Says who?

What do mountain bikes, reality TV, and energy-efficient refrigerators have in common? They're some of the best, and worst, ideas to come out of California in the past 25 years. California magazine kicked off 2007 with Eureka! -- an issue highlighting some of California's most brilliant inventions. The selection was made by faculty at UC Berkeley and UCLA and the staffs at California magazine and UCLA Magazine. But who are we to define the best and worst of California? Surely we missed a few. Nominate your own picks for the best and worst of California ideas and inventions by adding a comment below. --Carrie

Comments

[Anthony St. John]

QUESTION: When is the UC Board of Regents going to dedicate UC National Labs to hydrogen energy solutions?

“Global Warning” CALIFORNIA Sept/Oct 2006

“Worldwide Winter Warmest on Record” AP 15 March 2007

“Momentous Changes at the Poles” Science 16 March 2007

[D.Ronen '97]

One of the wonderful things about not only California, but specifically the Bay Area is the amount of effort people put out in order to do what's right for the environment. People actually go out of their way to improve our lives without trampling all over nature. Several companies who spend more in order to waste less are: Clif Bar (http://www.clifbar.com - renewed energy office space and working on fully-recyclable packaging), the James Irvine Foundation (http://www.irvine.org - funding countless non-profit orgs determined to help California harness its alternative energy sources), and even small local companies like Productive Procrastination (http://www.procrastination.net - require workers to use only hybrid vehicles or bicycle for work-related transportation, paper-waste reduction of 80% over other businesses, bring design and IT business into CA via technology, recuding airline travel).

What a great state we live in! Keep up the good work - may the next one year alone hold as many great advances as the past 25. Hopefully soon, it will be much easier to Live Green and everyone will be able to be just as environmentally-sound without having to spend the big bucks.

[D.Ronen '97]

One of the wonderful things about not only California, but specifically the Bay Area is the amount of effort people put out in order to do what's right for the environment. People actually go out of their way to improve our lives without trampling all over nature. Several companies who spend more in order to waste less are: Clif Bar (http://www.clifbar.com, renewed energy office space and working on fully-recyclable packaging), the James Irvine Foundation (http://www.irvine.org, funding countless non-profit orgs determined to help California harness its alternative energy sources), and even small local companies like Productive Procrastination (http://www.procrastination.net, require workers to use only hybrid vehicles or bicycle for work-related transportation, paper-waste reduction of 80% over other businesses, bring design and IT business into CA via technology, recuding airline travel).

What a great state we live in! Keep up the good work - may the next one year alone hold as many great advances as the past 25. Hopefully soon, it will be much easier to Live Green and everyone will be able to be just as environmentally-sound without having to spend the big bucks.

[Anthony St. John]

QUESTIONS REGARDING IPCC 2/2/07 CLIMATE CHANGE REPORT

Upon reading the report, the first conclusion is that America badly needs someone to educate all Americans about why climate changes are such a threat to humanity all of a sudden. Local newspapers like the L.A. Times and San Diego Union-Tribune no longer dedicate significant space to any science at all so they are of no use for public education anymore, actually making one wonder if there was an obituary for American science that we missed.

FIRST QUESTION ON GLOBAL WARMING HISTORY:
Where has American science been for over 100 years during the collection of correlation data while atmospheric carbon dioxide and global temperature kept increasing?

And why did it take until 2/2/07 for an international scientific group to finally appear to say something like:
Earth, We Have A Problem?

Regarding the Socolow and Pacala "Stabilization Wedges" wish list, which appears to be the conventional wisdom global warming solution list most scientists to refer to:

1. Stabilization wedges rely too heavily on perpetuating fossil fuel burning which forces us to continue to produce carbon dioxide based global warming,

2. Any solution that emphasizes a "portfolio" concept is doomed to failure in the real world of complex and contentious countervailing political forces that are still dominated by the most powerful fossil fuel burning special interests in Washington today such as Cheney’s Energy Task Force. Along this line it was most interesting to read the amazingly coincidental 2/2/07 L.A. Times article “Oil giant primes the biofuel pump with $500 million” about President Dynes grand pronouncement of his newest UC science alliance with BP!, which confirmed one more suspicion I have had about UC National Labs failures to produce energy generation replacements for fossil fuel burning for over 50 years.

