Today Houstonians woke up sounds of (soon to be erstwhile) Houston City Council member Carol Alvarado railing against terms limits in Houston's paper of note. And this performance after she joined Ada Edwards in complaining about term limits in Council just days ago.
What actually promoted the Wizard to write this epistle was not Ms. Alvarado's diatribe against term limits. It was a statement that she wrote in her editorial:
I believe that neighborhoods advocate through their elected officials. Their elected officials are accountable and they want them to be knowledgeable about city government. They want their elected officials to use their knowledge and experience that they have gained to help make their neighborhood and communities better and safer.
The Wizard knows many things. I now shall share a story with you gentle readers about a conversation that I had with a pair of gentlemen whom I met at a Christmas party that I attended about 10 days ago. These two men told me that they live in downtown Houston and therefore happen to live in District I, which is the district that Carol represented. They proceeded to tell me of a tale where they had some small issue they wanted help with (they did not exactly share with me what that issue was), so they contacted Ms. Alvarado and asked for her to handle the matter. According to these two gentlemen, who happened to have central (or eastern-central) European surnames, Ms. Alvarado then asked who they were. Upon learning their names, she then proceeded to hang up on them. In their words, "if you don't have a Hispanic surname, then she wouldn't lift a finger to help you."
Hmmm. So much for neighborhoods advocating through their elected officials.
But what about term limits? The Wizard is actually a bit of a fence sitter when it comes to setting arbitrary tenures on a politician's time in office. Ms. Alvarado joins former Mayor Lee Brown and a few others who have whined about the various ills allegedly surrounding term limits, including not having enough time to learn the ropes, worrying about future unemployment, not having enough time to push through projects, and so forth. Those are some interesting charges, but one forgets that the Wizard is a historically minded fellow and hence it is time to pull out the lens of history to see how well these charges hold up.
To note, Houston has had term limits on public officeholders since 1992, when we Houstonians passed them, having been caught up in a wave of term limiting ballot measures which briefly swept the country in the early 1990's. The Wizard remembers, in a long forgotten piece of American political lore, that some explored during that time whether members of Congress could be term limited. However that idea seems to have sunk under U.S. Constitutional arguments.
But I digress. What of major projects being held up due to term limits? Intercontinental Airport (oops - George Bush, I'm showing my age here) has been expanded since 1992. The City has completed (albeit with vast cost overruns and delays) street reconstruction of downtown Houston and various sports temples. The first section of the Kirby storm sewer project was done during 2001 - 2004 and the next awaits. I'm not really sure I can buy that argument.
And to continue, if one views the completion of such major projects like Intercontinental airport, we see that it was Mayor Louis Cutrer's administration who started the project, but Ms. Alvarado's assertion that the impetus and continuity on public works projects is lost through term limits - or on the really important ones - just doesn't hold up. In fact it is amazing that anyone who is as intimate with politics as Ms. Alvarado is would make such a statement. As it was, it was Louie Welch's administration that oversaw the completion and opening of the airport. Big important public works projects take on a life of their own, apart from that of any particular officeholder.
Moreover, shining the lens of history on term limits, I introduce into the record, some very helpful websites on Houston's history. This page shows Houston's mayors since 1900 (here is another one), and this website shows Houston's City Controllers. A cursory glance at Houston's mayors shows that only 3 of Houston's 19 mayors between 1900 and 1992 survived to serve more than six consecutive years in office at a stretch before the imposition of term limits. That matters due to Houston's strong mayor form of government. The Wizard thinks that this is some pretty solid evidence of fierce political competition for a powerful job.
A similar exercise, when carried against the City Controller's office, shows that of Houston 14 Controllers since 1903, six served for six years or longer, though the individuals who held the job have had a much more varied history in terms of their tenures.
It is a bit taxing to investigate the fates of Houston's council members over time, but I do know that District A was represented by Larry McKaskle for 20 consecutive years before being unseated by Helen Huey in 1991. However, there is the infamous example of Ben Reyes, who served from 1979-1995, but was convicted of taking over $50,000 in order to influence the outcome of the downtown convention center.
And then there is the issue of the items she lists as being of importance; garbage, streets, parks, sports venues, and so forth. One does have to remember that it is quite possible for private society to provide for these goods. There is nothing written in stone that says that government is to make for provision of these things. I live in a condominium complex where we contract for our own trash pickup. Despite Peter Brown's recent compulsion to force developers to provide for park space, one has to remember that Houston has for generations had benefactors donate park space for the city. The wealthy benefactors of sports venues could very easily afford to build their own temples.
A better question as to the effects of term limits would be to ask what really would have been different had term limits not been imposed? Term limits were imposed in 1992, when Bob Lanier was elected. One possible outcome had not term limits been implemented would have been that Lanier would have bled Metro's $750 million cash horde completely dry through the transfer to police provision. It is quite possible that the Main Street rail line would not have been built. It may have been that the City's financial problems, which were substantially racked up during the tenure of Lee Brown, might not have been as acute as they are now. Some aspects of the Smart Growth agenda may have been delayed or not implemented.
One notable aspect to the term limits question is what I perceive to be a lack of political competition once an officeholder gains office. Since 1992, once a Mayor has won election, there has been only one really competitive mid-term challenge, that of Orlando Sanchez who challenged Lee Brown in 2001. Lloyd Kelley lost the Controller's office after one term in 1997, but mostly after he committed a number of political missteps. Most council members have not faced substantial challenges during their tenures once they gained office.
Another fear is that given that an officeholder will only have a limited time in office, they may try to use that time to plunder the public purse as quickly as possible before their time runs out.
Then there is the issue of them looking forward towards their futures rather than concentrating on what they are doing today. It would seem to me that the officeholder's future rests substantially on whether the officeholder in question really has any job skills they can fall back on once they leave office. Mr. Cutrer was a practicing attorney who returned to private practice, as did Fred Hoffeinz. Bob Lanier has long been in the real estate development business. The logic here is that the people who do not have established careers outside of public office would be the ones who would be shouting the loudest about being term limited for fear of unemployment.
So, I would submit that a compromise to the term limits question would be to extend the time of tenure to perhaps 10-12 years. This would reopen the issue that if an officeholder gains office, then opponents would have to consider the fact that they would have to deal with their opposition holding power for that period of time, rather than merely waiting for a few years, watching officeholders come and go until the next person comes along. It is quite possible that most officeholders would not even make it through their entire tenure because of reinvigorated political competition. Surely a decade or a bit more in office should be enough time for those who wish to pursue municipal office to accomplish at least some of what they want.
Then there is the issue of why people seek office to begin with. Alvarado has made a number of statements to the effect that she is concerned with pollution issues in the East End. To me, that signals that she should have been running for a state representative post where she would have more say over such matters, rather than that of a municipal City Council seat. Maybe, as Anne suggests, the City's loss will be the state's gain. As one person noted, there you go Carol. It's time to turn the page and for you to run for Mr. Noreiga's seat.
Sigh...
Wizard
Yesterday afternoon found the Wizard rearranging portions of his vast personal library of books when I stumbled across a book which I have not read in some 10 years: Marguerite Johnston's Houston the Unknown City, 1836 - 1946. In the Wizard's view, Ms. Johnston's history book is really more of a collection of journalistic accounts of Houston's early history, but all authors have their individual writing styles so you take what you can and go with the flow.
Today's epistle is a brief encapsulation of chapter 28 of Ms. Johnston's tome, which she entitled Automobiles, an Unnoticed Revolution. Packed in those six and one half pages are early accounts of what the world was like when automobiles were entirely new.
