My World of “Ought to Be”
by Timothy Wilken, MD










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Monday, March 08, 2004
 

Socioeconomic Democracy

Robley E. George writes: Considering the multitude of perplexing and painful present problems of the planet, including (but by no means limited to) automation, computerization and robotization; budget deficits and national debts; bureaucracy; maltreatment of children; crime and punishment; maldevelopment; ecology, environment and pollution; education; maltreatment of the elderly; male domination of the female majority; inflation; international conflict; intranational conflict; involuntary employment; involuntary unemployment; labor strife and strikes; maldistributions of necessary resources; sick medical and health care; military metamorphosis; natural disasters; planned obsolescence; poor political participation; poverty; racism; sexism; untamed technology; unnecessarily unsettling societal instabilities and an at best anemic general welfare, it can be and has been assumed that the democratic design project is of some urgency. Socioeconomic Democracy is one theoretical and practical attempt to meet this universal need by reducing all these kinds of problems simultaneously through systemic change. Narrowly interpreted, and as originally conceived, Socioeconomic Democracy  is a theoretical model socioeconomic system wherein there exist both some form of Universal Guaranteed Personal Income and some form of Maximum Allowable Personal Wealth, with both the lower bound on personal material poverty and the upper bound on personal material wealth set and adjusted democratically by all participants of society. These two fundamental socioeconomic system parameters that are to be determined democratically, enjoy a long list of advocates, including Paine, Jefferson, extending back to the ancient Greek thinkers and up to the present global quest for improved, more just economic systems. Socioeconomic Democracy adopts this well established tradition and simply democratizes the possibilities faced by any society. This is accomplished by employing a central result of public choice theory, i.e., median value of participant preference distribution of an amount in question is the democratically desired amount, with single-peakedness and majority rule. Socioeconomic Democracy thereby inaugurated public introduction to and adoption of quantitative democracy. (03/08/04)


  b-future:

Why Good Things Happen to Bad People

John Brand writes: Let me define my terms. By "good things" I do not mean ideals valued among the noblest of human principles. Included among such majestic goals would be the dispensation of justice based on equity, the rightful distribution of goods, the pursuit of philosophy, the arts, and the profoundly spiritual. By "good things," in this column, I imply what our materialistic society values most highly: conspicuous consumption, tax evasion by the super rich, awarding non-competitive government contracts, golden parachutes, obscene stock options, off-shore companies, accounting finesses, and sundry other such exploitive gambits. In short, by "good things" I mean the advantage the favorite few exercise over the masses. By "bad people" I do not mean those caught "in flagrante delicto" in extracurricular, sexual adventures. Heavens to Betsy, even a larger number of priests, ministers, rabbis, and imams than we are wont to admit would have to be called bad by that standard. "Bad people," in this column, are folks who pontificate about petty, moralistic issues but are quite willing to eliminate the protection of the "Bill of Rights" for all those with whom they have serious disagreements. Bad people are those who crow about democracy but disregard and even undermine the constitutional balance of powers. "Bad people" manipulate the system to satiate their rapacious appetites. They are folks amassing large bank accounts by devious means. They hold powerful, judicial positions based on passing a litmus test. They exert tremendous political influence flaunting any sense of social responsibility. How does it happen that the above listed good things accrue to such bad folks? To put it briefly, the spin masters have been able to make three lies sound virtuous and cause the virtuous to sound evil. (03/08/04)


  b-CommUnity:

What is Purple Goosefoot?

The New Farm -- Purple goosefoot, or Atriplex hortensis, is an antique vegetable related to the spinach. It has never caught on here in the states, probably because your average shopper worries overmuch about where a goose’s foot might trod. The plant can also be called mountain spinach, or orach. The plant sports two decorator colors, red and green, and it has a nice, mellow flavor. I paid $126 for a pound of goosefoot seed last year and planted a seed crop. When the crop germinates you jump with fright because it looks just like the pernicious weed lambsquarters, or Chenopodium album. In fact it practically is lambsquarters and it grows like a weed. Out of 4 beds 40 inches wide and two hundred feet long I got four garbage cans of seed. The seed I didn’t harvest sprouted with the first rains. We harvested it and sold it loose, piled high in big fluffy purple mountains, for $4.00/pound at the farmers’ market. ... My first planting from my own seed came up a deeper purple than the mother stock and have proven to be very vigorous. Sales have been clicking along. Boulevard and Incanto, two of San Francisco’s nicer restaurants, have it on their menu, the public is buying all I bring to market and I’ve got no competition. (03/08/04)


  b-theInternet:

Scientific Adventure

Simon LambThe New Scientist Interview -- To geologist Simon Lamb, mountains are much more than lumps of rock. He has spent much of the past decade in Bolivia trying to find out how they evolve. What does it feel like to spend all that time in the mountains? It is extreme. The altitude is a problem. You have half as much oxygen as at sea level and that is stressful because you never feel completely well. It is hard work to move around, you have to force yourself. The other problem is that there is little infrastructure there. If your vehicle breaks down or somebody gets ill you quickly go from a situation where everything is fine to one that is life-threatening. You might have your breakfast and plan to do something, then by lunchtime you are fighting for your life. It takes a while to recover from that. Eventually, it takes it out of you psychologically. You become more reluctant to take risks - that becomes the biggest problem. When I first went to Bolivia we were adventurous, because we didn't know what could go wrong. We did an awful lot of things that later on in the project I wouldn't have dreamed of doing. What sort of things go wrong? There was one time when we wanted desperately to get to the summit of a volcano to sample some gases, but we couldn't see a way to get there. Then a miner said he knew how to take a party of people up the volcano. In fact he was humouring us: he didn't know the way at all. First he took us up the wrong volcano, so we ended up having to climb two volcanoes instead of one. After all this effort we were determined to get the gas sample. It got dark, the guide panicked. He knew he was in trouble and he more or less abandoned us. We were floundering around in the dark trying to feel our way down. We were at our limit. I was pig in the middle between the guide far in the distance and the other two people in our team behind. I was using a flashlight to signal to them where I was, while keeping an eye on the guide and shouting to him. It was a close thing. When you are in the mountains, does anything distract you from your geology? Definitely. You suddenly step back and say this is an incredible place to be. We have seen herds of vicuna, and foxes. You can be driving through Bolivia's Alto Plano, come over a hill and see a huge lake covered in flamingos, and they all suddenly rise up. There can be moments of immense beauty, especially late in the day when you get this wonderful low evening light - a rich light, it has a lot of orange in it - and the landscape becomes almost like a painting. It's fantastically beautiful. You do fantasise that you want to get back to civilisation, you want a hot shower, a meal at a restaurant, you want to pamper yourself. But when you get to the city it comes as quite a shock. You immediately regret being back, and straight away you are looking forward to going away again. That's the great thing about these long field trips: you always have the thought that you'll be off again in a week and a new adventure will start. I feel privileged to have experienced all that. (03/08/05)


  b-theInternet:

Summer 2003 was Hottest in 500 Years

BBC Environment -- European researchers say last summer was the hottest on the continent for at least five centuries. "When you consider Europe as a whole, it was by far the hottest," said Juerg Luterbacher of the University of Bern, Switzerland. According to the study, published by this week's Science magazine, European winters are also getting warmer. Average winter and annual temperatures during the past three decades were the warmest for 500 years, it says. Mr Luterbacher and his team collected data from all over Europe to analyse the continent's temperature history. Their information included readings from tree rings and soil cores from the year 1500. According to their study, there have been weather trends in both ways - towards cool and hot - in the last five centuries. The second hottest summer in the period was in 1757, which was followed by a cooler spell. The year 1902 witnessed the coolest summer of the last 500 years. Researchers report "an exceptionally strong, unprecedented warming trend" since 1977, resulting in last summer's heatwave. Authorities in various European countries say thousands of people died last summer due to excess heat. The Swiss study does not cover the controversial subject of human influence on climate change. "We don't make any analysis of the human influence," Mr Luterbacher said. "We don't attempt to determine the cause. We only report what we find." (03/08/04)


  b-theInternet:

Why Time Flies When You Are Having Fun

Time FliesBBC Science -- Scans have shown that patterns of activity in the brain change depending on how we focus on a task. Concentrating on time passing, as we do when bored, will trigger brain activity which will make it seem as though the clock is ticking more slowly. The research, by the French Laboratory of Neurobiology and Cognition, is published in the magazine Science. In the study, 12 volunteers watched an image while researchers monitored their brain activity using MRI scans. Volunteers were given a variety of tasks. In one they were told to concentrate simply on the duration of an image, in another they were asked to focus on the colour, and in a third they were asked to concentrate on both duration and colour. ... It is thought that if the brain is busy focusing on many aspects of a task, then it has to spread its resources thinly, and pays less heed to time passing. Therefore, time passes without us really noticing it, and seems to go quickly. However, if the brain is not stimulated in this way, it concentrates its full energies on monitoring the passing of time. This may make time seem to drag, but in fact it is probably a more accurate perception of reality. Indeed, the researchers found that the more volunteers concentrated on the duration of the images, the more accurate were their estimates of its duration. Lead researcher Dr Jennifer Coull told BBC News Online that many of the areas of the brain involved in estimating time were the same that played a key role in controlling movement, and preparing for action. She said this overlap suggests that the brain may make sense of time as intervals between movements, in much the same way as a musician marks time with his foot, or an athlete anticipates the sound of a starter's pistol. (03/08/05)


  b-theInternet:


6:10:42 AM    


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