Making a pact with the devil

For much of the last 15 or so years, we have not had to pay for our internet use outside of connection minutes. Email, web-browsing, Facebook, (MySpace), Twitter-- all have been free for the user, subsidized through outside advertising. Little by little, the barrier between those who pay and those who don't has been reduced. Recently, Google announced a significant change in their privacy policy that allows for cross-platform sharing of data, Twitter announced recently that it will allow government censorship (something Google did years ago).
Should we be surprised that there is no such thing as a free lunch?

Pipeline Politics

So it has come down to this: denied the Keystone extension,  Canada will look elsewhere for customers.

Does the average anti-pipeline environmentalist truly believe that this is a good thing? Looking past the short-term lack of job creation, it ultimately means that Americans will be paying a higher price for oil coming from such environmentally-conscious areas such as Venezuela, Nigeria, Mexico... This price increase will not touch the 1 percent, it probably will not even touch the 10 or 15 percent. But it will hit a lot of people who cannot afford the extra 1-2k per year. People who live in cold areas: New England, for example. People who commute via car or bus to work. True enough, the population is shifting to warmer climates - Texas, Arizona to name but two - but that move brings other problems with it. Water use, for example. And as far as living more than a bike ride or a walk away from work... is it realistic to shut down the suburbs?

It is far too facile to think that raised prices of fossil fuel will shift demand to alternative energy sources - even in the long-term. Think of France where high energy prices are a de-facto way of life and have been for over two decades. Public transportation used to be a way of life. Today, and for the last 10 years, investment in train transportation has diminished in every area but one: the long-haul TGV. Yes, people drive diesel-engine cars - but that does not mean that they are particularly environmentally friendly. Nearly the only way that France is independent of oil is in the energy sector: over 90 percent of electricity is provided by nuclear power. Given that there are no plans for nuclear plant production in the US, it's a no-brainer to see that our economy will not be weaned from fossil fuels in the near future, if at all.

This desire on the part of a vocal, wealthy minority to avoid potential environmental damage in the US only pushes development into other areas of the world where skill and infrastructure are not as highly developed in the US. It increases the potential for environmental damage. Is that truly what is desired - or are the vocal few simply NIMBYs?

Update: Cuba is now in the process of developing their deep-water capacity in the Gulf of Mexico. We get the pollution - who gets the energy?  http://gcaptain.com/billion-barrels-undiscovered-oil/?30418

Etta James

One of the hardest things to do as a musician (and maybe this is true of life in general, now that I think of it,) is to maintain a story at a slow tempo. In this live version of At Last, Etta James succeeds  in a way that keeps you on the edge of your chair.

A decade earlier she was captured live at Montreux with Damn Your Eyes

I hope I have such passion when I'm past 70.

RIP Etta James.

American Exceptionalism?

In a provocative article, Charles Murray, writing in the New Criterion, makes the argument that the increasingly divided society of today's America threatens the definition of American exceptionalism.  
What is American exceptionalism? 

Historically, Americans have been seen as different, even peculiar, to people around the world.1 I am thinking of qualities such as American industriousness—not just hard work, but the way that Americans have treated their work and their efforts to get ahead in life as a central expression of who they are. There is American neighborliness. Many cultures have traditions of generous hospitality to guests, but widespread voluntary mutual assistance among unrelated people who happen to live alongside each other has been rare. In the United States, it has been ubiquitous. I am thinking also of qualities such as American optimism, present even when there doesn’t seem to be any good reason for it; our striking lack of class envy; the assumption by most Americans that they are in control of their own destinies; and our famous naïveté in assuming the best of a random person that we come across. Finally, there is the most lovable of exceptional American qualities: our tradition of insisting that we are part of the middle class, even if we aren’t, and of interacting with our fellow citizens as if we were all middle class.

This last sentence is particularly important, and one that had been remarked upon from the earliest days of the Republic. Murray explains: 

Tocqueville, when explaining why the American system ensured that a despot could never successfully divide Americans against each other, wrote that “local freedom . . . perpetually brings men together, and forces them to help one another, in spite of the propensities which sever them. In the United States, the more opulent citizens take great care not to stand aloof from the people. On the contrary, they constantly keep on easy terms with the lower classes: they listen to them, they speak to them every day.”

The problem, however, is that over the past half century, people have grown increasingly isolated from each other - and no longer understand each other. The end result - a class-based society that is not so different from other "complex" societies.

When people are making decisions that affect the lives of many other people, the cultural isolation that has grown up around America’s new upper class can be disastrous. It is not a problem if truck drivers cannot empathize with the priorities of Yale law professors. It is a problem if Yale law professors, or producers of the nightly news, or CEOs of great corporations, or the President’s advisors, cannot empathize with the priorities of truck drivers.

The whole article is a must read.

Demystifying the Koran

Really interesting take from the Economist:

http://www.economist.com/node/21542162?fsrc=scn/tw/te/ar/inthebeginning