03.28.08
Posted in Energy, Society at 13:53 by RjZ
Have you heard about Earth Hour? Started by the World Wildlife Fund (a charity I actually donate to; and by ‘actually’ here I want to emphasize that I don’t donate to many charities), the idea is that this Saturday, 29th of March, people, businesses, organizations, and governments will turn off the lights from 8:00 to 9:00 in the evening.
I get the leadership and solidarity this is intended to show. Everyone who turns out the lights and joins the WWF will be telling governments and policy makers at businesses and civic organizations that we care about the effects of our energy consumption and we acknowledge we can do something about it.
It’s too bad most people won’t get that.
Many, and for all I know the designers of this action, might be fooled into believing that this has some other purpose. Say, showing how much power can be saved if we all just turned off the lights, for example. A horrible plan. Power plant operators are already concerned that extremist environmentalists want us to crawl back in caves and live by candle light. Even if Earth Hour action could show savings (it won’t!), they’re doing more to justify the fears of people who actually keep our lights on then they are to become agents for change.
Utility owners and policy makers are exactly the ones WWF are trying to convince, but unless extremist environmentalists, who apparently really do think we should return to a pre-industrial agrarian state, are willing to live that way; that is, go off the grid, give up their cars, computers, airplane rides, and all other advancements, like, say, healthcare, they come off as a bit disingenuous.
In fact, it’s terribly easy for the rest of us to turn the light switch off for an hour. During that time of honorable sacrifice we know we can just turn it right back on; we’re not giving up on anything. Meanwhlie, India, China, and the rest of the developing world are getting fed up with the attitude in the West. They want a chance to grow, with the same access to cheap energy, and by cheap, we often mean polluting, that we got to use and all we can do is tell people to turn of their lights.
Sadly, the hour of savings will hardly amount to more than a few megawatts and that people might think otherwise shows a lack of understanding of one of the world’s most incredible industrial inventions—the grid. Let’s have a look. What will happen when everyone turns off the lights at the same time? Unfortunately all the solar plants will already be idle as it’ll be night time. Wind is most steady at dawn and dusk (but this is dependent on many factors) and will not likely have a significant effect (as if we got any significant power from wind and solar today anyway….) Base-load power like nuclear and coal will keep burning away during this lack of demand. That, folks, is how the grid works. You can’t just turn off the overwhelming majority of power in a few minutes. Extra power just flows into the grid and if it’s not used then it will end up heating up transformers and being wasted anyway. There are no giant batteries to store up the extra power. The majority of power doesn’t cycle with demand; fortunately the grid is large enough to simply soak up the extra energy of most short-term changes in demand.
If enough people actually turn off their lights to have a significant demand effect, the power providers will have to respond in some way. Their first choice will be to turn off peaking power sources like oil and gas. Except, most of these will already be off because this isn’t peak demand time anyway, but there could be some actual savings there. Much of the hoped for energy savings will be lost due to inefficiencies of ramping them off and then back up again when demand returns, but these peak power sources are at least intended to respond to changes in demand so it’s not too big a deal.
If WWF gets a huge turn-out and demand really drops, then maybe a coal plant will actually go off-line. That would be really bad news. For that hour of CO2 saved during the coal plant outage, it will take it hours to even days to turn back on. During which all those peaking power sources will be running to take up the slack, drinking foreign oil the whole time.
In the 70s, the peak power season used to be December. Today the peak is during summer. What’s the difference? Air-conditioning units. Before AC on every home, power providers could actually measure the spike in power demand from all the Christmas lights. Now, in spite of the extra lights (have you seen the Joneses keeping up with the Smiths on who can put up the most lights? I sure have) Christmas barely registers above the noise for demand. Come summer, though, and all those AC units raise demand to pay for new power plants. The point is, turning off the lights for an hour won’t even rise above the noise.
At least we’ll have the solidarity. And maybe a romantic candle light dinner or two.
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03.12.08
Posted in Society, Travel at 13:11 by RjZ
“Oriental,” I answered, when my Israeli hosts asked what I wanted for dinner that night. Oriental is what Israelis call middle eastern food and it’s a delicious array of mezzes or salads of eggplant, cucumber, tomatoes, onions, chick peas and on and on. We left their office south of Tel Aviv and drove a good 15 miles south along the coast to a small village not far from one of my colleague’s home. He knew the area and often went to a bakery near our destination restaurant.
