. . . same as the old geopolitics.

In the end, it all comes down to molecules. You can talk all you want and imagine anything you want but in order to DO anything you have to have STUFF.

Food is stuff. It has to be grown. Everything else has to be mined. None of that is free. It takes human labor, human ingenuity, human tools and technology, and human societies and institutions. That doesn’t just cost dollars or dinars or rubles or riyals.

It costs energy. And that means molecules. Molecules of natural gas. Molecules of crude oil. Molecules of radioisotopes. Molecules of silicon. Molecules of water falling over dams.

And we have to make more molecules. Molecules of fertilizer. Molecules of industrial chemicals. And all the rest of the stuff we need for life like steel and plastics and aluminum and concrete and etc.

Here’s a thought experiment: let’s constrict the flow of world energy and world molecules (i.e., stuff and stuff-that-makes-stuff) by, I don’t know, one-fourth. Twenty-five (25%) percent.

OK, so let’s think: will this make things better?

No, it won’t.

We have mostly been insulated here at home from the costs of war. We’ve gone to war in Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan over the last thirty years and the American consumer has not felt any pain from those misadventures. In fact, the US economy is so big that even Korea and Vietnam did little more than increase the national debt. Folks at home didn’t feel it in the pocketbook. (Contrast that to WWII rationing of gas, rubber, meat, etc. We were on a “war footing.”)

This time it is different. This time there is a disconnect between the public conduct of the war and the reality for the American consumer and the world economy. Americans are seeing higher prices everywhere and those increases are just the beginning. Countries dependent on Mideast supplies of oil and fertilizer are really hurting. There are shortages, rationing, and even protests across the world. Food production will take a major hit in already-struggling economies.

The Trump Cult will claim this is good for America because now everyone will have to “buy from us.”

Their definition of “good for America” is “corporate profits.” Yes, some of our oil companies, chemical companies, and their ancillary industries will see a surge in revenues. Hooray! All that bombing, all that expended ordnance, all that jet fuel we burned was worth it. All those people we killed and things we destroyed are totally worth it if our economy benefits, right?

But those benefits will accrue only to a few. They won’t “trickle down” to the rest of us. The Most Holy & Sacred Reagan/Friedman Supply-Side Economics Doctrine that demands our slavish adherence no matter what will fail us this time.

There’s only so many molecules. When we restrict their supply, their costs go up. The demand will continue to increase. After all, people need stuff. Some short-term profit-takers will get a big, fat payout. But the rest of us will take it in the shorts. If some European or Asian country is willing to pay a premium for US oil or US finished products like gas or diesel then why would US companies sell it at a lower price to US consumers?

In the old days, the royals, the aristos, the mercantilists and other power-brokers manipulated global trade and markets for their own aggrandizement. They sold it, of course, as “good for the nation.” The British East India Company was all about profit. They never gave a shit about workers, citizens, and ordinary people. They didn’t give a shit about the political fallout of their actions as long as the books were in the black.

It’s 200 years later but the dynamic is the same. The War in Iran is a fucking disaster. But empty tankers are racing across the ocean to US ports in order to load up with our shit and sell it at a premium to starved markets, so it’s OK. After all, only losers would fail to take advantage of this great business opportunity!

If we have strategic objectives, assuming Demented Don has any sort of overall plan, I’m sure the US military is capable of accomplishing them. But the cost will be very high. Waging war from afar with long-range weapons and high-altitude aircraft, or impersonal war with drones, is easy. We don’t see the bloodied bodies (at least not ours) on the TV news. It unfortunately emboldens our “leaders” and encourages their grandiose geopolitical ambitions. But escalation will make the war more personal. And harder. And not only will our service members get hurt, so will our consumer economy.

How long will Trump Cultists allow this to continue? The only meaningful chance of ending this war is if Republicans in the House and Senate tell the White House “no more.” What are the odds of that happening? Everyone of those pusillanimous, self-centered assholes has tied his fortune and his political future to Trump and they are terrified of defying him.

Most likely the only beneficiaries of this war will be Russia and China. Russian oil and natural gas will flow again to Europe. China’s huge power build-out of the last few decades and its enormous investments in renewables, batteries, drones, EVs, and other modern technology will protect it from oil shocks. Plus both countries’ militaries have gotten really good look at the American Way of War. They’ve seen our equipment, our methods, and our doctrines operate in real time. That’s good for them. Is it good for us?

The losers will be Iran and the Gulf States. And Lebanon of course, thanks to Israel. And the US. We will lose, too. Life will cost more. Our international standing will be in tatters. Our military arsenals will be depleted. Our country’s politics will be even further polarized.

Maybe somebody can tell me all the good stuff this war will accomplish. Maybe I’m just clueless. Leave me a note in the comments.

The cruel and demented occupant of the (Mar-a-Lago) White House has threatened Iran with bombing so great they’ll be blasted back to the Stone Age. He stole that line. Of course he did—he’s a ripoff artist masquerading as a leader.

Here’s General Curtis LeMay on North Vietnam:

In his 1968 memoir he suggested that rather than negotiating with Hanoi, the United States should “bomb them back to the stone age,” by taking out factories, harbors, and bridges “until we have destroyed every work of man in North Vietnam.”

LeMay was the architect of the civilian-targeted firebombing campaign against Japanese cities in WWII. Those raids killed more people and did more damage than both atomic bombs. The United States has been killing civilians and destroying non-military targets for decades.

People don’t like being bombed. It’s a poor basis for negotiating. Eventually we will run out of bombs or we’ll run out of targets or both. We’ll be a poorer nation as a result, financially and morally. And Iran will be criminally and savagely bloodied, all toward some mythical strategic end that no one can articulate. All that destruction and suffering with only the barest attempt at justification will not make the world a better place. Both countries are going to lose this war.

I note that Trump’s threat was an Easter message.

Here’s an Easter message for you, it’s from Matthew, chapter 5, verse 9:

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

I’m willing to bet that Orange Clown has never read a book. And for certain he’s never cracked a Bible.

Megan Abbott writes noir. But you won’t find any career criminals, drug dealers, or cops on the take. There won’t be any dingy motels, needle-strewn parks, or hooker-infested boulevards.

You won’t be in one of Jim Thompson’s bleak Oklahoma oil towns. In fact, you’ll be in a leafy suburb. Or an upscale city block. Or a posh cabin in the piney woods.

Everyone will have a job and look healthy and say nice things. And like a Jim Thompson novel, there will be raging currents underneath those facades. But Abbott is no Thompson.

No, she’s completely her own thing. She carves out her own particular noir landscape. You should get yourself some Megan Abbott. I just finished Beware the Woman and it was even better than The Fever and You Will Know Me which were both great. Abbott is a master of pace and at evoking a sense of dread. She creates sympathetic characters in believable situations. The people aren’t remote—you feel like they could live next door. And when you find out what they are capable of, you wish they didn’t!

Chromite (FeCr₂O₄) is the ore of chromium. It’s found in serpentinites and is associated with ophiolites. Both are found in Northern California and particularly here in the State of Jefferson. The deposits are too small and too scattered and the countryside is too rugged for any commercial interest. Chromium (#24) is an essential ingredient in making stainless steels.

Most chromite today comes from South Africa. During WWII New Guinea was a major supplier. When the Japanese Army was chased out by US forces they lost out on the resource. Japan had to make do with inferior grade steels at the end of the conflict.

Worldwide production is on the order of 30 million tonnes annually. Chromium is not toxic itself but its compounds can be. Hexavalent chromium—Cr(VI)—and the chromate salts formed from that are carcinogens.

My father-in-law was a Naval Academy graduate and a veteran of WWII. He once told me that the lesson the US Navy learned from that terrible conflict was “don’t fight a land war in Asia.” My Dad was a Marine, he fought in Korea a few years later. Apparently we hadn’t learned the lesson.

Sixty-one years ago we “sent in the Marines” to a country in Asia. See photo above. (It’s from a James M. Lindsay article at Council of Foreign Relations.) We were in Vietnam another ten years.

Thirty-six years ago we fought another land war in Asia (Kuwait and Iraq). We followed that with land wars in Afghanistan (2001-2021) and again in Iraq (2003-2011).

It seems we are once again “sending in the Marines.” This time Iran is the target.

