Frozen Toothpaste

Source: eye of einstein

Last Wednesday evening, as I got up from the computer, I looked out the window. There in the sky, fragile and held aloft by what seemed to be nothing was a sliver of the moon. The horizon I could see over the nearby houses was an enchanting shade of mild orange, which melted into a thin rainbow of yellow and green under a sky of beautifully darkening blue.

To improve the image, the trees, long since little more than needle-like lines in the sky, pointed up everywhere. And below, a thick layer of recently fallen snow made the evergreens look like the quintessence of winter.

Were I feeling vulnerable, I though, I might just have to shed a tear or two at this sight. A sight made all the more valuable because of all the times I know I’ve forgotten to look out the window and say “My God, it’s grand to be alive.”

It’s exceptionally easy to forget what a wonder life is, as we bustle from meetings to errands to television and bed. And it’s when we lose sight of these sights, that thin sliver of a moon held aloft over a perfectly darkening horizon, that we begin to stress about things unworthy of our care.

Getting a raise, or a Christmas bonus, are perhaps not trivial concerns. Making certain you’ve got a shelter for warmth, and food and water to keep you alive certainly are not. But when I stood there and looked at the moon, not a single thing in the world seemed to matter much at all.

Were I to have died, right then, right there, I would have been satisfied. Sure I haven’t accomplished all I’d like. I’m not confident that the world’s a better place than it would have been without me. But to know I got to fully enjoy that view of the moon over my horizon when no one else did was enough. And that can alway be enough.

It’s that feeling, that deep awareness of the importance of that moon over that horizon, that has inspired my undying love for both The Little Prince and the poems of William Stafford. Like no other writers, Saint Exupéry and Stafford seem aware of the amazing power that’s contained in watching the last flickering momemts of the sunset, as the thin moons floats aloft exactly where you want it to be.

Sharing that feeling of love and peace communicated by those men is perhaps the highest ambition of this man.

Love Actually is the kind of movie I tend to avoid. You know the kind: sweet “romantic comedies” that only the lobotomized can’t figure out the outcome of within 15 minutes of their beginning. Where you know that these people are going to get together after you sit though the long list of false obstacles constructed by a screenwriter in need of more pages.

These movies always feel something like pouring lemonade into a papercut — a little painful and a little sweet. But it being Christmas time, I decided to give a Christmas-set member of the genre a minor reprieve.

As anyone who has seen Love Actually, now four years old, can tell you, it doesn’t deviate much from that formula. Set in the weeks before Christmas the inevitable goal is, of course, to have a happy Christmas with the woman or man you love. But Love Actually multiplies that standard formula by what seems like 12.

Somewhat mercifully, this multiplicity means that obstacles to a happy reunion are far fewer. Each obvious pairing — and there’s no denying how obvious they are — has at most one obstacle to overcome before they live “happily ever after.”

The author living in France must only learn Portuguese to express his obviously-mutual love to his housekeeper. The English waiter must only go to America where he will meet the girls — yes, plural — of his dreams. The Prime Minister must only sack — that’s fire in America — his personal helper in order to make it acceptable to fall in love with her. The grade-schooler must only learn to play the drums to win the heart of his dear American, Joanna.

These scenarios are — whether intentionally or not — all a bit too easy. But I see the obvious ease with which these stories fall into place as a wink and a nudge toward the most tired traditions of the genre. A way that the film’s writer and director Richard Curtis tell us, without saying so explicitly, that he’s well aware of the contrivances that tend to lengthen such films.

Part of Love Actually’s charm comes simply from the fact it doesn’t try too hard (read: much at all) to include the necessary bumps and troubles on the way to a happy ending. Indeed, some of the many stories don’t even have happy endings. But when the happy resolutions come they’re shoveled on so deep they nearly force you to smile. Sure they’re obvious contrivances, but the film invites us to revel in just how painfully obvious they are.

I would hardly put Love Actually on the top of my “Best Christmas Movies” list. It’s A Wonderful Life is almost certain to keep the top spot for ever. And the cheesy hits of Christmas Vacation, Home Alone, and A Christmas Story still are better in my book. There’s also the best Christmas/action movie ever, Die Hard, which will forever have a place in my heart.

Having said all that, Love Actually is a far more enjoyable Christmas “rom-com” than I originally expected. It could even win a spot on that long list of obligatory December flicks, though I’m not holding my breath for that.

I briefly mentioned parental infallibility recently, and that lead me to seek out a story related to the topic from Hemingway, called “Indian Camp.” If you’re interested, you can read the whole thing (it’s pretty short) on the grand old internet. I should warn you, though, that if the story were a movie it would probably need an “R” rating for language and violence.

But today’s “Other People’s Words,” are the last few lines of the story, which are neither profane nor violent. They’re about the complicated issues of parenting, place, and dying.

“Is dying hard, Daddy?”

“No, I think it’s pretty easy, Nick. It all depends.”

They were seated in the boat, Nick in the stern, his father rowing. The sun was coming over the hills. A bass jumped, making a circle in the water. Nick trailed his hand in the water. It felt warm in the sharp chill of the morning.

In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he felt quire sure that he would never die.

