A Logical Look at the Insanity Around Us...

Oh, to be One with the Land! (in California...)

2011-08-03T10:14:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, long, long ago, on a beautiful autumn day, Isaac Newton went wandering around his brother-in-law’s apple orchard in California.* The sun got high in the sky, the day got hotter, so Sir Isaac decided to rest in the shade of the lovely apple trees. Being autumn, the apples were ripe, (and fire season was on everyone’s mind.) And while Ike was resting, an apple dropped from the tree right on to his noggin’.

“Eureka!” he cried out.
“Wait one gosh-darned minute!” came a voice from several trees over...

Yes, coincidentally, the CalOSHA inspector was wandering through the very same orchard, and saw what happened. “These are manifestly unsafe working conditions. Apples cannot fall straight down from the tree. They cannot fall any farther than one foot away from the trunk. They might hit someone on the head and create an unsafe working environment.” The CalOSHA inspector rushed home to type up the memo, and issued a citation to the farmer who owned the orchard, Sir Isaac Newton’s brother-in-law, Jeremiah Waldimple.

After weeks of agony, waiting for the worst from CalOSHA, Farmer Waldimple finally got the citation. He had to pay a fine, and make sure that no apples in his orchard would fall further than one foot away from the trunk. Having a famous physicist for a brother-in-law didn’t help, as Isaac Newton pointed out that thanks to the law of gravity, apples were going to indeed fall straight down. So Jeremiah put on his thinking cap and came up with what he thought was a solution.

He constructed a number of devices much like this, and began constructing them and installing them around his trees. At great expense. (He had over seven hundred trees in his orchard!) It was tough to do, considering the profit margin on apples was already pretty tight. But it was worth it to get CalOSHA off his back. But he had not gotten very far when, along came some pencil-pusher from the State Water Resources Control Board, and he said...

“Oh, no! This will never do at al!” and he gave Jeremiah a citation (which included a fine of thousands of dollars) because he performed all this work during the rainy season, in a Risk Level 2 area,** without filing a Storm Water Pollution Prevention Plan. Even though Jeremiah was not aware that what he had been doing had been considered “construction activity,” he still had to pay the fine, hire a QSD, file a SWPPP, train to become his own QSP (for a measly $1,285, (this even though the regulations were changing in September, making for little appreciable difference between a QSP and a QSD, and Jeremiah was not sure how he would get a QSP on site during a “qualifying rain event” in a timely manner, and thus avoid yet more thousands in fines.) He also had to buy a turbidimeter (at $896) and a pH meter (at an additional $735.) And shell out $145 to join CASQA, a private non-profit, just so he could acquire the forms that the state required but would not provide to him free of charge. Even in PDF format.

But Jeremiah followed on everything and was under the impression that he was getting into compliance with both CalOSHA and the SWRCB. But no....

The very next day, a letter appeared in the Waldimple mailbox from the City of Santa Juanita. From the Building Department. It seems that the pencil-necked geek from the SWRCB ratted him out to the city, and the city sent him a letter telling him that his project was “red-tagged” and he would have to cease construction until he had filled out an application, paid the fees and got his permit.

Jeremiah heaved a big sigh. And went down to the city building department to find out exactly what they needed, and exactly what fees he had to pay. But it was Friday, and the city was closed every other Friday, in order to “save money.” So Monday, he went back. But no one was there. He waited an hour, two, and no one showed. It seems that Jeremiah had made the mistake of arriving at the start of the union-mandated mid-mid-morning break, one of six breaks the so-called “service” workers’ union required throughout the four hour work day, and since it lead directly into the lunch break, no one even bothered to come back into work between the two... Sure, the engineers were there to review drawings, sitting in their offices, but they saw no one since the person working the reception desk was a member of the Civil Service Employees International Union. And of course, on his break.

Eventually, however, Jeremiah saw someone. It seems that Jeremiah needed to supply seven sets of drawings, all signed off on by a civil engineer, a structural engineer, and MEP engineer, a registered architect.

“Okay,” Jeremiah said, “I can understand that a civil engineer might be needed for this, and possibly a structural engineer, but there is no mechanical systems, no HVAC, no electrical and no plumbing involved in this project.”
“Do you have irrigation on your orchard?”
“Yes, but that is not being changed or touched.”
“Still needs an MEP engineer’s Juan Hancock! Next!”

Jeremiah didn’t even get a chance to ask why a registered architect... But off he went to comply with the City’s demands. And after thousands of dollars pressed into the palms of various engineers and architects, Jeremiah had seven copies of everything, and trucked them over to the city. (It was a lot of paper!) And fortuitously, he had finally figured out the ins and outs of the when someone might be at the Building Department to help him.

“Great!” Jeremiah felt relieved when he heard the city engineer exclaim that. But the counter-wonk continued, “Now, all we need is $5,634 for the plan checkers’ fee, a $1,654 fee for storage, and a $6,564 Design Review Commission fee.”

“What!? What is all that?”

“Well, first, we have to have an independent ‘plan checker’ review these drawings for compliance with city, country and state regulations. That is what the plan checkers’ fee is for. And you have to pay for it. Then once we get a final version from you that has addressed the plan checkers’ comments and incorporated their corrections, then we refer it to Design Review. They will meet, in public, and address the aesthetics of your project and determine if it your project meets the standards, policies and practices that will promote and enhance design of the City's built environment. And finally, we need to be reimbursed for the cost of holding on to all this paper you just dumped her. So at some future date, if someone needs to review it again, lo! There it will be!”***

“CalOSHA has required that I institute these changes within a very short amount of time. How long is this process going to take? And what do I do about CalOSHA?”
“Not my problem.”

Jeremiah kept his cool, took out his checkbook, and began writing the check,

Autumn turned into winter, and winter turned into spring. And finally, two miracles happened: The plan checkers finished their review, and the Design Review Commission put the Waldimple Project on their agenda. Whoo-hoo! But as Jeremiah read the plan checker’s comments, his heart sank. The devices, which were designed to direct falling apples in towards the trunk, were being criticized for... DOING JUST THAT! Because by doing that, Jeremiah’s Apple Tree Device was in violation of California Agriculture Code, Title 3, Division 9. But what about CalOSHA? Additionally, the devise did not provide sufficient ventilation for the lichens on the tree trunk.

Jeremiah thought about going back to CalOSHA, but decided the battle was fought better with the plan checkers. Besides, he had an important date with three of the most self-aggrandizing, self-important architects in town, i.e, the design review commission. So, off he went.... And about three of the longest hours later, he returned home, somewhat crest-fallen, but still resolute. He was a farmer. This was his orchard. He was a law-abiding citizen, and he would do his duty!

He needed to make some changes in the design: use recycled metals, make the device out of a mesh to allow the rain to droppeth gently straight onto the soil, plus, they wanted to see a half-inch scale model of the entire orchard decked-out in the Waldimple Device. Jeremiah sucked it up, and cut another check to another architect to build the model, while going back to the original “design team” to see about incorporating the plan checker’s idiocy, er, comments....

This went on and on for, oh, about a year. Back and forth and back and forth. And then... He got a letter from the California Department of Fish and Game. It seems, that to be in compliance with California Environmental Quality Act, Jeremiah needed to get an Environmental Impact Assessment (or Report, as in EIR, which is what lots ‘o people call it.) Jiminy Christmas! This meant hiring yet ANOTHER consultant!

Jeremiah’s brother-in-law, Isaac, thought it was time to leave. He loved his sister and her husband, but, well, physics and calculus were much, much simpler than the ins and outs of the bureaucracy of the State of California. And Jeremiah hired a “biologist” to get him his EIR. And after gazillions of sumullions, and another lost apple season, later, the darned thing came back. And the recommendation? Do nothing, let the orchard return to its natural state, and get the hell off Gaia’s land. Secondarily, do nothing, but let someone build 4000 square foot houses at a density of one per ten acres. Thirdly, leave the orchard, but erect no devices, use no pesticides and farm only using California organic farming standards.

Jeremiah packed up his family and all their belongings. He tried to sell the land, but years before, the local agricultural land trust had gotten the county supervisors to sneak through a measure that would only allow agricultural land to change hands if it was donated to... the very same agriculture land trust! So, Jeremiah just abandoned everything. He thought about joining his brother-in-law in England, but that place was crazy, too. Possibly crazier. So the Waldimple family decided to move to... Israel. Sure, they would be in danger of getting blown up by terrorists at a pizza joint or blown up by rockets fired by Hamas but even with that, it is a much saner place to live.

And this is why all our apples now come from South America.

* I know, I know. Isaac Newton was never ever actually in California. But roll with me on this...
** Risk Level 2 because the ditch near his orchard, during a 50 year, 24 hour storm event may occasionally empty into a detention pond, which during a particularly wet winter once overflowed into the Criminy Creek, which emptied into the Santa Basura River, which, during the same wet winter, overflowed its banks and emptied into the Sacramento River...
** Ha! This I know from experience--they CALL it a “storage” fee, but it really is a “loosing-it-for-you-so-if-it-is-ever-needed-again-you-will-have-to-provide-us-with-another-set-or-three” fee.

Glossary:

CalOSHA: The Occupation Safety and Health Division of the California Department of Industrial Relations which is supposed to “protect workers and the public from safety hazards through its Occupational Safety and Health, elevator, amusement ride, aerial tramway, ski lift and pressure vessel inspection programs, and also [provide] consultative assistance to employers.” Much better, and cheaper, to be on their bad side than on the bad side of the EPA! Speaking on which...

SWPPP: Storm Water Pollution Prevention Plan. A burdensome document (and set of requirements) that address the following: potential sources of pollution which may reasonably be expected to affect the quality of storm water discharges from the construction site; practices to be used to reduce pollutants in storm water discharges from the construction site, and compliance with the terms and conditions of the permit.

QSD: Qualified SWPPP Developer

QSP: Qualified SWPPP Practitioner

CASQA: The California Stormwater Quality Association. A private non-profit that charges an arm and leg for access to the forms that the State of California “highly suggests” that you use for compliance with the requirements of the....

SWRCB: The State Water Resources Control Board. A Division of the California Environmental Protection Agency. On the “Spawn of Satan” scale, not quite up there with the California Air Resources Board for pure Evil, but darn close!

The Postmodern Hell of Theater Departments

2011-06-23T17:26:00.001-07:00

Williams Young has been posting a series of very interesting articles over at the “National Association of Scholars” site discussing the effects of postmodernism groupthink on science (and the scientific method) and how this has lead to the proliferation of the "global warming" nonsense. It is a very interesting read, and I highly recommend it.

And I am not trying to change the topic here, but...

I found it particularly interesting in light of a rant I just recently posted on Facebook regarding the decline of theater studies in the university--both his article and my rant have to do with the deleterious effects of this wacky "postmodern" philosophy (for lack of a better word; "philosophistry" would be more accurate) on studies, in general. Both in science (Young) and in humanities (Me).

First off, here is an abbreviated list of "Introduction to Dramatic Literature" classes at a certain Major University. Now this it THE introductory course for freshman beginning to study theater:

The Postcolonial and the Global: Power, Politics and Performance
Performing Masculinities
Performing Patriotism: Pride, Belonging and Dissent in American Culture
Theater for Social Change
Gender and Disability in Shakespeare
Performances of Belonging: Citizenship, Difference, and Nation
“Representing Trauma: the Performance of Mourning and Memory”
Staging the Crisis
Staging Gender: From Antiquity to the Early 1900s
Performing the Rememory of History in the American Racial State
Empire, Modernity and Modern Drama
Theater as Danger: Performing Metafiction:

The most obvious thing about these classes (especially if you read the class description) is: A) Clearly some people have a hard time letting go of their dissertation topic; and B) MUCH MORE IMPORTANTLY (and more disturbingly), is these classes are designed to teach the student WHAT to think.

Back in the dark ages, (about 30 years ago, when I was taking my "Intro to Dramatic Lit" classes), the intro to dramatic lit class was a survey course--we read the works of playwrights from the Greeks up to contemporary playwrights, and a healthy sampling of all. And we read A LOT of plays. We discussed them in class, but the conclusions were ones that we, as students, were free to draw. The humanities was trying to emulate the scientific method that Young describes....

I recall one particularly interesting class (one of the upper level undergrad courses) which was kind of a "before and after" sort of thing. We would read an early play, and then a later play based on it, or on the same subject. For example, we read Euripides's Hippolytus and then Racine's Phedre; Sophocles's Antigone, followed by Anouilh's Antigone; Plautus's Menaechmi followed by Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors; and so on. There was no going into reading these plays with a foregone conclusion: We read them to compare what was different about them, what about the playwright, the period, the culture, the language made these plays unique.

Fast forward 30 years...

Intro to Dramatic Lit classes TELL the students what they must think; and what is taught in these classes is taken as a given, a "truth," (ironically enough, since this is the PoMo crowd, after all.) Such as the evils of colonialism and that dead white men suck, for starters.

It does mystify me as to how feasible, how realistic it is to slap a Marxist interpretation on a play written by someone 2500 before Marx ever existed, someone who had no concept of what Marx would theorize about. Anouilh took Sophocles's play and adapted it--he turned it into a French play of the 1940's. But make no mistake--it is NOT the same play that Sophocles wrote, (not that there is anything wrong with that), it IS a Jean Anouilh play. And back in the dark ages, we read it that way...

The new crop of dramatic lit classes is all about theory and criticism. Starting with the freshmen. Who then read plays through the lens of the latest chic critical theory, and they are given to understand that this is THE ubermeaning of the work; THIS is what the play is ALL ABOUT. ...All because someone managed to slog their way through ten years of dissertation work, forgot everything else they learned, and now has to keep on teaching their dissertation, because they KNOW NOTHING ELSE!

(BTW, not only can you get a BA in "Performance Studies" (AKA, theater) from a Major State University without taking a single class on Shakespeare, but you can get a PhD in Theater from a Major University Known for its Theater Department without reading a single play! Just theory and criticism... It's a sad state of affairs...)

______________________________

Just thought I would share the course description for one of the above cited courses:

Introduction to Dramatic Literature: Performing Metafiction:
This course challenges its takers to rethink the conventional distinctions (audience/actor; reader/text; ...spectator/spectacle; life/art) traditionally imposed on, and by, aesthetic experience. We are accustomed to treating the art object as precisely that: an ob-ject that stands against, in front of, outside, and (usually) at a safe distance from, its consumer. But what happens when a beholder of, say, a museum-painting enters its frame and proceeds to participate in it (as Asia Argento’s character in her father, Dario Argento’s, 1996 B horror cult-flickThe Stendhal Syndrome, does)? Or when a psychoanalyst’s case study of a patient manifests the symptoms of the illness belonging to his patient (as Freud discovers himself doing in his case study of Schreber, a German high-court judge who believed God sodomized him with solar rays to conceive in his man-womb a Redeemer who would rescue the world from its Matrix-like delusions)? Or when characters become aware they’re characters and revolt against their ‘authors’ (as Will Ferrell tries to do in Stranger than Fiction)? Or when Don Quixote mis/takes himself to be a character in an epic romance? Or when two characters, at first fully-distinguishable from each other, inexplicably — unaccountably, impossibly! — morph into one another (as Jacques Moran, a private detective, and the man he’s pursuing, do in Beckett’s novel Molloy, or as Quentin and Shreve do in Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!)? We will study these — and many other — metafictional scenarios to determine why, and under what conditions, responses to art become, themselves, works of art. Or, if you like, why and under what conditions aesthetic consumption becomes aesthetic production, and criticism becomes performance. In the process, your own — written — responses to art will come under special scrutiny. In this [course] we will continue to build on the exegetical and expository skills you acquired there (or in its equivalent) while advancing you to the next stage of composition: the multi-sourced research paper. But fear not those dreaded words! We will spend the first 13 or so weeks rehearsing, step by step — and very slowly — the process/es by which (humanities-based) research is conducted, so when the curtain rises on your own critical ‘performances’ at the end of the semester, you’ll hit every cue.