We parked on the street and walked towards the restaurant past another bakery, still open, and selling warm challah and pitas, but, mysteriously, no bagels. (I assume there are bagels in Israel, there are enough New York jews there for sure, but I never saw one.) It was dusk of a warm evening. The village wasn’t nearly as tidy as Tel Aviv and several people were just hanging about chatting and smoking and taking in the evening. Some children we’re still playing in an alley off of the street.
The atmosphere in the restaurant had more in common with an American diner than a fine bistro. We sat in a booth at a metal and formica table near the windows, from which I could still make out the darkening ocean over the roofs of houses across the way. The restaurant was nearly empty. Some men wearing the traditional Palestinian black and white Shumaggs, like Yassir Arafat used to wear, were smoking a hookah in the far corner and shortly after we were seated a western dressed husband and hijab wearing wife sat at a table not far from ours and quieted their rambunctious young daughter and younger son.
And so, here we were, sitting in a restaurant in the Gaza strip, a few years before it would be in control of the Palestinian authority and no longer an annexed part of Israel. My two colleagues are both rather liberal Israelis. They were far more interested in keeping their electro-optics business running than Palestinian/Israeli politics. But, as I’ve written before, outside of religion and politics, there really isn’t much to talk about in Israel. We were finishing our meal and ordering some baklava when some from the hookah party came by to offer us a few puffs of the perfumy smoke. (We all politely declined.)
“You see…?” my colleague asked, “they don’t care if we’re Jews or Arabs. Real people just go about their business.” My colleagues don’t wear yarmulkas or the dark orthodox Jewish robes and hats, but no one who’s been to Israel would mistake them for anything other than Israelis. The thin, short-sleeve dress shirts and worn chinos all worn with a rather disheveled air are the hallmark of most Israeli businessmen. Still, no one gave us a second glance. The bakery sold Challah along side the pita; families ate dinner together; Arab men offered us the chance to join them enjoying the hookah; and the server spoke to us in Hebrew and English.
Even if the media is exaggerating the real devastation and despair in the Gaza strip today, it’s clear to me that things have gotten worse since that charming evening in a cheap, but delicious restaurant along quiet village streets. While there is real and justified animosity between people living in this region it’s equally important to remember that just a few years ago, people were smoking and breaking bread together. Too bad the pragmatism of my Israeli associate didn’t work out. Sure made sense at the time!
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02.15.08
Posted in Energy, Society at 13:05 by RjZ
Yesterday’s post was supposed to be about the changes in budget travel, but it was really about what happens when the developing world develops. The simple fact is that it’s usually great for individuals to have more cars and cellphones and food and fashion choices, but we’ve got to face that it’s not necessarily so great for trees and bunnies and the earth. As we humans take up more and more space, use more and more resources, and consume more and more energy, we’ll surely race towards a point where our status quo of cars and coal-plants will take too great a toll.
It doesn’t seem too far-fetch to suggest that we’re seeing the results today. And so, we sit in our comfortable homes wondering how the Chinese are going to fix the pollution in Beijing before the Olympics start. In this article a diplomat laments that as a Chinese he is being asked to give up what Europeans and U.S. Americans were never asked to give up. He’s asked to somehow develop his economy without coal and oil. How can we reasonably expect him to make do with a quarter of the CO2 output that we enjoy but still have enough power to produce the wealth and comfort we enjoy?
In Chennai, India, I saw window mounted air-conditioners blocking the view of nearly every apartment dweller, and who can blame them…it’s hot there! But those a/c units also consume plenty of electricity, supplied in Chennai, the same way we get it in the U.S., by burning things in power plants and producing CO2. A/C units are a bit like cars; how low their price can go is limited by the chunks of metal it takes to make them, not simply by the market’s ability to afford them. Despite the high cost, they’re popular in Chennai because the standard of living has increased so much in the past decade.
The correlation is obvious: high standard of living means high levels of energy consumption and since we don’t have many ways to produce large amounts of energy that don’t also make abundant amounts of CO2, expect the problem to get worse before it get’s better. Note: before everyone starts commenting about solar and wind, I said ‘large amounts of energy.’ Also note: comment anyway!
There may be a way out though, although probably no one knows what it is yet. If we’re lucky, along with all the new cars and cellphones that the better standard of living is bringing India, China and the developing world, people will have greater access to communication, information and education. All it takes is one really smart person to come up with the technological break-through that’s escaped us so far. It’s likely that such genius is one in a billion, but very soon, perhaps we’ll have a billion people working on it.
