The Casual Blog

Category: public policy

August 29, 2010

Ebooks and charity ideas

This week I went to Dallas and back twice. I will not complain, except to note that long periods confined in small seats do not get easier as the hours pass. I sat next to a fifteen year old kid on the way back, who, by the end of the flight, was writhing in discomfort, and I remembered how this was even tougher when I was younger.

I spent some of the seat time reading my first ebooks on my iPad. As a confirmed bibliophile, I doubted I would really like ebooks, but my compulsion to have handy several books when I travel has created problems with weight limits, and pushed me towards trying this lightweight solution. Using the Kindle software, it took me just a few minutes to fall in love with the format. I like the typeface and type size, the ability to highlight and annotate, and the light weight.

My first ebook was Against Intellectual Monopoly, by Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine, an against-the-grain discussion of the problems with our patent and copyright systems. I was gratified to see a discussion of Red Hat as a primary example of why patents don’t achieve anything close to their intended purpose in the software area.

It’s interesting how ideas can seem particularly interesting during cross-country flights, and how frequently new ones pop up. I found myself thinking about an NPR story from last week about individuals who commission new pieces of music or plays. The point of the story was that the cost could be shared with others and spread over time, so that being a patron and bringing a new piece of art into the world could be more affordable than you’d think.

I really liked the idea of contributing in a direct and immediate way to new art. If I can’t be a composer, perhaps I could help in the creation of music by funding one. So, how about a web site to allow composers, choreographers, or others to propose commission-worthy projects, and donors likewise to seek suitable artists? Sort of an arts-funding Craigslist. Sure, it could be there’s just not sufficient interest, but then, not so long ago Craigslist sounded like a fantasy.

The web today is a big part of my life, and of the lives of most people I know. In almost no time it’s gone from a novelty to a utility, and now I take it for granted much like the interstate highway system. Yet we may have just begun to scratch the surface of what it can do — things that go way beyond shopping and entertainment. Facebook and Twitter haven’t really inspired me, but they point in the direction of more immediate and wide-ranging connections that have more human meaning. It could reduce the barriers to charitable giving by making needs and resources easier to see and connect.

For example, it’s hard for me to visualize the enormous suffering from the current flooding in Pakistan, and hard to feel like there’s much I can personally do about it. But if I could connect with a person who’s lost everything and understand their story using web multimedia, it could help me, and I suspect others to open their hearts and wallets. People who’ve lost everything can’t easily get online, of course, but the tools that could get them there already exist. It would take some thought and energy. This could be an open source project.

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August 15, 2010

A musical dinner party

We had a small dinner party on Saturday night for some old friends. Sally put a lot of thought and work into the food, and I organized the music, including both recordings and some of my own piano playing. I’ve come to think that a musician’s work is inherently social. This isn’t completely obvious, since so much of the work consists of individual, solitary practice. It is possible to enjoy music alone, although even this has a social aspects, since it involves interacting with the musical ideas of others (composers, editors, previous performers).

But a musician’s conception that doesn’t get communicated is not quite complete. It’s like a meal prepared with infinite care which no one tastes. Listeners complete the musical circuit that runs from abstract idea to human emotion. Just as a meal is just an abstraction if it isn’t eaten, a musical conception isn’t really music until someone listens.

So I was happy that our friends let me share with them some of my musical ideas regarding Chopin and Debussy. I played the Minute Waltz, the D flat Nocturne (Op. 27, No. 2), and Clair de Lune, and managed to make some beautiful sonorities. There were some memory lapses, which I was not pleased about, but I recognized them as minor and didn’t get discombobulated.

Having listeners always changes the musician’s mental processing. It can cause greater inspiration and concentration, but it also causes greater stress, and sometimes system failure. The possibility of losing one’s grip and falling is part of the business of climbing, and the possibility of losing one’s place is part of the business of musical performance. It is strange, though, when it happens. The keys suddenly look completely unfamiliar, and the hands are paralyzed with uncertainty. It’s a terrible feeling. But it happens, and the only thing to do is move on. Despite the problems, I was glad I made the effort, and grateful to my listeners for completing the musical circuit.

