Kung Fu Hustle

“Kung Fu Hustle”
By Daniel G. Jennings
“Kung Fu Hustle” is one of the wonderful movies that is nothing but fun. Basically the Hustle is a series of action packed comedy skits parodying Kung Fu movie cliché. All of the skits are exciting and thrilling and all of them are absolutely hilarious.
Writer director Stanley Chow has succeeded in doing what his fellow Hong Kong native Jackie Chan couldn’t make a martial arts comedy on the level of the great physical silent comedies of Buster Keaton. It’s all funny, martial arts fans will love the parodies and those unfamiliar with Chinese movies will find it just plain funny.
The movie is made all the better because Chow does a good job of recreating 1930s China. In fact his 1930s city looks more authentic than a lot of American films about the same era. Characters listen to 1930s Chinese records and ride around town in streetcars. That adds to the fun and sets the mood.
As for the plot it’s as silly and convoluted as Frank Miller’s grotesque “Sin City.” An army of fearsome yet inept gangsters called the Ax Gang wages a senseless war on the residents of a tenement called the Pigsty. Fortunately for the residents of the pigsty the landlord, landlady, tailor, noodle maker and neighborhood coolie are Kung Fu masters in disguise. The comedy comes from the efforts of the clumsy gangsters and a pair of moronic small time hoodlums who are trying to join the Ax Gang. As well as the constantly bickering middle aged tenement landlords who turn out to be unstoppable fighters. Just imagine if Fred and Ethel Mertz had been Kung Fu Masters.
This movie works because Chow knows how ludicrous all this Kung Fu stuff is and presents it as such. He has fun with it and that’s why this is a great movie. Instead of trying to make some profound statement or art he just wants to make us laugh. Chow also knows how to emphasize the humanity of his characters which adds to the fun something a lot of Hollywood film makers have forgotten.
I just hope that Chow stays in China and keeps making these comedies. The last thing we need to see is another great Chinese filmmaker or actor turned into a sorry joke by the morons in charge of the American film industry.

Fiddling while Rome Burns

Congress & Media Fiddle While Rome Burns
By Daniel G. Jennings
The United States is facing a series of crises (the healthcare crisis, the energy crisis, the environmental crisis, the budget crisis, and several others I’ve forgotten about) that could culminate in a catastrophe that could rival the Great Depression in magnitude yet our Congress only seems to be interested in political infighting and character assassination.
The Senate is arguing about the filibuster rule and worse nitpicking President Bush’s political appointments the most recent being UN envoy nominee John Bolton. These actions are meaningless political designed to keep Senators from dealing with the nation’s real problems. Take the filibuster rule the Democrats are mad because Republicans want an up and down vote on judges that can’t be blocked by some windbag who wants to strut before the cameras for a few days. Just imagine if all the time, energy, resources and money that the Democrats are going to waste on this filibuster battle were spent on electing more Democratic Senators with an agenda of actually doing something.
The political nominee battles are even worse, there probably isn’t a Republican political nominee that the Democrats can’t find something wrong with. Mr. Bolton is too aggressive for their tastes, so he is a bad diplomat. Of course if Mr. Bolton were agreeable he’d be attacked as too passive.
By placing a microscope on the nominees the Senators can then spend endless hours holding hearings and investigating the nominees. This leads to political battles and plenty of media attention so Senators can get plenty of TV interviews.
In the house the battle is more troublesome Republican Majority Leader Tom DeLay is under attack for ethics violations. Now, I imagine these violations are real but are they any worse than what a hundred other Congressmen are doing? No.
So why is DeLay being investigated? Simple it gives Democrats something to do they can attack the evil conservative from Texas and score brownie points with the New York media. Republicans can then run to their embattled leader’s defense. This creates a political battle of good vs evil that gives Congressmen something to do besides deal with the nation’s problems.
This situation is made worse by the self-proclaimed news media which ignores the nation’s problems while devoting endless amounts of attention to the political squabbles. The media personalities in New York and Washington don’t have to leave their comfortable studios and their coffee cups. Nor do they have to risk offending the big corporations that pay their bills by reporting on something potentially controversial.
The hypocrisy of this situation becomes all the more apparent when the public ignores the shoddy political circus and average people start crabbing that nothing is being done. Instead of taking real action the elitists condemn average people as ignorant oafs who aren’t interested in public affairs. Why should average people be interested in politics that are about as real and have as much bearing on their lives as an episode of American Idol? At least American Idol is entertaining the sorry show from Washington these days lacks even that quality.
The frightening thing about this wave of do nothingism disguised as political squabbling has a precedent in American history. Today’s politics resemble those of the 1850s when Congress and the political leadership discussed and debated everything but the major problem facing the nation: slavery and its unholy stepchild succession. Congress spent all its time debating the issue of expanding slavery west, a non issue since most Western states were settled by anti slavery northerners. Such measures as the Homestead Act, the Transcontinental Railroad and the creation of new political divisions were shelved while Congress did nothing. Nor was this tomfoolery confined to Capitol Hill, things at the White House were just as bad. President James Buchanan’s answer to this crisis was to ignore secessionism and send the army to Utah to deal with the moral threat posed by Mormon polygamy just as today’s politicians ignore the energy crisis while talking about the menace of homosexuality. Buchanan didn’t use the military against the successionists or try and negotiate a deal between the slave holders and their enemy to preserve the peace.
Finally, average Americans sick and tired of the do nothingism elected a president who tried to do something, Abraham Lincoln. They did this by rejecting the two established political parties Whigs and Democrats and supporting a new party called the Republicans. The result was the Civil War that led to hundreds of thousands of deaths and nearly destroyed the country.
The moral of the lesson is clear those who fiddle while Rome burns are just as likely to perish in the inferno they unleashed as the average people they dismiss as ingrates. The question we have to ask ourselves is have our leaders learned this lesson or not. Judging by the content of the average Sunday morning news show I’d say not.

