[In email this morning from one of my tireless correspondents, this lovely comparison of the way we live now versus the "bad old days." You decide.]
1. Scenario: Jack goes quail hunting before school, pulls into school parking lot with shotgun in gun rack.
1957 - Vice principal comes over to look at Jack's shotgun. He goes to his car and gets his shotgun to show Jack.
2007 - School goes into lock down, and FBI is called. Jack is hauled off to jail and never sees his truck or gun again. Counselors called in for traumatized students and teachers.
Continued...
YESTERDAY I HEARD OF A YOUNG MOTHER who came downstairs early in the morning to find her fifth-grade son dressed for school but flat on his back in the middle of the living room staring in despair at the ceiling.
MOM: "What on Earth do you think you're doing?"
BOY: "I can't do it. I just can't go to school any more."
We all know how that small strike ended. Management made an offer ("Go to school or else."), and the union of one caved in with a few plaintive "But mom's.... "
I first thought that there was rough justice in that. After all, the thought of actually going on a ten-minute "I-won't-go-to-school" strike never would have entered my ten-year old mind. If it had I would not have heard the dreaded promise, "Wait until your father gets home." No, I would have heard the thermonuclear announcement, "I'm calling your father at work and telling him to come home right now." That one always alerted me that I had only one half-hour to get my affairs in order.
Today, after mulling the lie-down strike a little more, it seems to me there's more than a little to be said on the side of the fifth-grader's strike. After twenty years of schooling and more than thirty on the day shift, those early grades seem -- looked at through society's grubby glasses -- to be an idyllic time. After all, weren't they?
No real worries. No problems with the opposite or the same sex. No goals other than getting to Christmas break, Easter break or the long and endless summer. No money to make. No money, in fact, to speak of at all. All your expenses covered. No taxes. No sense of mortality. In short, the lost and golden land of childhood. We all think of it, once far removed from it, as some distant Edenic idyll.
But if we try and shift our point of view a bit, and if we try to remember all those things the haze of our twice-told childhood fairy-tales hides from us, we might see it -- just a bit and just for an instant -- from the point of view of the fifth-grade boy flat on his back in the living room staring at the ceiling in utter despair.
Evidence that The Surge was working continued to mount.
Forcing some politicians to modify their previous positions.
David McCumber, the current "Managing editor" at the risibly named Seattle Post-Intellligencer feels he got some splainin' to do. Having failed to learn the virtue of silence he blogs a memorable confession in "A ferry captain, the FBI and Benjamin Franklin." in which he states:
"I understand that people have a hard time with the concept that we get to decide what is news and what isn't, and what is fair and what isn't."McCumber is from the Hunter-Thompson-Envy school of journalism and, of course, this is a brain-echo of the Scoop Nisker dictum: "If you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own." Alas, McCumber is mired in the Thompson/Nisker/Pacifica/NPR Memorial Tarpits and fails to understand that making news about not liking the news is exactly what is going to happen to him and his ilk in this era. They never thought that not liking the news would come to include newspapers themselves. They thought, for decades, that they were immune. Alas, as we learn in the Holy Book of Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me, "Nobody is immune from a bust."
Continued...
The following video has been hidden after complaints that the soundtrack has caused the human brain to bleed. Take care....
Continued...
They came from the hills and mountains,
The valleys and the plains.
Some were kind and gentle,
And some too wild to tame.
A string of fearless hearts, on an endless ball of twine.
It's the same old train, it's just a different time.
-- Clint Black | Same Old Train
It's the "sweet sixteen" Hempfest down by the sound in ye olde Seattle. Yes, sixteen years of celebrating reduced cerebration busts loose in Myrtle Edwards Park; a slim strip of grass, driftwood, and a breakwater bracketed by genetic research institutes and the world's worst modern sculpture park.
It's a strange celebration and not only because the thousands attending are strange by birth, design and recent inhalation, but because the drug it celebrates is officially not in attendance. It's like an Oktoberfest without the beer.
Actually, dogs do get in even if they don't exactly run free. Everything else seem to be expressly prohibited. And to judge by the furtive deals going on down by the breakwater, the "Drug Free" zone is an illusion. The drugs here are anything but free. Ditto the burritos, bongs, and hemp brownies. Other than that, the crowd -- running to type and overwhelming predictability -- underscores the last line. No matter what else may be going on, This is not a free zone. It's a zone bounded by ritual and tedium.
I no longer remember, if I ever did, exactly what we had in mind at the San Francisco Acid Tests or the Human Be-In, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't anything as obvious as all this. We were, I believe, trying to "change the world," not sell it a hemp t-shirt.
"Been there. Done that. Have the autographed panties."
Hillary needs better staff advance work. Monday she said, in a parting shot at Karl Rove when asked about his observation that she is a "flawed candidate,"
Mrs. Clinton:" Well, aren't we glad to see him go, I think is the answer to that. You know, I am thrilled to be running this campaign, and to be getting the response that I'm getting all over the country. I was in Pahrump, Nevada, just today, earlier. 2,500 people. I feel very good about where I am." -- OpinionJournal - Best of the Web TodayOne thing you don't want to say when you are a candidate for President is that you "feel very good" about being in Pahrump, Nevada. Pahrump, Nevada, is -- for those who know -- the whorehouse capitol of Nevada, and hence, as far as legal brothels go, the whorehouse capitol of the United States. Now that might be the normal metaphysical environment for politicians of all parties, but it just isn't done to glory in it.
Continued...
A Century-21 Come-On ad from about a year ago, just before the first hiss of air escaping from the housing bubble began to be audible. I wonder where this couple is today. The hectoring agressive wife is no doubt kicking herself that a divorce just won't bring her the money she needs...
Provincetown's "Fresh Sea Clams," 1940. Andrew Sullivan third from left.
The always worthy Sippican Cottage has a meditation on the nature of change this morning with No NIMBYS Need Apply in which he observes: "Cape Cod, and Provincetown, are very much Not In My Back Yard Places now. It's hard to do much of anything building-wise. There is no more reactionary person than a wild-eyed progressive who has beaten the forces of the last reactionary, it appears."
This progressive mental disorder can be seen in Provincetown and any number of other places that once were cool and are now merely the haunt of the privileged pretenders to cool. Indeed, the current going price for a week in the hamlet of Provincetown seems to range from $5,500 per week for something that sleeps 8 to the more modest $650 a week for a cottage/closet sleeping two. For this, plus sundry other expenses, you get to party in the beach zone. It's a kind of Disneyland for adults and satisfies the new found need to be by the sea at least once a year to maintain your cool status. Once cheap, cool now costs lots of cold cash.
Getting in some rented beach time is important since most poor and middle class Americans now labor under America's new unwritten law that states: "Nobody with a net worth south of $30,000,000 is allowed to actually live by the ocean." (Unless grandfathered in by, well, your grandfather and you'd better be able to scrape up the jacked up property taxes too.)
The glutting of the "cool places" by the uncool cool-seekers is pretty much the state of the nation at the moment. It is important to "be cool." It is not important to live. By and large this compulsion for cool has gripped the soul of the nation and continues in an unstoppable way.
Continued...
(Left) One Too Many Lattes and a Thousand Miles Behind: "Franklin Foer, 31, is eager to "produce journalism that people read." (2006) New York Times
The very young editors ** of The New Republic want to spin but they only twist slowly in the wind. ("I think I'm going to be circumspect..." -- NR editor Michael Crowley)
Well, I've got no dog in the New Republic/Weekly Standard fight like Eli Lake or Michael Crowley, so I've no use for circumspection about this endlessly unreeling game of gotcha.
Except to say it was game over and winner The Weekly Standard from the very moment Michael Goldfarb read Scott Beauchamp's obvious fictions and felt the needle on his bullshit meter wrap several times around the pin.
The untold fact of the matter is that, when you're editing a magazine, no matter how "fair and balanced" an editor may wish to be in his or her heart, the stories with the grit and the blood and the atrocity always put out a clarion call that proves hard to resist. Printing "ripping yarns" is why you're in the business in the first place, and there just aren't a lot of those going in Foggy Bottom.
