Bring it on home, Barry:

Quick little bartblogging while I’m on my way home. Friday night had a taste of the old glory days. Maybe it was AlexUA on the scene, or maybe it was just the first time I’d been out on the town in a long while, but it occurs to me that I’m only going to be young and pretty enough to run with the bulls for so long, and it may be advisable to make the most of it.

Anyway, the Mission these days is out of control. All the trends that were in place when I left have continued to expand exponentially. I hear the same about North Brooklyn (will see in a month or so). Not sure how I feel about all this, but it seems like… an opportunity at least.

I believe the Black President is wrapping it up in terms of the election. This is looking a lot more like 96, 84 or 76 than 2000 or 04. That’s good.

So now there’s this: Obama campaign buys 30-minute time block on Oct 29th. My guess/hope is this will be a Perot-style policy demo. Our debt-based economy is rapidly collapsing, and as clever as Zack’s “25% hit on 401(k): five grand. President Obama? Priceless” line is, there’s a reality that shit’s real fucked up right now and it’s going to start hurting regular people, and badly, quite soon.

For my part, I agree with Zizek that we need a new theory, and I’m young and dumb enough to go one further and venture some guesses.

The sketchy wind-up:

• With the EPIC FAIL of free-market fundamentalism, the prevailing ideologies of the 20th century have all been knocked down. From marxism to capitalism, isolationism to neo-liberalism.
• Indeed, the only modern model which is currently thriving is the authoritarian/nationalist/command-capitalist hybrid the Chinese are running with, and my guess is as the global slowdown hits them in the gut they’re going to have some Interesting Times ahead as well.
• Without some kind of coherent means of looking at the world and the massive challenges (economic, social, thermodynamic, etc) we face, effective and lasting solutions are unlikely.
• The answer we seek lies in the ideas which are embedded in the Internet, and their ideal execution will be borne out over this new medium just as the last century utilized broadcast media and centralized computing.
• This new way forward — participatory democracy — is in vitally important ways post-bureaucratic, relying on the active and honest engagement of large numbers of citizen participants to be effective.
• Politically speaking, this is also important because instead of seeing “the people” as a mass to be stupefied or whipped into a revolutionary/reactionary mob, the goal here is to utilize the critical thinking skills of vast numbers of people.
• In the same way that bloggers realize “my commenters know more than me,” public officials of the 21st Century should be listening directly to their constituents, as opposed to, say, lobbyists. Listening in the sense of finding solutions, not just “feeling our pain” or getting a sense of public opinion.
• Paradigmatically, this isn’t just about information technology. The models we talk about for network resiliency have direct applications across the board: how the modern energy grid should be developed, how land-use and transportation should be shaped, and how taxation and issues of legal jurisdiction can be understood.
• As a for instance, rather than seeing the gap between how much money states like CA and NY pay to DC vs how much federal aid they receive, and calling it some kind of “wellfare,” the participatory democracy perspective sees this as fiscal load-balancing process.
• Same goes for progressive taxation. Powerful nodes within the network have a real interest in the wider ecosystem thriving as well. Conceptually, at least, this scales globally. And hopefully it will in reality too.
• The role of government can be seen as two-fold: firstly in providing/funding the low-level physical and social infrastructure (roads, clean air, internet, health care, security, etc) on top of which a free civilization (economy, culture, etc) is built and secondly in taking a proactive role in solving Public problems like poverty, disease, and global warming.
• The engagement of people vis-a-vis government — as citizens and as public servants — can be seen then in many ways: cyclicly designing, constructing, maintaining said infrastructure, and also in assisting with specific problem-solving or service initiatives.
• Ultimately we hope to see a transparent and responsive state which provides accurate real-time information on all its activities to citizens. We also hope to see a radically reconfigured relationship between offices of public service and the public itself, much closer to a peer-to-peer network than the representative/supplicant network which has been dominant for some time.

There are reasons to hope Obama is willing to go there at least for the theory ride part.

The hard nut issue is the power and money. If we can successfully devolve power out from the current gang of 535 Congresspeople and 500 or so high-level cabinet and sub-cabinet administrators, and into the hands of several thousand more actually-empowered public servants, that would be huge. Likewise it would be huge to utilize the federal budget in a true load-balancing capacity, and allow for much more control over spending at a state and local level.

That will be really hard political work, but it fits like a glove with our need for a New New Deal and a post-hydrocarbon economy. We can’t just patch up last Century’s models. We have to seriously and comprehensively re-tool, and there’s simply no way that can be done intelligently as a centralized top-down effort.

This is what I mean by “the revolution,” really.

Quick hits from Embarcaderro:

• I didn’t catch tonight’s debate, but I will tell you what I thought of last week’s VP contest: less exciting than expected, though Palin’s sex appeal remains a great unexplored aspect of the race.
• Gay marriage question was interesting. People I know are unhappy w/Biden’s answer, but I found the framing of constitutional rights to be ok. Civil unions for everyone, including breeders. Leave the magic “marriage” word up to the church. In another decade it won’t matter though.
• SF is pretty beautiful, and I’m hells-all busy as per usual. Secret plans which will be revealed in time.

Here comes the train. Wish I hadn’t left my headphones in the HC. Anyone got any book recommendations?

I’m back in the Bay for a week. BadCAMP coming up, and business to conduct for our budding Cycling Empire. Also happy birthday Zacker. Good fun and a nice drive, so I’m content with all that.

Oft’s the time I wonder about graphing my changes in mood and fortune, a little personalized stock ticker of the soul. Regular journal-writing is beyond me, and actually recounting the details of my daily life would be debilitatingly dreary. No one must know just how ho-hum my routine really is. Gotta preserve the mystery.

A numerical composite would be interesting, while (probably) allowing me to retain whatever shards of sex-appeal I can still muster. And what might such a life-market show? Finances flat but stable. Politics looking up and responsibility on the rise. Stress back down after peaking in August.

It’s all well and dandy, and I’m especially happy that visible signs of over-stress — e.g involuntary muscle-twitching — are declining, but as things level out I worry muchly about the void, that it may just sit there gaping at me. Nature abhors a vacuum, and although I could really use a vaction, the kind of soul-emptying boredom that may be in the offing here seems dangerous.

The best answer seems like a long shot. Short-sellers are killing the Love index. The gut feeling: flat-lined.

This is starting to become a problem. Aphoristic wisdoms along the lines of “age is a state of mind” are cold comfort when contemplating a creeping case of cynicism. I really don’t want to end up a jaded or pessimistic person. It’s a shit way to live, but objectively that’s the trend. Me no likey.

If our vaunted illusions of free will are worth anything, it would have to be here, right? I can remember more turgid times, dreams of heavy northwest rainfall makeout, sparkling deep beneath the sodium-yellow glow of a lone streetlight. Wet shoes and hot breath; high octane nostalgia. I’ve been complaining about the lack of this sort of fantastic for long enough now that I wonder if it isn’t time to consider some kind of dramatic action.

Let’s contemplate that.

• The best and possibly only thing one can do to invite Love is to be at 100% of whoever you are. Beyond that, it’s a matter of exposure.
• In that light, my lingering role-confsion and personal isolation are pretty much textbook (Eriksonian) faults.
• The practical answers are obvious: redeveloping a sense of self and instituting better habits of action for being exposed to other people.
• Just as my complaints are the result of a holistic complex, solutions would very likely be similarly synergistic.

My life in the country is problematic in this respect. I’ve grown quite comfortable there, but haven’t truly embraced it as a part of who I am beyond reinforcing the superficial lumberjack aspects of my persona. In a very real way, it’s a hideout. I’m not sure at this point whether that will change, or even if it needs to for my conditions to improve.

Perhaps recognition is enough. The notion of a clandestine utopian tree-fort is pretty romantic, no? Embracing this could be the beginnings of a great leap forward.

Similarly, my life in the City is equally vexing. I’ve never felt at home in San Francisco or the Bay Area, never saw it as my place to put down roots and grow. It’s been a palace of opportunities, a picturesque playground and super-swell port in some-odd storms, but I don’t really see myself settling here.