3. Any solution that requires a complex combination of scientific, technical and industrial solutions in inherently self-defeating in the real world where research into hydrogen based energy sources is measured in 50 year increments, at least not in time to prevent unacceptable quality of life tipping point threats from occurring in this century.

Then there is the “local” imperative for Southern Californians about where are we going to get clean water now that vital sources like the Sierra glaciers appear to be in extremis? I camp out with my family in the White Mountains and have been watching the Palisades glacier disappear for years, so this is really an up close and personal threat to quality of life for my family, my community, and especially for all children and students today, etc. I would hope that California scientists would at least promote desalination plants with some appropriate sense of urgency, especially since nuclear power is one of the S&P Stabilization Wedges.

So, Are we Doomed, or Not?
That is to say, can we make all those “Stabilization Wedges” work in time to save humanity after watching and doing nothing as the “hockey stick” graph bent ever more asymptotic to the vertical axis for over 100 years already?

Or, to put it another way:
Do we have any practical ideas that can be implemented today to guarantee acceptable quality of life for our children?

[Anthony St. John]

Got Ideas? --- Doesn’t Matter, Just Hope We Don’t Have To Depend On The UC Board of Regents For Milk!

In the Nov/Dec 2006 CALIFORNIA Steven Weber asked: “Why are we losing on the battleground of ideas?” The joint Jan/Feb 2007 CALIFORNIA/UCLA EUREKA!QUEST for ideas that followed-up on that question has proven one thing from the dearth of responses proves that the Sep/Oct 2006 “Global Warning” Special Issue testified to the fact that there is a greater threat to humanity than we thought.

Further, UC spokesman Michael Reese admitted to the news media recently “Our biggest problem is that we are not perceived as having a significant impact on the personal lives of Californians.” An admission that was sustained when it was reported in the media, on the same day the IPCC’s global warning report was presented, that UC President Dynes grandly pronounced that he is going to solve the fossil fuel burning carbon dioxide producing problem that causes global warming by forming an alliance sharing UC National Labs resources with the oil giant BP! No wonder “Controlled Fusion, Soon!” never happened, 50 years since Teller made that pledge and counting.

How much more brain-dead can the Board of Regents and their executives get one may ask? Well, there is still the article in the Jan/Feb CALIFORNIA that documents the: “Most expensive experiment: Lawrence Livermore Lab’s National Ignition Facility that is already four years overdue and expected to be about $3.5 BILLION over budget if it is even completed by 2010!

UCLA and CALIFORNIA magazines may still be looking for IDEAS, but the far greater challenge is to make the ideas happen because the UC Board of Regents and their executives have produced Dinosaur 21C that is creating conditions for our extinction faster than they can make ideas happen anyway.

[Anthony St. John]

I have posted criticisms ad nauseam against the UC Board of Regents and their executives on their totally unacceptable failures to protect humanity.

For over 50 years their UC National Labs have failed to produce hydrogen fuel cells and other energy generators to eliminate the need for fossil fuel burning, carbon dioxide producing products that the IPCC has now defined as a root cause of accelerated global warming that we are experiencing, in addition to the most hideously unacceptable fact that oil is a root cause of terrorism and wars today that have caused millions of hideous deaths and bodily injury along with hellacious suffering for far too many decades with no end in sight.

The paramount reality documented in the latest IPCC report is that earth is already beyond the global “deadline” to prevent totally unacceptable environmental consequences we are already experiencing.

QUESTION: When is the UC Board of Regents going to accept their prime responsibility to humanity to immediately provide the world with practical fuel cells after decades of “R&D” with expenditures of 100s of $Billions in irreplaceable resources paid for by taxpayers who have a right to demand results today?

Actually, it is now beyond obvious that the most immediate action required is for a complete change dedicated to environmentally responsible cultural values, also requiring total replacement of UC regents and their executives because they have proven to be unacceptably negligent for far too long, almost beyond the point of no return for humanity. They have created a whole new breed of dinosaur that is producing conditions for its own extinction.

Or does No One Really Care, because far too many have given up on fighting like hell for the living?

[Anthony St. John]

Science and politics can kill and destroy more readily than heal and build by failing on the battleground of ideas, derived from “The Lessons of History” by the Durants.

