Passing The Survival Test

Angelica reacts with exasperations to the tale of the EV1. She says she doesn't know whether to pity or bitchslap humanity. I personally go for bitchslapping, because while it's effectiveness may be low, the effective change accomplished by pity is zero.

I know this is starting to get tiresome, but I'd like to write just a bit more about the advantages of electric cars. I think some people see battery-electric cars (BEVs) as a technology that is the poor, retarded cousin to the athletic, witty hot bod on campus that is fuel cells, or maybe hybrids. And these are the environmentalists! I'd ask you to imagine what Detroit thinks about BEVs, except we already know that story.

(For an excellent review of the story of the EV1, read this fella.)

In case it's not clear, a BEV is a car that gets all of it's power directly from the electrical grid - same as your house. This is opposed to all currently mass-produced cars, which get their power entirely from gasoline - even hybrids just convert their gasoline to electricity. It is also opposed to plug-in hybrids (a technology that I've also been vocal about) which get some part of their power from the electrical grid. Finally, BEVs are similar in a sense to a theoretical fuel-cell car, in that their energy is electrical. However, there are a number of important differences.

First off, unlike plug-in hybrids and fuel cell cars, BEVs actually exist, and have been made in large numbers. This is a big, big plus. A here-and-now shantytown is better than a make-believe palace. Compare the existence of BEVs to the total non-existence of fuel cell cars (some wags are beginning to call them "fool's cells") and exactly one existing plug-in hybrid made out of a Prius in California.

Ah, but conventional hybrids exist too, and in far larger numbers than BEVs, right? True. But there's a problem with incremental improvements to gasoline cars. The improvements are more likely to be used to add power to the cars, rather than fuel efficiency. This is a process we've seen in conventional cars and SUVs for two decades now, and we're beginning to see it again with hybrid cars. Linda McQuaig has summed up this process as inevitably leading not to cars that run forever on fumes, but on 18-wheelers that accelerate like race cars. Also, as someone pointed out in comments to a previous post, incremental improvements to gasoline consumption can't realistically keep up with increasing demand. If each American was driving a Prius-equivalent car today, America would buy a respite for less than a decade until consumption (and therefore prices) caught up.

On the topic of oil supplies, it should be obvious now that neither of the conventional options presented to the public (conventional gasoline cars or hybrids) can realistically address the problem of global oil consumption. Even if America weren't besotted with the SUV, demand from China and India is liable to keep growing and therefore keep pressure on prices. Add the fear of peak production to the mix, and the world needs an escape hatch, pronto.

So what are the options? Well, the most popular non-gasoline option these days if fuel cells. But there's a number of problems with hydrogen as a power supply for cars. First off, the fuel cells themselves are still to expensive by a factor of 100. The hydrogen they run on can't be made cheaply or efficiently yet, it can barely be stored at all, and the best fuel cells convert hydrogen to electricity with an efficiency of about 50%. In case you're wondering, this is the short list of complaints. A longer version was written by former US DoE official Joseph Romm, called The Hype About Hydrogen. Don't get me wrong - long-term, hydrogen makes some sense. But I wonder whether it will ever be able to compete with batteries for some very simple reasons: Fuel cell's efficiency will always be lower than batteries, and it's questionable whether it will ever be price-competitive with batteries.

I don't mean to dismiss hydrogen fuel cells entirely - I continue to keep up as best I can, and I do try and post the good news with the bad. But I'd like to make the case for battery-electric cars here. So what the big deal about BEVs? It's hard to know where to begin. They're entirely clean on the user's end, dead simple to maintain, (should be) cheap to buy, obviate the need for gas stations and Exxon, and are blessedly quiet. I say they're clean on the user's end because it obviously depends on where they get their energy from. But it's sobering to note that a BEV powered by a dirty old coal plant would still emit less CO2, CO, and Nitrogen Oxides (while slightly increasing the sulphur) then a gasoline powered car.

Obviously, a BEV that's charged from a solar panel is the holy grail. And here again it compares favourably with hydrogen. The hydrogen future's dream is making H2 from water and renewable electricity. The problem with this scenario is that the current best technology can only operate at about 50% efficiency on both ends of the equation, meaning that before you've even turned on your hydrogen car you've lost 75% of the energy you put in to it. Meanwhile, batteries can store electricity with 80% efficiency. But the picture doesn't get better if we account for fuel cells getting better in the future. Even if our water-to-H and H-to-energy efficiencies are 90% (this is certainly unrealistic) the overall efficiency is 81% - a 1% margin over current commerical batteries. Hardly enough to notice.

Now, there are some technical shortcomings to BEVs. Their range is shorter than gasoline cars (200 miles versus 3-400 for gas) and they take longer to "refuel" (45 minutes for an 80% charge on an EV1, versus say 5-10 minutes for a gas station.) But compared to the alternatives, these technical hurdles look like the molehills they are. There are already batteries that can be near-fully charged in 5 minutes, and some limited-edition BEV cars have already gotten 300 miles on a full charge. In short, from a technical point of view, there's no reason to believe that BEVs can't deliver the performance people believe they "need". (How often people actually need to travel more than 300 miles is an argument for another time.)

The dealbreaker for me is the simple fact that we already have an electrical infrastructure, unlike the proposed alternative fuels that are bandied about. If required, you could literally plug your BEV in to the 3-prong outlet in your wall - though it would take hours to charge. Better to use a 240v plug - something so arcane you only find it in every home with an electric clothes-dryer. We need to find some more electricity for our cars, but less than you'd think. Engineer-Poet has argued that the entire US car fleet could be run on less than 200 GW. Now, this is a lot of energy, no doubt about it. But it's equivalent to adding 20% more to America's existing electrical generating capacity - or saving an equal amount through conservation. Frankly, it's almost inconceivable that we couldn't save 10% quickly, and add another 10% of new capacity just as quickly. (We only need to add new electricity as quickly as we're making BEV cars, remember. This will take at least a decade, and probably closer to two.)

And what would we get for that? (I swear I'm wrapping this up soon.) Well, first of all our air gets much clearer and easier to breathe. We dramatically cut our CO2 output. The price of oil falls earthward as the US (and presumably, other large-consumer nations) suddenly free up tens of millions of barrels of oil each day. China and India get to continue growing at a brisk pace for a while, and maybe some light finally begins shining again in Africa as energy prices decline for a while. And those of us who despise the House of Saud can chuckle as oil prices plummet. Even if they don't fall too far, it will be the largest single step we could take in protecting ourselves from the danger of Peak Oil. In short, we pass the test of the 21st century - can industrial civilization survive?

The problems, of course, are more human than technological. Will people accept cars that are so different from what they're used to? Will the state step in to force them? My personal belief is that when push comes to shove, the answer to both questions will be yes. We'll have to accept BEVs, or at the very least plug-in hybrids, because there aren't any better options.

Too Good To Be True

Like Fox Mulder, I want to believe:

Sources close to the Chicago federal grand jury probe into perjury and obstruction charges against President Bush and others said indictments were handed down this week, but a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Northern District of Illinois refused to comment....

According to federal whistleblower Tom Heneghen, who recently reported on www.truthradio.com, Powell testified before the citizen grand jury that President Bush had taken the U.S. to war illegally based on lies, which is a capital crime involving treason under the U.S. Code.

Look, I'd love to see Bush removed from office, and I'm not particularly choosy as to how it happens. But if Bush and Cheney are frog-marched out, (Speaker of the House) Denny Hastert is the next in line for the presidency. Believe me when I say that this isn't an improvement.

So: It'll never happen. And even if it did, it wouldn't help matters.

(via Voice in the Wilderness)

Surprise! Edjamikayshun Matters!

John Rogers, the Kung Fu Monkey, not only has a much better-named blog than me, but he's smarter and funnier. Alas. But he's probably got the best take on Bush's newfound "evolution is for the little people" stance:

I just have to say to my conservative friends ... listen, I don't want to hear SHIT when this comes back to bite us in the ass. When you're watching your children rocket downward through the Brave New Working Classes from gamma through delta straight to the epsilons, not a word. When the leader of your party turns his back on science, the product of God's 2nd greatest gift to us, reason,* when he turns from the very process which brought so much progress and prosperity to this land and encourages those would so eagerly toss aside rational thought itself ... gah, never mind voting Democrat: if my choice were between these cowards who would turn back the Enlightenment and anal-probing yet intellectually honest Martians, I would grit my teeth, vote for the Martians and learn to visualize my Happy Place during my Probe-Center appointments.

Am I reading too much into this statement? Am I making too big a deal of this? In one word, fuckno. This is just a symptom of what is, to me, the most destructive thing to occur in America in twenty years.

Even if your kids aren't directly taught ID or aren't in one of the new Bible Class districts, the overarching cultural damage has already been done. Through this group of RadicalRighties' constant rhetoric, they consistently strip away the idea that there is indeed a rigorous scientific process through which certain non-negotiable physical truths can be ascertained. They have suffused the county with with an intellectual laziness and a terrifying narcissism. Opinion has been enshrined as superior to fact. No longer need a person take into account the way the world works when forming their worldview -- they can instead hunt down "facts" and "theories" which support their own comfort zone, and what's worse, we can NO LONGER CALL BULLSHIT. Because if our leaders -- pardon me, your leaders -- don't call bullshit, who will? They have undermined the very process by which we know WHEN to call bullshit!...

Again, our motto at Kung Fu Monkey: "Everybody who wants to live in the 21st century over here. Everybody who wants to live in the 1800's over there. Good. Thanks. Good luck with that."

Go read the rest.

(via too many people to count properly. Most recently from Gristmill.)

Here's To Narcissism

Ezra Klein's saying that whenever James Dobson appears, he starts swearing compulsively. I've noticed a similar phenomena with myself, except in this case, the culprit is large SUVs, especially Hummers. I see one, and I start cursing as loudly as possible, in the (probably vain) hopes that the driver will hear my complaints. Alas, my words usually disappear in to the wind.

But while I hate SUVs and all they represent, it's good to know that they aren't without their advocates. For the people who like the idea of quickening the environmental and economic destruction of the planet, Rosie Dimanno Margaret Wente is there for you. Her column this morning in the Globe and Mail is an astonishing piece of work. It manages to blithely dismiss all the reasons people should avoid SUVs, and embrace the most disgusting aspects of North American consumerism. I think my favourite part is where she says that she's proud - proud, dammit! - that she never takes public transit.

The larger problem with Dimanno Wente is that she's unfortunately bought in to the myth that Car = Freedom. First off, there's a logical problem here. Really, mobility might be considered freedom, but a half-decent public transit system could guarantee that "freedom" as well as or better than cars. It's even worse if we take a minute to look at the problems associated with gasoline-powered cars. Between insurance, maintenance, and gasoline prices, my brief ownership of a car left me without any sense of freedom, number of large bills to pay. I was much happier - and felt much "free-er" when I sold the damn thing.

No, Dimanno has confused a privilege with a freedom. It's been a privilege of the upper class to own and drive SUVs - and now that the bill is coming due, they arrogantly call it a "freedom", to try and hide their greed and conceit. These people can afford the fuel cost, even at $1 a litre. The problem is that the rest of us can't afford the external costs of SUVs, or for that matter the entire gas-powered car itself. The rich have always been arrogant about their privilege, but it's still a shock to see it so blatantly peddled in my morning paper.

Update: Oops. Got my harpies mixed up. The woman in question is Margaret Wente, not Rosie Dimanno. I dislike both immensely, but this offense was Wentes. So apologies (of a sort) to Dimanno.

The Fate of The EV1

In comments, Anonymous writes:

"You know, the car companies just built a nice generation of electric cars. They were so nice that owners (lease holders?) protested when they were taken back and scrapped. Just a few months ago ..."

There were a number of small electric cars made by the major car makers, because of a law passed by California. GM made the EV1, and Toyota made the Rav4 EV, an SUV identical to it's RAV4 except that it didn't use gasoline. The EV1, like the Prius today, wasn't the only electric car or even necessarily the best one, but it somehow became the poster child of the electric car in California. As one of the people who worked for the EV1 writes:

Then something remarkable happened -- we ran out of cars. It didn't happen overnight, but it happened- it became clear that the market could evolve- which is when it also became clear that the auto industry wasn't about to -- and slowly but surely, everything changed in that program.

This was really astonishing at the time. Nobody imagined people would actually want an electric car - it could only get 70 miles before it had to be plugged in again, for God's sake!

Well, the mandate in California eventually was killed. Sadly, California's legislators bought the hype about hydrogen, and the carmakers argued that they could bring hydrogen cars to market sooner if they didn't have to meet that pesky mandate. It's really sad, because the EV1 and it's cousins had begun to get a rather vocal consituency. When the mandate expired, GM demanded that all the EV1's be returned - none were ever sold, only leased. People offered to pay GM the residual costs of the EV1, to no effect. GM refused to sell the EV1, no matter what. Contrast this with the approach Ford and Toyota took, where they sold their remaining electric cars for trivial sums, often a symbolic $1. GM refused to go this route, determined to purge the memory of a successful, beloved electric car from the memory of the public.

Nobody's quite sure why. Some suggest conspiracy - the old "engine that runs on water" hypothesis. I'm more partial to the business explanation - electric vehicles are inherently more reliable than internal combustion engines (no oil, gas, transmission, often no radiator, etc.) and this is an important part of any car company's bottom line - selling parts to your customers when there car breaks down. In any case, the last EV1s were crushed, despite a series of protests by their owners.

Anonymous also adds:

As far as I'm concerned, the electrics only "failed" in comparison to gas cars running cheap fuel. Raise the price of that fuel to $3-5/gal, and those electrics are going to look pretty good.

And now I'm starting to believe that I have multiple personality disorder. Not too much more than a month ago, I linked to a post on EVworld.com, arguing that charging electric cars with solar power was already competitve with gasoline. Hm. Apparently, my multiple personalities are forgetful.

I've been touting the advantages of battery-electric cars for about as long as I've had this blog. Still, even I was surprised when Mitsubishi announced it's plans to start producing electric cars. If this car actually makes it to market for 2010 (not a sure thing) it may make Mitsubishi the Company That Saved The World (or did more than it's share.) Whether it's because of Chinese and Indian demand, or because of Peak Oil, we'll be facing the reality of very, very expensive oil. A major car maker getting behind electric cars in a big way - and making a big profit - could be the signal the rest of the industry needs. Mitsubishi says it doesn't plan to sell it's EV in North America. I'll say this - it's the only car from a major manufacturer I've seen that I'd consider buying.

The EV1 is dead! Long live the Mitsubishi Colt EV!

In Which I Disagree With Jared Diamond

Anyone who's been reading this blog knows the reverence with which I regard Jared Diamond. That's why it pained me to read this:

During a public lecture in San Francisco last month, Jared Diamond, the mega-selling author of "Guns, Germs and Steel,'' became the latest and most prominent environmental intellectual to endorse nuclear power as a necessary response to global warming.

Addressing an overflow crowd at the Cowell Theater about why some societies fail and others don't (the theme of his most recent book, "Collapse''), Diamond three times cited global warming as a threat that could ruin modern civilization. During the question period, he was asked if he agreed with Stewart Brand, whose Long Now Foundation was sponsoring the lecture, that global warming posed such a grave threat that humanity had to embrace nuclear power.

It was a delicate moment, because Brand, the former editor of the Whole Earth Catalogue, was on stage with Diamond.

"I did not know that Stewart Brand said that," Diamond replied. "But yes, to deal with our energy problems we need everything available to us, including nuclear power." Nuclear, he added, should simply be "done carefully, like they do in France, where there have been no accidents."

Oh, woe unto me! An idol has fallen! How to put this: America is never going to do things like they do in France, because America is America. Specifically, Bush's America is never going to run with the efficiency and care of France's nuclear industry.

But there's a wider problem - the problem of wasted money. Wind power is already cheaper than nuclear power (roughly half the price of nuclear) and solar power is only 25-50% more expensive. Now, that's a pretty hefty margin for solar to overcome, but solar power has been coming down steadily in price for decades - something nuclear can't claim. Yes, France is a model for cheap, clean, safe nuclear power. But it's pretty much the only example nuclear advocates can point to - and there's a bunch more examples of how not to run a nuclear industry. The short list would include Japan, US, USSR, UK, and even Canada.

The problems aren't just technical - as with all energy and economic policy problems, they're political. France was able to form a post-1973 consensus that the country's energy needs should be met with nuclear power. No other country has been able to do so. Furthermore, the French are generally more amiable to big-government projects (like nuclear power) than many other countries. I doubt you could build a similar program in Canada, much less the US.

Meanwhile, solar and wind power have posted double-digit growth rates without nearly the kind of subsidies that Nuclear power has gotten. In the next few years the world will actually add more wind capacity than nuclear, with solar still a much smaller but rapidly-growing competitor. So for countries where the sun shines or the wind blows, they have a possible energy source that is quickly going to be cheaper than the alternatives.

Finally, it's worth noting that there's some question as to the state of the world's Uranium reserves. Some reports say we've got less than a century of Uranium left at current usage rates. Obviously, if we dramatically expanded our nuclear power that number would shrink substantially.

It's sad that people keep advocating nuclear power as a solution for climate change - there's surprisingly little to recommend it. It's more expensive, harder to build, slower to build, and even if it wasn't it's still a nasty form of energy that leaves a millenia-long legacy. This doesn't make Jared Diamond any less of a scientist - but he's certainly no energy wonk.

Get Cracking

Well, here we go: ExxonMobil, the largest company on Earth and one of the few remaining energy companies explicitly opposed to the facts of climate change and oil peaking, is softening it's stance. In a new announcement, Exxon is saying that non-OPEC oil production is going to peak sometime in the next five years*. This is significant for a number of reasons. First off, it's interesting to note that Peak Oil has gone from fringe theory to accepted wisdom in less than 5 years. Galileo would be envious.

Secondly, this is a severe blow to anyone who thinks that Peak Oil can be delayed by more drilling. Whenever you talk about Peak Oil, you'll usually get a question like "What about X?" where X is some far-flung outpost that is always rumoured to be the next Saudi Arabia. We've seen this process in Russia, Central Asia, and the South China Sea. What Exxon is saying is that there are not going to be any new Saudi Arabias - just the one. We are unlikely to find any new, large oil fields from here on out. What Exxon is essentially saying is that we can't drill our way out of this problem.

Thirdly, what should really concern us is the possibility that both Exxon and Matthew Simmons are right - that Saudi oil fields will also go in to decline in the next five years, and that they could decline in a big way. If we believe these warnings - and Exxon's comes with a pretty good pedigree, at least - then there's the possibility of the global economy being several millions barrels of oil short by 2010.

So the obvious question is what do we do about it? If we can't drill our way out of the problem, then there's some simple solutions that we need to start on - first off, free public transport in urban and sub-urban areas could cut oil demand quickly. But if the decline comes quickly enough, it's hard to see how we could easily save energy quickly enough to offset the losses we'd be seeing.

This is usually the point where we all start worrying about resource wars - that the US and X (China, India, Russia) will start fighting to gain control of the last drops of oil. It should be said that this is the stupidest possible foreign policy any state could ever pursue. Ever. The US has spent more than $300 billion on the war in Iraq - and at best, Iraq has only ever produced 3.5 million barrels of oil per day. So if you believe that the US invaded Iraq to control it's oil reserves, the US has spent about $100 billion per million barrels of oil of daily production. We should probably note that a war with Russia, China, or India (all nuclear powers) would probably be far more costlier than the war in Iraq.

(There's some belief that Iraq's production has been artificially low for historic reasons. But even if you assume that Iraq's production could double post-Saddam, the numbers don't make sense.)

Meanwhile, for a cool $25 billion you get one million barrels of oil per day from Alberta's tar sands. Now, I'm no fan of the tar sands, but if you want to secure oil reserves, the Dominion of Canada's a safer bet than most countries whose names end in -stan. And at 1/4 the cost of a war in the Middle East, it's a steal!

Using that money to buy plug-in hybrids would be slightly less cost-effective - you'd save a bit more than half of what you'd buy from Alberta - except that you'd save that much oil for the indefinite future, without needing to pay the costs of actually buying the oil. I'd personally prefer this option more than the others, but I think we know where the government is going to throw our money.

Anyway, there are solutions out there for us to grab hold of. If Exxon is beginning to admit reality, then it's long past time to act.

Not Safe For Work

If you've seen the posters for the movie "The Aristocrats" and wondered what the dirty joke they're talking about it, here's a version told by Eric Cartman. Enjoy.

(via Slacktivist.)

In Which I Insult My Betters

Okay, now in most cases I'm not fit to lick Juan Cole's boots. I concede this readily. The man is an accredited expert in the Middle East, and lived in Lebanon during the civil war there. I, meanwhile, am an accredited high school graduate, and survived my family's latest Christmas dinner. However, I feel no hesitation at all to call bullshit when Juan writes:

If you don't like the dependency [on foregin (Saudi) oil], here are your present options:

Put in wind generators like crazy. They're just about competitive at the current $60 a barrel price, and would help national security. They also make a lot of noise (or at least give off vibrations) and are annoying, and if you put them in the wrong place they'll kill a lot of birds.

Put in nuclear power plants. They don't produce greenhouse gases and are economically viable (especially if you factor in the cost of global warming otherwise, and of national security). They also sometimes melt down and they produce a byproduct that can be used to make very big bombs, and their waste is toxic and lasts thousands of years.

Go to solar panels , as Germany and Japan are doing, and now California. On the surface, solar is more expensive than fossil fuels (at the moment, ten times more expensive). Few are going to volunteer to pay a $1000 for something they can get for $100. But if you factor in the costs of global warming, who knows? Also the production of photovoltaic cells involves the use of some pretty toxic materials, which will become a pollution issue eventually.

Now, these are all good ideas (except the nuclear one) in their own right, but not a single one will affect the state of the oil markets one iota. There's a very simple reason for this - cars, trains, trucks, and planes don't run on electricity. Oil is America's largest source of energy, but it's almost non-existent as a source of electricity. Generating more electricity - whatever the source - won't affect oil imports in any case.

Now, if we started to build cars and trains that could run on electricity, the situation changes dramatically. I've long advocated plug-in hybrids which get part of their travel on electricity alone. To recap - most people don't drive more than 40 miles in a day. Therefore, a car which can get 40 miles without using gasoline effectively runs entirely off the electrical grid most days. (Cars which could also use gasoline mixed with biofuels could make a huge difference quickly.) Trains are already beginning to compete with trucks on shorter and shorter distances as fuel prices continue to climb - trains use fuel 8 times more efficiently than trucks, so they're affected by fuel price increase much less.

Now, Juan's post (and I suppose this one) are timely, because Bush is signing the US's energy bill today. Huzzah! The US will continue to offer massive subsidies to coal, oil, and nuclear energy while offering no practical help to renewable energy. Surprisingly, the bill does emphasize energy efficiency and conservation. This is surprising given that Cheney famously sneered at conservation, calling it a "virtue" but denying that it could help America. I'm watching Bush's speech now - he very pointedly called conservation a "public virtue" and important to America. So this is all nice and fuzzy.

Of course, none of this actually matters. OPEC is announcing a production increase - but nobody seriously thinks that will change matters. (With prices where they are, the member countries have almost certainly been pumping all they can, OPEC or no.) The President of the world's largest energy-consuming nation announces an energy bill, and nobody expects any significant changes. Meanwhile, the price of oil continues to climb - almost $64 today.

The reality is this: Even Exxon (!) is admitting to the reality of peak oil. Someday soon we are going to start taking less oil out of the ground than we did the day before, and things are going to start changing. When that happens, we're going to have to start taking non-fossil energy seriously.

I Am Overjoyed!

I will probably not sleep for days, because of this. A free, open-sourced remake of Wing Commander: Privateer.

My friends from high school will understand.

Greatest Headline EVAR

"River flowing with cocaine indicates 'vast' drug use"

Did they think it indicated something else?

"Why don't you try American girls?"

Just watched Some Like It Hot, starring Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, and most memorably Marilyn Monroe. Monroe's presence on this Earth, however brief, is pretty solid evidence for the case that, not only is there a God, but he's a guy.

"...like Jello on springs."

The other thing of note in that movie is the scene where "Daphne" (Lemmon) announces that he's going to get married to a rich millionaire - this despite the fact that both men have Y chromosomes. Trying to snap him out of it, Curtis yells "Why would a man want to marry another man?!!"

Lemmon responds, without hesitation, "Security!"

Exactly.

Free Curricula, Free other

Jim Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, is blogging at Larry Lessig's blog. His theme for the week is "10 Things that will be free." #2 is school curricula, Kindergarten through University. It's a pretty idea, but I think he's wrong when he says

In the long run, it will be very difficult for proprietary textbook publishers to compete with freely licensed alternatives. An open project with dozens of professors adapting and refining a textbook on a particular subject will be a very difficult thing for a proprietary publisher to compete with. The point is: there are a huge number of people who are qualified to write these books, and the tools are being created to leave them to do that.

It won't be difficult for traditional publishers to fight this at all. Textbook publishers are a not-inconsiderable lobby group, and textbooks are, as we see in Japan, a very political question. There's no way they go down without a fight. There's a second question of how to pay "dozens of professors" to adapt and refine textbooks. Presumably, not many are going to do this out of their spare time.

This is unfortunate, because a free curriculum could do a lot of good in the world - something an experiment in Kenya is already showing:

Since the Kenyan government introduced free primary school education two years ago, the resulting influx of kids has meant that resources are spread as thinly as ever.

Classrooms are crowded, and the all-too-familiar scenario of children sharing outdated textbooks is still very much in evidence.

However, in Class Five, things are just a little bit different. Fifty-four 11-year-old students are willing guinea pigs in an extraordinary experiment aimed at using technology to deliver education across the continent.

In the Eduvision pilot project, textbooks are out, customised Pocket PCs, referred to as e-slates, are very much in.

They are wi-fi enabled and run on licence-free open source software to keep costs down.

"The e-slates contain all the sorts of information you'd find in a textbook and a lot more," said Eduvision co-founder Maciej Sudra.

"They contain textual information, visual information and questions. Within visual information we can have audio files, we can have video clips, we can have animations.

I've said it before - the Open Source revolution may have been born in the west, but it's going to mature in the developing world.

On that note, I've recently installed Ubuntu Linux on my computer, and am tinkering with it between blogging and other things. So far it's a pleasant surprise. Very easy to install, and easy to use. Also pleasing for an ideologue like me, Ubuntu still carries the Gnu/Linux banner proudly:

Ubuntu is a community driven project to create an operating system and a full set of applications using free and open source software. At the core of the Ubuntu Philosophy of Software Freedom are these core philosophical ideals:

1. Every computer user should have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, share, change and improve their software for any purpose, without paying licensing fees.
2. Every computer user should be able to use their software in the language of their choice.
3. Every computer user should be given every opportunity to use software, even if they work under a disability.

It comes with Firefox and Open Office (using Open Office, I've written all of my papers for three years of university without once having to use the thrice-damned MS Word) and installing new software is pretty easy.

If, like me, most of your computer usage is either reading or writing, Ubuntu might be a good fit. Check it out.

Thank God It's All A Dream...

Or rather, a far-left Marxist conspiracy:

The unprecedented collapse of an ice-shelf in Antarctica could indirectly lead to a significant rise in global sea levels, researchers say.

The Larsen B ice shelf covered more than 3,000 square kilometres and was 200 metres thick until its northern part disintegrated in the 1990s. Three years ago, the central part also broke up.

Further delusions from the Comintern:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The 2005 Atlantic hurricane season will be worse than previously expected, with as many as 21 tropical storms and 11 hurricanes, the U.S. government predicted on Tuesday.

"Although we have already seen a record-setting seven tropical storms during June and July, much of the season's activity is still to come," said Gerry Bell, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration meteorologist told reporters....

A study published Sunday in the science journal Nature said hurricanes have become more destructive during the last 30 years, and could see their intensity increase as a result of global warming.

Does the bolshevik menace know no limits?

The World Health Organisation (WHO) says global warming could lead to a major increase in insect-borne diseases in Britain and Europe.

It has called for urgent government action to prepare for the spread of diseases like malaria and encephalitis.

Good thing we don't have to worry about any of this.

(Seriously? Malaria in London? Time was, that was a disease for the colonies!)

Memo to Americans:

Our new head of state is way better looking then your head of state.

That is all.

Bolton Strikes!

Some of you may remember what Bush said when he named his new ambassador to the United Nations:

Bush said the job at the United Nations was "too important to leave vacant any longer, especially during a war and a vital debate about U.N. reform."

Ah, excellent point. The UN is in need of reform, most especially reform of the antiquated Security Council, which still looks like it was made in 1945. (Which it was, of course.) So Bolton's first job should be working on expanding the Security Council, right?

Ha! Just kidding, India, Japan, Germany, Brazil!

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - China and the United States have agreed to work together to defeat plans to expand the prestigious U.N. Security Council at this time, China's U.N. ambassador said on Thursday.

The agreement came in a brief meeting with John Bolton, the George W. Bush administration's new ambassador to the United Nations, Ambassador Wang Guangya told reporters.

Great work, John. How exactly does America intend to build a strong relationship with India if it keeps slapping it down like this?

