Hampton Roads Publishing Company Blog

This report from the San Jose (Cal.) Mercury News via Truthout.org. I notice that scientists have an irritating habit of assuming that catastrophic change is unlikely to happen, then revising their estimates upward in the face of the evidence but continuing to insist that catastrophe is unlikely even when it is becoming obvious that it is upon us. A few years ago we were assured that sea levels were unlikely to rise more than a few inches in a century, if that. They’re up to three feet in a century now. My guess is that we will be looking at a three-foot rise within the next two decades, if not more. Will we be ready? Hard to prepare when the authorities are saying there isn’t anything to prepare for.

Under Water by 2100? Risk of the Rising Sea
By Mike Taugher
The San Jose Mercury News

Friday 26 January 2007

Scientists seek ways to avert a creeping catastrophe in Bay area.
The seas have been rising for 18,000 years, but the pace has quickened.

At the Golden Gate Bridge, the Pacific Ocean crept seven inches higher during the past century, as global warming melted glaciers and expanded ocean waters.

Californians are taking notice. In one of the first efforts of its kind in the state, officials are starting to address the threats rising seas pose to the Bay Area.

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Amen to this!

http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/content/view/799/32/

I already published one article about the Brandeis confrontation, but this, from The Jewish Week, is also interesting. http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=13589

Carter Faces, And Disarms, Jewish Crowd

Dershowitz scores some points but former president earns respect with apology on book passage.

Larry Cohler-Esses - Editor At Large

Waltham, Mass. — Former President Jimmy Carter entered the lion’s den Tuesday — and emerged with two standing ovations.

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This obit from the Miami Herald raises troubling questions. Hunt no doubt saw himself as a patriot. So did Liddy. So do the others who do so many ethically questionable things in your name. Is it possible to be a good man in a bad cause? Of course it is. Possible to be a bad man in a good cause? A good man in a good cause? A bad man in a bad cause? Choose your perumutation. The thing is, though, you had better be prepared to continually re-assess your judgment, for we are only as good or as bad as our actions — aren’t we? Or are there other standards to judge by?

But what if our opinion of the actions changes? Hunt is considered to have failed at Watergate and, previously, at the Bay of Pigs invasion, but to have succeeded as a “long-serving CIA spymaster involved in the successful Guatemalan coup.” But what business did he have — did the CIA have — in overthrowing a government merely because it didn’t like that government’s principles and feared where it might lead?

Hunt helped overthrow Arbenz, and the result was decades of savage persecution of the Guatemalan poor. He failed in his attempt to overthrow Castro, and the result was decades of savage persecution of Castro’s political enemies. Was one action right and the other wrong? If so, which?

I do not pretend that any of these questions would have troubled Hunt, any more than they would have troubled Liddy. These are men apparently untroubled by ambiguity. But they ought to trouble the rest of us.

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This story from the Santa Cruz Sentinel — http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2007/January/24/local/stories/07local.htm — shows both the potential and the problem involved in getting our society to convert to solar and other forms of renewable energy. Anybody with a brain knows that it makes more sense for a society to use renewaable resources rather than ones that are depleted through use. After all, sustainability means — you can sustain it! The opposite of a sustainable society is a society without a future. But — the catch is, how much does it cost to make the conversion?

This story tells of a farmer who has reduced his substantial energy bills by as much as 90 percent. But — look at the size of his initial investment! Now, if the same person who makes the initial investment reaps the rewards over time in the form of lower energy bills, no problem. This farmer is happy, as he figures that his investmentit should pay off in seven or eight years. The problem comes when you have what economists call a split incentive, as when landlords install inefficient — but cheap — appliances, because their tenants and not they themselves are going to pay the monthly energy bills.

People aren’t stupid. Find a way to assure that the people making the investment are the ones who will benefit from it, and they’ll beat a path to your door. Keep the incentives split, though, and you’ll wind up in the situation we are in, where everybody knows that there are major industries waiting to be developed, but it isn’t very much in anybody’s interest to do so, because others will reap the benefits.

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From the Boston Globe, a non-vitriolic piece about former President Jimmy Carter’s appearance to discuss his much-discussed (much-vilified!) book.

At Brandeis, a dialogue
By Eileen McNamara, Globe Columnist | January 24, 2007

It is a delicate balance for the academy, trying to promote civility without stifling speech. Until President Jimmy Carter’s actual appearance at Brandeis yesterday, I had been prepared to write that for the second time in a year, the university had leaned too far in the wrong direction.

But something happened on the way to that column: Events proved me wrong.

The university’s decision to screen the questions posed to Carter and to bar a documentary filmmaker from his speech on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict gave every appearance of an institution trying to control a potentially volatile debate. It is true, as administrators argued, that some questions are unfocused and that all venues have space limitations. But, I was prepared to write, isn’t an unbridled discussion in the finest tradition of academic freedom?

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Science fiction great Arthur C. Clarke used to say that all sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Here’s another case in point, this one from CBC News (Canada), via Tesday’s Schwartzreport. The significance? It seems to me that this is the predecessor of yet another huge breakthrough in information storage and transference. If they learn to store data on photons, the requirements for data transmission presumably decline accordingly, bringing economic costs further toward zero and — more importantly — suddenly making practical a host of applications that won’t occur to us for years.

‘Sounds Impossible,’ But U.S. Team Put Image Into Single Photon

CBC News (Canada)

American researchers have put all the data from an image into a single photon, one of the particles that make up light and other electromagnetic phenomena.

The team was also able to retrieve the data, the letters UR for the University of Rochester where lead researcher John Howell is an associate professor of physics.

“It sort of sounds impossible, but instead of storing just ones and zeros, we’re storing an entire image,” he said in a release Monday.

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A friend sent this to me, and I found it interesting and thought-provoking, as I think you will too.

The Radical Christian Right Is Built on Suburban Despair
By Chris Hedges, AlterNet

Posted on January 19, 2007, Printed on January 20, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/46908/
The engine that drives the radical Christian Right in the United States, the most dangerous mass movement in American history, is not religiosity, but despair. It is a movement built on the growing personal and economic despair of tens of millions of Americans, who watched helplessly as their communities were plunged into poverty by the flight of manufacturing jobs, their families and neighborhoods torn apart by neglect and indifference, and who eventually lost hope that America was a place where they had a future.

This despair crosses economic boundaries, of course, enveloping many in the middle class who live trapped in huge, soulless exurbs where, lacking any form of community rituals or centers, they also feel deeply isolated, vulnerable and lonely. Those in despair are the most easily manipulated by demagogues, who promise a fantastic utopia, whether it is a worker’s paradise, fraternite-egalite-liberte, or the second coming of Jesus Christ. Those in despair search desperately for a solution, the warm embrace of a community to replace the one they lost, a sense of purpose and meaning in life, the assurance they are protected, loved and worthwhile.

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I don’t know if you’re tired of comet photos. (How could you be?) A friend sends this URL http://msowww.anu.edu.au/~rmn/C2006P1new.htm that features photos such as this one:

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The latest “Letters at 3 a.m.” column from Michael Ventura, which appeared in the Austin Chronicle January 19, 2007. What this man can do with news clippings, intelligent thought and old-fashioned honest indignation is a marvel. He ought to be used as an example in every journalism school in the country, except he would so shame the other practitioners.

110,000 A YEAR

The numbers stun. “Of every 20 people who go into a U.S. hospital, one of them picks up something extra: an infection… for 90,000 Americans a year, the infections are a death sentence… 2 million patients get a hospital-acquired infection every year… Nation-wide, hospital infections are the eighth-leading cause of death [my italics]… [And] in most parts of the country, it’s virtually impossible to find out how well hospitals are doing at infection control overall.” [AARP Bulletin, January, 2007, p.12] If 2 million were infected and 90,000 were dying from diseases contracted at movie theaters or sports arenas, those venues would be closed amid headlines and government investigations galore. If terrorists killed 90,000 Americans a year, we’d be living under marshal law. But hospitals are protected by powerful insurance and health industry lobbies, so as yet no one in the federal government seems vitally interested.

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