Lift Up Your Hearts!

It began as a student project by Professor Jamie Rector's class at the University of California, Berkeley. They wanted to investigate methane emissions from abandoned and sealed oil wells. What the students discovered could turn the approach to California's environmental concerns on its head.

As they researched California’s abandoned oil wells, Rector’s students discovered an abundance of natural oil seeps located above the same fields—and came to a surprising conclusion. Geologically driven, natural oil seeps are a major contributor to California’s greenhouse emissions, they say. And drilling—long seen as the problem, not the answer—might be a panacea for emissions.

Natural seeps occur when liquid oil and gas leak to the Earth’s surface, both on land and under water. California sits on actively moving tectonic plates, which create fractured reservoirs and pathways for the oil to escape. ... Waters off Southern California are rife with seeps, and oil and gas fields ... have some of the highest natural hydrocarbon seep rates in the world, emitting gases such as methane, as well as toxic volatile organic compounds (VOCs). But these geologically driven seeps, Rector notes, have been largely unaccounted for in assessing how oil production fields contribute to California’s greenhouse gas emissions.

“There are hundreds of studies linking oil and gas fields to greenhouse gas emissions, to cancer rates, to climate justice, to groundwater pollution and everything else,” said Rector. “And yet none of these studies ever considered the possibility that it wasn’t from equipment or production, but natural seeps above the oil fields.” ... Rector’s team calculates that natural seeps, together with orphaned wells, produce 50 times more methane emissions than oil and gas equipment leaks in Southern California.

If seeps are driving emissions above oil fields, Rector reasons, plugging abandoned wells may do little to help pollution. In fact, he posits, the only demonstrated way to reduce natural seep emissions is by depleting underlying reservoirs—that is, by drilling.

Pointing to studies showing that oil production has reduced and even eliminated seeps, he suggests California’s current regulatory environment may be counterproductive.
“The crazy thing is, by stopping oil and gas production in California, after we’ve regulated and really gotten equipment emissions way down, we may be increasing seep emissions,” Rector said. “Because these seeps come up through the oil and gas fields, and the only way to stop it is by producing oil.”

The article is much longer than these excerpts, and the situation is of course complex, both scientifically and politically, but I see it as yet another demonstration of the truth that simplistic solutions with the best of intentions often lead to harmful, unintended consequences.

It's time to bring back a post from eight years ago, which I called Leadership. It was inspired by the funeral of a man I wish I had known better.

I've never aspired to be a leader. I learned that in elementary school, when my parents and teacher were talking about "leadership qualities" and I thought, "Doesn't sound like fun to me." I don't mean I necessarily like to be a follower—mostly I like to do my own thing (child of the '60s) and other people can come along, or not, as they wish.

But a man at our church, who died not long ago, is making me rethink the idea of leadership. I barely knew him, but our choir sang for his funeral, and what I learned about him then made me wish I had found a way to cultivate his friendship.

He was accomplished enough for 10 people. He graduated in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering from Princeton. He was a marine, serving in World War II and Korea. He followed that up by working for the CIA, earning the highest possible award for valor. For three years he endured Communist prison camp in Cuba. His civilian life achievements and community activities are too numerous to mention.

And they played bagpipes at his funeral.

Most amazing of all for someone so distinguished, everyone who knew him remarked about his humility. Churches talk a lot about "servant leadership" but apparently this man actually embodied it. He was, indeed, a "humble servant."

And yet....

The other thing said about him was that people did things the way he thought they ought to be done. He was humble, he was gentle, he was soft-spoken—but you didn't cross him. Somehow, he induced people to see things his way without pushing them around, without exerting his power—which is real power, indeed.

What might the world be like with more leaders like that?

There are a lot of things about the good ol' days that I don't miss—smoking on airplanes is at the top of the list—but recently I was gloriously reminded of one of the benefits that we took for granted at the time: good showers.

I don't think anyone born after 1990 has any idea what a good shower feels like. For almost 25 years it has taken me twice as long as previously to take a shower, because the flow from today's emasculated nozzles is so weak. Maybe if you've stood under a waterfall, or a tropical rainstorm, you have an idea of the joy of a shower free from unnecessary regulation, but it's pure bliss after all this wimpy stuff, let me tell you.

