Bugs is bugs

Everyone out there getting ready for the Miller Ride for the Arts, notice how dense the gnats are getting? Normally, I see a lot more warblers in the spring migration, but it's been an incredibly thin year for that, which equates to much larger numbers of gnats, mosquitoes and biting flies. Sadly, the Cooper's Hawk population has recovered and last year they were even fighting for nesting sites (ESPN?). Compound this increase in birdivores with all the condo construction which diminishes warbler stopping places and you have insect problems, not only here, but in the Wisconsin North woods where songbirds protect the forests from insect predation. Warblers, when they stop here, need enough cover to keep them from seeing any activity. They freeze when they see activity and stop eating, only, they are very hungry after flying thousands of miles, so they don't hang around if they can't eat in peace. Hence, perpetual development has steadily reduced the actual numbers of places where migrating songbirds can congregate, making it that much easier for the hawks to feed on them. This makes it much harder for us humans to avoid being annoyed by disease bearing insects.

While the Condo development was keeping south of North Avenue, where the river has been channeled since the 1800s, there was no problem with them building human habitation and box stores. Now, however they are crossing the line and with UWM as the con bait, are starting to build in prime migratory bird corridor habitat. The deal seems innocuous enough, but it is fraught with treachery and error. First they are promising not to build a through road, but a through road is required by law, so once they build the condos and dorms, they will have to bulldoze more riparian forest and activity screen to put in their road that the aldermen will gladly lay down for. It at least shuts the naive neithbors, or the idiot media (whichever) up for awhile.

Second, the issue of the riparian migratory corridor is being pooh poohed in the zoning committee meetings. All the city folk who want to see some part of nature in their world are supposed to move out to the country. Gladly, if it would still remain countryside, but if the whole city moved to the country, then the country would become the city, gosh how hard that is to figure out. Also, would our jobs and our tax paying businesses and residences move with us? Connecting with nature is an important part of life. Without being able to connect to the natural basis of life, one can never really learn to formulate principled arguments, since they do not have a strong understanding or grasp of the principles upon which life - modern or otherwise is based. I bet I know where to find at least one good example of that.

If we are expected to be human in a completely utilitarian world, I suggest reading "On Liberty" by John and Harriet Stuart Mill. Mr Mill was the most outstanding student of Jeremy Bentham, who in turn was the primary philosopher behind Utilitarianism. Mill realized that to be human meant that everything in our world could not be worked out in entirety. One could never be happy if all the problems were solved because we are a problem solving creature. To solve a problem requires that we have a strong grasp of principles, or we otherwise get frustrated alot. Experience with the oldest system in the world (400 million years and counting) gives individuals the soundest principles that can be obtained. Hence nature in a natural state, freely available for experiencing is critical for maintaining an intelligent, happy and less frustrated population, especially in a city, where it is more heavily used than anywhere else. Does it occur to anyone in government that the reason the city keeps losing people to the suburbs and why businesses keep moving to Waukesha is that there is in fact more nature out there? Isn't the big problem that the city is losing business? So how does destroying and neglecting more of our natural wealth serve?

Notice, that all the fancy condo names such as Fox Run or Oak Grove or even River View should be preceeded with the words "Used To Be". Living on a river where the adjacent bird habitat has been compromised is like living on a sewer with the added advantage of having a lot of insect pests. The value of a river is a lot more that a channel of water. But I wouldn't expect an unprincipled individual to understand that.

Peace

Soop

With any luck, the County executive and the right wing tyrant faction will be off Supervisor Holloway's case for awhile. At least the ethics board comes away with a little bit of respect intact.

Hopefully, Supervisor Holloway will be able to continue his political career and provide benefit to the thousands of urban residents he represents. We all know that politicians too long in office tend to corrupt, but maybe a good stiff battle every now and again keeps an individual honest - though in this case there was a bias that suggested correction where it was never really due. However, what goes around comes around, so perhaps its time to take a hard look at our political system and the various factions with their diverse political mechanics working to alter and destabilize our republican form of government, with its structural balances and checks on power. Especially those factions masquerading as arbitrary checks on government corruption.

In a republic, technically, there is no such thing as a minority. Class power balanced one against another keeps only reason in common. A minority opinion can be nothing other than the absence of reason. However, if we throw in probability and weighted issues, there still remains an underlying mechanism. In the real world there is no such thing as random or chance, all there is is our own inability to consider all the significant factors that influence a result. What this suggests is that where reason fails, there still remains the weighting of success against the weighting of failure. The question that should be asked more often is: if a program fails, can we afford to recover and return to the previous state of affairs?

In many situations we cannot return without a very high cost, which may not be less that the suffering due to failure. This is a fundamental quality of many systems and is the basis of 'catastrophy theory'. The best system we can, as human beings, devise, is one where all interests are present and empowered. Where a substantial part of the system is under represented or worse, ignored, the probability of failure increases dramatically, which in all likelihood will cost more in the end, than a more modest success that incorporates all the factors will cost overall.

To persecute or attempt to expunge those individuals who represent the city is, perhaps, the most egregious mistake County government and the suburban factions could make. In any city, there is a much higher population density, which leads to a high percentage of 'free riders', which are individuals who take advantage of civil society. This is simply a population based phenomenon, which gives individuals the feeling of security in anonymity. Since this is more prevalent in the city, there is a cultural thread that adapts to it. Individuals who are exposed to this on a daily basis tend to become desensitized toward it and just accept it as matter of fact. The result is that it is much less often corrected even when it is a simple mistake, so individuals tend to be less careful by habit than they otherwise could be. Let it be clear, that this is not a character flaw, but a social adaptation to an urban lifestyle. It can be corrected, as any habit can, but it takes a conscious effort, and what happens to the individual's inclusive fitness for urban life as a consequence?

Bigotry cannot be tolerated anywhere in the United States, so barring that, there is no reason why Urban issues need to be falsely represented, and no reason for surburban factions to persecute urban representatives in government. If there is a problem with an individual in office in the eyes of those whom they represent, the issue
should be addressed by them alone, at least barring an actual crime. For pundits hailing from rural outposts to cast aspersions upon urban representation is pure ignorance - in a deep sense.

For my part I certainly hope that Supervisor Holloway stays in office for a good while longer and that the faction hammer doesn't simply shift to pounding on some other urban representative. If an issue is soundly reasoned, there should be no serious opposition. Opposition occurs, in a republican form of government anyway, when sound principles are not adhered to and arbitrary, unpredictable and unjust rhetoric is propounded instead. In which case it is the responsibility of reasonable individuals to oppose such tyranny. Individuals who stand up to this sort of injustice are the best people to have in office. Those who promote such cockamamie schemes as to deprive the poor to pay for programs that help them should be released from public service.

Peace.