Give Me Denmark at Once! As a kid in grade school more years ago than I care to remember, I and the other students were assigned a project in which each would mail a nickel or dime to a particular member of the United Nations in NY City. I was assigned Denmark, and obediently secured my nickel or dime (I don't recall which denomination) and sent it off in an envelope at the post office to "Delegate from Denmark," whoever that nameless person happened to be. The accompanying letter requested that the delegate mail me back with a coin from his or her own country.
Well, you can just imagine what happened. That son of a pup kept my coin and responded with nothing, not even a thank you for the funding I obviously provided toward the next drink at the bar, or maybe even for a low-rent hooker!
Now that President Trump is on the move toward acquiring Greenland over Denmark's objections, I say please, Mr. President,
I WANT DENMARK! They owe me, and no matter what happened to my money I'm sure the interest involved by now would make me a millionaire! Or something. Anyway, if I can't actually hold those thieving Danish bastards responsible, maybe I could borrow Greenland for a while? You know, that island where the people wear caps that read MAGA: Make America Greenland Again? I promise to take good care of the place, Mr. Trump, and once I dig up about a nickel or dime's worth plus interest of rare earth minerals you can have it back. By the way, there's no hurry.
There was that long-sustainable era until just years ago when newspapers and their great reporters who knew how to write effectively and tell stories demanding to be told enjoyed the luxury of seemingly endless column space unrestrained by time or sound bites. Often, newspaper journalists could focus almost overnight and in depth on the benefits, problems or blatant illegalities involved with one subject or another. When that nebulous thing known as the environment became newspaper fodder, yes, there existed reporters, editors and publishers who happily tackled the crazy, scare-you-out-of-your-pants aspects to sell papers.
When "group think" invaded the newspaper industry in a hopeless attempt to stay relevant and profitable -- as readers started to divert their attention to the electronic brain-shriveling creature called the Internet -- the writing was on the wall. And on the digital chip. No longer did people capable of merely pushing buttons need to plan their days or their very lives or even decide what to feed the cat because The Screen satisfied their every curiosity. Truth, lies, damned lies and glittering pretend food to feed both starving and stupid brains. Real local, national and international news? Well, multiple versions were readily available on The Screen, and the Internet user could know "everything" with a little scrolling in just seconds. Not to forget -- just as the VCR became popular overnight primarily because one could finally access the greatest "pornography" (I think that means showing us as we really are) on the planet, the Web suddenly took over as the best sex machine aside from rubber inflatables and battery-operated devices ever known to man, woman or beast.
But I digress, don't I? The point is, newspaper reporters of old, much of their literary offspring now confined to magazines sold haphazardly on invisible newsstands and on grocery store shelves, spared nothing to alert communities to both the good and bad. RIP, the daily local newspaper as it continues a sad decline.
Newspapers of somewhat older times were superb at providing details about the construction of a new school or mall, or the benefits or consequences of actions provided by land developers. Mind you, these were occasions where only a few acres were involved, an era when a young couple might buy an acre or two upon which to build their dream home -- or perhaps a new factory or small business came into town, gobbling up a small amount of land.
But yes, change comes a knocking, like it or not. Small becomes bigger, simple becomes complex, national security becomes ever more paramount and the natural world collapses a little more as people who should care about such things instead bury their heads in sports or other innocuous time and flatulence-passers of no value to our existence as humans.
To Clay, New York has come a supposed miracle of digital chip technology, a 20-year plan by the Micron Technology corporation to build, if we understand this correctly, a four-part semiconductor manufacturing campus, each part the size of 10 football fields, eventually incorporating some 7.2 million square feet of space. Billions and billions of dollars are involved in the construction, and the kick-off of actual chip production is intended for four years from now. 50,000 jobs in the short-term seem to be required for construction and operations alone.
Indeed, a ground-breaking ceremony took place just days ago, and in attendance to break ground with individual shovels of soil were the usual dignitaries, including U.S. and state senators always up for a good photo op.
