Surprises

Surprises

   The new year is well underway and it feels as if I am straining my neck looking out the window, getting one final glimpse of what the past year brought, all before I sigh and sit back and prepare for the journey ahead.  And what a year it was, one full of unexpected surprises.

   For one (and I almost hate to start off this way), the past few months saw the number of "cookies" on my computer (those dang tracking things that haunt your smart phones and smart tvs and tablets and cars and who knows what else; but in this case, I am talking only about my laptop) jumped nearly tenfold from barely 2,000 in six months to over 190,000 in the next four months.  Each days usage of just under an hour generates nearly 5,000 tracking cookies...yikes!  But then data transmission is growing ever faster these days, the newest trans-Atlantic cables sending data at speeds of 340 gigabits per second, or about six times faster than your average high-speed connection at home (and about 15 times faster than my area's connection speed);  if that's a bit boggling, keep in mind that our universe, even after billions of years, is still growing at about 47 miles per second, so we're slowly catching up.

   And data storage?  We're leaving the era of trillions and quadrillions (remember when hearing the word "billion" was still unique?), as petabytes become common (just as a quick measure, 1000 gigabytes --and your average newer home computer stores about 4 gigabytes-- equals a terabyte and a 1000 of those equal a petabyte...the next level up is an exabyte).  Facebook alone stores hundreds of billions of photos and utilizes over 350 petabytes of data just to do that.  And I used to think that the Library of Congress (fabulous tour if you ever visit Washington, D.C.) was overwhelming.  Yet when The Atlantic asked a "dozen scientists, historians and technologists" to rank the top innovations since the invention of the wheel, the #1 invention, ahead of refrigeration and vaccines and automobiles and electricity and even the Internet, was...the printing press.  Who doesn't love a good book?

   And along those lines, what a treat to discover so many great books over the past year, several of which I wrote about in earlier postings.  But how to keep up?  Each site I visit, from the local library to the pages of Powell's Books or AARP, have their own top book recommendations.  Even readers and authors chime in with their recommendations on sites such as Good Reads and The New Yorker.  Throw in today's movies and apps and TED talks and magazines and phew, one is truly overwhelmed, overloaded, swamped, making one almost want to yell that old phrase, "stop the train I want to get off."

   But it's addicting, isn't it?  We keep reading and watching and listening, almost as if we'll miss something, even something as depressing as finding out that out our Congress was the second least productive in 40 years, but still managed to devote part of that time passing 40 bills to rename certain post offices and passing a bill to stop Nazis from collecting Social Security (did that even exist?...unfortunately yes, and for an even deeper view of why our Social Security is so full of such loopholes, view the recent issue of Kiplinger's which details how to collect even more from the system, all legally).

   I was also surprised to hear that despite the record profits that Exxon makes from its fracking operations, CEO Rex Tillerson joined a lawsuit that basically says, Not In My Backyard. This was odd for fracking is now so common that 1 out of 20 Americans "lived within a mile of a recently fracked well,"  according to Onearth.  Well, it's all water under the bridge, or at least into the well, for many of today's modern wells use over 5 million gallons of water, all blasted with chemicals that don't need to be disclosed (thanks to Dick Cheney's "Halliburton Loophole" law, passed while he was vice-president), a paltry amount compared to the new NSA facility using 1.7 million gallons of water daily.  Drought?  What drought?  The irony might be that the most recent fracking spill has now entered the water of Yellowstone (also part of the path of the Keystone XL pipeline, if passed) so residents are warned not to drink the water...can't disclose what chemicals are there (benzene is one of them), and the water might smell like diesel but don't worry, it's safe.  Hey, isn't one of Dick Cheney's homes near Yellowstone?

   Speaking of diesel, I was also surprised to see that London took over the title of leading the EU in car pollution (higher even than Beijing), and it was primarily because of its fleet of diesel cars.  Wait a minute, wasn't diesel better than gasoline because it emitted less carbon dioxide?  True, but the tradeoff was a surge (3x was allowed) of nitrogen oxide, which scientists are discovering, appears to bond with fine particulates and settle in people's lungs.

   Still with me?  Good, because despite all the depressing news (I had to get at least some of that out of the way first), there was great, great news last year, not least of which was generosity.  This was exemplified by the attitude of Jim Koch, creator and chairman of Boston Beer which makes Samuel Adams (his initial fundraising pitch?, "I raised $240,000 and promised my investors free beer for life, which was appealing.").  In an article in Inc., he says:  The reason I support competitors becomes obvious if you think about the way yeast ferments beer.  If enough yeast are working together, they can change the ecosystem for the mutual benefit of all.  If they aren't, other organisms take over, and the yeast will fail.  Craft brewing is kind of like that.  We are happy to share our innovations with the industry.  We were the first brewery to age beer in used spirits barrels back in the early 1990s.  So we got a lot of calls: Where do you get the barrels?  How do you do it?  How do you get approval for it?  We shared with anybody who asked us.  About a year ago, we invested $1 million to develop a beer can that allows you to get more air when you drink, so you experience the taste and smell of the beer at the same time.  We licensed the design to a manufacturer on the condition that it let other craft brewers use it for free.  It will help differentiate craft beers from beers the big guys have developed to compete with us.

   I witnessed this sort of giving just the other night, some friends of ours surprising us with a bounty of gifts, gifts genuinely given and our guilt at receiving them not accepted.  It was done from their hearts, from their friendship, and from something inside them that just wanted to return.  As with the Samuel Adams story, it was a humble sort of give and take, making one realize just how much good is around us, and for my wife and I, just how blessed we are to have such friends surrounding our circle.


   In writing about the warming climate and melting ice flows, rising oceans and disappearing lands, writer Rick Bass told of what he saw in the Galapagos islands, a little-touched piece of evolution giving us a glimpse of what was, and taking that word to heart should the rising waters take the islands back.  Writing in Audubon, he said:  The Galápagos aren't the only thing that will go underwater from the melting ice.  And not all of the islands will be submerged.  And it's true, if we survive the coming fire, we can study evolution—or devolution—in other places: newer places, older places, larger places, smaller places.  This will be just one more loss, among so many.  The doors to this museum, this cathedral, will be covered over with sand and algae, moss and barnacles.  But we can still tell stories about what is gone.  About, for instance, the poison apples in the Galápagos, which only the iguanas and tortoises can eat.  And we can wake up.  We have been sleeping for so long.  We can think, reason, and then act—quickly, forcefully.  We can wake up.  Thus far we have been sleeping so soundly that it is almost as if we have not yet even been fully born.  As if we are still adolescents, not yet—hopefully—fully formed.  As if we were waiting for some final warmth, to bestir.  We have big brains, big hearts.  We can wake up.

   Last year, 2014, I saw many friends, made even more friends, renewed ties with family...and despite all the gloomy news soaring within those high-speed data lines, I realized how little data I really needed.  It was there, right in front of me.  I woke up.