by Emily Stewart
For most of us, it’s hard to imagine a world and a life without toilet paper. But actually, less than a third of the global population uses toilet paper daily. And as it turns out, foregoing the T.P. might just be the best thing for our bodies and our planet.
Most of us assume that toilet paper protects us from dangerous bacteria and disease, but studies show that alternatives, like bidets, are actually safer and more effective. The chemicals found in a standard issue toilet roll will surprise you. Toilet paper fibers contain the much-hated chemical BPA, a xenoestrogen that the FDA has indicated is linked to increasing the risks of cancer, heart disease and infertility.
Of course, the primary problem with our toilet paper addiction is that we go through an enormous amount of it. Everyday, 27,000 trees go down the toilet as waste paper. And we consume thousands of gallons of excess water to flush the wad of paper through our sewer systems. If we each swapped just four rolls of traditional paper for recycled paper this year, we would save one million trees and 356 million gallons of fresh water.
To learn more about the impact of our $30 billion T.P. habit, check out this latest video from the Hidden Costs series.
January 19th, 2013 at 8:02 pm
The video link does not work (in my location?)
Here is one from U-tube that did.
‘Hidden Costs Series: Toilet Paper’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmmxgMCVZqs
Wipe on…
January 19th, 2013 at 8:13 pm
Given the present subject of what we wipe from our arses, and what was written by Madmanintheattic on the previous thread:
“By defdinition Adi Da Doo Dah Day is a fraud as are all the rest of them.”…
this little brief except is probably helpful in clarifying some issues about who or what to trust.
Trust. Intuition and Feeling are the conduits to Trust in the subjective experience of sppiritual life.
‘Adi Da Samraj: Trust’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwsRy8vhcl0
Could it be more clear?
January 19th, 2013 at 8:42 pm
In antediluvian times I posted this link to NBL comments (Kathy C might remember):
Lota (vessel)
For other uses, see Lota (disambiguation).
Lota (Urdu: لوٹا), (Hindi: लोटा) a small, usually spherical water vessel of brass, copper or plastic used in parts of South Asia.[1] The name is from Urdu and Hindi.
A Lota is commonly used to store or transfer small amounts of liquids like water, particularly for cleaning and ritual purification.
January 19th, 2013 at 8:53 pm
One man’s meat is another man’s poison. One man’s guru may be another man’s impostor.
Kafir
Kafir (Arabic: كافر kāfir, plural كفّار kuffār) is an Arabic term used in a Islamic doctrinal sense, usually translated as “unbeliever,” “disbeliever,” or “infidel.” The term refers to a person who rejects God or who hides, denies, or covers the “truth.”
January 19th, 2013 at 9:32 pm
Very interesting little video. Robin’s Lota notwithstanding, I wonder how much money, energy, and resources it would take to outfit almost 100,000,000 U.S. homes with bidets in every bathroom? Perhaps there’s a better way?
In our home, we still use toilet paper, but we have given up paper towels and paper napkins. We haven’t used them in more than 2 years and we don’t miss them at all. We probably do just a tab bit more laundry, but it wouldn’t add up to more than a few extra loads a year.
January 19th, 2013 at 9:44 pm
Since we are on the topic of rear ends, how about the SHTF in the USA:
‘Barack Obama’s baleful continuity with Bush era fetters on American liberties’
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/03/barack-obama-bush-era-american-liberties
A small piece:
“Unnoticed amid the fiscal cliff histrionics, the president signed into law further powers for the state to surveil and detain citizens…
Largely ignored by the media, these laws further entrench odious policies like indefinite detention, warrantless wiretapping and the continued operation of the US gulag in Guantánamo. The deal to avert the fiscal cliff itself increases the likelihood that President Obama may yet scuttle an unprecedented cut in the Pentagon’s bloated budget. It’s not such a happy new year, after all.
On Sunday 30 December, the White House press secretary’s office issued a terse release stating:
“The president signed into law HR 5949, the ‘Fisa Amendments Act Reauthorization Act of 2012′, which provides a five-year extension of Title VII of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.”
With that, the government’s controversial surveillance powers were renewed until the end of 2017. The American Civil Liberties Union called it the “heartbreak of another Senate vote in favor of dragnet collection of Americans’ communications”….
“With the renewal of the NDAA for 2013, with the indefinite detention provisions intact, ( Chris )Hedges told me:
“The appellate court is all that separates us and a state that is no different than any other military dictatorship.”"
And here is more grist for the rear end of the USA mill.
‘The coming drone attack on America’
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/21/coming-drone-attack-america
By Naomi Wolf:Friday 21 December 2012
A few quotes:
“People often ask me, in terms of my argument about “ten steps” that mark the descent to a police state or closed society, at what stage we are. I am sorry to say that with the importation of what will be tens of thousands of drones, by both US military and by commercial interests, into US airspace, with a specific mandate to engage in surveillance and with the capacity for weaponization – which is due to begin in earnest at the start of the new year – it means that the police state is now officially here.”
The hidden cost of : Democracy after Peak Oil.
Wipe away…
January 19th, 2013 at 9:45 pm
Robin Datta
What was the ‘Lota’ reference in relation to…?
January 19th, 2013 at 9:49 pm
The REAL Dr. House
Oh that Lota? Now I get it, Thanx TRDH.
January 19th, 2013 at 10:06 pm
Look, this Hidden Cost series is gotta be pretty useful, but only if it goes far enough IMO.
Many here see the hidden cost of much of the mdern world industrial economy as destruction of the biosphere; from cutting trees, now called deforrestation, to habitat ‘loss’ for species, and now US, to ocaen pollution, see the previous thread’s link on a deformed dolphin, (for fuck sake, that would be all those Soviet class nuclear subs off the Baltic Shelf, with some Chernobyl, and Fukushima which is still leaking into the Japanese ocean environment, and perhaps some Pacific Ocean nuclear testing thrown in at the beginning) to species eradication, to air pollution, ocean acidification, sea level rise, glacial shrinking(leading to freshwater loss to an entire subcontinental ecosystem in central Asia), loss of bes and polar bear deformities and hermaphridism on the rise.
You name it in the biosphere, we are wiping our arses with it!
These ‘costs’ are not so hidden now as they once were.
The hidden cost of Incarnation: Death.(That is one for Kathy C)
Like the Buddhists of an earlier time, once that is seen and fully understood, you begin to look way way deeper into this mortality thing, and IMO it is hardly surprising people with types of ‘mental illnesses’ often see the burning fires of Hell here, surrounding people and places, on Earth above ground.
Seems we are manifesting it in this situation now anyway.
January 19th, 2013 at 10:16 pm
If every American used swapped just 4 rolls of traditional toilet paper for recycled, we’d save 1 million trees/year and save 356 million gallons of fresh water.
http://www.insurancequotes.org/hidden-cost-toilet-paper
If trees and fresh water were rare,
The world would seem barren and bare;
Although, then again,
No one will care when
There’s nobody left to care.
January 19th, 2013 at 11:11 pm
Use the Asian bum gun (google it if you don’t know what it is) and perhaps a sheet of bog roll to mop up the water (or leave everything to air dry if that’s what you prefer). Far more civilized than the revolting Western habit of smearing shit all over the place.
January 20th, 2013 at 3:36 am
In India, we never use toilet water, we use water. Water is the best cleanser, given by nature. Using toilet paper is stupidity at best.
January 20th, 2013 at 3:39 am
people who are advising others to use recycled paper, i would first request them to understand the high costs of recycling. do a google and find out how much costly moneywise and environment wise recycling paper is. why cant you people use water to cleanse ?
January 20th, 2013 at 3:40 am
Yes Robin, I remember our Lota discussion. Cloth works fine too. For the arse end, leaves of the Lambs Ear plant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stachys_byzantina work fine and are softer than any TP. In our region it is perennial. And with a humanure toilet, is an addition to the organic matter to be composted. It is a grand attractor for bees as well.
Cloth for menstrual periods has the same benefit of keeping chemicals away from the bottom AND can be washed out to use as fertilizer. Once upon a time the monthly period was called “being on the rag” because that was literally true.
And cloth diapers of course. Not only do paper diapers put chemicals next to infant butts and waste resources, but they also are a threat to public health. Public health made a big push to get all human fecal matter into treatment plants and out of ditches etc. You can be sure that most parents now just wrap up all the poo instead of trying to put some in the toilet and send the whole package on to the dump. I have seen baby diapers in the trash cans in public parks. People get horrified about humanure, where care is taken to process human waste, and ignore all the baby poop that enters the untreated trash stream rather than the sewage stream.
January 20th, 2013 at 3:45 am
Dan, the bum gun requires pressurized water – not a very good solution when the lights go out. Here is the low tech wash – a simple little thing often given to mothers after birth – the peri bottle. http://www.amazon.com/Lavette-Bottle-Perineal-Irrigation-DYND70125H/dp/B000VSXSX2
While they won’t be making any after the lights go out, mine is 40 years old and still good. I can date it by the age of my child
January 20th, 2013 at 4:29 am
I wonder if the last tree on Easter Island was used to make toilet paper?
Answering one comment above, a bidet installed in any bathroom would cost, maybe $500 if you used a union plumber. Maybe $2,000 if you had to do drywall and plumbing to redirect the piping.
At one roll per day for a family of 4, and at $0.30 per roll, payback is between 4 and 16 years. A do-it-yourself could be half that. And in 5 years, when that paper is double the cost, then the payback is half the time. Especially when you are unemployed and $5 is a big deal.
But, when T.P. is NOT available, then how valuable would the bidet be?
January 20th, 2013 at 5:49 am
Hey Kathy: speaking of “when the lights go out” – it looks like it’s already started.
http://www.doomsteaddiner.org/blog/2012/11/11/olduvai-revisited/
(conclusion)
Despite the fact Ringfenced Economies like the FSofA, China and Germany may keep their Lights On longer than peripheral economies like Greece, Argentina and Brazil, the Knock-On effects of decreasing Electric availability in the “Developing” Nations impact the GDP of all of these “productive” countries. What they Produce in the main are many Toys that require Electricity to function, and you can’t sell more of thsoe Toys to people who don’t have electricity functioning in their homes and workplaces. Whether you produce large HVAC systems to sell to Bizness and Real Estate Developers or sell Iphones and LCD Big Screen TVs to Konsumers, the market for both is shrinking. The debt you took on to build the Factories to make these products on the assumption you could sell them to an ever increasing population of people who could afford to buy them is rapidly becoming unserviceable debt. As the sales of these toys drop, the Tax Revenue drops for these countries, and they also will no longer be able to service their debts either.
Ever decreasing numbers of available Jobs in all these economies leads to more Unemployment,followed by more Political Instability. Eventually, as is the case already in Spain and Greece, NO Political or Economic compromise can work, in real terms the Energy required to run the systems is not there for everyone to waste. For one groupof people to maintain access, another group has to be triaged off.
On the grand scale, eventually all the Big Power Plants serving large areas will go offline,and for a while the Uber Rich will keep Lights On in Walled Enclaves with some local power generation methods,but this too will fail in the long run, ot the least of the reasons being said walled communities will be Invaded by Hordes of Lights OFF people smashing all their Light Bulbs.
How LONG will this all take until it is LIGHTS OUT everywhere? Well, Richard Duncan’s curve has a pretty steep slope to it, so somewhere between 2030 and 2050 seems like a good bet to make on this one.
In the meantime for the Individual, reducing your dependence on steady electric power is a good idea. There is likely to be a fairly protracted period of “brownouts” before it is Lights Off for GOOD. Some Battery Backups utilizing Automotive Lead Acid Batteries and AC Power Inverters is pretty reasonable to invest in for a few hundred dollars. Add in a couple of Solar PV panels and RV Wind Turbines, for a bit more you can probably keep your Laptop running while the grid is down.
Longer term, begin to come to grips with the fact Lights at the Flick of a Switch and Refrigerators keeping Marie Callendar Frozen Meals is not likely to last much longer, and keep more Dried and Canned Foods around then Refigerated ones. You won’t lose as much when the power goes down for a week or two. For those of us in the 1st world, we may keep the lights on another 20 years, and I am not likely to last longer than that, if that. For those of you younger folks in better health with expectations to live past this period, put on your Rewilding Thinking Cap now. You’re gonna need it.
January 20th, 2013 at 7:45 am
Sorry folks, but this is more interesting than toilet paper or bum guns:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1hM8mcoF-g
January 20th, 2013 at 7:57 am
Makati1: Answering one comment above, a bidet installed in any bathroom would cost, maybe $500 if you used a union plumber. Maybe $2,000 if you had to do drywall and plumbing to redirect the piping.
My comment wasn’t referring to the cost of installation or even the purchase of the bidet – after all, they’re already on the shelf at Home Depot, right? (Isn’t toilet paper already on the shelf, too?) But following in the vein of the video, what are the “hidden” costs of installing a bidet?
The bidet is made in a factory – what are the costs of building that factory? The materials from which the bidet is made also have to be produced and/or mined. What is the cost of that process both financially and to the environment? How much energy is consumed? What about the large diesel equipment that allows humans to dig so deep in the earth for minerals and other raw goods, what is the ecological cost of operating and building that equipment? Many of these same questions could also be applied to the production of toilet paper.
My point is that we humans have been quite adept, particularly since the dawn of the industrial age, at ignoring the cost and consequences of our actions. Often, if we can’t see it, then it doesn’t seem to exist – at least in our minds. The video points out the costs of one solution, suggesting a different solution that has hidden costs which are similar to or even greater than the original solution.
I’m not advocating toilet paper use, we already have substituted a wash cloth for “moist toilet wipes” and now I think I’ll investigate Kathy C’s suggestion of lamb’s ear. I’m just suggesting that when it comes to reducing our impact on the environment, unless it’s something we can grow or produce ourselves using resources right where we are, then a solution to a problem, probably isn’t really much of a solution.
January 20th, 2013 at 8:39 am
Stocked T.P. fills my latrine,
And I’m used to a toilet routine;
Per Jevons paradox,
While I still have those stocks,
I’m wiping my butthole clean.
January 20th, 2013 at 8:56 am
Be careful which leaf you choose to wipe with.
January 20th, 2013 at 9:25 am
It’s back to the stone age again,
With hygiene much like way back when;
I can deal with no paper
Or suitable scraper,
But once there’s no water—what then?
January 20th, 2013 at 9:33 am
“Try the fish.”
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201301190042
Record radioactive cesium levels found in Fukushima
January 19, 2013
THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
“A rockfish caught in the port of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant was found to have radioactive cesium 2,540 times the government’s safety standard for foodstuffs, Tokyo Electric Power Co., the plant operator, said Jan. 18.
Caught in December, the rockfish had a reading of 254,000 becquerels per kilogram, the largest reading found in seafood since the nuclear disaster of March 2011.
The rockfish was caught near an unloading point north of the No. 1 through No. 4 reactors. No fishermen operate in the nuclear plant’s port.
The previous record was 25,800 becquerels of cesium per kilogram found in two greenlings caught about 20 kilometers north of the plant in August 2012.”
January 20th, 2013 at 9:36 am
Dr. House, there are some lower-impact ways to get a bidet experience: there are sitz baths and then there are some nozzles that you can hook up to a regular toilet that don’t seem to use much in the way of materials—far less than TP, anyway.
Is eliminating TP going to be enough? No, nothing at this stage will ever be enough, not even using leaves and corncobs. You could apply the logic you are using to every aspect of our lives and sensibly conclude that the most ethical thing for all of us to do would be to kill ourselves immediately. Perhaps you could write us some prescriptions, although wouldn’t those pills need to be manufactured in a factory, sealed in packaging, shipped on a truck, etc.?? Perhaps you can give us an herbal recipe we can brew—sustainably—from plants in our backyard…!!
If people had rejected toilet paper and, by extension, other superfluous consumer items en masse back in the 1940s, maybe we would be in a different place today, but we aren’t. And the fact that we are here at Guy’s joint means we are all using computers and electricity, most of us from traditionally-built Western-style houses with running water and fuel burners and all the sunk costs those systems bring with them.
I think it is easy to come to the conclusion that the correct amount of energy use/toilet paper use is, if not the amount we ourselves are using right now, the level that we imagine to be using in the near future (once we insulate our houses and put up the PV panels or buy a bidet or build a yurt). But we know, too, that the real “correct” amount of fossil energy use is zero, just as we also know that we will never bring our personal fossil fuel consumption to zero as long as we are alive.
