The Paucity of Hope

I just have one disagreement with Drew Weston's otherwise great piece on Obama in last Sunday's NYT.   And that's the title, "What Happened to Obama?"

I don't think anything happened to Barack Obama.  He is the man he always was.  In the swooning days of 2007 and 2008, some of us on the left distrusted the cult-like status of the man and his campaign.  His admirers (and detractors) weren't seeing him clearly.  Many people projected their desires and fears onto him.

With time, we can now see more clearly who he is.

And who is that?  Not a fighter.  Not a leftist.  Not a reformer.  A conciliator, pragmatist, centrist and technocrat.  Definitely not what these times call for. 

30 days without a workplace incident!

I heard Christine Lagarde interviewed on PBS today about the seriously crazy US "debt ceiling" food fight and the crazily serious Eurozone debt crisis.  She's the new head of the International Monetary Fund, replacing Dominque Strauss-Kahn on 28 June 2011. 

She sounded pretty competent.  And so far she hasn't sexually assaulted anyone. 

Good start.

The Demolished Man

The tragedy in Norway last week has me thinking of one of my favorite books, “The Demolished Man”, by Alfred Bester (1953).  Without spoiling this old science fiction novel for those who haven’t read it, I just want to say that an important idea in the novel is that destructive power capable of ending humanity may ultimately lie in each and every human’s hands.  The author suggests that with the knowledge of this power, we may find ourselves developing a sense of responsibility for all humanity.  Perhaps that sense will allow us to each do the right thing, and to act in a way in which every person assumes responsibility for every other person, and protects all humanity from an ultimate demolition. 

Or, perhaps not.

As technology development speeds up in our reality, the capability for immense violence and destruction by individuals grows.  Terrorist attacks, shooting sprees and the prospect of the acquisition of a nuclear weapon by fanatical extremists are all examples of this fearful trend.

Soon, the fanciful prospect laid out in The Demolished Man will be our reality.

What will we do, I wonder?

Al Gore for President

and, if so called, I will accede to my countrymen's cry to run as his vice-president.

See Al Gore's article in the Rolling Stone on climate change, President Obama, and the future of the Earth.

factoid for the day

Fun Fact for the day:

The sunlight photons that reached the Earth at this moment was created in the core of the Sun about 30,000 years ago, while the neutrinos that reached the Earth at this moment were generated about 8 minutes ago.

my she-Luddite

It's interesting to watch my girlfriend move steadily in the opposite direction from my technology arc.

Yvette now has:

(1) no cell phone

(2) no working home computer

(3) no internet service

(4) no social networking connection

(5) no cable television connection [OK, I don't have that either]

(6) no mp3 player

 

O vs O

According to the Google Ngram Viewer tool, Osama was ahead of Obama for a long time, by a 10:1 margin before 2002.  Though Obama recently scored the final win in 2011, Ngram doesn't presently go past 2008, and so doesn't show it.  Still, it's clear by Google that Obama had Osama beat by mid-2004, somewhat surprisingly.  I would have predicted that Osama would be ahead of Obama until 2007.