The face of unauthorised immigration in the US today (april 2006) (A paper for Catholic Social Thought)

(Unauthorised is a synonymn for illegal or undocumented)

I researched[1] the profiles of unauthorized immigrants and decided to normalize the numbers to the size of a class of 30 as proxy unauthorized immigrants.

If we represented the unauthorized immigrants in the US today, then there would be 24 additional class rooms that help comprise the face of America. A year ago there would have been two people less in this classroom. 20 of us would have been here for less than 10 years, 12 for less than 5. Aside from us, there are two other classrooms full of foreign-born Americans, one has 31 naturalized citizens, and the other has 28 permanent residents. 17 of us would have come from Mexico, 7 of us from Central and South America, (most of those from Central America), 4 of us from Asia, two of us from Europe, and one of us from Africa (or elsewhere).

Between 2000-2005, four Mexicans, one Asian and one Central American would have come here. 15 of us would be adult males, 10 adult females, and five of us would be children. 8 of our (the people in this room) children would be in another room, because they are American citizens by birth.

20 of us would be workers. 1 in Farming and related fields, 2 in Transportation and Material Moving, 2 in Sales and Administrative support, 2 in Management, Business and Professional areas, 3 in Production, Installation and Repair, 4 in Construction and Extractive, and 6 in Service Occupations. Aside from those jobs taken by unauthorized immigrants, there are only three other farming jobs, about 29 other service jobs, 25 other construction jobs, 30 other production jobs and 26 other transportation jobs (a disproportionate amount of immigrants are in these fields). And in total, aside from unauthorized workers, there are 388 other jobs, or 13 other classrooms.

This should give you all a better idea of what the face of unauthorized immigrants looks like, and how they relate to our economic structure.

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[1] http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/61.pdf and http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/us.html

Catholic Worker (a paper for Catholic Social Thought)

(this is drawn from http://www.catholicworker.org )

The Catholic Worker is a liberal Catholic movement started by Dorothy day and Peter Maurin in 1933. Committed to being a prophetic voice in a world turned away from human rights, it calls out injustice in economics, labor, politics, morals and the arms race. And it advocates personalism, a decentralized society, and a “green revolution”. It practices nonviolence, works of mercy, manual labor, and voluntary poverty.

It’s prophetic voice is aimed against the focus on wealth, production, “acquisition… material interests, and… respectability and mediocrity” and turned towards a radical acknowledgement of the human person as central to all human activities. Specifically a few areas they speak out against are unjust interest rates, war-related technology, alienation of workers from their products (inability to purchase their own products and complex production that makes a person only part of the process of production), ineffective and nonresponsive bureaucracy, over-control and regulation of life by government, classism, racism, sexism, conflict caused by the striving for wealth of capitalism, “spiritual destitution”, the arms race especially as an injury to the poor by taking resources that should be used for their benefit.

It’s advocacy is focused on the common good of society (meaning individuals and the whole) “in the service of God”. It focuses on the “freedom and dignity of each person”, taking personal action to address problems instead of playing the blame game, it encourages grass roots projects that are maintainable by small groups (thus distributing production, and remarrying production and the producers), reordering society so that money no longer becomes an end but returns to a means of exchange, relearning the meanings of labor and our relation to the earth, self-sufficiency, “associations of mutality”, and positive cooperation recognizing everyone’s dignity in resolution of conflict.

Its practices are focused on reflecting Christ’s, and “personal and social transformation”. They stand for nonviolence and life and against oppression, for self sacrifice, and prayer, fasting “and noncooperation with evil” (through civil disobedience, protest). Their works of mercy derive from the gospel, the constant teaching of the Church, and the radical concepts of the greatest saints, Basil, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and others. The center of which is that we are stewards of our gifts, and they are meant to satisfy the needs of the world, if we do not use them for such, we steal from those in need. Their idea of manual labor attempts to redignify it, and in a sense proclaim an incarnate theology, where the whole person is most dignified when working, and addressed, the body, mind and soul. And this work coupled with prayer is a gift to give to God. The voluntary poverty increases “knowledge [of] and belief in love.” A radical giving of self to the full disposal of God’s grace, and placing their own boats on the tides of the poor.

Despite this seeming unity of ideals, Catholic worker is very diverse. It is composed of over 185 different communities located in rural and urban areas. Each community is independent of the others, and no licensing is required to be called a “Catholic Worker”. Communities vary in purpose from hospitality to “resistance” (to injustices). And each is subject to the needs and dispositions of whatever community forms it, or maintains it.

The Theory of Relativity and other essays by Albert Einstein

The Theory of Relativity and other essays by Albert Einstein is a compilation of 7 of his essays spanning the years from 1936-1950 and covering his largest contributions to both the practical science and its philosophical interpretation. I will attempt to give a survey of his essays glossing over the more philosophical points and focusing on the physical theories.

1. The Theory of Relativity (1949)

The Theory of Relativity is the “consistent physical interpretation” of motion, space and time. The term relativity derives from its idea that all motion is relative motion, and motion is never in regards to an absolute space like the ether. Though Newtonian mechanics assumes an absolute space, Einstein argues that this is natural, since the earth provides a reference point and that relativistic effects aren’t observed easily at speeds that we normally deal with.

In classical geometry and physics, there is the notion that everything can be measured or located on a 3 or 4 dimensional graph of x,y,z or x,y,z,t. And that such a graph with an origin 0,0,0,0 accurately describes reality. Thus things that occurs with the same time coordinate are simultaneous. But special relativity removes this idea of simultaneity in favor of a measurable definition. For special relativity, the time of an event x relative to me is the time it takes for light to reach me from the event minus the travel time of the light. From this “coincidence” of the light reaching me I can describe which events are simultaneous, through a physical measure. But since the speed of light is always constant (L-Principle) events simultaneous to me, will not be simultaneous to another observer unless they are equidistant between the events as well.