RTD

High Oil Prices Should Make RTD Revise FasTracks
By Daniel G. Jennings
Sky-high oil prices should force the Regional Transportation District should reconsider and revise key elements of its ambitious FasTracks transit expansion scheme.
The elements of FasTracks RTD should rethink are the proposed diesel-powered commuter rail lines to Denver International Airport, Boulder and North Denver and the bus rapid transit line to Boulder. RTD should reconsider bus rapid transit and diesel rail because buses and diesel trains run on diesel fuel which is made from oil. Since oil prices are skyrocketing, energy costs for those forms of transit will skyrocket as well. Bus transit will be hit with a double whammy, not only do buses run on diesel fuel, they also use rubber tires which are largely made from oil.
RTD decided to go with bus rapid transit and diesel rail because its leaders thought the district would save money by not utilizing light rail which requires the construction and maintenance of costly electric power lines. This strategy is now called into question because the money RTD might save by not putting in power lines could be eaten up by rising oil costs.
It is time for RTD to take another look at the Bus Rapid Transit and Diesel rail lines and consider light rail to North Denver, DIA and Boulder. Or at least electrified commuter rail lines like those in Chicago, New York, Philadelphia and Boston.
Bus Rapid Transit has another draw back it is limited in the number of it can haul. Buses haul around half as many people as light rail cars can and they have operating costs. They require more maintenance and more drivers because they can’t be connected together to create trains. The most a bus can haul is a few dozen people, a train can haul hundreds of people.
If high oil prices cause massive increases in transit use, the buses may not be able to keep up with the demand. And remember Denver’s population is expected to double or even triple in the next few decades. The buses may not be able to do the job, and they will cost much more to operate than light rail or electric commuter rail.
We must also remember that the costs of building light rail or electric commuter rail will be higher in the future than now. The sooner we build electric rail the less it will cost. The more electric rail we build now the more we’ll be able to expand it in the future to keep up with our city’s growth and increased demands on the system.
The question then is do RTD’s leaders have the guts to admit that they may have made a mistake by going with diesel rail and bus rapid transit? More importantly do they have the wisdom and foresight to correct that mistake before it costs us a lot of tax money?