For at least half a century, scientists and politicians have failed to meet the challenges of poverty, failed to understand and deal with global warnings, to the point where even the University of California has admitted failure on the battleground of ideas.

The new congress appears to be listening to We The People once again, providing a window of opportunity for Generation Next to make their demands for responsible government known and acted upon to protect what is left of their quality of life. The history of state failures proves that these windows of opportunity don’t happen very often.

At the same time, Generation Next can provide leadership to stop the greediest Americans from continuing to create out of control numbers of impoverished Americans, and end the American appetite for egregious consumption that has threatened to drive the environment and social stability to their tipping points.

The Lessons of History prove far too often that the humans are naturally acquisitive, greedy and pugnacious, we kill naturally to survive, freedom and equality are everlasting enemies, poverty breeds revolts and dictatorships, and that poverty and crime are threats to the survival of our civilization that can die like previous civilizations.

A paramount Fact of Life is that equality of education opportunities for all is a key to our survival, the probabilities of social chaos increase as poorly educated grow more numerous and out of control, a most outrageously unacceptable consequence of our failures on the battleground of ideas.

It is time for Generation Next to act more aggressively by encouraging more people to Vote and communicate continuously with their elected representatives between elections, to fight any effort to achieve supreme executive authority and reduce our civil rights, demand an end to the institutionalized culture of political and scientific corruption and marginalization of citizens, and demand the UC Board of Regents and executives focus on the needs of humanity for social justice, environmental protection, and equality of educational opportunities instead of their personal avarice.

We live in an era of globalization requiring us to end the growing disparities between rich and poor, to protect and provide acceptable levels of environment more aggressively than ever before, to protect the opportunities that created the American middle class after WWII, and demand social justice for all of humanity.

[Anthony St. John]

EUREKA? Most uncelebrated California failure that is shaping the future

Will and Ariel Durant documented “The Lessons of History” including:

“Democracy is the most difficult of all forms of government, since
it requires the widest spread of intelligence”

“When a civilization declines, it is through no mystic limitation
of a corporate life, but through the failure of its political or
intellectual leaders to meet the challenge of change”

“Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew”

FACT: Equality of American education opportunities is getting further out of reach, threatening the decline of American Democracy.

WORST CASE SCENARIO: Berkeley’s UC National Labs’ history of failures to create ideas that actually produce useful replacements for oil is the greatest failure in California history. So the Sep/Oct 2006 issue featuring “Global Warning” should have been dedicated to the “Greatest Failure in California Ideas” due to the failures of the “Dr. Strangelove” culture.

QUESTION: I watched the PBS production of “China From the Inside” and couldn’t help wondering if this is the future for America because of our failures in education to meet the demands of Democracy and heed the lessons of history?

[Anthony St. John]

Interesting that there have been no “best ideas” submitted in response to your call for best ideas and inventions. This confirms the root cause of Berkeley’s failures to prevent out of control global warming by replacing the need for oil after over 50 years of hydrogen energy R&D at UC National Labs, mainly due to the institutionalized cultural failures in leadership by the UC Board of Regents and their chosen UC executives.

Instead, Berkeley’s “leaders” still choose to threaten humanity, producing hydrogen bombs for over 50 years, continuously certifying the words of President Eisenhower who warned America in his 1961 “Farewell Address to the Nation”:

“Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. ---The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.”

Thus Berkeley’s leadership failures leave America and humanity with “a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence” as our only option for survival once again, with no ideas that can actually save humanity from global warming threats featured in your Sep/Oct 2006 issue.

[hedera]

I don't know whether this counts as an invention, or what. But I'm fairly sure that California (Berkeley) is the original source of the attitude that "we are more righteous than you are and that gives us the right to be rude to you in public." At least I remember seeing it first in Berkeley, when someone saw a pregnant woman smoking and/or drinking in public, and took it upon themselves to go over and embarrass that woman by publicly chastising her. This is the example that sticks with me but it's not the only one.

The political correctness police seem to have forgotten Oliver Wendell Holmes' remark that "The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins," and the result has been a decline in public civility which I see as one of the worst "inventions" of Berkeley.

The political correctness police have also essentially eliminated free speech at Berkeley by refusing to allow speakers to present ideas they disagree with. From Oliver Wendell Holmes again, "If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought, not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate."