The ALCAIDE’S CAFE

One of the conversations I overheard the other night was about a company in Israel that’s growing, out of “regular plants” - trees and stuff, furniture and houses and various whatnots. All part of the “Green Movement”, they claimed. Well, that one got me curious.

Turns out it is true, essentially. I found the source on the internet, just as the guy in the Café said. (Surprising, isn’t it, how many people - folks you’d never ever picture on a computer - are surfing the Web!) I found an article in ScienceDaily August 21, 08, titled “Eco-architecture could produce ‘Grow Your Own’ Homes.”   There was a picture of a park bench built around, or integrated with, a couple (maybe 4?) trees. Actually, the bench was made of lumber like a regular bench but had trees growing in/through the ends of it. Made a pretty great shady rose-garden type thing, au natural, but not all that impressive. I’ve seen equally nifty, integrated-with-living-plants benches in grape arbors and rose trellises, even Mexican-style ramadas.

But reading on, I found hopes being expressed that were much more grandiose:

“Pilot projects now underway in the United States, Australia, and Israel include park benches for hospitals, playground structures, streetlamps and gates. ‘The approach is a new application of the well-known botanical phenomenon of aerial root development,’ says Prof Eshel. ‘Instead of using plant branches, this patented approach takes malleable roots and shapes them into useful objects for indoors and out.’”   [This Prof Eshel was ½ the Tel Aviv U. team doing all his. The other is Prof. Yoav Waisel.]

Now as I read, I was reminded of something I’d seen before. There once was a California roadside attraction created in the 1920’s. I’d seen it in one of Huell Howser’s popular PBS travel documentaries, a series called California’s Gold.

A little googling freshened the details:   A Swedish immigrant, Axel Erlandson started shaping, splicing and manipulating a variety of trees into all sorts of sometimes crazy, sometimes beautiful, sometimes utilitarian, and always “Wow!” shapes. After about 25 years of this he transplanted his marvels, about 70 in all, to Scotts Valley, California, and turned the collection into a roadside attraction for motoring tourists. The Tree Circus, he called it. He’s gone now, and so are some 2/3 of his trees, but the survivors have been incorporated into a “theme park”, called “Bonfante Gardens”.

My googling exercise also revealed there are dozens of other similar attempts to do what this Israeli team (and corporation) are doing, not to mention a variety of patents on tools and processes to do it. So there’s not as much new and original here as ScienceDaily or the Israeli pair think there is. They say:

“The original ‘root breaking’ research was conducted at the Sarah Racine Root Research Laboratory at Tel Aviv University, the first and largest aeroponics lab in the world. Founded by Prof. Waisel 20 years ago, the lab enables scientists to conduct future-forward and creative research that benefits mankind and the environment…” and express hopes that this “new method for growing ‘soft roots’, which could easily turn living trees into useful structures …. in the near future, entire homes will be constructed with the eco-friendly technology. An engineer by trade, Plantware’s CEO Gordon Glazer hopes the first home prototype will be ready in about a decade. While the method of ‘growing your own home’ can take years, the result is long lasting and desireable especially in the emerging field of green architecture.”

I hate to rain on anyone’s parade, but I have to at least toss a bucket or two of skepticism on this one. First, there’s obviously nothing all that new or original here. Maybe no one else is actually working on the roots, as opposed to the rest of the trees, but so what? Second, What’s so “green” or “eco-friendly” about growing a bench or staircase (as Erlander did) instead of making it out of lumber from trees you grew for the lumber? And last, maybe you could grow a whole house, but how is even that worth anything but the extra novelty? And I don’t about you but I have no interest in buying a house that I have to wait so long to have it finished that I’ve paid off the mortgage (and rented all the time while doing it) before I can even move in!

Last night, everyone got to talking about “alternative” energy. It wasn’t long before it was about cars.
 
Cars are, after all, where many oil/energy debates go for good reason. Almost everyone owns a car, needs a car, thinks about their car, and has to pay for the gas that runs the car. It might well be that the lion’s share of American oil consumption is in our cars, though I’m not sure. We also use tons of oil for electricity, for our trains, planes, buses and trucks, for lubrication, and plastics, and pesticides and fertilizers (and tractors and harvesters) and so on. So it involves a lot more than just cars, but talk in the cafe was mostly about cars.
 
Now, the talk was scattered all about, over time, and not very organized, but as I pass on the gist of it, you get my selection and organization/reorganization of it all. But is a pretty good representation of the evening.
 
