Happy Earth Day!

Wisconsin Senator Gaylord (uproarious laughter) Nelson first proposed a national day to celebrate the earth in September of 1969. The Vietnam War was wrecking Southeast Asia’s jungles, the Cuyahoga river caught fire in Cleveland, and South Carolina’s Savannah River nuclear power plant was melting down. The negative aftereffects of mass consumerism and industrialization that emerged during the end of World War II were spreading across North America like a terrible monstrous weed.

All of those events–and the other events that contributed to America’s first environmental movement–were important factors in increasing American’s awareness of the fragility of our natural environment and the long term consequences of its neglect. All of that stuff is incredibly important, but to me there is one event that stands out beyond all the rest.

The picture above was taken on the 7th of December, 1972. Colloquially called the “blue marble” picture, it is the first picture ever taken of our planet. Although this occurred after the first ”official” Earth Day, I think it was the single most important promoter of environmentalism we saw in the twentieth century.

It has since become the most widely distributed picture in human history. It reminds us that what we have is incredibly special and vibrant, but also susceptible to our carelessness. It’s difficult to frame our perspective in the universe when we have our feet firmly planted on the earth’s soil, but we exist in an incredibly precarious state. If we imperil the planet’s habitability, we have nowhere to turn. We are surrounded by a bleak inhospitable vaccum that would freeze our lungs and immediately suck the life out of us if we stepped into it for only a moment. Thinking of conservation and sustainability with that perspective tends to reorganize one’s priorities.

Imagine what it must have been like to look upon this picture for the first time back in 1972. Take some time today to view the high-res version here.

There’s only one of these. Take care of it, and have a great day.

Nixon W. Bush

Who is the worst President in the history of the United States?

OK, obviously. Let me revise the question: Who is the worst President in the history of the United States (active Presidents excluded)?

There are a few names you might be tossing around in your head. Hoover. Buchanan. Harding. But, chances are that there is one especially demonic, psychotic, megalomaniacal gargoyle that immediately leaped forward and started doing somersaults as soon as you finished reading the question.

NIXON

For years, I feel like our generation has lived in Nixon’s shadow. He was always the nadir of American politics. No one ever had anything nice to say about the former President, and he was the constant subject of ridicule for comedians and cartoonists. His physical appearance was ghastly-the demented eyes, the sagging jowls, the profuse sweating, the constant fidgeting, as if he were trying to slip out of his suit without unbuttoning anything. He spoke in a horrible guttural growl that made him sound like a gorgon with laryngitis.

Who’s Embarrassing Themselves on the Internet Today?

This is weird.

You are a trophy wife. Your husband, who is a major Broadway theater operator and a quarter century older than you, decides to divorce you. Since you signed a pre-nuptial agreement before you got married, you have no means for supporting yourself, and your future looks pretty bleak.

So, how do you make the best of a very bad situation? Post a video of yourself on YouTube, where you tearfully recount all of the abuses you’ve endured, slander your former spouses’ sexual prowess, and then call up his office and start screaming at the person on the other line!

Lama Yo Mama!

This weekend, His Holiness the Dalai Lama spoke in Seattle, and I was lucky enough to have Megan drag me along. I use the verb ‘drag’ because I was not initially inspired to attend this appearance when I first heard about it. Like any healthy skeptic, I regard most authority figures with extreme suspicion, especially when they derive their authority from a religious source. But, at the end I felt very differently about this particular devil. He had a lot of really thoughtful things to say, and I appreciated the opportunity to hear them.

The line outside the stadium snaked all the way around the block, which offered great opportunities for people watching. The evangelicals were out in full force with megaphones, signs, and t-shirts, warning all the attendees that Buddhism leads directly to eternal damnation.

The 10 Things You Should Know About John McCain

MoveOn.org just released a top ten list about John McCain that covers a few facts and connections unlikely to receive much coverage from the mainstream media. Each assertion is backed up with a hyperlink embedded within the text, so please feel free to research something if it sounds unfounded to you.

I know it’s unlikely that Hillary will receive the Dem’s nomination, but if she does, I strongly urge anyone out there who is considering a vote for McCain over Hillary to take a look at this:

High-Res Map of the U.S. Carbon Footprint

Click for larger version

From Wired Magazine…

A team of scientists has completed a carbon dioxide emissions inventory of the United States plotted down to 100-square-kilometer chunks.

