News, Information, Treason...

BRICS 2, and why I'm not really a B*stard

Another little video meditation on the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa)...

And on why I'm not really a B*stard. Or, anyway, not as much as you might think.

kinda blue #1

Just some kinda sad thoughts about the election...

A (probably useless) letter to the chiefs of the Democratic Party

Like it says...

a little video about love in Ozlandia

Like it says.

Link to the books is below the video

Love in Laverton
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NCGWRLE

Along the Finke
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OZ8K1G6

Beautiful Volcanoes, Ugly Politics

Like it says, a video meditation on beautiful volcanoes and ugly politics...

A video about BRICS and Brazil

A video with a few thoughts about the recent election in Brazil (2014) and the long term prospects for the BRICS...

And for us...

Another video, this one a triffle sad

As it says, another video I did for Belfort & Bastion, also promoting Prometheans. A little different in that it is more meditative and, indeed, a bit sad...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sR3BVuo3-c

the video from the Breaking Bad dam

Here's one little video I did to promote  Anastasia Leach's short story collection, Prometheans. (Link to the book is below the video on Youtube.

The one interesting thing about this is that I shot it (on my phone, obviously) at the John B. Robert Dam, in ABQ, NM. It has the distinction of being a major fixture in the Breaking Bad TV program.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DexNTtC_hLY

I'm experimenting with videos

I'm experimenting a bit more with videos at the moment. I'm not quite sure why. I'd never intended this to be a "Vlog." And, certainly, I'm nobody's idea of a photogenic superstar.

Still...it's interesting to play with cameras and special effects, no matter how crude they may be. And, besides, I've not been posting here much. Just haven't had the time mostly, but also the motivation's been a bit lacking. Maybe this refocus me. Re-establish my interest in this, my most personal form of personal expression.

What got me into Vlogging (this time, I've done it before) was doing some mildly promotional videos for Belfort & Bastion, my micro-publishing company. In the the next entries, I'll put links to the places where you can see some of the more interesting of those videos.

Anyway, that's what I'm up to.

cheers
mjt

Xcargo 2 is free!

Seems like I never get a chance to write here any more...

But, as one quick note, my second collection of vintage Xcargo columns is free Today (Aug 26, 2014) through Aug 28, 2014.

So head on over and grab up some cargo!


http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MP5XXA2http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MP5XXA2

Explosive-cargo 1 is free for a couple of days

I'm getting away from monsters for a while.

I'm gathering up all the old Xcargo Columns... I mean the early ones, the ones that date back to when Xcargo was an ezine...and publishing them as ebooks on Amazons.

the first collection, dating from the first quarter of 1994, is free tomorrow and the next day, that is Aug 17 and Aug 18.

So, head on over and grab a Cargo or two.

cheers
mjt

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MOPKU54

Monsters 2

I never meant to do more monsters.

I did not intend, again, to visit the subject of horrors. I had no wish to do more pictures of fiends and ogres and damn'd souls, in this world or the next.

Yet, and somewhat to my own disquiet, I discovered that I had (first) stumbled upon a genre unknown to me…i.e., the book or other work meant as a curse…and (second) that there were yet more people in the world who desperately needed cursing.

Here's the background. Sometime I did quasi-published an e-booklet or e-sketchbook entitled Montag's Monsters. itwas a personal thing and rather ridiculous. In it, I displayed a series of illustrations meant to accompany a horror novel I was working on some time ago. The story involved a graduate student who is murdered by a jealous professor. The dead man goes immediately to hell. There, he discovers that each of his professors has preceded him to Hades. Their bodies remain on earth, but their souls are down below, each transformed into the monsters which they actually, if secretly are.

I never finished the book because, well, frankly, it bored me. Or, more precisely, the people in it bored me. The damned were, of course, based on people who I really knew, and who genuinely had harmed me quite badly. Yet, they demonstrated quite well the banality of evil. Like many bullies, they were vile, but not interesting. They were bores and boors. And best left forgotten.

But I had the images already done and I published them. This gave me a certain petty and childish revenge. I could, in my own small and nasty way, portray them as I felt they truly were.


*


As I say, I thought that sort of thing was over for me. I never thought I'd do another monster.

And then…

Then came "ISIS"…The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. A.k.a., ISIL, The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. This group appeared in the wreckage of our American "liberation" of Iraq, and the revolution of Syria. It set out to create its own nation in the ruins.

I was only faintly aware of ISIS/ISIL. I knew that its fighters were renowned for their brutality. I knew that they were winning. But other than that, I paid little attention to them. They seemed merely one more group of bloody-minded lunatics, in a world full of bloody-minded lunatics.

Then…but then…I saw a photo. You've probably seen it, too. It was taken by ISIS's own people. It shows a child, a toddler, circled by armed men. He, or she, it is not clear to me, looks up at them confused.

They are, I gather, about to kill the child. I gather they did so.

I saw the photo for the first time last night (August 9, 2014). I went to the web and learned after that the scope of ISIS's horrors. They burn. They mutilate. They torture. They enslave. They are butchering children.

It is part of a larger plan. A strategy, even. ISIS/ISIL uses terror as a weapon. It practices "propaganda of the deed." It commits horrid acts and lets it be known that it does so. And thus the mass murder of children. The message is that "if we can kill these innocents, think what we will do to you."

Alas, it is effective. I have watched the news while the Iraqi armies and Syrian rebels have scattered before the berserkers like leaves before the storm.


*


And they are real. These images. These news stories.

At first, like many others, I had that moment of doubt. There have been so many lies told. Remember WMDs?

But, no. The more I researched the more it seems clear that this is actually happening. That there are real bodies in the desert. That there really are POWs being shot in the head. That there really are women being raped and sold into slavery. That there really are children being murdered.

We cannot doubt it. There have simply been too many reports from too many sources …too many pictures and videos from too many places…too many eye witness accounts from too many creditable men and women …

Quite simply, ISIS/ISIL claims to be brutal and murderous and even joyfully pathological. And I think we must take them at their word.

We would be fools not to.


*


When I realized this…when I realized that the photos of the doomed child were real…I was aghast.

I was horrified that I could do nothing to save him. Or her. I cannot go back in time and pull the guns away from his head. I cannot walk between the killers, pick her up, comfort her, and carry her back to her mother.

I cannot save other children who are even now dying, or will die soon, at the hands of those madmen…

I was and am furious at my helplessness.


*


I could not sleep that night. I tossed and turned. I dreamed. While my wife slept, I went back into my office and checked the web for news. I cheered the victories of the Kurds and the Americans and Brits and the rest. I mourned the dead. I feared for the future.

And I wondered: what could I do to help?

Alas, alas, nothing. Nothing. I can write my congressman. I can post to my blog. I can make appeals.

But otherwise…nothing. I am reduced to watching while yet another group of self-righteous psychopaths inflict horror on the world. How many has it been so far? And just in my own lifetime? Genocides and mass death in how many places? Rwanda, Somalia, the former Yugoslavia, Cambodia…killing field after killing field. Concentration camp after concentration camp.

And that doesn't even count the genocides that came before me…Holocaust and Holodomor, massacres and horrors…


*


I found myself a little obsessed with the situation in Iraq and Syria. I began to search for some way, however ineffectually, to express my feelings. I needed some way to, well, let it out.

I finally conceived the idea of going back to my little pictures. My "curse book" for lack of a better term. I decided to create a series of images that would portray ISIS/ISIL as it genuinely is…inside, that is. I would portray the souls of its leaders, and soldiers, and sympathizers. I would show the souls made monstrous by crimes against humanity.

I would show the fate that would await them if there is such a place as hell. I doubt that there is, but you never can tell.

I would insult and denigrate them.

*

So, I did more images. This time of ISIS/ISIL's leaders, its volunteers, its sympathizers, its paymasters…

I don't know if I'll publish the pictures. They are grotesque and the world has enough of that sort of thing already. (If you really, really want to see them, let me know. I'll send you copies.)

Though, who knows? Maybe I'll put some of the pictures out into the world.  Here and there. In one form or another.

Maybe I will do so on the theory that they will, somehow, actually impact the ISIS/ISIL psychopaths in their killing fields. Oh, don't get me wrong.  I do not believe in magic. And even if I did, a picture is not a voodoo doll with which to afflict your enemy.

But, still, perhaps these pictures will act like insulting caricatures. Maybe they will make ISIS/ISIL seem pathetic or ridiculous or, even, damned. Maybe one potential Jihadist will see the images, or encounter someone who has, and come away a little less likely to sign up at their local ISIS recruiting station.

Or, maybe, someone in the group or its leadership will see the pictures. Maybe (we can but hope), it will infuriate them. Maybe, in their rage, they will make an error…

And, finally, well, I've said I don’t believe in the supernatural. And I don't. But I could be wrong. Maybe there really is something in sympathetic magic. Or, maybe, ESP exists. Maybe there is some undetected wavelength in the electromagnetic spectrum that can be shaped and focused by the human mind.

