I find myself sadly writing this, but my bullshit meter, which I have been ignoring for months, leaves me no alternative.
Having spent the last two years writing and sending out more than 20 plus children's stories to publishers and editors and agents - and indeed, it maybe simply that I and my writer's group were completely kidding ourselves as to the quality of the work I was sending out, as compared to those books that I find newly published and printed - and having not even dented the seemingly impenetrate-able wall they seem to have erected around themselves, that the publishing companies, as well as SCBWI, seem to have discovered that they can make just as much money harnessing those crowds of people who want to become writers.
The entire business of teaching "writing" to wannabe authors has become the moneymaking equivalent of the summer camps that coaches run. I don't doubt that many coaches make as much from summer camps as they do from coaching; likewise, I suspect that many underpaid editors make a tidy sum from flying into a city like Houston, staying in a hotel, telling wannabe authors what they want, handing out stickers that can then be attached to manuscripts, then flying out several thousand dollars richer, with nothing changed.
I talked this summer with Alma Flor Ada, and asked her about SCBWI; she had never even heard of it. Alma Flor, who has published more than 250 books, is busy being an author. Perhaps she got into it before it was so popular that thousands wanted to do it, and just kept her nose to the grindstone. She is either writing books, or flying around the country teaching teachers.
SCBWI, on the other hand, struck me as the New York and California crowd of publishers, editors and agents holding their noses just long enough to collect and cash their checks before flying back, happy to be away from the hinterlands.
Several editors admitted that they only did the editing and reading aspect of their job after dinner, in their own houses. Otherwise they are overly occupied with selling books that make a ton of money, and keeping happy the publishers. The Publishers struck me as very very interesting: several openly admitted they didn't read much, either when they were kids, or at present! One editor confessed to being so openly ADHD that she often strayed off topic before she finished a page. She also admitted that the old formality of sending out rejection forms was passe. If she read your stuff and she liked it, she'd contact you, otherwise, she'd throw it in the trash. So send in your work, and if you don't hear back, well, you suck. Manners?
Fuck that. Why bother. That's for old fashioned losers.
I don't guess that editors make very much. Nor do I guess that most children's writers make much, unless they find a way to be amazingly successful. The average advance for a book is 4 grand to the writer and 8 to the illustrator. You can make more money washing dishes, washing dishes is easier, probably about the same hours, has benefits, and pays weekly.
The agents there weren't interested in talking about what aspiring writers wanted to know; they wanted to brag and thump chests.
For one thing, I got a glimpse at the lizard side of book publishing, and that was worthwhile.
If you've written a decent book, or illustrated and written a book, find a publisher in China. Publish it yourself. Make the rounds with the schools. Hawk your own books. Find bookstores that will gladly carry your book yourself.
Fuck the New York Publishers and their minions.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Thursday, July 1, 2010
On meeting authors
Strange yet wonderful day yesterday. I had heard there was a chance to take a class with Alma Flor Ada - an author whose books I've used many times in my classes. I came in early, got a ticket, and wandered out to find a coffee. Next to the Horace Mann building, I see two older Hispanic women, sipping coffee and eating breakfast sandwiches. I happen to ask, in Spanish "Esta cerrada?" while pointing at the door. We start a conversation; they mention that they are trying to get in but the door is locked. "Is there an entrance on the other side?" I gesture with my hand showing that completely on the other side of the building there is an entrance that surely is open: you have to get past the guard in a kiosk (who is usually reading a newspaper, specifically the sports section) to get in.
"I'm off to find coffee," I say and that's that.
I get my coffee, come back and head up to the class. The two Spanish women turn out to be Alma Flor Ada and Isabel Compoy, and their class is a delight - lots of easy concrete ways to get kids and families to start writing, to find their voice, to say something important.
Long story short, after the afternoon class, I am able to stand and have a long conversation with Isabel. She is charming, smart, able, and witty, all packaged in a tiny, feisty, Spanish women with a laugh that reminds me of sleigh bells.
Alma Flor Ada is white haired, somewhat grave, and certainly shyer, much less comfortable than Isabel standing in front of a crowd. She has written 250 children's books which is mind blowing, but gives me both pause and encouragement. I have sent out nearly a dozen of my best books in the last year, as yet no luck. But the encouraging thing to me is that I begin to see where I can get much better, where I can improve my characters, hone my words, say less to say more, define by showing, not telling; in short, get better.
An encouraging day... I give them my card, get to chat. I can see myself doing this in the twilight of my years, going around the country, talking with others, teaching teachers, and especially teaching writing...
"I'm off to find coffee," I say and that's that.
I get my coffee, come back and head up to the class. The two Spanish women turn out to be Alma Flor Ada and Isabel Compoy, and their class is a delight - lots of easy concrete ways to get kids and families to start writing, to find their voice, to say something important.
Long story short, after the afternoon class, I am able to stand and have a long conversation with Isabel. She is charming, smart, able, and witty, all packaged in a tiny, feisty, Spanish women with a laugh that reminds me of sleigh bells.
