I probably just screwed up the wording. I thought it was from an interview I heard on NPR, or perhaps William McDonough? Sorry, I can't find it either. There are so many variations. "[blah blah Republicans blah blah] fear naught but dying poor" etc...
Caring about the environment doesn't have to be ideological. The science showing that environmental destruction is bad by just about any measure you can name has been out there for a long time. What colour environmentalists are is moot--if you poison your life support system, you die. This isn't about rooting for your home sports team--there are supporting facts, evidence, solid math behind plenty (admittedly not all) of the environmentalists' positions. The typical Republican position tends to be based on a lot of ignorance, wishful thinking, and greed.
Modern Republican policy has contributed absolutely nothing to "the environment" for the last few decades. If you say that you care, but aren't willing to make any sacrifice at all, then you are a hypocrite. And if you honestly care, then you're in the wrong party. Of course, if you are a modern Republican, then you hate science, education, family planning, clean air and water, and a functioning ecosystem, and love torture, holding people without trial, unprovoked wars and occupations, giving most everything to for-profit corporations, and letting fundamentalist religious extremists run what's left of the country... to say nothing of the current topic. Or else you're not paying attention...
Ambitwistor has done a very good job with this, so I'll just chime in to emphasise one thing: waiting for positive proof that global warming is a disaster that we could have done something about is rather stupid. We have no certain knowledge of the future, ever. We have to make the best decisions we can. given the information we have now. And that information says that there's a reasonable chance that we are in very deep trouble indeed. Nothing you can imagine can hold a candle to the chaos that runaway climate change will cause.
For an elementary tutorial on risk management as applied to this particular threat, I highly recommend this YouTube video. Please let us know what you think!
It is very difficult to justify private ownership of something that is not produced by someone. Who should own the air? It must be owned by one entity, since there is only one atmosphere--national boundaries are irrelevant. And that means a monopoly. Whom should I pay for the privilege of breathing? What shall I do when they increase prices? What if they don't offer a product that I want? If Microsoft Air is too dirty, I can't just switch to Apple Air.
Government exists for exactly this purpose--to make sure that bullies can't destroy things at the expense of everyone else. Things like the air need to be managed by global nonprofits with the power to enforce rules (ie. armies), and I can't see anyone but a government doing this.
Or if I set up a global atmospheric regulation committee, what will you do? Pay me?
*laugh* Yes, well. It's healthy to be afraid of things that are likely to hurt you, especially if you might then do something about it. It is not healthy to fear things irrationally, or to fear things when the cure is worse than the disease, or to fear imaginary threats that, by definition, you can't do anything about.
That you use the word "bleating" does not make them wrong. The Tragedy of the Commons is very real, and current economic systems are built around abuse of critical global commons--the atmosphere, topsoil, the sea, surface water,... Any system that does not protect global commons will, quite literally, lead to the destruction of the world. You're seeing it now. Global warming is merely the fashionable cause du jour; very real, but there are others just as deadly.
You are right in principle. However, the financial system is make-believe because it ignores the real cost of items. The cost of a tree is not just the cost of harvesting the tree, it is also the cost of not having the tree anymore--increased CO_2 in the air ((a) not sequestered by the tree and (b) produced by fossil-fuel--burning logging equipment), loss of topsoil due to erosion, loss of intangibles that are hard to put financial value on, like beauty... Gasoline ought to cost the full clean-up cost of the air that is destroyed (not just the oxygen consumed, but the cost of getting all the toxins, carcinogens, and whatnot out of the ground and air), etc. So yes, capitalism would be great--IF it accurately accounted for the real costs of things.
But these costs have only become apparent recently. When capitalism was invented a few thousand years ago, the cost of not having a tree anymore was irrelevant because there were so many trees (well, sort of--even back then they ran into numerous problems, but the problems were quite local). Now that there are 7e9 people in the world, everything is done on such a massive scale that even small per-capita incremental costs add up to, frankly, global ecological disaster. And our financial systems haven't caught up. Whether we can make them do so in time is up in the air. Pun intended.
So yes, capitalism is wonderful in theory, but as implemented, is make-believe.
The fact that most Americans think this is funny is the problem. "If you do anything about global warming, you'll hurt my portfolio." Large-scale natural disasters in which whole ecosystems are destroyed are irrelevant, compared with a little make-believe system of measuring personal success vs. your neighbour. To quote someone famous, "Republicans are terrified of dying poor."
