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Saturday, January 01, 2005 |
The Elite
Jared Diamond on the elite:
A society contains a built-in blueprint for failure if the elite insulates itself from the consequences of its actions. That's why Maya kings, Norse Greenlanders and Easter Island chiefs made choices that eventually undermined their societies. They themselves did not begin to feel deprived until they had irreversibly destroyed their landscape.
Could this happen in the United States? It's a thought that often occurs to me here in Los Angeles, when I drive by gated communities, guarded by private security patrols, and filled with people who drink bottled water, depend on private pensions, and send their children to private schools. By doing these things, they lose the motivation to support the police force, the municipal water supply, Social Security and public schools. If conditions deteriorate too much for poorer people, gates will not keep the rioters out. Rioters eventually burned the palaces of Maya kings and tore down the statues of Easter Island chiefs; they have also already threatened wealthy districts in Los Angeles twice in recent decades.
In contrast, the elite in 17th-century Japan, as in modern Scandinavia and the Netherlands, could not ignore or insulate themselves from broad societal problems. For instance, the Dutch upper class for hundreds of years has been unable to insulate itself from the Netherlands' water management problems for a simple reason: the rich live in the same drained lands below sea level as the poor. If the dikes and pumps keeping out the sea fail, the well-off Dutch know that they will drown along with everybody else, which is precisely what happened during the floods of 1953.
4:16:57 PM Permalink
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The Ends of the World as We Know Them
The Ends of the World as We Know Them: "The Unites States is seemingly at the height of its power, but how long will our ascendancy last?"
(Via The New York Times > Opinion.)
A must-read by Jared Diamond, apparently summarizing a bunch of what's in his newest book.
Such questions seem especially appropriate this year. History warns us that when once-powerful societies collapse, they tend to do so quickly and unexpectedly. That shouldn't come as much of a surprise: peak power usually means peak population, peak needs, and hence peak vulnerability. What can be learned from history that could help us avoid joining the ranks of those who declined swiftly? We must expect the answers to be complex, because historical reality is complex: while some societies did indeed collapse spectacularly, others have managed to thrive for thousands of years without major reversal.
When it comes to historical collapses, five groups of interacting factors have been especially important: the damage that people have inflicted on their environment; climate change; enemies; changes in friendly trading partners; and the society's political, economic and social responses to these shifts. That's not to say that all five causes play a role in every case. Instead, think of this as a useful checklist of factors that should be examined, but whose relative importance varies from case to case.
So we're an empire now, but not for very long, most likely. And we haven't been an especially good one, either:
"America failed its exam as a superpower," says Lech Walesa, the former Solidarity trade-union leader who became Poland's first post-Communist president. "They are a military and economic superpower but not morally or politically anymore. This is a tragedy for us." Mr. Walesa laments what he sees as America's squandered leadership because he thinks the EU isn't ready for prime time.... [C]an Europe offer itself and the wider world a vision to match, and perhaps one day even supplant, America's role as "leader of the free world"?
In a campaign debate this fall, President Bush chided Sen. John Kerry for belittling the coalition in Iraq. "Well, you forgot Poland," said Mr. Bush. On a host of issues, however, many Poles, as well as some other allies, wonder if Mr. Bush has forgotten them.
And of course the American regime's slow and somewhat paltry response to the greatest catastrophe of our time shows how far we've failed as a superpower. Remember that Lech Walesa isn't any liberal America-basher, either.
3:59:06 PM Permalink
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Dobson sets his sights on the Senate...
Dobson sets his sights on the Senate...: " Dobson sets his sights on the Senate AMericablog - 1/1/2005 10:43:48 AM
According to The New York Times (registration required as you know), the Reverend Dr. James Dobson, President of Focus on the Family, has set his sights on the U.S. Senate. Seems the good Reverend has sent a letter to his followers about six Democratic Senators who he will defeat them if they block Bush's judicial appointments. Seems Reverend Dobson believes that he single-handedly elected Bush and defeated Tom Daschle. Now, he wants to control the Senate. Obviously the only thing that matters to evangelical leaders is the supreme court nomination. They have made it very clear that the state of the economy, health care, gov't spending, the Iraq war, and education have no meaning to them. Only the appointment of a suitable judge. Sure seems anti-Christian to me! "
(Via Crooks and Liars.)
12:29:23 PM Permalink
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Books Read: 2004
well, it's kind of a pitiful list, but here are the books I read in the past year, sorted chronologically. Heck, some of them I can't even remember now, and there are some I didn't log. The best books have an asterisk by them.
*A Rage in Harlem
Shooting the Sun
For Us, The Living : A Comedy of Customs
Pompeii: A Novel
Never Mind the Pollacks : A Rock and Roll Novel
*Isaac Newton
What Makes You Tick?: The Brain in Plain English
Mr. Paradise : A Novel
A Simple Twist of Fate: Bob Dylan and the Making of Blood on the Tracks
The Stranger at the Palazzo d'Oro and Other Stories
*Lost in Space : The Fall of NASA and the Dream of a New Space Age
Cons, Scams & Grifts
Murder Among Children: A Mitchell Tobin Mystery
National Lampoon's 1964 High School Yearbook : 39th Reunion Edition
Comm Check... : The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia
Beyond Infinity
Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium
*The World of Jeeves
Masters of Atlantis
Snowball Earth : The Story of the Great Global Catastrophe That Spawned Life as We Know It
*Chindi
Adventures of the Artificial Woman : A Novel
The Birth of the Mind: How a Tiny Number of Genes Creates the Complexities of Human Thought
American Desert : A Novel
Two Trains Running
The Way We Talk Now
*Atlas of the Year 1000
The Quest for Immortality: Science at the Frontiers of Aging
Coyote Moon
Bone in the Throat
The Road to Ruin
Lost Christianities: The Battle for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
The Devil's Redhead
Skinny Dip
Little Scarlet: An Easy Rawlins Mystery
*Platform
Amazonia: Five Years at the Epicenter of the Dot.Com Juggernaut
Younger Than That Now: The Collected Interviews with Bob Dylan
Checkpoint: A Novel
The Rider
Camouflage
*The Man in the High Castle
After Dark, My Sweet
*The Sex Lives of Cannibals : Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific
Florence of Arabia : A Novel
**Chronicles, Vol. 1
**The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason
**The Plot Against America : A Novel
*The Boy Who Would Live Forever : A Novel of Gateway
I Am Charlotte Simmons
*Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare
Gaudeamus
*Stevenson Under the Palm Trees
*The Final Solution: A Story of Detection
12:07:47 PM Permalink
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Resolutions
Well here's a list of things I'm going to try to do or not this year.
1. Keep the calories under closer control.
2. Keep the blood sugar under control.
3. At least 2000 miles on the bike (only 1801 in 2004, because I missed about a month after I got hit by the car).
4. Be more patient with my beer! Try not to drink it until it's conditioned in the bottle a bit longer. Because impatience is not worthy of the beer. And this may help with 1 & 2 above.
5. Read more and better books. I read 55 non-technical books in 2004, just more than 1 a week. Tivo and the internet are to blame. (List of books to come.)
6. Have more sex.
11:35:36 AM Permalink
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AND NOW THE GOOD NEWS OF 2004
AND NOW THE GOOD NEWS OF 2004: "
RADLEY BALKO, FOX NEWS - Juvenile violent crime has fallen every year – and nearly halved – since 1995. . . Teen birthrates are at a 20-year low, and high school dropout rates are at a 35-year low.
- Life expectancy in the U.S. is at an all-time high among men and women, black and white. . . Heart disease, cardiovascular disease and stroke have fallen dramatically in the last 15 years. Incidence of, and deaths from, cancer have dropped every year since 1990.
— Concentration levels of every major air pollutant have dropped dramatically since 1970.
- According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, there were just 19 major armed conflicts in 2003, down from 44 in 1995. . . . According to the Human Security Report, published by the University of British Columbia, 700,000 people died in battle in 1951. By the 1990s, the number had fallen to 40,000-100,000. In 2002, it was just 15,000.
- Yale University's David Dollar has pointed out that since 1980, the total number of people living on less than $1 per day has actually fallen by 200 million, despite the fact that the world's population increased by 1.8 billion. It's the first time in recorded history that that has happened. The UN's 2004 Human Development Report notes that real per capita incomes in the developing world have more than doubled since 1975. In some provinces in China, incomes are doubling every few months.
- Between 1960 and 2000, life expectancy in developing countries increased from 46 to 63 years. Mortality rates of children under five are half of what they were forty years ago.
"
(Via UNDERNEWS.)
10:38:53 AM Permalink
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Our Christian Nation: Stingy or Generous?
Our Christian Nation: Stingy or Generous?: "
A quote from this 'Global Analysts Dispute Perceived US Generosity' article:
Jeffrey Sachs, an economist at Columbia University and a specialist on aid to developing countries who has worked with the United Nations, said, ''There is a very big difference between American attitudes, which are generous; beliefs, which is that we do a lot; and the reality. . . . The reality is we actually do very little by comparative measures.
----
''I think the disaster in Asia is a stark example of this for a lot of Americans. It challenges their perceptions of their own country,' Sachs said. ''There is going to be even more shock when the US government asks for an additional $80 billion in Iraq and the American public juxtaposes that with what was given in one of the worst natural disasters the world has ever seen.
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''This discrepancy between what we think our country does and what it actually does is hurting America's image in the world, especially in the poorest corners of the world,' added Sachs.
(Via Jesus Politics.)
10:16:44 AM Permalink
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Nutcracker
We saw San Francisco Ballet's new production of The Nutcracker last night; it was the last show of the year. This season featured a totally new production of the sometimes hoary classic, which received its American debut 60 years ago at the same venue: the San Francisco Opera House. We last saw the Nutcracker here years ago, probably in 86 or 87. This new production was delightful and sumptuous, which Nutcracker's are supposed to be. A very nice touch was the opening, which showed the production to be set in Victorian San Francisco, with a beautiful scrim showing Victorians with the bridgeless bay in the background. (A very nice touch was the artificial snow which greeted us as we entered the Opera House -- it was raining slightly, and the snow almost fooled us. This production will have a long life -- decades, I'm sure -- and it's highly recommended. (I don't like those Opera House seats, though; I think they're too short for me or something. My knees hurt after an evening in them.)
10:14:34 AM Permalink
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© Copyright 2005 Steve Michel.
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