Alma Flor Ada is white haired, somewhat grave, and certainly shyer, much less comfortable than Isabel standing in front of a crowd. She has written 250 children's books which is mind blowing, but gives me both pause and encouragement. I have sent out nearly a dozen of my best books in the last year, as yet no luck. But the encouraging thing to me is that I begin to see where I can get much better, where I can improve my characters, hone my words, say less to say more, define by showing, not telling; in short, get better.
An encouraging day... I give them my card, get to chat. I can see myself doing this in the twilight of my years, going around the country, talking with others, teaching teachers, and especially teaching writing...
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Has the world gone nuts or what?
Is it just me, or are we losing all sense of decency in our country. Arizona's latest is a case in point. Fueled by out of state oldsters who shiver at the thought of hispanics - Hispanics! HISPANICS! PANICS! PANICS! - vote to let police pull over anybody - jeeze who might that be? What might they look like? What color hair and eyes and tone of skin would such persons have. Hmmmm... - for not being a u.s. citizen, and arrest them if they can't produce their papers.
For the last ten years, hell, since Nafta was signed, cheap abundant labor from Mexico has seeped through the cracks into our country. Why? Because their was work here, work that by and large, nobody white or black or brown wanted to do. Work like killing chickens, slaughtering cows, bussing tables, washing dishes, cooking in restaurants, roofing, cutting grass, all for the grand prize of minimum or subminimum wage.
If all of them were to disappear tomorrow, our country for a good long while at least, would grind to a halt.
But given our laws, should we just throw up our hands and grant them citizenship. No. But guess what? Their children, born here, already are citizens.
So what do we do?
My proposal is simple. Let them in. A million a year. Seriously. Register them. Give them guest worker papers that will let them stay here for 20 years. That's right. 20. Make them pay taxes. 15%. No refunds on these taxes. Take from them as well an additional 25% forced savings tax. Make them pay into medicare, but not into social security. They should not be able to get social security. Once they have been here for twenty years, they must return to their own country, where, check by check, their twenty five per cent saving will be returned to them, monthly. Call it a retirement. Should they return, they forfeit
For the last ten years, hell, since Nafta was signed, cheap abundant labor from Mexico has seeped through the cracks into our country. Why? Because their was work here, work that by and large, nobody white or black or brown wanted to do. Work like killing chickens, slaughtering cows, bussing tables, washing dishes, cooking in restaurants, roofing, cutting grass, all for the grand prize of minimum or subminimum wage.
If all of them were to disappear tomorrow, our country for a good long while at least, would grind to a halt.
But given our laws, should we just throw up our hands and grant them citizenship. No. But guess what? Their children, born here, already are citizens.
So what do we do?
My proposal is simple. Let them in. A million a year. Seriously. Register them. Give them guest worker papers that will let them stay here for 20 years. That's right. 20. Make them pay taxes. 15%. No refunds on these taxes. Take from them as well an additional 25% forced savings tax. Make them pay into medicare, but not into social security. They should not be able to get social security. Once they have been here for twenty years, they must return to their own country, where, check by check, their twenty five per cent saving will be returned to them, monthly. Call it a retirement. Should they return, they forfeit
Sunday, February 28, 2010
On acts of God, and other disasters
I awoke yesterday to turn on CNN and find that overnight an earthquake of almost unimaginable power had struck some 200 miles from the Capital of Chile. By almost unimaginable, to put that oft overused term into perspective, the quake in Chile was 800 times stronger than the recent quake that devastated Haiti. Eight hundred times more powerful.
Yet in retrospect, the disaster in Chile was minimal. In Haiti, thousands upon thousands died. Many of those will never be found or buried except either in mass graves or in trashheaps of rubble on Port Au Prince's outskirts.
That Haiti is, and has long been, a kleptocracy is an unavoidable conclusion. It's government, both when it speaks, or when it acts, has zero credibility.
Chile, on the other hand, seems to have the kind of infrastructure and building codes that have helped minimize the disaster there. Four of the top ten earthquakes of all time occurred in Chile - number one was 9.5 on the Richter scale, in 1960 - so it can be inferred that Chileans are well prepared for quakes, even bad ones. Chileans are educated, vastly more so than the Haitians, and despite political turmoil that saw Pinochet and the Facha* generals there ruling for a number of years,
they seem to have a country that is handling this disaster with poise and strength.
Not a bad thing.
We might learn from them.
Facha - a Spanish slang term for fascists, that is members of the fascist party in Spain.
Yet in retrospect, the disaster in Chile was minimal. In Haiti, thousands upon thousands died. Many of those will never be found or buried except either in mass graves or in trashheaps of rubble on Port Au Prince's outskirts.
That Haiti is, and has long been, a kleptocracy is an unavoidable conclusion. It's government, both when it speaks, or when it acts, has zero credibility.
Chile, on the other hand, seems to have the kind of infrastructure and building codes that have helped minimize the disaster there. Four of the top ten earthquakes of all time occurred in Chile - number one was 9.5 on the Richter scale, in 1960 - so it can be inferred that Chileans are well prepared for quakes, even bad ones. Chileans are educated, vastly more so than the Haitians, and despite political turmoil that saw Pinochet and the Facha* generals there ruling for a number of years,
they seem to have a country that is handling this disaster with poise and strength.
Not a bad thing.
We might learn from them.
Facha - a Spanish slang term for fascists, that is members of the fascist party in Spain.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Two years later
It's odd, taking a look at what I wrote a bit more than a year ago, just after the hurricane. Gas was pricey as hell. Obama wasn't yet president. The Teabaggers wasn't a term that rolled off the tongue.
It's probably a good thing that Obama got handed his ass politically. I voted for him, but, I have to say, one thing that he didn't quite get - but I hope he now is getting - is that politics is a very old game. (It's also the only blood sport that's still legal, with bows to Hockey and professional wrestling, of course) You can talk changing Washington all you want, but Washington isn't going to just change. What you have to do is play the game better. It's making slimy deals. It's
throwing in the pork. Yes it is.
I am hopeful that we get universal insurance. Personally, and people can call me a commie rat bastard socialist if they want, I'd like to see single payer insurance.
What I find interesting is that there are two groups of little guys that need to start listening and respecting each other.
On one side are the "Face the facts, you'll probably be working for a big ass company all your life, so join the union, band together, and wake up" crowd. I can sympathize. I've been a member of the teachers' union in Texas, where the teachers' unions have the power/pull/push of an overweight smart kid who just won't go away. I've also been a member of the teachers' union in St. Paul, Minnesota, where the first teachers union in the nation started - and where unionism is still going strong, and where nobody took shit from the bosses.
Lots of people piss on unions. They shouldn't. Without unions, we wouldn't have paid vacation, forty hour weeks or overtime. Without unions we wouldn't have many of the perks that we take for granted and that give work dignity.
On the other side are the "I owns a small business, or dream of owning my own business - small or large - and it really pisses me off when big government steals my money via taxes, or stupid wrong headed regulations that defy common sense, and what especially pisses me off is how they are spending money like drunken sailors, especially when that money is MY MONEY that was stolen from me via taxes."
One side thinks of themselves romantically as workers, and when they think of government they think of the New Deal, and Medicaid, and Social Security and New Deal Projects like
dams and buildings and parks and bridges. When such folks think of Big Business, they know and are offended by rich guys who trash workers, then pay themselves
outlandish, criminal bonuses.
The other side thinks of themselves romantically as small businesspersons or as pioneers. They dream of a world in which, like the pioneers they depend only on themselves and their families, and they keep a gun around the house because they know those a^&$#@holes in Washington. They dream of a government that defends the borders, delivers the mail, and otherwise, stays the hell out of their lives. They know in their bones how hard it is, and how heavy the responsibility lies on someone who has ever had to make a payroll. They don't pay very well, but they employ a hell of a lot of people, and they try to do it as well and as morally as they can. Most of the first group live in New York and California and up East. Most of the second group lives in the South and West.
They have a lot in common.
They really do.
One thing the first groups needs to do is admit that some people are lazy, don't work, and feed off the public trough. But I don't think it's very many, but that groups is there. (For folks who think that that group are black and browns, lets not even speak of the hidden or overt racism there. Please go back and see/read the Christmas Carol. When Dickens wrote "Are there no workhouses?" and had it coming out of Scrooges mouth, he was talking to you folks.)
One thing the second groups needs to do is recognize that Socialism isn't such a monstrous thing. Think of the Army/Navy/Marines/Air Force. Do they have socialism? Yep they do. Do they promise free medical not only to soldier/sailors/marines/airmen but also to their families. Yes they do. Are our military folks commies and socialist reds?
But most especially, what both groups need to start doing is listen.
They are just saying different things. It's like they are standing on two sides of the same mountain, insisting their view is the one and only.
The shame is we don't have a show like 30 Days that takes a union worker and a small business owner and make them swap jobs for 30 days.
Somehow I think at the end of it they'd shake hands, look each other in the eye and say: you know what? You make some damned good points about things.
Another is that they both need to expand their idea of who the rat bastards are.
For the first group it's big business and fat cat rich guys.
For the second groups it's big government and Wallstreet/Bankers fat cat rich guys.
They are both somewhat right, but it's like both groups have their fingers in their ears and are going NAH NAH NAH NAH when the other sides speaks.
Take your damned fingers out. Suspend judgment.
Wake up. Listen for a change. You might learn something.
One thing you can say about Obama is that he has that part right. Both sides love America, and they all want the best for the country.
What Obama hasn't done is get himself into the trenches, a la LBJ, and do the hard part. The arm twisting, the deal making. The slimy deals for the good of the country.
