Category Archives: Philosophy

Posts to do with philosophy of people and the world.

Hogan's, Station 55, and the Bug Jar

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Ali, Stacie, and I went to Hogan's Hideaway (197 Park Ave.) for dinner. I stuck with the sure bets of a good wine, French onion soup, and a grilled cheese and was not disappointed. Well, okay, except the sandwich which wasn't grilled as much as I'd like.

After that we headed to Station 55 (55 Railroad St.) for the ArtAwake event. We were surprised to find that they charged a cover at the door — not exactly an art-gallery-kosher move. I was then disappointed to find the works were not particularly impressive. Worse was that the lighting left nothing to the imagination and there were no nooks to explore. It didn't help all this any that there was no wine to be found either — which, among other things, can help loosen one's ingrained bindings with America's corporate-consumer culture. Alas, it was a big disappointment for me, and kind of kicked off the evening poorly.

So then we went to The Bug Jar (219 Monroe Ave.) a bit early to catch the bands there. Unfortunately — despite it being a rather popular headliner — GaylordMySpace link, in their last Rochester show before moving to Atlanta — the happy-hour vibe was still in full-force: blaring house music and all. I only really saw the first band, Razor Wire ShrineMySpace link who are an instrumental chaotic rock band with subtle influences from all over the place. I only caught a little of Fledgling DeathMySpace link, a thrash/heavy metal kind of band. By then the three of us were quite tired and decided to call it an early night.

In related news, The LandfillMySpace link (625 Weiland Rd.) has been shut down (related because sucky Station 55 has not — it's too milquetoast to displease the aristocracy). I recall reading it in a news clip from The City Newspaper but it doesn't appear to have made it to the online edition. I believe it was a casualty of Mayor Robert J. Duffy's plan to shut down house-parties, as I was pretty sure it was some guy's house. When I first heard of that law, I was concerned it would be abused beyond its original intent: to give police the leeway they "needed" to shut down house parties when they came upon them. Now, my vision of a house party that needs to be shut down is one that is completely out of control — where the residents have lost their ability to control the party themselves.

Once again — like the shutdown of A|V Art Sound Space (N. Union St. at Trinidad St., #8 in the Public Market, formerly the All-Purpose Room) — the creative fringe of this city has had its hands chopped off. And once again, I theorize that this will push one more of these inspirational creators to go find a tolerant city. And the Mayor and all his cronies will sit around and not care about those one or two fringe people, but to me, they inspire — and I assume so of other creative people. And unfortunately that is not a column in their spreadsheet and it doesn't compare well to tax dollars.

So, I'm left giving this advice: don't trust the police. They are not your friends. They are not there to help you. If you see them, go away from them.

I hope this is what the mayor has in mind.

A peculiarly terrible feeling

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Today I did my usual Saturday running around — groceries, lunch, hanging out with friends, and other miscellaneous errands. Everything seemed to go pretty well.

But in talking with my friends, we got on the topic of politics and the war and that was kind of upsetting — the old "Where's Osama?" game … all the lives and money lost on (both affecting generations to come) … the power grabbed in the midst of it all. Then there was some tangential notes about the police: someone I knew a little was arrested; my friend got pulled over for not signaling when he's sure he did (and right in front of his house); and the new surprise "no left turn" from westbound East Avenue onto southbound South Goodman (allegedly — I could swear they just installed a left-turn arrow for that turn).

I also observed people driving strangely in the last couple days. There are a lot of near-misses and generally poor form out there. It's like people are … well … scurrying. Like it's the day before the hurricane hits and everyone is running around trying to get those last survival essentials.

All these things combined and I was hit with an overwhelming feeling of dread — the knot-in-your-stomach kind of feeling just before you get into a car accident. Only it's lasting for the better part of an hour.

I hope it's nothing … maybe it's just me noticing things I hadn't noticed before — having my senses more open than I have in years. Maybe it's just some recent snarls in my own life. Or maybe it's that I'm noticing everyone else (including myself) having a generally dour attitude — a chronic kind of thing that just won't abate, but that you kind of get used to.

We'll see.

Connectedness to the world beyond our five senses

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My friend Sondra and I had a lengthy discussion about altered states of consciousness and whether the physical world as it is presently understood is all that there is to be known. We have both had experiences that seem to defy theories that we misinterpreted coincidental events or that we selectively remembered events that confirmed a theory.

She has recently had apparent success using sigils — a method of creating a symbol to influence a specific outcome. However, as both of us are skeptics, the lack of a causal understanding has us frustrated — although not so much frustration as to stop using what seems to work, especially when it does no harm.

She spoke of the theory that the symbols themselves were being "charged" with something (I almost wrote "energy" but that's not what I'm talking about). The concept is that if we can observe a symbol (a word, for instance) and that can cause a thought to form in our minds, there is a transfer of something from the symbol to ourself. If that's true, then can it be possible to charge a symbol with something that can later be received? Can it be used to communicate on some level different from language?

I felt it might be that a sigil is a representation of the start of an action that we forget how we complete. I made an analogy of pounding in a nail: starting with a nail protruding from a board, you would (1) desire for the nail to be pounded in, (2) get a hammer and pound in the nail, and (3) observe the nail pounded in. Now consider the experience if you forgot that you did #2: you would have observed a protruding nail that you wanted pounded in, and then you would note that it was indeed pounded in. What if a sigil is a way to express a desire, and we simply forget how we accomplished it, leading to an outcome that we wanted in the first place?

We also talked about out-of-body experiences, or at least extending our influence and connection to the world beyond the confines of our bodies. A long time ago I had tinkered with out-of-body experiences. One time I felt that I could locate the presence of non-physical beings in space — hundreds of them everywhere; in another, I heard a cacophony of voices. In both cases, though, it scared me — I very much did not want to reach a point where I couldn't avoid "seeing presences" or "hearing voices" so I turned away from those techniques.

So what if that was a valid, real perception? — a sensory device that I had not needed to use and that I psychologically blocked. What if that could help explain facets of our existence that have yet been unexplained? What if we have deliberately blinded ourselves to avoid seeing something that is complex and confusing; powerful and enriching? The cells in my body are connected in complicated ways, so why not a connection to all life to a similar degree? Why not a connection to the universe in its entirety?

It's certainly an exciting prospect … [unless, of course, it's demonstrably an illusion; then it would kind of suck.]

But then I don't want to dive right into the world of pseudoscience. A serendipitous e-mail gave me a hint, though. It was a link to a TED Talk by a neuroanatomist named Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor titled My stroke of insight. In it, she outlined her own experience of having a stroke and how it affected her brain — an expert in brain anatomy who got the chance to experience what she often explains to others.

The lecture is moving and engaging, but what I took away from it was a reminder to rely on science in my own exploration. One of the key parts of validly using reason and logic to come to conclusions is to start from a point that has already been established — "A" then "B" then "C". One of the pitfalls in exploring topics that are "out there" is to claim that it is an entirely new frontier and to start from a point that it is not grounded in established knowledge. Doing so invalidates any conclusions attained, so not only is it a false path, it's genuinely a waste of time.

So it's one thing to explore and play, but to draw conclusions — like mine and Sondra's analytical brains desperately want to do — requires that we start at a point of known, physical reality.  Maybe this left-brain, right-brain stuff is a starting point.  I guess I'd better get reading.

A lecture on the dangers of pseudoarchaeology at the MAG

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Ali and I headed to The Memorial Art Gallery (500 University Ave., near Goodman St.) to see the archaeology lecture. Dr. Garrett Fagan was there to talk about The Dangers of Pseudoarchaeology.

To start with, archaeology is the analysis of physical remains, paying special attention to the context of those remains — their geographic location, location relative to other items and within the strata of the region, any documented historical context, and so on. Further, he stated that there is an assumption among archaeologists that other archaeologists are interested in the best explanation for things.

