Is there a child in our basement?

Question:  is West Virginia the child in the basement of our Omelas?

Meanwhile, in West Virginia, there are 300,000 people without useable water, and an unknown number who may fall ill because the warning to avoid the tainted supply came seven hours after the leak was discovered – and perhaps weeks after it happened. (Neighbors of the plant have told reporters they detected the chemical's odor in December.)

That's not from an American newspaper, by the way, but a British one.  It's Ana Marie Cox, but she's publishing in the Guardian.  She compares the disaster in West Virginia to the problem in New Jersey, "Bridgeghazi."  One affects the lives of thousands of people; one affects the political career of a BosWash area politician.

Which is more important?  As Jason Linkins asks:

And here is the inconvenient truth that lies waiting be discovered -- the vulnerable tributaries and the decimated mountaintops of West Virginia are a symbol-slash-scar that testifies, each and every day, to the sacrifice that West Virginians have made to provide a wealthier and more convenient life for the rest of the nation. We should ask: To whom do we owe a greater responsibility -- the temporarily delayed travelers of the George Washington Bridge, or the people who gutted their own state to provide us all with electricity and who can now never look at the water flowing from their own taps without a creeping sense of suspicion?

So I ask again:  is West Virginia the child in the basement of our Omelas?

John Boehner doesn't even care:  "We have enough regulations on the books. ... Why wasn't this plant inspected since 1991?"  Maybe because:

It was, apparently, no one’s job to regularly monitor Freedom Industries’ tanks along the Elk, even though state officials knew that hazardous chemicals were sitting near the West Virginia American Water intake. The West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources produced its most recent “Source Water” report on the site in 2002; it includes no reference to either [4-methylcyclohexane methanol] or Freedom Industries. ... The state’s Department of Environmental Protection inspected the tanks in 1991, and found nothing amiss when, in 2010, it responded to a report of a licorice scent, or in 2012, when it updated its air-pollution oversight. The only permit issued by a state agency for the site governs stormwater runoff. Local officials have sometimes asked for new authority to plan for chemical spills, but those requests go nowhere in a state government that habitually defers to both coal and chemical companies.

And I have to note that information from the New Yorker is on their blog; not from their magazine.  You may recall, too, that as soon as word of this contamination reached the press, the Governor of West Virginia, and almost simultaneously Sen. Joe Manchin, rushed to microphones to reassure us this destruction of the water had nothing to do with the coal industry.

Of course it didn't.  Freedom Industries located on that river because of tax breaks and a favorable business environment they couldn't get in Taxachusetts or the liberal paradise of New York state or the western empire of Berkeleyfornia.  Because:

For nearly a century, Chemical Valley was home to the largest concentration of chemical plants in the United States, according to a 2004 history by Nathan Cantrell, published by the West Virginia Historical Society.

But it's got nothing to do with the coal industry.  Uh-uh; not at all.  Do you hear a noise from the basement?  Pay no attention!  Nothing to see here!  Move along!

I've always said the fictional citizens of Omelas were more humane than we are.  They may stay in Omelas; but at least they all know the child in the basement is why they are so comfortable and happy.

As Jason Linkins points out, the best facts about West Virginia and pollution is coming from National Geographic.  For the intellegentsia, if it doesn't come from the New York Times or the Washington Post, or involve a press conference, it doesn't exist.  Texas is more visible than Appalachia, Mississippi less of a blank spot in everyone's mental map than West Virginia.  Most of us couldn't find West Virginia on a map.  And besides, there'll be something new about Chris Christie on the talk shows this morning!

It is a privilege to....

Eric Posner says journalists don't deserve a legal privilege to publish classified or otherwise secret information, and I think he's right. He argues for a balance, but that's where I think he goes a bit askew:

A balance must be struck, and one compromise would be to allow a leaker to defend himself by proving that he disclosed grave wrongdoing. If that were the rule, instead of a reporter’s privilege, a leaker who acts in the public interest—and only that kind of leaker—would escape prosecution. That’s who should benefit from the law, not the journalist who profits from him.

Well, to be fair, such a leaker would escape conviction; but not prosecution.  It would be a defense to the crime, not a "get out of prosecution free" card.

Nobody gets one of those; except, oddly, journalists.  And the question is:  do they deserve one?  Because the ones who get that, are the ones who work for large organizations we call "news" organizations (FoxNews?  Is it really a "news" organization, or a propaganda arm?  Is it any different than a group of bloggers, except it has a larger megaphone?).  Slippery slope, indeed.  Would a blogger escape prosecution?  Would Glenn Greenwald, if he came to America?

James Risen is taking his case to the Supreme Court.  James Risen works for the New York Times.  Coincidence?  I think not. He isn't being prosecuted for a crime, but he could be:

That being the case, you might also think that reporters who publish such disclosures could themselves have acted criminally—by aiding and abetting a crime. The government has never prosecuted reporters on such a theory, however; all that it wants is for them to testify so that it can convict a leaker like Sterling, just as any other witness to a crime must testify in court. And so if we agree that the government can legitimately prosecute Sterling for disclosing information, then we ought to agree that the government can legitimately compel Risen to disclose at trial whether Sterling was his source.

Or be prosecuted for aiding and abetting a crime.  That really isn't a 1st Amendment case, anymore than carrying a handgun into a theater and shooting a man for throwing popcorn at you is a self-defense case, or a 2nd Amendment privilege.  Journalists in this country are largely left alone because they have a big megaphone; not because they have special Constitutional rights.

Does that special privilege extend to making the decision about what should be known to the public, and what should not, when that knowledge has already been decided by force of law?

Tell me again why Greenwald isn't part of this debate....

Glenn Greenwald tweeted, in response to Obama's NSA speech:

"Store all citizens' communications records" is a radical policy. But it's been transformed to normal- only allowed debate is: who holds it?

"Only allowed debate"? How about: "only debate: period?" As I've pointed out before, we've known since the 1960's that the phone company was keeping records on us. We accepted that, even after the Supreme Court said such "metadata" was not protected by any reasonable expectation of privacy, as the cost of the convenience of telecommunications. "Who holds it" is not the only allowed debate: it's the only debate possible.

Storing such communications is a radical policy? Why? Somebody's going to; should I feel more comfortable that Verizon and AT&T and T-Mobile are doing it, than that NSA is? Or Google, for that matter?

Why, exactly?

The Circus is back in town

IX. We had accepted uncritically the belief that technology is only good; that it cannot serve evil as well as good; that it cannot serve our enemies as well as ourselves; that it cannot be used to destroy what is good, including our homeland and our lives. 

Wendell Berry, In the Presence of Fear, Three Essays for a Changed World, The Orion Society, Great Barrington, MA, 2001, p. 3.

I was catching up on the PBS "Sherlock" series last night, and I realized that James Moriarty and Edward Snowden have a lot in common.

The episode was the last of the second season, "Reichenbach Falls."  Moriarty carries out three crimes at once:  he penetrates the security system of the Bank of England, enters the chamber that holds the Crown Jewels, and opens the cells of Pentonville Prison.  And he does all of this, he claims, by hacking the computer systems of each institution with "a few lines of code."

