Yahoo and Google: Uh-Oh…

I’m sure there aren’t many nerds out there who haven’t heard about Microsoft’s many attempts to buy Google in a bid to break into the search-engine market. Fortunately, up until now, Yahoo has refused, but this time, they’ve only gone as far as saying the business equivalent of “no comment.”

I’ve lamented these kinds of unholy unions before (for example, when Google bought Youtube), and in my (somewhat limited) experience, they never turn out well. When one company buys another, it usually has something very sinister in mind, and I’ve learned that that goes doubly so for Microsoft.

Not that I give a damn about Yahoo. I’ve been a member of the “cult of Google” for some years now. But, still, if Microsoft and Yahoo get together, who knows what kind of market-gobbling, grotesquely-deformed progeny might result? What next, will Microsoft be working busily to make Yahoo Search harder and harder to use, all the while being secretive and difficult and overcharging for everything? Will they try to get their hands on Google, too?

I’m aware that this is rather paranoid, but I assure you, that I am not (literally or metaphorically) wearing a foil helmet as I type this. I believe that there is a legitimate concern to be had in the monopolization of such a large horizontal slice of the information-technology market by one juggernaut corporation. If they get their fingers in too many pies (that’s a very odd expression, if you think about it), it seems that Microsoft wouldn’t have too much trouble subduing or at least delaying the open-source revolution so many of us tech-nerds have been dreaming of for so long. And what’s more, in a monopolized market, there is the obvious fact that the monopolist can charge exorbitant prices for crappy products.

Those are my thoughts. Take from them what you will. (That was my melodrama; do with it what you like).

Environmental “Protection” Agency

Since I was young, I’ve always been something of an environmentalist. I haven’t been a passionate environmentalist for years, and here’s why: I gave up. I eventually realized that a government will enact environmental legislation only when it serves them to do so, and that they’ll ignore it when whatever crisis they were protecting themselves against has passed.

It’s a lucky thing I’m not passionate anymore, because if I were, then I would be up in arms right now, yelling in the streets. And nobody wants that.

Here’s what’s gotten under my skin lately: very recently, California attempted to pass environmental regulations much tougher than those mandated nationwide. As California is one of the most polluted states and, paradoxically, one of the most environmentally-conscious — they were the ones, after all, who mandated a quota of zero-emissions (electric) vehicles, before the industry shut them down — this would seem rather logical. And, of course, logic and government don’t mix well, so something went wrong.

I suppose I should learn to expect such things, in this age of do-nothing, get-out-before-the-ship-sinks government, but what happened surprised even cynical old me: the EPA overruled California. Yes, that’s right, I said the EPA. Those letters used to stand for “Environmental Protection Agency.” Given their recent actions, I would recommend we change their meaning to something more appropriate, preferably with a couple of expletives in there. My suggestion is “Excessively Petty Assholes.”

Many will no doubt think this judgment too harsh, but my sordid tale is not finished. California’s regulations were put in place because Californians complain that global warming threatens their water supplies, their agricultures, and — given the increased incidence of forest fires that warming brings — their population. The EPA’s response? “Not on your life!” The EPA actually attempted to claim that there was not a credible threat to justify such harsh local environmental regulations. What!?!? California, as a coastal state, will probably be one of the first states to face a credible threat from global warming. Hell, they’ve already faced a credible threat from global warming! Didn’t they have a terrible fire a few weeks ago?!

It gets worse. The EPA also said that global warming regulations should be nationwide, not local. Right. Because those nationwide regulations were getting passed in a real damned hurry. To me, this looks suspiciously like the current do-nothing administration just buying time until they can inflate their golden parachutes. I just hope that when the forests star to slowly burn away, the coastlines flood and erode as the icecaps melt, the North Atlantic current breaks down, freezing Britain under an ice-age glacier, and the water-shortage wars in Africa and the Middle East spread worldwide, that the fifty years of environmentally-ignorant politicians we’ve suffered through are mostly still alive, so that with whatever breath the toxic atmosphere will allow us, we can all point and laugh at them.

Hm…that was a bit cynical even for me. Note to self: don’t write any more posts early in the morning.

Beware of The Ministries

It’s a common theme in dystopian fiction, from Orwell’s 1984 (and probably before that) to the present day (for example, the Half-Life series): in a terrible future (or present), society is controlled by an interlocking network of “Ministries,” and in some instances, a single omniscient Ministry. This Ministry (or Ministries) are responsible for the provision of all food, entertainment, news, et cetera. The citizens are so utterly dependent on these Ministries, and so blindly trusting of them, that they are completely and utterly unable to operate without them, which is why it inevitably requires a grizzled action hero to rouse them from their mental slumber.

By this point, readers are probably wondering what the point of all this is. Well, here it is. You think all these Ministry-based plots are fiction? Think again.

You see, we’re currently facing a dreadful trifecta of Ministries that is soon to fulfill all of our basic needs, leaving us so brain-dead and utterly dependent that we’re incapable of independent action or thought. They are:

• The Ministry of Truth (yes, I’m quoting Orwell again. Deal with it): Google and Wikipedia seem to have pretty much cornered the market on knowledge, as far as your average Internet consumer is concerned. My Science and Society professor just yesterday referenced Wikipedia (a notoriously un-neutral and inaccurate source for something calling itself an “encyclopedia”) in a lecture about the mind-body problem. The mind-body problem! A spiritual topic that is just about as hotly- and angrily-debated as whether evolution should be taught in public schools. And he trusted Wikipedia, of all sources, to be his unbiased provider of information. The encyclopedia that anyone, including (especially) angry zealots (on both sides of the issue) can edit! Now, I must admit that I myself am not innocent in this regard: Google is essentially a sort of personal Deity. I’m not even certain that I know how to find information any other way any more, and when Google the Omniscient fails to provide the answers I’m looking for, I’m about as helpless as an overturned tortoise with Krazy Glue on its back.
• The Ministry of Plenty: When was the last time you were in a grocery store that didn’t sell every product imaginable? Last week, I went to Target to buy a sweater, and later complained to someone that I’d forgotten to buy some vital food item or other at the grocer’s. This person then gleefully informed me that they do in fact carry that item at Target. I went back later, and, sure enough, Target has a grocery section! Okay. So, in addition to not knowing how to find reasonably unbiased information any more, now I have no idea where to get food, clothing, and novelty erotic items if they’re not all housed in the same store. Terrific.
• The Ministry of Love: I struggled to find an Orwellian correlate to the ministry in 1984 responsible for torture, but I’m such a committed 1984 freak that I actually found a way. Now, I was going to lump the rapidly-condensing news media into the aforementioned Ministry of Truth, but given the fact that I’ve actually seen contemporary television, I’m convinced that it’s no longer intended for entertainment, but for the torture of people who enjoy independent films and occasional treks off the couch. After all, how many reality shows have cropped up (or spawned like the deformed, demonic, parasitic insects that they are) in the last year or so? I can’t count them, mainly because that would require keeping up with them, which would almost certainly sap my rapidly-waning will to live. And network news? Well, actually, its proper title is “network news crappy hackneyed sob-stories pregnant with thinly-disguised political agendas.” And when I say pregnant, I mean pregnant. Okay, well, maybe services like the BBC, CNN, and NPR are only “a little bit pregnant,” but an outlet like, say, Fox news, is about as pregnant as that enormous and disgusting insect queen, distended with writhing larvae, that the sci-fi hero has to defeat with a grenade, producing suitably disgusting splattery results. I know that’s a long simile, but I take every opportunity to make peculiar and often repulsive cultural references. Anyway, Fox is pregnant with agendas. It’s annoying. Annoying rapidly becomes torture when the reporters actually pretend to be sincere about what they’re saying. I mean, come on! I’m not that bright — the Internet and television have seen to that — but I’m not that stupid (at least not yet; not until I start watching American Idol).

So, we basically have all the non-life-affirming Ministries of 1984, and there is no doubt a Big Brother figure soon to emerge as the “beneficient”, omniscient ruler of them all. But that remains to be seen. In the meantime, we are rapidly becoming (if we’re not already) the dependent Ministry-junkies that are featured in every aforementioned dystopian tale. And I know that I brought quite a lot of sardonic humor to the above descriptions, but I stand by them as serious warnings, too. Think about it. Don’t get dependent. The only thing that will save you is independent thought. Use a real (paper) encyclopedia occasionally (if you can find one). Search with another search engine. And for Google’s sake, don’t find that other search engine by Googling “search engine”!!! Or, even worse, go to a library. You remember libraries, right? Well, you will if you were born before 1988.

More food for thought, as always.

“Look at That!” Part 1

This begins a multipart series about facts and images that really grab my attention (thus the title). These happen to be scattered far and wide across the vast jungle of the Internet, so I thought I’d collect some of them into one place. Here goes!

I love this picture (and no, not because my mind is in the gutter). It so grabs the attention that it’s practically impossible to simply pass it by. And once it’s grabbed your attention, you have no choice but to consider its message: the fundamental entanglement of liberty and justice. (Credit: www.mindpollen.com)

Mother nature takes revenge.

I’m willing to have a drink with whoever did this.

I generally hate advertising, but I have to admit, this is really creative.

I’ll post Part 2 as soon as I can collect enough images. Any uncredited images were found through http://thefunniest.info.

AT&T: The Evil Empire

Since earlier this year, the telecommunications company AT&T has been expanding at an alarming rate. First, they absorbed Bell South. Next, they assimilated Cingular. Now, they hold the exclusive rights to the iPhone’s network. And yet, even though I listen to enough liberal radio to kill a horse, I haven’t heard a single outcry about this. Somebody has to say something. I guess that’s me, now.

Now, I don’t know just how far AT&T is planning to take this, and perhaps I’m just being paranoid, but it certainly seems that “The Evil Empire” — as I call it — is heading very quickly for monopoly territory. This makes me quite nervous.

First of all, in a monopoly, there is no competition, so there is no reason to set prices at a competitive rate. After all. in a monopoly situation, there is no competition. And since the only viable telecom network is the one that covers a majority of the service area, even if AT&T doesn’t take over every other provider, they’ll still have an effective monopoly, being the only ones that can provide broad-ranging coverage.

Secondly, if AT&T goes monopolistic, then there will be no reason for them to maintain any standard of quality. After all, with no real competition, they have no reason to spare the expense. Who else could their customers go to?

But perhaps the most frightening — and admittedly most paranoid — of the possibilities, should AT&T consume the whole market, is the potential for the abuse of democracy. The Internet is one of the most democratic media of exchange on Earth, and has been since its inception. However, who’s to say how this might change if one company has control over all the Internet access routes? I myself access the Web through a DSL modem now run by AT&T (it wasn’t my idea; when I signed up it was still Bell South). Suppose they didn’t like what I was writing about them. “Oops, Mr. Asymptote, it looks like your phone line has suffered some sort of inexplicable catastrophic failure.”

Think about it.

The Beginning of the End of Free Speech

I made the mistake of listening to the news again…well, at least I got a blog post out of it.

 This week, the Supreme Court (which now has a conservative majority, with John Roberts as chief justice and Samuel Alito on the bench) handed down two decisions that further undermined the American democracy.

In the first decision, the court decided to overturn a precedent set some years back. This precedent held that corporate and union funding of particular political candidates was not a form of free speech, and therefore was not protected by the First Amendment. Well, it was nice while it lasted. Now, corporations, unions, and interest groups can run as many advertisements as they want for a candidate, the only constraint being that they must not use the phrase “Vote for this candidate.” Somehow, I don’t think being unable to come out and say it explicitly is going to stop the corrupt corporate money from influencing the outcome of elections.

With this piece of legislation, some of my greatest fears have been realized. The automotive lobby will now have a much easier time trying to weed out potentially environmentally-conscious candidaes. The insurance lobby will be able to eliminate candidates who support universal healthcare. As if that wasn’t bad enough, now we’re going to be swamped by even more political advertisements than before. By the end of election season, I’m pretty sure I will have gouged my own eyes out.

The second decision to which I referred was, in my mind at least, a greater blow to American political freedoms. The supreme court upheld a decision by a lower court limiting the free-speech rights of students in cases where those rights contradict the policies of the student’s school. This followed on the heels of a court battle that erupted when a student displayed a banner reading “Bong hits 4 Jesus.”

To many people, this may seem completely insignificant. But to someone who was a public-school student not so long ago, this is a terrible blow. For the latter half of my school career, I became more and more annoyed at the serious suppression of the constitutional rights of young people. We were treated like second-class citizens, if we were considered citizens at all. We were continually subjected to meaningless and unfair rules. Every day, we were reminded that we didn’t have any right to free speech, or any right to peacably assemble. It was intolerable.

Now, admittedly, many students would, given these freedoms, simply make trouble. But it’s still not fair to suppress all the students, many of whom are politically conscious and actively want these rights. Now, though, the suppression has gotten even worse. Students are going to feel more and more like their school is a totalitarian prison, which I’m sure many of them already do. How is this conducive to education.

What’s worse, though, is the possibility of government-sanctioned silencing of what is often the most politically-active sector of a society: the young. The young are our only hope for change, for progress, but that isn’t going to happen. Not if we condition them to get used to a system in which they have no rights.

This may seem a bit extreme, and probably quite paranoid, but as usual, it’s just food for thought…

Wikipedia: An Orwellian View

While I was browsing the internet, I began to realize that more and more search engines are putting the Wikipedia entries for the searched terms at or near the top of the list. This, combined with the rapidly growing popularity of Wikipedia, creates the possibility — in my mind, at least — for a tremendous Orwellian system of information manipulation.

Political campaigns and practical jokers have already demonstrated that false information can be introduced into Wikipedia, and can remain there for a significant amount of time. So what happens when Wikipedia is becoming more and more of a centralized repository for information? There will be tremendous political advantage to be had in manipulating the information contained therein. And so, like so many democracies over the ages, totalitarianism will become too tempting, and right beneath our noses, Wikipedia will turn into the Orwellian Ministry of Truth: a center for disinformation, benefiting whichever candidate happens to be at the forefront at the time.

 I’m aware that this is hardly likely, and that it’s an awfully paranoid thing to say, but as always, it’s just food for thought.

The House Comes Through

The other day, I was, as usual, listening to NPR, and somebody mentioned something off-hand that caught my attention. This February, a committee of the United States House of Representatives approved a bill that would ban any kind of discrimination based on genetics. This, to me, is a step in the right direction, and sets back what looked like a truly terrible misuse of science.

Here’s the problem: with genetic screening for common diseases such as diabetes, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s, and cystic fibrosis becoming cheaper, more accurate, and more widespread, the insurance companies are faced with a veritable gold mine: they can insure only people who are at little or no risk of getting any of these diseases, so that less of “their” profits go towards treating people. This is clearly an ethical dilemma. Just because these people are stricken with diseases doesn’t mean they don’t have a right to medical care, and the right to live the most normal lives they can. Many have argued that something must be done about the steadily increasing possibility of such discrimination.

Enter the United States government. I never thought I’d be able to use that phrase: back when the Republicans controlled the Congress, they never passed the bills I wanted to see passed, and ever since the Democrats took over, it doesn’t seem they’ve passed much of anything. Well, assuming this bill passes, they’re coming through at last! Of course, given the Congress’s tendency to obsess about a few high-profile issues to the exclusion of all others, my hope may be premature…

Political Sum-Over-Histories (and a solemn note on the Virginia Tech shootings)

Note: Being a reasonably decent human being, I feel I would be terribly remiss if I did not give my heartfelt condolences to the faculty and staff of Virginia Tech, following yesterday’s terrifying shooting. As a member of the college-going population, I myself was absolutely horrified that such a thing is even possible. As for the killer, who may have fancied that he would render the authorities powerless by killing himself before they could, I say they drag his rotten corpse behind a dump truck for a while. Now, please don’t fault me on this, dear readers, but I feel that the best course of action for me would be to simply go on as normal, as nothing I can do will change the facts.

Insurance: The Silent Evil

Often in this humble blog, I complain about the manipulative evils of various industries: the pharmaceutical industry, the petroleum industry, and a number of others. An industry I hadn’t considered — until recently, that is — is the insurance industry. And in terms of the amount of human suffering they cause, insurers may be the worst industry I’ve ever ranted about. Insurance is not an inherently bad idea. Among the various methods of paying for healthcare, it’s one of the better ones. The problem is greed and corruption. Of late, the insurance companies have been hiking their premiums excessively, making insurance very difficult for many people to afford. So, straight away, insurers cut out anybody who can’t afford their prices. These people, however, happen to be those who would probably most benefit from health insurance: African Americans (who, it is believed, are more prone to heart disease and diabetes), the poor, and the homeless.

There is another slice of the population that the insurance companies toss in the garbage (metaphorically speaking): the chronically ill. The aim of insurance is to help people pay for the ridiculously expensive medical treatments they require, right? Not if you’re chronically sick. If you have cancer or diabetes or heart disease, good luck trying to find any kind of health insurance. Insurance companies simply don’t want to take on the “risk” of people who are in need of frequent, and often expensive, healthcare. So, once again, they cut out another segment of the population who could most benefit from their services.

Do you notice a pattern emerging? It would seem that insurance companies only want to insure those that would cost them the least: middle- and upper-class citizens with little prior history of health problems and little genetic predisposition to them, so that they can take as much of their premiums as possible for themselves. Almost makes the oil companies look tame in comparison.

But wait, there’s more! With the advent of the Human Genome Project, and the ability to predict genetic disease, the Insurers will at last be able to cut out the remaining group that steals their income away from them: the people who even have a chance of getting sick. Imagine: the year is around 2015, and genetic testing is becoming more and more accurate. Suppose you’re a twenty-something woman from a middle-class background who wants to buy some health insurance. Well, you’d better hope that you don’t have any genetic predisposition to disease! And you’d really better hope that the insurance company doesn’t have the legal clout to force you to get tested for genetic diseases! “I’m afraid you’re un-insurable, Ms. Doe, as you have a ten percent risk of developing ovarian cancer within the next thirty years.”

You can probably see why this would be a problem: the insurance companies appear to be moving in the direction of insuring people who rarely or never get sick. Wait a minute! These are the people who need insurance the least! You can see where problems would arise, and how your friendly Insurer might seem just a bit immoral, or at the least, shortsighted.

Think about that the next time you’re feeling under the weather: how sick can you really afford to get?

“Send me Something I Can Agree With”

Okay, I normally do my best to avoid railing against America’s current president, because, frankly, that’s been done to death. But he has forced me to break my own rule, through a spasm of what appears to be either complete foolishness or complete totalitarianism.

Here’s the problem: America is currently engaging in a war. Democrats don’t want America to be in that war any longer. Republicans want America to stay in the war for a while. But, since the Democrats are now in control of the American congress, they have promoted a bill which they hoped would continue keeping the military well-funded enough so that they don’t have to go to war shirtless, but that also demands that the war be ended by a 2008 deadline. No dice. President Bush decided that he didn’t like this idea.

Now that’s nothing especially new. He often decides that he doesn’t like other peoples’ ideas. But what truly baffled me was the way in which he chose to express this dislike. He said, and I quote, “I hope that the Congress can send me something I can sign.” What? I thought the purpose of the congress was to make laws that were best for the people, not laws that were best for the president. In my mind, the whole affair goes something like this:

Congress: We don’t like the war any longer. We think you should stop.

Mister President: No.

Congress: We’ll pass a bill to make you stop.

Mister President: I’ll veto it.

Congress: What about a compromise?

Mister President: As long as the compromise is the same as my plan.