Ms. Johnston repeats an observation which Robert Bruegmann wrote in Sprawl, namely that motorized automobiles and trucks did not replace rail. What automobiles replaced were horse drawn transport. To quote Ms. Johnston:
In 1900, horse-drawn carriages, mule-drawn wagons, and electric streetcars were all anyone could need for transportation. Automobiles came into Houston as a sport, and an athletic and adventurous one at that. Nobody predicted that within twenty years, automobiles and horses would have traded places - the car to be driven for daily transportation and the horse to be ridden on fine mornings as exercise for Houston ladies and gentlemen. Very few foresaw that these would swell in number to provide a new use for the oil gushing up out of the ground at Spindletop.
Ms. Johnston wrote that the automobile age began quietly, a vehicle acquired here and there. She writes that by December 21, 1901, the Houston Chronicle was able to write that :
Automobiles have come to Houston... For more than a months now these agile, swift-moving steam machines have been dashing back and forth over the downtown streets.
Our socialite author then goes on to tell her readers that horse livery stables and blacksmith shops all over Houston stood ready to rescue horse drawn vehicles with broken axles or horses who had lost their shoes, but that nothing of the sort existed for these new fangled vehicles. Indeed part of what made all of this so amazing was that in the beginning there was no supporting infrastructure for motorized transportation.
Ms. Johnston tells of how C.L.Bering made a cross country trip in a car in 1903 and was cheered in every town he passed through. April 1, 1903 (appropriately) saw the first record of a Houstonian getting ticketed and fined $10 for "fast driving down Main Street." By 1906, Houston had 80 automobiles. On June 21, 1909, the Houston Chronicle reported that:
The first local party of automobilists to successfully make a trip from Houston to Galveston and return in a single day made the run on Sunday, leaving here at 6 o'clock in the morning... returning ... about 9 o'clock in the evening."
She then goes on to describe how such country trips were no mean feat, due to the fact that the roads were usually dirt ones, with wheel ruts, no maps, and no signposts. The trip to Austin involved trips opening gates through private property! Ms. Johnston writes of Julian Huxley (yes, that Julian Huxley!), who at the time was teaching at the Rice Institute. Mr. Huxley bought a Model T for 100 pounds ($5,400 - $10,700 in 2006 dollars) when he was in Texas and later wrote of it:
It was a gallant little machine which I could drive across the prairies. In the winter vacation, I drove with a colleague in my new car to see Stark Young, professor of comparative literature at the State University at Austin...
This important route from Houston to Austin soon turned into a dirt road, so bad that at one swampy place I had to turn off into a field.
Ms. Johnston' goes on to write that Dr. Huxley got stuck in the mud on that hapless trip.
From 1906 to 1910, the number of licensed automobile owners in Houston increased 10 times. From 1910 to 1913, the number increased another 5 times on top of that. There were 4,143 autos in Houston by 1913. Ms. Johnston wrote that cars were starting to replace carriage horses in the stable at the back of the property. She wrote that saddle horses held out for another two decades.
Modes of death changed. Deaths incurred from runaway horses, animal bites, and diseases were replaced by automobile accidents. Amongst Houston's early fatalities was nine year old LaRue Sachs, who was killed by a motorist. La Rue Street, located off of West Dallas near Waugh Drive, is named after her.
Ms. Johnston goes on to describe what it was like to actually operate and ride in early automobiles, saying that glass windows and the hard top and not yet come. Dusters and goggles were part of the driver's uniform. The ladies wore scarves over their hats to counter the stiff breeze from traveling 30-40 miles per hour. Lap robes were common. Other perils awaiting those intrepid new car buyers included flat tires which were commonplace. Patching holes in inner tubes was a skill that many young men of the era learned fairly quickly.
The crankshafts were located in front under the radiators. Turning them often required an adult male's physical strength and it was harder to turn them over in winter time. Some covered the hoods of their cars with blankets or lap robes to keep the lubricants from congealing. On some really cold mornings, motorists would light up charcoal heaters under radiators.
Electric cars were out and about, competing with the gasoline powered ones. Some well known figures in Houston like Mrs. Albert Bath and Mrs. Will Clayton drove electric cars, where Ms. Johnston notes that these vehicles needed to be plugged in and recharged after daily runs.
Running boards were another frequent feature of cars of the era, noting that children and young people would sometimes hang on to them for short trips. Running boards were done away with as newer cars were designed with more streamlining.
Then one day, a fellow named George Hawkins decided to build a garage attached directly to his house. He persuaded developers to push 10 1/2 Street through to his driveway. More of that was to follow.
Ms. Johnston's chapter is a great read. She does not, however, discuss observations such as that motorized transportation use is strongly positively correlated with incomes, and that accordingly the adoption of automobiles had much to do with rising incomes and living standards. However her writings do give insight as to how much trouble people were willing to put up with in those early days towards operating an automobile. In fact one could make the observation that the hassles our ancestors faced in operating motorized transportation were merely a tradeoff and may have been less than the hassles they faced in the upkeep of horses and wagons. Her work also shows that the people of that era created an entire operating infrastructure for automobiles within a manner of a few decades, something that should put to sleep any worries about the future of having to arrange a new infrastructure to support ethanol fuels from cellulose (ethanol absorbs water), or having to produce electricity from hundreds or thousands of square miles of solar panels or wind turbines. When it makes economic sense to do so, then those innovations will come.
Wizard
As anyone who has been following the news in America over the past year, two of the biggest news stories have been turbulence in housing markets across the land, and what is the the story with petroleum prices. Tory wrote a blog entry back in August 2007 which raised questions on housing and commuting costs in American cities. In turn, his blog post linked to a story carried in Forbes about housing and commuting costs throughout the land. Naturally, much was made about commuting in Houston eating up a substantial part of our household budgets around here.
The Wizard has never put too much stock in such debates, indeed your learned commentator did not even bother to reply to Tory's post. Nor does yours truly think very highly of those who rage about transportation costs incurred from automobile use. And why, pray tell, is that? Let's just pay a visit to a very helpful and insightful website which reveals much: The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics web page which describes household consumer spending over the past 100 years.
Before going any further, we should remind ourselves that the figures from 100 years ago on household consumption are - well - just that. They are 100 years old. Governments of course have been collecting information on their respective populaces for a very long time. Still, there are as always the quality of that information, but the BLS does state that their statistical information on household expenditures for residents in Boston and New York City are amongst the oldest pieces of information that they have been continuously collecting and are of considerable interest when thinking of such issues.
So what does the Wizard believe are the observations of greatest import when it comes to household expenditures since 1900?
1) Rising incomes. American household incomes have gone up 10 fold or more since 1900. Budget constraints have been pushed outwards to astronomical levels. One very famous economist strongly believed - even during the depths of the Depression - that this massive accumulation of human wealth would continue. Regardless of what else you may think of him, on this issue he was absolutely correct.
2) Reduction in family size. The mean size of an American household was 5 people in 1900, whereas it was 2.6 people in 2000. The ramifications of the drop in the size of households cannot be underestimated. In 1901, the BLS says that American households spent some 42 percent of their household budgets on food, but 22 percent on housing (29 percent in Boston).
But reduction in household size also rolls over into housing markets. In the short run, the social demand curve for housing is very inelastic. And why is that? The reason is that very few people are willing to sleep outdoors or in their cars at night. In Houston, there are an estimated 10,000 homeless people out of an urban area of some 4 million people. When I read urban economics with Barton Smith, we discussed the issue of budget constraints one day and he said that poor people are often willing to part with 50 percent (or even more) of their incomes on making sure there is a roof over their heads. They are willing to double up if necessary, to move back in with family, or give up other consumer goods in order to make sure they do not have to face the elements.
Thus, reduction in household size allows for much greater monies for other goods, resulting in some very interesting changes in individual and household indifference curves. One thing I am very confident I can say is that housing is a normal good, as is spending on transportation.
