By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
NY Times
Published: April 30, 2008

It is great to see that we finally have some national unity on energy policy. Unfortunately, the unifying idea is so ridiculous, so unworthy of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away. Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer’s travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country.

When the summer is over, we will have increased our debt to China, increased our transfer of wealth to Saudi Arabia and increased our contribution to global warming for our kids to inherit.

No, no, no, we’ll just get the money by taxing Big Oil, says Mrs. Clinton. Even if you could do that, what a terrible way to spend precious tax dollars burning it up on the way to the beach rather than on innovation?

The McCain-Clinton gas holiday proposal is a perfect example of what energy expert Peter Schwartz of Global Business Network describes as the true American energy policy today: Maximize demand, minimize supply and buy the rest from the people who hate us the most.

Good for Barack Obama for resisting this shameful pandering.

But here’s what’s scary: our problem is so much worse than you think. We have no energy strategy. If you are going to use tax policy to shape energy strategy then you want to raise taxes on the things you want to discourage gasoline consumption and gas-guzzling cars and you want to lower taxes on the things you want to encourage new, renewable energy technologies. We are doing just the opposite.

Are you sitting down?

Link to NYTimes complete article

This is what I posted to the TW list this morning – note: there is no official format except to try to be somewhat creative or very descriptive, but at all costs, to have fun with it.

Place: 30 degrees,18 minutes,.46″N
81 degrees, 35 minutes, 6″ W
or,
Home.

Time: 6:00pm – ~2:00am

Participants: Kathy (wife), Mark (brother-in-law), me. No-shows: Billy & Steve, brothers, who were busy demolishing a room in a building they’re re-doing, or still smarting from my beating their butts in a round of golf from Friday.

Event title: Saturday night (SN).

Event Description:
History: We have done SN for all 19 years that Kathy and I have been married. Most previous years, we had a Friday night as well, but as the ages move on, we’ve found that just SN works well. It has been somewhat poignant for me to add the HO to the SN at my place OE.

Prix Fixe, Course 1: cocktails – me, a Beefeaters on the rocks, Kathy, a citrus vodka and water with limes, Mark, Jack and ginger. Cashews. A few glass oil lamps providing an atmosphere. Music. Music. Music. I have a system where a desktop computer with ~400 gigs of music is connected to my 5 channel receiver. It is networked along with my wireless laptop. I use the laptop to take control over the desktop thus allowing me to take the laptop wherever I am, in the house, on the pool deck, in another room, etc., and I play DJ by picking the music as we move through the evening. It’s like those old diners where in each booth, one had the songs that would play on the jukebox. Of course, TW is always a part of the playlist.

Prix Fixe, course 2: we try to get to dinner. Usually with the imbibing, we have to force ourselves to eat something, so we’ve mastered the art of cooking and eating when we don’t necessarily feel the overwhelming urge to do so. There’s that old adage about eating and staying sober, but I don’t think it really works. Kathy usually cooks up a gourmet meal – she loves to be creative, but tonight was less creative but no less gourmet. Hamburgers. Gourmet you might ask? Hamburgers? The whole meal comes from our local organic store, Native Sun. These large patties were made of organic beef (you’ve heard of grain fed, aged, etc – well, the taste of this meat is right there or better). I cook these on our grill to a perfect medium rare and they are served on organic, whole wheat muffins baked with a thin layer of blue cheese. Grilled onions and red peppers are added to the toppings to create a Dagwood style sandwich. Baked organic french fries along with Amy’s organic ketchup finishes off our version of “fast food.” Of course, drinks continue to flow, Kathy and Mark still pouring the same, and I’m onto a nice Penfolds Shiraz.

Prix Fixe, course 3: dessert and more drinks and of course, endless music (it has always amazed me how many songs I actually go through in a night – 70, 80 maybe which makes choosing from ~50,000 a task, especially after the Shiraz kicks in. We pulled some cheescake (not organic) that spent too much time in the freezer on a plate and each took a fork and attacked. The cheesecake was a gift from someone who brought it to one of our parties and it never got eaten at that time. These are individual slices with about 3 flavors – strawberry, marble, and another – can’t grok it right now. We left no prisoners on that plate.

Throughout the evening, conversation abounds. Recurring topics of our SNs include, in no special order, an update on our health issues/finds/strategies, a little politics (always try to avoid this as we are in different camps with Mark, but a little sneaks in every time), local sports – an ok topic when football season is not in full bloom as Mark is an avid U Florida Gator- a graduate of UF, Kathy is a graduate and obsessed fan of Florida State U Seminoles, and I am a seminole-by-marriage. It is a heated rivalry here and we have fun off season, but during the season, we all agree to not watch games together, as much as possible. Conversation continues with reminiscing about life, dreams and disappointments, all of our kids as they have grown from being a part of our SNs to now all having lives of their own, and March Madness playing on a muted TV in the background.

Mark leaves sometime around midnight, Kathy and I continue on until we need some snacks and then finish the evening.

A cousin of Kathy and Mark’s used to take part in our SN occasionally. He is kind of red-neck and a bit rough in many of his comments and outlooks on life, but he would always offer a toast at the beginning of the evening: “Here’s to Saturday night – I wonder what the poor people are doing?” I always thought that was crass and insensitive, and when taken literally, it is. But I’ve adapted that phrase to remind myself how wonderfully lucky and rich I am in so so many ways.

Would anyone like to take a shot at it? Please comment here with yours.

