Back to the salt mines

El Cabrero took some time off between the holidays. Nothing exciting, although it was nice to remember what it's like to wake up naturally without an alarm clock screaming at 4:45 a.m. Now it's back to sleep deprivation and all that. I didn't even turn on the computer for that period, if checking the Precious iPhone doesn't count.

A number of interesting news items came out in the interim but I will avoid commenting at length on all but one. The Dec. 24-Jan. 6 issue of The State Journal, a WV business paper, featured a list of the most influential business leaders in West Virginia. Topping the list was former (as of January 1) Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship.

I take no issue with that. For good or ill, Blankenship has no doubt made the most ripples in the pond. But I can't resist mentioning that the article quoted WVU free market economist Russel Sobel, of Unleashing Capitalism fame, to the effect that

The nice thing about this list is these are all people who've done it the right way. Their success is not based on political connections but on competing against others.

I guess buying a state supreme court seat in the 2004 election doesn't count. And apparently neither does trying to buy the state House of Delegates in 2006. If the latter didn't work as well as the former, it wasn't for lack of trying. I imagine some major change was also dropped in the 2008 and 2010 elections as well.

I guess doing things the right way also includes union busting; major environmental and coal mine safety violations--including the highest criminal fines ever levied against a company by MSHA; far too many dead miners; pumping sludge into old mines to contaminate well water and a whole host of fun and games.

The nice thing about subscribing to an ideological creed is that one never has to be bothered with the facts.

HOLED UP. Krugman's latest reminds us that we're still in deep despite recent economic good news.

HATE RADIO. Here's an interesting take on the right wing media and the rage machine.

LOOKING BACK. Here's Wired Science on the biggest scientific breakthroughs of 2010.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

THE PLAGUE YEARS

Caption: The Tower Hill Sundial in London. Photo by wallyg via everystockphoto.

Welcome to Albert Camus Week at Goat Rope. If this is your first visit, please click on earlier entries.

My favorite work by Camus is kind of a downer, unless you really like reading about massive lethal epidemics. It's his novel The Plague and I've gone back to it over and over again through the years.

Set in the still French Algerian city of Oran in the 1940s, it chronicles the outbreak of plague that begins with dying rats and spreads through the quarantined population. It's at least in part about how people bear up in an unbearable situation, some with quiet heroism and some without.

Obviously, there was a strong metaphorical factor involved given other world events in the 1940s. We seem to be living through a metaphorical plague of our own the last few years.

The part I go back to the most involves that character Tarrou, a stranger in town. His father was a magistrate who prosecuted criminal offenses. Tarrou once attended the execution by guillotine of someone his father had convicted and was repelled by what he saw.

He rebelled and joined a radical movement (obviously the Communist Party) and worked with it for years until he realized that there too he was complicit with murder:

And thus I came to understand that I, anyhow had had plague through all those long years in which, paradoxically enough, I'd believed with all my soul that I was fighting it. I learned that I had had an indirect hand in the deaths of thousands of people; that I'd even brought about their deaths by approving of acts and principles that could only end that way...

...I only know that one must do what one can to cease being plague-stricken, and that's the only way in which we can hope for some peace or, failing that, a decent death. This, and only this, can bring relief to men and, if not save them, at least do them the least harm possible and even, sometimes, a little good. So that is why I resolved to have no truck with anything which, directly or indirectly, for good reasons or for bad, brings death to anyone or justifies others' putting him to death.

Here's the take home message:

All I maintain is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims, and it's up to us, as far as possible not to join forces with the pestilences.

MEGAN WILLIAMS CASE UPDATE. Residents of Logan County, WV are calling for a positive public event in response to the kidnapping and torture of Megan Williams, an African American woman. The event, likely to be a candlelight vigil and prayer service, is planned for next week. Look for details here Monday.

HAVE NOT NATION. Here's a good column by Harold Meyerson from the Washington Post about why more Americans are identifying themselves as have-nots.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, here's the latest snapshot from the Economic Policy Institute highlighting unequal--and sometimes negative--wage growth between 1979 and 2004.

FOOTPRINT MALFUNCTIONS. Our good friends at the conservative WV State Journal appear to be taking the heroic stand that global warming is a hoax or at least a totally natural thing. Somehow they managed to fit that in between paens to Unleashing Capitalism. To clear the palate, here's an op-ed by Vaclav Havel, former president of the Czech Republic.

