A Rational Being

Unfutz has been busy

2005-02-28T06:18:00.000-08:00

Check out the pretty charts and related statistics on Unfutz. Telling stuff. Yes, yes I know we should not assume that the uneducated voted for Bush based on one chart, but I'd like to think so. :-)

Actually some of my best friends are bush supporters and they are highly educated. I didn't say it was a good education, they just got lots of it. :-)

The most telling statistic for me is the population vs acreage vote. Clearly the high- density areas of the country voted Kerry and the low-density areas voted Bush. This was also true in the 2000 Gore/Bush election.

Perhaps this is an argument against the electoral college, or perhaps it speaks to the Bush (Rove) strategy. Win enough rural electoral votes and you win. The drawl, swagger, clearing brush on the farm, the way he pronounces words like "Nukular", his Christianity etc...are going to play big in the "live off the land," "self sufficient" types found in these low density parts of the country.

Whitman on Fresh Air

2005-01-28T00:04:00.000-08:00

Christie Todd Whitman was interviewed by Terry Gross (Fresh Air, NPR). You can listen to the complete interview here. It's nice to hear a voice of reason from the Right. "Social Fundamentalist" is a term she's coined (Google found no other reference that conveyed the same meaning so I'm giving her the credit.) in her book It's My Party Too.... It is a good label for the Rick Santorums of the world.
I figure the least we can do as good liberals is support Republicans that speak against the theocratic right. Our support can help our cause. However, we do have to be careful of who we choose. Need another reason to support Whitman? Answer this question. Who are social fundamentalists more likely to listen to, a liberal or a Republican?

Tsunami and The Earth System

2004-12-30T00:03:00.000-08:00

It's been hard thinking about the earthquake victims. While I won't go so far as to call the earth a living being (others do however), I do believe that the earth system is in a delicate balance and that humans with their actions can, and have upset that balance.

For example did global warming contribute in some way to the recent tragedy in the Indian Ocean? Some of the variables like sea level, polar icecap mass, and global temperature work together (are tightly coupled). Change one, and the others respond.

What if the global temperature is increasing? That would decrease the mass of the ice caps while raising the sea level. This, in effect, is a redistribution of mass on the earth's surface. Would this mass redistribution impact tectonic plate behavior? I think yes, but Is it a subtle or a significant effect? That I can't say. Is the mass shift effect significant enough to cause the earthquake in the Indian Ocean? Or is it only enough to change the earthquake from a Richter 7 to a Richter 9 (a Richter 9 earthquake is 100 times more powerful than a Richter 7 earthquake). Had a Richter 7 earthquake occurred instead of a Richter 9, what would the death rate be? Had the sea level been one inch lower, what would the death toll be?

If earth is a system in delicate balance, our behavior can throw the system into an unstable state. Is the system trying to right itself? When the system finally becomes stable again, will we be able to live on the planet?
For an intro on system dynamics, check out systemdynamics.org hosted by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology).