They had a computer/electronic equipment recycling day in my town yesterday. I had some junk that wasn’t working anymore, so I packed it in a box and headed down to the DPW. I was a little wary, having once gone to a County toxic junk day where you had to wait in a line with your car for almost a half hour before you could drop your stuff off (which reminded me of the gasoline lines of the late 70’s and early 80’s). But no, this went quickly. No big line; there were only two or three cars ahead of me. It was a very efficient operation, just pull up, hand the stuff over to a couple of guys who help you unload, and pull right out. Easy.

The town hired a group called Advanced Recovery, Inc. to collect and recycle the computer junk. I tried to do a search on Advanced Recovery, but couldn’t find too much. They have a web site that says they have two locations, one in Newark, NJ and one in Tennessee. I assume they are run by a bunch of for-profit capitalists. But nonetheless, I wish them well — so long as they are the real deal. I assume that they re-sell what ever is salvagable and dispose of the rest in an environmentally responsible fashion. Their locations should bring jobs to places that sorely need them. Hopefully they don’t dump electronic stuff having mercury and other toxic waste into some abandoned Appalachian coal mine (most computers and electric gizmos in your home have toxic stuff in them; thus the need for special disposal).

Capitalism can be done in an enlightened, socially beneficial manner. Unfortunately, the free-for-all nature of open market competition usually encourages companies, both big and small, to take shortcuts that often put the public in danger (defective products, cheating on pollution laws, charter bus companies that don’t fix things right and hire cowboy drivers, etc.). I just hope that Advanced Recovery Inc. stays “in the light” and avoids “the dark side” of capitalism. The guys that I saw running the show on Saturday looked like groovy people. Let’s hope that our system still allows such guys to do well by doing good.

One more thing. I read a little about the recent comments on Islam that got Pope Ratzinger (Benedict, whatever) into hot water. In my estimation, the problems that cause this kind of thing are twofold: 1.) both sides (the Islamic leaders and the Vatican) are living in the past. A sense of history is a good thing, but the Pope was quoting a 14th century document about an argument between the Byzantium Emperor and a Persian Islamic scholar. And the Muslim authorities who chastised “Il Papa” pretty much took the side of that long-dead scholar. Everyone here is living in the past. 2.) No one involved in this little affair has as much as a smidgeon of humor about it. I don’t think there’s been a pope who could relax and laugh at a joke since John the 23rd. All of his successors, including the popular John Paul II, just took it all way too seriously. And the Islamic institutions . . . . let’s not even go there.

The Pope was hinting that Islam has a bias, however small, towards jihaddist violence, given the story of Muhammed and his warrior conquests. Yea, there’s something to that. But for many Islamic people today, Islam is mostly an institutional religion that presents the old stories as a metaphor for the fervor that should accompany faith in the Almighty. And Christianity, despite the inherent peacefullness of the story of Christ, has shown over the centuries that it knows how to make war and aggression with the best of them.

For better and for worse, Christianity sited itself in areas of the world that have experienced tremendous economic growth over the past half-millenium. The Islamic lands were once prosperous from being located at the crossroads of trade between Europe, Asia and Africa. But today they’re in a slump. Christian Europe got out of its slump (the Dark Ages) after the faithful finally got restless and defied Church authority, so as to advance. The Islamic world hasn’t quite reached that stage yet. So you have two cranky institutions, the Catholic Church (which once ruled an impoverished kingdom and still hasn’t gotten over being marginalized into a mere “spiritual authority”), and Islam (which still rules a kingdom that was once rich and mighty, and hasn’t gotten over that kingdom’s fall into poverty). Neither of them are in the mood right now for laughing, turning the other cheek, and just getting on with living in modern times.

Let’s just hope that Christians and Muslims learn to laugh a bit more and not take their institutions so seriously. Both religions claim to be God’s true representative on the planet Earth. At least one of them has to be wrong. But most likely, they’re both wrong. Hey, some common ground!

I’ve been all geeked out lately, which explains why I’m behind with this blog. I really was never much of a computer head, but my trusty Dell Dimension L667R is getting old (like me), and who knows how much longer it’s got (again, like me). So I decided to go on ebay and get a “lifeboat”, a second computer to keep around as a spare in case of an unexpected crash one fine day. Yea, I do eventually need to get a new computer. But with my finances currently under pressure because of my mother’s home care needs, I just don’t feel like shelling out a grand or so for something decent (yea, I see all those ads by Dell and other companies for “full systems” for less than $500; but when I finally get a new computer, I want something substantial, not an e-mail / video game toy; gonna need a Pentium processor, full business software suite, DVD burner, etc.).

So I put up $70 and bought another old Dimension L, this time an L866R (maybe 6 months younger than my venerable 667). Seemed as though it would be easy to clone the old system to the new, since I have Norton Ghost 2003. BUTTTTT, things turned out to be a bit more complex than I had figured. Well, it’s a long story, but suffice it to say that the new system has taken on a life of its own. I had to put up additional cash (another $170 worth), but now I have a Win 2K system with a CD burner, modem, network card, 80G hard drive, 384M RAM, a KVM switch to go back and forth with the original computer, and pretty much all the software I had with the old system.

Do I really need two computers? No, but it’s nice to be ready, given the degree to which I’ve come to rely on the darn thing over the past 5 years. And since I don’t have anti-virus on the new [old] computer, I can fool around with “resource-hog” programs that don’t run well on the main box, e.g. StarLogo. Once I’m finally ready to get a new system (perhaps with Windows VISTA — yuk), I’m hoping to keep at least one of the old boxes. That should qualify me for permanent geek-dom!

Interesting Article of the Week: While I was slaving over my new ancient computer, the NY Times published an article on some recent medical research that really makes you think. It’s about a series studies which all show there to be a gene that regulates stem cells in a way that makes human beings fall apart as they get older. It’s basically the old-age gene. When you’re young, your stem cells churn away to keep your muscles tight and your skin smooth and your bones and joints strong and your eyes and organs working right. But when you get old, those cells stop knocking out replacements for the worn out cells throughout your body, so your skin wrinkles and your muscles get weak and achy and your joints get rusty and your eyes and heart and everything else just don’t work very well anymore.

Well, in and of itself, that’s not surprising. But what is interesting is the finding that the same process also keeps cancer from happening. OK, it isn’t perfect; in reality, old people get cancer, much more than young people. But without this genetic process and the Ink4 protein that it produces, cancer would be much more prevalent. We’d seem to be in great shape in our 50s and 60s, but out of nowhere we’d all suddenly be dying of cancer. Hardly anyone would make it to 70. (FOOTNOTE: The latest theories about cancer say that it is caused by a series of random mutations that take place in your stem cell genes over time, maybe one mutation every 5 to 10 years. It takes a total of maybe 6 or 7 mutations to fire-up the cancer process, which makes the stem cells go into overdrive and knock out tumor cells in lieu of normal body cells. These mutations can be hastened by environmental factors such as exposure to toxic chemicals or radiation. And some people have genes that make these mutations easier and faster. But even the perfect human in the perfect environment will eventually have cell mutations. At bottom, the question of when these mutations happen is a throw of the dice. I knew a guy who unexpectedly died of leukemia in his 30s. We all tried to explain it away, e.g. he spent time in Buffalo where the water was toxic from Love Canal. But most likely, he was just unlucky; his mutation dice rolled the wrong way. So long as our stem cells kept churning away, sooner or later everyone would get cancer. But the Ink4 protein turns the stem cells down after age 40, lengthening the average time for the 5th, then 6th and 7th mutation to take place, thus putting off the start of the cancer process.)

What a crazy choice nature has given us. Option 1: stay in great shape until you are 50, maybe 60, then be absolutely assured of getting cancer. Option 2: go into a steady decline after age 40, but hold the cancer off longer (or until something else gets you). Well, actually we don’t have that choice; nature (through evolution) already made the decision. We will suffer old age, we will become weak and frail and dependent; but on average we will stay around longer. According to the Times article, medical science isn’t going to find any way around this nasty choice any time soon. The promise that stem cell research will let us live to 100 feeling like a college student all the time has taken a big setback. The dream of 80 years of hot sex has been put on ice. It’s back to reality for today’s youth. Maybe you all should go back to treating old people (like me) nice, because it turns out that you’re probably going to suffer old age too.

PS, my generation was told by science that we would travel to the Moon and Mars for vacation trips. Instead, we got personal computers. Does today’s youth believe science about stem-cell fountains of youth and pollution-less hydrogen cars? Bah, I’ll stick with what I can trust; including my old computers.

Love Lies Bleeding: The young couple living upstairs from me recently decided to take their relationship to the next step, i.e. engagement. In a burst of romantic enthusiasm, the young man decided to celebrate their commitment by decorating his SUV with professions of love. However, the remains of Hurricane Ernesto just came through town, drenching us with several inches of rain. And just as love itself is so often worn down by the storms of life, my neighbor’s windshield poetry was somewhat the worse for it all.

WHY WE STILL NEED LIBERALS: I’ve been reading a liberal book lately. It’s called “What’s The Matter With Kansas?”, by Thomas Frank. I hoped it would be an unbiased, insightful analysis of how the GOP and its social conservatism won the hearts and minds of the hordes out there in the heartland, those who would have done a whole lot better under a Democratic / Liberal government. I hoped it would expose the fallacies of both smothering liberalism and laissez faire conservatism, and put forth some new ideas. But alas, it did not. This book is full of liberal ax-grinding. And that gets on my nerves.

Here’s a quote which exemplifies Mr. Frank’s approach to liberal versus conservative and Democrat versus Republican. He describes a well-off suburb of Kansas City called Mission Hills, which is home to a great many captains of industry and commerce. In describing how most of Kansas is going down the tubes financially, he opines that “the people of Mission Hills are unfazed . . . . they know that poverty rocks. Poverty is profitable. Poverty makes stocks go up and labor come down.”

Now really. Even the wealthy owners of capital have to sell their products and services to someone. They still need a middle class to keep their offices and factories humming. So it can’t be quite that bad.

Or can it? I was listening to Morning Edition on NPR the other morning, and I heard a report on the growing number of families without health insurance. One of the biggest causes is the reluctance of many employers these days (Wal Mart most famously) to give their workers coverage. I heard a Mr. Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute say that expanding the government programs which pick up some of the uncovered workers (such as Medicaid) is exactly the wrong thing to do. Mr. Cannon claimed that the availability of government coverage for the working poor encourages employers not to offer health insurance. He implied that if there were no government alternatives, maybe the companies would be more willing to offer health insurance; the forces of supply and demand for labor would lead them to be nicer. It’s the government that’s making them so mean.

That’s one of those arguments that make a whole lot of sense if you don’t think about them. Since when do workers have the upper hand in the labor market? If this were 1960, you could argue that strong labor unions insure the workers’ bargaining power against mega-corporations (which are sometimes practically the sole employer in a small town, e.g. a mining town in Kentucky or a refinery somewhere in Louisiana). But today, the labor unions are on their knees. The percentage of workers who are members of unions is at an all-time low (12.5%, versus 53% in 1956). Big corporations have a whole lot more power over the terms of employment than individual, unorganized workers do. Big business has effectively used international trade to crush the American working man and woman.

I used to be unsympathetic to unions, as they went too far to protect sloth and inefficiency. I really thought that big business was being reasonable in its demand for worker “give-backs” and deregulation; at first they certainly were. But since Ronald Reagan, big business has gotten greedy. The ridiculous days of early capitalism, where workers died from dangerous machines and pollution, or barely stayed alive on meager wages, are coming back. Big business is truly a heartless monster after all. The rich are becoming filthy rich, the poor are getting poorer, and the middle class is being squeezed out. Somehow the capitalists are doing just fine selling their wares mostly to each other (or pushing the peons to buy on credit). I hate to say it, but perhaps we do need flaming liberals and stodgy unions after all!

The GOP offered America a contract, and the heartland took it. You can have you guns and your God, and we won’t make you sit next to gays and people of color. But in return, we will pick your pocket, take away your economic security, health insurance, clean environment and safe workplace. In return, we leave you with the chance to get rich. Too bad only about 1 in 1000 will even get close. But our mass media will leave you with sweet dreams, wonderful stories of those who have traded rags for riches in our “economy of opportunity”.

Perhaps Howard Dean is a necessary evil after all . . . . Kansas, how long until you figure that out?

Agreeing With the Devil: I usually disagree vehemently with philosopher Daniel Dennett and his loud proclamations that the human mind, in all its glory, has made God irrelevant and unnecessary. Oh yea, Danny, the human mind: the thing that has given the world Nazism, Darfur, neutron bombs, and health care rationalization. You really think those things are so much better than faith in God and participation in religious institutions?

Dennett is right in that religion and faith have frequently been part of the problem. But the core ideals of faith are not to blame, because they still haven’t been tried. Dennett is throwing a whole lot of baby out with the bathwater. Including the “Christ child” of Christmas, which in my opinion is one of the most touching religious mythologies ever to surface on this planet. I may not be a Christian at this point on my journey, but I still have a soft spot in my heart for Christmas.

So I read the transcript of a recent Australian radio interview with Dennett with my usual dismay. However . . . . the guy did say one thing that really hit home. He said that in his research regarding the folly of belief, he found that a whole lot of people who are heavily into religion have some dark secrets that they keep. Here’s the quote:

To me one of the fascinating things that grew out of my own research for this book was that I did a lot of informal, not scientific, but confidential interviews with people who were deeply religious . . . . . one of the most amazing things that emerged from them again and again and again, these people took this as an opportunity to tell me ‘Oh, I didn’t believe a word of it’, but they thought it was so important and it structured their whole lives. They are devoting their lives to their churches or their synagogues; no, they don’t believe that stuff, but they believe in belief.[emphasis added by me]

Yea, Dennett is right. That’s the problem with religion. Religion is supposed to be all about God, but it quickly becomes all about us. Cynics like Dennett believe that to be the fault of God (or the lack of God). I think that it’s our own fault. God is an idea still waiting to be tried. Among many other things.

Oh, the radio program is called “All in the Mind” with Natasha Mitchell. I’m nowhere near Australia, but thanks to the wonder of the Internet, I can stay up with this really interesting show. I very much recommend her show (and her show’s web site).

I’ve been driving back and forth to work along the same route for the past 15 years now (well, I try to take the train one day a week, although it involves a bit of a hike). Yea, mine is not exactly a life of high adventure. I go back and forth repetitiously, almost to the exact same minute each day. Over time, I’ve built up with a list of people to look out for, people that I regularly see along the way. They may be out jogging or power walking or slow walking or waiting for a bus. I have no idea who they are, so I give them fake names. Some of them, anyway.

One of my named characters is Ms. Cheerios. She’s just a middle aged suburbanite out doing some exercise-walking in the early AM. She used to wear a yellow Cheerios T-shirt. The T-shirt is now gone, but Ms. Cheerios is still out there most days, even on the colder and darker mornings. Give her credit for persistence.

Then there’s Grete the Great. Grete is a jogger, and she looks to be a darn serious one. She’s tall and muscular with pulled-back blond hair. She’s frequently out there at 7 am getting in her mileage. She obviously reminds me of Grete Waitz, the 7 time New York Marathon winner from Norway. I always see Grete running in the same direction as I’m driving (Ms. Cheerios, by contrast, is always walking in the opposite direction). During the summer months I sometimes spy her in my rear view mirror wearing sunglasses; that makes me think of her as “terminator-Grete” or “cyber-Grete”, especially when she has the pulse monitor around her arm.

Next, there’s Mr. Squiggleroom. “Squiggie” is an older black fellow who is a devoted power walker. He’s extremely disciplined in his motions, and it seems to keep him in good shape. I got the name for him while watching a tire commercial praising the virtues of a certain brand in its ability to absorb “road-squiggle”. To make the point, the ad showed a group of guys in a power walk race. Thus the inspiration for Mr. Squiggleroom. He was quite a regular there for a long time, at least 5 years (going in the opposite direction to me each day, same as Ms. Cheerios). Then I stopped seeing him late last year. But for the past couple of weeks he’s made a comeback. And that does my heart good.

There are a couple of other guys here and there that I recognize. One guy is frequently out running in the morning, but he never seems to be enjoying it. I think of him as Mr. Suffering. His face is always tilted a bit, looking as though he’s barely gonna make it (and he isn’t all that old either). Then there’s John, an afternoon walker (most of my clientele are seen in the AM). John is somewhat stocky and reminds me of an insurance consultant named John Wilson, who I remember from my days with the National Council of Comp Insurance.

