Political: Global Warming Redux - Potential solutions

I have been partially convinced on global warming. I looked up some of the IPCC's reports, and I learned a few things.
The most important thing I learned, really, is that I don't understand it. I got about 20 pages into one report before it got over my head. 20 out of 1000 pages, and that was just one of four reports from the IPCC for that year. And they release new reports every year. I'm never going to get through all of that well enough to know what it says. It's largely technical, which was good since I was looking for something hard with no spin, but it was also impossible to read unless you have a solid background in chemistry, physics, and reading scientific jargon. I don't have the last one at all.
That said, the huge number of people who write and contribute to the reports tells me there's something there. These aren't just professors looking for funding either, or Al Gore types trying to get attention, but serious and respected academics who know what they're talking about. I looked a few of them up and they're by and large not people who would just slap their names and reputations on something just to look important or go along with the crowd. They believe the information is accurate and they sure know enough to say better than I do.

I didn't even get far enough into it to really tackle the issue of whether or not we're causing the problem. There was something called 'radiative forcing' I was just getting to when I sort of got lost. It had to do with how the presence of certain gases in the atmosphere affected the temperature. Some increase it and some decrease it, and I'm still not really sure how, but their data say that humans are responsible for most of it, and that burning fossil fuels contributes more than agriculture, and those two are most of the positive radiative forcing, the ones that increase the temperature. Aerosols are in the column that decrease it, which makes it sound like banning them has contributed to the problem more than other things, but I don't know well enough to argue it.

On the topic of "Why isn't the sea level rising?" I finally did get my answer - it is, but so far it's only risen about 50 mm around the globe, which is measurable but not really noticeable to the average person. But it's quite likely to continue rising, and by the time it's really noticeable it'll be too late to do anything about it. So that was answered at least.

Anyway, even though my comprehension of our role in global warming isn't clear, I think it's pretty obvious that we can do things to combat the problems. What I can understand is that we need to decrease the carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse" gases in the atmosphere, and that there's a lot of possibility for reflecting light back into space that will help too. So I've come up with four ideas that I think are economical, effective, and on a scale we can do right now. They're all things we have to build and maintain, so they will cost some money, but they will also create jobs and infrastructure, including new areas of study and new careers we don't currently have. So they will cause a temporary reduction in the economy, followed by a sustainable and significant increase. Also of importance is that none of these solutions require the average person to change their lives, and aren't in a position to rob power and money from oil, coal, and other energy interests, so they won't face the fierce opposition that a carbon tax and other such ideas have right now.

For each idea, I'll give a general description, the benefits I think it will have, and the potential problems I can see.

1. Dome Screens for Major Cities.

I figured I should jump right in with the most radical idea first. This one is the most complicated and the most unusual from the way we do things now. What I'm thinking of is a large structure that covers over a city, either partially or completely. It would reflect light the area of the city back into space, as well as collecting rising gases in changeable air filters. It should be made of adjustable panels, which ideally should be able to go from transparent to opaque, and also pivot from open to closed. I think the structure should be open on the sides and only cover up the top, more like an awning than a tent. I know this is a really radical idea, but remember there was a time when sewer systems were a radical idea, and aqueducts before that. Both of them were created to solve an environmental and resource problem, and both revolutionized the lives of the people in the cities where they were first installed, and they're now commonplace. So just because they've never existed before doesn't mean we shouldn't build them now.
Benefits - Lots of jobs, both in construction and maintenance. Thinking about the local city that could use one of these the most, I kept coming back to New Orleans. The adjustable panels would allow them to divert rain out of the areas prone to flooding and block quite a bit of damaging winds, and the air filters would pretty well eliminate smog and other air pollutants from the city. There would also be a huge crime-fighting potential because you could put lights and even cameras on the underside of the support structure, enabling people to light up the whole city even in the darkest nights if they needed to, and record everything that moved. Businesses could pay to advertise on the supports as well. A giant hanging banner over your business would let everybody know where you were and what you had to sell. You could also use it for some civic pride. New Orleans as my example could have a giant fleur de lis on display to the world.
Potential problems - Obviously any time you build something above something else, there's a risk part of it could break off and fall. We've handled that pretty well up to now, though, and I'm sure it could be built as safely as anything else. I think more objections will be raised about how it will change the look of a place. People objected to the Eiffel Tower when it was first built for that reason. You couldn't avoid that it would alter the light coming into the city as well, so everything under it would look different from how it always had. There would be other complications with putting a roof on a city just in terms of things like satellite images - you'd just see the dome. I'm not sure if GPS would work inside. Of course, you could put things into the structure so that GPS, WiFi, cell phones, etc. would be amplified rather than suppressed. All the crud filtered out of the air has to be put somewhere as well, and there's no knowing how that might affect landfills, or what other environmental thing might suffer for the gain. There's also no telling how things like birds nesting or bats roosting or other animals might affect the panels, and if a motor responsible for moving a panel broke, somebody would have to climb up and fix it. Lastly, the potential for a terrorist attack would be pretty high since collapsing the structure would do massive damage to the whole city.

2. Artificial Polar Caps
Pretty straightforward - undo some of the damage by freezing sea ice into massive blocks and tow it back to the poles.
Benefits - This one is probably the easiest in terms of method. We'd need facilities for the process, but it's pretty easy to make ice. It's pretty easy to ship it too. If the ice is frozen to a sufficiently low temperature, once it's dropped back in the polar waters it'll freeze up the water around it too.
Potential Problems - Problems of scale. This has never been attempted before, and there's no telling how many people, ships, and resources it would take to do it. Also, arctic and Antarctic travel is always dangerous. Even if the caps are melting it's still dangerously cold. There are potential diplomatic problems with forming new shipping lanes, although they're surmountable. The most serious problem is that it's not going to address any of the other aspects of global warming - just the melting ice.

