Body Parts

What Is The Environmental Cost Of Solar Power?

The Secretary of Interior has set aside 1,000 square miles of public land for solar power generating stations. These stations will involve hundreds of square miles, across the West, of solar panels covering the land like a blanket, or perhaps solar array reflectors distributed across tens of square miles like massive pimples. What is the environmental cost of widespread shading of the fragile arid land ecosystems? What is the asethetic cost? Can anyone doubt that the blanket of panels will blight the landscape? In northern California, where non-coal power is a religious allegiance and requirement for citizenship at any chic gathering, a massive solar panel project now in place has offended and soured support for such power generation. The solar reflector arrays will be no more popular than oil refineries. Then there are the distribution lines. Because the solar power generators will be politically unpopular, they are being located in unpopulated areas, where local opposition can be mowed over. But the electricity they generate must still be transmitted to urban areas where it will be used. Tens of thousands of miles of new power line routes must be mapped, acquired, and developed. Huge swarths of national forests and wilderness areas near suburban districts will be devastated. Protected species and their habitats will be destroyed. Wildlife corridors will be severed. The routes will scar the landscape. They will be as ugly as the blight of solar panels and reflector arrays. Then there is the issue of the cost of solar electricity generation. Solar generating equipment deteriorates quickly; the environmental conditions under which they operate are harsh. Will any of it have more than a ten-year lifespan? You'll have to convince me it will. So maintenance costs and replacement costs will be high, which will require regular increase in rates or subsidies. Solar power is an expensive, ideological vanity policy; the sooner the public becomes upset and opposes it, the better. Nuclear power, anyone? Maybe our legislators should visit, gulp!, France, where 80% of electricity is nuclear generated in standardized, cheap, safe nuclear power plants.

At What Point Does Obama's Foreign Policy Become So Anti-American That He Is A Traitor?

It is difficult to see how Obama's foreign policy is to pursue American national interests. To the contrary, his policy is to diminish American sovereignty national interest. Caroline Glick runs through the list of anti-American dictators and their anti-democratic, anti-free regimes which Obama has supported, almost in disbelief. A parade of horrors, the most recent being Obama's support for a Leftist imitator of Chavez in Honduras, who was removed from office by order of the nation's supreme court and the national congress.

Oops. An Experience-Rich Latina Judge Is Not As Wise As A Bunch Of White Male Judges

Tant pis for race-based and gender-based legal wisdom. The Supreme Court 5-4 reversed the Ricci decision in which Sotomayor had joined a panel to support race-based public policy. At least a few white male judges know there is a legal document called the "Constitution" of the United States.

It's Still Michael Jackson This, Michael Jackson That

Conservative bloggers are still talking, reminiscing about Michael Jackson. Still. Is this some kind of big generational moment? He was just a pop star, for pete' sake. A pop star. With a sad personal history, a disturbed, probably criminal, personal lifestyle, and disturbing anti-semitic opinions. He is heralded as a singer and dancer who transformed pop song and dance, nearly single-handedly inventing the video song performance. (And that was different, how, from the movie musical and live theater musical? By the difference in the technological means of capturing images and replaying them?). As with audiences who enthusiastically applaud singers on stage who sing familiar songs, I think many people are celebrating themselves as much as the life of the pop performer they enjoyed. There is a difference.

Attention, Philosophers!

(Sunday reading prompts the following extended exclamation.) Genes do not have information, knowledge, intentionality, or wisdom. "Information", "knowledge", "intentionality", and "wisdom" are metaphors when referring to genes. Genes are chemical structures held together by chemical bonding. The structures are not capable of "knowing" anything. All activity undergone by genes is the result of chemical reactions; that's it. Those chemical reactions are instances of the laws of chemistry and physics concerning atomic and molecular "structures". (Because of the probability characteristics of physical events at the atomic and molecular levels, the term "structure", which is drawn from the macroscopic world, becomes inappropriate; strictly speaking, a metaphor). Information, knowledge, intentionality, and wisdom are useful concepts for discussing a few biological systems (but only a few), mainly homo sapiens, but they are not properties of biological organisms. They are only concepts with which we engage (observe, analyze, interact with) organisms, including ourselves, when they are alive and active in biologically existential situations. (Okay, there, I got that out of my system; now back to reading.)

Obama's Health Care Public Option Strategy and FDR's TVA Strategy

Roosevelt campaigned politically for TVA as a "yardstick" for electric prices in the South. The notion was that southern electrification had lagged, because private electric prices were too high. They were too high, because the private utilities had little competition and were gouging the public for profit. (Southern utilities argued in response that many southerners were too poor to purchase enough electricity to make it profitable to electrify their homes; nevertheless, many of the southern electric customers were subsidized by the utilities anyway.) I suspect that Obama's political staff have looked back and drawn upon FDR's strategy as a model for their campaign for the public health care option. There is an opportunity here for it's opponents, too. TVA was in many regards a success, but it also spawned problems. It was not an equal competitor, as it didn't pay taxes (though it provided contributions in lieu of taxes) and in later years it did not comply with environmental regulations that private utilities were required to meet. TVA was not an equal competitor. A little quick research by Republicans should enable them to provide strong counter evidence to the Obama claims about a public option.

