From the way in which my professor presented the question, your could tell that he intended that he wanted a yes, it will have major impact on foreign policy, or that no, global warming will have little effect on foreign policy since global warming is something that is made up, and we should not worry about it at all. Well, me being me, I do not fit into ether one of those molds. So, I do not know what category I would fit into, I am not really wanting to say that I have a Realist point of view for this never-ending debate.

To that end, I want to present a new way of thinking that is not a realist or a liberal view. What I would like to call this is, the logical or the logisticianal point of view. Which I am saying is you look at the hard facts and go from there. This is different from a realist view, since the realist would say we do whatever is in the best interest for the nation or nation-state. The liberal view says we need to come together with others, being countries or non-governmental organizations, to collaborate to get anything of value accomplished. That being said, this is my reply to the question at hand:

How and even if global warming will be addressed in future foreign policy all depends on who is in power. If the President becomes a literal figure-head to the United States, the leading view in Congress will become the policy. If Congress becomes a sitting duck, then that power is then transferred to lobbyists, whomever voice is the loudest. So, saying what will the policy be, whether it is in the foreign or domestic realm, in the next 5, 10 or even 50 years will be difficult to predict. Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” made it seem that global warming/environmental issues would be at the forefront of his presidency, and thinks that an adopting of a similar policy from George Bush, was one of the number of things that ended up costing him to win the election. We all know what policies Bush has put into place since he has got into office.

Since my professor said he didn’t want a five page essay, I left out the fact that we cannot really ding President Bush on not doing anything regarding global warming because of the events of September 11th. Now, if those events never happened, it would be a different story. Political candidates often pick up some portion of his or her top opponent to gain the interests of a wider population. The follow-through of such policies are under a lot of criticism because of the reasons you can probably guess. I am not saying the President’s policies are flawless.

Technorati Tags: Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth, Bush, foreign policy, George Bush, global warming, Gore, lobbyist, President Bush, policy, politics

The end of the Cold War brought about an unipolarized* globe or a global United States hegemony. Do we live in a unipolar world? Is there a shift towards a multi-polar world going on today?

Most of the class agreed that the world is unipolar for the most part, but is slipping. This is where the class went against me. They said that China would easily overtake the United States in the coming years. I think that the European Union could have a strong impact in the world. I was shot down pretty quickly. My view on their opinion is that they were thinking far too short sided. Yeah, I think that the European Union does not have much for power behind them, except for a few nations right now. But it is fairly new, the idea of the European continent working together started back in 1957 with the European Economic Community. The EEC had as its aim the eventual economic union of its member nations, ultimately leading to political union. It worked for the free movement of labor and capital, the abolition of trusts and cartels, and the development of joint and reciprocal policies on labor, social welfare, agriculture, transport, and foreign trade.

Then in 1992, the idea of the European Union was renewed, by the Maastrict Treaty. It brought on negotiations on a monetary union as well as a political union. As of today, there are 27 members, with three others waiting on being admitted. I won’t even guesstimate when their entry would happen. However, if these three countries are admitted to the EU, the total number is 30 nations. Although a lot of the members do not have a booming economy now, we don’t know how this will be in the future. In a post I wrote a post, Future Plans, which was partly a review of Peter G. Peterson’s book, Running on Empty, which talks about the current deficit the United States is currently facing. I don’t remember the details, but according to Peterson, we will run ourselves into the ground for Social Security around 2030.

Given that the system is only about 15 years old, so it is fairly new. Already it has established a common currency in 13 countries. One thing that the European Union does not have a whole lot of natural resources, but Poland has just began drilling for oil, so that area is really unknown at this time. Also things like alternative energy are also possible. So, in 20, 30, 40 years, who really knows the dependence on oil.

For example, in the 1990s there were electric cars on the streets of mainly California. These cars ran so smoothly, the auto manufacturers recalled them because the cars would cost the companies more money because the consumer wouldn’t need to have so much maintenance done on it. Cars are one of, or is the top, reason we consume so much oil in the United States. They were pulled off the market because researchers found out that there is approximately a trillion barrels of oil left in the earth, which results to $100 trillion dollars of business, or money in auto manufactures pockets. Do you see why it was stopped?

Anyway, back to my main topic, if the European Union made decisions like that now, who knows how much money could be saved. My main argument was that we honestly don’t know what the future will bring, but in the next 5 or 10 years, the United States will be at the top.

Asides: the information about the electric car was taken from the movie, Who Killed the Electric Car, here is the IMDB entry, and the Wikipedia article.

Technorati Tags: debate, economy, electric car, EU, European Union, oil, United States, world economy

We were there until almost 8:30, and she had to get back home. I was absolutely beat, I studied practically 9 hours straight on almost no food. I had a protein bar when I got up, I took a break around 3 to get a smoothie, and on my trek there, a group was giving away FREE food. I was like sweeeeeeeet, unfortunately it was only half a sandwich and a granola bar, but free. I ate the sandwich on the way into the place to get my smoothie. On my way back, I gave them a ‘can I have another’ look, but they didn’t bite.

