Core Dump » Rants

Posted on May 08 2008

Filed Under (Politics, Rants, Society) by Keithius

I finally got around to watching “An Inconvenient Truth” tonight, and I have to say, I’m all riled up.

There can be no doubt that climate change is real and is caused by human activity. That’s not what I’m all riled up about. I’m all riled up about what we can do about it and more worryingly, is it already too late?

One of the first things to really “shock” me in the film was the graph of the world’s population. I suppose I’d always “known” it, but I’d never really “known” it, if you follow me. Our population isn’t growing exponentially, it’s growing in some way that defies my knowledge of mathematics to explain it. It’s more like a straight line rising straight up than any sort of curve. In the 1950s there were only a little more than 2 billion people in the world - now we are over 6 billion. In another 30 years there will be close to 9 billion.

That is one hell of a lot of people.

What is perhaps more disturbing is the percentage of the population that is “industrialized.” Because that percentage is rising at an astronomical rate as well. And if you consider that the more “industrialized” a people are, the more energy they consume, well… you don’t need a degree in economic theory to understand basic supply & demand. With that many people, demand for energy will go up a lot. And there is no way our supply can keep up - even if there were vast, untouched resources on the same scale as the Middle East, it wouldn’t be enough to keep up.

Without change, we are going to consume more and more energy. As supply dwindles, and as demand increases, economic pressure will push us to consume every last bit of energy possible - and to hell with the consequences.

We will put the future of the human race - the future of our children - at risk, just for a few more years of energy, of the lifestyle we’ve gotten used to, that we’re “comfortable” with. And this risk is far more than the risk we used to be afraid of at the dawn of the Nuclear Age.

There are only 3 possibilities to deal with this problem:

Reduce the population (thus decreasing demand)
Relocate the population (I’m talking about space colonization)
Invent new technologies to make better use of the limited energy we posses

Let’s address them in turn.

Number 1 is going to happen if we don’t do something yesterday. If things continue as they have gone in the last 50 years, we will see mass starvation and massive death all across the globe. One way or another, there will be fewer people around. But it won’t be a pretty sight.

Number 2 is my personal choice. Space colonization brings with it the ability to harvest energy from the sun - or even terraform other planets and use resources there instead of bringing them from Earth. At least then, if we screw up the Earth so bad, we ourselves won’t totally die out.

Number 3 is starting to happen - although still too slow in many people’s opinions. And new technology can only take us so far - we can only squeeze so much out of a limited resource, no matter how efficient we make the technology. Without deep, radical, fundamental changes in our understanding of how to get energy, we will run out.

When you look at it like that, all 3 choices seem pretty dismal. But the great thing is that we don’t have to choose just one - we can take the best part of each solution and try to use them all at once, and maybe together we can do something about it.

But there’s a dark side to all this. To make a difference, we all really have to do it together. I mean everyone, everywhere, every nation, every city, everyone. We can’t do it piecemeal. It can’t just be one or two or even three countries - even if they are the biggest polluters or energy consumers. It has got to be everyone. Because our human nature demands it - if you have to restrict yourself, change your lifestyle, you’re going to resent your neighbor if he (or she, or they) don’t have to do the same - if they get to keep their lifestyle, if they don’t have to make sacrifices like you do. Our human nature demands that we all give equally, or else none of us will give. (This is, of course, a form of the “tragedy of the commons.”)

And we will all have to give. This sort of change isn’t going to be easy. I have a favorite little quote from one of my favorite movies, “The Lion King,” that goes something like this:

“Change is good…”

“…Yeah, but it’s not easy!”

Truer words were never said.

But we must change. It’s not going to be painless - let’s get that right out in the open right now. It’s going to hurt. Maybe a little, maybe a lot. That’s the way change is. And like most major paradigm-shifting changes, you can’t really see how things are going to be until you’re on the other side - and so will it be with this change. We don’t know what the future will bring, or even what it will be like. But we know we have to make the change. Because we do know what the future will be like if we don’t change.

It is not going to be easy. But it will be good.

Once we are on the other side, things will be better. We’ll have the technology, the policies, the systems in place and it’ll all be easy. Because once you’ve made the change, and it’s over with, well, it’s no longer change anymore - it’s just the way things are.

As the movie credits rolled, I was reminded of another quote that I really like - maybe you’ve even heard it before. I think that it is just as appropriate now as it was when it was first uttered:

“For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”

John F. Kennedy
Address at American University
Washington, D.C., 1963

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Posted on May 05 2008

Gas Tax Holiday: Dumbest Idea Ever

Filed Under (Politics, Rants) by Keithius

I overheard on the news this morning something about a “gas tax holiday” that someone (Senator Clinton?) was suggesting.

