Reports stacked up since last spring on the environmental damage from commercial pot agriculture. I first stumbled across the issue in the course of gathering reports on the water scarcity crisis and drought in California. By the summer, as California's drought deepened, so many news journalists and bloggers were addressing marijuana's contribution to water scarcity and other serious environmental problems, I didn't my blog could contribute anything to the discussion.
This morning I decided to delete the reports from my file. I was stopped by today's headlines at Google News about California's drought. I hadn't paid attention to the situation for months, not since a series of "Pineapple Express" storms roaring across the Pacific from Hawaii had dumped deluges on California.
At that time I thought, 'See? They'll muddle through somehow.'
But it turned out the tropical storms hitting California were like a glass of water thrown on a hot griddle. Meanwhile, El Niño did not deliver hoped-for big rains to the state. The latest headlines are that hope for a big snowpack in the Sierra Nevada has faded, San Francisco didn't see rain in January for the first time in 165 years, and that 40 percent of the state is still in an "exceptional" drought.
All these signs point to California heading into the fourth year of a severe drought and that the cumulative effects of the earlier drought years will wreak catastrophe on the state this year.
Ironically, it took the worsening drought in California last year to bring the environmental issues connected with pot farming into the spotlight, even though Associated Press had reported on the issues as early as 2008. The only press outlet that picked up the AP story was the Christian Science Monitor. The few other mainstream reports on the crisis since then couldn't get traction -- until last year.
Yet after a score of big-name press outlets raised hell this past summer about the evils of unrestricted marijuana farming, the issue plummeted back into the mainstream's Pit of Studious Silence.
So I'll play the fool, as long as the reports are at my fingertips. Several of them are from last year; a few go back much earlier. I'm not going to make an attempt to organize them, beyond what I did when I wrote about the issue. I'm not sure at this point whether I'll publish any of the writings; it would mean editing work.
Of course there is the Take It or Leave It Warts and All school of blogging, but I'll see.
For now, it's literal potluck posting at Pundita blog for the rest of this week, or until I can't stand looking any longer at that many tragic stories.
For crying out loud, marijuana isn't kudzu; it doesn't creep around strangling other plants. It's a sweet innocent plant when left to its own devices. So how did its cultivation end up in the same category as blood diamonds, conflict palm oil, and the trade in elephant tusks?
Actually I did learn how it happened by the time I'd plowed through scores of reports. I wish I'd never found out because I see no humane way to get the situation under control. If after studying the reports you see a way that doesn't involve a totalitarian police state, or shoving legal marijuana cultivation for U.S. consumption onto some hardscrabble countries that are already ecological basket cases, I'm all ears.
********
Sunday, February 1
Ah, but nobody's ever been arrested for driving under the influence of tomatoes, Lt. Nores
The key word in the headline for the following AP report from June 2014 is "medical." By that date the mask was slipping off commercial marijuana farming done for medical purposes. Or one might say that California's deepening drought had ripped off the mask. Yet the comment by Lt. John Nores of the Fish and Wildlife agency, which is on the front lines of the environmental disaster in California created by commercial pot farming, amounts to an apology for the industry. Indeed, a number of quotes in the report are from people who even with the best of intentions sound like apologists, which is why I'm reposting the entire report. They're making points that in light of the reality are hollow.
I understand Lt. Nores was trying to be understanding of people whose income depends on pot farming; after all, California's entire Emerald Triangle was built up by pot profits. He has to work with those people, try to gain their cooperation. But I wonder how understanding he is today, as the true picture of California's drought finally emerges.
A couple more notes about the report: The crusading Scott Bauer, the Fish and Wildlife biologist who's done so much to alert the public to the damage done by pot farming, was informed after the AP report was published that his estimate of 30,000 pot plants grown in each river system was far too low. So then he recalculated. Somewhere I have the report on this, buried in stacks of other reports on what is turning out to be a bottomless environmental catastrophe; if I find it I'll post it.
Also, the estimate of 6 gallons of water per pot plant for outdoor grown plants that's quoted by the report, and the claims that the estimate is too high, are a matter of dispute. From all I've read on the issue, it depends on the temperature, size of the plants, humidity, soil, etc. The plant's water need during its growing season can easily be double 6 gallons.
Study Finds Medical Pot Farms Draining Streams Dry
Associated Press via Yahoo News
June 1, 2014
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Some drought-stricken rivers and streams in Northern California's coastal forests are being polluted and sucked dry by water-guzzling medical marijuana farms, wildlife officials say — an issue that has spurred at least one county to try to outlaw personal grows.
State fish and wildlife officials say much of the marijuana being grown in northern counties under the state's medical pot law is not being used for legal, personal use, but for sale both in California and states where pot is still illegal.
This demand is fueling backyard and larger-scale pot farming, especially in remote Lake, Humboldt and Mendocino counties on the densely forested North Coast, officials said.
"People are coming in, denuding the hillsides, damming the creeks and mixing in fertilizers that are not allowed in the U.S. into our watersheds," said Denise Rushing, a Lake County supervisor who supports an ordinance essentially banning outdoor grows in populated areas.
"When rains come, it flows downstream into the lake and our water supply," she said.
Many affected waterways also contain endangered salmon, steelhead and other creatures protected by state and federal law.
Wildlife biologists noticed streams running dry more often over the 18 years since the state passed Proposition 215, but weren't sure why.
"We knew people were diverting water for marijuana operations, but we wanted to know exactly how much," said Scott Bauer, the department biologist who studied the pot farms' effects on four watersheds.
"We didn't know they could consume all the water in a stream."
So Bauer turned to Google mapping technology and satellite data to find out where the many gardens are, and how many plants each contained.
His study estimates that about 30,000 pot plants were being grown in each river system — and he estimates
that each plant uses about six gallons per day over marijuana's 150-day growing season. Some growers and others argue the six-gallon estimate is high, and that pot plants can use far less water, depending on size.
He compared that information with government data on stream flows, and visited 32 sites with other biologists to verify the mapping data. He said most grow sites had posted notices identifying them as medical pot farms.
Pot farm pollution has become such a problem in Lake County, south of Bauer's study area, that officials voted unanimously last year to ban outdoor grows.
"Counties are the ultimate arbiter of land use conflict, so while you have a right to grow marijuana for medicinal use, you don't have a right to impinge on someone else's happiness and wellbeing," Rushing said.
Saying they were being demonized, pot users challenged the law, and gathered enough signatures to place a referendum on the June 3 ballot. They argue that grow restrictions like the ones being voted on in Lake County lump the responsible users in with criminals.
"We definitely feel environmental issues are a concern. But more restrictive ... ordinances will force people to start growing in unregulated and illegal places on public land," said Daniel McClean, a registered nurse and medical marijuana user who opposes the outdoor-grow ban.
While some counties are trying to help regulate the environmental effects of pot farms, Bauer hopes his study will lead to better collaboration with growers to help police illegal use of water and pesticides.
Previous collaborative attempts between government and growers have not ended well, said Anthony Silvaggio, a Humboldt State University sociology professor who studies the pot economy.
"The county or state gets in there and starts doing code enforcement on other things," Silvaggio said. "They've done this in the past"
He said pot farmers believe they are being unfairly blamed for killing endangered salmon while decades of timber cutting and overfishing are the real culprits.
However, the environmental damage has led to a split in the marijuana growing community.
One business, the Tea House Collective in Humboldt County, offers medicinal pot to people with prescriptions that it says is farmed by "small scale, environmentally conscious producers."
[...]
"Patients who cannot grow their own medicine can rely on our farmers to provide them with the best holistic medicine that is naturally grown, sustainable and forever Humboldt," the group's website advertises.
Despite efforts of some pot farmers to clean things up, the increased water use by farms is a "full-scale environmental disaster," said Fish and Wildlife Lt. John Nores, who leads the agency's Marijuana Enforcement Team.
"Whether it's grown quasi legally under the state's medical marijuana laws, or it's a complete cartel outdoor drug trafficking grow site, there is extreme environmental damage being done at all levels," Nores said.
Officials say until the federal government recognizes California's medical marijuana laws, growers will continue to operate clandestinely to meet market demand for their product due to fear of prosecution.
Meantime, enforcing federal and state environmental regulations will be harder.
"If cherry tomatoes were worth $3,000 a pound, and consumption was prohibited in most states, people would be doing the same thing," Nores said.
[END REPORT]
********
I understand Lt. Nores was trying to be understanding of people whose income depends on pot farming; after all, California's entire Emerald Triangle was built up by pot profits. He has to work with those people, try to gain their cooperation. But I wonder how understanding he is today, as the true picture of California's drought finally emerges.
A couple more notes about the report: The crusading Scott Bauer, the Fish and Wildlife biologist who's done so much to alert the public to the damage done by pot farming, was informed after the AP report was published that his estimate of 30,000 pot plants grown in each river system was far too low. So then he recalculated. Somewhere I have the report on this, buried in stacks of other reports on what is turning out to be a bottomless environmental catastrophe; if I find it I'll post it.
Also, the estimate of 6 gallons of water per pot plant for outdoor grown plants that's quoted by the report, and the claims that the estimate is too high, are a matter of dispute. From all I've read on the issue, it depends on the temperature, size of the plants, humidity, soil, etc. The plant's water need during its growing season can easily be double 6 gallons.
Study Finds Medical Pot Farms Draining Streams Dry
Associated Press via Yahoo News
June 1, 2014
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Some drought-stricken rivers and streams in Northern California's coastal forests are being polluted and sucked dry by water-guzzling medical marijuana farms, wildlife officials say — an issue that has spurred at least one county to try to outlaw personal grows.
State fish and wildlife officials say much of the marijuana being grown in northern counties under the state's medical pot law is not being used for legal, personal use, but for sale both in California and states where pot is still illegal.
This demand is fueling backyard and larger-scale pot farming, especially in remote Lake, Humboldt and Mendocino counties on the densely forested North Coast, officials said.
"People are coming in, denuding the hillsides, damming the creeks and mixing in fertilizers that are not allowed in the U.S. into our watersheds," said Denise Rushing, a Lake County supervisor who supports an ordinance essentially banning outdoor grows in populated areas.
"When rains come, it flows downstream into the lake and our water supply," she said.
Many affected waterways also contain endangered salmon, steelhead and other creatures protected by state and federal law.
Wildlife biologists noticed streams running dry more often over the 18 years since the state passed Proposition 215, but weren't sure why.
"We knew people were diverting water for marijuana operations, but we wanted to know exactly how much," said Scott Bauer, the department biologist who studied the pot farms' effects on four watersheds.
"We didn't know they could consume all the water in a stream."
So Bauer turned to Google mapping technology and satellite data to find out where the many gardens are, and how many plants each contained.
His study estimates that about 30,000 pot plants were being grown in each river system — and he estimates
that each plant uses about six gallons per day over marijuana's 150-day growing season. Some growers and others argue the six-gallon estimate is high, and that pot plants can use far less water, depending on size.
He compared that information with government data on stream flows, and visited 32 sites with other biologists to verify the mapping data. He said most grow sites had posted notices identifying them as medical pot farms.
Pot farm pollution has become such a problem in Lake County, south of Bauer's study area, that officials voted unanimously last year to ban outdoor grows.
"Counties are the ultimate arbiter of land use conflict, so while you have a right to grow marijuana for medicinal use, you don't have a right to impinge on someone else's happiness and wellbeing," Rushing said.
Saying they were being demonized, pot users challenged the law, and gathered enough signatures to place a referendum on the June 3 ballot. They argue that grow restrictions like the ones being voted on in Lake County lump the responsible users in with criminals.
"We definitely feel environmental issues are a concern. But more restrictive ... ordinances will force people to start growing in unregulated and illegal places on public land," said Daniel McClean, a registered nurse and medical marijuana user who opposes the outdoor-grow ban.
While some counties are trying to help regulate the environmental effects of pot farms, Bauer hopes his study will lead to better collaboration with growers to help police illegal use of water and pesticides.
