Queen Vicky's Age of Aquarius

Hello Everyone!!

Since I've noticed that a lot of this blog has involved some very heavy topics and has a number of other heavy topics planned for the future, this post is going to involve something a little more fun-I hope.

In particular, there's been a lot of talk lately some positive and some negative, about if and how America might be re-entering another period like the 1960's. Some of this talk comes from very high brow analysis of societal cycles, others come from hopes for Obama, and other still base try to gauge the spirit of the times through popular culture.

Of course, some would say that America isn't finished fighting the culture wars from the first 60's and *really* can't afford another one. The inevitable question is:

"So OK a more progressive spirit may be coming back. But does that mean the hippie thing will have to come with it?"

While some people mourn the hippie thing others think it did progressive politics a disservice. Had politically minded young people simply marched for Civil Rights, protested Vietnam, and gotten involved with movement like nuclear disarmament, 2nd wave feminism, and the ecology movement wearing suits, ties, blouses, conservative skirts or trousers, and tweed jackets these movements would not have "alienated the working classes" and by 1980 the US would have been politically indistinguishable from Sweden rather than electing Ronald Reagan. Or so one theory goes.

Indeed the hippie and beatnik movements have become both a political rorschach test and perennial source of controversy. Perhaps the problem lies with the belief that the beatnik and hippie movements started in the mid 20th century, and were largely inventions of the Silent and Baby Boom generations. And that nothing like them had been seen in Western civilization before. Of course, litle could be farther from the truth. Countercultures have been a recurring part of Western society since Greek times. After all Socrates was basically a social dropout who was executed by poisoning on the charge that he was "corrupting the youth of Athens".



Perhaps the most striking aspect of the 1960's counterculture was just how unoriginal it was. And how such a large portion of its imagery and ideas were entirely recycled from the last time period most Americans would even think to look:

An age most Americans associate scrupulous morals, conservative dress, old fashioned patriarchal family values, and absolutely unabashed imperialism and industrial optimism. A time when the sun never set on Her Majesty Queen Victoria's British Empire, and the Queen had great trust in Prime Minster Disraeli or "Dear old Dizzy". When America struggled not over Vietnam and Civil Rights, but the aftermath of the Civil War and the failure of Reconstruction. When the Monarchs of Russia, Prussia, and Germany seemed as secure in their jobs as Vicky herself. Before the world ever heard of the atomic bomb, and the earth was believed to be slowly cooling. When concentration camps were remembered mostly a fate dished out to Afrikaaners.
When Gilbert and Sullivan were the height of popular culture. And as youngsters such as Adolf Hitler, TE Lawrence, Margaret Sanger, Amelia Earhart, and JRR Tolkien would grow up in the shadows of it all, being too young to participate.

The 60's cohort had a different set of theories on hand for it's wild ideas, and a different set of drugs. For the Victorian antecedents of the hippies LSD hadn't been invented, mushroom safety was not the most precise science, and marijuana (aka loco weed or jimson weed) mostly belonged to the American west and rural Appalachia. The hot drug was in fact Absinthe in the 1890's. At the time it was believed that if you drank enough of it you would see "The Green Fairy". Of course, toxicologists to this day manage to debate whether 19th century absinthe had psychedelic effects or simply made you drunk. And now that some versions of the brew are being relegalized, researchers seem eager to downplay it's more colorful history.

