A Math Lesson

An urgent lecture by Dr. Albert A. Bartlett: "Arithmetic, Population, and Energy" (2002).



Two great quotes from the presentation:

Democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people into the world, the value of life not only declines, it disappears. It doesn't matter if someone dies. The more people there are, the less one individual matters.

—Isaac Asimov

Unlike plagues of the dark ages or contemporary diseases we do not yet understand, the modern plague of overpopulation is soluble by means we have discovered and with resources we possess. What is lacking is not sufficient knowledge of the solution but universal consciousness of the gravity of the problem and education of the billions who are its victims.

—Martin Luther King

"..." 33 ("Today's Baudelaire's are hip-hop artists.")

In the nineteenth century, when Dickens and Darwin and Disraeli all read one another's work, the novel was the preeminent medium of social instruction. A new book by Thackeray or William Dean Howells was anticipated with the kind of fever that a late-December film release inspires today.

The big, obvious reason for the decline of the social novel is that modern technologies do a much better job of social instruction. Television, radio, and photographs are vivid, instantaneous media. Print journalism, too, in the wake of In Cold Blood, has become a viable creative alternative to the novel. Because they command large audiences, TV and magazines can afford to gather vast quantities of information quickly. Few serious novelists can pay for a quick trip to Singapore, or for the mass of expert consulting that gives serial TV dramas like E.R. and NYPD Blue their veneer of authenticity. The writer of average talent who wants to report on, say, the plight of illegal aliens would be foolish to choose the novel as a vehicle. Ditto the writer who wants to offend prevailing sensibilities. Portnoy's Complaint, which even my mother once heard enough about to disapprove of, was probably the last American novel that could have appeared on Bob Dole's radar as a nightmare of depravity. Today's Baudelaire's are hip-hop artists.

Source: Franzen, Jonathan. "Why Bother?" How to Be Alone. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002: 65-66. Print. [My emphasis]

"..." 31

[Marshall] McLuhan wrote that our tools end up "numbing" whatever part of our body they "amplify." When we extend some part of ourselves artificially, we also distance ourselves from the amplified part of its natural functions. When the power loom was invented, weavers could manufacture far more cloth during the course of a workday than they'd been able to make by hand, but they sacrificed some of their manual dexterity, not to mention some of their "feel" for fabric. Their fingers, in McLuhan's terms, became numb. Farmers, similarly, lost some of their feel for the soil when they began using mechanical harrows and plows. Today's industrial farm worker, sitting in his air-conditioned cage atop a gargantuan tractor, rarely touches the soil at all—though in a single day he can till a field that his hoe-wielding forebear could not have turned in a month. When we're behind the wheel of our car, we can go a far greater distance than we could cover on foot, but we lose the walker's intimate connection to the land.
[...]
    The price we pay to assume technology's power is alienation. The toll can be particularly high with our intellectual technologies. The tools of the mind amplify and in turn numb the most intimate, the most human, of our natural capacities—those for reason, perception, memory, and emotion. The mechanical clock, for all the blessings it bestowed, removed us from the natural flow of time. When Lewis Mumford described how modern clocks helped "create the belief in an independent world of mathematically measurable sequences," he also stressed that, as a consequence, clocks "disassociated time from human events." [...] In deciding when to eat, to work, to sleep, to wake up, we stopped listening to our senses and started obeying the clock. We became a lot more scientific, but we became a bit more mechanical as well.
[...]
    In explaining how technologies numb the very faculties they amplify [...] McLuhan was not trying to romanticize society as it existed before the invention of maps or clocks or power looms. Alienation, he understood, is an inevitable by-product of the use of technology. Whenever we use a tool to exert greater control over the outside world, we change our relationship with that world. Control can be wielded only from a psychological distance.

From: The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr, 2010, pp. 210-212.

"..." 29

For me, this is probably the most concise statement that I have found which sums up the relationship between philosophy and language. It is quoted from an interview by Robert Harrison in 2005, which happens to be available on iTunesU:

There are stories—historical narratives—to be told about the emergence of various discourses. My view is that when you’ve told the story about how the discourse emerged you’ve told everything—you’ve found out everything there is to know about the nature of mind, the nature of matter, the nature of God, stuff like that. There isn’t a further question about “Yeah, but what are they really?” All that there is to know is the story of how the words are used.

—Richard Rorty

"Nation Finally Shitty Enough to Make Social Progress"

WASHINGTON—After emerging victorious from one of the most pivotal elections in history, president-elect Barack Obama will assume the role of commander in chief on Jan. 20, shattering a racial barrier the United States is, at long last, shitty enough to overcome.

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Faced with losing everything, Americans took a long overdue step forward and elected Barack Obama.

Although polls going into the final weeks of October showed Sen. Obama in the lead, it remained unclear whether the failing economy, dilapidated housing market, crumbling national infrastructure, health care crisis, energy crisis, and five-year-long disastrous war in Iraq had made the nation crappy enough to rise above 300 years of racial prejudice and make lasting change.

"Today the American people have made their voices heard, and they have said, 'Things are finally as terrible as we're willing to tolerate," said Obama, addressing a crowd of unemployed, uninsured, and debt-ridden supporters. "To elect a black man, in this country, and at this time—these last eight years must have really broken you."

Added Obama, "It's a great day for our nation."

Carrying a majority of the popular vote, Obama did especially well among women and young voters, who polls showed were particularly sensitive to the current climate of everything being fucked. Another contributing factor to Obama's victory, political experts said, may have been the growing number of Americans who, faced with the complete collapse of their country, were at last able to abandon their preconceptions and cast their vote for a progressive African-American.

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After enduring eight years of near constant trauma, the United States is, at long last, ready for equality.

Citizens with eyes, ears, and the ability to wake up and realize what truly matters in the end are also believed to have played a crucial role in Tuesday's election.

According to a CNN exit poll, 42 percent of voters said that the nation's financial woes had finally become frightening enough to eclipse such concerns as gay marriage, while 30 percent said that the relentless body count in Iraq was at last harrowing enough to outweigh long ideological debates over abortion. In addition, 28 percent of voters were reportedly too busy paying off medical bills, desperately trying not to lose their homes, or watching their futures disappear to dismiss Obama any longer.

"The election of our first African-American president truly shows how far we've come as a nation," said NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams. "Just eight years ago, this moment would have been unthinkable. But finally we, as a country, have joined together, realized we've reached rock bottom, and for the first time voted for a candidate based on his policies rather than the color of his skin."

"Today Americans have grudgingly taken a giant leap forward," Williams continued. "And all it took was severe economic downturn, a bloody and unjust war, terrorist attacks on lower Manhattan, nearly 2,000 deaths in New Orleans, and more than three centuries of frequently violent racial turmoil."

Said Williams, "The American people should be commended for their long-overdue courage."

Obama's victory is being called the most significant change in politics since the 1992 election, when a full-scale economic recession led voters to momentarily ignore the fact that candidate Bill Clinton had once smoked marijuana. While many believed things had once again reached an all-time low in 2004, the successful reelection of President George W. Bush—despite historically low approval ratings nationwide—proved that things were not quite shitty enough to challenge the already pretty shitty status quo.

"If Obama learned one thing from his predecessors, it's that timing means everything," said Dr. James Pung, a professor of political science at Princeton University. "Less than a decade ago, Al Gore made the crucial mistake of suggesting we should care about preserving the environment before it became unavoidably clear that global warming would kill us all, and in 2004, John Kerry cost himself the presidency by saying we should pull out of Iraq months before everyone realized our invasion had become a complete and total quagmire."

"Obama had the foresight to run for president at a time when being an African-American was not as important to Americans as, say, the ability to clothe and feed their children," Pung continued. "An election like this only comes once, maybe twice, in a lifetime."

As we enter a new era of equality for all people, the election of Barack Obama will decidedly be a milestone in U.S. history, undeniable proof that Americans, when pushed to the very brink, are willing to look past outward appearances and judge a person by the quality of his character and strength of his record. So as long as that person is not a woman.

—The Onion

The powerful [sic] oratory of George W. Bush

Regardless of how future historians attempt to treat the legacy our president's last 8 years, I think there should be a sic section in forthcoming history textbooks—just a page or two of primary sources documenting things he actually said in order to give future Americans a better grasp of why he was ridiculed so often.

For example:

"I think anybody who doesn't think I'm smart enough to handle the job is misunderestimating [sic]." April 3, 2000.

"I have a different vision of leadership. A leadership [sic] is someone who brings people together." August 18, 2000.

"And America needs a military where our breast [sic] and brightest are proud to serve, and proud to stay." February 12, 2001.

