I wish and hope that this old GE motto: "Progress is our most
important product" will some day apply more fully to society as a
whole. The lack of progress in energy-related matters seems to be
a reflection of our national ingrained inertia - the inertia of
our more general culture.
The notion of advancement (above primitive emotions, like racial
or religious aversion and antipathy) has been taken given
lip-service in the past, but as far as actual "progress"... that
is less certain. On the national level, science is still the
unwanted step-child and possibly the hidden agenda of suspected
"liberals" and communists.
Our national motto sometime seems to be more like - "Status Quo is
US"
Cases in point. Looking back on this date (Sept 19) in the past
few hundred years:
1863 - American Civil War: the bloody Battle of Chickamauga
1900 - Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid commit their first
robbery
1934 - Bruno Hauptmann arrested for the murder of Charles
Lindbergh Jr.
1952 - The US bars Charlie Chaplin from reentering the country
1955 - Juan Perón is deposed in Argentina (CIA ?)
1957 - First U.S. underground nuclear bomb test
1959 - Nikita Khrushchev is barred from visiting Disneyland.
1982 - Scott Fahlman posts the first emoticon :-) to an online
bulletin board
1985 - A strong earthquake hits Mexico City
1989 - Hurricane Hugo makes landfall in South Carolina.
Progress?
We no longer fight our Civil wars on bloody battlefields at home -
we have moved that aggression to bloody battlefields on foreign
lands where the lives of innocent non-combatants have been
minimized - just "collateral damage".
No let-up in bank robberies, just less panache in the robbers
Now instead of barring good-time Charlie, we bar the renowned
terrorist Cat Stevens from "Freedom's shores"
The CIA is no less active in overseas "regime change" - has it
done us any good in the past? What is our image in Latin America
now because of this intrusion? Nowadays our "progress" in foreign
affairs seems to be that we have the religious-right, as
epitomized by Pat Robertson, joining-in to push the CIA into more
assassination.
Hurricanes are possibly more devastating that before.
On a more cheerful note - Thank heavens for smileys ;-)
Jones