Why are so many people drinking the GREEN kool-aid? (And why are the rest of us being forced to?)

2010-04-27T09:14:00.000-07:00

Let me tell you my theory on the Anthropogenic-Global-Warming-Gone-Wild situation. In the normal course of events, there is always SOME group of people who get some sort of bug up their tuchas about something. But this big bug is getting shoved up the collective tuchases of the rest of us, because there are A LOT of people who have embraced this ginormous bug. Why? Why are so many people so infatuated with this metaphorical Gregor Samsa? Well, here is my theory:

There have ALWAYS been “chickens little”: The sky is falling! The sky is falling! Remember Y2K? The planes were going to fall out of the sky! The cars would stop running! Our bank accounts would be wiped out! Before that, 1984? (Some Jews were really gaga since the Jewish year was also the root word for “destruction.” Tashmad? Tashmag? Something like...) Going all the way back, throughout human history. The WORLD IS GOING TO END! The END is NEAR!! They can be broken down into two groups of people: the saner crowd--who function on a daily basis, but buy into the latest “world-is-gong-to-end” fad; and the Hale-Bopp crowd, the real nutjobs. Both of these subgroups embraced the AGW theory with both arms, all the heart, and have held on tight...
The treehugger crowd--another crowd that has existed for a long time. And to a certain extent, has done a world of good. Thanks to John Muir, we have some great national parks. They did help force us to clean up the environment in the sixties and seventies. This is the largest group because everyone loves trees--so treehuggers range across a spectrum from Republicans for Environmental Protection to Earth Liberation Front. The difference between the right end of the spectrum and the not-so-right end of the spectrum is that those of us among the conservative treehuggers balance human needs and reality against what those at the lefter end of the spectrum want. (e.g., the ratio of area for drilling oil in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to the are of the WHOLE ANWR is roughly comparable to the area of Dulles to the entire state of South Carlina. And so we say, “Drill, baby, drill!”) Now, to a certain extent, some conservatives have jumped on the AGW bandwagon, but the further left you move along that spectrum, the more people have swallowed the kool-aid... (And the saner people are the ones now jumping OFF the bandwagon...)
The Communists have been in a bit of a funk since the demise of the Soviet Union. THAT “experiment” didn't work, but that didn't dissuade them from their fantasy of a New World Communist Order. Along came AGW, and they adapted. Read my “Green is the New Red” from my slumbering blog. Anyhow, if you read that, you can see how they jumped on the Green Bandwagon, and seriously took it over. And REALLY steered it in that direction. (Check out the 10 Planks of the Communist Manifest comparison at my blog!)
And of course, the people who have found a way to make money HAND OVER FIST on selling the People of World some new snake oil: Al Gore, GE, Kleiner-Perkins... This is a small slice of the people pie, but we're looking at GAZILLIONS of DOLLARS tied up in this. They are terriers (no pun intended) who will not let go of this... 'Cause it's a loooooooooooooot of sumullions!
People looking for meaning in their lives, or some sense of mysticism, or something like that. These are the folks who probably went to church once or twice a year as children, or who were were brought to the smorgasbord of religious tasties by hippie-dippie parents who were members of the “God-of-the-Month.” (“This month we'll learn all about Shiva and Vishnu; next month we'll focus on Cernunnos, and after that, we'll see...”) Or who were dragged to church every week, but for whom it was just a painful affair: they grow up, equating Christianity with the cause of their childhood misery. (Or Judaism, for the Jewish crowd.) Not realizing that the REAL religion has little to do with a dull pastor, priest or rabbi. (Unfortunately, God doesn't personally vet all those getting ordained. Some clunkers slip by.) So, these people are looking for a religious experience. In the sixties and seventies, they became Hari Krishas. Today, their bible is “An Inconvenient Truth,” their God-dess is Gaia, and Al Gore is her prophet. They have made this whole thing a religion. And if you don't believe me...
The people who get swept on in the latest fad. Usually college kids. In the 50's they were swallowing goldfish and stuffing phone booths. In the sixties, war protesting. Whatever shows that they are ON TOP of the VERY LATEST THING. This can include the fashionista type for whom Manolo Blahniks are soooo last year... Whatever is IN, or NOW, or CHIC, that is the train they get on, and AGW was the IN-NOW-CHIC train they boarded... Witness the Hollywood crowd...

Anyhow...

All six of these groups have been ganging up on the rest of us. And with this almost unprecedented convergence of divergent groups, they have more power, money, organization, and connections than ANY single one of the individual subgroups had EVER had (outside of the Communists in the Soviet Union. And again, look how THAT turned out...) And lo, we now have “Cap'n Trade” being shoved down our throats, and the EPA getting more power than ever, and so on, and so on and so on... And so on...

(In an interesting irony, it is the people from Group 2 are the ones who are more likely to peel away from the AGW nonsense. They have less of a horse in that race. And for the most part, they tend to be a more sane, realistic crowd--except, of course, those people further left on the treehugger spectrum... and the ELF crowd is just plain, unsalted NUTS!!!)

Save the Planet! Vote Republican!

Green is the New Red!

2008-02-29T13:34:00.000-08:00

Well, if I wasn’t aware of this before I sure as hell am now: Green is the new red.

