Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 331

The day has finally arrived: America’s pathological liar-in-chief has turned to nuclear saber-rattling

Donald Trump speaks during a rally in Huntington, W.Va. (Credit: AP/Darron Cummings)

President Trump lies so much no one knows when he’s telling the truth.

But the twisted words of the president-who-cried-wolf took a dark and ominous turn Tuesday, when in a 30-second response to a reporter’s question, Trump threatened to unleash unprecedented military force against North Korea.

“North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States,” he said, arms folded across his chest. “They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen. He [Kim Jong-un] has been very threatening — beyond a normal state. And as I said, they will be met with fire and fury, and, frankly, power, the likes of which this world has never seen before.”

Trump’s remarks, aimed at a region that two days before marked the anniversary of the world’s first atomic bombing of civilians (Hiroshima), and on Wednesday, marks the second (Nagasaki, Japan), are as dangerous as they are surreal. They are dangerous because he is commander-in-chief, has the authority to order military strikes and is as unstable as the North Korean dictator—both are unrepentant bullies. No one knows where this escalation will end up.

There’s nothing about Trump that inspires trust or confidence, because the man himself is as much an egomaniac as he is a pathological liar. Politics is full of egomaniacs, but American politics hasn’t seen a liar like Trump in decades. Now, with nuclear saber-rattling, the deceptive side of Trump has become deadly serious.

Trump can’t stop lying, as the New York Times again pointed out Tuesday, before he threatened North Korea. The White House press office justifies those lies by bending what’s already twisted. Truth squads like PolitiFact have documented that 69 percent of Trump’s assertions fall under the false umbrella. The Times even listed scores of his lies in his first six months in office, and indexed hundreds of people he’s insulted via Twitter since in office, and even more during the campaign.

The world is watching the latest he-man with access to far more than a gun. What Trump’s hall of mirrors and threats is doing to American politics, culture, institutions, professions, and individuals who rely on separating facts from fiction is one thing. But add in the military component and Trump is on the verge of what despots have done throughout history, as Yale historian Timothy Snyder described in his anti-Trump pamphlet, On Tyranny: 20 Lessons from the 20th Century. Trump’s mish-mash of lies, taunts, threats, propaganda, and attacks on the press and any adversary is paving the path toward a new American authoritarianism, Snyder said.

“The way it works is that you first just lie a lot,” Snyder said. “You fill up the public space with things that aren’t true, as Trump has obviously done. Next you say, ‘It’s not me who lies; it’s the crooked journalists. They’re the ones who spread the fake news.’ Then the third step, if this works, is that everybody shrugs their shoulders and says, ‘Well, we don’t really know who to trust; therefore, we’ll trust whoever we feel like trusting.’ In that situation, you can’t control political action and authoritarianism wins.”

When Snyder spoke to AlterNet last winter, he suspected Trump might create a domestic crisis as a pretext to impose some semblance of martial law. He worried that whole slices of the public would be susceptible to his rants and raves, as large populations throughout history have always had vulnerable and ill-informed masses.

“Frankly, we’re in uncharted waters here,” Snyder said. “A lot of people believed in Trump because of his charisma and the simplicity of his promises and because, in many cases, they were facing real problems. What they believed in, unfortunately, has zero substance. It’s very hard for people to recognize that. It’s much easier for people to be fooled than it is for people to be unfooled.”

But now the uncharted waters Snyder warned about include the authoritarian’s time-honored tool, military might. But this escalating argument with North Korea is not the same as sending American drones into Yemen or special forces into Afghanistan. North Korea is determined to keep its nuclear arsenal, just as Trump seems determined to use military firepower to take it away.

Before Trump’s latest threat, the Times’ Sheryl Gay Stolberg wrote a long piece on the impact of Trump’s lies, suggesting his behavior “reflects a broader decline in standards of truth for political discourse.” In it, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin pondered “whether Mr. Trump, in elevating the art of political fabrication, has forever changed what Americans are willing to tolerate from their leaders.”

“What’s different today and what’s scarier today is these lies are pointed out, and there’s evidence that they’re wrong,” Goodwin said. “And yet because of the attacks on the media, there are a percentage of people in the country who are willing to say, ‘Maybe he is telling the truth.’”

Only last week Trump lied that the head of the Boy Scouts had said his was the best speech ever delivered to its national jamboree. He lied that the president of Mexico had called to say that tough border enforcement was working. But now America’s liar-in-chief is threatening to inundate North Korea with “fire and fury and, frankly, power, the likes of which this world has never seen before.”

A representative government like the United States requires the public to trust the words and actions of its leaders, and to hold those elected leaders accountable. What are we to make of this latest apocalpytic threat from Trump? No one knows. And that’s precisely the problem with having a pathological liar as president.

From “All Lives Matter” to the terror in Charlottesville: How the media’s phony fairness got us here

White nationalist demonstrators clash with counter demonstrators at Lee Park in Charlottesville, Va. (Credit: AP/Steve Helber)

The Ku Klux Klan wears white robes because its members are channeling the ghosts of the Confederacy. The Ku Klux Klan burns crosses as a way of intimidating African-Americans and other groups who they deem to be their enemies.

The white supremacists who ran amok in Charlottesville, Virginia, last weekend do not wear white robes. Nor do they cover their faces. Instead, this new generation of white supremacists wears a uniform that consists of khaki pants, white shirts and red “Make America Great Again” hats in emulation of their idol, the current president of the United States.

Their regalia may differ from that of the white supremacist terrorists who killed at least 50,000 black Americans in the decades following the Civil War, but the threats and intimidation are very much the same.

The neo-Nazis, Kluxers, members of the so-called alt-right and the other white supremacists who descended upon Charlottesville to “Unite the Right” attacked anti-racist counter-protesters with bats, clubs, poles and sticks.

They threatened people with assault rifles and pistols. They threatened to burn down a black church. They assaulted members of the clergy. This was no minor donnybrook or fracas. It was a rampage. And the police did little to stop the attacks.

The effort to unite the right around a politics of hate would culminate in an ISIS-style terrorist attack that killed a 32-year-old woman named Heather Heyer and injured dozens of other people.

The white supremacist terrorist attack in Charlottesville should not come as a surprise: It is the logical and predictable culmination of the violence, racism, intolerance, prejudice and hatred that Donald Trump used to win the 2016 presidential election. Bathing in these social ills was his political baptismal rite. The Republican Party and its voters poured this water over Trump’s head. Their embrace of white supremacy from the “Southern strategy” of the 1960s to birtherism made his victory possible.

The following cannot be reasonably evaded or denied: Donald Trump is the Republican Party as it exists today; the Republican Party is Mr. Trump.

Of course, white supremacy is not new in America. It is a primal force that existed well before the founding of the country. Its influence has modulated and evolved over time. It remains all too powerful in the post-Civil Rights era.

Barack Obama — the country’s first black president — was elected despite white supremacy’s power. Donald Trump — the country’s first fascist president — is a political necromancer and warlock who was able to harness white supremacy’s power to win the presidency.

The mainstream American news media was complicit with Trump’s rise to power. It is estimated that he was given at least $5 billion worth of free coverage. During the 2016 presidential campaign they made excuses for Trump by focusing on his imagined intentions as opposed to the vile things he actually said and did. The mainstream media was obsessed with how and when Trump would inevitably become “presidential.” Further gutting its own tenuous legitimacy, the Fourth Estate also slavishly followed old rules and expectations regarding “fairness” and “balance” and “objectivity” in their discussions of Trump — a man who has no respect for democracy, despises the very idea of a free press and holds the truth in contempt. And of course, too many in the mainstream American news media were drunk — and still are — on the delusion that Mr. Trump led a “populist” campaign that spoke to “white working class economic anxiety.” In reality, Trump’s white voters were largely motivated by racism and bigotry.