higher education

State of Higher Education
By Daniel G. Jennings
There is nothing more depressing and inspiring of hope than the state of modern higher education and the students it produces. For higher education is exceeding beyond our wildest dreams in the fields of science, engineering and technology and failing miserably in what might be termed the "arts" or liberal arts.
We are turning out more scientists, engineers and physicians than at any time in human history and those scientists, engineers and physicians are of a far better quality than those of ages past. Our scientists are achieving so many wonders that their accomplishments are no longer even news. Our astronomers are now peering to the edge of the universe, our geneticists and biologists are working with the building blocks of life, our doctors are now successfully treating and occasionally even curing most diseases, our engineers are creating technology so advanced our entrepreneurs and politicians don’t know what to do with it.
Meanwhile on the other side of the college campus what we call the liberal arts: Literature, languages, history, political science, art, philosophy, architecture, journalism, the social sciences has become a bad joke. Our science schools can turn out men and women who can play with the building blocks of life and peer to the ends of the universe while liberal arts schools can’t turn out somebody as well read in the classics as the average English public school boy of the 1880s. We can churn out scientists who can learn the secrets of the universe but we can’t educate students in the basics of history, literature, art, philosophy and ethics.
We now have professors of history who teach that Communism was a good thing in denial of historical fact, professors of literature who tell students not to read Shakespear because he was a white man, professors of political science who deny modern economics, professors of philosophy who teach that humans can’t communicate with each other and professors of ethics who teach that animals are deserving of the same rights as humans. Many of these people are hailed as geniuses even though their theories are nonsense, their writings idiotic and much of their teaching little more than an attempt to deny reality. For example Peter Singer, esteemed professor of ethics at Princeton tells his students that apes and dogs are entitled to the same rights as men and Noam Chomsky of MIT icon of the left assures his readers that the United States government is run by a secret cabal of Nazis and public relations men.
This sorry phenomenon has many causes, some easy to see and others harder to grasp. First, I suppose we have simply neglected the arts especially literature and history for well over a century. We have spent vast fortunes on science precious little on history, philosophy or literature or architecture. Society has ignored these fields and allowed them to slumber in the 19th century. Has little real or original work been done in these fields since the 19th Century? Has there been a single 20th Century philosophical movement that wasn’t a dumbed-down regurgitation of some 19th Century German theory? Isn’t Cultural Marxism nothing but Hegel half warmed over and stripped of his conservative trappings? Deconstructionism is nothing but Nietzsche denuded of his Germanisms and Classical Roots. What is the nature worship of the environmentalists but updated Transcendentalism minus the romantic cultural heritage?
Originality has all but banished from the philosophy departments of our universities. For all his faults Marx was trying to come up with an original theory, his modern interpreters are simply parroting and distorting his observations.
Other fields fare no better, literature today is but a pale imitation of what we had even in the 1920s. Journalism is fast becoming a bad joke and political science, well what is that? Have any of the political science professors improved upon the observations the Founding Fathers made in the Federalist Papers? Perhaps it’s time to give up the conceited notion that bureaucratic institutions like universities can create art or philosophy, it’s obvious from the state of the arts and philosophy that they can’t.
The situation is made worse by multi culturalism, a sort of ignorant idealism that teaches all cultures are equal then only praises a few cultures its adherents find admirable. In particular the multiculturalists celebrate a few tribal cultures such as Native Americans or more precisely sanitized and romanticized distortions of those cultures. They don’t actually study those cultures they say they were good and leave it at that. Or emphasize the sufferings real or imaginary of the native at the hands of the imperialist real or imagined.
This sorry state of affairs is sustained by the fact that the arts have become refuges for all the cranks and crackpots not welcome in normal society. Those studying science have to base their conclusions on hard evidence, those studying arts only need present an interesting theory. Nobody could teach astronomy students that the earth is flat without somebody calling for a mental health professional. Yet you can teach ethics students that animals deserve the same rights as humans or history students that Mao was a genius whose works benefitted the Chinese people and not have to worry about your mental health being called into question. Even though those propositions are clearly false and verge on lunacy.
Liberal arts professors are free to teach whatever they want because nobody cares what they teach or believe. Liberal arts faculties are free to expel members who vote Republican and award those teach that the United States government is no better than Nazi Germany because nobody gives a damn what they do.
The arts are dysfunctional as our architecture and what passes for literature attests to. We have architects who can build almost anything yet put up buildings that are repulsive and the antithesis of beauty or function. We have writers who write incomprehensible novels nobody reads that win the major literary prizes because somebody (who probably hasn’t read their writings) likes their politics.
What the result of this situation will be I don’t know but here’s a guess. We’ll produce a generation of scientists who can solve all of our problems with their advances yet they won’t know what those problems are because there are no writers, artists, philosophers and critics deserving of those titles left to tell them.
The scientist having just invented the time machine or true artificial intelligence will wander over to the school of philosophy to ask the philosophers about the meaning of his invention. Only to find the professor of philosophy trying to have a conversation about 17th Century Apache literature (note there was no such thing as 17th Century Apache literature the Apaches were illiterate until modern times) with his dog. The dog having just been awarded an associate professor’s job at the school of philosophy because it is an intelligent being theoretically equal to the human professors there.
Maybe then we’d better hope that the scientists do invent the time machine, so they can go back to the 19th Century and transport some real philosophers, artists, writers, poets, architects and historians into our era to recreate the lost liberal arts.

