When Drones Are Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Have Drones

(AP)

First of all, I won’t identify the drone operator in my neighborhood by name because I don’t want to inspire others by glorifying his actions. I’m sure he bought his drone legally and thinks he is exercising his God-given constitutional rights to fly it above my house. If someone’s going to take his drone away, they’ll most likely have to kill him first.

On the other hand, it may be as simple as his receiving an “accommodation” based on some religious grounds that allows buzzing over my house. No, the Pope is not going to have the last say in this matter.

Maybe nobody has the last say except the perpetrator. While I, Man of the House, stood in front of the barbecue grill fuming and shouting obscenities and raised the middle finger salute to the contraption whining back and forth over our back yard, the Woman of the House sat quietly nursing her gin tonic, looked upward and said, “That’s enough.”

With iron fist in velvet glove, she marched out to the street and, five minutes later, the whining whirr stopped and she returned home with her report:

“It was (name deleted),” she said. “I asked him to stop flying it.”

“’Why?’ he said. ‘Because I don’t like it flying over my house,’ I said.”

“’Where do you live?’ he said. ‘Down at the corner,’ I said. ‘You can fly it somewhere else.’”

Maybe (name deleted) will take personal responsibility and fly his toy where it won’t bother anyone, where it won’t crash and hurt someone. No different than responsible owners of firearms who take safety training and secure their weapons not because the constitution allows them to, but because they take responsibility for their health and safety and that of the people around them.

Those who are unable or incapable of being responsible for their health and safety and the health and safety of those around them should be guided by the iron fist: no drones, no weapons. And there are places and times where and when we just don’t take drones and weapons. [ FAA Proposes Nearly $2 Million Fine To Drone Operator For Restricted Flights ]

Was anyone in the 12th Man crowd filling the stadium last Monday night packing drones or weapons? No. Did those who could not bring drones or weapons feel like their God-given constitutional right was being violated? Nope. And you know what? Qwest Field was one of the safest places to be in Seattle during Monday Night Football.

--Mike Sato

Let’s Talk About Sex For A Change

He/She/He Limpet (Jan Delsing/BioLib)

How about that Bruce Jenner? Makes that trans-sex transformation to female and gets the exclusive and the cover of Vanity Fair which is then picked up by every major and minor news outlet in the world. Reminds me of the time a few years back when the ribbed Mediterranean limpet (Patella ferruginea) was found to be able to change its sex from male to female and back again.

Mr./Mrs. Limpet had neither the vanity nor the desire to try for the cover of Vanity Fair but was described by John R. Platt in a Scientific American blog as nearly extinct and the subject of efforts by scientists to learn how it breeds and reproduces to save it from extinction. (The Incredible Mr./Mrs. Limpet: The Endangered, Sex-Changing Sea Snail)

Most limpet species possess both male and female characteristics and change gender in their lives due to external environmental factors; Patella ferruginea, however, is unusual in changing gender then back again, scientists discovered. When and why still remains a mystery.

The scientists wrote in a paper that, this discovery provides "new direction for research into the mechanisms and factors driving sex change and its effects on the population dynamics" for the species, which may help to inform conservation strategies to keep it from extinction.

Meanwhile, in an attempt to ride the media frenzy on June 1, the endangered smalltooth sawfish muscled in on the news with the discovery that they are resorting to “virgin births” in the wild— perhaps in an effort to survive.

According to The Washington Post, “Female sawfish in Florida estuaries were found to have produced living offspring without the help of a male. Researchers found that 3 percent of sawfish in their study were the result of this unusual reproductive strategy.” (On the verge of extinction, female sawfish resort to ‘virgin births’ to survive)

In rare instances some vertebrate females have been known to switch between sexual and asexual reproduction depending on the availability of a mate. Reproducing without mating is called facultative parthenogenesis where an egg absorbs a genetically identical cell to create offspring about half as genetically diverse as the mother. These offspring often don't survive but enough are around in Florida to be counted.

OK. You read it here and in Scientific American and The Washington Post.

Vanity vanitatum, omnia vanitas.

--Mike Sato

The 12th Man On MLK Day

Hard to sit down and compose a Martin Luther King Day blog after watching the end of Sunday’s Seattle Seahawk game. The 12th Man/Woman in houses up and down the neighborhood street yelled himself/herself hoarse. I hope they yell as hard for justice on Monday but race, civil rights, equal opportunity, domestic abuse, gender equality aren’t as simple as a football game, regardless of how much some people might think of sports as a metaphor for life.