Too many voices in the mainstream American news media continued those dangerous and irresponsible habits in their coverage of the Charlottesville white supremacist attacks.

Many in the media repeatedly used the words “white nationalists.” This implies a difference where none really exists. White supremacists and “white nationalists” both believe that nonwhites — especially black people — are inferior.

Many in the media repeatedly talked about the “alt-right.” That label was born of an effort to normalize the abnormal and the foul. The so-called alt-right are white supremacists, neo-Nazis, “white nationalists,” right-wing militia members and wannabe domestic terrorists.

Many in the media described the white supremacists and their allies running amok in Charlottesville as part of a right-wing “fringe” movement. This supposed “fringe movement” shares many of the same attitudes and beliefs held by rank-and-file Republican voters as well as the party’s leaders.

These habits are, of course, not new. They were previewed several years ago when Trump began his political crusade for the White House. These habits also have antecedents, which at the time seemed reasonable and benign to many members of the mainstream American news media specifically and White America more generally.

But others — especially students of the color line and those of us who have to navigate white racism in order to survive — understood the deeper and more menacing implications of these “reasonable” questions.

Several years ago, the human rights campaign Black Lives Matter emerged in response to the continued abuse of black and brown Americans by the country’s police and other institutions. The movement’s slogan is both an existential observation about the value of black people’s lives and a demand for justice and equality in American (and global) society. The statement that “Black Lives Matter” is also an affront and provocation to whiteness because the latter is a social and political identity prefaced on domination and power over people of color.

Thus it was no surprise that “Black Lives Matter ” was rebutted by “White Lives Matter.” This is the new “Sieg Heil!”

Thus it was no surprise that “Black Lives Matter ” was rebutted by “All Lives Matter.” This is the new “White Power!”

Thus it was no surprise that “Black Lives Matter” was rebutted by “Blue Lives Matter.” This is an assertion that America’s police have the inherent right to engage in thuggery, murder and brutality against people of color without consequence.

It is no surprise that the white supremacists marching in Charlottesville last weekend shouted, “White lives matter.” Just as it was no surprise that at Trump’s campaign rallies last year his supplicants enthusiastically shouted, “All lives matter!” while assaulting black and brown protesters.

The American news media coughed up many “thinkpieces” and “hot takes” on Black Lives Matter — both the phrase and the movement — speculating about whether “White Lives Matter” and “All Lives Matter” were more appropriate and “less confrontational” ways of talking about social injustice. Such work legitimates white supremacy and protects white privilege as the status quo in American society and life.

To write favorably about “All Lives Matter,” “White Lives Matter” or “Blue Lives Matter” is to accept the premise that white Americans are disadvantaged in America because of the color of their skin. To assert the obvious value of white lives in a country that was literally built on the murder and enslavement of nonwhites is intellectually and morally perverse. It is also redundant: Every major social, political and cultural institution in American society exists to affirm the inherent value of white people’s lives.

The writers, journalists, editors, websites and publications who trafficked in the bloody currency of “All Lives Matter,” “White Lives Matter,” or “Blue Lives Matter” owe the American people an apology. They helped to elect Donald Trump. They also share responsibility for the white supremacist terror that was unleashed in Charlottesville over the weekend.

Those members of the Fourth Estate who are willing to reevaluate their role in the national calamity of Donald Trump’s regime can learn an invaluable lesson from the past.

During the Civil Rights movement, many white journalists were on the front lines of a life-and-death struggle to end Jim and Jane Crow. These American heroes, through their words and photographs, shamed White America before the world and by doing so helped to bring down Jim and Jane Crow’s reign of terror. These journalists (both white and black) knew that one could not be “objective” or “fair” in the face of evil. To tell the truth meant that “balance” and “neutrality” were by definition not possible. Ultimately, reality and the truth are scales of a sort, but they do not treat both sides equally. This is a lesson that too many members of the American news media have apparently forgotten.

These lessons will need to be relearned — by journalists and by the American people — if they are to be on the right side of history in the struggle against Donald Trump and what he represents.

Eric Bolling’s defamation suit is bad for journalism (and bad for Eric Bolling)

Eric Bolling (Credit: Getty/Noam Galai)

Suspended Fox News host Eric Bolling filed a defamation lawsuit last week against journalist Yashar Ali, accusing the freelance writer of publishing false and misleading statements about his character. Critics have called the legal action a PR stunt and an act of intimidation.

The suit came almost immediately after Bolling found himself suspended in the wake of a report that Ali wrote for HuffPost while under contract with the news organization. In it, Ali alleged that Bolling sent lewd text messages — including graphic photographs of himself — to his female colleagues. Since Bolling’s suspension, at least one former Fox News guest has publicly accused him of sexual harassment.

Ali’s attorney, famed litigator Patricia Glaser, responded to Bolling’s lawsuit with a letter, calling Bolling’s case “frivolous” and “devoid of merit.”

Salon recently spoke with Jane Kirtley, a media law professor at the University of Minnesota and the former executive director of Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, about the lawsuit and its implications on the media industry as a whole.

Kirtley did not exactly express shock that Bolling brought the suit.

“In this litigious time, where we’re seeing a variety of public figures bring lawsuits against the news media. I can’t say I was really surprised because the revelations were pretty explosive and led to Bolling being suspended,” Kirtley said. “It is not unusual for people in that situation to lash back.”

Kirtley did note that Bolling himself is a member of the news media, which brings a unique twist to the case.

“Anybody who is in the media ought to be making a calculation that even if they prevail in a lawsuit like this, there is a possibility that they will result in making really bad legal precedent. It could come back to have an effect on them in the future,” she said.

Journalists around the country, for their part, have seemed to welcome the lawsuit, anticipating a potential discovery process that could, indeed, reveal even more unpleasant details about Bolling’s behavior. Kirtley said that the scope of discovery will be subject to the New York state court judge assigned to the case, but it would likely include emails, text messages and anything else Bolling could have used to engage in the behavior Ali alleged.

“There could be some posturing and bickering over whether it was anything he had ever said or constrained in some way,” Kirtley said, “but given the nature of the allegation, I don’t see how you can argue that the media defendant doesn’t have to explore those forms of communications.”

Many legal experts, including Ali’s attorney, have made hay that Bolling did not name HuffPost in a suit, but Kirtley said that was not atypical.

“It is not unusual for the plaintiff to sue just the writer, frankly as an intimidation move, unless you are talking about a multi-million dollar freelancer,” Kirtley said. “It is not likely that the writer will have resources that a news organization would have, so they are seen as more vulnerable and prepared to settled.”

Fortunately for Ali, HuffPost appears prepared to defend its freelancer. Lydia Polgreen, the editor in chief of HuffPost, indicated as much in a tweet last week.

Yashar Ali is a paid freelancer under contract with HuffPost. We have no hesitation about standing by him financially in this case.

— Lydia Polgreen (@lpolgreen) August 9, 2017

“It’s laudable that the Huffington Post has stepped up and said that they will defend him. I don’t know the nature of their contract, but that isn’t always the case,” Kirtley said.

Kirtley re-emphasized that these were trying times for journalists, especially after recent defamation cases that have gone in favor of the plaintiffs.

“The ‘Gawker’ case was a kind of a horrifying example of how Hulk Hogan’s crew basically went after the writers in these stories in an incredibly aggressive way,” Kirtley said. “After there was a judgment, they were going after their personal assets. It was a vindictive move in that case.”

“I can’t say that is the motivation here,” she added. “But those are things we have seen in the past, and those are techniques that could be in play here.”

The media law professor said she had concerns about the anonymous sources cited in this case. The state of New York has a robust shield law, which provides extensive privilege to journalists trying to protect their sources. Even so, it is often difficult to protect sources in a libel case, Kirtley said. Ali referenced an astounding 14 anonymous sources in his original story, so if this case proceeds to trial, many current and former Fox News employees may be unveiled as the people who brought down Bolling.

