This just in from intrepid reporter Patrick Smogan!

My alter ego has some exciting news...(click below for more)

The following sample column was written in response to an article published in the New York Times regarding the discovery of a new dwarf Tyrannosaur species by renowned paleontologist Paul Sereno. For background, the article can be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/18/science/18dinosaur.html?_r=1&hp


Dear Doctor S,

I was flipping through the Times the other day, and imagine my surprise when I found you were recently gossiping about me on the front page of the science section!

Good sir, first, congratulations are in order for your spectacular find; I pride myself on being a difficult specimen to come by. I thought the barren deserts of Northern China were such a good hiding spot!

What’s that? You didn’t actually find me? You just haggled me away from some paleontological grave robber? In that case, I suppose it’s cranial domes off to him, but you still deserve some credit for exhibiting such bartering prowess.

However, pleasantries aside, I must profess I take offense at your characterization of me and my particular subspecies. You discuss me as if I were some aberrant form of the “true” Tyrannosaurus Rex (I believe your meticulously massaged words were “miniature prototype,” but we all know that’s just code for “poor little bugger”). Perhaps I am being overly-sensitive, but I couldn’t help but feel that I was being characterized as a diminutive (read: primitive) ancestor of the real deal, a mere evolutionary stepping stone, an embarrassing cousin clipped from the family album who – what was it? – “really throws a wrench into this observed pattern.”

Oh, I’m sorry if the real Rex stood up and upset your toolbox. Here’s a wrench for you, which I would throw if I had the gripping capacity: I’m going to go back into hiding if you don’t start setting the record straight! Before we go creating a hierarchy that involves portraying some of us as suffering from relative dwarfism, just ask yourself which came first buddy: the nano- or the tyrano-? T.R. just had the good fortune to be discovered first, probably because he’s not as good at hiding as I am. There’s really no other reason aside from pure dumb luck coupled with poor stealth skills to explain how he’s been capturing headlines and imaginations for over a century. Let's face it, as some of you have finally figured out, T.R.’s lazy; it’s well established that he was more scavenger than predator, and was usually the slowest one among us. They even had to use a stunt double to chase that Jeep in “Jurassic Park”! Hell, the only thing T.R. ever really accomplished was letting himself go and putting on about 14,000 pounds. You people are only fascinated with him in the same way you’re fascinated with that one-ton man in Mexico who they had to move with a crane.

Also, about the name. Raptorex? What the hell: did you name me after an over-the-counter erectile dysfunction drug? I know you were probably trying to be cute, but I am not going to end up at the bottom of the joke pile along with viagrasaurus. I demand to be re-dubbed “sneaky-hidden lizard,” whatever that translates to in Latin.

And another thing: how about you and your know-it-all schoolchildren lay off the goddamn arm thing for a bit? T.R. warned me about this, how anytime a class field trip walks by he has to listen to a humiliating cacophony of “wow, why do his arms look more useless than Kanye’s etiquette coach?” I get it, okay? You don’t hear me going on about humans’ oversized heads and fucked up thumbs, do you? Who the hell needs thumbs anyway? Maybe benchpress isn’t exactly my thing, but while I’m not prepped for the cover of Saurischian Fitness -- I’m perfectly happy with National Geographic, thank you very much! -- I’ll arm wrestle you any day of the week. But, um, you’ll have to sit pretty close. I’ll have you know that these are damn good, serviceable limbs, almost perfectly adapted for pinning something not too large in a slightly awkward death grip as you bite its head off. So from now on, please refrain from using terms like “puny arms,” and if you absolutely have to pass comment, T.R. and I would much prefer if you could stick to “appendage-challenged.”

Believe me, I appreciate all this publicity, but I just want to be sure to set things straight before people start swooning over T.R. again and I get turned into a nanotyrano plush toy.

Regards,

- S.H.L.

P.S. – Also, in case this wasn’t clear, when you talk about me from now on, please remember to mention the awesome hiding job! I have to enjoy the fame while it lasts. I know this may come as a surprise, but I am actually not the best hider in the Rex clan. Levitrarex is much better (hint: have you been to Antarctica lately?).

