Connect-the-Dots

Cornellians get free copies of the NYT and blazingly fast internet connections, so I've been able to keep up with the media's breathless coverage of the present developments in Georgia. The reporting has been uniformly bad, but I suppose that's par for the course when we're speaking of "All the news that's fit to print." What's unfortunate is that the reporters have been missing out on an opportunity for some great fun with this conflict.


Let's play a game. Let's play connect-the-dots.


We know that as of now, the ascendance of China and India has meant much greater competition for resources that were once primarily the domain of the US and Europe, i.e. food, water, metals, and fuel.


Metal is, to an extent, renewable. A given quantity of aluminum, used for one purpose, can be reused. The aluminum in a can becomes part of a battle cruiser and fuels a war. Copper on the bottom of cheap pans becomes invaluable wiring and fuels modernization.

Food and water, while often scarce, are rarely viewed in terms of Strategic Geopolitical Resources(tm). Shortages are instead viewed in terms of mundane trade policy and accidents of nature. I would argue that this view is flawed -- for Third World agricultural exporters, the difference between market-skewing subsidies and naval blockades is not all that different in terms of impact. But in any case, economics is seen as economics and geopolitcs as something separate. And food is most definitely renewable. You eat corn, you excrete it, at some point you die and are burried, and by the end of it, the soil is ready to support yet more corn.


Fuel is different, though. Six hundred million years ago, a vast sea monster died and drifted to the bottom of the ocean. Compression and heat broke it down into a hydrocarbon sludge locked deep within the earth. And now, six hundred million years later, we sucked it up and sold it to you for $4 a gallon. When you drove to work, blasting through a school zone at 65 mph, you incinerated that sea monster into oblivion. It is no more. It is gone from the face of the earth. And for this reason, oil is unique among the resources nations are competing over right now. Without oil, our entire economic system collapses.


Europe doesn't just love oil; it loves natural gas. Obviously, Europe does not produce large quantities of its own natural gas. Natural gas is shipped off to Europe from the Middle East through various pipeline networks. Here is the South Stream pipeline, a very important natural gas artery:





So our dots are connected, it would seem. We go from Europe and head toward.... uh, oh. Something's very wrong with this picture. We're headed toward Russia! Russia is connected to natural gas pipelines, with both Russian producers and Middle Eastern producers in on the game. But you see, even though the EU loves natural gas, it doesn't love Russia. This is unfortunate, because most of the EU's natural gas comes from Russia. This is good for Gazprom and Putin, but not so much for Exxon and BP.

Exxon? Yes, Exxon. It may be a US company, but if the US has mastered any skill as a nation, it's market destabilization. We're simply the best in the world at it, and we aren't about to lose that distinction. Oil markets are especially important to us. We hold the Saudis' hands at Crawford and help them fund anti-American terrorist cells. We call Putin, who we are supposedly all touchy-feely, BFFs with, by his surname. So when the dots in our natural gas pipeline lead to Russia, we reconnect them.

So remember that South Stream, our old friend? Let's draw some new dots, and....


WOWZERS! Our new Nabucco pipeline makes everything so much simpler! "Nabucco" is how you say, "Fuck you, Putin, fuck you so hard up the ass" in English (and French, and German, and... well, you get the idea).

So where are all our new dots, anyway?

I'll start off with the easiest one. See Georgia there? See which part of Georgia we're headed through? Pretty neat coincidence, huh?

Uht, oh! See that little greenish region we have dots in, right above Georgia. That's Russia! "Liv, Liv, I thought we were AVOIDING Russia!" You big silly, that part of Russia is Chechnya. I hear there's a war going on there as well, but I'll bet it's unrelated.

"OK, Liv, but we have dots in Iraq! We'll never get them all connected if we're trying to draw the line through war zones!" Well, that's the Kurdish North of Iraq. You probably haven't heard much about it, because right after the US invaded Iraq, we made sure it was as secure and stable as can be, economically and politically. It's pretty wonderful... well, except when Turkey invades it...

The only problem is that while we draw our picture, the Russians are drawing theirs, and they're a little faster than us. They have dots that go into South Ossetia too, and they want to connect them all up, just in case our lines get accidentally broken a few hundred times and Georgia doesn't get to be a part of anyone's picture. But at least Turkey and the other downstream countries will have that line to pump through.