The medical industry is a HUGE generator of waste, btw. I won’t even get into the zero-tolerance notions (no doubt promoted by for-profit medical suppliers) that have made disposable needles, scalpels, speculums and so forth the order of the day. I will say that in Italy, where I lived for a number of years, they don’t use all the disposable drapes and johnnies—from what I have seen they have stuck with cloth. While they do now use massive amounts of bottled water, pallets upon pallets of which they distribute in the wards, patients are told to bring silverware and cups and glasses from home, and the patients themselves (or their relatives) wash these items after each meal at sinks located in the center hall of the ward. Not so long ago, patients’ families needed to bring the sheets for their loved one’s bed, and were responsible for laundering the bedding. There’s a lot of drug-company abuse: causing paranoia over expiration dates (my husband’s family was all convinced that if they took an aspirin that was a week out of date, they would be poisoned) and playing very nasty tricks with packaging. If a course of medicine was usually two weeks, rest assured that it would be packaged in boxes of 10 pills each. Pharmacies in Italy only distribute sealed confections of blister-packed pills, so of course the extra pills must be thrown out.
Virtually all bathrooms have bidets in Italy, though. They consider the Americans (French, Germans, etc.) pretty filthy in their habits.
January 20th, 2013 at 9:51 am
Lidia, i read about a group who assists people with suicide (with information) – who suggest going to the Party Store and getting a small tank of helium (used to blow up latex balloons), bringing it home and hooking it up to a plastic bag over the head via plastic cylindrical tubing available at hardware stores. Inhalation of about 10 – 15 breaths renders the user dead with no pain in a short period of time.
This is easily found on-line and explained in detail, and the materials are readily available and inexpensive. The group will provide a member to be there with the person, if they wish, to remove the evidence.
January 20th, 2013 at 10:38 am
Lidia, actually, you made my point better than I did. Thanks
A few threads back I did mention that anyone reading this blog is obviously part of the problem since all of us are using computers, taking advantage of the internet, etc.
And, I agree with everything you say about the medical industry – horribly complicit in the destruction of the planet – all to make a buck.
January 20th, 2013 at 10:54 am
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/01/20/1474171/study-finds-warming-driven-megadroughts-jeopardizing-amazon-forest/
(begins)
An area of the Amazon rainforest twice the size of California continues to suffer from the effects of a megadrought that began in 2005, finds a new NASA-led study. These results, together with observed recurrences of droughts every few years and associated damage to the forests in southern and western Amazonia in the past decade, suggest these rainforests may be showing the first signs of potential large-scale degradation due to climate change.
January 20th, 2013 at 11:32 am
Not a subject I would bring up in polite company, so hears to impolite company!!
I have a suggestion for a way the average Westerner can significantly reduce their use of toilet paper. I had my suggestion in limerick form but it was “crappier” than I was willing to type.
Eat well= less TP use.
When people I know stay for a visit, who eat the average American, store-bought diet, they go through a roll of TP about 5 times faster than the healthy eaters I know. Some people I know, who eat really well, say that their “ordure” is as care free as a deers’ or rabbits’.
January 20th, 2013 at 12:19 pm
Re: Toilet paper, I have paper mulberry that grows like weeds all around my property. It has an enormous leaf, and I understand that the fibers in it cause it to be a choose for the Japanese in making toilet paper. So, with a potentially invasive plant which produces leaves which can be used to make a safe and non tree destroying alternative, I propose we elect the paper mulberry! BTW, this stuff REALLY does grow like crazy and might be good option of other uses where it has already established a stronghold.
January 20th, 2013 at 12:34 pm
Lidia I spent two months on the Cape with my dad last fall when he had triple by-pass and I was astounded at the amount of disposable waste that left the hospital every day. Of course I do realize our entire system is unsustainable, but witnessing the staggering amount of plastic thrown away was quite an experience.
I have an Italian friend who lives in Italy half the year and she tells me that now, you have to separate every bit of recycling as to type. It gets picked up in clear plastic bags and if any of it isn’t properly sorted, it gets left behind with a handwritten note explaining the infraction. You then have to bring it back in until the next pickup and put it back out in the correct configuration. I surmise they have simply run out of space for landfill, not a problem we have yet here in the US, alas.
Anyway, her husband is American – it drives him crazy, ha!
January 20th, 2013 at 12:44 pm
Correction to the above; It is the bark from paper mulberry which is used to create the paper in Japan and is referred to as ‘washi.’ However, the leaves have been used as a common source of woodland toilet paper..
http://www.eattheweeds.com/broussonetia-papyrifera-paper-chase-2/
January 20th, 2013 at 12:47 pm
Tom, one such group in the US is http://www.finalexit.org/ – they offer a book by Derek Humphrey with the method you mention and information on other methods.
January 20th, 2013 at 12:47 pm
Another resource for self deliverance is at http://www.peacefulpillhandbook.com/
January 20th, 2013 at 12:49 pm
BtD – the limerick is especially suitable for this topic. Thanks for the humor
January 20th, 2013 at 1:37 pm
This 2 hr. video is very much in line with what we discuss here on NBL. Who makes crop circles and why. Seems appropriate now that we are due for a huge event.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4e_wlLb_kk&NR=1
David
January 20th, 2013 at 2:53 pm
Tom, interesting about the helium. I never would have thought it, since you hear of people inhaling it in order to give themselves a funny voice.. Don’t know if I will take that route as long as I am responsible for other people–blessed in that I don’t have any kids, but would find it hard to bail out on mom and husband. I’m also generally a curious person interested in what’s going on: not the kind of person who ever walked out on a movie, no matter how bad (although I can’t really bring myself to watch movies anymore). I’ll see how it goes over the next couple of years–if I can successfully garden and get my re-localization schemes off to a good start that’ll make life worthwhile to me. No hope, no fear, I suppose. If I were on my own, I’d retreat to some sort of austere monastic place to live out my days.
If NTE is a given, then it’s just a question of riding the suicide train to the end, isn’t it? …versus getting off at an earlier stop… giving up my seat to whom?
I’ve inherited a decent number of old pills which might work. I’m not convinced of their expiration dates.
January 20th, 2013 at 2:55 pm
dairymandave:
As long as we’re going in the “strange” direction, what do you think of this.
i come from a large extended family where only the cousins are left. We don’t keep in real close touch, but for the upcoming funeral of our mutual family member (that i mentioned above and on the last blog post), we will be getting together.
i called an older female cousin of mine today to give her the details of the funeral this coming week and she said:
“Tommy, i gotta tell you this first. You know i went to see a psychic this morning” (she had previously told me that she was going to do this last week) “and i wanted to go first. The guy comes in the house and the first words out of his mouth were ‘All the way over here a woman was talking to me, who was very excited that her son was coming to be with her. Her name is the name of a flower, um … Rose.” (My own mother’s name is also a flower.)
So the cousin who just died – his mom is Rose and she died about 10 years ago.
How did this “psychic” get this? He hadn’t even been introduced to anyone yet and had none of our family information (as far as i know).
The cousin who died’s younger brother (who is arranging the funeral)
said that there were so many weird “coincidences” and strange events the past few days that he got chills thinking about it all. When i told him the above story, he went quiet for a minute and said – “this is so bizarre.”
So is there an explanation or do we chalk it up to “unexplainable?”
i’ve heard of psychics who helped police find people and other stories that border on the Twilight Zone. But what are they tapping in to?
January 20th, 2013 at 3:06 pm
I find it amazing how this site is used to propagate off topic ideas, even if they are somewhat interesting…..
In this permaculture household, we have a dry composting toilet. We use TP, AND have a bidet. I’m male, and I’m the one who has to deal with the compost bin when it’s full, so I have first hand experience of dealing with toilet waste……. I’m also of French descent, and we invented the bidet…. a most civilised device, very handy post coital…!
I have no doubt it’s women who are most responsible for TP useage. I had no idea that women even used TP after pissing until I started dealing with the compost toilet….. I swear half the waste in the bin is paper! Washing with a bidet which directs all the waste water and unmentionables in it to fertilise the garden is highly sustainable.
Yes there is an environmental cost for the fitting of a bidet, but it’s a one off, unlike the endless manufacture of TP and the accompanied deforestation.
In the end, as usual, the real issue is, there are far far too many people on the planet.
Bring on the collapse………..
January 20th, 2013 at 3:08 pm
@Gail, wow, I left in September and hadn’t seen anything like that! Must be in the far North? I know the Germans have a separate recycling stream even for cigarette butts.
Where I was, in central Italy, people were only kusum starting to get the hang of it, while in Rome it was largely disregarded.
On the sick-care front, I wonder what Dr. House prescribes for his Patients. I’m not asking this to be snarky; I reaaly wonder how he can keep doing his job. I know my mom’s O2 is wildly unsustainable, but I can’t exactly take it upon myself to pull that plug.
January 20th, 2013 at 3:28 pm
@ Kathy, YW!
==
thestormcrow says: …in limerick form….Eat well= less TP use.
Try my new diet and see:
It works ecologically!
You not only eat well,
But when you expel,
The savings are in the T.P.
January 20th, 2013 at 3:30 pm
«If I were on my own, I’d retreat to some sort of austere monastic place to live out my days.»
alas! it does not exist, there is no such place but in your dreams. there is nowhere to escape.
January 20th, 2013 at 3:35 pm
Mike, yes “bidet” is French! I haven’t traveled very widely in France, but never did come across one there. I got reports back from Italian relatives,as well, after their travels.
Yes, women use more TP than men as it’s not so easy for us to shake out our business! The bidet is quite refreshing on a hot summer day. One consumer product I’ll promote here is “Chilly”, an “intimate” soap laced with menthol. Yowsa!
“kusum” in my prev. comment = iPod keybd. artifact
January 20th, 2013 at 3:38 pm
Mike; If you watch it, you may see that it is quite appropriate to NBL.
David
January 20th, 2013 at 3:54 pm
Gotta try and make a home-made version of that Chilly!
Michele, I think there are still places where (climate change aside) folks can live very simply. I visited some of the ancient monasteries remaining in the Italian hills and, aside from all the religious business, it looked like quite a peaceful life. Some of these orders are self-sufficient, as far as I know. It’s a matter of looking to the past, to a great degree, for example, long ago they would fire up an oven quite rarely and would eat dried bread “husks” as a matter of course, over months. These husks are stil made today, industrially, of course, for those people who still enjoy them as part of their food culture. You have to soak them in wine, water, or the juice of the fresh tomatoes in your lunch, otherwise they are inedible they are so hard.
Many of the Amish/Mennonites live pretty sustainably, except for their large brood size which cancels that out.
January 20th, 2013 at 4:24 pm
Dave
Crop circles are pretty neat
Using grain fields for art, nice feat
While it may seem quite queer
Perhaps aliens come here
For the canvas that just can’t be beat
I don’t know Dave – crop circles – either a lot of people have way too much time on their hands (is there profit to be made by making crop circles?) or something else is going on. My best guess is that aliens just found a planet where the folks stupidly monocropped and said hey nice canvas….
If they are coming to take us away, I will pass – I would rather die here on a dying planet than take my chances with some other life form.
One must never forget “To Serve Man” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Serve_Man_(The_Twilight_Zone)
January 20th, 2013 at 4:33 pm
Lidia, when the grid goes down for good as it will some which way or other, 400+ nuclear power plants (total of 700 individual reactors) and all their spent fuel pools go Fukushima. Only unlike Chernobyl and Fukushima they will not be contained in any way at all.
I keep posting this but it does not seem to get through
http://truth-out.org/news/item/7301-400-chernobyls-solar-flares-electromagnetic-pulses-and-nuclear-armageddon
Nuclear power plants are designed to disconnect automatically from the grid in the event of a local power failure or major grid anomaly; once disconnected, they begin the process of shutting down the reactor’s core. In the event of the loss of coolant flow to an active nuclear reactor’s core, the reactor will start to melt down and fail catastrophically within a matter of a few hours, at most. In an extreme GMD, nearly every reactor in the world could be affected.
It was a short-term cooling-system failure that caused the partial reactor core meltdown in March 1979 at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania. Similarly, according to Japanese authorities, it was not direct damage from Japan’s 9.0 magnitude Tohoku Earthquake on March 11, 2011, that caused the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor disaster, but the loss of electric power to the reactor’s cooling system pumps when the reactor’s backup batteries and diesel generators were wiped out by the ensuing tidal waves. In the hours and days after the tidal waves shuttered the cooling systems, the cores of reactors number 1, 2 and 3 were in full meltdown and released hydrogen gas, fueling explosions which breached several reactor containment vessels and blew the roof off the building housing reactor number 4′s spent-fuel storage pond. Of even greater danger and concern than the reactor cores themselves are the spent fuel rods stored in on-site cooling ponds. Lacking a permanent spent nuclear fuel storage facility, so-called “temporary” nuclear fuel containment ponds are features common to nearly all nuclear reactor facilities. They typically contain the accumulated spent fuel from ten or more decommissioned reactor cores. Due to lack of a permanent repository, most of these fuel containment ponds are greatly overloaded and tightly packed beyond original design. They are generally surrounded by common light industrial buildings with concrete walls and corrugated steel roofs. Unlike the active reactor cores, which are encased inside massive “containment vessels” with thick walls of concrete and steel, the buildings surrounding spent fuel rod storage ponds would do practically nothing to contain radioactive contaminants in the event of prolonged cooling system failures.
Since spent fuel ponds typically hold far greater quantities of highly radioactive material then the active nuclear reactors locked inside reinforced containment vessels, they clearly present far greater potential for the catastrophic spread of highly radioactive contaminants over huge swaths of land, polluting the environment for multiple generations. A study by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) determined that the “boil down time” for spent fuel rod containment ponds runs from between 4 and 22 days after loss of cooling system power before degenerating into a Fukushima-like situation, depending upon the type of nuclear reactor and how recently its latest batch of fuel rods had been decommissioned.[9]
Reactor fuel rods have a protective zirconium cladding, which, if superheated while exposed to air, will burn with intense, self-generating heat, much like a magnesium fire, releasing highly radioactive aerosols and smoke. According to nuclear whistleblower and former senior vice president for Nuclear Engineering Services Arnie Gundersen, once a zirconium fire has started, due to its extreme temperatures and high reactivity, contact with water will result in the water dissociating into hydrogen and oxygen gases, which will almost certainly lead to violent explosions. Gundersen says that once a zirconium fuel rod fire has started, the worst thing you could do is to try to quench the fire with water streams, which would cause violent explosions. Gundersen believes the massive explosion that blew the roof off the spent fuel pond at Fukushima was caused by zirconium-induced hydrogen dissociation.[10]
January 20th, 2013 at 4:35 pm
Here is a map that shows where the plants are in the world. It doesn’t show how the winds might blow all this nuclear waste as it burns
http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/2011/03/16/the-nuclear-world-interactive-map/#axzz2IYTSxjbE
January 20th, 2013 at 4:36 pm
Once we reduce military budgets to 10% of what they currently are, and rename and repurpose them as “Peace Forces”, we should then try to find more efficient ways of keeping out bums clean.
*
BP chief is confident that we won’t run short of mid-priced oil any time soon. And economics is such a sham science, the way it is practiced in this age at least, I can’t see the USA voluntarily collapsing, and I can’t see any other players insisting that the USA does the decent thing and let its economy collapse. So we may be waiting for quite a while yet for either peak oil or economic collapse to save us from ourselves.
January 20th, 2013 at 4:41 pm
Further there are More than 27,000 abandoned oil and gas wells lurk in the hard rock beneath the Gulf of Mexico, an environmental minefield that has been ignored for decades. No one — not industry, not government — is checking to see if they are leaking, an Associated Press investigation shows. http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/07/27000_abandoned_oil_and_gas_we.html So all the abandoned wells will be neglected after collapse, as will all the currently operating wells. I don’t have the numbers for the North Sea or any of the other ocean areas but I presume it is large. So we will have BP times some huge number to add to all the burning power plants. Add in drought, heat, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes – good luck finding places to live. Take a gas mask tho, because the smell of the rotting corpses once dieoff begins will be really bad. Throw in some new and renewed diseases without medical care – dengue, malaria will move north with warming.
I don’t mean to be harsh, but most here have seen the handwriting on the wall, and we don’t like it but well there it is. Fukushima changed everything – in a sense as we woke up to the fact that all the reactors and fuel pools in the world were going to burn when the grid comes down. We should have understood that earlier but now we do.
January 20th, 2013 at 4:54 pm
Personally, I don’t want to die prematurely (of course I realize sooner or later I will) and I don’t plan to use those methods of easy exit unless the food and/or water runs out, slowly and there’s no alternative… and then that would be a luxury.
I am far more concerned (I know, it’s stupidly neurotic) about violent death…not even my own, but my 3 daughters.
When I was young I endured a really violent attack and it has shaped my life, to the point where, anything would be preferable to going through that – which is why I have a gun. When the zombies are clawing at my door, I would much rather end it quickly, myself, than be tortured. If I’m already gone when that sort of thing becomes commenplace, I want to bequeath that quick exit to my kids rather than have them be attacked, mutilated, and so forth.
January 20th, 2013 at 6:22 pm
Lidia, your question was rather non-specific, so I’m not entirely sure how to respond, but I will share a couple of thoughts anyway.
Beyond a doubt it is very difficult to provide healthcare with what I know now. But the difficulty is with myself, not with the patients. On the one hand, some days it takes all the resolve I can muster to make the six mile trip to my clinic. I would much rather spend the day working in the garden, talking to the goats, feeding the chickens, playing with the dogs, etc. I suspect most people would prefer a life doing such relaxing, non-stressful activities. Unfortunately, it doesn’t pay the bills. And, until the economy collapses completely, I still have bills to pay – lots of them (including payroll for 8 employees).
On the other hand, I really enjoy interacting with my patients (well, most of them). We talk about all sorts of things, including their health. One of the advantages of practicing where I do is that some of my patients raise small numbers of livestock or grow a garden or hunt or make really practical things in the old traditions (soaps, food stuffs, clothing, etc.). So, to make the day more enjoyable, and to engage my patients, I talk to them about those things. They appreciate that I take the time to hear about something they enjoy, and I benefit by learning a great deal.
As a family physician (same as a GP in England), many of the maladies I treat would never have been seen by a doctor 50 years ago – nothing serious, but people don’t want to be sick even for a day, so they come to see me. However, I do treat LOTS of depression and anxiety. People are really worried and scared. So many are without work or are underemployed. They don’t know how they will survive. Before the so called fiscal cliff was averted, there was a significant uptick in the number of cases of anxiety as many of my patients have been on unemployment for a long time and were afraid that they would lose that benefit.
Treating depression can be one of my biggest challenges since I know that it’s not going to get better in the longterm. I don’t sugarcoat things. I speak plainly and honestly. By the same token, I don’t tell a depressed person about NTE as that just wouldn’t be helpful at all. Of course, I prescribe lots of anti-depressant medicine, but I also encourage patients to look for every opportunity to simplify their lives by getting off of Facebook (and the internet itself), getting rid of their cellphones, walking as much as possible, and trying to reconnect with nature.
Healthcare staff deal with life and death every day. We know that each one of our patients is going to die someday. We do what we can to mitigate that somewhat, but we can’t stop it. It’s a given and it’s just a matter of when. Armed with that knowledge, we do what we can in the meantime to help our patients live happy, healthy lives. Just because I’m aware of NTE doesn’t change my perspective; each of my patients is still going to die someday, and I’m still going to do what I can to help my patients live happy, healthy lives.
January 20th, 2013 at 6:24 pm
Off topic here, but quite pertinent to some lines of thought expressed in by commenters in previous posts:
The Ecology of Hell
“The motivations of the various actors remain inscrutable, beyond being able to state the obvious: they are what they do. This is not an unreasonable view of humanity. After all, we can see that popes roll around in popemobiles and bless things, that politicians lie and shake hands, that basketball players dribble while boxers try to punch each other in the head. Why they do these things is obvious: they are defined by their behaviors, ……”
January 20th, 2013 at 6:25 pm
@KathyC, well, there is that!
I wasn’t speaking of an escape, really: merely a retreat. That there are places where voluntary poverty or simple living is normal and not seen as crazy. I could eat a baked potato or a bowl of oatmeal ten meals in a row, but instead I prepare the conventional fare my relatives insist on. This is a weakness: falling into the status quo. I would like to find a simple community where renouncing complexity would have positive reinforcement and yield social rewards. As was discussed in the last thread, this could also be seen as selfish and ego-driven.
January 20th, 2013 at 6:27 pm
michele/montreal Says:
http://guymcpherson.com/2013/01/hidden-cost-of-toilet-paper/#comment-58509
“there is nowhere to escape.”
Eggs Actley
January 20th, 2013 at 7:07 pm
@dr.House, thanks for your reply. In Italy the PCP has office hours and operates on a first-come, first-served basis, so the waiting room is the oldsters’ social scene. I’m sure your human connection to your patients helps them with what physical issues they may have, as just the sense of someone caring is beneficial in itself.
The context of my question wasn’t really clear, but I asked it while I was in the frame of mind considering TP usage and resource usage in health care. Maybe you are not in a situation where you order millions of dollars worth of treatment for a single patient, but have you ever faced a situation in which you felt conflicted about the amount of resources used? I’m just putting myself in the position of someone who personally refuses to buy Kleenex or paper towels and who thinks that a bidet is too much of an investment for a family to make, hygiene-wise, thinking how I could then direct much more than what those resources represent towards most “average” patients, particularly the ones who aren’t really ill. It seems like a matter of compartmentalizing it .
I’m not blaming you, because I think we are all doing it to varying degrees. Just curious, is all. Thinking about the big truck coming ’round slinging O2 tanks.. The hoverounds. The exotic lizard-spit injections an Italian friend of mine was taking. The quadruple bypass he later had that technically killed him but for the fact that they were able to reboot him into a coma so that he could spend six months in the ICU. He “came back” but it was hard for me to have the same relationship with him. It wasn’t his fault–his care was directed by others–but there was something deeply UNSEEMLY about the whole affair: the refusal to accept death, the need for experimentation, control, and ultimately “victory” with absolutely no regard as to cost. There’s a comment on an IPF thread that might explicate better, if I can find it… Back later if I do.
January 20th, 2013 at 8:43 pm
Lidia, I tend to be very practical when it comes to healthcare, whether it’s mine or someone else’s.
I’m a firm believer that healthcare decisions shouldn’t be made based on cost but rather on what makes the most sense. In a large percentage of cases, what makes the most sense happens to be the least expensive and the least resource intensive.
I could come up with a lot of examples, but in general, I tend to lean toward letting nature takes its course as much as possible and when it makes more sense. Of course, patients get to make the decision – after all, it’s their health.
January 21st, 2013 at 1:53 am
I have just cut my toilet paper use down by about 80%
I’m using a toilet stool to lift my legs or help me ‘squat’
This is a humours explanation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WQaqeC_wME
January 21st, 2013 at 3:37 am
Lidia, I have been in and around communities that ascribe to simple living. Guess what – they argue about what is the RIGHT way to do simple living. There are the vegetarians who are considered wrong by the vegans, and then people who only eat things that a plant would normally shed at some time such as seeds and nuts (forgetting that they are eating tree fetuses). Each is sure that their simple living is the best and other’s simple living is not good enough or moral enough or whatever. In fact they can become more tiresome than “normal” people with their holier than thou view. I suppose some well established religious group would have worked that all out and put down the rules for their groups accepted simple living, if you like living under rigid rules that might be more peaceful.
this song by David Rovics says it all – especially in the comments that precede that explain where the inspiration came
http://youtu.be/lai0ytdCwvo lyrics below
I don’t drive a car
’cause they run on gas
but if I did
it’d run on biomass
I ride a bike
or sometimes a skateboard
so fuck off all you drivers
and your yuppie hordes
sitting all day
in the traffic queues
I’m a better anarchist than you
I don’t eat meat
Ii just live on moldy chives
or the donuts that I found
in last week’s dumpster dives
look at you people in that restaurant
I think you are so sad
when you coulda been eating bagels
like the ones that i just had
I think it is a shame
all the bourgeois things you do
I’m a better anarchist than you
I don’t wear leather
and I like my clothes in black
and I made a really cool hammock
from a moldy coffee sack
I like to hop on freight trains
I think that is so cool
it’s so much funner doing this
than being stuck in school
I can’t believe you’re wearing
those brand new shiny shoes
I’m a better anarchist than you
I don’t have sex
and there will be no sequel
because heterosexual relationships
are inherently unequal
I’ll just keep moshing
to rancid and the clash
until there are no differences
in gender, race or class
all you brainwashed breeders
you just haven’t got a clue
I’m a better anarchist than you
I am not a pacifist
I like throwing bricks
and when the cops have caught me
and i’ve taken a few licks
I always feel lucky
if I get a bloody nose
because I feel so militant
and everybody knows
by the time
the riot is all through
I’m a better anarchist than you
I don’t believe in leaders
I think consensus is the key
I don’t believe is stupid notions
like representative democracy
whether or not it works
I know it is the case
that only direct action
can save the human race
so when I see you in your voting booths
then I know it’s true
I’m a better anarchist than you
January 21st, 2013 at 3:50 am
Robert, I do thank you for not breeding.
Here is some more info on the squat toilet as well as selling a frame that can be used over the toilet to squat on – which gets you in an even more natural squat position. One could build it pretty easy, however one can also go outside next to your humanure compost pile and poop on a nice large comfrey leaf and add fold up your deposit and add it directly to the compost pile.
http://www.naturesplatform.com/health_benefits.html#rb
When my father went to Brazil in a rural area even the flush toilets were squat – his hemmerrhoids went away. Later he came back and was working for a company that built medical buildings – he kept trying to tell Drs. about this discovery and no one would listen.
I was using that method a lot until I tore the meniscus in my knee. Robin has commented that if you don’t squat regularly as a child something changes in the bones of your ankle I think it is. That makes squatting as an adult much more tiresome and difficult.
Thanks for showing an in between method of getting a more natural position for us squatting compromised first worlders and leaving less to wipe
January 21st, 2013 at 6:19 am
Kathy C Says:
http://guymcpherson.com/2013/01/hidden-cost-of-toilet-paper/#comment-58533
… “however one can also go outside next to your humanure compost pile and poop on a nice large comfrey leaf and add fold up your deposit and add it directly to the compost pile.”
Have you ever done that when it’s thirty degrees below zero F./ –34.44 C.?
January 21st, 2013 at 7:17 am
omg I can’t keep up!
Marathon? Your pace is relentless!
Please, I would like your permission – everyone who comments here at Nature Bats Last – to take screenshots of comments, links, and posts. @Guy – please accept my apologies, I probably should have asked you offline first, but I’m juggling the balls as they come at me. (I’ve already posted this request a few other places, a synchrony of timing is good practice, I’m still working on coordinating backward chaining (who needs to be alerted in advance) with the urgency of action in the present.)
I am trying to build a representation of the discourses around climate shift, using real people in real interactions (I do consider our cyberspace communication real, even if it isn’t as material as being in physical presence).
I’ve developed a form where people can register their “Informed Consent” – ideally I would like to be able to display names so that whatever I produce (some kind of public presentation) has its sources revealed in case anyone wants to investigate whether I took something out of context or for any other reason follow-up with people whom I quote. This is a kind of action research….. I do have university level training and credentials in the field of human subjects research. http://darkallyredesign.com/what-we-do/art-exception-clause/
You are the root, here. Meanwhile, @Greg Robie, I will respond to your latest comment over at reflexivity within some days. @Guy, I hope you’ll decide to continue to participate there, too.
January 21st, 2013 at 7:52 am
organder – I live in AL. But people used to go outside and poop in outhouses when it was below 0. What do you think people living in tents in Siberia do – poop in the tent? What do you think people living in Igloos did – poop in the igloo? But of course once people started making bowls they made chamber pots long before they made toilets you can sit on. Any appropriate size bowl will do so you can squat inside and dump into the humanure bucket or take out to the humanure pile http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chamber_pot
January 21st, 2013 at 8:11 am
Kathy C Says:
http://guymcpherson.com/2013/01/hidden-cost-of-toilet-paper/#comment-58541
“organder – But people used to go outside and poop in outhouses when it was below 0.”
Yes, I know. I’m one of em. Every now and then you have to take an ax out with you to the outhouse and knock the point off the pile.
BTW it’s ogardener
January 21st, 2013 at 8:18 am
For anyone who is trying to understand the increasingly bizarre twistings and turnings concerning the Sandy Hook story, this may be of interest. Consider the possibility that it is actually ‘an experiment’.
Bear in mind that the Pentagon is also running an AI program to see how people will react to propaganda and to government-inflicted terror. The program is called Sentient World Simulation:
“U.S defense, intel and homeland security officials are constructing a parallel world, on a computer, which the agencies will use to test propaganda messages and military strategies.
Called the Sentient World Simulation, the program uses AI routines based upon the psychological theories of Marty Seligman, among others. (Seligman introduced the theory of ‘learned helplessness’ in the 1960s, after shocking beagles until they cowered, urinating, on the bottom of their cages.)”
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/07/pentagon-seeks-to-manipulate-social-media-for-propaganda-purposes.html
January 21st, 2013 at 8:25 am
Re crop circles. Dmd, I thought you considered yourself a hard-headed realist ?
Those lights are chinese lanterns. You know, made out of wire and paper with a candle inside. Those circles are made by people, with ropes and boards. Nothing to do with aliens, everything to do with humans. Some do it for fun, some do it for money. Every year dumb gullible American idiots pay a lot of cash to stay in hotels and be driven in coaches to look at the circles. It’s a small industry. There’s whole magazines and people’s livelihoods built on the things, so somebody has got to keep ‘em appearing.
January 21st, 2013 at 8:29 am
Steph, you certainly have my permission to use all my writing for anything you’d like. Because this is a public space, I assume — perhaps incorrectly, and I don’t know the legal implications — the same is true for each person who posts here.
January 21st, 2013 at 8:38 am
This is for ogardener and anyone else who likes some music
http://youtu.be/6efQ_GyQW3o
January 21st, 2013 at 8:56 am
“We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood—it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, “Too late.” “
Martin Luther King – From Beyond Vietnam
http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_beyond_vietnam/
January 21st, 2013 at 9:07 am
Think Kyoto hasn’t failed? Think again.
January 21st, 2013 at 9:50 am
Steph, when we write here as comments we are often writing comments that relate to other folks comments and may not take as much time to write them as the original essay. It seems to me that out of context some comments could be misconstrued. I would prefer to be contacted before any comment I make is used so I know it is not suffering from being out of context. Please ask Guy for my e-mail and contact me before using a comment – or ask about a specific comment here on the discussion site. Of course I realize this is an open forum so anyone can take any of our comments at any time without permission. But it seems a courtesy to ask.
January 21st, 2013 at 9:58 am
K- “organder – But people used to go outside and poop in outhouses when it was below 0.”
O- Yes, I know. I’m one of em. Every now and then you have to take an ax out with you to the outhouse and knock the point off the pile.
BTW it’s ogardener
K – Sorry for the mispelling. So it never dawned on you to use a chamber pot when you were using an outhouse???
January 21st, 2013 at 10:45 am
New comment by Superman1 at RealClimate:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/01/unforced-variations-jan-2013/comment-page-4/#comment-314635
January 21st, 2013 at 10:57 am
Kathy C Says:
http://guymcpherson.com/2013/01/hidden-cost-of-toilet-paper/#comment-58551
So it never dawned on you to use a chamber pot when you were using an outhouse???
Too redundant.
January 21st, 2013 at 11:44 am
K – So it never dawned on you to use a chamber pot when you were using an outhouse???
O – Too redundant.
K – You were the one complaining about the cold. On cold days and nights you can stay warm except for the dumping if you use a chamber pot. Don’t like redundancy, don’t complain about the cold.
January 21st, 2013 at 12:06 pm
Badlands/AK:
About epi-pens. I have been told that 5 years old is too young to teach about how to use an epi-pen. The parents should know how to use it and should keep one around for the child. Also, their school teacher should be educated about how and when to use it and should have one for the child. In Canada, the prescription for epi-pens are renewed every six months because they lose their effectiveness after that time.
About age eight is when a pediatrician should assess the child for the maturity to be able to use the pen appropriately.
Does that help?
January 21st, 2013 at 12:07 pm
Michelle/Montreal:
Are you still in such pain that you cannot leave your apartment? Is it back pain? Has a physician told you what is wrong?
January 21st, 2013 at 1:32 pm
Thank you ulvfugl for the Ry Cooder song. Wonderful. For your enjoyment, Ry Cooder playing with Ali Farka Toure at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in 1994:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ9H5t3zOfs
The video of this ends early, but the audio is complete. I looked for a more complete video including these two, but could not locate anything. Enjoy!
January 21st, 2013 at 2:09 pm
thanks for caring BCN: it is foraminal stenosis, discal hernia and arthrosis. will pass more exams in the next 2 weeks.
but, more importantly, my occupation consists in keeping my NTE switch “on”. She/it always go back to “off”, as soon as i release my finger. I am still easily distracted. simple constatation.
January 21st, 2013 at 2:30 pm
Nature has to bat last, I’m waiting for the day!