And please don’t think that I’m attacking the President here. Well, I am, but not exclusively. I’m also trying to figure out how the new Democratic majority managed to make itself so completely ineffective. I guess I’d just never seen a divided congress before…

Sports Metaphors and Politics

I don’t intend to get into a full-fledged rant against sports-themed metaphors in general; I don’t have that kind of time or space to work with here. But I would like to address, in brief, the strange propensity of politicians to use these metaphors, often in rather inappropriate ways.

Take for example the phrase “political football,” which seems to be especially favored by members of the current administration. Now, while this one is fairly understandable (the “opposition” essentially takes their idea and runs the other way with it), I’d like some clarification. After all, there are many things you can do with a football. You can run the other way with it. You can throw it down on the ground for no particular reason. You can throw it to somebody else. You can trip and fall on it, and have a guy throw a little political bean-bag flag at you.

Most of the clarity ends there. What about “The ball’s in his court”? What is he actually supposed to do with it? It’s not always clear whether he’s supposed to shoot or pass or whatever else you do in basketball. Most of the time, people with balls in their court just stand there dribbling them stupidly anyway (that was not, I repeat NOT a double-entendre).

And what about “Home run”? This term is thrown about so freely that it’s lost all semblance of meaning. In politics, sometimes it’s not a good idea to go on bashing everything out of the ballpark. “Ballpark” is another one. Have any of these politicians actually seen a ballpark? Pretty damn large, it turns out. Actually, considering the level of accuracy we’ve learned to expect from modern government, “ballpark” might be pretty apt…

Our State

Now, when most Americans think about corrupt states, I doubt that North Carolina would be the first one to come to their minds. I, however, beg to differ. This, it has always seemed to me, is one of the most socially and economically backwards states in the union. Let me explain why.

This state houses the city of Charlotte, where I was born, and where I currently take up residence. Charlotte has been a rat’s nest of problems for at least the last decade, and possibly longer (since I wasn’t paying attention to all of it until about a decade ago). First, there’s the ongoing, painfully slow road construction. It never seems to finish, making an already-congested city clog up even worse. And what’s more, they do all the road construction on the best roads. It seems to me that they should do something about the roads where the pavement has had to be replaced so many times that the asphalt has become three-colored. Or the roads that have had all their lane markings worn off. Or the ones that are so warped that driving on them is reminiscent of being in a small boat in a hurricane.

Next comes the arena scandal. Many years ago, a select group of high-powered executives decided that they wanted a basketball arena. The only problem was, the people voted it down. So the city council lumped the arena into a package with Discovery Place, a cool childrens’ science museum (trips to which were the highlights of my youth), so that we couldn’t vote down the arena without voting down funding for Discovery Place. So, in a nutshell, this is what happened. They wanted an arena. The citizens didn’t want it. So they built an arena…

And finally, in ascending order of severity, comes the current scandal. It seems that some of North Carolina’s corruption has leaked across the border into South Carolina. There, Duke Power (the Haliburton or Blackwater of the North Carolina power industry), asked for funding to build a new nuclear power plant. That’s all well and good; I’m not terribly fond of nuclear power, but at least they didn’t get the coal power stations they wanted. But then comes the corruption. Apparently, in order to “protect their financial interests”, they’d like to be able to recover $125,000,000 in planning money if the project doesn’t go forward. Where is that recovery money going to come from? They want to take it out of the taxpayers’ hides! They actually want the people to pay them for something they didn’t build. The main problem (one of many, of course): the government funds the plant, but the people pay for not building it. It’s been called “An open-ended nuclear spending account.” How stupid does Duke Power really think we are?

And to my fellow North Carolinians who may be reading this: move now! Save yourself while you still can!

Contractually Obligated

Ever since 2001, the United States has been spoiling for a fight. Granted, back then, we had a perfectly good reason. But now, six years later, our reasoning is beginning to fall into question. We’ve got a war going in the Middle East that has outlasted almost every other modern war (including World War Two), and several other wars threatening to take hold in Korea and Iran. In light of all this conflict, the phrase “military contractors” has become something of a buzzword among American political pundits. This did not seem, at the beginning of the war, to be much of a problem. It was actually quite nice that there were civilians willing to help out the war effort. But that was then. Now, trouble is brewing.

Let’s go first to New Orleans, which was smashed in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina (a name that anybody who listens to the news even occasionally will be tired of hearing). Since the government relief efforts were, shall we say “lackluster,” there was a desperate need for aid, any kind of aid. The military contractor known as Blackwater stepped up and sent people to New Orleans to help in the repair and recovery operations. This was all well and good, until they billed the government for several hundred million dollars. Still, for a great humanitarian effort like the rescue of New Orleans, they certainly deserved some pay. But problems arise when you look at just how the money was broken down. Blackwater billed the government for $950 per person per day. The problem is, the actual contractors who went into New Orleans only reported being paid $650 per person per day. Somewhere along the way, almost a third of the money is unaccounted for. It is not difficult to go from the missing money to foul play on Blackwater’s part.

The problems do not end there, by any stretch of the imagination. The contractors often refuse to release documents to Congress, claiming that they are classified. But aren’t they working as employees of the government? And aren’t most employees obliged to disclose information on the request of the employer? It gets worse still: there have been several reported cases of privatized military forces disobeying congress’s orders. This is a very dangerous situation, exacerbated by the fact that, when they cause or get caught up in a problem, they refuse to abide by, or find legal loopholes in the contracts they have with their employees.

By now, I’m sure, the little alarm bells will be ringing madly in some of my readers’ heads. They ring in mine, too, and here’s why: we have private armies entering war zones and disaster areas, where they have a tendency to get killed, or perhaps to exacerbate an already-serious situation. They then refuse to release the documents concerning these affairs, even to Congress. This has all the makings of an embryonic coup.

Now, perhaps I’m being dismal and paranoid. I’m sure my more conservative readers will agree with this, but I see a truly frightening scenario:

The military contractors refuse to withhold from the government vital documents concerning incidents in which they are involved, thus creating a sphere of deniability. They use some of the money that they report to have spent on their employees in order to buy equipment and train more employees. Before long, the number of members of the United States military is overtaken by the number of soldiers employed by military contractors. We have, at this point, a force capable of overtaking the military forces of the U.S. government. This would make a coup, should the idea cross their minds, relatively easy to execute. Now, I’m sure there are some radical individuals who would like to see the government overthrown, and in any other case, I might agree with them; the only problem in this case is that the contractors are already known for lying, denying, and abusing their power. Were they to get control over the government (that is, assuming they don’t already have it), what kind of totalitarian state could they build?

Just something to think about…

Governments are Doomed to Fall

Ever since I read 1984, I’ve been thinking about the permanence of governments. And I’ve noticed that most seem doomed to fall over time, often very soon after their inception. And that led to a whole train of thought about governments in general.