Pseudoarchaeology — "armchair archaeology" if you will — is performed by people who are not interested in the best explanation at all. Rather, the goal is to attain sensational results — and as such, truth that inconveniently gets in the way of that goal is ignored, denied, or derided as being part of a conspiratorial establishment. It abuses select methods of archaeology for the purpose of lending credence to itself. So, for instance, it may take a small piece of data and fabricate a vast conclusion from it. Or it may rely on outdated models — cherry-picking debunked theories to support a hypothesis.

The thought then is, "so what?: legitimate archaeology will debunk their findings". Well it's not so hard when some guy shows up on TV with a wrench and claims it's the bone of a metal dinosaur. But when it's someone who's published a dozen books under the "archaeology" category, it's quite another.

And therein lies the cornerstone for the "dangers" that Dr. Fagan outlined. The pseudoarchaeologist makes their conclusions first then finds data to fit that — specifically, they skip the peer-review process that is designed to strengthen legitimate theories and diminish illegitimate ones. Relatedly, they will deride critics and celebrate supporters; whereas a true archaeologist will celebrate the respectability of criticism or support and deride inferiority. Frequently the pseudoarchaeologist will leverage nationalism and other unrelated reasons affect objective investigation.

But worst of all is that these pseudoarchaeologists don't do any real archaeology but they are supported under false pretenses to establish dig-sites which are no more respectable than (and just as destructive as) looters.

The key — in my mind — is that the average person is not an expert in archaeology (and in point of fact, is seldom an expert in any more than one field). As such, they rely on indicators of expertise to make a decision: advanced degrees, validation from others, longevity of their claimed expertise, etc. Unfortunately, all of these can be forged and the non-expert is left wondering what to do.

I guess for most, it's to remain vigilant. Look for telltale signs — sweeping conclusions, derision of all critics and celebration of all supporters, and a strong influence of motivations external to the work-at-hand.

I also left the lecture with a sense of familiarity for the kind of person that makes a pseudoarchaeologist. It's the same traits that make up the pseudoscientist and the fraudulent leader. In all these cases, the perpetrator of fraud creates an environment of power and prestige by convincing people that established knowledge is simply a conspiracy against wonders-untold that is otherwise claimed untrue.

For the pseudoarchaeologist, it may be that ancient civilizations were far more advanced than we are — despite established knowledge that they used tools and techniques that we have built upon to become more advanced than they. For the pseudoscientist, it is almost exclusively an attack on good old Thermodynamics Law #2: that you can't get more energy out of something than you put in — perpetual motion machines, and miraculous energy machines constitute the bulk of their exploration. And for the fraudulent leader, it is a claim that vast improvements can come from their method of leadership which history has consistently shown to be a path to a civilization's destruction.

And I agree with Dr. Fagan's comment that these people are not evil, just misguided. They are often deluded by the same thing that tricks others: the fundamental belief that great rewards exist to be claimed; and the refusal to accept that sometimes the greatness of a reward is distorted to be larger than it actually is when observed from afar.

Happy Birthday, Wanda June at the Dryden

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The Dryden Theater at George Eastman House (900 East Ave.) showed Happy Birthday, Wanda June and Ali and I got to see it, despite the terrible road conditions getting there. It was a film based on a play by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. with a very theatrical feel, giving it a bizarre edge. It was funny and poignant, making the point that war is really quite pointless and that there really isn't any value in the "heroism" of fighting and killing. Oh, and how incredibly silly and dangerous the idea of "heaven" is.

The plot of the film follows a woman and her son. Her husband has been out-of-contact for 8 years on some kind of heroic journey — wars, killing animals and the like. She gets a college degree and begins to piece her own life together by courting two men: a pacifist doctor and a hero-worshiping vacuum cleaner salesman. Her husband makes a surprise return and tries to retain his brazen, hero's status.

