Archive for July 1st, 2004

We Need the Power

Posted July 1, 2004 By Dave Thomer

Energy policy has become a nexus through which so many seemingly disparate issues connect. Energy affects the economy because of fuel prices and production costs. It affects national security because of our dependence on oil from foreign countries, including some that use their oil profits to fund terrorists and other destabilizing forces. It affects the environment and public health because energy consumption creates pollutants that contribute to global warming, smog, and the presence of irritants and toxins in the atmosphere. (And when you get down to it, every one of those other issues carries an added economic cost with it.) It’s not surprising, then, that energy policy has become a significant issue in the current presidential election. It seems like a good idea, then, to look at the two major candidate’s plans as a starting point for a discussion of where we should go in the future.

Both George W. Bush and John Kerry provide outlines of their plans on their websites. Both outlines are extremely vague on a number of points, such as Bush’s claim that he “remains actively engaged with our friends in OPEC, as well as non-OPEC producers from around the worldâ€? in order to reduce gas prices or Kerry’s non-specific promise to “improve fuel efficiency of cars to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.â€? How are you going to engage them? What’s the payoff of the engagement? How much are you going to increase efficiency? How will you motivate manufacturers to make those improvements? Even in those vague statements, however, there are clearly differences in priorities, and there are some concrete proposals to consider as well. Read the remainder of this entry »

Filed in Public Policy

Reform Begins at Home

Posted July 1, 2004 By Dave Thomer

The challenge of a Deweyan reformer is to somehow form a functioning community out of a vast society – to create close enough links between geographically disparate people such that one will consider the effect of his actions on the other even if they never become acquainted in person, or indeed ever become specifically aware of the other’s existence. It is a difficult task, even if the reformer successfully exploits the technological and media tools available to her. It may be tempting, therefore, for the reformer to focus her efforts on the national scale – writing essays for national magazines, staging events designed to be covered by the large news networks, etc. Dewey, however, was quite cognizant of the role of local communities in the eventual establishment of the Great Community, and the democratic reformer ignores this role at her own peril.

Vibrant local communities are vital to Dewey’s vision of a flourishing democracy. Many social challenges will need to be addressed at a local level, and the experience of working together to address said problems will give citizens the skills and mindset to tackle larger issues in a similar fashion. The impetus for change often begins at the local level as well, as a grass-roots response to a particular local problem calls attention to a larger issue and galvanizes feeling about it. If a national reform movement is to be a true model for the desired democratic society, it too must function as a network of thriving, coordinated local reform movements.
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Filed in Philosophy

How Not To Worry And Love The Armed Nut

Posted July 1, 2004 By Earl Green

I guess it has now been my turn to be in on the latest craze, Some Stupid Guy Going Nuts And Grabbing A Gun To Solve All His Problems. I had a doctor’s appointment on a Wednesday morning in March 2001, for which I needed to wear shorts. I planned to go back to my apartment around lunchtime and change clothes so I could go to work.

I couldn’t get into the north entrance of my apartment complex, as the driveway I have to take to get home was blocked off by lots of cars, including some police cruisers. I went the long way around to the south entrance, and found my way blocked there too. I tried to reach my apartment on foot, and met up with a police officer who told me in no uncertain terms to stay away, that there was an armed nut on the loose somewhere in the apartments.

This alarmed me. My wife was at work, but it was common for me to raise the blinds on a couple of windows in our apartment so our three cats could curl up in the window sill and catch the sights and sounds of the outside world, which we didn’t really allow them to see otherwise. If someone was looking for targets, or worse yet a hiding place to break into, that might have made an inviting sight for him. Read the remainder of this entry »

Filed in Special Order Speeches

On the Up and Up(grade)

Posted July 1, 2004 By Dave Thomer

I’ve been using personal finance software for years to track my expenditures and have some sense of where my money is coming from, as well as going. I tend not to use too many features beyond the electronic check register and the occasional simple report or graph, but one thing I have become quite accustomed to is the ability to download transaction information from my credit card company. It saves some typing, allows me to keep things synchronized, and is in many other ways simply nifty. So I was slightly perturbed when I learned that Intuit would stop supporting that capability in the version of the software I own, which I bought a little over four years ago. I would need to jump ahead at least to the 2002 version, and I’m sure deep down Intuit wanted me to go get the brand spankin’ new 2004 edition.

The most significant problem with that strategy is that Amazon reviews and Usenet comments achieved the almost unanimous conclusion that Quicken 2004 was best suited for use as a coaster rather than an actual piece of software. (The problems seemed to be largely felt by people upgrading from prior versions with years’ worth of accumulated data – in other words, folks like me – and so they didn’t show up as much in the professional reviews I read in the computer press.) Further research suggested that the 2002 version was probably the most stable, so I snagged a copy of that from eBay and bought myself at least another couple of years.

Truth be told, even if 2004 had been a good year for Quicken, I still would have tried to go the secondhand route. The idea that a part of the functionality I originally purchased could be turned off in order to get me to re-purchase something just rubs me a bit wrong. Yet I can’t deny that it seems to make perfect sense in an upgrade-happy culture whose economy depends on folks always going out and Getting More Stuff, a world where it’s cheaper to throw out an appliance than it is to get it fixed. To get a sense of the cultural impact this has had: the producers of Sesame Street recently turned the Fix-It Shop into a Kinko’s/post office hybrid called the Mail-It Shop, because kids today just can’t relate to the notion of getting their toaster repaired. Read the remainder of this entry »

Filed in Life in Practice