found_drama

In the midst of all this “Great Bailout of ‘08″ stuff, I have tried to keep myself contemplative and distant.  Economic woes being what they are, they certainly touch on all households when they get to this magnitude but it seemed wise to keep a positive outlook on it¹.  Aside from the occasional link and a bit of humor, I’ve tried to keep quiet about this particular subject here in this particular venue.  I haven’t said much mostly because it seemed gratuitous; I have a layperson’s grasp of the subject and I wasn’t going to add much to the dialogue that wasn’t already being covered in-depth much more frequently and by much more knowledgeable people.  But as events have unfolded under the Capitol dome and as I’ve meditated more deeply on the conversations I’ve had, something has become startlingly clear to me.

First:  As Americans, a sense of justice is deeply ingrained in our national cultural psyche.  It is deeply important to us that the guilty are punished regardless of whether or not they have broken any laws.  And that is why our collective stomach heaves at the prospect of $700B being shelled out “for our own good”² without some assurance that the perpetrators of this heinous crime³ get what’s coming to them.  As Americans, it offends us that something this awful can be allowed to occur without seeing to it that someone hangs for it.  But at the same time (as a friend so eloquently put it):

I’m not happy about this, either, but at some point the need for responsible stewardship outweighs the desire to see CEOs get the shaft.

Or:  we can swallow our pride, get over this “sense of justice” thing we hold so dear, and allow The Government to take some action that will preserve some semblance of economic vitality and our quality of life⁴.

But that’s not what really bugs us.  And while that snapped into clarity for me, it was not that startling revelation.

Second:  Related to our sense of justice (”first cousins”, if you will) is this important need to get value out of our expenditures.  We want a return on our investment and when it comes to taxes, our outrage doesn’t come from the hit we take on Pay Day, it’s from the over-powering perception that the money is being pissed away by our elected officials on $600 toilet seats and $700B bailout packages.

Apocryphal or not, these stories are just icing on top of a cake that’s already baked with a crumbling transportation infrastructure, under-funded mass transit programs, a non-existent health care program, budget freezes on scientific research programs, and a long list of other failures that drain public trust in our Byzantine Leviathan of a government.  Of course we cringe at the taxes we pay — the benefits are intangible abstractions when they exist at all.

As Congress moves forward with this plan, we get another collective stomach heave.  It’s not enough that the original Section 8 is gone from the plan.  We got some oversight (”I guess”) but it’s a pale imitation of the justice we really want.  And while some action can be thought of as “a good thing”⁵, we start looking at the riders on this bill and shudder at their fringe nature (e.g., exemptions for arrows for child archers) or consider with disgust that we’re offering a hand out to industries that offer no productivity toward our long-term economic stability (e.g., Hollywood film production and automotive racing).

I was having a conversation with someone who pays more in Federal taxes than the 2006 median household income.  Wow, sucky.  But (as I said to this person) it isn’t sucky because of the hit he’s taking; it’s because at the end of the day you feel like you’re not getting anything for your outlay.  I got some reluctant agreement to this point.  If you felt like The Government was managing your money prudently, that you had good roads and scholarships for your kids and grant funding for science and universal health care and the best-maintained public park lands in the world, etc. then it wouldn’t feel quite so bad.

But instead you get expensive endless wars and corruption trials and bailout packages and budget cuts for anything important — “Death and Taxes“, basically.

So where do we land?  And what do we do?

Short of an all out revolution⁶, there seems to be only one thing to do.  Cliched as it may sound:  get the fuck out there and vote.  Seriously.  There is an election coming up.  Take a good long look at who is out there and who is going to do any good.  In some cases, the sensible choice is obvious.  There are a lot of incumbents that probably don’t deserve to get a trip back to D.C. or [fill in your state capital here].  Demand some accountability.  Don’t be satisfied with Party Platform answers and talking points and all that other vague bullshit that we have come to accept as political double-speak.  We deserve better than that and we should expect more from them.  These people are supposed to represent you and your interests.  Start thinking about Your Representation like you would think about your 401(k) adviser or your mutual fund’s manager or anyone else to whom you’ve ever turned over money.  Take a good long look at that Death and Taxes poster.  Maybe mail a copy to your Congressman.  Don’t just ask for some transparency, demand it.  Be a pain in the ass to his/her office.

Satisfying your sense of justice depends on it.

