BJM Bujumbura Report 6: The Root of Poverty and Fear

I've been back from Burundi for four weeks now, and the country is still deadlocked and shut down. The most puzzling thing to me, as a Westerner, was the deep fear I could sense in my students when we talked about the future. On the first day of protests, I was waiting for my ride to church on the library steps. A student I didn't know walked up to me and asked, "Are you out here because you're worried?" Actually, worry was the last thing on my mind, but I suppose my face might have looked worried to an African. Of course, my first thought on hearing that question was "I wasn't, but ... should I be?"

On that day, I decided I'd gauge the severity of the situation from the size of the protests. Bujumbura is a city of several million. If thousands protest in several places around the city, then I might start to worry that the situation is unstable. But if only hundreds protest, I figured there would be no reason to worry because they were such a small percentage of the total. (My context for protests was the WTO "riot" in Seattle, where I think a Starbucks got its windows broken.) I was pretty sure from talking to people that only hundreds would protest. Burundians are quiet people and don't protest recreationally.

I was right and I was wrong. Only hundreds protested. But they also protested the next day, and the next, and the next. Each day I looked down on an empty parking lot and knew my students couldn't make it to class. Yet couldn't they just go around a protest if they ran into one?

There are so many things I didn't know. I was the student here, getting a crash course in East African history and politics.  Burundi's civil war ended a little more than a decade ago. These students remembered unspeakable things. Even though we were behind a high wall and guarded by army and police, the students were still afraid. It was this paralyzing fear that I didn't understand. Yet it was entirely logical.

I didn't understand it, until my fellow university professor forwarded a TED talk about it on Twitter, that is. I know, TED talks are so, like, five years ago, right? But this TED talk isn't about technology. It's about the fears that lie behind poverty.

Poverty is not about resources anymore. It's about public safety and rule of law. The ability to feel protected so you can walk to the resources the Westerners have provided. And if that's not there, then the resources might as well not be there either.

You have to be able to walk to school to learn. Transportation is on the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy here.

As much as I would have liked to move past the fear I saw in my students' eyes, to inspire them to dodge the protests and the tear gas and not get caught running the wrong way down the street, I knew that it's not something I could solve. I could only make a few recordings for the future, for a time capsule to open when they could resume the class (a time still in the future), and rebook my flight to leave the country.

It's heartbreaking to be so powerless. I feel a twinge every day for being in my luxurious US middle-class life. But it's a real reflection of the powerlessness they feel. It's a strange privilege to be able to understand their world. I'm not sure what good it does, but it does remind me to pray. That may be enough.

Maybe this is what I learned in Burundi. You can only do so much, and sometimes you have to wait. In that waiting, as a Christian, at least I can still pray out of my powerlessness. And I pray that we see a work of power in Burundi that's like what we saw in South Africa. It did happen there. I believe it can happen again. Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down.

Dear reader, I hope this for you. Not the fear and the danger, but the understanding of what it's like to live another life, in this case, to live in the second-poorest country in Africa. And to know that, behind it all, despite it all, and because of it all, my students have faith. Despite their fear, when this calms down, they will brush themselves off, hop on a bus, and learn. (After seeing the dedication of the African students I'm going to be a little more frustrated when my American students can't even put down their video game controllers long enough to study!)

If we can put our fingers on the real problems, then maybe we can apply pressure to change these real problems. Maybe we can push back the fear and make a country people can trust in. If Burundi can come as far in the next ten years as they have in the past ten years ... then maybe they can reach that.

Watch the talk, I promise you, it's worth it (I have a few quibbles but it's too important to list those right now):

And if you have thoughts, let me know what you think. I will shift this blog back to science now that my life has shifted back to science, but to my Burundian friends: I'm always thinking about you and praying for you from a corner of my mind. May the Lord bless you and keep you and give you peace ... and patience till it comes. Till we meet again. Yours, BJM

Should We All Just Give Cash Directly to the Poor?

Should We All Just Give Cash Directly to the Poor?

[In case anyone's wondering, I'm trying to use the share button more to see how it works, because I have at least 20 stories in my backlog that haven't seen the light of day on the blog yet. Consider this an experiment.]

Now this story gets the left and right halves of my brain yelling at each other. It's about a charity that just transfers money to poor people. Talk about minimal administration. No buildings, no campaigns, no nothing except giving the poor money.

It cuts out corruption and intrusive bureaucratic structures, so the libertarian in me rejoices.

But it has no regulation or constraint for how it's too be used, so the teacher in me (who watches out for student cheating) is concerned.

But it is simple and uses the freely available technology (cell phones) well, so the tech-efficiency side of me rejoices.

But there are so many poor people that I have to wonder about unfair distribution or spreading it out so much that it's too small to do any good, like that $8 class action settlement check I got a week ago, so the financial side of me is concerned. How does this work without relationship?

Bottom line, however, is when I turn to what Jesus and the prophets say about giving, they don't seem to be worried about how, they just say do it, give. This is the most straight-forward fulfillment of that command that I've seen short of a hand-to-hand transfer.

And that's the question: is this good enough or not good, because there is no relationship whatsoever? How much of a relationship is there when one of the disciples would give to one of the beggars at the gate of the temple, after all?

C.S. Lewis and the Courage to be a Craftsman

Taking stock of the last year and planning for the next, it's easy to keep the same old evaluation system when deciding what worked and what didn't. But sometimes the evaluation system itself needs fixing. I had never read the essay titled "The Inner Ring" by C.S. Lewis before, but it hit me at just the right time, because it speaks to this question of what are you doing and why. Here is the essay/speech itself, it's a fast read with a high value-to-word ratio:

http://www.lewissociety.org/innerring.php

The idea of constantly striving for the next inner ring reminds me of the answer to the question "How much money does a person need?": "Just one more dollar." Just one more inner ring, and then I'll be set. One more step into the onion. Here Lewis turns the onion to transparent glass (all John Lennon references aside).

This especially echoes with the state of Lewis's life in 1944. It was a good time for his "output," roughly contemporaneous with the Mere Christianity lectures and The Great Divorce, 5 years before the publication of the Chronicles of Narnia and 10 years before he would move to Cambridge after repeatedly failing to enter the academic inner ring in his department at Oxford. Lewis never reached that inner ring, probably because he was true to his own words here and realized that it wasn't worth what it seemed to be worth. Instead, he focused on his craft, finished the Space Trilogy and after it didn't go as well as he hoped -- read Planet Narnia for more on this -- he turned to Narnia, which would be his true hallmark work. (Is this an act of literary kenosis?)

If C.S. Lewis had focused on the inner ring rather than his craft, he may have stayed at Oxford, but would we have Narnia today? Academics is political and those politics have probably prevented some great works from being written as academics work more to impress their fellow academics than to create something lasting. Today I don't know who was in that Oxfordian inner ring, but I do know Lewis's words. That's lasting.

Thanks to this essay, I resolve to begin the new year wary of reaching for the inner ring when instead I should be looking to the work I've been given. It will take time and care to carve out the right words for the right time and the right student. Inner rings can wait -- I resolve this year to create value, carefully, the best I can, with focus and labor.

(PS: Looking back on this I can see how my thoughts are also colored by all this talk of the politics of the fiscal cliff, too!)

Book Review: When I Was a Child I Read Books

I've had this book read for a couple of weeks now and I have been trying to find time to write a review that will do it justice. This is not that review. This is what happens when I have to return a book to the library. But perhaps my review can be this: I may go out and buy this book just to own it. How's that?

I do have to note that I prefer Absence of Mind to this book: the former is pithier and more focused on science than politics, and I am more completely behind Robinson when she writes about science than when she writes about politics. Kind of strange for a scientist to say about a novelist, but true. She's more convincing on the scientific issues because of her classical sense of argument and diction, as well as her historically and philosophically grounded content. Somehow she manages to be incredibly erudite without being showy about it. How does she do it? She notes at one point that she is indebted to the style of Cicero more than to a modern writer, that's got to be part of it. But when Robinson argues politics, I find myself answering her back at several points, and honestly, her arguments are shallower. They're still pretty deep.

Thoroughly recommended, although not always agreed with.

Book Review: The Hemlock Cup

Once again the quest for vivid historical scholarship turns up a good book. The Hemlock Cup by Bettany Hughes is about the life and death of Socrates and the democratic Athenians he walked among. Hughes has researched the latest artifacts dug up from the ground and has traveled to most of the sites in the book -- she'll often tell you what a battlefield or ancient town is like today. Her portrait of Socrates is illuminating, especially for the big question of how could a city like Athens kill a man like Socrates? I didn't think I could understand why but after reading this book I can finally see how it happened. This book is even more useful for its portrait of Athens than of Socrates: Socrates stands out from history so much that most people have some idea of what he was like, but Hughes is able to detail some of what must have been going on in the average Athenian's mind, which is harder to do. The detail of why and how they believed in the gods that they believed in is fascinating and certainly colors any wrongly over-rationalized pictures of the Golden Age of Greece one might have. In fact, if a person was walking around Athens 500 years later the first thing he'd probably notice was how many statues to how many gods they had scattered around (see Acts 17 for more). This was a very theistic city, and also very troubled by war with Sparta and the inherent insecurity of democracy. If I was a student of history and had time for it, I could write a whole book comparing and constrasting Jesus and Socrates, and this would be the main source for Socrates. It's that good.

Excellent Essay on Churchill

I got more out of this essay on Churchill than from a biography I read about 10 years ago that was hundreds of times as long.

One of my favorite paragraphs:

Churchill’s real legacy lies elsewhere. He is, with de Gaulle, the greatest instance in modern times of the romantic-conservative temperament in power. The curious thing is that this temperament can at moments be more practical than its liberal opposite, or than its pragmatic-conservative twin, since it rightly concedes the primacy of ideas and passions, rather than interests and practicalities, in men’s minds. Churchill was a student of history, but one whose reading allowed him to grasp when a new thing in history happened.

Is that why the "What's Wrong with Kansas" crowd are mistaken -- that ideas and passions more primary than interests and practicalities?

Read more at http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2010/08/30/100830crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz19RGS8N5B

Washington DC Thoughts

If the last post was about "I must decrease, He must increase," this post is about a town where the opposite's true, where power hangs in the sky like smog and scandal is a matter not of "if" but of "when."

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Washington DC is a city of new gods. In places it's almost exactly what a Greek citizen would see in Athens, what Paul gestured to on Mars Hill. The random larger-than-life statues of liberators and generals that cars speed past all look the same except to historians. And I was wondering, now that the WWII memorial is complete, will we ever be able to build white marble monuments again, or will every new war monument have to be like the Vietnam and Korean War Memorials, black and reflective?

As an aside about the WWII memorial, it is incoherent and jumbled, but I think that just makes the architecture of the moment more suitable for a truly global conflict. I don't think it throws off the emptiness of the Mall. The Mall's still really big. (Rule for DC: Always allow 15 extra minutes for walking anywhere.)

Perhaps it was the original Washington Monument on display in the Museum of American History that sums up this visit to DC. My first reaction is that it was a statue of Zeus, but when I got around to the front, it was George himself looking back at me. At first I'd had enough of all the neo-classical new empire symbolism, but then looking closer, the way he holds his lightning bolt, er, sword, stood out. The sword is backwards, Washington stepping down and handing power back to the people after two terms. I can get behind that (actually, that was my first viewpoint!).

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And then there's the Lincoln memorial, perhaps the most like a Greek temple in style and form but the least like one inside. I mean on the inside walls, not the Zeus-like statue of Lincoln. On the walls are two of the most sublime collections of words in the English language: the Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural Address. I am going to make a tradition now, anytime I'm in DC, of stopping by the Lincoln Memorial and reading the Second Inaugural aloud (under my breath, I'm not THAT kind of tourist). It is an amazing political document and poem. As a theological document, the basic idea is the kind any follower of Jesus should adopt after immersing oneself in the Gospels. But the truly theologically amazing part of it is how it puts that solid theology into practice in few enough words to fit on a wall. Not since MENE MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN has the writing on the wall been so significant and succinct. Everyone should read it.

