Isaac Laquedem

A new cell phone company hits the right track

Cell phone companies occasionally send me solicitations to switch to their services, usually with promises of better reception, wider coverage area, or lower rates.  Today's mail brought a cell phone company's solicitation, with a pitch that I'd never read before.

This one is from CREDO Mobile, a name that's new to me.  It opens with "Dear Fellow Progressive" and leads with "If you get your mobile service from Verizon Wireless or AT&T, you should know that they contribute big bucks to radical right-wing causes."  The letter states that since 2009, Verizon Wireless has given "an incredible $220,600" to members of the House and Senate Tea Party Caucuses, and AT&T has given "a massive $1,080,000."

That sounds like a lot of money, but then there were a lot of Tea Party Caucus members.  Wikipedia says that in January 2013 the caucus included 49 representatives and five senators.  Taking that as the caucus's typical membership level, AT&T's contributions work out to be about $5,000 per member per year.  Verizon's donations work out to be about $1,000 per member per year.  That's a lot more than I give to our congressional delegation (sorry, Earl), but it's less than half my annual cell phone bill.  AT&T's contributions work out to be about one cent for each of its one hundred million customers.  Far from being generous to the right wing, it looks to me that AT&T and Verizon are being rather stingy.  They're certainly nowhere close to competing with the Koch brothers.

Schrodinger's Bridge: until September 30, it's both alive and dead

The Austrian physicist and philosopher Erwin Schrodinger, in a famous thought experiment, asked us to imagine a closed box containing a cat and a timed device.  The device may go off sometime between now and six hours from now, when we will open the box.  When it goes off it will kill the cat.  Whether it has gone off can't be determined without opening the box.  Schrodinger asked whether, in that six-hour period, the question "Is the cat alive or dead?" has any meaning.  In his view, which he likened to quantum states of particles, until the box is opened Schrodinger's cat is both alive and dead: in physical language the cat's two possible states exist in superposition until the box is opened.

In June, afte the Washington legislature rejected a measure to fund $450 million of the Columbia River Crossing, Governors Kitzhaber of Oregon and Inslee of Washington declared the CRC dead.  Dead it may have been declared, but pieces kept on twitching, to the point that three weeks later Willamette Week called the CRC a Zombridge, as the CRC team continued to work on getting the DEQ to approve pier work in the river, and the Coast Guard continued its review of the CRC team's application for a permit to obstruct the river.  Since then it's been announced that the two states' departments of transportation have agreed to pay off two businesses that the bridge would hurt, and the Oregon Department of Transportation has agreed to pay off a third business in the same situation.  Governor Kitzhaber has made noises about calling the Oregon legislature into special session on September 30, ostensibly to deal with PERS, but the behind-the-scenes talk is that he will also ask the legislature to fund the CRC whether or not Washington chips in.  And yesterday evening, the C-TRAN board (Clark County's trasportation district) voted to get back into the CRC planning process.

So:  is the Columbia River Crossing alive or dead?  Or is it, like Schrodinger's cat, alive and dead at the same time?  We'll open the box on September 30 and find out.

Let's not be Syria's

As the Obama administration considers lobbing a few missiles at Syria to punish the Syrian regime (which we used to call the "Syrian government," or just "Syria") for allegedly using chemical weapons on its citizens, the New York Times this week posted a graphic (which we used to call "gory") video showing rebel soldiers executing seven Syrian soldiers.  The video, which turned out to be not fresh news but 17 months old, sparked an argument that if the rebels are this brutal, then we shouldn't be supporting them by lobbing bombs at the government.

Two days ago Secretary of State John Kerry explained to MSNBC why the video should not deter our government from attacking Syria from a safe distance.  I noted this quotation particularly:

I guarantee you if we turn our backs today, the picture we all saw in the paper today and the media of those people shot, that will take place more because more extremists will be attracted to this, because they will be funded as the only alternative in order to take on Assad.

Here is my translation of Secretary Kerry's statement:

If we do not kill some Syrian soldiers and nearby civilians with safe and effective American missiles in the hope that the Damascus PTA will take over running Syria, we will see more pictures and videos of Syrian rebels killing the same Syrian soldiers and nearby civilians that our missiles would kill more efficiently.  If we do kill some Syrians with our missiles, their survivors will applaud our willingness to intervene in their domestic conflict and will become our friends when the war ends.

This is not striking me as a good reason to get involved in a war.  I know the government is saying that we are not getting into a war with Syria, but I also know that our recent history suggests that, as with the famous brand of potato chips, we don't often stop with just one.