Super Freakonomics by Steven B Levitt and Stephen J Dubner

This is billed as the “explosive” follow-up to Freakonomics,” and is subtitled: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance.

Apparently the world can’t get enough of this team who keep questioning our assumptions about how the world works, and how we should be evaluating the statistics the media bombards us with.

They open with something that’s not intuitively obvious — according to the statistics (and if you accept their assumption that people walk as much drunk as they drive), it’s far safer for the drunk person to drive drunk than to walk drunk.

It’s far safer for other drivers for drunks to walk, but for the drunk, it’s safer to drive — so they don’t lie down in the middle of the street and pass out, fall in front of a car, cross a street without looking, or the other dangerous things drunk pedestrians do. They didn’t even include the real possibility (in some neighborhoods) of being robbed.

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A Disagreement In Idaho Written By Holt E Glenn

I can compare this book with the circumstances that have occurred in Arizona mostly during the past year regarding illegal immigration even though the bulk of “A Disagreement In Idaho” took place in the future. The story begins describing The late Governor Seabon Wilson of Idaho who, when in office, was faced with the ever growing problem of far too many illegal immigrants, along with many others in Idaho and elsewhere throughout the United States fighting or backing the illegals. An old time girlfriend of the governors brother, Josey Lawson, was running to escape those trying to find and destroy all records of the late governor so as to make that period in Idaho’s history disappear. Josey was a very experienced backwoods person and that expertise is what allowed her to escape those tracking her down.

After a very descriptive beginning we move ahead to the time when Seabon Wilson was the governor of Idaho. He was a staunch believer in governing the way our forefathers had laid out in the constitution, including immigration. Seabon was well aware of the deepening problems created by so many illegal immigrants living in Idaho, working hard and sending much of their earnings back to their families in Mexico. Many employers, mostly farm owners, knew their help was illegal but since the labor was cheap they felt they were only helping the employees families in Mexico to survive. The constant battle between those that supported and those against illegal immigrants working in Idaho spread throughout the state and adjoining states also.

Juan Horanto was one of the hard working illegals that had been working as a laborer in Texas until the local authorities started a severe crackdown to find those that did not belong. This drove many either back to Mexico or to another state where pressure was not as strong. Juan was earning $15.00 an hour in Texas where in Mexico he would have been paid only about $2.00 per hour for the same work. He moved to other areas but eventually ended up in Idaho thanks to a friend. Realize that Juan was only one of many illegal immigrants working in the United States. As long as they could get away with it they would. The citizens and many organizations in Idaho started rebelling against losing employment of their own residents and the push was on to legislate and enforce laws to eliminate the illegals.

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Review – Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet

The Earth that mankind knew, and grew up on, is gone. A new planet needs a new name; hence Eaarth. It is a place of poles where the ice caps are severely reduced, or gone. It is a place where the oceans are becoming more acid, because of excess carbon absorbed into the water, not to mention the toxic chemicals and other pollutants being dumped into it. It is a place of more extreme weather patterns.

The average person might not care if an entire glacier completely melts away, like the Chacaltaya Glacier in Bolivia. Those living downstream, dependent on that glacier for their water supply, will certainly care. Since 1980, the tropics have expanded worldwide by 2 degrees north and south. Over 8 million more square miles of land are now tropical, with dry subtropics pushing ahead of them. The chances of Lake Mead, which is behind Hoover Dam, running dry in the next 10 years, have reached 50 percent. The residents of an oceanside town in North Carolina are spending up to $30,000 each to place large sandbags in front of their homes to keep the ocean at bay.

The times when America, or the world, can simply grow its way out of its financial problems are gone forever. Building enough nuclear power plants to get rid of even a tenth of the climate change problem will cost at least $8 trillion. According to one estimate, America needs to spend over $200 billion a year for decades, just on infrastructure, to avoid the kind of gridlock that will collapse the economy. A small village in Alaska is being evacuated, because of rising sea levels, at a cost of $400,000 per person. There is not enough money on Earth to evacuate everyone threatened by rising sea levels.

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