Whether Bolling intended it or not, this lawsuit marks another defamation case attempting to silence a journalist. Ali’s reporting uncovered repugnant behavior of a man who has aspirations for the U.S. Senate. Now that dream appears to be collapsing, and Bolling is taking it out on Ali, a freelance journalist trying to hold the powerful and elite accountable.

But this is somewhat different than the assault on Gawker. While Bolling might not consider himself a member of the press, he undoubtedly works in the media. Fox News has been called biased and a propaganda machine, but the network does employ real journalists who, like Ali, are trying to cover real stories that matter. Bolling’s lawsuit is not just targeting the reporter who wrote a damning story about him, it is targeting every journalist who works in the industry — his colleagues included.

In his spite, Bolling’s not only potentially allowing more damning evidence against him to surface, he’s also threatening the very industry that’s made him famous.

Fall movie preview: The 10 films we’re most excited for

Blade Runner 2049; mother!; The Meyerowitz Stories (Credit: Warner Bros./Paramount Pictures/Netflix)

The leaves are about to change and the movies — which have already been quite good this year — are about to get stellar. Coming this fall to a movie theater — or streaming site — near you are films from the best veteran directors in the biz, as well as exciting new projects from young talents. Precocious six-year-old Floridians, a shrunken Matt Damon, the mid-20th century London fashion world: it’s all happening. It’s never too early to fantasize about the fall movie slate, so here, in the middle of August, is our Fall Movie Preview, in which we pick the ten films we are most looking forward to.

1. “Mother!” (September 15)

Name a living director better at putting audiences at the edge of their seats and keeping them there than Darren Aronofsky. His best films have an unparalleled intensity running through them. “Mother!”, which stars Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem and Ed Harris, is a film I can’t wait to want-to-but-not-want to look away from.

2. “Woodshock” (September 22)

Two fashion designers, the sisters Kate and Laura Mulleavy, team up for a Kirsten Dunst pic about a girl who takes a drug and suffers from intense paranoia. It is sure to be visually sumptuous, if nothing else.

3. “The Florida Project” (October 6)

Remember the guy who made a film about Los Angeles transgender sex workers on his iPhone? He’s back and headed to Florida. And this time he’s focusing his camera on a group of ragtag six-year-olds who spend their summer doing things like begging strangers for ice cream money.

4. “Blade Runner 2049″ (October 6)

With Denis Villeneuve at the head, the new “Blade Runner” is what you want to see from a sequel or a remake: a franchise brand being used as cover for an ambitious artist to make a giant, no-cost-barred piece of cinema.

5. “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” (November 3)

, who you probably know as the director of “The Lobster,” makes exquisitely odd films. This one, which also stars Colin Farrell, is about a boy’s attempts to hook his mom up with a brilliant surgeon. Also, the boy () asks the surgeon (Farrell) to show him his chest hair. Which he does.   

 6. and 7. “The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)”  and “Lady Bird” (November 10)

Noah Baumbach’s last four movies have either starred Greta Gerwig or Ben Stiller. The difference has amounted to one of enchantment: The Gerwig movies, which I am partial to, have been light and romantic, where the Stiller films have been more cynical. Baumbach’s latest stars neither actor. It is about a family that reunites in New York to celebrate the patriarch’s artistic work. And the cast is perhaps the best Baumbach has worked with. It is stacked from top to bottom, with the likes of Adam Sandler, Grace Van Patten, Dustin Hoffman, Elizabeth Marvel and Emma Thompson at the top of the call sheet and stellar character actors (plus Adam Driver and Sigourney Weaver) further down. I don’t know what to expect tonally. But I do know this much: There’ll be some great performances.

Also this fall comes “Lady Bird,” Gerwig’s solo debut as a writer-director. It is about a student (played by Saoirse Ronan) at a conservative Catholic Sacramento high school who wants to flee the suburbs and hightail to the Big Apple. Gerwig’s track record, both as an actor and as a co-writer and co-director, is pretty outstanding. So I have high hopes.

8. “Downsizing” (December 22)

Essentially Alexander Payne’s take on “Honey I Shrunk the Kids,” in which Matt Damon is the shrunken. You probably have a lot more questions. So do I.

9. “Phantom Thread” (December)

Little information has surfaced about this film. It might not even be called “Phantom Thread.” But here’s what we do know: Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest stars Daniel Day-Lewis — in what he says will be his final movie role — as a dressmaker in 1950s London. That’s enough. It’s frickin’ Paul Thomas Anderson and Daniel Day-Lewis, people. 

10. “Under the Silver Lake” and “Gemini”

Two separate Los Angeles noir thrillers. The first of which comes from , maker of “It Follows.” The second, from Aaron Katz, I saw at BAMCinemaFest, and it is one of my favorite films of the year.

What can we learn from 1967’s Summer of Love to help us through our current political nightmare?

FILE - In this June 21, 1967, file photo, a crowd of hippies keep a large ball, painted to represent a world globe, in the air during a gathering at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, to celebrate the summer solstice on June 21, day one of "Summer of Love." (Credit: AP Photo, File)

Editor’s Note: Danny Goldberg is the modern version of the Renaissance Man. He has a long and colorful history as an activist, author, and influential music executive. Goldberg came of age at the height of the hippie era in 1967, experiencing the powerful and haunting mix of excitement, hope, experimentation and despair. He captures it all in vibrant detail and political nuance in his newest  book, “In Search of the Lost Chord: 1967 and the Hippie Idea” (Akashic Books). AlterNet’s executive editor, Don Hazen, interviewed Goldberg in the offices of his company, Gold Village Entertainment, on July 12th.

Don Hazen: Let’s start by addressing what lessons we can learn from 1967, what analogies are applicable 50 years later. In the book [In Search of the Lost Chord] there is a lot about that classic split between the hippies and the radicals. And is that a Bernie/Hillary split? Is that split still with us? How do you look back 50 years and apply it today?

Danny Goldberg: Well, there are things to learn, to do, and things to learn not to do, from the ’60s. A major feature of the Be-In, in January 1967 that led to event of the Summer of Love, was that it was a “gathering of the tribes” to try to address that split.

There were also serious divides within the civil rights movement.

Stokely Carmichael and Adam Clayton Powell sometimes mocked Martin Luther King publicly and questioned his non-violent strategy. On the other hand, when Martin King came out against the war, the NAACP board voted 60-0 to condemn him for that position because they feared pissing off President Johnson. There were splits in the peace movement between the pacifists and non-pacifists; among those who focused on replacing LBJ with an anti-war Democrat there was bitter resentment between many of those who preferred Gene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy supporters.

DH: And the Digger critique of Abbie Hoffman was what?  He was  not “lefty enough?”

DG: It was that the Diggers were committed to anonymity and Abbie was the opposite of that. There’s no question Abbie Hoffman was a self-promoter, but on the other hand he had the ability to popularize radical ideas in a way no one else could.

The Diggers saw themselves as the conscience of all these movements.

DH: And Peter Coyote was a Digger, right?

DG: Yes, Coyote was one of the thought leaders. The Diggers organized the free concerts near Haight-Ashbury. They made and gave free meals to hundreds of people. They ran a “free store.” They came from experimental theatre world and did a lot public displays that challenged conventional thinking.

They had a mimeograph machine, and distributed circulars in the neighborhood, and when the Black Panthers started in Oakland, the Diggers lent them the machine for the first three issues of their newspaper.

But they also had a self-righteousness that judged almost everyone else in the counterculture adversely. They had a commitment to ideals that were distinct from people that were more commercially minded, so hip capitalism was one of their targets. They also had a jaundiced view of Tim Leary. They were often confrontational with radical political groups that they felt were too mired in old ideology. In some ways, they were the forerunner of the most intolerant anarchists of the Occupy period. But they also had the creativity to create some of the purest expressions of countercultural idealism.