But in the 1890's in Britain, Europe, and part of America it became popular for people to put aside the very classical styles of the earlier 19 century in favor of art noveau with it's fanciful designs and bright colors. And certain people became very interested in the supposed divorce between modern society and nature often advocating solutions such as open marriages, communal living, "back to nature" trends such as home gardening and wilderness organizations for youth, and other radical arrangements. Many young men took on colorful clothes and behaviors that were then considered too "feminine" even as more mainstream women were starting to loosen their corsets, shorten their skirts, ride bicycles, seek new professions, and agitate for the right to vote.
When the typical middle to upper class Victorian diet was so meat oriented that, Dr. Atkins would worry about protein poisoning, a radical few began to advocate "dietary reform" that encouraged more fruit, vegetables, legumes, and grains sometimes to the point of promoting vegetarianism. Of course, the hip and with it protein was peanuts and peanut butter rather than the soybean. And with it the anti-vivisection movement and the temperance movement largely coalesced. Along with an interest in "natural medicine" such as the the ideas of JH Kellogg.
And then there were the more literary and cultural ideas. Much like the 60's brought an intense interest in JRR Tolkien, many counterculturally inclined Victorians were interested in the Arthurian Legends. Another common fascination for the Victorian unconventionals was the ideas of the fairies, and in fact they invented the view of fairies as gentle and benign. Their Irish contemporaries however did not share this perception and often blamed the faires for mental illness, sick or deformed children, dead cattle and sheep, failed crops, and in some cases even The Great Famine. Other modifications of grim European folklore would include Bram Stocker's sexualization of the idea of a vampire in "Dracula".
More direct similarities between the 1960's and 1890's was the interest in Eastern ideas. And with The British Empire at its height there was plenty of "cultural exchange". Sometimes students of Eastern philosophy came in unlikely packages. If the 1960's had it's grey suited psychologists with radical ideas, the late Victorian era had a certain equally analytical and tweedy gentlemen living at the fictional address of 221B Baker Street, London.

Why does this whole "hippie" thing keep recurring? Several theories point to either a historical, an economic, or even a generational cycle. But perhaps a more provocative theory was propsed by a feminist and cultural theorist Charlene Spretnak. According to Spretnak countercultural movements are a reaction against an intense militarization of society. In her mind viewing it as a rebellion against "sexual repression" is misguided, because many societies with a much stricter sexual code than the US in the 1950's (or late Victorian Britain) did not see that kind of youth rebellion. And in fact, both the 1950's and 1880's /1870's were already much more liberal than the period before them. But both were very militaristic societies, and both had a tendency to make either Cold War patriotism or one's duty to the Empire not just a political loyalty but the cornerstone of everyday life. Down to the preferences for boys haircuts, children's toys, and how women were instructed to raise their children, cook and clean, and maintain their marriages.
And the reaction against such an ethos often will tend to embrace things like sensuality, disorder, and the desire to "free one's mind". Others may rebel by less ordered and pristine but actually more authoritarian social movements such as fundamentalist religion or reactionary political groups, which can partly explain the ugly polarization that hit many European countries
in the earlier decades of the 20th century, and the fact that Americans still can't seem to end the so-called cultural wars. According to Spretnak, it would be facile to blame counterculture for the polarization, or to put it all down to factors such as covert racism and devisive economics. It was even Vietnam or the Civil Rights movement that made the 60's such a radical departure from the 50's or so controversial decades later, but rather was much deeper than that.

Since you will all hear talk about the 60's and perhaps the next counterculture in the near future, hopefully I've provided some perspective and some interesting thoughts to chew on.

That's all for tonight. And

Say Goodnight Readers!

Making Sense of The Autism Epidemic

Hello Everyone!

I want to touch on a complex topic that concerns more and more members of our society, namely the dramatic increase in disorders such as autism and Asperger's syndrome. As many of you know both of them are disorders for which the most prominent features are a lack of social intelligence. In the case of autism it is often accompanied by an inability to talk or perform basic daily living tasks. Individuals with Aspergers are often normal or even highly talented in topics such as language, music, mathematics, art, science, computer programming or other areas, but they may still have a hard time making their way in the world.

And there has been a lot of controversy over whether or not autism rates are increasing and why. The UN currently defines the rise as a "global emergency". Currently the rate of autism and related disorders in the United States stands at 1 in 150 children born.

But a recent study on the autism increase in California, debunks several folk theories about autism and the view that the disorder is entirely due to genetics.

One set of critics have suggested that maybe autism isn't on the rise, but we are simply more aware of it. In the past, these critics have suggested autistic children might have just been kept on a farm, or killed as possessed by the Devil. As late as the 1950's to 1970's, or even the 1980's in some places, they might have been labeled as retarded or mentally ill and put away in an institution without any further investigations. Additionally they point out that the diagnostic criteria has become somewhat broader since the 1960's. However, the California study shows that this is not the case, because only a small portion of the increase in reported cases of autism are due to improved diagnosis, increased awareness, increased reporting, or broadened diagnostic criteria. Also age of diagnosis was not a factor because they looked specifically at the number of children diagnosed at specific ages.