My local Hole Foods (in Boulder, no less!) just tore down a couple of neighbouring stores so they could install another few hundred spaces of "free parking" (ie. parking subsidised by high prices). They actually want me, a cyclist, to help pay for their other customers to pollute the air, create urban sprawl, increase global warming, jack up energy prices, make our air dirtier, and all the other ills that accompany cars.
For more whining about this kind of policy and where it gets us, check out "The High Cost Of Free Parking".
I wrote them a letter at some point congratulating them on what I thought was a move to encourage cycling. I got a note back saying that I was mistaken, that the "new policy" I'd seen hints of was crap, and that they fully supported their customers driving from 2 miles away in their FUVs in order to shop, and thanked me for supporting their new parking lot.
On the other hand, other comments are also correct: they do have some of the best groceries in town. Freshest produce, highest-quality meat and fish, tastiest potato chips, finest bread by far,...
So I go there for things I really can't get elsewhere.
I rather like the current model, but for another reason: Americans are already so isolated, so unconscious of the existence of other countries or other parts of the world, that the current model in a sense subsidises not just browsing, but education. Getting more people on the 'net is important, but a tiered structure opens the door to things like "US-only" plans, which is exactly what the head-up-their-ass America-is-the-world Republican redneck hicks would buy. That makes the Internet far less valuable to us as a society.
I can understand that Americans are so brainwashed by "10% off sales" and "1% rebate credit cards" that they think that 20% is a big number. It's not. An 80% increase in fuel efficiency might lead to (guessing here) a 60% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, but would by the same token lead to an increase in congestion and travel times. 20% is pretty near irrelevant for what we need to do: break our addiction to fossil fuels.
Why on earth would you want to prevent them from reading something? You could try letting your kids learn about the world in an environment in which they can come to you for help when they're confused. Sheltering them will only help them to end up like Americans, who can't solve anything without lawyers and therapists and guns.
You'd think that all this hoopla over global warming, urban sprawl, unsustainable development, economic collapse, etc., would remind people that if our society ever wants to crawl out of its hole we need to work on separating people from their cars. The car is simply not a viable system for transporting people. They're too big and heavy and expensive and dangerous in a million ways.
Yes, keeping old fogies happy is of course important to a society that values the well-being of its citizens. But a society in which everyone must drive everywhere is antithetical to the wellbeing of everyone. The more so because old people are allowed to drive, raising the danger for all road users, but if cars never had accidents the other costs would still be prohibitive.
By my math (from DOT statistics) about one person in 50 in the USA dies in a car crash, and other countries do even worse. That number could be affected by the number of geriatrics in cars. But how many die by illness brought on by the obesity that a car-based society promotes? How many will die by wars over the oil that we still depend on? How about cancer and other hydrocarbon-related diseases? Of course, eliminating all of these sources of death would increase the number of old people...
When will this absurd country pull its collective head out of its ass and invest in public transportation?
Buildup is irrelevant: there can be buildup with no war. The proof that the wars are coming is simpler than that: we are running out of natural resources, and we need them. Scarcity of something that is required for life (or just an economy) must lead to war. Oil is just the beginning. Topsoil will be an interesting one.
True, the Gnome people are especially good at forgetting that Linux ought to cater first to competent users. Even the "Beginner/Advanced" switch on options panels has been disappearing lately, let alone scriptable interfaces everywhere.
It's a compromise. I remember well the days when computer manufacturers had never heard of Linux, and being very excited when one asked me what I used and insisted I answer and had actually heard of it. Popularity has made Linux infinitely better (it runs on most hardware, and there is commercial software available) at some cost.
Many modern Linux developers are acting like Republican slime: they oppose the Middle Class. In much recent software, you begin as a complete novice (using their expurgated options dialogs), but then you stay there. There is no gradual progression of skills as you become more advanced, since the next skillset that lets you interact with the programs more powerfully is downloading the source, adding your own features, and recompiling. If you're lucky, registry hacks are an ugly middle ground. You are either proletariat or aristocracy.
I've said it before and I'll keep saying it, but what's needed is for our primary education system to focus less on facts and more on thought processes. Without this, there can never be a democracy. Children need to learn that there are always people who will lie to them, and they need to be able to sort fact from fiction from honest speculation on their own.
