I have to believe that we might be acting just a bit overly alarmist over the swine flu craze that sweeping the nation. As I post this, I understand there have been fewer than a hundred deaths in the world, but the masses are in a state of panic.

On the other hand, “on average in 2008, between 102 and 103 people were killed on the roadways of the U.S. each day“ (thanks Wikipedia), but there were no (well, few) calls to have all the cars destroyed. Millions and millions have been killed in wars (Wikipedia you’re wonderful!), but I’m not getting WiscAlerts about it.

Call me callous and spoiled, but isn’t it just the tiniest bit odd that we freak out about the “Swine Flu Pandemic” (not official yet, but preset in its title), while cars and wars and obesity and pollution and guns and heart disease and a thousand other far-more-deadly things are part of our everyday life?

We should at least be allowed to joke about it.

“Through humor, you can soften some of the worst blows that life delivers.” — Bill Cosby

Disclaimer: This probably won’t actually fix the car industry, but it makes sense to me as a direction.We’ve got a great mass of industry still left in the U.S. but they’re making products that do not make sense in the economically- and energy-challenged world that we’re living in. My not-especially-brilliant-but-sensible idea is to convert them to green:

1. Stop making cars until current inventory is sold. Sell them as cheap as possible. While they’re being sold. Keep paying assembly workers, but pay them to meet and come up with better ideas, and to be trained. This will cut costs because there will not be raw materials being used. Obviously, this will affect some of the industries that supply parts to the big three. Get them in the room around the table, and ask for their input and ideas as well.
2. Meanwhile, engineers need to finalize plans and ramp up for the next generation of vehicles (and supply lines). If I were benevolent dictator, I’d make a requirement for x-billion dollar loan than they partner up with greener technologies like:
   • Tesla
   • Zap
   • Vectrix
   • and that guy who’s developing the air-powered motor (Engineair of Australia)
3. Recognizing that electric or air-powered vehicles might not arrive next month (but they might, if we’re really serious), when existing inventory is gone, start making new versions of only the most efficient vehicle in each class. In other words, the big three put all their best technologies into only one vehicle each of the following classes, which they will put out to compete with the other 2 companies: 2-passenger, 4-passenger, 6-passenger, 8-passenger, 4×4 SUV, 10-14 passenger, bus, panel truck, etc. There can still be options and accessories for them (paint, upholstery, etc.) but the line would be incredibly simplified and standardized — following, in many ways, the Apple computer models.
4. Convert the factories that are not making these vehicles into factories that make windmills, solar panels, buses or trains or some of the next generation vehicles (in #2).
5. Any assembly workers who don’t keep their jobs get 2-years of technical or state college paid for (with a stipend for living). If they go into green technologies, they get 4-years paid for.

Before long, we have 3 mainstream companies competing with each other in the production and assembly of electric/hybrid scooters and cars, efficient buses and trucks, solar- and wind- powered charging stations (off-grid, on-grid, residential and small-business sized. Industry and other large-scale power needs might still be best met by the current energy industry — although they should go greener too.We also will have a large population going back to school for further training and development in green technologies. This will help infuse our schools with capital, and encourage them to focus more on sustainable practices.Next up, health-care… (maybe)

By 2017, knowledge-based jobs will be free to move anyplace. “We’ll take it for granted that you can go anywhere and get wireless Internet access,” Mr. Cooper adds. Most people will carry mobile Internet devices (“the iPhone on steroids”) with instant messaging, e-mail, a phone, GPS functions and productivity applications, he says.

…come 2017, “context-aware” mobile services will allow people to control and manage the kind of information they receive, and when and where they receive it, Mr. McDevitt says. For example, a mobile user might choose to receive messages or calls based on who they are from, or what kind of information they contain; calls and messages from clients and business prospects might be given greater priority than administrative e-mail from the office. And of course, the device will know where the user is at all times.

… “In addition, with the move to ecological sensitivity, we will see increased pressure to keep people from commuting,” Mr. Cooper says. “Wireless will be the foundation. People will demand it. There will be no computers in fixed locations.”

My own thoughts on this are that ten years is a long time to wait. I might, however, be riding on a high tech high, fueled by my recent iPhone purchase (love it), but if I have to wait ten years for this stuff, there’s a serious problem.

Okay, so there *is* already a serious problem: our nation has goofy priorities and seems to have largely given up on itself and its people. We aren’t spending the money we should be spending on a public technological infrastructure, universal health care, sustainability, or public education. Instead we’re exhausting our resources fighting a preemptive war against a country that was never a threat, defending the rights of corporations to plunder a poorly-educated populace that “should know better how to manage their money,” while at the same time cutting the money meant to educate that populace, or diverting it to the private corporations that make standardized tests designed to measure failure more than success.