The point, in a way, is to ask, "what the fuck is so heroic about killing?" It really resonated with me. I had been asking more-or-less the same question for a while. For instance, it's common knowledge that you thank soldiers for defending the country. But given our eternal conflict in Iraq, it's become … unsatisfying … for me to do so. When you fundamentally disagree with the idea of war in the first place, and then add on that further fighting is only inciting existing enemies and creating more then how can you thank someone for making America less safe? It gets to the point of patronizing — like thanking the neighborhood cat-murdering idiot for keeping your house safe from cat infestation.

In fact, it's more about fear. I feel compelled to thank a soldier for the sake of not getting in trouble, yet my opinion of the situation is so bad that I want to tell them, "stop fucking volunteering!!!!" [With extra exclamation points, even.] Please.

And what scares me more is people who believe in an afterlife — especially those who think it's the promised land of 57 varieties of virgins. And before you think I'm bashing Islam alone, ask a Christian how much they're looking forward to meeting Jesus and how lucky people are whose miserable earthly existence is cut short. It's really quite scary. I really would like it if people believed like I did: that we get one shot at life and that we should make the best of it and help everyone else to make the best of theirs too.

But that makes me some kind of Godless monster, right? I mean, true evil in the world comes from the Others — the people who don't read the Bible and don't go to church and don't hate gays and don't believe women are just baby incubators.

Sorry … I digress …

The response from war hawks is always the same: "your pacifist beliefs are all well and good, but what happens when someone sticks a gun in your face?" Well then the rules change, don't they? If you believe in the value of life — especially that you only get one go around — then you'd better believe I'm going to try and avoid kisses from bullets rushing to show me the love.

The trick is this: "peace first". Or, if you must, "war last".

In other words, if you come upon people who say, "we hate America," figure out why first. At present, the only reaction is to blow the fuck out of them. You see, we can talk and understand and resolve for a long time — even have an ebb and flow about the whole thing — but you can't un-blow the fuck out of someone. So save that for last.

Then the response from the hawks and jingoists is, "what about 9/11?" Oh yeah — what about that? We need to get "them", right? And who are "they"? Why Osama bin Laden of course. Haven't heard that name in a while, have you? Of course not: if you watch 9/11 Press for Truth or read The Complete 911 Timeline or the related book, The Terror Timeline: Year by Year, Day by Day, Minute by Minute: A Comprehensive Chronicle of the Road to 9/11—and America's Response, you'll find that the Bushies carefully herded bin Laden to safety in Pakistan.

You've been had, America.  Wake up!

Breakfast at Blue Horizon and Driving the Wrong Way on 390

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Ali and I had a late breakfast at The Blue Horizon Restaurant (1174 Brooks Ave.) As diners go, this is one of the best: of late my number one qualification is that my coffee stays full — and not only did it not get empty, it barely hit the halfway mark. The food is good diner-grade food and the prices are low diner-grade prices.

We left around 1 or so and on the way home I thought, "I should just take Brooks Avenue" but I got on 390 anyway. As I was getting on the ramp, I saw that traffic was at a standstill. We got in line anyway, figuring it would clear up. However, a steady stream of emergency vehicles kept coming. Some cars behind us rushed ahead to get to the second lane, but we were in no hurry and didn't mind being one of the last ones through. State Police closed 390 at Brooks behind us and were directing all traffic off the highway. A State Police officer started having cars entering at the exit turn around and drive the wrong way up 390 then turn off on the exit. We followed suit. It's the only time I've ever driven the wrong way on the highway. It was wild — it made me feel all sophisticated like I was driving on The M1 or something.

We decided to see what happened so we got back on at Mt. Hope but traffic ground to a halt around Scottsville Rd. Police were directing all traffic off the highway at that point as well, but we could see a multiple-car pileup — rubbernecking, we saw at least 6 cars involved. The hill formed by the new tunnel under the runway for the Scottsville Road access road had caused drifting snow to form a whiteout and had coated the road with snow. As it turned out, there were way more than 6 cars involved: 36 in all. As you've probably heard on the news, one young girl got killed and there were about 20 people taken to the hospitals with various degrees of injuries. The accident was apparently caused by a driver who stopped in the middle of the white-out.