And so again, maybe the answer here isn’t to beat myself up over this fact, but rather to look at the glass as half-full and embrace it for what it is: a wheeling-and-dealing roller coaster of opportunity. There’s romance in there too.

And anyway, who needs to nest? There are too many un-met pre-requisites to even worry about that.

Yeah. This starts to feel right. It’s not dramatic action, but it’s a change, the beginnings of a new theory of everything. Theory is easier than practice they say, but it’s necessary. You can’t knock it, nor can you deny it when it’s true.

My good friend Frank writes:

Josh,

Thinking about the current financial crisis/bailout predicament, I noticed that you’ve begged off in your blog from weighing in. I thought it strange until I remembered something you’d said to me perhaps 200 times before:

“In my school-days, when I had lost one shaft,
I shot his fellow of the self-same flight
The self-same way with more advised watch,
To find the other forth, and by adventuring both
I oft found both: I urge this childhood proof,
Because what follows is pure innocence.
I owe you much, and, like a wilful youth,
That which I owe is lost; but if you please
To shoot another arrow that self way
Which you did shoot the first, I do not doubt,
As I will watch the aim, or to find both
Or bring your latter hazard back again
And thankfully rest debtor for the first.”

If you remember, that didn’t end very well. I was heavily invested in overseas contracts and you convinced me to leverage myself even further (deregulation had laid the way for exotic, organ-backed securities). Ships are but boards, sailors but men and when I lost all three ships, I had an instant liquidity crisis. If the judicial system hadn’t been biased against predatory lenders (and had I not enlisted a knowledgeable corporate legal team) I would have lost everything.

Lucky thing, that.

Canadia to the rescue:

In demonstrating the technology in practice, Keith and his team used a custom-built tower to capture CO2 directly from the air while requiring less than 100 kilowatt-hours of electricity per tonne of carbon dioxide. The tower unit was able to capture the equivalent of approximately 20 tonnes per year of CO2 on a single square metre of scrubbing material — which amounts to the average level of emissions produced by one person each year in North America.

While still in its early stages, the atmosphere-scrubbing technology has already been touted by environmentalists as an energy-efficient and cost-effective way to complement other approaches designed to help reduce transportation emissions, such as biofuels and electric engines.

Now, this should be pursued in addition to planting a lot of trees, but the truth is that over the past 300 years, we’ve dug massive amounts of shit out of the ground and set it on fire. Getting back into balance means taking a bunch of that shit out of the air and putting it somewhere else again. Trees don’t cut it because when you cut them down they rot and the gas gets out again.

Basically the idea is you perfect this kind of rig along with some solar/wind power to keep it running — just like highway lights on the remote parts of the highway — and it becomes somebody’s high-paying Union Job to service the thing, put the used-up scrubbers in a box car to be hauled off for burial, etc.

Maybe we can re-build the ruined mountain-tops of Appalachia.

As Atros says, Poll Porn.

This is only one pollster, and one that’s been showing bigger margins for Obama in general — which is why sober analysts use composite averages — but it would appear that the Obama campaign is indeed beginning to pull ahead:

“It is difficult to find a modern competitive presidential race that has swung so dramatically, so quickly and so sharply this late in the campaign. In the last 20 days, Sen. Barack Obama has gone from seven points down to eight points up in Florida, while widening his leads to eight points in Ohio and 15 points in Pennsylvania,” said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

…

“Sen. Obama clearly won the debate, voters say. Their opinion of Gov. Sarah Palin has gone south and the Wall Street meltdown has been a dagger to McCain’s political heart. Roughly a third of voters, and almost as large a share of the key independent vote, say McCain did more harm than good in trying to resolve the financial crisis, and the share of voters who see the economy as the top issue has risen from roughly half to six in ten.”

With the Palen/Biden debate widely expected to be a trainwreck, it’s hard to see how McCain recovers without a big game-changing event or “October Surprise.” He can’t really capitalize on the bailout, and unless Obama stumbles badly in the next two debates I don’t see what other happenings between now and Nov 4th could reverse the momentum.

