Living the Map

Check this cool website out.  This guy’s site is called “Living the Map.”  He’s on task to take a job in each of the 50 states of our great nation.  And he’s learning very interesting things about the various people’s who live around the country.  He’s going to get a broader prospective on what living in the USA is like than anyone out there (perhaps the current run of candidates should phone this guy up and ask a few vital questions).

Election maps 2008

Usually I look in vain for good maps of the election cycle, but with the proliferation of on-line mapping these days, you knew we’d run into some.  There’s a litany of KML regarding the election this year, but what I wanted was some nice maps showing distributions that you don’t normally see.

What a welcome post Aaron over at GIS Dev Café has produced, looking for the same thing I am.

His post today is about a site called Patchwork Nation (CS Monitor) that has a real nice map of different demographic groups around the country.  As simplified as it is, I’m intrigued by the categories and their distribution.  Take a look, and then take a look at the maps on  Voting Machine Technology, Advertisement Spending, and Campaign Finance.

The ad spending maps were very interesting.  Looks like both party’s candidates are spending the bulk of their money in the industrial lake states.  My first reaction was that we out here in the wee west have been left out and forgotten, but then remembering what heavy spending on TV ads and mailings looks like, perhaps we’re better off.

Big Brother Tech

Lately I’ve been seeing many articles and blog posts talking about more and more technology being used to track and pinpoint you and aspects of your life.  I work in an industry that when the technology is being applied to businesses and government, the thought pattern is that the more detail you can get, the better you can understand, research and track the people you serve, the better and more efficient your business or government entity can be.

However, like all things technological, we have to be careful with what we invent.  Often times the human tendency is to get all excited about what we CAN do, and we ignore the question of whether we SHOULD do it.

Take for instance this story in the Wall Street Journal (hat tip to Slash Geo) on using web technology to better pinpoint your IP address.  Now, for the time being they can only narrow your location down to the city you are connecting from, but I notice that there’s interest in narrowing that field.

Or perhaps think about how location technology is used in transportation.  Failing to get popular support for a national ID program, Australia is mulling the creation of a nationwide automatic number plate recognition system.  “In addition to being able to recognize plates, the system would also collect images of drivers and passengers with high enough resolution for identification purposes.”  How scary does that sound?

Think about it.  At the moment you have honorable government workers and police investigators dreaming of the ease of locating people when they need to, like criminals.  At the back end you have a system where the powers that be can find YOU any time your driving around and track your movements.  Am I being paranoid?

Aerial photography is now being used to help tax assessors review your property and make adjustments to the value of your home and land.  On it’s surface this isn’t a big deal.  Housing prices are in great flux right now, with the mortgage crisis we’ve been dealing with (and will continue to deal with).  However, the more our private property (as well as ourselves) can be scrutinized and tallied by those who wish to extract whatever taxes they can, the harder it’s going to be to function. 

Take Atlantic City, New Jersey.  They recently implemented a system where the tax assessor’s department reviews photos that can spot a new porch on someone’s house that they didn’t take out a permit on, and subsequently fine the home owner.  I understand the permit process, and why home construction is coded.  However I’ve made small improvements on my home, for which I’ve been told I should have had a permit for.  The permit and code process was supposed to be designed for safer houses, not to help fund the government.

And yet that’s what I’m seeing here.

At stake is an untold amount of tax revenue. Cape May County appears to be ground zero on the issue as it was one of the first in the nation to buy into the system, purchasing its first pictures in 2003.

While Van Drew ponders writing a law to limit the uses of Pictometry, Cape May County Tax Administrator George R. Brown III is already using it to adjust assessments on farms. He doesn't consider it a Big Brother tactic. He calls it "a great assessment tool," one of many to make sure people pay their fair share of taxes.

So is the permit process about managing safety and construction codes, or is it about money?
In one of the first real disputes to this system, a farmer noted that when informed by the county that they found she wasn’t farming enough of her land, and therefore would have to pay more taxes (farmers have to farm enough of a percentage of their land to get the tax break), and “Brown disputed the number of acres of pumpkins growing when the pictures were taken in March.

‘We don't grow pumpkins in March,’ Rea said.”

This, of course, reminded me of the current use of red-light cameras starting to proliferate around the country.  Despite the growing evidence that they actually are increasing accidents at intersections (although they differ in kind), and that they are subject to wide abuse (adjusting the yellow timing to catch more offenders) they still continue to grow in number.  The only conclusion we are left with is that municipalities that implement red-light camera systems do so for the money they generate, not because of actual safety.

All these technologies are neat, and can lead to much benefit to our society.  However, their implementation and general acceptance by the powers that be concerns me.  Where’s the oversight?  Where are the checks and balances?  This isn’t a Bush thing.  No one person or group of people sets out to create Orwell’s Big Brother.  I didn’t get the impression when reading that book that the society he created was the work of one person.  The closest thing to that was the Soviet Union and it’s satellites.  That wasn’t the work of one person either (although there were a few strong personalities involved).  It’s the little steps forward, that ordinary people don’t detect, that you have to watch out for and think carefully about before just implementing them outright.

Paul Newman, enabling GIS for disadvantaged communities

I had heard that Paul Newman had died this last weekend, and was reflecting on his vast career as an actor.  Many of you know how active he was as a philanthropist and an entrepreneur (Newman’s Own brand of whatever).  However this one surprised me because his generosity enabled those in my industry to help others around the world.

