I’ve been a casual reader of news the last few days. I’ve skimmed. I’ve been busy. But I think I’m not alone in that. Regardless, the point I’ve gotten about Obama’s energy policy is that he’s backtracked on offshore drilling, and is now willing to support it.

I was a little pissed about this, until I actually read the speech he gave. Anyone who’s concerned about the future of energy consumption, the environment, or gas prices (so, yeah, everyone) ought to read it. It’s an outline of serious proposals, with real targets and financial incentives behind them, the kind of thing that we’ve been running away from in the U.S. for way too many years.

Yeah, he said he’d be “willing to consider” a lmited amount of offshore drilling — something he calls unmeaningful in the long or short term — if that’s what it politically took to pass a comprehensive energy bill. That hurts a little, but it also shows who he is — someone practical who is willing to compromise a little in pursuit of a very important goal. I can accept that, and it is better that he tells us this now than later. Right?

His real proposals (or targets) are serious, and good grist for genuine discussion:

• work to get 1 million 150 mpg hybrids on the road in 6 years
• $7000 tax credit to consumers for buying these
• $4 billion in tax credits and loans to help U.S. factories retool to make these
• by end of 1st term, require that 10 percent of energy in US comes from renewable sources. (This can be a tricky figure, depending on whether he’s talking total energy demand, or total national electricity generation. Renewables accounted for 7 percent of total demand in 2006, but already 9.5 percent of electricity generation. It’s not an easy figure to grow, either– three-quarters of the renewables-generated electricity was hydroelectric, and it’s unlikely we’ll be building any significant new dams soon)
• national goal to reduce electricity use by 15 percent by end of next decade.

There’s meat here, even if it’s possible for us to do more. More than just a flip-flop on offshore drilling. As a package, it’s so much more serious than what McCain is proposing (drilling and a tax holiday on gas) that it makes the GOP sound a little like, I don’t know, maybe Paris Hilton…

I know, I haven’t been blogging lately. I’ve been traveling, in the States for the first time since moving to Berlin (more on that later, but it was only in going back that I finally felt like an expat). Also reading, evolutionary theory and sociobiology.

Which leads to this point. Reading this article on the growing branch of “neuroeconomics” (economists that actually look inside the brain, with MRIs and such, to see what’s happening in the course of an economic decision). It strikes me that a pretty simple evolutionary argument exposes a serious flaw in much of classical liberal (or conservative, in modern parlance) economics.

There’s an exercise called the “ultimatum game,” which behavioral economists use to study people’s preferences. Two people. A set sum of money, say $100, to be split between the two. Person A is given the right to set the distribution split, without any limits. She can say 50-50, for example, or 90-10. The only limit is that B has to agree. If B in fact agrees, they both get whatever cash A has doled out. If B disagrees, both get nothing.

A perfectly rational B, (classical economics’ rational actor) should in theory accept even a radically uneven (90-10) split, because he is getting a free $10. The fact that A is getting $90 shouldn’t matter, all other things being even (another big assumption, but skip that for a little while). In fact, studies show that B rejects a very large proportion of uneven splits, apparently because they seem unfair.

Irrational by “rational actor” standards, sure. But it strikes me that an evolutionary analysis shows why this is perfectly rational, even inevitable, from a genetic perspective. As Richard Dawkins (”The Selfish Gene“) describe, genes themselves clearly don’t have conscious preferences. However, behavior can evolve, as in the case of genetic-driven behavior which successfully allows an individual to accumulate more resources, which translates into greater ability to reproduce (more nuts gathered, for example, means that a larger number of offspring can be supported), and thus a wider propagation of that particular gene or genetic pattern.

Clearly, in a world of limited resources, there is competition for resources. Every individual would be best served by being in the position of the game’s A, getting more resources than her rival. In a strictly economic perspective, B’s getting a free $10 is a good thing, and should be accepted regardless of the unfair split. But in an evolutionary perspective, a gene (or gene-driven behavior) which happily accepted the 10 percent split while a rival took 90 percent, wouldn’t last. The A group, with more resources, would propagate at a much higher rate, and ultimately drive the B’s out.

It’s a bit more complicated than that, of course. A rise in the proportion of As probably wouldn’t be stable itself. But what might be stable is the rise of B’s who had evolved a sense of being cheated — who would reject the 90-10 split, leaving both parties with nothing, leaving them both poor but equal. From B’s perspective of evolutionary survival, equal at zero is better than being a little bit better off absolutely, but having less resources than A.

I’m sure evolutionary-minded economists have puzzled this all out before. But it has interesting consequences for thinking about our consumption decisionns, and our preferences for a fair vs. unequal society. The conservative argument that it is OK if the rich get very rich, as long as the poor get a little better off in absolute terms, probably violates a kind of internal fairness system we’ve developed over the years in order to keep ourselves alive. So much for “rational actor.”

As a writer, I have become shamefully dependent on my thesaurus. By which, of course, I generally mean the Internet, since actually taking my fingers off the keyboard is a task too frightening to contemplate (and the thesauri in OpenOffice and Word are rudimentary at best).

Until a few weeks ago, I have been very happy with Thesaurus.com. I’ve used it something like three million times a day, usually with the help of a handy Yahoo widget that sat on top of my documents, and gave me bundles of synonyms at the click of a mouse. But then, a few weeks ago, the site came down with a serious case of uselessness.

I’m not the only one who’s noticed this, although the roars of outrage online seem to be muted. Comments in this blog  seem to indicate that the company has switched reference tools, from Roget’s New Millenium (good) to Roget’s II: The New Thesaurus. As with most sequels, this one is crummy. Parent company Lexico’s blog doesn’t mention any switch at all.

The thing is, I’d even pay for a good thesaurus. But it appears that even the premium version of Thesaurus.com has been eviscerated. Or at least there’s nothing indicating otherwise.

Luckily, the Internet steps in to save the day. Mirriam-Websters’ thesaurus function is too inconsistent to use, but a bit of hunting found me this searchable 1911 Roget’s, put out by the University of Chicago and the lovely, lovely Project Gutenberg. Granted, a lot of words have changed or emerged in that last 100 years. But searches there return a vast and inspiring list of cross-referenced synonyms, rather than a few paltry suggestions.

There’s even a Firefox plugin. What’s not to like?

I think I’ve spent the last six months entirely inside. It wasn’t a cold winter, but the dark and cold-enough of it seemed to get under my skin more than I expected this year. Though it’s possible that staring at a laptop screen for 29 hours a day every day has something to do with creating a vitamin deficiency.

But last night, against all odds, we actually ventured outside to this event being thrown by a few dozen B-list clubs across the city, one ticket gets you in all of them, dance to your heart’s content. It’s the first time Peasant Glasses and I have been to any Berlin dance clubs except our friendly local Icon, and so naturally we excitedly started at the old-person’s hour of 11, when everything was deserted. The first few were a bust for me; I never liked high school dances, and have zero nostalgia for the disco of the 70s and radio hits of the 80s. But just in time, we found a group of crazy Romanian DJs playing some kind of hard bass-heavy electronic goodness, two in giant cardboard robot costumes, another laying down live sax squeals over the beats. I dug. Dancing is a collective ecstasy; it’s hard for me to transcend my own inclination to simply nod my head and analyze the music, but it’s a beautiful thing when it happens.

On the way home, we stopped to watch a pair of blackbirds battle-rapping at 4 am, sitting on opposite sides of a long vacant stretch where the Wall used to run, alternating complex and creative stretches of song at the top of their lungs. The sound echoed from the sides of the apartments, lit up the pre-dawn streets like fireworks, made us grin.

Winter’s over, finally.

Gary Gygax, the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, died today. Just 69, but he’d had health problems for a long time. He leaves behind a legacy that’s far stronger and more important than the non-geek world really understands, I think. D&D, and the gaming worlds that evolved from it, were hugely influential on generations of kids (true, mostly boys) who were learning how to imagine and interact with the world around them. Yeah, it was wizards and thieves and +5 Holy Avenger swords, but these games were (and are) a kind of collective, improvisational storytelling that at their best rise easily to the level of art, and at their worst trains the imagination and analytical skills tremendously well.

My coauthor Brad and I began our history of video game culture not with anything digital, but with Gygax and his co-inventor Dave Arneson working out the rules for D&D, because we believed (and still believe) that the kind of collective, face-to-face, immersive-world gaming they created was as or more influential in the history of video game communities than anything Atari ever created. Gygax was generous enough to spend hours on the phone with us. He was just as you’d expect. Kind of grumpy, but eager to talk about the origin and lasting legacy of the game he’d created. Which still surprised him.

He was the protogeek, a tabletop gamer who wanted to tell stories and infuse ordinary reality with a little magic.  He and Arneson succeeded.

After a bit of swearing and frowning and several trips down to a part of Wedding which I don’t ordinarily see (but we all should, because there’s quite interesting African Lebensmittel shops there), the Ausländerbehördenites have at last given me a permission slip to stay in this part of the world for a bit longer. Many, many thanks to Bowleserised, who pointed me in the direction of a very helpful accountant who prepared the 3,000 page folder of documents that allowed me to sidle confidently into the office, wait no longer than four hours, and then head off home with a newly valid Aufenthaltserlaubnis.

So, now that nobody’s kicking me out of the country, it’s time to figure out what to do with the time.

I think you have to give this particular Net spam-fraudster a little credit for a sense of humor:

Dear Winner, (they write)

This is to inform you that you have been selected for a cash prize of 1,000,000.00GBP (One Million Great British Pounds) and
a brand new BMW 5 Series Car from International programs held on the 22nd of JAN 2008 in London Uk.

Details follow, until it is signed by the aptly named “MRS Pat Swindell.”

