Disclaimer: This is not a post about my five year plan. I don't have one. Not my style. It is, however, a post about longer-term thinking — in part brought on by the election, the results of Hurricane sandy, and other things. Longer term for all of us here on Spaceship Earth, and for myself personally. Here goes.

Constructing the infrastructure necessary to manage Earth as a holistic system — meaning long-term habitable for close to ten billion of our fellows — is the largest and most worthwhile public works project imaginable. In addition to being imperative to the survival and prosperity of future generations, it is a heck of a good investment.

The first phase of this process is already underway: we are creating global-scale mechanisms for communication and coordination which will allow us to keep track of the world, and engage in an inclusive dialogue to figure out what to do next. These functions will be vital to realize and manage future phases of the project. That's what I see myself as working on.

There are more nuts and bolts ways to describe it, but broadly speaking I'm working to help humanity move towards a different system of exchanging information, one with significantly lower costs, less "friction", and the ability to include everyone (at least theoretically) as a creator/producer. Basically, making the internet work really well. Historically, shifts that help with the wider creation and sharing of information have been closely correlated with widespread change in other aspects of social organization, generally known as "progress". That's why I'm so into it.

I don't want to offend anyone with this post, but I might. C'est la vie.

So, one of my newest and favorite blogging pleasures is The Brody File from the Christian Broadcasting Network (aka parent org of The 700 Club). Mr. Brody is a pretty good writer, and he's covering politics -- mostly the GOP presidential nomination process -- from an angle distinctly different from my own.

I find this kind of perspective valuable. I have been generally digging on The Right's Field, which is on a similar beat, but that's written by people who are on my side and in some cases my friends, so it just doesn't have the savory flavor and nuance of getting into the head of the Other.

Anyway, reading the Brody File seems like a good way to get in touch with mentalities that I don't often encounter socially, which is worthy even (especially) when I may disagree with said mentality. Keeps things nimble and limber. I wish there were a similar blog -- meaning readable and relatively non-propagandistic -- that was on the "Bomb Iran" tip that most GOP candidates (save Ron Paul) seem to be rolling on. That would be tight.

Back to the point, in the first Republican debate, three of the ten candidates stated that they did not in fact believe in evolution. The rest -- especially the great tan hope Mitt Romney -- have been doing the politician potty-walk ever since, and Brody has been following it, for obvious reasons.

In this post he publishes some letters from readers presenting arguments for the creationist viewpoint:

This is a smart move; electable is the word that comes to mind.

She should be getting it out on YouTube.

With Democrats set to take over the congress in 2007, there's obviously a lot of interest and wonder in the prospect of impeaching President Bush. I'm not a fan of this idea.

There are several reasons why I don't think it's especially great goal to pursue which I'll list, but I want to point out that the idea that impeachment is "off the table" is clearly bunk. It's in the constitution so it's on the table, the question is whether or not this is something that should be pursued specifically. I think not.

Why? Well here's a list of my reasons:

The internet is good for politics, a welcome addition to aging machine organizations, broadcast campaigning, a moribund press corps and the "infotainment" of 24-hour cable news. Even though many lament the "coarsening of the discourse" and the sharpness and vitrol you can find in the online "fever swamp", it's not as if this is actually new. Talk radio is famous for this, and countless other subcultural media -- mostly on the right, but some on the anarchist or communist fringe -- have been at it for years. It's just out in the open now, which, if you want to address the problems of divisive politics, is a necessary first step.

The internet is good chiefly for two reasons:

1. Lower Barriers to Entry and Decentralized Authority: basically anyone who meets a minimal (and increasingly ubiquitous) set of requirements can take part. This widens the circle of participation, prevents or at least counteracts stale and unhelpful assumptions (aka "conventional wisdom"), and creates more competition to deliver good results. Win win win.

   Also, the open playing field means that authority -- and by that I mean both who's "an authority" on something as well as who's the boss -- becomes decentralized and harder to work for. You're an authority because you put out something that builds a community of consensus, and in an open system it's hard to do that without transparency and hard to build a consensus around lies if you can't be opaque. Again, people will and are using this for evil as well as good, but the good is far more prevalent, and net/net it's a much better ecosystem for civilization than the Hurst empire.

I was against the war as far back as Fall of 2002, when it was clear that the Bush administration wanted it. I always thought it was a foolish exercise in hubris and greed. But my and millions of others protests were dismissed as "a focus group," and it went down anyway. And so here we are.

We've got to end the occupation. It's not working. It's not going to work. In fact, it's making the situation worse.

Ending the occupation doesn't mean trying to dodge any national responsibility. It doesn't mean isolationism. It doesn't mean "cut and run." It means making the only moral choice we've got left, and taking to first step towards bringing down the curtain on this misbegotten American Empire.

We have two options: we can end the occupation in a process we have some control over and attempt to foster a more effective (read: international) means for helping the New Iraq find a balance, or we can wait until we can simply no longer afford to maintain the empire, let the permanent bases we're building be overrun, lose many more lives, kill many more people, and have nothing to show for it but more blood in the sand, more debts and more enemies.

Go vote next week. It won't solve everything, but it will help.