musings of a defrocked physicist

What happens after Capitalism succeeds?

2012-01-17T12:40:00.001-07:00

Last night the Republican candidates and many of their potential GOP voters in South Carolina made more or less the same point: the creation of jobs and the creation of welfare support (food stamps, subsidies, whatever) are not compatible. Well, that's probably not true but it got me to thinking.

One of the advantages of Capitalism, at least as articulated by Adam Smith and Milton Friedman, is that market forces (as opposed to physical forces) create efficiencies in production and marketing. That is, when Capitalism works well, things become more available, more cheaply available, more widely available. So, fine. What are we to do when everyone needs a job but jobs for everyone are not needed? That is, in a Capitalist economy, as envisioned by, say, Mitt Romney, what if the economy (that "thing" that underlies the "market") produces enough and distributes enough and sells enough with only, lets say 80% employment. That's the goal of Capitalism, after all, isn't it? That the market should drive food production and clothing production and housing production and general goods production to such efficiencies that some of the people can make and deliver and sell all the stuff that all the people need.

So, what, then, does it mean to "create jobs"? Wouldn't jobs for that 20% of "surplus" workers be, in the context of capitalist efficiency, the same as "welfare"? There is, of course, no mechanism within a Capitalist framework for people without jobs to get access to any of the "stuff". In a Capitalist framework, they are not "needed". They should be made to go away. It looks to me like we're there, now. There's certainly plenty of stuff, probably more than enough to go around. But of course it doesn't go around. Why can't we just make it go around more? What's so bad about distributing the stuff, of which there is plenty, to everyone? The Capitalists will say that that will cause the 80% to stop working and then no one will have stuff. But I don't think there's any evidence for that. The alternative is to make the unemployed go away. Where should they go?

They know not what they do

2011-11-01T12:08:00.000-06:00

First of all, if I or anyone reads this even a few years from now, it is likely that the name, Occupy Wall Street will not ring any bells. So let's just say that OWS is at this moment an on-going, spontaneous, global protest against the corporate and financial structure of the world, at least the "developed" world. The resounding theme is "we are the 99%" who are losing wealth, and losing hope, and losing time. The message is familiar: the only reason we have societies is for our mutual benefit. We didn't sign up to be mulch in the wealth-gardens of the 1%.

I seems to me that a big problem is that the 1% don't even know they're doing anything wrong. Of course, they are, but they don't know it. Our system (call it by name, Capitalism) is ideologically based on the notion that if profits are maximized, all will be well. Well, it isn't and it won't. For the most part, the banks aren't doing anything illegal when they buy and sell, debt, and insurance, and derivatives. Anyone can sell anything whether it's real or not, as long as someone wants to buy it. And corporations aren't doing anything illegal when they restructure instead of retool, when they move jobs to polluting, hazardous, plantations instead of taking smaller profits. They're all just doing what the "market" demands.

In order for anything to change, these activities must become illegal. We can't just do it with incentives; they're no substitute for obscene profits. Yes, we must put restraints on "liberty" for the benefit of society. After all, that's why we live in a society, for the benefit. When the majority (much less 99%) of those who form a society no longer receive a benefit from it, when they'd be better off living in trees, they will bring it down, and the 1% along with it.

Socialized Medicine vs Socialized Public Safety

2011-10-25T08:25:00.003-06:00

Those who oppose Socialized Medicine, or Universal Health Care, or let's just call it Common Sense are wont to appeal to basic Puritanism with the notion that people should be responsible for their own lives. Freedom, they will say, means that individuals are allowed to take risks and are obliged to deal with the consequences of those risks. Ron Paul, bless his tiny heart, has been steadfast in this regard and others on the Right, while not always quite so eloquent in their support of this Cotton Mather Health Plan are no less adamant in their ardor.

But to my knowledge no conservative candidate or pundit has suggested, much less advocated, that the Police and Fire departments of cities, counties, states, of jurisdictions large and small, far and wide should be disbanded and that individuals should be, well, responsible for their own property.

So that's it, really. Private property is a public responsibility. I'm responsible for helping to ensure, that is, to pay for, your house's integrity, your store's defense against the inevitable stampede of entropy, your community's bulwark against riff-raff like, well, me. But private health is a private responsibility, at least as far as what has become the political center is concerned. But why is that? Why is property a collective good but health, even with it's obvious public ramifications (think epidemics), is strictly a personal choice? Let's be clear. If your house catches fire because you didn't plan on overloaded and frayed electrical wires failing to perform at more than their specified tolerance, I share in the remediation even if my own house is in no danger. Socialized fire department. But if you contract diphtheria because you happened to walk down the same street as someone else that's your own problem alone, even if you're going to bring it into the same bank where I'm making a deposit. Private responsibility.

I could go on but I'm just repeating the obvious. It is obvious isn't it?

The Consumer/Employee Coupling Problem

2011-09-27T08:13:00.002-06:00

There is a famous exercise in applied mathematics known as the "rabbit lynx coupling" problem (not "coupling" in the sense of "mommy and daddy time", but in the sense of coupled differential equations describing the two populations). The population of rabbits goes up when the population of lynxes goes down and vice versa. In a stable ecosystem, the two populations will oscillate at the same frequency with opposite phase. It's all great fun, unless of course you're the rabbit.

In modern capitalist economies, there is, it seems to me, a similar problem with coupled populations: Consumers and Workers. In this case, however, they're really the same population or at least there's a great deal of overlap (you NEVER find a rabbit who IS a lynx!). As I have said before, and is certainly well known anyway, money must flow if the economy is to be healthy. One way money flows, in fact we're finding that it's the principal way, is that people buy things. In order to buy things they need to have money. In order to have money they need to have jobs. Furthermore, when they think there is a likelihood that they might lose their job, people buy only what they absolutely need. This is important. It turns out that this isn't enough. For the economy to be healthy, people must buy stuff that they don't need. That's crazy!

And this is where we are now. The economy is struggling to get out of a recession and the way we're told this will happen is that people will buy things (that they don't need). But in order to do that, they need jobs so they can have more money than just what they need to buy just what they need. And what do we expect those jobs to be? Why, making stuff and selling stuff and disposing of stuff that we don't need!
Look: if people don't need stuff, a new car, a new dryer, a new sofa, our economy shouldn't collapse if they don't buy it anyway. In fact, the economy would be more sustainable if it could survive with people only buying what they need, or at least mostly buying what they need. It may be, and I have serious trepidation even raising this, that not everybody needs to be fully employed to make what everyone needs. Ultimately, after all, it's really the farmers, and extractors (oil, minerals, ...) who make what we need. Everyone else is really making stuff so those guys don't get all the money. And, by the way, I'm not talking about old MacDonald here. The farmers in question are Cargill and Monsanto and ArcherDanielsMidland.

Anyway, the problem is that our economy depends on the coupling between different aspects of the same population: workers and consumers. There are no jobs if people don't buy steering wheel covers, or t-shirts, or paper clips. Likewise, there is no stuff if people don't have jobs. But most of it is stuff we don't need. That is, it's the stuff we're not buying now because we're limiting our buying to what we need. But because of "lack of consumer confidence", no new jobs are being created so consumers are even less confident. But it's all made up. We're not rabbits suffering from an abundance of lynxes. Nor are we lynxes suffering from a scarcity of rabbits. We are all both workers (money receivers) and consumers (money spenders). And we shouldn't have to buy more than we need to ensure that we will be able to buy what we need in the first place. We ought to find a way of living so that we produce enough for people to have what they need (and then some) and for people to acquire those things and not have to keep acquiring what they don't need.

So okay, you'll say that this is socialism and planned economy and that it doesn't work. Fair enough. But I think it's obvious that this, what we have now, doesn't work either. So why is capitalism not working so much better than socialism not working?

Why I'm not a Democrat

2011-09-22T09:52:00.000-06:00

The Democrats are like a big pile of cow shit between me and a big pile of pig shit, that being the Republicans. They may smell better, but they still stink. And they're full of shit.

President Obama has nothing to lose

2011-08-26T09:56:00.000-06:00

Sure, President Obama would like to be a two-term president. Once a person decides he or she wants to be president at all, that's pretty much settled. The problem is, he's gone to such lengths to govern from the middle, to avoid angering anyone (except his shrinking base of support), to appease the howling lunatics of the ideological right, that he can't really be a credible progressive. He never was particularly hard over on progressive policies anyway. He was never an advocate of universal health care. That was John Edwards. He was never an absolutist against the war(s). That was Bill Richardson. But great-googly-moogly he talked a good game!

But here's the thing: the red meat right is never going to love him. If the moderate right (by which I mean a view of the world that would have made the John Birch Society blush only thirty years ago) prevails, they have Romney, they don't need Obama. And against the likes of Perry or Bachman, any pragmatic realism is only seen as weakness.

So the question is, does the majority of the American electorate want the government to sponsor even the meager social safety net we have now or not? Do they want all government regulation, of child labor, worker safety, environmental protection to be eradicated, leaving us to catch up with China on a slave labor-based prosperity, or not? Do they want people who make millions of dollars (and create no jobs, whatever Boehner calls them) to be allowed to pay no taxes or not?

If the answers are yes, then Obama has no chance anyway. But if the answers are no, then he needs to seize whatever executive authority he has and govern against Congress. He needs to give the American people a glimpse of what a useful government can provide in a time of difficulty. It may be too late. On the other hand, he has nothing to lose.

My representative doesn't represent me - 2

2011-08-03T10:50:00.002-06:00

The other day I received this mailer from Rep. Doug Lamborn:

There are many things wrong with it but let me pick on a few. First take a look at the graph, "A Choice of Two Futures". The current level of debt is something like half what it was at what appears to be the end of WW2. And here we are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, a little in Libya and then all the post WW2 strategic deployments (Korea, Germany, I don't know where all). So right away, that doesn't seem like too much debt.
Then there's some exponential curve that purports to be our projected debt at "our current rate of spending". It's ludicrous on the face of it. There's nothing historical to support that function, in fact more like the opposite. It's just more right-wing "fact by assertion".

Then there's Lamborn's letter where he refers to the "failed trillion dollar stimulus bill" and how the "treasury pumped hundreds of billions of dollars in borrowed money into the struggling economy". Absent from his analysis is any notion of the utter catastrophe that market capitalism left us with and how much worse shape we'd be in if those initiatives he so despises were not undertaken. But enough of that. The real outrage is on the 2nd page.

In what he trumpets as a "Common-sense Jobs Plan", Lamborn lists 4 broad aphorisms, talking points of the right for some time now, that have no self-evident connection to the creation of jobs at all. The times of low unemployment in the United States historically have never been associated with any of these things. In fact, the only empirical evidence there is suggests that the measures Lamborn endorses will actually lower both the standard of living in the US and the rate of employment. It is, of course, axiomatic to the conservative movement that taxes are bad for the economy. Well, axiomatic or not, the only evidence we have is that taxes are at best irrelevant and more likely constructive.

And his "note to seniors" (of which I am one)! Absent entirely, although not unexpectedly, is any acknowledgement that just increasing revenues a little will actually constitute the "real reform" he supposedly wants.

My representative doesn't represent me

2011-07-18T13:49:00.000-06:00

I live in a congressional district represented by Douglas Lamborn. In my opinion, he's a dangerous ideologue who doesn't understand the first thing about representative democracy, but, hey, what do I know? As Jefferson said, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

I receive occasional messages by email from Rep. Lamborn's office. Today's documented an interview he held with our local newspaper, the Gazette. An exerpt:

The Gazette:Budget talks have been the only thing coming out of Washington for weeks now. So along those lines, what’s happening that you specifically think voters around here should know about?
Lamborn:The big news today is that we got together as (House) Republicans this morning, and we have a deal that we think is a great deal to move forward with, and that we can unify behind. And that’s the first time in this whole debate that we’ve really reached this point. And I’m excited about the plan. It’s cut, cap and balance. In the short term, we cut next year’s budget by $111 billion. Some of that is discretionary, some of that is mandatory. In the medium term, in the next 10 years, we cut from our current spending — the current budget is about 24 percent of gross domestic product — to under 20 percent of GDP, with an eventual path to get down, someday, to 18 percent. To me, the sooner the better. And then in the long term, have a balanced budget amendment that goes out to the states. I’m hopeful that enough states would ratify it to put this in the Constitution, so that on a permanent basis, we can’t overspend. Those are the main provisions. [my emphasis]

So let's see. A constitutional amendment that requires, like say, California, that the budget not exceed revenue. Then, some perverse congress, like the one we have now, that refuses to consider raising taxes just because it has some religious significance for them, can paralyze the entire apparatus of government. That's working so great for the states! What a tool!

How the Left killed civil discourse

2011-07-11T11:15:00.000-06:00

This morning I heard Cokie Roberts describing her impending appointment to deliver a eulogy for Betty Ford. Apparently Betty Ford had requested that, when the opportunity came, she speak about the time when Gerry Ford and Hale Boggs (Cokie Roberts' father) were House Minority Leader and Majority Leader, respectively, and House members were collegial and even friends, irrespective of party (united, perhaps, by their common loathing of the Senate). Later on I read an article in The Nation extolling the courage and civic virtue of "...all those gay couples who were willing to weaponize their lives...'you're either with me, or you're with the haters - but you can't have it both ways'".

That's it, of course. You (we) can't have it both ways. When Boggs and Ford were friends, discourse in the Congress was about compromise and continuity. Change was gradual, what we might call "adiabatic". Everyone's position was respectable. Then there was the Vietnam War, and the Civil Rights Movement. It was my side, the Left, that saw that gradual change meant more lynchings and more body bags. It was we who said the other side's argument was totally bankrupt. And it worked. Great googlymoogly, it worked a treat!

Of course, THEY were watching. They saw that it worked. And whose fault is it that they're even better at it than we are? So here we are. There is no middle ground. An argument is either right or wrong and if it's wrong, what's respectable about that? You can't have it both ways.

When a dead coyote stops being a dog

2011-05-02T12:35:00.001-06:00

My dogs are not a sentimental bunch. With only few exceptions, any animal that isn't them is, potentially, food. The exceptions include people and, grudgingly, the cats that live in our house, and, it seems, other dogs. Their lack of sentimentality not withstanding, there is evidence that their disinclination to eat other dogs extends to dead coyotes, up to a point.

This past winter, a coyote died on my property. I didn't see any obvious signs of why it died but there it was. As we passed nearby on our various hikes, my dogs would show interest, but also respect. They made a point of checking it out, sniffing and circling, but they didn't paw at it, or chew it, or disturb it.

Months later, the corpse looked pretty much the same:

It looked the same to me, that is. To the dogs, it was totally different. Over just a couple of walks, they were tearing it apart, chasing each other for pieces, chewing it up (it was totally disgusting to me but what do I know?).

So I think for a long time, and the time was enhanced by the cold weather, the body smelled like a dog. You may argue that a coyote is not a dog at all. Since dogs and coyotes can interbreed and produce fertile offspring, I would argue that you would be wrong. Anyway, I think it's clear that my dogs thought this coyote had been a dog. They have no compunction whatsoever about cat corpses, skunk corpses, weasel corpses. But they left this corpse alone for months. Then, one day, it stopped being the corpse of a dog and became, well, meat. It was rotten, smelly, disgusting meat, to be sure, but that's never been a deal-breaker for them.

The Prison Problem

2011-01-17T10:42:00.000-07:00

The problems with prisons are (at least nearly) universal. I don't know of any country that can say their prison system is just what they want, that it accomplishes anything really useful for the society. Certainly the prisons here in the US are a total travesty. So, why is that?

Well, I think we don't really know what we want from our prisons. The way I see it, a prison might be expected to provide any one of three services (but only one): Rehabilitation, Penitence, and Deterrence.

In the Rehabilitation model, a convict is sent to prison for some period with the expectation that at the end of that period, he or she has been taught how to behave in a way that society will find acceptable. Furthermore, the convict will have been re-conditioned in some way so that the expected behavior will be desirable to him or her.

In the Penitence model, the convict is supposed to know what behavior is expected of him or her by society and only requires the enforced time to consider the error of his or her ways and reflect on the connectedness of his or her behavior with the general welfare in which he or she participates.

In the Deterrence model, the convict is subjected to an environment so horrific that the expectation is that he or she will aspire to avoid being subjected to it ever again. Needless to say, this is really the only model that is ever put into practice.

There may have been a time when we expected our prisons to operate in accordance with the Penitence model, hence the sobriquet: penitentiary. I sense a heavy overlay of Christianity in this model and, as such, a set of assumptions about people that is more ideologically than empirically based. Certainly the current state of prisons as overcrowded, chaotic, and dangerous is not consistent with contemplation and introspection.

Likewise, although I'm certain that parole boards honestly expect rehabilitation, the prisons are in no way designed to facilitate anything of the kind. The educational opportunities that are afforded to convicts, when there are any, are rudimentary. The vocational training is haphazard, without regard to what job opportunities might exist for the eventual ex-convict. More importantly, there is no attempt to treat, other than by punishment, the personality traits that led the convict to think that the behavior that brought him or her to prison was reasonable. Without that, there is no reason to believe that he or she might not think so again.

So, we have Deterrence. But we don't really since there is no evidence to support the idea that prison has a deterrent effect. That is odd, of course, since, from all accounts, prison is really horrible. So either an ex-convict doesn't believe he or she will be caught again, or conditions are at least as bad for him or her "on the outside". That's a sobering thought. Either way the whole thing doesn't work and we should try to find out why.

American Exceptionalism -- or not

2010-10-19T08:07:00.001-06:00

The people of the United States are, in their majority at least, suffering the effects of a severe economic recession. We don't like it. We're not used to it. It wasn't supposed to be this way. We are taught that for a lot of reasons the United States is the world's leader in prosperity, in academic achievement, in technology, in the pursuit of happiness, in everything. Some of that may have been true at one time. It isn't any more.

Let us examine the reasons we believe lie at the heart of why we are so much more successful than the rest of the world, leaving aside for the moment the question of whether in fact we are. Publicly, a lot of our political leaders aver that our peculiar blend of democratic government and free-market capitalism is responsible for everything good and great in the US. Our European cousins, late to democratic political institutions and suspiciously agnostic on the question of capitalism, just don't have the constituent fundamental elements to be Number 1. We're Number 1. More perniciously, many people believe that prosperity and power in the US are due to American Exceptionalism, specifically, Divine Favor. Both of these views are, of course, wrong.

If either democracy or free markets were required for world economic domination, well, then China would not be running the show today. But it is. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for democracy. I just don't think it's necessarily good for business. What is good for business, and what America had in spades right up until (I guess) the 1970s, is resources and infrastructure. Until about the turn of the 19th century, the US was just another 2-bit player in the world. We were mostly agrarian. We had moderately successful trade, more successful with our western hemisphere neighbors than with Europe. We were doing all right. Then came the Industrial Revolution. Practically overnight we became an international powerhouse. Why? Were babies born in the United States automatically endowed with superior faculties relative to their (literal) cousins born elsewhere? Certainly social mobility was greater in the US than in Europe but I doubt that accounts for Cornelius Vanderbilt. What does is coal and steel and timber and space. That, I think, is what made the US strong. Democracy doesn't hurt, but I don't think it helps that much. Ready access to resources, cheap land to build on, infrastructure to transport goods, these are what really allow economic development to flourish. If the United States had been less endowed with the basic raw materials of industry, I don't believe our democracy would have propelled us to trade dominance. We would still have been a free people, sufficient unto ourselves, secure in our pursuit of happiness. We would have been, as Jefferson had hoped we would be, more like Sweden and less like Rome. That I think is the rational view.

American Exceptionalism is, on the face of it, the irrational view. America is great because it was ordained by God that we should be. Where to start? Did God favor the geography or the people? If the geography, then would the natives have somehow become an economic powerhouse with stone tools if the Europeans hadn't come? If the people, how are we different for having immigrated than if we had stayed in Europe and Asia and Africa? But most egregiously, American Exceptionalism fails the categorical imperative, enunciated by Emmanuel Kant. Simply put, something is morally right if it would be fine if everyone did it. Now, loving one's country, or society, or clan is charming in the way that small children playing big music is charming. But if we insist that the world is broken if we, ourselves, are not the absolute masters of it, then what if Colombians felt that way (and why shouldn't they?), what if Chinese felt that way, what if Angolans felt that way? Politicians of every stripe are fulminating at the notion, no, reality, that China dominates the world economy. Why? Was it horrible for Austria when the US dominated the world economy? Why should it be horrible for the US when China dominates? Can everyone dominate? Congress went ballistic when Air Bus won an Air Force procurement. Why? Boeing wins European competitions all the time. Should France be worried that the US is building their military planes? Then why must they not build ours?

Whatever became of the Thracians?

2010-10-18T09:52:00.001-06:00

The other day, for some reason I found my self wondering how Jews became so thoroughly dispersed throughout the Roman Empire, and how, moreover, we remained Jews. Take the Thracians for instance. Why weren't they sent to Iberia, or Caledonia? If they were, why aren't they still Thracians? Curiously enough, since I almost never consider religion a rational reason for anything, I think it was the peculiar mono-theism of the Jews that is responsible. Consider:

The Roman Empire is expanding over Europe, Mesopotamia, North Africa. Everywhere they go, there are, of course, people living there already. While these people obviously don't consider themselves Roman, they don't really have all that much attachment to their own rulers either. They are living under more or less totalitarian despots who, while they probably speak the same language as the population, are not governing by the consent of the governed in any real way. So, why not the Romans? Now they come to Judea. The population believes, universally I think, that the land, from Golan to Goshen, is theirs because God gave it to Isaac. Their rulers are anointed by God. While the Roman emperor is actually divine, the Romans have so many gods that one more or less has got to be pretty insignificant. Furthermore, the Jews, because they have only this one god, and because Moses told them that this god said so, are pretty intolerant of gentiles, especially gentile overlords (1st commandment). As long as there are Jews in Judea, they're going to want to run things, especially the temple. As long as there are Jews in Judea, there will be rebellion. We're just that ornery! Not so the Thracians. For them, it's just a change of uniform, a change of currency, no change at all, really. What to do about the Jews? Well, send them to Iberia of course. Send them to Germania. Send them to Scythia. Let them practice their peculiar religion. Let them long for Jerusalem. Let them, in the mean time, establish commerce with the far-flung reaches of the empire.

The Romans come and go. Likewise the Visigoths and the Saxons. The peculiar residents who were never actually "from there" even though they've always "been there" remain. And all because we couldn't be made to play well with the other children.

We still don't play well, apparently. How else to explain why the settlement question is so intractable? When the United States annexed parts of what had been Mexico, the people living in those places, who had been Mexican, who had considered themselves Mexican, who spoke the language of Mexico, did not feel like they had to leave. They did not, nor did the Mexican government, nor did the US government, think that it was impossible for them to remain in their settlements while the political boundaries changed around them. So there are Jewish settlements in Palestine? Let them become part of the Palestinian state. Why not? Because, I suppose, we're just not Thracians.

In support of strong bank regulation

2010-09-30T09:04:00.001-06:00

Many people were justifiably outraged that large private corporations, that happen to be banks, were propped up with government bailouts. That outrage, however, is misdirected when the blame is ascribed to the federal government. The fault lies with capitalism, or rather, with free market banking.

For at least the last 5,000 years, if not longer, most economies have been based on some form of money. Money is not wealth; money is an abstraction of wealth. The fact is that wealth, real wealth, rots. Corn is wealth. Oil is wealth. Meat is wealth. They all rot. Money does not rot. But in order to be useful, money must flow. The accumulation of money is not the accumulation of wealth. The accumulation of real wealth would be pointless because it rots. Likewise, from a global economic perspective as opposed to a personal greed perspective, the accumulation of money is pointless because if the money does not flow, the real wealth does not get to where it can be used before it rots. The steps that governments, institutions, secret societies, and even enlightened capitalists take to ensure the appropriate flux of money is called "monetary policy". The point of monetary policy is to keep money flowing at the proper rate to keep the wealth from rotting.

In the US and other capitalist countries, the instrument of monetary policy is the banking industry, that is, banks, large and small, consumer and investment, local and global. The Federal Reserve Bank, an arm of the US government that formulates monetary policy injects more or less money into the private banking system, and the money flows. Or it doesn't.

Banks are owned and run by people who are not, unless of course they are, interested in monetary policy. They are interested in becoming rich. Because it would be impractical for them to accumulate wheat or cattle, and because they likely confuse money with wealth, they believe that becoming rich means accumulating money. To all appearances, they're right. So what happens is that the banks, whose only real benefit to society, the reason we allow them to exist, is to be a mechanism to facilitate the flow of money, become instead a money sink. Rather than circulate, the money that is injected into the economy by the Fed, the source, is pooled in the banks (the sink). Not only is this untenable from a fluid mechanical view, it is in contradiction to the interests of society. If banks behave like this, there is no reason we should allow them to exist. Before you cry "commie", recall that we don't allow a lot of businesses to exist. Businesses that are not in the general interest, think brothels, casinos, cock-fights, are not permitted to operate.

Rather than outlaw banks (that's actually called communism), I propose that they be required to behave. They should be required by law, that is, regulation, to manage the flow of money in the public interest. Just like utilities, which are also private companies and quite profitable ones, are required to manage the flow of electricity in the public interest, banks should be regulated strenuously and closely so that the money they siphon off from "the flow" is commensurate with both the service they provide to society and the continuity of the proper current of money (i.e., currency).