Previous collaborative attempts between government and growers have not ended well, said Anthony Silvaggio, a Humboldt State University sociology professor who studies the pot economy.
"The county or state gets in there and starts doing code enforcement on other things," Silvaggio said. "They've done this in the past"
He said pot farmers believe they are being unfairly blamed for killing endangered salmon while decades of timber cutting and overfishing are the real culprits.
However, the environmental damage has led to a split in the marijuana growing community.
One business, the Tea House Collective in Humboldt County, offers medicinal pot to people with prescriptions that it says is farmed by "small scale, environmentally conscious producers."
[...]
"Patients who cannot grow their own medicine can rely on our farmers to provide them with the best holistic medicine that is naturally grown, sustainable and forever Humboldt," the group's website advertises.
Despite efforts of some pot farmers to clean things up, the increased water use by farms is a "full-scale environmental disaster," said Fish and Wildlife Lt. John Nores, who leads the agency's Marijuana Enforcement Team.
"Whether it's grown quasi legally under the state's medical marijuana laws, or it's a complete cartel outdoor drug trafficking grow site, there is extreme environmental damage being done at all levels," Nores said.
Officials say until the federal government recognizes California's medical marijuana laws, growers will continue to operate clandestinely to meet market demand for their product due to fear of prosecution.
Meantime, enforcing federal and state environmental regulations will be harder.
"If cherry tomatoes were worth $3,000 a pound, and consumption was prohibited in most states, people would be doing the same thing," Nores said.
[END REPORT]
********
The rise of 3D printing and the fall of oil prices
Recently saw a headline that some company in the USA had 3D printed a car. Yesterday heard a news blurb that China has 3D printed a five-story building. This is going to revolutionize the construction industry, said the reporter. Gee no kidding.
The reporter also noted how fast all this is happening -- within the past two years. For years 3D printers were a novelty printing out novelties. For years hydrofracking had no measurable impact on the oil industry.
There's still a delayed reaction; societies haven't yet absorbed the vast changes upon them.
Economists, central banks, deer in the headlights.
********
The reporter also noted how fast all this is happening -- within the past two years. For years 3D printers were a novelty printing out novelties. For years hydrofracking had no measurable impact on the oil industry.
There's still a delayed reaction; societies haven't yet absorbed the vast changes upon them.
Economists, central banks, deer in the headlights.
********
Thursday, January 29
"I can't do anything!" Chad Dukes delivers the Radio Rant of the Decade, and a look at Yukon Men's lessons about adulthood
Roaring or perhaps wailing of truth, pound-the-table funny, some middle-aged guy I never heard of before hosting at a radio station I never heard of before, recounting a horrifying day in his life when he discovered that just about the only thing he knew how to do was yap into a radio microphone.
He described in vivid detail that over the course of serial incidents earlier that day, he'd been forced to realize that to save his life he couldn't make the simplest household repairs, couldn't keep track of his important personal papers, didn't know anything about the insurance policy he paid into every month. He wasn't even capable of keeping track of his bank card -- having lost it something like four times during the previous six months.
"I can't do anything! ... Looking down at my big gut and enormous man-boobs, I realized I can't take care of my body. I can't even take control of my own teeth ... I realized I have no skills! I have no backup plan!"
By backup plan he meant that if he lost his job in radio he wouldn't know how to do anything else except maybe get a job in retail sales.
When he got to the radio station that day he confessed his realizations to male coworkers and asked if they, too, ever felt they couldn't do anything. The confessions tumbled out; one coworker said he actually knew how to change a tire but "... I can't point out more than three things in a car," and that he couldn't hook up a TV, couldn't spackle or put up drywall.
This, then, decided the host to put the same question to (male) members of his radio audience. The phone lines lit up with men calling to confess the simple things they had no idea how to do.
One caller said, "What happened to us? My dad could do all these things."
Someone pointed out that during the eras in the USA when 'shop' courses were routinely available in schools, at least boys learned how to build a table.
Another caller told the host that he should organize one of those retreats where men gather in the wilderness and dance and sing around a campfire to reaffirm their manliness, and discuss the problem of not knowing how to do anything.
The host burst out that this wasn't a good idea because they'd all die when they had to search for water and build a campfire.
Of course there are many American men who do know how to build a campfire and can build a table and even an entire house. They even know how to read a compass. And dedicated Survivalists have learned to build just about everything from scratch, repair just about anything, and know how to live off the land. But the host was clearly speaking for many people, females as well as males, although he excluded women from the call-in segment, I think on grounds that men have high expectations regarding their ability to excel at survival.
The radio host's name is Chad Dukes and his show is called "Chad Dukes Versus the World". The radio station call letters, at least here in the District of Columbia are WJFK (106.7 FM). There is a podcast of the show's segment; I don't have the link but it would be worth your while to find it. The show was aired on Friday, January 23 and the rant launched at about 5:40 PM ET.
Yukon Men
Dukes's rant reminded me of a reality show called "Yukon Men." I watched the 2013 season; haven't checked to see if it's still on the air. Yukon Men followed the fathers and sons in a few families in a native tribe in Alaska's Yukon that survives by hunting and fishing rather than farming. One learns from the show that the Yukon wilderness is not only harsh, its weather is deadly tricky in that the onset of winter can happen earlier than expected and with no warning.
So there is a huge amount of lore that has to be transmitted from father to son about surviving in such an environment. One of the show's lessons is that there's a big difference between doing it yourself and figuring it out for yourself. Trying to wing it in the Yukon with winter closing in is an easy way to die.
The survival lore and its transmission are also the basis for the tribe's rite of passage for males. Before a son can marry and start his own family, he must live on his own in a house he's built and equipped under his father's tutelage -- and survive a winter in the house in a climate of steep subzero temperatures and heavy snows that can cut off help for months.
Chad Dukes recounted with wit and honesty the experience of confronting, all at once, one's vulnerabilities. Yet before we can increase our do it yourself survival skills, there has to be an understanding of the need for this. The Yukon teaches such understanding every winter. In the absence of such a graphic lesson, Chad Dukes hurtled through the busy hours of his adult life with no awareness of how vulnerable he was.
How to translate that observation into an action path?
The most poignant episode I saw in Yukon Men concerned a very young man from an urban environment in the "Lower 48" who went to the Yukon and sought out the tribe specifically to immerse himself in a more 'grounded' lifestyle. He went to work for one of the fathers in the tribe but it was quickly obvious he wasn't cut out for the work and that the father would have to fire him.
Yet I suspect the young man was trying to immerse himself not so much in a traditional tribal way of life as one where the rite of passage into adulthood was clear for him. Graduation from high school and college and even procuring an income are not clear enough.
In this era a sharp distinction should be made between the education to qualify a child for an income-producing job and the education that prepares a child for adulthood.
So prospective parents need to hash out the necessary skills for adulthood, codify them, learn to teach them, and work out a rite of passage that demonstrates the child has learned the skills.
Some of the teaching can be done as a cooperative effort, but a striking aspect of "Yukon Men" is that while these men belong to a bona fide tribe, it was the individual father who was responsible for bringing his son across the bridge that separates childhood from adulthood. (From the little shown about the females, it was the mother who was similarly responsible for the daughter.)
This is very definitely a teaching responsibility as distinct from a provider one. And while the tribe has communal responsibilities it is the parents who are tasked with bringing their children into adulthood. Mastery of particular survival skills is the visible symbol of a successful rite of passage. But if mastery is divorced from the symbolism, knowing even all the world's survival skills won't necessarily create an adult.
********
He described in vivid detail that over the course of serial incidents earlier that day, he'd been forced to realize that to save his life he couldn't make the simplest household repairs, couldn't keep track of his important personal papers, didn't know anything about the insurance policy he paid into every month. He wasn't even capable of keeping track of his bank card -- having lost it something like four times during the previous six months.
"I can't do anything! ... Looking down at my big gut and enormous man-boobs, I realized I can't take care of my body. I can't even take control of my own teeth ... I realized I have no skills! I have no backup plan!"
By backup plan he meant that if he lost his job in radio he wouldn't know how to do anything else except maybe get a job in retail sales.
When he got to the radio station that day he confessed his realizations to male coworkers and asked if they, too, ever felt they couldn't do anything. The confessions tumbled out; one coworker said he actually knew how to change a tire but "... I can't point out more than three things in a car," and that he couldn't hook up a TV, couldn't spackle or put up drywall.
This, then, decided the host to put the same question to (male) members of his radio audience. The phone lines lit up with men calling to confess the simple things they had no idea how to do.
One caller said, "What happened to us? My dad could do all these things."
Someone pointed out that during the eras in the USA when 'shop' courses were routinely available in schools, at least boys learned how to build a table.
Another caller told the host that he should organize one of those retreats where men gather in the wilderness and dance and sing around a campfire to reaffirm their manliness, and discuss the problem of not knowing how to do anything.
The host burst out that this wasn't a good idea because they'd all die when they had to search for water and build a campfire.
Of course there are many American men who do know how to build a campfire and can build a table and even an entire house. They even know how to read a compass. And dedicated Survivalists have learned to build just about everything from scratch, repair just about anything, and know how to live off the land. But the host was clearly speaking for many people, females as well as males, although he excluded women from the call-in segment, I think on grounds that men have high expectations regarding their ability to excel at survival.
The radio host's name is Chad Dukes and his show is called "Chad Dukes Versus the World". The radio station call letters, at least here in the District of Columbia are WJFK (106.7 FM). There is a podcast of the show's segment; I don't have the link but it would be worth your while to find it. The show was aired on Friday, January 23 and the rant launched at about 5:40 PM ET.
Yukon Men
Dukes's rant reminded me of a reality show called "Yukon Men." I watched the 2013 season; haven't checked to see if it's still on the air. Yukon Men followed the fathers and sons in a few families in a native tribe in Alaska's Yukon that survives by hunting and fishing rather than farming. One learns from the show that the Yukon wilderness is not only harsh, its weather is deadly tricky in that the onset of winter can happen earlier than expected and with no warning.
So there is a huge amount of lore that has to be transmitted from father to son about surviving in such an environment. One of the show's lessons is that there's a big difference between doing it yourself and figuring it out for yourself. Trying to wing it in the Yukon with winter closing in is an easy way to die.
The survival lore and its transmission are also the basis for the tribe's rite of passage for males. Before a son can marry and start his own family, he must live on his own in a house he's built and equipped under his father's tutelage -- and survive a winter in the house in a climate of steep subzero temperatures and heavy snows that can cut off help for months.
Chad Dukes recounted with wit and honesty the experience of confronting, all at once, one's vulnerabilities. Yet before we can increase our do it yourself survival skills, there has to be an understanding of the need for this. The Yukon teaches such understanding every winter. In the absence of such a graphic lesson, Chad Dukes hurtled through the busy hours of his adult life with no awareness of how vulnerable he was.
How to translate that observation into an action path?
The most poignant episode I saw in Yukon Men concerned a very young man from an urban environment in the "Lower 48" who went to the Yukon and sought out the tribe specifically to immerse himself in a more 'grounded' lifestyle. He went to work for one of the fathers in the tribe but it was quickly obvious he wasn't cut out for the work and that the father would have to fire him.
Yet I suspect the young man was trying to immerse himself not so much in a traditional tribal way of life as one where the rite of passage into adulthood was clear for him. Graduation from high school and college and even procuring an income are not clear enough.
In this era a sharp distinction should be made between the education to qualify a child for an income-producing job and the education that prepares a child for adulthood.
So prospective parents need to hash out the necessary skills for adulthood, codify them, learn to teach them, and work out a rite of passage that demonstrates the child has learned the skills.
Some of the teaching can be done as a cooperative effort, but a striking aspect of "Yukon Men" is that while these men belong to a bona fide tribe, it was the individual father who was responsible for bringing his son across the bridge that separates childhood from adulthood. (From the little shown about the females, it was the mother who was similarly responsible for the daughter.)
