December 2009 archive

The Geek took hiatus last week to attend, and be part of, the marriage between Eldest Son and his very wonderful bride.  It was a very traditional Methodist service, and it went off perfectly insofar as no one fainted, no one objected (there was not a “If anyone objects…” clause in this particular service, so no one did.

The Geek also took today off and did not write a scientific column for several reasons.  First, I stayed up too late last night reading the news and weather.  Second, I could never come up with a good topic for tonight.  I will do better for next week, I promise.  Third, The Geek has just been feeling a tiny bit under the weather, but not horribly ill or anything.

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

Doctor Dan Mongiardo, Kentucky’s Lieutenant Governor, has announced that he is running for the Democratic nomination for the Kentucky Senate race, to take on whoever wins the Republican nomination to challenge for the seat that Senator Bunning (R-Big$$$) has announced he is giving up.

Lots of politics to unwrap in that paragraph, which I’ll leave to the political wise-guys. The Sunday Train today is about Dr. Dan’s Rail Plan.

As far as I can tell, Dr. Dan’s Rail Plan has four main parts, and regular readers of the Sunday Train will recognize much from each of the four parts:

• Support for expanding Kentucky’s existing and potential Amtrak routes into 110mph Emerging Higher Speed Rail corridors
  
• Support for regional rail services to complete the above state rail map
  
• “Hybrid Light Rail” to provide cross-metropolitan local rail services, principally to Louisville
  
• Heavy investment in complementary local transit, including bus rapid transit and a high frequency driverless monotrain system for Kentucky.
  

Act Blue Page

For those looking to send some snake oil Doctor Dan’s way: Daniel Mongiardo’s Act Blue Page.

Weekend News Digest is an Open Thread

This Sunday’s Edition is being brought to you by TMC, so ek hornbeck can bake cookies.

The Top News Story



East Coast hammered by severe winter storm

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A weekend nor’easter buried much of the U.S. East Coast on Saturday and Sunday, disrupting public transport and air travel and hampering holiday shoppers on the last weekend before Christmas.

Up to 22 inches of snow was expected by Saturday night in the Baltimore-Washington area, more than any snowstorm to hit the region since February 2003, as the storm system moved north into New York and New England.

With snow falling at a rate of two inches an hour, most flights were canceled at the three major Washington-area airports before two of them, Reagan and BWI, were closed until Sunday morning. Delays and cancellations also hit Philadelphia’s international airport.

The driving snowstorm did not stop U.S. senators from convening and Democrats secured the pivotal 60th vote of holdout Senator Ben Nelson needed to ensure passage of the healthcare overhaul bill by Christmas.

But the storm could take a big bite out of retail sales on one of the busiest shopping weekend of the year.

Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty declared a snow emergency and asked District of Columbia residents to keep off the streets as the U.S. capital faced what one TV station dubbed “The Shopper Stopper Storm.”

(psssst… Cassiodorus read my mind!)

I’m not sure if anyone in my little political junkie clique here comprehends how much I hate hate HATE electoral politics. But I gotta tell ya. My Bullshit Detector has been polished and fine tuned in the past year. I watched only a clip snip of Axelrod on the shows this morning and then I went a-reading / scanning the blogs, and … if these guys spin this HCR POS Reform any harder …. they’re gonna land themselves on the frikkin moon.

I know, this Chris Hedges piece came out nearly two weeks ago.  This is a further exploration of the “liberals are useless” meme in political conversation.  Here I will suggest that liberals, progressives, etc. may be useless, but they can’t be dismissed outright.  Thus we need the building blocks of a more proactive stance.

(Crossposted at Orange)

Part One (posted December 17):

Part Two (posted December 18):

Part Three (posted December 20):

Daniel J. Weiss is making a very disingenuous argument in his “we should only go for what’s possible” approach.  He keeps falling back on the “perfect is the enemy of the good” line, as though anyone seriously expects or asks for perfection.  He also ignores that when Medicare, Social Security, the Civil Rights Act, and the Clean Air Act were passed, the political environment was very different – Republicans could be rolled far more easily than they can be today.  What’s more, by starting with the accommodation first and working down from there, substantive policies are not being passed.  Weiss doesn’t even acknowledge the obvious tactical reality at work: obviously demanding everything from the start is not going to get us everything, but it can lead us to some actual compromise that everyone can live with.  Daphne Wysham, who is advocating for stronger policies and takes the opposite argument, could have done a bit more to press the counterarguments I just mentioned, but overall it was a spirited and informative discussion.  It’s certainly nothing like what you’d see on any of the cable news programs.

