I've seen people write that the reason we don't have clean energy is that there's a conspiracy of the fat cats who own the oil companies.
Actually, there's another way of looking at this, from an engineering perspective rather than from a big oil conspiracy perspective. And frankly, I suspect that the engineering perspective is correct. Here it is:
The problem with alternative energy sources is that for the past hundred years or so they've been way more expensive than oil and coal. Billions of dinosaurs and plants died so that we could tool around town in gas guzzling cars and have air conditioning in our houses. All that oil and coal is essentially nature's way of storing up millions of years worth of solar energy in a compact, easily retrievable form. It's quite difficult and hugely expensive to collect enough solar energy to match our current energy usage each year. It might not even be possible.
And collecting renewable energy also has a big environmental impact. Wind turbines cause turbulence in the atmosphere near the ground. That turbulence dries up the ground and the plants. Solar collectors shade the ground. If you put them in the Mojave desert, you'll be messing with a very delicate ecological system.
If you put those same solar collectors in the Sahara desert, there aren't any life forms to bother, but you're still making the Arabs into world energy czars. And you can't transmit electricity from there to here no matter how efficient your transmission lines could become. You'd have to use the energy to form hydrogen from sea water and transport the hydrogen here. Then we're still dependent on foreign energy. Not to mention that with current technology, hydrogen, like matzos and potato chips, doesn't travel well, or cheaply. Using the energy of the tides is nice near the ocean, where fifty percent of people in the US lives, but it doesn't help middle America much, and collecting that energy probably will have a negative effect on tidal wetlands which are vital to the health of the sea life that we depend on for food.
So the big oil and coal companies don't even need a conspiracy. Nature has conspired to help them. The only solution is technology that hasn't been invented yet. Fusion would do it. Even fission, but we'd have to build lots more nuclear power plants with the resultant problems of nuclear waste. In theory, fusion wouldn't create radioactive waste.
We still don't know how to build a controlled fusion power plant. If we did, I'm sure that the energy companies would like to get in on that business since they're running out of oil, and they must feel a little bit bad about all the environmental damage they do with coal mines and oil spills. At least, I hope they feel a little bit bad about that.
So there won't be new energy sources making a huge difference any time soon. What we can do is make fossil fuels so expensive that people will be motivated to conserve energy by insulating their houses, using public transportation and driving energy efficient vehicles. That technology already exists, and conservation can make a huge difference in the next few years. I hate to say it, but I'm a Democrat so I'll say it anyway, we need to greatly increase taxes on any fossil fuel use. That will motivate people to conserve energy. It's the only thing that will get people to conserve energy.
Oh, there's one more thing that I hate to say, but I'm a Democrat so I'll say this too. Population control would be helpful for reducing world wide pollution and global warming. I realize that there are way more cockroaches than there are people, but the roaches are perfectly willing to use public transportation. You hardly ever see a roach driving around town in a Hummer. She might be hitching a ride in one, but it's a human being at the wheel.
Not your ordinary memoir
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
My Neighborhood in Manhattan
My memories of where I lived don't go back before the age of three. I'd lived in Texas and Oklahoma during WWII because that's where my father was stationed. He was a second lieutenant during all or WWII. I think that's a record. But I don't remember any of that.
Between the ages of three and seven, I lived in Manhattan at 155 Ridge St. We had a three room apartment (not three bedrooms, three rooms all together). The building was in the shape of an H. Our apartment was on the third floor and the windows of our apartment looked down into the courtyard in front of the building.
At the time, the neighborhood was a bit of a slum in that there were vacant lots and vacant buildings within a block of our building. My friend, Angelo, and I explored many of the vacant lots and buildings even though I was, in theory, not allowed to cross any streets. The problem with the vacant buildings was that there was lots of broken glass and dog poop in them. Otherwise, they'd have been great places to play. Once, I slipped on a staircase in one of the buildings and got dog poop on my right hand. It took me what seemed like a very long time in the rest room of a nearby restaurant to get the poop, and the smell, off my hand before I could go home. I didn't want my mother to know I'd crossed the street to investigate a vacant building.