So, perhaps…just perhaps…these images might somehow cause real damage to those men who are both evil and deranged.

Particularly if not just I but many focus their mental furies upon them.

Let us hope so. Let us hope that many virtuous minds focusing their righteous anger against evil might have good effect.

Might, indeed, be mighty.


*


It may be that by the time you read this, the problem will be solved. Perhaps the ISIS/ISIL state will have collapsed. Perhaps one or more of the world's powers will have intervened and brought the bastards to heel.

Sadly, though, I suspect not. It is simply too complicated and too hellish a problem to solve easily or quickly. I suspect that, as you read this, war continues in what used to be Syria and what used to be Iraq. I suspect that ISIS/ISIL continues to murder and maim.

And even if it does not, then history seems to show there will always be others…of whatever religion or political position…willing and eager to proclaim the Holy War, the Crusade, the Holy War, the Final Solution, the…whatever.

If the original target is gone, then let these images be for those others. All who long for the apocalypse…

All who murder children.


*


If you should ever see these images, you will note several things. For example, I have tried to adapt the vision to the cultural milieu of the individuals in question. I made some pigs or dogs, animals obviously considered unclean in the Levant. In other cases I've shorn them of the male sexual characteristics that are, for them, the signs of personal superiority.

Also, in many (almost all) cases, I've shown the individual subjected to some sort of torture or bondage, frequently with strong sexual overtones, i.e., it is sadomasochistic. I wanted to add that note of perversion because I think it is fitting. "Perversion" as a word implies something evil and sick. But the average sadomasochist is, usually, a fairly harmless individual. It is thus wrong to call him or her a "pervert."

But someone who kills in the name of an all-merciful and loving God, that is a diseased and disgusting individual…a true pervert.


*


In any case, that's what I did. Those were the images I created.

As I say, I will not openly publish them. But, again, if you really want to see them, let me know. And, keep an eye out, you may run across them by accident at this or that place on the 'net.

An aside, if you do see them, you should know that they are protected by a Creative Commons mark. This will specify that you may download them, hold them, keep them…but must not resell them, or claim them as your own. Nor can you adapt them without my permission.

But you can forward them to all and sundry.

Let us hope that, eventually, they come into the hands of ISIS and its people.

And that at that moment, the images become like glass…broken glass…clear, transparent, revealing all, jagged, and, lastly…and horribly….

Wounding.

Cheesecake and Coffee At The End Of The World (as we know it)

Special note: The following is a brief description of a wild and wooly adventure I had with a book that is, alas, no longer publishable…by me, in any case. More importantly, it contains a call to arms and authors (of a certain age). It asks that you who are both writers and members of the Millennial generation take pen in hand …or wordprocessor on desk…and write a great American novel. Or non-fiction blockbuster.

Exactly what kind of book that is…well, you'll have to read the essay to find out.

Also, there are some really amateurish, badly done, probably sexist, and downright silly cheesecake-type illustrations of beautiful women and stalwart men to go along with it. But, to see those, you have to go to the other place this essay is posted, Belfort and Bastion's PWYW page, or right about here:

Cheesecake and Coffee

Or, if you don't want to read the essay at all, and just want the really amateurish, badly done, probably sexist, and downright silly cheesecake-type illustrations of beautiful women and stalwart men, well, there's a link on the PWYW site that will take you to where you can download a bunch of 'em.

Cheers
Mjt



*

                           Cheesecake and Coffee, or the End of the World As We Know It


                                                     By Michael Jay Tucker

1.

So, once again, I offer you a story of an illustrated book that I’m not publishing.

It is a complicated tale: one in which I strive to protect an author, wrestle with the end of the world, and…and ….

Produce pictures of pretty girls and handsome boys. In varying degrees of undress.


2.

It starts like this.

About the time I founded Belfort and Bastion, my little publishing company, I was approached by a talented young writer whom I happened to know from another aspect of my professional life. Let's call him Siegfried.

Anyway Siegfried had several books he wanted to show me. Most of these were travel books…visits to lands new and far (he's a great traveler) and his observations on same.

But, one of these manuscripts was a novel. Part of it was pure fiction, that is, invented, but much of it (like all novels) was autobiographical. Individual details, the general pattern of events…these were from the author's life, and he admitted to me as much.

In the book, the protagonist, like the writer, is a young man, in his mid-20s, from a privileged upper-middle to upper class background. Over the course of the novel, this character flounders about, desperately trying to find some place for himself in life…and failing consistently.

Also, there was an awful lot of sex in the book, and for this reason Siegfried was reluctant to have the work published under his own name. In fact, his family didn't want him to publish it at all.

Eventually, he had gotten their permission to try to publish the work on the condition that he do so under a pseudonym. I suspect, but do not know, that they also gave their consent knowing that I would be the publisher…i.e., someone unknown, whose customers would surely not include family, friends, or important connections.

In any case, we chatted about the problem. I agreed to keep his identity a secret. I even invented the penname he elected to use. Again, to protect his identity, I will not reveal what it was. Suffice to say that it had connections to the Aesthetic Movement of the nineteenth century.

And, like that movement, it had a certain overtone of studied decadence.


3.

Why decadence? Because of the sex.

Siegfried's goal with the book was to explore the ways that people of his generation and his class have been, well, set up. Young people of his cohort, and he is from the upper crust, have been given a rather fearsome set of instructions. They have been told time and time again that they must not have ordinary, everyday, happy lives of moderate means. No. They are supposed to achieve genuine greatness. They are expected to go forth and become CEOs and Senators, great Scientists and Doctors, fabulously successful Entrepreneurs and Artistic Innovators...

The problem is that not everyone can be a CEO, a senator, a famous scientist or doctor, or an innovator of any sort. Most of us can't. Most of us are doomed to lives of mediocrity, if not of outright failure. That is the sad fate decreed by an indifferent heaven to the vast majority of men and women, even when they are gifted and talented. The race, alas, is not always to the swift. Indeed, it usually isn't.

But Siegfried felt that he and millions like him …the children of affluent suburbs across America…had never learned that. They were burdened with, or, rather, poisoned by these vastly unrealistic expectations. They were sent out into the world with the motto do or die…and, most often, discovered the first wasn't really an option.

So, Siegfried's character spends most of his time in frantic activity. He is almost a blur! He tries one thing after another. Surely, surely, something's got to work. Something will allow him to achieve the grandeur that he feels he must somehow obtain…or else, be a total failure.

And in this breathless dash toward a wholly unobtainable goal, sex is something of a distraction. Yet, he cannot help himself. Siegfried's character is an attractive man, and a lusty one, and he finds himself blundering into and out of relationship after relationship. All of them cold and empty. None answering any human need. And yet the protagonist is enmeshed in them. Trapped. A "prisoner of sex."

Thus the connection to decadence. To a sexuality which includes no humanity. Which is casual to the point of indifference.


4.

I thought that was all a rather good idea for a book. Still do, for that matter.

The problem was, I really didn't have a handle on the book that Siegfried had genuinely written. I was so taken with the idea of the protagonist in his struggle to achieve greatness that I missed what the author was really after.

You see, Siegfried's book was a very personal book. It was profoundly autobiographical. It reflected his own struggle to find some way of leaving his mark upon the world. It was the story of one human being in a particular set of circumstances.

But I, being me, interpreted the book instead from my own strange perspective. I am obsessed with the idea that ours is an age of transition…an age that will be as dramatic as the Industrial Revolution or even the Neolithic. When it is done, our lives …how we make our livings, where we dwell, who commands and who does not… will be radically different.

I think all this because I cannot help but see the trend toward intellectual industrialization … to computers, to machines. I'm not talking about Artificial Intelligence or the "Singularity" or any of the rest of it. No.

But it is inevitable that most white-collar jobs are going to be as automated as the blue-collar ones before them. Just as the artisan fell before the Assembly Line and the industrial robot, so too will the middle and even the upper manager be increasingly rendered irrelevant by machines. (Every economist, every social planner, should be forced to watch the Jeopardy episode in which IBM's Watson successfully competed with humans. It is…instructive.)

In the long run, I am an optimist about this transition. I think we will see a more comfortable world for it.

But in the short run, I'm afraid that things are going to get very messy, indeed.

And that was the framework into which I tried to shove Siegfried's book. I tried to make it the story of a man who realizes that some ages lend themselves to new explorations, to the winning of empires, to new and stunning insights.

But some ages do not lend themselves to such things. In some ages, the path to greatness is quieter and less evident. In eras when empires collapse, when horizons contract, the resolute hero is the man or woman who fights to conserve what has been gained. He or she is the individual who entrenches, who retreats, who fortifies, who evacuates the innocent to shelter, and who plans the counter-attack.

And having thus realized the nature of his age, the protagonist would, like the older and wiser Candide before him, set out to cultivate the garden to the best of his ability.

In the process, telling his parents, his high school guidance counselors, and all the other self-important and toxic people who would run his life for him…that they can go straight away to hell.

Like I say. I think it's a great idea for a book. I wish someone would write it.

It can't be me, because I'm the wrong generation. It should be someone in their 20s or 30s. Maybe, someday, some young writer will appear with such a book in hand at my door. Or, maybe Siegfried will do the piece.

But, in the meanwhile…


5.

So, I set out to sell Siegfried's opus. And,  I failed.

I failed because I was actually trying to sell the book I wanted to see written. Not the one that Siegfried had written. I marketed a book that existed only in my imagination. That's the book I described in all the supporting materials, the press release, the "about this book" that went on Amazon, and so on.

And, of course, it didn't work. When people downloaded the text, they discovered it was not the story I'd told them it was. So, they did not recommend it to friends and family. They did not review it. Or, if they did, then they did so in grudging tones.

I grew increasingly frustrated. Why, I wondered, wasn't the book selling? It seemed like such an easy pitch…

I went back and re-read the work. Dimly, I began to realize that I'd not understood it.

Or rather, I'd understood it well enough. But I had chosen to promote another book entirely… the one in my head.

And both consumer and creator had genuine reason to be angry at me.


6.

The good news was that Siegfried wasn't angry at me. Or at least didn't elect to show that he was. The bad news was that having perceived my error I didn't know how to correct it. You see, it is hard to sell a personal vision.

Yet, I thought, perhaps, I could do so. First, I'd have to recast the advertising materials to stress the protagonist's genuine condition. That is, I would abandon the conceit that he was Everyman (and -woman) in the Age of Diminished Expectations. Instead, I'd point out that Siegfried's character was what Siegfried himself was, i.e., a semi-aristocrat, the child of the 'burbs, facing the anguishing question of what he could do to be worthy of his nobility.

Second…the sex.

I could stress the sex. I hadn't done so because I'd thought of it as being far less important than the social message of the text. But, on reflection, I realized that it was at the heart of the book. The protagonist is constantly attempting to make human connections, through sex, and never manages to do so.

That was an interesting way to take the marketing—particularly since the protagonist, at one point, considers a career in writing erotica. After all, he has lots of experience. It is just that when he tries to put pen to paper, it all comes out dry and tasteless.

But how to emphasize the sex? That was my problem.  After considerable thought, I had a bit of a brainstorm. Why not illustrate the book?

The wonderful thing about electronic books is that you can have pictures in them quite cheaply. Where a full color illustration in a print book can cost you an arm and a leg, it is pretty simple to slip it into an e-book.

Maybe, I thought, we could even break the book up into a series of illustrated, interconnected sub-sections. It would be like an old-time serial. Each chapter would be published separately, as a stand-alone e-booklet, each with five or six semi-erotic pictures in it.

Where would we get the pictures? Well, that was a problem. However, if we could come up with the money, we might be able to hire an artist to do some illustrations for us. In fact, I knew an artist I might be able to use. I had been at one of the innumerable arts and crafts fairs that regularly pop up in New Mexico and I'd met a woman who did color drawings that looked a bit like those of the great Art Deco illustrator, Louis Icart (1880-1950)—i.e. languid women, lounging in clinging evening gowns, mischievous and lascivious, each faintly considering an evening of passion with whichever swain it is that most attracts her.

Or, if we couldn't come up with the money, I might try something myself. I'm not an artist, God knows, but I might manage something with my little painting programs and the Seashore graphics editor.

In fact, I realized, I should do up some images in any case. If I was going to pitch the idea to Siegfried, I'd need show him a little bit of what I had in in mind. And, besides, I thought it would be cool to something kind of sexual. I'm a good, red-blooded, heterosexual male. I'd enjoy doing those kind of pictures.

And…

And it would make a nice change from all those monsters I'd done as Montag.

I produced several images that might perhaps be used to illustrate such a series. (I ought to stress that they were not based on any particular scenes in the book. I just produced the pictures as something Siegfried and I could use as possible models for something we might do later.)

Then, I gathered up the results and prepared to share them, and my idea, with Siegfried.

Cue the Debacle, stage right…


7.

It was, I think, the day before I intended to actually get in touch with Siegfried and explain what I had in mind.  Martha, my father, and I had all gone down to the big Walmart store on Wyoming and Menaul. We'd seen an advertisement about upgrading our iPhones at the store and we thought it be would be quick, simple, and cheap to do so. (It wasn't. And we didn't. We finally had to go to an AT&T store to get the job done.)

Martha decided to visit the women's department. Dad and I went up to the front where we could get a coffee and he could sit down.

While we were there, lingering over the coffee and watching the whole wide world go by (as it always does at Walmart), my phone beeped. I had email.

I glanced at it.

Siegfried…


8.

Siegfried had a problem. Or, several of them. I only got bits and pieces of the details, and I'm not sure I understood everything, but what it boiled down to was that his novel and his other works had to absolutely…positively…exit the Belfort and Bastion catalog. Right now.

Why? Well, it seems he'd gotten a job with a certain large organization. A powerful one. Doing good things for America everywhere. However, this organization would look with displeasure on an employee who might have authored a book that could be considered …pornographic.

In some of our subsequent communications, in which I basically pleaded with him not to take his stuff out of the B&B catalog, I pointed out that he had published it under a penname. There was no way for his employer to know he'd written it.

He did not exactly say, Yeah, right…but that's what he meant. Had I ever heard the name Edward Snowden? If so, did I really believe that there was anything like privacy or secrecy on the Web?

Oh, I said, in a very small voice.

So down came the novel. And all his other books. They are no longer in our catalog. There's no record they ever even existed.

All gone down the memory hole…

Welcome to the new millennium. When technology was going to make censorship impossible. There was a TED talk that said so. So it must be true.

Right?


9.

I didn't blame Siegfried. He was quite right.  He needed to protect himself.

But I was disappointed. His going meant a big hole in our catalog. And, of course, I had those pictures sitting on my hard drive…just waiting for my wife or someone to run across them and raise an eyebrow. ("So, exactly what are you doing with your computer when you say you're working late.")

At first, I was tempted to trash them. But, then, I thought, well, what the hell? Let's use 'em. Let's just throw 'em out there. Maybe someone will find them arousing. Or at least amusing.

So that's what's here. In this document you read.

Oh, and one other thing.

I still think that someone ought to write that book I described. Someone, somewhere, a member of the Millennial Generation…someone in that age cohort which has taken so much abuse from their elders for being "The Peter Pan" generation, and the "boomerang generation," and all the other well-reasoned insults which basically come down to, "You have not lived up to our expectations…even though the world we have given you is resource poor, threadbare, in debt, and in conflict."

Someone needs to write the book that rejects that criticism as drivel, the slander of self-important and self-aggrandizing old fools...

And that, afterwards, points the way forward. 

The way that leads through sacrifice, and struggle, and pain…and, ultimately, I think, to a new world. A world made pure and golden and one.

So, writers, begin. I await your wisdom. And your manuscripts.

~mjt

The B&B PWYW site

Sorry I've been so long away from Xcargo. I've been doing a bunch of things and they taken up most of my time.

I'll spare you most of the details. But here's one thing I'll mention. If you haven't already read about in one of many other websites (sigh), I'm a starting a new little project with Belfort & Bastion. It's the B&B Pay-What-You-Want (PWYW) website.

The idea is as follows: we post e-books, e-art, and so on to the site. You can download them freely, or simply read them on the site. If you like them, then you have the option of paying the creator what you think the material was worth—$0, $2, $50…whatever you decide.

So, if you get a chance, do check it out. You might find something you like.

Onward and upward.

Finally...

Tired. You'll recall that I had an author leave Belfort and Bastion. That meant I had to take all his material off my various sites.

Finally got it done. I have removed all his material...both the stuff he wrote under his own name and the material he'd done under pen names.

Lot of work.

Amusing, really. Takes as much effort to un-publish something as to publish it.

Maybe there is a moral there, somewhere.

First Data Problems Resolved!

So I'm happy to report that my problem with First Data Merchant Services have been resolved almost painlessly. A First Data person contacted me and within a day everything was neatly settled.

Ergo, kudos to First Data! Special thanx to Stacie W. 'Twas above and beyond.

Problems with First Data Merchant Services

So here's my tale of woe.

Early this spring, I thought I needed to have the ability to take credit cards for purchases on my tiny little company's website, BelfortandBastion.com. For companies interested in getting such a capacity, my web hosting providers, GoDaddy, offers a link to First Data Merchant Services a.k.a., First Data.

I filled out the necessary forms, including one that listed my bank account number and the routing number of my bank. However, when I did so, I must have mistyped one of those two numbers. Either way, something went wrong.

Then, in May, I received a note from First Data Merchant Services (or, more precisely, its collection department) saying that I was in default, that I had not paid the $30 a month processing fees, or start-up costs, and billing me $160. The note, by the way, was dated May 12.