As I stood under the shower, the thought crossed my mind: I know President Trump has a lot of more important things to think about, but I sure wish he'd get rid of the shower head restrictions.

I thought it was just a useless wish. But like my similar dreams that companies would get rid of the junk that fills much of our food, or that someone would take seriously the catastrophic rise in allergies, autism, ADHD, and other afflictions that have replaced measles, mumps, and chicken pox as parental concerns. But at last, we as a country are attempting to address those and other long-time concerns of mine, so I though maybe shower heads had a chance.

Lo and behold, today I learned that President Trump has already rescinded—not the original 1992 regulation of showerheads, which I would have preferred, but at least the subsequent re-interpretations of the rules that were considerably more onerous. I'll celebrate victories when I see them.

There are many ways to conserve resources. One size fits all rarely works well. I'll take shorter, more powerful showers; you're welcome to take longer, wimpier ones.

Maybe it's time to stimulate the economy by buying new showerheads. As long as they're made in America.

Make showers great again!

Based on the last time I read through our Constitution, I'd say the Babylon Bee is spot on here: Democrats Outraged After Court Rules Commander-In-Chief Of Armed Forces Can Command Armed Forces. (Article II, Section 2) The headline says it all, but here's an excerpt from the article:

Democratic leaders said that the ruling was a clear and present threat to American democracy and they feared for the future of a country where the person in charge of things could actually be in charge of things.

"This is an extremely dangerous precedent for the court to set," said Senator Cory Booker. "There is no way that the president should be allowed to exercise his constitutional authority to tell the U.S. Armed Forces what to do, as though he were somehow their highest-ranking commanding officer. These activist judges are trying to make Trump out to be some type of president or something."

At publishing time, Democrats were so outraged by Trump's overreach that they threatened to impeach the president for acting as the president.

I'll admit it is somewhat amusing, if also disturbing, that our natural tendency is to assume that an action—be it legislation, court ruling, or presidential initiative—must be unconstitutional because we disagree with it.

In this we all embody the quote attributed to Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall: "The Constitution is what I say it is." (As far as I can tell, he didn't actually use those words, but they are a pretty accurate précis of his more nuanced position.)

I highly recommend reading the entire U. S. Constitution, including the Bill of Rights and other Amendments, at least once a year, to keep it fresh in our minds. For such a monumental document, it is surprisingly short, and takes only about half an hour to read through.

When I was young, stories for children about sports had one theme in common: sportsmanship. In fact, that was the main reason given for the existence and importance of sports: taming the instincts of aggression and domination into tools for the betterment of all areas of society, including the protection of women and children. A coach's job was to build a winning team, sure, but his most important job was to build boys into men. With minor modifications, that works as well for girls and women.

Today we have a win-at-any-cost mentality that poisons sports, politics, and every other area of life. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream that people would be judged by the content of their character loses its soul when character no longer matters.

I don't understand how people can live with themselves whose victory comes from not playing by the same rules as their opponents.

I don't follow Matt Walsh's podcasts, but that's for lack of time, not lack of respect. I find him intelligent and well-spoken, and sometimes quote him here. Not that I always agree with him—he nearly lost me when I found out that he thinks raw milk is disgusting. I was almost one of the 14,000+ people who called him out on that, but decided instead that each of us has a right to be wrong, and let him alone.   

Why have I included him in my Heroes category? Because we need heroes at every level. Maybe Matt Walsh didn't run into a burning building to save a child, but he just took an important stand against the undefined but powerful mob that will use any excuse and any tactic to bring down those who dare disagree with whatever narrative they are currently imposing. I have no problem with calling someone out for saying or doing something that troubles me, but the demand for an apology and public groveling, which is almost always a part of the process, is not only wrong, but a dangerous abuse of power.