I think, therefore I hologram

Apparently, all the universe is a hologram: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126911.300-our-world-may-be-a-giant-hologram.html?full=true. Including us. And all the nice things out there like puppies and ice cream (though I always suspected something as bland as vanilla couldn't have much real substance to it). But let’s keep in mind this is coming from the man who, in my childhood, helped perpetuate myths about corpulent, Communist gift-dropping arctic elf dictators and bunnies who squeeze out chocolate eggs and feel compelled to stash them in secret places.

What’s clear from this article is that my dad has either had a ground-breaking insight into the nature of space and time, or that he’s highly qualified to write for Star Trek. With little modification, direct quotes become lines that would look snugly at home on the page of a Next Generation script: "[Captain,] It looks like GEO600 is being buffeted by the microscopic quantum convulsions of space-time," says [Lieutenant Commander] Hogan. (The holographic principle would also explain why Captain Picard can get away with saying things like “On the holodeck, even a holographic bullet can kill.” Indeed, good Captain, it is the only sort that ever has).

Yet it seems to me that there’s something terribly dangerous in revealing that we’re all living inside a giant hologram, that it may be best to put holographic noise back in its scientific pandora’s box (or at least to turn down the volume). For if it was an existential struggle to find a point to it all before, how much more so now that we discover that we’re really just holographic reflections within a giant, cosmic limited-edition Topps trading card? (or a “Pringle,” to which I think one physicist cited in the article compares the universe). Indeed, one conceivable consequence of letting the holographic principle go public seems to be the possibility of a sudden, overwhelming surge of global apathy. If it’s all just a bloody hologram anyway, why should I go to work tomorrow?

Ah ha! You see, my dear Watson, this isn't the real free market at all...

The “free market” has been grabbing a lot of headlines since it was found lying bruised and battered in the middle of Wall Street (to be fair, it started the fight). Conservatives, in between beating their chests, rending their clothes and wailing, have been printing their “get well soon” editorials. Liberals, in between bouts of gloating, have been squabbling about how to carve up the ideological inheritance. Some on both sides have been busily eulogizing, wishing capitalism all the best in the socio-economic afterlife (feudalism, mercantilism, and pinko commie-ism must be thrilled to be getting a new poker buddy).

Amidst all this grim funereal nonsense, I was recently surprised to find a headline posing a relatively interesting question about the free market: does it corrode moral character? My initial response was, surprise, “of course it does! The free market sanctions hedonism and greed and preaches that selfishness is good!” But then, after reflecting a moment, I came to the rather depressing conclusion that, perhaps, the free market is really just a neutral tool, a lens that gets held up to human nature and magnifies whatever happen to be its most dominant characteristics, in which case there’s maybe not much we can do. If that’s the case, I gotta say that given all the current economic news, human nature’s not looking so good at the moment; greed and selfishness make for bad combination skin and a nasty complexion. The end result is the same – ultimately, greed and its ilk win out – but it’s not really the free market’s fault; the market merely provides the stage on which the tragic drama gets acted out. And then I realized that the original question wasn’t really fair, as free market economics by definition refuses to concern itself with such bothersome issues as morality and equity (how nice it must be for free market economics, that it can so airily dismiss those nettlesome questions!).

So asking if the free market corrodes moral character is really kind of unfair, as it obviously has no idea what moral character is, and is not particularly interested in finding out. It’s a bit like asking a nuclear physicist if the Balanchine school of ballet corrodes the art of dance (“Hey man, I just split atoms, don’t ask me”).

Rather, the concern of free market economics is efficiency, that is, the most efficient allocation of this world’s scarce (and some might add dwindling) resources. This principle of economic efficiency – which underpins all the modern mantras about the glories of economic growth – has become something of a religion in modern western society, the prime organizing social creed. For the record, I think it’s about time we collectively freed ourselves from the vice-like grip of the Invisible Hand, cast it off and defy it by having the courage to live as inefficiently as possible. I’m still working out how exactly to do this, but I think it involves wearing ski boots to work every day (or moccasins, if you happen to be a ski instructor) and then when you get to work, writing poetry or playing music or painting instead of doing anything typically considered “productive.”