Young magazine editors -- especially those of the ostensibly male persuasion -- always have a soft-spot in their heads for the "man of action war story." This is mainly because, to tell the truth, young male magazine editors today are simply not very manly. In general, they rise out of a culture and an educational background where manliness is discouraged and put down, even as the expectation of it, within and without, remains attached like some phantom limb to the neutered body.
Let's just get it over with, okay? I'm sick of it. You're sick of it. The whole damn country is sick of it. The "coming" election, that is.
The only problem is that the election is more than a year off and everybody, including the candidates, is so sick of it I expect projectile vomiting contests to replace the "debates" in order to garner an audience somewhere north of negative numbers.
So let's just cut the crap and, with a minor adjustment in one candidate's candor and another small alteration in the US Constitution, get those worthy democrats into office and on with the business of running the country, the world, and your life.
By turns:
"Years of bad data corrected; 1998 no longer the warmest year on record" -- DailyTech - Blogger Finds Y2K Bug in NASA Climate Data
Yeah, come on all of you green-hue-mens,
Mother Earth needs your help again.
She's feeling the heat, she's got the fear,
Way up yonder in the thermosphere!
So hold down your carbon and pick up your blather,
We're workin' Earth into a lather!
And it's one, two, three
Whose ox are we goring for?
Don't ask me, I'm getting hot.
Don't sign Kyoto, you should be shot!
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up those new tax gates!
Ain't no time to wonder who
Cranks out the most C-O-2!
Wired editor-at-large Kevin Kelly, a sane and insightful man, looks at technology through the eyes of technology.
Well worth the 20 minutes it takes to listen to.
Key points:
"My name is Marina and I am a philologist. I love to discuss the origins of words." You too can attend -- HotForWords' online school! This is strongly advised even if English is not your second language.
(For the answer to Guess the Word -- plus "staring contest" -- CLICK HERE.)
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"With grim crocodile tears, grim the MSM grimly reported that the grim United states grimly passed the grim milestone of grimness in the grim war in grim [Afghanistan] as grim American grim casualties of grimiosity grimly reached the grim number of [500].
"When grimly asked why the grim MSM grimly gives grim front (grim) page grim-prominence to such an out-of-grim-context number while grimily ignoring non-grim grim-type other grim news about grim-positive grim developments since the grim surge grimly started working with grimness or, indeed, why the grim MSM never reports on grim grim milestones of any other grim conflicts or grim armed grim forces (especially those of the grim enemy), the grim MSM just looked grim." - Ephemeral Isle: Grim Reporting
"I'm not home a lot, so Michelle is usually willing to give it up." - Barack Obama in Entertainment Weekly
Michelle Obama ... on their upcoming vacation: "We're going to Hawaii to visit Barack's grandma" -Playbook 24/7 - Politico.com
"When Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats spent a week holding the people's chamber under house arrest, they made plain a political vulnerability beyond drilling. To achieve greenhouse gas goals in the out-years, they are willing to risk a slowdown now in the American economy. How else can you interpret what happened this week? These Democrats aren't environmentalists. They're enviromaniacs." -Wonder Land - WSJ.com
Academy award winning actor George Clooney is set to host a fundraiser for Barack Obama in Switzerland next month. - CNN
Giving you the skinny on race:
"White people spend a significant portion of their time preparing for the moment when they will be offended. They read magazines, books, and watch documentaries all in hopes that one day they will encounter a person who will say something offensive. When this happens, they can leap into action with quotes, statistics, and historical examples. Once they have finished lecturing another white person about how it's wrong to use the term "black" instead of "African-American," they can sit back and relax in the knowledge that they have made a difference." - Being Offended - Stuff White People Like #101
We Believe in Offshore Drilling and Fares from $9* Each Way
"The Chronicle's announcement pushed the number of layoffs and buyouts this year above 7,000. (There are more, of course, because some papers have not said how many people have been laid off or have accepted buyouts.) Adding in the cuts at the Chronicle and the Modesto Bee, about 17 percent of all layoffs/buyouts this year have been in California."File under "Who says there's no good news?"
