Koyaanisqatsi

I find it rather ironic that Firefly's diehard fans -- those who initiated petition after petition and campaign after campaign -- should name themselves 'Browncoats'.

The brown coat worn by Malcolm became a symbol of resistance against the Alliance government, the dominant power in the Firefly universe. It continues to survive on the outlying worlds, poor and poorly terraformed and thus of relatively little interest to the Alliance.

The Browncoats may be romantic as hell – but they lost.

Both Smallville and Buffy the Vampire Slayer can be said to be bildungsromans (stories of growing up). Both originally take place in a small town where assorted weirdities take place for an in-show logical reason (the Hellmouth in Buffy, the meteor shower in Smallville). Thus Smallville was thought to appeal to the previous Buffy audience.

Yet it is at these superficialities that the similarity ends.

Smallville insists on overt transparency, but covertly resists both transparency and its root of trust: and it is not Lex Luthor who is the first to mistrust. The entire show hinges on this principle. Clark inherits mistrust from the father he trusts; and after several rejections, Lex reluctantly does the same, from the father he has never trusted. Clark's secret, shared with Lex after the first-season automobile crash, could have been a secret source of mutual strength. Instead, it becomes the destruction of them both.

In contrast, Buffy accepts that overt communication can never communicate the really important things, but continually hopes for the important things to be seen between the lines. Several episodes examine this theme directly by taking away spoken speech from the characters: forcing them to find other ways to communicate or die. Yet those who are able to share these secrets do become strong, together.

If Buffy is a show about change and growth, at least the first four seasons of Smallville have been about resistance to change. Not one episode of Buffy ends with virtually all the characters returning to precisely where they were at the beginning of that episode: the polar opposite of almost every one of the high school Smallville episodes. With only two exceptions, if a non-Kent character in Smallville learned about Clark's powers, by the end of the episode they were made to forget. Amnesia, both involuntary and deliberate, is a desirable thing for the core characters on Smallville: for it returns the amnesiacs to a previous state of innocence.

By comparison, just try to imagine any core character on Buffy willing and determined to deliberately forget what they have learned. As a result of events in each and every episode, every one of these characters learns, and grows. To take away their memories of events is to erode their very selfhood: as Tara makes quite clear during the musical episode, when her lover Willow magically erases Tara's memory every time they run into an awkward moment, rather than work it out the hard way. If inducing forgetfulness in another is to seize complete power over that other, what then is a repeated erasure of another's memory? Willow sees her actions as the most logical solution to a problem – and on a non-empathy level, absolutely it is. Yet Tara sees it as rape.

And, well, if a society as a whole is determined to retain only the shortest of short-term memories: whose, really, is the responsibility for what transpires? and what can politicians possibly say to this blank cheque except "Thank you"?

If the series did not work for poor children, the entire project would fail.
- Gerald S. Lesser, Professor of Education and Developmental Psychology, writing about the goals of Sesame Street

Much of modern policy has been driven by self interest: some of it enlightened (as far as pragmatism and long-term employment will allow), most of it pragmatic. In a democratic system, careers are gained and lost upon the successful courting of large voting blocs.

Many people who do not personally need a service do not see why they should pay for that service. Policy driven by this philosophy will tend to erode every service which is not used by just about every voter. Few argue that a military should be government (tax)-funded: but services such as education, medical assistance (or specific medical procedures), and publicly-funded television and radio foster constant debate. Those without children or who send their children to privately-funded schools often don't see why they should additionally subsidise public education, when they personally make no use of it.

The most common outcome is the drive to keep tax dollars local, even to the point of funding such public services as public education county by county: with the expected resulting variances in education quality. It may also result in tax breaks for those not using the service. This approach increases the proportional tax burden on those who are left, which in turn also impacts on overall quality and sets in motion a positive feedback loop: as publicly-funded quality falls, more of those people who are able will pull their children from public systems, their (higher) taxes will no longer fund those public systems, and quality will fall further. If the loop is not interrupted, the end result will be that only children from families too poor to afford publicly-funded education will be left in an educational system, funded solely by the taxes from the poorest of the poor.

On the other side of the coin, few argue against roads being government-funded, yet those living in remote areas not serviced by all-season roads or even by roads at all are still required to pay for roads through their taxes. Arizona's current anti illegal immigrant legislation is also a case in point. The relevant issue to most Arizona taxpayers is not which legal rights should be bent or outright broken in trying to combat illegal immigration -- for in the eyes of many United States taxpayers, those who are not United States citizens or legally landed aliens should not be entitled to United States legal rights -- but that the federal government has been shirking its responsibility in this area, placing a disproportionate burden on Arizona and thus forcing Arizona to take (and pay for) action. On that basis, a significant number of the residents of other states agree with Arizona's choice. If an individual state's perceived economic burden cannot be broadly shared, then the only remaining relevant question becomes one of states' rights vs. federalism.

(One has long wondered why legal immigration limits should exist at all, especially in countries which believe in the possibility of infinite growth of wealth; and the corollary question of why citizenship holds no obligations whatsoever in non compulsory service countries, only the expectation of certain rights. Paying taxes is not specific to citizenship: in fact, citizens get a tax break. Is citizenship really nothing more than a lottery of birth to determine future benefits? But more on this later.)

Increasingly common -- and thus relevant to votes -- is the attitude that if a service is not personally needed, the service is not generally needed. For people holding this attitude, any public funding at all for services which are not personally used is an affront. Few, still, are the country leaders who claim openly that they do not watch their country's public television station: but after Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper's proud statement that he does not watch the CBC, more might be coming out of the woodwork.

Within this philosophy, it makes no difference that some of the services used only by a few may also be lifelines to those few. Although the education example above is typical, it also makes no difference within this philosophy whether services are disproportionately needed by richer or poorer people. Social pressure to publicly fund a service tends to be less with services needed more by middle/higher income earners, such as autism behavioural therapies: yet these costs may be just as difficult for these families to bear individually as basic medical services and even basic housing needs for poorer families.

These are rationing choices, differing only in priority and degree. All societies make them. Sometimes the limits are set by individual or small community resources: which is why rural health care practitioners may care more, but tend to have fewer medical resources and are often more poorly funded than their big city counterparts. Where the societal policy prioritises universal access but limits funding, rationing is achieved by increasing waiting times to access the service -- not deliberately, but as a natural consequence of universal access to limited services and equipment.

At the heart of all rationing choices are two tenets: budgets are limited; and even services which are often publicly funded, whether in part or in whole, cannot and maybe should not be accessible to every person/legal alien/citizen (except, perhaps, in theory).

Yet children -- all children, from all walks of education -- will become the next generation upon whom all of us will depend. A society which denies a significant percentage of its children the opportunity to develop their gifts as far as they can be developed is a doomed society.

Yet abstract reasoning means nothing on a pragmatic level. What is needed is a personal reason for those in power to start valuing public education again: to go beyond basic questions of standardised testing and job-relevant skillsets to find out and do what is needed on a broader level.

Suppose, just for a moment, that all public servants, elected and appointed, should be required to send their children to publicly funded schools. It is not so much of a stretch. All kinds of professions in positions of trust are already subject to specific limits and restrictions as a condition of employment, restrictions which can go as far as complete loss of privacy. Were publicly-funded schooling to become a standard requirement for the children of all persons paid from the public coffers, how do you suppose priorities in education might change?

Why is it that, in every corporate "information" session with the public or media, the person designated to field the questions never seems to have the answers to any of the important ones? Are corporate information sessions intended to provide actual information relevant to the public interest, or to consist only of the specific line of information the corporation wishes to promote?

What would happen if all corporate Q&A sessions with the public were to commence with this question?

(In some locations, legislation is beginning to be passed which requires the release of all research prior to allowing a new drug on the market. Previously, the business was able to release only the particular studies which happened to show a significant positive result, regardless of how many other in-house studies had shown little or no result, or even negative results.)

When the ten-kilo bag of rice crossed the scanner, the young female cashier blinked and laughed: "That is a lot of rice. Are you planning something special, a party?"

