Venice sinking and me
So I had NOVA on the TiVo tonight and thought I'd watch it as I took care of some stuff for work and to prepare for my trip to Minnesota for Thanksgiving.
Interesting program on Venice sinking and/or the ocean rising and how the city is dealing with it.
I was intrigued by some of the many viewpoints presented:
1) Sometime following the Italian Renassaince the people stopped tearing down and building on top of previous structures. Had they continued that they would prevented the problem (or at least this specific problem) becuase they would be rising with the water and or sinking.
2) There's an environmental issue because Venice has no municipal sewer system(?)!
3) A multi-billion dollar project to put in a swinging gate like structure is only a temporary measure.
I got a call today from Mother Jones Journal (an "independent" magazine I really enjoy. Grab one next time your stuck in the airport) asking for $10 a month to subsidize their operations so that they don't have to take advertising dollars from 'corporate america'.
So during this phone call i'm hearing about how Mother Jones provides a voice to real issues that conventional issues can't, or doesn't want to address. The idea being that these other news outlets are beholden to corporate interests. Specifically there is a rallying around social issues, which is a huge area of focuse for the magazine. I was hearing about womenÕs reproductive rights, Supreme Court and circuit court appointments, and conservative politics being generally bad. Now I'm probably more moderate that people percieve me as but I don't disagree with many of the concerns people are having regarding the republican agenda for our country.
So while I'm watching the show on NOVA i'm thinking that there's an interesting analogy between the worst characteristics of a purely convserative political agenda.
a) Preservation of established power structures is critical (tax breaks for the wealthy, money used to influence government is good as while corrupt at lest it's econmoically based etc.)
b) We don't need any sort of cogent long-term health agenda, educational reform or environmental/energy policy that is sustainable unless it can survive natural market forces. To me this is like not having a municipal sewer system.
c) Star Wars missile defense. a very expensive solution that assumes a missile based attack is likely enough that it's worth spending all that money in defense. The parallels between the missile defense program and the 'gates' to block the Adriatic tide's progress into the lagoon.
All in all I found the program very damn interesting. I've noticed that many of my web log entries have been about politics and this Venice is Sinking problem might be an apt metaphor within which to present my reactions to the political news of the day.
It'd certainly be fun to look at how political forces affect huge inevitable problems in a country that's so much different than the USA. Maybe I could title this web log category The Sinking City of Venice directly. Or I could get cute and call it The Sinking City of Washington DC? No, too many people there are doing good work and fighting the good fight a trip to the thesaurus may be in order. We'll see if this goes anywhere.