Like drew Stephens, Director, The GIS Institute, Service at Sea I was also saddened this past week-end to hear about the passing of Paul Newman. What I wasn't aware of was how Newman reached so many people through his generosity, including the GIS Community. In a touching letter, Stephens described how in 2006, Newman's funding for The GIS Institute provided the seed capital to run our first proof-of-concept trip "Service for Africa", a six week project that delivered GIS training for over 100 people from 20 different conservation organizations in five African countries.

I didn’t always agree with what Paul Newman was about, but he stands as an example of what people in advantageous positions should be doing with their wealth.

Google road network change

Beware the road network on Google Maps!  So says Jonathan Crowe, who lives in Canada and has noticed that since Google has switched it’s contract for road network data from Navteq to Tele-Atlas, the road network has gotten a little more inaccurate.

But there’s a problem: Chad complains that the change has added a heavy dose of wrong to Google Maps. Based on my experience, I agree with him; since the changeover, I’ve noticed a number of changes that actually introduced error in a place where the mapping data was previously correct. (Presumably this was well known among users of the mobile and API products, but now it’s on the main site.)

He provides snapshots of some of the errors he’s already found.  Perhaps you can find some too.  So beware when using Google for the time being.

Badger Creek Wilderness

No, that other Badger Creek. Yes there are many creeks and rivers in the United States with that name. In researching our hike this summer I had to remember to insert "Oregon" or Mt Hood National Forest" in my query or I would get some po-dunk creek in the south or something. Actually most of the time I was taken to the beautiful Badger Creek basin in the San Juan mountains of Colorado. Must go there sometime.
But anyway.

Before we got to the trailhead, which was on the east side of the Cascades in the dry high desert, we found this cool pioneer cemetery. Drive down highway 397 from the Dalles toward Dufer and you might see it on a bare hill. It's still being used, as we saw some new additions. But it was the old additions that were really cool. Check the photo at left.

The Badger Creek basin is in a designated wilderness on the east side of the Mt. Hood National Forest. Which means it's on the far side from Portland. Which means less people. Well, I thought that anyway. We were alone for most of the first day. I took this trip a bit differently than most, I suspect, because my plan was to start from the east side, walk up the creek to the lake which is it's source, Badger Lake. We saw no one on the trail all day. I was all set to enjoy some pristine lake tucked nicely inside a wilderness. All alone. Well, except for all the local yokels who know that there's a road easement into the lake. Yes, there were lots of people. People staying up for all hours cackling at some joke that was lost on us. Because we were trying to sleep.

Badger Creek at the trail head

So here's the lake at the right. Very nice. I'm sure there's some nice fishing. I enjoyed its refreshing coolness before we left on the 2nd day. It was brisk, but the footing was sandy instead of that muck you get in many alpine lakes. Turns out this lake isn't quite natural. Earthen dam keeps most of it in.

The object of the 2nd day was to climb to Lookout Peak (lots of imagination was wasted on naming features in this area). By far the highest peak east of Mt. Hood in this area, on a good day you'll get fantastic views of Mt. Hood, the high desert, and if the air is clear you'll get Mt. Jefferson and the Sisters to the south, Mt Adams and Mt. Rainier to the north.

To the left is the view of Mt. Hood from the top of Lookout Peak. It looks much bigger in person.

Just in front of Mt. Hood you can see a ridge running left to right. It looks a bit brown, and indeed was the site of a big fire more than a year ago. Perhaps two, I don't recall. I do recall that we didn't know that when we set out to hike that ridge and the valley behind it last September. It's hard to find your way sometimes when you're stepping through 6 inches of ash.

Let's forget about last year now, shall we.

To the right is a view back down to our campsite, Badger Lake. Again from Lookout.
There were so many wonderful views, and these fantastic spires on the ridgeline that we got to walk along and then underneath. Needless to say I didn't get any really good shots of them.

I'll just leave you with a shot I took of Badger creek and a tributary joining it near where we camped on the 2nd and final night in this lesser known area on the far side of Mt. Hood. Well worth the effort, though.



Coda: You can drive pretty close to Lookout Mountain's peak and then hike in a short 2 or 3 mile road to the top. Consult your Forest Service map or Green Trails map (Mt. Hood and Flag Point maps should do ya).
Check out some of the other wildernesses I've posted on. Indian Heaven in Washington. Columbia (Hatfield) Wilderness, Bull of the Woods Wilderness, Mt Hood Wilderness.

Hurricane coverage

The Map Room has some links to sites that are following the hurricanes using mapping technology.  On the tail end of Gustav is the tropical storm Hanna, which could be a hurricane by as early as tomorrow.

Of interest is whether or not the RNC convention will be adversely affected by this.  Sorry, I know that people are having to deal with the effects of the hurricane down in Texas, Louisiana and Florida, but comparatively these aren’t as strong as some in the last few years.  Gustav has missed any major population centers and Hanna probably will too (Jacksonville is a likely target though).  The damage is relatively low and yet all the major networks and news stations have been non-stop in the coverage of this, completely avoiding the RNC.  Are they purposefully avoiding political coverage this week?

Invade Canada!

Many people are aware that the border between the U.S. and Canada is the longest unprotected border between two nations in the world.  In politics and foreign policy, trade and the like, Canada and the U.S. are viewed as friends and partners (for the most part, there are squabbles as in any friendship).

Yet, how many of you know about all the small wars waged between the U.S. and Canada over the past 2 centuries.  I wasn’t aware of all of them, and Catholicgauze takes a short page to list them out.  Seems there were battles during the American Revolution and the War of 1812, where some Americans thought that taking Canada away from the British was a moral imperative. 

However, in that time, most of the fighting men were militia, and wouldn’t fight outside their home state.

There were some other less known “wars,” such as the Lower Canada Rebellion, Patriot war, Aroostook war (Canada took part of Maine), and the San Juan Island War, which had to be settled by arbitration with Kaiser Wilhelm.

But the one that caught my funny bone was the Fenian Raids:

The United States was upset at the British tact support for the Confederate States of America during the Civil War. There was one way the Americans could strike back without risk of major backlash: terrorism. The Fenian Brotherhood was an Irish republican/terrorist organization based in the United States. A Brotherhood song ending with "And we'll go and capture Canada, for we've nothing else to do" sums up the mood of Irish who just wanted to kill some British.

How did that strike me as funny, you ask?

Gus: Canadians are always dreaming up a lotta ways to ruin our lives. The metric system, for the love of God! Celsius! Neil Young!

Edwin S. Simon, NBS News Anchor: The Canadians. They walk among us. William Shatner. Michael J. Fox. Monty Hall. Mike Meyers. Alex Trebek. All of them Canadians. All of them here.

Edwin S. Simon, NBS News Anchor: It is the height of six American football fields, or five Canadian football fields. As if Canadian football really counts.

Edwin S. Simon, NBS News Anchor: Think of your children pledging allegiance to the maple leaf. Mayonnaise on everything. Winter 11 months of the year. Anne Murray - all day, every day.

Smiley: When have you ever heard anyone say, "Honey, lets stay in and order Canadian food"?

U.S. President: I want to say to Prime Minister MacDonald: Surrender her pronto, or we'll level Toronto.

U.S. President: You sold control of American missiles to a foreign country?
R.J. Hacker, President of Hacker Dynamics: If you can call Canada foreign.
Smiley: Or a country.

Boomer: There's a time to think, and a time to act. And this, gentlemen, is no time to think.

RCMP Officer at Headquarters: I don't know what you're talking aboot, eh?
Kabral: Aboot! It's ABOUT! And what's with this 'eh' business?
Roy Boy: [pointing a gun] We have ways of making you pronounce the letter O, pal.

Solzhenitsyn is dead

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Russian dissident and author.  1918-2008.  Stalin couldn't kill him.  The Russian Gulags didn't end him.  Cancer had no hold on him.  But time finally caught up with him.

I remember reading the Gulag Archipelago in my early 20s.  It was a daunting book (and that was just volume 1) but I couldn’t put it down at times.  The sheer disregard for humanity and justice during the Stalin years is just breathtaking.  Comparisons to things like Guantanamo as the American "gulag" fall about as short as trying to compare Bush to Hitler or Stalin.  You may not like his policies, but you're belittling what Hitler was and what he tried to do.   It's like comparing the kid who stole a pack of bubble gum to the guy who broke down the door, shot the store keeper and emptied the cash register.  If you need some perspective, read the book.

Repose on political economics

I’ve been busy at work and home over the past week, but I thought it was time I responded to a commenter last week on this post about Obama and the politics of change (or not so much change).

The comment is in response to this part of my post:

But should you announce to the world that you’re an economist while endorsing and campaigning for a guy who’s proposing to increase the size of government by hundreds of billions of dollars?  And with all the tax cuts he's proposing, is anything he says on the issue even realistic?  What are they teaching economists these days?

Here’s his response to that:

So economics is a solved field then? There's only one valid viewpoint and strict adherence to it is the only means by which to proceed in the field.

Look, the Chicago school (and rational choice theory in general) is as dominant today as it was at any other period - but that doesn't mean it's the sole "logical" stricture within the discipline.

Furthermore, that's variance within chosen theory. In terms of application you essentially assume that anyone who does not embrace libertarian viewpoints is "wrong" or doesn't know what s/he's talking about; and that's just flat out wrong.
It's a bogus assumption and either you know it and enjoy basking in the comfort of solipsism as justification or you simply have no understanding of the issue you are actually addressing.

Ok.  He’s got me on a good point.  I’m not an expert in economics, but I do know a little about it.   I do realize that there are many different theories regarding economics, and that none of them operate in the real world.  Theories are theoretical systems mean to try and explain what’s happening in the real world.  Sometimes you come closer than others, but most of the time you can’t completely explain how the world works with just a theoretical explanation. 

The commenter guesses, because of my disdain for government intervention in the economy and dissing of Republicans on that point,  that I’m a libertarian, which is only sort of true.   Like most Democrats and Republicans (and Libertarians) my roundish peg doesn’t quite fit into that square hole.  Nor does my belief in the Chicago or neoclassical economic theory.  Like Keynesians who believe that there’s a balance between government and the market, I believe there’s a roll for government in the economy, and it’s an important one, but a very limited one (unlike Keynesians).

To me, it seems that most Democrat and Republican politicians subscribe to the Keynesian schools of economics in varying amounts.  Daily they call for government action regarding some economic arena, but mostly this is just political self-serving behavior.  Politicians believe that the public likes to see them doing something about people’s economic woes, even if that action is detrimental to the system as a whole. 

Economists, whatever you might say about them, are generally not short term thinkers.  Each action within an economic system has far reaching implications over the long term.  Politicians are by nature short-term thinkers, and therefore, regardless of whatever economic theory they claim to hold to, they will instead act in accordance to political gain, and will easily leave good economic theory in the dumpster like an abandoned infant.