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So in this city of white marble and sharp-edged grassy fields trampled and wilted, there are monuments to empire, as in every empire's capital. But some of those monuments are to something more, to handing back power and to the humility of forgiving even the worst of human nature after the worst of wars. Those make me proud of my country.

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[Reference song: "Our Song" by Joe Henry off the Citizens album.]

Evaluating Professors

It's been more than a week since the shootings at University of Alabama -- Huntsville in which one biology professor killed three others and wounded more. In the interim I've been trying to wade through the mountain of comments to glean some truth from among the mean-spiritedness, militant nihilism, and snark. It takes me a while because after reading just a few blog posts or articles it's advisable to take a break for your own sanity.

A few points need constant re-emphasis and are often lost in the pile:
-- When evaluating Amy Bishop's work, effectiveness, genius, etc., you have to keep in mind her context. At least half of what's out there doesn't even try to add context. A lot of people assume that because she was a professor she was a near-genius, a lot of comments talk about the line between genius and insanity. You know, that's not really it. She was a rather ordinary professor, who knew a lot about biology and came up with a rather pedestrian invention that, who knows, could have sold some but was basically a robotic cell culture machine. There are some signs recently that she was pushing the envelope when it comes to publication: especially the "vanity press" article that appears to list her children as co-authors. But I have yet to see an actual evaluation of the content of that article, and she has about a dozen other papers that at the very least made it through peer review. It's weird that she's not last author, but it's funny how many people stop there and evaluate her as a simple crank. I just can't evaluate her yet, whether she deserved tenure at her institution or not, because her case looks borderline. I find it surprising how many people want to jump one way or the other because of preconceived notions of academia or the nature of the UAH campus.

-- The one reporter who tried to give context is the New York Times' Gina Kolata, but she seems to have called up a professor at Columbia, who flat-out remarked that Bishop would not be qualified for tenure there. Well, of course, I could see that by counting papers, but Columbia is a top research school and UAH is a different kind of school -- UAH is probably closer to the normal liberal-arts college than it is to Columbia. It's not an open-and-shut case either way. From the evidence I would say she probably doesn't deserve tenure, but you know, that's why there's a process with lots of people and lots of time. There's no evidence of politics or injustice on the surface at least. Again: borderline.

-- Bishop got an NIH AREA grant from 2008-2011. I know that mechanism well! They don't give those grants to big research institutions. They give them to primarily undergraduate institutions and similar schools. That right there shows you she could compete for some money, but also that she was out of the loop for big money. Not a genius: just a professor like the rest of us.

-- I read that the department chair (the first one shot...) was supporting Bishop's tenure bid. This can't be just about "I didn't get tenure so I'm going to shoot people." It was a contributing factor, perhaps the most significant one, but there must be other factors as well.

-- And of course the most depressing part is how everyone mines Bishop's past to come up with stereotypes whether positive or negative, to ride their favorite political hobbyhorse: Obama, gun control (pro and con!), the political nature of the tenure process, and even an Intelligent Design blog that points out (rather crudely) how she was listed as a resource for "Evolution Weekend" in which churches were encouraged to talk about Darwin from the pulpit. (And I probably have a whole post in me about that one, but not now!) Stop using her. Just stop. Look, I'm not going to stop going to pancake houses because Bishop had an altercation there, and I'm not going to stop teaching the citric acid cycle because Bishop taught it in class (presumably). The fact that she couldn't control her rage has nothing to do with "Evolution Weekend." Let's talk about pressure in academia instead, that's the big factor here.

It comes down to this: how does one fairly evaluate a professor? When someone doesn't get tenure, how can we make it so they're still useful and not at a dead end in life? If it's such a selective process, let's make sure we take care of those selected out rather than just the winners. And I'm hoping someday the Internet will grow up but I'm not counting on it happening any time soon.

Comments on the East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU) Emails

I'm hoping to put this together with other thoughts on other topics but I think something needs to be said now since it's on a lot of people's minds.

Basically, several emails were hacked from the East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU), which has been the source of a lot of climate history research. What this means is the reality TV cameras have been turned on for the scientists in that their private emails have become public, with all the politics clearly exposed, and some data presentation discussions. Does the data presentation become data distortion? Are they trying to hide some of their research to put forward what fits with their theory?