It would not have occurred to me to buy rice -- or any other dry or frozen staple with reasonably long shelf life -- in any other way. Working out per-weight/volume unit costs, in my head long before some stores began to post them on the shelf, is second nature. From rice to single-serving ramen packages, staples are something always to have on hand. If they can be bought in bulk, the savings over smaller portions are significant. Even with basic ramen, buying a case can save as much as half the cost; while the per-weight unit cost of smaller packages of the exact same type of rice can be five or ten times that of the largest bags. Yet based on the cashier's reaction, this kind of purchase is unusual.

Part of it is clearly the way the cashier herself thinks of groceries: which is why I noted her gender and age group in this context. Although overall budget in the western world had, until quite recently, been the sole domain of men, household management skills for lower and middle class women (whether or not they also held a paying job) had always included a solid understanding of kitchen economics: part of a wife's value lay in how far she could stretch the "egg money". At the time I entered university, these kitchen skills were starting to be taught to young men as well -- along with teaching young women such traditional male skills as simple household repairs and changing a tire. Yet clearly this particular budgetary skill, at least as it applied to rice, was not relevant to this young cashier's world.

Part of it may be the location. This particular store served a community mostly of students and seniors, who tend to purchase food based on immediate needs. Many of the seniors in the area take their meals as part of meal plans at the community retirement home, whether or not they themselves live there; many of the students have similar meal plans at various cafeterias and fast-food outlets on campus. If one eats most of one's meals pre-prepared, it stands to reason that home cooking will be a matter of snacks and easy convenient things.

Among those who do cook regularly, it is possible that part of the reason may lie in the rice itself. For me, rice happens to come close to an everyday staple. For others, it may be potatoes, or pasta, or couscous. If rice is associated more with Chinese takeout than with household everyday staple, there is no reason to take up valuable apartment kitchen or pantry space with bulk rice that won't be used up for a year or even longer, or may no longer even be used at all.

It may be kitchen values themselves that have changed. Long habit, both personally learned and family heirloom, causes me to automatically divide groceries into categories based on staples, perishability, and luxuries/treats. Each of these categories is bought in a different pattern, albeit with enough flexibility in it to take advantage of store promotions and the occasional desire for an absolutely fresh fruit, vegetable, or herb (which is not purchased in the grocery store). In other words, I hardly ever purchase groceries directly around a single week's planned menu, let along a single meal: yet based on the food choices of those in front of me and behind me at the grocery stores, others frequently do.

Which leads me finally to security of food supply: which a fair number of us seem to take for granted, even for some of the most exotic things. For some time now, starvation has not truly been an issue for nearly all people in the western world. Yet much of the world does not take a secure food supply for granted. A few good years is not enough to erase the memories of lifetime and countless previous generations. In many cases, it is not that there is not enough food, it is "just" that the food does not reach those who need it most. Those of us in the west think ourselves somehow immune to this: yet food supply chains, even in the most developed countries, are fundamentally vulnerable, more so because so many of our staples are no longer local.

We depend so strongly on the immediate availability of anything we can imagine. Our very kitchen habits have changed to become utterly dependent on that availability. Strikes and other human-caused delays which are not intended to destroy can be met with negotiation or with force: but what will happen if our transportation network cannot adapt quickly enough to volcanoes, emergencies, fallout radiation, natural disasters, changing energy needs?

Random thought for the day:

Longitudinal waves are normally understood to consist of particles vibrating along the direction of the wave's propagation, while in transverse waves, particles vibrate at right angles to the direction of the wave's propagation. Yet in a third kind of wave -- often confused with longitudinal waves -- particles actually oscillate inward and outward relative to the direction of the wave's propagation: periodically "thinning" and "thickening" it.

Eruption of the old volcano of Eyafjeld Jokkul in Iceland, in December 1821
- from the Liverpool Mercury, 13 September 1822

The remarkable fall of the barometer which took place almost simultaneously throughout all Europe, in the month of December, 1821, and which in some cases was accompanied with an agitation of the magnetic needle, brought many persons to conjecture that some tremendous convulsion of nature must have visited some part of the globe. This conjecture has at last been verified by a volcanic eruption of the old volcano of Eyafjeld Jokkul, which has been in a quiet state since the year 1612. This mountain, otherwise called Mount Hecla, is about 5666 feet in height. It is nearly equidistant from Kolla and Hecla, and is the southernmost of the chain where a dreadful eruption broke out about the middle of the last century.

