New Hope for Green (or blue green) Energy

Energy giant Chevron Corporation and the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory have announced that they have renewed research to produce liquid transportation fuels using algae.

This is not a joke. Previous scum-to-energy research halted in the 1990s, when crude oil prices were low. Now, with economic and political factors, as well as environmental concerns putting a lot of pressure on energy companies to find an alternative to petroleum, slime slides to the head of the list of bio-fuel sources. Algae is easy to grow in a lot of places that would not be suitable for other crops that might be used for needed food supplies. You don't need a green thumb, just a neglected fish tank.

The thing is, if we are really going to look to the scum of the Earth to save us from ourselves, we will find out in short order what nation harbors the most of it. Scum is power! Because we're talking about literal rather than figurative scum, we're talking about a genuine resource.

Algae probably seems plentiful now, but wait until we're avidly scraping it as fast as it can form, to feed our voracious appetite for energy.

Personally I like the idea of humanity being saved by scum. It scoops up so many great metaphors into one neat, slimy bucket.

Poisonous Chinese Toys

Here it is, Halloween morning, and some kids are getting the bad news that their fake teeth from Hong Kong have been recalled because they contain unacceptable amounts of lead.

Are Americans being wussies about this lead business? Or is this really a serious issue?

Do the Chinese give lead-laced toys to their own kids? Don't they know that could seriously hamper their plans for world domination as that lead diminishes the mental capacity of an entire generation of their youth? Or is lead really a nutritional supplement that helps keep a person grounded, rooted to the earth?

Maybe they're trying to do us a favor.

Simple Supply and Demand

Although I could live as a modern suburbanite now, with heat that comes on by itself and no need to walk out my back door, I still use the wood stove to provide most of the heat.

Hot iron gives more even warmth than the propane Monitor or the fake wood stove in the living room. Those breathe out their heat when the flames dance, but subside to cold metal while the house chills enough to alarm their thermostats again.

A fire takes more than logs. I still pick up kindling and pine cones from the woods. It's a simple act that connects me to the entire history of human gathering. So much of what we use now we gather from stores, using the intermediary of money to mask the simple act of finding a useful basic element and bringing it home. You'd get arrested if you just gathered a cart full of stuff from local stores and carried it home without going through the checkout line.

Trash picking and Dumpster diving are forms of gathering, but not quite the same as identifying a natural resource and picking it up directly. When I go out with an empty pail in search of pine cones I spot and select them with much more care and attention than a lowly pine cone ever inspires at other times. When I go to a berry patch with empty containers, at first I'm daunted by the task of filling them one small fruit at a time. It's as far as you can get from scooping up a pre-packed pint or quart from the supermarket and heading for the express lane.

This isn't about character building or knowing the true cost of things. It's about picking up something that nature provided, and using it directly, without modification, to make your own life more comfortable. Pine tree makes pine cones, cones serve their reproductive purpose, I use what's left to start warming fire for my lair. The simple process shows what lies beneath all the other complicated structures and procedures we use to extract what we want or need from the Earth. Find where it's lying and figure out how to pick it up. When it's gone, find more or find something else. If it's something that grows back, wait for the next crop.

Freedom is free

Freedom is absolutely one hundred percent free. The people who tell you otherwise are often the ones who stole it from you and now want to sell it back to you at a high price. They coin snappy slogans like "Freedom isn't Free" to try to make you, the wronged party in the transaction, feel guilty for quite logically being unwilling to pay them.

Freedom is free, but oppression is cheap and plentiful. Oppressors always seem to get a lot of bang for their buck, too. Stooges abound who will support philosophies and organizations that promote one sub-group's freedom at the expense of another's. Then a relatively freer organization will raise a banner representing freedom and it will be the best anyone can do, so sides are drawn up and conflict is pursued.

Freedom is free, but government costs money. Government as an outgrowth of thoughtful public debate is better than nothing, as long as conscience remains so unevenly distributed among humanity. And someone has to keep the infrastructure functioning. We all chip in, we all get something back.

Freedom is free, but societies are interdependent. Interdependence imposes limits. Grown-ups understand limits. Push yourself and the boundaries of human achievement, but don't get pushy and don't get grabby. Freedom is one thing. Rudeness is another. And greed is something else again.

From the Forest

One of the cats was lobbying me heavily to let her go outside. It's a crisp fall afternoon. The trees have roughly half their leaves, so the color scheme of yellow and brown extends from the lower branches to the ground. The wind moves the branches. Loose leaves lift and flop on the rust-colored ground. There's a lot of movement in the forest.

A more purposeful movement behind the first screen of trees caught my eye. The largest, healthiest-looking coyote I've ever seen was foraging just outside the clearing in which the house sits. This thing looked like a wolf. It was beautiful. Its fur was thick and full. The coyotes I've seen before have looked like mangy German Shepherds.

The coyote stayed for several minutes. It looked toward me several times, as if it sensed me watching. I saw it find something to eat back there, but I couldn't see what that might be. The Chicken Shooters across the street might have released more pen-raised exotic fowl for rich numb-rods to shoot with expensive shotguns this weekend. A wounded one might have breathed its last back there behind the compost pile. It wouldn't be the first time.

The coyote population surged around here when the Chicken Shooters first cranked up. The Chicken Shooters basically laid out a coyote buffet. They had pens of fowl of various ages, and the escapees from all phases of the operation scattered into the scrub with no wild heritage to guide them.

Interestingly, the coyotes used to call to each other while hunting, but now hunt silently. I'm guessing this is because of the ways the Chicken Shooters have tried to protect their investment in pheasants, quail and Chukar partridge. It's open season on coyotes all year 'round in New Hampshire. You need a license to hunt 'em, but then you can blast away at them like shooting rats down at the town dump.

When the gunfire gets really thick and heavy over there I have to remind myself that this operation did keep the land from getting broken up as house lots, each of which would have driven up our tax rates. But with all their various enterprises, they halted all the hiking, mountain biking and cross-country skiing some of us used to do on that land, as well as making the paddling dicey on the stretch of Pine River that flows past their property.

Somehow I haven't picked up any death hobbies as I've gone through life. There was the simulated combat of fencing, but nothing that purposely ends the life of an animal or person. As an omnivore, I can't cop a moral stance and say I don't eat face, but I also don't play noisy hand-eye coordination games that annoy the neighbors, either. Unless you count the fiddle. And the fiddle doesn't leave dead bodies of any size lying around afterwards. If you want to eat chicken, go buy some chicken.

It's rather grim that we can't maintain wild game bird stocks anymore so that someone who wants the primal experience of the hunt can go find one wandering around on its own. We have to have places that manufacture birds and simulate their last wild dash toward freedom. Their little bird brains don't know how good or bad they've got it, but it still seems a tad gruesome. Only a touch less gruesome than a commercial poultry farm.

Anyway, it was cool to see that coyote looking so fine.

Will the world survive the Bush administration?

George W. Bush has always sounded to me like a redneck picking a bar fight. Where Bill Clinton (love him or loathe him) had that soft, Elvis-style southern accent that made you want to forgive him for sleeping with your girlfriend, Bush has always spoken with the harsh edge of a poorly educated, irritable man. I'm always waiting for a string of profanity.

I hadn't been up two minutes this morning, with barely a couple of sips of coffee in me, when there on the television was Condoleezza Rice "in a Today Show exclusive," pumping up the rationale for invading Iran.

In the present crisis brewing over Iran, I can't trust anything coming out of the White House urging a hard line with Tehran, because we saw with Iraq that they would say anything to start the war they want. Ordinary citizens have no credible source of information. Believe what you like about the Internet. Believe what you like from it. In truth, you only believe it because you choose to believe it.

A lack of solid information leaves us to fall back on personal philosophies and powers of reasoning.

Looking at the long, lurching stumble of history one sees a slow trend toward greater human understanding, all too gradually replacing the paranoia that has marred every contact between differing cultures since the beginning of culture. That paranoia reached its technological and cultural zenith in the Cold War. The Cold War grew from the Second World War. "The Second World War's connected to the First World War. The First World War's connected to the Franco-Prussian War. Now hear the word of the Lord..."

It stinks when the leaders of other countries make more sense than your own. This isn't treason, this is reason. No, you can't trust a politician, not even a foreign one who momentarily seems to have found the right spin. But consider the general concept that saber rattling is not the appropriate response to absolutely every diplomatic challenge.

Bluffing is a time-honored tradition, particularly among weaklings. Threatening to beat people up is a time-honored tradition among bullies. Neither one is a particularly tenable stance for a nation supposedly devoted to the spread of peace, understanding and a big box retail store in every town in the world.

