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May 25, 2012
 As of this morning, I'm on vacation! Yay! Or, at least, mostly on vacation but I plan to blog some. No big projects in the works, except for puppy Casey's house training. So, I hope, I'll get lots of rest and relaxation. The podcast will resume at a yet to be determined point in July (contingent, in part, on how well Casey's house training progresses). Please check the blog for schedule updates. And I wish you all a most excellent summer!
May 17, 2012
 Americans consume almost forty pounds of high fructose corn syrup per person, per year. That's a lot. (And, thanks, by the way, because federal corn price subsidies put me through graduate school.) Despite industry telling us that "sugar is sugar" it's not. High fructose corn syrup also contains an extensive list of questionable processing chemicals in trace form, some of which may well cause cancer. But quite apart from all that, new research shows that consuming high fructose corn syrup makes you stupid. Well, it does if you're a rat, but the research results presumably apply to humans too. Americans consume much more high fructose corn syrup per person, several times more, than the Europeans or Japanese, which we can now consider as an additional, plausible factor in explaining our relative political impairment.
May 4, 2012
 Here's the soon to be addition to the Kenney family. We visited a couple weeks ago when the pups were six weeks old. On Monday they'll be eight weeks old, ready for their new homes, and we'll pick ours up from Deep Run Farm (down near Warrenton, Virginia). Thanks, Phyllis, Jack and Kristi!! Everything seems pretty much organized for the pup's arrival but any last minute suggestions regarding dog training materials would be most welcome.
May 3, 2012
 You immediately knew something wasn't right, watching the State Department spokesman using the words "according to" when talking about the interactions of U.S. diplomats in Beijing with Chen Guangcheng. "According to" diplomats who talked with Chen, he said... What? No. You use the phrase "according to" when you want to explicitly invoke uncertainty about the reliability of the source of a report. "According to" translates from diplo-speak as "maybe this was what was said, or maybe it wasn't, but this is what they said they said and you can decide for yourself." As applied here by one U.S. diplomatic official to another U.S. diplomatic official it means (a) those idiots at the American Embassy in Beijing don't know their rear ends from a hole in the ground, or (b) headquarters has no clue what really happened, or (c) both.
Continue reading "Foggy Bottom Follies"...
April 25, 2012
By John Stauber
 Americans might remember that when the first mad cow was confirmed in the United States in December, 2003, it was major news. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had been petitioned for years by lawyers from farm and consumer groups I worked with to stop the cannibal feeding practices that transmit this horrible, always fatal, human and animal dementia. When the first cow was found in Washington state, the government said it would stop such feeding, and the media went away. But once the cameras were off and the reporters were gone nothing substantial changed.
Continue reading "America's Mad Cow Crisis "...
April 22, 2012
 A fascinating, tricky thing, memory remains less than well understood. Is it just a set of synaptic connections or maybe something else? When we train memory, what exactly are we doing? In a discontinuous leap forward it now appears that memory is an important basis — perhaps the most important basis — for what we label 'fluid intelligence.' And that a certain type of memory training has cross-over effects that significantly raise intelligence. (The military will be on this like white on rice.) To a materialist it may seem as though several fundamental questions about personhood and consciousness finally are being addressed. But I'd like to suggest an alternative gloss: by working distant, several-order memory functions one taps, perhaps, into prompts that go beyond self, into a kind of poetical inspiration, a mystical awareness independent of the human condition. Memory and forgetfulness. It's not all about us. [Graphic: Curl by Colette Calascione.]
 BlueHost is upgrading EP's server. The work will be done tonight and will involve a brief interruption in service at some point during the late Sunday night/early Monday morning hours. So if you notice the site has disappeared, not to worry. ☺
April 17, 2012
 This Friday my guest will be Dr. Ralph E. Gomory. Ralph is a former head of research at IBM and President Emeritus of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; currently he's a research professor at NYU. We talk about the virtues of protectionism and of class warfare. The Friday following, April 27th, for a sort of sequel, my guest will be the economist Dr. Ha-Joon Chang of the University of Cambridge. On May 4th, for a different sort of sequel, to talk about our "Age of Ignorance," my guest will be Charles Simic, the 15th U.S. Poet Laureate and Professor Emeritus at the University of New Hampshire. Then, on May 11th, for something more than a little different, my guest will be Col. John B. Alexander, Ph.D., talking about UFOs. John's background is unique, an intersection of special operations, the intelligence community, and very advanced R&D; (as a civilian he was SES equivalent at Los Alamos National Laboratory) — 'a visionary' might be a good way to describe him. Somewhere in there I'll try to toss in an extra, much shorter interview about honeybee Colony Collapse Disorder with Dr. Alex Lu of Harvard. And several irons are in the fire...
April 11, 2012
 On cable television you see a raft of political experts, vying to be impartial, advising Mitt Romney to "be himself." To be the "likeable guy" all his friends say he is. On a more partisan note people like former Michigan Governor Jennifer M. Granholm argue that there is no there there, that Mitt is a "hollow man." Both observations have merit but neither gets remotely close to the whole story. These and similarly tentative lenses fail to capture Mitt's real problem, namely Mormonism. In fact, nobody seems to want to talk about Mormonism, as if to do so were akin to the political incorrectness of barring transgender contestants from the Miss Universe Pageant. But unlike Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism, Islam or other authentic major religions, where beliefs — for better or worse, whether right or wrong — are openly aired and argued over, in the cult of Mormonism the watchword is secrecy. Mr. Romney can no more talk honestly about who he is, or who he thinks he is, e.g., about secret Mormon doctrine, than he could raise his magic Mormon underpants on a county courthouse flagpole. Even as intellectually degraded as Americans may be there aren't (yet) enough of us to take this particular hook without any bait. We're lucky for a change... Stipulating a two-way race I predict a landslide defeat for the Republicans.
April 8, 2012
 It's 4:00 a.m. Do you know where your cook is? This year for Easter two of Sharon's kids came down from New York City. I figured I'd try something a little different with the Sunday lamb, so am improvising a Moroccan-style roast. I took a New Zealand semi-boneless leg of lamb, almost six pounds, and washed it with lemon juice. Then I made a paste of half a dozen large cloves of garlic, salt, pepper, turmeric, cumin, paprika, saffron and olive oil. Apart from the garlic and the saffron about a teaspoon each of everything else. Paste applied to lamb, lamb put on a rack in a heavy pan and tightly sealed with heavy foil, pan into a 220° oven. To cook for about nine hours, basting occasionally. To finish at about 475° uncovered, until crispy (15-25 minutes). In theory, you should be able to cut this with a spoon. We'll see... On the side, par-boiled baby potatoes browned in a frying pan with butter and chopped parsley; diced fresh carrots boiled with frozen peas; some mango chutney; some mint jelly; a nice Sancerre and a very nice Chianti Classico (for me). Also a store bought apple pie, but if I have the energy and find the motivation I may do something else for dessert. Yum!
April 3, 2012
 If a sworn police officer had shot and killed Trevon Martin that officer would, almost certainly, have had to surrender their weapon and be placed on administrative leave. And, in all probability — since Trevon Martin was unarmed (unless you count ice tea and skittles) — that officer would have subsequently been fired and then tried in a court of law. Stipulating the hypothetical, why then should civilians be held to a lower standard of accountability for shooting and killing one of their own? It's as if Florida has issued hunting permits for killing black people. What's distressing almost more than the killing itself is that it's taking so long to put Mr. Zimmerman behind bars. Florida won't do it. The only rational explanation there being that Florida cracker politicians are beholden to the 'Stand Your Ground' lobby. But the Feds won't do it, either. Presumably Mr. Obama is afraid of Florida voters in the November election. What an ugly mess...
March 21, 2012
 One of the above pups — one of the black males, to be precise — will be coming home to chez Kenney sometime in mid-May. The Sire, Sam, is a brilliant Master Hunter and the Dam, Pary (Parasol), is a very sweet tempered creature. We drove down to central Virginia and met the parents a few weeks ago and fell in love. The pups' pedigree is really impressive but as I don't expect to show, compete with, or breed our pup I'll probably get a 'limited' AKC registration. (On the other hand, as I'd prefer anyhow not to have the little guy fixed, and maybe if it's not hideously expensive, I'll bump the AKC papers up to a full registration, for bragging rights.) We'll go down again to see the pups when they're about six weeks old, and will pick ours up at eight weeks. What to name him? And we've got a lot of puppy proofing and preparation to do, including explaining all this to the cats... Woof!
March 20, 2012
 For late March/early April we've got three great shows. On March 23d my guest will be Grant Smith, talking about his recent book Divert (with an epilogue by Col. Pat Lang), on the NUMEC affair. Friday, March 30th, my guest will be Ed Asner, a real hero to me and a powerful force for good on the Left. Then, on April 6th, my guest will be Dr. Timothy Messer-Kruse, talking about his recent, riveting book Trial of the Haymarket Anarchists: Terrorism and Justice in the Gilded Age (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), and about an essay he's written at the Chronicle of Higher Education on his experiences explaining — or, rather, failing to explain — the Haymarket history to Wikipedia.
March 17, 2012
 Now it looks like scientists haven't found evidence of faster than light particles after all. At least, not yet. But I'm still disinclined to believe that science has answered this question definitively. Heck, for all I know there's a faster than light universe out there with scientists who solemnly proclaim that nothing can move slower than the speed of light... I would think of it as a boundary question and I'm not so sure that science has tried to test it that way.
March 16, 2012
 Apropos today's podcast, Winslow Wheeler has an excellent essay published today at AOL/Defense, drawing in particular on recent comparative numbers from the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. Note that the IISS counts more than the officially declared U.S. military budget, for 2011 getting up to $739.3 billion. Yet even IISS doesn't count several categories that logically should be included in the military budget, which if counted bring the total very close to a trillion dollars. That's Trillion, with a "t."
March 14, 2012
 In today's New York Times Greg Smith writes about why he's quitting Goldman Sachs. It's an interesting essay, perhaps more interesting for what it promises in the future than what it delivers, though even this much is a bombshell. The BBC wanted to talk in general terms about what it's like to resign, why people resign, etc., so invited me on their program World Have Your Say. I was on for two half hour segments, one broadcast in the U.S. and the other in Africa. The second is available as a podcast (for a limited time) — see the last twenty minutes of the show on the ICC. I like the format. The show was pretty interesting. Hopefully the BBC will ask me back. ☺
March 13, 2012
 Mr. Obama hasn't done much. On balance, what he has done has been more harmful than helpful. Surely he knows the difference. It's almost impossible for him, then, to talk about what he's done because he's a really lousy actor. If he could feign sincerity probably he'd be doing OK, but the one thing he feigns at all naturally is the supercilious scold, which doesn't make anyone's heart flutter. The fact is, the American public just doesn't like a chilly smarty pants... Still, it's mind-boggling to see in polls that the erstwhile Republican candidates can get so close, being as they all are bat-shit crazy and mean as snakes. What does that make us, as a society? I really am having a hard time figuring the right metrics.
 This isn't exactly new news. English lit people have known about it for a long time (like always) and probably others. For that matter it's not even new news for the BBC, which reported it last month, largely based on a couple books several years old. I wouldn't have known about it except that I saw where the BBC report was re-reported (largely verbatim) and I don't think I'd ever heard of it before. The gist is this: traditionally, going back through recorded history, people have slept in two distinct intervals separated by an active period of wakefulness. Not in your 8 hour stretch. That began to change in the late 17th century; by now we've forgotten how it used to be. Since I tend to sleep in two (or three) intervals separated by activity I'm happy to learn that it's normal to do so! Whew!
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May 25, 2012
 To be at one with ourselves we cannot escape the night. What we do, what we don't do, what we dream — who we are — at night, shapes and informs us during the day. Nighttime, then, must necessarily contain diverse social meanings. It's not quite clear to me how far one might push this abstract argument, but I reckon pretty far; in any case, a lot farther than conventionally understood. To talk about the culture of the night I turned to Dr. Craig M. Koslofsky, author most recently of Evening's Empire: A History of the Night in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2011). Thanks, Craig! Total runtime fifty one minutes. Nunquam minus sōlus quam cum sōlus.
May 18, 2012
 To be honest, Bashar al-Assad looks — and acts — like one of those stereotypical dictators who crop up occasionally in Doonesbury cartoons. If only it would be so easy to figure out what to do with him. But Syria, ultimately, involves the stability of the entire region, from Iran to Lebanon to Egypt, and it's hard to see where all the threads lead. For a perspective sympathetic to the Syrian plight I turned to Henry Hogger CMG, a former British Ambassador to Syria (2000-2003). Henry says, and I agree, there are no easy answers. My own take: leave Syria to the Syrians to fix, with international mediation (the UN, maybe the Russians) where possible. Total runtime fifty one minutes. Grātīs anhēlāns, multa agendō nihil agēns.
May 11, 2012
 For 'something a little different' I turned to Col. John B. Alexander, Ph.D. (U.S. Army, Ret.), to talk about UFOs. John has had a unique experience looking into the UFO question from a government insider's point of view and has a lot of extremely helpful, and extremely thoughtful, things to say — both about the reality of the phenomena and about our ignorance regarding what's happening. I highly recommend his latest book, UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies, and Realities (St. Martin's, 2011). Thanks, John! Total runtime fifty minutes. Caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt.
May 4, 2012
 By any reasonable reckoning idiocy in America has reached alarming proportions. Or, in the words of former U.S. Poet Laureate Charles Simic, "[t]he ideal citizen of a politically corrupt state, such as the one we now have, is a gullible dolt unable to tell truth from bullshit." That's clear enough. Apt. And yet, and yet... I asked Charles please to elaborate. Total runtime fifty two minutes. Dum spiro, spero.
May 1, 2012
 Here's an extra, in-between show, in-between our regular Friday shows. Two reasons for this: it's a very short conversation and the sound quality is less than optimal (from a cell phone on the street). Still, it's an extremely important subject, one we should all be aware of and well worth pondering. Dr. Chensheng "Alex" Lu has found an explanation, a controversial explanation, for honeybee colony collapse disorder — not surprisingly, perhaps, CCD is linked to a common pesticide. I hope I can revisit this subject at greater length with Alex later this year. Total runtime seventeen minutes. Nātūrae dēbitum reddidērunt.
April 27, 2012
 According to Dr. Ha-Joon Chang, modern economics emulates the spirit and purpose of medieval scholasticism in upholding — above all else — the status quo. Nowhere is this more apparent, or more required, than in the ridiculous nostrum of "free trade," though if you look closely most elements of mainstream economics are riddled with conceptual error. Because human beings are human beings, not calculating machines. Kudos to Ha-Joon for taking on the system from within! And, btw, if you haven't yet read it, please buy or borrow Ha-Joon's most recent — exceptionally outstanding — book, 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism (Bloomsbury, 2011). Total runtime thirty six minutes. Sub speciē aeternitātis.
April 20, 2012
 It's a vicious circle. Financialization. Profit maximization. Offshoring. Political dysfunction. To start with the offshoring part, the American economy will wither and die without good industrial jobs. The numbers don't add up otherwise and the numbers don't lie. But thanks to money, corporations prefer things the way they are, as do politicians. Making matters worse, academicians who study such things mostly haven't got a clue. It's refreshing, then, to get the full, unvarnished truth from an insider's insider. Dr. Ralph E. Gomory was the head of research for many years at IBM and is President Emeritus of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Currently he's a research professor at NYU. To cut to the chase, Ralph believes that protectionism would be good for America. And he goes much further, to say that the banner of (non-violent) class warfare should be proudly unfurled. I agree! Total runtime forty nine minutes. Cantābit vacuus cōram latrōne viātor.
April 13, 2012
 Human beings start domesticating crops only 12,000 or so years ago. Written history begins about 5,000 years ago. The modern era dates from — when? — maybe 100-200 years ago. Perhaps it's no surprise, then, that we have some difficulty internalizing the idea that our burning carbon has, already, set into motion dramatic changes to the entire planet's environment, changes that will persist for 100,000 years, or more. One of these is ocean acidification. Dr. Bärbel Hönisch and her co-authors of the paper "The Geological Record of Ocean Acidification," Science (2 March, 2012), show that the rate of change of ocean acidification is greater today, by at least an order of magnitude, than it has ever been during any period over the past 300,000,000 years. Rate of change, not absolute pH level, being what matters. The deep past includes, notably, a couple of rapid ocean acidification/mass extinction events. This therefore, not unreasonably, should be of concern. Thanks, Bärbel! Total runtime fifty minutes. Potius sērō quam nunquam.
April 6, 2012
 It isn't every day that someone has a second look at enshrined history and finds it upside down. Then, to tell people what's wrong is even more remarkable. It takes a combination of (possibly naïve) philosophical idealism, hearty persistence and guts. Dr. Timothy Messer-Kruse reexamined the trial resulting from the 1886 Haymarket Affair — a supposedly monstrous miscarriage of justice that we commemorate with International Workers' Day on May 1st — and discovered that the trial was, in fact, reasonably fair. Can Labor now obtain a clean slate? To me, the lesson is that violence doesn't pay. Total runtime forty two minutes. Dē omnī rē scībilī et quibusdam aliīs.
March 30, 2012
 Listening to Ed Asner I'm reminded of Michael Polanyi's observation (to paraphrase) that we believe more than we can prove and know more than we can say. Polanyi also talked about "growing points" in science, which I hope has an analogue in a free society where personal connections become more important, particularly when rethinking the past. Why not, after all, have an idealistic Socialist vision of what we want or a gimlet-eyed Socialist appraisal of what's gone wrong? This is the stuff of which optimists are made. Thanks, Ed!! Total runtime thirty four minutes. Credo ut intelligam.
March 23, 2012
 No charges were ever filed. Nothing was ever proved. But the FBI tried, over the course of several criminal investigations, to ascertain whether, in fact, certain suspect individuals had diverted hundreds of pounds of highly enriched uranium from a plant in Pennsylvania to Israel, for use in making Israel's first few nuclear bombs. Indeed, at one point Attorney General Ed Levi wanted the criminal investigation broadened to include possible collusion by U.S. Government officials. Unfortunately, each investigation was nipped in the bud. And, naturally, political protection always was blind to party. To tell this twisted, thorny story I turned to Grant F. Smith, founder of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, whose latest book, Divert (with an epilogue by Col. Pat Lang), should keep people thinking. Total runtime forty four minutes. Ecce signum!
March 16, 2012
 When it comes to its spending priorities America seems congenitally unable to focus on reality. Obfuscation being more highly prized than clarity. Nevertheless, we should recognize that as a percentage of GDP this country spends four to five times the money for military purposes as do other industrial states. In absolute terms we spend about one trillion dollars per year, dwarfing the competition. Recently, the Pentagon released its 2013 budget proposal, an undercounted proposal designed to misinform. To walk us through what's in it — and what's not but should be — I turned once again to Winslow Wheeler, one of the top experts on Pentagon budget numbers. Great job, Winslow! Total runtime forty minutes. Nīl igitur mors est ad nōs neque pertinet hīlum.
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