In every case things were longer, costlier, bloodier, uglier, and more complex than the original expectations. And this particular mess is being led by the most corrupt and the most incompetent crew of despots ever to command US troops.

Happy Pi Day.

This is in addition to the terrible human cost, of course.

I’ve been told my whole life that “people vote with their pocketbooks.” Trump was elected, in a large part, because poorly-informed and intellectually lazy voters thought he might help the economy.

Gee, how’s that working out?

Carbon is fundamental. There’s no life (as we know it) without carbon’s ability to make covalent bonds with other atoms like hydrogen (H), nitrogen (N), oxygen (O), phosphorus (P), and sulfur (S). Take a look at the chemical formulae for the twenty essential amino acids that humans require and you’ll see a lot of C, H, O, with some N and an occasional S. Take a look at DNA and you’ll get plenty of P.

In college there are chemistry courses devoted entirely to carbon. They are called “organic” chemistry! That’s because all organic (that is, living or once-living) materials contain carbon. The classes have little to do with “organic” food and whatnot. Carbon makes such a byzantine variety of chemical combinations that an entire corpus of systematic nomenclature is devoted to these things. You don’t just learn about biological applications in organic chemistry, you learn about petroleum and its derivatives (plastics) as well. Fossil fuels are just that—fossils of once-living creatures. Oil is a mostly marine phenomenon, the source animals are plankton and algae, not Chevron’s dinosaurs. The gasoline we burn is from quite ancient places. The carbon atoms we liberate could have been there for 100 million years or more.

There is really only one thing to know about carbon, and that’s the carbon cycle. The earth is a vast repository of fossil carbon and we release lots of that fossil carbon because we are an industrial society. This of course has consequences. But carbon and its compounds like carbon dioxide cycle through every aspect of our existence even if we be Stone Age farmers. Carbon is life.

If you find something ancient, beautiful, and valuable on your land, what do you do? Do you extract it and turn it into dollars? Do you husband it for the future? Do you try to find a balance? That is, do you use the resource wisely? Do you think about externalities like clean air and water, quality of life, natural beauty, etc.? Is “value” in a capitalist economy only in terms of money?

I hope not.

Here’s the forecast for Mt Shasta Ski Park:

The base elevation there is 5500 feet and the Grey Butte chair will take you up to 7536 feet. The park sits on the southern flank of massive Mt Shasta which tops out at 14,179 feet.

The other local ski resort—Mt Ashland, just over the Oregon border—has it a little better:

Those folks sit a little higher: it’s 6634 feet at the base and it’s 7533 feet on the summit (the top of Ariel chair). Mt Ashland is the tallest of the Siskiyou range and the resort sits on the peak’s north face.

I’m not complaining because I’m a frustrated skier. The conditions are certainly lousy for winter recreation. No, I’m complaining because this is not good. It’s not good for California. It’s not good for Oregon. It’s not good for anyone in the West.

In the West we depend on snowpack. Rain is great, sure. We love us some rain.

But it’s all about the snow. It’s got to accumulate. We need to come out of winter with all of our mountains blanketed in the stuff.

So far that’s not happening. And this patchwork of storms is not just alarming, it’s downright dangerous. The existing snowpack, under these warm, wet conditions is particularly unstable.

I don’t like hot, smoky summers. I don’t like watching the West burn. We need some goddamn snow!

The Stupor Bowl encourages us to be indifferent to the contest and watch the advertisements instead. This is backwards from my normal sports viewing—I always use the ad breaks for refills, trips to the loo, etc. I also like to get up and move around and not be a couch potato. So I don’t watch the famous adverts and in fact make a point to avoid them. This fits with my “hygiene” theme!

When I was a kid people were always saying that “too much TV is bad for you.” They were right.

I was reading a blog post from Paul Campos (Lawyers, Guns & Money) and he linked to an NYT interview with Michael Pollan who has a new book (“A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness”). I found this bit interesting:

Consciousness is a very precious realm. It’s the realm of our privacy and our freedom to think. So I think we need some kind of consciousness hygiene, particularly at this moment, where this one politician has figured out ways to command our attention.

Yes.

I’m all for consciousness hygiene! They used to say “tune in and turn on” but now I think we have to say “tune out and turn off.”