Everyone started talking about getting smaller cars, hybrids.  That sometimes led them to other conservation technologies, but I was surprised when the Alcaide’s crowd got into stuff almost everyone else, in the news and political campaigns ignore. That’s what I focus on:
 
(1) The fact is there’s no way any of these transitions, these changeovers to new energy sources and new technologies are gonna happen in ten years (which is how long the Dems - and other anti-drilling for oil folks - say it will take for drilling to get new oil on line), or even for the next 20 or 25 years (which a lot of us older citizens only hope we will last). New technology doesn’t just pop up when we want! How long have we been inching our way into good solar?
 
(2) The costs of implementing these changeovers, when they’ve finally been invented and made doable - in money, resources, energy use and costs, and our landfills (you gotta throw the old stuff away!), are going to be huge beyond imagination!
 
For instance: there are now about 250 million (that’s 250,000,000) cars today, in just the US. How long will it take to build 250 million new ones – even if a super good replacement for “gas guzzlers”? How many years? And how much steel, copper, plastic, aluminum, rubber, glass, etc. will it take? And how much carbon-producing energy will it take to mine, refine, produce the raw materials, let alone manufacture and assemble 250 million cars? And what happens to the 250 million old ones? Some parts can be recycled, but at no small cost in labor, money, energy, and so-called carbon footprints!
 
Now, since everyone wants to start yesterday, with yesterday’s slightly improved “hybrid” technology, I guess we will try to build 250 million of them, then build another 250 million of the new improved technological marvels that come in 5, 10, or 15 years. Meanwhile, of course, how much in resources, manufacturing costs and energy will we use in just batteries for those hybrids we love today?
 
(3) Most people are stretched buying a new car every few or even ten years. Will they buy a new one? Maybe if it’s the law, they will! But with what money? Maybe another round of rebates or tax refunds? Say, about $25,000 per household. Where’s that money? Get real!
 
(4) What will the new cars use for energy? Electricity seems the dream. We who already have brownouts every summer wonder where that electricity will come from? Oh yes, the dreamers say we will build new power sources. Not oil or coal, of course. And most say not nuke either. So from what? Wind?
 
Have you noticed how difficult and much resources are required for a wind generator? Aluminum and copper and steel, not to mention the energy to refine and manufacture them? And how many “save the birds” and “save my view” and “Not here” objections are raised with every attempt? Even Senator Kennedy refused to let them be built in his ocean view (so far out they’d looked like toothpicks!). And how much copper, steel, concrete, and money and energy, will it take for every generator to be wired into the power grid? And how many hearings and debates over environmental issues and eminent domain squabble and political objection for permits?
 
(5) What about water power? Everyone mentions hydro as an “alternative”, clean and renewable power source. Ever build a damn? Try to do it today! Every objection imaginable will be raised, and no new damn will ever be built! In fact, where I live, they are tearing them down! Save the fishes, natural beauty, rafting, God only knows what other objections!
 
Besides, damns are not clean. Huge amounts of resources (concrete, steel, etc.) are used to build and wire them into the grid. They soon fill up with silt, kill fishes and habitats, etc. And it takes enormous carbon-based fuels to build a damn. (Surely, you don’t envision hybrid or battery-powered bulldozers and excavators and land-movers, do you?)
 
(6) What about nuclear? Well, even assuming they finally get the go-ahead from the public and politicos to build nuclear plants again, how long will it take to design even one and decide where to build it. How many years to get past the environmental and political objections of locals who NEVER want it (or anything) in their neighborhood or backyard? We can’t even get to bury nuke waste in the middle of a mountain in the middle of a desert after a quarter of a century!
 
(7) What about those ethanol fuels to replace oil? Oh yeah, let’s take the food out of our refrigerator (oh wait, saving electricity means getting off the old “icebox lifestyle, so make that “food out of our pantry”) and put it in our gas tanks! Great, idea. Took us only about 3 years to realize what a disaster that was becoming! (BTW, Fidel Castro was a prophet on that one, accusing us, from the get go of planning to starve the rest of the world!)
 
(8) OK, as some say, let’s just reorganize our living patterns. Stop scattering families across the nation. Stop living in suburbs. Only let farmers live in the country. Start building cities that are walk-able, with jobs and marketplaces and schools and recreation (movies, gyms, bowling alleys, EVERYTHING) within a few blocks. Well, now let’s repeat the litany of hurdles and costs and timetables we just went through for new cars, and not mention restructuring our entire culture, cultural geography, economy, and physical infrastructure (Did I mention, trains, planes, trucks, construction equipment, etc, too, which all require oil products? Oh yeah.)
 
Sounds great if you’re twenty-something, living in a San Francisco Victorian apartment, athletic, working in the neighborhood bike store, getting groceries at corner market, a girlfriend nearby, and parents a cell phone away, etc. But, if you went to State U, live with three kids in a development 3 miles from schools, about the same to the supermarket, 25 miles to his job, almost as far to her job, and 2 miles to day-care, and a thousand miles to grandparents and the same to brothers (uncles) and sisters (aunts), and the nearest public transit is … well, in town, the idea of reorganizing our civilization back down into a village/tribal … well, no way that will happen in your lifetime, at whatever cost!
 
Bear 

Read a story in the local newspaper today that just … well, made me wonder. And do some serious re-examination of my own thinking. The story was titled, “Mission to Succeed”* And this was the first passage that got to me:

“I once was lost but now I’m found.”

That’s how Samantha Keeler described her experience at a faith-based program in Oxnard (CA) that helps single women with substance abuse problems…

But advocates for the separation of church and state say there is a problem with the way some women are getting into the program They are given a choice of either going to jail or entering the faith-based program.”

My first reaction, usually, when I hear that some ”advocates” or “critics” have problems with other people ”having a choice” in how to run their own lives, is a big “So what? Like, what business is it of theirs?” Almost without exception it turns out that it is absolutely none of their business. Almost always these so-called advocates and critics are people pushing some selfish agenda of their own, and are really upset that other people are making choices that they themselves don’t want or like. They are troubled that the world isn’t marching along in lockstep with their own views and beliefs. That’s especially true in regard to religion and politics. Nothing brings out the fascism, nowadays, more than partisan politics or religion (or, more to the point, some sort of anti-religion). In this story, the so-called “concerned advocate” says,

“Imagine the outrage in Ventura County (CA) if women were given the choice between jail and a Muslim-based drug treatment program.”

OK, I had to stop and think about this. I imagined my feelings. Though I am a very dedicated Christian (and, I must admit, one who is strongly offended by the Islamist war on me and mine), I still had to conclude that I have no such outrage. None. If a Muslim program would fit the needs, would work for any or all of the substance abuse victims we read about here, who are currently facing jail, or even more to the point, would otherwise continue to destroy their own and their family’s lives - I really don’t care if its run by Muslims. I would be glad for it! Really, I shouldn’t be at all surprised to hear that some Muslim program is working , doing exceptionally well somewhere. Why? Because I suspect, the “faith” required, and rules of participation in a Muslim program would probably be even stronger and the teachings and disciplines even tougher than the program in this story! And truthfully, my first concern is the rescue and salvation of the addicted, not their recruitment into my own religious beliefs and opinions!

It sure looks to me that the reason these critics (”advocates for the separation of church and state”) assume I and everyone else would be outraged by a Muslim program, is that they themselves are bigots, closed-minded and intolerant, and think everyone is the same. They are so partisan, and intolerant, that they can’t understand that many - if not most - of the rest of the world aren’t. And it reveals the underlying theme of their objections to the program. Let me simply say that it’s not about the welfare of the ”substance abusers”.

“17 women are now going through a nine-month recovery plan that includes the traditional 12-step recovery program supplemented by religious classes….

Although they are not required (my emphasis) to participate….

Several local churches provide mentors … and strive to give them a new social environment.

Now anyone who knows much about drug abuse knows “recovery” is absolutely dependent on getting into a “New social environment”. So, if these critics care so much, why don’t they step up and volunteer, too, and provide another “new social environment”?

“Two other programs that helped female substance abusers have closed … because of funding difficulties.”

Or at the very least, donate some damn money?

“The Lighthouse program has an annual operating budget of $840,000 that comes entirely from private donations…”

Donate some damn money?

“Although a nine-month substance abuse program is expensive, its success rate is much higher…”

Donate some damn money?

“85 percent of those who stay until the end remain in recovery for at least five years.”

Isn’t that a choice well worth offering, and taking?

“The Ventura County Probation Agency does not contract with Lighthouse as a service provider. But Attorneys for women who have exhausted their Proposition 36 opportunities (Prop 36 allows for 3 chances to go into other “secular” rehab programs) sometimes propose … their clients be permitted to go to the Lighthouse program as an alternative to jail… the only free program of its kind and the only practical option for poor women…

But,

“Joe Cohn, a spokesman for … Americans United for Separation of Church and State, questioned what kind of choice was being offered…

The choice of a religious program or jail is coercion is wrong, he said.

 ”WRONG?” “COERCION?” Is he nuts?