You see, all governments are doomed to eventual failure. Either they change until they have become something entirely different from what they were when they began; or they succumb to strife between their different internal parties; or corruption alienates the governed from their government, and the governed rebel; or the government is attacked and demolished by a much more powerful one, which then consumes it.  But are there any sorts of government which are immune to these forces?

History teaches us that totalitarian nations have perhaps the shortest lifespan, falling to internal rebellion in short order; and if they don’t succumb to rebellion, they will, in all likelihood, be paralyzed by their own stringent organization, until the people begin to starve and die, which often fragments the nation, or causes it to collapse altogether.

Communist governments rarely fare much better, no matter how good the idea may seem on paper. But in practice, people will not be separated easily from their money and possessions, and the officials in government will rarely be able to resist the ease with which such governments can grant them more power. Thus, if they do not collapse into famine and confusion, as the USSR did in the 1990’s, they will almost certainly become a strained totalitarian state, as China — to some peoples’ reckoning — has.

Democratic governments have been in existence for such a relatively short time (only a few centuries, at the most) that it is difficult to project how (and notice that I did not use the word if) they will fall. But from examples such as Ghana, it can be seen that there are two types of democracies in the world: the type (as in Ghana) which is in turmoil from the beginning, with wild elements within the government continually overthrowing one another and changing the government from democratic to totalitarian and back again; and the type (as, one might argue, America was in the nineteenth century) which remains stable, but seems to move towards more and more government corruption and public mistrust. So perhaps this is the doom of democracies: a slow decay into corrupt bureaucracy, which can easily be usurped and controlled by totalitarian regimes; or simply a continual oscillation that demolishes the nation bit by bit.

In view of all these, it may seem impossible for any government to last which maintains the individual freedoms of its subjects. I would tend to agree with this, but I have a proposition for maintaining such freedoms indefinitely: managed Anarchy.

Managed Anarchy is not the wild chaos and confusion that plagues countries whose governments have suddenly disappeared, or abandoned ship. Managed Anarchy, as oxymoronic as it may seem, is more a type of government than the lack of a government. MA is a grassroots government in which all power is handled by the people, and all power passes from the people,  to the people, without any governing middlemen. I believe that people are capable of self-managing, without the artificial constraint of a government. Now, I do not claim that even Managed Anarchy is an immortal form of government, but I believe that it could be maintained for quite a long time, by following a few guiding principles, the Principles of Managed Anarchy:

• The people who subscribe to MA must learn to resist all forms of imposed governance, and they must teach their children and grandchildren such resistance.
• Centralization should be minimized, or eliminated entirely. Centralization gives one individual or group more power than those who depend on the centralized organization. And, in the spirit of this:
• Hierarchies should be eliminated. The only way true equality can be accomplished is if all people are truly on the same organizational level. This is why centralization must be eliminated.
• The people should produce the commodities. As above, those who depend for their food, their water, et cetera, on a centralized producer can easily be subjected to the control of that producer.
• Desire to rise politically should be seen as a very bad trait, and it should be curtailed wherever possible.
• Violence must be severely controlled or limited. Those who are violent may enlist other violent people to bring their violence on a peaceful group, conquering it, and therefore forming what is, for all intents and purposes, a totalitarian state.

Daylight “Savings” Time

Since I was a little kid, I’ve always been mystified by the practice of Daylight Savings Time. It’s always struck me as one of humanity’s most illogical practices, and considering what humanity is like, that’s saying a lot.

The very idea of Daylight Savings Time annoys me to no end.

Mister Government: Okay, remember to set your clocks ahead so that your internal clock will be confused all day!

Humanity: But why? It doesn’t help anybody!

Mister Government: It’s so the farmers can have an extra hour to work in the fields!

Humanity: But most farming these days is done by machines, many of which are computerized, and many farms are becoming part of large corporations.

Mister Government: Do it because I say so!

Humanity: Okay…

Mister Government: You didn’t say “Simon Says.”

But the final insult: the government has decided this year to arbitrarily move this already-arbitrary event a couple of months earlier than usual! And the justification for this idiotic move? To save energy. Now, perhaps in other circumstances, perhaps with different people in government, this might not seem like such an insane decision. But we’re talking about the administration that gives tax breaks for people buying gas-guzzling Hummers. The same administration that actively discouraged almost every type of energy-efficient vehicle that ever came down the line.

Can you tell that I’m pissed about this?

The Standardized Brain

What are the most important things for our children to learn? Most parents will say things like “Life skills,” “Math and science,” “How to succeed in the world,” and other such mighty philosophical goals.

Then, I have a question for these parents: “If you want your children to think, then why are you programming them to become complete drones???“

This heated rant was triggered by a segment on the standardized-test-producing No Child Left Behind Act, that I heard on NPR. But, it’s been bubbling in my mind since some time in third grade.

You see, in third grade, for the first time in my life, I took a standardized test. I had no idea what the whole thing was about. Before me, I saw a whole grid of little bubbles. I had been taught extensively the proper technique for filling in these bubbles, and I complied to it. After I answered the questions for a while according to the correct answers. Then, I got bored. I stopped caring whether or not my answers were correct. So what did I do? I filled in the bubbles so that they formed an aesthetically-pleasing zigzag pattern. That may well have been the last twitch of my high-level creative muscles before the horror that followed caused them to atrophy almost out of existence.

What followed was a Ministry-of Love-style inquisition, never-ending, never-relenting, and intellectually paralyzing. No longer did my classes challenge or entertain me. No longer was I expected to think up my own solutions to problems. From that moment forward, I was instructed, directly or indirectly, to do my best to come up with the answers the test-maker was looking for. How, exactly, is this good for developing minds? Well, it’s not. But it’s very good for the newly-minted American Totalitarian State, which has finally cracked the age-old secret of how to create the perfect race of conformist drones who do not question government and don’t dare think outside the box: test them into submission.

As the grades went by, I didn’t notice the subtle change in my own psyche. I didn’t feel my sense of wonder at the world slipping away; I didn’t notice it when my drive to succeed academically began to falter; I didn’t take note when I began to become more and more resentful of school and everything it symbolized. But these things happened, and they brought me to where I am today. And that is not necessarily such a good place. I have, no matter how hard I tried to fight, part drone myself. Every now and then, I’ll catch myself watching television, even when the program in question is a wretched, sex-obsessed, moronic wad of drivel, with which I wouldn’t wipe my own rectum. I find myself surfing the internet without reason, even when I don’t have any information in particular to look for.