I contacted First Data and some very nice person there explained what had happened. When First Data had been unable to collect its fees from my bank account (because I'd mistyped a number), my First Data account had been instantly closed. (She was unable to explain why no one attempted contact me before the account was shut down, but that's beside the point.)

I asked if that meant I no longer had an account with First Data. She said that was correct.

I was not concerned about that because I had realized I really didn't need credit card processing (just yet) for my company, which only sells a few items a year. I therefore said I understood, and was content that I no longer had an account with First Data. I then sent the company a check for what I owed, i.e., $160.

I thought the incident was closed.

However, yesterday, or June 30, I received a "second notice" from First Data's collection department saying that I now owed $235 and that failure to pay could negatively impact my credit rating.

But, of course, the problem is that I thought I no longer had an account with First Data, and so it seems as if I'm being charged credit card processing fees for credit cards that aren't, well, being processed.

So how on earth do I get out of this situation? I've left a message with First Data's collection department, but so far haven't heard back from them.


Thank you so much in advance.

mjt

So you say you want a revolution?

So you say you want a revolution?

Okay, here's what you do.

Step one: CEO pay is now genuinely breathtaking. As everyone knows, the average corporate chieftain (at least in America and to a lesser degree in Europe) earns many, many hundred times what their mid-level employee does. At the moment, boards of directors and stockholders are willing to put up with that because the former have close connections with the CEOs in question and the latter (particularly the smaller ones) don't have a lot of say in the matter.

But, suppose, you went out and gathered up and codified almost everything that a CEO needs to know to run a corporation. It wouldn't be that hard. In a sense, MBA programs have been trying to do exactly the same thing for years.

Okay, then, you take that information and roll it up as online databases, "expert-systems," "knowledge engines," and all the rest of it. Then, go out and license IBM's Watson or some other natural language technology and make that your user interface.

In short, you would then have a system with which almost anyone…anyone at all!... possessing a basic understanding of business could manage the biggest, badest, multi-national corporation on the planet.

Right, now envision the board of directors doing the math: pay multiple zillion-dollar salaries for a rock-star CEO, or offer $100K or so to some middling sort who may or may not even have an MBA.

Pretty soon, even the most incestuous board is going to get tempted…



*


Now…Step Two.

This is harder. It may not even be possible. But consider it…

Make the same system cheap enough to run on every PC on the planet. Make it available to everyone. Make it possible for any human being to have the same skills as the most talented (read "obscenely overpaid") executive on the planet.

Then sit back.

And watch it all change.

*

Onward and upward...

More on Memorial Day

I pick up where I left off.

I must confess, Memorial Day is one of those holidays which concern me—not because I object to the premise. Vets and our fallen deserve all the thanks and glory we can give them.

Rather I am concerned because those who most publicly and noisily celebrate (or denigrate) the holiday seem to do so for their own quite narrow ends, with the Vets themselves being left behind somehow in all the sound and fury.

I think this is true for both the political Right and the political Left. I find them both quite equally guilty.

Let me begin with the Left first. People on that side of the public debate tend to us Memorial Day to disparage War in general. ("What is it good for? Absolutely nothing.")

And that is good and fine. I agree. War is a waste, and evil. But, two things: first, in the process of disparaging war sometimes…sometimes… some members of the Left find themselves disparaging those men and women who have fought in themit In their dialogues there is expressed or implied the idea that soldiers are at best fools, and at worse imperialists and brutes, and either way not worth our sympathy or our support.

The second error of the Left is, I think, more humane, more subtle, but more dangerous. It is that War is not only inevitably wrong but easily avoided. They say that any war, any confrontation, can be escaped if only you make Nice-Nice. If only you are willing to negotiate, to seek compromise… if only you are intelligent enough to sidestep the oncoming truck…then bloodshed simply will not happen.

Ah, but there's the rub. That isn't the case. I don't care how intelligent you, how un-aggressive, how reasonable, how "un-testosteronal," how much on the side of the Angels…eventually you will encounter someone who isn't. Eventually, you will meet someone who simply wants to kill you, or harm your children, or enslave you, and nothing you can do will change their mind. Hitler was not going to learn to love Jews. Stalin would not have seen the error of his ways. European imperialists and slave traders were not going to abandon their wealth for Christian principles. Genghis Khan and his successors were not going to become gentle pastoralists in a day. (In case you're interested, the Khans' mostly unprovoked wars seem to have killed so many people that the world actually grew cooler, as the amount of CO2 in the air was reduced. Fewer people breathing, you see. Plus the fact that farmlands were being abandoned to trees and other carbon sinks.)

In such situations, violence is perfectly justified. It may, indeed, be the only moral course of action, if the alternative is the destruction or degradation of those near and dear to you. It may not be wholesale battle, with armies and warships. It may be a quiet assassination rather than a noisy artillery barrage, but it will be violence all the same.

That the Left does not understand this, is …troubling. And it explains much of why it was that on 9-11, even as the dead fell in rubble to the streets of New York, there were many of the Educated and the Elite who could think of nothing more to say than that "We brought it on ourselves."

Many among them are saying it sill.

*

The Right…

It is worse than the Left. Far worse.

The Right claims to honor the Fallen. To thank the Vet.

But have how you ever noticed how often there is an ulterior motive in what's said? How often the oh-so-pious platitude is accompanied by other things? By a subtext? By the implication that if you support the Vet, if you stand with her or him, then you must also support future wars?

The logic is bizarre, but you hear it time and time again. It is overt, it is covert, it is whispered or shouted from rooftops…but it is there. If you "stand with the Vets, with our boys (and, oh, yes, girls)," then you must also support the War. Any war. Any war on offer. Any war at any time.

It is all the more remarkable because the same people who say these things are so often (albeit not always, but often) the first to vote the cutbacks in services for vets, or their families…the first to cry boondoggle and pork…the last to notice that the men and women they claim to honor are sick, or homeless, or dying in the street…

There is something horrible about that. Something unforgivable.

*

I am appalled by this nation's treatment of its veterans. I am appalled by the numbers—the soaring number of veterans who commit suicide; who suffer from debilitating or deadly diseases that experts pompously announce do not, in fact, exist and therefore do not need to be treated at public expense ("Gulf War Syndrome" was just the first of many); whose lives and families collapse …

I read the other day that there are now more homeless female vets with their children on the street than at any other time in our history.

I find that fact uniquely horrible. There should not be any homeless vets, period. And there should certainly be no homeless mothers who have served in uniform.


*

Oh, an aside…regarding my concern for homeless female vets? I'm told by Those Who Know Best and Are Politically Correct that I've just committed an act of "Positive Sexism." It is, they explain, an act of "Micro-Aggression" which "Denies the Empowerment of Others."

I do not care. That any mother should be without a place for her children to rest their heads is intolerable. That the mother in question should also be a vet makes it all the more terrible.

And those Who Know Best? The Politically Correct?

They can jolly well go suck an egg.

*

Then there is the current VA crisis.

But, then, perhaps the less said about that the better.

It is too horrible.

*

I don't quite know how to end this piece. I've worked at it for a couple of days now. Nothing seems quite right. Nothing seems appropriate.

So, I suppose, I can do no more than default to the same sort of platitudes that I decry in others.

So… like it or not, war exists and always will, regardless of who might be in charge…or how benign that leadership might be. (Even the Second Coming, if you believe in that, is predicated on war.)

And, therefore, like it or not, we will always have among us those who must go to war. Who will die there. Who will suffer and be wounded in body, mind, and soul.

It will be, therefore, always incumbent upon us as a society to respect and care or those who fight for us…to heal their wounds, if possible, and to honor their memories if not.

For us to either proclaim them fools and "imperialists," or to make grand show of our love for them while in fact simply exploiting them for our own political gain, is grotesque.

Grotesque…and dangerous.

For, in time, if we do not support the fallen and the brave, they will begin to ask a very pertinent question.

Two wit, if we are not for them, then why should they be for us?

Memorial Day 2014

I write this on Memorial Day. As such, I use this entry to express my thanks to all the vets who lived and died in service to this nation and to peace everywhere.

Thank you.







*

One other thing…

I have been watching the VA scandal. You know the one I mean? The one that involves soldiers dying while the government stonewalled and falsified data?

And I have an idea.

We find out whoever is responsible. We take that person or persons, give them a full canteen, three days rations, and a sharp stick…

Then we airdrop 'em in someplace like, oh, I don't know, backwater Afghanistan, and let 'em walk home.

If they make it, no hard feelings. If they don't…well, that sort of solves the problem too, doesn't it?

Mother's Day

The first Mother's Day since her passing.

I am surprised by how little I feel. Or, rather, by how little I seem to be allowing myself to feel. I know the grief is there. I have had dreams in which I weep for her. More, I detect emotion…sadness…directly under the surface of my conscious awareness. It is like sensing the tremor of the fault under the apparently solid ground that supports your feet.

