by Dan Allen, a high school Chemistry teacher in New Jersey, as well as a concerned father, organic farmer, and community garden organizer.
“The spent fuel stored in pools holds between 5 and 10 times more long-lived radioactivity than the reactor cores themselves hold. Because they were intended to be temporary, the pools do not have the same ‘defense in depth’ features that the NRC requires of reactors.” — Robert Alvarez (2012, http://www.ips-dc.org/reports/improving_spent-fuel_storage_at_nuclear_reactors)
“[T]he possibility of a terrorist attack…is speculative and simply too far removed from the natural or expected consequences of agency action…” — The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (2002) (quoted in http://www.princeton.edu/sgs/publications/sgs/pdf/11_1Alvarez.pdf)
“If the water were to drain entirely from a spent fuel pool, it could trigger a catastrophic radioactive fire that would spew toxins and render hundreds of thousands of square miles uninhabitable.” — Robert Alvarez (2011, http://www.ips-dc.org/reports/spent_nuclear_fuel_pools_in_the_us_reducing_the_deadly_risks_of_storage)
Summary: (grim satire) Ever consider destroying the US? This essay offers a quick, easy way to render much of the nation uninhabitable. (Spoiler alert: Just drain the cooling water from the lightly-secured, self-igniting spent-fuel pools of the nation’s 23 Fukushima-type nuclear reactors!) Includes reactor diagrams and maps to your conveniently-located targets!
References:
• Robert Alvarez (2012) “Improving Spent-Fuel Storage at Nuclear Reactors”, http://www.ips-dc.org/reports/improving_spent-fuel_storage_at_nuclear_reactors
• Robert Alvarez (2011) “Spent Nuclear Fuel Pools in the US: Reducing the Deadly Risks of Storage”, http://www.ips-dc.org/reports/spent_nuclear_fuel_pools_in_the_us_reducing_the_deadly_risks_of_storage
• Robert Alvarez (2003) “Reducing the Hazards from Stored Spent Power-Reactor Fuel in the United States”, http://www.princeton.edu/sgs/publications/sgs/pdf/11_1Alvarez.pdf
• Arnie Gunderson (2012) “Can Spent Fuel Pools Catch Fire?” (video) http://www.fairewinds.com/content/can-spent-fuel-pools-catch-fire
• Arnie Gunderson (2012) “More Lessons from Fukushima Daiichi” (video), http://www.fairewinds.com/content/more-lessons-fukushima-daiichi-accident-containment-failures-and-loss-ultimate-heat-sink
• Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists report (2003), “The NRC’s Dirty Little Secret: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is still unwilling to respond to serious security problems.”, http://www.thebulletin.org/files/NRCsDirtyLittleSecretHirschLockbaumLymanMay2003.pdf
• Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) (2011) “Hazards of Boiling Water Reactors in the United States”, http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/bwrfact.htm
• National Resources Defense Council’s interactive fallout map: http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/fallout/
• General nuclear info and activism: http://www.nirs.org/, http://www.fairewinds.com/, http://www.beyondnuclear.org/
WHEREFORE DESTRUCTION?
OK, so you’ve opened this ‘destroy the US’ link, huh? … Bold move.
But since you’ve come this far, I’m assuming two things about you: (1) You don’t mind being on an FBI watch list, and (2) you’re at least curious as to how one might ‘quickly and rapidly’ destroy a huge, armed-to-the-teeth industrial nation. Heck, maybe you’re even toying with the idea.
But before we get to the ‘how’, I want to ask you to think briefly about the ‘why’ and ‘what’ of your incipient plans of destruction. Namely, I’d just like you to clarify (if only for yourself) some of the reasons you might be considering such a bold project, as well as just what you’ll be destroying should you succeed.
We wouldn’t want to stumble forward blindly here, now would we?
As for your reasons, well, I suppose we could take our pick, huh? Maybe you object to the various US military and ‘nation building’ escapades in certain foreign countries you hold dear. Or maybe you object to what you perceive as unfair economic arm-twisting and ‘resource grabs’ in various smaller republics of your liking. Or maybe you simply wish to blunt or nullify some economic or military competition from the US in favor of your more preferred foreign governments or corporations. Or maybe you’re just nuts.
Hey, lots of reasons!
… And just what will you be destroying with this plan should this plan be successful? Wow, lots of stuff! It’s a really big country with a lot of people, and you could really polish off a huge chunk of it if you follow the directions here. And the cool part is that it’s not just the people here and now that you could destroy — no, it’d be messed up for centuries. And, of course, there are a lot of other living things here too, and I bet a good bit of them would get trashed as well. Bonus points!
And as you’ll see, it’s actually really easy to do!
BUT C’MON, ISN’T SLOW DESTRUCTION ENOUGH?
OK, so I’m glad we got the ‘why’ and ‘what’ parts of your destruction plans straight. It’s important to think things through at least a little bit — especially when one’s dealing with the destruction of entire countries.
But before we get to the ‘how’ and maybe actually implement your quick and easy plan of rapid destruction, you should probably be aware that the US is, in fact, already engineering its own destruction on several fronts. Granted, it’s occurring in a perhaps overly drawn-out manner at the moment — but, wow, it sure seems to be gaining momentum!
And how, you say? Did someone mention ‘unlivable climate’ or ‘nation-sized radiation exclusion zone’? Ha ha ha. That’s right, the US is well on its way to being a nation of uninhabitable, radioactive sand dunes, acidified-sea to shining acidified-sea. A combination of (1) accelerating climate change (driven by record global CO2 emissions and mounting exponential positive feedbacks from the earth system) and (2) deteriorating nuclear plant stability (due to aging plant infrastructure, dangerously crowded on-plant stockpiling of spent-fuel, climate destabilization, increased profit-driven short-cutting of already-insufficient safety regulations, and an emerging economic collapse) are daily increasing the odds of uninhabitability even a few decades hence.
Now, that’s a big claim, so if you’d like to research this a bit, check out the links in this essay: http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2012-12-10/extirpation-nation-how-much-of-the-us-will-be-habitable-in-50-years.
The problem, of course, is that this self-immolation/irradiation may take decades. And for a Type-A personality like yourself, that’s way too long! You want the USA destroyed … and you want it now!!
Ha ha ha! But hold on there, tiger. First we have a wee bit of research to do…
PICKING THE RIGHT TARGET
Seeing as you might get just one shot at this, you’ll want to make sure you do it right. And that means picking the right targets. And that’s a tall order, since the requirements are a bit daunting. The targets must be: (1) easily accessible, (2) lightly guarded, and (3) capable of wreaking great destruction with only minimal prodding on your part. In other words, we need soft targets that will do most of the dirty destructive work for us.
Luckily, the US has many such targets: the twenty-three Mark I Boiling Water Nuclear Reactors – known more commonly as “the kind that blew up in Fukushima.” See Figure 1 (below) for what they look like on the inside before they blow up. (Google the gory pictures of the Fukushima reactors to see what these beauties look like after they blow up. Spoiler alert: Sort of more opened-up, crumpled, twisted, and smoking.)
Figure 1. The Mark 1 Boiling Water Nuclear Reactor. There are 23 of these in the US. Of interest here is the actively-cooled spent-fuel pool, located on the 4th floor, directly under the large orange crane. In the US, these pools contain 5 to 10 times the radioactive cesium present in the core itself (the elongated red vessel in the middle). Should the (sometimes steel-lined) five-foot thick cement walls of these spent-fuel pools be breached and the cooling water drain, the ensuing self-igniting fire would release enough radiation to render hundreds of square miles uninhabitable. (Source: http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/teachers/03.pdf)
Now let’s just quickly outline some of the key reasons the Mark I reactors make ideal targets for quickly destroying the United States:
1. There are lots of them.. The US has 23 Mark I reactors and 6 more of the similarly-designed Mark II models. That’s a good 31 country-destroyin’ dirty bombs! And if each can render hundreds of square miles uninhabitable (as Brookhaven National Laboratory warns), well… that’ll do! See the map below for their names and locations.
Figure 2. Locations of the 23 Mark I Nuclear Reactors in the US. Note their convenient placement near major population centers. Also note that, like the identical Fukushima Mark I reactors, several locations feature multiple plants. Double and triple the fun! See www.mapquest.com for convenient driving directions.
2. They’re accessible & lightly guarded. These potential dirty bombs aren’t buried deep within heavily-secured military bases, hidden in the middle of vast scorching deserts, concealed deep within mountains, or perched high-up on inaccessible mesas. Nope, they’re located right where millions of people live — and on accessible, recreational bodies of water, no less! If boats can pull right up close to them in full daylight (see Figure 3 below), I‘m pretty sure you could figure something out.
Figure 3: Can you say ‘soft-target’? A protest boat sailing delightfully close to the Indian Point, NY nuclear reactor. Source: http://www.treehugger.com/culture/anti-nuclear-protest-uses-bikes-boats-and-a-mock-evacuation-of-nyc-photos.html
And to top it off, the security is, ahem, not exactly of Navy Seal caliber. As Helen Caldicott writes, “The security guards at nuclear power plants complain of low morale, inadequate training, exhaustion from excessive overtime, and poor pay. They are often expected to work seventy-two hours a week, and not infrequently they go to sleep on the job. They state that they would not be prepared to die to save the reactor, considering their poor compensation and the treatment they routinely receive from management.” (from Nuclear Power is Not the Answer, 2006; Paraphrased from this 2003 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists report: http://www.thebulletin.org/files/NRCsDirtyLittleSecretHirschLockbaumLymanMay2003.pdf)
In other words, these reactors put the ‘soft’ in ‘soft target.’ Pillow soft. Marshmallow soft. Nuclear reactor soft.
3. They’re easily compromised, self-igniting and incredibly potent. All you need to do is crack the 5-foot thick (sometimes steel-lined) concrete floor of the spent fuel pool to drain the cooling water (See plant diagram in Figure 1). Without the cooling water, the now-unshielded and un-cooled spent-fuel rods will heat up rather quickly, which both (1) makes it impossible to get anywhere near the radiation-spewing spent fuel rods to repair the damage, and (2) results in the ignition of their zirconium alloy coating. (See Alvarez and Gunderson references above). The ensuing firefighter-inaccessible fire will volatilize most of the radioactive cesium and render a large swath of land uninhabitable for centuries.
… Easy-peasy!
A FEW EXTRA DETAILS …
Now, I realize I glossed over a few details in the last little section there, so let me flesh it out a little for you – just so you know I’m not pullin’ yer leg.
Like how exactly do we drain this fuel pool? You can do this ‘accidentally’ by simply picking up and dropping (via that orange crane in Figure 1) one of the very massive spent-fuel racks into the bottom of the pool. You can also do it ‘purposely’ with a well-placed, modestly-sized explosion. Got an airplane? Got an anti-tank missile? Got some plastic explosive and access to the plant as an ‘employee’? That’ll do! Note that those egghead GE designers from the 1960s are really helping us out here, as these spent-fuel pools are perched conveniently on the 4th floor (?!) and roofed by “buildings no more secure than car dealerships.” (Alvarez, 2011)
A quick look at the busted-open version of a Mark I reactor (a la Fukushima) shows the tin-can nature of the spent-fuel pool covering. (See Figure 4, below.)
Figure 4: Destroyer-of-worlds … in a can! The Mark I reactor cores have some hefty (although still-insufficient) armor. The even-more-dangerous spent fuel pools do not. Indeed, Mark I spent fuel storage pools are “housed in building no more secure than car dealerships.” (Alvarez, 2011). Photo source: http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/21/japan.nuclear.reactors/index.html
And why would the rods heat up outside the core and become inaccessible once the cooling water drained? Well, the spent-fuel elements you get after fission of the uranium fuel are not happy campers. They continue to ‘self-destruct’ for years after removal from the core, spitting out both heat and nasty radiation particles in the process. Hence the need for the radiation-shielding/heat-dispersing cooling pool. Lowering of the water level in the spent fuel pool causes problems on several fronts:
(1) First, since the water shields plant workers from these nasty radiation particles, absence of the water makes it impossible for workers to access the compromised fuel pool to repair them. Alvarez writes, “Once the pool water level is below the top of the fuel … lethal doses [of gamma radiation in the reactor building, even out of direct sight of the pool] would be incurred within about an hour. Given such dose rates, the NRC staff assumed that further ad hoc interventions would not be possible.” Simply put, these deadly pools become inaccessible to repair if sufficiently compromised – at the exact time when only fixing them can avert a widespread, catastrophic release of radiation. (An ironic slow-clapping for the nuclear industry would be appropriate at this point.)
(2) Secondly, decay heat from the spent-fuel will boil off any remaining water and ignite their thin zirconium-alloy covering in air. The mounting temperatures from the decay heat and the zirconium fire will then liberate the deadly radioactive cesium within the rods. Alvarez writes, “Particularly worrisome are the large amounts of cesium-137 in spent-fuel pools, because nearly all of this dangerous isotope would be released into the environment in a fire, according to the NRC.” (Alvarez, 2012)
Figure 5: Our hero, the overloaded spent fuel pool. If it could talk, it would surely say this: “Die, you motherf*%#ers!”
It’s also important to note the huge quantities and densities of spent fuel currently being stored in these spent fuel pools. Due to absence of any suitable long-term place to put the stuff (and an inexplicable refusal to transfer it short-term to dry-cask storage), reactors have simply stockpiled spent fuel in these tenuous pools for the past fifty years – at ever-increasing densities.
In true nuclear-industry style, the pools were designed for only very temporary storage of very little, widely-spaced spent fuel — but are now used as permanent repositories for very large amounts of densely-packed spent fuel. In fact, the way-over-specs density of the spent fuel in these pools is one of the contributing factors to their overheating: convective cooling of the dry rods becomes utterly ineffective when they’re packed so tightly. And at this point there are from 5 to 10 times as much cesium stockpiled in the spent fuel pools as in the reactor cores themselves. Yowza!
So here’s an analogy for you: If these spent fuel pools were guns, they’d be fully loaded semi-automatics. Hair triggers. Safeties off. Pointed right at the US public.
… Step right up.
And as for spreading this cesium around, well, that’s what they make wind for! Alvarez quotes a 2004 National Academy of Science report to Congress: “A loss-of-pool-coolant event resulting from damage or collapse of the pool could have severe consequences. … [A] terrorist attack that partially or completely drained a spent fuel pool could lead to a propagating zirconium cladding fire and release large quantities of radioactive materials to the environment. … Such fires would create thermal plumes that could potentially transport radioactive aerosols hundreds of miles downwind under appropriate atmospheric conditions.”
Here’s a cute interactive fallout map from the Natural Resources Defense Council: http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/fallout/. Oh, the possibilities!!
YOU WANNA HEAR SOMETHING FUNNY?
So there, I’ve laid it all out for you. … You’re welcome.
But I know, I know — Instead of thanking me, you’re thinking, “Great! Now that you just clued them into the soft targets we can hit to destroy the US, they’ll do something to fix it — they’ll beef up security; or better yet, they’ll move the spent-fuel to dry cask storage and shut down the reactors, like Germany is doing.”
But here’s the funny part: They won’t.
They already know these spent-fuel pools are slam-dunk terrorist targets. They already know they’re ticking time bombs, at the fickle mercy of mounting climate destabilization and economic collapse. They already know they can destroy the nation. And they even know that you know.
… And they don’t care.
That’s right, they don’t care. You see, the plant owners and operators, the nuclear intelligensia, the (cough) ‘watchdog’ Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and our elected (cough) ‘leaders’ have known for decades that the pools are over-loaded, lacking even rudimentary safety controls, and ridiculously vulnerable to plant accident natural disaster, and terrorist attacks. They’ve been warned by scores of engineers, stacks of peer-reviewed reports, decades of protesters, and their own repressed consciences.
And still they do nothing. They just sit and watch year after year as the fragile pools get crammed ever denser with combustible, ultra-toxic spent-fuel. As they cycle endlessly between industry and regulatory positions. As they schmooze each other at meetings. As they collect their ample paychecks. As they numb their consciences with ludicrous smoke-and-mirrors statistical safety analyses. As they offer endless prayer-like reaffirmations to each other in the form of meaningless charts and numbers vomited up into the coffee-infused air of padded conference rooms.
While they do nothing.
Nothing at all.
… So me clueing you into these nice delectable soft targets won’t prompt them to make these deadly targets any less soft.
Chernobyl didn’t.
9/11 didn’t.
Warnings from Robert Alvarez, Helen Caldicott, Arnie Gunderson, David Lochbaum, and scores of physicians, nuclear engineers, and concerned citizens didn’t.
Fukushima didn’t.
The brimming basketful of nuclear plant near-misses in the past few years didn’t.
And this essay won’t.
So you can proceed with your wicked plans just as if they were blissfully unaware of the huge dirty bombs they tend.
Yea, you can sail, drive, walk, or fly right up to one of these things tomorrow and blast away.
And you know what? They probably won’t even blink an eye.