Learning to fly

2010-09-22T07:49:00.003-06:00

There is a pair of hawks who live on or near my property. I've never seen where they nest but I see them hunting around the place all the time. This is the time of year they teach their fledgelings to fly, and this year is no different. I see them nearly every day, but it always seems to be when I don't have my camera . There's always a good wind and the youngsters seem to enjoy that. They're careening around, cackling, tumbling around each other. The parents are more serene, more accustomed to flight, wings out-stretched, head into the wind, watching. Every now and then one or the other adult lets out a long call and the fledgelings tack across the wind and they all move a quarter-mile or so.

It looks like fun. It looks like they're all enjoying themselves.

I imagine my parents watched me learning to walk in much the same way as the hawk parents are watching their offspring learning to fly. I don't remember. I do remember watching my own children learning to walk, encouraging them, enjoying them. It was fun. For sure. Still, I kind of wish someone had taught me to fly.

Is America a Christian Nation?

2010-09-20T13:50:00.000-06:00

Politicians and commentators often say, erroneously in my view, that the United States is a christian nation, that our founders had christian doctrine in mind, whatever they actually said on the subject not withstanding. Speaking as an outsider (to Christianity), I'd have to say that the United States is less christian now than perhaps it ever has been.

In the United States, you can eat if you have the money. You can go to a good school if you have the money. You can get decent health care if you have the money. You can live in a house if you have the money. The United States as a nation will not clothe the naked, or feed the hungry, or nurture the sick, or shelter the poor. At least not well and worse every day.

So what is christian about this country? Surely there has to be more to christian-ness than killing abortionists and sodomites. After all, that seems decidedly Old Testament. Maybe the United States is a Hebrew nation. God knows we don't need another one of those. There is also a remarkable overlap with shiria law, except for the charity part.

I don't know. It's not my religion or heritage but I fail to see how the behavior of the American government or indeed the people ourselves can be in any way confused with christian tenets.

public and personal morality

2010-08-05T11:28:00.002-06:00

When is it "ok" for personal moral decisions to be forced on the public? I'd like to think that the answer is, Never. Looked at one way, you might say that murder is immoral and that's why it's illegal. If that's the case then whose morality is it that is being imposed on the rest of us? Apart from the immorality of murder being pretty wide spread, maybe the entire premise is wrong. Murder isn't illegal because it's immoral; it's illegal because it's injurious to society. Murder cannot be permitted because, like not obeying traffic signs, it leads to disorder and chaos. If nothing else, it's bad for business.

So if we can strip out any moral considerations from public policy, things get clearer. Marriage is in the public interest only in as much as it supports stability (and commerce). If churches don't approve of gay marriage, they should excommunicate those who practice it, much like some churches excommunicate people who divorce although the State allows divorce. It's not for the State to enforce everyone's individual idea of morality.

So, --- abortion.
It isn't a question of whether I am in favor of abortion. That's like asking if I'm in favor of amputation. I don't even like to think about it. But sometimes it may be the best choice in a bad situation. The proper question is, does allowing women to choose to terminate pregnancy promote or diminish public stability? As with all questions of personal liberty, the answer must default to choice.

What if...

2010-06-30T12:53:00.000-06:00

Let's pretend that we're rational people and, as such, are capable of thinking anything - there is no such thing as "unthinkable". What if there were no Israel? Let's not worry right now how this might happen: a defeat at the hands of Palestine, a dismantling executed by the UN, an act of God,... It's just a premise. Apart from the warm, fuzzy feeling on the part of the Ashkenazi diaspora (myself included) that there is such a thing as a Jewish nation (talk about the unthinkable!), I don't see anything catastrophic happening. Part of the reason Israel exists is to prevent the extermination of the Jews of Europe. Well, the Jews of Europe were effectively exterminated and I really don't think the remnants would be in any greater danger without the political protection that the existence of Israel affords.

Let's face it: Israel is just a country. And it's not like it's all that great a country. It's just another 2-bit political artifact on the edge of the desert. American Jews (maybe Jews generally, but not me) think they have some special affinity for Israel because, well I guess because of Abraham and Moses. I guess it helps if you subscribe to Hebrew mythology, but I don't. I read about calls for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions, and that opposition to these calls is based on the notion that they would lead to the dissolution of Israel. And I think, "so, what's that to me?"

The debate seems to involve notions of loving Israel and hating Israel. Both sides seem to agree about this. What about indifference (that greatest of American virtues)? I don't love Israel and I don't hate Israel. Israel, to me, is like, well Estonia. I'm sure it's a fine place but so what? Take away the political structure and it's just geography. I categorically reject the notion that Jews must love the nation of Israel. Must Celts love Austria? The ancestors of the Celtic people lived in what is now Austria about the time my ancestors lived in what is now Israel. So what? Back to mythology.

It was the mythological association of the geography with, what?, genetics that led to the creation of a Jewish nation where it is. The original zionist movement wasn't so much fixed on the land "that god promised to Abraham" as they were on getting the hell out of Eastern Europe. Then England decided to give "them" some land that was incidentally occupied by people who thought they were entitled to do so but which land had been administered by the Turkish Empire whom the English had wupped. My mother used to say, "if the English loved us so much, why didn't they give us Sussex?"

The idea that criticism of Israel, even criticism of the notion of Israel, is antisemitic is preposterous. Israel is not "the Jews". Israel is not MY homeland. Israel is a political creature and it's political origins are a little smelly at that. If Israel had never existed, or ceased to exist tomorrow, my Jewishness, and that of all Jews I dare say, would not be compromised. Some may argue that my safety in the face of tomorrow's Hitler depends on the existence of Israel. Well, that's just crazy talk. If anything, given their outrageous policies, the existence of Israel is a threat to that safety. That leaves mythology.

I know: the US should stop sending money to the modern nation of Israel and instead send mythological money to the Kingdom of Judea. Let's see what would happen then?

If corporations are people...

2010-06-14T10:46:00.001-06:00

The Supreme Court ruled recently that corporations are people. Since political contributions are speech, according to an earlier ruling, the court ruled that corporations, being people, could not be deprived of their free speech rights under the first amendment and so are allowed to make direct political contributions. Well, that's just stupid but maybe it just seems that way to me because I'm not a lawyer.

But let's take it as it comes. BP is a corporation, so it's a person. Now, it's a foreign person but foreign persons are subject to US laws when they're in the US. BP killed 11 people when their oil rig exploded. They've broken many environmental laws (something like "littering with extreme prejudice"). They should go to jail. Not that fatuous CEO, or the Board of Directors, or any number of executives. They should be prosecuted too, of course. But if BP is a person, it should be subject to the penalties of person-hood. They should be completely deprived of their liberty to function as a person in society, just like any other person. They should be subjected to punitive detention in the (admittedly dim) hope of rehabilitation. They should be deprived of their civil liberties as a person for life. Most importantly, just like a person, they should be locked away from contact with any other people or, apparently, corporations.

If this cannot be accomplished, regardless of the egregious nature of their crimes, then BP is not, despite any ridiculous Supreme Court ruling to the contrary, a person, and by extension, neither is any other corporation.

Facts on the ground

2010-06-08T12:56:00.000-06:00

I think that anyone would agree that, objectively, the events that took place in the Americas between 1492 and say, 1880, I mean the dispossession of the native Americans from their lands, were wrong. But here we are: facts on the ground. There's no going back. There's really no back to go to.

In 1917, the British government essentially promised to "give" the Jews of Europe land on which other people were living. This was the Balfour Declaration: His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country." The legal authority by which the British felt they could do this was that they had beaten the Turks in WWI. The Turkish government, in their turn, had taken authority over the land in question by beating the Mamelukes, and so on. To be brutally honest, the only reason the British had any authority in England was because they beat the Celts.

But there you are: facts on the ground. After a while, a generation, a century, it no longer matters how we got here. Here we are. Of course, it may still matter to some people but no one who counts. Do the Israelis have a right to live in Israel? Where else are they going to live? Facts on the ground. Do the Palestinians who were driven out of Israel, or who left for whatever reason, have a right to live in Israel? Well, they're living somewhere else now. Facts on the ground. Is all of Jerusalem part of Israel? It sure seems to be. Facts on the ground.

Every day there are new facts on the ground. A wall separating Israel from the West Bank, except that for, you know, good reasons, some the Israeli side of the wall includes what was part of the West Bank before the wall was erected but, well, that's where we are. Facts on the ground.

All this can possibly mean is that the Palestinians will have to establish facts on the ground. There will be no resolution in the courts to give them a viable state. There will be no Balfour Declaration for them. No one will give them a single piece of land that facts on the ground tell us is part of Israel. They must, it seems, change the facts on the ground or nothing will change.

When all options save all out war are taken off the table, what else remains? Facts on the ground.

What a strange thing to say

2010-05-27T10:13:00.001-06:00

As de bubbe volt gehat beytsim, volt zi gevain mayn zaidah.

What a strange thing to say. Who came up with that? In my lifetime it was cleaned up to be, "if my grandmother had wheels she'd be a trolley car" but that was clearly a relatively modern update. So there's these people living in Eastern or Central Europe, isolated from other communities, practically living in the Bronze Age, and this is how they talk to each other? Can you imagine Teviah from Fiddler on the Roof saying that? To whom would he say it? I certainly understand the circumstances when a person would want to express the sentiment. You know, you're in a meeting and the whole conversation has veered off into the future perfect subjunctive: if the xyz group were to decide to encrypt the abc message using the ijk code... But still, is that really what you'd say?

Tipping

2010-04-08T11:33:00.002-06:00

Tipping is a weird, anachronistic, degrading, and yet ubiquitous and multicultural custom. Certain service providers get tipped, others don't. Those who do, depend on those tips to supplement an otherwise insufficient wage. Those who don't, presumably, are paid acceptably without tips. Weird, right?

First of all, I suspect the origin of the custom, at least in the European-influenced part of the world, is insultingly class-ist. Here's what I think must have happened. Some servant is employed at some house or inn or coach house, or whatever at some pitiful wage that barely allows that person to exist, let alone have a family. Along comes a "gentleman" who is served by said servant. Being kindly, if not particularly enlightened, the served, in appreciation of the service or the company, offers the servant a "little extra" so that he (the servant) might have a drink or buy flowers for a girl or whatever and which payment will not be known to his employers (otherwise they would claim it for themselves). That servant will naturally do whatever he thinks might elicit the same response from others or that same returning "customer". The process catches on. The employers, seeing that the servants have another source of income, and (here's the really disgusting part) not wanting them to rise above their station, reduce that wage so that the total now (with tips) is no better than it was before (without them).

And that's where we are. I don't want to stiff a waiter or a cab driver or a bell hop or anyone. But they should be paid a proper wage by their employers, and I should be charged accordingly for the service.

The Large Hadron Collider

2010-04-02T09:20:00.001-06:00

The Large Hadron Collider is up and running. As far as I know, the destruction of the Universe, or even our part of it, has not occurred. Whew!

Hadrons, of course, are "fat" particles, not to be confused with baryons, which are "heavy" particles, although some confusion is understandable as baryons are hadrons. But then, so are mesons which are not heavy, although, generally speaking, neither are baryons, you know, compared to say, water buffaloes. Everyone agrees, though, that both mesons and baryons are definitely fat.

But amidst all the speculation about whether or not the Higgs Boson will be detected and what is symmetry breaking, anyway, I think something really important has been overlooked. Or, at least, I haven't heard any public discussion:
Is the collider large, or will it collide large hadrons?

A night of Venezuelan harp music

2010-03-31T09:44:00.000-06:00

In the early '80s I was working in Venezuela. Normally, I'd say well, you know, it sounds more exotic than it really was. But this was just as exotic as it sounds. The prospect was in Delta Amacuro, an un-incorporated territory, neighboring Guyana, where the Orinoco empties into the Caribbean. We lived on a barge with trailer-like accommodations built on-deck. The work was accomplished with Primacord(TM), hydrophones, primitive satellite positioning, radio triangulation, manatees, snakes, pelicans, ... Well, those last weren't part of the work but they were always around in the caños.

Anyway, so there we were out in the mouth of the river. We were actually closer to Trinidad than to any town in Venezuela. To get "home" (Jean and Sara were living in Florida), I would get a ride (on our supply skiff) to Tucupita. That was always exciting. Parts of the river would be clogged with lilies(?), there would be a chorus of red howler monkeys all along the route, parrots and toucans, the odd sloth or two. Then, from Tucupita, I'd get a bus to Maturín. From Maturín, if all went well, I'd fly to Caracas, spend the night, and go off to Miami in the morning.

One time the bus got to Maturín late. The plane had already left. I could either spend the night in Maturín and fly to Caracas the next day, or I could take an overnight bus and arrive in Caracas in time to catch the flight I would have had I caught the flight I was supposed to in Maturín. (Got it?). I took the bus.

