Jesus said, "get the fuck out of here!"

President tRump, whose strongest supporters are white evangelical Christians, knows how Jesus would treat the homeless.  tRump expressed that very, very clearly:

He expressed sympathy for real estate investors here and other Californians whose property values or quality of life are threatened.
“In many cases, they came from other countries and they moved to Los Angeles or they moved to San Francisco because of the prestige of the city, and all of a sudden they have tents,” Trump said. “Hundreds and hundreds of tents and people living at the entrance to their office building. And they want to leave.”
In Los Angeles and San Francisco, Trump said, people are living on the “best highways, our best streets, our best entrances to buildings . . . where people in those buildings pay tremendous taxes, where they went to those locations because of the prestige.” ...
Trump has characterized the homeless problem in California and other places as a “disgrace,” saying this July: “We may do something to get that whole thing cleaned up. It’s inappropriate.” He more recently directed aides to figure out “how the hell we can get these people off the streets,” one senior administration official said.

As always, tRump offers a clear response to What Would Jesus Do?

Of course, I am not the only one who is angry at this President's inhumane approach to homelessness, and to the hypocrisy of his bible-thumping supporters.  This columnist, for instance, offers to rewrite a King tRump version of the bible, and suggests many sarcastic interpretations of Jesus' thoughts, like this one:

“A righteous man rounds up the poor and puts them someplace where people don’t have to see how gross they are; a wicked man allows people who pay tremendous taxes to be inconvenienced.”

This is how you make god great again!

Here is one exhibit that tRump and his supporters wouldn't even care about.  A local story of a homeless woman who was run over by a garbage truck.  She was once the kid on the right in this photo:

Much later, she was the mother in this photo:

She was 57 years old and homeless when she died.

Annette Lorraine Montero, unhoused and apparently suffering from mental illness, was run over and killed by a garbage truck as she slept in a parking lot near downtown Eugene.

Here's another exhibit, from Los Angeles.  The homeless man in the photo below was not born homeless. "He was a Yale graduate, Wall Street banker and entrepreneur."

Homelessness is a complex human problem.  This horrible human being in the Oval Office doesn't have an iota of empathy in him to begin to understand is not a surprise.  What excuse do the followers of Jesus have?

And if we cannot empathize with a fellow human right in front of our eyes, how are we going to even begin to understand the plight of humans far away, like the refugees fleeing wars?

And these are the same people who believe that I am going to hell because I am an atheist who does not believe in Jesus?  If only they understood that it is we humans who create hell right here on earth.  Why don't they want us to work together in order to create a heaven right here on earth!

Lying is as American as apple pie!

The relentless campaign about Barack Obama being a Muslim and a Kenyan.
The swift-boating of John Kerry.
The whisper campaign that John McCain fathered a daughter with a black woman.

From Jill Lepore's book, I come to understand that rare was a really truthful moment in American politics and elections.  Sure, Lepore could be a narrating the story with her progressive bias.  But, it is not as if she is working with "alternative facts."

Consider, for instance, the election of 1934, in which Upton Sinclair, "an eccentric and dizzyingly prolific writer still best known for The Jungle ... decided to run for governor of California."  As a prolific writer, Sinclair had established quite a paper trail.  And that's where his problems began.

Clem Whitaker and Leone Baxter, who later became a couple, "like most California Republicans, were horrified at the prospect of a Sinclair governorship."  So, they huddled themselves in a room, and selected sentences from Sinclair's writing. 

Newspapers were partisans (faux news is not all that new!), and the "Los Angeles Times began running on its front page a box with an Upton Sinclair quotation in it"--the quotes, of course, taken completely out of context.  Sinclair lost.

Lepore writes, "as Sinclair argued, voters were now being led by a Lie Factory."

Whitaker and Baxter continued to fine-tune this new art of negative campaigning, especially lying, which seems to be a part of being a Republican!  They wrote the book on this, as they say.

Every campaign needs a theme. Keep it simple. ... Never explain anything. The more you have to explain, the more difficult it is to win support.  Say the same thing over and over again. ... Simplify, simplify, simplify.  A wall goes up when you try to make Mr. and Mrs. Average American Citizen work or think."

Like trump's MAGA; Drain the swamp; Build the wall; Lock her up; Repeal Obamacare; No collusion; Fake news; ...

In all the lying and cheating in order to get elected, the powerful whites could not be bothered about the plight of blacks. Not even about lynchings!  For all the things that we credit FDR for, his "New Deal programs were generally segregated, and Roosevelt failed to act to oppose lynching."  And when FDR refused to support an anti-lynching bill in 1933 , because he needed the Southern Democrats votes in Congress, "the anti-lynching bill died."

Across the Atlantic, in the continent from where the European settlers came and wiped out the natives and then imported humans from Africa in order to dehumanize them as slaves, a powerful populist also effectively used lying and negative campaigning--particularly about minorities.

On Tuesday, the president will use the stage in Congress in order to further engage in lies, damn lies, and fear-mongering, in the grand old white American way :(

Native Americans. Africans. Mexicans. And now? Chinese!

Since 1492, and since Mayflower, and since the Declaration of Independence and then the Constitution, it has been one chaos after another for non-whites.  As we get more into the Jim Crow era in Jill Lepore's narration of the history of the United States, we will remind ourselves about what she is exploring in this book:

The American experiment rests on three political ideas--"these truths," Thomas Jefferson called them--political equality, natural rights, and the sovereignty of the people. ...
Does American history prove these truths, or does it belie them?

And so far the evidence is ... awful!  The original inhabitants nearly wiped out. People from Africa imported, traded, and held as property.  An empire-building America provoked a war with Mexico and gobbled up the upper-third of its territory.  A horrible Civil War was fought in order to abolish slavery. Women were told that they shall not have rights to participate in politics.

Political equality? Natural rights? Sovereignty of people?

It was time to go after yet another group: Chinese immigrants.

Following the gold rush, "Chinese immigrants began arriving in the United States in large numbers during the 1850s."