The above characters have been perennials; they’ve been around for at least 5 years or so. But aside from them, there are a handful of others who came and went, who never stayed long enough to get a name. There was the tall, skinny Catholic high school girl at the bus stop near Roseville Avenue in Newark. Last I saw, she seemed to have a boyfriend. Then there’s the old guy from my former barbershop, who I sometimes see right after I pull out of my driveway (I haven’t gone there since I went bald, with the help of a triple razor). And a couple of years back there was a tall, blondish, somewhat vintage woman who I often saw walking into a laundromat in Bloomfield wearing high heels and a skirt cut somewhat above her knees. Every morning at 7. Don’t know what happened to her after the laundromat burned down.

Well, this is just what the mind does when it isn’t properly stimulated. It slides off into fantasy land. It finds its own little world to get interested in. And it’s just as well that we never discover the truth about the objects of our little fantasies. What if Grete the Great’s real name is Nancy or Rosemarie? What if Mr. Squiggleroom is really Robert? And Ms. Cheerios — oh, let’s not even get into that. To me they’ll always be my little fantasy team.

Sometimes I feel the urge to talk about all the positive things about this world. OK, so I will — just for a quick moment. It’s summer. And that’s still a positive thing in my book. Yea, it gets hot and muggy here where I live, and sometimes the bugs can be annoying (although I don’t mind the beetles, and the ladybugs and butterflies are part of the joy of summer). But still, the days are long, the mornings are cool (relatively), the thunderstorms are entertaining (so long as you find your way to safety), the flowers are pretty, and so are the young women. When I was a kid, summer meant swimming and ice cream cones and vacation trips and lemon ice and barbecued burgers. Today, none of those things make my list. Life has changed for me. But there’s still something about summer that makes life a little more user-friendly.

But back to negative things (i.e., let’s get real). Here are two of my pet peeves. First, the way that President George W Bush smiles after answering a challenging question, as if he thinks that he proved his point beyond a doubt. I don’t remember any other president ever doing that. OK, Ron Reagan smiled a lot, but that was more or less a permanent fixture. Actually, Dutch had enough sense to stop smiling when trying to be serious. GWB just doesn’t seem like a US President to me. And that stupid smile has a lot to do with it.

Second pet peeve: David Chalmers. Chalmers is a philosopher who thinks and writes about human consciousness. He’s gotten a lot of attention over the past 10 years, as consciousness research has experienced a renaissance. David is a groovy guy, and no TV or radio special on consciousness is complete without an appearance by him. But when you delve into his theories about consciousness, they make a lot of sense until you start thinking about them. In a nutshell, Chalmers suggests that human consciousness is just a peak form of some entity or event that permeates the universe. Where ever there is information, according to Chalmers, there is consciousness — to some degree, anyway. (Although Chalmers sometimes denies saying this, in fact he does). So consciousness is and isn’t a part of this universe of matter, energy, timespace and the physical laws that govern them. According to Chalmers, there could be a world where consciousness and matter / energy / timespace do NOT coexist. In that world, there could be human-like creatures just like us, who act just like us — but who just don’t experience consciousness (even though they talk about it, in the same fashion that Chalmers and the rest of us who are fascinated by the mystery of human consciousness). Chalmers calls them zombies. They live in a world where consciousness is just not in the air.

Chalmers thinks that this little ‘thought experiment’ proves the validity of his concepts and viewpoints regarding consciousness. But as various other philosophers point out, most notably John Searle, zombie-world is not our world. Perhaps we should stick to things as they are in the world that we live in. Regarding consciousness as we know it, it occurs within the brains of living human beings under certain conditions, i.e. not under anethstesia, not in a coma or deep sleep, etc. We still don’t know exactly what set of conditions lights the flame of consciousness. But it does most logically seem to be a triggered condition, an all-or-nothing event, not something that lodges in varying degree in simple machines such as thermostats, or in macro phenomenon such as the population of China. When you read Chalmers, he makes some good points in his first two or three paragraphs. But it’s probably best to stop right there. Everything that follows is the philosophical equivalent of President Bush’s triumphant little smile.