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/01/21-1
January 21st, 2013 at 3:06 pm
Elaine, just read that to my husband. He remarked, yep we’re the cops of the world – the title of a song by Phil Ochs http://youtu.be/6_2x3JWWzvY
Guy, the Kyoto protocol poster says it all. We have been doomed for a long time – too smart for our own good and too dumb to do anything about it – pretty soon everyone will see that. I found a quote from one of Gail’s essays from Thomas Hobbes – Hell is truth seen to late. That about says it all – well world welcome to hell.
January 21st, 2013 at 3:15 pm
Headline of the (inauguration) day: Bomber in Chief: 20,000 Airstrikes in the President’s First Term Cause Death and Destruction From Iraq to Somalia
January 21st, 2013 at 3:24 pm
Kathy C; We tend to imagine that all life is just like ours, based on oxygen/photosynthesis with water as the solvent. Even on earth, we can find life based on sulfur, sulfates, iron, nitrates, various anaerobic kinds. It has been speculated that life could be based on methane as the solvent, or even based on silicon. Anyhow, man may not even be edible to other life forms. That’s a relief. What if photosynthesis hadn’t happened and some other process got started?
The fact that we evolved just far enough to be too smart, smart enough to wipe ourselves out is really the theme of that movie I recommended about crop circles. Maybe there is life somewhere that took a different path and became more mature than we are and avoided hitting the wall. Maybe they see what we are doing to ourselves. Let’s admit it; we aren’t very intelligent. Most of us can’t even see. What if we had spent the last 200,000 years growing up rather than killing each other?
The last 15 minutes is where the punch line is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4e_wlLb_kk&NR=1
January 21st, 2013 at 3:54 pm
Kathy C Says:
http://guymcpherson.com/2013/01/hidden-cost-of-toilet-paper/#comment-58556
“K – You were the one complaining about the cold. On cold days and nights you can stay warm except for the dumping if you use a chamber pot. Don’t like redundancy, don’t complain about the cold.”
I asked you a question. You replied, “organder – I live in AL”. Which didn’t answer my question at all. A simple yes or no would have sufficed. Then you became condescending as if I had no idea about a chamber pot.
Moreover, please enlighten me and illustrate where I was complaining about anything in my posts.
Your treatise on humanure may work for you in Alabama but everyone participating on this forum doesn’t live in Alabama nor subscribes to the idea of using humanure in their vegetable gardens when other alternatives may be available like Bokashi, vegetable/plant matter composting, granite derived stone dust, the use of actively aerated compost teas – both fungal and bacterial, sea weed etc. I have won blue, red and white ribbons for my organically grown vegetables at the county fair in my area and I don’t use any manure of any kind at all plus I am competing against farmers and gardeners who are using commercially manufactured inorganic fertilizer. Just FYI.
January 21st, 2013 at 4:32 pm
michele/montreal:
Those are some serious conditions. I hope there are things that can be done, but I’m afraid surgery is going to be one of them. I just kept thinking about you all weekend. Hope you’re feeling better soon.
January 21st, 2013 at 5:00 pm
@BC Nurse Prof
re:epi-pen Yes, thank you so much for inquiring, it does help. I think I will focus on getting him set for the long haul of allergy shots, which he should soon be old enough for. While that sort of thing is still available. And just getting him more familiar with our allergy action plan/s. Thanks again!
January 21st, 2013 at 6:20 pm
.
On Morality
The monkeys used series of grunts
Inventing the “law” with word stunts,
But that greased the way
To mute social fray
That each monkey always confronts.
The top monkey set down the law
And taught all to hold it in awe,
But if anyone bucked,
They got royally fucked
With justice that’s red, tooth and claw.
You see, they had no right or wrong
To govern the monkey throng,
But if you insist
That justice persist,
The right ones were always the strong!
January 21st, 2013 at 6:33 pm
Orgardener, You can do humanure anywhere you can garden. It serves the function of returning the minerals to the soil. Otherwise you have to get them from somewhere else.
The Humanure Handbook was something of an accidental literary phenomenon. Joe Jenkins began writing the book as a master’s thesis while attending Slippery Rock University’s Master of Science in Sustainable Systems program in northwestern Pennsylvania in the early 90s. Not content with academic convention, but fastinated with the topic of humanure composting, Jenkins decided to convert the book’s language into a popular format and self-publish the thesis as a book.
http://humanurehandbook.com/about.html
When we no longer have pressurized running water in houses its back to smelly nasty outhouses that waste precious resources that are currently being wasted in septic systems or sewage treatment plants. It DOES NOT SMELL – I keep our buckets in the house in the bathroom and often it might take a week for the two of us to fill it up before it goes out to be dumped in the compost bin. Thus I never have to go outside in the winter to an outhouse and freeze my buns off. However I noted that I lived in AL to get across the idea that the squat and poop on a leaf next to the humanure compost pile never subjected me to below 0 weather. I am well aware that solutions in one part of the country are different than in another part and was trying to get across the idea that you could use a chamber pot as a means of employing the healthful method of squatting inside.
When the grid goes down for good pressurized water will end and although you can flush a toilet with a bucket of water, where will you get that water and why would you want what is now a precious resource to be used to throw away a valuable resource? Doesn’t matter of course because about 1 week after the grid goes down the nuclear power plants go up. But if you don’t live anywhere near a nuclear power plant you should start thinking about either building an outhouse or doing some sort of composting toilet because the grid will go down eventually. Outhouses are nasty, composting toilets are not, and humanure toilets are composting made simple.
January 21st, 2013 at 7:45 pm
Darwin and Hooker invented/discovered Permaculture a century before Mollison.
Pity nobody paid any attention or learned anything. Seems they still have not, just stupid talk about colonising Mars whilst they continue to trash Earth.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11137903
January 21st, 2013 at 7:47 pm
@ Kathy C. When the grid goes down for good pressurized water will end
Mine will not. The well is several hundred feet higher than the house, and gravity takes care of everything.
January 21st, 2013 at 8:13 pm
Death by a thousand cuts.
White-Nose Syndrome: A Crisis for America’s Bats
http://www.batcon.org/pdfs/whitenose/WNS_FAQ.pdf
—
@Kathy
I’m already familiar with living off grid.
January 21st, 2013 at 8:25 pm
What thestormcrow said.
Some days, I don’t really need any toilet paper (though I still check!) and my diet is largely (always) fresh food. I do wonder why that’s not the case every day, though.
What will people do if (actually, probably “when”) toilet paper isn’t available any more? Not everyone can have a bidet that works off grid or when the water pipe perishes.
I agree with comments about using composting toilets, though that’s not directly related to the use of toilet paper.
January 21st, 2013 at 8:57 pm
BenjamintheDonkey,
Your finest yet.
January 21st, 2013 at 9:25 pm
This link works:
href=”http://www.alternet.org/world/bomber-chief-20000-airstrikes-presidents-first-term-cause-death-and-destruction-iraq-somalia”>”Bomber in Chief: 20,000 Airstrikes in the President’s First Term Cause Death and Destruction From Iraq to Somalia”
January 21st, 2013 at 9:26 pm
This link works:
“Bomber in Chief: 20,000 Airstrikes in the President’s First Term Cause Death and Destruction From Iraq to Somalia”
January 21st, 2013 at 9:27 pm
Please, I would like your permission – everyone who comments here at Nature Bats Last – to take screenshots of comments, links, and posts.
Because this is a public space, I assume — perhaps incorrectly, and I don’t know the legal implications — the same is true for each person who posts here.
The comments guidelines/policy could be modified to include a Creative Commons license. Our host could even place all posts and comments to NBL under a http://creativecommons.org/choose/“>Creative Commons License.
January 21st, 2013 at 9:38 pm
wildwoman, thanks!
January 21st, 2013 at 9:41 pm
“I like throwing bricks”
The gent is attempting to enforcement by coercive violence. He’s promoting oligarchy, not anarchy. Action speaks louder than words.
January 21st, 2013 at 10:21 pm
Squatting Facets
January 21st, 2013 at 10:23 pm
Squatting Facets
January 21st, 2013 at 10:48 pm
Location of the bone-to-bone contact areas where there are on both contacting bones smooth, cartilage-covered squatting facets
January 22nd, 2013 at 2:10 am
Off topic…
Has anyone any idea what has happened to the End of Empire site. It was bought out from Matt Savinar last year( that is the mpression I got), and the person who was running it has some notifacation on the site that due to family issues she can’t do the site for the moment, its been September last year.
It looks rather like a shut down operation to me, that is on the face of it, with no background info on my part.
A good way to turn the tap off is to scoop up the ‘nodes’, and then turn them off. Could be, Just sayin…
If there is a real personal story there, well OK, I don’t need to know the personal details, just be nice to know if it is legit. Its a pitty such a site, which was pretty good for convergent info, is effectively off line for now.
Anyone got any good oil….eh…pardon the pun, on any of that?
Or, on topic,
The Hidden Cost of…. being one of the first out of the gate on Peak Oil and Industrial Civilisation’s complete dependence on cheap oil, Matt Savinar and LATOC.
January 22nd, 2013 at 2:39 am
How High Could the Tide Go?
“She has zeroed in on the Pliocene epoch, roughly three million years ago. The level of carbon dioxide in the air then appears to have been about 400 parts per million — a level that will be reached again within the next few years, after two centuries of fossil fuel burning.
The previous estimates of Pliocene sea level, based on spotty evidence, range from 15 feet to 130 feet above today’s ocean, with 80 feet being a commonly cited figure.”
January 22nd, 2013 at 2:45 am
End of Empire News
January 22nd, 2013 at 4:05 am
K When the grid goes down for good pressurized water will end
U Mine will not. The well is several hundred feet higher than the house, and gravity takes care of everything.
K Point taken. So Ulvfugl you hand pump water into a reservoir so you can get pressure in the house or does your well run on solar power?
I have a hand pump well besides the electric well. Not above the house but no matter, no way am I going to hand pump into a reservoir just so water can flow freely from taps – that encourages wasting water. No way am I going to hand pump water for anything but the most necessary of uses once the grid is down. I already hand wash clothes in a James Hand Washer – for the two of us 1 load every week or so. If I have to hand pump that water it is going to be far less frequent. I certainly would never waste water to flush away a valuable resource such as human feces as if it were waste.
I have read that Chinese farmers along roads used to build outhouses and decorate them so that travelers would be encouraged to leave their valuable piss and poo at their outhouse, not at someone else’s. Fecophobia has blinded us to the fact that what we eat needs to be returned to the soil daily and at our death. So we sequester it in septic fields or wash it to the sea and then have to grind up rock and turn fossil fuels into nitrogen. The cycle of life in the natural world puts the minerals right back where they came from.
January 22nd, 2013 at 4:25 am
@ Kathy C. So Ulvfugl you hand pump water into a reservoir so you can get pressure in the house or does your well run on solar power?
Eh ? No, of course not. It falls out of the sky, onto this mountain. It flows downhill everywhere, mostly unseen, emerging here and there as boggy patches, springs and streams. At a point on the mountainside above me, where it collects naturally underground as a reliable source even in droughts, is a well, and from there a pipe carries some of it further downhill to the plumbing in my home. All of the rest just continues its natural journey down the mountainside, to a stream in the valley below me, which becomes a riverlet and thence to the sea.
Here, it is not a matter of wasting water, there is usually too much of it falling down on me. But the good part is that when other people get flooded, I do not, because however much water falls from clouds, it soon finds its way downhill and is gone.
January 22nd, 2013 at 4:52 am
People adapt to the economic demise of our empire:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2266225/Las-Vegas-sewer-homes-Homeless-live-tunnels-beneath-Sin-City.html
January 22nd, 2013 at 4:58 am
on GM foods:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2266143/Uncovered-toxic-gene-hiding-GM-crops-Revelation-throws-new-doubt-safety-foods.html
A virus gene that could be poisonous to humans has been missed when GM food crops have been assessed for safety.
GM crops such as corn and soya, which are being grown around the world for both human and farm animal consumption, include the gene.
A new study by the EU’s official food watchdog, the European Food Safety Authority(EFSA), has revealed that the international approval process for GM crops failed to identify the gene.
January 22nd, 2013 at 5:17 am
Perhaps you don’t understand the physics, Kathy. If I open the tap at this end of the pipe, and let water out, that makes suction at the other end of the pipe, half a mile away, up the hill, in the well, and pulls water into the pipe up there.
The weight of water in that half mile of pipe, all pushing, pulled by gravity, wanting to flow down the hill, is considerable. That’s what provides the water pressure. No pumps.
The only problems that can arise are if something gets into the pipe, like silt, or a frog, which has happened, or if the pipe freezes, which has happened, but those problems are easily prevented. In theory, it’s maintenance free and should last indefinitely.
January 22nd, 2013 at 5:40 am
Traditional vertical drilling for gas and oil could lessen in favor of state-of-the-art horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing of rock layers, perhaps as shallow as 1,000 feet underground and not far from drinking water aquifers.
At least one Western Pennsylvania company is fracking rock about 3,000 feet down in Westmoreland County, slurping oil out of formations about half as deep as the heavily tapped, gas-rich Marcellus shale.
If the technique catches on — industry experts suggest shallow fracking is inevitable — it could be a boon to smaller drillers. It could reshape state law and increase concern about the safety of drinking water, experts say.
http://triblive.com/news/allegheny/3239089-74/wells-fracking-shallow#axzz2IfptDQVr
January 22nd, 2013 at 5:43 am
In testimony before a Senate subcommittee, Ken Cook spoke passionately about 10 Americans who were found to have more than 200 synthetic chemicals in their blood.
The list included flame retardants, lead, stain removers, and pesticides the federal government had banned three decades ago.
“Their chemical exposures did not come from the air they breathed, the water they drank, or the food they ate,” said Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, a national advocacy group.
How did he know?
The 10 Americans were newborns. “Babies are coming into this world pre-polluted with toxic chemicals,” he said.
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/01/20/180443/were-in-contact-with-uncontrolled.html#storylink=cpy
January 22nd, 2013 at 6:28 am
Ulvfugl – ah a siphon – Neat – how did you prime it? Or do you tap into it at the level of the water? My wells the water is all down a significant number of feet – the pipe in my handpump well has a small hole in it so the water accumulated in the top slowly drains out when not in use so that it never freezes in the pump itself.
January 22nd, 2013 at 6:31 am
U – just saw your previous comment – so it is not a dug or drilled well but some sort of depression or hole that catches the water?
You do know of course that this is a unique solution not available to many or perhaps even most and therefore my comment about losing water pressure is valid, if not for you – don’t you?
January 22nd, 2013 at 6:34 am
Mr. President: A Plaintive Plush Plea
2 1/4 minutes – enjoy
http://youtu.be/Zy7a1pyUswA
January 22nd, 2013 at 6:35 am
You can shit in the loo or the can
In your bathroom install a fan
Flush down our shit
Don’t have to smell it
And talking about it we ban
Nice that at least at NBL we can have this conversation
January 22nd, 2013 at 7:01 am
how did you prime it? Or do you tap into it at the level of the water? My wells the water is all down a significant number of feet – the pipe in my handpump well has a small hole in it so the water accumulated in the top slowly drains out when not in use so that it never freezes in the pump itself.
so it is not a dug or drilled well but some sort of depression or hole that catches the water?
You do know of course that this is a unique solution not available to many or perhaps even most and therefore my comment about losing water pressure is valid, if not for you – don’t you?
@ Kathy C.
I don’t know the exact nature of the well, because the person who lived here before me made it. Afaik, there was a natural upwelling, marked by a very wet boggy patch from which a small stream emerged. The guy dug out a deep hole with a mechanical digger inserted the pipe, and filled it with rocks, so the spaces between the rocks stay full of clean water. It doesn’t need any priming, because once there’s water in the pipe the suction is very strong. It sometimes gets air in it, because there’s a couple of joins, but the bubbles work there way out.
Yes, of course I know this solution is not available to everyone. I don’t live in a desert, I live on a Welsh mountain where it rains a lot. Climate change probably means increased rainfall here. It may also mean some unusually hot dry summers. However, people have lived on this site probably for thousands of years, chosen because it is half way between the top and the bottom of the mountain, on a level patch, where water naturally emerges ( not that well I mentioned, a natural pond ) meaning a reliable supply for people, cattle and other animals, which has never dried in the driest summers since I have been here. People used to notice that sort of thing and chose their dwelling places for those kind of reasons, water, shelter from weather, access to winter and summer grazing ( transhumance), etc, etc.
