Falling Sky Scenarios

The concept of a falling sky is originally connected with the belief that the sky will fall. It is identified with apocalypse theorists, millenialists, etc. For an interesting article on the boom in these end-of-timers see: http://www.nypress.com/17/38/news&columns/feature.cfmIt is by extension that the concept of a 'falling sky' describes any of a number of predictive assessments of the future likelihood of the failure of a market. The employment of 'falling sky' scenarios is usually associated with the collapse of markets, such as when a bubble bursts, or a sector dries up. In its association with the economic system of exchange, falling sky is a metaphor used to describe a scenario, but it may also be used to describe a doomsday prediction that may or may not materialize. Their appeal consists in their likelihood of being true. For markets have surely collapsed and there have been those who have predicted their collapse.

They are a social product, for they dwell in the space of human imagination and consent (the free market) and they often have a material basis, such as when a commodity gets scarce. They are point-releases that can shake loose confidence in a sector, thereby diminishing value. Investors are wary of them, wanting not to believe they are true, but admitting that there is some likelihood to their being true.

More concretely, a "falling sky" is located in things falling out of the sky: hail, rain, mortarshells? And there is a connection to the thunderbolt of Zeus which "steers all things". Falling skies may be associated by the religiously minded with divine retribution for past social sins incurred. There is something numinous about the idea of a falling sky.

So what distinguishes a "falling sky" scenario from a rational prediction? Technically, nothing. A falling sky scenario is a label applied to a rational prediction. There may be less and more rational predictions (better supported), of course. But it is a term of decor for those who wish to utilize the rational prediction. A "falling sky" scenario has the connotation of initial plausibility but eventual unlikeliness. To declare that something is a "falling sky" scenario, one may thereby downplay the likelihood of social assent to the prediction.

Perhaps "falling sky" scenarios enjoy this connotation on account of the Chinese story, and one which is surely repeated elsewhere, of the man who, being ignorant of the properties of air, lived in fear of the sky falling down upon him. But the wise man, gives him a palliative answer and informs him that air cannot fall, just as earth cannot sink. The man was thus relieved. For story see: http://www.chinapage.com/story/skyfalling.html But the wise man's salve, as the commentator suggests, is a "faulty explanation"....

British-made ENV 

Hydrogen Powered Motorcycles

Click the link for pix.

For an article that explores the hydrogen capacity in closer detail see: http://www.hydrogenforecast.com/June2005/BritishFuelCell.htm

It runs on a 2 liter carbon composite tank of hydrogen at 3,000 psi. It is possible to produce one's own hydrogen by solar panels, by biomass, etc. Motorcycles require a lot less plastic to build...and the deliberately minimal design of the env seems to emphasize that fact.

Scene: 2020, Downtown Chicago, Michigan Avenue. Thousands of commuters on quiet hydrogen scooters and motorcycles moving like chinese on bicycles through a Beijing Bazaar while "Altogether elsewhere vast
Herds of reindeer move across

Miles and miles of golden moss,

silently and very fast."

And the military made operational its first SUV fuel cell vehicle. See: http://www.gizmag.com/go/3910/ Notice Hilary there, advancing the interests of the eco-community through the existing spending. Nice.

But then, come to think about it, aren't those military vehicles with 10,000 psi tanks of hydrogen, miniature Hindenburgs? Would you feel safe driving one of those things through Baghdad? And what about that 3,000 psi grenade between your legs on the bike?

Career Women and the Sperm Bank

A recent article explores the conveniences of sperm banks for the professional woman. See http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8284173/ For some reason, as I read the article a chill ran down my spine. It had always been a non-issue for me. But the sight of the two "sperm bank" children in the arms of their busy mom made me pause. Where was the "daddy" in all of this? The morality of sperm banks, along with other methods of conception such as in-vitro fertilization, is an open question.

The existence of sperm banks present decisions made about laws, social policies, societal mores, that we as a people accept about them. They are surely legal, and the procedures used to impregnate the mother are standardized and safe. What more could we hope to ask about the morality of sperm banks?