Well, not so much.  He reveals to Sherlock, at the end, that actually he pulled off those crimes because he had inside help:  people at computer terminals switching off security systems.  He invented the lie of the "lines of code" because, as he proves throughout the show, a big lie surrounded by a bit of truth is always more believable.  The very fiction of the computer code is a perfect example.  He knows Sherlock likes things to be "clever" (and don't we all think computers are somehow magic, and that one man with the right keystrokes can undo the work of  thousands, just as one man can penetrate a high security area and kill hundreds without ever being stopped, because he, too, is "clever"?).  Moriarty mocks the idea that a "few lines of code" could be a skeleton key that would unlock any computer program anywhere on earth.  The real world, he points out, simply isn't that simple, or elegant.

Remember when James Snowden was a super-genius computer hacker?  That was the cover story from the NSA itself:

Last week NSA Director Keith Alexander told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that Snowden was able to access files inside the NSA by fabricating digital keys that gave him access to areas he was not allowed to visit as a low-level contractor and systems administrator. 

How do you protect yourself from a clever super-genius?  Well, maybe that's the wrong question::

Snowden may have persuaded between 20 and 25 fellow workers at the NSA regional operations center in Hawaii to give him their logins and passwords by telling them they were needed for him to do his job as a computer systems administrator, a second source said.

The revelation is the latest to indicate that inadequate security measures at the NSA played a significant role in the worst breach of classified data in the super-secret eavesdropping agency's 61-year history.

Reuters reported last month that the NSA failed to install the most up-to-date, anti-leak software at the Hawaii site before Snowden went to work there and downloaded highly classified documents belonging to the agency and its British counterpart, Government Communication Headquarters.

Turns out security, or insecurity, is more a matter of the big lie wrapped in a small amount of truth.  Snowden used it to get passwords.  Moriarty used it to pose "the final problem" to Sherlock Holmes.  We have been using it to turn away from the real problem with the NSA, and with security in general:

 "In the classified world, there is a sharp distinction between insiders and outsiders. If you've been cleared and especially if you've been polygraphed, you're an insider and you are presumed to be trustworthy," said Steven Aftergood, a secrecy expert with the Federation of American Scientists.

"What agencies are having a hard time grappling with is the insider threat, the idea that the guy in the next cubicle may not be reliable," he added.

Edward Snowden was not some kind of super-genius (which always wins our respect:  after all, how do you predict a super-genius?  How do you prevent them?  And being super-geniuses, don't they always know things we don't, and deserve our respect just for being genius?)  He was a spy, plain and simple; using the tools spies use in LeCarre novels, or Graham Greene novels:  he got people to reveal their secrets, and he used those secrets to commit crimes.  There was nothing brilliant about what Snowden did:  he was just a garden variety thief.

And technology made it possible for him to steal so much.

Moriarty makes the point to Sherlock, before he has revealed that the code he supposedly has is a fiction.  Moriarty claims he has access through the "code" to everyone's secrets:  bank accounts, e-mails, everything is now his.  If it seems a plausible claim it's because our secrets are no longer on paper which must be seen with human eyes that open file cabinets and find:  it is because we have made it all available to anyone who might find the secret code that unlocks all doors; and because we can imagine such a key could exist that would unlock all cyber-doors.  And once unlocked, you would have all the treasures of Smaug, with no Smaug to stop you taking them.

But Snowden and Moriarty let us fill in the blanks with imagination, distracting us like magicians from the truth hidden in plain sight:  in any security system, the biggest problem is the insider threat:  "the idea that the guy in the next cubicle may not be reliable."  And the difference  today is, that "guy" doesn't need to surreptitiously whip out a "spy camera" and open paper folders and hope nobody turns the door knob before he's finished.  "That guy" can just push a button, and it's gone; or it's everywhere.

And that's the real issue with what Snowden did: that's what he really revealed:  that we are all more vulnerable than ever before, and the only way to change that, is to turn off all the machines.

Because you're never going to be sure the guy in the next cubicle is reliable.

O brave new world....!

I hear it helps to keep the physical Scarlett Johansson in mind....

I haven't seen "Her," but I'd like to.  Listening to a caller on NPR's "Science Friday" just now, though, I have a question:

It is the purpose of a good story teller to craft a story in a way that we feel sympathy for the situation presented.  We should be drawn in to the story enough to believe the circumstances it presents, to be willing, in Coleridge's phrase, to suspend disbelief and accept the truth of the world the story posits.  So "Her" posits an operating system so sophisticated it might as well be human; and, as the reviews of the movie state, that raises questions about our own humanity.

But what if the film took the same approach, and replaced the operating system with domestic pets, say, dogs or cats?  I know more than a few people who say they are more satisfied with the dogs or cats they've known than with most people.  What if "Her" were written, not to make us sympathize with a man who falls in love with an operating system, but with a man who prefers the company of animals to people?

Would that raise the same questions about our humanity, and our civilization (since domesticated animals, animals you could have such a sympathetic relationship with, are a product of civilization, just as technology is)?

Is technology, in other words, really altering us all that much?

Is that even legal?

Still wondering why we can't just all get along...

Houston Mayor Annise Parker got married in California to Kathy Hubbard yesterday.  But Texas, like Oklahoma, has a Constitutional provision banning such marriages.

So, did Mayor Parker create a community property estate here in Texas, where she lives?  Is her marriage even legitimate here in Texas?

These are the kinds of issues that get marriage bans, even in state constitutions, overturned.  I don't  know if Mayor Parker wants to have that fight; but it's coming from somebody, soon.

What, after all, is the rational basis for such a ban?  Is it any stronger than the ban on inter-racial marriages?

We were talking (and talking, and talking, and talking....)

I realize I've been talking about this since I started this blog; when will I ever tire?  But The Thought Criminal puts me on to this article, which I can't help but quote-mine:

Prominent figures in the evangelical establishment have already begun sounding alarms. In particular, the Barna Group, an evangelical market research organization, has been issuing a steady stream of books and white papers documenting the erosion of support for evangelicalism, especially among young people. Contributions from worshippers 55 and older now account for almost two-thirds of evangelical churches’ income in the United States. A mere three percent of non-Christian Americans under 30 have a positive impression of evangelical Christianity, according to David Kinnaman, the Barna Group’s president. That’s down from 25 percent of baby boomers at a similar age. At present rates of attrition, two-thirds of evangelicals in their 20s will abandon church before they turn 30. “It’s the melting of the icebergs,” Kinnaman told me. Young people’s most common complaint, he said, is that churches are too focused on sexual issues and preoccupied with their own institutional development—in other words, he explained, “Christianity no longer looks like Jesus.”

Stop right there and ask yourself:  "Why, again, is Pope Francis so popular?  What is it so many people are saying about him?"  But going a bit further, and on another topic altogether, this is an excellent summation of the recent history of churches in America:

Schuller, like Billy Graham and other name-brand evangelical ministers, led a mid-20th-century spiritual resurgence that corresponded with the birth and subsequent coming of age of America’s baby-boom generation. Even as older, inner-city mainline Protestant congregations withered in postwar America, suburban evangelical churches gained members when boomers, now having children of their own, began showing up in the late 1970s. A decade later, evangelical megachurches—some of the largest of which were in Orange County—were the dominant trend in American Christianity, growing in lockstep with the suburbs that gave them birth and set their spiritual tone.

I've seen the churches in my neighborhood, and indeed in every area of the country before I left Texas to go to seminary, affected this way.  Born by a new growth in the neighborhood, new churches would spring up or old ones would be revived.  A few decades later (one or two is all that's needed), the neighborhood has changed, especially in rapidly growing areas (or rapidly declining ones), and the old churches are empty or nearly so, everyone gone to newer churches in newer, or at least younger, neighborhoods.  And there's also this:

The Christianity practiced in these suburban churches was not of the fire-and-brimstone variety. Evangelicals are far looser and more theologically diverse than Christian fundamentalists, who emerged in the late 19th century in reaction to the destabilizing effects of industrialization, the Civil War, and advances in science. Fundamentalism, especially the view that the Bible is inerrant in all of its teachings, has been steadily declining as a force in American Christianity for decades. Recent Barna Group research shows that just 38 percent of Christians—down from close to half two decades ago—regard the Bible as “totally accurate in all of the principles it teaches.” Evangelicals, by contrast, while acknowledging the authority of scripture, place greater emphasis on the believer’s personal relationship with Christ. They trace their roots in America to Jonathan Edwards, an 18th-century Massachusetts divine who paired Calvinistic theology with scholarship, evangelism, and spiritual conversion. The preeminence of conversion has produced huge variety and creativity in their outreach to nonbelievers. For nearly a century, evangelicals have been at the forefront of innovations in church music, worship style, architecture, and use of media to engage the non-Christian world.

Despite the fact Sam Harris insisted only a few years ago that all real Christians are fundamentalists, and the fact that, on the internet at least, all believers are Christian fundamentalists (and therefore lunatics), only 38% of Christians identify with those claims.  The reference to John Edwards there is ironic, since his most famous sermon is "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God."  Not the kind of thing Robert Schuller would ever preach.

And this description sounds like the town I live in (which, according to the U.S. Census, is the most ethnically diverse city in America; and my neighborhood the most ethnically diverse in the city):

Young people in Orange County, no matter their ethnic or economic background, no longer view themselves as living in a suburban appendage of urban Los Angeles. The county is dense with Vietnamese pho joints, boba tea shops, Asian shopping malls, halal markets, Mexican swap meets, punk-rock nightclubs, and art galleries. 

There is a non-denominational "commnity church" within walking distance of where I sit, a new occupant of a building used by a Mexican Pentecostal church until it got big enough to purchase the emptied out Baptist church (it died mostly of old age) across the street from the church I came here to pastor over a decade ago.  There are Thai and Mexican and Korean and Vietnamese diners a stone's throw from me, as well as national chains, barbecue joints, Spanish speaking psychics, herablists, juice joints catering to cultures from south of the border, within two miles of where I sit.  Oh, and a huge and growing retail center catering mostly to upscale and middle class buyers, just across the freeway.  Rick Warren might find a receptive audience at the biggest Baptist church in Houston, which is about 15 minutes away from me just now; but he'd never try to open Saddleback in my neighborhood:  too many of his followers would be afraid to drive over here (the grocery store I use still courts the upper class shoppers by putting security guards in the parking lot, to reassure them).

This is equally fascinating:

 “The megachurch was a baby-boomer suburban phenomenon that folks under 45 typically aren’t perpetuating,” says Ryan Bolger, who teaches contemporary Christianity at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena. Young evangelicals “want to start communities in cafés, and this isn’t just whites. We’re starting to see with Koreans and Latinos a desire to move away from the churchiness of church, to be multicultural and in an urban context, church in the profane areas of life.”

One of my professors in seminary (this was, mind, circa 1995) wondered if mega-churches weren't the sign of yet another "Great Awakening" in America.  Well, maybe, but if it was, it's worth pointing out those "Awakenings" were never really fundamental shifts in American religious life (the first one, led by Edwards, was; the rest?  Not so much.).  And again:  this explains the appeal of a Pope Francis.

This, in fact, very much appeals to me; and I say that as a pastor, as someone who dedicated four years of his life to being educated so he could be ordained as a minister in a denomination, and seek a pulpit in a church where he could earn a full-time salary.  I soon realized that such salaries were a drain on most churches, which needed to raise a six figure budget every year just to open the doors and pay the pastor to minister to them, and effort that put a tremendous strain on the real reason a church should gather:  to be the people of God.  This place seems to have figured that out:

At Epic Church, a 200-member, decade-old congregation in a northern part of Orange County populated mostly by Koreans and Hispanics, members gather for weekly worship in a rented office building but spend much of their time together working as tutors to low-income students at a nearby neighborhood center. “We haven’t been a church that understands ourselves as goods and services,” said Kevin Doi, Epic’s founder and pastor. The church welcomes gays, makes no overt effort to raise money from members, and regularly invites residents at a neighboring homeless shelter to its services. Doi said he has no long-range plan for his church and wouldn’t mind if it ceased functioning as an institution altogether. “We didn’t feel like our goal was to get people to come to our church,” he said. “We wanted to be present in the neighborhood, where we’re the guests.”

That last line, especially, puts me in mind of Dorothy Day:

I am reading (Simone Weil's) essays as a part of my Lenten reading...She says that we "...must experience every day, both in the spirit and the flesh, the pains and humiliations of poverty...and further we must do something which is harder than enduring in poverty, we must renounce all compensations: in our contacts with the people around us we must sincerely practice the humility of a naturalized citizen in the country which has received us."

I keep reminding the young people who come to work with us that they are not naturalized citizens...They are not really poor. We are always foreigners to the poor. So we have to make up for it by "renouncing all compensations..."

Dorothy Day, from The Dorothy Day Book, p. 11.

And this:

“Evangelicals are good at whipping people up into a frenzy, and then you’re like, ‘What was that?’ ” Bell told me. “I was the pastor of a megachurch, and lots of people came, and I did book tours and interviews and films. That’s fine. But I’ll take seeing God every day, which is washing dishes with my kids and walking my dog and interacting with someone I just met.”

Or what Kathleen Norris called the "quotidian mysteries," the presence of God in daily life.  Frankly, this is a guy I resonate with.  And the article ends with this startling observation:

Robert Schuller’s brand of worship might just turn out to be nothing more than a spiritual fad. 

That, in the context of this earlier statement:

America will not become like Europe, where ossified state churches proved unable to compete against the inherently secularizing forces of market capitalism—and where immigrants’ faith expressions are often met with hostility. America will remain exceptionally religious. But traditional evangelical Christianity will no longer be a dominant presence in that religiosity.

Gives me something to think about, even to feel hopeful about.

It's not like we were using it anyway.....

Well, okay:

While most of the software is inserted by gaining access to computer networks, the N.S.A. has increasingly made use of a secret technology that enables it to enter and alter data in computers even if they are not connected to the Internet, according to N.S.A. documents, computer experts and American officials. The technology, which the agency has used since at least 2008, relies on a covert channel of radio waves that can be transmitted from tiny circuit boards and USB cards inserted surreptitiously into the computers. In some cases, they are sent to a briefcase-size relay station that intelligence agencies can set up miles away from the target.

I'm sure that the all-too-human, but curiously error-prone, heroes of our intelligence services will never misuse this power or, if mistakes are made, ironclad congressional oversight will protect us and, anyway, you had to know this was going on and Glenn Greenwald thinks he's sooooooo smart...

