Cav's Place

Recent reports indicate that Jupiter‘s moon Europa may have small lakes much closer to the surface than the immense ocean long thought to exist beneath its thick frozen outer layer. According to the researchers, this not only improves the chances of life developing, due to an exchange of nutrients taking place between the lakes and the ocean, but also makes a mission aimed at searching for life inside the moon significantly more plausible.
In itself, this sounds terribly exciting. Europa has been a strong candidate for extraterrestrial life ever since we have started to actively explore and try to determine what conditions could be required in order for life to appear and persist on a world, so any such reports make us dream of the long-awaited confirmation even more and the supposition that there may be enough oxygen in the water to even allow for advanced life forms only puts the icing on the cake. However, as always when it comes to science, we must take a step back before we leap forward, putting our hopes and dreams aside to analyze these findings somewhat more objectively for a moment.

We’re talking about a celestial body that almost certainly contains liquid water, which is considered to be the primary requirement for life. However, said water is not found on the surface, but well beneath it, and it doesn’t stay liquid because the required temperature can be found anywhere in Europa’s depths but because other processes keep it liquid in spite of the extreme cold, the predicted temperatures being well below the lower limit at which life has so far been known to exist. What’s more, the water in these small lakes is very likely to be colder than the one in the ocean, seeing as they are much closer to the frigid surface and surrounded by ice.
Additionally, we’re talking about a moon of Jupiter, and Jupter releases huge amounts of radiation. On the one hand, that does make for interesting reactions, which may well provide the necessary ingredients and accelerate the development of life. On the other, that same radiation would make it even harder for life to persist, greatly harming and likely killing any living organism that would develop. Once again, the lakes would receive even more of this radiation than the ocean, being closer to the surface and therefore less shielded, so any life forms are likely to have an even harder time surviving in them.
And then there is the obvious lack of sunlight, which affects both the lakes and the ocean equally, seeing as being covered by three or thirty kilometers of ice makes no difference when it comes to that. Then again, Jupiter, and therefore also Europa, receives roughly 25 times less sunlight than Earth, so there wouldn’t be much of it available to begin with, even if the liquid water would somehow be on, or somehow connected to, the surface.
Of course, life could take many forms and thrive in all sorts of conditions, some of them being well outside of what we would now consider to be suitable. At the same time, we need to determine what the suitable conditions could be in order to know both where to look and, to some extent, what to look for. After all, life forms that would thrive in conditions that we wouldn’t deem to be suitable for life may well look and behave in ways that would make them hard or even impossible for us to detect. In fact, they could even be “alive” in ways which we wouldn’t currently define as such, meaning that we’d likely ignore them even if we would somehow notice them.

On top of the discussions about the possibility of life on Europa, we must also see whether we could properly investigate even these lakes, not to mention the ocean itself. After all, digging through what may be as little as three kilometers of ice to get to such a lake may indeed be much easier than digging through as much as thirty kilometers to reach the ocean, but we’re still talking about digging through kilometers of ice on a relatively distant world, all the while withstanding frigid temperatures and significant radiation. Not to mention that we’d need to accurately pinpoint the location of such a lake through all those kilometers of ice before we could even begin to dig towards it.
It seems like a lot to ask of the equipment, considering our current technological level and the lack of any previous missions that could in any way be considered to be similar. It would be an enormous undertaking, which in itself sounds rather unlikely when you see how funding for science keeps being slashed lately, regardless of the discussions we keep seeing about it, but it would also be a very risky one. Any such mission wouldn’t only need to get past the difficulties described above, but also to do so without causing any potential harm to any potential life that could exist on Europa, whether detected or not, which would imply not causing any changes, not releasing any substances and not leaving anything at all behind. If it wouldn’t be done extremely carefully, or if anything at all would go wrong, we would most likely end up interfering with any potential life, altering, harming and possibly even destroying it completely, which is something that must be avoided at all costs.