Sally’s cooking was delicious, and there was plenty of laughter and lively conversation. Tony Judt, the historian and author of Postwar (a great book about the aftermath of WW II) who died of ALS last week, once said that talking was the point of adult experience. It certainly is a great pleasure to talk with kindred spirits about things we care about passionately.

At work last week I took a short class on the subject of “crucial conversations,” which was about how to communicate better when stakes and emotions are high. The class included a little film by a middle schooler who replicated Solomon Asch’s conformity experiment. In the experiment, the subject is told that there is a test of visual perception, and asked to compare the length of one straight line to another. The subject hears several people who are secretly in on the experiment give answers that are clearly wrong, and then, most often, agrees with the clearly wrong answer. The point is, most people go along with the group, even when they think the group is wrong. Those who are willing to trust their own perceptions and buck the group are a minority.

Why does this happen? Is it intellectual insecurity? The fear of being ostracized? It’s possible to imagine a certain evolutionary advantage might accrue to those that maintained stable groups with uniform, though wrong, ideas, so that their band was more effective in hunting, say, the woolly mammoth. But it’s also possible that a huge evolutionary disadvantage from group think that prevented admitting and addressing such global problems as the disastrous war on drugs or global warming from CO2 emissions.

Whether we admit it or not, we all struggle with the pressure to conform to the group, but some of us put up more of a fight than others. Our friends would probably be in the minority of Asch’s test subjects that was willing to go against the grain and voice their true thoughts. It makes for much more lively conversation. Before we knew it, four hours had flown by, and it was time to say good night.

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August 1, 2010

Fear, courage, and the costs of misunderstanding 9/11

This week I heard an NPR report on the U.S. Army’s recruiting station in Philadelphia called the Army Experience Center.  It offers video war games and helicopter simulators to prospective recruits, and it sounded entertaining for adolescent males.  The report suggested that it had been a great success in getting kids to sign up.  It would, of course, be unacceptable to say straight out that war is fun and give this as a reason for enlisting,  but the Experience Center has found a workaround to that dilemma.  It sends the message of fun without saying it.

There’s probably no way to persuade every teenager that war is something to avoid if at all possible.  Even with the fullest possible disclosure, it isn’t possible for a non-combatant to fully comprehend the shock and horror of battle, or to appreciate completely the resulting trauma.  Adolescents are in general both inexperienced and eager for adventure.  So an Army Experience Center devoted to the sights, sounds, and smells of exploding and dismembered comrades would probably not dissuade all potential recruits.  But that sort of full disclosure would be more appropriate, and more fair, really, to those being asked to consider sacrificing their lives.

The Army Experience Center not only exploits the desire for adrenalized fun, but also the more noble aspiration to be courageous in a righteous cause.  We all like to think we’d be willing to stand up to a fearsome enemy, and we’re all proud to confront and overcome our fears.  Few of us ever test ourselves in mortal combat, but we cultivate little bits of courage in lower risk activities.  That’s one reason people like scary movies:  it’s a safe way to experience blasts of adrenalin and demonstrate courage. Some sports do the same.

But the longing for excitement and nobility is the mother’s milk of demagogues.  Fear mongering is the time honored way to motivate choices that become policy disasters.  People love to be frightened, and to imagine a heroic solution.  This explains the most politically powerful fear narrative of the past decade, which is now known simply as 9/11.  I originally thought 9/11 just meant a horrible crime by a handful of religious fanatics, and I still think that’s what it should mean.  But the term became shorthand for an existential threat conceived of as a powerful, organized force capable of destroying the American way of life.  Despite the lack of connection to objective reality, this 9/11 idea has transformed American life.  We view ourselves as under siege by radical Islamic bombers.  There are, no question, a few such crazies about.  But our response has been massively disproportionate, at an enormous cost, in money spent and lives lost.