A)  This has been public knowledge since 2011.

B)  This is how the US got into Iraq's computers and screwed around with their abilities to process radioactive materials.

C)  The Chinese probably used this technology to hack into the computers of the New York Times recently.

D)  "miles away from the target" is about 8 miles, or roughly the distance an Amazon drone could fly to deliver a package.  If Amazon had distribution centers every 8 miles from all its customers; and the FAA let them send up drones like flocks of carrier pigeons before we wiped them out.

E)  this technology, which is usually software on a thumb drive or slipped into a laptop that becomes part of an "air gap" system (one that is wholly off line), is used on a targeted basis, not because Americans buy extra computers to keep their private thoughts on that aren't connected to anything because we really don't like Facebook and blogs and etc.

F)  This is the only subject on which I really want to tell Charlie Pierce to put a sock in it.  Snowden is a criminal, and Greenwald is a putz, and not every news story is "news" and not every action of the NSA means Big Brother is watching you through the flat screen TeeVee (which, I understand, are only going to get larger and larger.)  I don't fear the NSA and the eventuality of "1984."  I'm afraid Ray Bradbury was more prescient in 1953 (interestingly, just 5 years after Orwell).

"We're from the government." We're here to help you."

Okay....

"We're taking our plunder, that's taken from us as individuals, [giving] it to the government, and the government is now keeping itself in power by giving these goodies away," [North Carolina Republican senate candidate Greg] Brannon said in the interview. "The answer is the Department of Agriculture should go away at the federal level. And now 80 percent of the farm bill was food stamps. That enslaves people. What you want to do, it's crazy but it's true, teach people to fish instead of giving them fish. When you're at the behest of somebody else, you are actually a slavery to them [sic]. That kind of charity does not make people freer." 

Instead of food stamps, we will give every person on food stamps 40 acres and a mule.  Or just a fishing rod, and point them toward a body of water.

Hey, it's better than slavery!

Fishing rod offer void in West Virginia until further notice.

"Reversing an effort to restore Christianity"

"Loosen up your suspenders, hunker down on on the ground...."

Per Thought Criminal, who provides a video of Noam Chomsky talking about the effects of Vatican II and the "preferential option for the poor".  Interesting in itself, and provides some context to the pig squeals of FoxNews and Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin in response to Pope Francis's Evangelii Gaudium.  And that we didn't take this as seriously as we did Vatican II.

Maybe because it's only words, and Vatican II represented a change in behavior.  Or maybe it's because it affected South America, and not southern America. Or maybe it's because the radical bishops Chomsky mentions will have to re-emerge under Francis.

All I know is, even LBJ visited the poor in Appalachia. I don't think I could find a picture of a President since in the same situation.  And we've become quite comfortable, since my youth (I'd have been the age of these boys in the picture) with cliches.

As Chomsky says:  "Keep away from cliches; the world's much more complicated."

When will we ever learn?

The natural gas pumped into your home has an aroma because of New London, Texas in 1937.

We learned the explosive power of fertilizer chemicals because of Texas City, Texas in 1946.

And then in 2013 the town of West, Texas, was half-blown off the map.

Now 2014 begins with the drinking water in West Virginia contaminated because a chemical plant went without any inspections for over 20 years. Some say the company will, or at least should, be held accountable, and if it goes out of business, so be it. That won't restore the sense of safety in the water coming into people's homes, though; or the fear that, until the order to stop using the water was issued, that people were poisoned or contaminated by the spilled chemicals.  It isn't even clear quite what all the chemicals were that were in that tank; like fracking materials, the chemical formulae are proprietary.

The problem here is not even lax regulation; it's the very idea of regulation.  Our system puts the burden of proof on the governments (state, local, federal) to prove industrial practices are dangerous.  It should be on the industry, to prove their practices are safe (they are not now required to do so).  Industries should satisfy the larger society that their practices are not dangerous; it should not be up to society to inspect industry facilities and prove them unsound.  Why is that important?

I don’t know enough about how the company operates to say it was predictable. But I will say that their response was so bad that I’m guessing that their routine maintenance and monitoring was just as bad. Their response was so poor that it indicates that they had very poor health and safety standard operating procedures.
One of the things that really disturbs me about this incident is that it was initially identified not by, you know, routine, regular monitoring by the facility itself, Freedom, for leaks and spills, but it was actually reported by the community. Which means that the levels were so high in the air that they were noxious. They were disturbing the community.

And that’s really high air pollution. People were saying they could smell it in the water, and they could smell it in the air. So that’s a real problem … It means the company is not monitoring themselves properly.

And then the second thing was the fact that the company did not alert the community, or the downstream water intake, when they found out. Or let them know what chemical it was.

So here you’ve got all these people being exposed to chemicals at levels that’s actually bothering them, noxious levels, and they’re not being told what they’re exposed to. That’s a problem also for providing medical care for first responders.

As of this writing the Governor of West Virginia seems preoccupied with two things:  making sure we all know this is not a spill related to the coal industry (it is, but he insists it isn't); and that the water will be safe to drink soon; but not just yet.

There is one difference between these four disasters, but that difference is crucial.  Children died in New London, Texas.  The first link above will direct you to a memorial web page for an event that occurred in 1937.  I spent a Saturday in New London when I was in junior high.  The town was saturated in history.  The ruins of the school were long gone, but there was a plaque memorializing it, and I remember indications of the accident all over town, wherever I went that day.  77 years later, they've moved their memorial on-line, and they have a museum (which may have been there when I was).  They won't forget, because almost 300 children died.

No one was in school in West, Texas.  Had they been, it would have been a disaster as memorable as New London.

Children didn't die in Texas City, either; not at the epicenter of the blast; not in huge numbers; not in a school.  Safer handling of chemicals took place because of one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in human history.  Nothing, of course, happened after West Fertilizer destroyed its facilities and half the town it was inside of.   But don't take my word for it:

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, speaking at West on the last day of August, told residents: “We get to define our lives by how we respond to the challenges we face.”

This is the state’s response at year’s end:

The Legislature, though it was in session when the plant blew up, did little beyond holding hearings.

Perry has been silent on specific changes in Texas’ laws or regulatory approach.

Texas has taken no measurable steps toward adopting a statewide fire code, which could have prevented the blast.

The state has not tightened rules for storing or securing ammonium nitrate, the chemical that exploded at West.

Does anyone expect anything different to happen in West Virginia?

Someone on Diane Rehm this morning said Freedom Industries may go out of business for polluting the water of West Virginia.  If they do, someone will take their place and continue operations as before.  If there isn't another inspection for 20+ years, and no new leaks until at least that long, it would still be considered a good business investment.  After all, as the head of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality said after West, Texas was destroyed:

“There are hundreds of these facilities, and fortunately they don’t explode very often."

Not often enough to get too worked up about, anyway.  Besides, we put an odor in the natural gas, didn't we?

And I find it kinda funny, I find it kinda sad

The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had

I find it hard to tell you
I find it hard to take
--R.E.M.