Which is why I think it’s unfair of the commenter to complain about why I scoffed at the guy on the street.  It’s not that I feel an economist is foolish to vote for one candidate or another, it’s that I think it’s foolish for an economist to promote any Democrats, or Republicans, because his education and experience tells him that any one candidates economic goals are more reasonable.  At this point I don’t find either Obama’s or McCain’s platforms reasonable in their entirety, and am not all that confident that the reasonable portions of their platforms will ever be implemented.

I need to respond to another part of the comment:

I read your blog because geography is cool, but if you are going to talk about a specific field as if you hold expert knowledge in it - actually do.

I hear you there, and I’ve been a bit more political in my posts than in the past.  It’s way past time for me to talk about some of the places I’ve visited recently and geographic issues I’ve been reading about. 

But dude, this isn’t a geography magazine.  This is my blog.  I do think geography is cool, but sometimes I don’t have anything geographic to say, but have some very political things to say, and I’m going to say them.  Free country and all.

Ossetia, Georgia and Russia

If you haven’t been watching the Olympics or the news you might not be aware that the spirit of international cooperation and brotherly love hasn’t caught on in some parts of the world.  Specifically the area of Southern Ossetia in the country of Georgia. 

Georgia has had trouble from that region for some time.  There are Ossetians who would like to kick off the yoke of those harsh democratic masters and prefer their friends over in Russia.  Not all the Ossetians fell that way.

Georgian President Saakashvili recently tried to engineer a cease fire, but Russia decided that they needed to intervene anyway and sent troops and tanks into a sovereign country.  We can just leave the talk about how Russia is just there as a peace keeping force, they’ve acted more like an occupying force.

Russian forces seized several towns and a military base deep in western Georgia on Monday, opening a second front in the fighting. Georgia's president said his country had been effectively cut in half with the capture of the main east-west highway near Gori.

Catholicguaze has a good set of Google maps/earth data for us.  Check out where all this is happening.
Also, check out what Google did with the map related to the story.  I didn’t hear anything about Russian tanks outside of Atlanta.  (Update:  checked the Google story, and they haven’t improved it much.  Now it points to Vienna, Austria).

Imus map of Oregon

If you are into maps, as I am, and you live in Oregon (or Alaska by the way) you need to know this guy’s name.

Imus' original Oregon map, which has sold 45,000 copies, won "best of show" in an American Congress on Surveying & Mapping contest. The revised version was nearly two years in the making.

That’s David Imus, not the radio talk show guy.  I have an Imus of the Bull of the Woods wilderness map he made, and it’s very pretty.  I probably wouldn’t take one of these on a backpacking trip, but might mount it on the wall.

His Alaska map also won some acclaim I’m told.  Like the blurb above, he just revised his Oregon map that won all those awards.  Suitable for mounting.

Gas and hot air

Are gasoline prices too high?  Certainly oil and gas have risen in price quite a bit over the past few years, and politicians waste no time pointing fingers for personal advantage.  However there isn’t much our government can do without making life worse for us, and even less the President can do.

Not that they won’t spend time talking about how they’ll all make life better for us.

That smell on the nation's highways isn't just car exhaust. It's also the rank odor of political populism, as John McCain and Barack Obama both try to score points with dubious energy ideas.

The unfortunate end result of this is that people believe them, and so they’ll keep talking this way.  They might even act on it, and that wouldn’t be good.  So here’s my proposition, and I hope that this gets out, so pass it on.  Let’s do nothing. Really.  Don’t drive everywhere.  Don’t buy stupid items made from petroleum products that you don’t really need (and since oil is used in most plastics, that’s pretty much everything).  And most of all don’t push your congressmen to do anything about it. 

This isn’t a partisan message.  Republicans are certainly rabid puppies when it comes to public attention and they want to get elected as much as the next politician, and so fall into the trap of assuming that the government should do something whenever the people whine about their lifestyles taking a hit.

A House Republican leader is lambasting President Bush on his decision not to call Congress back into session to deal with the energy crisis.
In a legislative update sent to GOP members and staff on Tuesday, Republican House Policy Committee Chairman Thaddeus McCotter (Mich.) accused "Beijing George" Bush of throwing House Republicans "under the bone-dry bus" on his way to the Olympics in China.

In truth Bush did what he needed to do, or rather all he really has the power to do without creating more wasteful bureaucracy, and that’s remove administrative roadblocks to more domestic oil extraction and production.  The ball is in Congress’ court, and that seems to make them uncomfortable.

Perhaps we could stick it to the oil companies.  After all they’re just charging us more because they’re making huge profits, not because, you know, oil actually costs more right now.  Oh, wait, I guess Obama is already proposing that.

Making Exxon surrender money that is now falling into its lap would not necessarily affect its longer-term plans or incentives. Indeed, some of Big Oil's "windfall" already will go to the government: The more profit the companies earn, the more corporate income tax they pay. But to add a five-year tax increase on top of that to pay for a one-year gift to voters would, indeed, increase the cost of doing business. That cost would be passed along in forgone investment in new production, lower dividends for pension funds and other shareholders, and higher prices at the pump -- thus socking it to the consumers whom the plan is supposed to help. If oil prices fall, there might be no windfall profits to tax. Then the Obama rebate would have to be paid for through spending cuts, taxes on something else or borrowing.

All and all, like the first article above talks about, is $4 per gallon gas really a bad thing?  It certainly is reversing the American trend of frivolous driving and gas guzzling car purchases, and driving innovation in oil alternatives. 

But legislators' knee-jerk tendencies to want to “fix” everything only makes government bigger and increasing the scope of government power over any sector of the economy will only hurt the economy in the long run. 