Distance between four dimensional events are described by the Lorentz transform: ds²=dx²+dy²+dz²-cdt² The General Theory of Relativity uses this equation to help describe the “field” which warps time and space about masses. The General theory also describes any inertial frame as equivalent to an accelerated frame. According to Einstein the General Theory is incomplete, as it does not yet describe the “total field”, though he expected the General Theory to be the stepping stone for the final theory.

2. E = MC² (1946)

In this essay, Einstein simply describes the historical development of E=mc². Using a pendulum as the basis for the equivalence of Potential and Kinetic Energy, he attains the equation: mgh=.5mv². But experience shows that the pendulum will stop, due to friction. So what happens? Heat is given off, which was discovered as proportional to the energy radiated. So energy is always conserved, which lead to other areas adopting conservation laws (Einstein cites chemical, electromagnetic, and “all fields”.)

He then continues to explain how mass conservation gets tied into the conservation of energy. He explains that previously this conservation was unnoticed due to the fact that adding an amount of energy that we normally experience to any object would not be able to over come the denominator c² in the equation m=E/c². The amount of energy would have to be enormous or the original mass would have to be comparable to its increase… thus very small. This is why only with atomic physics we begin to see the equivalence.

3. Physics and Reality (1936)

General Consideration Concerning the Method of Science

Einstein argues that due to the radical upheavals in physics today, physicists have to be philosophers, since they alone know the problems intimately. He then does some basic philosophy in the nature of sense experience and his belief that the world is intelligible (he supports this claim with the fact that our theories do actually predict outcomes) amongst other philosophical excursions.

Mechanics and the Attempt to Base all Physics Upon It

Einstein next delves into understanding the concepts of space, body and time. Two properties that we assign to “body” are an existence independent of time and observation. From the concept of body, space arises as a body of a special type. This special type of body is formed from notions of position. Which is best described as a type of contact with space. Time appeared objective, from everyday experience, as things that were seen as occurring simultaneously were assumed to have occurred simultaneously, despite their distance from the observer and the time required for the travel of light.

Einstein considers these understandings (or misunderstandings) of nature to have been fortunate for the development of mechanics. This lead to the concepts of material points, law of inertia, law of motion, and laws of force.

The Field Concept

Einstein traces the development from Newton’s particle view of E&M to Maxwell’s field view. Which is incomplete due to singularities reached from the total differential equations used to solve the field. From this Einstein argues that “the whole theory must be based solely on partial differential equations and their singularity-free solutions.”

The Theory of Relativity

Maxwell’s theory with Lorentz transforms were so successful that the question of an absolute space came back into question. The question was: is speed of light constant in all frames? If it wasn’t constant, then there is a preferred frame of reference, which would be absolute space (possibly in the form of an ether). If it was constant, then there wouldn’t be an absolute space. From this and experimental knowledge, the invariance of the speed of light was raised to the level of a principle (the “Light Principle” or “Light Postulate”, LP for short). This principle led to the Lorentz transforms being applied to a metric in 4-d space in the form of: ds²=dx₁²+dx₂²+dx₃²-dx₄². Where x_1-3 are spatial coordinates and x₄ is time. This application of the LP led to the denial of an absolute time. Also, another postulate had to be declared to account for the equivalency of different inertial and accelerated frames (Principle of Relativity, or PR).

These two together the LP and PR are compatible with Maxwell’s equations, but not with classical mechanics. This is due to the action at a distance and “absolute instantaneousness” of classical concepts and with the contradictory field idea of Relativity. General relativity takes the 4-d metric and moves it to a “general (Reimannian) metric of Bane ds²=g_uvdx_udx_v (summed over u and v)” This results from an incorporation of gravitation into the theory.

Quantum Theory and the Fundamentals of Physics

Classical physics failed as the speed of light failed to be infinite, and instead finite, it also failed as the size of particles failed to be zero, and instead finite (values determined by Plank’s constant). He again states the Probability interpretation of Quantum Mechanics(QM), and then states EPR’s argument for the incompleteness of QM.

Relative Theory and Corpuscles

Einstein tries to show that using partial differential equations, one can come to a complete field for bodies (especially corpuscles) without singularities.

Summary

Einstein makes the claim that the truth of a theory should be judged on criteria of usefulness of the theory’s theorems via observed sense data. He also argues for intuition and a priori theories that can then correlate to sense experience to create more a priori theories. A chain that gets “harder and longer”. He also briefly summarizes the whole paper.

4. The Fundamentals of Theoretical Physics (1940)

Einstein defines physics as “that group of natural sciences which base their concepts on measurements. And whose concepts and propositions lend themselves to mathematical formulation.” Part of physics is the search for the foundations of all physics; the unified theory of those natural sciences. Unlike the foundations of buildings, these foundations are the ones most weathered by new insights.

Newton was the first to strive for a unified theory (according to Einstein). Though E&M, and light were not very well accounted for in his theory. The wave nature of light and E&M are what slowly eroded Newtonian physics, by leading to field theories that challenged action at a distance theories as ad hoc. Theories that eventually equated light and E&M thanks to Maxwell, et al. From this came Special Relativity and Quantum Mechanics; two theories that seemed to have widened the gap in the search for unity of theories.

Using Lorentz transforms and shifts in frames of reference, Special Relativity unified Maxwell’s equations and unified mass, energy and E&M. General Relativity applied field theory to gravitation. But its greatest weaknesses are that gravity and electromagnetic theories are separated, and that it fails to describe quantum phenomena.