This is why I say that creationism should be taught in science class. It is bogus, and it is obvious with a little thought that it is bogus, but so few Americans are capable of this level of thought. Blind trust in authority is the end of civilisation. It is essential that we teach good and bad theories, and give children the tools to tell the two apart on their own.
A truth rating for websites is useless. We already strive to teach kids the truth in schools, and that's turning into The Truth (ie. the Christian nutcases' religious doctrine). Let a governing body decide what is truth and you get more circularity in your so-called "democracy"--people learn to trust another govenment-run FACTory, and stop having to think for themselves. That is the last thing we need.
But biodiesel is horrible for the environment--we already clearcut vast swaths of forest, use huge amounts of pesticides and fertilisers, irrigate, etc., for agriculture. Biodiesel can be produced from tanks of sludge, but to fuel more than a handful of vehicles we will need to clearcut EVERYTHING. Of course, you already know the problems that this causes--topsoil loss, oceanic dead zones, soil toxification, loss of desperately needed short-term carbon sequesterers... to say nothing of sending the price of corn through the roof. Biodiesel will of course eliminate the problem of Mexicans illegally crossing into the USA--they'll all starve to death first!
Biodiesel may be the answer. What was the question, again?
Evidence has a place in science classes, but what should really be taught is the scientific method. Teach creationism in science classes, by all means! It is a fabulous example of a scientific theory that makes all possible predictions and is therefore scientific crap. Teach it, and teach why it is junk. Science class should be about teaching a thought process, not a bunch of facts.
True, the presence (or perceived presence) of dumb users leads to dumbing down of software (as anyone who has followed Galeon can attest to), but software companies develop based on markets, not ideologies. If fewer people ran Linux there would be no commercial software. Ideology is nice, but ideology without power (in this case, marketshare) is meaningless. In other words, your ideology's impact is something like (ideology's purity) * (market penetration).
If I could not get Mathematica and Matlab for Linux, it would be much less useful to me (unless it ran under Win4Lin (another commercial product created by demand)). Millions would switch to Linux but for AutoCad. Millions would switch away if Oracle weren't available. In time, there may be free alternatives to these things, but for now there is a massive difference between the commercial product and any free versions.
By the same token, every person running Windows or MacOS hurts me by making it less likely that a commercial software company will develop for Linux.
Unwashed masses give us power. Do not throw them out with the bathwater. Um, never mind...
Of course! We could bloody admit that as far as being the dominant life form on the planet, humans have done an incredibly piss-poor job at running things. We've fucked up nearly everything we were capable of touching, about 12 causes of our demise are well understood and yet we do next to nothing about them, we repeatedly take out other whole ecosystems in the shrapnel, we still rape, torture, kill, and let people who have never been trained in how to use their brains make our decisions for us...
The truth is that we had our chance and we fucked up. Let's see if the robots can do any better.
That's exactly the question that Jared Diamond addresses in Guns, Germs, and Steel. Fascinating. Ultimately, his newer book, Collapse, is the important one (possibly the most important book ever written), but you might be intrigued by the former.
Maslow adds a couple more: we also need personal safety, friendship/love, and the ability to pursue one's potential (in that order?). Given those things, sure, why not live the way we did 10000 years ago? We don't need iPods, exactly... the technological details of how we get our self-fulfillment are irrelevant. Of course, standards for safety have changed (health care (everywhere but the USA, at least), something like habeas corpus (ditto), etc...), but fundamentally technology is there to enable richer lives, and too few people ask which pieces of it are succeeding.
What is wrong with us, as a society? The difference is obvious, and yet we can't figure out how to write it down. Let lawyers try, and the language defines its own loopholes with words like "substantially identical", "more than 1000", "for commercial gain", "possible interest to the recipient", etc. There's really very little question about what is spam, but there is much question about what is reasonable for a court to decide. Our lawyers need to grow up and stop being such babies about interpreting the letter of the law, but that has its own problems. The real solution to the spam problem is probably vigilante justice, ninja-style, baby.
Of course, if I had stolen Death Star plans, I'd use unsolicited email too. Illegal? Certainly! On quite a few levels.