World War I started as a series of unfortunate threats collided with an equally unfortunate series of promises. Don't think the same mistake couldn't be made again with far worse consequences. Our tools for mayhem and destruction have evolved much faster than our ability to conceive that a more grown-up approach is possible.

The correct response to a bully trying to start a fight is "grow up."

The Bully in Chief has more than a year left to try to get us into more complex brawls before he retires safely to the ranch, having personally dodged yet another armed conflict the nation would have been advised to avoid in the first place. Will we make it?

Kona Friday on a Thursday

The local coffee shop always has Kona on Fridays. It's become a bit of a holiday.

Kona is a lighter roast, with a wine-like finish because of its acidity. It's a great coffee to let cool off, especially with a little cream in it. I like it still somewhat on the red side, never milked to pale blandness. As a light roast it is deceptively mild until you realize that it hasn't had the caffeine cooked out of it andyou'rereallyflyingandeverything'sgoing greatthisstuffisgreatyouneed totryithere'sacouplebucksgonextdoorandgetyourselfsome,YEAH!

If you drink enough, you see God. And you talk to him really fast.

Today I walked in to find the pot of Kona on the counter.

"Yes, it's Thursday," said Mandy, current co-owner of the shop. "I'm going to be closed tomorrow. I hoped you'd be in here today."

I promised to return for seconds. When I did, a couple of hours later, she told me she'd ice some and leave it in the fridge for me for tomorrow. I can let myself into the shop and get it.

Friggin' enablers. God, I love her.

Well, gotta go. I see a bright light and I have a lot to say.

Genius and the rest of us

Cartoonist Garry Trudeau, creator of Doonesbury, has followed a path from a relatively ordinary young life to a position of immense influence. As he himself describes it, it sounds like a series of accidents. He was the son of an illustrious physician, true, but was himself not attracted to a career in medicine. He could have had a career as a well-to-do unknown. But he didn't.

At an evening presentation last night in White River Junction, VT, Trudeau said that he never envisioned a career in cartooning "until about junior year." He drew cartoons and submitted them to the student paper at Yale. They developed a popular following, despite his idiosyncratic drawing style, and that led to an offer from Universal Press Syndicate.

That's right, my aspiring scribblers. They came to him. To put it bluntly, that shit doesn't happen to everyone.

Trudeau admitted that he was in the right place at the right time. While he may not be the voice of his generation, he is certainly a voice of it. In the medium of cartooning he depicted the lives and times of a certain set of Baby Boomer intellectuals. He admitted to his flaws as he described how he covered things like the Vietnam War. As a craftsman, he strives for accuracy in satire. You must first understand what is going on to portray it even in an ironic light.

In a way, I see his adoption of the troops now fighting abroad as a form of atonement for failing to portray them with precision in the Vietnam era. As he says, he was never against the troops themselves, only against the decisions made by political and military leaders to send them to Southeast Asia and to keep them there. So it is today with our military personnel being taxed and expended in Iraq.

"You have to be able to separate between opposing the war and honoring the warrior," he said.

Because Trudeau requested that no recording devices be present last night, I am doing my best to piece this together from memory and a few notes scribbled while the house lights were up. It's a shame, in one regard, because certain points of his talk flowed seamlessly, each quip or joke setting up the next. At other times he seemed to get a little jumbled, as when doing a bit with Supreme Court justices, but was he really stumbling or was I just too ignorant to get the joke? If it was the latter, I was not alone, because no one else laughed until what I, too, perceived as a punchline. Beyond the jokes, he also delivered a call for more people to take up the responsibilities of citizenship, to pay attention to the running of their country. It wasn't said that bluntly, but almost in those terms through the character of Jack Tanner in the HBO series Trudeau did with Robert Altman.

Mention of this collaboration with Altman and Trudeau's work with Elizabeth Swados ("Doonesbury" the musical, Rap Master Ronnie) underscored for me how he had moved into the world of genius from the one in which the rest of us toil in obscurity. You may have your own opinion of the work of Altman and Swados, but at least they're Somebody You've Heard Of. Each is a verifiable heavy hitter. Trudeau is married to Jane Pauley. They can afford not only to live in New York, but to live well there. He hangs out with all sorts of People You've Heard Of. They've all heard of each other. It's a different world.

As his prominence grew, his ability to build his genius in the company of genius grew as well.