ROLLING OUT THE PROGRAM. It looks like Unleashing Capitalism is the new holy writ of WV Republicans.

CHIP PASSES THE SENATE by a 67-29 margin.

A LITTLE GOOD NEWS. There has been positive action in Congress lately dealing with the high cost of higher education.


GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

PUSH THE ROCK

Welcome to Albert Camus Week at Goat Rope. If this is your first visit, please click on earlier entries.

In his work "The Myth of Sisyphus," Camus asserted that

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whet er life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.

(The reader has apparently answered the question in the affirmative at the moment anyway...)

For Camus, the question of the value of life was related to his idea of the absurd, that is human life as characterized by mortality, contingency, and the lack of an inherent meaning in a universe without God. As he put it,

in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger.

His image for the human condition was derived from the mythological figure of Sisyphus, who was condemned by the gods to perpetually roll a heavy stone up the hill only to have it roll down again.

Come to think of it, a lot of life is kinda like that. Still, Camus wound up affirming life.

Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable...."I conclude that all is well," says Oedipus, and that remark is sacred. It echoes in the wild and limited universe of man. It teaches that all is not, has not been, exhausted...It makes of fate a human matter, which must be settled among men.

All Sisyphus' silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him. His rock is his thing...

I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. The universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

CHIP VOTE. The House passed legislation preserving and expanding the Children's Health Insurance Program 265 to 159 yesterday, not enough to override a Bush veto if it happens.

El Cabrero and his amigos held a press conference yesterday in support of the program for which we actually had press, which is a plus. High five! Great success!

CHIP AND IRAQ. The CHIP expansion mentioned above costs less than six weeks of the war in Iraq.

UNLEASHING WHATEVER UPDATE. A marriage made in heaven?

A TENTATIVE AGREEMENT between GM and the UAW has been reached. Here's hoping they got a good deal.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

THE PLAGUE OF WAR

This week, El Cabrero is on another ancient Greek jag. The theme is the tragic Peloponnesian War which brought about the end of Greece's "golden age" as documented by Thucydides (died around 400 BC), the first "modern" historian.

One would hope that it's not too late to learn from that tragedy. If this is your first visit, please click on earlier entries.

As is the case with most wars, both sides predicted a short fight and an easy win. When the Spartans invaded Attica, the Athenians gave up their countryside and retired within the walls of the city, counting on sea power for provisions and victory.

Plague came in the wake of the overcrowding and poor sanitary conditions:

people in good health were all of a sudden attacked by violent heats in the head, and redness and inflammation in the eyes, the inward parts, such as the throat or tongue, becoming bloody and emitting an unnatural and fetid breath. These symptoms were followed by sneezing and hoarseness, after which the pain soon reached the chest, and produced a hard cough. When it fixed in the stomach, it upset it; and discharges of bile of every kind named by physicians ensued, accompanied by very great distress. In most cases also an ineffectual retching followed, producing violent spasms, which in some cases ceased soon after, in others much later.

That was just the warm up. It got really nasty after that. The worst was the feeling of despair and isolation:

By far the most terrible feature in the malady was the dejection which ensued when any one felt himself sickening, for the despair into which they instantly fell took away their power of resistance, and left them a much easier prey to the disorder; besides which, there was the awful spectacle of men dying like sheep, through having caught the infection in nursing each other. This caused the greatest mortality. On the one hand, if they were afraid to visit each other, they perished from neglect; indeed many houses were emptied of their inmates for want of a nurse: on the other, if they ventured to do so, death was the consequence. This was especially the case with such as made any pretensions to goodness: honor made them unsparing of themselves in their attendance in their friends' houses, where even the members of the family were at last worn out by the moans of the dying, and succumbed to the force of the disaster.

Thucydides sums it up this way:

Words indeed fail when one tries to give a general picture of this disease; and as for the sufferings of individuals, they seemed almost beyond the capacity of human nature to endure

.

All this happened in the year 430. There were 26 more years of war to go...

But there was another plague as well: the plague of habitual brutality as the war dragged on and led to other revolutions and civil wars. Thucydides again:

What used to be described as a thoughtless act of aggression was now regarded as the courage one would expect to find in a party member; to think of the future and wait was merely another way of saying one was a coward; any idea of moderation was just an attempt to disguise one's unmanly character; ability to understand a question from all sides meant that one was totally unfitted for action. Fanatical enthusiasm was the mare of a real man, and to plot against an enemy behind his back was perfectly legitimate self-defence. Anyone who held violent opinions could always be trusted, and anyone who objected to them became a suspect...

Revenge was more important than self-preservation...

Love of power, operating through greed and through personal ambition, was the cause of all these evils. To this must be added the violent fanaticism which came into play once the struggle had broken out.

There's a lot more to it but you get the idea...

WV AHEAD OF CURVE ON MINE SAFETY. In the wake of the 2006 mine disasters, the state of West Virginia didn't wait for federal action. It moved quickly to enact new safetly legislation which became a model for the MINER Act. This is from USA Today:

West Virginia passed its own mine safety law last year after an explosion at its Sago mine trapped 13 miners, all but one of whom died. State mining officials followed with an ambitious plan to get the best communication devices available now to miners quickly. The state is using combinations of older technologies to provide systems that can work deep underground. One uses miles of cable antennae run through a mine's tunnels along with wireless radios, much like the ones used by police and firefighters, for individual miners. Another system uses an adaptation of Wi-Fi.

The state required operators to submit plans for using the devices by last month. Mines will start getting the devices this year. By the end of 2008, 170 underground coal mines can be equipped for $150 million, according to Randall Harris, engineering adviser to West Virginia's mine safety director.

In other words, West Virginia is doing the best it can for miners right now, while the federal government is spending years looking for a perfect solution. Robert Friend, the deputy assistant secretary for the federal mine safety agency, says West Virginia is "trying to get out in front and be proactive. I wouldn't criticize them for that." Even so, he believes that the federal approach encourages development of a better, fully wireless system by 2009.

Unfortunately, waiting for a perfect system can mean more dead miners.

(I imagine our "Unleashing Capitalism" friends would prefer all this to be left to "the market.")

KATRINA: A "GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY" FOR CONSERVATISM. As we pass the second anniversary of the Katrina debacle, here's a good one by Rick Perlstein about how the hard right hoped to cash in on the disaster.

TAX CUTS: WORKING FOR WHOM? This snapshot from the Economic Policy Institute challenges supply side dogma about growth, employment, and cutting taxes.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

THE GODDESS STRIFE

Caption: This isn't one of her better pictures.

El Cabrero is a big fan of ancient Greece. Philosophy, art, literature, politics, history, a pluralistic approach to religion, name it. Unfortunately, the objects of my admiration sometimes had the self-destructive tendencies of the heroes of their tragedies.

They were like the Ziggy Stardusts of the ancient world. They took it all too far, but boy could they play guitar--or kithara, as the case may be.

Back in the heyday, Greece wasn't a unified country like a modern nation or an empire like those of Alexander the Macedonian or the Romans. It was a diverse collection of city-states which took political forms ranging from democracy to monarchy to tyranny to mixed governments. To the extent they were united at all, it was by language, myths, religion, and custom, including the famous panhellenic games which were the forerunners of our Olympics.

They had plenty of shortcomings but one of the biggest was an addiction to strife or Eris,which/who was also a goddess. According to the poet Hesiod in Works and Days, there were actually two goddesses of strife, one good one bad. The bad one led to war and destruction:

So, after all, there was not one kind of Strife alone, but all over the earth there are two. As for the one, a man would praise her when he came to understand her; but the other is blameworthy: and they are wholly different in nature. For one fosters evil war and battle, being cruel: her no man loves; but perforce, through the will of the deathless gods, men pay harsh Strife her honour due.

The other, theoretically at least, to led healthy competition:

But the other is the elder daughter of dark Night, and the son of Cronos who sits above and dwells in the aether, set her in the roots of the earth: and she is far kinder to men. She stirs up even the shiftless to toil; for a man grows eager to work when he considers his neighbour, a rich man who hastens to plough and plant and put his house in good order; and neighbour vies with is neighbour as he hurries after wealth. This Strife is wholesome for men. And potter is angry with potter, and craftsman with craftsman, and beggar is jealous of beggar, and minstrel of minstrel.

In practice, the two often get muddled together, as you may have noticed.

According to another mythological strand, the whole Trojan war grew out of the spite of the vengeful goddess Eris at not being invited to a wedding (although, in my experience, strife is usually at most weddings anyway, invited or not). She makes an appearance in Homer's Iliad with a particularly apt description:

Strife whose wrath is relentless, she is the sister and companion of murderous Ares [god of war], she who is only a little thing at the first, but thereafter grows until she strides on the earth with her head striking heaven. She then hurled down bitterness equally between both sides as she walked through the onslaught making men's pain heavier. She also has a son whom she named Strife.

Anyway, strife or Eris, whether personified or not, brought down classical Greek civilization. The fall was long and slow, but a major step on the way was the long and fratricidal Pelopponesian War, masterfully recounted by Thucydides. That will be the guiding threat through this week's posts.

I don't plan on working the parallels between the Greeks and us too hard but I think it's safe to say that this goddess is still with us.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT. William Schweke of the Center for Enterprise Development recently published this op-ed about a rational approach to economic development for West Virginia (and elsewhere). He warns that

the state should not be frightened into radical proposals by the dogmatic anti-government crowd to cut regulation, taxation and other responsibilities to the bone.

WORTH READING. The latest edition of Jim Lewis' Notes from Under the Fig Tree is available. Jim, an Episcopal priest (yay team!), is a master of metaphors and this issue is full of them.

UNLEASHING WHATEVER DEPARTMENT. Meanwhile, over at West Virgina Blue, Antipode has published a good critique of Unleashing Capitalism, a libertarian tract that has become the Holy Writ of the WV right wing.

CALLING ALL WEST VIRGINIANS. I've noticed that readers of Goat Rope come from all over, but I'd like to ask those who live in El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia to read this and respond appropriately in this economic justice campaign. Short version: please check out the link and contact the legislature (it's easy if you go there) to preserve access to education for welfare recipients. It's the best way for people to permanently escape poverty.

THREE ITEMS. For those who don't get the Charleston Gazette or the Sunday Gazette Mail, there are three items in there I highly recommend. One is an article by Paul Nyden on economist Dean Baker, who will be giving a talk in Charleston today on the theme of The Conservative Nanny State. Another is an op-ed by Perry Mann on a lifetime of reading. Finally, there is the heart-rending story by Tara Tuckwiller about a young girl from WV who is doing her part to stop the war in Iraq. Her mother is about to be sent there.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

PLACID AND SELF CONTAIN'D?

Caption: Does Venus look placid to you?

First, I'd like to apologize about the irregular posts last week. These were due to a combination of a phone/internet crash at Goat Rope Farm followed by a week on the road. El Cabrero can usually get around one or the other but both at the same time are a problem.

Now we're back to the regular schedule of six days per week (more if something really bad or really good happens). Thanks for your patience.

This week, El Cabrero is thinking about animals and the roles they play in our lives (aside from consumption). How do they fit in yours?

Walt Whitman had somewhat exalted ideas about our animal friends:

I think I could turn and live with animals, they're so placid and self contain'd,
I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the earth.

It is obvious from this passage that Walt was a city boy and idealized critters. While it is true that they spend relatively little time on theological and other reflections (as far as we can tell), they are anything but placid and self contain'd.

UNLEASHING INEQUALITY. Here's an op-ed from Sunday's Gazette by Ross Eisenbrey on the proposals offered by the recent book Unleashing Capitalism, which has garnered quite a fan club among the WV's right wing media. He particularly takes issue with the idea that wages automatically increase with productivity. Would that it were so...

THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE DARK. The agonizing wait for news about the trapped miners in Utah continues. Here's a good item by Ken Ward about the dangerous practice of mining the pillars that hold up earlier excavations.

On a related subject, the CEO of the company, Robert Murray, is long known as a foe of new safety regulations, the United Mine Workers union, and environmentalists. Here's an item about his opposition to post-Sago reforms.

On yet another related front, Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship has filed suit against the WV Democratic Party for allegedly defaming his character during the 2006 campaigns when he spent several million dollars of his own money in an unsuccessful bid to change the composition of the state legislature.

I don't know where to start with that one. Except maybe this comment: where's tort reform when you really need it?

U.S. LIFE EXPECTANCY FALLS BEHIND. This is from the AP:

Americans are living longer than ever, but not as long as people in 41 other countries.

For decades, the United States has been slipping in international rankings of life expectancy, as other countries improve health care, nutrition and lifestyles.

Countries that surpass the U.S. include Japan and most of Europe, as well as Jordan, Guam and the Cayman Islands.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

LEAVE SAFETY TO THE "MARKET"?

Once again, pardon the irregular posts (and the absence of the usual gratuitous animal picture). That's life on the road.

As is the case with many interested people all over the world, I'm finding it hard not to think about the trapped miners in Utah and about the larger issues of worker safety.

Recently in El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia, there's been a lot of talk about "unleashing capitalism." Two things that some people are calling for are reducing regulation of industries like mining and so-called "tort reform."

Here's the reality. Workers in dangerous occupations like mining depend for their very lives on vigorous enforcement and improvement of safety regulations. And when that fails, the only recourse for injured workers and their families--or for survivors if fatalities are involved--is legal action against negligent companies.

Take away both and you have the perfect recipe for death on the job.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

KANT STOP IT, AND LOTS MORE

Caption: Cats have very few social problems (as long as there's a feather to play with.

Welcome to Immanual Kant Week at Goat Rope. All posts this week are devoted to the ideas of that very influential 18th century Prussian philosopher.

In particular, the focus is on Kant's philosophy of history and on the question of whether there's any hope of humanity getting its act together before it's too late. As mentioned previously, this was the subject of his essay Idea For A Universal History With A Cosmopolitan Purpose.

As mentioned yesterday, Kant believed that humanity's nasty and antagonistic traits were necessary for us to develop our potentialities:

The greatest problem for the human race, to the solution of which Nature drives man, is the achievement of a free universal civic society which administers law fairly for all.

The highest purpose of Nature, which is the development of all the capacities which can be achieved by mankind, is attainable only in society, and more specifically in the society with the greatest freedom. Such a society is one in which there is mutual opposition among the members, together with the most exact definition of freedom and fixing of its limits so that it may be consistent with the freedom of others. Nature demands that humankind should itself achieve this goal like all its other destined goals.

That is to say, over time, we are driven by our "unsocial sociability" to develop a social order based on both freedom and rule of law. It's our homework assignment from Mother Nature:

Thus a society in which freedom under external laws is associated in the highest degree with irresistible power, i.e., a perfectly just civic constitution, is the highest problem Nature assigns to the human race; for Nature can achieve her other purposes for mankind only upon the solution and completion of this assignment. Need forces men, so enamored otherwise of their boundless freedom, into this state of constraint. They are forced to it by the greatest of all needs, a need they themselves occasion inasmuch as their passions keep them from living long together in wild freedom. Once in such a preserve as a civic union, these same passions subsequently do the most good.

And we owe it all to our nastiness:

All culture, art which adorns mankind, and the finest social order are fruits of unsociableness, which forces itself to discipline itself and so, by a contrived art, to develop the natural seeds to perfection.

The major remaining problem is that once people in a given country arrive at a rational social order that balances freedom and justice, the law of the jungle prevails between countries.

SPEAKING OF LAW AND JUSTICE, Massey Energy took another hit yesterday:

CHARLESTON, W.Va. - Failing to perform a pre-shift examination at a West Virginia coal mine is going to cost a Massey Energy Co. subsidiary $50,000.

U.S. District Judge John T. Copenhaver Jr. fined Richmond, Va.-based Massey's White Buck Coal Co. that amount Wednesday for a misdemeanor charge of willfully violating a mandatory safety standard. White Buck had pleaded guilty to the charge, which involved failing to perform a pre-shift examination at the Grassy Creek No. 1 mine in Nicholas County five years ago.

According to the report, two employees who agreed to testify were fined for misdemeanors.

The company also faces a shareholder lawsuit, potentially $2.4 billion in fines for alleged violations of the Clean Water Act, and an ongoing criminal probe of a fatal fire at a Logan County mine in January 2006.

CRIMES AGAINST NATURE? On a related note, here's a Gazette item by Ken Ward about Robert Kennedy Jr.'s visit to WV, where he discussed mountaintop removal mining as a "crime against nature."

GROWING PAINS. Those who think economic growth is all you need should check out Business Week's special report on China, which for years has been the fastest growing economy in the world. The article cites the growing ecological crisis, product safety problems, and other social stresses and recommends, among other things, more and better regulation and investments in the social safety net.

SHAME ON GOOGLE. El Cabrero is a big fan/addict of Google products so it was really disappointing to see that this hugely successful company take advantage of an Appalachian part of North Carolina with high unemployment by sucking up subsidies. Business Week reports that the town of Lenoir, Caldwell County, and the state of North Carolina coughed up $211.7 million to land a computer center. This low road approach has highly profitable companies pitting different locations against each other in a bidding war to see which will pay the most to impoverish the public at private expense.

Uhhh...whatever happened to the market? This is another case of socialism for the rich and free enterprise for the poor. And, for the record, this is one area where El Cabrero is with the Unleashing Capitalism crew.

One group that has done a great job at exposing the subsidies racket is GoodJobsFirst.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

GILGAMESH, ANYONE?

Gilgamesh, represented here by the rooster Stewpot, was a mighty ruler in Uruk.

If it's midsummer and you need a guiding theme to fill up a week's worth of blogging in an unpredictable world, there's just one clear choice--duh!--The Epic of Gilgamesh, of course. It is, after all, one of the earliest written stories in human history, even though it was only discovered in the 19th century. It could also be considered the first (literary) tragedy.

It has been a fairly long time since El Cabrero went on a weeklong mythological tear, and Sumerian/Mesopotamian mythology would be a Goat Rope first. We proceed...

As far as I can surmise, the basic theme of the epic is that, as Dirty Harry once said, "A man's got to know his limitations." It's a lesson we all have to learn.

Though written much later, it seems to refer to a possibly real ruler of the Mesopotamian kingdom of Uruk in what is now Iraq in the 3rd millennium BC. Gilgamesh was undoubtedly an alpha male, as we can see from the opening lines of the epic:

I will proclaim to the world the deeds of Gilgamesh. This was the man to whom all things were known; this was the king who knew the countries of the world. He was wise, he saw mysteries and knew secret things, he brought us a tale of the days before the flood. He went on a long journey, was weary, worn-out with labour, returning he rested, he engraved on a stone the whole story.

The story goes that he was the son of Queen Ninsun and King Lugulbanda and was 2/3rds god and 1/3 human. The arithmetic is never explained.

Gilgamesh was also kind of a pain to his subjects, rock and rolling all night and partying every day. His subjects began to complain:

Gilgamesh sounds the tocsin for his amusement, his arrogance has no bounds by day or night. No son is left with his father, for Gilgamesh takes them all, even the children; yet the king should be a shepherd to his people. His lust leaves no virgin to his lover, neither the warrior's daughter nor the wife of the noble; yet this is the shepherd of the city, wise, comely, and resolute.

They pray to the gods to think of some way of keeping Gilgamesh occupied and the gods respond by creating a companion for him, the wild and hairy man Enkidu, who lives with beasts in the forest and eats grass. Gilgamesh was destined to "love him like a woman"--not that there's anything wrong with that.

Unlike Gilgamesh, who is a founder of civilization, Enkidu is a child of nature, innocent of both culture and sexuality. A trapper who has seen him in the wild goes to Gilgamesh for advice on how to domesticate him. He prescribes the charms of woman. An unnamed sacred prostitute is sent to the (literal) watering hole where Enkidu hangs out.

Of that funky stuff which was the subject of 1970s song, Enkidu could not get enough. He treads the primrose path of dalliance with her nonstop for six days and seven nights, which would make him something of a prodigy. One hopes they kept themselves hydrated...

After that tryst, Enkidu loses his wilderness mojo. The wild beasts run from him and he can't keep up with them. It really IS always something, isn't it? The woman tells him:

You are wise, Enkidu, and now you have become like a god. Why do you want to run wild with the beasts in the hills? Come with me. I will take you to strong-walled Uruk...there Gilgamesh lives, who is very strong, and like a wild bull he lords it over men.

So they head to the big city for the next phase of the epic, about which more tomorrow.

COGITO ERGO BLOG.Goat Rope was recently nominated a "Thinking Blog" by the masterful blog of all things West Virginian Lincoln Walks at Midnight. Considering the source, I take that as quite a compliment--Thanks!

There's a cool little graphic that comes with it but El Cabrero can't think well enough to make it show up here. As part of the deal, I need to nominate five blogs that make me think, but I need to think about that some more.

LABOR JOINS THE FIGHT FOR GREEN JOBS. According to Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers union,

We need to put an end to the lies, the myths, the hysteria, that say you can have either a clean environment or good jobs. You can have both, or you have neither.

For more on high road approaches to economic growth and sustainable energy, click here.

HIGH ROAD LOW ROAD. On a related theme, here's an op-ed by yours truly on the choices facing WV as we try to build a better future.

THIS IS WHAT I'M SCREAMING. One fairly easy step that can be taken to get WV on the high road is making high speed internet available throughout the state. Here's a step in the right direction in Charleston. And you know what?--they didn't have to eliminate minimum wage or mine safety laws to do it.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

SPECIAL BRUCE LEE EDITION

Caption: This great blue heron practices the crane style.

In his first epistle to the Corinthians, in the famous 13th chapter, St. Paul says "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."

Speak for yourself, dude. I mean, how much stock can you put in a saying by someone who said "It is better to marry than burn"?

(Note: that was a joke--especially in the event La Cabra reads this.)

I thought of those lines about putting away childish things when I came across this Google video featuring a "lost interview" with Bruce Lee, the idol of my youth and icon of my declining years.

He had just died when I began formally studying martial arts in the summer of 1973, a hobby I've continued off and on ever since. In fact, I remember reading his philosophical articles on the subject in magazines as a kid before he became a superstar.

I still like Bruce and quote him frequently even though I don't kick as high, hard or fast as I used to. Come to think of it I still like the other idols of my youth like Tolkien and Alice Cooper (not necessarily in that order).

Bruce was not just a pretty spinning back kick. He studied philosophy at the University of Washington and throughout his life and his theories of the martial arts and other subjects are still studied. Perhaps not surprisingly, he was particularly influenced by the Taoist tradition.

His ideas of strategy can be applied to areas far removed from martial arts (although they do work pretty well there too).

Here is my favorite quotation from Chairman Bruce, one that has served me well in several difficult situations when I remembered to act on it:

Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way round or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water…If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water my friend.

CHINESE LABOR LAW REFORM. This could be interesting, particularly if it is seriously enforced. From the Washington Post:

BEIJING, June 29 -- The Chinese legislature passed a law Friday to provide more protection to the millions of farm youths who leave home and become cheap labor in the factories and construction sites that have mushroomed in China's booming economy.

The Standing Committee of the China People's Congress, in approving the law, presented it as a bulwark against widespread abuses of the often-uneducated migrant workers, such as forced labor, withholding of pay and unwarranted dismissal. The country was alarmed two weeks ago, for example, by the discovery that hundreds of Chinese were forced to work in conditions resembling slavery at dozens of brick kilns in Shanxi province while local Communist Party officials did nothing to stop it.

In reaction, lawmakers at the last minute added a provision to the long-discussed labor code to mandate punishment for officials who are shown to be negligent or corrupt in allowing entrepreneurs to abuse workers. This and the unusual public rollout of the new law seemed designed to show the Chinese public that the central government of President Hu Jintao is determined to crack down on corrupt officials and protect those left behind by the swift economic growth of the past 25 years.

RADIO GA GA. A recent book titled Unleashing Capitalism has been getting lots of attention in El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia. The book, which claims to be totally objective and scientific, opposes minimum wage and prevailing wage; supports right to work for less; calls for "tort reform;" wants to cuts public funding for education, infrastructure, and services to pay for business tax cuts; opposes workplace safety and other business regulations; wants to undercut public education with a voucher system; etc.

Again, this is all "science" and anyone who disagrees--say by wanting good coal mine safety legislation--is a "Marxist."

WV Public Broadcasting reporter Scott Finn interviewed WVU's Russell Sobel about the book. Dr. Sobel got a little defensive when questioned about the book's factual and "scientific" claims. Yours truly was also interviewed and expressed a different point of view. Here's what another WV blogger, Raging Red, had to say about the story.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED