Being an eternal student, I should report in every now and then as to what I’m currently studying. Recall that I’m an old guy, long out of school. I study things simply for the beauty of it. I’m not taking a course; I’m not going to be graded; I’m not going to get a new job from it. It makes absolutely no difference to anyone or anything that my brain is still stuck in school. Except maybe to me, because I like to do it. So here’s what I’m doing in terms of learning these days:

1.) The Roman Empire

Course Material: CD lecture series “Rome and the Barbarians” by The Great Courses; The Immense Majesty: A History of Rome and the Roman Empire, Thomas Africa; Handbook to Life in Ancient Rome, Lesley Adkins and Roy Adkins.

Initial Impressions: This is where civilization came from? This great empire was built on the subjugation of independent peoples and cultures surrounding the Mediterranean Sea through military aggressiveness. Well, I guess you can’t make an omelet without cracking some eggs; look at what had to be done to native Americans and African slaves in order to build the American empire. If I could make but one suggestion for future generations, it would be “no more empires”. Instead, let’s have a world full of little nation-states about 200 miles wide, tops. They can still build coalitions to do interesting things like explore space or find cures for cancer. But let’s get rid of the big, militarily dominating empires. The break-up of the Soviet Union was a step in the right direction. The European Union, luckily, doesn’t seem destined to become much more than a trade block. And hey, what would be so wrong with Iraq breaking up into three mini-nations?

One good thing about studying the Roman Empire: it helps you to understand science fiction, especially the Star Trek / Star Wars kind. Almost all of the “space invasion” movies (e.g., Fourth of July) and TV shows (isn’t there a new one on ABC these days?) are based on the fear that someday, some Romans from another Galaxy are going to come along and decide that our planet would make a good addition to their empire. In the process, they would do to us what Rome did to Gaul, Spain, Carthage, Greece, Israel, Dacia, Armenia, etc. Or what the early American state did to the Cherokees, Choctaws, Seminoles, Navajo, Mohawk, Sioux, Apache, Crow, etc. Oh dear, a taste of our own medicine. How bitter.

2.) Quantum Theory

Course Material: Introducing Quantum Theory, J.P. McEvoy and Oscan Zarate; Quantum Reality, Nick Herbert.

Initial Impressions: My initial impressions of Quantum Theory were formed long ago. I’ve been trying to figure out just what all the fuss is about since I was in college. Only now am I beginning to realize just how weird the micro-world really is. Only in my old age can I grasp just why the results of the double-slit electron experiment are so strange. Electrons and light particles are really something like traveling blurs or blobs that cover an area much larger than the particle itself, with the particle sort-of existing everywhere in the blob, but nowhere in particular; not until some act of measurement takes place. This blurry blob has wave-like properties; sort-of, anyway. Also, when this blob comes upon a fork in the road, it goes both ways — sort-of. Yup, definitely pretty weird.

3.) Human Consciousness

Course Material: Consciousness, An Introduction, Susan Blackmore; Introducing Consciousness, D. Papineau, H. Selina; The Mystery of Consciousness, John R. Searle.

Initial Impressions: Consciousness at first seems rather obvious. But try to explain it, and it gets kind-of like quantum theory. Eventually, you start talking about a little person in your head watching a screen. And what is inside that little person’s head? Another little person, ad infinitem like Russian dolls? Ultimately, about the only thing we can say about what consciousness is like, is that it’s like being conscious. We more-or-less hit a dead end, maybe a limit of knowledge (just as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle acts as a dead-end to knowledge in the quantum world).

I personally think that a lot can be said about consciousness and its place in our experience by studying human evolution and the development of the mind in a child. Compared with other species, we humans have the ability to think abstractly. We use language as the way to memorialize (and share) our abstractions. One of our biggest abstractions is the concept of ourselves. And once we grasp that concept, we start having emotions about it. That’s what consciousness is ultimately all about, an on-going emotional reaction to a jumbled mix of what’s presently coming thru our senses, what we remember, what we believe, what we hope for and fear (consciously and sub-consciously), and what we had for breakfast. Emotions evolved in animal species so as to increase the brain’s activity in response to exceptional conditions (proximity of food, perception of danger, opportunity for sex). Humans turned this higher level of brain processing into an almost constant thing (although we still have increased brain activity during times of danger or sexual arousal; we never completely leave the jungle).