There was a bigger kid, whose name escapes me at the moment, who my mother paid to walk me to school once I was six so I could cross the street with someone who was tall enough so the drivers might actually see him. There were two girls, Eileen and Nancy, sisters, who Angelo and I would play with at times. Not often though since they usually wanted to play girls games.
I never actually went to kindergarten. My mother took me there the first day, but I didn't understand how she could know we were in the correct line at the beginning of the first school day. Then some girl started to cry so I started to cry, too. My mother took me back home, and I never went to Kindergarten. Angelo didn't go to Kindergarten either, so we got a whole year of playing around when other kids had to go to school. When it was time for me to start the first grade, my father took the day off work and brought me to school. I knew that crying wouldn't get me out of school if my father was there so I didn't bother to cry. It turned out that I liked school anyway. I got to sit next to Angelo. I suppose his father brought him to school that first day of the first grade, too.
There were three reading groups in that first grade class, the roses, the tulips, and the zinnias. Looking backward, I suppose the teacher, whose name and face escape me, used flower names to prevent the kids from knowing which group was the upper, middle and lower group. But it was clear to all of us that the roses were the top group, the tulips were the middle group, and the zinnias were the bottom group. To this day, those three kinds of flowers are the only flowers I can actually name if I see them. All other flowers, to me, are just generic flowers.
Between the ages of three and seven, I lived in Manhattan at 155 Ridge St. We had a three room apartment (not three bedrooms, three rooms all together). The building was in the shape of an H. Our apartment was on the third floor and the windows of our apartment looked down into the courtyard in front of the building.
At the time, the neighborhood was a bit of a slum in that there were vacant lots and vacant buildings within a block of our building. My friend, Angelo, and I explored many of the vacant lots and buildings even though I was, in theory, not allowed to cross any streets. The problem with the vacant buildings was that there was lots of broken glass and dog poop in them. Otherwise, they'd have been great places to play. Once, I slipped on a staircase in one of the buildings and got dog poop on my right hand. It took me what seemed like a very long time in the rest room of a nearby restaurant to get the poop, and the smell, off my hand before I could go home. I didn't want my mother to know I'd crossed the street to investigate a vacant building.
There was a bigger kid, whose name escapes me at the moment, who my mother paid to walk me to school once I was six so I could cross the street with someone who was tall enough so the drivers might actually see him. There were two girls, Eileen and Nancy, sisters, who Angelo and I would play with at times. Not often though since they usually wanted to play girls games.
I never actually went to kindergarten. My mother took me there the first day, but I didn't understand how she could know we were in the correct line at the beginning of the first school day. Then some girl started to cry so I started to cry, too. My mother took me back home, and I never went to Kindergarten. Angelo didn't go to Kindergarten either, so we got a whole year of playing around when other kids had to go to school. When it was time for me to start the first grade, my father took the day off work and brought me to school. I knew that crying wouldn't get me out of school if my father was there so I didn't bother to cry. It turned out that I liked school anyway. I got to sit next to Angelo. I suppose his father brought him to school that first day of the first grade, too.
There were three reading groups in that first grade class, the roses, the tulips, and the zinnias. Looking backward, I suppose the teacher, whose name and face escape me, used flower names to prevent the kids from knowing which group was the upper, middle and lower group. But it was clear to all of us that the roses were the top group, the tulips were the middle group, and the zinnias were the bottom group. To this day, those three kinds of flowers are the only flowers I can actually name if I see them. All other flowers, to me, are just generic flowers.
Healing
Writing/Cancer Support Group Tuesday 7/13/10
What does healing mean?
=======================================
Healing is a medical term. It refers to the process by which a part of the body that has a lesion (a wound, for example) gets back as close as possible to how it was before the lesion existed.
Doctors don't actually cure anybody. What they do is help the healing process along. If there weren't a healing process, people would fall apart a whole lot quicker than they do.
For example, when I used to sew up lacerations in the ER, what I'd do is clean out the wound because dirt and germs retard and prevent healing. Then I'd close the wouund with stitches. The person would thank me for curing them, but that's not what I'd done. I'd just made conditions better for more rapid healing than would have taken place if I hadn't done what I'd done. It's the healing process that did the actual trick of curing the patient. The stitches wouldn't last forever. Without that healing process, the stitches would fall out, the wound would re-open, and the patient wouldn't pay his bill. Fortunately, the healing process pretty much always kicked in.