I don't know whether the bus driver was playing the radio or a tape but what I remember is that one particular song must have played twenty times. I will always associate that song with a beautiful, long, starry night in Venezuela.

Who writes sonnets anymore?

2010-03-17T09:08:00.006-06:00

The other day (actually, I think it was yesterday), I caught "The Writer's Almanac" on NPR. Garrison Keillor read one of Shakespeare's sonnets. Now, I'm not really into poetry. I don't understand it and I don't find it groovy and I just don't get it. That said, I like to hear Billy Collins read his stuff, and I always read Calvin Trillin's deadline poet bit in the Nation.

Every now and then there's a contest or a movement or whatever to submit Haiku on some subject or other and they're always a riot. I even have a Haiku as my answering machine message. So why Haiku and not Mark McMorris or Robert Bly? I think it's the structure. A Haiku is, must be, 3 lines, with 5, 7, and 5 syllables respectively. That's like a puzzle to write and I think I appreciate it like I can appreciate a crystal. Like I said, I don't get poetry. I get structure.

So that brings me to sonnets. Does anyone write them anymore? I mean, if they're good enough for Shakespeare, surely even the snobbiest would-be poet can lower him or herself to use the form, no? I guess not. As I understand it, a sonnet has 14 lines of 10 syllables each. Furthermore (and here's the out-of-fashion part) it has a rhyming scheme. Imagine! The last 2 lines rhyme. The other 12 lines are divided in to 4-line quatrains (that means "4 lines") . Each quatrain can rhyme "a-b-a-b" or "a-b-b-a". OK, sounds simple enough.

Because we have no guaranteed health care,
I try to stay away from getting sick.
But just in case, I wear clean underwear,
And always cross the public streets real quick.

The politicians try to sound so sweet,
And make us trust the goals of government.
But what with groceries and gas and rent,
It costs too much to credence their deceit.

When a costly medical procedure
Is needed , I around don't want to fool.
But with two aspirin and a drink, cool,
I can forebear awhile and so demur.

May god forbid, should I need surgery,
I may be forced to commit perjury.

Come the Revolution

2010-03-12T11:31:00.025-07:00

I've been expecting the Revolution since, well probably 1965, certainly since 1968. Not just expecting it, either, counting on it: After the Revolution, you'll be the first one up against the wall!. But, as I'm sure everyone knows, it hasn't happened. Not only hasn't the Revolution happened but all the progress that I thought I saw and heard in the people around me back then, that I thought heralded the coming, is gone. Maybe it wasn't ever there. Maybe I only knew so few people that what I thought was true of the general population wasn't.

Maybe those who would have borne the brunt of any revolutionary action saw it coming. I'd like to think that's it. They knew what was going to happen and co-opted, lied, manipulated enough to forestall and divert. To think otherwise is to believe that people on the verge of being good turned bad. Now, I'm as cynical as a man can be (without being, you know, actually paranoid), but that would make me sad. We were so close that I could almost see the other side. And I know that that was true for others, too. So what happened? Why is everyone so selfish now? Why is everyone so greedy now (is that the same thing?)? Why is everyone so short-sighted? Perhaps, like so many other revolutions, things just have to get really intolerable. As Jefferson said, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. I think that's the direction we're heading.

I knew he wasn't a progressive - so why am I disappointed?

2010-03-08T11:05:00.002-07:00

Like a lot of people, I'm sure, I expected better from an Obama administration. I shouldn't have but I guess I got caught up in hype and change.

When he was campaigning, Obama, unlike Edwards, was never a fan of a single payer medical program. He was never anti-war. He was never, well, socialist enough for me. Still, I thought, maybe, once he took office, maybe... No.

And the Democrats generally! They can't legislate with a super-majority. They can't legislate with a simple majority. What good are they?

We used to have goats.

2010-03-02T13:51:00.005-07:00

I'm a city boy. My wife, Jean, is from Montana but she's a townie all the same. So why, at 50 (each, that is) did we become ranchers? The reason, at least my construction of it, starts in 1980 in a rented bungalow in Englewood, FL. Sara, our main child, was 1. A local dog, the "mother puppy" to the locals, had a litter of puppies in a culvert on our street. All the people in the neighborhood (except the guy who ostensibly owned the MP) would feed the puppies. Sara loved to go out with a handful of bread crusts. All the puppies would jump around and yap -- except the runt.

This litter actually had a runt. I'd never seen a real runt before, but this puppy was half the size of her siblings. Whenever they would go charging around the street, she would hide in the "birth culvert". When the others would get food from the little girl, the runt would hide in the bushes. When the others would chase the old lady's cat, the runt would hide in the garbage cans. So, when the old lady with the cat called animal control and the guy with the net came, the runt was hiding under a car. That's how Gimli the Dwarf came to live with us. Sara, Gimli, and eventually, Joshua all grew up together. Then, when all 3 were teenagers (in human years), Gimli died. We didn't have a dog. For the first time in 16 years. It was wierd.

(But what has this got to do with the ranch?)

After what she considered a decent period of doglessness, a friend alerted us to a dog in extremus at the PG County (Maryland) pound. An unwed mother was about to be executed if no one claimed her that day. Joshua and I went to take a look. We found a mixed border collie who was skinny, dirty, and generally pathetic. As it turns out I'm incapable of walking out of the pound without a dog (more on that later). Anyway, she cleaned up real good.

Mandala, or Mandy, is very different from Gimli. For one thing, she's not a paranoid runt. For another, she's got herding in her blood.

Now, bear with me; the story of the ranch is a dog story, so I have to tell you about the dog.

For about a year after our father died, my brother kept his (Dad's) ashes waiting for inspiration as to what to do with them. Finally, I think he decided it was unseemly to dawdle any longer. He had me meet him in Albuquerque from where we drove to the Escalante region of Utah where some friends of his had a llama ranch. I brought Mandy (much to the distaste of the llamas). The day before we took Dad on his last hike, Mandy and I were up before anyone else (we were on East Coast time) walking along the creek. Mandy started barking at a clump of river birch and out trotted a yearling bull. Mandy went into a frenzy. She ran around and around that bull until he started moving. She had him up in the corral before she lost interest. Of course, by the time anyone else got up, the bull was long gone. Mandy was no help the next time we tried to get him (being just as interested in the horses as she was in the bull) but it was clear she had the right genes.

So I figured I had to get her some animals to herd. But what animals and where and how? The way I see it, sheep are just too much work. Cows are too big. So goats. Turns out, goats don't really take to being herded very well, but how was I to know?

Since about the time we got married (1977) my wife, Jean, and I have talked about buying a piece of land somewhere. We kept looking for the perfect deal: forest, creek, isolated but accessible, 2 cents/acre; you know the dream. We almost did it a couple of times but the road was too bad, or the price was too high, or something.

We moved to Colorado from Maryland. Sara was away at college. Joshua had 2 more years of high school so we lived in a house that wasn't so far out of town that there was no school. We had the idea that we might move farther out when Josh graduated. In 1999, Jean started looking at rural properties. We both worked in Colorado Springs so that was the fixed point in our search. We couldn't really look to the west of town. For one thing, the mountain property is way too expensive for us. It's also intensely subdivided and covenanted - the horsey set isn't fond of "real" livestock. For another thing, I would dread the idea of driving up and down Ute Pass in the winter.

Whether we had good reasons or not, we looked to the east., out on the prairie. We found 280 acres just outside of Calhan, about 30 miles from the Springs. From a recreational perspective, our place is pretty pathetic. It's shaped like a tetris piece with one tree near the middle (if there is a middle). From a goat's point of view, however, it couldn't be better. There are coyotes occasionally but they're not really a threat except with small kids. There are no lions or bears (as there would be in the mountains). There is plenty of grass and lots of variety. They'd probably prefer some rocky escarpments to "bound" on but all in all, it's a good goat ranch.

So, ok, we bought the ranch. My first worry was water. If we had to go too deep, we wouldn't be able to afford to do anything else. We sweated where to put the well (i.e., house): not too close to the road, not so far that it would be prohibitive to bring in electricity. I hired a "witch" to tell me where, in the general vicinity we picked, we should drill. Now, it's not that I really believe this old coot could actually feel (as he claimed) the water through a copper pipe as he drove around in a Dodge pickup. On the other hand, he was a retired well digger who had seen productive holes and dry holes all over El Paso County for the last 50 years. He had to have a better idea of where to drill than I did, no matter what he was holding in his hand! I drilled where he told me to and got water at 250 feet. That was a relief.

After the well was in place, everything else more or less happened like clockwork. There was a bit of unpleasantness with liens and lawyers but let's not go into that now. By June-2000, we had a barn, a house (well, a trailer really but quite nice), a deck, electricity, propane, septic system, and water. Jean was out of town attending school. Joshua was working nights so I hardly saw him. I took the dogs and moved in.

"Dogs??", you say, "What dogs? I only know about Mandy". Well, there are 2. It was before I was living at the ranch. Everything was set up: trailer, barn, water, gas, electricity; no phone yet but that's a different story. One rainy day, in June, I realized that my day job (the one that isn't "rancher") put me as close to the Pikes Peak Humane Society shelter as I was ever likely to be accidentally. So, after work one day, I dropped in to see if there was a border collie-type dog in need of a job. Well, there wasn't. But, as I had found when I got Mandy, I was absolutely incapable of leaving without a dog! I think it has something to do with my mindset when I go in that I'm open to getting a dog. Then, regardless of whether "just the right" dog (whatever that means) is there, there are so many that need a home. They're like in jail just for being alive. Anyway, I guess what I don't understand is why I don't take them all. For reasons I don't fully comprehend, I went home with a 9-month old, solid black, non-descript dog whose rap sheet had him listed as a "mixed Australian Shepherd". He came with a name, Java, and I saw no reason to change it. I consider him to be Mandy's dog and she seems to think so, too.

As it turns out, neither Mandy nor Java, genetics not withstanding, is worth a bucket of warm spit when it comes to goat management. Still, they're good dogs and I guess that's all that matters.

The weekend of July 4th (2000). I was living on the ranch with the dogs. I had been planning on getting my first goats when I had a week off, later in the month, when I could spend some time making sure they knew where home was. I still thought the dogs would be pretty tight with the goats but I figured they'd need several days to settle on terms. The 4-day weekend started for me on Saturday. The week before, I had gotten a lead on a goat farm from my vet and I had arranged to look at a couple of does. I was planning on arranging to buy them a few weeks later when I would have a whole week to look after them. Meanwhile, I already had a deal on 2 whethers and a buck for that same week; I was looking for does to show up around the same time. I took the dogs with me to the farm. They stayed in the car while I went to look at the girls.

This particular farm had a pretty elaborate setup. They had a whole building of chickens and guineas. Then another building and an outdoor enclosure for goats, cows, and llamas, and another building for bucks. According to the owner, they were switching from milk to meat so they were trying to change over their goat herd to a mostly Boer goat population. Anyway, the two does they wanted to sell were a Nubian, Maggie, and a Swiss/Angora, Goldilocks. I explained that I didn't really want to take any goats home with me right then. They explained that they didn't want to keep them any more (something about feed and I don't know what all). I said I was concerned they wouldn't be acclimated by the time I had to go back to work; I didn't have a way of closing them up; I wasn't sure I had what I needed to get started... Now, the vet had assured me that these people were meticulous goat ranchers and wouldn't even let me buy a goat unless they were sure I was able to care for it properly. So I was expecting they would at least tell me what I needed to do. Far from it. They packed those 2 goats into my little Subaru so fast I didn't even have time to get the dogs up into the front (that was exciting).

Well, Maggie and Goldie were, understandably, nervous. I managed to get the dogs quieted down and pulled back onto the road. The goats kept snorting and stomping (as best they could, being a bit scrunched up in the car). I stopped at a feed store and bought a bale of hay. Fortunately, I had prepared a little stall for them in the barn. It gave me (if not them) a sense of a place of their own to live. The trick was getting them from the car, into the barn. I drove up close to the barn and backed up near the opening. I let the dogs out. When I opened the back of the car, the goats didn't want to get out. When I finally prodded them out, they bolted.

OK. There's me, a 50 year old city boy. Two dogs whose only real interaction with non-dogs had been limited to chasing and barking. And there are 2 goats, full grown, with horns (did I mention horns?) who have no idea what's going on but are reasonably sure they don't like it. Amazingly, I managed to catch them. Whether it was with the dogs' help or in spite of them I don't know. To this day there is a barely contained mutual hostility between Maggie and Mandy. Java is a mere irritant but Mandy gets Maggie's back up (literally).

I finally got them into the stall, put a bucket of water near them, put some hay down, and closed the barn. It was hot but not too bad in the barn. This was Saturday. I had 3 more days to convince them that this was home. On Sunday, I put collars on the goats and took them for a walk with 2 10-foot lengths of rope. It was then, after 1 day in the business, that I made a discovery: I had thought I would "herd" my goats, much like one herds cattle, that is, from behind. You don't herd goats, you lead them. So much for the dogs (but not quite).

By Monday, I was concerned that Maggie wasn't eating. My son had come over Sunday night so I left him looking after Goldie and took Maggie back to the McQuatters'. There I learned that:
1. She'll eat when she's hungry,

2. Goats love rolled corn, and

3. I'm supposed to milk her!

Well, I tried milking Maggie tethered to a post. No deal. I tied all 4 of her legs to posts. No deal. Finally, against my better judgment (which, I was beginning to suspect, isn't all that good), I built a wooden stanchion to hold her head, tethered her back legs with bicycle inner tubes, and managed to milk her for a couple of months. I didn't like it. She didn't like it. Finally, she got mastitis. I don't know whether it was from my bad milking technique or what, but the vet said to dry her up cold turkey. I would have done that in July if I hadn't believed I couldn't.
Anyway, Maggie and Goldie became the elders of my herd and, for better or worse, exercised the perogatives of Alpha and Beta, respectively. They are mean, greedy, and jealous. But they're mine. I say "exercised" because now I have a big male (buck) who is clearly the Alpha. He came to the ranch with 2 whethers when I took that week off.

Back in April (or was it May?) I had arranged with a man I work with to buy some of his goats. He has a milking herd. As such, he needs to have periodic births so that the milkers keep producing. He keeps the does (up to a point) and slaughters or sells the bucks. I told him I wanted a buck for breeding, and 2 whethers for the stew pot.

In April (or was it May?) I went over to look at the goats he had picked for me. To be honest, at that point I had no idea what to look for in a goat; I still don't, really. He wanted me to decide which goat to keep as a buck. In the end, I acceded to his recommendation.

So it was that on 27 July, I went over to his house after work and picked up the 3 Billy Goats Gruff (technically, 2 of them were no longer actually billy goats). These guys were only about 4 months old and, at least compared to Maggie and Goldie when I brought them home, quite affectionate. They were a little shaken up about being manhandled into the car (same old Subaru) but they were even more curious than scared about me and where we were going.

When we got back to the ranch, I learned about herd integration. Goldie and Maggie were from a different herd. Maybe it was my herd, maybe it was still their original herd, but definitely not the same herd as these newcomers. Consequently, the 3 bucklings were shy and obsequious. When I took the herd for a walk, Goldie would butt them out of her way, even if they hadn't been in her way before she decided that she wanted to be where they were.

Taking the herd for a walk. By now, Maggie and Goldie, and soon the 3 guys, would follow me wherever I went. In fact, in order to go to work in the morning, I had to distract them with corn, run to my car, and get to the gate before they saw me. I would lead them to the pond, or the hill, or the ravine, and sit on the ground and read while they browsed. Sometimes one of goats would come over to me to get an ear rub or chew on my book. If one of my billies come over, it wouldn't be long before Maggie or Goldie would come chase him off and take his place.

I was having fun with my little 5-goat herd. But I only had 2 breeding does. Given Maggie's indeterminate age, I didn't know how long it would be until I only had 1. So I went back to my friend at work (he of the 3 billy goats), to see if he knew someone who wanted to sell some young does. He did. One Saturday morning I went and bought 3 little girl goats. They were altogether different from the others. They had obviously been handled tenderly. They would climb into my lap like puppies. Now that they were the newcomers, the 3 bucks and 2 OGs (original goats) treated them like outsiders. Maggie and Goldie were still aloof from the 3 B's G, but now I had 3 herds. In some respects, however, OGs and the 3B'sG, as longer standing residents, would lord it over the 3 new girls. They, the pearly goats, were pretty intimidated. For one thing, they were a lot smaller than any of the others even though they were roughly the same age as the 3 boys.

By the way, the boys had names. I had read that it's not a good idea to name animals that are destined to be eaten so I called the 2 whethers by what I intended to do with their hides: Slippers and Bodhran. I named the buck for the Greek paragon of masculinity, Testicles (pronounced testikleez). On my daughter's suggestion, I named the 3 pearly goats after the 3 principal Hindu goddesses, Lakshmi, Saraswathi, and Durgha.
That then, was my herd, until first blood.

In retrospect, it was probably sooner than was really warranted. Whatever, we thought around Christmas (2000) was when to slaughter one of the whethers (Slippers, as it turned out). I say it was too early because there was only about 45 pounds of meat (not counting dog food). Slippers was only 8 or 9 months old and would have been a lot meatier at a later time.

No matter, it was planned and done. Grandma Simpson was staying with us the day after Christmas so we would slaughter then so she could advise on the butchering. Now, I had by now established that a lot, if not all of my conceptions about how my goat farming would work were, in fact, misconceptions. The goat-dog relationship, the free-range = far-range idea. I should not have been surprised, therefore, that the actual killing would less than the dispassionate exercise I had envisioned. I chose Slippers because, of the 2 candidates, he was the least "tame". He wouldn't let me scratch his neck, as Bodhran would. I figured that, if I killed Bodhran, Slippers would get even more suspicious of me. That much was probably true.

Now my idea is that if I'm going to eat meat, the only honest way to do it is to do the whole thing myself. No distance. I don't mean this as a criticism of anyone else. It's just that, for me, letting someone else do the dirty work doesn't make it any less dirty. If I can't bring myself to do it, I can't ask someone else to do it for me. I like meat. A lot. But killing an animal is a serious thing. The meat cannot and should not be somehow disconnected from the killing. And the killing itself should be done with a realization of what it is.

First let me say, it wasn't any fun. It was, as I said, the day after Christmas. The herd was in the barn. I grabbed Slippers and hauled him out of the barn, up to the shed near the house. My daughter stayed at the barn door to keep the other goats inside. I had a shot of whiskey I tried to give Slippers to put him out of it. He didn't want it. I drank it. Probably best that way. I shot him in the head and he dropped. He twitched rather more than I expected. I shot him twice more although it was probably just my nerves. I slit his throat and bled him out. Then I went in the house for another drink. Gutted and skinned (Slippers, that is), I let him cool until the next day when we cut him up into freezable pieces and that was that.
We had a roast that night.So that was Christmas. There were soon to be some babies and we forgot about poor Slippers.

I didn't know it then but several of the ladies were pregnant. It would soon be obvious.

The first to give birth was Saraswathi. I had, naively as it turns out, thought that the goats would regulate their own "personal matters" so as to give birth in the Spring. When it was warm. Since then my experience is they invariably pick the coldest days (nights, usually) of the year. Saraswathi's first born was on Washington's Birthday, Feb. 22. Naturally, I named him George.

I came home from work that day and saw that all the herd save Saraswathi was out browsing. I looked in the barn and there they were. He was a creamy gold color (like a palomino horse) with a white blaze on his forehead. He had (as all baby goats have) little horn buds and clear alert eyes. He must have been at least a few hours old as he was dry, standing (walking in fact) and nursing. At that moment he didn't want to have anything to do with me but Saraswathi was glad to see me. I brought her some hay and water and rubbed her sides. By the next day I was little George's best friend. All the adults would go off to browse and he was all alone in the barn. I would go in there and sit in the straw with him and read. He would climb on me or nibble my jacket, or just sleep in my lap. A few weeks later he had a little brother/cousin but until then, I was the only one who paid him any attention.

In fact, the next birth, one week after George was a tragedy. Maggie gave birth on Feb. 26 to a brown spotted boy who lived around 24 hours; let's call him #2. I found them pretty much as I had found George and Saraswathi, in the barn with the herd (except for George) off on the pasture. But #2 wasn't standing and he wasn't nursing. I knew it was very important for him to nurse before Maggie re-absorbed the colostrum (a nutrient and antibiotic rich fluid that precedes the more caloric milk). I squeezed milk out of her onto his face; I rubbed his thorax to stimulate him. I took him in the house and tried to feed him warm milk with a dropper. And, finally, I took him back to his mother to die.
Maggie was quite upset, as you can imagine, for several days. She kept calling for her baby, and he, of course, kept not being there. He was, by then, dog food. In later kid deaths I was more together about it and took the skins but this time I was almost as upset as Maggie. I just chopped him up whole, skin and all, and boiled him down for dog food. It was pretty gruesome.

Luckily, it wasn't long before we had another baby to lighten the mood. Spot was born to Lakshmi in the wee hours on March 5. He was there in the barn when I went in to give them food and water in the cooooold morning dark. He was dry and standing and, while I thought it was too cold to be fooling around with giving birth and all, Lakshmi apparently thought everything was just fine. After a couple of days (really, it doesn't take very long at all), Spot was able to romp around and George abandoned me for his little brother (I didn't mind at all).

Durgha was next. She gave birth on March 26 to a little girl, Lambchop. This was another afternoon birth so whatever happened happened while I was at work. Lambchop was a little suspicious of me for quite a while (until the blizzard) but she really liked her brothers. As Lambchop got a little bigger she became principal leaper of the ranchocabron ballet. She liked nothing better than to jump up onto a car, or better, to leap up onto the little ledge that's formed where the window rolls into the door, and run all around the circumference of the car several times. She would hang out wherever George and Spot were. Now, George and Spot were seriously into head butting with the big boys Bodhran and Testicles. It was amusing to see how gentle the adult males would be with what amounted to some pretty obnoxious behavior. Well, it was a while before Lambchop was able to play in that milieu; even then it was never her thing. Anyway while the boys were butting heads, Lambchop would get so excited that she would leap straight up into the air.

So what are Testicles and Bodhran doing during all this birthing? Surprisingly, they were pretty well behaved during the actual births; they would just stay the hell away. I was worried they would trample the babies but they never did. Then, when the kids were able to hang around with the herd, the big males seem to like to play with the kids even more than the females. The mothers would fuss over their own kids but had little patience for anyone else's. The males however seemed to enjoy playing with them all. And, like I said, nobody seemed to think too much about poor Slippers.

In early April, we had a blizzard. I guess it's not all that unusual but I really thought winter was over. Anyway, the wind blew so hard the barn door was blocked with snow, one of the sheds blew down, and it was a real struggle to get out to tend to the herd. All three of the living 2nd generation were big and healthy so it was just a big sleepover for them. I had to dig out the doorway so they could get out when it was over (2 days). Then I had to collect all the shed pieces so they wouldn't get cut up. I guess it wasn't such a big deal but, since it was our first winter, it seemed quite dramatic.

Just one more blessed event that season, but it was a good one. I thought Goldi was too big for T that season but I was wrong. That is, I new he was stronger than the Pearly Goats and I wasn't surprised when they turn out to be pregnant. I was surprised when Maggie dominoed since I hadn't seen them together at all. I had seen him try to get to Goldie, however, and she was pretty persistent about running him off. One time she even broke one of his horns. That was a bit of nightmare. I had to separate him, take him to the vet, subdue him, change his bandage. All while he was at his maximum grossest!
Anyway, they must have settled their differences because on April 26 Goldie had twins. The timing couldn't have been better. Some people I knew from Maryland were in town and came out for a barbecue. I came home a little early to stoke the grill. I went to check on the goats and found Goldie in the barn puffing and groaning. I put a blanket down and petted her while she pushed out a little white baby. I ran to the house to get a towel and a camera and when I got back, there was another one. We called them Ken and Barbie. Barbie had a little trouble straitening her front right leg at the foot so I made a little splint out of shish kebab skewers and duct tape. I don't know whether that helped or not but in a couple of days she was walking fine.
So we settled down for the summer. Maggie and Goldie continued to be mean to the Pearly Goats. Bodhran and Testicles played with the kids (jumping up on spools and knocking off all comers). They could be surprisingly tender; they would let the little ones win and never hurt them. They would also intercede when an older kid (like George) was picking on a little one (like Ken). Then T would come over and lend his support to the underdog. It was something to see.

Then Fall came and it was time to think about killing another goat. It was, of course Bodhran's turn and so it came to pass. This time it was a cleaner death and a more efficient process, but I still didn't like it. I can do it, that's not the problem. I just don't find anything about it pleasant (except, of course, the eating).
Now, it must be said that I now had 2 hides, ostensibly with plans to make slippers out of one and a drum out of the other. No sign of that happening.

The summer passed un-eventfully. That's a good thing; I'm not complaining. The kids grew. They interacted with each other and with the adults. It was like a long-running episode of National Geographic. I would sometimes watch form the house with binoculars so as not to be part of the "spectacle". One thing I have to say: goats are he most perniciously destructive animals I have ever dealt with. I must admit, I've never had any real contact with wolverines, but goats have to be pretty close. Most of my farm work (and I did a lot) was repairing damage the goats had done, or trying to keep them away from things I didn't want destroyed. I can see why people don't want to deal with free-range goats. It wouldn't have been a problem if they had wanted to stay far away from the house, the cars, and let's not even talk about boxes and crates. On the contrary, they were on the deck, chewing the screens chewing the siding jumping on anything that supported them (and leveling anything that didn't. So there's a thousand dollars worth of fence I had to build and repair after every storm. It was impossible to keep windshield wipers on the cars, or trim. So there's a garage. But it's just their nature. Needless to say the dogs were no help (nor did they try to be). So, as I said, the summer passed. It was Fall again, and I supposed that the herd was mating. As it turned out, they must have been.

Now, the alert reader will recall that at this point there are 2 dogs, Mandy and Java. Now, a woman I worked with had a dog that had been small as a puppy. As is so often the case, however, he was not small as an adult (around 1 year old). She called him Beethoven (since he looked a little like the St. Bernard in the movie). He is part shepherd, part border collie, and part boxer. I call him Beta, since he was bigger and more aggressive than Java but clearly subordinate to Mandy. [Ah, Mandy. It breaks my heart to write about this period but I must.] Anyway, as you must have guessed Beta came to live with us. It was in November of 2001. His then current owners just didn't have the room, the time, or, really, the interest to keep him.

Now, you may have sensed an implied resentment on my part that neither Java nor Mandy had any interest in the goats. Well, Beta took an interest. Unfortunately, his interest was largely military in nature, but more about that later.

So now we had 3 dogs and another kidding season was about to start. This time, the first birth was to Maggie, on the coldest night of the year, January 21. It was -4 that night but somehow, Maggie pulled it off. We named him Nanuck, but it wasn't long before we gave up the whole naming thing. Next to kid was, of all things, Lambchop. On 27-Jan, she had a little cream-colored baby that we named #7. Now things were pretty interesting. There were adults. There were last year's kids (one of whom was Lambchop). And there were (now 2, soon more) this year's kids. The big kids still thought they wanted a little Mommy time (including Lambchop)) but the Mommies were starting to get preoccupied with babies. As the babies got bigger, the 2 year-cohorts would interact just like you might expect.
OK. We're getting to the hard part.

On February 21, I got home from work around 4:00. As usual, I unloaded some hay bales, put some down for the goats, gave them some (liquid) water, and checked for babies. As it turned out, Saraswathi had had twins (8 and 9). It was pretty cold and there was snow on the ground, so I got some warm towels and rubbed them down. This time that would have to do.

I went back up to the house. Java and Beta came and greeted me. No Mandy.
I called to her and she came out from under the trailer, covered in blood At this point she didn't seem to be in distress and she wasn't dripping blood or anything. I looked for a wound but I couldn't find one (there was one). I was worried. I called the vet. He met me at his (closed) clinic and looked her over. He found the bullet hole. He told me to take her to town to an animal emergency hospital. I did.
She died about 4:00 the next morning.

I won't say any more about it because it's just too painful, but she was unequivocally the best dog I have ever known.

You may recall that, originally, the whole idea of the ranch, the goats, was for Mandy. First, that idea turned out to be bogus. Then, Mandy turned out to be dead. Things went downhill from there.

Shortly after Mandy died, Beta started killing kids. I still think he was just playing rough but dead they were none the less. I came home from work in time for 8 (or was it 9) to die in my arms.

Durgha had triplets one cold day. I came home and found them only minutes old. I had to suck on their ears to thaw them enough to dry them off. I mean, it was really cold! They all lived, though. That is until Beta killed one.
Lakshmi had twins. Beta killed one.

Goldilocks had twins (once again, she waited for me to be there). Beta ate one. It was getting to be too awful.

In April I had had enough. The drought was really bad. There was no pasture and no prospect of having any that year. If I kept the goats, I'd have to feed them hay all year. All, that is, except those that Beta killed. That was starting to get too depressing, too. So I called up the McQuatters and told them they could have them all if they just took them away. They did.
The experiment is over.
Conclusion: Dogs won't take care of goats (in any useful way) without, at least, a lot more training than I was able to supply.

My Argentine adventure - a memoire

2010-03-01T08:56:00.013-07:00

I'm sure everyone has one of these: a box of jumbled old photographs. Anyway, we had one. As far back as I can remember, we had a shoe box full of photo's and I would look through it from time to time. There were pictures of people I knew from before I knew them (my grandparents as young hipsters!) and people I never knew that my parents knew, and even some that nobody knew. Anyway, growing up I always knew where that box was, in Brooklyn, then Queens, then Brooklyn again, then Queens again, then Los Angeles, and even in Monterey, Palo Alto, and San Francisco, where I never lived.

One picture that I discovered very early on was a small (maybe 1.5" x 3") black and white of a young man. He had a Calvin Coolidge haircut and collar. He wore round wire-rim glasses. He wasn't smiling but, then, he wasn't scowling either. On the back of the photo was something written in cursive Hebrew, and then "Basavilbaso" in Roman letters and a date (if I recall correctly, 1914). I never found out what was written there. Either my father never really learned cursive Hebrew or it just didn't say anything memorable but it doesn't really matter. What I did find out was that we had relatives in Argentina.

The way my father told me, and I'm sure he was telling me what he knew, or thought he knew, the picture was of his father's (my grandfather) younger brother (no name known) who went to Argentina some time either before or after my grandfather came to the US. In this, he was wrong, at least about who the guy was. Basavilbaso was the name of the town where he lived. This turned out to be correct. I never knew either of my father's parents but, along with the obligatory "you think I'm strict? Well my father would have chopped your arms off years ago!", I came to know that my grandfather's name was Louis. I knew this because my brother's middle name is Louis and we knew he was named for our grandfather. All our cousins on that side also knew that our grandfather's name was Louis and all of us were wrong. Anyway, my father's older sister had actually communicated with the Argentine relatives during WWII (one or two letters, no more) and we were also given to understand that they went by "Rosquìn" (viz Rashkin). This turned out to be correct.

Well, time passed, as it does, and I was working as an exploration geophysicist. After three years in North Africa, I was about to go to Argentina. Moreover, although this is somewhat tangential, somewhere between leaving our apartment in Greece and getting to her parent's house in Montana (we spent some time in Scotland and Ireland on the way), my wife became pregnant with our first child. We did not consider this a reason why we ought not to go to Argentina. This also turned out to be correct. Be that as it may, on the way we stopped off in San Francisco to say hello/goodbye to my father and step-mother (my mother died while I was in Libya. My father's new "old lady" was never really my mother but she was certainly my children's grandmother so "step-mother" it is). While I was there, I took the picture of the young man from Basavilbaso.

After cooling our heels in Tulsa for a few weeks (bad food, Star Trek re-runs) while some paperwork did whatever it is that paperwork does, we were off. The first stop was Miami to get our visas. At the Argentine consulate, while we were waiting in the outer office (more paperwork doing what it does, I suspect) I studied a wall map of Argentina that they had there (as you would expect). Now, as it turns out, no matter how long I might have looked, I wouldn't have found Basavilbaso as it wasn't on the map. But even not knowing that, Argentina is a big place and I had no idea where to look. I asked the clerk if she knew where I might find Basavilbaso. She allowed as how she was, in fact, from Florida, but she would ask the Consul. She went into the back office where I presume she did indeed ask the consul. In any case, she returned in a few minutes with the report, "he thinks it might be in Entre Rios". This turned out to be correct.

Entre Rios is the province just north of Buenos Aires. Entre Rios is Spanish for Mesopotamia which is Greek for "between the rivers". The rivers that Entre Rios is between are the Paranà and the Uruguay. Across the Paranà from Entre Rios is Santa Fè province and across the Uruguay is Uruguay. North of Sante Fè is the province of Chaco where we were going.

We flew from Miami to Buenos Aires where we had to spend another couple of weeks cooling our heels (more paperwork doing whatever). In case anyone is wondering, if you have the choice of cooling your heels for two weeks in Tulsa or Buenos Aires, pick Buenos Aires, especially if you aren't going to have a car in either. Anyway, between the mediaslunas and cafe con leche for breakfast, the colonial architecture, the wine, the food, well the two weeks passed uneventfully. I can't actually remember how we got there (probably plane) but our next stop was the city of Corrientes, in the province of Corrientes which is across the Paranà from Chaco. Jean was, by now, five or six month's pregnant. It was early summer and hot. She had to stay in Corrientes on her own for a week while I went to Las Breñas and set up some sort of housekeeping. As it turns out, she could have stayed just across the river in Resistencia (the provincial capital of Chaco) but a) we didn't know that, and b) it wasn't much different.

It might be useful at this point to explain what we were doing there. The company I worked for at that time had been hired by Yacimientos Petrolificos Fiscales (YPF) to train their crews in the equipment we brought with us for that purpose. The way you look for oil is to make some sort of noise on or near the surface and capture the reflection of that noise at some point(s) distant from the source. The input noise creates (among other kinds) compressional waves that travel through the various sedimentary layers, reflecting some of the incident energy at each interface. The time between the source noise and the reflected signal, and the strength of the reflected signal are used to compute the size and density of the intervening layers. A long-standing source agent had always been dynamite. It makes a good noise but it has uncontrolled signal characteristics. The biggest improvement we were bringing to YPF were vibrator trucks that were used to create a "pilot" signal whose spectral characteristics could be controlled. Naturally, the processing of the collected data was different for vibrators and dynamite, so we had something to teach YPF there, too. While we were at it, we also brought the newest (1979) digital recording equipment as well. YPF was operating a prospect in Chaco (and neighboring provinces) using two complete crews that rotated in and out of Las Breñas on a 2-week cycle.

We rented a house in Las Breñas, found an obstetrician in the neighboring town, Charata, made some friends, and basically settled down. I worked in the field. Sometimes, depending on how far away we were working, I couldn't come home every night, but most of the time I could. After a while, I remembered the photo. Seismic crews in Argentina, like those in the US, comprise people from all over. Some of the YPF guys were from Chaco but most were from other places. I started asking around if any of them were from Entre Rios. One was. I asked him if he knew where Basavilbaso was. He did. He, himself, was from a town not far from there. I asked if he knew of any people named Rosquìn from thereabouts. He did not, but he thought maybe his uncle had had some business with someone by that name at some time. He said he would look into it. After two weeks he went off on his rotation. Two weeks later he returned with a telegram: "Tell the American engineer his family lives at 1021 Calle San Martìn". How cool is that!

It took a little while to put it together. I had to arrange for some time off. Then we had to figure out how to actually get there. Anyway, it was in January I think before we actually got there. Jean was as big as a house, that much I know for sure. We took advantage of a crew change to hitch a ride to Resistencia. Then we flew to Rosario (in Santa Fè). Then we took a train to somewhere in Entre Rios. Then we took a bus to Basavilbaso. We arrived in the afternoon and found a very picturesque hotel. I think it must have been a Saturday when we got there since the next day a lot of stuff was closed, including what turned out to be where we were going. Anyway, we wandered around the town, which was très cute, had something to eat, wandered by 1021 Calle San Martìn just to scope it out, and went to bed. The next morning we have breakfast, in no particular hurry, and stroll on over, again in no particular hurry. It's not that we had any particular trepidation or that we weren't eager to find out who was who and what was what, it's just that we weren't entirely sure it was going to be an altogether pleasant experience. It was.

I guess it was around 9:30 in the morning when I knocked on the door. The man who answered the door was the spitting image of my father - 20 years earlier as this guy still had all his hair. This is important to remember in what comes next. We introduced ourselves and he did likewise. His name was Gregorio Rosquìn, or Goyo to his family. He invited us to come in. "In" was the front room of a veterinary clinic (Goyo was a vet). As I say, I think it was Sunday since to all appearances the clinic was closed. It was cool and a little dark inside; an old man was sitting quietly against a wall. Jean sat down near the old guy. She was at the point where standing up was not on her list of pleasures. I started to explain why I thought we had something to talk about. I produced the picture. Goyo looked at it. He went around the counter and turned on a table lamp and looked at it some more. He turned it over and looked at that side. Like me, he couldn't make heads or tails of the writing, but, he said, "this is a picture of him" pointing to the old man. Unfortunately, his father, Leòn Rosquìn, had just had cataract surgery (hence the dark) so he couldn't see me, or the photograph, but I thought I knew what I was doing.

"Did you have a brother named Louis?", I asked. "No," he answered, "I never had a brother". "OK," says I, "sorry to have bothered you."

Goyo was more on the ball. "You have a picture of my father," he pointed out, "how is that?" So we talked some more. I told what I knew of my grandparents and their children. Goyo noted that my aunts' names were the same as his aunts' (Leòn's sisters) names. Neither of us knew if that meant anything but it seemed worth noting. Finally Leòn figured it out. "Lipe" he said, "his name was Lipe". It turns out that my grandfather wasn't named Louis, at least back in Russia, but Lipe. And he wasn't Leòn's brother, he was his uncle. My grandfather's (way older) brother Zelig and his wife had moved to Argentina. Being thoughtful parents they took their son (who was around the same age as Zelig's youngest brother) with them. Some years later, that son, Leon (aka Leòn), sent his friend/uncle, Lipe, a picture. Mystery solved.

So here's what happened. In the latter years of the 19th century, Zionism was not necessarily all about Israel. One of the zionist destinations was a colonia in Argentina procured by a German philanthropist named Hirsch, who was, surprisingly enough, a baron. Anyway, Zelig and others from his part of Ukraine went to Argentina to be farmers. The greatest number of Jewish settlers went to the more famous Moisès Villa in Santa Fè province (there is a book about them, Los Gauchos Judìos). But some, including my grandfather's brother and a good friend of his (family name: Borodovsky) went to Basavilbaso. This Borodovsky's grandson, Leoncito (to distinguish him from Leòn) Borodovsky, whose mother was one of Zelig's daughters, Esther, was a farmer/rancher/gaucho (in full bombacha). He was married to Sara and we met them, too. Goyo was married to Nyata (possibly short for Natalia but I never found out). Goyo and Nyata had a son, Jorge who was married to Silvia, and a daughter, Patricia, who was still in school. Leoncito and Sara had two daughters, Khetti, and Miriam who both lived in Buenos Aires but came to see us. Leoncito was still working the old ejido and we went out to see it and the old Jewish cemetery. Wouldn't you believe it, there was still a faithful old retainer, Gonzales, now working for Leoncito. He said I looked like Zelig come back to life but I think he was just getting into the whole spirit of the thing.

We had a great dinner with all the Rosquìn's and Borodovsky's and then Jean and I spent a couple of days with Jorge and Silvia and then we went back to Las Breñas. Our Sara was born in March. In April (for Passover of all things) my father and step-mother met us in Basavilbaso and everyone got to see Sara and my Dad got to meet his cousins and a good time was had by all. I attempted to keep up a correspondence with Jorge and Silvia but it fizzled out. It's a Rashkin thing; we don't relate well.

we live in a corporatocracy

2010-02-22T10:35:00.003-07:00

I am pessimistic that the ineffectualness of Congress will ever be overcome. I'm also not sure it would be a good thing. The recent Supreme Court ruling that corporations are entitled to spend whatever they want to in campaign contributions, campaign ads, congressional bribery, means that the last vestige of a democratic legislature have been removed. We, the people, have voluntarily ceded our democracy to the corporations and it is very unlikely that they will voluntarily cede it back.

Sure, corporations, like other kinds of "persons", will have factions and non-intersecting interests. Their congress, the one that answers to them, the one that they own, the only one that exists, will still have wrangling and compromise. It may even appear, from time to time, that the public (those "persons" who are not corporations) interest coincides with one or the other corporate factions. But this will be ephemeral, and basically wrong. As it said in the IWW membership book, "The working class and the employing class have nothing in common". Rather, "the human persons and the corporate persons have nothing in common".

What of the other branches of government? The currently constituted Supreme Court has long favored the interests of corporations. Since the (corporate) Congress needs to approve any nominations, it is unlikely that the judicial branch will change its stripes. I don't think we can look to them to look out for us. That leaves the President and the organs of bureaucracy. Actually, we might actually have an ally there. Someday. Not now. For all his inspirational rhetoric, our current president has never been nor claimed to be particularly progressive, nor, more importantly, daring. Some future president could, theoretically, defy the corporations and their Congress and re-establish a republic "for the people, etc". But not this one. He started his health care reform by convening the big corporate health care interests to get their "input" (what, in fact, might be acceptable).

No. We live in a corporatocracy. As always, some of us will learn how to live well. Others not so much. Some will convince themselves that the government is still a reflection of their interests. This will, never the less, be untrue.

We're number one

2009-10-21T14:20:00.002-06:00

We're number one.
We're also, judging by the national discourse, racist and proud of it. We're also stupid and proud of it. We're also mean and proud of it.
I think if one were to honestly review American history, it would be revealed that we have always tended at least toward racist, stupid meanness. But at least, for most of our history, we had the decency to be ashamed of it.

The War on Dreams

2009-01-19T09:17:00.002-07:00

Words matter. This is, of course, especially true when one is speaking, or writing, or in some way using words to convey an idea. But it is also the case that words inform our thinking. So using words badly leads to thinking badly.

"The war on terror". Who came up with that, and why? Probably they knew what they were doing and didn't want people thinking too hard about what they were really talking about. "Terror" is, of course an emotional response. To what? Sometimes nothing (think "night terrors"). To wage war on terror is like waging war on panic, or euphoria, or nausea. The war on terror might as well be a war on dreams.

So what did they mean, those people who came up with "war on terror". Maybe they meant "war on terrorism", but that, too, is fraught with problems. Terrorism is a tactic. War on "terrorism" is akin to war on "aerial bombardment". That is, it's a rhetorical devise, at best. People trying to eliminate the use of land mines might be said to be "at war with land mines" but that misses the point of what they do. So what is a "war on terrorism"? It could be a war on "terrorists", but that, again, is problematic. Consider John and Samuel (especially Sam) Adams. Clearly they were, by the standards of today and their own time as well, terrorists. Consider Nelson Mandela. Perhaps our war with terrorists is more nuanced than the name would imply. That's likely; wars are usually nuanced, except for those in the cross hairs.

George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condeleeza Rice, they knew what they were doing. If they were to use the words more carefully, more meaningfully, more precisely, it would be clear that what we have is a "criminal" matter, not a "military" one. Terror is a natural emotion for humans (and probably other animals). We can't get rid of it. Sure, we can declare war on it but nothing will change. Terrorism is a valid military tactic and can be no more eradicated than "seize and hold" can. Likewise, terrorists can not be eradicated, else who would exericize the (valid) tactic of terrorism? So we're left with "crime". But we can't say that war on crime is new. We've been at war with crime for centuries. That's what crime means! If we go after crime, then an (yes, let's just say it) Arab student who is in the US legally, who says horrible things about American policy, or American values, or American people is completely within his rights. We cannot prosecute him. We must not restrain him. He has commited no crime.

But what about those plotting to commit crimes in a country where it isn't a crime to do so? Must we wait until those plotters come to the US and execute their plan? Well, consider how we might know that they are in that country and planning their crimes. Do we have some sort of relationship with the host country? Do we have spies? Can we know when the intended perpetrators leave, where they go? It's the same as if they were planning to come to the US to commit a "more benign" mass murder - how would we stop them? How would we know beforehand? That's why we have courts. That's why we have laws. That's why we have police.

What about Global Warming?

2008-09-15T09:15:00.004-06:00

I think the discussion of global warming ought to proceed from a couple of "axioms". First of all, let's stop worrying about whether or not human activity is principally responsible, or completely responsible, or partially responsible, or whatever, for global warming. I personally believe the data indicating a principal role for human causes, but look: it doesn't matter anymore. No one paying atttention can doubt the overwhelming data that the earth's climate (atmosphere and ocean) is warming. It doesn't make any difference to what we might do, if anything, what the cause is or was. Let's just agree that the earth is warmer than it used to be and getting warmer.

Second, let's agree that people aren't really good making fundamental changes to nature on a large scale and really controlling, or even predicting the outcome. That is, we try to change the course of rivers, and things dry up and things flood and things get bad downstream. Or we try to make a healthy wetlands and wind up with a fetid swamp. So whatever we might try to do to mitigate the effects of climate change ought to be done with caution and a realization that things are likely to work out in ways that we cannot predict.

OK, then. That said, what can we do? What should we do?

A good first step would be to control human causes for warming but maybe that won't be particularly useful. Maybe at this point we're too far along on the warming trend to prevent or moderate the effects. One very useful role the government can play is to sponsor research to develop really useful models for what's happening, and what's going to happen. We know that warming of the atmosphere is really the addition of energy. That can mean a higher mean temperature or a greater amplitude of hot/cold oscillation, or both. So where will winters be colder? Where will summers be warmer? Where will water be scarcer? Where will flooding be greater? What's going to happen. If we can't do anything to stop it happening, can we, should we, do something to deal with it? Should we monkey around with species and distribution (remembering that we're not very good at it)? Should we plan for and get ready for the mass relocation of human populations?

I have my opinions but I haven't heard anyone else discussing these things.

Why should the US care about the Middle East?

2006-08-07T11:29:00.000-06:00

The Middle East is a mess. There's Iraq, of course. That doesn't seem likely to end well, or at all. Then there's Iran, with it's looming nuclear capability. And, of course there's Israel. Israel and Palestine. Israel and Lebanon. Israel and us.

Not to be crude, but, why should we, in the United States, give a flip? Is it because stability in any region is valuable to global commerce? If that were the case, we'd jettison Israel in a heartbeat and good riddance. Is it because, as the defender of liberty where ever it's threatened, we have a moral obligation? If that were the case, we'd look more carefully at whose side we're on. Moreover, why isn't it just as important in Darfur, or Kashmir, or Sri Lanka?

The inescapable conclusion is that we're too dependant on oil to leave politics and conquest in the oil-rich Holy Land to the tender mercies of its inhabitants. And that means that our policy is even more stupid than its disasterous results would indicate. If the US invested a tenth of the money we spend on war, aid, diplomacy, or just plain crap in the ME on hydrogen fuel cells, or wind generation, or who knows what alternatives, we'd be in a much more secure position to let them have their fun and be done with it.

The water crisis, a solution

2006-06-19T10:20:00.000-06:00

Every year, it seems, the upper Mississippi river floods. Towns, large and small, in Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, are inundated and angry. Meanwhile, at the western edge of the Mississippi watershed, that is, Colorado's eastern slope, we're in the midst of a 10-year drought that has farmers desperate and the rest of us concerned, too. My own propery, in fact, includes what is euphemistically labeled on topo' maps as the headwaters of Horse Creek. Horse Creek, you see, is dry. On the map, it winds through south-eastern Colorado to join the Arkansas River (not dry) in La Junta. In reality, it's just sand. There are a lot of supposed creeks like that, all supposedly feeding the Arkansas but, in fact, dry.

Now, we seem (by we I mean people) to have no problem stringing pipelines all over creation to carry oil and natural gas. Those pipelines have serious problems: a leak can mean serious environmental catastrophe. On the other hand, we (again, people) have solved all the major engineering problems involved in laying the pipe in the first place, insuring continuous flow, regulating output, that sort of thing.

What if, instead of oil, we piped water from the upper Mississippi to the barren plains of the western basin? Two problems solved: flooding controlled, and drought mitigated. Moreover, water isn't biodegradable, compressible, or any other-ble that makes oil pipelines dangerous, or expensive to maintain, or detrimental to the environment. The pipe springs a leak in Nebraska? Who cares? It's just water! The cost of installation would probably be recouped in 2 or 3 years of disaster recovery savings. Plus, I might just get a lake out of it. Furthermore, the water will eventually get to the same place, joining the Mississippi in Arkansas after it's quieted down some.

Economic Growth

2006-06-14T15:25:00.001-06:00

Now, I know less about economics than almost anything else (except maybe curling). Still I think I know one thing that seems to fly in the face of all economic pronouncements, left or right: growth is not sustainable. We hear reports about the health of the economy based on growth and stagnation; growth is good, stagnation is bad. Well, the words themselves are certainly charged. Everyone knows that growing implies health. Stagnation implies fetid swamps, mosquitos, poisonous snakes. But, what if, instead of stagnation we said stability? That certainly sounds nicer.

Economic theory was developed in a time of seemingly limitless resources and relatively small poplulations. In those circumstances, there is no immediate down side to growth. So growth is an easy way to sustain an economy. Generate more people. Generate more jobs for them. Use up more resources doing it. It was always a bad model but there was no way to see that it was "through the trees". Well, the trees are gone now, literally. It isn't that the depletion of resources, or the rise in population has changed a growth-based model from good to bad, it was always a bad model. There have always been those who could see that but they were dismissed by the establishment on both the right and the left as alarmists, pessimists, and, when all else fails, idiots.

We need a good economic model. One that doesn't require growth to be strong. There is, in fact, no logical reason why an economic model must equate growth with success. Consider a system where the number of elements remains constant, but not the elements themselves. The resources that fuel the processes in this system are recaptured, re-cycled, to fuel the next generation of processes. And so on. This is, indeed, the definition of a star, well known to be a powerful engine.

I don't know what the right model is. But I get angry when I hear growth equated with economic health. Growth is growth. That's all. Economic health must be measured against people's ability to live, and the expectation that their children will be able to live, as well.

Truth and Science

2006-06-13T07:57:00.001-06:00

There seems to be a good deal of misunderstanding in American society about what science is. When some social engineers want to teach creationism, or intelligent design, alongside evolution in science classes, they betray a fundamental misunderstanding of science, as well as embuing science with far more importance than it has. "Evolution is just a theory", they say. Well of course it's a theory. That's what science is. Relativity is a theory. Quantum electrodynamics is a theory. They all happen to be theories that are consistent with all currently known evidence. Therefore, they are accepted as valid theories, for the time being, until some evidence is discovered with which they are not consistent.