Last week the Washington Post reported on the vast spy bureaucracy that we have created and paid for with our tax dollars.  There are 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies that work on counterterrorism, homeland security, and intelligence in some 10,000 locations.  Since 2001, in the D.C. area, 33 complexes for top-secret intelligence work have been built or are under construction, with square footage almost equalling three Pentagons.  There are an estimated 854,000 people with top-secret security clearances — more people than live in Washington.  Every day the National Security Agency intercepts nearly two billion separate e-mails, phone calls, and other communications.

Never mind the lurking civil liberties concerns for the moment, and let’s just talk about money and safety, costs and benefits.  Obviously the cost of all this is huge.  So what do we get in return?  That’s classified, of course.  Based on press reports, though, it appears that we don’t get much for our money.  We hear now and again that an inept fanatic or little band of them has been arrested, but that’s about it.

According to Nicholas Kristof of the NY Times, “The war in Afghanistan will consume more money this year alone than we spent on the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican -American War, the Civil War, and the Spanish -American War — combined.”   In short, this war is stunningly expensive, and is contributing to enormous budget deficits.  It seems fair to ask whether the money and lives we’ve expended have made our country any safer, or have any prospect of doing so.  It seems reasonable to consider whether our violence is simply driving the recruitment efforts of the fanatics who hate us.  And it also seems worth reconsidering whether the 9/11 threat — that is, a threat of existential proportions that justifies a military response — actually exists.

But the 9/11 fear narrative is still very strong.  In recent weeks public support for war in Afghanistan has dropped, but there’s still a taboo against discussion of the fear mongering at the roots of the war. Confronting it would involve unsettling some cherished beliefs, which would surely result in accusations of lack of patriotism.  Fantasies of courage will not accomplish anything.  Addressing this deep problem will take real courage.

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July 25, 2010

Water skiing and fun, healthy, ethical food

My shoulders are aching from the fun we had yesterday skiing on Falls Lake.   Ken and Carol took us out, along with their friends Ken and Kristen, on their plush and powerful ski boat.  Moving over the water at relatively high speed may be the ideal way to enjoy the outdoors in the middle of a massive heat wave.  I hadn’t water skied since I was twelve or so, but had vivid memories — the smell of gasoline, the anxiety as the boat worked into position, the sudden roar of the engine, the jerk of the rope, and the thrill of a transformation — water going soft to hard, something on which you can travel upright.

Ken encouraged us to try his wake board, which he said was easier than skis.  I decided to give it a shot, based on my rule of thumb to always accept an offer to try something new if it looks like it could be fun and isn’t illegal, immoral, or seriously dangerous.  Of five tries, I crashed and burned in the first three, came close to getting up on four, and bombed again on number five.  At that point, I decided to revert to skis.  I hated to admit defeat with the wake board, but it was unclear whether I was on the verge of success or still far from it, and I did not feel good claiming any bigger share of boat time.

Happily, I could still manage to ski.  The attempt was a learning experience:  I learned that for me it isn’t easier than skis, and that to get securely out of the water I need to do something different from what I was doing.  Later, while Carol drove, Ken demonstrated a hydrofoil device, a board with a seat above and a metal extension below so that the board came two or three feet above the water.  It looked both bizarre and fun, but Carol said it took many tries to get the hang of it.

Sally and I got back to the apartment shortly before eight and discovered we had a yen for Thai food within walking distance, so we had dinner at Thai Phoon on Glenwood.  We ordered two different spicy garlic tofu dishes from a good array of vegetarian options.  Just as we were starting to wonder why the food hadn’t arrived, our server showed up to apologize for the delay.  To make up for it, she said the soup was on her.  A nice gesture.