First and foremost, the insurance bill should be about making it universal. Next it should be cheap and worthwhile. It should require the use of one universal form. It should require not paying more than 6% (which is what Germany and Japan pay their insurance companies for the same) for administrative costs. Next, it should include tort reform, which would save another 20%. Next it should absolutely wrestle with big pharmaceutical companies about prices, and say, guess what? Here is our list of drugs, and this is what we are going to pay. And if you don't like it, then up yours, we will buy overseas, just like every other first and second world government in the world does. After all, big business sends it's factories abroad to get cheap, why shouldn't the federal government?
Lastly, it needs to deal with the opt in/ opt out thing.
Do we opt out of taxes? Or social security? Or Medicaid? Or do we pay?
Personally, I think people should be allowed to opt out. But if they do, then they can't opt in for a period of two years. So you are a wrong headed idiot about your family and you don't pay for insurance, then you get to deal with paying full price for two years should your wife get cancer or your child have a car accident.
I also think that we need to speak to the other 800 pound gorilla in the room - illegal immigrants - by making them legal guest workers for a period of 20 years. Yep you can stay, yep you can work, yep you have to pay taxes, have a drivers license, pay social security, medicaid, school and county taxes, but no you don't have the rights of a citizen because you aren't citizens. Also, all immigrants have to pay a 20% get out of Dodge tax, which will be taken from them and put into interest bearing accounts. When the twenty years is up, that 20% will begin to be paid out to each guest worker in their home country. Guest workers who sneak back lose it all. Guest workers who come here, work hard, put in their twenty years and go back get to live off their twenty per cent in their own countries. But that's another story, for another post.
What puzzles me is that while it is easy/convenient to demonize idiotic government and stupid regulations, there is an 800 pound gorilla in the room that neither side is talking about, or seemingly even seeing.
That is big businesses. Multi National Corporations. Specifically, pharmaceutical and insurance companies, because they have the biggest dogs in this fight.
Do either side really think that large pharmaceutical companies have our best interests at heart? Do they really think that large pharmaceutical and large insurance companies really give a crap about the little guy?
And, do people really think that the Tea Party Crowd - most of whom, though lilly white, I think are earnest, honest and really saying what they believe - isn't being organized/paid for by the large Pharmaceuticals and large insurance companies?
Ever heard of Dick Armey? He may paint himself as being the hero of less government (odd, you know, after having been in the house for 18 years. Hm... I wonder if ole Dick has refused his government pension and government insurance for his family. His
"organizing" of such things as the T party crowd is bought and paid for by big corporations. DUUUUUH!)
So, as it looks now, insurance reform is stalled and once again, the insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies have managed to stave off change. People who can easily think of the Narcotraficante's crowd and Big Tobacco as the bad guys, but think of insurance companies and pharmos as the good guys need to pull their u know whats out of their u know wheres. It's dark in there. Wake up.
We don't have the best medical care in the world. We have the most expensive medical care in the world.
I don't know.
I'm with Whoopie Goldberg, who says she just wants the insurance deal that the members of the Senate and House of Representatives have.
She's got a hell of a point.
It's probably a good thing that Obama got handed his ass politically. I voted for him, but, I have to say, one thing that he didn't quite get - but I hope he now is getting - is that politics is a very old game. (It's also the only blood sport that's still legal, with bows to Hockey and professional wrestling, of course) You can talk changing Washington all you want, but Washington isn't going to just change. What you have to do is play the game better. It's making slimy deals. It's
throwing in the pork. Yes it is.
I am hopeful that we get universal insurance. Personally, and people can call me a commie rat bastard socialist if they want, I'd like to see single payer insurance.
What I find interesting is that there are two groups of little guys that need to start listening and respecting each other.
On one side are the "Face the facts, you'll probably be working for a big ass company all your life, so join the union, band together, and wake up" crowd. I can sympathize. I've been a member of the teachers' union in Texas, where the teachers' unions have the power/pull/push of an overweight smart kid who just won't go away. I've also been a member of the teachers' union in St. Paul, Minnesota, where the first teachers union in the nation started - and where unionism is still going strong, and where nobody took shit from the bosses.
Lots of people piss on unions. They shouldn't. Without unions, we wouldn't have paid vacation, forty hour weeks or overtime. Without unions we wouldn't have many of the perks that we take for granted and that give work dignity.
On the other side are the "I owns a small business, or dream of owning my own business - small or large - and it really pisses me off when big government steals my money via taxes, or stupid wrong headed regulations that defy common sense, and what especially pisses me off is how they are spending money like drunken sailors, especially when that money is MY MONEY that was stolen from me via taxes."
One side thinks of themselves romantically as workers, and when they think of government they think of the New Deal, and Medicaid, and Social Security and New Deal Projects like
dams and buildings and parks and bridges. When such folks think of Big Business, they know and are offended by rich guys who trash workers, then pay themselves
outlandish, criminal bonuses.
The other side thinks of themselves romantically as small businesspersons or as pioneers. They dream of a world in which, like the pioneers they depend only on themselves and their families, and they keep a gun around the house because they know those a^&$#@holes in Washington. They dream of a government that defends the borders, delivers the mail, and otherwise, stays the hell out of their lives. They know in their bones how hard it is, and how heavy the responsibility lies on someone who has ever had to make a payroll. They don't pay very well, but they employ a hell of a lot of people, and they try to do it as well and as morally as they can. Most of the first group live in New York and California and up East. Most of the second group lives in the South and West.
They have a lot in common.
They really do.
One thing the first groups needs to do is admit that some people are lazy, don't work, and feed off the public trough. But I don't think it's very many, but that groups is there. (For folks who think that that group are black and browns, lets not even speak of the hidden or overt racism there. Please go back and see/read the Christmas Carol. When Dickens wrote "Are there no workhouses?" and had it coming out of Scrooges mouth, he was talking to you folks.)
One thing the second groups needs to do is recognize that Socialism isn't such a monstrous thing. Think of the Army/Navy/Marines/Air Force. Do they have socialism? Yep they do. Do they promise free medical not only to soldier/sailors/marines/airmen but also to their families. Yes they do. Are our military folks commies and socialist reds?
But most especially, what both groups need to start doing is listen.
They are just saying different things. It's like they are standing on two sides of the same mountain, insisting their view is the one and only.
The shame is we don't have a show like 30 Days that takes a union worker and a small business owner and make them swap jobs for 30 days.
Somehow I think at the end of it they'd shake hands, look each other in the eye and say: you know what? You make some damned good points about things.
Another is that they both need to expand their idea of who the rat bastards are.
For the first group it's big business and fat cat rich guys.
For the second groups it's big government and Wallstreet/Bankers fat cat rich guys.
They are both somewhat right, but it's like both groups have their fingers in their ears and are going NAH NAH NAH NAH when the other sides speaks.
Take your damned fingers out. Suspend judgment.
Wake up. Listen for a change. You might learn something.
One thing you can say about Obama is that he has that part right. Both sides love America, and they all want the best for the country.
What Obama hasn't done is get himself into the trenches, a la LBJ, and do the hard part. The arm twisting, the deal making. The slimy deals for the good of the country.
First and foremost, the insurance bill should be about making it universal. Next it should be cheap and worthwhile. It should require the use of one universal form. It should require not paying more than 6% (which is what Germany and Japan pay their insurance companies for the same) for administrative costs. Next, it should include tort reform, which would save another 20%. Next it should absolutely wrestle with big pharmaceutical companies about prices, and say, guess what? Here is our list of drugs, and this is what we are going to pay. And if you don't like it, then up yours, we will buy overseas, just like every other first and second world government in the world does. After all, big business sends it's factories abroad to get cheap, why shouldn't the federal government?
Lastly, it needs to deal with the opt in/ opt out thing.
Do we opt out of taxes? Or social security? Or Medicaid? Or do we pay?
Personally, I think people should be allowed to opt out. But if they do, then they can't opt in for a period of two years. So you are a wrong headed idiot about your family and you don't pay for insurance, then you get to deal with paying full price for two years should your wife get cancer or your child have a car accident.
I also think that we need to speak to the other 800 pound gorilla in the room - illegal immigrants - by making them legal guest workers for a period of 20 years. Yep you can stay, yep you can work, yep you have to pay taxes, have a drivers license, pay social security, medicaid, school and county taxes, but no you don't have the rights of a citizen because you aren't citizens. Also, all immigrants have to pay a 20% get out of Dodge tax, which will be taken from them and put into interest bearing accounts. When the twenty years is up, that 20% will begin to be paid out to each guest worker in their home country. Guest workers who sneak back lose it all. Guest workers who come here, work hard, put in their twenty years and go back get to live off their twenty per cent in their own countries. But that's another story, for another post.
What puzzles me is that while it is easy/convenient to demonize idiotic government and stupid regulations, there is an 800 pound gorilla in the room that neither side is talking about, or seemingly even seeing.
That is big businesses. Multi National Corporations. Specifically, pharmaceutical and insurance companies, because they have the biggest dogs in this fight.
Do either side really think that large pharmaceutical companies have our best interests at heart? Do they really think that large pharmaceutical and large insurance companies really give a crap about the little guy?
And, do people really think that the Tea Party Crowd - most of whom, though lilly white, I think are earnest, honest and really saying what they believe - isn't being organized/paid for by the large Pharmaceuticals and large insurance companies?
Ever heard of Dick Armey? He may paint himself as being the hero of less government (odd, you know, after having been in the house for 18 years. Hm... I wonder if ole Dick has refused his government pension and government insurance for his family. His
"organizing" of such things as the T party crowd is bought and paid for by big corporations. DUUUUUH!)
So, as it looks now, insurance reform is stalled and once again, the insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies have managed to stave off change. People who can easily think of the Narcotraficante's crowd and Big Tobacco as the bad guys, but think of insurance companies and pharmos as the good guys need to pull their u know whats out of their u know wheres. It's dark in there. Wake up.
We don't have the best medical care in the world. We have the most expensive medical care in the world.
I don't know.
I'm with Whoopie Goldberg, who says she just wants the insurance deal that the members of the Senate and House of Representatives have.
She's got a hell of a point.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Hurricanes, fusion and the future
Outside Tropical Storm/not quite hurricane Edouard is drenching my lawn. It's a soothing sound. And I expect it will be at it half the day and into the night.
I live far enough west of Houston - that the vicissitudes of the coastal weather usually don't bother my family, far enough to be cheap as well. Lucky me.
I've taken a new job this fall. I'll be teaching in the school district I live in. I suspect I'm not alone. Lots and lots of people have either changed jobs or contemplating changing jobs to find work closer to home, pushed by the rising cost of gas.
I'm going to go out on a limb here, which will probably piss some people off, but so be it. (I know how many people read this blog. I'm not stupid. Both of them can get in their SUV's and come throw dirt clods at my house if it will make them feel better.)
Guess what? Four dollar a gallon gasoline has proven in some ways to be a blessing. It's made lots of people park their honking pickups and suv's and find alternatives, if nothing else just to lessen the sting of paying a hundred dollars or more at the pump every week.
I own a ten year old Toyota Avalon; it gets about twenty miles to the gallon in the city if I'm not using the air conditioning.
Course, six months out of the year, I am using air conditioning. So it doesn't get anything like twenty to the gallon.
Lots of people are doing the same. I suspect that lots more people will be planting vegetable gardens next spring. They'll be looking for locally grown produce. They'll maybe shop at their neighborhood grocery instead of driving extra miles to the local GigantoWalmartotron.
People may look for kids clothes at their nearest garage sale, rather than at the nearest store.
They'll maybe buy a small car that gets 30+ miles to the gallon. Still can't figure out who exactly will buy those gigantic Ford 350's and GM Hummers. Perhaps someone will paint them and turn them into lawn art.
Our way of life is changing.
Change is hard. But change can be a good thing.
The end result is that we may take a look at ways out of all this, and quit arguing amongst ourselves. Take global warming - normal historical warming or warming caused by too much carbon dioxide in the air - either way, it's getting warmer, though so far by smallish amounts.
Those smallish amounts are causing things to happen - ice to melt and things to change - such that we can either place our heads further up our backsides or do something sensible about it.
Personally, I'd like to see us free from buying oil abroad. But unlike many, I think the worst thing we can do about it is simply to drill for more. If you are addicted to crack the way we are addicted to oil, a solution to same is not to just find a cheaper local dealer, or to start growing coca plants.
Some time in the next fifty years we need to give the oil economy the boot, and switch to the hydrogen economy. GM and Ford and Toyota are ready for it; they've already built their hydrogen cars. Ten years from now would be a whole lot better than fifty years from now.
The way to go in the meantime is not only more electricity-making fueled by clean moving air and moving water, but a host of things - not just drill more and use more clean coal and build more nuclear plants. We need to change laws to make electric cars legal - in most states they are not allowed. We need to regard nuclear plants as giant bulleyes for terrorists - and therefore to be avoided. We need to change laws to allow plants to turn their excess heat into electricity. We need to improve our pitiful mass transit system. We need to revamp our infrastructure. We need above all to quit doing what we were doing, just because we were doing it. We need to be daring. We need to think outside of the box.
What we really need is fusion - that is the nearly limitless power that fuels the atomic bomb.
Problem is that the power that fusion produces is so great we have yet to figure out how to contain it.
The Manhatten project that is spoken of to get us off our dependence on foreign oil should be started, but it's impetus should be to harness fusion.
To placate the oil corporations, whose money and influence are vast, we should invite them all in, and spend the next eight years in a wild search to develop a method to harness and controll fusion. They provide energy to us now, they can have a piece of providing hydrogen to future generations. Fair is fair. Once fusion is controlled, then use it to builg plants both make electricity and change water into hydrogen.
I'm no expert. But I imagine that the pipeline system that now crisscrosses and snakes across our country carrying petroleum can simply be replaced with hyrdrogen pipelines and we can cheerfully shoot the Saudi's the finger and leave them to their lakes of oil.
The sooner we get there, the better.
We'll still need petroleum. The plastics that we make from it we be useful for generations to come. But the sooner we get to a time when clean hydrogen powered and electric power vehicles
move us around, and gas powered vehicles become as antiquated and rare as console sized radios, the better.
I tell my daughter the story of how in high school the math/science club wanted to buy a calculator. They were brand new things from Texas Instruments. All they could do is add, subtract, multiply and divide. They cost two hundred dollars, and budding technogeeks, we wanted to buy them. We started raising money. It took a couple of months, and by that time, the price had dropped to about a third.
Technology is a blessing. It's nimble, and ever changing. It gets better, and smaller, and cheaper. But it only came about because people were daring and though outside the box. They didn't listen to the naysayers, they forged on. Our desktop computers, which you can buy for less than five hundred dollars, would run rings around the enormouse machines that in my day took up large rooms and cost millions. What stories will our children tell about the technology they now use?
Will their children and grandchildren scoff at stories about stinky gas powered cars?
I sincerely hope so.
I live far enough west of Houston - that the vicissitudes of the coastal weather usually don't bother my family, far enough to be cheap as well. Lucky me.
I've taken a new job this fall. I'll be teaching in the school district I live in. I suspect I'm not alone. Lots and lots of people have either changed jobs or contemplating changing jobs to find work closer to home, pushed by the rising cost of gas.
I'm going to go out on a limb here, which will probably piss some people off, but so be it. (I know how many people read this blog. I'm not stupid. Both of them can get in their SUV's and come throw dirt clods at my house if it will make them feel better.)
Guess what? Four dollar a gallon gasoline has proven in some ways to be a blessing. It's made lots of people park their honking pickups and suv's and find alternatives, if nothing else just to lessen the sting of paying a hundred dollars or more at the pump every week.
I own a ten year old Toyota Avalon; it gets about twenty miles to the gallon in the city if I'm not using the air conditioning.
Course, six months out of the year, I am using air conditioning. So it doesn't get anything like twenty to the gallon.
Lots of people are doing the same. I suspect that lots more people will be planting vegetable gardens next spring. They'll be looking for locally grown produce. They'll maybe shop at their neighborhood grocery instead of driving extra miles to the local GigantoWalmartotron.
People may look for kids clothes at their nearest garage sale, rather than at the nearest store.
They'll maybe buy a small car that gets 30+ miles to the gallon. Still can't figure out who exactly will buy those gigantic Ford 350's and GM Hummers. Perhaps someone will paint them and turn them into lawn art.
Our way of life is changing.
Change is hard. But change can be a good thing.
The end result is that we may take a look at ways out of all this, and quit arguing amongst ourselves. Take global warming - normal historical warming or warming caused by too much carbon dioxide in the air - either way, it's getting warmer, though so far by smallish amounts.
Those smallish amounts are causing things to happen - ice to melt and things to change - such that we can either place our heads further up our backsides or do something sensible about it.
Personally, I'd like to see us free from buying oil abroad. But unlike many, I think the worst thing we can do about it is simply to drill for more. If you are addicted to crack the way we are addicted to oil, a solution to same is not to just find a cheaper local dealer, or to start growing coca plants.
Some time in the next fifty years we need to give the oil economy the boot, and switch to the hydrogen economy. GM and Ford and Toyota are ready for it; they've already built their hydrogen cars. Ten years from now would be a whole lot better than fifty years from now.
The way to go in the meantime is not only more electricity-making fueled by clean moving air and moving water, but a host of things - not just drill more and use more clean coal and build more nuclear plants. We need to change laws to make electric cars legal - in most states they are not allowed. We need to regard nuclear plants as giant bulleyes for terrorists - and therefore to be avoided. We need to change laws to allow plants to turn their excess heat into electricity. We need to improve our pitiful mass transit system. We need to revamp our infrastructure. We need above all to quit doing what we were doing, just because we were doing it. We need to be daring. We need to think outside of the box.
What we really need is fusion - that is the nearly limitless power that fuels the atomic bomb.
Problem is that the power that fusion produces is so great we have yet to figure out how to contain it.
The Manhatten project that is spoken of to get us off our dependence on foreign oil should be started, but it's impetus should be to harness fusion.
To placate the oil corporations, whose money and influence are vast, we should invite them all in, and spend the next eight years in a wild search to develop a method to harness and controll fusion. They provide energy to us now, they can have a piece of providing hydrogen to future generations. Fair is fair. Once fusion is controlled, then use it to builg plants both make electricity and change water into hydrogen.
I'm no expert. But I imagine that the pipeline system that now crisscrosses and snakes across our country carrying petroleum can simply be replaced with hyrdrogen pipelines and we can cheerfully shoot the Saudi's the finger and leave them to their lakes of oil.
The sooner we get there, the better.
We'll still need petroleum. The plastics that we make from it we be useful for generations to come. But the sooner we get to a time when clean hydrogen powered and electric power vehicles
move us around, and gas powered vehicles become as antiquated and rare as console sized radios, the better.
I tell my daughter the story of how in high school the math/science club wanted to buy a calculator. They were brand new things from Texas Instruments. All they could do is add, subtract, multiply and divide. They cost two hundred dollars, and budding technogeeks, we wanted to buy them. We started raising money. It took a couple of months, and by that time, the price had dropped to about a third.
Technology is a blessing. It's nimble, and ever changing. It gets better, and smaller, and cheaper. But it only came about because people were daring and though outside the box. They didn't listen to the naysayers, they forged on. Our desktop computers, which you can buy for less than five hundred dollars, would run rings around the enormouse machines that in my day took up large rooms and cost millions. What stories will our children tell about the technology they now use?
Will their children and grandchildren scoff at stories about stinky gas powered cars?
I sincerely hope so.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
You read it here first! Smellovision!
In some far off future, or hell, maybe three years from now, you will go into your local movie theater, and while being blasted by sounds which are a bit too loud - loud enough to shake the seats - you may notice that there is something new - smell. Imagine seeing a movie like Saving Private Ryan - which is gripping as hell, visually and audially, if you could also smell what was going on screen.
The result, I think, would be an experience so gripping that people would cry, vomit, shake uncontrollably, etc. For those of us old enough to remember, people had similar reactions after watch Linda Blair in The Exorcist. People fainted, cried, went into hysterics, shook, or came out of the theater with the stunned look of a deer in the headlights. I remember only thinking, when she vomited green liquid - Hey that's the same shade as Campbell's split pea soup, I wonder if that's what they used? - but that's me. Losing my sense of disbelief takes a lot, and the Exorcist, interesting as it was, didn't get me there.
Part of the technology for smell o vision already exists. Perfume companies already have small electronic boxes, which at the cost of about a million dollars each, have the ability to mimic any smell. Park one on the beach at Wakiki, and you can smell the beach at Wakiki three thousand miles away - or at least the electronic box's best estimate of the smell.
What probably hasn't been invented is the technology to make smells only linger for a few minutes - long enough to enrich a scene, but not so long that when the next show starts, you are still smelling things from the first.
Why smellovision - and I will also be the first to say that the name, well the name I'm using sucks. Really sucks. But sucks or not, it's a powerful idea. Smells go directly into the emotional part of our brain, whereas most of our senses have to do a bypass through a second part of our brain, then go into our emotions.
That's one of the reasons that smells are so evocative, and one of the reasons why I predict that some time in the future, the way we went from silent movies to talkie movies, we will go from technicolortalkiesoundieshakey movies - what we have now - to sniffies.
No one must, or ONE MUST tell the pencil lead brains in hollywood, who always think that if a little is good, a lot is better, that with smells, understatement is everthing.
As anyone who has ever sat in front of the old lady brigade at church knows, a little says a lot, and a lot makes you want to upchuck.
So, you might not be able to have smellovision in your home, but what the hell - it will be another reason to get us out of the house and down to the local cinema. Imagine seeing Gone with the wind, or Dr. Zhivago while smelling what is going on on screen, and you have the makings of an absolutely unforgettable experience. Plus, instead of only making new movies, you could enrich the coffers by putting smellovision on the older movies.
Wait and see.
And whoever does it, remember me. You can mail me a modest seven figure check yearly, and pretend you came up with it yourself. I won't say a word.
The result, I think, would be an experience so gripping that people would cry, vomit, shake uncontrollably, etc. For those of us old enough to remember, people had similar reactions after watch Linda Blair in The Exorcist. People fainted, cried, went into hysterics, shook, or came out of the theater with the stunned look of a deer in the headlights. I remember only thinking, when she vomited green liquid - Hey that's the same shade as Campbell's split pea soup, I wonder if that's what they used? - but that's me. Losing my sense of disbelief takes a lot, and the Exorcist, interesting as it was, didn't get me there.
Part of the technology for smell o vision already exists. Perfume companies already have small electronic boxes, which at the cost of about a million dollars each, have the ability to mimic any smell. Park one on the beach at Wakiki, and you can smell the beach at Wakiki three thousand miles away - or at least the electronic box's best estimate of the smell.
What probably hasn't been invented is the technology to make smells only linger for a few minutes - long enough to enrich a scene, but not so long that when the next show starts, you are still smelling things from the first.
Why smellovision - and I will also be the first to say that the name, well the name I'm using sucks. Really sucks. But sucks or not, it's a powerful idea. Smells go directly into the emotional part of our brain, whereas most of our senses have to do a bypass through a second part of our brain, then go into our emotions.
That's one of the reasons that smells are so evocative, and one of the reasons why I predict that some time in the future, the way we went from silent movies to talkie movies, we will go from technicolortalkiesoundieshakey movies - what we have now - to sniffies.
No one must, or ONE MUST tell the pencil lead brains in hollywood, who always think that if a little is good, a lot is better, that with smells, understatement is everthing.
As anyone who has ever sat in front of the old lady brigade at church knows, a little says a lot, and a lot makes you want to upchuck.
So, you might not be able to have smellovision in your home, but what the hell - it will be another reason to get us out of the house and down to the local cinema. Imagine seeing Gone with the wind, or Dr. Zhivago while smelling what is going on on screen, and you have the makings of an absolutely unforgettable experience. Plus, instead of only making new movies, you could enrich the coffers by putting smellovision on the older movies.
Wait and see.
And whoever does it, remember me. You can mail me a modest seven figure check yearly, and pretend you came up with it yourself. I won't say a word.
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