The football league is sponsoring 30-second public service announcements featuring football players who are shown having a hard time talking about domestic violence and sexual assault. I’m not sure who those messages are addressed to. I don’t have any difficulty talking about domestic violence and sexual abuse: I can look directly into a camera and say unequivocally that domestic violence and sexual assault are wrong and that anyone who behaves that way or condones that behavior is a creep, period.

Can we do the same for race and gender? Look directly into the camera and say, unequivocally, that discrimination in employment, housing, policing, health care, education is wrong? That it doesn’t matter what you might think or feel, but anyone who behaves that way or condone that kind of behavior is a creep, period?

Is “creep” too mild? What would you call them?

Yes, I know: behavior like that is against the law. But laws are sand, custom is rock. Unless custom changes, the creeps continue to behave, well, like creeps. As long as someone feels like they have power over another, they will not stand as equals and the opportunity to be a creep continues.

If all you want to do is educate, make more 30-second public service annoucements? I think it’s better to start right now by calling out the creeps, as hard and dangerous as it is, and to talk and keep talking about equal justice for all. Louder. We might even change some behavior and that would make Dr. King happy.

Ready to yell for justice, 12th Man, 12th Woman?

--Mike Sato

12th Man et al: When Was The Last Time You Cheered?

PHOTO: TDdaily.com

The last time a lot of folks in Washington state cheered was two weekends ago and the next time they expect to cheer will be when the Super Bowl is played this Sunday.

Since then, I watched rugby being played on television with the sound off last weekend and, not knowing much about the game’s rules, was amazed at the players’ prowess but had no idea what to cheer about. On Sunday, I watched the Grammy Awards with the sound on and heard a lot of cheering but just couldn’t figure out what the cheering was about.

In high school, I cheered. We had pep rallies and cheer leaders. We cheered at football games. We were led in cheers extolling the offense to go down the field and the defense to hold that line, and in cheers appreciating the wounded warrior taken from the field of action. We cheered as one voice spontaneously when a runner broke loose or when a long pass connected.

We were really “old school” back then — no trash talk allowed, no belittling the ones you beat. Sort of like a golden rule of competing: play the way you want to be played against— play clean, win clean, don’t make it personal.

More recently, I recall chanting “Yes We Can” and “Four More Years.” The last time I recall really letting out a hearty cheer was on Election Night 2012 and before that Election Night 2008. But I know winning elections is one thing, an important thing, but only the start of governing. I think there is a rule of campaigning that says winning at all cost will not lead to good governance.

Over the years I’ve chanted “LBJ, How Many Boys Have You Killed Today” and “Hell No We Won’t Go.” I’ve cheered when my horse won at the track. I cheered when I saw Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. But I’ve never chanted “USA.”

I’ve joined in cheering performers at music events and plays. I’ve never cheered boxers beating each other up or professional wrestlers throwing each other out of the ring.

Maybe it’s all a matter of taste but in all cases I can understand the seductive power of joining in to cheer, whether it be for the Seahawks or for Daft Punk or your favorite rugby team: it’s being a part of the shared power of the many, the willing suspension of the individual to the voice of the whole.

With sports and music, one can forget, at least for awhile, that it’s bread and circuses, not real life as we know our everyday life. While we are cheering as one voice, we can forget these are multi-million dollar industries selling products and experiences. Nobody cheers for Boeing or Microsoft or Amazon. But it’s entertainment and, as long as nobody gets hurt, it remains entertainment.

But what we cheer for in our real lives isn’t entertainment. When we cheer the victor and demean the loser, we sully the contest. When we cheer the performance, winners and losers, we elevate the contest. What we cheer for and how we cheer, I think, makes a big difference in how we see our world.

So, when was the last time you cheered?

--Mike Sato

Are We Capable of Protecting the Oceans? --Probably Not.

Transforming Earth (New Scientist)

BBC News asked that question to a number of experts at the beginning of the month ( Viewpoints: Are humans capable of protecting the oceans?  ) and, not being an expert, I’ve been grappling with an answer for the last couple of weeks.