DH: Let’s step back for a second and ask you to explain how people should really understand the hippie idea and what, if any, of it could be applied to solving the problems that we are confronting today.

DG: The question I ask myself a lot, as I’ve been talking about the book, is: What difference does something that happened 50 years ago matter? Other than nostalgia (which I don’t think is a completely bad thing) the relevance depends on the extent that there are values that are not driven by the 24-hour news cycle or by who’s president, but endure from generation to generation, basic concepts about what it is to be a human being. To me, the hippie idea was a spiritual movement at its core, even though the word hippie and the external symbols like tie dye or long hair or hip language like “groovy” or “far out” or “cool, man,” soon became passé.

DH: Don’t forget the peace sign.

DG: Yes, the peace sign too — all of these things were quickly drained of meaning because of commercialization, the media magnifying glass, predators, etc. I understand why the punk generation that came along 10 or 15 years later had contempt for it, because they weren’t reacting to the experience I had; they were reacting to the cartoon version of it. I’m sure if I were of that generation, I would have been a punk also, because it was all about trying to seek integrity, authenticity, and meaning. But to me, the hippie moment was a critique of materialism. Ayn Rand’s philosophy was just as pernicious in the ’60s as it is today, or maybe the way to say it’s just as pernicious today as it was then.

DH: Is there any model of a counterculture theme or anti-materialistic vision that’s applicable today, anything like “back to the land”? Because the country is so split. The differences are just enormous. Even the way of thinking.

DG: The thing I keep hoping is that the meeting place is spirituality, because I do think that most people who identify as Christians are sincere about it. Even though many of the right-wing American leaders who exploit them seem quite removed from the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount, Pope Francis is a compelling and powerful moral and spiritual voice who, to me, evokes counterculture values as much as he does Catholic tradition. Some of the attitudes of conservative evangelicals are primarily tribal. But I think that the words of Jesus Christ are so powerful that they can have unintended effects; the idea of loving thy neighbor as thyself is essentially the same as hippie idea. In researching 1967, one thing that blew my mind was reading some of the speeches of Martin Luther King, and Bobby Kennedy; neither of whom, as far as I know, ever took LSD. They both wore suits and had short hair and didn’t identify as hippies in any way.

DH: No dashikis for Martin Luther King.

DG: And no love beads for Bobby Kennedy. . . But they came to the same meeting place in terms of the ideal that there’s more to life than just money. Kennedy gave this great speech about the Gross National Product measures everything except the things that are most important in life. And King, in sermon after sermon, talked about the inner world, of man as a spirit and as a soul. Of course he coupled this with an ethical code which required activism in an immoral world.

So it is my hope is that there is a critical mass of people who see themselves as being in different tribes, but who in their souls share some values that could create some kind of a moral clarity in the country.

The other big thing, I think, in terms of changing the politics of the country now, is to focus on young people, because that’s also a similarity with the ’60s. You’ve got this gigantic generation, the biggest generation since the Baby Boom generation, and more progressive. Those of us who were against the war were never a majority until way later when the whole country turned against the war by the mid-70s. But the proportion of younger people who voted for Bernie, the proportion of younger people who vote Democrat, is very, very high.

DH: Let’s go back to the spiritual theme. The heroes of your book are really Ram Dass and Allen Ginsberg. I’m interested in how you think that Allen Ginsberg and Ram Dass were able to carry that message, and whether it’s succeeded in beginning inside the culture, or the culture just went all materialist.

DG: I think it’s a mixed bag. One of the things about being older is knowing that I have more life behind me than in front of me, and it’s quite clear that the odds of all the problems of America or the Western world being solved in my lifetime is extremely low. The rapid success of the civil rights movement on certain issues and the explosive spread of hip images and rock and roll, I created a set of expectations regarding timing that were not realistic. But the fact that everything’s not perfect or close to perfect doesn’t mean that all the efforts to advance the species are a failure; it means that history is to be looked at in terms of hundreds or thousands of years, not just one generation. In terms of the individual lives, I think Ram Dass is exemplary. He’s been committed to service. The money from Be Here Now went to his foundation that he and Wavy Gravy among others set up that has helped cure blindness in millions of people in third world countries.

DH: I read a review of your book on the Be Here Now network. I never knew that existed.

DG: It’s a podcast network that is a spin-off that is associated with the foundation that is built up around Ram Dass and run by Raghu Markus. I do a podcast on it called “Rock And Roles.”

DH: Let’s talk about the riots, and segue from Martin Luther King to Detroit and to Newark and what a huge impact the uprisings had on the black community. We do not seem to have made much progress on race in this country. The riots of 1967 seem to have been a product of somewhat raised expectations from civil rights and the poverty program. Today, the black community has very little expectations. That might be a reason why white males are dying at a much higher rate than blacks and Latino men, because their reality is more accepted.

DG: The scale dwarfs anything that’s happened since. In Detroit there were 43 dead, 1,189 injured, over 7,200 arrests, and more than 2,000 buildings destroyed. And much havoc in other cities as well.

Not everyone called them riots—they were called rebellions, revolts. They were usually triggered by police violence. But the tinder box of frustration, poverty, oppression was so great, and the raised expectations were followed by only marginal improvement especially in the North where the problems was “de facto” segregation that wasn’t fixed by the Civil Rights Bill. Before he was killed, King had become a much more radical and complicated thinker as the years went by and he saw the complexity of the legacy of racism.

DH: What else from the ’60s is applicable in the Trump era?

DG: Number one, ease up on tribalism on our side.

DH: Yeah, well, tribalism’s natural for corruption. And also for loyalty and protection.

DG: True. It’s incredibly seductive, because it feels good. It’s why people join gangs.

DH: Nepotism is one of the most powerful forces in the world. Taking care of your own, your family. Everyone protects their family, or else they’re thought of as having bad character.

DG: Taking care of your own family isn’t the problem. Doing it in a way that hurts other people’s families is what is immoral. The Mafia will claim you have no choice. The Mafia is the ultimate Ayn Rand entity.

DH: So, 1967 is the year that you picked, but ’68, ’69 and ’70 also were all huge years for me: ’69 was Woodstock, of course. ’70 was Kent State and Cambodia and the biggest student rebellion ever. It seems to me that the reverberations of ’67 just kept rolling along in different ways. And of course there’s Altamont versus Woodstock.

DG: Well, I think it’s about the balance, and that’s the conceit of the title, “In Search of the Lost Chord,” that there were these different notes and relationship to them, and it’s about the balance of the energies. Things got darker in ’68. with the assassinations of King and Kennedy. Another inflection point was the decline of Haight-Ashbury. There was a community in ’65 and ’66 and the beginning of ’67, it was a model of an alternative lifestyle that couldn’t survive the glare of the media. The media definitely killed it. There was actually a formal ceremony in Haight-Ashbury called Death of Hippie in October ’67. And the drugs got worse very quickly.

DH: The Brown acid.

DG: Yes, some of the LSD sold by less than idealistic dealers was mixed with speed. Pure speed, then as now brought out the worst in people. Heroin, then as now, destroyed lives. So even though shards of countercultural idealism cropped up in places well into the seventies, the peak was already in the rearview mirror. Even the purest kind of LSD had limits in its value to people. I’m someone who is very happy with my memories of LSD trips. I’ve never had a bad trip, thank God, but it became like seeing the same movie too many times. It’s been decades and I have no plans to take it again.

DH: Yeah, it doesn’t tell you how to figure things out.

DG: Yeah, at the end of the book, I quote Peter Coyote saying that LSD is like a helicopter that takes you to the top of the mountain, but then it brings you back down again, so if you actually want to live on the top of the mountain, it’s a lifetime of work to get up there, not a helicopter ride.