The soft sciences have co-opted the term, healing, to mean something else. I'm not a soft science kind of guy so I'm kind of guessing here. I'd guess that the counseling type folks have re-defined the term, healing, so they could apply it to people who actually aren't going to get better at all.
In my hospice practice, the social workers and other counseling people tried hard to convince the patients that they were healing when, to me, and to the nurses, all their lesions were getting worse, and were incurable.
Eventually, I needed to buy in to the concept that even a dying person could heal in some way. So, the way I'd address the concept when I'd make a home visit is by encouraging the patient and the family to heal their relationships before the end came. Even when you're dying, relationships can heal.
That healing doesn't make any long term difference to the person who'd dying, but it can make a big difference to the family members who need to get on with their lives. Whenever we managed to get family members back together when they hadn't spoken to each other in years, I thought of that as a hospice triumph.
What does healing mean?
=======================================
Healing is a medical term. It refers to the process by which a part of the body that has a lesion (a wound, for example) gets back as close as possible to how it was before the lesion existed.
Doctors don't actually cure anybody. What they do is help the healing process along. If there weren't a healing process, people would fall apart a whole lot quicker than they do.
For example, when I used to sew up lacerations in the ER, what I'd do is clean out the wound because dirt and germs retard and prevent healing. Then I'd close the wouund with stitches. The person would thank me for curing them, but that's not what I'd done. I'd just made conditions better for more rapid healing than would have taken place if I hadn't done what I'd done. It's the healing process that did the actual trick of curing the patient. The stitches wouldn't last forever. Without that healing process, the stitches would fall out, the wound would re-open, and the patient wouldn't pay his bill. Fortunately, the healing process pretty much always kicked in.
The soft sciences have co-opted the term, healing, to mean something else. I'm not a soft science kind of guy so I'm kind of guessing here. I'd guess that the counseling type folks have re-defined the term, healing, so they could apply it to people who actually aren't going to get better at all.
In my hospice practice, the social workers and other counseling people tried hard to convince the patients that they were healing when, to me, and to the nurses, all their lesions were getting worse, and were incurable.
Eventually, I needed to buy in to the concept that even a dying person could heal in some way. So, the way I'd address the concept when I'd make a home visit is by encouraging the patient and the family to heal their relationships before the end came. Even when you're dying, relationships can heal.
That healing doesn't make any long term difference to the person who'd dying, but it can make a big difference to the family members who need to get on with their lives. Whenever we managed to get family members back together when they hadn't spoken to each other in years, I thought of that as a hospice triumph.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Monkey Bars
In my earliest detailed memory, I was three. My mother was pregnant. I was playing in the park and was up on top of the monkey bars. They don't seem to have monkey bars in parks anymore. Anyway, I was up at the top, and I yelled out to my father, "Look Daddy, no hands."
As you might expect, I fell. I remember falling, but I don't remember hitting the cement. I must have been unconscious for a while because the next thing I remember is my father taking me back to our apartment. I was crying because I'd scraped my thumb. My father took me to his uncle Benny, a GP, and uncle Benny took an X-ray of my skull. He diagnosed a fracture and said I needed to stay in bed for a month
Just so you'll know, they no longer prescribe quite so much rest for a linear fracture of the skull that doesn't need surgery, which I didn't need. I remember that at night, I was in my own bed, but in the daytime, my parents let me rest in their bed. That was good because their bed was much springier than mine, and whenever they weren't in the room, I'd be jumping up and down on the bed.
It was only a three room apartment so, thinking about it, my parents must have known what I was doing. Jumping on the bed has a distinctive sound. But they let me do it. I'm not sure they kept that bed rest thing up for an entire month. My sense of time wasn't all that accurate, and I didn't know about calendars when I was three.
I have a tonsillectomy memory from around that same age. I'd been
getting sick pretty often, and the doctor would come to our little
apartment and give me a shot. Eventually, he told my parents I needed
to get my tonsils out.
My parents took me to Beth Israel Hospital in New York, the same hospital where I was born, I remember a doctor in a mask holding a bad smelling rubber thing on my face and telling me to count to ten. I never got to ten, My next memory was that I was in an elevator, asking my mother when they were going to take out my tonsils, She told me they were already out and that I was going to get ice cream.
