Yo' Mother Earth

I'd love to visit outer space, but I wouldn't want to live there. Living on the earth is great.


Think about it: there is so much majesty, yet we also have plenty of water-slide parks and go-kart tracks. Yes, when it comes to human comforts, planet Earth really does have it all.

Tim DeChristopher is all crazy about the earth too. A few years ago, as a 27-year-old college student, he showed up to a BLM oil-lease auction and started bidding away. He won 14 leases that day. (Ambitious for a college student.) Unfortunately for the BLM, Tim had no intention of paying up. He was only there to make life harder for oil companies.

Fast-forward a few years and Tim is convicted of two felony counts of mucking things up for rich people, and is sentenced to two years in prison, and given a $10,000 fine.


My thoughts on the matter are largely unimportant. (But I'll let you know, in case you're curious.) My first reaction was, "Shame on the BLM auctioneers for waiting until this twenty-something-dude won 14 leases before pulling the cord." Shouldn't they have known something was up much sooner?

I thought the whole thing was kind of funny.

I also thought the leases were rushed to auction and not well thought out. (An opinion the courts happened to later agree with.)

Finally, I generally think it's a waste of legal resources to pursue any criminal case when there is an adequate civil law remedy. (Let the oil companies and BLM sue this guy, clear his bank accounts, garnish his wages, and make the guy miserable for years, and don't let him become a hero by serving jail time.) I mean, we paid for this guys trial and he was prosecuted at the expense of not prosecuting someone else.

All of that said, I don't have any strong feelings about Tim of Christopher; I do have strong feelings about idiocy, bad advocacy, and wry observations. Enter the protesters and my friend Christopher (no relation to DeChristopher)...

Prior to Tim's sentencing hearing, Christopher received this (horrible) email, which is ridiculous enough that it's worth quoting in its entirety:

America is broken. The people get it, and something's starting.

Folks are calling for an occupation of DC to end the wars and protect the planet. Others are pushing for an occupation of Wall Street to end the funding for the destruction. Still others are engaging in direct action and civil disobedience against mountaintop removal, the tar sands pipeline, and fossil fuels in general. And rabble-rousers around the country are calling for an end to corporate rights and rule.

But you don't have to go to DC to act, and you don't have to wait to say a holy NO to catastrophic climate change. Because it's happening right here in Salt Lake City, right now.

On Tuesday, Tim DeChristopher will be sentenced for successfully preventing oil and gas drilling on Utah wilderness lands. Tim engaged in civil disobedience to save the planet, and now he's facing years in federal prison while the real carbon crooks go free.

This is an outrage. But it's going to take a lot more than outrage to stop this crazy, cliff-defying train of injustice. It's going to take all of us doing what Tim did: taking direct action against the fossil fuel industry to keep carbon in the ground.

And that's what we intend to do.

The first step is getting your body down to Exchange Plaza on Tuesday, July 26th at noon to demonstrate your solidarity with Tim and your objection to eco-injustice.

There'll be political theater, singing, dancing, resisting, rebuilding, and getting ready.

Be there.

I will only say one thing about this call to action: "cliff-defying train of injustice."

But it turns out all the political theater, singing, and dancing wasn't really persuasive to 20-year Federal Judge Dee Benson, who sent Tim away to the joint for two years.

When Christopher heard about the sentence he remarked, "Considering when he gets out, he's got a book deal and a fine career as a paid public speaker, it beats graduate school."

The protestors weren't so insightful or impassive, and chose to react to the news by making a human chain across the Trax line. Christopher texted me: "Way to stick it to big oil and gas companies; disrupting public transportation."

(ABC News: http://www.abc4.com/content/news/slc/story/Bidder-70-protestors-released-from-jail-after/4yPfWMWJCEmWlOuHdxA5Rg.cspx)

Another apt observation.

He further summed up the situation:

I read the paper today and they interviewed this lady who was on the Trax train [the protesters] blocked. She was like, "I'm trying to get home from work to be with my family. These people don't even have jobs." I only knew one of them, but darned if she wasn't right about that one.

Nothing blocks meaningful debate and progress like villainizing the opposition, and no one makes so few converts as the zealot. Nietzsche once said, "The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments." He might have also added, "and political theater" to the end of his quote, and darned if he wouldn't have been right.

Private Letters Reveal Einstein was Full of It

It appears Einstein might have been no Einstein. Recently discovered letters show the iconic physicist was, in his own words, sometimes "just [making] crap up."



