by Geoffrey Chia, a cardiologist in Brisbane, Australia
My favourite author, the much loved and much missed American Humanist, dear old departed Kurt Vonnegut, was a masterful practitioner of the poignant and ironic turn of phrase. His essay “Cold Turkey” decried our addiction to fossil fuels and mourned the parlous state of American politics during Bush junior’s time in office. “Only a nutcase would want to be President”, Kurt said. Indeed, only a nutcase would want to be a human being. And here we are, nutcase human beings making a mighty mess of things.
“We are terrible animals and I believe the Earth’s immune system is trying to get rid of us, as well it should.” Kurt’s mind remained so sharp and incisive to the very end, you’d swear he ate razor blades for breakfast.
It is a really, really bad parasite that kills its host, if only because, in so doing, it kills itself. And so, long after we have wrecked the very ecosystem which sustains us and we ourselves have turned into fossil fuel gloop to be used for combustion by the next industrial species, what will be the best thing that could be said about the human race? That we were a really bad parasite?
Kurt said that the 51st state of America was the state of denial. Global warming is all a greenie conspiracy, don’t you know, fabricated independently by thousands of poorly paid scientists all round the world in a diabolical plot. Much better to believe the views of a few oil, coal and gas baron billionaires and their media cronies, who only have our best interests at heart.
So here I am, little old me on my metaphorical soapbox at this ecospeak gathering. Maybe we should call it “ecosqueak”, because our tiny voices will hardly be heard, being drowned out by the deafening cacophony of the corporate media and their internet trolls. Loudest of all the loudmouths by proxy is Chris Mitchell, editor of the Australian newspaper and shameless promoter of global warming denialism, as outlined in Quarterly Essay by Robert Manne in September 2011.
Now we are told that coal mining magnate Gina Rinehart, richest woman in the world and well known bankroller of global warming denialists, has come to the financial rescue of Fairfax, our only remaining commercial counterpoint to the Murdoch press. According to the redoubtable Tony Rabbit, she is a white knight who only wants to save jobs and uphold the journalistic integrity of this nation. A fable worthy of Wonderland, talking caterpillars and magic mushrooms. To this tall tale, let me add my own pathetic and clunky poetic commentary, such as it is:
No one is meaner
Than corpulent Gina
Who won’t hesitate at all to sue
Non-entities like me and you
To tighten Rinehart’s corporate reign.Saviour of Fairfax
Much better than anthrax
Her good intent let’s not deny
She’ll make us think that pigs may fly!
(In truth, she gets around by plane)
Lewis Carroll described his epic poem The Hunting of the Snark as an “agony in eight fits”. I wrote my own “agony in ten pages” earlier this year, an essay I titled The Brisbane Institute is a Brisbane Prostitute. I described my dismay as to how the supposedly honourable Brisbane Institute had become a paid mouthpiece for the fossil fuel lobby, highlighting the views of Christopher Monckton and Ian Plimer. They also imported a morbidly obese fossil fuel professor named Michael Economides to lecture us on how wonderfully beneficial unrestrained overconsumption was for us and how terrifically great the coal seam gas industry was, with no adverse effects whatsoever. In my essay I of course apologised to any prostitutes who may have been offended by the comparison with that reprehensible Brisbane Institute.
“Don’t publicise your Brisbane Prostitute essay”, I was warned by certain individuals. I would be a damned fool to set myself up as a target for litigation, even if every single thing I wrote was true. Yet here I am again, making a damned fool of myself once more. I guess some people never learn.
So what can I hope to have inscribed on my own gravestone when I myself have turned into fossil fuel gloop to be used for combustion by the next industrial species? Perhaps the best thing that could be said about me is this: “He tried his best not to be a bad parasite.”
______________
This essay was presented verbally on 25 July 2012 at the University of Queensland’s Ecospeak session.
January 24th, 2013 at 7:36 pm
Speaking of bad parasites:
Team of Ex-NASA Scientists Concludes No Imminent Threat from Man-Made CO2
The above is from one of my favorite deniers sites, our favorite weatherman, Anthony Watts. I am guessing you have already seen this Guy, but I was wondering if you could give us a little more information about where these “ex-NASA scientists” are coming from. Here is the opening paragraph of the article.
“A group of 20 ex-NASA scientists have concluded that the science used to support the man-made climate change hypothesis is not settled and no convincing physical evidence exists to support catastrophic climate change forecasts.”
What’s up with that?
January 24th, 2013 at 7:37 pm
Sorry, here is the link.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/23/team-of-ex-nasa-scientists-concludes-no-imminent-threat-from-man-made-co2/
January 24th, 2013 at 7:40 pm
Does the above give new meaning to the old cliche, “It ain’t rocket science” ?
January 24th, 2013 at 7:44 pm
From this space in July 2012:
Seeking “balance” on the idiot box means presenting two sides to a one-sided issue until it’s too late to address the crisis.
It’s too late.
January 24th, 2013 at 7:47 pm
I miss dear Mr. Vonnegut tremendously. Heard him speak at a URI commencement once. His message – “Be kind to one another.”
January 24th, 2013 at 8:59 pm
it is best just to read “God Bless You Mr Rosewater” when down
January 24th, 2013 at 9:11 pm
“The good Earth- we could have saved it, but we were too cheap and lazy.”
~~~Kurt Vonnegut~~~
January 24th, 2013 at 9:19 pm
I only wish earth had been meant for those of us who cherish it, and the moon as a destination for those who don’t.
January 24th, 2013 at 9:24 pm
As if global climate change could not get any worse, world atmosphere oxygen levels have dropped from 21% to 15%. Remember the children in 1992 Rhodesia who were visited by ETs and in this visit these children were telepathically warned that the future for mankind was a world in which all the trees are dieing and people could not breathe oxygen? This is coming to pass. Why do we continue to allow these prophecies continue on to reality?
1994 ARIEL SCHOOL ENCOUNTER:
“I got the feeling he was interested in all of us. … He looked sad and without love. …In space there is no love and down here there is.”
Harvard researcher, Dr. John Mack, and I were at the Ariel School, a small elementary school outside Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, listening to Elsa (not her real name) describe her encounter last September 16 [1994] with an “alien” being. In all, sixty children, ages six through twelve, reported seeing one large and several smaller spaceships land – hover, really – over the scrubby bushland adjoining their playground.
The twelve children we interviewed over the course of two days all described the same event with a steady consistency of detail. In addition to the spaceships, the children had seen two “strange beings,” one sitting on one of the spaceships and the other running back and forth in the grass, “bouncing as if he were on the moon, but not quite so much.”
The beings were described as black with long heads, “eyes as big as rugby balls,” with thin arms and legs. The event took place during the children’s morning recess while teachers were in a staff meeting. Many of the younger children were very scared and cried. “At first I thought it was a gardener,” one fourth-grader told us. “Then I realized it was an alien.”
The event lasted about fifteen minutes, the children said, before the spaceships faded from view. But even in their state of fear, many of the children reported also being curious and fascinated by the strange beings they saw, whose eyes in particular commanded an intense attention. Elsa told us that she thought the beings wanted to tell us something about our future, about how “the world is going to end, maybe because we don’t look after our planet or the air.” She said she felt horrible inside when she got home that day. “Like all the trees will go down and there will be no air. People will be dying. Those thoughts came from the man – the man’s eyes.”
Isabelle, a composed and articulate ten-year-old, echoed Elsa’s feelings. “He was just staring. He was scary. We were trying not to look at him ’cause he was scary. My eyes and feelings went with him.” What came through her “conscience” as she looked at the being was, “We are doing harm to the Earth.”
January 24th, 2013 at 10:04 pm
This is a timely short essay on issues here in Australia.
The strategy is clear; in order to rip the heart out of yet another ecosystem, you have to get control of the media.
On the previous post is a link to a ‘newly discovered’(?) shale oil deposit:
‘$20 trillion shale oil find surrounding Coober Pedy ‘can fuel Australia”
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/national/trillion-shale-oil-find-surrounding-coober-pedy-can-fuel-australia/story-fndo471r-1226560401043
Great, now Australia is going to become a geopolitical hot spot, and greatly extent the life of the Ecocidal Industrial Ecomnomy.
I have no doubt Miss G R will get her way.
Sorry about all this guys…
We have really gone collectively mad, but it is still IMO not the ‘fault’ of Jane and Jim Anybody, it is because the lever pullers of Empire have the means toslowly and consistantly alter public opinion. There are many arms to the many tentacled beast in the media, but IMO it is the deliverysystem directly into your home, day in day out, that is the most persuasive storyteller of spin and fiction there ever was.
I mean, whay imbecile invites two complete strangers(usually goodloooking and well spoken and well greemed), into your lounge room every night, at about 6:30 to tell you with pictures what happened around the world and why?
TV, the best investment in political spin money can buy.
Its ‘Game Over Man’ with this new Shale Oil deposit….
I will probably end up a bush dweller, and raid bins in the twilight hours, not for food though, but for reading material.
January 24th, 2013 at 10:58 pm
Apparently Australia is attempting to become the first nation to achieve a daily maximum of 60oC in the shade in large metropolitan areas. The 42 to 48oC achieved so far is a good start (54oC in remote regions). Digging up coal and burning it, along with burning natural gas and oil should enable Australia to reach its target within a decade.
January 25th, 2013 at 3:25 am
Widely used pesticides can kill frogs within an hour, new research has revealed, suggesting the chemicals are playing a significant and previously unknown role in the catastrophic global decline of amphibians….
Trenton Garner, an ecologist at the Zoological Society of London, said: “This is a valuable addition to the substantial body of literature detailing how existing standards for the use of agricultural pesticides, herbicides and fertilisers are inadequate for the protection of biodiversity.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jan/24/pesticides-kill-frogs-within-hour
January 25th, 2013 at 3:31 am
The Kochs have also contributed vast sums to promote scepticism towards climate change, more even than the oil industry according to some estimates. Greenpeace, for instance, has calculated that ExxonMobil spent $8.9m on climate-sceptic groups between 2005 and 2008; over the same period the Koch brothers backed such groups to the tune of nearly $25m.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/how-the-kochtopus-stifled-green-debate-8466316.html
January 25th, 2013 at 4:33 am
Oh man. Great essay, super comments and links, people. To add to our insanity, this:
http://m.guardian.co.uk//science/2013/jan/23/bird-flu-researchers-engineered-virus
Bird flu researchers get green light to continue work on engineered virus
Oh, it’s all about medical cure and prevention i’m sure – when the military is behind all the research to turn this virus into yet another weapon!
January 25th, 2013 at 4:55 am
And, by the way, what are we INDIA?
http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/nm-bill-would-require-rape-victims-st
“This is the latest salvo fired in the Republican war on women. Fortunately for the people of New Mexico, the state legislature is controlled by the Democrats. But this is a perfect example of the sorts of things those creative Republicans dream up if you let down your guard down, or trust them for even a minute with the reins of government:
A Republican lawmaker in New Mexico introduced a bill on Wednesday that would legally require victims of rape to carry their pregnancies to term in order to use the fetus as evidence for a sexual assault trial.”
and it was drafted by a woman!!!
January 25th, 2013 at 5:40 am
A little movie (from 92 93 around there), about Venus, the Sphinx or the prostitute somehow :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=eX1kh6WxZcg
January 25th, 2013 at 6:21 am
(sorry, Kathy, i didn’t see that you posted my last one yesterday)
January 25th, 2013 at 6:32 am
Perhaps this goes some way to explaining those happy smiley Stepford people on TV who are so cheerful about having had their children murdered, and the long, long list of ‘shooters’, who, when asked why they did it, say, words to the effect, ‘I don’t know’, which is so very strange, if you think about it. Why would anyone commit such savage, dramatic, acts, that require some planning and motivation, and then be unable to supply even rudimentary reasoning to justify themselves ? We’re supposed to accept it’s because they are crazy, autistic, on pharmaceuticals, whatever. That’s what we’re told…
January 25th, 2013 at 8:19 am
From the Nowhere To Runfile. Irony at its best.
The Final Call -
Nature’s Capital is the Limiting Resource
by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
Excerpt: Pennsylvania, possibly the most corrupt state in the US, has passed a law that prevents health care professionals from sharing information about the health care effects of fracking. “I have never seen anything like this in my 37 years of practice,” says Dr. Helen Podgainy, pediatrician from Coraopolis, Pa.
January 25th, 2013 at 8:51 am
Total bank assets in the United States equal $13 trillion. Twelve criminal Wall Street banks control $9 trillion of that money. These twelve banks control the country, with the full support of the Federal Reserve, which they own. These banks use their bottomless pit of fiat dollars to buy off politicians, government bureaucrats, and the corporate mainstream media. They are the oligarchs. They own you. They have robbed you. They have impoverished the nation for their own benefit. They will cause the destruction of this country. A showdown between the people and the bankers will happen. But, not until they collapse our economic system, again.
http://www.theburningplatform.com/?p=48015
January 25th, 2013 at 9:10 am
ulvfugl:
After 8 years of Bush getting away with it, the government now will now simply make the rules as they go along via “national security” (like the retro-active telecom bill) and makes no pretense of caring about anything but the survival of the few. Now Obama has all but declared himself emperor and there’s not a fat lot we can do about it – because no one was prosecuted in the Bush administration for war crimes (not to mention 9-11). So they can continue in this Republic/democracy destroying way, ripping up the Constitution, deflating the Bill of Rights severely and ruining the standard of living for the nation to that of destitution for the 99%. It looks like societal collapse will occur before environmental calamity for the US.
January 25th, 2013 at 9:24 am
Look, Obama’s got a fly on his third eye:
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/obama-vs-fly-call-draw-205357952–politics.html
January 25th, 2013 at 9:27 am
Climate change signals the end of the social sciences
January 25th, 2013 at 9:40 am
Frank, thank you so much for posting the account of that amazing event. Me and my close friend (the only one who has been able to overcome the denial programs and is ontologically open minded) recently recalled this incident. I first learned about it on a History Channel documentary.
Were you a colleague of Dr. Mack?
I would be interested to read your personal impressions of the children and their recollections.
P.S. One of the things that Dr. Mack discussed in his lectures and in his book Abduction is that we are subjected to ontological censorship. There is a system of ontological politics which imposes its self interested limitations on what is and isn’t real.
January 25th, 2013 at 10:02 am
Geoffrey , thanks for your essay. I also love Kurt Vonegut. One thing though. In 1.1 billion years from now, the Sun will be 10% brighter than it is today. This extra energy will cause a moist greenhouse effect in the beginning, similar to the runaway warming on Venus. But then the Earth’s atmosphere will dry out as the water vapor is lost to space, never to return.
In 3.5 billion years from now, the Sun will be 40% brighter than it is today. It will be so hot that the oceans will boil and that water vapor will be lost to space as well. The ice caps will permanently melt, and snow will be ancient history; life will be unable to survive anywhere on the surface of the Earth. The Earth will resemble dry hot Venus.
Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/18847/life-of-the-sun/#ixzz2J0WIa7WU
Extinction back to thermopiles will have a hard time evolving into intelligent beings that can use the oil of our compressed bodies to burn. Won’t be enough time before it is all over anyway.
January 25th, 2013 at 10:12 am
Tom I have to disagree with you on the flu research. I have no question that TPTB want to created microbes to do what they want as far as wiping out humans. But to be useful to them they need a stable microbe from which they can reliably protect themselves. Flu is a RNA virus and per wiki “RNA viruses generally have very high mutation rates compared to DNA viruses, because viral RNA polymerases lack the proof-reading ability of DNA polymerases.[8] This is one reason why it is difficult to make effective vaccines to prevent diseases caused by RNA viruses.” The speed with which the flu has developed resistance to anti virals is astounding. Because it changes each year, each year brings the need for a new vaccine which is mostly the best guess for which flu viruses will be most prevalent and dangerous.
OTOH the US and Russia and probably other countries have both smallpox virus and a proven vaccine for the same. It is more stable, and since it has been eliminated in the wild, natural resistance will be low. Now that is a weapon! Made all the more powerful because they eliminated in the wild. Us old folks might still have some resistance thanks to vaccines. Death rate was about 30%. Probably higher among a population not culled for resistance. Certainly did a job on the native populations of the Americas. Nasty disease.
I cannot believe that they would ever attempt to use the flu – if they did it could well hit them as well. Of course I can’t rule out stupidity.
January 25th, 2013 at 10:30 am
Yeah, i was just pointing to the point that, like genetic engineering, they’re getting into things with profound consequences should the least little thing go wrong – like that book The Hot Zone or others of that genre.
Guy, thanks for that link (another in the anchor to our demise).
January 25th, 2013 at 12:09 pm
Virus wipes out millions of oysters overnight in Australia – ‘Very strong possibility’ record heat wave to blame:
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/virus-wipes-out-millions-of-oysters-overnight-20130124-2d9tz.html
January 25th, 2013 at 12:13 pm
Floods in southern Mozambique have displaced up to 70 000 people and cut power exports to energy-hungry neighbour South Africa in half, officials said yesterday. The south and centre of the country have been placed on red alert after experiencing the heaviest rainfall since devastating floods killed some 800 people in 2000.
http://www.sabc.co.za/news/a/c8c77d804e4e8c24b381b7f251b4e4e2/Mozambique-floods-hit-power-exports,-displace-70-000-20132501
Plus, 15,000 crocodiles were washed away from a farm and into the Limpopo River.
January 25th, 2013 at 12:36 pm
Geopolitics update:
Who does Christine Lagarde really work for?
http://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/the-uk-europe-does-cameron-really-understand-the-politics/
Hint: The daughter of the vampire squid strikes again.
January 25th, 2013 at 3:12 pm
BC nurse, glad you found a bit of time to send us some links. Christine seems to be linked to the usual suspects eh? Always thought the DSK thing was a set up, even if personal foibles made him easy to set up.
January 25th, 2013 at 3:20 pm
Ambassador George Kennan’s cold war policy planning memo, set to music…
So, if that was their plan all along, they really should not complain when the tumbrils roll and they get dragged to the guillotines…
http://youtu.be/FoSApfp2Sgo
January 25th, 2013 at 4:35 pm
Sink hole in LA not resolved, still active.
Louisiana’s Office of Conservation, in consultation with Assumption Parish Incident Command advised Saturday that Louisiana’s historic sinkhole appears to have undergone a growth event, indicated by a recent increase in earthquakes and cracks, prompting the order for personnel and equipment to be removed from the disaster site.
The Bayou Corne historic “sinkhole” appears to have grown, according to officials, who say this is indicated by a recent upswing in measured seismic activity.
The growth event follows a week of rain and flooding in South Louisiana, including in Assumption Parish
REST AT THE LINK http://www.examiner.com/article/la-sinkhole-quakes-cracks-collapse-prompt-removing-workers
January 25th, 2013 at 6:50 pm
So it goes…
Thank you for remembering Kurt, he is dearly missed.
January 25th, 2013 at 8:24 pm
So first I posted a study yesterday which said that organism extinction projections have been overstated. And now this saying that global warming projections will be on the mild side. What the heck is going on with all this back pedaling in the midst of seeing all these new extremes unfolding around us?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130125103927.htm
January 25th, 2013 at 9:01 pm
Balley,
It’s quite obvious that most people don’t want to hear the truth about Climate Change. I’ve attempted to bring greater awareness to those I know. And in the end, the overall attitude is of denial or that nothing can be done. I agree with Guy. It’s too late. It’s not that we should just throw our hands in the error and give up. But I fear that we as a global community are passing through the “tipping point” (though there are many such tipping points) as we speak. I’m not sure, at this point, that we can undo the damage we’ve created for ourselves.
January 25th, 2013 at 9:03 pm
And I must correct my “typo.” I meant to say throw our hands in the “air”… not “error.” I don’t know how I typed such a gross error. Ooops!
January 25th, 2013 at 9:22 pm
Pilot, but why is the science community and playing down the threat recently? Less extinctions forecasted, ex NASA scientists minimizing CO2 risks, new article stating warming will be on the low side…I don’t get it.
January 25th, 2013 at 10:34 pm
Guy
That is a very interesting link to the Clive Hamilton post:
‘Climate change signals the end of the social sciences’.
An interesting debate in the comments section there, dealing with issues like Nature Versus Human in categories of historical conceptions of human ideas.
A few quotes here:
“Geoffrey Edwards
Intertoob Blowhard
If you assert: “We can no longer place some events into the box marked “Nature” and some into the box marked “Human”.
Then you really should apply that to claims like:
“Each year humans shift ten times more rock and soil around the Earth than the great natural processes of erosion and weathering.”
- If the human is not distinct from nature, then humans are as much a “natural process” as erosion and weathering:
“Half of the land surface has been modified by humans.”
- So, as per above…”
“Sue Ieraci
Public hospital clinician
In reply to Geoffrey Edwards
Geoffrey Edwards – your argument brings to mind the way of thinking that calls everything “natural”, as a way of absolving people from the consequences of their choices. The line would go something like you said: “human beings are part of nature, humans evolved brains, therefore anything that humans decide to do is just natural use of their brains.”
Well, that is one way of thinking, but it totally neglects the entire concept of judgment.
In this sense I would argue against the author’s premise…”
“Geoffrey Edwards
Intertoob Blowhard
In reply to Sue Ieraci
“Well, that is one way of thinking, but it totally neglects the entire concept of judgment.”
- I am not arguing against the existence of judgement. But even so, IF humans are not distinct from nature, neither is human judgement. Human judgement is as much a “natural process” as any other process. Once you set aside this dichotomy, you cannot reinstate it for the sake of convenience.
“…our judgment provides us with motives for behaviour that go beyond the basic survival ones.”
- Agree…”
“Sue Ieraci
Public hospital clinician
In reply to Geoffrey Edwards
Thanks, Geoffrey.
I largely agree, except for this: “Human judgement is as much a “natural process” as any other process. Once you set aside this dichotomy, you cannot reinstate it for the sake of convenience.”
As I said above, I disagree with the author in wanting to set aside the dichotomy – I’m all for preserving it, for the reasons I gave.”
I read most of the comments, but an issue I think not quite teased out, and IMO central to the issue in the post, and this Now postmodern Moment, is one of consciosness. The quotes use the term ‘judgement’, but i think it is proper to call it what it is…
If nature and human are collapsed as categories of identity, which is the thrust of Hamiltons commentary, and Humans are really now to be conceived of as part of nature, then this is the reintegration of a conscious entity in Nature, something centuries of theological arguments(Christendom), wanted to infer was separate for humans alone, (as ‘Children of God’)because of the devine relation to their God.(via descent)
If humans are now to be understood as a natural force, and by dint of this realisation we become aware we are no longer ‘really’ separate from nature,(ie we wake up), then we have in a roundabout way reanimated the natural world because we are not separated from it. Cool!!
Seems like some mental juggling, but if one goes through the process of realising these issues with how one actually lives in the world, as part of the world, its ‘fucking spiritual man!’
BTW, when I was in senior hig school we had a subject I think is still available, a 1 unit subject called ‘General Studies’, which to me was always ironic, because by definition everything else was either ‘Specific Studies’, or ‘Specialist Studies’. Anyhow, we were just studying topics, and writing essays, and it was a way of honeing essay skills. I wrote an essay that I put a lot of passion into, on the environment, and the basic thesis was that Science and human activity was not natural. And being so, we have destroyed, or are destroying, the planet, (circa 1980), because we are separate from nature.
Sound familiar?
Anyway, I though the teacher was a wuss. He was a Science teacher, and I guess my essay pushed some of his buttons. Being an upstart, I though I had him, and his repl would be flounderng etc. But his written comments were devastatingly educational to me!!!
He wrote, in parraphrase: “What makes you believe that ‘Science’ as a human activity is not natural?”
I was floored. In that moment I grew wings, or legs or some other appendage, or some maturity of mind, I suppose. I had missed the possibility that humans were still natural, it was just our self conception of some special post relgious category that kept us self educating ourselves to ‘behave and think’ as separate from nature.
Going to the Moon didn’t help with keeping the hubris at bay I suppose, but if one knows anything beyond the popular conceptions of what it takes to keep humans alive and radiation free, and keep bone and muscle integrity over weeks at a time, in space, away from this biosphere, one would not really conceive of humans as anything but bound to this planet for now.
And so we are.
Great link Guy, IMO.
(I wish I had kept that essay!)
Thanks.
January 25th, 2013 at 10:40 pm
All I can say, Balley, is that it goes to show that MONEY TALKS. In other words, our Media is not “the liberal media” like so many Conservatives say (with a pointed finger). In reality, the Media is bought and sold by these Corporate Capitalists and (more so) the Fossil Fuel Industry. There are hundreds of lobbyists in Washington, D.C. who are advocating for oil rights and the expansion of drilling. There are just too many people (be them scientists or politicians) who have been “paid off” to keep quiet. I will be the first to tell you that I am NOT a “conspiracy theorist” (though I still question the Trade Center’s collapse on 9/11… but I digress), but I truly believe people are being paid to “shut up” and keep the “masses” from knowing the Truth. I would have responded sooner to you, but I have been watching some podcasts of Guy. We are in DEEP trouble.. and Humanity just isn’t listening. Like I’ve said on this blog. I had my good cry (Man, did I f–ckin’ bawl) in the Spring of 1988 when I saw this all coming. I knew that Humankind would just proceed blindly like cattle with “business as usual”… to extinction. Bummer………
January 25th, 2013 at 10:55 pm
‘Mini-tornado hits Queensland coastal town’
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/breaking-news/mini-tornado-hits-queensland-coastal-town/story-e6freono-1226562434151
That is on the back of Cyclone Oswald.
‘NASA sees troublesome remnants of Cyclone Oswald still causing problems’
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-01/nsfc-nst012513.php
A snippet:
“Ex-tropical cyclone Oswald doesn’t know when to stop causing problems for Queensland, Australia, and now teamed up with a low pressure area, it continues to bring heavy rainfall. NASA’s Aqua satellite passed over the remnants and saw Oswald hugging the southeastern Queensland coast.
Oswald has dropped a lot of rainfall throughout Queensland. An earlier rainfall analysis using NASA’s TRMM satellite data showed Oswald and its remnants had dropped over 600 mm (~23.6 inches) of rain in areas of the Cape York Peninsula near the Gulf of Carpentaria. Higher rainfall totals have been recorded over the southern Capricornia district.”
There is widspread high tides expected and storm surges on the coast and adjacent inlets.
A full moon will bring higher than usualwater levels.
All ‘Natural’ though.
January 25th, 2013 at 11:29 pm
Bailey, I concur with Pilot17. I’ve long expected the denialists to double down as the evidence becomes stronger. In that particular case of the “extinctions aren’t so bad” study, the Australian author is typical of too many scientists in the US, who have one foot in academia and another in the world of “regulation” which is actually corporate “management”. He was CEO of an organization that “managed” natural “resources” ie coral reefs and rainforests. Here’s the description:
“The Rainforest CRC is a research and education partnership, bringing together a range of experts in an exciting portfolio covering the following key areas of research: Environmental planning and management in rainforest regions; Evaluating ecosystem goods and services in a dynamic landscape; Rainforest visitation, business, interpretation and presentation; Managing and monitoring impacts arising from rainforest access; Rehabilitation and restoration, including riparian; Conservation principles and management; and Aboriginal and collaborative management.”
When I see something like “goods and services” I read: exploitation and corruption. Scientists who purport to study environmental impacts of industry are unfortunately usually on the payroll one way or the other.
January 25th, 2013 at 11:34 pm
Seventy Years of Nuclear Fission, Thousands of Centuries of Nuclear Waste
The lesson of the first 70 years of fission is that we cannot endure more of the same.
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/14065-seventy-years-of-nuclear-fission-thousands-of-centuries-of-nuclear-waste
January 25th, 2013 at 11:43 pm
An interesting take on an Economic Recovery the USA can’t afford to have:
‘No recovery, and certain death: the joyous message of the last Friday in January’
http://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2013/01/25/life-death-january-recovery-bollocks/
The filth:
“One sort of knows the world has gone entirely mad when a bank warns against the consequences of recovery, but that’s what Bank of America did yesterday. Any ‘unexpected growth’ that hadn’t been factored in, said BoA, could very easily cause the bonds market to crash. This would mean most Western sovereigns being left unable to sell debt, and thus being rendered literally bankrupt, as opposed to technically insolvent. It’s the sort of result that makes a debt ceiling academic, because the bailiffs are in da house removing all the furniture, the walls, and the ceiling.
There is no end to the bonkers cart-before-horse illogicality of all this: ‘we mustn’t have any growth because that’ll call in the US debt, remove any chance of future bailouts, make bankers even less willing to lend money, crash the Eurozone, wipe out half of Wall Street, leave no money for business capital, and make a recovery impossible’. Whatever you do, don’t start a recovery, or else recovery will be impossible. This is expansive neocon genius in full bloom. I am awestruck.
Such is the nature of our species now. Everything used to be a matter life or death, but is now become death or death….”
Yup, just keep the price of Oil too expensive for ‘an economic recovery’, and too cheep for a debt default after a currency collapse’….
That will just about screw everyone except the lever pullers.
This is what happens when the cheep oil runs out, all that is left is to slave-labour-everyone-into-debt-ridden-legal-fuck-yourself-land….
January 25th, 2013 at 11:48 pm
Still, having only what you can afford is not a bad motto to live by.
In our village/town(pop: 4595 circa 2011), we rent and we are pretty sure when our tennancy is up next year we will be priced out of the rental market here. We don’t know where we will go. Rental agent here are putting signs up saying do not bother to apply unless you have two permanent incomes. Who has ‘permanent incomes’ these days? Everything is casualised, to make peaople live in fear, as a response to the industrial relations laws benifiting working people and dismissal laws. Casual labour is easier to shed in down times, and easier to intimidate if jobs are scarce.
I will invest in some 4 person tents I think, who knows, the parks look good for squatting in, before we get moved on….
January 26th, 2013 at 1:31 am
Hi “Depressive Lucidity”,
A friend of mine served as one of Dr. Mack’s research assistants. She was so impressed by Dr. Mack’s application of rigorous scientific methodology to this fascinating phenomenon that eventually I became interested as well.
Regarding the Ariel School incident, you might be interested to know that despite the passage of almost 20 years no student nor member of the faculty or administration has modified or retracted the testimony originally provided.
Dr. Mack was a powerful voice of legitimacy given his flawless record of eminent research at Harvard University, including Nobel and Pulitzer prizes. After conducting years of quiet research before proffering an opinion, Dr. Mack determined that a major component of the ET abduction experience was to warn mankind that we are destroying the ecology and unless we implement extreme change, the world will experience a biblical type apocalyptic end. “The images of planetary destruction presented to the experiencers- people from across the spectrum of nations, education, economics, and race-are so dramatic, so utterly bleak or catastrophic, that they reach apocalyptic proportions,” stated Dr. Mack. The aliens seem to indicate that only if we act now will this horrible future be avoided. One positive outcome from the abduction experience is that many abductees become committed environmental activists. Dr Mack added, “That kind of shift of consciousness is the only thing which could possibly arrest the downward spiral of destruction that is now unfolding on our only home. Advanced civilizations understand from their own development history that societies reach tipping points. The first tipping point encountered by mankind was self-annihilation through nuclear destruction. Fortunately we possessed the wisdom to avoid this fate. Now we have reached an ecological tipping point. Do we posses the wisdom to recognize the consequences of our actions and do we posses the wisdom to prevent ecological mass suicide? This is the over-arching question facing mankind today.”
January 26th, 2013 at 1:50 am
I forgot to add that in 2004 Dr. Mack was killed by a hit and run driver while visiting London for a presentation. Despite narrow streets and a city brimming with surveillance cameras, the killer(s) were never caught, which for me is most curious not to mention tragic given the importance of his message.
January 26th, 2013 at 3:22 am
Frank; is there any connection between the Ariel school incident and crop circles? Seems to me like there is. Same message.
January 26th, 2013 at 3:36 am
Regarding Science Daily;
They stop at 2010.
They ignor methane.
They ignor volume reduction of Arctic ice.
They ignor the fact that the temperature of melting ice can’t rise. Heating ice will warm up until it starts to melt. There was a lot more warming ice from 2000 to 2010 than there has been since. Now there is more melting ice.
They ignor the whole Arctic situation, including faster warming up there than worldwide.
They ignor the heat content of increased water volume which is potential energy and won’t show up on a thermometer.
They ignor the storm breakup of melting ice which was stirred around and would tend to cool more water than if not broaken up.
What they do say is the same story. “The fight cannot be won without implementing substantial climate measures within the next few years”. That won’t happen. We won’t lower particulates either; we are burning more coal.
Boils down to doctor telling terminal patient “don’t worry, you’re going to be fine”.
January 26th, 2013 at 4:25 am
Guy, please note my new e-mail address (i got hacked and can’t get in to the old one anymore).
As to less species dying, that may be true, since there are only a finite number on the planet – after a while less will be available for death until there’s only a few left (but we won’t be among them).
i saw on the news this morning that the CDC is warning that the fast-spreading norovirus has now arrived in the U.S. from Australia. So now we have rampant flu and norovirus to contend with (not to mention who knows what else is around that isn’t being reported due to not enough deaths).
Back to the topic of “money talking,” there’s this, which clearly indicates there’s no incentive to change anything when it comes to greed and “wealth creation” (i hate that term):
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/goldman-sachs-made-400-million-betting-on-food-prices-in-2012-while-hundreds-of-millions-starved
“Why does it seem like wherever there is human suffering, some giant bank is making money off of it? According to a new report from the World Development Movement, Goldman Sachs made about 400 million dollars betting on food prices last year. Overall, 2012 was quite a banner year for Goldman Sachs. As I reported in a previous article, revenues for Goldman increased by about 30 percent in 2012 and the price of Goldman stock has risen by more than 40 percent over the past 12 months. It is estimated that the average banker at Goldman brought in a pay and bonus package of approximately $396,500 for 2012. So without a doubt, Goldman Sachs is swimming in money right now. But what is the price for all of this “success”? Many claim that the rampant speculation on food prices by the big banks has dramatically increased the global price of food and has caused the suffering of hundreds of millions of poor families around the planet to become much worse. At this point, global food prices are more than twice as high as they were back in 2003. Approximately 2 billion people on the planet spend at least half of their incomes on food, and close to a billion people regularly do not have enough food to eat. Is it moral for Goldman Sachs and other big banks such as Barclays and Morgan Stanley to make hundreds of millions of dollars betting on the price of food if that is going to drive up global food prices and make it harder for poor families all over the world to feed themselves?”
(there’s more, if you can stand it)
i also noticed that a lot of fish and an 18 meter long whale washed up in separate places in the last few days. Sooner or later the ocean will no longer provide for hungry humans since we’re poisoning the fishbowl constantly with everything from plastic (the Pacific Gyre) to radiation (Fukushima and elsewhere i’m sure) to garbage and toxic medical waste. Yummy. Try the hake!
Ozman – i hear ya. If my wife loses her job we’re gonna be in the same boat. i have a house that probably won’t sell in this economy for anywhere near what i paid for it and the taxes are killing us anyway. i can barely get classes any more and tutoring has all but dried up since nobody has excess money to spend on frivolities like education (especially the irrelevant crap they’re teaching in schools). i thought about investing in a tent and some arctic-type sleeping bags, but have held out so far. At this point i’d just as soon jump in an icy river and get my 15 minutes of fame, or just go out back and wait in the 9 degree cold until i fall out and freeze to death (wouldn’t take long but it would be painful until the numbness sets in). Gettin’ old sucks.
January 26th, 2013 at 5:31 am
Ozman, Tom, others, if it’s looking like where you’re living isn’t going to last, I’d suggest seeking a community to join… that takes some time. Better to do it in an easy going relaxed way, than when things get urgent and desperate ?
http://leavingbabylon.wordpress.com/2012/12/22/living-by-the-bell/
January 26th, 2013 at 5:58 am
ulvfugl
Yes.
I have thought seriously about that, and if I wanted to go I would have to leave my family behind, so I chose the option of creating that community here, where there is some chance of riding it out,(if there is any) for the short term.(being in a rain/precipitation saddle here at 1050 meters.) I sense the biggest problem will be windstorms here, big gusts up through the gullys concentrate the wind and funnel it onto certain ridgelines etc. We are presently in a moderate area re that wind factor.
Creating that community is not going to be easy, but there are lots of people close to the edge here doing lots to get ‘sustainable’ and perma like stuff. Not too far from getting on board the express train to NTE, but the climate SHTF will do the heavy lifting in terms of changing their minds, I am supposing.
Don’t really know how it will go, but I’m giving it a try, not much else I can do given I have decided not to abandon the family, and I cannot convince any of them of the urgency, and necessity, to move.
But if we get turfed out at the end of this tennancy, it may be up for grabs, but 2 high schools to disentangle and all that social teenager stuff,(remember that?- minus the i-shit-gadgets) will be a bit hairy….?
I hope your situation remains tennable, but I guess you rely on some outside supplies, no?
BTW, what kinds of things do you do to tend the forrest there?
Thanks for the mindful regard.
Cheers.