Another theory that attributes autism to genetics, but acknowledges the rise attributes it to assortative mating. Originally set forth by experimental psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen (As a matter of fact he is related to Sasha Baron-Cohen: aka Borat, Ali G, Bruno et al.), this has been dubbed the "revenge of the nerds theory. Basically assortative mating is a term in biology that means by individuals mating with individuals either like or different from themselves as means of increasing or decreasing certain traits. Often it is credited with the differentiation of certain species. But in the assortative mating theory of autism, people who have certain autistic like traits to a lesser degree are the people wildly labeled as "nerds" or "geeks". Or basically the kids who are more interested in quantum physics, calculus, computer programming, and Latin grammar than prom dates, school dances, football, cheerleading, and pep rallies. According to this theory in the past nerds, especially female nerds, had limited mating prospects. But now social scenes such as the computer industry, the tech industries, and increasingly biotech is giving the nerds an opportunity not only to marry and have families, but to do so with each other. And this is the cause of the rise of autism.
Of course, Simon Baron-Cohen was an important figure with the regards to understanding people with autism, and he has created some interesting learning programs to help autistic people. But the California study does not support the assortative mating theory. Because it showed that autism was not associated with migration into California either from other locations. And if autism was really associated with the "nerd marriages" in silicon valley and other tech locations, one would expect in migration to be a large factor in the increase. (Of course, you could accuse me of bias, because I've sometimes been considered something of a nerd.) Because you'd expect most of the nerds in Silicon Valley to reflect more people who migrated from other parts of the US, rather than long time Californians.
Another theory, that has been struck a blow by the lack of association with migration or longer term residence in California, is blaming rising maternal or paternal ages for autism. Because if that was the case you'd expect a negative association, because so many migrants coming into California are immigrants from Mexico and Latin America who tend to start families at younger ages than native born citizens.

Yet another highly popular theory for the rise in autism-albiet one few scientists took seriously-has also been thoroughly exonerated by the study. The California study has shown that there is no association between any vaccination or the vaccine perservative thimersol, and autism.

So what is causing the rise in autism? The answer to that is "We don't really know?"

Is it some pollutant in the environment? The answer to that is "Possibly." There are many environmental scientists and autism researchers who advocate more research regarding a number of environemntal pollutants including particularly organo-mercury.
And some of you may be asking "Well wait a minute!! How come mercury pollution is a suspect, but not thimersol a mercury based perservative?"

The answer to that lies with the complex toxicology of mercury. As it turns out the mercury in thimersol is generally doesn't stay in the body for long time and doesn't increase blood and tissue levels of mercury on a long term basis. However whenever mercury is released into an ocean ecosystem a complex chain of events take places. Usually once the mercury desposits in marine sediments the bacteria convert it into methylmercury (which has a very different toxicological profile than thimersol). And that methylmercury accumulates in the food chain, so that humans are typically exposed by eating fish or seafood. When humans are exposed to methylmercury in that manner it can accumulate in the body, pass the blood brain and blood placental barrier, and appear in a womans' breast milk.

Of course, we are a long way from knowing which if any pollutants are implicated in autism with any certainty. It could be a combination of pollutants, or even a combination of both pollutants and other environmental factors. And it is almost certainly the case that genetics have a lot to do with why some individuals are susceptible to various environmental factors while others are not. All important things to be mindful of, before blaming that cousin, friend, coworker, or daughter in-law with an autistic child for eating too many tuna sandwiches while breastfeeding, getting a new carpet while pregnant, living in Detroit, parenting choices you may not agree with, or other things.

Other theories and studies have focused on indoor air pollutants, lack of vitamin D, differences in gut flora between autistic and non-autistic people, white noise, and more.

Inevitably people will ask "What should parents do to prevent autism in their children?" And sadly, there just isn't enough knowledge to create any clear guidelines yet. Nor are there are any clear guidelines for individuals who have autism. Although it is not inconceivable that this may change in the not-too-distant future. Even now there are some autistic adults who have done much better than experts would have ever believed possible when they were children such as livestock scientist and author Temple Grandin, and autor John Elder Robison, the brother of author Augusten Burroughs who was diagnosed at 40.
And it is possible with medicine, technology, and new understanding of the brain that things may get substantially better in the future.

But first we have to understand these disorders in much greater depth.

That's all for today. And:

Say Goodnight Readers!

Absurdities of Our Times: Part 2

Hello Everyone!

I'd like to discuss another feature of our times that WILL be looked back upon as absurd. And hopefully this absurdity is already soon to be remedied.

However the absurdity regards the US train system, and by that I mean not only the relative lack thereof, but also the standards that literally puts domestic train passengers literally below the whims of corporate track owners, and even cheap merchandise on the way to Wal-mart. The bottom line is that as of now, the US has a passenger train system right out of Borat's mythical (as opposed to the real!!) Kazakhastan.

Until recently it seemed that Congress had a annual ritual of trying to destroy Amtrak. And to make matters worse Amtrak trains typically share rails with freight trains. And when only one train can pass through a certain set of tracks at a time, it is the passenger trains who have to wait and the freight that gets priority!! Why? Because freight is considered a bigger moneymaker by the rail owners. Something of a cold comfort for riders up in the Cascade Mountains, traveling through Texas, or on the famous "City of New Orleans" who sometimes have to sit in an unmoving train for up to an hour, while the freight trains pass.

Even worse is the problem faced by those who would like to ride from New Orleans into Florida. For years a major Amtrak route called the "Sunset Unlimited" went from Los Angeles, through San Antonio, New Orleans to Orlando, Florida. Until the track from Louisiana to Florida were destroyed by hurricane Katrina.

Did they rebuild the tracks? Yes, they've been long since rebuilt. Of course, they were too important for freight to leave in ruins. The problem is that the current owner of the tracks, CSX Transportation has decided against letting Amtrak on that part of the property. So any rider who is in New Orleans and would like to go to Floria has to take a train to Washington DC, and then get on the train to Florida from there!! If you don't believe me check out the Amtrak website and try to book a ride from New Orleans to Miami or Jacksonville.

Why has the US divested in trains for so many decades? Some people say that they were a luxury we couldn't afford and other said we had the luxury of not building them. But either way, this will go down as one of the many absurdities of our times.

See you soon and.

Say Goodnight Readers.

Leaky Pipes: More than Meets the Eye

Mexico City is experiencing a major water shortage as reservoir levels are currently the lowest in The Capital's history. So far the government has dealt with this shortage by cutting off water to 5 million residents or about a quarter of the population during the days before and during Easter. You may be wondering what the government thought the result of this would be. One claim is that they hoped more people would leave and visit relatives living outside the Capital. However at the same time 500 trucks went through the parts of the city affected, and distributed water rations.

The fact that the cutoff mostly affected the poorer areas of the city would surprise nobody who has followed water issues for any period of time.

But one aspect of the city's water shortage is that part of the problem comes from leaky pipes. How leaky? By some estimates the pipes in Mexico City leak 50% of the water that travels through them, or as much as they deliver. And lest you think this is just a peculiarity of Mexican infrastructure, there has been a lot of attention to this problem as it exists around the world. Of course, the previous link isn't a fully comprehensive look at how big a problem leaky pipes are around the world.

Why haven't we heard more about this problem, despite all the ads encouraging people to save water?

Part of the reason is that it is very hard to estimate exactly how much water is being lost to leaks and other causes such as evaporation in the reservoirs. And frankly, it is an even harder problem to solve. Perhaps the simplest reason for the problem is that pumping massive amounts of water through a complex system of municipal pipes tends to put a lot of pressure on the pipes by its very nature. And over the years this builds up.

Also civil engineers have always expected to lose a certain percentage of the water in any public project. While more and more engineers are starting to take the issue of curbing water loss seriously, for a long time loss rates were simply part of the cost of doing business. Another issue is of course, the sheer expense of fixing the problem. In the US, that water infrastructure and the pipes in many cities has been suffering from the same aging infrastructure problems that apply to roads, the electrical grid, and the larger water and sewage plants. And of course, the same massive problem in coming up with the money to fix it. In the poorer countries infrastructure money is always a challenge to put things mildly.

One thing students of engineering and environmental science learn relatively early, to deal with a human settlement's water infrastructure is to deal with the *underground* history of that settlement both literally and figuratively. For a unique educational experience in this arena you might try taking an "Underground Tour", in your own city or the places you visit. While Seattle has perhaps the most notorious underground tour other cities such as Portland, Atlanta, Charleston, and Boston have similar offerings or may acquire them in the not too distant future. Also one can try consulting local historians or even archeologists in a surprising number of locations about the water infrastructure in your area, instead of assuming that the engineers and city planners are the only relevant experts.

Of course, to put off some of the costs of digging through all these complexities (no pun intended) various engineers have devised a number of ways to fix leaky water pipes without the cost and labor of getting to them. On British company is seeking approval for a technology that involves using introducing many small pieces of polymeric material into the water pipes, so that they can actually patch up leaks like platelets in your bloodstream. And many engineers are working on the idea of dispatching robots into sewer systems, underground tunnels, hard to reach places, and even traveling through the muncipal water pipes themselves to detect and perhaps in some cased even fix leaks.

Are these technologies going to be available in poorer countries? And are we really going to have these high tech robots making their way through aging pipes?

It's all very possible, but unlikely to replace the shovel and pneumatic drill. Meanwhile in the US we may see some of the stimulus money go to water infrastructure. And some people in the water conservation business argue that the leakage in water infrastructure should be regulated.

That's all for now! And

Say Goodnight Readers!

The Mileage Tax: Curbing Cars (Part 2)

Hello Everyone!

Now that I've already discussed how a mileage tax would be implemented, I'd like to deal a little more why some people endorse the idea. You may wonder whether or not a mileage tax would penalize people with more efficient vehicles. Or why we should go to all that trouble when some say that the gas tax would accomplish the same thing.

To start out one has to look at the original intent of the gas tax. It was not introduced as a way to reduce petroleum consumption, but rather as a way to bring in money to maintain the roads and highways. After the fact people began to expect it to serve as an eco-tax, or suggested that increasing the gas tax would encourage more efficient cars and less driving.

In this case perhaps the simplest argument for the mileage tax would involve maintaining the roads as more cars become hybrids, plug in hybrids, electric, natural gas or fuel cell (methanol, zinc, etc) that they would no longer contribute the revenue to building the roads, and that unless an alternative way to collect revenue for driving is found, that it could spell disaster for the condition of the roads and infrastructure funding in general. Some states have been reluctant to promote electric vehicles for exactly that reason.

Trying to argue that a mileage tax would be an eco-tax ends up depending on more sophisticated arguments. Inevitably the first objection to a mileage tax as an eco-tax is that it penalizes people with more efficient vehicles. Washington State has considered dealing with this issue by making the mileage tax a supplement rather than a replacement for the gas tax.

Perhaps the most compelling argument for a mileage tax as a neccesary eco-tax is that more and more efficient cars (environmental impact per mile), will be of limited use if people continue to drive more and more miles every year. And while, an electric or plug in hybrid car would definitely consume less or no gasoline, it is possible that an increased electric demand due to an increasing fleat of electric cars could increase the demand for coal fired plants.

Even electricity produced from power sources such as solar, wind, or hydro-electric can have bring some of their own concerns. For example hydroelectric damns can impact fish habitat. Wind power requires some land use and can be hazardous to bird or bats if designed poorly. Solar thermal plants can consume significant amounts of water, and the manufacture of photovoltaics produces significant amounts of toxic wastes and requires a good deal of energy and water. Furthermore as of now, the majority of photovoltaics manufactured in the US and globally require certain rare metals, which some scientists fear may be facing scarcity in the future. Certainly there are more and more efforts to recycle silicon based PV cells in order to reclaim and reuse some of the metals and to possibly reduce the environmental costs of building new PVs, as well as researcher dye based and organic solar cells which don't require rare metals and are ecologically cheaper to produce. However the fact that electricity was produced from renewables doesn't mean that conservation is no object. Certainly algal fuels are likely to run into issues like water consumption, land use, and possibly water pollution. Solutions like zinc air fuel cells and carbon recycling will always depend on some energy source.

Renewable energies may have less impact on the environmental and consume fewer basic resources than coal fired plants or gasoline, but that doesn't mean that the remaining costs should be dismissed out of hand. Not to mention the fact that cutting down on carbon dioxide emissions from coal fired electric plants, retiring some of the more ecologically destruction hydroelectric dams, and President Obama's plans to update the national electric grid is already creating an immense set of challenges even without adding the following electric demands:

1) A growing fleet of millions of electric, plug in hybrid, and zinc-air fuel cell cars.
2) Several hundred carbon dioxide recycling plants.
3) Several thousand algae farms and biofuel refineries.
4) Possibly all of the above.

Keep in mind that I'm not doubting that these challenges can be met with enough political will. But inevitably the total number of auto miles driven by Americans each year is bound to remain an issue.

I look forward to any comments or feedback on these questions. And.

Say Goodnight Readers!

An End to Nuclear Madness

President Obama ran on a platform of change. And many of us supported him with our fingers crossed. Some accused us of creating a cult, for simply daring to hope that maybe, just maybe, this most unlikely candidate might be able to keep his campaign promise of bringing change to Washington.

But few of us even dared to hope that Obama would seriously propose, what he did just three days ago: That the US and other nations should, as a long term goal, seek a world without nuclear weapons. For many years many organizations, and many individuals from countries around the world sought to get this goal on the map politically. Most of them frankly, had little hope of success and many thought that they continued to pursue it because of the moral implications of just giving up.

Of course, the issue of nuclear weapons is a central one on the matter of planetary survival, and runs very close to my heart as a child of the Reagan years-that overlooked and arguably most dangerous period of the Cold War. Back in the days when visions of nuclear war were dominated by utterly gruesome portraits such as "The Day After" and it's exponentially more brutal British counterpart "Threads".

The big question in many minds is, "Can this goal be accomplished?" And too often the answers different people give have been obscured by reactions ranging from aggressive jingoism, to denial, to fatalism, to apocalyptic fervor, to just about everything in between.

Of course, so far not much is known about the nature of Obama's plan. And the President himself has admitted that the ultimate goal may not be accomplished in his own lifetime. But without some goal, even an unrealized goal, to contain this nuclear madness, what are the alternatives?

Keeping Cold War nuclear weapons pointed in their Cold War directions for the next 500 years or more? Just hope the next nuclear radar or computer error won't have worse consequences than the ones that occurred in 1983 and 1995? Accept policies such as Mutually Assured Distruction (MAD) or Nuclear Utilization Target Selection (NUTS) with their all too fitting acronyms as a permanent aspect of human civilization? Genetically engineer humans to live in underground caves like something out of an HG Wells Novel? Kinda hope that a post nuclear war future would be as exciting as it looks in films such as the upcoming "Terminator Salvation"?

While it is very possible that the exact details of any plan Obama could possibly present may have to be modified both in the near future and in the years, decades, and even generations to come, it is a start that is decades overdue. And it represents a decision on the part of the United States to finally turn away from the nuclear madness that began on August 6, 1945 and instead seek nuclear sanity.

Obama's statement that the United States is the only nation to use a nuclear bomb is certainly correct if one is referring to their use during warttime or on human targets. But many people underestimate the extent of nuclear testing especially during the 1950's and 1960's, and the amount of radiation that it released into the biosphere. Indeed one has to wonder about why the public at large was so concered about radiation from the Chernobyl accident coming our way in 1986, but expressed no such comparable level of worry when the Soviet Union tested the Tsar Bomba-the largest nuclear weapon ever exploded-in 1961 along with many other Soviet and American nuclear tests in the same time period. Or over the fact that the US carried out underground nuclear tests in Nevada throughout the 1980's and well into the 1990's.

It's equally amazing that a fair number of Americans supported a war with Iraq and possibly Iran on the belief that they WMDs, while so little attention was given to what the US, USSR/CIS, and five other nations (not including Iraq or Iran) were doing during the mid to late 20th century.

But perhaps now the idea of seeking an end to this insanity, will no larger be seen as "fringe" or "radical".

Say Goodnight Readers!

The Mileage Tax: On the Road Again? (Part 1)

Hello everyone!

Today I'm going to talk about the mileage tax. Now to many readers who live in the Pacific Northwest, the idea of a mileage tax may be viewed as another kooky 70's fad right up there with recycling co-ops, bioregional governments, Esperanto classes, mandatory yearly service at tree planting, JRR Tolkien puppet shows and street theater, community bathhouses, Italian- Chinese fusion cuisine, and the whole Appalachian folk revival thing. For those of you from, erm, less colorful parts of the nation there's a good to excellent chance you've never even heard of it.