oil conspiracies

Oil in the News
By Daniel G. Jennings
People who wonder why Americans have no respect for journalists should take a look at the news media’s deliberate ignorance of the biggest story of our times: the depletion of oil and the resulting high gasoline prices.
Average Americans, the vast majority of whom drive and put up with high prices at the pump are all too aware of this story. Yet the big media with the interesting exception of the Drudge Report has systematically buried it.
Take my home town’s leading newspaper The Denver Post gas prices have been soaring for weeks in the Mile High City and average people have been complaining. Yet front page news has focused on the moronic antics of University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill, the state budget crisis, and worse.
One recent Front Page story in the Post the owners of a sled dog business were shooting dogs that were injured or sick. Excuse me folks is that a story? When I was a kid and my parents didn’t have money to spare for the vet but did have some ammo left for my dad’s target pistol and a couple of our pets got sick. Guess how dad put the pets out of their misery? I’m sure a lot of working class Americans can relate that story. Remember Old Yeller?
The Post can’t see high gas prices as a crisis but they think some business guy shooting sick dogs instead of wasting money on veterinarians is a story. It would laughable if the national media wasn’t as pathetic.
On Sunday April 10, I tuned into the Sunday morning news talk fests, the big story was the Pope’s death. The big crisis facing the country was the Senate’s upcoming vote on the selection of federal judges and the selection of the Pope. I watched two of them before I got sick and shut off the set. Fox News didn’t even mention high gas prices. ABC’s show with former Clinton Propaganda Minister George Stephenopolis was worse. The pundits on that show mentioned high gas prices because somebody in the Bush administration correctly that high gas prices were the real cause of Bush’s low approval ratings.
The talking heads on ABC who included George Will and Cokie Roberts quickly pooh pahed this notion. They stated that adjusted for inflation gas prices were higher back in 1982 and so on. Then quickly went on to say that the Bush Social Security reform plan is the real reason for low approval reasons. Since half the population doesn’t know about this plan how does this affect approval ratings?
When I saw this, I felt like a French peasant back in 1789 who had just heard about Marie Antoinette telling starving peasants to eat cake instead of bread. The arrogant media elitists might not notice a dollar rise in gas prices it won’t affect their income based on $300,000 a year salaries but to Joe and Jane Public it’s a major expenditure. A lot of people won’t be going on vacation this summer because of those high gas prices. A lot of working folks will be making wonderful decisions like do I buy health insurance for the family or pay for gas for the car so I can get to work to make money to pay the bills?
The arrogant elitists in the newsrooms can’t see this. After all, their sacrifice will be I guess I don’t go to the movies or the ball game this weekend because gas prices are a little higher. Average people wondering how to buy food to feed the kids and gas to run the car to get to work will have little sympathy for them.
The media elitists will pay for their shortsightedness on this matter as will the politicos. Average people in the lunchrooms of the workplaces of America are already talking. They’re crabbing about high gas prices and wondering about the unseen conspiracy behind them? Sooner or later, some third rate politician will overhear this talk and start naming the members of this conspiracy and a lot of the arrogant fools in the newsrooms will find their names on the list of this modern day McCarthy. I can’t wait, to see the media elitists pay for their shortsightedness, I just hope that our political leaders aren’t as stupid as the self proclaimed journalists on the oil issue.

