Category: Uncategorized

Does no one else remember our coming ice age? My third grade science textbook had an entire chapter on how we were heading for a new ice age, how life would suck with less sunlight, fewer crops, and never ending winter. The culprit was supposedly the carbon being put into the atmosphere by all of those factories and cars. There was a 40 year cooling period (which global warming hysteria mongers conveniently ignore) so I can understand how someone could jump to conclusions, but scientists shouldn’t do that.

The next year we had a snow storm in February that kept us out of school for a week. I figured that this was it, it had come. My fear was somewhat tempered by the hope that we would have Mastadons roaming suburban Richmond. Anyway, the snow melted of course, and I felt very much betrayed. Over the next several years it became obvious that there was no ice age, just some bad winters now and again.

Later in life, I have taken that lesson to heart. Anecdotal evidence is absolutely useless when trying to perceive trends. There has been variable and changeable weather for all of human history. The 2005 hurricane season was widely believed to show how global warming had affected the weather, but somehow 2006’s doesn’t. The truth is that that variation in hurricane activity is huge, and those two years are within the expected bounds. There is a repeating history of people taking scientific research and turning it to sell the most number of books, films (hello Mr. Oscar) and news stories. Maybe this time the doomsayers are right, sorry, can’t help but react to my being burned before…

Isaac

It’s really amusing to see the VAST differences in how we (as Americans) see the middle east as opposed to the people in it. Americans for the most part hate those religious terrorists and see our involvement as strictly political, with no religious intent. The people in this part of the world see the US’s actions in a religious light and they love those political radicals that blow things up. Religion is used by politicos on both sides to stir up fear, but the actual conflicts and bloodshed (to Americans) are almost completely politically motivated. Strange days indeed

Isaac

It is amazing to watch, and listen to the traffic here in Sana’a. People routinely stop their car in a narrow, alley like street in order to buy something or just to chat. Of course this backs all traffic up behind them. The people behind the first guy immediately lay on the horn and start calling the first guy names. When the first guy finally gets going, the person behind them inevitably does EXCTLY THE SAME THING. Nobody seems to care in the slightest that they are blocking someone else, but they get mad as hell if they are held up. I notice the same thing with parking, or waiting outside of the car. They have no compunction about blocking an intersection, either with a car or a group of people. Everyone uses the horn all the time. It means, “I’m coming up behind you,” “I’m passing you,” “Get out of my way,” “Why aren’t you going?” and sometimes just to make noise as far as I can tell. It is the norm here to lay on the horn when you come to a group of cars stopped at an intersection WAITING FOR THE LIGHT TO CHANGE. The horn is blown, I’m not kidding, about every 45-75 seconds that I am in a cab or dabob. It is maddening, and on my cynical days I think that it is a window into the inner workings of the Yemeni mind….

Isaac

The riots that have plagued the Danish capital have me confused, or at least the news reports do. It seems as though people are upset that the government evicted some squatters from a building. The building was sold 6 years ago, and the authorities got around to evicting them just now. Apparently, the people feel that it is “theirs” because they have been using it for so long. What is confusing me is that the news reports keep referring to the squatters and protesters as “anarchists.” I’m pretty damn sure that they are not political anarchists since they base their world view on strong property rights. It sounds more like the people that have been using the building feel a sense of entitlement (as proven by their “demand” for another building to replace this one, free of charge of course) and are surprised that the authorities would do something like this. I doubt that this (the riots) would ever happen in the US, there just isn’t enough sympathy for people taking someone’s property… It must be a European thing I wouldn’t understand.

Isaac

I replied to a friend’s blog when he asked why global warming is “still political.” He was referring to the humorous energy gluttony of Al Gore, whose household apparently consumes 20 times more energy than the “average” home. I don’t see this as political, but he does. I’ll lay out my ideas here on why the issue of political warming is a real political issue.

First off, let me say that I am not convinced one way or the other that man made CO2 is the reason that the planet’s temperature is rising. No one has explained to me how our CO2 production rose for 40 years and our temperature dropped (from the 30’s through the 70’s I think). Does anyone have any links that might explain this? I am also under the impression that warming due to CO2 buildup is a logarithmic, NOT additive. That means that if you double the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, you do not double the temperature increase, it is much less, and each doubling contributes less and less to warming. It isn’t clear to me where we are in that series, are we towards the end of the CO2 concentration effects, in the middle, or at the beginning? Solar radiation is another possible explanation that doesn’t get much press. It’s variations match the earth’s temperature variations much better than the CO2 models.

Graph from Hall of Record

The only reason that any of this is important is that so many people are clamoring for the government to step in and do “the right thing.” That’s a little scary considering we don’t really know what would change the warming, if anything at all could. The other scary thing about that is how much money would supposedly be needed to “solve” the CO2 problem. The numbers I have seen are between 3%-5% of global GDP per year. Folks, that’s a large part of the economy and an almost impossible to imagine number of dollars. It is so large that there is considerable debate among economists whether it would be worth it to do anything. The last report that came out of the UN used a technique that made the cure much more expensive than the estimated cost of global warming. The idea is that if we spent the money that the report says is necessary, we would do more damage to the economy (and people’s lives) than if we did nothing at all and allowed the economy to continue on its current course. Like I said, there is debate, and nothing is settled yet.

