Rodger and the UCSB murders

http://blogs.kqed.org/newsfix/2014/05/26/amid-multiple-warning-signs-alleged-isla-vista-killer-slipped-through-system/
http://blogs.kqed.org/newsfix/2017/05/27/legislation-santa-barbara-shootings/

It seems like we have this conversation every few months. The press and social media are active as usual, with a WP commentator even insinuating that Judd Apatow movies are to blame for Rodger's unrealistic expectations for his sex life (like how video games were behind Adam Lanza, and Marilyn Manson led to Columbine).

Most people are dismissing Rodger as just "crazy". He was diagnosed with mild autism but was not on any drugs. However, if all of us got thorough psych evals, I am sure over half of us would register something. After reading some of his "manifesto", he doesn't strike me as deranged or irrational. He of course carefully planned the rampage and kept his composure enough to convince the sheriff's dept. that he was not a threat. Personally, I think this case is more about Rodger's morals/socialization than mental illness. Unfortunately, perfectly sane people can hurt and kill others, as long as their worldview/values/ideology are compatible.

Most people in society realize that they need to address grievances lawfully, and don't have the right to be judge and executioner over perceived injustices. Teaching kids to have grit is popular these days too. At a basic level, kids may have better life outcomes if they learn to handle adversity without having egotistical victim complex and homicidal vengeance like Rodger. That is obvious. So parenting and communication could have made a difference. And then there is the cultural angle, especially among college-aged people where hormone-driven sexual assaults are outrageously high. Young men are bombarded by ludicrous messages that they are losers if they do not bed hot babes every week, no means yes, it's always someone else's fault, and so on. Fortunately better judgment and morals usually win out in the public space.

But most of us are subject to the misogynist culture, and most of us don't rape or kill. Most mentally ill people or gun owners don't either. So what is the key variable that separates mass killers from the rest of us? A tragic combination of these and bad luck? If we can't isolate the personal/social causes and take preventative measures, then the next best thing is limiting the ability of murderous people to access weapons.

Gun ownership rates are correlated with gun murders. The NRA would say causation is reversed - people need to own guns in those places because they live in dangerous places. But a reader on the KQED blog made a good point - instead of (or in addition to) the sheriff interviewing Rodger, could they check the database to see if he owns guns, and whether he bought them recently? For decades the NRA has blocked access to info like that, which has infuriated the public and law enforcement alike. Felons can't own guns, even if they didn't commit a violent crime. So why can a moody 14 year old, alcoholic, or a bipolar person legally own a gun? Some would argue that half of Rodger's victims died by knife. But that is just an anecdote - guns kill way more people than knives each year.

Did BP and the Feds do more harm than good trying to clean up the Gulf?

BP's Gulf PR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoOfIR4Vk1o

Probably closer to the truth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLzacnH3u50

and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cR5ieufbcAk

and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1cXrkw9n-E

The oil's all gone, victims are fairly compensated, and the Gulf is just like how it used to be, right?

We expected this problem wouldn't go away so smoothly, and unfortunately we were proven right. BP seemed to care more about concealing their Gulf spill rather than actually cleaning it properly. Remember how they heavily relied on chemical dispersants, such as Corexit (sounds like maximum strength white-out)? Corexit is banned by many nations, but is manufactured by Ecolab in the US, so it is still open for business (most times, the burden of proof is not on the company but on environmentalists/others to prove that a substance causes harm). Other nations prefer to use oil eating microbes, but Corexit just dissolves oil globs into smaller ones (out of sight, out of mind). The hope was that sea life would digest the smaller droplets and the problem would be solved (but what happens when sea life ingests the Corexit too?). 4 years after the disaster, oil is still washing up on the Gulf Coast. So maybe some of the millions of barrels of oil were digested, but clearly a great deal was not.

So the dispersant strategy was partly ineffective, but what about the side effects? Anything that chemically separates aggregated hydrocarbons is probably not healthy for other organic matter. When Corexit was used in Valdez and the Gulf, hundreds of workers came down with respiratory issues (the chemical is sprayed out of hoses and nozzles like Agent Orange, and can be easily inhaled). Coastal residents also documented many cases of skin rashes and boils. BP and the Coast Guard did not have its cleaning crews wear any protective clothing or respirators. According to VICE, they even barred people from wearing respirators because of the negative impression.

Under the water, many studies have shown that Corexit+oil is much more toxic on some marine life than oil or Corexit alone. So the shrimping industry was heavily affected too. One business reported ~50% of shrimp exhibiting illnesses and deformities, often in the gills. They are obviously unsellable and possibly unsafe for consumption (despite the FDA quickly pronouncing Gulf seafood to be safe just 4 months after the blowout... but it takes them 10 years to declare a medicine to be safe?).

