Surely the described outrages pale.. in mid-'13.. when we raise the Scale one? 3 or 4? notches:

Don't get sick in Murica (that is: eat right; evade as many pharm-chem nostrums as.. your own immune system can already manage.)
Assume that some %large of any formally-paid Authority Figures have chosen to wield Power as a career: because of (known?) (unknown?)
personal-psych 'Issues.' Humor them (where possible without being next actually maimed.)
Flatter their testosterone-enhanced egos (even the females: All have some %testosterone too.)

Failure to properly assuage those--in forced-contact--who are acting-out: compounds the possible outrages which are in the arsenal.

Be grateful when calm techniques save you from the extreme/sadistic perps in various uniforms (including chortling nurses inserting catheters: they wear White uniforms, note.)

ie Yep: WE'RE THERE already.
And there's No Place to Hide from the banana-Plantation Owners.
..even lovely Bhutan, with its Gross National Happiness / annual [Real!] survey: treats females ~~ the same as your average Murican WASP-misogynist. Pity.. that.

If you think I am here exaggerating.. go read the ENRAGED 16 yo's 2010 event.
It's now 2013--anyone think it's gotten Better since?


Soo Then ... Which -?- cooks US First, next:

Door #1: a, say exponential rise in frequency/duration of 105-115°F daily temps, not just in fly-over backwaters?
(Water aquifers poisoned by fracking fluids, droughts, more movement of ΣNationalWealth into the 0.1% offshore collection points;
Lousier supermarket-food-like substances at higher prices: Little Fun-Shopping-for-Stuff, as the Consumer Dream evanesces into: 85%-at-Official-Poverty-Level (we're nearing that already)
________ any here can add n more symptoms. (And yes, every topic WIll generate T.M.I. paralysis.)

Door #2: an even more rapid deterioration of Civility (verbal/physical/penal forms, etc.) towards some Mad-Max tipping point
--where Revolution happens [amongst the Active/Aware/Outraged] and the vast majority of the Otiose/Complacent/Gullible stand about ... ... ... in that
'helpless confusion' which Confucius described as the Cost of 'language not being [kept] correct'

(If there's a Door #3: it would have to be simultaneous #1 + #2, wouldn't it?)


From my POV: Yesss we still have a slim-chance to salvage much that was fine, but the momentum is clearly towards -->
More of the Same which empowered the Cheney Shogunate to Act Crazy, Then and still.
The USSC is unlikely to be impeached for their obvious 12th Century bias in all things.
[ NOW: One fucking Man/Kennedy!!-- 'Decides' whether to Bury Us All / Give us a Reprieve. ¡Verdad! ]
The Koch Bros. et alia: Rule all the government pseudo-choices; hold ALL of the $$$-cards, permanently.

I shall tune-out the Deluge, feed the feral cats (who, like all Other species on the planet--get No Thought) within the techno-Dream kultur
--which daily expands its planet-rapine--for something which addled minds call 'Profit', while burning their nest, along with ours.
(Who needs to imagine 'species-cide' when we've got All-species-seppuku ... should all those perfectly-programmed nukes fly,
amidst some next series of mistaken-data or Mistaken-psyches?)

Am glad to have the maya hypothesis: all this stuff is Just a Play.
But is [Something] dreaming-it-All-Up? (like Leibniz' metaphor of sitting in a 'room', watching a screen??)
It's BEST, never to be Certain of such matters. IMO.

Time to cool off a couple spots for ferals to escape (the mere ~100F of today.)
Cats, via physiology: always live in The Present-moment. / ergo: Superior Beings to homo-saps.



Ed: LeVar Burton explains how not to be killed by police
http://www.salon.com...emium%29_7_30_110

except that diseased ones tend to be more creative in their means for wished-for destruction of their Opponents: anyone Not-me.

That title pic may be the finest/compact/pukka representation of our current plight--yet seen.
Just Perfect!

(And yes, somewhere I have my Uher Report-L tape of my brief interview of Mario Savio, the very night when the Reagan Goons began dragging-out the sit-in protesters
(not long after I left Sproul Hall): purposely dragging same feet-first down a series of stairs, that each step
just might induce concussion (or if a lucky drop: imminent-seizure.)

Fortunately they were young, strong and I expect: braced. Pre-Terrierist perps, all. Just sitting there..
1964: 4 years prior to [my assigned Inflection Point--"all-Negative-slope" from mid-'68 on]

I saw JFK ~ 15' away as he rode up The Hill to see Lab Director / exchanged my wave for a head-nod.
Who Knew he had so short a time left.
It's been a long slog to today's measurable, nay palpable level-of-deterioration.
Who KNEW WE ALL had so short a time remaining, within any civilized milieu.

One hopeful thing: it can't get much more diabolically-insane out there before.. even Muricans sorta begin to Notice.
Ya think??

30

Guess I have to dust off some slightly-earlier observations, from correspondence.
[Not a single EXPLOsion.. in these parts, yet ... lucky moi.]

Bob Frye in ... In my Lifetime ... 'Syracuse native's documentary explores history, future of nuclear weapons'
http://www.syracuse....rye_syracuse.html
has his slogan, Optimism is to be engaged. Pessimism is to be resigned.

I need not deny the advances made, in your list. But assessing such [+] / [-] lists can prove deceptive, as the perceived 'Quality'-overall of one's environment, is not the sum-of such lists (even VS some earlier time's comparable, poorer list over a similar interval.)
I'd like.. to.. believe that ~ "there is measurable significant progress" since '70s. But it doesn't need data matrices to discern that Significant-Damage since the start of the Cheney Shogunate quite o'ercrows the integral of some histogram of the mentioned [+]s
Today such comparos may even be the very definition of, obsolete thinking?, because:

The planet is in peril--or, it is not. Whichever is True: the Problem (and its verification) is unprecedented, clearly.

We (think we..) have the techno means to evaluate the nature of the problem(s) and to launch ameliorating changes, but our allotted time is seen to be extremely short. It won't matter--in the End--the vast number of actions we *might* take, next, to apply all our lore towards the multitudes of interrelated details:
IF.. sufficient time is wasted in ignorant faux-argument as produces effete/ineffective projects with no chance to alter the population-caused effects, let alone time wasted via premeditated/corporate obfuscation-for pure profit:
Corporations actively funding/working against any amelioration sufficient to the necessities already seen. Their aim remains: obfuscation and they are intransigent.
They possess the cash to buy a supine media-class, to out-Göbbels Göbbels' Best: AND THEY ARE DOING IT ($B-worth as. we. speak.)

In my view, none of the previous metrics which claim to measure 'wealth' (and then Must project "its growth" next) are even relevant--yet that rubric is the only important one, in 2013, to a substantial %total-population.
The tiny-fraction of people who possess a huge fraction of all resources: rule over all resources and their employment.

(These Moguls will 'lend' [as in, Heh..] a hand to whatever project--if the profit is sufficiently enticing.) But what if the cumulative bill to kill emissions in-time is: some $quadrillions? to be added to that current floating $35T, recently estimated?
If you live within that mind-set: you will conclude that earth-denizens just could not change their whole way of defining Wealth / in a matter of months (?)
Translation: Gee, we just can't afford to do That much, that fast.. … == It's too fucking $Expensive! to, er 'keep the planet below broil: for our grand-cheeldrun.'

So to me it seems:

1) Those who are science-literate are facing the Final Post-Graduate exam: out-Manhattan The Manhattan Project--and with a similar time-constraint (if not quite-worse.)

2) The plutocrats, [the 0.01% to perhaps 1.0%] who 'OWN' (conservatively) 2/3 of [the Grand-total-of-all-Stuff + Real Estate] are, with few exceptions: science-illiterate or worse: so anti-'science' that their mule-stubborn ideologies shall render them unteachable.
So for these: it's already WW-III and the fight shall be over keeping their Power (and much of their fungible loot is--to them--'safely ensconced' somewhere.)
Their allegiance is not to 'Country' or 'its citizens', but solely to Themselves + whatever is their dynasty.

Ergo:
We are Over-populated or, we are not. (We've never fed Everyone on this planet--yet.) It doesn't bother the people who don't have to look daily at the Losers.
Our Elites one-up each other via the SIZE of the beds in their private 737s and at least, a few larger.
Religious inculcation has led to the impending next Middle-East conflagration with/without nuking of Israel and all who sail in her.
Religious inculcation + Corporate-paid propaganda has brought the US Congress to 0-efficiency, Draconian new misogynistic laws and further transfers of the %average-pittance --> The Few.
.
. Etc.
Many more details could be added by any of us, to demonstrate the magnitude of Denial as clearly dominates mind-sets, as a %population-everywhere. The more wealth coveted: the stronger the denial.

What may make our {probable?} denouement most unbearable to the informed, must surely be about the impotent - w a i t i n g - thus - w a s t i n g - of so many opportunities which are soon to slip away.
All that lore as could flash-into-action, with quite more enthusiasm than: when it was JUST to blow-away Them before they blew-away Us!
All Intelligence On idle ... as $billionaires play the only game they've ever known--to the death.

That APOD of the colliding galaxies? INERTIA (again.)
Our inertia seems to be the root-cause--as would be assigned in the necropsy--and nobody has a clue as to What it would take to alter the mercantile/daily habits of millions--just to save 'some planet-thing … from something'.

Maybe there needs to be a planet-wide screening of Things to Come. Another 1935 argument about eschewing stupidity--which went unheeded. Too.
http://en.wikipedia....ki/Things_to_Come

At the conclusion of the film, Oswald Cabal delivers a speech about Progress and humanity's quest for knowledge. "CABAL: '. . . for MAN no rest and no ending. He must go on—conquest beyond conquest. This little planet and its winds and ways, and all the laws of mind and matter that restrain him. Then the planets about him, and at last out across immensity to the stars. And when he has conquered all the deeps of space and all the mysteries of time—still he will be beginning. . . . If we’re no more than animals—we must snatch at our little scraps of happiness and live and suffer and pass, mattering no more—than all the other animals do—or have done. (He points out at the stars.) It is that—or this? All the universe—or nothingness. . . . Which shall it be?"

Hah.. well, 'MAN' wasn't able even to change a few habits to save.. that little planet and its 'winds and ways'.

So then, 'da capo' as we say in music; back to beginning: Optimism is to be engaged. Pessimism is to be resigned.
You cannot 'Be Engaged' amidst chaotic fusillades of just-plain fabrications/lies: confounding all communications. And within an audience of Puritan-inculcated, science-averse Shopaholics seeking <above all else> diversion from any thinking/decision, deeper than, Want fries with that?

I choose, instead, to save a few cats [from other forms of homo-sap cluelessness, often outright malice] than to paralyze my grey-cells via some perverse effort towards actual empathy? for my ex-cohorts, now in process of abetting the frying of their own neurons … well-before the Heat Death of the (local?) Universe.
Teller was RIGHT about that universal inability to experience emotionally: the exponential function. He be daid for coming-up 10 years now--no Nobel Oracle Prize for Him :-/

30

May this Anniversary crowd be inspired to focus-->Attention upon the do-able, the sane, the Necessary-next tasks.
A Tall Order, that--the organizers must hone, refine, rehearse! a compelling series of messages, with simple words but in no way simplistic points.
..All that: without a MLK to edit.

Natch I hope.. ... ... ... that yours is a more balanced overview of our prospects.

But the QUESTION: In. Time. ???
looms Large in my jaundiced view of the prospects for self-education of the Consumptive er, Consuming Masses:
as the Chinese already exceed (in first-derivative of Change) the voracious/limitless appetites of Muricans
(who are now constrained by their imminent-pauperhood / as is doomed to be maintained via Forces who utterly control their any prospects for
... anything resembling a sane distribution of the National Net Worth. Ever.)


Tangled web..

:-) :-/ :-) :-/ (crap shoot, that is.)