The domain Ravingmoderate.com is available for sale at Namecheap.com for $9999. Also available: Trumpsswamp.com for $1000; Twitchter for $1000.

Facebook's Psychological Experiments

It's not so much the studying of our data - indeed it's out there and being analyzed anyway - as the idea of manipulating communications from your friends so as to influence our moods. I'm not entirely clear how this was to be achieved, but it sounds like they were in effect meddling in our relationships to a degree. Maybe there was a marriage in your family that week, but Facebook has chosen to funnel you a little extra negativity. Gee, thanks. It's also a fact that corporations do try to manipulate our feelings all the time - so that we will buy their stuff. In fact, everybody manipulates everybody else's emotions all the time, either because we want something or simply by being there. We all know this and most of us are at least sort of used to it. But somehow, dispassionately stepping back and just playing with our feelings to see what happens seems a little extra creepy, especially for a company that we've come to look at as one that dispassionately relays our communications, almost like the phone company. Yes, I am logging in via Facebook. Maybe they'll read this, and start to get it.

In reply to  "Facebook still won't say 'sorry' for mind games experiment" on CNN's website.

Military Suicide Prevention

In reply to Senator Donnelly Announces Jacob Sexton Suicide Prevention of 2014

I agree with all of the Senator's comments. However, the number one thing we can do to prevent military suicides is to stop sending our service men and women into unnecessary wars, wherein they may be forced to see and likely take part in things that no human being should ever have to see. We can and should do everything to comfort and if necessary rehabilitate those who have been there. If there is such a thing as a just war and our wars are truly just, they can also take comfort from that. But an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and to this end I would say that the most effective thing the federal government can do is to adopt Dennis Kucinich's forgotten proposal to establish a Department of Peace, to put the same kind of energy into preventing wars that currently gets put into prosecuting them.

Comment on CNET Google Glass Piece

My reply (as Guitarface) to "United Airlines to Google Glass wearer: Take off high-tech specs"

Not everybody likes to have a camera stuck in their face, and nobody likes to have a camera stuck in their face all the time. The more people use Google Glass, the more time we will always spend with a camera stuck in our face, or trained upon us whenever wearers glance our way. Now, you won't know whether it's being used as a camera at that moment, since it has other functions and may also just be sitting there, stored idly upon the wearer's nose for the moment until wanted again. But still, someone's camera will be potentially on you in every public moment, not for security purposes, not because you're friends, but maybe just because someone is a photobug, or a voyeur, or even actually spying on you for whatever reason. I'm sure the vast majority of Google Glass users will be as polite, well-intentioned and respectful as the general population has ever been, but given the  fair number of people in that population who aren't terribly polite, well-intentioned and respectful, is it hard to imagine that this phenomenon of wearable cameras - albeit they are more than cameras - may become, well, rather creepy? Come to think of it, "more than cameras" makes it a little creepier. It looks like folks can already look you up using face recognition via a Glass app called "Name Tag". Hmm, cute, wonder where she lives... 

Don't get me wrong. I'm glad we all have cameras in our pockets, to record anything from precious moments to wrongdoing by rogue police. But I truly feel that Glass has the potential take us a step too far towards a voyeuristic society where privacy has ceased to exist for all intents and purposes. This may be unavoidable; it may even have overall benefits with regards to law and order, and become less painful as new generations are born into this milieu. Nevertheless, if Google Glass and similar hardware become ubiquitous, it's going to be an uncomfortable transition, and we should think long and hard about how it will affect us all.

New York Times: "A Critic Finds Obama Policies a Perfect Target "

During Bush's term in office, I personally wasn't above emailing a few of my friends an animation I'd run across of W. morphing into Hitler, and I still feel that way. But if one drops all pretense of nuance in the public arena, then all you get is the nutty left battling the nutty right, and woe unto all of us if either one wins. Bush was all for gaining total power, on a credit card yet. Obama wants to make sure all Americans have health coverage, which seems like a bare minimum of returning something to the American people for all of the tax dollars we do spend, while hopefully making the whole project pay for itself. He wouldn't even be trying to do this if the insurance companies weren't doing such a crummy job in the first place. If we don't want the government to do this stuff for us, then we'd better grow up and start pursuing "enlightened" capitalism, entrepreneurship that has a true social conscience, not just the veneer of one, rather than all wishing we could be robber barons like the ones who have tens of millions of dollars and more tucked away.

Which is all to say, I think the Bill Wilson in this article sounds like a nut to me, more interested in winning some ideological battle than in what the actual outcome will be for democracy.

New York Times: Supreme Court to Revisit ‘Hillary’ Documentary

There's a real tension here. Speech should be as absolutely free flowing as possible. I'd certainly like to think I can say what I want about a campaign candidate, and use what resources I have to disseminate my sincere feelings about that person and their relationship to the issues. However, with sufficient power and money, it is possible to overwhelm the airwaves and drown out the opposition. This may sound impossible. However, the so-called "conservative" (really corporate and would-be totalitarian) strategy for the past several years has been to activate the reptilian brains of its most loyal and unquestioning followers, using infantile arguments to whip them into a frenzy of anger and, above all, noise, that makes rational thinking and debate extremely difficult, magnifying the power of the distribution of a given broadcast or article. To the conservative thinkers out there: don't be offended, the preceding comment doesn't apply to you if you actually think, and believe in thinking and rational debate. Another perquisite that comes with corporate wealth and power is the ability to hire a lot of people to write propaganda and push it on the media. Often they even own the media, or heavily sponsor it, as Noam Chomsky points out in "Manufacturing Consent". Corporations don't care, if a corporation can do such a thing as "care", about the origins or private lives of a candidate. They care about being free to maximize profits, and they don't want to be bothered with regulations that force them to do anything, including taking proper care of their workers or reducing pollution. But they are happy to paint candidates as crawling from corrupt ooze if that will inflame people to not vote for the person who might want to actually limit corporate power. We're all afraid of government getting too big and powerful, but it is the big corporations that really dominate our lives, and who are all too happy to own the government as well, if allowed to do so.

NYT: "Judges’ Dissents for Death Row Inmates Are Rising"

Executing innocent human beings is not law and order. It is murder. Or at least manslaughter, if one wants to get technical about it.

BBC Asks "Is an ageing population a good thing?"

If it is comfortable and satisfying, long life is a great thing. After all, we only get a little time out of eternity. But of course having more people alive also further strains our planet's resources, and eventually, as Kurt Vonnegut pointed out in "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow", tempers as well. So if we're going to stick around a long time, we should either think about how to extend resources without overtaxing our planet any further, about having fewer children, or colonizing the moon.

Another Prisoner to Be Released from Guano

But One Question Still Remains For the Raving Moderate

Glad to see work being done on closing Guantanamo. Thank you, President Obama. But once again, where exactly is the possible reasonable balancing of justice with paranoia in this limbo category of "can neither be tried nor released"?? They call it "Gitmo" for short, but I still sense that "Guano" might be more appropriate in this regard.

Evan Bayh Votes for the (fortunately defeated) Thune Amendment

Response sent to Evan Bayh's Office (http://bayh.senate.gov/contact/email/) after Bayh voted for this amendment -

Can't believe you voted for the Thune Amendment. The carrying of concealed guns would be nothing but a prelude to shootings breaking out in bars and on city streets, not to mention bringing cases of road rage one step closer to catastrophe. Let's keep in mind the first half of the Second Amendment - "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State". The right to bear arms is in light of this necessity, and to be kept "well regulated".

Frankly, Indianapolis, Gary, South Bend and other cities in Indiana are dangerous enough already.

Perhaps this was one of those votes that wasn't going to make a difference anyway, so might as well as please a few Libertarians and Independents. Well, core Democrats have noticed, too. I like and often agree with Libertarians and Independents, but occasionally we need to keep individuals from infringing on each others' liberties, just as we more often need to keep government and large corporations from doing so. Concealed weapons will make the streets more dangerous, not safer.

New York Times: Bush Weighed Using Military in Arrests

My feeling was always that, bottom line, Bush and Cheney simply wanted unfettered power, with no limits and no accountability. The legal stuff was just a smokescreen for that, or at best a hurdle to be cleared. If innocent people were rounded up alongside terrorists, better that they should just disappear than ever have the chance to tell their stories. Why else would Bush and Cheney have feared Habeas Corpus for prisoners? Don't we, a constitutional democracy that holds itself up as a role model for the world, care just a little whether people in prison are really who we suspect them of being? Their argument was always to put a label on them, terrorists, enemy combatants, unlawful combatants, and then say that such people weren't entitled to any rights. But they didn't even seem to care whether or not the label actually fit, begging the question. At least a large part of the reason that our Constitution gives rights to criminal suspects is that they might actually be innocent. Using labels that begged this question was a huge erosion of this principle, since increasingly anyone could be labeled and immediately placed outside of Constitutional protection.

Note Sent to Senator Kennedy in response to NY Times "Kennedy’s Absent Voice on Health Bill Resonates"

All my best wishes to the Senator. The New York Times has described the mutual frustration felt by both Senator Kennedy and the Senate itself, that the Senator cannot be present for the current debate on the health care bill. I would like to suggest that when Senator Kennedy feels up to it, he should record his comments via video, and have those sent to the Senate floor, and of course invite C-Span to show them to the American people as well. His voice would be powerful at this time. I would also remind the Senator that, as shown in Michael Moore's movie, Sicko, and as I have experienced myself when visiting Scandinavia, health care in much of the industrialized world is simply covered. It is paid for by taxes to be sure, but no one in those countries need ever worry about being bankrupted by a health crisis such as the Senator is experiencing at this time, one which is well covered by the Senate's own plan for itself, but one which, even for a middle class family, could easily be financially devastating to most Americans, on top of the other pain it causes. I thank and congratulate the Senator for his years of tireless work and the historic point to which it has helped to bring us, and, again, wish him all the best.

The Economist on "The underworked American"

Once again, the Raving Moderate once again comes down squarely in the middle of the debate about whether Europeans or Americans are truly lazier...

I'm all for American style endless summer vacations for our kids. I'm all for European style, liberal leave policies, too. People need to have time to get to know and/or remember what a little bit of freedom is like. It's worth the educational and economic costs, in my opinion, if it doesn't actually make up for them. Besides, we're all so damn competitive without really having any idea what the point is.

Thanks to Bob Knight for posting the article (linked to the headline above) on his Facebook page!

"N. Korea Sentences 2 U.S. Journalists to 12 Years of Hard Labor "

We need to differentiate nations from their leaders. North Korea is a nation of human beings like any other. Their current leadership, however, appears to be exceptionally lacking in maturity. But the idea that we must retaliate militarily, and it will just be "their fault" also lacks maturity of vision. I hope that any confrontation does not escalate to the point where the people of any nation must suffer from it.

No Habeas at Bagram?

Update on June 8 - no reply, although the form had a checkbox letting one specify that no reply is needed, a box which I didn't check off.


I just submitted the following comment at whitehouse.gov:

The New York Times states as follows: "In a court filing last month, the Obama administration agreed with the Bush administration position that 600 prisoners in a cavernous prison on the American air base at Bagram in Afghanistan have no right to seek their release in court." (Source:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/us/politics/08obama.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss). I personally don't see how any, and I mean any, prisoner should be denied habeas. There can always be mistakes where an innocent person is imprisoned, which is a horrible fate. This may occur despite the best intentions of the authorities involved. Furthermore, such intentions should not be taken for granted in a situation as serious as the detention of human beings. Even in a POW situation, a bystander may be mistaken for a combatant. There may be such cases where habeas needs to be streamlined, due to sheer numbers. But I seriously believe it should never be shortchanged. Please let me know where I may read a copy of the filing referred to in the Times article. I will be posting this question on my blog at ravingmoderate.com, and very much look forward to your response, so that I may understand how this filing is consistent with the Administration's apparent desire to stand on principle, and not just legalisms. I appreciate the apparent progress that has been made so far in this regard. Thank you.

Layoffs in an Economic Downturn

(This is a response to the New York Times article linked above)

For decades we've been told that in the long run laissez faire capitalism will produce the best economy. This type of situation (massive layoffs in an economic downturn) illustrates the tension between the former and the latter. Our economy needs more people to be put to work; the capitalists would rather lay people off to keep their stockholders happy, and indeed may need to do so in order to keep their companies solvent. Even our government is asking the auto companies to trim their payrolls in return for bailout money, at the same time as the stimulus package is supposed to be largely for the purpose of producing jobs.

Coburn Amendment to Freeze Arts Out of Stimulus Package

See:
LA Times and

San Francisco Chronicle

Commentary:
The arts are certainly not a "waste", nor "non-stimulating" to the economy. Music in particular almost literally "stimulates" the economy by creating a pleasant, "stimulating" atmosphere for working and shopping (aka spending money back into the economy). Live music makes an even greater attraction for special events that stimulate spending, whether it's a night at the opera, a festival, a show at a club, or a ribbon cutting for a new hardware store. Music has been shown to stimulate developing brains, and may help us turn out better engineers as well as musicians. Music is used for therapy for the ill and even the dying. No waste here, Mr. Coburn, nothing elitist, nor ultimately frivolous, about any of it. Some specific proposals may be better than others, but that's true in any area of endeavor, and is the reason that we have screening processes for grants and loans.

Sure there's a lot of serious business to do out there. But the arts help make life worthwhile, and, as in some of the musical examples I've just given, can provide a playful yet effective approach to serious concerns. A non-musical example might be a book or a play that serves to illustrate and help us understand important truths that we might otherwise miss.

It's one thing to leave the arts out of the package due to arguably more pressing concerns. It's quite another to slip a gratuitous insult to the Arts community into the package at the same time. Personally, I think the Arts are a crucial part of our infrastructure, and that artists have too long been undervalued because they are so much more eager than most to work very hard at making their contribution to the community - i.e. it's too easy to get them to work practically for free. If we all stopped working (I'm a musician as well as a blogger), the economy would feel the effects.

Letter to My Congressman on the Stimulus Package

My Congressman, Baron Hill, today wrote his consituents, asking "I would like to hear your thoughts about the overall recovery package, particular provisions you are concerned with or support, and any ideas you have about how best to stimulate our economy. While I cannot promise a prompt response, I will certainly take your thoughts and suggestions into account while considering my next vote on this legislation." The letter also opened by saying "As you know all too well, we currently find ourselves in a very grave situation. The national economic climate is dismal." Here is my response.

Dear Congressman Hill,

My feeling is that whatever money is spent should be viewed as an investment that produces a return beyond just putting it out there into somebody's hands to "stimulate" the economy. Ideally, it would be calculated to be "revenue neutral". That is to say, it would produce at least as much revenue for the government as it costs, so as not to increase the deficit and the national debt to the point where the "stimulus" would eventually be the cause of another crisis for the American people. Politically, this would be accomplished most easily by stimulating the economy to the point where it produced additional tax revenues to compensate for the outlay, without raising tax rates. Some types of stimuli that might produce this result and/or have other beneficial results:

1. Infrastructure improvements. E.g. better roads would increase taxable commerce, while also providing jobs (which will also result in a partial rebate to the government of their stimulus dollars by way of tax revenues).
2. National healthcare would produce a return in healthier, more productive workers, who, again, pay taxes.
3. Environmental expenditures and tax incentives. Again, healthier environment, healthier workers. Green industries also pay taxes.
4. Loans to stimulate business - will theoretically get paid back, with interest, and create a taxpaying business.
5. More efficient use of bailout moneys. Here are some suggestions I posted earlier on my blog at ravingmoderate.com to that effect:

I would suggest that rather than giving industries direct bailouts, we increase the incentives for Americans to patronize their companies while also benefiting society, the economy, and/or the environment. Case in point: the auto industry. If we gave a truly sizable tax exemption to anyone who buys a particularly environmentally friendly automobile that is made in the U.S.A., the industry would be forced to build the cars to meet the increased demand, and the money would still wind up in their pockets, while people could drive newer cars while cutting down on emissions. We would get a lot more for our tax dollar this way.

Similarly we should have bailed out mortgagees, not loan companies. The money would still have wound up in the companies' coffers, enabling them to stay in business, but at the same time more people could have stayed in their homes - for the same buck.

Again, fewer homeless people, more people likely to go back to work - and pay taxes. More tax revenues from the auto industry…

6. I also suggested on Raving Moderate that there is a psychological component to this crisis. No doubt there is a strong, fiscal component as well. But everyone is being told we're in a crisis that is made to sound so bad that everyone is afraid to try anything, so they are just staying home and hoarding their money, if they have any. So I suggest that we try not to wallow in too much "dismal"-ness. It's also worth noting that Jimmy Carter's "malaise" speech is widely considered to be one of the pivotal reasons, along with the hostage crisis in Iran, for his defeat by Ronald Reagan in 1980. I think we need a little more "Yes We Can" -- Obama himself needs to be reminded of this as well!
7. Businesses receiving stimulus money must keep their jobs in America in order to return the stimulus to the American economy. I don't believe in protectionism, and I want all people everywhere to have good jobs in a global economy; but we are also first responsible for keeping our own house in order.
8. At the same time as all of this, for the sake of our resources and our environment, both national and global, we should consider the virtues of living with somewhat less. A bigger economy isn't always the best economy.

Sincerely,

Tom Marshalek

Thoughts From the Fringe...

A few years back, maybe we thought the Internet was a vast network of documents. Actually, it was we who were being networked.

Caps on Executive Pay to Bailout Recipients "Not Draconian"

A $500,000 cap on pay to executives of companies receiving bailout money is "draconian", according to James F. Reda, quoted in the New York Times article linked above. That's very funny. Mr. Reda is not living in the real world. We're talking about giving these companies the tax money of people who mostly make a tiny fraction of that very comfortable salary, so that the companies can pay that salary. If the company can afford to pay tens of millions of dollars to their CEO's, then it's their business, but they don't need OUR bailout money. Incidentally, to reiterate some of my previous posts, bailout money should only go indirectly to corporations, so the money can do more good. For example, the financial bailout could have directly made payments on mortgages, which would have saved homes at the same time that the money ends up with the banks. The auto bailout could instead have been a tax incentive to buy American (and preferably ecological) cars, etc. Instead, we're just giving them the money, and what do they do? Horde it for themselves, and then expect to keep paying their CEO's ridiculously huge salaries.

On the "Racial Significance" of the Nomination

Click the link above for the NY Times article to which this is in part a response (emailed a draft of this to Carl Hulse of the Times).

I find the phrase "racial significance" to be interesting. I think part of the significance of President Obama's election and inauguration is that it begins to affirm, or reaffirm, that so-called "race" is not significant. The significant problem has been that we have pretended or believed that race is significant. Allowing that people may identify themselves to a degree by their cultural heritages, and that differences in heritage can also be medically significant at times, I choose to believe that the very word "race" nevertheless tends to overstate the case, and that there is only one human race.

---

Incidentally, Viva Obama!

Change.gov Question

Just condensed my previous post into a 250 character question for Change.gov. Sign in or register there to vote on or submit questions for the incoming Obama Administration to answer. Search for my question in order to vote on it by using the keyword "eco-cars".

"Couldn't bailouts help the American people more directly and still save industries? We make some payments on folks' mortgages: the banks get the money AND a home is saved. Tax rebates to buy American eco-cars would wind up in automakers' pockets etc."
ravingmoderate.com, Midwest, USA

We can get more for our money than a simple bailout

Just posted the following on BarackObama.com:

I would suggest that rather than giving industries direct bailouts, we increase the incentives for Americans to patronize their companies while also benefiting society, the economy, and/or the environment. Case in point: the auto industry. If we gave a truly sizable tax exemption to anyone who buys a particularly environmentally friendly automobile that is made in the U.S.A., the industry would be forced to build the cars to meet the increased demand, and the money would still wind up in their pockets, while people could drive newer cars while cutting down on emissions. We would get a lot more for our tax dollar this way.

Similarly we should have bailed out mortgagees, not loan companies. The money would still have wound up in the companies' coffers, enabling them to stay in business, but at the same time more people could have stayed in their homes - for the same buck.

I'm also concerned that the dire forecasts themselves may be what is driving the economy down to a large degree. All the fear increases the rate of the spiral. At the same time, we should be learning to live with fewer unimportant luxuries, in order to preserve the habitability of the planet. In this sense, a slowing economy can be a good thing. The important thing is that we make sure people don't starve or live out in the streets. There has to be a tipping point where the philosophy that a booming economy is the best economy breaks down. Perhaps this is that tipping point, and we should be thinking of something other than to jumpstart things into another boom, which will lead to another bust. The economy we need is a comfortable level of food, shelter and medical care for all, where we aren't robbing the future just because we don't know when to stop.

Note to Obama - the Campaign Needs to Continue

Sent to change.gov, the website of Barack Obama's transition team:

I actually came to this site looking for more of a national suggestion box than to tell my story... I had a small epiphany this morning. The campaign isn't over. In these troubled times, the chant of "Yes We Can" can be more important to overcoming adversity than it even was in electing a new President. President Barack Obama needs to return to whipping up those crowds, but also to continue to remember that it's not about him, it's about all of the people continuing to believe in their efficacy, and continuing to take the initiative. I fear perhaps he has begun to feel like the burden is all on him, even with the excellent help he has enlisted. He should remember that he has the assistance, and the ideas and innovation, of the majority of the American people, a majority that will hopefully grow. It is also important to remember that a cult of personality is a very fragile thing, whereas to inspire the many to each become wise leaders in their own right is to create a more robust democracy. Now that we have campaigned to make one man our President, we need to continue campaign for this even greater goal.

Additional note sent to the BBC in response to the musical question "Will Obama save the US economy?"

I believe that putting Americans to work rebuilding America is a very good start for the American economy. But Barack Obama will not singlehandedly save the US economy. The American people will. We cannot continue to rely on the fortunes of our nations rising and falling with those of our top leaders. Obama, however, is in a very good position to make a difference, and to keep leading us in the chant of "Yes we can!" Emphasis on "we".

Scalia on Torture (ignoring the Starbucks headline...)

Maybe torture is "constitutional in a ticking time bomb scenario" (NYT paraphrasing Justice Scalia), if there is a reasonable belief that that is the most effective means of thwarting a genuine crisis that is truly imminent and of that magnitude, although the efficacy of torture is in itself questionable. But that scenario is also very fact specific. The danger is that the powers that be will simply hide behind an illusory version of this scenario when it does not apply. This tends to make the state itself look like something of a terrorist entity, and thereby also tends, as we have seen, to actually reinforce the anti-state arguments of the violent resistance, helping them to recruit. I read our Constitution as cleverly designed to avoid all of these things. Proper due process allows the guilty to be convicted and removed from society, while also largely convincing the skeptical that the state itself has not run amok. So we should be very careful about allowing for suspensions of due process, and not allow the executive to paint more-scary-than-real scenarios in order to clothe what is really the naked will to power.

Follow up post:

If Scalia's argument, per MR's comment, is that cruel and unusual doesn't apply -- we might reply to Scalia that torture IS punishment. It's almost by definition punishment for alleged non-cooperation, presumably used in an attempt to force cooperation. Often, it's also an attempt by interrogators to punish the prisoner for crimes he is assumed to have committed. In either case it is meted out without Constitutional due process of law, and if it is "cruel and unusual" (which is hard to get around if it's really torture) it is almost certainly unconstitutional on that ground as well. So I back off the part of my previous post that agrees that at least in some farfetched scenario, torture might really be constitutional. Even if the world was about to blow up, torture would still be unconstitutional on grounds of cruel and unusual punishment AND lack of due process -- whether or not those are Scalia's arguments. However, at that extreme, one might still forgive torture, unconstitutional though it may be, at least in the also unlikely event that it actually worked. In a way this sounded to me like what Scalia must have meant -- in the worst case scenario, the ban on torture would seem absurd, and the Constitution couldn't be absurd. But to the extent that there are better alternatives than torture, such a ban is not absurd. It's also possible that the framers, being human, didn't think of every possibility, and there may be, if only once in a lifetime, a time when something unconstitutional is the only right thing to do. But Bush and Co. are only pretending that that moment has arrived, because they don't want anyone telling them what to do.

Of course, the "unusual" in "cruel and unusual" is a most unfortunate loophole, inasmuch as it seems to allow any sort of "cruel punishment", if only it is also "usual". I would think this was either a linguistic lapse or a compromise on the part of the framers (who after all, were human). Then again, it might eventually force the phasing out of cruel punishments -- if for example the death penalty was found to be merely cruel (how could it not be cruel to be told you will be killed?) and several jurisdictions banned it, while others used it more and more rarely, it would also become "unusual". Meanwhile any cruel punishments that were new or simply unusual would immediately be unconstitutional before they could have a chance to become "usual", so they could never cross over that threshold.

Comment to Andrew C. Revkin/New York Times on "Resilient" Polar Bears

"No threat of outright extinction within a century or more" shouldn't be that calming. "No outright extinction" doesn't rule out "endangered" or "rare". Also, a century isn't much at the tail end of "110,000 years". Neither does the relative safety of polar bears say much about the overall gravity and complexity of the global climate situation. For example, the polar bears may survive, and the Arctic may even reconstitute to one degree or another, but human beings will nevertheless have felt the impact of rising sea levels, perhaps including more Katrinas or worse.

