#60 / Shapers

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2024 is a "Leap Year," and today, February 29th, is our "Leap Day." This statement is just for information purposes, only. My topic today is somethng else!

oooOOOooo

I was delighted to have been recently profiled by Wallace Baine, in a column that appeared on the online news platform, Lookout. Click the following link if you'd like to read the column, which reviews the local, Santa Cruz County history in which I was involved during the twenty-year period I served as an elected member of the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors. 

Baine's column provides an "evaluative" retrospective of what happened and what I had to do with it. The fact that the column describes my "legacy" as a "long shadow" gives the reader an indication that both the "pluses" and the "minuses" of my tenure on the Board are discussed. I do like to think that my involvement was more "plus" than "minus," more "sunshine" than "shadow," but that isn't everyone's evaluation!

Lookout photographer Kevin Painchaud contributed a very nice picture to accompany the column, the picture having been taken in late February 2024, showing me out at Lighthouse Field, where my involvement with local politics began, back in the early 1970's:

I was not the first person that Lookout decided to profile as one of the "Shapers" who have affected Santa Cruz County history, and I surely won't be the last. Here is how Lookout has defined its "Shapers" series:

In many fundamental respects, Santa Cruz County is what it is today, for better or worse, because of the efforts and decisions of a few highly influential and consequential people. We here at Lookout are attempting to do something audacious and take the measure of those foundational people in our new series of profiles called “The Shapers.”

Who are the Shapers? They are people who have left a lasting mark on how many of the rest of us live and work today in Santa Cruz County. Obviously, some are elected officials, but others are government employees, businesspeople, nonprofit/arts leaders, entrepreneurs, academics/teachers, community activists, artists/writers and philanthropists. Many of those significant people are now retired from public life and are perhaps due for a reappraisal from the current generation. Others are still active and exerting influence in the realms of culture, business, the arts, development and public policy.

Other "Shapers" whom Lookout has identified include, Ciel Cirillo, Bruce and Marcia McDougal, Tim Jackson, and Rowland Rebele. I think my profile comes fifth in the series. More to come!

As I read the column - and reviewed its evaluation of the role I have played in Santa Cruz County history - it struck me that I should probably comment about the whole idea of seeing history as having been "shaped" by "highly influential and consequential" individuals. There is no doubt that individuals, and what they do, have an important impact on what happens - and thus on the history of the times in which they lived. However, and maybe this can be seen particularly in the case of elected officials, our history is a "group project." We shouldn't ever forget that. 

If we begin to think that what counts most is what "consequential" individuals do, we can underestimate, and actually "undermine," our own role in "making history." I want to say that when I look back on the history in which I have been involved (and I'm still "kicking"), I want to be remembered most for my role as an elected "representative," and I want to be remembered as a "good" representative, of course. I think the "Shapers" review of my tenure on the Board of Supervisors should be counted as giving me a pretty good "grade."

Our elected officials are not selected because they, individually, are supposed to figure out what to do, and then do it. Our system of "self-government" is a system of "representative" government, in which we (the people) decide what to do, and then elect people who "represent" the voters who put them into office, and who will work (we hope successfully) to achieve what the majority of the community wants to accomplish. 

The way I look back on the history in which I have been involved (and it's highlighted very well, I think, in Wallace Baine's Lookout column), my job was to try to achieve what the people who elected me wanted to accomplish. How well I did at that, how well I was able to help the community achieve what the majority wanted to happen, is how my personal contributions should be evaluated. "Saving Lighthouse Field," establishing a comprehensive system of "growth management," saving farmland, setting up a system that required developers to set aside at least a small share of new residential development as "price-restricted," so that it would always be "affordable" to a person with an average or below average income, providing resourcess for community based social programs, stopping offshore oil drilling and protecting our marine environment were not my projects. Those were community projects. 

Bottom line? Who shapes our history? WE do. We do it together - at least that's what happens if our politics is working right. It doesn't always work right, of course, and it certainly won't work right if we elect people who make statements like this one: "I am your justice. I am your retribution." The person who said that doesn't understand the first thing about democratic and representative self-government, and never should have been elected to "represent" the people, because that person doesn't "get" the whole idea. He thinks it's all about him! 

I am very proud to have been recognized as an effective and "consequential" representative of the people of Santa Cruz County, but just remember this: When we want to think about who "shapes" our history, the answer is that WE do! We're in this together!

So, let me end with my much-repeated admonition: If we want to accomplish anything - if we want "self-government" - we need to get involved ourselves.

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Image Credits:

(1) and (2) -- https://lookout.co/the-shapers-the-long-shadow-of-gary-pattons-legacy-in-santa-cruz-county/

 

#59 / Not So Self-Evident

  

 

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I haven't read the book, but an online review caught my attention. The book I am referencing is titled, "Equality: The History of an Elusive Idea." Darrin M. McMahon is the author. He teaches history at Dartmouth.

The book review I have mentioned appeared on the Truthdig website. McMahon's "second insight," as highlighted below, is the observation that most intrigued me: 

[McMahon] convincingly rebuts the notion that the concept of equality was first developed as a result of European encounters with Indigenous peoples or, more conventionally, was the invention of the Enlightenment or the American and French Revolutions. “Ideas of equality had a long and rich history prior to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,” he writes, “and that deep history inevitably bore on its modern emergence, shaping and inflecting it in important ways.” ....

[McMahon's] second important insight is the “enduring tension between difference and sameness in the long history of equality.” No two people are alike. Equality, McMahon explains, “is first and foremost a relationship that we conjure in our minds in order to draw comparisons between dissimilar things.” From our fingerprints to our facial features, as well as our hopes and dreams, human beings are different. Thus, claims of equality “necessarily involve the abstracting out of a shared characteristic (or characteristics).” Is there something essential in every human being that justifies a claim to equality? “From a common soul to a common humanity to a common place of birth, the rationales are extensive, and over time they have changed, privileging at various stages religion, reason, virtue, sex, race, age, and dignity, to name only a few.” 

It follows that equality is perfectly compatible with difference and even presupposes it. “The equality in political, industrial, and social life which modern men [and women] must have in order to live,” W.E.B. Du Bois wrote in 1915, “is not to be confounded with sameness. On the contrary … it is rather insistence upon the right of diversity” (emphasis added).

The right of diversity! Think about that. Think about what that actually means. 

The idea proclaimed as a "self-evident" truth in The Declaration of Independence is that all persons are "created equal." This is a claim that human "diversity" should not allow us to treat people differently, just because they are, in fact, "different." Whatever differences may exist (and they are manifold), every person is of equal value, and must be equally prized. 

Comparisons, my mother said, are odious. It is in comparison, most typically, that we distinguish who is worthy and who is not, who is better and who is not, who is important, and who is not. Etc. 

To live up to the promise made at the founding of this nation, we must forget all that.

Because we live together, it is self-evident that we cannot found a Republic, or govern ourselves correctly, unless we truly understand this rather radical insight: We are different, but we are equally worthy, equally due respect and deference. All of us. Every one of us!

If we truly understand this, and accept this as a truth, the phrase, "we are all in this, together," becomes a revelation. 

The United States has sometimes claimed to be "exceptional," and I for one believe that it is. The exceptional nature of our nation and our government is in its claim that we will not turn difference into a comparative, and let comparisons rank and order who gets what, who can do what, who is important and who is not. 

Our claim is that equality - understood as just discussed - is both self-evident, and is the place where self-government begins. From the beginning, this has been the foundation upon which we have premised our national existence.

Let us reflect upon that observation from W.E.B. Du Bois, and then respond to the command of Captain Picard. 

Let us "make it so."

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Image Credit:

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/truths-not-always-self-evident/

#58 / Confidence Is infectious. So Is Defeatism.

 

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Robert Hubbell, pictured, writes a daily blog on Substack. He calls it the "Today's Edition" newsletter. On Monday, February 26, 2024, Hubbell titled his blog posting, "Democrats should be gaining confidence."

I am a subscriber to Hubbell's blog, which provides a daily review of national politics. You can click here for an explanation of how Hubbell puts together his daily blog postings. 

I thought that Hubbell's statement - comandeered for the title I have placed on my own blog posting today - was worth highlighting. It really is true that "defeatism" is infectious - and please be aware that the infectious disease of "defeatism" can be truly deadly in the political arena. The national media do not necessarily give readers a clear understanding of what's going on, so here is a comment by Hubbell that is worth thinking about:

When Joe Biden won the South Carolina Democratic primary two weeks ago with 96.2% of the vote, the NYTimes called his victory an “uncertain measure of wider enthusiasm,” but when Trump won only 59.8% of the vote in the GOP South Carolina primary, the Times proclaimed Trump delivered “a crushing blow” to Nikki Haley! 

Let's not get "overconfident," though. Hubbell's message is designed for those who believe that reelecting Donld J. Trump as president would be a political disaster, and neither undue confidence nor feelings of incipient "doom" are appropriate. Besides understanding that we are routinely seduced into feelings of "defeatism," which we need to discard, we also need to understand the following points, as Hubbell has outlined them in that February 26th blog post:

(1) No matter what happens, the general election will be a close race that will demand every effort we can muster.

(2) We can’t count on Trump to defeat himself. Instead, we must beat him, fair and square—which means winning by about 10 million votes to account for the embedded inequities in the electoral college system.

(3) We should be confident about Democratic chances in the fall—but not complacent. Confidence is infectious—but so is defeatism. Because we have reason to be confident, we should pass it on to others!