In the first place, there are the children. And, of these children, we must ask whether we do not owe them something for having produced them in this way? Another way of asking the question is whether or not it is natural and right for them to have a sperm donor father--anonymous, but possibly recorded and researchable? Can we make up for the loss of the father to them. How will we pay them this natural debt?

It is a sad day when our society can no longer live according to a natural order through which human civilization has long been nourished. That is the freedom and responsibility of women to be mothers and men to be fathers. It is sad that our women are so overworked in the ratrace of business and career that they cannot, without great damage to their careers, have children. It makes it difficult for them to retain men. This balancing act between career and family is for a busy executive, often, more than impossible.

And then, when it is entirely natural and fitting for them to do so, by the prompting of their own natural needs and desires, they elect to have children, alas, there are no men to want to be around them and have children with them. Or worse, they are uprooted by distance and cannot sustain a livelihood together.

That having been said, it is not natural and fitting that the woman should thereby have a right to become pregnant via a sperm bank. She ought not to take matters into her own hands and have herself impregnated. The reason is that she thereby contradicts the natural law and runs afoul of a reasonable political theory of justice.

What right has she to place herself above the natural law?

What right have we to so force her to take such measures?

What right do we have to deprive children of their natural fathers?

I am using the language of natural law to frame this issue. It is hopeful that such an approach may show directly what is wrong with the morality of sperm banks. In another moral vernacular, say Kantian deontology, or Millian hedonism, the same conclusion could be drawn. I think that a reasonable political philosophy will need to give the balance in favor of the moral view.

The only framework--or rather set of frameworks--in which this practice would be considered acceptable is a minimal state form allowing a radical freedom of individual liberty that did not count children as citizens--a kind of rowdy individualism. Additional support may come from other varieties of relativism, unitarianism, etc.

But such a downsized form of public reasonableness goes too far. Instead, one must evaluate the decision with an eye both to what the balance of reasonable comprehensive moral views have to say on the topic in light of the political values of law and civility proper to a democratic society.
Here, the balance of political values can be decided along the lines of a political conception of justice. Which liberties will enjoy priority? In this case, the family at is the heart of the basic structure of society, and the liberal state has typically been silent on the inner structure of families. But this question asks how political values are to be justly distributed across the family. Certain toleration is made for variations in parenting, punishment, schooling, etc. within the bounds of the liberty of citizens in their capacities as parents. And where there are deep liberties at stake, things "without which a person would be at a considerable disadvantage", public reason must prevail. The capacity to deprive basic rights to a child--and it is already true to say that one of those natural rights is to enjoy the participation in a natural family (one with a father and a mother, the most basic social unity)--is not within the ambit of a reasonable political conception of justice. In fact, justice requires that a limit be drawn here.

"Liberty" is often construed as the principal value of democratic societies. Such as in "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." But that liberty has been understood to be constrained by something like the harm principle: liberty for all up to the point at which we do another harm. And indeed it is the political value of Life which is serially prior to Liberty that sets this constraint. And so, as for the argument for the liberty of mothers to have sperm-bank children on demand as it is in their liberty to do so is concerned, we can see that indeed that liberty is constrained by what would harm the children--harm their liberty. Thus, there can be no liberty to take from others--even children one wants for oneself really badly --the fundamental right to be born and raised (at least in principle) by one's own natural parents. While there are counterexamples to this right of natural parentage such as in divorce, adoption, or the death of a parent, etc., these counterexamples can each be explained ceteris paribus to not violate this right. With regards mothers and fathers who wish to raise spermbank children as a family unit the case is more complicated and it may be permissable. But there are clear cases of infringement that must be curtailed through law. And, in this case, the balance of political values must rule in favor of the lifelong liberty interest of the child.