My observations find confirmation if one studies BLS data on household spending for housing and transportation over time. The 1934-1936 data is the first time the BLS displays data for transportation expenditures. The U.S. household percentage was 8.3 percent, while the Boston and New York figures were 5.1 and 5.7 percent. The 1960-1961 data show that U.S. household expenditures for transportation were 14.7 percent, while New York households spent 10.7 percent and Bostonians spent 13.5 percent. The 1984-1985 data show that transportation spending was 19.6 percent, 15.8 percent for New York and 19.3 percent for Boston. The 2002-2003 transportation figures were 19.1 percent for the U.S., 15.4 percent for New York and 17.3 percent for Boston.
The food budget fell from 42 percent in 1901 to 33-36 percent in 1936, then to 24-28 percent in 1960-61, 12-16 percent by 1984-85. Food budgets have stayed at 13 percent since then.
Housing expenditures rose from 23 percent in 1901 (29 percent in Boston) to 32-35 percent by 1934-1936. They stayed at 30 percent in the 1960-61 and 1984-85 periods. They rose however by 2002-03 32 percent across the U.S, and 36-37 percent in Boston and New York.
So what can we say about all of this, besides the fact that housing and transportation are normal goods? It can be pointed out that food production has increased dramatically with modern agricultural methods. Some have pointed out that fossil fuels have much to do with this in terms of providing fertilizer, pesticides, and farm machinery fuel, but one has to wonder whether there are substitutes for these? Can genetic manipulation of crops provide even greater crop yields? The Wizard is watching the work of one man in particular to see what holds in store for the future, not only for agriculture production, but for future liquid fuel production and a lot of other items as well.
But I digress. Clearly household budgeting for food would fall with the decline of family size regardless of any other factors. Also, it does help to remember that not only was food a bigger part of family budgets 100 years ago, but to reiterate that family incomes themselves were lower! Even if our children were to see an era of rising food prices due to an alleged decline in the amount of fossil fuels or phosphorus available (and an implied decline in agricultural productivity), is that not to mean that we cannot put land back into agricultural use?
I ask questions like this because what all of this shows is that there are a number of issues that those who see nothing but doom and gloom for man's future seem to not consider. We do not know what future incomes (and hence household budget constraints) will be; we do not know what technological improvements will happen, nor do we know exactly how fast they will happen (and they may happen very quickly!); we do not know what percentages of household budgets people in the future will be willing to allocate towards various desires.
Are you just dying to see the world's stock of petroleum to run low so that people will stop driving gasoline powered cars, knowing that electric cars are more expensive? Did you ever think that the automobile manufacturers might consider allowing people to carry an 8 year car note instead of 5 years? Did you ever think that Americans might consider downsizing their average house sizes from 2,300 square feet to 1,700 square feet, and perhaps cutting down the size of their house notes 25 percent in the process? If doing so results in a drop in the amount they are carrying on their mortgage by $50,000, that would result in a drop of $300 per month every month for 30 years, if a mortgage is carried at six percent interest. And what will people do with that extra $300 per month? They just might spend it carrying a note on a $35,000 flex fuel car which might be powered up during their work day by an electrical outlet that is provided by their employer's parking lot, but we don't know that do we?
And that is the reason why the Wizard did not put much effort to get worked up about the Forbes article, nor do I worry about such things as how much of American household budgets go towards transportation costs, food costs, or any of the other things that work other people who really have nothing else to worry about into a lather. I am concerned about whether people try to make certain household expenditures more expensive than they need be because of political or aesthetic preferences. People will make adjustments as they want or need to do so, but why force them to make tradeoff decisions that they otherwise might not need to? I would have much more to be concerned about had suffered the genuine misfortune, like 80 percent of humanity, of having been born in a really poor country.
Wizard.
Note: This is the fifth and last of a series of static web page redirects from previous book reviews I have posted elsewhere. Wizard
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Native Canadian scientist Steven Pinker wrote this book sometime in 2002 and was was featured in a Borders Book store which I happened to be in sometime in late 2003. Normally I do not go for science books (especially psychology books!) these days, despite the fact that I work in computers. Reading anything more about science than I already have to simply makes my head hurt. Nonetheless, intrigued by the book cover, and having spent a good thirty minutes or so having read through about 20 random pages of content, I decided to plunk down my hard earned dosh and see what the good Professor had to say about blank slates and human nature.
The first thing I had to learn about Pinker is that he subscribes to what is known as evolutionary psychology, meaning that he is someone who studies human behavior from the standpoint of evolutionary development. More precisely, Dr. Pinker is a professor of language psychology and how it is acquired by children. The dust cover jacket also describes research he has done in the field of visual cognition. Moreover, in reading this book (I had never heard of Steven Pinker before reading this book, even though he was already an academic celebrity before this book via having written other such tomes as The Language Instinct and How the Mind Works) one cannot but help noticing that Pinker is well aware of developments in a number of other fields of scientific endeavor, such as genetics, ethnology, and anthropology.
Pinker also is well aware of the political pitfalls and minefields with which the research of human behavior (particularly the study of human behavior via evolutionary psychology) is sown. Indeed The Blank Slate is riddled up and down with war stories of various academics having experienced public crucifixion from others who have (purposefully or not) vilified their writings or research. Some of this outrage comes from people who hadn't read what it was that the academic had to say, but Pinker also makes it clear that quite a bit of what various academics have had to put up with has come from other academics and interested groups whose ideas and ideology are under severe intellectual assault from Pinker and fellow evo - psych researchers.
At 434 pages long, along with a list of human universals observed by academic D.E. Brown, 27 pages of footnotes and 28 pages of references, Pinker's opus is not an easy book to get through. However Pinker makes the going quite a bit easier by dividing The Blank Slate into six parts. At the beginning of each section, Pinker devotes 1- 3 pages that explain what it is that he is about out to write about. I love this style of writing. Pinker writes clearly, sensibly, and goes through quite a bit of trouble to make sure that the book stays on track. And to belabor the point, it is important that a tome that sets out to destroy such cherished beliefs as that we are Blank Slates, that we are inhabited by Ghosts in Machines, or that we are all Noble Savages (the three mainstay ideologies that exist that proport to explain how it is that we behave) stay on track.
Do you want just one example (out of many, by the way) of the angry intensity that can be unleashed by the issues that evolutionary psychology raises? Then try this: In chapter 18 of The Blank Slate, whose subject is human gender, Pinker tells the tale of biologist Randy Thornhill and anthropologist Craig Palmer, who in the year 2000 jointly wrote a book entitled A Natural History of Rape. It seems that one premise of the book (full disclosure, I haven't read the book) is that a big reason why men rape women has to do with the idea that rapes are committed by men as a reproductive strategy. As one can imagine, this premise brought down more agony on the field of evolutionary psychology than it had in years - and that's saying quite a bit.
Nonetheless, Pinker makes it clear that it is important to air this out since he subsequently points out that current political and social sensibilities that have been around since the 1970's are that rape has nothing to do with sex - it's all about power, baby. Many of you have probably heard some arguments that run along the lines of, "rape is part of a male dominated society's means for keeping women down." Pinker point out that such arguments fall flat on their faces in the light that 1) men who attempt to rape women try do so in secret, 2) men who are discovered to have committed rape are usually deeply despised and 3) men who are discovered to be rapists will have to face the wrath of the woman's father and brothers. So much for the idea that a rapist commits rape on behalf of all males in a society in an effort to keep the women down and in their place.
To return to the book in general, the six sections that Pinker divides his book into are
1) An explanation on how The Blank Slate became the dominant theory of human nature and behavior in modern intellectual life. Also included here are examinations behind the rise of The Noble Savage and the Ghost in the Machine.
2) Subsequently, Pinker then describes how newer views of human nature are challenging these long held views and talks about the disquiet that has been provoked by modern day findings.
