The Second Half of Infinity

∞

That is the symbol for infinity (Alt+236 on my Windows 7 system.) Besides the counter clockwise rotation is there any difference between it and an 8? They are both like a Hot Wheels over and under race track aren't they? And that over and under race track is my point.

I am sure that what happened to me is nothing new in the world. But when something new happens to you personally, it is new. My epiphany was simple. It was a remembrance of my walking along a tree lined street in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

The importance of that moment was that I then and there decided not to attend college. That day led directly to this day. (I understand that everyday leads to the next day but you know what I mean.) That was the proverbial first step in the thousand mile journey. (According to auto odometers its been more than a thousand miles.)

So where am I now? That's where the over and under race track comes in. The epiphany was that my current spot was directly above that previous spot. One and the same place put spatially separate. From those spots I can view that section of the journey. That is the spot where what went around came around.

What does all that mean. Who knows? But it was weird. Now to take a look at the other loop.

Next Stop : The Fiscal Cliff

With the election over it's finally time to talk about the 800 lb gorilla in the room. The gorilla that both candidates and parties refused to acknowledge during the recent campaign, the fiscal cliff.

With the makeup of the House and Senate fundamentally unchanged can we really expect any different behavior from them in the next six weeks or the next two years? What political incentive does the Republican Party have for compromise? Why would the Democrats compromise in the wake of their win?

Mitt Romney was considered a “moderate” Republican. The young and upcoming Republican leaders, the potential 2016 presidential candidates, are all farther to the right than Romney. Aren't they better served by holding their current fiscal positions, not compromising an inch, and using the cliff as a threat?

I think the Republican Party has more to gain if the political situation plays out along the worst case scenario. The nation falls off the fiscal cliff. The economy pulls back into recession. Congress remains at loggerheads for the next two years. Then the Republicans will blame the Democrats for a lack of leadership and direction.

In 2014 the Republicans will take control of the Senate while retaining the House. The Democrat White House will use it's veto powers repeatedly during the final years of its term and the US voter will get angrier and angrier at the political stalemate. This allows the Republicans to capture the Presidency in 2016.

It is a terrible scenario for the American public. But what incentive does either party have for compromise? Are you ready to compromise?

George W Parker

Reading Homework

The current fashion in teaching is to assign reading homework. I would be the last person in the world to minimize the importance of the three Rs. But I do think reading homework is wrong. Reading should be fun. You want students reading not playing videos. (When was the last time you saw adults reading? Playing on their phones?)

So how do you put the fun into something as important as reading? You find students something fun to read. My youngest daughter loves reading the Warrior books by Erin Hunter. My son at that age was reading Harry Potter. I went for the Hardy Boys. My oldest daughter enjoys True Adventure. My middle daughter is busy reading Magic Tree House stories with her boys.

There is a tremendous variety of reading materiel available. We as parents and teachers have to find the words that our children enjoy reading. When I'm having trouble finding a book to read I always fall back to detective novels. They are fun for me.

George W. Parker

Apple vs Exxon

I have been reading a book authored by Steve Coll entitled Private Empire, ExxonMobil and American Power. It details a lot of that corporations' commercial, political, environmental and humanitarian history over the past thirty years.

The book raised several questions in my mind: Can any entity of that size, be and stay “clean?” Can dealing with governments, politicians, suppliers, sub-contractors and human populations be any different for Apple than it is for Exxon Mobil? How can the macro challenges of making a profit for those two companies really be different from each other?

America loves its biggest corporation - Apple^*, and hates its second biggest – Exxon Mobil^*. Around the world we have tigers in our tanks and iPhones in our pockets. Is it simply the “cool” factor that differentiates the two? Is one really “cleaner” than the other?

I thought I would do a simple comparison: What is the carbon footprint of an iPhone vs the carbon footprint of one gallon of gasoline?

Here is a link to Apple's site about their emissions: http://www.apple.com/environment/ Here they tout the decrease in their carbon footprint as a percentage of total revenue. (Might this decrease be more driven by their revenue increases than the carbon emission decreases?)

Here is a link to Exxon Mobil's Corporate Citizen Report: http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/Files/news_pub_ccr2011.pdf  Here they tout the decreases in their emissions based on their comparison year 2000 baselines.

Both web links read like corporate speak to me so I went looking for other data. I came across the Carbon Disclosure Project https://www.cdproject.net/en-US/Pages/HomePage.aspx. (Here is a Wkipedia link about the project http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_Disclosure_Project.) I signed up and went diving for data.

Yearly data is listed there for Exxon Mobil but Apple stopped participating in the project in 2010. Now, I am sure Apple has a litany of good corporate bureaucratic reasons not to participate but it makes me wonder, what they are hiding?

I did find a Pacific Gas and Electric statement http://www.pge.com/about/environment/calculator/assumptions.shtml based on an USEPA publication that “Burning 1 gallon of gasoline produces 19.4 lbs CO₂.”

Apple http://images.apple.com/environment/reports/docs/iPhone5_product_environmental_report_sept2012.pdf  lists iPhone 5 as have "Total greenhouse gas emissions: 75 kg (165.347 lbs) CO2e" over its life cycle. I did not see a definition of  "life cycle."

How do we compare apples to gas cans?

George W Parker

Disclaimer time. I do not own stock in either company. (I wish I did.) I do not receive any remuneration in any form from either company. (Again, I wish I did.) I do buy Exxon Mobil gasoline. I do own an old iPhone my daughter uses as an iTouch. I need to also state that I am inherently skeptical of any information offered by any company for public review.

War Stories

Sometimes you have an idea and you work on it and work on it and it just doesn't go where you planned. The following is one of those. I'm posting it because of the time I invested in it.

There are many kinds of war stories:

The philosophical explanations like The Art of War by Sun Tzu and On War by Carl von Clausewitz.

The histories such as Livy's The War with Hannibal or Shelby Foote's The Civil War: A Narrative which are literature.

Biographies of favorite generals like Caesar Napoleon, Patton and Sherman fill library shelves.

“I was there and this is what happened” histories written by those favorite generals trying to explain away there miscalculations.

Fascinating reads like Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant and With the Old Breed: Peleliu and Okinawa by Eugene Sledge. These are few and far between.

The one thing that these types have in common is a rational effort to describe the facts and acts of war. But I don't believe anyone would argue that war is rational.

Apparently it takes the guise of fiction to present its irrationality. The Red Badge of Courage by Steven Crane, All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, and The Thin Red Line by James Jones for example.

Prowling the imagination, divorcing one's self from the rational portrayal of the facts so you can better present the irrational behavior of men (and now women) under terrible stress appears to better present the actualities of facts. 

General W.T. Sherman is quoted as saying, “I tell you, war is hell!” It needs to be written that way.

Difficult Novels

Have you read a difficult book lately?

There are lots of top ten “Hard to Read Novels' lists out there, some of which are filled with heavy content and others which are filled with heavy volumes. Following is a link to goodreads Most Difficult Novels as voted by its membership. http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/827.Most_Difficult_Novels

Most of my successful difficult reads came when I was younger and before family and career took over my priorities. Once that happened I had to become more judicious with my time. (Time is money after all.) I've had to weigh the perceived value of the content against the actual value of my time, determine its ROI. For me, the hard to read novels lose out here.

As an example I'll pick on Finnegan's Wake. I would like to read it. I have tried to read it. Can there be anything in its content worth my time and effort to extract it? For me that answer was “no” - two different times. Rightly or wrongly, I've decided the value in reading the novel is in the deed.

I think accessibility is important for a writer. As a writer, if you want to be read, you have to be readable. I also think that James Joyce would say that he is accessible to his readers.

George W Parker

Kipling and Frogs

There was an episode of PBS Nature on the other night entitled The Thin Green Line. It was about frogs and the unique position they hold in nature because they literally have a foot both in the water and on the ground. The show described the habitat encroachment, herbicide/pesticide challenges and natural attacks (a fungus called Chytrid ) that are part of their everyday battle. The images of a line of frogs fighting for their existence conjured by the title are very powerful.

Coincidentally I was reading James Jones' The Thin Red Line. This story is about a WWII US Army company on Guadalcanal. For some reason this title's imagery for me has always been a line of dying, bleeding men. Not nearly as heroic a fight as I see with the frogs.

That is what I love about literature, the way you can layer meaning on top of meaning. With a little background history on the title I now suddenly see the frogs as doomed players in a Greek tragedy.

Now, I don't know if the frog documentary writers, directors, producers were referencing Jones' novel or if they were aiming back to where Jones got his title line, Kipling's Tommy.

Yes, makin' mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep 

Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap;  

An' hustlin' drunken soldiers when they're goin' large a bit  

Is five times better business than paradin' in full kit.  

Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, 'ow's yer soul?" 

But it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll,  

The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,  

O it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll. 

Adding the Kipling perspective brings human disrespect and unconcern to the plight of the frogs and our shared environment.

You know, I hope the documentary writers, directors, producers have never heard of Jones or Kipling. I hope they just thought it was a cute title. I prefer to think of the frogs as heroic winners in their battles.

George W. Parker