January 26th, 2013 at 6:00 am
I agree with your comments folks regarding the current minimization by the science community regarding substantial climate threats. Even many scientists – with the exception of a few like Hansen – have money triggered neuro transmitters. Of course, this just makes the situation hopeless as ever because the public eat the MSM candy.
I agree ulvfugl. Has anyone read Twelve by Twelve? http://www.amazon.com/Twelve-One-Room-Cabin-Beyond-American/dp/1577318978/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1359205137&sr=8-1&keywords=12+by+12
January 26th, 2013 at 6:11 am
On the note of joining communities, I have only dabbled in looking, but my first impression is without some significant assets, money or quickly transferable wealth to cash, they don’t want you. Some maybe don’t fit that parameter, but finding them will be the thing n a scenario hard to invisage.
Even in the range of living where these truely ‘sustainable’(I know, I know??) groups are trying to get together, accumulation of wealth, on the backs of the world poor, is still there in the background.
Walking Away from Empire, would for me be Walking Into Wilderness.
one thingI have learned in the recent weeksand months enacting some of this gift community… it is very easy for people to have different conceptions of what is going on in a community. People will generally not give up privelaged existance without needing to have needs met in no other way. Some accept the concepts and go along with the ides, even participate, but it becomes clear how they are tallying things up in their own mind,and what their own objective are.
How could it be otherwise I suppose.
Someopne will get it, sooner or later, and then there will be two of us.
I don’t like to admit it, but self interest seems to rule, untill it no longer works, and it looks like for the vast majority of folk, it will be kicking and screaming they come, not by enlightened choice and clear principled understanding of what will be, and is already needed to get along with this world.
Who knows what may come…?
January 26th, 2013 at 6:18 am
Climate change signals the end of the social sciences
Quote from article:
The modern social sciences — sociology, psychology, political science, economics, history and, we may add, philosophy — rest on the assumption that the grand and the humdrum events of human life take place against a backdrop of an inert nature. Only humans have agency. Everything worthy of analysis occurs in the sealed world of “the social”, and where nature does make itself felt – in environmental history, sociology or politics – “the environment” is the Umwelt, the natural world “over there” that surrounds us and sometimes intrudes on our plans, but always remains separate.
What was distinctive of the “social sciences” that emerged in 18th-century Europe was not so much their aspiration to science but their “social-only” domain of concern.
The above is quite obviously not the opinion of ALL ‘philosophers’! Both Karl Marx and Frederick Engels understood (150 years ago!) that the Earth’s ecosystem were dynamic and complex, with an intricate, delicately balanced process of interacting components where any changes that occur feed back with new, and often unpredictable, effects. Engels warned that we disrupt the natural ecosystem at our peril, stating, “Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each victory nature takes its revenge on us.
Each victory, it is true, in the first place brings about the results we expected, but in the second and third places it has quite different, unforeseen effects which only too often cancel out the first.”
http://climateandcapitalism.com/2012/03/01/worth-framing/
Ho hum, pity not enough ‘humans’ were listening…
January 26th, 2013 at 7:19 am
‘”Peak Oil” impacting Norwegian and Saudi 2013 production?’
http://www.mining.com/web/peak-oil-impacting-norwegian-and-saudi-2013-production/
A quote:
“While it is hard to ramp up much sympathy for petro-states, Norway and Saudi Arabia are both facing a murky 2013 as domestic production falls, pushing both nations towards some difficult (and expensive) choices.
OPEC’s leading producer Saudi Arabia is facing the twin storms of declining oil production and the rise of global alternatives, threatening its market share.
On the plus side, the U.S. government’s Energy Information Administration in its “Annual Energy Outlook 2013” predicts that by 2020, worldwide production of crude and condensates will hit 99.7 million barrels per day, up from its 2012 level of 89.2 million bpd. Liquid hydrocarbon production will be almost seven million bpd, or seven percent higher than the EIA’s forecast a mere two years ago in its 2011 reference scenario.
The downside? The report notes in its “Annual Energy Outlook 2013 projections to 2040” that both “growth in energy production outstrips consumption growth” and “crude oil production rises sharply over the next decade.””
Can the world afford it?
January 26th, 2013 at 7:26 am
According to this crappy site with its crappy adverts most of us are going to be exterminated…. shrug…
http://church-of-illumination.com/
January 26th, 2013 at 7:42 am
Ozman:
For the wind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zqt4zCeGMnk
I’m not sure if Ken is around any more, but The Plant For a Future website still is.
January 26th, 2013 at 7:55 am
I never heard of Dr. Mack before, and his early civil disobedience against nuclear weapons is fascinating as is the persecution of him by Harvard colleagues. But Frank, that’s not what Wiki says, about his death:
Death
On Monday, September 27, 2004 while in London to lecture at a T. E. Lawrence Society-sponsored conference, Mack was killed by a drunken driver heading west on Totteridge Lane. He was walking home alone, after a dinner with friends, when he was struck at 11:25 p.m. near the junction of Totteridge Lane and Longland Drive. He lost consciousness at the scene of the accident and was pronounced dead shortly thereafter. The driver was arrested at the scene, and later entered a plea of guilty by careless driving whilst under the influence of alcohol. Mack’s family requested leniency for the suspect in a letter to the Wood Green Crown Court. “Although this was a tragic event for our family,” the letter reads, “we feel [the accused's] behavior was neither malicious nor intentional, and we have no ill will toward him since we learned of the circumstances of the collision.”[10]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Edward_Mack
January 26th, 2013 at 8:09 am
No problem. I stand corrected over his death. I never bothered to receive a cause of death update.
Nuclear weapons was not his focus at Harvard. His focus was the ET/environmental connection.
January 26th, 2013 at 8:22 am
Although Wikipedia is not the end all truth. After looking through my notes I came across this interesting interpretation of events surrounding Dr. Mack’s death, which I agree and therefore retract my statement above:
“Ever since I heard the story about John E Mack getting killed by a ‘drunken’ driver, the story has never sat well with me. I have a statistical background (not that it makes me special) but it does make me look at things different then the average person. I can’t help but create a visual distribution of ‘event’s in my mind… and other distracting things)
There are some interesting aspects to this story that I never see discussed or talked about. John E Mack was highly intelligent, credentialed, understood scientific methodology, and clearly knew how to diagnose all manner of psychological phenomena. He was also willing to go public and stand by his research. This made him a huge risk to the PTB. He was clearly making inroads, opening up the field, creating awareness, (just watched the Oprah interview – 1994)
Rare Dr John Mack TV Appearance Part: 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-ufuNtpQd0
Rare Dr John Mack TV Appearance Part: 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnZfM…feature=relmfu
Rare Dr John Mack TV Appearance Part: 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f96VP…feature=relmfu
and his book was an instant best seller (just before he died). The rate of his movement in the media could be described as fast becoming meteoric, as he began to establish a name for himself.
I would dare say that few could have used the typical standard techniques of ridicule and criticism on him that seem to work so successfully on the majority of people that try to come out. The man was a psychiatrist! The University went to great lengths to threaten him, to take away his tenure, to ruin him by destroying his reputation and character and after a great deal of struggle and legal battle he fought them back, barely surviving.
There was no question at that point he was perceived as an even greater threat. He could have made a difference. He could have brought this into main stream awareness. He could have presented this information in a manner that not even the scientific community could have refuted. He character was honourable, solid, his credentials were impeccable. His life was a testimony of scientific integrity.
What is also interesting is that the man who killed him has never received any [legitimate] attention in the media it seems. I find this strange, usually there is a lot more detailed information, [but in this case, barely a name, no occupation, no history, or context] etc.
[Update: we have his name and age (thanks bmdb) (which is an amazingly similar pattern as Lady Di’s butler’s assailant; approx 50 yrs old, Eastern European, not responsible for their actions, treated with great ‘sensitivity and leniency’ and minimal punishment – one has to admit this is yet another ‘coincidence’) I wonder is it possible, these people fit into some kind of demographic? is there a criminal element? i.e. more easily ‘coerced’ due to past record? paperwork or citizen status? which in turn affects their financial situation? anyone who is an ‘immigrant’ understands the subtle but different treatment I speak of. And unbelievably, somehow Mack’s family was convinced that it was neither “malicious nor intentional” – again, when is that ever taken into consideration let alone ‘highlighted’ in a drinking/driving case? since when did the courts reek of such ‘goodwill and generosity’ ??? These people weren’t rich, elites or super celebrities, able to sway the courts, they would have been perceived as ‘nobodies’ the kind of people the courts salivate at the chance to chew up and spit out. This just isn’t how the courts refer to ‘drunk drivers’, they are demonized, disgraced and ostracized for their debauchery and irresponsibility in order to justify a heavy fine $$$ and a punishing sentence.”
January 26th, 2013 at 8:33 am
«if it’s looking like where you’re living isn’t going to last, I’d suggest seeking a community to join… that takes some time. Better to do it in an easy going relaxed way, than when things get urgent and desperate»
Still looking for “solutions”? Even this (joining an hypothetic community) is not possible. For the majority it has never been, and today, it is already nigh impossible. Also, impossible to tell any other person what to do because you don’t know the details of their circumstances, assets, life story, way of living, etc. Around here, there is no community to be found whatsoever. And nobody would have any interest in accepting an invalid aging POOR woman. And beleive me, there are millions invalid aging poor people. There are not many way out for me (and the likes of me). And it is the same for most of us. Like the species we are bringing down, we do not have a choice. We never had.
«Who knows what may come…?»
Me.
January 26th, 2013 at 8:40 am
Friends: I own 2,750 acres of Colombian rainforest (the flora/fauna are magnificent and the climate is heavenly since this is “highland” forest) that is maintained as a wildlife reserve. The land is incredibly fertile- rich volcanic soil-and crops can be grown all year long. The cost of living is only a fraction of what it is here in the US including healthcare, which is as good or better in the US. Colombia is just a three hour flight from the US.
I might be interested in sharing this property (perhaps donating to a community umbrella organization because I believe in democracy) with like-minded folks found on this web site. We also have the potential to expand the borders of the reserve through a process called “possession”. In other words, adjacent unclaimed and untitled land.
This could be an interesting way to help friends and the natural world simultaneously.
If anyone is sincerely interested in investigating this concept please write me at ffkling@sbcglobal.net. I will share all information. I know that I am trusting the public, but I have discovered that the individuals who visit this site are good, salt of the earth people. Maybe I am being utopian, but we must try for a better world as an example to others. So I would be interested in any feedback positive or negative.
Thank you.
January 26th, 2013 at 8:52 am
Frank says: …Nuclear weapons was not his focus at Harvard….
Actually, nuclear weapons were very much his focus at Harvard:
…Mack and other Physicians for Social Responsibility … promoted the elimination of nuclear weapons….
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Edward_Mack
PSR was some of the earlier work of Helen Caldicott:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physicians_for_Social_Responsibility
January 26th, 2013 at 9:15 am
michele: i agree. My wife and i had a long discussion on the ride home the other night (from my cousin’s funeral ceremony – cremated) regarding my “dim outlook” and being somewhat non-productive (in the sense of earning money). i’ve never been an accumulator of wealth, though i did have a wonderful career of making money (just not a lot of it). i have basically nothing but this house to show for it and now it isn’t worth what i paid for it and is expensive to keep up. i do all the yardwork and gardening, the household chores except for cooking (i can boil water if i read the instructions carefully) and take care of the dogs. My little 5 house neighborhood is quiet with most of us keeping to ourselves but we talk and are friendly and helpful with each other. Everyone is doing better than us on the economic front though.
The problem is that all these folks, including my wife, have this unshakeable worldview that ASSUMES that all this is going to continue forever and that, even if it doesn’t, they’re going to ride it as long as they can – because it’s financially rewarding to them! There is zero incentive to change, as far as their little world is concerned. The assumption is that it’ll be a very long time (long after we’re gone, supposedly) before it gets dire – and that in the meantime i better get off my ass and start makin’ some money doing something.
i’m pretty sure no one is going to hire me, in my sixties, for anything and don’t want to even bother going through the motions just to illustrate the point (as if it doesn’t take a toll on a person, being repeatedly rejected for even menial work). i have plenty of experience as a teacher, both in high school and college, have tutored for about the same amount of time (to rave reviews from parents of tutees) and i ran a successful business for 20 years before that. It looks and feels like i’m being replaced at the college i’ve worked at for over 20 years – not given first crack at classes as it’s been for many years (seniority means nothing as an adjunct), finally gratefully taking one remedial class that was offered.
i garden extensively, i’m no expert (stuff grows though despite my learning curve) and enough bounty is generated to give away a lot of what comes up to family, neighbors and the local food bank.
i noticed this summer and fall that my > 100 ft tall trees are starting to show signs of stress – dropping spotted leaves all summer, branches and twigs, & dropping more dead than i remember from previous years. i have one that was hit by lightening and a buddy of mine is going to cut out the dead this spring.
i got hit with the tomato “rust” or whatever that limits you to one harvest before the leaves and stems die-off. i’m not sure i should even eat them but they look okay and taste okay, so . . .
So, it just seems like i’m getting backed into a corner. i’m not afraid to apply for jobs, i just think it’s a waste of time and energy.
i volunteered at community events, and put time in as a protester against fracking (latest venture) in the state (not that it’s doing any good, but ya gotta show up to at least let ‘em know we don’t like it). i was politically involved for years but have given it up as another gross waste of time because i’m convinced of the total corporate take-over of the government from federal to local.
i’m not interested in making money any more and if i have to starve then so be it. i’d really like to devote the rest of my days to raising awareness of what’s coming, but that now is a dead-end (pun intended) and won’t make any difference (i’ll still fight fracking and to keep our water and air clean as we can make them). Other than that, i really have lost all interest in life on this planet.
January 26th, 2013 at 9:22 am
Oh, i meant to link to this for general knowledge:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste&WT.mc_id=SA_Facebook
January 26th, 2013 at 9:58 am
Tom says: (i can boil water if i read the instructions carefully)
I haven’t yet mastered obstructions
To complex nutritious productions;
I keep watching the pot:
Is is boiling? It’s not!
So please send along the instructions.
January 26th, 2013 at 10:06 am
We got to see the late great Kurt Vonnegut speak at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival theatre in Canada. Can’t remember what year it was, of course.
His message was how hard it is to be a merely decent human being and to go on trying to be a merely decent human being despite the effort.
We miss him, too.
January 26th, 2013 at 10:10 am
So, erm, this is off topic, but I’m thinking to myself, what happens, if/when, it can be proven irrefutably, scientifically, to standards acceptable in any regular court of law, that Sandy Hook was a staged event ?
I know that there is supposed to be some sort of Inquiry coming up, headed, if I remember, by a local mayor. Maybe that’ll be a farce like the 9/11 inquiry ? To my mind it will be an indication as to what remains of legality and justice in the USA still functions.
January 26th, 2013 at 10:29 am
Tom [i got hit with the tomato “rust” or whatever that limits you to one harvest before the leaves and stems die-off. i’m not sure i should even eat them but they look okay and taste okay, so . . .]
maybe anthracnose – I got hit with it this year pretty big time. Probably too late I got a copper spray. Mostly I kept picking off infected leaves and throwing them outside the garden. I did not compost any tomatoe stems this year. Hoping for better next year. But I did manage to get quite a number of jars of tomato sauce put up.
My cherry tomatoes got it but yielded well anyway – this variety – best cherry we have had.
http://www.southernexposure.com/dr-carolyn-tomato-008-g-p-344.html
January 26th, 2013 at 10:45 am
«Maybe that’ll be a farce like the 9/11 inquiry»
good answer! (but you do not get full grade because you should have added “or worse”).
January 26th, 2013 at 11:36 am
@ m/m
I’m not in USA, just a distant casual observer, but seems to me this SH is the key issue, the battle of the moment, upon which so much hinges. The major division between liberal progressives, who fear guns, and ‘patriots’, who fear having their guns taken away; and the fascist-corporate state with all the MSM propaganda and the alphabet agencies and covert clandestine operations, and The People and their rights….
There are not many way out for me
It may be that, indeed, there are none, but if you don’t seek, you don’t find…
January 26th, 2013 at 12:02 pm
to: OzMan, Ulvfugl, and others
re: Intentional Community (IC)
I, too, have seriously considered joining a community and put a lot of effort investigating IC in Canada, mostly in the West. My conclusion, in a sentence, is these, mostly, are microcosmic recreations of the middle/upper-class lives they have always lived. That is, they have merely set up exclusive, gated communities disguised as Eco or green or whatever.
The least expensive buy-in would have crept up to about C$250,000 … I don’t have that. The other factor which screened me out was religion. Almost all of them are religion based even if it is not explicit. The religion most common to IC was Vegetarianism. I tried VGN for much of my life and was sick for much of my life. My health improved in all aspects literally overnight when I went back to eating meat. I classify VGN as a religion because of the intolerance it shows for individual differences. It flabbergasted me these people would reject a qualified tradesman just because my metabolism requires meat to fuel the hard work I did.
A couple of interesting examples of what I discovered:
A group in Ontario, (as of my research around 2008/9) after nine years still could not agree on the colour to paint the rec room floor in their co-housing building because they used consensus decision making. In my mind this calls into question the Ideology of Consensus. If these people can’t even decide on a paint colour, how are they going to decide on a strategy when TSHTF?
This group established their IC in their late middle age and are now finding themselves too old to do the work. When they moved to the land the gigantic, old, intact and usable farmhouse was considered “not good enough” so they built the co-housing unit. Now they want to sell shares to young people, give them cells in the old farmhouse and put them to work in the fields as a separate class of IC resident. Instant class-system (more on that in the next example).
The other example is a new group which has set up on one of the islands in nearby. First off, the island they are on is one of the ones where the billionaires are pushing out the millionaires so they had big bucks to start that especially now when the economy is so bad. Again they are late-middle age. It took them two years to design and build a woodshed that I and a one-armed apprentice could have done in a couple of days. Again, decision making.
This group has an option by which you can live there, basically as an indentured servant, work your ass off for them and then stand in judgement of them as to whether you are worthy to join their exclusive gated community. If you are not, you just donated two years free labour … and class structure again.
I noted four different classes:
1) Slaves otherwise known as WWOOFers (just because they are willing slaves still means they are slaves)
2) Indentured servitude
3) Second class labour – see the Ontario example above
4) The wealthy overlord owner.
Does this in any way sound familiar? Does this in any way resemble the structure of current society? So in what way is this an improvement?
Dmitry Orlov points out a strategy of “disband and regroup” which means all the cute window dressings we have put on the situation (IC, Transition Movement, all the Eco-green nonsense) will collapse when everything else collapse and the survivors will re-group with whomever, wherever, doing whatever they can, with whatever they have wherever they happen to be. Or better yet already be in a “traditional” community or ethnic clan, preferably speaking a rare foreign language.
Face it folks, the bikers, the Asian gangs, the Russian and other mafias, and the sissified, angry, disenfranchised teenaged boys sitting in their basements playing violent video games and watching violent porn (potentially the most dangerous group) are already grouped, armed and have separate language or slang which will serve their advantage in many ways (do read The Road by Cormac McCarthy before too long … or see the movie. Spoiler alert: the people with the guns rounded up, and herded other, unarmed, human beings as meat animals).
So the person with whom you will be fighting with for the carcass of that feral dog will be an armed biker, Sikh or Asian. Yea. Your cute, Eco-green gated IC will be overrun don’t you think? Of course that is before environmental degradation wipes us all out.
January 26th, 2013 at 12:08 pm
Kurt Vonnegut – Truly a spokesman for our time.
Thanks Dr. Chia for referencing him.
—
@Tom
“i got hit with the tomato “rust” or whatever that limits you to one harvest before the leaves and stems die-off. i’m not sure i should even eat them but they look okay and taste okay, so . . .”
Sounds to me like Early Blight. Although it could additionally be Late Blight. All members of the Solanaceae family are susceptible. The above references should get you started. If you use tobacco products and I hope you don’t then Tobacco Mosaic Virus can be just as nasty.
Also, thank you for your post about partners, friends and family members who just don’t get it and don’t wanna get it. That would make for a good topic further on down the road at NBL imho.
January 26th, 2013 at 12:09 pm
«but if you don’t seek, you don’t find…» If this is what you have to tell me, please refrain from talking to me. The … included.
January 26th, 2013 at 12:51 pm
to: michele/montreal
Just want to tell you I think I get what you mean. I too am old, poor and broke. I am on a disability pension – my reward for sacrificing my tissues to the profits of someone else and to the delusion that I could “get ahead” and blah fucking blah. I too feel very limited in my options. I am dealing with a rapid transition from a relatively healthy, robust late-middle age to health collapse which has left me with nothing.
Perhaps the advantage I have is I have been thinking about this stuff for decades. One reason I never had children was even as a teenager in the 1970s it was obvious to me we were headed full-speed to the edge of a cliff and there was no way I was going to be responsible for ushering another feeling being into this freakshow deathculture we have created.
I am prepared for death and destruction mentally. In fact, at this point in my life, about the only thing keeping me going is my curiosity to see exactly when mainstream culture starts to get there is a problem here and to see exactly how it plays out. Pretty perverse I guess but if we are going to exterminate the biosphere of he only planet in the Universe we know carries complex life, then I want to see it. I want to be around for this literally planet-altering event we have created.
I think I know how you feel and I’m on your side. Buddhism without beliefs (i.e. non-religous Buddhism) has aided me in finding some modicum of peaceful detachment whilst I wile away my hours observing a planet-sized slow-motion train wreck. I cannot say much more than as always we only ever do what we can with what have wherever we are with whomever else is around.
I also carry a very small, very sharp folding knife either in my pocket or strapped to my wrist at all times. I am quite confident I can drive it into my carotod artery if it comes to it. Better that than be held captive as a meat animal. All other things being equal and given the time and leisure, when the time comes I think it will be the Poppy for me.
Hey BtD, the last phrase of the last sentence rhymes – maybe you can do something with it.
January 26th, 2013 at 1:16 pm
Frank, again thank you for discussing John Mack and his research … imho, it is an integral part of the whole complex of events that stand beyond the range of human cognition, but is somehow involved with our reality. Mack felt that we had somehow lost the capacity to interact with these other, hyperdimensional realms, especially as western culture became increasingly materialistic and narrowed its focus … we lost the sense of mystery and our post-enlightenment technologists dismissed anything they could not explain, or control as mere superstition.
I have always suspected that Mack’s death was an assassination disguised as an accident. TPTB are very good at this sort of thing. As you pointed out, Mack’s credentials made him a threat to those who want to control the ontological boundaries of our world.
After Bud Hopkin’s death, the last credible and credentialed researcher left was David Jacobs at Temple University. But Jacobs was also attacked in an attempt to ruin his reputation and he has since retired. No one is publishing any serious work in this field anymore and perhaps they can’t … Unlike Mack, Bud and Jacobs (like John Keel before them) came to the conclusion that the phenomenon was not friendly to human interests. Of course, given that the pursuit of human interests has led to omincide, who can blame the ETs for having a low opinion of the demonic chimps? If cows could understand what we are doing to them, we would represent evil incarnate.
January 26th, 2013 at 1:26 pm
@madmanintheattic
As always a well thought out post.
You write: “Dmitry Orlov points out a strategy of “disband and regroup” which means all the cute window dressings we have put on the situation (IC, Transition Movement, all the Eco-green nonsense) will collapse when everything else collapse and the survivors will re-group with whomever, wherever, doing whatever they can, with whatever they have wherever they happen to be. Or better yet already be in a “traditional” community or ethnic clan, preferably speaking a rare foreign language. “
This statement holds true for many reasons. What I think you may overlook and perhaps Dmitry as well is that if one or a small group were to locate their community so far into the bush like in Columbia for example quite a few of these human threats would be eliminated. This of course is all academic as probably any number of additional life threatening maladies like tropical diseases and human parasites would substitute for the gangstas. ‘Seasteading’ may not be a safer bet especially with a deteriorating climate and difficult weather conditions at sea, not to mention pirates
As far as strangers living together in an IC I would not recommend it. In order for an IC to function minimally great camaraderie would be required amongst its members and perhaps a worthy, common goal agreed on by the community of surviving TSHTF as comfortably as possible may fend off the bickering for a while. My $.02
January 26th, 2013 at 1:29 pm
Madman and Tom, I’m in my early 50s and I wanted to tell you how much I appreciate your honesty and truthfulness. My wife, who I love dearly, gets it, but she can’t internalize it. I have one close friend who is a few years older than me who gets it. He has two young children and is constantly battling depression because he realizes that his children are part of the generation of the coming die off.
My attitude is that I’m just passing through this world of impermanence and have been graced with the opportunity to experience first hand what happens when a failed, quasi-sentient species gets trapped in its own self serving delusions. It’s like living in an insane asylum, knowing that a bomb is going to blow up the building soon, but you can’t get through to the residents.
January 26th, 2013 at 1:36 pm
The idea of extra-terrestrials warning humanity that we must change because we are destroying the earth is so ludicrous! Especially school children in Africa – how could that possibly change our culture? If there ARE any extraterrestrials capable of visiting earth and putting thoughts into people’s heads, you’d think they would have gotten into Reagan or Bush’s heads, or the Koch brothers. Why bother with people who have absolutely no influence? It’s far more likely that people who sense, for whatever reason, that the Malthusian outcome is imminent, experience some serious cognitive dissonence and have all sorts of psychiatric reactions trying to make sense of the madness.
Furthermore, any extraterrestrials clever enough to come to earth and leave again would no doubt already know what is quite obvious – humans are incapable of changing. We are hardwired to overpopulate and overconsume, and no matter how many of us realize that, we can’t alter our collective march to extinction. Sooner or later, our greed and myopia will be the end of us, it’s only just a question of when and how the details will emerge – which of the pending disasters will triumph? I call it a race of converging catastrophes, and we all have ring-side seats at the finish line…aren’t we lucky?
An interesting slide show came my way today – it still has a bit of superfluous hopium at the end, but up till then it is an accurate description of our inescapable dilemma:
http://www.slideshare.net/chsiung/short-history-of-progress-review
January 26th, 2013 at 1:40 pm
Gail:
Furthermore, any extraterrestrials clever enough to come to earth and leave again would no doubt already know what is quite obvious – humans are incapable of changing. We are hardwired to overpopulate and overconsume, and no matter how many of us realize that, we can’t alter our collective march to extinction. Sooner or later, our greed and myopia will be the end of us, it’s only just a question of when and how the details will emerge – which of the pending disasters will triumph? I call it a race of converging catastrophes, and we all have ring-side seats at the finish line…aren’t we lucky?
Yep. That’s why they don’t bother to save us from ourselves.
January 26th, 2013 at 1:43 pm
to: Ulvfugl
re: So, erm, this is off topic, but I’m thinking to myself, what happens, if/when, it can be proven irrefutably, scientifically, to standards acceptable in any regular court of law, that Sandy Hook was a staged event?
Yes, three things about this:
First, off topic indeed. Since when did NBL become a domicile for conspiracy theorists and believers in Extra-terrestrial visitation and fake phenomenology? I’m not sure how these topics relate to the general theme of NBL. There are plenty of other places to talk about those things. Notice how few people on this site respond to these three topics. Perhaps that is a clue as to the interest level regarding these three disinformation topics.
Second: Reganding “proven irrefutably, scientifically when are you going to provide some proof or evidence which stands up and which is not just fevered paranoia of sundry Alex Jones clones. To paraphrase Ralph Waldo Emerson: “A foolish inconsistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by paranoids, conspiracy theorists and divines.”
Thirdly if/when it is proven by any acceptable standard of evidence that Sandy Hook was NOT a staged event, how will you respond? By moving the goalposts or raising your standards of evidence or just finding another bucket of foolish inconsistencies or just shouting ever more loudly that it is a cover-up?
January 26th, 2013 at 1:49 pm
@Frank
That is very thoughtful of you thinking of others regarding the property you have available in Columbia! Though it is not likely for me to leave the country, I have had similar thoughts about finding some acreage in the states in as suitable a spot as possible (I have done some research around the Mountain City NE TN area), and getting several likeminded folks who wish to tough it out to the end. It wouldn’t even have to be on the same parcel so long as there were some ‘minimalists’ close enough by that could help one another (the rest wouldn’t have a clue to the bloody end).
January 26th, 2013 at 1:58 pm
RE: Trees dying. I have noticed many older trees in my area looking very bad lately. I was also in Savannah Ga last weekend at the old Bonaventure cemetery and dozens of large old oaks of a certain variety were dead and dying. I have noticed pecan trees in my area dying back rapidly this year (and on my property even).
January 26th, 2013 at 2:52 pm
Tom, for tomatoes try Juliet F1. 60 days, blight resistant. It’s the only variety we grow. Freezes and dries really well, and you won’t need to blanch them for freezing. We cut a couple of suckers in August that are inside with us (Z5)now and we have started taking suckers from these plants for really early tomatoes. Good in drought too. We have about 70 plants. We sell 20-30 pounds a week, give away a lot, between the drying and freezing have more than enough for the winter.
January 26th, 2013 at 3:05 pm
@ Madmanintheattic
First, off topic indeed. Since when did NBL become a domicile for conspiracy theorists and believers in Extra-terrestrial visitation and fake phenomenology? I’m not sure how these topics relate to the general theme of NBL. There are plenty of other places to talk about those things. Notice how few people on this site respond to these three topics. Perhaps that is a clue as to the interest level regarding these three disinformation topics.
Second: Reganding “proven irrefutably, scientifically when are you going to provide some proof or evidence which stands up and which is not just fevered paranoia of sundry Alex Jones clones. To paraphrase Ralph Waldo Emerson: “A foolish inconsistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by paranoids, conspiracy theorists and divines.”
Thirdly if/when it is proven by any acceptable standard of evidence that Sandy Hook was NOT a staged event, how will you respond? By moving the goalposts or raising your standards of evidence or just finding another bucket of foolish inconsistencies or just shouting ever more loudly that it is a cover-up?
I don’t really understand what point you are trying to make. NBL is whatever it is. There’s been a whole thread devoted to conspiracy theories. As I pointed out, the very term is a meme coined by the CIA, which has been inserted, rather effectively, it seems, into your brain. Fake phenomenology ? What is that ? Disinformation topics ? What is that ?
I mean, if you want to argue with me, please provide something of substance worth debating. You’re the guy, in the earlier thread, who claims to have wasted thirty years meditating, and found nothing worthwhile. Did it ever strike you, in all that time, that possibly you might been doing something wrong ?
January 26th, 2013 at 3:37 pm
Madmanintheattic Says: I am prepared
When you know trouble’s coming about,
You won’t run in circles and shout,
And you won’t be as scared,
If you have prepared
A plan to help you get out.
January 26th, 2013 at 3:57 pm
Ulvfugl
re: that possibly you might been doing something wrong?
Ah, yes, the last refuge of the true believer scoundrel is to blame the victim. I addressed that already. According to Hindu philosophy this is Kali Yuga, a time of spiritual endarkenment in which the “truth” is not available, gurus are at best suspect and at worst child-raping frauds and spiritual practice is fruitless.
Right back at you: Is it possible there really is nothing there? I find it interesting that the deconversion experience is so threatening to true believers. How can it be that your belief system is so fragile that you are so threatened that you have to blame the victim? Apostacy is punisable by death in Islam which to me only speaks to the cowardice embedded in the fragile fairy tales of these various delusions and hallucinations (belief systems). By the way, by definition, a belief is something held to be true for which there is no evidence – I don’t waste my time with bullshit rabbit holes anymore. Discussions with true believers is like discussing things with conspiracy believers – no point.
Also the logical fallacy you have just committed is ad hominem. Good for you.
Since this kind of discussion (beliefs, UFOs, fairy tales, phenomenology, conspiracy theories) is pointless, I will attempt to make this my last post on these topics and restrain myself from responding to further triggers.
January 26th, 2013 at 4:10 pm
There are many, many people who have no options with respect to relocating or joining an intentional community. I would venture to say that the overwhelming majority of the American population falls into that category.
For many, the limitation is financial. When you’re so deep in debt that you are a slave to the banks, unless you’re willing to walk away from the obligation, which may or may not sit well with others in the family, you have no choice but to continue to work to pay them off.
For others, the limitation is physical. Whether it’s age or fitness or both, if you can’t contribute, then there really isn’t much of an incentive for a community to take you on. And, if you have a chronic disease which requires regular treatment or medicines simply to survive, again, that doesn’t give a community much incentive to be welcoming.
Some might have a limitation related to their cognitive ability. While being a hard worker does not necessarily require a good brain, being a productive, equal member of an intentional community might be difficult, particularly if the other members are all well educated.
Ultimately, as has been discussed many times on this site, there is almost certainly not going to be an orderly descent into a lower energy world. In my opinion, no community is going to be immune from the chaos. Nuclear radiation is no respecter of boundaries and climate change is going to impact pretty much the entire globe. So, you might as well go down wherever you are most happy and comfortable.
January 26th, 2013 at 4:14 pm
One more thought about intentional communities: NASA has spent years studying this issue as part of planning for long duration space missions. The amount of time and effort required to find people who would be psychologically compatible in the various situations which might arise on a long space voyage was substantial.
An Earth-bound community is different, of course, but the core issue is the same: it’s difficult to form forced communities.
January 26th, 2013 at 4:54 pm
Madmanintheattic says: conspiracy theorists and believers in Extra-terrestrial visitation and fake phenomenology
I give such ideas a wide berth
And all of the time they are worth;
Oh well, anyhow,
I have to go now
‘Cause I’m due back on planet earth.
H/T: Woody Allen, of course (“Annie Hall”)
January 26th, 2013 at 4:59 pm
@ Madmanintheattic
Ah, yes, the last refuge of the true believer scoundrel is to blame the victim.
Where did I blame anybody for anything ?
I addressed that already. According to Hindu philosophy this is Kali Yuga, a time of spiritual endarkenment in which the “truth” is not available, gurus are at best suspect and at worst child-raping frauds and spiritual practice is fruitless.
Are you a Hindu ? I certainly am not. I don’t subscribe to the Kali Yuga story any more than I subscribe to the Genesis story.
Right back at you: Is it possible there really is nothing there? I find it interesting that the deconversion experience is so threatening to true believers. How can it be that your belief system is so fragile that you are so threatened that you have to blame the victim?
What ‘belief system’ ? I have no idea what you are talking about. You are attacking a strawman of your own invention. Again, where did I ‘blame’ you for anything ? Are you paranoid ?
Apostacy is punisable by death in Islam which to me only speaks to the cowardice embedded in the fragile fairy tales of these various delusions and hallucinations (belief systems). By the way, by definition, a belief is something held to be true for which there is no evidence – I don’t waste my time with bullshit rabbit holes anymore. Discussions with true believers is like discussing things with conspiracy believers – no point.
Didn’t you just go down a rabbit hole you dug for yourself ? I never mentioned any of that stuff anywhere.
Also the logical fallacy you have just committed is ad hominem. Good for you.
Eh ? Again, no idea what you are talking about there. I adhere to a practice called soto zen. The aim of the practice is liberation from all belief systems.
Since this kind of discussion (beliefs, UFOs, fairy tales, phenomenology, conspiracy theories) is pointless, I will attempt to make this my last post on these topics and restrain myself from responding to further triggers.
Well, you raised the subject and made the initial comment and criticism, didn’t you ?
From my perspective, as I’ve said more than once, I see us all standing on the beach watching the tsunami of NTE on the distant horizon, with nowhere much to run to. So really, all conversation is rather pointless. But I prefer to be as positive and cheerful as I can be, and unlike m/m and yourself, I rejoice in small miracles and the delights of the day, rather than constantly dwelling upon slitting of wrists, dead babies, faeces, and so forth. Some here seem to revel in the morbid and macabre. Sure, there is strange awesome beauty about a corpse. I’ve watched the foxes and ravens change a large large woolly sheep into a few bare bones over the last few days.
I do like to hear the range of perspectives here.
Gail dismisses the notion of extra-terrestrials as ludicrous. She privileges her own belief system – the Enlightenment, materialist, capitalist, Western one – above all others. It is an aberration, as depressive lucidity has pointed out, being the only known culture ever, to deny the existence of a spiritual domain ( okay, if you bolt on the Christian part, which goes with it, it does have a spiritual domain, but it is of a very peculiar kind, one which, despite Jesus words ‘The Kingdom of Heaven is within’, makes a precise division between this world and the spiritual world, which is faraway, elsewhere ). It’s also the culture which has caused the most damage ever.
But I am myself all in favour of science, at its best. I don’t know what to make of Dr Mack and the Zimbabwe thing. I had never heard of that. But as for dairymandave and the crop circles and the aliens, why invent aliens ? It’s well know who started the crop circles. The guys have admitted it, written about it, explained how and why they did it, there’s videos of them. For me, it is indeed ludicrous to claim aliens are making crop circles when we’ve got university students INSISTING that it was THEM who made them. But there we are. if people have a deep psychological need for aliens, so be it. Let ‘em have their aliens. We’re standing on the Beach of Doom. Kiddies want sweeties. Who cares ? It makes no difference, does it.