We continued our discussion of the mystery of unhealthy eating and resistance to vegetarianism.  Why do so many people put so much of so many things in their bodies that make them fat and shorten their lives?  Could it be lack of knowledge, when good information is so readily available?   Most of us would never consider fueling our cars with anything other than standard quality gasoline, so how can we stand to put any old thing in our irreplaceable bodies?  It can’t be explained based simply on calculated pleasure-seeking, since there are so many wonderful and interesting plant-based foods.

And how can so many thoughtful, decent, well-meaning people tolerate the massive cruelty of industrialized slaughter houses that turn living animals into dead meat?  Surely most of us respect the integrity of individual members of other animal species and would never consider intentionally torturing them.  So how can we stand the cruelty?   I do not know.  But I know each individual is capable of change for the better, because of my own journey.  There’s still hope for a healthier, more ethical society.  If it comes, it will be through many small, thoughtful, individual choices.  Like spicy garlic tofu.

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July 24, 2010

A ballet dress rehearsal

As part of our contribution to the Carolina Ballet, we’re sponsoring the pointe shoes of one of the dancers.  Ballet is not ballet without pointe shoes, and professional dancers go through them so quickly that they become a major budget item.  The ballerina we’re sponsoring, Lola Cooper, invited us to a dress rehearsal last Thursday for a program where she had a significant solo.

It turned out that Sally and I were the only non-company people there.  The rehearsal was in Fletcher, a small but elegant hall, where we had the best seats in the house.  It’s rare to see performers in the state of being in between simple practice and performance.  From my high school days at the N.C. School of the Arts, I was familiar with the basic ideas, but it was interesting to see how these artists used the precious time when the show is imminent.  The dancers at times left off steps and did simple blocking, getting a feel for the surface and space of the stage, the lights, and their costumes.  Ricky Weiss shouted a few specific directions during the run throughs, and after each piece went on stage to discuss refinements.

While we waited for Lola’s piece, we talked with our friend Ginny about other dancers struggling to succeed as artists and to get by.  For those just starting out, the wages are tiny, and for the more experienced, they are low.  There’s a huge disconnect between the inherent value of the artistry of these professionals, the amount of physical and emotional effort required for their art, and the economic rewards.  It’s depressing that their brilliant work is priced at a fraction of that of, say, professional baseball or football players (or doctors, accountants, or lawyers).   For those of us who care about ballet, it’s a reminder that we are a struggling minority, while the majority places little value on the art.

At the same time, the disconnect is a reminder that money is far from the only reason for work.  Artists almost by definition are pursuing something outside the realm of the senses, something beyond the everyday.  They explore these other realms and share with the rest of us their discoveries.  These deeper levels of feeling and meaning have no well-developed markets — there’s no effective system of pricing them in dollars.  But humans have engaged in this type of artistic commerce for thousands of years, and they keep on doing it.  This is an admirable characteristic of the species, and a cheering fact.  This does not, however, mean we shouldn’t worry about getting our dancers a living wage.  It’s in our best interest that they be well nourished, well clothed, in safe quarters,with reliable transportation, and with enough left over to have some fun.  Happy, healthy dancers are good for us.

At the rehearsal, Ricky introduced us to his wife and prima ballerina Melissa Podcasy, and  I felt really honored.  I’ve been very moved by so many of her great performances over the years (among others, Juliet, Carmen, the wife in the Kreutzer Sonata, the woman who yearns in Carmina Burana).  We talked a bit about our cats.  At the pauses, she worked with the performers.

Lola’s piece, from Balanchine’s Raymonda, was last.  She came out of the gate very strong.  Her jumps were big, and she had great quickness and speed.  Her solo was long and arduous, and after several minutes the strain was showing.  We talked for a few minutes afterward, when she was still breathing hard, and she was thinking about improvements.  She’ll be great.

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June 26, 2010

Supreme Court connections to gifted people

This week I signed a letter in support of the nomination of Elena Kagan that was written by Peter Keisler and Harry Litman and signed by most of the Supreme Court clerks from the year (OT ’86) our group worked for the Court.  I always liked and respected Elena.  She was bright and friendly, and I was happy to guard her in our clerk basketball games, where I was fortunate to have a meaningful height advantage (she could shoot).   I find it reassuring that in a world where Tea Party whack jobs are sometimes taken seriously that Elena with such old-fashioned and relatively unexciting qualities as intelligence, balance, and decency has quietly risen to the apex of the legal profession.