While I and millions of DC residents are cleaning up after a huge snow storm, I look out my window this morning and notice strangers giving aid and assistance to drivers of cars stuck out in the wintry mix.  Stodgy, suspicious, ponderous Washington has momentarily set aside its default setting to lend a hand.  It is only when events this big and massive disrupt the status quo that this city shrinks in size and shared humanity begins to creep into the proceedings.  DC is a city full of cross-currents and diversity, so it is rare that anyone is truly on the same page with another for very long.  A Type A city ruled by Type A people means that often everyone is in a hurry going nowhere for no good reason, utterly consumed with their work to the detriment of every other facet of their lives.  Though retailers will undoubtedly even lose money here in these crucial days leading up to Christmas, I can’t say that I am entirely saddened by the development.      

Had this been any average year, the media would have run half a dozen stories (or more) gently chiding us for again, yet another year, completely destroying the meaning of the Christmas season.  Many of us would assume our time-honored roles, mournfully nodding our heads up in down to signify that we agreed, but could find no solution to stop the orgiastic aspects of capitalism from overrunning the most important of holidays.  A recession ought not only provide purely negative consequences.  If we can learn from it, then all is not lost.  If we are to face discomfort and pain, my hope is that we can understand that simplicity is a virtue, not a hindrance, and that accumulating possessions is a bit like accumulating inches of snow.  In the beginning, it’s fun, but after a while, it begin to pose a serious problem.  Not only that, others who believe in the grass is greener principle have a tendency to envy accumulation without understanding its notable drawbacks.

I personally am enjoying fewer crowds, less traffic, and less panicked looks.  That it took a weakened economy and with it the loss of buying power surprises me not a bit.  If the free market promised freedom from producing more problems than it fixes, I would be wholeheartedly in its corner.  Some of the strongest people I ever met were those of my grandparents’ generation, who had faced a Great Depression and a World War, and whose iron resolve and stoic attitude showed the results of having gone fifteen rounds with hardship and tragedy and emerged stronger than steel.  No shrinking violets were they.    

As for these times, the only time I saw anything remotely similar to the traditional Christmas insanity was Friday of this past week, shortly before the snow fell, when thousands upon thousands of residents in our nation’s capital rushed madly to scoop up enough provisions and finish up their seasonal shopping.  Everyone seems to be cutting back this year and I certainly am as well.  Some have mentioned that the tinsel and electric excitement that requires a robust pocketbook is lacking, making this a bummer of a Season’s Greetings, at which point I suppose I have to note that I have grown so cynical about Christmas reality that I have embraced a kind of deliberately sparse rendering.  All that twinkles is not gold.  Some might assume that less money in the bank is the true War on Christmas™, though I believe that to be the overwhelming opinion of bankers.          

The generation of my parents’ parents have been romanticized as “The Greatest Generation” but while the moniker is fitting, I saw nothing particularly superhuman about them.  They were indebted to the same flaws as humanity has displayed ever since humans began to walk upright.  If we faced the same challenges and abject perils as they, I am firmly convinced that we too would respond the identical way they did.  The human body and the human mind have a way of being incredibly adaptive to adversity.  It is fashionable in some circles to take pot shots at Baby Boomers or their children out of some desire to shame us all into acting properly or that we might better appreciate that which has fallen into our lap, but I will refrain from that line here.  We have been incredibly fortunate, certainly, but neither do I think beating us over the head with our privilege is much of a solution.  My hope is that we will retain the memory of what it felt like to not revel in excess and that we will apply those examples to our own lives and to the lives of those who we directly influence.    

If this were truly some pitched battle against all that is sacred and holy against Christmas, then the true enemies would not be a secular society gone wildly astray, having embraced the confusion of political correctness.  Instead, the enemies would be those people and things which fool us into thinking that we are the center of the universe and that there is no need to take into account the lives and struggles of our fellow beings.  As I said before, 364 days out of the year, this city runs on the twin forces of preoccupation and workaholicism, but it has only been now when the roads are still largely impassible, many businesses and places are still unreachable or closed, and public transportation is barely functional that we recognize the folly of our ways.  Still, I imagine a thousand nervous fingers madly punching keys on their Blackberries, expecting a fresh batch of places to go, people to see, and things to do.  

I know personally of many people who believe that bringing their work home with them aids and assists those in need.  Worthy causes exist, of course, and the belief among many is working themselves to death provides help to those who would otherwise not have it.  I know others who have built their entire self-esteem, self-image, and self in their vocation, at the expense of any other facet in their life.  This is tragedy to the extreme.  We lose our humanity when we become robotic and monolithic.  DC needs a snow day like this to re-think its priorities and my hope is that it doesn’t take a series of blizzards, both literal and figurative, to change the conventional wisdom.