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I probably just screwed up the wording. I thought it was from an interview I heard on NPR, or perhaps William McDonough? Sorry, I can't find it either. There are so many variations. "[blah blah Republicans blah blah] fear naught but dying poor" etc...
Caring about the environment doesn't have to be ideological. The science showing that environmental destruction is bad by just about any measure you can name has been out there for a long time. What colour environmentalists are is moot--if you poison your life support system, you die. This isn't about rooting for your home sports team--there are supporting facts, evidence, solid math behind plenty (admittedly not all) of the environmentalists' positions. The typical Republican position tends to be based on a lot of ignorance, wishful thinking, and greed.
Modern Republican policy has contributed absolutely nothing to "the environment" for the last few decades. If you say that you care, but aren't willing to make any sacrifice at all, then you are a hypocrite. And if you honestly care, then you're in the wrong party. Of course, if you are a modern Republican, then you hate science, education, family planning, clean air and water, and a functioning ecosystem, and love torture, holding people without trial, unprovoked wars and occupations, giving most everything to for-profit corporations, and letting fundamentalist religious extremists run what's left of the country... to say nothing of the current topic. Or else you're not paying attention...
Ambitwistor has done a very good job with this, so I'll just chime in to emphasise one thing: waiting for positive proof that global warming is a disaster that we could have done something about is rather stupid. We have no certain knowledge of the future, ever. We have to make the best decisions we can. given the information we have now. And that information says that there's a reasonable chance that we are in very deep trouble indeed. Nothing you can imagine can hold a candle to the chaos that runaway climate change will cause.
For an elementary tutorial on risk management as applied to this particular threat, I highly recommend this YouTube video. Please let us know what you think!
It is very difficult to justify private ownership of something that is not produced by someone. Who should own the air? It must be owned by one entity, since there is only one atmosphere--national boundaries are irrelevant. And that means a monopoly. Whom should I pay for the privilege of breathing? What shall I do when they increase prices? What if they don't offer a product that I want? If Microsoft Air is too dirty, I can't just switch to Apple Air.
Government exists for exactly this purpose--to make sure that bullies can't destroy things at the expense of everyone else. Things like the air need to be managed by global nonprofits with the power to enforce rules (ie. armies), and I can't see anyone but a government doing this.
Or if I set up a global atmospheric regulation committee, what will you do? Pay me?
*laugh* Yes, well. It's healthy to be afraid of things that are likely to hurt you, especially if you might then do something about it. It is not healthy to fear things irrationally, or to fear things when the cure is worse than the disease, or to fear imaginary threats that, by definition, you can't do anything about.
That you use the word "bleating" does not make them wrong. The Tragedy of the Commons is very real, and current economic systems are built around abuse of critical global commons--the atmosphere, topsoil, the sea, surface water, ... Any system that does not protect global commons will, quite literally, lead to the destruction of the world. You're seeing it now. Global warming is merely the fashionable cause du jour; very real, but there are others just as deadly.
You are right in principle. However, the financial system is make-believe because it ignores the real cost of items. The cost of a tree is not just the cost of harvesting the tree, it is also the cost of not having the tree anymore--increased CO_2 in the air ((a) not sequestered by the tree and (b) produced by fossil-fuel--burning logging equipment), loss of topsoil due to erosion, loss of intangibles that are hard to put financial value on, like beauty... Gasoline ought to cost the full clean-up cost of the air that is destroyed (not just the oxygen consumed, but the cost of getting all the toxins, carcinogens, and whatnot out of the ground and air), etc. So yes, capitalism would be great--IF it accurately accounted for the real costs of things.
But these costs have only become apparent recently. When capitalism was invented a few thousand years ago, the cost of not having a tree anymore was irrelevant because there were so many trees (well, sort of--even back then they ran into numerous problems, but the problems were quite local). Now that there are 7e9 people in the world, everything is done on such a massive scale that even small per-capita incremental costs add up to, frankly, global ecological disaster. And our financial systems haven't caught up. Whether we can make them do so in time is up in the air. Pun intended.
So yes, capitalism is wonderful in theory, but as implemented, is make-believe.
The fact that most Americans think this is funny is the problem. "If you do anything about global warming, you'll hurt my portfolio." Large-scale natural disasters in which whole ecosystems are destroyed are irrelevant, compared with a little make-believe system of measuring personal success vs. your neighbour. To quote someone famous, "Republicans are terrified of dying poor."
My local Hole Foods (in Boulder, no less!) just tore down a couple of neighbouring stores so they could install another few hundred spaces of "free parking" (ie. parking subsidised by high prices). They actually want me, a cyclist, to help pay for their other customers to pollute the air, create urban sprawl, increase global warming, jack up energy prices, make our air dirtier, and all the other ills that accompany cars.
For more whining about this kind of policy and where it gets us, check out "The High Cost Of Free Parking".
I wrote them a letter at some point congratulating them on what I thought was a move to encourage cycling. I got a note back saying that I was mistaken, that the "new policy" I'd seen hints of was crap, and that they fully supported their customers driving from 2 miles away in their FUVs in order to shop, and thanked me for supporting their new parking lot.
On the other hand, other comments are also correct: they do have some of the best groceries in town. Freshest produce, highest-quality meat and fish, tastiest potato chips, finest bread by far, ...
So I go there for things I really can't get elsewhere.
I guess this is off topic, isn't it? Oops.
I rather like the current model, but for another reason: Americans are already so isolated, so unconscious of the existence of other countries or other parts of the world, that the current model in a sense subsidises not just browsing, but education. Getting more people on the 'net is important, but a tiered structure opens the door to things like "US-only" plans, which is exactly what the head-up-their-ass America-is-the-world Republican redneck hicks would buy. That makes the Internet far less valuable to us as a society.
Think global.
I can understand that Americans are so brainwashed by "10% off sales" and "1% rebate credit cards" that they think that 20% is a big number. It's not. An 80% increase in fuel efficiency might lead to (guessing here) a 60% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, but would by the same token lead to an increase in congestion and travel times. 20% is pretty near irrelevant for what we need to do: break our addiction to fossil fuels.
Why on earth would you want to prevent them from reading something? You could try letting your kids learn about the world in an environment in which they can come to you for help when they're confused. Sheltering them will only help them to end up like Americans, who can't solve anything without lawyers and therapists and guns.
You'd think that all this hoopla over global warming, urban sprawl, unsustainable development, economic collapse, etc., would remind people that if our society ever wants to crawl out of its hole we need to work on separating people from their cars. The car is simply not a viable system for transporting people. They're too big and heavy and expensive and dangerous in a million ways.
Yes, keeping old fogies happy is of course important to a society that values the well-being of its citizens. But a society in which everyone must drive everywhere is antithetical to the wellbeing of everyone. The more so because old people are allowed to drive, raising the danger for all road users, but if cars never had accidents the other costs would still be prohibitive.
By my math (from DOT statistics) about one person in 50 in the USA dies in a car crash, and other countries do even worse. That number could be affected by the number of geriatrics in cars. But how many die by illness brought on by the obesity that a car-based society promotes? How many will die by wars over the oil that we still depend on? How about cancer and other hydrocarbon-related diseases? Of course, eliminating all of these sources of death would increase the number of old people...
When will this absurd country pull its collective head out of its ass and invest in public transportation?
Buildup is irrelevant: there can be buildup with no war. The proof that the wars are coming is simpler than that: we are running out of natural resources, and we need them. Scarcity of something that is required for life (or just an economy) must lead to war. Oil is just the beginning. Topsoil will be an interesting one.
True, the Gnome people are especially good at forgetting that Linux ought to cater first to competent users. Even the "Beginner/Advanced" switch on options panels has been disappearing lately, let alone scriptable interfaces everywhere.
It's a compromise. I remember well the days when computer manufacturers had never heard of Linux, and being very excited when one asked me what I used and insisted I answer and had actually heard of it. Popularity has made Linux infinitely better (it runs on most hardware, and there is commercial software available) at some cost.
Many modern Linux developers are acting like Republican slime: they oppose the Middle Class. In much recent software, you begin as a complete novice (using their expurgated options dialogs), but then you stay there. There is no gradual progression of skills as you become more advanced, since the next skillset that lets you interact with the programs more powerfully is downloading the source, adding your own features, and recompiling. If you're lucky, registry hacks are an ugly middle ground. You are either proletariat or aristocracy.
Teach Correlationism in highschool science class!
I've said it before and I'll keep saying it, but what's needed is for our primary education system to focus less on facts and more on thought processes. Without this, there can never be a democracy. Children need to learn that there are always people who will lie to them, and they need to be able to sort fact from fiction from honest speculation on their own.