The United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child states that children have rights to natural parentage and the obligational matrix that that entails. Article 8, section1:"States Parties undertake to preserve his or her identity, including nationality, name and family relations as recognized by law without unlawful interference." By denying the child access to one half his genealogy, there is a decisive truncation of identity there. These children will have half legs to stand upon as they move into the world, thus putting them in a vulnerable position. A second, and perhaps more relevant "right" may be found in Article 9, section 3: "States Parties shall respect the right of the child who is separated from one or both parents to maintain personal relations and direct contact with both parents on a regular basis, except if it is contrary to the child's interests." Well, with regards career women who want to have spermbank children on their own--without even the possibility of knowing and living with their fathers, there can be no right to such an option. To do so is to deprive children ab initio of their root in the most fundamental human unit, the natural human family. The dignity of having a family, contact with that family, a shared ancestry, a name, a complete identity cannot be overemphasized.

While there can be a well-justified policy against spermbanking-on-demand, it is not so easy to eradicate through fiat the troubling circumstances that make spermbanking appear a viable option for many career women. The absurdity of spermbanking reveals a deep contradiction in the social roles of professional women. That is a systemic problem that requires considerable compromise, understanding, and compassion to overcome.

In the first place, we might recognize the goodness of women and thank them for the many gifts they bring the human family. Women are the kernel, the hearth, the source of the life of families. And they are rational beings with selves in need of fulfillment. The tension between the role of Mother and Worker could never be stronger than for our corporate ladies. Only by a public recognition of the contradictions in this system can viable solutions emerge. But we will start with the first principle that women--and their rights to have children--hold a central place in the reproduction and creation of society.

Nevertheless, as women, they cannot be permitted do this to our common human family. There are outer limits to what human nature will permit. The derogation of the family to but one of several possible breeding arrangements allowed in a liberal society has gone too far. The utilization of husbandry techniques was also deployed in the desperate narrows of the third Reich in which the SS Stud Farms got going. The stories of those children are deeply riven by tragedy, alienation, and isolation having been whisked away and left without identity. Where the human family is uprooted the solution is to reroot the family, not to abolish the rights of children, "future citizens" for the convenience of an unnatural person in an unnatural time.

The idea of a "conceptual scheme"

I came across a line from one of M. Vater's essays, "Heidegger and Schelling: The Finitude of Being" that is worth repeating.

"System is not a mold for thought, a form somehow imposed on a hitherto amorphous stuff which, for all its lack of definition, is supposed to be "thought." System is the heart of thought itself." M. Vater, "Heidegger and Schelling: The Finitude of Being" in Idealistic Studies, vol. 5, No. 1, January, 1975.

This is, I think, a nice way of describing the situation we are in with regards our language and the reality that we seek to describe. Our language, our conceptual scheme, is coextensive with what we take to be reality. Language, thought, and reality are inextricably forged in the creation of our experience.

But let's put some heat on this idea of a "conceptual scheme". Maybe some of its imprecision can be burned off. Perhaps the very idea will need to be scrapped.

Donald Davidson's essay, "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme", challenged the relativism of conceptual scheme language by arguing against one of its chief supports. It is often said that the failure to translate between one language and another suffices to show that there are conceptual schemes that can be radically different. Donald Davidson writes, "we may identify conceptual schemes with languages, then, or better, allowing for the possibility that more than one language may express the same scheme, sets of intertranslatable languages. Languages we will not think of as separable from souls; speaking a language is not a trait a man can lose while retaining the power of thought. So there is a chance that someone can take up a vantage oint for comparing conceptual schemes by temporarily shedding his own. Can we then say that two people have different conceptual schemes if thes speak languages that fail of intertranslatibility?" "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme" (1973).

With regards to cases of total or partial failure of intertranslatibility, Davidson is less than optimistic that we have discovered true cases of distinct "conceptual schemes" that might not overlap in deeper ways. "So what sounded at first like a thrilling discovery--that truth is relative to a conceptual scheme--has not so far been shown to be anything more than the pedestrian and familiar fact that the truth of a sentence is relative to (amongst other things) the language to which it belongs." Scheme, p. 11.