January 26th, 2013 at 5:43 pm
I agree with you Dr. House; An intentional community based on NTE would be way too complicated and unrealistic at this point. My own interest is (if possible) eventually finding an area where I feel gives a little more mileage in respect to NTE – Away from Nukes, not drought prone, not along the coast (which I am currently), away from the huge populations, and not in an area that will be deadly hot in a few years. Just having a few people close by that are minimalists, wish to be foster simplicity and caring relationships, and have left Empire behind as much as possible would be an improvement.
January 26th, 2013 at 6:40 pm
The freeway blogger is having a contest… come up with slogans for his signs, now seen on freeways all over the west coast. He is looking for slogans to go alongside pictures of the earth. Slogans should be about arctic sea ice loss & global warming. He is actually offering cash prizes. Link to his site is below. Be sure to explore around a bit. His is a very creative approach to waking some folks up. Captive audience.
http://freewayblogger.blogspot.co.at/
I think he started out in the LA area & now appears to be traveling up & down the west coast putting these up. A commendable way to spend time IMHO.
Also, thanks everyone for all your comments here. This place means a lot.
My submission: “I Believe The Scientists”
IR
January 26th, 2013 at 6:45 pm
The End of an Era
by Dr. Tim Morgan, Tullet Prebon,
The economy as we know it is facing a lethal confluence of four critical factors — the fall-out from the biggest debt bubble in history; a disastrous experiment with globalisation; the massaging of data to the point where economic trends are obscured; and, most important of all, the approach of an energy-returns cliff-edge.
January 26th, 2013 at 6:51 pm
islandraider says: The freeway blogger is having a contest…
Just one word, and you know what it is.
January 26th, 2013 at 7:50 pm
Wind farm turbines wear sooner than expected, says study
“The analysis of almost 3,000 onshore wind turbines — the biggest study of its kind —warns that they will continue to generate electricity effectively for just 12 to 15 years.”
January 26th, 2013 at 8:12 pm
Wow, back to bickering again…
January 26th, 2013 at 8:18 pm
Guy,
Off topic…. but DIRM?, (Does It Really Matter-that much?)
can you describe the difference between an ‘Adjunct Professor’ and an ‘Associate Professor’ and if there is any practical differences in the lif eof an academy/university?
January 26th, 2013 at 8:57 pm
Hi, I’m freewayblogger, the guy who paints signs and puts them on freeways, and I can vouch for both the contest:
http://www.freewayblogger.blogspot.com/2013/01/second-annual-slogan-contest.html
the prize money behind it (less than it cost the last time my “check engine” light went on) and the basic premise of utilizing the first amendment on high-traffic motorways: when you put a sign on a freeway people will read it until someone takes it down, and that can be a hell of a lot of people.
January 26th, 2013 at 8:58 pm
OzMan, I suppose it doesn’t matter how long the wind turbines last. But their relatively short life supports the contention of Kenneth Deffeyes and James Howard Kunstler that we’ll be in the post-industrial Stone Age by 2025 because the accouterments of industrial civilization will fail by then.
Along the academic path of tenure, the traditional steps are Assistant Professor (usually a six-year trial period), Associate Professor (the change in title comes with tenure), and (full) Professor. Each step includes a raise in pay (often modest) and, more importantly in the ivory tower, an increase in prestige. In general, Adjunct Professors are not on the path to tenure: They’re either on year-to-year contracts or they occupy courtesy, unpaid positions.
January 26th, 2013 at 10:50 pm
Guy,
back in the early 1980′s I knew a woman who shared a flat with a PhD student in wind trbine rotor design. Then it was cutting edge. He told me that there was a big market for the buggest turbines,(which presumably we now have) but the so called efficiencies of scale were not well proven with wind. He had looked at a lot of alternative small domestic and say x4 domestic scale designs, and these were more efficient by cost-vs-maintinence-vs-output way better than the biggies.
The investment, mostly from the Scandinavian and European market was vastly more interested in the bigger designs. His thesis, which I never got to read, because the woman and I, well, didn’t hang out much after a while, included some analysis contrary to the prevailing view.
I don’t think he was specific enough to know it was going to be so cost ineffective as the article you put up indicates, but it follows a principle I have suspected for some time – in that domestic energy needs can best be procured from the site of occupation, or not at all.
That would mean a wind turbine and solar and a lot of specific type of generating going on domestically, which may not be feasable.
Great link, once again, thanx.
January 26th, 2013 at 11:05 pm
So the person with whom you will be fighting with for the carcass of that feral dog will be an armed biker, Sikh or Asian.
I’ll pick Sikh or Asian. Better still, an Asian Sikh..
January 27th, 2013 at 3:41 am
‘Benjamin The Donkey” Nuclear weapons were not his focus in the last 20 years of his life. Perhaps early in his career. Get your time line straight.
January 27th, 2013 at 3:44 am
Even Dr. Tim Morgan still believes in progress on a finite planet, wants more free energy.
“Oh what tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.”
We tried to deceive nature, I think. By the way, nature does provide endless free energy; sunshine. We are about to receive lots more of it…free. Tim will be pleased. Did someone say nature bats last?
January 27th, 2013 at 4:17 am
Having lived in and around intentional and unintentional communities I can tell you that for western folks they don’t work very well. The ones that survive usually have a strong charismatic leader (Koinonia before Clarence Jordan died) or a strong religious heirarchy (Bruederhoff). Until there is cohesion based on need – ie until the crash takes off – the ties that bind are difficult to forge. Hunter-gatherers had kin relationships, growing up in community, strong traditions and customs to make that life work. A warning for those with partners- don’t invite others into community or go into community yourself unless your commitment to each other is strong and stable – seen several marriages break up in community. Make sure that you have enough land and living space to take in close kin. Your kin may not want to be in community now, but when TSHTF they will. If you only have enough for the community, whatcha gonna do when hungry people sit at your door begging, especially if they are brother, sister, son, daughter. Discuss this likely eventuality with any non kin you form community with.
January 27th, 2013 at 4:20 am
Ed “Tom, for tomatoes try Juliet F1.” That would be a hybrid, yes? Good for now but not for seed saving?
January 27th, 2013 at 4:47 am
Nicholas Stern: ‘I got it wrong on climate change – it’s far, far worse’
Author of 2006 review speaks out on danger to economies as planet absorbs less carbon and is ‘on track’ for 4C rise
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jan/27/nicholas-stern-climate-change-davos
January 27th, 2013 at 5:03 am
@ Ozman
Wow, back to bickering again…
Not at all. Trying to be helpful. Not surprising if people don’t find what they seek, if they look for the wrong thing, in the wrong way, in the wrong place, for example, going to India looking for ‘enlightenment from gurus’.
January 27th, 2013 at 5:10 am
Intentional community link, fwiw…
Brian Fey is creating permacultural systems in the forest at the Bosque Village, in the Mexican highlands, a really interesting project that includes an intentional community.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/01/brian-fey-talking-about-permaculture-in-the-bosque-village.html
January 27th, 2013 at 5:44 am
scarlet p.: love your work!
another home-run by collapse:
http://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/
The Illusion of Money and the End of Nature
In order to understand why the world is locked into a blind stampede over a cliff, you have to understand how the world runs, i.e. its socio-economic system. A large percentage of the population doesn’t understand that the world is ruled by multinational corporations or that the citizenry are simply disposable pawns with no voice in their fate.
(and further down)
When you have such an immovable supersystem of puppet governments and marauding transnational corporations running the show, radical movements questioning and trying to change the status quo are easily co-opted or crushed, a recent example being the Occupy movement. In a world where extinction of the human species is guaranteed by climate chaos and the myriad of other crises created by industrial capitalism, a slow and incremental regimen of change is not what is needed to stave off collapse. Unfortunately, the entrenched interests of the financial elite and the nation-states they control won’t allow for any sort of abrupt and profound transformation. As Professor Julian Cribb has correctly identified, a culture of money worship and the mass delusion of money’s illusory value is at the heart of the global crisis. The high priests of money are protected at the expense of all else:
(it concludes)
Without changing the socio-economic system under which we live, no real solutions for the multiple civilization-ending crises we face can be properly addressed. There is an expiration date for this unending conversion of the natural world into fake symbols of wealth hoarded and squandered by a greedy few…
January 27th, 2013 at 7:35 am
Ha, ha as ususal I woke up on the cynical side of the bed this morning. Whenever I see articles taking one side or the other on energy, climate, or environment, I always look for the funding, even with academic studies. Follow the money!
Regarding wind turbines, the article had this: “The report, published last week by the Renewable Energy Foundation (REF), a think tank that has campaigned against wind farms”
wiki: Renewable Energy Foundation says
“There have been critics of REF’s agenda, in particular Juliet Davenport, chief executive of green energy provider Good Energy, and Dale Vince, founder of Ecotricity, who both accuse the organisation of using a deliberately “misleading” name. Vince says “They are not a Foundation for Renewable Energy, as their name says and as any reasonable person would conclude from their name – they actually exist to undermine Renewable Energy – in that respect their name is a deceit.”
“Other critics such as Maria McCaffery, chief executive of RenewableUK, a trade body that represents more than 600 wind and marine energy firms, says the Renewable Energy Foundation’s true purpose is diametrically opposed to the interests of the wind energy industry. “It is an anti-wind lobbying organisation,” she told BusinessGreen. “I’d like to know where the renewable energy part of their remit is. They don’t foster or promote or develop, they just try to undermine the case for wind energy all the time.”[6]”
In an article in the UK Guardian the organization admits they get funding from banks and the “energy sector” meaning fossil fuels – most of which they refuse to name: May 18, 2011 environment blog – “Will the Real Renewable Energy Foundation Please Stand Up”.
I actually think wind farms are stupid, because more energy just leads to more energy being used. It’s a joke, and doesn’t address the core issue, which is too many people consuming too much stuff making too much pollution. The Forest Ecology Network published a really good anti-industrial wind article:
http://www.forestecologynetwork.org/industrial_wind/industrial_wind.html
January 27th, 2013 at 8:02 am
I think that the greatest fault with humans may be their excellent ability to lie. It isn’t some sort of morality or ethics that I am refering to. 2 + 2 is not 5. All politicians are liars; the best politicians are the best liars. Lies is what make religion work. It’s what makes economics work. It’s what makes capitalism work, government, energy policy, agriculture. Where do I stop? But the fact that lies ultimately DON’T work is what we are facing now.
Once in a while we stumble upon someone who is at least trying to tell the truth. Guy, for example. I think John Mack was trying. I think the makers of the really good crop circles are also trying to tell us the truth: that they can make them better than we can…and that’s the truth. “We see what you did to the earth. Let’s see what you can do with crop circles”. And we obliged, in all our hubris. Oh what fools we are.
Truth doesn’t need to be defended; it stands on its own. That’s why all the nations of the world never argue about math and science; they are pure, relatively. Too bad most folks prefer the lies. That may be our greatest problem. (and don’t start arguing that nothing can be proved. We need to believe something just to get out of bed in the morning. 2+2 = 4. That means you, ulvfugl)
January 27th, 2013 at 8:04 am
The whole renewable energy push misses many points.
First they have to produce electricity for vehicles and manufacturing and the heating they are not currently doing. The grid is not up to that even if the renewables were.
Second, windmills use rare earth magnets http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare-earth_magnet – while rare earth minerals are often not rare they are often highly dispersed making nasty mining projects. (google neodymium mine china images)
Third, to date I have not seen electric 18 wheelers, electric steam rollers, electric combines etc. The idea that we can keep industrial civ going on windmills and solar panels is thankfully ridiculous
Fourth – if we could scale up windmills and solar panels to cover all our current usage, we don’t know what that would do to the environment. The wind energy and sun energy they capture are not doing nothing. They are part of what is. Capture a significant part and you may well change our climate in other ways – maybe for the good, maybe not. Back when they started mining coal and oil they didn’t know that it was doing something more than taking up space in the ground, it was sequestering carbon from the atmosphere.
January 27th, 2013 at 8:15 am
Think of all the trees that will need to (and are) cut down for maximal solar panel exposure. If this were to happen on a broader scale, we will soon be treeless – as we are headed soon anyhow.
January 27th, 2013 at 8:18 am
@Kathy C
“Ed “Tom, for tomatoes try Juliet F1.” That would be a hybrid, yes? Good for now but not for seed saving?”
Why would Ed be saving seeds of ‘Juliet F1′ if he’s cloning exact genetic duplicates of ‘Juliet F1′?
January 27th, 2013 at 8:34 am
Good points Kathy. The bottom line is of course overpopulation – which it has been since Ehrlich brought it up in the 1970′s. Nobody listens – “every one has a right to reproduce!” – it’s so mindbogglingly idiotic that we’ve over-run the place to the point that we’ve produced enough pollutants to kill ourselves off – and now we’re on the way to killing off all the other species “taking up space in OUR environment!.”
For the record dairymandave, i agree that there are things that can’t be explained when it comes to UFO’s and crop circles among many others (including geologic peculiarities like Gobekli Tepi) and that we’re far from the truth regarding the origins of human life, past civilizations, and many topics chalked up to “unknown” and left at that. The very structure of “education” tends to keep the status quo at all costs (as in ganging up on anyone who disagrees and putting them out of academia unless they renounce their heretical theories) and disallows – through the process of “peer review” and others – any dissent in many fields (especially regarding paleontology).
By the way, 2 + 2 = 10 (in base 4, ie. 1 group of four and no ones), just so you see that even math can be manipulated (look at statistics if you really want something to howl about – specifically, in many structured medical tests placebos had the same effect as some tested pharmaceuticals and often did better because there were no adverse side effects).
Gail: atta girl! Of course it’s ludicrous – but where ever BIG MONEY is involved, what can you expect? Lies, deceit, distortion, misinformation, propaganda, corruption and the usual nudge-nudge, wink wink business as usual! Pay off the politicians and the regulators, squash the protestors, and everything’s fine at Goldman Sachs! Next!
January 27th, 2013 at 8:51 am
«But I prefer to be as positive and cheerful as I can be, and unlike m/m and yourself, I rejoice in small miracles and the delights of the day, rather than constantly dwelling upon slitting of wrists, dead babies, faeces, and so forth. Some here seem to revel in the morbid and macabre.»
Please, in your rejoicing of small miracles and the delights of the day, refrain yourself of talking about me (of whom you know absolutely nothing) on this site. I am sure that at this stage, we all can dispense with it. Please.
January 27th, 2013 at 9:21 am
.
We’re not going to have sustainable;
The reason’s completely explainable
And perfectly clear:
You can’t get there from here.
And that’s why it’s unattainable.
January 27th, 2013 at 9:25 am
@ dmd
We need to believe something just to get out of bed in the morning. 2+2 = 4. That means you, ulvfugl
Actually, not so. My muscles and bones do that. I don’t need to ‘believe’ anything.
You truly believe that aliens make crop circles, dmd ? So you prefer your own imaginary nonsense, rather than the real evidence of real humans telling you that they did it, showing you how they do it, with ropes and planks and gps ? Imo that’s barking crazy.
And I get criticised here for going on about the invisible world of quantum stuff, which everybody sees everyday, when they flick a switch and the lights come on… you know, electrons, photons… stuff that is actually proven and demonstrated to exist….
January 27th, 2013 at 9:29 am
Gail, at the end of the great article you posted on wind mills is this statement It is clear that the right choice for Maine is offshore. This is where the best winds are, where turbines can be placed out of sight, and, in general, where the least amount of environmental damage will occur. Unfortunately even these folks are willing to have the damage be somewhere else so we can keep industrial civ going. The creatures of the offshore areas probably don’t do well with all the noise either eh?
January 27th, 2013 at 9:31 am
U, I know I am going to be sorry for this, but you do have to believe that your floor is solid to get out of bed. That’s because it is made of solid matter.
January 27th, 2013 at 9:35 am
Tom – have you seen this article on placebos
Placebos Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why
http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/magazine/17-09/ff_placebo_effect?currentPage=all
I love this – color is important but varies from country to country
“Moreover, a pill’s shape, size, branding, and price all influence its effects on the body. Soothing blue capsules make more effective tranquilizers than angry red ones, except among Italian men, for whom the color blue is associated with their national soccer team—”
January 27th, 2013 at 9:35 am
@ m/m
Please, in your rejoicing of small miracles and the delights of the day, refrain yourself of talking about me (of whom you know absolutely nothing) on this site. I am sure that at this stage, we all can dispense with it. Please.
Well, you’ve told us quite a lot about yourself and your circumstances, so more than nothing, but if I’ve offended you, apologies, m/m. Imo, it’s very easy to dig a pit of despondency and depression and fall into it, pulling others down as well. I have learned that it is not the good way to go. I concluded, either end your existence, or make the best of things. I discovered that death of ego, living as if already dead, even if it sounds rather odd, is actually a sublime and wondrous way to be. Living thus is free from care and filled with miracles.
January 27th, 2013 at 9:36 am
And this study http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/dec/22/placebo-effect-patients-sham-drug
“Placebo effect works even if patients know they’re getting a sham drug
Study suggests patients benefit from the placebo effect even when told explicitly that they’re taking an ‘inert substance’”
January 27th, 2013 at 9:41 am
@ Kathy C.
U, I know I am going to be sorry for this, but you do have to believe that your floor is solid to get out of bed. That’s because it is made of solid matter.
I don’t have to believe any such thing. A belief, as I understand it, is something I believe in my head, mind, brain, i.e. an idea, a concept, something which can be changed if reviewed.
I get out of bed just like a bird alights upon a branch, or a cat pounces upon a mouse, it’s all physical, no beliefs involved.
January 27th, 2013 at 9:44 am
Tom; If I buy 2 cows, I have 2 cows. If I buy 2 more cows, I have 4 cows. That’s how I put food on the table. That’s the math I use most of the time but I thought calculus was kind of cool back when.
January 27th, 2013 at 9:48 am
Orgardner – good point, if all the tomatoes Ed plants are from suckers of course he doesn’t need seed duh – missed that. But that sets you up for the same problem I would think as has occurred potatoes – lack of variation in the plant leading to disease problems, which is why many people buy certified seed potatoes instead of keep using their own seed. I was told by one organic company I bought from that I shouldn’t go more than 3 years with saving my own seed potatoes because of the accumulation of disease in the potatoes.
Also it seems that suckers are harder to insure that you will keep alive than seeds.
I am always tempted to get hybrid tomatoes because here in the south there are so many more diseases than in the north. But I have had trouble with even hybrids. However some of our problems are moving north. Ed (if this is the same old Ed) and I discussed my problem with squash vine borers, but he understood the problem better when they hit him last year
Our tomato diseases might move that way as well – even Juliet might succumb.
January 27th, 2013 at 9:55 am
The essential weakness of progressive liberals is not to ignore the importance of force, but a failure to leverage what it means in order to gain a competitive edge. Many seem to bemoan, complain and otherwise be depressed about the facts-of-life, but if one is really interested in survival, then it is critical to be realistic about how this is going to play out.
First of all, the most important concepts are generally the simplest. In that vein, let us consider ‘bread & circuses’; it is absolutely imperative that the masters keep the slaves from rioting. In this day & age, the electrical grid is how virtual bread (the entire EBT/benefits system) is distributed to recipients, and it is of course how the Web/TV based circus is maintained (FB, NBL, AI, etc).
With this thought in mind, the very last thing to go will be the grid. Bet on it.
Secondly, physical food (ie food-like calories) must actually be delivered to consumers, so the very last fuel resources will be shared amongst the military – in order to maintain our control of foreign oil – and keeping the delivery trucks rolling on the Interstates. Bet on it.
We need water, but it can be polluted to some degree as long as people don’t get too sick. It can’t actually be cut off (ie failure of pumps hooked to the grid), otherwise that would impel the sheep to come out of their hovels. In no case can groups be allowed to form. Sewage is also important, but we have a pretty good track record of despoiling our environment without disrupting the flock too greatly.
Since no one will be working, gasoline for personal vehicles won’t be that essential. Bike riding will once again become the primary mode of travel.
So, add it up. You’re gonna want to be in a 1st world enclave whose rulers understand Maslow. They blow it there, they lose the game of conquest & control, and then become targets themselves of the angry hordes. It’s the classic dilemna of what you do when you finally have a tiger by the tail – you can’t let go.
The most traditional ICs are family, clan & race. You might not completely agree with them, but blood is thicker than water. Stick to your kind in an area known to possess strong sentiments towards independence. View the situation from the rulers’ POV: they can either be beat down or they can be paid off via tribute.
Hitler went around CH for a reason. Jefferson was wise enough to pay off the pirates of Tripoli. Understand the power game, and find a way to disappear in the crowd.
January 27th, 2013 at 9:56 am
U since you have stated a belief that matter doesn’t exist I wonder that you can get out of bed at all.
January 27th, 2013 at 9:58 am
Ulvfugl, my father, who was a Baptist minister, used to talk about blind faith. (Seems an appropriate topic for this Sunday morning.) He said that each of us exercise faith every time we sit on a chair or walk up a flight of steps. Perhaps his point was valid, perhaps not, but I do know that we don’t stop and think of the physics of the wood and whether the molecular bonds are strong enough to hold our bulk, etc. We just accept it and go on. Now, in this “enlightened” age of understanding, perhaps more people actually think about those things – particularly if they happen to have above average bulk – but in my opinion, that is a belief. A belief established at a very early age that chairs (or floors or whatever) are designed to support us. That belief can be altered if we sit in enough chairs which can’t support us and we crash to the floor. In that case, we begin to question the soundness of each chair, and we may actually alter our belief and avoid all chairs in the future.
January 27th, 2013 at 9:59 am
ulvfugl; there certain things we can believe in. One of them is that you will argue with anyone about anything for any reason.
I understand that something like half the circles are made by man and we have seen how they do it and we also can clearly see the difference. Well, I can anyway. I have yet to see how the really good ones are made. In spite of all his hubris, there are still some things that man can’t do. Perhaps you could show me or explain it to me.
Seems that man can’t do anything very well and that seems to be the “message”.
January 27th, 2013 at 10:09 am
Kathy, if you keep telling people about those placebo studies, you’ll hurt my business – so knock it off lady!
Just kidding
I’ve shared this example before, but it’s a perfect example of how drug companies manipulate the placebo effect to their advantage.
The maker of Prilosec was about to lose their patent, so they took the drug (omeprazole) and altered it slightly to make Nexium (esomeprazole). Presto Chango – now they have a new patent. The trick was convincing people that it actually works better. So, they hyped it up – “today’s purple pill”, pushed it to all the doctors, and made it very expensive. Those things combined have made it an overwhelming success and the company has made tons and tons of money. Here’s the kicker: it doesn’t work any better than omeprazole – at least I know of no study which shows that it does. But many of my patients swear by it. Of course, insurance companies know that it doesn’t work any better so none of them will pay for it. But people still buy it “because it works better”.
The sad reality is that, particularly in this case, the need for the drug could be completely eliminated if people would just eat more responsibly.
January 27th, 2013 at 10:12 am
U – a present for you
http://astrobob.areavoices.com/2013/01/26/tonights-full-wolf-moon-makes-for-happy-howlers/
January 27th, 2013 at 10:22 am
The Real Dr. House; I take it back. We can do some things really well.
January 27th, 2013 at 10:41 am
@ Kathy C.
U since you have stated a belief that matter doesn’t exist I wonder that you can get out of bed at all.
I have stated no such belief. I have stated that science has shown that what appears to be matter is composed of atoms which are composed of sub-atomic particles which are mostly energy, you know, Einstein, E=MC2, atoms are mostly empty space, matter is mostly nothingness. That’s science. Bewildering, isn’t it.
When the stuff that we are made of collides with other stuff, it seems like solid matter, but everything out there is not as it seems.
January 27th, 2013 at 10:45 am
@ TRDH
Yes, we assume the sun will rise in the morning. It’s a reasonable assumption, going on past experience. It’s not guaranteed, is it. Can’t be proven beforehand. And I might die in the night
January 27th, 2013 at 10:46 am
When trees die, people die: “When the U.S. Forest Service looked at mortality rates in counties affected by the emerald ash borer, they found increased mortality rates. Specifically, more people were dying of cardiovascular and lower respiratory tract illness — the first and third most common causes of death in the U.S. As the infestation took over in each of these places, the connection to poor health strengthened.”
January 27th, 2013 at 10:55 am
another day, another chemical:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130122191412.htm
BPA Substitute Could Spell Trouble: Experiments Show Bisphenol S Also Disrupts Hormone Activity
A few years ago, manufacturers of water bottles, food containers, and baby products had a big problem. A key ingredient of the plastics they used to make their merchandise, an organic compound called bisphenol A, had been linked by scientists to diabetes, asthma and cancer and altered prostate and neurological development. The FDA and state legislatures were considering action to restrict BPA’s use, and the public was pressuring retailers to remove BPA-containing items from their shelves.
The industry responded by creating “BPA-free” products, which were made from plastic containing a compound called bisphenol S. In addition to having similar names, BPA and BPS share a similar structure and versatility: BPS is now known to be used in everything from currency to thermal receipt paper, and widespread human exposure to BPS was confirmed in a 2012 analysis of urine samples taken in the U.S., Japan, China and five other Asian countries.
According to a study by University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston researchers, though, BPS also resembles BPA in a more problematic way. Like BPA, the study found, BPS disrupts cellular responses to the hormone estrogen, changing patterns of cell growth and death and hormone release. Also like BPA, it does so at extremely low levels of exposure.
“Our studies show that BPS is active at femtomolar to picomolar concentrations just like endogenous hormones — that’s in the range of parts per trillion to quadrillion,” said UTMB professor Cheryl Watson, senior author of a paper on the study now online in the advance publications section of Environmental Health Perspectives. “Those are levels likely to be produced by BPS leaching from containers into their contents.”
January 27th, 2013 at 10:56 am
Man.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfGMYdalClU
January 27th, 2013 at 11:02 am
@ dmd
…you will argue with anyone about anything for any reason.
No, I argue with you sometimes, iver some topics, when I think you talk nonsense.
I understand that something like half the circles are made by man and we have seen how they do it and we also can clearly see the difference. Well, I can anyway. I have yet to see how the really good ones are made.
They are made by smart undergraduates from universities who spend a lot of time planning how to lay out Mandelbrot’s whatsit’s and working out the precise co-ordinates on graph paper, and then they choose a good field with suitable access where they won’t get caught, and a moonlit night with cloud cover, and spend an hour doing it. It’s not that hard. There’s youtube videos showing how it’s done.
In spite of all his hubris, there are still some things that man can’t do. Perhaps you could show me or explain it to me.
There were natural crop circles, which were much more interesting than the manmade ones, that were inexplicable, made either by some freak wind event, like a dust devil, or some weird geomagnetic force, but they were fairly simple, mostly just circular, and they were long ago lost and forgotten once the ‘creative artists’ moved in, which is a shame, really.
Seems that man can’t do anything very well and that seems to be the “message”.
The message I get is that if there’s money to be made, then why not make it ? You know, it ‘works’. Is it ethical ? Possibly not, because it’s based on fakery, like a lot of showmanship. But then, it’s relatively harmless, it makes people happy. I put it in the same category as telling peoples fortunes by reading their palms. Half serious, half fun. Don’t know what the farmers think, about people trampling their crops.
January 27th, 2013 at 11:08 am
@ dmd
If I buy 2 cows, I have 2 cows. If I buy 2 more cows, I have 4 cows. That’s how I put food on the table. That’s the math I use most of the time
Well, no wonder you’re in such a sorry state, ffs, why don’t you buy a bull, then you’d get some more sensible mathematics…
January 27th, 2013 at 11:18 am
Kathy, when i was fortunate enough to teach stat for 5 years i spent a lot of time on the placebo effect and have done a lot of reading on it. Thanks for the articles you linked to – they seem to illustrate the whole “mind over matter” principle.
In New Scientist a few years back they quoted a doctor who had a patient who was convinced that someone had put a spell on them and they were severely physically effected. The doctor decided the only cure was to use voodoo to correct it – so he arranged a session with a “high priest” (one of his assistants) and they basically tricked the guy, producing a large lizard from his stomach in a sham cure-ceremony. The guy was better within hours.
In another issue they delved into one of their own staff writers visiting a leading expert on the placebo effect. The writer was wired up to electrodes and, after determining his pain level from mild to severe (like touching an electric fence), he was seated in a chair and placed in front of a computer monitor that flashed red and green lights – indicating how severe a jolt of electricity he’d feel. After about a hundred of these random shocks the last three were green and he barely felt them. The researcher said that the last three were the most severe but that he had been conditioned not to feel them.
On another front (i know this is off topic, but it’s very interesting to me) – when my pitbull mix tore his hind ACL he couldn’t even put his back foot down. i took him to the vet who said she could either recommend him for a $3000 operation and then he’d be immobilized for a week or two after that and need extensive physical therapy too. i couldn’t afford that, so i asked her what else we could do. She said accupuncture. What? On a dog? How are you gonna convince him that it’ll work? She said, i can’t explain how it works, i just know it does. We did treatments for about 4 months, starting with 3 times a week then twice-weekly, and finally once a week over that period of time, after which he was significantly better, about 85% and we followed that up with swim therapy – which he completely loves. He was back to 100% after 6 months and can run, jump and play like he was a youngster. i always thought accupuncture was related to the placebo effect, but now i see it’s just another strange way to get the body to function as we wish.
January 27th, 2013 at 11:24 am
@ dmd
If only half the crop circles are made by humans, and the other half are made by, erm, some unknown alien entities…well, maybe you’re talking trans-dimensional hybrids ?and according to this, they’re not that nice, super-intelligent, yes, but always very deceptive, they tell you what you want to hear… see what I mean ? If you want it to be them that made the crop circles, then that’s what they’ll be telling you…. sounds pretty tricky to me…
http://www.jasoncolavito.com/1/post/2013/01/was-there-a-trans-dimensional-race-of-hybrid-beings.html
January 27th, 2013 at 11:29 am
Kathy C, you’re right – it’s almost impossible to find a study or report about catastrophe that doesn’t end with unjustified optimism!
Guy, I demolished that study to the best of my ability (it makes me so mad!), twice, and I wrote to one of the authors who insisted the reason people aren’t as healthy when the trees are gone is “emotional stress”, not more pollution. grrrrrrrrrr here’s what I wrote second with a link to the first. To my mind, it is very important, conclusive evidence of just how much ozone the trees are soaking up – this was from my post:
The Atlantic has picked up on the study I mentioned earlier indicating that people become less healthy when trees in their neighborhoods are lost. Naturally I left a comment:
“…they are unable to satisfactorily explain why this might be so.” That is because the Forest Service – which is entangled with timber and other extractive mining industries linked to fossil fuel interests – doesn’t want to admit what they well know: the pollution from cars and power plants is toxic. How many times have you heard – plant a tree, they clean the air? Well, they do! That’s why people are healthier when the trees are absorbing tropospheric ozone.
The other thing this study ignores is the rather obvious question – what happens to trees when they so obligingly absorb poisonous gases? Answer: THEY die, instead of us! Studies have proven that trees are dying all over the world, and it’s because they are damaged from pollution, which makes them more vulnerable to other pathogens – insects, diseasae and fungus. The grid went down for so long after Sandy because hundreds of thousands of trees fell, and it was easy to see that they were rotted on the inside. Trees should live for centuries, some for thousands of years. They’re not supposed to be rotted when they are 50 or 150 years old. More on this “flawed” (coughs politely) study here: (http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-withering-of-all-woods-is-drawing.html)
January 27th, 2013 at 11:30 am
Hey, the US Chamber of Commerce says fracking is our future!
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/karoli/us-chamber-ceo-donohue-fracking-our-future-
“All is not lost, peasants. Tom Donohue has the answer to our economic woes. All we need to do, according to the God of Commerce, is open federal lands and frack the hell out of them. Really. Here is his claim, verbatim:
Fracking, for example, has created 1.75 million jobs in less than two years. There’s billions and billions of dollars going to the states and the federal coffers. We have more energy than anybody in the world and, if we, in an environmentally friendly way, acquire it, go on the federal lands, do it in the right way, we’ll get that extra piece of cash and bring manufacturing and jobs back to the United States or create them in the United States because of our energy.
In laymen’s English, Donohue’s constituents — the Kochs, the Hunts, and other Texas oil barons — see the answer to our economic woes as being pretty simple. Sell federal lands to them, let them frack the heck out of it (in an environmentally friendly way, of course — cough), and there will be more jobs than the eye can see!”
Doomed i tell ya – we’re completely, utterly gone – why, we guarantee it!
January 27th, 2013 at 11:52 am
Tom, re BPA: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-disappearing-male/
January 27th, 2013 at 12:30 pm
dairymandave:
I’ve seen that “man” video before. It reminds of this verse from the Hebrew/Christian Bible:
Genesis 1:28: “God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth‘” (NRSV)
I’d say we’ve fulfilled that commission rather well. Sigh.
January 27th, 2013 at 12:59 pm
@Kathy C
Kathy C writes: Orgardner – good point, if all the tomatoes Ed plants are from suckers of course he doesn’t need seed duh – missed that. But that sets you up for the same problem I would think as has occurred potatoes – lack of variation in the plant leading to disease problems, which is why many people buy certified seed potatoes instead of keep using their own seed. I was told by one organic company I bought from that I shouldn’t go more than 3 years with saving my own seed potatoes because of the accumulation of disease in the potatoes.
I certainly cannot speak for Ed but if I found a tomato plant that exhibited excellent disease resistance, plant vigor, hardiness, flavor of the fruit and other desirable characteristics then I would vegetatively propagate the plant and give it a try for the following planting season by keeping it going over the winter. If I found the plant to exhibit undesirable characteristics then I would not clone it. For what would be the use of that?
While potatoes and tomatoes are in the same family (Solanaceae) you are comparing a tuber to a fruit. One grows below ground, one grows above. Crop rotation is an important part of organic gardening practices and a three year rotation cycle is recommended for members of the Solanaceae family. Additionally a seed potato is not a seed it’s a tuber and is propagated by division of the tuber. The same principles apply. If your potato crop is experiencing problems then why would you save the seed potato for the following year? Planting an infected seed potato is going to yield an infected seed potato.
Also it seems that suckers are harder to insure that you will keep alive than seeds.
I think this depends on how adept one is at cloning. Seeds can be mishandled, stored improperly etc. Cloning annual plants is not difficult especially if you are trying to preserve disease resistance and desirable characteristics. If one can grow houseplants in the winter then it is certainly feasible to keep rooted cuttings growing until planting time within the home or greenhouse environment. If I may paraphrase Forrest Gump… seed saving is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get… unless you really know what you’re doing.
I am always tempted to get hybrid tomatoes because here in the south there are so many more diseases than in the north. But I have had trouble with even hybrids. However some of our problems are moving north. Ed (if this is the same old Ed) and I discussed my problem with squash vine borers, but he understood the problem better when they hit him last year
Our tomato diseases might move that way as well – even Juliet might succumb.
I grow hybrids but I also use heirloom cultivars and varieties and yes they do cross pollinate. The ‘Roma’ tomato cultivar seems to grow just about everywhere with satisfactory results and has pretty good disease resistance. I think climate change is definitely moving plant viruses and diseases northward because let’s face it, things just ain’t like they used to be.
January 27th, 2013 at 1:24 pm
Ogardener, of course I know a seed potato is not a seed. That was part of my point, not expressed very well. When you clone you lose the benefit of crossing plants to create seeds with mixed genes. Of course with potatoes you pretty much have to do that, but not so with tomatoes. Although this person is doing potatoes from true seeds – http://www.curzio.com/N/Potato_starting_from_seed.htm which seems like a useful project – or would be if it weren’t that we are going extinct soon
Of course you would save suckers or potatoes from your best plants. When I used to grow potatoes I did that – bad knees have made me quit potatoes. But what if one year they all got infected. What if they were infected late in the season and the damage was not obvious. Seeds seems a safer way to go. When I save seeds I save from the best, but I also make sure I save from several of the best plants.
I have gardened for 40 years in Western NY, California, Georgia, North Carolina, TN, and now AL. California and Alabama were the biggest adjustments from my home state, NY. I buy mostly from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange as they carry varieties better suited to the south, all non hybrid I think and mostly organic.
January 27th, 2013 at 1:29 pm
Hey Depressive Lucidity:
Please feel free to send me an email at ffkling@sbcglobal.net.
I am happy to share with you the many years of information that I have accumulated. I have been researching this topic since 1975.
I have a theory that pretty well ties everything together with a few exceptions (i.e. cattle/animal/human mutilations). The mutilation issue is what first garnered my interest. I grew up on a farm and one of our neighbors lost 8 cows in a single night for reasons nobody could explain. This happened in Winter with snow yet there were no tracks. The cows were drained of blood. Their rectums cored out. The lips, one eye, one ear, and utters removed with exacting precison. The other strange thing was that their backs were broken (the only way this could happen is if they were dropped from a great height). Cows are tough animals and are not easy to take down. Also, no predator would approach the animals. The government has tried blaming this on satanist cults, but not a single person has ever been arrested in the US or worldwide.