I enrolled in an extension class on “Green Building.” Why, you may wonder. After all, I am one of the seemingly few sane people out here in this neck of the woods. Well, I thought, given the field in which I work, it would look good on the old resumé. And although I tend to be fairly conservative about things, I do, to a certain degree, believe in a lot of what sustainable building SHOULD be about. We do need to be good stewards of the planet—use what we need, not be wantonly wasteful. We should learn to be modest in our resource use, etc. Do we really need 5000 sq.ft. houses with multi-media rooms, and enormous walk-in closets in the guest rooms? (Do you really want you guests staying that long?)

Anyhow…

The year long course is structured on around, more or less, around the US Green Building Council’s LEED certification, or, “Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design” Green Building Rating System™ which is supposed to “encourage and accelerate global adoption of sustainable green building and development practices through the creation and implementation of universally understood and accepted tools and performance criteria.”

Whatever.

But for those of you who are not familiar with it, it is a sort of benchmarking system for different types of construction projects such as new construction, commercial interiors, core and shell, etc., and addresses six areas of sustainability: site selection, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, indoor environmental quality and innovation in design. The outline of this course echoes that. So the first class was in the area of “site selection.”

What is site selection and what does that have to do with sustainability, and more importantly what does this have to do with green being the new red? Well, I’m a-gitting’ there, just be patient...

Site selection as a sustainable element of construction has to do with choosing to build on a “sustainable” site: remediating a brownfield, not choosing pristine woodlands, not building on prime agricultural land, “smart growth,” building within walking distance of basic services, etc. Because we need to be attentive to the ecological footprint we make on the planet.

Now, let me sidetrack a bit on this ecological footprint thing. Wikipedia defines it as an attempt “to measure human demand on nature [by comparing] human consumption of natural resources with planet Earth’s ecological capacity to regenerate them. It is an estimate of the amount of biologically productive land and sea area needed to regenerate (if possible) the resources a human population consumes and to absorb and render harmless the corresponding waste, given prevailing technology and current understanding. Using this assessment, it is possible to estimate how many planet Earths it would take to support humanity if everybody lived a given lifestyle.”

Hmmmm…

Well, if you check it out, in any of a variety of places, your best bet at getting your life down to just the One Earth is if you live in an overcrowded Third World city, with no electricity and no indoor plumbing. Hey, Citizens of Decca Living in Poverty! You are oodles more GREEN than I am! Give yourselves a hearty pat on the back!

(And doesn't that just seem like an odd concept...? And for some real fun, try the carbon footprint calculators.)

So, anyhow…

Just to give you a wee bit more background info on this before I launch into the meat of the matter: Some of the issues associated with site selection have to do with population, food resources, and poverty. It is necessary reduce the drain on the planet's resources.

So back to the course…

During the first class on sustainable site selection, we broke off into groups of about 5 to 7 and discussed solving the problems of the world, because, that is what sustainability is all about, right? Since there was such an emphasis on population (and overpopulation) and feeding people, my suggestion was “Soylent Green.” Not one that went over well.* (But it would work!)

What did come out of the various group discussions had a familiar ring to it:

Abolish private ownership of land, buildings. If all land is publically/state controlled, development can be controlled, “smart” development would be the law, and all building would be “green.”
Redistribution of wealth, either forcibly, or through a heave progressive tax structure.
Hold prime agricultural land in trust so that it cannot be sold off by future generations for development.
Confiscation of property in order to ensure that it is “sustainably” developed. (e.g., if owner refuses to xeriscape, or persists in maintaining “non-green” practices associated with the property.)
Establish a “green” economy, and economic structure in which sustainability, carbon footprint, etc., constitute value/worth/productivity benchmarks.
Establish public transit systems that are locally controlled; if possible, “forced” use of public transit by either banning ownership of “gas guzzlers,” high taxes on privately held autos, etc.
Limit commercial and housing development to land already developed, preferably to brownfield,, leaving land for open space, and possible agriculture.
Establishment of a sort of “green” WPA (or NRA, as in FDR): A sort of “army” of “green-collar” people to verify, oversee, install, initiate, mandate, etc., green practices.
Establish small, communally owned agricultural settlements, “victory” gardens, rooftop gardens” wherein food can be grown. Drive population distribution in viable areas that do not encroach on agricultural land; settlement along connective corridors. Establish small communally-owned manufacturing that focuses on recycled products.
Establish an educational system that focuses on “values” education, wherein “values” is defined as living a “green” life: minimal carbon footprint, minimal environmental impact. Development of a (politically correct) kids afterschool activity similar to scouting that has the same focus.

Does any of it some eerily familiar to you? For you lefties, think back to your foreign-smokes-toking, Marx-toting undergraduate days… And let’s get ready to compare that list to the Ten Planks of the Communist Manifesto. Whoo-hoo!:

Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
Abolition of all right of inheritance.
Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.
Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c., &c

Cripes!

Think back to what I wrote about the Ecological Footprint. After all, for a Marxist, the poor, unwashed, downtrodden laborors of the world were the unsung heros of history. To the “Greenists,” it is essentially the same: the Ecological Footprint is another way to underscore that. (“One Earthers of the world, unite! You have nothing to loose but your chains!”)

One can only imagine how the recent “Focus the Nation” teach-in went on that campus! For some insight at another campus, check out Samantha Stolle's article in the Bucknell Counterweight.

I can only imagine a rally of which Vladimir Ilyich Ulanov would have been quite proud.

* I did find out later that someone else suggested Soylent Green as well; at least one other person in the class has a sense of humor… Maybe there is some hope for the future…

The Academy Remains True to Form

2008-01-30T15:44:00.000-08:00

Well, I knew that Michael Moore's docu-ganda film, “Sicko” was undoubtedly going to be nominated for an Academy Award. And it was; what a surprise! On the up side, it probably will not win. On the down side, another docu-ganda film, “No End in Sight.” (Cinnamon Stillwell addressed the politics of the Academy Awards last year: “Hollywood's Big Ho Hum.”)

So, since it did, I thought I would recycle something I wrote shortly after its release earlier last year. Here ya go!

I now keep hearing this statistic tossed at me all the time, that the US is ranked 37th in healthcare, right there next to Slovenia, and I keep asking, well, what does it mean? Today, I perused the internet, and found it--it comes out of some World Health Organization report. And I STILL have no idea what it means!

Like any overly broad ranking, it means very little. Rankings are an OVER-SIMPLICATION of statistics. (And let me just interject here: “Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics.”)

It reminds me of the US News and World Report college and university rankings--assigning numbers based on a select set of criteria, which, when added up, essentially amounts to zero, zip, zilch, nothing. And those criteria are chosen, and weighted, based on what the evaluator is looking for. With this WHO ranking, maybe we have really FANTABULOUS medical care, but if someone want us to look bad, they might heavily weigh the analysis so that we would.

For example, we have a lot of land mass that is fairly sparsely populated, and there are people there who travel far for medical care. If you come with a criterion that states: “The percentage of geographic area in which residents must travel 1+ hour(s) to receive medical care,” we'll bomb. (In the interest of full disclosure, this is NOT a statistic I found buried inthe WHO report.)

I notice the countries ranked higher (France, Finland, etc.) tend to have a higher numbers for:

General government expenditure on health as % of total expenditure on health. (France at 76 vs 43 for the US).
Social security expenditure on health as % of general government expenditure on health (97 vs. 33)

While we have higher numbers for Private prepaid plans as % of private expenditure on health (61 for the US vs. 53 for France.) Do the people who calculate the ranking DEDUCT points for that, or what? And REWARD countries for socialist style medicine? (I'm betting YES!)

How do they interpret in their ranking the fact that as a per capita total expenditure on health (at average exchange rate US$), France spends $2981 while we spend $5711? I'll wager that counts against us! But solving THAT problem is NOT going to be done by going to a single-payer system, to government run healthcare! That number is so high because of a variety of reasons: insane litigation, the fact that the individual consumers generally don't pay (for insurance or for the product/service) and therefore healthcare has little consumer-driven pricing structure; our willingness/eagerness to perform ground-breaking procedures, etc.

Another issue with this is that it compares apples and oranges, and apples and asparagus, and apples and armadillos... There are VERY few countries with which the US can compare in terms of population, land mass, GDP/GNP, etc. It is INSANE to compare us to France: We have a MUCH larger landmass, a MUCH larger population, a far LESS dense population (293 vs. 80 per sq.mi., not too mention that over 90% of France's population is in metropolitan areas.) We have a different system of government and taxes, and while we are much closer culturally with France than we are with, oh, say, Djibouti, we do nonetheless have a very different cultural—and therefore DIFFERENT EXPECTATIONS OF OUR HEALTHCARE SYSTEM.

According to WHO, some of the things that this ranking apparently tried to address included (description are from WHO):

Fairness of financial contribution: The measurement is based on the fraction of a household's capacity to spend (income minus food expenditure) that goes on health care (including tax payments, social insurance, private insurance and out of pocket payments). Colombia was the top-rated country in this category, followed by Luxembourg, Belgium, Djibouti, Denmark, Ireland, Germany, Norway, Japan and Finland.

Countries judged to have the least fair financing of health systems include Sierra Leone, Myanmar, Brazil, China, Viet Nam, Nepal, Russian Federation, Peru and Cambodia.

Brazil, a middle-income nation, ranks low in this table because its people make high out-of-pocket payments for health care. This means a substantial number of households pay a large fraction of their income (after paying for food) on health care. In North America, Canada rates as the country with the fairest mechanism for health system finance – ranked at 17-19, while the United States is at 54- 55. Cuba is the highest among Latin American and Caribbean nations at 23-25.

Obviously, the less socialized the medicine, the less likely to come out on top with this statistic. Actually, the U.S. ranking at 54-55 puts us in the mildly socialized level. But of course, this does not take in to account how much of the taxes that people pay go into propping up the socialized medical structure, (not the tax rate of the country.)

Overall Level of Health: To assess overall population health and thus to judge how well the objective of good health is being achieved, WHO has chosen to use the measure of disability- adjusted life expectancy (DALE). This has the advantage of being directly comparable to life expectancy and is readily compared across populations. The report provides estimates for all countries of disability- adjusted life expectancy. DALE is estimated to equal or exceed 70 years in 24 countries, and 60 years in over half the Member States of WHO. At the other extreme are 32 countries where disability- adjusted life expectancy is estimated to be less than 40 years.

The United States didn't do too badly in this category, despite the fact that we are apparently such fat slobs, addicated to french fries and burgers, sitting on our fat asses, watching television. We ranked 24th under this system, with an average of 70.0 years of healthy life for babies born in 1999; female babies could expect 72.6 years of healthy life, versus just 67.5 years for male babies. Sure, we rank lower than Australia, (73.2 years); France, (73.1); Sweden, (73.0); Spain, (72.8); Italy, (72.7); Greece, (72.5); Switzerland, (72.5); Monaco, (72.4); and Andorra, (72.3). But then we have a much larger population, a much higher percentage of which is rural. We have a much more heterogeneous poplulation. Large numbers of diverse people living scattered across the geography makes public health more difficult to shove down their throats.

Distribution of Health in the Populations: It is not sufficient to protect or improve the average health of the population, if - at the same time - inequality worsens or remains high because the gain accrues disproportionately to those already enjoying better health. The health system also has the responsibility to try to reduce inequalities by prioritizing actions to improve the health of the worse-off, wherever these inequalities are caused by conditions amenable to intervention. The objective of good health is really twofold: the best attainable average level – goodness – and the smallest feasible differences among individuals and groups – fairness. A gain in either one of these, with no change in the other, constitutes an improvement.

I have no idea where the U.S. ranked in this category. If you can find any information about this, please let me know. The link to the report is below.

Responsiveness: Responsiveness includes two major components. These are (a) respect for persons (including dignity, confidentiality and autonomy of individuals and families to decide about their own health); and (b) client orientation (including prompt attention, access to social support networks during care, quality of basic amenities and choice of provider).

The nations with the most responsive health systems are the United States, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Denmark, Germany, Japan, Canada, Norway, Netherlands and Sweden. The reason these are all advanced industrial nations is that a number of the elements of responsiveness depend strongly on the availability of resources. In addition, many of these countries were the first to begin addressing the responsiveness of their health systems to people's needs.

Notice where the United States ranks? We are No. 1! This, to me, says more about the state of health care in the United States than any of the other statistical analyses contained in the WHO report.

Distribution of Financing: There are good and bad ways to raise the resources for a health system, but they are more or less good primarily as they affect how fairly the financial burden is shared. Fair financing, as the name suggests, is only concerned with distribution. It is not related to the total resource bill, nor to how the funds are used. The objectives of the health system do not include any particular level of total spending, either absolutely or relative to income. This is because, at all levels of spending there are other possible uses for the resources devoted to health. The level of funding to allocate to the health system is a social choice – with no correct answer. Nonetheless, the report suggests that countries spending less than around 60 dollars per person per year on health find that their populations are unable to access health services from an adequately performing health system.

In order to reflect these attributes, health systems have to carry out certain functions. They build human resources through investment and training, they deliver services, they finance all these activities. They act as the overall stewards of the resources and powers entrusted to them. In focusing on these few universal functions of health systems, the report provides evidence to assist policy-makers as they make choices to improve health system performance.

Well, I think we can guess what this means. It is all about how socialized the financing is, because it is so much more fair to derive a pound of flesh by way of increased tax burden on the “haves” as opposed to the “have nots.” now, don't get me wrong--I do believe that healthcare is not solely the purview of those that can afford it. But, well that is a thought to continue at a later date...

Well, all well and good, I suppose, but they are still reducing a TON of DISPARATE information down to ONE number—and it, in the end, doesn't mean a whole lot. And, of course, the US will come out near the bottom of the top--the statistical analysis is stacked such that we will REGARDLESS OF HOW EXCELLENT HEALTHCARE IS IN THE U.S.! (Like you all hadn't figured THAT out yet!)

For those of you interested in taking a gander at the WHO report yourself (and please do!) here it is: “World Health Organization.”)

The Ideological Idiot

2007-12-05T16:52:00.000-08:00

(Since I am a bit new at this whole blog thing, I am digging out an observation I wrote in February of 2007. Here it goes...)

Early this year, an article by Jay Dixit was published in Psychology Today, entitled, “The Ideological Animal.” For the article, several people were interviewed, among whom was one of my favorite writers/commentators on politics today (Cinnamon Stillwell). In the article, Dixit ostensibly explores the “psychology” behind one’s political stance: “We think our political stance is the product of reason, but we're easily manipulated and surprisingly malleable. Our essential political self is more a stew of childhood temperament, education, and fear of death. Call it the 9/11 effect.”

Feh.

He obviously didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to what Cinnamon had to say. He already seems to have had an axe to grind.

This article reminds my of a paper published in England early last year claiming a link between performing certain household chores (like doing laundry, cleaning the house, cooking) on a regular basis and a lower rate of breast cancer. In reality, there is an increased incidence of breast cancer among women who postpone childbearing until after the age of 30, or who bear one or two or no children at all. The CORRELATION is in fact tied to the periodic cessation of menses that happens during pregnancy, and how that effects hormone levels, which are at a different levels among younger (pre-30) women, than among older (post-30) women. Now, there is a general tendency among women who have more children at younger ages, to take on more "traditional" housewife roles and responsibilities—including laundry, cleaning, cooking, etc. But the people responsible for the paper only looked at a general seeming correlation between A (traditional housewife chores) and B (breast cancer rate). I hope that they didn't include any sort of conclusion based on the seeming correlation…

…Unlike the Psychology Today article, which did.

Conclusions and generalities in the Psychology Today article only show correlations rather than causation. The correlations that it does mention mean practically bubkes, because there is absolutely no investigation into what lies beyond the correlations. And it is disingenuous to base ANY conclusions (as the clown, er, I mean author, does) on these SEEMING correlations.