The Great Game, Pt. III?

Something important happened last week, and it hasn't really registered yet. How important? I can't say. But I think it's noteworthy.

Last week, the US military was told to pack up and leave the airbase in Uzbekistan. The base (specifically Karshi-Khanabad airbase, I assume built by the Soviets) was being used extensively by the US for it's operations in Afghanistan. It's possible Uzbekistan's president, the loathesome Islam "I like my dissidents boiled in oil" Karimov may reconsider, but it's unlikely.

The way the New York Times reports it, you'd believe this was all a dispute over human rights abuses. Indeed, Karimov is a pretty loathsome fella - the crack above about boiling people in oil is no joke. But let's be serious - the US has never let human rights abuses get in the way of the military necessities. It is possible that Karimov decided that the US was getting too pushy, but actually kicking the US off an airbase is a pretty precipitous move. Most thugs usually find ways of dealing with American human rights complaints short of that.

So what was behind Uzbekistan's move? Well, while we were all bopping to Live 8, a group called the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, or SCO, was demanding that the US withdraw from Central Asia. Four weeks later, the US gets the boot from Uzbekistan. So who makes up this apparently powerful group, SCO? The governments of Russia, China, and the "Russian 'Stans", including Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, where the US has airbases. I think that - human rights disputes aside - Karimov took a look at a map, and realized that whatever Uzbekistan had, Russia and China will always be bigger customers than the US. When Russia and China said "jump", this is Karimov's way of saying "High enough?"

Put more clearly, the US just lost an important (albeit not crucial) ally to pressure from a third party. And Uzbekistan was important to the prosecution of the war in Afghanistan - the other base the US has been using in Kyrgyzstan is much further away, and the new Kyrgyz president has also emphatically endorsed the demands of the SCO. He's also said he doesn't intend to kick the Americans out, however. Whether he holds to that position will be interesting to see, given that China, Russia, and even Uzbekistan itself can apply a great deal of pressure to tiny Kyrgyzstan.

So is this the start of a new round of competition for energy resources in Central Asia? If it is, then China and Russia have just scored a home run in the first inning. There's been some thought that democratic India might be able to act as a counterweight to China - and that this is behind recent American moves to shore up relations with New Delhi. However, the Americans should realize that in this fight, they're on their own. India needs oil and gas as much as the next rapidly-growing economy, and isn't going to jeopardize their supply just because the Americans need something.

Back in the bad old days, the "Great Game" was what they called British and Russian competition for control of Central Asia. Some labelled the US-Soviet conflict in Afghanistan a "Second Great Game." Are we seeing act 3? Despite the post title, I'm not sure. It could be this all blows over. It could be that I'm overreacting. But...

But... I just finished reading a biography of the British Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith, the man who led Britain through the first half of World War I. One of the things that struck me was the sheer number of "near misses" that happened before the crisis which started the Great War. Going back to 1905 and even further, there were a number of events that people were worried would start the general war they all expected. With all the talk of the new Cold War with China, I'm afraid that if we start on this new Great Game, we'll just be repeating a very, very sad story. Albeit with a new, much flashier ending.

A Profile In Courage

Buried at the end of this article about deteriorating Chinese-Japanese relations comes this quote from a Chinese author:

"We criticize Yasukuni Shrine, but we have Mao Zedong's shrine in the middle of Beijing, which is our own Yasukuni," he said. "This is a shame to me, because Mao Zedong killed more Chinese than the Japanese did. Until we are able to recognize our own problems, the Japanese won't take us seriously."

Hoo boy. To call Mao Zedong a war criminal takes enormous balls in China. On the plus side, the only thing the article says happened to him was his book "disappearing" from bookshelves. Hopefully that's all that does happen.

Steal This Policy

Damn. If they keep this up, I might even vote for them. As my father weeps.

OTTAWA (CP) — The Conservatives have moved into the fast lane on green transportation policy, promising to make bus and subway passes tax deductible if they form the next federal government.

Details of the proposal, aimed at attracting urban voters, are to revealed Thursday at the party's caucus meeting in Toronto.

Seriously. Will some other party endorse this proposal so I don't have to vote for the Harperites?

Ooh, Snap

Joseph Stiglitz on America's patronizing attitude towards China's economic policies:

The US economy is growing at a third the pace of China’s. Poverty is rising and median household incomes are, in real terms, declining. America’s total net savings are much less than China’s. China produces far more of the engineers and scientists that are necessary to compete in the global economy than the US, while America is cutting its expenditures on basic research as it increases military spending. Meanwhile, as America’s debt continues to balloon, its president wants to make tax cuts for the richest people permanent. With all this in mind, China’s leaders may not feel they need to seek advice from the US on how to manage either the exchange rate or the economy.

Read the whole thing - Stiglitz is a phenomenal author, and incidentally winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics.

Staying with China, it appears (via Brad Delong) that the AEI is trying to make trouble again. Not being satisfied with having advocated an unwinnable war in Iraq, the AEI is apparently trying to sign the US up for an unwinnable war against China. The funny thing is, as Justin Logan has remarked, that China is doing nothing - absolutely nothing - that you wouldn't expect from any self-respecting nation. But I really had to laugh when I read the actual article. It's simply bizarre. This paragraph near the end made me giggle:

For one thing, as these annual Pentagon reports have repeatedly pointed out, China shrouds its military plans and senior decision-making in secrecy.

What, as opposed to the bastion of openness and accountability that is the Pentagon? Seriously, it's almost three years later and nobody's quite sure what "The Reason" for the war in Iraq was. What does that say about the secrecy of government?

But what we can observe could hardly lead anyone to think that we should be so confident about China's intentions. After all, this is the country that now ranks third in the world in overall defense spending, and the one that has increased its military budget fastest over the past decade, with growth in military expenditures outpacing even China's own remarkable growth in GDP. General Pace had better hope his statement doesn't go down in history alongside George Tenet's now infamous, "It's a slam dunk, Mr. President."

First off: The AEI doesn't get to make fun of George Tenet. Tenet didn't say anything that the AEI wasn't saying for much longer - if Tenet was wrong, than the AEI is super-extra double wrong. Secondly, we all are still hyperventilating over China's military spending, and we all need to calm down. China's military has been shrinking, while it's spending is growing. It's trying to make a smaller, more modern army capable of fighting modern war. While that may scare the US, it's a perfectly reasonable policy - one which, by the way, the US followed at the end of the Vietnam war. And by the way, China's military spending still has a far higher proportion of pensioners to pay from the old days. And while China's military spending is growing quickly, it's still about 10-20% of what the US spends.

I keep trying to figure out what scares the American military-industrial establishment so about China. I mean, hostility to the west isn't new, neither is human rights abuses. Hell, the US has had allies who were both those things. My personal belief is that what scares certain hawks in the US so much is the simple fact of China's growing power - even if China were an America-friendly democracy, the US would be afraid. We're rapidly approaching the point where some new entity is likely to join America as a superpower - India, China, the EU, someone. Maybe several someones. That this is worrying to certain "America uber alles" thinkers isn't surprising. But just because China wants to be powerful, that doesn't make them evil or something. Frankly, if America has the right to intervene in Asian regional politics (which most hawks certainly believe) then China certainly does.

My advice for US policy makers (as Angelica pointed out, I'm mustering all the authority a Canadian blogger can) would be to wait. I don't fundamentally believe the Communist Party is destined to be in power for much longer, relatively speaking. Certainly, by the time China is ready to seriously challenge the US for some kind of regional leadership in Asia, I would be surprised if the Communists are still running the place. Meanwhile, Japan and India (not to mention Russia) continue to surround China with serious opponents if things ever get out of hand. Seeing as continents don't move very quickly at all, I think the US can calm down.

No No No No No

In response to the Mars Homestead Project, Chris Shults at Gristmill writes "I'm all for space exploration, but maybe we should get our act together on this planet before we go mucking up others."

This oft-repeated sentiment drives me absolutely insane. First of all, what does "mucking up" other planets consist of? Mars - to the best of our knowledge - is either dead, or nearly so. Do we wait until we get our act together before we upset some rocks? That's absurd. It's even worse if you believe (as I do) that a human presence in space and on Mars can contribute in a number of important ways to helping the rest of us on Earth "clean up our act." As just one example, solar power collected in orbit could be beamed back to Earth at much higher efficiency than ground-based solar power.

I find this attitude really unfortunate for another reason - space exploration and space science has only helped the environmental movement. It was pictures taken by the Apollo astronauts which first showed our planet to be the isolated oasis in space that it is. Similar pictures from space showed the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. It was measurements from the Space Shuttle which finally confirmed the damage that CFCs were doing to the ozone layer.

I recently had a somewhat tiresome argument over NASA's budget - specifically, the Deep Impact probe. It was a pretty common argument - basically, the money that NASA spends could be better spent "here on Earth." Progressives have been making this argument since Walter Mondale nearly killed the Apollo Program - months before it had a spectacular success with the Apollo 8 mission. There are three obvious problems with this line of reasoning: One: Where do you think the money is spent? NASA employs tens of thousands of people across the US. That money is allspent "here on Earth", creating a lot of well-paying jobs. Objection Two: If you were going to criticize America's spending priorities, why would you quibble over NASA's paltry budget, when the Pentagon gets larger budget increases some years than NASA's entire budget? Objection Three: NASA is probably the one activity the US government spends large sums on that doesn't contribute in some way to global human misery. All NASA does is put people in orbit, and put space probes on Mars (and in deep space, around Jupiter and Saturn, etc.) Compared to the FBI, NSA, CIA, and the Pentagon, NASA is practically the Mother Theresa of US government spending. And yet Progressives have always been extremely critical of NASA's "wasteful" spending. It's worth noting that, during the Apollo program, American households spent as much money on cosmetics as they did on space exploration.