January 27th, 2013 at 1:43 pm
Now that I have had a chance to read some of the posts I have a message for those persons so damn sure of their reality: If you disagree, than fine but stop casting aspersions. The ones who attribute UFOs to fairy tales have never spent more than 2 minutes of serious research.
So go ahead and mourn over the corpse ad infinitum, but please do not irritate with your musings the rest of us who are interested in expanding our realm of knowledge.
I never liked a know-it-all. I still do not.
January 27th, 2013 at 1:54 pm
Hi Dairymandave:
Boy, we have really upset the thought police on this blog. Keep up the great work. Unfortunately, I do not know much about crop circles, although while some are hoaxes others are of such intricate design and complexity that it would be impossible to hoax. Further, cameras have been set-up to look for hoaxers and while the cameras make sure no people are involved the circles appear. There is something going on. Keep investigating.
January 27th, 2013 at 1:56 pm
@ Kathy C
“Although this person is doing potatoes from true seeds – http://www.curzio.com/N/Potato_starting_from_seed.htm which seems like a useful project – or would be if it weren’t that we are going extinct soon
”
Aye Lass, that’s the ticket!
January 27th, 2013 at 2:05 pm
Frank; We are made from air, water, and a little dirt. But to get energy, we need to eat other beings made from air, water and dirt. What if we had evolved so that we just eat dirt, breathe air, drink water, and do our own photosynthesis on top of our heads? Black would be the best color for our bodies, maybe green. Point is, we wouldn’t need to be so agressive if we didn’t need to eat each other. What if plants evolved to walk? Just thinking out of the box since this run didn’t work out so well. What could have been. What could be.
January 27th, 2013 at 2:38 pm
@ Frank
Boy, we have really upset the thought police on this blog. Keep up the great work. Unfortunately, I do not know much about crop circles, although while some are hoaxes others are of such intricate design and complexity that it would be impossible to hoax.
Hahaha, are you talking about me ? You’ve obviously missed the threads where I get told off for talking about siddhis and quantum reality. The ‘intricate design’ argument won’t fly. Just needs smart people and more work. People shown how it’s done. But if you need aliens to have done it, fine, I care not one bit.
@ dmd
We are made from air, water, and a little dirt.
Which are mostly nothingness.
January 27th, 2013 at 2:58 pm
ulvfugl; spinning nothingness. Now try to figure where that didn’t come from.
January 27th, 2013 at 3:14 pm
A Must Read:
http://agonist.org/2013-financial-overview-the-endgame-is-closer-than-ever/#more-101074
I’ve followed Numerian’s writing for years. Comprehensive, nuanced, informed, and prescient.
BTW, my prediction of which swan will shit in the pool, among the many he lists, is the bird called climate change caused food shortage.
January 27th, 2013 at 3:45 pm
@ dmd
Now try to figure where that didn’t come from.
Well, you’ve got me there, because I do not know, it’s unfathomable mystery, to which I have no answer, but neither does anyone else.
January 27th, 2013 at 5:39 pm
BCNP: great link and i agree about food shortages probably causing the next financial catastrophe which then causes all of civilization to break down in chaos. People are already coming unglued in a lot of middle eastern countries and Africa can always surprise, but once it hits here – everyone will know the game is up. Silent Spring here we come.
January 27th, 2013 at 5:55 pm
I concur on the food issue hitting the fan, and believe it will really hit this coming fall. Not only the drought, but so much weird weather which has nature all out of balance. I have citrus, avocados, blue berries, and all sorts of other fruit blooming in the middle of January when in times past, this happens around April. My tomatoes which normally die in the winter, are being eaten by pests (BTW, Sun Gold are the best cherry toms!). It’s got to be that global cooling!
January 27th, 2013 at 6:17 pm
Bailey, we are having the same sort of weirdness – not quite as bad tho – our sorrel is making flower heads already – That is WAY early. Saw a yellow cabbage butterfly the other day. Starting my seedlings NOW for an early spring.
January 27th, 2013 at 6:58 pm
Yeah Kathy, I haven’t been able to grow my usual greens and lettuces this winter, because they have all bolted, blooming out and becoming prematurely pungent. I even had watermelon from the summer that lived through the winter and harvested one the other day! It’s scary to think what this summer is going to be like – yet the latest science reports seem to be downplaying the whole warming issue lately.
January 27th, 2013 at 9:58 pm
Frank
After some thought a few years ago it occurred to me that the cow biopsies, and broken backs may likely be a way of TPTB getting high grade analysis, covert of course, on the contamination of say any one of several thousand potentially deadly chemicals, and/or radiation in tissue samples from those special parts.
Seems obvious it would all be precision cutting and heli drop, so no one found out who it was. If the cattle just did not turn up, then the police could keep digging and find evidence.
As it is, you are looking for a rectum thief!!!
Thats a far harder investigation than cattle rustling.
Just a thought.
January 27th, 2013 at 10:29 pm
Global Hyperwarming: Sea levels rise even faster due to water’s thermal expansion:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/01/27/1182474/-Global-Hyperwarming-It-s-worse-than-you-ever-thought
Copyright here means we get info six months later than we otherwise would (not that that would change anything in this case, but “just sayin’”).
January 27th, 2013 at 11:06 pm
A full rant on the starving in Ethiopia, and social justice where food is concerned.
‘A plague of David Attenborough’
http://climateandcapitalism.com/2013/01/27/a-plague-of-david-attenborough/
A few quotes:
“Last week, British broadcaster and naturalist David Attenborough devoted over a third of a widely reported interview to his claim that human beings are “a plague on the earth.”
“It’s not just climate change; it’s sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde. Either we limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world is doing it for us right now.”
Attenborough cited Ethiopia as his only example of the natural world fighting back against the human plague.
“We keep putting on programmes about famine in Ethiopia; that’s what’s happening. Too many people there. They can’t support themselves – and it’s not an inhuman thing to say. It’s the case.”
In Attenborough’s view, Ethiopians are starving simply because there are too many of them. Since they haven’t voluntarily reduced their numbers, the natural world is doing so, by the “natural” method of mass starvation…..
Ethiopia actually produces much more food per person today than it did when the population was much smaller. According to Oxfam, the country is now is “just 2% from being able to supply an adequate level of food energy to all its citizens.”
Despite that, at least thirty million Ethiopians go to bed hungry every night. (Crikey Jebus, that is more than the population of Australia by 6 million odd- OzMan added)
The problem isn’t human numbers or food production, it’s an economic and political system that enriches foreign investors and a tiny urban elite, while nearly 80% of the people earn less than $1 a day. There’s lots of food, but they can’t afford to buy it.
Cruel irony: the hungriest people in Ethiopia are farmers. In the past five years, hundreds of thousands have been driven off their land with no compensation, while the government has leased millions of hectares to foreign corporations that raise export crops.
But in Attenborough’s populationist worldview, there are no land grabbers stealing land from subsistence farmers. There is no history of colonial exploitation, slavery, and war, no extreme inequality reinforced by neoliberal policies. There are no international speculators driving up food prices, no agribusiness giants exporting food to richer countries while millions starve. There are just people, and people are a plague.
Yes, there is a plague on the earth, but it isn’t people. It’s a social and economic system that puts profit before people, that treats food as a commodity instead of as a basic human right. So long as that system remains in place, hunger and poverty will continue, no matter what happens to birth rates….”
Crikey bloody Jebus.
As of 2011, Ethiopias population was 84,734,000, or thereabouts. 80% of that is, about 67,787,200 people, living on less than $1 per day.
Crikey friggin Jebus, what the fuck is wrong with this picture ?????
Question: if most in the Anex-1 countries get at least 3 significant meals per day, (and many can get vastly more calories than needed), would ‘we all’ give up one of those meals every day from now on if we were absolutely certain those starving people, (in all like situations as in Ethiopia) would get adequite food?
Anyone?
I would, in a heartbeat.
OTOH, if some predictions here and elsewhere come to pass soon, ‘we all’ may be giving up that meal per day, or even two, anyway.
January 27th, 2013 at 11:33 pm
Frank & ulvfugl
It’s ironic that those who want to limit the discussion on this site to suicide, meat puppetry and composting dismiss any phenomenon which does not fit within the coordinates of the consensus, materialist reality game. They rightfully criticize those who ignore the seriousness of climate change, who ignore the methane bomb, and so forth, yet they dismiss the mountain of research that has been devoted to the UFO issue by serious, intelligent people … if it’s all just hoaxes and superstition then explain how such chimera are tracked and confirmed by radar, photographed, filmed, witnessed in some instances by thousands of people, chased by military jets, observed by competent pilots, astronauts, and the list can go on and on.
As Dr. John Mack said in one of his lectures, we are surrounded by the reality police who want to keep us in this narrow post-enlightenment, capitalist, materialist box believing that we are cut off from anything that transcends our puny bones:
I have suggested the idea of the “politics of ontology,” which has to do with how a society organizes itself, particularly through a certain elite group, to determine for the rest of that society what is real. The politics of ontology is a kind of governance of ideas. In this culture, there may be a very small group of scientific, governmental, religious, and corporate elite that determine the prevailing boundaries of reality. The forces that surround the determination of reality is an area of politics that we have not really thought about that much. We think about the politics of economics, of the governing of communities and the creation of a social order, but not much about how we are governed with respect to what we are supposed to think is real.
If we are nearing the end of the human journey, then why is it so offensive to some that others want to discuss reality in broader terms than what the thought regulators deem acceptable?
January 28th, 2013 at 12:27 am
Now the suits are beginning to waver, quiver, & quake… But hey,
what an exciting opportunity for growth!
—
Nicholas Stern: ‘I got it wrong on climate change – it’s far, far worse’
Author of 2006 review speaks out on danger to economies as planet absorbs less carbon and is ‘on track’ for 4C rise
The Stern review, published in 2006, pointed to a 75% chance that global temperatures would rise by between two and three degrees above the long-term average; he now believes we are “on track for something like four “. Had he known the way the situation would evolve, he says, “I think I would have been a bit more blunt. I would have been much more strong about the risks of a four- or five-degree rise.”
He said some countries, including China, had now started to grasp the seriousness of the risks, but governments should now act forcefully to shift their economies towards less energy-intensive, more environmentally sustainable technologies.
“This is potentially so dangerous that we have to act strongly. Do we want to play Russian roulette with two bullets or one? These risks for many people are existential.”
Stern said he backed the UK’s Climate Change Act, which commits the government to ambitious carbon reduction targets. But he called for increased investment in greening the economy, saying: “It’s a very exciting growth story.”
MORE HERE:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jan/27/nicholas-stern-climate-change-davos?INTCMP=SRCH
January 28th, 2013 at 4:04 am
Bailey, I wonder if sorrel would work for you – it never gets bitter, stays the same flavor all year. Eaten alone it has a strong lemony flavor, but in salad or sandwich it is not overpowering. http://www.southernexposure.com/sorrel-garden-herb-04g-p-770.html – they say use it sparingly in salad = but we use it as the whole salad! We don’t grow lettuce at all any more. For a bit of bite in our salads we grow creasy greens (upland cress).
Watermelon now – wow. Well we keep trying to garden until we can’t but it gets harder to figure out when to plant and what to plant.
January 28th, 2013 at 4:44 am
dl: we aren’t bound by those people or rules here at NBL (at least i haven’t heard Guy express this) and can bring up and discuss whatever comes up ON OUR WAY OUT. The trouble with those topics is that we hit the wall of limited knowledge, past which is mere speculation, whereas with the usual topics (mostly evidence of how quickly and in what directions the collapse is occuring) it’s easily pointed to in scientific studies and current events (though, as pointed out above, it gets to us a bit late) that we establish as temporary fact. i enjoy discussions about UFO lore and current sightings, crop circles (has anyone seen the movie?), mysterious archeological finds, advanced science and math, and weird occurances such as ghosts, the hum, near death experiences, psy-ops, time warps and others not neatly catagorized into one of our pre-selected pigeon-holes of knowledge.
So please don’t hold back despite what anyone else expresses – those of us who have something to contribute will and anyone interested can at least read and learn (even if to personally dismiss) the information.
Lidia: sea-level rise is one of those “it won’t effect us in our lifetime” sorts of things (that will end up surprising a lot of people). i’m noticing the glacial pace of reconstruction after (Katrina and) Sandy, not to mention the entire towns that were flattened by tornadoes, burned out by fire or inundated by flooding over the past few years. Insurance companies are beginning to “welsh” on their contracts (“it was an act of God”) and the fed is broke as everyone knows (accept for the military/homeland security, the TBTF banks and Wall St. of course) so we’ll be hearing a lot of empty promises in the coming year when it starts all over again.
Fun times, eh?
January 28th, 2013 at 4:52 am
Kathy, Bailey (and all): Your anecdotes are what worry me about the erratic weather bringing about the Silent Spring scenario i’m dreading. With vegetation sprouting early and then possibly getting frozen in the many weeks we still have until spring, should this happen to trees (already under enough stress) it will do significant damage and they may not regenerate if it happens often or severely enough. As Gail pointed out, the increase of damaging ozone down here where we live in the troposphere isn’t helping matters, and combined with persistant drought in the (former) breadbasket states will wreak havoc on our nations food production ability. If/when this extends to California (and Florida) – we’ll have reached the point of no return.
January 28th, 2013 at 5:01 am
@ depressive lucidity
Yes, important and interesting, the politics of ontology.
As I see it, there is no ‘reality’, all there is, for the individual, are a huge range of experiences, of various kinds and qualities, extended over a lifetime, which other people categorise and interpret and classify, according to the prevailing dominant paradigm and cultural norms. To break out of the mainstream consensus is heretical, dangerous, the path of the shaman and the madman. Lots of casualties and disasters.
I’ve met plenty.
http://youtu.be/Pc8gRgNCw1Y
January 28th, 2013 at 5:24 am
Re the politics of ontology, long film, MKUltra, LSD, the Hippie Movement
http://youtu.be/PiVxbS02kp0
January 28th, 2013 at 5:26 am
Seedling sealed in its own ecosystem and watered just once in 53 years
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2267504/The-sealed-bottle-garden-thriving-40-years-fresh-air-water.html
January 28th, 2013 at 5:45 am
Questions to David Graeber
http://www.mhpbooks.com/david-graeber-live-chat-reddit-ama/
January 28th, 2013 at 5:51 am
i’m sure we’ll be seeing more of this as things “progress” into the next few years:
http://www.globalnewsdesk.co.uk/middle-east-asia/north-korea-cannibalism-hunger-reports/03138/
January 28th, 2013 at 5:54 am
Why are these occurring?
UFO-Related Homicide in Brazil
By G. Cope Schellhorn
If this case is authentically UFO-related – and at this time I have no reason to believe it is not – then all of us are going to have to reevaluate to one degree or another our tentative conclusions as to the possible specific intentions, moral perspectives and general agenda that some of our extraterrestrial visitors may have.
There have been rumors of homicidal, UFO-related, human mutilation cases for some time now but hard evidence has been lacking. Until, perhaps, now. Brazilian ufologist Encarnacion Zapata Garcia and Dr. Rubens Goes have recently presented a series of sensational photographs, obtained from police files which mimic the wounds of countless UFO-related animal mutilation cases that have been reported in Europe and North, Central and South America since the 1960s. On first glance they would seem to be ufology’s worst nightmare.
What is more disturbing is that Brazilian ufologists and police have intimated that there may be at least a dozen or more cases similar to the recently uncovered Guarapiranga reservoir case. If this is true, it is somewhat doubtful that any of this potential new material will ever see the light of day, given the official attitudes now prevailing in Western power circles. But we can be grateful for fortuitous disclosures, and the Guarapiranga case and it’s accompanying photographs seem to be just that. A great stroke of luck, albeit a dismaying one. Obviously if the Guarapiranga data is legitimate, then it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain the position that all visitors are demonstrating a relatively friendly attitude toward humans, regardless of what their specific agenda(s) may be. The Guarapiranga situation indicates that there is at least one group of alien visitors to the planet who have a complete disdain for human sensibilities, who, in fact, could care less about the value of human life.
When I learned of the Guarapiranga case through Brazilian ufologist A.J. Gevaerd, who first published the related photos in his magazine UFO, my interest was stimulated and I quickly made plans for a trip to Brazil. In Sao Paulo I met Encarnacion Garcia at the home of well known ufologist Claudeir Covo and talked with her later at length. Then I traveled to Campo Grande and questioned Gevaerd. He was kind enough to supply me with second generation photographs (the best available) of the Guarapiranga reservoir victim having himself become thoroughly convinced that the evidence supporting the case was authentic and that the case was UFO-related. I came to the same conclusion because all other alternatives were neither supported by facts nor good logic, whereas the similarities to numerous cattle mutilations which I had studied in the United States were startling, exactly paralleling what I have seen many times before.
The specifics of the case are as follows:
Encarnacion Garcia learned from her friend, Dr. Rubens Goes, that he was in possession of some rather “odd” photos which had been given to him by his cousin, police technician, Rubens Sergio. These were official photos of a body that had been found near Guarapiranga reservoir on the 29th of September, 1988, of an unnamed male who was, however, later identified. The name of this man has been withheld from all media investigators, including UFO investigators, at the request of his relatives.
After studying the photos, Encarnacion Garcia was impressed with how similar the wounds of the body were to those found on the carcasses of so many UFO-related mutilated animals, knowledge which the original investigating police officials and medical doctors involved with the case did not possess. Surprisingly, Dr. Cuenca, head of the primary investigation, offered his files on the case. This is the stroke of luck which I previously mentioned and for which we can all be thankful. These included the all-. important autopsy description to which I will momentarily refer.
The initial police report, however, was not extraordinary in nature except for the recognition that the body, although extremely mutilated, had not met with unusual violence; that is, there were no signs of struggle or the application of bondage of any kind.
It was the autopsy report itself which was most revealing, especially when we compare the remarks made there with what we have learned from animal mutilation cases elsewhere. It is imperative to remember, as I have stated previously, that the individuals conducting the autopsy had no knowledge of similar animal mutilation cases. This makes the official remarks of the report all the more revealing in retrospect.
Encarnacion Garcia received copies of seven photos. I have included the five most revealing ones here with a description and commentary. The work of the perpetrators of this atrocity: the kinds of cuts made, the precision of the cuts, the removal of whole internal organs through small apertures, the lack of bleeding, the failure of the body to smell or decompose rapidly – all these are hallmarks of UFO-related animal mutilations. These peculiarities would seem to rule out Satanists, revenge- seekers or casual mutilators and go beyond even the capacities of a modern Jack the Ripper.
Photo #I: Face and upper torso photo. The body was in perfect condition. Rigor mortis had not set in and it was estimated that the victim had been killed approximately 48 to 72 hours previously. There were no signs of animal predation or putrefaction which might be expected. Strangely, there was no odor to the cadaver. Bleeding from the wounds had been minimal. The black coloration found in the face area and in other places within the photo is partly due to low light exposure when this photo and others were taken. It is also partly due to coagulated blood in the wound areas.
As can clearly be seen, flesh and lips have been excised around the mandibles, as is common in cattle and other animal mutilations, the autopsy report noted that “the eyes and ears were also removed and the mouth cavity was emptied.” Removal of these body parts, including the tongue as here, is common enough in animal mutilation cases.
As Encarnacion Garcia rightly recognized, if a comparison of the victim with animal mutilation cases is made, “You can see they are the same – and that is also the conclusion of experienced doctors.” The doctors drew their conclusion only after they had been shown photographs of similar animal mutilation cases, cases with which they were not previously familiar.
The autopsy report states: “There has been a removal of extensive tissue along many parts of the face, head and neck of the victim… There has also been extraction of ocular tissue, eyes, auditive internal and external organs (ears) and entire parts of the head. The tongue and several muscles were also extracted.”
The kinds of cuts on the cadaver are what we have come to expect in UFO-related animal mutilation cases. Of primary interest is their precision. The “surgery” (or butchery, if you will) was done with agility and care and probably with speed. The lack of profuse bleeding suggests the use of a laser-like instrument producing acute heat, thus cauterizing almost immediately the edge of the wounds. This is a speculation on my part, however, although there are numerous precedents. Many of the cases studied by Dr. John Altshuler in the United States exhibit this kind of high heat, rapid surgery. Whether it would still be possible to test fragments of the flesh from the victim’s wound areas is doubtful. Suffice it to say the wounds appear to be exact replicas of cases studied by Dr. Altshuler, Tom Adams, Bob Pratt, Ted Oliphant, Linda Howe, Colman VonKeviczky and myself.
Photo #2: (Above) Face and upper torso with arms outstretched. Perhaps it is best to begin here with several quotes from the autopsy report. “The axillary regions on both sides showed soft spots where organs had been removed. Incisions were made on the face, internal thorax, abdomen, legs, arms, and chest.” As Garcia observed, the doctors stated that these wounds were quite uncommon. The report also observes, “Shoulders and arms have perforations of 1 to 1.5 inches in diameter where tissue and muscles were extracted. The edges of the perforations were uniform and so was their size. The chest had shrunk due to the removal of internal organs.”
In other words, internal organs were removed or sucked somehow through these small circular incisions. Why such a technique? Some doctors today are using a similar method to remove diseased tissue and organs from their human subjects – but this kind of procedure injures those organs in the process. Did the “surgeons” who worked on this victim care whether the organs were injured or not? What kind of specimens were they looking for? What kind of research is this? Wouldn’t it be easier and more medically expedient to abduct a human specimen and study it live, including its anatomy and physiology, in a properly equipped laboratory? It would appear that the perpetrators of this act did not care if the man’s life was lost nor did they care if the body were found. Here we have strong indication of a total disregard for the specimen and, by extension, for human life in general. The body was left as trash. What does this say about the perpetrators and their attitudes?
The photo clearly shows the symmetrical holes in the man’s arms. One arm clearly shows the sunken area near the perforation clearly, demonstrating where muscle has been extracted. The shrunken chest area also indicates a similar process of internal extractions. It is significant that the police and medical examiners were convinced the holes found in the head, arms, stomach, anus and legs were not produced by bullet wounds.
Photo #3: Close up of the left side of the victim’s head. Here we see that the ear is cleanly excised. As the report states, “auditive internal and external” matter was removed The photo does not show the small holes discovered in the cranium. These were detected, however, by the medical examiners. How much, if any, of the brain tissue was removed is not stated.
Photo #4: Close up of lower torso including thighs. The stretcher, pants and cord that are visible belonged to the rescue team. The autopsy report continues, “You also find the removal of the belly button leaving a 1.5 inch hole in the abdomen and a depressed abdominal cavity showing the removal of the intestines.” Brazilian doctors who later viewed the evidence were left nonplused by the hole in the umbilical area where, it appeared, “a great amount of internal organs were extracted. The edge of the hole was perfect and shows a precision cut. Also, the abdominal area of the body was very shrunken because of organ removal.” The original autopsy report notes that “the scrotum was also removed by a 3 x 1.5 cm. elliptical incision.” Strangely, the penis itself was left intact although it appeared to have been stretched to about twice its normal length. Why excise the scrotum without taking the penis? Human logic is defied by such actions. We are aware, however, of the great similarity here with other animal mutilation cases, particularly female cattle where it is not unusual to see anus, teats, vagina and uterus extracted. But why exactly this is done is as big a mystery as who the exact perpetrators are, although there is enough strong circumstantial evidence to implicate UFO involvement.
The hole in the left leg duplicates in size the umbilical hole and the arm hole previously discussed. In the words of the autopsy report, “It was an… elliptical incision of about 3 x 1. 5 cm…The penis was stretched and had no signs of being cut. The testicles were extracted with a precision cut.” Rather startling is the lack of pubic hair, as if the victim had been readied for surgery.
Early on in the investigation, Brazilian official investigators considered the possibility that the castration of the victim was an act of revenge. They soon rejected this theory, however, because it could not account for the remaining wounds and the other peculiarities related to the body. What is more, revenge seekers who castrate usually excise the penis, not just the scrotum.
Photo #5: Victim lying on his stomach. The autopsy report specifies: -”Removal of the anus and a hole between the second and third toes…The anal orifice of the victim was extracted with a large incision about 3 by 6 inches in diameter. The rectum and other internal parts of the human discharge system were also removed. It is probable that even some of the internal organs of the man could have been removed through this incision.”
What is most compelling about the anal incision and the extraction of anal and digestive tract tissue is that it is a carbon copy of the surgery we have seen in so many UFO-related animal mutilation cases. Are we supposed to believe a revengeful human or a group of Satanists are capable of such precise, difficult, surgical techniques/procedures which leave even medical professionals perplexed as to how they could have been done? I think not. Has the Brazilian and/or American government staged a little demonstration at the Guarapiranga reservoir to frighten UFO investigators and the general public into fearing all extraterrestrial contact? In other words, are we faced with a gruesome, carefully orchestrated display of misinformation? Possibly, but probably not, and my reasons for believing this are several.
First, it would seem a fortuitous turn of events that ufologist Encarnacion Zapata Garcia had the right friend(s) in the right places at the right time. If our government, and presumably the Brazilian government, has kept a lid on similarly sensational material in the past – and I have no doubt there is more than ample evidence supporting such a contention – here we have an accidental bubble that has, against all odds, escaped the pot. It is our good fortune, you might say.
The photos are definitely causing a stir; causing many people, including some UFO investigators, to do some new thinking. But the powers that control lids will be carefully double-checking in the near future to make sure the pot is as secure as possible. Thus I would not get my hopes up that additional homicidal, UFO-related human mutilation cases and graphic photographs accompanying them will surface in the near future.
If we discard the possibility of the Guarapiranga case as a piece of misinformation, we are left with several intriguing alternatives. Is this the infrequent act of a rogue extraterrestrial group which from time to time enjoys indulging themselves in a pathological blood sport at the expense of humans? Perhaps. More likely, I think, we are indirect witnesses to an intentionally contemptuous act by a group or species of extraterrestrial origin who would like to give other visiting species a bad name and, as a bonus, harness mankind into a greater fear-mentality than already binds it. But these are only speculations and we will have to wait until a future time for a greater truth when more thorough revelations, and evidence that supports them, become available.
Do we have any precedents to the Guarapiranga case? Yes, we do. At least one good example and the rumors of possibly another. The case of Sgt. Jonathan P Louette, who was stationed at White Sands Missile Test Range in 1956 and whose mutilated body was found on the Range three days after an Air Force major had witnessed his abduction by a “disk shaped” object, bares a striking resemblance to the Guarapiranga situation. Louette’s genitals had been removed, his rectum cored out with surgical precision and his eyes excised in a manner quite similar to the incisions made upon our Guarapiranga victim. And then there is the rumor of the Texas mutilation case which occurred – and was quickly hushed up – in the mid ’60s. I have had verification ofthe legitimacy of this by two intelligence agency personnel, one active and one retired, but have not had time to investigate further.
At present, the rumors of human body parts found on at least one crashed UFO in the 1940s, body parts found in a barn in the state of Oregon several years ago or the rumor of a mutilated Vietnam War B-52 crew will have to remain just that – rumors, until the lid accidentally, albeit infrequently, comes ajar again and we have some solid evidence. But there is no denying that the Guarapiranga reservoir case has taken us far beyond rumor. The evidence is unmistakable and it is sobering. On the one hand, it points stunningly in a UFO-related direction. On the other hand, I believe it would be wise of us to draw a tentative conclusion if other less violent cases have not already led us to do so. We should not, in most cases, generalize about our extraterrestrial visitors; neither about their motives , morals nor research agendas. And one addendum also seems advisable: In an age when almost anything has come to seem possible, if not probable, either cosmically or here on earth, the wisest course might be to let our extraterrestrial visitors demonstrate their friendliness before jumping to conclusions about their philanthropy and opening the door too wide. After all, Little Red Riding Hood, nine times out of ten, is no match for the wolf at the door.
We have seen in the past, especially in Brazil, many cases where Human beings have been attacked by UFOs and their occupants. This is an undeniable reality that many researchers do not want to face. The Fenomeno Chupa-Chupa or “Suck-Suck” phenomenon which occurred in the Amazon and northeastern part of the country in the ’70s and ’80s produced hundreds of injured people and ultimately some fatalities. These mostly impoverished people were usually attacked by small probes (3-6 inches in diameter), probably unmanned, little UFOs which emitted strong, burning beams of light. Many of the victims suffered not only burns but a significant loss of blood (thus the “suck-suck” appellation) during their encounters. Some, such as Luiz Fernandes Barroso, suffered appreciable mental as well as physical incapacitation. Barroso’s mind was reduced to that of a two-year-old long before his death.
In North America, reports of brutal manhandling by UFO occupants are much rarer. If homicidal, UFO-related human mutilations have taken place they have either gone unrecognized for what they really are or have been adeptly covered up by official intervention. Whatever the truth may be, the Guarapiranga reservoir case and the startling photos which accompany it should give us pause for thought. I, like ufologist editor A.J. Gevaerd, came to the conclusion after reviewing the evidence that UFO-related mutilators were most probably the perpetrators of the abominations revealed by the photographs of the Guarapiranga reservoir victim. And I believe Gevaerd is probably right when he says most extraterrestrial visitors seem neutral in their attitudes towards Earth and earth humans, some are friendly and some could care less. We had better learn, I think, to discern the differences. It might in the long run save our world culture and our very lives.
[end]
The Human Mutilation Factor
by Don Ecker
In the last forty years of UFO research, one of the most baffling questions that have plagued researchers has been “Is the UFO Phenomenon dangerous to humanity?” Over the years, there have been numerous cases where the phenomenon has figured into human deaths, but as a rule, most cases have been officially ruled accidental. When speaking of cases where death has resulted, usually most assume cases where military pilots have died as a result of “chasing” the phenomenon. One of the most famous of these military chases that is discussed when ever the subject of death and UFOs is raised, is the famous “Mantell Case”. This case is so well known that I will not discuss it here, but there are many others. In one of the less well known cases, during the mid 1950′s, a military jet interceptor was observed on radar being “absorbed” into a UFO over the Great Lakes. No trace of pilot or aircraft was ever found. In another case reported in the excellent work “Clear Intent” was the case of the “Cuban MIG Incident”. In this case a Cuban MIG was locking on his weapons radar when the aircraft exploded in mid*air. The wing man was certain that the UFO had fired some type of weapon, but other than the jet exploding, no other smoke, flame or other obvious weapon firing was observed.
The matter of either overt or covert hostility on the part of UFOs has always been treated warily by serious researchers. On the one hand, if the enigma is hostile, then several questions must be faced. What if anything should the powers in authority tell the public? Is the government capable of handling a threat of this type? Is the public ready to face an issue as potentially terrifying as a “possible threat from somewhere else?” Other than incidents involving military involvement, have there been cases where civilians have been injured or killed during some type of UFO encounter? Is it possible that the reported cases of UFOs and their occupants abducting unwilling humans for some type of medical or genetic experimentation could be true? Now, if any of this is factual, then what ramifications do the Human Race face in light of the above?
According to Mr. Phil Imbrogno, during the research that led to the writing of “NIGHT SIEGE The Hudson Valley UFO Sightings” by Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Philip Imbrogno, and Bob Pratt, Imbrogno has stated that on several occasions, Hynek specified that he wanted no mention of the dozens of human abductions that they had already uncovered at that time, to be mentioned in the book. Hynek was afraid of the adverse publicity if word of this aspect leaked out to the public. After Hyneks death, Imbrogno stated publicly on Compuserve and other public forums, facts of abductions, animal mutilations, and EVEN several cases of mysterious deaths of humans, that he indicated COULD possibly be linked to the UFO Phenomenon.
While researching several stories for UFO Magazine, I interviewed a number of prominent UFOlogists, over the last several months, and in each case, the question of human deaths, in connection with animal mutilations, invariably was raised. Most readers of this text will be familiar with Mr. John Keel, who many regard as the last of the Great UFOlogists. From the earliest days of modern UFOlogy, Keel has been a force to reckon with. The author of numerous books that address various aspects of UFOlogy, and magazine articles too numerous to mention, Keel has a unique slant on the subject that most will never experience. According to Keel, the phenomenon has always had an unexplained hostility towards humans, that have led to untold numbers of deaths. While Keel will be the first to explain that he rejects the ET hypothesis, he does not doubt the phenomenon a bit. In what many UFOlogists consider as one of Keels best works “The Mothman Prophecies”, E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc. 1975, Keel related report after report of animal mutilations involving cattle, dogs, horses and sheep, and also related what were called “vampire killings” of four humans in Yugoslavia, where the victims were “mutilated and drained of blood”.
After having spoken to John Ford, the Chairman of the Long Island UFO Network, for a news story for UFO Magazine, I became even more convinced that the aspect of potential UFO hostility should be investigated. Ford relayed a numbing number of animal mutilations, human disappearances, human abductions, covert Federal involvement in areas that suffered high numbers of animal mutilations, and even armed military helicopters that chased UFOs over civilian communities. Ford, who is an officer of the Federal Court system, did investigations into the disappearances of mostly young adults over a year period, in areas of high UFO overflights, and after having several personal friends who were police officers of the local municipalities look into the situation, came to the conclusion that the facts were being suppressed. The reason given was that there was “no need to panic the public.” Although no iron clad proof can be made for direct UFO intervention, the circumstances are extremely suspect.
After growing up in an age where the entire human race can be decimated by nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, the human race somehow manages to keep slogging on. I have seen more people “panicked” over a shortage of gasoline than imminent nuclear holocaust, yet somehow when the subject of UFOs crop up, the government doesn’t want to panic anyone. It really makes me wonder what they know, that I should. I really don’t think that they are going to talk to anyone soon, as you shall soon see.
In January, 1989, it came to the attention of the MUFON State Director of Idaho, Mr. Don Mason, that cattle mutilations had occurred once again in the southeastern section of Idaho. After an investigation by a MUFON investigator, the facts were as follows. The animals ( two cattle, same night, but each owned by different ranchers ) were “somehow” killed, sexual organs removed, body fluids drained, patches of hide “surgically” removed. All the appearances of what is today considered to be a classic case of animal mutilation. As of this date ( February 15, 1989 ) the final lab reports are not back yet, but already the Sheriffs Department has labeled it a “cult killing.” No tracks, tire or human, around the animals even though it had just rained, no unusual activity reported by the ranchers that evening, and one animal was found next to an occupied house. One of the ranchers admitted that this was the second time he had been “hit” by the mysterious mutilators. The last incident had only been a bit over a year previously, and they were worried enough that all had their “deer rifle” within easy reach.
After having been personally involved in an investigation of cattle mutilations as a police officer back in 1982, I was very familiar with the “cult” theory of perpetrators. The Idaho Department of Law Enforcement drags it out every time there is a new rash of mutilations. The problem is, and every one is aware of it, that no one has yet been brought to trial, or arrested yet for these crimes. Out here in the west, people know that you are flirting with a ranchers bullet if you are caught fooling around with the ranchers cattle. They are his livelihood, and he will defend it. Yet, the mutilations keep occurring, and no one is any the wiser, or are they?
With the subject of animal mutilations fresh in everyones mind, I was once again speaking to Don Mason, when he informed me that the investigator that had been assigned to the above mentioned case had come across a very mysterious death of a man back in 1979. According to the report, two hunters in the Bliss and Jerome area of Idaho had literally stumbled across the nude body of a man that had been hideously mutilated. The body was in the literal middle of nowhere, nude except for a pair of underpants, his sexual organs had been removed, his lips sliced off, and several other classic mutilation cuts. Although he was in very rugged country, his bare feet were not marked as if he had walked in that terrain, but yet no other tracks, animal or human were evident anywhere. After the police were notified, an intensive search was mounted, and miles away, the mans possessions were recovered, yet no one yet knows how the body ended up where it was found, or even more importantly, what happened to him. It should be noted that this area also had over the years, many unexplained UFO reports and cattle mutilations.
Now I must explain that I had very mixed feelings about whether I wished to attempt to explore this subject any further, or allow sleeping dogs to lie. On the one hand, I wanted more than anything to discover just what was occurring, and on the other, I realized that this had the potential to backfire on someone that disturbed the status quo. I was familiar with reports of human abductions and mutilations that had surfaced in the last several years in reports such as the Lear documents, Grudge 13 reports and others, but yet I was not sure what I believed, or even if there was anything to believe. I ran across a friend that was still employed with a police department in this area who was a detective. I had mentioned to him the recent cattle mutilations, and what I suspected in the above mentioned case of a human that had been mutilated. Scot had also been involved in the last several years with several cases of mutilations that he had been called upon to investigate, always with negative results. He was as curious about this phenomenon as I was, and since he was still an active duty police officer, he had access to the department computer, to access the NCIC system that is maintained in Washington D. C. by the FBI{ext. link} . After giving Scot the criteria for a search of unexplained human deaths, that involved factors of mutilation, I asked that the search go back to at least 1973, involving this area of the Northwest. Scot ( not his real name ) ran the request through the department computer. As he mentioned at the time, he had expected to get realms of reports back that we would have to wade through, to get to the reports that would be are further study. Scot ended up requesting that the inquiry be run back to 1970, and involve not only Idaho, but also Utah, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington states. Because of the magnitude of this search, Scot stated that it would take about one week to get the results back into his department. As a side note, for anyone that is not familiar with the NCIC system, it is a national data bank for Law enforcement agencies all across the United States. It is maintained and controlled by the Federal Burea of Investigation, at FBI headquarters, in Washington D. C.
