The Daily Overdose of Logic for Thursday, 20 October 2011: Colorado Springs Sings the Blues

I regret to say that we must begin this morning with some very sad news.

Extraordinarily talented blues musician and painfully decent human being John-Alex Mason died yesterday at the age of 35 after suffering a major internal bleed during what was supposed to be an outpatient surgery three weeks ago. John-Alex was a highly prominent and respected figure in Colorado Springs' tight-knit musical community; he was especially well-liked by students and faculty at the Colorado Springs School, from which he graduated in 1994 and where he was a frequent guest musician and instructor. (I graduated from CSS in 2007.)

I am forced to admit, to my everlasting shame, that I barely knew John-Alex personally. I met him in person on only two occasions, both during my senior year of high school. His death, however, comes as a major blow to many of my close friends--including my sister (a 2011 CSS graduate), whose participation in a CSS "Blues and Civil Rights" seminar taught largely by John-Alex was an incredible and life-changing experience. And it has affected me to a degree that seems disproportionate to my connection to the man.

Death, especially the woefully premature death of someone who deserved a long and happy life, is extraordinarily difficult for all people to handle, but perhaps even more so for an atheist. While a theist is able to take solace in the notions that the deceased lives on, in some sense, in Paradise and that the death is part of a grand design of which we non-deities cannot comprehend, atheists may indulge in no such luxuries--though it is overwhelmingly tempting to do so. An atheist has no choice but to accept that his or her life has suddenly and irrevocably become much poorer, and that a person he or she cared for or respected or loved is forever gone in every way. Death brings out the starkest contrasts between theism and atheism, and it does so in a way not at all favorable to the empiricists. And that, I think, is why I personally struggle so mightily to cope with it, and why it impacts me so profoundly.

I do not mean to turn this writing into a critique of religion or a diary-like confession of my own feelings--in the wake of a true tragedy, the former is petty and the latter is arrogant. I mean only to emphasize, and I apologize in advance for the cliche, that our connections to our fellow men and women, even the ones that, in the moment, seem attenuated and distant, are, and ought to be, among our most cherished treasures. Most importantly, we must appreciate those treasures here and now; it is only now that he is gone that I recognize the grave error I committed in not doing more to befriend, and learn from, John-Alex Mason.

Goodbye, John-Alex. Thank you for all the wisdom and inspiration you provided. You will be deeply missed.

John-Alex Mason.

Image courtesy Colorado Springs Gazette.

In other news:

World: Depending on whether you believe the BBC or the New York Times more, ousted Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has been either captured or killed by rebel forces after a protracted battle for the colonel's coastal hometown of Sirte. I am on the record as saying that I am not particularly convinced that life for the average Libyan is going to noticeably improve under the rebels as compared to under Gaddafi (I said the same thing about Egypt this past winter, and so far I'm being pretty well vindicated), but the end of Gaddafi's freedom would be, in addition to whatever else, the removal of the last major stumbling block standing in the way of an uneasy ceasefire, and I therefore approve. I will update the post throughout the day as clearer information becomes available.

America: Rick Perry spent a fair amount of time on Tuesday night railing against Herman Cain's "9-9-9" plan, in large part because it would represent a tax increase for the great majority of Americans, particularly poor ones. And now Perry himself wants a national flat tax. Look, there is some merit--notice I said some--in the idea of a flat tax, and it's an option that should be seriously discussed at the national level, but for Christ's sake, GOP, either stop pretending that you're fighting on behalf of the poor or, you know, actually fight on behalf of the poor. But don't allow Candidate A to tactically nuke Candidate B's tax plan because it's regressive and then turn immediately around and propose a tax plan more regressive than the one we currently have. The Republican Party continues to be stranger than fiction.

Business: As long as you don't expect the actual sitting-on-an-airplane, traveling-through-the-air part of air travel to be a poncy, pampering experience, Southwest is seriously the greatest airline ever. Its employees are unfailingly chipper. It's obsessed with being on time. For decades, it has been a profit machine. Most of the time, its fares are at least as cheap as anybody else's. And because the price of oil fell over the summer, it booked a Q3 loss of $140 million. Good deeds never go unpunished.

Technology: Google released video of how its driverless car technology works, thereby making futurist nerds (like me) everywhere instantly hard. I appreciate that Google is trying to make the real world more like The Jetsons in every conceivable way, but, like some of their other recent projects, I'm having a hard time seeing any benefits (other than "ooh, aah, isn't that cool") that will accrue to anybody in the realistically foreseeable future. (Of course, I said the same thing about Google Earth and now I use that shit a dozen times a day, so it's pretty clear that when it comes to Google's development strategy, I basically have no idea what the fuck I'm talking about.)

Colorado: U.S. District Judge William Martinez has ruled that the Department of Energy went beyond the limits imposed by federal environmental law in its plan to resume uranium mining on Colorado's Western Slope and enjoined it from further activities on 31 sites southwest of Grand Junction. (One would imagine the DOE will appeal to the Tenth Circuit.) It was the right decision as a matter of law, but on a broader view, as a matter of policy, the laws governing nuclear energy in this country are themselves unnecessarily restrictive. Yes, uranium mining is environmentally disruptive. Yes, there is a risk (a tiny, piddling, and minuscule, but non-zero, risk) that nuclear power plants, which are expensive to build and maintain, can melt down disastrously. Yes, nuclear waste storage is a political hot potato. But you want to know what the realistic alternatives are? Coal and oil. You've gotta pick your poison; I prefer the one that releases essentially no greenhouse gases, is way safer overall (seriously), and is, for all intents and purposes, completely renewable.

Anti-depressant: The only proper solution to the scandal at this year's World Scrabble Championships? Play Scrabble naked. (PLEASE NOBODY ACTUALLY DO THIS.)