3) In a part of the book that is a bit difficult, Pinker sets out to deal with the fears which might arise from viewing human nature through the lens of evolutionary psychology, such as human nihilism, social inequality & fairness, and Determinism.
4) Pinker then strives to show how newer views of human nature can provide either complement, or provide deeper insights into human behavior. Included are discussions on topics like how people make economic decisions and how they treat people based on their genetic or familial relation to themselves.
5) In the part which I found to be the most fun to read, Pinker then shows how new ideas can shed light into socially controversial issues, including politics, child rearing, violence, feminism, personal choices, about enjoyment of the arts, and other sundry topics. I particularly loved his writing regarding the so - called "crisis in the arts" in the 20th - and 21st centuries, and his treatment of how people perceive art (and the artists who create art) in all of its forms.
6) Pinker ends his book by informing readers that they should not worry so much about the dismissal of old concepts like The Blank Slate, et.al.
Along the way, Pinker makes it quite clear that even though we may well be hard wired for certain behaviors through genetics, that in no way morally or normatively excuses people from behaving or committing acts that are intolerable. For example, a killer may well be equipped with a brain whose areas which help to inhibit violent behavior, but that fact does not excuse the fact that the killer killed someone. Also, Pinker goes into some depth about topics like how much knowledge we may be able to cull out of cracking the human genome and how much behavior we might be able to attribute to our genes. Pinker also tells many stories, both silly and horrible, that have been perpetrated by man against his fellow man, all in the name of thinking of people as Blank Slates, Noble Savages, or Ghosts in Machines.
I am not someone who is terribly interested in analyzing human behavior to death. Leave that to the thousands of female undergraduate students lurking around all of the college campuses in this country and to women in general. This book, however, is a first rate study for people who might be interested in what the frontiers of human behavioral research are revealing. The breadth of the book, because it delves into such topics like genetics, ethnology, brain development, language, and social responses to human behavior, is astonishing and the fact that Pinker organizes his topics so well makes the book a true pleasure to read. To end this poor review of this fascinating book, I can certainly say that I learned a thing or two! You might get upset over the idea that human behavior can partly be explained by our human evolution, but the next time you find yourself in the throes of some powerful emotional matter in your own life, it may well be because of what we came from as humans.
The Mighty Wizard gives this book a 9.5 out of 10 - go buy it and prepare to wrestle with a stimulating read!
This is the fourth of a series of redirects from previous static web pages from which I had written book reviews. Wizard
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January 6, 2004: The Closing of the Western Mind - The Rise of Faith and The Fall of Reason by Charles Freeman.
Bear in mind while you read this review that I am an agnostic.
Charles Freeman has written a book about an extraordinarily important historical matter, one that is almost always glossed over in the history books. That question is, Why was it that Europe went through a 1000 year period known as the Dark Ages, and later the Middle Ages, between the Fall of Rome and the Renaissance?
Although I love reading history just as much as the next history buff over, I had never seriously considered what the real answer to this question might have been. For years, I assumed that a standard answer (if there is one) to this question would have been something like this: Rome was sacked in 410 A.D. (and again in 476 A.D.), and with it books were burned by a bunch of barbarians like the Huns, Goths, and Visigoths who were not accustomed to living a cultured life the way that the Greeks and Romans were. Ergo, the wealthy and civilized Roman Empire in the West faded into memory, and its cultural achievements were not appreciated by those who came thereafter, learning didn't pick up again for a 1000 years.
Buzzer goes off. AAAAA wrong!
Actually, I was kinda sorta close in a few regards. In his book, Freeman leads the reader through the classical Greek age of the competitive city states. He relates how the Greek civilization of the 5th century B.C fostered a remarkable culture and spirit of tolerating intellectual inquiry into every sphere of human interest. This went for the sciences, math, philosophy, rhetoric, religion, and architecture. Indeed, there was something of an atmosphere of one upsmanship and competitiveness amongst the Greek intellectuals which would accept the achievements of the great, while trying to improve on previous achievements.
Meanwhile, another aspect of Greek civilization and rationality asserted itself. The Greeks, especially Aristotle, denoted boundaries between what was knowable and would could not be known. They ascertained and denoted the ideas of deductive and inductive reasoning. They also tolerated inquiry while remaining pious to religious (and to remind the reader that the Greeks were pagan) tenants. There was tolerance between Muthos and Logos. This spirit of inquiry survived through the age of Philip of Macedonia and his son Alexander "the Great," and eventually spread to other areas of the classical world where Greeks eventually settled, such as Alexandria and Sicily.
The Romans picked up on this spirit of the Greeks when they conquered the Greek peninsula before the coming of Christ. I've read elsewhere the when the Romans encountered the classical Greek culture, they were definitely had their eyes opened. Some aspects of Greek life, such as participating in sporting events in the nude were abhorred, but Romans loved rhetoric (think Cicero), and added their own achievements, such as road building, public baths, and architecture. Scientists such as Ptolemy continued to make advances in fields such as astronomy.
Moreover, in the sphere of religion, the Romans were as tolerant as the Greeks about the faiths of conquered peoples. Deities were swapped and matched between faiths, and faiths such as Mithraism were widespread. However, one faith that was founded during this time was not tolerant of others - Christianity.
Freeman's book lays the downfall of inquiry and reason in the Roman world at the feet of Christianity. Mind you, it was not the teachings of Jesus Christ that were to blame for this. Jesus, being without sin, preached in his ministry the message of love, forgiveness, charity, and walked with sinners and the downtrodden. The stellar ethics of Jesus were those of Excellence. They were worthy of one whom could be a Son of God.
Freeman blames much of what turned into what we know of as Christianity today at the feet of the apostle Paul. He points out that Paul had a bit of a precarious position amongst the early Church leaders, as Paul did not have personal knowledge of Jesus the way that Peter and others had. Freeman characterizes Paul as someone who seems uncomfortable with sexuality, to which this day is still a hot button issue in both Protestant and Roman Catholic faiths. Also, Freeman believes that when Paul went on his ministry to spread the Good Word, he eventually reaches Athens, where Freeman thinks that Paul may have taken an intellectual beating at the hands of the wise and learned in the Great City. Freeman thinks that this leads to Paul articulating a strain of thought within Christianity that frowns on the thinking of human philosophers. Better to not strain the brain about the world around you. Place your trust in God as man will not profit from inquiring too harshly of the world around us. Indeed St. Augustine warns of and condemns the "dangers" of having a mind of curiosity in his Confessions, written some 400 years later.
Two other major developments warrant mention. The first is that eventually the emperor Constantine makes the decision to adopt Christianity as the state religion in the year AD 323. Freeman characterizes this decision as one of pragmatism on the part of Constantine, who is trying to keep the empire together. Indeed paganism continued to flourish for some time.
However, the early Christian Church was a church that was plagued with many internecine wars. These wars were due to the fact that an entire swath of ideas and versions of Christianity had sprung up in the centuries that followed the death and resurrection of Christ. Writings and movements, such as the Gnostic Gospels, Arianism, and Donatism all had wide followings. Eventually accusations of heresy were tossed between the followers of various Church movements, which threatened the stability of the Church and broader social stability within the Empire. Added to this potent stew of social unrest was the fact that after Christianity was adopted as the state religion, there was money to be made via patronage. Eventually, various emperors in the later days of the Empire step in to enforce their own version of orthodoxy in an effort to quiesce matters.
All of these matters combine eventually to stifle the atmosphere of tolerance that was needed to sustain the freedom of inquiry that is so crucial to progress in other forms of human endeavor. Reason was squashed in favor of Faith. In all, Freeman's book is a must read for non - academic students of history.
Addendum: In one of my earliest blog entries, I exchanged emails with Mr. Freeman, which he allowed me to publish.
Wizard.