So if the camera adds ten pounds, I think it also takes away 10 IQ points. Some of the stuff that's said is just plain tribal and I'm sure there's sociologists of science talking about how it show "groupthink." There's two responses: 1.) This proves climate scientists are frauds and 2.) This proves climate scientists are just human but it has no effect on climate science.

Of course, I'm going to come down firmly between those two straw men. (What else are straw men for?)

There is a deep problem here, with the authority of science. When scientists want to use the authority of science, they emphasize how it's monolithic, how those who disagree must have other interests, that the science is somehow neutral. When the scientists themselves are revealed to have non-scientific interests ... the monolith falls over.

Look, if you spend your life's work on something you will want to defend it. Just because someone is defensive doesn't mean they're wrong.

The fact of the matter is, the science is not monolithic. There are some things that are near 100%: old earth, evolution, HIV causes AIDS. Then there are some things that are more 75%/two-thirds, where you have a clear majority and then some reasonable dissent. Climate change is in this category, and the most reasonable argument I've heard on it is the "driving in fog" argument: we're not sure if there's a cliff out there, but just in case there is doesn't it make sense to put on the brakes?

Another analogy may be cancer. We've found a lump. It could kill us. But hacking off the limb with the lump could hurt us too. So this is the time for reasonable prevention and "watchful waiting." (See recent mammogram advice shift!)

So I'm in favor of inexpensive, straightforward solutions to this problem. The rubber-meeting-road conclusions are:

1.) Cap-and-trade as it stands now seems too close to a shell game. Let's get something simpler on the table. I'm not usually for taxes but a gasoline tax may be in order. That's better than a convoluted system that seems more like medieval indulgences than a true solution. The point of the tax is not to generate money but to let other things that are now more expensive cost less relatively ... which can lead to lower costs in the long run.

2.) Research, research, research into solar/hydrogen cells and build, build, build nuclear. Also work, work, work on transportation with alternate fuels and try some geoengineering on a small-scale basis. It's not time for geoengineering yet, but if we get a decade of data that suggests it's time let's get ready. There's positive things to do with energy that as a chemist I'm really excited about.

3.) Stop pretending there's a 100% consensus about the future. Instead argue that a clear majority of scientists think there's a problem and that should be enough for now -- try inexpensive or innovative options now and keep a close eye on temperatures and weather patterns and species extinctions. There may be a cliff out there in the fog, but if stomping on the brakes causes a 15-car pileup I may still end up hurt. Instead, can we slow down and at least try to watch things like this recent cooling?

What's really needed is probabilistic thinking. I still think there's a majority chance that we have a problem but we need to watch more to be sure. There are simple ways to try to cut down -- I've noticed that car miles are down and bus miles are up. This is important enough that all the stops should be pulled out for low-impact, low-cost solutions. I don't see a clear justification for drastic costs yet.

Let's watch this lump and see if bad stuff happens; in the meantime, let's "eat healthier" with our energy choices and try to see if energy research hits the jackpot.

Book Review: Empire of Illusion

All through this book I was trying to think of where I had heard of its author before. Then in the final chapter he admits, "As I was writing my book American Fascists on the Christian Right ... " and everything fell into place. This screed, at times spot on but just as often over the top and vague, was written by the same fellow who used to be a foreign correspondent and now likens conservative Christians to fascists. I'm glad it took me that long to figure out why his views were so extreme, because I'm well aware of his previous work and I may have listened a bit less if I knew he was the type not to really listen to conservative Christians. I'm not all that conservative myself but I am tired of those on the left who will not really listen to them/us. And Hedges is one of those.

So this book is a mixture of easy targets, good honest jeremiads, and old liberal tropes dressed up in the latest news of Spring 2009 when the book apparently went to press. In the past few months things have turned around enough -- while they are still shaky -- that the apocalyptic pronouncements in the last chapter about the coming systemic collapse ring hollow, although, he's right, you never know. I just find the book format to be too unresponsive, and the last chapter itself colors the rest of the book as not taking the long view.