More Oil

How High Oil Prices Could Affect Us
By Daniel G. Jennings
Even the media is ignoring it, average Americans are probably wondering how rising oil prices will affect their lives and society at large.
The first people who will feel the pinch of high oil prices will be the group of Americans who can least afford it: the rural poor. With the disappearance of traditional small town businesses and the rural communities they support rural residents are forced to drive long distances in order to do everyday things like shop and go to the doctor. It’s not uncommon for rural residents to drive seventy miles to get to Wal-Mart.
If gas prices keep going up, rural poor and working class will have no choice but to move into the cities. This of course will deprive small towns of taxpayers, workers in businesses and other people they need to survive. The first casualty of the Great Gas Shortage will be small town life, many small towns will die out and become ghost towns because of this catastrophe.
Many cities and suburban areas will experience social disruption because of an influx of poor rural whites, poor rural blacks, poor rural Hispanics and poor rural Native Americans. I’m sure a lot of yuppies will be shocked to see poor whites living in their local housing project or ghetto. There will am I sure be turf wars between urban gangs and new coming gangs of poor white kids from the country side. Since the country boys are probably better with guns than the city boys there could be some interesting drug turf wars over the next few years.
Rural areas will get hit by a double whammy average people won’t be able to afford to live there because of high fuel prices while high fuel prices hurt agriculture. The looser will be family farms, corporate farmers will be able to afford the high fuel prices and absorb the cost of converting to new energy sources, family farmers won’t. The traditional American rural lifestyle based on family agriculture could be the greatest casualty of the fuel shortage.
In the cities and suburbs the thing average people will notice first and most will be the prices. The price of virtually everything will go up because all products are delivered by trucks which run on diesel fuel. Since American trains are pulled by diesel locomotives there will be little saving using rail transport. Food costs will go up because farming which relies upon diesel powered tractors will be more expensive as will transport. Then there’s plastic virtually everything we use these days cars, phones, computers, containers is made from plastic much of which is made from oil those prices will go up true. Yes, we can switch to plastics made from something like soy but that will cost money and take years.
There will be other casualties Americans will have to give up a lot of their recreation, boats, motorcycles, ATVs, snow mobiles run on gasoline. A lot of people will give these things up and grandma and grandpa will probably have to park their RV. The great American vacation will be affected, instead of going to the lake or the cabin, Americans will instead end up going to the beach or the movies.
With flying more expensive many people will go back to trains or buses. Many people may not end up taking a vacation for years until they get done building the high speed rail lines. Las Vegas Casinos and Orlando theme parks may get shuttered for a few years. As will Colorado ski areas, they’ll reopen when the high speed train service starts up but they won’t be the same.
Closer to home, fuel prices will greatly affect real estate prices. A lot of pricey outlying homes, second homes, ski condos and rural ranches will suddenly become worthless. Many expensive homes will be worthless because they aren’t in walking distance of the bus stop or the light rail line. On the flip side a lot of formerly slum housing in inner cities and older suburbs is going to be worth a lot of money. Formerly poor inner city areas will see intense disruption as the upper and middle classes pour in and displace the poor. This is already happening in parts of New York like Brooklyn and Harlem. In the future we could see a reversal of the present urban living pattern, the poor living far out in formerly middle class suburbs, the upper and middle class living downtown in former slums.
So how should average people prepare for the gas shortage? Well, first choose your housing carefully if you’re living in a distant suburb or small town it’s a good time to move out. Look around for a home in a smaller city, a traditional main street town, a traditional suburb or downtown area. Then carefully evaluate it, if need be can you walk to things like the grocery store, the discount store, the clothing store etc. Can you walk to recreational activities like movies or the park. Can your kids walk to school and can you walk to things like church if need be. Is there transit probably bus service nearby and how good is the transit will it take you where you want to go. In other words can the bus get you to work and back if need be? Take it from an experienced transit rider there’s only way to evaluate transit service and that’s to actually ride it. Don’t believe the claims of the real estate agent or the transit agency’s web site, get on the bus and take a ride.
Beyond that investing in a lower gas mileage car would be probably be a wise move. It might not be a bad idea to buy a decent bicycle if you like them. A motorcycle or motor scooter might also be a wise investment.
Talking your parents and other older residents into moving into the city would be a wise move at this juncture. Elderly people who can’t walk far will be especially hard hit many of them drive bigger older cars that get lousy gas mileage. Such individuals should be moved into senior apartment complexes or houses in areas with good bus service. Frail elderly people will need somebody younger and stronger to protect them. Especially if lots of young hoodlums are roaming around with guns looking for gas.
The worst case scenario would be the Road Warrior scenario. Remember the first Mad Max movie the highways are full of vicious thugs seeking gasoline at all costs. This being America a lot of them will have guns but no gasoline so they’re going to use the guns to get gas. The authorities faced with such a situation will have little choice but to declare martial law.
My guess is most people will survive the Great Oil Shortage but they won’t be very comfortable in their survival.