Nope. Before the first hot particle reaches the first toddler’s mouth, they’ll just shift into economic and public relations damage control mode.
They’ll do the TEPCO shuffle. The Chernobyl two-step.
Even as the plumes of death rise from reactors all over the country.
Even as the cesium worms its way into our children’s heart tissue.
Even as our children die.
Even as our tumors grow.
They will still admit no wrong.
And the bastards will deny, deny, deny, deny, deny, deny, and fucking deny.
And they will actively conceal the ongoing apocalypse.
And they will blame everyone else but themselves.
And we, the public, will wring our hands.
And we will duct-tape our windows.
And we will watch all the action on our televisions.
And we will cower in dumb silence, just as we did before.
And we will bury our dead.
And we will stream into the refugee camps.
And we will nurture the tumors growing within us.
And we will wonder how it ever could have happened.
And we will even deny to ourselves that we or anybody ever could have conceived of such a tragedy.
And we will forget that it all could have been prevented.
So easily prevented!
And so we will curse our bad luck.
And we will forget that we did nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Not. One. Damn. Thing.
As we wasted chance after chance after chance to raise our voices.
As the spent-fuel time bombs ticked down to zero.
Until … surprise! Oh my! What horrible, horrible bad luck we do have!!
… So there it is.
We’ve made our toxic bed, and at some point either some ‘terrorist’ or mega-storm or extended power outage or armed conflict or simply the inevitable ravages of entropy is going to step in and require that we sleep in it.
So do what you will.
Because if you succeed — if we continue to fail in our basic biological charge to protect our children — it is because we deserved it.
… God, what a horrible thing to say!
But it will be true.
By our outrageous silence,
by our mute tolerance of suicidal greed,
by our inexcusable inaction in the face of a reckless and readily-preventable danger,
we will have deserved it.
_________________
If anybody is willing and able to shoulder the burden of creating and moderating a forum, I’d appreciate the effort. I am not interested, and I don’t have the time, but I’ll work with somebody who will take on the lion’s share of the task.
February 9th, 2013 at 9:04 am
Hey Guy. Thanks for putting this up. You’re one of the few out there who has the guts to say the Emporer has no…well…to say that he’s actually trying to kill us. And succeeding.
Just a pre-emptive justification for this post: What if you find a loaded semi-automatic on a playground bench, safety off? Do you walk on by and hope nobdy finds it? Or do you point it out?
February 9th, 2013 at 9:26 am
If anybody is willing and able to shoulder the burden of creating and moderating a forum, I’d appreciate the effort. I am not interested, and I don’t have the time, but I’ll work with somebody who will take on the lion’s share of the task.
February 9th, 2013 at 9:44 am
The money spent on securing used fuel rods is better spent on Drones and resource wars, don’t ya know. The trillions in “Defense Department” boondoggles defends corporate profit margins.
There are no ‘profits’ in defending spent fuel rods, except for the disaster capital shock doctrine ‘cleanup’ efforts after the fact.
The nation-state does not exist anymore, just Corporatist transnational entities. It’s so far beyond ‘national’ control much less ‘local’ regulations.
An economic collapse will have zero funds available for dealing with nuclear pollution. Food and heat and shelter won’t even be covered.
February 9th, 2013 at 9:45 am
Wow, this is quite the essay!
None of the links are lit/working, btw.
I notice Fermi is a Mark 1. TPTB wanted to build a Fermi II in Midland MI decades ago, back when protest was legal. Many of us walked picket lines in protest, and it went down in flames. Good times.
If we don’t hear from Guy or dan allen again, we’ll know why.
February 9th, 2013 at 9:52 am
I’ve always admired teachers and their moxie. However I’m not as interested in “soft targets” as I am with trying to grow greens in the winter…or at least until nuclear winter sets in:(
February 9th, 2013 at 10:49 am
Links appear to be repaired.
Connection re-established.
Film at 11, music at about 1:20.
RIP Marmaduke, et al.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgb699p49Eg
February 9th, 2013 at 11:10 am
Interesting article Dan,
When I got several paragraphs in I was thinking ‘This is tongue in cheek satire hoping to draw attention to a problem that some of us have worried about for many years now’ However, after finishing reading I now see that you are venting (as well any sane person would)in frustration. Greg Levine also addresses nuclear issues at his blog http://capitoilette.com and folk might also find his take on nuclear to be accurate.
After almost going crazy when I became aware of the impending catastrophe that Guy talks about these days, I find that a curious “detached calm” has replaced my fears and I now look at the world through different eyes. What those eyes tell me now is that humanity has truly run it’s course and due to our collective idiocy we will be checking out soon.
I have a few chickens and tended to them just before reading today’s offering here at NBL and ironically the thought crossed my mind, as I came back to the house, that when the truth of our situation can no longer be denied (even by the Lord Moncktons of the world) that governments might use the “nuclear option” to avoid the worst of the pain that we will be subject to.
So rave on Dan and know that you are not alone and that your courage to flip off the PTB is admired by at least a few of us. You too Guy..
Regards,
Edward Kerr
February 9th, 2013 at 11:15 am
In a recent article at Counterpunch, Morris Berman analyzes the crisis of meaning in the modern world, specifically Amerika:
And what is the core of the problem? Basically, that the technical order is meaningless; that the American Way of Life finally has no moral center. Indeed, it is not clear that it ever did. In Freedom Just Around the Corner, historian Walter McDougall characterizes the United States as a “nation of hustlers,” going back to its earliest days. What began as trade and opportunism finally issued out into a full-blown crisis of meaning, and it is this that now constitutes the crisis of late capitalism.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/02/08/the-moral-order/
The so called “problem” is not just that the technical order is meaningless. Once homo sapiens [sic] broke out of the environmental constraints that bind all other species and began to manipulate the environment in new, more radical ways than hunter gatherers we launched a ten thousand year search for meaning, not just any meaning, but a meaning that would make us whole, that would protect us from the inherent neuroses of life. In the process, we invented civilization after civilization, each with its own mythological universe justifying why the powerful were powerful, why everyone else was subservient and why the arrangement was good. The scientific revolution and the technological age, over time, deconstructed the traditional mythologies which posited a realm of the gods, “as above, so below,” and so forth and left us with just the here and now, a sheer Nothing, a hole which must be filled to avoid a psychic disintegration, because we cannot endure the possibility that existence is groundless, that it has no inherent meaning or purpose, that suffering and pain are just suffering and pain, that there is no divine accountant who will redeem all the anguish that permeates life. Since few are intellectually, spiritually and emotionally equipped to even peripherally sense the fissure at the heart of Being, a fissure which implies that the universe is itself incomplete and inconsistent, lacking a telos, the privileged members of developed countries (i.e. the well fed) have drowned themselves in onanistic oceans of junk consumption and infantile fantasies, from Evangelical Christianity to neoliberalism, to avoid falling into the existential black whole of actual self awareness.
We now find ourselves sitting in the wasteland (the direct consequence of our industrialization binge) surrounded by the debris of the biosphere and facing NTE. The Ted Kaczynski pretense is just another form of negotiating with reality. It’s a manifestation of the control fetish that we can’t seem to shake. We are threatened by fact that Amerika is going to collapse from the structural defects of an unsustainable system. The collapse will not be on our terms, we are not going to control the horror movie that will ensue. IT will kill us and everyone we love, we will not kill IT.
February 9th, 2013 at 11:23 am
Get Together – Jesse Colin Young – No Nukes 1979
February 9th, 2013 at 11:47 am
“…we will cower in dumb silence” about sums up the response of most people, so thank you science teacher for not doing that, in a very engaging and informative and provocative essay.
Bravo, depressive! Ever more lucid. I am thinking lately that people as a species HATE nature. We hate it because we are separate from it, we can’t control it anymore than we can prevent our own individual deaths – although we’d very much like to, and often pretend we can. So we have been at war with nature, we are trying to kill it.
I was talking to my dad recently about the myth of tribal sustainability and the romanticization of a perceived connection between primitive people and nature. It seems so anthropocentric to imbue a “spirit” into an animal and presumtuous to thank it for “giving” it’s life so you can kill and eat it! My dad then recalled traveling across country many years ago and stopping somewhere in Nebraska or wherever, at a place where the Indians had rounded up herds of bison, and sent them into a panicked stampede over a cliff. Of course, he said, many more fell than could be used or eaten at once, and so there is a mountain of old bones at the bottom of the cliff.
February 9th, 2013 at 11:52 am
Good essay Dan! i live close enough to Limerick (in PA) that i can see the clouds of vapor as they come off the cooling towers in the distance on my way to class. It’s really scary stuff! People brought this up at the pre-construction meetings – that there isn’t any place to put the “spent” fuel – and were pooh-poohed with “experts” talking about how a permanent place or, better yet, facility to make this stuff into non-lethal glass was “on the drawing board”/”would be up and running before this place was 2 yrs old.” Long since, of course, they’re following the capitalist game plan to the letter, safety, health and regulation be damned.
Thanks.
February 9th, 2013 at 11:58 am
Here is an even better example(imo)of a forum community. I’ve been a member of unfettered mind for a few years. Ning provides all of the structure and maintenance. They charge a fee for their services.
I would be no good at moderating, but I would be happy to contribute up to $30.00/yr. to help pay for the space. Guy, if you designate someone to set this up, and pick a few co-moderators, my check is in the mail.
http://www.unfetteredmind.org/
above is an example of a Ning Community. They are easily customized and can be as simple or extensive as you want.
February 9th, 2013 at 11:59 am
My father told me about Rachael Carson and ‘Silent Spring’ when I was a wee lad. Then after that he told me about human overpopulation of the planet. Those words of wisdom were not lost on me. YMMV
February 9th, 2013 at 12:02 pm
I forgot to add the url for Ning. It is: http://www.ning.com
February 9th, 2013 at 12:40 pm
http://neartermextinction.ning.com/
please email me for member invitations. Please let me know if you are willing to moderate and help administer the network. It’s free for a month and I’ve set it up to draw from my debit card after that.
thanks,
bradhp@msn.com
February 9th, 2013 at 12:40 pm
Dan Allen says: Did someone mention ‘unlivable climate’ or ‘nation-sized radiation exclusion zone’?
War Is Over If You Want It
Our species now has enough clues:
Survival’s a war we will lose;
Since you’ve gotten the news,
It might alter your views,
But fight on, if that’s what you choose.
February 9th, 2013 at 12:51 pm
The US Govt spends billions of taxpayer money on “relief” after natural disasters. And, when a nuclear plants blows up, they will spend billions of taxpayer money cleaning that up. All the while everyone in power continues to get rich, no consequences.
The idea that everyone contributes to our own extinction shakes me everyday. I want to “check out” so that I am not actively contributing via my tax dollars (income tax, sales tax, property tax, etc.).
I can live on the streets, eat out of dumpsters, and sleep in doorways…
February 9th, 2013 at 1:11 pm
You are so right, Gail. Many people, particularly here in the US, despise the concept of Nature. My old and grouchy neighbor is one such example. If a plant dares show itself on his property that is not part of his manicured 11 acre design, than it must be eliminated. Any wild animal that dares step foot on his highly regulated golf-course must be eliminated. Thus herbicides, insecticides, rodencides, fungicides, and all other forms of death are applied with the concept that more is better. Needless to say, this neighbor is appalled by the state of condition of my property where Nature reigns supreme, not subservient. He has called the county department of the environment to vociferously complain. The “Department of the Environment” sided with the artificial golf course environment thus I was forced to eliminate the brush piles that I created to provide cover for the wildlife. Furthermore, I am now prohibited from accepting “off site generated organic material” or in other word, leaves. The neighbor and the county prefer that the
rganic material’ is disposed of in a landfill. I live in a typically American exurb or better known as hell. The arrogance, self-righteousness, and cruelty of mankind knows no bounds. The human experiment has failed miserably and is beyond recovery.
February 9th, 2013 at 1:12 pm
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=4140355102606
February 9th, 2013 at 1:13 pm
Awesome SA, “depressive.”
February 9th, 2013 at 1:28 pm
Thank you Daniel for the laugh, especially needed it today.
February 9th, 2013 at 2:19 pm
Yeh, most humans despise Nature. Herman Melville and Mary Shelly were quite aware of this when they wrote Moby Dick and Frankenstein in the 19th.
Must have been mighty lonely pushing that Meme in those days.
Victor Frankenstein rebels against the Laws of Nature (how Life is naturally made) and as a result is punished by his creation. “Perfect,” Victor exclaimed, “You look marvelous!”
Captain Ahab follows suit and raises the stakes against Nature with one very big White Whale.
This topic of Nature hatred has not escaped the attention of writers down the ages, but unfortunately, the writers themselves owed their lifestyles to those very forces of control freaking empire that they illuminate in their stories.
Oh the Irony.
Most primitive cultures destroy the majority of their eco-systems, the lucky ones, just short of the abyss of total collapse, then find a little balance (think ‘death bed conversion’ facing the hangman’s noose), not out of reverence for Nature, but for pure self preservation reasons. Not exactly Noble.
A couple tribes of North American Plains Indians discovered the power of the horse in the early 1700′s after the Spanish horses that were freed in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 fled to the wild and eventually showed up on the Great Plains. The Sioux in the north and the Comanche in the southern plains not only mastered the horse as an extraordinary hunting platform, making them extremely ‘wealthy’in the coin of the realm, Buffalo, but used it to terrorize and dominance adjacent tribes who had not.
Had European settlers not shown up on the plains a century later, I have no doubt whatsoever that those two main plains tribes would have completely dominant the entire Mid-West and possibly beyond to form an Empire like the Greeks or Romans or Aztecs or Mayans or Incas with all the Nature hating baggage that comes with it. Again, not exactly Noble. Nothing to cheer about here, keep moving.
I recommend the book “Empire of the Summer Moon” for an alternate view of the Commanche and their conduct with their neighbors, whites, Hispanic and native American.
Read the book soon, I hear they are making a movie out of it that will undoubtedly be a travesty of the book.
.
February 9th, 2013 at 2:24 pm
“Not. One. Damn. Thing.”
To me, this is the best evidence that our American civ will hit the wall at 90 mph. We have such blatant denial of the real, near-term dangers that we face, preferring instead to project our fears onto nebulous long-term problems that may only come to pass if we can get somehow maintain what we’ve got through the near-term, decadal bottleneck of problems inherent in a civilization contracting for the first time in hundreds of years, essentially. Thanks, Dan, Guy.
February 9th, 2013 at 2:26 pm
Please note Brad Phillips’ generous offer to initiate a forum in his comments above (here and here). His latter comment is copied below (I joined the forum by visiting the site, and it’s easy):
Brad Phillips Says:
February 9th, 2013 at 12:40 pm
http://neartermextinction.ning.com/
please email me for member invitations. Please let me know if you are willing to moderate and help administer the network. It’s free for a month and I’ve set it up to draw from my debit card after that.
thanks,
bradhp@msn.com
February 9th, 2013 at 3:23 pm
The collapse of the industrialised economies of the Western World will achieve the same result – there will be no means, nor will, to maintain the nuclear storage pools. As a species, we’ve painted ourselves into a corner. Just enjoy each day whilst times are still ok.
February 9th, 2013 at 3:27 pm
@ Kathy C and wildwoman
So as not to cross contaminate the threads, I posted a response to you both on the previous one.
February 9th, 2013 at 3:28 pm
I registered on the forum. Thanks for setting that up.
February 9th, 2013 at 3:38 pm
Guy, if there is a forum here, than why is another being set-up?
February 9th, 2013 at 3:48 pm
Thanks for seeking clarification, Friedrich Kling. Brad offered to set up a forum in response to considerable commentary in this space and in my email in-box. The general consensus: several people have stopped reading comments here because the tone has become too uncivil. I’m hoping people will continue to comment in this space, but I’m also hoping we can lose the name-calling and personal attacks. People who frequent fora tend to have thick skins. If you’d like to fully engage people and their ideas, including sometimes-vicious, off-topic commentary, the forum is the place for you.
February 9th, 2013 at 3:53 pm
My question as well.
February 9th, 2013 at 3:55 pm
Adequately answered, Jeff S.?
February 9th, 2013 at 4:07 pm
Decent rant. But it really does not require applied force. Fukishima taught us that.
And a year or so ago, a tornado grazed a reactor in Virginia. What happens when an F5 storm hits one? The NRC doesn’t tell us how they’re protected from these storms. And whether that cover just reactors or containment and spent fuel ponds.
It’s just a matter of time. Human intervention is not necessary.
It is really embarrassing that our species is so dumb.
February 9th, 2013 at 4:29 pm
^richard pauli, I agree, they don’t need ‘terrorists’ to set them off — this essay was aimed at just one aspect of their many vulnerabilities. They’re ticking time bombs in so many ways. My main goal is to try to drum up some sort of awareness of the nuclear plant dangers — which is really the low-hanging fruit of what we need to do to have any kind of future. I agree that it’s pathetic and embarrassing that we can’t even acknowledge (much less address) this issue, much less the climate. (tired sigh) — Dan
February 9th, 2013 at 5:37 pm
I’d like to add that the Ning forum makes room for everyone to be as expressive as they like and interact at whatever levels they feel comfortable. There are personal blog spaces and group areas can be set up for more detailed discussions of topics. If you want to set up an area for discussing soil adaption strategies, or how to raise goats or just want an area where you can recite drunken poetry and offer up videos of yourself pretend bull-fighting with your Doberman, there is a place for it. Ths is not an attempt to hi-jack Guy’s site, just a place for wider expression and flexibility in levels of interaction. Thanks.
February 9th, 2013 at 5:43 pm
Also, it turns out you don’t have to email me. You can go directly to neartermextinction.ning.com and join.
February 9th, 2013 at 6:44 pm
@ Brad Phillips
I’d like to thank you for setting it up, Brad. An excellent initiative.
However, the flexibility you mention, although one of the great strengths, can also be a problem. Dark Mountain was on ning, and what happened was that it became a bewildering labyrinthine maze, with so many options and doorways and passages that lead to more hidden chambers… Imo, it’s essential to have a very clear main page so people can navigate and actually find their way around… otherwise, BRAVO !
February 9th, 2013 at 7:24 pm
Even Lester Brown is coming around:
“New era of food scarcity echoes collapsed civilizations”
http://www.earth-policy.org/book_bytes/2013/fpepch1
February 9th, 2013 at 7:26 pm
Two Great Lakes hit lowest levels on record
http://www.heatisonline.org/contentserver/objecthandlers/index.cfm?ID=8403&Method=Full
February 9th, 2013 at 8:19 pm
Pearl Harbours are needed to motivate the sheeple. Pearl Harbour I (Tora! Tora! Tora!) got by in grand style because (?) Al Gore-Tex had not yet invented the Internet. Pearl Harbour II allowed the airing of conspiracy theories on the Internet. The theory of gravity, for instance: objects in free fall. The theory of physical chemistry: the maximum temperature of an aviation-fuel-in-air fire. Theories of physics underlying architectural, mechanical and civil engineering: the collapse of steel-framed builgings in fires. The theory (they call it laws, even though they were not legislated by the Congress and signed by the President, and therefore are unconstitutional) of thermodynamics: the spontaneous appearance of particles with high embedded energy such as nanothermite. And like all conspiracy theories, all of these can also be dismissed out of hand, Sir Isaac Newton et al. be damned.
A Fuke was not selected for Pearl Harbour II (and will perhaps not be selected for Pearl Harbour III because a sheeple revolt might do irreparable harm to the nuclear industry and its minions.
February 9th, 2013 at 9:16 pm
the universe is itself incomplete and inconsistent, lacking a telos
Seeking a telos is like seeking a telos for the apparent snake in a rope misperceived in a dimly lit room.
the existential black whole of actual self awareness
It is also peace beyond all peace and fearlessness beyond all fearlessness. When all has been ditched, there is nothing left to be ruffled and nothing left to be damaged or lost, even though it’s all still APPARENTLY there under one’s APPARENT stewardship.
Facebook links do not work for non-facebookies. Flickr and Instagram are open to the public.
One site with a makyo master is enough.
February 9th, 2013 at 9:40 pm
@Brad
Thanks for the effort on the ning NTE site.
If you ever need help with funding, send me an email at the address I used when registering.
If anyone really wants to immanentize the Eschaton along the lines of the current article, remember that these facilities are guarded (if laxly, as mentioned above) and are not designed to admit tour groups carrying bulky satchels.
You’d want some excellent gear and a superb plan.
February 9th, 2013 at 9:46 pm
Some clarification sought here. I remember reading once on a web site supporting the nuclear industry that the naturally occuring radiation in the earth’s crust is many orders of magnitude greater than all that found in the nuclear reactors and storage pools. I don’t doubt the truth of this but I expect what they failed to mention was that it is either mostly buried so deep that it could never affect us or else it is in a form less detrimental to human health.
So, I basically have two questions:
1) Does a nuclear reactor create a surplus of radiation or merely convert one radioactive element (uranium 235 or whatever) into equally radioactive fission products (lighter elements) whilst maintaining the roughly the same amount of radiation?
2) Is the problem that the lighter radioactive elements created are more likely to collect in the bodies of living creatures when breathed in or ingested than the original radioactive material?
Any help appreciated.
February 9th, 2013 at 10:07 pm
That’s why I doubt there will be a war between China and Japan. 26 nuclear plant targets. Al;l with tons of spent fuel rods sitting in pools. All within a few minutes missile flight from China and all near population centers. Fukushima has crippled Japan. What would 26 Fukushimas do?
BTW: It would also cause havoc in the North american continent when the radiation reaches there a few days/months later.
February 9th, 2013 at 10:44 pm
I found this TED Talk compelling in regards to the ease with which human thought is molded and programmed ie: cultural myth, media, government propoganda etc. . .
“The Danger of the Single Story”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg
Anyone read about the devaluation of the Venezuelan currency(OPEC member)? Price freeze and ban on advertising in Argentina? Food riots in Greece? US Fed sending 237 billion to European banks in the past month to keep them afloat(been ongoing for some time)?
February 10th, 2013 at 1:38 am
What if the ordinary ancient Greeks, Egyptians, Scandinavians etc were also afflicted by the hype?
The ordinary folk then may have been as sick of hearing from their public officials about Thor, Odin, the Valkyrie, (not the movie with Tom in it), or Zues, Achillies, Seth, Horus and the rest.
‘Winge of the ancient villager.’
A local village meeting. Night.
Zorgoth: “Arrgh, I’ve had a gutful of hearing about Thor and his great hammer Mjölnir. This all sounds like a justification for building more armaments and siege engines, and for what? To go out and attack other peoples.We farm, we fish, that’s an honourable way to live isn’t it? Not likely you’ll see me doing something so dishonourable.”
Pilnari: “You were right Zorgoth, who believes this drivel about Azgard and Odin, what dog-slop. Why are they peddling this drivel? Just to bignote themselves, been doing it for years, and probably for centuries to come.”
Zorgoth: “Comon, lets go. We got some wolftail stew at my hovel, better tasting than the shit they are talkin.”
What if the wee folk just wanted to get on with their lives, have as much jiggy-jig as their morality of the day would allow, and have somewhere warm and dry to sleep, and be around family.
Probably a few more to add to the list.
But suppose they were as we are now, not believing in the spin and hype, and suppose their education system was being white anted and they could see it?
Its all been a very long con.
But there is a difference with The Nuclear Industry Con, and The Industrial Chemicals Con.
They maim and kill “non-combatants”, once called civilians, once called peaople, and all other life forms.
How about teaching your classes some useful stuff, like how to make soap, an earth battery, what you can do with human urine, and so forth. They might just need it soon.
Great rant, and justifyably so, IMO.
February 10th, 2013 at 1:39 am
WTF
Why is my comment awaiting moderation?
February 10th, 2013 at 2:42 am
Based on what I hear from this site, NBL, we can move these projected dates closer to now, unless NTE isn’t a single story and needs “balance”.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/02/05/climate-change-agriculture-study/1893455/
February 10th, 2013 at 3:52 am
Great compliation of material about the issue Dan. You wrote Due to absence of any suitable long-term place to put the stuff (and an inexplicable refusal to transfer it short-term to dry-cask storage), reactors have simply stockpiled spent fuel in these tenuous pools for the past fifty years – at ever-increasing densities.
I am pretty sure it was Arnie Gundersen who explained that. “Nuclear power plants are required by the NRC to put aside funds for their decommissioning during operations.” http://www.nei.org/resourcesandstats/Documentlibrary/nuclearwastedisposal/factsheet/decommissioningnuclearpowerplants If the plants can wait until decommissioning to put fuel into dry cask they can take that expense out of the decommissioning fund. If they do it now it costs about 1 million dollars per cask and that comes out of their current bottom line net income.
Even if we have no attack on the nuclear power plants, once the grid comes down due to lack of fuel, solar flares, or EMP attack every nuclear power plant in the world goes Fukushima. 439 of them
February 10th, 2013 at 4:18 am
d lucidity / Morris Berman are right, America is all about is who hustles best. All that matters that you get to be the one who profits. We live under an ideology that insist that someone must always be able to make a profit, and so long as engineering destruction remains a profitable enterprise, it will continue.
“the US is, in fact, already engineering its own destruction on several fronts.”
If you own the world and especially all the best places, what does it matter if some of it gets destroyed, as long as you profited from the engineered destruction. This is what the environmental movement just doesn’t get. When you own everything, it doesn’t matter If some areas become radioactive, you just move on and make more new and greater profits from all the chaos, destruction, and relocation that others, not you, will suffer.
“The problem, of course, is that this self-immolation/irradiation may take decades.”
This is not a problem for the people who own everything, because they are profiting from it now, and will continue to profit throughout those decades. So for them, destruction/self-immolation/irradiation/nte, whatever you what to call it, is always a win-win situation. Just invest in radiation proof clothing now and make a killing!
February 10th, 2013 at 4:40 am
^^Kathy C — Yea, I remember Arnie Gunderson saying that as well. I meant ‘inexplicable’ in the broader sense — that the refusal to transfer the spent fuel in the pools to dry cask storage makes no sense if our goal is to survive on this planet. …Which apparently it’s not.
^^^etc. Yorchichan — You need to poke around a bit on the internet or in books if you want to understand it. For starters, Arnie Gunderson has a ‘nuclear power 101′ video: http://www.fairewinds.com/content/nuclear-power-101-fairewinds-examines-fundamental-advantages-and-disadvantages-splitting-ato See also the Union of Concerned Scientists website — they have fact sheets and other good stuff.
February 10th, 2013 at 4:57 am
Regarding what is going on in the Earth Systems and the Biosphere, even some ‘local’ Astro-physics, I am in favour of the ‘evidence’ presented being Scientific, which seems to be the default position Guy has set up at NBL.(which I accept and applaud)
But I see no need to continue any ‘reality conjecture’ and ‘analysis’ of the evidence to conform to 21 Century Scientific theorising about reality.
Nothing proves this ‘Scientific Model’ conjecture.
What particles? Made of what? Smaller hypothetical into-exstance-then-soon-out-of-existance sub-particles, which are just… energy….
And where is all this taking place, where is ‘it all’?
No one has a damn clue, so apart from the very local conditions, and local knowledge on Newtonian-like interactions we know shit, for sure, about anything.
For example, what is the motivation for almost the entire Scientific community,(‘defence’ weapon systems aside perhaps) dwelling on this mythical ‘Big Bang Theory’ (not the TV sit-com)?
It is not simply ‘an origin story’, re Popper, even though that explains the ‘something that is there’, not nothing.
No. It is because untill the Scientific and wider community get there heads around Quantum uncertainty, they are stuck in this conception of existing in a Newtonian universe, which is comprised of billard balls, all with rekoned 3 vector spatial coordinates, and therefore a quantifyable energy quotient due to Delta V, or motion of masses in the near viod, (which is anything but a void).
Einstein pointed out Relativity, and all the cosmological bedrock was dissolved in one formula: E=MC2
So this sill’ Big Bang Theory’ is the last despairate bastion of where and how did this isness begin, (for those who wont grow up).
Sorry to rain on the parade… but none of this ‘Science’ explains anything about ‘where’ we are, and what we ‘are’, nor even ‘when’ we are. It is all referenced, to something that now is shown not to be real.
Science is essentially bunked out because it relied in its earlier stages for authenticity on dead rekoning, with regard to motion, and gravitation, and ‘the old atomic theory of the ancient Greeks’.
All those earlier reference points, are now in extreme doubt, and ‘uncertainty’(Ha Ha), because someone desired to look over the hedge, into a larger ‘world’.
So whoever wants this forum to rely on Scientific principles will have to prove the case from scratch that Science has something useful, to us, to offer, about what is ‘reality’, beyond measuring the temperature of the Air, acidity of the Oceans, thickness of the Sea Ice, etc etc.
Many here have had a great privelage to have been afforded a broad education in the core Sciences, so with competency in computer internet usage, we can get up to speed on many contemporary areas of so called ‘knowledge’.
But is much of it true?
Science is a powerful too, agreed. But it is not a belief system!
I don’t kid mself, it would be no great loss here, but if this forum starts consensualising on there being a Scientific reality, in contradistinction to REALITY, I will be off, and kiss you all goodby?
I am one of those who advocate realising the truth, which is simultaeneous with understanding what is real. In doing so I have given my own clearly detailed personal evidence of experiences which do not fit into the ordinary parameters of existing Scientific understanding.
I have also understood for myself, and advocated that in keeping with discussing what is ‘real’ that a divine being has come and passed from the body in recent times, and the account of what is real, from that divine beings own recent testamony bears on the discussion topics of what is real, and therefore, what is really going on, here, now.
I don’t reject Science as a tool, but I do as a belief system. This is BTW in contradiction to the main socialisation motive of my education, or my public education, which was verbatum Scientific theory 101.
I had visions and dreams which have subsequestly come to pass.
Explain that with that ‘Science tool’ alone.
I notice no one ever answers that querie here, just silent denial.
Why, well it is too hard isn’t it, just too hard, and subjective so , well it is not relevent, is it?
Bullshit.
It only take one authentic subjective event in utter contradiction to a prevailing world view to disprove that world view to the subject, in this case that is me.
Look up the history of how ‘Ball Lightening’ went from an unproven assorment of folk stories, to ‘Scientific Fact’, then an understanding of how Sciences mediates, and nrokers what is consensually ‘real’ in world culture now becomes clearer.
Has anyone here ever really thought hard and long about how perhaps Science has got us into this mess? Scientific thinking, and conceiving of the existance-here thing? Yes I don’t suppose there are many who haven’t ideated it but did it sink in?
If anything Science achieved its investigatory, curiosity quest endeavour into ‘what is real?’, with the developments of Relativity, and Quantum uncertainty, ‘we’ are just not mature enough to want to understand it.
Yes, it was also not in the intended job description of TPTB for happy consumers to need to bother about the culmination of an entire Western civilisations intellectual work, its effect on philosophy, the humanities and human understanding of ‘The Big Picture’.
The truth is, it was not expected by the Western intellegensia, that thousands of years of Eastern investigation(via other human functions), into that question, ‘what is reality?’ would turn out to be where they arrived via Einstein, Heisenberg, Planck, Shroedinger, Bohr and others.
They didn’t expect it, but also failed to interpret the basic misconception the Eastern investigators did not, i.e. that to reject consciousness from ‘reality’ is absurd.
…and being arrogant, and soon colonised by Big Money, the great Scientific breakthrough that was Quantum Uncertainty, got burried down the path of needing bigger and more expensive sub atomic particle smashers, etc, and into applications of ‘local field physics’, which works well for products and profit, if you don’t take account of the poisons and ecocide it induces, but completely fails to account to its culture for the existential vaccuum thus it birthed the West into.
In the West, arguably, only in art did any real subsequently investigation enact itself, IMO, at least of the kind that non-scientific types could digest, or even broach.
Cubism attempted to break up the picture plane,(world window – use of the body-mind-witness-of-reality-engine) with multiple POV, which was implicit in Quantum understandings and Relativity, and many art style variants continued, as educated artist took up these ideas, fully expecting the culture to respond and grow ‘for the better’, beyond Bourgeois dictates of taste and social constructs.
Then built in obsolescence and profit truly began to rule the culture.
As someone else here commented on a previous thread, steam engines built to last forever, suddenly were built to last for a short time…and in many ways the lights went out, people stopped thinking, and started watching TV…(not going there).
Also so much research went into the Gravitation side of physics, that the Electro-Magnetic aspects of Quantum and Relativity theory were ignored, and are only now catching up.(Teslar excepted).
So can we please. please drop this tired old sharade of Science being true, and the only thing we can rely on to know anything for sure?
Please!
If you are willing to accept that your heart does not exist, and not merely the conception of the blood pump, but the feeling centre of ‘you’, then maybe ask yourself why you ‘need’ so badly to hang on to that ‘bedrock of solid knowldge’. Could be that like all the rest, it is simply too hard to peer over the hedge.
Well if that is good enough, and rigourous enough enquiry into the known ideas of reality for (all of) you, it isn’t for me.
Simple as that.
Go on, give it a go, be brave.
February 10th, 2013 at 5:40 am
Some Ball Lightning links:
‘Show us what you are made off! Contains ball lightning!!’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qevVKCIAdwM
Look around the 1 min mark for a small ball hitting the ground. (not too convinced myself there)
‘Does ball lightning really exist?’
http://science.howstuffworks.com/nature/climate-weather/atmospheric/ball-lightning.htm
A quote:
” Were these balls actually lightning? Perhaps otherworldly phenomena? The skepticism began to wane in 1963 when a group of scientists flying from New York to Washington, D.C., witnessed a blazing orb drift down the aisle and disappear through the rear of the plane. Looking to explain what they saw, research began.”
So in this case it was the shared ‘subjective’ experiences of a quorum of ‘Qualified Scientists’ that gave a previously anecdotal mysterious effect the status of ‘real’, and therefore worthy of further investigation. The ‘Qualified Scientists’ had no reason to doubt the shared experience of the phenomena, whatever it may have been, therefor, thier shared collegial support was implicit in overcoming the anxiety and reticence at publishing scientific papers, on a hitherto wierd and wacky mysteroius subjest matter, which BTW, always arose in spontaeneous circumstances, and therefor would not lend itself to easy scientific scruitiny, a chacteristic which, IMO, belies a fundamental flaw in Scientific ideas of repeatability and time, (another story, another time).
QED
Brokering ‘reality’.
February 10th, 2013 at 5:50 am
Saw this (i live close to Philadelphia):
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2276370/Her-brain-Neurological-condition-affecting-young-women-discovered-makes-hysterical-catatonic.html#axzz2KUGGXtGw
A illness newly discovered by Philadelphia doctors is leaving young women dazed, restrained to hospital beds, and finally catatonic.
Doctors say it’s as if your brain is on fire.
Ozman:
after reading your post i just wanted to comment that after centuries of living in fear and ignorance, it was science and math that brought us out of the Dark Ages. Now, granted, as any and all human “knowledge” it was inherently flawed, but moving in the “right” direction (ie. being more beneficial than, say, bleeding patients was). i agree that science has been co-opted by big business and misused for mainly military ends, but it does, in fact, “work” in some sense to explain phenomena. If we’re going to throw it all out because it can’t explain everything, then we’re going to go back to “magic” and “god’s will” that doesn’t explain anything.
On another front, our brains are what process “reality” to us, so we’re limited in our knowledge by age, maturity, IQ, genetics, birth defects, head injury, disease, old age, etc. For a quick anecdote – when my mom was passing away from a brain tumor, at one point she couldn’t understand why she couldn’t call anyone from the tv remote she believed was a cell phone.
So, in the end it all comes down to the fact that we probably CAN’T understand it all, even with science and math. (This may be the agnostic position.)
Guy (and all): i really appreciate this site because it affords a forum for thoughts along the way to our species (and others) demise – whatever they are. i’m not afraid of being attacked or belittled or educated by others if i’ve made a mistake or misconstrue something i see. i read most of the comments, but avoid the personal attacks as being unrelated and uninteresting, and take what i can from the combined input of everyone here – from all the different locales, perspectives, and links (etc.). Thanks again for creating and allowing this forum to be what it is. i’ll probably just stay here if it’s okay with you all.
February 10th, 2013 at 6:06 am
An example of Cubist painting below by Marcel Duchamp, circa 1912.
‘File:Duchamp – Nude Descending a Staircase.jpg’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Duchamp_-_Nude_Descending_a_Staircase.jpg
Multiple views of (visual) reality, begin the process of reassessing preexisting complete identification with the body-mind’s-single-POV-reality-engine. This leads quickly to a critique of POV as a witness of reality, but collapses when the ‘objetctive’ POV is concieved of as a sum of all possible single POV on reality.
Therefore, a single POV is a function of a local perception-engine, the animal chordat body-mind, and its sub-adult immature understanding of the linitations of that perception-engine itself.
February 10th, 2013 at 6:24 am
When an atom the size of a uranium atom is broken into pieces, the pieces are not in themselves necessarily stable. Like chunks of rubble that crumble or roll before coming to rest, they give off particles or radiation (energy) before attaining a stable configuration. If it is high-energy radiation or neutrons there is a problem for biological systems. The degree of instability is related to the speed at which they reach their stable state. The atoms of a radioactive element reach a steady state randomly, but the overall rate is quite constant for each element. The half-life is the time in which half of the atoms reach a steady state. If it is very short, in seconds to days, the amount of radiation given off over the short time can be quite intense, but they quickly stop being a problem. If the half-life is in thousands to millions of years they may give off just as much radiation, but living things don’t live long enough to be exposed to any significant part of it. The problem arises with the half-lives of weeks to centuries, where in the human timescale, a significant amount of exposure to the radiation can occur.
The radiation from an external source passing through the body can do its damage en route through the body. The radioactive elements taken up by the body can sit inside the body and give off radiation at their own rates, causing damage as well.
Where the elements locate in the body depend on what those elements are, and their close relatives on the periodic table of elements. Strontium mimics calcium and is taken up by bones. Cesium mimics porassium and is taken up by all cells. Because much of the volume of intracellular material (stuff inside the cells) is in muscles, cesium is said to concentrate inside muscles. Iodine is iodine, and is taken up by the thyroid gland. (As an aside, even non-radioactive arsenic substitutes for phosphorus, screwing up the cell’s biochemical machinery. And lithium substitutes for sodium, screwing with electrical impulse generation and transmission, showing up as effects on the brain and psychiatric disorders).
Uranium-235, the isotope used in nuclear reactors, has a half-life of 703.8 million years. But when its atoms are broken, they produce neutrons that can hit and break other uranium atoms (prompt neutrons). Some of the broken fragments themselves can produce neutrons (delayed neutrons) that can also hit and break other uranium atoms. In this way, uranium can sustain a chain reaction, and is called fissile.
If the lump of uranium is sufficiently pure and sufficiently large, there will be a runaway chain reaction, and the heat generated will cause the lump to blow apart into fragments. In nuclear weapons, a shaped charge of conventional explosives is made to detonate from outside in all around a lump formed from separate pieces: the explosion of the outer parts of the explosive drives the inner parts of the explosion inwards as an implosion that forces the pieces together and holds them together while the runaway chain reaction proceeds and releases its energy without blowing the fragments apart too soon.
The uranium used in nuclear reactors is not so pure, but still sufficiently pure to generate enough heat for a core meltdown. This is prevented by control rods of neutron-absorbing material between the fuel rods: the control rods are raised or lowered as desired.
Plutonium-238 has a half-life of 88 years, significant over human lifetimes, and emits alpha particles, not useful in sustaining a fission reaction, but plenty bad when emitted by plutonium inside the body. (Alpha particles penetrate very poorly and are not hazardous from external sources: they are stopped by the skin). Plutonium-238 is produced in nuclear reactors. Plutonium-239 is used in bombs such as the one at Nagasaki, and produces plenty of neutrons, but has a half-life of 24,100 years which is too long for significant exposures on a human timescale.
February 10th, 2013 at 7:43 am
Dan Allen
Thank you for the informative Arnie Gunderson link. I understand now (with thanks to Robin also) that the problem is the fission products and plutonium produced in nuclear reactors are far more radioactive than the original uranium 235 due to their shorter half lives. This greater radioactivity (plus in the cases of caesium and strontium their similarities to potassium and calcium) means they cause a great deal of damage if they become lodged in the body of a living creature.
February 10th, 2013 at 7:50 am
Tom
I appreciate your response.
I did not advise to throw the whole lot out.
In practice most of these issues are a mystery to me, and I freely admit I am in no way in a position of mastery of all aspects of the topic, but, I just don’t buy the Science story either, of logical this and that. A lot of scientific discoveries were retrofitted research from intuitive connections sometimes even from mistakes in a lab. Even the story of Science itself censors itself from knowing intuition has been a significant player in its establisment.
But to take your response as you write it:
“…after centuries of living in fear and ignorance, it was science and math that brought us out of the Dark Ages. Now, granted, as any and all human “knowledge” it was inherently flawed, but moving in the “right” direction (ie. being more beneficial than, say, bleeding patients was). I agree that science has been co-opted by big business and misused for mainly military ends, but it does, in fact, “work” in some sense to explain phenomena.”
Sorry to be critical here, but so many holes in your assumptions from my pointof view. Just the biggest one…”but it does, in fact, “work” in some sense to explain phenomena”
It only works to explain Phenomena in the local field. The very small and the very large bits of the story are just too wobbly, but the middle bit, which pertains to the local field of experience, well our atomic theory, say of valencies, electrons etc it ‘works’ to explain nothing in my opinion.
It works to manipulate chemicals and even nano scale jive bits, OK, but that is not a coherent understanding of what is going on, it is just a theory of everything where some local bits of the theory engage enough with the operating mechanisms in the local field for us to manipulate thaose same materials. It only shows an incomplete understanding of what is there. No one is saying nothing is there, nor are they saying to disregard the bumping the chair because most of you and the chair is empty space, so you can pass through each other. Some of this science theory explains enough of observable phenomena and experience in the local firld for it to ‘work’. yes, but that is not sufficient to conclude the bigger and smaller segments of the teory are authentic.
As for heading in the right direction, with the example of leeching as a blood cleanser, I think the jury is still out on understanding what the actual medical effects of blood thinning leech excretions has on the body, but in any case, the obvious example you misses was the use and abuse of Radioactive Materials, and is that heading in the right direction. I think you are pointing to medical scientific ‘advances’, and broardly I can agree, with a few caveats.
The first is how we are now, not too far after first using them, about to cross the threshold of ineffective antibiotics in treating infections, across the board.
The use of antibiotics has contributed to population growth, yes, and reduced suffering for individuals, yes, but for how long? We will soon be back to amoutating limbs to avoid sepsis. How smart was that? How much progress in the right direction was that.
Perhaps all those Norman and Gypsy European women herbalists killed in the witch hunts in the Middle Ages and alfter had some perfectly powerful herbal poltices that used other bodily systems to control infections, and all the world over it was probably so.
These indigenous cultures did not survive without detailed medicine systems, all surplanted by know-better dominaors, etc etc we know the story.
As for the ‘Magic’ and Gods will’ you mention, these are actually two very different traditions and things in themselves, not wisely bunched together.
The ‘magic’ was a problem, but only when you dispense with childish stories of good and evil, and no longer wish to be manipulated by evidence-free enquiry(cosmology). So answers were sought there and perhaps that is what you refer to as ‘lifting us out of the dark ages’.
OK, I won’t quibble, but I could, because if say my friend cannot percieve the spirit of our ancestors, in this place, and moment, but I can, then who has the incomplete appraisal of the reality? Qua? I think it is my friend, because he/she eats so much sugar their intuition is not within their perception-field, and their MSM education has told them spirits do not exist and is a sign you need medication for life.
As for the “god’s will” reference, there we are talking about a rather sophisticated obfuscation rehtorical verbal device to cover several thousand years of systemic spiritual corruption and ignorance perpetrated by an elite cabal of power-fuckers, preying on blackmailed psychological children, in fear of eternal damnation.
I am not posing returning to those henious days, and it is not,IMO, as you suggest the only regressive alternative to doubting the overall authenticity of Science as a reality system either.
I am advocating people get the growth experiences and knowledge of reality themselves, and hang believing in shit.
Some sound scaffolding is always helpful, others have gone there before us, but going back is not an option, that is what TV is for, to assuage the generations who just cant quite get growing beyond adolescence, and are happy with the numbing occupation of being told what to think, buy, and who to trust, vote for and how to keep doing that more efficiently.
We need to keep growing, and not fatter, nor in population size, but spiritually, and that means firstly psychologically.
Sorry Tom, I’m ranting a bit.
Dan’s article set me off.
My brother died of Lukemiaas a 14 year old boy, over 36 years ago, and ‘rationally’ I blame the nuclear industry and the enabler class of assfucks…. all of them. But ‘emotionally’ I blame the nuclear industry and the enabler class of assfucks, all of them too.
So today I visited my sister who has not long to go, and rehashed with her the toll it took on our mum, (now ethered off somewhere), and other family members, not to mention what it means to have not had him there all those years, for better or worse.
As an aside, I have learned that during my mothers term of carrying my brother she took recently available Flouride pills to strengthen his teeth, because Flouride was not then (1960)available in the water supply in Sydney, and being middle class…well you do what other middle class people do….and what ‘doctor’ pushes on you, at least my mother did.(not blaming her)
When his baby teeth came through he had no enamel, just fangs. There was two forms of Flouride used, one was incorrect, and I think the other was also in some other way fuckng up kids teeth. But because of this fact, my brother never attained norman height, and was a very slight build – whersas my other brother and I are very chunky built. So by the time in the 1969-70 came alomg, the Strontium 90 floating on over here to the Easten Australian coast, recently liberated from American, French and other PTB motherfucker elites, just happened to be very attractive to his under calcified bones, due to being a lab rat for big pharma back then.
Strontium90 sits on the periodic table in the same line or family as Calcium, so if you are calcium deficient, your body will metabolise Strontioum90 as Calcium, straight to the bones, and Lukemia is a common response, due to the mutagenic effect to the bone marrow blood cells deep in the long bones.
‘Periodic Table of Elements’
http://www.ptable.com/Images/periodic%20table.png
The other nice liberated radioactive gift we were showered with was Cesium 137-134, and this sits on the periodic table in the family below Potassium, which is a large component in muscle. The heart muscle is often affected, and many infants and children just die of heart failure.
I had a growth on my left leg removed at about 8-9 years old, and have made attempt to get details of the biopsy, if any, but my only memory is of the doctor and my family being very hush hush about it. Wonder why?
So my brother died. They killed him, via a circuitous route.
How else does one interpret the facts? We all die. I fully accept that, very OK with that.
Who is responsible?
You decide, I have.
Yeah Tom, Science is really headed in the right direction. Sorry if that sarcasm sounds derisive, I don’t intend it so personally, just in addressing the actual things you put up there.
In conclusion, I am not attempting to understand it all, that is the lie bits at either end of the Science bunkum story that is so unproven and just wobbly, because the Science fraternity and TPTB who use that elite fraternity, are attempting to bolster a cosmological view they cannot substantiate in any evidentiary way, just another fluffy story top’n'tail, the Macro and the Micro, just some old tat, just in time story hokum to keep the balls in the air.
I advocate ‘keep growing’, and don’t stop, but that is not solely in the mind. It is in all the Self you are. It does force you out of your comfort zone, and there is the rub – to be an Adult, psychologically, one can only go there through Understanding, belief systems don’t cut it.
That is where we are at in the West IMO. We need to ditch the hokum belief systems, and engage with ‘reality’, starting with our bodies and the biosphere.
NTE?
Getting a lock on death, be it personal or collective is first base in the Adult Ed class.
So it is cool it is a topic here, and many are adjusting through all the NTE kubler-ross veils of emotional response to it all.
Should mean we may be usefull to others in some fashon down the track, if any of us get through the bottleneck.
Best of luck with that to everyone here.
February 10th, 2013 at 8:04 am
Lidia in case you don’t go back to the last thread, I left a comment to you about Sarah Palin.
February 10th, 2013 at 8:13 am
Robin Datta
Thanks for your explainations.
Now the mental illness explosion, and alzhimers epidemic is crystal clear, thanks a lot.
February 10th, 2013 at 8:38 am
Oz-man: i see your point and put “right” in quotes because i too think that we’ve misused, mis-applied, and don’t completely understand the implications of going about “living” in this current science-supported way either. Nuclear radiation is one of them, but there are many more. One that i’ve come to hate is genetic engineering. The entire field is based on false assumptions and is being used by Monsanto and others to control food (and other things) via seeds and patents etc. It’s monstrous! i don’t take your criticism personally and appreciate the dialogue. It’s why i frequent this site.
i’m taking my grandson to see Chasing Ice this afternoon – i’m hoping it opens his eyes and mind to what’s going on.
February 10th, 2013 at 9:51 am
Oz-man: i meant to link this video for your perusal
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnlTYFKBg18
Genetic Rouletten – The Gamble of Our Lives
February 10th, 2013 at 10:41 am
Genetic roulette, CO2 roulette, fission roulette, even the flush toilet. We lost. We don’t deserve Earth. This is science without wisdom.
Wisdom is the judicious application of knowledge. It is a deep understanding and realization of people, things, events or situations, resulting in the ability to apply perceptions, judgments and actions in keeping with this understanding. It often requires control of one’s emotional reactions (the “passions”) so that universal principles, reason and knowledge prevail to determine one’s actions. Wisdom is also the comprehension of what is true coupled with optimum judgment as to action. Synonyms include: sagacity, discernment, or insight.
February 10th, 2013 at 11:23 am
Oh, I copied that bit about wisdom from wiki.
February 10th, 2013 at 11:39 am
dmd, all – the aforementioned link to genetic roulette is well worth the look if you haven’t seen it (especially with regard to cattle raising, crop production, and medical effects like food allergies, breast and other cancers and even autism)
Human wisdom is compromised, corrupted and shanghaied by MONEY, power, obfuscation, propaganda, politics, non-regulation, coercion and many other “tools,” both legal and illegal, that corporations/unscrupulous people have in their psychopathic “my way or the highway” kits. That’s why we lose – we put up with it! Path of least resistance, go along to get along, “can’t fight city hall” and all of the rest of the compliant attitudes we adapt with because we’re so busy with our little phoney jobs and our little fiefdoms of postage stamp lawns and two cars and the kids’ braces . . .lead us right down the primrose path to perdition.