This is very definitely a teaching responsibility as distinct from a provider one. And while the tribe has communal responsibilities it is the parents who are tasked with bringing their children into adulthood. Mastery of particular survival skills is the visible symbol of a successful rite of passage. But if mastery is divorced from the symbolism, knowing even all the world's survival skills won't necessarily create an adult.
********
Wednesday, January 28
Rise of the New Vernacular
The years 2008 - 2010 saw Americans in large numbers ejected by the financial crisis from establishments that make up what's called mainstream society. This has happened before to one degree or another during severe economic downturns. But this time many Americans found very old paths or forged new ones for getting routine things done, paths that aren't part of the established systems, and didn't return to the establishments.
I characterize this trend as the rise in the United States of what I term "the Vernacular" -- although as I explained years ago on this blog I didn't invent this use of the term, which is itself borrowed from architecture.
While it's hard to define a trend by making use of an unfamiliar term, I think it's important to distinguish the trend from the current American dialogue about "big government versus small government" -- a dialogue that forms much of the American Libertarian and Tea Party discourses and their debates with the two established political parties in the USA, and indeed much of the debate between the traditional American Left and Right.
The Vernacular isn't concerned with the size of government and it's not anti-government in an anarchist sense; it's not political. Nor is it anti-establishment although it develops and flourishes outside established orders. When I first wrote about the Vernacular for this blog, in the attempt to illustrate the concept at a glance I published photographs of weeds growing in cracks in paved-over surfaces -- highways and parking lots.
The Vernacular, a term originally borrowed from 'ad hoc' architecture (as distinct from planned architectural developments), refers to the Common Person working out his own ways of wending through the pervasive systems of state-directed society. With architecture it's the Common Person putting up buildings that don't reflect government planned developments, or making use of planned urban spaces that weren't intended by the planners.
A famous example is homeless people using public park benches as beds, although the newer bench designs attempt to discourage this unplanned-for way of using the public benches.
While the Vernacular is traditionally associated with the poorest and least educated, the rise of the American Vernacular (and its non-American versions) in the closing years of the past decade is rooted in middle- and even the lower end of upper-income groups that are often college educated.
Another feature of the new Vernacular is its international character. This is made possible by globalized digital communication platforms -- cell phones and Internet. These can connect people around the world according to their needs rather than domestic political agendas and state planning. And the fact that the 2008 financial crisis was a global phenomenon spurred people in far-flung parts of the world to take up Vernacular thinking and gave them common purpose with Americans in the same situations.
An example of the globalized Vernacular in action is that an American with reasonably good credit can now raise a micro loan from an informal group of 'investors' in America or networked in several countries without having to go through the traditional banking establishment.
This fills a great need. The establishment banking system got to the point where it ignored the small borrower because processing small loans was considered too costly by the banks. This forced the borrower to turn to high-interest credit cards or payday loan companies to raise a small loan.
The peer-to-peer way of banking, as it's been called, is revolutionizing how people with small funding needs can cheaply raise capital for very small business startups, etc. In this approach loan making is entirely circumventing the establishment.
Another way to say this is that peer to peer banking opens up to everyone the micro loan concept, which previously had been limited to the world's poorest peoples. And this kind of banking is being given a boost by the rise of Bitcoin, which also makes it possible to borrow very small amounts of money at a low interest rate.
Peer to peer banking is just one aspect of the peer to peer way of doing things, which in essence cuts out the establishment's middlemen whether in finance, education, health care, and so on.
Is the New Vernacular a Political Movement?
The Vernacular as it exists today is too amorphous, too diffused, to be politicized. So analogies are best found in fashion (and pop music) rather than political movements. For example the street attire of the poor or teenagers can eventually be noticed and reworked by high fashion designers, then again reworked by designers for mass retailers and mass produced.
The same process can happen with street music. What starts out as completely anti-establishment sounds gets picked up by a famous recording artist, then eventually reworked until it ends up as Muzak piped into shopping malls.
Fashion or music trends can be politicized to an extent, but only after they've gained wide acceptance in the society.
In short, any attempt to politicize the new Vernacular would be trying to do things backward. And this is an evolutionary movement, not a revolutionary one -- or rather, by the time it's thought of as revolutionary, a new establishment has already evolved from it.
However, the evolution in this case is well underway; it's just that it's been happening largely under the radar of the mainstream media -- although ironically, the media do pick up news of innovations that arise from the Vernacular, such as Bitcoin, only without fitting them into a larger picture.
The larger picture is reminiscent of that great line in Jurassic Park: Nature always finds a way. When our establishments come to rule us, along comes some fool with a washboard and wazoo and starts making music.
********
I characterize this trend as the rise in the United States of what I term "the Vernacular" -- although as I explained years ago on this blog I didn't invent this use of the term, which is itself borrowed from architecture.
While it's hard to define a trend by making use of an unfamiliar term, I think it's important to distinguish the trend from the current American dialogue about "big government versus small government" -- a dialogue that forms much of the American Libertarian and Tea Party discourses and their debates with the two established political parties in the USA, and indeed much of the debate between the traditional American Left and Right.
The Vernacular isn't concerned with the size of government and it's not anti-government in an anarchist sense; it's not political. Nor is it anti-establishment although it develops and flourishes outside established orders. When I first wrote about the Vernacular for this blog, in the attempt to illustrate the concept at a glance I published photographs of weeds growing in cracks in paved-over surfaces -- highways and parking lots.
The Vernacular, a term originally borrowed from 'ad hoc' architecture (as distinct from planned architectural developments), refers to the Common Person working out his own ways of wending through the pervasive systems of state-directed society. With architecture it's the Common Person putting up buildings that don't reflect government planned developments, or making use of planned urban spaces that weren't intended by the planners.
A famous example is homeless people using public park benches as beds, although the newer bench designs attempt to discourage this unplanned-for way of using the public benches.
While the Vernacular is traditionally associated with the poorest and least educated, the rise of the American Vernacular (and its non-American versions) in the closing years of the past decade is rooted in middle- and even the lower end of upper-income groups that are often college educated.
Another feature of the new Vernacular is its international character. This is made possible by globalized digital communication platforms -- cell phones and Internet. These can connect people around the world according to their needs rather than domestic political agendas and state planning. And the fact that the 2008 financial crisis was a global phenomenon spurred people in far-flung parts of the world to take up Vernacular thinking and gave them common purpose with Americans in the same situations.
An example of the globalized Vernacular in action is that an American with reasonably good credit can now raise a micro loan from an informal group of 'investors' in America or networked in several countries without having to go through the traditional banking establishment.
This fills a great need. The establishment banking system got to the point where it ignored the small borrower because processing small loans was considered too costly by the banks. This forced the borrower to turn to high-interest credit cards or payday loan companies to raise a small loan.
The peer-to-peer way of banking, as it's been called, is revolutionizing how people with small funding needs can cheaply raise capital for very small business startups, etc. In this approach loan making is entirely circumventing the establishment.
Another way to say this is that peer to peer banking opens up to everyone the micro loan concept, which previously had been limited to the world's poorest peoples. And this kind of banking is being given a boost by the rise of Bitcoin, which also makes it possible to borrow very small amounts of money at a low interest rate.
Peer to peer banking is just one aspect of the peer to peer way of doing things, which in essence cuts out the establishment's middlemen whether in finance, education, health care, and so on.
Is the New Vernacular a Political Movement?
The Vernacular as it exists today is too amorphous, too diffused, to be politicized. So analogies are best found in fashion (and pop music) rather than political movements. For example the street attire of the poor or teenagers can eventually be noticed and reworked by high fashion designers, then again reworked by designers for mass retailers and mass produced.
The same process can happen with street music. What starts out as completely anti-establishment sounds gets picked up by a famous recording artist, then eventually reworked until it ends up as Muzak piped into shopping malls.
Fashion or music trends can be politicized to an extent, but only after they've gained wide acceptance in the society.
In short, any attempt to politicize the new Vernacular would be trying to do things backward. And this is an evolutionary movement, not a revolutionary one -- or rather, by the time it's thought of as revolutionary, a new establishment has already evolved from it.
However, the evolution in this case is well underway; it's just that it's been happening largely under the radar of the mainstream media -- although ironically, the media do pick up news of innovations that arise from the Vernacular, such as Bitcoin, only without fitting them into a larger picture.
The larger picture is reminiscent of that great line in Jurassic Park: Nature always finds a way. When our establishments come to rule us, along comes some fool with a washboard and wazoo and starts making music.
********
Tuesday, January 27
Reality vs Ideologies
I went to the Internet to find reports about Yemen's water crisis and came across Juan Cole's December 29 essay, Did Drought and Climate Change cause Middle Eastern States to Collapse in 2014?
A great many things led to the collapse but yes, as I learned to my surprise in 2014, a year I dubbed, "Oh by the Way," towering over everything is reality in the form of water scarcity that when broken down into categories works out to the cumulative effects from some or all of following conditions:
> Mismanagement of water resources
> Lack of water conservation
> Bad agricultural practices
> Wasteful or excessive industrial practices
> Inadequate water infrastructures
> Existing water infrastructures in disrepair
> Desertification
> Desiccation
> Deforestation
> Diversion of waterways
> Dam building
> Skyrocketed human and farm animal populations
> Unsustainable urban expansion
Note the term "climate change" is nowhere on the list. This doesn't mean the climate isn't changing for the worse in some regions; e.g., getting hotter and drier from climatic conditions. But the observation doesn't produce the kind of strategies that could stave off the direst and most immediate water crises.
How dire? Well, Sana'a, the capital city of Yemen, has less than two years before it runs out of "economically viable water supplies," as a 2010 Guardian article put it, which is also when the country runs out of oil reserves. By 2010, other parts of Yemen were draining Sana'a's water basin at the staggering rate of 4 times the amount of replacement water in the basin.
How did the country get into such a pickle? Dope. Specifically the commercial cultivation of a narcotic plant called qat that produces a high when chewed and slurps up huge amounts of irrigation water. As the Guardian put it, Yemenis are literally chewing themselves to death.
That's just Yemen. The majority of Middle Eastern - North African nation-states are on track for extinction, at least as they exist today. There's too many people and livestock and too little water. But Yemen is a good case study because it's an ancient agricultural region, like Egypt. Yet when you pile industry on top of agriculture, and pile on top ever-larger cities for burgeoning populations, you're using huge amounts of virtual water in addition to water for agriculture. At some point, a point that is now being reached by several countries in MENA, the way of life is no longer sustainable.
That's the case right here in the USA as well, in certain regions. And in many other places in the world. So now everyone's in a mad dash to recalculate taking virtual water into account.
Yet what do you do, when your way of life has come to depend on exporting your precious water in the form of industrial output? And when your cities slurp up ever greater amounts of virtual and actual water just to sustain their infrastructures? And when NASA's amazing GRACE satellite system beams back exactly how much groundwater is left -- the amount being far less than anyone had imagined before?
So I'd advise American wonks to worry less about radical Islam, China's Communist Party, and Russia's designs on Ukraine and worry more about America's water supplies a decade down the line. I'd also worry less right now about manmade climate change and worry more about manmade water scarcity. And I urge ideologues of all persuasions to confront the fact that reality doesn't give a damn what you think.
*********
A great many things led to the collapse but yes, as I learned to my surprise in 2014, a year I dubbed, "Oh by the Way," towering over everything is reality in the form of water scarcity that when broken down into categories works out to the cumulative effects from some or all of following conditions:
> Mismanagement of water resources
> Lack of water conservation
> Bad agricultural practices
> Wasteful or excessive industrial practices
> Inadequate water infrastructures
> Existing water infrastructures in disrepair
> Desertification
> Desiccation
> Deforestation
> Diversion of waterways
> Dam building
> Skyrocketed human and farm animal populations
> Unsustainable urban expansion
Note the term "climate change" is nowhere on the list. This doesn't mean the climate isn't changing for the worse in some regions; e.g., getting hotter and drier from climatic conditions. But the observation doesn't produce the kind of strategies that could stave off the direst and most immediate water crises.