That means that the NASA- and Department of Energy-funded scientists can detail emissions across all 9 million square kilometers that compose the United States. For a full explanation, check out the video that Purdue’s Kevin Gurney put together, which features a number of other excellent CO2 visualizations. Andy Revkin, the New York Times‘ environment-beat writer, put a memorable headline on a post about the video, calling it, “Breath of a Nation.”

The work, known as The Vulcan Project, has already yielded a significant discovery: Previous CO2 estimates that used population as a proxy for emissions overestimated the Northeast’s greenhouse-gas generation, while underestimating the coal-heavy Southeast’s contribution.

via Wired

How’s your Operating Thetan Level Today?

The feature story within this month’s Radar Magazine is about the Church of Scientology and the underground internet group that is taking them down. It’s interesting to see Scientologist opponents taking this tactical course, since the cult religion has been so clever about diverting criticism and using its massive resources to silence critics.

Here’s how the attacks on Scientology began (from the article):

On January 21, a video titled “Message to Scientology” appeared on YouTube. A brilliant work of agitprop, the video (embedded below) features a monotone, computer-generated voice speaking in staccato against a mesmerizing backdrop of gathering clouds. The message, which bears quoting at length, is ominous:

“Hello, Scientology. We are Anonymous. Over the years, we have been watching you. Your campaigns of misinformation, suppression of dissent, your litigious nature: All of these things have caught our eye. With the leakage of your latest propaganda video into mainstream circulation, the extent of your malign influence over those who have come to trust you has been made clear to us. Anonymous has therefore decided that your organization should be destroyed. … We are Anonymous. We are legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us.”

Within hours of the video’s posting, all hell broke loose. Almost immediately, the Church’s main website, scientology.org, went down under a distributed denial of service attack, a classic hacker technique that overwhelms a target’s website with phantom user traffic until it crashes. Scientology offices worldwide were flooded with prank phone calls and so-called black faxes—pages upon pages of blank black pages—tying up their phone lines and emptying ink cartridges. Dozens of proprietary Church documents—videos, lectures, and course materials worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in Scientology’s pay-to-pray scheme—beganshowing up on YouTube, BitTorrent, and countless websites.

Here is the video in its entirety:

You can also read the full article here.

What’s so Civil about War Anyway?

I’ve recently been watching Ken Burn’s epic documentary on the Civil War. As I’m nearing the end, I consider the following two impressions to be the biggest lessons that I have learned so far:

1. The Union’s leaders were not the visionary geniuses we sometimes consider them to have been. Lincoln was a great president, but at the time he was mired in a constant state of doubt and insecurity. The public received his Gettysburg Address with confusion and disinterest, and he was convinced that it had been a failed speech. The Emancipation Proclamation nearly backfired on him as well, when thousands of northern civilians rioted in response. He was unpopular towards the end of his first term, and he did not expect to return for a second. Union generals such as Ambrose Burnside and George McClellan made innumerable tactical blunders and provided despairingly poor leadership. Their cowardice and inept battle plans often resulted in thousands of deaths with no gain and no explanation save misjudgment. The Union’s eventual victory is quite astounding, and in some ways seems almost accidental. The people who lived through the conflict certainly did not anticipate or even expect the eventual outcome.

2. Aside from the whole “we-believe-black-people-are-property” component of their ethos, it’s pretty difficult not to fall in love with the Confederate cause. There is something incredibly romantic and compelling about the way in which secessionists spoke about their culture and their land. In a way, they sound almost like a band of Robin Hoods defending their Sherwood Forest against President Nottingham Lincoln. Colorful characters like Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Nathan Bedford Forrest seem almost as if they had sprung from the pages of an ancient Homeric epic poem. The common rebel soldier possessed a roguish wisecracking demeanor that made him considerably more likeable than his stoic but bland Union counterpart. Confederates also had an extensive spy network, which included Southern Belles who would ferry arms under their hoop skirts. There was even one woman, a debutante living in D.C., who regularly extracted secrets from the Union’s secretary of war via seductive methods!