As noted earlier, this blog entry is part of an ongoing redirection of old static web pages of book reviews. Wizard.
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Febuary 1, 2004
It took me about 2 weeks to get through Elaine Pagels' 1979 academic smash, The Gnostic Gospels. It wasn't because the book is long. At 151 pages, it isn't. It mainly had to do with the fact that I had other things going on, which made my reading of this book come in fits and starts.
Pagels, a professor of Religion at Princeton University, is famous for having written a series of book length studies having to do with the the discovery of the so - called, Nag Hammadi books, after the area in which these documents were discovered. Pagels starts off The Gnostic Gospels by telling the riveting story of how in December 1945, an Egyptian peasant named Muhammad Ali al - Samman discovered a meter high jar while out in the desert. Inside were 13 papyrus books that were bound with leather. He took them home and laid them on the ground next to the family's oven. His mother later admitted that she burned much of the papyrus in the oven along with straw to kindle fires.
Reading that fact makes one's heart sink after finding out what was on those rolls of papyrus. For indeed, amongst the texts were such priceless writings such as, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Phillip, the Gospel of Truth, the Gospel to the Egyptians, the Secret Book of James, the Apocalypse of Paul, the Letter of Peter to Phillip, the Apocalypse of Peter, the Gospel of Mary, the Secret Book of John, amongst many other texts. They were written in Coptic, the language of Egyptian Christians, and were probably translations of earlier Greek writings. Pagels later writes that scholar Frederik Wisse has suggested that monks in the nearby monastary of St. Pachomius may have had the Nag Hammadi texts within their Devotional library. In 367, when Athanasius, the Archbishop of Alexandria sent orders that "apocryphal books" should be purged, the St. Pachomius monks may have hidden the books and buried them on the nearby cliffs, only to be found 1600 years later.
Nearly as insane was the political and academic wars which were set off by the discovery of these texts. The Egyptian government claimed control of the texts, which had leaked onto the black market. Meanwhile, scholars battled for access to the Gnostic Gospels, which they recognized would make their careers. Reading this early part of Pagel's book easily beats anything found in a Hollywood film.
Pagels divides The Gnostic Gospels into six chapters, each pertaining to important questions which the Gospels raise about the early Christian Church. The texts raise questions over whether the death and resurrection of Jesus should be viewed historically or symbolically. There were battles over what the roles of an institutionalized church and its officially ordained bishops should play in guiding faith. There clashing views over the role of women in the faith and the church. The early members of the Church was often persecuted. Should believers be martyrs, or should they spare themselves? What is evil? Is the faith one of self knowledge and the pursuit of spiritual self discovery, or is it a faith where you share your beliefs and participate in a wider community? Pagels' book shows that there were many, many sharp dividing issues which split the Christian church in its first 400 years.
Pagels also believes that the institutionalized church is what preserved the faith. Otherwise, the teachings of Christ may well have fallen by the wayside, as have the teachings of so many other faiths throughout history. She goes on to give other reasons why the Catholic Church prevailed over the Gnostic teachings. Among them are ideas such as the issue that the Catholic faith was non - discriminatory in whom it taught, whereas some Gnostics were very judgmental in whom they believed were ready to receive teaching. Also, the Catholic faith tried to make the faith touch you, whereas the Gnostic teachings required more of an effort on the part of believers.
Pagels shows what kinds of heretical charges were tossed between Gnostics and the Catholics. She goes on with this issue, showing that it was quite probable that heretical charges - and what types of heretical charges - were often tied to the political and social situations in which theologians found themselves in.
The Nag Hammadi texts have reopened an entire Pandora's box of questions regarding the followers and teachings of Christ. Pagels points out that it is rather extraordinary that these texts were found in our time, which is one of atheism, agnosticism, and belief in man's power. It would have been an entirely different story if these texts had been found 1,000 years ago. In all, Pagels has written an admirable introductory book to subject that should fascinate all open minded people, the subject of the foundations of Christianity.
British classicist Anthony Everitt, a professor, arts council advisor, and a writer for the European press about cultural matters, has greeted the Third Millennium by writing a wonderful introduction to the life and times of the man many people think of as the greatest Orator and lawyer of all time - the classical Roman politician Marcus Tulllius Cicero. The book Everitt produced is - at 330+ pages - easily accessible to modern readers, explaining not only the life of his subject in a clear eyed, lucid manner, but more importantly Everitt takes time out to explain the breathtaking and momentous events in Roman history in which Cicero himself was a player. It was Cicero's fate, to have lived (and died) in the death throes of the Roman Republic, when it finally collapsed into being an dictatorial Empire.
Everitt starts his story on March 15, 44 B.C. where he tries to describe the scene of the assassination of Julius Caesar from what it must have been like for Cicero, who happened to have a front row view of the grisly scene. But in a deft manuever, Everitt quickly shifts his tale to a 12 - 13 page synopsis which covers of the overall socio - political situation that Rome finds herself in during the last 100 years before the failure of the Republic. He shows us the Roman Constitution, describing the formal political posts within the government, including the Roman Senate, the roles of Tribunes (representing "the people"), Quaestors (officials who collected taxes), Adeiles (which put on civic events - at their own expense!), Praetors who acted as Judges and administered laws, all of which had to be served before one could run for Consul - the supreme executive in the Republic. During this part of the story, Everitt also discusses the origins of the terrible problem of land reform and redistribution within the Republic, which threatens powerful vested interests. By doing this, Everitt provides the reader a clear eyed account of the the main tectonic forces which were causing the Republic to tear itself apart. He plainly states his belief that the Roman Constitution had too many checks built within its system and that major social questions and problems of the day were left to fester simply because they could not be resolved within the political system as it was during Cicero's day.
Everitt then starts his tale with Cicero's beginnings in 106 B.C. when he was born to a well to do provincial family in the town of Arpinum, which was about 70 miles southeast of Rome. Cicero and his brother were given a good education by their father and when they came of age, their father arranged to have his boys educated by some well regarded rhetoricians of the day in Rome itself. Cicero's background as an provincial outsider, who did not belong to any of the old time prominent families of the city, was to have an interesting effect on his career. It was remarkable that this outsider was, within a span of 20 years, to go from being an unknown lawyer to reaching the highest pinnacles of power within the Republic.
Along the way, Everitt shows us glimpses of Cicero's teachers, such as Scaevola, Diodotus, and Philo. We see the young Cicero meet his wife Terentia, his children - especially his love for his daughter Tullia, as well as some of his contemporaries, - the young Julius Caesar, Pompey (whom he met during his brief military career), and his greatest friend the urbane Titus Pomponius Atticus, known to us simply as Atticus. It is to Atticus that we owe a huge debt of gratitude for much of our knowledge of Cicero. For it was with Atticus that Cicero kept up a 25+ year correspondence of letters, many of which have miraculously survived and have come down to us.
We also get to see Cicero, who was an extremely precocious boy, got swept up in the excitement of watching the great orators of the day slug out in (often corrupt) legal duels held the legendary Roman Forum. Early on, Cicero resolved that he too would be a lawyer. Cicero worked hard at studying rhetoric and perfecting his oratorical style, eventually writing a book on the topic. It would be his sheer ability to persuade jurists and public opinion that would bring him to the pinnacle of Roman life and ensure his memory.
Everitt shows us the effects of the acts of the ruthless dictator Lucius Felix Sulla, Consul when Caesar, Atticus, Pompey, and Cicero were in their teens and twenties. Sulla, was to cast a long shadow over the career paths of each of these men. Sulla was an army general and politician, who among other things had instigated a proscription amongst the Roman elite when the boys were young. This was to have differing effects amongst the young men: Caesar was to become something of a radical, who eventually decimated the Republic. Atticus, though staying involved at the edges of public life, essentially moves to Greece and settles into a life of making money and living Epicurean values. Meanwhile, Cicero who was horrified at the chaos and turbulence that afflicted his youth, became attached to a conservatism in which he felt the Republic had to be saved by means of bringing the various social groups together and uplifting "better" men into public life.
