Exploring excess: A diamond planet?

The anti-gravity jamboree, or... like shooting buffalo from a moving train

About to land in Denver at 8:45 a.m.

I find it amazing to live in an age when I can fall out of bed in New Hampshire, drive all of eight minutes in my car to the Manchester Airport, and then take a seat on a machine that will fly through the air all the way to Denver, Colo., arriving before 9 a.m. local time.

Think about that. It's barely past breakfast, and I'm in a city more than 1,500 miles from home, looking at the shards of a broken beer bottle on a sidewalk. And I haven't broken a sweat. Not long ago, this would have been just plain unthinkable. Now it's possible for anyone who can pay $120 to Southwest Airlines and produce a government-issued photo ID.

What's more, I can spend the whole day in this far-off place, then board a similar machine that will fly through the air all the way back without stopping (for another $120), landing at the very same place I came from and enabling me to climb back in that same bed where I began before Jimmy Fallon's show comes on the television.

That pretty much describes what I did on Thursday, Sept. 6, 2012, a day in which I gave in to the present-day wonder of inexpensive commercial air travel. I also got to run 10K in the suburban developments near the airport, and so added Colorado to my quest to run that distance in all 50 states. You can read about that adventure on Running the 234, another blog.

I say "present day" because no one knows how long magically cheap flights will last. Energy prices, global environmental concerns, and just plain economics may soon render air travel hideously expensive or perhaps even illegal. We may one day look upon today's cheap and frequent flights, with jet engines blasting away in the fragile upper atmosphere, as a bizarre aberration.

Heck, commercial aviation may even seen as criminal behavior, like those people on the first transcontinental trains who shot wild buffalo from the open windows just for the fun of it. Like this:

So with air travel, count me in. Every day, aircraft soar over my backyard on their way out to distant places. Today, I will not be satisfied to watch from below, but will take part in the anti-gravity jamboree, rocketing through the sky with all the others and making for the horizon. It's a feat that until now was beyond the most powerful figures in history, and I can do it for the price of getting my riding mower tuned and lubed.

To me, air travel is the equivalent of a rip in the time/space continuum, not in science fiction but right here in front of us, right now. If there really was a rip the space/time continuum that transported you 1,500 miles away, wouldn't you want to step through it? It's relatively slow as time portholes go (four hours to Denver?), but what a fantastic thing to have access to.

And yes, I know, few people think of commercial air travel as magical, which is a great illustration of how humans can get used to anything. I think of a passage from Kurt Vonnegut in which he describes our addiction to "molten glurp" (oil) and cheap energy that enables a fat old lady to enjoy an iced beverage and go 60 miles an hour while picking her nose and listening to the radio. Magic, right? But no one today regards that as out of the ordinary.

One reason I still feel this way is perhaps due to a personal connection. My father was a commercial airline pilot. It was many years ago, and he's long gone now, having died when I was 4. But flying was a big part of his life. So today, flying for me (even as a passenger) is a way of communing with his spirit, or at least a vague way of putting my own life in perspective and seeing it from a distance.

Once airborne, I look out the window and see what he saw, the view from his office. (At about $30 an hour, it's relatively cheap therapy.) While the engines roar and the air blasts by outside, I feel connected to him, the same way dropping flower petals in the Ganges is supposed to connect you to your ancestors.

Taking off from Denver, the sun is low in the western sky, lighting up everything at the airport like it's on a stage set. We take off, climbing towards a dark overcast in the east, but the late summer landscape of ranches and fields below us is bathed in a warm yellow light. The colors are pastel. Long shadows throw the rolling knolls into voluptuous relief.

I look out the window, and I can sense why my dad wanted to spend so much time up here.

Departing from Denver at 7 p.m.

The benefits of global warming

On Monday, Aug. 27, the New York Times carried a story describing how the amount of ice in the Arctic Ocean is currently at its lowest recorded level, and we still have a month of melting to go before it starts its seasonal build-up.

Much of the story focused on comments from scientists blaming human activity for the melting. What really stood out, however, was this sentence in the second half of the story:

"The melting does, however, offer some potential benefits, including new shipping routes and easier access to oil and other mineral deposits. A rush is on to stake claims and begin mineral exploration in the Arctic."

Great! One of the benefits of melting, which was caused by human activities, is that it opens up more areas for oil extraction.

Does anyone else see the problem here?

I believe that one of the basic qualities of being human is the ability to recognize a paradox. Well, with this article, we just got a little less human.

Very important thoughts...

...can be found elsewhere. Meanwhile, there's this:

• Isn't evaporation awesome? I mean, imagine how terrible it would be if liquid water just didn't disappear into the atmosphere like it does. We'd just be wet all the time, especially after a rainstorm. Our hair would never dry. And so on.

• Here's a great quote from Walt Whitman's 'Song of Myself,' which I would like to read someday:

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

• Another nice notion, which I heard somewhere on National Public Radio: "Truth is what everyone right now declines to argue about."

• Why is global warming a concern when all I hear about is polarization?

• When I was a kid, for years I thought 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' was a poem about electricity.

BP: Small-time compared to this!

• In an age of heightened environmental awareness, is the above insignia really the best way to promote a brand of paint?

• Unfair competition? The 2016 Olympic Summer Games in Rio De Janiero will actually take place in winter. What can be done about this hemisphere bias?

• Do dog owners really look like their pets? I have to say this seems to be the case. And so among the conclusions you can reasonably draw is that because people choose their pets, then people generally see their own image as desireable.

• I was struck by how 18th century astronomers were able to use the Transit of Venus in 1761 and then 1769 to calculate the actual distance between Earth and the sun. Simple equipment but extremely elegant logic and calculations allowed insight into realities beyond our immediate grasp. Make me wonder if there's not a way to tease out truths about our existence from the mundane and humdrum lives we all lead. Is there a parallax of the soul?

• When nothing else is going right, read a book by David McCullough. Right now I'm going through "Pathway Between The Seas," his 1977 history of the construction of the Panama Canal. Wow, I had no idea how bad a pesthole Panama was!

Actual dialogue from my house

The Scene: Wife opening gallon can of white paint in kitchen. Husband holding piece of half-eaten peanut butter on toast.

Husband: Wow, look at that! Can I smell it?

Wife: Just don't get any toast crumbs in it.

Husband leans to put nose close to paint, then inhales deeply.

Husband: Ahhh, volatile organic chemicals! It reminds me of my childhood.

"Let's run government like a business."

Here's the best, most cogent response to this I've seen in a long time. It's from an editorial in the Economist in January 2012 responding to a debate about the profitability of Amtrak, the government-run U.S. passenger rail company.

"But framing the discussion around a weird notion of "profitability" isn't particularly helpful. Here's a good rule of thumb: if a government entity's profitability is the main thing you're worried about, it probably shouldn't be a government entity. Nobody worries about the military or the courts being "profitable". It's probably not the right question about Amtrak, either."

Yes, government functions can be run in business-like fashion. Efficiency is good. But to assume that all functions of government should make a profit defeats the whole purpose of getting government involved in the first place. There.