"The shamans of contemporary linguistic taboos have adopted nigger, faggot, cunt, and the other forbidden words as passwords, emblems of group membership -- and membership, as American Express has been at pains to remind us, has its privileges. No one outside the shamans' circle is permitted to speak the password; it's an arrogation of a jealously guarded status. He who dares must be cut down, ground into the dust, and forbidden ever to speak at all, to any effect, in any context. For as in all systems of nymic magic, the word is deemed congruent with the thing: the taboo words are at the root of the shamans' power. Failure to enforce the taboo would risk the loss of the group's privileges and immunities, laboriously amassed over the decades of exploitation of others' guilt." -Francis W. Porretto - Eternity Road
The two women married in Canada, obtained identical tattoos and picked out adjoining burial plots with the expectation that they would be together till death and beyond. Then one of them fell for someone else, and without getting a divorce, entered into a Vermont civil union in Stowe with the new woman. Now the woman who says she was left behind -- Laureen Wells-Weiss -- is alleging that her estranged spouse committed bigamy.
"On the official website of the United Church of Christ, where there's something called UCC FIRSTS: A Journey through Time -- a list of the historic achievements of the various Congregationalist and German Reformed churches that joined to form the denomination in 1957. The items run from John Winthrop's 1630 prayer that the Massachusetts Bay Colony "be as a city upon a hill" to the 1995 publication of "the only hymnal released by a Christian church that honors in equal measure both male and female images of God." - The Death of Protestant America: A Political Theory of the Protestant Mainline by Joseph Bottum
HOUSTON -- Gasoline prices rose to a record-high four expletives per gallon Monday, a rate of fuel-price-related cursing not seen since the 1979 energy crisis sparked a nationwide obscenity boom.
"My point is that any discussion of Obama's "skinniness" and its impact on the typical American voter can't avoid being interpreted as a coded discussion of race." - When "skinny" means "black." - By Timothy Noah - Slate Magazine
"If Senator Obama is as exercised about "outrageous" profits as he says he is, he might also have to turn on a few liberal darlings. Oh, say, Berkshire Hathaway. Warren Buffett's outfit pulled in $11 billion last year, up 29% from 2006. Its profit margin -- if that's the relevant figure -- was 11.47%, which beats out the American oil majors. Or consider Google, which earned a mere $4.2 billion but at a whopping 25.3% margin. Google earns far more from each of its sales dollars than does Exxon, but why doesn't Mr. Obama consider its advertising-search windfall worthy of special taxation? - What Is a 'Windfall' Profit? - WSJ.com
"It's clear that in Marin and its environs, Republicanism has become thoughtcrime. This is serious stuff. This is -- if I may use a phrase that has become tainted with controversy -- Un-American. And the only way I can think of to combat it is for individuals to speak out and come out. They may find, as I did, that there's some unpleasantness but that the vast majority of friends and family stick by them, and the ones that don't aren't the finest of the lot. - neo-neocon - A plea to the closet Republicans of Marin: come out, come out, wherever you are