I note that one of the driving issues of the campaign is how dissatisfied people are with the way Bush is handling the economy (read the article I’m linking to, it has a good overview of the positions of both candidates).

One thing is clear: Americans are worried about the economy and aren't pleased with Bush. A recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll found 73 percent disapprove of the president's performance on the economy. That includes 41 percent of Republicans.

So are Republicans angry at Bush because he hasn’t set the government loose on the American economy so that everyone has a government allocated Ford pickup and Toyota Prius in the driveway and artificially set the price of gas down to $1.50 per gallon?  No, of course not.  Republicans are upset with Bush because he’s as spend-happy as any Republican of his generation (that’s what compassionate conservative mean back in 2000).  Despite all the good levers he pulled to pick the economy back up after 9-11, he made it worse by championing large government programs and withholding the veto pen at every turn.  I’m upset with Bush’s roll in the economy not because he’s not doing anything, but primarily because of what he DID do in increasing the government’s roll in people’s life.

So how is McCain, Obama, McCotter or anyone else calling for government action going to make our lives any better?

Brazilian, the language

How about this, folks.

Portugal may have to recognise the inevitable by bowing to the economic and cultural predominance of Brazil, its former colony. The once proud imperial power is considering reforming its language to accommodate recent linguistic developments in the South American economic powerhouse, with which it shares a language.

There are some languages that are much more formalized and standardized than others.  The French for instance have a standardizing body for all the Francophone nations of the world. 

English, of course, doesn’t have that.  You even get differences within countries like the US, much less the vast differences between countries that cause things like the spelling of “recognize” above (article is from the UK).

The proposal to be put before parliament on 15 May would standardise Portuguese around the world and change the spellings of hundreds of words in favour of the Brazilian versions. The measure is largely a response to commercial interests. But for the once proud imperial power, whose language is spoken by 230 million people worldwide, it is a blow to national pride comparable to Britons adopting American spellings and writing, say, "traveler" instead of "traveller".

There are several advantages for Portugal (or rather for Portuguese speaking people).  One is that communication and marketing will be easier, as industries like publishing will be able to market more broadly.  Internet searches will be easier, and Portugal hopes that the measure will “advance an old ambition of getting Portuguese adopted as an official language at the UN.”

Hat tip to Catholicgauze.

Violence in South Africa

There’s been a rash of Xenophobia in South Africa.

The spate of violent attacks targeting foreigners in South Africa has caused an estimated 13,000 people to flee from their homes to police stations and other havens, local Red Cross officials said.

At least 22 people have been killed in the week-long spree of violence, police have said. The attacks and looting has drawn condemnation from South African officials and other African leaders.

I take it that the leaders are condemning racism, but this doesn’t seem like ideological racism.  I wonder if this is more vast uncomfortableness with the mix of people who are not trying to assimilate.  I mean sure, there’s probably some racism going on, but when you get mass violence and protesting from ordinary citizens, you have to ask, “what started the big bang?”

Many of the foreigners are from other countries, most prominently Zimbabwe, because they are fleeing from massive violence or oppression.  They don’t want to be there, but kinda have to right now.  What kind of resentment do you think that’s causing?

I’m looking forward to more perspectives from people who understand that region more.

Perspective on economics

Here’s an interesting statement about economics.

There is nothing complicated about finance. It is based on old people lending to young people. Young people invest in homes and businesses; aging people save to acquire assets on which to retire. The new generation supports the old one, and retirement systems simply apportion rights to income between the generations. Never before in human history, though, has a new generation simply failed to appear.

This is a response to some complaining by the German President about the present economic downturn (some would call it a crisis).   However the author wanted to point out that the larger elephant in the room isn’t how western capitalism functions and how corrupt it must be, but how unbalanced Europe has gotten demographically, how that stress on supporting the aging population  makes the economic downturn worse, and how that’s going to lead to an even worse crisis.

Early Gaelic discovery of America

Hi.  Me again. 
If you’ve read stuff I’ve put here before, you know that I have some affinity toward geography.  And as such, the study of explorers is particularly interesting, although I admit I haven’t sailed that westerly much in my academic or private life.

Sometime in the past I told of a possible alternate theory regarding the naming of America.  It was the British trader Richard Amerike, Dutch by birth, but English nevertheless.  It is now thought that he possibly traded across the North Atlantic and even had a trading post or two along the harsh northern coasts of what’s now Canada.

So I went out and bought a book on Amerike, so I’ll let you all know how that turns out.
But, you say, does that mean that we should look to the Brits as the discoverers of America?  Well, depends on what you mean.  There are many stories and legends of peoples finding lands that are now thought to be parts of the Americas, including this story of St. Brendan of Ireland in the 6^th century returning from many sea voyages beyond the known world at the time.

The Voyage is often ignored by historians of exploration because it is considered a folk-tale. However, the Voyage has far fewer fantastic details than a standard Irish legend and many of these are best read as confused accounts of real events: a crystal tower (an iceberg); the gates of hell (an Icelandic volcano); the ocean where you could see into the depths (a coral sea); the sluggish ocean (the Sargasso Sea).

Giving the Voyage the benefit of the doubt, and using the information about the islands Brendan visits, it is possible to draw a series of itineraries that take the saint around the northern two thirds of the Atlantic: the first, St Kilda, the Faeroes, Madeira, the Azores, the Faeroes; the second, the Faeroes, Greenland; the third, the Caribbean, Madeira; the fourth, an iceberg, Iceland, Jan Mayen Island, Iceland, Rockall, the Faeroes; the fifth, the Faeroes and America. The distances given in the text - the Voyage’s author describes the journey in terms of days - approximately fit these itineraries.