(4) Don’t believe the media’s negative spin on every story!

Enough said? I hope so!

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https://substack.com/@roberthubbell

#57 / Democracy At Risk

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Leon Panetta, pictured, is a former Member of Congress, who represented the Monterey Bay Area, including Santa Cruz County, for sixteen years. He has also served (not at the same time) as Secretary of Defense, Director of the CIA, White House Chief of Staff, and Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Click this link for a Wikipedia write-up. Panetta is now the Chairman of the Panetta Institute for Public Policy, which is located in Monterey County. 

In the Winter 2023 edition of the Panetta Institute "Update," Panetta had this to say, under a headline that read, "Democracy at Risk."

In 1937, The New Republic ran a series on "The Future of Democracy." Leading writers like Bertrand Russell and John Dewey were asked: "Do you think that political democracy is on the wane?" The lead contributor, the Italian philosopher, Benedetto Croce, took issue with the question. He said that this type of question was like asking if it was going to rain today. The trouble, Croce explained, is "that political problems are not external forces beyond a society's control; they are forces within a society's control. We need solely to make up our minds and act."

I was very pleased to see Panetta's statement. Today, many look upon politics as some kind of "spectator sport." They "observe." They "report." They "bitch."  

As I have pointed out quite frequently, politics - and specifically the politics of self-government - is not about what we observe; it's about what we do! It's about the actions we take, and voting, while "necessary" - while it's important - is not "sufficient." "Self-government" means that we, ourselves, must be directly involved - doing things. Acting! Governing (not just griping).

Is "Democracy At Risk"?

I am with Benedetto Croce. We decide!

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Image Credit:

https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2017/01/12/leon-panetta

#56 / Ears

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Whenever I write out and publish one of these blog postings - and I have published one every day, since January 1, 2010 - a question always comes to mind: Will anyone actually read this? I do feel compelled to ask myself that question, which then, almost always, leads to another: Is there a way, right now, right at the start, that I could grab the attention of a potential reader, grab that reader by the throat (so to speak), and get my point across?

Candidly, if I felt I had a good answer to that question, I think I would write a whole book!

Jesus, who never wrote anything down himself (at least as far as we know), was successful, it seems, in getting his message out. It appears that Jesus approached things this way, with this proclamation: “He who has ears to hear…. Let him hear.”

“He, she, or they,” of course. Let me correct Jesus on that!

You'll get my point, I am sure. Jesus had faith. He didn't need a plan to "pre-sell" the Gospel. He pretty much expected that the Word would get out to those who needed to hear it. All he needed to do was to "tell it like it is."

With a little bit of faith, along those lines, I think I could write a whole book!

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https://divetimor.com/ear-problems-helpful-techniques-to-equalize-your-ears/

#55 / Humanity's Environmental Hubris

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The Aral Sea stands as a grim parable, a warning of what can come from humanity’s environmental hubris. If we continue this way, waiting for somebody else to do something or letting short-term economic interests stand in the way, we may find ourselves ... telling visitors about how beautiful our home once was.

The Friday, December 22, 2023, edition of The New York Times carried an "Opinion" column authored by Jacob Dreyer. His column was titled, in the hard copy version of the paper that I picked up off my front lawn at 5:00 a.m., "A Giant Sea Is Now a Desert, and a Warning for Humanity." I am quoting his column, above.

Dreyer's words, and the picture above, inform us of the current condition of the Aral Sea, described by Dreyer as a "once-great body of water." That "once-great" statement reflects the fact that the Aral Sea used to cover an area "about 15 percent larger than Lake Michigan," and was "the world's fourth-largest inland body of water."

No more. 

Perhaps, if you are a non-subscriber, The Times will let you read Dreyer's article. I certainly recommend that you do. But you may well know, already, about what happened to the Aral Sea. I certainly did. Dreyer just provided a reminder - and a warning. Did you know that some people, in our country, are talking about draining Lake Superior, to compensate for the groundwater overdrafting that has occurred (and is occurring) in the American Southwest, and throughout the Great Plains? Visit Duluth, Minnesota, as I did last summer, and you'll be advised. 

I knew, already, before I read Dreyer's article, what has happened to the Aral Sea. Why bother with this blog posting, then? I was motivated by just one phrase. Let us all reflect on the phrase that sent me from the morning papers to my computer:

Humanity's Environmental Hubris

If we recognize ourselves through Dreyer's description (Dreyer says that "walking toward the shrinking remnants of what used to be the Aral Sea ... was like entering hell"), if we will admit to ourselves what's going on, virtually everywhere on Earth, we may be able to change our ways. Can we? Can we learn something from what Jacob Dreyer wrote in his article, and from that photo that The Times published with Dreyer's column, shown at the top of this blog posting?