3. Dry Ice Oceanic Ice Cubes
Sort of a combination aspects of 1 and 2. Filter carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases out of the air, and freeze them into giant blocks of dry ice. One problem with the ocean absorbing the increased levels of CO2 at the moment is that it raises the acidity levels, so the dry ice would need to be sealed up in containers that would take hundreds of years to corrode. Then haul the sealed ice to the center of the ocean and sink it to the depths, or tow it by submarine underneath the arctic pole.
Benefits - Clears CO2 out of the air, reintroducing it slowly and much later into the ocean depths where is can be safely reabsorbed. Also cools the ocean water around the dry ice containers. It treats both the causes and the symptoms and would reverse massive damage in a short period.
Potential Problems - Similar to the above idea. It would be a massive operation, requiring international cooperation and there's no telling how much it would cost to run, or what environmental impact it would have.

4. Giant Solar Mirror and/or Algae Farm
People usually think of trees when they think of plants that turn carbon dioxide into oxygen. Only the green parts of trees perform photosynthesis. Algae is much more efficient, because it's single-celled and only photosynthesizes. We build a giant reservoir, out in the desert, or in the plains of the Midwest, or somewhere else similar. It would only need a few inches of water in it, and enough algae on the surface to start it up. It will spread until it covers the whole thing, and will become an enormous carbon sink, sucking up CO2 and throwing out oxygen. The uncovered parts of the reservoir will reflect light, especially if the water is clear and the bottom is polished enough to shine. It should get covered over by the end of the summer, at which point you drain the pond and let it work as a mirror until spring.
Benefits - Intensive maintenance will employ hundred of people, and they won't need much education or specialized skills. The more of these we build, the better for the economy and the environment. It will treat the major causes of global warming and heal some of the damage already done. There would be a lot of options for funding, and it would be much easier to get corporate sponsors than some of the other ideas. Oil companies could be persuaded to send in money in exchange for the bragging rights about how they're cleaning up everything.
Potential Problems - Construction expense is the biggest. Also needs to be tested on a smaller scale first. I don't know what the relationship is - if you had 150 square miles of algae, how much CO2 would that absorb? Can we possibly make one big enough? Once again, massively changing existing landscape will have other environmental impacts as well, and we can't always know what they will be in advance.

These are the best ideas I've had so far. I don't know if any of them will work, but I think they're probably all worth trying.

Political/Single Issue: Language War - Making Something Out of Nothing

I don't know if there's really anything to this, but it certainly seems to cause more problems than it should.

You ever know someone who just can't say a word the right way? Maybe they think there's an X in especially or forget how many Rs there are in library, or just can't remember how to use their punctuations correctly. There is, of course, a modern term for people who go around calling others out on their minor errors which do not actually affect communication in any way - Grammar Nazis.

The thing is, we all do this a little bit, even though we're well aware it's a dumb thing to do. You know where we don't realize that? When we're dealing with a slightly different culture.

Words are different in different parts of the country. Down here in the south, for example, we commonly refer to the lights that hang over the roads and tell traffic whether to go or not as red lights, regardless of what color they are at a given moment. This caused some confusion a few years back when we were giving directions to some family from Michigan. "Wait, you want us to drive through the red light? Isn't that illegal?" That's because they call them traffic lights. We had similar trouble driving around up there, where street signs mentioned that you could only turn from the center lane. On a 7-lane highway, it took us a few missed turns before we realized that they meant what we call the turn lane. This is the stuff mildly amusing family anecdotes are made of.

Once you get past that, though, it stops being so amusing and starts getting unnerving. Did you know that Wikipedia has been edited 11,751 times over the spelling of Brazil? They spell it Brasil there. And someone has "corrected" the entry over ten thousand times changing an inconsequential detail that doesn't really have a "right" answer. Source

That source page has lots of examples of time being wasted over the tiniest of details, but it gets worse when we start drawing the lines and pitching the tents over similarly meaningless details.

 

This is Sean Lock. He's a British comedian, something you may remember I'm quite fond of. He has a joke about how British English is being corrupted by American English, in the form of people going into a Starbucks and saying "Can I get a cup of coffee?" instead of the 'correct' "Can I have a cup of coffee?" I get that it's a joke. I'm not complaining that he did a joke I don't like. I'm concerned that the reason that joke works so well is because people think he's right. People think there's a real and valuable thing to protect there. We use different words in the same language in America than they use in Britain, or Australia, or other places. But they're different. It doesn't mean one of us is wrong and really needs to change to the other way. It certainly doesn't mean we need to be prepared to wage passive-aggressive insult wars with everyone who's different. Go read a YouTube comments page and count how many arguments start over someone saying something perfectly reasonable but with a misspelled word. Watch how nasty it gets from there.

 

There's too much hate in the world. People used to pick up guns and go to war over who owned which patch of land. It's less violent, but just as destructive to have people pick up insults and hurl them back and forth over who can't speak the one true language properly. It's so common, so brutish, and so accepted. You don't usually get those three adjectives on the same topic.

 

I don't know what the solution is here. Why are people in different parts of the country, or different countries, ready to divide and conquer over the right word? Why, if not that, are they willing to spend hour after hour mercilessly editing and re-editing to make sure their version is the final version? It is dividing us into antisocial, mental fortress-bugs as much as social movers once feared. Why do we want to pull away from each other? Why will take any excuse, no matter how small, to cut each other apart from ourselves?

 

If you know, make sure you spell the answer correctly.

Personal: Lowering the Bar

I am writing today a different person from who I was a few months back. I've changed jobs, and no longer work nights, and my world has expanded from its little three-square-mile patch of existence into a much larger patch of existence. A change of scenery has had no effect on my mood so far. I want to talk today about the effects of raising the bar, and about those moments that give life fullness, meaning, and joy, and especially why you shouldn't have them too early.

These aren't accomplishments of mine, so they're not something I can take great pride in, but they're experiences I've had. Most of them were engineered, directly or indirectly, by my mom. We didn't have a lot of money growing up, but she was determined that I be a well-rounded person with a lot of experience to draw on. She pushed me into the Chattanooga Boys' Choir, which is a professional boys' choir in Chattanooga, Tennessee. It tours both nationally and internationally, and gave me some amazing performance opportunities, all before I could even drive. I missed most of a summer band program going into my freshman year of high school because I was out on my third and final tour with them.

