IRAN - December 8, 2011

We have been hearing so much these days about Iran, and the danger that their nuclear program supposedly subjects us to that one might reasonably think there is no foundation for the trouble there or to the animus of so many Iranis to the US, and especially also to the UK. Actually, the trouble between the Iranis and the English goes back some 200 years at least, and the US has joined on the UK side only in the wake of WW II and the Eisenhower administration. As soon as the nascent UN had finished off the imperial pretentions of Germany and Japan, the US resumed the cold war that had started between the elites of capitalism and the USSR with Lenin’s October Revolution. It had been paused for the 4 years 1941-45 while part of the world set aside the doctrinal hatred of the sort that Europe had seen since the French Revolution in order to crush Hitler. Then the US immediately started to collect the remaining forces of the plutocrats from fear that the spectre of Communism would take away the sand pile that we call our world. The world was split between the protectorates of the West and those of the Soviet Union. In the middle, a small package of countries that wanted no part of yet another world war opted out and formed the shaggy uncommitted bloc, notably Yugoslavia, India and little Iran. Although Truman had lived easily with countries that resisted being US protectorates without joining the Warsaw Pact group, the Eisenhower administration under the leadership of John Foster Dulles and his brother Allen implicitly declared that all those that were not with us were against us, and Ike joined the UK in overthrowing the elected government of Iran, which had just then nationalized the oil under Iran. They installed the military fascist regime there, which the Iranis overthrew in 1979, dumping the dictator, and violated international precedent by taking the US keepers as hostages. For some reason, the Iranis thought they had a grievance against US. We live today with the remains of that history.

ELECTRICITY - December 1, 2011

We are now embarking again on the famous WI winter. This year, there has been an especially large outbreak of rains, floods and snows that have had the effect of felling trees, many falling across power lines and depriving whole areas of electricity, often for an extended period. Whenever this happens, it reminds me of my effort to interest MG&E in the enormous benefits that could accrue to places like the City of Madison if it were possible to be less dependent on long-distance power lines. Such a condition could be obtained by Madison and many other towns and cities, many in WI, through the advantages that could accrue to us if we had widespread mini-combined heat and power, abbreviated mini-CHP. This technology, which has been proven in use in Europe, especially Scandinavia, would provide electricity each user as a nearly free by-product of home heating. The yearly cost of natural gas and electric power for each such user would be about the cost of gas alone, with savings of about 50%. Into the bargain, the supply of electricity would be a nearly perfect guarantee to the user of continuity of that service, while saving about half the cost of the two utilities billed separately. MG&E advertises that they are eager to help us cut our total energy use, thus saving both money and nearly half of the natural gas and its attendant electricity. I was never successful in winning over the gas company to this proven technology and the side benefits of almost total freedom from power outages due to felled grid lines. There may be some unknown reasons why this company, which could profit handsomely from the benefits that could flow from mini-CHP, refuses to undertake a test in a few dozen homes that would demonstrate the benefits that would flow to the whole city, including the gas and electric company itself.

GEOMETRY - November 24, 2011

As we struggle to save the State of Wisconsin from the disaster that is sure to befall it if the Kochs and their hand puppet governor have their way, it is time to consider the likely outcome of the proletarianizing of the teaching profession. In case you have not had occasion to measure, I can vouch for the fact that very few Wisconsin High School graduates have been equipped in the matter of understanding what is going on in mathematics, with a similar notation for physics. Indeed, there are very few teachers in our High Schools who have had any acquaintance with either subject beyond the memorization of a few rules that would enable them to make routine calculations in it, thus qualifying themselves as inferior competitors in carrying out mechanical tasks to the machines widely available. Most egregious is the deficiency in experiencing the process of knowing when a given proposition has been proven. Often fairly talented students in our colleges are prevented from appreciating even the simplest subtleties of formal logic. And as the management of our schools falls increasingly into the hands of administrators and parents who already are handicapped in this way, the ability to hire any of the few available teachers who understand that triumph of human understanding vanishes, and that rules our graduates out of keeping pace with the intellectual accomplishments of the past centuries, and certainly of those now happening. The judgment of who can even teach the material at the High School level falls increasingly to people who do not know it themselves. Almost any teacher might be chosen for that task. And as the profession is made increasingly unattractive by bosses who are themselves ignorant of its subtleties, it will be increasingly difficult to hire the replacements for those who have quit it or been forced out. Governors and Principals who are ignorant of the intellectual achievements that brought us to this time will offer the students increasingly barren educations.

DEMOCRACY - November 17, 2011

At this moment in mid-November, WI stands at the crossroads for the State, and likely for USA. In a sort of poetic way, we will be following the shade of Bob Lafollette, or that of Joe McCarthy, and will likely set the course for whether we will reignite the Progressive spirit or sink into what sociologists have called the Peasant Mentality. The past 60 years have indicated that the Age of Reason has been losing its battle with sluggish contentment out here on the prairie. The Billionaire’s Lobby has paid to set a hand puppet in charge of the State government and there is no Enlightenment on the horizon to take the place of the German immigrants of 1848. If there is not a flash of clarity to bring the working people of WI to act to rid ourselves of the laws enacted in a virtual flash of an eye as decided by the Kochs and their ilk, we will forfeit all claim to the Progressive tradition and the prosperity it has brought us in the XX Century. We are blessed at this time that Dave Obey has peeked out of retirement to lead the cause of removal of the puppet regime. And if we are lucky, Kathleen Falk will condescend to the office of Lieutenant Governor for a few years, she might well earn the right to succeed him in the statehouse. As for Jon Erpenbach, we will need him desperately in the Senate until our State has regained its intelligence and its Mission. If we lose this chance for the working people to vote for their Enlightenment, the Billionaires’ Lobby will most likely close off that chance for the remainder of this century at least. The move to vote their needs in democracy and prosperity is being negated as quickly as the Kochs are sending bills to negate what we used to think was our traditional recourse to sense and sensibility.

IMMIGRANTS - November 10, 2011

In all the controversy over who has a “right” to move into a space where someone else has a claim of right, there is very little that addresses the Q in its extremes, though they often fail to exclude those extremes. These consist of the claim that the established people of an area have a right to say who will share that right and who has no such legitimacy. Still, I have not heard anyone claim that the right is universal, or even limited to the sane and legally innocent, while no I have not heard that there are those (e.g. those imported by their parents without their legal consent) who obtain that right without being subject to the laws and practices of the “legitimate” owners. Indeed, I am convinced that almost no one maintains the absoluteness of either of those claims. I do not know of anyone who claims that a child obtains citizenship by such an act of their parents, nor the right to obtain cheap labor in circumstances approaching serfdom. However, I do believe that the entitlement to immigration lies with the legitimate adults of a free land, by unanimous or overwhelming consensus. Until I hear such argument, I eschew all those who claim that their own preferences are the voice of divine law. However, I do believe that the most extreme actions are not necessary as alternatives to allowing the excesses claimed by either side. The most regulated options would, in the opinions of many, at least extend to the benefits of the social compact enacted by those with legitimate standing, especially the coverage of the welfare state, and the forbidding of employment to those without such recognition as a valid claim to citizenship can be policed in a mild way by fining employers who refuse to cooperate in determining who is a legal resident, and the use of substantial penalties against those with resources should be enough to prevent their profligate abuse. Laws like those in AZ and AL are not necessary to minimize those abuses.

LEGAL FICTIONS - November 3, 2011

We have already had a bellyful of decisions from the SC like those deciding that money is protected speech and corporations are people with all the rights of the US Constitution’s First Amendment. Now comes the Chamber of Commerce, among other institutions, standing up for the principle that corruption is not criminal, but a legitimate means of obtaining profits, and thus business. And since business has been sanctified as a function of civilized life, this legitimizes it to the point that it is most likely to put the veil of trade secrets around practices that ordinary people think should be subject to the ordinary criminal laws. By a current report, almost all the GOP congressfolk adhere to the move to repeal the Federal Corrupt Practices Act, together with some Democratic Senators and Representatives. The fact that people are making money out of such actions is said to lend it the presumptions of legitimacy unless the contrary can be proved, likely requiring such proof beyond doubt. When I studied the law, I already saw the early form of this argument when e.g. the CEOs of the tobacco corporations all swore under oath that they believed that cigarettes were not addictive, and none were indicted for perjury. Even when strong evidence was found that they did not believe what they were saying, the fact that business was involved shielded them from prosecution. This is how low we have sunk in the deification of money, and the bulk of the US population seems able to accept the decision, together with the other ways in which the SC has proclaimed that money cleans all activities. The alchemists of the Middle Ages sought the universal solvent, which would dissolve every material, and in our own time, it seems to be gold. If we do not stand up for ourselves, we shall all be for sale. If we don’t vote for our autonomy, we shall likely lose it.

LEAVES - October 27, 2011

Every year at this time, we collect the discarded leaves of our beautiful green city. We pay to have them swept up and taken away, with many of them composted for eventual use as mulch and fertilizer for our lawns and gardens. This composting is a vast improvement on the earlier practice of burning most of them and releasing the CO2 into the air. However, it is still distinctly inferior to subjecting them to anaerobic digestion, in which much of the chemical energy that our thousands of trees have stored in them is made available for chemical energy of a very high level, compared with the CO2, which is generally acknowledged as a pollutant and a contributor to the warming of the planet. Of course, even the digestion gives off part of its output as CO2, but in the case of the composting, the part of the organic process yields methane, which is a far worse product than the CO2. Also, the sludge that is the residue of the composter is a far richer fertilizer, since its proteins and oils have not been degraded by the oxidation of the rest. In addition, the average time needed to reduce the leaves to mulch is much less in the digester than in the open air, even when deprived of O2. There is of course an investment needed in the building of a digester, but the additional energy needed (if any) can easily be provided by solar cells yielding both power and heat to run the digester. For a city that hopes to be graced by its new Inst. of Discovery, it is a step further into the world of the future than the one on the ceremonial quarter, which features a cow, corn and cheese. As the modern efforts abandoned in the past century to avoid the pretended threat of commonism, it would be a claim on the kind of world we hope to build.