DH: But the hippie period trigger a lot of things such as “back to the land,” and the Grateful Dead, right?

DG: Absolutely. There are still reverberations from that period that continue to this day. Environmentalism had antecedents with people like Thoreau, but its explosion as a mass movement was the direct outgrowth of hippie culture. Many of the creators of a lot of the internet in the ’90s, including Steve Jobs, took psychedelics. On the political side, there is a direct line from the civil rights and anti-war movements to feminism, the gay rights movement, Code Pink, Occupy Wall Street, and many aspects of the Sanders campaign.

In the spiritual realm, in 1967, Richard Alpert, the fired Harvard professor who was Tim Leary’s protégé in popularizing LSD, went to India, met his guru Neem Karoli Baba, was renamed Ram Dass, wrote the book “Be Here Now,” a major catalyst of the New Age movement. And in 1967 the Beatles, who were the most famous musicians in the world, were introduced to meditation, which overnight went from being a word known primarily in monasteries and theology departments to being part of the language of pop culture.

DH: Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, right?

DG: Yeah, the Maharishi was the first one that became a public figure when they visited him, but almost immediately afterwards, George Harrison and John Lennon became interested in the so-called Hare Krishna guru, Swami Bhaktivedanta.

And all this opened up a wellspring of a zillion different spiritual paths explored by people in the mass culture, some of the bogus but some real. The I Ching went from selling a couple of thousand copies a year to 50,000-100,000 a year, and was quoted in numerous rock lyrics. A lot of younger people were relieved that you don’t have to choose between the religion you were born into or purely secular materialism. There were lanes you could go down to try to integrate the idea of identifying yourself as a spirit without having to be enmeshed in the hierarchy of rules and structures that seemed irrelevant to a modern life. Some people found transcendence in mainstream religions but a lot of us didn’t find it there.

DH: As you talk about your book, is there a question no one asking you that you really wanted to answer? Is there something that you want the world to know about this book that you’re not getting out there?

DG: Well, the main thing about the book is its complexity. There were so many things happening all at the same time. It’s a mosaic of, a couple hundred pieces, and there were another couple of thousand that I couldn’t deal with because I didn’t have the time or the wisdom to do it. I feel guilty dumbing it down sometimes.

DH: Somebody in the book said that New York was always two years later, but you said by ’67 it had caught up. Is that really true?

DG: Ken Kesey said that to Tom Wolfe in “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.”

There was this sense of you had this magical thing that no one else had. When it was the province of universities and psychiatrists and people that were authorized to experiment with it, it was very limited. But once it was illegal in late 1966, it became easy to get. High school in New York, kids couldn’t get acid in 1964, but could in ’67.

DH: They had no Summer of Love in New York.

DG: I don’t know, man. It was nice to be young there then. That’s the year I graduated from high school.

There was a Be-In in Easter of ’67. There were these things that Bob Fass would organize, this Fly-In and sweeping up streets on the Lower East Side. It was a bit darker than the Bay Area, nut we had the peace and love thing going too for a minute.

DH: I was both a hippie and a radical and most of my hippie friends were political and most of my radical friends had disdain for drugs. And then there was, within SDS, there was social workers, the ones that cut their hair off and went to the factories and worked.

DG: But there were people who struggled to bridge the divide. Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and Paul Krassner — all had dual citizenship.

DH: Abbie Hoffman was one of our best political strategists. I traveled to Nicaragua with him and then I spent some with him in Zihuatanejo. But also I saw the dark side of him, too, which obviously led to his death. But he was amazing. He was manic depressive, yeah. And when he was manic, there was just no one, no one, who could compete with him as a speaker, as a thinker, strategist, as a performer.

DG: I think he’s a little underrated by history because the depression became more part of the story. Hoffman and Jerry Rubin and of course Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Brian Jones and Jim Morrison had tragically premature deaths. On the other hand, the people I dedicated the book to — Paul Krassner, Wavy Gravy, and Ram Dass — didn’t self-destruct, and continued to live righteous lives with real consistency about who they said they were as younger people as did Bob Dylan and Joan Baez and Peter Coyote and many others who are not famous but who are worthy role models.

So overall, it certainly is a mixed bag. I have a romantic view of it, but hopefully not a delusional view of it…

DH: Well, that’s a good way to stop. A romantic view of it, but not a delusional view of it.

 

Climate change has influenced timing of Europe’s floods

Red cross teams use boats to evacuate people after river Danube flooded the old town of Passau, southern Germany, on Tuesday, June 4, 2013. Raging waters from three rivers have flooded large parts of the southeast German city following days of heavy rainfall in central Europe. (Credit: AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)

From the heavy rains that sent the Seine into the streets of Paris last year to a parade of storms that left southern England waterlogged during the winter of 2013-2014, there have been startling examples in recent years of the heavy toll that flooding can levy in both human and economic terms.

Such events also lead to questions about the role climate change is playing in altering these threats. A new study detailed Thursday in the journal Science finds that the timing of such floods has changed over the past 50 years across Europe because of changes in the climate, the first time a clear climate signal has been found in flooding on a Europe-wide scale.

The changes, though, aren’t uniform. Instead, they are a patchwork of regions where floods are coming earlier or later because of the interplay with other factors like the timing of snowmelt or the types of soil in a region.

It’s not clear that all of the trends will continue into the future, but the study does make clear that there is a need to understand the role climate plays in floods in order for societies to adapt, experts say.

“It’s a reminder that we are already in a changed climate and it’s having real impacts on our societies and even on our safety in some cases,” Maarten van Aalst, director of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, said.

Understanding how climate change might influence flooding has been a tricky endeavor because so many other factors, like urbanization, deforestation or the dredging of rivers, also impact how often floods occur and how big they are, muddying the picture.

“It’s been very difficult to disentangle” those various threads, said van Aalst, who wasn’t involved with the new study.

So a group of researchers from all over Europe turned to looking at the timing of flooding, as the seasonal nature of them is tied much more closely to climate than to any other interfering factors.

They pooled data from more than 4,000 flood gauges from 38 European countries and looked at how the date of the highest flood peak of the year had changed since 1960.

“The overall result is that yes, climate change has impacted flood timing” in Europe, lead author Günter Blöschl of Vienna University of Technology, said. “But it did so in very different ways in different parts of Europe.”

In northeastern Europe floods are happening about a month earlier than they were 50 years ago, while along the North Atlantic Coast from Portugal to England they are happening at least two weeks earlier. Along the North Sea and in Scotland, however, they are happening two weeks later.

The opposing shifts, even in neighboring regions like England and Scotland, have to do with the factors that influence floods in different seasons. Sweden, for example, sees its biggest floods in the spring when winter snows melt. As temperatures are warming, that snowmelt is happening earlier and earlier.

In the UK and western Europe more generally, though, floods are driven by winter rainstorms. There, changes both in pressure patterns over the northern Atlantic and in soil types — which determines how quickly the ground becomes saturated — are driving the changes in flood timing.

It’s not clear if all of the trends seen over the past 50 years will continue. The trends driven by earlier snowmelt are likely to as they are “are very much in line with the projections of future climate” from climate models, study co-author Berit Arheimer of the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute said. “We see the climate change very clearly here.”

But it is less clear what the role of climate change might be in the changing Atlantic pressure patterns, and so whether the flooding trends tied to them will continue.

Overall the study shows that flooding on a continent-wide scale is sensitive to climate in a way researchers haven’t been able to before, which has implications for “how we adapt to this uncertainty of flood timing in the future,” Louise Slater, a hydrologist at Loughborough University in the U.K., said. Some ecosystems and societies are well-adapted to the historical timing of flooding. Slater, who wasn’t involved with the study, wrote a commentary on it in Science.