That said, 20 days ago McCain/Palin was on top. Lots more than 20 days to go.

If I were the Obama campaign, I’d be focused on banking hard supporters via early voting, and start stoking sub-rosa concerns around the Bradley effect and dirty tricks to keep the sense of urgency high. It also might be real. A 5 to 10% margin in the polls might not be enough!

As the saying goes, when your opponent is drowning, throw them an anvil. Folks with an interest here should start turning up the heat. The Oval Office is for closers.

Concept album for a psychedelic Red Dawn fantasy rock band. Working track list:

1. Trip Narnia
2. Rockin’ Out in Xibalba
3. Sleep With Your Third Eye Open
4. Rebel Unicorns

I can’t claim any more than collaborative authorship. I’m just a conduit, one of many tiny condensing cells of consciousness, small sparks in geological time, looking to do battle with entropy. Maybe the b-side will feature dirty-beat and dub reggae remixes.

The Autumn is upon us. We are honest outlaws. We’ve got a shed full of wood and we’re not afraid to use it. We recognize decay and even calamity as parts of every life-cycle, and we’re not afraid of a little turbulence.

Most of all, we’re winning.

It’s a very two-steps forward one-step back kind of winning, but you have to recognize progress when it happens. Is it enough? Of course not. It’s never enough, but it’s something. We’re winning feet and inches with miles to go, but that’s a hell of a lot better than giving up ground, because in addition to (slowly) making progress, we’re also getting stronger.

What do I mean, “we,” white man? I mean the forces of hope for the 21st Century.

It’s easy to see the apocalypse around every corner. Seductive even. The undercurrent of doom runs strong throughout our world, and it too is a real thing. Stock markets crash. Carbon dioxide accumulates. Our lives slip away in a fitful series of fluorescent flickers, gasping for traction. As the good word says, “it’s so easy to be sad.”

But there’s light out there. There’s promise in the sun, in snowflakes on mars, in the premise of a Black President and Millennial Power. Every year there are more people like us, and not just because people like them are dying off, but because we’re right about a lot of things. We’re right and we’re passionate and passion+truth is a powerful combination. We win converts every day.

So to those uncertain, pulled down by fear and doubt, take heart. Tomorrow is another day, and if we keep doing like we’re doing, tomorrow will be better. The human race will gradually unshackle itself from bondage to poverty, disease, hatred and our addiction to hydrocarbons. The truth is stronger than lies, and it’s easy to be on the right side. You just have to start doing it, and everything else comes.

I actually watched tonight’s debate in full down at Humbrews. I would call it a draw overall, which favors Obama. Considering he needed to change the momentum and this was supposed to be his zone, that’s good.

TV coverage is somewhat unhelpful to me. It’s mostly fluff and drek. The debate itself was pretty interesting though. The format was good in terms of getting into the weeds. I liked that.

Other notes:

• McCain broached the idea of cutting Pentagon spending. That was the first surprising thing for me.
• Neither candidate said anything bold or interesting about the Wall St meltdown. The next time I hear someone do the Wall St/Main St contrast, I may go on a killing spree. Such a cliche.
• Obama does a lot of good things overall. He may not be a zinger kind of debater, but he speaks well. The Kissinger bit was strong. The “you were wrong” was also strong.
• McCain did a lot better in all the talking-over moments. He doesn’t back down. Obama does. That scores points for McCain; it shows him pushing Obama around a bit.
• Both candidates show that media narratives trump facts: McCain brings up “Iran’s Republican Guard” and Obama answers in the same words. Those were the boogymen in Iraq from back in the day, y’alls. Iran’s crack paramilitary forces are the Revolutionary Guard.

Overall, it was surprising to me how narrow the terms of debate are here. Reagan is great. You can talk about the “freedom fighters in Iraq” without noting that, uhmmm, those are some of literally the same people who dropped the twin towers. Nobody calls any serious bullshit on the finance thing.