Quantum physics begins with the discovery of quanta by Max Plank as he was trying to solve the UV catastrophe. This idea of quanta was quickly applied to atomic phenomena especially absorption and emission spectra. From this derived Schrodinger’s wave mechanics and Born’s probabilistic interpretation which showed Schrodinger’s waves were probability waves that described the likelihood of finding a system in a particular location or state. This and other aspects of Quantum Mechanics leads to the denial of any “rigorously deterministic structure of nature”. Though Einstein still holds hope for the ability to represent reality without probability.

5. The Common Language of Science (1941)

Is a foray into the understanding of language, and the dominance of Science. Science is understood as striving for simplicity, “clarity and acuteness” of meaning that permits symbols and meanings to be manipulated transnationally. This leads to a superiority that given a goal can show itself, without a goal it is solely a useless tool.

6. The Laws of Science and the Laws of Ethics (1950)

Is a brief paper that discusses his thoughts on the laws of ethics. Stating ethics’ premises are ultimately based on logical arbitrariness, but also psychological and genetic reality. He then comments on their worthiness as a field of endeavor and their truth for humanity.

7. An Elementary Derivation of the Equivalence of Mass and Energy (1946)

Is exactly that. It utilizes the law of conservation of momentum, a radiation expression, and a “well known expression of for the aberration of light”.

These essays together show the broad genius of Einstein and together show his understanding of science and its impact upon life.

Skunks. (A nature writting for Creative Non Fiction)

Disclaimer… the following must be read in a Leesiana accent.

Skunks. Black, white, brown. They’s problems. And no it aint theys smell. Theys illegals. They take the jobs of nice, homebred and American, dogs and cats. Thinkin we want them as pets. We don’t want them as pets, we could do just fine without them. It’s rampant propaganda. I says we join those 30 other states that have taken this problem head on and do the only sensible restriction we could. NO IMMIGRATION.

Now I knows what you thinking. What’d the skunk ever do to us. It aint a matta of what they did or didn do. It a matter of morality. It aint about color, they just aint native. Sure, theys bes spoutin propaganda sayin they got 9 native species. But they’s weasels and nocturnal. That means theys shifty. Why can’t they work in the day? What they hidin. An look at what they eat. They ominvores, they eat anything. Thats Un-American!

And what kind of pet attacks with the wrong end? That just ain’t right, and well tween you an me, it almost seems… well, Indonesian or maybe Filipino. And we all know how unnatural their animals are. My guess is they doin some kinda genetic manipulation project designed to destroy American culture. By pollutin our pet stock. And that just aint natural.

So in conclusion, we need to kick ‘em out. Get rid of those illegals. It’s not they stink, nor they color, nor wha they did or didn do. Its morality. They propagandists, weasels, Indonesian or Filipino, but most of all, theys just unnatural.

Three page reflection on Ghandi the movie

The Movie Gandhi was very interesting. The story of his non-violence movement was incredibly well done. From South Africa to his death, it was filled with things that provoke thought. Though it does make him superhuman by the way every word from his mouth was profound, it does present his ideals in a way that contrasts against those so ready to go to violence.

I am not a pacifist, and in fact I believe it the duty of every man to protect the weak. It is the duty of every man to protect his family and sacrifice himself for their sake. This movie however, makes me wonder when I would be willing to use non-violence against an aggressor. Would it be only against an enemy as civilized as the British? Only against an enemy with a free press? Or are there other limits that I’ve not considered or that I’d be willing to go beyond. It is at first very clear to me that I would kill any many that is pursuing the death of my family. For my own life, however, it is not immediately evident what I would do. Initially, I would reserve the right to proportionality. Though I also see that I could be convinced that my life could be sacrificed for something greater, and perhaps a nonviolent movement where the aggressors are acting to kill/beat only me and compatriots and not my family (unless they are compatriots) is a case where I’d participate.

I find his method fascinating. But I also wonder how unique it is to India. Or must something completely different occur in other cultures/histories? In the United States, MLK was not seeking an independent nation, but was suing for equality. This is a victory for nonviolence, but its it the same victory as India? I tend to think not. India was a revolution against a civil occupier, the civil rights movement was a demand for equal rights from a government considered their own. They seem very similar, but I still see critical differences, the demand for native rule (because of civil rights and severe poverty) and the demand for equality in the government differ in an overthrow of sorts and a working in the system. Though I think both are appropriate actions, both were contingent on the situation, and I think they were both only possible because of the democratic civil society they both developed in.

In a situation such as China I think a nonviolent movement could be victorious if given a specific goal, and perhaps democracy is such a goal that could be achieved, but the details of the movement must come from the people and be inspired by their history, common culture, and their national strengths. In situations such as Sudan, Ruanda and other developing African nations, I have great doubt that a nonviolent movement could ever be successful. Factions seem too split, too aggressive, and seem to devalue their opponents as not human.

The commonness of Humanity seems a key to a successful civil nonviolent movement. In civil countries that consider citizens human (e.g., India, USA, and China) a civil movement could occur fruitfully. But in others where factions do not consider opponents human, a nonviolent movement can not readily make an impact on the psyche of the opponent. In those countries, a program of humanizing the opponents must occur first, then, once humanized, perhaps in a few situations non-violence could work. Though I still would suspect a civil society that follows the rule of law must be in place for nonviolence to really impact the national psyche.

I think testimony to this is the numerous pogroms throughout history. If nonviolence really worked all the time, would not the murder of innocent women and children turn a country against itself?