"I want to thank the dozens of welfare to work stories, the actual examples of people who made the firm and solemn commitment to work hard to embetter [sic] themselves." April 18, 2002.

"The public education system in America is one of the most important foundations of our democracy. After all, it is where children from all over America learn to be responsible citizens, and learn to have the skills necessary to take advantage of our fantastic opportunistic [sic] society." May 1, 2002.

"Rarely is the question asked, is [sic] our children learning?" July 3, 2003.

"We ended the rule of one of history's worst tyrants, and in so doing, we not only freed the American [sic] people, we made our own people more secure." May 3, 2003.

"No President has ever done more for human rights than I have [sic]." January 19, 2004.

"I hear there's rumors on the internets [sic] that we're going to have a draft. We're not going to have a draft, period." October 8, 2004.

"I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations [sic]." October 13, 2004.

"Our journey from national independence to equal injustice [sic] included the enslavement of millions, and a four-year civil war." May 7, 2005.

"And the best place to start is to make sure every child can read and write and add and subtract. And so that was the spirit behind proposing the No Child Left Behind Act. And as I mentioned, there was a lot of non-partisan cooperation -- kind of a rare thing in Washington. But it made sense when it come [sic] to public schools." January 9, 2006.

"You took an oath to defend our flag and our freedom, and you kept that oath underseas [sic] and under fire." January 10, 2006.

"And so, what Gen. Petraeus is saying, some early signs, still dangerous, but give me—give my chance a plan to work [sic]." April 24, 2007.

"Wisdom and strength, and my [sic] family, is what I'd like for you to pray for." May 2, 2007.

"More than two decades [sic] later, it is hard to imagine the Revolutionary War coming out any other way." July 4, 2007.

"As yesterday's positive report card shows, childrens [sic] do learn when standards are high and results are measured." September 26, 2007.

"I got a lot of Ph.D.-types and smart people around me who come into the Oval Office and say, 'Mr. President, here's what's on my mind.' And I listen carefully to their advice. But having gathered the device [sic], I decide, you know, I say, 'This is what we're going to do.'" October 3, 2007.

"I fully understand those who say you can't win this thing militarily. That's exactly what the United States military says, that you can't win this military [sic]." October 17, 2007.

"We're going to—we'll be sending a person on the ground there pretty soon to help implement the malaria initiative, and that initiative will mean spreading nets and insecticides throughout the country so that we can see a reduction in death of young children that—a death that we can cure [sic]." October 18, 2007.

"A clear lesson I learned in the museum was that outside forces that tend to divide people up inside their country are unbelievably counterproductive [sic]." After touring a genocide memorial, Kigali, Rwanda, February 19, 2008.

There are some good gaffes too:

"If you're a single mother with two children, which is the toughest job in America as far as I'm concerned, and you're working hard to put food on your family." January 27, 2000.

"This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while." September 16, 2001.

"It would be a mistake for the United States Senate to allow any kind of human cloning to come out of that chamber." April 10, 2002.

"There's a lot of talk about Iraq on our TV screens, and there should be, because we're trying to figure out how best to make the world a peaceful place. There's an old saying in Tennessee—I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee—that says, fool me once, shame on—shame on you. Fool me—you can't get fooled again." September 17, 2002. (From the official transcript by the White House Press Secretary.)

"Then you wake up at the high school level and find out that the illiteracy level of our children are appalling." January 23, 2004.

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." August 5, 2004.

"And the question is, are we going to be facile enough to change with—will we be nimble enough; will we be able to deal with the circumstances on the ground? And the answer is, yes, we will." July 25, 2006.

"Iraq is a very important part of securing the homeland, and it's a very important part of helping change the Middle East into a part of the world that will not serve as a threat to the civilized world, to people like—or to the developed world, to people like—in the United States." April 3, 2007.

And then there are outright ri-fucking-diculous comments:

"I know that human being and fish can coexist peacefully." September 29, 2000.

"They want the federal government controlling Social Security like it's some kind of federal program." November 2, 2000.

"I couldn't imagine somebody like Osama bin Laden understanding the joy of Hannukah." December 10, 2001.

"You can't read a newspaper if you can't read." August 6, 2004.

"We understand the fright that can come when you're worried about a rocket landing on top of your home." May 17, 2007.

