{"id":626,"date":"2004-05-24T19:55:00","date_gmt":"2004-05-24T19:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/2004\/05\/24\/626\/"},"modified":"2015-06-10T20:36:01","modified_gmt":"2015-06-11T01:36:01","slug":"626","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=626","title":{"rendered":"QUAID PRO QUO"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had a friend my age who was one of those techno-geek-loners (which I also qualify for, admittedly). Today, the younger techno-geek-loners generally do OK as software engineers. Unfortunately, the computer revolution hadn\u2019t really begun yet back when my erstwhile friend was in college, so Rick settled for chemical engineering. In those days, computers<\/strong> were big, crude uncool things (such as the IBM 360 and other monsters made by Burroughs and Sperry-Rand) that were only used for accounting, payroll and inventory functions. So it wasn\u2019t surprising that computers didn\u2019t capture Rick\u2019s imagination back when he was making career choices.<\/p>\n

Rick eventually moved to Ohio<\/strong>, where he eventually bought a house. He lived there by himself (and probably still does). The place was rather — eh, shall we say sparsely furnished. Interior decoration and meticulous housekeeping were not exactly Rick\u2019s forte. Rick was a good guy with a witty and intelligent air about him, but deep down there was a cloud of Sarte-like anomie hanging over his life.<\/p>\n

I visited Rick in Ohio a couple of times before we lost touch (mainly my fault — I was entering my own \u201ceremitic\u201d phase). On a disinspiring Saturday afternoon while Rick and I were trying to think of something to do, I remember him making a comment about feeling down. Rick\u2019s environment would send most people tumbling into clinical depression, but good old Rick was a hearty strain — a pack of cigarettes and couple of beers was all he needed for mental health. Well, actually more<\/strong> than a couple …<\/p>\n

Anyway, I asked Rick what was wrong, and he motioned his cigarette toward the TV, where some nondescript mid-afternoon movie was on. He told me that the movie channel had an all-week Dennis Quaid<\/a> festival underway. I had been reading the paper or something and generally ignoring the tube, but his comment made me pay attention to the cinematic delight in question. After a half hour or so, I started feeling blue too. There was indeed something depressing about watching Dennis Quiad in some cheesy melodrama on a cloudy mid-afternoon. I finally thought of some museum or tourist trap that I wanted to see, and we got out into the light where our moods improved a little. Rick lived outside of Akron in flatland Ohio, so they didn\u2019t improve all that much; the overall surroundings were rather \u201cQuaidian\u201d in themselves.<\/p>\n

So, when I read about Quaid\u2019s new movie, \u201cThe Day After Tomorrow<\/a>\u201d, I was reminded of that afternoon with Rick. Yet another pepper-upper by Dennis Quiad. What\u2019s interesting about Day After Tomorrow is that it has gained a cache of respectability by dealing with the all-too-serious environmental threat caused by global warming. As the tornadoes gather and the snow falls, Quaid is finally having his moment in the sun.<\/p>\n

The scenario presented in the movie unfolds way too fast, in keeping with Hollywood\u2019s need to pander to America\u2019s 30-second attention span. However, respectable scientists have said that natural temperature trends now under way, exacerbated by industrial atmospheric emissions, could conceivably change ocean currents in a way that triggers a new ice age. (Yes, it seems strange that global warming could start an ice age; but the warming trend could break our ecosystem\u2019s current equilibrium, and when equilibriums are broken, anything can happen). The glaciers wouldn\u2019t arrive all at once, as in the movie; it might take 20 or 30 years before things get noticeably colder. But even 30 years would not be enough time for the human race to adapt. There would eventually be significant drops in agricultural production and mass migrations away from frozen zones and flooded coastlines, which would probably lead to resource wars. Things would get pretty nasty<\/strong>; the world could probably not support 6 billion people any longer. It would certainly endanger the comfortable and generally civilized style of life that about a half-billion Westerners (like myself) have become accustomed to.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to believe that Mother Nature would betray us like that. But scientific studies indicate that the history of human civilization has occupied a temporary niche of relatively nice weather. The world climate seems to flip between warm and cold periods<\/a>, maybe every 20,000 years or so. We\u2019re not necessarily due for a change, but all the carbon dioxide and particulates and other stuff that we\u2019ve thrown up into the atmosphere over the past 100 years or so may be pushing the system into a zone of instability and \u201cphase shift<\/strong>\u201d. The party of human prosperity is still going on, but it may be later than we think.<\/p>\n

I thought it was quite appropriate for that notion to be popularized by a Dennis Quiad movie. As to Rick, well I recall that he was a pretty good cross-country skier and a bit of a survivalist (I think he had a gun somewhere in his house). And he just doesn\u2019t get depressed too easily, despite his vulnerability to Quiad\u2019s acting. Rick will probably do much better<\/strong> than I will if the Gulf Stream shut-down occurs within our lifetimes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had a friend my age who was one of those techno-geek-loners (which I also qualify for, admittedly). Today, the younger techno-geek-loners generally do OK as software engineers. Unfortunately, the computer revolution hadn\u2019t really begun yet back when my erstwhile friend was in college, so Rick settled for chemical engineering. In those days, computers were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,33],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=626"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5472,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626\/revisions\/5472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}