So, this happened:

LISA BONCHEK ADAMS has spent the last seven years in a fierce and very public cage fight with death. Since a mammogram detected the first toxic seeds of cancer in her left breast when she was 37, she has blogged and tweeted copiously about her contest with the advancing disease. She has tweeted through morphine haze and radiation burn. Even by contemporary standards of social-media self-disclosure, she is a phenomenon. (Last week she tweeted her 165,000th tweet.) A rapt audience of several thousand follows her unsparing narrative of mastectomy, chemotherapy, radiation, biopsies and scans, pumps and drains and catheters, grueling drug trials and grim side effects, along with her posts on how to tell the children, potshots at the breast cancer lobby, poetry and resolute calls to “persevere.”

Which has inflamed lots of people for reasons I don't quite understand.

Bill Keller's point was to contrast the response to cancer of Lisa Adams with the response to cancer of his father-in-law, who lived in Britain:

In October 2012 I wrote about my father-in-law’s death from cancer in a British hospital. There, more routinely than in the United States, patients are offered the option of being unplugged from everything except pain killers and allowed to slip peacefully from life. His death seemed to me a humane and honorable alternative to the frantic medical trench warfare that often makes an expensive misery of death in America.

He has a valid point, actually, picking up on that last line about the "expensive misery of death in America:"

Her digital presence is no doubt a comfort to many of her followers. On the other hand, as cancer experts I consulted pointed out, Adams is the standard-bearer for an approach to cancer that honors the warrior, that may raise false hopes, and that, implicitly, seems to peg patients like my father-in-law as failures.

Steven Goodman, an associate dean of the Stanford University School of Medicine, said he cringes at the combat metaphor, because it suggests that those who choose not to spend their final days in battle, using every weapon in the high-tech medical arsenal, lack character or willpower.

Unfortunately, he goes a bit awry both by taking Ms. Adams' response to cancer far too personally.  Does Ms. Adams response to her cancer truly peg his father-in-law as a failure?

And here we hit the interesting question:  whose death is it, anyway?  Or rather, whose life is it?  Yours alone?  Or are you part of a community?  If so, which one, and who sets the rules about what is, and is not, acceptable there?

People are quite inflamed about this, probably in no small part because Emma Keller wrote an op-ed that was published in the Guardian (and then removed) which apparently asked questions like:  "[is there] such a thing as TMI? Are her tweets a grim equivalent of deathbed selfies, one step further than funeral selfies? Why am I so obsessed?"  Most of the response to the Kellers is that they are monsters for raising these issues.

And I'm not so sure they are.

We still fear cancer, and we fear death and dying, too.  I used to see ads all the time for a clinic that treated cancer patients and promised to take care of them, to give them every possible treatment (not including, apparently, extracts from peach pits, but everything else), and had purported (I don't know; were they just actors?) cancer patients who'd been told to go home and die who had been cured, or were in remission, or who certainly weren't worried about dying anymore.

And here's where it gets problematic:  I don't want anyone to die from cancer, but none of us gets out of here alive.  When is it too much?

I've known cancer patients to undergo experimental therapies that nearly killed them, because refusing to try everything was simply not to be considered.  To this day I suspect the decision to experiment had more to do with the family's fear of not trying it all, than it did with the patient's desire to live longer.  In that case, it only made life more miserable, when there wasn't that much life left anyway.

On the other hand, of course, YMMV, and who knows the future?  But is it impossible to have this conversation without being called a "monster in human form"?  Just a few years ago tout le monde was talking about Jack Kevorkian and the "right to die."  Now we can't talk about the right not to be heroic about your cancer?

I knew a church member, when I was a student pastor, who died of cancer in his home, with his family.  I was there on his last night, I stayed with the family until the early morning hours, I prayed with them; I prayed with him.  It meant a great deal to me (I cannot speak for the family) to do his funeral only a few days later, in the snows of southern Illinois.  To go home, to accept death, was as heroic as to defy cancer with every weapon in the modern medical arsenal.

I'm not carrying a banner (or even any water) for Bill Keller.  This is a sensitive topic and, try as he might to approach it with sensitivity, I think he went a bit off the rails.  On the other hand, I don't think that, because he wrote this, he's a monster, or unfit for human society.  This is a hard subject.  Some of us accept death like an old friend, in the words of the story of the three brothers from Harry Potter.  Some of us prefer to fight death to the last breath.  I don't think Mr. Keller is arguing that one position is superior to the other; that one choice alone should be allowed in society, the other shunned.  I'm no fan of euthanasia because it can too easily make the ill and infirm feel they have a duty to die and leave the living alone.  I'm also not so sure any of us can imagine our own death, can realize with what finality it comes.  I say, even as an ordained Christian minister, that what comes after death is unknown, and what we too easily imagine is being a guest at our own funeral.  You won't be there, of course.  The funeral is for the living, not for the dead.

But try to imagine your funeral that way.  Your funeral happens without even there to imagine it.  Now, try to really imagine your funeral.

Some of us want to fight illness and death with every weapon available to us, but even then there's a social component.  So many cancers are caused by environmental conditions; yet beyond curbing tobacco use, what do we really do to decrease the rates of cancer in our world?  That cost is too high, it would seem; or perhaps too tenuously connected, so we go for the direct connection of "curing" cancer when it strikes.  That it would be far easier and more effective to prevent cancer, no one really argues.  But once we banned smoking in most public places and restricting advertising of tobacco products, we pretty much gave up on that pursuit.  Now we prefer to leave the treatment of cancer to the free market (cancer clinics and insurance companies) and will power (if you fight hard enough, you might win!).

And there's that social component again:  if we urge you to fight your cancer, and you decline to do so, what does society say about you?  Some cancers respond well to chemotherapy and radiation (our methods of treating cancer really having changed since my childhood.  I know there's a new gene-based treatment that is now conceivable; but then I remember when interferon was going to change the way we treated cancer, once and for all; and there was something before interferon that was going to work the miracle, if I recall correctly.).

I don't begrudge anyone the treatment of their illness in any way they want to (or can afford to), but I have long wondered about the social costs and consequences of supporting the patient the way we "support our troops."  How many of us, after all, still have those magnets on our cars, or ever did more than buy one in the first place?  I don't plan to spit on a cancer patient leaving a hospital any time soon, or to burn my insurance card; but must we all be warriors against death and illness?   I'm all for preventing diseases.  I'd much rather we put our social and economic effort into preventing cancer, than into burning and cutting and poisoning it out.  I suspect even the genetic-based therapies, if they ever come into existence, won't be as pleasant as never having a cancer in the first place.  Would it be wrong of me to promote the brave warriors against the causes of cancer, rather than the warrior-patients in their fight against their cancer?

I have a friend who died recently of cancer.  She fought it all the way, as determinedly as she could.  I'm glad for her, that she did that.  But I wouldn't have blamed her, either, if she's said "Phooey, I'm gonna die anyway, and this chemo is only going to make me miserable!"  She wanted the chance to defeat it, even when there really wasn't one; but, after all, who knows the future?  I would not disagree with her choice; but I never regarded her as an icon, either.  It was pretty clear that, at least at some point, she never had a chance.  She never admitted that but she was never an icon, either.

