Atheist Meditations

I'd like to begin this rant - I mean blog - with a personal story. I was preparing a blog this morning based on the USA Today headline 'Jobless Rate Falls Unexpectantly.' I've long held the prejudice that economics and psychology are two industries of tremendous bullshit, and planned to skewer the 'dismal science ' with my caustic wit. The fact that nine thousand fewer American's lost jobs last month than some wankers in Washington predicted, I thought, is a sure example of economic techno-babble trying to put a happy spin on the shitty news that 300 and some odd thousand people did lose their jobs. Plus, the article I was reading stated that "Businesses are taking a cautious approach given the widespread attention given to the problems on Wall Street and in the housing industry, but they are not acting as if they expect a recession. . ." Yeah right, I wrote, like any business makes decisions based on such abstract notions. Most are concerned with immediate factors in their immediate business environment.

Then this lousy feeling started to grow in my belly. I re-read the article and found that sentence continued with an "or, are seeing a significant decline in revenues that requires cutting back on the number of workers" That pretty much shoots the shit out of my second attack. Time to go back over the jobless numbers. 9000 divided by 311,000 is 0.0289 or almost three percent. Fuck, three percent is rather significant. Maybe, as I read more related articles, our economy is a complicated beast with about 300,000 people losing employment every month and almost the same amount finding new work. Time to press delete on that post.

Thus I drove to work doubting myself and angry that I was a half hour late with nothing to show for it.

Some of my readers may be familiar with the wonderful Amber series by Roger Zelazny. I really enjoyed those books as a kid and was fascinated by the 'logrus' (I've got a tribal tattoo on my back of it.) The logrus was a black tentacle sort of thing that members of the Court of Chaos could use to reach out into the millions of parallel worlds to find the one thing that they were looking for. I loved that and and one of my 'pleasant fantasies' is that my own consciousness worked that way. The total mind could understand more than the conscious mind could comprehend at one time, and often I would find myself absorbed with something that would have serendipitous value later.

I was a terrible student, rarely ever doing reading assignments or homework. I do not know how many times I would find myself drawn into a page of my textbook in the boredom of a teacher's lecture only to be called upon during Q&A on that exact topic. The one time I grabbed a condom for my wallet before a first date was the . . .

Anyhoo, I'm sure you'all get the meme.

I get to work and sitting in the office is this yesterdays Wall Street Journal with a teaser in the upper corner about Dick Cheney's response to Allen Greenspan's new book where he criticizes Bush for over-spending ( the accusation of over-spending to a republican is like accusing a democrat of beating a harp seal's skull in - them's fight'n words ) Mr. Cheney quickly shot off an editorial to the WSJ titled 'The Real Bush Record."

I read it, I had to, and almost as soon as I got past the bland statements of respect and friendship for Mr. Greenspan that I'm sure come straight from our Vice President's unnaturally preserved heart, he gets to invoking 9/11.

Aimed at our country's financial sector, the attacks were followed by the closing of stores and shopping malls, and the cancellation of thousands of flights. In the three and a half months between 9/11 and Christmas nearly a million Americans lost their jobs

The logrus strikes.

311,000 people filed new claims for unemployment last month. During the last recession that number was as high as 450,000 in a month. 'Nearly a million Americans' losing their jobs in three and a half months is not a fucking shocker. If anything, it shows how little the terrorist attack did actually unbalance the economy.

Mr. Cheney, almost certainly knows this. He also knows that 'a million Americans lost their jobs' makes a nice paragraph ending statement (or at least his staff writers know.) Yet he will use that foolish statement as the prime argument for the first of his two columns. Even when writing to a readership as erudite and conservatively tight as the Wall Street Journal, he doesn't mind talking down to us as if we were retarded.

He does more of that shit as he continues to argue Bush's fiscal responsibility. "[A]nd that's why he has steadily reduced the annual rate of growth in non-security discretionary spending." That's not a big deal, since obviously 'non-security' spending would be the areas of government where the money spend actually fucking accomplishes something. Probably in a manner that has some sort of oversight and record-keeping. Bush, Cheney, and their corporate board of directors are much more interested in the kind of spending that they've so mastered in Iraq: zero fucking oversight, no-bid contracts to loyal friends and pet corporations, billions that just 'get misplaced', and nothing to fucking show for it.

Maybe that's what Mr. Greenspan was driving at. Bush's spending has been reckless because as a nation we have abso-fucking-lutely nothing to show for it. Iraq and the entire Middle East are much worse than if we had just left them the hell alone.

Curiously, Mr. Cheney omits any acknowledgment of Mr. Greenspan's most controversial statement, that the Iraq Crusade was largely about oil and, unfortunately, the current political environment makes saying that difficult.