That bolded phrase, above, is the phrase that sent me to my keyboard. We have, really, so little time to make the changes we must make. We are (we all know it, too) already advised of what happens when we continue to think that we are, somehow, not required to respect the laws and the limits that govern this wonderful world in which we have been so lucky to be born. 

Until we change - and a mighty change is required - we are all (let's admit it, we do all need to admit it) "walking towards hell."

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https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/28/opinion/climate-uzbekistan-water-aral.html

#54 / Let's Cut Ourselves Some Slack

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I often get ideas in the shower. In fact, a number of the things that I write about in this blog start out in the shower. I get up in the morning, read the newspapers that are delivered to my door. Then, I eat breakfast. Then, I take a shower. Then... at least sometimes, some little phrase from what I read in the newspapers will come to me, and if I don't forget the thought (and that happens all too often), I'll sit down at my computer, wrapped up in a towel, and type out something that may appear in this blog, sometime in the future.

Right after I read that essay mentioned in my blog post yesterday, published by The Hannah Arendt Center ("The Negation Of Politics"), I did take a shower, and a little phrase did come to me, which related, in my mind, to what happened in the case of Masha Gessen. 

"Cut Me Some Slack." That's the phrase that came to me. 

As I searched for suitable images to accompany this blog posting, the most common use of the phrase did seem to be this one: "Cut ME some slack." As I have just recounted, this is, in fact, how the phrase came to me in the shower. Thinking about it, though, I realized that my thought wasn't that we should all be demanding of others that they cut US some slack. My thought is that we should, as our first impulse, cut THEM some slack. We should cut some slack for other people instead of blaming and shaming them. That is what the illustration above actually suggests.

Thinking some more about it, though, looking at the image above, I realized that the idea that had come to me in the shower wasn't that we should cut others some slack because they have had a bad day, or because something may have gone wrong in their lives that we may not know about. That's a good thought; nothing wrong with that, and that is what is conveyed by the illustration at the top of this blog posting. However, that isn't, exactly, the thought that had come to me in the shower. 

My thought was that we should not get mad at other people, and retaliate, fight back, or denounce them when they say stupid things, or do stupid things - even when the things they say or do cause us genuine anguish. Lots of times, the disturbing and upsetting things that people say and do are not said and done because the person saying or doing them is "having a bad day, etc." Oftentimes, those making a statement, or doing something, are just "wrong." They're on the wrong side of the argument, political or otherwise. What do we do then? 

We cut them some slack. That's what I am suggesting.

Here, as an example, is a comment posted on my Facebook Page in the middle of December. This comment was made by someone who disagrees with my politics, and who often shows up on that page to attack me, or someone else, as generally illustrated below: 

Biden = WW3, Globalism will turn the Earth into a Hell, Deep State murdered JFK+MLK+RFK, and a long list of crap from the Progressive Deep State Globalists. Meanwhile, the greatest President of all time, President Trump, had his election stolen, and you pathetic bitch Pelosi has Americans locked up for a staged entrapment. One thing is for certain, God always exposes the truth, and that light will make you burn.

Masha Gessen said, in an article in The New Yorker, that the way Israel has treated Gaza is the way Nazi Germany treated the Jews during World War II. Gessen is far more coherent than the commenter quoted above, but those who believe Israel has every right (and even a duty) to retaliate against Hamas, for what it did, even if tens of thousands of innocent people are killed, find it very difficult to cut her some slack for the statement she made. 

If you have read yestereday's blog posting, you will remember that those who have studied and best know Hannah Arendt's thinking believe that Arendt, while not agreeing with Gessen, might very well have cut Gessen some slack. 

It strikes me that this is good advice for all of us. We don't need to agree with opinions that we think are wrong. We don't need to ignore actions we think are wrong. But that doesn't mean that we can't cut each other some slack. We shouldn't be writing people out of the public conversation as we discuss and debate the issues we are collectively having to confront, because it does remain true: We are in this together. 

Let's never forget that, and... Let's cut ourselves some slack.

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#53 / The Negation Of Politics

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I am a member of The Hannah Arendt Center For Politics And Humanities at Bard College. Among other things, this means that I receive a weekly email bulletin from The Hannah Arendt Center. These bulletins generally arrive on Sunday, and on December 17th I received: (1) a notice about next year's Hannah Arendt Center conference (see below), and (2) an article written by Roger Berkowitz, the Founder and Academic Director of The Hannah Arendt Center. 

The Berkowitz article was titled, "The Negation Of Politics." Click that link to read it in its entirety (which I do recommend). 

Berkowitz' article discusses a recent incident in which the Heinrich Böll Foundation, which is located in Bremen, initially awarded the 2023 Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thinking to Masha Gessen. However, the Foundation decided to cancel the award, just days before the ceremony, apparently based on the fact that the Foundation didn't like what Gessen wrote in an article that appeared in The New Yorker. Gessen is Jewish, and her article, “In the Shadow of the Holocaust," compared Gaza before the October 7th Hamas attack to the Jewish ghettoes of Nazi-occupied Europe.

Berkowitz' statement struck me as an important observation about the nature of our national discussion and debate about almost everything - including, specifically, our efforts to talk about the conflict between the State of Israel and Hamas, the future of our institutions of higher education, and what is sometimes called "cancel culture." 

Berkowitz frequently notes, when he writes about Arendt, that Arendt believed that politics is not about "truth," but about "opinion." Arendt believes that the essence of politics is discussion and debate, as we utilize such discussion and debate in our efforts to decide what we should do. In this political discussion,  every person's ideas and opinions need to be able to get a public hearing:

That a Foundation which presents an award in the name of Hannah Arendt would seek to rescind the award because of a provocative statement in an essay is utterly inconsistent with the spirit of Hannah Arendt. Arendt understood that the life of the mind as well as the life of political action requires that one listen to and engage with opinions that challenge our own. Arendt herself was a provocative thinker. Her book Eichmann in Jerusalem was widely condemned in Israel and by many Jews around the world for her statement, amongst others, that Jewish collaborators with the Nazis were, for a Jew, the darkest part of the whole dark history. Her essay on the desegregation of the schools in Little Rock, Arkansas was first suppressed and then widely and vigorously condemned by those who thought it wrong to criticize forced desegregation. Her rejection of Zionism and her belief that a particular form of Zionism—one that demands a religiously Jewish state as opposed to a state where Jews could live safely and securely as Jews—was a mistake, led her to worry that a Jewish state could lead to an unjust rule of Jews over Arabs. Her essay “Zionism Reconsidered” led some of her Jewish friends to demand she apologize. If the criteria for winning the Hannah Arendt Prize is that the winner not say anything that might upset Jews or frustrate a liberal consensus, then Hannah Arendt herself could not win the prize now given in her name. It goes without saying that the Böll Foundation in Bremen owes Gessen and also the memory of Hannah Arendt an apology.

An article in The Guardian, by Samantha Rose Hill, made the same point, asserting that "Hannah Arendt would not qualify for the Hannah Arendt prize. She would be cancelled in Germany today for her political position on Israel and opinions about contemporary Zionism, which she remained critical of from 1942 until her death in 1975."

As I say, I think Berkowitz' focus on this incident is important. Attempts to stifle robust debate about contentious claims is, indeed, the "negation of politics," and we need more "politics" not less "politics," as we seek to discover and decide upon what it is that we should do!

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(1) - https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/the-negation-of-politics-2023-12-17

(2) - https://hac.bard.edu/conferences/

#52 / Scams

SCAM #1 - THE (POSSIBLE) WORLD CRUISE SCAM 

Kara and Joe Youssef (pictured above) uprooted their lives to embark on a 3-year-cruise around the world. The wonderful around-the-world voyage for which they signed up with Miray Cruises was cancelled at the last moment, after a couple of earlier, last-minute extensions and delays. The $80,000 deposit that the Youssefs paid for their reservations has not been refunded. The Youssefs had sold their two apartments and liquidated all their life savings to pay for the cruise, and they are now facing homelessness. Others who signed up for the cruise are in a similar position. They paid; the cruise didn't happen, and now they're stuck without their money, and with their lives substantially disrupted.

Paywall policies permitting, you can read all about what happened to the Youssefs in a brief article by Ceylan Yeginsu, who covers the "cruise ship" beat for The New York Times. Yeginsu's first article didn't come down hard with an assertion that what happened to the Youssefs, and others, was a genuine scam. Her follow-up article is lending credence to the idea that the advertised cruise was a "scam," right from the start. The more time that goes by, the more it seems that this was not a case of the company just running into unanticipated trouble. It is less and less looking like things wll work out for the Youssefs, and for others who signed up for "the cruise that never happened." 

When I read about the possible cruise ship scam, outlined above, my mind immediately leaped to two indubitably real scams - recent scams - with which I am personally familiar. 

SCAM #2 - THE NEW JOB SCAM

The granddaughter of one of my friends teaches art in a Santa Cruz County public school. Of course, school teachers aren't really paid enough for them to survive in Santa Cruz, so my friend's granddaughter is always on the lookout for other potential jobs that might be better compensated. She found one, online - a potential new job - as an art director for a high-tech company. She would be expected to assist with website design and other art-related duties.

That sounded good, and my friend's granddaughter went through a number of online interviews, submitted evidence of her artistic talents, supplied a resume, etc. Good news, she was hired! All of this occurred online, of course, but no "red flags" appeared. In fact, the company representative with whom she was negotiating (online) said that she would be expected to work remotely, and that she would need new and upgraded computer equipment. The company hiring her was going to pay her to purchase the equipment she would need for the work, and to allow her to set up an adequate "home office." A check in the amount of several thousand dollars was sent to her, and she was told to deposit it to her account, and then to purchase what was needed for her new home office. 

Everything sounded great! However, shortly after receiving the check (and having made a mobile deposit into her account) she heard from the person with whom she had been dealing. He was extremely apologetic, but he confessed that he had sent her about $1,000 too much. She was asked to return +/- $1,000 of the significantly greater amount she had been sent - sending back the "overpayment" by Venmo.

Instead of immediately doing that, as she had been requested to do, my friend's granddaughter went in person to the very reputable bank upon which the check to her had been drawn, just to make sure that the check sent to her was actually good. It was lucky she checked; it wasn't! 

End result: No new job. On the upside, though, my friend's granddaughter didn't actually lose $1,000 of her own money, either.

SCAM #3- THE NON-EXISTANT GATES INTERNSHIP SCAM

Something similar occurred to a UCSC computer science student. He learned of a competition for a working internship with the "Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation." If the student were interested, he would need to submit a resume, respond to questions, etc. His local contact would be an actual "professor" at UCSC, overseeing the internship competition. The name of that "professor?" 

I won't keep you in suspense: "Gary Patton." 

A fake Gary Patton oversaw negotiations with the student. Emails sent to the student appeared to be from "Professor Patton," but the email account being used was not an email I ever knew about (I am, of course, a "real" Gary Patton). I was completely oblivious to the scam being carried out in my name. How my name was selected (since I have no connection, whatsoever, with the computer science department at UCSC), is not clear. 

As in the "New Job" scam - Scam #2 - there was a pretty long and extensive set of online email exchanges, but the student who had applied for the internship was ultimately informed by email (by "Professor Patton") that he had been selected. He would need some additional computer equipment, and the "Gates Foundation" would, of course, pay for that equipment. In fact, the Foundation sent him a check for deposit to his personal bank account. He did receive that and deposited it. He was then directed to arrange for the equipment purchase through a vendor designated by the "Gates Foundation." The specifics were transmitted to him by "Professor Patton." The student was directed to Venmo the designated vendor the sum of $2,350 (the same amount he had been granted in the check that he deposited to his account).

Did the student do that? Yes, he did! 

I found out about this scam when the student began emailing me at my real UCSC email address, asking whether I had actually authored the earlier emails to him. He provided copies of the email exchanges, showing the fictititious email account that was used. I am hoping that law enforcement authorities (and specifically the Santa Cruz County District Attorney's Office) will try to track down who owned that fictitious email account, and bring the scammers to justice (and with any luck recovering the money that the student has lost). Just in case you missed it, the check he deposited was a fake, and he never actually got any new money in his bank account. The money he sent by Venmo, though, was "real" money (his money), and he lost it.

CONCLUSION

The "online" world is not the "real" world. I have been saying that in various blog postings for quite some time. Don't be fooled. If you are going to sign up for a new job, or pursue a fellowship or internship opportunity - or even search for the love of your life - do it in the REAL WORLD. 

Not online!

PS: To avoid being the victim of an online scam, don't send real money back to someone who asks you for a return of money that you have not yet validated is actual, real money. That's what made those "New Job" and "Internship" scams work so well. The intended victims got what appeared to be a very "real" deposit to their account, but the bank's rules are that deposits shown in your account, after deposit, are not funds you can access until after the deposit has "cleared," and that usually takes several days. 

Heads up, folks! And let's try to live our lives in the "real" world. 

Not online!

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Image Credit:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/12/insider/exploring-the-3-year-cruise-that-never-set-sail.html

#51 / Well, What If?

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The image above comes from Mira Jacob, and is part of an Op-Art "Opinion" piece that takes up a full page in the December 31, 2023, edition of The New York Times: "Things I Thought Made Sense Just Don't Anymore."

Subscribers to The Times, I believe, should be able to see the whole thing. Non-subscribers are probably going to have to be content with what I am providing here. 

This particular frame, anyway, is the best one in the series - at least in my opinion, but all the frames are good. 

"What if?"

What if - indeed - we were suddenly able actually to appreciate that our "futures are intertwined," that we are, in fact, "in this together"?

What a wonderful world this would be!!

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Image Credits:

(1) - https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/28/opinion/love-rage-evolution-pandemic.html

(2) - https://youtu.be/R4GLAKEjU4w?si=kzpAacE0yb_JRbkE 

#50 / Where Are You?

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Pictured above is Apple's version of a new "mixed-reality" headset. Want one? We are told that they're in the stores, and that you can order one online. It will only cost you something like $3,500. 

Already, many, many people who are walking around our streets (or driving cars), or who are sitting inside their homes, or who are playing immersive video games that grab the attention of so many young people, are not really where they are. 

To get on one's cellphone, to go "online," or to enter the "Metaverse," for whatever purpose, is to leave behind the physical world into which we were born. That physical world, by the way, is a "shared" world. The world we inhabit inside our phones, or that we find on our laptop or desktop computer screens - or that we can access with one of these "headsets" - is not the "real" world, and it is not a world that we share with others. 

"Shared" is a key word, I think. 

Headsets like this new model from Apple (Meta/Facebook has been selling these for some time) cut us off from our physical location, and from other people, even more directly than cellphones, tablets, laptops and desktop computers do. I think that's an issue of concern - an important issue of concern.

Apple bills its new headset as providing users a "mixed reality." I learned from a story in The New York Times, that Apple is also trying to get users, and potential users, and ultimately "buyers," to employ the term, "spatial computing." Apple thinks "nomenclature" is important. No "Metaverse" for Apple. That's a "formerly Facebook" description. 

The "real" world, the physical world in which our bodies are located, is by its very nature a "shared" world. That is the world in which my frequent claim is true: "We are all in this together." That claim is not actually true inside "cyberspace," where we are separated from other people, except as our apparently shared experience may be mediated (or, actually, "simulated") by the giant corporations who "create" cyberspace on their servers, and then charge us, in various ways, an entry fee to get there. 

In a lot of ways, I am less worried about so-called "artificial intelligence" than I am about the effective displacement of so many of us from our "shared" world. We choose to leave that shared world as we gaze into screens, or as we now affix headsets to obscure what our physical eyes might tell us, and we begin to "live" through the more vivid, more "informational" encounters we find in a cyberspace controlled by the corporations. 

Where are you? Where are you, right now?

I would like to persuade you that you ought to be right where you physically are, and that your experiences of the world should be experiences of things and people you both can and do touch with your physical body, not with your ever more easily beguiled and distracted mind!

 

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Image Credit:

https://qz.com/emails/daily-brief/1851150259/the-apple-for-your-eyes

#49 / An Email Reply (Dream Big)

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I recently got an email from an activist working on land use and water issues in the Central Valley. After I sent my reply off, I thought I might just put it here, so anyone who reads my blog can see my thoughts. 

So great to hear from you! And I am also glad that the Berkowitz piece, and its last paragraph, seems worthwhile. I do think it is! 

I must say that I was surprised to find you confessing to a battle against “sloth,” since that is definitely not my picture of you. But… whether the “sloth” designation has any real relevance to your life or not, I am happy that you made it to the bank in time, to solve that problem with your credit card before this upcoming three-day weekend!! 

My "confidence,” which you mentioned in your email to me, is at least partly based, I believe, on the very strong conviction I have that we are capable of doing what we tell ourselves we can do. Because I believe that - REALLY believe that - I am extremely reluctant to enumerate all the reasons that bad might prevail and all the good fail. 

In a very real way (as I learned from my father) failure is a self-selected choice. If you haven’t read my blog posting about that - about that world-changing revelation I had, as I accompanied my father into the crawl space below the floors in our house in Palo Alto - that story is where you will find the origin of my certainty that failure is something we ourselves produce. Click this link, and look for the section titled, “Possibility” Is My Category - Thanks To My Dad." 

If you believe, “theoretically,” that anything is possible with respect to all the arrangements we make in our human world (and, of course, I do believe that), then you undermine your own belief by rehearsing all the reasons that failure is a lot more likely than not. Yet, most of us do that all the time. Some of my blog postings about “doom,” including a recent one, try to address the issue. 

There is, probably, a very good reason that we tend to “give up” on possibility, since it is our lot to die (Memento Mori, as I keep telling myself), and dying does seem quite a bit like “failure,” doesn’t it? What do I say to that? Well, I just thought, as I was tapping out this message, that Bob Dylan has a song that is a kind of sermon on this subject. If you don’t know it, try this link. It may be important to take seriously his message, that “Death Is Not The End.” 

I do think that there is another reason, though, that I have “confidence” when I think about what prevails in our “political world.” I was extremely privileged to be personally involved in changes in our local community that fundamentally transformed what seemed inevitable into something quite the opposite: (1) We saved farmland for farming, and preserved open space for wildlife, and protected our natural world, managing new growth and guiding it into areas already committed to urban development; (2) We started a process of investing in successful community-based social service programs that has continued to this day; and (3) amazingly enough, our little county (the smallest county, by size, in the State of California) kicked off what turned into a successful nationwide effort to stop new offshore oil drilling. That effort resulted not only in the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, but also put a moratorium on new offshore oil development everywhere around our nations’s coasts where offshore drilling operations were not already in place. 

I saw that happen. I even got to help. Our community did it! These things were, objectively, thought to be “impossible.” 

Can we do more, now? And we have to do more, of course - a lot more!

