[Anonymous selections from recent correspondence]
If there is danger in the human trajectory, it is not so much in the survival of our own species as in the fulfillment of the ultimate irony of organic evolution: that in the instant of achieving self-understanding through the mind of man, life has doomed its most beautiful creations. –E. O. Wilson, from The Diversity of Life (1992), quoted in the frontispiece of Elizabeth Kolbert's 2014 book, The Sixth Extinction
Last year was the hottest in earth’s recorded history, scientists reported on Friday, underscoring scientific warnings about the risks of runaway emissions and undermining claims by climate-change contrarians that global warming had somehow stopped.
Extreme heat blanketed Alaska and much of the western United States last year. Several European countries set temperature records. And the ocean surface was unusually warm virtually everywhere except around Antarctica, the scientists said, providing the energy that fueled damaging Pacific storms.
In the annals of climatology, 2014 now surpasses 2010 as the warmest year in a global temperature record that stretches back to 1880. The 10 warmest years on record have all occurred since 1997, a reflection of the relentless planetary warming that scientists say is a consequence of human emissions and poses profound long-term risks to civilization and to the natural world.
Of the large inhabited land areas, only the eastern half of the United States recorded below-average temperatures in 2014, a sort of mirror image of the unusual heat in the West. Some experts think the stuck-in-place weather pattern that produced those extremes in the United States is itself an indirect consequence of the release of greenhouse gases, though that is not proven.
Several scientists said the most remarkable thing about the 2014 record was that it occurred in a year that did not feature El Niño, a large-scale weather pattern in which the ocean dumps an enormous amount of heat into the atmosphere.
Perhaps the biggest news lately in North American skiing has been the announcement in 2014 that seven ski resorts perched high above Salt Lake City hope to join hands to create the largest megaresort in North America. OneWasatch, as it’s being billed, would be a colossus, with one ski pass linking more than 100 lifts across Utah’s Wasatch Mountains, more than double the acreage of Whistler-Blackcomb in Canada, currently the continent’s largest ski resort. Its backers say OneWasatch would offer an experience akin to Europe’s linked valley-to-valley ski systems like Arlberg in Austria or Trois Vallées in France.
The idea is ambitious. It’s sexy. It’s also hugely controversial. Opponents say linking the resorts isn’t right for the mountains, or for the people who play in them or who rely on them....
Why do it? “It’s a huge marketing draw,” said Nathan Rafferty, president and chief executive of Ski Utah, which markets the state’s ski resorts. “It would simply create a ski experience in Utah that no one else in North American has, or could have.”....
But opponents say the idea, though beguiling, falls apart upon closer inspection, for several reasons.
Among them is water. The high central Wasatch are this region’s water tower. Nearly 500,000 people in the Salt Lake Valley rely to some extent on melting snow that drains from the mountains. As a result, the Wasatch, though intensely used, are also intensely regulated. Dogs aren’t even allowed in some popular canyons....
Anyway, I've been reading No Place to Hide, and I recommend it. Excerpt:
...US dominance over the Internet has given the country substantial power and influence, and has also generated vast profit:
Such profit and power have also inevitably accrued, of course, to the surveillance industry itself, providing another motive for its endless expansion. The post-9/11 era has seen a massive explosion of resources dedicated to surveillance. Most of those resources were transferred from the public coffers (i.e., the American taxpayer) into the pockets of private surveillance defense corporations.
Companies like Booz Allen Hamilton and AT&T employ hordes of former government officials, while hordes of current top defense officials are past (and likely future) employees of those same corporations. Constantly growing the surveillance state is a way to ensure that the government funds keep flowing, that the revolving door stays greased. That is also the best way to ensure that the NSA and its related agencies retain institutional importance and influence inside Washington.
As the scale and ambition of the surveillance industry has grown, so has the profile of its perceived adversary. Listing the various threats supposedly facing the United States, the NSA – in a document entitled "National Security Agency: Overview Briefing" – includes some predictable items: "hackers," "criminal elements," and "terrorists." Revealingly, though, it also goes far broader by including among the threats a list of technologies, including the Internet itself.
The Internet has long been heralded as a unprecedented instrument of democratization and liberalization, even emancipation. But in the eyes of the US government, the global network and other types of communications technology threaten to undermind American power. Viewed from this perspective, the NSA's ambition to "collect it all" at last become coherent. It is vital that the NSA monitor all parts of the Internet and any other means of communication, so that none can escape US government control.
Ultimately, beyond diplomatic manipulation and economic gain, a system of ubiquitous spying allows the United States to maintain its grip on the world. When the United States is able to know everything that everyone is doing, saying, thinking, and planning – its own citizens, foreign populations, international corporations, other government leaders – its power over those factions is maximized. That's doubly true if the government operates at ever greater levels of secrecy. The secrecy creates a one-way mirror: the US government sees what everyone else in the world does, including its own population, while no one sees its own actions. It is the ultimate imbalance, permitting the most dangerous of all human conditions: the exercise of limitless power with no transparency or accountability.
Edward Snowden's revelations subverted that dangerous dynamic by shining a light on the system and how it functions. For the first time, people everywhere were able to learn the true extent of the surveillance capabilities amassed against them. The news triggered an intense, sustained worldwide debate precisely because the surveillance poses such a grave threat to democratic governance. It also triggered proposals for reform, a global discussion of the importance of Internet freedom and privacy in the electronic age, and a reckoning with the vital question: What does limitless surveillance mean for us as individuals, in our own lives? [pp. 167-169]
And my wife agrees. She said we should take a whole month so we can see all the historical places too.
I told her we could hire a small airplane and see them all in a couple of days. It would take longer for Alaska and Hawaii, of course.
 |
| George H.W. Bush & Barbara |
.jpg)
Some more paraprosdokians – figures of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected:
- Money can't buy happiness, but it sure makes misery easier to live with.
- There's a fine line between cuddling and holding someone down so they can't get away.
- I used to be indecisive; now I'm not so sure.
Someone just told me that her friend heard a crying baby on her porch the night before last, and she called the police because it was late and she thought it was weird. The police told her, "Whatever you do, DO NOT open the door."
She told them that now it sounded like the baby had crawled near a window, and she was worried that it would crawl to the street and get run over.
The police said, "We already have a unit on the way. DO NOT open the door." He told her that they thought a serial killer in the area had a baby's cry recorded and was using it to coax women out of their homes by leading them to think that someone had dropped off a baby.
The police said they had not verified it, but they had had several other calls from women reporting baby's cries outside their doors when they're home alone at night.
Istanbul, Turkey, is the only city in the world located on two continents.
"Twin Peaks Planet." [Paul Krugman, NY Times] Excerpt:
In 2014, soaring inequality in advanced nations finally received the attention it deserved, as Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century became a surprise (and deserving) best seller. The usual suspects are still in well-paid denial, but, to everyone else, it is now obvious that income and wealth are more concentrated at the very top than they have been since the Gilded Age – and the trend shows no sign of letting up.The day before Krugman published that, he had nominated for 2014's chart of the year a graph by Branko Milanovic of the City University of New York Graduate Center:
What Mr. Milanovic shows is that income growth since the fall of the Berlin Wall has been a “twin peaks” story. Incomes have, of course, soared at the top, as the world’s elite becomes ever richer. But there have also been huge gains for what we might call the global middle – largely consisting of the rising middle classes of China and India.
And let’s be clear: Income growth in emerging nations has produced huge gains in human welfare, lifting hundreds of millions of people out of desperate poverty and giving them a chance for a better life.
Now for the bad news: Between these twin peaks – the ever-richer global elite and the rising Chinese middle class – lies what we might call the valley of despond: Incomes have grown slowly, if at all, for people around the 20th percentile of the world income distribution. Who are these people? Basically, the advanced-country working classes. And although Mr. Milanovic’s data only go up through 2008, we can be sure that this group has done even worse since then, wracked by the effects of high unemployment, stagnating wages, and austerity policies.
Furthermore, the travails of workers in rich countries are, in important ways, the flip side of the gains above and below them. Competition from emerging-economy exports has surely been a factor depressing wages in wealthier nations, although probably not the dominant force. More important, soaring incomes at the top were achieved, in large part, by squeezing those below: by cutting wages, slashing benefits, crushing unions, and diverting a rising share of national resources to financial wheeling and dealing.
Perhaps more important still, the wealthy exert a vastly disproportionate effect on policy. And elite priorities – obsessive concern with budget deficits, with the supposed need to slash social programs – have done a lot to deepen the valley of despond.
So who speaks for those left behind in this twin-peaked world? You might have expected conventional parties of the left to take a populist stance on behalf of their domestic working classes. But mostly what you get instead – from leaders ranging from François Hollande of France to Ed Milliband of Britain to, yes, President Obama – is awkward mumbling. (Mr. Obama has, in fact, done a lot to help working Americans, but he’s remarkably bad at making his own case.)
The problem with these conventional leaders, I’d argue, is that they’re afraid to challenge elite priorities, in particular the obsession with budget deficits, for fear of being considered irresponsible. And that leaves the field open for unconventional leaders – some of them seriously scary – who are willing to address the anger and despair of ordinary citizens.
Most men in the early west carried a jack knife made by the Buck knife company. When playing poker it was common to place one of these Buck knives in front of the dealer so that everyone knew who he was. When it was time for a new dealer the deck of cards and the knife were given to the new dealer. If this person didn't want to deal he would "pass the buck" to the next player. If that player accepted then "the buck stopped there."
An awesome road. Going-to-the-Sun-Road, Glacier National Park, Montana:
I must admit I looked forward to our upcoming church service with greater anticipation than usual after reading in our bulletin, "This being Easter Sunday, we will ask Mrs. Brown to come forward and lay an egg on the altar."
Do you know who is the poor guy who comments as "Ken"? [Possibly, but not sure] Whoever he is, he seems kind of sad. I've composed a limerick for him, in the hope he can be encouraged to seek priestly or professional help:
Ken lashes out at people, he shoves themLos Angeles’s full name is: El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula – and can be abbreviated to 3.63% of its size: L.A.
It seems like insolence strongly govs him
Is it just the way he is?
Has he made abuse his biz?
Could he be that way cause no one loves him?
Some more quotations from Albert Einstein:
The finest way to walk is "sauntering." The term came into our language from France in the Middle Ages. At this time, the French peasants and other city people were forbidden to walk on the "high road," as only the VIPs could employ it for overland travel and commerce.
- Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
- Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds.
- Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Onf form of travel was permitted, however, when the Crusades began. If ordinary peopl were found on the high road, they would affirm they were going to "San Terre" – the Holy Land. They were permitted to go on. Most Sundays found almost endless troops of all ages and gender making the trek. Them ambled along, "san terreing" or sauntering, modernly enjoying the great outdoors.
Today, sauntering is the best way to walk and one might reach the Holy Land.
Limerick of the week [originally published on January 16, 2011]:
The proof "more even than odd" was semantic,
playful, good-humored, a little pedantic,
done for good fun,
as well as the pun,
and while not even odd, it was, flatly, antic.
| Copyright © 2015 by Morris Dean |
No comments:
Post a Comment