The letters document an ongoing correspondence between Einstein and fellow German physicist and Nobel Prize winner Max Planck. For the most part they are letters you would expect between colleagues--a kind of intellectual exchange--but sometimes a lighter, playful, even at times juvenile side comes through.

Perhaps most interesting, though, are the letters discussing Einstein's 1905 paper about mass-energy equivalences. This is the paper that gave birth to the best-known equation of the 20th century: E=mc2 (squared).



Shortly after the paper's release, Planck wrote Einstein asking for clarification about the soon-to-be-famous formula. "This does not make sense to me," he challenged. "Though I respect your ability, try as I might, I cannot seem to follow your work. E=mc2 is a puzzle to me and I doubt its veracity."

"Maxy, don't be such a jerk," Einstein began his reply. "Of course you cannot follow it. Sometimes I just make crap up." Einstein went on to explain a different sort of theory.

"People are insecure," and if you lose them in a little math, throw in some things that are impossible to explain, they will "half of the time say you are brilliant rather than admit they have no idea what you are talking about."

He went on to explain: "Energy is equal to mass times the speed of light squared? What does it even mean? Of course it's nonsense. A doughnut fits in your hand and weighs like 3 ounces, and the speed of light squared is like some really ginormous number. If you multiply those things together, does it come out to 300 calories? Maybe. I highly doubt it. But I don't think anyone knows for sure and that's just the thing. You can't measure or verify it, but it sure as [expletive] sounds impressive."

In subsequent letters Einstein reveals earlier rejected drafts that he considered for the famous equation. While they still leave us clueless when it comes to understanding the universe, they do give some insight into Einstein's process as a writer. The earlier drafts include:

Candle is equal to mass times a million, divided by 6.674.
Energy is equal to the gravitational constant squared, times pi.
Mass is equal to 42.

The International Language: Love's Labors Lost in Translation

Just in case you weren't raised on a steady diet of 1980's television and movies, let me take you to a cinematic place called Better Off Dead.



I believe the moral of the story was that meeting a French girl will fix up your boss Camaro and completely eliminate your severe suicidal ideation.


Sounds great, right? But where in Your-Town, U.S.A. do you find a French girl? Well, in the movie she came courtesy of the next-door neighbors via some kind of foreign exchange program.

Unfortunately this exchange was not about cross-culturization--no happy commingling of fromage and apple pie, or baseball and wine swilling. No, this poor phillie was brought across the sea by the neighbors for the sole purpose of making a love connection with the unsightly Ricky.



If you want to know more, you should go to your local netfilx and rent the movie. But for our purposes here you only need know at one point it is said that though Ricky doesn't speak any French, and the phillie doesn't speak any English, the two are nevertheless communicating just fine using the international language.


The audience is then left to uncomfortably laugh at the idea of the grotesque, fat American having a romantic relationship with the attractive, captive French chick.

What's the point? I'm not sure. But I've recently had a brush-up with the romance on the world wide web--and trust me, it is world wide. I'm not sure if Ricky and the Frenchette were able to communicate any better, but in my limited experience courtship and attraction doesn't necessary translate well.

And with that very, very long introduction, I now present to you a collection of emails I have entitled "The International Language: Love's Labors Lost in Translation." While I think they are funny, I am not poking fun. I promise. It's funny like all of us are funny, and I think, above all else, this is adorable.

hi... desire to make many friends

Don't we all?

oh! I not though you get write to me...but thnak you!:).... yeah I had a great sunday really!!:):) nice to meet you DANIEL!!

You are very welcome. I'm glad you had a nice day.

oh! Thank you Daniel!!...How was your day! here in Peur it is summer and great but sometimes not ahaha weel...I work doing proyecto envorimental I study it...and I love it career really.....I'm member as 14 years and u dear friend?.

Uh... It's winter here. There is a lot of snow. And I've been LDS for all my life.

oh much snow there it must be beautifull but difficult for the card !! no?.......oh woww all your life you are member of the church woww I glad for you friend!.....
Well we are in summer here in Perú....all quite!!:)yeah, you have luck:) hahahaaaa I believe it ...I think all your family is member truth....I glad for u really.... How was your day?....... You meet people by this?.

I am very lucky. And you are right, the snow is beautiful but hard to drive in. No, I haven't met anyone from the internet. The idea kind of creeps me out.

Wow, lol How you get creeped out? I have. :) been interesting. Mostly I meet great people :)

you look so official in your clothes. i like good guys:) :) Muy guapo must say!

Well, if you must...

Report

More miserable failure.

1. Sleep goal: One out of ten. (I'm going to need an intervention.)
2. Writing goal: Maybe one page out of three.
3. Reading goal: Still one book ahead.

Last week's book was Blink.


I really enjoyed it. The book wasn't nearly as helpful as it could've been, and the content was largely stuff I had read elsewhere, but Gladwell can flat out write. The book moved quickly and was engaging.

However, Gladwell does quote some police men, and police men do swear like sailors. Be ye forewarned.

Sacrament Poetry

I've been accused of being cynical. Or maybe the word was "jaded." Either way, I didn't take it personally and I wouldn't refute it. (In fact, I'm usually impressed when people have the candor to be so honest with me.)

So I am jaded. It's true. But it's not the whole truth.

Sometimes I can be humane and vulnerable and cuddly and down-right, boyishly naive. I'm complex. But these poems aren't.

I wrote them all in LDS Sacrament meetings, and I didn't write them because I was bored. (Which is something a jaded person would do.) But because I was touched and wanted to give in to things that I didn't understand. (Which is something a person who is only sometimes jaded can do.)

Orderville

________Shuffling boots
____and cowboy-cut suits,
_________row after row
_of heads seldom combed

_________Still-wet parts
brave boys battling callicks
________Contrite hearts
_____worn by earth's grit.

_________Humble men,
_____taller than steeples.

Warts and All

He...
He came down, born in a manger.
And the Child
grew and waxed and filled with wisdom.
He knew man,
in all points tempted as we are,
yet without sin.

He knelt in that garden and pled,
Let this cup pass...
Nevertheless, He drank the cup
to the bottom.
And now He really knew mankind--
warts and all.

It was a miracle
that He died
and rose up on the third day.
It's a miracle
that He suffered for my sins
in The Garden
and suffered all over again
on The Cross.

But it's no less a miracle
that knowing me
and that knowing you--
warts and all--
He still wanted to take us
Home with Him
Because He really does know us
and still loves
Us.

Red Checkmarks

Josephus B. Waters,

Check.

Everette Cain,

Check.

James G. Bennet,
Hyrum L. Pizor,
William Blakeslee,

Check.
Check.
Check.

One by one,
all together.

Gone for now,
but not forever.

Check.

Drop by Drop, aka The Sunbeam

Drop by drop,
blue, green, orange, and brown,
M&Ms fall
into the empty sacrament cup.
I don't think
Jesus would be displeased.
After all,
He wants this little boy
for a sunbeam.

Backblog

So I'm a little behind.


Which is both an accurate description of my circumstances and of my personality.

Let's look at my goals for the past three weeks.

1. Sleeping.

I have no idea how I'm doing on this, but I'm not doing a great job. I was busy. And I got sick. And there was one night last week where I didn't sleep at all. My guess is I'm still hovering around 25% to 33%. I might have to do some tinkering to get this going in ernest (misspelling intentional out of deference to James Varney, R.I.P.)

2. Reading.

I'm crushing it. Since last reporting I have read, chronologically: Truman, The Wednesday Wars, Change Anything: The New Science to Personal Success, and The Back of the North Wind.

Truman was a masterpiece. Heartbreakingly good. McCullough shifted seamlessly from the intimate and personal to broader global and historical context, and the compelling nature of the story was never lost.


The book has crystal clear, incredible detail, but never seems to get bogged down. The prose is largely without fault--a real accomplishment for a 1,000 page biography--but more impressive still is the great mental effort that went into collecting, sorting, refining, and arranging the pieces.

It's a tapestry of thousands and thousands of threads, laid out and arranged to near perfection.

I seldom gush. Even when people ask me about my favorite books, I will typically address the one or two flaws I found. Not here. I was overwhelmed by the accomplishment, and I can't say anything otherwise.

3. Writing.

I think in the past few weeks I netted two or three pages. Not stellar. In addition to the novel I've been working on, I started a short story about a conversation between a lark and a Catholic priest.

I'm pretty sure Hollywood will want to make the lark/priest story into a full-length motion picture because I've chosen a premise with such universal appeal.

Makes sense.

The First and the Last

When I say coach, I mean Jerry Sloan.


The Original Bull...


The last of the Jazz Legends.


Whenever I say coach, I mean Jerry Sloan.