In the end, I don’t see this new report as changing too much. The mission would be extraordinarily difficult either way and sending equipment capable of exploring the ocean, possibly also more or less briefly analyzing one or two such lakes if it’d happen to find them on the way down, still seems like the best bet, seeing as simply exploring one such lake and not finding anything wouldn’t mean much about the possibility of life on Europa as a whole. However, considering the enormous risks involved, both for the equipment and for any potential life that could be affected by it, I don’t think that such a mission should be attempted as soon as possible, but instead another should be sent before it, to a target far less likely to harbor life, in order to thoroughly test everything.
Considering all the budget cuts, even making this mission happen seems unlikely, so sending another one before it only to test how it’ll work out is basically impossible, but I can hope. Who knows, from a technological point of view it may be possible to build something that could start such a search for life a decade from now, as it seems to be planned, but I fear that they’ll need to cut all possible corners in order to have any chance of getting it approved by then, resulting in a mission perhaps more likely to destroy than detect… Making us the destroyers of two worlds instead of just one.

This post can be said to be mainly aimed at certain people who try to organize protests in Romania, and particularly in Bucharest, on issues that clearly won’t get the attention of the masses. As such, it’ll contain some specifics that may not apply too well to other places or situations, but the general idea should be of use to anyone trying to kick off a protest on a niche issue without having a strong organization or a solid group of activists to rely on.
This may be even more fitting at this particular time, when large protests seem to be kicking off in more and more places, because this tends to make the small protests even smaller and more difficult to kick off. When the big protests, on issues that have mass appeal, grow and get more attention, those who would be in any way willing to take part in something like this tend to join them, greatly reducing the number of potential attendees for any other protests that may take place at the same time. In turn, that makes the media and the politicians focus only on these major protests, meaning that it becomes even more difficult for people to even learn of the smaller ones, and those who do hear of them may well say that it’ll be pointless to attend, since they’ll be getting little to no attention anyway.

The particular situation around here is even more difficult, because Romanians generally don’t tend to take part in protests, so there are extremely few dedicated activists and, if you exclude the major political parties, next to no organizations capable of organizing a large protest. But it can’t be a singular case and, as I already pointed out, the large protests that are now taking place all over the world tend to take people away from the smaller ones, meaning that anyone trying to make something happen regarding an issue not covered, or at least not sufficiently covered, by the large protests is likely to face similar problems.
Under these circumstances, it’s crucial not to rely on the fact that people will come. Many most likely won’t and some of those who may originally intend to attend will be put off by the very small number of attendees and turn back, reducing the potential size of the protest even further. In turn, a very small protest sends the message that people don’t care about the issue in question, which may make the media and the relevant authorities pay even less attention to it in the future than they would have if there wouldn’t have been any protest at all! And since that must be avoided at all costs, a protest organizer must first determine whether having the protest take place at the specified time and place is even worth it.
A person protesting on the street may easily be worth a hundred of signatures on an on-line petition, but there are times when it’s well over a hundred times easier to persuade people to sign such a petition than to take part in an actual protest. What’s more, there are several other things that fall in between signing a petition on-line and taking part in such a protest, such as writing messages to or calling the relevant authorities, boycotting or, quite the contrary, purchasing significant quantities of certain products, taking part in flash mobs and so on. It’s the protest organizer’s job to determine whether any of these would be more effective than the protest under the current circumstances and change the plans accordingly.

In case the protest is deemed to be the most effective, as well as for those determined to have one regardless of the circumstances, gathering a sufficient number of people from the beginning is crucial, so you’ll probably want to be certain that at least a hundred people will attend. Unless you have the backing of an organization capable of producing such a number of activists on short notice, that means making sure that as many people as possible know about the protest and that anyone interested in taking part can easily do so. Pick a time and place suitable for as many people as possible, because a solid protest at the “wrong” time is much better than a weak one at the “right” time, and announce the details at least a week in advance, more if at all possible. Try to also discuss with the potential participants, offering them advice on reaching the location if necessary and making sure that enough of them will arrive on time.
Once you have a sufficient number of people to start the protest, the second key point is gaining the support of the passersby. You’ll want to have a clear message, with a general idea that’s easy to grasp at a glance and details readily available for anyone interested, and try not to offend or inconvenience anyone other than the target of your protest, or at least offend and inconvenience them as little as possible, preferably also leaving the site of the protest better than you found it. This requires careful planning, discussions with the core group of protesters and perhaps even removing some people from the group, but it’ll be the difference between having people decide to join the protest even if they didn’t intend to do so at first and driving potential protesters away or even ending up with a more or less spontaneous counter-protest nearby.
Last but certainly not least, you’ll want to make the most of any attention the protest will receive, whether positive or negative. On top of having a clear message, this implies having people fully prepared to present your issue to anyone who asks, as well as people fully prepared to mediate conflicts and deal with any potential police presence. Being a small protest, this should only require a total of five to ten people, but at least one or two of them will need to know how to properly discuss the matter at hand with any potential representatives of the authorities, how to very briefly present the issue to the media in a way that’s most likely to make the news, how to explain the cause to an interested passerby in order to gain said person’s support and how to calmly persuade the police that no action should be taken against the protesters. After all, the protest itself attracts attention, but these spokespersons will actually make the message known.