My response to him:
Yeah, you can forget that. I don’t charge, much to my wife’s chagrin LOL, since I feel that on this go-round of reincarnated lives, I need to help people and not get rich, thus probably why I’m in education as a counselor. I often feel that with astrological readings, when one charges, one messes with the spirits… I dunno… just my own quirky thing. Or on the other side of life’s rewards, I feel I’m one of the richest people I know (about) with my life and that might be a “what goes around” thing.

We have a local weatherscan channel that shows a lot of graphics, maps, etc, but I’d hate to have that woman’s job who says: “Your current conditions.” And then in a few seconds, “Local Dopler Radar,” then “Local Forcast,” and then she starts all over again. Man, just sitting there, doing that all day, over and over..

It seemed, however, that either my joke was missed or that this struck a cord with other members of the group. The most poignant post was about JB Librarian’s father:

My dad was a busdriver. He loved his job. He would give a tour of his route, finding
useless pieces of information to share with passengers about this house or that store or
a make of car or type of dog… there was always something. He was animated. His
passengers loved him and he received Busdriver of the year award on a number of occasions.

I still ride the bus. I like being part of those in-between spaces: people going
somewhere or coming back from somewhere. There’s an anticipatory energy on the bus, and also a letting go of the day. Depends when you ride it. I study the busdrivers, and for the most part, I think they would rather be any place else than driving a bunch of folks around the same circle of town for eight hours, bored out of their skulls and probably tired of the ridiculous passenger that gives them trouble from time to time.

I suppose what I’m saying is that being truly present for every moment switches consciousness from mundane to fantastical. Doesn’t matter what you’re doing: cleaning toilets of performing brain surgery. If you’re present and not coloring the moment with expectation, it’s all worthwhile.

It is an automated channel and I was joking about the droning and repetitive nature of the voice. My father sold produce door to door from his truck almost his entire working life. He left the house every morning whistling and I can remember thinking that I can only hope that I will feel that way about my job someday. He’ll be 92 this year, going strong, and job satisfaction is probably in-part responsible. Because of my job as a counselor (and if not whistling, I do love my job and feel good about it almost always), I obviously (at least I hope it’s obvious) believe that jobs are all in the eyes of the beholders – what might be boring for some is not for others. Buckminster Fuller did extensive writing and research on world resources and people. His most famous book probably is Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth,
http://www.bfi.org/node/422
and in it, I believe, is his study of people and jobs around the world and he was able to speculate that if all people were given a living wage for whatever job they *wanted* to do, then all essential jobs on earth would done such as garbage pickup – and probably the voice on weatherscan channels ;>) The Bucky Fuller Institute:
http://www.bfi.org/

It is an ironic juxtaposition: one involves a  meaningless ritual in which
we look to a creature of little intelligence for prognostication, and the other involves a Groundhog.

The Mars Rover took a lot of pictures of the Mars surface in 2004. Here is something strange in a few of the frames.

The larger area:

The picture is disturbing. The figure differs significantly from the surrounding terrain. It doesn’t seem to fit. Sure, it could be a trick of the light and all.

Don’t you just love it!!! I want to know more.

The other day a young person asked me how I felt about being old. I was taken aback, for I do not think of myself as old. Upon seeing my reaction, she was immediately embarrassed, but I explained that it was interesting question, and I would ponder it, and let her know Old Age, I decided, is a gift.

I am now, probably for the first time in my life, the person I have always wanted to be. Oh, not my body!  I sometime despair over my body, the wrinkles, the baggy eyes, and the sagging butt. And often I am taken aback by that old person that lives in my mirror (who looks like my mother!), but I don’t agonize over those things for long.

I would never trade my amazing friends, my wonderful life, my loving family for less gray hair or a flatter belly. s I’ve aged, I’ve become more kind to myself, and less critical of myself. I’ve become my own friend. I don’t chide myself for eating that extra cookie, or for not making my bed, or for buying that silly cement gecko that I didn’t need, but looks so avante garde on my patio. I am entitled to a treat, to be messy, to be extravagant.

I have seen too many dear friends leave this world too soon; before they understood the great freedom that comes with aging.

Whose business is it if I choose to read or play on the computer until 4 AM and sleep until noon?

I will dance with myself to those wonderful tunes of the 60&70′s, and if I, at the same time, wish to weep over a lost love . I will.

I will walk the beach in a swim suit that is stretched over a bulging body, and will dive into the waves with abandon if I choose to, despite the pitying glances from the jet set. They, too, will get old.

I know I am sometimes forgetful. But there again, some of life is just as well forgotten. And I eventually remember the important things.

Sure, over the years my heart has been broken. How can your heart not break when you lose a loved one, or when a child suffers, or even when somebody’s beloved pet gets hit by a car? But broken hearts are what give us strength and understanding and compassion. A heart never broken is pristine and sterile and will never know the joy of being imperfect.

I am so blessed to have lived long enough to have my hair turning gray, and to have my youthful laughs be forever etched into deep grooves on my face. So many have never laughed, and so many have died before their hair could turn silver.

As you get older, it is easier to be positive. You care less about what other people think. I don’t question myself anymore. I’ve even earned the right to be wrong.

So, to answer your question, I like being old. It has set me free.  I like the person I have become. I am not going to live forever, but while I am still here, I will not waste time lamenting what could have been, or worrying about what will be. And I shall eat dessert every single day. (If I feel like it).