They put me in a pediatric ward with lots of other kids,and they told me I'd have a special nurse who would be right by my crib all the time. My problem with that was that when I woke up in the middle of the night, I was a bit reluctant to tell a stranger that I had to pee. Eventually, I did tell her.
I have no specific memory of actually getting any ice cream.
As you might expect, I fell. I remember falling, but I don't remember hitting the cement. I must have been unconscious for a while because the next thing I remember is my father taking me back to our apartment. I was crying because I'd scraped my thumb. My father took me to his uncle Benny, a GP, and uncle Benny took an X-ray of my skull. He diagnosed a fracture and said I needed to stay in bed for a month
Just so you'll know, they no longer prescribe quite so much rest for a linear fracture of the skull that doesn't need surgery, which I didn't need. I remember that at night, I was in my own bed, but in the daytime, my parents let me rest in their bed. That was good because their bed was much springier than mine, and whenever they weren't in the room, I'd be jumping up and down on the bed.
It was only a three room apartment so, thinking about it, my parents must have known what I was doing. Jumping on the bed has a distinctive sound. But they let me do it. I'm not sure they kept that bed rest thing up for an entire month. My sense of time wasn't all that accurate, and I didn't know about calendars when I was three.
I have a tonsillectomy memory from around that same age. I'd been
getting sick pretty often, and the doctor would come to our little
apartment and give me a shot. Eventually, he told my parents I needed
to get my tonsils out.
My parents took me to Beth Israel Hospital in New York, the same hospital where I was born, I remember a doctor in a mask holding a bad smelling rubber thing on my face and telling me to count to ten. I never got to ten, My next memory was that I was in an elevator, asking my mother when they were going to take out my tonsils, She told me they were already out and that I was going to get ice cream.
They put me in a pediatric ward with lots of other kids,and they told me I'd have a special nurse who would be right by my crib all the time. My problem with that was that when I woke up in the middle of the night, I was a bit reluctant to tell a stranger that I had to pee. Eventually, I did tell her.
I have no specific memory of actually getting any ice cream.
Which Mask Should I put on Today?
Writing / Cancer support group 6/30/10
Topic: In the closet of my mind, I have many masks. Sometimes I wonder which to put on.
============================================
Not sure if this is on topic, but it brings to mind an experience I had in high school.
I went to a high school that had many more girls than boys. Back then, there were four gender segregated high schools in Baltimore. Most of the boys in my neighborhood went to one or the other of them, City or Poly. I was uninterested in taking the bus to school. I'd done that for junior high school, and I was done with that. So I went to Forest Park High School which was around four blocks from where I lived.
I was invited to join a class, called the enriched class, for people who were interested in learning more than what was in the standard curriculum, and I joined that class. Because of the gender imbalance in the entire school, I was the only boy who opted to join that class. There were eighteen girls in the class, and me. We took most of our classes together.
Since it was a class for smart kids, and snobbery was rampant in our class, we all figured that we were smarter than all the other kids, but there was a smartness pecking order within our class, too. Carolyn was in that class, and she was in the top tier on the smartness scale, but you had to figure it out. She didn't flaunt her IQ. The girl who made it quite clear that she was in that top tier was Margie, and it was certainly true that she was in the smarter section of our smart group.
I was somewhere in the middle of the pack, and I found that a bit intimidating. I was also quite shy about talking to girls. Somehow, I thought they'd be bored with whatever I had to say. So the mask I wore was one of aloofness. I tried to make it seem as if the reason I wasn't talking to the girls much was that they didn't have anything to say that would be of interest to me.
Because we were snobs, we'd have class parties that included only the people from the enriched class so I was the only boy there. The girls would all be chattering away, laughing, and giggling in their high pitched high school girl voices, and I'd just sit around quietly and eat the party snacks.
The mask issue happened at one of those parties. Margie came up to me and started asking me questions about my life, and about my plans for the future. I was amazed that she was interested in anything about me. The mask came off, and I started answering her questions. Like most boys, and men, it turned out that I enjoyed talking about myself. Still do. Hence this blog. The party got quiet, and all the girls were listening to Margie essentially interview me. It was an amazing experience. It turned out that all I had to do to get girls to be interested in talking to me was to just take off the mask and be myself. What a concept.