But now the mileage tax has been seriously suggested not by yet another eccentric guy with a beard and ponytail, but by US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. Although President Obama has so far been very reluctant to endorse the idea, it has gained some supporters in Congress such Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA). And since the idea has gone from obscure hippideom and eco-oriented science fiction, to the national conversation, I'm going to attempt a cogent discussion of the matter.

Perhaps the first question that comes up is "How can you accurately count miles driven in order to tax them?" The answer to that is that there are basically two practical methods to do it. Of course, other suggestions such as tolls roads have been proposed, but for regulating total number of miles driven it simply wouldn't be practical.

1) A GPS satellite tracking system-

This is the technocrat's favored method of counting automobile miles, but it is not popular with the ACLU or much of the US public. And this is the method that was used in a pilot program in Oregon with a relatively small number of drivers. Technically this is probably them most accurate way to count miles driven by a car. But to many people it raises the spectre of "Big Brother".
The pilot program used in Oregon was designed so that only the number of miles would be retained in the database with no possibility of tracking drivers or trying to reconstruct where the car went and when. But in theory it is certainly possible to design a system so that the local police, FBI, or Department of Homeland Security could do exactly that. Many Civil Libertarians fear that a GPS based mileage tax could end up being only an administration away from being designed that way.

2) Regular in car odometers with an "honor system"-

Although this system is generally favored by civil libertarians, it could make tampering or cheating on the mileage tax easier and more common, than with a GPS based system. And many proponents with a technocratic streak and little concern for privacy rights, dislike it for being scientifically less accurate even when drivers are fully honest. However this is the method favored by Sen. Barbara Boxer.

Basically this system would involve having the miles certified and billed either annually or whenever the car went in for repairs or an emissions test. Basically a technician or mechanic would check the odometer's mileage and examine the odometer for signs of tampering. At perhaps less frequent intervals the car would be examined for various indicators of wear and tear, to see if it more or less "jibes" with the odometer.

As it stands now odometer tampering is in fact a felony. Mostly because it is seen as a form of consumer fraud pertaining to the used car business. And already we have a situation where odometers are getting progressively more difficult to tamper with-at least without leaving some evidence of tampering in the device. Furthermore, there is a surprisingly sophisticated science of examining a car to see if the odometer reading appear to be accurately reflect the number of miles the car has driven.
Certainly the business of preventing odometer tampering would get much bigger if the crime was elevated from consumer fraud to tax evasion.

And of course, different variations on a mileage tax would depend on which method was adopted. Some proponents of the tax have suggested using "congestion pricing" or charging a higher fee when the car is driven in high traffic areas. This suggestion however would require the adoption of a GPS based system.
Furthermore if the mileage tax was collected by individual states it would have to involve either a GPS tracking system to determine if the car was driving in that particular state or not. Or it would require states to accept the fact if the driver paid for some miles either in the state where the car visited a mechanic or was registered, that it might not always reflect where the driving had actually taken place.
And if some states had a lower rate than others some people might try to find ways to take advantage of it. For example if the rate was higher in Oregon than California, a lot of Oregonians might decide to take the car into the shop during their vacation in Mt. Shasta (that is assuming you can pay in a mechanic shop in a state where the car is not registererd). Also dynamics could get interesting if you talk about a population known as "snowbirds". Or the rate might be lower in New Mexico, Colorado, or Utah than in either Arizona or Michigan. Then the snowbirds driving into Arizona for the winter could decide to get a tune up on their trip between Arizona and Michigan, so that the states where the snowbirds simply drive through get a more revenue than the place where they spend half the year.

In order to avoid such pitfalls an in car odometer based mileage tax would probably have to be national and would require some fair way to redistribute much of the money to individual states. Another arguement in favor of making it national is that people could more easily include the records of how much they already payed in mileage taxes with their Federal tax papers, and that considering mileage taxes part of a larger Federal formula could prevent regressive taxation.

Now that I've written this long post about how a mileage tax could be implemented, I'm sure some readers are wondering why a mileage tax might be implemented, as opposed to simply sticking with the gas tax.

For that you'll have to stay tune for future posts!! And

Say Goodnight Readers!!