Why, then, do I feel, well, numb to it all? I suspect there are number of reasons. First, it is very soon. She died in March. That was only a few weeks ago. On some level I have not realized (emotionally) that she is genuinely gone.

Second, she spent two years in a state somewhere between life and death. In a way, I have already grieved for her. Or, at least, did so partially.

And, finally, I have been just so busy caring for my father and dealing with a thousand other matters that I simply haven't had time to explore my grief.

None of this, I know, is healthy. I know that, eventually, I will have to face my emotions regarding the death of my mother. It's only a question of time. Though, there's the rub. Who can say when that time will be?

*

There will be an interesting trial tomorrow. Martha has organized a small memorial service for her. It won't be large…just her, me, David, and the minister. But it will be difficult for me to repress my feelings in that setting. I hope I can, however. I do not want to weep uncontrollably in front of witnesses.

I will let you know how it works out.

Drones and Boko Haram

A lot of my friends have objections to the Drone Wars…that is, the use of Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles (UCAVs) for targeted killings.

I understand their reservations. And yet…

I'm reading about the abduction of all those poor girls in Nigeria. And about Boko Haram, the organization responsible. And about Abubakar Shekau, it's pathological leader.

And you know what?

I can't think of anyone on earth more deserving of a Hellfire missile up the left nostril.

And Last...

One last point about solar power.

I was walking to my father about all this. He made an interesting point.

Suppose, he said, you made it a law that every new home, new building, and new shopping center had to have solar cells on the roof.

It would make sense. It would move us yet further toward energy independence and a green economy. It would be inexpensive. It would not inconvenience homebuyers or builders more than a host of other, less sensible building regulations do already.

And…

And...

And can you envision the pure fury that such an idea would almost certainly generate? The calls of "Communism!" "Socialism!" "Totalitarianism!" "UnAmericanism!" and all the rest of it? The Swift-Boating and accusations of Treason and references to blue dresses (with stains) in the Oval Office? The not-so-subtle implications of Islamic Fundamentalism in the State House if not the White House?

And all of it coming from people who…surprise, surprise…just happen to have a vested interest in keeping things exactly the way they are? Even if it means making life worse for everyone else?

Rather takes the breath away.

Solar Power: Of Koch and Coal and (Pseudo)-Capitalism

So before I get started, I need to mention the Tea Party.

I need to, because I need to explain that what I'm about to talk about — solar power —isn't a Liberal vs. Conservative issue. It isn't a socialists vs. capitalists issue. It isn't even a Democrats vs. Republicans issue.

It's a people issue.

And to prove that, allow me to present Exhibit A: the Tea Party.

Yes, folks, the Tea Party, that bastion of traditionalism and conservatism, wants you to go sunny. Solar Power, it turns out, is a very big deal with the Tea Partiers. They think it is just terrific.

No. Really. They do. Go read this if you don't believe me: The Tea Party Wants to Help You Go Solar (http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/04/tea-party-wants-help-you-go-solar).

The Tea Partiers see it, you see, as a way for Americans to be even more independent that they are now.

So, if that's the case…if the Tea Party and the Green Party and the Tree Huggers and the Strip Miners and everyone in between is united on this…. who could be anti-solar?

Funny you should ask.


*

Suppose every home had solar panels on the roof.

It is really quite an attractive idea. If they invest in a few solar cells, homeowners not only don't have to pay …or at least not as much…for electricity but they even stand a chance of making a buck or two. The system as it stands requires that the utilities buy your unused power. You may not make a bunch, but a penny here and a penny there and eventually it adds up.

Truth be told, it's even a pretty good deal for the utility. The company isn't paying a huge sum for your spare watts. And since you're the one who shelled out for the solar cells in the first place, it doesn't have to pay for the infrastructure. And, again, while it may not be much, every erg it gets from its customers is energy it didn't have to pay for in terms of coal, gas, or whatever.

Still, even every roof had a solar panel, eventually…eventually!...this sort of thing would make the utilities far less important than they are now. And, hence, less profitable. Which was my father's point (see the previous posting).

I suppose, then, I could understand why utilities, oil companies, and so on would therefore oppose solar power. I could see why they would try to have laws passed making it difficult or expensive for someone to use their competitors' products. (Though, there is some irony in the fact that the same people and companies who are the first to preach the virtues of "free enterprise" when they're winning are the first to practice restraint of trade when they're not.)

What is a complete mystery to me is why companies and people who seem to have little or nothing to lose from solar power are, for some reason, dead-set against it.

Case in point: the Koch Brothers.


*


You know the Koch Brothers, of course. Specifically, you know of Charles G. and David H. Koch, rich and powerful 1%ers, terror of liberals everywhere (and a few conservatives, actually), sugar daddies to reactionary causes of every stripe, and sons of Fred C. Koch (who, in turn, was the builder of a vast fortune, briefly an admirer of the USSR, later a devoted anti-Communist and a founder of the John Birch Society. Fred C. was also didn't much care for folks of dusky hue. Or to put it another way, he was certain that African-Americans were just this side of being zoo-material.)

Okay, Charles and David between them control the vast Koch Industries. They also bankroll an enormous number of conservative and libertarian organizations. That, of course, is entirely within their rights. They are as free as anyone else to support candidates and express opinions…even though they do so with do with far greater force than normal people can.

But, in any case, they support or at least claim to support free enterprise. Unfettered, rough and tumble, no holds barred capitalism like mother used to make. Which is fine and dandy if you like that sort of thing.

Except…except…

Among the groups they support is something called Americans for Prosperity. They also fund something else called the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec). Both organizations are dead-set against solar and doing their level best to keep homeowners from putting solar cells on their roofs. They are lobbying for laws and regulations to make certain it just doesn't happen.

Why? Well, now, that's a good question.

In theory, the objection is that homeowners who go solar are "freeloading." The solar power users are not, you see, contributing their fair share to the cost of the generators, transmission lines, etc.  Other customers, non-solar customers, have to pick up the slack.

Tsk. Tsk. Tsk. You dirty solar moochers, you.


*

The reality, of course, is that this is all ridiculous. Solar power users aren't mooching. They are electing to purchase smaller amounts of a particular commodity. If they decided not to water their lawns, they'd being doing exactly the same thing but with water.

If you believe in Libertarianism, and free enterprise, and say your prayers to Ayn Rand, and all that …then you have to say that a customer has every right to decide what and how much there are going to buy, and from whom they are going to buy it. If you don’t want to purchase power from your local utility, then by George, you shouldn't have too.

And, oh, by the way, in perfectly good capitalist logic, if that means one supplier or another has to figure out how to make its product more attractive or otherwise win back customers, that's their job. It's not up to the customers (or the tax payers, or state governments) to make life easier for private companies or privately owned utilities.

So logically, the Kochs, as defenders of all that free market stuff, ought to be keeping their grubby little hands off solar. They ought to be letting the Market Take Its Course.

But they're not. They're in there with everything short of flame throwers to try to take down solar wherever it rears its shinning little head.


*

So what's the real motivation for the Koch Bro's crusade against solar?

At first I thought it was that Koch Industries had a lot from solar. I thought maybe they own lots of utility stock and oil, gas, and coal companies.

And that may be true. Among Koch properties are Koch Carbon (coal) and Koch Exploration (oil). But, a little research reveals fairly quickly that the energy companies that Koch owns are often into things like gasoline and diesel (the brothers own Chevron, instance). Which means home heating and local electricity aren't as big in the Koch portfolio as you might think.

Besides, the Koch boys own a whole lot of stuff…as you know if you're a good left-winger and try to boycott Koch products. Pretty soon you find out that you can't even buy toilet paper without giving Koch industries its cut. Even if, somehow, solar power started to really eat into the Brothers' holdings, they could always simply rely on other parts of the empire to compensate. In other words, they'd still be rich as freaking Croesus no matter what the average homeowner does with his/her roof.

Besides #2, the Kochs are supposed to be capitalists. They are supposed to being looking ahead in time and dodging bullets. So solar is going to nibble a bit into their oil and gas holdings? Okay, now is the time to get into solar cell manufacturing. That's the sort of thing that capitalists do.

What they don't do is hire tame congressmen to pass laws against competition.


*

Well, then…


How do I answer my own query? How do I explain why a few really powerful people working so hard against solar power? If, that is, it really isn't that big threat to them?


Just a guess...

Could it be…could it just possible be…because they simply don't like it?

Because they don't like the idea that serfs and peasants can get uppity and unplug form the big, powerful, hierarchical, fossil fuel companies.

They want you to know your place…you pathetic little man who doesn't own a yacht, didn't go to expensive schools, and dare to think that your absurd little existence is as important as that of theirs.


*

I am not entirely certain that the above is the real answer to my questions. I hope it isn't.

But…

If it is anywhere near the truth, then we have all of us got a much bigger riddle to solve.


To wit: what the hell are we going to do about it?


*

My Sources

"The Koch Attack on Solar Energy," Sunday Review, New York Times, April 26, 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/27/opinion/sunday/the-koch-attack-on-solar-energy.html?_r=1

Suzanne Goldenberg and Ed Pilkington, "ALEC calls for penalties on 'freerider' homeowners in assault on clean energy," The Guardian, December 4 2013 http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/04/alec-freerider-homeowners-assault-clean-energy

Lindsay Abrams, "The Koch brothers are going after solar panels," Salon, April 21, 2014. http://www.salon.com/2014/04/21/the_koch_brothers_are_going_after_solar_panels/

George ("Fish Out of Water") Birchard, "Now That Solar Capacity Is Soaring—Koch Brothers Demand Tax on the Sun," Daily Kaos, Alter Net, April 28, 2014, http://www.alternet.org/environment/now-solar-capacity-soaring-koch-brothers-demand-tax-sun

Evan Halper, "Koch brothers, big utilities attack solar, green energy policies," Los Angeles Times, April 19, 2014, http://articles.latimes.com/2014/apr/19/nation/la-na-solar-kochs-20140420.

Solar Power #3: More On Disruption

My father and I resumed our conversation the following day. This time we were on our way to coffee. I was driving him to the Starbucks up at the intersection of Academy and Tramway.

Consider the utility company, he said.

I considered.

Utilities, and power companies in general (he said) appeared at a very specific point in our civilization's existence. They came about when we could only generate electricity by making big metal things move around in a circle. Dynamos, generators, and so on are basically just that…enormous metal wheels that rotate in a magnetic field. That's how you get electricity.

And so we built and sheltered large companies which did nothing but that. They constructed wheels and turned them, using coal or oil or gas or nuclear power to do it.

Okay, but now we have cheap solar power. Suppose you had every house with a roof covered with such solar cells. Each home generates a certain amount of electricity, uses some, and whatever is left over it puts back into the power grid, where it is stored and used later on.

Okay, if that's case, my father asked, what do you need a utility for?


*

Of course, he said, there's always a need for the power grid, and for some way of storing energy, and probably for backup generation in case of emergency…

But, if you had enough houses producing their own solar energy, and feeding that energy back into the grid, then things get interesting. You start to ask why you have quite so many big companies building gigantic wheels and making them go around in circles. You wonder why you are paying …though your tax dollars as well as via your utility bills…for all that coal that's being strip-mined out of the earth. And the oil that's being taken out of increasingly dangerous places…like Iraq, where we seem to have fought a full-scale war expressly for the benefit of the oil industry. And the natural gas that's being gotten by means of fracking every piece of rock from here to hell and back again. And the nuclear reactors that are, somehow, sitting in the way of tidal waves like in a Japan a while back. And the enormous dams that contain mountains of concrete and take billions of dollars to construct.

Again, he said, that isn't to say you wouldn't have some of those things about. The utilities, the coal mines, the generators, the coal mines, the oil wells, and, yes, even the nuclear reactors would still exist.

But we wouldn't need quite so many of them.

Maybe we'd only need a very, very few.

Which would make things…complicated. And certain people…very important people…might be angry.

Because, you see, they might lose quite a lot of money.

And people fight over money.

Always.


*

We came to the Starbucks. I parked the car and we entered. We found a table and we had our coffees.

I asked him if he really thought powerful people might genuinely be willing to use certain measures …fierce measures…against those who would promote solar power.

He raised an eyebrow. He pointed out that I was the one with two degrees in history. What did I think? What had I seen in the past to indicate the future?

And…

Despite the hot coffee. Despite the warm weather of this desert state.

I was chill.

Solar Power #2: The Myth Of Subsidy, or, Where Are The Libertarians Hiding?

You remember I said that solar power was going to be a disruptive technology? Well, here's a little more background. And it's where my own father comes into the picture.

It's like this. I have heard for years…and you probably have too…that solar power would not be economical if it weren't for the fact that the government is subsidizing it. It gets special tax breaks and, in some cases, outright grants from Washington.

So, goes the logic, solar power doesn't really pay for itself. It is, in fact, a parasite. You hear it on talk shows. You see it in financial publications. If it weren't for your taxes going to those people (long haired hippie freaks and greenie weenies) then solar wouldn't exist.

Not like oil. Which is based on sound principles. And stands on its own two feet. Like a man. You betcha.

Except …except….


*

My father.

My father is an 85-year-old man. He's getting quite frail, now. He has trouble seeing. He no longer drives (thank God). He has trouble walking.

But, all the brains works just fine, thank you very much.

He's also a physicist. And, sometimes, when I take him out for coffee in the afternoons, we'll talk energy. A couple of days ago, while we were at Satellite Coffee down on Montgomery, the subject of solar power came up. He told me some of his thoughts. He mentioned the dropping costs of solar cells, and the rising costs of oil, and all the rest.

I was curious. I had never thought I'd hear such things from him…not the hardened realistist who told me how the solar tower at Sandia was basically useless.  So, as an experiment, I quoted back at him something I'd read in Forbes…about the "false economy" of solar power, and how it didn't work, and how it was only attractive because of government supports.

He gave me that smile of his. The one he reserves for moments when I've revealed a particularly endearing brand of stupidity.

"But," he said, "oil is subsidized, too."

"What? You're kidding."

"Oh, no. It is. Big time."

I whipped out the old smart phone and did a search. He was, of course, absolutely right. Big oil, big fossil fuel companies, consume government money like you would not believe. They get billions …and billions…of dollars. Either directly, or indirectly in the form of tax breaks.

I'm not sure if anyone even really knows how much the oil industry gets. I've seen numbers anywhere from $100 to $400 billion. But, if you're interested, here's some places to look. I found most of them on my cell phone that morning in the coffee shop:

*"America's Most Obvious Tax Reform Idea: Kill the Oil and Gas Subsidies," by Jordan Weissmann, The Atlantic, theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/03/americas-most-obvious-tax-reform-idea-kill-the-oil-and-gas-subsidies/274121/

*"As Oil Industry Fights a Tax, It Reaps Subsidies," by David Kocieniewski, International New York Times, nytimes.com/2010/07/04/business/04bptax.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

*"Fossil Fuel Subsidies in the U.S.," Oil Change International, priceofoil.org/fossil-fuel-subsidies/

Yes, folks, your taxes are going to the same vast fuel companies that are already earning jaw-dropping profits…while moving their operations and HQs overseas, the way that Halliburton moved to Dubai. Your money is going to the very same companies that announce sanctimoniously that solar and other renewable energy supplies are viable only because they get government subsidies.

Subsidies which look like peanuts compared to what the oil companies themselves get.


*

"So what I want to know," my father asked, over his triple espresso and cranberry scone, "is where are the Libertarians?"

Where, indeed?  Where are the Libertarians? Where are the Ayn Randers? Where are the defenders of free enterprise? Of less government and more freedom? Why aren't they out protesting? Why aren't they in the streets? 

Could it be they just don't know? Could it be that no one ever explained to them just how much money the fossil fuel companies were taking out of their paychecks and savings? Could none of their leaders have pointed this out to them?

Or, could it be that, in fact, their leaders have lied to them? That their leaders do not care about the free enterprise and the opportunity they claim to treasure? That, in fact, in their heart of hearts they believe that the welfare state is just fine, so long as the recipients of the monthly checks are rich and powerful corporations with many lawyers and more lobbyists? Not just ordinary serfs…like the ones they employ?

Just asking.


*


Does it make you uncomfortable to consider that thought? Perhaps you are a Libertarian and you value the power of capitalism to improve the world. Perhaps it seems to you that I am attacking the very concept of free enterprise.

I am not. I am, rather, defending it.

If it would make easier for you, remember the vast sums of money that the oil companies are getting from the government. With that in mind, it is easier to see them for what they are: not private enterprises but rather state-corporations, what the Europeans and South Americans used to call para-state or "parastatal" corporations. They look like private enterprises. Sometimes they act like private enterprises.

But they're not.

Not really.


*


The point is, if you really believe in free enterprise, in capitalism, and in opportunity for all, then government subsidies have to go…for the enormous oil companies as well as for the little solar power startups.

And if that ever happens (I know it is unlikely, but if) then it will be interesting to see who has the better chances of survival—the solar startups, tiny and new, or the fossil fuel giants, who have done so little and prospered so long.


*

But I have not explained why I said that solar would be disruptive.

For that, I must return to my conversation with my father. I asked him if I thought the oil and other fossil fuel companies would oppose solar, in whatever way they could.

He gave me that smile again. He reminded me of another news story. You probably saw it too. It seems that in Oklahoma there was an attempt by the state legislature, backed by utility and other energy companies to impose a special tax on homeowners who dared to put solar panels on their roofs (1). There were all sorts of glib reasons given for the move…it was unfair for some state residents not to pay as much for electricity as others, etc. …but come right down to it, the real reason for the law was obvious. Solar was a threat to certain special interests, and the measure was meant to punish those of us peasants who got out of line.

Need one add that a later New York Times article revealed the effort to establish such laws is being led by organizations associated with the Koch Brothers? I didn't think so (2).

My father then repeated my question to me. Would they resist? The oil companies? The fossil fuel giants? Using tactics both fair and foul, and often foul?

How could I not see…my father said… that it had already begun?

He brushed away the crumbs of the scone. "But," he added, again with the deadly smile, "that's a problem for your generation, isn't it?"

And then he suggested it might be time to leave.








*



(1) weather.com/news/science/environment/oklahoma-alternative-energy-taxes-20140423

(2) nytimes.com/2014/04/27/opinion/sunday/the-koch-attack-on-solar-energy.html?_r=0

I am a born again Solar Power Freak #1

I seem to be becoming a solar power freak. This is weird. This is very weird. This is downright alarming.

Here's the thing: many decades ago, in my long lost youth, when dinosaurs ruled the earth and people actually listened to disco (No. Really. They did), I paid a lot of attention to solar power. This was the 1970s and we were just getting our first taste of energy famine. OPEC had just screwed the tap down tight and it seemed pretty clear that it was a sign of things to come. (And it was.)

So I spent some time casting about for alternatives. What, I wondered, could take the place of oil. One of the things I looked at was solar power.

There are several ways of extracting electricity for sunlight. You can, for instance, focus the sun's rays on a boiler. Water turns to steam and turns a turbine. In the 1970s, I could even see such a system in operation. I was living in New Mexico in those days (as I am now) and Sandia Federal Labs had an enormous solar power program underway.

It was quite amazing, really. On some land south of the city, the scientists had constructed an enormous field of mirrors which focused the sun's light on a tower in their midst. You could see it from almost any place in town. And when it was in operation…Lord! The tower glowed like steel in a blast furnace.

As I say, impressive. The problem? It actually produced very little energy. Not really. Oh, it could turn water to steam and turn a turbine and all that, but it also consumed power, usually in passive ways. My father was working at Sandia at the time, and he put it simply and distressingly. "As near as I can tell," he told me, "it can produce almost enough energy to keep its own mirrors clean."

That was the kicker, you see. You don't just stick a mirror or lens out in a field and hope for the best. It gets dusty, particularly in a desert, and you have to polish it. Or it degrades in the environment. Ordinary mirrors lose their reflectiveness after a while, which is why antique mirrors often seem so dim and brown. So, you need to develop entirely new kinds of mirrors, things what will stay bright even after decades in the open. And, at the time, there were no such mirrors out there, or at least none that could be produced cheaply enough to make solar competitive with oil or coal.

*

Okay, that seemed to pretty well take solar boilers out of the game…at least in most parts of the world. So, I turned to photovoltaics…that is, solar cells, materials that turn sunlight directly into energy. It's what people usually think when they say "solar power."

Solar cells are quick and convenient. You could use them pretty much anywhere. You can plaster your roof with 'em.

So, why not go with them?

Because…in the 1970s, they cost a lot, and they weren't too efficient, and they tended to degrade (like mirrors) over time. I remember looking at the numbers. In those days, solar cells were proven money losers. They consumed more energy to produce and maintain than they could possibly generate.

And that, as far as I was concerned, put paid to that.

I decided (around about 1980), that solar simply wasn't in the cards. What we needed to do, I thought, was focus on developing some other means of power production…Fusion, in particular. And, until we got that problem licked, we'd need to rely on a combination of oil, coal, and gas.

Which was about where my thinking stopped.


*


Okay, now fast-forward about thirty years. Give or take a little.

I began, dimly, in my limited way, to notice some things.

Like, for instance: the cost of solar cells has dropped like a gawdamn rock. I meant it has freaking plummeted. New manufacturing technologies, plus the advantages of sheer scale as more and more companies have come into the solar cell business, has brought them way, way down in price. (As I write this in early 2014, I can get enough solar panels to almost power my whole house for under $2K, depending on the supplier.)

And they've gotten more efficient. New solar cells are getting damn competitive with oil, gas, and coal in terms of generating energy…and they're getting better every day.

But the real news isn't in the cells themselves. It is in lots of other stuff. Like that batteries are getting better now. And a lot of our electronics don't consume that much energy any more. Your cell phone does things that would put a mainframe computer of the year 1980 to shame…but consumes so little power that it can be charged in under hour from any outlet.

And then there's weight. Things don't weigh what they used to. Which means it doesn't require as much energy to move them.

Case in point: in New Mexico there's a company named Titan Areospace. It makes drone aircraft. Not the kind that blow up people. Rather, the kind that drift up to high altitudes and hang out there for, say, five years or so.

And guess what? They're solar powered.

Titan just got bought by Google which is interested in the aircraft as alternatives to satellites for the delivery of wireless Internet (take that, Comcast! And Verizon!)

But Titan's drones would be impossible were it not for a host of new materials, new batteries, and new everything else. They are so bloody light, and so energy efficient, that they can cruise the skies, and do it all without a drop of jet fuel.


*

It was ironic, really. For years I'd been waiting for a technological revolution in energy production…fusion, thorium fission, space-based power satellites…and all the while the revolution was coming from quite a different quarter, from materials science.

But, better late than never. I now more or less admit that "renewables" in general and solar in particular are going to be a major part of our energy future. I still think we ought to keep up work on things like fusion and space-based power and all that other stuff. I also still think that solar power advocates need to face up to just how hard it is going to be to build a solar powered economy. And I suspect that, yes, there will always be a need for big generators somewhere in the system, if only to provide for backup or to power industry.

But clearly, the sun is going to be a very big part of our energy future.

Now, that said…I also think that solar is going to be a disruptive technology. Maybe even as disruptive as computers were before them. Maybe more.

Which is to say that there will be people who fight it, and progress in general, tooth and nail.

But that's for next time…

I am not sufficiently arrogant to be happy

I was feeling a little depressed last night. All right, a lot depressed. And, of course, me being me, I then became depressed about the fact that I was depressed. A really ripping chap of stout build and firm mind would (you see) be able to overcome it. I should, by sheer force of will, make myself chipper regardless of my circumstances. By God, it's the American way.

Then…I got to thinking about it. What exactly is my situation at the moment? Well, my mother died a month ago after two long years in a succession of nursing facilities and hospitals. My father grows ever more frail. My wife is putting up with me (no easy task). My kid is in the middle of finals. My career continues its unconventional trajectory (i.e., upward, but by way of a swamp). And the world as a whole resolutely refuses to rotate in the direction I would prefer.

So…

Given all that, what right do I have to be a cheery little ray of gawdamn sunshine?


*

Actually, just as I finished typing that, I realized there is something serious in it. We are taught from the cradle that the optimum condition of life is to be happy, to be cheerful and bright. It is good for us, and pleasant for others.

Yet, everyone around me is not in a good place at the moment. My father is grieving, though (the boy from a former generation) he refuses to admit it, or speak of it. Martha, too, is dealing with her feelings, and with mine. And, besides, she wrestles with some of her own demons (she adjusts, not always easily, to being retired). My son is well, but he hurries to complete all his work for the semester, and it is a lot of work.

And I…well, I have all my own problems.

If I were to deny all that, to be chippy in spite of it, then I would be denying their pain, as well as my own. I would have to somehow not feel the sadness, concern, and sympathy which is normal and humane to feel in such conditions. I would have to be in other words, a sociopath.

There is something frightening in that thought. It suggests, you see, that to be Polyanna one must be not quite human.

And, maybe, rather terrible.

I err, I am ashamed

I had a curious experience. And a shaming one.

I run multiple blogs and sites for both my own purposes and my company's…i.e., Belfort and Bastion.

One of these blogs is based on Tumblr. That company allows you to "reblog" material you find on other Tumblr-based blogs. You just hit a button and, voila! it's on your own site.

I had come across a posting on a stranger's blog that happened to include the photo of a young woman—actually a girl, pre-teen or early teens. I was interested in the article not the photo, but when I reblogged one I reblogged both.

I also made some comments critiquing the article.

What I didn't know was that the photo had not been used with the permission of the young woman. Worse, a quick read of my one line comment could be interpreted as a criticism of the woman herself. And, even more of a problem, the young woman in question frequently Tumblr and came across my re-blogged entry.

She was, not unnaturally, offended and sent me a note to that effect.

I was aghast. I apologized, took down the photo, and un-reblogged the article as quickly as I could.

I hope the young woman forgives me. But the experience has taught me something. Or, rather, reminded me of it. To wit: no motion is free of unintended consequences. And some of those consequences may include the injury of the innocent.

It is not possible, surely, to foresee every such eventuality. But (and here is the lesson for the day), you may at least reduce their possibility by always keeping in mind that there is a world out there…beyond the keyboard, beyond the screen, beyond one's own little existence, outside of one's own skin…

And it is your duty, as a human being, to make that effort at empathy. Not just on the web, but everywhere.

For the alternative is to be cruel. First by accident, as I was. Then, all too easily, by design.

That is not a consummation greatly to be wished.

I censor myself...

There are drawbacks in being a public diarist. There is much which I could record in a notebook …material that is sensitive, embarrassing, crude, personal …which I cannot place here.

Which is unfortunate. It removes much of the power of a real diary. The role of a personal, handwritten journal (the kind that used to come with a lock on the cover) is often to be a kind of silent therapist. You place within it the darkest parts of your life. Your hatreds, fears, lusts…the name of the man you secretly wish to destroy (though you know he doesn't deserve it), the acts so foul that you cannot possibly admit you want to perform them. And it is safe to say these things in a journal. Safer even than it would be to speak them on the couch of the psychiatrist or in the church confessional. Because no one will ever know what you've written…save you, and God (assuming there is one).

And besides, some day, when the journal is full, you may toss it into the shredder. Or just pitch it into the trash. (Come, admit, no one will ever read the thing.) And then, those thoughts and sins are consigned forever to oblivion.

How different here in public. Here there is no oblivion. No genuine confession. No absolution. Here, sins would be forever enshrined. Perversions (of the body or the soul) would become your defining characteristic. People would remember you not for your attempts at the good but your admissions of the evil…evils which, truth be told, are present in us all. You would be different, and therefore damned, only because you were so gauche as to say that you had them.

So I restrain myself. I conceal. I censor. And that is for my benefit. But also for yours. You do not want to know.

Yet, I know, too, that mine is not really a popular opinion. As usual, I am the one who is out of step. I am the oddity, the crank, and the eccentric. I cruise the web and walk the aisles of my local bookstore, and I find there are many, many diarists and autobiographers for whom the barrier does not exist. They abandon the implicit privacy of the memoirist as easily as the progressive cartoonist breaks "the fourth wall," i.e., as though it were an act of daring.

And perhaps it is. Daring, I mean.

Yet, I wonder, at what point does confession become exhibitionism? Where does the diarist leave off, and where begins the dirty, sick old man in the proverbial raincoat, pants below his knees, for whom a sad fulfillment comes only in a flash, the pathetic shock, and the waving of his limp little willy at a cold and indifferent world?

The Rhythm Of Melancholy

I have begun to realize there is a kind of generational rhythm to melancholy. It has a predictable pattern.

To explain: a close friend of mine, a man almost exactly my own age, just lost his father…this after his mother passed on only a short time ago. As you know, my mother too recently passed away. In fact, virtually everyone I know who is also of my generation is in a similar situation. We all of us watch as our parents age, become frail, die…

Which is why I suspect that every generation has a certain cadence to its emotional life. We share with the majority of our peers common stages of our lives. We know together the extreme emotions of childhood, the extraordinary unease of adolescence, the confusion of the twenties, the triumphs and defeats that come after that.

When you are my age, and I'm 57, you share with your peers that moment in your life when you suddenly realize that they…your parents …won't be there forever. Or, are not there now.

And, no matter how good or bad your relationship was with them (and in my case it was very good), there is something unimaginably disturbing in that.  For you know that what seemed a fixed point in the universe, its pivot, does not exist any longer. It is wholly gone, forever.

You realize that now you have no choice but to attempt to be a pivot yourself.

Though, in some ways, that is the more dreadful, for you know that…in time…your children will discover in their turn just how unsteady a center you really are.

Easter 2014

To my friends who are Christians, happy Easter. ("He is risen.")

To my friends who are not, may you have a lovely time on this early Spring afternoon, when …at least here in New Mexico…the sun is out and the winds are not chill and everywhere there are the signs of new beginnings.

*

Interesting that both the Western and the Orthodox Easters fall on the same day this year. That doesn't happen often. We, you see, (i.e., the West) use the Gregorian calendar. They (the East) use the Julian.  There have been some rather serious quarrels about that.

Amazing thing, human nature. That we find even in the days of the week a reason to get into a good scrap.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

A remarkable man...

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/18/books/gabriel-garcia-marquez-literary-pioneer-dies-at-87.html?_r=0

A bit of minor whining

Tired. A wee bit depressed, as I often become when I've finished some major project.

And I have completed one, by the way. A project. Although it isn't quite complete. I was working on the layout of a very demanding book. It has taken me two days to get it (I think) more or less in shape. I sent it to the author this p.m. for a final check.

Two things worry me: first that he won't like it and I'll have to make major revisions. Second, the printer. (Yes, for the first time, I am moving into hardcopy. More later.) I fear that when I send the files off to the printer I'll discover I've done something horribly wrong and need do it all over again.

Let's hope I'm wrong, shall we?

Fashion

I was bored and found myself cruising Tumblr.com blogs. These are interesting in that allow you "reblog" material from other people's Tumblr sites. It makes for an unusual form of social network in that like-minded blogs tend to link to one another. Fans of, say, photos of World War II fighter aircraft post each other's images. With a few clicks you are enmeshed in an entire community.

On this particularly day I somehow drifted into a linked collections of blogs dealing with high-fashion photography. People were scanning or downloading photos from Vogue, Elle, W Magazine, Town and Country, etc., and loading them to their sites for various reasons.

It had been years since I'd actually looked at a women's fashion magazine and I did so now mostly out of a professional curiosity. I am, after all, a former magazine writer and an aspiring publisher.

But, as I looked at the photos, I realized I was becoming more and more uncomfortable. They seemed odd somehow. At first I thought it was just because the women were so very thin. They had that concentration camp look that nutritionists and feminists so often decry.

Then I thought it was just because they were, well, creepy. The modern fashion model is not made up to conform to any traditional conception of beauty (and certainly not a heterosexual man's). Their skins were deathly pale, cosmetic bruises could be seen under eyes on cheeks, expressions were stern to the point of murderous, and there was way too much leather and lace.

Next, I thought that what bothered me was the age (or the seeming age) of the people involved. There were two sorts of model on display: thin, boyish women made to look very young, and girls…girls between the ages of 11 and 14. Both groups wore the same very suggestive outfits, clothing which concerned almost nothing (even though there was very little to conceal). Both were posed in positions that I can only call erotic, as though they were inviting the viewer to join them in bed, or as if they had recently shared one another's beds and we were there as an audience, peeping through keyholes, spying through windows.

It felt, well, perverted. I felt that I was supposed to be seeing children…highly sexualized children…girls, or even boys in drag, offered up for my voyeuristic pleasure, and suggesting that I cultivate a certain pedophilia.

This I found revolting and it was with a real feeling of illness that I left off browsing for the day.


*

The following morning, I took the dog for a walk. As we strolled through the sunlight of a New Mexican morning, I considered again my reaction to those photos. For a time, I believed I finally understood why they'd made me feel quite the way they did. I thought I was reacting as a father, someone who has a child (even if my son is now grown), and who was distressed to have these images floating about, possibly influencing the real behavior of real children. (Pre-teen girls do read this kind of magazine.) And, worse, possibly influencing the behavior of adults in their relations with children.

But just as we came around the corner down by the school, I realized that there was still more…something else was troubling me.

I recalled one picture in particular. It showed a girl of maybe ten. She was heavily made-up. She stood in some urban location and gazed at the viewer with an odd expression that seemed to combine disinterest and erotic availability. Though she was a child, she held a cigarette in one hand.

I later discovered that this picture was in fact "inspired" by much more famous images by much more famed photographers. There is, indeed, it seems a whole genre of them: the child presented as an adult, performing acts which are hazardous at best, and which are therefore somehow infinitely more alarming when they are done by someone so very young. So very vulnerable.

And it struck me. There is something here that is genuinely unhealthy. Something indicative of a sickness at the very heart of our culture.

But that sickness isn't in the threat it represents to children…or, rather, not just in that threat.

It is in what these photos say about our adults.


*

Consider, who is that child with the cigarette supposed to be? Who does she genuinely portray?

Well, there is a theory we humans prefer photos of things that resemble us. Confronted by a collection of strangers' images and asked to pick the most attractive, we select the men and women who most look like us…either our exterior self or our internal reality.

If so, then the images in the fashion magazines are in fact those of the adults who read, write, and publish those journals—our fashionistas, our Devils In Prada, our setters of style and makers of trends. It these people whose souls and whose inner-most selves are presented on the shiny pages.

These are powerful, powerful people. They are among the mightiest of our civilization has to offer. What they decree to be fashionable will determine the purchasing of millions, and the labor of millions more.

And who are these people? What do we see when we turn to their images in the glossy magazines?

Answer: a person who has all the superficial characteristics of extreme youth…but whose reality is vastly different.

That reality is exhaustion. It is corruption. It is the Bordello Madam somehow concealed within the body of an ingénue as she smokes her cigarette and contemplates heroin chic.

In other words, there is much in this child-hag to remind one of the corpse. Cunningly embalmed. The very picture of peaches and cream.

Even as the decay sets in.