Given the track record of white supremacy from 1492, it is easy to predict that the Chinese would have been attacked, killed, imprisoned, and their citizenship questioned, right?

It is incredible how when I was in the 8th or 9th grade, when Mr. Venkatesan taught (he was a horrible teacher anyway!) history, we were somehow led to understand that it was a glorious American political experiment, in which the only blemish was slavery, which too was corrected by Lincoln after the Civil War. And it was happily ever after!

So, people immigrated from China.

Chinese workers began settling in Boise in 1865 and only five years later constituted a third of Idaho's settlers and nearly 60 percent of its miners. In 1870, Chinese immigrants and their children made up nearly 9 percent of the population of California, and one-quarter of the state's wage earners.

Imagine white settlers looking across and seeing hardworking Chinese.   Oregon and California tightly restricted the rights of Chinese. 

Frederick Douglass was consistent in his view of human rights:

Again, this is the Douglass about whom the current president knew nothing!

As I noted in this post back in September, the United States passed a law to exclude the Chinese. To strip them of their citizenship. And the US Supreme Court even upheld this law in 1889! 

Let's ask ourselves, again:

The American experiment rests on three political ideas--"these truths," Thomas Jefferson called them--political equality, natural rights, and the sovereignty of the people. ...
Does American history prove these truths, or does it belie them?

Today's California and yesterday's Bengal

One of the main reasons that I had a fascination for Calcutta was this: I had been exposed forever to "what Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow." 

Though it was in the context of independence struggle to kick the bastards out of India, even after the country became free, it seemed like many of the leading intellectuals came from there.

And, of course, my commie teenage sentiments also favored the principled leftists like Jyoti Basu.

Throughout history, different regions have served as the leading lights, diffusing their ideas through other regions.  Here in the US, in recent years, it has been California.

To outsiders, California might come across as a liberal (as in left-of-center) state.  Which is not entirely true, if one pauses to think about it.  Two easy exhibits that everybody can relate two: Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan.  But, there is more.

When I landed in Los Angeles, George Deukmejian was the governor.  He was a Republican.  Yep, a Republican governor, and for two terms.

His successor was also a Republican--Pete Wilson.  By the time Wilson ran for the office, I was well versed in California's and America's politics, and I hated the thought of him becoming governor because of his crazy ideas, and how he and the GOP were beating up on immigrants.  He successfully fueled an anti-immigrant hysteria.  The asshole continued to influence the political scene in the state, and helped another entertainer--Arnold Schwarzenegger--become another (perhaps the final ever) Republican governor.

What California thinks today, USA thinks tomorrow!

The epicenter of 2018’s version of conservatism, and of American Trumpism, isn’t Washington, DC. It’s California.
Breitbart News was founded in Los Angeles, and its headquarters remains in the city’s Brentwood Heights neighborhood. Its founder, Andrew Breitbart, who died in 2012, met former White House adviser Steve Bannon in LA. Ben Shapiro, whom Breitbart mentored and who worked at his eponymous publication, now runs his own conservative media empire, DailyWire.com, out of a nondescript office building in LA.
The Claremont Colleges, located on the eastern edge of Los Angeles County, were the birthplace of intellectual Trumpism and the “Flight 93 Election” — an influential essay published in the Claremont Review of Books that stated that electing Trump was the only way to save the country. The author of that missive, Michael Anton, went to the University of California Berkeley and Claremont Graduate University, and then went on to work in the Trump White House, alongside White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, a native of Santa Monica, and Trumpist trade adviser Peter Navarro, who taught at the UC Irvine.

trump and his party are playing the California tunes from two decades ago.  Since then, California has moved on.  Its current demographics, economics, and politics, appear to be the key to the future.  Which means, if California continues to think today what the rest of the country will think tomorrow, well, the party of Reagan will die the same way that the party of Wilson has died in California.  And that is one hell of an awesome thing to celebrate! ;)

Of princes and paupers

A young woman we know graduated last June, and is excited about the job that she has been offered in San Francisco.  General Malaise that I am, I had to make sure I would not blurt anything bad.  For once, thankfully, I kept my mouth shut.

I did comment to M that this woman will be able to barely rent a closet in somebody's home with the income that she will get.  But then youthful mistakes are what most of our lives are about ;)  She will soon find out!

Housing is so expensive that more people are leaving than those are going there:

The cost of living is among the highest in the world. One founder reckons young startups pay at least four times more to operate in the Bay Area than in most other American cities. New technologies, from quantum computing to synthetic biology, offer lower margins than internet services, making it more important for startups in these emerging fields to husband their cash. All this is before taking into account the nastier features of Bay Area life: clogged traffic, discarded syringes and shocking inequality.

Housing being expensive there is not a new thing.  The growth curve has only become steeper. 

Two decades ago, I was considering a job opportunity at San Jose State University.  When talking with the department chairman, I asked him whether the university offered any subsidy scheme for faculty to own homes there.  After all, faculty don't get paid by the truckload.  He paused.  And responded that housing costs had become a major disincentive, and that attracting faculty was getting to be difficult.  The old timers lucked out, he said.

That was twenty years ago.

Now, think about students who want to go to any of the universities there.  Tough luck finding something affordable!  It has gotten so bad that ...

Amid a local housing crisis and facing a shortage of on-campus beds as the fall quarter looms, UC Santa Cruz sent an email this week to faculty and staff asking them to open their homes to students.
“The need is real and it is urgent, so I am reaching out to the faculty and staff community for help,” the executive director of housing services, Dave Keller, wrote. “Offering a room in your home to a student who has not been able to find housing for the school year would be a tremendous support to their success at UCSC.”

Re-read that excerpt in order to get a feel for how bad the situation is.

And, of course, these are also the no-growth or slow-growth communities where the old-timers who lucked out back in the day are making sure that no new high density residential areas will be built.

Yes, all in "liberal" California!

As George Carlin caustically remarked, these liberals don't really care about others as much as making sure that their awesome lifestyles will not be affected.  The rest can eat cakes!