She also pushed me into 4-H, and as much as I hated it at the time, it was probably the best decision I ever had taken out of my hands. I learned more useful things in my peripheral association with 4-H than I did in all my years of formal education. The bar was set very high for me at a very early age, and I usually met the challenge.

One quite memorable experience had almost nothing to it – pure dumb luck, I suppose. My college was hosting a Nobel Prize nominated poet from Nigeria and I knew both the professor whose house he was staying at and the professor who had invited him to come speak, and as a result, I got to meet him in person at the little get-together they were having after his lecture. I wasn't the only student there, but I got a little more personal treatment than I really deserved. As a favor to my professor, he agreed to come to our class the next day and read the poem that had earned him the notice of the Nobel committee. He read it out to us, and as I was sitting there thinking about it with the rest of the class, he finished, and he looked up and our eyes met, and he said “Now, you.”

Words still fail me. In seven years since it happened, I cannot describe the emotional height I had reading that poem TO THE MAN WHO WAS ALMOST GIVEN A MILLION DOLLARS FOR WRITING IT. I was exhilarated, anxious, nervous, and all of those other words to a degree I can't really name. It ranks right up there with my first kiss and the day I was baptized. And when I finished reading he gave me a small round of applause, which the rest of the class joined in, and I was so drained from only a minute's reading that I thought I was going to pass out in my chair.

I was twenty years old when that happened.

I am now 28 years old, and here are just a few of the experiences I've already had -

I've traveled all over the country, including to Alaska, where I stayed up all night on the summer solstice and watched the sun not set.

I've traveled to England, where we saw the Queen Mother, who got into her car and almost ran over our accompanist. Royalty always have the right of way in England.

I've written two novels.

I've performed in two operas and one touring Broadway musical.

I've met four or five published authors and talked about their work with them.

I've seen most of the works of Norman Rockwell.

I've swum with dolphins, and also petted sharks.

I've been to Disney World so many times I had the layout memorized when I was 13.

I've been camping in the Tennessee wilderness and escaped from a bear and a scary old man, on separate occasions.

I've taken photographs of Big Ben, the Statue of Liberty, Pike's Peak, and the World Trade Center when the twin towers were still standing.

I've sung on national television with a contemporary gospel music star.

I've met a Nobel Prize nominee, a CEO, two congressmen, three TV stars, and seen one ex-president playing tennis.

 

I rode in one of the first electric cars ever manufactured.

I've eaten fish and chips in London, baked beans in Boston, pizza in New York, crawfish in Louisiana, cheese steak in Philadelphia, lobster in Maine, and barbecue in Memphis.

I've clawed my way back to functionality from a crippling mental illness.

I've paid my respects to the Unknown Soldiers and broken a known one's collarbone when he wanted to see which of us was stronger.

Now, at 28, I'm living on my own, working my job, and generally trying to figure out where to go from here.

Where do you go from here? That's a list of things to do before you die, not before you turn thirty. What can life offer me that can possibly compare to what I've already had? How do you go from a list like that and work upwards? I think perhaps I have to accept that I've probably passed my prime. Life from here is mostly about paying the bills for the good time I had.

I don't have the right to sing the blues. I've had a good life. Now what am I supposed to do to pass the time till my clock finally runs out?

Personal, Philosophical, and Political: Educating the Next Generation

I don't have kids, but I have noticed that there has been a shift in social consciousness recently that's been very negative towards parents, teachers, and other caregivers. Part of it is the pedophilia scare. Part of it is the anti-discipline crusade. Most of it comes down to what George Carlin termed "Child worship" - the idea that kids are pure and perfect and we ought to encourage and support whatever they want to do instead of trying to make them into little versions of us.

There are several problems with this attitude in application, and there are plenty of people willing to explain those problems, in language more emotional than I'm prepared to publish.  What I'd like to do is list some of the things I think the next generation needs to be taught, by teachers, parents, and all the rest of us adults in their region of influence. It's not my responsibility as a single, childless person to try to parent a child or to give parenting advice to a parent. But it is my responsibility, as a human, as an American, as a Christian, and most importantly as an adult to model the behavior I want to see in others and to explain to people who ask why I do what I do, and why I do it that way.

These are the things I want kids to learn -

1. You are special. Cynical people will tell you you're not, and they're wrong. Naïve people will tell you that's enough, and they're wrong too. You are not unique. There are other people in the world similar to you, but no one just like you. You can do things other people can't, or can do things better than other people can. But being special isn't enough. You can't just say "I'm special" and expect people to give you whatever you want, or even what you need. It's up to you to figure out what makes you special and find some way to use that to better yourself and those around you. If you don't do anything with your specialness, it stops being special.

2. Nothing is always right or always wrong. You can't judge things without context. Sometimes you won't know what is right, and maybe there's no way you can. Sometimes you have to accept that you just don't know the answer.

3. There is a difference in someone doing things you don't like and someone being a bad person.

4. You will not always do better or worse than anyone else. It's natural that you will compare your own state to the state of the people around you, but you shouldn't put a lot of importance on your observations. Sometimes the people you think aren't doing as well as you have done much better in the past, or will do much better in the future, and vice-versa. People are successful and unsuccessful in different quantities at different times. Also, this doesn't mean that any of the people you compare yourself to are any better or worse than you are.

5. You need to decide for yourself what constitutes success and failure, and also what degrees of each you're willing to live with for the short term. You also need to know what society considers a success and a failure, and to be prepared for harsh criticism if your standards are different. Criticism doesn't mean you should change, but it is a cost you have to pay to do things your own way.

6. People will lie to you all the time. Sometimes because they want something from you, sometimes just to be mean, sometimes as a reflex without even thinking about it. You won't always know which is which. Try not to rely on information you can't verify, and try not to make decisions based solely on what other people tell you.

7. People can change, but they won't unless they want to and think they need to, and even then there's a lot of work involved. People who want to change usually try and fail many times, but if they never stop trying they will eventually succeed. "Wanting to" isn't the same as trying, either. Acknowledging the need for change is important, but doesn't usually cause the change on its own.

