Pressing “play”

Journeying home from Melbourne

The last blog I wrote for the Nexus was about how difficult it is to come home.  Even though I was fully armed with that knowledge this second time around, knowing that only helped to brace me for the impact.  Coming home just seems to get stranger each time and with each passing month that I spent abroad, I got farther and farther away from the life I had.  I am realizing that there are motions I have to go through in order to press play on a life that’s been in the pause position for so long, and coming back to Santa Barbara has made me feel the enormity of the past year.  Intensely.

So how has this been? What is it like coming back after such a long time away?

Well sometimes I feel like I’m moving in slow motion, like I am five paces behind everybody else, desperately trying to grab ahold of some kind of reality, to some kind of new life.  I feel like things happen suddenly.  In fact, these days, life seems almost too sudden.  I think it is odd that all I did was move my feet across a divide onto an airplane and surroundings that I had grown to love and appreciate over five months just suddenly melted away.  It feels like I have sustained a terrible loss.  I wake up most mornings slightly confused about where I am and how I’ve gotten here as I run through mental lists of places I’ve been.  Living in Santa Barbara again feels arbitrary.  I haven’t called this place home for 13 months, yet here I am again after a tornado of change, in surroundings that are at the same time deliciously familiar yet strangely foreign.  In some ways, I feel like I’ve just been jolted out of a deep, yearlog unconsciousness. (more…)

Independence Day Grab-Bag

I hope you all had a safe and enjoyable Fourth of July.  In honor of Independence Day I’ve prepared a special triple-feature for you: a grab-bag of news items representing the three biggest threats to your individual liberties and well-being as an American: Big Business, Big Religion, and Big Government.  These categories, while not perfect, adequately cover most groups, individuals, political movements, and ideologies at work in the world right now which threaten your freedoms: freedom of speech, economic freedom, scientific freedom, artistic freedom, and property rights, including the environment-oceans, atmosphere, groundwater, climate-which is our mutual property.

The categories aren’t mutually-exclusive, there are internal divisions within the groups, and some individuals or factions might actually pursue the agenda of another group, even if it may be to the detriment of themselves or their own class.  For example, a wealth corporate executive, a man who most would assume would pursue the interests of Big Business, might actually give money and political support to the advancement to the cause of either Big Religion or Big Government, even if such might harm his business interests in the long-term.  Also, it should be noted that both Big Business and Big Religion seek to harness the power of Big Government-the largest, wealthiest, and most powerful of the trio-to pursue their own agendas.  Big Government helps the other two grow, but as it is also the most directly accountable to the people and the most powerful of the three, it can be used to crush down the other two to manageable levels before cutting itself down to size.  Government must be the means the people have to defend their rights, and thus it must occasionally intervene in personal matters, including matters of commerce and religion, but just as there is not always martial law, the government ought to be, in its day-to-day state, small and unobtrusive.

First, let’s start off with Big Government:

Venezuela Oil Rigs

In Ayn Rand’s famous and much-maligned novel (and, let’s be honest, enormously long author tract) Atlas Shrugged a railroad line belonging to Taggart Transcontinental is seized and nationalized by Mexican government.  Protagonist Dagny Taggart, having foreseen such a move by the Mexican government, had fortunately taken action to cut the company’s losses by cutting staff, leaving only one outdated wood-burning locomotive operating the line, and moving every piece of company property possible out of Mexico.  Dagny never liked the idea of opening a railway line in Mexico to begin with-what could her company profit, she asked, from opening a line in an impoverished nation whose government didn’t respect property rights?  Her brother, the bleeding-heart James, had said that it was their humanitarian duty to invest in Mexico, to help raise the Mexican people up to the level of the United States.  Now fifty-three years after its publication, life has imitated art: the Venezuelan government, ruled by the self-proclaimed Socialist Hugo Chavez, has nationalized 11 oil rigs owned by an American company, Helmerich and Payne. (more…)

The Gulf Oil Spill and the Future of Energy

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
But from what I’ve tasted of desire,
We’ll perish by oil, not ice or fire.