Follow the immigrants

This, which I have sent to the editor, builds on a previous blog-post
************************************************************

“Follow the immigrants.” 

That is an easy guideline to understanding the economic geography dynamics in the contemporary United States.

Consider the affluent neighbor that is immediately south of us. The prosperity in California correlates well with the percentage of foreign-born to whom the Golden State is now home. More than a quarter—about 27 percent—of its population was born outside the country. It is no wonder that the Silicon Valley looks more and more like the United Nations.

Consider a contrast to California. West Virginia is an economic laggard, where how one talks about coal—not silicon—is the way elections are won and lost. Here, too, there is a correlation between the economy and the percentage of foreign-born. Barely 1.4 percent of the population in West Virginia was born outside the US. To put it simply, immigrants do not flock to West Virginia.

It is more than a mere correlation, of course. The foreign-born population cannot afford to be jobless and poor, whether they are here legally or illegally, and whether or not they are skilled or unskilled. Hence, immigrants are almost always headed to states where there is potential for work and wages. California offers that promise, and not West Virginia.

In this broad framework, Abigail Cooke, an assistant professor of geography at the University at Buffalo, and Thomas Kemeny, a UB research assistant professor and at the University of Southampton in England, write about their research that was recently published in the journal “Economic Geography.” There is "a strong relationship between greater immigrant diversity and higher productivity—in this case, wages.”

Jobs and incomes are urban-based. "What we found was remarkable. In cities that are unwelcoming to immigrants, as diversity rises, people's wages either don't change, or they go up by only a small amount. In cities that are welcoming to immigrants, as diversity goes up, people's wages go up, and by a lot,” Cooke notes.

It is an interesting feedback cycle. Cities and states where the economies are growing attract immigrants. This influx strengthens the human capital that in turn creates more economic growth and development.

Such dynamics are not merely a contrast between California and West Virginia. In Oregon, the foreign-born account for about 9.8 percent of the population. Even within the state, we can observe differences between, for example, the metropolitan Portland where the economy is based on modern economic activities, versus Coos Bay whose economy was based on natural resources. 

An economy based on resources that were prized in the past—like timber—lags behind one that is driven by the likes of Intel and Nike. This means we will also notice a corresponding significant difference in the percentage of the foreign-born in the Portland area versus in coastal communities.  A diverse immigrant population is naturally attracted to regions for obvious economic reasons--even farming grains, fruits, and flowers, with considerable export potential, will attract immigrants.

However, this unequal economic growth and development across the geography of the country, and within the regions of a state, have had serious implications. 

Richard Florida—an academic and a public intellectual based in Toronto, who has always been enthusiastic about cities, is now worried about a new urban crisis.  Florida writes in a recent essay about the winner-take-all-urbanism “in which the talented and the advantaged cluster and colonize a small, select group of superstar cities, leaving everybody and everywhere else behind. Much more than a crisis of cities, the New Urban Crisis is the central crisis of our time.”

The story is deceptively simple, but a complex one. Modern economic activities are urban-based, and immigrants flock to those urban areas with the greatest economic potential. The reinforcing feedback cycle makes some cities and regions more prosperous than others, and soon we have regions that are seemingly left behind. These left-behind regions, like West Virginia, are also home to less-diverse population.

It has also been clear for a long time that economic advancement does not seem to reach the corners of West Virginia or a Coos Bay here in Oregon. We the people need to try to understand such complexities in a rapidly evolving global economic geography. And, more importantly, we will need political leaders who can articulate constructive policy responses that will not dampen the pace of economic development even while assisting the under-performing regions. 

Or, we can simplistically decide, for instance, that immigrants in a heterogeneous California are the reasons for the lack of economic opportunities in a significantly homogeneous West Virginia.

I would rather that we attracted the immigrants, instead of chasing them away.

Donald Trump reminds me of the other celebrity politician who won

Gray Davis was a well educated man, with an undergrad from Stanford and a law degree from Columbia.  He then served in Vietnam, during some of the intense conflict years, and returned as a decorated veteran.  Davis, like John Kerry and John McCain, turned to politics after the Vietnam experience and served California in various capacities.  And then was elected as governor.  A wonderful story, right?

Except that the story did not end there.  "California erupted in an anti-government, anti-establishment convulsion unlike any ever seen" and Davis was recalled less than a year into his second term as the governor.

The October 2003 ouster of Davis, a Democrat, was a primal response to the gridlock, partisan warfare, overweening special interests and mushrooming budget deficits that made the state capital a slough of dysfunction.

You can perhaps begin to see where this post is going.  For a few years now, Washington DC has been characterized by gridlock, partisan warfare, overweening special interests and mushrooming budget deficits that made the state capital a slough of dysfunction.  Voters are pissed off.  Right?

What did Californians do?  (Not me--by then I had already moved to Oregon!)  They held a special election for Davis's replacement.  Who were they?

The spectacle — a snap election featuring a color wheel of 135 candidates, including a former child actor, a porn star and a handful of professional politicians — shook California from its usual political slumber and captivated an audience that watched from around the world.

Haven't we had quite a spectacle of candidates this time around!

The eventual winner, Arnold Schwarzenegger, was not the porn star, though he could have been one!

In the interview, Schwarzenegger, then 29, acknowledged using "grass and hash, -- no hard drugs." He described participating in group sex with a group of bodybuilders and a "black girl" at Gold's Gym in Venice (Los Angeles County), saying "having chicks around is the kind of thing that breaks up the intense training. It gives you relief, and then afterward you go back to the serious stuff." 

So, with that kind of old stories, and with boastful claims of the outsider life that he led, with statements like ""I never lived my life to be a politician. I never lived my life to be the governor of California," Arnold Schwarzenegger became the governor.  What had he ever done in politics?  Nothing as an elected official. Nothing as any kind of a cabinet officer.  Nothing as a member of a regulatory body.  Schwarzenegger was a political nobody.  And he won the election.  He won as a Republican in a state where the demographics were rapidly shifting in favor of Democrats.  His celebrity status carried the day.

The voters didn't care that Schwarzenegger knew nothing about politics--they figured that he couldn't be any worse than the clowns who had paralyzed politics in the state.  Heck, even Warren Buffett came forward to be Schwarzenegger's advisor, and then promptly spoke the truth about property tax and the actor had to quickly silence the gazillionaire.  So successful he was that serious Republicans even explored loopholes in the Constitution that could allow the Austrian-American to run for the presidency.

For the most part, replace the last name of Schwarzenegger with Trump and the story sounds all too familiar now, right?

In the old country, Bengalis prided themselves on how Bengal thinks today what the country will think about only tomorrow.  California, similarly, has been a leader in political revolutions in many ways.  More than a decade later, the country is tempted to follow California's lead by electing a celebrity businessman with no political experience whatsoever.  They both have Germanic heritage as well.  I wonder if their fingers also match in size! ;)

Driving fast by the graveyard in California

Those were some brutal scenes that I was a witness to.  The dead lay in rows after rows.  Black and dark brown.

Yet, I did not stop to take photos.  I continued to drive in the slow lane as vehicles sped past me as they always do.

The dead, you see, were almond trees.  In California's San Joaquin Valley.

Like in this photograph from the Washington Post:

Usually when I near Coalinga, I prepare myself for the stink from the mega-dairies.  And I was prepared for that.  Acres of dead almond trees was new.  California's drought has dramatically altered its landscape already.  Yet, life goes on in California and elsewhere.

What a contrast to conditions in the old country!

Back when we were kids, watching a movie meant sitting through a government propaganda documentary as well.  Invariably, those documentaries--News Reels, they were called--were about hardships that farmers faced.  Almost always, they seemed to be about Bihar where if it was not floods it was a drought!

Even now, the prospect of a serious monsoon failure in South Asia is a nightmarish scenario--for the countries there and for the rest of the world too.  Because, unlike in California, half the population relies on agriculture for their existence.  Their livelihoods are dependent on a prosperous agriculture sector.  And unlike almonds, which are luxuries, rice and wheat are staples that sustain the hundreds of millions.

The fact that nobody really worries about California's drought is by itself a measure of the affluence in this country.  Of course, almond trees are down.  Lawns are brown.  But, life is otherwise unchanged.  The only noticeable difference is this: water is no longer served at restaurants.  Water is served only if the diner requests it.  To paraphrase Harry Truman's mother who reportedly told him "if that's your biggest problem, Harry, consider yourself lucky," here in the land of affluence if water by request is the biggest problem in California, well, we are lucky beyond our wildest imaginations!

One word--Plastics. Plus one word--Ban. Equals two words--No Sense

Way back in high school, in one of Harold Robbins' many potboilers that I read, the plot involved a young man who was f*ing around with a young woman and her mother too.  Yes,  I read Dickens and Dostoevsky and also Robbins and Chase (James Hadley) and others; go figure!

A couple of years after that, sometime soon after coming to the US, I watched The Graduate in which the Dustin Hoffman character also, well, you know the story.

No, this is not about some strange young man with a mother-daughter sex triangle.  Stay with me.  In the highly sheltered existence of mine, those kind of things happened only in the fictional worlds, which is why they did not bother me at all.  Thus, what really impressed me in that movie with the glorious Simon/Garfunkel score was the scene in which the young graduate receives that advice in one word: plastics. Not the love or the sex story.

Ah, those were simpler times.  An era in which me the starving graduate student taking ziplock bags to India was a big achievement.  Plastics!

A few years ago, I was pleasantly shocked to notice that the vendor who was selling mangoes off his cart in Chennai was bagging a customer's purchase in plastic bags that he had.  The flower lady had plastic bags. And so did every seller, from the pavement to fancy stores.  Plastics had reached India, big time.

A couple of years ago, my neighbor went to Mali to volunteer his expertise in installing expensive medical equipment.  When he came back, his travel stories began with a question: "do you know what the national flower of Mali is?"  I had no freaking clue, of course.  "Plastic bags" he chuckled.  "They are everywhere on the street, on the trees, on open grounds."  He was unhappy with the littering he saw in Mali.

Meanwhile, in India, cows that looked like they had big stomachs turned out to be inflated because they had ingested a whole lot of plastic bags that were choking their stomachs.  And, yes, plastic bags had replaced the lotus as the flower of the country.

But, I don't ever think that the plastic bags are the greatest environmental threat ever--there are far worse things that I want to tackle first before banning the bags.  Not that I use a whole bunch of bags either--a long time ago I had switched over to reusable bags, which I regularly wash ;)

However, activism and politics are less about carefully thinking through and more about emotions and symbolic acts.  This, the great state of California and environmental activists passed a statewide ban on plastic bags.  Hallelujah!  All environmental problems solved!  Yeah, right!

It's a mildly positive step for the planet — especially if the goal is to cut down on plastic waste. But the disproportionate emphasis on plastic bags among people who care about the environment is also a bit misplaced. If you want to use your shopping choices to benefit wildlife and the environment as a whole, the type of bag you use is far less important than what you put inside it.

So, how would we then approach it rationally?  We would rank the practices that damage the flora and fauna by the order of their magnitude and then begin to focus on the worst ones first, right?

Not so, when it comes to activism or the politicians who are all about symbolism.

As an example, consider a vegetarian who prefers plastic bags versus a carnivore who wants to ban plastic bags.  Ready?

Isn't that picture worth a gazillion words?

These numbers can vary based on agricultural techniques, shipping methods, and other factors, but when you compare plastic bags with food, it's not even close. Yet for whatever reason, we associate plastic bags — but not food production — with environmental degradation.

Many fanatical environmentalists I know, especially among the left-leaning in academe, are also big time "nonveg" people.  They mouth the rhetoric, drive their expensive Prisues, travel to far away places to appreciate the natural settings there, yet, without seeing no environmental contradictions in their lives, eagerly champion banning plastic bags and plastic water bottles and ...