The new reality has come to town. Instead of a house or two, or a hardware store and a pharmacy putting in roots, the current choice continues to involve enlisting scores of bulldozers and a myriad of other heavy equipment to clear-cut tens or hundreds or thousands of acres of land. No longer is a farm, a meadow or a babbling brook looked upon as a gem to cherish and leave untouched, but rather a commodity to wipe out and transform as easily as erasing words from a blackboard, altered forever. The animals? As always, they can go "somewhere else." The wild berries, the fragrant wildflowers, fruit trees of all manner must go because of progress.
The ruling class in Central New York and, of course, its frequently accommodating broadcast media love the concept of Micron's arrival. Thousands of jobs will come at last in an area longing for steady employment. It's funny, though. Micron is building in an area known as White Pine Commerce Park, and of course white pines will be among the plethora of trees soon to disappear in exchange for pavement, blacktop and modern buildings serving the chip and AI industry. On the bright side, skyscrapers apparently occupy no space in the sprawl.
I'm not taking this opportunity to complain about this Goliath project, as we humans are what we are and we will always do what we do. The dilemma is that we always take and seldom give back, in the sense that everything we accomplish is for our benefit and the rest of that which nurtures us, ours and theirs is usually moved away, crushed or killed into powder and generally forgotten about in terms of future importance.
As far as Micron's sprawling presence goes -- what if, say, in three to five or six years people suddenly have the ability to produce chips, tons of them, in the comfort of their own homes? Further, don't discount the very real possibility that robotics will assume all production duties flawlessly. As we already worry with the rise of artificial intelligence, who needs humans for jobs in the years ahead and how many? What would become of the mega-campus?
Of what value will the semiconductor chips of Micron or any chip manufacturer be if (when?) we experience another "Carrington Effect" of the 1800s, when the sun vomited the mother of all EMP (electromagnetic pulsation) energy directly toward our atmospherically protected, yet incredibly vulnerable planet, causing telegraph lines and office telegraph equipment to go up on flames? Planet-wide, effective shielding from such cosmic incursions upon modern electrical living is pathetically lacking -- especially, remarkably, in the USA.
So, like many sprawling chip plants across the globe, Micron will materialize. An abundant and essential clean water supply will be sucked into this new neighbor industry by millions of gallons a week, used and then discarded as dirty water. Local residents are assured that this can be managed with high tech. Can't everything? Along with these mega-structures, extensive housing will be required for those who build and for those who work in the facility. This will require the vast sale of farms, forests, meadows and other areas of natural beauty and pure environmental importance for tens if not hundreds of miles around. Along with Micron will come a myriad of supporting businesses and structures, thereby requiring even more bulldozing, pavement, blacktop and obliteration of things natural and good. By the time these thousands of new workers make their homes where they have access to Micron and other businesses, spending their free time having night after night of wild recreational or child-producing sex on mattresses sold by novel mattress and bed companies, the new hell is loaded and ready to go. Eventually, perhaps doomed kids born in this arena, battling for a paucity of good jobs as they mature, once entitled to growing up with nature and natural processes assisting in showing them who they are, will instead be condemned to pavement, blacktop, few LOCAL grass or forest areas and a life structured by AI, restrictive laws and almost literally no place to go, no place to run. Unless one's idea of a good time is to become the Singularity. And don't expect that a so-called neighborhood park or two developed by some nebulous planning board will take the place of what was previously real and vital just yesterday. Pollution and crime as babysitters? We shall see.
The three-alarm fire sale grab and makeover of gigantic tracts of at least moderately unblemished land tempered until now is about to explode with crucial decisions routinely determined by both the elite and the well paid-off who wield the keys, and as is customary there will be shouts of "Jobs Jobs Jobs!" along with the hoary mantra, "People have to live somewhere!" Whose somewhere? What somewhere? What happens to creatures whom we are not?
Really, I detest whacked-out members of the crazy environmental class as much as anybody, but this time much seems so different, so jeopardized. Are we fine-tuned enough to administer caution as new ventures of monstrous size emerge from blueprints all over the country?
We were warned years ago about what has already come and what is scheduled to invade our living space in such books as,
The Last Child in the Woods, which should be read by anybody intent upon anticipation of a secure future with children in tow -- though by now we suggest that we have seen the future. For most of us, sadly, there may be no particularly desirable room at that nearby inn as both AI and the ultra-huge take charge. Just saying. . .