People say the "cause" was the driver who stopped, but that was just the final straw. A whiteout totally sucks and there's no ideal solution. Initial wisdom says that if you can't see, stop, but it's also a highway, so you don't stop. Second best is to proceed slowly. In my opinion, that means very slowly compared to highway speeds (i.e. 20-30 miles-per-hour) but judging by the damage to cars, it appears that people scarcely took their foot off the accelerator and instead plowed into whatever was in front of them at full-bore. Then again, it was clear skies and dry roads right up to the bend, so only the properly attentive drivers even had a chance.

I also think it's interesting that nobody faults the airport. If it were a private residence and they had put up a privacy wall, they'd have hell to pay. But because the airport presumably wanted to extend a runway to accommodate larger planes, it's all good — dead girl and all. I'm not so much advocating suing the airport, but I'd like to see a fair assessment. Rather than let it slide with a passive-voiced "the conditions were dangerous," I think it's important to realize that prior to this construction project, this was not an issue. And as such, to determine if there is something that can be done to change the structure of the tunnel to prevent these kind of conditions from forming again.

Seeing Strange Culture and Steve Kurtz at the Dryden

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Ali and I headed to the Dryden Theatre at George Eastman House (900 East Ave.) to see Strange Culture. The movie is a haunting mid-process reenactment/documentary of what has been happening to Steven Kurtz.

Steve is an art professor at SUNY Buffalo (17 Capen Hall, Amherst, NY) and a member of a group called The Critical Art Ensemble. He was working on several projects with his wife, Hope when in May, 2004, she died in her sleep. Steve didn't know what to do so he called 911. When police arrived, they saw the petri dishes of bacteria cultures they were preparing for one of the art exhibits and called in the FBI. Steve was detained for 22 hours and questioned under suspicion of bioterrorism (but not actually arrested — just illegally detained). His wife's body was taken away and the local coroner ruled her death a heart attack caused by a rare congenital condition. The FBI then took her body and did another autopsy coming to the same conclusion.

So when they were unable to bring him up on charges of bioterrorism, the Department of Justice has filed mail fraud and wire fraud charges against him and a scientist (Robert Ferrell) he worked with to obtain the bacteria samples (which are harmless, by the way, and readily available through the Internet). Steve was not able to bring up details of the case but a woman he'd been working with (I can't seem to find her name anywhere) was able to fill in details Steve was not permitted to.

Basically mail and wire fraud is a civil case — one brought by one party against another when they feel defrauded. The Department of Justice is trying to expand their power by bring it to trial as a criminal case: although neither party involved with the transfer of the bacteria feels defrauded, the Department of Justice is charging both parties with willfully violating the implicit contract between them.

Oh yeah, so anyway: the movie. They used a mix of actors performing reenactments and actual participants discussing the facts of the case. Since the outcome isn't yet determined — Steve has not yet gone to trial — as a documentary, it has a, well, "special" feel to it. Ordinarily you'd expect a documentary to be released after the fact; to put a nice bow at the end of the story to say what happened. Well this one didn't. And as such it's rather unique to leave that huge story arc just dangling off the end of the film.

I asked about whether Steve knew that this particular art project would make people so upset — as an artist, I think there's some desire to have an impact, but rarely is it true that jack-booted thugs really do kick down your door. He said they were working on several projects not mentioned in the movie. One of them was about germ warfare (and what the samples were largely for) to help people understand just how ineffective it really is. I mean, if you look at the facts of the anthrax scare from 2001, 17 people got infected and 5 people died — and this was military-grade antrhax. It's a crappy weapon, yet we're conditioned by our government to cower from it — remember all about sealing up a room with plastic and duct tape in case of an attack?

I cannot begin to express how disappointed I am at the United States Government and the people who blindly support it. It's stupefying to me to believe that a few innocent people need to be used as scapegoats so that our laws are stronger??? It is beyond logic and beyond hope to me.

