On Optimism

After writing many rants here, the question of optimism arises. I can be an skeptical trouble-shooter who is critical of what others do. It is obvious that I have been harsh on government and business, and my comments say that I have been disappointed many times by what others do. I see a lack of excellence and pride in what people are paid to do. They seem to have little moral stake in what they do. So the question is am I optimistic about the human condition, about my future, about the future of my children and people I know?

The answer is equivocal. On the one hand I see no ordained reason for the human race to survive. Like most of the species that have ever existed, there is no mandate that humans should survive the earth. More than likely our planet will go on for billions of years even after we are gone.

On the other hand, I am surprised by the resilliancy of individuals; we have a great deal of flexibility, and more than we think. I had a period in 2007 when I was almost homeless, in that it was during this episode that I found out how government really doesn't work. Now business doesn't work either, and actually has less fortitude to solve difficult problems. It isn't a question that one if better than the other, but that both are plagued by people who don't perform tasks they are nominally charged with and are not accountable. In fact the decadence of a civilization may be measured by the amount of unaccountability. But I had survived this stress and made my own recovery with precious little help from either government or business.

But, no matter, one can scream that the sky is falling as institutions and contacts fail, and one can be bitter about it. I don't have that attitude. I think that every condition gets its due, and that suffering is indicative only of inflexibility. The news is full of what amounts to free advertising for those interests hurt by change, by the fiscal collapse of government. I had written about how services I could use get taken away right at the time when they are most useful because government funding is now tightly linked to the business cycle as Conservatives wanted. So, no matter. If government or some bank or the Stock Market are such good things, let's see what happens when they go away and lets see if their detractors like what results.

I am optimistic, not that the status quo will return. I don't think that at all and that is a good thing, but because people will discover that change provides new opportunities. As the past is my guide we smile at the crises of some prior economic glitch, such as running out of wood and going to coal. I am certain that if we get to do fusion to make energy, our dependence on foreign oil and perhaps the global warming problem will seen temporary. At the same time I would say that like the dinosaurs we could easily be on the chopping block put there by the lack of wisdom of out leaders. The universe really doesn't care and there is nothing I can do about that, so why get upset about it?

I think that to believe in conspiracy theories is an act of huberis. Even if the believer claims to have no personal power, he or she lusts for it and gives to others mow power than they really have. I could construct a conspiracy in the world financial order to drain away the wealth of the U.S. to reinvest in Asia, even with pennies on the dollar. I could say that is why banks engage in risky investments, still even after TARP, and that their plan was to use mortgage and credit card debt to get at equity to reinvest in China. I could even say that George H. W. Bush's use of "New World Order" was a code for this conspiracy. But I resist this idea. It gives people too much intelligence and foresight, something I think they lack. Even if the trend is true, that wealth will drain away from the U.S. and go to Asia and elsewhere, principally Europe, simple greed is enough to explain it. It doesn't really matter that is might be a trend and that the U.S. will become less powerful. That might be a blessing in disguise, and in any case if all the world's investors think that China or India are a good bet the could be just as wrong as the group of people who just got wiped out in last year's crisis. It is just as likely that China will be the most vulnerable economy in the world to the effect of global warming and become a very bad bet in as soon as 20-30 years. So even though its billions of consumers represent a huge market, it may have already passed the limit of sustainability.

The Moon on Jul 20, 1969, 1st Man on the Moon.

As I recalled it on the night Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, the moon was a waxing crescent, about half way between new and first quarter. I remember going outside and looking at it and thinking that people are there for the first time. I was a senior in college at what is today California State University, East Bay. The following year I started grad school in geology at Stanford.

Today I checked my recollection with a planetarium program, Celestia, and confirmed it. The Moon was in Virgo, below the Ecliptic; so the descending node was precessed to somewhere around Cancer. I don't know when there was a solar eclipse in 1969, but it might have been in June or July of that year.

I speculate that NASA chose the phase at Mare Tranquillitatis, with heating of the space suits or the LEM in mind. The sun had just risen at that phase angel, and so the lunar surface has not warmed too much.

Excite restored my e-mail

Excite gave me back my e-mail. It took them a while, but they did give me my e-mail back. This begs the question of who owns your e-mail. None of the web-based mail services offer you the option of sending you an archive, that is, allowing you to create something like a zip file, of your messages when you want to, like when you delete the messages.

I still have to deal with the fact that the web interface is still very limited. Not only do you have to put up with advertizing, but you can't resize the messages window; you can change the part that is devoted to the individual message as opposed to the section for the message list.