On top of all this, if plastic bag bans like California's end up causing people to use more paper bags — instead of bringing their reusable ones to the store — it'll certainly end up being worse for the environment. Research shows that making a paper bag consumes about four times more energy than a plastic bag, and produces about four times more waste if it's not recycled. 

When it comes to both climate change and trash production, eliminating plastic bags is a symbolic move, not a substantial one.

Oh well.  It provided material for a commentary! ;)  Maybe I should forget all about the plastic bags and, instead, watch The Graduate again.

We are all responsible for the drought in California?

Cogito, ergo sum is one that has been a wonderful guiding philosophy for me ever since I came across that.  (No, it was not in a Latin class, my friend!)  I often remark to students that education is all about thinking.  Thinking almost always challenges out gut instincts, which will not only make us a tad uncomfortable but force us to view the world in completely different ways.

But then thinking is hard work.  When students parrot statements condemning GMO food, or WalMart, or even the virtues of locavore as helping the local economy, it worries me very little.  They are, after all, in the process of figuring out how to think through.  I then prompt them with questions.  It is like the typical response we all received from our mothers throughout most of our childhood: "what were you thinking?" but without the judgmental tone.  Hmmm..., and then I wonder why enrollment in my classes has been on a decline! ;)

When I came across a Facebook comment, made perhaps in a lighter vein, that the ice-bucket-challenge was a waste of water, I was tempted to point out that the ice-bucket-challenge was a mere, ahem, drop in the ocean of wastage.  But, I did not, because Facebook is not really about serious discussions.  I have my blog for that! ;)

Vox.com provides a logical way to think through how we use water, and compares it with the gallon used in the ice-bucket-challenge:

source

The Slate piece that the chart is based on is not about the ice-bucket itself but a related water story--on how so much bottled water is exported out of California, which has been experiencing a terrible drought.

On Monday, Mother Jones produced this set of viral maps showing that most of the country’s bottled water comes from California, which just so happens to be in the midst of an epic, soul-crushing drought.
Barring a tropical storm or other variety of apocalypse, there is really no reason to ever buy bottled water. Bottled water is expensive, and it’s wasteful. But truthfully, exporting bottled water across state lines contributes an incredibly tiny amount to California’s annual water loss. You should never buy bottled water, but it’s because of the plastic, not because it’s making California’s drought worse.

Our gut instincts might tell us that exporting water from a state that has a serious water shortage is the worst thing Californians can do.  Which is where our gut instincts are wrong.  Not because exporting bottled water is wrong--it is wrong because of the plastic, as the article notes, and not because of the water itself.  What is the reality that challenges our gut instincts?

According to the bottled water industry, Americans consume about 30 gallons of bottled water per capita, each year. That may sound like a lot, but you’d do more to stem California’s drought by forgoing a single glass of Napa Valley wine or a single slice of Central Valley cheese. Skipping a single car wash would save more water than two people buy in bottles each year. But here’s the kicker: A single steak dinner uses as much water as almost a lifetime (61½ years’ worth, to be exact) of drinking bottled water. Animal products use so much water mostly because of the inherent inefficiencies of growing hay or grain first, and then feeding it to the animals. Animals raised industrially (not on pasture) are even worse: It takes a lot of water to wash away all the poop that would otherwise just recharge the soil.

Imagine a scene in California: a lovely middle-aged couple having a steak dinner with two glasses of wine and a tomato salad.  And their table also has bottled water.  A typical environmentalist will point only to that bottled water as a crime against nature, when the reality is far from that.

As long as you are checking your "gut" regarding thinking, you might also want to check your real gut:

Since California’s agriculture uses 80 percent of the state’s water anyway, small changes in your diet can go a long way. And since a good chunk of the entire country’s food comes from California, that means you don’t have to be a local to make a difference.

Even if you are a vegetarian--good for your health and for the global environment--and are eating almonds and cheese from California, you have contributed to worsening the state's drought way more than a schmuck does drinking water that was bottled in the Golden State ;)

Yes, Virginia, earthquakes happen in California, too

Oh boy, for a news junkie like me, what a day!  I mean, what a day!

From the West Coast, which is known for literal and metaphorical earthshaking:

A shallow magnitude 3.0 earthquake was reported Tuesday evening eight miles from Ridgemark, Calif., according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Ok, that is not the one, but this:

Judge Rolf M. Treu ruled, in effect, that it was too easy for teachers to gain strong job protections and too difficult to dismiss those who performed poorly in the classroom. If the ruling stands, California will have to craft new rules for hiring and firing teachers.

Gee, I am shocked, shocked that (awful) teachers with tenure are a major part of the education mess.  I had no idea!  (Yes, I am being gleefully sarcastic!)

Could this ruling get us out of the Jurassic Age of the education system?

The lawsuit, brought on behalf of nine schoolchildren, concentrated on three areas: teacher tenure, dismissal procedures and the seniority rules. The plaintiffs had argued that the rules resulted in grossly ineffective teachers obtaining and retaining permanent employment, and these teachers were disproportionately in schools serving low-income and minority students. The judge said this violated fundamental rights to equal education. "There is also no dispute that there are a significant number of grossly ineffective teachers currently active in California classrooms," he said, adding that “the evidence is compelling. Indeed it shocks the conscience.” 

Indeed.  Remember that lengthy New Yorker piece on the awful teachers who cannot be fired?  The Rubber Room?

Meanwhile, on the other coast, a huge political earthquake:

 In one of the most stunning primary election upsets in congressional history, the House majority leader, Eric Cantor, was soundly defeated on Tuesday by a Tea Party-backed economics professor who had hammered him for being insufficiently conservative.

I can't decide which earth-shattering news excites me more; damn, couldn't they have happened on two separate days so that I could have enjoyed them, savored them, both!

Compared with Cantor, Speaker Boehner was a "moderate."  And how does Cantor compare with the guy who beat him in the primary?  And what does it mean for the next two years of Obama's lamest of lame duck presidency?

