I really don't agree with much of what he's saying but I LOVE watching them panic.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
The Maze and the Minotaur
The role of false choices and the state in the age of unreason.
I witnessed a dispute between my nephew and his mother about the amount of time he spent playing video games and watching television. The nephew, upset at the television in the living room being broken disrupted his habitual video gaming and/or endless channel surfing. His mother, unsuccessfully, tried to explain to him that these "activities" were actually poisonous to his chances of a positive future. This sparked a thought; what where the real choices this fourteen-year-old boy had? Not the apparent choices but the choices that would actually do something to improve his life from his perspective. I struggled with this.
The kid spends his time playing first-person-shooter games. When he wasn't playing the games he would watch YouTube videos of other people playing the games. These games are mazes where the player navigates a virtual territory, destroys computer generated monsters and finds and utilizes virtual tools and treasure. None of this translates into the real world because the kid won't; leave the house, face any challenges in reality, or use any real world tools. He prefers a virtual maze. Strangely, this is absolutely normal.
What is it about mazes?
The ancient civilization that was Crete before the Greeks got organized was famous for having a Labyrinth, the original labyrinth, into which young men and women were tossed where they would wander the maze and, according to mythology, encounter the bull-headed Minotaur that would hunt them through the maze and kill them. These young people were paid as tribute to the Cretans from neighboring states. Right from the start of our civilization, a labyrinth of choices, young people tossed into the maze, and hunted through it by the ultimate government representative, the Minotaur.
Young people still face a labyrinth of choices. Most of them meaningless but touted, promoted, peer-pressured and infused into every media available to them as critical to who they are, how they will succeed or fail, who will love or hate them, live or die. Yet these are bogus choices.
All sodas are carbonated, flavored corn-syrup, artificial sweetener and tap water. All of them slow poisons. Our food system is like a corn maze where all the turns leave you facing yet-more-corn except one; the exit. The thousands of choices we are presented with are a mask for the ultimate non-choice; they are absolutely unable, most of them, to quit being consumers. There is no non-consumer space open to them. All of their needs, food, clothing, shelter, entertainment, medical care and now, social-interaction are presented to them by the maze of corporate culture. A culture so pervasive, so ubiquitous, that they are no more aware of it than a goldfish is aware of the water in his bowl.
The human brain likes mazes. Hundreds of thousands of years of walking down game trails noting which plants were fruiting, what had been recently grazed and which tree the leopard liked to lurk in gives us an instinct for mapping our surroundings. Wandering to unfamiliar or rarely visited territory was how our primate ancestors found new sources of food, game and shelter. Outside of cities every step on a wild trail is worthy of attention as there are things better left untrampled. Inside cities, people drag their feet around as if a step is the same as a stumble. In cities, your surroundings are important only if you have money. If you don't have money you spend your time hiding from the minotaur, the police. Police don't fight crime they herd populations. Try to get the police to investigate a burglary.
At the same time children are excluded from participation in much of the urban maze they are offered a plethora of virtual mazes. In a virtual maze they get to play the minotaur. The player is the hunter. The player gets little virtual rewards for learning the maze and dominating the virtual inhabitants. It's a really nasty bit too since a person playing a video game is captured by a maze bigger than himself and the game. The labyrinth builder doesn't even have to build walls or physically chase them around; their brain runs around in circles while they sit there as a passive lump taking breaks only to work, eat, sleep and dispose of wastes.
Is this starting to sound familiar? The supermarket is a maze; they change the layout regularly. Television is a maze; you make choices by changing channels but you are still entrapped. Schooling is a maze; it's television but more expensive and more demanding of 'buy-in' from the maze runners. Always there are a multitude of choices, tiny intermediate rewards and the promise of a great reward at the center, the heart of the maze. A few fools even get that reward from time to time.
The elites that design all these mazes have one goal in mind. They want to keep otherwise difficult populations available for use but disable their ability to claim free agency. The easiest way to do this is to reward poor choices. Most importantly they disrupt critical thinking and reward idiots. It's not an accident that people on television are idiots. It's not an accident that people are rewarded for demonstrating the ability to lie to themselves. It's not an accident that a certain political party has front men that are intellectually challenged. Reasoned thinking is dangerous. Somebody might get the idea that an hour of say, Jesus Montoya the grape pruner's life is worth the same as an hour of a Wall Street executives life. The grape pruner can be proven to be doing something productive. The executive is, at best, a symbiont, usually a parasite, frequently a predator.
So mazes are designed to control your thinking. Mazes are built to control your movements. Mazes are designed to entrain your mind and defuse your frustration. Start looking for those mazes and you will see them forming around you; physically, mentally, socially. Refuse one maze and you will be offered another. Start climbing the walls and you'll meet the minotaur. Just remember he's in a maze too. His choices have been programmed and you can use that programming.
Do your best not to play. Confound the labyrinth. Introduce errors. Teach critical thinking. Spend as much time as possible in the natural world. Limit your machine time. Don't run. Climb the walls. The true maze is in our minds.
I witnessed a dispute between my nephew and his mother about the amount of time he spent playing video games and watching television. The nephew, upset at the television in the living room being broken disrupted his habitual video gaming and/or endless channel surfing. His mother, unsuccessfully, tried to explain to him that these "activities" were actually poisonous to his chances of a positive future. This sparked a thought; what where the real choices this fourteen-year-old boy had? Not the apparent choices but the choices that would actually do something to improve his life from his perspective. I struggled with this.
The kid spends his time playing first-person-shooter games. When he wasn't playing the games he would watch YouTube videos of other people playing the games. These games are mazes where the player navigates a virtual territory, destroys computer generated monsters and finds and utilizes virtual tools and treasure. None of this translates into the real world because the kid won't; leave the house, face any challenges in reality, or use any real world tools. He prefers a virtual maze. Strangely, this is absolutely normal.
What is it about mazes?
The ancient civilization that was Crete before the Greeks got organized was famous for having a Labyrinth, the original labyrinth, into which young men and women were tossed where they would wander the maze and, according to mythology, encounter the bull-headed Minotaur that would hunt them through the maze and kill them. These young people were paid as tribute to the Cretans from neighboring states. Right from the start of our civilization, a labyrinth of choices, young people tossed into the maze, and hunted through it by the ultimate government representative, the Minotaur.
Young people still face a labyrinth of choices. Most of them meaningless but touted, promoted, peer-pressured and infused into every media available to them as critical to who they are, how they will succeed or fail, who will love or hate them, live or die. Yet these are bogus choices.
All sodas are carbonated, flavored corn-syrup, artificial sweetener and tap water. All of them slow poisons. Our food system is like a corn maze where all the turns leave you facing yet-more-corn except one; the exit. The thousands of choices we are presented with are a mask for the ultimate non-choice; they are absolutely unable, most of them, to quit being consumers. There is no non-consumer space open to them. All of their needs, food, clothing, shelter, entertainment, medical care and now, social-interaction are presented to them by the maze of corporate culture. A culture so pervasive, so ubiquitous, that they are no more aware of it than a goldfish is aware of the water in his bowl.
The human brain likes mazes. Hundreds of thousands of years of walking down game trails noting which plants were fruiting, what had been recently grazed and which tree the leopard liked to lurk in gives us an instinct for mapping our surroundings. Wandering to unfamiliar or rarely visited territory was how our primate ancestors found new sources of food, game and shelter. Outside of cities every step on a wild trail is worthy of attention as there are things better left untrampled. Inside cities, people drag their feet around as if a step is the same as a stumble. In cities, your surroundings are important only if you have money. If you don't have money you spend your time hiding from the minotaur, the police. Police don't fight crime they herd populations. Try to get the police to investigate a burglary.
At the same time children are excluded from participation in much of the urban maze they are offered a plethora of virtual mazes. In a virtual maze they get to play the minotaur. The player is the hunter. The player gets little virtual rewards for learning the maze and dominating the virtual inhabitants. It's a really nasty bit too since a person playing a video game is captured by a maze bigger than himself and the game. The labyrinth builder doesn't even have to build walls or physically chase them around; their brain runs around in circles while they sit there as a passive lump taking breaks only to work, eat, sleep and dispose of wastes.
Is this starting to sound familiar? The supermarket is a maze; they change the layout regularly. Television is a maze; you make choices by changing channels but you are still entrapped. Schooling is a maze; it's television but more expensive and more demanding of 'buy-in' from the maze runners. Always there are a multitude of choices, tiny intermediate rewards and the promise of a great reward at the center, the heart of the maze. A few fools even get that reward from time to time.
The elites that design all these mazes have one goal in mind. They want to keep otherwise difficult populations available for use but disable their ability to claim free agency. The easiest way to do this is to reward poor choices. Most importantly they disrupt critical thinking and reward idiots. It's not an accident that people on television are idiots. It's not an accident that people are rewarded for demonstrating the ability to lie to themselves. It's not an accident that a certain political party has front men that are intellectually challenged. Reasoned thinking is dangerous. Somebody might get the idea that an hour of say, Jesus Montoya the grape pruner's life is worth the same as an hour of a Wall Street executives life. The grape pruner can be proven to be doing something productive. The executive is, at best, a symbiont, usually a parasite, frequently a predator.
So mazes are designed to control your thinking. Mazes are built to control your movements. Mazes are designed to entrain your mind and defuse your frustration. Start looking for those mazes and you will see them forming around you; physically, mentally, socially. Refuse one maze and you will be offered another. Start climbing the walls and you'll meet the minotaur. Just remember he's in a maze too. His choices have been programmed and you can use that programming.