“A lot of how we are impacted by this depends on how we adapt, or even more generally how we manage these risks,” van Aalst said. In his native Netherlands, for example, officials are moving away from dealing with the duel threat of ocean and river flooding by simply building stronger and higher flood defenses to actually setting aside land that can absorb waters during floods.

Looking at floods as a long-term, perennial threat instead of as one-off disasters  “has been a growing theme in many countries in Europe and there has been a growing investment,” van Aalst said.

And having this Europe-wide data in hand will also help climate scientists and hydrologists better predict how floods will change there in the future, Slater said.

10 questions about edtech to ask your kid’s teacher

(Credit: Getty/dolgachov)

Is your school beefing up computer labs, getting wired, buying devices, and investing in teacher tech training? Are you hearing more about “blended learning,” “flipped classrooms,” and “adaptive software”? Learning with technology — or edtech — incorporates everything from Common Core standards and STEM initiatives to coding classes — and it’s finally becoming part of many K–12 classrooms.

When a school adopts edtech, it means that technology — computers, software, media, networks, and the like — are incorporated into teaching, communication, grading, and homework. Some schools add a lot, some a little, but all edtech adopters promise it’s a way for students to gain essential digital skills.

As with anything new, edtech takes patience and flexibility. By asking the right questions of teachers and administrators, you can help your kids get the most out of it, foster their learning, and support your school as it shifts towards edtech. (For definitions of edtech terms, check out our glossary.)

1. Which edtech tools will my child be using in your class?

One reason the word “edtech” can be confusing is it applies to a wide variety of classroom technology solutions, from educational video lessons to online systems that connect students and teachers.

The teacher or the school should be able to provide a list of the resources they’re using. A well-prepared teacher will be knowledgeable about them, able to discuss the learning potential, and possibly even be connected to professional support networks where he or she can find additional information and ideas. Ask for a demonstration of the software or check it out online yourself. Many educational software developers include information for parents on their websites.

2. What is the learning purpose for each of the tools?

Though new computer labs, video studios, and laptop programs look impressive, you want to make sure the tech choices are intentional and integrated into lesson planning purposefully. In general, when schools adopt new edtech tools, they make sure teachers are trained and have some practical experience with the programs. Ask teachers to explain the learning goals of the tools they’re using; they’re often tied to state requirements for the grade and subject. See tech-rich lesson plans created by teachers.

3. Will I be able to access or monitor my child’s work/interactions in these tools?

When your kid is working on a printed worksheet, you can easily track her progress. But when she’s entering information into a software program? Not so much. Edtech requires everyone — teachers, students, and parents — to work a bit differently than they’re used to. Ask your teacher how you can continue to support your kid’s online learning and monitor interactions (if necessary). The software may have a teacher dashboard that can be shared with parents or a parent log-in, or the teacher can give you access to your kid’s account.

4. Are the sites/apps/games approved by the school, or is the teacher free to choose the edtech?

Depending on the school, teachers may have a lot of flexibility in what technology they use in their lessons. So long as the tech they’re choosing serves a learning purpose, it’s great to encourage forward-thinking teachers to innovate in the classroom.

The only issue is that when students aren’t using a school-wide program, they may need to create individual accounts on the software, which invites some privacy concerns. If that’s the case, find out who creates the account, what information is needed, and whether parental consent is required, and dig into the software developer’s privacy policy to make sure you understand what student information (if any) is collected.

5. Does the teacher or school assess the privacy and security of a tool before letting students try it?

Awareness about protecting student privacy is growing. Still, some edtech software developers have complicated student privacy policies that request non-essential information and collect and track data. Find out whether the school has information about its edtech review process and whether student privacy is part of it. The bottom line is that any information should be for educational purposes and companies should not be able to use or monetize student data. Learn more about how to protect your student’s privacy at school.

6. Does the school or class use a digital citizenship curriculum or any lessons to prepare students for using technology in class?

Just the process of using edtech can impart digital citizenship lessons. For example, as students reply to classmates’ comments online, they learn how to give feedback responsibly and respectfully. But schools also can employ comprehensive K–12 digital citizenship lessons that help students think critically about using technology. Point teachers to Common Sense’s collection of digital literacy and classroom curricula, if appropriate. It covers everything from how to cite online resources to how to fight cyberbullying. If you want to work on digital citizenship lessons at home, check out Digital Passport for grades K–5 and Digital Compass for 6–8.

7. How much time during the day or class period will kids be using media or tech?

Edtech holds a lot of promise for engaging students, tailoring lessons, and reaching more kids than a single teacher can. But overuse of educational technology can lead to rote learning. A balanced curriculum will incorporate variety, including moving and learning through hands-on, real-world activity. If kids are spending a large part of their school day with media and tech, consider limiting it at home to maintain overall balance.

8. Will my kid need to have access to these tools at home?

The at-home requirements for technology vary a lot from class to class and school to school. If your school has a 1-to-1 program, your kid will be using that device (and only that device, since the software on it is part of the curriculum) at school and at home. If your school uses a “flipped classroom” model, meaning kids watch online videos or interactive presentations at night and do guided practice (aka homework) during the school day, you’ll probably need a device for that. “Blended learning” classes, which mix technology into the school day, may or may not require the use of a device after school.

Many teachers recognize that not all students have computers or even high-speed Internet access at home. They try to make sure that their online assignments can be completed at school during the day. But that’s not always possible. Get your teacher’s input on the kind of device you might need, the programs and accounts you’ll need, and which apps and other software might be useful. If you need more help and advice, ask an administrator to connect you with the school’s technology specialist.

9. What does it mean if my school is using an “adaptive learning system”?

Adaptive learning systems change lessons on the fly in response to a student’s performance. Typically, each student has an individual log-in and works on lessons that change based on his or her answers — for example, adding extra work in weak areas and moving quickly through areas of mastery. The students’ progress is automatically uploaded to the teacher’s account. Adaptive learning can be used in conjunction with a 1-to-1 device or on the schools’ computer lab. Find explanations for other edtech terms, including “blended learning,” “flipped classrooms,” and “Learning Management System.”

10. Is edtech better than traditional ways of learning?

Most school districts are realistic about the limits and potential of learning with technology. A balanced teaching approach, with instruction that requires kids to use their brains and bodies and that takes into account various learning styles, is crucial for a well-rounded education.

Thinking like an economist can make your next trip abroad cheaper

(Credit: Kamenetskiy Konstantin via Shutterstock)

A record number of tourists and business travelers visited another country in 2016, and this year is already on pace to exceed that tally.

One thing you definitely need when traveling abroad besides a passport is local currency, such as euros in Europe, yen in Japan or rubles in Russia. In the past, travelers would typically withdraw what they need from an ATM in the country they’re visiting or simply use a credit card, letting their bank calculate the cost in their home currency at roughly the market rate. There was usually also a foreign transaction fee.

Increasingly, however, retailers, restaurants and ATMs are offering travelers the option to pay or withdraw money in terms immediately converted into their home currency. Companies offering the service call it “dynamic currency conversion.” For example, an American tourist visiting Paris is able to use her credit card to pay for a fancy meal at a French bistro in U.S. dollars, instead of euros.

This may seem innocuous — or even convenient — but agreeing to use your home currency in a foreign land can significantly inflate the cost of every purchase. Thinking a bit more like an economist can help you avoid this mistake, and save a lot of money.

Surge in tourists

A century ago, international travel was only for the rich. These days, almost anyone from an industrialized country can see a bit of the world on a budget.

While people commonly complain about “high” airfares, the real cost of flying has never been less expensive — it’s half what it was in the early ‘80’s — or safer.

And that’s one reason why a record 1.24 billion people visited another country in 2016. Naturally, financial firms have sought to capitalize on all this wandering by inventing ever more ways to separate travelers from their hard-earned money.

Buying things abroad

Tourists rely on credit, debit or ATM cards to pay for hotels, restaurant meals and local trinkets.

