Medium Low

Ken Jennings, the Jeopardy! guy, maintains a one-post-a-day blog over at ken-jennings.com. His posts are almost always good for an ironic chuckle. Occasionally they are downright cute (as a parent with kids the same age I share that guilty pleasure).

In today's post, "Mormon guy to Internet: shut up and think a minute," Mr. Jennings takes a serious turn to protest the treatment of his religion in the media: in particular, the liberty pundits feel they have to treat Mormonism with less respect than other religions and to use it as the butt of jokes. I think his points are well made. Especially his advice to substitute other religions (including one's own) into one's jokes to test whether they are still funny.

Mr. Jennings seems to assume, however, that the maligners of Mormonism are religious (perhaps rightly, see studies quoted below). But we here at MeLo are mostly avowed atheists, so we reserve the right to make fun of all religions. We'll try to do it equitably.

Current MeLo contributors all live in a very liberal city, so we are not exposed daily to "average" Americans. We are shocked disgusted dismayed whenever a survey of U.S. religious beliefs is released indicating that we are in a small minority. For example the American Religious Identification Survey (most recent available: ARIS 2001 - age of the survey doesn't matter much as these things change very slowly) indicated that we atheists represent approximately 13% of the adult population. Given that we live in a country that still manages to lead the world in most scientific domains, how can we also be one of the most religious industrialized countries? Despite the right's mantra regarding the Christian foundations of the U.S., the country was actually founded on the assumption that reason should always trump religion in civic affairs. How can Americans purportedly be committed to governing our public lives by secular principles and still gather weekly in animist temples?

Our dismay is tempered by our certainty that eventually rational though will win out. It seems inevitable to us that humanity will eventually shed its remaining superstitions. In the meantime, we'll feel free to use ridicule to try to speed things along.

We MeLoids all keep track of the Peak Oil meme. If you're not familiar with the Peak Oil phenomenon, please take a minute to go read about it on Wikipedia. Different people make different predictions about how our lives will be different in a post Peak Oil (PPO) world, ranging from "we're totally fucked, society as we know it will end" to "no big deal, we'll adjust". Personally, I think it'll be somewhere in between.

The one thing we know about a PPO world is that oil will be much more expensive, and we use oil profligately for everything: the obvious energy uses but also fertilizer, plastics, most non-natural fabrics and food (yes, you eat petroleum). And complex manufactured objects like iPods use barrels of oil per unit. The raw materials for each component have to be extracted and processed and then transported several times through stages of distribution to reach assembly. Then the components have to be transported to the place of their final assembly into the device, which is then packaged and transported again through multiple links to the point of sale. Food is another issue. The commonly cited estimate is that the average food item eaten by a US consumer has been transported 1,000-1,500 miles.

I find myself trying to imagine the PPO world several times a day. Pretty much any time I purchase something or unwrap something or throw something away, I wonder whether I'll have access to that item PPO or if I do, how it will be produced, packaged and distributed. For example, last night I used some plastic cling wrap. When oil is $200 per barrel will it still be economical to manufacture and sell cling wrap? The wide variety of produce we have available year round will almost certainly go away, but what will be available? Will local farmers figure out ways to use greenhouses or other solar heating to grow lettuce in northern climes in the winter?

It's possible we could maintain some of our "food on wheels" lifestyle if we did as James Howard Kunstler is always harping: rebuild our rail systems. But since we won't start doing that until it's way beyond obvious that we need to, there are going to be many years without Tropicana fresh squeezed OJ in the interim. We certainly won't be able to manufacture and distribute 116,000 iPods a day [Apple sold 10.5 million iPods in the first quarter of 2007].

What kinds of things will be economical to distribute on a national scale? Laundry soap? Bicycles? M&Ms? And which will fall away or be produced regionally or locally?

Vacations will certainly change dramatically. Fuel costs are already a major component of airline fares, so big increases in oil costs will immediately make air travel unaffordable to all but the rich. And you won't be driving your 8 mpg RV to Yellowstone, either. If you're lucky, maybe you can take a train to many places. Will greyhound experience a huge revival?

By the way, if you're new to this topic the first thing you should do is disabuse yourself of the notion that biofuels or hydrogen are going to save us. Corn prices are already skyrocketing due to diversion of corn to biofuel production, and so far those biofuels are making an almost unmeasurably small contribution to overall energy needs. It is just simply not possible to grow enough biomass to replace a significant amount of petroleum and still have land to grow any food. And hydrogen is not an energy source. It takes large amounts of energy to produce the hydrogen (for example, by extracting it from seawater); by some estimates more energy than the hydrogen stores. So hydrogen is merely a new way to transport energy, not to produce it.

What do you think? How fucked will we be? What products that you use every day will no longer be available? And for those you think will be available, how and where will they be produced?

The National Day of Prayer was apparently yesterday, although it's pretty fucking hard to figure out the actual date from their web site (this was about the 10th page I navigated to).

We missed it, God damn it!

This week a couple of studies came out concerning young children and television. The first is a study led by Dr. Frederick J. Zimmerman of the University of Washington that will be published in JAMA. Zimmerman surveyed parents regarding how much and what type of programming children watched from birth through 24 months. The second study was authored by Elizabeth Vandewater of the University of Texas in Austin and surveyed parents of children up through age 6.

I'm a parent of a 3-year-old and an 18-month-old. We are strong believers in the maxim "all things in moderation." We are not rabidly anti-TV, but we also are not laissez-faire about letting our kids watch anything that's on. Our kids only watch Noggin and PBS Kids on TV; and classic Disney films, Sesame Street and Electric Company on DVD. That's pretty much it. Once in a while I'll watch a sports program on a weekend afternoon with them in the room, but they never see adult programming like CSI or Law & Order or even the news.

Becoming a no-TV household seems vaguely attractive, but think how much TV programming is a part of our body of cultural knowledge. References to TV shows old and new come up in my conversations many times a day. It seems like isolating one's children from that body of "knowledge" would handicap them when it comes to relating to other kids. Personally, I learn an immense amount from watching TV. Not everything I watch, obviously, but definitely from Nova, Frontline and many programs on the Discovery and History channels, for example.

Having said that, however, I have to admit that the zombie state our kids get in while watching TV is disturbing. My 3-year-old gets so entranced that I literally have to stand between her and screen to get her attention, and even then it takes a few seconds for the trance to be broken.

It turns out we're pretty damn average according to the results of the Zimmerman study as reported in Science Daily:

The average amount of viewing time for the children was 40.2 minutes per day. At 3 months of age children watched less than an hour per day and by 24 months they watched more than 1.5 hours per day. "Approximately half of the viewing was of shows that parents reported to be in the children's educational category," the authors note. "The remaining half was approximately equally split among children's non-educational content, baby DVDs/videos and grown-up television."

The Vandewater study, however, (as reported in the Washington Post) is far more disturbing:

...as many as one in five youngsters under 2 even have a television placed in their bedrooms. More than half (54 percent) of these tiny tots could turn on the TV themselves...

...Most often, parents interviewed in the study said they put a TV set in their kid's room because it freed up other TVs in the house for parental use...

The percentage of older children with TVs in their bedrooms is even higher. To me, putting TV in a child's bedroom is obviously a bad thing. Children are very clever. It won't take them long to learn how to turn the volume down so they can get away with watching TV at any hour of the night, forfeiting the sleep developing brains clearly require. I can guarantee that our children will not have a TV (or a computer, for that matter) in their room until they are out of high school.

When I was young, I always woke up very early - long before anyone else in the house. I would try to watch TV, but in that era most stations were off the air until 6:00 or 7:00 am, and even when they came on the air their programming was about as unattractive to a kid as could be. The local farm report is what I remember most. But today, who knows what one's child might tune into in the middle of the night. I doubt many of the parents who put a TV in their child's room take the time to program the channels to which the TV can be tuned.

Parenting is a whole other topic, but I think TVs in young children's bedrooms are part of a larger "parenting of convenience" trend. Many parents today don't want to have conflict with their children, so they acquiesce to pretty much whatever the child wants. As many have commented, these parents are raising a generation of narcissists who learn very few lessons about personal boundaries or responsibility. As the Love and Logic folks say, you can pay your dues (i.e. learn to set limits for your kids and deal with the temporary conflict that causes) early in your children's lives, or you can pay much higher dues when they are teenagers. To us the choice is obvious.

Unlike the other melo contributors I am not gainfully employed, but instead am nearing the end of the first year of a master's program. I enjoy life as a 40 year old student, although there have been moments when I've felt very old. This is my second time through graduate school, the first time ending with a PhD in chemistry. When I began my program last September I had been out of school for 13 years, and it had been 22 years since I began my undergraduate studies. Keeping in mind that memories are not nearly as accurate as we'd like to believe, my melo advent will consist of my thoughts on what has changed on campus since the late 80's.

It goes without saying that the younger generation is wired. Wow, are they wired. Wireless, actually. I'm hardly a luddite but I was stunned to observe the nearly-constant texting, IM-ing, chatting, facebook-browsing and general universal connectivity. In fact, the most consistent complaint that I hear from my classmates is that there are insufficient numbers of outlets in the classrooms, and the lighting is bad for viewing a laptop monitor. One class was held in a decrepit old university building that lacked Wi-Fi. The horror! Frankly, if I were a professor my classroom would be a laptop-free zone. While access to google or wikipedia is occasionally useful, the amount of note-taking that gets done on laptops is minimal. Even more shocking to me is just how blatant students are about using chat during lectures. There's no effort to be discreet and professors are much more tolerant than I would expect.

A positive side to all of this new information technology and a clear difference from my first time through college is the ease of research that is facilitated by the incredible availability of information. I believe that this is the single most significant difference; I never go to library. Instead I'm able to do my research from home, at any crazy hour of the day or night. And then I send my completed assignment to the professor via email. For someone who formerly took notes and made photocopies from bound collections of journals that were stored in the bowels of the library, and then typed a paper (remember typewriters?) this is a remarkable and wonderful change. My background as a scientist exposed me to many specialized databases, and for me the amazing range of information sources provided by the university is a great big wonderful information playground. This brings up another generational difference; many of my classmates believe that searching = google. It drives me crazy when I work with them on group projects. They're ignoring an unbelievable resource, one that is far better than they'll ever have in the corporate world. In fact I had a long discussion with one of my professors about this topic. She felt that in spite of the availability of information that the average quality of academic work has declined as a result of indiscriminate use of google.

And then there's the issue of grade inflation. It does appear to be real, although after experiencing it I don't think that it matters much. In my program it is nearly impossible to get a grade lower than 3.0. However, in order to maintain good standing with the graduate school, all grades must be 3.0 or higher, so a 2.9 is effectively a failing grade. In spite of the fact that the grade range is compressed between 3.0 and 4.0 the ranking of students remains legitimate. Additionally, if anything I've found it more difficult to get a 4.0 than it was back in the 80's. As far as I've observed, 4.0's have been reserved for truly exceptional work. A related issue is that of workload and expectations. There's no question that my current program feels easier than my work as a chemistry PhD student. However, the disciplines are quite different so I'm not sure that a comparison is completely valid. All of my, ahem, life experience does seem to be good for something, too, as I clearly am able to work more efficiently than most of my younger classmates. On the other hand, on several occasions I have been surprised at how accommodating professors are when students have come forward with (at least in my opinion) quite lame reasons for needing extensions or regrading of an assignment.

Ubiquitous information technology has dramatically changed academic life and I believe that this is the single most significant difference between my university experiences. Professors also appear to be generally more accommodating of student's desires than they were in the past and perhaps the expectations are lower. However, something that never changes is that as a student you get out of your studies what you put into it. Some of my classmates appreciate this fact, and some of them don't. As one who didn't appreciate it back in 1988 I can't judge them too harshly.

I was once married to a woman from a military family. Just as we were parting, her father was retiring as a lieutenant general (that's three stars) in the US Army.

The US military prides itself on being "professional", which in the military context means largely immune to the immediate external politics of their country. Examples of non-professional military organizations would be one loyal to a dictator or one in which promotions were largely governed by nepotism. However, that's not to say the US military is not political. To be promoted to 1-star general or above, one must be nominated by the President (on recommendation of a military promotion board) and then confirmed by the Senate. While this is apparently often a smooth process and the President and Senate follow the recommendations of the promotion board, that's not always the case.

In addition, the higher up one rises the fewer positions there are available into which one could be promoted. It's not a matter purely of rank. By tradition, the very uppermost positions are always filled by officers from particular specialties. For example, the head of battle strategy will always be an officer who rose through the ranks of the infantry, not an officer who spent his career in logistics.

Finally, the military has an "up or out" policy. There is a period of time after one's previous promotion when one is eligible for one's next promotion, the specific period depends on the rank. If you are promoted before that time, you are "below the zone", during that time, "in the zone" and beyond that period "above the zone". You only get one shot at "above the zone". If you are not promoted that year (only 3% of officers not promoted in the zone are promoted above the zone), you must retire.

In the case of my former father-in-law, there were only two jobs left for him to take and the then-occupants of those jobs showed no signs of leaving. So he retired because there was nowhere for him to advance in the army (a funny aside - he was quite worried about what kind of civilian job he could get since he only knew the military life, but he immediately got a job as a VP at a large telecommunications company and retired from that job not too many years later as a very wealthy man).

All of this brings me to a subject in the news today: the replacement of Gen. Peter Pace as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Ever since knowing my former father-in-law and watching the end stages of his army career, I always have sympathy for people in Gen. Pace's position. Such a person has spent his whole life playing the game well to rise to that position. It is purely by chance that one would happen to rise to the top position during any particular war, and it seems to me especially bad luck to reach that point in the middle of an especially unsuccessful and wrong-headed war. I can't help but feel sad for the guy.

In addition to our *ahem* intellectual pursuits, several Medium Low contributors devote much of their leisure time to unreasonably difficult endurance events such as trans-Europe bike tours, RAMROD and Ironman Canada. Personally, I enjoy the process of planning and training for an event and observing how my body adapts and changes over time. However, the culture of recreational athletics, in particular the gym, never ceases to embarrass me. A regular topic of conversation at the Medium Low headquarters is the general ridiculousness of American culture, and I believe that the Range of Motion (ROM) exercise machine is about as excellent an example of ridiculousness that you’re likely to find. First of all, look at the thing. It’s, I don’t know how to describe it, a weird hybrid of some sort of bondage device and a Rube Goldberg-esque contraption. Even better is the workout plan—4 minutes per day! Evidently 4 minutes on the ROM provides the same benefit as up to 45 minutes of running, 45 minutes of weight training and 20 minutes of stretching. All for $14615. And to think of all that time I’ve wasted on long bike rides and runs.

This year has seen a trend for large, cool cultural events to label themselves as green. The Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival, the Sasquatch Music Festival, the Live Earth concerts, and Burning Man are a few examples of recent or upcoming events that are calling themselves green and/or carbon neutral. One might argue that any event that causes large numbers of people to drive long distances is by definition an unsustainable extravagance, but what do I know? Of course let's not forget some of the other forms of environmental damage caused by large gatherings of humans. Like a carbon-neutral event that generates enough drug-laced urine to damage aquatic ecosystems. It's fairly obvious that the term "green," like "organic" before it, has become a marketing tool that assuages liberal guilt while it encourages still more consumption, however the green labeling of massive music festivals strikes me as being especially hypocritical. Any change in society first requires awareness that a problem exists, so an increase in green consciousness is a positive thing. However, the motivation for so much of the green movement is to sell things. A conservative would argue that this proves the superiority of the free market. I, on the contrary, think that all we've done is substitute one form of consumption for another.

I recently noticed that my favorite beer, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, no longer comes in bottles with twist-off caps. The author of one of my favorite blogs, Salon's How the World Works, has also noticed this fact and has written about it. My initial reaction was that his discussion of the symbolism of the change was way over the top. In spite of that, his premise that in an era of increasing environmental degradation and limited resources it may be impossible to maintain our accustomed level of convenience and luxury is an important message. In an earlier post to Medium Low I examined the way that terms such as "green" and "sustainable" are used to rationalize our continuing consumption. I think a better and, dare I say it, more sustainable paradigm is to accept the fact that all of our decisions have an impact on the world. Rather than looking at one choice as being more "green" than another we should acknowledge that any choice consumes resources and limits us in some way. Choosing to live in a big suburban house is fine, but if you make that choice then don't complain about traffic jams because your decision just made them worse. In Orion Curtis White examines these issues. He makes a strong argument that the current manifestation of environmentalism is simply another facet of our free market, consumption-based culture which views nature as a commodity. The capitalist system is so deeply entrenched that despite our good intentions we're unable to perceive an alternate point of view. I don't believe that the spiritual view of the world and our place in it that White propounds is the answer, or at least not the complete answer, either. However, it is clear to me that we should be thinking about models for society that do not rely on continual growth and I believe that articles such as these provide a framework for the discussion. If only they were read by more than a handful of prosperous, well-educated liberals.

Yesterday some program my kids were watching on TV referred to the practice of counting sheep to help oneself fall asleep. It made me wonder where the concept came from.

This morning I had to go settle one of my kids at 4:30am. My personal practice for getting myself to sleep when it doesn't happen naturally is to mentally play back the highlight reel of my sexual history. I'll go through partners sequentially from my first sexual experience and remember the best episodes with each of them.

It occurred to me that perhaps the person who invented the notion of counting sheep was doing exactly the same thing. But when his wife asked him how he got to sleep, he couldn't really say, "I reminisced about all of the sheep I'd had sex with." So he said he had been "counting" them.