Do your best not to play. Confound the labyrinth. Introduce errors. Teach critical thinking. Spend as much time as possible in the natural world. Limit your machine time. Don't run. Climb the walls. The true maze is in our minds.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Learning the Abundance of Just Enough
Read this and turn away from your screens for a piece and look about you. Look at your stuff; really look at it. Chances are that you have way more of it than you know what to do with. I think I have twenty coffee mugs. I'm a single man. I only have two hands and four chairs and the chairs are in storage. I have a car that I haven't driven on an actual errand since August 2009. I have boxes of books and more boxes of kitchen ware. Look at your stuff and wonder; is it enough? Do I use all this? What's the point of this stuff anyway?
The "economic recovery" is crap. Anybody who tells you differently is lying and that's pretty much the entire mainstream media and most elective office holders. If you're anything like me you know a few people who are flat out-of-work and a few dozen more whose "job descriptions" rely heavily on yoga, tofu, pampered pets, massages, house plants, house-cleaning and handyman descriptions. Their actual incomes run about half to a third of what stable full-time employment would bring them. Surprisingly, no-one starves. Most have housing even if they move frequently. Their clothes may be worn but are usually clean and in fair condition barring fashion statements. They aren't going to be buying new: cars, houses, appliances, furniture or any other major purchases anytime soon. For some of them that may extend to ever again.
Yet they have enough. Most have the cars, bicycles, computers, clothes, furniture, kitchen-wares, linens etc. that are required to keep them comfortable. Many are concerned about losing weight. They all have cell phones. Everyone who wants recreational substances, alcohol, pot or whatever seems to be able to afford them. Utility bills get paid. Their medical care is deferred or billed to the state when their ailments get bad enough that a doctor is required. For most, it is enough.
In the next year millions more will be invited to learn the abundance of just enough. State and local governments are bankrupt and the federal government refuses to consider bailing them out. Jobs will be redlined. The american people have been told that governments can operate without raising taxes for thirty years and it's always been a flat lie. They've been told that they've been living in a capitalistic system also and that's been a lie as well. Look at the maps of which states pay funds into the federal budget and which states take money out. Most of the country geographically is on the dole one way or another. Reality and Congress are not in regular contact.
So as the economy rachets down due to reasons like Peak Oil, Climate Change damages and Finance Sector parasitism most of us are going to have to learn to make due with less. This is going to be painful for many until they learn to bicycle around, cook food from scratch ingredients, grow vegetables, glean fruits, mend clothing and get along with roommates. More than a few of us have learned how to treat everything short of major trauma and cancer without Big Pharmas big price tags. We'll learn to entertain each other as television and radio becomes increasingly, desperately, focused on extracting every last penny from those remaining in the "real economy."
We're better off.
Depressed? Slash the tires on your car, buy a bicycle and find something five or six miles out of town that you just have to get to. Lonely? Not with three roommates and their 28 friends wandering through you're not. Bored? Learn to play an instrument, paint, sew, knit, garden, fix bicycles, hack electronics, build furniture, boats, kilns, stoves and/or weld. Hungry? Learn the endless variations of beans/tortillas, hummus/pita, rice/curry, beets/cabbage or dhal/chapati that feed the rest of the world. Tired? Sling a hammock in a friends garage.
Learn to laugh as you dance. Comfort each other. Sit meditation. Paint faces. Learn to walk together. There is time enough and love enough for all. Just enough, if we share.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Technical Difficulties
My venerable and ancient Mac laptop has given up the ghost and is no longer with us. If you have wandered over here looking for me that's what happened.
I will be checking in at libraries and relatives houses as such access is available.
Thank you for your attention.
Pangolin
I will be checking in at libraries and relatives houses as such access is available.
Thank you for your attention.
Pangolin
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Canceling Saint Victim's Day.....
.... and demanding more.
I am hereby unilaterally and on behalf of the entire world canceling St. Victims Day. For those of you who are looking at your calendar and wondering when Saint Victims Day is the answer is pretty much every day. Any day, week or month that is announced to be XYZ "awareness" day counts. Cut it out. Just cut that shit out right now.
So what do I expect the people who have XYZ modern plight to do about getting the cooperation of the rest of us? Quit whining, get support the old fashioned political way, buy it with sex and money or fight dirty. Our American Founding Fathers did not kick out the British who had more money, a larger army and better transportation by standing in neat lines wearing brightly colored jackets waiting for the British cannon to chew them up. They shot the bastards from behind trees and walls and ran like hell.
Homeless people; grab a large stone and drop it on the road in front of the richest development in town. Repeat, with all your friends until arrested. Keep doing it until the police get exhausted. There are more of you than them and they really don't want to touch you. Oh, if you're getting arrested anyway; pee your pants, on purpose. (eat asparagus and take extra B Vitamins) There is nothing cops hate more than piss in their patrol car.
Health Care uninsured. Blockade one hospital or private medical building a week Critical Mass style. Make sure the plastic surgeons and other high profit medical business gets disrupted first. Oh, yeah; expect to get arrested also. Make sure you tell the officers how sick you are; it makes their jobs more fun to know they're arresting people who could code on them at a moments notice.
Climate Change? If you're concerned you better be on your bicycle and you better look good riding it. That means riding a clean, classy, bike whenever you can and presenting a neat, attractive appearance doing so. No spandex on your ass unless your S.O. can bounce quarters off it while you're sleeping. You could do something about your energy guzzling house too.
Foreclosed? You just lay down and took it didn't you? Did you demand the company foreclosing on you produce the physical note? Did you make them evict you? Did you leave them an intact house? Your job was to wrench up the works that screwed you as much as possible even if it did nothing to help you. It will help somebody.
Hungry? Plant food in planting strips and along rights of way. Take over watering systems to provide for your stuff. Correcting anything you do will cost them $75 per hour minimum. (2 guys, 1 truck, phone calls and confusion).
Sexually oppressed or fearful? If you were raped its about time you not only learned a Martial Art but start aggressively teaching it to kids of your cohort. It's also your job to make if fun, popular and sexy. Rapists should be extremely fearful of very small blades secreted about the persons of women and one shot pepper sprays. That or a swift kick in the acorns. Waiting for 'something to be done' is getting kind of stale don't you think? Here's a clue; the men aren't going to do it for you. You got one body and one life to figure it out. You're way behind.
Uneducated. Get one laptop and hand it around. Find a twelve year old boy to hijack internet service for you. Give him some cigarettes or booze. If his parents weren't slacking he'd refuse it. Knowledge is knowledge and degrees are increasingly worth nothing as employers realize they don't mean the degree holder can read, write, speak clearly or think outside of a three-ring-binder. Soon enough Google will have some way of evaluating real skills that will bypass the degree bullshit. Be prepared.
In short, get pissed off and prepare to make others uncomfortable. Then deal with the consequences. Gandhi beat the British by simply making it impossible for them to function. If we have to sandbag the roads with our living bodies we need to do the same thing until we get some basic humanity. I'm not talking three bedrooms and a Cadillac Escalade for everybody. How about minimal; housing (10'x10'), food, clothing, basic medical and dental care and a bus pass. If we can afford to keep the dry husks of our elderly propped up on machines for years we should be able to afford some bullshit standards for everyone else.
If they don't want to go along with the program; fuck em. Sandbag them. Do every legal thing you can to make the bastards miserable and then start on the illegal things that don't hurt people. If they ask who blocked this or that road stand up and demand a jury trial. Sandbag their asses there too.
Twenty percent of us are unemployed and the jobs are not appearing. We don't own jack because the banks been skimming the game the whole time. Time to fight back. Just quit with the fucking whining and don't ask me for a nickel for your walkathon.
St. Victims Day is cancelled until you all learn to work together.
p.s. If this is your house, business, road, school or whatever that is disrupted you may need to scream like hell about something being done to get these assholes doing something other than hassling you. Hint: sick, broke, homeless people got nothing but time on their hands until they can land slots as healthy, housed, non-broke people like you with better shit to do.
p.p.s.- Cambodia, Rwanda, Germany, Serbia, California and the Former Soviet Union tried the massive prison and execution thing. It backfires. (In California with real flames)
I am hereby unilaterally and on behalf of the entire world canceling St. Victims Day. For those of you who are looking at your calendar and wondering when Saint Victims Day is the answer is pretty much every day. Any day, week or month that is announced to be XYZ "awareness" day counts. Cut it out. Just cut that shit out right now.
So what do I expect the people who have XYZ modern plight to do about getting the cooperation of the rest of us? Quit whining, get support the old fashioned political way, buy it with sex and money or fight dirty. Our American Founding Fathers did not kick out the British who had more money, a larger army and better transportation by standing in neat lines wearing brightly colored jackets waiting for the British cannon to chew them up. They shot the bastards from behind trees and walls and ran like hell.
Homeless people; grab a large stone and drop it on the road in front of the richest development in town. Repeat, with all your friends until arrested. Keep doing it until the police get exhausted. There are more of you than them and they really don't want to touch you. Oh, if you're getting arrested anyway; pee your pants, on purpose. (eat asparagus and take extra B Vitamins) There is nothing cops hate more than piss in their patrol car.
Health Care uninsured. Blockade one hospital or private medical building a week Critical Mass style. Make sure the plastic surgeons and other high profit medical business gets disrupted first. Oh, yeah; expect to get arrested also. Make sure you tell the officers how sick you are; it makes their jobs more fun to know they're arresting people who could code on them at a moments notice.
Climate Change? If you're concerned you better be on your bicycle and you better look good riding it. That means riding a clean, classy, bike whenever you can and presenting a neat, attractive appearance doing so. No spandex on your ass unless your S.O. can bounce quarters off it while you're sleeping. You could do something about your energy guzzling house too.
Foreclosed? You just lay down and took it didn't you? Did you demand the company foreclosing on you produce the physical note? Did you make them evict you? Did you leave them an intact house? Your job was to wrench up the works that screwed you as much as possible even if it did nothing to help you. It will help somebody.
Hungry? Plant food in planting strips and along rights of way. Take over watering systems to provide for your stuff. Correcting anything you do will cost them $75 per hour minimum. (2 guys, 1 truck, phone calls and confusion).