Why did this happen? Why did a kid who adored science more than anything else in the world, who loved his teachers, who enjoyed going to school (most of the time), become a struggling, flailing student in an undistinguished university, living the American nightmare? School. It’s always been school that got me down, school that broke me, school that got me to stand up on the podium, in front of millions of followers loyal to the system, and, in an Orwellian fashion, denounce myself for my crimes against the Party. Were this 1984, I might have said something like this: “I am a traitor. An enemy of the party. I have failed tests. I have attempted to think differently. I have resisted the beneficient forces of monotonization and conformization. I have attempted to break the mold. I deserve no mercy. I deserve death.” My true crimes, though, go in the opposite direction: I have allowed tests to depress me. I have obsessed about their results. I have allowed myself to partake in the continuous review so that we can get better and better grades on them. I deserve no mercy. I deserve death.

This only got worse with the enactment of No Child Left Behind. This horrendous act, which created a set of benchmarks, to which all schools must comply or face death, is solely responsible for killing the American soul. No Child Left Behind is, by itself, a good reason to despise the current Administration. Even if you ignore American errors, mistakes, horrors, and deceptions, No Child Left Behind stands as a beacon of insanity, a ray of darkness in a sea of light.

I’m sure some of my readers will not be clear on what this Act actually does, especially those fortunate enough to be in Europe, Asia, or one of the other Americas. The meat of the act is simple: it requires a near-constant battery of tests with which it judges the performance of schools. On paper, like Marxism, it may seem like a good idea: it’s (supposedly) a way to see which schools are doing so dismally that they might be hurting the children. (Of course, this assumes that NCLB has no dark ulterior motives, which I doubt) In practice, it does no such thing. Having experienced its effects throughout high school, here’s what it does:

• Provides accountability. Translation: requires students to take test after test, so many, in fact, that teachers begin teaching mostly material that will be covered on the test, to the exclusion of all other facts. The focus of education shifts from understanding to rote memorization, and curiosity is ultimately stifled.
• Judges schools based on their performance. Translation: attacks poor and minority students, despite pretending to help them, by closing down their neighborhood schools and filling them with self-doubt about their own academic prowess.
• Helps academically-troubled students catch up. Translation: Pulls academically gifted students down to the “normal” level. Gone are the special programs for children who think differently. In their places, the gifted ones get the same crap as the non-gifted ones. It’s like taking the people who are fortunate enough to eat full, healthy meals, and then feeding them the same things as the poor, starving indigents lurking on the street.
• Prepares students to become competitive in the global arena. Translation: seeks out and destroys creativity, turns unorthodoxy into “deviance,” and warps the minds of its victims, making sure that not a single one of their thoughts strays out of the assigned box, making certain that they live according to rules, schedules, and prescribed plans.

Having finally written all of this down, and finally given it some thought, I’m beginning to feel quite robbed. I don’t have the same analytical mind as a mathematician would have had years ago. I don’t have the curiosity I used to have. I feel as though my soul has been hollowed out with some sort of spiritual melon-baller. The most I can do now is hope to save as many of the younger generation as I can.

So here’s a message for all you young people who are reading this: never, never, NEVER, NEVER let the system get to you. Disobey. Argue with your teachers when you know they’re wrong. Bend the rules. Think differently. Act differently. The moment you start thinking it’s a good idea to be more like everybody else, smack yourself in the face and do something outrageously individual. Don’t learn to the test: seek out more information about things that interest you. Think about your future, because life has no multiple-choice questions. Stop thinking about studying and memorizing and facts. Start working with ideas, and start understanding. Don’t try to save me; I’m pretty sure I’m too far gone. But save yourself while there’s still time! Hurry!

Toyota Eats GM

Now, normally when I begin a blog post with {something} eats {something else}, the reader can expect something of a serious rant ahead. Not this time. For once, I’m glad {something} is eating {something else}.

The issue is this: I hate GM. I absolutely despise them. I think they may very well be the second most evil automaker on the planet (the first is Ford, number one purveyor of climate-demolishing SUVs and heavy trucks). I’m sure most environmentally-conscious people who have seen the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car?, as I have, will agree with me.

Back in the late 1990s, California decided that it wanted to have a quota of at least a certain number of vehicles that produced zero emissions. None. Not one gram of carbon and nitrogen pollutants. And such vehicles existed, most noticeably in the guise of the EV-1.

The EV-1 is the only automobile that I will admit ever drooling over (after its demise, since I didn’t learn about it until I saw the movie in 2006). It was stylish, it was fast, it was modern, and most importantly, it was electric. Plug it into the wall at night, unplug it when you wanted to drive. Three hundred miles on a single charge-up. It was fast, too, easily outpacing the gas-guzzling monsters we’re now used to.

Well, to all those who were fond of them, GM said: “Too bad.” Under pressure from oil companies, auto-manufacturers (who depend on replacement parts for revenue, which they would have lost on the EV-1, since its drivetrain was so simple), the bastards folded. Since they had only provided EV-1s for lease, they could recall them any time they wanted. And they did. They towed them away, crushed them, and ground them into little shreds in an industrial Cuisinart. They did the same with some other electric cars, and even with a few gasoline-powered economy cars.

Which brings us to the main point of my story, namely, the reason I’m happy Toyota is now moving to overtake GM in sales. The reason is simple: I loathe and despise GM for taking the car of my dreams off the market before I got my chance at one. Well, thank goodness they’ve got some competition. And their competition is one of the few automakers on this planet that can legitimately claim to be moderately less destructive than most.

Of course, it’s not all good. Even if Toyota eats all the other automakers in America, we’ll still have the problem of gasoline dependence. Hybrids are not enough. Ethanol is certainly not enough. Hydrogen? Decades down the road, probably. Even if it isn’t, there are still the safety concerns. Until we can perfect super-clean fuels, electric was probably the best substitute for gasoline. But Big Oil would never allow that…

Well, it looks like it turned into a rant anyway. Oh well. Here, have a link: more information about the EV-1. It is Wikipedia, but at least the pictures have some chance of being accurate…

Global Warming: It’s Not A Lie if an Eight-Year-Old Can Feel It

Over the past few months, with the government grudgingly admitting that something probably ought to be done about the ecosystem-demolishing effects of human-initiated global warming, I have heard hands-over-the-ears rhetoric that actually tops some of the rhetoric of the current administration.

The problem is this: some politicians insist that global warming is a hoax, and that there is little or no evidence to support it. I’ll put aside the enormously sinister political ties between many of these politicians and the actual sources of global warming, and go straight to the ridiculousness of their claim.