I saw an interview with John Hope Franklin by Charlie Rose and it got me thinking about slavery

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I had a hard time getting to sleep and I ended up watching TV for a bit. I stumbled on an episode of Charlie Rose on WXXI re-run from December 1, 2005: an interview with John Hope Franklin shortly after he published his book, Mirror to America: The Autobiography of John Hope Franklin. I caught bits-and-pieces as I went in-and-out of feverish sleep.

I did catch a discussion on slavery, though. Franklin's view is that for America to really get over slavery, we need to acknowledge that it was a pivotal part of building America. He also made an argument for reparations in an intelligent manner. I don't remember it completely clearly, but he said that it wasn't as simple as white people writing checks to blacks. I gathered that his intention was that it was not the monetary compensation that was important — for that alone is meaningless — but that it was the whole process of accepting that it happened, understanding that it was an important part of America's development, realizing the effects that have carried to today, and preparing to heal those wounds and close the gaps.

Here he was a man born 50 years after slavery was abolished and who has grown through the slow process of stamping out the flames of racism. As I drifted off, I recall him talking about how slavery is alive today. All those ideas seem to have stuck with me.

So I got to thinking about slavery: what is it?

Well it's white slave masters with whips in the South beating blacks to pick cotton while they got rich. Something like that, right? I imagine that on average slaves were treated like work animals: they were given minimal-but-adequate food, shelter, water, clothing, and health care, they were forced to work, and they were not allowed to leave of their own volition.

So then I connected that with minimum wage. Consider a married person with 2 kids working 40 hours at New York's current minimum wage of $7.15/hour. Working a full 52 weeks nets you $14,872 a year and at the end of the year, you pretty much pay no income tax. Let's round that off to $1,250/month. You'll need a place to stay, so that's like $700/month, then gas and electric will cost another $250 or so. Groceries for a family with 2 kids you might be able to sneak for $200/month if you're frugal. So that's $1,150/month in basic expenses leaving $100 for "incidentals" like health care, clothing, and, oh yeah: transportation.

Let's say you manage to enroll in night classes for a better-paying job (which is the only "acceptable" way of bettering yourself — unlike a well-paid person who is free to take classes in scrapbooking, for instance, without nearly as much sneering and harumphing: a clear double-standard if you ask me). But then the car breaks down … *whip crack* … or your kid needs a tooth pulled … *whip crack* … or you fall ill … *whip crack*.

Just making it through one year without some "mishap" qua "financial disaster" happening is a lucky year indeed. Add to that that you need to be infallible — for human error is not an acceptable portion of the equation. (But remember also that by the luck of the draw, you're probably somewhere around average intelligence and average skill, not superhuman.)

Oh, you say, but there's a safety net of welfare. Yes, a safety net indeed — wherein you accept your minimal-but-adequate food, shelter, water, clothing, and health care, on the condition that you follow the rules and take any job you're accepted for. Given your skills, the best you can hope for is another minimum-wage job. By the way, good luck paying off that debt you now have too.

But there are people who have escaped the cycle, so it must be possible. Possible, yes, but likely no. It requires determination, skill, and luck to all come into confluence. Without all three, the cycle stays closed.

So in the end, I think that's maybe what we need to realize about America: that it took determination, skill, and luck to get to where we are today. Then perhaps we can admit that "minimum wage" approximates "slavery" well enough to call them equivalent. And then we can look at how America operates today and realize that our present view of "prosperity" is predicated upon owning slaves.

And then, maybe we can start to talk about ending slavery once and for all.

The Death of Hope

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I started thinking about how it's the start of 2008 and what I can be hopeful for. And by "hope", I'm referring to a "belief that things will be better in the future". Not necessarily a specific time period, but I guess "in my lifetime" or "reasonably soon". Something like that.

I watched this video on YouTube called How It All Ends by a high-school science teacher named Greg. In it he outlines the response to the possibility of global warming in terms of risk-assessment. Either global warming is happening and caused by us, or it isn't, and either we do something about it or do nothing. His argument is that there are two positive outcomes: we do nothing and the threat of global warming was false, or we do something and it was true but we fix it. However, if we do something and global warming wasn't happening then — the worst case — is that we have a large economic hit; if we do nothing and global warming is happening, then — the worst case again — is that there are floods, droughts, and famines on a scale humanity has never seen. His bet, therefore, is to just take the economic hit and not worry about it.