Sexually oppressed or fearful? If you were raped its about time you not only learned a Martial Art but start aggressively teaching it to kids of your cohort. It's also your job to make if fun, popular and sexy. Rapists should be extremely fearful of very small blades secreted about the persons of women and one shot pepper sprays. That or a swift kick in the acorns. Waiting for 'something to be done' is getting kind of stale don't you think? Here's a clue; the men aren't going to do it for you. You got one body and one life to figure it out. You're way behind.
Uneducated. Get one laptop and hand it around. Find a twelve year old boy to hijack internet service for you. Give him some cigarettes or booze. If his parents weren't slacking he'd refuse it. Knowledge is knowledge and degrees are increasingly worth nothing as employers realize they don't mean the degree holder can read, write, speak clearly or think outside of a three-ring-binder. Soon enough Google will have some way of evaluating real skills that will bypass the degree bullshit. Be prepared.
In short, get pissed off and prepare to make others uncomfortable. Then deal with the consequences. Gandhi beat the British by simply making it impossible for them to function. If we have to sandbag the roads with our living bodies we need to do the same thing until we get some basic humanity. I'm not talking three bedrooms and a Cadillac Escalade for everybody. How about minimal; housing (10'x10'), food, clothing, basic medical and dental care and a bus pass. If we can afford to keep the dry husks of our elderly propped up on machines for years we should be able to afford some bullshit standards for everyone else.
If they don't want to go along with the program; fuck em. Sandbag them. Do every legal thing you can to make the bastards miserable and then start on the illegal things that don't hurt people. If they ask who blocked this or that road stand up and demand a jury trial. Sandbag their asses there too.
Twenty percent of us are unemployed and the jobs are not appearing. We don't own jack because the banks been skimming the game the whole time. Time to fight back. Just quit with the fucking whining and don't ask me for a nickel for your walkathon.
St. Victims Day is cancelled until you all learn to work together.
p.s. If this is your house, business, road, school or whatever that is disrupted you may need to scream like hell about something being done to get these assholes doing something other than hassling you. Hint: sick, broke, homeless people got nothing but time on their hands until they can land slots as healthy, housed, non-broke people like you with better shit to do.
p.p.s.- Cambodia, Rwanda, Germany, Serbia, California and the Former Soviet Union tried the massive prison and execution thing. It backfires. (In California with real flames)
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Failure Is Sudden
All the kings horses
and all the kings men
couldn't put Humpty
together again
Failure is sudden
it comes from long rot
you think to foresee it
I'm thinking not
It ends in confusion
This rot in the core
There many long years
And now it's no more
and all the kings men
couldn't put Humpty
together again
Failure is sudden
it comes from long rot
you think to foresee it
I'm thinking not
It ends in confusion
This rot in the core
There many long years
And now it's no more
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Solution: Piss on it...
Something completely different:
"Sustainable fertilizer: Urine and wood ash produce large harvest"
http://preview.tinyurl.com/n86598
Which backs up the work of this guy: http://e-terrapretarooftopexp.blogspot.com/
So you farmer types might want to set a terra cotta pot a discreet few steps out the back door and fill it with the ash from your wood stove. Modify as nature calls.
"Sustainable fertilizer: Urine and wood ash produce large harvest"
"Results of the first study evaluating the use of human urine mixed with wood ash as a fertilizer for food crops has found that the combination can be substituted for costly synthetic fertilizers to produce bumper crops of tomatoes without introducing any risk of disease for consumers. The study appears in the current issue of ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, a bi-weekly publication."
http://preview.tinyurl.com/n86598
Which backs up the work of this guy: http://e-terrapretarooftopexp.blogspot.com/
So you farmer types might want to set a terra cotta pot a discreet few steps out the back door and fill it with the ash from your wood stove. Modify as nature calls.
Reply to the Strong Man
There's a lot of strong men out there, good men, thinking men, who are sold a lie so that the powers that be can play god unhindered. The lie is this: You got to your place of comfort by your efforts alone. We'll protect your place; for a fee.
Then they say: The fees kind of high right now because we have to support all these slacker's. Cheat's. Lazy people. Gypsies. If you don't mind we'll just remove them and then the fee will go down. Just don't bother us while we do it.
This conversation has been going on forever and we've had a recent run on it over at Deep INTO ARTLIFE WEST in the comments section. More comment than blog but we like it and Nina's kind enough to host.
So I posted a comment there that I think is important enough to repeat here:
You see, I got hurt. Hurt so bad I can't find the trail back to the warm hearth. Just wandering the wilderness losing bits of my kit whenever I stop for a boil up. TPTB they whispered to what I thought was my family. Hey, you got YOURS to protect. Don't go helping him. So they wander out and give me a few kicks and tell me to get my ass back to the barn and do my chores and then they leave. Never a hand down to pull up on. No shoulder offered for a limp back.
The 'borgs been whispering to them too from the evil box. "This could be YOUR's. And THIS and this and this and this and then you will be complete. But not if you're helping others oh, no. How could you buy this if you're helping others. Be a Wolf. We've got the vultures to take care of the weak."
Then they say: The fees kind of high right now because we have to support all these slacker's. Cheat's. Lazy people. Gypsies. If you don't mind we'll just remove them and then the fee will go down. Just don't bother us while we do it.
This conversation has been going on forever and we've had a recent run on it over at Deep INTO ARTLIFE WEST in the comments section. More comment than blog but we like it and Nina's kind enough to host.
So I posted a comment there that I think is important enough to repeat here:
Got'cha Baz. You're a strong man who's got a good deal right now with TPTB. You've got your bit to play on and they mostly leave you alone on that bit. What's it to anyone else what work you do or don't do there? They weren't there helping you and you didn't want them there anyway.
Today.
Don't get hurt man. Nothing worse than a strong man brought low by pain. Or worse, asking your body to move and not even getting a response from the required part. You get hurt too far out the back door and it's the pigs turn to eat but you know that. Man hunting alone has to be lucky EVERY day.
There's no place to stand in the world for many of us. There is no place the government isn't claiming or deeding to the banksters. TPTB don't like you and they send a whole military squad to raid your house in the middle of the night and masked cyborg 'agents' shove automatic weapons in your kids face at four in the morning. Happens to someone I know just about every year.
And they will shoot. Oh damn straight they will.
So that MINE word some folks hold on to is a LIE. It's a lie that the cyborg whispers to us to separate the strong from the weak. Wolves from the sheep, Steers from the heffers. We know what happens to steers, don't we now.
Hey, don't look here. We're just taking a few of the weak ones. Don't bother yourself about where we're taking them; do you want to come too? Then the 'borg looks at you and you KNOW you're fucked if you don't back off.
Don't bother yourself. It's just the tweakers. Just the morons. Just the gimps, gypsies, Indians, wetbacks and Maori. Just the Jews. We're just cutting out these steers to improve the herd.
You got yours know. You keep it. You don't owe them steers nothing.
Don't get hurt.
You see, I got hurt. Hurt so bad I can't find the trail back to the warm hearth. Just wandering the wilderness losing bits of my kit whenever I stop for a boil up. TPTB they whispered to what I thought was my family. Hey, you got YOURS to protect. Don't go helping him. So they wander out and give me a few kicks and tell me to get my ass back to the barn and do my chores and then they leave. Never a hand down to pull up on. No shoulder offered for a limp back.
The 'borgs been whispering to them too from the evil box. "This could be YOUR's. And THIS and this and this and this and then you will be complete. But not if you're helping others oh, no. How could you buy this if you're helping others. Be a Wolf. We've got the vultures to take care of the weak."
Monday, August 24, 2009
Crashing in the Fog, Smelling the Smoke
I was always crazy. Bad things happened to me before I could spell my name; Gitmo-style bad things. The first escape I had was nature. I found that under a bush or up a tree was a fair place to hide from the lash. The second escape was reading.
For some reason the original Whole Earth Catalog was left in my families living room; and all subsequent editions. Imagine a second grader learning to read with that as source material. Yurts, dome homes, aikido, organic gardening, sexual revolution, birth control, dope, alternative politics. "The Man Who Planted Trees" was in one of those books. I was ruined for commerce. Then I started reading Heinlein, Pohl, Asimov, Bradbury, Benford, Bear and Spider Robinson. Worlds with different rules, and new ideas.
By the seventh grade I was pretty close to unschoolable. I already read more than all of the other students and most of the teachers. I had too many ideas and no experience. I lasted through tenth grade by taking two days off a week to go hiking and acing tests on the days I attended. Drove everybody around me batshit.
I was never convinced that chasing the almighty dollar was worth a damn. I dropped in and out of college. Did stints as a cook, mailroom clerk, barrista, masseur, house-dad, construction worker, cloth dyer, retail clerk, handyman, manager and a few other things that I forget. Got married, rehabbed a house for the wife's family, got booted with no thanks. Helped set up a co-housing community where the ex and kids still live. Never finished college due to a little encounter with black mold. Learning a bit about pain now; from the inside.
The business of America has been fraud for over 30 years IMHO. The fortunate stumble onto the personal computer revolution helped balance the books but honestly never got us to break-even. Education is on a downhill slide. Reading skills that would have flunked you out of my mediocre high school are tolerated among at the State University down the block. College juniors stumbling to read portions of the text out loud as if we were in fourth grade. Business fraud is so rampant that your insurance, bank and credit card contracts mean nothing. Try and read them; I dare you.
While ever increasing amounts of information are available fewer people than ever have any clue as to know what to do with it. As Joe Bageant and many other writers are pointing out our brains are being jammed as if thinking were a speech by Fidel Castro. We are being advertised, game-boy'd, porn'd, caffeinated, televised, entertained, sugared, salted, I-podded and cell phoned into the chair bound critter from the Wall-E movie. All of this leads to cascades of bad decisions that pile up on each other like freeway traffic in tule fog. We can hear the crashing in the distance but we can't see the shape of the wreckage.
