Archive | February, 2010
Prescription for (Killing) the Planet
Prescription for the Planet was written by Tom Blees and published in 2008. It was recommended to me, with a strong sense of urgency, by a couple friends. It is written in a very compelling style, which is too bad because it suckers people into the kind of wishing thinking for which we’ve become infamous [...]
Continue reading...Goatlets, updated
17. February 2010
It’s a boy! And a girl! And another girl! One of the three goats we’re tending had triplets last night. This morning, Ruby and the as-yet-unnamed kids are doing well. Our infrastructure has passed another test. More importantly, we were witness to the miracle of life. And not just once, but three times. That’s right, [...]
Continue reading...Viral collapse
14. February 2010
According to economists, the beauty of globalization is worldwide access to materials and cheap (or free) labor to bring the materials to powerful countries. We provide garbage, pollution, and low wages — or, in the “best” cases we enslave workers — and we obtain materials and finished goods. This is the rising economic tide that [...]
Continue reading...Entropy revisited
5. February 2010
You can’t win, you can’t break even, and you can’t get out of the game. Those kernels are my favorite descriptors of the Three Laws of Thermodynamics. Respectively, the clauses mean (1) energy is conserved (First Law), (2) entropy never decreases, thus precluding perpetual motion machines (Second Law), and (3) it is impossible to cool [...]
Continue reading...City living in a post-peak world
3. February 2010
This headline at today’s version of Energy Bulletin caught my eye: Are cities sustainable in a post-peak oil world? The editors at Energy Bulletin, reflecting contemporary culture, clearly do not understand sustainability. At every level, from the individual through the culture and even through the species, ours is a transient existence. We should be focused [...]
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22. February 2010
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