Apparently, once Christianity was brought to Ireland, monks got inspired by tales of solitary worship of monks in other parts of the world, such as in deserts and mountains.  Well, since in Ireland it’s pretty hard to get away from people, the monks turned to the one wilderness that the emerald island has in abundance:  the Atlantic ocean.

Seems the monks were not very good navigators, but instead put themselves out to sea, raised a sail and let God take over.  There are stories of Irish monks landing on shores all over the Atlantic that was known at the time, but it stands to reason that some would end up visiting Iceland, Greenland and the like.

Truly there are many stories and histories of peoples who might have visited this continent well before Columbus.  The Vikings, Carthaginians, Egyptians, Arabs, Jewish Diaspora and even Pics are thought to have had the ability of getting boats over to the Western Hemisphere.   There’s even some archeological evidence in South America that some of these cultures might have made it prior to the Roman Empire (although they didn’t get back).

As for Columbus and the title of discoverer of the Americas, you can make the charge that Columbus' voyage opened the doors to general knowledge of the new world, and therefore is the "official" discoverer, even if he wasn't the first one from Europe or Asia to land on our shores.

Truly, there’s so much we don’t know about history.  With an ever changing knowledge of our past do we ever get to say with definitive authority that we truly know what happened at any time in the distant past?

PDOT bike commuter month

The Portland Dept of Transportation is having an entire month of events in May for bike commuters or potential bike commuters.  Suck it up and get on that pedal machine.  Portland is commonly known as one of, if not the, most bike-friendly cities in the nation.  I’ve been riding my bike to work for years (off and on) and can attest to that.

Photos of galaxies

As if yesterday’s photo gallery of cities at night weren’t enough, check out the largest gallery of Hubble telescope photos I’ve seen in a while.  Galaxies Gone Wild!

Cities at night

For your viewing pleasure.  Cities at night from space.

Riots in Egypt

There’s rioting in the streets.  In Egypt in a town called Mahalla, but it’s starting to reach out to other parts of the country.

It all started two days ago, when a nationwide strike was called by a number of political parties and worker movements to protest their low income, the skyrocketing cost of living, and the open corruption and blatant nepotism of the Egyptian government. All eyes that day were on Mahalla, which was supposed to kick-start the strike by having its 30,000 textile factory workers go to the factory and stage a sit-in. The security forces in charge immediately rounded up the strike leaders, pressuring some of the weaker ones to accept a compromise. They also arrested and isolated every other strike organizer who wouldn’t budge. The government forced the workers to work at the point of a gun, and announced that the strike was canceled. This rang true until the workers got off work and found their union leaders detained and arrested. They then started confronting the security forces, which lead to clashes that lasted till midnight that day and led to two casualties and some 95 arrests.

The following day, yesterday, around 2,000 demonstrators demonstrated peacefully in front of the police station, demanding the release of their detained co-workers, relatives, and friends. The Egyptian police responded by shooting rubber bullets and tear gas at the demonstrators, and attacking them physically. When word of this reached the demonstrators’ family members and friends, they responded by taking to the streets and attacking the security forces wherever they could find them. The people threw rocks at the security forces, destroyed their cars, and tore down the pictures of Mubarak all over the city. The security forces continued shooting and arresting people, all the while sending plain-clothed police thugs to destroy stores and ransack schools. This was done in order to make it look like as if the people were destroying everything in their path and had to be cracked down on and stopped. The death toll rose to 5 the second night (including a 12 year-old and a 15 year-old), while the arrest total rose to 195. Countless people were injured.

The government is trying to clamp down, and has a 24 hour curfew and no journalists allowed.  I’ll paint this one simple for you.  Long ruling tyrannical despot vs. people tired of living in squalid conditions.  Keep your eyes on this and don’t forget the people of Egypt.

Political Power

I’ve often thought about this as the source of real problems in our political/social system in this country.  There’s a general sense that we need to solve the problem of special interests using money to improperly influence the government, or at least the legislative process.   At the same time, there’s a feeling among those of certain economic classes that people who make a lot of money (I mean like hundreds of millions) for some reason don’t deserve that kind of money. 

Arnold Kling in TCG Daily:

It is misleading to compare legislative budgets with the wealth of Warren Buffett or Bill Gates, because legislators are spending money on all of us. They are not spending money on themselves.

However, America's wealthiest people do not spend their money on themselves, either. They could not possibly do so. As smart as Warren Buffett and Bill Gates are, they cannot figure out how to spend all of their money. They will end up giving most of it away.

What the super-wealthy have that the merely wealthy do not have is more financial power. When it comes to deciding which causes are going to receive money, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have more power than other people. Which is exactly the power that politicians have.

The problem, as the article points out, is that politicians have far more of this type of “power” than any wealthy person, to orders of magnitude.  The sums of money that politicians, especially federal politicians, have control over is too tempting for players on the national and local scene. 

The monetary comparisons only scratch the surface of the inequality and excesses of political power in the United States. Bill Gates might be said to control as much money as a member of the County Council where I live. But he does not have the power to, say, tell the people of the County where they can and cannot smoke, or to tell local businesses what wages they must pay their workers, or to decide whether a local concert venue will be devoted to folk music or to rock.

Wealthy people do not control the curriculum in our children's schools. Politicians do. Wealthy people do not set licensing requirements for everything from doctors to interior designers to hair stylists to manicurists. Politicians do.

