OK, I'm late to the game in commenting on US District Judge Vaughn Walker's ruling overturning California's Proposition 8. But I haven't seen anyone comment on Walker's hilarious use of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Scalia's writings to support his ruling that enshrines marriage as a fundamental right not be denied on the basis of sexual orientation. 

Scalia wrote a dissenting opinion in the Supreme Court's 2003 6-3 Lawrence v. Texas decision that overturned a law against sodomy. In his dissent, Scalia says it's OK for a majority to prohibit sodomy because of a belief that it's "immoral and unacceptable," and says the same principle applies to same-sex marriage, adult incest, and bestiality. He decries a Supreme Court "that has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda" and declares that courts have no role in protecting homosexuals from those who would exclude them from jobs, volunteer positions, or lodgings.

In short, Scalia is not a likely vote to uphold Walker's ruling, should the case get to the Supreme Court. Yet to build one of his findings of facts, that no state has ever required
that partners in a marriage be willing or able to have children, Walker quotes from Scalia's dissent in Lawrence v. Texas:

If moral disapprobation of homosexual conduct is ‘no legitimate state interest’ for purposes of proscribing that conduct * * * what justification could there possibly be for denying the benefits of marriage to homosexual couples exercising ‘the liberty protected by the Constitution’?  Surely not the encouragement of procreation, since the sterile and the elderly are allowed to marry.

It seems like an impish poke, to use Scalia's dissent to bolster the case for same-sex marriage. Yet Walker chose not to quote, for some reason, the larger point that Scalia was making in his Lawrence v. Texas dissent:

Today's [majority] opinion dismantles the structure of constitutional law that has permitted a distinction to be made between heterosexual and homosexual unions, insofar as formal recognition in marriage is concerned.

Maybe that's because Walker anticipates that the Prop. 8 case, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, will be the one in which the majority of the Supreme Court will finally agree to dismantle the legal distinction between heterosexual and homosexual marriages. 

David Brooks had a bizarre column in yesterday's New York Times in which he pretends to be confused about the difference between theories and facts. He sets up a contrast:

These Demand Side theorists are giving you a plan of action. But you’re not a theorist. You’re a practical executive, and you have some concerns.

Practical executives are theorists, too!  One of the most famous quotes from John Maynard Keynes points this out: "Even the most practical man of affairs is usually in the thrall of the ideas of some long dead economist." It's just that some people are more willing to examine their theories critically, in light of the facts, while others mistake their theories for facts. 

I'm re-reading Sherlock Holmes these days, and Brooks reminds me of the bumbling Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard. Here he is in "The Boscombe Valley Mystery":

"We have got to the deductions and the inferences," said Lestrade, winking at me. "I find it hard enough to tackle the facts, Holmes, without flying away after theories and fancies."

"You are right," said Holmes demurely; "you do find it very hard to tackle the facts."

"Anyhow, I have grasped one fact which you seem to find it difficult to get hold of," replied Lestrade with some warmth.

"And that is--"

"That McCarthy senior met his death from McCarthy junior and that all theories to the contrary are the merest moonshine."

Of course, Holmes finds the real killer--not McCarthy junior--by the end of the story. 

Part of the bizarreness of Brooks' column lies in his apparent unwillingness to name fellow NYT columnist Paul Krugman, though he is obviously attacking Krugman's ideas throughout. A convention of the NYT op-ed page? Anyway, Krugman responds concisely to Brooks (by name, with a link) on his blog. Essentially, Krugman says that Brooks finds it very hard to tackle the facts.

Tricycle, really.

Saw this interesting vehicle in Burlington yesterday. Like a Baby Björn sling, the tricycle keeps the kid in front of the adult. The tricycle set-up surely gives a lot of stability. A fun sight!

John Dillon reported on VPR that Vermont Yankee has electrical cables that frequently get submerged in water, and the NRC is none too happy about it. It's not clear from his report what the cables provide power to. If it's safety systems, there's a worry that they could short out when submerged. 

The NRC approved the design at Yankee and most or all other reactors with buried pipes, nearly impossible to inspect for leaks, carrying radioactive materials. And they've regularly been accused of being lapdogs of the industry. So if the NRC thinks it's a big deal, it probably is.

