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:

1. Reduce the population (thus decreasing demand)
2. Relocate the population (I’m talking about space colonization)
3. 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

This story over on Slashdot about how the Washington Post’s online executive editor Jim Brady is arguing against anonymity sparked quite a lively little debate.

The problem isn’t really anonymity - it’s identity.

They don’t want to know who a particular person is, they just want to somehow stop that one person from coming back. They don’t care who you are, they just want to make sure that “you” don’t come back.

This is not a new problem.

Basically, what you need is a trusted, secure, centralized system that you identify yourself to. This centralized system then anonymizes your identity to allow you to participate in anonymous discussions. If you mis-behave (or if the owner of the discussion group just doesn’t like you), you can be banned - and the system takes care of the actual “banning.” The owner of the discussion group just says “ban anonymous user #xxx” and the system connects it back to “you.”

It’s sort of like encryption - where only the central server has the decryption key.

As an interesting aside, Arthur C. Clarke made an interesting use of this concept in his novel “The Songs of Distant Earth“, in the form of “ship’s council.” If you can, pick up that book and read it to see an example of this problem “solved” (in a manner of speaking).

Unfortunately, because of the centralized requirement of this form of anonymity, it will never really be possible on the Internet. After all, there is no “central” anonymizing server. And you can’t just make your own for various reasons - your government might seize it, you yourself might not be trustworthy, etc.

I sort of hope that one day we can solve this problem - because it is a problem. Just look up “sock puppets” sometime and see what I mean. But for now, I think we all just have to learn to deal with it - because it’s better to have broken anonymity than no anonymity at all.

It seemed like it was time for another episode of Desktop Madness, so… here are some new desktop wallpapers I’ve come across recently. Enjoy!

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.

Once again, I’ve filled up my hard drive. It’s inevitable, really - I tend to keep everything, and my music, picture, and video collections are quite… extensive.

What’s sad is that I bought my computer a little over a year ago, and I distinctly remember remaking that its 160 GB hard drive should be “big enough to last quite a while.”

Ha!

But that’s not the question I’m struggling with. I’ve bought a new 500 GB SATA Seagate hard drive, and it will arrive in a few days. The question is, what do I do once I get it? The way I see it, I have two basic options:

1. Use a tool like GParted to copy my existing partition onto the new drive, expand it to fill the available extra space, and set the new drive to be the primary drive and boot of of it. This has the benefit of duplicating my data - effectively making a backup of it - and when I’m done and satisfied, I can wipe the old drive and use it for extra storage. The downside is that Windows partitions don’t like to be resized - and the process takes a long time, especially on bigger drives. Switching the drives around will also take some time as well.
2. Use Windows’ built-in support for “directory junctions” to basically “junction” the new hard drive to an empty folder on my computer. I would probably do some finagling and “junction” the “My Documents” folder to the new drive. The effect of this would be that anything in the “My Documents” folder would actually be on the new drive, although from my point of view it would just be a normal folder on my C: drive. (As you may have suspected, it’s the “My Documents” folder that takes up most of my hard drive space.) This has the benefit of being relatively straightforward to do (although I’ll have to move things around temporarily, as you must junction to an empty folder) and it won’t mess up my existing file/folder hierarchy (no having to switch to a new drive letter or anything). The downside is that I’ll be devoting an entire 500 GB hard drive to just my “My Documents” folder, which seems somehow… wasteful.

So, basically, the decision is - copy the entire Windows partition (the “C:” drive) and fiddle around with re-sizing partitions (can be risky), or just devote the entire new hard drive to just one folder through directory junctions.

Although, I suppose I could split the new hard drive into different sized partitions, and junction them to key places on the old hard drive where space is tight.

If you have any suggestions for me, or if you’d like to share what you’ve done under similar circumstances, feel free to post in the comments.