1. The bank account is about to be overdrawn. We can't deposit our way out of this problem.
2. Your bedroom is a mess. You can't tidy up your way out of this problem.
3. I'm hungry. I can't eat my way out of this problem.
4. We're out of food. We can't go grocery shopping our way out of this problem.
5. We are disgusting, fat tubs of goo. We can't exercise our way out of this problem. - Etcetera and so forth @ House of Eratosthenes
"When we are incapable of finding "one good thing" to say about Bush or Pelosi or even someone in our personal lives, we've surrendered reason to repellent hate; the hate owns us. At that point, we are no better than the person we abhor; we may be worse."- Eizabeth Scalia Let's Debate, Not Dehumanize
"When such an overarching absolute standard is rejected -- as it has been by aggressive secularism, atheistic, reductionist, and materialistic to the core -- we can only enforce a form of unity through coercion and power. Inner moral dictates must be subjugated to coerced conformity. It is "acceptable" to hold "values" which are at odds with the secular societal standard -- as long as these "values" are never acted upon in speech or behavior. We may believe abortion to be morally abhorrent -- but must never act to restrain it; we may hold homosexuality to be morally wrong and believe gay marriage to be a threat to a core foundational institution of society -- but to verbalize thus is "hate speech", and "intolerance", and "ignorance." Our unity is the unity of the gag, a multicultural muzzle which celebrates the superficial, elevates the insignificant, tolerates the intolerable -- and punishes the moral. Our unity is the unity of relativism, a superficial solidarity where everything is acceptable but absolutes, where anything is tolerated but truth. Such unity strives for the lowest common denominator, maintaining its forced cohesion by the will to power, destroying in its enslaving solidarity the very soul of freedom and the heart of true human harmony." - The Utopia of Relativism | The Doctor Is In
More to this than meets the eye. Much more. Zombietime took a little stroll through a San Francisco Street Fair and reports back with many pictures from Up Your Alley 2008. So, if you wish to see what passes for acceptable pubic display in San Francisco these days, click the link. Warning. Not work safe. Not child safe. Not safe at all. It is far beyond anything you can imagine. Pretty damning, actually, on all levels: Up Your Alley 2008
"You might not think that dealing with the ongoing plague of disintegrating parachutists might not be the most important problem of our modern age, but it is one that will grow in size and intensity as the baby boom generation ages. This generational cohort, stuck as it is in a perpetual adolescence, will refuse to grow gracefully as previous generations did and will spend an inordinate amount of time doing things any normal person would think beyond the physical capacity of someone of that advanced age. But the baby boom, for whom life means never really having to grow up, will try to deny the biological effects of time passing and as a result of this denial the skies over this our Great Republic will soon fill with dentures, limbs, pacemakers, walkers, bifocals, AARP membership cards, and the occasional veteran of the Summer of Love raining down upon an unsuspecting populace like so much unwanted space debris. Things will definitely get uglier hereabouts before they get any better, folks." -The Passing Parade: Cheap Shots from a Drive By Mind
"Obama should know that for all his own talents, it is rare to have someone with his meager law record selected as Harvard Review Editor, or hired at the University of Chicago Law School, or after a mere two years in the Senate, a presidential candidate. The point is not that his race explains his success, but in America alone it either was irrelevant to it, or, more likely, a great force multiplier. - Works and Days
Calif. Prison Giving Inmates Free Condoms A union representing prison guard supervisors is opposed to the distribution of condoms. The union said that condoms can be used as places to hide drugs or weapons. "They can put stuff in them and use them to throw at staff or other inmates," said Chris Gold of the Prison Supervisor's Union." Ah, isn't that sort of the idea?
Jobless rate rises to 4-year high of 5.7 percentStill somewhat behind the 75 year unemployment high of 24.9 percent set in 1933. But where there's Obama there's hope.
"Here comes the orator! With his flood of words, and his drop of reason." -- Benjamin Franklin 1735
"When the young leader spoke eloquently and passionately and denounced the old system, the press fell in love with him. They never questioned who his friends were or what he really believed in. When he said he would help the farmers and the poor and bring free medical care and education to all, everyone followed. When he said he would bring justice and equality to all, everyone said "Praise the Lord." And when the young leader said, "I will be for change and I'll bring you change," everyone yelled, "Viva Fidel!" - Letters To The Editor - Letters to the Editor - inRich.com
A man who was found with his head severed by a chainsaw was fighting to stay in a block of 70 flats in Hampshire cleared for redevelopment. David Phyall, 50, was the last tenant at the Atlantic Housing Ltd housing association flats in Eastleigh. His body was found by police on 5 July, who said his death was not suspicious.
"You have your sub-bullshit, your opti-bullshit and your supra-bullshit. We get snookered by this blend time and time again, because we have a tendency to say: I know the sub-bullshit is true; I do not agree with the supra-bullshit, but compared to that the opti-bullshit is believable. And so we believe the opti-bullshit, the bullshit calibrated to the optimum degree of self-reproduction. We will repeat the opti-bullshit to people we know. And if anyone dares challenge it, we will treat the challenge as a challenge to the sub-bullshit. Anytime the sub-bullshit is demonstrated to be true, which it will be, we will take that as further proof of the opti-bullshit, and become more convinced of the validity of the opti-bullshit ... which we haven't even tested, or observed anyone else testing." - House of Eratosthenes
"As much as legislators and founders of states ought to be honoured and respected among men, as much ought the founders of sects and factions to be detested and hated; because the influence of faction is directly contrary to that of laws. Factions subvert government, render laws impotent, and beget the fiercest animosities among men of the same nation, who ought to give mutual assistance and protection to each other." - David Hume, Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, Part I, Essay VIII, OF PARTIES IN GENERAL
Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards is pulling the plug on a scholarship program he started at an Eastern North Carolina high school -- a program he once promised would be a model for the nation under an Edwards presidency. - newsobserver.com | Edwards ending college programNow we know he knows he's kaput. No use throwing good money after good.
"Obama Launches LowRoadExpress.com" - Advertising Age - Campaign Trail
Time managing editor Rich Stengel said he was proud of the Obama puff piece, and that he hoped it would help to redefine the boundaries of journalistic drivel. "When the American people cast their vote this November, this is the piece of fluff they're going to remember," Stengel said. "Not the ones by Newsweek, Harper's, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New Republic, The Economist, Nightline, The Wall Street Journal, or even that story about lessons Obama learned from his first-grade teacher we ran a month ago." -'Time' Publishes Definitive Obama Puff Piece
"I don't share the beautiful people's revulsion for suburbia. It's just decent people making a living for themselves, and maybe having a patch of grass to play touch football on. Many people do hate suburbia, the whole idea of it, and wish we were all living in concrete urban human dovecotes, where they can keep their eye on us." -Sippican Cottage: Gettin' Used To It
"What we're looking at, essentially, is the beginning of food zoning. Liquor and cigarette sales are already zoned. You can't sell booze here; you can't sell smokes there. Each city makes its own rules, block by block. Proponents of the L.A. ordinance see it as the logical next step. Fast food is bad for you, just as drinking or smoking is, they argue. Community Coalition, a local activist group, promotes the moratorium as a sequel to its crackdown on alcohol merchants, scummy motels, and other "nuisance businesses." An L.A. councilman says the ordinance makes sense because it's "not too different to how we regulate liquor stores.... Supporters of the moratorium call this state of affairs "food apartheid." - Banning fast food in poor neighborhoods. - By William Saletan - Slate MagazineRich whites to poor blacks in South Central L.A. - "Shut up and eat your vegetables."
"Not a few designers are pushing men to expose more of the bodies that they have spent so much time perfecting at the gym. "We have all these self-imposed restrictions" about our dress, said Ben Clawson, the sales director for the designer Michael Bastian. "As men's wear continues to evolve and becomes a little more casual without becoming grungy, it's not impossible anymore to be dressed up in shorts.... "The idea of being threatened by the objectified male body has gone, the process is complete," explained Aaron Hicklin, the editor in chief of Out magazine. "Men are the same as women now."" - Shorts Crack the Code - NYTimes.com
"Come to think of it, maybe the best status for Obama would be that of monarch, of the type reigning in present-day England. After all, it's the ultimate symbolic position: no accomplishments necessary, no policy commitments involved, once you're in you're in for life, you get to go on all those fine world tours, the clothes are classic, and speeches are heavily featured." - neo-neocon - On acting Presidential (or kingly)
"Republicans have been in control of either Congress or the Presidency for eighteen of the twenty years since I left office, and yet in that short time you've managed to double the size of the federal budget, add hundreds of new federal agencies, and destroy the optimism of the American people," ranted Reagan. "Good going, geniuses."
EARTH—Former vice president Al Gore -- who for the past three decades has unsuccessfully attempted to warn humanity of the coming destruction of our planet, only to be mocked and derided by the very people he has tried to save -- launched his infant son into space Monday in the faint hope that his only child would reach the safety of another world.
"How many hours is Michelle Obama actually putting in at her $200,000 hospital administration job these days? Does she still work there? Or, let's not ask about "work" per se -- does she continue drawing a salary?" -AceAnswer: She's on Obamaternity leave!