If it looks like a lot of work, that’s because it really is, but if you’re not up to it you probably shouldn’t be trying to organize a protest in the first place. A proper small protest can accomplish a lot, but one that’s too weak or offends or inconveniences too many passersby ends up actually harming its own cause, so it should be avoided. Quite simply, with the exception of true life and death situations, when you have no other options, a small protest is generally something that must be done right or not at all.

Since I’m still not getting anywhere with the non-personal posts, I need to buy some more time with another personal one. Incidentally, the failed protest, which I’ll tell you about in this post, did make me want to write something else as well, so now I have two serious posts on my mind… Not that either of them is getting anywhere, as I said, but it may mean that I have some chance of writing two non-personal posts next week, whether it’ll be these two or one of them and one about something else. But I wouldn’t hold my breath…
I’ve been whimpering more and more anyway, so I’m not doing much of anything. Still rather surprised that I’m holding on as much as I am, considering what’s going on and that I haven’t even done any other crazy things about it after that first one, but it probably won’t last that much longer. I’m functioning on borrowed time and I know it, so the next real breakdown will be a pretty bad one… But I guess there’s nothing to do other than curl in a ball, once again cling on to memories and dreams, maybe do another stupid thing that’ll somehow manage to make things even worse, and then get back to hoping that maybe someday it’ll all be worth it… Somehow…

But let’s move on to what happened this Tuesday, when I tried to take part in a protest against a law that would once again allow local authorities to euthanize all stray animals captured and not adopted within 30 days. Or at least I went to the specified location, because I never really thought that there would be enough people for me to dare join them, protests that aren’t organized by the major political parties and don’t deal with pensions or people getting fired usually gathering around 20 people around here.
It was supposed to take place between 9 AM and 3 PM, so I thought I’d get there reasonably early during it, woke up at 9 AM and made my way to Dristor metro station. That was because I looked the night before for the list of stations where they put in card machines, so I could buy one without actually having to go up to a clerk for it, and that seemed like the nearest one, or at least the nearest that I clearly knew how to get to on foot. Unfortunately, I saw nothing of the kind there. Fortunately, I somehow managed to buy it the old-fashioned way, likely thanks to the fact that it was just me, the clerk and a guy standing in the corner and talking on his phone while looking over a newspaper, otherwise the place looking deserted, and those booths just have a tiny slip to slip in the money and have the card slipped out to you, so I was otherwise “shielded” from the clerk.
Walking was also an option, sure, but it’d have taken around one hour, if not more, and since I had only slept a few hours and was heading towards something that would be extremely taxing if I were to end up joining it, I really wasn’t keen on it. But since I did manage to buy myself that card, the part about getting there was solved and I reached the specified location around 10:30, seeing the expected crowd of around 20. As I said, that’s way too little for me to get involved even if they wouldn’t have started honking some horns or something continuously just as I was approaching them. Since they did that and kept it up for minutes, as in I got out of earshot before they stopped, I had to get out of there even faster, for the sake of my ears.
Afterwards I wandered to another nearby park, which was the plan in case there’d be too few people in the morning, to see if more would gather later. Though the two are very close, I never went from one to the other, so I obviously got a bit confused before finally finding my way. Then I walked around for a while, again got a little confused on the way back, backtracked a fair bit and eventually got back to the park with the protest around 11:30.
To my surprise, I found no trace of protesters anymore. Went around half the park, somewhat puzzled, and when I arrived back at the specified location I realized that the “protest” had moved to a bench. I’m not sure if the few young men sitting on another bench and obviously listening in were also connected or not, but the remaining protesters seemed to be a few old women who were sitting down on said bench and a few other people, also generally older, who were standing in front of them. As I passed by them, they seemed to be discussing how not even those who claim to be animal lovers in this country would ever lift a finger, because they just love their own and don’t give a fuck about any others. So I just gave up on the idea and made my way back…

