skip to main |
skip to sidebar
April 11, 2008
We decided we would stay home today. It has
been a great week and we have both enjoyed it,
but we're ready to take a day off.
Tomorrow, I go to the State House District
Assembly to nominate democrats to run for
the State Legislature.
Our DSL was down last night and is still
down today. Hopefully, Qwest will show up
tomorrow afternoon to fix the problem. It
is frustrating not to have any Internet.
April 10, 2008
I attended three sessions today: "Voters, Delegates,
Super delegates: How We Nominate, How We Elect," "What
Politicians Need to Know About Science," and "Cuba."
Because I have been so involved in the political process
in Colorado this year I didn't learn much from this
panel. None of them were from Colorado so I, clearly,
new more about how our system works than they did!
There were three really good speakers for the 2nd panel
and they told stories about the abysmal state of
our politician's science knowledge. That having
good science advisers isn't enough if the President
and Legislators don't know enough science to
understand what their advisers are telling them.
And certainly to have a President who does not
believe in Evolution and does not understand what
a Scientific Theory is, i.e. the theory of gravity,
makes for some pretty poor policies. Some of
the things they noted was that our current model
of Health Care isn't going to work. There are
companies and one in particular who is developing
drugs for orphan diseases (like the one my brother
had). This company has developed a drug to cure
a genetic disease that has about 5000 people in
the world who have it and life with it is terrible.
The drug cures this disease, but it costs 300,000
dollars per year. There is no way our current
system can cope with that. And yet, what a
difference it makes for those few people if they
could afford it. Other problems that need work,
were brought up in other panels..the water problem,
peak oil, global warming and so on.
Finally, Cuba. It was clear none of them thought
the embargo should have been carried on for so
long. It hadn't had an inpact on Fidel and now
that Raoul is in charge it probably won't have
an inpact on him either. Although there are some
small changes being made in Cuba and bit by bit
they are changing. One speaker suggested that
having Raoul take over was much like Bush saying
that I've canceled the election and Jeb will
take over now, although Cuba does not call itself
a democracy. They also pointed out that if Cuba
were not just 90 miles away from the US, but 9000
miles, the US would have ignored it.
Apparently the old guard is changing somewhat
because the newspaper which is run by the governmnet
is starting to be critical of the government.
One of the things that Cuba is relaly proud of and
should be is that they have the largest and if not
the best a very good medical school. They train
thousands of doctors and send them all over Latin
America to set up clinics and help the poor. They
also send them to Mali which no one seems to quite
understand how Mali got included.
Another speaker noted that b 2015 Cuba will have
brought literacy to a large portion of Latin
American, performed 6 million surgeries and doesn't
that seem a better way to win minds and hearts
than using bombs?
April 9, 2008
Today I attended three panels: "Hardwired to Believe,"
"Bench the Eagle: The End of the American Empire," and
"The Real Reasons Iran is the Next Target." They were
all three interesting, but I found the first one the
most interesting. Fintan Steel whom I mentioned earlier
and is an MD molecular biologist researcher was on this
panel and said that there are interesting findings on
how genes influence our behavior including our emotions
and our tendency to be religious. He also pointed out
that even if you had a "religious gene" you might or
might not be religious because there are so many other
influences. But he is a great speaker and did have
much to say on the subject. Akim Kodderman who is a
philosophy professor also spoke, but spoke so fast it
was hard to keep up with him and for the most part,
I felt he was talking nonsense. There were two others
on the panel, one was a devout Muslim and he said that
Islam says that "people ARE in order to worship." Humans
are created to "believe." The final panelist said that
he enjoyed investigating religion and trying to determine
what is reality. He said then, that any one looking at
me would say I do not have perfect vision because I
wear glasses, but they would be wrong because, and here
he took off his glasses and showed they had no lenses.
The panelist on the 2nd panel were primarily concerned
about the lack of state-hood in our foreign policy and
that the defense department has such a huge budget and
that State has such a small budget that more and more
Foreign Policy is being taken over by Defense. It
was all pretty chilling.
And finally, Iran. The general consensus was that it
is in the plan. Cheney is determined and that, of course
it is all about oil and has been all about oil.
April 8, 2008
This morning, the first panel session I attended
ran from 11 AM to 12:20 PM. It was titled "Poverty
American-Style." This was pretty depressing. Much
of what I heard was not new i.e. the prisons are big
business and the majority of inmates are black, teen-
age pregnancy more common in the poor communities and
so forth.