Pope

The Pope
By Daniel G. Jennings
The death of Pope John Paul II and the media frenzy surrounding it expose and underscore a fascinating phenomenon the development of an ancient and utterly archaic institution into one of the most influential forces in the world.
John Paul II is the most popular and influential pope of all time and possibility the most popular and influential religious leader and individual in human history because of the modern media and its cult of celebrity. The Pope and the Vatican media machine around him astutely manipulated the media to vastly increase their influence. They did this by making the Pope into a sort of rock star putting him on TV, having him fly around the world and tour like a rock star and holding mass rallies that made the faithful feel like they were part of the event. A technique used to great effect by Hitler and Mao as well.
The Pope did this at the right time, as political leaders around the world were falling. Politicians and kings were getting smaller and weaker and more human because of media and television. Television in particular destroys the cult of leadership by bringing the leader right into the homes of the governed and showing him or her to be just another person. Especially in real time, we got to see how nasty and petty Richard Nixon was, observe Gerald Ford’s clumsiness first hand and watch Jimmy Carter’s mumbling and bungling. When Fidel Castro and Saddam Hussein appear on TV they look and act like comic opera buffoons rather than fearsome dictators. Television destroyed both Nikita Khrushchev and Boris Yeltsin by exposing them as drunken clowns.
John Paul II was about the only leader of modern times who figured out how to use television to make himself appear larger than life. He looked and acted exactly as a Pope should. It is no coincidence that John Paul like another man with whom he shared the world stage, Ronald Reagan, was a former actor. He acted the part and acted it well.
The Vatican also figured out how to preserve the mystery of the faith by not showing too much of the Pope. His appearances were selective and carefully choreographed. He moved slowly and methodically instead of frantically running around like most modern politicians. When he appeared the effect was dramatic and startling rather than hurried and confused.
The Vatican has increased its influence in the world through a brilliant two fold strategy of astutely manipulating the media and sticking fast to Catholic morality and dogma. Since the church is not afraid to talk to the media and work closely with reporters its always assured of an audience. And since the church means what it says even people who don’t agree with it or even like much of its teachings will listen because they actually respect the church and its leadership.
The old mainline Protestant denominations in the United States and the state Protestant churches in Europe lost their influence because they compromised too much. Instead of acting as moral authorities criticizing society and holding fast to Christian doctrine they adopted to society and became about as morally influential as department stores.
This of course is an odd development because the Catholic Church is faced with declining physical influence in some parts of the world particularly Europe and the US. There’s the shortage of priests and the falling attendance at Mass particularly in Europe. The church has also failed to influence governments to implement its policies, the death penalty is still practiced in America and abortion is legal virtually everywhere.
The Catholic Church has an almost instinctive ability to discern the spirit of the age and adapt to it. Today, the Pope and his minions are highly visible filling our TV screens on an almost daily basis and flooding the media with press releases and sound bites. Yet, just fifty or sixty years ago the Vatican kept an extremely low profile. Largely because the Popes of that time knew taking a high profile stand would put them in danger from the Nazis and the Communists. The Vatican only survived Hitler and Stalin because it didn’t get in their way and give them a pretext to destroy it. No institution then is a better judge of the times than the papacy.
There of course are troubling aspects to the vast influence of the Pope. Unlike traditional political figures and leaders, the Pope appears to be accountable only to God. The Pope is the most influential man in the world yet he is accountable to no temporal authority, the college of Cardinals has only one major purpose to elect a new Pope. Since it’s members are appointed by the Pope it rarely challenges the Pope’s authority.
The Vatican and the Catholic Church in general get little scrutiny from the media. Generally, the media fawns over the Pope, priests and bishops. Secular reporters seem to have an almost worshipful respect of the Catholic clergy that the church uses to great effect. Rarely does a representative of the church get challenged on anything in the media even when the church is doing wrong. Critics of the church are dismissed and legitimate criticism of its influence are rarely heard.
This gives the Pope almost unlimited media influence, fortunately John Paul II was a great and good man, a true servant of God but I worry about that much influence in the hands of any person. Its as close to absolute power as a person can weld these days and we should remember what Lord Acton wrote back in the 19th Century, “absolute power corrupts absolutely.” We should well remember that Lord Acton was writing about the papacy when he invented that cliché and hope and pray that the next Pope is as good a man as John Paul II.

