The bay area

Dammit, I miss this place every time I come out here. Or, more to the point, I miss the people. I’ve been pathetically lazy, and despite plans otherwise (which, to be fair, the other parties couldn’t make, one flaked the other had a legit medical excuse) I never made it to the other side of the bay. I barely made it out of oakland. But I had a fabuuu time. Saturday was awesome. A 10 hour gaming party? Yes, please! Jeremy, Simon, Lili, me, , , and . Awesome. Tichu, Mu (okay, they’re not board games, whatever), a deduction game (think clue, but different), staying up late chatting. Yay.

Then sunday Simon, Lili, and I had lunch with and dinner with . Monday I had lunch with Rice, and a gangbang dinner (no actual banging occurred) with Simon, Lili, & his man, and .

I won’t jump ship on chicago or the gao without a job, but that’s a far cry from saying I won’t look for a job doing environmental policy in the bay area for a slightly more flexible and relaxed employer. =)

Waterboarding video

I was checking out Current TV, Al Gore’s user-generated-content media venture. And the first thing I saw on it was a video of a guy paying experts to waterboard him. Holy shit.

Sometimes I’m disturbed by my dispassion. This was probably one of those cases. I should not be resigned about this. This is something worth marching in the streets over. Why am I not out there? Why isn’t anyone else?

There was an okcupid test about “what role would you have played in Nazi Germany?” It said “you would think of your old Jewish friends from time to time, be a little sad and wonder what happened to them.” And at the time it stung. As someone who strives and at times sacrifices to avoid groupthink, that definitely stung. And yet, I wonder how inaccurate it is…

I’m too pragmatic to be a paladin. I will not pit myself against the current, I’ll just step out of the river. It’s a bit sad to think of myself that way, but that’s the reality of the situation.

Overblown rhetoric

A phenomenon I encountered while at the Berkeley Free Clinic makes me think a bit about what Al Qaeda, and perhaps a certain Iranian president might be doing. Let me ‘splain. At the BFC, we were always trying to recruit people, and unsurprisingly, we got alot of idealogues. And there was alot of talk about empowering the people to make their own medical decisions, and down with physician tyranny. But the truth is, we loved and trusted our physicians, and were pretty heavily oriented towards the scientific method-tested ways of doing things. We got funding from and worked with government health boards. So, why the “down with the medical establishment” talk?

It’s a recruiting trick. Our organization did alot of good work, and we did have an ususually democratic decision making structure. But we didn’t really do anything too radical in terms of challenging the system.

This brings us to terrorism, “the greatest threat to western civilization” (it’s far, far from it). And the rhetoric that surrounds it. Whether it’s our own leaders saying the terrorists would destroy us if we weren’t doing our very best to brutalize them in any way possible or bin laden talking about how he’ll ultimately bring us to our knees, there’s alot of highly overblown rhetoric involved.

Let’s be clear, pollution and congestion cause more problems in the united states than terrorism did. This was true before, during, and after september 11th. It’s just diffuse.

The first goal of terrorists is not to kill. It’s to get attention. If all 3,000ish people that died, 5 years ago, had died of unexplained natural causes in their bed. If twice that number had, the terrorists would not have been happy. Our deaths are not goal. They are a means to an end. Remember that. Terror is the goal. Panic, destabilization. It’s a psychological game. And they are winning the game on their terms. We don’t seem to know the terms of our game, and that more than anything else, is why we are not winning.

But telling us “they pose a serious threat to us” is a) false. We kill more of our own in car accidents and destroy more dollar value in property in any year than they have in their top year. Did I pull that out of my ass? Yes. Do I doubt it? Not in the slightest. b) fear mongering of the first order.

Do we have things to fear other than fear? Of course. But it doesn’t do us any good to fear them. And sweating your odds of dying in a plane crash is just plain stupid. The last thing we should be doing is buying into their overblown rhetoric. We don’t want to be playing the game by their rules.

NYT roundup from this week

It seems Howard Dean is indeed working to restructure the democratic party from within. And meeting with heavy resistance. Interesting to read about. Reading about what he’s doing makes me vascilate between “Why are you doing things this way?” And “Way to go Dean!”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/magazine/01dean.html

A lazy man’s story about cutting his own CO2 production:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/05/garden/05green.html

This gives me some hope for the army, they’re talking about completely reforming the organization, and taking this on, not as a traditional conventional land war, but as a counter insurgency struggle, like it is. The particular lessons drawn are especially encouraging. Maybe we’re not totally screwed. It seems to me success at anything is not generally “alot more of whatever we’ve been doing, no matter how it’s going.” It’s a matter of examining what you’ve done, what’s worked, and what hasn’t, and reforming the techniques when needed. It sounds like that may be happening. Or maybe it’s more spin, but that’s not generally what I expect from our armed services (perhaps I’m naive). Would , , or care to comment?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/05/washington/05doctrine.html

David Brooks says something not-entirely-unreasonable about the Foley controversy thing. He outlines the tensions moderately well, though, of course, his biases, which I unsurprisingly disagree with, run throughout the conversation. He talks about how it’s a cultural conflict. And how there’s a “was anyone hurt? No? Okay, nothing to get too worked up about then.” crowd, which I firmly belong in. And another part which is an “Oh my god, this is destroying the fabric of society.” crowd. It does require times select, but it’s worth the read.

http://select.nytimes.com/2006/10/05/opinion/05brooks.html

on grinding down

I’m going nuts this week. And I know that I’m not facing extraordinary hardship. 9 hours /day (well, really 10, thanks to the mandatory lunch break) + 2 hour r/t commute is bad, sure, but I know people who have far more insane schedules. I’ll be grateful for my vacation, even if a little sad that working the extra hours for it is making it all the more necessary.

PS, I still want an environmental policy job in the Bay Area. Maybe I should do more about it, other than just talking.

Clash of Civilizations

In Friedman’s editorial on Friday, he talked about Samuel Huntington and his ideas about the Clash of Civilizations. His big idea is that the major political actors of the near future will not be nations, but civilizations (or cultures). And I can see that. He apparently was thinking of continental civilizations. Like “The West” or “Islam”.

But given what Friedman said about him, and the wikipedia page, it sounds like he views cultures as supersets of nations, which has some truth to it. But the idea shows even greater value when you start looking at internal divisions of societies. The effects of immigrant influx, and the race to assimilate. I’d say more, but it’s late, and I’m tired. Hopefully I’ll pick up on this later, or maybe read the book and actually talk from *gasp* an informed opinion. Rather than pulling shit out of my ass. =)

I have a ton of travel coming up.

And it’s not just to Hawaii.

Two weekends after I get back from Hawaii, I’ll be heading to New York (well, Newark/Hoboken, but I’ll definitely spend some time on Manhattan). Two weeks after that I’ll be spending Tuesday through Thursday in Denver for training, and I’ll have a 3 day weekend starting immediately after (I’m thinking that would be a good time for Seattle). Two weeks after that, it’ll be thanksgiving. Two weeks after that, it’s out to Denver for more training. Two weeks after that, Christmas weekend, which may well be spent in Burlington, VT. This definitely isn’t going to help debt payback… =)