Unfortunately, all we have now is Fox News, and MSNBC pandering to the left and right respectively. The blogs have followed suit. You either read The Drudge Report, or the Huffington Post, never both. And it’s not if had you read both consistently you would get a the whole picture. Adding parts from the either ends of the spectrum doesn’t make picture whole. Rather it creates a sad picture indeed, a picture in which news reporting ceases to exist but fosters news creating. Creating stories where there isn’t one.

Isn’t that why we had talk of death panels with the health bill? Isn’t that why the Sherri Sherod story took off? Whatever happened to journalistic integrity? Where are the Edward Murrows and Walter Cronkites of this generation?

I don’t wish for all news organizations to become nodes of objectivity. What I wish for is something close to Pirsig’s Quality. I want news to be news, reported and reacted to, not to be incited with emotion and used to blame political opposition at every occasion.

If I have to rely on satirical news shows and obscure blogs for intellectual discourse on the problems our society has to face in the future, I find the future very bleak. However, hopefully… hopefully we (laymen) realize that news organizations when chasing after ratings will always try to create conflict and never properly report the news and that we (in the news business) realize that true discourse and Quality will move this nation forward. Let’s take two steps forward without taking a step back.

The answer is an obvious no. First, the tea-party movement is not as uniform as one may think. Certainly, some groups do communicate with one another and plan gatherings, but there is no single national movement, and most importantly to this debate, no Tea Party political party. So the claim that thousands, if not millions, of Americans are uniting to create a neo-nazi inspired crusade against black America is absurd and insulting.

I will concede however, that some Americans do possess racist beliefs. Whether it is a poster here, or a fiery town hall meeting there, racism is present in our society. We must remember these people are the fringe. So far right, or so far left that they hold no allegiances to political parties. With them, we have little to worry about. They will marginalize themselves and expose everything that is wrong with discrimination.

But there may be more to the racism debate in America. Does anyone remember the 2008 presidentia

l election? Yes. Does anyone remember the voter intimidation exercised by the New Black Panthers? No. Here’s why. If that story  broke two years ago, the liberal movement would have suffered a serious blowback. Organizations like

these, focused on hate and bigotry are the disease rotting away at America. We must do everything we can to push these radicals away from the mainstream and into a region where the public will immediately disregard their actions.

So in the long run, I do not expect to see race wars across the United States. After all, we recently elected our first African American president. As Americans we must remember to retain a bit of skepticism with everything we hear in an effort to prevent misinformation, one of the many reasons for discrimination and wrongdoing. As we expose these radicals it will become more evident to the American people that prejudice is not welcome in a democracy and every effort to isolate it will be encouraged.

More dangerous than the outright, blatantly obvious damages that modern-day humans inflict upon our planet’s fragile ecosystem are the injuries we inflict that are more deleterious than anything; that is to say, those injuries which we don’t realize as having a negative impact upon our environment until it is too late. While there is a matter of debate among scientists as to whether the space just beyond Earth’s atmosphere can be described as part of this planet’s ecosystem, one certainly cannot deny that this planet’s upper atmosphere is part of the environment in which we live.

With the advent of space flight, governments and private entities (both wealthy individuals and private corporations) have been blasting off rockets into space, or at least into the border area where the Earth’s atmosphere generally ends and outer space begins (scientists are a bit fuzzy regarding this point, too). While certainly well within their rights to do so, humanity’s early forays into space have been slowly contributing to a problem that, while carefully monitored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), we as humans are currently powerless to remedy and, worse still, not only threatens the inherent natural and political rights of all humans but also endangers Homo sapiens as a species.

This problem, not widely recognized now but sure to be a well-known phrase in the coming decades, is known as the Kessler Syndrome. Explicitly defined, the Kessler Syndrome is the idea that space debris collisions can occur at an ever-increasing rate to the point that a self-sustaining system is created in the form of a positive feedback loop. While this definition may be abstruse, the Kessler Syndrome itself is easy to illustrate. Basically explained, the scenario calls for any number satellites (satellite being defined as any object in orbit above a planetary body) in space around Earth, each traveling at varying velocities and in different directions, to crash into each other. The analogy of a car accident is appropriate. While certain minor car accidents, such as fender-benders, result in little to no damage to one or both automobiles involved, a major accident, such as one that results in the “totaling” of at least one car (totaling being defined as destroying the automobile to the point that repair costs would be greater than the cost of buying a new vehicle), often produces debris. Pieces of one or more of the automobiles often break off and become scattered around the scene of the original collision. This is where the automobile accidents and real-life satellite collisions start to differ. When automobiles collide violently, debris disperses around the immediate area. When satellites collide, something entirely different occurs. Due to the greatly lessened affect of Earth’s gravity upon the satellites, collisions in space are far more dangerous. When two satellites violently collide, pieces of both satellites do not stay in the immediately vicinity. Instead, they shoot off at different vectors, often traveling at thousands of miles per hour. Within a matter of moments, two large satellites can break up into hundreds of smaller pieces, all flying and falling in different directions. Each of the smaller pieces is now a projectile that could possibly crash into other satellites. For every impact that produces debris, more small satellites are created, meaning the Kessler syndrome is a positive feedback loop (it feeds on itself). While much space debris would eventually fall to Earth within a few years due to gravity, the debris that becomes trapped in a higher orbit can linger for as much as a thousand years, destroying the possibility of a safe exit from Earth’s atmosphere.