“How do you get that or anything done now? Eric is too liberal? This was the guy holding Boehner back.”

Muahahaha.  Eric Cantor is a liberal as far as the Tea Party is concerned.  On that scale, Nancy Pelosi is more of a communist than all the communists of the world put together.

The good ol' US of A, where the political theatre can be even more exciting than the one in the old country!

Yes, I am sufficiently entertained! ;)

Might be a good day to me. But not to all

It was a pleasure driving on the eastern side of the mountains after the rains on the windward side.  There was no need to worry about the rain affecting the visibility or the traction on the road.  I could afford to take my eyes off the road in order to scan the surroundings for interesting sights. And then stop whenever I felt like.

Life is never about getting to the destination.  It is all about what happens when we think we are headed towards it.  Life is, as they say, what happens when we are busy planning for it.  But, we rarely ever consciously live that way.  We get dejected, depressed, sad, heartbroken, and everything else when things don't develop the way we had imagined they would.

And even when we delight at something, well, it is that age old saying that one man's food is another man's poison.

I stopped at an intersection to fill gas.  When driving along lonely stretches, I get paranoid that the gas gauge might be faulty and that I might be better off if I added a few more gallons.  The ever cautious 'better safe than sorry" personality that I am.  Not much unlike Madan's cartoon character, munjaakkiradhai muthannaa (முன்ஜாக்கிரதை முத்தண்ணா,) who, when visiting an old fort walks behind the canon just in case!

It was a lonely rural gas station under the blue sky with a scattering of white clouds.  The air was crisp.  I stood for a few seconds to enjoy the sun and the air.  There was nothing to complain about.

The rural setting also meant that the pump was an older model without a credit-card reader.  I walked into the mini-store to pay.

"Please close that door and turn that knob. Otherwise it won't close" urged the woman at the counter.  Sure enough, the door opened wide behind me.  "Am getting a new door tomorrow" she said as I walked towards the counter after making sure the door closed.

"It is a beautiful day outside" I said.

"Yeeeeesss ..." she dragged as if she really didn't want to agree with that.

After a momentary hesitation, she qualified it with "not a good day with this wind when you are out farmin'"

I was reminded of an acquaintance back in my California days.  He had agricultural interests and often remarked that the good days for us city dwellers are often not the best conditions for those out on the fields.

I resumed driving. I figured that I pay my share of dealing with bad days and I had earned the right to enjoy the sights.  Like the red rocks that seemed like somebody had painted that as a sharp contrast to the landscape.  I am glad I stopped there, for I know not what life has in store for me and whether I might ever see that mountain again.

Is this better than Weed? No comparison!

After I got back on to the freeway, resuming my drive to LA, I turned the radio on in order to listen to NPR.  It has been only a day and I already miss NPR in the background.  Visits to India get immensely more complicated than this because I can't ever listen to my buds Steve, Michelle, Melissa, Bob, Scott, and, of course, Will Schortz!

The news said something about Tropical Storm Ernesto.  Strangely, it was not the news that a tropical storm was on its way to making landfall that piqued my interest.  It was the name "Ernesto."

Because, the dinner last night was at "Ernesto's!"

"B" picked me up from the motel, and asked me whether I was ok with Mexican food.

"Sure.  Any food is ok, because the prime thing for me is your company, and not the food itself" I told him.  "But, that does not include McDonald's" I added.

We entered the restaurant, and "B" wanted to know whether I preferred outdoor seating or inside.  After a long drive in 98 degree heat, there was no way I was going to sit outside.

It was the end of happy hour, and there sure were some happy customers, talking away in a jet-plane-engine-decibel level.

The Quesadilla in the menu looked tempting.  I was curious about the "Colorado" and "Navajo" chicken options.  I asked the middle-aged waiter for explanations, which he gave me with one of the best smiles I have seen recently.  But, I didn't understand a single word he said.  Often, a pleasant demeanor more than makes up for communication issues.

"I will try the Navajo chicken, please" I said without having a clue about how it is prepared and how it differed from the other option.  "B" placed his order.  His was with a glass of beer, and it was lemonade for me.

We talked and ate.  I cleaned up my plate.  "B" asked me with a smile, "so, was this better than the Mexican food you had at Weed"  That Indian-Chinese-Mexican thing?"  I was so delighted that he remembered this from a year ago.

This was many, many times better.  Muy bueno!

The bump on the road knocked me off the recollection mode, and into the present.  Steve Inskeep had moved on to some other topic.  I looked up at the temperature display.  68!  The utter fear of temperatures in the high 90s, or even 100+, made me do something that I rarely do: speed at almost ten miles over the speed limit.  The funny thing is that even then I was the slow vehicle. Welcome to California!

The temperature rises fast, but not my temper!

The temperature gauge reported a pleasant 60 degrees when I left home soon after eight in the morning.  With the sun struggling to break through the clouds, it was the best driving conditions I could have asked for.

Through the first two hours, the temperature slightly fluctuated--between 58 and 61--and I enjoyed the cool air rushing in through the vents.. But, when I saw the beginnings of a blue sky at a distance, I was not thrilled.  Sure enough, quickly it was up to 71, and when I reached Ashland, about three hours from home, it was a bright and sunny midday at 81.

There is nothing we can do about the weather, how much ever we might complain about it.  So, I did the best possible attitude adjustment I could, when I resumed the long drive to Southern California after a pleasant lunch break at the park.  Lunch prepared at home, thank you ;)

Over the mountain stretch, I wanted a break from driving in the 87-degree heat, and swung all the way over from the fast lane to the exit to Dunsmuir.

Dunsmuir?

I drove through the main drag.  It seemed like even the locals did not want to venture out in the blistering heat.  A couple of tourists were dragging themselves to a cafe.

Similar to how life is full of unexpected twists and turns, even my exiting at Dunsmuir was an unplanned one.

More was to come--I turned on to a side street, which led to the rail depot.  With plenty of trees on the side that provided wonderful shade.  I was certain that the vehicle would appreciate being in the shade for a while; if only my car could talk to me when I drive!