One of the intrinsic problems in being a liberal is that you can never reveal your first principles, because if you explicitly articulate them, people will be repelled at what a contemptuous and supercilious asshat you are. Therefore, you must always couch them in terms of "compassion," or "helping the little guy," or "healing the planet," or "unity," or some other such blather. So in that regard, Obama is dealing with a more general problem that is intrinsic to liberalism, which is How to Fool the Idiots. One must be very cautious, because even the idiots are only so stupid. - One Cosmos: Evolutionary Creationism
"Housing students by race seemed to me an odd approach to ending racial division. During my freshman year, I lived two floors below the African American Theme Program floor. Other such floors included the Asian Pacific American Theme Program, the latino-centered Casa Magdalena Mora, and the Unity House, a gay-themed housing unit that allows you to have a roommate of the opposite sex. From what I remember, black students were the only ones participating in the African American Theme Program. Though students of all races and ethnicities are allowed to live in any of the available themed housing units, rarely did I see students living in housing centered on a culture different from their own." - Am I Diverse Enough Now? (Originals)
"The US Congress, which prevents the US , doubtless the greatest hydrocarbon province in the world, from producing much more oil, gas and coal than it does at present. The U.S. has the resource base, the capital, technology and management capability to increase oil, gas and coal production by 15% within 5 years and by 50% within 10 years. Such an increase would bring fossil energy and food prices down by a quarter to a third worldwide , greatly strengthen the dollar, create a boom in good jobs, generate a tidal wave of federal, state and local revenues, propel the stock market to new highs, more than restore housing prices, and substantially enhance national security. Congress is the friend of despots in Iran and Venezuela and the worst enemy of consumers, globally. It's not the fault of the speculators or the Saudis or the Chinese that Congress so likes to blame but of itself (i.e., Congress) and of course, We the People who vote Congress into power. Oil at $175 will not be imposed by some Other on us; it will be freely willed by us as a sovereign people. We are responsible for the consequences of our choices. We may not like them but we cannot evade them nor shift the onus on the Other." -Vinod K. Dar Oil Prices
"Carbon control is what the West talks about. Carbon consumption is what the Non-Western Nations seek. Electricity efficiency and avoided generation is what the West talks about. Electricity supply is what nations big and small outside the West seek. Transportation efficiency is what the West talks about. Increased, greatly increased, mechanized mobility is what the nations of Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America seek. The West wants to orate about wind, solar, geothermal and wave energy. The rest of the world wants more oil and natural gas, coal and uranium. The West worries about carbon control. The rest of the world, especially Asia, worries greatly about energy and food control. - Vinod K. Dar Earth Cools
"As for renewable energy to meet electric needs, the preferred technology for Eucaliyork is always one that is not commercially ready and as soon as it is ripe, it is no longer favored. The ideal project is an invisible windmill transporting power via buried, non-existent, superconducting cables." - Coal and Nuclear
"There are two parallel energy worlds today -- The world as seen from Eucaliyork (EU, California, New York) and RealWorld. Included in the former are New England, Eastern Canada and Japan while the latter embraces most of the U.S., India, China, much of the Pacific Rim, part of Eastern Europe, much of Latin America, Russia, Africa and the rest of Asia. About 600 million people live in the former world and about six billion in the latter. The RealWorld has 10 times as many people as Eucaliyork; it accounts for 100% of the world's population growth and, perhaps, 90 % of the world's economic growth; it has almost 100% of the world's reserves of conventional and unconventional oil and natural gas, coal and uranium, and much of the world's agricultural land." - Vinod K. Dar - Coal and Nuclear
"Conservative issues don't attract me as much as liberal idiocy repels me." - AVI: Postliberal
- School Daze: Then and Now
- Back to School
- The Summer of Our Discontent
- The Decider of the Seattle P-I
- The Joyful Moments and Sweet Sounds of Hempfest
- Stoned to Death in Seattle: Hempfest 2007 Comes to Town
- Hillary's Feeling "Good About Where I Am." In Pahrump, Nevada.
- How the Final Fools Were Sucked Into The Bubble
- Cooling Out: From Spare Change to No Change
- Cindy Beauchamp Foer's Folly -- or -- "Oh Yeah? You and What Army?"
- The Trinity: Sorta Female, Sorta Black, Sorta Gay
- Anthem for the Global Warming Blowhards
- It's a Big Machine
- Simmer Skool: The Ultimate "Word-A-Day" 'Application'
- This American Wife: Elizabeth Dewberry and Her Reborn Molester Ted Turner as Told by the Cuckolded Husband, Robert Olen Butler