According to BBC News:

The health of the world's oceans is deteriorating even faster than had previously been thought, a report says. A review from the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) warns that the oceans are facing multiple threats.
They are being heated by climate change, turned slowly less alkaline by absorbing CO2, and suffering from overfishing and pollution. The report warns that dead zones formed by fertiliser run-off are a problem. It says conditions are ripe for the sort of mass extinction event that has afflicted the oceans in the past. Are humans capable of protecting the oceans and preventing a mass ocean extinction?

You can read the answers of some of the experts but take some time to answer the question yourself. For me, these last few weeks since the BBC News article ran was characterized by some dark assessments of our human capacity for spinning our wheels while strutting and fretting amidst looming financial disaster aka shutdown and debt ceiling Russian roulette.

When I think about the ignorance and mendacity demonstated from right-wingnut leaders and their constituents, the oceans and their inhabitants are doomed. Not all of the oceans critters— there will be blooms of jellyfish and blankets of toxic algae to take their places. Nature moves on.

As a rule, ends come with dramatic bangs; they more likely come with whimpers. And the effects of climate change, ocean acidification and marine dead zones will be felt and reported over many more lifetimes than those of us who are here today.

In better moments, I’m heartened when I read about geoengineering solutions like those highlighted in last week’s issue of New Scientist ( Terraforming Earth: Geoengineering megaplan starts now ) because engineering solutions can be pretty cool. The article talks about the well-known bromide of ‘plant a tree’ but on a massive scale. Then there are new technologies like growing crops and burning them to capture their carbon and burying it, sucking carbon out of the air and burying it, fertilizing the ocean with iron to grow plankton to capture carbon (something like what was done off the BC coast), and throwing lime into the ocean.

These are expensive engineering solutions which would change the face of the earth and would draw screams and protests from environmentalists like me. But those are the kinds of engineering solutions it would take to remove the amount of carbon dioxide we currently have in the atmosphere and reverse the climate and acidification trends.

Maybe you don’t like it but it’s at least pretty interesting— and a lot more interesting than listening to Governor Jay’s climate change initiative proposals he presented last Monday. ( Inslee Wants To Explore State-Only ‘Cap and Trade’ Scheme ) Republican legislators immediately objected to his proposals and offered their best alternative solutions, such as Sen. Doug Ericksen (R-Ferndale) wanting nuclear power, no doubt to be sited in his district for job-hungry constituents.

But geoengineering solutions to remove carbon out of the atmosphere and to save the oceans are fruitless unless we humans modify our terrestrial behavior and reduce the amount of carbon we continue to put into the atmosphere.

That’s the part where the darkness settled over me these last two weeks. We used to say that if people understood what was happening to Puget Sound, they would work to save Puget Sound. A board member once tried to slay that by saying, “What do you want? A bunch of educated people watching Puget Sound go down the toilet?”-- meaning it took action, not understanding, to save the Sound. Like in philosophy, the gap between is and ought isn’t necessarily a logical progression.

It gets dark when I think about studies showing how people collect facts to reinforce what they already believe and discount facts that contradict their beliefs. How many Americans still believe we invaded Iraq because Saddam Hussein was somehow responsible for 9/11? How come more Americans are against Obamacare than the Affordable Health Care Act?

In the dark times I fault the ignorant— but I will reserve the deeper circle of Hell for the leaders who fan the flames of ignorance to exercise their power. Extinctions happen every day; I think the demise of much of what we know as life in the oceans today will be with a whimper and other forms of life will take their place. So, are we capable of protecting the oceans? Probably not.

What do you think?

--Mike Sato

Discussing “Dark Ecology”

Two weeks ago in Salish Sea News and Weather, I encouraged folks to read Paul Kingsnorth’s essay in Orion Magazine, “Dark Ecology: Searching for Truth in a post-green world.”  It’s long but pretty provocative; it merits some discussion.

Like Bill McKibbon in The End of Nature, Kingsnorth laments our taming of Nature, the defanging of the self-willed Other that conservationist once sought to live in balance with, and replacing this Other with a utility system providing us with goods and services. The first 20 years of the modern environmental movement-- from the first Earth Day to the first Rio Summit in 1992-- were glory days, according to Kingsnorth. The next 20 years, exemplified at the second Rio Conference by non-governmental groups struggling and failing to find a common direction when facing major habitat losses, climate change and world economic downturns, Kingsnorth judges as steps toward the end of our natural world, thanks to our industrial-technological society.