(Apologies to Mr. Frost)

We have now passed day 65 of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and things keep getting more and more ludicrous.  Obama’s moratorium on deepwater drilling-one of the few sensible things he’s done in response to this crisis-was overturned by a judge who, surprise of the century, turns out to own stock in BP.  Secretary of the Interior Salazar has failed to purge Mineral Management Servive of oil industry shills, a BP robot crashed into the containment dome, forcing the company to remove the containment vessel and once more unleash the full volume of oil spewing from the damaged piping and blowout capacitor, and a device made by Kevin Costner, of all people, is working wonders at separating out the oil!  It’d be hilarious if it was fiction, but alas, this is reality.  When the Coast Guard is allowed to prevent the Louisianans from setting up a blockade of barges to block the spread of the slick because some of the vessels might not have up-to-date fire extinguishers, it becomes rather obvious that this entire response is botched to hell and back, and the crisis is not over yet.

Last week our brave president-the one who has to take golf breaks for the good of the country-delivered a national address from the Oval Office concerning the tremendous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and how he and his administration, fifty days in to the worst environmental disaster in recent history, were working to rectify the situation.  His speech was equal parts empty rhetoric, blame-shifting, and use of the tragedy to advance his own agenda.  All the words in the world cannot compensate for his administration’s failure to prevent this catastrophe, their initial inaction, and continued foot-dragging, inaction, and ineptitude of the federal government.  When the Coast Guard is allowed to prevent the Louisianans from setting up a blockade of barges to block the spread of the slick because some of the vessels might not have up-to-date fire extinguishers, it becomes rather obvious that this entire response is botched to hell and back.  Political analyst David Gergen said on Anderson Cooper’s program on CNN that this speech was Obama’s last chance to make up for prior inaction and to win over the American people, and that, in his opinion, he failed to do so.

Around the same time last week the major news networks began reporting about another deepwater BP oil platform named Atlantis. It is deeper and pumps more oil than the Deepwater Horizon, and 90% of its safety documentation is missing.  This wouldn’t be as frightening were it not for BP’s over 700 past egregious and willful safety violations. (more…)

Holding Media Accountable: How the Huffington Post Spins Data

2010 Multi‐state Survey on Race & Politics

Tea Party Poll

Tea Party, June 1

Another day, and yet another meaningless poll which is completely misconstrued by the media, this time courtesy of University of Washington and the Huffingtonpost.com.    With the headline “More Than Half Of Tea Party Supporters Say Gays And Lesbians Have Too Much Political Power (POLL)”, The Huff Post is spinning this small poll in Washington state as yet further proof that the Tea Partiers are all horrible, ignorant, racist, homophobic, and “downright mean”; I wish they could have told that to the short-haired, boot-clad, “Marriage Equality California” t-shirt wearing woman I saw visiting the display booths at the local Tea Party rally I attended, or all the non-white Tea Party protestors.  Clearly those poor people were not aware that they were part of some covertly racist and homophobic terrorist organization run by lunatics.

One should never trust a news story about a poll, or even the charts or conclusions the pollsters have formulated.  Instead one must look at the actual polling data and methodology to judge the validity of its conclusions, and luckily the article had the link to all that right in the first sentence.  While those who the study classifies as “true” Tea Partiers diverge from what the people conducting the study classify as the “mainstream” opinion (if we’re defining the mainstream American opinion by the 2000 people in Washington surveyed in this study) on many issues, on some issues the Tea Party people in Washington are just exaggerated expression of what the majority (again, according to the data set they’re going on) believes.  For example, a majority of both the people surveyed AND those classified by the pollsters disapprove of the job being done by the current U.S. congress, by 60% and 80%, respectively. Majorities of both support the AZ immigration law, by 88 and 52 percent. While their stances on LGBT issues my seem unpalatable to many of us Californians, this is a poll of people in one state (and, again, according to the people formulating the data, they’re categorizing the opinions of only 335 people within that group as the “Tea Party position”), which the Huffing Glue Post is trying to use as an accurate description of a nationwide movement. Their purpose, of course, is to continue hyping the “Tea Partiers are all ignorant, fat, racist, homophobic rednecks” meme which the media has been promoting since last summer’s town hall meetings.

