Prioritizing World Problems

Ranking the Rank: F- it, let's solve them all

Actually, as Bjorn Lomborg said, it may be more productive to rank solutions than problems, according to a bang for the buck type of calculus. I think we should seek perfection. Why not. We can solve all the problems, on multiple fronts, simultaneously, in my opinion. Everything's interrelated, anyway. We should start by solving the problems that will help us solve other problems, to create a snowball effect. We need to get serious, and mobilize. We shouldn't depend on governments for the answer, although they can certainly be a (big) part. There's really only one solution:

Simplicity, as Hannibal said. Or, to quote Jennifer Hathaway on ted.com,
"I worked in high-end interior construction as a crew chief for a decade, and while some discussion went into every project, too much discussion and waffling would only bog projects down. The key to making progress is to put our heads together with the homeowner, discuss the desired result, present our best two or three solutions, accept the final decision, and then follow through with the work- at which point the homeowner more or less got out of the way until we were "finished" enough to get feedback on any changes/further issues they might want. [all of our business came from word-of-mouth references by satisfied clients, btw]. If any of my workers were too prone to talking and not doing, [s]he would not long have a job.What I see happening far too much in the world of "helping" is the tendency to overthink. I think it's silly to waste too much time on that. Elegant simplicity is not only key in engineering but in problem solving in general. I believe another name for that is "common sense".

So just do it.
God, the slave driver. Get to work!
Be a man. Be a man for others.

All about slow sand filters:
http://www.nesc.wvu.edu/ndwc/pdf/OT/TB/TB14_slowsand.pdf

That doesn't mean there isn't a place for thoughtful reflection on how to best deal with the issues facing us; i.e. how to best structure a response. World government? No governments? Less governments (larger blocks)? More governments? I choose all of the above. To explain:

Law
Governments create and enforce law. I have said earlier I think everyone should live under a system of laws they approve of, making their own laws, of which the jurisdictions could be a single household to the entire world, with the laws posted outside their homes, at borders, or on computer, appearing by gps. Rules and morals should be thought about, agreed upon, and self-made, not imposed by any authority, unless you accept that authority (such as Shariah law, for example). So this could range from utterly zillions of little rules upon pain of death, to do what thou wilt/aka anarky, with no punishments allowed. I imagine some rules could be universally agreed upon. Maybe not, though. Anarchy, upon pain of death? lol.

"There are sufficient resources existing to alleviate core global problems, they just need to be made available. We could mobilise them without having to reduce the living standards in the economically rich parts of the world." -Carlston Voelz

What are the core global problems, and how much will solving them cost?

Some think it's too late to try and solve all the world's problems, so we should all just give up. Jose Tavares says it's a question of (limited) money, (limited) resources, (limited) will and (limited) sustainability, and (limited) time (In fact, 'we're' way too late! he says), and that living standards would in fact worsen in the developed world as money was invested elsewhere.

Rubbish. Just like the myth of sisyphus, there's merit in the trying, even if the boulder just rolls down the hill again. I don't think it will, though. Or it won't roll all the way down. The planet can be that city upon a hill. So if we all acted and got our ostrich heads out of the sand, tv, computer, whatever, we might even bequeath a better future to our children than we got from our parents, rather than worse. I'm a stubbornly dogged idealist on human potential.

What are the core problems? Population and migration, conflict and war and terrorism, global warming aka climate change, malnutrition and hunger and starvation and famine, clean water and sanitation, economic instability, Communicable diseases (eg. HIV/AIDS, Malaria, TB), education, governance and corruption, subsidies and trade barriers. I would also say tobacco and obesity and unhealthy lifestyles. That's 11. There's plenty more.

a list of communicable diseases:
http://www.health.state.ny.us/diseases/communicable/

Bjorn's book, Solutions for the world's biggest problems, lists and ranks, by cost-effective solubility, 23 problems. They are (unranked):

Part I. Economy
2. Financial instability Peter Blair Henry3. Lack of intellectual property rights Keith E. Maskus4. Money laundering Donato Masciandaro5. Subsidies and trade barriers Kym Anderson

Part II. Environment
6. Air pollution Guy Hutton7. Climate change Gary Yohe8. Deforestation Henk Folmer and G. Cornelis van Kooten9. Land degradation Ian Coxhead and Ragnar Oygard10. Loss of biodiversity Dan Biller11. Vulnerability to natural disasters Roger A. Pielke

Part III. Governance
12. Arms proliferation Paul Dunne13. Conflicts Paul Collier14. Corruption Susan Rose-Ackerman15. Lack of education Peter Orazem16. Terrorism Daniel Linotte

Part IV. Health and Population
17. Drugs Jefrey A. Miron18. Diseases Dean Jamison19. Lack of people of working age Robert E. Wright and Katerina Lisenkova20. Living conditions of children Harry Anthony Patrinos21. Living conditions of women Brinda Viswanathan22. Malnutrition/hunger Jere R. Behrman, Harold Alderman and John Hoddinott23. Unsafe water and lack of sanitation Guy Hutton24. Population: migration Michael J. Greenwood

I haven't read the book. I'd like to. I'd like to tally the cost of all 23 problems, and basically get to work on what rednecks are said to say, namely..."git r' done." That's my philosophy. I wonder how wholistically the different problems are treated. It looks a bit compartmentalized.

Click here to buy Solutions to the World's Biggest Problems by Bjorn.

"over"population
I would like to say that it is a fallacy that increased living standards for the poor will necessarily lead to higher populations. A China-like family policy could be globally implemented. Also, it has been shown that wealthier families have less children, as in the developed world. Professional women have less children. Number of children correlates inversely with literacy, I believe. I think there's a middle ground, income-wise, in which statistically families grow, before they reduce. This can be regulated. It's probably cultural, and not just an absolute function of wealth. From an evolutionary standpoint, people want to maximize their genes in the next generation. They can do this through less children, paradoxically, if they invest more resources in each, to ensure their survival and success, of course. But religious statements like in the OT about Abraham having "a nation" greater than the number of stars or sand or whatever appeals to many men, when really we just want a happy life with whatever number of happy children. We're not baby machines, we want to enjoy life. And raising kids is largely seen as unpleasant, with the satisfaction coming later in life. People replace babies with cars/comforts. So cultural conditioning and evolutionary calculus and law all play a part.

How big a problem is overpopulation? What level becomes "over"? Malthusian economics says war, starvation, and disease will automatically winnow down populations that exceed carrying capacity. So we should pre-emptively avoid all that suffering by implementing policies that keep population pressures from boiling over into misery, or future misery, because of unsustainability. Some say we have billions of people too many already. We may be able to support a much bigger population than we think we can, though, and overpopulation might not be as big a problem as so many make it out to be. My professor (Tuma) at UC Davis thought as much. I trust his judgement. Estimates of the earth's human carrying-capacity range from 2B to 40B, which is quite a range.

Dr. McConeghy says that a single human being only needs, per year:
1)about 400 kilograms (liters) of water that is not very dirty or salty
2)about 300 kilograms of food, mostly grain such as rice, or bread
3)a shelter that maintains a temperature above freezing in winter

If every human being only consumed this, the earth could support 40B humans, he says. Although perhaps this means the earth would basically be transformed into a human "feedlot."
Of course, there are many many solutions to solving dietary requirements cheaply. Collect them all!

For Dr. McConeghy's overview of the topic of carrying capacity, go to:
http://mmcconeghy.com/students/supcarryingcapacity.html

Family Planning
There are an estimated 350 million women in the poorest countries of the world who either did not want their last child, do not want another child or want to space their pregnancies, but they lack access to information, affordable means and services to determine the size and spacing of their families. In the developing world, some 514,000 women die of complications from pregnancy and abortion on a yearly basis. One suggested solution is for population growth to be slowed quickly by investing heavily in female literacy and family planning services

Just get the money and make a difference. You'll feel good. I guarantee it.

"Marginal"
How much should we spend per problem? We should employ professional economists to figure out marginal costs and marginal effectiveness. Everyone in AIDS prevention knows that the first billion you invest in AIDS prevention is about a hundred times more effective than the 50th billion. As some point the same "purchases" not only cease to produce the same benefits, but they can actually do harm. So, I would say we should spend up to that point, if we can intelligently determine it (i.e. if it isn't just some theoretical construct).

MS: Misery and Suffering
We should rank problems by human suffering. Attack the problems of most misery first. This needs to include a long-term perspective. We can't put the world on crack, for example. Neuralgia is a debilitating disease of continual suffering. Some schizophrenics suffer tortuous mental anguish. People in physical and psychological pain should have access to the treatment they deserve. No one deserves to suffer, even torturers. It's got to stop.

War
The threat of war should never loom over people. Safety is a basic human right. All militaries should be disbanded. War is totally yesterday. All nukes worldwide should be dismantled. Nuclear components and technology should still be monitored, of course. The unthinkable should truly be unthinkable; i.e. impossible. The UN should be fully funded, so Peace Keeping forces can be fully deployed rapidly wherever they may be needed. All assault weapons or automatic weaponry across the world should be destroyed. As I have said, although scary, I think the world would be safer if everyone were armed with handguns. Basically, this is because I read a convincing study. But you could live in a gun-free space, if you chose. I'm sure that would be a popular law.

China has an ancient culture, and we should adopt the many martial artist's view of combat as between individuals, who learn philosophies of peace, and respect each other's lethality from having been trained and mentally disciplined in martial arts (the motions can be elegant and beatiful). In other words, if fight we must, then personal, not military, the conflict should be. This would be like between two boxers, who agree in advance to the risk, and often respect each other more afterward.

Global Warming
Obviously, as you may have guessed, I don't believe we should spend all our money and consume all our resources for ourselves, without thinking of our children, and future generations. So if we agree that the future world will be hellishly hot, then remedying global warming/ghg/carbon emissions becomes a priority. If, on the other hand, it's an average increase of just a few degrees, with people merely picking up their things and moving from flooded cities, that's not as much misery, I would think. Rising seas will happen gradually, and people can move their things, perhaps even buildings. Relocation is a matter of logistics, not misery. Building new infrastructure might even be a good thing. These are just thoughts. I'm no expert. Someone said that the Polar Bear population is actually increasing. So maybe even Gore isn't reliable. We need serious people, who know what they're talking about, know the facts (i.e. check the facts), and are committed to the truth, so trust will be more prevalent and maximally informed decision-makers can make the right choices. Of course, people only truly know what they perceive, if that. Just as oil is moved today, perhaps we could move fresh water in the future, from Antarctica or Lake Baikal or what have you. We could probably collect freshwater in the form of rainfall, with every household having storage receptacles on their rooves, when the rain does come (if less frequently). But we would have to prevent acid rain and the like. We have to clean up our pollution, so neurotoxins and carcinogens don't kill us, from above or below, rain or groundwater. I think I read somewhere that drinking water may be responsible for the phenomenal rise in autism. CSR (corporate social responsibility) must happen, upon pain of... Well, I don't know. Whatever works. Clean water transportation is a matter of logistics that a richer world could probably afford (?), especially if we continue developing and deploying clean, renewable energy sources. We wouldn't lose all that money to unsavory oil producers, and..There's a market for green energy. Green makes green. Would the value of an expanded clean-energy sector offset the cost of the increased need to transport clean water? The size of the world's pie is projected to increase greatly (per capita, as well) in the future. No one should be left behind. No child left behind, no adult left behind, no one. The rising tide shouldn't drown anyone, but rather lift all boats.

global warming is said to threaten future conflict
If we want to bequeath a peaceful and safe society to the future humanity/world, we need to create a functioning system in which the root causes of war are addressed.

War
Peace is more than not-war

On war and peace, peace is ideally not just the absence of war, but the presence of contentment or joy. War is hell, but not being in hell doesn't necessarily mean you're in heaven. You could be in limbo or purgatory. So peace should means contentment or happiness, and we say dead people are at peace, in line with the Buddhist understanding that only death brings the extinction of suffering. Or is it Nirvana? It's only a temporary state, I believe, for the living, I believe, for them. Then again, life is a temporary state. Perhaps the best life possible is perpetually nirvanic. In any case, although war can be enjoyable for some soldiers, it carries the risk of immense suffering, pain and trauma, and of course death, in addition to being so destructive to the lives of civilians, who basically want to be left alone. So we must prevent war. Willing combatants should go play paintball or something. There's an article in the Economist about healthy boxing in Iraq between Shias and Sunnis.

The causes of war are: (historically: taxation without representation (independence), economics, racism (slavery and the civil war), antisemitism and liebensraum (Germany's offense under Hitler), abcdefghijklmn.. Water rights could be a basis for future conflicts.

Food
Obviously, hunger and malnutrition is priority number one, or part of the bundle that should be immediately and permanently addressed. Malnourished children can't solve problems as well in the future, so there are ripple effects for a long time. Doesn't basic human decency dictate that we shouldn't let people starve or be hungry or not have nutritional diets? What kind of people are we? Famine usually has sociological origins, not "natural" ones. Although, you could say leaders are often "naturally" cruel or or uncaring or misinformed or uninformed or uncurious or even stupid.

"sociopathic corporations"
We're institutionally sociopathic, and structurally selfish, and thus cruel. But individually, I think, we're better than that. Many believe it's every man for himself, and live and let die, and nothing really matters, and life's a bitch/unfair, and he who dies with the most toys wins, and we're rebels and haters like Kurt Cobain on the Nevermind cover flipping off the world that torments us, and we're all slaves and unfree and prisoners, and no one gives a damn. Well, they're wrong. Virtually everyone wants a better world, and just feels frustrated at an inability to make change, personally or systemically. There are many kind institutions, not least of which are religions. Kindness is my religion, and should be yours, too. I'm guessing it already is. That's the last word. I command thee.

Witnessing Jehovah
JW's, for instance, in their frustration, put their hope in Jehovah God creating an Armageddon as a "war to end all wars" that will "bring to ruin those ruining the earth." This month's tract declares that "Realistically, we cannot divorce corruption and wickedness from the people practicing them. Thus, lasting peace and justice come at the price of removal of the wicked ones". It also states, "He, Jehovah, finds no delight in destroying the wicked; he only does so as a last resort" (Ez 18:32, Peter 3:9). Basically, you could say they want me or someone like me to start killing those I deem as sinners. That's how I interpret it, as I don't see people just disappearing like in that popular Christian book series. This prime mover would kill, and the ripple effect would spread outward as others start to enact their final solutions, if that is indeed how the spirit moves. They (the JW's, and well, so many others) hunger for righteousness. They need some vengeance. They need someone to step up and be lord (vengeance is mine, sayeth the lord). Well, I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to be the Sauron Jesus of Revelation 19:19, even if Sauron, in this context, is good/god. I believe in the essential goodness of humanity, even the most "evil", and why would God disobey his own commandment of 'Thou Shalt not Kill'. So people won't fight back? So he can enact justice, as the arbiter of justice, without being judged himself in turn? I would guess Jesus let himself be killed under the weight of having killed, himself. The bible can be a scary book. The JW's can be scary people. They're the ultimate in "cruel to be kind." If you want to be good, as you would assume anyone reading the bible intends, you have to become God, as "only God is good". Basically, killing doesn't have to be cruel, they're saying. It can serve goodness, righteousness, God, humanity. From God's perspective, you can love someone by killing them, because they can't change their evil ways, despite having good intentions, or having goodness in them, or good ideals (but they're still essentially evil). In other words, if they knew what they were doing, they would want you to kill them. Jesus said "forgive them, for they know not what they do." We all want our sins to be forgiven, yet the bible says "the wages of sin is death." So, one could conclude that you'll be forgiven when you're dead. I'm not into that. Catholic priests forgive you now, and you can start fresh after the sacrament of reconciliation. As I don't really believe in God, I would say you should basically see where you might have gone wrong in your life, and maybe tell someone you love, 'fess up as it were, come clean, and move on, if you feel the need. You shouldn't carry a burden of guilt, of undisclosed and unforgiven "sin". Well, maybe there's a telepath out there who knows what you've done. Sin is breaking God's law, not the state's (although you might think they're the same, or, in any case, overlap). My law, if you're wondering, is be kind and rewind (make the world a better place), lol. Just as you may want your own sins to be forgiven, you should also want crimes to be pardoned, criminals to be acquitted, the guilty to be innocent, and the incarcerated to be free. Lawyers are gods, too. Judge not lest ye be judged. Otherwise, you're just basically declaring a death sentence on yourself, if you follow the bible.

You might think that the more sinful one is, the sooner his/her death will come. We should all know that isn't true. Nor should it be, in my opinion. We don't need religious nuts finding reasons to kill people.

Marxism and Humanism
Marx had a point when he believed the poor would rise up- but they can't swim across the oceans. Anger is a reasonable response. But the effective and humane response is to shun violence in favor of the more preferable creation of a massive public change toward decency and human respect and sympathy and kindness, by appealing to humankind's more noble nature, that through government (taxes) or charity or organizational work (like Peace Corps, Dr's without borders, x, y, or z) or individual relationships, makes a difference. This is generally done by preachers and priests and ministers in churches, but I think should be taught by parents, teachers, and anyone else, as a foundation of humanism, in which a pie in the sky God is replaced by a respect for basic human decency, kindness, and compassion. Perhaps spending Sundays during youth at church is a good way to instill this value system, if only to have the dogma shed later. It just seems a tad nuts. I think the Catechism of the Catholic Church, for example, is completely bonkers, to tell the truth. I could address every single point in it, but I think I have better things to do, and why make enemies.

Religious extremism
The tragedy on 9-11 is an expression of the frustration in the developing world. True, it was primarily religious, but I would say it was also economic. I would be mad too, if I lived in Afghanistan earning an average of x and Americans, earning an average of y, had a pair of buildings in (the richest city in the world?) that they had the gall to name the "World Trade Center," with trade barriers... Obviously, there is no actual center of world trade. The name is somewhat offensive. That's no reason to kill anyone, of course, but I can see why they chose it as a target. Plus, money is the epicenter of American life, as opposed to Allah in the Muslim world. We may be a Christian country, believing in a God who said "it is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God than to go through the eye of a needle," but we (are the richest nation on earth?) who only gives x to aid the 3W and doesn't fully fund the UN, which provides peacekeeping forces to places like Darfur.

Disease
Malaria and AIDS and TB, for example, can all be significantly reduced, through education and nets and...whatever for whatever amount of money...tbc.

Keeping an open mind
Marxism, Islamic (for example) extremism, humanism, the JW's...they all have something important to say. I say don't exclude any perspectives from your world view, but integrate them all. To carry this line of thinking further, all religions have similar goals, if not principles. So INTEGRATE everything. Academically, different fields of study all interrelate, so integrate those too. Try not to compartmentalize and exclude. All isms and all fields and everything else are all bundled up in this thing we call "reality." Expand your mind, and exclude nothing and no one. Love believes everything, the bible says. When two statements "collide," ascertain the truth.

Solving the World's Problems

Solving the problem problem

First, we need to define the problems. That means make a list, and make clear how they interrelate.

Second, we need to define the solutions, i.e. what needs to be done. Collect them all. (One of the solutions might be ranking the problems).

Third, we need to determine which way to decide which solutions, or sets of solutions, are best for each problem (unless all the problems are just one big interdependent problem).

Fourth, having ranked/grouped the solutions, then we need to emphasize those, and act.

Basically, we need to decide what we realistically can do. That may be everything; i.e. all the problems can be solved -they may even interrelate to such an extent that they need to all be solved together, holistically (sp? wholistically?), at once. The world has 6.7B people and 48T dollars. I think we could, if we wanted, solve all our problems, with a concerted effort. I think all it would take is for everyone to focus on solving everyone's problems, and not just their own, with a sense of global community, and not a selfish personal, familial, national, religious, ethnic, or otherwise exclusive identity. We have to realize other people's problems ARE our problem. Other's happiness affects our own. Many of us intuitively understand this already in the realm of ecology. We need bees to pollinate our crops, which need... If we don't decide to solve all our problems at once, we need to prioritize the problems, and run down the list until everybody's happy. If we're using money, we have to decide how much money it will take, and how we will get the money. Perhaps you might think not all problems can be solved with money. I would say they can. They meet the basic needs so other problems can be addressed afterwards, at the very least.

Aside: Ideas are like currency, and you can be rich in brilliance. Happiness has an economic component. Having lots of money (or more than someone else) makes people happy. But I think being truly happy means having your needs met, which doesn't necessarily require money. People think they are only worth what's in their bank account, and this is a false consciousness. People are valued for who they are, not just what they do, or what they have.

If everybody is working to survive and be happy, shouldn't we all get that? The vampire mentality of our each being happy at another's expense has got to stop. We should be happy making others happy, and I'm not talking just about comedy. I'm talking about effective service where it matters most, to alleviate suffering, whether that be comedy or feeding the poor or researching cures or visiting prisoners or exercising or being a big brother/sister or taking someone to a ballgame or distributing malaria nets or giving gifts (not necessarily just on a birthday or Christmas) or going to the zoo or forest, teaching someone to surf or ski, or go rock climbing, or to go fly a kite, or go to a concert, or make a battlebot, or race a remote controlled toy, or teach someone to swim, or about astronomy, or small boat sailing, or make a homemade movie, or joining Dr's without Borders, or contributing to any number of worthy causes, in time or money.

First, and to be more systematic than the above paragraph's rant, what are the problems:
Basic needs are survival and happiness.

This means, at a minimum, for survival: food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, clean water, and sanitation. For happiness, I would say we all basically need love and safety. The Beatles sang 'all you need is love,' but they seem to have forgotten about nutritious food, clean water, cool threads, warm shelter in the winter or cool shade in the sun, preventive maintenance of health (a good diet and exercise), sanitation, and medical facilities. Exercise is a dry, passionless word. Being in shape and having endorphins flowing through your blood stream keeps you happy. So take a walk, ride a bike, play sports, go for a swim, lift weights, have sex. More than just simply loving yourself, which I believe is necessary, I think everyone needs companionship. And an appropriate level of intimacy: people need to be touched.

I would also add education and entertainment. I don't know that they're basic needs, exactly, but I sure like them. They make me happy. People need education on basic things like HIV/Aids prevention, or germ theory, or the need to brush your teeth, or... My solution to this is to somehow get everyone a (solid, secure, fast and functioning) laptop with access to all of the world's books and video and music, all for free. By solid, I mean it should be the best. None of this depressingly slow crap, with viruses or what-have-you. For an investment in all of humanity like this, we should pull out all the stops. It should be ecological. We should make it a global Manhattan Project. Of course, I could learn to be happy with other things. It's just an idea.

All of this is predicated on money, in our current system. Madonna, the Material Girl, sang "nothing really matters, love is all we need" and money can't buy me love, they say. That may be true, but we all need to have food, for love, which most of us need to purchase. You can go to a Catholic Mass and get a free wafer, of course. Anyway, if you're not growing or raising food, you're working for it, or depending on someone to give it to you, like a charity or the government or a dumpster. Money is a mess. For example, people across the world work for 10 hours a day for 60 dollars a month, while people in America can order a "Lazy Cash Money Income System," for $37 that guarantees, for sitting at your computer at home, a hundred dollars an hour.. The poorest people are beyond homeless and penniless; they're in hell, maybe being raped while their children are killed or recruited into forced military service or slavery. Meanwhile, Carlos Slim, the richest man in the world, is happily, I assume, enjoying his 48B dollars. It's truly insane.

Violence against Women

The VW bugh

In the U.S., it is said there are 2k rapes/day (or 1 every 5 minutes). I assume this means reported rapes. Most rapes go unreported. Worldwide, who knows. Psychological abuse is even more prevalent. Domination and enforced subservience and insidious cultural conditioning of sex roles plays out in childhood and adulthood, as parents and in the workplace. Medical studies are made with male subjects, for example, and men have more rights throughout the world.

Life's a bitch, then you die? Life is unfair. Life is shit. Life is hell. You don't have to accept these aphorisms/realities. And you don't have to become a lesbian, either.
http://amananta.wordpress.com/2006/10/03/how-long-before-they-admit-it/

I'm admitting it. Men suck. My wife, on the other hand, she rules.

If you want me to "admit" I'm at war with women, though, well, it's just not true. I think everybody IS, and therefore should be treated as, equals. I know, I'm on a God trip. I'm an insect, though. I worship women. We're all gods, we're all insects, whatever. Equal is the thing. Equally imperfect humans, if you like. I'm pro-life, but only because I'm adopted, and glad that I'm alive, and extend that sense of gratefulness to an imagined future of all the unborn. I think they deserve the benefit of the doubt. I think abortions are violence against women. I think women are violent to their children. There will always be enough willing adoptive parents to accept "unwanted" children. Of course, each one of us have a quintillion microorganisms within us, and if you want to consider your zygote just another one, or less even, like a tumor, that is leaching life from you and threatening you with a painful and potentially fatal birth, you have that right, as well as the legal right to abort. Personally, though, I still think it's wrong. Then again, I eat meat. Maybe the cows think I'm immoral. Nobody's perfect, right? Women are more peaceful than men, in general, and I think good heterosexual relationships should hopefully result in men and women pacifying each other, increasing the peace, and not leading to conflict. Rape is inexcusable. So is prison rape. Everyone should be armed, in my opinion.

Some hard data re: rape is at: http://www.coolnurse.com/rape.htm

Here's more, from Wikipedia:
Rape by perpetrator/ PerpetratorFrequency
Steady dating partner: 21.6%
Casual friend: 16.5%. Ex-boyfriend:12.2%
Acquaintance:10.8%. Close friend:10.1%. Casual date:10.1%
Husband:7.2%. Stranger:2%

It doesn't say if this is all rapes, or only reported. AND, this only adds up to 90.5% (!). 10-20% of rapes have multiple attackers. Maybe that's the undisclosed category. Gang rape is the most damaging kind of rape. A study performed by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology disclosed that 79% of women fantasize and seek to be gang raped, though. (Seek? That can't be right. Either the study is stupid, or the person who entered this fact onto Wikipedia is. How can a woman "seek" to be raped? The definition of rape is unwanted and unwilling forced sexual intercourse, right? There isn't such thing as forced consensual sex, is there?).

Many claim less than 5 percent of completed and attempted rapes are reported to law enforcement officials. In about two-thirds of rape incidents, however, the victim does tell another person about the incidents.

I read a headline that said sex with drunk women may soon be called a form of rape. I kind of like that (although I have done it). I don't think men should have sex with women who might otherwise say no, or are too drunk to say no, or feeling intimidated because they are incapacitated.. Accused men often say the accuser is only regretting having consensual sex after the fact. This should not even be on the table, in the context of alcohol. Any man who takes advantage of a drunk woman is probably a brute, or at least brutish. Et tu, Brute? It's all about the word no. No means no. That's all it takes to make it a rape, in my opinion. Rape is more about power than pleasure, if it's about pleasure at all. A raped woman feels powerless, and most people want to go into court feeling at an advantage. A rape can sometimes be difficult to prosecute. After all, usually only the two of them were there. Women fear what involvement in a rape trial will do to their lives, namely cause them to be treated like some kind of vindictive shrew/harlot.

No wonder women don't report rape. It's thorny.

Save the Forests

Get thee to a Forest, for rest, for est.

I'm trying to be clever. But seriously, nothing refreshes (my) being better than a walk through a forest. I like to commune with nature. If you've never done so, I recommend it. An absolute must. 'Est' is being in french, I think. It's good for your soul. Birds and ferns and light coming through the canopy, and such. Good exercise to go hiking, to boot (pun intended).

Anyway, once you have a spiritual connection with our forested ancient human past, and are at one with the universe, you may decide you want to bequeath to your children a similar experience, and -to be more cerebral- you may want to preserve trees as producers of oxygen for us to breath (they take in carbon dioxide, the opposite of us). Plants and humans are in a symbiotic relationship. We need them for our air, our weather, and our spiritual wellbeing.

Forests are ecosystems, and rain forests, for example, contain a huge diversity of life. We should respect all life. After all, humans are only animals, like any other. In an infinite universe, we're basically bugs, too. Anyway, I personally believe a New Yorker and a resident of the Amazonian rain forest are equals. Both should be respected and happy.

New Yorkers are just a bunch of ants in a hive-mind, like a colony in the forest. Yes, nature is predatory. You gotta do what you gotta do. Extinctions happen. Have a heart.

Forests, which cover a third (well, around 30%) of the earth's landmass, give us wood, in the form of lumber or firewood, medicines, they store genetic variation (useful for crop resistance, for example), they stabilize soils, and they maintain an immense store of biodiversity, both plant and animal. They mitigate climate change, as carbon sinks, and are a source of fresh water: Two-thirds of people worldwide depend for all or some of their water on supplies from forests. And more than 1 billion people living in extreme poverty around the world depend on forests for their livelihoods.

Deforestation is a serious problem. An estimated 140,000 (upper estimation) species are going extinct every year. This is an irreversible loss, despite what the movie Jurassic Park may have told you. 1/3 of anthropogenic (human-caused) carbon emissions (a greenhouse gas) have resulted from deforestation (trees absorb carbon dioxide, while burning releases it). Global warming's consequences include: rising sea levels (worse case:44 feet!) and the consequent displacements of populations, less fresh water and more conflict for it, and hotter (and cooler) temperatures, with conseqent weather effects like hurricanes. Anyway, 13 million hectares, average, of forest were cut down each year from '90-'05. A hectare is 2.4710439 U.S. survey acres (I like specificity, I'm a nerd), or 10,000 square kilometers or 107,639 square feet. Of course, trees are planted and forests grow. So the net deforestation is a smaller amount than the 13m hectares/yr. From '90-'00, the net loss was 8.9m hectares/yr., and from '01-'05 the net loss was 7.3m hectares/yr. Here's a fun to calculate (and yet sad) fact: from '90 to '05, x square feet of forest, net, disappeared. x= 14,466,681,600,000. Over 14 trillion square feet.

A bit of forest history: About half of the mature tropical forests, between 750 to 800 million hectares of the original 1.5 to 1.6 billion hectares that once covered the planet have fallen. By 2030, if current trends continue, there will only be ten percent of tropical rainforests remaining with another ten percent in a degraded condition; 80 percent will have been lost, says Wikipedia.

Here are some links to get you started on your path to saving the forests, and thus yourself, in my opinion:
1.http://www.csshome.com/forests.htm
2.http://wilderness.org/
3.http://www.conservation.org/learn/forests/Pages/overview.aspx
4.http://www.wwfus.org/consumer/pf.cfm
5.http://www.nature.org/initiatives/forests/
6.http://www.sierraclub.org/forests/
7.http://www.foei.org/en/campaigns/climate/bali/forests-declaration (friends of the earth say Mr. T: mobilize, resist, transform!)

Consider planting a live tree after Christmas, from a Christmas tree you've rented with roots and all. Good for the ozone/ghg's (greenhouse gases) situation . See this link.

Consumption is a disease

Black gold is black as death

I was wondering how much fuel we (the U.S.) consume, and how much money we spend on it..
The following information is from: http://auto.howstuffworks.com/question417.htm

The United States consumes about 20 million barrels of oil each day. A barrel of oil (which contains 42 gallons or 159 liters) will yield something like 19 or 20 gallons (75 liters) of gasoline, depending on the refinery. Therefore, in the United States, something like 400 million gallons (1.51 billion liters) of gasoline gets consumed every day. That truly is an amazing amount of liquid, but when you consider that there are about 100 million households in the United States, it is only 4 gallons per household per day. That's an average, some more, some less. It may not be a bell curve. Anyway, in a year, therefore, the U.S. consumes about 146 billion gallons (about 550 billion liters) of gasoline!

There are two ways we typically see oil and gasoline moving around: tanker trucks and oil tanker ships. A tanker truck can typically hold about 9,000 gallons (34,000 liters) of gasoline. It would take 40,000 tanker trucks to carry the gasoline the U.S. consumes in one day. A large tanker ship like the Exxon Valdez carries about 1.26 million barrels of oil, so it takes about 14.25 of these ships to carry all of the oil that the U.S. consumes in one day.

Where does all of that gasoline go? When it burns, it turns into lots of carbon dioxide gas. Gasoline is mostly carbon by weight, so a gallon of gas might release 5 to 6 pounds (2.5 kg) of carbon into the atmosphere. The U.S. is releasing roughly 2 billion pounds of carbon into the atmosphere each day.

One thing that's been in the news lately is the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It currently stores about 570 million barrels of oil in underground salt caverns along the Gulf of Mexico. Given that the U.S. imports about half of its oil, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve holds about a 60 day supply of oil if all imports were suddenly cut off.

So, obviously, as individuals we're not going to make much of a dent in 730B pounds of carbon (a year, just in the U.S.), but you can spread the word. Remember, it's about a pound of carbon released per mile. You may not save the world, but you can save your conscience. Then again, maybe you will! Maybe you're a policy maker in China, or something.

Nuclear Power

Greenpeace says:
Do you know all you should about nuclear reactors in the U.S.? There are currently 104 operating reactors in the continental U.S. There hasn't been a reactor ordered and subsequently completed since 1973. They were promoted as a cheap energy source - "too cheap to meter" - but have proven the most expensive energy source ever explored. The last reactor to come on line in 1996 cost over 8 billion dollars and took 23 years to complete. Meanwhile the nuclear industry had already experienced a $100 billion cost overrun for the first 75 reactors built in the U.S. Add to this the problems of waste disposal and accident and terrorist threats and you have to wonder why the Bush Administration is dead set on pushing them onto an unsuspecting public. Companies currently investing in new nuclear power plants include, Exelon, Dominion, and Entergy.

Data
The 104 produce a total of 97,400 megawatts (electric), which is approximately 20% of the nation's total electric energy consumption.

Global Warming

Forget the facts and figures: Here's what you should do

Okay, I'll do the summarizing soundbite, just because I guess I have to: Hurricane Katrina. A rapidly disappearing Arctic. The warmest winter on the East Coast in recorded history. The leading scientist at NASA warns that we have only ten years to reverse climate change; the British government's report on global warming estimates that the financial impact will be greater than the Great Depression and both world wars—combined. Worst case scenario: the seas could rise up to 44 feet. The scientific consensus is well-nigh universal. Aaaaaagh!! DOOM.

Anyway, to do your part as a responsible citizen:

Lifestyle
Transportation
1. Walking is the least impactful mode of transportation, followed by the bicycle, whose usage produces no carbon emissions. (The manufacturing of bicycles does emit carbon dioxide and other pollutants.) It's good for you, too. You, too, can be a rock-animal like Lance Armstrong. Support bike lanes in your community, and wear a helmet. Perhaps you can wear a neon colored vest or something, as well. You can put bells and bikelights (I like Cat's eyes) on your bike, to boot, for safety. You can attach baskets, for groceries or whatever. There are even trailers you can get for towing your tots. If practical.

2. If that isn't practical, Take public transportation, or carpool. You'll meet people. You can listen to music or books on tape, such as from the library, for example. You can do research on your laptop to submit to my totally awesome blog. I know of an older woman who rides around a city all day, hopping busses, using her bus pass. It can be pleasurable in and of itself. Just bask in the bliss of knowing your carbon footprint just got smaller (Avoiding just 10 miles of driving every week would eliminate about 500 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions a year. In other words, cars spew about a pound of carbon dioxide per mile. Hmm, I thought it was carbon MONoxide. Maybe Gore's site is wrong? In any case, busses spew x. But the average bus carries x people, so that's an improvement by a factor of x. The bus will be running, with or without you, in any case).

3. If that isn't practical, then: Cars- a)Purchase a vehicle which gets high gas mileage to help to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide. Consider a hybrid. b)Keep your tires inflated properly (it saves gas mileage) and your engine in good shape. c)Proper maintenance is important. I like the show Cartalk on npr. Regarding tire inflation, according to tire experts, under normal driving conditions, air-filled tires can lose from 1 to 2 psi per month as air permeates through the tires. This can cause crashes. According to a 2006 study on fuel efficiency, passenger cars and light trucks use an estimated 130B gallons of fuel per year in the U.S., total. It is estimated that 1.2B gallons of this is wasted due to the increased resistance of underinflated tires (that's 2m gallons a day). Individually speaking, you'll save a tank of gas a year. (Did you know you can also modify your driving technique to improve gas mileage?) See: http://www.wanderings.net/notebook/Main/HowToGet59MPGInAnAccord
d)Basically, though, what you should know is that you should slow down and drive less aggressively. Aggressive drivers use an extra 125 gallons a year, and spend $250 more. Exceeding the speed limit by 5 mph on the hwy. leads to a decrease in fuel efficiency of 6%. There are little tips to know, like e) in stop and go driving, air conditioning decreases fuel economy by as much as 12%, so consider opening your window, but at higher speeds, open windows lead to decreased efficiency, and f) if you're stopped for more than 10 seconds, turn off the engine (except in traffic), and g) travel light and minimize drag (put luggage inside, not on your roof or trunk).

4. Also, you can share vehicles. Community car sharing organizations provide access to a car and the membership fee covers gas, maintenance and insurance. Many companies, such as Flexcar or ZipCar, offer low emission or hybrid cars too.

5. Drive less. When the price of gas goes up, people drive less. So just pretend it's high, anyway (It may actually reach $4.00 a gallon, but Americans still get it cheap). When people are forced to not drive as much, they make their purchases online and pick them up nearby, as well as make less trips for food, by making bulk purchases at superstores. So do that, I guess.

6. Fly less. Airplanes are big polluters: i.e. large amounts of carbon dioxide. Take a train, bus, boat, or even car. Busses are the most energy efficient for long distances, and trains are twice as efficient as planes. If you must fly, consider carbon offsets. Do they sell carbon offsets at the airport?

7. Telecommute if you can, even if only once a week.

Environment
8.Trees: Protecting forests and planting new trees contributes to the absorption of carbon dioxide from the air. There are many opportunities to plant trees in the yard, along roads, in parks, and in public gardens. Plant a tree near your house, for needed summer shade and as a carbon sink. Maybe two, so you can hang a clothesline. In addition, some charities plant fast-growing trees -- for as little as $US 0.10 per tree -- to help people in tropical developing countries restore the productivity of their lands. Conversely, clearing old-growth forests adds to the carbon in the atmosphere, so buying non-old-growth paper is good for the climate as well as the forest. Apparently, paper in Japan is often from Tasmanian old-growth forests (Gunn's Limited logging). See:
http://www.treesnotgunns.org/

9. Carbon offsets: The principle of carbon offset is this: one decides that he or she doesn't want to be responsible for accelerating climate change, and he or she has already made efforts to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions, so they decide to pay someone else to further reduce their net emissions by planting trees or by taking up low-carbon technologies. Every unit of carbon that is absorbed by trees -- or not emitted due to your funding of renewable energy deployment -- offsets the emissions from their fossil fuel use. In many cases, funding of renewable energy, energy efficiency, or tree planting -- particularly in developing nations -- can be a relatively cheap way of making an individual "carbon neutral". Carbon offset providers -- some as inexpensive as US$0.11 per metric ton (US$0.10 per US ton) of carbon dioxide.

Carbon offsets are also called 'clean energy certificates'. Help spur the renewable energy market, and cut ghg emissions, by buying "wind certificates" or "green tags," which represent clean power you can add to the nation's energy grid in place of electricity from fossil fuels. For information, see Green-e. You can calculate the global warming pollution associated with your everyday activities, then buy enough certificates to offset them and become "climate neutral." Two places to learn how: NativeEnergy's WindBuilders(sm) program and Bonneville Environmental Foundation's Green Tags program. (From the NRDC site)

10. Using less animal products: The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization reports that rearing livestock contributes more greenhouse gases than all fossil fuel burning combined. A 2006 study from the Department of Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago found the difference between a vegan diet and red meat diet is equivalent to driving a sedan compared to a sport utility vehicle. Maybe we could create a new form of carbon offset in which we pay people to become vegetarian?

11. Food: In addition to vegetarianism/buying less meat, there are four other food rules to help you become more ecologically sound, i.e. reduce your carbon footprint: a) buy local (the average meal travels 1200 miles), b) support local farmer's markets, c) buy organic (organic soils capture and store carbon dioxide)and d) buy fresh (not frozen) foods. When hiking, you're supposed to "take only pictures, leave only footprints." Don't be a carbon bigfoot.

Home Energy
12.Labels: The Energy Star label can be seen on many household appliances, home electronics, office equipment, heating and cooling equipment, windows, residential light fixtures, and other products. Energy Star products use less energy. Did you know the cost of wasted standby energy over a device's lifetime can be higher than the cost of buying it! So unplug them, too. This is easily done with power strips (also called power cords or surge protectors). Laptops use 5x less energy than desktops. The cost of leaving your computer on all year can be more than the entire electricity expenses of an efficient household. Of course, you can't unplug your fridge, which is generally responsible for a third of your E consumption, so you should have a more recent, energy-saving, model (around 100kWh/year). These fridges also last longer, need fewer repairs, and make less noise. (If you're in the market for a fridge, you might want a freezer as part of your fridge, or separate: Refrigerators with frozen food compartments are less efficient. Of these fridges, the ones with freezer compartments above or below are more efficient than side to side. Chest type freezers are the most efficient freezer). And you should turn off your lights and tv when you're not using them, of course. The idea about switching lights on and off thereby using more energy is a myth. Light bulbs should mos' def be CFL's (compact fluorescent lightbulbs). They're cheaper, and last a lot longer, and have a major impact. Specifically, they use 4x less energy, last 8x longer, and I've seen them for sale at .25cents a piece (please dispose of them properly, so the mercury in them can be recycled). It is estimated that the average CFL will save a user roughly $35 over the bulb's life, compared with the power costs of an incandescent bulb, and cost 25 cents to recycle. Fluorescent tubes last even longer, and should be used with "a modern ballast starter" (a part of the fixture). CFL's and tubes can be dimmable, as well, which is good (and romantic). Avoid halogen floor lamps at all costs (they can also burn you and start fires). Also, you should strategically use reflectors to put light exactly where you need it, and use natural light to full advantage. They also say motion-sensors are a good idea. Switching to use of only high-efficiency appliances in an average household leads to 10x less power consumption (from 11,209 kWh/y to 1300kWh/y). Make sure the appliances you choose are not too large or too small. If every U.S. household became energy efficient, 800 million tons of greenhouse gas would not be emitted.

13. Support "green energy." The wind energy produced in Denmark, for example, provides about 20 percent of the country's total electricity needs. These methods of energy production emit no greenhouse gases once they are up and running. Many energy suppliers in various countries worldwide have options to purchase part or pure "green energy." Green energy can be from the grid, or your own. Solar is, of course, awesome, if expensive. How long do solar panels last? Crystalline panels are often guaranteed from 20 years to a lifetime, while Thin film panels receive shorter warranties (usually from 2-5 years), but have been known to still be putting out a charge for up to double that time. The thin film panels work better in dimmer light, though. You can even sometimes sell power back to the grid! In addition to solar and wind, green energy can be from biomass, or geothermal (heat from the earth's core). Because electricity demand is based on consumer choices, the more we all demand green power, the more these cleaner, renewable, non-heat-trapping polluter, sources will be used. By cleaner, I mean less smog, soot, mercury, and acid rain.

14.You can get your home Energy Audited, for free. They'll tell you what to do and where. This will obviously include insulation and weatherization (caulking and weatherstripping). Proper ventilation during the summer is important, and there's something called "glazing" which makes my eyes glaze over, because I don't know what it means. If you're buying a new house, choose an energy-efficient house, just as you would consider a hybrid car. You should install a light-colored or reflective roof. Dishwashers should only be run on full, and on the energy-saver cycle.

15. Regarding heating and cooling, you should a) set your thermostat at 2 degrees lower in the winter and 2 degrees higher in the summer, b)have a programmable thermostat that adjusts to night and day temperatures, c)clean or replace your furnace and air conditioner filters, and d) gas heating is always better than electrical heating. Don't use space-heaters. Also, e)you should keep your shades drawn in the summer to keep your house cool, and open in the winter to let in warm sunlight.

16. In hot water: use less of it by 1) install low-flow showerheads, which will over their "lifetime" of 10 years, yield a savings of 1500 or 1900 kWh/year, for electrical and gas/oil boilers, respectively, and 2) wash your clothes in cooler water settings, and 3) your hot water heater should be turned down to 120 degrees.

17. We need new laws that will steer our nation toward the most important solutions to global warming: cleaner cars and cleaner power plants. Send a message to your elected officials, letting them know that you will hold them accountable for what they do -or fail to do- about global warming. (from the Natural Resources Defense Council- You can join them, if you're a joiner).

18. Spread the word, spread the gospel. People will appreciate you helping them save money, in addition to all the karmic goodness.

Al Gore's website lists most of these things, with greater detail, useful links, and perhaps better clarity at:
http://www.climatecrisis.net/takeaction/whatyoucando/

Most of these will save you money, to boot.
Also, corporations can be major pollutors, so work for change in yours (and others).

Other sites you can visit are:
1.http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/campaigns/climate-and-energy/solutions/energy-efficiency/12-steps (12 tips)
2.http://www.nrdc.org/globalwarming/gsteps.asp (10 steps)
3.http://www.fightglobalwarming.com/page.cfm?tagID=267 (25 tips)
4.http://www.goveg.com/environment-globalWarming.asp (just One: go vegetarian!)

To finish with a few more facts about the reasons for doing all this, the consequences of global warming, an increase in the average temperature of the earth by as much as x, are as follows:

Death, disease, hunger, thirst, and relocation
1. Less drinking water. Melting glaciers on the Tibetan plateau, which currently provide water for 40% of the world's population, could reduce the Asian potable water supply by x.

2.Heatwaves. The 2003 European heatwave, for example, killed 35k.

3.Stronger hurricanes (in duration, intensity: both have increased by 50% since the '70s). This is a consequence of warming oceans.

4.Floods, drought, and famine. Soil moisture dries up, leaving fewer and dryer crops. (And rainfall patterns change dramatically, and relocate).

5.Disease. Around 30 new diseases have emerged over the last 30 yrs., and old, formerly controlled, diseases, are resurging. Vectors that thrive better in warmer temps are algae, mosquitoes (they're moving to higher elevations), tsetse flies, lice, rodents, snails, bats, ticks, and fleas.

6.Polar bears die, as an example (among others). I imagine we can't even begin to understand the ecological effects, in the complex web of natural relationships that make up our world.

7.The maps will have to be redrawn, as water submerges islands and coastal territory, displacing x millions, depending on how high the seas rise. For example, a rise of 20 feet would displace 20m around Beijing, 40m around Shanghai, and 60m in Bangladesh and Calcutta, India.

Okay, since you probably didn't know the "facts and figures" anyway, I'll give them (from Wikipedia): The global average air temperature near the Earth's surface rose 0.74 ± 0.18 °C (1.33 ± 0.32 °F) during the hundred years ending in 2005. Climate model projections summarized by the IPCC indicate that average global surface temperature will likely rise a further 1.1 to 6.4 °C (2.0 to 11.5 °F) during the twenty-first century. The range of values results from the use of differing scenarios of future greenhouse gas emissions as well as models with differing climate sensitivity. Although most studies focus on the period up to 2100, warming and sea level rise are expected to continue for more than a thousand years even if greenhouse gas levels are stabilized. The delay in reaching equilibrium is a result of the large heat capacity of the oceans (water changes temperature more slowly; this is why San Francisco has a cool climate, being surrounded by ocean).

What's the best case scenario? I could say B1, but unfortunately that's also a bomber. TV could get educational, and the world could get serious about solving, not avoiding, it's problems. Everybody seems to just be wasting their time watching tv. I think most people are rather dumb, and apathetic about social issues. People even think our president is. Perhaps democratization (especially without increasing education) isn't the biggest hoo-ha around.

Update news (6/6/08): TOKYO - The world needs to invest $45 trillion in energy in coming decades, build some 1,400 nuclear power plants and vastly expand wind power in order to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, according to an energy study released Friday. The report by the Paris-based International Energy Agency envisions a "energy revolution" that would greatly reduce the world's dependence on fossil fuels while maintaining steady economic growth.
"Meeting this target of 50 percent cut in emissions represents a formidable challenge, and we would require immediate policy action and technological transition on an unprecedented scale," IEA Executive Director Nobuo Tanaka said. A U.N.-network of scientists concluded last year that emissions have to be cut by at least half by 2050 to avoid an increase in world temperatures of between 3.6 and 4.2 degrees above pre-18th century levels. Scientists say temperature increases beyond that could trigger devastating effects, such as widespread loss of species, famines and droughts, and swamping of heavily populated coastal areas by rising oceans.
$45T would be 1.1 percent of the world's gross domestic product, the report said. That would be an investment more than three times the current size of the entire U.S. economy. I would remind everyone reading of Bjorn Lomborg's priorities. There are other, equally, if not more, pressing problems, too. Like starvation/malnutrition. Don't be intimidated. We can afford "the Kingdom"!

Failure to act would lead to a doubling of energy demand and a 130 percent increase in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, the officials said. This development is clearly not sustainable. About $27 trillion of the 45 would be borne by developing countries, which will be responsible for two-thirds of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Most of the money would be in the commercialization of energy technologies developed by governments and the private sector. When the industry as a whole becomes convinced to enact a policy of serious, deep CO2 emission cuts, then these investments will be made by the private sector.

Update 6/9: The ocean's pH is currently about 8.2. By 2001, it will be 7.8. When you add CO2 to seawater, you get carbonic acid (simple chemistry). This thins shells by reducing calcium carbonate concentrations and reduces sealife/ keystone species such as mussels, limpets, and barnacles. In other words, marine food webs as we know them are going to alter, and biodiversity will decrease. Seagrasses increase, though. Lower depths have lower pH. Values as low 7.5 in waters heavily used by US fishermen have already been recorded.

Update 6/23: James Hansen, Nasa scientist, testifying before congress, and echoing work by other scientists, said that in five to 10 years, the Arctic will be free of sea ice in the summer. Action, he says, must be taken immediately. The world has long passed the "dangerous level" for greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and needs to get back to 1988 levels. He said Earth's atmosphere can only stay this loaded with man-made carbon dioxide for a couple more decades without changes such as mass extinction, ecosystem collapse and dramatic sea level rises.

Update 7/3: The U.S. government has done the least among the world’s eight biggest economies to address global warming, a study released last week found. The G8 Climate Scorecards 2008, released 6 days ago ahead of next week’s gathering of the Group of Eight in Japan, also found that none of the eight countries are making improvements large enough to prevent temperature increases that scientists think would cause catastrophic climate changes.

Update 7-8:World leaders say they will aim to set a global target of cutting carbon emissions by at least 50% by 2050 in an effort to tackle global warming. Five of the world's biggest emerging economies said the G8 should increase its targets to more than 80% by 2050. A target of a 25-40% cut below 1990 levels by 2020 is also being urged. So they're essentially re-stating a 1992 Earth Summit committment. But "progress" might even be regress. A Japanese minister said 50% from current levels, not 1990 levels, which would be less. They're avoiding short-term targets, too. Baby steps, people. The longest journey begins with a single step.

Slavery

Brittany Spears, this isn't funny

Slavery still exists. Some say it is pretty much legal everywhere, in the form of capitalism, prison labor, bonded labor, and of course outright slavery.

Here is the Wikipedia article, in it's entirety:
Although outlawed in nearly all countries today, slavery is still practiced in some parts of the world. According to a broad definition of slavery used by Kevin Bales of Free the Slaves, an advocacy group linked with Anti-Slavery International, there are 27 million people (though some put the number as high as 200 million) in virtual slavery today, spread all over the world. This is, also according to that group:
-The largest number of people that has ever been in slavery at any point in world history.
-The smallest percentage of the total human population that has ever been enslaved at once.
-"Price" of slaves range from as low as US$40 in Mali for young adult male laborers, to a high of US$1000 or so in Thailand for HIV-free young females suitable for use in brothels. This represents the price paid to the person, or parents. This represents the lowest price that there has ever been for a slave in raw labor terms — the price of a comparable male slave in 1850 America would have been about US$1000 in the currency of the time (US$38,000 today). Thus slaves, at least of that category, now cost one thirty-eighth of their price 150 years ago, although this does not refer to the price of an 1850 slave in Africa.

As a result, the economics of slavery is stark: the yield of profit per year for those buying and controlling a slave is over 800% on average, as opposed to the 5% per year that would have been the expected payback for buying a slave in colonial times. This combines with the high potential to lose a slave (have them stolen, escape, or freed by unfriendly authorities) to yield what are called disposable people — those who can be exploited intensely for a short time and then discarded, such as the prostitutes thrown out on city streets to die once they contract HIV, or slaves forced to work in mines.

Although outlawed in most countries today slavery is, nonetheless, practiced in secret in many parts of the world — with outright enslavement still taking place in parts of Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. In June and July 2007, 570 people who had been enslaved by brick manufacturers in Shanxi and Henan were freed by the Chinese government. Of those rescued, 69 of them were children. In response, the Chinese government assembled a force of 35,000 police to check northern Chinese brick kilns for slaves, sent dozens of kiln supervisors to prison, punished 95 officials in Shanxi province for dereliction of duty, and sentenced one kiln foreman to death for killing an enslaved worker.

In Mauritania alone, it is estimated that up to 600,000 men, women and children, or 20% of the population, are enslaved, many of them used as bonded labour. Slavery in Mauritania was criminalized in August 2007. In Niger, slavery is also a current phenomenon. A Nigerian study has found that more than 800,000 people are enslaved, almost 8% of the population. Child slavery has commonly been used in the production of cash crops and mining. According to the U.S. Department of State, more than 109,000 children were working on cocoa farms alone in Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) in 'the worst forms of child labor' in 2002.

Which countries still allow slavery?
Answer 1
YES, THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!The 13th Amendment states: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."An increasing number of prisons in the U.S. are run by corporations, using their prisoners as workers and selling their labor to corporations. Federal safety and health standards do not protect prison labor, nor do the National Labor Relations Board policies. The corporations do not even have to pay minimum wage.J.C. Penney, Victoria's Secret, IBM, Toys R Us and TWA are among the US corporations that have profited by employing prisoners. Put together long mandatory sentences for minor drug offences, a strong racial bias, prisons run by corporations for profit, the sale of convict labor to corporations, and a charge for prison room and board and you have a modern system of bonded labor - a social condition otherwise known as slavery.

Answer 2
This question is a difficult one to answer. There are several factors to consider. First, a definition of slavery: slavery is the forced labor, through mental or physical threat or bondage, that is not paid or compensated in any form. News media and international organizations often refer to this as human trafficking. This is similar to the transatlantic slave trade that occurred between Africa, Europe and the colonies (and later the United States). However, not all slaves are kidnapped. Some children are sold into slavery to pay their parents' debts, some people are forced into slavery to pay off their own debts, some are prisoners of war, and some are tricked into slavery (some slave traders tell poor, frustrated people in LDCs that they will be able to find a job in a new country; when they arrive, they find the only job available is bond labor).

Slaves come in all ages, races and genders. They are used as forced prostitutes, soldiers, and laborers. International organizations such as Amnesty International, Anti-Slavery International, and the United Nations estimate that between 20 and 27 million people are in a situation of forced labor today. For comparison, this is more people in bond labor at one time than ever before.

The legality of slavery is a harder question to answer. Most countries have laws against slavery, but that does not preclude the usage of bond laborers in that country, even by the official government. Other times, human trafficking takes place on the black markets: governments either turn a blind eye, are unaware of the trafficking, or are impotent to stop it.

Internationally, the Declaration of Human Rights, which forbids human trafficking and forced labor, is considered to be the end all of international law in regards to slavery. The DHR is part of the United Nations constitution, drafted in 1948. While many states agree to follow the rights laid out in the DHR, it is not an internationally signed agreement. In fact, there are no signatories; in 1948, 48 countries voted to ratify the DHR, with 0 nays and only 8 abstentions, but they did not sign it. Therefore, unlike agreements like the Kyoto Protocols or the Geneva Conventions, countries that are in contempt of the DHR can not be legally punished; it is not official international law. Forced labor unfortunately takes place on every continent in the world except Antartica. Human trafficking even takes place in the US. Here are some links that might be helpful to you:
http://www.iabolish.com/ http://www.antislavery.org/ http://www.unhcr.org/ http://www.hrw.org/

Answer 3
Basically any country run on capitalist principles. If your wages just cover your rent and food, then you are a slave as that is all slaves got.

(What percentage of Americans are "slaves," by this definition?)
Britney, by the way, sang "I'm a slave for you." That's why I said that.

Seinfeld

The tears of a clown

My wife love's the sitcom 'Seinfeld' which was on from '89 to '98, as well as 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' starring the co-creator of Seinfeld, Larry David. She wants me to write about it.

Jerry Seinfeld anagrams to 'friendly jeers.' His show is a self-described show about "nothing." It has a laugh track. I hate laugh tracks. No one should ever tell you when you should laugh. Especially a machine that generates different levels of laughter. Cheers had a live studio audience. Ugh. I occasionally laugh, but I feel like I've been manipulated, and I know it's not really that funny. Apparently, tv people think we're all sheep.

As for Larry David, my dad's name is Larry, and Lawrence is my middle name. My dad is the director of the Burlingame Adult School. King David was the son of Jesse in the bible, and David is also the voice in my head who I'm struggling to expel.

This voice is from David, a man I thought was a friend, the guy who said he and I were vampires, the highly intelligent homosexual african-american attorney mathematician who I attribute my headshocks, chestpains, and voice to, who seems to be looking through my eyes and listening to my thoughts and "getting in my face," who is basically nothing but an irritant and an annoyance, and can even make me feel "possessed" at times. He used to be a friend, but now I hate him. All I ever do is tell him in my head (with my subvocalization) to shut up, leave me alone, stop talking to me, go away, get out of my head, get out of my life, stop bothering me, and f- you, a-hole. You get the picture.

So Larry and David are big men in my world. My dad, Mr. T, prefers not to be mentioned in my blog, so I'll leave it at that.

I graduated from highschool in '89, and my brother from the same highschool in '98. I'm not sure that means anything, actually.

I'm into seeing how names might relate to identity/personality, so here goes:
On an episode of The Daily Show, host Jon Stewart remarked on the fact that Seinfeld did not change his name for the purpose of show business but then went on to ask what he would call himself if he did change it. Jerry then jokingly said, "Well, I would keep my last name, so as not to offend my parents and I would have to go with Jesus."

I anagrammed his name, and Jerome A. Seinfeld could be 'Jeremiad oneself' or 'mad felonies jeer.' A jeremiad is a prolonged lament or mournful complaint. It can also be a literary work or speech expressing a bitter lament or a righteous prophecy of doom. The tears of a clown.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus anagrams to 'Jail usuriously fed'. Michael Richards is 'Shh! Direr acclaim'. And Jason Alexander is 'Relaxed as Joann'. Larry David is 'rival dryad.' A dryad is a deity from classical mythology; namely, a wood nymph; i.e. a nymph whose life was bound up with that of her tree. Usurious means charging illegal or exorbitant rates of interest for the use of money.

Jail IS usuriously fed, with an opportunity cost toward society. Read:
http://www.urbanstrategies.org/programs/csj/documents/CostsofIncarcerationFlyer_08.06.07_BH.pdf
Some JL trivia. I'm a JL, too. The 2008-9 California Budget lays out the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) budget of $10,669,413 (7.6%). There's supposed to be 177,021 inmates in '08-'09. So that's, let's see, around 60 bucks an inmate? I don't think so. Well, they don't get all their money from the state.. For Fiscal Year 2007-2008, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) was allocated a total of $9,776,618,000. That's more like it. That's 55k an inmate/yr.

The department operates 33 adult prisons, including 11 reception centers, a central medical facility, a treatment center for narcotic addicts under civil commitment, and a substance abuse facility for incarcerated felons. The CDCR also operates eight juvenile correctional facilities, including three reception centers. In addition, CDCR manages 13 Community Correctional Facilities, 44 adult and juvenile conservation camps, the Richard A. McGee Correctional Training Center, and 202 adult and juvenile parole offices. "Over 70 percent of this agency’s budget costs come from the salaries of over 60,000 employees, most of whom are custody staff that supervise inmates and parolees" -head of the CDCR, John Tilton. (So actually, that's an average of $114,060 per employee/yr., and 16,568.57 per inmate/yr.). That's $45.40 an inmate per day.

One source says California's prison system is operating at about double capacity, with inmates having a statistical 90% chance of getting raped.
http://www.concretemagazine.com/09_05/features/prison_reform.htm

The view from the CDCR employees is that the problems are "racial tension, violence, and walking dead" and "excessive overtime pay" (You may want to mail Judge Henderson):

RE: California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation concerns. Dear Judge Henderson,I am writing this letter out of concern for the appalling conditions of the CDCR and the recent placement of its medical care under Federal Receivership. Since the receivership was ordered, nothing has changed for the inmates. We are still losing inmates the same as before and there are several hundred who are literally walking dead due to the lack of proper medical diagnosis and treatment. Now the entire CDCR system is plagued with racial tension and is on the verge of collapse. The CCPOA Union is responsible for all of this and continually makes and enforces decisions to create chaos, turmoil, and violence to assure their staff receives optimum benefits and nearly impossible overtime pay. Recently there has been uproar about placing violent offenders in general population which disrupts the rehabilitative efforts of the inmates. The action of placing violent offenders in population is simply a tool by the CCPOA to create and maintain their hold on the CDCR system through violence which in turn guarantees union employee benefits and excessive overtime pay to the tune of more than $100,000.00 per year for several hundred CDCR employees.Further, the CDCR budget is clearly open to abuse by the CCPOA to such an extent that it is out of control. The Special Interest Groups are blatantly in control of the system and are abusing it. Numerous investigative reporters have documented these abuses and no one, including Governor Schwarzenegger or the interim Secretary, will listen and correct them. The CCPOA publicly displays its abuses on a website (--) which includes derogatory references to you and the federal judiciary about placing the medical problem in receivership. The CDCR system has collapsed and is not about corrections or rehabilitation. The only viable option is to take the steps to place the entire system under receivership and bring in federal authority to recoup the system before a total breakdown occurs and countless inmates are allowed to die from medical neglect or murder in a hostile environment meant to rehabilitate them.There are hundreds of thousands of family members, friends, and concerned citizens who urge prison reform on the failed CDCR system. Please consider all of our pleas to correct this system by placing the CDCR under complete federal receivership before it is too late.

Also, there's this article that talks about Alabama inmates getting fed on $1.75 a day.

There's definitely something to this Julia Louis-Dreyfus thing.

Seriously, every dollar needs to be spent wisely and well. We need volunteers in our jails and prisons, teaching people to read, and making books available, for starters. Please, stop watching your Seinfeld so much.

About the audit of the Ca prison healthcare system: http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/2006/08/state_controlle.html

Oil? What the heck is oil?

I actually don't know what oil is, so I thought I'd write this post on the different kinds and purposes of the stuff, and just what's the big deal about the black gold, or whatever color it is.

First of all, we call gasoline to fuel our cars "gas" and it is a liquid. There's natural gas, too, which some of us use to heat our homes, and many of us use with our outdoor barbeques. It comes in big trucks, which I believe has it in liquid form, although it comes out of our stoves in gas form. Whatever the state (there are 4 states of matter: solid, liquid, gas, and plasma), it's still "gas." Furthermore, we get motor oil for our cars (like Pennzoil), whose level we are supposed to check with the engine's "dipstick," upon pain of burning up our engine. So how does petroleum fit into all this? What about crude oil and refined oil, and the various permutations thereof, like sweet light and so forth? How is vegetable oil an oil like (what I presume is) the decayed and buried fossils of ancient organic material ("fossil fuel"). I never took a class that cleared all this up, so I've been in the dark, and I'm going to enlighten you.

My main question is this: does our economy depend on the product we call motor oil? It's such a minor thing, it seems, in comparison to the ubiquitous gasoline which our continually thirsty vehicles hunger for. When people talk about the price per barrel going over a hundred dollars, what exactly are they talking about?

Ah, who cares. I'm going to bed.
Just ride a bike. Take a bus or train. Carpool. in a hybrid.
and reduce your footprint:
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/human-footprint/?ngc=57

Allah

Arm, Leg, Leg, Arm, Head

What does Allah mean, and how is the name pronounced?
Question 1:
http://www.faizani.com/portal/allah.html
In Islam, Allah is the name of the nameless God. According to the tradition of Islam there are 99 Names of God (al-asma al-husna lit. meaning: "The best names") each of which evoke a distinct characteristic of Allah.

"One of the complexities of the Arabic language is that a single word can have multiple meanings". This quote strikes me as funny. Any word in any language can have multiple meanings. I could make up an alternate meaning for "alternate" right now, lol.

In any case, Allah means God (in monotheistic understanding of the word); the only entity worthy of worship. Although, the word had a different meaning for pre-Islamic arabians and has a slightly different meaning for Arab Christians.

Question 2:
Is it pronounced ALLah or al-LAW? Maybe both. I've heard both. I don't know. Maybe there is no correct pronunciation.

It is unfortunate that Islam can be split into I slam, which evokes the 9-11 attacks.
The anagrams for Islam are also: Mails, A Slim, A Mils, La Mis, La Ism, Lam Is, Alms I, Lams I, Las Mi, As Mil.

A Slim could be Slim Shady or Carlos Slim. Muslims smoking Virginia Slims. The world is nuts. I hope you don't take offense.

Capital Punishment: Death, Thou Shalt Die

Reasons to let killers live

1.He or she loves and is loved; or has a family, a spouse, a kid

2.The family of the victim has mercy/compassion

3.He or she can live a useful life, or has or will have money.

4.He or she is mentally ill or retarded

5.The legal system is fukt up: other killers like him or her were allowed to live

6.Morality is subjective; there is no good; the murder served the public interest

7.You would have killed, too -if you knew the victim,
-if you were the murderer, had his genes, experiences.

8.CP is inhumane, barbaric, cruel and unusual punishment.

9.CP is evil, a sin, debases our society, makes the state no better than the criminal.
The death penalty is murder, pure and simple.

10.CP is racist, and unfair.

11.CP is expensive

12.B.F. Skinner's adage that he can condition anyone to become anything still applies.

13.Society should be compassionate and merciful.

“I am convinced about the veracity of my opinions, but I do consider it likely that they may turn out to be incorrect. Likewise, I am convinced about the incorrectness of the views different from mine, but I do concede the possibility that they may turn out to be correct.” — Imam Shafa’i

Here's the Amnesty International update on the Death Penalty.

Murder is redrum backwards

MrDr's yogurt is a Culture of Death
or
vomiting bloody rum

How prevalent is murder in the world? If the tv is any indication, it happens all the time, and one might even say it defines reality for the rest of us, with crime shows like csi and law and order and the sopranos and monk and on and on (and ON). For some of us, it's ad nauseum.

Murder, defined, is the unlawful killing of a human being. You might be tempted to say meat is murder, and it is (unless you're eating carrion), but it's (usually) not human meat. Also, you might want to say (unnatural) abortions are murder, but they are often legally allowed. Finally, you might want to say capital punishment, casualties of war, or preventable death (such as starvation) is murder. Keep in mind, war is only unlawful for the other side.

What is murder, really? Legally speaking, murder can be first degree, second degree, or third degree. It can also be capital murder, and be confused with homicide or manslaughter, which can be negligent or nonnegligent.

MURDER, FIRST DEGREE - In order for someone to be found guilty of first degree murder the government must prove a)that the person killed another person; b)the person killed the other person with malice aforethought; and c)the killing was premeditated. To kill with malice aforethought means to kill either deliberately and intentionally or recklessly with extreme disregard for human life. Premeditation means with planning or deliberation. The amount of time needed for premeditation of a killing depends on the person and the circumstances. It must be long enough, after forming the intent to kill, for the killer to have been fully conscious of the intent and to have considered the killing.First-degree murder in California includes a killing that is "willful, deliberate, and premeditated," or that is committed in the perpetration, or in an attempt to perpetrate, certain felonies, including burglary, and not including the petty offense of shoplifting. Cal. Penal Code S 189.

MURDER, SECOND DEGREE - In order for someone to be found guilty of second degree murder the government must prove that the person killed another person; the person killed the other person with malice aforethought; and the killing was premeditated. Note that the elements are identical with those for 1st degree murder. The practical difference is the sentences are different. Which crime to charge is usually entirely up to the prosecutors discretion.

California doesn't have a third degree category.

In general, it's The unlawful killing of another human being without justification or excuse.
1.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder
2.http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/murder

Capital murder is a murder for which the punishment must be death. The death penalty is permitted for federal crimes like murder, treason, and espionage. It is infrequently sought, and even less likely to be imposed. In most places that practice capital punishment today, the death penalty is reserved as punishment for premeditated murder, espionage, treason, or as part of military justice. In some countries sexual crimes, such as rape, adultery and sodomy, carry the death penalty, as do religious crimes such as apostasy (the formal renunciation of one's religion). In many retentionist countries (countries that use the death penalty), drug trafficking is also a capital offense. In China human trafficking and serious cases of corruption are also punished by the death penalty. In militaries around the world courts-martial have imposed death sentences for offenses such as cowardice, desertion, insubordination, and mutiny.

Homicide is the broader category of a person killing a person, whether lawful or not, whether murder or manslaughter.
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/homicide

Manslaughter is:

MANSLAUGHTER - The unlawful killing of a human being without malice or premeditation, either express or implied; distinguished from murder, which requires malicious intent.The distinctions between manslaughter and murder, consists in the following: In the former, though the act which occasions the death be unlawful, or likely to be attended with bodily mischief, yet the malice, either express or implied, which is the very essence of murder, is presumed to be wanting in manslaughter.It also differs from murder in this, that there can be no accessories before the fact, there having been no time for premeditation. Manslaughter is voluntary, when it happens upon a sudden heat; or involuntary, when it takes place in the commission of some unlawful act. The cases of manslaughter may be classed as follows those which take place in consequence of: 1. Provocation. 2. Mutual combat. 3. Resistance to public officers, etc. 4. Killing in the prosecution of an unlawful or wanton act. 5. Killing in the prosecution of a lawful act, improperly performed, or performed without lawful authority. The provocation which reduces the killing from murder to manslaughter is an answer to the presumption of malice which the law raises in every case of homicide; it is therefore no answer when express malice is proved and to be available the provocation must have been reasonable and recent, for no words or slight provocation will be sufficient, and if the party has had time to cool, malice will be inferred. In cases of mutual combat, it is generally manslaughter only when one of the parties is killed. When death ensues from duelling the rule is different, and such killing is murder.The killing of an officer by resistance to him while acting under lawful authority is murder; but if the officer be acting under a void or illegal authority, or out of his jurisdiction, the killing is manslaughter, or excusable homicide, according to the circumstances of the case.Killing a person while doing an act of mere wantonness, is manslaughter as, if a person throws down stones in a coal-pit, by which a man is killed, although the offender was only a trespasser.When death ensues from the performance of a lawful act, it may, in consequence of the negligence of the offender, amount to manslaughter. For instance, if the death has been occasioned by negligent driving. Again, when death ensues, from the gross negligence of a medical or surgical practitioner, it is manslaughter.

So, back to my original point. How prevalent is murder? Actually, let's say there is no law, and therefore no parsing of distinction between legal murder and illegal murder, which can vary between state and country and territory and, presumably, culture. How many killings take place? In other words, how many people die before their time (despite the fatalism of the saying "I'll go when my number's up").

To go with the Police song, Murder by Numbers, here are some stats on Abortion, Capital punishment, War, and Medical causes of death (largely preventable):

Abortion: There are about 3,700 abortions every DAY in the US. That equates to 1.37M per year. Worldwide, there are approximately 46M per year. (Only 1% of all abortions occur because of rape or incest. 6% occurs because of potential health problems regarding either the mother or child. 93% of all abortions, performed in the US, are for social reasons).

Capital Punishment: In 2006, the U.S. executed 53 inmates. Factoid: As many as 10% of U.S. death-row inmates suffer from mental retardation. In part because of DNA, the pace of death row exonerations is quickening, and reports of sleeping lawyers, crooked cops and forced confessions have convinced even some long-time death penalty supporters to look at recalibrating the scales of justice to fix or even abandon the system. In any case, Worldwide, in 2006, executions are known to have been carried out in the following 25 countries: Bahrain, Bangladesh, Botswana, China, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Jordan, North Korea, Kuwait, Malaysia, Mongolia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Uganda, the United States of America, Vietnam, and Yemen. In that year also, 91% of all known executions took place in six countries: China (1010, at least; some sources say between 7500-8000), Iran (177), Pakistan (82), Iraq(65, at least), Sudan (65, at least), and U.S. (53). That puts the (official) tally at about 1600 (for 2006).

War: How many people are dying per year from war around the world? War is just stupid and illogical, in my opinion, and it should be totally outlawed, as should militaries (except maybe an international force to enforce the anti-war law). I don't know, but I found this:
1.http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstats.htm
and this:
2.http://www.openmarket.org/2007/09/10/poor-people-die-in-agony-because-of-war-on-drugs/
and this:
3.Wikipedia lists 30 current and ongoing wars, with Iraq and Afghanistan the most recent major (defined as 1k battlefield deaths/year) wars, both involving the U.S.

The wars, and the death counts, are: Iraq (151k since it started in '03), Afghanistan (17-27k since '01), Sri Lankan civil war (70k since '83), and Ogaden, Ethiopia (~1500 since '07) are the top four. The others, chronologically, are the 2nd Tuareg rebellion in Niger and Mali (56 since '07), The Mexican drug war (2700 since '06), Chad (~1400 since '05), Thailand (~2500 since '04), Waziristan Pakistan (~2600-7100 since '04), Darfur Sudan (200-400k since '03), Saudi Arabia (273 since '03), 2nd Chechen war in N. Caucasus (28-113k since '99), Somali civil war (300-400k since '88), 2nd Ugandan civil war (~12k since '87), Peru (~70k since '80), Laos (2-3k since '75), Phillippines (160k estimated since '69), Burma (7k+ since '48). The ones I omitted had no body counts. These were Balochistan Pakistan since '04, Algeria since '02, Nagaland India since '93, Nigeria since '92, Senegal since '90, Kashmir since '89, New Guinea (the Papua) since '84, Turkey since '84, Palestine-Israel since '67, and Columbia since '64.

Disease: Medically, people are dying from preventable diseases.
Tobacco: In the WHO Report on the Global Tobacco Epidemic, 2008, the World Health Organization finds that tobacco use already kills 5.4 million people a year and the epidemic is worsening, especially in the developing world where more than 80 percent of tobacco-caused deaths will occur in the coming decades. Unless urgent action is taken, one billion people will die worldwide from tobacco use this century. Tobacco use is so devastating to the human body that it is a risk factor for six of the eight leading causes of death in the world.

What are the leading causes of death? Well, in the U.S. it's different than the R.O.W. (rest of world). In 2004, for the U.S. leading causes of death, and their tolls, were as follows:
1.Heart disease: 652,486
2.Cancer: 553,888
3.Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 150,074
4.Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 121,987
5.Accidents (unintentional injuries): 112,012
6.Diabetes: 73,138
7.Alzheimer's disease: 65,965
8.Influenza/Pneumonia: 59,664
9.Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 42,480
10.Septicemia: 33,373
Source: Deaths: Final Data for 2004, Table C

However, these 10 causes of death deserve an inclusion of an 11th. (This list goes to eleven!) http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/01/02/medical-mistakes-part-three.aspx
This article, if however biased toward selling codliver oil, says doctors are the third leading cause of death in the U.S. (250k people/yr). Evidence from a few studies indicates that as many as 20% to 30% of patients receive inappropriate care. One study says an estimated 44,000 to 98,000 among them die each year as a result of medical errors. A Pravda headline says 'up to 90,000 patients die in US hospitals every year because of medical malpractice', and estimates about the same number for Russia.

Here's one quoted study's breakdown, for the U.S.:
12,000 (deaths): unnecessary surgery
7,000: medication errors in hospitals
20,000: other errors in hospitals
80,000: infections in hospitals
106,000: non-error, negative effects of drugs
These total to 225,000 deaths per year from iatrogenic causes. Iatrogenic means induced in a patient by a physician's activity, manner, or therapy. The word is used especially of a complication of treatment.

Here's the global mortality stats (including the U.S.): (I don't think the 6 of 8 stat is accurate any longer, though). The 9 leading causes of death, worldwide, are: 1)ischaemic heart disease (7,208m or 12.6% of total), 2)cerebrovascular disease, 3)lower respiratory infections, 4)HIV/AIDS, 5)chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, 6) diarrheal disease, 7) TB, 8)malaria, and 9)cancer of the trachea, bronchii, or lungs. This website, with the chart, came out today, and it's no joke (happy april fool's by the way):
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0779147.html

But, back to murder, which got me started on this crazy gig, how many murders take place?
I found this list of highest ranking countries for acquittals:
1.http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_acq_percap-crime-acquitted-per-capita
and
2.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_murder_rate#2000s
You could get a rough answer to my question of the world's most recent murder rate by applying the percentages of each country to each country's population, but that would take some grueling doing. So I guess we're on our own. Plus, the graph of the top scoring nation's homicide rates comes with this caveat: DEFINITION: Total recorded intentional homicides, completed. Crime statistics are often better indicators of prevalence of law enforcement and willingness to report crime, than actual prevalence.

3.In the U.S., however, I found these statistics for the year 2004. "In 2004, there were 16,137 cases of murder or nonnegligent manslaughter in the United States. 62.6% of homicides were “cleared,” leaving a substantial portion of murder cases unresolved. Of course, they might not always get the right man, when they DO clear. In any case, the FBI’s official site says a crime is cleared when either an arrest is made or “elements beyond the control of law enforcement prevent the agency from arresting and formally charging the offender, by exceptional means.” We assume this refers to rare cases when, for example, suspects die before they can be charged. Because 37.4% of these cases went uncleared, around 6,035 people can be said to have "gotten away with murder” that year. Of course, this assumes each offender murdered only one person, which very likely isn’t true, but seeing as the cases are unsolved, this is a good guess.

In 2005, there were 16,912 murders in the U.S. This is ~20 times as many murders in the US in 2005 as there were US soldiers lost in the War in Iraq that year (846 in '05). Of course, there were 2,000 times as many Americans in America than there were in Iraq. So the death rate among soldiers in Iraq was therefore 100 times the murder rate among civilians.

The stats are all at: http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/

Okay, so this site has different numbers than what I just quoted. 2005 has 16,740 murders, for example. 2004 has 16,148. 2006 swung up to 17,034. 2003 had 16,528 murders. There were 16,229 in '02, 16,037 in '01, and 15,586 in 2000. I wonder if '01 includes the WTC. I would guess not. 2,996 people died that day, probably, from the attacks (not including the hijackers). I wonder how they were classified, if not murders.

The list of victims, by name, is at:
http://www.september11victims.com/september11victims/victims_list.htm

There's a joke going round on the internet, as of I don't know when, that says "There has been a monthly average of 160,000 troops in the Iraq theater of operations during the last 22 months, and a total of 2112 deaths. That gives a firearm death rate of 60 per 100,000 soldiers. The fdr in Washington D.C. is 80.6 per 100,000 persons for the same period. Thus, you are 25% more likely to be shot and killed in the U.S. capital than in Iraq. Conclusion: the U.S. should pull out of Washington."

"One of the more interesting things I learned in this charming movie is that Canada has a violent crime rate almost twice that of the United States. I was rather startled so I started checking some statistics and it's basically correct. Canada's murder rate is lower than America's, but its total violent crime rate is damn near twice as high as ours. Fascinating."-some guy named Dean.

New Orleans is hell. "As the year comes to a bloody close, it seems that New Orleans is nearing the tipping point where it may become so violent that it is no longer livable at all. Certainly, the current murder rate is so high and the city's population so low (around 250,000, well below pre- Katrina population of about 500,000) that a significant chunk of the city is already simply being killed off." To read more, go to: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/nov/06/usa

Think global, act local.

Taxes amounting to just 1% of world GDP would raise over $400 billion per year. Such a sum would meet many urgent needs while placing a very modest burden on the world's richest consumers.

Escaping Escapism

No, I'm not saying we should all go to jail

Maybe I should. According to the A.C. Nielsen Co., the average American watches more than 4 hours of TV each day (or 28 hours/week, or 2 months of nonstop TV-watching per year). In a 65-year life, that person will have spent 9 years glued to the tube. Number of violent acts seen on TV by age 18: 200,000.
http://www.csun.edu/science/health/docs/tv&health.html

As for movies, the average cost to make and market a film in 2005 dipped slightly from 2004, to $96.2 million. The moviebox.net lists 228 movies for that year. That's $21,933.6M ($21.9336B). I'm sure it cost more money because of independents. Movie attendance has exceeded one billion paid-admissions annually since 1976. A (2001, I believe) summary of the movie industry by James Jaeger is at:
http://www.mecfilms.com/moviepubs/memos/moviein.htm

As for music, "Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, gaiety and life to everything. It is the essence of order and lends to all that is good and just and beautiful." Plato said this.

Like I've said before, it's all just mind control.

I think we should all stop running away from the world's problems and start addressing them head-on. If you say apply directly to the forehead, I'm going to kill you.