And if the response to this point is that they were not publicized then I would claim that in itself is the point. I claim that they were not publicized for two reasons, because of a call by the population in support of the pogrom or because of a government censorship program. In the first case, advertising would not work, and in the second, advertising can only occur in a limited and covert way. In both cases active defense of human life must occur, specifically for those who do not choose martyrdom. If a man chooses martyrdom for himself but his family does not (or the weak do not), then he is truly not living as Christ did for his Church. Christ laid his life down for his Bride, NOT for himself. In this case a man would be selfish, self-centered and unworthy of any praise, for he has failed in his role as husband, as male, and as the image of Christ. Though once a man has been denied means for retaliation, he must still seek to lay his life down for his family (and the weak) by any means possible, which very likely would be limited to nonviolence.

The movie Gandhi was very thought provoking about the nature and use of non-violence. And I think I now have a greater appreciation for the power, uses, and methods of nonviolence. Though I still remain not a pacifist, I can see clear examples where civil disobedience and nonviolence can be effective methods for change.

The Tower of Babel (Book Proposal for Creative Non Fiction)

Student: `In phenomena, what is true?'

Master: `The very phenomena are themselves truth.'

Student: `The how should it be revealed?'

The master lifted the tea tray.

~Zen Koan

How many people have ever wondered if there really is an essential difference in religions? Or is it simply a matter of words? Simply an artifact of language and that over time it will be realized that everyone is talking about the same exact thing…

Over the next year I will visit twelve different religious traditions and follow a leader of the religion around, taking on the culture, dress and lifestyle. But as it seems often that the difference is merely a matter of language and not of meaning, I will select locations where the language is not my own. This will permit my eyes to see more than perhaps I would if caught in discussions of theology. I want to see their theology lived out. I want to see their reactions to a foreigner who can not speak their tongue. How do they really live out what they teach and preach? What do they seem most concerned with? How do they respond to the poor, to the rich? What does it mean to worship? How “attached” are they to the world?

The locations I will visit and leaders I will work with are: Mozambique with an evangelical Christian minister, Persia with a Zoroastrian leader, Nepal with a Hindu leader, Tibet with a Vajrayāna (Tibetan) Buddhist Monk, Italy with a Roman Catholic Priest, Turkey with an Eastern Orthodox Priest, Saudi Arabia with a Muslim Imam, Israel with a Jewish Rabbi, Japan with a Zen Buddhist Monk, Punjab, India with a Sikh leader, North Korea with a Juche (state atheist “philosophy”) leader, and China with a Confucian/Taoist practitioner.

One Day.

We wake before dawn, beating even the newspapers to the front steps. Before I realized I was out of my bed, I had already showered, and was stepping out into the cold Indiana Air. I like Indiana, it’s more urban than some of the places I’ve been, where two cars on a road constitutes severe congestion and a traffic jam. It reminds me of where I grew up, those various cities I call home; D.C., Monterey and Athens. The van is dark and frozen. Catching your breath won’t help unless you like icicles, only nuzzling into your coat and scarf has any chance of saving you. Of keeping you dreaming long enough that you just might fall back to sleep.

The chill air is nothing new, but touching my hair I realize it has become frozen string. From now on, showers at night. The cold brittleness seems a bit apt. It’s like the dream on the edge of reality, ready to break full force into consciousness at the slightest disturbance, yet desperately holding onto its delicate moment of existence. The cold snaps. And back into existence, I crash. From my sweet dreams; “Yes, you’re really here, you’re really here in a van with 9 others, really a missionary and really awake.”

I’ve awoken to good and bad, to reality and something beyond. Only I seem to be aware of this, as the van shivers through the streets and roads, the highways and private drives. The scenery grabs my thoughts.

The sun has just peaked her head, as we pull up to a small city in the middle of Kansas. My mind slowly comes back. I must have been gone for a few hours. Grainfield? Weren’t we just here? No, I think that was Wheatsville… or something.

The town is small; one street has all the stores… actually one block and not even both sides of the street. Theresa and Mike, the team leaders, tell us we have some free time. There’s a slide over there. Jim comes with me.

It’s quiet, but Jim and I talk. How’ve you been? What do you think of the team? Of the girls? Of the team leaders? Are we going to make it? How are the retreats for you? What are you doing this summer? What do you miss? The conversation is continuous and rhythmic, but paced like the slow drip of water from a faucet in the middle of the night.

We start walking to check out the main street. It has a single store with a white rectangle for a sign. Painted in black, the words “The Store” stand almost as a joke but also as a commentary. This place is simple. And that’s okay. It doesn’t take itself seriously, and doesn’t need to. It’s happy.

Jim says it’s 9am, time to head to the church on the next block.

We didn’t have a retreat today. Instead we get to do spring cleaning on the church… a cavernous affair with stained glass streaming light upon the color treated cement floor. We divide into groups, cleaning pews, windows, confessionals, floors and various accoutrements. I choose to work the ladders cleaning the windows, as everyone else is scared of climbing them. I hate ladders. They wobble and I’m sure I’ll die falling off one; I’ve always had dreams of that. Jim and I move the ladders around he cleans the bottom of the windows, I clean the top, two to three stories higher than the slick cement below. The walls brace the ladder well, and after the first few, I’m not too scared, but no body would notice. I pace myself to seem natural. To seem composed.

As we finish, I look at the Crucifix hanging mid air above the altar. It’s dusty and seems to need the Good Friday cleaning that everything else is getting. Can we clean it? The Parish contact agrees, and we move the tall ladder precariously through the aisle, a few times almost toppling over.

The corpus is a beautiful bronze casting, two times the size of a normal body, perhaps more; majestic, silent, beautiful. I almost cry as I climb the ladder to clean it. My mind is transported back almost two thousand years, to the first Good Friday. I tremble every step I take. Not knowing what to do. What to say to a man dying on a cross before my eyes. What comfort can you offer?