I wanted to speak with him, because he inspired my early aspirations. More detail would certainly have helped at the time, but somehow I'd developed the handicap early in life of believing that asking for details constituted prying. A born journalist will pry and be damned, but I came out much more reticent. It dogs me to this day. So last night I had a thick portfolio in my plain room at the Hotel Coolidge, less than 50 yards away, but no polite excuse to lay it before him. He was tired. I knew it had been a long day, because he'd given a lecture that morning at the Center for Cartoon Studies, and now it was close to 10 p.m. I did hang around until the line for book signing dwindled to nothing. Then I identified myself as a finalist in the Union of Concerned Scientists cartoon contest from this summer. He brightened at that, shook my hand and asked which one was mine. I told him and he laughed, indicating recognition. There were only a dozen finalists, so he might well have remembered it. I chose to believe it, anyway, because I'd had a long day at the end of a long life and I could use the reassurance. We actually walked together, slowly, toward the door, and even down the stairs to the street. I didn't try to bend his ear. I just flowed with the group escorting him out, tossing in a remark or two. He said how much he enjoyed his visit to Vermont. I said it might have been quite different across the Connecticut River.

"I live in the state next door," I said. There was a general laugh and some knowing murmurs. "But they need subversives there," I said.

Before I let him go forever, out on the sidewalk, I did hand him one of the business cards my incredibly wonderful wife made for me as a good-luck gift before I went on this journey. Who knows? He might not send those pants to the cleaners with the card forgotten in the pocket, and he might, in a moment of mad boredom, visit one of the two web addresses provided.

I wanted to ask him about the issues he doesn't get to cover, because he has taken on the war and warriors as his focus. Thus has the Bush Administration tied up one more of our national resources in pursuit of his ill-advised military campaign. All the while Trudeau delivers a necessary message about the war, he isn't talking about the economy, health care and the environment. And who is left with the genius connections and the high media profile to put that into cartoon form for the public to get a meaningful chuckle?

We who are not famous work from the ground up. It's hard, underpaid, frustrating and sometimes mightily boring. We're not doing anything that gets us on TV or hanging out with the people who do. We depend on our elevated observers to help us guide our efforts.

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I had an interesting time personally that evening. The whole trip had the sense of a mission. I planned it from compiling a portfolio, to deciding what creative and communicative tools to bring, to resolving that I would plant myself on the sidewalk at least an hour early to be sure I got a good seat.

Food would be a problem. At first I had planned to make enough lunch to supply an early supper as well, but time got away from me as I focused on the portfolio and a few household things that needed to be taken care of, so I headed out with one chicken sandwich, three speckly bananas and the last of a box of Cheez-Its. I hoped I might miraculously find a source of somewhat nourishing food in downtown White River Junction, though I doubted it.

As planned, I got to town in plenty of time to stuff my car behind the Coolidge, where it was immune to the two-hour parking restriction, and then wander the streets to see who I might meet. The Center has a number of really cool people on its staff or associated with it. Unfortunately, there are a lot of cartoonists and related professionals out there. Even if you've seen someone's work and know their name, you may never have seen a picture of them. I looked for the one or two I might recognize.

Robyn Chapman was working the desk at the Coolidge. An award-winning cartoonist and teacher, faculty member at the Center for Cartoon Studies, she still needs a day job, like so many of us. I'm always glad to see Robyn, for no specific reason.

Yards down the block, I had just slipped into the Briggs Opera House to check out the evening's venue, when I had a chance to help Michelle Ollie carry some stuff up the stairs from street level. She's the managing director and co-founder of the Center. She remembered me from phone and email conversations.

Right after that I spotted James Sturm across the street. He's the director of the Center. After a minuscule bit of prompting he remembered me from the previous summer, or at least politely acceded to the possibility.

I wondered if any of the alumni from that workshop who live nearby might show up, but no one came up to me and I didn't see anyone who looked familiar.

With one thing and another, I did not hook up with any food. I did not want to drive anywhere. See? I really will starve first. I did score some Java at the Coolidge Cards convenience store, and used it to wash down my two remaining speckly bananas and the dregs of the Cheez-Its. I spent a couple of hours on the hotel's wireless network, researching wetland ordinances on the Internet. Civic involvement goes on. I have a meeting tonight, in fact.