But in order to identify what is truly unique to a conceptual scheme such that some sentence in it would not be translatable into another conceptual scheme, requires a coign of vantage that is not ours. "Neither a fixed stock of meanings, nor a theory-neutral reality, can provide, then, a ground for comparison of conceptual schemes...in abandoning this search, we abandon the attempto to make sense of the metaphor of a single space within which each scheme has a position and provides a point of view." p. 17. And with that, the third dogma of empiricism (the thesis of a scheme/content dualism) is cast down.

While it may be true that we cannot now clearly demarcate our own conceptual scheme from itself, and while this may also be true of countless other failures to precisely identify wherein the ultimate criterion of difference lies, it cannot be said that conceptual schemes and all of their cognate ideas (system, Geist, language, "soul", lebensform, categorial knowledge, etc.) do not describe broad enough differences in social context, behavior, and other adaptations specific to the form of life of a language group, so as to be a convenient shorthand for saying "hey, this is really a very different system of thinking here!" and so on. It is a way of expressing the fact that there is another perspective, another way of approaching, reality.

But the point of Davidson's argument is one which I think is easy enough to accept: there can be no ice-clear demarcation between content and scheme. Or, as Vater describes it, "system is not a mold for thought...system is the heart of thought itself." To which I feel free to add: neither is reason to be thought of as independent of thought: reason just is thought itself.

The Prijon, hull cleaned, gel-coat sanded, the whole fine-sanded, polished, rubbed, and waxed. New seals on the bulkheads. New tape, too! 

The hull was badly gel-coated and splattered with varnish from a deck. 

The Prijon, partially restored 

Missy, Lake Superior, AuTrain River 

John Stewart on Rove

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/07/12.html#a3898

Judith Miller, a sort of Cassandra

The genius of greek literature consists, in part, in its plasticity and appositeness to the human drama in all historical periods, perhaps even to eternal types of the human soul. The recent jailing of Judith Miller bears a reflection of the story of Cassandra, the girlfriend of Agamemnon, who's refusal of Apollo, the indignation of his ire, gave her the gift of true prophesy even though none would believe her.

I was not unhappy about the decision to jail Miller on account of her failure to comply with a federal judge's court order that she release what information she had (but never published) on the Valerie Plame debacle. For Judith Miller has been a courtesan of the Bush administration, jerking it off with the right hand while the left hand was penning copy and pocketing riches . See Alexander Cockburn's resume of Miller's self-aggrandizing stay at the NY Times: http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn08182003.html No, Miller is not a favorite reporter of the left, for she is a kind of female Tom Friedman, a dilettante pundit whose every published view seems to support directly or indirectly, the interests of GOP party bosses. And so it was that I, and I'm sure many others, took a kind of vicarious pleasure in her jailing.

Of course, such pleasure is an indecent one. Judith Miller has taken a firm stand on rights of reporters to conceal their sources. She has recast herself as civil libertarian, a defender of first amendment rights. The New York Times put her in this light in its editorial on her jailing: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/07/opinion/07thu1.html And so, it would seem that her jailing is not something that should go unchallenged. Principle requires that we separate out our inclinations from our duties. We should remind ourselves that even people who we disagree with deserve the protections of the constitution. We might advocate tougher shield laws, should they show up on a referendum somewhere.

But there is a very good reason why her cause will not be celebrated, will fade and disappear into the white noise. And that is because, on a deep level, her act of civil disobedience is not done to protect the innocent, nor to protect a "whistleblower", nor to protect an insider who has a sudden bout of compunction, no, hers is an act of protecting the identity of the great gamesman behind this debacle. Hers is an act of complicity with the game of intimidation, of cuddling up to the administration. She has chosen to protect her lovely, Karl Rove.

When a reporter appeals to first amendment privileges and does so in the name of civil disobedience, let it not be said that they did so to protect the scandal-makers and spindoctors from within the government. That is not a reasonable use of civil disobedience, but is the very essence of sycophancy and complicity. Why button up now? You were going so well, Cassandra, telling us what you could envisage so clearly even though noone can believe you. Just sing out now your rotten truths from your cellared hell, little canary, sing sing your rotten truths. The truth shall set you free!

Arno Penzias, nobel laureate and former chief scientist at Lucent, discusses his ideas and work on the coming energy crisis

Link: http://news.com.com/From+the+Big+Bang+to+big+bucks/2008-1082_3-5770732.html?tag=st.prev

Besides mentioning some new developments in solar, Penzias suggested that solid-oxide fuel cells (SOFC's) show promise. For an introduction to sofc's see: http://www.siemenswestinghouse.com/en/fuelcells/index.cfm see also: http://www.fuelcells.org/basics/how.html




Good eyes, Stryder.

Non-violent direct action for adjuncts

Making people wait. --A sure way to provoke people and to put malicious thoughts in their heads is to make them wait for a long time. This makes people immoral. -F. Nietzsche Human, All Too Human, ss. 309.

I was hired by a local art school recently to teach a course in existentialism in the fall. My wages: 2,500 (gross) u.s. dollars spread out over four months. I just called them back and told them that I would not be able to do it for ethical reasons. No, I am not going to cover up their dirty little secret at my expense, nor at the students. "Should we not use you in the future?" asked the woman. "Yeah, go ahead and put me on the do not use list" I quipped. I should have waited until the week before classes to resign and, if done collectively, this kind of non-violent direct action might make an impact.

We are far too polite to these administrators. They abuse our good natures, our cultivated politeness and civility, and we should cease to allow them to bend us over and fuck us like this. Adjunct labor--which comprises some 70 percent of labor at most community colleges and small schools--is a crime committed against teachers. It is a way of externalizing the costs and becoming more efficient at the expense of the teacher. Look, higher liberal education is badly needed in our society on account of the democratic deficit. We need citizens who can think, deploy critical reasoning, learn the ropes of political and moral discourse, and understand their true human interests and the true human interests of society. To expect humanities teachers to fulfill this role out of the goodness of their hearts, running deep debts year after year, is unreasonable and cruel. I have heard it said that noone goes into teaching for the money. But teachers don't go into teaching because they want to make a killing, but because they want to make a living--at teaching.

"2,500 dollars" you say "is good money for part time work". Yes, it would be good money for part time work if there weren't the massive costs associated with the procurement of a phd. Getting a phd is no light and easy task. Most often, those who are equipped to teach an adjunct course at a college will be trained for little else besides. It is their livelihood. This is not some easy part-time work above and beyond my regular work. THIS IS MY WORK. And this is the work of many, many phd's like me who service the university at bargain-basement prices. If you think that anybody can teach these courses, I ask you to go ahead and try. There will only be one requirement: your presentation must cohere with and use the same language as does the present state of exegesis and critical discourse on the topic in the secondary literature. Can you do that? When you work out what is required of a person to be able to do that you begin to realize what an immense social responsibility we have to these people on account of their hard work for the sake of the highest good in society.