First of all, it IS a CHOICE, one first proposed by the addict. Where’s the coercion in that? Even more, the choices are between three “opportunities”  (1) at secular/non Christian programs (which rarely work, rarely cure the addictions), and (2) jail, or (3) a program that generally works! Let’s see: jail; a rehab that doesn’t rehab; a program that usually does rehab and gets one far away from a life of dismal failure, sickness, and even death in an alley somewhere. The best choice looks pretty obvious to me but… but, for our critics (uh, “advocates” for freedom from all that - because it also offers chance to “get religion” if you want) it’s really evil and should be banned! For whose benefit? For whose satisfaction?

Well, Samantha Keeler gives us her answer, speaking about her own ”viciously coerced” experience:

“What matters to Keeler, however, is that she is in a much better place than before. Now 29, she started doing drugs at age 14. By the time she was 16, she hadf dropped out of high school … got into an eight-year relationship centered on drugs and drinking. She had a daughter and ended up having to give her up….

She was not religious before she entered the program. But she thought, “Why not? Why not try a different way of life?”

And now,

“She’s going to college pat time and has reconnected with her daughter.

‘I have joy in my life now,’ she said…”

Yet apparantly, to keep the atheists of Americans United… happy, she (and the hundreds of other successful rehabs) should give this up? Go back into their “uncoerced” druggy lives? Is religion, or belief in God, so horrible that druggy lives are a better choice?

Give me, and them, a break from your paranoid, narcissitic, and tyranical attitudes and beliefs, Americans United…. Please.

* In the Ventura County Star, Aug 1, 2008. By Jose L. Sanchez Jr.

Was Charlie, I think, who brought this one up - just a great line.

He was watching a show called The O’reilly Factor, but it was by a guest host, a woman named Laura, filling in. The topic was “energy”.

Charlie:

“the guest was pitching, you know, the usual Democrat line (I’m paraphrasing Charlie, here, of course) ’It’ll take too long to get more oil into production, we need instead to develop (and deploy, I assume…) new technologies, and … well, you know, stop global warming, save the planet, make amends for our (the US of A) overconsumption and excessive success, etc., etc.”

Well, this chick, this Laura whatever (her name is Ingram, btw) says to this guy:

“Would you really wanna fly to New York on a solar-panel airplane?”.

I tell you, I almost died laughing! Solar powered airplane. Really, that’s what it comes down to. Like, what if they run into a cloudy day? That is so right on!

He’s got one heck of a point, eh? Let’s see: We don’t need oil or gas (actually, most planes use diesel) but “alternatives”! After all, the best we could hope for is more oil in ten years (truth is, two to five, really, but…) so instead, let the prices go to hell, cuz the real answer is “alternatives”. So WHAT alternatives? Especially for such as airplanes? Even if we could erase our existing airplane inventory and build something else (in less than 10 years???), what would it be? Solar? I think not. Nuclear? “Excuuuuuse me!” the greenies would say. Wind? Uh, that’s sorta backward. And certainly not coal (ah yes, the good “steamer” version of a 737…). Oh yes, there is ethanol. Our foodstuffs sacrificed for the LA to NY flight… Or solar?

Well, Charlie took the lady’s point well. And had quite a laught. EVERY time he repeated it with someone else.

Only hours after I told you about the Oregon Health Plan’s rather callous way of keeping costs down, to wit, offering suicide instead of medical care if the ilness is serious and really life threatening (isn’t life “life threatening”?), The Oregonian reports on another case of the same!

“The Register-Guard of Eugene…. described the sad plight of Barbara Wagner, a 64-year-old Springfield woman with lung cancer.

After her oncologist prescribed a cancer drug that would cost $4,000 a month, the newspaper reported, “Wagner was notified that the Oregon Health Plan wouldn’t cover the treatment, but that it would cover palliative, or comfort, care, including, if she chose, doctor-assisted suicide.”

I’m glad I’m no longer living in Oregon and, at least as long as I stay working, I’m covered by my HMO.

There’s kind of a curious twist, though, to the Oregonian’s editorial. They really have no problem with the fact the Oregon Health Plan is refusing to pay for the woman’s medical needs. I know that if my HMO refused me, or any evil profit-mongering insurance company refused to pay my medical bills because “it just wasn’t probable I would live happily on for at least five more years, so it just wasn’t worth the bother at all”, all hell would break loose” in headlines around the country, and cable news stories, and the lobbying anecdotes of those pushing for national health care or universal insurance. But not in this Oregonian editorial. No, they recognize the fiscal responsibilities and restraints of their own state’s public Health Plan. Gotta protect the taxpayers (who voted for this, btw), you know.

