How Much Don't I Know?

Every now and then I get to thinking (always dangerous), and what sometimes gets me going is a reference to some scientific or historical fact of which I know little or nothing. Like, say, the Great Siege of Malta in the 1500s.

The what?

I came across a reference to it and, not having heard of it and feeling, for the umpteenth time, that my education had been sorely lacking, I had to go look it up. Of course, one looks up things on the web at one's own risk, but that's a different post... Anyway, there is so much that I don't know, that I sometimes feel like the donkey who starved to death between two bales of hay. Unable to choose, he wasted away, poor jackass. Then I look at all of the time I have wasted in nonproductive ways and if I'm not careful, things go downhill fast. But sometimes I get to work and learn something, and that's a good thing. At least for me it is. I like to learn things, and my aged brain can still stretch enough to keep new facts in place. Some things come easy, some hard. But I do need to make the time.

Six Days

No, not the Six Day War, the six days in Genesis. There's a creationism museum somewhere that some guy dredged up enough money to open, and people are flocking to it. I guess if otherwise intelligent people want to believe in a God who literally created the universe in six days and then, having tired himself out, sat out the seventh, it's none of my business. But it does kind of give me the willies. And it begins to annoy me when those same people want their belief taught co-equally in science class. I'm not anti-religion in schools, but if you want to discuss creationism (or its spiffed-up but equally retarded half-brother "intelligent design") in a classroom, do it in a "religion around the world" setting. Don't pawn it off as science. Because if that's done, science becomes opinion becomes junk. And there's enough junk science out there as it is.

Cheap, Free Power

While we dump umpty-gazillion dollars into the war in Iraq, we continue to have a, what can charitably be called, "fractured" energy policy. The Greens are beside themselves, as even they are forced to admit that all the wind/water/whatever systems in the world won't amount to anything compared to the current U.S. power consumption, which leaves nuclear as the only reasonable short-term (the next 50 to 100 years) power alternative, and some (but, to their credit not all) of them would rather go back to the Stone Age than use power generated by a *gasp* nuclear reactor. The government, in the way that only massive, self-concerned bureacracies can do, says to use hybrids - no, wait, not too many - or to use bio-fuel - yeah, THAT'S the ticket - no, wait, bio-fuel actually causes more "greenhouse gases" than it prevents... um, well... then use wind! solar! heck, we don't have a clue! (that last one is mine).

Here's the recipe, if anyone is asking: build a crapload of nuclear power plants in the U.S. This drives a collapse in the foreign oil market and, gee, what a nice extra, a collapse in the funding for those nuts out there who want to kill Americans. Develop solar power satellites. Big, feathery panels that capture the free solar power and beam it down to God-forsaken locations (Oh yes, IF global warming is man-made, they can deflect the energy coming into the atmosphere. But I sure don't want to be the one figuring out how much solar energy must be reflected to reduce the mean temperature of the earth. Today's meteorologists can't even predict Tuesday's weather with any degree of accuracy). Some day (don't hold your breath) develop fusion power. When I was a kid (mumblety-mumble years ago), fusion power was "20 years in the future." It still is. It may be when my grandchildren are my age. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

The Love of Money...

Money is the root of all evil, right? Well, you can believe that, but if you say it, don't think you are accurately quoting the original phrase. It varies depending on the Bible translation, of course (what? the Bible isn't just one version???) but it pretty much goes like this: "for the love of money is the root of all evil." (1 Timothy 6:10 if you don't believe me). Kind of different. In a great, big, way. Money isn't good or evil. Heck money doesn't even exist. Don't believe me? How much is a dollar bill worth? One dollar? Sez who? You? Your neighbor? The gummint? What if tomorrow they all say something different? Fact is, a dollar is worth a dollar because - and ONLY because - everybody agrees that it's worth a dollar. Money doesn't exist, at least not physically. It isn't a "thing." It surely isn't little pieces of metal or crinkly pieces of paper or electronic notations you see on your computer screen when you check your bank account. Money is all in your mind. It's all in eveyone's minds. But I digress...

The love of money, however, can be a real problem, as Tim pointed out 2000 years ago. If you scramble and dig and scrape for the old do-re-mi, and you get lots of it just because you wanted it, odds are the only thing you'll want to do is get more. Blah, who needs that? Not that having enough money to pay the bills is a bad thing, it most emphatically is not! There's nothing noble about being poor, just as there's nothing ignoble about being wealthy (right, John Edwards? Al Gore? Hillary? Teddy?). "I've been rich and I've been poor, and believe me, rich is better." Quick, who said that - Sophie Tucker, Mae West or Gertrude Stein? Well, according to various quote sources, all of them...