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01.04.08
Posted in Society at 17:55 by RjZ
I got something very special from my friends and family this year for the holidays. I gave them the same thing, so I wasn’t surprised. You see, Santa didn’t bring me anything at all. Nothing. (Well, I did get a jar of homemade mustard–thanks!) I didn’t buy, or even make a single thing for anyone either. Scrooge you say? Bah humbug? Perhaps. But what we exchanged this year was freedom; and I loved my gift! While most folks in the U.S. and elsewhere were running around wrinkling their brows thinking of the perfect give and fighting crowds or cyberspace to buy it, I was carefree and enjoying the cool winter nights around the fireplace.
There’s nothing wrong with trading gifts this time of year or for any reason at all, but the obligation that accompanies gift exchange, especially around the holidays contributes to so many people’s stress! It’s not like it would be fair for me to expect some gifts I’d really like for myself. If anyone really still wants to get me a new camera, this one will do, but I don’t really need, or want more stuff. I don’t want any new clothes, or book store gift certificates. I don’t want more stuff to clutter up my closet, my house, or my car! I am trying to simplify, not complexify.
Everybody likes getting the gift they didn’t even think of, and I am not an exception; I am not opposed to gifts as a rule, but really how many of the things we received this time of year fell into that category? (Hopefully a few!) Even with those wonderful surprises, the stories I heard were of charming things that people we’re happy to receive, partly, because of the fun of receiving gifts, of giving them, and above all the thought behind them. I’d be happy if people knew the deep breath of freedom that comes from skipping the game completely.
I hereby release you, dear friend, family member, acquaintance, of feeling obligated to get me anything at all. Next time you’re out some where and see that special thing that I didn’t even know I wanted, I hope you’ll remember we gave each other a pass this holiday. It’ll mean so much to me that you thought about me, even when there was actually no reason to do so, nothing to celebrate except our friendship. I can’t wait to do the same for you. If nothing comes along, I’m not likely to notice; it’s not like there was some holiday reminding me that you better think of me. As for Christmashanakwanza…let’s just give each other freedom.
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12.25.07
Posted in Society at 9:08 by RjZ
I was living in München, Germany around 1994 when a rather large tax was passed in effort to help pay for the heavy economic burden of reunifying East and West Germany. I had a pretty average German salary and I was surprised when my take-home pay dropped by 100 marks from one check to the next. That’s a pretty huge after tax pay cut! Pass such a drastic tax in the United States and people will march, barefoot, to Washington to protest it. So, I inquired with my colleagues what they thought of the new tax. After all, most of them we’re better paid than I and must be suffering too. ‘It’s for re-unification’ they’d explain, with resignation, as if that simple fact explained everything.
I was reminded of this experience while surveying a power plant outside of Seoul, Korea. Here in the United States, the media portrays a giant gap between South and North Korea. From president Bush labeling North Korea as part of the axis of evil to South Park’s satire of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, one could hardly confuse the North Korean nuclear threat with the friendly South Korean manufacturers of Hyundai’s and Samsung. There I was, looking north at the coal field and further to the DMZ and North Korea just passed the horizon, with the plant’s construction manager was explaining that they were adding two more units for another 1600 megawatts to this already large power plant dominating the little island off the coast. Where is all the power going, I asked, is Seoul still growing so fast? To the north, he pointed. But who is going to pay for it? North Korea doesn’t really have a thriving economy.
While we think of two distinct countries with widely different situations, economies and politics, it’s fairly clear when you speak to South Koreans that they do not share our view regarding the deep divide between the north and the south, save for the arbitrary, 155 mile long, 2.5 mile wide demilitarized zone. The line was drawn right between families and friends separating them for more than half a century. Today, the majority of both countries’ military stands opposed to each other on either side of the DMZ, while back at the power plant, the construction manager seemed a bit befuddled by my questions and responded that “I guess we will pay.”
The construction manager shrugged off the enormous impact of eventual reunification with the same resignation about a future already decided that I saw in Germany. Except it won’t be nearly as easy for Korea as it was for Germany. East German economy was hardly a stellar performer, but people weren’t exactly starving to death. In North Korea, they are. I got the impression that South Koreans imagine a reunified Korea where the North joins them. West Germans had the same expectation, and, for the most part, that is exactly what happened, but it was not without friction. Kim Jong Il does not seem nearly as conciliatory as the East German leaders were. Finally, East Germany didn’t exactly decide to join West Germany on its own. It was allowed to by Soviet President Gorbachov. North Korea, meanwhile, shares a border with China and the Chinese don’t seem nearly as forthcoming today as the Soviets did in 1989.