One thing I’ve earned from living in Yemen is that poverty is much worse than just about anything else. Yes, worse than less land and fewer farming areas. Anyone that assumes that we can make the kind of cuts in our economy that the doom sayers are purposing and not even notice it are dreaming. There will be incredible consequences and it’s very important that if we choose to go after the problem in this way that we do it in a way that minimizes the effects to not only ourselves, but to other (less developed) countries as well. There are potential really bad consequences if we do nothing, there are definite really bad consequences consequences to doing what the UN report says to do. it isn’t clear what the probabilities are in either case, but there is a hell of a lot on the line in both cases…

Isaac

Luchiano and I went back to the “Italian” place for dinner last night. He got chinese food and I got Indian, LOL. Actually, on the way there I was fixated on getting some decent Indian food but then I realized that they make probably the best pizza in Sana’a. Instead of deciding, I got both. What the hell, when the most expensive thing is the equivalent of $7.50, why not? I finished off the pizza this morning:-) I saw three enormous American guys there, I almost shouted out something to the effect of go Marines. Luckily I thought better of it, they probably don’t like too much attention being called to them. Besides, they might not have been Marines, they could be special forces or even some private contractor that the Army had hired. In any case, I’m sure they weren’t members of the All Yemen college football team…

We figured out that gas prices here are about $1.15 a gallon. Hello 1988! Gasoline is heavily subsidized here. Apparently there were near riots here when the government tried to raise them up to $1.50 or so. No one wanted to pay that much more, but I wonder why no one wondered who is paying the difference right now?

Isaac

I had a dream the other night that “starred” Alan Alda and Martha Stewart. Martha was playing herself (narfing down an arugala, goat cheese, and date salad) while Alan was playing a combination of Alton Brown (of “Good Eats” fame) and Dr. House from the show with the same name. Alan was challenging Martha to a cook off with the curious stipulation that she must take diet pills during it. She just smiled and kept eating, I think she knew she could take him….

Wow, what a strange dream, I wonder what brought that on? I’ll tell you what brought that on, the mother of all fevers. The dream was just a precursor to possibly the worst fever I’ve ever had. I was weak enough that I was really worried that I’d fall over and hurt myself on my (frequent) trips to the bathroom. I broiled and drank, broiled and drank until it finally broke and I sweated it all out. That was the sickest I have been here, and it wasn’t fun, but at least it was short lived. I spent all of yesterday in bed, mostly because of how weak I was, truly a lost day.

Today I was starving, which I took as a good sign. I had to go to the lab and pick up my HIV test (which is required for a long term visa). Halfway there I realized that I had forgotten to bring the two photographs that I had forgotten the other day. So I had the cabbie turn around, take me back to my place, and them to the lab. I was thinking that this was going to be an expensive day because I WAS going to decent restaurant to eat and I had already paid the cabbie twice what I had expected. Lunch was good, my eyes were definitely larger than my stomach since it had shrunk during the illness. I got a surprise at the end, the head waiter told me that the meal was on him. I have no idea why, he wouldn’t tell me, and he wouldn’t accept my money. It is a mystery to me, but a happy one:-)

Isaac

I actually put them up last night, but that idiot AMerican guy came in. I had to stop what I was doing to cool him off, but now there are descriptions with the pictures…

Isaac

I have finally gotten the stuff done that I needed to get my long term visa. I needed an HIV test, a letter from the embassy saying it was OK for me to be here, I had to set up a bank account, and get a fistfull of pictures. Turns out the biggest hassle was at the bank.

The place was nuts, people milling and shouting all over the place. Turns out that Yemenis stand in line as well as they drive… Today was the first day that I have been short with a local, I didn’t know the Arabic words for “HEY! There’s a line!” but he got my point. The amount of cash floating around was impressive, I felt like I was behind the scenes at a casino. Part of the reason for all of the cash was the deflated value of the currency, just about anything will run you a 1000 riyals, and that’s for something cheap. Big ticket items require (literally) bags of cash. That is still what amazes me, this is a strictly cash economy, if you want to buy something, you pay cash. I was a little worried when I first got here about someone taking my credit cards. Now I realize that they can’t do a damn thing with them here. You can’t even buy a plane ticket with a credit card, it’s cash all the way.

One unexpected question on the application was what religion I am. I wonder if they have both interest bearing and non interest bearing accounts. Usury is forbidden in Islam, one of the many reasons I suspect this part of the world is so underdeveloped…

I was pretty excited to get a local account, I figured I would have much lower ATM fees. Well it turns out that I can’t transfer money directly from my savings account in the US and this bank here. SIGH, I guess I’ll keep getting eaten alive with fees…

Isaac

Turns out barbers are barbers all over the world. After we managed to convince each other we understood each other, things went pretty smoothly. He did a decent job, the expected problems with my cowlick notwithstanding.

While I was there they had a soccer game on TV, Oman vs. Kuwait I think. The first thing I noticed was that there wasn’t anyone in the stands. There might have been a couple of hundred people there, in a stadium that seated thousands. After watching for a while, I knew why both teams really suck. Granted, the last match I saw was between two of the best teams in the world (Manchester U vs. Arsenal) but really, this was pathetic. I like watching sports, but I hate watching sports played badly.

Isaac