8. Don't be afraid to chase your dreams, but remember you can't chase all of them, and some of them won't come true no matter what. Does your dream seem unreasonable? If you want it, go for it anyway. If it doesn't work out, try again. If it doesn't work that time, try a different approach. But if it seems like it never works, no matter what, then you should probably let go and chase a different dream.

9. A lot of times, people will present you with choices limited to two extremes. Usually, the more emotional the issue, the more simple they want the extremes to seem. It's almost never true. Remember, if the right choice is easy, people don't argue about it. If they're arguing, it's not because one is right and one is wrong. It's because they both think they're right, and really there may be more than one good answer or even no good answer at all.

10. Most difficult things in life aren't tests, challenges, or secret riddles disguised as problems. They're just difficult. Most things worth having are difficult to get. That's why people want them.

11. There's nothing wrong with being idealistic, but there's a difference in being idealistic and being naïve. Idealists find something they want to change about the world, talk about it, come up with a plan to make it happen, work the plan, solve problems to the plan as they arise, and keep working and re-working until they make their vision a reality. Naïve people find something they want to change about the world, talk about it, and then pretend they already have it.

12. There's nothing wrong with being cynical, either, and while it is likely to make you smarter, it's not likely to make you happier.

13. People have a right to be wrong. If you disagree with someone, even if you're right, most of the time you're better off letting them be wrong than trying to change them. Also, most people will say they see the world differently than they really do. They will say they see it the way they wish they saw it. You'll never make any progress arguing with them.

14. Most of the people who get what they want out of life do so according to a time-tested and nearly foolproof formula - you have to have natural talent, you have to develop that talent into a useful skill, you have to have a workable plan for that skill, you have to work really hard, and you have to be really lucky. Most people will acknowledge everything but the luck.

15. You should learn where to draw the line on the following things. They are all gray areas with no absolute answer, and wherever you draw it, you will run into someone who disagrees with you eventually. You should know the differences in:

quitting and accepting defeat and moving on
persisting and uselessly banging your head against a wall
telling someone the truth, telling someone what they want to hear, and telling someone something that's unnecessarily cruel
what is right and what you want; and vice versa
winning and not losing; and vice versa
chasing a dream and tilting at a windmill
being cautious and being cowardly
being brave and being foolhardy
being successful and being respectable
being successful and having prestige
being feared and being respected
being feared and being loved
being accepted and being tolerated
loving someone and liking someone
friends and contacts
hurting someone and harming someone
encouraging someone, criticizing someone, and helping someone
living with a purpose and living without one

16. Most importantly, you should know that you are responsible for you. It's increasingly popular to find something, a concept, an illness, a group, a person, a policy, an adversary, etc for all the problems in life. The truth is problems exist for everyone, everywhere, all the time, and they always have. They're not the same, and they're not all the same degree of severity, but they're always there. You will never be happy if you wait for them to go away, and especially not if you wait for someone to take them away. You have to make your own choices and accept the consequences of them. Bad things will happen to you that are not your fault, but if you just wait for them to get better, or for someone to make them better for you, they become your fault. You must either make them better or decide how to proceed in spite of them.

Personal and Religious: Maybe I Finally Get It

“Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in Heaven.” - Matthew 5:16

I've thought for years about that verse, and that the concept of personal ministry begins with that idea. Nobody ever converts people by scolding them and telling them how awful they are, although that technique is still popular no matter how ineffective it is. I've always thought the only effective way to lead someone to Christ is to show them that there's something in being a Christian that you just don't have otherwise. No matter how righteous your behavior, and no matter what good you do in the world, if you can't make it visible that it's only because God lives in you, you won't save any souls.

Therefore, I reasoned, my principle duty as a Christian is to live a life that makes Christianity look attractive to others, and makes following Jesus look like a good idea and a desirable choice in life. That's caused me a lot of consternation because I'm generally not a happy person, and I'm not good at hiding it. If I couldn't be happy in Christ, then how could I convince anyone else that they could? And as I pointed out in a previous entry, if I was so miserable following God and only did what the Bible tells me because I feel like I have to (and usually hate it even while I'm doing it), then what good was I going to be, leading others to the same burden I have to carry?

It now occurs to me I may have been interpreting the verse and its application wrong all along. As I've also pointed out in another entry, a few years back when I realized how unhappy I was I started changing things in my life to fix it. Over the past four years I've changed nearly everything. I've put down all the bad habits I picked up in my college years, changed my diet, picked up my regular exercise routine, and all the other stuff I mentioned. Now I'm beginning to see that my most recent depressed/angry period may have been exacerbated by the fact that all that stuff I changed in an effort to be happy didn't work. Really, all I've changed in potentially lengthening my lifespan with healthier behavior is that I'm going to be a miserable git for a lot longer than I previously anticipated, and that's depressing on its own.

But, through all my struggles, and with everything else I've tried to change, my faith is the only thing I haven't given up. I've looked for ways I might be able to, and I haven't found any. No matter how I feel, whether I'm angry, sad, frustrated, or hopeless, I've never been able to let go of God. Maybe that's the way I need to look at personal ministry – I can't make a life for God look like something that's fun to do and a path to happiness and fulfillment. But I can make sure people know that I'm willing to give up whatever I have to for health and happiness, except God. My faith is the only thing in my life I can't live without. That is the light I shine.

Single Issue: The Four Whys of Conspiracy Theories



All images used without permission, because permission is the only thing you can't find online.

I don't believe in any conspiracy theories unless you count the neo-conservatives. I know everyone defends their own irrationality, but I think the neo-conservatives don't count as a conspiracy theory because they're pretty open and honest about who they are, what they believe, and how they want to reshape America. As scary as they are, I mean the kind that don't really have evidence to back them up, like the idea that the moon landing was faked, the government is secretly trying to kill us, the pyramids were built by aliens, etc.

They are a hobby of mine, though. I have an entire collection of 2012 Doomsday videos I downloaded just for fun. I spend a lot of time watching videos on everything from ghosts to Illuminati-based theories, and I used to wonder, why do people believe things like this? How do people not only believe things this stupid, but proudly push them out there to convince others? After countless reviews of the videos, talks with the true believers, and attempts to at least raise the shadow of skepticism in the world, I've come up with four motives at the foundation of every theory, either in concept or promotion.

