Thursday, October 31, 2013

Humans' Encounter with Space Aliens

A recent article on Huffington Post said, in its headline, that an expert has said that the world should prepare for encounters with other-world aliens.

Although the article, and the comment it was reporting, focused on the prospect that Mankind will encounter other intelligent beings as Man voyages further and further out into space, we've been largely conditioned (by sci-fi movies) to think in terms of aliens landing on earth in their "flying saucers."

I don't want to weigh in on the likelihood that aliens are going to land on earth—let alone the question of whether they have already done so. But I do want to speculate a bit on what an alien "encounter" might be like.

First, I fear that Mankind's first reaction might well be to let loose the military or the police and those first aliens—even if coming in peace—might well be killed by us.

Second, thought should be given to how we are going to communicate. In the movies, the aliens speak English and say, "We have learned your language by monitoring your radio and television broadcasts." Well, I don't think we ought to count on that; and the issue of how we might communicate is not an easy or obvious question.

Next, I've amused myself by thinking about how aliens might differ from us. Entirely apart from how aliens might differ from us in physical appearance (and there's no reason to think they're going to have two eyes, one nose, one mouth, two arms and two legs, etc.), how about if their minds are very different from ours? Maybe they will be beings who are incapable of lying and will have no comprehension of what lying is or of how and why we can and do lie.

Last, suppose they are creatures who never make mistakes. They might say to us, "Well, if you intended to do [such-and-such], why did you not do that? Why did you do something else?"

Copyright © 2013.

Sunday, October 20, 2013

How the US Government Could Save Money--and Save You on Your Taxes

Conservatives don't want to pay taxes that fund social-welfare programs. I know this because I have heard at least a few individuals say that to me, face-to-face.

They say that money is taken from them in the form of taxes and given to people who don't want to work. (At heart this idea is racist: They are really talking about African-Americans and the sentiment relies on the old racist canard that African-Americans don't want to work--never mind pointing out to them that huge numbers of job applicants have turned out, with lines going around the block, when there has been a widely announced hiring event in their communities, as shown in photos and video clips.

I will tell you, them, whomever—where tax dollars are really going to waste.

For one thing, the United States sends billions of dollars to the government of Afghanistan; and in turn, in the course of just one year, a billion dollars of Afghan aid was "lost to corruption." For another thing, Afghan President Karzai is an opportunist who has given power—and immunity from prosecution—to men who in another time and place would be counted as war criminals.

Much as I might support the aspirations of women in Afghanistan to have those rights which Taliban rule in Afghanistan would deny them, I see a relic of the cold war here: The United States got involved in Afghanistan after the country was wrecked and ruined by civil wars, fighting between war lords and factions that followed the withdrawal of the Soviets. (To remember our history: In Vietnam, the French lost and pulled out and America thought it could do better, but could not and lost also. Similarly, the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan and apparently the US felt it could do better, and the final results of that may not be in but it does not look optimistic.)

So, I have to suspect that US efforts in Afghanistan have been a waste of your and my tax dollars. And here is another one: Businesses like Walmart, and fast-food companies like McDonald's who pay their workers inadequate wages.

These companies are allowed to pay their workers a minimum wage which has not gone up, in real dollars (or even in nominal dollars) for decades.

A Walmart worker who is single earns a wage which puts her at about the poverty level. If a Walmart, or McDonald's, worker earns minimum wage but supports a family of four on his or her income, that worker's income is supplemented by aid from the government which costs us an average of about $1700 for that family. So, what Walmart or McDonald's does not pay the worker, you and I pay.

Walmart is making huge profits. Basically every American taxpayer, by having to add to the insufficient income that the Walmart or McDonald's worker receives from her employer, is paying his taxes ultimately into the pockets of the owners of Walmart and McDonald's. It would save us, the middle-class Americans who pay taxes, money if those companies were compelled to pay a living wage.

Copyright © 2013.

Thursday, October 17, 2013

Right-Wing Lies about "Obamacare"

I have blogged twice (September 21, 2012 and August 5, 2013) about lies generated by right-wing or conservative commentators, politicians, and bloggers, and spread by emailers who forward e-mails.

Obamacare--that is not the correct term but was originally a derogatory term coined by these right-wing people and now it seems to have stuck as the common term by which to refer to the Affordable Care Act--has been the victim of much misinformation.

Many people may remember Sarah Palin's assertion, quite some time ago, that there would be "death squads" which would decide whether elderly patients would receive treatment or would be allowed to die. I hope that anyone who heard that has since come to understand that there are no such things as these death squads.

More recently, Rush Limbaugh asserted that Obamacare is in effect a massive tax increase. Again, false.

One other assertion is that under the new health care plan, doctors would be obliged to ask patients about their sex lives.

I get very troubled by such deliberate dissemination of lies. If you are a person who always tries to believe the best about people, maybe you believe that these are well-intentioned and that the people who have spread these false ideas had reason to believe they were true. If you are more cynical, then you probably will believe that the people who say these things know they are false and say them anyway.

I think it was Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propoganda, who said that you only have to repeat a lie enough times and people will believe it. Unfortunately, this is true; and as I said in one of my earlier blog postings, people who hear or read these things are not always critical of what they hear and take it as fact and truth.

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Government Shutdown

One hour ago the US government had to shut down, because a budget had not been passed by the Congress, and so there is no money to run the government and pay its employees

Most likely a great majority of Americans don't understand what the consequences of this are going to be. I am sure we will be hearing of new consequences every day that this goes on. One thing is certain, there will be a big impact on the economy. Today, the day preceding the actual shutdown, the US stock markets took a bit hit in anticipation of the government shutdown.

Let's look at why this happened. The immediate cause is that the US House of Representatives refused to pass a budget without a provision that would have delayed the implementation of "Obamacare" by one year; and the Senate would not accept a budget law that contained this provision.

So maybe, if an agreement could not be reached, you have to figure both sides were inflexible and would not compromise.

I think the House, and particularly the Republicans in the House, are to blame. There are many Republican congressmen, many of them allied with the Tea Party, who have been obsessively resolved to undo Obamacare. Forty-two times the House has voted—unsuccessfully—to repeal Obamacare. Should we admire their persistence? That might be a fit subject for debate.

My take on it is that the Tea Partiers will sacrifice the economic welfare of the country to their own ideology—they'd say "principles," I am sure—and are absolutely determined not to compromise at all.

Someone once said that politics is the art of the practical. That does not mean the art of absolute and uncompromising ideology, which is something quite different.

But you can step back yet one step and blame the people who elected the Tea Partiers, these well-nigh insane ideologues who would not accept the defeat of their 42 attempts to repeal Obamacare but instead were willing to maneuver the economic welfare of the US to the brink of a cliff, holding the raising of the debt ceiling, which would let the government continue to operate, hostage. You know the "game" of "chicken," where two young men drive their cars at one another until one loses his nerve and veers and thus avoids the collision? How many people have been killed in that "game"? Well now the same thing has happened with the US economy.

Copyright © 2013