Memorial post

I'm postponing this week's Long Emergency till tomorrow afternoon, in observance of Memorial Day. The poet Archibald MacLeish served with my grandfather Francis McCloskey (not of MacLeish's stature to be sure but also a public intellectual in his day) in World War I. MacLeish wrote this poem for his brother, who died in that war. There are still U.S. troops in harms way abroad, although the country seems mostly to have forgotten about it. Now Bolton and Pompeo want an even bigger, better war than George Bush II got. I don't think the people will stand for that this time, but who knows? They got duped before.

Ambassador Puser the ambassador
Reminds himself in French, felicitous tongue,
What these (young men no longer) lie here for
In rows that once, and somewhere else, were young . . .
All night in Brussels the wind had tugged at my door:
I had heard the wind at my door and the trees strung
Taut, and to me who had never been before
In that country it was a strange wind, blowing
Steadily, stiffening the walls, the floor,
The roof of my room. I had not slept for knowing
He too, dead, was a stranger in that land
And felt beneath the earth in the wind’s flowing
A tightening of roots and would not understand,
Remembering lake winds in Illinois,
That strange wind. I had felt his bones in the sand
Listening.
. . . Reflects that these enjoy
Their country’s gratitude, that deep repose,
That peace no pain can break, no hurt destroy,
That rest, that sleep . . .
At Ghent the wind rose.
There was a smell of rain and a heavy drag
Of wind in the hedges but not as the wind blows
Over fresh water when the waves lag
Foaming and the willows huddle and it will rain:
I felt him waiting.
. . . Indicates the flag
Which (may he say) enisles in Flanders plain
This little field these happy, happy dead
Have made America . . .
In the ripe grain
The wind coiled glistening, darted, fled,
Dragging its heavy body: at Waereghem
The wind coiled in the grass above his head:
Waiting—listening . . .
. . . Dedicates to them
This earth their bones have hallowed, this last gift
A grateful country . . .
Under the dry grass stem
The words are blurred, are thickened, the words sift
Confused by the rasp of the wind, by the thin grating
Of ants under the grass, the minute shift
And tumble of dusty sand separating
From dusty sand. The roots of the grass strain,
Tighten, the earth is rigid, waits—he is waiting—
And suddenly, and all at once, the rain!

Sunday Sermonette: Jehovah the psychopath

The character of God in the Old Testament is the most morally repugnant being imaginable. This seems inexplicably untroubling to the faithful -- the rabbis and theologians don't seem to worry about it much. But I have certainly noticed it. Let's pay attention to what's going on here, in Exodus 7, as the story finally picks up some speed.

Then the Lord said to Moses, “See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron will be your prophet. ² You are to say everything I command you, and your brother Aaron is to tell Pharaoh to let the Israelites go out of his country. ³ But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and though I multiply my signs and wonders in Egypt, ⁴ he will not listen to you.

 So it seems Pharaoh, if left to his own devices, might be perfectly willing to let the Hebrews go, but God will "harden his heart" to make sure he doesn't, in order for God to have the opportunity to punish the Egyptian people, for no apparent reason.

Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and with mighty acts of judgment I will bring out my divisions, my people the Israelites. ⁵ And the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring the Israelites out of it.”
⁶ Moses and Aaron did just as the Lord commanded them. ⁷ Moses was eighty years old and Aaron eighty-three when they spoke to Pharaoh.

At least these ages aren't biologically impossible, but it was extremely unusual for people to live that long in the third millennium BC, or really at any time in human history until the 19th Century. As far as I have been able to determine, nobody has figured out exactly why the early books of the Torah consistently give people these preposterous lifespans. I believe I may have mentioned early on in this project that it may have had to do with faulty transliteration of numbering systems.

⁸ The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, ⁹ “When Pharaoh says to you, ‘Perform a miracle,’ then say to Aaron, ‘Take your staff and throw it down before Pharaoh,’ and it will become a snake.”

Remember that this proposal has already come up a couple of chapters back, but a lot of other business intervened. Again, it appears the scribes have compiled various stories and versions of stories about Moses into a single document, giving us this disjointed narrative.

¹⁰ So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as the Lord commanded. Aaron threw his staff down in front of Pharaoh and his officials, and it became a snake. ¹¹ Pharaoh then summoned wise men and sorcerers, and the Egyptian magicians also did the same things by their secret arts: ¹² Each one threw down his staff and it became a snake. But Aaron’s staff swallowed up their staffs. ¹³ Yet Pharaoh’s heart became hard and he would not listen to them, just as the Lord had said.

KJV has "7:13 And he hardened Pharaoh's heart, that he hearkened not unto them; as the LORD had said." Again, the translators of the NIV seem to be trying to clean things up. 

¹⁴ Then the Lord said to Moses, “Pharaoh’s heart is unyielding; he refuses to let the people go. ¹⁵ Go to Pharaoh in the morning as he goes out to the river. Confront him on the bank of the Nile, and take in your hand the staff that was changed into a snake. ¹⁶ Then say to him, ‘The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has sent me to say to you: Let my people go, so that they may worship me in the wilderness. But until now you have not listened. ¹⁷ This is what the Lord says: By this you will know that I am the Lord: With the staff that is in my hand I will strike the water of the Nile, and it will be changed into blood. ¹⁸ The fish in the Nile will die, and the river will stink; the Egyptians will not be able to drink its water.’”
¹⁹ The Lord said to Moses, “Tell Aaron, ‘Take your staff and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt—over the streams and canals, over the ponds and all the reservoirs—and they will turn to blood.’ Blood will be everywhere in Egypt, even in vessels^[a] of wood and stone.”
²⁰ Moses and Aaron did just as the Lord had commanded. He raised his staff in the presence of Pharaoh and his officials and struck the water of the Nile, and all the water was changed into blood. ²¹ The fish in the Nile died, and the river smelled so bad that the Egyptians could not drink its water. Blood was everywhere in Egypt.