Since I was a little boy, I’ve noticed that something is the matter with the world. When I was young, in the early nineties, winters got very cold, and summers got quite warm. It usually snowed every winter, and usually rained fairly often during the summer. But somewhere in the intervening decade, something’s gone peculiar. Now, the winters are warm, and the summers are deathly hot. The presence of snow in any given winter is something of a crapshoot. Rain is so rare in the summers that I’m surprised I don’t see more people jumping up and down in the streets, arms turned skyward, when it finally does rain. The part of the country in which I live has been under drought conditions for several years.

So I ask you, politicians, how on Earth can global warming possibly be denied? You can only blame El Niño for so long. Now, before I’m written of as some sort of partisan extremist, I do understand where the less prickly among them are coming from. For some time, it did indeed seem that some sort of unusual weather system, or a natural variation in the Earth’s climate, may have been to blame for the peculiar warming. And, there was a time when the scientific evidence wasn’t extraordinarily clear. Unfortunately, we are living in neither of those times. It has now become evident that we and we alone are to blame for the gradual death of our world.

And, as promised, allow me to address some of the issues which are causing this death:

• SUV’s: I have never, ever seen the use of such vehicles. The only stories I have ever heard of them are of their rolling over, catching fire, and costing exorbitant amounts of money at the fuel pump. Who the hell needs so many cubic feet of cargo space? Soccer moms and soccer dads should stick to minivans, and the young people should stick to junkers that don’t hold up long enough for their fuel economy to be a problem.
• Big Oil: I have the same problem with Big Oil that I have with Big Pharma: They are both corrupt, money-grubbing, evil, and sinister organizations. Big Oil encourages tax breaks for those who purchase Hummers. They close refineries to drive up their prices. They use their congressional sock puppets to keep fuel-economy standards the lowest in the gasoline-consuming world. They suppress efficient electric vehicles. They promote the use of ethanol and hydrogen fuels, the former of which they could take over when gasoline is no longer viable, and the latter of which promises decreased environmental impact without ever actually becoming practical. They encourage auto-makers to continue pushing fuel-wasting trucks and SUVs that are an embarrassment to the rest of the world. This hardly seems practical in a country that is sponsoring a contest to design a 100-mile-per-gallon vehicle.
• Sock Puppets: I’m not talking about the children’s variety (which are quite fun, and good company if you’re lonely). I’m talking about the aforementioned congressional puppets, who have the hands of industry driven firmly into their posteriors (which is probably the invisible hand that Adam Smith was talking about; no wonder some of our congresspeople have such funny expressions on their faces all the time). They block environmentally-sound legislation, and practically scream “Na na na na na!!! I can’t hear you!!!” at all of those who oppose them.
• The Citizens: That’s right, I’m not letting the people off the hook either. People buy SUVs and pickup trucks and Hummers. People buy outdated incandescent light bulbs which could be easily replaced by the more attractive and energy-efficient natural spectrum fluorescents. People believe that hydrogen cars are just another couple of years down the road, and that ethanol will somehow solve the carbon-emissions problem, despite being a carbon-based fuel itself. People listen to car advertisements, and believe that Mister Government and Big Oil have their best interests in mind. People buy into the rhetoric that eliminating polluting fuels will be bad for the economy. Well, you know what’s even worse for the economy? GLOBAL CROP DEATH, FAMINE, AND DISASTERS BROUGHT ON BY CHANGES IN THE CLIMATE.
• The Term “Climate Change”: If ever there were a soft way for talking about a hard issue, this is it. Most people seem quite unsure what the climate actually is, and “change” could be beneficial. In fact, in our culture, change is often seen as a good thing. Let’s not deceive ourselves.

That about sums up my worldview. But I leave you with this: when a vile and disgusting germ invades the human body and begins emitting a slew of toxic byproducts, the body’s response is to increase the temperature until it becomes inhospitable for the invaders. Think about it.

From Ganja to Adderal

It seems that every period of American history has had its own particular drug of choice. From the late eighteenth century to the mid-forties, it was nicotine. From the mid-forties to somewhere in the sixties, it was a disturbingly wide slew of depressants and psychotropics like cannabis and LSD. Cocaine and crack became popular from the seventies to the early nineties. And that brings us to the present, and to the really frightening new drug movement. We have now entered the age of ’scrips.

Since I was in high school, I’ve noticed the enormous rise in the “off-label” use of pharmaceuticals. Xanax sold for over ten dollars a pill at times, and Adderal was the drug of choice when an exam drew near. Hydrocodone, Oxycodone, Wellbutrin, Viagra, Xanax, Adderal, Ritalin, Benzedrine, all of them have become normal members of the drug scene. And the new “high-class” (emphasis on the quotation marks) drug, replacing cocaine, is the new-age morphine, the ridiculously powerful and ridiculously addictive Vicodin.

This may very well make me seem quite paranoid, but here goes: Big Pharma is behind this. Pfizer has been denying for months that they promote the recreational use of Viagra. I haven’t heard any such ruckus over Adderal and Xanax, but I’m sure that’s coming soon. But in all the media flourish, everybody seems to have missed the point: we have pharmaceutical companies essentially promoting dangerous addictions to their products. In no other nation will you see television advertisements for potentially addictive prescription drugs. Sleeping pills, erectile dysfunction treatments, antidepressants. I sense a very sinister pattern here. I leave the reader to draw their own conclusions.

Farewell, Youtube…

When the news first broke that Google was purchasing Youtube, I prophesized the downfall of Youtube’s free-content system. Of course, even I didn’t take me entirely seriously at the time. The unfortunate thing is that it appears I was right. Google’s gotten its corporate claws into Youtube, which has now degenerated into a morass of messages like this one:

It is what I alwyas feared: any little swath of e-democracy out there will eventually be sought out by a massive multibillion-dollar corporation and pounded into submission until it is perfectly corporation-friendly. That is, until it’s devoid of any mildly interesting content.

Now, I know this is going to sound exactly like a great deal of contemporary Internet rhetoric, but in this case, I think it happens to be true. Now, let me be precise here: I’m not saying that Google is crushing e-democracy intentionally, but merely as a horrifying, twisted side-effect of their quest for dollars. Here’s how it works:

Google: Gee, Youtube is getting a lot of hits. We could make a great deal of money from that. Hey, Youtube, would you like to be bought?

Youtube: Wow, money! Sure thing, Mister Google!

Google: Look at all the money we’re making off our new purchase! We’re happy.

The ALMIGHTY ©: Wait just a minute! Some of these videos belong to ME! Lawsuit! Lawsuit!

Google: Oh no, not a lawsuit! Quick, strip Youtube of its content!

Youtube: **Pitiful coughing and sputtering, prior to death**

The same thing happened to Napster. And just wait, before long, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Compaq, Apple, and other computer manufacturers will be sneaking phrases like this into their End-User License Agreements:

The person who purchases and uses this machine (henceforth referred to as “the user”), by consenting to this license agreement, hereby grants all intellectual property rights for works created with or in conjunction with this machine to <COMPANY NAME> corporation.