I consider it a heroic act to stand up to that kind of pressure. It's not easy. I remember, with shame, the times in my life when I've apologized for things I still believe were not only not wrong, but actively the right thing to do. And yet, shameful though I think my groveling was, I'm not apologizing for apologizing under duress, because the threats were not to me but to my children. The memory, however, makes me all the more inclined to respect people who, as Walsh put it, decline to take part.

In this video, Walsh addresses the firestorm that erupted when he refused to take down an image that someone else posted in a critical response to one of his X posts. Walsh, the mob insists, knowingly and approvingly posted a swastika, because he didn't censor his critic's image.

Now that I know where it is, I find it impossible not to see the swastika in question. But until it was pointed out, I didn't see it at all. I have no problem believing that Walsh didn't either. But once noted, why not take it down? The better question is, why should it be taken down? Even if it had been in plain sight, a normal swastika, while it would have been fine for Walsh to delete an image that someone else had imposed on his X feed, it is wrong for anyone to pressure him to do so. The swastika has been around for millennia and originally meant well-being. This mob would have had us burn our antique Oriental rug because it included these ancient symbols in its design.

Just because someone has reused a historic symbol for other purposes, that doesn't mean it's right to cave in to the misappropriation. Even if I'm the last person in the world to do so, I will still use "gay" to mean "lighthearted," use masculine pronouns as neutral when appropriate, and continue to cringe every time I hear "they" and "them" used as if they were singular. (This means I am cringing frequently while listening to the lastest New International Version of the Bible—not a salubrious situation.) I also insist on singing the old words to familiar hymns rather than the abominations featured in modern hymnals. Take that, "Good Christian Friends, Rejoice!"

This attack on Walsh makes me want to post an image of a swastika loud and clear on my blog, maybe in the company of my nasty-looking image of the COVID-19 virus. However, even if it may sometimes be necessary to fight a bear, it's stupid to poke one unnecessarily, so my more rational side beat down my gut reaction in this case.

The really interesting part of all this is the image itself—which I reserve for a subsequent post. I'll try enabling comments, just in case someone else notices the issue with the picture before I write about it. Please be respectful and refrain from using the comment section for arguments.

Florida has become the second state (after Utah) to ban the addition of fluoride to community water systems, for which I am very grateful. I prefer to have governmental decisions made at the lowest practical level, but I prefer even more not to have to choose between buying bottled water and drinking tap water with greater-than-natural levels of fluoride. I already get plenty, perhaps too much, from other sources, from toothpaste to topical fluoride to my frequent cups of tea. There may be dental benefits to consuming fluoride, but ingesting it ought to be a personal choice, not something forced upon all customers of the community water supply.

I let my opinion be known at the city level, with no success, despite the good examples of neighboring cities. So I was thrilled to learn yesterday that our legislature had passed, and Governor DeSantis signed, a bill eliminating added fluoride in our water systems.

There may have been a time when adding fluoride to the water supply was important, but with the substance so readily available in other ways, there's no excuse for forcing it on the general population.

Thanks, Florida!

I've been reading through our Constitution recently, a practice I recommend, along with reading the entire Bible on an annual basis. You never know what's going to jump out at you.

Here's a stark reminder of the dangers of getting our information from headlines, sound bites, click-bait, and quotations taken out of context.

There you have it.  Be a good citizen and vote accordingly.

Why are people so upset that some government workers are losing their jobs? Why are we not rather rejoicing that vast areas of waste and downright corruption and fraud are being exposed? For as long as I can remember—and that's well more than half a century—governmental inefficiency and waste has been a standard joke. But it's not funny. It is unethical, and has led directly to our country's unimaginable debt, and the financial disaster we are bequeathing our children and grandchildren.

Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency are heroes in my book. Why is it that the same people who just months ago wanted to force us all to switch to electric cars are now so upset by the thought of layoffs that they think it's reasonable and useful to destroy Teslas?

It really stinks to lose your job. We've been there, more than once. But government employees have been living in a fantasy world of job security. Private companies, from small family businesses to massive corporations, frequently face situations where they must let employees go: sometimes when the workers have done something unethical, sometimes when they are not doing their jobs well, and often because cold, hard, economic facts force the business to downsize.