On the 14th of February, Scott contacted me in person, and appeared very troubled. His exact words were that “something is really screwy, Don.” “I got the request back from NCIC on Monday, and there has gotta be something wrong. They told me that they had NO unsolved murders at all, zero, that met that criteria. THAT ANY FURTHER REQUESTS WILL HAVE TO BE MADE BY VOICE, TELEPHONE CALL, WITH PROPER AUTHORIZATION. Somebody is sitting on something, big as Hell.” I also knew that something was as screwy as hell. After all, anybody that has had any dealing with law enforcement knows about the “Green River Killer” in Washington state. This serial killer is credited with at least 30 to 40 murders of young women, and to this date, the case is as big a mystery as ever. Many of the killings showed some types of mutilation, and if nothing else, at least some of these homicides should have shown up.
Once more, as a side note, I had been warned by a prominent UFOlogist, that there was a lid “screwed down tighter than you would believe in regards to human mutes.” I also was warned that in order to break through the secrecy, was going to be a long and sometimes weary job, but that if enough persistence was applied, then it was possible to get to the bottom of this facet of the UFO enigma. Do I think that this can be solved, along with the rest of the puzzle? Yes, I do, because I think that the secrecy can only be maintained for so long, and then no longer. I also believe very strongly that only if the entire UFO community works in concert will this be accomplished, and the infighting and arguments MUST CEASE for the good of us all.
On the ParaNet system and on Compuserve, I wrote and uploaded a file entitled LIGHT.TXT, and in UFO Magazine Vol. 3, No. 5 I called for a UFO summit to be held in order to get the UFO community organized and to present a unified front. Only by a unified front, and calling for Congressional hearings, will this lid ever get torn off, and the truth that is suppressed be brought to the light of day. Any help from the members will be greatly appreciated, and I can be reached at ParaNet RHO at the following number: 1-208-338-9187 in the USA.
Also I can be reached on Compuserve by EMail, and my user number is: 74270,3360. Anyone with ANY INFORMATION is requested to contact me at the above addresses as soon as possible. The secrecy game has gone on long enough. It is past time to get to the bottom of this. Forty years IS LONG ENOUGH.
Don Ecker The Secrecy Game
by: Tim Swartz
Copyright ©1997 Tim Swartz
Are UFOs responsible for mysterious human mutilations?
Researchers of the UFO phenomenon have openly speculated over the years that if UFOs do represent extraterrestrial visitors, why do they operate in such secrecy? Alleged UFO contactees say that the aliens are friendly and are here to help mankind. However, evidence that extraterrestrials have a sinister, hidden agenda when dealing with Earth’s inhabitants tells a different story. The most obvious example of nefarious UFO activity has to be the mutilation of cattle. The evidence is mostly anecdotal that UFOs are involved with cattle mutilations, but the unusual circumstances surrounding this mystery seem to point to UFOs, or at least UFO-like activity.
Over the years, strange attacks on animals and humans have been recorded and attributed to predators, other humans and even vampires. What makes these incidents similar is the general lack of blood found on the bodies. Primitive man believed that blood was sacred, the source of life in all creatures. When you lost your blood, you lost your life. So it made sense that the life force must be contained in blood. The Old Testament is a good example of ancient beliefs regarding blood. Leviticus 17:14 states, that “the life of every living creature is its blood.” The verse goes on to say that it is forbidden for anyone to eat blood because it is the source of all life.
Because of these early beliefs, man has always had a superstitious horror when dealing with unusual attacks that involve the loss of blood. Throughout history, there have been numerous reports of strange attacks and mutilations that seem to go beyond normal animal predators. In 1874 near Cavan, Ireland, for several months something killed as many as thirty sheep a night, biting their throats and draining the blood. In 1905 at Great Badminton, Avon, sheep were again the target for attacks. A police sergeant in Gloucestershire was quoted in the London Daily Mail, “I have seen two of the carcasses myself and can say definitely that it is impossible for it to be the work of a dog. Dogs are not vampires, and do not suck the blood of a sheep, and leave the flesh almost untouched.” In a single night in March of 1906, near the town of Guildford, Great Britain, fifty-one sheep were killed when their blood was drained from bite wounds to the throats. Local residents formed posses to hunt down whatever was killing their livestock, but nothing was ever caught, and the killings remain a mystery. Events of this kind have probably occurred regularly throughout history. The cases that have received media attention, are those involving a large number of deaths, but there are probably hundreds of smaller attacks that have gone unnoticed over the years.
These strange livestock attacks are eerily similar to the recent attacks by the so-called Chupacabra, which means “goat sucker.” Confining itself chiefly to the southern hemisphere, the Chupacabra has been blamed for numerous attacks on small animals. The animals have had their throats bitten and their blood sucked out by the creature that reportedly stands on two legs, has large black or red eyes and is about four feet tall. Unlike past killings, the Chupacabra has been seen by shocked eyewitnesses whose descriptions seem to describe an animal that superficially resembles the “Grays” of flying saucer lore. As in past cases, attempts to track down the Chupacabra has met with failure. If history is any indication, the Chupacabra will never be caught, and the strange events will remain a mystery. It is as if the mystery mutilators appear out of thin air, do their damage, and then, just as quickly, disappear again.
The mutilation of cattle seems to involve a different set of circumstances then past vampire-like attacks on livestock. While cattle mutilations almost always involve the complete draining of blood, physical mutilation of the flesh is so apparent that seasoned ranchers are shocked by the unusual nature of the deaths. No one really knows when the first unusual cattle mutilations began. Records show that in the middle of 1963, a series of livestock attacks occurred in Haskell County, Texas. In a typical case, an Angus bull was found with its throat slashed and a saucer-sized wound in its stomach. The attacks were attributed to a wild beast of some sort, a “vanishing varmint.” As the attacks continued through the Haskell County area, the unknown attacker assumed mythic proportions and a new name was created, “The Haskell Rascal.” Whatever was responsible for the mutilations was never caught, and the attacks slowly stopped. Throughout the following decade though, there would be similar reports of attacks on livestock. The most prominent of these infrequent reports was the mutilation death of a horse named Lady, in 1967. Area residents of southern Colorado reported UFO activity the night before Lady was found dead, and the consensus was that the unknown craft were somehow responsible.
In 1973 the modern cattle mutilation wave can be said to have begun in earnest. It is interesting to note that a huge UFO flap was occurring across the country in 1973, with many sightings taking place in the same areas that cattle mutilations were happening. In November of 1974, rumors began to connect the sighting of UFOs with mutilated cows that were being found in large numbers in various Minnesota counties. Dozens of UFOs were reported in Minnesota and dozens of cattle were found dead and mutilated. Although the sightings and mutilations were never correlated, many felt that the number of sightings was added proof that the UFOs were somehow involved.
In 1975, an unprecedented onslaught of strange deaths spread across the western two-thirds of the United States. Mutilation reports peaked in that year, accompanied by accounts of UFOs and unidentified helicopters. By 1979, numerous livestock mutilations were also being reported in Canada, primarily in Alberta and Saskatchewan. In 1980, there was an increase in activity in the United States. Mutilations have been reported less frequently since that year, though this may be due in part to an increased reluctance to report mutilations on the part of ranchers and farmers. In the 1990′s the mutilations have continued. In the United States, over ten thousand animals have reportedly died under unusual circumstances.
Because of the strange nature of the killings, wild stories and rumors have surfaced over the years in an attempt to explain what is really going on. Chief among these are stories that aliens are harvesting cattle at night for their evil purposes. The extraterrestrials’ preoccupation with cattle is apparently due to the fact that the ET’s absorb nutrients through the skin. The blood that they acquire from the cattle is mixed with hydrogen peroxide, which kills the foreign bacteria in the mixture, and is “painted” on their skin, allowing absorption of the required nutrients. Supposedly human blood is preferred by the aliens, but cattle blood can be altered to serve the same purpose.
While it may seem far-fetched that animal blood could be used in place of human blood, recent scientific discoveries seem to confirm that animal blood can be altered for human transfusions. According to The Observer, a respected weekly paper in Great Britain. The scientists who helped engineer the first cloned sheep are reportedly close to generating human blood plasma from animals. PPL Therapeutics, the Scottish firm that helped Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute clone a sheep, is developing the means to replace the plasma genes of sheep and cows with the human equivalent. PPL told the paper it plans to raise herds of the animals and manufacture plasma from the proteins extracted from the animals. The Observer quoted Dr. Ron James, the firm’s managing director, as saying. ” Only 5 percent of Britain’s population regularly gives blood. Genetically modified animals could produce 10,000 times more plasma a year than a human donor.”
In 1991 DNX Corp., a Princeton-based biotechnology firm, announced that it had developed genetically engineered, transgenic pigs that produce large quantities of recombinant human hemoglobin. When commercialized, DNX’s blood substitute could provide a cost-effective, virtually unlimited alternative to the human blood supply that is entirely free from the threat of contamination by infectious agents that cause diseases such as AIDS and hepatitis. In addition, DNX’s recombinant hemoglobin-based transfusion product will be universally compatible with all blood types, eliminating the need for blood typing and cross matching, and will have improved shelf-life and storage characteristics. DNX’s announcement was made to the 1991 World Congress on Cell and Tissue Culture in Anaheim, Calif., by John Logan, vice president of research at DNX. Perhaps the wild stories are not so far-fetched after all.
If the stories are true, some would ask why aren’t the aliens catching and mutilating humans instead of animals? The truth could be that human mutilations and deaths are occurring on a regular basis, but that the stories are too horrible to contemplate. If murderous, UFO-related human mutilations have taken place, they have either gone unrecognized for what they really are, or have been adeptly covered up by official intervention. Thousands of people worldwide disappear every year, never to be seen again. A majority of these disappearances can be attributed to homicides or other more comman situations.
However, some disappearances are so unusual and unexplained that more disturbing scenarios must be examined. In 1956 at the White Sands Missile Test Range, an Air Force major reported that he had witnessed a disk shaped flying object kidnap Sgt. Jonathan P. Louette. Louette was missing for three days when his mutilated body was found in the dessert near the test range. Louette’s genitals had been removed and his rectum cored out with surgical precision. Like many cattle mutilations, Louette’s eyes had been removed and all of his blood was missing. The Air Force filed a report stating that Sgt. Louette had died of exposure after being lost in the dessert.
The late Leonard H. Stringfield, a former Air Force intelligence officer wrote in his self-published book, UFO Crash/Retrievals, Status Report No. 6, about the testimony given by a “high ranking Army officer” whom Stringfield says he has known for several years and who is allegedly a “straight shooter.” The officer claimed that while he was in Cambodia during the Vietnam war, his Special Operations group was involved in a fire fight with aliens, whom the soldiers came across sorting human body parts and sealing them into large bins. Subsequently the unit was held for several days and interrogated under hypnosis. The officer claimed that he and his men were given cover memories which only began to surface years later. The implications here are staggering. If this story is true, then the possibility exists that military and government officials are aware of the aliens interests in the physiological makeup of the human body.
In 1989, the mysterious death of a man a decade earlier came to the attention of the MUFON State Director of Idaho, Don Mason. According to the report, in 1979, two hunters in the Bliss and Jerome area of Idaho stumbled across the almost nude body of a man that had been hideously mutilated. The body’s sexual organs had been removed, it’s lips were sliced off, and the blood had been drained. Although the body was found in very rugged country, it’s bare feet were not marked, and no other tracks, animal or human were evident. After the police were notified, an intensive search was mounted and the man’s possessions were recovered miles from where the body was found. No one knows how the body ended up where it was found, or even more importantly, what happened to him. It should be noted that this area over the years, has had many unexplained UFO reports and cattle mutilations.
In Westchester county New York, in 1988, several morgues were broken into late at night. Fresh human bodies had undergone mutilations involving partial removal of the face and total removal of the eyes, stomach, thyroid gland and genitals. An assistant medical examiner who had broken the silence concerning the case, stated that checks were immediately run on the employees who were on duty at the morgues. No links connecting morgue employees with the crimes were found. While there is no evidence that UFOs were responsible for the bizarre incidents, once again we see human bodies being mutilated in the same ways that cattle and other animals are being mutilated.
Another interesting case that has received little publicity in the United States is the Brazilian Guarapiranga reservoir case. Brazilian ufologist Encarnacion Zapata Garcia and Dr. Rubens Goes uncovered a series of sensational photographs obtained from police files. The photos are of a dead man whose injuries are similar to the wounds of countless UFO-related animal mutilation cases. The body had been found near Guarapiranga reservoir on September 29, 1988. The name of the man has been withheld from the media and UFO investigators at the request of his relatives. After studying the photos, Encarnacion Garcia was impressed with how similar the wounds of the body were to those found on the carcasses of so many mutilated animals. The initial police report noted that the body, although extremely mutilated, showed no signs of struggle or the application of bondage of any kind.
The body appeared to be in good condition. Rigor mortis had not set in and it was estimated that the victim had been killed approximately 48 to 72 hours previously. There were no signs of animal predation or decay which might be expected. Strangely, there was no odor to the body. Bleeding from the wounds had been minimal. In fact, it was noted that there was a general lack of blood found in the body or on the ground around the body. Police photos show that the flesh and lips had been removed from around the mouth, as is common in cattle and other animal mutilations. An autopsy report stated that “the eyes and ears were also removed and the mouth cavity was emptied.” Removal of these body parts, including the tongue as here, is common enough in animal mutilation cases.
The “surgery” appeared to have been done by someone familiar with surgical procedures. The lack of profuse bleeding suggested the use of a laser-like instrument producing heat, thus immediately cauterizing the edge of the wounds. The autopsy report states that, “The axillary regions on both sides showed soft spots where organs had been removed. Incisions were made on the face, internal thorax, abdomen, legs, arms, and chest. Shoulders and arms have perforations of 1 to 1.5 inches in diameter where tissue and muscles were extracted. The edges of the perforations were uniform and so was their size. The chest had shrunk due to the removal of internal organs.” The autopsy report continues, “You also find the removal of the belly button leaving a 1.5 inch hole in the abdomen and a depressed abdominal cavity showing the removal of the intestines.” The report also noted the victims scrotum had been removed, and that the anal orifice had been extracted with a large incision about 3 to 6 inches in diameter.
It is significant that the police and medical examiners were convinced the holes found in the head, arms, stomach, anus and legs were not produced by bullet wounds. What is most disturbing about the anal incision and the extraction of anal and digestive tract tissue is that it is a carbon copy of the surgery seen in so many UFO-related animal mutilation cases. While no evidence linking the Guarapiranga reservoir mutilation case with UFOs has been found, Brazilian ufologists and police have hinted that there may be at least a dozen or more cases similar to this one. In fact, Brazil has had past incidents where UFOs have reportedly attacked people, and possibly taking blood from them. The July 12, 1977 edition of the JORNAL DA BAHIA reported that, “A fantastic story of a flying object emitting a strong light and sucking blood from people, circulated from mouth to mouth among the population of the counties of Braganca, Vizeu and Augusto Correa in Para’, where many people fear leaving their homes during the night so they won’t get caught by the vampire-like light from the strange object which, according to information, already has caused the death of two men. No one knows how the story started, but the truth is that it reached Bele’m and grabbed headlines in the local newspapers.”
Months later, on October 8, the newspaper O LIBERAL launched the first in a series of reports, about the Chupa-Chupa (suck-suck) phenomenon. “Sucking animal attacks men and women in the village of Vigia: A strange phenomenon has been occurring for several weeks in the village of Vigia, more exactly in the Vila Santo Antonio do Imbituba about 7 kilometers from highway PA-140, with the appearance of an object which focus a white light over people, immobilizing them for around an hour, and sucks the breasts of the women leaving them bleeding. The object, known by the locals as “Bicho Voador” (Flying Animal), or “Bicho Sugador” (Sucking Animal), has the shape of a rounded ship and attacks people in isolation. One of the victims, among many in the area, was Mrs. Rosita Ferreira, married, 46 years old, resident of Ramal do Triunfo, who a few days ago was sucked by the light on the left breast, and passed out. Increasingly it looked like she was dealing with a nightmare, feeling as if there were some claws trying to hold her. She was attacked around 3:30 in the morning. Another victim was the lady known as “Chiquita,” who was also sucked by the strange object with her breast becoming bloody, but without leaving any marks.”
Compared to reports of mysterious animal attacks and mutilations, reports involving humans are somewhat rare. The probable reason is that many such incidents involving people are not recognized for what they are. The possibility is that a massive cover-up by officials world-wide exists to hide the fact that something is preying on humans. If we consider that extraterrestrials are visiting Earth, the likely reason for such visitations is scientific exploration. Consider that with billions of galaxies and the likelyhood that there are multitudes of different kinds of life scattered across the universe, the Earth is just another source of specimens for extraterrestrial scientists to gather and study. While man’s ego would like to think that we are special in the universe, the hard reality could be that we are just curiosities to be collected, studied, and possibly exploited, and then finally pickled in a jar someplace with the notation: HUMAN, MOSTLY HARMLESS.
If you wish to examine the medical examiner photos: http://www.think-aboutit.com/mutilations/Human_Mutilations.htm
January 28th, 2013 at 6:09 am
Regarding the anomalous of UFOs, abductions, cattle mutilations, legit crop circles, group visions (whether little greys, Virgin of Medjugorje, etc); I have looked into this for years and believe that while most cases are readily explainable, the ones that are not are attributable to transpersonal manifestations of the collective unconscious.
Why? Because they all have much in common and they change in theme with the collective and culture. What used to be little elves and gnomes are now bug eyed little greys; What used to be ‘flying saucers’ are now ‘lights in the sky’ and orbs, etc etc. None of these are ‘real’ in a literal consensus reality and this is they are mercurial and why no evidence will ever come forth. This is nothing new and has been with us throughout our history – but the themes change with the times. Well, I didn’t mean to go there, but because it keeps coming up, I couldn’t resist..
January 28th, 2013 at 6:36 am
From the UK Guardian Newspaper
A report from the NASA Planetary Science Division to the Office of the President that was leaked warns:
It may not rank as the most compelling reason to curb greenhouse gases, but reducing our emissions might just save humanity from a pre-emptive alien attack, scientists claim.
Watching from afar, extraterrestrial beings might view changes in Earth’s atmosphere as symptomatic of a civilisation growing out of control – and take drastic action to keep us from becoming a more serious threat, the researchers explain.
“Green” aliens might object to the environmental damage humans have caused on Earth and wipe us out to save the planet. “These scenarios give us reason to limit our growth and reduce our impact on global ecosystems. It would be particularly important for us to limit our emissions of greenhouse gases, since atmospheric composition can be observed from other planets,” the authors write.
January 28th, 2013 at 6:38 am
..Adding to the above, when I say the anomalous is not ‘real’, I do not mean that it does not leave evidential footprints – whether scratch marks from supposed demons, ghostly or haunting phenomenon, or burns from a flying saucer,..or even some cases of cattle mutilations.
My thinking on it is hard to fully expound in this NBL format, so I will just say that I believe some scientists are correct in that we live in a sort of information based, simulated reality – and as such we are holons. Therefore, the psychopathology aspect of our collective unconscious is capable of sending back radar returns in certain cases. Though I have been open to literal ETs, and I now convinced that it has more to do with ‘us’ than any ‘them.’
January 28th, 2013 at 6:43 am
@ Frank
So, Frank, you’ve been studying that stuff. Have you arrived at any opinion yourself as to what it is all about ?
January 28th, 2013 at 6:45 am
Bailey:
I understand your mind-set. You live in a well designed, predictable box and anything that might upset your pre-conceived perceptions of reality is a direct threat and therefore must be quashed. Global climate change denialists also live in this box, which explains their almost religious zeal to deny all evidence.
There are numerous flawless cases that have stood the test of time and high scrutiny and here are some examples: Travis Walton abduction in the 1970′s; The 1973 Pascagoula, MS abduction of Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker in 1973; 1980 abduction of police constable Alan Godfrey. I suggest you research the two day encounter with UFOs at the Rendlesham Airforce base. The UFOs were witnessed (and physical proof exists) by multiple military security police personnel including the Deputy Base Commander, Colonel James Halt.
January 28th, 2013 at 6:49 am
Thank you for the question, ulvfugi. I will explain my opinion a little later this morning, and I would be grateful for any intelligent feedback.
January 28th, 2013 at 6:56 am
Frank, you are totally incorrect in your analysis of me. I have lived my life totally outside of predictable reality lol, and have been open minded to everything I hear. But my own study and thoughful research of these phenomenon over the years, leads me to a collective unconscious explanation – and anyone who has studied the history of anomalous encounters throughout history and culture,cannot deny that they change accordingly.
No one is going to convince me that little green men drive a different model of space ship every couple of decades – to my point about why no one sees ‘flying saucers’ anymore. The current abductions, generations ago where not bug eyed little aliens (because this was not in the collective unconscious), but were attacks by old hags or medieval creatures, demons, etc. My thinking on this is far from a materialistic mindset however, (if you will go back and ponder my acceptance of the validity of the anomalous).
January 28th, 2013 at 7:00 am
Lidia, thanks for sharing that link about global hyperwarming. Very interesting!
I read it last night. When I attempted to look at it again this morning I get an error message that says the diary has been deleted. Weird.
January 28th, 2013 at 7:13 am
Hamlet – you wrote “Now the suits are beginning to waver, quiver, & quake… But hey,
what an exciting opportunity for growth!
—
Nicholas Stern: ‘I got it wrong on climate change – it’s far, far worse’”
I think you are right in that as TPTB realize climate change is real and dire, they will not be able to escape their mindset of “how can I make money off of this”/
Meanwhile the scientific community has their own reasons for not telling us how dire it is
http://arctic-news.blogspot.co.nz/2013/01/the-ongoing-tragic-failure-of-the-scientific-community-to-issue-adequate-warning-re-the-arctic-tipping-point-emergency.html
The author posits thusly
Even though conditions are clearly lining up which can trigger a runaway (such as the Arctic ice collapse and the loss of solar reflectivity that will only accelerate further Arctic warming), there is no warning being issued commensurate with the danger. One reason appears to be that, as stated earlier, scientists are trained to only make statements based on “hard evidence”. In the case of a potentially abrupt methane runaway, it is not possible to pinpoint a specific moment in time when such may be initiated. It cannot be stated with certainty whether this will happen in 2017, 2027, or 2037. Without this ability to pinpoint and quantify, the response of science has been to simply not address it.
Secondly, scientists are human. All of us have great difficulty in truly facing and absorbing the full implications of a complete collapse of human society and even a wiping out of most or all life on the planet. It is human to utilize methods of psychological denial to block out such a staggeringly horrific threat to our collective existence. In this instance, scientists are no different. Unless there is “absolute proof” staring us in the face, the overwheming tendency is to push such thoughts out of our consciousness so we can “get on with our day”.
I think point two is probably a main factor that we are not getting dire warnings from most scientists
Then he goes on to point three A third factor is that the current methodology for the reporting of climate science is fundamentally flawed and dysfunctional in regard to the challenge at hand. The single most important such report is that issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It is based on a consensus process and an intensively time-consuming level of peer review. Under normal circumstances, such would be seen as positives. But in a situation where humanity may come under severe threat in the very near term future, these reports are essentially looking backward at where science has been for the past 7 years rather than reporting the cutting edge trend lines. A glaring example is how the IPCC completely missed on predicting the speed at which the Arctic would melt…Is it possible that the very pillar of science which has served our society so well – the uncompromising demand for incontrovertible “evidence” – has in this unprecedented current crisis become a dangerous obstruction? Is it possible that this requirement of absolute “proof” is creating a perceptual blindness that could pave the way for the most horrendous suffering in the history of civilization?
Actually this morning I listened to a very speculative report on how dogs got domesticated along with humans as they found a gene that dogs have that wolves don’t have that allows them to digest starchy food. In fact I often here scientists themselves doing wild speculation on what their findings might mean. Why then are climate scientists so wont to stick to the careful approach. The denialists say they promote climate change to get grants. I suspect it is the opposite, they downplay climate change to keep their funding = IMHO.
So we head to a planetary future of perhaps our own extinction, but we will know that dogs have a gene that wolves don’t for digesting starchy food…..Heads stuffed full of information, but no ability to stop our mad rush over the cliff.
January 28th, 2013 at 7:21 am
OzMan,
With respect to those starving in Ethiopia. You ask if anyone would be willing to skip a meal a day so that those who are starving there could eat.
That question, to a lesser degree has been asked here in the U.S. for as long as I can remember in the form of pleas to give money to food aid organizations. The commercials show young children with swollen bellies and flies around their mouths and noses. The sad reality is that those organizations have been very successful in raising lots of money and developing huge bloated organizations, but not so good of letting go of that money. A very small percentage ever gets to the intended audience.
That’s really beside the point, actually, and doesn’t answer your question.
The greater issue is overpopulation and our continued attempts to thwart the laws of nature. Let’s say that I give up one meal a day for a starving child in Ethiopia, a country already grossly overpopulated. Let’s also say that my gift allows the child to grow into an adult. That adult then goes on to have three or four children. But remember, I’m already giving up a meal to feed the one who is now a mother. Who will feed her children? Am I really helping or am I just enabling greater suffering in the future in the form of three times as many starving children?
As the article you posted states (and I’m not sure I agree with it), Ethiopia should be able to feed its people, but, as usual, the developed world is paying off a few officials so that they can rape the land and steal the resources.
But the only way that all that food is being produced is by using fossil fuels and industrial agriculture. That’s not something that the Ethiopians have access to, apparently. So, even if the West suddenly became magnanimous and started giving all the food it was growing there to the Ethiopians, and also taught them how to grow it themselves using industrial methods, where would that get us? Perhaps another generation before if all comes crashing down? How high would their population be then? 100,000,000?
I realize that this is a very difficult situation. And if I thought my giving up a meal a day would help, then I would be happy to. But I think it’s the wrong question. The question should be, is there a solution at all? And the answer is, yes. As David Attenborough has pointed out, nature is providing the solution.
A final note: to be clear, I think we’re going to be seeing the Ethiopian situation in the U.S. soon, for exactly the same reasons.
January 28th, 2013 at 7:24 am
Anonymous: “Operation Last Resort: Not This Time. This Time There Will Be Change, Or There Will Be Chaos”
Posted on January 27, 2013 by WashingtonsBlog
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/01/anonymous-operation-last-resort-not-this-time-this-time-there-will-be-change-or-there-will-be-chaos.html
January 28th, 2013 at 7:28 am
Here is another reason why climate science is behind the curve; It’s called tunnel vision. I.e., scientists work in their own little niche and get where they cannot see the forest for the trees.
I work in medical research and compile studies for layman consumption from many different genres in a certain field. When I correspond with doctors and research scientists, I am always astounded that they are so caught up in their own little project, that they are not mindful of all the other research unfolding all around them – and especially if if doesn’t stroke their own emotional investment and ego gratification. It has always been thus with science. Even though it is thought to be a totally objective field, it is rife with subjectivity tainted with human emotion.
January 28th, 2013 at 7:30 am
Until recently, the delicate states of matter predicted by quantum mechanics have only been accessed with the most careful experiments: isolated particles at blisteringly low temperatures or pressures approaching that of deep space.
The idea that biology – impossibly warm, wet and messy to your average physicist – should play host to these states was almost heretical.
But a few strands of evidence were bringing the idea into the mainstream, said Luca Turin of the Fleming Institute in Greece.
“There are definitely three areas that have turned out to be manifestly quantum,” Dr Turin told the BBC. “These three things… have dispelled the idea that quantum mechanics had nothing to say about biology.”..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21150047
January 28th, 2013 at 8:56 am
Bailey, thank you for being so reasonable. Your point about UFO’s and other visitors from the unknowable changing from over time in accordance with the culture they emerge from is excellent – and it’s not too different from what I have always thought about religion…isn’t it funny that people are convinced their god(s) exist when, after a civilization fails or a tribe disappears, everyone that comes after knows without any doubt that their god(s) were made up fairy tales? And yet at the time, it would have been heretical to say Isis wasn’t real, or Thor or Zeus or as many gods as there have been tribes.
When I first noticed that trees are dying, and hardly anybody else would admit it (still pretty much the case) it was making me crazy trying to understand why people couldn’t see what was so obvious to me.
And then I remembered everything I read about the Holocaust and the deep denial among the victims – and the witnesses – to the horror and I realized something that is very important and explains much:
Never underestimate the capacity of humans to delude themselves.
The more awful the event – especially those perpetrated on us by our own species – the greater our ability to ignore it. (Think of incest, which is shockingly common, and not just in America although that is the focus of this article: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/01/america-has-an-incest-problem/272459/)
Making up spirits and souls and consciousncess outside of ourselves is an essential part of that capacity (and one way children create alternate personalites when they are abused). Our imagination is a wonderful thing, but it is also enabling us to commit ecocide.
January 28th, 2013 at 9:00 am
Gail the Muse says:
It’s far more likely that people who sense, for whatever reason, that the Malthusian outcome is imminent, experience some serious cognitive dissonence and have all sorts of psychiatric reactions trying to make sense of the madness.
Gonna Live Forever
Some, being stuck in Stage Three,
Bargain for eternity:
They want to decree
That death will not be,
As in many a fantasy.
January 28th, 2013 at 9:03 am
That DailyKos diary has been deleted but I found the text (I think it’s the same) and copied it:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/alt.politics/YCYpmlvvN8Q
Dr. Landing has advanced the theory of global hyperwarming in a recent
journal article. This is a new hypothesis that features a whole new
twist on the idea that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the driver in
a global warming episode.
Landing is a paleontologist and a geologist with a different slant to
the whole idea of climate change. Geologists take the long view, with a
timescale that considers millions of years. According to the
geologists, greenhouse conditions are actually the default state of our
planet, with a temperature of about 72 degrees Fahrenheit, averaged out
over the globe, day and night, summer and winter. By contrast, 2012,
one of the ten hottest years on record averaged out at 58 degrees. In
the default condition, all of the glaciers and icecaps are melted. All
of human evolution has taken place within a few degrees of ice house
conditions. We haven’t seen a warm planet yet. The reason is because
of plate tectonics, which have managed to place a major continent on the
Antarctic pole, and surrounded the Arctic with land masses. Water is
sucked out of the system as ice, and the polar seas sink oxygenated
water into the oceans, which allows sea creatures to sequester carbon in
the oceans. That confluence of events has allowed us to enjoy the Earth
as it is. But we are fucking it up.
If all of the ice in Antarctic and Greenland and the continental
glaciers melted it would result in a sea level rise of about 100 meters.
That would be enough to put most of the Eastern seaboard under water,
and would make Memphis a seaport. But Landing has produced evidence,
in the form of multiple layers of black slate, the residue of black,
anoxic (no oxygen) mud, that suggest that the actual sea levels were
twice that during the Ordovician and Cambrian eras. Other scientists
have found evidence of lethally hot temperatures and anoxic oceans
during the great Triassic extinction, which wiped out about 90% of the
world’s extant species.
So where did the higher water come from? Lander’s theory is that it was
simply the thermal expansion of the ocean’s waters. As water overlaps
the continents, the sun heats up the shallow seas, which feeds back into
the ocean. At the same time, there was a large increase in water vapor,
which is itself a potent greenhouse gas. Lander figures that the world
had an average temperature over 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the Ordovician
era.
In fact, water in New York Harbor has risen about 8 inches since record
keeping began, and this is fairly consistent with other records around
the world. This more due to thermal expansion than glacier melting,
which just began recently.
In the absence of anthropogenic forcing, we would still be living in
rather cold temperatures. But given the release of carbon into the
atmosphere, we can expect that all of the world’s ice will be melted
within 300 years. At that point, the conditions are ripe for Landing’s
hyperwarming to set in. When the ocean reaches its highest point, the
Appalachians will be a series of islands. All of the Midwest will be
under sea water. The people that are left will be really hungry.
January 28th, 2013 at 9:05 am
And here’s a link to an article about the study (which has a link to the full study at the end, if you go to the site):
http://www.nysm.nysed.gov/nysgs/news/2012-04.landing.html
NEW YORK STATE PALEONTOLOGIST, DR. ED LANDING, REPORTS NEW CLIMATE CHANGE STUDY
As we continue to experience one of the warmest winters on record in the Northeast, the New York State paleontologist is reporting new research suggesting that high sea levels leading to “global hyperwarming” are much more important than carbon dioxide levels in predicting global climate change.
Dr. Ed Landing, state paleontologist and curator of paleontology at the New York State Museum, has recently published his findings online in “Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology,” an international journal that publishes high quality and multi-disciplinary, original studies with global implications in the field of palaeo-environmental geology.
Since the middle 1800s scientists have considered high carbon dioxide levels to be a greenhouse gas and a driver of higher global temperatures. However, Landing’s study of the rock succession in New York state shows that periodic extreme temperatures, with oceans reaching 100 F, occurred within “greenhouse” intervals. He terms these “global hyperwarming” times, and shows that they correspond to intervals of very high sea-levels.
“Global hyperwarming” is a previously unrecognized climate condition. As sea levels rise, Landing’s research suggests that with the predicted melting of polar ice caps, the continents will reflect less sun light back to space and less reflective shallow seas will store heat and warm as they overlap the land. Warming seas will rapidly work to increase global temperatures and heat the world ocean. This leads to a feedback that further expands ocean volume, with heating, and further accelerates both global warming and sea-level rise. In the course of this feedback, marine water circulation and oxygenation fall due in part to the fact that hot waters hold less oxygen.
Landing first recognized the imprint of “global hyperwarming” in 520 to 440 million-year-old, shallow to deep-water rocks in eastern New York and from other information received on localities worldwide. This time interval shows nine intervals of extreme sea-levels that covered much of North America and other ancient continents. In all cases, strong sea-level rises, which sometimes drove marine shorelines into the upper Midwest, are accompanied by the spread of hot, low oxygen marine water largely devoid of animal life down into the deep sea and across the continents.
Landing’s study may help predict the future. A 300-foot sea-level rise, which would result from melting the Greenland and Antarctica ice caps, is as great as the ancient sea-level rises documented by Landing and other scientists 520 to 460 million years ago. This sea-level rise would also lead to a warming and expansion of the ocean waters resulting in a rise of shorelines to 500 feet above present, basically covering the non-mountainous U.S. to northern Wisconsin. Even worse, in the case of New York, the Earth’s rotation would force a rise of the west Atlantic to 650 feet above present sea levels.
January 28th, 2013 at 9:30 am
Folks, what are your thoughts on the prospect of an irreversible carbon effect such that we would end up with a ruined atmosphere like Venus? I realize that carbon is eventually sequestered via life forms in the ocean and otherwise, but is it possible to overbalance the equation with so much carbon that it can never correct itself?
January 28th, 2013 at 9:39 am
Runaway Greenhouse Effect, James Hansen 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACHLayfA6_4
January 28th, 2013 at 9:52 am
@ Gail
No offence intended, but …were made up fairy tales?
ALL that we have are stories. Your stories, Gail, about the trees and ozone are just stories. The only difference between your stories and fairy tales is that, if you are correct, your stories have a connection to empirical, quantifiable, measurable, evidence.
I actually take exception to the disparaging usage of the term ‘fairy tales’ (which Frank also mentioned). If anyone actually studied fairy tales, they are one of the greatest literary genres of the world. They carry timeless truths about the human condition. To speak of them as if they are no more than worthless, some sort of misleading junk, is imo, quite offensive.
Everybody on this blog, everybody on the internet, is telling stories. Either because they want us to believe theirs, or they want to discredit someone else’s story. Mythos and logos. Right brain stories and left brain stories.
People claim there is something called Truth, which they like to attach to particular stories. But if you try to establish, with any precision, what that term ‘truth’ actually means, it turns out to be very, very difficult. What, exactly, is the relationship between a verbal statement of ‘fact’, and a corresponding piece of empirical evidence said to support that fact ? Assertions and arm waving really won’t do.
Gail has just given Landing’s story re sea levels and global temperatures, etc. How can we possibly test that story for truth or falsehood ? Frank gave us another, far more bizarre story, even more difficult to test or evaluate in any way.
It’s bad enough for the very simple stuff, like the boiling temperature of water. Always 100 deg. C. That’s ‘true’. Except it’s not. It changes with air pressure.
January 28th, 2013 at 9:54 am
Bailey says……”No one is going to convince me.”
You made my point, sir or madam.
There is nothing more to say since you refuse to look at the evidence, including the examples I provided.
January 28th, 2013 at 10:01 am
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2013-01-28/can-we-avoid-a-collapse
“Population Bomb” author & Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich on his Royal Society Paper “Can a collapse of global civilization be avoided?” From Tasmania, forest expert Dr. David Bowman: wild fires drive more global warming. Economist John Talberth suing the U.S. Government over risky ocean oil leases in the Arctic. Three interviews from a world of trouble.