And in that same vein, I’ve always been terrified of those EULAs that pop up when you’re installing software. After all, what is at the bottom of that boilerplate bullet list?

The user agrees to grant the provider his or her immortal soul.

As usual, just food for thought.

E-Vengeance

Well, it seems that every time I watch the news, I find yet another contemporary subject to rant about. The only difference is, this time, the rant has some justification.

I was watching one of the primetime news channels (can’t remember which one), when a story came on about the coming rise of “E-justice,” or what I prefer to call WikiJustice. WikiJustice is simple: if the police can’t or won’t take on a case (they see it as “too minor”, or something of that nature), then you spread information about the case all over the Internet, until you build up a loyal network of supporters, who go after the people in question.

Well, this would certainly seem like a good idea. Unfortunately, it’s like Communism: looks really good on paper, but in practice, it puts too much power in the hands of the wrong people. Because, as outgrowths of this WikiJustice, you have WikiVengeance. There are now entire sites devoted to publicly slandering your ex-partner. These bits of gossip are, as far as I can tell, not screened for truth in any fashion. There have been cases recently where people have been falsely accused of having STDs, and have been ruthlessly attacked and hacked away at by an unmerciful public.

As I sat and watched this report, I was reminded about something that we discussed in my Global Connections class a week or two ago. We were talking about just how much of Orwell’s 1984 came true later on. Now, it seems, yet another of the book’s dire prophecies has been realized: you can trust no one, because anybody could potentially accuse you of disloyalty to The Party, and what will follow is months or years of brutal torture in our own modern-day Ministry of Love — the Internet.

The report went on to yet further abuses of information: webcams to catch lousy tippers or cheating lovers. We are construcing the seeds of our own society’s doom: a vast network of nervous snitches who hurry to denounce someone else, lest they be denounced themselves.

Isn’t anybody else concerned about this?

And one final note in relation to 1984. I noticed a further parallel earlier, concerning the true mutability of information on the Internet. It brought to mind these words:

The past was erased, the erasure forgotten; the lie became truth.

George Orwell (1984)

The Return to Valium Housewives

Now, I don’t know how often housewives really took valium in the ’50s and ’60s, but that is of little consequence now, because it seems that we are about to see the return of that fad. Serves me right for watching the news, I suppose.

Here’s what happened: After I finished watching House, I was lounging around, and I saw an advertisement for the upcoming news broadcast (who the hell advertises news?) Something caught my eye: a seeming endorsement by the pharmaceutical community of the use of antidepressants in people not suffering from clinical depression. This brings to mind Pfizer’s claim that they don’t encourage Viagra’s recreational use: yet another ploy for Big Pharma to line their bursting pockets. Actually, they’re just lining the insides of their wads of cash, now.

Here’s how it goes: in their monetary brilliance, Big Pharma has produced two drugs, exactly identical, but with different labeling. One of them is indicated for clinical depression. The “other” one is indicated for the treatment of nicotine addiction. Insurance companies will usually pay for the one that treats depression, but not the other one (I’ll leave the justification of that to the reader; it seems like Big Insurance would want to help as many nicotine-addicted people quit as possible…wait a minute…they make money off of their…) The result? Paging Dr. Con: doctors are now prescribing the depression-indicated drug, listing the patient as being treated for depression, and sending them on their way. Anybody else see a problem here?

Don’t even get me started on Big Pharma’s ethics issues; I’m sure the one that insurance will pay for is the more expensive one (ka-ching!). Moving on to the human side of things: where does this end? Are we going to start prescribing Ritalin and Adderal for college kids who want to pull an all-nighter (actually, they might already do that; several of my classmates have come in wired on anti-ADD medications). What about viagra for bored teenagers (oops…already did that, too). Okay…maybe heart medications to improve athletes’ performance (hey, I think they already do that, too). Well…I don’t really have anything left…so I suppose the moral of this story is: swallow a fistful of pills. Everybody else is doing it.

“If It Gets in the Way, Go Around It”

Normally, when I’m reading about international politics or hearing about it on the radio, I can’t help but giggle a little. It’s often just so damned funny: countires acting like squabbling kids on some playground. But when I was listening to NPR this morning, I heard a report about some international policies that fairly well blew me away.

You see, we Americans have a bit of a problem: our government doesn’t listen to us. In fact, sometimes, the current administration seems to be deliberately toying with us. When the voters say we don’t want to spend any more resources in our endless war on Iraq, the good old executive branch decides to send more resources. By now, fans of Orwell’s 1984 will be noticing a striking pattern. But recently, there arose a rare condition: somebody actually did something about the apparent deafness of our current administration.

The issue at hand is this: human beings have developed a surprising knack for destroying the planet. The American variety of human beings are especially good at it, with their ten-thousand-watt security lights hung on their houses like Christmas tree ornaments, and with their eight-ton Hummers that get about thirty miles to the tank. There are, of course some American-type human beings who are not particularly satisfied with this state of affairs, and wanted the government to perhaps consider doing something about it. But the dialogue went something like this:

Eco-Minded Americans: Mister Government, please do something about the people who are destroying all the good bits of the planet.

Mister Government: I am the decider, and I decide no!

Non-Eco-Minded Americans: Yeah! Continue tax breaks on expensive, lousy, polluting vehicles!

But, thank goodness, somebody realized that there was a problem here, and merry old England (or is it supposed to be called Britain? I never did figure that out) stepped in to help out its former colony. The result: British (English?) officials actually went around the government, and went directly to a handful of American states, in order to try to help get some reasonable “decider”-free environmental policies enacted. And I have just one thing to say about that: Finally!

“Non-Binding Resolutions” and Other Odd Things to Do

Though I used to be somewhat political, I, just like pretty much every other university student I’ve met, have completely burned out on politics, and I (most of the time) vehemently refuse to swear allegiance to any particular bit of the infamous “political spectrum”, sometimes I simply must say something about Congress’s “Non-Binding Resolution” against President Bush’s “Troop Surge” in Iraq: What the hell??? A non-binding resolution? That’s like someone going into a fistfight and saying “Wait, wait! If you don’t hit me, I’ll be your bestest friend!” I sigh loudly.

But, in the interest of cameral balance, I’ll say this to the executive branch: What the hell??? “Global warming is a hoax!”? Do the politicians who say this never step outside or something? Hell, I’ve noticed global warming in my lifetime (note the entry “From Powder To Mush”, where I noted that my area hasn’t had snow since 2004)! I sigh loudly!