He ends with praise for Mr. Bush's 'superb' efforts to coax Congress into reforming Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. I'll end with thanking the god I don't believe in that these three institutions escaped the sort of 'reform' that Bush and his Coterie of Corruption would have inflicted.

My one beer a day program totally sucks! I think I may have made a foolish decision there; the first beer merely cleanses the palate for the next one. I'll never again split a variety pack with a buddy and debate the various styles of ale, lagers, pilsners, and stouts. One beer a day makes it difficult to compare and contrast.

I've decided that drinking wine in excess just ain't for me. I used to love to drink a bottle of Australian Shiraz, smoke a thin cigar and write. Guess I'm not into stained teeth anymore. I'll drink a glass with Cin over a good meal, but excess be denied me. I dug all my old cocktail apparatuses out of storage, and attempted to achieve the perfection of a Stolichnaya Straight Up Extra Dry One Olive Martini. I feel pretty good writing with one of those in front of me, yet by the Wolf's Hour when I'm in need of number three, I usually just go to bed. My ancestry is Irish, not Russian.

Whiskey goes down just as fast and smooth as beer - even faster and smoother in fact - so that beverage was returned to the list of 'inappropriate for regular consumption.' Trust me, nobody wants to be around Aurelius when he's 'Whiskey Friskey.'

RANDOM THOUGHTS

• I can't believe when Petraeus and Crocker testified before Congress they did not have to do so under oath. What a crock .
• The latest issue of Skeptic magazine has a fascinating article on the end of science. Really he's talking about the end of technology, i.e. that most of the major breakthroughs have already happened. A Bee-Girl from the thirties might be impressed with your iphone, but between the telegraph and radar she ain't seeing much science that's new to her.
  

Here's how Mordechai Ben-Ari extrapolates this line of thinking to grapple with ET (I think it's fascinating.)

We have every reason to believe that the laws of physical science are universal, so that even if there is a much older intelligent ET life, it will have the same physics and chemistry as we do. Any scientific revolutions that they underwent are ones that we might potentially undergo, so if that prospect is doubtful here, it is doubtful there too. Discussions of ET life must be careful not to commit the non sequitur of deducing the existence of radically new science and technology from the existence of intelligent life. (Skeptic Vol 13, Num 2 2007, p 26)

I love this line of thinking and Cindy and I debate it frequently. She believes that life is astronomically rare, I favor the notion that life (at least simple life) is fairly commonplace. Within my lifetime we should have definitive knowledge regarding Mars and microbial life.

This debate at astrobiology.com lends my views some support.

Imagine an immense universe filled with countless planets and moons that harbored complex life, many of them even able to evolve a sentient species before an asteroid/solar fluctuation/volcanism/pandemic/war wiped the slate clean. All of them contemplating existence, and none of them ever going to discover a technology that would allow them to escape their host star's gravity.

I think that's beautiful

Labels: Astrobiology, personal

Slowly getting back to the routine here after a long week off staying up near the headwaters with family. Had a swell time. The tallest Red Pine in Minnesota, one of the tallest in the nation, suffered wind damage this spring. About 300 years old, now 'the monarch is dying.' Choked me up a little.

I've been enamored with that Ralph Waldo Emerson quote for quite a while. I believe he is saying that will have no 'Covenants', no childish, black and white rules for his behavior. Rather an Ideal that he will seek to remain in 'proximity' of. So instead of declaring that alcohol is a sin and I will never touch it, he sees a role model of a responsible, temperate man and strives to emulate that behavior.

I liked that thinking. Seemed more mature than the system of 'morality' where one follows certain commandments laid down by a questionable deity in return for rewards of an even more questionable nature. This system also precludes the worthless guilt from 'cheating on your diet.' I swore I was never again going to wank it on a Sunday morning, now I've sinned and feel lousy about myself.

Besides, 'covenants' and the like must be purged from one's consciousness to stay on the active defense against the living death of Obsessive Compulsive Behavior.

Yet I'm also coming to grips with the usefulness of certain rules and routines. I'm learning that the Writer sits down and writes every single day - that should be the proximity I'm shooting for. My policy of writing every Tuesday and Thursday for two hours even if I have to tie myself to the desk chair is working. . .

So I shall have One Covenant, one self-imposed rule that I will subjugate my id to without deviation.

See, I have two great loves in my life, so I can only have one beer.

The One Beer Covenant. I completely love beer. I love every variety and type, the history and the science; hops makes my blood smile. Lately I've been alcoholically ravenous. A bottle of Summit Extra Pale Ale goes in my belly in a few chugs, then on to the next one. I'm not enjoying the beer, only the buzz. So now I will only drink one beer a day.

Don't get me wrong, I'll still get rowdy off a string of martinis or a bottle of wine, I'm only putting the beer hound on the leash. I think this is a big enough change. It's a big enough change.

Labels: personal, pseudo-inspirational