Heinlein

Heinlein
By Daniel G. Jennings,
Master Blogger
I just got done reading "For Us the Living"* the first novel written by Robert A. Heinlein, the greatest science fiction writer who ever lived. This book was written in the late 1930s and rejected by publishers at the time because it was too radical largely because Heinlein advocated sexual freedom. Today it seems old hat but at the time it was radical.
Heinlein was forced to make his living in the pulps as a science fiction writer and children’s book writer for the next twenty years not allowed to write adult novels again until the late 1950s. Then like another neglected literary master, Sinclair Lewis, Heinlein revolutionized American writing and was forgotten for it.
Since he wrote science fiction and held unfashionable political opinions, Heinlein knew he’d never win the Nobel Prize, or the Pulitzer Prize or be honored by the literary elite. He would never get into the pantheon of great American writers alongside people like Hemingway and Steinbeck. Largely because Heinlein, like Sinclair Lewis, challenged and criticized all aspects of society he was just as wont to knock the left’s sacred cows as he was the right’s. Heinlein criticized bankers but he also attacked bureaucrats and politicians. He criticized religion as a threat to freedom but he was just as skeptical and fearful of psychiatry and social engineering. Heinlein liked and respected the military and for all his criticism of American society he was an old fashioned patriot who never wavered.
Unlike Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke whose science fiction could be dismissed as flights of the imagination Heinlein wrote about basic human questions, sex religion, war, freedom and dared challenge conventional thinking. Unlike most intellectuals Heinlein was critical of pacifism and believed peace should be based on military might.
Heinlein was one of the few literary figures in America to denounce the evil of Communism. Unlike most American intellectuals Heinlein had a healthy dislike of Europe which he saw as a source of barbarism and tyranny. He was also a promoter of sexual equality, sexual freedom and privacy long before such things were fashionable. Yet Heinlein was willing to attack such liberal sacred cows as the Peace Corps in his work.
The scope and breadth of Heinlein’s vision as expressed in "For Us the Living" is incredible. In this book, written in 1938, Heinlein predicted that Hitler would commit suicide by shooting himself, that Nazi Germany would collapse because it lacked the resources to fight a protracted war, both things happened. Heinlein predicted a United Europe that would eventually collapse. He failed to predict American involvement in World War II but rightly predicted McCarthyism a hysterical anti-Communist crusade in the 1950s.
Some of the other predictions are also interesting, Heinlein predicted that the United States government in the year 2086 would be based upon respecting the right to privacy of its citizens. Today of course much of our politics is dedicated to fights over rights like abortion, contraception, freedom to read, the right to bear arms etc.
Heinlein predicted televangelism and the Religious Right as well. He predicted that extreme fundamentalists led by television preachers would seriously try to limit Americans religious freedom in the late 1930s and early 40s. Heinlein also predicted that these people would discredit religion and force average people to rise up and take action against the religious extremists. Heinlein’s criticism and skepticism of religion and championing of reason are things we should well remember in this era where too many thinkers champion spirituality and cite religion as a basis of morality.
Some of Heinlein’s other predictions are notable he predicted that private automobiles would be replaced by mass transit. That a system of socialized medicine would have to be introduced and that the government would one day have to provide income to citizens. In terms of technology he predicted people movers, television, magnetic levitation, high speed air travel, genetic engineering.
Heinlein was no dogmatist unlike Ayn Rand he realized that pure capitalism was unworkable and massive government intervention in the economy unavoidable. In particular he saw that entrepreneurs and businessmen could just as easily be hindrances to progress as promoters of progress. Yet, he refused to buy into the silly dogma of Communism and saw clearly the threat Communism posed.
Heinlein’s attitude to Communism was interesting, he backed Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan because he believed they would be more effective in fighting Communism. Many were horrified by Heinlein’s decision to back Goldwater (whose personal beliefs on such issues as sex were close to Heinlein’s) in 1964, yet in light of the needless death and destruction caused by the Vietnam War launched by the enlightened liberal Johnson we can see that Heinlein might have been right.
Heinlein’s works are well worth rereading today because they put our world in a very different light. In particular they show many of its shortcoming and point to a better world that can be created by the human spirit and American ingenuity.
* "For Us The Living: A Comedy of Customs" by Robert A. Heinlein, Scribner, New York, 2004.