Everitt guides us through the long arc of Cicero's career, where after he reaches the pinnacle of power, he is ruined by a political rival, Clodius, then later rehabilitated. Early on, we see Cicero's famed corruption trial against Verres, the governor of Sicily, by which Cicero first comes to public notice. We see Cicero being banished from Rome by Clodius and later on govern a province. Everitt shows us Cicero's interest in training and promoting the careers of younger men, his retreat into books when things weren't going well, and he covers Cicero's incredible burst of writing in the last years of his life before he at last falls victim to a new Civil War era proscription by Marc Antony and Octavian at the age of 63. Everitt also touches points at times in his narrative on some of the great "what if" questions that might have changed the fate of what happened. Everitt includes a post mortem, where he concludes his narrative over the outcomes of the Roman Civil war between Caesar and the Republican forces.
This book is a first rate book for those who want to read a solid introductory tale of what classical Roman life was like. Everitt also includes a bibliography for those who are interested in further reading into a topic of Roman history and the lives of its notable citizens, as well as including some questions that readers can discuss (or ponder) once they have finished his tome. Trust me, Everitt has written a book that is a page turner. Once you have started reading this book, you just can't wait to see what's going to happen next. And that's how every biography or history book should be written.
The Wizard rates this book an A+.
Wizard.
I am wishing everyone out there a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
The Wizard is celebrating some of his 2007 Christmas by doing a bit of site clean up. Notably some static web pages that I have had hanging out there for years, and which look as though they were created in 1997, are being redirected to my blog page. Hence, the next 5 entries to be found here are redirects from elsewhere.
Enjoy!
March 27, 2004
Some time in 2002 or 2003, I was at home one evening watching The History Channel on television, when a curious television program came on. The program was entitled A History of God. Broadly speaking, the program was essentially about how our ideas of God have taken shape over time and what forces may have been involved in how the process took place. Being the history buff that I am, I was absolutely spell bound by both the subject matter and by the things that some of the people who appeared on the program had to say. In particular, there was one dignified British woman by the name of Karen Armstrong who enunciated some fascinating thoughts about the matter of God, and how our concepts of the Divine have both stayed stable and how they have evolved. The program mentioned that Ms. Armstrong, a former nun but who is now practicing writer / journalist, was the author of a book called "A History of God," so I wrote down this information and promptly headed over to a nearby bookstore to hunt down the book.
As for the book itself, I've read a lot of books in my life, but A History of God is a challenge to read. The paperback version of Armstrong's tome tops off at 399 pages, with another 60 pages of definitions, citations, notes and bibliography thrown in for good measure.
The book is composed of 11 chapters. The book's first 5 chapters start, as one might imagine, at the beginning of faith, and take the reader through the time of Muhammad. All of this was worth reading. However, in chapters 6 - 7 (and part of chapter 8), she writes about how God became the God of the philosophers and mystics during the era of the Middle Ages. This part of the book proved to be rather difficult to read because there are a few times where she - in a sense - repeats herself because by this time, many of the ideas of God that our ancestors had are now familiar to the reader. The book does pick up towards the end when in the last 2 - 3 chapters, she starts to approach more recent centuries. She begins to write about the rise of human rationalism and science. Topics like the "death of God," what ideas may we have about God in the future, or whether God even has a future are examined.
This is a difficult book to review, not because the topic is difficult, but because it is hard to distill so many ideas and thoughts into a relatively short review that touches on the many topics and ideas in this book. I may find that I might rewrite this book review sometime in the future in order to encompass matters I might have missed, or to extend the review so that I write more about the last half of the book.
I should clarify what I mean by the book being a challenge to read. The book is in fact quite readable and quite extraordinary. Ms. Armstrong has a gift of being able to delineate and get to the root of some complicated matters involving monotheism (the book does touch on Buddhism and Hindu ideas too), and do so in a way that a layman can grasp. Where the book becomes a challenge is that the reader has to make sure that he / she is staying alert and following along with the vast, ongoing train of Ms. Armstrong's great story. Readers encounter many personages, nation states, conceptual ideas, and conflicts that Ms. Armstrong covers in the course of this book. For example, at different times in history, men of different times and places have reached similar ideas about God, but in order to remember who had reached these ideas before, one has to look back at who had reached such conclusions before and why they had come to these conclusions. I found that in order to really get the most out of this book, I had to reread the book a second time and take notes in order to keep track of everything.
Armstrong starts the book off with her own story of her religious and spiritual journey. She clearly had some experiences that I think most people can smile at. For example, she writes about how easy it is for most people to conceive of Satan, but how are we to conceive of God? Or, for that matter, isn't the majesty of God supposed to be inconceivable to begin with?
I myself went to a parochial school growing up and I had to chuckle at Ms. Armstrong's efforts to "find God" when she was a nun. We all know full well that Satan is a red colored fellow with horns, but are we supposed to think of God as some huge, old, bearded fellow with a book that has everyone's name in it. Doesn't God look down on us from the heavens, waiting for us to die so that He can look at our report card and check off whether we are allowed into Heaven? Well gentle readers, things are not quite so simple in this world, and I'm sure things aren't so simple in the next one either!
There have been many theories about the origins of religion, but Armstrong writes about the idea that the ancients may have had ideas about religion because they may have been trying to deal with issues of the Unseen. She writes that what makes religious belief come alive for people is that religion works for them. Ideas and thoughts that may be relevant at one point in time might very well make little sense years later. People are spiritual animals, Armstrong points out that there are other ways in which we can have deeply meaningful experiences other than those experienced by religious belief.
Armstrong writes about the influence of Babylonian and Sumerian gods and their influence on monotheism. The Babylonians (and later the Greeks) thought that gods were not distant, unaccessible, or shut off from humanity. Ergo there was not any need for revelation. Faith wasn't something intellectual, or organized into Dogmas. Rather faith for the ancients was something that was held because the God Yahweh (or any other belief that was held) made good on his / her promises. Because of this view about faith, the Israelites had quite a struggle trying to let go of their old deities like Baal, and embrace Yahweh.
The God Yahweh was, as many Christians know, a jealous God. He (Armstrong traces how God became a "He"), also is a partisan God. Yes, Old Testament incarnations of Yahweh were later to be a source of frustration and consternation to later Jews and Christians. Similarly, the Unmoved First Mover of Plato and Aristotle seemed to many to be elitist. Later admirers of Greek thought, including educated Muslims and Jews, were to admit this. There must be some kind of Anthropormophism in religion, because we won't be able to identify with any faith that doesn't have such an element in it.
Religious faith needs to be effective in order to be successful, writes Armstrong. We watch while as the Israelites are overrun and exiled to Babylon, Yahweh makes a transformation. Yahweh becomes a Mover of History. Even enemies of the Israelites are His instruments. And yet, God relies on Man to act in the world, which became an important idea in Judiasm.
Later, we see the encounter of Greek philosophy with the Jewish faith. Armstrong devotes an entire chapter to the coming of the New Messenger, Jesus of Nazareth. She writes about the slow development of the concept that Jesus was Divine, which takes place over the next four centuries. She writes about the theological struggles that took place in early Christianity as Christian thinkers from all over the Roman empire battled to come up with a "workable" theology of The Trinity, which could encompass the story of Jesus and how Jesus the Man could also Divine.
Some interesting issues that Armstrong writes about were about how Jews, who used to be proselytizers of their faith, stopped doing so. This was because groups of monotheists, called God Fearers, who did not want to adapt all of the "baggage" of Judiasm, such as diet and various Laws, eventually convert to the new Christian faith. Jews became much more suspicious of converts. There were many converts to the new faith, but in the early centuries, such people were often slaves or lower classed people. What Armstrong believes brought "socially better off" people towards Christianity was the impressive social welfare efforts of the Church, as well as the intellectual efforts on the part of some educated Romans to expound on the new faith. Eventually of course, Constantine makes Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire.
Armstrong also delves into the difficult legacy that St. Augustine left Christianity, especially regarding the roles of women and sexuality. Of course, this was only part of St. Augustine's legacy. St. Augustine was having to deal with the world shaking fact that Rome herself had been sacked by barbarians in the year 410 A.D. This event literally marked the end of the empire, and nobody knew what was going to come next. His great polemic, The City of God, was partly written to answer the charge made by pagans that Rome had abandoned her earlier gods, which had protected her for over 1100 years. It was when the new God had been adapted, so went the thought, that Rome fell.
Another strong area of the book revolves around the story of Muhammad. She writes about the changes that were going on in Muhammad's world, and about how the Last Prophet, who had never read the Bible, nor had ever heard of any of the Patriarchs, ended up having a story that nearly parallels the stories of all of the previous Prophets and Messengers of God. She writes about the political genius of Muhammad, who managed to weave together a workable faith that synthesized the traditional laws and customs of Arabian tribes, along with a strong element of togetherness. His message was that all men were the same before the One God. All peoples of God, including Jews and Christians, were to be seen as brothers. This chapter is a must read for anyone.
The story of Muhammad reminds me that one of the strongest points of this book is that it gives just enough insight into the character of each and every person who makes an appearance to make the book nearly as much a history of religious figures as it is a history of God. There are many more figures in the later half of the book. I will not write about the last half of the book because that would make this review twice as long as it already is. I hope that reading this review will give you enough of a feel about what the book is like to read. I may add a "part II" to this review in the future.
If that is not enough for you, I will end this book review with one last story. I purchased two additional copies of this book for two co - workers who were the type of people who I thought would be interesting in reading Ms. Armstrong's book. One of my co - workers was a girl, a college student in her early 20's, who happens to be from a practising Muslim family. She told me that this book just absolutely blew her away and that this was one of the best books she has ever read! She told me that her father, who is a highly educated man, saw her copy of this book and immediately stole the book out of her backpack! She told me that her father was so amazed and enthralled by this book that he would not give the book back to her so she could finish it. This book was a New York Times best seller and the Wizard highly recommends that you find yourself a copy and see for yourself why this is so.
Wizard.
I stumbled across this story on Thailand's election in the International Herald Tribune. The Wizard has written on Thailand before and the IHT article largely jibes with what I wrote there. The IHT article sums up the entire political situation in the country quite nicely, to the point where I wish I could have written it. That is the biggest complement I could pay to Mr. Mydans.
It is becoming clear that the election that Thais are holding is not going to solve the question of Thaksin Shinawatra and the problems that Mr. Shinawatra's previous elections posed for the old guard in the country. Thailand as a nation will not make breakthroughs in achieving a truly pluralistic political society until the old guard of the Monarchy, the army, the bureaucracy, and economic elites realize that the country's large population of working poor represent its political power in the Democracy. If you are going to have a Democracy, then that is where the political power lies, not in the privileges enjoyed by the old guard. All Mr. Shinawatra did was cater to the country's vast population of rural peasantry and not to the palace or so much to the army. Until these questions are solved and the answers accepted by everyone, then look for more tensions to come.
Sigh...
Addendum edit: A pro-Thaksin party has won a substantial minority of seats in the 480 member Parliament and will reach out to minor parties to form a coalition government. It also seems the old guard military has passed an "internal security law" which blunts pluralistic progress. And so it goes that the stalemate will continue.
Wizard
This past Wednesday, December 12, 2007, HPRA member Brooks Porter was featured in the Wall Street Journal in a story entitled Whose Beach Is This Anyway? Now we humble property rights advocates here in Houston have to deal with the fact that one of our members is world famous!
Amusement aside, as can be read from the story, Mr. Brooks and his staunch hold out neighbors have been fighting a property rights battle for some years now. At stake is the fact that Mr. Brooks purchased a pair of beach houses 25 years ago, but over time the Gulf of Mexico has slowly eroded away the beach at a rate of several feet per year. Now their homes lie within the vegetation line, ergo they are on the beach which is open access as per the 1959 Texas Open Beaches Act. Some of the holdouts basically want the State of Texas to buy them out, while others absolutely refuse to move at all. They say that State action to move the Brazos River has altered water flows which have greatly hastened beach erosion. Meanwhile, the Open Beaches Act apparently makes little provision for issues like beach erosion.
But as one might expect about the political classes, the Great State of Texas isn't about to pay up for a fully valued condemnation, something I have often discovered is the case when governments face the prospect of having to actually pay for swiping things away from people. As can be denoted from the story, the State is willing to pay money for relocation costs only.
Needlessly making life annoying for the beach home owners is the fact that the Texas Surf Riders Association asked (and was allowed) to join the suit on the side of the State. It seems the Surf Riders group has done rather well for itself over the years suing various property groups. The accompanying film shows a member of the Surf Riders complaining about rebar and septic tanks left on the beaches, but rebar was put in place by villages and those septic tanks could be found from anywhere and put on the beach for dramatic purposes.
Moreover, I have an incredibly hard time understanding how it is that the Surf Riders would get wound up by this. Unless the homeowners would actually try to define away the entire beach as their own property (something not talked about in the story), then as an interested bystander, it seems to me that both groups could co-exist. The homeowners could get their homes, while the Surf Riders and beach goers get their beach access. What's the problem?
As an advocate of property rights, I have a hard time understanding how the State cannot cough up money for a full condemnation buyout of some of the hold outs who may accept a full buyout offer. If the Act also makes little provision for erosion (and I have to admit I have not read the Act while writing this), then the issue needs to be sorely revisited before more people get caught up in problems like this.
Then there's a philosophical issue that certain groups say that property rights are defined and granted by society to members of that society. If that is the case, then I ask such people a rhetorical question. That would be that if property rights are bestowed by some act of noblesse oblige by society, then it would seem that property rights can be swiped away by society by effectively defining them away, can they not? That indeed is what is going on here and in every place where zoning is in effect.
Wizard
The Wizard has been an avid paying subscriber of The Economist, for nearly 15 years. In the previous week's edition, the world's greatest news magazine featured a story on how advances in power electronics are enabling ships in the 21st century to handle massive flows of current. They are also being complemented by improvements in electrical motors which are smaller, more powerful, and more versatile. Amazing changes on how our ocean vessels move about are taking place far from the minds of your average everday John and Jane Doe.
Amongst the story's exerpts:
Galley slaves pulled on oars; river-boat steam engines turned paddles; and nuclear reactors boiled water to drive turbines connected to propellers on aircraft carriers and submarines. What makes the experimental engine room in Leicestershire so special is that it leaves out the bit that usually links the engine and propeller. Instead of a propulsion shaft connecting the two, the all-electric drive being tested uses the ship's engines (turbine or diesel) to burn fossil fuels to generate electricity, which is then routed down thick cables to an electric motor that drives its propellers.
...
Almost a century ago, around the time of the emergence of modern ship propulsion, electric drives were seen as viable contenders to compete with the then-rising mechanical drives.
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But these early examples were large and unwieldy, and the idea was abandoned.
...
Its recent rebirth has been almost as rapid as its fall, helped by two related developments: power electronics capable of handling huge flows of current, and smaller, more powerful electric motors. These advances have allowed shipbuilders to reduce the size and weight penalties associated with electric drives. They have also made possible the development of totally integrated power systems, which make energy fungible: instead of having one engine dedicated to driving the ship and another one devoted to generating shipboard power, electricity from multiple sources can simply be routed to wherever it is needed at the time.