Entergy tried to excuse its misinformation to regulators about having no buried pipes by distinguishing between "underground" pipes and "buried" pipes (a distinction NRC officials have said they don't recognize). I guess it won't do Entergy any good this time to insist that the electrical cables are actually not "submerged," just "under water."

Electric assist bicycle motors are a boon for people who want the low cost, convenience, and exercise benefits of bicycling, but maybe not all the exercise benefits that the distance or topography of their trips would offer.

They're also great for cycling late at night without getting the metabolism too high for easy sleep. I used to keep an electric bike for night-time climbs of the 700 vertical feet on the trip from town to home, for precisely that reason. Alas, the motor burned out just after the warrantee expired, though I used it but weekly. I haven't risked any more money on an electric bike in the seven or so years since then.

Recently I read that the Tour de France officials are checking bicycles for hidden motors, after allegations that Swiss cyclist Fabian Cancellara used one when he won the Tour of Flanders and the Paris-Roubaix.

I understand that tiny, concealable, but significantly powerful electric motors represent a nightmare  for bicycle race officials. As someone who supports transportation cycling, however, I'm glad to see the technology has come this far. Not because I can see a point to paying $2500 or so for this level of miniaturization. But if premium technology this light and small is available, I assume that the less expensive technology for us ordinary blokes has improved significantly, too. (As the design adage has it, "Light, inexpensive, robust: pick any two.")

On the other hand, maybe amazing high-end technology is not the place to look for harbingers of better bike motors for the rest of us. The technology advances and economies of scale from China putting 100 million electric bikes on the road may be more important. 

Building up the formal local economy is a big part of the work to transition to greater resilience. But the informal economy, too, is tremendously important. The informal economy includes things like the timebank Onion River Exchange or the neighborhood dinners that people take turns hosting in parts of East Montpelier and other places.

It also includes all manner of sharing. I enjoyed interviewing Janelle Orsi, co-author of The Sharing Solution: How to Save Money, Simplify Your Life & Build Community, who had suggestions for how to share everything from child care to cars. 

And in today's New York Times,  Laurie Woolever writes about sharing cooking and cleanup without group living. She introduces the concept in an intriguing, before-and-after-commercial way:

Dinnertime in our home, once a source of great pride and pleasure, became a rather lackluster affair after the birth of our son in 2008. Mostly it involved repurposing takeout leftovers or, on a more ambitious night, mixing chunks of frozen vegetable purées, meant for the baby, with macaroni and cheese. It was family dinner in the sense that it was marginally edible food, consumed together in the home, but prepared with the same care and passion I brought to refilling the cat’s water bowl.

But in February, everything changed. My husband and I became part of a cooking cooperative, and suddenly we were eating tagliatelle Bolognese, eggplant Parmesan or chicken adobo, all of it homemade, and only a fraction of it cooked by me.

She outlines a couple approaches to a cooking co-op, or dinner swap:

* At regular intervals, each member cooks a giant meal, divides it into refrigeratorable or freezeable portions, and swaps it for other apportioned meals with the other members. Woolever's group does this, and members take turns hosting the swap, which is accompanied by socializing and (what else?) eating.

*  Members each take a day to make hot food and deliver it to all the other members' homes at dinner time. This model seems more demanding to me--I think it would be difficult except where members live near each other and have regular and similar mealtimes.

There can be problems if people don't like each others' foods, so Woolever advises people to find folks with compatible cooking and eating habits and dietary restrictions. 

In our monthly neighborhood dinners, generally the host provides the entire meal and drinks, and the guests show up with plates, cups, bowls, and silvereware. That way the host has less cleanup afterwards. We discussed a potluck model a few years ago, but most of us felt it was a bargain to get a meal with no cooking at all 11 times a year in exchange for making the entire meal on the 12th time. It takes me maybe 4-5 times as long to make a meal for the neighborhood as to make a potluck dish, so our model cuts my annual prep time in half. Similarly, making dinner once a week for five people or families would be significantly faster, I think, than making five dinners for myself.

Maybe I'll give it a try. 

Gov. Jim Douglas regularly asserts that raising taxes on the wealthy is likely to drive the wealthy to leave the state. Twice in the last several months, I've heard him asked to provide statistical evidence that this is true. Both times he demurred, referring instead to a conversation he had once and to statistics about the total loss of population from Vermont (irrespective of wealth).