Of course, this is an event that can happen in fact, an algae bloom. It wouldn't affect all of the streams and canals as the story has it, and the red tide isn't literally blood, but this could have been inspired by a historical event. 

²² But the Egyptian magicians did the same things by their secret arts,

Huh? I guess the point is supposed to be that Pharaoh isn't all that impressed since his sorcerers could also have done this, but I don't see that as very logical.

and Pharaoh’s heart became hard; he would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the Lord had said. ²³ Instead, he turned and went into his palace, and did not take even this to heart. ²⁴ And all the Egyptians dug along the Nile to get drinking water, because they could not drink the water of the river.
²⁵ Seven days passed after the Lord struck the Nile.

Now think about this. The Egyptian people did not enslave the Hebrews or refuse to free them. As a matter of fact, it isn't even Pharaoh that refused to free them, it's God, who controlled Pharaoh's actions. But let's ignore that latter fact. This may seem to make moral sense to the tellers of this tale because political cultures of the era conflated the ruler with the populace. He essentially embodies the national existence. L'etat ce mois. But it is the Egyptian populace, not Pharaoh, who are made to suffer.

Harm Reduction

Kishore and colleagues in NEJM, including Josiah Rich from a university well known to me, discuss the harm reduction approach to injection drug use (IDU). Basically, this means using evidence to guide practice so as to minimize as much as possible the adverse public health consequences of addiction. In addition to the risk of overdose, which is getting most of the attention nowadays, IDU is a means of transmission of Hepatitis C and HIV, and contaminated needles transmit other common infectious organisms that can result in abscesses, and very serious consequences such as myocarditis.

So, assuring that users have access to sterile needles is an obvious way to reduce the damage caused by addiction. But the common reaction among citizens and politicians is that giving addicts injection equipment, or even allowing them to legally possess it, enables and encourages drug abuse and crime. Consequently, possession of hypodermic needles without a prescription is illegal in most states, and only 21 states have authorized any form of needle exchange. These are programs in which addicts can receive clean needles in exchange for used ones. Often they allow only one-to-one exchange, however, which does result in some re-use. According to the linked article, only 47 of 220 rural counties found by CDC to be most vulnerable to HIV and HCV outbreaks had needle exchange programs.

The truth is that there is no evidence that needle exchange programs increase the prevalence of injection drug use, or crime, and plenty of evidence that they reduce the transmission of disease and, by creating contact between users and service providers, they facilitate entry to treatment and can actually contribute to reducing IDU and controlling the epidemic.

The basic reason that these true facts fail to produce good public policy is that people still see addiction as a moral issue. Illicit drug use is stigmatized and many people seem to think that if addicts become infected or die that's their own fault. They seem to think that doing anything to help people who are sick and in desperate need signals approval of conduct that is morally wrong.

So get this straight. It is not a moral failure. In fact, in most cases these days, we are talking about iatrogenic disease -- a disease caused by physicians. Addicts cannot just stop. Their brains have been rewired and their behavior is compulsive. People need help and compassion, not condemnation and abandonment. We need to change both federal and state law. I'm not even going to safe injection sites, which are illegal thanks to congress. Maybe we'll discuss that later.

The Long Emergency: It isn't just climate change

I'm still sketching out the basic challenges facing humanity, in broad strokes. Last week I presented the history of human population in the past 2000 years and a very basic primer on climate. But there are much broader issues of resource depletion. Some people have expected bigger catastrophes sooner than they have actually happened, and it's perilous to make very specific predictions, but we're at the point now where we aren't just making predictions, we're observing what's already happening.

Here's the basic problem:



If 3 billion people are going to  achieve a standard of living comparable to that of a typical North American or European, we will have to triple our consumption of natural resources. Or maybe not. Perhaps we can ameliorate the problem by reducing the depredations of the few very rich people.



That could help, but it won't be enough. The surface area of the planet, in case you didn't know, is finite:



Of the earth's habitable land surface, 50% is already dedicated to agriculture. Of that, 3/4 is used to feed livestock. We can't cut down any more forest without accelerating the mass extinction that is already happening, and with it, climate change. Basically, we cannot expand the extent of agricultural land.



Agriculture requires water:



So why aren't we starving already? Many people thought we would be by now but it turns out there was a technical fix, at least for a while, called the Green Revolution. Improved crop varieties yielded more per acre:




But that's over. The laws of physics and chemistry put a limit on plant productivity. And by the way, this is consuming a huge amount of fossil fuel as well. Nitrogen fertilizer is required, which is made by extracting nitrogen from the atmosphere using natural gas. But there is a solution, even though many of you aren't going to like it. In fact, I have found that many people get absolutely furious when I try to tell them this. Don't get mad, just listen. Next week.