So yeah, no, nice try though HP. (more…)

No on 14 and 16

2010 Multi‐state Survey on Race & Politics

Well, the June primaries are less than a week away, and like any California election this month’s ballot is loaded with propositions.  I don’t have the sufficient level of obsessiveness to go through the pros and cons of all the initiatives, so for this entry I’ve targeted what I feel are the two worst props.  These Propositions are especially deceptive, and I feel the need to inform the voters of their

Prop 14 is being billed as an “open primary” proposition.  It is more akin to an “incumbent protection” bill.  The “Top-two” system described by the bill has been used in Louisiana, where it neither advanced moderate politicians nor increased the viability of third party candidates, as advocates of Prop 14 claim it will do for California.  The “Top Two” system will in fact crush third parties, but it gets worse.  Under a top-two system in an overwhelmingly Republican district the top two could both be Republicans, thus denying the Democrats the chance to even have a candidate, and the reverse in overwhelmingly Democrat districts.  Needless to say, such a system would also mean death to the smaller parties, denying their voters even so much as a chance to vote for their parties’ candidates in the general elections.  It’s no surprise then that virtually every political party in the state, from the big two to the smaller parties such as the Greens and Libertarians, are opposed to Prop 14.

The proposition also allows candidates to choose not to list their party affiliation, allowing politicians to deceive and mislead unwary voters of their true political affiliations.

Proposition 14 is a horribly deceitful ballot initiative, one that seeks to subvert the electorate’s genuine dissatisfaction with the current partisan gridlock in Sacramento and use it to solidify that very crooked system.  It’s little wonder that Governor Schwarzenegger and his “dream team” are behind it.  Sadly, the polls show that most Californian voters are as well, so it is imperative that as many of us work to spread the truth about this deceptive initiative.

Just as disingenuous is Proposition 16, the egregiously named “Taxpayers Right to Vote Act”.  According to Ballotpedia (a site I know nothing about, so I cannot attest to it’s bias or lack thereof):

“ If Proposition 16 is approved by voters, it will take a two-thirds vote of the electorate before a public agency could enter the retail power business. This will make it more difficult than it is currently for local entities to form either municipal utilities, or community wide clean electricity districts called Community Choice Aggregators (CCAs). Forming a local municipal utility or a CCA, if this measure is enacted, will require the approval, through election, of 2/3rds of the voters who live in the area of the would-be local municipal utility or CCA.[1]

Pacific Gas & Electric is the primary financial sponsor of the initiative, having contributed $46.1 million through May 25, 2010. That makes PG&E the Goliath in a David-v-Goliath battle, since Prop 16′s opponents have raised less than $50,000 through mid-May.[2],[3]”

http://www.ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/California_Proposition_16_%28June_2010%29

Like the proponent of Proposition 14, the proponents for 16 are trying to tap into current voter discontent, running ads that mention government takeovers of local electric providers and using your tax dollars to do so.  The reality is that this PG&E-financed ballot initiative is merely an attempt to solidify the company’s strangling monopoly on utilities in California.  Honestly, is there another electric company to which Californians can switch to, one with lower rates and better service?  Yeah, I thought not.   Contrary to it’s naming, the proposition would limit the power of voters; while all state propositions only require a simple majority to pass, this amendment would change the state constitution so that a super-majority of two-thirds of all voters are required to approve before a local government could go into the utilities business.  Luckily, despite the round-the-clock advertising and millions of dollars spent, the polls show that approval for the proposition has been steadily declining for months. I’m hopeful that by next Tuesday the California voters will be well-enough informed to see through the lies and vote against Props 14 and 16.

Calderon Addresses Congress; Pot Addresses Kettle

“…it is a law…that not only ignores a reality that cannot be erased by decree, but also introduces a terrible idea…using racial profiling as the basis of law enforcement.  That is why I agree…I agree with the president: the new law carries a great amount of risk…when core values that we all care about are breached.  I don’t want to deepen the gap between the feelings and emotions between our countries and our peoples.  I believe in bridges, I believe communications, I believe in cooperation.  We must find together a better way to face and fix this common problem”—Mexican President Felipe Calderon, in his address to a joint session of Congress on May 20, 2010, seen here on YouTube

Okay, first off, who does Senor Calderon think he is that he can lecture the Congress of the United States of America?  How dare a foreign head of state lecturing our congress, telling them to act contrary to the will of their electorate and to detriment of the nation?   This is outrageous!  And while I know that “tu quoque” (essentially saying “No you!”) is not a legitimate logical argument, Mexico’s draconian immigration policies are worth noting.  A señor Calderon: Apártate que me tiznas, dijo la sartén al cazo.

Even more outrageous is that Obama and Biden just sit there so smug and sure, grinning and nodding and shaking his hand afterwards!  It’s an outrage and a travesty, and I personally feel that it’s bad enough that Obama should resign and apologize to the nation for failing his people.  Which then leads me to wonder if he indeed considers us “downright mean”, people, so ignorant and yet paradoxically also too “distracted” with the “over-abundance of information that we can access on our “Xboxes and Iphones and Ipads and Ps3s” to indeed be “his people”.  Such disdain for the free flow of information makes President Obama’s selection Kagan as his nominee to the Supreme Court even more worrying, as Miss Kagan has ruled in favor of it the past.  The case in question, however, was both one involving the right to free speech and the equally-touchy issue of campaign finance.  Campaign finances are a touchy area, but I personally lean to the side of public campaign financing with private contributions being forbidden.  Some would say that’s an unfair restriction of one’s free speech, but this is different, because the people, as part of the social contract, expect honesty and impartiality from their public servants, and have the reasonable assumption that their congressmen and senators will represent their interests and not the interests of private businesses who finance their campaigns.  Now, I don’t want the government to be some Marxist tool of wealth redistribution or class warfare or social justice or any other such progressive claptrap.  I just want it to do its job and stick to its contract.  It’s a business contract, and I think it was the artist Peter Paul Reubens-whose name lends us the adjective “Reubenesque”-who said that all trade and business is inherently based on trust, and I can’t but feel that he was completely spot-on in saying so. (more…)

What EAP Didn’t Mention…

The end.

(Or not to me at least).

This blog is for all of you out there, dredging through your last quarter in Santa Barbara for a semester, or maybe even for a whole year.  This blog is for everyone who is excited/nervous/anxious/yet looking forward to their time abroad, and just can’t wait to leave.  At this point, you all have surely been to your EAP pre-departure meetings and have heard a great deal about what is to come.  You may be feeling varying levels of preparedness, and are continuing to research the new country and home that will be yours for a few months.  In short, you are just ready to get on that plane and get the hell out of the United States.  While you may be tired of EAP alumni preaching at you about their experiences, I would like to offer you all some advice about a very important subject that I feel EAP grossly neglected, and that I sincerely wish someone had preached at me about during one of those meetings before I left.

While I felt incredibly well informed about things like the academic environment in Spain, cultural differences, and what to expect in my living situation, nobody discussed in any detail one very important aspect of the EAP experience: coming home.  You all may be thinking, “aren’t you currently abroad?” Yes, I am currently abroad, but I came home for about a month in between my Spain program and my Australia program, and what I experienced during that time was nothing like I could have expected.

I will first say that studying abroad is obviously a very temporary thing, but for however many months you are away, you build a life completely different than any you have ever known before.  For 3, 4, 5 months, or for you lucky people out there, for a year, you create a new world for yourself where you take on new challenges, perhaps learn a new language, and meet people that have an impact on you.  You travel, encounter new cultures, and have unforgettable experiences regularly.  You may fall deeply in love with the place you live (or with someone!), feel a sense of joy and purpose abroad that you have never known at home, and you may realize that you wish you could stay longer.  At some point, it hits you that your life has changed in a way you were never able to imagine before.  It all feels amazing and surreal and slightly dreamlike.

All that is good and well until you step on that plane to go home, and if you’re like me, realize that nobody told you that it was going to be harder to come back home than to leave. (more…)

Howyagoinmate?

There are certain themes that have pervaded my study abroad experience.  I would say the most common theme has been my ability – or inability, as you will come to understand – to communicate.  Of course in Spain, it made perfect sense as I was going there to learn the language.  What made it difficult at times is the fact that people talk incredibly fast and in Southern Spain, have accents that you grow to love but are just plain hard to understand when you first get there.  So it stood to reason that I would have glitches in communication over there.  I expected this before I went and just had to laugh at myself when I couldn’t understand what was going on or said stupid things to people in public (which, I guarantee, anybody going abroad to study and learn a foreign language, WILL HAPPEN TO YOU)

However, I found myself fairly certain that all problems with communication would cease the moment I left Spain.  I looked forward to going to a country that speaks my language, as this would be one less stressor (it can get tiring constantly worrying about whether or not your nouns and verbs are agreeing, that’s for sure).  Now here I am, looking back on the past three and a half months, and I guess the lesson that has been brutally drilled into my head throughout my time abroad is that assumptions will kick you in the balls every time.

Sometimes, I just truly do not communicate well with Australians.  I have left many an encounter scratching my head and going, “Hm.  I just don’t think we’re speaking the same language here!” These encounters leave me feeling incredibly wrong-footed and freak me out a little bit because I’m a native English speaker! On these occasions, I just wonder, “what the hell is wrong with me?” (more…)

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