My personal theory is that liberals and progressives have long since realized that fighting military spending is a game of diminishing returns - every time you make a cut, the public elects a Republican who jacks it right back up again. So rather than go after the elephant on the stage, liberals go after an easier target - NASA. It's sad, because NASA has done a lot to give evidence and ammunition to environmentalism. By attacking NASA (and space exploration in general), liberals are biting one of the hands that feeds them.

Rubes

So the US Congress passed an Energy Bill which, to put it charitably, will have almost no effect on the US's Energy problems. As expected, the Republican party voted for the bill, and will be rewarded handsomly for their sacrifice. Depressingly, however, Democrats also voted for the bill. Why? Let's just say that it has hooves and oinks:

Jay Rockefeller in West Virginia? Clean coal. Tim Johnson of South Dakota? Ethanol. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota? Ethanol. Evan Bayh of Indiana? Ethanol. Oh, and cleaner school buses. And every statement contains some variation of Obama's "reluctantly" -- "this bill doesn't go far enough," "it's just a first step," "we missed a big chance." Great.

Kent Conrad of North Dakota? Clean coal and ethanol. Note the language: "This bill takes steps toward greater energy independence for the United States and lays the groundwork for a plan that promotes substantial investment in North Dakota's energy sector." Half of that statement is horsepoop. Can you guess which?

Now, I don't think that Democrats also believe any of this, but it's interesting that, when they want to support the co-rulers of American politics (Their Majesties King Coal and King Corn), Democrats at least feel they have to dress it up in Green burlesque. I'm not sure whether that makes me happy or not.

Are Americans Bloodthirsty?

via Battlepanda, Publius at Legal Fiction asks why

To be “credible” on the national level, you had to have supported the invasion. As I noted yesterday, one of the things Hillary has going for her is that she voted pro-war across the board. That's insane - pure psychosis. But true nonetheless.

It is insane. And it's accompanied by a very disturbing other form of insanity - the belief that somehow America could have won in Vietnam, "if only..." Depending on where exactly in the hawkosphere you sit, "if only..." leads to "incompetent Generals", "LBJ", "Nixon", etc, etc. What is missing from the entire debate in Vietnam is that the Americans lost, period. Nixon pulled out before the defeat could be total, but there was no chance of victory.

It is very similar in some respects to the idea prevalent in pre-Nazi, post-WWI Germany: That Germany lost because she was "betrayed" by the Communists, the Jews, etc etc. David Neiwert has been watching this trend for some time, and Josh Marshall found an example relating to the current Iraq war. Karl Rove's recent speech talking about liberals wanting to offer terrorists "therapy" is a similar attempt to point to the left as the "weakness within" that, it logically follows, should be purged.

In reality of course, the German army was beaten in the field by the combination of new tactics and the American entry in to the war - the Germans were outnumbered, outgunned, and (crucially) outfought. The same holds true of Vietnam. By the end of the war, the US Army was so demoralized that withdrawal was the only option. Focusing on the activities of Jane Fonda or other relics of the 1970s simply obscures the fact that America did not have the means to accomplish it's goals. It lost. Period. There is no credible scenario in which the US could have "won" the war, save the near-impossible event that the North would have accepted the existence of a separate (and to the Communist's eyes, still colonial) South.

And yet in both countries - Weimar Germany and modern America - it was/is suicide in national politics to say that the homeland was wrong to go to war. (It's worth remembering that Hitler did not invent Germany's feeling of national victimhood after WWI. Every point on the political spectrum fundamentally agreed that German had been mistreated by the victorious powers.) The only exception might have been Howard Dean, but we saw how he was treated by the press. America, either knowingly or not, has constructed institutions that prevent the uncomfortable facts from actually being spoken where they might do some good. Kerry tried to run on a "kind of, sort of, opposed to the leadership but not the war" campaign, and this really shows just how constrained American leaders (and hopefuls) are when it comes to telling the truth. It was obvious last year that the war was going badly. Yet the American people were (marginally) more supportive of Bush than Kerry, despite the obvious.

So American progressives have to address a simple question. Would Dean (or another candidate who shared Dean's anti-war stance) have done better than Kerry? I don't think so. I think the roots of American militarism go too deep. I think that Iraq could cease to exist as a nation-state (a likely scenario in any coming civil war) and most Americans would not only refuse to see Bush's responsibility, they would refuse to admit that their country has done wrong. I think this is the crucial problem for American progressives. Many Americans still labor under the notion that their country is a Good one. Good, as in morally superior - the "City on the Hill." Even if it's never stated so baldly, it really is impossible for some to admit that their country could sin. But the idea that America did something it shouldn't have - say, start a war in Indochina or Mesopotamia - implies a sin.

I should say that I don't think this is a particularly American trait - most countries would probably react to defeat the same way. The example of Japan is instructive - despite a lot of implicit admissions of Japan's war guilt, it is still extremely difficult for any Japanese leader to come out and say that Japan's role in WWII was wrong. Hell, in Canada the government won't even admit that deporting the Acadians was wrong, for fear of lawsuits. Of course, in the case of America this problem becomes far more important - whatever we did to the Acadians, Canada doesn't have nuclear weapons.

Gwynne Dyer has written before that America needs to lose, and quickly, in Iraq, so they can learn to face reality. If I thought the last step was possible, I'd agree with the first one. Either way, the only thing I can say for now is for American progressive to start thinking of ways to explain to people 1) Why the war was wrong, even if Saddam was a monster, and 2) Why America was wrong, even if the war had been won.

I'm Several Days Faster Than The New York Times

I swear when I wrote this I hadn't read this.

It's good to see NASA is finally admitting reality. Ever since the Shuttle program was gutted in the Nixon Administration, NASA should have bit the bullet and re-designed the Shuttle. As you can see by the NYT article, most of the parts of the Shuttle can still be used, but by reorganizing the parts you get a much more sensible design. People have talked for years about building a "Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicle" (SDLV is an acronym you might see a lot) and it's a good idea for a number of reasons, and a bad reason for a few. It's a good reason for the simple fact that the Shuttle's parts are already availble, and they've got lots of data on their performance. You could argue that it's a bad idea to throw out all these parts when it will be more expensive to start all over again. Indeed, the original critics of the Shuttle program made exactly that argument - the Saturn V and it's predecessors were well-tested designs that, with some small tweaking, could be made at lower costs to the taxpayer because they already existed, whereas nobody then knew when the Shuttle would be ready.

However, there's also an argument to be made that equivalent or better performance could be had for lower cost by using newer, equally-tested parts. For example, rather than using the Space Shuttle Main Engines (SSMEs) which were designed in the 1970s, or using the old J-2 rockets from the Apollo, a number of people have advocated using the Boeing RS-83. I'm not well-versed enough to say if there's an objectively better rocket engine, but it's worth noting that while NASA talks about a steady evolution from the Shuttle, a number of companies are proposing more revolutionary changes.

And one added note - ATK Thiokol, the company that is apparently most emphatic about the models used in the NYT piece (they've put together a website called Safe, Simple, and Soon to back this plan), is also the company which makes the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) for the Shuttle. That's my main reservation about this whole plan, in that the manned space capsule would be launched aboard a modified SRB. The SRBs are, it should be said, incredibly polluting, somewhat dangerous, and were incidentally the piece of equipment which destroyed the Challenger. They have been on the list of Shuttle parts most needing to be replaced or at least redesigned for decades now. You could get better performance out of a liquid-fueled rocket. Of course, ATK Thiokol is incredibly disingenuous in their website when they say SRB's can't "explode". Of course they can, like any rocket. While I like the overall shape of this plan, if keeping the SRBs is part of it, it's liable to get more astronauts killed.

Ah...

The glorious holiday we Canadians call... the Civic Holiday. We're so whimsical.

Actually, in Toronto the holiday is known as Simcoe day, after John Graves Simcoe. Simcoe was the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada (now whimsically known as Ontario) and was most notable for effectively abolishing slavery in Upper Canada. He didn't abolish it outright, but forbade new slaves from being brought in to Canada, and decreed that children born to slave mothers would be free on their 25th birthday.

Slavery essentially ceased to exist in Upper Canada by 1810. (The United States invaded two years later to bring us freedom.) For reference, slavery was abolished in the rest of the British Empire a quarter century later, and more than a half century later in the United States.

Anyway, Simcoe is as close as Canada comes to a Lincoln figure, and we don't even recognize his greatness nation-wide - Toronto is the only juridiction that calls it Simcoe Day. I know the rest of the country hates this city, but in this case at least, the country has something to learn from us.

War In SPAAAAACE

Lawrence "If Kuwait grew carrots, we wouldn't give a damn" Korb, an excellent commentator on military affairs, lays a smackdown to advocates of space-based weapons. Essentially, the oldest and simplest argument against space-based weapons is still the best. In essence, for every dollar the US spends on space-based weaponry, it's adversaries will spend pennies on countermeasures - and the adversaries will win out. This is especially true for things like space-based Ballistic Missile Defense, but even for the less fantastical ideas. Any weapon placed in orbit is immediately seen, and is incredibly vulnerable. As many people have pointed out, once you've put a multi-billion dollar satellite in orbit, it can be destroyed by a million dollar rocket with a $10 bucket of nails.

This is why, back in the day, the US agreed with the USSR to cease work on anti-satellite weaponry - it was destabilizing to the entire surveillance satellite network of both countries. The only recourse was for each country to threaten nuclear war if their satellite were blown up, which wasn't somewhere even Reagan wanted to go. Bizarrely, space-based weapons that were originally hoped to escape Mutual Assured Destruction ended up only strengthening it.

Go read the Korb piece. He's generally worth reading.

Good News For Everyone

Cornell University is reporting that organic farming is more than competitive with conventional methods. (Link goes to the Treehugger article. The report itself isn't available online, but Cornell's press release is here.)

First off, this is excellent news for everyone on the planet who eats, breathes, or drinks water. Sadly, the way we get our food is one of the largest sources of water and air pollution. The idea that it should be possible to grow our food without resorting to fertilizers and pesticides (which are ineffective in the long-term anyway) is excellent, period.

One of the most interesting things that I saw was this:

The fact that organic agriculture systems also absorb and retain significant amounts of carbon in the soil has implications for global warming, Pimentel said, pointing out that soil carbon in the organic systems increased by 15 to 28 percent, the equivalent of taking about 3,500 pounds of carbon dioxide per hectare out of the air.

Among the study's other findings:

• In the drought years, 1988 to 1998, corn yields in the [organic] legume-based system were 22 percent higher than yields in the conventional system.
• The soil nitrogen levels in the organic farming systems increased 8 to 15 percent. Nitrate leaching was about equivalent in the organic and conventional farming systems.
• Organic farming reduced local and regional groundwater pollution by not applying agricultural chemicals.

So it gets better and better - not only does organic food sequester more CO2 than conventional agriculture, but organic agriculture actually resists droughts better than conventional methods. This means that not only can organic farming help combat climate change, but it's also likely to survive whatever climate change does happen.

Now, if we can bring the costs down (shifting subsidies, anyone?) maybe we can finally get our food industry off of what Vandana Shiva has called the chemical "treadmill" - the process by which we kill the land with fertilizers (requiring more fertilizers) and produce pesticide-resistant insects, requiring more pesticide. It's better for farmers (lower input costs), better for the environment, and incidentally better for humans.

You've Made It, Bucky!

Buckminster Fuller, the patron saint of this blog, has been Farked.

To see where the Fark link leads, click here.

Hooray for Big Guvmint

Rick Perlstein has written a piece advocating that Democrats of all stripes come out for universal health care, noting that - duh - it had the advantage of already being supported (in theory) by the American public.

It is the duty of every generation of Democrats to produce new geese to lay 70 years of golden eggs. It is the only way our party has grown—as Bill Kristol puts it, by reviving the reputation of the Democrats as the generous protector of middle-class interests. They know they're screwed if we're credible in our pledge to deliver new kinds of power to ordinary people in their every day lives.

Democratic congressmen can do that, for example, by making a credible collective pledge that if you vote Democrat enough you will never pay another medical bill as long as you live. You really think people wouldn't stop voting Republican then?...

Remember when Dick Morris used to tell President Clinton that he couldn't afford not to be on the side of any issue supported by 60 percent of Americans? Paul Krugman reported a poll that 72 percent of Americans favor "government-guaranteed health insurance for all."

Ah, serendipity. I just finished reading Linda McQuaig's book The Wealthy Banker's Wife, written in the early 1990s and still depressingly relevant. Interestingly, she makes the same point as Perlstein: Progressives need to fight for broad, universal social programs. There are a number of good reasons for this. First is the moral one - government should help everyone. Second is the political one - universal programs (like Social Security in the US, or Medicare in Canada) are far more difficult to kill than targeted ones, like welfare. Third, and finally, is the financial one - universal programs, being easier to maintain, actually do more good for less money than targeted plans.

Perlstein talks about health care, and I'm hugely in favour of the US adopting a universal system, if only to save Canada's health care system from increasing American predation. But it's worth noting that the universalist method is, well, universal. If the government can afford it (and we can, easily) why not provide free post-secondary education to everyone? As our economy becomes increasingly knowledge-based and professional, we can't afford to restrict access to necessary education. Seeing as the government in Canada already spends a lot of money to guarantee for-profit student loans, it would even makes a certain amount of sense financially - though as I noted above, that's the least of our concerns.

Of course, the mother of all universal programs is the idea of a guaranteed annual income - effectively, the government would either top-up your paycheck or send the money to you. Years ago the National Post reported that the Liberals were considering this as a new program to solidify Liberal rule for a generation - but then I never saw another story on it again. Whether it has a chance in hell is debatable, but the social and economic benefits of higher consumption and less poverty are hard to argue. Bizarrely, it's not just socialists who'd like to see a guaranteed income scheme - Milton Friedman has also advocated a similar scheme. Being in agreement with Friedman leaves me with the feeling that my eyes should be bleeding.

So I say bring on the heavy hand of government! I was never wedded to my work ethic in the first place.

Godspeed Discovery

Okay, so I'm still catching up. But I'm pleased to see that it now looks like Discovery will actually make it home safely (knock on wood.)

When Columbia was lost, there was a spate of articles essentially arguing that space exploration was either a) unnecessary, or b) better done by robots anyway. I reject argument A, and am lukewarm to argument B. Jim Lewis guestblogging at DefenseTech gives a recent example of the "unmanned is best" mindset. For specific tasks, robots can easily outperform humans, period. However, for general science or large-scale exploration, crewed missions are vital.

This isn't to say that the Shuttle should be maintained. The shuttle has never been a useful space vehicle, and never could have met the lofty promises that NASA made in the early years. (One flight a month??) There are two reasons for this, and both have to do with the basic design of the Shuttle.

The first problem is that the Shuttle is designed to carry both cargo and humans. This makes no sense whatsoever, as the cost of man-rating a vehicle is an order of magnitude higher than a cargo-carrying rocket. NASA orginally justified this choice based on the possibility of recovering satellites, that they might be brought back to Earth for repair and refurbishment. There are two problems with this scenario, however. First, satellites are usually obsolete long before they become damaged beyond repair, making it more sensible to simply de-orbit them rather than repairing them. Secondly, even if you theoretically did want to bring the satellite home, it would make far more sense to design an unmanned cargo shuttle. You could still use most of the same parts, but design two different models of Shuttle.

Of course, it probably still doesn't make sense to build a reusable cargo shuttle - disposable rockets are usually cheaper and more reliable. But this was how it was sold to Congress back in ye olde Nixon administration.

Flowing from this choice (to use the same vehicle for two jobs) comes the second problem - the design of the Shuttle launch stack. Because of the size of the combined passenger/freight Shuttle, the orbiter needs to be seated on the side of the volatile launch stack. A smaller passenger-only orbiter could instead be placed on top of a single rocket and launched without fear of falling debris, unlike the current Shuttle. As we've seen with Discovery, even years of attention aren't enough to eliminate the problem of falling debris. The far simpler solution is to place the orbiter out of the way of harm. Some have even argued that a top-launched orbiter might have survived a Challenger-style explosion during launch. In any case, splitting up the tasks of a reusable spacecraft really is the only way to do it - something NASA now seems to be admitting, 30 years too late.

This isn't to say that the Shuttle could not have been put to a more profitable use - I've become a rather passionate foe of the International Space Station, simply because it will be unlikely to serve any serious scientific or exploratory purpose. If you'd like to see a company that has better ideas for what to do with the Shuttle, check out these guys. They've got an excellent rebuttal to Bush's proposed Mars/Moon plan here. Critically, they are a private, for-profit group looking to do more than just science in space - they're looking to sell products and services back to the Earth, including Solar Power Satellites.

In any case, I hope the Shuttle program is put out of it's misery soon - frankly, the ISS is now so much less than it's original proposals that the difference between completing it or abandoning it is really negligible, except for the billions of dollars that have already been spent.

If Grassland Survives, The Terrorists Win

Via Battlepanda, I find myself doing something I'd so far avoided - reading a John Tierney column. God, he's really an awful wingnut pundit. But the substance of his column is interesting - environmentalists have agreed to buy grazing permits from ranchers to protect a national park. Excellent example of environmentalists working with the community - the greens win, the ranchers win, so everybody's happy, right?

No, not right. For reasons that are beyond my feeble understanding, Republicans have pressured the Interior department to stop the sale. Angelica asks if this is simple spite motivating the GOP, and I'm leaning towards yes - for the GOP, anything - absolutely anything - which smacks of "environmentalism" has to be fought tooth and nail, no matter how appealing it otherwise would be.

'Nuff Said

I haven't yet written about the whole GTA: San Andreas controversy, largely because I can't really work up the energy to care. So I'm thankful that, as with so many things, Scott Kurtz manages to summarize the issue perfectly.

Punditry and Anti-Punditry

Ah, the New York Times. The only material in the entire universe that can withstand the massive release of energy caused when punditry and anti-punditry collide. It's like the dilithium crystal of newsprint. Today's example is Bob Herbert's column:

You can run through all the wildly varying rationales for this [Iraq] war: the weapons of mass destruction (that were never found), the need to remove the unmitigated evil of Saddam (whom we had once cozied up to), the connection to Al Qaeda (which was bogus), and one of President Bush's favorites, the need to fight the terrorists "over there" so we won't have to fight them here at home.

All the rationales have to genuflect before "The Prize," which was the title of Mr. Yergin's Pulitzer-Prize-winning book.

It's the oil, stupid.

Holy hell!! To see such virulent anti-Americanism on the pages of the Paper of Record, no less! Meanwhile, of course, Tom Friedman has (since the beginning of this sorry catastrophe) maintained that the war had nothing to do with oil. Both share the same space (the NYT op-ed page) and yet, miraculously, the streets of New York are not a smoking crater from what should be a case of mutual annihilation. I'm sure that particle physicists from all over the world will be streaming in to New York to investigate this phenomenon.

More importantly, it's really nice to see the mainstream media acknowledge what the sentient have known for three years - any way with Iraq was going to be at least partly about oil.

Plame Update

Ah, the stories begin to unravel. "Chatter" (as the Pentagon would put it) now seems to indicate that, as I suspected, Miller is claiming the protection of the first ammendment so that she doesn't have to use the fifth. To put that in, you know, english, I turn to Arianna Huffington:

It's July 6, 2003, and Joe Wilson's now famous op-ed piece appears in the Times, raising the idea that the Bush administration has "manipulate[d]" and "twisted" intelligence "to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." Miller, who has been pushing this manipulated, twisted, and exaggerated intel in the Times for months, goes ballistic. Someone is using the pages of her own paper to call into question the justification for the war -- and, indirectly, much of her reporting. The idea that intelligence was being fixed goes to the heart of Miller's credibility. So she calls her friends in the intelligence community and asks, Who is this guy? She finds out he's married to a CIA agent. She then passes on the info about Mrs. Wilson to Scooter Libby (Newsday has identified a meeting Miller had on July 8 in Washington with an "unnamed government official"). Maybe Miller tells Rove too -- or Libby does. The White House hatchet men turn around and tell Novak and Cooper. The story gets out.

So here we have it. If true (and this is really just Arianna's word at this point) Miller isn't protecting a source - she's protecting herself against a charge that could have her imprisoned for a long, long time. Of course, the First ammendment is so much sexier than the fifth (which has unfortunate associations with both Communists and Ken Lay). I'm personally inclined to believe it, but you'll all have to make up your own minds.

Wow.

Al Gore just got Atrios' endorsement for 2008 - shortly after Matthew Yglesias'. Gee, if this keeps up, Al Gore could have the all-important (sarcasm alert!) blogistan endorsement by dinnertime!

One note, though: If Al Gore, circa 2000 shows up, I'm voting Green. If Al Gore, circa 2002-present shows up to kick some ass and take names, then I'm moving to Iowa for 2007.

Of course, I'd really, really, really hope that this is the only way in which Al Gore imitates the career of Richard Nixon.

Speaking of Lies

Ah, the Pentagon. Is there a place in this universe more amoral and immoral, more corrupt and careless, more of a cesspool? Outside of the event horizon of a black hole, I honestly can't think of a single place in the universe where bright light more fears to tread.

First, we get the logical corollary to the press lying for the military - the military lying to the press. Billmon has more. What's really funny his how bad the lie is - I mean, if you're going to fabricate quotes, don't use the same one twice! I've known first-year undergrads who plagiarize better than this. And not at the cost of $1 billion a week, neither.

Second, the Pentagon continues to refuse to release records of the abuse at Abu Ghraib, which allegedly contains video of young Iraqis being raped by US soldiers. Good work!

Finally, Bush has threatened to veto any law - including the current military spending bill in Congress - that limits his power to torture people without due process.

Sweet Jesus it must be hard to wake up a Republican. I'm tempted to scream "How did it come to this?" but I'm afraid of the answer.

NPR is Excellent, While Movies Suck

I know conservatives must hate it, but during my brief sojourn in to the land of the Spangled Stars, I did get to enjoy NPR. Which, for all it's faults, contains some excellent programming. For instance, an interview NPR did with Edward Jay Epstein was fascinating, and it led to his Slate pieces - which I could of course only read once I got home. Thankfully my memory didn't fail me, and I was able to find his latest Slate piece:

In 1948, with studios earning all their revenues from the box office, that audience was moviegoers. Even as late as 1980, when the audience had television sets and video players, studios still earned 55 percent of their money from people who actually went to movie theaters. In 2005, however, those moviegoers provided the studios with less than 15 percent of their worldwide revenues, while couch potatoes provided it with 85.8 percent.

I had naturally assumed that the rapid adoption of DVDs had changed the movie business, but I hadn't dreamed that things had swung that far. Obviously this has been a long-term trend - beginning with the introduction of TV in the 1950s - but to think that studios now lose money on their box-office releases is astonishing. Congratulations, technology: You've made the traditional movie theatre essentially a marketing device for the DVD market.

You should really read Epstein's entire piece - and his others on Slate too. But let's take a moment to realize what bullshit the movie studio's anti-piracy campaign has been. After much wailing an gnashing of teeth over the declining box-office take, and worries about a slowdown in DVD sales, Epstein lays this on us:

Instead of a box-office decline, the studios actually took in more from the U.S. box office in the first quarter of 2005 ($870.2 million) than they did in the similar period of 2004 ($797.1 million). So even though the total audience at movie theaters declined during this period, this came mainly at the expense of independent, foreign, and documentary movies. For the Hollywood studios (and their subsidaries), in fact, there was no slump at all....

The numbers tell the story. In the first three months of 2005, the studios earned $5.67 billion dollars from DVD sales, compared to $4.375 billion in the same period in 2004. DVD sales were up $1.29 billion, an incredible rise of 28 percent, which exceeded last year's increase. So there was hardly a slowdown in DVD sales. Indeed, DVDs alone now provide 59 percent of the feature film revenues of the studios, as opposed to 48 percent in 2004.

Well first off, I'd like to say I'm an idiot for buying the hype about the alleged movie "slowdown". Once again - you listen to the studios, and you're being lied to.

Secondly, look at the second part of the DVD story - not only do they now make up 85% of a studio's revenues, but they even make up almost 60% of an individual new release's revenues. And that figure is up more than 10% in a single year. Hate to say it, but it looks like the movie chains are doomed - DOOMED, I SAY! Actually, I don't hate to say it too much - going to the theatre these days usually fills me with equal parts of dread and apprehension. Don't buy the fear-mongering, either. Actors will continue to get paid, films will continue to be made. But the increasingly irrelevant theatres will probably be shuttered. But as Wired tells us today, they won't go down without a fight.

Representatives of Hollywood's top movie studios say they have agreed on technical specifications that will make it easier to distribute and display movies digitally....

Studios spent more than $631 million in 2003 on film prints for the North American market alone, according to the Motion Picture Association of America. Subtracting reels from that equation could reduce total distribution costs by as much as 90 percent, according to U.K. digital cinema analyst Patrick von Sychowski. Add in costs for overseas distribution and exhibition, and the move from prints to digital files could mean an eventual annual savings of up to $900 million.

Advocates of the shift to digital exhibition say theater owners also would benefit from new flexibility: If a movie sells out in one theater, an owner can quickly switch other screens to that feature to accommodate the unexpected demand. And if a supposed blockbuster turns out to be a bomb, it can be yanked from screens just as instantly -- no new prints from the studio, no reel swaps.

Fascinating, and it might even staunch the hemmoraging of the audience - for a time. But I doubt it. Frankly, the "experience" of going to a movie just isn't worth it anymore - I haven't left a movie theatre without feeling at least slightly ripped off since Fellowship of the Ring came out. I don't know about others, but even the best movies don't make up for a $40+ expense, especially when the DVD will be out for $25 in 6 months, and I own a microwave for popcorn.

So: The movies are dead! Long live the movies!

Worse and Worse

I was willing to give the British police a break on the whole "we shoot dusky people" thing. Really, after two bombings anybody can get twitchy. Then, while I was at the cottage, I heard the reports come out. Specifically, this one:

Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, was shot seven times in the head and once in the shoulder, at Stockwell Tube station, south London, on Friday.

Ah, the picture starts to emerge. As more and more details have come to light, it looks like a) he wasn't wearing the bulky jacket the police say he did, and b) there was no good reason for him to have been suspected in the first place - except for the aformentioned dusky skin. My first reaction to the reports of Menezes being shot in the head 7 times was simple - he was dropped with the first shot to the shoulder, and then executed by an overzealous cop. That doesn't seem to be quite what happened, but in any case it looks like the police have screwed up badly. Some trigger-happy cop was put in a tense situation, and an innocent man is dead.

So what now? My vote is we do what we always do in murder cases - prosecute the offender. Cops are part of the system too, and frankly, I don't care what stress he was under. He's a cop, and stress is in the job description. The law makes allowances for these kinds of things, but we still have to apply it equally.

The Engrish Strikes Back

Brilliant. Take one Crappy Movie, translate the dialogue to Chinese, then back in to English.

Just to whet your appetite, "Revenge of the Sith" becomes "Backstroke of the West".

Go read.

And I'm Back

...catching up on things, watching taped Daily Show episodes and I was shocked to see Sen. Rick Santorum look almost human. I was actually listening really intently, because I guess I half-expected him to spit acid on Stewart's face, or something.

It was actually succeeding in making Santorum look less like hellspawn.

Until.

Until the junior Senator from Pennsylvania said that when America was dealing with "segregation and racism", that "was" a time for a strong federal government.

Racism. "Was".

Apparently, America has conquered the scourge of racism. This must have happened sometime between Sunday afternoon, when I went away, and Monday afternoon, when Jon Stewart was taped.

Or, it might just be that Sen. Santorum is an ass who's so detached from reality that he can work in Washington for ten years and never see evidence of racism in America's blackest city.

No wonder some people are less than happy with this ass.

Bush the Atheist?

Nick Kristof has a fascinating article today about North Korea. It's sensible, clear, and contains good advice - but only if you read it backwards.

Kristof's second half of the op-ed suggests a number of ways that the US could help change the North Korean regime, including negotiating directly with Pyongyang, letting NK in to the Asian Development Bank, etc. These are all excellent suggestions - and the US isn't doing a single one of them. The US, you might remember, is currently run by conservative Christians in the executive and legislative branches. Therefore, you can see how Kristof arrives at the obvious conclusion (interestingly, propounded in the first half of the article): it's all liberal's fault.

"The biggest scandal in progressive politics," Tony Blair told The New Yorker this year, "is that you do not have people with placards out in the street on North Korea. I mean, that is a disgusting regime. The people are kept in a form of slavery, 23 million of them, and no one protests!"

Actually, some people do protest. Conservative Christians have aggressively taken up the cause of North Korean human rights in the last few years, and the movement is gathering steam. A U.S.-government-financed conference on North Korean human rights convened in Washington last week, and President Bush is expected shortly to appoint Jay Lefkowitz to the new position of special envoy for North Korean human rights.

Ah, yes, Conservatives have had such amazing success in North Korea. Let's go through Kristof's list:

Our first step should be to talk directly to North Koreans, even invite senior officials to the United States. Many conservatives would accept direct talks, as long as the agenda included human rights (on the model of the Helsinki accords).

Bush has refused any direct negotiations with Pyongyang. Bush is the most powerful conservative Christian in the world. Yet somehow, these two facts mean that Progressives are wimps. Or something.