It's BAD people. We FUCKED UP. Climate Change is real and is rolling downhill. Our food supply is dependent upon ever-increasing supplies of oil. The oil supply has topped out and is decreasing. Our medical system ignores fundamental facts about how bacteria and viruses work. We have about a billion young men in the world who can't support wives; a billion potential soldiers. Only a tiny few of understand jack about defusing anger, stress, trauma and sexual violence. The really nasty bit is the lubrication, the money, that has kept the machine working to date, the american dollar, is turning from the oil of commerce to the sand in the gears.
Old school thinking isn't going to get us out of this one. You can take your capitalism, communism, marxism, Book of Mormon, Ayn Rand tracts and Starhawk DVD's and light a bonfire of the vanities. We need to crack our brains open to new ideas and then test those ideas out in millions of experiments. It's time to break open the hallucinogen locker and hand out the goodies in Parliments, Cabinets, Congress and colleges the world over. Not for entertainment, or the pretty lights or to get everyone laid. We have to shatter our individual stories of reality again and again until what's left is what nature puts in front of us. To break the idea that we understand reality independent of the natural world.
Nothing else.
Right now we don't seem to be able to see shit but our stories. We keep hearing the banging in the distance. Now we're smelling the smoke. It would sure be nice to be able to clear this fog.
For some reason the original Whole Earth Catalog was left in my families living room; and all subsequent editions. Imagine a second grader learning to read with that as source material. Yurts, dome homes, aikido, organic gardening, sexual revolution, birth control, dope, alternative politics. "The Man Who Planted Trees" was in one of those books. I was ruined for commerce. Then I started reading Heinlein, Pohl, Asimov, Bradbury, Benford, Bear and Spider Robinson. Worlds with different rules, and new ideas.
By the seventh grade I was pretty close to unschoolable. I already read more than all of the other students and most of the teachers. I had too many ideas and no experience. I lasted through tenth grade by taking two days off a week to go hiking and acing tests on the days I attended. Drove everybody around me batshit.
I was never convinced that chasing the almighty dollar was worth a damn. I dropped in and out of college. Did stints as a cook, mailroom clerk, barrista, masseur, house-dad, construction worker, cloth dyer, retail clerk, handyman, manager and a few other things that I forget. Got married, rehabbed a house for the wife's family, got booted with no thanks. Helped set up a co-housing community where the ex and kids still live. Never finished college due to a little encounter with black mold. Learning a bit about pain now; from the inside.
The business of America has been fraud for over 30 years IMHO. The fortunate stumble onto the personal computer revolution helped balance the books but honestly never got us to break-even. Education is on a downhill slide. Reading skills that would have flunked you out of my mediocre high school are tolerated among at the State University down the block. College juniors stumbling to read portions of the text out loud as if we were in fourth grade. Business fraud is so rampant that your insurance, bank and credit card contracts mean nothing. Try and read them; I dare you.
While ever increasing amounts of information are available fewer people than ever have any clue as to know what to do with it. As Joe Bageant and many other writers are pointing out our brains are being jammed as if thinking were a speech by Fidel Castro. We are being advertised, game-boy'd, porn'd, caffeinated, televised, entertained, sugared, salted, I-podded and cell phoned into the chair bound critter from the Wall-E movie. All of this leads to cascades of bad decisions that pile up on each other like freeway traffic in tule fog. We can hear the crashing in the distance but we can't see the shape of the wreckage.
It's BAD people. We FUCKED UP. Climate Change is real and is rolling downhill. Our food supply is dependent upon ever-increasing supplies of oil. The oil supply has topped out and is decreasing. Our medical system ignores fundamental facts about how bacteria and viruses work. We have about a billion young men in the world who can't support wives; a billion potential soldiers. Only a tiny few of understand jack about defusing anger, stress, trauma and sexual violence. The really nasty bit is the lubrication, the money, that has kept the machine working to date, the american dollar, is turning from the oil of commerce to the sand in the gears.
Old school thinking isn't going to get us out of this one. You can take your capitalism, communism, marxism, Book of Mormon, Ayn Rand tracts and Starhawk DVD's and light a bonfire of the vanities. We need to crack our brains open to new ideas and then test those ideas out in millions of experiments. It's time to break open the hallucinogen locker and hand out the goodies in Parliments, Cabinets, Congress and colleges the world over. Not for entertainment, or the pretty lights or to get everyone laid. We have to shatter our individual stories of reality again and again until what's left is what nature puts in front of us. To break the idea that we understand reality independent of the natural world.
Nothing else.
Right now we don't seem to be able to see shit but our stories. We keep hearing the banging in the distance. Now we're smelling the smoke. It would sure be nice to be able to clear this fog.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Get Off the Internet, It doesn't Matter
or 'keeping our corporate masters happy'
I repeatedly read people's blogs, posts, rants and implications that blogging doesn't matter. You don't matter unless you are standing on a street corner protesting or preferably rounding up a militia to gun it out with ZOG.
What utter crap.
It would be real nice if you quit voting too and we could all wake up every morning to the words 'President Palin' on NPR because no person in their right mind believes John McCain can wipe his own ass anymore. The man is well into age-related dementia and it's been obvious for years.
Three ways the internet matters:
1. Climate Change: It's real and the mainstream media does everything possible to confuse the issue and promote corporate lies. If you don't think climate change isn't kicking your ass already go to the grocery store and look at food prices. Read the real news about how New Orleans is ultimately doomed.
2. Biochar: The addition of charred biomass to soils may be as important as learning that we could save the seed from this melon and grow new melons next year. Far more important than industrial fertilizers and pesticides because the needed tools are a hoe and a machete. This technique is the only known method of reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide and harvesting a net energy gain.
3. Corporate Corruption: If you want to go on thinking that you're the ONLY person your (insert: bank, insurance company, doctor, credit card holder, home builder, employer, etc., etc, etc,) is ripping off you are entitled to that opinion. You are probably wrong and a quick Google search will show you how you are wrong. Corporations hold no goal more dearly than eliminating easy anonymity on the internet. So they can attack those who snitch on their bullshit.
If you want to keep believing that your problems are all your fault go for it. Get off the internet and sulk in your corner. Make a CEO happy.
Chances are your problems are like somebody else's problems. They might have a solution for your's and you might have something to offer them. But you have to find each other first and then you have to communicate. Your stupid little blog is an opening where somebody can find you. Their stupid little blog might point you to the herb that saves you from heart surgery that does nothing to extend your life. So you only get 10 hits a day. So what? You don't know which day it is that you're post will matter to somebody else.
Finally, all this back and forth on blog comments nurtures and maintains the art of written discourse. If you can write clearly you can think clearly. It's a skill that is only developed and improved by use and criticism. Watching TV and listening to your I-pod isn't doing you a bit of good once you are faced with a new problem to puzzle out. Your life will depend on being able to think for yourself. You can't rely on doctors, lawyers or your congressman to cover your ass here. When it comes to thinking; you're on your own bub.
Keep blogging.
I repeatedly read people's blogs, posts, rants and implications that blogging doesn't matter. You don't matter unless you are standing on a street corner protesting or preferably rounding up a militia to gun it out with ZOG.
What utter crap.
It would be real nice if you quit voting too and we could all wake up every morning to the words 'President Palin' on NPR because no person in their right mind believes John McCain can wipe his own ass anymore. The man is well into age-related dementia and it's been obvious for years.
Three ways the internet matters:
1. Climate Change: It's real and the mainstream media does everything possible to confuse the issue and promote corporate lies. If you don't think climate change isn't kicking your ass already go to the grocery store and look at food prices. Read the real news about how New Orleans is ultimately doomed.
2. Biochar: The addition of charred biomass to soils may be as important as learning that we could save the seed from this melon and grow new melons next year. Far more important than industrial fertilizers and pesticides because the needed tools are a hoe and a machete. This technique is the only known method of reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide and harvesting a net energy gain.
3. Corporate Corruption: If you want to go on thinking that you're the ONLY person your (insert: bank, insurance company, doctor, credit card holder, home builder, employer, etc., etc, etc,) is ripping off you are entitled to that opinion. You are probably wrong and a quick Google search will show you how you are wrong. Corporations hold no goal more dearly than eliminating easy anonymity on the internet. So they can attack those who snitch on their bullshit.
If you want to keep believing that your problems are all your fault go for it. Get off the internet and sulk in your corner. Make a CEO happy.
Chances are your problems are like somebody else's problems. They might have a solution for your's and you might have something to offer them. But you have to find each other first and then you have to communicate. Your stupid little blog is an opening where somebody can find you. Their stupid little blog might point you to the herb that saves you from heart surgery that does nothing to extend your life. So you only get 10 hits a day. So what? You don't know which day it is that you're post will matter to somebody else.
Finally, all this back and forth on blog comments nurtures and maintains the art of written discourse. If you can write clearly you can think clearly. It's a skill that is only developed and improved by use and criticism. Watching TV and listening to your I-pod isn't doing you a bit of good once you are faced with a new problem to puzzle out. Your life will depend on being able to think for yourself. You can't rely on doctors, lawyers or your congressman to cover your ass here. When it comes to thinking; you're on your own bub.
Keep blogging.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Reality Check: Global Food Crisis
These charts over at Global Research make clear that there are going to be many, many people in the world looking at empty porridge bowls in the next year. Far too much of the grain growing regions of the world are experiencing drought in a time when grain production is falling behind consumption a little bit each year.
Some years ago the world had surplus grain. Now, each year every silo is emptied at some point of the year. Remember the lesson of the bible in that a nation without full grain silos is in grave danger. A world with empty grain silos can be a typhoon or two away from disaster.
I can walk to a rice field in a long morning and glean if I want. Most of us don't have that luxury. Look at your grain consumption and maybe consider buying that one or two months security blanket in the form of extra hundredweights of rice, oats or wheat.