My answer is, "Yes." My father’s message still resonates within me, as it has throughout my life to date: “If you don’t have a dream, Gary, you can’t have a dream come true.”

Substitute your own name, where mine is shown above. Dream big!

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Image Credit:

Kevin Painchaud, Lookout Santa Cruz

 

#48 / A "Good Enough" Life

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Sophie McBain, who lives in New York but who writes for The Guardian, a British publication, is suggesting that our pursuit of a "Better Life" is perhaps leading us into error. McBain's column, which appeared in The Guardian on January 1, 2024, was a meditation on the practice of structuring each New Year around one or more "New Year's Resolutions," which we believe will make things better, if we can only accomplish in fact what we so earnestly resolve. 

McBain's column bears the title, "Is being ‘good enough’ better than perfection?"

I think McBain is on to something. When considered from an "environmentalist" perspective (certainly one of my favorite go-to "worldviews"), human beings seem often to reject the idea of conforming our activities to the limitations of the "World of Nature," and feel much better when we are constructing our own, "Human World." One of my recurring themes is the fallacy in thinking that we can, somehow, create a world of our own that is not, in the end, completely dependent on the "World of Nature" into which we have been most mysteriously born. Any regular reader of these blog postings will immediately think, "Oh, yeah, now we're going to hear about global warming."

In fact, "Global Warming" is being caused by our human refusal to live within the limits of the natural world. We could obtain our energy from the "flow" of the energy that pours down upon us from the sun. Instead of living within the limits of that "flow," however, we want, instead, to dig up those "fossil" fuels that represent tens of millions of years of past "flow," so we can do things that we want to do, and go beyond what the "World of Nature" provides. Like (just an example) building a new city on Mars, since we have "fucked up" (that's a technical term) all of our cities here on Earth. 

Well.... McBain's point (and I think it's a good point) is that even within our "Human World," the world that we create, we are not ever satisfied. We keep looking for "better," or even for "perfection." 

How about just accepting, and loving, the blessings that exist?

We're already getting into that "New Year." It isn't really isn't all that "new" by now. Still, let's all think about whether McBain might be right. If she's right, that might change how we comport ourselves during the remainder of 2024!

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Image Credit:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/jan/01/the-big-idea-is-being-good-enough-better-than-perfection

#47 / Check My Hat: It's "Aspirational"

 

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I realize that "MAGA" is the abbreviated and shortened form of a Donald Trump campaign slogan - "Make America Great Again." Thus, I also realize that anyone who suggests that it doesn't make much sense to attack this political slogan is in danger of being considered a supporter of our former president, and/or someone who is perfectly "OK" with everything our former president stands for, or does - or has done, for that matter. 

I am no supporter of Donald J. Trump. Just the opposite. I am no "MAGA" supporter, either, in the sense that I have anything good to say about our former president. 

But... as for the sentiments expressed by the slogan itself - that we should be trying to "Make America Great Again" - I am of a different mind. Who wouldn't want America to be "great"? Great again if you have fond feelings for the past history of the United States, or great in the future, if you are somewhat in doubt of how "great" America has actually been in the past. 

Those who know anything about the history of slavery in the United States, and about continuing racial and other forms of discrimination, and about economic inequality, and about government corruption and incompetence, and anyone who has examined how the United States has conducted itself in the world, are very much armed and able properly to argue about how "great" America has been. Our nation has not always done "great" things. On the other hand, my sense is that most Americans, and most people in the world, for that matter, would actually concede that the United States has done some truly great things. And if we have done it before, then let's do some more of those things, right? Whatever great things we have done in the past, let's do some more things like that! 

That is definitely my personal feeling, and I would argue that if attempts are made to classify those who like that "MAGA" slogan as persons who should be put into a "basket of deplorables," those who advance such an assertion, directly or inferentially, are making a significant mistake. 

Our job (those who don't like the Trump program, past, present, or future) ought to be seeking to claim that "MAGA" slogan as our own, and then say just what it will take to "Make America Great Again." Trying to achieve that "Make America Great Again" result is exactly what our politics should be all about. Politicians, and political commentators, and pundits, and others who deplore the "Make America Great Again" formula are charging like a bull at the red cape being waved by Donald J. Trump. Watch out!

I thought about putting this blog posting online after reading a letter to the Wall Street Journal that ran in the February 8, 2024, edition of the paper (see below). I don't think Madeline Bizette, who comes from Port Orange, Florida, is "deplorable." Like Madeline, I, too, want to "Make America Great Again," and while Madeline and I might not agree about this, I think that voting down our former president's attempt to return to the presidency is certainly Step #1. That's the way I see it! 

Let's not make it harder to achieve Step #1 by saying that we are against the whole idea of "Making America Great Again."

I am not against that. In fact, I think that is exactly what we have to do!

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Image Credit:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/325372442430