I don't know that we need any icons.  We certainly don't need to tear them down, either.  These personal stories can be powerful.  They can also be misleading.  I don't want to be in the position of judging another person's life decisions, but we all do that when we approve, or disapprove, of someone else's choices; or even when we don't' wholly agree with them:  just ask Bill and Emma Keller.  I'm not saying (again) he got it right in his op-ed today; but maybe all Bill Keller meant to say, was that we could be, as a society, a bit less militaristic, and a bit more humane.

I think it would be a start, anyway.

Addendum:

Perhaps I'm being too clinical about this.  What I know of cancer patients I mentioned in this post.  But what I find curious is that, by and large, I agree with Keller's assessment of Keller:

“I think some readers have misread my point, and some – the most vociferous – seem to believe that anything short of an unqualified ‘right on, Lisa!’ is inhumane or sacrilegious,” he told Sullivan. “But I’ve heard from readers who understood the point and found it worth grappling with.”

At least to the point of finding this an issue worth grappling with.  The comparison of Keller's 79 year old father in law to a 40 year old cancer patient is a poor choice of rhetorical base for his argument (then again, so is saying Keller has aided and abetted Sarah Palin's "Death panels" argument), and I don't excuse it because, like Edward Snowden, Keller "meant well."  But I don't get why it prompts this kind of language:

There is so much condescending and arrogant in that paragraph [sic], I hardly know where to begin. Keller writes a piece that’s riddled with errors from the very first sentence, and then he blames the backlash on people “misreading” his point. He insists the criticism is because he wrote something that wasn’t “an unqualified ‘right on, Lisa!” And then he nobly acknowledges that at least some readers “understood the point.”

I don’t know how stupid Keller thinks New York Times readers are, but believe me, plenty of us have basic reading comprehension.

And basic reading comprehension means we can all read the same text and draw radically different conclusions from it.  But rather than shoot the (admittedly imperfect) messenger, why don't we consider the complexity of the topic (some face cancer heroically by fighting it, some by accepting it, and the difference is, well..."Change the facts, change the outcome."

I guess, as usual, it's another example of generating a lot of heat, and not much light.

Workin' on a chain gang....

I'm sorry, I don't know which of her three guests said it, but on Diane Rehm's show this morning, discussing unemployment insurance, a caller phoned in to say productivity is up in America, but the work week is stuck at 40 hours, and why don't we lower the work week to allow more workers to have jobs?  It occurred to me that productivity is up because unemployment is up (that's true for many jobs I know; fewer people doing more work for, essentially, less money, because salaries don't go up as your produce more or put in more hours), but one of Ms. Rehm's guests explained it for me.  It seems people like working long hours so they can buy things they like with all the money they earn from working harder and longer, things like housing and food and clothes (I guess).  Too bad I couldn't send this in to the show's e-mail (I saw it too late):

The measure’s authors, Sen. Glenn Grothman of West Bend and Mark Born of Beaver Dam, say the bill brings Wisconsin in line with federal law, gives workers a way to make extra money and employers a way to boost production. But Democrats and labor leaders insisted bosses would use the bill to force their employees to work longer and effectively erase the weekend.

Well, you know, why shouldn't they give up weekends if it means more $$$$.  Or even if it means any $$$ at all, like work 7 days a week or take a hike, Bub!  I mean, the guest on Ms. Rehm's show could have been Mark Born of Beaver Dam, WI (except Mr. Born would NEVER be invited to talk on an NPR radio show like Ms. Rehm's).  You see, since federal law doesn't limit how many days you work, so long as overtime and minimum wage laws are met:

“Here’s an opportunity for folks to work together to get things done in a positive way for the employer and the employee,” Born said. “It just seems like a win all the way around.”

And even if minimum wage does go up (fat chance!), employers can still save money by working employees 7 days a week and getting even more production out of even fewer people!  Maybe we could go back to candles, too, and servants to polish all that silver, and people to dip all those candles.  More work for everybody!*

*except, of course, landed gentry, dowager countesses, Wall Street-types, and politicians; oh, and pundits who bloviate on radio shows.

Me and Will Ferrell: Together again

And this is why:

In reality, Justice Sotomayor only stayed the court of appeals’ denial of Little Sisters’ request for an injunction; in other words, her ruling only temporarily stops the government from enforcing the regulation against Little Sisters and its co-plaintiffs. How the case will ultimately turn out is far from clear.

Part of the problem with this case, from the beginning, was the sloppiness of the reporting.  "Change the facts, change the outcome," my Torts professor taught me (and that's about all I remember from Torts class, which I attended about 30 years ago now....!).  But don't get me started down that road; I've learned it is better to read many articles over many days, rather than rely on any one for a report on what cases are before the Court and why.  As I said below, this case really rests on the question of standing:

 Which means that if Little Sisters signs the self-certification that it opposes providing coverage for contraception, its employees will not receive such coverage.  In this respect, any possible connection between the Little Sisters’ religious objection and their employees’ use of contraception would be even more attenuated than Notre Dame’s.  Indeed, it’s not at all obvious why the plaintiff has standing to object to the self-certification requirement:  How could the Little Sisters be complicit in their employees’ use of contraceptives if those employees will not receive reimbursement for those services? (emphasis added)

And why aren't they covered?  Why isn't this a RFRA case at all?  Another acronym explains:  ERISA:

 Simply put, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, or ERISA, contains an exemption for "church plans"—pension or insurance plans that are for the benefit of employees of churches or other religious organizations. If "church plans" are exempt from ERISA, they are exempt from the contraception coverage because, in essence, the government has no authority to force the employers to comply, beyond filling out the "self-certification" forms, which will not result in any actual insurance coverage for contraception. But Little Sisters is arguing first, that filling out the "self-certification" forms make it complicit in sinful activity and second, that the government might change the rules at some point down the road. 

Sarah Posner concludes her analysis this way:

 According to Politico this morning, an unnamed White House official is "confident that our final rules strike the balance of providing women with free contraceptive coverage while preventing non-profit religious employers with religious objections to contraceptive coverage from having to contract, arrange, pay, or refer for such coverage." In the case of employers with "church plans," though, it seems like their employees will be out of luck, by the government's own admission. I'm not sure which part is more inexplicable: that the government didn't figure this out sooner, or that the religious objectors are still complaining about it.

The answer to the first part is:  politics is all about perception.  Easier for the White House to carve out an exception, very publicly, that is legally pointless, than to explain ERISA and IRS interpretations of the law (read Posner's analysis) to the White House Press Corps (MEGO, in other words, explains all).  As for the latter, that's the part that bewilders me:  not that  the Becket Fund is pushing this useless effort, but that the Supreme Court is participating in it (rather than dismissing the case out of hand.  This is why a single Justice reviews a case before passing it on to the full Court).

Where are my crazy pills?

Noted in passing

Hail "Baphomet the Sabbatic Goat, an occult symbol since the 19th century,

 adopted by Crowleyans and then LaVeyan Satanists in the 20th [century]..."

The next time someone tells me atheism is not about being anti-religion, or more narrowly just anti-Christian, I think I'll just point to this list of "15 ways atheists can stand up for rationality."  It has nothing to do with rationality, and everything to do with arranging a set of straw men and then knocking them over like dominoes (I know, mixed metaphors and/or logical fallacies, but you get the idea).