Fuck the NYT Daily Crossword. Connect-the-dots is a lot more exciting!

Hats off to you

I have had a lovely day, and I would like to share it with a group of lovely people.

I played piano for a couple of hours. I read a new book under my favorite old tree in our garden while drinking tea I'd made with mint from that same garden. I had good-natured but intense arguments with a few members of my household; I listened to music until my ears twitched, sang some old songs, went through some old letters.

For the first time in a year, I wore a certain black hat that once called the Telluride House at Cornell home but soon grew attached to my head and later to my bookshelf, a hat that was supposed to serve as a comforting reminder of six weeks of forever but was unsuccessful in driving away the pain of separation when pitted against the memory of the actual thing.

As many of us go on to start a new chapter of our lives, as some of us already have, I want to take the opportunity to just smile at you virtually, tell you how much I love you, remind you that you all will always be in my thoughts and in my heart, and salute you for being the exceptional people you are.

If I had a false mustache (I want to write "moustache" so desperately. There, I did it.), a monocle and a tailcoat, I would don them now with that TASP hat as a flashback to our kooky TASPy cross-dressing party and then slip into a low bow, removing the hat with a flourish. A virtual flourish, of course.

Basically, I've been missing you these past few days (weeks, months, year) and wanted to say hello and how are you and please keep this blog alive 103 posts after its inception and please, pretty please excuse my use of polysyndeton, which I know is annoying.

In other news, I am thinking of taking a trip in the Easterly direction this Thanksgiving. Nothing for certain yet, but the prospect of a reunion could be the incentive I need to actually go and get tickets. Anyone?

Laura's crazy, but Mac's boring, which is worse.

I think I'm probably a little crazy. I'm always really hesitant to post on here, because I think, "Jeez, they're going to think I'm totally wacko. They're going to think I spend all my time on this blog, just posting stuff that no one wants to read. I'll be such a bother."

As is evident, I think about it probably too much.
I also forget that the fact that I always check the blog, compulsively, as I told Aurelie, doesn't mean I'm actually communicating. I mean, you guys can't tell. I'm a little crazy.

Mac says, "A little?" Mac says I'm a lot crazy, apparently. Mac's kind of a jerk, you guys.

Mac's also contributing to this post, and doesn't think this is fair. Mac says, "I could just delete all of that." But then I wouldn't be communicating, either.

Hey you guys, Mac came to visit me! In scenic Kirksville! Super exciting! Scenic northeast Missouri (NEMO), specifically. We drove around the House district today, seeing the beautiful hills and being friendly. Also running political errands. Because that's what I spend so much time doing.

We miss you guys. I read the post Julieta wrote, and the posts everyone else wrote, and we're all nostalgic, and I think it's great. Mac said I sound generic, and that I make him sound like an awful person, to which he objects strongly. Mac is not an awful person. But I digress.
Mac and my brother, Andrew, whom some of you have met, are making fun of me for needing to sleep eight hours a night. They're saying I'm a sloth, and that I have too many toes. I say they're inaccurate. I am not a three-toed sloth, or any kind of sloth. Nope.

Anyway, yes. We do miss you guys. When I read the posts, I wanted to be all, "Oh my gosh, totally, I totally miss you guys!" That was my immediate response. I sound kind of vapid, guys. It's terrible. That's not Mac making a value judgment, that's me being critical. Mac's being quiet, instead of making fun of me. Only now he's doing it passive-aggressively. You guys miss us so much, right?
Mac's not a terrible person. He's being really nice and not saying anything about the typos I keep making. And in general, he's a pretty okay guy. Awww.

Anyway. Again. We've got a point. Mac says I shouldn't digress again. But I'm getting to the point. Which is that you all, to me, to us, are inspiring. Meeting you, and getting to know you, and falling in love with each of you, mattered. And still matters. You still matter to us. Julieta mentioned that she still thinks about TASP every day. I read that, and it seemed like a strange statement to me. I hadn't really thought about it before. But you guys, I can't imagine not thinking about TASP, or all of you, or living in the house and the whole beautiful summer every day.

I'm glad you all say stuff like that, though, because then I know it's not just me. And then I don't feel like I'm quite as totally crazy. So that's good.
Mac agrees.

Incidentally, we're having fun here in Kirksville. Mac's computer is really cool, because it changes colors. And there's aliens on it.