Oil Depletion

As gasoline prices rise many of us are wondering how we as a nation and a people should react to the scenario.
Well first we should conserve, we should drive less and drive vehicles that burn less oil. Yet we should remember that conservation while certainly a great thing to do is a stopgap matter. No matter how we much we increase gas mileage the oil is still running out. In the long run all conservation does is pass the problem along to future generations.
Second we should look for or work on alternatives to oil. Some alternatives such as electric cars and hydrogen powered cars are impractical with today’s technology. Others such as making fuel from plant materials are doable but they’re going to be very expensive. Obviously we’re going to spend a lot of money on this.
More importantly we should switch as much of our plastics industry as possible over to plant derived plastics. The majority of people don’t realize it but much of our plastic and many of our chemicals are made from oil. Fortunately, much if not most of this can also be made from plants and the Department of Agriculture has already done much of the research needed to make this possible.
Third we have to take advantage of the alternative ground transportation technology that doesn’t need oil which is available right now electric powered rail. Unlike hydrogen electric powered rail is an old and proven technology that’s been around for nearly a hundred and thirty years. We don’t have to do expensive research to build electric trains, trolley cars, subways and monorails all we have to do is pull the plans off the shelf.
Electrifying our railroad system is feasible but it will be very expensive. Railroad electrification and the creation of new light rail, streetcar, trolley bus, subway, monorail and other electric transit system in our cities will cost big money. However, it won’t cost much more than the money we already spend on highway and airport construction and airline bail outs. The federal government spends $140 billion a year on highways and Uncle Sam already allocates around $50 billion for urban mass transit.
From a structural standpoint much of America is well prepared for such new transportation systems. The Interstate Highway Corridors in the countryside and the freeway corridors in the cities and suburbs would be ideal locations for high speed electric rail or even maglev (magnetic levitation) rail lines. Since these corridors have already been disturbed so rail construction along them won’t do much environmental damage and they serve most destinations. Such an electric rail network might be the only hope our economy especially industry has if the cost of air travel becomes prohibitive.
The cities present us with another set of problems, subway construction is expensive but construction of surface rail lines in freeway right of ways and along old rail lines provides a cheaper alternative. Utilizing surface routes could enable transit systems to use double decker train cars which can carry a lot more people and take up less room.
Street level transit will be a bigger challenge, oddly enough suburbs especially newer high density suburbs may have an advantage here. The wide parkway type streets in many suburbs would be perfect routes for street car and light rail lines. In many suburbs light rail could be installed without removing homes or businesses. Such lines wouldn’t disrupt traffic that much. Modern low floor trams mean that expensive and elaborate stations are not needed.
Older cities with narrower streets and more compact neighborhoods would have a disadvantage here. One solution already in use in San Francisco, Boston and Ohio would be to bring back trolley buses that is buses getting electric power from overhead lines.
The question is where is the electricity to run these trains going to come from? Since current solar and wind technology can’t produce enough power and natural gas is running out the answer will be coal and nuclear. Yes, coal is dirty and nuclear is potentially dangerous. Fortunately we can overcome these shortcomings well run nuclear reactors as the US and British navy’s submarine fleets have been proving for nearly fifty years can be operated safely in the most dangerous conditions and new scrubbing technologies can make coal emissions cleaner.
In the long run there are other technologies that might bail us out. Fusion power (which probably won’t be available for about forty years if ever) would be a far safer and cheaper version of nuclear power. Solar power might also be collected in space and beamed down to earth by satellites someday. Both fusion and space solar could potentially generate vast amounts of power but that power would be electricity which without great increases in battery efficiency would be far more practical for use in rail than in cars and planes.
Therefore the best answer to increasing oil depletion and rising gas prices is still summed up in two words: electric rail. The question is how do we get our leaders to say those two words and start thinking about them?