As is typical of most small towns in the US, here too the rail depot had the red, white and blue all over the place.   It is amazing how true the stereotypical representation of small-town America is, with the fluttering flags, pies at cafes, and with a charm about them.

The rail engineers were walking up and down the locomotives, which made me think that perhaps the freight train would leave soon.  There was no way I was going to miss out on that--this was a golden intersection of my fascination for trains and my fascination for small towns.

And then it happened.

The train tooted twice, and I hurriedly got my camera into the video recording mode.  Initially, it seemed like the train barely moved at all.  It did.  And a little bit more. The pace picked up slowly.  I noticed there were three locomotives in tandem, and I was sure this would be a mighty long freight train.  I started counting the wagons, and soon lost count. I put away the camera and delighted at the sights and sounds of a mile-plus long freight train going past me in a strange small town in the Siskiyous.

I didn't care much about the temperature after that, even though for most of the rest of the trip it hovered at between 98 and 100!  Further, as Scarlett O'Hara said, "tomorrow is another day!"

Bets are always on the US

The juggernaut that the US is, I expect it to easily keep moving along for a very long time. 

In responding to this post blogged by a friend from the other side of the planet, I commented:

My long-term bets, if I were a betting man, will always be on California and not on, say, Oregon, just as the bets will favor the US over any other country in the world.

Of course, I have written about this earlier too, like here.  The more I read and think about this, the less I am convinced that the juggernaut will be stopped in its tracks anytime soon. 

So, what I did read to trigger these additional remarks?  For one, The Economist concludes, after reviewing two books on this topic:

All things considered, America looks remarkably strong. I will be very surprised if another large country is richer and more stable than it two decades from now.

Of course, there is plenty wrong with the US--from bombing the shit out of innocent families to an increasingly dysfunctional political system where a majority vote in the Senate is often broadcast in the media as a bill having failed to pass to ... well, the list is quite endless.    

Yet, it is the US that I would bet on.  At one level, the logic is quite simplistic, similar to how in the bad old days the pinks and the reds would be asked a rather simple question: how many people in the world would rather immigrate to the US versus immigrating to the USSR?  Sometimes such Occam Razor-like thoughts, as simplistic as they might sound, carry a great deal of weight.

There is also plenty going well for the US, which the Economist also points out:

[One] thing that is often underappreciated about the place is its remarkable economic and institutional flexibility. When Michigan's economy implodes, that's bad—but people find it remarkably easy to pack up and move to sunnier climes. When Congress can scarcely keep the money for highway repair flowing, the city of Chicago pioneers new public-private sources of infrastructure finance. America's federal government is often a wreck. Luckily, America's success isn't driven almost entirely by the choices and actions of the federal government. China's success is really remarkable in so many ways, and I don't pretend there is nothing America can learn from its success. As a special report this week indicates, it is in many ways a surprisingly resilient economy. Its institutions are well-equipped to handle a major macroeconomic shock. Yet every government makes mistakes, and an economy built on the assumption that the government won't make too many mistakes is putting itself at risk for eventual stagnation, or perhaps collapse.
Meanwhile, American innovation is proving as impressive as ever. The golden age of the Space Race may be long gone, but private firms in America are putting ships into orbit. Apple is the envy of the world, and rightly so. Google is doing pioneering work on autonomous vehicles, which could revolutionise transport. IBM's Watson, and things like it, could change medicine and many other fields besides.

 To quite an extent, this Houdini-like magical performance of the US was probably what led the taxi driver in Nagercoil to remark that it is amazing that America always comes out on top.

As Branko Milanovic points out in his wonderful book, The Haves and the Have-Nots, even if the US grows at a mere 2.5% a year, while China and India grow at 7% a year, well, catching up won't be easy.  Furthermore, as countries reach that middle-income sweet spot, it becomes difficult to maintain high growth rates.

If one considers California as a barometer, a leading indicator, of what lies ahead for the US, Dowell Myers, whose class I have had as a graduate student, cautions that we do not believe any tales of the Golden State's gloomy future.  Even when it comes to population dynamics:

When it comes to retaining native sons and daughters, California has the fifth-strongest attraction of all 50 states. Among California-born adults who were at least 25 years of age and old enough to have moved away, fully 66.9 percent were still choosing to reside in the Golden State in 2007, the last year of high migration before the recession held people down. Texas, with 75.1 percent of native Texans still living in the state, has the strongest loyalty, and the other three rounding out the top five are Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Georgia. California’s top-five ranking is all the more impressive when you take into account the state’s high living costs and other negatives. We must have something going for us.

A variation of that old question comparing the US and USSR, would one rather go to, or be in, California, versus living in, Utah?  Is it any wonder why Facebookistan would be headquartered in California, though the authoritarian founder is a New Yorker!  Here, too, it is not that everything is well in California, but my bets are on that state.

But, would I ever want to move back to California?  Sure, to La Jolla, if I can afford it :)

"How did you know they were from California?"

It was warm and bright day at Mahabalipuram (Mamallapuram) as is typical this time of the year.

If only the sun weren't this intense!  But, that kind of a wish is what an old expression captures well: "if my aunt had balls, she would be my uncle!"  It is what it is.

We walked from the car to the "Five Chariots." What an amazing piece of history and art!

It is one thing to have read about these, in history books and in Kalki's wonderful fictionalized history, and it is a completely different experience to see them up close and personal.

Looking at them, I was reminded of the observation attributed to Michelangelo that he saw the images in the chunks of marble and all he did was remove the stone from around those images.  The granite sculptors here in Mahabalipuram, similarly, perhaps clearly saw these images, and slowly and methodically chiseled away the hard stone revealing these fantastic pieces of art. 

Given the tourist attraction of the place on top of its historical status, it deserves a lot more upkeep and enhancements than what is currently provided.  But, again, that quote about aunt, balls, and uncle!

There were a few tourists from outside India.  With small and large cameras and wide-rimmed hats, umbrellas, and water bottles they were all equipped to deal with the intensely bright sun and enjoy the scenery.