-------------------------------------------------
Off topic entirely, there was another of the class parties where we were all playing dodge ball in the back yard when, suddenly one of the girls on the other side of the yard sat down suddenly, a bunch of the other girls near her crowded around her, and one of them came over to me and told me to just stay where I was and sit down on the grass, which I did. Nobody was telling me what had happened across the yard, but, although I didn't have the terminology at the time, I figured it was a wardrobe malfunction. One of the girls went into the house, brought something to the girl sitting on the ground across the yard, and a few minutes later, the game started up again. What's mildly amusing about that episode is that Carolyn walked up to me after everything had settled down, and she said that she'd explain to me what happened in thirty years, after we'd been married for a long enough time.
I wasn't dating Carolyn, or anyone, while I was in high school. I have no idea how she knew we'd get married, but we did, and on our thirtieth anniversary, Carolyn did tell me what happened, and it was a wardrobe malfunction as I'd suspected.
Topic: In the closet of my mind, I have many masks. Sometimes I wonder which to put on.
============================================
Not sure if this is on topic, but it brings to mind an experience I had in high school.
I went to a high school that had many more girls than boys. Back then, there were four gender segregated high schools in Baltimore. Most of the boys in my neighborhood went to one or the other of them, City or Poly. I was uninterested in taking the bus to school. I'd done that for junior high school, and I was done with that. So I went to Forest Park High School which was around four blocks from where I lived.
I was invited to join a class, called the enriched class, for people who were interested in learning more than what was in the standard curriculum, and I joined that class. Because of the gender imbalance in the entire school, I was the only boy who opted to join that class. There were eighteen girls in the class, and me. We took most of our classes together.
Since it was a class for smart kids, and snobbery was rampant in our class, we all figured that we were smarter than all the other kids, but there was a smartness pecking order within our class, too. Carolyn was in that class, and she was in the top tier on the smartness scale, but you had to figure it out. She didn't flaunt her IQ. The girl who made it quite clear that she was in that top tier was Margie, and it was certainly true that she was in the smarter section of our smart group.
I was somewhere in the middle of the pack, and I found that a bit intimidating. I was also quite shy about talking to girls. Somehow, I thought they'd be bored with whatever I had to say. So the mask I wore was one of aloofness. I tried to make it seem as if the reason I wasn't talking to the girls much was that they didn't have anything to say that would be of interest to me.
Because we were snobs, we'd have class parties that included only the people from the enriched class so I was the only boy there. The girls would all be chattering away, laughing, and giggling in their high pitched high school girl voices, and I'd just sit around quietly and eat the party snacks.
The mask issue happened at one of those parties. Margie came up to me and started asking me questions about my life, and about my plans for the future. I was amazed that she was interested in anything about me. The mask came off, and I started answering her questions. Like most boys, and men, it turned out that I enjoyed talking about myself. Still do. Hence this blog. The party got quiet, and all the girls were listening to Margie essentially interview me. It was an amazing experience. It turned out that all I had to do to get girls to be interested in talking to me was to just take off the mask and be myself. What a concept.
-------------------------------------------------
Off topic entirely, there was another of the class parties where we were all playing dodge ball in the back yard when, suddenly one of the girls on the other side of the yard sat down suddenly, a bunch of the other girls near her crowded around her, and one of them came over to me and told me to just stay where I was and sit down on the grass, which I did. Nobody was telling me what had happened across the yard, but, although I didn't have the terminology at the time, I figured it was a wardrobe malfunction. One of the girls went into the house, brought something to the girl sitting on the ground across the yard, and a few minutes later, the game started up again. What's mildly amusing about that episode is that Carolyn walked up to me after everything had settled down, and she said that she'd explain to me what happened in thirty years, after we'd been married for a long enough time.
I wasn't dating Carolyn, or anyone, while I was in high school. I have no idea how she knew we'd get married, but we did, and on our thirtieth anniversary, Carolyn did tell me what happened, and it was a wardrobe malfunction as I'd suspected.
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