To Divest, Or Not To Divest?

AT AT LEAST ONE major University in the United States, the students are urging the people who govern the university to divest the university of all stock related to fossil fuels. The powers that be are naturally quite reluctant to do this; fossil fuel stock is a good investment, and never let it be said that an American university passes up good investments. Most university students are liberal, most university faculty are liberal, but most college administrators are not quite as liberal. Fossil fuels may be destroying the planet, but their corporate stock is quite valuable, and likely to become more so in the future. Bear in mind that American universities are, in essence, profit seeking corporations. It seems likely that if large numbers of fossil fuel shareholders divest, most fossil fuel stock will end up in the hands of fewer people, exacerbating the concentration of wealth and power. Better perhaps that everyone own one, and only one, fossil fuel share, that corporate power might be diluted and diffused as much as possible, and the people in general would have corporate power and wealth.

Putin the Pugnacious, ISIS the Insufferable

RUSSIAN BIG BOSS Vladimir Putin is again doing his impersonation of a tough guy (remember the shirtless pics?). Putin, the one who intends to reconstitute the old Soviet Union empire. A compressed spring will eventually return to its uncompressed state, he glibly said, meaning, the empire shall return. Hence, the Crimea. Next? The Ukraine! He now accuses the United states and Saudi Arabia of conspiring to keep global oil prices down, to ruin the Russian economy. As if the United States and Saudi Arabia could ever agree on anything, much less a joint conspiracy. as if they would be willing to wreck their own economies to wreck Putin's. As usual, Putin's estimate of his own importance is way high. The Russian have always been pretty good at wrecking their own economy, Why would anyone want to interfere? Putin the paranoid also claims that there is a legion of foreign spies in his country, working to destabilize the Russian currency. Again, why bother? Putin the Pretext, looking for reasons to start a war. If only the Coke Brothers would finance an early Putinic retirement. Of course, the Coke brothers might prefer having Putin in power............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................Is is too late to stop the Islamic State from existing, or should the U.S. and the world concede its existence, and move towards diplomatic intercourse? the American Air Force is dropping tons of bombs, daily, on I.S., and has already killed an estimated one thousand people, perhaps fifty collateral civilians. Not bad, but will it be enough. And if not, what will be? ISIS came into existence no more nefariously than many other a fine, widely recognized nation, the United States included.

Seeking the Post Capitalistic Light

FOR A LONG TIME, two decades at least, Japan has been in an economic funk, without any growth, try as they might. Now, they are trying stimulus packages from their pro business government, easing regulations, and corporate tax incentives. anything to get ye olde corporate capitalistic machine going again. We may soon have to come to our senses, and realize that this Japanese stagnation is not some aberration, but rather, the new normal. For, Capitalism, particularly big time corporate capitalism, growth is the engine of health. there will come a time, the sooner the better, when growth, hence capitalism, is no longer necessary - when we have ten billion billionaires, what else will we need? An economy designed to maintain the status quo, in terms of gross global product, because we simply have enough, for everybody. Its possible, probable, highly likely that such a time will l come, along with free energy, food, and shelter. the object then will be to keep people happily employed, for the purpose of happiness, rather than survival. Its either that, or the old endless routine cycle of prosperity, destruction, and rebuilding. The Japanese population, the world population, is aging, and the birth rate in many nations is declining. The answer to all our problems may be eternal expansion into space. That, plus a solid plan of population and age management. For now, let us proceed with construction of a solar power satellite, a flat black screen in space a mere five miles in diameter. A few billion more trees would help, while the fossil fuel corporations steadily, painlessly lead us away from fossil fuels, and towards the light, trading one kind of wealth for another.

Bill Cosby, Opening A Dark Closet

SOMEHOW, STRANGELY, the Bill Cosby drama fits. This multiple drug rape business, all these women coming forth, it fits. Wasn't Cosby, forty and fifty years ago, a raunchy Vegas stand up comic with an X rated routine? Then, he began his decades long family family routine, which may, after all, have been sort of a cover. Here we have a huge celebrity, but someone who is nobody's idea of a stud. And let's face it, male celebs tend to be studs. Maybe Cosby simply felt that the number of women, and the lack of ease with which he could seduce them, was inappropriately low for a man of his fame and fortune, and he wanted, and got, more, got what he wanted, many women. Another Jerry Sandusky story; a high profile, productive, successful life, with only the huge hidden monster in the closet, which emerges just in time to spoil the reputation and legacy of the too successful perpetrator, right in what should have been the golden years. Cosby, as he turned his raunchy career into a family values career, became somewhat of a darling of the conservative movement in America, particularly with his message to young black men to drop the ebonics and the gang colors, get an education, and succeed in mainstream society, after the fashion of successful conservative white folk. but then again, it is interesting how often successful, family valued conservative folks end up having things hidden in their closets, unsavory things, and end up showing them, quite by accident. Maybe what we need, to take care of people like Bill Cosby, and the rest of us, is simply more sex. A More promiscuous society in which taboos against promiscuity are cut to the bone, everybody gets enough, and all this tension and anger and violence vanish.

