America's 500th Birthday

Today is America’s 500th birthday—by one calculus, at least. We learn this from Bradley S. Klapper of the Associated Press, in an article at
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/nation/4745831.html

An obscure cartographer, Martin Waldseemueller, is credited with publishing on April 25, 1507, in St. Die, France (described as a “backwater French court”), the first map of the world naming the Western Hemisphere “America.” The map is regarded as the first “to depict a separate Western Hemisphere and a separate Pacific Ocean.”

The map named the hemisphere in honor of Amerigo Vespucci, the Italian who “discovered” the new world shortly after Columbus. Although Columbus got to the new world first, he set out thinking it was Asia he would find. When he died in 1506, he still believed that all four of his voyages had been to Asia.

Unlike Columbus, Vespucci sailed along the north and east coasts of South America and correctly identified the new world as a previously unknown land mass. Waldseemueller argued that Amerigo should be honored as the first to grasp the significance of their discovery.

As a student of Alfred North Whitehead, I was primed to pay special attention to this article. Whitehead was fond of citing Columbus as an example of the unexpected tricks and turns creativity can take. While teaching at Harvard in 1933, Whitehead found it fascinating that Columbus had started out searching for one continent, but then found another he’d never imagined.

In Adventures of Ideas Whitehead said: “Before Columbus set sail for America, he had dreamt of the far East, and of the round world, and of the trackless ocean. Adventure rarely reaches its predetermined end. Columbus never reached China. But he discovered America.”

Well, not exactly. Today’s information puts Columbus’ discovery in a much different light.

Yes, he risked his life in the conviction that the earth is a globe and if you sailed it west from Europe, you’d one day reach another continent. And he should be celebrated for being right.

Yet in the giddiness of actually finding the new land mass, Columbus was so much a prisoner of his own thought processes that he could not imagine a continent other than Asia. It took Vespucci, possibly with more information and certainly with a more accurate imagination, to truly discover “America.”

The lesson is endlessly instructive. We need to keep discovering. We need to set out courageously to seek what we hope to find. And when we say eureka, we have found it, we may be right. But it may turn out that we have not found “it” at all. And in rare and hugely important occasions, we may learn that we have been blessed to discover “infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.” (Ephesians 3:20-21).

Happy 500th birthday, America!

The Buzz and the Bees

Let's hope they're wrong. If not, this could pose a considerable quandry for several million cell phone users. This is from http://www.earthweek.com/online/ew070420/ew070420f.html

Cell Phone Signals May Cause Bee Disappearance

Studies conducted by German researchers indicate that the growing use of cell phones could in some way be responsible for the sudden disappearance of bees seen across America and parts of Europe since last fall.

A limited study conducted at Germany’s Landau University has found that bees refuse to return to their hives when mobile phones are placed nearby.

Lead researcher Dr. Jochen Kuhn said this could provide a “hint” to a possible cause of what has been termed Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).

The phenomenon has seen entire bee colonies disappear from their hives, leaving only the queen, eggs and a few immature workers.

Kuhn cautioned that his research was on how cell phone signals might affect learning, and not on CCD.

Dr. George Carlo, who headed an extensive study by the U.S. government and mobile phone industry on the hazards of mobile phone use during the 1990s, told Britain’s Independent newspaper the “possibility is real” that the use of cell phones could be contributing to CCD.

The Independent's article, actually more alarmist in tone than the one at earthweek.com, is at http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/wildlife/article2449968.ece

Bill Maher had a sarcastic yet sobering Earth Day take on this. A You Tube version is posted at http://scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/2007/04/bill_maher_on_earth_day.php

The Insanity of Arming Everyone

For a very helpful take on the insanity of arming everyone, please see today's column by Mark Morford of the San Francisco Chronicle at

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2007/04/20/notes042007.DTL&feed=rss.mmorford

Thanks to Amy for her post publicizing the column at

http://blog.myspace.com/acoyle

Obama's Small Step toward Better Gun Control

This is starting to be noticed in blogs, but it merits a lot more media attention than it’s gotten so far. Barack Obama says the circumstances of the Virginia Tech massacre warrant some common sense changes in gun laws. So far that makes him the only presidential candidate courageous enough to challenge the NRA’s lock on the national political process. It’s a small challenge, but braver than any other candidate has ventured. And the NRA has ended other political careers over less.

This AP article is posted at http://www.click2houston.com/politics/12535089/detail.html.

Obama: Gun Law Changes Needed For Mentally Ill
POSTED: 5:08 pm CDT April 19, 2007
UPDATED: 5:22 pm CDT April 19, 2007

Illinois Democrat and presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama wants stronger laws to prevent the mentally ill from buying guns.

The student who killed 32 people at Virginia Tech, Cho Seung-Hui, had a history of mental health problems but still was able to buy the two guns used in the rampage.

In an interview with the syndicated radio program "The Steve Harvey Morning Show," Obama said gun laws have to change to prevent the type of killings seen this week at Virginia Tech and on a daily basis in urban areas. The senator said "some common-sense" changes are needed.

Obama also said he wants mental health services improved to identify people with serious problems who aren't getting treatment.

Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

By the way, I agree with Charles Krauthammer’s observation today that it was tasteless and not very helpful for Obama, in an earlier impromptu speech just hours after the massacre, to remark that Cho’s violence took place in the context of other kinds of “violence” our society allows, including the “violence” of Don Imus toward the Rutger’s women’s basketball team, the “violence” of outsourcing American jobs to other countries, and the “violence” that an ineffective American foreign policy has allowed to continue against the children of Darfur. Rhetoric about these topics is appropriate for the political campaign, but connecting them with the gun violence at Virginia Tech will take a very long national discussion, and this is not the time to begin it.

However, the circumstances of the Virginia Tech shootings cry out for more effective gun controls. Obama is right to say so and to challenge those who are in denial about that--especially those who think that the solution to too many guns is many more guns.

Krauthammer is at http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/4732334.html.

Nothing a Few More Guns Wouldn't Fix!

Or so said the gun lobby in quick-draw emails before the bodies at Virginia Tech were even cold.

Few words, if any, are adequate to address the enormity of the shootings in Blacksburg on 4/16/07. But the gun advocates get the prize for the most brutal, insensitive, unsympathetic, thoughtless and hypocritical remarks so far.

The bogus claim to a thought process goes like this: Demented people with guns gravitate toward places where people are unarmed and defenseless—like school campuses, churches, courthouses, hospitals and the like. It is impossible to secure such locations no matter how many armed guards and other security measures we muster. Therefore, the more civilians who bring guns into such places, the better our chances of coming out alive.

Have they completely lost their minds?

Sure, let’s all holster our semiautomatic weapons and bring them to church and school and court and the hospital. And let’s pull our guns whenever we feel threatened. And when I turn a corner a see a civilian brandishing a gun, let me pull my gun too, because now I also feel threatened. And once two people have drawn their guns, and I’m the next gunman to come upon the scene, surely I’ll know the good guy from the bad. And let’s try not to catch any unarmed innocents in the crossfire.

The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

The Supreme Court has not reversed its 1939 decision (U.S. v. Miller) that the Second Amendment guarantees the arming of militias, not an individual right to bear my firearm of choice. The 3/9/07 ruling of the federal Circuit Court of Appeals struck down, by a 2-1 vote, a Washington D.C. law keeping handguns out of residences. But the Supreme Court has not blessed that judgment, much less over-ruled its own 70-year old decision. And should the Supreme Court ever buy the gun lobby’s misreading of the Constitution, it will be time to pursue a new constitutional amendment to restore sanity to our national life.

The massacre is being described as our worst mass shooting. So far. It was perpetrated by a student who purchased two handguns legally. The best memorial to the 32 students and faculty members he shot is better gun control, not less. The massacre calls for reducing the availability of guns and improving measures to keep the wrong people from getting them—not only crazies and criminals, but also civilians who think they have the right and the competence to take the law into their own hands.

A Question for George Will: Why Is Paralysis the Best Prescription for Global Warming?

In the print version of his syndicated column published today, George Will takes up where William F. Buckley Jr. left off two weeks ago: because there are downsides to some proposals to combat global warming, we should curb our enthusiasm for all of them. The tactic, again, is not to deny the problem, but to argue that nothing can be done about it. But some things can be done. Why is paralysis the best approach?

An example of Will’s perverse logic: The Toyota Prius hybrid is fuel-efficient. But there are environmental costs to Canada to mine and smelt the zinc needed for the batteries—and to the atmosphere to ship the zinc to Wales for refining, then to China to make the battery component, and then to Japan where the batteries are actually assembled. Will wonders if people who recommend such solutions are “thinking globally but not clearly?” Therefore, he suggests, maybe it’s more environmentally responsible to buy a Hummer H3, which at least is supposed to last longer.

If Will wants clear thinking, there are two better ways to do it.

First, if there are downsides to some proposals to combat global warming, why is dismissing them out of hand better than working to overcome the downsides? Are there ways, for instance, to mine and smelt zinc that would reduce the environmental impacts?

Second, if there are responses to global warming that have no known downsides, why do conservative commentators habitually ignore them? I suggested one April 3rd: reducing global birthing. I know of no one who has explained why aggressively pursuing it is not a great idea.

On the same day of Will’s column, Neal Peirce published one noting another response with no known downside. He catalogued cities which have discovered and are actively promoting the advantages of bicycles over cars—not only reducing congestion and pollution, but also increasing mobility and neighborliness. The cities are as wide-ranging as Seattle, WA; Portland, OR; Davis, CA; Louisville, KY; Chattanooga, TN; Gainesville, FL; and New York City, Paris and Copenhagen.

Until they face these questions squarely and honestly, conservatives cannot be taken seriously on climate change.

Global Birthing Fuels Global Warming

The most recent syndicated column by William F. Buckley Jr. is headlined, “Business of Global Warming Feels a Lot like Inquisition.”

He says the campaign to take global warming seriously and to provoke steps to reduce it often overdoses on self-righteousness and self-congratulation—because unknowns include exactly how much damage is done by specific acts and exactly how much relief is gained by specific counter-measures.

Point taken: individuals sometimes pride themselves on and content themselves with specific responses which may not do any good and can, as Buckley points out, have devastating financial consequences.

However, the point cannot be used—as Buckley’s fellow conservatives have for many years—to deny the existence of the problem, to continue behaviors that are known to contribute to it, or to excuse ourselves from giving top priority to finding solutions. It is not at all clear from Buckley’s column that he or they have been persuaded to abandon that failed approach.

One behavior known to contribute to global change is obvious. And it has an obvious solution with few financial downsides, if any.

I refer to over-population. It has been argued since Malthus in 1798 that the world is producing more people than the earth’s resources can support. The counter from the right (political and religious) has been that the divine mandate to populate the planet trumps all other concerns, and that God will see to it that technology will find ways to support population increase without end.

Well, history has shown otherwise. It is painfully clear that technology has not been adequate to produce and deliver a long list of basic necessities to every human on earth: food, water, transportation, waste disposal—or to control the pollutants which accompany their provision.

Given that history, it is rather amazing that the most obvious way of reducing global warming is the one least talked about: reduce the pace of adding bodies to the planet until we learn how sustain the lives of the ones we already have.

At this juncture, the Catholic Church could make an important contribution by reconsidering its opposition to birth control. Bloggers working for the John Edwards’ presidential campaign got into trouble for some prior sarcastic remarks that the church opposes birth control because it would reduce the number of its contributors. The official Catholic position is not quite that cynical, but it is deeply flawed—especially in facing the harmful global impacts of over-population.

The official Catholic position, enunciated by Pope Paul VI in his 1968 encyclical Humanae vitae and reaffirmed by John Paul II and Benedict XVI, is that “each and every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life.”

The position has never been accepted by the vast majority of Catholic theologians or Catholics in the U.S. and Europe, because it elevates the mandate to procreate and the physical structure of conception over other valid concerns—including the happiness of married couples, sex as an expression of their mutual affection, their individual parenting skills, their financial situation, and their responsibility to decide what family size they can best sustain.

The church did not open the door to these non-procreative concerns until 1853, when it endorsed the only birth control tactic which it still allows. That is the so-called ‘rhythm method’—planning sexual intercourse only during periods when the wife cannot conceive. Prior to that, the church repeated St. Augustine’s position that sex during sterile periods was an unacceptable concession to lust. The reversal of Augustine was important because it was the church’s first acknowledgment that marital sex has valid purposes beyond “birthing babies.”

What the church was unwilling to say officially in 1968 or since was that people should take advantage of birth control pills and other modern means of limiting conception. As a result, the church has become the primary global proponent of over-population—playing music to the ears of financially struggling populations in Latin America, Africa and Asia, who see more offspring as the key to greater dominance in the world. Global warming is an important symptom of the pathology of that tune.

If the church is convinced that climate change is a reality and truly wants to do something about it, Rome needs to re-think its birth control policy by factoring in concern for the planet much more than it has done previously. It is morally bankrupt—and suicidal, and stupid—to give population increase priority over planetary survival.