Inequality and excess political power is getting worse at a faster rate than inequality and excess in monetary income. As I pointed out in We Need 250 states, political power is far more concentrated and insulated from the voters than was the case 200 years ago.

I feel awkward and defensive when the subject of economic inequality comes up. The fact is that I cannot say that I feel comfortable with the levels of inequality and excess that exist in our society.

However, I am loathe to call inequality a problem that requires a government solution. I do not see how it solves the problem to take power away from wealthy people who have a lot of it in order to increase the power of politicians who have far more of it.

What the American people really should feel awkward and defensive about is the level of inequality and excess of political power. Instead of asking ourselves what we can do about Warren Buffett or Bill Gates, we should be asking ourselves about what we can do about the Clintons and the Spitzers. Those who want more and more power should be our biggest concern.

And a concern it should be.  We’ve learned, by way of laws like McCain-Feingold, that you can’t take the money out of politics.  It will find a way in.  My belief is that the only way to rid our life of politically tainted money thrown around by special interests is to reduce the power that politicians wield.  That would, of course, mean that the size and scope of government must decrease, and that means that functions such as health care, education and the like, would have to disappear, and I fear that ain’t happening anytime soon.

Truthfully, though I might favor one candidate for President or Congress over another for his/her economic sanity, neither party has an abundance of members who understand that we all suffer when government grows in it’s scope and power. 

When’s the revolt?  Anyone?

Settle down on the playground

I know I’m supposed to get livid over things like this, but I find myself strangely philosophical about it.  I’ve heard of kids shows in Palestine approaching on the bizarre when it comes to indoctrinating kids to hate other people.  If you don’t think there’s something screwed up about that culture, then perhaps we just need to take a closer look at their children’s entertainment.

Gateway pundit points to this dialog regarding a guy in a bunny suit on a children’s show (Assud is the rabbit):

Saraa: Did you see the West's attack against the Messenger [Muhammad]? What do you have to say about this?

Amaani, (10 year old girl by phone): I say to the cowardly infidels...

Assud: Criminals.

Amaani: Criminals.

Assud: Do you boycott Israeli and Danish products?

Amaani: Yes

Assud: You don't eat them at all?

Amaan: I don't eat them at all.

Assud: Great! Keep it up!

Saraa: We will all boycott Danish products, and Israeli products first.

* * * * *

Saraa: What can we do for the Messenger?

Inaas, (10 year old girl by phone): We can fight them because they cursed Allah's Messenger.

Saraa: 'Tomorrow's Pioneers' army will redeem the Messenger, with their possessions and their blood, Assud, and will not let them repeat this attack.

Assud: If they repeat it we will kill them, by Allah.

Saraa: In His will.

Assud: I will bite them and eat them!

Nice.  Those Danes might look tasty, but…
So we can argue all day about how its all Israel’s fault for the mental state these people are in, and that they wouldn’t be this foundational hatred if Israel had never existed, but you can also argue convincingly that there are some cultural issues at the heart of this, and Israel is just a scapegoat.  There are many groups of people who are suffering far worse at the hands of their own government, and they aren’t screaming death to anyone.

Regarding the tendency for many fundamental Muslims to rage against the machine every time they feel the least bit of disrespect toward them or their religion (think specifically of the cartoons published in many places, but notably Denmark) they cry bloody murder, literally.  Death to Denmark.  Death to Israel.  And while we’re at it, death to America.  Can’t leave them out.

This behavior is strikingly similar to pre-adolescent maturity striking out when pride has been injured.
Basically there are a few ways that a person can react when someone takes a shot at their pride.  One is to ignore it, which is what we try to teach our kids to do.  Sometimes you can’t ignore it, and you takes steps to either remove yourself from the scene or appeal to a higher authority.  In the kid’s case this would be a teacher or parent, right?  We would prefer that these responses be the ones our own children would use.  However…

Another possible approach is to defend yourself intellectually.  And by that, when I think of a 10 year old I’m thinking of ways you can jab back verbally, making it a war of words until you come up with the quip that will ensure legendary status in your lunchroom (“I know you are, but what am I”).  Either way, getting verbal jabs in gives you an outlet for your emotional stress.  Defending yourself verbally is they way many arguments SHOULD happen.

Now, here come the complaints from moms everywhere.  No, I don’t really advocate this in the extreme.   Abusive comments and cursing are also something I don’t encourage in my own children.  But if you can’t verbally defend yourself to the neighborhood bully it eventually might lead down this next path.

And that’s physical violence.  We often think about the adult who gets goaded into starting a bar fight because someone insulted his mullet as “infantile” and seriously lacking in self-respect.  If your only response to insult or demeaning comments is to attack the accuser physically, then perhaps you never really graduated from 3^rd grade, emotionally anyway.

Now I must admit that whenever I see Muslim responses to criticism or insult, no matter how slight (or in some cases how misunderstood) I see the group acting like the 8 year old down the block who’s mother probably didn’t love him enough.  Unfortunately, like the mullet-sporting bar fighter above, you can’t go back home and regain that respect from your mother’s love.  At least not entirely.  And the Arab/Muslim community isn’t going to get over this by concessions from the west, nor is Israel rolling over and moving to Palm Springs going to repair the damage.  That must come from within.

There’s actually a better Christian answer for this,  but that’s for the individual, and I’m talking about a group and a culture.  Christian individuals, according to the faith, are supposed to expect insult and oppression.  We’re also supposed to take it, because if you can’t get someone to become a Christian by demonstrating it faithfully and defending it logically, then you’ve got nothing.  Muslims probably have a better response to critical statements about their religion than “Death to infidels,” but unless they use it they appear every bit the tike on the playground who lashes out at kids calling him fat.  Is it any wonder that we don’t take them seriously?