No, the problem The Oregonian editors had with Barbara’s situation was something else. They put it this way:

“In Wagner’s case, administrators of the Oregon Health Plan had to make a difficult call. But that’s what they do every day in performing the tough, thankless job of rationing government-paid health care to the needy.

What’s unacceptable, however, is that Wagner’s rejection letter included the offer of payment for doctor-assisted death. (my emphasis)Such notification creates at least the appearance of an ethical conflict: state encouragement of dying as a cost-saving measure.

As the only state that both allows assisted suicide and tries to ration health care, Oregon has created a fine ethical line for state officials to navigate. In this case, they stepped over it. For the sake of ethical clarity in Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act, the state health plan should stop offering to pay for those who use it.”

Like, they not only are fine with the idea that you don’t get paid to live (or at least try to), they are actually objecting to the idea of offering to pay for your “state-assisted suicide”. Geez, I bet they’d be OK with paying the humane society to put her dog down, though! But for Barbara (or maybe, if you should fall upon similar hard times) the Oregonian’s editors have this to say:: “Get your own damn pills if you want to take a “(easy”?) short cut out. If you can’t afford them, try some rat poison from the local hardware store.”

Here’s a quick little item to start things off:The folks in Oregon are just now beginning to find out what a public health program run by bureaucrats is like. You tell me if HMOs or private insurance companies can be any worse.

Turns out that the guidelines of Oregon’s compassionate and (fiscally) conservative Oregon Health Plan require that before they’ll pay for your medical treatment they have to be assured that its “worth it”. That is, that they’re not just wasting their money on YOUR life. And how do they decide that? Well, the rule of thumb is that there must be at least a 5% probability that your doctor’s ministrations, or your medical prescription/program will extend your life by at least 5 years! Whoa! Sure hope your not at already 70 years old (or within 5 years of your own particular average life expectancy)! That in itself would make your chances of getting medical treatment pretty slim in some bureaucrat’s eyes, I’d guess. In other words, Oregon’s public health doesn’t sound like one AARP should approve of!

And what about someone with a bad driving record? Could that calculate in? Or someone living in a “bad” (say, euphemistically, “inner city”) neighborhood? You might think such considerations are far fetched, but what if the state’s health fund was really in the hole, and the state’s general economy headed south (not that unlike what many economists say is very possible in the next few years)? Might not the pressure be on those bureaucratic decision-makers to just factor such things in so they can say “no” to more sick folks and stay in budget?  But the case that brought all this to light, and into the public eye (like the news media), was the case of a rather young (less than 50, at least), and rather poor (at least not rich or influential) man. He has cancer. He needs chemotherapy. Like all chemo, it might work, might not. But he has hope. Like you or me, he wants to live. “See my nephews and nieces grow up”, he said. But the state decided the likelihood of his living 5 more years was too low. So the bureaucrats said no more Doctors. No chemo. No hope. No joy. No chance.BUT. They weren’t all that cruel and hard hearted, those state medical bureaucrats. “We won’t pay to have you live”, they told him. “But we will pay to let a doctor put you down! We will pay for the meds to assist you commit suicide!”

“Gee, thanks” he said.

I don’t think I’ll move to Oregon (I once lived there, and still have a few friends there) in order to get on their health plan! Already know where I’d be. About 15 years ago I came up with a whole bunch of plugged arteries. The cardiologists said I had about two weeks to live if I didn’t get at least four arteries bypassed! Having no insurance, at the time, I had to decline. By the good grace of one of the cardiologist I did get a bunch of free meds. Checked in every two weeks. Got more pills. And worked hard to outlive those prognostications. And I’m still going strong 15 years later. And now, with the resources of a good HMO, I have all the meds I need to control my angina, etc., and keep on going strong. A good life, watching my grandchildren (six in all, from 13 to newborn) grow up! And a wife I love, a job, a dog, and a blog. A full life.

Would I have met the 5%/5 years cut-off? I doubt it. I know that when I (luckily) got Social Security Disability support back in those first months when walking across a living room was a three-part effort, they had another rule that surprised me. I got a (small) monthly stipend … but had to live it out for 2 years before I could get Medicare! Just another government medical program rationale: Survive 2 years on your own, and we’ll let you see a doctor!

PS The public outcry in this one man’s instance embarrassed the bureaucrats to relent, at least for him: he’s getting his chemo! Pray for him! Pray he does well, and once the spotlight is turned off, they won’t cut him off again.