If you’ve ever come to the site before, you’ll probably notice that it looks different. To lessen the shock, here’s an introduction to what’s changed and is new. (Actually, those two sentences are no more than a thin facade to excuse me from feeling bad that this is an otherwise meaningless and self-indulgent post.)

In any case, some things have changed. You’ve probably noticed that font is both bigger and serifed (those little curvy bits). I think both changes make make the text easier and more pleasant to read. The other immediately-noticeable change is the absence of a sidebar. This was done because, perhaps selfishly, I wanted people to read what I’m writing and not be distracted by all the pretty links in the sidebar. Lest you fear that those links are gone for good, the important ones are still available at the bottom of every page.

The more substantial changes are actually the “Archives” and “About” pages. The About page is a combination of the old “About me” and “About this Blog” pages, with a new section that tells you about how Frozen Toothpaste is produced (sorry, but no toothpaste factories or dry ice are involved).

The Archives pages is very much improved. Instead of what was essentially a massive list of everything I’ve written, there’s a recommendation section, as well as a fun-to-play-with tag cloud. Both of those section will change as new content is added, and as I do a better job making sure all the old content is correctly filed and profiled.

As to new content, little will change. The schedule I described the last time I was self-indulgent enough to write a post like this is working pretty well for me. It keeps the content rather varied, and also helps me fight against the seemingly-inevitable problem of having nothing to write (though it’s FAR from eliminated).

And as feel honor-bound to do every time I write something exceptionally self-indulgent, I must finally say this: Thanks for reading.

I’m rather certain that my favorite Republican presidential candidate during the 2000 election cycle was John McCain. I’m also rather certain that he’s my favorite this time too. It’s not that he’s perfect. Far from it. I’m well aware that he’s got flaws, and I’ve certainly taken issue with some of the things he’s said.

Lest we go too far into America’s political realities, let’s get back to nukes. But this is not about Iran, North Korea, or the kind of nuclear technologies that go boom. We’re talking about the significantly less frightening kind that just boil water.

Nuclear technology and environmentalists have never been friends. And so the idea that they’ll suddenly become so is unlikely. But John McCain is right about one thing: environmentalists need nuclear power.

To their credit some have come to this realization. Stewart Brand, who created The Whole Earth Catalogue, which The Economist described as “a path-breaking manual crammed with examples of small-scale technologies to enable individuals to reduce their environmental impact” that still has fans in environmental circles.

But Mr. Brand, like Mr. McCain, has embraced the importance of nuclear power to the greening of America. Also like Mr. McCain (and myself), he fails to see what’s so bad about nuclear power and the requisite waste storage. Again, The Economist:

For years, he held the orthodox environmental view that nukes were evil. He now confesses that this was merely “knee-jerk opposition”, and not a carefully considered opinion. His growing concern about global warming, which he calls “the single most important environmental threat facing mankind”, explains his U-turn in favour of this low-carbon but hugely controversial source of electricity.

The turning point came, he says, when he visited Yucca Mountain, a remote site in the Nevada desert where American officials plan to bury the country’s nuclear waste. … Although greens and other anti-nuclear activists oppose the Yucca Mountain project, Mr Brand says he realised that “we are asking the wrong question” about nuclear power. Rather than asking how spent nuclear fuel can be kept safe for 10,000 to 100,000 years, he says, we should worry about keeping it safe for only 100 years. Because nuclear waste still contains an enormous amount of energy, future generations may be able to harness it as an energy source through tomorrow’s better technologies.

Though I’m not as sanguine as Mr. Brand about the ease with which technology will reharness our spent nuclear fuel, I fail to see how opposition to nuclear power is anything but a knee-jerk reaction. Given the choice between filling even a few hollowed-out mountains with spent nuclear fuel or flooding a number of small island nations and coastal cities into nonexistence I think the choices is obvious.

Surely green power-generation technologies exist, and surely they’re becoming more efficient by the year, but they’re hardly ready to be the sole fuel sources for the world. The most well-known options — wind and solar — are both inefficient and far from dependable. It doesn’t take much to realize that without wind or sun they’d produce no power.

Nuclear power certainly is not a perfect technology, but it’s the most carbon-neutral and dependable option available. Power generation companies in this country and around the world realize this and are working to build bigger, safer, and more productive nuclear power stations (usually near existing ones, to avoid the “not in my backyard” problem). And though the most obvious allies for the power companies push to lower carbon dioxide emission are greens, they’re still the people most likely to step out and oppose it.

The issue of safety with nuclear power stations is still the foremost for most opponents. It’s worth noting, as I have, that compared with coal, nuclear is incredibly safe. The number of deaths related to the Chernobyl disaster is easily dwarfed by the number killed mining coal in China in a single year.

Certainly that doesn’t compare with the estimated zero killed by wind, solar, tidal, and geothermal power plants, but this is again ignoring the issue of viability as dependable producers of electricity.

Nuclear is hardly the ideal choice. Were completely safe and renewable energy a viable option in the next few years, I would readily support it. But it’s not. What’s currently available is the unsavory choice between fossil fuels and nuclear, and between those two nuclear is certainly the safer and more environmentally-friendly option. Until renewable sources of energy are dependable and efficient enough, I think nuclear remains the only acceptable stop-gap for a carbon-concerned environmentalist. The sooner that’s realized, the better.