Clearly, this cautionary tale demonstrates the dangers of (1) our dependence on fossil fuels, (2) our hubris that the latest technologies will never fail and we can safely tap more challenging resource deposits in more environmentally sensitive areas, (3) the political influences of the petrochemical industry, and (4) lax/incompetent regulation. Also, a destroyed city can be rebuilt, but a decimated ecosystem may be irreversible (at least on human schedules).

BP should not only compensate victims of the blowout, but also of the "cleanup". Whoever authorized the use of Corexit at this scale (without sufficient impact study a priori and public oversight) should be fired and possibly jailed. If this isn't grounds for prohibiting a foreign company from doing business in the US (and hopefully nationalizing their assets), I don't know what is. "Corporations are people, too", but if we can drone-execute a US citizen overseas without trial, then we should be able to give companies a lifetime ban if the body of evidence is so compelling. We lock up poor minorities and throw away the key, and AFAIK they did much less harm to the US than BP so far.

Fascinating origin story of HIV

http://www.radiolab.org/story/169879-patient-zero/

Ffwd past the Typhoid Mary story if you are short on time (to about 15:00).

Refugee to native ratios

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_refugee_population

I thought this was interesting and disappointing. We've already discussed America's betrayal of Iraqi translators and their promised immigration, but this is an overall view. It's not a stretch to say that America is a nation of immigrants and became a superpower in no small part from recent immigrants' contributions. Not to mention that we were taught in school that the US upholds certain principles such as protecting the vulnerable and helping the needy (per capita we are still a very generous nation).

The wiki page above suggests that we are less welcoming of refugees than Armenia. And overall, Ethiopia and civil rights champion China have more foreign refugees than we do. What gives? Considering our defense budget (even with austerity, our share is 65% of global) and how much foreign military aid we give to allies, you'd think we could at least finance some refugee camps or relocation programs, if our DHS/State refuse to allow refugees within our borders for security reasons and red tape.

The shift from federal poverty programs to the states and private NGOs/churches in the US is fairly well documented, and I wonder if foreign aid is following a similar trend. Oxfam, MSF, and others have to pick up the slack for less generous G20 governments (and of course those orgs are funded by donations). In the Mideast and Central Africa (where many conflicts are occurring), neighboring nations are on the front lines of the refugee crisis and bursting at the seams. Over a million Iraqis fled the war and are living elsewhere, but Iraq now has to host some 200K refugees from Syria.

If you can believe, the native:refugee ratios for Jordan and Lebanon is under 10:1. You can imagine the social strains and risks (the US would probably collapse under those conditions, so I don't know how poorer states do it). The refugees may not speak the language, don't have work or school authorization, and if they can find low-wage work - that may cause resentment among the locals (who often are in precarious economic situations too). They are literally living in tents for years, waiting and hoping to return home some day when it's safer. Many fall prey to scamsters offering fake visas or promises to get to the west. A whole generation of youth are at risk of having little to no future. Sure, I understand that tax dollars flow from the rich nations to the UN and other orgs, who distribute it to the camps and local authorities. But it is not nearly enough. This is yet another facet of our broken immigration system. We can't even get enough skilled foreign workers from Asia, so I suppose there is no hope for refugees from insecure parts of the world. Distance can't be in issue, since SWE/NOR's ratio is about 100:1, while the US is 1,200:1.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugees_of_the_Syrian_civil_war

Historically, the US has greatly benefited from harboring refugees from European states undergoing war/revolution, as well as from our allies in Asia. Persian-Americans and Jewish-Americans have flourished here after the 1979 revolution and WWII, respectively. Those who are given a chance here often become some of our most patriotic and productive citizens. They are highly motivated to make the most of this precious opportunity, succeed, and give back. They also bridge the diplomatic gap between the US and other states who may be on rocky terms with us. Humanitarian arguments aside, even from a selfish economic/strategic standpoint, it makes sense for us to take in more refugees.

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How is admittance of refugees different than other immigrants?  Are camps really the norm?  Are they expected to return at some point?

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I am not sure about the answers but here is some brief digging:

It seems that the majority of refugees do live in camps, maybe due to the host nation's infrastructure limitations and uncertainty over their immigration/assimilation policies. The conditions in the camps are pretty bad, like a prison, or like the first scene in Scarface (I guess the US loved to take in Cuban refugees in the '80s because that showed how much better the US was vs. Castro's Cuba). But still, it's better than facing shelling and starvation every day in Homs, or risking rape and murder in the Central Af. Republic. 

http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/consider-this/Consider-This-blog/2014/2/4/photos-of-the-unknownrefugeecrisis.html

Re: the US law - I think refugees can apply for temporary protected status or full asylum here, but I imagine the process is slow and with a high rejection rate. Also, if many of the refugees have little education and access to US diplomatic personnel, how can they apply? I doubt they could afford their airfare to the US either. But in the Syria case, I don't think we have an embassy there, so maybe we could reach out to the refugees who already made it to Turkey, Jordan, etc. Interview them in the camps, grant some of them visas, and set them up with host families or relatives here?

http://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/refugees-asylum

For the few who get refugee status for themselves and their families, I think they go through the regular green card process if they want to stay here permanently. Though I am not sure what happens if their app is rejected - maybe they get deported to another nation that will take them (but not their home country where they could still be at risk)? I guess we have deported 3,000 Cubans in the last 30 years, but not sure to where.

http://www.usimmigration.com/new-rule-cubans.html

And during the Bush years, it seems that refugee Cambodians convicted of a crime (not just violent acts, but in some cases merely driving drunk or possessing an unlicensed weapon) in the US faced deportation to Cambodia, even if they grew up here and know little about Cambodian culture. It is possible that jail and torture (and poverty at the very least) awaited them in Cambodia.

http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Refugees-with-a-record-face-shock-deportation-1089366.php

Lastly, this is somewhat related - but there is growing furor at the US Border Patrol for their record of using deadly force against Mexican nationals who weren't really a threat to anyone. In most cases, there was little to no investigation, disclosure, and punishment for the agents involved. Like most law enforcement agencies, there seems to be a circle-the-wagons and silent-treatment mentality regarding public oversight and accountability.

http://www.npr.org/2014/04/30/308220322/u-s-border-patrol-scrutinized-for-increasing-fatalities

Climate change defeatism

I know we've talked about climate change for years, and of course it's only getting worse. It has been more in my consciousness recently because I had some class projects on it, and it seems to be in my News Feed a lot.

From the little I know, unfortunately I think it's too fucking late. Many of the underlying mechanisms are positive feedback loops, so it makes it even harder to reverse them - even if we had the social consensus and investments. Deforestation, reduced food production, and more and more resources wasted on extreme weather/fire/sea level responses - it will likely be more crippling on humanity than the aging Baby Boomers. 

People in our situations will likely have decent lives in spite of climate change. We have the mobility and resources to avoid a lot of the pains. But billions of others are not so lucky, and many species will die out or be decimated in our lifetimes too. Species that never meant humans any harm. They just want to live and we took that from them.

So even though we may not suffer much directly, we will have to live with the shame that we presided over the biggest environmental calamity since the meteor that wiped out the dinos. Clearly, industrialized humans have been the worse thing for the planet. All because of the pursuit of wealth (or pursuit of happiness/survival). So future humans will look back at us the way we look at the Nazis or Crusaders. That is just pitiful to me.

Of course most of this is on the Boomers instead of the younger generations, but we weren't strong enough to overthrow those fucks and course correct. We want to be like them, that is the problem.

Do you have any thoughts on this stuff? Sorry for being so negative, but it's hard to feel upbeat about anything when you look at the various data. Sure, I do believe humans will find cost-effective ways to get renewable energy, protect coastal cities, grow food with a smaller environmental footprint, and conserve way better. But those things just make our lives more comfortable - they don't do much for the poor or the various species/ecosystems under threat.

PS - maybe you saw this how Gates is telling China's mega rich to help the poor. What do you think about wealth inequality in China vs. the west? Can China's social structure survive more decades of inflation, environmental degradation, construction bubble, and a growing wealth gap?

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From what I understand, major changes to the global climate are now more or less inevitable. Maybe I'm behind on the science, but I also thought that we can still mitigate the damage somewhat? 

Of course a lot of the damage due to climate change is senseless and was avoidable, but to the extent that it wasn't avoidable, I don't think we can be too hard on ourselves. The best we can do is mitigate it and teach our children to do better. Maybe I've gotten too cynical, but I never really expected humanity to do much about it. If you follow politics closely, it's basically just a series of leaders kicking the can down the road on hard decisions. 

The EU did that with the financial crisis, it's estimated that as a result of the German's need to "teach the Greeks a lesson," (in reality the problems had nothing to do with the average Greek citizen) millions of people have been out of work, had their soul crushed, and been made to feel worthless in Europe  and tens of thousands have committed suicide that otherwise wouldn't have: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/world/europe/increasingly-in-europe-suicides-by-economic-crisis.html?pagewanted=all

In the US, national single payer health care, if instituted any of the earlier junctures in which it was attempted to pass, would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives over the years, and even with Obamacare, lack of a truly comprehensive health care system will kill untold thousands more (http://www.pnhp.org/facts/a-brief-history-universal-health-care-efforts-in-the-us).