On the 19th December, 1821, the eruption began. The crater was formed at the distance of five miles from the minister's house at Holt, and discharged itself through the thick mass of ice that enveloped it, and which is never melted. The ice was dispersed in every direction, of which one mass, 18 feet high, and 60 feet in circumference, fell towards the north. A number of stones, of different sizes, rolled down the mountain, accompanied with a noise like thunder; and this was immediately followed by a discharge of an enormous and lofty column of flame, which illuminated the whole country, and allowed the people in Holt to read as perfectly within their houses at night as if it had been day. Ashes, stones, gravel, and heavy masses of rock, some of which weighed about 50 lbs, were thrown up, and one of these last was found at the distance of five miles from the crater. On the day immediately following the eruption, a great quantity of fine greyish-white powder of pumice was discharged, and carried about by the wind so as to fall like snow, through every opening. It exhaled a disagreeable smell of sulphur, brought on affections in the eyes, and occasioned diseases among the sheep in Vaster Eyafjeld and Oster Landoe.

On the 25th of December, a violent storm raged from the south, and by the united action of the wind and rain, the fields were cleaned of the sulphurous dust which had covered them. On the 26th and 27th of December, there was a heavy storm from the north-east, and the barometer, which had been gradually falling since the 18th December, when it was 29° 16, had reached, on the 26th December, its lowest point at28° 49. It is a curious fact, however, that on the 8th of February, the barometer fell to 27° 25, a time when no earthquake was felt, and no apparent change had taken place in the eruption. On the 18th of February, the barometer, which had been at 29° 42 on the 11th fell to 27° 72. So late as the 23d of February, the Eyafjeld Jokkul emitted smoke greatly resembling the steam of boiling water; and some persons were of the opinion that the mountain had decreased, and was lower near the crater, as it evidently appeared to be when viewed in a direction from north to south.

It is stated that the water in the rivers that flow from the Jokkul and the surrounding mountains, had been considerably enlarged during the first day's eruption. A constant rumbling noise was heard in the vicinity of the volcano, attended occasionally by a dreadful crash, as if the immense masses of stones and ice were on the eve of all being precipitated down the mountain.

Other two volcanoes to the east, in the mountains of Kolla and Oraefa Jokkul, are said to have broken out, but no certain information has been received on that subject.

The vessel which brought the account of the volcanic eruption to Copenhagen, left Iceland on the 7th of March and it is reported that the sailors, when at sea, again saw a violent fire in the direction of the volcano.


(When was the last time you heard about the Eyjafjallajökull volcano, let alone Katla, in the news? The risk for cancelled flights has not gone away. The risk that Katla -- and as many as seven other Icelandic volcanoes -- will erupt this year has not lessened. The original eruption still is very much active!)

Many years ago, when I first set a toe into the world of advanced physics, I asked a question which was not in the textbooks. Today, I would ask that question differently, but it is still essentially the same question.

Then: Why is light, being massless, affected by gravity?

Now: If matter and energy are equivalent, separated only by a speed-of-light squared constant, why are they assymetrical? Specifically, why are both mass and energy influenced by mass-induced alterations in spacetime; but only mass is capable of shaping spacetime? (Why can energy be influenced gravitationally by mass, but not mass by energy?)

Don't give this guy his Miranda rights until we find out what it's all about. That would be a serious mistake at least until we find out as much information as we have.
- John McCain, talking about Faisal Shahzad, the would-be 2010 New York City bomber and a naturalised citizen of the United States

But tell me ... in what way am I being harmed if someone intercepts my phone call to aunt martha about her fruit cake recipe? Or a call where I'm ticked at my friend George? For crying out loud ... right or wrong, this information has been available to the feds for over 70 years! People are just now getting paranoid about it?
- A comment on a thread discussing McCain's comment, by a minister who had previously enforced the will of federal government on a nuclear submarine and is currently enforcing the will of the website owners on the linked website. The following post is reprinted from my answer there.


