Hampton Roads Publishing Company Blog

I get a sardonic smile from those supporters of China who say the Dalai Lama is being “unfair” to China. Oh well. This article from http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080420/NEWS05/80420034&imw=Y

Dalai Lama calls for greater focus on inner contentment and compassion

By TINA LAM • FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER • April 20, 2008

The United States and other wealthy countries need to downscale their lifestyles and try to focus more on inner contentment, the Dalai Lama said today.

There simply aren’t enough natural resources on the planet to support all 6 billion people on Earth imitating Western lifestyles, which consume large amounts of water and electricity. Because there are limitations on external material resources, but not on internal ones, it’s better to seek contentment and peace rather than material things, he said.

The Dalai Lama, the head of the Buddhist church, gave two lectures today at Crisler Arena in Ann Arbor, one on Buddhist texts and, in the afternoon, a lecture on the environment sponsored by the University of Michigan. Both were attended by more than 7,000 people.

Outside, about 600 to 700 people protested, university officials said, most supporting the Chinese government and the Olympics.

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This in some ways could be a big deal. Maybe it’s nothing; time will tell–but it could be a big deal. Gradually this disastrous federal administration seems to be reviving the ability of the states to think and act for themselves, together. For this we should probably thank the fact that the governor of California is constitutionally prohibited from becoming president (not having been born in the United States). Maybe we should prohibit more governors from becoming president, so that they would cease to regard their governorships as stepping-stones to a larger candidacy!

This story is from http://www.courant.com/news/politics/hc-global0419.artapr19,0,1146491.story and I was alerted to it by the morning Schwartzreport, as so often.

Governors Convene At Yale To Fight Global Warming

By DAVID FUNKHOUSER | Courant Staff Writer
April 19, 2008

NEW HAVEN - The moment he strode into Woolsey Hall Friday afternoon, late but just in time for a photo op, Arnold Schwarzenegger changed the climate of Yale’s austere gathering of governors and gave the sweltering crowd a boost of energy — and a lot to think about.

In what was intended as a historic replay of a landmark meeting on conservation called by President Theodore Roosevelt 100 years ago, Yale brought together governors and officials from several states this week to sign a declaration calling on the federal government to get moving on climate change.

Schwarzenegger came to sign the declaration and to deliver his own brand of eco-politics: As a fiercely independent Republican governor of California, he perhaps has done more to fight global warming than any other governor in the nation. And he makes no bones about his differences with Congress and the Bush administration.

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Do you think politicians are the important people who shape your world? Think again. Our world is shaped more by thinkers like this, it’s just that the effect takes longer to spread through the culture — and the effect, when it does arrive, is less likely to be chaos of the economic and political type. Notice, BTW, that his theory came from his “accidentally” leaving out some numbers, and then his thinking about what had happened as a result of his doing so. I put the quotes around the word “accidentally” not because I think he did it on purpose, but because it has become clear to me over the years that when the non-physical side of things wants to cause something to happen, such synchronistic events often precipitate them. This obit from http://www.efluxmedia.com/news_Chaos_Theory_Scientist_Edward_Lorenz_Dies_At_90_16477.html

Chaos Theory Scientist Edward Lorenz Dies At 90

On April 16, the world lost yet another remarkable scientific figure that marked the 20th century with his ideas of the chaos theory and the butterfly effect. Edward Norton Lorenz, who revolutionized meteorology by studying the effects of small variations in the initial condition of a dynamical system, which can lead to large and unpredictable variations in later stages of the system, died of cancer at the age of 90 on Wednesday, at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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Free Tibet? Hell, free America!

Support the humble monks? You bet. But oh, let’s not forget our own wonderfully abundant atrocities

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

I know I know I know — we don’t exactly have huge platoons of nasty jackbooted soldiers storming through the streets in riot gear and gas masks and large sticks bashing down on the shiny heads of peaceful monks.

We don’t exactly have smashed and burning vehicles and dead bodies in the streets and vicious martial law, ethnic cleansings and curfews and media lockouts and blocked Internet access and all sorts of nefarious, disturbing reports of brutality and beatings and death. Well, except for parts of Oakland. And Los Angeles And Chicago. But never mind that now.

Overall, even under the deformed and wretched Bush regime and despite how much Dick Cheney’s dead raisin of a heart leaps with excitement when he sees the videos of those bloodied and dead Tibetan protesters (”Damn hippies had it coming”), America is still far from the brutality and inhumanity happening right now in Lhasa and beyond.

Or maybe not. For here is what we do have: We have torture. We have a frighteningly simpleminded cowboy-wannabe president who supports and endorses the most inhumane treatment of prisoners imaginable despite its utter failure as a tactic, and this violent belief, this dark energy infects the national bloodstream like prehistoric malaria.

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Chinese-Christians Are Paying a High Price for the Olympics

By John W. Whitehead
April 14, 2008
The world is finally seeing China for what it is: a totalitarian dictatorship.

It’s widely known that China has been rounding up and persecuting First Amendment advocates. These Chinese dissidents who use the Internet and demonstrations to protest what China has been doing often disappear or are sent to re-education camps.

Little, however, is said about China’s religious persecution, especially of Christians. Yet it is on par with, if not worse than, the harsh and oppressive treatment of demonstrators in Tibet that has received widespread news coverage and caused public outrage. And it’s been happening for years.

Nevertheless, the 2008 Olympic Games were awarded to China in July 2001, with the expectation that the Games would act as a catalyst for the improvement of human rights in China and cause China to change its image. And over the past seven years, China has invested huge amounts of time and resources in preparing for the Olympics in order to make a good impression on the world. Unfortunately, these preparations have included the “religious repression, torture, sexual abuse and arbitrary detention” of many religious individuals, particularly Chinese Christians.

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From http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=558271&in_page_id=1770

You will note, here, the reference to Hampton Roads author Dr. Gary Schwartz.

Can we really transplant a human soul?
By Dr DANNY PENMAN -

Last updated at 19:06pm on 9th April 2008

Transplant: What else is triggered when doctors undertake a donor operation?
The progress of medical science in the past 30 years has been so rapid that yesterday’s miracles are tomorrow’s commonplace procedures.

So it has proved with heart transplants, which have become almost routine in hospitals around the world.

Yet every once in a while a story emerges which should cause us all to sit up and take note that there is nothing “routine” or “commonplace” about such complex operations.

The suggestion, highlighted again this week, that donor patients could not only be acquiring the organs but also the memories - or even the soul - of the donor is surely one such story.

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A friend passed this on to me, and therefore I don’t know where it was posted originally. I liked it a lot, although — as i felt obliged to point out — it’s a little late for some of us!

What Do I Want to be Remembered For?

Peter F. Drucker February 1, 2008

When I was 13, I had an inspiring teacher of religion, who one day went through the class of boys asking each one, “What do you want to be remembered for?” None of us, of course, could give an answer. So, he chuckled and said, “I didn’t expect you to be able to answer it. But if you still can’t by the time you’re 50, you will have wasted your life.”

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This from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/7329992.stm

As so often, I learned of it from Stephan Schwartz’ Schwartzreport. My conclusion is that in this, as in so many areas, America must be the new Egypt, because we live in a state dependent upon denial. (Okay, so it’s a weak pun; it’s memorable, anyway.) “America is Number One,” right! In everything, right? Automatically, right?

Uh — well, not exactly. And the very social traits that brought us to this pass are continuing to bring us down, at an accelerated rate.

US kept in slow broadband lane

By Ian Hardy
Click’s North America technology correspondent

We all know that America is the technology hub of the universe. It is home to Intel, Microsoft, Apple, Sun, Google, YouTube, Yahoo, MIT - the list is endless. So why, when it comes to the basics, like delivering the internet to its citizens, has it fallen way behind many other nations?

In Manhattan people pay about $30 (£15) a month for a download speed of three megabits per second (Mbps) via a DSL line. Many people are very happy with that, until they realise what is going on elsewhere in the world.

US broadband speeds are much slower than in many countries

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Via the Schwartzreport, this from Science Daily. Editor Stephan Schwartz added this comment:

This is an extremely important report because it addresses the central charge of the climate change deniers, to whit, the models scientists use are so imperfect that they mean little or nothing prospectively. This settles that issue, and shuts the door on such criticism because the more data the more accurate the models will become, so the trend is clear.

Climate Models Look Good When Predicting Climate Change

ScienceDaily

The accuracy of computer models that predict climate change over the coming decades has been the subject of debate among politicians, environmentalists and even scientists. A new study by meteorologists at the University of Utah shows that current climate models are quite accurate and can be valuable tools for those seeking solutions on reversing global warming trends. Most of these models project a global warming trend that amounts to about 7 degrees Fahrenheit over the next 100 years.

In the study, co-authors Thomas Reichler and Junsu Kim from the Department of Meteorology at the University of Utah investigate how well climate models actually do their job in simulating climate. To this end, they compare the output of the models against observations for present climate. The authors apply this method to about 50 different national and international models that were developed over the past two decades at major climate research centers in China, Russia, Australia, Canada, France, Korea, Great Britain, Germany, and the United States. Of course, also included is the very latest model generation that was used for the very recent (2007) report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

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Police State Tactics: Tasering Pregnant Women and the Elderly

By John W. Whitehead
April 7, 2008

In George Lucas’ film THX 1138 (1970), the police in a futuristic state make citizens compliant by shocking them with “pain prods.” After seeing the movie, I remember thinking that if the police were ever allowed to use implements such as these, we would rapidly move into a police state. This has now happened with tasers.

Tasers are electro-shock weapons that are currently used by more than 11,000 law enforcement agencies in the United States. Designed to cause instant incapacitation by delivering a 50,000-volt shock, tasers are hand-held electronic stun guns that fire two barbed darts. The darts, which usually remain attached to the gun by wires, deliver a high voltage shock and can penetrate up to two inches of clothing or skin. The darts can strike the subject from a distance of up to 35 feet, or the taser can be applied directly to the skin. Although a taser shot is capable of jamming the central nervous system for up to 30 seconds, it can disable the subject for even longer. And because tasers can be aimed anywhere on the body, they can immobilize someone more easily than pepper spray, which must be sprayed in the face.

Taser manufacturers and police agencies insist that tasers are a safer alternative to many conventional weapons typically used to restrain dangerous individuals. This may be true in situations where tasers are used as an alternative to other impact weapons that can cause serious injury, such as batons or lethal force. However, research shows that in many police departments, officers routinely use tasers primarily as a substitute for low-level force weapons such as pepper spray or chemical spray. Tasers have become a prevalent force tool, often used against individuals who pose no serious danger to themselves, the officers or others.

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