It seems to me that we humans are shortsighted due to our own brief lifespans, and are all too happy to put off change even though we know our present course is leading to big problems in a decade or two, or even a century. Well, a century will include the lifespans of the grandchildren of those alive today, and they'll have learned from us either to seriously address or to mostly ignore global environmental problems. We knew in the sixties and seventies that pollution was a big problem, and already there were people experiencing its direct, toxic effects. We put band aids on a few of those problems when the media created sufficient pressure. Now, looking at increasingly powerful weather events and the melting of the ice caps, it seems that the next wave of chickens has come home to roost, and the pressure should be vastly increasing to reverse some of the damage we're doing. Indeed, some astronomical event, sometime, may have a much greater impact than we're likely to generate for a few decades or even centuries (sooner or later we'll figure out how to do that, too), even as our own chickens keep getting bigger and uglier. But in the meantime, why do we keep doing this to ourselves? Not only do we put off dealing with predictable problems, but we accept and tolerate newer and bigger problems as they, ironically in the case of melting glaciers, keep snowballing.

I don't mean to whine or complain, only to realistically describe the challenge which is out there to be met.

Global Warming

Some thoughts triggered by the Times reporting on a recent hoax claiming global warming is actually being caused by bacteria. The times wasn't saying global warming was the hoax, but I was reminded of the doubting Thomases who remain out there.

To those who still doubt Global Warming:

We do know that the Earth is getting substantially warmer on the whole, and the glaciers are getting smaller. One can try to point the finger at other reasons for this, but the fact is that for the past hundred some odd years since the Industrial Revolution, we've been dumping more stuff into the atmosphere -- and on a continuous basis -- than probably in the rest of human history combined. Meanwhile, the theory of global warming seems to have been in place long enough that it should get credit for predicting the changes that are now occurring. I heard of global warming and greenhouse gases as a grade schooler, and I'm in my 40's. So it wasn't an after-the-fact explanation by environmentalists. But blaming "other" factors is pretty convenient for polluters who don't want to change their ways, which means not just industrial giants, but most of us humans in the industrialized world. Hard as it is to believe, the atmosphere holds only a finite amount of air, and the junk billions of people pump into it makes a difference -- same thing for the ocean and the land. So while there may be additional, complicating factors (global dimming from the particulates slowing down the warming from the gases??), I think it's pretty safe to say we've made a mess of a nice planet with our excessive ways. I'm not saying I've just proved global warming, but try on this perspective for a while and see if it doesn't make sense.

Comment to New York Times on Colbert "Candidacy" Discussion

The record needs setting straight on a couple of issues here. First of all, if you're looking for real news, try Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman, available on independent radio, Free Speech TV, and the Internet. Stewart and Colbert just give a more enlightened spin on the same news the mainstream media is reporting already. Second, George W. Bush looks much more like Alfred E. Newman (as has already been portrayed in many satirical drawings) than Dennis Kucinich ever will. If you look past his physical features and listen to what he has to say, however, Dennis Kucinich looks considerably more like a real leader than any of the current candidates.

Offsets, offsets

I was looking into Duke Energy's "Go Green" program for consumers in Indiana, and discovered the gee whiz article that my headline links to. Duke charges you extra to purchase presumably "green" power -- really, an offset, to my understanding, because we still personally get the same coal power or whatever that we usually do.

I think Greg Flynn's comment at the link nails the problem. If the big corporations - and we individuals - are serious about cleaning up the environment and reducing global warming, we'll actually cut down our own emissions, not just pay a "feel good tax" everytime we want to pollute some more, in the hopes that someone else who gets the money will make up for our excesses. Not that it hurts to pay it if you're going to pollute anyway, and maybe it will slow us down a bit, like having a curse jar, and produce some amelioration. But the real formula for preserving the environment -- especially now that we really need to actually reverse the damage or face the consequences --is the same as ever -- reduce, reuse, recycle (for best results, in that order). And you must do it YOURSELF! This offset stuff is only accessible to people with extra money, making it more of a bourgeois self-pat on the back than a real solution. If we take measures, I'm afraid global warming is still gonna get us!

Guns again...

They say that guns don't people, people kill people, and that if a killer really wants to kill, he'd find a way to do it anyway.

But, if we could have controlled guns a long time ago, I don't think 33 people would have died at Virginia Tech on Monday. Maybe one or two, which would have been horrible enough -- it can't be nearly as easy to commit mass murder with a knife as it is with a semi-automatic weapon, and someone wielding a knife would be easier to subdue. Nor could it be as easy to build a bomb as it is to purchase a semi-automatic. So probably not 33 people. Some people love their guns. This (and probably most of our problems in the Middle East) is the price we pay.