But — nice as all that sounds, it still doesn’t solve the “hard problem”, which is “just what IS this consciousness of feelings???” A lot of consciousness scientists say that we will someday understand the ultimate nature of conscious experience, but the more I study it, the more I have my doubts. Psychologists, philosophers, and neuroscientists are coming up with all kinds of interesting observations about the workings of the brain and the mind; unlike my evolutionary abstraction and “reflective emotions” hypothesis, theirs are carefully specified and supported by empirical evidence (my idea is mostly SWAG, stupid wild-ass guessing). A handful of them seem to think that they’ve said enough, and that the “hard problem” is (or will soon be) satisfactorily resolved. But my impression is that they’ve hardly scratched the surface, and a consensus of experts appears to agree. I personally don’ t believe that such a consensus will ever evolve, unless a wave of mass delusion overtakes the academic world (which does occasionally happen).

Over the past 400 years or so, science has pushed back the shroud of mystery through which humankind once looked upon the world. Earthquakes and lightening and other mighty phenomenon are now explainable and predictable things. At present, the Big Bang remains a bit of a mystery, but superstring theory may eventually explain it. Quantum phenomenon cannot be understood in the way that everyday events in our world are, but we do have scientific and mathematical tools that elucidate the micro-world. They may even make practical use of strange quantum events (e.g., the development of quantum computing). But as to whether or not the mystery of human consciousness will ever yield to mathematical models or computer analysis, that’s the BIG BIG question of the 21st Century (and maybe even the 22nd and 23rd).

Two articles in the papers caught my eye recently.

1.) Last Thursday, the Washington post ran an editorial about proposed federal legislation to water down federal “habeas corpus” protections for criminals facing the death penalty. The bill is called the Streamlined Procedures Act, and its now in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Within the past few years, DNA evidence has shown that a handful of innocent people have probably been executed in capital cases since Gary Gilmore went down in ’78. Therefore, it doesn’t seem like a good time to handcuff the feds, who are often the only hope for the victim of an aggressive prosecutor looking to close a high-profile murder case and show the press that he or she has exacted justice for a heinous crime.

Too often, local prosecutors have their eyes on other prizes — e.g. mayor, governor, senator, etc. It doesn’t happen much, but there are times when a poor person without access to effective legal counsel (the quality of public defenders and the resources available to them vary greatly from state to state) is picked out because a nice-looking case can be made against him, and exonerating evidence can be conveniently discounted. Yes, that person is often guilty of other crimes such as robbery or assault. That only makes the person a juicier target for a chief of detectives or a prosecutor frustrated by the lack of any solid leads. Again, it doesn’t happen much. But the criminal justice system is far from perfect, and if we are going to let it have to power to kill people, we need to make it harder and more strictly controlled, not easier.

The Streamlined Procedures Act is just another manifestation of the conservative revolution of the GWB years. Interestingly enough, the Republicans want to proclaim that Jesus is Lord and Savior in our schools and city halls, and at the same time they want to go back to the eye-for-an-eye philosophy of the Old Testament (something Jesus wasn’t too big on). I myself believe that although murderers have to account for their acts and thus be seperated from the society that they have attacked, until they are too old or feeble to do any more harm, the state should avoid doing that which it seeks to sanction. Although stopping the Streamlined Procedures Act would not eliminate the death penalty, it would at least make it harder to kill an innocent person. I suggest that you locate your Representative and Senators on the web and drop them an e-mail asking them to administer the death penalty to the Streamlined Procedures Act.

2.) The SUV, the roadway monster of the Republican era of laissez-faire excess (including the Clinton crypto-Republican years), is finally under attack. Higher fuel prices have caused SUV sales to decline. According to an article in the NY Times this past Monday, sales of large S.U.V.’s in September were down 43 percent from a year earlier. Over the past 15 years, Ford and GM have put most of their efforts into building and selling huge SUVs; so it’s not too surprising that G.M.’s overall sales fell 24.2 percent and Ford’s declined 20.3 percent, compared with the same month a year earlier. The Japanese car companies, which have focused on passenger cars and smaller S.U.V.’s, are doing well. Toyota’s sales rose 10.3 percent, Honda’s increased 11.7 percent and Nissan’s, 16.4 percent in September from a year ago.

Gas prices are coming down again; I saw regular going for $2.69 today. But the glory days of $1.50 gas is probably over. I’m hoping that $75 fill-ups will make Americans realize that the days of “every man and woman for themselves” is coming to an end, and an era of cooperation and maybe even a little sacrifice for the greater good might not be such a bad thing at this point; it’s worth a try, anyway.

Here are a couple of interesting articles that I recently came across.

1.) Viewpoint: The cult of ‘People Power’, Mark Almond (Oxford University)
This one is on the BBC web site. Professor Almond assesses the myth and reality of “People Power”, i.e. what happens after the people triumph over tyranny through revolution. Sometimes it works out (as in the US back in 1776, Hungary and Poland in 1979, etc.), and sometimes it turns into a mess (as in France in 1789, Russia in 1917, Iran in 1979, etc.). Professor Almond reviews some recent revolutions, including the Orange movement in the Ukraine. He concludes that popular victories are great until they’re over and someone has to set up a stable, honest government. That’s where things so often backfire. The Who said it all back in ’71: Meet the new boss, same as the old boss (from “Won’t Get Fooled Again”).

2.) How to Win in Iraq, Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr.
This is the semi-famous “Oil Spots” article in Foreign Affairs, which lots of people are now talking about. Mr. Krepinevich thinks that the US military is going about the Iraq campaign all wrong. They need to concentrate on securing a few small areas from the insurgents, bolstering the Iraqi military and police forces within those zones, then spreading out from there (just as an oil spot grows). Krepinevich says that we could get the job done with fewer troops, but they would have to stay longer (maybe 10 to 15 years), and there would ultimately be more Americans killed.

My take on this article is that it’s built on a string of “best case” assumptions. Mr. Krepinevich doesn’t leave much room for things to go wrong, and doesn’t say what will happen if they do. I’m not an expert on counter-insurgency tactics, but I wonder how he would keep suicide bombers from infiltrating his “oil spots” when Israel has such poor luck in doing something similar. Other people say that the US military is already doing most of what he suggests. To be honest, I’m not sure why Foreign Affairs is wasting its space on this guy. The big question in Iraq right now is whether the average Sunni supports the insurgency or the constitutional process. A detailed article about the current status of Iraq’s Sunni population would be much more useful.

As the first article said, it’s great to throw out tyrants (like Saddam Hussein). But once you do, you may have a Pandora’s Box to deal with. Iraq is sure turning out that way.

Enjoy.

Unlike Texas and Louisiana, which are riding out another terrible storm today, northern NJ is experiencing close-to-perfect weather; sunny with temps in the low 70s. So I took a walk down to the local park and took my camera along. Here are a couple of things that I saw.

Some grafitti on a parkbench where teens hang out. It looks pretty innocent; some Led Zep lyrics and band members playing guitar and drums. And love, sweet love.

But this side of the bench isn’t so innocent. The top line reads: John Cruz is my sexi bf <--- I'm going to have his babies . . . .

Next, some political commentary.

This was just another pretty picture of the local war monument alongside the lake. However, with a few Photoshop adjustments, I managed to bring out a darker, more foreboding presence lurking behind the scene. Perhaps I should say THE foreboding presence, the same one that broods behind every sunny depiction of the glories of battle.

But lets end on a nice note. This looks like a boy and his grandpa setting up for a bit of informal fishing on the creek that drains off from the lake. Ah yes, maybe there’s still hope.

I was thinking about the 1980s recently. I lived thru them, and it was pretty nice. A whole lot of people had a whole lot of good times back then, including me. The music was “bouncier”, if you will (who can ever forget Duran Duran?). The economy seemed to be getting better (after the “stagflation” of the late 70s) and gasoline prices were coming down. New stores were opening and new products were hitting the shelves. IBM and some company named Apple started selling computers that you could buy and use right in your own home. Things seemed to be changing for the better. And despite all the “evil empire” rumblings from the White House regarding our archenemy, the Soviet Union, there didn’t seem to be any wars that the average American family had to worry about.