Some years ago the world had surplus grain. Now, each year every silo is emptied at some point of the year. Remember the lesson of the bible in that a nation without full grain silos is in grave danger. A world with empty grain silos can be a typhoon or two away from disaster.
I can walk to a rice field in a long morning and glean if I want. Most of us don't have that luxury. Look at your grain consumption and maybe consider buying that one or two months security blanket in the form of extra hundredweights of rice, oats or wheat.
Friday, August 7, 2009
Bring On the Suicide Booths
I know a secret. It's an ugly secret. The US is engaged in the practice of Eugenics. Specifically we are killing, through exposure and neglect, our excess population. The Greeks and Romans would "expose" babies born with defects on cold nights. They would put visibly deformed children out in the weather where cold and/or scavengers would kill them. This practice continues to this day in some parts of the world although people are reluctant to admit it. The US does this to it's "homeless" population. We push them out of available shelter in the hopes that they will die.
Let's be absolutely clear; there is shelter available. In the US there is likely a vacant bedroom for every single homeless person in the nation in housing already built for the rental market or for sale. There are tens of millions of "second homes." There are millions of permanently vacant hotel and motel rooms. There are fleets of boats and motor homes that have "live-aboard" capability. We just refuse to make these resources available for people who don't have access to sufficient cash money.
Homelessness kills. It's a death sentence as sure as some cancers. More so than prostate cancer. Without access to regular shelter and hygiene people die in far higher numbers than comparable populations. This has been proven in multiple studies by epidemiologists controlled for drug and alcohol abuse, presence or lack of various illnesses and other such factors. Preventing people from having regular shelter kills a fat percentage of them. (google your own damn cites you lazy bastard, ok check the footnotes)
We do this on purpose. OK not you, or maybe your small circle of friends but unless you have somebody living rent-free in your garage you are part of the problem. You, too, refuse to shelter these people. You're an Eugenicist just like the Nazi's. You pretend, like good Germans of the 1940's, that everything is ok when your eyes tell you it's not. Constantly dirty people with teeth falling out and open sores aren't going to live long sleeping on concrete. Call it a wild guess.
Add another factor; a huge number of newly employed people are about to lose their benefits. A certain percentage of these people will end up with post-traumatic stress disorder and for all economic purposes be useless as potential employees. Another huge chunk already have addictions and borderline mental illnesses that will become full on cases due to stress. It's a surplus population that isn't going away and we aren't going to find tax money to support.
Why not let them die? We aren't going to support them. Our elites say nasty things about chronically unemployed or they say nice things but refuse to provide the means for minimal needs. We expect them to die if they don't get better. We just don't admit it. Let's give them a break.
Let's build some (ok lots) suicide booths. A recurrent feature in science fiction dramas from Star Trek to the cartoon, Futurama, the idea of suicide booths refuses to go away. Because it's more humane than forcing somebody to sleep on a steam grate until they can catch an appropriate virus. Because it would be cheaper. Because it would be cleaner. Because it would be kinder. Because it WOULD BE MORE HONEST.
OK, there is the problem that somebody YOU care about might make use of one but what's that say about your care of loved ones? Maybe we would take better care of the people in our lives if we knew they had other options than to put up with your shit. Maybe employers would fear the loss of training investments just that little bit more. Maybe families would give weird Uncle Bob that extra call every month. Maybe some of the folks in nursing homes are tired of being left alone.
Finally, in keeping with the theme of this blog; we have a few excess humans on this planet. About five or six billion extra if you ask some biologists. While reductions in birth rates can temper that number an increase in death rate is the only way to bring the human population in balance with the ecosphere. While we're doing a great job of promoting War, Famine and Pestilence deaths are just not keeping up with births. Offering people a clean and painless exit can't hurt matters.
Finally, I'll take the first booth for a test drive. I have a chronic pain problem and the US medical hash-up has no interest in helping it. I'm offered Zombie pills and a firm boot to the curb, thank you. Nobody's going to pay me for writing this shit. As far as our corporate masters are concerned I'm surplus meat waiting to die. Or worse, a subversive who spreads the word that there are alternatives to their game.
I don't really expect to see suicide booths in the near future. I also don't expect that we will be honest about dealing with these people. We're going to punt. Again.
Because we punt on everything these days.
What happens the day all these balls drop?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_booth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics
http://www.euvolution.com/articles/ancient.htm
http://www.paulchefurka.ca/Population.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_sulfide
The Nine Stages of American Autogenocide (http://www.whale.to/b/crow.html)
*http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=Z7RgB-ARGT8C&oi=fnd&pg=PR11&dq=homeless+eugenics+&ots=uXoQUivoA2&sig=w5cqAqPVVaYV80IXC4LEnA8jHPE
http://www.informaworld.com/index/713662815.pdf
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=info:mxcZrwTnxqUJ:scholar.google.com/&output=viewport&pg=1&hl=en
Let's be absolutely clear; there is shelter available. In the US there is likely a vacant bedroom for every single homeless person in the nation in housing already built for the rental market or for sale. There are tens of millions of "second homes." There are millions of permanently vacant hotel and motel rooms. There are fleets of boats and motor homes that have "live-aboard" capability. We just refuse to make these resources available for people who don't have access to sufficient cash money.
Homelessness kills. It's a death sentence as sure as some cancers. More so than prostate cancer. Without access to regular shelter and hygiene people die in far higher numbers than comparable populations. This has been proven in multiple studies by epidemiologists controlled for drug and alcohol abuse, presence or lack of various illnesses and other such factors. Preventing people from having regular shelter kills a fat percentage of them. (google your own damn cites you lazy bastard, ok check the footnotes)
We do this on purpose. OK not you, or maybe your small circle of friends but unless you have somebody living rent-free in your garage you are part of the problem. You, too, refuse to shelter these people. You're an Eugenicist just like the Nazi's. You pretend, like good Germans of the 1940's, that everything is ok when your eyes tell you it's not. Constantly dirty people with teeth falling out and open sores aren't going to live long sleeping on concrete. Call it a wild guess.
Add another factor; a huge number of newly employed people are about to lose their benefits. A certain percentage of these people will end up with post-traumatic stress disorder and for all economic purposes be useless as potential employees. Another huge chunk already have addictions and borderline mental illnesses that will become full on cases due to stress. It's a surplus population that isn't going away and we aren't going to find tax money to support.
Why not let them die? We aren't going to support them. Our elites say nasty things about chronically unemployed or they say nice things but refuse to provide the means for minimal needs. We expect them to die if they don't get better. We just don't admit it. Let's give them a break.
Let's build some (ok lots) suicide booths. A recurrent feature in science fiction dramas from Star Trek to the cartoon, Futurama, the idea of suicide booths refuses to go away. Because it's more humane than forcing somebody to sleep on a steam grate until they can catch an appropriate virus. Because it would be cheaper. Because it would be cleaner. Because it would be kinder. Because it WOULD BE MORE HONEST.
OK, there is the problem that somebody YOU care about might make use of one but what's that say about your care of loved ones? Maybe we would take better care of the people in our lives if we knew they had other options than to put up with your shit. Maybe employers would fear the loss of training investments just that little bit more. Maybe families would give weird Uncle Bob that extra call every month. Maybe some of the folks in nursing homes are tired of being left alone.
Finally, in keeping with the theme of this blog; we have a few excess humans on this planet. About five or six billion extra if you ask some biologists. While reductions in birth rates can temper that number an increase in death rate is the only way to bring the human population in balance with the ecosphere. While we're doing a great job of promoting War, Famine and Pestilence deaths are just not keeping up with births. Offering people a clean and painless exit can't hurt matters.
Finally, I'll take the first booth for a test drive. I have a chronic pain problem and the US medical hash-up has no interest in helping it. I'm offered Zombie pills and a firm boot to the curb, thank you. Nobody's going to pay me for writing this shit. As far as our corporate masters are concerned I'm surplus meat waiting to die. Or worse, a subversive who spreads the word that there are alternatives to their game.
I don't really expect to see suicide booths in the near future. I also don't expect that we will be honest about dealing with these people. We're going to punt. Again.
Because we punt on everything these days.
What happens the day all these balls drop?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_booth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics
http://www.euvolution.com/articles/ancient.htm
http://www.paulchefurka.ca/Population.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_sulfide
The Nine Stages of American Autogenocide (http://www.whale.to/b/crow.html)
*http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=Z7RgB-ARGT8C&oi=fnd&pg=PR11&dq=homeless+eugenics+&ots=uXoQUivoA2&sig=w5cqAqPVVaYV80IXC4LEnA8jHPE
http://www.informaworld.com/index/713662815.pdf
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=info:mxcZrwTnxqUJ:scholar.google.com/&output=viewport&pg=1&hl=en
Monday, July 13, 2009
Kunstler Weighs in As Optimist.
James Howard Kunstler is still holding out for a last minute conversion of the PTB to his train-centric view of the world. He starts with this:
The cat coming out of the bag this week -- a frazzled, flaming, rabid, death-dealing cat -- is the news that Goldman Sachs will announce impressive second-quarter profits, and set aside $18 billion or so for employee bonuses averaging $600,000 per head (though, of course, not evenly distributed among them). There probably are not fifty-three people in the USA who can explain how this development figures in with last fall's bailout gift from the US treasury, or the $13 billion GS received on the backside of US gift payments to the failed AIG insurance company, plus the reams of necrotic securitized debt paper rotting in the back of the GS vaults. This is a company playing with the fire of world history.
And somehow ends up here....
I'm not ready to capitulate to cynicism. There is something in the political wind this summer. I think events will force Mr. Obama to assert some real leadership and take the national debate on our predicament in another direction, even if it is an uncomfortable direction for him and everybody else. Despite the massive disappointment being expressed by so many Obama voters these days, I believe the president will redeem himself before long.Attorney General Eric Holder announced over the weekend that he will commence an investigation into the Bush regime's misconduct with terrorism suspects. His department is capable of running more than one investigation at a time. Why doesn't President Obama direct him to open an investigation of Goldman Sachs's behavior in the area of securities fraud, insider trading, and misuse of goverment funds? Without an official inquiry into financial misconduct of this company, and others, I believe public anger will overwhelm any attempts to transform our contracting economy and the president's ability to manage it.
James is correct in that he hasn't given in to cynicism. He is incorrect in his assumption that when the outrage comes to a boil it will assume any sensible shape.The american people are in a word: morons. (see California govt., fiscal crisis, yearly) Individuals may be intelligent but our collective decision making ability is insufficient to make toast without an automatic toaster and sliced bread. This is by design.
For over fifty years the formative years of the american populace have been corrupted by High Schools and Colleges. These institutions, as known in the US, practically guarantee that no brain will be corrupted by the words of somebody whose hands get dirty every day. Sixteen years of the U.S. school system and your average citizen can't change out a light switch, balance a budget or understand any of the contracts they sign every day.
To quell the hopes that somehow walkable communities will fix something....what are we walking to? We don't make anything anymore. Will we all walk to our offices and wait for the genies to bring us food and fix our houses?
We're going to collapse. People are going to point fingers wherever Rush or DailyKos tell them to and then proceed to destroy the tools needed to help them survive. Then they will attack those folks who actually know how to grow food or fix things just out of frustration.
GM is NOT going to be put to work making trolleys. Obama and the corporate-bankster, congress are not going to finance a massive energy overhaul. We are not suddenly going to all get a reasonable health care system and find new jobs installing solar panels and growing organic vegetables. We're going to squander our wealth bouncing rocks in Afghanistan that the Soviet's bounced in the '80s.
The rich, despite setbacks, still own most of what is worth owning in this country and they aren't giving up control of land, wealth, housing or other assets because they hope to keep up with the Gates and the Buffets someday. The middle class are simply too occupied with keeping themselves firmly on the the treadmill by means of social posturing. (skills don't matter; who you know rules all) The poor are just hoping that they can hang on and avoid eviction for another month and maybe get drunk, stoned, or laid enough mask the pain.
That doesn't leave very many people. The people actually trying to turn things around represent the equivalent effort of a guy with an oar in the bow of the Titanic preparing to fend off the iceberg. A bigger oar isn't going to cut it nor is the whole-hearted assistance of your dubious best buddy and spouse.
We're screwed. If we should somehow manage the banking crisis, the health care crisis, the education crisis there are still the mega-bergs of Peak Oil and Climate change mysteriously following in our wake. Just barely glimpsed now these last two will grind human civilization into dust unless every passenger on this boat starts converting the ship to lifeboats.
Which isn't going to happen. Whether stoned, Prozac'd, religiously whacked or just too preoccupied with the dress for the ball tomorrow most passengers don't know, don't care, and aren't willing to listen to your scary tales.
Build your own lifeboat; get as far from the wreckage as you can. Organize your tribe, save seeds, get paper copies of any information you might need for survival. If you're a loner; join a tribe and expect to be on shit-bucket duty when things get bad. Don't complain; known and useful is better than unknown, cold and hungry.
I'm probably going to change my mind about this and post something positive later but to honest it's just me taking my turn trying to push the iceberg.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
GoDaddy.com commits Fraud.
Hey there,
For anybody who's reading this just on general principles or who might have tagged this when they googled GoDaddy.com I would just like to point out that Godaddy's fraudulent practices have really pissed me off.
I registered the domain names PUTCARBONBACK.US, PUTCARBONBACK.NET, PUTCARBONBACK.ORG, PUTCARBONBACK.COM thinking that I might set up a web site. Time, energy and health constraints prevented me from seeing this through. I held on to these domains in 2007 and 2008.
In 2009 Godaddy.com sent me repeated e-mails urging me to re-register my credit card information as they could not charge me for renewals. This was fine with me.
Of course the bastards charged my card anyway AFTER I made repeated attempts to disable the account renewal function and AFTER they had sent me multiple e-mails claiming that I wouldn't be charged unless I re-registered the changes to my credit card.
To make matters worse when I saw a $15.00 charge on my credit card account and tried to cancel on the GoDadddy.com website they charged me another $60 or so. Try as you might you cannot delete your credit card information from their site.
Plus they have no direct e-mail address so you can't just contact them.
DO NOT GIVE GoDaddy.com your credit card information under ANY circumstances. They WILL charge you and then you have to go through a hassle to get the charges deleted.
GoDaddy.com is a FRAUD and CHEATing company. Check out these sites committed to exposing that fraud.
godaddy fraud problem - NamePros.com
Lets End GoDaddy Fraud
Pangolin.
For anybody who's reading this just on general principles or who might have tagged this when they googled GoDaddy.com I would just like to point out that Godaddy's fraudulent practices have really pissed me off.
I registered the domain names PUTCARBONBACK.US, PUTCARBONBACK.NET, PUTCARBONBACK.ORG, PUTCARBONBACK.COM thinking that I might set up a web site. Time, energy and health constraints prevented me from seeing this through. I held on to these domains in 2007 and 2008.
In 2009 Godaddy.com sent me repeated e-mails urging me to re-register my credit card information as they could not charge me for renewals. This was fine with me.
Of course the bastards charged my card anyway AFTER I made repeated attempts to disable the account renewal function and AFTER they had sent me multiple e-mails claiming that I wouldn't be charged unless I re-registered the changes to my credit card.
To make matters worse when I saw a $15.00 charge on my credit card account and tried to cancel on the GoDadddy.com website they charged me another $60 or so. Try as you might you cannot delete your credit card information from their site.
Plus they have no direct e-mail address so you can't just contact them.
DO NOT GIVE GoDaddy.com your credit card information under ANY circumstances. They WILL charge you and then you have to go through a hassle to get the charges deleted.
GoDaddy.com is a FRAUD and CHEATing company. Check out these sites committed to exposing that fraud.
Godaddy complaints stats from Google
godaddy fraud problem - NamePros.com
GoDaddy.com Complaints - Fraud and cheating company!
Lets End GoDaddy Fraud
ScamVictimsUnited.com • View topic - Lets End GoDaddy Fraud
GoDaddy Fraud - Kill The Bloody CowBoyMessage from Godaddy fraud dept - Web Hosting Talk - The largest ...
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Ok, it's off topic but I hate getting ripped off as much as anybody else.Pangolin.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Briar Patch Economics
David Roberts, editor at Gristmill, thinks we shouldn't use a Carbon Tax and rebate system because nobody in Washington thinks it's a good idea except most progressives and a few conservative columnists playing B'rer Rabbit and the Briar Patch. (see "Carbon tax is a poison pill")
""I guess I'm going to be barbecue this day." Brer Rabbit sighed. "But getting barbecued is a whole lot better than getting thrown in the briar patch." He sighed again. "No doubt about it. Getting barbecued is almost a blessing compared to being thrown in that briar patch on the other side of the road. If you got to go, go in a barbecue sauce. That's what I always say. How much lemon juice and brown sugar you put in yours?"-from mythfolklore.net
Yeah, those poor conservative shills or the Coal'N'Oil industries suddenly want anything but "Cap'N'Trade."
On Noes!! B'rer Obama! You gots us now and we know we have to change our coal burning ways. We'll do whatever you like just don make us deal with a "Cap'N'Trade"system; oh my think of the paper work.
Now B'rer Obama he knows how tricksy Coal'N'Oil can get and he surely is tired of getting kicked by them so he thinks he just might toss 'em in a sack of Carbon Tacks where the more they kick the more they get poked. Yep, it's a little bit of the hike over the hill to the shed where he can get a good strong sack and them Carbon Tacks but to be rid of Coal'N'Oil he jus might do it'. Yer gone git the Carbon Tacks in a nice tight sack he tells Coal'N'Oil.
Coal'N'Oil he surely don't want no Carbon Tacks in a nice tight sack so he thinks quick looks around and sees the crazy Sierra Club bird hanging out on a nearby tree limb. Throwin his voice he sings out like it's the Sierra Club bird... "Give 'em to the Carbon Off-sets" he sings, "they'll tear him to pieces and starve him to death those Carbon Off-sets will."
Well those Carbon Off-sets will fill my mouth with fur, bite me like a thousand house-flies and tear out my nails but surely that will be better than throwing me to the Cap'N'Trade system. Whatever you all do jus don' throw me there.
B'rer Obama thinks about this and decides that Carbon Off-sets won't hurt nearly enough and tell's Coal'N'Oil it might be fun to tie Coal'N'Oil up in front of his pump house and feed everyone who comes up to the pump house door with Sun-power seeds, Wind-turbinados and Geo-powershakes that he's going to pay for with Coal'N'Oil's tab down at the treasury. Coal'N'Oil let's go a mighty shudder and sings out.. "Well that's a relief because for a minute there I thought you were going to throw me to the Cap'N'Trade"system where I'd be cut to pieces by all those long Wall Street knives."
We all know how this story is supposed to end but remember what happened when California tried to throw Coal'N'Oil's big Uncle Enron into the Power'N'Trade system which was pretty much the Cap'N'Trade system with free drinks and skittles. Uncle Enron managed to steal California's paycheck and the deed to the house on the way in and things haven't gone right there since.
If B'rer Obama listens to a word Coal'N'Oil is singing or the confusion caused by the voice throwing and wailing by the Wall Street ravens who rely on Coal'N'Oil to feed them a steady supply of dead and dying economies to feed on the rest of us are sunk. It will be way over four years before anybody gets their hands around Coal'N'Oil's throat again because nobody's gonna trust B'rer Obama if he screws this one up and it could be twelve years of doing nothing useful before the winds blow the right way again. We played this game with B'rer Clinton and health care and people are still paying for that bungle.
Push the carbon tax now and rebate now and structure it so the first rebate checks arrive in mailbox's March 2010 and there won't be a whimper from the GOP. Nobody complains about their Social Security checks arriving despite the fact that THAT'S an income redistribution system. A per capita rebate system advantages the very people the GOP would try and rally against any kind of carbon fee; the rural middle class. I'm pretty sure that given the choice between God in the pulpit and Mammon in the mailbox they'll choose mammon.
""I guess I'm going to be barbecue this day." Brer Rabbit sighed. "But getting barbecued is a whole lot better than getting thrown in the briar patch." He sighed again. "No doubt about it. Getting barbecued is almost a blessing compared to being thrown in that briar patch on the other side of the road. If you got to go, go in a barbecue sauce. That's what I always say. How much lemon juice and brown sugar you put in yours?"-from mythfolklore.net
Yeah, those poor conservative shills or the Coal'N'Oil industries suddenly want anything but "Cap'N'Trade."
On Noes!! B'rer Obama! You gots us now and we know we have to change our coal burning ways. We'll do whatever you like just don make us deal with a "Cap'N'Trade"system; oh my think of the paper work.
Now B'rer Obama he knows how tricksy Coal'N'Oil can get and he surely is tired of getting kicked by them so he thinks he just might toss 'em in a sack of Carbon Tacks where the more they kick the more they get poked. Yep, it's a little bit of the hike over the hill to the shed where he can get a good strong sack and them Carbon Tacks but to be rid of Coal'N'Oil he jus might do it'. Yer gone git the Carbon Tacks in a nice tight sack he tells Coal'N'Oil.
Coal'N'Oil he surely don't want no Carbon Tacks in a nice tight sack so he thinks quick looks around and sees the crazy Sierra Club bird hanging out on a nearby tree limb. Throwin his voice he sings out like it's the Sierra Club bird... "Give 'em to the Carbon Off-sets" he sings, "they'll tear him to pieces and starve him to death those Carbon Off-sets will."
Well those Carbon Off-sets will fill my mouth with fur, bite me like a thousand house-flies and tear out my nails but surely that will be better than throwing me to the Cap'N'Trade system. Whatever you all do jus don' throw me there.
B'rer Obama thinks about this and decides that Carbon Off-sets won't hurt nearly enough and tell's Coal'N'Oil it might be fun to tie Coal'N'Oil up in front of his pump house and feed everyone who comes up to the pump house door with Sun-power seeds, Wind-turbinados and Geo-powershakes that he's going to pay for with Coal'N'Oil's tab down at the treasury. Coal'N'Oil let's go a mighty shudder and sings out.. "Well that's a relief because for a minute there I thought you were going to throw me to the Cap'N'Trade"system where I'd be cut to pieces by all those long Wall Street knives."
We all know how this story is supposed to end but remember what happened when California tried to throw Coal'N'Oil's big Uncle Enron into the Power'N'Trade system which was pretty much the Cap'N'Trade system with free drinks and skittles. Uncle Enron managed to steal California's paycheck and the deed to the house on the way in and things haven't gone right there since.
If B'rer Obama listens to a word Coal'N'Oil is singing or the confusion caused by the voice throwing and wailing by the Wall Street ravens who rely on Coal'N'Oil to feed them a steady supply of dead and dying economies to feed on the rest of us are sunk. It will be way over four years before anybody gets their hands around Coal'N'Oil's throat again because nobody's gonna trust B'rer Obama if he screws this one up and it could be twelve years of doing nothing useful before the winds blow the right way again. We played this game with B'rer Clinton and health care and people are still paying for that bungle.
Push the carbon tax now and rebate now and structure it so the first rebate checks arrive in mailbox's March 2010 and there won't be a whimper from the GOP. Nobody complains about their Social Security checks arriving despite the fact that THAT'S an income redistribution system. A per capita rebate system advantages the very people the GOP would try and rally against any kind of carbon fee; the rural middle class. I'm pretty sure that given the choice between God in the pulpit and Mammon in the mailbox they'll choose mammon.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Reality Challenged Congress
crossposted from a Gristmill thread on the lack of transit funding.
Face it; this congress isn't that different than the last congress and reality seems to be a bit of a challenge for congressional delegates.
Climate change is real, very dangerous and accelerating. Congressional proposals at best will merely slow the rate of acceleration and do absolutely nothing to mitigate. There are no viable bills proposed to get GHG emissions to zero and then sequester atmospheric CO2 on a massive scale. None.
Oil imports have grown as a percentage of use every year but possibly 2008 in the US and technologically viable standards that would make every single car, van, SUV and light truck produced plug-in hybrid vehicles aren't anywhere to be seen. We're still trying to manage with the completely discredited ethanol industry.
The fastest way to reduce petroleum costs would be to convert homes and businesses and the entire state of Hawaii from heating oil and propane use to ground-loop heating and solar power. Congress is totally crickets on the issue even though it's a proven money producing investment.
State, local and federal government agencies can't afford asphalt and can't find it if prices stray into the affordable range. Interurban and rural rail connections, a standard feature of life in 1910 rural america, are completely off the boards as a viable solution.
A Congress that gives our clown college bankers free cash in fire-hose quantities and nickels and dimes food stamp recipients isn't going to suddenly bring a third neuron to the party. We're pretty much stuck with sitting back and watching the beatings continuing till morale improves.
Face it; this congress isn't that different than the last congress and reality seems to be a bit of a challenge for congressional delegates.
Climate change is real, very dangerous and accelerating. Congressional proposals at best will merely slow the rate of acceleration and do absolutely nothing to mitigate. There are no viable bills proposed to get GHG emissions to zero and then sequester atmospheric CO2 on a massive scale. None.
Oil imports have grown as a percentage of use every year but possibly 2008 in the US and technologically viable standards that would make every single car, van, SUV and light truck produced plug-in hybrid vehicles aren't anywhere to be seen. We're still trying to manage with the completely discredited ethanol industry.
The fastest way to reduce petroleum costs would be to convert homes and businesses and the entire state of Hawaii from heating oil and propane use to ground-loop heating and solar power. Congress is totally crickets on the issue even though it's a proven money producing investment.
State, local and federal government agencies can't afford asphalt and can't find it if prices stray into the affordable range. Interurban and rural rail connections, a standard feature of life in 1910 rural america, are completely off the boards as a viable solution.
A Congress that gives our clown college bankers free cash in fire-hose quantities and nickels and dimes food stamp recipients isn't going to suddenly bring a third neuron to the party. We're pretty much stuck with sitting back and watching the beatings continuing till morale improves.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Ok, that's weird.....
While I was nosing around Gristmill and reading a sermon on global warming I was loading todays arctic sea ice pic from Cryosphere today. If those guys are doing this on purpose it's NOT funny.
Click on the picture and look closely.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Santa's Pissed.
I think Santa's had enough and has pulled the death rays from the weapons locker. If this picture doesn't scare you then a look over at the Cryosphere Today website where it came from should do it.In particular the tale of the tape should get you thinking that things are changing a little faster than the evening news lets on. It could even be said to happening "faster than expected."
Naked child needs what?
This was originally posted over on Gristmill blog in response to a investigation into the "more technology needed" argument. Rather than looking at what we have or want why shouldn't we look at what we need?
Take a naked child, what does that child need?
The cheapest available solutions to the above problems are:
Carbon Capture can be handled by
Take a naked child, what does that child need?
- It needs it's parents to care for it.
- Therefore we must support the parents (community services)
- It needs clean air
- It needs clean water
- It needs to be kept in a thermally stable environment 65 to 85 degrees F or so. (clothing and also housing)
- It's family needs food and food security
- a small fuel or power source to cook food
- It needs a mentally stimulating environment (a large garden is ideal)
- It will need some medicines at some point. (provided by the garden and community but also trade)
- Access to accurate information
The cheapest available solutions to the above problems are:
- One worker families or no more than 60 hours total for two workers.
- social safety nets (cheaper than prisons)
- restricted burning of fuels (no coal, oil, biofuel or gas burning without community restrictions)
- No net discharge of wastes to water systems. Because dumping fertilizer in drinking water is insane that's why.
- A cob or straw bale house (mud and straw; what could be cheaper?) works everywhere but the arctic where logs and mud work just fine. Geo-exchange is just another way of accessing thermal mass. Fabrics can be made from a very wide variety of materials from wool to musk ox to hemp to nettles.
- Food security depends upon a biodiversity of food sources. Multiple sources ensure that no failure of a single source results in disaster. Permaculture agriculture promotes this concept. By contrast our current food stream is almost entirely corn, soy, rice, wheat, potatoes, barley and cane sugar.
- Solar ovens backed up by wood-gas stoves could provide most of the cooking heat at fraction of current fuel use of even the poorest families.
- The cost benefit analysis of gardens effects on health suggest that for that reason alone people should spend time gardening.
- A community based upon healthy diet and exercise can more easily afford to care for the remaining sick.
- Durable, cheap laptop computers have been designed that could be available to everybody on the planet. Information is the best birth control.
- bicycles, barges, heavy rail and sail-powered shipping can move the worlds goods. Airships don't require roads so could possibly be cheaper than rail on many routes. Solar power and solar-generated liquid fuels would be sufficient to provide this transportation structure.
Carbon Capture can be handled by
- Biochar agriculture (requires a hoe and machete)
- Rangeland management prioritizing soil optimization (requires a boy with a long stick to prod cattle)
- Forest reserves, orchard crops and coppicing. (requires a billhook and pruning knife)
- As a last recourse seeding oceans with powdered minerals that fix carbon dioxide. (requires massive industrial machinery and large shipping capacity)
Friday, April 18, 2008
I get spanked.
David Roberts, blogmaster over at Gristmill has spanked me for being a bad boy on his blog. No surprise it comes quickly after I've jumped all over WalMart's pet environmentalist Adam Werbach. Read over my shoulder now......