Welcome to another triple-header with Radio Ecoshock. I’m Alex Smith with three interviews with three great guests.
I’ll call Tasmania to learn why it burned and why climate-driven fires threaten all of us. Our guest is world-recognized fire expert David Bowman.
Then we’ll investigate why the Obama Administration is rushing to sell off oil and gas rights on the dangerous Outer Continental Shelf. Is that fire-sale meant to fatten a Ponzi scheme of big oil stock prices? Economist John Talberth explains why his group, The Center for Sustainable Economy, is suing the government.
But first Stanford’s eminent biologist Dr. Paul Ehrlich (author of “The Population Bomb” and a dozen more) on his new scientific paper, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. The title of this peer-reviewed paper is “Can a collapse of global civilization be avoided?”
January 28th, 2013 at 10:02 am
ulv said, Frank gave us another, far more bizarre story, even more difficult to test or evaluate in any way.
What are you referring to? The mutilation issue? What more do you want and what more can be provided other than the official autopsy reports, photos, and the doctors opinions. If you have a viable alternative theory I would love to hear it.
Damn near everything is a theory including gravity.
January 28th, 2013 at 10:04 am
fairy tales – Zeus in the form of a swan fucks Leda – certainly an informative fairy tale that carries the same weight as scientific proof of damage from ozone.
January 28th, 2013 at 10:19 am
@Frank,
“Bailey says……”No one is going to convince me.”
You made my point, sir or madam.
There is nothing more to say since you refuse to look at the evidence, including the examples I provided.”
How interesting that you keyed in on one little sentence and ignored the rest. I said, “no one is going to convince me that aliens drive different types of space ships every couple of decades.” I am open to the rest, because the truth is, I REALLY don’t know. Unlike some (having had an ‘experience’ myself) I acknowledge the anomalous – I just have a different take on it..
January 28th, 2013 at 10:54 am
Blazing Kat Productions has been creating and broadcasting episodes about the Occupy movement for more than a year. They’ve run out of money, primarily because the U.S. government has stopped the flow of funds into Iran, where the OWS Weekly station is broadcast on Press TV. I’ve given them significant support, and I ask readers here to do the same. There is a “donate” button toward the bottom of their home page.
January 28th, 2013 at 10:56 am
In response to the comments here about community living and how these communities (intentional, micro etc.) that won’t and don’t work, my wife and I have a question regarding the ads on this site under CLASSIFIEDS.
We’ve wrote here as well as on our blog about what we have tried and because of our not succeeding have only heard excuses about why they won’t work, such as we’re not capable of it (copout) and how many just want to have serfs tend their property (not us) and how much $$$$ is required and the list goes on.
To make this short as we have work to do…can anyone here tell us after reading the ads (that Guy has made readily available to all at the top of the page) what we’re doing wrong and how we may make changes to our plans?
Of course taking into consideration that us property owners still have insurance, property tax as well as other infrastructure maintenance that if using a gift economy would require something to share that would reduce our costs. Also, if growing one’s food is not something that one can do then what is it they have to offer in return for hours of labor? We both realize that there will always be exceptions especially in large communities where some of this can be absorbed by others but generally speaking we all need to contribute if we’re in this together. No one should be exempt from having to work for what sustains us; other animals are fine examples of this. We’re not looking for debating why or why it won’t work as much as finding out what some of us are doing wrong and how we may try different approaches.
Another question, why do some feel they wouldn’t fit into some of the communities posted here? What type of things are they looking for in a community, or expectations?
Appreciate your suggestions and please keep in mind that there are just the two of us working our land and only one typing, thank you.
January 28th, 2013 at 11:12 am
Kathy C says: Heads stuffed full of information, but no ability to stop our mad rush over the cliff.
We can make an electric broom,
And rockets that vroom when they zoom,
And a boom from the bloom
Of a nuclear plume,
But we do not know how to stop doom.
We can sit around in the gloom
Discussing great issues that loom;
What’s more, we presume,
Someone cares when we fume,
Yet and that still, that doesn’t stop doom.
In conclusion then, we must assume,
When there’s nothing left to exhume
From our womb and our tomb,
That it all went kaboom
‘Cause we did not know how to stop doom.
January 28th, 2013 at 1:39 pm
BtD – Yeah, that’s what I meant to say.
January 28th, 2013 at 3:34 pm
Having harvested tens of thousands of acres of grains/grasses, I know what it looks like standing and I know what puts it down and what it looks like lying down. I can’t easily be fooled about this. From videos I have seen of crop circles, some of them could certainly have been made by man but others certainly could not unless these men had highly advanced technology which I’m not familiar with, and no one else is familiar with either. When I learn how men did it, I will accept that men did it. Convince me.
Also, pigs don’t fly and I do believe in gravity, proof or not.
January 28th, 2013 at 4:50 pm
@ dmd
Google the youtubes, I can’t be bothered to do the work for you. The guys who made the first crop circles are interviewed and explain how and why they did it. Others explain how they do them. It really is no big deal. Unless you want it to be. Honestly, if you really want the mystery, I don’t want to spoil it for you. Perhaps better not google ?
People can ‘believe’ in anything. Phlogiston. Aether. Humours.
What do you mean ‘believe in gravity’ ? Nobody can explain it. Particles are attracted to each other. That’s about it.
January 28th, 2013 at 5:00 pm
@ Frank
What are you referring to? The mutilation issue? What more do you want and what more can be provided other than the official autopsy reports, photos, and the doctors opinions. If you have a viable alternative theory I would love to hear it.
I don’t have any theory. I asked you if you had anything to offer, seeing as you said you had been studying the matter, apparently for some time and in some depth. I was looking forward to hearing whatever you had to say.
Damn near everything is a theory including gravity.
I go further than that, and leave out the ‘damn near’ and the ‘theory’. It’s all stories.
Science ( and law courts ) tell special kinds of stories, because they are stories that are supposed to be attached in some way to testable, checkable, evidence, that supports the logic of the claims that they make.
January 28th, 2013 at 5:12 pm
@ Kathy C.
fairy tales – Zeus in the form of a swan fucks Leda – certainly an informative fairy tale that carries the same weight as scientific proof of damage from ozone.
What a ridiculous and ignorant remark to make
The story of Leda and the swan does not pretend to be science, does it. You compare an apple and a banana and say one is inferior because they are not the same shape. How stupid is that ?
According to your logic all art, music, culture, poetry, architecture, literature, fiction, fantasy everything other than literal scientific data is to be considered worthless and untrue ?
My point, which I have made here many times, is that there are two types of story, both have value, we need both, we cannot avoid having both, because they correspond with our physical brain structure, the left and right hemispheres, logos and mythos, literal truths and poetic truths.
Gail tells us stories about the death of trees and ozone. The only factor that distinguishes such scientific ( logos ) stories from fairy ( mythos ) stories, is their attachment to empirical data, evidence, that someone can go out and check and measure and confirm.
January 28th, 2013 at 5:37 pm
Bailey: i’m not sure we can get a runaway greenhouse (or Venus) effect in any way, but should we even try? i’ve read how it can happen and think i understand the systems interaction that could make it possible – especially when we factor in the weakening magnetic field (pre-pole shift?) that’s occuring now while we have increased solar activity tossing harmful radiation our way (that’s usually deflected by said magnetic field). Add to that bi-Polar ice melt, a radiation suffused and chemically imbalanced atmosphere, steady or increased volcanic activity, global desertification, vegetation stress from detrimental increased tropospheric ozone and our continued stupidity to ADD more CO2 to all this rather than run the other way immediately, and it’s not only feasible, but possibly guaranteed since we have no idea how to shut it all off now that we’ve kicked in the list of positive feedback loops i’m sure you’re familiar with (from reading this blog/listening to Guy).
January 28th, 2013 at 5:54 pm
@ Bailey
I have looked into this for years and believe that while most cases are readily explainable, the ones that are not are attributable to transpersonal manifestations of the collective unconscious.
Why? Because they all have much in common and they change in theme with the collective and culture. What used to be little elves and gnomes are now bug eyed little greys; What used to be ‘flying saucers’ are now ‘lights in the sky’ and orbs, etc etc. None of these are ‘real’ in a literal consensus reality and this is they are mercurial and why no evidence will ever come forth. This is nothing new and has been with us throughout our history – but the themes change with the times.
..Adding to the above, when I say the anomalous is not ‘real’, I do not mean that it does not leave evidential footprints – whether scratch marks from supposed demons, ghostly or haunting phenomenon, or burns from a flying saucer,..or even some cases of cattle mutilations.
My thinking on it is hard to fully expound in this NBL format, so I will just say that I believe some scientists are correct in that we live in a sort of information based, simulated reality – and as such we are holons. Therefore, the psychopathology aspect of our collective unconscious is capable of sending back radar returns in certain cases. Though I have been open to literal ETs, and I now convinced that it has more to do with ‘us’ than any ‘them.’
I’ve edited you’re comment a little, Bailey, I hope not distorting the gist.
Seems to me it’s Graham Hancock’s speculation laid upon Carl Jung’s speculation. Can’t say I accept either paradigm myself.
And then you get to the ‘scratch marks from demons’ and the ‘burn marks from flying saucers’. How do you propose to account for the chain of events that lead from mental or spiritual or psychic phenomena, to such material physical effects ? The Roman Catholic Church’s Chief Exorcist will probably be happy to go along with your world view, but it defies modern science, does it not, and afaik, no accepted evidence to support it ? Only anecdotes and fringe Fortean stuff.
I have to say, I have never been very interested or paid much attention to UFO and Alien abduction stories. I’ve heard of greys, cattle mutilations, whatnot, but always had other preoccupations. I did check out the Norwegian Hessdalen stuff which seemed to me to be the proper scientific investigative way to go, rigorous research of the highest standard.
http://www.hessdalen.org/film/
January 28th, 2013 at 5:55 pm
David: i think it’s going to be very difficult to develop your community (if you can even get ONE person to be happy and productive taking the risk that they may end up an invalid or squatter or pathological to the point of killing you to take over your place after years of trustful relations, i’d be amazed). i can’t see how it can “work” to the satisfaction of all concerned, in every instance around the clock – especially when you get down to the nitty gritty of actually living with someone (and all their baggage). You’d have to have a manual or some sort of “contract” about as thick as the Old English dictionary spelling out what to do in every possible circumstance, emergency, change of plans due to climate change, civilization collapse, marauders, even as simple as taking on anyone else (what if the first person doesn’t like the new one?). i just don’t see how it can work unless necessity – like the entire breakdown of the rule of law and government enforcement – makes it somehow possible due to desperation by “others” (but then you’re still back to all the problems, and more, i just listed off the top of my head).
Good luck!
January 28th, 2013 at 6:25 pm
@ David
Suggest it’s a numbers game… you know, kiss a heck of a lot of frogs before one turns into a prince/princess… if you’re lucky
January 28th, 2013 at 6:36 pm
“Climate change has shrunk Andean glaciers between 30 and 50 percent since the 1970s and could melt many of them away altogether in coming years, according to a study published on Tuesday in the journal The Cryosphere…….Andean glaciers, a vital source of fresh water for tens of millions of South Americans, are retreating at their fastest rates in more than 300 years, according to the most comprehensive review of Andean ice loss so far……”
http://www.planetark.org/enviro-news/item/67722
January 28th, 2013 at 6:40 pm
ulvfugl; I’m outstanding in my field and thus not easily fooled.
If I were an alien and wanted to get a message through to those idiot earthlings, what media would I need to use so there would be no doubt about its being genuine? Not paper, not digital, not painted on the side of a building, not radio or TV, not verbal. I can think of only 2 ways to do it: in soft snow or in a standing crop. Think it through and think straight. It must be done in a way that no man could do. We all know how men do their circles. They showed us. If you can’t see the difference, we might as well drop the subject.
You see, we spent the last 200,000 years learning how to better kill each other. Maybe some beings somewhere spent that time learning other things. Look at what we did with chips in just 30 years. Of course now we will just proceed to use this knowledge to kill others. That’s what we do best.
http://video.pbs.org/video/2326108547/
January 28th, 2013 at 6:46 pm
Funniest Joke in the World:
“Last night I dreamed I was eating flannel cakes.
When I woke up the blanket was gone!”
Kurt Vonnegut – A Man Without A Country
January 28th, 2013 at 7:09 pm
@ dmd
I find that a ridiculous argument. If the aliens, or God, or anything or anyone else, wanted to communicate something… Ffs, he/she/it/they/them, whatever has given us this miraculous world right in front of our noses every moment of our lives… and yet most never even wake up and see THAT… If they can’t hear the message the birds singing, in the clouds blowing across the sky, the stars at night, then they are too effing dumb to see it anywhere. But if you need/want/must have aliens and crop circles, that’s okay, they are, compared with most of what’s going on, relatively innocuous and benign, and who knows, if there are aliens, they’ll join in the fun and help out.
@ Frank
Thinking about those strange human corpses. Rather than adjust my paradigm to cater for rather unpleasant aliens, I have a suggestion that it could be some sort of insect. I have seen beetles which enter making very small holes, eat some of the internal organs, then leave. Doesn’t cover everything in the description. But there are a hell of a lot of weird bugs in S. America. Maybe some kind of ant or larva ?
January 28th, 2013 at 7:20 pm
@ Daniel: In a previous thread, you said:
…I believe we are only at the beginning of seriously questioning how this new paradigm [NTE] completely overrides our past presumptions.
I’ve been hoping to hear more about this from you.
BtD
January 28th, 2013 at 7:21 pm
Kathy,
January 28th, 2013 at 7:31 pm
National Nervous Breakdown
by Linh Dinh
January 28th, 2013 at 7:55 pm
Seriously (some) folks..what does all this anomalous phenomenon have to do with NTE/NBL?
January 28th, 2013 at 8:43 pm
omg have you seen the weather in Australia? I really feel for those people/animals. It’s just disaster after disaster, no time to catch your breath. I guess it’s what we can expect from now on- the unexpected.
@BtD But we do not know how to stop doom.
Isn’t that crazy?! When I look at things like the Discover telescope-the main lens alone took something like 7 years to make- and that people can find things out there in the universe called waltzing black holes, I mean, why can’t we figure out how to get along and take care of the earth while we’re at it? I guess there are just too many of us and we get distracted and bored so easily, some people do things like build telescopes and search the skies for answers, some find more and more intricate, complicated ways to be ‘entertained’. I imagine each person with threads branching out in all directions, reaching and grabbing at the resources needed to feed and support their life, and there are so many of us that all of those threads are tangled and knotted and suffocating the planet. I cried after I read Wall-E to the kids at bedtime, because it’s closer to the truth than what society at large is going to teach them, but probably with a happier ending.
January 28th, 2013 at 8:52 pm
Bailey
I suspect some skullduggery and whte-anting going on, just MHO.
January 28th, 2013 at 9:37 pm
ulvfugl-
Thanks for the suggestion, although nsects are not a viable option for a couple of reasons. First, a hallmark of mut. cases including this one is that predators and all other animals, which includes insects like blowflies, do not approach the remains. This fact was mentioned in the autopsy report. Second, if insects were the culprits, they would need the ability to cut precise cookie-cutter like holes in various sections with exacting precision and extract all internal organs. Why, for example, would the insects remove the scrotum but not the penis? Why remove the lips and some skin around the chin (also same with animal muts.), but not the whole face? Also, the insects would have had to work at lightening speed since the body was discovered only 48 to 72 hours subsequent to death.
The report frequently refers to the excisions being performed with vital reactions (i.e. the person was alive while the procedure was being performed). Further, “Internal Examination: …after opening the cranial cavity using Griessinger technique we found: 17) unimpaired skullcap; 18) cerebral edema.” The presence of cerebral edema without direct traumatic origin is a strong indicator of an agonizing death. The conclusion states: “There is a component of causa mortis by vagus stimulation” (i.e. cardio-respiratory arrest caused by extreme pain.
No wonder the government is covering up these ghastly cases, although on occasion due to an amazing combination of fortuitous events some cases leak out. Can you imagine the public reaction if the government announced that they were completely incapable of defending its citizens from these diabolical ET entities?
January 28th, 2013 at 9:53 pm
@ David
You asked:
“To make this short as we have work to do…can anyone here tell us after reading the ads (that Guy has made readily available to all at the top of the page) what we’re doing wrong and how we may make changes to our plans?”
No one wants to have their earnest questions answered by someone recommending they read a book, however, in response to your question, if you haven’t already, Diana L. Christian’s book Creating a Life Together: Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities, IMO, is as close as you’ll come to finding what you’re looking for. Or rather, if you read between the lines, she both details at great length, but also, inadvertently describes why so many IC’s fail by what she doesn’t detail. There is a reason why the failure rate in over 90%. In one word: Logistics. In two words: Group dynamics.
While I know you already have, I also believe you will discover why you can’t find those you’ve been “expecting” to find, by simply perusing the IC listing directory. Notice how many groups are in the “forming” stage–most of them in fact. Think about the type of people who are generally motivated to completely check out of our dominant culture. These are not your typical sheeople. They/we tend to be fairly independent, obtusely opinionated and otherwise disagreeable, as well as, often being highly educated–either academics or self-taught anarcho-libertarians.
In other words, most of us don’t have a history of playing well with others, hence, our desire to walk away from it all. I think many of us desperately want to be members of a vibrant community, but honestly, many of us lack any number of the required personality traits to make group cohesion possible.
The “successful” IC prototypes have been well documented, they all have a common nexus which keeps their members together, either through shared enterprise, religion, cult/strong leadership or ideology. I believe many of us foolishly assumed–myself included–that “collapse”, was more than a raison d’être for coming together, that our collective understanding of the imminent threat before us, was a perfect catalyst for putting our petty desires aside, and getting down to getting our hands dirty in building a resilient community.
Maybe we thought that the severity of our ecological dilemma, was somehow capable of overriding our entrenched idiosyncratic identities. Maybe we falsely assumed “systems theory” was enough of a guiding principle, to establish a common ground capable of overcoming everyone’s personal baggage. Maybe we all just got caught up in what seemed to be at the time–say ten years ago–a groundswell of pragmatic thinking in regards to the necessity of collapse preparedness. Where in a cloistered environment of groupthink, we just foolishly forgot that the vast, vast, vast majority of humanity, simply doesn’t give a shit…….at least enough to make the required sacrifices.
As I’m sure you’ve seen for yourself, there is an incredible similarity in our failing to find what we’re looking for. The patterned behavior is impossible to ignore. Our sense of frustration with “others”, our ostracism from family and friends, our disdain of our dominant culture, our willingness to place blame, our tendency to bang our heads against the same wall, all the while expecting a different outcome, our almost naive romanticism of the 19th century, our childlike opinions of a benign slow decline where our ability to feed ourselves, will somehow suffice in staying ahead of an unimaginably catastrophic curve.
I think you’re more than capable of answering your questions, and you’re just asking to see if anyone has found anything different under a stone you’ve looked under a hundred times. And where like many of us, you’re still holding out for that unforeseen awareness, that somehow makes all our relentless pessimism somehow bear fruit.
But sadly, the long and the short of your inquiry, is I believe that the very reason you can’t find others to join you in your endeavor, is for the most part, the same reason why you didn’t join an already existing community in theirs.
However, if I had one suggestion as to what you could do differently, it would be to abandon the idea of forming any kind of community, and think about repurposing your property as a working farm, and then seek out those in your immediate area, who are already managing a farm’s booth at a farmers market–like Wintergreens or Ground Works–and offer those you immediately feel an affinity with, an almost free rein to develop their own produce enterprise at some regional market. There are hundreds of young adults working on farms with aspirations, they know will probably never be met. And ask nothing financial of them, other than their willingness to put the time in, in getting a small market farm off the ground, where if and when, it turns a profit, you can negotiate some basic terms.
The existing financial burden of your property, is yours to bear. The likelihood of you finding able bodied young adults, who have the ethical values of horticulture, who are also upwardly mobile enough to pay what you are asking, is simply a demographic divide you will most likely never bridge, unless you come very close to giving away the farm……so to speak.
January 28th, 2013 at 10:04 pm
BadlandsAK
Re the extreme weather events here in Australia…
I recall that not long ago Gorbachev admitted that the break up of the Soviet Union was essentially caused by the exorbitant cost of Chernobyl Nuclear Event of April 1986, in the Ukraine. That only took 4 years.
Even though this was a single human made event, it is the model for all the coming devastating weather events, from heat waves, forest and built-up-environment fires, wind storms and cyclonic flooding events.
These ‘disasters’ cost money.
( Caveat: The term ‘disasters’ here is used in the normal way we humans view them, but in ‘reality’, once stripped of the cultural bias which is inherent in language, these events are still only ‘weather’ )
These suck resources from an economy.
These drain the state and federal coffers of the ‘Profits’ made via Capitalism.
These add up to limiting the places both habitable to humans, and their agriculture, and civic and economic operations.
As in Chernobyl, a lot of people were displaced from zones of habitation. In a socialist system all that relocation cost is born by the state, but what is the difference in a capitalist system. Insurence houses and state emergency services and federal disaster support funding come from taxes, so what is the difference.
All of this rebuilding eats into ‘profits’ of whatever system is running.
My point is that with more and more extreme weather events, which cost huge amounts in themselves, but also contribute to losses via economic downtime, the economies will not hold enough residual ‘profits’ from their economic whuritzer activities to cope very long.
And when it is critical systems that are impacted, like electricity generation, or transport infrastructure, the effects will be compounded.
The ancient Egyptians were forced to move an entire city hundreds of kilometers because a major branch of the Nile changed its course, permanently. All the human and agricultural activities were no longer viable in the original riverbed because the water was no longer nearby.
In such circumstances as we are now encountering, humans will decide it is no longer viable to work or reside in certain locations.
Will we be intellegent about it?
Probably need to learn the hard way, IMHO.
January 28th, 2013 at 10:41 pm
@ Ozman
….Gorbachev admitted that the break up of the Soviet Union was essentially caused by the exorbitant cost of Chernobyl Nuclear Event …
Nothing to do with the vastly greater cost of the Afghanistan War ?? and that the economy had been slowly collapsing for decades ??
January 28th, 2013 at 11:12 pm
@ Frank
Unlike Bailey, I am not in the ‘Nothing will ever convince me…’ camp, about anything, and I am always attracted to the intriguing anomalies, like Tom’s pieces of metal in coal seams, and all the Fortean stuff, because at an early age, I read some account as to what it was like for someone in the 19th C., raised exclusively on the biblical narrative, to be told, ‘Hey, have you heard about that guy Darwin, sea shells in rocks on the top of mountains on the Andes, skeletons of ancient monsters in the cliffs at Dorset, do you think Genesis could be wrong ?’ kinda thing.
Paradigm shifts are painful.
However, from what you say, I remain unconvinced. Thing is, insects, small birds and animals can’t break into a carcase, they start with the eyes, tongue, anus. The beetles I mentioned make perfect circles. Some rodent bites off the scrotum and runs off with it. The guy may have died in agony from some other cause, a seizure or something. There may have been a number of different creatures responsible for the damage to the corpse. Yes, it is very strange, very odd, my explanation is unsatisfactory and inadequate. But I remain a very long way from the leap that is required to conclude that the only possible explanation is some weird unknown ‘thing’.
My position might change, if I studied more cases, or more cases were reported, but as things stand, I suspect an explanation involving known natural factors would be more likely.
I have no idea why Ozman and Bailey now object to discussion of anomalies. Central to this blog is the case for climate change. That is a story. It’s a story that claims that an invisible gas which is a very minor constituent of the atmosphere, is responsible for changes which will likely result in our extinction as a species. I think most people here believe that story. I think it’s fair to say, mot people not here do not believe that story.
So, imho, the belief/disbelief thing, and how it works, is quite relevant and interesting.
January 28th, 2013 at 11:27 pm
To David and others interested in his question:
Your question is something that I have thought about quite a bit.
It is something I have worked in and through quite a bit, too.
Obviously, I have strong feelings on the subject, but I hate for feelings to enter discussion. The questions I ask are ones that I have asked myself and I offer them to you as ideas, not insults.
I can forgive your broad brushstrokes in exchange of kind:
There is a stain upon humanity that is not washed away by vigorous scrubbing. There is no magic ointment. — Slavery days slaving was not so different than WWOOF, if practiced on the long-term. An example might be the emotional state of the intern/owned, as it also relates to the quality of the work produced. So, then the alternative is sharecropping – and ultimately the modern days slaving/people farming/human domestication/resource collapse model. There is an extensive vs intensive argument there that is essentially beside the point. Human community is that way. An attempt at escape from it does not deliver you to any such *different* state. That is to say, you begin where you start. The wild *wolfpack in homeostasis with the surroundings* is not what we observe as the conditions around us. (You could use *pack of large herbivores* synonymously.)
There is this *thing* going on in these NBL threads that I have observed – namely that there is this *thing* we know and others do not – and the burden of it is so daunting…(!) It is not sophisticated to see problems, so much as bourgeois. See? Even if I hate to part with it! Most people are trying to feed themselves. We are all animals. So, the intentional community is one you choose because you can leave what you have, by a combination of will and dollars. What if you were intentionally part of your own community/current place and accepted all the other parts of it as possibly equal, without current judgement? Could you bear the knowledge of being average? What *thing* do they know?
What does a local in an impoverished locale think of a tourist? The tourist makes a game of their lifestyle and leaves it whenever they fancy the notion… The WOOFER imagines a paradigm shift, a different sort of human community, but there is only humanity everywhere. That is essentially the lesson they learn in their apprenticeship education. That is what I learned in my various relevant experiences. If I refuse to let my emotions enter the discussion, I can grow a tomato better than the person who purveys some superstitious voodoo, be it monsanto or hippie Jim-Bob potion. The tomato in life requires me to pay attention to it efficiently for the most part, as there are so many other requirements of being alive.
I submit that each person does approximately the best they can, but may employ significantly different survey markers. My intentional community is made up of almost entirely people who have no use for NBL or any idea that they are part of any such community. I am not so disappointed in them, because I do not expect them to ~ convert. Surely we want a *better* world to be possible. I try simply to put forth goodwill. Upon parting, I use a phrase that I learned from Guy. “Make it a great day.” Being liked helps some…
Guy made me notice something I already knew. All (most?) people have something to teach you and when you treat them that way, you can/may learn the something. So, I try to not lose that quality of myself.
January 28th, 2013 at 11:55 pm
Pardon the screw up:
Daily Kos: Global Hyperwarming: It’s worse than you ever thought
January 29th, 2013 at 12:01 am
Just in case:
Global Hyperwarming: It’s worse than you ever thought
You thought it was going to be bad. It’s going to be worse than bad.
I contribute to a blog called Scientia, which is sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. My editor suggested that I talk to a scientist called Ed Landing, who is the New York State Paleontologist and Curator of Paleontology, New York State Museum. Dr. Landing has advanced the theory of global hyperwarming in a recent journal article. This is a new hypothesis that features a whole new twist on the idea that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the driver in a global warming episode.
Landing is a paleontologist and a geologist with a different slant to the whole idea of climate change. Geologists take the long view, with a timescale that considers millions of years. According to the geologists, greenhouse conditions are actually the default state of our planet, with a temperature of about 72 degrees Fahrenheit, averaged out over the globe, day and night, summer and winter. By contrast, 2012, one of the ten hottest years on record averaged out at 58 degrees. In the default condition, all of the glaciers and icecaps are melted. All of human evolution has taken place within a few degrees of ice house conditions. We haven’t seen a warm planet yet. The reason is because of plate tectonics, which have managed to place a major continent on the Antarctic pole, and surrounded the Arctic with land masses. Water is sucked out of the system as ice, and the polar seas sink oxygenated water into the oceans, which allows sea creatures to sequester carbon in the oceans. That confluence of events has allowed us to enjoy the Earth as it is. But we are fucking it up.
This discussion will continue beyond the orange Frenchy-looking squiggle.
If all of the ice in Antarctic and Greenland and the continental glaciers melted it would result in a sea level rise of about 100 meters. That would be enough to put most of the Eastern seaboard under water, and would make Memphis a seaport. But Landing has produced evidence, in the form of multiple layers of black slate, the residue of black, anoxic (no oxygen) mud, that suggest that the actual sea levels were twice that during the Ordovician and Cambrian eras. Other scientists have found evidence of lethally hot temperatures and anoxic oceans during the great Triassic extinction, which wiped out about 90% of the world’s extant species.
So where did the higher water come from? Lander’s theory is that it was simply the thermal expansion of the ocean’s waters. As water overlaps the continents, the sun heats up the shallow seas, which feeds back into the ocean. At the same time, there was a large increase in water vapor, which is itself a potent greenhouse gas. Lander figures that the world had an average temperature over 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the Ordovician era.
In fact, water in New York Harbor has risen about 8 inches since record keeping began, and this is fairly consistent with other records around the world. This more due to thermal expansion than glacier melting, which just began recently.
In the absence of anthropogenic forcing, we would still be living in rather cold temperatures. But given the release of carbon into the atmosphere, we can expect that all of the world’s ice will be melted within 300 years. At that point, the conditions are ripe for Landing’s hyperwarming to set in. When the ocean reaches its highest point, the Appalachians will be a series of islands. All of the Midwest will be under sea water. The people that are left will be really hungry.
My email exchange with Landing ran to 3000 words. My editor demanded that I cut it down to 1000. I whittled it down to 1500. But I left out Landing’s concluding comments, which are reproduced here:
“I gave the Palaeo-3 paper to Bill McKibben, with the comment that greenhouse warming and melting of ice on land will be followed by a hitherto unexpected acceleration of sea level rise and global temperature rise. The onset of hyperwarming will be prompted by the sea-level rise due to anthropogenic warming and melting of grounded ice, but I think a real quantitative model will show that it will become the dominant climate and sea-level driver. With one prediction that all Antarctic and Greenland ice could begone in 300 years, you just have to think that the conditions for global hyperwarming are only then well established. Remember, that we have to get some quantitative modeling done.
One thing to remember, I’m not proposing some bit of nonsensical “junk science” to get a little personal focus. I’m also not proposing a “speculation” as a sort of way to get “humanity to change its ways, before it is too late.”
In answer to any thought of “junk science,” the fact of extremely high sea-levels well beyond that which could be accommodated by the melting of land ice, the coincidence of these times with hypoxic, organic rick mud deposition half way across ancestral North America (as far as the Mississippi River valley, and the expansion of black mud deposition down the continental slope are all facts. Similarly, the rapid (less than a million year cyclicity) of hyperwarming/highest sea levels to low sea levels and “normal greenhouse times means that hyperwarming can’t be accommodated by the slower changes in abundance of carbon dioxide as a result of changes in rate of ptate tectonic spreading and origin of new, mantle-derived carbon dioxide.
The second idea that the possibility of hyperwarming will change “our ways” really can’t be entertained. Psychologically and politically it seems like humans can only react to the immediate threat–the lion attacking or a scourge of witches in colonial times. The flat-out evidence of global warming and the profound loss of Arctic pack ice was simply met by permission to drill in the Chukchi Sea and plans to ship more cheaply through the newly melted “northwest passage.” Science can document what has happened and predict what will likely happen, but, as an example, the permits to build summer McMansions on hurricane-endangered barrier islands will continue.”
Landing has to begin his presentations with a disclaimer that his views are not shared by his employer, New York state. Which is just ridiculous. Like the politicians know better than the scientists.
Wow, the Rec List. Thanks y’all. It’s been awhile. Send a little love to Ed Landing. I think he would appreciate it.
I am presenting a series of Scientia posts. I have to wait six months, because they have the copyright under contract. Other Scientia posts are below:
Back to the Future: Haldane’s Daedalus Revisted.
The First Science Fiction Story
http://www.dailykos.com/..
January 29th, 2013 at 1:08 am
Guy made me notice something I already knew. All (most?) people have something to teach you and when you treat them that way, you can/may learn the something.
That is a wonderful platitude, but as a freelance, polytheistic nihilist, I must reject its basic sentiment.
Most (99.9%) people are running the same, mindless personality programs that the Matrix has inculcated. They watch the same television shows, they laugh at the same things, hate the same, tell the same jokes, they even grieve the same … stupid people being happy. It’s very depressing, really. Some have vague inklings that something is amiss, especially when they lose their jobs and can’t go to the mall as often. But they never seem to trek beyond the coordinates of state sanctioned cynicism. 9/11 = bad Muslims. JFK = Oswald. The Super Bowl and the U.S. military = sacred and good. Oh, and there’s plenty of oil in the Arctic, so drill baby drill.
The sleep walkers are the problem. Billions and billions of them consuming everything, questioning nothing, but always breeding. WE are delusionally obsessed with our specialness and we eat up all the myths and commercials that reinforce the anthropocentric thing, which is backed by the monotheistic mental virus. As a collectivity, we are insane, perpetually bored and neurotic; that’s why we have been inventing death cults for at least 5,000 years. Industrial capitalism is just the latest and the last of these death cults.
“I don’t understand why we must do things in this world, why we must have friends and aspirations, hopes and dreams. Wouldn’t it be better to retreat to a faraway corner of the world, where all its noise and complications would be heard no more? Then we could renounce culture and ambitions; we would lose everything and gain nothing; for what is there to be gained from this world?”
Emil Cioran, On the Heights of Despair
January 29th, 2013 at 3:43 am
Frank; It appears to me, having not read much about any of this, (I’m just an infant looking at what I see) that they are interested in why we need to eat and then defecate other beings. What a strange and horrible way to get energy. How can there be any harmony?
Maybe they get their energy directly from the sun, just like grass does, so they don’t need to eat each other. They don’t need to be big, heavy and strong. They don’t need big mouths, big muscles, and big ass holes. They are trying to understand why we do have these features.
Imagine what the world would be like if the grass and trees were fighting each other, arguing with each other, and eating each other. Oh, wait. That’s what the world is like. Sounds like hell.
January 29th, 2013 at 3:48 am
per http://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Chernobyls-Role-in-the-Fall-of-the-Soviet-Union.html
Gorbachev states that Chernobyl was “perhaps the real cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Before the Chernobyl accident occurred Gorbachev had already introduced his glasnost policy which was aimed at increasing the transparency between the state and its citizens, yet what was expected to be a step by step incremental and slow process exploded after the accident.
Michael David-Fox, a professor of Russian and Soviet history at Georgetown University, also admitted that the disaster at Chernobyl may have hastened the implementation of the glasnost policy which eventually led to the dismantling of the Soviet Union.
As horror stories about Chernobyl and the nuclear radiation poisoning that followed began to spread, the citizens of the Soviet Union began to lose faith in the state’s ability to inform and protect them; the government quickly began to lose control over its public. Whereas before the people believed in the Soviet system, and trusted that it had led them to be the leading power in the world. After Chernobyl they realised that they were woefully inept compared to many western countries, and that the system was flawed and potentially dangerous.
On Christmas day 1991 one of the largest empires in history ceased to exist, and Chernobyl represents its final resting place.”
No one things brings down a country, but the saying “straw that broke the camel’s back” comes to mind. So does the idea that some in the US would like to think that they brought down the USSR with trapping it into Afganistan, or that it was a failed system like capitalism, and none in the power structure in the US would like anyone to think that is came down because of a Nuclear accident thus they would deliberately leave that out of the narrative.
January 29th, 2013 at 4:01 am
Badlands When I look at things like the Discover telescope-the main lens alone took something like 7 years to make- and that people can find things out there in the universe called waltzing black holes, I mean, why can’t we figure out how to get along and take care of the earth while we’re at it?
Because we are still animals, and our programs, often hidden from us, run us in the end even if they do let us choose the color to paint the bedroom. We get some leeway but in the end the only control that keeps a species from overpopulating and using up its resource base is another species or the environment. In this case we are making our own self limiting environment, but probably one that will in the end do us in. We are no different from other cases – such as the anaerobic bacteria that created an oxygen filled world causing them to hide under the soil, or the reindeer on Matthew Island = http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/what-wiped-out-st-matthew-islands-reindeer introduced to an island with no predators and no where to go they ate themselves out of food.
So it goes….
January 29th, 2013 at 4:23 am
– and as such we are holons.
How about a few colons – full of s**t?
Think of incest, which is shockingly common
“Incest is relative”.
“Reality is the set of delusions we hold in common”.
January 29th, 2013 at 4:30 am
@ depressive lucidity
..Wouldn’t it be better to retreat to a faraway corner of the world, where all its noise and complications would be heard no more? Then we could renounce culture and ambitions; we would lose everything and gain nothing; for what is there to be gained from this world?”
Nice quotation.
“..beside a stream there was a dwelling. Blackened by time and rain, the hut was piled up on all sides with taiga rubbish—bark, poles, planks. If it hadn’t been for a window the size of my backpack pocket, it would have been hard to believe that people lived there. But they did, no doubt about it…. Our arrival had been noticed, as we could see.
The low door creaked, and the figure of a very old man emerged into the light of day, straight out of a fairy tale. Barefoot. Wearing a patched and repatched shirt made of sacking. He wore trousers of the same material, also in patches, and had an uncombed beard. His hair was disheveled. He looked frightened and was very attentive…. We had to say something, so I began: ‘Greetings, grandfather! We’ve come to visit!’