This is why I say that creationism should be taught in science class. It is bogus, and it is obvious with a little thought that it is bogus, but so few Americans are capable of this level of thought. Blind trust in authority is the end of civilisation. It is essential that we teach good and bad theories, and give children the tools to tell the two apart on their own.
A truth rating for websites is useless. We already strive to teach kids the truth in schools, and that's turning into The Truth (ie. the Christian nutcases' religious doctrine). Let a governing body decide what is truth and you get more circularity in your so-called "democracy"--people learn to trust another govenment-run FACTory, and stop having to think for themselves. That is the last thing we need.
But biodiesel is horrible for the environment--we already clearcut vast swaths of forest, use huge amounts of pesticides and fertilisers, irrigate, etc., for agriculture. Biodiesel can be produced from tanks of sludge, but to fuel more than a handful of vehicles we will need to clearcut EVERYTHING. Of course, you already know the problems that this causes--topsoil loss, oceanic dead zones, soil toxification, loss of desperately needed short-term carbon sequesterers... to say nothing of sending the price of corn through the roof. Biodiesel will of course eliminate the problem of Mexicans illegally crossing into the USA--they'll all starve to death first!
Biodiesel may be the answer. What was the question, again?
Evidence has a place in science classes, but what should really be taught is the scientific method. Teach creationism in science classes, by all means! It is a fabulous example of a scientific theory that makes all possible predictions and is therefore scientific crap. Teach it, and teach why it is junk. Science class should be about teaching a thought process, not a bunch of facts.
True, the presence (or perceived presence) of dumb users leads to dumbing down of software (as anyone who has followed Galeon can attest to), but software companies develop based on markets, not ideologies. If fewer people ran Linux there would be no commercial software. Ideology is nice, but ideology without power (in this case, marketshare) is meaningless. In other words, your ideology's impact is something like (ideology's purity) * (market penetration).
If I could not get Mathematica and Matlab for Linux, it would be much less useful to me (unless it ran under Win4Lin (another commercial product created by demand)). Millions would switch to Linux but for AutoCad. Millions would switch away if Oracle weren't available. In time, there may be free alternatives to these things, but for now there is a massive difference between the commercial product and any free versions.
By the same token, every person running Windows or MacOS hurts me by making it less likely that a commercial software company will develop for Linux.
Unwashed masses give us power. Do not throw them out with the bathwater. Um, never mind...
Of course! We could bloody admit that as far as being the dominant life form on the planet, humans have done an incredibly piss-poor job at running things. We've fucked up nearly everything we were capable of touching, about 12 causes of our demise are well understood and yet we do next to nothing about them, we repeatedly take out other whole ecosystems in the shrapnel, we still rape, torture, kill, and let people who have never been trained in how to use their brains make our decisions for us...
The truth is that we had our chance and we fucked up. Let's see if the robots can do any better.
ps. Bwahahahahaha! ;)
That's exactly the question that Jared Diamond addresses in Guns, Germs, and Steel. Fascinating. Ultimately, his newer book, Collapse, is the important one (possibly the most important book ever written), but you might be intrigued by the former.
Maslow adds a couple more: we also need personal safety, friendship/love, and the ability to pursue one's potential (in that order?). Given those things, sure, why not live the way we did 10000 years ago? We don't need iPods, exactly... the technological details of how we get our self-fulfillment are irrelevant. Of course, standards for safety have changed (health care (everywhere but the USA, at least), something like habeas corpus (ditto), etc...), but fundamentally technology is there to enable richer lives, and too few people ask which pieces of it are succeeding.
What is wrong with us, as a society? The difference is obvious, and yet we can't figure out how to write it down. Let lawyers try, and the language defines its own loopholes with words like "substantially identical", "more than 1000", "for commercial gain", "possible interest to the recipient", etc. There's really very little question about what is spam, but there is much question about what is reasonable for a court to decide. Our lawyers need to grow up and stop being such babies about interpreting the letter of the law, but that has its own problems. The real solution to the spam problem is probably vigilante justice, ninja-style, baby.
Of course, if I had stolen Death Star plans, I'd use unsolicited email too. Illegal? Certainly! On quite a few levels.
It is if you're a beer critic.