What to do, what to do? I guess I must make my case.....
Solution sets
David- In my little town the western border of the town is bisected by the train tracks that run from Sacramento to Seattle. All day long you can cross those tracks, look north, look south and see nothing; no train. For 23 hours and 20 minutes per day there is no train on those tracks. If you don't live by the tracks and just happen across them for five minutes here or there you might think them a safe place to hang out. Somebody makes this mistake every few months.
A person who is "hysterical" about a danger that others can't perceive may be crazy or they may have more information. The danger is real, it is global, it has the potential to cause a mass extinction and eliminate the support systems for the majority of the human race. None of these ideas originate with me or lack support in peer-reviewed science.
A few years ago I wasn't concerned about the climate all that much. I drove small cars and biked around in good weather so it wasn't my problem. Took my cans, bottles and paper to the recycling bin, kept a little veggie garden and left well enough alone. The 9-11 thing and the resulting wars woke me up to the fact that we were going to war to preserve the right not to drive but to drive really big vehicles. I started reading.
Mike Rupert, Jan Lundberg, Mathew Simmons, Paul Chefurka, the crew over at The Oil Drum, all built on foundations laid by Edward Abbey, Kim Stanley Robinson and Ernest Callenbach. They all point to the same conclusion. That the human race is walking down a very dark path. This isn't even close to my idea; I walk a very well trodden and exquisitely mapped path that starts at Homer and continues to the edge of tomorrow.
The earth is limited. Our space on this earth is a small portion of the total space. You cannot place your emissions or waste in a place that is sufficiently "away." You cannot push your neighbor far enough "away" that the damage your conflict caused will not somehow come back to you. If you take from your neighbors share that person will be angry with you. If he then is forced to take from his neighbor they both may be angry with you.
You know very well that you and I and especially AW and the people he works for exist by taking from our neighbors share. It's the heart of our culture. That very concept was driven home here on Grist with Michael Tobis' post "My Little World (and yours)
So, yeah, I'm a PITA on your board and other boards sometimes. Nothing new there; you have jabailo, Black Wallaby, Manaker and many others in your peanut gallery. I also propose solutions, valid, tested, solutions regularly. I earned my living with my hands so star-wars carbon defense systems don't appeal to me as much as digging charcoal into the soil with a hoe and then planting orchard trees.
I've proposed or promoted solutions on concentrated solar power, organic gardening, transition economics, carbon capture, golf, cars rice apples cars again also airships, tactics of debate, housing, hybrid utilization, biomass and much more. I've posted a lot of commentary and criticism most of which doesn't rate a comment by anyone; no surprise there. I promise that in my 548 posts to date (I counted) I've never once used the phrase "the end is nigh."
Your search engine yields 13 results for the word "sheeple." This one is mine and it's a rant, it even says "rant warning." Here are 1, 2, 3 posted by some David Roberts guy. Twice in defense of some enviro's association with greenwashing. My single use of the word is in response to DR's use in thread #2. Sadly, I frequently refer to "sheep" as grazing animals known for mowing lawns and yeah once I used "sheep" to describe the "fleecing" of gamblers in Vegas. Harsh criticism that and beyond the pale.
I frequently post that nasty link to the Google search: ["faster than expected" warming]. Just the headings on that search will give you the willies and a news alert on that string is worse. Repeated posting of links isn't banned on your site last I checked. Please inform Greyfalcon if they are. It's grim reading but I only post the link to the search. Luckily nothing bad happens like that right?
My entire life I've belonged to that crazy club that voluntarily moved towards a green ethic. Bookstores have whole sections of lushly photographed adobe, cob and straw bale houses but still the majority live in CO2 spewing urban or suburban tract housing.
We have the solutions to global warming that would allow us to lead comfortable lives at far less energy input in human labor, fuels, biomass and minerals than the current economic standard but simply desiring change is useless without the resources to change. People want these solutions just like they want universal health care but "something" presents a barrier. That barrier is economic inequality. People with limited economic choices just can't buy land and put a net-zero house on it. They can't afford houses at all when housing prices are run up by speculators and insane mortgages. It's been a bit of a problem recently.
So yeah, I'm bitter towards the comfortable class. Thank god I'm alone, right? It makes it easy to dismiss people like me as jealous cranks. Then those Brown grads can relax at their $200 lunches where they discuss profit opportunities in cap-and-trade schemes and the "BLUE" labeling of disposable consumer goods. They can cash those fat checks and move on. Hey go for it; it's not like lives are at stake or something.
Pangolin,
Let me be crystal clear. The current path the human race is on amounts to mass suicide of about 5 billion people.(quoting me-pangolin)
The fact that you believe this is crystal clear from the first ten million times you said it. You say it on every thread; it is your response to every subject, no matter the size or nature.
You might think that hectoring people for whom you radiate contempt (and frequently refer to as "sheeple") is a good way to avert the outcome you fear, but I assure you it is not. When people see that discussion here is dominated by strident cries that The End Is Nigh -- and, by implication, that anything else they have on their mind reveals them to be deluded and selfish -- they run the other direction. Adam and I have both had reports of people who wanted to discuss his article but were put off by the vitriol in the comments here.
I can't imagine that anyone who reads these boards doesn't know where you're coming from by now. If anyone's mind was going to be changed by it, it's changed. I think you should take the gentle advice offered more than once now and tone it down.
grist.org
by David Roberts at 1:32 PM on 17 Apr 2008
What to do, what to do? I guess I must make my case.....
Solution sets
David- In my little town the western border of the town is bisected by the train tracks that run from Sacramento to Seattle. All day long you can cross those tracks, look north, look south and see nothing; no train. For 23 hours and 20 minutes per day there is no train on those tracks. If you don't live by the tracks and just happen across them for five minutes here or there you might think them a safe place to hang out. Somebody makes this mistake every few months.
A person who is "hysterical" about a danger that others can't perceive may be crazy or they may have more information. The danger is real, it is global, it has the potential to cause a mass extinction and eliminate the support systems for the majority of the human race. None of these ideas originate with me or lack support in peer-reviewed science.
A few years ago I wasn't concerned about the climate all that much. I drove small cars and biked around in good weather so it wasn't my problem. Took my cans, bottles and paper to the recycling bin, kept a little veggie garden and left well enough alone. The 9-11 thing and the resulting wars woke me up to the fact that we were going to war to preserve the right not to drive but to drive really big vehicles. I started reading.
Mike Rupert, Jan Lundberg, Mathew Simmons, Paul Chefurka, the crew over at The Oil Drum, all built on foundations laid by Edward Abbey, Kim Stanley Robinson and Ernest Callenbach. They all point to the same conclusion. That the human race is walking down a very dark path. This isn't even close to my idea; I walk a very well trodden and exquisitely mapped path that starts at Homer and continues to the edge of tomorrow.
The earth is limited. Our space on this earth is a small portion of the total space. You cannot place your emissions or waste in a place that is sufficiently "away." You cannot push your neighbor far enough "away" that the damage your conflict caused will not somehow come back to you. If you take from your neighbors share that person will be angry with you. If he then is forced to take from his neighbor they both may be angry with you.
You know very well that you and I and especially AW and the people he works for exist by taking from our neighbors share. It's the heart of our culture. That very concept was driven home here on Grist with Michael Tobis' post "My Little World (and yours)
So, yeah, I'm a PITA on your board and other boards sometimes. Nothing new there; you have jabailo, Black Wallaby, Manaker and many others in your peanut gallery. I also propose solutions, valid, tested, solutions regularly. I earned my living with my hands so star-wars carbon defense systems don't appeal to me as much as digging charcoal into the soil with a hoe and then planting orchard trees.
I've proposed or promoted solutions on concentrated solar power, organic gardening, transition economics, carbon capture, golf, cars rice apples cars again also airships, tactics of debate, housing, hybrid utilization, biomass and much more. I've posted a lot of commentary and criticism most of which doesn't rate a comment by anyone; no surprise there. I promise that in my 548 posts to date (I counted) I've never once used the phrase "the end is nigh."
Your search engine yields 13 results for the word "sheeple." This one is mine and it's a rant, it even says "rant warning." Here are 1, 2, 3 posted by some David Roberts guy. Twice in defense of some enviro's association with greenwashing. My single use of the word is in response to DR's use in thread #2. Sadly, I frequently refer to "sheep" as grazing animals known for mowing lawns and yeah once I used "sheep" to describe the "fleecing" of gamblers in Vegas. Harsh criticism that and beyond the pale.
I frequently post that nasty link to the Google search: ["faster than expected" warming]. Just the headings on that search will give you the willies and a news alert on that string is worse. Repeated posting of links isn't banned on your site last I checked. Please inform Greyfalcon if they are. It's grim reading but I only post the link to the search. Luckily nothing bad happens like that right?
My entire life I've belonged to that crazy club that voluntarily moved towards a green ethic. Bookstores have whole sections of lushly photographed adobe, cob and straw bale houses but still the majority live in CO2 spewing urban or suburban tract housing.
We have the solutions to global warming that would allow us to lead comfortable lives at far less energy input in human labor, fuels, biomass and minerals than the current economic standard but simply desiring change is useless without the resources to change. People want these solutions just like they want universal health care but "something" presents a barrier. That barrier is economic inequality. People with limited economic choices just can't buy land and put a net-zero house on it. They can't afford houses at all when housing prices are run up by speculators and insane mortgages. It's been a bit of a problem recently.
So yeah, I'm bitter towards the comfortable class. Thank god I'm alone, right? It makes it easy to dismiss people like me as jealous cranks. Then those Brown grads can relax at their $200 lunches where they discuss profit opportunities in cap-and-trade schemes and the "BLUE" labeling of disposable consumer goods. They can cash those fat checks and move on. Hey go for it; it's not like lives are at stake or something.
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