But I guess I’m optimistic, and hope that we’ll be over that soon (hopefully far less than ten years!), and well on our way to having an intelligent infrastructure to support an intelligent populace, because I believe strongly that with the right tools, we can learn and do amazing things.

I am clearly not a well-informed citizen of these United States…

so sorry.

http://www.regardingjohn.com/blog/2007/02/25/choice/ http://www.regardingjohn.com/blog/2007/02/25/choice/#comments Mon, 26 Feb 2007 02:03:03 +0000 John Martin http://www.regardingjohn.com/blog/2007/02/25/choice/ There is a level of laziness in this country, where, when confronted with too many difficult choices or options for action, we tend to shut down and simply choose what’s easiest. Capitalism relies on this in order to sell us bad choices (the default choice in a capitalistic society is almost always the poorer one). It’s why the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor — the rich can afford (time and money) to pay an expert to make the better choices, whereas the poor have no expertise in specialized areas (like investing, money management, insurance, law, etc.), and not enough money to hire someone who *does* have the expertise to make the better decisions. Given a multitude of choices and no expertise to make them, it’s a crap shoot, and more often than not, we lose.

This is why I’m a fan of “big government” programs. Bureaucrat specialists who know this stuff, and make $50,000 a year aren’t getting paid enough to figure out how to screw over their customers in order to make more money for their shareholders. They may not *all* be motivated by a sense of charity and good-will, but enough of them are — at least enough to not willingly screw most of us over. This gives most of us a safety net.

Education. Retirement. Health Care. Welfare. Police. Fire Protection. Transportation. The Environment. Parks and Recreation. etc. — I’d rather they not be for profit, and I’d rather that public employees who knew more about them than I do would take care of them for me.

This frees me to focus on my passions — what I know best. And it makes me less stressed. Less stress = better worker.

Just wanted to put some facts out there:

It is estimated Saddam Hussein killed 600,000 civilians during his ~8000 day reign, an average of 75 per day.
http://www.gbn.com/ArticleDisplayServlet.srv?aid=2400&msp=1242

The 2003-present war has directly killed an estimated 60,000 REPORTED civilians during the 1436 days of the war, an average of 42 per day. Obviously, the unnecessary civilian deaths as a result of the war due to non-viloent means is much much higher. By 2004, estimates were already over 100,000- a rate of 182 per day.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7967-2004Oct28.html
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

In the 1990-1991 gulf war, there were an estimated 85,000 unnecessary civilian deaths (low estimate) as a result of the 211 day war. This takes into account malnourishment, etc. and not just violent deaths.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War#Casualties

As a result of the present war, there are an estimated 2 million refugees, and an aditional 1.8 million internally displaced Iraqis. That represents over 10% of the country’s population. That’s a whopping 2,650 Iraqis forced out of their homes and livelihoods per day. The US has generously offered to increase the number of Iraquis seeking asylum from 463 at present to 7,000 next year, almost 3 days worth.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6362289.stm

**************************************************************************

The only support that we can give our troops is to do all we can to bring them home to their families and loved ones as soon as possible outside of a body bag and hopefully with all their limbs. I am certian any soldier would appreciate coming home safe rather than knowing that people are attacking the “goddurn liberals” who are trying to end the war.

How do *I* feel about it? Well, I oppose the misspelling of certain, but otherwise feel that this is a pretty important point that needs to be made a bit more loudly, perhaps.

It’s turning out that our actions in Iraq, selfishly foisted by our leaders, are worse than Saddam, who we understood to be Evil incarnate. But as citizens (with our, I believe, good intentions) we hate to think we supported something more evil than Saddam because we were misled and lied to, so we hang onto the notion that it’ll get better. You hear it in the news from the right, with a sense of urgent desparation — “we *have* to win now, or the evil terrorists will sweep across the world.” It’s classic “last stand against evil” rhetoric. And it’s scary because we’ve been wrong before.