I take the hands, as a medic would, carefully and gently cleaning the lacerations. I daub the feet with soft cotton, and embrace them in my hands. Kissing the memorial wounds. I’ve cleaned down one side, now I must go up the other. Wiping the dry sweat from the thighs straining to remain standing, straining for each breath.

I clean His chest, wondering what it would have felt like, strong, proud, to the very end or clammy and suffocating, fragile as a real human. I clean the broken arch of His back, ripped by whips into swatches of hanging flesh. I clean his crown, getting pricked and stabbed by the intermeshed five inch thorns sharpened to conical points. My thin hands can’t even fit through to clean his hair, the thorns so dense, so painful. I can’t even place my hand on his hair. I can’t even offer that small comfort and affection that I hold so dear.

I wish I was alone. I wish I could pour torrents from my eyes. Be overcome by the sorrow and joy. I wish I could rip the thorns off, and kiss His brow. I wish the bronze was the clammy flesh.

I descend to the call to meet in the church hall for lunch. Outside is bright, sunshiny and warm. The ocean air a light blanket that covers and cools.

The parish hall is next door.

Lunch is what I’ve heard will be standard fare on the road; lasagna. I guess it could be worse. At least I’ll be fed.

It’s been raining outside the past few days, but now it’s a vibrant sky and low 80’s. A few of the friends I’ve made here at training have decided to renew our after lunch ultimate Frisbee game. So I clip my flip flops to the back of my belt with a red caribiner that I keep for such opportunities and walk barefoot across the squishy-pine coned camp to the lower fields. The lower fields are lush green, a foot or two higher than and surrounded by a horseshoe lake that turns a glance into full trance and into a meditation on the beauty of God. A trance only to be awakened from by the call “Game-on!”

The field is flooded two inches or more, but we play on. Slides from catches distract us and the game becomes about gnarly grabs and sweet slides, we forget score. Body surfing now dominates, as does mud caked wetly on our skin. Bystanders are pulled in and a mud war erupts. Cool, sticky brown orange mud beneath a light and warm atmosphere. I could lie here forever.

The call for showers rings out. I don’t want to leave. But I must.

My shower is quick and thankfully warm. And now I’m rushing out the door. Most days are crazy, I feel like I’m being pulled from one spot to the next. Dragged like an anchor by my own will and compelled by my leader’s whip. I knew this would happen. I knew it back in Indiana. But today my asthma is acting up, and so is my rash, so I’m heading to a doctor for more meds.

The doctor’s office is a block from the beach in lovely San Diego, California. This guy’s office already seems like that of a quack… obscure location, and by a beach, great, maybe he’ll listen to me and give me the drugs I need to not die. Forms are filled, and a bit later I’m called in. It seems a small operation, with only a few narrow clinical rooms. Moments later a twenty something beach bum with a lab coat enters. Great. I tell him as plainly as I can that my asthma is acting up, so I need something for that, and my rash is acting up, so if he could hit me with a steroid shot, it’d get better.

His short brown hair keeps its light bounce despite his client’s self diagnosis and prescriptions that are subtle innuendos about his lack of qualification. He takes a moment and asks an obscure question. “When does your asthma act up, you seem fine now?” I stumble with mutterings, which eventually evolve into coherence about maybe being around my coworkers. After a few more obscurities, he asks something almost personal. “When was the last time you were happy?”

I left the office dazed. I have eczema? Is that what this year and a half old rash has been? The other diagnosis? Yeah, he’s a quack and I don’t believe him, but I’m not telling anyone about it, just in case he’s right. What would it change anyway? They’d think I was trying to get out of work or trying to hide from the ever and all important TEAM. Individuals don’t matter, unless they’ve been assimilated. And how true is a concern based on a new description? Am I to be more pitied and cared for because of a diagnosis, and not because I’ve been in pain the whole time? You don’t care about me. Stay the hell out of my life.

I pop the first pill after I’ve escaped on a brief “walk.” I’m going to keep this quiet. No one will know. It won’t matter anyhow.

The van arrives to pick us up and we pile in. I get in quickly to grab my favorite seat, the back left corner, away from the team leaders in the front. Texas is so nice this time of year, before the first frost.

I normally zone out when I get in the van. Yet for some reason, when she talks I’m now listening. Just two weeks ago, I despised Kat. Absolutely annoyed by any words from her mouth, but now instead of being as sarcastic as I realize I could be, and really crave to be, I smile genuinely. We had a day off together last week, where I learned she wasn’t who she seems. Where I learned of a beautiful soul who loved quite and simplicity. A smiling face that was content to smile.

Now I talk to her and try to grab her attention, try to learn more about this sweet and kind face that seems to glow when I turn my eyes towards it. I’ve always known she was beautiful. But now I see something much deeper, a beauty that resonates from her soul outward, something 10,000 times more beautiful and attractive than her soft face.

The van slows as we stop at the restaurant. It’s dinner time, and our host families have decided to take the whole team out for Italian food. I never expected to see Italian food in the middle of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I also never expected to see snow in early October.

We’ve been on the road for only a few days. And so far it’s been pretty nice. Host families are amazing! Every day we travel to a new parish to do a retreat for their youth, usually 5-6 cities in one week. And every night we get to meet some of the most amazing families, each of whom open their homes to a pair of us for the night. Five parish families taking in ten young adults for the night, feeding us with food and giving us rest on their best beds, but most of all offering us comfort from the road. Offering us family affection that affirms we’re of value, that we’re people, and that we’re loved. Every night is a mini celebration, a welcome home party of sorts. And every night we are home.