"You know, when you give a man more money in his pocket—in this case, a woman more money in her pocket to expand a business, it—they build new buildings. And when somebody builds a new building somebody has got to come and build the building. And when the building expanded it prevented [sic] additional opportunities for people to work." October 3, 2007.

Never again, Texas.


1. Bushisms
2. George W. Bush - Wikiquote

WTF, Andrew Jackson?

I was studying for an American history test and looking at the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Wikipedia mentioned that it was brought up in Andrew Jackson's State of the Union Address from the previous year, so I thought I'd have a look.

It's not quite as racist and insensitive as I would have guessed, but it's still pretty disgusting.


State of the Union Address, December 8, 1829:

The condition and ulterior destiny of the Indian tribes within the limits of some of our States have become objects of much interest and importance. It has long been the policy of Government to introduce among them the arts of civilization, in the hope of gradually reclaiming them from a wandering life. This policy has, however, been coupled with another wholly incompatible with its success. Professing a desire to civilize and settle them, we have at the same time lost no opportunity to purchase their lands and thrust them farther into the wilderness. By this means they have not only been kept in a wandering state, but been led to look upon us as unjust and indifferent to their fate. Thus, though lavish in its expenditures upon the subject, Government has constantly defeated its own policy, and the Indians in general, receding farther and farther to the west, have retained their savage habits. A portion, however, of the Southern tribes, having mingled much with the whites and made some progress in the arts of civilized life, have lately attempted to erect an independent government within the limits of Georgia and Alabama. These States, claiming to be the only sovereigns within their territories, extended their laws over the Indians, which induced the latter to call upon the United States for protection.

Under these circumstances the question presented was whether the General Government had a right to sustain those people in their pretensions. The Constitution declares that "no new State shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other State" without the consent of its legislature. If the General Government is not permitted to tolerate the erection of a confederate State within the territory of one of the members of this Union against her consent, much less could it allow a foreign and independent government to establish itself there.

Georgia became a member of the Confederacy which eventuated in our Federal Union as a sovereign State, always asserting her claim to certain limits, which, having been originally defined in her colonial charter and subsequently recognized in the treaty of peace, she has ever since continued to enjoy, except as they have been circumscribed by her own voluntary transfer of a portion of her territory to the United States in the articles of cession of 1802. Alabama was admitted into the Union on the same footing with the original States, with boundaries which were prescribed by Congress.

There is no constitutional, conventional, or legal provision which allows them less power over the Indians within their borders than is possessed by Maine or New York. Would the people of Maine permit the Penobscot tribe to erect an independent government within their State? And unless they did would it not be the duty of the General Government to support them in resisting such a measure? Would the people of New York permit each remnant of the six Nations within her borders to declare itself an independent people under the protection of the United States? Could the Indians establish a separate republic on each of their reservations in Ohio? And if they were so disposed would it be the duty of this Government to protect them in the attempt? If the principle involved in the obvious answer to these questions be abandoned, it will follow that the objects of this Government are reversed, and that it has become a part of its duty to aid in destroying the States which it was established to protect.

Actuated by this view of the subject, I informed the Indians inhabiting parts of Georgia and Alabama that their attempt to establish an independent government would not be countenanced by the Executive of the United States, and advised them to emigrate beyond the Mississippi or submit to the laws of those States.

Our conduct toward these people is deeply interesting to our national character. Their present condition, contrasted with what they once were, makes a most powerful appeal to our sympathies. Our ancestors found them the uncontrolled possessors of these vast regions. By persuasion and force they have been made to retire from river to river and from mountain to mountain, until some of the tribes have become extinct and others have left but remnants to preserve for a while their once terrible names. Surrounded by the whites with their arts of civilization, which by destroying the resources of the savage doom him to weakness and decay, the fate of the Mohegan, the Narragansett, and the Delaware is fast over-taking the Choctaw, the Cherokee, and the Creek. That this fate surely awaits them if they remain within the limits of the States does not admit of a doubt. Humanity and national honor demand that every effort should be made to avert so great a calamity. It is too late to inquire whether it was just in the United States to include them and their territory within the bounds of new States, whose limits they could control. That step can not be retraced. A State can not be dismembered by Congress or restricted in the exercise of her constitutional power. But the people of those States and of every State, actuated by feelings of justice and a regard for our national honor, submit to you the interesting question whether something can not be done, consistently with the rights of the States, to preserve this much-injured race. As a means of effecting this end I suggest for your consideration the propriety of setting apart an ample district west of the Mississippi, and without the limits of any State or Territory now formed, to be guaranteed to the Indian tribes as long as they shall occupy it, each tribe having a distinct control over the portion designated for its use. There they may be secured in the enjoyment of governments of their own choice, subject to no other control from the United States than such as may be necessary to preserve peace on the frontier and between the several tribes. There the benevolent may endeavor to teach them the arts of civilization, and, by promoting union and harmony among them, to raise up an interesting commonwealth, destined to perpetuate the race and to attest the humanity and justice of this Government.

This emigration should be voluntary, for it would be as cruel as unjust to compel the aborigines to abandon the graves of their fathers and seek a home in a distant land. But they should be distinctly informed that if they remain within the limits of the States they must be subject to their laws. In return for their obedience as individuals they will without doubt be protected in the enjoyment of those possessions which they have improved by their industry. But it seems to me visionary to suppose that in this state of things claims can be allowed on tracts of country on which they have neither dwelt nor made improvements, merely because they have seen them from the mountain or passed them in the chase. Submitting to the laws of the States, and receiving, like other citizens, protection in their persons and property, they will ere long become merged in the mass of our population.

What's equally upsetting is that, despite this, Jackson is recognized on the $20 bill, taking Grover Cleveland's place from 1928 onward, despite his distaste for paper currency.





1. Wikipedia: United States twenty-dollar bill

Sept. 11, 1973

There was a very good opinion piece in the UDK today (which rarely happens):

By Patrick de Oliveria

Exactly 28 years before terrorist attacks claimed 3,000 lives in the United States, an event took place that would symbolize the terror endured by South American countries for decades to come.

On Sept. 11, 1973, a military coup led by Augusto Pinochet overthrew the democratically-elected Chilean government of Salvador Allende and installed a brutal military dictatorship. The military and right wing of Chile opposed Allende because of his Marxist positions.

Similar events happened in several South American countries around that period. In Brazil, a military coup had already occurred in 1964 under similar conditions, and in 1976 a military junta took power in Argentina.

Because of the Cold War, the United States supported these right-wing military dictatorships and was involved in many ways. The United States recognized these authoritarian regimes, provided intelligence to them, trained various militaries—who would latter engage in torture and death squads—at the School of the Americas and, if ever needed, would’ve provided military support. All of this despite the human rights abuses and authoritarian measures taken by these governments.

Although I was born two years after the dictatorship ended in Brazil, the horrors of that period are still in the public consciousness. Several figures in my life were affected by it, and South America as a whole is still scarred.

My high school history teacher had a sister who was tortured. My dad’s friend was “asked” to leave the country. My friend’s dad had to hide a student militant in the countryside.

Students and artists were specifically targeted because of their leftist tendencies and calls for democratization. Student leaders would disappear and be tortured or killed. These were people around my age now. Some of the torture methods included driving needles under fingernails, whipping the feet with bamboo sticks and electric shocks.

Throughout high school I heard about Victor Jara, a Chilean musician and activist who was arrested, tortured and then gunned downed because of his political views. And about Stuart Angel, a Brazilian student militant who, after being tortured, had his mouth tied to the exhaust pipe of a jeep and dragged behind it until his death. Every year there would be news about the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo weeping for their thousands of children who disappeared during Argentina’s Dirty War.

The healing process is still going on, especially since new information about that period is still surfacing. Distrust towards the military and police still exists, and anti-Americanism in the region is related with American involvement during that period—especially the hypocrisy of rhetorically supporting democracies and human rights, but in practice doing the exact opposite.

That dark period has now passed, but it shouldn’t be forgotten. However, it shouldn’t be remembered only by the people who suffered it. The process of suffering, mourning and healing should be a global one if we truly want to avoid tragedies like this in the future.

It may sound hopelessly utopian, but the prospect of a better world is deeply interconnected with the ability to sympathize and empathize with other people’s suffering. Although we may disagree with everything else there is one thing we all have in common: we suffer. Only when we start valuing this human connection more than ideologies, politics and power struggles­—whether they be colonialism, capitalism verses Communism or the War on Terror—will a more peaceful condition be possible.

So, when we remember Sept. 11, 2001, let us also remember Sept. 11, 1973.

1. De Oliveira: Sept. 11 should spark memories of other events