Civilization itself – our version of it – is not only toxic, it’s a death sentence!
February 10th, 2013 at 11:44 am
Jennifer Hartley…….you still out there? You’ve been on my mind as of late, just want to know everything’s o.k. Loved your poem BTW.
February 10th, 2013 at 12:32 pm
Dan Allen,
Thank you for your post on NPI – nuclear power installations in Amerika.
I would like to share this video with the forum.
The Battle for Chernobyl – (Full Length Documentary)
The meltdown occurred as a result of a “test”.
February 10th, 2013 at 12:39 pm
Ogardener, someone I think on this site said the test was to try to run the reactor on its own power, instead of off site power. I think I have watched that video but don’t remember what they said about it. Thanks for posting it = worth another watch I think. And then just imagine Chernobyl and Fukushima post peak oil/collapse – with NO remediation at all, no attempts to contain….
Daniel I did go check your comments to me on the last thread-thanks
Dave – science without wisdom or at the route homo without sapiens sapiens.
February 10th, 2013 at 1:48 pm
At the root not route
February 10th, 2013 at 1:54 pm
Mike Ruppert on Dorner http://youtu.be/tnoYZS2q7FE
February 10th, 2013 at 3:05 pm
Drones for Dorner. Who could have guessed? LAPD lied about that, too.
Now there is a $1 million reward for information.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/376732/Man-hunt-for-ex-soldier-who-shot-police-chief-s-daughter-and-killed-policeman
February 10th, 2013 at 3:06 pm
I left my first comment here last post and wanted to thank the people who responded to me for the warm welcome. Guy I want to thank you for this incredible, informative page. I agree with Tom that I might read or not read each comment; some are conversations or perhaps an argument between two players, others are discussions on esoterica or politics that i have determined for what ever reason isnt pertinent to how i intend to spend the remaining gift of my life. I find wisdom in most of the words here and keep in mind that the messenger is less important than the message. So I will just stay here and read. I wouldn’t use a forum because I would probably not select from, say, the Buddha or zen thread and would miss some of what I have seen and enjoyed. Somebody wrote something about how a particular Indian nation got horses first and used it to gain hedgemony over the other nations, now I want to read that book. I wouldnt have discovered that if it had not been posted in this general discussion area. So i hope the regulars will continue to write on this page even if you use the forum. Thank you also to everyone for all the video links, it is an exceptional library that never closes.
Daniel: thanks for that comment last post about who “we” are and what holds us together as a community of the NTE awareness experience. That was really thoughtful and interesting. And to answer your question: I am only lonely in a certain kind of grief. It is not business as usual for me. Once you know something you can’t not know it. Kind of like the general weirdness of the kid in the movie the sixth sense. Nobody else saw dead people so his behavior was off putting and confusing to others. And in keeping with a movie theme, in my marriage I am like the Richard Dreyfus Character in close encounters of the third kind building a giant mashed potato devils tower at dinner to an audience of slack jaws.
Besides, No one is ever alone in the eastern forest. For now, it is teeming with precious living things. I have to be where they are and there is nothing more to my choices than that. I am confident that my husband, that everybody’s husband, wife, family, friends, will soon have a conversion unless they have been brain damaged or willfully choose a path of ignorance and denial.
Wild woman: I started with economic collapse as my motivator. I realized very quickly it was much more horrific in scope and didnt get too far on “preppin’” once I realized I would never shoot somebody who was stealing a tomato or live in confinement. Things got easier after that. I know some accomplished preppers and can think of about 15 scenarios that render all their time and expense pointless. So i am a grasshopper not an ant. But I did manage to squirrel away some goods that will come in handy…for a while.
My apologies in advance for not restricting my comments to the content of the original post
February 10th, 2013 at 3:15 pm
I think each original post is excellent and important and is usually discussed in length. But there is only so much to say about the subject. Meanwhile, other events take place in the world that also are of interest. So we go with the flow.
February 10th, 2013 at 5:19 pm
Red Eft – I had a brother who kept various sorts of toads and snakes and lizards – I am quite familiar with the Red Eft from my childhood in WNY http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_newt Although their range puts them in our area I have not seen one here (AL)
Your comments are well stated and get to the heart of many issues. I have most of the same feelings except luckily for me my husband and I are on the same page. Kids are all grown and so their various stages of denial don’t impact us much. The scene you note from Close Encounters is one of my favorites.
Glad to hear all your comments.
February 10th, 2013 at 6:20 pm
Guy McPherson Says:
February 9th, 2013 at 3:55 pm
Adequately answered, Jeff S.?
Totally. Your response slipped in right before i posted, and i didn’t even see it. Sorry for the bother.
February 10th, 2013 at 8:50 pm
@Gail, thanks for your supportive comment on the previous thread. I haven’t really “met” any fans up ’til now, either, other than the regular supporters of the Palin investigative blogs… I appreciate all the work you put into your own blog, of which I’ve only been aware in the past year or so—somewhat after I put Mrs. Palin behind me, so I hadn’t seen your posts on that subject. I have to say that it’s hard for me to visit your blog (“Wit’s End” right?), actually, so painful is the material. Driving through VT this fall and winter, my husband spontaneously mentioned on several occasions that he had never seen trees just broken in half… fallen over and uprooted, maybe.. but not with the trunks snapped in half six to twelve feet above ground. What could I say? I broached the tree-death aspect of NTE. It’s an entrée, and we have yet to have the full-on NTE discussion, although he is “Long Emergency/Descent”-aware.
The Palin phenomenon is indeed fertile ground for analyzing the process of humans’ psychological denial: even the woman’s most fervent political opponents would not “go there”, for some unknown reason, although it would’ve been a slam dunk as well as a complete and utter burial of the Republican party for at least several election cycles. It just goes to show how cozy TPTB interests all are, maintaining the bipartisan gravy train at the expense of the truth (to the extent of true treason, of which I believe Mr. McCain guilty in the Palin affair), and demonstrates the degree to which fraudulent faux-democratic circuses are more valuable to the system than bread, in terms of manipulating the populace and manufacturing consent.
February 10th, 2013 at 9:04 pm
@Friedrich Kling re. suburban hell… Yowch! You gotta move outta there!
Two similar instances to share: 1.) my RWNJ sister has a yard which collects a lot of leaves which she has trouble raking every year. To save her the cost of a yard service which would haul them away, I bought her a leaf shredder so she could compost them in situ (not exactly green, but better than the leaf blowers). I asked her whether it made sense to pay people to haul leaves away in big trucks using lots of diesel fuel and then to pay people to haul compost or fertilizer back to their suburban lawns, and her haughty reply was “THAT’s CIV-I-LI-ZAY!!-TION!”. What do you expect the graduate of a “Christian” business school to say?
2.) My mom still has our house in the suburb where we grew up as kids. In the sixties and seventies lawn care was universal, but hardly anal. Now people have to have the red mulch and every bush is trimmed (kinda like how now all ladies’ bushes must be trimmed, apparently). Most everyone hires a gardener (unheard of in my childhood days) to achieve this Burger King / shopping-mall-berm look. One gentleman new to the neighborhood has upped the ante in his war against leaves. You can count on him to be leaf-blowing for 2-3 hours on any given day between August and December, but the climax of craziness was when I saw him power-washing his driveway to rid it of leaves, in the midst of a windy rainstorm.
Our society is truly a sick one, and the sooner it dies, the better, is all one can conclude.
February 10th, 2013 at 9:49 pm
Red Eft, I hope you keep commenting as you see fit. I agree about the main thread having such a variety of material, and I hope it stays that way. I haven’t checked out the forum yet, but I think it might be a good place to explore in depth prospects introduced here as well as more narrowly-shared concerns.
“Once you know something you can’t not know it.” At the time I was coming to grips with the financial crisis of several years ago, which was my entrée into the world of near-term industrial collapse, I started reading Charles Hugh Smith’s blog, among others. He offered a post about “The Burden of Knowing”:
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogmay10/burden-of-knowing05-10.html
This does not address universal ecological NTE per se, but treats the related subjects of certain economic and social collapse which for many people will mean the same thing: a premature demise as well as the evaporation of the structures they took for granted would guarantee them and their children the well-being to which they’ve become accustomed.
February 10th, 2013 at 10:12 pm
Question: How do you help someone suffering from radioactive Lithium isotope induced mental illness?
Answer: Put them on medication that contains Lithium, for life.
So great, all these mental illness problems are going to proliferate, and especially if your diet is nitrient deficient, in Sodium, you are especially likely to come down with a servere case of thinking the bus driver follows you home from work, or school each day.
Perhaps the safest thing is to have really high nutrition awareness, and actually eat a balanced diet of real fruit and vegetables, and clean water, etc. Then there will not be any major deficiency in your body when the fallout comes.
May help, but perhaps not with a system wide series of irradiation Fukish events.
What a hell some humans have created for all living things.
February 10th, 2013 at 10:13 pm
A forum? What good is that? How is that going to make any difference whatsoever? We know that it is over. The human race or whatever you want to call it is finished. Is there any reason to even talk about climate change any more? I think it would be a good idea to empty the fuel pools in the Mark I’s or whatever the hell they are called. But that is because I don’t want children or anyone else to die of tumors and cancer. But even if they don’t die this way they are going to die of starvation, or in the gang violence the collapse of civilization will release, or in nuclear war, or from some new horrible disease, or from whatever. Guy is right, we’re done. I’ll tell you a little secret–it wasn’t news to most of us. So the question is what do we do now. Do we want to spend the short rest of our lives cursing those who got us here? No, that is not a good way to spend this valuable time. And anyway, the article is quite right. We have brought this on ourselves. We have no one to complain to. It is our slavish concern for our own skins, and even our own pleasures that has allowed us to do nothing in the face of this calamity. All of us are to blame. The whole human race has become a pathetic squirrely thing with leaders who are triple threats–stupid, mad, and vicious.
I must admit, my own loyalty to the human race has worn paper thin. Only rarely do I see something that reminds me of what tender creatures we are. Most of what I see in the human world is not worth saving, and in any case cannot be saved.
So what to do? My suggestion is for each person to try to determine how he would like to make his exit, for I think it is possible that the race might still exit gracefully, like a tenant who leaves the place clean when he departs. If things continue as they are now we shall all be flushed away with the waste. For myself I see little profit in lecturing about global warming unless that is something like fighting the good but futile fight. I myself would prefer an orderly retreat. Stop reproducing. End the production of war machines, end capitalism, house the homeless, feed the hungry, reduce economies to a local level, and try to make the world last long enough so that those who now live can end their lives in peace. Is this a completely Utopian agenda? Yes, but only because we are a race of slaves. All that prevents it from happening is inertia.
February 10th, 2013 at 10:24 pm
Red Eft: “I am confident that my husband, that everybody’s husband, wife, family, friends, will soon have a conversion”
I don’t know about that.
Too many people have too short of a memory.
For instance, you say that the Eastern Forest is full of life. Although I don’t know the area you are referring to, I don’t see it in my current “Eastern Forest”? town in New England. I remember as a kid the autumn skies being full of ducks and geese; I didn’t notice any this year. I remember my suburban RI backyard being criss-crossed with animal and bird tracks; today in much less-densely-populated VT I see few to none. I couldn’t dig a spoonful of dirt back then without snagging a worm; at my recent home in Italy there were no worms in the yard, and dug-up portions of dirt would remain nude for years: no opportunistic plants were even interested in it. The ducks who used to inhabit the suburban RI subdivision pond of my childhood and teenage years are no longer there. The current residents –the leaf-blowers– don’t care and couldn’t care even if they might because they have no memory of it. Much has been lost –not only that is unlikely to be regained, but– much that people Are Just Not Aware Of.
Speaking of memory, though (the Italians have a longer memory than do Americans)… The region where I lived in Italy continues to have a “Sagra del Tordo”. A “tordo” is a small songbird, a thrush, considered a delicacy among the residents of the area. About two bites of meat per bird. Of course, the residents killed most of the “tordi” long ago, but as a matter of tradition they hold the “Sagra” (festival) anyway, offering other local dishes instead. Something about holding the “Sagra” anyway perpetuates the idea that there COULD be Tordi and that one COULD eat them if only the State didn’t now protect the suffering Tordi. I find this sort of perverse, although I could never explain why to a local. And the local would be offended at having the “Sagra” questioned!
I find the same problem with the National Geographic Channel et al. If you can turn on the TV and see polar bears, elephants and orangutans 24/7, then how bad can things really be, I ask you!?
As I care for my aging mother, I see how she is reduced to a child-like state, where things not within her direct range of vision for all intents and purposes do not exist. If you see polar bears, then there must be polar bears. If you don’t see polar bears, then the world is sufficient and righteous without them. Q.E.D.
February 10th, 2013 at 10:34 pm
Michael Doliner Says: A forum? What good is that?
Eh, it’s just a way to bide the time until we kick the bucket. Is pinochle any better or worse?
February 10th, 2013 at 10:49 pm
More to the point of the topic, my original introduction to the idea of NTE came when I read Dmitry Orlov’s post on nuclear plants, here:
http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2012/04/fundraising-in-extremis.html
Dan Allen’s post is great, but a more likely scenario is that of long-term conventional power outages plus running out of backup diesel fuel. We have met the enemy, and he is us, in other words.
February 10th, 2013 at 11:09 pm
Been thinking about collapse and NTE, and what difference it makes as to how one ‘sees’ these things.
If you embrace the need to live not dependent on fossil fuels and the huge environmental challenges adead, and decide to do without most, if not all, of the benifits of the worldwide industrial economy, then when you live that way, perhaps as Guy now does, (with caveats of course), then essentially you are choosing to live in that future, but now.
Why wait?
This is what appears crazy to those in close proximity to a NTE and collapse aware individual, (who is over the initial shock, grief and freak out phases).
Why would you give up all this personal advantage, just for some ideal that may not eventuate?
I’ve seen that glaze over, and wary slight step backwards from ‘ordinary livers’.
But it is a very clear logic that moves one into these choices.
I look at it as a kind of win win lose affair.
If there is no NTE and collapse, then you win because:
1. You are still alive and many of your loved ones are too.(including many other species)
2. You have eaten much healthier food and spent less money on food, or what you did spend went into systems you are sure do little extra ecocideal damage.
3. You learned a whole lot that enables you and any dependants to be comparitively more self sufficient, and therefore, have more options to help youselves and others.
But you lose because the industrial economy keeps going, and also you have a bit harder time socially, because the proof of your collapse and NTE blabbing-rants has not come to pass. So you ‘are’ crazy!!!(for now)
If NTE and collapse does occur, IMO this may cascade and no one knows for sure what human and other chimeras may emerge, or what strategies may allow some pockets to survive, for a time, (not in denial folks, just looking at the glass which to me is at the ‘half way’ mark, neither ‘half full’ nor ‘half empty’).
So in this case the wins may be:
1. That you are already mentally prepped, and systemically engaged in more ‘durable’ systems of needs provision, (food, water, energy), at a local scale, which you are fully aware of and can maintain for some time to come.
2. You are in a much better situation to notice even small or large changes that emerge in your location, or local area that effect your present adaptation and ability to supply those needs. Should for example the wind quotent in your area suddenly increase in intensity and frequently, you may need to brace and protect food growing areas and plots to counter this, and it could effect pollination etc. You might also choose to exploit that increase in wind by using more small scale wind energy conversion machines. (That list is endless.)
3.You may be of assistance to neighbours and locals who are reeling from the challenges, by giving mental, emotional and practical support. If these shattered and lost looking neighbours are the same ones who looked at you with glazed eyes, and took that small step back, you can also impress them by never mentioning their earlier doubts, but just help them in their moments of need, by pitching in together and they will figure out your maturity level was always greater than they previously assessed.
4.You get to author your own survival, with your close knit companions,( no one is going to have any chance alone, or thinking alone.)
5. Your human relations will settle into needs based activities and experiences, at least in the near term, and not bullshit ego based hokum socialisation. (what a relief)
The lose side of all this is the loss of everything around as we know it – all the life forms disappearing, from devastating environmental extremes. Carrion may be the only plus in that hell scenario.
For me, I can stand the funny looks, for now, and as the time passes, and more and more of the food I produce gets eaten, and the less and less we buy, it feels a better way to live, and the energy just comes.
At a critical juncture about a year ago I asked myself: How much coffee, or other stimulants, do I require to live my present existance? The answer showed me that a trueism I heard years ago was actually true. It was:
Coffee (and stimulants in general) is only needed when you do not have the intrinsic motivation and energy to do the task you are doing, and by extension live the way you are presently living. if you were living sanely, the energy would come(assuming edequite nutrition).
It follows then that it is not the ‘right’ way for ‘you’ to live.