Should there ever be a case where the Kessler Syndrome would prevent humans from launching space-faring vessels and exploring beyond this planet’s bounds, the societal ramifications would be incredibly far reaching.

In the modern era we live in, man has spread to every corner of the globe where life can be sustained, and some places where it cannot (Antarctica, for example). Due to the wave of democratic revolutions that took place during the 20^th Century, the world went from a continuous period of autocratic-dominated rule to an era in which democratic countries with representative governments now vastly outnumber countries that maintain monarchies and autocracies. This is remarkable considering how all of written human history up until the 20^th Century provides us with a record that currently confirms the fact that governments of the people are a relatively new phenomenon.

Representative governments, generally being very liberal regarding the rights of citizens, tend to enact few systematic barriers regarding travel. This usually holds true for both travel within a country’s bounds and travel that has individuals leaving a specified country. While this is certainly an ability that many people, even prolific travelers, take for granted, one must remember that many countries throughout history had governments that prevented their people from leaving, or at least had institutionalized roadblocks that made travel all but impossible. Severe travel restrictions visited many countries, including the United States, during both World Wars. It is easy to forget that the Soviet Union, a country that greatly restricted both in-country and out-of-country travel before its collapse in 1991, was the world’s largest country in terms of land area and among its most populous. To think that the almost three-hundred million people of the Soviet Union were trapped within their country less than twenty years ago is mind-boggling.

If the Kessler Syndrome were to result in a situation where space flight from planet Earth were not practically feasible due to the danger of collision with orbiting debris, humanity, both as a collective and as individual members, would be trapped on this planet. While this explanation seems plain enough, it would most assuredly have almost immediate drastic consequences.

Given that the vast majority of governments throughout human history have been autocratic in nature, it is not unreasonable to assume that sometime in the future at least one sizeable autocratic government will be established. Depending on the reactions of both world leaders and common citizens, this theoretical autocratic regime will either be shunned and will eventually fall by the weight of its own people or, worse, will inspire a world-wide power grab as the leaders of nations either centralize power or new political factions arise, these factions then implementing for stronger centralized states. At this point in time, history shows just how real both scenarios could become. For an example of the former, see Josefa Iloilo, the current president and now-dictator of Fiji (he recently dissolved the country’s highest court and suspended the country’s constitution), rose to power simply out of his own might but is destined to fall, both due to the fact that there is institutionalized popular sovereignty in Fiji based on the country’s constitution but also because, at age eighty-eight, many Fijians wishing for a new leader are just waiting for him to die rather than start a revolution. For examples of the latter, one needs only to turn to Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler, men who both rose due to popular sovereignty, or at least, were confirmed as leaders due to the support of their respective country’s citizens.

But how exactly does the Kessler syndrome figure into these postulations? Time and time again, history has shown that autocratic governments almost always trample on the rights of individual citizens in order to carry out government goals. It should be noted that these aims could just as easily be due to the desires of an elite oligarchy as they could be due to calls for action by an enraged, blood-thirty general populace. During these times of social unrest and/or governmental oppression, the primary danger of the Kessler syndrome is revealed: the destruction of the ability to have vessels leave this planet effectively prevents escape from planet Earth. While this may seem like a particularly bold claim, the interconnectivity of our world today due to both advanced telecommunications emplacements and speedy travel possibilities has effectively shrunken the world; what two-hundred years ago would have been a several-months journey by horse-and-buggy or by foot became a few-days journey with the invention of the coal-powered locomotive and the establishment of train systems. From 1803 to 1806, explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark traveled from the western boundaries of the small American republic (pre-Louisiana Purchase) to the Pacific Ocean. With the completion of the United States Transcontinental Railroad in 1869, an individual could travel from New York to San Francisco, an even greater distance, in just under a week. With the advent of cheap air travel during the 20^th Century, any individual could pay a modest sum of money to travel the same distance in about six hours. With the shrinking of our world, any motivated and well-resourced government could easily hunt down individuals. Totalitarian governments in particular have shown to have complete disregard for the sovereignty of other countries by illegally pursing individuals who have fled to escape political oppression. Examples are numerous, including famous Marxist theorist Leon Trotsky, who was assassinated in his home in Mexico by a Soviet agent; Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian who fled to the United Kingdom but was later famously murdered in London by a KGB agent who used a specially-designed umbrella gun; Karim Mohammedzadeh, an Iranian who fled to Sweden and was later killed in his Stockholm-suburb apartment; and recently Alexander Litvinenko, an ex-KGB who in 2006 was poisoned in Britain with radioactive element polonium-210 by a suspected Russian national acting on government orders. With our world becoming ever more interconnected, escape from active, murderous governments has become almost impossible. A runaway Kessler syndrome scenario would close our final frontier and our only real escape: outer space.