How dire? Well, Sana'a, the capital city of Yemen, has less than two years before it runs out of "economically viable water supplies," as a 2010 Guardian article put it, which is also when the country runs out of oil reserves. By 2010, other parts of Yemen were draining Sana'a's water basin at the staggering rate of 4 times the amount of replacement water in the basin.
How did the country get into such a pickle? Dope. Specifically the commercial cultivation of a narcotic plant called qat that produces a high when chewed and slurps up huge amounts of irrigation water. As the Guardian put it, Yemenis are literally chewing themselves to death.
That's just Yemen. The majority of Middle Eastern - North African nation-states are on track for extinction, at least as they exist today. There's too many people and livestock and too little water. But Yemen is a good case study because it's an ancient agricultural region, like Egypt. Yet when you pile industry on top of agriculture, and pile on top ever-larger cities for burgeoning populations, you're using huge amounts of virtual water in addition to water for agriculture. At some point, a point that is now being reached by several countries in MENA, the way of life is no longer sustainable.
That's the case right here in the USA as well, in certain regions. And in many other places in the world. So now everyone's in a mad dash to recalculate taking virtual water into account.
Yet what do you do, when your way of life has come to depend on exporting your precious water in the form of industrial output? And when your cities slurp up ever greater amounts of virtual and actual water just to sustain their infrastructures? And when NASA's amazing GRACE satellite system beams back exactly how much groundwater is left -- the amount being far less than anyone had imagined before?
So I'd advise American wonks to worry less about radical Islam, China's Communist Party, and Russia's designs on Ukraine and worry more about America's water supplies a decade down the line. I'd also worry less right now about manmade climate change and worry more about manmade water scarcity. And I urge ideologues of all persuasions to confront the fact that reality doesn't give a damn what you think.
*********
The Toad Method vs Incomprehensible Government Language
From a recent column at WND by Dr Lee Hieb :
Given the stiff penalties for failure to comprehend incomprehensible language, American medical and dental practitioners might want to consider demanding that as long as the codes they supply to Medicare are Toad Compliant they should be exempt from criminal charges and triple fines. They should take the demand all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary. And be sure to enter a toad into the court proceedings.
********
[...]As Dr Hieb emphasized, and as everyone who has flunked an IRS audit or the correct Medicare code knows, American government agencies make no allowance for ignorance of the law, and this includes failure to comprehend the language of the law. But to pound home the point here's a story from her same column:
I have some experience in dealing with codes and [government phone] help lines. As a physician, not only do I confront the IRS yearly, but on a very personal and up front way we in private practice confront the Medicare/Medicaid codes. These codes flow over 150,000 pages – and that estimate was 10 years ago, before any of the Obamacare nightmare began to add to the volume.
[...]
Even when you get advice [from Medicare] it may be wrong. A GAO (Government Accountability Office) study done in 2002 reported that 85 percent of the time when advising a medical client, the Medicare customer service representative gave incorrect advice.
After this dismal report card the government set out to do corrective action, and by 2004 [found in a study that] 96 percent of the time the Medicare representative gave wrong information.
These were not surprise quizzes. The response center knew they were being tested, and, "The questions represented common, policy-oriented questions concerning the proper way to bill Medicare in order to obtain payment."
Surprisingly, the CMS [Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services] had some insight into the problem. As reported by Larry Huntoon, M.D., Ph.D. in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons 2004: Among other things, the GAO found that Medicare policies and regulations were so complex and confusing that neither Medicare CSRs [customer service representatives] nor CMS policy experts could understand them.
"CMS officials acknowledged that some policies contain complex language. In addition, they told us that the agency's goal of quickly publishing a policy that is technically correct may sometimes overshadow its effort to develop a clear and understandable document."
In other words, in some cases they purposely publish incomprehensible Medicare policies. Needless to say, in spite of understanding the root cause of the problem, the government took the exact opposite approach and kept going down the same distorted road of unreality by adding thousands and thousands more pages of incomprehensible regulations in the form of Obamacare.
I haven't found an accurate count, but given that the bill itself is 2,400 pages, I will be surprised if our Health and Human Service opus is anything short of 200,000 pages at this time. NO human being can possibly understand this, although they continue to apply the legal maxim that "ignorance of the law is no excuse."
Now there may be some hope on the horizon for [physicians] and you in dealing with this IRS debacle. Dr. Huntoon, a neurologist in private practice ... took the Medicare questions and phrased them so a toad could answer "yes" or "no" by jumping right or left.
The Toad Method yielded a 50 percent incorrect response rate -- considerably better than the 96 percent incorrect response rate of the Medicare representatives.
(Apparently, being able to read actually makes one less able to understand the nuances of government regulations.)
So, this April 15, if you sit for hours [on the phone] waiting for an IRS representative, or perhaps have talked with a representative but couldn't understand or didn't trust the answer, just go outside and grab a toad (probably a frog would work as well, since Dr. Huntoon didn't really control the experiment for species), and double check the answer with Mr. Toad.
If you are audited, you can always take a copy of Dr. Huntoon's research paper with you and maybe even the toad as a demonstration.
Like the IRS codes, we little people may not be able to comprehend (or even read) the [Medicare] codes, but we are responsible for being in compliance with the codes or face penalties. And, just like the tax code, these penalties include fines, fines with triple damages, seizure of assets and jail time.If 10 percent sounds steep, the billing service has to go through hell and high water to wring comprehensible answers from CMS and I suspect at least 7 percent of the fee is for hiring clairvoyants to plumb the answers for meaning.
A dentist who was charged with fraud under the Medicaid code spent nearly seven years in prison, including considerable time in solitary confinement. Finally, at the end of his ordeal, he was released – and the government could only show that the poor dentist had overcharged Medicaid by about $40.
Unfortunately, he is not alone. When you hear your doctor is being charged with Medicare fraud, most of the time what is called "fraud" is choosing the wrong code from 150+ pages of regulation.
To avoid the government thump, practitioners go to great lengths to "be in compliance" with the codes. I did not feel I could safely navigate the Medicare code waters alone in my office. I paid 10 percent of my income to a billing service that itself had 160 employees and hired specialists in Medicare and Medicaid.[...]
Given the stiff penalties for failure to comprehend incomprehensible language, American medical and dental practitioners might want to consider demanding that as long as the codes they supply to Medicare are Toad Compliant they should be exempt from criminal charges and triple fines. They should take the demand all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary. And be sure to enter a toad into the court proceedings.
********
Two Screws
"For want of a nail the kingdom was lost."
-- from an old proverb
This writing started as a note to myself so I'm not certain about the date of the WTOP broadcast I mention in the second paragraph. But my best guess is that it was January 18; in any event it was a few days after a smoke incident on Monday, January 12 in the subway system in Washington, DC that centered on the L'Enfant Plaza stop:
Just heard this at 1 PM on WTOP (the all-news radio station for the DMV -- District of Columbia and parts of Maryland and Virginia nearest the District):
When the emergency responders (fire and/or Metro employees) finally got to the trapped subway train, which was more than 40 minutes after thick black-orange smoke had filled the train cars, they ran into another problem. The latches to open the emergency train doors from the outside weren't there.
Then the same responders found that the passengers trapped in the smoke-filled train couldn't open the emergency doors from the inside until two screws had been removed from the doors. The report didn't say whether the screws were located inside or outside the train.
What's clear is that there's no mention of two screws and the need to remove them shown in the instructions posted in every train car for how passengers can open the emergency doors.
From the prominently displayed idiot-proofed written instructions and illustrations that accompany them, the process of opening the emergency exit doors from the inside is child's play. Even the most panicked adult passenger could immediately comprehend how to open the doors from glancing at the large poster of instructions placed next to the emergency doors.
The missing outside door latches and the surprising existence of two screws are just one part of the mess involving Metro (the company that runs the subway trains), PEPCO (the electric company serving the subway system), the police, and the fire department. A mess that cost one passenger her life and sent 85 passengers to emergency rooms, and most probably would have resulted in a train full of dead people if some passengers trapped on the train hadn't called 911 to report the situation and explain that several minutes had elapsed with no help arriving.
Reportedly, up until the passenger calls to 911, the fire and police departments had no idea how serious the situation was. They didn't know there were passengers trapped on a train in which smoke was being sucked in through air exchange vents. This, despite the fact that the billowing smoke had been noted by Metro almost as soon as it broke out in the L'Enfant Plaza station on the Yellow Line at approximately 3:15 PM -- must as the 'official' rush hour was getting underway in the nation's capital and throughout the Metro line. (Because rush hour was just getting underway, if the smoke incident had started just a few moments later there would have been many more commuters trapped on the train.)
Since I wrote the above, more of the story of what happened during the incident has been coming out, in dribs and drabs, from officials connected with various entities involved; e.g., fire department, Metro, etc.
The incident is still under investigation -- a multi-agency investigation that could take a year before the final report is issued, according to one news report. So exactly what happened, and who's to blame for what, is still shrouded in fog. But a couple days ago, I think it was, there was a news report on WTOP regarding an official announcement that investigators were currently looking at 10 lapses or issues that together led to the disaster and/or needed to be addressed to prevent another such disaster.
I note that the disaster wasn't the smoke incident itself, the cause of which is still being investigated -- although from an unconfirmed report it was due to electrical cable(s) falling on a section of the electrified 'third rail.' The disaster was in the slow and muddled response to the breakout of the smoke. This led to scores of commuters being trapped on a smoke filled six- or eight-car train at L'Enfant Plaza for about 40 minutes before they were freed.
The train on which the commuters rode was also trapped. The conductor couldn't move the train forward out of the smoke-filled station, for reasons that aren't clear to me. And he couldn't back the train out the station because the track was blocked from behind by other trains, which had been halted because of the smoke.
(There was an unconfirmed report a day or so after the incident that the conductor abandoned his train, which if confirmed would throw light on why the train didn't pull out of the station away from the worst of the smoke.)
The WTOP report didn't detail every one of the 10 issues but did mention one shocker: In response to the investigation thus far, Metro has made it procedure for a subway conductor to immediately shut off the air intake to a train in the event of a smoke incident.
Why in God's name the procedure was never before instituted by Metro is a mystery; it should be the first thing a conductor should do in those circumstances. Because it wasn't done that day, poisonous thick smoke in the tunnel kept being sucked into the train cars on the trapped train. And as is now known, with no way for passengers on the train to open the emergency doors -- and with a delay of about 40 minutes before responders could get the doors opened.
By the way this wasn't simply smoke; it contained particles that once lodged in lungs can cause health problems for months and even years after the incident.
There were also complications with communications between various responding agencies, which created confusion. One confusion was whether electricity to the third rail had been shut off in response to the smoke alarm. Reportedly the question delayed decisions about when to send firemen into the smoky tunnel to free passengers from the trapped train. According to one early news report, without certain knowledge that power to the third rail had been shut off, those in charge decided it would be very dangerous to send firemen and other first responders into the smoke-filled subway tunnels.
If the report is confirmed I don't understand why the responders couldn't have simply walked on the side of the tunnels where the third rail isn't -- the rail is only on one side of the train cars. Unless the tunnels intersect at angles and because of poor visibility due to the smoke the responders might have easily gotten confused about the location of the third rail. In that event it's possible the delay in getting to the train was also due to authorities waiting for the thickest of the smoke to be dissipated by giant fans in the tunnels, which had been immediately turned on to clear the smoke.
As the mention of "ten" issues indicates, there are questions surrounding the incident in addition ones I've touched on. And because there are so many agencies involved including the federal NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board), which investigates accidents on U.S. mass transport systems, the final report on the incident will probably be almost as many pages as the 911 Commission Report.
Yet when all the investigations are wrapped up and written up and all the finger-pointing in every direction is finished, the incident will amount to just one of those times when everything that could wrong did.
However, Metro (which also operates Washington, DC buses) has been plagued by safety issues on the subway system since at least as early as 2009. Metro's long-running answer to complaints about the safety issues: We need more money and we need to have dedicated funds rather than sharing them with other agencies.
Of course mass casualty incidents that represent a confluence of missteps, mismanagement, and mishaps occur in every major city in the world. I mention this one to a Pundita readership that is both national and international because the life-or-death gap between clear instructions and reality in the fire incident is worthy of everyone's note.
The emergency door exit system and instructions for using it were obviously given careful thought and surely garnered from best practices in subway systems in other cities. In light of this, there's no way subway passengers would be expected to remove two screws before they could exit through emergency doors. So the most likely explanation is that the screws were there to protect a panel on a train car during the crating, shipping, and uncrating processes, and that the screws were to be removed after the train cars were installed at their destination.
The same explanation is likely for the missing outside-door latches; it's a good guess they were to intended to be attached after the train cars had been uncrated and installed in order to protect them from damage during crating and shipping of the subway cars and/or while the car parts were being fitted together at their destination.
In short it's unlikely this was a quality control problem arising at the factory; more likely this was an installation problem. In any case the problem could have been caught at two levels: inspection and drill. If an inspection had failed, a drill in escaping from the cars would have caught that the emergency doors didn't work as expected.
So while there were a number of factors that caused a muddled response to a smoke incident, there was actually only one factor in play that nearly killed 85 people: nowhere was it posted in the train when the last safety drill had occurred.
This is a world in which chances for human catastrophes multiply with the need to coordinate multiple agencies responsible for a mass system, a world in which the systems are increasingly complex. In that mileu it's misplaced to put one's trust only in instructions; trust must also be placed in drills that routinely test the instructions.
Make no mistake, it was a close call. People who were freed from the train and able to talk spilled out a nightmarish story to reporters of passengers around them fainting, vomiting, and retching as the smoke overcame them. The terrible irony is that just as the tunnels were being cleared of the worst of the smoke by giant fans, smoke was being pulled into the train cars, and with no way for the passengers to free themselves. They had only moments left to live by the time they were rescued, and one wasn't able to hold out.
********
-- from an old proverb
This writing started as a note to myself so I'm not certain about the date of the WTOP broadcast I mention in the second paragraph. But my best guess is that it was January 18; in any event it was a few days after a smoke incident on Monday, January 12 in the subway system in Washington, DC that centered on the L'Enfant Plaza stop:
Just heard this at 1 PM on WTOP (the all-news radio station for the DMV -- District of Columbia and parts of Maryland and Virginia nearest the District):
When the emergency responders (fire and/or Metro employees) finally got to the trapped subway train, which was more than 40 minutes after thick black-orange smoke had filled the train cars, they ran into another problem. The latches to open the emergency train doors from the outside weren't there.
Then the same responders found that the passengers trapped in the smoke-filled train couldn't open the emergency doors from the inside until two screws had been removed from the doors. The report didn't say whether the screws were located inside or outside the train.
What's clear is that there's no mention of two screws and the need to remove them shown in the instructions posted in every train car for how passengers can open the emergency doors.
From the prominently displayed idiot-proofed written instructions and illustrations that accompany them, the process of opening the emergency exit doors from the inside is child's play. Even the most panicked adult passenger could immediately comprehend how to open the doors from glancing at the large poster of instructions placed next to the emergency doors.
The missing outside door latches and the surprising existence of two screws are just one part of the mess involving Metro (the company that runs the subway trains), PEPCO (the electric company serving the subway system), the police, and the fire department. A mess that cost one passenger her life and sent 85 passengers to emergency rooms, and most probably would have resulted in a train full of dead people if some passengers trapped on the train hadn't called 911 to report the situation and explain that several minutes had elapsed with no help arriving.
Reportedly, up until the passenger calls to 911, the fire and police departments had no idea how serious the situation was. They didn't know there were passengers trapped on a train in which smoke was being sucked in through air exchange vents. This, despite the fact that the billowing smoke had been noted by Metro almost as soon as it broke out in the L'Enfant Plaza station on the Yellow Line at approximately 3:15 PM -- must as the 'official' rush hour was getting underway in the nation's capital and throughout the Metro line. (Because rush hour was just getting underway, if the smoke incident had started just a few moments later there would have been many more commuters trapped on the train.)
Since I wrote the above, more of the story of what happened during the incident has been coming out, in dribs and drabs, from officials connected with various entities involved; e.g., fire department, Metro, etc.
The incident is still under investigation -- a multi-agency investigation that could take a year before the final report is issued, according to one news report. So exactly what happened, and who's to blame for what, is still shrouded in fog. But a couple days ago, I think it was, there was a news report on WTOP regarding an official announcement that investigators were currently looking at 10 lapses or issues that together led to the disaster and/or needed to be addressed to prevent another such disaster.
I note that the disaster wasn't the smoke incident itself, the cause of which is still being investigated -- although from an unconfirmed report it was due to electrical cable(s) falling on a section of the electrified 'third rail.' The disaster was in the slow and muddled response to the breakout of the smoke. This led to scores of commuters being trapped on a smoke filled six- or eight-car train at L'Enfant Plaza for about 40 minutes before they were freed.
The train on which the commuters rode was also trapped. The conductor couldn't move the train forward out of the smoke-filled station, for reasons that aren't clear to me. And he couldn't back the train out the station because the track was blocked from behind by other trains, which had been halted because of the smoke.
(There was an unconfirmed report a day or so after the incident that the conductor abandoned his train, which if confirmed would throw light on why the train didn't pull out of the station away from the worst of the smoke.)
The WTOP report didn't detail every one of the 10 issues but did mention one shocker: In response to the investigation thus far, Metro has made it procedure for a subway conductor to immediately shut off the air intake to a train in the event of a smoke incident.
Why in God's name the procedure was never before instituted by Metro is a mystery; it should be the first thing a conductor should do in those circumstances. Because it wasn't done that day, poisonous thick smoke in the tunnel kept being sucked into the train cars on the trapped train. And as is now known, with no way for passengers on the train to open the emergency doors -- and with a delay of about 40 minutes before responders could get the doors opened.
By the way this wasn't simply smoke; it contained particles that once lodged in lungs can cause health problems for months and even years after the incident.
There were also complications with communications between various responding agencies, which created confusion. One confusion was whether electricity to the third rail had been shut off in response to the smoke alarm. Reportedly the question delayed decisions about when to send firemen into the smoky tunnel to free passengers from the trapped train. According to one early news report, without certain knowledge that power to the third rail had been shut off, those in charge decided it would be very dangerous to send firemen and other first responders into the smoke-filled subway tunnels.
If the report is confirmed I don't understand why the responders couldn't have simply walked on the side of the tunnels where the third rail isn't -- the rail is only on one side of the train cars. Unless the tunnels intersect at angles and because of poor visibility due to the smoke the responders might have easily gotten confused about the location of the third rail. In that event it's possible the delay in getting to the train was also due to authorities waiting for the thickest of the smoke to be dissipated by giant fans in the tunnels, which had been immediately turned on to clear the smoke.
As the mention of "ten" issues indicates, there are questions surrounding the incident in addition ones I've touched on. And because there are so many agencies involved including the federal NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board), which investigates accidents on U.S. mass transport systems, the final report on the incident will probably be almost as many pages as the 911 Commission Report.
Yet when all the investigations are wrapped up and written up and all the finger-pointing in every direction is finished, the incident will amount to just one of those times when everything that could wrong did.
However, Metro (which also operates Washington, DC buses) has been plagued by safety issues on the subway system since at least as early as 2009. Metro's long-running answer to complaints about the safety issues: We need more money and we need to have dedicated funds rather than sharing them with other agencies.
Of course mass casualty incidents that represent a confluence of missteps, mismanagement, and mishaps occur in every major city in the world. I mention this one to a Pundita readership that is both national and international because the life-or-death gap between clear instructions and reality in the fire incident is worthy of everyone's note.
The emergency door exit system and instructions for using it were obviously given careful thought and surely garnered from best practices in subway systems in other cities. In light of this, there's no way subway passengers would be expected to remove two screws before they could exit through emergency doors. So the most likely explanation is that the screws were there to protect a panel on a train car during the crating, shipping, and uncrating processes, and that the screws were to be removed after the train cars were installed at their destination.
The same explanation is likely for the missing outside-door latches; it's a good guess they were to intended to be attached after the train cars had been uncrated and installed in order to protect them from damage during crating and shipping of the subway cars and/or while the car parts were being fitted together at their destination.
In short it's unlikely this was a quality control problem arising at the factory; more likely this was an installation problem. In any case the problem could have been caught at two levels: inspection and drill. If an inspection had failed, a drill in escaping from the cars would have caught that the emergency doors didn't work as expected.
So while there were a number of factors that caused a muddled response to a smoke incident, there was actually only one factor in play that nearly killed 85 people: nowhere was it posted in the train when the last safety drill had occurred.
This is a world in which chances for human catastrophes multiply with the need to coordinate multiple agencies responsible for a mass system, a world in which the systems are increasingly complex. In that mileu it's misplaced to put one's trust only in instructions; trust must also be placed in drills that routinely test the instructions.
Make no mistake, it was a close call. People who were freed from the train and able to talk spilled out a nightmarish story to reporters of passengers around them fainting, vomiting, and retching as the smoke overcame them. The terrible irony is that just as the tunnels were being cleared of the worst of the smoke by giant fans, smoke was being pulled into the train cars, and with no way for the passengers to free themselves. They had only moments left to live by the time they were rescued, and one wasn't able to hold out.
********
Sunday, January 11
The First SEALs and the unexpected in war
The podcast of John Batchelor's discussion last night with Patrick K. O'Donnell makes a great introduction to Patrick's latest book, First SEALs: The Untold Story of the Forging of America's Most Elite Unit.
John has a rare gift for talking about historic battles, and combat historian and documentarian Patrick K. O'Donnell has a rare gift for researching and writing about them. So when those two get together to tell tales from one of Patrick's books, as they've done several times over the years, it's always a memorable night in radioland.
And that's how, in the space of 24 hours, I went from the doldrums listening to war historian Bevin Alexander recount for John's radio audience the grim tale of Gen. Stonewall Jackson's trials serving inane commanders to laughter and awe, as I listened to exploits of the first SEALs -- not to be confused with the first Navy SEALs.
The first SEALs were a creation of Wild Bill Donovan and the OSS. Of course it wasn't all fun and games but put together a team of incredibly reckless and brave mavericks, outfit them with newfangled frogmen suits, and send them off to fight a new kind of war, and what happens is a whale of an inspirational tale.
Patrick combed through tens of thousands of documents and interviewed surviving members of the team to piece together the history of the first SEALs and bring the story to public light. I should add that in addition to his work as an author he made it his life's mission to collect and document oral recollections of combat veterans; there are 4,000 of these archived on his website.
Ah! I see that Batchelor's war history offering for Saturday is his conversation with Stephen Budiansky about about Budiansky's book, Blackett's War: The Men Who Defeated the Nazi U-Boats and Brought Science to the Art of Warfare. I'll save listening to that one for another time.
Gee I'll bet Colonel John Boyd, The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War, would have loved the John Batchelor Show war histories. Stonewall Jackson would surely have been a regular listener also. But what to say about the heights and depths of war fighting, both on display during Batchelor's Thursday and Friday shows? I don't think I'll ever recover from learning on Thursday that the European prosecution of the First World War faithfully repeated the very worst mistakes of war planners during the Civil War.
Bevin Alexander observed that war is a mad enterprise. But how the madness plays out, whether the actors are foolish or wise, is what makes the history of warfare an endless fascination.
Yet there is something else at work that makes the study of war important. Perhaps the most profound observation ever made about warfare is from the German military strategist Helmuth von Moltke: “No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.”
Of course the observation doesn't always hold true but I was reminded of it when Alexander described how Gen. Stonewall Jackson died. He was killed by friendly fire -- a complete fluke. The small party he was with during an inspection tour was mistaken in the dark and vision-hampering terrain for enemy infiltrators. His own troops opened fire, and that was that.
Yet it so happens he was killed at just the time General Robert E. Lee had finally agreed to allow Jackson to fight a battle his way, that being the rational way.
If Jackson had lived, it's possible and even likely Lee would have allowed him to enact his plan for bringing the Union side to its knees and fairly fast, and in pretty bloodless fashion.
In that event, from Alexander's digging into the war records, the Confederates could have rather easily won what today is still considered by most students of American history to be a war they couldn't have won.
Our daily lives are one unexpected event after another, but it's easy to overlook just how much the unexpected intervenes because very rarely do interventions in prosaic situations make history and entire epochs. It's only in war that the unexpected can make its most striking statements. As such, war history is a lesson in humility, a crucially important lesson to learn and not forget.
*******
John has a rare gift for talking about historic battles, and combat historian and documentarian Patrick K. O'Donnell has a rare gift for researching and writing about them. So when those two get together to tell tales from one of Patrick's books, as they've done several times over the years, it's always a memorable night in radioland.
And that's how, in the space of 24 hours, I went from the doldrums listening to war historian Bevin Alexander recount for John's radio audience the grim tale of Gen. Stonewall Jackson's trials serving inane commanders to laughter and awe, as I listened to exploits of the first SEALs -- not to be confused with the first Navy SEALs.
The first SEALs were a creation of Wild Bill Donovan and the OSS. Of course it wasn't all fun and games but put together a team of incredibly reckless and brave mavericks, outfit them with newfangled frogmen suits, and send them off to fight a new kind of war, and what happens is a whale of an inspirational tale.
Patrick combed through tens of thousands of documents and interviewed surviving members of the team to piece together the history of the first SEALs and bring the story to public light. I should add that in addition to his work as an author he made it his life's mission to collect and document oral recollections of combat veterans; there are 4,000 of these archived on his website.
Ah! I see that Batchelor's war history offering for Saturday is his conversation with Stephen Budiansky about about Budiansky's book, Blackett's War: The Men Who Defeated the Nazi U-Boats and Brought Science to the Art of Warfare. I'll save listening to that one for another time.
Gee I'll bet Colonel John Boyd, The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War, would have loved the John Batchelor Show war histories. Stonewall Jackson would surely have been a regular listener also. But what to say about the heights and depths of war fighting, both on display during Batchelor's Thursday and Friday shows? I don't think I'll ever recover from learning on Thursday that the European prosecution of the First World War faithfully repeated the very worst mistakes of war planners during the Civil War.
Bevin Alexander observed that war is a mad enterprise. But how the madness plays out, whether the actors are foolish or wise, is what makes the history of warfare an endless fascination.
Yet there is something else at work that makes the study of war important. Perhaps the most profound observation ever made about warfare is from the German military strategist Helmuth von Moltke: “No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.”
Of course the observation doesn't always hold true but I was reminded of it when Alexander described how Gen. Stonewall Jackson died. He was killed by friendly fire -- a complete fluke. The small party he was with during an inspection tour was mistaken in the dark and vision-hampering terrain for enemy infiltrators. His own troops opened fire, and that was that.
Yet it so happens he was killed at just the time General Robert E. Lee had finally agreed to allow Jackson to fight a battle his way, that being the rational way.
If Jackson had lived, it's possible and even likely Lee would have allowed him to enact his plan for bringing the Union side to its knees and fairly fast, and in pretty bloodless fashion.
In that event, from Alexander's digging into the war records, the Confederates could have rather easily won what today is still considered by most students of American history to be a war they couldn't have won.
Our daily lives are one unexpected event after another, but it's easy to overlook just how much the unexpected intervenes because very rarely do interventions in prosaic situations make history and entire epochs. It's only in war that the unexpected can make its most striking statements. As such, war history is a lesson in humility, a crucially important lesson to learn and not forget.
*******
Friday, January 9
Part 7, Shoot Yourself in the Foot Health Care: Let's play mad chemist with Over the Counter medications
I'll assume that a great many people who closely follow medical news are well aware that over the counter (OTC) painkillers can raise blood pressure; for those readers who missed the memo here is an article at MedicineNet, both written and edited by MDs, that details the risks.
The article underscores the danger of doctoring oneself with medications about which one knows nothing at all -- and often about which science knows little.
We live in an era of cheap, nonprescription nostrums that take up rows of shelves in pharmacies and grocery stores. I think the consumer's unconscious assumption is that anything so readily available and sold for many years is safe. Maybe so, if taken for a very short period on rare occasion. But the tendency is to start routinely popping OTCs if there are chronic conditions that the person doesn't think require a doctor's attention.
The danger of this practice skyrockets when OTCs for different 'minor' conditions are routinely taken on a regular basis; e.g., pain, allergy, headache, stomach upset, sinus problem, etc.
Add to this the odd assumption that because it's a natural supplement it can't have a 'drug' reaction with OTC drugs -- although doctors have made their patients aware of some of the known negative interactions with certain natural substances and prescription drugs.
The assumption extends to creams and patches for pain relief.
But it's all chemicals, and chemistry is a long way from figuring out how all these chemicals, whether made in a lab or distilled from a natural source, interact in the human body -- and at what times of times of day and what amount, and whether the effects of the interactions are cumulative.
And in the end it's throwing darts blindfolded. This was graphically illustrated by the recent newsmaking horror story of the teenager who had a rare reaction to an antibiotic that was in effect burning her body from the inside out. The odds of that happening are astronomical but there's no accounting for how the individual body reacts to medicines.
This says nothing about dangerous interactions between medicinal drugs, both prescription and OTC, and the chemicals in food ingredients, both artificial and natural, and chemicals found inside the home and office.
What's the tiebreaker, given that OTCs can be a godsend in an emergency? Maybe human nature's famous three-time rule can be applied here. Three stomach upsets, or three bouts of stuffy nose, etc., within a reasonably short period of time and hie oneself to a physician to investigate what could be causing the condition.
Working against this common sense is widespread distrust today of establishment medicine, which has probably followed the same trajectory as distrust for big government.
Of course medicine is a very imperfect art but modern medicine is bound up with very powerful chemicals that unlike the general run of government gaffes don't leave room for mistakes and do-overs. From that view it's better to seek the help of a licensed medical practitioner than play mad chemist with one's body. However, the great availability of OTCs has allowed many people to avoid taking this sensible approach. Thus, yet another example of using the benefits of the modern era to shoot oneself in the foot.
********
The article underscores the danger of doctoring oneself with medications about which one knows nothing at all -- and often about which science knows little.
We live in an era of cheap, nonprescription nostrums that take up rows of shelves in pharmacies and grocery stores. I think the consumer's unconscious assumption is that anything so readily available and sold for many years is safe. Maybe so, if taken for a very short period on rare occasion. But the tendency is to start routinely popping OTCs if there are chronic conditions that the person doesn't think require a doctor's attention.
The danger of this practice skyrockets when OTCs for different 'minor' conditions are routinely taken on a regular basis; e.g., pain, allergy, headache, stomach upset, sinus problem, etc.
Add to this the odd assumption that because it's a natural supplement it can't have a 'drug' reaction with OTC drugs -- although doctors have made their patients aware of some of the known negative interactions with certain natural substances and prescription drugs.
The assumption extends to creams and patches for pain relief.
But it's all chemicals, and chemistry is a long way from figuring out how all these chemicals, whether made in a lab or distilled from a natural source, interact in the human body -- and at what times of times of day and what amount, and whether the effects of the interactions are cumulative.
And in the end it's throwing darts blindfolded. This was graphically illustrated by the recent newsmaking horror story of the teenager who had a rare reaction to an antibiotic that was in effect burning her body from the inside out. The odds of that happening are astronomical but there's no accounting for how the individual body reacts to medicines.
This says nothing about dangerous interactions between medicinal drugs, both prescription and OTC, and the chemicals in food ingredients, both artificial and natural, and chemicals found inside the home and office.
What's the tiebreaker, given that OTCs can be a godsend in an emergency? Maybe human nature's famous three-time rule can be applied here. Three stomach upsets, or three bouts of stuffy nose, etc., within a reasonably short period of time and hie oneself to a physician to investigate what could be causing the condition.
Working against this common sense is widespread distrust today of establishment medicine, which has probably followed the same trajectory as distrust for big government.
Of course medicine is a very imperfect art but modern medicine is bound up with very powerful chemicals that unlike the general run of government gaffes don't leave room for mistakes and do-overs. From that view it's better to seek the help of a licensed medical practitioner than play mad chemist with one's body. However, the great availability of OTCs has allowed many people to avoid taking this sensible approach. Thus, yet another example of using the benefits of the modern era to shoot oneself in the foot.
********
How the Confederacy could have easily won the Civil War
Acclaimed military historian Bevin Alexander's deconstruction of the worst mistakes of Civil War commanders on both sides is almost unbearable to contemplate. The horror is mitigated only by his account of the towering intelligence and rationality of Confederate General Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson, as told in Alexander's 2014 book, Such Troops As These: The Genius and Leadership of Confederate General Stonewall Jackson.
For an introduction and summary of the worst mistakes listen to the podcast of Alexander's discussion on the John Batchelor Show last night.
Doubly shattering is that the same mistakes made in fighting the Civil War -- mistakes repeated ad nauseam by both sides -- were then repeated in the First World War. Nothing, absolutely nothing at all, had been learned by the Europeans from the American Civil War, and so the first 'great war' was also a slaughterhouse.
Yet as Alexander explains, these weren't so much mistakes as a traditional European aristocratic way of war fighting transplanted to America -- a tradition that refused to bend to timeless rules of war.
Americans who despair at the U.S. prosecution of the Vietnam, Korean, and Afghan wars will find Bevin Alexander's discussion with John Batchelor to be a Hair of the Dog experience: if you think those modern American wars were crazily run, wait'll you learn in some detail what Jackson had to put up with.
It's not exactly cheering to know the story but it does tend to put many things in context.
********
For an introduction and summary of the worst mistakes listen to the podcast of Alexander's discussion on the John Batchelor Show last night.
Doubly shattering is that the same mistakes made in fighting the Civil War -- mistakes repeated ad nauseam by both sides -- were then repeated in the First World War. Nothing, absolutely nothing at all, had been learned by the Europeans from the American Civil War, and so the first 'great war' was also a slaughterhouse.
Yet as Alexander explains, these weren't so much mistakes as a traditional European aristocratic way of war fighting transplanted to America -- a tradition that refused to bend to timeless rules of war.
Americans who despair at the U.S. prosecution of the Vietnam, Korean, and Afghan wars will find Bevin Alexander's discussion with John Batchelor to be a Hair of the Dog experience: if you think those modern American wars were crazily run, wait'll you learn in some detail what Jackson had to put up with.
It's not exactly cheering to know the story but it does tend to put many things in context.
********
Thursday, January 8
John Batchelor's Prep Show for a Year of the Whirlwind
Up until the last segment, which is mostly about space travel, John Batchelor's Monday night into Tuesday morning radio show (Jan 5-6) lays down the markers for macro issues that will be very important, both domestically and internationally, as 2015 unfolds. So if you're looking to be well prepared for the coming year of news events you can't do better than the podcast of the show.
Now was it shorting other important issues that for this prep session John gave Stephen F. Cohen an entire hour out of the four-hour show to talk about Russian-Ukrainian issues?
(Actually it's not a full hour because the podcast omits station news and commercial breaks.)
As you will note as the discussion progresses, it's about far more than two countries. And with the possible exception of a few academics laboring in obscurity in Washington, there is no American analyst who comes close to Steve's grasp of Russian matters and ones that branch from it. This includes the situation with the European Union and in particular Germany, as it applies to EU relations with Russia and Ukraine -- and the United States.
And Batchelor himself is a great analyst of those parts of the world; in fact there's no other person in the U.S. media who can match his grasp. So when those two analysts talk to each other, it is always an education.
To top it off, Steve Cohen has high-level contacts, so he's not only an academic historian doing analysis; he's also providing information, intelligence -- choice intelligence.
I should add that at no time does Batchelor say it's a Year of Whirlwind. I'm saying it; that's my view of what's coming down the pike. If I'm right, this will be a bad year for Washington to attempt to correct what has been disastrous U.S. policy regarding the Russian-Ukrainian situation.
I'll also add that I'm not in complete agreement with Larry Kudlow and Steve Moore's pretty rosy economic forecast, which along with a Barron's analyst they provide in the first hour of the Mon-Tue Batchelor show. (The Barron's guy is a little more restrained in his prediction.) This doesn't mean their observations aren't valuable; on the contrary they summarize issues that could well dominate the thinking of financial analysts this year. But if it's a year in which the whirlwind rules, predictions must be very short term because Murphy's Law tends to kick in when the wind springs up from every direction at the same time.
All right; here's the link to the podcast page for Batchelor's show, where you can find all the Mon-Tue segments, but I'm also highlighting the podcast to Steve Cohen's discussion . If you can find time to listen to nothing else from the show, I give this one top billing.
Finally, for the foreseeable future my focus this year, as it was for more than half of last year, will be on personal issues that apply to the entire American society, as my "Shoot Yourself in the Foot Health Care" series indicated. This doesn't mean I'm not paying attention to macro issues. But I take advantage of John Batchelor's show, which watches the world so I don't have to spend every free moment doing so.
This doesn't mean I agree with every analyst on his show or every opinion Batchelor expresses. It means I'd be looking a gift horse in the mouth in the attempt to do a tenth as well at what Batchelor does superbly every night as a matter of course. This country is very lucky to have his show, as I've mentioned before. My mentioning this again now is my New Year's gift to you
.
Tune in on occasion. And check the daily schedule (published near the end of every show) and catch up with podcasts.
********
Now was it shorting other important issues that for this prep session John gave Stephen F. Cohen an entire hour out of the four-hour show to talk about Russian-Ukrainian issues?
(Actually it's not a full hour because the podcast omits station news and commercial breaks.)
As you will note as the discussion progresses, it's about far more than two countries. And with the possible exception of a few academics laboring in obscurity in Washington, there is no American analyst who comes close to Steve's grasp of Russian matters and ones that branch from it. This includes the situation with the European Union and in particular Germany, as it applies to EU relations with Russia and Ukraine -- and the United States.
And Batchelor himself is a great analyst of those parts of the world; in fact there's no other person in the U.S. media who can match his grasp. So when those two analysts talk to each other, it is always an education.
To top it off, Steve Cohen has high-level contacts, so he's not only an academic historian doing analysis; he's also providing information, intelligence -- choice intelligence.
I should add that at no time does Batchelor say it's a Year of Whirlwind. I'm saying it; that's my view of what's coming down the pike. If I'm right, this will be a bad year for Washington to attempt to correct what has been disastrous U.S. policy regarding the Russian-Ukrainian situation.
I'll also add that I'm not in complete agreement with Larry Kudlow and Steve Moore's pretty rosy economic forecast, which along with a Barron's analyst they provide in the first hour of the Mon-Tue Batchelor show. (The Barron's guy is a little more restrained in his prediction.) This doesn't mean their observations aren't valuable; on the contrary they summarize issues that could well dominate the thinking of financial analysts this year. But if it's a year in which the whirlwind rules, predictions must be very short term because Murphy's Law tends to kick in when the wind springs up from every direction at the same time.
All right; here's the link to the podcast page for Batchelor's show, where you can find all the Mon-Tue segments, but I'm also highlighting the podcast to Steve Cohen's discussion . If you can find time to listen to nothing else from the show, I give this one top billing.
Finally, for the foreseeable future my focus this year, as it was for more than half of last year, will be on personal issues that apply to the entire American society, as my "Shoot Yourself in the Foot Health Care" series indicated. This doesn't mean I'm not paying attention to macro issues. But I take advantage of John Batchelor's show, which watches the world so I don't have to spend every free moment doing so.
This doesn't mean I agree with every analyst on his show or every opinion Batchelor expresses. It means I'd be looking a gift horse in the mouth in the attempt to do a tenth as well at what Batchelor does superbly every night as a matter of course. This country is very lucky to have his show, as I've mentioned before. My mentioning this again now is my New Year's gift to you
.
Tune in on occasion. And check the daily schedule (published near the end of every show) and catch up with podcasts.
********
Wednesday, January 7
The neuropathology of smart phone use is damn scary
Slowly it's been emerging that the human brain and the most beloved possession of modern peoples don't mix and can't ever mix. It turns out that smart phone use is even worse an addiction than say, crack cocaine, because it's bound up with a critically important survival impulse.
John Batchelor's January 5 interview with Pulitzer Prize journalist Matt Richtel eases into the bad news with Matt's highly dramatic summary of his latest book, A Deadly Wandering: A Tale of Tragedy and Redemption in the Age of Attention, but eventually gets down to the brass tacks of the neuropathology.
Here's the podcast of the interview.
As to what we're going to do about the problem, darned if I know. But for starters the pathology needs to be better understood by the public before anything can be done. Many people don't believe the warnings because they don't know the science behind them. So unsurprisingly laws banning phone use while driving have made little to no difference in preventing people from using their communication devices on the road; you'll learn why in detail from Matt's discussion -- although distracted driving is only one aspect of the problem.
By the time the interview ended I was questioning whether the problem should even be termed an addiciton. It seems more a compulsion, which I don't think is quite the same as addiciton, and which isn't under conscious control. The compulsion is grounded in a very necessary survival impulse that's hardwired into our brains. Yet if we don't get control of a compulsion to use portable (and wearable!) digital communication devices, the entire human race will soon find itself in the deadly position of those ancient Greek mariners who were enthralled by the songs of Sirens.
********
John Batchelor's January 5 interview with Pulitzer Prize journalist Matt Richtel eases into the bad news with Matt's highly dramatic summary of his latest book, A Deadly Wandering: A Tale of Tragedy and Redemption in the Age of Attention, but eventually gets down to the brass tacks of the neuropathology.
Here's the podcast of the interview.
As to what we're going to do about the problem, darned if I know. But for starters the pathology needs to be better understood by the public before anything can be done. Many people don't believe the warnings because they don't know the science behind them. So unsurprisingly laws banning phone use while driving have made little to no difference in preventing people from using their communication devices on the road; you'll learn why in detail from Matt's discussion -- although distracted driving is only one aspect of the problem.
By the time the interview ended I was questioning whether the problem should even be termed an addiciton. It seems more a compulsion, which I don't think is quite the same as addiciton, and which isn't under conscious control. The compulsion is grounded in a very necessary survival impulse that's hardwired into our brains. Yet if we don't get control of a compulsion to use portable (and wearable!) digital communication devices, the entire human race will soon find itself in the deadly position of those ancient Greek mariners who were enthralled by the songs of Sirens.
********
Monday, January 5
The Basketball Game
Here's the link to OVGuide's video copy of CNBC's hour-long investigative report, Crackberry'd: The Truth About Information Overload, first aired January 4, 2011. The centerpiece of the report is a very short video of a basketball game practice session that was designed as a psycho-epistemological test. The viewer is given a simple counting task while watching the practice. Then after the test ends the tape is played at a slightly slower speed to show the viewer what he missed. The revelation is so astounding it can be a life changer.
If this is your first encounter I'd strongly recommend that you take the test cold, as part of watching the CNBC report. But for people who like to read the last page of a mystery novel first, here is a YouTube video of just the experiment with accompanying text that gives away the plot -- although providing the viewer with some advance idea of what's actually happening during the basketball game might make no difference to the test.
The test was used by CNBC to demonstrate that the human brain is not wired to multitask. It was also used by a defense attorney in a murder trial to challenge eyewitness testimony; jurists later explained that it was mostly on the strength of the test that they turned in a not guilty verdict.
The question I ask is whether the test is indeed a fair demonstration of the brain's difficulty with splitting its attention, or whether human attentiveness has degenerated -- or a combination of the two factors.
I was reminded of the basketball game recently when I explained to a repairman a problem with a washing machine. I was struck by the 'attitude of listening' that came over his face and manifested in his eyes. He was giving my words his full attention. I realized I wouldn't have to repeat my explanation or any part of it -- repetition being such a common feature of modern life that it's done unthinkingly.
So notable was this demonstration of fully focused attention that I had to restrain myself from asking the man, who had a Mexican accent, whether he was from rural Mexico. I'm now sorry I didn't bring the conversation around to the topic of exactly where he hailed from. In my travels I'd noted that villagers in remote regions had concentrative powers that seemed extraordinary by modern standards, powers accompanied by feats of memory that are also considered extraordinary.
I have wondered many times if these extraordinary mental powers are the way all humans were before literacy, although not all the villagers I encountered were illiterate -- and certainly the Mexican repairman wasn't illiterate.
George Gurdjieff made a huge issue about the poor attention span of modernized peoples; one might say it was the 'chief feature' of his teachings. He made these observations long before the advent of digital attention distracters. He even concocted his own test of attention that greatly predated the one represented by the basketball game.
His three-part book, Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson or An Objectively Impartial Criticism of the Life of Man contains sentences that are paragraphs long -- some as long as an entire page -- and filled with made-up words of several syllables that are a hodgepodge of Russian/Central Asian languages, English, etc.
My first experience with trying to read Beelzebub's Tales was that I fell asleep after struggling to mentally process a few sentences, or was unable to remember a word I'd read by the time I got to the end of a page. At one point I contemplated standing on my head while reading, in hopes the additional blood supply to the brain would help my concentration.
Finally I blurted angrily, "I will not be beaten by words on a page. I can do this." I then turned the book upside down and forced myself to read and reread a page in that manner until out of sheer desperation, it seemed, my brain entered a realm of greatly heightened concentration -- a supreme effort that was physically exhausting.
Beelzebub's Tales wasn't Mr Gurdjieff's only test to back his argument that modern peoples had such a limited attention span they were literal sleepwalkers. I'm not sure he proved his argument that the limited attention represents an actual stage of sleep. But at the least, the disciples who had the mental grit and stamina to endure the physical training he put them through were living demonstrations that with supreme efforts humans can accomplish feats of concentration that to all appearances are superhuman.
Would trained attention produce a human brain better suited to the modern era and the demands of multitasking? I think that's a dangerous question given the very low character of modern peoples, which is marked by a maniacal overestimation of their intelligence.
Granted, the mania is not new. Old world history and parables are littered with tales of people who developed supernormal powers along with an inflated view of their intelligence but whose character was so bad they quickly brought themselves down. It's the story of the mythic fall of Atlantis.
In any case the last we need in an era of rampant bad character and puffy heads is millions of idiots with the concentrative powers of a god. And so I venture the human race is slated, at least for now, to struggle along with quite average concentrative powers.
Yet nowhere is it written that our attention must be dashed into so many shards by blind misuse of modern technologies that our mental and physical health are harmed and we're a serious danger or inconvenience to others. That is the great lesson of Crackberry'd and the basketball game.
My New Year's wish is that you and I will be guided by the lesson in 2015.
I am slowing down as much as I can. I am listening as carefully as I can. I am focusing on one task at a time as much as I can. And, taking a page from Mr Gurdjieff's teachings, I am struggling to keep remembering my aim to think more about where my attention is at any time.
********
If this is your first encounter I'd strongly recommend that you take the test cold, as part of watching the CNBC report. But for people who like to read the last page of a mystery novel first, here is a YouTube video of just the experiment with accompanying text that gives away the plot -- although providing the viewer with some advance idea of what's actually happening during the basketball game might make no difference to the test.
The test was used by CNBC to demonstrate that the human brain is not wired to multitask. It was also used by a defense attorney in a murder trial to challenge eyewitness testimony; jurists later explained that it was mostly on the strength of the test that they turned in a not guilty verdict.
The question I ask is whether the test is indeed a fair demonstration of the brain's difficulty with splitting its attention, or whether human attentiveness has degenerated -- or a combination of the two factors.