On another note, while I went through that other park I also took a moment to check a certain message written on a tree that I had first noticed when Andreea took me there about a year ago. I wanted to see if it was still preserved, since something like this really should be, but unfortunately saw that a piece of the bark was now missing, so the top of the message was now gone. Still, it is preserved in pictures, as a quick search revealed one taken shortly after it was supposedly written and one from 2010.
The text, translated from the pictures after fixing the various spelling and grammar mistakes, is as follows:
“Emil + Natalia
December 14, 2006
He worked.
She was in high school.
Him – 20 years old.
Her – 18 years old.
He met her in the metro, commuting every day.
One day he bought a white rose and gave it to her. He loved her since the first date, cared for her enormously, was desperate.
Every day he gave her roses.
Once, she charmed him with a sweet kiss. As of that day, he lived only moments full of life and sunshine in his heart and soul.
He lived with his soul full of love.
One day she said they can no longer be together. Why?
I am Emil, the one who writes, and I will wait a lifetime for her.
I’m crying and writing.”
All I can say after something like this is that I hope they’re back together by now… And that it’s a good thing the Internet is here to preserve such things.

I actually have another rant in mind for whenever I’ll somehow manage to get around to writing it, which strangely enough hasn’t been the case during the past couple of weeks, but for the moment you’ll just get the regular Sunday update, obviously mainly here in order to stick to the rule of writing two posts per week. As I keep saying, that in itself is quite something, considering my mood in general and what’s been going on lately in particular.

Still relatively hooked on Tropico 3, though it’s getting rather tedious, especially when it comes to starting a new mission. At least I’m no longer failing, as I managed to get through whatever problems came my way and make it through all missions except that absolutely terrible Viva Tropico one with relative ease. I completed 11 from the original campaign so far and the 12th is now going very well, though I was in a tight spot at some point, so the end is in sight, as there seem to be a total of 15 missions. At this point I’m not sure whether I’ll check out any additional content or even play any sandbox games once I’m done with this campaign, but it was all right while it lasted.
All right and necessary, if I was to have any chance of doing much of anything after she put me on ignore. Crawling out of bed without some new obsession to crawl to would have been terribly difficult during such a time, as would have been doing pretty much anything else. I’m more or less crashing whenever I quit the game anyway, though at least I’m talking to someone even though I have once again stopped logging on to Yahoo! Messenger ever since I noticed that I was on ignore, so there is one other thing to look forward to somewhat. Not that talking doesn’t make me think of her and miss her even more, as I already explained a week ago, but it’s pretty nice nevertheless…

Understandably, all of this makes writing even harder, and I’m not just talking about the blog. In fact, I’m not really talking about the blog at all, but about the fact that what’s being added to my story these days is even crappier than the crap that I’ve been writing so far. Adding being nearly unable to even focus on the story to my inability to put thoughts into a human-readable form and my known creative blocks makes for a very unpleasant picture, doesn’t it?
But that’s how it is and I’ll keep going anyway, as long as it’ll still be somewhat possible. I have to add something to my story every day and keep writing two blog posts per week because if I’ll ever take any sort of break from any of this I know I’ll never start again. And they’re supposedly things I’m doing because I want to, not because I have to in any way, so they should come more easily, right? At least that’s what the theory is…

As you probably know, the world’s human population has just reached seven billion… Or more or less seven billion, considering the missing data and the guesswork required to make such an estimate. Not that the exact date is too important anyway.
Then again, not even hitting this milestone has too much importance in itself, for the most part only making calculations simpler. We know, or at least we should know, that the sheer weight of our increasing numbers makes life on this little rocky sphere we call home worse and worse with every day that passes, for ourselves as well as for the other species we share this planet with. As such, from this point of view, today is worse than yesterday, but better than tomorrow, regardless of the exact numbers involved. Not that the term “better” could be appropriate in this situation, seeing as our numbers have exceeded any potential carrying capacity decades ago.