January 22nd, 2013 at 7:26 am
Dairymandave: Here’s another phenomenon that fascinates me (The Hum)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LzNtEXFvI
January 22nd, 2013 at 7:46 am
Tom, in a previous thread you mentioned reports of foreign troops in USA, and I sort of smirked to myself, because there’s US troops all around the world, so it would seem likely that there’d be reciprocal training agreements whatever… however, here’s something that strikes me as quite odd… I watched a video of armed police searching a house beside SH school, and they seemed to be speaking a foreign language. Unfortunately, I’ve lost that one, forgotten where I found it, but here’s part of the same, shorter and poorer quality. There are plenty of foreign troops, as part of NATO that would train in UK, but it would be unheard of for any foreigners to take part in any domestic police incident similar to SH, you know, wtf is that about ? Who are they ? Do they even know what they are taking part in ? Seems very weird to me. As I said there’s a better vid somewhere, if I find it I’ll post it.
http://sandyhooktruth.wordpress.com/2013/01/21/video-sandy-hook-shootings/
January 22nd, 2013 at 7:55 am
Tom: My thoughts. Didn’t anyone, during the past decade, ever think to measure the hum and show it on a screen. It’s called a sound wave. At least we would have something to look at besides peoples opinions.
January 22nd, 2013 at 7:58 am
which lead to this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZQwyV7wHzM
even if they’re hoaxes (very doubtful), it’s pretty spooky. Let’s you know there are forces beyond our control or, as the video says – something is definitely wrong.
There are so many fascinating topics from UFO’s to the weird noices, space happenings, topics like the new world of quantum physics and some theoretical math, to the placebo effect and other facets of our reality. It takes you away for a moment from the inexorable march off the cliff that humanity is undertaking. Thanks for the distraction.
Thanks to Guy for this great site, Emily for the hint at where we should be concentrating and to everyone who commented and for all your wonderful links!
January 22nd, 2013 at 8:14 am
U – People used to notice that sort of thing and chose their dwelling places for those kind of reasons, water, shelter from weather, access to winter and summer grazing ( transhumance), etc, etc.
Sounds like a great place to live. Not many humans get to choose where to live anymore. Too many of us for the less abundant ideal sites.
January 22nd, 2013 at 8:17 am
Stunned scientists warn world could run out of breathable air (journalists recognize no other types of scientist)
January 22nd, 2013 at 8:27 am
ulvfugl: EXACTLY! Welcome to Orwell’s world. It especially makes sense if the whole ordeal was a training exercise, from selected reporting and set up screen shots to paid “expert” smokescreens and controlled media – while the whole thing may be a CIA/NSA psy-op!
yeah, DMD – there ARE recordings, but only a small percent of the population can detect it (and they can’t believe we can’t hear it)!
Follow the links (or Google the topic) and it goes on and on.
Here’s one i like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUDYcapY1Qo
January 22nd, 2013 at 8:49 am
For consideration on the topic of toilet paper:
The human diet before agriculture was very low in carbohydrates. Humans were leaner, had stronger leg muscles and no excess butt fat. A healthy lean human, with a diet proportionately high in fat, with a strong and wide squatting stance would produce slippery, greasy feces that leaves no or very little residue.
And regarding humanure:
If the stumbling block to making humanure is not wanting to use it on fruit trees or veggies, donate it to non-edibles. Any plant would appreciate the return to nature of one of the greatest gifts an animal has to offer. No one HAS to deal with worries about poop on their food.
January 22nd, 2013 at 8:55 am
ulvfugl and Tom
The article that was referenced earlier about the US military constructing a simulation of the society is very ominous. If they have allowed this much information to leak into the public domain, one can only imagine how extensive the real thing must be. It seems that they are scraping information about everyone from online sources(including, I’m sure, our postings on this site). In the US, we already have over 70 “fusion centers” which have been surreptitiously compiling information from every available data base on the planet and creating profiles of everyone in the population based on unknown criteria. Presumably, this information will eventually be used to target individuals who might resist a police state, or perhaps even have the temerity to publicly express an adverse opinion about the governmemnt. This is not so far fetched, anyone who has read Solzhenitsyn knows that the gulag system was insane. Some people were sent to the camps just for being late to work because the government had established secret arrest quotas.
A manufactured incident like SH could be used to test the predictive reliability of the simulations and determine, for example, how effectively the public’s perception of the event can be manipulated, guage the political impact (in this case with respect to gun control legislation), see which alternative internet players deconstuct the psyop (how quickly was the connection to Dark Knight Rises made?)and so on.
January 22nd, 2013 at 10:02 am
DL: yeah, it’s gettin’ really weird wrt spying, Minority Report type-stuff actually happening, and now drones to carry out instant “justice” without regard for “collateral damages.”
January 22nd, 2013 at 10:16 am
@ depressive lucidity
Yes. It doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with ‘grabbing the guns’, or that could just be a useful byproduct. It could be a selection filter, sieve the sheep into categories, the ones whose instant response is emotional, how easily confused they are, those who dig, those who find the correct answers, those who go down the crazy wormholes… all recorded and classified, ready to be further refined and manipulated by the next event… they’ll know exactly where everyone stands, in terms of political, psychological profile, beliefs, loyalties, demographic, networks, etc. They could colour code every individual and every address, based on SH, Facebook, forums, emails, and all the rest of the data… Arbeit Macht Frei
January 22nd, 2013 at 11:42 am
regarding quick and easy home suicide remedies:
Do not forget the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum. It should be included in every “re-wilding” first aid kit raw and as laudinum (mixed with alcohol) as an analgesic. Poppies are easy to grow, grow almost everywhere and they look nice too. Processing the latex sap from the seeds is easy and a few plants can provide enough narcotic to put an entire family to sleep for eternity. Dr House or some one other could confirm this, lots of info available on the InterWeb. I am pretty sure it would be a relatively painless way to go. You would take to much, become profoundly intoxicated, fall asleep and stop breathing. Simple as that.
January 22nd, 2013 at 11:52 am
GreenGenes; I agree with both of your points, what we should eat and what we should do with the results. Right on. The way it was.
January 22nd, 2013 at 12:11 pm
Guy, I am no expert but that link looks extremely sketchy to me, and sensationalized as the title suggests – “stunned scientists” when there are none in the actual acticle who claim to be stunned. Right off the bat it talks about Keeling being “worried…very worried” about lower oxygen levels but there’s no quote, and no link, plus, he is credited with inventing the Keeling curve when it was his father who did. Then it says sloppy things like “… the rate that it’s losing oxygen is now on the verge of accelerating.” What does “on the verge of” mean?
Then, this sounds purely speculative and is asserted without any attribution other than that most scientists are ignoring it: “…the connection between solar activity and volcanic eruptions: massive solar activity can lead to massive volcanic eruptions”.
Next the article talks about ocean dead zones as though they are caused by a lack of oxygen which is sort of upside down – the dead zones are caused by pollution, leading to explosive growth of algae, which use up all the oxygen and cause depletion and anoxia so really, the lack of oxygen is a result of the dead zone, more than a cause.
Then it says vastly lower oxygen is “well documented” by a difference in the charcoal in forests from fires, but provides zero documentation!
Assuming it’s the same author, he publishes stories in “Before It’s News” with titles such as:
Death Platforms Appear in Sky
Man Transported to Another Universe
HAARP Unleashes Tesla Deathray
It’s a very funny list: http://beforeitsnews.com/contributor/pages/5/446/stories.html
Apparently in an interview when asked why he writes he replied “…to entertain”. I think that’s about right.
January 22nd, 2013 at 12:42 pm
oops, somebody much more knowledgable than I has written about the author:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/tag/terrence-aym/#.UP7pe6FEOs0
There’s also some evidence he is a global warming denier, who thinks “political correctness” – you know, sensitivity training in corporations so women won’t be harrassed on the workplace – is a 60-year old Marxist, Jewish plot to destroy the American way of life, and wrote: “The insidious growth of Marxism has crept across all sectors of America. It took root in economics with the introduction of the Marx-inspired progressive income tax system designed to limit growth, restrain wealth and redistribute it, and undermine capitalism…The handmaiden of Marxist economics is cultural Marxism and its centerpiece is political correctness.”
But never mind.
January 22nd, 2013 at 12:50 pm
Follow-up to the Hum in Canada:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/taking-action-on-the-windsor-hum-2013-01-21
WINDSOR, Ontario, Jan. 21, 2013 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — On behalf of Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, Bob Dechert, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, today visited Windsor, Ontario, to announce the launch of a study to identify the cause of the so-called “Windsor Hum”–the recurring vibration and noise that have been disturbing people in the area for almost two years.
“Our government takes this issue seriously and is following up on its commitment to find a solution that works for the people of Windsor. Promise made, promise kept,” said Parliamentary Secretary Dechert.
Acting on a recommendation from the International Joint Commission, the Government of Canada is funding the study to try to identify the source of the Hum. The study, to be conducted jointly by scientists at the University of Windsor and Western University, will be a key step in developing a possible solution.
January 22nd, 2013 at 12:53 pm
@ depressive lucidity, Tom,
The official death certificates are released. Hard to believe that whoever is responsible would be completely unaware of the controversy ? When the SH Hoax video is viral, with 10 million hits or something ? Are they consciously trying to bait, to goad, to feed what they call the ‘conspiracy theory’ ?
All the alleged deaths are dated Dec. 14th, the day of the incident, except A. Lanza’s, which is dated Dec. 13th.
( In line, perhaps, with the patsy theory, that he was murdered beforehand and his body dumped at the scene ).
In addition, he is not mentioned on Nancy Lanza’s certificate, only her husband and son Ryan.
(This is what the forums say, I’d have to pay to check the official record directly myself)
January 22nd, 2013 at 2:40 pm
Now we can’t even trust the effing food labels:
http://gma.yahoo.com/exclusive-group-finds-more-fake-food-ingredients-090412537–abc-news-topstories.html
…..Group Finds More Fake Ingredients in Popular Foods
By JIM AVILA and SERENA MARSHALL | Good Morning America – 5 hours ago
….Email 0Share Tweet0Share0Print……
It’s what we expect as shoppers—what’s in the food will be displayed on the label.
But a new scientific examination by the non-profit food fraud detectives the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention (USP), discovered rising numbers of fake ingredients in products from olive oil to spices to fruit juice.
“Food products are not always what they purport to be,” Markus Lipp, senior director for Food Standards for the independent lab in Maryland, told ABC News.
In a new database to be released Wednesday, and obtained exclusively by ABC News today, USP warns consumers, the FDA and manufacturers that the amount of food fraud they found is up by 60 percent this year.
USP, a scientific nonprofit that according to their website “sets standards for the identity, strength, quality, and purity of medicines, food ingredients, and dietary supplements manufactured, distributed and consumed worldwide” first released the Food Fraud Database in April 2012.
The organization examined more than 1,300 published studies and media reports from 1980-2010. The update to the database includes nearly 800 new records, nearly all published in 2011 and 2012.
Among the most popular targets for unscrupulous food suppliers? Pomegranate juice, which is often diluted with grape or pear juice.
“Pomegranate juice is a high-value ingredient and a high-priced ingredient, and adulteration appears to be widespread,” Lipp said. “It can be adulterated with other food juices…additional sugar, or just water and sugar.”
Lipp added that there have also been reports of completely “synthetic pomegranate juice” that didn’t contain any traces of the real juice.
USP tells ABC News that liquids and ground foods in general are the easiest to tamper with:
•Olive oil: often diluted with cheaper oils
•Lemon juice: cheapened with water and sugar
•Tea: diluted with fillers like lawn grass or fern leaves
•Spices: like paprika or saffron adulterated with dangerous food colorings that mimic the colors
Milk, honey, coffee and syrup are also listed by the USP as being highly adulterated products.
Also high on the list: seafood. The number one fake being escolar, an oily fish that can cause stomach problems, being mislabeled as white tuna or albacore, frequently found on sushi menus.
National Consumers League did its own testing on lemon juice just this past year and found four different products labeled 100 percent lemon juice were far from pure.
“One had 10 percent lemon juice, it said it had 100 percent, another had 15 percent lemon juice, another…had 25 percent, and the last one had 35 percent lemon juice,” Sally Greenberg, Executive Director for the National Consumers League said. “And they were all labeled 100 percent lemon juice.”
Greenberg explains there are indications to help consumers pick the faux from the food.
“In a bottle of olive oil if there’s a dark bottle, does it have the date that it was harvested?” she said. While other products, such as honey or lemon juice, are more difficult to discern, if the price is “too good to be true” it probably is.
“$5.50, that’s pretty cheap for extra virgin olive oil,” Greenberg said. “And something that should raise some eyebrows for consumers.”
Many of the products USP found to be adulterated are those that would be more expensive or research intensive in its production. “Pomegranate juice is expensive because there is little juice in a pomegranate,” Lipp said.
But the issue is more than just not getting what you pay for.
“There’s absolutely a public health risk,” said John Spink, associate director for the Anti-Counterfeit and Product Protection Program (A-CAPPP) at Michigan State University. “And the key is the people that are unauthorized to handle this product, they are probably not following good manufacturing practices and so there could be contaminates in it.”
Spink recommends purchasing from “suppliers, retailers, brands, that have a vested interest in keeping us as repeat customers.”
Both the FDA and the Grocery Manufacturers Association say they take food adulteration “very seriously.”
“FDA’s protection of consumers includes not only regulating and continually monitoring food products in interstate commerce for safety and sanitation, but also for the truthfulness and accuracy of their labels,” the FDA said in a statement to ABC News.
Most recently the FDA issued an alert for pomegranate juice mislabeled as 100 percent pomegranate juice, as well as one for the adulteration of honey.
The Grocery Manufacturers of America told ABC News in a statement that “ensuring the safety and integrity of our products – and maintaining the confidence of consumers – is the single most important goal of our industry,” and that their members have “robust quality management programs and procedures in place, including analytical testing, to help ensure that only the safest and highest quality products are being offered to consumers.”
January 22nd, 2013 at 3:33 pm
From toilet paper to two-by-fours: The Real Score on CO 2 Emiss ions and Framing Materials (pdf)
January 22nd, 2013 at 3:41 pm
Good grab Guy! Not only do we have a glut of unsold homes but now they’re building more! Who’s gonna buy them is anyones guess in this economy.
Another day, another shooting – this one at Lone Star College in Houston.
and now
Senator Asks CIA Nominee When Drones Can Kill Americans
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/01/wyden-brennan/
The man in charge of America’s drone wars will face Senate questioning about perhaps their most controversial aspect: when the president can target American citizens for death.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) sent a letter on Monday to John Brennan, the White House’s counterterrorism adviser and nominee to be head of the CIA, asking for an outline of the legal and practical rules that underpin the U.S. government’s targeted killing of American citizens suspected of working with al-Qaida. The Obama administration has repeatedly resisted disclosing any such information about its so-called “disposition matrix” targeting terrorists, especially where it concerns possible American targets. Brennan reportedly oversees that matrix from his White House perch, and would be responsible for its execution at CIA director.
“How much evidence does the President need to determine that a particular American can be lawfully killed?” Wyden, a member of the Senate intelligence committee, asks in the letter, acquired by Danger Room. “Does the President have to provide individual Americans with the opportunity to surrender before killing them?”
Wyden’s questions about the targeted-killing effort get specific. He wants to know how the administration determines when it is “not feasible” to capture American citizens suspected of terrorism; if the administration considers its authority to order such killings inherent in its Constitutional war powers or embedded in the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force; and if the intelligence agencies can “carry out lethal operations inside the United States.” Wyden also expresses “surprise and dismay” that the intelligence agencies haven’t provided him with a complete list of countries in which they’ve killed people in the war on terrorism, which he says “reflects poorly on the Obama administration’s commitment to cooperation with congressional oversight.”
Thus far, senators on the intelligence panel have been more concerned about Brennan’s possible role in national-security information leaks and the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program than in using Brennan’s nomination to peer into the decision-making surrounding Obama’s counterterrorism strikes. Wyden writes that it is “critically important” for Congress to understand “how the executive branch understands the limits and boundaries of this authority.”
In September 2011, a U.S. missile strike in Yemen killed Anwar al-Awlaki, al-Qaida’s most prominent English-language propagandist and an American citizen. Weeks later, another strike fired by a U.S. drone killed Awlaki’s 16-year old son, Abdulrahman.
i don’t think this is in the Constitution, but i guess that’s just me.
January 22nd, 2013 at 3:51 pm
Insurance group Swiss Re have worked out six possible future energy scenarios….
Hahaha, their ‘best case’…
In the best-case scenario, a successful mix of political, social and technological factors would mean that low-carbon technologies could supply 92% of the global power supply by 2050. This would cap the global temperature increase at 3°C. However, reaching this goal would involve global policy consensus, relatively stable economic conditions and strong public support for the replacement of fossil fuel technologies with low-carbon energy sources.
in other words, we’re f****d but they don’t dare to say that…
http://www.swissre.com/media/news_releases/nr_20130121_climate_energy_future.html
January 22nd, 2013 at 4:00 pm
yeah U, that sounds like a thinly veiled “throw in the towel” since we’d have had to have begun well before the year 2000 throughout the globe to put solar, wave and wind into play and be fully transitioned to it by now in order to meet that 92% mark by 2050, not to mention that 3 degrees C is game over anyway.