I made another Supreme Court connection this week when I caught up with Larry Lessig.  Lessig clerked for Justice Scalia a few years after I did.  Now a law professor at Harvard, he’s distinguished himself as a constitutional and intellectual property law scholar and reformer.  His work on copyright law, including Free Culture and Remix, challenges the received wisdom that more copyright protection promotes greater creativity and shows that the opposite may be the result.  In this area, he’s a true rock star.

Lessig’s current project is focusing on the corrosive role of money in our political system.  On Tuesday Mel Chernoff and I attended the talk he gave at Campbell Law School promoting public financing of elections.  He’s well known for his extraordinary slide shows, which use super quick cuts to press points, and this was a good one.  We’d corresponded by email previously, and it was good to make a face-to-face connection after the event.  In addition to being brilliant, he seemed like a warm and sincere guy.

When I have personal encounters with really gifted people, I generally find it unsettling.  It’s inspiring, and I find myself thinking so much more is possible, but also being more-than-usually aware of my personal limits.  As John McPhee once noted in the context of great tennis players, there are many levels of the game.   It’s a privilege to play with higher level players, and rewarding. If it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger.  But it does not promote calm and tranquility.

It is

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June 19, 2010

Liberation — death, sorrow, life

The Gulf of Mexico oil spill has been a big news story these last few weeks, but the news reports have given little coverage to the fact that millions of sea creatures that will die.  Our scuba experiences in the last couple of years have made us more conscious of the teeming life in the oceans, the unbelievable profusion, a cornucopia of bizarre, beautiful life.  The loss of life now taking place is impossible to fully grasp, and painful to consider.  I think it’s good, though, to try grasping it, and accept the pain of it.

We humans are generally deathophobes.  At the same time, it’s obvious that death is a fundamental part of life.  It’s in front, behind, and all around us, and avoiding it is really not possible.  We may as well have a little courage and honesty and figure out how to think about it.

I keep coming back to the line by Wallace Stevens in his poem Sunday Morning:  “Death is the mother of beauty.”  When I first read it, I thought he was just being provocative, but I now see he was struggling with something profound.  It isn’t that death itself is beautiful.  But it is an integral part of the natural cycle of change, which is a defining characteristic of life.  In Sunday Morning, Stevens asks, “Is there no change of death in paradise?  Does ripe fruit never fall?”  The Talking Heads got at the same idea with the funny line, “Heaven/ is a place/ where nothing/ ever happens.”  Such a paradise would be inhuman.  And very boring.

But coming to terms with this part of reality is not just a matter of working through the ideas.  It’s also accepting some unpleasant feelings, like grief and sorrow.  It seems natural to avoid such things, but it won’t work.  Those feelings are integral to the human experience; they’ll always be there.  We may as well face them with honesty and courage.  Opening ourselves to those feelings makes us more human.  It’s liberating.

Sally had a harsh and sad confrontation with one animal’s death this week.  She was monitoring her blue bird boxes at the Lochmere golf course for new for baby blue birds, which is usually a cheering thing.  She came upon  a young Canada goose that had had a horrible accident that destroyed its beak and left it bloody and mutilated.   It could still move, but was plainly suffering and unable to survive long.  The poor thing needed to be euthanized, but there was no practical way to capture it without making matters worse.  She had no confidence that the animal control service would be able to assist without increasing the animal’s fear and pain.  There was no solution, other than nature itself.

Sally began to cry as she told the story, and continued to wonder whether there was something else she could have done.  She is a tender-hearted soul, and I love her for it.  I was reminded of the time years ago when she arrived home in tears at having run over a little frog as she was parking her car.  I knew then, once again, that she was the girl for me.