I changed things on that basis, because implicit in the idea is that one’s instincts can be overridden, and placated, but that is not living a ‘true’, full instinctual life. Some compromises are within the ambit, but in general you are either living ‘your’ life, or your ‘life’ is living you.
Which way round do you suppose the Industrial Economy benifits from, and would rather you conform to?
Order that coffee, now, to go. And make it a double!
(Make mine De-Naff)
February 11th, 2013 at 12:34 am
Michael Doliner is right a forum like this isn’t good for much, except for people who are, as you say “a race of slaves.” And as slaves I think we should spend the little time we have left admiring the lucky few who aren’t slaves. Let’s concentrate on all the beautiful things that some people are able to enjoy, and that maybe made the destruction of the planet worth it. We should celebrate the fact that all the destruction has produced extremes of wealth on a scale unmatched in human history and has allowed a few people to live in their own private utopias. I expect we will continue to do nothing but keep our slave faces pressed up against the glass watching our betters eat 23 carat edible gold desserts. Like the coal co exec who just blew off a mt top and whose private jet has just landed to enjoy a celebratory slice. Shouldn’t we comfort ourselves by knowing that at least some few have benefited enormously from all the destruction. Since we’re not going to do anything about it anyway.
http://www.serendipity3dc.com/FrrrozenHaute.html
February 11th, 2013 at 2:56 am
The reason nuclear power and all the other destructive ways the rich make themselves richer must and will continue, is because getting rid any one of them could lead to a slippery slope. First, nuclear power, then nuclear weapons, then war, etc… This is why it cannot be allowed to happen. The rich can never allow such a frightening chain of events to begin.
February 11th, 2013 at 3:49 am
Ripley
Is that sarcasm, or just emphasis?
Are you implying TPTB can’t afford to let those three ‘agencies’:
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Weapons
War,
be dismantled or become obsolete?
And “..chain of events”.. how dry, very dry!
February 11th, 2013 at 4:02 am
So many good comments to read this morning –
Lidia you wrote “my husband spontaneously mentioned on several occasions that he had never seen trees just broken in half… fallen over and uprooted, maybe.. but not with the trunks snapped in half six to twelve feet above ground. What could I say? I broached the tree-death aspect of NTE.”
Down here in the south we have a solution to old trees dying – you cut down all the hardwoods on your property and plant pines to be harvested in 20 years. Our property is one of the few that still have older hardwoods left. Its so sad when you see each few remaining properties logged and the crappy soil left from when this was all cotton farming exposed. They come in with these humoungous saws on trucks and whack away then haul away. If someone near you decides to log their property you have days and days and days of logging trucks running by your house.
February 11th, 2013 at 4:36 am
http://news.sky.com/story/1050513/pope-benedict-resigns-vatican-confirms
Holy Shit!
February 11th, 2013 at 4:43 am
Holy Shit is right Tom – I think the child abuse scandals are probably coming too close to the Papal throne…. He can’t say “I want to spend more time with my family” so age and health issues are convenient.
February 11th, 2013 at 5:32 am
Kathy C
Do you use compost tea on your gardens?
I have sort of developed my own version I now call ‘Aussie Roo-Poo Tea’, and have had great results with most plants, applying once per week diluted of course.
How do you actually collect the chicken poo from the garden, just by raking the grond with straw or what?
Any help would be a boon.
Also where in the great USA do you and hubby live, so I can just get my geography right?
Keep posting, I feel your offerings are very highly regarded. And people need to start enjoying the supporting of each ther here, and shy of psychophanic gushing praise, give some human acknowledgment, rather than the harsher crits of a personal nature a lot of the time, IMO.
Hope you are not near all that Eastern wacky storms and snow.
Cheers.
February 11th, 2013 at 6:27 am
Oz-man: i use this great gardening site to answer all kinds of questions (Mike McGrath has a syndicated radio program you can hear each week and this link is to the “garden answers A – Z” section of the website).
http://www.gardensalive.com/article.asp?ai=492
i too read and appreciate Kathy C’s advise on gardening and organic things. This is just another source for you.
Kathy: First thing my wife said after i told her about the Pope’s “retirement” was “There’s a story behind this . . .”
all:
There’s a lot of noise out there about geo-engineering BY MARCH of this year based on the AMEG statement.
Here’s one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8J0mFX9xK4&list=FLHE92x768p8h-fMrqhsnE1Q&index=1
February 11th, 2013 at 7:34 am
OZ, I don’t use compost tea. I do compost around plants and when I dig holes for tomatoes, peppers, squash, melons, I dig extra deep and add humanure compost and chicken manure compost. For tomatoes and peppers I also add 1 handful of finely ground egg shells (blender) and 2 handfuls of wood ash. During the year I pour our pee from our pee bucket around various plants. The whole garden is under a continual mulch of leaves (and straw when I can get some).
Our coop is an old two room cottage that is in the process of falling down – but slowly. We have 100 chickens roost there – we use leaves under the roost. About once a month I fork it out into a compost pile. The chickens get all excited and hop in to work through it some more – I have two so that the one side can age while I am filling up the other side. What they poop in the 1 acre chicken yard (not near the garden, enclosed with electric netting fence) goes to the yard, but since some of it is on a slope so I put up barriers to hold it from all running down to the low end of the fence. The chickens scratch and poop in those places and I harvest the dirt from there for the garden as well. Our blueberries are in the chicken yard – I use barriers there as well and fill it up with leaves. That encourages the chickens to go scratch there and add poop to the blueberries. Surprisingly they don’t fly up in the blueberries so they only eat the ones they can reach by jumping. AND just one subflock hangs there – subflocks don’t mix much during the day so most of the chickens appear to not know there are blueberries there.
Our weather is whacky but we are fine – long drought last summer but now we are getting rain. Tornadoes were south of us. However things are blooming way early. That worked out OK last year but no telling this year. Got my edible pod peas in and up anticipating an early spring.
February 11th, 2013 at 7:41 am
Daniel, I left a note to you on the last thread around the 350 mark.
Re: Ratzinger….ding dong the witch is dead!(Metaphorically speaking) Yippee! Now there is one evil motherfucker.
Red Eft: Eastern woodlands, where ish? Been reading a lot of history about the Ohio River Valley from contact to around 1814 and it sounds like it was a gorgeous area until white people arrived.
Yes, Native Americans did bad shit to the “environment” but nowhere near on the scale of whites. Finished “The Frontiersmen” recently and both Simon Kenton and Daniel Boone were amazed at how quickly game was depleted as they helped white people move into the area. Thanks guys. At least the prepper show inspired a blog entry, so it wasn’t wasted time.
Speak Softly, I read “Empire of the Summer Moon” and had not heard about a movie. Oh dear god, that’s not a happy thought.
Has everyone here heard about the movie “The East”? Supposed eco-thriller about ALF types who declare war on corporations.
Tom, that link you posted on the last thread has been haunting me. I’m reposting it because it’s apropos to the discussion here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfEPzUdIgds&feature=player_embedded#
We’ve all talked about time frames and when things will get bad. You can see quite clearly that 2021 is the outside date, I think.
February 11th, 2013 at 7:53 am
@ M. Doliner
You said: “So what to do?…” “Stop reproducing. End the production of war machines, end capitalism, house the homeless, feed the hungry, reduce economies to a local level, and try to make the world last long enough so that those who now live can end their lives in peace. Is this a completely Utopian agenda? Yes, but only because we are a race of slaves. All that prevents it from happening is inertia.”
The problem of “What to do” is that we, the ones that are aware, the few of us, cannot end capitalism, house the homeless, feed the hungry, etc… Sure, we can stop reproducing, form local aware communities attempting to be self-sufficient, but nobody is going to end their life in peace (if you believe NTE).
Now, what we CAN do is stop contributing to capitalism, stop contributing to industrialized civilization, and stop contributing to our disproportionate use of the earth’s resources.
BUT – by doing these things, we are actually making matters WORSE in the grand scheme of things BECAUSE what REALLY needs to happen (for any species to have ANY chance) is for industrial civilization to come crashing down ASAP. Now, the debacle is how to get industrial civilization to come crashing down ASAP with some attention to detail while chaos is raging. Someone has to “turn out the lights” on the way out! We need an orderly shut down of all nuclear reactors, safe disposal of all kinds of dangerous things like spent fuel, nuclear warheads, chemical weapons, biological laboratories, etc.
I get the feeling from most here on NBL that there is no chance of any kind of orderly shut down of industrialized civilization, so, given that, there is no chance. So, given that, “What to do?” is moot, and, therefore, there is no right or wrong behavior – heck, reproduce at will, eat nothing but processed foods, leave your lights on 24/7, let your car idle for hours each day, and run up as much debt as you can!
Each day you can get any news you want – economists saying the US is about to ramp up its “recovery” and 2013 will be a very good year for everyone – or economists saying that US fiscal policy will soon unleash the Greatest Depression ever and we’re all doomed.
They had a guy on CNN on Sunday saying America was about to become energy independent due to all the shale oil discoveries…
All I see is crazy.
February 11th, 2013 at 8:16 am
We know that politicians, corporations, & uneducated civilians are the biggest block to taking action to stop climate change; scientists need to become much more ACTIVE, not just vocal. Why not get scientists, instead of lawyers & developers & corporate cronies, to run for office? Why not demand improved science education as a law? Instead of multi-billion budgets for college football, spend the money on actually EDUCATING people.
Until we deal with the current catastrophe of being dominated by greed, stupidity, and apathy, all others pale in comparison.
February 11th, 2013 at 8:37 am
photos, everything fukushima:
http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0oG7my8CxlRNjAA2XBXNyoA;_ylc=X1MDMjc2NjY3OQRfcgMyBGNzcmNwdmlkA1Q5LlJaVWdldXJDaUpGZlJVUkJDemdwNk1zS1g5bEVaQ0U4QUFRUFIEZnIDeWZwLXQtNjM2LXMEZnIyA3NnLWdhYwRpdANncARuX2dwcwMxMARvcmlnaW4Dc3JwBHBvcwM1BHBxc3RyA2Z1awRxdWVyeQNmdWsEc2FjAzEEc2FvAzEEc2VjA3JlbC1zYQRzbGsDdGV4dAR2dGVzdGlkA1ZJUDA5OQ–?p=fukushima%20radiation&fr2=sg-gac&fr=yfp-t-636-s&pqstr=fuk
February 11th, 2013 at 8:59 am
OzMan
“Do you use compost tea on your gardens?”
Hey OzMan,
I use compost tea on my gardens.
Check this out: Aerated Compost Tea Attributes, Uses & Production Method
This is another video smaller scale, great results.
Growing BIG Vegetables using Compost Tea
A five gallon brew of aerated compost tea will treat approximately one acre of garden. The secret is in the compost and whether you are brewing a predominately aerobic bacterial or fungal brew. A great introduction to understanding the rhizosphere is a book titled
‘Teaming With Microbes – A Gardener’s Guide to the Soil Food Web’. I bought a used copy for cheap and it was in perfect condition. One can make their own aerated compost tea brewer for under $100.00. The air pump is the biggest expense at around $70.00 Amerikan currency.
February 11th, 2013 at 9:08 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=boAFBjrrlrE
February 11th, 2013 at 11:26 am
Michael Doliner says: …My suggestion is for each person to try to determine how he would like to make his exit….
Stopping My Shoulds on Slowly Leaving
Hope, impassioned and deep,
Made promises no one can keep;
Though I still think it queer
That the end is now here,
I’ll rest now, before I sleep.
February 11th, 2013 at 12:33 pm
Lidia, for a follower of NTE to think my blog is too painful to read…well, I guess that puts me in some kind of special corner of hell, ha!
February 11th, 2013 at 12:42 pm
“… Radiation from the Fukushima Nuclear Plant disaster in Japan is now actively in the ecosystem all along the North American west coast… even the sea weed is now radiated. The Vancouver Sun reported one year ago that the seaweed tested from waters off the coast of British Columbia were 4 times the amount considered safe. …
How can we protect ourselves? First, be aware of what items are likely to be highly tainted, like SEAFOOD!
February 11th, 2013 at 12:48 pm
Dan Allen says: Did someone mention ‘unlivable climate’ or ‘nation-sized radiation exclusion zone’?
War Is Over If You Want It con’t.
Doom’s nearer, at least at last sighting;
Nature says, “Get up and keep fighting!”
With radiation and heat,
Might as well have a seat,
At least, that is, as of this writing.
February 11th, 2013 at 12:55 pm
BtD two good ones. Stopping my Shoulds looks like a refrigerator posting to me – I’ll go see if there is room
February 11th, 2013 at 1:10 pm
Thanks Mike for sharing your video.
February 11th, 2013 at 1:17 pm
Thanks, Kathy.
So “Stopping My Shoulds” was the right amount of obvious as a takeoff on Frost?
February 11th, 2013 at 1:24 pm
wildwoman: yeah, me too – it’s happening too fast! i thought we had 50 – 100 years! At this rate, we’ll be lucky if we make it past the 2020′s.
BtD: i second the Stopping limerick as a fridge saying.
All: i know we talked about geo-engineering in a previous thread, but i don’t recall anyone saying that it would be happening soon – especially NEXT MONTH! Who authorizes this? Can we vote on it? Is it a U.N. thing? i have the utmost confidence that whoever decides to “hack the planet” (as the Weather Channel is calling it) – that it will only make things worse (meaning the end will be even sooner as a result). Gyad!
http://www.theburningplatform.com/?p=49024
Quotes of the Day
“We lie the loudest when we lie to ourselves.”
― Eric Hoffer
“In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.”
― Eric Hoffer
“People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.”
― Eric Hoffer
“Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”
― Eric Hoffer, The Temper of Our Time
“Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.”
― Eric Hoffer
“Anger is the prelude to courage.”
― Eric Hoffer
“It is the individual only who is timeless. Societies, cultures, and civilizations — past and present — are often incomprehensible to outsiders, but the individual’s hungers, anxieties, dreams, and preoccupations have remained unchanged through the millenia.”
― Eric Hoffer
“Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.”
― Eric Hoffer
“Far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know.”
― Eric Hoffer
“Our frustration is greater when we have much and want more than when we have nothing and want some. We are less dissatisfied when we lack many things than when we seem to lack but one thing.”
― Eric Hoffer
February 11th, 2013 at 1:24 pm
@Pat We know that politicians, corporations, & uneducated civilians are the biggest block to taking action to stop climate change; scientists need to become much more ACTIVE, not just vocal. Why not get scientists, instead of lawyers & developers & corporate cronies, to run for office? Why not demand improved science education as a law? Instead of multi-billion budgets for college football, spend the money on actually EDUCATING people.
Pat, all of us here empathize with your frustration. Living in this homicidal insane asylum is almost intolerable to those very few who have opened one eye and peeked at the real world. But here is why nothing will be done to stop it:
(1) Crashing industrial civilization means killing at least 3 billion people (probably 5-6 billion).
(2) No one is in charge of the world. This means that even if tomorrow the US were to put the Green Party in charge of the country, China would continue burning coal and building more coal based electrical plants.
(3) No one has the power to collapse developing countries who want to become like the US circa 1950-1970, and some of these nations are armed with nukes.
(4) The scientists are politically impotent and almost all of them are employed by either government (and the military), or corporations. When they say stuff that threatens Wall Street, no one listens. Moreover, as Beckwith has pointed out, scientists have become so specialized and institutionally compartmentalized that many of them are blind to the big picture.
Calls to “collapse industrial civilization” sound great, until you realize that it essentially means genocide on a scale that dwarfs the holocaust. It can’t be done by enlightened politicians and CEOs. Nature will have to do it for us.
February 11th, 2013 at 1:40 pm
It seems to me that the tendency to still hold out hope that somehow people will wake up and things will change in a fundamental way is the last delusion. Some believe in “the human spirit,” that we are innately semi-divine, but just don’t know it and once we recognize that we’re little gods, we’ll accomplish great things and end up like the people on Star Trek. All of this is just primate induced narcissism. Look around you. Look at the history of the little ape gods. Horror, horror, horror. We have finally reached the end of a 3 million year run. It’s time to just let it go.
February 11th, 2013 at 1:42 pm
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2013-02-11/rationally-speaking-we-are-all-apocalyptic-now
Rationally Speaking, We Are All Apocalyptic Now, Robert Jensen. Originally at Truth Out, same date. Interesting that even this very mainstream site is allowing an article by a fairly mainstream “progressive” talking about the situation in such drastic terms. I will let them know of Guy’s video, of course.
February 11th, 2013 at 1:59 pm
Thanks Tom.
February 11th, 2013 at 3:18 pm
depressive lucidity; “Moreover, as Beckwith has pointed out, scientists have become so specialized and institutionally compartmentalized that many of them are blind to the big picture.”
Are you confident that this group sees the big picture or do you think that maybe even we have some pieces missing? Since joining this group, I have lost at least some confidence in many of the other bloggers that we are all familiar with. Each seems to have a rather narrow view, like the scientists mentioned. Or a blind spot. They mention NTE and then forget about it.
February 11th, 2013 at 3:20 pm
tick-tack, tick-tack, tick-tack … here come the vampires
«In a normal year, moose in New Hampshire have to deal with 30,000 ticks at a time, but recent warm years have increased the tick population, so moose have to cope with as many as 150,000 insects at a time, Inkley said in a blog post.»
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/09/us-climate-moose-idUSBRE91806Y20130209
but like was said before in this thread I think: if there are mooses on national geographic channel, what is the problem?
February 11th, 2013 at 3:22 pm
Mike Sosebee
A potent piece of filmmaking there. Especially the segment where at a rally accross the bay from the San Onofre reactor site a Japanese woman who went to the rally said she learned for the first time about the Fukushima disaster at the rally. She must have been asleep or whatever.
I don’t wish to sound cynical, howerver, there would be a lot of aging boomer protesting fraternity types in and around California, with the ability and time to get this rally together.
But please, have you gone down to the places in America like North and South Dakota where there are poor socio-economic enclaves and whole districts where TPTB motherfuckers are building a whole lot of new reactors.
Yes, locating them where the fallout on ‘less important tax-payers’ will not effect reelection, and in the end will not ‘need’ remediation when it goes wrong.(Nuclear power and weapons by definition have no way of going ‘right’IMO)
So Mike, an ‘A’ for the actual footage and coverage of an extremely important issue, ‘Nuclear Power gone mad’, but a I have to give a ‘-’ to the ‘A’, which means an ‘A-’, for not also showing the difficulties down in those other states which obviously TPTB have decided are expendable.
Great link, with only a minor criticism from me.
I hope you have read my earlier account of my brother’s premature death from Lukemia decades ago which I ascribe to the motherfuckers in this and other Industrial groupings.
And to think when I was a boy for several minutes I actually considdered I might like to train up as an Actuary.
Apocolypse Now
Admiral Kurtz: “The Horror…the Horror!!”
February 11th, 2013 at 3:32 pm
BtD “So “Stopping My Shoulds” was the right amount of obvious as a takeoff on Frost?”
Duh, I didn’t get it. I just liked your poem a lot. Now i like it better
February 11th, 2013 at 3:56 pm
David Graeber, podcast from Goldsmiths, re his book and Occupy
http://www.gold.ac.uk/podcasts/
February 11th, 2013 at 4:20 pm
Tree die off from hotter temperatures (preaching to the choir of course)..
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130211135005.htm
February 11th, 2013 at 5:08 pm
Kathy, yeah, not obvious enough, I was afraid of that. Thanks for the feedback!
==
michele/montreal says: …moose have to cope with as many as 150,000 insects at a time….”
“Moose with this many blood-sucking ticks can die of anemia.” http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/09/us-climate-moose-idUSBRE91806Y20130209
O.K. fine, we’re in kind of a fix,
Awaiting cortege to deep-six,
But to add to the mix
Being eaten by ticks—
The thought alone makes me shit bricks.
February 11th, 2013 at 5:20 pm
Oh, BtD, that is the best yet!
February 11th, 2013 at 5:22 pm
Haha thanks, wildwoman.
February 11th, 2013 at 6:02 pm
BtD – my wife & i laughed at your verse, excellent!
February 11th, 2013 at 6:11 pm
Just in case some of you missed this……I believe this was Kurt Vonnegut’s last public appearance before his death……and boy did he ever spell it out. It’s short about 2 1/2 minuets.
http://www.theforumchannel.tv/video-clip/Kurt–Vonnegut-Colin-McEnroe/Vonneguts-Message-to-Future-Generations-The-World-is-Ending/5
February 11th, 2013 at 6:15 pm
Hi Lidia,
I moved to this Chicago exurb as a consequence of professional requirements, but now that requisite has been removed. Housing prices have been hammered hard in these communities. As luck would have it, I bought at the absolute zenith of home prices and as a consequence i have incurred a 35% loss EXCLUDING the cost of improvements and betterments (a mitigating factor is that I sold me other house at the high as well). Further exacerbating the problem is property taxes. This county has the 25th highest property tax rate of all US counties. Republicans proclaim themselves to be fiscal conservatives. Republicans control EVERY county elected position. What explains the disconnect with property tax rates? So I have to decide if I accept the loss and move on or wait for a possible recovery.
The other issue is that I share virtually nothing in common with my “neighbors.” I put quotation marks around neighbors because there is no sense of community. My one friendly neighbor told me that when he went to introduce himself to a new neighbor this neighbor told him that he had no interest in knowing who lived next door. These people love their hummers and other fossil fuel burning toys- it’s their God given right as Americans, you know. It’s damn near impossible for me to have any sympathy for these people when the shit hits the fan. They hate nature- they hate the wildlife that eat their shrubbery. One neighbor installed extra outdoor lighting due to their fear of deer!!! My question is why on earth did they move here?
February 11th, 2013 at 6:26 pm
I watched again tonite The Battle of Chernobyl posted by ogardener http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9IePKlgj_g
If the grids go down for whatever reason (whole world or whole countries), each and every nuclear power plant in the area that is down has about 1 week until they go Chernobyl. If the grids are down no remediation work will be done, and no one will be evacuated or even warned to evacuate. I highly recommend watching this film with the heroic efforts and huge expenditures and then imagine it happening without any effort being put forth. When they were fearing a second explosion Gorbachev says if that had happened it would have taken out Minsk and made all of Europe uninhabitable. One reactor. And it most likely would have had a second explosion without all the work done to contain it.
That is why it is over…..
Tom I listened to the vid about geoengineering. I think the speaker is stretching stuff. While the AMEG group is encouraging geo engineering of various types I do not think that anyone has taken them up on their plans. Because they put a date on when it should begin does not mean that it will begin. In the cautious climate scientist community I think AMEG is considered way outside the bounds of reality, or so someone who claims to know has said to me on another blog.
I hope no one takes them up on their plans, but I can understand them thinking that something must be done. It hardly matters anymore – we are at near term extinction regardless so it doesn’t seem we should worry about that. Anyway, Peak Oil means that there is no excess oil for implementing such plans and nothing is likely to be taken away from propping up the economy.
February 11th, 2013 at 6:28 pm
Tom, glad she liked it! Spreading the word.
Kathy C says: refrigerator posting….Tom says: fridge saying
I’m singing a worried song
About hunger when everything’s wrong:
There’s still lots of chow,
So I’m eating it now
But I won’t be eating it long.
H/T: Woody Guthrie
February 11th, 2013 at 6:30 pm
Kathy says down South: “Down here in the south we have a solution to old trees dying – you cut down all the hardwoods on your property.”
I begged my neighbor not to cut down a large White Oak tree that was on his property by a mere few inches. I asked him if he ever appreciated the numerous birds and other cavity nesting animals that require “ugly dead trees” for their home. He cut down the tree anyway and in the process killed nesting owls. I was so angry that I could not see straight. He was simply glad to get that “eye-soar” out of the way.
Remember James Lee? James was the protester who placed himself every day in front of the Discovery channel offices to call attention to the mass extinction crises and Discovery channels refusal to cover this under-reported disaster, until he could not take it any longer. He took hostages saying that he had a bomb, which he did not and was shot dead by a sniper. I empathize with his frustration and outrage.
February 11th, 2013 at 6:38 pm
Kathy uses: ” I dig extra deep and add humanure compost.” I though that human manure is dangerous to use as fertilizer on edible plants due to the high concentration of heavy metals.
I would be MOST GRATEFUL for any suggestions, experiences, or references people may have regarding composting toilets. Is this a viable replacement for plumbing toilets. Thinking about composting toilets at a reserve in Colombia.
February 11th, 2013 at 6:42 pm
Here are some more famous last words.
This was from world renown anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss just before he passed away. Recorded on NPR, again, it’s about four years old.
“There is today a frightful disappearance of living species, be they plants or animals. And it’s clear that the density of human beings has become so great, if I can say so, that they have begun to poison themselves. And the world in which I am finishing my existence is no longer a world that I like.”
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120066035
February 11th, 2013 at 6:42 pm
Friedrich Kling, we use composting toilets at the mud hut. Specifically, we have two Biolet toilets. They’ve worked well for five years so far. For solids, we use the same mixture as Jefferson and Washington: two parts sawdust and one part wood ash. We apply humanure compost to trees in the orchard.
February 11th, 2013 at 7:02 pm
The Humanure Handbook by Joseph Jenkins is available free and legal at http://www.humanurehandbook.com/
I’ve used sawdust humanure toilets for over a decade with no problems and no stink.
February 11th, 2013 at 7:05 pm
@ F Kling
There is only one book you need which is Joseph Jenkins “Humanure Handbook” I believe he is the one who coined the term. The whole process is incredibly easy, actually, IMO, the cheapest and easiest design is the best. Several buckets with a moveable toilet seat. You can mix urine with feces, just make sure you fully cover your droppings with any kind of mixed wood bi-product, and when a bucket is filled, dump it in your humanure designated compost bin. Let sit for about two years, and presto, the essence of life.
February 11th, 2013 at 7:09 pm
@Friedrich Kling, we are planning a simple bucket system as described in the Humanure Handbook, found here online for free (you can also buy a hard copy):
http://www.weblife.org/humanure/pdf/humanure_handbook_third_edition.pdf
Recently went to a conference at the VT Law School and their public restrooms have Clivus Multrum brand composting toilets. Funny to be in a trafficked public bathroom and hear no flushing!
February 11th, 2013 at 7:13 pm
Radiation levels in Shibuya downtown Tokyo now at 200 times recommended average.
http://fukushima-diary.com/2013/02/column-to-live-one-second-longer/
February 11th, 2013 at 7:14 pm
Daniel, I have noticed the disappearance of even the most mundane of domestic insects. I used to get moths eating my wool sweaters and rugs; I can’t tell you the last time I saw a clothes moth. I have noticed a drop in spiders: just moved to a 110+ year-old house in VT this fall and I have seen exactly TWO spiders. Did not seen any earwigs or crickets this fall. The last time I saw a silverfish was when I was about ten.
February 11th, 2013 at 7:33 pm
Re: The disappearance of bugs and ‘critters;’ I have the perspective of having basically lived in the same area for 57 years, so I have a metric for comparison. There used to be so many flies (and fireflies), moths, and other various insects (in Fl) that it was truly a nuisance. Now, they are virtually gone. I have also noticed the decline of many bee species in just the last decade or so. We would always get wasps nests on our decking, dirt dabbers all in our garage and under eaves etc. Not anymore! It is very rare to see these things. There used to be a joke that we would destroy the earth and only roaches would be left…BUT they too have greatly reduced in numbers. Things are truly amiss.
February 11th, 2013 at 7:35 pm
..I was just thinking further about moths; You could turn an outdoor light on and it would be covered by moths. They would invariably get in the house and my cat would love to eat them. This past summer I turned on the outside patio light thinking about this, and only saw a couple of moths after several trials.
February 11th, 2013 at 7:39 pm
Social adaptation barriers represent a significant challenge to climate change adaptation in U.S. agriculture. The perception of the need for adaptation is influenced by access to finance, political norms and values, and culture and religious ideologies.
USDA tells farmers to get used to climate change; farmers say “no big whoop”.
http://grist.org/food/can-usdas-climate-reality-message-take-root-with-denialist-farmers/
The USDA cites evidence that California winters may become too warm for fruit and nut growing as soon as the middle of this century.
…perhaps the biggest climate gotcha in the report is the suggestion that a warming climate could spell doom for industrial agriculture’s reliance on livestock factory farms, aka CAFOs. It turns out that as the climate warms it’s going to get harder and harder to keep these massive facilities full of animals cool enough. And if farmers have to spend a fortune air conditioning their barns during brutal summers, CAFOs may soon become uneconomical.
The USDA wants farmers to know it’s time to get real on climate. The question now is if they’ll listen.
February 11th, 2013 at 8:10 pm
Bugs you say……well, can’t say I’ve noticed any decline in the amounts of bugs, they just seem to be showing up earlier and hanging around longer. We’re above the 45th parallel, and this year we had mosquitoes up to the end of January. The problem with bugs, are the invasive species. Recently the Asian brown marmorated stink bug. It is spreading like wildfire, and it loves any number of vegetables in the garden. It has no predators, and as of yet, no non-toxic way of getting rid of them.
The meek truly shall inherit the earth!
February 11th, 2013 at 8:39 pm
pat Says:
February 11th, 2013 at 12:42 pm
“… Radiation from the Fukushima Nuclear Plant disaster in Japan is now actively in the ecosystem all along the North American west coast… even the sea weed is now radiated. The Vancouver Sun reported one year ago that the seaweed tested from waters off the coast of British Columbia were 4 times the amount considered safe. …
Apparently Fukushima radiation could have spread to the S. Hem. much faster than expected. . . 40 days:
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110613/full/news.2011.366.html
Gavin Schmidt from RealClimate is quoted as saying (paraphrased) “Wow, these monitoring stations could have benefits for climate science”.
I couldn’t make this stuff up.
February 11th, 2013 at 9:00 pm
It’s not just insects. White Nose Syndrome whose origins are unknown is responsible for killing millions of bats. It started in New England and has been moving west. I erected bat houses on the property according to specifications. Whereas 5 years ago I used to enjoy watching bat acrobatics at dusk every summer evening, this past year just ONE bat remained.
Chytrid is causing the extinction of numerous amphibian species. The Panamanian Golden frog WAS the national symbol of Panama, but within one year of chytrid being discovered this frog species was declared extinct.
These are the canaries in the coal mine warning us that the natural world is on the precipice of collapse. The signs are everywhere.
February 11th, 2013 at 9:11 pm
dairymandave Says:
February 11th, 2013 at 3:18 pm
I have lost at least some confidence in many of the other bloggers that we are all familiar with. Each seems to have a rather narrow view, like the scientists mentioned. Or a blind spot. They mention NTE and then forget about it.
There is no money, glory, public status or future in pushing the NTE meme,quite the opposite, hence why would they harp on it? The money, glory and ego building is in sticking with the delusion that their particular flavor of negotiating with physics, chemistry and biology is a solution.
It is pretty darn difficult to survive extinction, yes?
February 11th, 2013 at 10:42 pm
@Anthony “There is no money, glory, public status or future in pushing the NTE meme”
Exactly. I think part of the problem why so many doomers are seemingly bewildered by the lack of concern amongst their fellow sapiens is due to simply failing to understand their hopes, dreams & aspirations. And the reason for that is most likely driven by a stubborn tendency to impose anti-social attitudes which are telegraphed by certain dress & manners long before getting a chance to even speak.
I’ve always advocated & practiced being a chameleon. Anyone can look like a hippy, but it takes a real talent to know what kind of haircut to have, what kind of clothes to wear & how to act & speak as if you were part of the mainstream. While not as extreme as the famous E Murphy skit about passing as white, it is pretty dang revealing.
So, are you ready for the truth? The right wing, especially “corporations”, always seems to be the convenient boogie men of the left, but consider the phrase, ‘physician, heal thyself’. That is, if the right is the natural opposition, how about the left? And what more liberal, progressive, media dominant city exists in N America than vaunted San Francisco?
So what’s going on in SF? I’ll tell you, as someone who isn’t quite in the 1%, but has enough economic freedom to frequently visit that fair city, that the left is just as obsessed with the hustle of “getting ahead” as any pie-in-the-sky OC real estate developer. It’s just that, since they are more emotionally tuned, their areas of focus happen to be on trendy, more ‘artistic’ pursuits.
But, perhaps most importantly, art in this context isn’t confined to visual, performance, etc, but the essence of fitting in in a group dynamic of ‘doing the right thing’. And the right thing these days is of course green.
So, while the very real danger of various NTE scenarios play out amongst the few in-the-know, real life liberals, with real economic agendas pass legislation such as the one that mandates that store owners charge customers an extra 10 cents per bag for their groceries. LOL. I mean, SF has a major, major footprint, including massive hidden costs incurred to get groceries delivered to hundreds of stores that then must charge a feel-good surcharge to please all the greens.
OK, so that’s the state of reality as it exists in an apex city in an epex state in an apex country. Never one to want to break out of character, but sometimes I would like to tell a happy, carefree lib that Benny is printing $85 billion fun-bux each & every month so that tourists can continue to flock to the city and keep the hotels full.
No one knows anything. They are kept stupid for a reason. It’s an impossible task to teach someone something they don’t want to know. So, have fun & live. Move seamlessly in the crowd, and watch the living movie unfold before your eyes.
February 12th, 2013 at 1:50 am
ulvfugl
That David Graeber podcast link was a helpful and timely eye-opener to me.
I have been looking for an explaination of the phoney way indebtedness and financial shenanigans actually work, especially up there with the big movers and shakers. I think from the podcast David Graeber may be a good place to start, and I do always remember he may be pushing a few barrows himself, so critical listening and reading is the order of the day, hey?