“Progress” is an illusion; the new environmental technocrats, those he calls neo-environmentalists, will not save nature through technological solutions.

Kingsnorth: “If you think you can magic us out of the progress trap with new ideas or new technologies, you are wasting your time. If you think that the usual “campaigning” behavior is going to work today where it didn’t work yesterday, you will be wasting your time. If you think the machine can be reformed, tamed, or defanged, you will be wasting your time. If you draw up a great big plan for a better world based on science and rational argument, you will be wasting your time. If you try to live in the past, you will be wasting your time. If you romanticize hunting and gathering or send bombs to computer store owners, you will be wasting your time....”

Kingsnorth puts forth five things he can think he could do honestly in the post-green world he sees. Briefly: 1. Withdraw from the world; 2. Preserve non-human life; 3. Get your hands dirty; 4. Insist that nature has a value beyond utility; 5. Build refuges

Kingsnorth: “These are the things that make sense to me right now when I think about what is coming and what I can do, still, with some joy and determination. If you don’t feel despair, in times like these, you are not fully alive. But there has to be something beyond despair too; or rather, something that accompanies it, like a companion on the road. This is my approach, right now. It is, I suppose, the development of a personal philosophy for a dark time: a dark ecology. None of it is going to save the world—but then there is no saving the world, and the ones who say there is are the ones you need to save it from....”

In discussing this “dark ecology,” one reader wrote to me: “I taught an 8-week course on climate change a couple of years ago for the local Catholic Church, through their social justice program.  The Catholic Archdiocese developed the curriculum, amazingly (those Jesuits are awesome). That course taught me just as much as the students who took it.  I came away angry, depressed and then finally resigned to what I believe to be our fate - that the human race is going to become extinct in the next few hundred years, and we will take out most of the rest of the world's biodiversity along with us.  Already, according to EO Wilson, we've eradicated almost 50% of the world's flora and fauna. That doesn't stop me from doing my best to make it be different, but I see all around me the unsustainability of this human-dominated world now. It just changed the way I see things utterly.  There's no way this kind of life can continue.  No way.  First it pissed me off totally, but now, most of the time, I am set free.  I think Gloria Steinem said that, actually:  "The truth shall set you free, but first you're gonna be really pissed off."

I guess I, too, am pissed off if I’m honest about the arc of the last 40 years. I didn’t focus on the environment until the mid-80s having started out in activism against the war machine and organizing around land use and energy politics. What do we have to show for much of the time and effort spent trying to build a constituency that balances humans and wilderness in land use, energy and environment? Too often it is the sad shrug of, “It would have been worse if nothing had been done.” True, but that’s not going to bring back untamed wilderness, Nature as the self-willed Other, I’ve seen lost over and over the last 40 years.  The only times when we notice Nature as the self-willed Other is when the earth quakes, the rivers flood and the seas rise over the shores. And we talk then of engineering and technological measures to keep Nature in her place. Sure, there’s a resilience in Nature because Nature is blindly fecund and will fill every niche when diversity declines. But damn it, I like whales and rockfish and auklets more than cockroaches and jellyfish— and I know what’s called “nature” will be different for my grandkids. It already is from what it was 40 years ago.

I won’t withdraw. I still get too much of an adrenal charge organizing around an issue and mobilizing people for socially redeeming causes. The days when it’s hard to get going are days when it’s clear we too often win a campaign but fail to sustain a culture of change. That’s a hard truth to face: that we need to build the kinds of communities that sustain the broad range of changes that we work towards in health, in food, in energy, in land use, in conservation, in art, in matters of the spirit.

That takes time and effort and that may well be as Kingsnorth concludes a waste of time. I don’t think so, at least I hope not. I think it’s a matter of survival, not saving the world. I’d add “compassion” to Kingsnorth’s “things to do” list:   I will preserve human and non-human life. I will get my hands dirty. I will insist that nature has a value beyond utility. And I will build, if I can, or at least protect, a refuge, a wild place for the self-willed Other.

I’ve had a say here. I invite you to read Kingsnorth’s piece and share what you think.

--Mike Sato

Bowl Alone, Die Alone

It’s been a bit of a strange few days since the end of the old year and the beginning of the new-- being homebound because of an illness, watching our government turn itself inside out over a fiscal crisis, considering the usual constellation of resolutions to make myself a better person in the year to come.  A reflective period, as it were.

I read Eric Klineberg’s article, “Adaptation,” in this week’s issue of The New Yorker, subtitled “How can cities be ‘climate-proofed’?” In addition to the engineering and technological ‘fixes’ he reviews in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, Klineberg describes the mortality rate among different neighborhoods in the 1995 summer heat wave that savaged Chicago and killed 739 people.

Subsequent studies showed that mortality was consistent with Chicago’s demographics of segregation and inequality: eight of 10 areas with the highest death rates were African-American, characterized by concentrated poverty and violent crime. But: three of the 10 neighborhoods with the lowest heat-wave death rates were also poor, violent and predominantly African-American. The difference, in part, was people living more as a community in one, looking out for each other.

Building community ties so that residents know which of their neighbors are vulnerable and how to assist them can become a low-cost tactic applicable to natural disaster and climate-change survival strategies.

In the ‘70s, I lived on an island where we did know, for better or worse, a lot more about each other’s lives. We sat around in the long, dark winter nights fantasizing about how we would survive if the military-industrial society on the mainland were to collapse. It didn't and we tended to bicker a lot-- but we were pretty good about thinking about ourselves as a community and responded well when the occasion arose.

I'm now a townie and, more recently, I’d spent some time thinking about where my communities were heading after Robert Putnam wrote his book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Writing at the turn of this century, Putnam found civic participation in organizations in decline. Using the example of bowling, Putnam describes how the number of people bowling has increased but the number of people bowling in leagues has decreased. Community, if it continues, will be bound together in a different way than by engagement in civil organizations.

Rather abstract for the first week of the new year— but here’s the test I put to myself about me in my neighborhood: If a major natural disaster were to occur, who would need help? What skills and resources do I have that would be of value to our neighborhood? What are the skills and resources— and needs— of this neighborhood? I know Nick and Leta, Jackie, Jason and Whitney, Phil and Cynthia, Steve, Brook, and Laura— but who are all those other people?

What would make us a community rather than a neighborhood? I don’t think I will volunteer to keep the survival rations for everyone in my garage but it would at least help, as a first step, to know who folks are— and for them to know who I am.

A good resolution for the new year. I may be bowling alone but I don’t want to die alone.

--Mike Sato

Ignorant and Stupid People Vote, Too

"No, that's ignorant. They just don't know any better."

"I read in the LA Times that last weekend’s poll of Republican voters in Alabama and Mississippi found about half still believe President Obama is a Muslim and about 1 in 4 believes his parents’ interracial marriage should have been illegal.

I usually check my gut response by first reminding myself that polls, like statistics, can be used to show practically anything and  second, that the movie, Nurse Betty, makes a good, albeit rather violent, point about the difference between ignorance and stupidity.

Ignorant is not knowing any better; stupid is...well, stupid.

The world’s changed enough that I don’t worry too much any more about the interracial marriage issue. When I first moved to the back woods in the early ‘70s, Esther Borg used to refer to me as the “guy married to the white woman.” Esther’s dead now; my children are ‘mixed’ and my grandchildren even more ‘mixed.’  Long live miscegenation.

I’m not so sure about the religion issue.  I like when people get spiritual to bring us together, I don’t like when it’s used as some kind of credential to determine who’s in and who’s out.

As far as I’m concerned, the public good is not defined by Christian, Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu scripture— not in this country, my country.

Seems to me if someone says being a Mormon won’t determine how he will govern if elected or if someone says he is a Christian, then that should be good enough. So, now you know and to think otherwise would be...well, stupid.

But we also know it’s not what we know as much as what we believe that determines what we think and do. Ignorant and stupid people vote, too.

I might not like it but I wouldn’t have it any other way, not in this country, my country.

--Mike Sato

New Year’s Fireworks, Price of Ahi, Marine Reserves and Civil Unions

Happy New Year.


The President leaves today to go back to work. I'm here for a few more days.


This New Year’s Eve was the first celebrated with an island-wide ban on Oahu on personal aerial fireworks. None of those black-smoker sparklers either. Fewer permits were bought to pop firecrackers. Finally, after all the years of discussion and debate, rules were in place to keep the evening’s air cleaner and fires prevented.

