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.

Slowing the Descent

SOMEHOW YOU GET THE FEELING that no matter how scientists and doctors tell us that there is no need to quarantine anyone returning from Ebola fighting in Africa, most of the American people, or many of them, simply will not believe it. Particularly if Obama says it, it has to be wrong. Everything that Obama does and says is wrong, a priori. Indicative of the way these people think, three out of four Republicans do not believe in human caused global warming. These same people are inclined to believe in Biblical miracles, but not modern science and chemistry. Critical thinking skills are in short supply across America. Amid all the standardized testing and government rating of students and schools, a little more training in critical thinking skills might come in right handy. It might slow down our evident descent into a new dark age.

Sweeping the Democrats Out

SUPPOSE THE REPUBLICANS sweep the Democrats from power this coming Tuesday, and Congress enacts a hard core right wing agenda, over and above all Obama vetoes. Obamacare would be eliminated, it goes without saying, and would be replaced with...a blank slate, called "free enterprise". Roe V. Wade would be legislated out of existence, and women would lose their reproductive freedom. Legalized Marijuana in Colorado and Washington state? Forget about it. And welcome back supply side "Trickle down" economics, the smoke and mirrors system in which the wealthy do as they please with their savings in tax payments, and no new markets are created. One can scarcely imagine how wide the gap between rich and poor could become. Probably much greater than it is now, and now, its great. Oh well. At least, after the conservatives take over, we'll be praying in school again.

The Vaccine is Waiting in the Wings

SO THE LADY RETURNS FROM AFRICA, hoping to be welcomed back to the states, and instead is placed in solitary for three weeks. Understandably, she's a tad miffed. After all, when she left a month or so ago, she had no idea this would happen. The Hon Govs. of New Jersey and New York wish to demonstrate incredibly amounts of protective behavior towards the pre election electorate. President Obama has neither closed the borders, nor issued quarantine orders, both of which he opposes, for intelligent reasons, largely ignored by his often less intelligent critics. The vaccine is waiting in the wings. If nothing else, Ebola is showing us the necessity of cooperation. How many more cooperative endeavors might we the human race engage in, to our benefit? Is it possible to remove carbon from the air, repackage and sell it for a profit? If so, we have a fighting chance at long term survival. it is not necessary to continue economic growth perpetually. Only until everyone has what they need. Then, we move beyond capitalism, way beyond it. See John Maynard Keynes, and his comments concerning moving beyond capitalism. Like an invisible hand, the free market forces of supply and demand always rectify themselves, and the economy works, even if we are all dead in the meantime and we destroy our environment. Or, we can use cooperative endeavor to correct undesired market externalities, to improve efficiency. Lets not close off the borders, let's manage them, and let's not ban fossil fuels, let's evovlve away from them.

Racism: Still Around

THE RECENT EVENTS in and Around St. Louis, U.S.A., in which young African Americans were killed by European American police officers, resulting in protests by much of the black community, should have been enough to remind us that racism, the most durable American tradition, is still very much with us. If not, consider this. A team of researchers found one thousand job vacancies around the United States, and sent out two applications for each. In each case, one application used a black sounding name, black sounding address, and black sounding resume, and the other application used stereotypically white names. All this merely to create an impression, a vague hint of ethnicity, on paper. The black sounding applications were made a little better than the white ones, to hedge the bet. Overwhelmingly, across the board, the white sounding applications got the more attention, responses, and job offers, even though the "black apps" were, on paper, more qualified. it turns out that we have not eliminated racism, we have merely hidden it away, changed its name, and repackaged it.

Praising Modern Medicine

WE ARE EXTREMELY FORTUNATE, notwithstanding the thousands of recent deaths from Ebola, and the continuing threat. If this virus had emerged only two or three generations ago, it may well have eventuated in a global catastrophe of tens of millions of deaths. During the seventeen seventies, in Philadelphia, each year the entire population of thirty thousand, or most of it, would flee to the countryside as a small pox epidemic ripped through the city. The annual event played havoc with the first and second continental congresses, and the Declaration of Independence was nearly scuttled. Prior to Louis Pasteur and the discovery of microorganisms in the late nineteenth century, homo sapiens was helpless against infection and viral contagion, and on several occasions was nearly wiped out on account thereof. Long live blood testing and vaccines!