From an NYT blog, a Steve Jobs quote bashing Amazon’s (no longer new) e-book reader:

“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”

So, fellow writers, fellow readers, throw up your hands in defeat, the iPod generation has triumphed. Burning books is so twentieth century, we will simply declare reading to be a waste of time, a marketplace irrelevance, and move on.

What a prick.

(via Appalachian Geek, who has much smarter things than I to say about it)

Because I am a fervent believer that the unrestrained free market has the best possible answers to all problems, I would like to propose to the Internets at large a solution to the problem of meat, and a way of reigning in the pork and cattle industries that have become nothing less than environmental disasters.

The industrial world has shown us the way. Carbon credits, in which over-polluting companies can buy what are essentially rights to pollute from companies that have cleaned up their act, are obviously turning around the entire global warming problem. Lickety-split, as they say. Thus, we simply need to apply this model to the agribusiness world, and we’re in good shape.

Here’s how it will work. All people on the planet will be given an appropriate level of meat consumption. Say, three-quarters of a pound a week. That’s three quarter pounders at McDonalds, more if you figure that not all that mashed-up stuff is actually meat anyway. Anybody who wants to consume more than that can go onto to MeatOffsetCredits.com and buy credits, and chow down to their heart’s content.

The credits themselves will come from people who can document that they’ve eaten less than the 3/4 lb per week. Veggies, tofu- and bean-lovers. The less meat you eat, the more money you’ve got in the bank.
Think of the advantages. It’s a perfect way to funnel developed-world funds to poverty-stricken, or even voluntarily vegetarian nations. Give every citizen in the world a MeatOffsetCredits.com account, and we can even skip some of those pesky foreign aid issues where development funds get diverted by (dare I say steak-loving) dictators and generals.

And for those of us bean-lovers who are living in say, Berlin, skimping on meat budgets so we can enjoy our palatial two-room apartments, well, let’s just say we won’t have to worry about the falling dollar anymore. We’ll be subsidized by the international brotherhood of the Fleisch.

Who’s with me? Anybody have Ban Ki-Moon’s email address?

(Thanks to Kean for the link to this NYT story, which is a good luck at the genuinely terrible state of industrial meat production and consumption in America)

I’m thrilled about Obama’s win in Iowa. I’m not as surprised as maybe I should be, reading the headlines, but maybe this is one of the advantages of being overseas, and not steeped in the daily horse-race reporting. From here, the story emerging after Obama’s win — that Democrats are more focused on the prospect of a complete and cleansing change than on the promise of competence — seems a bit obvious. Yet that’s simplistic, too. What Obama seems to have done is convince people in Iowa that in addition to being a genuinely new and healing force, he can still be a competent leader. More power to him, that’s what the country needs.

The coverage here is fascinating. I was a little shocked to read this in Der Spiegel, a magazine I ordinarily respect deeply.

But the Iowa snow king has scant hope of reaching the White House. He’s too young, too inexperienced, too vague, and for many Americans, too black. His magic words about the era of change, of hope, of an America he will unite — all that will evaporate like morning mist. …

Yesterday morning in my hotel, at the breakfast table next to mine, two sisters, perhaps six and eight years old, greeted each other with the following exchange. “Are you fired up?” said one. “Are you ready to go?” replied the other. That’s the battle cry of Obama’s supporters. Children love fairy tales.

Compare this to Arianna Huffington’s take:

Obama’s win might not have legs. Hope could give way to fear once again. But, for tonight at least, it holds a mirror up to the face of America, and we can look at ourselves with pride. This is the kind of country America was meant to be, even if you are for Clinton or Edwards — or even Huckabee or Giuliani.

It’s the kind of country we’ve always imagined ourselves being — even if in the last seven years we fell horribly short: a young country, an optimistic country, a forward-looking country, a country not afraid to take risks or to dream big.

Huffington’s right, I think, even if it’s a bit starry-eyed. A kind of optimistic political innocence is a defining American characteristic. It can go horribly wrong, as the Bush years have shown. But at least today, Americans still genuinely believe in — even expect, as in a Hollywood movie — healing and redemption after periods of darkness.

The Spiegel article rejects this idea. Obama represents the triumph of this innocence, and Americans are silly to believe in fairy tales, it argues. I think there’s more, too; America has screwed up so badly, so viciously, in ways with such awful consequences for the rest of the world, that it doesn’t deserve a healing process. And maybe there’s something to this. We voted Bush in twice, inflicting his ignorance and violence on the rest of the world; maybe it’s time we stopped believing in fairy tales.

But I think that’s a misreading of America. Voting for Obama is neither a rejection of our own history or a childlike misunderstanding of the difficulties of the future. It’s the expression of a people and place that for more than 200 years has been defined by constant self-reinvention. It’s an ugly spirit at times, when we not only refuse to admit our mistakes, but actually forget them. But genuine hope is not only a fairy tale. Sometimes healing happens.