Hey speakin’ of game over (J. Hansen’s statement regarding the XL tarsands pipeline:
US state governor notifies officials he approved new Canadian pipeline route through Nebraska
http://news.yahoo.com/us-state-governor-notifies-officials-approved-canadian-pipeline-165834228.html
…..LINCOLN, Neb. – Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman has approved a new route for the Keystone XL oil pipeline that avoids the state’s environmentally sensitive Sandhills region.
Heineman sent a letter Tuesday to President Barack Obama confirming that he would allow the controversial project to proceed in his state.
The pipeline has faced strong resistance in Nebraska from a coalition of landowners and environmental groups who claim it would contaminate the Ogallala aquifer, a massive groundwater supply.
Canadian pipeline developer TransCanada and some workers’ unions say the project is safe and will create thousands of jobs.
The original route would have run the pipeline through a region of erodible, grass-covered sand dunes. The new route skirts that area.
bwah-hah-hah-haaaaaa, (choke, gasp) “safe” he says! Yeah, like nuclear power!!
January 22nd, 2013 at 4:13 pm
okay, last one for today
apparently mankind is much older than we thought or whoever inhabited this planet way back left some interesting stuff behind:
http://beforeitsnews.com/beyond-science/2013/01/300-million-year-old-machinery-found-in-russia-experts-say-aluminum-gear-not-the-result-of-natural-forces-may-be-extraterrestrial-2440610.html
January 22nd, 2013 at 7:12 pm
This has got to be one of the most incredible things I have ever seen. Professor Cornel West expounds in the tradition of Dr. Martin Luther King with a whole lot of Malcolm X mixed in. Essential viewing for all human beings…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=96d_CzrfxsM
January 22nd, 2013 at 7:33 pm
From a comment at a preceding post
Maybe I could get some advice on setting up my own blog
January 22nd, 2013 at 7:38 pm
From a comment at a preceding post
Maybe I could get some advice on setting up my own blog
And there are others. Starting a blog is the easy part. The care and feeding of the blog is quite another matter.
January 22nd, 2013 at 8:02 pm
i don’t think this is in the Constitution, but i guess that’s just me
For the Native Americans and Afro-Americans who were exterminated like vermin, the constitution was not worth the toilet paper it was not written on.
Laws are not worth the sonorous sequel to a feast of beans nor to the toilet paper they were not written on. What matters is who interprets them and who enforces them.
January 22nd, 2013 at 8:05 pm
Here is a twenty minuet video on Arctic Methane. It has probably already been posted, given that much of the footage is familiar, but as a whole, I consider it to not only be very concise, but probably the best up to date video montage on methane……therefore it’s worth repeating, for those who missed it the first time.
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=david+wasdell&view=detail&mid=47D6141A984F8B5819FB47D6141A984F8B5819FB&first=0
January 22nd, 2013 at 8:21 pm
Nice overview of the Kulture of Lies the U.S. has become.
We have the Ministry of Propaganda in the Land of the Brave that Joseph Göbbels and his soulmate and dancing partner Edward Bernay would swoon over.
Lance Armstrong and America’s growing culture of psychopathic liars
http://www.naturalnews.com/037650_Lance_Armstrong_psychopath_liars.html
January 22nd, 2013 at 9:26 pm
Guy, thank you for your permission, and Robin – you’re correct about the public nature of comments here, technically I didn’t have to ask, but because I’m interested in collaboration and collective intelligence and such, it matters that people are more-or-less okay with knowing the communication is being thought about in a scientific way.
fyi, someone who wanted to quote somebody from NBL could probably get around a Creative Commons license or even a traditional copyright via “Fair Use” like rebellious pixels Right Wing Radio Duck: Donald Duck Discovers Glenn Beck.
Kathy C, I have no problem sharing whatever I’d like to you use for your case-by-case permission, the mechanism is Conditional Affirmation. I do know how things can be taken out of context, and also (on the flip side) that creative interpretations are sometimes more effective than literal ones.
This possibility of misrepresentation is another reason to have made the request publicly: anyone who’s interested can help provide a check-and-balance on the apparent level of (in)sanity. Speaking of which, here’s this week’s reflexivity entry:
Mudfire! May the world be good to you.
January 23rd, 2013 at 3:14 am
Armstrong confesses:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/cotown/la-et-ct-armstrong-interview-28-million-worldwide-20130122,0,5646419.story
But yes, it sure took a long time to come out in the land of liars.
January 23rd, 2013 at 4:17 am
@ Tom
I had an uncle who used to volunteer to assist on archaeological diggings, who told me that on one such, they went down through the layers, Mediaeval, Anglo-saxon, Roman, Iron age, and came upon an intact and perfectly preserved light bulb from the 1950s, with no explanation as to how it had arrived deep in the ground. I don’t think I’d be inclined to rewrite European history on the strength of that anomaly though, and likewise with those bizarre Russian and American oddities found in the coal. Although they are very peculiar and it is hard to see what the explanation could be, perhaps there is one that does not involve aliens or rearranging evolution, etc. Maybe there was earlier unrecorded illicit mining that was backfilled or something. Who knows ?
Re SH. Seems that the death certificate thing I mentioned is not actually official. It comes from a commercial site. Seems official death certificates are not made available to the public. So Adam Lanza’s Dec. 13th could be a typo or could be someone making mischief and confusion. Remarkably, seems that there is not one single official documentary record of any kind showing that someone called Adam Lanza ever existed. Nothing.
January 23rd, 2013 at 4:32 am
ulvfugl: and here i was going to start the day with this, from your side of the pond
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2266435/Does-rock-prove-life-outer-space-Controversial-scientist-claims-fossils-meteor-fragment.html
i agree that it’s odd, but i recall a few journalists cataloguing all the anomalies from archeology and putting out a book, some time ago, which was summarily dismissed as rubbish by the established archeologists. No one ever provided any other explanation though. How the frack do formed metal parts become embedded in million year old coal seams? Curious. The one above is evidence of life from a meteorite that fell to earth. Another strange occurance.
On Sandy Hook, i’m leaning toward a psy-op because the msm lack of consistency and botched explanations don’t say anything about an actual event. Compare it to the college shooting yesterday and you can see that the whole thing smells like an “exercise” by law enforcement, complete with little to no actual details and the like. i think we’re being corralled by the powers that be, slowly but surely (maybe into FEMA camps, as Alex Jones says). Their explanation of the carnage in such a short amount of time by an amateur gunman was called into question by a military person on some blog who is familiar with guns and what it would take to hit each target multiple times (better than experts, according to him). It’s all really fishy.
January 23rd, 2013 at 5:37 am
@ Tom
Yes, I saw that diatom in the meteorite. But it doesn’t mean there’s life in outer Space does it, it could more likely be from when massive meteorites impacted Earth and flung debris out into Space, and that piece has returned.
I don’t think that metal parts do get embedded in million year old coal seams millions of years ago. I think it happens more recently. How, I don’t know. That would need detailed investigation of each site and the surrounding circumstances. Some coal is quite soft and sticky. Could also be like Piltdown Man, forgery kinda thing ? maybe.
Yes, SH goes on and on. The authorities and MSM are not honest and straightforward so the amateurs and the kids do the digging and it does get crazy…
http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message2114146/pg1
You know, the first time I saw the A L photo, I thought it looked photoshopped and made to fit a classic scary-psycho-weirdo stereotype, specifically chosen to fit a narrative. The MSM have told the public a story, which they mostly now believe. What really happened is something completely different.
January 23rd, 2013 at 6:01 am
U: Agree – just like with the other “happenings” and their official versions of the Orwellian truth (JFK, RFK, 9-11, and who knows what others up to SH).
Saw this and began wondering how pervasive mosquito and tick-borne diseases are becoming for humanity. We’re worried about a flu epidemic here while these people have some really scary shit to deal with in dengue fever!
http://www.theglobaldispatch.com/dengue-epidemic-in-southwest-brazil-campo-grande-in-a-state-of-emergency-50853/
January 23rd, 2013 at 6:44 am
@ Tom
Yes. Ticks have increased a lot here in recent years. Hard to feel any ‘buddhist compassion for all sentient beings’ when it comes to ticks…
There is a theory that this is some sort of internal power struggle between, say, CIA and DHS, or similar factions. DHS/FEMA were doing the simulated drills at the time, someone else moves in to do the ‘reality’ version under their noses, sending a signal, a message…
http://willyloman.wordpress.com/2013/01/20/sandy-hook-massacre-both-long-guns-found-in-trunk-of-car/#comment-54060
January 23rd, 2013 at 7:02 am
Oh, the CIA! Now there’s a can of worms:
http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/01/22/senate-intelligence-torture-report-cia-lied-to-the-white-house-and-the-public/
and below (so i don’t get moderated)
January 23rd, 2013 at 7:02 am
http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/01/22/rather-than-lying-to-congress-cia-now-blows-it-off/
January 23rd, 2013 at 8:16 am
I think that all megalomaniac psychopathic kings, dictators, czars, pharoahs, presidents, whatever, probably right back to Sumeria, have had to have networks of spies under a spy master. And then the problem arises, can they trust the spymaster ? Because he’s actually got more power than they have themselves. So then they set up another network of spies to spy on the first lot, to check out the stories the spymaster is telling. And soon the paranoia increases, because if someone gets assassinated, and both spy networks deny any knowledge, then who was it ? And so a third secret spy network is needed to watch the first two… and the spymasters themselves do not trust their own spies and subordinates, many of whom will be double-agents, and so employ additional off-the-record criminals to find out what’s really going on. And then these agencies grow and take on a life of their own…. And so it goes….
CIA… Indeed.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWcia.htm
January 23rd, 2013 at 8:27 am
People are not conscious of it, but ‘conspiracy theory’, as a negative term, is a CIA invention, a mental association, meme that has been planted into everyone’s brain by the CIA. Think about that for a moment.
“Conspiracy theory” is a term that at once strikes fear and anxiety in the hearts of most every public figure, particularly journalists and academics. Since the 1960s the label has become a disciplinary device that has been overwhelmingly effective in defining certain events off limits to inquiry or debate. Especially in the United States raising legitimate questions about dubious official narratives destined to inform public opinion (and thereby public policy) is a major thought crime that must be cauterized from the public psyche at all costs.
http://memoryholeblog.com/2013/01/20/cia-document-1035-960-foundation-of-a-weaponized-term/
January 23rd, 2013 at 9:01 am
A family member just sent me this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdqcbwMjkA4
Think there is a message there?
January 23rd, 2013 at 10:11 am
.
Nothing Don’t Matter No More
Ain’t sweeping no dirt off no floor,
Don’t seem like no reason what for;
Climate heat’s high degree
Plus failed nukes guarantee
That nothing don’t matter no more.
Each day we see more to deplore—
Still in store, much more horror of war;
With nowhere to flee,
There’s no escapee,
So nothing don’t matter no more.
At first it seems somewhat hardcore,
Using language that’s hard to ignore,
But si, senor, si!
And monsieur, mais oui!
Nothing don’t matter no more.
Dunno today’s circus game score,
Daily bread’s always less than before;
Our NTE
Inevitability
Means nothing don’t matter no more.
Ain’t sweeping no dirt off no floor,
Don’t seem like no reason what for;
Climate heat’s high degree
Plus failed nukes guarantee
That nothing don’t matter no more.
January 23rd, 2013 at 10:40 am
Wildwoman, I just had a chance to watch that little video. Interesting thing to watch on a short break between patients.
The advice to just live life and stop living in fear was good. The rest of it was typical denial. True, there have been many predictions of the end of the world, and thus far, all of them have been wrong. But it only takes one. It reminds me of the daredevil who says “I’ve always been okay before” just before he crashes. There’s a difference between those who predict the end of the world based on mysticism and religion and those who predict that our way of life is leading to our rapid demise. One is based on fantasy, the other is based on scientific observation. Big difference.
January 23rd, 2013 at 12:26 pm
Wildwoman, that made me laugh so hard I literally have tears in my eyes!! Of course the Dr. is correct…but it was funny!!
Collapse has a terrific video posted today, way better than the insipid story of stuff series:
http://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/2013/01/23/the-toxic-soup-of-industrial-civilization/
January 23rd, 2013 at 1:38 pm
It is a hilarious little video. If only squirrels were powerful! But yes, I’ve tried very hard to emphasize the difference between data and calendars, Aliens, comets and whatever else. I’ve written two blogs about becoming a doomer, and I talk about denial, etc. If there must be denial, let it be this funny.
January 23rd, 2013 at 2:13 pm
This may be of interest:
http://enenews.com/unprecedented-move-iaea-shifts-47-japan-reactors-long-term-shutdown-number-reactors-operation-worldwide-lowest-level-chernobyl-1986
In an unprecedented move, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has shifted 47 Japanese nuclear reactors from the category “In Operation” to the category “Long-term Shutdown” (LTS) in its web-based Power Reactor Information System (PRIS). The number of nuclear reactors listed as “In Operation” in the world thus drops from 437 yesterday to 390 today, a level last seen in Chernobyl-year 1986 and a dramatic step of the IAEA’s official statistics in recognizing industrial reality in Japan. This is without doubt a unique revision of world operational nuclear data. [...]
Hey, at this rate we’ll be nuclear free by about 2200!! YAY!
January 23rd, 2013 at 2:25 pm
this does not mean that the power plants “not in operation” are not dangerous…
January 23rd, 2013 at 2:28 pm
BtD you have outdone yourself. I think you need to publish a book.
Reminded me of this song I first heard sung by Pete Seeger
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mi2rKWFbhCM
The Housewife’s Lament
HOUSEWIFE’S LAMENT
One day I was walking, I heard a complaining
And saw an old woman the picture of gloom
She gazed at the mud on her doorstep (’twas raining)
And this was her song as she wielded her broom
Life is a trial and love is a trouble
Beauty will fade and riches will flee
Pleasures they dwindle and prices they double
And nothing is as I would wish it to be.
There’s too much of worriment goes to a bonnet
There’s too much of ironing goes to a shirt
There’s nothing that pays for the time you waste on it
There’s nothing that last us but trouble and dirt.
CHORUS
In March it is mud, it is slush in December
The midsummer breezes are loaded with dust
In fall the leaves litter, in muddy September
The wall paper rots and the candlesticks rust
CHORUS
There are worms on the cherries and slugs on the roses
And ants in the sugar and mice in the pies
The rubbish of spiders no mortal supposes
And ravaging roaches and damaging flies
CHORUS
It’s sweeping at six and it’s dusting at seven
It’s victuals at eight and it’s dishes at nine
It’s potting and panning form ten to eleven
We scarce break our fast till we plan how to dine
CHORUS
With grease and with grime from corner to center
Forever at war and forever alert
No rest for a day lest the enemy enter
I spend my whole life in struggle with dirt
CHORUS
Last night in my dreams I was stationed forever
On a far distant isle in the midst of the sea
My one chance of life was a ceaseless endeavor
To sweep off the waves as they swept over me
Alas! Twas no dream; ahead I behold it
I see I am helpless my fate to avert
She lay down her broom, her apron she folded
She lay down and died and was buried in dirt.
January 23rd, 2013 at 2:44 pm
I was accused today basically of wanting and rejoicing in end time events. I guess once you get OK about NTE you look to others so crazy that they have to attribute crazy ideas to make you go away. Usually no one accuses a Dr. of wanting his patient to die when he signs the papers that allow them hospice care, ie saying they have 6 months or less to live. But I had one hospice patient who finally went to the hospital – the Dr. prescribed pain killers in a min and max amount. The daughter asked the nurses to give the max amount and one of the accused her of trying to kill her father.
I did a huge hunk of mourning when I realized over 10 years ago that a great dieoff was coming so by the time I realized that NTE was what it was probably going to be, it was more like a little blip – oh 100% instead of 99.9%
The thing is that the end comes to each of us anyway – personal end that is. It is of course harder to think about most or all people dying, but in fact everyone alive today will die. Timing is what we are looking at, method of death, and whether our genes carry forward or not. (Except for those to be snatched directly to heaven in the Rapture
) Squirrel missed the one about the end of the sun which scientist seem to agree will happen….