The old man did not reply immediately…. Finally, we heard a soft, uncertain voice: ‘Well, since you have traveled this far, you might as well come in.’
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/history/2013/01/for-40-years-this-russian-family-was-cut-off-from-all-human-contact-unaware-of-world-war-ii
January 29th, 2013 at 4:30 am
@ulvfugl
“Unlike Bailey, I am not in the ‘Nothing will ever convince me…’ camp, about anything, and I am always attracted to the intriguing anomalies,”
Interesting how neither one of you choose to quote me correctly/completely (and neither understood what I was saying, or cared to obviously..)
January 29th, 2013 at 4:38 am
ulvfugl and Kathy C
Points taken thre. I wasn’t really fully accepting the blanket explaination of Gorbachevs, about Chernobyl. I have also read that the Reagan era administration tricked the Soviet union into pumping a lot of ots oil closer to peak, so it could deplete it of somemarket dominance, or some such thing. It is a multifactorial situation, the brak up of an empire, but in this case it was a forced union in the beginning, The USSR.
I also don’t quite swallow this from Kathy C’s quote:
” Whereas before the people believed in the Soviet system, and trusted that it had led them to be the leading power in the world.”
The individuals who I have spoken to who lived in the USSR were from Poland, Ukraine and other groups not fro Russia proper. Almost without exception they all report the servere oppression and political corruption, and bemoan that very few ordinary folk, as distinv=ct from party faithful,regional administrators civil servents etc, absolutely did not believe in the Soviet System.
obviously there would be many who were believers, but not being an informed demograoher, I cant make any educated definitive statements there. Perhaps my sample is skewed, as those I have spoken to left, and came to Australia.
Regarding the actual economic, (and political I suppose), breakup of the USSR, my point was to illustrate that the costly repair, (in the case of Chernobyl, IMO it will never and can never be ‘repaired’, that is Nuclear Power/Weopons full stop), of such large scale disasters, which I was drawing a long bow regarding catastrophic climate human disasters, will draw too much of a nations wealth now that these events are only going to get worse, or at best just persist, but with graeter regularity.
As a displaced queenslander resident was heard to utter on the news here yesterday, when asked how he and his family were coping after the 2011 floods, which he endured and now this one…..
To paraphrase:
“Well, you know, we will do our best to clean up, and get ready for the next one in a hundred year flood next year”
The sobering thing about his intellegent wry comment, is that he ‘meant’ it!
January 29th, 2013 at 4:45 am
@ Bailey
You are at liberty to make sure everyone understands exactly what you think, aren’t you ?
I did ask you an question, so that you could clarify your position :
“Seems to me it’s Graham Hancock’s speculation laid upon Carl Jung’s speculation…
And then you get to the ‘scratch marks from demons’ and the ‘burn marks from flying saucers’. How do you propose to account for the chain of events that lead from mental or spiritual or psychic phenomena, to such material physical effects ? “
I’m really quite interested to know. You say you’ve thought and read about this stuff for years. There’s a very wide range of positions represented here, you complained that Frank had got you wrong, but how can we know where you stand, unless you go to the trouble of trying to explain ?
January 29th, 2013 at 5:09 am
@ dmd
…they are interested in why we need to eat and then defecate…
So they are maybe not so interested in sending friendly communiques via crop circles, and maybe just as likely to treat us the way we treat laboratory rats ?
January 29th, 2013 at 5:19 am
ulvfugl
You find some great stuff !!!
What a story, and this is my quote from the whole text…
Of Agafia…
“She thought nothing of hard work, either, excavating a new cellar by hand late in the fall and working on by moonlight when the sun had set. Asked by an astonished Peskov whether she was not frightened to be out alone in the wilderness after dark, she replied: “What would there be out here to hurt me?””
No separation there between human and nature, or no fear at least, even as they had a type of religion too.
It is obvious from this reading, that if you live in the natural world, you know it as an intergral aspect of yourself, even though there is an obvious recognition of the difference, i.e. of being a conscious being.
The key point of modern civilised existance is a predominant fear of ‘Nature’ concommittant with a lack of experience with natural geography and wildlife.
(It is harder to ‘sell’ wildlife en mass, than it is to ‘sell’ cultural stories attached to products dug out of the ground and altered.)
Spending time in specific locations from infancy is what tunes us to a land, and those who now grow up from birth separated from the wild things in this world endure a kind of sophisticate madness, only really apparent when they are put in those wild place, by choice or by misadventure, or the ‘normal’ accoutriments of modernity are somehow removed or dont work because the system is momentarily bung.
I somehow draw a causal link there to alienation from human instincts, (excepting those instincts that are well exploited by BIG Advertising), and also the subtlties of having patience, and the ability to ‘listen’ to the world, as it changes, by just being itself.
What a great story, except for the ‘premature’ deaths revealed after contact with others.
Once more for emphasis:
Agafia:
“What would there be out here to hurt me?”
Yo!
January 29th, 2013 at 5:51 am
I mean, why can’t we figure out how to get along and take care of the earth while we’re at it?
We didn’t do this to ourselves. Some of us did this to the rest of us. There are innocents, and there are culprits. If we were a species who were going to survive, we’d all be able to identify the culprits by now.
We’re like the teenager who wraps his car around a telephone pole, drunk, with his whoopin and hollerin friends in the passenger seats, because someone was intent on earning a few bucks through selling us the booze.
Proper management could have pulled us away from the brink – could still pull us away from the brink – but we are seduced buy the bullshit artist by our side, telling us not to worry. Selling us guns and bombs to fight each other with.
January 29th, 2013 at 6:00 am
A bit off topic, but not for NBL propper…
‘The Mystery of Easter Island’
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/The_Mystery_of_Easter_Island.html?c=y&page=1
New research suggests the demise of Easter Island was more rapid than first thought.
A snippet:
“In his book Collapse, Jared Diamond refers to the Rapanui’s environmental degradation as “ecocide” and points to the civilization’s demise as a model of what can happen if human appetites go unchecked.
But new findings by archaeologist Terry Hunt of the University of Hawai’i may indicate a different version of events. In 2000, Hunt, archaeologist Carl Lipo of California State University, Long Beach, and their students began excavations at Anakena, a white sandy beach on the island’s northern shore. The researchers believed Anakena would have been an attractive area for the Rapanui to land, and therefore may be one of the earliest settlement sites. In the top several layers of their excavation pit, the researchers found clear evidence of human presence: charcoal, tools—even bones, some of which had come from rats. Underneath they found soil that seemed absent of human contact. This point of first human interaction, they figured, would tell them when the first Rapanui had arrived on the island.
Hunt sent the samples from the dig to a lab for radiocarbon dating, expecting to receive a date around 800 A.D., in keeping with what other archaeologists had found. Instead, the samples dated to 1200 A.D. This would mean the Rapanui arrived four centuries later than expected. The deforestation would have happened much faster than originally assumed, and the human impact on the environment was fast and immediate.
Hunt suspected that humans alone could not destroy the forests this quickly. In the sand’s layers, he found a potential culprit—a plethora of rat bones….”
January 29th, 2013 at 6:06 am
Ogardener: One of my favorite jokes
A snail reaches the front door of a house after a week of travel from the sidewalk and knocks on the door. Man answers, looks around, doesn’t see anything and closes the door. Snail knocks again. Dude opens the door and looks around more carefully, sees the snail on the doorsill, picks him up, throws him as far as he can, and shuts the door.
Six weeks later the snail knocks on the door again. When the guy opens the door, the snail says: “What the hell was THAT all about?!”
David: revisiting on a little more positive note. This guy did it, maybe it’ll work for you (or you can communicate with him and see how he got started and makes it work.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=YrMJwIedrWU&NR=1
January 29th, 2013 at 6:24 am
@ Ozman
You find some great stuff !!!
Thank you, sir.
This is for dmd, madmanintheattic, Kathy C., and others, who don’t get why quantum stuff is interesting and relevant to our lives…
http://youtu.be/wcXSpXyZVuY
January 29th, 2013 at 6:34 am
The authorities do their systematic best to keep fellow prisoners misinformed about what is happening elsewhere in the world prison. They do not, in the aggressive sense of the term, indoctrinate. Indoctrination is reserved for the training of the small élite of traders and managerial and market experts. For the mass prison population the aim is not to activate them, but to keep them in a state of passive uncertainty, to remind them remorselessly that there is nothing in life but risk, and that the earth is an unsafe place.
This is done with carefully selected information, with misinformation, commentaries, rumors, fictions. Insofar as the operation succeeds, it proposes and maintains a hallucinating paradox, for it tricks a prison population into believing that the priority for each one of them is to make arrangements for their own personal protection and to acquire somehow, even though incarcerated, their own particular exemption from the common fate. This image of mankind as transmitted through a view of the world is truly without precedent. Mankind is presented as a coward; only winners are brave. In addition, there are no gifts; there are only prizes.
Prisoners have always found ways of communicating with one another. In today’s global prison, cyberspace can be used against the interests of those who first installed it. Like this, prisoners inform themselves about what the world does each day, and they follow suppressed stories from the past and so stand shoulder to shoulder with the dead.
In doing so, they rediscover little gifts, examples of courage, a single rose in a kitchen where there’s not enough to eat, indelible pains, the indefatigability of mothers, laughter, mutual aid, silence, ever-widening resistance, willing sacrifice, more laughter…
The messages are brief but they extend in the solitude of their (our) nights.
http://www.guernicamag.com/features/john_berger_7_15_11/
January 29th, 2013 at 8:41 am
Ulvfugler said I discovered that death of ego, living as if already dead, even if it sounds rather odd, is actually a sublime and wondrous way to be.
In my experience the people capable of fatuous, self-serving bullshit like this are the one’s with the largest egos. After all one must have an ego in order to make statements about how great it is to be living without an ego whilst still presenting oneself as an egomaniac as Ulvwhatever does. It is the ego extolling the fake virtue of not having an ego which makes this statement. A truly egoless person could not make that statement and be as much of an egomaniac and jerk as Ulvbuggerer is.
Ulvblahblah has shown well, truly and often to be the largest and most judgemental egomaniac here. It seems, after the troll war between Morrocco Bama, Ivy Mike and Ulvfugl, simply the “best” troll won … and now we are stuck with him. Oh, yea …
January 29th, 2013 at 8:49 am
Ulthingy said: This is for dmd, madmanintheattic, Kathy C., and others, who don’t get why quantum stuff is interesting and relevant to our lives…
This statement contains so many logical fallacies and is such a well-constructed personal attack I say it only goes to show Ulvnutter’s egomania and trollishness.
You have no idea what I get and what I don’t get and of course I know it is relevant to our lives, you idiot – I’m using a computer and the internet right now. The only statement I made, which you agreed with but are now turning around as an opportunity to attack three people, is I live and interact, mostly in a world of matter.
I won’t be sucked in to a spat here but I just can’t sit back and let utter BULLSHIT like Ulksnuggler spouts go un-noted.
January 29th, 2013 at 9:08 am
twinkles fingers up!
January 29th, 2013 at 9:14 am
It seems that the clever demon chimps have found a way to turn environmentalism into a tool of domination and destruction:
Like the neoliberals, the neo-environmentalists are attempting to break through the lines of an old orthodoxy that is visibly exhausted and confused. Like the neoliberals, they are mostly American and mostly male, and they emphasize scientific measurement and economic analysis over other ways of seeing and measuring. Like the neoliberals, they cluster around a few key think tanks: then, the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Cato Institute, and the Adam Smith Institute; now, the Breakthrough Institute, the Long Now Foundation, and the Copenhagen Consensus. Like the neoliberals, they are beginning to grow in numbers at a time of global collapse and uncertainty. And like the neoliberals, they think they have radical solutions.
Kareiva’s ideas are a good place to start in understanding the neo-environmentalists. He is an outspoken former conservationist who now believes that most of what the greens think they know is wrong. Nature, he says, is more resilient than fragile; science proves it. “Humans degrade and destroy and crucify the natural environment,” he says, “and 80 percent of the time it recovers pretty well.” Wilderness does not exist; all of it has been influenced by humans at some time. Trying to protect large functioning ecosystems from human development is mostly futile; humans like development, and you can’t stop them from having it. Nature is tough and will adapt to this: “Today, coyotes roam downtown Chicago, and peregrine falcons astonish San Franciscans as they sweep down skyscraper canyons. . . . As we destroy habitats, we create new ones.” Now that “science” has shown us that nothing is “pristine” and nature “adapts,” there’s no reason to worry about many traditional green goals such as, for example, protecting rainforest habitats. “Is halting deforestation in the Amazon . . . feasible?” he asks. “Is it even necessary?” Somehow, you know what the answer is going to be before he gives it to you.
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/7277/
January 29th, 2013 at 9:37 am
ulvfugl: So they are maybe not so interested in sending friendly communiques via crop circles, and maybe just as likely to treat us the way we treat laboratory rats?
This is precisely the way I see it.
I doubt that these forms of intelligence (I won’t even refer to them as “life forms” because they may not be alive in terms that would make sense to us) most likely relate to us the same way we relate to mice. How would you begin to explain human reality to a mouse?
The folks involved with artificial intelligence research have been talking for years about the coming singularity, by which they mean that we are decades away from building synthetic brains that will have IQs in the millions … it’s like worms getting together and creating god. These guys are asking whether these super intelligences might turn on us, given that they will probably not be able to relate to us because of the huge intelligence gap. On human terms, an IQ gap of only 70 points separates someone who is mentally retarded from a genius. What would a 1,000,000 (or more) IQ gap look like?
The entities we call ETs probably reached their own singularities eons ago either here, or in some other universe. I can’t imagine that we are more relevant to them than the mice in my backyard are to me (although my cats might disagree). We, of course, are so convinced that we are the central players in a cosmic drama that we immediately assume that they want something from us, that we are somehow important to them.
January 29th, 2013 at 9:40 am
DL: awesome response, especially the last line
“for what is there to be gained from this world?”
ulvfugl: nice, with the Lloyd.
January 29th, 2013 at 10:03 am
ulvfugl Says:
January 29th, 2013 at 4:45 am
@ Bailey
You are at liberty to make sure everyone understands exactly what you think, aren’t you ?
I did ask you an question, so that you could clarify your position :
Quite honestly, I am sorry now that I brought it up on this forum. I do have an interest in psi and unusual phenomenon, but I don’t accept the common explanations. I am really not up to expounded on it here (yet) on this board, because I am more interested in the subject matter of NTE/NBL. No one who has researched paranormal phenom for years, has ended with anything but craziness as a result (that is the truth).
January 29th, 2013 at 10:09 am
ulvfugi- this is my final post to you on this subject since you suffer from a selective memory.
This corpse and other mut. cases are hallmarked by the refusal of animals/insects to invade or even get near the corpses. This fact was pointed out by the autopsy report and other reports as well.
January 29th, 2013 at 10:11 am
..I will add the one last final thing on the subject of the anomalous. If you are familiar with the writings of Jacques Vallee, Terrance McKenna and some others, you may find this interesting (as a place to start in understanding my position of the involvement of our own psyches). Read some of the reviews also.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Trickster-Paranormal-George-Hansen/dp/1401000827/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1359479260&sr=8-1&keywords=trickster+and+the+paranormal
January 29th, 2013 at 10:14 am
Madman – isn’t it interesting how often people with huge egos are so blind to the fact that they have them?
January 29th, 2013 at 10:14 am
As William Gibson said, “The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.”
That’s what I think of when I read about what has been going on in Philadelphia, as the link provided above. It will get worse, folks. Much worse.
Fortunately, the past is still here, and also not evenly distributed. We’ll all be gone soon, but some sooner than others, and in a different manner.
I have a couple of observations on human beings today. One is that we are pattern recognizers. We do it incessantly and unconciously. We see faces in the folds of curtains, we see conspiracies under every bed. Once the reflex is recognized and indulged in, it becomes pervasive, especially when others agree with you. In difficult times, when few things make sense, when trust is gone, even more primitive pattern recognition skills reassert themselves.
Secondly, as Wade Davis has noted, physical science split the atom. The equivalent act in the social sciences was splitting the individual from community. This splitting was necessary because capitalism requires a workforce that can be induced to move here and there to take up the slack in one type of industry and then another and then another, removing all alliance to place. Hence the hype on rugged individualism, which we have swallowed hook, line and cellphone. But it’s against our nature and we’re always trying to get back to a community: football, TV, religion, online groups. All of these have been coopted to create moveable enclaves using the best propaganda methods money can buy to keep us away from each other and afraid of each other.
I agree with you, TRDH, aid to other countries makes it worse in the end. Leave them be. No weapons, no fertilizers, no refugee camps, no cheap drugs. Stay away. Leave their oil and gas in the ground. They’ll be way ahead of us in adapting to the downward spiral we’re all facing.
January 29th, 2013 at 10:43 am
@ Madmanintheattic
First, I think you don’t understand what I mean by ego. Second, you insisted that the quantum stuff had no relevance, quoting ‘Where does the weirdness go’, which is now out of date, and overtaken by new research. As for your insults, they are just childish and silly and not worthy of my time.
January 29th, 2013 at 10:49 am
@ Frank
this is my final post to you on this subject since you suffer from a selective memory.
Another silly insult. Dear me. So you can only discuss with someone who agrees with you ?
January 29th, 2013 at 10:54 am
@ Bailey
If you are familiar with the writings of Jacques Vallee, Terrance McKenna and some others, you may find this interesting (as a place to start in understanding my position of the involvement of our own psyches).
Yes, I’m familiar with that stuff. I was curious as to what your own position was, but you seem incapable of articulating it.
January 29th, 2013 at 11:04 am
@ Kathy C.
isn’t it interesting how often people with huge egos are so blind to the fact that they have them?
Another who doesn’t understand what I mean by ego. Ego is essential in any social context. As T. McKenna said, without one, if you went into a restaurant, you would not know which mouth to put the food into. The rest of the time, mushin, no-mind, budda-mind, nirvana.
January 29th, 2013 at 11:07 am
Madman; Ulv….. posted a link about photosynthesis being done by bacteria capturing photons, right here, right now. Maybe after we are gone, they, or phytoplankton will evolve into beings that don’t eat each other. That’s where my imagination was heading. Did Ulv…. make a mistake?
Maybe that’s why we like trees and meadows so much. They just hang around soaking up sunshine and don’t bother anyone. As for aliens, maybe they have been watching our behavior and decided to try it.
January 29th, 2013 at 11:09 am
@ depressive lucidity
In a nutshell, the New Natural : Toxic sludge is good for you !
January 29th, 2013 at 11:12 am
Thanks Daniel for your insight, somehow I think we’ve talked before. You say,
But sadly, the long and the short of your inquiry, is I believe that the very reason you can’t find others to join you in your endeavor, is for the most part, the same reason why you didn’t join an already existing community in theirs.
We have had our property on the market thinking to join another’s community as my wife and I have had contact with others trying to do the same and know we would be a welcomed asset to these communities. We have even been asked by others to join them.
While our property was on the market we noticed those looking were not from “our crowd” but most who wanted out of the city for other reasons such as peace and quiet, to ride four wheelers, have horses or just to say they live in the country and they were not willing to pay for the “food factory” so to speak that we have worked at putting in for the last 12 years. In other words it was hard to let go of all we have started here to turn it over to such lookers, so we decided to stay put and recently have changed our game plan to look more of business partners who want to grow something more for profit.
IMO we’ve been programmed to believe we’re not capable of living together without having a mission statement or king of the castle mentality. Recently a friend sent this link,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmUzwRCyTSo&feature=player_embedded
that I can surely relate to especially after reading many of the comments on NBL. We have become exactly what TPTB want us to be (narcisstic, egocentric and selfish) and our nurturing, loving, compassionate ways have been programmed out of us. One example that comes to my mind is the fact that Monsanto dictates our food supply and could you imagine what it would look like if Vandana Shiva held the levers of power in the food industry?
I lived the possibility of having people work and play together in my many years of sports, I learned the good that came out of such teamwork and sacrificing oneself for the betterment of the team. I also learned many years ago with all my volunteer work that giving is much more rewarding than receiving.
Tom:
Thanks for the link, I only watched the first few minutes and will definitely watch the rest later, it’s good to know that some are not just sitting back and waiting.
Bub you say,
My intentional community is made up of almost entirely people who have no use for NBL or any idea that they are part of any such community. I am not so disappointed in them, because I do not expect them to ~ convert.
We’re not looking to convert anyone and would never want to bring people on the property who didn’t want to be here (kicking and screaming is not part of our plan). We want people here who understand the predicament we’re in and can work towards creating the environment that we’ll need to muddle through collapse as best as we can or until there is no more.
You also say,
Upon parting, I use a phrase that I learned from Guy. “Make it a great day.” Being liked helps some…
I don’t think it’s as important to be liked as it is “doing the right thing” although I do understand that means something different to everyone. I work to make every day a great one as I never know what tomorrow will bring. Thank you for sharing.
And to BC Nurse Prof thank you for this:
Hence the hype on rugged individualism, which we have swallowed hook, line and cellphone. But it’s against our nature and we’re always trying to get back to a community: football, TV, religion, online groups. All of these have been coopted to create moveable enclaves using the best propaganda methods money can buy to keep us away from each other and afraid of each other.
January 29th, 2013 at 11:17 am
About hyperwarming; our farm is located at a rather high elevation in New York. Some of the fields near the house have rock outcropings made of sedimentary shale. The rock is full of fossils and has been pushed around 45 to 90 degrees from flat. Glaciers were one mile high here once. The land goes back and up another 300 feet to the top of the farm where under the shallow soil we still find flat shale, sedimentary rock, undisturbed, full of fossils. That’s about 1500-1800 feet elevation and we can see 20 miles in all directions.
Just some facts, for a change of pace.
January 29th, 2013 at 11:19 am
@ dmd
…photosynthesis being done by bacteria capturing photons, right here, right now. Maybe after we are gone, they, or phytoplankton will evolve into beings that don’t eat each other. That’s where my imagination was heading. Did Ulv…. make a mistake?
Mistake about what ? Point was those bacteria do quantum computing and constitute 40% of the biomass… Point was that your nose smells using quantum effects… it’s not quite established yet, but I suspect soon, all our minds are using quantum effects, i.e. entangled, which will possibly account for the siddhis, and psi phenomena…. and nothingness…
http://youtu.be/Y-vKh_jKX7Q
January 29th, 2013 at 12:01 pm
ecosqueak or eco roar,
as btd has said:
‘it don’t matter no more’
good squeak, cardiologist geoffrey chia. unfortunately in the usa a couple of decades ago there was a stupid ‘chia pet’ craze. just google it if u don’t believe me. bad association. anyway, i appreciate the considerable efforts u’re making to spread the word. very frustrating, isn’t it?
i wanted to listen to your peak oil talk on youtube, but the poor audio quality and distant and highly angled video were technical difficulties that ruined it. if u have something important to communicate and the ability to do it very well, u need more and better support in matters such as posting youtube videos. if so, i hope u get it.
i hope u’ll continue your efforts at least a bit longer. i’m impressed by your honesty and glibness, your professional achievement combined with the ‘activism’ of public speaking/writing on the issues of our concern. thumbs up to u.
‘The idea of extra-terrestrials warning humanity that we must change because we are destroying the earth is so ludicrous! Especially school children in Africa – how could that possibly change our culture? If there ARE any extraterrestrials capable of visiting earth and putting thoughts into people’s heads, you’d think they would have gotten into Reagan or Bush’s heads, or the Koch brothers. Why bother with people who have absolutely no influence? It’s far more likely that people who sense, for whatever reason, that the Malthusian outcome is imminent, experience some serious cognitive dissonence and have all sorts of psychiatric reactions trying to make sense of the madness.’ -gail
since when have sheeple needed to ‘sense’ the ‘end times’ to be irrational and delusional about some things (dogmas, for example)? i don’t know about u, but in my personal experience/view, there are a lot of supposedly sane sheeple who harbor delusional dogmatic beliefs and false memories of events that occurred only in their imagination. they tend to be dan quayle types (not the sharpest minds).
i think some sheeple make shit up to get attention. some are damned good liars, perhaps simply trying to take advantage of this ability. perhaps some privately get a kick out of fooling gullible sheeple. whatever, it takes 2 to play a fool’s game, a deceiver and a fool. deceit is only rewarded by fools, who in this case have been dumbed down both genetically and environmentally by millennia of civilized domestication, of being drilled to trust and obey ‘authorities’. fear both the liar and the fool, the delusional and the ‘true believers’ for whom faith trumps fact.
the point is that human irrationality and delusions are common long standing aspects of humanity.
January 29th, 2013 at 12:47 pm
U You wrote to Frank Another silly insult. Dear me. So you can only discuss with someone who agrees with you ?
and to Bailey Yes, I’m familiar with that stuff. I was curious as to what your own position was, but you seem incapable of articulating it.
And to Madman First, I think you don’t understand what I mean by ego. Second, you insisted that the quantum stuff had no relevance, quoting ‘Where does the weirdness go’, which is now out of date, and overtaken by new research. As for your insults, they are just childish and silly and not worthy of my time.
And to me Another who doesn’t understand what I mean by ego. Ego is essential in any social context. As T. McKenna said, without one, if you went into a restaurant, you would not know which mouth to put the food into. The rest of the time, mushin, no-mind, budda-mind, nirvana.
ego – self-esteem or self-image
Well there you go again boosting your self esteem by putting yourself up and others down. Do you not realize that you do this all the time, multiple times every day on this site? The ironic thing is that people who act so superior do this to boost their self esteem are actually very insecure and have low self esteem. And yet they never see it. You are so persistent in your behavior that others are provoked to respond to you as you have acted to them, and then you get to feel superior all over again. I realize it is time for me to stop letting you get under my skin and start feeling sorry for you.
January 29th, 2013 at 1:17 pm
ET Tour Bus
“What in the world could befall
To make such a wreck, wall to wall?”
“A species got strong,
The balance went wrong,
And they wrecked the whole place, that’s all.”
January 29th, 2013 at 1:32 pm
Elfbuggerers egomania is such that he can discard as useless a book he has not even read. The analysis of the misinterpretation of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and Bell’s Non-locality theorum which are presented in Where Does The Weirdness Go still stand and will forever stand as long as those principles are consistently misinterpreted as Elkfucker and others continue to do.
I’m pretty sure VUlvanuggler has no understanding of what the ego is when he can be the disparaging, denegrating, attacking arrogant Troll he is at the same he proclaims his existence to be residing in an ego-free nirvana. What a sad, sad joke and the joke is on him.
If the man has to trumpet his enlightenment to Nirvana (whatever that is) on this particular little blog along with his anger and projections as “egolessness” then I too shall begin to feel sorry for the pathetic little Egomaniacal Troll.
January 29th, 2013 at 1:39 pm
David,
I think that I understand what you are saying.
I’m not sure that I was entirely clear on those points.
~ convert means (to me) to change others to see the world more the way that I do. This is the classic pitfall and it seems to have been a set-up for disaster in my life, even though I thought that I could avoid it. I can’t change others at all, or at least in any predictable fashion. I had to realize that my being ~ open-minded, anti-slavery, pro-WWOOF was a religion and way of believing also. It can’t be that everyone else is wrong and I alone am right. (I now think most WWOOF situations involve fairly incompetent agrarians with little to teach.) Open-minded has changed in meaning for me over about the last 10 or 15 years. When I didn’t trust anyone over thirty or without a beard, I was perhaps even more closed-off in denial of my humanity. Now I suppose that I don’t really trust anybody, but it is equal-opportunity dis-belief.
That is where the *being likeable* matters. You can’t let the disdain overwhelm your decency. I don’t propose a popularity contest, but an attempt at following through with the desire for getting along better (?) that drives the whole desire to go back to the land and build the less-diabolical food machine you describe passionately. No wo/man is an island, but sort of… kinda?
And even the people who may seem to have nothing to teach you are the examples of what you do not want to be. I include that as a lesson in my way of thinking. There are examples even in our community : )
January 29th, 2013 at 2:00 pm
the virgin terry says: the point is that human irrationality and delusions are common long standing aspects of humanity.
One reason we think as we do
When it’s not all objectively true:
If your niche isn’t high,
And you don’t buy the lie,
It loosens the social glue.
January 29th, 2013 at 2:07 pm
The case of former governor Don Siegalman is another example of how American justice works when any of the elites’ entrenched interests are even mildly challenged. It should also give one a glimpse of how opposition to the Wall Street/Oil&Coal complex will be dealt with.
Siegalman was prosecuted by a pal of Karl Rove and is serving a prison sentence for the sin of being a popular democrat in the South who sought to use state gambling funds to offer free college tuition for the citizens of Alabama.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mimi-kennedy/don-siegelman_b_1851909.html
January 29th, 2013 at 2:21 pm
@ Madmanintheattic
Re the book, I’m not so foolish to buy and read a book from 1997, which is ancient history, when I can read summaries of it’s contents on the web and know it’s wrong. Quantum effects are found at room temperature in biological environments. That’s new.
As for your other nonsense, you have no idea what you are talking about, child.
January 29th, 2013 at 2:32 pm
@ Kathy C.
Thank you for the uninvited and completely mistaken attempt at psychoanalysing me.
My definition of ego does not equal ‘self-esteem, self-image’, and whilst I could explain what I mean by ego-lessness, you do not understand the subject sufficiently well to be able comprehend my explanation, so I will leave it there.
January 29th, 2013 at 2:42 pm
Depressive, ah yes our own former governor got shafted by Rove. He wasn’t the best one could hope for, but he didn’t deserve what he got. Gone down hill here since then politically.
January 29th, 2013 at 3:24 pm
@ulvfugl
“Yes, I’m familiar with that stuff. I was curious as to what your own position was, but you seem incapable of articulating it.”
You seem incapable of comprehending what I wrote – I.e., I do not wish to delve into that subject matter on this forum.
January 29th, 2013 at 3:36 pm
BTD: they’re so “on”! Do you have a stockpile of these or can you just bang one out like some poet/rapper. They’re always pithy, witty and “game.” Keep ‘em comin’!
dl: Yeah i don’t see Corzine goin’ anywhere though. “eh, ya got change for a billion?”
tvt: Your final sentence was inciteful. i think we’re all completely bonkers – we must be in order to live by destroying LIFE, and doing it in our everyday lives, without even thinking about it, over and over – and locked in if you have a “regular job” to supporting this behemoth that’s devouring (y)our soul through (y)our taxes. And now, the “new and improved” version, powerless to change it! Our leaders are corporate tools who lie to us, spy on us, and can now order our death by drone strike – right here in the U.S. – or “disappear” us with no recourse to the legal system, even devoid of charges! As the article linked to above about the XL pipeline people having to cede to the “legal” power of the corporation illustrates, people and the environment are now expendable. i liked the movie Avatar because it illustrated the epic struggle to save the environment (in an idealized/Hollywood kind of way) – that you have to fight to the death if you want to protect the biosphere. Now that it’s too late, it’s full steam ahead until the lights go out by tptb. Nuts, right?
dmd: that sounds like a nice spread. Takes a lot to run a farm – you have help or is it all family?
January 29th, 2013 at 3:38 pm
@ Bailey
I do not wish to delve into that subject matter on this forum.
Hahaha, so why do you keep on doing it ? Jeez. Gail supported your position. I wanted to know how you were going to make a connection between spiritual or psychic phenomena, and material or physical phenomena, ” scratch marks by demons, burn marks by flying saucers”, whatever. You made that rather interesting assertion. You said that’s what you believe.
January 29th, 2013 at 4:10 pm
ulvfugl:
In light of all the comments on crop circles I thought this was kind of interesting, thought you might too,
http://www.execonn.com/cropcircles/isotopes.html
“In this paper we report the discovery of thirteen short-lived radionuclides (radioactive isotopes) in soil samples taken from an English crop circle. We will explain the significance of this discovery, rule out several mundane explanations for it (including hoax), and propose that the radionuclides were created by bombardment of the soil with deuterium nuclei (also called “deuterons.”) We will also consider whether the radionuclides present a health hazard and conclude that they probably do not.”
Apparently there was a follow up study done in 1992. I would be curious to know what, if anything, was discovered.
January 29th, 2013 at 4:11 pm
@ulvfugl
Please go back and read EVERYTHING I wrote. I include it here for your review..
Quite honestly, I am sorry now that I brought it up on this forum. I do have an interest in psi and unusual phenomenon, but I don’t accept the common explanations. I am really not up to expounded on it here (yet) on this board, because I am more interested in the subject matter of NTE/NBL. No one who has researched paranormal phenom for years, has ended with anything but craziness as a result (that is the truth).
January 29th, 2013 at 5:03 pm
@ Bailey
Please go back and read EVERYTHING I wrote.
Hahaha, you’re kidding, no ? I have far more interesting and urgent stuff to attend to…
Look, if you can’t be bothered to explain what you mean, don’t complain that people don’t understand what you mean. Sure, the world is full of insanity and craziness. The idea is to try and sort some of it out and bring some clarity and light to the madness, isn’t it ?
You seem to feel threatened or something, and unwilling discuss your view. Nevermind. I think the ‘demon claw marks and flying saucer burn marks’ is actually very profound. That’s what everyone believed during the pre-scientific era. That’s what the Vatican still teaches. Weeping statues of the Madonna. That’s what much of the 7 billion believe. That’s what Frank believes. That’s what dmd believes. Some weird force intervenes or interferes with what we call physical reality in some way that we find inexplicable.
Scientists, on the whole, the majority, have rejected that possibility. They maintain that all phenomena have some explicable empirical cause, that can be clarified by careful investigation. I think probably Lidia, Gail, Kathy C. represent that view.
I find this fascinating. I am a zen buddhist. My understanding of that position, is that it means having no world view, no belief system. If you like, it’s being in the world rather as an animal is in the world. Simply being, in a sensual, sensory sense. At the same time, I am an educated man, who takes an interest in intellectual matters and thinks.
On some issues, siddhis, telepathy, precognition, etc. I have had so much direct experience, I have no doubts whatsoever of the reality, and I expect, if the research had time to be done before everything collapses, eventually, science would find the explanation. I’m a big fan of good science. On other issues, e.g. aliens, I’m extremely sceptical. So, I have a foot in both camps, so to speak.
I don’t think any of it matters very much. I think that what matters is to learn basic meditation, sort your head out, learn a physical complimentary technique, like qi gong or tai chi, keep your body in order… I think that’s what I’d but at the top of the list of what matters… learn how to be completely empty, completely in the moment…
January 29th, 2013 at 5:13 pm
@ patrick k o’leary
Fascinating, indeed. Yes, I wonder what has been done since, and I wonder what theory that evidence supports ?
January 29th, 2013 at 5:38 pm
@ulv,
Plain and simple; It comes from us, it reflects us, it morphs to our myths, it changes with our culture and beliefs, it plays trickster, it is mercurial and all evidence evaporates on close examination. There is much with the NDE phenom which is also applicable, but it’s really hard to communicate everything I feel and think about this in such a format as this. Hope you understand my reluctance this time..
January 29th, 2013 at 6:06 pm
Tom, thank you!
My jingles began with a limerick contest at LATOC. At first, I thought silly ditties might sometimes break through denial better than lengthy expositions. Then I started clinging to writing for meaning in my life after one of my visits to the abyss. My goal has always been to go viral, but that hasn’t happened, and I’m becoming unconvinced that putting a collection in book form would help.
Lately I’m like a studio musician: I look for good stuff and riff on it, practicing to get better. Maybe if the verses get good enough, they’ll break through.
January 29th, 2013 at 6:47 pm
EDGE : 154 Responses to What Should We Be Worried About.
Varying degrees of interest to folks here, most seem rather out of touch with the real world, imo.
January 29th, 2013 at 7:30 pm
Four dead in severe floods across eastern Australia
“Little or no action has been taken to tackle over-development in flood-prone areas, fortify public flood defences, reinforce critical infrastructure or address the refusal of insurance companies to cover the costs of rebuilding homes destroyed or damaged by swollen rivers.
That’s because it’s a lost cause.
January 29th, 2013 at 7:43 pm
As we debate & discuss the impacts of pollution on our biosphere, it is difficult for me to understand how, in 2013, knowing what we know about carbon emissions and pollution impacts that we are seeing overt and obvious pollution on the scale of what is going down right now in China. Can you imagine not being able to walk across the road without a dust mask? Apparently some folks have taken to wearing full respirators and gas masks.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/29/world/asia/china-beijing-smog/index.html?iref=allsearch
Do TPTB think we are this stupid? (rhetorical question) Do they think we are all so addicted to our consumer lifestyle that we will ignore a little thing like not having air to breathe? (again, rhetorical) I honestly did not think we would be this far along so quickly, exploited so openly, with no visible resistance.