Amazing

MY VISIT TO early 21st century Earth is nearly complete, confirm unfortunate report prevalence of dark ages. Human thought processes still yield widespread illogic, and hence destructive behavior, individually and collectively. The Abrahamic religious triplex adheres, indeed, yet prevails. Their religious, political, and economic structures accrue wealth and power to a tiny minority, who invariably use it to exploit and oppress everyone else. Amazing,in their reasonably advanced time many of them still believe that God writes books, that the theory of evolution is unproven, and that their behavior is doing no damage to their world. It seems amazing that any species on their course could last much longer.

Assimilating

THE GORGEOUS YOUNG LADY working at the library had an attitude from the git go. No way she was going to smile at me,let alone laugh with me. I should have known better than to try to be funny. But I have to try. I love making people laugh. She was born in L.A., a life long American,but her accent was strongly south of the border.She obviously didn't like being asked where she came from, and she didn't like my jokes, though she surely understand why someone might think she was foreign born. Things went downhill from there. I called myself a "straggler"; she asked another librarian where the "stragglers" were located. People standing nearby began to giggle, so ahead I plowed, digging myself in ever deeper. Finally she suggested I seek assistance elsewhere. My apology fell flat, and she never smiled. the guy across the street in my small town is from Guatemala, and he has a strong accent, but his American born children do not. That's the way it usually works, the usually process. People born in American have American accents, usually. The young librarian? Decades of ethnic cocooning, perhaps, in the large Los Angeles latino community. Well, may we all be fortunate enough to experience multiple cultures, and may we always be fortunate enough to feel comfortable, and a part of the country wherein we live.

Hooked On Twitter

SOMEHOW, YOU KNEW it was coming. You just knew that someone would notice that most of us spend most of our time walking around like zombies, texting, and reading text messages, would get curious, do the research, and find out why. And sure enough, after irrefutable research, we know why, and really, it isn't surprising. People love to text because they get a big emotional buzz out of it, cocaine-like. There's just something about 140 letters, brief, intense messages, the anticipation of it all, the social contact, that goes right to the emotional centers of the brain, and gives a person a hooked in with the world feeling of being connected. Brain scanning and careful monitoring of the states of mind of many average texters clearly shows this. People do not text to save time or communicate more efficiently. they do it because they are hooked on a drug, the drug of emotional connectivity. Electronic Communication Addiction.(ECA) How familiar that sounds! I remember having the same feeling back fifteen years ago, on AOL, when AOL was king, in chatrooms, and instant messages. If not mistaken, text messaging is nothing other that the result of AOL being forced by the courts to drop its monopoly on instant messaging. Instant messaging and chatrooms were very addictive, back in the day, some of the older folks might remember. Now we have Facebook and text messaging, which evidently have the same effect. So, no wonder. How long will it all last, and whither will it lead? Maybe Facebook is indeed a fad, a bad habit we'll eventually break, like cocaine rehab. And maybe we'll someday cut back on the screen time and get back to actually talking to each other. One can hope. It is allegedly liberating.

Braindeadness, Coming Home

IN A GREAT BOOK entitled "Bowling Alone" the point is made that participation in the community in America is declining, things such as church, bowling leagues, PTA, civic clubs, etc. Those who remain are the truly devoted. A deeply devoted minority of true and ardent believers, religiously, politically.The moderates and the lukewarm have flown the coop. Everyone is hard line and hard core, all or nothing. First, decide that you are liberal or conservative, one or the other, all the way. Then, as each issue appears, ascertain which is the liberal viewpoint, and which the conservative. Be sure to embrace the right one. Ignore the fact that nobody is all one, or all the other, in anything. Strict to the doctrine. since everyone wants you to be "consistent", and since you want everyone else to be, ahem, "consistent", be so, by any and all means. the fact that this 'tude is the very antithesis of open mindedness is, apparently, irrelevant. Rock solid hard line consistency trumps flexible, critical thinking, every time, because the former is so totally comfy, and the latter so annoyingly complicated, and requires more effort. The fact that this creates a double edged, polarized society of anger is irrelevant. Dems, libs, repubcons. Rich and Poor. The consequences of our braindeadness are coming home.

Exciting wonder

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, as a young man, was seated at dinner with a group of prominent folks, including Thomas Jefferson. He listened in amazement as Jefferson told how once, while he was living in Paris, the temperature remained below zero for six consecutive weeks. Adams knew darned good and well that no such thing had occurred, because he had himself been in Paris at the same time as Jefferson. His memory was that the weather had indeed been a bit nippy, but endurable. Never let the truth interfere with a good story, Mark Twain might have said. Adams was a tolerant and understanding man, a keen judge of character, and he didn't hold Jefferson's lie against him. He understand that dreamy Thomas was merely a man who loved to, in Adam's words, "excite wonder". Himself filled with a sense of the miracle of life , Jefferson simply wanted to share his passion for living with others. That's hard to do nowadays; that is, to excite wonder. I do a lot of reading, and I can't swing a dead cat without coming across some fact or set of facts which I had never before known, which excites wonder within me. So I close my book and look around for somebody with whom to share my excitement. Problem is, it never works. I never find anyone with whom to share my excitement. I never seem to excite any wonder. Invariably, the target of my wonder lust ignore what I said, or seems to, and proceeds to change the topic of conversation to himself. or tries to outdo me with some bit of information, usually about herself. Often, the target will simply nod and shrug, as if to say: "so what", or, "hell, I already knew that". every time, I know damned good and well that target did not in fact already know my wondrous fact, and was disguising wondrous excitement, or not listening. People seem immune to the wondrous. Its a disappointing feeling. No one seems to want to be intellectually excited by an outside source. No one seems willing to admit that somebody knows something that they themselves didn't already know. We Americans seem too proud to admit that there are things we didn't already know, as if such an admission would reveal some weakness. And its a shame, because few things in life are more fulfilling than the excitement of wonder.

Inventing A More Interesting World

THE MOST RECENT hit science fiction movie, "Interstellar", posits a dying earth, and a grand plan to travel across the galaxy through wormholes to other planets, and to terraform them in order to construct a new earth, replacing the old one. Exciting stuff, requiring only that a little common sense be ignored. Wormholes are temporary, they come and go capriciously, according to theory, and, according to theory, traveling through one and across vast distances of space causes the hole to collapse en route. But aside from that, the question arises: assuming that humanity has the ability to travel across the galaxy and restructure planets to make them humanly habitable, wouldn't it be easier to merely reconstruct the earth we already have, or to travel a mere fifty million miles, and terraform Mars? Never let common sense get in the way of a good flick. After all, we live in a culture largely devoid of simple, common sense, popular science. Even as we speak, thousands of planets are being discovered orbiting other stars, a small car is roving around the surface of Mars giving us vast amounts of data and starkly beautiful photos, and we think we finally have the answer to the question of whether the universe is a one time event, or a recycling one. It would seem to be the former. None of this is ever widely discussed among the science laity. A large number of us are much more interested in UFO abduction, beings from Andromeda, and messages channeled from somebody near the star Sirius. It seems that no matter how interesting the real world is, we are not content with it, and are eternally impelled to invent a more interesting one.

Hanging On to Fossil Fuel

PRESIDENT OBAMA is set to veto the Keystone pipeline, and the fireworks are set to begin. He'll veto it because he's a solid environmentalist, and not so solid a corporate capitalist, who thinks the pipeline isn't worth the effort for two reasons. One, it would transport Canadian oil to U.S. ports to be sold to and shipped to foreign countries, which means that direct economic benefit to America would be somewhat limited. Secondly, the jobs thus provided for Americans would be temporary. The price of oil is down, and the price of coal is down, but presumably there will be, one day soon enough, a resurgence in price as the corporations garner one final payday before fossil fuels are relegated to the past. Once there were nearly a million coal miners in america, now there are fewer than one hundred thousand. Strip mining has taken over, in a process which greatly reduces labor costs and sheers the tops off previously beautiful mountains, causes coal sludge to accumulate in storage ponds, and results in trailer people being crushed, by runaway sludge and cascading boulder, in valleys in Appalachia. Even now federal litigators are going after coal companies who scrimp on mine safety, profit over people. Since federal regulators of every industry tend to be close friends of the companies they are mandated to regulate, federal litigation rarely accomplishes much, and the corporations either get away with murder, or declare bankruptcy, then soon reemerge with a new name and a clean legal slate. Big fossil fuel business has gotten yet another reprieve; the republicans are back in town, but only, we can hope, for a couple of years.

Breaking Promises

THERE ARE APPROXIMATELY twenty three million veterans of military service in the United States, with more on the way every day. Though nearly all world war two veterans are dead, or soon will be, and the number of Viet Nam vets is starting to dwindle, the most recent three wars, (two in Iraq, one in Afghanistan) have replenished the supply considerably. This amounts to a considerable amount of money for pensions and services to disabled veterans, of which there are many. Post traumatic stress disorder and "moral disability" are particularly prominent these days, because thousands of veterans are returning home from service in combat situations which have left them emotionally, mentally damaged. Most of these are young people. How will the nation be able to pay for it all? It may be that taxes will have to be raised, promises broken, pensions curtailed, as well as other benefits, including social security. The veterans hospital system will have to be expanded, again at considerable expense. An empire is expensive to maintain, and promises are hard to keep.

Waiting For April to Arrive

FORMER PRESIDENT George Bush, the second one, has written, (spoken) and allowed to be edited, presumably, a book about his father, the first George Bush, son of Prescott, grandson of Sam. He wanted to become the first former president in American history to write a biography about his father the president, since John Quincy Adams did not write a book about his presidential father. Neither john Adams the first nor George Bush the first wrote memoirs, so the second George Bush is doing us all, and the historical profession, quite a favor. John Adams the first had begun his autobiography, but gave up on it, much the way Thomas Jefferson did. When I heard double you interviewed on National Public Radio, I was drifting in and out of sleep, and I just couldn't get him to interrupt his sentence, and answer my question. My question was: what about April Glaspie? She seems, to this day, to take the blame for misleading Saddam Hussein about American intentions in 1990, but doesn't the buck stop higher up? Wouldn't it have been better, had the first Bush warned Saddam not to attack Kuwait, rather than first granting him permission to do so, then Indian giving the blank check with boistrous indignation once the dirty deed was done, the blank check cashed? We'll probably never know. Evidently the name "April Glaspie" does not appear in the book, entitled "forty one".It can be hoped that it will appear in other, more objective books, yet to be written.

Hoaxing the Republicans

YOU'VE PROBABLY HEARD some conservative say something like "a single volcanic eruption spews more pollution into the earth's atmosphere than all the mad mad pollution ever spewed". You've heard them say that, right? (its a standard conservative line, articulated by such intellectual giants as college flunk out Rush Limbaugh, on his Excrement In Broadcasting (EIB) network). You've heard a lot of things from people like that. the problem is, its a lie. A Joseph Goebbels, big lie oft repeated lie. each volcanic eruption, in point of fact, spews but a tiny fraction of what home sapiens, that being us, spews in only a short time. Perhaps youve also heard that global warming is a liberal hoax. seventy five percent of the members of the Republican party make that claim. this would entail millions of liberals, conspiring to pump billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere, then conspiring to make the world's thermometers all rise, just a bit, each year. Quite an elaborate hoax. But, not quite good enough. conservatives can see right through it. The lesson is: never try to fool a conservative, and never try to hoax a fool.

Atheists, Fornicators, and Proper Gentlemen

THE CONSENSUS SEEMS to be that we are fortunate that the election is over, because we are fortunate that all the back biting, acrimony, and rudeness have expired, finally. We need not pretend that political hatefulness is getting worse, or is a new phenomenon. In 1800 Thomas Jefferson, while running for president, was accused of being a fornicator and an atheist. The fact that both accusations were true does not vindicate his detractors. Jefferson did his part, by employing a muckraking journalist named Callendar to smear his opponent, John Adams. After several years of coldness between the two politicians, they ended up dear friends, exchanging a fascinating series of letters, and appropriately dying on the same day, exactly fifty years after the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson wanted to live until July 4th, and he made it, just barely. John Adams, turned out of office after a single term, took the high road. If Jefferson wants the office that badly, Adams surmised, let him have it. Abigail was not quite as magnanimous. She wrote Jefferson, and told him "I still love you, but there was a time when I respected you." And so it goes. For our next act, we've only to wait a few weeks, and if Obama does not get immigration reform out of congress, by God, he'll do it himself. He does not seem cowed by being reminded by republican leaders that by so doing he would be "poisoning the well." Translation; if you don't give us the respect we think we deserve we will pout, and refuse to have anything further to do with you. Curious, though, that anyone would accuse our president of violating the constitution, and the law of the land, by issuing executive orders. Executive orders are quite legal, and have been employed by every president. There are limits to what Obama can do about immigration using this device, but what he can do is perfectly legal, else his army of lawyers would have informed him otherwise, which they apparently have not. But at least we needn't concern ourselves whether our national leaders are proper gentlemen; after all, they never have been.

The Content, and the Malcontent

PEOPLE SOMETIMES SEEM a bit confused about what liberals and conservatives are. They start talking about things like "big government", or "small government", as if either libs or conservatives have a monopoly on either size. Instead, think of it in terms of money. A person may be either conservative with money, or liberal with it. The conservative spends little, the liberal spends, well, liberally. the key concept is change. A liberal's money changes hands more often than one who stewards money conservatively. The more change one wants, the more liberal one is, the less change, the more conservative. We live in a liberal world, because the world changes. with time, changed accumulates, and becomes considerable, even if it occurs slowly; a conservative desires a slower rate of change. A liberal might respond: "who doesn't want to change this world"? who indeed? Why, someone who is personally successful in the status quo is far more likely to resist change. Hence, conservatives, particularly in the United States, tend to be more successful than liberals, more content with less change, less inclined to complain. Liberals are complainers, advocates of change. A person who is devoted to one tradition is more likely to be devoted to another. In America, free enterprise and Christianity are traditional, thus the two are joined at the hip,bundled into the conservative mindset. Conservatism embraces tradition, liberalism seeks innovation.the dirty little secret is that we are all combinations of both viewpoints. No one is pure! How strange, and how human, that we tend to defend our own majority viewpoint, whichever one claims most of our allegiance, and to discredit the other at all costs, even while embracing some of each.

Changing Directions, or Planning To

MANY AMERICANS AWAKEN the day after a big election with political hangovers; we had the big party, all the fussing and fighting, the results are in, and now is the brief letdown phase before returning to normalcy, whatever that might be. The republicans have their big victory, and all of them are now promising to take America in a new direction. During my sixty years in country America has never taken a new direction; the old one has always seemed comfortable. What exactly would a new direction entail? Americans are already liberal on most issues; gay marriage, legalized marijuana are sweeping the nation, along with minimum wage increases. Most Americans want the nanny state to endure. Most Americana believe that the government should confiscate wealth and redistribute it. How are the republicans going to change all that, without making themselves as unpopular as they have made Obama? To change direction would entail banning gay marriage nationwide, banning marijuana nationwide, keeping minimum wage low so as not to destroy jobs, and dismantling the social safety net, aka the nanny state, including Obamacare. Let's wait and see how far the Republicans get with that.

Tweedle Dee, or Tweedle Dum

Whichever side wins in the U.S. Tuesday, and of course it'll be the Republicans, the world will continue to turn, and with it, America. Both sides predict disastrous consequences should the other win, and both are wrong. The disasters are already here,; how much worse can they get? There is some difference between the two parties, but not much, not enough, and the differences that exist are greatly magnified by all concerned. Minimum wage will never be enough, whether it increases or not, the poor will always be among us, and the only question is; how poor and how numerous and how angry will they ever become? So far, so good, the bread crumbs have kept the peace, but who knows how long that'll last, or whether it will last at all. If we could only create vast new markets, by getting meaningful amounts of money into the hands of millions of poor people. Time for some demand side, trickle up economic policies! Instead, we seem to think that by increasing supply, or trying to lure the wealthy into doing so, demand will somehow magically manifest. But whence cometh the new consumers to make all these purchases, if not from among America's current non purchasers, non consumers?

Sensing Trouble

MAINTAINING A POSITIVE ATTITUDE is of the utmost importance, of course, but is sometimes, you might agree, difficult to do. Can you imagine paying off your mortgage with a major banking lender, oh, say, bank o america, only to discover a short time later that they were still taking money out of your checking account o make mortgage payments? Its enough to shake one's faith, so to speak, in corporate America. Enough to raise one's blood pressure. Things like this happen, mistakes are made, people make mistakes. But goodness gracious. You'd think, with all our computers and such, that, well...it turns out that we live in a rat race of a survival of the fittest society no less brutal, no less dangerous, in its own very special way, than any group of ancient, historical, or primordial humans. Our advances merely open us up to new dangers, it seems. But wouldn't it be helpful, wouldn't it at least help a bit, if we started thinking straight, for instance, if more us us believed in global warming than in UFOs? Until such time, you sense trouble.