Power grab by the DEA

I’ve been interested lately in the way that government agencies attempt to grab power for themselves above and beyond what their actual mandate accounts for.  For instance an agency who attempts to get power from Congress over an arena that traditionally belongs to another agency.

This just whisked across the wire:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120407467410795235.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries

Innovative new drugs such as OxyContin that have been developed in the last two decades provide targeted relief for intractable pain. While they have helped innumerable patients, they have also been abused. The DEA response?

One was to try and get the power (now exclusively vested in the FDA) to have a final say over whether new narcotic medications should come to the market. Legislation to do so was temporarily passed in 2004 and the DEA sought its reauthorization in 2005 -- as a "rider" attached to its appropriations bill, without Congressional debate. At one time, the DEA even sent out solicitations to hire clinicians to review new drug applications for narcotics, a role reserved for the FDA. The DEA has stepped back from that effort -- at least for now.

It's often the case that measures that increase federal power are hidden inside larger bills and don't get adequate congressional scrutiny.  So now you have another case.  For your information this type of thing happens all the time, and is just another of the plethora of reasons to outlaw unrelated riders on Federal bills before Congress.  If you didn't already believe that.

It's interesting how, when looking back at the age where the Fed really started to acquire power in the early 20th century, much of the control that government has over society was inserted and enacted without popular support.  Social Security was generally unpopular in the 30s and 40s, as it went across the traditional American value of self-reliance.  But it ended up being sold as something it wasn't, and in the end many of it's measure have been passed as riders on larger omnibus bills which are difficult for legislators to vote against (usually because of something else that's in there).

Here's another example.  This is what Barack Obama says about a bill he introduced last year:

American Jobs: Barack Obama introduced the Patriot Employer Act of 2007 to provide a tax credit to companies that maintain or increase the number of full-time workers in America relative to those outside the US; maintain their corporate headquarters in America; pay decent wages; prepare workers for retirement; provide health insurance; and support employees who serve in the military.

And this is what it does:

The legislation, called the 'Patriot Employer Act', defines patriotic businesses as those that

• "Pay at least 60 percent of each employee's health care premiums,"
• Have a position of "neutrality in employee [union] organizing drives,"
• "Maintain or increase the number of full-time workers in the United States relative to the number of full-time workers outside of the United States,"
• Pay a salary to each employee "not less than an amount equal to the federal poverty level," and
• Provide a pension plan.

So your patriotic if you obey, or fall into line with what certain members of government want you to do.  That's an interesting definition of the word "patriot" if you ask me.  And by the way, the tax credit is miniscule. 

But this type of stuff happens all the time.  Make the name of the bill sound good enough and it doesn't matter what it's called.

I'm getting behind

For the past few months I’ve been absent from this blog much of the time.  I’ve been busy, or in many cases I’ve been doing lots of reading and unsure what I wanted to write on.  Lately, I started briefly with the intention of scrutinizing the platforms of the candidates for President of the United States.  As I’ve been going along, I’ve been slow enough to have candidates drop out before I was done with them, such as Romney and Thompson.  Now I have a decision to make as far as candidates who appear done, such as Hillary. 

Yes, for those of you who know me and my inclinations politically, I will be looking hard at the Democrat and not dismissing them out right.  However, it’s not likely that I’m going to like what I see overall.

As for Hillary, some pundits (not insignificant ones) are starting to declare her candidacy all but Casper.  She hasn’t won a state in a while, and momentum seems to have finally taken hold of the Obama campaign, so much so that even states where Clinton was supposed to win are now looking like they might tilt.  There’s some concern that Hillary will use the Clinton machine to influence the decisions of the delegates and super-delegates, regardless of how the states voted.  It’s legally possible, but doing so would tear the Democrat party apart and they’d have a much less likely hope in November.

So, in subsequent posts I’m going to start looking at McCain and Obama.  Our primary here isn’t until May, but the races will be over by then, so why wait?  We might even see some third party candidates entering the general election by then.

I'm from the government…
…and I'm here to help you (bwaa hahahahaaa!).
In other political news, The Armed Liberal over at Winds reminds us that using government control as a way to try and influence the economy and peoples choices is a bi-partisan psychosis:

January 31st, 2008 - WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., today joined Senator Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., in offering legislation to provide a tax credit for anyone purchasing a newly constructed home, a foreclosed home or a home where foreclosure is pending.

“Providing Americans with this $15,000 tax credit over three years would provide a much-needed boost to the housing market and the economy,” Alexander said. “This incentive will restore confidence in the housing market while preventing a housing disaster by reducing the number of unsold and foreclosed homes on the market that threaten to lessen home values and reduce homeowner equity.”

And here’s what AL said:

So the senator and his co-sponsor want to use the power of the US Treasury to punish private home sellers by making the federal government fund their competitors. Under this legislation, the government will be actively harming the financial interests of millions of private sellers in order to boost the fortunes of a few thousand other sellers.

I often criticize Democrats for making populist decisions designed to give the impression of help, and yet not really understanding how the economy works or really care what government control does to personal freedom over time.  However it seems that many Republicans don’t get this either.

That’s one of the things I’ll be looking for with the candidates this year.  How well do they understand the economy and how likely are they to impose populist measures designed to look good but actually increase government power to the detriment of us all.

Stay tuned.