Exactly how South Korea will accomplish their reunification remains to be seen. Even if political forces somehow relent, their dynamic economy might just be able to survive the extraordinary burden that, like giddy West Germans a decade ago, few seem remotely willing to acknowledge.
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09.26.07
Posted in Society at 7:46 by RjZ
And I am not an economist. So really, you should stop reading now because the following is surely uninformed and biased by my sour grapes. I am worried about the future of the U.S. economy. I forecast winds of a nasty storm all blowing in the same direction and none of them are very good for the future.
Three deficits
U.S. Americans have built up record highs in all three forms of debt. The current administration has not only done nothing to limit it’s spending, but in fact has built up the national debt to its record high. Our national debt is likely greater than the number of bytes on your hard drive.
We’re buying a lot of things we don’t make too. Cars, toys, clothing, shoes, we seem awfully hungry for cheap things made somewhere else. (I think it’s great that we can do this, but it’s also really difficult to see the real cost of our actions.) The trade deficit is also hovering around all time highs.
Finally, we’re buying all this cheap stuff with credit cards and home loads. Individuals have record high credit card debt and the collapse of the can’t-do-math home loans represent huge amounts of unmanageable secured debt as well.
The problem with this is that when investors from the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Japan and above all, China are looking around deciding where to invest their extra cash and considering ‘emerging markets’, the ‘Eurozone’ or hopefully, USA incorporated, many of them are looking at our debt to earnings ratio and thinking twice. That’s gonna hit the stock market at some point. Which is unfortunate because….
Boomers and their kids
Boomers discovered the stock market at least a couple of decades ago. Fueled by extra time, extra income and easy access to easy trading their influx of investment may have contributed to the stock market swings of the .com and telecom era. They’ll do OK though, don’t fret about them. They’ll retire and start withdrawing all that cash they’ve earned. Boomers did so well in the booming stock market that many will probably even have some left over to leave to their kids. All the while, they’ll be spending money on boats, travel and retirement homes which isn’t going to be too bad for the economy, but they’re not investing anything in any new growing businesses either.
What ever’s left over, boomers are likely to leave to their kids. Lucky kids of boomers. They’ve been pretty protected from the growing threat that is life in America (halloween parties instead of trick or treating comes to mind) and now, when their parents finally pass away, they’ll get a nice lump sum for their retirement. Quite the legacy. Some of them, I’m thinking Paris Hilton, will spend the money like blood squirting from a coronary artery, and some will see the opportunity and build great new businesses with this unexpected seed money, but the majority will do the best they can and basically spend the money for better houses, cars and clothes. They’ll make ends meet and live a little larger, but pitifully few of them have will have the experience or the discipline to do what their parents did and grow that money. They’re not likely to have this discipline, after all, because their parents made a concerted effort to shelter them from it.
So, we’re in debt, investors will think twice about choosing the USA for their money (don’t believe me? check out the value of the dollar which essentially represents a stock market certificate in USA inc.) boomers are withdrawing money and their kids are too young to even think about retirement, so they’re likely to spend it. It’s a recipe for short term gain and long term pain.
My only proposal to solve the problem is to educate the lucky boomer kids who are receiving the inheritance now about retiring and investing. I don’t see how it would work, but it might help. Any (other armchair) economists out there think I’ve got this right?
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09.20.07
Posted in Society at 11:46 by RjZ
According to a University of Minnesota study, U. S. Americans have identified atheists as the most mistrusted minority.
From a telephone sampling of more than 2,000 households, university researchers found that Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in “sharing their vision of American society.” Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry.
A Gallup poll ranked atheists at the very bottom, below Catholics, Jews, blacks, married for the third time, 72 years old and even homosexuals in response to the question: “If your party nominated a generally well-qualified person for president who happened to be …, would you vote for that person?”
Why don’t Americans trust atheists to be president? Is it because they’re a bunch of Satan worshipers? Surely a few Americans feel that way, absurd as it is. Atheists no more believe in Satan than they think a giant mystical panda created the universe. More likely it’s because voters are concerned that Atheists, without the guidance of a higher power, have no morals of their own.
But does belief in a higher power really mean the candidate shares your morals? Who really has more reliable morals? The person with no moral compass of his own who must refer to a book, even a really great and popular book, to determine right from wrong? The person who doesn’t doesn’t trust his own notion of good or evil but relies upon the interpretation of a religious leader for guidance? Couldn’t we be better served by someone who knows in his heart what is right, good, just and fair and has had the wisdom to analyze his experience and studies to construct a world-view that is consistent. Americans seem to assume that religion gives a person morals, but ask yourself; do you need religion to tell you that pedophilia is abhorrent, (the Bible is ambiguous on the topic) or do you just know it is?