Simple statements sometimes contain complex truths, as I think this quote, properly rendered, does. Simple statements can also be stupid and pointless. You pays your many and you takes your chance.

For Want of a Nail...

I've been reading - okay, listening to - 1776, the novel about the year. It's a fascinating story about the early stages of the Revolutionary War and the critical battles and events that take place. One thing that strikes me is how thin was the margin by which the colonies succeeded in their attempt to break away from the Crown. There are so many times when, had a relatively small event taken place, an entire battle and, likely, the entire war would have been lost. And who knows what our world would be like had that happened? It seems that all wars have those little things which occur and on which the fate of something larger, perhaps the entire enterprise, hangs. That anyone is here at all is against the odds...

Reading is FUNdamental!

I was reading an article today, and it quoted Steve Jobs as saying something about not caring about Kindle (Amazon's new electronic book/reader) because "40 percent of the people in the US read one book or less each year." Or words to that effect. Then the article went on to quote some other study that said 27 percent of the people in the US do not read even one book per year, but that a like amount of people read 15 or more books per year (hmmmm... the law of conservation of reading?). But really, whatever the stat, it sounds like there is some really large number of people who don't read even one book each year. What a ghastly statistic! I think of the books I have read, am reading and (hopefully) will read, and I'm appalled that so many people won't get the enjoyment that I have from books. I don't think it has anything to do with class or snobbery, this is basic - reading, good, not reading, bad. I can't even imagine it, really. For as long as I can remember, I have read. I remember one of my early reading coups was reading all of the Tom Swift Jr. books available to date when I was little, maybe eight or so (and it was a lot - in the twenties, I think). And after that, so, so much - starting with science fiction, but branching out into everything. My life has been immeasurably enriched by reading, and to think that there are people who just... don't; it's sad. I know there are literacy problems for some, and language problems for others, but if we say 30 percent we're starting to talk about 100 million people for pete's sake! I've met people who have said in passing, "oh, I don't read books," but I've never really taken it to heart. How can one not read? My wife and I have so many books that we can't deal with them all. In fact, because I moved into her house, not vice versa, most of mine are still in boxes in the basement, sniff...
I don't even want to think about what this means in terms of an informed electorate *shudder* I think I'm going to have some more wine, read Guns, Germs and Steel and contemplate a world without the written word. Yikes.

The Burn

I downhill-skied for most of my life. I began when I was eleven, with wooden skies, cable bindings, "boots," and poles. Ski wear was jeans with longjohns underneath, a wool sweater and a jacket. A pair of goggles, gloves or mittens, and a hat rounded out the ensemble. Helmet? Puh-leeze. Skis changed - Metal! Fiberglass! Composite! Longer! Shorter! Parabolic! Clothes changed - Polypro! Ski Pants! Gore-tex! Goggles changed to the point that they sometimes actually didn't fog or ice up. And on I skied over the decades, on the ice, rocks and occasional powder of the northeast, on the deep, vast pillows of snow out west. And when it was time, I taught my three sons to downhill ski. Tiny little boots, and short little skis, and lots of clothing and helmets and goggles, all of it outgrown each year and handed down to a younger brother. And finally, as soon as he could formulate an argument, each of my sons said goodbye forever to skiing and began snowboarding.
So that is how it came to be that, three years ago, facing especially crummy conditions which left few of the difficult slopes open or worth skiing on, I decided to try snowboarding. I had taken one lesson several years before, and what I remembered most of that lesson was that one falls down a lot when learning to snowboard. True to my recollection, when I started out, I fell down. A lot. Hard. I fell on my back, my front, my knees, my arms, my head. It hurt. But I kept at it, watching others, trying to find the key that would let me move from pathetic novice to intermediate, a move that can happen literally in an instant in snowboarding. And it did. Something clicked, my body got it, and there I was.
Which is how, three years later, I am able to go with my sons and enjoy their company as we snowboard down whatever the mountain we're on can throw at us. And the burn comes in your thighs, after you have raced down a double black diamond without stopping, and your calves ache and your thighs are on fire and your breath is coming in gasps. It's great.