There was good reason for him to duck the question: Apparently the statistics that exist show either no evidence that raising taxes on high earners leads them to flee a state or that total revenue gains far and away offset any revenue losses from those who do move away. Dylan Matthews summarizes a literature review by the Center for Budget and Policy Prioriites (h/t Matt Yglesias).

Gross National Happiness USA debuted at the beginning of this month with a conference in Burlington on Changing What We Measure from Wealth to Well-Being. I used audio from the conference, from interviews I conducted afterwards, and from Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke's May speech on the Economics of Happiness to put together a radio documentary called Pursuing Happiness in Hard Times.

In the documentary, my point of departure is that we're about to face the end of economic growth in industrial economies, as fossil fuels peak and decline. So, is there anything in the burgeoning field of happiness research that can give us hints on how to maintain well-being while the economy shrinks? I found some surprising answers. 

The half-hour radio show debuted yesterday on the Pacifica radio network, and you can download it here or at the web site for my weekly radio show Relocalizing Vermont on WGDR Plainfield. 

Wow. When I looked up the actual report, I was astonished to see how wrong the Associated Press got the story printed in today's Times Argus about a newly released Massachusetts study comparing greenhouse gas emissions from burning forest biomass with burning fossil fuels.

The Times Argus slugs the story, "Study: Wood worse polluter than coal." The headline is an accurate reflection of an inaccurate article.

What the study by the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences actually says is burning forest biomass just to produce electricity is a really dumb idea. And it says there are strong greenhouse gas benefits from burning wood in combined heat and power generation, especially if the forest is managed for long-term sustainability.

(A local example of this wasteful use of wood is the McNeil Generating Station in Burlington. Burlington Electric says 70% of its fuel comes from forest biomass, while 30% comes from wood waste, whose carbon impact is not analyzed in the Manomet Center's report.)

One dumb part of using wood for electricity is that, in our climate at least, we burn a lot of fossil fuels to stay warm in the winter and heat our water. And standard electrical generating stations throw most of their energy away as "waste heat," because only a third or so of the energy is converted into electricity. If a biomass plant is dimensioned and run to meet demand for heating and hot water, then nearly all the energy in the wood can be captured. This is the way the biomass district heating plant for Montpelier is planned.

The argument is often made that wood is carbon neutral, because the carbon released from burning the wood is taken up as the forest regenerates. The Manomet study accepts this basic model, and they provide a helpful graph to show how an example of how, over time, biomass harvested leads to regenerating forests sucking carbon back out of the atmosphere and paying greenhouse "dividends" compared to fossil fuels:

Thatcher Moats wrote in today's Times Argus that the Montpelier City Council released a ruling on Friday that Vermont Compost's operations pose no "public health hazard or risk."

At the time, I could see no reason for holding the hearing. Moats quotes Mayor Mayor Hooper on her thoughts as to why the hearing took place:

Mayor Mary Hooper, who signed the six-page decision, said the duration of the conflict and unanswered questions surrounding it warranted a hearing to try to put the long-running dispute to rest.

"That in my mind … was sufficient to want to say, 'OK. Let's make an affirmative decision one way or another about what's going on, so we're not speculating,'" Hooper said.

Some other excerpts from the article:

The city's latest ruling is not surprising; nobody at the hearing presented evidence that food waste was creating a health risk...

[Vermont Compost owner Karl] Hammer said on Saturday that he was pleased with the ruling.

"It's a judicious and sensible point of view," he said.

It's also predictable, he added.

"It's what I expected they would do: determine there's no health threat because nobody was really saying there is one," he said.

Hooper said she hopes the issue is resolved for the sake of Vermont Compost and the LaRosas.

"It's a very important business in our community and I'm happy neighborhood concerns have been dealt with," he said.

The LaRosas could not be reached for comment Saturday.

State action on nominally unrelated issues may still threaten Vermont Compost's operations. Karl Hammer has expressed concerns that authority granted by the legislature this session to Act 250 officials may result in his farm being declared not a farm. 

Vermont Compost is the site for the June 22 quarterly meeting and midsummer celebration of the Central Vermont Food Systems Council; come on by starting at 5 pm.