What scares the social engineers is that they confuse scientific theories with truth. Science isn't about truth. Art is about truth. Religion is about truth. Philosophy, even, is about truth. But science is fundamentally and emphatically not about truth. Science is about fact. Science is about models. Science is about what is not true, in the sense that it can be shown that a given explanation does not jibe with data. But science is never about truth. Truth should not be taught in science class; it's just that simple.

I learned the "scientific method", attributed to Francis Bacon, in junior high school. It went something like this:

observe a phenomenon
formulate a(n) hypothesis (aka "model")
test the hypothesis by any of the following means (listed in order of rigor):

experimentation
observation
literature search
conjecture

analyse results
draw conclusions

The only latitude for "truth" in that list is that a phenomenon was truly observed (which is different from stating that it truly happened), the data truly resulted from the experiment (if an experiment was conducted), and possibly, that the hypothesis truly did not fit the data. That's the absolute closest that science can come to truth.

Consider the study of mitochondrial DNA (mDNA). Scientists observed first that there was such a thing. Mitochondria are organelles within the cells of organisms that appear to have their own life-cycles but are carried through the host cells' reproduction. What a gas! Furthermore, as they are carried in fully formed cells, mitochondria are passed through the generations by mothers (whose ova are basically whole cells). Then they discovered that mitochondria mutate at knowable rate. Now this is a theory. They know that mitochondria mutate. They observe a pattern to that mutation, and they build a model of that mutation rate. Should any evidence come to light that violates that model, the theory would have to be discarded. None has. Using this model, scientists can calculate, and have calculated, at what point in the past two individuals (or an entire population) had a common maternal ancestor. They did it with dogs and they did it with people. Is it true? That's not a valid scientific question. It is consistent with all known data and the model. That's all.

Art, on the other hand, is about truth. That's why it isn't open to debate. That's why it isn't subject to refutation. That's why it can be wrong. Truth must be believed because there's no other way it can be known. Science, fact, data, need not be believed; it can be seen. Granted, sometimes the seeing requires some pretty elaborate equipment (including, say, mathematics), but it can be seen. Which is not to say that science is devoid of belief. The entire history of science, in fact, rests on one fundamental belief: there is an objective reality. It's actually pretty ironic. The basic tenet of science is that there is a truth that is, in essence, orthogonal to scientific observation. All we, as scientific beings, can do is sense simplified projections of reality. This was said about particle physics but I think it applies to all science: it's like hitting a swiss watch with a hammer and then trying to figure out what time it is by looking at the pieces. The more we learn about how complex our models can be without spanning the complexity of the underlying reality, the more we turn to art, religion, or, in extreme cases, drugs to express the truth.

So, if a school board somewhere doesn't like what science is, they should just not teach it. No regrets, no shame, no excuses. I like science but it's only one discipline among many for approaching or avoiding reality. To insist that science be taught, but that something that is not science be included in the curriculum, is to grant more importance to science than I think those who would do so would care to admit. Let them say with no embarassment: "We don't need no stinking science! We'll teach truth!". It wouldn't be my first choice but it is certainly within the prerogatives of local authorities. There are lot's of other worthwhile things to teach and to learn. But to teach that which is not science as science does a disservice to everyone.

The Myth of the Militia

2006-06-05T12:16:00.000-06:00

First of all, I want to state that I think the men and women in the military offer a sacrifice to the rest of us way out of proportion to what we, as a society, have a right to expect. That said, however, their role in the US and the world has become confused with that of an organization that has not existed since the Revolution. That institution was the Colonial Militia. The militias, indeed, were sworn to defend the homeland, to preserve the liberty and tranquility of the citizenry, and to, unilaterally, decide when that was necessary. After the adoption of the Constitution, the militias were disbanded (although, interestingly, not disarmed), and the United States Armed Forces were established under the control of the civil government. There's nothing particularly profound in that but we (as a society) seem to have forgotten what it means. Our brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, in uniform do not defend liberty; they implement policy. If it is the policy of the government du jour, then they do defend liberty. It's been a while since I have believed that, indeed, that was the policy of the US government. If, instead, it is the policy of the US government to control some strategic global asset, then that's what they do. They don't get to choose, and it is a fundamental tenet of constitutional democracy that they should not get to choose.

So, not to disparage anyone, it's wrong to say things like "they put their lives on the line so we can enjoy liberty at home" or some such tripe. They do put their lives on the line and for that they deserve our respect and support. But it isn't so that we at home can practice the freedoms guaranteed in our founding documents. It is to implement policy. In that, the Armed Forces are really no different from other instruments of policy, other than that they are frequently in immediate danger, and that they project immediate danger. To mythologize our armed service personnel is dangerous and anti-democratic. We are frequently told that to question the war in Iraq, for instance, is to dishonor our troops. Hogwash! The job of our troops is to implement policy. The job of the civilian government is to devise policy. If I disagree with a policy, my argument is not with the instrument but with the wielder.

So it isn't surprising that events occur that are at odds with the (erroneous) notion that the role of the US military is to defend, protect, and generally support democracy. Events like MyLai. Events like Abu Graib. Events like Haditha. The public, the same people who equate questioning policy to disloyalty, recoils in horror. The picture is blurred. Our heroes are not who they seemed. But the fact is that they are just what they seem: instruments of American policy, acting in our name, carrying out the policies of our government. Don't make them heroes when they're not. Don't make them villains when they're not. It is the policy that stinks.

a good walk spoiled

2006-05-31T11:27:00.000-06:00

I was out walking with my dogs, who, admittedly, were more interested in the ground squirrels than in the walk.

Where I live is considered "short grass prairie", but after 4 years of drought, it's more like "desert". Still, I like it and I find the empty landscape beautiful in its own way.

So I was unhappy to find that my own little piece of prairie had been sullied by the bad habits of my neighbor.

My property is shaped like a tetris piece, and this particular neighbor owns 40 acres tucked into one of the jags in my place. He doesn't live there, he just stores a (growing) pile of junk right along the fence line. It is, after all, his right to keep whatever he wants on his side of the fence. I have to say, though, I always find it irritating that he pushes up so close to the fence. Given that, it was inevitable that a good, strong, south wind would cause problems, and it did.

coincidence, correlation, and causality

2006-05-30T11:04:00.000-06:00

Two or more things happen. What do we say about them? More and more in our public discourse, I see signs of a hasty and lazy leap to the conclusion of a causal relationship when there is barely any reason to believe in even a correlation. Some definitions:

Coincidence - two or more things happening. For my purposes, they don't even need to be said to happen at the same time.
Correlation - two or more things whose occurrence is (are?) connected. It could be that one thing always happens when one or more other thing happens, or only if something else doesn't happen, or ...
Causality - one or more thing whose occurrence is a direct result of one or more (other) thing.

It is the purview of science, or at least the scientific method, to establish what relationship exists, if any, among events. A tree falls on my car and my wife calls her mother. Coincidence, probably. A tree falls on my car and the wind blows. There could be a causal relationship there but there really isn't any basis, just from these two events, to conclude that there is one.

Establishing causality, as opposed to making it up, is hard. Often in science, particularly in physics, the scientist develops a model that fits some (hopefully, all) the data associated with a particular phenomenon or observation. A model is not the same as physical reality. It is useful precisely because it is a simplification of reality. If a model works, then it is often possible to derive causal relationships (mathematically) from the model. Even then, the validity of that causality is only conditional on the model. It is frequently the case that the prediction of causal relationships is what allows a model to be tested, and discarded. Without a model, that is, in reality, establishing a causal relationship as opposed to a correlation, is often impossible.

Politicians are, in my opinion, the worst offenders, because their intellectual laziness has the broadest effect. Every time a politician says "...because...", examine the foundation for the causal relationship. Mostly, there won't be any. Bush says "the economy is strong because of our tax cuts". Wrong on so many levels. First of all, I don't see much evidence that the economy is strong. But, that aside, how do we know anything about a causal relationship between the tax cuts and the strength (or weakness) of the economy? They're just two pieces of (varyingly believable) information.

immigration

2006-05-30T08:12:00.000-06:00

I'm trying to understand the current fuss about immigration, illegal or otherwise. What if, instead of Mexico, Colorado were being flooded with transplants from, say, Kentucky. What would we do? Surely, those new Coloradans would be competing with those already here for jobs. Would we tell them they couldn't come? More likely, we would, as a nation, address the issue in Kentucky that was causing them to leave.

I know, really I do: Mexico is a foreign country. But here's the point: we have a trillion dollar deficit. We're spending money we don't have to fight in Iraq. We're spending money we don't have to fix the levies in New Orleans. And now we're going to spend more money we don't have to do what everyone knows will not solve the problem of immigrants coming across the Mexican border. I'd rather spend less money to fix the problem, rather than more money to just act tough. The United States should work with the Mexican government to address problems in the Mexican economy that force (yes, force) people to seek jobs here. It would be cheaper in the short term, way cheaper in the long term, and it might actually work.

the case for impeachment

2006-05-30T08:08:00.000-06:00

Conservative leaders are fond of criticizing what they call "activist judges" for interpreting laws in a culturally relative way. We are admonished by these leaders, in Congress, in the press, and in the Supreme Court that an appropriate view of the law, especially the Constitution, is the "strict constructionist" view where the framers' original intent is rigorously and narrowly implemented. Liberals, on the other hand, will tell us that the authors of the Constitution, living as they did in the 18th century, could not have foreseen many of the complex obstacles to legal interpretation that pertain in our modern world. Well, one thingthe framers clearly understood was the war on terrorism.

Under British colonial rule, the American colonies were subject to raids, arrests, and all manner of indignities perpetrated by the government in pursuit of threats to their established order. Sometimes it was hostile natives. Sometimes it was French provocateurs. Sometimes, more frequently as the Revolution approached, it was home-grown American revolutionaries fomenting disobedience to the Crown. But always it was the British government's claim that their own actions were in defense of order against "those who would do us harm" (terrorists). So, over the centuries, while much has changed, this, at least, has not. Then, as now, governments felt challenged by demons, real and imagined, and answered that challenge with war.

With this history in mind, the framers of the Constitution and its first 10 ammendments (the Bill of Rights) set about to establish a government regulated by laws. In particular, then Congressman James Madison had Britain's war on terrorism in mind when he delineated the separation of powers in the Constitution and the rights of individuals against unwarranted searches in the Bill of Rights (ammendment 4: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."). The war on terrorism, or any war, is no excuse for violating these laws.

President Bush has stated openly that he knowingly and willingly directed warrantless searches against American citizens. He said that the war on terrorism permits him to take this action. The framers of the constitution clearly foresaw this condition when they wrote the laws defining our republic. A strict constructionist interpretation of the law dictates that there is absolutely no ambiguity in this case. The conservatives can't have it both ways. If they truly believe in the principle of original intent, they should stand up for it. If only there were a spine to be found in the halls of Congress, the President should be removed from office.

patriotism in a nation of laws

2006-05-30T08:00:00.000-06:00

What does it mean to be a patriot? I sense that there is an ugly sentiment among the populace that any exercise of dissent, indeed, any exercise of the liberties that define America, is un-patriotic. In my opinion, quite the reverse is true.

We are a nation of laws. That used to be unique; it's still something to be proud of. We are a nation founded on principles of reason and tolerance. The very essence of patriotism, therefore, is the honoring of those principles and respect for those laws. How can it be un-patriotic, in and of itself, to disagree with the majority? The foundation of our republic is the compromise among strong competing interests (federalism and state's rights, big and small, North and South). I submit that the strength of our constitution, the codification of what patriots supposedly honor, is directly proportional to the magnitude of its compromises.

Nor can it be un-patriotic to be wrong. Charles Lindberg supported Hitler. Nobody can claim that Lindy was not a patriot. Yet, no one would argue that the thousands of Americans who went to war to defeat Hitler were not patriots, too. So, Lindy was wrong. That doesn't diminish his patriotism.

So, who might we say is not patriotic? I believe that those who would subvert the laws of government, the Constitution, to a regime of anti-libertarian "crackdowns" are anti-American. Those who would involve the U. S. in "foreign entanglements" (as George Washington called them) for other than the public's interest are anti-American. Those who would seek to make America intolerant are anti-American. Those who would have America act in ways that are not supported by reasoned argument are anti-American. Lying to Congress about Medicare; lying to the world about terrorist activities; suspending due process for citizens (and non-citizens, for that matter); leaking the names of covert operatives for political revenge; these actions are fundamentally anti-American and, indeed, illegal.

For starters

2006-05-27T16:36:00.000-06:00

I have known for some time now that all the cool kids were blogging. Never having been cool, nor having much to say, I hadn't signed up, myself. I'm still not cool. It turns out, however, that I occasionally think of things I want to say. Next time, I'll be ready.