Poverty in the US was once thought to be possible to eradicate, and in fact we once came pretty close with the Great Society program. But thanks to Reagan, we do too little to actually fix the problem, and as a result hundreds of thousands go hungry, homeless, and lack adequate health care and social services on a daily basis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States The estimated cost to fix this is a trivial percent of the cost of what we spent on Iraq and only a smallish sliver of our annual defense budget.

I don't bring these up to be overly pessimistic, but I guess I see these problems as much more directly impactful on society than climate change and we can't even remove vested interests from them (or only with a lot of effort, see Obamacare) to make any headway. I think climate change is one of those things where people in society feel that they can "make a difference" more than these other problems above by buying a more fuel-efficient car, recycling, etc. and of course it gets a lot of messaging on lefty blogs/news sources. And it definitely should - it is an important issue.

But at the same time I feel like there are these issues where people are suffering /now/, where society could do something, but because the people are poor or invisible, we don't do anything. And that's what really breaks my heart. 

As for China, I think the Chinese are getting more altruistic, and that's a good thing. I think that one of the ironic things about Communism was that if you wanted to survive, you, by necessity, had to look out for number one - if you cared about anyone else's survival, you might starve or really go without. That carried over after the reform era began but things are changing. A new generation is growing up that has seen the excesses of development and want to do something about it. Still, they're a ways from Western level of altruism and I think there's a lot less trust of NGOs in China than there are in the US (and rightfully so - even supposedly well run US NGOs waste a lot of their money).

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Re: China - is there a similar tension between the 1% and 99% like we see in places like the US and Brazil? Or do the poor kind of accept that the connected elites in the Party hoard all the money too? I just don't know if there is much culture of sharing in China, as you said. Especially with the rapid transition from Great Leap to #2 economy, now it's all about "me" and conspicuous consumption, etc. Luxury brands now say that China is their key market, right? Also, Beijing gives way less foreign aid relative to its GDP vs. others in the G20. I guess you could call their projects in the 3rd world "aid" - securing resources rights by giving Congo a shitty dam or railway that is shoddy and won't add much value to the host nation (plus it's all built by immigrant Chinese, so it doesn't produce much vocational training, jobs, and economic activity for the locals - hence the resentment by the locals).

Wow, I didn't know about the Greece suicide data, that is really sad. I agree that the social problems you mentioned are more easily and cheaply fixed than climate change, and could save more lives. I also agree that we really had a chance with LBJ and the Great Society to wipe out poverty and have a more fair, humane nation. All the conditions were right, but he got sidetracked with Vietnam and then stagflation-oil embargo-Iran hit us, and the GOP got to take over and dismantle some of the progress. IMO, we'll never get such an opportunity again. It's not just you; we're all more cynical with harder hearts these days I think.

But re: climate change, I would have hoped for more traction/progress, because unlike poverty/inequality issues, it's not about "why should the rich help the needy?" Climate change is both a threat and opportunity for the rich. Do they want their kids to be subjected to superstorms and droughts for perpetuity? And those extreme events wreak havoc on the stability of global markets and their investments. Lastly, climate change is a huge opportunity too (industries to either mitigate or adapt to it). It's a trillion dollar problem with huge profits to be made for the first movers - so why haven't we seen it (apart from the impressive advances in solar, and energy efficiency for some products)? 

I forget which NYT journalist said it, but his comment was along the lines of "lightbulbs aren't going to solve climate change." There is only so much a conscientious consumer can do. Sure we can get a Prius, improve our home's insulation, and change some of our behaviors, but even if millions of us had the money/time to make those changes, it would barely affect the carbon situation. The main drivers are deforestation, agribusiness, and power generation. Huge, politically connected, int'l industries where only coalitions of governments have enough power and reach to move them (if they wanted to). Sure, consumers en masse could give up beef or boycott Indonesia until their economy stops burning rainforest - but we know it won't happen because we are addicted to carbon-intensive products and services.

Bottom line, climate change could eat up 10% or more of global GDP, and reduce crops/fish yields by 20% or more. That is freaking scary. With a growing population and more consumption in Asia, something's gotta give. All the conflicts that could arise due to climate-related problems could also eat up gov't resources, attention, and lives. So overall it's a major deadweight loss for humanity, and likely irreversible at this point.