Friday, January 31, 2003

Battle of the Bands I hit page 580 of McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom and encountered this poignant passage, describing the evening before the horrific battle of Stones River on Dec. 31, 1862, until that time the most deadly engagement of the Civil War: As the two armies bedded down a few hundred yards from each other, their bands commenced a musical battle as prelude to the real thing next day. Northern musicians blared out "Yankee Doodle" and "Hail Columbia," and were answered across the way by "Dixie" and "The Bonnie Blue Flag." One band finally swung into the sentimental strains of "Home Sweet Home"; others picked it up and soon thousands of Yanks and Rebs who tomorrow would kill each other were singing the familiar words together. 10:57:56 PM     Bush and the First Element Here's an excellent gleaning from the Atlantic Monthly's Real State of the Union. In his speech Monday, Bush said: Tonight I am proposing 1.2 billion dollars in research funding so that America can lead the world in developing clean, hydrogen-powered automobiles . . . . Join me in this important innovation -- to make our air significantly cleaner, and our country much less dependent on foreign sources of energy. But, as this article in The Atlantic points out, Bush is playing a shell game: Even if the government did not actively subsidize a hydrogen infrastructure, it could point the nation toward a hydrogen future by ceasing to subsidize the burning of fossil fuels. Unfortunately, however, Washington is at the moment neither encouraging hydrogen development nor discouraging fossil-fuel use. President Bush's energy plan proposed considerably more in subsidies for fossil fuels and nuclear energy -- $2 billion over ten years to support the development of oxymoronic "clean coal," and billions more for nuclear energy -- than for hydrogen fuel cells, wind, or any other form of renewable energy. Currently the government is spending about $77 million a year on hydrogen fuel cells, or about a third of what the President has proposed for "clean coal." 12:57:51 AM

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