That is to say, do conservative people like country music BECAUSE they are conservative? Or is it that people who like country music tend to be conservative? If so, why is there this tendency? Are people with cluttered homes that way BECAUSE they are liberal, or is that messy people TEND to be liberal? What would cause this correlation? (BTW, I am a messy person who is not fond of country music. And I am conservative.)

Something else of which the Psychology Today article reminds me is an article I read once about statistics… The writer used the example of the thesis "Children with big feet are smarter" in which a conclusion is drawn based on a false assumption after observing that some children with bigger feet are “smarter” than other children whose feet are smaller, without considering the AGES of the children: the feet of nine year old children are larger than the feet of four year old children, and nine year old children would perform better on tests than four year old would perform on the same test.

Or as Benjamin Disraeli would say, “Lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

A Modest Gender-neutrification Proposal

2007-12-03T10:06:00.000-08:00

Jennifer Roback Morse recently discussed the “Gender Jumble” that would result from the California Student Civil Rights Act at the National Review Online. And I thought I try to address some of the concerns she expressed in her recent column, and offer some modest proposals.To begin with, here is some proposed new terminology to replace the outmoded, outdated things like “husband,” “wife,” “mother,” “father,” etc.:

“Main Squeeze” for either person in the couple. When a person outside the “union” is referring to one or either party in the union, it can be done as follows: “I now pronounce you mutual Main Squeezes. You can mack to your hearts’ content.” “That’s Persephone and ky(*) Main Squeeze, Juanderlust.” (*--see pronouns below) “Yes, now that you mention it, Brandi and Taquila are mutual main squeezes.”
“Alpha Rent” for the parent-in-charge: the one whose voice really carries weight when it comes to punishment, etc. (Every kid knows this. The parents may not, but the kids do...) Obviously, the Alpha Rent can be male or female, or whatever gender with which they identify.
“Beta Rent” is for the parent next in line. Then there are grand-rents, and great-grand rents, etc.
“Rent-Sibling” for aunt or uncle.

(This terminology enables ease of transition once polygamy, uh, I mean plural marriage is legalized: “Gamma Rent,” “Delta Rent,” and so on for parental units. “Main Squeeze” can become just “Squeeze” in the case of multiples: “Mo Udall’s grand-rent had four squeezes.”)

A new pronoun will be introduced. It will replace the gendered third person pronouns: “he,” “she,” “him,” “her,” etc. It is based (loosely) on the pronoun developed in Ursula LeGuin’s “Left Hand of Darkness,” more so another sci-fi book that ripped her off in that regard (i.e., the gender neutral pronoun), and modeled on the existing English Language pronouns. It is: ke.

Nominative Singular: ke (rhymes with “he” or “she”)
Objective Singular: kerm
Possessive Singular: ke’s (rhymes with “keys”)
Reflexive Singular: keself (ke-self)
Possessive Adjectives: ky (rhymes with “my”)

Usage: Here is an example of the new terminology in use:

“The first grade child’s Alpha Rent, Wiki-wiki, was unable to come to the Parent-Teacher conference as ke was at the hospital. Ky sibling had been brought to the hospital earlier in the day, so ke was waiting there to hear news of ky health. So, the child’s Beta Rent, Mellifluous, came to the school. Unlike the parents of the other children in the class, ky rents were still married, so Mellifluous was Wiki-wiki’s Main squeeze, and vice-versa. Or in other words, they were mutual main squeezes.”

Yes, it seems awkward and confusing now--one starts to loose sight of the antecedents in the sentence--but after the new pronoun takes hold, and teachers no longer have to worry about getting in trouble for being politically incorrect when it comes to “genderification,” well, I am sure it will just take off, and people will look back on the use of “he” and “she” the way they currently do about hit, he and heo of Anglo-Saxon.

(Besides which, no one pays that much attention to anyone else any more, so who cares about the antecedents? The average person’s attention span dictates simple declarative sentences and pretty much precludes the use of any pronouns other than the first and second person.)

Admittedly, this may be poquito confusing for Spanish speakers, so while it is worth considering another consonant to replace the letter “k” for clarification, it should be noted that careful thought was given to the letter “K.” In working through the alphabet, too many other choices had the potential to “genderfy” the pronoun: Using a hard or soft “G” sound would harken too much to the Greek root for woman, gyn- not to mention the word, “girl.” Using an “F” or “D” is too reminiscent of “father” or “dad,” as would the letter “P”—because of the reference to the Latin root, pater, not too mention the more crude, and readily identifiable by children, reference to “pee-pee,” which would render that pronunciation too “masculine.” “T” is similarly problematic on the other side of the gender fence, (“ta-tas” and “tits”), as is “V” (too close to “vagina” and “vulva.”)

Plus, the letter “K was used in the Ursula LeGuin rip-off book.

A committee would need to carefully review other possible consonant choices.

As for homecoming queens, well...

One person will be elected to serve as the Homecoming Dictatron. (Stealing from the restaurant industry who tried out “waitron” as an alternative to “waiter” or “waitress” before settling on the still-sexist “server.”) All students of any gender or gender-identity would be eligible for the title and the throne. That student can then appoint any number (because one would posit the idea that a ruling set consists of two people only, alienating those children from families that practice plural marriage) of Sheikstrons of Fun to co-rule with kerm over the Homecoming Festivities.

Hope this helps with envisioning the future!