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Wednesday, February 19, 2003
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Richard Eckersley writes: On 20 March 1995, members of Aum Shinrikyo (or Aum Supreme Truth), a Japanese religious sect, carried out a nerve-gas attack on the Tokyo subway, leaving 12 people dead and thousands ill. The sect is one of several ‘doomsday cults’ linked in recent years to mass murder and suicide. Aum Shinrikyo attracted many highly intelligent and well-educated young people, including chemists, physicists and medical specialists. As the report of the World Commission on Culture and Development observes, these people possessed a formidable mastery of scientific know-how, but not an iota of know-why. ‘I did not want my life to be meaningless,’ a senior sect member said. Meaning in life is a crucial aspect of human well-being. For most of our existence as a species, meaning was pretty much a social given. Children grew up in a close network of family and community relationships which largely defined their world - their values and beliefs, identity and place. People knew little of what lay outside that world, of other ways of living (except through the intrusions of trade or invasion). Beyond the mortal realm, they had a religious faith that gave them a place in the Cosmic scheme of things. Much of life was predictable and what wasn’t was explained in terms of the supernatural. The old ways might often have been harsh and oppressive, but they allowed people to make sense of their lives at several levels. As the 19th Century German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzche, said: ‘He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how’. (02/19/03) | |
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C.J.R.Sumner writes: I have recently found myself staring in the face of an awkward dilemma. It seems I can no longer communicate with the vast majority of people on an effective and progressive level. I have been stripped of all the pleasures of intellectual conversation on stimulating and important topics and left with nothing more than mindless jibba- jabba. I have struggled to uphold the values of talking about the future of humanity, the destruction of our planet, the quest of the individual, scientific frontiers and political reformation. I feel it is of vital importance to humanity for individual intellects to interact in a forum of open-minded, open-ended discussions on subjects relevant to the well-being and longevity of our environments, both external (the planet, society, family), and internal (body, mind, soul). ...
Jan Hearthstone writes: Any of the remedies that either are being currently pursued, or that might still be contemplated, meant to address the many, with time rapidly increasing environmental and social problems of this planet, cannot keep pace with the proliferation of those problems. The only certainty that could be entertained about our collective, global future is, for an informed person, that whatever problems the world might have had in the past, and is facing presently, the future will have those problems also, but multiplied and greatly amplified. Although technical and scientific knowledge is increasing astoundingly, the more so is increasing the world's misery. The more computers we have (to put it simplistically), the proportionally more homeless, hungry, abjectly poor, and socially dissatisfied there are in the world. And also, thanks to our increasing knowledge, and by observing the trend that modern warfare is following, we can with certainty expect any future armed conflicts to be very much more devastating than any armed conflicts of the past. It is only a tiny fraction of humanity who could expect their future to be better than their past. Incidentally, this tiny fraction of humanity is also the portion of humanity that is responsible for the greatest exploitation of resources both - natural (including very many other than human species) and human. (02/19/03) | |
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CNN World News -- CAMP DOHA, Kuwait (CNN) -- The commander of coalition forces in Kuwait said Tuesday there are more than 100,000 U.S. troops in the country ready to launch an attack if one is ordered against Iraq. Lt. Gen. David D. McKiernan, who would lead U.S. and British land forces in any invasion of Iraq, told CNN's Bill Hemmer in an interview that "if we are called upon to execute a mission we are ready to do it." McKiernan said his forces could maintain that level of readiness for "as long as it takes." (02/19/03) | |
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Arthur Noll writes: Sustainability is a matter of not taking resources faster than they renew. You cannot cut trees faster than they grow, or net fish, or burn fossil fuels. You cannot pollute faster than pollution breaks down. There is a balance of resources, using too much energy to take resources tilts the balance away from sustainability. Like the concept of interdependence, the energy efficiency of partnership, the idea of consistent measure, this seems so obvious that one almost wonders why it has to be said. One can wonder how an addict can avoid seeing easy logic as well. Ultimately, the argument comes down to the existence of magic, of infinite growth on a finite planet. The people who argue that resources are unlimited, that it is OK to not be efficient, because there is so much, are basically arguing that resources are infinite, and one can go on being wasteful and building up bubbles that will never burst. For their defense, they point at how limits have been reached in the past, but alternatives were found, and growth continued. They predict that this can always happen. Larger populations of people are good, they say, because in those populations will be found the individuals that will be clever enough to find alternatives. (02/19/03) | |
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New York Times -- Automakers are obsessed with ratings, from customer satisfaction to how many hours it takes workers to assemble a car. But there is at least one list many do not like to talk about. The Environmental Protection Agency rates every vehicle according to the amount of pollutants coming out of the tailpipe that contribute to smog, which can worsen asthma and lead to cancer and lung damage. Many popular sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks rank at the bottom on the 0-to-10 scale. Among them are a number of recently introduced — and highly profitable — models. Vehicles with ratings from 0 to 4 include four pickup trucks — the Ford F-150, Chevrolet Silverado, Dodge Ram and GMC Sierra — as well as sport utilities, including the Mercedes M class, Chevrolet Tahoe and Suburban, Cadillac Escalade, GMC Yukon and Lincoln Navigator. Toyota, which has been praised by environmentalists for its fuel-efficient hybrid car, the Prius, also sells three sport utility vehicles that receive low ratings: the Sequoia, the Land Cruiser and the LX 470 from its Lexus division. The low ratings mean that these vehicles emit at best 21 pounds of pollutants for every 15,000 miles driven, the E.P.A. says, and have 2 to 10 times the emissions of most Honda Civics. (The ratings are posted at epa.gov/greenvehicles.) ... Last month, the top executive of Hyundai, the Korean automaker that made its name in small cars, said the company would probably sell its first full-size sport utility by 2007 and was considering a pickup truck as well. In 1980, light trucks made up only a fifth of American auto sales. In 2001, they crept past half of the industry's sales and last year grew to 52 percent. There were 51 sport utilities on the market last September, according to George Peterson, president of AutoPacific, a market research company that conducts focus groups and surveys. He expects the number to rise to at least 85 by 2006 or 2007. (02/19/03) | |
12:03:53 AM 
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2003
Timothy Wilken.
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2/28/2003; 12:47:00 AM.
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