gpspacey's Xanga

Bill Moyers from 1987

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 18:45:49 GMT

This was a wonderful history lesson. I knew the overall story, but the amazing part was the extent to which this happened and our utter inability to stop it from happening again. Clearly I have much more learning to do.

This will help you understand why Iranians chant "Death to America" and don't want to give up their nuclear ambition. This helps me understand why corrupt leaders can play the anti-American hatred card to gain power and remain in power. People who were kids in 60s, 70s, 80s and saw the brutality unfolding around them... they learned that unless they have money and power themselves, there is no chance of escaping the long reaches of an enemy with money and power. they now run these countries. America may be waning, but the retreating tentacles are still tentacles.

I don't know whether I should be grateful or ashamed to have chosen to live here, to make this my home, and to lead a comfortable life.

I'll be forever grateful to Bill Moyers.

$5,833 per head

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 03:19:40 GMT

NY Times reports that the U.S. hit $1.4 trillion deficit this past fiscal year.

$1,400,000,000,000

Current U.S. population is about 300 million.

300,000,000

That comes out to $4,666 of debt per person this year, including all the infants.

According to Wikipedia, about 80% of the U.S. population are estimated to be in the 15+ age bracket. That's 240,000,000 people. That leaves us with debt of $5,833 per person if we don't want our children to pay for our mistakes. I suppose this chump change when you consider our national debt of almost 12 trillion.

Me, worried?

Jon Stewart at his best -- CNN factchecks SNL

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 04:32:25 GMT

As often as I try to quit the Daily Show, pieces like this make me return.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
CNN Leaves It There
www.thedailyshow.com

Neil Postman is smiling from somewhere...

"This is a matter of considerable importance, for it goes beyond the question of how truth is perceived on television news shows. If on television, credibility replaces reality as the decisive test of truth-telling, political leaders need not trouble themselves very much with reality provided that their performances consistently generate a sense of verisimilitude." (102)

"Viewers, after all, are partners with the newscasters in the 'Now... this' culture, and they expect the newscaster to playout his or her role as a character who is marginally serious but who stays well clear of authentic understanding. ... The viewers also know that no matter how grave any fragment of news may appear, ... it will shortly be followed by a series of commercials that will, in an instant, defuse the import of the news, in fact render it largely banal. This is a key element in the structure of a news program and all by itself refutes any claim that television news is designed as a serious form of public discourse." (104)

-- Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death

"Like the Sorcerer's Apprentice, we are awash in information, without even a broom to help us get rid of it. The tie between information and human purpose has been severed. Information is now a commodity that is bought and sold; it comes indiscriminately, whether asked for or not, directed at no one in particular, in enormous volume, at high speeds, disconnected from meaning and import. It comes unquestioned and uncombined, and we do not have, as Millay said, a loom to weave it all into fabric. No transcendent narratives to provide us with moral guidance, social purpose, intellectual economy. No stories to tell us what we need to know, and especially what we do not need to know.

"Without such narratives, we discover that information does not touch any of the important problems of life. If there are children starving in Somalia, or any other place, it has nothing to do with inadequate information. If our oceans are polluted and the rain forests depleted, it has nothing to do with inadequate information. If crime is rampant on our streets, if children are mistreated, it has nothing to do with inadequate information. Indeed, if we cannot get along with our own relatives, this, too, has nothing to do with inadequate information."

-- Neil Postman, "Science and the Story that We Need," First Things, Jan 1997

(btw if you haven't seen the "d*ck in a box" sketch, it's a must.)

Armillary Sphere

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 06:38:28 GMT

Homer-Dixon mentions an archaic device called armillary sphere in his book The Upside of Down. It was an exquisite but hopelessly complicated model of the 'heavenly bodies' rotating around the earth.

Having spent at least two hours plowing through 40+ pages of academic writing on a theory of cultural sociology, I couldn't help but recall this device.

U.S. Government Manual

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 03:50:04 GMT

Did you know that our government comes with a manual? This was news to me.

U.S. Government Manual: Browse the 2008-09 Edition

There, you see the meaning of BUREAUCRACY, literally. (When I say literally, I mean 'literally', not 'virtually'. Why is this a difficult concept?)
Do you think it also comes with a registration and warranty card?

Why Rachel Maddow Rocks

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 17:30:52 GMT

Go Rachel Maddow!!!

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

ramble

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 04:49:24 GMT

Busy organizing my head these days around the new school schedule, around the new stuff from last semester, around summer sundry readings (only some of which should be relevant to the current train of thought but somehow my brain insists on weaving them into a monstrous super-theory). After a whole summer, intellectual dust hasn't settled. One indication I may not be good at the whole big-thinking business, but I'm going to keep chugging for a while and see what comes out of it.

On a separate note, here is another thing to wrap my head with: "One either anticipates firestorms and does something useful, or one gets swept up in them."

Amazing how people occupying the same space in the same sequence of movements can have such detached interpretation of reality. (Not talking about the author, but about the people he's discussing... which ultimately encompasses everyone since we're all individual players with our own interpretation in the grand scheme.)

Prince William Sound, Alaska

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 22:11:30 GMT

More incredible pictures from my recent trip to Alaska.
If you have a chance to go there, bring the best camera you can afford.

These are all from a day cruise that leaves from Whittier, going around in Port Wells section of PWS. Even though the day was super foggy, the cruise was still worth every cent.

Alaska's dead evergreens -- seeing is believing

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 14:06:33 GMT

Little more than a week ago I went to Alaska to visit my husband's family. The trip included glacier trekking and cruising in Prince William Sound. Wow, such beauty! Following the Glenn Hwy (Rt1) to the Matanuska Glacier for hiking, we made a couple pit stops to appreciate the breathtaking grandeur of Alaskan landscape:

This is a stitch of 3 separate pictures.

Close-up of the third.

Even a bigger close-up.

Seeing dead trees everywhere we went, all of which appear to be a type of evergreen, I recalled hearing about the beetle infestation in the California coast as well as British Columbia. I couldn't remember if the news mentioned Alaska so wasn't sure why these trees were dying and my Alaskan relative didn't know either. From a cursory online research, it indeed appears to be due to spruce bark beetle infestation.

Some articles/sites:

Battling the Bark Beetle: As Global Warming Rises, So Do Tree-Killing Infestations
Aerial survey of forest damage by pests, done in 2005
Kenai Peninsula Borough Spruce Bark Beetle Mitigation Program
"The spruce bark beetle outbreak in Southcentral Alaska is the largest natural disturbance event to affect terrestrial ecosystems in Alaska since the 1964 earthquake, and its impacts will persist for decades."
Beetles, wildfire: Double threat in warming world -- from Associated Press 10 hrs ago!
"Farther north, in the Yukon, the pine beetle isn't endemic — yet. Here it's the spruce bark beetle that has eaten its way through 400,000 hectares (1 million acres) of woodland, and even more in neighboring Alaska, in a 15-year-old epidemic unmatched in its longevity and extent."

You can even see it in google map:

NYC Subway Cars

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 17:55:33 GMT

I don't have a way to make this entry contemplative but wanted to share anyway because it's something you don't see on a daily basis.

New subway cars waiting to be transported across the George Washington Bridge.
Taken June 28, 2009

Old cars waiting to go down the Hudson River.
This was the day when a tour helicopter collided with a small plane (8/8/09).
Due to the accident, the barge stopped moving downstream for a while.

What goes in must...