What more can I say about it? Not much, or at least nothing I haven’t already said. My opinion regarding the issue is very clear: There have been too many humans for at least half a century, and possibly far more than that, and human overpopulation is by far the worst problem this world is facing and the first one we must solve if we are to have any chance of solving the other important ones as well. Without drastically reducing the population, other efforts, especially when it comes to environmental issues, mainly mean lost time and resources, seeing as the sheer size of the population negates a significant portion of the positive effects such efforts could otherwise have.
Of course, as I keep saying, the population shouldn’t be reduced by killing people or allowing them to die due to lacking access to food, clean water, medical services or other necessities. Instead, the reduction should happen naturally, thanks to a very low number of births. That is the goal that needs to be achieved by any means necessary, which almost certainly means draconian population control regulations and equally harsh punishments for anyone trying to have children without approval, regardless of what human rights activists may have to say about it. After all, having a child is the most public and, with perhaps the exception of a few truly extraordinary individuals, who can be proven to possess outstanding natural abilities, also the single worst thing a person can do under the current circumstances, so it’s no more a matter of personal freedom than, say, becoming a serial killer is!

Now there will be people saying that women are already having fewer children and that raising the standard of living and offering education and access to safe and effective birth control will solve the problem, so there’s no need for such drastic measures. In fact, now that it’s being managed by the Population Institute, even the Global Population Speak Out movement is going strictly with that line, appearing to lose even what few radical elements it originally had. Which, of course, only means that they don’t really want to solve the human overpopulation problem, but at best tackle a few humanitarian issues and add the overpopulation element to the discussions simply as a way to feel better about themselves, if even that.
The point is that, as I said, there have been too many humans for a very long time already, so measures that would just slow or even stop the growth are far too little, far too late. They could, possibly, have been enough to prevent this problem from ever appearing if they’d have been applied in full and worldwide no later than the 1950s, but now… Raising the standard of living and offering access to education and birth control are things that must be done simply because they’re right, but they could never have a strong enough effect to be considered solutions to the problem. If we are to avoid the truly terrifying scenarios, the number of births needs to be reduced far, far more than the tremendous majority of humans could ever be willing to accept without a fight, so anyone who truly wants to solve this problem needs to be willing to do what must be done.

To back my words up with some numbers, I’ll go back to that rough estimate that says that the wealthiest 2% of people use half of the world’s resources and the poorest 80% use only a fifth, which leaves 18% to use 30%. To that, I’ll add the most recent estimate, which says that last year we used 150% of what the planet could regenerate in that same amount of time. As such, if we’d take everyone to the average standard of living of the 18%, we’d end up using 250% of what the planet could regenerate! And when you think that the people who make up the 18%, probably including you and me and nearly everyone either of us knows, also tend to be at least somewhat unhappy with what they have and desire more at least in some areas, the problem becomes all too obvious. Or at least it should…
According to these rough estimates, if we are to have a hope of offering a decent standard of living to every single person without using more than the planet can offer, the population would need to drop by a minimum of 60%, so to less than three billion. And that fits, since three billion tends to be the upper limit revealed by the serious studies regarding the planet’s carrying capacity, taking the environment and the other species into account as well. However, keep in mind that this would do nothing to repair the damage already caused, as that would require using significantly less than can be regenerated and therefore also a population significantly below three billion.

In the end, my target remains the same. I’m aiming for two and a half billion by the end of the century, but hope for no more than two billion and would be willing to accept up to a maximum of three billion. And I wish us to reach these numbers without killing people or allowing them to die unnecessarily, but only by very drastically limiting births, perhaps even to the bare minimum necessary to avoid a genetic bottleneck. To that end, no measure, no matter how unpopular, drastic or even truly horrifying, is off the table.