My immediate reaction? That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard.

Let me explain:

First off, giving a “holiday” from gasoline taxes is basically admitting that you’ve failed. You’re basically saying, “I’ve failed to keep gasoline prices from skyrocketing and things have gotten so bad that I’m going to try and give you a tiny break just so you won’t go bankrupt when trying to fill up your new Ford/GM/[insert name of your least-favorite car manufacturer here] Planetbuster SUV.” And while I admire politicians who are brave enough to admit failure, this is sort of a weaselly way of doing it.

Secondly, and perhaps most profoundly, is the fact that this is quite obviously a diversionary tactic, meant to draw our attention away from more important things. It is, quite frankly, an insult to our intelligence. It is basically saying “here’s a brief break from the price of gas, now vote for me!” It is bribery, in the truest sense of the word.

Now, trading favors like this for votes is an old political trick - and everyone’s been doing it for pretty much forever, so nothing new there. What’s different here is how brazenly open it is. Instead of the usual “if elected, I promise to do X,” it’s more like “if elected, I’ll personally write each and every one of you a $100 check - I promise!”

Never mind that the whole idea is basically a panacea. It’s like giving someone a pain reliever when they’ve had their arm chopped off. Sure, it’ll dull the pain for a bit, but they’re still gushing blood from the open wound!

Basic economic theory tells us what to do in a situation like this. If the price of a commodity like gasoline is going up, you can either increase the supply or reduce the demand. So, it’s either find more oil, or make us collectively use less of it. (Hint: a gas tax holiday does neither of these things - in fact, arguably, it increases demand, because everyone will fill up during the holiday, and there will probably be hoarding, people filling up portable containers and stockpiling gas - thus using more and leaving us in a worse position, supply-wise, after the holiday than we were before!)

So, you can see that the idea of a “gas tax holiday” is at the very least useless (and possibly even harmful) in the long term, and worst of all, is a brazen attempt at bribing the voting populace by hitting us all where it hurts - in our wallet after we’ve filled up.

To me, that seems like an incredibly shameful thing to do, and that’s why I believe it qualifies for the “Dumbest Idea Ever” title.

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Posted on Apr 24 2008

Comcastic “Support?”

Filed Under (Rants, Technology) by Keithius

Earlier this week, on Monday, I had some Internet trouble.

My ISP, Patriot Media, was recently bought out by that cable company everyone loves to hate, Comcast. On Monday, my Internet stopped working, and so I set about trying to figure out what went wrong.

I saw right away that it seemed as though my local (as in neighborhood) network had finally been switched over to Comcast’s network - the IP had changed to a totally different class A network, and as a further clue, the host name now said “comcast” instead of “patriotmedia.” OK - so why can’t I connect to anything?

I was getting the new IP address via DHCP, so I knew I was at least connected to Comcast - but I could not ping the DHCP, DNS, or Gateway IP addresses I was given. Very strange! So the problem must’ve been on their end.

Ugh. That means I have to call Comcast tech support and probably go through all my troubleshooting all over again.

Sure enough, that is exactly what happened. Even though I’d already done the whole “connect your computer directly to the cable modem” thing, they made me do it again. And again. I mean, I know why they make you do this, and I know that they’re probably told to ignore callers who say “I’m a tech person, I know what I’m doing” (which I did say, in not so few words), but still…

Anyway, they eventually said they’d have to escalate it (duh!) and would it be OK for a tech to call me back on this number? I said sure, made sure they had the phone number right (they did), and hung up.

Several hours later, with no Internet, I was going through withdrawal. Remember, I live on the Internet!

So I called back to get a status report - and they started making me go through the troubleshooting steps again! So I firmly asked for a status report, and they said, basically, “they’re working on it.”

To keep myself amused, I was periodically checking my ‘net connection, resetting my router and cable modem to see if I had connectivity. Finally, after 6 hours, the Internet came back to life and I was able to get back online.

Fast forward to today, and I get a call out of the blue. It was Comcast… calling to see if my Internet was working now.

For those who can’t count, that’s 3 days later they finally called to check in on me.

I guess you could say that this is what “Comcastic” really means - leave your customers hanging for 3 days before following up on something that you fixed 3 days earlier. If they keep using that word in their advertising, well… to quote a great movie, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”