1. E.g., how much will it really affect my day-to-day?[↩]
2. I.e.,”for the economy”.[↩]
3. Viz., Wall Street CEOs, hedge fund managers, etc.[↩]
4. Viz., make at least a “best effort” at not letting things get worse.[↩]
5. I.e., “responsible stewardship” and all that.[↩]
6. Which, frankly, seems like it would be terribly destabilizing and counter-productive with respect to a long-term, sustainable solution.[↩]

First and foremost: an uncritical read of this book will leave you feeling cynical and a bit cheated. It ranks up there with E.O. Wilson’s Sociobiology and Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene¹. It would be very easy to find yourself getting defensive about the material presented in here; especially if you believe humans to be some special exception among animals. 

Meanwhile, with a more critical approach, you will find that you cannot get Robert Wright’s The Moral Animal out of your head: it is insightful, intellectually rigorous, even-handed, and at times palpably funny. Plus, you will find that it informs a great many (all?) of the human discourse (verbal or otherwise) that you encounter daily — how certain traits and behaviors came to be and the functions they serve. 

Don’t ask about their intentions though; we need to remember that evolution is goal-less, after all. Put most succinctly: 

We are built to be effective animals, not happy ones.

Read the rest of this entry »

1. Though I will readily admit that I know these two texts primarily by reputation, having only read excerpts and not their entireties.[↩]

Even if Obama isn’t the choice for you, please get out there and exercise your franchise tomorrow: March 4th, 2008!

Today (July 11th) is Fair Use Day!  w00t!

What is Fair Use Day?  In a nutshell, it’s a day where we as citizens of the world, as media consumers, as storytellers, as singers, as guitar-jamming musicians, as painters and collage artists, as new world mythologists, as human beings get to speak up (and out) about how we want to share our cultural heritage.  As consumers, we should expect a little respect from the companies we do business with; don’t lock down our products, don’t treat us like criminals.  As content makers, we should take the flip approach; how are people going to most enjoy what I make?  And how can I give them those freedoms fairly?

It’s a lot of things to a lot of people.  (Well, those people that are thinking about those things…)

So how am I celebrating?

Well, as usual, my photos up on Flickr are released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareALike license.  (And it’s come in handy for a bunch of folks.  This Swedish guy for example…)

But this year, I’ll go one better.  Here is a deep/tech/house track that I wrote a couple of  years ago and a remix:

• Skulk (original deep dub)
• Skulk (AggroDisco remix)

Now, for all the remixers, masher-uppers, DJs, producers, sound designers, and the like: I’m also throwing out this kit of loops that I created (from scratch, more/less) to create the song.  Do with it as you will.  I’m throwing it out there under that same Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareALike license.  If you remix the track or just re-use some of the beats of FX — just drop a link my way.  Let me know what you’ve done.  I’d love to see hear it.

The above image will not be appearing in this NowPublic.com story. When I first saw the request, I was a bit flattered. Neat, I thought. Then I read the story and thought Hmm… seems to miss the point.

In the spirit of the Creative Commons license that I use for my Flickr’d photos however¹ I figured that it would be okay anyway as long as they gave the due attribution. And I followed that up with my rebuttal.

The photo will not appear on the site however because they require folks to register as users first.

Did I hear someone say Totally Weaksauce?

In any event, my rebuttal would go something along these lines:

Regardless of how many resources it takes to produce either vehicle, the H2 (on the road) produces far more CO tonnage than the Prius. The argument that you’re going to drive a mile-for-mile more environmentall-friendly vehicle in the H2 is a garbage argument. Especially when they start adding the “miles to the life of the vehicle” aspect in there. 300,000 mile life expectancy on the H2? Highly doubtful when driving habits are factored in.

That being said, my rebuttal should scarcely be taken as a pro-Prius argument. Between the Sudbury-mined nickel, the on-going debates about battery disposal², and the not-quite-resolved high-voltage hazards posed to first responders, it seems silly for me to bother mentioning drivers’ habits again. Those Priuses trucking along on the highway at 85mph with a single occupant? Yeah, those guys are getting their fuel economy returns in a big hurry.

As usual: walk if you’re close enough, public transport if you’re not, and ask your friends and co-workers about rideshare options.

1. Attribution-NonCommercial -ShareAlike 2.0.[↩]
2. Sorry, no citation here. Had one at one point but the link is long-gone and the only things I’m finding in the Google are pro-hybrid “battery bounty” stroke-fests.[↩]

A fruitful quote from our guest at this evening’s dinner:

The only revolution left is to change your own life.

Still recovering. I hate having to spend a Friday night “in” but still being a little on the sick side and having A. out of town on family business anyway… Well, it just makes more sense. Better to get healthy. Especially with Mardi Gras tomorrow. That should be a lot of fun. Our company has a (er) “float” this year. Should be quite bad ass… As for tonight, I’ll be headed to bed early. If my cough will let me. Oh what I wouldn’t give for a copy of Civ IV right now…

In other news:

• DF has a good(-ish) piece on gender equity in the webdev arena. I like that he’s citing facts and questioning the assumptions that (for example) Kottke is making. However, I take issue with the figures on graduation numbers. In four years there is plenty of time for alpha geek males (students and profs alike) to “bully out” otherwise-interested females. The unspoken secret shame of CS (and webdev in particular) is that it’s dominated by young men that go all lefty on their politics but are secretly and perhaps unconsciously sexist.
• Linked earlier this week: The “Interstellar Ark” bit from Strange Paths. Nicely heady piece of science-heavy sci-fi back-story ish. A lot of math and physics. I think I need at least two more passes to “get” it. But damn fascinating.
• Which leads me to another link from earlier this week: Imaginary Homelands (via MeFi). The more time I spend with the links, the more fascinated I become. It brings to mind some kind of encyclopedic work that I seem to recall finding in Creighton’s possession a few years ago. Of course, it also brings to mind several projects that I’ve had (and either abandoned or side-lined) over the years…
• And also linked earlier this week: Coding Horror on “The cost of leaving your PC on“… I was going to write-up a Mac-heads version of this but then I realized, he’d already linked out to an article that covered that material already. The verdict? Macs are like ascetic monks when it comes to power. (Sort of.) So figure out a good schedule and shut it down at night if you can. You’ll be doing us all a favor. And on that note…

Via Jalopnik: “Hybrids drive their way out of car-pool lanes“:

Giving free solo trips in the commuter lanes has successfully clogged up those commuter lanes that were intended to ease traffic. Also, the way stickers are allocated was flawed — it was based on when new hybrid owners received their license plates in the mail. There’s no guarantee when plates will arrive — often, it could take as long as three months. Perhaps the DMV should’ve based it on when the car was purchased, making it clear if people qualified. Instead, when the current program ended, the DMV had 700 more applications than stickers. Some owners out there won’t be happy campers.

So my hat is off to California…  Sort of.  This practice of permitting hybrid drivers to utilize the HOV lanes is a horrifying practice and those states that are out there doing it should stop it.  While we can all be delighted that gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles typically exhibit greater (and in some cases far greater) fuel economy than your typical internal combustion engine, someone tooling around solo in one of them is still not really doing us any favors.  Just because you’re sucking less gasoline than the rest of us is a nice start.  But you’re still contributing to sprawl, still contributing to traffic, still requiring as much petrol for your tires and engine lubricants…  And what about that “other” battery that you happen to have?  And what about all the factory resources expended to manufacture your hybrid?

So if California’s goal was to introduce people to the hybrid vehicle concept…  Well, then I guess they’re getting nice checks in the mail from Toyota and Honda?  (I didn’t realize that the HOV lane was a marketing tool!)  Anyway…

The hybrid is a nice start at cutting back the carbon emissions.  But for wholesale reduction plans, nothing beats the “reduce” plan.  And there’s no quicker way to cut it back than to carpool.  Or use public transportation.  Or walk.

This gallery has been popping up ALL OVER THE PLACE in my RSS aggregator today. Americans and their guns… Fascinating photojournalistic project. In nothing else, the MeFi thread gets pretty interesting. The photos speak for themselves, however. Also: let’s face it, Brittny is cute.

Via the Wrangle: Vegetarian is the New Prius on The Huffington Post. *ahem* Let’s quote:

They noted that feeding animals for meat, dairy, and egg production requires growing some ten times as much crops as we’d need if we just ate pasta primavera, faux chicken nuggets, and other plant foods. On top of that, we have to transport the animals to slaughterhouses, slaughter them, refrigerate their carcasses, and distribute their flesh all across the country. Producing a calorie of meat protein means burning more than ten times as much fossil fuels–and spewing more than ten times as much heat-trapping carbon dioxide–as does a calorie of plant protein. The researchers found that, when it’s all added up, the average American does more to reduce global warming emissions by going vegetarian than by switching to a Prius.

This is bullshit.  Anytime I’ve seen figures like the ones that they mention above, those figures are always in reference to the large-scale commercial livestock industry.

Just like the Prius argument is riddled with its own set of special problems (e.g., you still need regular oil changes, still contribute to road congestion problems as a driver, your tires are still petrol-based, etc.), saying that “vegetarian is the new Prius” is not an environmental argument — it’s an anti-meat argument.  On its own, “switching” to vegetarianism doesn’t solve the problem.  Much of the same arguments raised here (e.g., the harvesting & distribution questions) can just as easily be applied to your out-of-season fresh fruit and vegetables.  The only real solution to that question is to go macrobiotic and buy local (if you buy at all).

I’m certainly no saint in this regard but I also don’t think that you have any business making an anti-meat argument like this if you’re not prepared to go all the way.