1. Cars go faster than bikes, walking, or (sometimes) public transportation. I’m no physicist, but I recall something about the relationship of velocity and impact.
2. Cars weigh more than bikes, walking, (but not public transportation). Another thing I learned in my early science classes had to do with the relationship between mass and impact. When people die in bike crashes, it’s usually because they were hit by a much heavier and faster car. Rarely however, bicyclists will crash without a motorized vehicle’s assistance, and die of head trauma because they aren’t wearing their helmet.
3. Cars use/burn more carbon-based products per user than bikes, walking, or public transportation. And we all know the resulting pollution causes heart and lung disease. Biking and walking, on the other hand are generally considered good exercise. Furthermore, when we walk or bike through a neighborhood, we tend to become more connected to the neighborhood, and if it’s not as nice as we want it to be, we are more likely to do something about it than if we drove through it. The womb-like nature of cars tend to detach (protect) us from what’s outside the windows, so why take the effort to fix it?
4. Cars cost more to make, to use, and to support — per person than bikes, walking, or public transportation. If the country didn’t have to put all this work/money/resources to support a car-based infrastructure (building roads, parking spots/lots/ramps, traffic control and enforcement, snow removal and road maintenence, auto making and repairing industries, fueling stations and infrastructure, refineries, trillion dollar Mid-Eastern wars and troop injuries, and civilian fatalities (most killed by car bombs) to protect supplies, etc. — really, we spend a lot of our time and energy supporting our cars!), we could spend it on parks, schools (2006 US Department of Education budget was ~$70 billion. Sounds like a lot? Bush just requested over $470 billion — almost 7 times $70 billion! — to spend on the Iraq war, bringing the total to over $1 trillion. Imagine how good schools could be if we even doubled their current budget!). We could also make amazing pedestrian-friendly cities, etc. And, we wouldn’t have to work as many hours per week, so we’d have more time with our families, friends, hobbies, churches, etc.
5. Using cars aids and comforts terrorists more than bikes, walking, or public transportation. Besides tending to live in oil-rich countries and thereby profiting directly from our car habit, the terrorists — which I’ll define here as people who hate us for the sake of hating us, rather than those who just want us out of their countries — have us on a home turf advantage as long as we depend on them for oil. Car bombs are also a very effective weapon of terrorism. No cars = no car bombs. Check out this excerpt:

On any graph of urban terrorism, the curve representing car bombs is rising steeply, almost exponentially. US-occupied Iraq, of course, is a relentless inferno, with more than 9,000 casualties – mainly civilian – attributed to vehicle bombs in the two-year period between July 2003 and June 2005. Since then, the frequency of car-bomb attacks has dramatically increased: 140 per month last autumn, and 13 in Baghdad this New Year’s Day alone. If roadside bombs or IEDs (improvised explosive devices) are the most effective device against US armored vehicles, car bombs are the weapon of choice for slaughtering Shi’ite civilians in front of mosques and markets and instigating an apocalyptic sectarian war. (source)

I could actually go on with this reasoning for a while, but since I have other things to do in my life (get on my bike ;-) and head to work), I’d best end it here for now.

It averages out to every one of the 300 million men, women, and children in the U.S. is paying more than 50 cents a day to Exxon/Mobil and Shell.

What would you do if your tax bill were $866 less each year?

My point is one of contradictions of sorts — loving the part of winter that can only happen because of the cold, but hating the cold that allows it. Some would say that I do this a lot in life, and they’d suggest that I love playing but dislike the part of life that makes playing possible (“work” — defined as something *unpleasant* that we must do in order to play). My mother would always chide me that there are hoops in life that we all have to jump through, even if we don’t like it. And she is correct, but that doesn’t mean that those hoops are necessarily A Good Thing.

In fact, I contend that those who quietly acquiesce to the unpleasant and meaningless hoops are part of The Problem. (by the way, I seem to have inadvertantly set up my soapbox here. It wasn’t my intention when I started the post…). We are hard-wired to avoid unpleasantness (except in cases of curiosity), and since we typically find drudgery unpleasant, we dislike school, work, taxes, meetings, etc.

If those things were fun, we’d enjoy them more, no? So the trick is to either A) make them fun, or B) leave them to the folks who find them fun, or C) focus on the parts of them that we find fun.

The people in the world who are doing the most creative work typically don’t consider it “work” as much as they consider it “hard play.” We read about this all the time — the best inventions and most advanced technologies are often created *outside* of their job responsibilities, because they *love* it.
I put tremendous effort into things that I’m passionate about. That’s why I’m still in school — not for the schooling, but for the energy of the curious folks that surround me. My work at FML is like that. I work my butt off there, but it’s fun for me so I don’t consider it “work” (although it is a nice bonus that they pay me). And I want to continue to live in my fantasy world where the “work” I do is fun.

Sadly, society seems to eschew this idea. We have this masochistic (and often sadistic) work ethic that strays from the challenge by choice quite a bit.

My world, the one that I’m trying very hard to create for myself, is full of people who *can* do drudge work, but who try very hard to find fun alternatives to it. I want to find a joyfully capable and naturally silly woman to join me in this quest. It’s a fine thing to “be grown up” but not so great to give up on the playfulness of life because of society’s expectations and structure. Challenge and change the structure! (Playfully) fight the power!