By not paying them enough--or paying them WalMart$ type wages (and by most reasonable calculations of the average salary of an adjunct nationwide, the wage is about 8-10 dollars an hour), we have lost touch with the first virtue of social institutions, namely justice. To put into some kind of perspective the injustice of typical adjunct wages, we might use a formula similar to that discussed in connection with energy investment. EROEI--energy returned over energy invested--is a formula used to analyze the viabililty of a source of energy. Well, cost returned over cost invested might be a way of analyzing the viability of a profession as well. Post-graduate education for the medical and legal professions have a typically high CROCI ratio for the professional. A first year lawyer may have 100,000 dollars in debt or more, but it is not atypical for a first year lawyer to make 50-100,000 dollars in the first year! Nor is it uncommon for a first year dentist with the same debt load to have that same earning power. But it is wholly uncommon, virtually impossible for the same humanities phd to acquire anything remotely resembling that. Adjunct wages will, assuming it is possible to cobble together a 5/5 load (which it is virtually impossible to do, even under conditions of availability(an average full time professor is on a 3/3 load)) make said adjunct 20,000 gross u.s. dollars. Now, if said adjunct is saddled with the same debt load as the other professions (and indeed it costs as much to achieve the same), then we begin to see what a bad deal this is for humanities phd's. Debt peonage is not a rational financial position to be in. And let's not forget: they are making 3,000 bucks a head on these students x 30= 90,000 bucks, perhaps less in other schools, but let's say it's a 1,000 bucks a head. That equals 30,000 bucks. The teacher sees 2-3,000 of that. That's usury or whatever term of financial exploitation you want to apply. It's not as if they can't afford to give away another 5 or 10 percent of that.

From an administrative standpoint of efficiency, where students are equivalent to consumers and professors are customer service representatives, the humanities make no sense. That is why we need administrators that have strict legal mandates for a minimum wage for a lecturer. As a desideratum we might suggest a mandatory minimum of philosophy professors apportioned per capita--say 1 in every 50. But seriously, there needs to be something done about this, everybody admits it, and nothing gets done about it year after year. We see adjunct arrangements growing as full time positions with benefits are declining.

With regard to living within one's means--that is accepting what is "given", an adjunct could always try it, but noone is saying that it is possible to live off of it. Perhaps I could just give them 2,500 dollars worth of my time. Could I scale back on "quality" to make it more "cost effective"? Well, I suppose. But then its going to make the students suffer and my reputation will suffer as well. This "systemic" problem that all administrators hide behind to shed moral responsibility for their actions has got to stop. And, indeed, we also must not allow ourselves to be a part of the problem. I know no other way to handle this than to turn my back on something that I have long loved and respected as one of the sacred duties of a higher liberal education, to teach. What pain this causes me. And indeed the adminstrator got the last laugh. She thanked me because I had given her enough time to find somebody else.

But let's be clear. This is a moral action on my part on account of its universalizability. My imperative, which is the categorical imperative of all moral reason: a person ought never to allow humanity, whether in himself or in another, to be treated simply as a means and never as an end in itself.
My maxim: The systematic conditions of adjunct labor make it a moral obligation for every card carrying member of the kingdom of ends to forbid themselves to be used so that they are thereby deprived of adequate means to afford their place in civil society.

Gratitude to Teachers

I wish to extend my gratitude to all my teachers who, knowingly or not, had the composure and good manners to at least pretend that it was all true or relevant or useful.

A man of "disciplines and old habitats"

See for yourself: http://pakwerk02.blogspot.com/

Prior to G8 Summit, Bush declares that Kyoto "would have destroyed" U.S. Economy

For article see:http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/05/international/europe/05summit.html

If that's what Kyoto would do, imagine PeakOil.

Here are the numbers (in reductions of emissions and consumption) for the seven scenarios indicated by the Kyoto Protocol for U.S. petroleum consumption from 1990-2020: http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/kyoto/pdf/execgraph3.pdf (look to table ES 10). None of these reductions even begins to touch the physical shortages that will emerge after the peak.

Life after the peak

Here is an excellent in-depth analysis of the economic reasons for a total collapse soon after the peak by David Savinar, esq. (UC Davis graduate): http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/SecondPage.html#anchor_79 To the long list of petroleum corporate mergers Savinar adduces in support of a hypothesis that the petroleum industry is gearing up for a declining end game, we must not fail to add Royal Dutch and Shell: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4628983.stm Nor should we forget the recent bid by CNOOC (Chinese national oil company) for UNOCAL: http://www.oilonline.com/news/headlines/mergers/20050624.CNOOC_pr.18359.asp This is particularly interesting given Unocal's alliances with Saudi Aramco.