Good to allow people to breathe on New Year’s eve, good to keep roofs and hillsides from burning, and good to make life bearable for the dogs, cats and birds that have had to suffer through the nights. How strange, having grown up with fireworks and coming "home" to Honolulu all these years for New Year’s celebrations, to see a tradition — controversial, no doubt — fade. There were still firecrackers popping as midnight approached and some personal aerials filled the skies but it was noticeably a much more subdued welcome for the new year. But I missed, on the morning after, seeing the ubiquitous flakes of red firecracker paper littering the streets and the powder burns streaked across the blacktop.

Another New Year’s tradition closely reported on is the price of ahi, or yellowtail tuna, eaten raw as sashimi on New Year’s Day. Ahi is prized for the day’s feast because, besides being tasty, it maintains its freshness and firmness on the serving plate. There will always be demand so supply determines the price of ahi by the day before New Year’s day. I think that the price topped $30 by New Year’s eve. Try that with Chinook or halibut one of these days.

Two other changes took place when the clock struck midnight and 2012 began in Hawaii.

In Honolulu, fishing opened in the Waikiki-Diamond Head Shoreline Fishing Management Areas bounded by the Waikiki War Memorial Natatorium to the Diamond Head lighthouse. The area is closed in odd-numbered years to allow fish stocks to recover. The area of the Waikiki Marine Life Conservation District from the Natatorium to the Kapahulu sea wall remains closed to fishing.  (If you’ve been to Waikiki, you will understand that.) in any case, the signs along the shoreline make the demarcations and regulations clear.

And, as of the new year, civil unions are legal and recognized in Hawaii. Congratulations. Hauoli makahiki hou. Aloha.
 
--Mike Sato

Smokin’ and Talkin’ and Textin’ While Drivin’

I stopped smoking a few years ago. These days, while driving, I sometimes answer my cell phone or make calls.

Last week, Deborah Hersman, chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, gave an impassioned plea for drivers to stop using cell phones while driving.

I know she’s right. Using the cell phone while driving is distracting and dangerous. I also know that “Just Say NO” doesn’t work to change people’s behavior.

Matt Richtel in his New York Times article “Reframing the Debate Over Using Phones Behind the Wheel” unpacked some of the motivators that make cell phones so compelling.

Like smoking, being able to communicate anywhere may have a cool factor like smoking had years ago. Cell phones relieve restlessness and boredom. The compulsion is powerful: “People do not know when an urgent or interesting e-mail or text will come in, so they feel compelled to check it all the time.”

We are social animals. “The ring of a phone or the ping of text becomes a promise of human connection.” Information has a value that is lost over time. Answer it now; send it now.

Consider this a good social marketing exercise to think about what it will take to change societal values and behaviors surrounding using cell phones while driving.

How about a technology fix  that would block cell phone signals while a vehicle is in motion? That would stop cell phone use but also insure that my family and friends would choose never to ride with me.

Tough laws, enforcement and education have worked in effecting changes in drunk driving, seat belt and helmet laws.

As a smoker, I heard all the health reasons to stop smoking. Shown all the ways second-hand smoke hurt those around me. Figured out how much the habit was costing me. I’m sure there were smokers who quit for those reasons. I quit but not for any of those reasons but quit because it was something my father wanted me to do and, after he passed away, I thought there was at least one hard thing I could do for him. And I did it.

Different motivators work for different folks.

Smokers quit for a number of different reasons. Smokers die. Smokers get taxed heavily. Smokers have fewer and fewer public places where they can smoke.  Smoking is no longer a societal norm because of a combination of education, regulation and enforcement.

Maybe messaging that says “driving while texting is just not cool” would work for a social segment. Maybe “driving while phoning is dangerous to your health” would work for another. Or “practice safe text.” Or even an abstinence pledge for others.  More research is needed here.

In the meantime, maybe cell and smart phone manufacturers would include an easily activated message and voice mail feature that says, “Hey dudes, I’m driving, be back soon.”

If you drive and text and kill yourself, that’s fine with me. But if you hurt or kill others, you go to hell. Maybe those zealots who pushed relentlessly for no-smoking regulations would work to provide a meaningful deterrent by strengthen the penalties for drivers at fault in accidents when they were using a cell phone. (Yes, phone records can be subpoenaed.)

And maybe friends and family, if they can take a moment off from their handheld devices, could remind drivers that “Friends don’t let friends drive and text.”

What do you suggest?

--Mike Sato