I arrive back at my dorm, around 9, and sit down to dinner at 9:30. Absolutely drained, I decided to take a cat nap and then study some more. Well, when I got up, I was like oh crap, I don’t know what to go over, what to memorize, blah, blah, blah. After almost 3 hours of that, I said to heck with it, I am off to bed for good. My exam was at 8:30, I had my mom give me a call around 7-7:30. I managed to get up at 6 to get some last minute studying in, but I didn’t make much progress than I did when I quit 4 hours ago. Yes, I took a final on 4 hours of sleep.

I walk into my final, gave it an once over, and was like I was stressing over this and this, but it’s not on here. I only said damn I should have gave that term more than a quick read while studying two times. Somehow I managed to finish the test with just about a half hour to spare. The person I studied with finished before that even. After a quick bite to eat I manned our booth at the tech fair. I primarily answered questions about accessible technology, and did on-the-fly accessible web design evaluations.

As for the rest of the week, it was pretty mellow.

Technorati Tags: finals, exam, exams, study, UW, web design, accessibility

Althoigh I could talk about this book some more, it wasn’t the purpose for the post. The purpose for this post is to talk about what I feel while I read this book.

I feel as though I can do something about the current state of affairs. Everybody that knows me knows about either my passion for computers or my vast knowledge of them. While reading this book, I feel as though all that stuff is gone, and I want to pursue things covered in this book. Does this mean I am now inspiring to be the president or a representative? No. I just want to help people. Back in the day, I felt that the only way to do that was through improving computers, or helping people with technical support. Running on Empty, just adds to the pile that has been growing over the past several years, which is pursuing something pertaining to the Federal Government.

Like I said earlier, I am not telling people to listen for a guy with the last name Benson to be running for Congress or the presidenticy, rather I am wanting to help open eyes. I am talking about starting off from a normal level and working myself up the ladder as some kind of an advisor or an analyst. Most likely either general analysis, or something relating to technology.

The concern I have about this is in being a general analysis you will have to cover a wide variety of things. What I think myself is the followimg:

1. Hey I am a computer/engineering guy majoring in liberal arts, a full specturm change, and doing well at it. Plus I learned about things that were 100% new to me. Clearly after allowing myself exposure to something, I will pick it up.
2. Second, as a general analyst, you aren’t looking to make sure every t is crossed or i’s are dotted, but rather the big picture is there. Basically, having the ability to point out and to say, “Hey, this is total crap, fix it.”

Now in regard to the second statement above, I am not saying crossing t’s or dotting i’s are not imporant, I am saying when going through something those first, second, or third times making sure that the big picture is clear, and also is a good one. The readings, meetings, or whatever, after those first initial times are there to making sure that every t is crossed or i’s are dotted. In reality, this is most likely a hierarchy of sorts, so the top people make sure that the big picture is there, and further down people make sure the correct and logical steps are there.

I hope somebody shares their two cents on this…

You see, this year the Disabled Student Services began having notes sent to this special e-mail account. So what happens is the note taker sends an e-mail with the notes attached in some fashion, and I am supposed to do is log on via the web interface and grab the e-mails that have my course number in the subject. Our e-mail is customizable on certain levels. For example, by default the subject line is highlighted in yellow. So what Disabled Student Services did was highlight the from address in black, and of course kept the text black also. So when an e-mail is opened, there is just a black bar there covering the from line. It takes a rocket scientist figure out to just highlight it, and bingo.

On top of that, I use another program to check University of Washington e-mails, and although you can make it do fancy stuff like that, it doesn’t carry over from the web version. So, I logged in, and there was the from address clear as day. Of course, I told my professor in the same order that I just did. This lead to him asking about my knowledge of computers. I told him they are my primary interest, and have a lot of knowledge about them.

The class that I am taking with him is a simulation of the United States Congress within the course about Congress. A fair majority of the simulation takes place online, at this site my professor came up with. At first I thought it was pretty sweet, that he’s a professor of political science, yet he put together this site, which simulates Congress. Well, he isn’t the person who actually put the site together, rather he’s the one that came up with the concept. While talking to him, he thought that it would be cool if I helped improve the site, mainly since I know about accessibility, and he figured that it would be best if the site was as accessible as possible, just incase somebody down the road had to use soume assistive technology.

So, a few days before I was going to register, I went in and talked to my professor to see if me doing an independent study under him, that would be making improvements to the website. Well, the conversation drifted from working on that project to other projects that he is working on. The project that seemed most benefiticial to both of us is one of his other projects.

This project takes bills that were in Congress from 1945 to nearly current, I forget the exact ending date, and puts them in electronic format. See the bills during this period are very hard to come by, some only exsisting in six places in the nation. Somebody may think why are 60 year old bills so important?

While I cannot exactly ramble of bills from the 1940’s or 1950’s off the top of my head, I can name a number from both the 1960’s and 1970’s that still have effect today. One of the obvious is the Civil Rights Act in 1965. But others include the Clean Air Act, and various vechicle safety bills.

At the University of Washington, we are fortunate enough to have a considerable amount of these in one of our libraries on campus, but they are in microfiece (spelling) format. Microfiece is like present day pdf files in the way they are displayed, but are stored on something that looks short of an 8-track. So it is a bit hard to view unless you are on campus. Well a few days before we talked, my professor he had submitted some paperwork on the project, and wished we had talked sooner, because I enlightened him on a few things that would help make his argument for this stronger. I am going to check up on this this upcoming week.