The Italian food is actually amazing. But I can’t decide if it’s the people or the food. I suspect it’s the people, but amongst the laughter and smiles, the joy and stories of faith, I really don’t care. It’s good to be alive. It’s good to be here.

I’m supposed to meet with Theresa and Mike after dinner, and they finally call me upstairs. I’ve been struggling with my team leaders. Though really it’s only Theresa that leads and she astonishes me. We’re in St. Louis right next to Saint Louis University staying in one of the houses SLU has set aside for its faculty. The owner is an old NET team member and current professor. National Evangelization Teams. NET and Netters. It’s my life lately, and I’ve done it long enough to be called a Netter.

Two weeks ago I asked to go see my family for Thanksgiving, instead of the weekend I got the day before. Though I wanted an escape longer, I was okay with it. I asked all the questions and got all the permissions. After morning mass I was allowed to leave. I was to be picked up by my best friend who would drive five hours that day to bring me back to my homes. I’d head to Austin first to see the “family” I chose, and then to San Antonio to see the family I was graced with by birth.

Everything seemed mystical that morning I was to leave, I had been separated from my families since late summer, and though this group wanted to replace them, their feet were too small to fit the shoes. My friend arrived on time and prepared to leave when Theresa said I couldn’t leave! What? I have permission! Mike, the other leader arranged it through the office! My world was spinning. I asked Mike to support me. But he turned tail and hid behind his training to support the other leader regardless.

After failing in my attempts to get a hold of the office and verify that everything was cleared, I left. Upsetting Theresa’s sense of authority.

Tonight we’re supposed to sit down and talk about it. I was ready, I had a list of things that I was upset about, and had prepared myself for some give and take, prepared myself for a discussion. It started off well. “Lets talk about this [problem] so I can hear your concerns about the situation.” Good. She wants to discuss and I’ll get a fair trial. “We’ve already decided your punishment.” WHAT? You just said you want to hear my concerns and my side of the story! She didn’t want to hear my concerns. “How can you say you want to hear my side when you’ve already judged me?” She mumbled some words that were meaningless. She didn’t care. And I was appalled.

We talked for a while, two different ideas conflicting in a discussion that was incomprehensible. I wanted a give and take. She wanted me to give.

It became a sermon about why I was wrong. There was no concern for the list of problems and injustices I wrote down. And when she realized I had a list, annoyed, she asked me to read it off, then dismissed it entirely. She asked “why won’t you obey.” I responded, “you have not the authority.” I had rights and one is to be respected. An impasse.

“My authority comes from God” suddenly rang out like the dying shriek from a mortally wounded animal. Shocked, the whole room went silent as aghast I didn’t know whether to laugh or run. Did she really just say that? Is that the substance of her argument? Is that it?

Yes, she was serious. Her face distorted by the elongated shadows from a single light that hid the ends of her lips and eyes. She was serious. My reasoning based upon Catholic tradition, based upon the catechism and Aquinas, the Popes and the Fathers, was met with the only thing it couldn’t defeat.

I’m going for a walk.

The cold air comforts me. The rhythmic thud of my shoes on the quiet pavement takes me elsewhere, to a deep thought that I only catch when I walk. I’ve always been cheered up by a frozen wind attacking head on, it has always invigorated me, always reminded me that I stand. I may do nothing else well, but standing against wind I can do, even when tears are in my eyes.

There’s something about walking to the Eucharist that gives me a sense of profound focus and direction, all my fears can be answered, all my hurts healed, all my anxieties calmed. I used to be an atheist. I say that so many times these days… every retreat telling my story of faith. I used to think the Eucharist was just a piece of bread that would taste better with some peanut butter & jelly. But then some girls tricked me into liking them… and I followed them to a Eucharistic chapel. Months later, I had an experience. I can’t describe it except in acting out the tensions in my soul. I can’t touch what happened with an accounting of thoughts and actions. I can only touch the power of it by saying things that may not have happened, but really really did.

I sat there reading a book. Something interesting and educational about the Church I wanted to prove wrong, but also wanted to give a fair hearing. Just reading in the chapel. By myself at 4am. Quiet. Peaceful. Content. Alert. Golden light filling the room after being filtered by false windows. The Eucharist sitting on the altar, in the center of a gilded monstrance, a sunburst sitting atop a candlestick base. Two angels knelt beside the altar, holding stone vigil.

I looked up for no reason than to look.

No other reason.

I looked and yelled.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING THERE?!”

“WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME?”

“YOU’VE BEEN THERE THE WHOLE TIME AND DIDN’T TELL ME!”

His sweet face smiled at me as I raged desperately in the last fits of faithlessness.

He smiled.

I was overcome and tears poured. He was in the Eucharist and I could no longer be an atheist. I was a Catholic and I no longer had any choice in the matter. He had made that choice for me.

It’s cold outside in Gary, Indiana and inside the chapel is warmth. I have a minute and then I need to sleep. It’s 1 am and we wake in four hours.

Living Wage

Living Wage

A living wage “is generally considered to require that a person working forty hours a week, with no additional income, should be able to afford housing, food, utilities, transport, health care and a certain amount of recreation.”[1] The purpose of a living wage regulation is to provide equal access to basic necessities of life for those below the poverty line, in an attempt to eliminate working poverty. With the great excess of wealth in our country it might seem odd that a living wage is not in place for the majority of Americans. To attempt to understand this I will briefly present the problems and responses to the problems of a living wage standard.

Problems

Limited effect: Current living wage regulations are limited to a select few cities and their contractors. Thus limiting the effect a living wage has on poverty, both by geographically limiting it to urban areas and by limiting the effect economically by being specific to municipal activities and organs. Thus for a LWR to be of any significant use, it would need to be either statewide or nationwide.

Ineffective: The Employment Policies Institute has conducted research[2] that suggests a living wage regulation is ineffective, by driving out of the job market the very people it’s meant to assist. This is due to an influx of competition (in the study from High School students) who wish to capitalize on the higher wages.

Inflation: A statewide or nation wide LWR could potentially disrupt the economy, causing inflation and possibly causing collapse. With a universally increased consumer buying power, prices might begin a slow rise. With a slow rise in cost, a sensible living wage that is tagged to a Cost of Living Adjustment would also increase, thus increasing more the buying power, and subsequently increasing prices a little more. This could turn quickly into a vicious logarithmic cycle that causes prices to outpace income, returning the targets of a LW back to poverty and bringing a state or nation with them.

Offshore jobs: a company faced with increased labor costs and decreased profits might consider locating production out of nation to return profits to pre-LW rates. This would reduce the overall employment in the economy most likely affecting the least skilled and lowest paid first. This is the very group that a LW is intended to help, but might instead abandon.

Responses to Problems

Limited effect: A statewide or nationwide LW seems most appropriate and desirable, but the movement towards a fair wage must begin somewhere. Cities are currently the easiest place to organize LW standards. Ultimately, cities should begin to pressure state and national government to adopt LW standards.

Ineffective: Increased competition for jobs offering a LW might actually improve the overall pay of lower and mid-echelon employees. With the ability of employees to live by working 40 hours a week in an increased number and selection of jobs, companies will have to lure employees in with new incentives, which can range from rapid advancement to higher starting pay.

Inflation: The increased focus on attracting and maintaining employees might arrest inflation, by increasing corporate costs and reducing corporate spending. Reducing corporate spending would reduce the overall amount of money in the economy, with money going to basic necessities instead of large scale investment.

Offshore jobs: many of the lower paid and least skilled workers are foreign nationals who have emigrated from their countries by necessity due to the overwhelming poverty they experienced in their own countries. A company moving offshore to a foreign country will most likely end up in those countries with high emigration rates to the United States, for the same reasons that the émigrés have left; poverty. A situation of poverty in a country provides a great opportunity for a company to reduce costs and benefit the local economy while offering a living wage in their new country of residence. Thus poverty can be addressed in the countries that have the highest problem. Yes, this will reduce the overall jobs in the United States and yes, we will have to deal with the immediate economic shock on the people and locales whose jobs are lost. But trying to avoid this shock could create even worse problems in the future. And those problems would continue to be international in scope with local patch work solutions, whereas we could make them local problems with international solutions.

A living wage is important to the dignity of a human person and the lack of one needs to be addressed. People deserve the right to live. There are problems with a LW and they will be difficult but these can be dealt with. Passing the issue off to future generations will not help the issue, but make it exponentially worse. If we deal with it now, we permit creative solutions to appear while we can still control the severity of the economic backlash.

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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_wage 03/09/2006

[2] http://www.epionline.org/news_detail.cfm?rid=57 03/09/2006

The Making of the Atomic Bomb

The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes is a work of nonfiction chronicling the scientists, discoveries and other events surrounding the first nuclear fission weapons.

The first part of the book discusses the web of relationships and discoveries that occurred from around the turn of the century to beginning of World War 2. The discoveries and people varied from Leo Szilard and his idea of a chain reaction, Bohr and his model of the atom and insight that atomic number should decide periodic table location, Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner and the Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes, Chaim Weizemann and Cordite, transmutation, the Mass Spectrograph, the Cyclotron, Neutrons, the difference between slow and fast Neutrons and many more discoveries, inventions and scientists. Then the book discusses how this web of relationships was able to evacuate scientists from Germany, Italy and Russia, who were or had Jewish family. In addition to simple evacuation, the Physicists outside of Germany, Italy and Russia were able locate jobs relatively quickly for the émigrés.

The second part of the book discusses the formation of the Manhattan Project itself, and touches on the developments in Germany and Japan.

Allies

The allied program was mainly a program by the US and UK. Russia was left out initially due to the migration of most scientists to the US and UK before and after Germany instituted anti-Jewish laws that prohibited Jewish civil servants. The US took the brunt of the research willingly as the UK was on the battlefront and needed technologies that could be implemented immediately, and that would not require as great of resources as an atomic program would. Towards the end of the war, however, the atomic program was kept secret from Russia via conscious decisions by Churchill and FDR. This was despite the objections by Bohr and others that doing so would create mistrust over a technology that Russia could attain rather quickly, once aware that it existed.

In the beginning the program was nothing more than individual physicists discovering interesting things about atoms, and publishing them. Leo Szilard realized how dangerous this would be if they discovered road markers on the path to an atomic weapon, published them, and Nazi Germany’s atomic program benefited. He went on a mission to get the scientists to hold a code of secrecy and submit research to the US government for safekeeping and support. Initially it wasn’t very successful in trying to reign in scientists who tended towards a free information exchange, but with the influence of other scientists who saw the real possibility of an atomic weapon, secrecy began. With the help of Einstein the group of physicists was able to alert Washington to the very real possibility of such a weapon and of its probable development by Germany. Washington responded by organizing the Advisory Committee on Uranium which was to take its ultimate form as the Manhattan Project after varied evolutions. The Manhattan Project was the secret and full scale development of the atomic weapons. It involved various locations of scientist (the main location being at Los Alamos, New Mexico) and two main factories in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Hanford, Washington, both of which were extraordinary undertakings to build from ground up.

The Atomic project quickly developed theories and experimental evidence about the use of Tubealloy (codename for generic Uranium), Magnesium (Codename for Uranium 235) and Copper (codename for Plutonium). It developed the egg-boiling experiment (codename for developments of a self sustained reaction in an uranium pile) into fruition with the first self sustained chain reaction observed by Fermi’s team December 2 1942.

Development of isotope separation technologies was greatly influenced by the threat of a German Atomic project, and thus economics was much secondary. To this effect a policy of parallel development occurred with five different technologies being built: a centrifuge plant, gaseous barrier diffusion plant, electromagnetic separation plant, graphite piles and heavy water piles. Ultimately they were used in conjunction with each other to maximize efficiency.

Another important aspect was Gadget development. Gadget was the term used for the bomb designs themselves. Initially two were selected as most promising, a canon-bomb (where critical mass of Uranium was completed by shooting the missing part into a sphere, triggering an explosion) and an implosion design (which had a hollow sphere of uranium crushed into a solid sphere by explosives creating a critical mass). The canon-bomb initially called the Tall Man (a reference to FDR) eventually developed into the Little Boy when new understandings allowed them to reduce the length of the cannon. The implosion design, called the Fat Man (a reference to Churchill) was the most technically problematic of the two designs, and required cutting edge technologies like an IBM computer, explosive lenses (focused and directed explosions) and the development of calculations for hydrodynamics of an implosion.

By March 3 1944 the program was in such full swing that the first atomic bomb drops were practiced by B29s at Muroc Army Air Force Base in California in order to test for needed modifications to the aircraft. This evolved in September into Paul Tibbets’ command of the project codenamed “Silverplate.” “Silverplate” was the creation of the 509^th Composite Group whose mission, unknown to even them, was to deliver the atomic bomb.

Germany

Though the prospect of Germany having an atomic bomb program was the reason that the US and UK were pursuing their own programs, there was no active intelligence program to discover the progress of a German program until the end of the war.

The German program was stifled by many problems and setbacks. Perhaps the first was the reduced number of atomic physicists, due to the Jewish laws that encouraged many Jewish Physicists to escape to the UK and US. Another was the miscalculations ruling out carbon as a moderator for a chain reaction. (Carbon was a cheaper alternative to heavy water). Without a cheap moderator the German fission program was tied to an expensive and rare resource that came from one factory in the world in Vemork, Norway. This factory was attacked several times during the war, limiting the ability of German Physicists even more.

Circa 1942, the Germans scuttled their Atomic Bomb project, as they expected a bomb to not be developed in time for the current war, and with a scarcity of resources they decided to use their resources to develop weapons that might impact the war. They did however continue their research into fission reactors as power sources to move vehicles. Ultimately at the end of the war in Europe, German physicists had just created a test reactor that Heisenberg estimated if increased by 50% in size would create a self sustaining chain reaction.

Japan

Unlike the civilian origins of the atomic programs in the UK, US and Germany, the Japanese project originated in the military via a report requested by and prepared for the director of the Aviation Technology Research Institute of the Imperial Japanese Army. In 1941, Tokutaro Hagiwara was the first to suggest a hydrogen bomb ignited by an atomic weapon. Between 1942 and 1943, the Japanese Navy convened a committee to decide whether or not to pursue atomic bomb research. During this investigation, the Navy decided to encourage the development of other technologies as an atomic bomb seemed unreachable during the war, by any of the parties. (For Japan, it would require “a tenth of the annual Japanese electrical capacity and half of the nation’s copper output” in addition to approximately ten years and finding enough uranium in the first place). At the same time, research into a fission reactor was encouraged by the Navy. Also at this time, then University of Kyoto, where Tokutaro Hagiwara taught, received funding for atomic bomb development by the Fleet Administration Center of the Navy.

Despite the Navy withdrawing from major support of an atomic weapon, the Army continued to do so. But was plagued by misunderstandings such as: Army Liason: “If uranium is to be used as an explosive, 10 kg is required. Why not use 10 kg of a conventional explosive?” Scientist: “That’s nonsense.” (pp. 582)

Ultimately the bulk of the Japanese atomic bomb project went up in flames, due to firebombing by America B-29s, which caught the wooden building which housed the gaseous thermal diffusion equipment (Japan’s method of U235 extraction) on fire.

The Making of the Atomic Bomb is packed with stories that attempt to bring life to the characters, times and events that surrounded the development of the first nuclear weapons.

Re: free will isn't so problematic

This is from a discussion we're having in my Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics class:

So in either case we end up not having the free will that we would like to have. In a deterministic universe we don't seem to have genuine freedom to do other than what we in fact do, and in an indeterministic universe it's not clear how we can claim authorship and responsibility for actions that arise from indeterministic causes.

But the universe is either deterministic or indeterministic. That exhausts the possiblities. So it seems like genuine freedom of the will, the kind that most people want when then they say they want it, is impossible.

My response:
I agree that the world has to be either deterministic or indeterministic. But I think there's a difference between a materialist and a dualist idea of determinism.

I think a non material mind could be a self-determined entity. Whereas it would appear the only self-determined entity in a materialist perspective would be the system taken in its entirety.

I believe it entirely possible that a God could create a soul and empower the soul with a measure of self-creation. Such that the soul could create a nature that has abilities/character that can not be accounted for by the original nature or character.

Isn't this still deterministic in the same sense as the materialist?

No. I think the ability of creation endows its owner with a creative essence that is uniquely self-determinstic(I'm not good with formulating this argument as I've never tried before, so I apologise for it's crudeness).

Thus in the "world" there are several self-deterministic entities interacting. So though there are deterministic methods, there is not A deterministic method for the world. Thus the system is neiter a classically deterministic one, nor is it an indeterministic one, it is somewhere in between.