Musings Of An Indie Writer| « |
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Saturday, February 11, 2012
Assorted
1. Books, Books, Books...
The C.S.O. and your Curmudgeon are the owners of an immense personal library: well over 12,000 volumes, counting hardcovers and paperbacks together. Reading has been our principal pleasure over the years, and inasmuch as the local public library seldom has anything we haven't already read, we tend to buy a lot of books. The Fortress of Crankitude displays the consequences quite vividly: any space not occupied by bookshelves is taken up by computers, cooking gear, or our preferred presidential candidate.
And so, when Barnes & Noble introduced the NOOK Color, we swiftly joined the ranks of the "early adopters." These days, your Curmudgeon does most of his reading from his NOOK, and the C.S.O. is in much the same condition. It regularly grieves us to learn that a book we've been waiting for hasn't been released in the NOOK's .EPUB format.
Nevertheless, your Curmudgeon continues to favor paper books for certain kinds of material: reference books, technicata, histories, and anything he might think to lend to another reader. Other e-reader owners, however enthusiastic they are about their device and its capabilities, usually have similar exclusions. For that reason among others, your Curmudgeon seriously doubts that the e-reader explosion will kill the paper book.
And indeed, it would appear that others with money to invest have reached a similar conclusion.
Sadly, at this time Half Price Books doesn't have a store on Long Island or anywhere near enough to warrant an afternoon excursion. All the same, your Curmudgeon finds the development cheering. This, plus the e-readers' surging popularity, will have salutary effects on American publishing. In particular, as HPB's acquisition and brokering approach becomes more popular, it will put downward pressure on the prices of new paper books, which will be transmitted in part to the prices of new e-books. And of course, American readers will acquire yet another place to fritter away their weekend afternoons, a timely replacement for the late, lamented Borders Books.
2. Fracking.
Kevin Williamson has an excellent article in the latest National Review on hydrofracturing -- "fracking" -- its potential, and the pseudo-controversy surrounding it. His survey of the opposition arguments to fracking, which would open access to hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of natural gas, is particularly important. A snippet:
"Methane migration [i.e., the phenomenon responsible for the presence of unacceptable amounts of volatile organics in certain water wells] is real," says John Hanger, an environmental activist in Pennsylvania who served as head of the state's department of environmental protection under the liberal governorship of Democrat Ed Rendell. "Prior to the Marcellus, there have probably been 50 to 150 private water wells, out of more than a million in the state, that have had methane contamination as a result of mistakes in the drilling process -- but that has nothing to do with fracking. Some in the [gas drilling] industry deny that it ever happens, and that is false. But frack fluids returning from depth, from 5,000 to 8,000 feet under the ground, to contaminate an aquifer? When the industry says that's never happened, that has in fact never happened."
Despite this and similar testimonials from highly placed figures in the environmentalist community, the great majority of environmentalists oppose fracking and are marshaling their forces to try to stop or prevent it. The effort is point-for-point identical, both in principle and procedure, to their opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, to any expansion of coastal oil exploration, and to the issuance or renewal of exploration leases on federally managed lands: Any expansion of the "carbon economy" undermines their drive for a "clean-energy economy."
It's not about "global warming" any more; that chimera has been headless for some years now. It's about not wanting to look like fools for backing insane enterprises such as Solyndra, Lightsquared, and Fisker: undertakings that could only present the appearance of economic rationality while backed by massive federal subsidies and loan guarantees. For there is this about the environmentalist "cause person:" he is less inclined to admit his mistakes than any other life form known to science.
If this isn't yet a conservative cause celebre, it should be.
3. The Presidential Campaign.
It sometimes seems that both parties are doing their utmost to lose the November 2012 presidential election. For the Democrats' part, we have Barack Hussein Obama's insistence on ever more closely regulating and controlling every aspect of American life. The recent decree that Catholic hospitals and charities must provide their employees with contraceptive and abortifacient insurance is merely the most conspicuous outcropping. On the Republican side, the remaining candidates for the GOP's presidential nomination have all acted as if their highest priority is to provide voters with a reason to choose anyone else.
In this regard, Mitt Romney is beyond all dispute the biggest offender. The former one-term governor of Massachusetts has acted consistently as if he regards the presidency as his by right, and therefore that no tactic by which he might get closer to it is inadmissible. Speak not to your Curmudgeon of Romney's supposedly stainless character or his unblemished fidelity to his wife; say rather why his slurs and slanders against his competitors should not be held against him. He clearly has no respect for Ronald Reagan's Eleventh Commandment. Add that to his record in power, his unwillingness to admit that Romneycare was a terrible mistake, and his complete lack of any hard and fast principle he's willing to defend a outrance, and he appears to your Curmudgeon to be the worst possible Republican nominee. Yet many commentators continue to style him "inevitable," though their reasons are scattered and open to serious dispute.
So Republicans must choose their champion against the nakedly evil Obama from among the scurrilous Romney, the wild man Gingrich, and the paternalist Santorum. If your Curmudgeon might borrow from David Letterman in one of his more memorable moments, what a pity all these fine candidates can't lose.
The hell of it is that present trends continuing, one of those four will be the president of the United States from January 20, 2013 through January 19, 2017 -- or until the Republic collapses under the weight of accumulated political lunacy and venality. The odds are looking ever more as if Obama will win a second term. At least, the touts in Las Vegas are giving substantial odds that he will be.
Dare we hope for a deadlock in the primaries and a brokered GOP convention that will draft a real conservative for its standard-bearer? Who would that be? What's the pool of potential draftees? Is your Curmudgeon being unreasonably pessimistic about the probable course of events? And what about Naomi?
Sigh. Your Curmudgeon would really like a taste of freedom before he dies. But the prospects are becoming ever bleaker as the days pass.
