Month: December 2005

Wikipedia now limits anonymous users to updating exsting articles, preventing them from creating new ones. Anonymous access has been a prized feature, on the theory that, for example, a Chinese dissident should not be limited any more than [s]he already is by the government in Internet participation.

But arguably, an encyclopedia–on line or otherwise–is the wrong place for one-sided information, whether from governments or dissidents. And recent incidents have forced Wikipedia’s hand.

Frankly, I find it surprising it’s taken this long. Comments in this blog are limited to registered users. And I’m certainly not hiding my identity here.

Even when I allowed anonymous comments, I moderated them, and wound up deleting all that came in, because I wasn’t hearing from Chinese dissidents but people who worship President Bush and the ground he walks on, and accept as gospel all his lies and distortions. People who, for instance, insist that the accumulation of scientific evidence on global warming is some kind of politically-motivated scientific groupthink.

It’s too bad. Because it is entirely too easy to imagine a legitimate need for anonymous access. And even easier to imagine how people can abuse it.

“Take a pot of scalding water, remove all the oxygen, mix in a bit of poisonous carbon monoxide, and add a pinch of hydrogen gas.” Why? Because a fast-growing microbe, Carboxydothermus hydrogenoformans, prefers this environment. Why do we care? “Isolated from a hot spring on the Russian volcanic island of Kunashir, this microbe lives almost entirely on carbon monoxide. While consuming this normally poisonous gas, the microbe mixes it with water, producing hydrogen gas as waste.”

Kilauea shed a lava delta and is now forming another one.

According to the BBC, Condoleeza Rice “will tell European allies to ‘back off'” on allegations “that the CIA had been using Soviet-era camps in eastern Europe to detain and interrogate terror suspects” as reported by the Washington Post on 2 November 2005 and that “the German government has a list of at least 437 flights suspected of being operated by the CIA in German airspace” which may have been in extraordinary rendition operations. Rice’s attitude will be that “We’re all in this together and you [the European Union] need to look at yourselves as much as us.”

Meanwhile, the Washington Post has uncovered an account of an extraordinary rendition gone awry. “Unlike the military’s prison for terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba — where 180 prisoners have been freed after a review of their cases — there is no tribunal or judge to check the evidence against those picked up by the CIA.”

Free trade advocates claim that globalization creates increased prosperity. It does, for corporations and their stockholders. Examining the current economic recovery, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities explained, “The new Commerce data confirm that the current recovery has been relatively slow and very uneven, with workers receiving an unusually small share of the income gains and corporations receiving an exceptionally large share of the income gains. The nature of the recovery is thus likely to aggravate income disparities. Corporate profits tend to benefit those with the highest incomes, through increased dividends and capital gains. In contrast, middle and low-income Americans receive most of their incomes through wages and salaries, which are now lagging behind.” The Center’s analysis yields the following chart:

As the Census Bureau explained, “[F]actors related to the downward trend in wages of less-educated workers include intensifying global competition and immigration, the decline of the proportion of workers belonging to unions, the decline in the real value of the minimum wage;” their figures show how the gap between rich and poor has already risen:

Meanwhile, corporations bear a reduced portion of the burden for their own labor and environmental exploitation. In his “Presentation to the President’s Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform” on 8 March 2005, Douglas A. Shackelford of the University of North Carolina included this chart, showing how corporate taxes have decreased both as a portion of GDP and federal tax revenue:

Shackleford specifically cited international competition as a reason for the decreased revenue. Globalization as a means to increased prosperity then becomes another flavor of the old “trickle down” theory, which has never worked to improve the condition of anyone but the rich. Meanwhile, economic disruptions have meant that three times over the past twenty-five years, job growth has not only failed to keep up with population growth but actually gone negative (data from Bruce F. Bendall and the Census Bureau):

Economists call it “restructuring” and cast it as a good thing. But what it means is that to have any hope of remaining in demand over the last twenty-five years, workers would have to have acquired new skills three times, an average of once every eight years. What does this mean? Does it mean that they are to go to college, and rack up a bunch of student loan debt, every eight years? How, exactly, are people supposed to do this?

The background image in that chart, by the way, was taken as a prank, during the depression. I don’t know how you explain laughing about something like this without minimizing a huge amount of suffering. We idolize the rich and diminish the poor, in this country; this makes us more likely to adopt the values of the rich — including “trickle down” theory.

But preferring corporations to people has other costs. Corporate greed has driven U.S. foreign policy (data from globalsecurity.org and the Federation of American Scientists; background image from Joe Rosenthal):

People are fighting and dying to advance the very corporate interest that impoverishes us at home.

According to the National Security Archive, the “international community,” prominently including the United States, approved Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor in 1975, which began a legacy of human rights abuses.

The Guardian has it all in a story covering the current state of human reaction to global warming. It seems this is another issue on which the Bush administration has lost touch with the people.

As finals week opens, I still don’t know when I’m graduating. At the end of this quarter, I will have completed all the academic requirements, but missed the bureaucratic requirements. It all matters because I rely on financial aid to keep everything afloat.

Right now, I’m listed as graduating in Winter (March) 2006; only that’s the quarter I’m supposed to start the graduate program (in January). Thus the university hasn’t admitted me to the graduate program, because that application is for Winter 2006. We’ve requested that my graduation date be advanced to Fall (December) 2005, but have not, as yet, received a response.

So one solution would simply be to jump into the graduate level classes, even as an undergraduate. But if I do this as an undergraduate, I need 12 units to maintain full-time status for financial aid. Because graduate work expectations are higher, a normal graduate level load is 8 units. I’m a bit nervous about that.

Another solution would be to simply resign myself to the fact that the bureaucracy is very important to the bureaucrats, and continue on with undergraduate work. Because I have worked out a unique deal for graduation with my department, I could do this, and continue on preparing to graduate with a speech communication degree in the event that my deal to graduate with a mass communication degree falls through. But I’m anxious to get on with graduate work.

So I wait. And wonder.

The BBC is reporting that the ACLU is suing the CIA over its practice of extraordinary rendition.

A record-breaking hurricane season is over, but Epsilon is still out there. It is now a category 1 hurricane, a long ways east of the United States, and too far north to likely do anything other than die in the North Atlantic. The USA Today story observes the controversy over whether this year’s activity can be attributed to global warming: We’ll know in about thirty years.

Meanwhile, there’s been a rash of stories about a “30% reduction in the warm currents that carry water north from the Gulf Stream” of currents in the North Atlantic which might result in a mini ice age in Europe and Northeast Canada. This prospect is an extreme example of how global warming might produce cooler weather, in a chain of events that begins with the introduction of higher density freshwater–from melting ice–into the North Atlantic, interfering with the heat exchange that draws water north.