The Scottosphere

I’ll be in Cincin­nati Fri­day 12/22 through Wednes­day 12/27. If you plan to be in Boston for the new year, drop me an e-mail!

I’ve been read­ing a lot about the increas­ing pop­u­lar­ity of wood-fired boil­ers for home heat­ing. This tech­nol­ogy has attracted an out­spo­ken set of advo­cates who claim that wood is cheap, renew­able, and domestically-produced.

These things are all true, but in their zeal, wood-fuel advo­cates have for­got­ten one of the most stag­ger­ingly impor­tant changes the indus­trial rev­o­lu­tion brought to our land­scape: the shift from wood fuel to coal (and later, oil). For mil­len­nia, the dom­i­nant source of fuel for heat­ing and cook­ing had been wood. But wood is inef­fi­cient, and entire forests would be stripped clean to pro­vide win­ter heat­ing. Straight­for­ward com­bus­tion of wood is also a tremen­dous source of pol­lu­tion. I haven’t tried cal­cu­lat­ing any num­bers, but I’m pretty cer­tain that in a mod­ern pop­u­la­tion of our size, it is not a viable fuel for every­day use.

It’s funny how his­tory repeats itself. What next, another killer smog?

I met Stephen Meyer in Feb­ru­ary 1999 when I signed up for 17.319, Envi­ron­men­tal Pol­i­tics and Pol­icy. I might have been a young and impres­sion­able fresh­man at MIT, but that was not a pre­req­ui­site to hav­ing Pro­fes­sor Meyer make an impres­sion on you.

His sheer breadth of sci­en­tific knowl­edge and his uncanny abil­ity to mesh it in great detail with diverse, seem­ingly unre­lated sub­jects was eye-opening. A nat­ural lec­turer, he had the comedic tim­ing of a pro­fes­sional stand-up and hon­est, bot­tom­less enthu­si­asm for his sub­ject mat­ter that could infect even the most lan­guid undergraduate.

Upon my return to MIT in 2004, I was sur­prised to dis­cover that Pro­fes­sor Meyer’s polit­i­cal inter­ests were so diverse that he also taught 17.471, Amer­i­can National Secu­rity Pol­icy. The Polit­i­cal Sci­ence office spoke about the class in rev­er­ent tones, but I didn’t need their encour­age­ment to sign up. Every­thing I had heard was true. Once again he stunned me with his wealth of knowl­edge, keen insight, and rich expe­ri­ences. There was a run­ning joke that his old friend Condi Rice was sup­posed to come and do a guest lec­ture for us, but she always had another appointment.

Not long into the term, Meyer appeared at lec­ture with an intra­venous tube con­nected to a small waist-mounted pouch. This, he explained, was a portable chemother­apy pump. He quickly and offhand­edly men­tioned that the can­cer that he had sur­vived a few years back had returned, but he had been through this rou­tine before and it was not going to be a big deal. He explained that he might occa­sion­ally appear tired, or lose his voice, but noth­ing else—not even his fash­ion­able bald spot—was going to change. He resumed his lec­tur­ing and never men­tioned it again.

True to his word, Pro­fes­sor Meyer slogged his way through the term, deliv­er­ing impec­ca­bly orga­nized and well-considered lec­tures to my class and sev­eral oth­ers. He con­tin­ued advis­ing scores of grad­u­ate stu­dents. Some­how he kept up with his research, his writ­ing, and his com­mu­nity work. Some­times, mid-lecture, his voice would fal­ter and he would pause for just a moment to rest. The class would wait pen­sively until the awk­ward silence was dis­missed with a quick joke and a smile, and the lec­ture would move on.

At the last lec­ture, Pro­fes­sor Meyer thanked us all for being such great stu­dents. Our inter­est and enthu­si­asm meant a lot to him, he said, since this would be the last time the class is offered. The class was one of the best I’d ever taken at MIT. Why on earth would they can­cel it? I asked this ques­tion of my TA, Jes­sica, as I handed in my final exam on Decem­ber 14.

“Steve’s can­cer is ter­mi­nal, and he won’t make it through the next year,” she whis­pered to me in front of the remain­ing test-takers. “But don’t tell any­one I told you that. He doesn’t want peo­ple feel­ing sorry for him. He wants every­one to focus on the mate­r­ial, and he wants to keep teach­ing it right up to the end because teach­ing means every­thing to him.”

Her com­ment moved me greatly.

Stephen Meyer was suc­cess­ful in many pur­suits. As a gov­ern­ment con­sul­tant, he advised the Rea­gan and Bush admin­is­tra­tions on the com­plex nuances of national secu­rity pol­icy dur­ing a tur­bu­lent period of inter­na­tional change. As a friendly cit­i­zen, knowl­edge­able sci­en­tist, and heart­felt advo­cate of the envi­ron­ment he lived in, he took devel­op­ers on “nature hikes” to show them up close the plants and ani­mals their work would dis­place. As a teacher, he indeli­bly impressed upon his stu­dents not just details of envi­ron­men­tal calami­ties and secu­rity deba­cles but broader ways of under­stand­ing the inter­play between com­plex sys­tems, the polit­i­cal machine, and the pub­lic. He made seem­ingly spe­cial­ized fields rel­e­vant to every­day life.

Stephen Meyer died Decem­ber 10 at age 54.

Tomorrow’s doc­tors learn with Pow­er­Point, not patients (The New York Times).

I tried to make Pio­neer Tele­phone (a small Maine com­pany with the best rates) my long-distance provider. They con­firmed that the changes were made after I signed up, but I still can’t place long-distance calls. A friendly Ver­i­zon agent informed me that my LPIC (for Intra-LATA call­ing) had been updated but my PIC (for Inter-LATA) was not.

“Can you just fix it for me please?”

“I could eas­ily fix it, but there would be a $5 ser­vice charge on your bill.”

“And if I have Pio­neer ini­ti­ate the change?”

“Then it is free.”

“What if I pre­tend to be Pio­neer right now?”

“I can’t do that. I guess you should just tell them to put in the order to update your PIC.”

At least they changed my Intra-LATA ser­vice first. Ver­i­zon charges an out­ra­geous rate for in-state call­ing. What a mess though. If I find get­ting good rates for long-distance ser­vice this con­fus­ing, I won­der what it’s like for the aver­age person…

The Inter­net tubes will be con­nected to my new apart­ment on Mon­day, so expect to see a lit­tle more activ­ity on this page after that.

12/12 UPDATE: Appar­ently UPS “3-Day Select” ship­ping means, “we’ll select whether to take 3 days or 6!” My DSL modem doesn’t arrive until tomor­row now. Come on!

I feel oblig­ated to point out that today is the 65th anniver­sary of 12/7.

I’m mov­ing this weekend!

But I’m not going very far. In fact, I’m not even using a truck. It’s about two blocks away from my cur­rent place, yet it’s a com­pletely dif­fer­ent liv­ing expe­ri­ence. Stay tuned for some kind of broad­cast email with my new con­tact information.