Out of Cheese

Reading this week's issue of

Reading this week's issue of Time tonight, I came across this quote in a letter about the magazine's recent cover story on the environment: "The common thread running through all environmental problems is overpopulation."

That reminded me of a talk that then-Undersecretary for Global Affairs Tim Wirth gave to a group of high school Capitol Hill interns, including me, back in 1994. He started by asking us what we thought the most pressing environmental problem was and a number of people gave answers that he dismissed before I put up my hand and answered with overpopulation, arguing that if we didn't have nearly as many people or such sharp population growth, all other environmental problems would be much easier to solve. He agreed and launched into his talk.

Eight years later, overpopulation is still mentioned rarely, if ever, when environmental problems are discussed. We now have relatively stable population growth in North America and Europe, but the Indian subcontinent and Africa are still experiencing significant population growth. Africa, in particular, has largely only seen its growth slowed by the tragedy of AIDS.

"Be fruitful and multiply" may be the first mitzvah, but it's clear that the world suffers today from the strain of supporting as many people as it has and that supporting an ever-increasing population will not be easy. Legislation like China's is not a solution -- the number of unreported deaths of infant girls and resulting imbalance in gender among Chinese youths is horrifying. Instead, it's clear that the U.N. needs to work harder to introduce inexpensive forms of birth control to people who otherwise wouldn't have access to it, and also to concentrate on developing improved farming techniques that increase efficiency and can enable women to have enough free time to be educated instead of working in the fields. Most every study shows that educated women have more reasonably-sized families and are better off financially. Time had an article about some successful attempts along these lines a few weeks ago, and it was a great read. I hope similar programs will get additional funding in the future, and then perhaps Time won't have to put out an issue every year that discusses how we're continuing to destroy the environment in a multitude of ways that largely boil down to a single cause.

Stephanie Dee: "Home is where

Stephanie Dee: "Home is where your desktop is."

Iowa will enter the 1990s

Iowa will enter the 1990s on Friday, as the first Starbucks in the state opens. Still a few years behind the rest of the world are Alaska, Montana, both Dakotas, Arkansas, and West Virginia.

Katie writes about a story

Katie writes about a story in the Oregonian about an Ecuadorean citizen who was notified of his Miranda rights upon his arrest but was not notified of his right under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations to speak to the Ecuadorean consulate.

I'd agree with Katie that a Miranda warning is sufficient at the time of arrest. There's nothing in "you have the right to remain silent" that would lead the person being arrested to start talking which would be changed if he was notified of his right to contact his consulate. Timely notification of the right makes sense, though I'd argue that Katie's suggestion of two hours might be too fast for it to be a hard limit.

I do take issue with one of Katie's comments, though: "This case also highlights one of the Vienna agreement's shortcomings; because 'a timely manner' is so inspecific, it puts any suspect on foreign soil at the mercy of the 'reasonableness' of that country's justice system." A suspect on foreign soil is always at the mercy of that country's justice system. No treaty is going to change the fact that a foreign suspect who commits a non-capital crime and receives a just sentence isn't going to receive much support from his home country unless some reason arises for his government to care about him. If the Vienna agreement was intended to change that, it certainly hasn't succeeded. And any unreasonable justice system is very unlikely to pay much attention to international treaties; after all, if they acknowledged those treaties they'd be reasonable justice systems. Help for foreign citizens accused of crimes in those countries is and will continue to be dependent on political pressure from their home countries rather than the vagaries of international law.

A year ago this morning

A year ago this morning I was on a U.S. Airways flight from Philadelphia to Seattle. I'm lucky I'd moved from Stanford to Seattle a few weeks earlier, since before moving I often flew from Newark to San Francisco instead of leaving from Philadelphia. The flight that went down in Shanksville, Pennsylvania was a Newark->San Francisco flight.

I was asleep on the plane, as I often was on flights before that day. I don't sleep nearly as often on planes any more. The plane dipped a bit in the air and I woke up, somewhat annoyed at what I figured was turbulence. The pilot got on the intercom, but rather than telling us about turbulence, he said something completely unexpected. "We've received word of serious terrorist activity and been instructed to land immediately."

The plane then went into the steepest dive I've ever experienced. We knew nothing of the events in New York, so the meaning of the pilot's comments were fully open for interpretation. I sat there, trying to understand just what sort of terrorist activity could cause a plane in the middle of nowhere to land as quickly as possible. I figured that somebody thought there was a bomb on board and I started praying that we'd land safely.

About ten minutes later we were at a gate at Willard Airport in Champaign, Illinois. Everyone pulled out their cell phones right away, and before I could track down my parents the news of the day had percolated throughout the plane from those who had managed to get through to their families immediately. I talked to my mother shortly afterwards, catching her as she waited for my grandmother to come out of minor surgery in a Philadelphia-area hospital. She was frantic, and extremely happy to hear that I was safe. Apparently the news had spread that an unknown number of planes were hijacked, so there was no way for anybody to know if a given plane was safe.

When we got off the plane, we all wandered into the coffee shop at the impressively tiny airport and watched the news. Word quickly spread that as many as twelve other jets were going to land in Champaign, even though the airport only has a few gates. Fortunately, all the other flights managed to land elsewhere.

After an hour or so, we realized that the pilot's attempts to contact U.S. Air weren't likely to be successful. Wanting to get away from the news, I wandered downstairs to the first level of the airport and saw a number of people wearing Red Cross jerseys. I figured they were holding a blood drive until I looked a bit closer and saw the "Disaster Relief" labels. I realized with a twinge of guilt that, despite the much more serious situations in New York and Washington, we were the disaster.

The wonderfully friendly Red Cross volunteers and folks from the local Chamber of Commerce put together a list of all the area motels, started calling around to find out how many rooms were available, and chartered buses to take us from the airport to our rooms. Just to make the day even more strange, the bus I was on managed to knock a side mirror off a police car as we were leaving the airport, leaving me to wonder what else could go wrong.

I spent September 11th and 12th in Champaign, trying to get in touch with U.S. Air to figure out what my next step was. When I finally got through the interminable wait on hold and talked to a U.S. Air agent, I realized that they didn't even know they had a plane on the ground in Champaign. Meanwhile, the poor folks at Willard Airport couldn't get any more information out of U.S. Air than I could. All of that, combined with the realization that U.S. Air doesn't serve the Champaign airport and therefore didn't have a ground crew or anything else to help it get the plane back in the air prompted me to consider alternatives.

On the 13th I decided to take a bus to Chicago, figuring that I'd have a better chance of getting to Seattle from O'Hare than I would in Champaign. I got on a Greyhound bus that was half-full of passengers who had just been released from a federal prison and were now heading back to inner-city Chicago. Despite some extra interest from one of the ex-prisoners in my Palm Pilot, I managed to get to my motel safely.

The next morning I took a cab to O'Hare and the driver managed to get into an accident while dropping me off. I was OK, and after waiting in line for an hour or so I ended up on the first U.S. Air flight out of O'Hare since the 11th...going backwards, to Pittsburgh. I flew from there on to Seattle, ending my journey across the country after a day of terrorist attacks, two car accidents, and three days in the middle of nowhere in Illinois.

The story of our landing in Champaign is still available online a year later. More interesting to me is that I talked to a radio reporter while I was at the airport on the 11th but never heard anything about the interview again. Not until tonight did I find out what happened to that interview -- it was broadcast on WILL 580 AM in Champaign. The RealAudio clip is online. I'm "Eric Obert from Seattle" and yes, they got the origin of our flight wrong.