And that is why advanced navies such as Britain's and America's are now among the most enthusiastic and earliest adopters of electric-drive ships. As warfare has become more digital, the demand for electricity on board warships has increased. Radar, computers and combat systems now account for as much as 30% of the fuel burned on modern warships. And the demand for power could be about to jump dramatically. Some navies are already testing rail guns, which use huge amounts of electricity to produce a magnetic field which then accelerates projectiles to many times the speed of sound.
Even more futuristic and power-hungry applications are within sight, such as “direct energy” weapons that zap enemy ships and “electric armour” that vaporises incoming missiles. With such demands for power, some of it only for a fraction of a second, warship designers are keen to have a single system doing all manner of things. Think of the Enterprise in “Star Trek”, where power is diverted to the shields, weapons or warp drive as needed. “We're going with electric drive because of warfighting need,” says Rear-Admiral Kevin McCoy of the American navy. “We are almost at the limits of technology and affordability in making improvements in mechanical drives.”
...
Although they are more expensive, bigger, heavier and in theory less efficient than mechanical drives, they use much less fuel. This is because the diesel engines and gas turbines commonly used to power ships are most efficient when buzzing away constantly at close to their maximum output. Throttle them back even a little, and the amount of energy obtained for each barrel of fuel burned falls sharply.
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By some estimates, American navy ships spend 80% of their time travelling at half speed, which requires barely one-eighth of the power needed to propel a ship at top speed. But this requires them to burn almost as much fuel as they would when going much faster.
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The savings can be huge. America's Congressional Research Service reckons that installing electric drives on naval ships can cut fuel use by 10-25%. The American navy, which already has a handful of electric-drive support ships, expects savings of close to 20% for future warships using the technology.
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Perhaps surprisingly, many of these advantages also apply to cruise liners, which present designers with many of the same problems as warships.
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Much of this power is used to keep passengers happy, running air conditioners during hot Caribbean days, for instance, and powering discos and cinemas in the evenings. Then, once all the passengers have gone to bed, the power can be routed down to the propellers for a high-speed dash to the next port.
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Electrical propulsion is much more difficult. But some small experimental aircraft are already flying with electric motors driving their propellers. They are generally powered by high-discharge lithium-polymer batteries, which are also being used in some electric cars. Fuel cells are another option. Boeing is testing an electrically powered light aircraft which uses both batteries and a fuel cell as power sources.
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Yet all these electrical aircraft are small and have limited range. What of larger aircraft? Retrofitting a large airliner with electric motors instead of engines would not be feasible because the power-to-weight ratio of an electric motor cannot compete with that of a jet engine, and storing and generating the energy needed for a long-haul flight would not be possible given the shape and size constraints of existing aircraft. But a “blended wing”—an aircraft in which the fuselage is a flat, tail-less structure resembling a giant wing—could provide huge efficiency gains and may form the basis of future airliners.
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These propellers could be driven by superconducting motors, which can generate three times the torque of a conventional motor of the same weight and power input, according to a paper published in August in the journal Superconductor Science and Technology by Philippe Masson and his colleagues at Florida State University. American researchers are working on superconducting technology for maritime propulsion, which would leapfrog the British electric-drive system.
...
The World turns.
Wizard
Oh my goodness! Even the Wizard didn't foresee this bolt from out of the blue cast by Tory. $1.8 billion for a 14 mile light rail line? $130 million per mile for light rail? Richmond and Wheeler costing $1.3 billion?
Just this past week I wrote about Metro's $3 billion limousine. Now, 30 miles at $130 million per mile is $3.9 billion. Add in the $520 million Main Street train and the $300 million Intermodal temple and you have a $4.7 billion limousine. I tried to show an argument that Metro could afford to field 500 buses on the road for a $3 billion limousine. Now the opportunity costs of the rail build out would mean we could probably operate 800 - 1,000 new buses everyday out on the road instead of 500. Instead, we have 18 rail cars on Main and Frank Wilson wants to buy another 100.
Folks, this is nothing short of a disaster! For American cities that were built in the age of the automobile, we need to completely reorient our public transportation tax dollars towards building up massive investment trusts for operations purposes - which would be inviolate and could not be touched by elected officials - and get them completely away from flashy transit monuments. Leave the massive capital spending for New York's subways and maybe Chicago. As described in my previous post, at a $4.7 billion we could acquire and operate 5 or more times as many additional buses out on the road as rail cars - indeed we could completely bury all of Metro's five rail lines with two times as many additional buses as rail cars - and still have some 400 or more new buses left over for the entire rest of the City. This would cut down wait times everywhere, give us a vastly more nimble transit system that would serve the entire city, rather than have a few dozen miles of trains going nowhere near where I need to go and a shriveled, truncated bus system which serves no other purpose other than to feed a greedy and rigid set of trains.
Friday, December 7, 2007, will be a day which will live in Houston Transit Infamy. Yes gentle readers, there will be even more Fireballs, Lightning Bolts, and Hell Storms yet to come.
Addendum edit - December 8, 2007: The news came across last week about the FTA's decision to require Metro to resubmit documentation and allow public comments on the North and Southeast alignments. I don't care if you are all for railroading the city and for violating the property rights of the home and business owners along the corridors by stuffing them into 500 yard radial condemnation zones which will surround all of the train stations. As a taxpayer, you should be thankful for the FTA's decision to do this.
Wizard
And so it has come across the news that South America's latest Caudillo, Hugo Chavez, is not pleased with the Venezuelan constitution which he himself wrote and is putting up for vote revisions. All this to push along his so called 21st century socialism, which of course is no different from the socialisms of the 19th and 20th centuries that succeeded - as the Wizard personally knows - in keeping billions of people throughout the world in dire poverty. Some people just never learn.
Today's epistle is about a specific aspect of the latest Chavez bombasts and threats - threatening to kneecap America by cutting off oil shipments in the event that America tries to intervene. In short order, such a threat will not work and the Wizard will tell his gentle readers exactly why.
As Daniel Yergin explains in his master work on the world oil and gas industry, The Prize, in the 1980's petroleum started being traded on world oil markets. Not all oil is created equal, as some petroleum from some places has lots of gunk in it like sulfur, metals, and other content in it which makes it more difficult to refine into useable products than other petroleum. The petroleum from Venezuela tends to be of the less desireable kind.
But the fact that Venezuelan crude is less desireable than petrol from other places doesn't mean it is not desireable at all. Indeed that's the whole point. Say for just a moment that Chavez make good with his promise to cut off oil exports to the United States. He needs to remember that in order to carry out his 19th and 20th century 21st century socialism, he needs oil revenues. As such, the country's fields need to continue to produce. There are supply schedules to follow and those schedules need buyers.
Now then, Chavez could try to command that the country's oil be sold to China or India, presuming that there would be enough buyers to use it. However, what would buyers do once their hands are on it? That is the problem is Chavez's threat. Petroleum is fungible and there is nothing preventing others from turning around and simply selling it to the United States at prices which are set by world oil markets. Indeed that is what happened to a large degree in the aftermath of the 1973 Arab oil embargo. Petroleum exports still eventually reached the U.S. through other countries, once the world's oil and gas industry figured out how to reconfigure the supply lines and shipping routes.
The real problem for America in 1973 was self created - namely that the Nixom Administration imposed price ceilings (price controls), which as every first year economics student learns, results in shortages in supply. Because prices were not allowed to rise, rationing had to occur somehow and that rationing came in the form of waiting in line for gasoline, with the entire country wasting time, money, and gasoline trying to get more gas.
And so gentle readers, Chavez's threat is little or nothing to worry about. If Chavez does not want to sell us oil, then some other corrupt government in some other heavily politicized (hence making it a disordered and disastrously run country) will.
Wizard