One story that made my hair stand up was the following:
There is an organization called "Small Smiles." They
are among the very few organizations or private dental
practiced that take Medicaid. All of their small clients
are on Medicaid. Sounds good, doesn't it, but how do
they do it. This is not a charity. They are making
a profit. How they do it...first, the parent is not
allowed into the room where the child will be examined
and/or treated. Second, they have "production" goals.
The more patients treated and the higher the bill the
happier the organization is and the more likely the
dentist or hygienist will get a good bonus. And, finally,
what do they do to these children? They are strapped down
to a "papoose board." They take multiple x-rays; they do
root canals; they fill teeth that don't need to be filled
and on and on and on. The Carlisle group which supports
this calls it "drilling for dollars!"
There were many other examples of how the poor in the
US are being mis-treated. Much of it through the baking
of Home Land Security! Another horror story was how
a young man who blew the whistle on one of the egregious
acts of Home Land Security was railroaded into prison for
harboring his girlfriend. In the process his car was
ceased by Immigration, much like property is taken in
drug cases although the speaker was not aware of any
law passed that would allow this.
The Plenary session followed this and was titled "Why
Africa is Poor." The speaker, from Africa, described
white Colonialism and that Africa has never really
gotten past that. The western world assumes that
all the countries need to do is have a Western-style
democracy, but Africa is such a tribal continent that
Western-style democracy doesn't work and corruption
is so rampant that there is no money left to do
anything for the people.
I attended two other panels, "Foreign Policy: The Shape
of Things to Come" and "Water, Water Every Where Nor Any
Drop to Drink." They were both very well attended and
very interesting. The issue was raised about the military
in space and how since Eisenhower the policy has been, "
Space for Peace," but that is changing. Another speaker
noted how quiet all the candidates are on foreign policy
and no one seems concerned about our obscene budget for
"defense."
The one about water discussed ways of producing water such
as desalinization, but the over-all discussion was about
the coming shortage of water through out the world and
what some countries are doing about it. Much of the
discussion centered on the western US and on how much
of the fish habitat has been spoiled throughout the west.
But that the dams are finally coming down. I didn't realize
how inefficient a way to store water that is. But, clearly
here where evaporation is powerful the storage of water
above ground doesn't make sense. Laws against rain barrels
as we have in Boulder County don't make sense either. It
was a lively discussion and very relevant in our dry area.
We have had very little snow this year so we are in for
a long dry summer!
Monday, April 7, 2008
This week we are attending the Conference on World
Affairs (CWA) which is held annually on the Colorado
University (CU) campus. This is its 60th year!
I won't try and describe all the sessions we went to,
but shall share some of the highlights. Robert and
I both attended the conference and sometimes the
same session, but often we split up to hear different
panels.
Today we attended the panel "Bush Legacy: Too Early
to Tell too Late to Matter." Caroline Daniel was on
this panel. She is a journalist and has an impressive
biography, but she herself if even more impressive. I
enjoyed her sense of humor as well as her many statistics
of the firsts in the Bush administration. She had a
quote from one of Bob Woodward's books describing Bush
and his legacy, " Walks on Water, Takes on Water, Glug,
Glug." Clearly we are in the Glug, Glug stage. She
also said that the Statue of Liberty had been replaced
in the world view by the Abugrave prison.
The Keynote speech was given by Wendy Chamberlin who
was American ambassador to Pakistan on September 11,
2001. She was an excellent speaker and emphasized the
need for the US to learn much, much more about the
culture of the Mideast.
The most fun panel of the day was titled
"Out of the Closet, into the Suburbs." The panel
members were all gay and with interesting backgrounds.
Fintan Steele, the one with the lightest sense of humor,
is an MD Molecular Biologist and a very interesting guy.
The three were commenting
on how they had each, with partner, moved to the suburbs and
happily been accepted. Fintan and Emily Resh ( a gynecological
nurse) are both legally married and living in Massachusetts.
Terri Jentz lives with her partner near San Diego. Terri is
the author of a mystery book about her bicycle ride across
the country which ended in Oregon where her room mate and
fellow bike-rider, but not gay, was murdered. Her
current partner is in the process of making a film from
the book.
I found it astounding and interesting that they each
described their avoidance of anything demonstrative in
public and Emily even admitted that she and her spouse
have a cottage in Mexico which is in an idyllic setting
and they love to go there, but have never made love
there because of fear. They represent themselves as
widows and are scared to death that IF the villagers
knew they were Gay they might even be killed. Of
course the question was asked "how can it be idyllic
if you can't even make love when there?" The answer
was pretty vague and she said they had been thinking
of selling it. But they all voiced fear as being part
of their lives. That is so sad!