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April 17, 2010

Up in the air: Dallas travel routines and adventures

I’m wearing a groove in the stratosphere at 30,000 feet between Raleigh and Dallas.  As we near a federal trial on patent infringement in the Eastern District of Texas, I’m learning well the routines of our airlines and regulators.  My former resentment at being required at the security gate to remove my shoes and computers and be scanned and sometimes frisked has mostly been replaced with resignation (“let’s just get this done”).  The required speech by the flight attendants on seat belt, emergency oxygen, no smoking, and exit rows has become like the Mass, almost impossible to listen to and understand because it’s so familiar.

There are, of course, better and worse routines.  I achieved Priority One status with American a few months back, and it made me happier than I expected.  Before I got Priority Oneitized, I had not realized that the reason I was generally among the last to be called for seating and generally seated in the back of the plane was that others had higher status in one of its several flavors.   Thus, pre-Priority-Oneitization, I was always, with reason, worried about finding a spot in the overhead bin for my rollaboard case; on full planes the bins were always close to full.  Post PO, I get seated early, hoist my case and wedge it in to a convenient overhead spot without danger to nearby boarders, settle into my seat, and watch the later boarders struggle with the problem of crowded bin space.  Do I feel badly?  A little.  Not too much.

I’ve also learned to work around some of the little difficulties and indignities that have become routine parts of air travel.  I make it a little game to see if I can nourish myself with only relatively healthy, relatively tasty vegetarian food.  Yes, it’s very challenging in airports, where the main food groups are “fast” and “junk.”  But it’s not impossible.  I typically pause in Terminal Two in Raleigh at Camden Foods to buy a hummus wrap, grab some paper towels from the men’s room to use as napkins, and look forward to a relatively calm dinner once on board.

One of the joys of travel, though, is unpredictability.  Last week my temporary assistant booked my Dallas trip, and being new she did not know to use my frequent flyer number.  I was again one of the unwashed, in the boarding group “not yet,” in the seat “way back,” between two other passengers.  Surrounding me were people who seemed unused to flying.  It was unusually hot and unusually noisy.  I had an eight-inch thick stack of memos, reports, and articles to get through.

The woman to my right (by the window), seemed to be turned toward me when I sat down, and I thought at first she was saying something to me.  She didn’t respond to my greeting and seemed to be talking to empty space.  I then assumed she had a cellphone somewhere.  It turned out that she was speaking with a fellow in the row behind us, and she continued talking between her seat and mine in the space next to my right ear.  At first I thought she was wrapping up a conversation started prior to boarding, but this turned out to be wrong.  I then thought of offering to switch seats, but the fellow seemed to be also chatting with another fellow next to him, and I couldn’t figure out the relationships.  Eventually I deduced that my seat mate and her aft friend were co-workers headed to a conference who had discovered a mutual attraction.  There was not a lot of personal content, but the tones were highly animated.  Flirting, in short.  It flared up, settled down, flared again, and so on.  At the earliest permitted moment (after “the captain has turned off the fasten seatbealts sign”), I got my noise-cancelling headphones in place and tuned out as much of the chat as I could.

In due course I unwrapped by hummus wrap, trying not to spread hummus on the memo I was reading and marking up, trying to avoid getting food on my pants (there were no back up pants) or shirt, hoping I wouldn’t run out of paper towels (my napkins).  And hoping that the one remaining routine meaningful service of the flight attendants, the drink cart, would come quickly.  It is difficult to eat a hummus wrap without something to drink.  I just learned this fact on that flight.  The mouth gets very dry.

At just this point a passenger on the flight passed out.  People craned their necks trying to see what happened.  I couldn’t see anything, but my aisle-side seatmate briefed me.  An attendant made an announcement in a serious voice asking if there were a doctor on the plane.  There was.  The passenger soon revived, and the doctor gave his opinion that an emergency stop was not necessary.  I was glad that the passenger was apparently all right.  I was sorry, though, that the flight attendants determined they could not distribute any beverages.  They announced that this was due to the medical emergency.  Given that the patient seemed normal and a doctor was watching the situation, I wondered at this explanation.  My mouth got dryer.

An hour later, I smelled a strange smell, similar to rubbing alcohol, which at first I thought might have to do with the “medical emergency.”  Then I recognized it as nail polish.  Then I realized that my seat mate had paused in her conversation to do her nails.  In the confined space, the odor was powerful and made my eyes water.  I examined the distance between the bottle of red liquid, the edge of the seat tray, and my knee, and wondered how likely it was that a sudden bump could cause the bottle to turn and spill its contents onto my pants.  I tried to remember if I’d ever seen anyone do her nails on a plane before, and couldn’t remember a case.  I wondered if this was because it was illegal or just impolite.

I worried a little that I might be getting to be a grouchy curmudgeon.  She dried them with by waving, fingers spread, the traditional method.  Then I noticed they were beautiful.

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April 11, 2010

Another speech, with normal anxieties

Some months back, I agreed to do a talk on software patents for the NC Bar Association’s IP Section annual meeting.  When I accepted the invitation, I thought of the task as something of a public service.  I also thought there was plenty of time to do it, which there was.  By last weekend, though, there was not plenty of time; the talk was less than a week away.  My plate was overloaded with time sensitive matters, and there was no room in the schedule for philosophical reflection.  In the middle of the week, I finally carved out a bit of time to work on some slides, and I used the drive to Greensboro for the event as my one and only practice session.

In days gone by, I would get more anxious about this sort of situation.  It’s been a long time since I experienced a full dose of the terror of public speaking, but there’s always a concern that it might be lurking with a view to one more attack.  These days, my worries are more about whether my audience will find my talk interesting, meaningful, and helpful.  Or at least not boring.  And of course, I’m hoping the audience won’t think badly of me.

In the talk on Friday, I shared the stage with a very fine lawyer, Tom Irving.  I knew coming in that Tom was a very experienced speaker, with views quite different from mine on the issues at hand, and more than enough intellectual firepower to make my task uncomfortable.  In the event he was  gracious and personable.  In fact, our presentations were an interesting contrast of views and styles.  Our audience of perhaps 100 seemed interested, asked questions, and applauded.

As usual, after the varying worries, I enjoyed doing the presentation.  Also as usual, it was a great feeling to have it behind me.  It was a beautiful warm spring day when I climbed into my 911 to return to Raleigh.  I enjoyed the drive.

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March 27, 2010

Talking about big problems, like healthcare

What strange political times we live in!  The lunatic fringe has seized the Republican party and is spewing forth venom and hysteria about the just-passed health care reform law.  With the new law, we moved some, but not a lot, in the direction of a more humane society.  It’s hard to believe any one thinks that this augers dramatic social change, either positive or negative.  But there’s a vocal minority that believe passionately that the law portends the end of democracy.  Some subgroup of that minority is advocating violent resistance.  This is craziness, and a bit scary.

It would certainly be possible to worry all the time about this and other big problems (global warming, nuclear and non-nuclear war, economic meltdown, political corruption, jihadism, failed states & etc.).   But worrying by itself doesn’t change anything, and is itself bad for your health.   What’s needed is dialog, plans for action, and action.  But it’s hard even to have a dialog.  Politics has become polarized, so that people who disagree find it difficult even to talk.  It’s unclear how we got into this box, and unclear how we get out.  But at a minimum, we need to try more talking.

Sally and I finally got around to watching Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth last week.  The basic message is now familiar to most of those willing to listen to it, and certainly familiar to us.  And the facts about global warming aren’t getting any better.  But it was inspiring to hear again the story of Al Gore, a failed presidential candidate, who passionately pursued an issue that he thought was vital.  He stayed with the message for years and played an important role on getting it onto the agenda.  I really admire him for that.  Now we’ve got to address the problem.

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