Where was all this weeping, wailing, and wrongdoing when American manufacturing went overseas? When our IT jobs went overseas? When millions of workers were imported to keep agricultural wages artificially low? When slave labor became acceptable because otherwise the plantation system would fall apart? (We once fought an especially grievous war over that one.) All these caused millions of American families to become unemployed or to settle for low-paying jobs without the benefits we once had. Did Americans then rise up in protest, or did we just sit back and enjoy the benefits of cheap goods?

It stinks to lose your job, but as far as I can tell, the government employees facing that threat have been offered generous severance packages, much nicer than what most people get when they find themselves out of a job. Why should governmental workers be protected from what ordinary Americans face daily?

Sadly, too many federal judges are showing that they are living in the same fantasy world, by ruling that the government cannot fire its own employees, reorganize its divisions, or effect layoffs of its own workers. What business could possibly stay afloat under such conditions? What part of the Constitution guarantees that a government employee, once hired, has a right to keep his job forever? I can only hope that higher courts have better sense—and that the errant judges are overruled before the damage done becomes irrevocable.

And what's wrong for an employee to be asked to give an accounting for the work he is doing? I admit I don't like the idea of cutting out remote work, which was a positive step forward for job satisfaction and family life. But remote work—or any work for that matter—can only succeed if the tasks actually get done, and I don't see why it's a bad thing to require some accounting of the work that justifies one's paycheck.

I don't remember where I heard the following, but it neatly expresses the problem.

I know a guy in the IT sector who says that a man slept at his desk regularly through the day, but they could not touch him, unless he really botched up. That is someone who is stealing from this company. He is stealing his wages for work not performed. 

That struck me in particular, because of a situation from my own experience. I also knew an IT guy who regularly fell asleep at his desk—or on the floor of his office. He was also one of the most treasured employees because he got the work done, and then some, without counting the hours. He was brilliant, and did his work in a manner that worked best for him. The company had no objection to his unusual schedule because they appreciated what he brought to the table.

I would like to see a system that facilitates such flexibility. Requiring a brief summary of the week's accomplishments can allow such people to shine.

Doubting that most of America's workforce is as obviously effective as my friend was, I believe we could all benefit from such an exercise. The psychological advantage of focusing on "what did I accomplish?" instead of "did I put in my hours?" could be great.

This picture showed up on my Facebook page. It's from the Babylon Bee, which I often, though not always, find funny. I wouldn't have given this article more than a passing glance, were it not for the fact that less than 24 hours previously we had seen an excellent and amazing production, by our church's Resurrection Players, of Beetlejuice, Jr.

Trump Issues New Striped Robes For Federal Judges

If you've never seen the show, this won't make sense, but if you have, the association may provoke a smile unintended by the Bee.

I remember the days when we were enthusiastic supporters of National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service. WFLN in Philadelphia, WXXI in Rochester, WMFE in Orlando. This was primarily because wherever we went, they were the stations of classical music. And PBS was where you could find great shows like Mystery! and Connections and Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood.

When that changed, I'm not sure. The biggest break for me came when WMFE split off their music and put it on a radio frequency we couldn't receive. It became all talk, all the time, and most of that did not interest me. I remained a huge fan of shows like Car Talk and A Prairie Home Companion, but found little of the other non-music talk worth my time.

I'm pretty sure we stopped our regular support of WMFE when we could no longer get the music, but Porter still listened to their shows during his morning and evening commutes. It helped distract him from the traffic, though it certainly didn't have a calming effect. I believe it was at about that point he started calling it National Socialist Radio. With good reason.

After he retired and spent less time in the car, our public radio consumption became rare, as we'd tune into something for a few minutes, then start to wish that we could cut off our tax contributions to the system as we had our personal money.

Sasha Stone's experience was more dramatic than ours. She was not only a great supporter of NPR/PBS, but was herself interviewed on Weekend Edition back in 2012. (Ms. Stone is another one of those people I would never have chosen to listen to—what do I care about Hollywood and the Oscars?—but once introduced, found her interesting and insightful.) That link takes you to one of her recent Substack posts. Caveat: I have only read the text, and not watched all the videos.

Sasha's own story is interesting enough, but what inspired me to include it here was that part of it pertains to New Hampshire. The context is NPR's substantial political bias.

Just look at NPR’s shameful coverage of the trans issue.... Search for any story that tells the opposing viewpoint ever. You won’t find it. For an ideology that the Democrats insist represents only 1% of the population, it sure is a popular topic at NPR. Searching just in the last year brings up hundreds, if not thousands of stories. They seem to never tire of different ways to tell the transgender perspective to their listeners and yet have no way of telling even one story that represents the alternative viewpoint.

Recently, in New Hampshire, a 23-year-old Democratic representative named Jonah Wheeler voted to protect women in sports, causing a major uproar in the city. His constituents demanded a town hall meeting, but Wheeler bravely stood up to them.

At the same meeting, a young man spoke before the crowd, asking the woman there what she would tell parents of detransitioners like him who had been convinced to have their testicles removed because that would make them women. He now has to live this way for the rest of his life.

NPR had no search results for Representative Jonah Wheeler. Certainly, none for whistleblower Jamie Reed, who was there to support Wheeler, and even stayed after to ensure he got to his car safely. Reed has been traveling from state to state to ensure laws banning “gender-affirming care” are passed.

But over at NPR, she doesn’t exist. And if she doesn’t exist, most of the people you know on the Left will never have heard of her, or this dramatic story playing out in New Hampshire.

If you want to see the videos of the speeches, you'll have to go to the whole essay. I did watch the ones pertaining to the New Hampshire story, which was probably not good for my blood pressure, but at least they're short.

I don't know the solution to the problem of funding the arts, or science, or education, or medicine, or almost anything for that matter. Generally, I'm for markets as free and control as local as possible; it's not so much that they do a great job, as that they do far better than any other system I've seen. It's like the saying that democracy is the worst form of government—except for all the others.

But there is definitely a place for government and governmental action. The trick lies in matching the action with the appropriate level. The further up the food chain we go, the greater the power and the money—and the greater the risk of tyranny and corruption. It also makes it possible, as in the case of PBS and NPR, for a single ideology to dominate, whether it's the medieval Catholic Church or a modern secular movement.

There's a lot to be said for the Principle of Subsidiarity. (See the top paragraphs at that link for further explanation.)

The Principle of Subsidiarity refers to the idea that decision-making authority should be placed where responsibility for outcomes will occur and in close proximity to where actions are taken. This principle emphasizes matching authority with responsibility and situating them as close as possible to operations for well-informed decisions.

Or as I frequently say,

Responsibility without authority is slavery; authority without responsibility is tyranny.

When an organization is financially dependent primarily on the direct support of the public (think NPR's fund drives), there's a smaller (though certainly non-zero) probability that it will become captured by an ideological power that cannot be trusted to serve the public's best interests. When an unelected governmental agency doles out huge sums of money for broadcasting, or education, or medical research, or just about anything, such that the entity cannot survive without the agency's funding, tyranny thrives.

Who is Bill Maher, and why does he deserve a place in my Heroes category?

No one who knows the deep extent of my ignorance of pop culture (among other things) will be surprised that until I looked him up on that great foundation of American knowledge and ignorance, Wikipedia, I had no idea who Bill Maher was. Now I know he's a comedian, politically and socially liberal, and a potty-mouth. There are issues on which Maher and I agree, and I've reluctantly come to accept the need to endure crude speech because these days I know so many otherwise highly intelligent and reasonable people who for reasons unknown apparently cannot speak without being vulgar. However, I find modern comedy generally too edgy for my taste, so I'm unlikely to add Maher to my list of favorite speakers.

Thus it was only through a friend (also intelligent, reasonable, potty-mouthed, and one of the funniest people I know) that I heard the following monologue (13 minutes).

What I find amusingly frustrating is that Maher's simple description of spending time with President Trump has people on both sides of the aisle asking, "Has Bill Maher gone MAGA?" No, he hasn't; he's just being a reasonable human being, the way that was standard not all that long ago.