When noting how the Kessler syndrome prevents escape from this planet, we must not focus on just individuals or even sizeable groups of individuals who wish for a change of scenery. Humanity itself is threatened by being forced to stay within this planet’s bounds. Each year, millions of objects stray into the path of Earth as our planet passes around the sun. These objects are known as meteoroids. When they come into contact with Earth’s atmosphere, they usually burn up and can be seen in the night sky as shooting stars. However, an incredibly small fraction of meteoroids fail to burn up in the atmosphere, coming all the way down to the ground. These objects are meteorites and the greatly threaten the survival of our species. The most famous historical example, one that very clearly illustrates just how deadly meteorites actually are, is the case of the rock that crashed into what is now the Yucatan Peninsula over sixty-five million years ago. This giant meteorite had such a massive impact on Earth’s surface that geologists believe that it carved out much of what is now the Gulf of Mexico. Paleontologists usually attribute this meteorite for causing the global destruction that lead to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Astronomers predict that the Earth is long overdue for another object to stray into this planet’s path and become a meteorite, reigning destruction down upon the fragile ecosystem we have here. That a runaway-case of Kessler syndrome could effectively prevent both planetary countermeasures as well as a last-ditch escape could mean that we would be trapped on Earth, facing our own demise as a species with almost no chance of survival.

The Kessler syndrome will certainly be a hot topic on the lips of many, astrophysicist, politician, and layman, in the coming decades. Preempting the angry rhetoric sure to be found in the speeches of future firebrands and aspiring office-holders, NASA has already established a network which tracks objects larger than five centimeters in size. For larger pieces that may endanger flying aircraft and ground populations, the United States Strategic Command, a section of the United States Department of Defense, tracks pieces and advises pilots and local law enforcement officials accordingly. Our knowledge today of how dangerous Kessler really is certainly our strongest weapon in the arsenal to battle this developing problem, with scientists and researchers worldwide working day and night to create technologies that will combat this future danger. Because of what we know now, we can only hope that our future is one where our skies aren’t plagued with debris so that we may freely leave Earth for beyond as we do please.

Copyright Dan Downs 2009

It was with incredible shock that I heard Senator Dodd casually mention the n-word while appearing as a guest on “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” a Bloomberg Television talk show that airs on Friday afternoon and Sunday morning. That a man could so audaciously use such a powerful, aggressive word in seemingly polite discourse was, to say the least, a surprising fact. Whether or not Senator Dodd intended his use of the n-word to have drastic consequences, the result was the same: markets tumbled Friday on the news that influential sitting politicians, such as Chris Dodd, were even considering the implementation of the n-word. When Alan Greenspan had used that n-word earlier this week, the market generally pooh-poohed his remarks without giving them much credence, as the aging former Chairman for the Federal Reserve, while still influential, now has almost no control over the mechanisms of this government, economic or otherwise. Dodd?s use of the word this Friday sent shockwaves through Wall Street as investors questioned their very reason for being.

This insidious word, one that is rarely mentioned in successful capitalistic societies, is certainly not what is needed now. The word I have been alluding to is, of course, ?nationalization.? Simply defined, nationalization is the process of a government seizing the interests of a company or even an entire industry. The history of the use of nationalization aside (Wikipedia and InfoPlease.com and good places to start for those wishing to brush up on the history of nationalization), the reason why this word has caused so much fear on Wall Street as of late is due to, among other things, a specific aspect of nationalization; namely, how investors are compensated once a government takes control of a business or industry. If a government were to nationalize an industry without compensating investors, the result would be known as expropriation. Depending on the industry, investors could lose millions to billions of dollars worth of assets simply because the government exercises its power (legally given or otherwise) to take control of a freely-operating business.

A nice benefit to living in a (mostly) free-market, capitalistic society is that businesses are allowed to fail and, by extension, allowed to succeed. As failure is generally an unpleasant option for entrepreneurs and business owners, the quest for success is generally what a business and its owners endeavor. That the government may swoop in at any moment and take over a successful (or failing) business is not a thought that business owners and operators wish to address. The idea that the government may, at any time, take over a business and jeopardize the assets of those who own stake in the company, is one that is simply abhorrent! Barring a major societal and economic shift, I can only hope that Senator Dodd and other law makers avoid the use of the n-word so that businesses and the people in their employ can continue trying to make a profit without the (hopefully needless) fear of government confiscation.

Copyright 2009 Daniel Downs