Letters to the Editor
Jeffrey P. Harrison
Published Letters: 464 Editor's Choice: 44
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See James Burke's excellent series on changes
[Read the article: Are you losing your memory thanks to the Internet?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]He's done at least two, one called "Changes", I think and the other called "The Day the Universe Stood Still". These series look at the causes and/or consequences of changes in the historical past.
One of the episodes dealt with the consequence of that high tech invention of the 15th century, the printing press. Prior to the printing press, people had to remember stuff because there were almost no books since books had to be hand printed. People used a variety of techniques to remember things from mnemonics to rhyme (with an extension into poetry). Back then, people had MEMORIES. Ten digit phone numbers? Pfui. The news media of the day (traveling troubadours) could remember a 1,000 line lay on a single hearing - word perfect. Along comes the printing press with all the books that were then produced with vast amounts of information in them that significantly reduced what you had to remember and the world became more ... prosaic (to use Mr. Burke's line) and the rhyming and memories vanished.
Does this sound familiar?
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What you describe is all about wielding power
[Read the article: The Newer Deal: The path to a Democratic supermajority]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]and not about governance. Specifically about wielding coercive power and it's absolutely indistinguishable from the "permanent Republican majority" crap that we've put up with for the last 8 years. It's all about empowering one group to impose their views on everybody else. For the last 8 years we've had social conservatives and religious fanatics imposing their world view on everybody else. Can anyone explain to me why the government should be concerned about gay marriage, for example? Is anyone being injured: physically or financially? Are anyone else's rights to life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness being infringed on? No. Indeed by permitting this sort of coercion, you are trampling on the rights of homosexuals to the pursuit of happiness. All because the social conservatives and religious fanatics don't like homosexuals.
Governance is all about ensuring a level playing field for everybody and ensuring that people are treated fairly and their inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is not abridged. It is not about pursuing some social agenda, or who will now be receiving government largess (pick your receiver - big pharma, the military-industrial complex, religious organizations, or social agencies, etc etc). As long as the government continues to merely pursue the acquisition and use of power instead of governance, the very fabric of our country will continue to unravel.
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Data Privacy Law
[Read the article: Web users demand privacy, then give it up]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]One of the things that pisses me off is that these companies essentially force you to give up some of your privacy if you wish to use their websites. For example, I have cookies turned off except for sites that I have authorized to write cookies. This drives my grown kids crazy when the come over and try to look at their e-mail on my machine. Neither Google nor Yahoo is authorized to write cookies but if you want to use gmail or hotmail, you have to let them write cookies, just as an example.
Any data privacy law would have to require collectors of information to reveal what information on you they have and purge it should you so demand.
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Turn and face the strange changes...
[Read the article: The sacrifice-free election strategy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]But truthiness? I don't think so. First of all, the political elite, after years of PC-speak, think that the electorate needs to be coddled and managed. These subjects are just so complex that lesser persons (i.e. the entire electorate) cannot make intelligent and/or responsible decisions about them. And, secondly, it's extremely doubtful that they know the truth themselves. The give away here is that no one talks about the level of uncertainty associated with these subjects which, regardless of how they are presented in the media, is quite high. God only knows, the last think Americans want is uncertainty.
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A few observations
[Read the article: Did you hear that Alaska has more oil than the Middle East?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]1. This is not the first time that people have cried peak oil. The first was in the 1920s. If we fail to explore, it will be a self fulfilling prophesy.
2. Probably any new oil discoveries (vast or otherwise) will be in locations where exploration and exploitation will be difficult and expensive. This is not a certainty but an odds on favorite. Nobody with two brains to rub together thinks that anybody is going to sell oil for less than it costs to produce it.
3. "Energy Independence" is part of the concept of autarky. Historically, this has been a losing proposition. Unfortunately, this desire for "Energy Independence" is really driven by the desire to push the rest of the world around which requires a vast military machine that requires a vast sea of oil to function. Otherwise, we might have to listen to what other countries want, not just what we want. God forbid that should happen.
4. Petroleum is more valuable as a chemical than as a fuel. Regardless of weather this is peak oil or not, regardless of how many billions and billions of barrels oil remain to be found and/or extracted, oil is finite. It would behoove us not to waste it.