Voting for someone based on his claimed religious beliefs gives you absolutely no idea what he’s likely to do anyway. Religion’s moral compass spins in almost every direction you can imagine. The Ten Commandments neglected to forbid slavery! Is it alright to kill or not? Eye for an eye, but turn the other cheek. Should we be the judge or leave it to God? Should we save unborn life but kill criminals? Moreover, do devout religious people commit fewer crimes or avoid fewer scandals? You can find just about every opinion or behavior supported by religious dogma and worse faith isn’t the slightest guarantee that the believer actually follows the doctrine in any event. I won’t even bore you with the countless examples of the faithful going astray. It’s pretty clear that what one says, particularly what a politician says, doesn’t guarantee how he will act, and religion doesn’t seem to be an effective indicator.
Or maybe not. Imagine a politician who had the courage to describe how his morals come from experience and observation and not from a higher power. Of course, he is committing political suicide, but one thing is sure, he’s the most honest politician you’re likely to ever hear speak.
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08.20.07
Posted in Society at 11:21 by RjZ
Intended for publication 10 August, 2007. Sorry for the delay.
History isn’t consistent. It shouldn’t be a surprise that what we take as an accounting of what happened is strongly colored by our culture and not a little bit by what we want to hear. Yesterday (9 August, 2007), NPR had a story about Rudi Bohlmann. Mr. Bohlmann was on one of the very first ships to sail to Nagasaki after the second atomic bomb attack. In NPR’s story he describes the stench and destruction in visceral detail. At the end of the story, reporter Curt Nickisch, says that Mr. Bohlmann remembers the bombing as “above all, the end of the war. It meant that he could return to the family farm.”
And that’s just how it was taught to me too. The United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, starting the atomic age, and killing several hundreds of thousands of people, but they did so to end the war. It was a horrible thing, of course, but at least it ended the war. The United States made the courageous decision to execute such a horrendous act in an effort to spare lives. That’s how I remember learning about the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and that’s how I’ve heard from others too.
Thing is, that’s not what people around the world learned about it. While generations of U.S. Americans imagined pained decisions and proud patriots doing what they have to do to save people everywhere, Soviet citizens, for example, felt that they had already forced the end of World War II by invading Japan and that the U.S. was sending a clear message about the power they possessed. My colleagues in Germany shared a similar view and would occasionally mention that it was ‘typical’ of Americans to flex their muscles even without justification.
Then-General Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote of his misgivings about dropping the bombs “Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives.” General Douglas MacArthur joined Eisenhower. Pacific Fleet Commander Chester Nimitz declared the “atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military view, in the defeat of Japan.”
I can’t remember when I first discovered this other way of seeing the bombings, but I was surprised to learn that we might not be heroes engaged in the necessary evil of dropping the bomb. I won’t suggest schools must ensure history is strictly politically correct or that the lofty goal of reporting it without bias is even a very likely end. Indeed, whether Hiroshima and Nagasaki we’re actually justified is still debated. Perhaps the best thing to notice is simply the very fact that there are quite possibly more than a couple of interpretations of the ‘facts’ we’re presented in school or even in the news.
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07.26.07
Posted in Society at 11:37 by RjZ
According to Corn World, the national corn growers’ website, the sale price of corn is up to an all time high. That’s probably due to ethanol. It’s really quite impressive that corn is finally almost worth growing again. After all, corn is the largest U.S. crop by acreage (76million acres), the U.S. grows more corn than any other nation (even China) and exports farm more than any other nation (more than all the other nations combined.) Corn yield haven’t changed significantly either. Holding steady at nearly 12 bushels per acre (now almost 15 bushels per acre) for 20 years. In spite of all that growth, there are fewer and fewer corn farmers each year.
Today, the Congress will vote on the Farm Bill. Lobbyists from the National Corn Growers and others will argue that agriculture is a dangerous business with unpredictable yields, even though that 20 year run described on their own website says otherwise. They will argue that the Farm Bill keeps our nation’s food supply safe and cheap. And at the end of the day the administration will sign the bill saying that they added money for renewables (a 1.2% increase! Wow! Um, or not) but that they kept the bill from getting too much larger. When President Bush signs the bill, he’ll be signing a check (in your name!) for:
$623,463,000,000!
Let’s repeat that. $623 billion dollars.
$439 billion is for the food stamp program, to be fair, but most cheap foods have corn in the one way or another anyway, so Cargill and the few other huge growers still get their cut.
It turns out that the Farm Bill is really the great Uniter. As reported on NPR, the left and the right find common ground in their dislike for it. The left points out that two thirds of the left over $1.8 bil goes to biggest, wealthiest 10% of the “farmers.” Farmers is in quote because the National Corn Growers Association and others would like you to picture a wholesome middle American family in overalls, but the reality is that it’s big, big agribusiness who’s getting your hard earned tax dollars. David Beckman of Bread for the World stresses the Farm Bill keeps prices artificially low which hurts foreign farmers and does little for the poor in this nation because most of your billions of dollars go to agribusiness. Meanwhile, on the far right, Damien Moore of Taxpayers With Common Sense (follow that link, they sum it up well) points out that “the market is kinder to poor people than badly spent government money.”
The farm bill causes or contributes to the following:
• Distorts the market price for food, particularly corn.
• Leads to over production.
• Hurts the environment by fostering factory farming, monoculture growing and over fertilization (a fossil product which pollutes our nation’s water).
• Subsidizing for the already wealthy agribusiness
• Encouraging food with little nutritional value.
The goal of the Farm Bill is ostensibly to keep the nation’s food supply safe and cheap. It has failed on both counts. Food borne illness from E. Coli and others is on the rise. Highly concentrated, centralized food production increases threat of damage or even terrorism to our food supply. Food has remained cheap over the last few decades. Americans pay less for their food as a percentage of income than nearly every other nation. In fact, food is quite a bit cheaper than it ought to be (although, food prices, now so dependent on fossil fuels, show a variation and dependance on, of all things, foreign oil!) Except, it isn’t actually cheaper. In addition to the $1.8 bill tax premium each of us helps to pay to keep the food cheap, we haven’t begun to account for environmental damage, global warming, and health costs that may be attributed to our centralized, industrialized food system.
There is no need to go organic, or become vegetarian, although those things might reduce the risks we face. Instead, simply dismantling this subsidized enemy of free trade known as the Farm Bill would go a long way towards changing the broken system we find ourselves a part of. Food prices at the grocery store would increase, to be sure, but we’re already bearing that cost in unseen ways. Perhaps if we could actually see it, we would be better informed about the critical decisions we make everyday about what we eat.
Don’t bet on it though. No one thinks that the Congress will do anything but yield to the tremendous bi-partisan pressure of the industrial food lobby.
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06.25.07
Posted in Liberty, Society at 13:50 by RjZ
I remain perplexed about what is right and reasonable for religious and cultural practices. As I wrote here, in cultures such as Egypt where it is the standard, women don’t actually abide very strictly by the religious tradition that motivates wearing a veil. All across Europe, however, while the number of women wearing the niqab (full face covering) is dramatically fewer than in Cairo, the impact is greater. Particularly in Britain, where no laws have yet been passed restricting this behavior, many people on both sides of the debate are feeling the challenges.
What do you think? Should women in Britain, or the United States be entitled to wear the niqab if the so desire? Sounds like an easy question. Perhaps you think: of course they should, it’s their right in a free country to express themselves. It’s freedom of religion! Even the most conservative amongst us have a hard time justifying making the headscarf illegal simply because these people ought to fit in and integrate just as they ought to (whatever that means) learn English. Oh sure, they ought to; like our grandparents did, but must we have a law restricting clothing?
On the other hand, we already do! People may not claim that it is their religious rights to walk around naked, because, that right would offend the prude majority. Satan worship is allowed, but virgin sacrifice isn’t, regardless of your religious persuasion or beliefs. But what’s the harm of women covering their faces? In a society where women are discouraged or prohibited from closing contracts without male family members, there really isn’t any problem not being able to identify them. In the west, women are provided with rights to buy cars and houses, so it’s not unreasonable that those closing those deals might wish to verify the identity of their business partners.
What about teaching, withdrawing money from a bank, being caught speeding, using a credit card? It disturbs me to limit someone’s freedom, certainly their religious freedom (a theme on which the United States was founded) and especially for such a trivial notion as clothing, but the customs, and economic function of Western society make it difficult to do otherwise. At some point during nearly all of these transactions, we’ll need to see her face.
Women must be allowed to dress anyway they wish (men too) whether they are motivated by religion or mere style. It’s just that the government and business partners have a reasonable expectation to expect to see more than eyes behind a veil. Do what you wish, but don’t expect to participate in society at large without some compromises.
What do you think?
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