There isn't a uniform rate of change.

Post #377,477 by Another Scott 7/3/13 10:04:02 PM Reply	There isn't a uniform rate of change. A well written, heart-felt essay. Thanks. But lots of things have gotten much better than they were in 1970. Pollution in the US was horrible then. Factory smoke that looked like the horrors that are happening in China now. We had too many nearly dead rivers and lakes. We are no longer poisoning our youth in cities with tetraethyl lead. We aren't drafting hundreds of thousands of men to fight (and many to die) in battle any more. The FBI is not headed by a man (Hoover) who had accumulated so much power that he had a job for life, and used that power to investigate (and likely effectively blackmail) his political opponents. The CIA is no longer a private army for the President. I don't know how much worse (if at all) spying on US is than it was. My gut tells me that when international long distance phone calls were dollars per minute, and much rarer, that it is likely that individualized snooping by the NSA was probably much more common than it is when such calls are incredibly cheap and incredibly common... We know that technology enables a lot, and storage and computing power gets cheaper all the time. But we also know that governments move slowly, and military organizations move slower still. IBM's R&D spending is about $1.5B a quarter ($6B a year). NSA's budget is supposedly around $10B/year. The FBI's budget is about $8B/year. The IRS's budget is around $12.5B/year. In 2007, local police operating costs were $260/resident - http://www.bjs.gov/i....cfm?ty=tp&tid=71 - if we assume 300M people, that's $78B/year. Local police departments don't have enough people and a big enough budget to spy on people in their areas. The NSA's and the IRS's and all of the other federal law enforcement agencies budgets are even smaller relative to the population. They simply don't have enough people and a big enough budget to spy on all of us. Even if they can't spy on us individually as much as the black helicopter people think, are they spying on us too much? I dunno. Maybe. Maybe not. Am I creeped out by the traffic cameras I pass every day that can pass out traffic tickets? A little. Any more than if a cop car were sitting there instead, watching me? No, not really. There does need to be better explanations of what the NSA does and doesn't do. There needs to be robust oversight of these agencies and programs to make sure that they are not being abused. Is that in place now? I dunno. We have more opportunities for free speech, and more opportunities to petition our government for redress of grievances than ever before. In 1970 we could write our representatives or picket or call or FAX. Now we can still do that, but we can also easily organize national assemblies of like-minded people. We don't depend on a few "important" newspapers or national TV networks to let us know what's "important" any more. There are dozens of easily-available news sources from around the world. Women and minorities and the disabled have many more opportunities now than in 1970. (That trend is under serious threat, of course.) The risk of thermonuclear war is much less than it was in 1970. Yes, of course, many things are worse now. The national politics is much more polarized than anytime in my memory. Even during the height of the Vietnam war days, there wasn't a mania by a large fraction of the elected representatives to shut down the government, or punish the poor and the unemployed, or destroy food safety programs, or ... :-( I understand the curmudgeonly instinct. I'm around a decade younger than you and I get in that mood too sometimes. :-) But don't lose your optimism. It is too easy for fatalism about the future to be self-fulfilling. My $0.02. Cheers, Scott.
Post #377,515 by Ashton 7/4/13 7:00:44 PM Reply	Re: There isn't a uniform rate of change. 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.. Â == 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 Â 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 onÂconquest 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 timeÂstill he will be beginning. . . . If weÂre no more than animalsÂwe must snatch at our little scraps of happiness and live and suffer and pass, mattering no moreÂthan all the other animals doÂor have done. (He points out at the stars.) It is thatÂor this? All the universeÂor 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 Â 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
Post #377,517 by Another Scott 7/4/13 7:54:23 PM Reply	Well said, as always. And yet... As quickly as the Tea Party came to prominence, they can fade away. While it's much easier to destroy than to construct, construction does happen. Remember the boom under Clinton when the Cold War finally wound down? We can have an economy like that after we get out of Afghanistan and continue to wind down the excessive ungodly expensive weapons systems that were started long ago. We can redirect our economy away from things that do the masses too little good. Tomorrow? No. Within 10 years, yes I think so. It wasn't that long ago that some national Republicans were for a carbon tax with a cap and trade system. It wasn't that long ago that investment in R&D was a national, bipartisan priority. All it takes is a few of the dinosaurs to lose elections, and for people to be willing to step up and confront ignorance and stupid policies (e.g. Wendy Davis in Texas) for things to change. Things can change for the better pretty quickly. I expect them to with our help. Yes, climate change is a big threat. We can make substantial progress even if we can't get back to 350 ppm in my lifetime. All it takes is for a few dozen seats in the House to change sides. It's not an impossible task. I think a lot of our national problems would go away with a financial transactions tax and with some sort of election reform that included public funding. I've often thought that something like a limited campaign season (say 1 year for president, 6 months for Senate and House races), but I dunno. Unknowns need time to build name recognition and support, and the "operatives" that earn millions running campaigns would find ways to keep their gravy flowing. And figuring out a fair formula for deciding who gets funding and how much, in a way that wouldn't be gamed by incumbents or billionaires, would be very tough. We, as a species, almost blew up the planet with nuclear weapons. We almost destroyed the ozone layer with CFCs. We almost destroyed the nation's ability to grow crops during the dust bowl. We can address climate change, too. And I think we will. A sign of what's possible in the near term will be the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington August 24-28, 2013: http://officialmlkdream50.com/ Hang in there. My $0.02. Cheers, Scott.
Post #377,561 by Ashton 7/5/13 2:28:53 PM Reply	Excellent Link.. 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.) Law above fear, justice above law, mercy above justice, love above all.

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