But remember the last "catastrophic event" that was to happen?: the Y2K bug. And what happened? Nothing. And why? Because we took the economic hit of fixing everything we could find. And what did people believe? It was all a lie to start with.

So likewise with global warming, if I'm out there saying "travel less" and "use less energy" and that becomes forced upon people and then nothing bad happens, people will simply believe that global warming was a myth. They'll blame us "global warming freaks" for ruining their lives. And then if catastrophe does strike, they'll blame us "global warming freaks" for doing the wrong thing and not fixing everything for them. Therefore, my best bet is to quietly go off and figure out how to live in the catastrophic post-global-warming world without being seen. But that's not really hopeful at all — it's just surviving disaster.

The catalyst for this post, though, was in trying to do taxes. I wanted to get my taxes done early because I'm self-employed and need to hand over checks to the U.S. Government on a regular basis. If I don't estimate correctly, I get hit with a huge fine. But I can avoid it entirely if I file by January 31 and pay everything I owe. The only problem is that the forms I need from my bank and mortgage company won't arrive until after January 31, so it would be essentially illegal to file before January 31. So I've got my fingers crossed that I won't get in trouble.

I really wish taxes were simpler, but it's only me and other small business owners that even see it. I remember puzzling about how bad it really was in the 1990's — after all, the company I worked for handled all the hard stuff, and at the end of the year I'd fill out a few lines on a 1040EZ and get a check in the mail. Awesome! What's wrong with that system?

But worse is that I actually write a check to the government. If I don't, I'd go to prison which I don't want to do. I don't want the government to kill more people in Iraq, but my voice is not represented in the U.S. Government — I still have to pay taxes, though. [And here I thought that's why we fought that big war 230 some-odd years ago against England.] My big lament, though, is that I voluntarily sign the check to pay fund the war. If I were just a regular working person, I could claim that I don't get a choice — that taxes automatically come out of my paycheck.

And it's not like we're getting out of Iraq any time soon. It's a question of "how many Iraqis do we need to kill before they believe in freedom?" The real answer is, "we are the problem," but W. doesn't believe in being wrong. By the way, what ever happened to Osama bin Laden? We apparently failed to hang him, so I can only imagine he's planning another 9/11. I don't see any hope at all on that whole situation.

It used to be fashionable to help the poor — to ensure they have food, shelter, and water. Somewhere along the way "shelter" got eliminated, so it was just to feed the poor, but lately it's food stamps and welfare that are crippling the country. And water? Well if you can't afford to buy the clean stuff in the bottles you deserve what you get. What's next, air?

What about providing youth programs to keep kids off the street? Nah: just get more police to shoot them when they form gangs and start killing people. Health care? Hopeless. Public education? Hopeless.

The other day I was riding home from the Public Market — I took my bike with the trailer to get stuff — and I went to turn onto my street. I had to get into the left lane and I didn't see anyone behind me. As I turned into the turn-lane, someone tried passing me just at that moment and broke off the mirror on my bike. I was less than an inch away from getting knocked off the bike, and barely a foot away from being killed.

But did they stop? Hell no. I was just an obstacle in their way — a nuisance. Probably some worthless beggar who'd be better off dead than alive. I mean, can you believe that I thought I was permitted to ride on the street? That's for cars, moron!

And so goes the last shred of human decency: that nearly killing someone else is okay — in fact, it was my fault anyway for making them decide whether they needed to touch their brakes.

With that goes the last of hope.

Is Electric Heat Cost-Effective?

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So I did the cost-of-gas analysis last week and now I got to wondering if the cost of natural gas was high enough to justify electric heat. I first heard about this from someone who was building a workshop. They were trying to figure out if they should bother to install a gas furnace or if electric heat would be cost-effective — so I got the bug in my head about the conversion between the heat energy in natural gas and that in electricity.

So here's the deal: like last week, we have the cost of gas heat (Cg) and the cost of electric heat (Ce) which, at the break-even point will be the same:

Cg = Ce

And what we want to end up with is a break-even point where the price of a unit of natural gas (Pg) is some constant multiplied by the price of a unit of electrical energy (Pe). This is where it gets a little funny because I'm just going to assume the efficiency of a gas furnace is 80% and that an electric heater is 95%. In other words, the total heat in a cubic-foot of natural gas has a certain amount of chemical energy that can be converted to heat, but a furnace is not perfectly efficient at recovering that heat as usable heat in your house (i.e. some necessarily needs to go up the chimney to get rid of the carbon dioxide). Electric heaters are much more efficient as the easiest thing you can do with electric current is to turn it into heat — it's more like 100% efficient, but I'll assume there's some cable losses in the house and maybe it has a fan that does non-heating work.

It also gets a little funny because when I talk about the total cost of heating, for purposes of determining the conversion factor between prices-per-unit, it doesn't matter how much heat — just that it's the same amount. So let's say it's 2000 Calories — like kilocalories or the Calories in terms of food. Trust me. It'll be a fun result.

So now what we've got is that the cost is the unit price * 2000 Calories:

2000 Calories * Pg = 2000 Calories * Pe

Obviously the 2000 Calorie factor cancels out — but I'll leave it there for a while.

Now let's turn to the electricity. We pay for electricity in kilowatt-hour blocks. If I go to Google, I see that 2000 Calories is 2.324 kilowatt-hours. If I factor in that 95% efficiency, I'll need 2.447 kilowatt-hours to make 2000 Calories of heat.

Now gas gets kind of weird [great, more weird, right?] because it's delivered in hundreds of cubic feet (ccf) but billed as therms (100,000 British Thermal Units or 100,000 BTUs). RG&E does the conversion on the bill: 1.0136 therm is 1 ccf. Again turning to Google, 2000 Calories is 0.0793 therms. If I factor in that 80% efficiency, I'll need 0.0991 therms to make 2000 Calories of heat.

So now what I have is:

0.0991 therms * Pg = 2.447 kilowatt-hours * Pe

And since Pg is in dollars/therm and Pe is in dollars/kilowatt-hour, it all works out to dollars-equals-dollars which is perfect.

Moving stuff around, that's:

Pg = 2.447 kilowatt-hours * Pe / 0.0991 therms
Pg = 24.69 kilowatt-hours/therm * Pe

In other words, if you take the price-per-kilowatt of electricity, and multiply it by 24.69, you get the price-per-therm of gas for the same amount of heat.

I had signed up for ConEdison Solutions GreenPower (which is all renewable wind and hydroelectric) so there's separate sections for how much electricity costs. On the last bill I used 363 kwh and paid ConEdison $36.12 and RG&E another $20.93 (-$19.38 in fixed charges for the privilege of being a customer), so that's a total of $37.67 in charges based on a per-kwh rate. Dividing the total by 363, I get an overall cost of $0.104/kwh.

Doing the conversion, if my gas cost is higher than 24.69 * $0.104 = $2.57/therm, then it's cheaper to run electric heat.

I used 157.1 therms of gas, but 3 therms are included for "free" in my $14.38 customer charge and $0.62 "bill issuance charge" — $15.00 total. I paid $209.20 for gas with all the surcharges and such, so removing the $15.00 fixed charge, that's $194.20. Dividing by the 154.1 therms used, that's $1.26/therm — just about half the cost of heating with electricity.

But hey, now you can do the math yourself with your own bill. If it's easier, you can round up the conversion to 25 — so the break-even point is when the cost of a therm of gas is 25 times the cost of a kilowatt-hour of electricity.

Oh yeah, but what about the fun with the 2000 Calorie number? That's about a day's worth of food, right? So if I ran on electricity, it would cost 2.447 kilowatt-hours * $0.104/kwh = $0.25, or if I ran on natural gas, that would be 0.0991 therms * $1.26/therm = $0.12.