An outline of the criticized institutions:
1.) Wrestling/television/celebrity culture: I thought the comparison of celebrity worship to ancient gods is actually useful and helpful, and there were some things I didn't know about wrestling, but you know, I really don't think the "uncensored" episodes of Jerry Springer are anything but the most extreme edge of TV ...
2.) Pornography: The thrown-away too-old actresses are the angle here, and the absolute abuse that is endemic to the industry. Probably the most-agreed with chapter on my part, although the repetition does get absolutely sickening. I think a stronger theology of sin and the body would strengthen this chapter.
3.) College: Even Berkeley's too hung up on football. Well, there is a reorganization of priorities going on right now, and if it's not a real re-org, colleges will go the way of the newspapers. But I have hope that there's lots of things we do better than anyone else in this area.
4.) Positive thinking: Now that Dan Brown has revealed he is on the side of the "positive thinkers" I am absolutely sure I'm against it. Some useful observations in Hedges chapter but also an easy target.
5.) Politics: By the time he started quoting Nader extensively I started reaching for my David Brooks as an antidote. The good-to-not ratio was way down in this chapter and the citations of Spring 2009 data way up.

So Jeremiads are always readable, but not always right. I really wish this had more about where to go with all this beyond three pages about love tacked on the end. Too many times it doesn't offer an alternative after trashing what rightfully should be trashed and the end is downright alarmist. Hedges, you had me for the first half but then you lost me. Too bad, because I think if you'd stop calling them fascists that the church would agree with you on quite a bit. Up until you get to decrying elites while at the same time deploring pretty much everyone else in politics. Isn't that a bit elitist?

Camille Paglia Quote of the Month

"The problem facing international security is that people who believe something will always be stronger and more committed than people who believe nothing -- which unfortunately describes the complacent passivity of most Western intellectuals these days."

From http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2009/06/10/waterloo/index.html, including a nice review of the new U2 album.

As usual, she closes her article with a paragraph or two on the Brazilian singer Daniela Mercury which I simply don't get. Maybe it's her version of ritual.

Politicizing Random Violence

I have read four different columnists (or blog columnists) for the New York Times in the past week connecting the shooting of Dr. George Tiller with the Holocaust Museum shooting, citing both as evidence of far-right domestic terrorism. I think the connection is more spurious than factual, a coincidence of the calendar rather than a movement. (Not to mention that there isn't really much ideological ground the two shooters shared, other than that they probably didn't vote for Obama.) Where was this speculation when a pastor was shot in the pulpit in Illinois this past May? Note that Tiller was shot in church as well, but rightfully, no connection is made on those grounds. There was another church shooting in Tennessee last July, and before that the December 2007 shootings in Colorado. Were those shootings evidence of disturbed, violent individuals, or a connection to a wider societal trend?

Well, of course it was both. But I think it's telling that not a single NYT columnist mentioned any of those incidents that I can recall, and definitely there was no "connect-the-dots" type reasoning.

I'm going to keep reading the NYT daily, but every time something like this happens I'll have to correct for the ideological blinders of those columnists. I mean, the point of columnists is that they write with ideological blinders on, and it's the reader's responsibility to account for them. But they lose credibility with this reader when they don't at least try to consider other points of view.

How Israel and Palestine Can Move Forward?

A few days ago I read this op-ed and I keep thinking about it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/opinion/25atran.html?th&emc=th

Before and since that op-ed there have been several others proposing various ways to make peace, but this one strikes me as fundamentally different.

In brief, it proposes that the thing that would really mean something to the Palenstinians would be an apology from Israel. And the thing that would really mean something to Israel would be if Palestinians would recognize Israel's right to exist (and change the textbooks, etc. that deny it).

First off, this comes from actually asking each side, "What would you do if the other side did this, or that?" and picking the most positive response. Actual data and conversations with at least representatives of each side.

Secondly, it is based on forgiveness. Apologies and "right to exist" language can be dismissed as empty words, but how else would forgiveness be expressed? And if the words are empty, then just give it a try, if it doesn't work you haven't lost anything material. I think even an empty recitation of the words can pull dialogue in the right direction.