I was reminded of the basketball game recently when I explained to a repairman a problem with a washing machine. I was struck by the 'attitude of listening' that came over his face and manifested in his eyes. He was giving my words his full attention. I realized I wouldn't have to repeat my explanation or any part of it -- repetition being such a common feature of modern life that it's done unthinkingly.
So notable was this demonstration of fully focused attention that I had to restrain myself from asking the man, who had a Mexican accent, whether he was from rural Mexico. I'm now sorry I didn't bring the conversation around to the topic of exactly where he hailed from. In my travels I'd noted that villagers in remote regions had concentrative powers that seemed extraordinary by modern standards, powers accompanied by feats of memory that are also considered extraordinary.
I have wondered many times if these extraordinary mental powers are the way all humans were before literacy, although not all the villagers I encountered were illiterate -- and certainly the Mexican repairman wasn't illiterate.
George Gurdjieff made a huge issue about the poor attention span of modernized peoples; one might say it was the 'chief feature' of his teachings. He made these observations long before the advent of digital attention distracters. He even concocted his own test of attention that greatly predated the one represented by the basketball game.
His three-part book, Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson or An Objectively Impartial Criticism of the Life of Man contains sentences that are paragraphs long -- some as long as an entire page -- and filled with made-up words of several syllables that are a hodgepodge of Russian/Central Asian languages, English, etc.
My first experience with trying to read Beelzebub's Tales was that I fell asleep after struggling to mentally process a few sentences, or was unable to remember a word I'd read by the time I got to the end of a page. At one point I contemplated standing on my head while reading, in hopes the additional blood supply to the brain would help my concentration.
Finally I blurted angrily, "I will not be beaten by words on a page. I can do this." I then turned the book upside down and forced myself to read and reread a page in that manner until out of sheer desperation, it seemed, my brain entered a realm of greatly heightened concentration -- a supreme effort that was physically exhausting.
Beelzebub's Tales wasn't Mr Gurdjieff's only test to back his argument that modern peoples had such a limited attention span they were literal sleepwalkers. I'm not sure he proved his argument that the limited attention represents an actual stage of sleep. But at the least, the disciples who had the mental grit and stamina to endure the physical training he put them through were living demonstrations that with supreme efforts humans can accomplish feats of concentration that to all appearances are superhuman.
Would trained attention produce a human brain better suited to the modern era and the demands of multitasking? I think that's a dangerous question given the very low character of modern peoples, which is marked by a maniacal overestimation of their intelligence.
Granted, the mania is not new. Old world history and parables are littered with tales of people who developed supernormal powers along with an inflated view of their intelligence but whose character was so bad they quickly brought themselves down. It's the story of the mythic fall of Atlantis.
In any case the last we need in an era of rampant bad character and puffy heads is millions of idiots with the concentrative powers of a god. And so I venture the human race is slated, at least for now, to struggle along with quite average concentrative powers.
Yet nowhere is it written that our attention must be dashed into so many shards by blind misuse of modern technologies that our mental and physical health are harmed and we're a serious danger or inconvenience to others. That is the great lesson of Crackberry'd and the basketball game.
My New Year's wish is that you and I will be guided by the lesson in 2015.
I am slowing down as much as I can. I am listening as carefully as I can. I am focusing on one task at a time as much as I can. And, taking a page from Mr Gurdjieff's teachings, I am struggling to keep remembering my aim to think more about where my attention is at any time.
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Wednesday, December 31
The Benghazi Mess and Washington's Blowhards
In a report today for the Daily Signal, Emmy award-winning investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson and author of Stonewalled lists 26 Ways the Media Botched Their Reporting on the Latest Benghazi Report. The list is a helpful summary of a complete mess. But it's not only the media that can be faulted. Taken together the items on Attkisson's list point to a tangle of CYA actions on the part of officials in Congress, the White House and at an alphabet soup of Washington agencies.
As to whether the tangle points to an actual conspiracy in the mode of Iran-Contra, it looks to me as if the same situation is at the bottom of both: Washington officials and their policy advisers strategizing on the strength of a delusion that the world is a chessboard. When reality impinges on the delusion, the one predictable outcome is that things have a way of falling apart.
In the case of Benghazi, before and during the attack on the U.S. mission the State Department couldn't very well press for more security for their personnel in Libya because they were involved in a clandestine operation -- an operation that seemed to be directed at Syria.
At any rate, an ongoing U.S. 'defense' involvement in Libya was more than the American voters wanted; they hadn't even wanted the Obama administration to be involved in air strikes on Libya, period. Much less fooling around in Syria with an ill-defined gaggle of fighters bent on taking down Assad.
At any rate, an ongoing U.S. 'defense' involvement in Libya was more than the American voters wanted; they hadn't even wanted the Obama administration to be involved in air strikes on Libya, period. Much less fooling around in Syria with an ill-defined gaggle of fighters bent on taking down Assad.
But the Obama administration was trying to please the Pussyfooting War Hawk contingent in Congress plus Qatar's fat emir and the Saudi monarch. (I think it's the fat emir who runs Qatar; no matter, it's one of those Middle Eastern gas or oil banana republics.) Plus trying to keep NATO and the EU happy about Syria and placate the French or was it the Italians about Libya.
The point is that any chess master could have told them this ain't chess. But no, no, if they made enough X, Q, A, and Z moves the Y situations would somehow work out. It's just that they didn't factor in enough factors.
Can anything pry Washington away from its long-running idea that it can turn millions of living, unpredictable humans -- foreign humans, at that -- into inanimate pieces on a chessboard? Yeah. Oil at $5 a barrel and the U.S. dollar falling to a level that reflects its actual worth, both of which will put a crimp in the U.S. government's ability to kite checks to fund its harebrained geostrategizing.
On a related matter, did you know it's possible to exacerbate and even create a sinus infection, a chronic infection, in yourself by blowing your nose wrong? Talk about blowback. This ignorance has translated to endemic sinus infections in the USA to include Washington, DC.
Here's the right way to blow your nose. Number One rule: don't blow hard. By interesting coincidence that's what a pussyfooting war hawk actually is: a blowhard. A blowhard who can get a lot of people killed and maimed and never be held to account.
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Happy New Year, OPEC
Will OPEC nations including Saudi Arabia retaliate in any way they can to the latest turn of events? Will they put inordinate pressure on their best friends in Congress to pressure the Obama administration to hold the line? It would be short-sighted to do so, which means they might try. 2015 could be a very interesting year.
Bloomberg/Business Week
Bloomberg/Business Week
U.S. Opening Door to More Oil Exports Seen Foiling OPEC Strategy
The Obama administration’s move to allow exports of ultralight crude without government approval may encourage shale drilling and thwart Saudi Arabia’s strategy to curb U.S. output, further weakening oil markets, according to Citigroup Inc.
A type of crude known as condensate can be exported if it is run through a distillation tower, which separates the hydrocarbons that make up the oil, according to U.S. government guidelines published yesterday. That may boost supplies ready to be sold overseas to as much as 1 million barrels a day by the end of 2015, Citigroup analysts led by Ed Morse in New York said in an e-mailed report.
Saudi Arabia led the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to maintain its production quota at a meeting last month even as a shale boom boosted U.S. output to the highest in more than three decades. That prompted speculation OPEC was willing to let prices fall to force some companies with higher drilling costs to stop pumping.
“U.S. producers are under the gun to reduce capital expenditures given lower prices,” Citigroup said in the report. “Now an export route provides a new lease on life that can further weaken crude oil markets and throw a monkey wrench into recent Saudi plans to cripple U.S. production.”
While the guidelines on the website of the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security are the first public explanation of steps companies can take to avoid violating export laws, they don’t mean an end to the ban on most crude exports, which Congress adopted in 1975 in response to the Arab oil embargo.
“While government officials have gone out of their way to indicate there is no change in policy, in practice this long-awaited move can open up the floodgates to substantial increases in exports by end-2015,” Citigroup said. The U.S. produces about 3.81 million barrels a day of light and ultralight crude, according to the bank.
[...] [Lots more to the report]
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Thursday, December 25
Christmas 1941: Yet in thy dark streets shineth ...
John Batchelor's wonderful introduction to Stanley Weintraub's 2011 book, Pearl Harbor Christmas: A World at War, December 1941 featured clips from two of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's most memorable talks to the American nation; one broadcast on the radio the day after the December 7 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the other on the occasion of the President's lighting of the White House Christmas tree that year -- with Winston Churchill at his side (photo above). During that second talk Roosevelt asked rhetorically how during this darkest hour Americans could celebrate Christmas -- and answered the question, in perhaps the most memorable speech given in modern times.
John urged that people re-read the book once a year around Christmas time, to remember what a threat constitutes. Well, the podcast of his discussion with the author is a great substitute if the holiday season leaves no time for reading.
The world Stanley Weintraub describes for John's radio audience, the world as it was in 1941 as the Japanese triumphed, horribly, in region after region while the Germans pounded away at the Russian front, is indeed a good refresher on what evil in full battle regalia looks like.
The more one knows about the era, the easier it is to understand why to this day it dominates the defense/foreign policy of the Western nations, and still influences the Chinese view of Japan. In many instances this focus on what I've called the "Ghost of 1939" has had tragic consequences. And yet, listening to the discussion, it struck me that it's less a remembrance of World War Two and more a fogginess on the details of what actually happened that's caused American policymakers in post-war eras to blindly adhere to strategies that should be limited to responding to the kind of situations the Allies faced.
An example is that Roosevelt and Churchill knowingly made a deal with the devil, that being Josef Stalin. It has been argued that they hadn't needed to give away so much to Stalin but I think this view ignores the time pressure under which the deal was struck.
No such pressure existed for post-war American (and British/European) leaders who made deals with Gulf Sunni leaders espousing a strict interpretation of Islam that is fully as dehumanizing as Nazism. Yet Western leaders struck the deals on the rationale that harks to the fateful decision by Churchill and Roosevelt to treat Stalin as 'the enemy of my enemy.'
This conversion into a long-term strategy of a tactic that should only be deployed in the most pressing of wartime circumstances has been disastrous. So perhaps it's Washington policymakers who most need to read Stanley Weintraub's book, or at least listen to his discussion with John Batchelor, to visit in their minds the way things actually were at Christmas, 73 years ago.
But enough of giving advice that will surely fall on deaf ears. A nifty companion volume to Weintraub's offering is historian David McCullough's 2010 In the Dark Streets Shineth: A 1941 Christmas Eve Story. Only 40 pages long, the book is about Winston Churchill's wartime visit to Washington. From Mark Tooley's review at the American Spectator, the book:
... focuses particularly on the British premier's first hearing of the hymn, O Little Town of Bethlehem, sung at a Christmas service to which FDR took him. The carol partly echoed some words in Churchill's first radio broadcast to the American people, referring to the "English-speaking world" at Christmas as a "brightly-lighted island of happiness and peace."
Churchill had steamed the Nazi submarine–infested Atlantic to appear in Washington, D.C. on December 22, just two weeks after Pearl Harbor had made Britain and America wartime allies.[...] During the Christmas Eve tree lighting on the White House south lawn, the Marine Band had performed Joy to the World and the Hallelujah chorus from Handel's The Messiah.
On Christmas Day, FDR took Churchill to Foundry Methodist Church, about a mile north of the White House. "I like to sing hymns with the Methodys," FDR had once chirpily explained of his sometime attendance at Foundry, despite his being Episcopalian.
Various dignitaries joined them, including Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall and Vice President Henry Wallace. The minister prayed for "those who are dying on land and sea this Christmas morning."
Churchill later remembered of the service: "Certainly there was much to fortify the faith of all who believe in the moral governance of the universe."
Surprisingly, it was the first time Churchill ever heard O Little Town of Bethlehem, written 75 years earlier by a Philadelphia pastor while visiting the Holy Land during Christmas.
Memorably, the hymn declares: "Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light; the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight."
According to McCullough's book, both FDR and Churchill typically "sang lustily, if not exactly in tune."[...]*********
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