The concept of rights is cored in the belief that government and the instruments of government can never be trusted. The corollary is that those who have been and continue to be the instruments of government can sometimes lose touch with why those rights have come into existence.

Someone whose speech and action is permanently 100% in line with the government of the time will never be harmed and thus never have anything to fear, no matter how slippery the slope. (Unless, of course, the government begins to wonder why someone should be trying so hard to be so innocuous.)

To believe in rights at all is to waive the ability to cherrypick among rights. From FBI to local police forces, the law enforcement agencies have had immunity to prosecution from criminals for as long as they have existed: so long as procedure defined under law has been followed. Procedure usually requires a minimum of reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed, is being committed, or is about to be committed: and what constitutes reasonable suspicion is also defined by law.

It may be worth noting that in law enforcement eyes, all people are potential criminals. In an individualistic society, law enforcement can only be effective with such a mindset. This is why oversight is -- must -- come from outside law enforcement. Oversight with the same bias which law enforcement must have to be effective simply cannot be a good watchdog on the actions of law enforcement.

These rights cover a great deal more than simply one person's right to due procedure upon arrest. At present, they also include the right to vote as one wishes and have it have meaning (it may have been forgotten that Communist countries held elections as well), and the right to peaceful assembly (church gatherings, Tea Parties, anti-war demonstrations in the Bush era ... as though the war were somehow over now). They even include the right of Helium to host a thread such as this one, and for debate to happen on that thread. After all, what has been said here -- and in most of this forum -- is not 100% in line with the government, any government. Yet the right to free speech allows it.

Rights issues (including interception of personal correspondence) happen to be of more concern now than ever for two reasons:

* There is more awareness of the consequences of surveillance, whether or not the subject of surveillance turns out to be innocent (see Hollywood blacklist)
* The current technology intrudes into virtually all parts of life.

Major rights concerns have been raised from about the '50s onward -- and even decades earlier, if one takes into account the civil rights and labour movements (many of which took place as part of church meetings) -- but when bugging is limited to letter-reading and planting moles in meetings, it still covers a relatively small slice of life. Unless I happened to write it in a letter or say it in public, aspects such as my super-secret rum fruitcake recipe never even made the radar.

However, current technology can pick up what we say and do everywhere, including in the privacy of our own homes. I too could not care less whether the government learns my hyper-secret rum fruitcake recipe, but I see no reason why the government should be interested in my nephew's first "facts of life" talk. If I should be angry at a friend or if that friend should tell me something in confidence, what is said is between me and that friend. For one simple but potentially devastating consequence, suppose the cause of the anger involves "don't ask, don't tell"?

If I once waive the right not to be subject to random surveillance, I cannot thereafter cherrypick what is and is not private.

To say that any such distinction ought to be irrelevant to national security is to throw out confidences of all kinds, respect for the privacy of others, even the sanctity of the confessional: not simply in actual matters of security, but in all things.

A blank page I've been nudged out by a computer screen And that's never blank, you know (unless it's on the fritz). There's always a companion there, a blinking cursor, a mouse: You can play with its tail Make sparkling stardust with its tail With the right app you can make full screen ripples With this tale – Or you could turn off all the glitz and, you know, Write. I've been nudged out by a computer screen Where there's so much else to do (and easier too!). There's always another window, a browser, a whole Internet: You can update Facebook Harvest Farmville, clear out a Warcraft dungeon Build a house in Second Life and add Another story – Or you could go it the hard way, focus on this life, and Write. I've been nudged out by a computer screen It's all about speed dating these days (and no regrets). There's always someone sexier out there: New e-mail backgrounds, fonts, blog templates Fancy software for self-publishing Tire of one type and turn over A new page – Whatever happened to leisurely seduction? Won't you give me a second chance, and Write?

We are caught in an evolutionary catch-22. Several, in fact.

For almost as long as we have been on this earth, we lived a precarious existence between hunger and just enough food to survive. Our bodies learned how to store food against the ever-present probability of starvation, and our minds learned how to select food for adequate nutrition but highest caloric value. Even our tastebuds have learned to read "fatty" as "delicious".

At the same time we have been trained by millennia to become aware of small changes in our immediate family, our immediate friends, and our immediate environment. Our lives depended on it.

With the development of speech, one first-hand data stream became two, the second no longer directly first-hand. What we were told became just as important as what we sensed for ourselves. The ability to read and write further expanded our horizons, and with them the amount of information we found necessary to continued wellbeing. Only a few centuries later, the invention of printing and then of moveable type exponentially increased the amount of information available in our environment: and for the first time ever, knowing as much of it as possible was no longer relevant to survival.

In just five generations followed live distance audio, wireless audio, recorded audio, audiovisual transmission, recording, streaming, Internet updates, portable and near-constant data updates, Twittering. As quickly as we can define data filtres to sift information and limit it only to what we accept as trusted and believe to be personally relevant, our media environment comes up with new ways to feed us essentially the same information. At the same time, we ourselves become equally constant data feeds to our closest friends and to people we will never meet.

Having established the connections, we can't let go. With immediacy of access comes an equal immediacy of obligation. Twitters must be kept track of as they happen, instant messages and even old-fashioned e-mails must be answered at once. The language develops shortcuts so as not to slow down the flow of information in the slightest. Long millennia of instinct tell us that we must try to keep up with all of it regardless. There was once a time when our survival might have depended on it.

As we chain ourselves to our televisions and our iPhones trying to keep up, our bodies happily keep converting the increasing number of calories not burned into extra stores: well beyond their capacity to keep those stores healthy for our bodies as a whole. And so instinct tells us to keep trying to keep up, certain that the relevant information to solve even this dilemma will suddenly turn up out there ... somewhere.

The concept of rights and the assumption of a functioning government are inextricably intertwined. Where there is no societal governing structure to enforce it, the concept of rights can have no meaning. At the same time, there is no need for a concept of rights without a functioning government.

A perceived need for rights is cored in the belief that government and the instruments of government can never be trusted, and therefore must be constrained at every turn by legal and administrative procedure. Sublimating power to procedure makes it impossible for the government -- or any individual person -- to act both arbitrarily and with power.

Only a trusted government can remain small. Since nothing can abate a fundamental mistrust, the procedures put into place to try to constrain any potential abuses can only ever grow. Consequently the manpower needed to staff ballooning levels of procedure must necessarily increase, and with it the size and cost of government.

To try to reduce the size of government (usually by trying to cut back on its tax income), without simultaneously conceding a certain basic trust, cannot actually cut back on its size. It can only render that government inefficient at best, ineffective at worst. The end result is a bureaucratic anarchy which eats up huge amounts of money while accomplishing ever less of substance.

Yet within a determination not to trust, this should be seen as desirable. Inertia is at least familiar, as are its abuses. Where a government is not trusted, changes of substance are to be feared.

The Battle Hymn of the Republic (Brought Down to Date)
- Mark Twain (1901, written in the wake of the the Philippine Revolution (1896-8) / Spanish-American War (1898) / Philippine-American War (1899-1902)

Mine eyes have seen the orgy of the launching of the Sword;
He is searching out the hoardings where the stranger's wealth is stored;
He hath loosed his fateful lightnings, and with woe and death has scored;
His lust is marching on.

I have seen him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps;
They have builded him an altar in the Eastern dews and damps;
I have read his doomful mission by the dim and flaring lamps --
His night is marching on.

I have read his bandit gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
"As ye deal with my pretensions, so with you my wrath shall deal;
Let the faithless son of Freedom crush the patriot with his heel;
Lo, Greed is marching on!"

We have legalized the strumpet and are guarding her retreat;*
Greed is seeking out commercial souls before his judgement seat;
O, be swift, ye clods, to answer him! be jubilant my feet!
Our god is marching on!

In a sordid slime harmonious Greed was born in yonder ditch,
With a longing in his bosom -- and for others' goods an itch.
As Christ died to make men holy, let men die to make us rich --
Our god is marching on.

* NOTE: In Manila the Government has placed a certain industry under the protection of our flag. (M.T.)

Why think in terms of "It all revolves around me?"
Just for a change, why not think in terms of "Who would I be, without each and every one of them?"