Viewing Historical Film--We Were Fitter Then, A Strong People

I have been viewing American historical films made before 1950 for a little documentary I am making. I have been struck--repeatedly struck every time I view a movie--that everyone is slender. Men, women, children, young, old, the demographic makes no difference. Everyone was slim. In archival photos of US soldiers in world war two, the young men sometimes have their shirts off. They pose for girl friends and family back home. They are so slender that in some poses you see hints of ribs. No fat hanging anywhere. They posture and mug for the camera. They were not body builders. They didn't have the bulging muscles, rippling six-packs, and over-sized necks of today's body builders. But they looked fit. Through the black and white photos, they glow with energy, stamina, alertness, motivation. In movies of the WACs and other women's branches of the services, service women all look slender and well put up; they walk tall, straight back, bright eyes, and with a briskness that reveals body confidence. Any woman today viewing such images would be  instantly jealous. Scenes of factories, families at home, people walking on city streets, the same tale doth repeat.  I know that not everyone was trim before 1950s. I look at my own family photo albums, and my grandparents were heavy by the time they were in their fifties. But when viewing documentary movies, historical scrapbooks, and archival photos of public places, you have to search to find anyone who looks overweight. The corpulence and hefty bodies we see now everywhere did not exist then. We looked healthier, more vital and alive. We looked like a strong people then.

Note To Boeing 787 Engineers: You Be The First To Test-Fly The New Plane

I'm appalled, actually, that, this late in the game, Boeing has discovered that the wings of the 787 have stress fractures where the wing attaches to the upper fuselage. Stressing the wings (procedure and loads not disclosed) produced visible damage. Stress fractures! Computer models didn't predict the stress problems. Only testing the constructed wings on fuselages revealed the problem. Boeing says it is a small, managable problem; such things happen in all new planes. The stress points will be strengthened with small plates. (Hey, let's jerry-rig, ad hoc, rube goldberg the world's most advanced airplane!)

Well, I've got news for Boeing. You screwed up. Your new fuselage composite construction was inadequate. Your fuselage and wing designs were inadequate. Your computer modelling was inadequate. Your preliminary physical testing was inadequate. You screwed up big.

I've been proud of Boeing. I have seen Boeing as proof for the argument that America can lead in advanced industrial manufacturing (even though much of the 787's manufacturing is off-shored). Your engineers were to be the last line of defense against postmodernism, the theory of which asserts that poets can design bridges (and airplanes) as well as engineers. You're the last American commercial aviation manufacturer, the last demonstration of the genius of American industrial prowess. And you are stumbling. You need to get it right, for yourselves, for America. And for the engineers who will volunteer to test-fly that plane. Poets need not apply.

A shudder. A brief chill. Maybe America can't pull it off. Maybe we can't.

First Rule of Fighting Anti-Semitism: Do Not Imitate Nazis

During the Civil Rights era of the 1960s, the slogan, "if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem", was a line in the sand. We understood the slogan to mean, every person has a personal responsibility to oppose prejudice and discrimination in their daily lives and in a positive way to advance racial integration. If American society was to move past the custom of racism, we had to make everyone self-aware of its presence; and self-awareness was generated by confrontation and contradiction. If you don't oppose prejudice and discrimination, then you not only perpetuate them, you legitimate them. If someone made a racial slur, for instance, or refused to sit near blacks at a restaurant, we called them on it. I have never doubted that the struggle to end racial segregation, social discrimination, and prejudice was worth it; I can't imagine that any Americans would doubt it. Advancing black people was the test of our generation.

The struggle against anti-semitism is of equal weight and moral urgency; alas, this conviction is not shared by, at least, a large percentage of Americans and Europeans. A large segment of the American black community has not returned the favor to Jews, who supported the civil rights movement, and harbors profound anti-semitic prejudice and fantasies; unhappily and extraordinarily, our President is so close to this ugly prejudice that it dulls his statue like the dust of pigeon dung. And in America and in Europe, anti-semitism cloaks itself with anti-Zionism; and he has done nothing to distance himself from this ugliness. A good portion of the Western Left, with which Obama is aligned, also stands without shame for anti-semitism.

As with the movement against racism against blacks, a line needs to be drawn in the sand against anti-semitism. There are many ways for us to conceptualize this line. Here is one: do not imitate Nazis. Do not act or speak like Nazis. Do not endorse state policies that resemble Nazis. In this regard, Obama's policies toward Israel and the Jews of Israel needs condemnation and correction. His formulation of these policies partakes of anti-Zionism and its hidden anti-semitic agenda. In particular, his personal investment, along with his Secretary of State's support, in prohibiting natural growth in Jewish settlements outside the 1949 armistice line is a piece of ugly Nazism. It reeks of Nazi eugenic racial cleansing. I applaud Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs for calling the President out on this policy. The administration's position on growth in the settlements is identical with the explicitly anti-semitic racism of the so-called Palestinians and Islam itself. Obama and his administration must be confronted in their alliance with anti-semitism. They can find other ways and other policies to advance their endorsement of the "two-state solution" that do not implicitly reference the "final solution". It is a personal obligation of all free persons to confront and oppose Obama and every individual of his administration about their association with Jew-free policies of the Nazi past that are manifested today in the Muslim hatred of the Jews of Israel. That's the line in the sand. No excuses.

Why Are Conservative Blogs Noting Michael Jackson's Death?

Why does his passing warrant notice in conservative political blogs? Will some one please ramp up some postmodern theory of pop culture as the ontological mirror of the mythic democratic psyche as an emergent property of the material contradictions of American mixed capitalism, or something equally undignified and fantastic, to justify this attention. FGS! At this rate, we won't deserve the readership we don't get.