Are there patterns in the events in Egypt.

It would be interesting to see some math analysis of the popular uprising in Egypt.

I know that mathematicians have theories and formulas that describe large groups of individuals in random motion: molecules of gas, flocks of birds, population projections, to name a few. These could be or perhaps already have been applied to this seemingly leaderless revolt.

First, I realize that while the overall motion of large groups can be calculated, there is no way to determine what one individual will do, particularly one very complex individual human, with an assortment of abilities, opportunities and motivations. So, which individual or group will ultimately rise to power, should Mubarak be removed soon, is, for the moment, pure speculation, the general process will probably unfold in some predictable pattern.

Right now the scene looks rather chaotic, although there are people cooperating to fend off the attacks of the government's hired thugs. To me, all phenomena are much more interesting and beautiful if the pattern is discernable, and this uprising looks like it is unfolding like an elaborate flower or condensing like a gas cloud into a solar system.

A complex system set in motion will run its course, following some natural pattern. I am anxious to see how these events unfold.

The loss of analytic thought

The following quote by Nobel Prize winning scientist, Peter Medawar, speaks ominously to this society at this time.

"The spread of secondary and latterly of tertiary education has created a large population of people, often with well-developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought."

As a society, we seem to have substituted the boisterous babbling of bewildering balderdash and the relentless ranting of redundant rubbish for clear, analytic discussions.

As Medawar points out, we have many people who are educated and sophisticated in their tastes. However, something has been neglected in their education or in their personal intellectual quest. One thing that seems to be lost is the reflective gap between some event and the assessment of it.

For example, the recent protests in Egypt were immediately proclaimed by some as a great and noble revolution, leading to a new era of democratic government. Others immediately denounced it as an Islamist take over. At this writing, it is too early to tell, but it could end up as either of those, the rise of a new autocrat, a complete break down of government or perhaps some other alternative. The point being, these folks didn't take a moment to think it through before pontificating on the subject.

Take our current political climate. If you were to plot a graph with the political far right on one end and the far left on the other end of the X axis, and then plotted the amount of analytic thinking on the Y axis, once the American voters were each placed in the appropriate spot, I strongly suspect that we would end up with a bell curve, that is, as you move out to the extremes, the number of analytic thinkers drops off to nearly zip.

Perhaps we've learned to harness our thinking into 140 character tweets, or perhaps our educational system is focused only on preparing students to do something, rather than to think deeply about something. Whatever the case, we are inundated with the sound of many intelligent loose cannons.

Money for education from the private sector

One way to help cash strapped school districts is with partnerships with the private sector.

I realized the power of this when I advised a Middle School newspaper. The paper was part of the afterschool program and did not rely on either funding or support from the school administration. In our last year of operation, we were totally self funded, made a profit and provided a scholarship for a student to go to DC for an educational event. We even had money left to pay student reporters for their stories. We did this through selling advertisements. The students sold these ads over the phone and collected a commission on each sale.

The outpouring of response from the business community made me realize what an untapped resource we have all around us. How can we best use this resource?

1. If each high school and middle school had a school/community newspaper with ads, a journalism program could be established that not only paid for itself, but made a profit that could be returned to the schools.

2. Magazines could be started at the high schools. They could center on subjects like the sports programs, the Fitness for Life program, a literary quarterly, academics, school community, etc. Each of these mags would teach reading, writing, editing, sales and layout skills, all practical activities that could lead to careers.

3. Business sponsors for our sports teams would pay for uniforms and the cost of lighting the games.

4. Apprenticeship programs would put students in local business for several hours per week, giving them hands on experience, providing entry level workers for the companies, training the next generation of employees and bringing in some money to support the program. The companies would pay the district an amount that would normally be paid to part time, entry level employees.

5. Academic competitions could be held in various subject areas, with sponsorship from businesses. Award would be given, sponsors recognized and excellent students would have another item for their university resumes.

6. The arts: Drama and music programs could be paid for by sponsorships for school plays and musical recitals. Young musicians could elect to be in classical orchestras, jazz bands or rock groups. They would perform, and money would be collected at the door as well as from the sponsors.

To me, the important thing is to get a double benefit from each project. One benefit would be the sponsorship money, and the other would be practical skills to augment the usual book skills taught in the classroom. Everyone wants something tangible for their efforts, and abstractions only motivate those already highly motivated.

I believe these suggestions would help save a district's budget, but only if the district doesn't spend it all on running the program. This doesn't need a whole new department, another top level administrator or a huge staff. The trick to making this work is to have students help run these programs--another important life skill.

Best of all worlds

The other day I went to the local farmers market at Cabrillo Community College. It was an unseasonably warm day, one of those little islands of sunshine that usually pop up in January. I was helping the animal shelter promote cat adoption, so I was there for half the day.

At one point, I decided to talk a walk to the top of the college, which is built on a hill. The gardening department is on top, quite a climb up from the street, and when I go there, I found a bench overlooking the Monterey Bay. I sat down and just took it all in. I could see the hills of Monterey and Carmel, looking like islands rising from the sea, and the smoke stacks of the Moss Landing power plant seemed to be coming up out of the morning mist, which spread out in shades of pink and cream. Santa Cruz was filtered through a thin curtain of fog, and everything look photo-still and peaceful.

On the way back down, a path along a row of classrooms was lined by maple trees, leaves yellow, gold and redish-brown. Leaves were still on the trees and also on the ground. On that path were two small boys, bundled up in winter wear, each holding a balloon on a length of ribbon. It was like an old Norman Rockwell scene.

Then, a bit later, back in the car and driving up an off ramp, a red tail hawk flew in front of me and hit the ground, wings out and neck arched. I couldn't see what it had caught, but I knew it had it's breakfast.

Now, two days later, as I walked the neighborhood in the early morning, I saw the first buds and flowers on trees along the road. It is, indeed, the best of all possible worlds.

automobile economy

While I’m certainly no expert on banking or Wall Street, I know enough basic economics
to sense what has gone wrong. It has to do with what kind of economy we choose. Unless you’re a hunter gatherer, you basically have three choices: Socialism, Capitalism or some mix of the two.

Socialism doesn’t have the financial incentives for innovation and success, but it creates equality, the equality of financial stagnation. Capitalism has periods of boom and
bust, the boom making many people rich, the bust causing many to go broke.
Capitalism with regulation cushions the up and down motion, hopefully avoiding the nasty booms and busts.

It’s like the early attempts to build an automobile. People bolted the body to
the frame, and everything was secure and controllable, but the ride was so rough that you couldn’t go over five mph. That’s sort of like socialism.

So, people installed springs, softening the ride. However, when the car hit
bumps or holes, the car would alternately bottom out and send the passengers
through the roof, plus making steering almost impossible. That’s sort of like
capitalism.

Then someone invented the shock absorber. The car was still able to go up and
down on the springs, but it was kept from full compression and full
extension. That’s sort of like capitalism with regulation.

I’m sure that even the guys in banks and on Wall Street know this. They just don’t want to admit it.

what are our rights

Our “rights” are a constant source of discussion, making one believe that we are naturally endowed with a list of these, and the only argument revolves around which items are on the list. The reality may not be so simple.

Looking at the natural world, it’s hard to find anything resembling rights. From birth on it is a struggle to eat and to keep from being eaten. A creature’s survival depends on luck and on how good it is at these two things. Lions don’t have a right to a fat gazelle, and gazelles don’t have a right to plentiful grass or to immunity from lions.

What humans consider rights are part of the social overlay we place over the natural world, something that imposes our concepts of order on what we perceive as natural disorder. Like most other items in human culture, these are artificial, in that they do not occur naturally. We build certain rights into the structure of our societies. For example, most societies feel one has the right not to be murdered, so they impose severe penalties on murderers.

When the Declaration of Independence claims, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” they start the sentence with “We.” In this they are saying that our culture, our society, our leaders hold these things to be true. They did not claim that this applies to people in far away places, bob cats, inch worms or oak trees.

Not all societies have our long list of rights. In some places, the king or chief has most of the rights, and the people have the right to do whatever doesn’t displease the leader. The old Soviet Union believed most rights were reserved for the collective, not the individual, and the collective was embodied in the leaders. Other societies base all rights on their religious books.

Naturally, we prefer our long list of rights, but even in our society some people would rather sacrifice some of those for a bit more order and security. In times of war, we tend toward order and security, and the degree and timing of the return to rights is always debated. The bottom line being that there are no set of rights that seem natural and proper for every human and for every occasion.

We can add to our list or subtract from it. We can have the right to universal medical care, equal civil rights for all, rights of the poor equal to those of the rich, rights of women regarding child bearing and many others. We can even lose our rights and allow someone to enslave us.

We, individually and as a people, have to decide what rights we are to have, and then we must secure these and defend them, once secured. We can secure them by force, which often backfires on us, leaving us with fewer rights, or we can secure them through legislation and jurisprudence. We can also convince others that our list of rights is best, and then we build a consensus which changes our society’s point of view. We can stand up individually against transgressions against our rights, or we can act collectively. However we choose to do it, and whatever list of rights we deem proper, we must do it, for without a conscious social act, we revert to the natural world, where the concept of “rights” has no meaning.

Creating wilderness

One of the most personally satisfying things I’ve ever done was to help create wilderness. I hiked in beautiful, unspoiled country, took pictures and notes, drew lines on a map, and a few months later we had new wilderness.

I was volunteering with the Ventana Wilderness Alliance and The California Wilderness Coalition on the Wilderness 2000 program. We were concentrating our efforts in the northern Santa Lucias, a land of mixed oversight. These mountains above the Big Sur coast have BLM, National Forest, and Wilderness lands, plus scattered private lands. One can walk among the various federal designations and not see the difference.

Our plan was to survey wild public land, put it in a big bill, and send it to Congress, followed up with a public support campaign, along with lobbying. The result was Congressman Farr’s, “Big Sur Wilderness and Conservation Act of 2002," which created over 50,000 acres of new Wilderness. So, with a map, a notebook and a camera, I got to “play God” and help create new Gardens of Eden.

Late December seemed more like summer as I climbed the Coast Ridge Road out of the Ventana Resort in Big Sur. It’s a steep, dirt road that’s used by the Forest Service and the few land owners. You can’t drive or bike it, but you are free to hike it for twenty miles along the ridge. About four miles up the road is an unspoiled piece of forest nicknamed Outlaw.

The walk to Outlaw passes through cool, second growth redwoods before it opens to the grassland hills. The ground undulates away to forested canyons, down to the highway and the sea.

Outlaw sits between the Coast Ridge Road and the Ventana Wilderness. The Terrace Creek Trail descends into Outlaw and drops two impressive miles to the Pine Ridge trail in the Wilderness. It begins in hillside meadows studded with oak and madrone and drops into redwood groves with cascading waterfalls.

The few homes on the ridge were deserted, and without other hikers I was alone with the sounds of nature. The air was thin and clear in a way peculiar to sunny winter days. The smallest details from miles up the coast seemed only yards away. The dirt road undulated along the corrugated ridge. I took photos down toward the Big Sur Gorge below. Then I walked most of the way down the Terrace Creek Trail, almost to the campground and the wilderness.

Terrace Creek Trail was in disrepair. Downed trees requiring climbing and scrambling. In the wooded canyon, the terraces in the creek became visible, long cascading waterfalls that dropped to the Big Sur River below.

Outlaw wasn’t the only parcel I surveyed. Logwood, another, larger parcel, was a bit further up Coast Ridge Road. It also extended down toward the Big Sur Gorge from the road and had all the qualities of a wilderness.

At the Boronda Ridge trailhead, the rain and wind almost changed my mind. I lacked rain gear, and there might not be enough visibility to survey and photograph. But, the rain was stopping, and I could turn back if things got uncomfortable.

Within minutes the sun started to break through the clouds. Before long I was so warm I had to remove my sweater.

The ridge was vivid green from the rains, and along the trail were tiny violet flowers. Too small to survive in the meadow, they’d found a niche on the abandoned roadway. The trail occasionally turned from the exposed ridge to stands of oaks and a brief respite from the wind.

An hour up the trail, I stood on a rocky outcropping. The wind had whipped the ocean to a silver-gray meringue. A couple of hundred feet below me two deer looked up and watched me until I moved on.

Coast Ridge Road was deserted. Walking north, I looked east toward Logwood Creek. I found an abandoned road going east, down toward the creek. I followed it until I was sure it was impassable. The large fallen tree and young madrones in the roadway convinced me.

Having hiked almost to Outlaw, I turned back south, towards Cold Springs Camp, at the southern extreme of Logwood. The wind in the trees was so loud that I turned around often, thinking a truck was coming. The pines were leaning and shaking, and I was concerned about falling branches. The solitude and the howling of the wind gave an eerie, surreal quality to the five mile walk.

The wind was getting stronger, and the temperature was dropping, and I was anxious to find the De Angulo trail. The first part of the trail was treacherous, a steep trail bed of loose rock. Even below the rocky section, the piles of leaves, freshly wet from the rain, made the trail slippery, and in places the trail had broken away leaving it the width of a single boot. The dark stillness of occasional wooded patches was a welcome change.

I stopped to enjoy the view. The cloud cover was cumulonimbus piles rushing by. The shadows of the clouds on the ocean were like lines of ghostly, gray, giant amoebae marching southward across a mirrored sea. Sunlight streamed through the clouds in fan-like rays. I might have stood there the rest of the afternoon, but the moments of sunshine ended suddenly with gusts that almost knocked me off my feet.

I was almost seven and a half hours into the hike before I saw other humans, a young couple coming up the trail.

On the last two miles of the way down, I experienced hail, rain and even snow. And at that point I was greeted by two dogs, who walked up as if they knew me and took it upon themselves to escort me the rest of the way to the highway, as if I were somehow expected, as if this entire drama was staged for my enjoyment or education.

It was an exhilarating and satisfying way to help the environment.