A Call to Action

Christmas Eve 2015 the high temperature was a record of 20 degrees Celsius or 68 degrees Fahrenheit. Coming out of from Midnight Mass at Boston Cathedral I told the priest the I was from California and he thanked me for bringing the good weather.

I'm not sure that was a compliment. It's pretty obvious that if Santa Claus can't have snow for his sleights in Boston then a lot of children will only get coals for presents, haha.

There is nothing new in the world since 1974 when I first met Dennis Ritchie at the University of Waterloo. There was already an energy crisis and the science behind global warming was already known simply there were a lot more opportunities for publication back then. Socialist and co-operative movements had a history of 100 years at that time. Notwithstanding what Chad Griffin states in "Redeeming the Dream" it was easy to meet and interact with gay people. Ideological lines between those favoring community ownership of wealth and private ownership were drawn in the line. The world was not that far from nuclear Armageddon or straining of resources from over population. Religious differences were already close to sparking an explosion as is evidenced by what happened a few years later in Iran.

The difference, so it seems to me, is that we had a little more common sense back then. It may seem strange to describe the 1970s this way but it was a more sensible time. Vladimir Brezhnev did not push the button, nor did Richard Nixon nor Mao-Tse-Tung. At a more personal level.  Neil Docherty and myself bitterly disagreed but we were able to set aside our differences and when we could not to conflict in an honorable way on the Chevron

Dennis Ritchies death in 2011 went almost unnoticed initially as compared to the death of Steve Jobs. It was first announced by a blog post by Robert Pike of Google, What was truly amazing about Ritchie and his generation was that they were engineers with a spirit of humility.

This is what California can bring to the world.

There's no doubt that the state has welcomed a lot of people with oversized egos including Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, David Boies, and Barry Bonds. This is nothing new. In their time, James Lick and William Randolph Hearst were no different but they left a legacy that built California. These people need to be shepherded using reason, respect, and restraint that is all.

A lot will have to be done to turn California around and the first thing is to come up with a plan to combat global warming. Here again, engineering has not changed and the same common sense solutions using nuclear fission are absolutely required as well as the possibility of recycling nuclear waste into plutonium.

There is a lot of righteous anger in California, fueled by the recall of Gray Davis in 2002, by the failure of Proposition 8, by the foreclosures, and by the feeling that Washington simply is not moving fast enough and is deadlocked by partisan bickering. At the same time Hispanics are deprived of rights due to the lack of bilingual education and there is increasing persecution of the Catholic Church in violation of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo.

As with the crowning of George III in the 18th century, the likely elections of Mrs. Clinton and Mrs. Newsom are likely to fuel the fire. As George Washington realized in the case of London, Washington is not likely to change.

What is needed is to fuel that energy, to take people from the California Democratic and Republican party that are of good will, and to prepare a revision of the California State Constitution redefining our status in the Union. There is no reason we cannot have a status such as that of Puerto Rico.

Revolutions need to be prepared without violence and with care.

We are 12 percent of the United States, that deserves respect, God and right are on our side and our opponents know it, and you can't keep a good man down.