1. Genuine Craziness Seeking a Common Bond

For reasons science doesn't understand yet, one of the most common delusions of people subject to delusions is being contacted by aliens. I believed that myself when I was nine. Because I was a kid, people thought it was cute. If it suddenly overtook me now, people would realize I was crazy. The only people who wouldn't think so were people who also thought they had been contacted by aliens. If you've ever heard stories from people who claim that, you probably noticed that there are usually some vague things they all have in common (they always seem to happen at night, to somebody who's alone and geographically isolated, who is usually contacted by more than one being who appear out of nowhere, you get the idea) and there are a lot of details that don't always add up. For instance, the vague facial traits of most aliens in these experiences are almost universal, but height, build, skin tone, other physical characteristics, as well as details about the space ship if there is one, all vary enormously.

What's more, if you ask someone about the details of the story, they change over time, usually more and more change as time goes by. But they don't realize their stories don't line up. They usually don't even remember the previous version of events. That's another trait common to delusional behavior – since the brain is effectively creating a false memory, it also deletes memories that don't match the current version.

Get enough people with the same type of experiences together, at a UFO convention or on the Internet, and they start to compare details. Some of them get eliminated, some of them don't, some of them divide into separate theories. Looking at the 2012 Doomsday theories, for example, the predicted cause and effects of the end of the world were almost never the same. Some of the predictions included:

A celestial body was going to appear out of nowhere and crash into the earth

Aliens who bred humans into existence were going to come back and kill us

Some sort of energy pulse from space was going to wipe out the planet

There was no agreement on any details. What was the celestial body? A comet? A rogue planet? A brown dwarf? I heard all of these and more, and some variants that combined others, such as the idea that it was going to be a rogue planet carrying the alien overlords back into contact with Earth. But all of these mismatched details are subject to change or be ignored, because the root delusion is the same. Finding other people who believed “the same thing” is a very powerful internal force. Finding a justification that YOU were right all along is pretty strong motivation. If the facts get mangled up a bit to make that happen, it usually doesn't matter, and the people who don't believe you are (part of/victims of) the conspiracy to keep the evidence hidden.

2. People With Something to Gain

At the risk of oversimplifying, people will lie to you if it benefits them. What lie they're willing to tell you varies, but that quasi-rhetorical question “Why would he lie to me?” can usually be answered with “Because he wants your money.” In the Internet age, attention is worth at least as much as money. We've had three mass shootings in America in the past two years, one on Arizona, one in Colorado, and one in Connecticut, that were all intended to get attention. If there are people willing to kill randomly picked strangers for it, you know there are people willing to do less despicable things for it.

The most common manifestation of this reason is somebody who's either trying to (sell something to/win the admiration of) the people in the genuinely crazy group. The second most common is someone at the origin trying to profit from a no-pretext-of-reality work of fiction (like Loose Change or The Da Vinci Code) that gets its fictional context removed by someone looking just for the attention.

I should point out here that there's no such thing as “just” a cry for attention. When it works, they do it again. When it doesn't, they do something bigger next time. Neither ignoring nor indulging them will fix anything. The only solution is to address the underlying problem with that person. Or shoot them first, depending on your point of view.

People who stand to profit one way or another from conspiracy theories usually don't stick to just one, and they work a lot harder to find things that look like evidence and make subsequent “facts” up to support their theories than delusional people do. When you believe because you believe, you don't need proof. When you're trying to sell something, you need to give the buyer an incentive.

A lot of JFK conspiracy theories hinge on some letters written back and forth between the CIA (or FBI depending on the theory) and Lee Harvey Oswald. In the sixties, with the Cold War still raging impotently, the Soviets had some of their best forgers write those letters. Why? They had something to gain from stirring up distrust. They also had millions of dollars in resources and effectively limitless manpower to put into doing so. Of course their product convinced a few people. Apple computers was able to sell an iPhone that doesn't make calls as an iPad Mini. You can convince people of nearly anything if you work hard enough.

With so many people out there either creating or repeating things, more and more people get convinced. If you want a good, modern example, and don't mind some disturbing imagery, look at some of the evidence out there for Slender Man. It's so popular, it was the top suggested result when I entered just the letters “sl” into an image search. Slender Man, if you haven't heard of him, is a modern urban legend bogeyman that was deliberately created as such. I really like it as a case study because you can still see the exact moment and place it was created.

 

The Origin of Slender Man on SomethingAwful.com

Now look around out there and see how many people have already been convinced he's real.

3. People Want to Believe

I've said before that people have an innate need to believe in things. Faith and fear are different sides of the same instinctive coin. We need to believe in something bigger than we are, and we're usually scared of things that are bigger than we are. As long as there are governments, there will be people who don't trust them. Give them a good, sound reason that supports their instinctive need and they'll never let it go.

These days, cynicism rules all public communication. People will tell you they don't believe something like there's a prize for doing so. Many of us have become so insecure about the concept of belief, we have to constantly reassure ourselves and others that we're not gullible idiots and we don't believe the lies the rest of the world does. Sadly, there's a belief system and a market just for that.

Conspiracy theories provide a "faith free" way to satisfy our faith need, because the delusion they center around is usually one of distrust. Where religion provides a place for each and every one of us who follows the religion faithfully, conspiracy theories provide a place for everyone who believes in them, no matter what the ubiquitous THEY say. THEY are just stupid. THEY are blind to the truth. If THEY opened their eyes and looked around, THEY would see the truth as clearly as YOU do. Look at the type of person who usually expounds on their conspiracy theory publicly. For example, the woman I've heard argue the most fervently that Obama is a Muslim and part of an Islamist movement to seize control of the government is the same woman who also insisted the human spine has only four bones in it because it was an answer on a game show. People want to believe in secret information only they and their fellow believers have the sense to spot. They're not crazy, or even all that stupid, but they're insecure about their knowledge of the world, and end up having to make some of it up from time to time if they want to function.


4. Good Old-Fashioned Envy

This one took me a while to see. One of the most popular conspiracies has to do with the goverment, business, religion, the entertainment world, and nearly any other source of authority you can find. The idea is that people get into power because of some secret network of other people in power, and that you can't really accomplish anything unless you're part of that network because they're so intent on keeping the rest of us down. Part of the reason it was hard to see this for what it was is that it is partially true. No matter what area of influence you're in, there are always people at the top. They usually didn't get there by playing by the same rules as everyone else, and they don't want anyone else taking their power away from them. Sad, but true.

You can't get to the top of any field by just hard work and ability. It also takes quite a bit of luck, and a competitive spirit. You have to be willing and able to take out your competition to advance, and the higher you want to go, the more competitive (and lucky) you have to be. Both of those can be turned in your favor if you have friends who are already up there willing to help you. The result is that the top tier of any power struggle is only occupied by the people who did the worst stuff without getting caught and/or had help from people who did the same.

The thing is, we should be able to recognize the competitive nature of the world without having to read some sort of supernatural element into it. Most of the New World Order/Illuminati/Masonic conspiracies have some sort of Satanic pact worked into them. The ones that don't frequently involve that old stand-by, space aliens. Secretly inhuman lizard-people of possibly extra-terrestrial origin make up a few as well. It's depressing that most of us will never be what we dreamed, and it's harsh to realize that it's because the world is competitive and there's only so much awesomeness to go around. Quite a few of us judge ourselves as failures because we didn't get what we wanted, or more futilely, we didn't get what someone else got. A lot of times we want some excuse for our failure. The other guy got lucky, worked harder, and stabbed everyone else in the back seems like a valid excuse to me. The people who believe these theories go a little further - we never had a chance, because we didn't have whatever supernatural abilities the powerful exploited to get what they have.

While I can understand that position, I don't like it, and I am opposed to spreading it around, because it encourages people to give up without trying. Your life may never be what you think it should, but you can always work a little harder to make it better. If you're unhappy with your life, you have the responsibility for trying to improve it. It's not up to whoever you say victimized you to fix your problems. You can always do better next time. Failure is inevitable, but it never becomes permanent until you stop trying. I don't like competition myself, and I'd rather end up homeless and starving than push someone else out of my way. But it's just as reprehensible to just give up and blame someone else because that's easier.

Single Issue: Fifteen Under-Exploited EDH Combos

This wasn't supposed to be a Magic blog, but then it wasn't supposed to be a recipe collection or a religious rant blog either. Oh well.

I wanted to throw out 15 combos I'm surprised I don't see used more in EDH games. If you don't know what an EDH game is, you can find the official information on it here. If you don't know what Magic: the Gathering is or don't want to read about it, you're in the wrong place.

This post will feature some copyrighted material. My use of it should be protected under the same sort of laws that allow for fanfictions and other fan tribute creations. The name Magic: the Gathering, the mana symbols, the card templates and designs, set names, setting names, card names, and all major character names (if I've mentioned any) are copyright 1993-2013 Wizards of the Coast.

Also, some of these combos are not original. So if you think you've seen this somewhere else before, you may well be right.

15. Thalakos Library

 

Library of Leng with Thalakos Scout

 

Effect - Retrievable creature, no maximum hand size, the ability to toss stuff into your graveyard or library as needed.

 

Combo Type - Resource Management with a decent creature.

 

Pros - Thalakos Scout is hard to block and with the Library hard to kill

Both cards are fairly cheap and easy to get

You only need one color and three mana to make it work

Provides a constant threat that is hard to answer, allowing you to build up your board position

 

Cons - It's still vulnerable to counterspells and any wipe effect that hits both creatures and artifacts

It doesn't win you the game on its own

The Library is open to removal even if the Scout isn't

 

14. Haunted Hanna

 

Hanna, Ship's Navigator with Haunted Crossroads

 

Effect - Easy retrieval of three permanent types.

 

Combo Type - Resource Management

 

Pros - Runs with only three or four mana

Not especially weak to counter magic or removal - you only need one to watch the other

"Budget" recursion

Doesn't give your opponents an "I have to kill that now!" level of threat

 

Cons - Requires three different colors of mana to play and use

Doesn't win you the game on its own

Has the potential to lock you up if you don't have a good draw effect

 

13. Transcendence of Punishment

 

Transcendence with Leyline of Punishment

 

Effect - You can't be killed with damage. Nobody can gain life or prevent damage, and you don't need to.

 

Combo Type - Shield Effect

 

Pros - You're effectively immortal

Fairly easy to assemble

Removes all drawback from spells that damage everyone indiscriminately

 

Cons - You have to wait a while to play Transcendence - you have to be below 20 life to use it

Doesn't protect you against Commander damage

Removing either once you get them out might kill you

Doesn't provide a win condition on its own

 

12. Concerted Protection



 

Guardian of the Guildpact, Enemy of the Guildpact, and Concerted Effort

 

Effect - All your creatures have protection from all colors.

 

Combo Type - Shield Effect

 

Pros - The protection starts over at the beginning of each upkeep

May make your creatures unblockable and unkillable

Budget combo

Fairly easy to assemble

 

Cons - Doesn't help against mass removal

Doesn't address colorless effects

Not a static effect. Your opponents have a chance to respond to the protection each upkeep.

Assuming you have the winning attack, you'll need one turn rotation before you can attack with your invincible army.

11. Rooftop Conspiracy

Rooftop Storm with Conspiracy

Effect - Free creatures

Combo Type - Free creatures

Pros/Cons - All your creatures are Zombies, which opens them up to a lot of other enhancements. Death Baron and Noxious Ghoul affect all your creatures, but then so do Extinction and Slayer of the Wicked. You have to craft your strategy around it, but it should be easy to do.

10. Mirror, Mirror, Mirror, Mirror

Mirror-Sigil Sergeant, Followed Footsteps, and Paradox Haze

Effect - Each of your turns, you get two upkeeps, and each upkeep you copy Mirror-Sigil Sergeant at least twice.

Combo Type - Token Production

Pros - The Paradox Haze and Followed Footsteps trigger Mirror-Sigil Sergeant's own ability.
Even the first double upkeep, you'll get three Sergeants the first time and then four more the second. You go from one to eight immediately, and the next turn it goes to 36.

Cons - No matter how many you have, they're all the same creature, and most of them are tokens, so they're open to even more mass removal spells than usual.
You have one turn rotation before you can attack with any of them.
You put a bulls-eye on your combo and yourself until it's dealt with.

9. Spirit Squall

Squallmonger with Spirit Link

Effect - Damage to all flyers and players, gaining you life.

Combo Type - Creature Enhancement

Pros - Cheap and easy to get and use
Even if it's destroyed, you can massively alter the board state at instant speed first.
Squallmonger's "any player" clause might get opponents to hurt each other for a little bit first.
You can use it without having to build a deck around it.

Cons - Dies to anything

8. Vigorous Wumpus

 

Thrashing Wumpus, Vigor, and Charisma/Basilisk Collar

Effect - Version 1, Steal everything and pump it. Version 2, Kill everything and gain a lot of life.

Combo Type - Creature Combos

Pros/Cons - You can use the Wumpus and Vigor on their own to buff your army. If you go the Charisma route, you also get everyone else's stuff. If you go the Basilisk Collar route, you'll kill everyone else's stuff. You will also kill your own Vigor (and all your own creatures if you activate the Wumpus more than once), but only your creatures will survive. Apart from the obvious removal problems, if you use Charisma and they destroy just that, everyone gets all their creatures back with the counters on them. Also, this uses a lot of color-specific mana in at least two different colors, so you might have a hard time getting it to work in the first place.

7. Unnatural Mirror

Unnatural Selection with Spirit Mirror

Credit for this combo gos to Eric Kretzschmar

Effect - Pay 1 to kill anything.

Combo Type - Abuse of Rules

Pros - Kills nearly anything at instant speed
Ignores renegeration (You just destroy it again)
Easy to use

Cons - Does not work on shroud, hexproof, pro blue, pro white, or indestructible creatures.
Doesn't win the game on its own and does make you a target.

6. Hazy, Lazy Manta

Mistmeadow Witch, Torpor Orb, and Wormfang Manta

 

Effect - Infinite turns

Combo Type - Infinite turns

Pros - Fairly easy to use and maintain
Another budget combo. These aren't hard cards to get

Cons - Your turns don't stack in the queue. You have to repeat it each time.
Wormfang Manta needs seven mana and is really easy to kill in response to you blinking it.
Torpor Orb is a target anyway, and if any of your opponents destroy it, the rest of it becomes useless.

5. Squirrel Craft

Earthcraft with Squirrel Nest (plus a basic land)

Effect - Infinite 1/1 Squirrel tokens and next turn, infinite mana

Combo Type - Token Production, Infinite stuff

Pros/Cons - Works in one color, off three mana. The biggest drawback is that no matter how many you make, all but the last one is tapped. If you had a mass untap effect (like Vitalize) and a mass haste effect (like Concordant Crossroads) you can win that turn, but that takes a lot of luck or some fetch effects. Also, they're both enchantments, and green has no way to fetch enchantments on its own. If you get really lucky, you can win the game your third turn. Otherwise, you're going to have to be able to survive a turn rotation wearing a bulls-eye.

4. Freed Mana

Argothian Elder with Freed from the Real

Effect - Infinite Mana

Combo Type - Infinite Mana

Pros - The cheapest, easiest infinite mana combo in print. All you need is two lands, one of which has to produce blue.

Cons - You still need something to do with the mana.

3. Pact Hive

Hive Mind with any/all of the Futuresight Pacts

Effect - Win the Game

Combo Type - Kill Combo

Pros - Given the color restrictions of EDH, you're almost certain to kill someone. You might well kill everyone (especially if you tap out and cast Exhaustion before the pact). Also you can make it work in any color combination as long as one of them is blue.

Cons - Some of the pacts are hard to use, and Hive Mind is a rules problem even without any other weird interactions. The black one requires each player to have a separate target for it to work. The blue one not only requires each player to have a separate target, but it counters a spell. Everyone just picks one that's already been targeted to stop it from resolving. Also, if anyone manages to pay the upkeep cost, you have to have something to follow up, and you'll still have Hive Mind to worry about.

2 and 1. The Cereal Combos - Lucky Charms and Fruity Pebbles
I'm including these together because a lot of their parts are interchangeable and they do the same thing. As a side note, I don't know where the names came from. These are old combos people were using when I was in high school. I thought they were all well-known, but I've learned otherwise.

Fruity Pebbles

Goblin Bombardment, Enduring Renewal, and Memnite or Ornithopter (either)

Lucky Charms 

Aluren, Furious Assault, and Horned Kavu

 

 

Effect - Win the Game

 

Combo Type - Kill Combos

 

Pros - Both of these result in instant kills, and both only need four mana to work. Also, Lucky Charms in particular doesn't require you to have that creature. It also works with Shrieking Drake, Man-o'-War, Cavern Harpy, or anything else that can bounce itself as soon as it comes in.

 

Cons - There are a few ways to shut them down. You are re-casting creatures ad infinitum, so counter magic will break them both. Instant creature removal works on Lucky Charms but not Fruity Pebbles. Enchantment removal kills both. Any effect that punishes you when you cast a spell will hurt quite a bit. An untargetable player can't be killed this way. Also, Aluren affects everyone, not just you, so your opponents may have some tricky cheap creatures they can drop and screw up everything.





Political: Guns and Banks - Taking Scapegoating To a New Level

I'm absolutely disgusted by how much the Newtown shooting last month has been co-opted for political gain in this country. The sad fact is that it was a horrible tragedy, but the school did everything it could have. They had a security camera system, they had intruder drills, and they had locked the doors by the time the shooter arrived. They evacuated the school according to a rehearsed method into a pre-arranged meeting place, and everything they practiced went through according to plan. It just wasn't enough. They did everything right, and it might have saved more lives than we know, but it didn't save the 26 people he got to before the plan could be put into motion.

What we don't want to hear is, under the circumstances it couldn't have gone any better than it did. This simply couldn't have been prevented any better. What we are hearing is that if only the shooter hadn't been able to get his hands on the guns, it wouldn't have happened. That if only there weren't any guns he knew about anywhere between New Jersey and Connecticut, he wouldn't have been able to come up with some other sort of plan and would have gone about his business like everyone else that day.

There are people in this country who want guns outlawed no matter what it takes to make that happen. I acknowledge that guns are responsible for a lot of deaths, and more importantly they don't have any other purpose. Guns were invented to make it easier to kill things, and every improvement and modification to them over the years has been to make them even better at it. They're not useful for anything else. But I really don't buy that if the shooter had been unable to get his hands on a gun that day he would've just climbed in his car and driven to work. He had snapped. He was going to do something that day, and there really wasn't any stopping him. Blaming the tool he used to do it is a stretch. It just so happens that it's a stretch some people were already trying to make anyway.

On a different subject, do you know how the current recession started in this country? I can remember the first market crash in the spring of 2007 because I was a senior in college at the time. One of my friends who was about to graduate with a finance degree was watching the international reports and told me the markets had just crashed in China and we needed to sell most or all of our stock immediately because it was about to happen over here too. He was right. By noon that day, the markets had plunged about a thousand points and kept falling all week. It seems that a lot of the banks backing the market had been counting on that not happening, because they didn't have any other source of income because they were overburdened with loans people weren't paying.

The story of the bad debt begins a lot further back though, in the late 1990s. Prior to that, there were some really stringent laws about what constituted a bank, what sort of bank it was, and what it could do. Savings, lendings, checking, and credit were all treated quite a bit differently than they are now. Your local bank where you had a savings or checking account couldn't also issue you a credit card, for example, and businesses didn't have their own financing divisions. Nowadays you can get a credit card from department stores and gas stations. That was illegal twenty years ago. The change in the law meant that credit was a lot more available than it had been. The result was that people used it a lot more.

The other change in the law at about the same time was in regard to loan approval. Basically, banks used a person's credit rating to determine how likely they were to be able to pay back a loan, and set an interest rate and assessed a monthly payment based on each individual person's record with debt. Somehow, the government decided that this process was discriminatory against particular races. I don't want to make any claims about skin color having anything to do with ability to pay back loans, but the result was that banks were basically forbidden from denying people loans, even if a person's credit indicated there was no way they could pay it back. What's more, the banks weren't allowed to tell people that they didn't think they could pay a loan back and maybe it wasn't a good idea for them to get one. The only thing they were allowed to do is charge whatever interest rate seemed fair based on the person's credit. This ended up producing the now-dreaded adjustable mortgage. In order to allow for the increasing number of people out there who couldn't pay off their mortgages, and still basically forbidden to refuse one, they had to charge higher and higher rates just to keep enough money on hand to make the next loan.

After the first market crash in 2007, it became more and more obvious that the banks couldn't keep up with the staggering number of defaults. Mortgage companies in particular were selling their loans to whoever they could just to try to keep their own companies open, and even repossessing the houses they'd lent the money on wasn't helping anymore because nobody could afford to get another mortgage to buy the house back from the bank. Then from somewhere, we got the idea that all this had happened on purpose. We got the image of the greedy banker, sitting in his office, smoking a cigar and drinking brandy and making plans to get everyone's houses by loaning them money.

Who is a banker? Is the teller at the window a banker? She's just a low-level employee, like me. Her boss, the branch manager, is no different than the manager of a McDonalds or Payless Shoes. They don't make the rules. They're just in charge of making sure everyone else there follows them. What about the middle managers who balance all the accounts and make sure there's enough money in one area to cover all the debts the banks in that area have? They're salaried people, but they're still just paper-pushers and don't get any more money when the bank records a higher profit. So it must be the top-level executives. After all they're the ones that get the huge bonuses all the time. They must be the ones who pushed all the loans onto the public. If you know anything about high-ranking executives, you know that it's all numbers and long-term management. Although they set the policies and procedure in place, they're only carrying out what they've been told to do by their board of directors, who are in turn looking at the stock price and trying to protect the interests of their shareholders. Their bonuses are awarded for how closely they follow their instructions, which, if developed correctly, should mean increased profits. So it's those greedy shareholders at the bottom of everything, huh? Who are those guys?

Holy crap, I'm one of those guys!

Seriously, I own stock in Citigroup, effectively making me one of the people responsible for the price of the stock and the decisions that people make to keep it up. Am I a banker? Am I the guy everyone hates? I'm just an assistant manager in a gas station. I wasn't trying to take anyone's house. I don't even own one myself.

The problem gets a little clearer - what's happened here is that we the public borrowed a bunch of money we couldn't pay back from a bunch of banks that weren't allowed to say no, and then when it all went to pieces we were quick to blame a fictional construct for it so we didn't have to face the reality that it was our own fault. Guns similarly make a good scapegoat beause they're inanimate objects.

We've blamed all our problems on things that either don't really exist or aren't alive so we can face the reality before us secure in the knowledge that it's not our fault and we don't have to change anything to fix it. We're the victims here, which means it's not our responsibility to fix our lives. It's the responsibility of the bankers to quit demanding their money back and the guns to stop firing bullets at the things we point them at.

It's true AIG made the embarrassing decision not to re-schedule their conference in the Bahamas. After all, the tickets were already bought and the rooms were already rented. That money was already spent. It looked bad that the conference fell about two days after they got their bailout money from the government. But that was one bank, making one bad decision, that wasn't all that obviously bad until after the fact. Most of the rest of the idea that greedy corporations were out to plunder all they could take from the American public remains a fictional construct. Why does it exist? So we can keep irresponsibly pouring all our money into those corporations and screaming about victimization when we go broke.

The scary thing about this new level of scapegoating is that we didn't find something to blame our problems on so nobody noticed while we fix them behind the scenes. What we've moved on to is continuously blaming them on things that aren't real so we don't have to try to fix anything.