January 23rd, 2013 at 2:49 pm
Tom good news – only 390 nuclear plants to go Fukushima when the grid goes down!!! Not such good news concerning San Onofre and the NRC
Podcast by Arnie Gundersen – he talks about the hearing in the first 20 minutes and then it goes into the hearing itself I have only listened to the first part so far. The NRC doesn’t care about us, that is clear. As he made his presentation one of the NRC folks fell asleep and another tried to hurry him up he said.
http://fairewinds.com/content/games-people-play
THE GAMES PEOPLE PLAY
In this week’s podcast, Fairewinds looks at how difficult it is for the public to meaningfully participate in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s licensing process. Arnie Gundersen was retained by Friends of the Earth to assess major problems at the San Onofre nuclear plant in California that have caused a year long shutdown. Arnie met with the NRC this week concerning his analysis of what went wrong and how the problems were foreseeable. In this podcast, Arnie discusses how Southern California Edison deliberately withheld information to make his technical analysis more difficult to accomplish. Fairewinds taped the meeting, so our podcast listeners can hear for themselves the difficulties Arnie encountered and the games the NRC and Southern California Edison played to prevent his participatio
January 23rd, 2013 at 3:11 pm
Thanks Kathy. Now, I have to confess and belatedly give you your share of the credit. I’ve been trying to make the idea work for a long time, but it was your recent post at America2Point0 which provided the final stimulus:
Does anyone think anything makes any difference now????? Kathy
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/America2Point0/message/27166
January 23rd, 2013 at 3:30 pm
Kathy, or rather I should say, you provided the direction—as usual!
January 23rd, 2013 at 3:32 pm
Kathy C said “It is of course harder to think about most or all people dying, but in fact everyone alive today will die.”
There’s that, which is undeniably true – but what is far more difficult for me isn’t all people dying, it’s all of nature – the trees, the insects, the corals and the whales – which took so unimaginably long to create the exquisitely enormous variety of life that we are so quickly destroying…that, and the marvelous paintings and the music and the literature and the sculpture and the magnificent buildings from Machu Pichu to the Greek temples.
That breaks my heart, because I just don’t see it ever being re-created. When we die, and take many other forms of life with us, other forms will likely come along, eventually (unless of course we have unleashed a Venus effect, but that’s hard to know). But all that other stuff, I can’t see that being preserved, let alone resurrected. It will be just, gone.
Now, that is sad.
January 23rd, 2013 at 3:41 pm
Gail yes sad, but when the sun dies it all goes. And while it is all beautiful in the whole, in the parts it is each one eat another, rabbits eaten by foxes, baby birds swallowed by snakes etc. Lots of horror in the details. And probably only a few species other than humans can begin to look at it an find it beautiful and certainly only humans have ever looked at the big beautiful planet in the sky from the sky. Don’t know if that helps you, it helps me. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uimut0dYZ7s
So sad, the one species that could look over the whole planet and call it good is the one species that is bringing it all down….
January 23rd, 2013 at 4:07 pm
Hah! Kathy I watched that video. It’s really heartbreaking and reminded me of my local schoolchild contest:
http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/2012/04/sixth-grade-earth-day-doomer-contest.html
January 23rd, 2013 at 4:10 pm
This country (Québec and Canada) is a cold country. Which means it cannot support more people than it can sustain with energy on the coldest day. It is very cold now, for many days, and the grid is stretched to its maximum. And all my life I heard people say: «There is so much space in Canada, there should be more people.» Like if one dimension, in this case space, is enough to evaluate a complex situation…
Should the grid fail for many days in a period as cold as this one, it could be massive die-off. And nobody really knows the real state of that «grid». We have to rely on the little information and lies we get from the enegy company. The grid fell before, and it will fall again.
It is difficult today to imagine Australia baking. It is so cold here. It is difficult to heat the houses. Schools are closed. And the MSM is very busy telling us how to start our cars in such a weather. That is the important thing: the cars. Keep the cars on the road. eternally.
January 23rd, 2013 at 4:27 pm
Thank you Gail, what a testament to the wisdom of children and the fog of adulthood.
Michele come summer I think we live in the worst of places, but you remind me that right now we have it good – got sunny and went up to 60 today. Guess you can freeze sooner than you can starve from lack of food due to drought….
January 23rd, 2013 at 4:36 pm
So…Can we Mothers do something? I wonder, constantly, how it is that mothers obsess over stupid shit like grades and not a word about near term extinction.
Is there some way we can join together to demand a global survival plan?
January 23rd, 2013 at 4:44 pm
When trees die, people die
January 23rd, 2013 at 5:14 pm
«So…Can we Mothers do something?» dear Gail, I just learned today that 7 weeks ago, a young alchoolic woman on welfare who already has a very difficult 3 year old son with no father got pregnant from my son who cannot and do not want a child. She did not tell him she had stopped contraception and she now says it is her «choice» and she will keep the child. They were never a couple and he will never have a life with her. I am simply desperate. I will be the grandmother of that child! I have no «choice». I have very somber thoughts. I am completely powerless. I wish I never had children.
And my answer is no, we mothers cannot do anything.
January 23rd, 2013 at 5:29 pm
Andean glaciers melting at ‘unprecedented’ rates
Andean glaciers are retreating at their fastest rates in more than 300 years, according to a new study
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jan/23/andean-glaciers-melting?CMP=twt_gu
January 23rd, 2013 at 5:33 pm
Dave Pollard’s
May 2, 2005
The End of Philosophy
How to Save the World – Dave Pollard’s blog
“We humans have not changed and cannot change what we are, what we do, how we behave or what we value. We are doomed by the coding in our DNA to continue along our inexorable path of self-destruction, and to inflict large-scale but ultimately transitory damage on our planet in the process.”
“the good life is only the natural life lived skilfully; it has no particular purpose, and nothing to do with the will or trying to realize any ideal…The core of ethics is not choice or conscious awareness, but the knack of knowing what to do. It is a skill that comes with practice and an empty mind; it means living effortlessly, according to our natures.”
January 23rd, 2013 at 6:41 pm
They’ve found a shale oil deposit (somewhere between 3bbl and 200bbl) in Australia, and the only question anybody asks is where to get a few hundred billion dollars so they can start extracting it from the ground. File under “we’ve totally got it coming to us.”
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/national/trillion-shale-oil-find-surrounding-coober-pedy-can-fuel-australia/story-fndo471r-1226560401043
January 23rd, 2013 at 6:52 pm
The Man Who Planted Trees
http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/plantedtrees.pdf
January 23rd, 2013 at 7:51 pm
Nature’s Way by Spirit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsTK2LHZKPQ
January 23rd, 2013 at 11:21 pm
RD, thanks for the link to Pollard, who talks about my favorite British pessimist, John Gray.
Gray, correctly imo, claims that the Enlightenment was a rationalist fantasy because the hairless monkey is burdened with too much evolutionary baggage to compensate for the aggressive territorial tendencies, cognitive deficiencies and other hard wired distortions that a successful intelligent species would be required to overcome. The myth of progress, according to Gray, is nothing more than a secularized version of Joachim of Fiore’s “revelation” that history has a formal structure and is progressing toward a final consummation during the coming age of the holy spirit. Hegel and Marx and, finally, Twentieth Century capitalism derived their view of history as progression towards inevitable betterment of the human condition from Joachim’s millenarianism.
If one had to pick one reason for our demise, it seems to me that the “delusional drive” (to coin a term) would be it; i.e. the need to construct master narratives that are disconnected from reality and which posit the hairless monkey as the central protagonist in a cosmic drama (or, now a days, the central protagonist in a reality TV show … don’t most people act and think as if they are living in a television show?). These narratives always rationalize hierarchical systems of exploitation and oppression. Monotheism fits in perfectly with the notion of One Folk, One Nation, One Ruler. It is the deep psychological need to embrace mythologies (Christianity, nationalism, racism, consumerism, asshole-ism, etc) that has prevented us from recognizing the bio-physical limits to the sudden expansion of our species that occurred in the last 200 years and the depth of the destruction it has caused.
The transhumanists think that soon we will be able to genetically and cybernetically create a better model. That’s probably what the ETs did when their civilizations reached a similar singularity ages ago in a hyperdimension far, far away. It seems that we’re probably going to run out of time before we can manufacture human 2.0 (or, maybe someone, somewhere has already done it for us).
January 24th, 2013 at 12:18 am
Guy, just a note of respect and appreciation for your remarkable work/videos I’ve viewed on You Tube. To the point, good timing/delivery, no-nonsense and easy-to-follow, even riveting. Wow. (Don’t let my compliment get to your head.)
A+
Keep up the good work.
~ Caelan
January 24th, 2013 at 2:33 am
The Residence time of oxygen on the atmosphere is 4,500 years per the Wikipedia article on the Oxygen Cycle. This means that in one year 1/4,500 of the atmospheric oxygen leaves the atmosphere and is replaced by an equal quantity of oxygen entering the atmosphere. If all entry were stopped, and the rate of depletion continued the same, in 2,250 years half the oxygen would be removed. If the rate of depletion were doubled (as for example, from phenomena such as forest fires) in 1,125 years half the oxygen would be removed. In one year, 1/2500 of the oxygen in the atmosphere would be removed. Nothing that would concern Homo destructus var. myopicus.
January 24th, 2013 at 3:07 am
Robin; OK, so it doesn’t matter in the near future. But runaway warming does.
January 24th, 2013 at 3:15 am
Humans as Chimera? Take your pick:
http://www.google.com/search?q=chimera&hl=en&tbo=u&qscrl=1&rlz=1T4ADRA_enUS353US353&tbm=isch&source=univ&sa=X&ei=2voAUYuzB4yt0AG81YH4BQ&ved=0CGoQsAQ&biw=1084&bih=527
January 24th, 2013 at 3:50 am
Snip below, more at the link….confirming what I thought about some of these folks….
http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2013/01/understanding-link-behavior-on-the-internet.html
Unfortunately, the content on many of the “alternative” websites often exhibit the same revenue-driven linking behavior I described above with respect to MSM or SCM websites, to wit”
There are few (if any) links to outside sources, even when the topics under discussion demand some kind of documentation. For example, Jim Kunstler’s website is a veritable “black hole” in the sense that, once you enter there, you can hardly follow an outbound link to another content source. You can follow links to materials (video, audio) which promote Jim’s writings. And you will find mostly the same thing on Smith’s blog, Greer’s blog or Martenson’s website. There will be occasional exceptions, as I noted above, but these only serve to prove the rule.
When outside sources are cited, they tend to support the point of view being presented, which creates what I call a closed world. Sources with different views are rarely linked to. The point of view presented is thus confirmed and reinforced by restricting access to conflicting information. On DOTE, I do my best to present an open world. I always link to (and quote) the sources whose wrongheaded views conflict with my own
Many “alternative” websites are “self-centered” because they want grab and hold your attention in order to generate revenue in one of these two ways”
subscriptions Martenson uses this revenue model, so he puts content in front of and behind a pay wall. Stuff in front is meant to get you to subscribe so you can read the stuff behind the wall.
book/DVD sales, speaker fees Greer, Smith and Kunstler are “selling their book” as the phrase goes. The Automatic Earth is selling DVDs. It’s a good bet that all these people accept speaking fees.
January 24th, 2013 at 5:09 am
Kathy: Well, yeah – bloggers have to generate an income stream to stay “alive” so of course they’re going to “talk their book.” What’s funny, to me, is the sentence by this critic “I do my best to present an open world. I always link to (and quote) the sources whose wrongheaded views conflict with my own” automatically disparaging opinions other than that which he accepts as ‘wrongheaded’ – JUST LIKE THE REST. We all have “confirmation bias” to some extent, and i appreciate this guy at least admitting it up front in that statement, but think it’s funny nonetheless. i don’t find this surprising, just typically human. We decide what truth we want to believe in, be it the myth of religion, environmentalism, capitalism, or whatever and tend to shun that which contradicts it (if we’re lucky the truth whacks us in the head and can’t be ignored – changing our worldview in the process). i think most people live in ignorance their entire lives.
‘collapse’ has a great follow-up to yesterday’s article, worth the read:
http://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/2013/01/24/email-from-professor-julian-cribb/
Robin: Pollard is a good read. Thanks for the old link (i had forgotten about).
Guy: thanks for the link to that article. People don’t count nature for more than its use (okay ABuse) by humanity – to their detriment. The quote by Thoreau makes it clear that nature heals us without even trying and that segregating ourselves off from it is tantamount to suicide.
January 24th, 2013 at 6:01 am
Michele I am so sorry. My biggest fear is that one of my daughters will decide to start a family. I’m hoping in an awful sort of way that they’ll realize what a mistake it would be before they reach a time in their life where they are ready to start a family. Either way it’s awful.
Guy, that study made me want to scream!! The forest service is as corrupt as the FDA and the Federal Reserve. They have a revolving door with lumber companies just like other agencies have with big banks, big pharma, Monsanto, etc. One of the authors actually told me that he thinks “stress” is the reason people die with less trees, as opposed to a known toxic gas that is inexorably increasing in concentration! Thanks for the link, I put this comment at the Atlantic:
“…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 the 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 the are 50 or 150 years old. More on this “flawed” (coughs politely) study here: http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/2013/01/a-travesty-of-mockery-of-sham.html
January 24th, 2013 at 6:29 am
Tom I noted that as well (automatically disparaging opinions other than that which he accepts as ‘wrongheaded’), OTOH saying we will have endless energy from fossil fuels is wrongheaded. Saying that climate change is not human caused is wrongheaded. I don’t know if those were the opinions he was referring to but if they are he is right. There are some opinions that we can safely call wrongheaded. Like that the earth is Flat. And some that you can’t be sure about but strongly suspect are wrong. I haven’t read enough of his blog to know what he labels wrongheaded, but I did note that he has a donate button.
January 24th, 2013 at 6:55 am
@ Tom
Here is a video clip of ‘State Police’ at SH, the ones who appear to be speaking a foreign language.
http://www.bloomberg.com/video/connecticut-shooting-authorities-patrol-house-ECN4QOY2Qv~ti2muJ7OB~g.html
January 24th, 2013 at 7:09 am
@ Tom
Also came across this interesting incident that I had not heard of before, where a false flag event was used to manipulate public opinion.
To make the attack seem more convincing, the Germans brought in Franciszek Honiok, a German Silesian known for sympathizing with the Poles, who had been arrested the previous day by the Gestapo. Honiok was dressed to look like a saboteur; then killed by lethal injection, given gunshot wounds, and left dead at the scene, so that he appeared to have been killed while attacking the station. His corpse was subsequently presented as proof of the attack to the police and press…….American correspondents were summoned to the scene the next day but no neutral parties were allowed to investigate the incident in detail and the international public was skeptical of the German version of the incident
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleiwitz_incident
Imo, it is as yet too early to say for certain, but if the video from the state of the art security system that had just been installed never appears, and the entire building is soon to be demolished, without any further independent forensic investigation, as has been suggested will now happen, and all the outstanding questions remain unanswered, I think it would be safe to conclude that SH was an ‘unconventional operation’.
January 24th, 2013 at 7:26 am
From that wiki page, Hitler.. : ..told his generals, “I will provide a propagandistic casus belli. Its credibility doesn’t matter. The victor will not be asked whether he told the truth.”
Which I find interesting. You see, it really does not matter whether people are sceptical about what the media has told them about SH, or whether they think it is all lies. It’s part of a propaganda war. Just like “We know he’s got WMD’s” was an outright lie, that didn’t matter and didn’t make any difference to what followed.
If/when more SH incidents occur, they’ll provide the justification, in rhetorical, propagandistic, terms, for action of some kind. And after the deeds are done, who cares what the ‘truth’ was ? Nobody has the power to drag Bush and Blair and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and Powell, et al, in front of a War Crimes Tribunal, have they. Whoever ‘arranges’ the SH-type incidents knows that much, for sure.
January 24th, 2013 at 7:29 am
Thanks for your first-time comment in this space, Caelan MacIntyre. If you insist upon being complimentary, please keep ‘em coming.
January 24th, 2013 at 9:00 am
The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future by Naomi Oreskes & Erik M. Conway
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/DAED_a_00184
January 24th, 2013 at 9:50 am
Kathy: i was talking to a friend whose girlfriend wants to have kids (she’s a bit younger than him) whereas he decidedly doesn’t want any. He said he can’t even bring it up to her because she’s so optimistic and “looking toward the future”. He says she firmly believes that all will turn out well because she believes in God (the catholic version).
i sent him both Guy’s “We’re Done” essay and the collapse blogpost i linked to this morning. People who are just SO SURE that their religious convictions are the unvarnished truth of the world are in for a rude awakening in a few years. But of course that’s just my opinion and like the squirrel demands – i keep it to myself.
Gail: yeah, all our “watchdog” agencies have been infiltrated with people from the very industries they’re supposed to be regulating. This has been going on for a while.
Ulvfugl: have you seen this?
http://beforeitsnews.com/conspiracy-theories/2013/01/road-signs-marked-martial-law-in-effect-found-during-routine-drug-stop-in-houston-tx-video-2448004.html
It won’t effect you but i’m gettin’ a little nervous.
January 24th, 2013 at 10:22 am
Observations on Arctic ice:
http://eh2r.blogspot.ca/
snip:
Baffin Bay ice has particular features which ease the presence of cyclones over the entire Bay. It seems obvious that Arctic Ocean new ice morphology is doing exactly the same thing, but on a far larger scale, Baffin Lows are a repository of Cyclones, they die there because of Greenland. Recent cyclones on their way north dwarf Greenland a great deal more than the spin off lows which usually die over Baffin Bay, they have no quick place to expire but live a whole lot longer over the Arctic ocean, this ultimately changes the nature of long standing weather cycles going way back in time. At this stage of thinner ice, we are not experiencing the full effect of the change. But have some ideas of what will happen. Massive cyclones will keep the Arctic even warmer, they will linger longer bringing northwards all the heat they carry, instead of “bouncing” off cold anticyclonic air frontier and therefore keeping the mid-latitudes warmer. The interim view is a colder mid-latitude winter only in some spots, while the further warming of the Arctic.
January 24th, 2013 at 10:34 am
@ Tom
I think USA sees UK as a convenient air base, whatever happens over there has its effects here…
There are four groups categories of people emerge with events like Sandy Hook:
1- A sub-group of people who automatically assume that every shooting/terrorist attack is an “inside-job”. This sizable minority group will dogmatically remain entrenched in this position regardless of the evidence. The inevitability here is that they will cherry pick evidence and advocate whichever alternative theory their pied-piper puts forward regardless of the facts.
2 – There exists another sub-group who hold a healthy scepticism of government and media. There will be some crossover with group 1, but not much. The inevitability here is that many of these people will dilligently pour over the evidence with a fine tooth comb before reaching a conclusion which isn’t afraid to go against the grain.
3- Another sub-group would be those in the all-important majority. They generally accept the MSM as fact, are privately open to alternative theories but are conditioned to be fearful of the Orwellian perjorative of “conspiracy theorist”. Alternative blogs and news sites combined with the repetition of government/media lies have had a tremendous impact in nudging little-by-little this group towards group 2. I would expect this large group to be the primary targets of government disinformation campaigns.
4. The final group would be essentially the other side of the same coin with group 1. These zombies will accept everything the MSM and government proclaim as fact and “will dogmatically remain entrenched in this position regardless of the evidence.”
Groups 1 and 2 are a problem for the government. Group 3 must be prevented in merging with group 1 at all costs. This is why Obama’s former “informations Tsar” Cass Sunstein called for action against “conspiracy theories” in a 2008 paper he authored entitled “Conspiracy Theories”. He said:
http://theflowerthrowers.wordpress.com/2013/01/20/the-sandy-hoax-trap/
January 24th, 2013 at 10:35 am
Did you all see this? A momma right whale and her calf were spotted in Plymouth Harbor TWO AND A HALF MONTHS earlier than any have ever been seen before. (They normally calve near Florida and reach New England waters in April. These two were first spotted on Jan 12th.)
Whale sighting worries marine experts.
January 24th, 2013 at 10:42 am
States Considering Laws That Would Make it an Act of Terrorism to Report on Abuses at Factory Farms:
http://www.alternet.org/environment/states-considering-laws-would-make-it-act-terrorism-report-animal-cruelty-food-safety-or
January 24th, 2013 at 12:00 pm
Another distress call from the scientists at Arctic News:
This is potentially a United States and world food security emergency, and an Arctic methane feedback planetary emergency. The pace is outstripping the capacity of the international published climate modeling science to assess the risks. The climate science assessment process is unable to rapidly assess all the risks and the combined risk of all risk factors. …
We are on track for 6C by 2100. Even an all out emergency scale response would not see any reduction of atmospheric GHGs for many decades.
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2013/01/call-for-high-level-risk-assessment.html
January 24th, 2013 at 12:26 pm
wait, what? KERRY a climate hawk?! and, and . . pro renewables!!!?
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/issue/?mobile=nc
maybe now that it’s too late they’ll make a pretense of giving a shit.
January 24th, 2013 at 12:43 pm
@ulvfugl
Here is the abstract of the journal article from MIT press that you referenced above:
Science fiction writers construct an imaginary future; historians attempt to reconstruct the past. Ultimately, both are seeking to understand the present. In this essay, we blend the two genres to imagine a future historian looking back on a past that is our present and (possible) future. The occasion is the tercentenary of the end of Western culture (1540 – 2073); the dilemma being addressed is how we – the children of the Enlightenment – failed to act on robust information about climate change and knowledge of the damaging events that were about to unfold. Our historian concludes that a second Dark Age had fallen on Western civilization, in which denial and self-deception, rooted in an ideological fixation on “free” markets, disabled the world’s powerful nations in the face of tragedy. Moreover, the scientists who best understood the problem were hamstrung by their own cultural practices, which demanded an excessively stringent standard for accepting claims of any kind – even those involving imminent threats. Here, our future historian, living in the Second People’s Republic of China, recounts the events of the Period of the Penumbra (1988 – 2073) that led to the Great Collapse and Mass Migration (2074)
Interestingly, these two professors — who are seemingly well informed about the planetary crisis — wrote an article on the collapse of civilization, as if that represented the worst case scenario, when we are clearly facing species level extinction. I’m curious as to whether they too are in denial of NTE, or if they restricted their discussion to collapse because they could not otherwise get the article published?
January 24th, 2013 at 12:57 pm
http://www.alternet.org/gender/crazy-republican-lawmaker-wants-jail-rape-victims-ending-pregnancies?akid=9970.76043.6SSN0I&rd=1&src=newsletter782577&t=3
Crazy — Republican Lawmaker Wants to Jail Rape Victims for Ending Pregnancies
A New Mexico lawmaker has proposed that the fetus is evidence and terminating it could cost women three years in jail.
Apparently it took a female Republican to come up with the most vicious way to punish women who had the audacity to get themselves raped.
Wednesday, state representative Cathrynn Brown of New Mexico introduced a bill whose sheer audacity makes Todd Akins look as harmless as an ill-informed teenager groping his way through puberty.
The proposed legislation, House Bill 206, would make it illegal for a woman to have an abortion after being raped because the fetus is evidence of the crime. A women who does choose to have an abortion would be charged with the third-degree felony of “tampering with evidence,” which carries up to a three year prison sentence in New Mexico.
More at the link above.
January 24th, 2013 at 1:00 pm
michele – been thinking about you all day and feeling your sadness. Any chance your son might get a vasectomy to prevent further such incidents? Keep trying to think of something helpful to say and nothing comes…..don’t know if it is any help but I understand your feelings entirely.
January 24th, 2013 at 1:28 pm
Depressive, I think the key point those two are trying to impart is this:
“Moreover, the scientists who best understood the problem were hamstrung by their own cultural practices, which demanded an excessively stringent standard for accepting claims of any kind – even those involving imminent threats.”
This is a huge problem, which I’m working on a post about, considering how Gavin Schmidt hedged about the connection between Arctic melting and superstorm Sandy (more research needed):
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/earth/climate-change-sandy.html
…and of course the way scientists refuse to connect ozone to global forest decline (grrrr…)
You had a great comment further up about John Gray, can I quote you?
thanks,
Gail
January 24th, 2013 at 1:30 pm
remind me to stay out of hospital:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/jan/23/antibiotic-resistant-diseases-apocalyptic-threat
Britain’s most senior medical adviser has warned MPs that the rise in drug-resistant diseases could trigger a national emergency comparable to a catastrophic terrorist attack, pandemic flu or major coastal flooding.
Dame Sally Davies, the chief medical officer, said the threat from infections that are resistant to frontline antibiotics was so serious that the issue should be added to the government’s national risk register of civil emergencies.
She described what she called an “apocalyptic scenario” where people going for simple operations in 20 years’ time die of routine infections “because we have run out of antibiotics”.
The register was established in 2008 to advise the public and businesses on national emergencies that Britain could face in the next five years. The highest priority risks on the latest register include a deadly flu outbreak, catastrophic terrorist attacks, and major flooding on the scale of 1953, the last occasion on which a national emergency was declared in the UK.
Speaking to MPs on the Commons science and technology committee, Davies said she would ask the Cabinet Office to add antibiotic resistance to the national risk register in the light of an annual report on infectious disease she will publish in March.
Though this is a British article, my son assures me it’s just as bad here.
January 24th, 2013 at 1:39 pm
Gail, thanks for your response.
By all means, you can quote my meager postings anytime you like.
January 24th, 2013 at 1:43 pm
please Kathy,
do not feel sorry for me.
this is all nothing compare to NTE.
(BtD: is there something to do with those 2 lines)
I just brought it up to answer gail’s «can the mothers do something».
We all have our personal circumstances and each life deserves a blog. but it is impossible. thank you very much for your compassion and don’t worry for me.
January 24th, 2013 at 2:27 pm
Michele, to feel compassion for another is perhaps the only human trait that can make up for all the evil.
Fukushima Diary posted this today – sometimes something will come along and break through the walls we keep up so we can make it through each day. But then I also pull myself together and remember that extinction will mean that no one ever dies of radiation poisoning after it is over.
Futabamachi mayor, “Like in Auschwitz camp, our DNA is massacred in Fukushima prefecture just like guinea pigs”
Posted by Mochizuki on January 24th, 2013
Futabamachi town mayor, Idogawwa has been purged to oppose accepting interim storage facility of contaminated soil produced from decontamination. [Link 1] Since he was seriously exposed in 311, he has been having the serious health symptoms. (cf, Futaba town mayor “Fukushima medical university stops us from having exposure test.” [Link 2])
On 1/20/2013, he was hospitalized for emergency [Link 3], and on 1/23/2013, he announced to resign.
On the temporary website of the town, he commented like this below,
“Surrender” is for us not to do anything for the current situation.
Not to surrender, we mustn’t forget about these things.
- Tepco and the government stated any nuclear accident will never happen.
- The accident wasn’t caused by us.
- They made us exposed to radiation.
- We are going to be forced to clean up the radiation.
- We have to go back to our town of 20mSv/y.
We learnt a lot from this accident. We did learn our country underestimates human lives. ・・・
Shirakawa city of Fukushima has Auschwitz camp museum. It’s famous that the Nazis massacred Jewish with poisonous gas. Ironically enough, in Fukushima prefecture, our DNA is also massacred by radiation. There is no other option to guarantee our health than letting us evacuate as soon as possible. ・・・
There is not enough study to prove the safety standard about artificial radionuclide. If they say there is no effect on our health in 20mSv/y, they should live there with their own family to prove that is safe. ・・・
We are treated like guinea pig. It’s the same as a foreign tyrant launches missiles to us.
http://fukushima-diary.com/2013/01/futabamachi-mayor-like-in-auschwitz-camp-our-dna-is-massacred-in-fukushima-prefecture-just-like-guinea-pigs/
January 24th, 2013 at 3:03 pm
michele/montreal says:
do not feel sorry for me.
this is all nothing compare to NTE.
I’m fucked up temporarily,
But please don’t feel sorry for me:
My life has no cures,
Pretty much just like yours,
And it’s nothing like NTE.
January 24th, 2013 at 3:47 pm
Kathy C says: Michele, to feel compassion for another is perhaps the only human trait that can make up for all the evil.
Compassion may as from a cup pour,
But looking at this closeup or
From farther away,
Things would still be O.K.
With no evil to have to make up for.
January 24th, 2013 at 4:10 pm
I hope, when I die, I die quick:
Don’t want to be lying ‘round sick;
And for doom, just the same:
A slow crash would be lame—
Avoiding the pain, that’s the trick.
January 24th, 2013 at 4:50 pm
Well this certainly challenges the NBL position concerning species extinction. What’s with the contradition?
Extinction rates not that bad
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130124150806.htm
January 24th, 2013 at 5:05 pm
Oh, Bailey, I can answer that!!!
TOTAL BULLSHIT.
January 24th, 2013 at 5:15 pm
Yeah Gail, that one blew me away. I have been in the same general area for 57 years, and I can mention several species of organisms which I no longer see – though they may not be extinct globally in the strictest sense.
January 24th, 2013 at 5:19 pm
Hallelujah! Well this is a couple decades too late..
Scientists warn of sperm count crisis
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/scientists-warn-of-sperm-count-crisis-8382449.html
January 24th, 2013 at 5:58 pm
Other limericks don’t really compare
To this I will gladly swear
BtD bard of doom
Though others may fume
Has a talent most grand and most rare
January 24th, 2013 at 6:37 pm
@Bailey and Gail: My partner brought home a laundry basket full of VHS home movies from the 80′s and 90′s recently (he is only 25) and we’ve been marveling at the changes we’re noticing while watching them. There are scenes taped at a local beach that we like to go to in the summer and in them the kids are boring their parents with the incessant show and tell of endless amounts of horseshoe crabs, the beach is full of piping plovers and terns and lots more wildlife. None of that stuff is left. Last summer I saw one seagull and a couple of butterflies. And Gail-the trees! There is an autumnal visit to a Christmas tree farm in Western Maine on one of the tapes and I had to stop watching-the changing baseline punched me. The trees for sale were nice, much nicer than at the Christmas tree farm I did some work on a couple of years ago, but the foliage in the background was so breathtakingly beautiful and something I have not seen the likes of in years. There is also footage of sledding at Thanksgiving, something kids used to be able to do here without fail until probably the late 90′s, and so much more background summertime wildlife noise (frogs, owls, insects, etc.) than I hear now. Almost deafening in comparison.
January 24th, 2013 at 7:07 pm
With thanks to Emily Stewart for her essay, the latest guest essay was written by Geoffrey Chia. It’s here.
January 24th, 2013 at 7:23 pm
Aw shucks, Kathy.
I assure you that I am no poet,
Not even one who doesn’t know it;
My hobby’s distraction
Till doom gets more traction,
By which time I ought to outgrow it.
January 24th, 2013 at 8:26 pm
btd, i was going to post this comment to your blog, but when it asked to create a blogger profile, i said fuck it, i’ll just post it on nbl and trust u’ll see it. better to post here anyways, where others will read it, including kathy c, who can remind us both the name of that favorite folk musician of hers, ah, i think i just remembered his name: david roviks. yep, that’s it. anyway, here’s my comment:
fuck, i lost it. copied something over it, don’t know how to retrieve it. anyway, here’s the gyst of it: i loved the lyrical poetry u submitted above titled: ‘nothing don’t matter no more’ or something like that. submitted about 36 hours before this one, yesterday morn. i think u or maybe kathy ought to send roviks these lyrics, see if he might be amenable to setting them to music, making a song, giving u credit as lyricist. who knows, might lead to future collaborative efforts as well. a means to reach a wider audience, more recognition and appreciation for your considerable gift, btd. imo, of course!
January 24th, 2013 at 8:27 pm
Amanda, I was born and raised on Amelia Island Fl which was a paradise of live oaks, magnolias, maples, hickories, palms, salt water marshes, rivers, fireflies everywhere, so many fish in the ocean one could catch enough for a large fish fry right off the beach etc. One could take a chicken neck to the jetties and easily catch a bucket of crabs. Just north is Cumberland Island Ga, and south was little and Big Talbot Islands. Now except for parts of Cumberland and Talbot parks, it’s all completely ruined and developed, and the amount of fish one catches off the beach (or in a boat) is a total joke – not worth buying a license.
We used to hear whipper wills at night, see skunks on the road, flocks of ducks and geese that would fill the sky migrating along the coast. Just the changes in the amount of birds, frogs, snakes, toads, bobcats, etc is frightening. All of that gone in a few decades. When you have grown up in such a wild paradise and seen it ruined, it is quadruple the sickening effect of one who has not seen such. Seeing my paradise ruined is what first made such a huge impact on my ‘enviro’ psyche starting 20 years ago.
January 24th, 2013 at 8:30 pm
..I have an incurable case of revulsion to Homo Parasiticus.
January 24th, 2013 at 9:25 pm
tvt, thanks, although I don’t think I’m ready for prime time yet.
January 25th, 2013 at 9:02 am
Amanda, and Bailey, thanks for your comments. It is good to know I am not the only one who is grieving. Most people I know are completely unaware that anything has changed!
January 25th, 2013 at 9:43 pm
Bailey, your beautiful reflections on Amelia Island evoked a memory of the movie Soylent Green. Our destructiveness is unbelievably tragic … and most people remain completely oblivious to it. Makes it hard to have much compassion for the large brained chimps.
I spent a weekend on the island about 2 years ago and mainly remember the nuclear power plant that now sits near it.