More Madonna, Less Jesus

Drugs, Decisions and Values

This must have been sixth grade.

On the first page, we find this mimeographed page of questions. I’m not sure if my answers were supposed to record comprehension of the material presented in class or my own opinions.

Why do you think young people and adults use drugs? Name some:

kicks
excape from reality
couriosity

Do drugs have good uses? Name some:

headaches
curing disease
lose weight

I remember lots of “don’t smoke cigarettes” messages, like this one. I remember the creepy feeling of knowing that “Hamilton Burger” was already dead of lung cancer by the time I watched it.

But where this came from, I have no idea.

Private Fire Insurance

Another scary article in Harpers about AIG and its private “fire fighters” that run around ritzy neighborhoods spraying their customers’ homes with retardant. It also includes a history of fire insurance.

Before Barbon there was Hammurabi, the sixth king of Babylon and originator of the first forms of insurance. Hammurabi’s Code was harsh in places. But its edicts an on insurance captured all that was communal and good about the idea. In 1700 B.C. Babylon, if a man was robbed, the community reimbursed him. If a man himself was stolen, the community paid his relatives one mina of silver. If he “owed a debt for aloan, and a strom prostrates the grain, or the harvest fail, or the grain does not grow for lack of water; in that year he need not give his creditor any grain, he wases in debt-tablet in water, and pays no rent for this year.”

Tis is what our concept of insurance became-we understand it as a way to reduce risk, to improve life–but this is not all that insurance became. When it turned private and for-profit, part of the free market, insurance was combined with something else: the need for growth. And a system meant to reduce risk soon began to crave more of it.

Looking Backward

The 30th High School Reunion is coming up, and inspired by a classmate who posted the 9th grade photo on facebook, I dug out a box of memorabilia from those years. I don’t seem to have much from high school, but I do have the junior high yearbooks.

8th grade wasn’t all that great.

9th grade was better. I was an editor on a literary magazine and started writing.

All Together Now

We all have seen the statistic that it costs more to keep a drug offender in a California prison than it does to send him/her to college. I think about this as I read new reports of how many people won’t be able to attend the University of California, or teach there, or do their research there, or work there. Then I read about how the prison guard’s union is so powerful in California politics. Here’s an article from one of the many research organizations of UC that the state can’t want to fund anymore, the UCB Institute for Governmental Studies.

The California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA) is the California prison guards’ union. In recent years the CCPOA has become a major player in California politics. Its political influence has grown to the point that it is widely considered to be one of the most powerful political forces in Sacramento. Its lobbying efforts and campaign contributions have greatly facilitated the passage of legislation favorable to union members.

And, I may add, favorable to the institutions of prisons themselves.

So why can’t the UC employee unions be a powerful force in California politics? They represent around 200,000 people. Why aren’t the UC unions out there lobbying for UC to be a vital part of California economy and social justice? Because UC has spent the last 25 years spending their state-funded money to break the employee unions. UC’s employees are a natural voice for the importance of UC –as opposed to more and larger prisons. But that voice was suppressed, that partnership was rebuffed. Now UC is asking us to individually lobby our legislators and write stories about how UC changed our lives. That’s all very nice, but our political system responds to collective action. Now the unions are fighting for their members alone, pointing out that we’re all getting paycuts while executive positions continue to be created. Too bad the unions can’t be in cahoots with management in Sacramento, like the prison guards and the prison industry.

Lockheed Fire: 8/16 11 pm MODIS: No new detections

Last summer during the Big Sur fire we watched the MODIS maps in horror as the red dots marched further and further north, west, and south every 12 hours. In the Lockheed fire, we’ve gone 24 hours with no new detections. The fire is buring, but not spreading.

Ralph asked for notation of Warnella Rd, which runs along a ridge west of Bonny Doon village. The rest of these maps indicate where the southern edge of the fire has been in relation to this road. I removed the 1 km footprints to make it easier to see the terrain.

Lockheed Fire: MODIS/Google Map 8-15-09 1 pm.

Only one map is needed this afternoon because it is all good news. No new fires have been detected in the last 12 hours, that’s why there are no red dots on the map. The orange and yellow areas may still be burning, but the Lockheed fire doesn’t appear to be growing.

I figured out how to find what time the data was collected.

Google Earth maps of Lockheed Fire 8/14/09 pm

I added some thumb tacks to point out some of the road intersections that I know of. If you’d like me to add them for other landmarks I can do that, just let me know.

The red areas are what burned today, or in the twelve hours that pass since the last time the satellite went over. What is orange is what was red the last time.

Some of the images are rotated in relation to the compass so that you can see the “thumbtack” better. North is indicated in the upper left of the map.

Google Earth Maps of Lockheed fire 8/14/09

I figured out how to use the MODIS data in google earth. I’ll add more images as the
data is updated every 12 hours. Let me know if you’d like to see something in particular
and don’t know how to do this.

But if you want to learn, you download and launch google earth, and then click
on this link:

activefiremaps.fs.fed.us/kml/conus.kmz

This kmz file should load into google earth. You then twiddle with the google earth controls until you see
what you need to see.

Current UCSC Staff Training and Development classes.