November 25th, 2009
I would like to dedicate some words to the approaching holiday of Thanksgiving – or as I call it ‘the only good one’, the Abraham Lincoln holiday, not only because it was he who had the wisdom to designate it a national holiday, but because in so doing he seems to have imparted some of his good character to it.
By some miracle Thanksgiving mostly shirks the crass commercialism of the other major holidays, in a way that even the most superficial can appreciate. It bears no semblance to the avarice of Christmas, nor especially the bizarre pagan rites of Easter. It is a secular holiday and consequently the only one kept holy.
Thanksgiving is an invitation to hospitality, hospitality being one of the Deity’s simplest and most profound tests: revered by all the major religions (and at least respected by conscionable atheists). Let us not forget that the test is a personal one, not dependent on whether our kindness is greeted fairly or returned.
While I sympathize with those who cannot separate the harvest feast of 1621 from the incomprehensible depravity to come, I would argue that the spirit of charity expressed at that feast represents the very hope of our race. And while the modern holiday is not completely bereft of commercialism and artifice, the essential premise is hard to dispute. I, for one, cannot begin to count the effects of life to which I owe my deepest gratitude.
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November 18th, 2009
Food, clothing, and shelter are so easy to come by now that significant portions of the populace have been left with nothing to do. Easy as these staples are to produce the devil is in the distribution. We could have it all were it not for our cowardly egos. If the angels visited tomorrow what a great embarrassment it would be that some of us are going without.
Some say that authority is the problem, and admittedly, places without a strong central authority produce some impressively high domestic yields: narcotic crops, landmines, orphans and the like. Perhaps it is the character of authority that is the problem, and we should not yet abandon the idea of administrators tending to things that would be tedious for us.
Some say that restrictions on the free market are the problem, that we might seek to emulate nature, where each creature must take responsibility for itself. That would be fine I think, except for one thing: nature is a total catastrophe for its citizens, a war of abject fear and ruthless predation that never ends. Our kind has spent a hundred thousand years escaping it.
Some are concerned that the population of the East will surge indefinitely – as likely a trend as a never-ending housing boom. However, it does seem clear that China is on its way to economic ascendancy. I for one welcome it, in part because they have lately shown themselves to be a more responsible actor in the world, not because of altruism but because of a comparatively rational self interest that stands in contrast to modern American shoot-yourself-in-the-foot-ism. Let us hope that when their time comes they will consider more rationally the prospects of our species.
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November 11th, 2009
Just about my favorite thing in the world is unseasonably warm weather; the thought of a balmy day in November gives me a chill. So I ask myself: the warming of the Earth – phenomenon or phenomenal? Clearly the world is getting warmer – we don’t need the dubious evidence of my Indian summer to see that; temperatures are easily measured.
Ah, but climatologists combine the measurements year-to-year and take averages and in so doing hazard exposure to that potent neurotoxin: the statistic. Statistics are a poison that can engender all manner of ill effects upon the populace. In this case it is the rising average temperature that has terrific swaths of the people quite ready to believe that catastrophe is imminent – and has been for decades.
The alarmists have the surety of their sophisticated mathematical models, but for a race who has yet to master whether or not it will rain later this afternoon the idea of predicting how the climate will change over the next century seems suspicious. The real ‘calculation’ is that we see the curve has turned up sharply and, looking at it on paper, we reasonably expect it will continue to do so for a while.
But what troubles me far more than the warming globe is the scaremongering of its evangelists. They foresee “the end of civilization” brought on by a poorly understood fractional increase in the Earth’s average surface temperature. You would expect these scientists to remember, among other things, that there are people living quite comfortably in places like…orbit. This crisis seems manageable to me; there may be others more pressing.
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November 4th, 2009
It was the first day back at college in upstate New York. My notorious associates and I were convened on the front lawn of our suburban two-family, kicked back on the steps of the farmer’s porch, flicking cigarettes and juggling soccer balls. One of our crew was backing his car out of the driveway, headed out for more tea and crumpets.
There was a screech of tires as a sedan came over the top of the hill like a rodeo bull clearing the gate. It struck a parked car on the far side of the road, crushing the side mirrors and shattering windows before careening wildly across the street, scattering us rodeo clowns.
At the whim of fortune our friend backing out of the driveway had determined that something was amiss and stopped his car. Had he not done so the stampeding vehicle surely would have slammed into his driver’s side and annihilated him. Instead it jumped the curb and embedded up to the windshield in the house next door.
We all craned our necks to see the author of the mayhem. A aging man in his undershirt came out onto the upstairs porch of the damaged house holding a late morning beer, presumably to see what had caused the noise. A gentleman emerged slowly from the passenger side of the car, he looked up and indicating his driver said, “She’s just learning how to drive.” The disheveled man on the upstairs porch looked down and said, “Well she’s got a ways to go,” and with that went back into his apartment.
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