There was a large contingent from Japan.  Along with the Japanese, in the same tour group, was a group of older, white folks. One woman just seemed Californian.  I can't quite figure out why she came across that way, but she did.

"Where are you folks from?" I asked her.

"California."

Bingo!

"Hey, I am from Oregon."

I bet that is one confusing statement when I am in India.  "I am visiting now, and so is my brother and his family from Australia. We are here with our parents and sister."

She pointed to another woman in her group and said, "she is from Port Townsend in Washington." And then called her and we said hi.

"Where in California?"

"Los Angeles."

"I went to school at USC" I responded.

Strangers we no more were.  It is human, after all, to feel that sense of a shared home when far away from home.

"My daughter and her husband live in LA; they are doing their residencies at USC."

"Your daughter?  You don't look old enough to have that much grown up a daughter."

By now I am used to that kind of a response from people.  It is almost easy to predict what follows after that, which is what she said: "well, you have grey hair and a grey beard."

Bingo!

"She is my adopted daughter" I clarified.

"Are you a physician too?"

I told her I teach at a university in Oregon.

As her husband joined her after clicking away, she introduced us and added that he was a physician. She pronounced an Indian name, attempting to correctly pronounce the name of the person who worked with her husband.  "There are quite a few Indian physicians" she said.

I took photos of them and the Port Townsend woman and her husband (I am guessing here), all by the elephant. 

We bid adieu.

After they left, my mother asked me, "from the manner in which you talked with them, I thought you knew them.  How did you know they were from California?"

Beats me!

The best thing about the Siskiyous: keeps California away from Oregon :)

The Los Angeles-San Diego area is almost a contiguous urbanized land area except for that stretch in southern Orange County and northern San Diego County.  Where there is very little sign of the busy built environment to the south and the north.  And the one recognizable sign off the freeway warns motorists to watch out for the possibility of humans (illegal aliens!) running across.  Thus, southern San Diego County and its cities have not been messed up by the urbanites from north.

A similar barren patch insulates Oregon from any overwhelming influence from California--the mountain stretch all the way from Ashland in the southern tip of Oregon until Redding in California, from where the great valley extends up to Bakersfield, where I lived for many years.

I am so thankful for this geographic feature that stops California at the border, so to speak.

California is a great place to visit, as is New York City. Great to visit only because of the comforting and reassuring feeling that, unlike with the Eagles' Hotel California, I can truly leave after checking out.

I did :)

The Cascades on the eastern side and the Pacific Ocean on the west further ensure minimal interference from those sides. Never before have I paused to appreciate these geographic features for how much they help with the Oregon story.

It is, therefore, a figurative island that this part of Oregon is.  Or, perhaps like the setting in Brigadoon.  Ironically, even the "native" students seem confused when I tell them this is a paradise on earth; I suppose they are yet to check out other places ... they, too, will soon find out :)

Poppies remind me of California ...

About this time of the year, the golden-orange colors of the California poppies bring to energetic life the Grapevine stretch over the hills between Bakersfield and Sen Fernando Valley in Los Angeles.

Often I have stopped while driving across to admire them.  I am sure my daughter remembers stopping by Gorman at least a few times to pick some of those flowers, all the while worrying that a cop or a ranger will issue us a cease and desist order.  The poppies made the warm--sometimes uncomfortably warm--drive a lot more pleasant.  No wonder Christo did that wonderful poppy-colored umbrella project.

Here in Oregon, poppies are in bloom, even by the Willamette River that I walk by practically everyday now that the cold, cold and rainy, rainy days are long gone.  There are all kinds of wildflowers displaying their beauty, attracting the bees and the humans alike.  But, it is always the poppies that draw me closer to them.  Because, ... I have stories that link me to them.  To their California cousins.    Doesn't it look like a line of poppies are meandering through on their way to California? Run, Forrest, run :)

I could watch those flowers for hours, I think, if Led Zeppelin's "Going to California" played in an extended jam session in the background :)

Quote of the day, on California's higher education system

A phenomenon without a doubt, and without a peer:

California is arguably the heaviest-hitting state in any league of higher education. To find something comparable, you would have to aggregate the combined performance of the entire Northeastern United States. Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York together have produced precisely as many Shanghai top 50 institutions as California. And they have done so with the head start of an extra century or more of development, with the resources of a combined population base close to twice California's and, of course, with vast amounts of private-pocket financing.

The combined endowments of the 10 top-50 institutions on the East Coast top $80 billion. The West Coast's 10 top-ranked universities have a combined endowment of just over $21 billion, or about one-fourth of what their East Coast counterparts have amassed. Moreover, Stanford alone accounts for more than half of the endowment money held by the West Coast's top universities.

In other words, in terms of bang for the buck, the efficiency of California's university performance is staggering. Only a few state institutions in the Northeastern United States make it into the Shanghai top 50. All the others are plushly upholstered private institutions.

So, whatever happened to California, which finds itself in such a mess today?  

Map of the day: where the elephant gained

The note at the source (ht),

The other side of the equation can be seen in the Pacific Coast states (Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington). Despite the Red wave sweeping America, the net House gain for the GOP in these five states was zero (+1 in Washington and -1 in Hawaii). The Pacific states of California, Oregon, and Washington have become a Blue sandbar that can withstand even a Republican tsunami. Strong GOP candidates for Governor in Oregon and California were defeated. Credible Republican Senate contenders in California and Washington could not oust Democratic incumbents. With 53 House berths, not a single Golden State seat changed party hands. Back in 1994, the last GOP landslide year, Republicans picked up three seats in California. The story is worse for Republicans in Washington State, which was ground zero for the GOP in 1994, when the party won six House seats and held their Senate seat too. All the state’s House seats save one were impervious to a Red tide this time around.

Remember a key Democratic loss in 1994?

Foley became the first sitting Speaker of the House to lose his bid for re-election since Galusha Grow in 1862.

No significant GOP inroads since ... no complaints :)