If saying the words is somehow compromising spiritual values or some kind of idealism, I respond that Jesus' words and actions were condemned for somehow compromising who God was, God's "spiritual values," so to speak. That got him tried for blasphemy.

I may be missing something but this seems like something that's just worth trying. Most likely it smacks of naive idealism. And I still don't see how Israel can give up the West Bank given the constant flow of rockets into (and out of) Gaza. I still keep thinking of Jesus' words. Words are worth trying.

Feel free to disagree in the comments.

The 2nd-to-Last Temptations of the Candidates

I only got to listen to part of the 2nd debate in the car and the very end after dinner. Some of it seemed awful familiar (at least there wasn't an interminable What-Would-Kissinger-Do debate this time). But thinking on it afterwards (and correct me if I missed something), I'm impressed. Both candidates have resisted considerable temptations, and I mean that straightforwardly.

McCain resisted the temptation tonight to "take the gloves off" and go after Obama's associations with Wright and Ayers. Maybe that will even cost him the election. But he kept his attacks on-topic and current, and I'm convinced he did it because it was the honorable, high-road thing to do. (Also, that is what Palin's for, right?)

Obama has resisted the temptation to talk like he can solve every problem, to give in to the more fawning end of his advisor spectrum. People have been complaining about how "cool"/"cold" he's been lately, but it's because he's admirably kept away from salvation-language and acting like he'd solve everything automatically, just by being him. No more swooning fans in the audience. The "pop star" label just doesn't stick as well anymore as a consequence.

So McCain resists the mud-slinging temptation (wrath?), and Obama resists pride.

Now they can go and prove me wrong tomorrow. On a positive note, what I'd like to see is a creative proposal to address the current economic crisis. McCain's mortgage plan may be a step in the right direction, but I'd like to hear more before concluding. Obama, what is that "economic dream team" telling you? Nothing about Charles Keating, please ...

The Criminal Isomer

One of my readers has pointed out that most of my news posts seem to be about food. Since it appears I've found my voice in that respect, here's another food-related news item: it seems our county (King County) is considering outlawing trans fats. This makes about as much sense as banning all liquids from airplanes. (Oh, wait ... ) The worst of it all is it may change how local institution Dick's Drive In makes their fries:

http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=transfat10m&date=20070710&query=trans+fat

Let me just make one simple point here. If trans fats are so bad that they must be outlawed, why is it that Dick's Drive In has prospered selling these things for decades? Why force them to change? Is the cost that hidden? Or are we making mountains out of molehills?

I don't doubt that trans fats are bad for you, but I doubt they're so bad for you they require government intervention.

"I don't care if you eat French fries," said Seattle City Councilmember Sally Clark, a member of the health board. But when they're fried in trans fat, she said, "I end up paying for your heart disease. It's costing us money."

My question in response is, how do you really know, and how much of an extra economic burden can be traced to trans fats? There's a hidden cost to government regulation, especially if it's of something that doesn't need to be regulated. And I don't want my council members turning everything into a monetary calculation. If you want to get down to that, the atoms in each human body is worth, what, 93 bucks or something? Just because you can put a number on it doesn't mean you've correctly assessed risk.

What's next? The ATF becomes the ATFTF (Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Trans Fats)?

The chemistry behind this is that trans fats are artifically formed isomers of real fats: they're real fat twisted just a bit. Flipping a real fat (a cis fat) into a trans configuration actually only takes a small amount of energy, the amount required to break and re-form a carbon-carbon double bond. In fact, even in wholly natural substances, regular heat is enough to flip a few of those bonds. Therefore, a trace amount of the unsaturated fats will have isomerized and turned into trans fats. Depending on how the ban is worded, we could be outlawing ... pretty much everything with fat.

Come on, then. We all need some fats for our cell's membranes. Or as a friend of mine used to say, we need enough cholesterol to make sure our arteries don't start collapsing from lack of wall structure.

All I can say practically is, I will be watching very closely how any ban is worded, and I will vote accordingly. Scary, I know. Oh, and I can blog about it. That should at least lower my blood pressure. Thanks, blogspot. Think of how much money that just saved the community at large!!