Of course, the irony is that the free market that keeps appearing in the headlines – the smoldering ruins that everyone’s busy crying over – aren’t really the House That Adam Smith Built at all, but rather represent the blasted remnants of a pale imitation, a two-dimensional free market-lite movie set. The Free Market ideal that formed the ideological bedrock of modern conservatism, and that now lies ideologically bankrupt and interred, was, in fact, an imposter bearing no resemblance to the theoretical perfection of the “free market.” So everyone should take a breath and stop worrying about the free market; it’s not the one on the autopsy table.

The corpse that is, however, has all but usurped any meaning that term may once have had. The reason this house-of-cards that was apparently underpinning our entire financial system came crashing down is that it violated one of the core principles of the true free market: transparency and equal access to information. The free market, at least as originally formulated, only works if all actors have equal access to information about the goods and services being exchanged. The most important piece of information about these goods and services – their price – is assumed to be real and accurate, reflecting all the social costs of that good or service. This ensures that market actors can weigh all available options and make the choice that’s most sensible for them; this pursuit of self-interest on the part of individuals ultimately leads to the best outcome for society. Theoretically, it means that government regulation would be irrelevant; if a company were making, say, tainted milk that sickened anyone who drank it, all milk consumers would know this and buy other brands milk. The point is, for anything approaching a free market system to function properly, transparency is key.

Of course, perfect access to information and full transparency is a theoretical impossibility. But the imposter free market that’s shredded the financial system went too far in the other direction; the mess we find ourselves in now stems from the fact that, basically, its underlying paradigm was built on lies and nobody really knew what was going on. Housing prices were falsely inflated, and therefore meaningless. Far from including any sort of transparency, risks were hidden and tossed from actor to actor in a game of economic pass-the-parcel to the point that they were no longer apparent, and no one knew what they were or who was supposed to be responsible for them. Equating this opaque train-wreck to the “free market” doubtless has Smith and his intellectual successors down in their graves spinning faster than the offspring of Karl Rove’s homemade perpetual motion machine and an Iranian centrifuge.

Wanted: Emissions-Lite Girls. And Thawed Dinosaurs.

I work in the most unsexy profession there is.

Before I tell you what I do for a living, I want to see if you can guess. Am I a…chess grand master? Nope, guess again: that cerebral intensity and rare talent for sweeping queens off their feet put Bobby Fischer and his coworkers a safe distance from the bottom of the rankings. Perhaps a fast food chef? Closer, but again, perhaps there’s a layer of meaning to “i’m lovin’ it” that not all of us can appreciate. Plumber? Nay! Despite a bad rap earned by a few careless tradesmen wearing their jeans one size too large and one inch too low, the prurience of the plumber is attested to by the fact that, next to pool boys, they probably have a starring role in more pornos than any other profession. Plus, as of the recent election, plumbers have now been elevated to the status of amateur politician and foreign policy expert.

Nope, my profession’s inherent unsexiness dwarfs all of these. I am a climate policy wonk. It’s sort of like being a monk, except instead of making beer and occasionally trying to do good in the world through acts of charity, you stare at a screen and think about ways to reduce atmospheric concentrations of invisible, scentless gases that will lead to devastating effects on our planet and way of life many decades from now.

I know what you’re thinking. “Aww that’s great! Good for you!” And secretly, “Damn, that IS unsexy. I thought he might at least be a schoolteacher. But perhaps the accompanying levels of altruistic feel-fluffy-goodiness must compensate for that overwhelming level of unsexiness.”

Wrong. Here’s why working on climate change is inherently unsexy. First off, the subtext of the all-too-typical reaction above: whenever you tell someone that you work on climate change, the “that’s great” usually gets accompanied by a slightly pitying, slightly bemused smile, the same sort of smile you’d get if you said you banged your head against a wall for a living.

In our society, success is sexy. The problem with working on climate change – an invisible, long-term problem – is that there is no good metric for measuring success. In other professions, success is measured by real-world, tangible results. Successful doctors have healthy patients. Great musicians have sold-out concert halls and platinum selling albums. Talented plumbers have useable toilets and the occasional interview on Fox News. On the other hand, if you’re a brilliant climate policy tactician, you’ll have a great design for a cap-and-trade program or an amazingly efficient carbon tax…but you’ll get scolded for wanting to dismantle the economy or having too much sympathy for polar bears. In climate-wonk world, if you’re good at what you do, you quite literally have nothing to show for it. The whole point of being successful in addressing climate change is that you’ll never see any results; success is measured by a total absence of anything happening. Greenhouse gas emissions will go down, so temperatures won’t rise. Storms won’t increase in intensity or frequency. Droughts won’t get worse. And let’s face it, that’s incredibly boring. “Helping things stay the same” is hardly something to brag about. In fact, it’s one of the lowest-selling bumper stickers out there (just doing slightly better than “Proud Parent of an Honors Student…at a Suicide Bombers Academy!”). Success is decades away and invisible.

If you still doubt that climate policy is a notoriously unsexy line of work (perhaps your heart’s still aflutter over the idea of a baby polar bear savior) let me tell you exactly what I think about all day. I think about cap-and-trade. I see that you still have Knut paddling around in your eyes, so allow me to continue. Cap-and-trade is a market mechanism designed to achieve a desired level of pollution reduction (in this case, greenhouse gases) in the most low-cost manner possible. This is done by setting a cap on the total level of emissions allowed across the economy, and then creating a market (and thus a price) for these emissions by distributing tradable emissions “allowances” (basically, rights to emit). Sources have to hold allowances equivalent to their emissions, and since these allowances can be freely bought and sold, and some emitters will have more low-cost opportunities for emissions reductions than others, the market will ultimately find the most low-cost emissions reductions available to achieve the desired level of emissions.

Holy-shit-boring, right? And that’s just the tagline. Cap-and-trade design is enormously complex and tremendously unrewarding (again, if your policy works, you’ll likely see slightly higher energy costs, and suffer the blame for them, along with static sea levels that allow an extenuation of our love affair with Gulf Coast real estate).

I think about this a lot, but the sad truth is, there is just no way to make cap-and-trade sexy, despite the fact that it’s all about internalizing externalities (anyone? anyone? no?). I’ve tried desperately to think up plotlines to thrillers involving climate policy wonks racing against the clock to keep unchecked climate change from wreaking havoc on the world, but the storyline inevitably gets bogged down in questions about whether allowances get given away freely or auctioned, whether agricultural emissions should qualify as offsets projects, and other such timeless questions that I’m sure plague all Hollywood boilerplate actioneers. I’ve even fantasized about “Cap-and-Trade: The Porno!”, which would of course feature gratuitous “trading” of “emissions” [allowances] and “full coverage” [of the electricity sector]. But I always run up against the ineluctable truth that other professions are just sexier by varying, but always prohibitive, margins. Firemen sweat and pant as they pull victims from smoldering ruins; I consider the tradeoffs between going with a 10,000 metric ton emissions reporting threshold or a 2,500 metric ton emissions reporting threshold, while occasionally adjusting the thermostat in my office. Lawyers stand up for justice and righteousness and maintain the rule of law; I think about various ways of limiting atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide equivalent to 500 parts per million over a span of decades. Other branches of work involve people who jump into volcanoes or discover holy grails hidden inside of lost arks stored deep within Thuggy temples; climate change has people who watch ice flow or sift through dirt trying to get a better sense of carbon cycles. It is really, really hard to make that sexy.

Yet, I’m working hard to think of ways that it can be. The emissions that contribute to global warming come from every sector of our economy, and meeting this challenge requires the active involvement of individuals at every level of society. But inspiring that involvement is going to take some work. Even if they grudgingly accept it’s a real problem, people are put off by climate change; switching light bulbs or wearing a sweater indoors in the winter or keeping your tires inflated is about as sexy as Dick Cheney reading his own medical records out loud. So finding a way to make climate change sexy is the first, and perhaps most crucial, step on the path to its invisible, thankless solution.

First off, media treatment of climate change needs a sexover. CNN’s “Planet in Peril” is a good start with its dramatic music and Bourne Identity editing style (who knew that rapidly cutting between pine trees and glaciers before quickly splicing to a worried-looking gazelle could be so stimulating?), but more could be done. First, Anderson Cooper should probably be greased up and shirtless, and carry a large semiautomatic weapon. As with anything on T.V., it would also help if there were dinosaurs. Perhaps Anderson could imply, between bursts of machine gun fire aimed at encroaching velociraptors, that warmer temperatures had awoken them from a 65 million year hibernatory slumber…and now they’re hungry! Also, it’s generally accepted that losing weight is a sexy thing to do. As it happens, it’s also good for the planet! Heavy people eat more (which requires more carbon-storying trees cut down to grow more food, or more methane-spouting cows, or more fertilizer, or all of these things) and require more energy (i.e. fuel) to move around in cars or on trains. So, we should pay people to lose weight, and calculate how much emissions go down for each pound they lose, achieving the coveted double dividend of a healthier planet and healthier populations (assuming, of course, they keep it off). Coupled with this, not nearly enough is being done to market a low-carbon lifestyle in a sexy way. Why haven’t we had a television campaign featuring the Emissions Lite girls giggling in bikinis as they switch their old light bulbs out for new compact fluorescents? Also, they should start giving glaciologists and climate modelers their own exhilarating soundtracks anytime they appear on T.V. (maybe they could borrow Anderson Cooper’s).

Alas, while this may offer a start, it fails to get at the inescapable unsexy fact that the rewards of good climate policy work consist of seeing absolutely nothing change in the world around us. I’m looking into playing chess or fixing sinks, but in the meantime, I remain condemned to thinking about how to keep those baby bears from drowning…and the negative consequences of “busting” the “cap”.

Classic revival

For those of you interested in re-connecting with O'Smiley's roots, I've posted some archived selections from the original column further below, after the latest post (for no particular reason I decided to pretend that they were published in December 2007). More coming soon.

Late but smiling

All right. I’ve finally managed to stop pinching myself…my arm is raw. The thrilled trembling in my fingers has receded to the point that I can actually type again. And the eye-mist (okay, they were tears; two parts unbridled joy, one part profound exhaustion) has dissipated to the point that I can once again bring a screen into focus. But it seems I am too late! After surfing to the edges of the post-election internet, with several navigations around the blogosphere, the news sites, and the various ‘tubes, this cyber Marco Polo is forced to admit that it’s all been said and written and posted by now, in a manner far more moving and eloquent than any words I might put down here. However, given the nature of this moment (which I absolutely refuse to stop savoring) I think that’s okay. I’m here to add my brief shout from the rooftop to the global chorus…

…starting with an apology to all those who have had to look me in the face the last couple days. I haven’t been able to stop smiling for nearly 48 hours. My face has frozen in what, since I can’t bring myself to look in a mirror, I can only imagine to be a sort of obnoxious, gleeful rictus. I attribute this to the heavy dose of Obamatox I received on Tuesday night (side effects may include a revitalized national spirit, cornucopian abundance of international good will, and unrelenting exuberance). The worst part is that just when I think I’ll be able to straighten out my mouth again, I happen to see another picture from Grant Park or D.C. or Indonesia, another headline reminding me that yes, this has actually happened, and suddenly I’m back to grinning wider than the Cheshire Cat on his way out of the dentist’s office. Normally, I would be very self-conscious about this, worried that people might be put off by the fact that I was flashing more tooth than a teratoma cultivated in the Joker’s mouth. Fortunately, Obamatox smiles are everywhere; everyone else seems to be stricken with a case of unrestrainable joy as well! So perhaps apologies aren’t necessary.

I’m smiling for a host of reasons, which you all know by now, and all of which have been polished to the shiniest of prose nuggets in editorials and blog entries stretching from here to the internet’s farthest shore. But in addition to all of those reasons, I’m smiling because I am unabashedly proud of this country again, for what it stands for and what it’s capable of – that despite the best efforts of the shadowy cabal or whoever’s been calling the shots these last eight years, the system can actually still work (and work wonders). I’m proud because, for the first time in my adult life, I feel that I don’t have to mumble apologies or hide in the shadows when I’m outside of the country. I’m proud of my generation for finally getting its act together. Really people, it was beyond time.

And I’m grinning like an idiot at the Shiny Object store because of what I saw, and was a part of, on Tuesday night. By historical accident I was fortunate enough to be in Washington D.C. when Obama was making the world tear up with talk of puppies and hope and such, and ended up as a participant in the most impromptu outpouring of joy I’ve ever seen as people danced and sang in front of the White House. After watching Obama's victory speech (yet another one to add to the Greatest Hits album) I took to the streets with a couple friends. We kept passing small knots of whooping, hollering people. And gradually, these small knots of whooping, hollering people merged into big globs of whoopers and hollerers, all walking in more or less the same direction, until, without any explicit signal or verbal cue, everyone started running towards the White House, gaining more momentum and more cheering throngs by the second and arriving just a hundred yards outside of a certain Mr. W.’s (soon-to-be-vacant) bedroom...where it joined with similar jubilant mobs from all over the city, hundreds of people singing, cheering, dancing, hugging and screaming, as if a physical and emotional dam had given way.

Nothing approaches that euphoric mob’s expression of spontaneous exuberance on Tuesday night. The whole scene was like stepping back in time into one of those videos of the Berlin Wall tumbling down, or witnessing the exultations of the happy multitudes following the toppling of a tyrannical dictator in some forgotten country, a great exhalation from a long-oppressed people (the only thing lacking to complete the image was a colossal bronze Bush being pulled to the ground...but I guess that was going on figuratively, at least).

And now, I’ve woken up the last two mornings to a world that feels palpably different. Some of that change is inside myself. There is no longer the oppressive weight of the relentless anxiety associated with the last several months. More importantly, there is no longer the weight, heavier still, that I had grown so accustomed to over the last eight years I had forgotten it was there, though it weighed my spirits down mightily: the weight of hopelessness, helplessness, and isolation that has been the burden of so many both here in American and all around the world for nearly a decade, and that now, finally, has been cast off. And spirits are soaring.

Much has been spouted about how this election marked a turning point, a crossroads, and a decisive moment in history that would steer our nation towards one of two very divergent paths. And for once, I feel like all the hyperbole, while always flirting with the ridiculous, was not completely off. It is as though the nation, and the world, has been decisively nudged by a guiding and concerned benevolent hand (not to be confused with Adam Smith’s invisible appendage; that thing’s lying bruised and battered on Wall Street somewhere. Either that, or trying to sneak into the bailout coffers). In the epic fantasy world of my imagination, this hand has steered us onto a path towards a better and brighter destiny, diverted us from a fate descending into gloom and chaos. I’m almost positive that somewhere – probably in rural Virginia, or North Carolina, or Colorado, or Indiana – there stands a wizened, bearded old man in a pointy hat looking out over the country, leaning on his staff as he nods sagely, just before muttering something ominous about a One Ring and vanishing mysteriously into thin air. Wait…has anyone seen David Axelrod or David Plouffe since the election??? I always thought they looked a little too disheveled to be from around here…

Okay, this is getting a bit silly. Obviously the guiding, benevolent hand was all of us. So now that we’ve found it again, let’s keep it at the tiller.

Giving into hyperbole again, the promise of the next four (ahem, eight) years seems boundless right now. Yet the realist in my knows that of course President Obama won’t be perfect. The thankless task he has undertaken may involve disappointment and unfulfilled promises as much as it brings inspiration and long-alluded-to change. There will still be problems facing this country after he leaves office. But at least I will be able to tolerate listening to him speak; more than that, I will make an effort to tune in daily and lend a rapt ear. And on top of everything else, I’m thrilled that on January 20th, we’ll have the Cutest First Family of All Time moving into the White House. The celebrity of the Barackstars and the accompanying paparazzi bonanza means that soon, I won’t have to feel embarrassed when I get caught browsing the tabloids picking up a copy of Us Weekly; I’ll just be reading up on my political news, and obviously, People will become the go-to mag for the politically savvy…and all those who like watching pictures of puppies frolicking in the rose garden.

For now though, it’s still all Obamatox smiles, and, perhaps, a brief respite from Hope as we take a break to enjoy where it’s taken us.