I was third in line at the door. By 7:30, the line stretched back toward the Coolidge. Up the stairs we went. I had to claim my ticket. I gave my name. The volunteer at the table found the envelope and handed it to me. I proceeded to the next station, having lost a number of places to people who already had tickets in hand. I wasn't too worried, it's a very small theater. But then a very strange thing happened.

"He has a yellow ticket," said the attendant at the door. "He wasn't at the dinner, but he has a yellow ticket for some reason."

"Wait, there was dinner?" I said. My bananas and Cheez-Its rumbled slightly at the thought of genuinely tasty and nutritious food. But I was swept along by the usher to a roped-off area where a seat with my name on it awaited me.

It has happened to me before. Fame I did not know I had preceded me and I received some level of deference above what I had expected. Usually it is a matter of coincidence or mistaken identity. But I supposed someone might have identified me as the region's finalist in the prestigious Union of Concerned Scientists contest. Maybe Trudeau himself had specified it.

I had a good laugh over that line of speculation, but I accepted the seat. I was right next to one marked NHPR. Great! I could do some networking and self promotion with someone from my favorite radio station.

I was pretty sure this was a case of mistaken identity. Shortly, a guy addressed as "Tim" by the usher, was searching a few rows forward for his seat. I wasn't going to put up my hand until someone made me, but I 'll bet his last name is "White." I meant to ask, but he got away from me at the end of the show. And maybe it wasn't. He had his wife with him, and neither seat beside me had her name on it. It worked out for us all, because they got to sit two rows closer. The show was supposedly sold out, but the theater was not full.

NHPR blew it off. I was bummed about that.

When the lights came up at the end, I discovered that Alison Bechdel had been sitting in the first occupied seat to my right. But there's that thing about name recognition without facial recognition. Turns out she looks like one of her characters, but I only caught on to who she was when I heard someone address her and then saw the name tag still taped to the back of her chair. As I leaned in to start to try to make contact, she gave me a look like, "who is this weirdo?" Lacking a good answer, I aborted the approach. I was having trouble with my voice from a couple of hours of silence, purposeful dehydration (don't want to waste time on useless pee stops) and my autumn allergens. I let her slip away.

I'm not a fan of anyone to speak of. I respect what's respectable about a number of people, but I had no powerful urge to buy a book and get it signed. Real personal contact transcends souvenirs, and I'd tapped my charitable budget by buying the ticket to the show. Proceeds benefit the Center for Cartoon Studies. I gave. So while the crush gathered to have books signed, I went out to the lobby. My refreshment sense was tingling. There were cookies! And they were free!

My metabolism had shut down somewhere near the beginning of the show. I'd run out of fuel and my body temperature was approaching the territory of a dormant salamander. If I was going to shake Trudeau's hand, and by god I intended to, I needed something in the furnace so he wouldn't think I was one of the undead.

The oatmeal cookies actually seemed to have some nutritional value. They were probably glued together with a half-pound of butter apiece, but there were bits of oatmeal and other twigs in there to provide some virtue. For some reason, Alison Bechdel bestowed a more benevolent look upon me when she saw me chomping on the cookies like I had just been rescued from the wilderness. I felt better all the way around. Still totally lacked the balls to go up and make like a colleague, but felt better, anyway.

I passed some time conversing with a couple I had met in the line before the show. We all seemed content to talk without exchanging names. I have that dratted tendency to hug anonymity. Agree or disagree with my ideas. My identity does not matter. But, dammit, if I'm going to make something of branding, I have to build that identity. But again, once I do that, it is rude and affectedly coy to try to remain anonymous. You can't win.

After my brief time in the presence of Garry, I went back to the hotel to try to sleep. Part of me was very tired and just wanted to crash out until the bagel joint opened in the morning, with real food and coffee. But my mind churned with the decades of issues connected to this comic quest. I willed it to be silent, but it would not. And in a way I didn't want it to. I wanted to ride it all out, bring myself back to functioning equilibrium. I have to operate the life I have created, even if I change it. I have to stand on its solid ground to be able to step off.

Religious Extremism

A suspected terrorist from a radical Shaker sect blew himself up today while attempting to assemble a bomb.

A statement from the extremist group Shaker Jihad stated that Brother Jacob was unfortunately overcome by the Holy Spirit while performing the tricky task of installing the detonator. Giving way to the tremulous trance for which the Shaker sect is named, he set off the explosive.

See, it just doesn't work for some religions.

Past and Present Touch

Next week I'm going to see Garry Trudeau in White River Junction, Vermont. He's doing a benefit for the Center for Cartoon Studies, where I went to cartoon camp last summer.

Back in the 1970s, Trudeau's work had a great influence on mine. He portrayed the world of college and young adulthood I was soon to enter. His values represented the change in political climate that was shaping national policy as young people started paying more attention to how things were run and who was running them. But before it got as painfully political as it did after his characters graduated from college it was funny. And it was pretty roughly drawn, which gave me hope that I could find success with my own less than polished style.

As Trudeau moved into the adult world and brought his characters with him, they faced the transitions that we all did in the Baby Boom generation. Born almost exactly eight years before I was, he went through the thick of the social unrest and intellectual questioning that emanated from college campuses in the late 1960s. His perspective was different from mine and my contemporaries, because his age group came at these things first. From middle to late "Boom," each year got a slightly different slant. Someone my age might be forgiven for getting the mistaken impression that a lot of issues were taken care of already. We were truly rebels without a cause, because we had witnessed the actions of our older siblings and their contemporaries. We developed our own leanings, whether conservative or countercultural, without facing the live fire of large-scale demonstrations and the specter of a war we might actually be sent to.

What remained was the hedonistic echo of free-loving campus life and a jaunty disrespect for an authority that appeared to shallow thinkers (plentiful among people in their late teens and twenties) to be completely discredited.

I had chosen long ago to be a cartoonist. This was not something one could go to school for. No cartoonist ever visited any school I attended on Career Day. Guidance counselors broke the glass on the emergency equipment box on their office wall when I told them what I hoped to do for a living. "Anything but that!" was the consensus.

"Success is money," said one. "Get into something that makes money and do that art shit as a hobby."

If only I had listened. Oh well.

All the time I thought I was working on becoming a cartoonist I was actually becoming a cartoon. I identified with the characters rather than critically examining what the various comic artists were doing. Then I got pissed off when even Zonker turned out to have more entrepreneurial ability than I do.

Speaking of pissed, what's with Frazz being independently wealthy? That totally negates the value of his simple occupation. Anybody can be cool when they don't have to worry about money. I ride a bike and do underpaid crap work, and I don't do it with a back door cash flow from creative success. Try being hardworking and frustrated for decades and see how cool you be.

If nothing else, I hope to come back from this outing with renewed energy to work on my own stuff, which keeps getting pushed to the back of the desk. I get blocked in to the point where I can't seem to get myself to pull it forward. I'll drag a better portfolio than I took to cartoon camp, in case anyone has a chance to look. That means I have to pull some things forward.

Trudeau was one of the judges on the cartoon contest in which I made the finals this summer. I keep forgetting that happened, because I haven't gotten my free calendars yet.

In a Good Cause

Making enemies may be emotionally gratifying, but making progress is much more so.

The same goes for making friends.

Human connections are important. The desire to have cooperative or adversary relationships may cloud your thinking when dealing with complex or controversial issues.

Sometimes there is no "good fight." Sometimes there is just an important truth that needs to be served.

Here endeth the lint. Doesn't necessarily mean anything, it just drifted out from under the furniture of my mind and I haven't vacuumed it up.

Ax the Tolls

Don't raise the tolls on New Hampshire expressways. Raise the speed limits about 30 miles per hour, erect bleachers along the highways and charge admission to watch.

NASCAR is big business. Why can't we tap into some of that excitement? Most people drive like they're in a race anyway. Without toll gates to slow them down it could be a real crowd pleaser. And drivers will appreciate being able to use the highways for free, at last.

I would be willing to bet it would raise more revenue than the toll hike ever would have, with a lot less grumbling. And it would create a whole new category of business as entrepreneurs opened parking lots for the spectators. It would generate race weekend money all the time.

Drive Free or Die.

Too Much

Once you realize that humans are basically hopelessly delusional, you may feel a sense of relief, but you still have to figure out how to make a life for yourself in those conditions.

First you need to crank up the squelch to filter out most of the paradoxes. If you listen to everything and really try to consider it, your head will spin constantly.

On top of this pile the real issues in politics, environment, and social organization.

Seems like the two options are to babble constantly or to shut up completely.

Hence some long silences. No thought lasts long enough for me to articulate it. Sometimes new information derails a conclusion that was starting to form. Or lack of information makes any attempt to express a conclusion too vague.