Instead, there was “Star Wars”, President Reagan’s ultimate “feel good” project. No longer would we have to worry about a rain of fire from Soviet missiles. Technology was ready to seal us off from the lingering threat of nuclear destruction, a leftover nightmare from the 1950s. All that was needed to make that happen was some good old-fashioned American know-how and a positive attitude. Ron Reagan was a master at positive attitude. Ron promised us that by the early 1990s there would be lasers in space and on airplanes and submarines and at ground sites, everywhere you look, giving us absolute protection against the forces of evil.

Looking back now, it’s hard to believe how many people swallowed this. Or sadder still, how many people weren’t deceived, but were powerless to stop the delusion of our exaulted leader. I just did some perfunctory research, and it appears that Mr. Reagan actually believed that the technology was there to build a foolproof shield against nuclear missiles. In a series of letters he wrote to his best friend (Laurence Beilenson, a former attorney for the Screen Actors Guild), Reagan said that he wasn’t trying to fake out the Soviets and get them to spend themselves into bankruptcy. (Supposedly the Soviet leader of the time, Mikhal Gorbachev, knew that we couldn’t really do it anyway). He honestly thought it would work.

President Reagan probably got the “Star Wars” idea from some Popular Science articles (or from Flash Gordon movie scripts). In 1983 he took it to his generals and they said “sure, we can do it, just give us lots of money”. Reagan never stopped to think that no military bigwig would tell him the truth in that situation. They all wanted to keep their jobs, and they also liked the idea of getting lots of money. And they wouldn’t be around long enough to take the blame if nothing much came of it (which is what happened), because generals and admirals only serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff for a few years.

Between 1983 and 1989, the Strategic Defense Initiative spent nearly $50 billion, only to find out what a lot of smart people knew from the start: that our electronics and optics and computers and communications and rockets and other stuff weren’t nearly ready to protect the northern half of the planet from missile attack. The proverbial haystacks were (and still are) way too big, and the needles are still way too small.

Amazing: fifty billion dollars pretty much vaporized. What if America had instead invested that money into energy independence technology (as Jimmy Carter was doing when he was president, and which Ronald Reagan stopped as soon as he entered office)? Would we now have 60 MPG cars and be pretty much independent from Middle Eastern oil? Would Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups have never gotten off the ground due to lack of funding (remember that a part of every dollar that you spend for gasoline goes to support terrorism, probably thru the Royal Saudi family and their “charitable donations”)?

OK, maybe I’m going too far here, just as President Reagan was pushing technology beyond its capacity with his dreams. But we would at least be moving in the right direction by now. Star Wars was a defense against the enemy of the past; perhaps the Soviet Union collapsed a bit quicker because of their response to stepped-up American military spending during the Reagan years. But it was the Abrams tanks and Pershing missiles and aircraft carriers that worried them, not some crazy scheme about exploding X-ray laser satellites. Had we started pushing energy conservation and alternative sources back then, we would have better defenses against terrorism today — in 1985, terrorism was the enemy of the future (and now the present).

The problem is this: President Bush the Second is still dreaming the Ronald Reagan dream. He’s still trying to get more oil from the Middle East (isn’t that what the Iraq war is really all about?). And he’s still trying to shoot down missiles that North Korea and Iran may or may not ever have (when it’s airplane hijackers and subway bombers that immediately threaten us). And his “limited missile defense” still doesn’t work! When are we going to wake up from the Reagan dream (pleasant though it was)? When will we see what Jimmy Carter — and now semi-famous NY Times columnist Tom Friedman — knew and still know: that we have to put all our technology cards on energy independence if America is going to have a future.

He’s a real nowhere man
Sitting in his nowhere land
Making all his nowhere plans
For nobody

Back when I was in 7th grade, the teacher asked the class if they could associate a song with a classmate. One of the Miss Popularity girls, someone who normally didn’t have much time for me, raised her hand and said my name, then said “Nowhere Man” (the 1965 Lennon/McCartney classic). The class got a laugh out of it. After they settled down, the teacher said “that’s true!”, getting another rise. I could have taken offense, but it was just too close to home. I had to smile. Yea, Miss Popularity had my number there.

Hey, but so what. That’s just what people like me do, few that we are in this world. We’re here for some odd reason. We actually wish that our “nowhere plans” would help all of you “somewhere” people. Once in a very blue moon, they actually do.

I hope that Miss Popularity and all her “somewhere” friends are having nice lives. As for me, it ain’t been easy dwelling all these years in a nowhere land surrounded by a somewhere world. But it’s my home. As Man From UNCLE agent Napolean Solo said at the end of “The Nowhere Affair” to a lady who just told him that she was nowhere: “then you are somewhere”. Cut to theme song.

THE WAR IN IRAQ, CONTINUED: And unfortunately, it does continue. During the 2004 Presidential Campaign, John Kerry said that Iraq was “the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time”. This was widely discussed in the blogosphere. The quote actually came from Army General Omar Bradley during the Korean War. The Chinese had just entered the war to help North Korea, and General McArthur wanted to declare war against China. In May, 1951, before the Senate Armed Services Committee, General Bradley said “Red China is not the powerful nation seeking to dominate the world. Frankly, in the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, this strategy would involve us in the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy.”

Amazingly, it still fits the present day situation. Sadaam Hussein was definitely an enemy. But he wasn’t the right enemy, just as “Red” China wasn’t. The Iraq invasion has used up a whole lot of American resources, and is still very uncertain of a positive outcome. If Mr. Bush gets lucky and a stable Arab democracy does emerge, then maybe it will have been worth it. But that’s still a 50-50 proposition.

I honestly think we have to look at the Middle East in terms of economics. How can we bring that part of the world into the world economy in a way that creates opportunity for the common man and woman? They used to do all right as traders, about a thousand years ago, because they were right on the land routes between Europe and the East (China, India). But then better ships came along and cut them out of the deal. They have their oil, but that just causes more problems because the wealth goes to a small set of princes and sheiks; everyone else stays poor. How do we get them into modern times? It seems impossible, but go back 30 or 40 years and it seemed impossible then that China and India would ever get into the economic mainstream. I don’t have an answer for the Middle East, but it seems to me that the ultimate answer will respond to the question of economics, not the question of military strategy.

NEW ORLEANS – BYE BYE PUBLIC HOUSING: I know a guy who does consulting work with public housing agencies, so I asked him was going to happen now in New Orleans, which once had a huge public housing system (with 19,995 units). He said that public housing is pretty much finished there. (GOP Congressman Richard Baker of Baton Rouge was overheard telling lobbyists: “We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did.”) They will rebuild some senior citizens buildings and will use the land formerly occupied by family tenements for mixed use developments (e.g., some affordable apartments, some homeownership units, some retail stores). Most former tenants will get Section 8 certificates to subsidize their rent (up to a point) where ever they move to.

But the big conglomerations of units for low-income families won’t be brought back. A lot of the people who lived in them may not want to come back anyway (there was an article in the NY Times saying that a survey showed that up to 20% of the former population doesn’t plan to move back); they may find work in Texas or Baton Rouge. So, the new New Orleans will be a less poor city. Let’s just hope that the silver lining works both ways — i.e., that the poor who were scattered by Katrina will also find better lives where ever they wind up. Let’s hope that Mr. Bush makes good on the little detail of honestly helping them achieve that.

MISHEARD LYRICS: BAD MOON RISING. OK, so everyone knows that the refrain to the 1974 Creedence Clearwater Revival hit song “Bad Moon Rising” has been misinterpreted by countless of listeners as “There’s a Bathroom on the Right”. But I got another part of that song wrong: toward the middle, John Fogerty sings “I hear the voice of rage and ruin”. Given Fogerty’s famous slur, I used to hear something like “I hear the voice, the rain of ruin”.

Little did I know that the phrase “rain of ruin” was used by President Harry Truman in a speech following the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan in 1945. Truman said that if Japan didn’t immediately surrender, there would be a such an atomic rain on its land.

Maybe my misinterpreted line would have been more appropriate. Truman’s voice, and a bad mushroom cloud rising, indeed.

ON THE FENCE: A BLUES MEMORY. Here’s a spray paint tribute to the Blues Brothers, Jake and Elwood, which recently appeared on a fence along Route 3 in Clifton (NJ). The fence slats almost look like prison bars – which goes with their persona quite nicely. Rest in peace, Mr. Belushi. Glad to know that there are still people out there like me who remember those fun days.