Never ask a doctor what they would recommend as a treatment. The gold standard of medicine is based as much on cost-effectiveness as it is on efficacy. Instead, ask what the doctor would do for their own child -- and, if you happen to have asked it differently earlier and found different answers to the two different questions, pay very close attention to where the two answers differ.

Armed societies are governed by fear: of government on the one hand, and of people on the other. All people are seen as fundamentally self-serving, each man out for himself without regard for anyone else; the actions of individuals or institutions not personally known or vouched for are additionally seen as arbitrary. That fear goes even deeper: since fear of consequences is perceived as the only thing holding society in check. If they could only get away with it (so goes the reasoning): why, a person or government might do ... anything.

In such a society, the police are simultaneously charged with the constant hassle of the (potentially) non law-abiding while leaving completely alone the (clearly) law-abiding. Every individual with something to lose sees the distinction clearly -- they are just looking for opportunities to get away with things, but can't you tell that I am obviously a law-abiding citizen? -- and expects the police to do the same. Any failure to do the second makes the police an instrument of government which has been corrupted by power, and thus to be stymied at every turn. Any failure to do the first makes them useless.

The end result is that the police, the very people who are normally entrusted by society to be a more-or-less neutral instrument of law enforcement, are simultaneously made powerless and seen as powerless.

When the police can no longer be trusted, the individual who has anything to lose must take the responsibility for their own protection upon themself. In such a society, the logic drives each such individual to go armed: for nothing less will suffice to stand between them and chaos.

(And yet in each person's mind, they themself have no part in having built that chaos on a foundation of mistrust born of fear.)

To contain a deepwater offshore oil leak, the leak must be sealed off below the leak and the wellhead must be capped or otherwise closed off as soon as possible. Only after the submarine leak is capped can the surface oil slick be properly dealt with. Anything less is pulling individual raindrops out of a hurricane -- and even that little at a short- and long-term cost to the environment almost as heavy as the oil itself.

(Then again, the end effect of the Deepwater Horizon spill must also be measured against the pre-existing 22,000 square kilometre dead zone reaching out into the Gulf of Mexico from the mouth of the Mississippi river: which had already been impacting the shrimp fishing industry to the east.)

The first (and only) line of pre-emptive defense is the blowout preventer: a method which has not been substantially updated since 1922. Should it fail, the only remaining action which can make a substantive difference is to slant-drill a relief well into the reservoir, then use it to pump in seawater and concrete to permanently close the well. Some countries have tried to require such a relief well to be drilled before mining the main reservoir. Until now, the counter-argument has always been cost.

No technology for repairing this kind of damage has ever been tested at anything like these depths. Even basic subsea oil recovery systems have only ever been previously used in shallow water less than 100 metres deep. We are deep into experimental territory here.

In shallow water, a relief well has been drilled in as little as thirty days under optimal conditions. Under the Gulf of Mexico, all drilling will be through hard shale rock, so conditions are far from optimal even without taking deepsea pressures into account. It is much more likely that drilling a successful relief well will take multiple attempts, if the water and oil pressures involved in deepsea drilling allow drilling a relief well at all.

Once again, our determination to delve ever further for new riches (resources, knowledge) has exceeded our known ability to mitigate the potential harm.

"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for?"
- Robert Browning, "Andrea del Sarto"

It was such a simple question.

What song is this? please help:):so earlier today i heard this song on the radio and i really liked it:) but idk what ittts called.
i remembered this one part of the song
and it goes like this...'they'll call me freedom just like a waving flag'.
somethnglike that:)
and his voice was like jamaicann.

pease help:) thanks.

So why, when the full and preferred answer is given, would the reply be

thanks alot(:

Why such bitter disappointment at having read the lyrics? Did the asker perhaps have a completely different assumption about the song's intent?

Facebook is not free. Even if its staff were able to do their duties out of the goodness of their hearts, bandwidth and other site-related expenses must still be paid.

Thus, like so many other "free" services, Facebook must base its business model at least in part on data gathering. The service is only the bait. We ourselves are but eyeballs who have taken the hook, collected and sorted for advertisers to use.

In our modern monetary economic structure, there are but two choices. If privacy is the issue, we must be prepared to pay for the privilege.