Each stage of this awakening is like pealing an onion (along with the crying)… ok, I get it now, NTE, that’s bad. No wait, this is even worse than NTE, it is NTFE. Holy shit, this is far worse still, it is NTMFE! I think that is the highest order of E. This is MFE! Is MFE really happening? Right before my eyes? It looks like freaking Blade Runner in China. And… we (‘merica) are getting ready to sell them more ‘steam coal’: the dirtiest, most foul coal in the world? Let’s make it worse so the rich cocksuckers can earn a few more bucks! What the fuck. Really? We are really going to do this? And we can’t stop? For… money we are going to do this? Money?
I am sad. I am ashamed. This is real. This is happening right before my eyes.
January 29th, 2013 at 8:00 pm
Thanks for that link ulvfugl, I was perusing that a few days ago and thought I should post it here, but subsequently got distracted. I agree that many responses seem out of touch, however they also highlight the many different wrinkles that are contributing to the whole damn mess. One wrinkle in particular (pun intended) caught my eye:
David Berreby
Journalist; Author, Us and Them
Global Greying
“For example, out of the 9 billion people expected when the Earth’s population peaks in 2050, the World Health Organization expects 2 billion—more than one person in five—to suffer from dementia. Is any society ready for this? Is any really talking about how to be ready?”
Having had some experience caring for Alzheimers victims over the years, I wonder how this might contribute to the quickening dissolution of society? I wish I could believe our culture would provide a compassionate response, unfortunately I fear this will only add to the Horror. What does everyone else think?
January 29th, 2013 at 8:04 pm
With humble respect & honors to BtD:
Soon my limericks will be good enough
But, it’s not easy, it’s actually quite tough
I might go extinct
Before I can make rhymes so succinct
Oh well, I’ll keep trying even if it’s rough
At least I did not try to make a rhyme with ‘orange’:)
January 29th, 2013 at 8:25 pm
islandraider says:
Soon my limericks will be good enough
But, it’s not easy, it’s actually quite tough
I might go extinct
Before I can make rhymes so succinct
Oh well, I’ll keep trying even if it’s rough
Haha perfect! Thanks!
January 29th, 2013 at 10:57 pm
‘Open-minded has changed in meaning for me over about the last 10 or 15 years. When I didn’t trust anyone over thirty or without a beard, I was perhaps even more closed-off in denial of my humanity. Now I suppose that I don’t really trust anybody, but it is equal-opportunity dis-belief.’ -bub
hey bub! i’m always happy to see relatively young sheeple on blogs like this. i think it takes most sheeple a rather long time, well into adulthood, to get wise to the surreality of all the deceit, delusions, and dogmas under which our culture labels. it’s good to know some learn faster. also that not everyone commenting here is relatively old. after all, the young have more at stake and should be more concerned and involved.
‘tvt: Your final sentence was inciteful.’ -tom
thanks, tom. however, i think u’re misspelling insightful. minor point, i know. yep, our world’s fucking insane. that’s one of surreality’s most unpleasant aspects.
‘Maybe if the verses get good enough, they’ll break through’ -btd
maybe, maybe not. lots of talent goes largely unrecognized. at least u get a little love here.
January 29th, 2013 at 10:58 pm
@ulvfugl
I think I love you.
January 29th, 2013 at 10:58 pm
i forgot to say to kathy good luck with the severe weather in your area tomorrow. hope the tornadoes miss u.
January 29th, 2013 at 10:59 pm
@ulvfugl
Because of this:
Imo, it’s very easy to dig a pit of despondency and depression and fall into it, pulling others down as well. I have learned that it is not the good way to go. I concluded, either end your existence, or make the best of things. I discovered that death of ego, living as if already dead, even if it sounds rather odd, is actually a sublime and wondrous way to be. Living thus is free from care and filled with miracles.
January 29th, 2013 at 10:59 pm
Daniel
Most of your sentiments and comments about ICs I can agree with, in that I have been experimenting with putting some of the principles of ‘Gift Community’ awareness in my present location into action.
Little steps have been good. The bigger steps have been very sobering, and lead to ‘extreme learning’ !!! (on my part that is, I’m not sure about other parties.)
(BTW, a cool concept…’Extreme Learning’, defined by the fast speed of uptake involved, and the necessity of only being exposed once to get it, IMO)
One rather unhappy conclusion I have come to in a recent experience with some local people, is that ICs will form as they are needed, and desired. You may be just the early seedling in the field, so to speak.
The key point with the type of IC you speak of, and in my case, something close to gift community dynamics and networking, is that humans need to get to the stage where the only alternative to their satifying core survival needs is via other peoples labour or skills, (advice even). If the usual, pay-money-to: tradesmen, layers, dentists, shopkeepers and taxes apply, people seem to trust that system because their view of independence, and self responsibility, (as in, the “I don’t bludge off the common purse like welfare recipeients”- this can be expressed with more expletives I am aware) is earning an honest weeks sallary etc.
I have come to other assessments/conclusions about these ICs and GCs. I think the collapse stuff is what has driven me to want to get in the front of the wave, rather than at the destructive whip end of it, so I have moved pretty quickly in my thinking, and actions, at least in experimenting with growing food, local food, seeing what works etc.
Another reason I am considdering in the background overarching all this, which is a can of worms I know, but I may as well open it here.
I am one of those who did not have a reliable male parent, and I wonder if that figures psychologically in the dark subconscious spaces that that inexperience of a dependable father parent means I am more willing to accept that the systems and supply structures in place may fail, or are not to be depended on, as so many do.
They do fail all the time of course, somewhere in the world, but could it be that some individuals are more disposed to ‘understand’, (and notice I did not write ‘believe’) that so much of the industrial economy is running on just consensus, and consensus by control and violence?
I really turned yet another corner on these issues when I investigated Derrik Jensen’s, ( and I presume many came before him) arguments that the modern state is predicated on violence, when it comes down to it.
Not going to go into that here, but the question I ask regarding someone’s underlying receptivity, or rejection of, collapse ideas, and also fossil fuel cycle depedency, is one I have tossed around for some time.
I suppose it would never be such a direct correlation, as No Dad Around Much = Collapse Ideas Receptivity, but it may also just come down to intellegence, (Ha Ha. How’s that for some ‘Motivated Reasoning’ for NBL?), or having a significant influence in childhood from someone, (a source) that was sceptical of all this ‘high culture of consumption’?
I have come to a conclusion that things do come together around these things like generating a IC, and if the time is right and you are holding that dream in your mind(s) as you persue living that way, it will arrive the moment you need it. Not to sound too new agey there, but I could suggest that the process might need a festival to kick it off.
In Australia, the Northern NSW town of Nimbin in 1973 was host to the last of a series of ‘Aquarius’ festivals:
‘Aquarius Festival’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquarius_Festival
A quote from Wiki…
“The Aquarius Festival was a counter-cultural arts and music festival organised by the Australian Union of Students and sponsored by Peter Stuyvesant,(big tobacco? crikey bajebus – OzMan added) and held at Nimbin. The first NUAUS festival was held in Sydney ca 1966,[1] while the second, Melbourne, third in Canberra and last (Aquarius) was held in Nimbin, New South Wales in 1973.[2]
The Aquarius Festival aimed to celebrate alternative thinking and sustainable lifestyles.[3] The ten day event was held from 12 to 23 May 1973 and co-directed by Johnny Allen and Graeme Dunstan. Vernon Treweeke also played a part in organising the event. It is often described as Australia’s equivalent to the Woodstock Festival and the birthplace for Australia’s hippie movement.[4] Estimated turn-up at Nimbin was from 5,000 to 10,000 people….”
As it turned out many people wished to change their lives, if anyone here is old enough to remember, and the sleepy town of Nimbin was chosen by some as a place to enact some of these ideas ‘Alternative’ ideas and ways of living. So many purchased land, or just squatted.
I think it is something to considder on a smaller scale. Getting a few other local ‘growers’, and people you know but maybe already know you wont cohabit with, but share the dream of finding those that will, could get a festival together, or a series of focus weekends for different aspects of living ‘that way’?
Something to considder. Good hunting, as the old saying goes. (But you might find you are defined by TPTB these days as ‘enemy combatants’ or even ‘terrorists’…. it really would’nt surprise me in the least.)
Lastly, I think it is worth noting that when some considder an idea of living in or creating an IC, there is in the background the sense of a group with some shared feelings, and that feeling life of a group is usually mediated in the modern world by financial participation.
Generally music links people, and nowadays, what with the plethora of recorded music, and myriad i-devices to replay them, ‘live’ music communicates community feeling the best IMO.
Getting that sense of feeling on the same page, and supported, and contributing to others, a group, is a strong subconscious desire that Big Advertising uses in almost every teenage cola commercial, because it is what is missing in this culture!!!!
It was the first thing that went by-by when local communities were obliterated by aggricultural machinocide forced many to the cities and dislocated them from their rural roots.
So those ideas just stated I just float out there to considder. Music can communicate community feeling.
Also I will just add this. It seems obvious, but those hunter gatherers we idealise, and perhaps romanticise, to some degree, they grew up from birth with all their kin. That is where the feeling comes from.
Creating that, or something like it from relatively bruised and wobbly parts… people who emerge stunned from the raveges of Industrial-Empire-Shock, will not be easy. Shared evnets, and moments in time and place can create temporary bonds of community, but it will be one’s commitment to relate to others, on a daily basis that will stand the test of time with all that.
Guy can probably add his 2cents on that topic ….
January 29th, 2013 at 11:04 pm
We, of course, are so convinced that we are the central players in a cosmic drama
As long as “I” am “I” and “we” are “we”, I/we are insignificant
Madman – isn’t it interesting how often people with huge egos are so blind to the fact that they have them?
O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An’ foolish notion:
What airs in dress an’ gait wad lea’e us,
An’ ev’n devotion!
- Robert Burns
Maybe after we are gone, they, or phytoplankton will evolve into beings that don’t eat each other.
The corpses of micro/organisms will pile up mighty fast and the stuff of which more of their bodies might be made will deplete with equal precipitancy. Disavowing death and thereby truncating the concept of life is an American forte.
January 29th, 2013 at 11:23 pm
I wonder what ooze will be generated in geoplogical time in the rocks by all the human biomass just about to be culled, and the vegetation dead from all the SHTF? It wont be ‘crude oil’, as we now know it today.
It may be some fatty residue, no good for anything and have a really low EROEI. The future Earth scanners will find it trapped between the Anthropocien-plastic-rock layers, and the wasted-broken-after-singel-use-consumer-goods conglomerate layers.
I lol’ed when this though just came to me. Ha Ha.
(Caviet: of course I do not wish these deaths, and have strong feelings of both compassion, and indignation, that this time will have a likely NTE scenario, not to mention all the other lifeforms – just sharing a wierd funny moment/thought… OK?)
January 29th, 2013 at 11:41 pm
islandraider, China, India and the other developing economies are dead set on becoming like the US of A in the 1960s, 80s and 90s. Their populations want cars, big screen televisions and all of the other gadgets and existential dildos that we have been gorging on since the end of WWII. When it comes to global warming, the Chinese say, “go long,” which means that they don’t give an egg roll about the biosphere. In fact, the Chinese are getting ready to be the last man standing when the global economy goes belly up. They are stockpiling everything from rice to copper:
http://www.infowars.com/no-obvious-reason-for-why-china-is-massively-boosting-stockpiles-of-rice-iron-ore-precious-metals-dry-milk/
In Beijing, the subway system has been hardened to withstand a nuclear strike:
A U.S. official said the disclosure of the subway’s capabilities to withstand attack is unusual since it highlights Beijing’s strategic nuclear modernization program, something normally kept secret from state-controlled media. The strategic nuclear buildup includes the expansion of offensive nuclear forces, missile defenses, and anti-satellite arms.
China is building new long-range mobile missiles, including the DF-41, and plans to deploy up to eight new ballistic missile submarines. Reports from Asia indicate the Chinese military is also planning to build new long-range strategic nuclear bombers.
Russia too is expanding its nuclear forces with new submarines and missiles. Moscow announced last year that it is also constructing some 5,000 underground bomb shelters in Russia’s capital in anticipation of a possible future nuclear conflict.
http://freebeacon.com/war-preparation-indicator/
It looks like the major players are preparing to duke it out for the last drop of oil; they intend to keep the lights on and the party going no matter what! CO2? Methane? “Fuck it,” they say. If there’s money to be made in killing the planet, so be it. Money, money, money, money. That’s all they see.
As many have commented on this blog before, what else could one expect from the demonic chimps who have been killing each other for 200 thousand years? Other than the mushy headed New Agers who are waiting for a magical accession of monkey consciousness, it’s pretty clear to the anthropological realists that the psycho-organic units we call humans are too screwed up to survive industrial civilization. We’re going to bomb and rape each other until there’s nothing left. So enjoy the ride.
January 30th, 2013 at 12:22 am
And you don’t buy the lie,
It loosens the social glue.
Social controls. Society is controlled through enforcement by the threat of coercive violence commanded by a vertical hierarchy. Community coherence – glue – is the network of voluntary horizontal interactions. Even knowledge, experience and skill sets in community are incorporated into the voluntary non-coercive, non-violent networks.
They maintain that all phenomena have some explicable empirical cause, that can be clarified by careful investigation. I think probably Lidia, Gail, Kathy C. represent that view.
Indeed. And a valid stance. Can anyone prove (other than to oneself) that the person is not a meat-robot? Acting, reacting and emoting in accordance with the wetware and its programming?
I think that what matters is to learn basic meditation,
For those of an appropriate attitude, aptitude, temperament and character. That would be those who have mastered the prerequisites of the Aryan Eightfold Path. The components are prioritised according to their importance and meditation is the last of them. For the sincere perseverant, each of the others is a path reaching all the way to the destination.
if the research had time to be done before everything collapses, eventually, science would find the explanation.
Again, indeed. No way to remove the label of “meat-robot”.
January 30th, 2013 at 12:44 am
i know. yep, our world’s fucking insane.
Not insane, its the reptilian brain. Intellect is in the driver’s seat, but does not realise that it’s the chauffeur: the reptilian brain is non-rational, non-verbal, and below the level of conscious perception. So the chauffeur thinks it is alone in the car.
January 30th, 2013 at 12:54 am
BTW, a cool concept…’Extreme Learning’, defined by the fast speed of uptake involved, and the necessity of only being exposed once to get it, IMO
Known in the army as /Special High Intensity Training.
January 30th, 2013 at 2:09 am
@ Smitty
I think I love you…Because of this:
Hahaha. Thank you, Smitty. Sweet pearls of wisdom found in the most bitter and desolate places, I am so very glad that someone appreciates the value.
January 30th, 2013 at 2:35 am
@ patrick k o’leary
Thanks for that link ulvfugl, I was perusing that a few days ago and thought I should post it here, but subsequently got distracted. I agree that many responses seem out of touch, however they also highlight the many different wrinkles that are contributing to the whole damn mess.
Something for everyone, I suppose, in that selection. What they call the ‘intelligentsia’. The intellectual elite. I skimmed down the list. There’s some I despise, so they were easy to skip, some I know very well, so they were easy to skip…. mostly very smart people living in bubbles, who hardly ever touch on the topics of the biosphere, biodiversity, American imperialist wars and competition with China and Russia, the global financial system, overpopulation, social justice, etc, etc, etc.
I have to add, there was none that I read where I went ‘Wow, that’s brilliant, original, an amazing new insight, someone who really gets it, now I feel uplifted and optimistic’
Yes, all those old people with all kinds of disabilities who cannot care for themselves and cost a fortune to keep alive….
I expect, as in Greece now, and the collapse of the USSR, and similar situations, many get thrown into the streets to fend for themselves for a few days, weeks, months before they perish.
For convenience here is the link again, Susan Blackmore, Gavin Schmidt, Sir Martin Rees, many other familiar names.
http://edge.org/responses/what-should-we-be-worried-about
January 30th, 2013 at 3:03 am
@ Robin D.
Me : They maintain that all phenomena have some explicable empirical cause, that can be clarified by careful investigation. I think probably Lidia, Gail, Kathy C. represent that view.
R D : Indeed. And a valid stance. Can anyone prove (other than to oneself) that the person is not a meat-robot? Acting, reacting and emoting in accordance with the wetware and its programming?
I don’t agree with your position at all. I think ot only arises because the philosophical base of science is totally fucked up. Scientists don’t even realise that there is a philosophical base, because they are never told or taught. It’s all just assumed and taken for granted. All your meat robot shit is no different to aliens treating us as lab rats. There should be no need. Human dignity and sentience should be assumed, a priori. Blame fucking Descartes, the vivisector, for depriving us of our souls and making us, conceptually, into meat puppets.
Me : I think that what matters is to learn basic meditation,
R D : For those of an appropriate attitude, aptitude, temperament and character. That would be those who have mastered the prerequisites of the Aryan Eightfold Path. The components are prioritised according to their importance and meditation is the last of them. For the sincere perseverant, each of the others is a path reaching all the way to the destination.
I could quibble about that. If there was time and luxury for an orderly approach under ideal circumstances, perhaps so.
But considering what happens when soceity collapses as exemplified by the ghastliness ( i forget who posted the link ? thanks )
I mean, people need identity, community, to be valued by neighbours, some sort of social structure, all kinds of basic stuff… as it is, when that goes, and their bodies are full of pollutants, and their food is full of toxins and they have insane tv as the centre of their world, and they are used and abused and exploited by a system that sees them as trash, surplus to requirements…
where to begin ? basic meditation ?
http://dissidentvoice.org/2013/01/national-nervous-breakdown/
Me : if the research had time to be done before everything collapses, eventually, science would find the explanation.
Again, indeed. No way to remove the label of “meat-robot”.
I can’t foresee what would be discovered. I feel quite sorry for you, that you have such a sterile and horrible view of yourself and human beings as to see them in such a way. Descartes, B.F. Skinner, Kurzweil, and you’ve lost your humanity, and you seem quite happy with that, which appalls me.
January 30th, 2013 at 4:04 am
TvT – thanks for your comment about our weather – we won’t get hit as hard as the rest of the state, but some of the nasty stuff may hit us later today.
We will go from a high of 71 yesterday to a high of 48 Friday. Been like that all winter… How is it up your way?
January 30th, 2013 at 4:23 am
Not much of a J. Robb fan anymore, I hate all the drone crap and technophilia, but maybe this local community mapping has something going for it, re intentional communities.
http://www.resilientcommunities.com/how-open-online-tools-can-help-us-build-resilient-communities/
January 30th, 2013 at 4:36 am
Madman:
Your thirty years were not entirely wasted. You have a measure of discernment showing much insight into the character of others. Sufficient to fulminate at their conceit but not to the degree where such reactions become unnecessary. Perhaps it was there prior to your “sadhana” (you will recognise the term from your immersion in that milieu). But in that milieu a balanced approach was necessary. You can see how far off the track one can go with an unbalanced approach.
With regard to meat robots, one has yet to see how their responses demonstrate that they are not automatons without awareness acting in accordance with their wetware and its programming – aberrant programming in some cases. But the discernment between the perceived world and the perceiving is yet another matter, and will remain lost to some.
January 30th, 2013 at 4:44 am
The Greatest Speech by a Western Statesman This Century?
32 year old Belgiam MP Laurent Louis’s speech/video in the Belgian Parliament has been widely passed around but has not been seen by the tens of millions that need to hear these truths.
This courageous man makes the stooges and weasels in our Congress look to be exactly what they are…traitors.
January 30th, 2013 at 5:03 am
@ Robin D.
What ‘conceit’ ? What ‘unbalanced approach’ ? I take exception to your oblique passive aggression.
As for your pompous verbiage, ‘wetware’ and ‘aberrant programming’, it’s an obscenity, it shows you understand nothing as to true divinity, the sanctity of life. It reduces the giggling child, the tenderness of love, the grief of bereavement, the joy of experience, the awe, magic and mystery of everything, to a machinery. That appalls me, I find it deeply, deeply offensive.
You claim wisdom for yourself and often preach to us, but if your path means de-grading and de-humanising humans, and by extension, all other living creatures, then it is worthless and retrograde.
Yes, I think you are indeed a meat robot. You have no heart, no soul, you have lost something most precious, otherwise you would not talk in such ugly terms.
January 30th, 2013 at 5:15 am
U: from the “what we should worry about” link, i thought this was pretty good
Bart Kosko
Information Scientist and Professor of Electrical Engineering and Law, the University of Southern California; Author, Noise
Lamplight Probabilities
We should worry that so much of our science and technology still uses just five main models of probability—even though there are more probability models than there are real numbers.
I call these lamplight probabilities. The adjective refers to the old joke about the drunk who keeps walking around a lamplight one night. A policeman sees the drunk and asks him what he is doing. He says that he is looking for his keys that he lost. The policeman asks him where he lost the keys. The drunk points off into the dark. The policeman then asks him why he keeps looking for the keys under the lamplight. The drunk says that he looks for the keys there because that is where the light is.
The five lamplight probabilities do explain a lot of the observed world. They have simple closed-form definitions. So they are easy to teach. Open any book on probability and there they are. We have proven lots of theorems about them. And they generalize to many other simple closed-form probabilities that also seem to explain a lot of the world and that find their way into real-world models that range from finance to communications to nuclear engineering.
But how accurate are they? How well do they match fact rather than just simplify the hard task of picking a good random model of the world?
Their use in practice seldom comes with a statistical hypothesis test that can give some objective measure of how well the assumption of a lamplight probability fits the data at hand. And each model has express technical conditions that the data must satisfy. Yet the data routinely violate these conditions in practice.
Everyone knows the first lamplight probability: the normal bell curve. Indeed most people think that the normal bell curve is the bell curve. But there are whole families of bell curves with thicker tails that explain a wide range of otherwise unlikely “rare” or “black swan” events depending on how thick the tails are. And that is still under the assumption that the bell is regular or symmetric. You just don’t find these bell curves in most textbooks.
There is also a simple test for such thin-tailed “normality” in time-series data such as price histories or sampled human speech: All higher-order cumulants of the process must be zero. A cumulant is a special average of the process. Looking at the higher-order cumulants of an alleged normal process routinely leads to the same finding: They are not all zero. So the process cannot be normal. Yet under the lamplight we go ahead and assume the process is normal anyway—especially since so many other researchers do the same thing in similar circumstances.
That can lead to severely underestimating the occurrence of rare events such as loan defaults. That is just what happened in the financial engineering models of the recent financial panic when financial engineers found a way to impose the normal curve on complex correlated financial derivatives.
The second and third lamplight probabilities are the Poisson and exponential probability models. Poisson probabilities model random counting events such as the number of hits on an internet site or the number of cars that merge onto a freeway or the number of raindrops that hit a sidewalk. Exponential probabilities model how long it takes for the next Poisson event to happen. So they model how long it takes until the next customer walks through the door or until the next raindrop hits the pavement. This easily generalizes into how long you have to wait for the next ten internet hits or the next ten raindrops. Modern queuing theory rests on these two lamplight probabilities. It is all about waiting times for Poisson arrivals at queues. And so the internet itself rests on these two lamplight models.
But Poisson models have a big Achilles heel: Their averages must equal their variances (spreads about their means). This again routinely fails to hold in practice. Exponential models have a similar problem. Their variances must equal the square of their means. This is a fine relationship that also rarely holds exactly in practice. It holds only to some fuzzy degree in most cases. Whether the approximation is a good enough is a judgment call—and one that the lamplight makes a lot easier to make.
The fourth lamplight probability is the uniform probability model. Everyone also knows the uniform model because it is the special case where all outcomes are equally likely. It is just what the layman thinks of as doing something “at random” such as drawing straws or grabbing a numbered ping-pong ball from a bingo hopper. But straws come in varying lengths and thicknesses and so their draw probabilities may not be exactly equal. It gets harder and harder in practice to produce equally likely outcomes as the number of outcomes increase. It is even a theoretical fact that one cannot draw an integer at random from the set of integers because of the nature of infinity. So it helps to appeal to common practice under the lamplight and simply assume that the outcomes are all equally likely.
The fifth and final lamplight probability is the binomial probability model. It describes the canonical random metaphor of flipping a coin. The binomial model requires binary outcomes such as heads or tails and further requires independent trials or flips. The probability of getting heads must also stay the same from flip to flip. This seems simple enough. But it can be hard to accept that the next flip of a fair coin is just as likely to be heads as it is to be tails when the preceding three independent coin-flip outcomes have all been heads.
Even the initiated can scratch their heads at how the binomial behaves. Consider a fair penny. Fairness here means that the penny is equally likely to come up heads or tails when flipped (and hence the fourth lamplight probability describes this elementary outcome). So the probability of heads is ½. Now flip the penny several times. Then answer this question: Are you more likely to get three heads in six coin flips or are you more likely to get three heads in just five coin flips? The correct answer is neither. The probability of getting three heads in both cases is exactly 5/16. That is hardly intuitive but it comes straight out of counting up all the possible outcomes.
Lamplight probabilities have proven an especially tight restriction on modern Bayesian inference.
That is disappointing given both the explosion in modern Bayesian computing and the widespread view that learning itself is a form of using Bayes theorem to update one’s belief given fresh data or evidence. Bayes theorem shows how to compute the probability of a logical converse. It shows how to adjust the probability of lung cancer given a biopsy if we know what the raw probability of lung cancer is and if we know the probability that we would observe such a biopsy in a patient if the patient in fact has lung cancer.
But almost all Bayesian models restrict these probabilities to not just the well-known lamplight probabilities. They further restrict them so that they satisfy a very restrictive “conjugacy” relationship. The result has put much of modern Bayesian computing into a straightjacket of its own design.
Conjugacy is tempting. Suppose the cancer probability is normal. Suppose also that the conditional probability of the biopsy given the cancer is normal. These two probabilities are conjugate. Then what looks like mathematical magic happens. The desired probability of lung cancer given the biopsy likelihood is itself a normal probability curve. And thus normal conjugates with normal to produce a new normal. That lets us take this new normal model as the current estimate of lung cancer and then repeat the process for a new biopsy.
The computer can grind away on hundreds or thousands of such data-based iterations and the result will always be a normal bell curve. But change either of the two input normal curves and in general the result will not be normal. That gives a perverse incentive to stay within the lamplight and keep assuming a thin-tailed normal curve to describe both the data and what we believe. The same thing happens when one tries to estimate the probability of heads for a biased coin using the binomial and a beta curve that generalizes the uniform. And a similar conjugacy relation holds between Poisson probabilities and exponentials and their generalizations to gamma probabilities. So that gives three basic conjugacy relations.
Most Bayesian applications assume some form of one of these three conjugacy relations—and almost always for ease of computation or to comply with common practice.
That is no way to run a revolution in probabilistic computing.
Great find! Thanks.
tvt: yep, misspelled it – my bad . . . keep up the great commentary.
January 30th, 2013 at 5:19 am
They maintain that all phenomena have some explicable empirical cause, that can be clarified by careful investigation. I think probably Lidia, Gail, Kathy C. represent that view.
Include me in that group.
January 30th, 2013 at 5:27 am
Islandraider, in regards to the smog in China, in many of the pictures, I notice that people are still driving, still participating in the activities which are causing the smog, and we here are still buying crap made there. So, yes, the powers that be are still profiting from our destruction, but are we not just as culpable? We who still buy all the stuff they make which requires steam coal, we who use the internet, etc.?
I know we’ve had a similar discussion before and some like to say it isn’t true, but like it or not, we all share responsibility for what’s happening to our world. Blaming TPTB is just a convenient way of trying to offload our guilt.
January 30th, 2013 at 5:39 am
@ TRDH
Include me in that group.
My most sincere apologies for having omitted you ! And to anyone else I forgot to mention
January 30th, 2013 at 5:40 am
@ Tom
I missed that one. Good find ! Fascinating.
January 30th, 2013 at 5:51 am
Accepting that “all phenomena have some explicable empirical cause” doesn’t preclude finding meaning, joy, mystery and love in life. Those are not the exclusive perogative of believers in spirits. It just means that you do so knowing that those emotions and perceptions are an ephemeral product of our imagination, which is created by our brains. In many ways it makes for a deeper appreciation of the precious gift of the time we are allotted, and an even greater moral imperative to make the most of it, and conduct ourselves towards others wisely and well.
January 30th, 2013 at 6:07 am
For anyone interested:
http://beforeitsnews.com/beyond-science/2013/01/alien-photographed-accidentally-in-texas-2440686.html
Lots of stuff to question and discuss, but this was also on there (dmd, others):
Black Country crop circles prove phenomenon is no hoax, claims Australian expert
“An Aussie historian believes he has buried forever the ‘cereal’ lie that crop circles are the work of hoaxers – by unearthing Black Country images of them dating back to 1945 and beyond.
It’s ‘barley’ believable, but Greg Jefferys has also uncovered evidence of the phenomenon in scientific documents dating back to 1880.
The boffin, from Hobart, Tasmania, says his findings prove there’s more to the mysterious circles than hoaxers playing silly tricks.”
After which is a video of the International Space Station with a UFO in the background (screen captured on live feed)
and, from the same site, more on Sandy Hook (it just won’t go away)
http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2013/01/sandy-hook-the-plot-just-got-a-whole-lot-thicker-must-see-video-2550154.html
January 30th, 2013 at 6:48 am
U They maintain that all phenomena have some explicable empirical cause, that can be clarified by careful investigation. I think probably Lidia, Gail, Kathy C. represent that view.
Dr, H Include me in that group.
What fine company I keep. I am honored to be lumped into such company. For once U has given a compliment.
U “I am a zen buddhist.” I used to admire some Buddhists. How can one ever forget the Buddhist monk who immolated themselves in Vietnam for the cause they believed in http://www.worldsfamousphotos.com/2007/04/27/burning-monk-the-self-immolation-1963/ Surely his practice allowed him to destroy his body without fear and in perfect calm. You on the other hand are conceited, quick to criticize, spending hours on the internet just finding things to pick at. If you are an example of what Zen Buddhism produces, it is an evil practice, one that should be avoided.
January 30th, 2013 at 6:57 am
@ Gail
Accepting that “all phenomena have some explicable empirical cause” doesn’t preclude finding meaning, joy, mystery and love in life.
I have never said that it does. The first division I pointed to, is the one ( re Kathy C.’s comment ) between logos stories ( science, Darwin’s theory, etc. ) and mythos stories ( fairy tales, Romeo and Juliet, etc. ).
That’s a different division to the the later one in the thread, between folk who believe that – what shall we call them ? non-physical agencies ? – can produce physical effects ( madonna statues can weep tears, demons leave scratch marks, aliens mutilate cattle and make crop circles, etc, ) and folk who deny that possibility and insist that all phenomena can be explained, in principle, by empirical causes.
All these people can, of course, find joy and love of life and so on, regardless of their philosophical position. However, how one sees one’s self and others, and the world, is socially and culturally conditioned. Essentially, we are taught what we are, and how to be, by our families, schools, peers, wider soceity, etc.
That’s why I find Robin’s ‘meat robot’ thing so obnoxious. It’s reminiscent of what the Nazi’s did to the Jews, and others, prior to WW2, portraying them as sub-human, and therefore appropriate objects for maltreatment. It’s routinely done re farm animals.
Robin’s ‘philosophy’, if that’s what it can be called, turns people into ‘things’. Just as capitalism, neo-classical economics, turns people into consumers, just as it turns your beloved trees, and everything else on the planet, into ‘resources’.
The language matters. Otherwise there is no difference between a 12thC cathedral and a car park, or an old growth virgin forest and a toxic waste dump. It’s all ‘just stuff’. To materialist science, it IS all ‘just stuff’. Join materialist science, to militaristic corporatist fascism, to capitalist neoliberal economics, etc, etc, and we have the result we have, an accelerating race to NTE…
Those are not the exclusive perogative of believers in spirits.
I would make a distinction between ‘believers in’ and ‘experiencers of’.
It just means that you do so knowing that those emotions and perceptions are an ephemeral product of our imagination,
I think that ‘imagination’ is the wrong word. I see that word as the ability to conjure up internal mental imagery, imagine possibilities, and so forth. Emotions are not ‘imagined’. Fear, love, anger, etc, are not imaginary, they are very real, strong passions.
..which is created by our brains. In many ways it makes for a deeper appreciation of the precious gift of the time we are allotted, and an even greater moral imperative to make the most of it, and conduct ourselves towards others wisely and well.
Please understand, I’m not saying your position is ‘wrong’, it’s a perfectly respectable position to hold, shared by many decent, honourable people. What I’ve been trying to explain is that there are other equally valid points of view that should be heard and considered.
January 30th, 2013 at 7:01 am
@ Kathy C.
You on the other hand are conceited, quick to criticize, spending hours on the internet just finding things to pick at. If you are an example of what Zen Buddhism produces, it is an evil practice, one that should be avoided.
Hahaha. Coming from you, I take that as a compliment. Thanks.
January 30th, 2013 at 7:07 am
@ Kathy C.
Perhaps you’d like to spread your admiration around and devote some to the many, many other people who have burned themselves to death over recent years to protest injustice, who have not been any sort of buddhist, and perhaps include the many Tibetan buddhists who have immolated themselves, whom you despise so much ?
January 30th, 2013 at 7:07 am
I agree, Real Dr House – this new video from Greenpeace explains how companies in the US are planning to export massive amounts of coal. Of course, the emissions just float right back over the Pacific Ocean – not as much the particulates that make the air murky, but the CO2 and ozone precursors. So not only are we buying the stuff that is manufactured in Asia, we’re subsidizing the shipment of coal! (So is Australia.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Txf5_vYJuzw&feature=em-uploademail
January 30th, 2013 at 7:38 am
I’ve written and posted a new essay. It’s here.
January 30th, 2013 at 7:51 am
BenjaminTheDonkey says: Maybe if the verses get good enough, they’ll break through.
Talk about self-delusion! Bigger and better projects are routinely ignored, nobody cares, and when they do, it’ll be too late. D’oh!
the virgin terry says: at least u get a little love here.
That’s why I do it. Thank you all so very much.
January 30th, 2013 at 9:43 am
btd, i think if u want a touch of fame, u ought to find a musical collaborator who will set your stuff to music, someone with a good deal of talent. but of course, it isn’t the most important thing in the world, and as we know all to well, nothing lasts forever, and given our peculiar circumstances now, such fame will vanish even more quickly, as shit hits fan.
kathy, as u know we’re not too different in longitude, so the weather systems that affect u affect me, but differently, about the same time. last week we were in the deep freeze here. bitter cold, 4 or 5 days in a row with morning lows below 0 fahrenheit (gaia, how i wish the usa wasn’t so fucking backward and ‘exceptional’ in it’s insistence on adhering to antiquated standards of measurement that almost all of the rest of the world no longer uses… wouldn’t have to specify which scale is being used!). past couple of days has been a dramatic warm up, expecting to top of early this afternoon in the low 60′s, before heavy rains come and frigid air re-asserts itself. it’s expected that many record high temperature marks will be set in my area today. instead of very severe weather like u get down south, all we have to contend with is a bit of harmless wind and substantial rain, which in combo with snow melt has created flood threat. not too big of a deal. routine, happens a few times every winter, every year, of course.
January 30th, 2013 at 1:52 pm
The REAL Dr. House
Although this tread is ending perhaps, I can’t leave this comment un-answered, even though it was addressed to another.
Your comment about pollution in China:
“… in regards to the smog in China, in many of the pictures, I notice that people are still driving, still participating in the activities which are causing the smog, and we here are still buying crap made there. So, yes, the powers that be are still profiting from our destruction, but are we not just as culpable? …”
I will emphasise here that even in China, a large organised industrial economy, the systems which people live by are organisd for efficiecy, and not for ‘durability’, or the sus word, ‘sustainability’.
So people, more and more, choose convenience, because it takes more energy, organisation and time to procure individual and family needs(notice ‘needs’, not ‘wants’, but ‘wants’ factor into the big picture in capitalist cultures because of the massaging of desire…etc), in the older ways, or in organic ways, like backyard gardening.
If you have to get to a job on the other side of your city, to fullfil the fluidity of the labourmarket that drives modern commerce, AND your lever pullers do not provide regular efficient public transport, you may choose to by and use a toxic automobile, for convenience(?), that is moot.
Suburbia, as Guyand others have pointed out, is designed to need F/Fuel cars to get anything.
Of course you could walk, and some do, or bicycle, (yes China was once the bicycle hub of the world), but generally it is counterproductive to expend so much time and energy on daily transporting to and from employment, that people ‘choose’ F/Fuuel methods.
The ‘choice’ is clearly available to do all the power down, and renewable, and low carbon options, but the systemic infrastructure is ‘engineered’ to disuade many from those ‘better’ options, into consumption patterns to satisfy needs, and muddy the waters on desiring the wants, which can feel like needs.
The planet, and all life forms pay for our convenence.
But IMO your question is pertinent, and, yes, we are still responsible, but also since we as humans grow in a slow fashion to adulthood, we live for many years in out world before we get to be fully responsible, and thus we learn by crossover with other generations how to do things, and in this case by imitation, whch has consequences as we all can see.
January 30th, 2013 at 5:19 pm
Hey ulvfugi,
Stop the attacks on “Kathy C”. If you don’t have anything nice to say, than shut the pie hole. I am really tired of your control and bullying.