A complex international computer network checks if a card is valid for the transaction and transfers the money. Traditionally, to help pay for this, banks and credit card companies have charged customers a foreign transaction fee.

However, banks are now offering more cards with no foreign transaction fees. At the same time, “free ATMs” are popping up around the world that don’t charge local transaction fees (though your own bank may still do so).

So how do banks cover the costs of these transactions if they are increasingly letting consumers use the system for free? One way is offering the option to pay in a user’s home currency. Even some bankers warn against consumers doing this because the exchange rate used is much worse than the one your bank would offer.

For example, say you’re a Spaniard visiting New York City and shopping for some clothes at a department store. After scouring the store for the right sweater for your mother, you go to the cashier to pay the US$50 bill (tax included). After you swipe your Spanish credit card (which boasts no foreign transaction fee), the cashier asks if you’d like to pay in euros instead of dollars.

If you stick with dollars, your bank would convert the price into euros at about the market rate, €43 at the moment. If you choose to pay in euros, however, the currency conversion includes a fee for the privilege, which may be as much as 10 percentage points. So you might end up paying about €47 instead.

The same thing happens with ATMs. I was recently in London’s Heathrow Airport and needed some British pounds. In the old days, an ATM would simply offer a few denomination options, issue me money and my bank at home would eventually calculate the cost in U.S. dollars. Instead, the airport ATM asked me if I wanted to lock in the exchange rate and know exactly how many dollars would be debited from my bank account.

I wanted £100 and tried two different ATMs. The currency rate offered in dollars ranged from almost 4 percent to 10 percent more than what my bank charged (or about $134 to $142). I rejected both offers, did the transaction in the local currency and ended up with a total charge of just $129 from my bank.

I have observed numerous international travelers as they made this choice, such as an Italian family arguing about it at the next ATM, and most chose the dynamic conversion into their own currencies.

So why do travelers pay more by accepting a worse exchange rate when they could simply say no?

Three functions of money

Economists consider any item as money if it performs three different functions: unit of account, store of value and medium of exchange. Two out of three explain why so many international travelers act the way they do.

The first function of money is a unit of account, which is how people post and keep track of prices. This is why banks and credit card companies get people to agree to pay in the currency where they live, instead of using local money.

When people travel to a country with a different currency, they often mentally keep track of their spending using their home currency, converting all prices in their heads as they shop and eat. If an ATM or credit card terminal asks if you want to pay for something in the currency you use as your unit of account, your brain says yes.

Money also acts as a store of value. Items used as money provide the ability to make purchases now and also in the future. At the end of a trip, travelers not planning on returning to a country tend to spend leftover money in airports buying things they don’t really want. They don’t want to hold onto foreign bills since they are not a store of value. For the same reason, they prefer to be charged in their home currency when getting money from an ATM.

Money is also a medium of exchange, which is anything readily acceptable as payment to buy or sell goods and services. This is why people have to convert money when they travel abroad. In New York City, a dollar bill is a medium of exchange for food, drink or a ride on the subway. However, those dollars are not a medium of exchange in, say, China, where waving a wad of greenbacks would mostly get you stares. And that’s why travelers must convert money from one currency to another.

How to save money abroad

When faced with an ATM or credit card machine that asks if you want to convert to your home currency, I recommend you decline, especially if you went to the pain and effort to ensure you have a card or bank with no extra foreign exchange fees. Even if you don’t have one, and your debt card charges a fee, in most cases it still makes sense to use the local currency.

An exception to this rule, of course, is if your bank or credit card charges a very high fixed foreign exchange fee and you need only a little bit of money. If this is your case, then saying yes might save you money even if you get a poor exchange rate.

The main thing is: Think it through! Resist your natural inclination to say yes just because it makes you feel comfortable. Don’t be fooled when asked if you want to complete a transaction using your home currency. Using the local currency can save you money, making your next trip abroad less costly.



Jay L. Zagorsky, Economist and Research Scientist, The Ohio State University

The Pacific Northwest’s fiery week warns of hotter times to come

A helicopter drops water on the fire as crews battle the Sunshine Fire in the Sunshine canyon area of Boulder, Colo. on Sunday, March 19, 2017. (Jeremy Papasso/Daily Camera via AP) (Credit: AP)

It’s feeling a little apocalypse-y in the Pacific Northwest this week.

With excessive heat warnings and temperatures reaching the triple digits from northern California through Washington state (places where air conditioning is far from a given), it’s a bit hard to fathom that this week should have been even hotter.

All-time records could have been set up and down the coast, if it hadn’t been for the thick smoke streaming down from more than 100 massive forest fires in British Columbia, about 500 miles north.

You heard that right — the smoke in places like Portland, Seattle, and Vancouverwas so thick it changed the weather. At Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, smoke even kept flights from taking off. (From the air, you couldn’t even see the ground.) In Seattle on Thursday, the air quality was worse than in Beijing.

Welcome to climate change, 2017 edition.

This interplay between fire and hot weather has inspired a bleak and eerie feeling for people in this part of the country. As climate scientist Sarah Myhre writes for Seattle’s alternative newspaper, the visceral experience of climate change in the future might feel a lot like it does this week in the Emerald City.

Hot temperatures increase evaporation rates and dry out the soil, resulting in even hotter temperatures. Drier weather makes wildfire more likely, and wildfires in a hot and dry environment can spark pyrocumulus clouds — freak thunderstorms borne literally of the heat of the fires themselves, whose lightning can spark new fires. (This actually happened in northern California on Wednesday.)

It’s no wonder it feels like a sneak peak at the end of the world.

It’s normally fairly dry this time of year from Sacramento to Juneau, but the last six weeks have been exceptional. This summer’s wildfires in British Columbia are the worst in more than half a century. If it doesn’t rain this weekend — and it’s not forecast to — Seattle will set a new a new all-time record for consecutive days without measurable rainfall.

In a normal year, Seattle reaches 90 degrees only three times. In this week’s heatwave alone, Seattle may reach that mark seven days in a row. In parts of southern Oregon, temps rose above 110 degrees this week even despite the smoke. And the latest forecast shows that the smoke might stick around for at least another week.

Overnight lows, in particular, were record warm this week — a classic signal of global warming. The changing atmosphere is effectively becoming a thicker blanket, preventing heat from escaping into space at night, making overnight temperatures warm even faster than daytime highs. That’s a worrying trend for public health.

At 1 a.m. on Thursday morning in Seattle, the temperature was still 77 degrees, equivalent to the average high for this time of the year. Without the smoke, the high on Thursday would likely have breached 100 for just the fourth time since weather records began in Seattle, back in 1894.

As the New York Times points out, only about one-third of Seattle’s homes have air conditioning. The inability to cool down is a public health hazard in extended heatwaves like this; studies of hyperthermia consistently show that it’s the lack of overnight recovery time that can become deadly.

A new study out this week projected that, should global carbon emissions continue unchecked, more than 500 million people in South Asia alone could be subjected to heatwaves so intense by the end of this century that they could kill even healthy people that happened to venture outdoors.

That’s exactly what scientists mean when they say climate change could render parts of our planet uninhabitable. This week’s weather, as mild as it is in comparison, is yet another warning sign.

From helping farmers to saving wildlife, here are 7 ways drones are being used for good

(Credit: AP/Alex Brandon)

When you hear the word drone, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Probably the fact that they are used by the U.S. military for missile strikes. And that association is giving drone technology a serious PR problem.

Drones were first employed as a tool of war, during the siege of Venice in 1849, when Austrians launched the first air raid in history, using unmanned, bomb-carrying balloons over the Italian city. In 1935, Great Britain launched the first successful unmanned, remote-controlled aircraft. Named the Queen Bee, it appears to have been the inspiration for calling these craft “drones.” (Technically, they are known as unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs.) Today, drone strikes are a regular tool of the U.S. military in overseas missions.

The entertainment industry has also often highlighted the unwelcome and somewhat sinister elements of drones in storylines, from alien invaders using drones to monitor occupied human cities in the TV series “Colony” to the weaponized drones terrorizing the streets of Los Angeles in the film “Furious 7.”

When drones first entered the commercial market, they were pricey, snatched up by rich hobbyists, many of whom seemed content to simply annoy their neighbors with privacy invading flyovers. But the drone is slowly shedding its negative image, thanks to scientists, researchers and entrepreneurs finding new ways to put this developing technology to work for non-lethal—and much less annoying—reasons.

Here are six ways drones can help protect — and even save — the environment.

1. Reducing carbon emissions and air pollution.

The famous “last mile” logistical problem — the final leg of a supply chain that gets the product to the consumer — has preoccupied Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, who wanted to get packages to his customers economically and without adding on a shipping charge. “One memorable fever dream involved storing products in the homes and apartments of local bike messengers in major cities,” writes Bloomberg’s Brad Stone.

Bezos now has his solution: parcel delivery drones. These automated delivery drones would not only help Amazon’s packages arrive on time and in a cost-effective manner, they could have a powerful environmental benefit by reducing the carbon emissions associated with trucks.

A new study by researchers at the University of Washington found that drones have less of a carbon impact than trucks for delivering packages in certain circumstances, particularly if the distance isn’t too far, the route has few stops and the packages are small and light.

“Flight is so much more energy-intensive — getting yourself airborne takes a huge amount of effort. So I initially thought there was no way drones could compete with trucks on carbon dioxide emissions,” said senior author Anne Goodchild, a UW associate professor of civil and environmental engineering. “In the end, I was amazed at how energy-efficient drones are in some contexts. Trucks compete better on heavier loads, but for really light packages, drones are awesome.”

In addition to replacing some truck deliveries, drones could deliver small packages you might otherwise have to use your car to get, like groceries or pizza. Eventually, the impact of drones will be felt across several areas of transportation, resulting not only in lower carbon emissions, but in improved air quality.

Outside the U.S., drones have been successful delivering food, mail and medicine. It might take a little while for the U.S. to get there. While the Federal Aviation Administration recently established the legal space for drone experimentation, official authorization for commercial operations is still far off.

2. Identifying illegal logging operations.

Over the past decade, illegal logging has destroyed nearly 3,000 square miles of the Brazilian Amazon every year. In the Peruvian Amazon, the figure is closer to tens of thousands of square miles.

For local authorities and conservationists, preventing such operations — many of which are part of organized crime rings — is a difficult task, as the logging often occurs in remote parts of rugged terrain.

But drones are helping level the playing field. The Amazon Basin Conservation Association’s Los Amigos conservancy concession, for example, uses two small drones to monitor the Los Amigos conservation land trust located in Peru’s Madre de Dios region. With only five rangers to patrol 145,000 hectares (550 square miles) in a dense jungle with no paved roads, defending the region is made much easier with the deployment of a pair of camera drones, allowing the team to respond quickly to reports of deforestation.

“We can go straight to the point, not just walking everywhere trying to find it in the forest,” said Carlos Castaneda, the trust’s coordinator. They’ve already found evidence of both illegal logging and mining.

3. Measuring wildlife populations and preventing poaching.

Wild elephants are particularly sensitive to encounters with humans. Sometimes elephants migrate out of protected parks in search of food and wind up on private farmland. In efforts to preserve their livelihood, farmers often retaliate with aggressive measures, hurling firecrackers at elephants, poisoning them, or merely taking a blind eye to the poachers who hunt the animals for their ivory.

Rangers have been successfully using drones to herd elephants away from farmlands and communities. Like humans, elephants don’t like the noise drones create and so are easily herded by them. The buzzing sound is put to good use to keep elephants in the parks, away from harm and safe from poachers.

“The greater interaction distance the UAVs provide lends a much-needed safety buffer for our rangers, the farmers and the elephants,” said Angela Mwakatobe, head of research management at the Tanzanian Wildlife Research Institute and a co-author of a paper about the use of drones to protect elephants in Tanzania. “Here is a useful piece of technology we didn’t have in our tool kit one year ago.”

In addition to being anti-poaching tools, drones have been successfully used to measure wildlife populations around the globe, from rhino populations in India to black bears in Minnesota.

4. Measuring air, water and marine health.

In addition to being able to keep some vehicles off the road, which reduces air pollution, drones can be used effectively to measure air quality, including measuring and analyzing ozone levels, the radiation following nuclear accidents and the ash cloud after volcanic eruptions.

And not all drones are airborne. Oceanographers, climatologists and marine biologists are using underwater drones to measure sea levels, marine populations, ocean acidification, coastal erosion and assess the health of marine mammals.

Currently, NOAA scientists are using unmanned ocean vehicles called Saildrones to analyze places such as the Arctic and the tropical Pacific that are difficult to access. These water-based drones will help them understand how oceanic changes impact the weather, climate, fisheries and marine mammals.

5. Saving water and monitoring crops.

Cannon Michael is a farmer who grows tomatoes, melons, carrots, onions, cotton and almonds at Bowles Farming Co. near Los Banos, 120 miles southeast of San Francisco. He’s keenly aware of how climate change has affected water supplies. Like some other drought-stricken farmers, Michael has turned to drones to detect water irrigation leaks across his fields.  “I’ve always been a big fan of technology,” he said. “I think it’s really the only way we’re going to stay in business.”

One study suggested California wine production could plummet as much as 70 percent by the middle of the century due to rising temperatures associated with climate change. Some winemakers, like Jackson Family Wines in Sonoma County, are relying on drone technology to help. The Jacksons are monitoring their vineyard with drones armed with sensors that evaluate the colors of the plants to detect moisture. The wrong color can mean leaks in the irrigation or that the crops are missing key nutrients.

Katie Jackson, the vice president of sustainability and external affairs, calls it “data-driven farming.”

6. Reducing chemical run-off.

Because they are sprayed across entire agricultural fields, more than 98 percent of sprayed insecticides and 95 percent of herbicides impact something other than their target species. Runoff can carry these toxic chemicals far beyond the fields, to aquatic environments, animal grazing areas and other areas, where they can sicken or kill a host of other species.

Drones outfitted with multispectral cameras can help limit runoff by measuring the health of crops through photographs that reveal things the human eye does not.

7. Delivering clean energy.

Since strong winds blow more reliably the higher you go, high-altitude drones known as wind drones or energy kites could become a dependable source of wind power.

The Economist reports that Makani, a startup acquired by Google in 2013, “reckons a single energy kite can generate 50 percent more electricity than a single wind turbine while using only 10 percent of the materials.”

Power tool

As with all forms of technology, it’s not all butterflies and unicorns. We don’t appreciate the drones that spy on us or simply invade our space. Aside from causing these obvious downsides for the general public, drones can also be disruptive to other species.

Wildlife may experience increased stress when they see a camera drone in the sky. A 2015 study on black bears in the U.S. showed that the animals experienced increased heart rates when drones flew over. Drones can cause herds of animals to scatter, separating mothers from babies. And birds have been known to injure themselves in midair collisions with drones. Hopefully the technology and its implementation will evolve to reduce these negatives.

In the meantime, drones are here to stay — hopefully to do more good than bad. As prices go down and there are more inexpensive drones to choose from, environmentalists, conservationists, scientists and entrepreneurs will surely devise many more ways that drones can help the environment.

Drones may have gotten a bad rap, but they aren’t essentially bad. As British philosopher and politician Jeffrey Sacks observed, “Technology gives us power, but it does not and cannot tell us how to use that power.” By being put into service to help farmers and scientists in myriad ways, the power of drone technology is becoming an important tool for doing good.