Quit Your Griping, the World is Fine

I just ran across an article that hasn't made any headlines, nor been played on the evening news. No, of course not--it's hard to point fingers at a villain there's no villainy to report.

From the WSJ opinion article:

But here they are: World-wide illiteracy rates have fallen by half since 1970 and now stand at an all-time low of 18%. More people live in free countries than ever before. The average human being today will live 50% longer in 2025 than one born in 1955.

To what do we owe this improvement? Capitalism, according to the U.N. Free trade is rightly recognized as the engine of global prosperity in recent years. In 1981, 40% of the world's population lived on less than $1 a day. Now that percentage is only 25%, adjusted for inflation. And at current rates of growth, "world poverty will be cut in half between 2000 and 2015"--which is arguably one of the greatest triumphs in human history. Trade and technology are closing the global "digital divide," and the report notes hopefully that soon laptop computers will cost $100 and almost every schoolchild will be a mouse click away from the Internet (and, regrettably, those interminable computer games).

So the next time you hear someone's anti-capitalist, anti-corporate rant, recall that it is the corporations, supported by free trade and capitalism, that are the ones making the world a better place for everyone. And you can tell them to shut their yaps.

Let the Recall Begin

Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm's disastrous solution to the states abysmal budget deficit is to raise taxes to cover most of the shortfall. Consequently, businesses are set to exit the state for a more tax-friendly environment. We can look forward to a deeper state recession as a result. Unsurprisingly, there is now a movement to recall some key legislators and the governor herself.

Enter the Michigan Taxpayers Alliance, which will initiate recall proceedings in the wake of the malfeasance. The site's blog addresses the reasons behind the budget disaster:

When I served in Lansing, I frequently asked colleagues if they thought reforms, like eliminating the state's prevailing wage laws or becoming a right-to-work state, would help Michigan. Nearly every Republican and a few Democrats told me that they knew such reforms would help the economy, but they could not vote for them because the unions would harshly punish them in an election. Privately, legislators support education reform BUT fear the teacher union would punish them. Shrinking government spending is also supported BUT government employees would target legislators caught enacting such cuts.

Oh, thank goodness for unions!

Recalling the governor appears to be a longshot, but she's the most public face behind the fiasco, and so her name will likely appear at the top of any petition.

I just wonder what morons voted her into office in the first place. Oh, right. Union members.

Hastert for Romney? Cool.

From the article,

Former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert heads a full slate of 57 candidates seeking election as convention delegates pledged to Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney in the state's Feb. 5 primary, the campaign said Tuesday.

Groovy.

Brief Thoughts from a Theoretical Physicist

I stumbled across this article featuring an interview with Brian Greene, a physicist grappling with string theory, which I found simultaneously fascinating and incomprehensible.

Anyway, he had a couple good things to say:

What issues are most woefully ignored in public discourse?

I think the general role of science is not as appreciated as it should be. There’s still a great sense that science is what takes place in laboratories, by scientists, without a recognition of how it so fully informs almost every aspect of everyday life — from cell phones to the iPods you were mentioning to personal computers to all manner of technology, medical and otherwise. A computer chip owes its existence to quantum physics. This esoteric sounding subject developed in the 1920s and ’30s is what allows these things to exist. Moreover, what’s ignored in conversations [currently preoccupying the world] — climate changes, global pandemics, stem cells — is often the underlying science, which can really inform the conversation and help it to go down very different directions. What’s missing in the public discourse is for science to be tightly woven into the cultural tapestry, so that it’s not viewed as something separate, but something fully integrated into the way we think.

What is on your iPod?

I don’t have an iPod.

This guy and I are so similar, it's like we're separated at birth. He digs science, I dig science. He doesn't own an iPod, I don't own an iPod. Wow, that's really eerie when you think about it.

Michigan's New Budget Deal

Here's my 1,000-word take on Michigan's new budget, which includes both a service tax hike and an income tax hike.



Republicans didn't have the fortitude to force a government shutdown and demand more cuts. Democrats couldn't bear to abandon their pandering to entrenched economic parasites. Way to go, Michigan. At least Louisiana had a hurricane to blame. You have only your own stupidity.

Ugh. Macs.

Okay, so I can't say I've ever had the Blue Screen of Death on my Mac at work. No, I get the shinier, slicker, more user-friendly "Greyed Screen of Death." I feel so much better now. I hate Macs.

By the way, my Vista machine at home has NEVER crashed. Ever.

I think I'll read Clarence Thomas

ABC News offers a review of memoirs by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas--and it looks like a great read. I've wondered about where he came from, where he developed his opinions and how he has handled the abuses he's seen since becoming one of the most conservative voices on the Supreme Court. A couple interesting bits from the review:

Thomas's most deeply felt opinions are about race, and he pulls no punches. For Thomas, the menacing racists who donned white sheets in the segregated South of his childhood [aren't] as bad or worse than the northern liberal zealots in suits and ties.

"These people who claim to be progressive … have been far more vicious to me than any southerner," Thomas says, "and it is purely ideological."

"People get bent out of shape about the fact that when I was a kid, you could not drink out of certain water fountains. Well, the water was the same. My grandfather always said that, 'The water's exactly the same.' But those same people are extremely comfortable saying I can't drink from this fountain of knowledge," Thomas says. "They certainly don't see themselves as being like the bigots in the South. Well, I've lived both experiences. And I really don't see that they're any different from them."

He says his critics — the people who question whether he is smart or qualified to be on the Court or who suggest he merely does what a white Supreme Court colleague dictates — are as also as bigoted as the whites of his childhood in the deep South.

I think I'll pick it up.