Second, we should welcome North Korea's economic integration with the rest of the world. For example, we should stop blocking Pyongyang's entry into the Asian Development Bank and encourage visits to North Korea by overweight American bankers. In a country where much of the population is hungry, our most effective propaganda is our paunchiness.

I'm certain the Bush administration is willing to help open North Korea to outside contact. After all, look at how rational America's policy on Cuba has been. Oh, wait.

Third, we should continue feeding starving North Koreans, while also pushing for increased monitoring. The food is delivered through the U.N. World Food Program in sacks that say, in Korean as well as English, that the food is from America. Nobody has done more to bring about change in North Korea than the World Food Program, which now has 45 foreigners traveling around the country.

Okay, so this is the list of priorities for Kristof's plan to save North Korea - 2 things the Bush administration either won't do, or will only do grudgingly, and one thing we're already doing - feeding the North with food aid. You might think this might be a problem for the people who, you know, actually run the country. But you and I aren't nearly as smart as Kristof. He knows who the real culprits are - liberals. Or who knows, maybe Bush has stopped being a Conservative Christian while I was out.

Hell, it wouldn't be the Sunday New York Times without a gratuitous snipe at the Left.

In other North Korean news, Pyongyang is proposing a permanent peace treaty to replace the armistice the South refused to sign in 1953.

North Korea has called for a peace treaty with the US, ahead of the resumption of talks aimed at ending the stand-off over its nuclear weapons.

Pyongyang said in a statement that a full treaty replacing the armistice signed at the end of the Korean War in 1953 was needed to resolve the crisis....

In a statement issued on Friday, North Korea's foreign ministry said: "Replacing the cease-fire mechanism by a peace mechanism on the Korean Peninsula would lead to putting an end to the US hostile policy" towards the North.

It added that a peace treaty would "automatically result in the denuclearisation of the peninsula".

Of course, the North is still going to demand an assurance that the US won't attack, which Washington won't give - Republicans or no, the US's foreign policy is to never, except in the most dire circumstances, make any concessions to limit its freedom of action. So the US is faced with an interesting choice - either continue it's present course and risk the incineration of North Asia, or actually step back a bit from it's imperial policies and secure some peace and security. I know what choice I'd have them make.

In other news, I'll be heading to my family's cottage for the next few days, so no blogging until Wednesday night or Thursday morning. Have a lovely time, y'all. I'll be back.

Do We Have A Right To Electricity?

As I've mentioned before, we in Ontario are in the midst of an electricity shortage. The financial costs alone of this situation are pretty huge - for every kilowatt-hour Ontario has to import, the government is paying 53 cents - or roughly ten times the domestic rate. Meanwhile, office buildings continue to be air conditioned to 20 degrees celsius, because god forbid we ask men to wear shorts and t-shirts.

The reckoning will come, of course, in one form or another - either taxes will go up, spending will go down, or electricity rates will rise. Either way, the public as a whole will suffer for this nearly perfect example of a tragedy of the commons. In the worst case, we'll face blackouts.

So rationing is going to be a reality one way or another. We don't have the means to ration electricity in real-time yet, but we really need to face the reality that, barring an explosion in new supply, the government is going to need to constrict demand somehow. Now watch for the screaming to begin...

Oh, that's right...

It's called Democracy. Lindsay Beyerstein, guest-blogging at the Washington Monthly, has a great line about Bush's Supreme Court nominee - who, by the way, thinks 10-year olds should be jailed for the heinous crime of french-fry eating. Anyway, Lindsay:

The Republicans are trying to convince the public that the president has the right to have his nominees confirmed. That's absolutely ridiculous. Regardless of what you think about the judicial filibuster, the fact remains that every senator is responsible for evaluating and critiquing the nominees (adivsing) and approving only those she deems worthy (consenting). Consent implies the choice between assent and dissent. You can't exercise consent when "consent" is your only option.

It's really scary how "mainstream" the idea of silence and obedience to power has become. This is just another example of that.

Crowded Schedules Strike Again

Saw March of the Penguins last night. It's amazing how a good animal documentary can convince you of one simple fact: We aren't special. I'm serious. There are no new stories. Humans are just chimps with air conditioning. (An innovation I'm very thankful for, by the way.)

For those who don't know, MotP follows the annual trek of Emperor Penguins from the "beaches" of Antarctica, where they feed, to the breeding grounds deeper in-continent, where the thicker ice prevents hapless Penguin chicks from falling into the waters. The mothers lay the eggs, and then immediately head back to the feeding grounds. The males have to meanwhile stay and guard the eggs until they hatch - between the march inland, the egg-guarding duties, and the march back to the sea, the men lose half their body weight.

It's amazing that anything manages to survive on the surface of Antarctica, much less waterfowl. If you need a really good real-life drama, go see it. If you live in Toronto, it's on at the Cumberland.

Lite Blogging

Manual labour has led, inevitably, to soreness and pain. Also, in the middle of a good book.

In the meantime, some assorted links:

A road vehicle that looks kind of like a space capsule.

Cheap solar power, contd.

Long lasting, low power lighting from LEDs - coming soon, from Phillips.

In a blow to creationists everywhere, elephants respond to poachers by being born without tusks. You win again, reality.

Now, I return to bed.

Movie Grosses Back Up

The tone of this Globe piece is really funny:

You could almost hear the sighs of relief all the way from Hollywood last Sunday, as movie moguls got their first look at the weekend's box office returns.

After 19 agonizing consecutive weeks when North American movie revenue was down from a year earlier, a surprisingly successful release of The Fantastic Four from 20th Century Fox helped propel box office returns for the July 8-10 weekend to $148.9-million (U.S.). That was just a few hundred thousand dollars over the same period in 2004, but enough to cause a collective wiping of brows.

Wow. Next week, revenue will be lower than last year again and the heart attacks will start anew. Does anyone seriously think that Fantastic Four is going to have legs? No, the movie industry is in a lot of trouble, though not because of this:

The biggest threat to the movie business may come from people such as Ian, an 18-year-old computer whiz who lives in Toronto.

Ian, not his real name, has a customized computer with four hard drives, two video cards and a large memory that allows him to do a wide range of heavy-duty computing, including downloading full-length movies.

It currently takes about an hour and half to download a film, but he foresees that dropping to about five minutes in the near future.

Yeah, right. Movies are being released on torrent sites that are now gigabyte-sized files. Bandwidth may increase, but that will just let pirates increase the size (and quality) of the movies they're distributing.

But let's say that Hollywood gets it's wish, and manages to create an Internet where nobody can commit any piracy whatsoever. Ignore the impossibility of this scenario for a moment, and go with me here.

People don't just listen to any music that flits through their computer. It's well understood that people follow the trends of certain opinion leaders within their social group. This was first really understood by Paul Lazarsfeld in the election of 1940 - despite a hostile press, Roosevelt did well in the election because most people didn't really care about what the press said. Rather, they looked to the most-informed members of their group to advise them on who they should vote for - so-called "opinion leaders." Ironically the opinion leaders were the most well-informed about the election because they consumed the most campaign news, while the undecideds were the least informed on the election, and the least inclined to learn about the election. Some things never change...

Anyway, the point is this: In any group of friends, there is the Music Nerd. I know several. These are the guys who buy every CD they can get their hands on, even from groups they know nothing about. These are the people from whom the rest of us learn about new bands, new music, etc. Given the sad state of commercial radio these days, the Music Nerds are often the only way for non-music nerds (like myself) to learn about new music. Like I said, people don't listen to just any music - they listen to what their friends are listening to.

This poses some real problems for music and movies. I may not own all the music and movies I want, but I almost certainly wouldn't have a hard time finding anything I wanted within my circle of friends. And most of my friends don't listen to CDs, per se. Rather, they rip what CDs they have, and listen off their computers. This is incredibly common among my friends, and I'd be willing to wager within my generation. And it's going to get more common, not less.

So what does it have to do with Internet piracy? Well, let's examine some prices. Napster is offering unlimited music downloads for $15.00, but is having a hard time competing with iTunes. iTunes, the elephant of the industry, is still charging $1.00 for a song. Meanwhile, the cheapest new hard drive you can buy costs $60.00 Canadian, and holds 60GB. So for 4 months of Napster, or 60 songs of iTunes, you've got a hard drive that is relatively portable, will last years, and will hold a lot of whatever you want to walk around. For smaller denominations of memory, USB flash drives continue to fall in price. Simply put, even if the content industries manage to shut down all internet piracy, people will walk their data around. And suddenly stopping piracy has become analagous to trying to stop marijuana or crack - it's easy to produce, easy to hide, and extremely portable. It would simply be a nightmare for law enforcement.

I'll say it again: If Hollywood thinks it can win this game by lawsuits, they're deluding themselves.

Horrible

I came across this a while back - Suburban Guerilla linked to it as a reason for gay marriage to be legalized. In case you didn't hear:

TAMPA - Even though the boy would shake and wet himself, his father, Ronnie Paris Jr., would box with the 3-year-old, slapping him in the head until he cried because he didn't want his son to grow up to be "a sissy," the boy's mother testified Monday.

Others corroborated Nysheerah Paris' testimony as the prosecution built its case during the first day of the capital murder trial of Ronnie Paris Jr., 21, accused of abusing 3-year- old Ronnie Paris until the boy slipped into a coma Jan. 22.

He died six days later with swelling on both sides of his brain.

"He was trying to teach him how to fight," said Shanita Powell, Nysheerah Paris' sister. "He was concerned that the child might be gay."

Just to be clear, we have here the charming and innovative combination of a hate crime and infanticide. It truly boggles my mind how a parent could be so afraid of homosexuality - in a three year-old - that they could beat their son to death. Was he worried about his son coming home from day care in leather chaps?

I don't have much else to say. I'm really only linking to this on the off chance that I might make some bigots less comfortable.