I suspect he will take a lot of heat for being reasonable—lives have been ruined for less—and he knew it before deciding to speak out. But he spoke the truth anyway, and that makes him a hero to me.

It was eye-opening, when we first visited Switzerland, to discover that they don't refrigerate their eggs. Nor do they get sick from that practice. Why must we refrigerate American eggs? Here's an Epoch Times article that explains why we are once again being given the short end of the gustatory and nutritional stick.

Being raised in the United States, I was startled during my first trip out of the country. I noticed that the eggs at the store were not refrigerated. How is this possible? ... I gradually came to realize that the United States is the outlier, apparently the only country in the world where eggs go from the chicken to the refrigerator, both at the store and at home.

The United States seems to be the only country in the world that requires the washing of eggs before they are sold. As a result, the outside membrane—called the cuticle—is washed away, leaving them vulnerable to outside bacteria and other sources of spoilage. That’s why they must be refrigerated. ... However, if you don’t wash away the cuticle, they can sit happily on the counter for a very long time and be ready to eat anytime.

It’s because of Big Agriculture and industrial methods of egg harvesting. They pack chickens in huge warehouses inches apart and in tight layers. The whole place is a gigantic mess because machines can’t stop the natural function of the digestive system. In essence, the place is filthy. As a result, washing the eggs is absolutely necessary to remove all the pathogenic muck.

The industry, then, lobbied the government over decades to make this a general rule, providing them with a level competitive playing field with small farmers who run much cleaner operations. ... In effect, the USDA and the FDA have adopted rules on behalf of the biggest players in the industry while forgetting about the small farmers.

Maybe in the future, Americans will have the right to raise and sell eggs without washing off the protective layer from the shells. Maybe in the future, we will stop being seemingly the one outlying country in the entire world that routinely refrigerates our chicken eggs? We shall see.

Maybe in the future we will have better access to eggs bursting with nutrition and with beautiful, deep-golden yolks that come from a natural diet that includes bugs and a variety of vegetation, not something added to a grain-based diet just to make the eggs look good.

The following letter, published in the Orlando Sentinel in April 2015, was written by a friend of ours, a good man with whom we seriously disagreed on several issues. Those were the days when being on opposite sides of heated battles did not spill over into personal life. I discovered a copy of the ten year old letter when cleaning up files, and decided it needs wider circulation.

The inspiration for the letter was the Religious Freedom Restoration Act that had been recently passed by the state of Indiana, but the sentiment is as applicable, and essential, today.

Religious belief is among the most personal of human attributes, and deals with the spiritual and the infinite. Governments are, rather, an expression of general agreement in things secular. In theory, these philosophical areas should complement each other; however, in practice the boundaries frequently conflict.

Thus, one person's faith becomes another person's bigotry.

So it is with the Hoosier State, which, like many states before it, has passed its own RFRA.

When is a business acting on its sincerely held religious beliefs, and when is it merely denying services to people unjustly and hypocritically using religion as a cover?

Discriminating against people because of who they are is categorically wrong. But when a customer demands, under penalty of law or litigation, that I render a product or service, which, according to my religious belief, constitutes the facilitating of sin, I must draw the line—a line protected by the RFRA. So, the baker, florist or photographer should, in good conscience, sell their wares to all comers, but they should also have the option not to be a part of events that they believe are proscribed by their faith.

My favorite sandwich place is closed on Sunday. My favorite Florida chicken restaurant is closed on Saturday—both for religious reasons. A local obstetrician/gynecologist believes abortion to be infanticide. Shall I compel their cooperation?

This is ultimately an issue of fairness and tolerance for both sides. Acceptance should be optional, but tolerance, caring and respect are essential to the human conversation.

James xxxxxxx Apopka
[I doubt our friend would mind my using his full name, since it was published in the paper, but just in case, I have redacted it.]

It's hard to believe that I'm looking back at 2015 as an era of civility, but relatively speaking....

Enthusiasm, fortitude, patience, and joy are good qualities in a president.

I wouldn't wish that job on one of my grandchildren any more than I'd wish them leukemia. Nonetheless, I would vote for her.

President Grace Daley speaks at the Smithsonian.