There isn't one item on the list that addresses Islam, Judiasm, Hinduism, or any of the major world religions directly; and most address only fundamentalist Protestant American Christians.  But every item is anti-religion, because apparently being anti-religion=being rational.  And every item is about as fundamental to Christianity as that statue of Satan above.

The Satanists in Oklahoma are more fun.

The treachery of agency and agendas

Take it from my cold, dead fingers

I heard about this yesterday, and it raises the question again:  when is "dead"?

The legal definition is "brain death."  By that definition, Marlise Munoz is dead.  But this is the linchpin of the controversy:

The hospital maintains that it is following the law, although several experts in medical ethics said they believed the hospital was misinterpreting it. A crucial issue is whether the law applies to pregnant patients who are brain-dead as opposed to those in a coma or a vegetative state. The law, first passed by the Texas Legislature in 1989 and amended in 1999, states that a person may not withdraw or withhold “life-sustaining treatment” from a pregnant patient.

Mr. and Mrs. Machado said the hospital had made it clear to them that their daughter was brain-dead, but hospital officials have declined to comment on Mrs. Munoz’s care and condition, creating uncertainty over whether the hospital has formally declared her brain-dead.

There is both the law and the issue: “A person may not withdraw or withhold life-sustaining treatment … from a pregnant patient.”  But life-sustaining treatment cannot be withheld from a corpse.  So there's the rub:  if the hospital declares Marlise Munoz dead, do they run afoul of Texas law?  And if they don't?

Well, it isn't quite that the law forces this conclusion.  It's more that the hospital (JPS) doesn't want to be left holding the legal bag in this matter.  But their non-committal statement is belied by the background of their outside counsel:

“JPS is encouraged by this development because the courts are the appropriate venue to provide clarity, direction and resolution in this matter,” J.R. Labbe, the hospital system’s vice president of communications and community affairs, said in a statement. “JPS remains focused on providing compassionate care to all patients while also following the law as it applies to healthcare in the state of Texas.”

The hospital’s outside counsel is Neal Adams, who led the drive to end abortions at JPS in 1988 and is on the advisory board of the Northeast Tarrant Right-to-Life Educational Association, based in Euless.

So yes, this goes a bit deeper than the "requirements" of the law.  Does the law require this outcome?  Or does a right-to-life advocate like Neal Adams insist to his client that it requires this outcome, for reasons that don't really have much bearing on a legal analysis of the applicable statute?  And, of course, that's why JPS now is "uncertain" over whether or not they have declared Ms. Munoz dead.

As long as the machines can keep her blood pumping and oxygenated, and her organs functioning, she can be what most right-to-lifers clearly think pregnant women are:  flesh incubators.

So this is not just a horror story about modern medicine and our power over death, which is really no power at all.  It's a horror story about how we treat the autonomy of the individual, and how we decide who is human, and who is "more" human, and what we do with, and to, people who have lost their power of agency.  Texas law created this problem; but it took a true zealot to turn it into an object lesson in man's inhumanity to man.

If the law, a blunt instrument in the best of cases, is going to be used to prevent abortions and promote as many pregnancies to viability as is technologically possible, perhaps it is time for us to face the consequences of such uses of the law, and to reconsider the legal system and its relationship to pregnancy and abortion.  Because this situation is absolutely morally indefensible.

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2014/01/09/5473242/family-of-pregnant-brain-dead.html#storylink=cpy

I prefer to call it "Bridgezilla"

Rachel Maddow pointed out last night that Chris Christie has been locked in a fight with the New Jersey Senate over judicial appointments; and that the NJ Senate turned down another Christie judicial nominee the night before the famous Bridget Kelly e-mail about how it was time to shut down the George Washington Bridge.

One salient point Rachel failed to point out:  Bridget Kelly was the Deputy Chief of Staff for Legislative Affairs.

Which just further convinces me she's onto something, and that Chris Christie, who was so glib about this kerfluffle until this week (he didn't even know Fort Lee, NJ had "dedicated access lanes"?  What was up with that?  (The city doesn't, of course.).), is now suddenly so betrayed and saddened by it.  I don't think Bridget Kelly "went rogue."  And I don't think Christie was trying to punish the city of Fort Lee.  (Dave Weigel wonders why retaliate against a politician who wasn't up for re-election in 2014?  Which presumes another alternative answer could make sense out of closing a bridge to punish a local politician.)

As Rachel points out, the Senator who chairs the Committee that refused Christie's judicial nomination, represents Fort Lee.  And it's worth remembering, this only came to light because the New York side of the Port Authority said they knew nothing about lane closures related to any "traffic study."

Had they kept this thing entirely in New Jersey, we might still know nothing about it.  Tony Soprano would have thought of that.

And, in a civilized nation, Christie would already be embarrassed out the door.  As Brian Beutler notes, Christie is either a dupe or a liar.  He is responsible for the people he hired and for the work they do on behalf of the people of New Jersey.  The buck stops with him.  Except that doesn't mean anything, because you can't read his mind and know his thoughts so you have to take his word for it that he didn't know nuthin'.  Besides, as John Dickerson said, it was a great performance; and isn't that all we ask of our politicians, at least until we catch them naked in bed with our wife, and even then, who are you gonna believe? Christie, or your lyin' eyes?

Actually, Beutler is blunter than I make out:

1) That after two decades in politics and four in the New Jersey governor’s office, Christie’s no better prepared to serve than an unlikely Prince Hal surrounded by a merry band of younger Falstaffs; or

2) He’s one of the most audacious liars in 21st century American politics.

This is the part of American politics I just don't get.  Christie is guilty whether he told Bridget Kelly to "make it so" back in September, or whether he really did just learn about it on Wednesday morning after his daily workout (and if you believe that, I've got a bridge in New Jersey I can sell you, cheap).  He's guilty because he's stupid, or because he's lying.

Why do we tolerate this?  Either Christie is too petty and venal to hold elected office (there are all kinds of abuse of power issues here, even if not one of them is a criminal violation), or he's too stupid and ineffective to serve as the chief Administrator of the Executive branch at any level.  Does it really matter at this point what he knew and when he knew it?  This is as much a case of what he didn't know.

To me, that's enough to ask:  "Why are you still here?"

Jon Stewart explains it all for you

"Moral Hazard" is not an economic concept created in the 18th century (when "economics" first became a subject of study and not just the oikonomos, or law of the household, something historic Christianity was actually deeply concerned with. But that's another topic....). "Moral Hazard" is a concept as old as "Teacher, who sinned, that this man was born blind?" It's as old as the disciples, themselves slightly better off economically than the beggars Jesus spoke to, and living themselves off the contributions of supporters of the homeless mendicant they called "Rabbi," sometimes tried to keep away from the Teacher.  The idea that the poor don't deserve money, that money would simply corrupt them, while the rich are obviously more worthy to be wealthy, is a very, very old one.


That doesn't mean Jon Stewart is wrong, or doesn't do a brilliant job skewering that immoral and hazardous idea.

The treachery of the pursuit of happyness

But is it art?

"The number one question facing anyone who wants to help improve the quality of public discourse is: how the hell do you get a look-in?"

Actually, I think it's:  how do you lead a horse to water AND make him think?  The sad truth is, you can't do both.

So, yeah:

The critics pushing the oversimplification argument seem to believe that if only people weren't wasting their time on silly TED talks, they'd be reading books, taking evening classes, poring over scientific papers, or at the very least subscribing to the critic's uniquely brilliant blog.

But that doesn't change the fundamental point:  TED talks suck!  They're a glib excuse for feeling like you're suddenly knowledgeable and insightful and maybe even clever, without having to do any of the hard work of reading books, taking evening classes, poring over scientific (or academic, or philosophical, or theological!) papers, "or at the very least subscribing to the critic's uniquely brilliant blog" (and when ARE you people gonna subscribe to my uniquely brilliant blog?  Huh?).  They aren't much different from the college student who occasionally attends lectures, occasionally pays attention, but never reads the assigned materials, seldom does the assigned work, and then complains that the whole thing is boring because it didn't entertain him enough to get him involved.  Knowledge for the masses is not knowledge; it's just a confirmation of prejudices and commonly accepted ideas.  One interesting contrast between the two columns I've linked to here:  one is full of middlebrow "thinking," the other is a challenge to most of what you might accept as "conventional wisdom."  That doesn't weigh them out on the scales of "who's right/who's wrong."  But it does underscore the critic's point:  TED talks are "middlebrow megachurch infotainment."

I have as much use for them as I do for megachurches that assure their attendees Jesus is just alright with you, just the way you are at this moment; and only wants you to be happier than you are now, on into forever.  TED talks are all about as challenging as that kind of religious pap.

But I don't come here to denigrate TED talks (I'll put my cranky old man rants aside); I come here to praise some of the insights presented in the guise of a critique of TED talks, a critique that is actually a lament that we so much love lazy thinking.

On the subject of TED talks and their virtues, read some of the works of Michel Foucault.  When he was alive and infrequently lecturing in Paris, at the institute that paid him to think, write, and infrequently lecture (sort of like Princeton's Advance Research facility, except I don't think Princeton required Einstein and Godel to lecture), his lectures were crowded with people, most of whom taped the remarks for review later.  Foucault didn't dumb anything down for his audience.  He didn't reduce his thoughts to 18 minutes, or express much concern that what he was saying was too complex.  He spoke of power, existence, medieval history, and arcana, and let his audience keep up if they could.  And still they crowded the halls when he came to speak.

Well, that's France, you say; and probably that's it, more than anything.  But the contrast is revealing:  TED talks are an American version of that, I suppose; but even the American Chataqua has a better pedigree and promises more thinking among the speaking.

I write about entanglements of technology and culture, how technologies enable the making of certain worlds, and at the same time how culture structures how those technologies will evolve, this way or that. It's where philosophy and design intersect.

Benjamin Bratton says; and that could be academic bafflegab and jargon speak, or it could be some truly meaty stuff.  But his point is:  if you are going to take things seriously, take them seriously; don't just imagine you take them seriously because you watch an 18 minute TED talk instead of 18 minutes (between commercials) of a talk show, or a cable news program.  As Bratton boils it down:

The key rhetorical device for TED talks is a combination of epiphany and personal testimony (an "epiphimony" if you like ) through which the speaker shares a personal journey of insight and realisation, its triumphs and tribulations.

What is it that the TED audience hopes to get from this? A vicarious insight, a fleeting moment of wonder, an inkling that maybe it's all going to work out after all? A spiritual buzz?

I'm sorry but this fails to meet the challenges that we are supposedly here to confront. These are complicated and difficult and are not given to tidy just-so solutions. They don't care about anyone's experience of optimism. Given the stakes, making our best and brightest waste their time – and the audience's time – dancing like infomercial hosts is too high a price. It is cynical.

I won't quote the whole thing, though it's tempting  Bratton points out that technology is not really changing everything; not fundamentally.  We want, as he points out, everything to be new, so long as everything remains the same.  We go home to buildings based on "kitsch architecture copied from the 18th century," and it's worth pointing out here the technology which makes our houses "smarter" doesn't really change them fundamentally at all.  The fundamental change in architecture, actually in construction, was the "balloon frame" house, the kind you're probably sitting in right now.  But it was pointed out to me in college, 40 years ago, that such buildings consume too much wood and other materials, that we needed a new alternative just as the balloon frame had been the cheap alternative when it came along, well over a century ago.  The more things change, the more they remain the same; and that's the problem.

I connect this with a story I heard on NPR yesterday about how the next "revolution" equivalent to the invention of the steam engine is in machines that can "think" at least well enough to begin replacing human thought the way steam engines replaced animal (and human) muscle.  This change was presented as inevitable, as a natural force like a river carving the Grand Canyon or making the deltas of the American South.  It's no such thing, of course; yet we yield our power to affect it, and simply have to change ourselves and our society in order to accommodate it.  There is, it seems, nothing else we can do.  And I hear such things and think more and more of the dystopias of "Elysium" or "In Time," dystopias which, in the worlds of their stories, were equally inevitable and necessary and to which we simply must bend.  As the villain of "In Time" says, for a few to be immortal, many must die.

Is it time yet to say no one deserves to be immortal if even one person must die?  Are we yet ready to examine the terms of our Omelas?

I dare say I would not confront "the challenges that we are supposedly here to confront" the same way Mr. Bratton would, but I agree with him we aren't confronting them now.  Middlebrow thinkers assure me the future is inevitable and all I can do is adjust to it.  Oddly, the future that was inevitable when I was 5 years old never arrived, and the collapse of the middle class which was never supposed to happen (George Jetson was as bourgeois as could be imagined) is hastening apace because the future we have now has become the inevitable one.  Or, to put it as bluntly as Bratton does:

 Phones, drones and genomes, that's what we do here in San Diego and La Jolla. In addition to the other insanely great things these technologies do, they are the basis of NSA spying, flying robots killing people, and the wholesale privatisation of biological life itself. That's also what we do.

The potential for these technologies are both wonderful and horrifying at the same time, and to make them serve good futures, design as "innovation" just isn't a strong enough idea by itself. We need to talk more about design as "immunisation," actively preventing certain potential "innovations" that we do not want from happening.

I would not limit the idea of "innovations" to new technologies or new designs for old technologies (the kind of thing Apple excels at, for example).  I would expand it to consider the very idea that technology itself is an unalloyed good which must be allowed to run free and reshape human society even as we adapt to it's demands and make technology the paramount goal of human existence.  The great concern of Romanticism was the impact of the Industrial Revolution, but they never engaged the fight so much as gave us an alternative to it (and in doing so invented the modern idea of humanity, a shift in perspective as profound as Augustine's invention of self-consciousness, albeit thoroughly in line with the saint's insights).   Then again, its from the Romantics that we get the idea that transformation, radical, revolutionary change in human existence, in what it means to be a human being, is not only possible but necessary.  Jefferson all but announced it (no Romantic, he, but still) when he declared the chief end of man to no longer be glorifying God and enjoying God forever, but "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

The question we have to ask our selves now is:  are we pursuing transformation, or is transformation pursuing us?  Are we still chasing down happiness, or being chased down by it?  Does the way we live merely need to be summarized and described in a TED talk?  Or do "we need to raise the level of general understanding to the level of complexity of the systems in which we are embedded and which are embedded in us. This is not about "personal stories of inspiration", it's about the difficult and uncertain work of demystification and reconceptualisation: the hard stuff that really changes how we think."