Listening to Graeber’s analysis and answers to questions in the podcast kind of reminded me of an old Abbot ans Costello skit.
‘Kangaroo Straight’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZ0roHgpQKQ
This u-tube is all there is on this skit, but what it doesn’t show is after this Abbott tells Costello that nothing beats a Kangaroo Straight.
Then soon Costello is betting big. Abbott puts down 4 kings or some very high cards, I can’t remember, and begins to rake back the money.
Costello tells him to wait, and puts down a Kangaroo Straight, and laughs and starts to rake back the money to his side. But to Costello’s surprise and shagrin, Abbott says “wait a minute”, and explains it can only be used once on a sitting, so Abbott rakes back the money!
That’s how the big guys do it, just keep the complexity at a very high level, and keep inventing then changing the ‘rules’ – what ‘rules’ are actually ‘rules’ when they are there and then not there only to suit TPTB? Arguably, ‘Occupy’, ‘Wikileaks’ and’ The Arab Spring’, (surely it has become Autumn by now?) are examples of people waking up to the longest bondage con we have ever known. I can now see far better how these things actually do threaten TPTB and so also see the level of retaliation, qv the comingling of the financial sector and FBI and HS over there in the USA. Their interests are one, so they collude, and feel perfectly justified in doing so.
Breathtaking.
brought up to believe and ‘feel’ the world and all its inhabitants are their oyster, to manipulate at all costs.
Vomitworthy IMO.
What I had forgotten in the ‘Kangaroo Straight’ skit is that there is the other bald guy there, obviously in cahoots with Abbott. He is the vital enabler to the fleecing of the little guy, Costello.
This is how the wheeler dealers at Wall Street, Fleet Street and the CIA manage to keep getting the money off the slave class, just change the rules.
I have a copy now of David Graeber’s book:
‘Debt – The First 5,000 Years’
and it is my next reading assignment, and ‘I choose to accept it!’
Thanks once again ulvfugl, your links have helped me see more, please keep posting here, I value your contribution, for what MHO is worth.
BTW, does running the website you do, mean a lot of contributors send links to info you might not have found yourself?
If so… Crikey!
I got to get me one of them website thingys.
February 12th, 2013 at 2:13 am
Anthony
You wrote:
“There is no money, glory, public status or future in pushing the NTE meme, quite the opposite, hence why would they harp on it?”
After making a few enquiries some time back, I have come to the view that this is why Dimitri Orlov keeps his message clearly in the ‘lifeboat’ and ‘survivability’ camp.
I think Orlov has plenty to say that is useful, and cogent snd very helpful, but it seems an income stream from the growing panic is his business model to surviving himself.
He might see it as a fair trade, but to me Guy offers something far more valable:
“You are going to die. We are all going to die. The majority of life on Earth will die very soon in geological time scales…. Now if you like, you are welcome to come on in and have a cup of tea”.
That is honest, straight up, the Truth, (regardless of NTE scenarios..ha ha.)
And it is free! (Unless Guy makes money or capital from the web browsing exchange comodity process, which I don’t quite understand yet.)
Can’t see Guy having a business model though.
February 12th, 2013 at 3:01 am
@ Ozman
I got the link from his twitter feed.
… don’t forget the methane.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-OTfGBMswYDs/UQyPQJI8UXI/AAAAAAAAJKQ/zFrPQUexXaY/s1600/8453866348957.jpg
February 12th, 2013 at 3:18 am
Friedrich Kling, if my husband and I had enough heavy metals in our excretions to hurt the plants we fertilize we would probably be dead. I think you have read that using human manure in sewage sludge has heavy metals which would be from industrial waste and other waste that people dispose of in their home sinks.
The disadvantages and limitations of sewage sludge use The heavy metal content of sewage sludge has been considered the most significant restricting factor in the agricultural use of sludge. The problem is that heavy metals remain in the soil and many of them undergo biomagnification in the food chain. Among the heavy metals in sewage sludge, the most hazardous ones to humans are cadmium, mercury, and lead, while copper, zinc, chromium, and nickel in high concentrations are particularly poisonous to plants. (Levinen 1991)
Industry is the main source of heavy metals in sewage sludge; they also pass into surface waters with rainwater and from corroded piping. The amount of metals in sludge cannot be decreased by sludge treatment; moreover if the amount of organic matter decreases during treatment, the metal concentration is increased. http://orgprints.org/8477/1/njf4.pdf
February 12th, 2013 at 3:24 am
The Humanure Handbook will answer all your questions about safety of using feces and urine for fertilizer – available in book form and the author also generously makes it available for free on the web
http://humanurehandbook.com/contents.html
Originally I only used it on flowers and where deeply dug into the soil, but got over my fears. Mine composts for at least 2 years before being used. Been doing this for about 20 years and plants still growing fine, and we only seem to get sick when we mix too much with the rest of the world, which is seldom.
February 12th, 2013 at 3:27 am
Cant resist putting up this one from Abbott and Costello.
‘Abbott and Costello – Hot Dog and Mustard’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJyorgHxvLA
Some early spin doctoring going on there, great rhetorical wit, but notice neither actually eat their Hot Dog.
Both masters of the gag, IMO.
There is more than a passing resemblence between ‘Ren and Stimpy’ to these two, and Tom and Jerry.
IMO the key to their humour is that Abbott is the Adolescent, and Costello the Child.
When with others, Abbott defends Costello, but alone or in close quarters he exploits Costello’s gullability and emotionality.
Kinda like TPTB and the Shepeople.
‘Abbott & Costello – Limburger Cheese Sandwich & Orange Juice (Who Done It?, 1942)’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=9Cm-blfss64&NR=1
Dare I say,
good clean fun…
….just as America was gearing up their Suburbs:
‘Suburb’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suburb
A snippet:
“In the U.S., 1950 was the first year that more people lived in suburbs than elsewhere.”
and Nuclear Power,
‘Nuclear power in the United States’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_States
Some quotes:
“Argonne National Laboratory was assigned by the United States Atomic Energy Commission the lead role in developing commercial nuclear energy beginning in the 1940s….”
“In the early afternoon of December 20, 1951 …. was the first time that a usable amount of electrical power had ever been generated from nuclear fission. Only days afterward, the reactor produced all the electricity needed for the entire EBR complex.[10] One ton of natural Uranium can produce more than 40 million kilowatt-hours of electricity —this is equivalent to burning 16,000 tons of coal or 80,000 barrels of oil.[11] More central to EBR-I’s purpose than just generating electricity, however, was its role in proving that a reactor could create more nuclear fuel as a byproduct than it consumed during operation. In 1953, tests verified that this was the case.”
Ah hem….very clear…fuel for atomic weapons, not bin liners or tooth paste,(although, I would check your tooth paste, very lax regulations about what can be used in toothpaste…?)
“More central to EBR-I’s purpose than just generating electricity, however, was its role in proving that a reactor could create more nuclear fuel as a byproduct than it consumed during operation.”
and…
“In his 1963 book ‘Change, Hope and the Bomb’, David Lilienthal criticized nuclear developments, particularly the nuclear industry’s failure to address the nuclear waste question.”
So that is 2013 minus 1963…lets see, oh that is easy I was born 1963, 50 years.
For 50 years no action on nuclear fuel disposal, as if there ever was any intention to dispose, it is a waste…
What a mess!
February 12th, 2013 at 3:29 am
OOOPS just saw that others had already posted the humanure handbook – reminder to self, read all comments before posting
February 12th, 2013 at 3:45 am
Daniel, the Brown marmorated stink bug down here is just called the stink bug – stinks if you crush it by hand, doesn’t seem to be a big problem. OTOH the harlequin cabbage bug is in the same family and does cause some problems, seemed a bit worse last year. The squash borer has gotten so bad that my plants seldom stay alive long enough for the little worms that get in the squash itself to start in anymore. But OTOH the Mexican bean beetle seems to have disappeared. Last year I had green aphids on my edible pod peas for the first time, and this year I have something small and black that is probably a type of aphid on my garlic and onions and garlic chives.
I think the main problem with insects will be not that there or more or less but that we each begin to be hit by different ones. For us humans personally the mosquitoes that carry dengue (break bone fever) and malaria and other such diseases are moving north. http://diseasemaps.usgs.gov/dep_us_human.html
February 12th, 2013 at 3:46 am
Correction…
there is the Sandinavian attemt.to which on the face of it appears to be a genuine attemt to do something responsible…
Onkalo….. means ‘cave’.
‘Into Eternity trailer’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sioLKHyf108
‘Interview with Michael Madsen, director of ‘Into Eternity”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8D4TWb_vSHs
Staggering…!
February 12th, 2013 at 3:57 am
A slightly better intro to the documentry ‘Into Eternity’…
‘Into Eternity Trailer with Aimo Hautojärvi’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SdXUpDylgs
Anyone have a link to the full doco?
February 12th, 2013 at 6:59 am
@Anthony,
I have lost at least some confidence in many of the other bloggers that we are all familiar with. Each seems to have a rather narrow view, like the scientists mentioned. Or a blind spot. They mention NTE and then forget about it.
I have noticed this do, and even new science when it is released, and which keeps repeating “this or that is happening much faster” yada yada, then take it no farther. Take this now article for example..
Sunlight Stimulates Release of Climate-Warming Gas from Melting Arctic Permafrost
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130211162116.htm
In the context of the larger gestalt of everything else happening, such articles lead the casual reader with a ‘no big deal’ feeling.
February 12th, 2013 at 7:02 am
Not sure what Matt Damon wants…
http://strikewithme.org/
February 12th, 2013 at 7:37 am
In 2009, the city of Austin, Texas legally approved a composting toilet for use; the story was featured in Time Magazine. Time wrote that this “may be the first legal composting toilet in the U.S.” The approved system, called Humanure, involves dumping waste into a compost bin and covering it with sawdust rather than leaving it to contaminate the ground. In Marin County, Calif., another group is working to replace chemical toilets in public areas.
Read more: The Legality of Composting Toilets | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/about_7220040_legality-composting-toilets.html#ixzz2KhCEWywJ
February 12th, 2013 at 7:50 am
Matt Damon’s strike is hilarious! pat, that is so appropriate given the discussion about humanmanure and composting toilets.
F. Kling, I think I might have you beat on the development hell living arrangement. Site condo. With homeowners association. You can imagine. My former neighbor has three trees lined up in front of her house. This is an actual conversation:
Her: I’m thinking about taking that tree down. (She motions to a pretty little dogwood).
Me: Why? Is it sick?
Her: It just stands there.
Me: (Trying not to laugh out loud) Well, that’s kind of what trees do.
Her: (Crickets)
I live on maybe a quarter acre and have planted 14 trees in the 13 years we’ve lived here. I was kind of happy when the Bradford Pear went down in a wind storm and now have a white swamp Oak planted there.
People do hate nature. And they are fucking idiots that deserve what is coming to them.
We’re putting the house up for sale this spring. I can’t take it anymore.
February 12th, 2013 at 8:04 am
In response to your implied question, Ozman, I have no business plan and I make no money off this website. It costs me money, though. Despite living off the meager savings I accrued from many years living in the empire, I support groups and movements in which I believe. I ask everybody here to join me in supporting Blazing Kat Productions, the televised “voice” of Occupy.
February 12th, 2013 at 8:08 am
Dave Pollard’s Preparing For Collapse : The New Political Map
http://howtosavetheworld.ca/2013/02/04/preparing-for-collapse-the-new-political-map/
February 12th, 2013 at 8:10 am
Jane Goodall, ‘We’ve been stealing, stealing, stealing, from our children’
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/02/10/jane-goodall-on-climate-change-weve-just-been-stealing-stealing-stealing-from-our-children-and-its-shocking
February 12th, 2013 at 8:33 am
Re: Compost toilets, leaves where available can be substituted for sawdust. I am not so sure how available sawdust is, and if it means power tools cutting down trees specifically for that purpose, that wouldn’t be cool.
February 12th, 2013 at 8:43 am
@ Bailey
I don’t think leaves will work the same as sawdust!
I had the same thought, where do I get sawdust? Do they sell it at Wal-Mart? LOL.
The key to the sawdust is to create a seal around the poop so it doesn’t smell.
February 12th, 2013 at 8:54 am
It’s awful to live in the sticks
The moose are all dying of ticks
My students prefer
As one, they concur
They’d rather live online as clicks
February 12th, 2013 at 8:55 am
Pat, leaves work just fine. It is all I have ever used in our humanure. Some leaves work better than others as far as breaking down in the compost pile. Bradford Pear are terrible, pecan are best but you can’t get as much in a bucket because they curl up. Maple are good and oak is OK – I try to vary which leaves I use so the pile has a mix.
February 12th, 2013 at 8:59 am
As long as we’re talking about toilets, this looks like a metaphor for the entire earth:
http://gma.yahoo.com/passengers-text-dire-conditions-cruise-ship-081005868–abc-news-topstories.html
February 12th, 2013 at 9:04 am
From the Jane Goodall story, I guess you could say it encapsulates how intrinsically blind we are:
At 78, Goodall, who has 53 years of studying chimps behind her, is still criss-crossing the planet to raise the awareness of populations and their leaders on the fate of the apes and the need to protect the environment.
“I haven’t been more than two or three weeks in one place at one time,” for the past 25 years, she says.
February 12th, 2013 at 9:13 am
Yep, and leaf mold works even better than leaves. And if you add compost worms, all the better for breaking it down faster.
February 12th, 2013 at 9:15 am
..Certain oak leaves have a waxy covering will not break down as well, but leaves which naturally break down faster, I think will work the best.
February 12th, 2013 at 9:27 am
@Guy McPherson
“…we use composting toilets at the mud hut. Specifically, we have two Biolet toilets. They’ve worked well for five years so far. For solids, we use the same mixture as Jefferson and Washington: two parts sawdust and one part wood ash. We apply humanure compost to trees in the orchard.”
May I ask why you are not applying your humanure to annual plants like garden vegetables?
Since chemical and physical properties of soil vary from location to location I was wondering if any of you currently using humanure have had your soil tested and analyzed by university soil scientists or your local Extension Service? Soil tests are very inexpensive and it’s always good to have a baseline to measure against. If you have had your soil tested after several years of humanure applications I’d be interested in reading about the results. ie; pH, soil texture, nutrient levels, OM, soluble salts, recommendations etc. Thanks.
This is a good read about a man who is anti-war.
Saboteur
February 12th, 2013 at 10:10 am
One caution on the use of ash; It can greatly raise the ph and interfere with the microbes which are needed to break down the humanure.
February 12th, 2013 at 10:14 am
.
The story about humankind
Features habitats which have declined:
We keep ourselves fed
Clearing forests ahead,
And leaving just deserts behind.
February 12th, 2013 at 10:15 am
@ Ogardener:
the Saboteur link was interesting, what possessed you to post it here?
I found it most interesting that he realizes he cannot make any real difference in the grand scheme of things, but he continues in his own small way simply because, in his mind, it is the right thing to do. Nevermind that each Hummer he burns just gets them a brand new one at US taxpayers’ expense.
I’ve been guilty of telling preppers and those who stockpile guns that they are not only wasting their time, but they are actually making it less likely they will survive the inevitable militarization of collapse. People with guns will be the first people arrested and sent to camps. Preppers will be overrun by marauding hordes. But, like the hero in your link “Sabateur” it is, in their minds, the right thing to do, therefore, it is what they must do.
However, prepping and stockpiling guns is one thing, raging against the machine is quite another.
February 12th, 2013 at 10:18 am
@ ogardener
Interesting link, that. The Pen and the Sword ?
One of the cherished myths of American history is that plucky Yankees won independence from Great Britain by picking off befuddled redcoats too dense to deviate from ritualistic parade-ground warfare. That is an exaggeration. By the time the Revolution broke out, in 1775, the British were well versed in irregular warfare and were countering it in Europe, the Caribbean, and North America. Redcoats certainly knew enough to break ranks and seek cover in battle when possible, rather than, in the words of one historian, “remaining inert and vulnerable to enemy fire.” The British army had a different problem: much like the modern U.S. Army pre-Iraq, it had forgotten most of the lessons of irregular war learned a generation before. And the American rebels used a more sophisticated form of irregular warfare than the French backwoodsmen and Native American warriors whom the redcoats had gotten used to fighting. The spread of literacy and printed books allowed the American insurgents to appeal for popular support, thereby elevating the role of propaganda and psychological warfare. It is appropriate that the term “public opinion” first appeared in print in 1776, for the American rebels won independence in large part by appealing to the British electorate with documents such as Thomas Paine’s pamphlet Common Sense and the Declaration of Independence. In fact, the outcome of the Revolution was really decided in 1782, when the British House of Commons voted by a narrow margin to discontinue offensive operations. The British could have kept fighting after that date; they could have raised fresh armies even after the defeat at Yorktown in 1781. But not after they had lost the support of parliament.
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/138824/max-boot/the-evolution-of-irregular-war?page=show
February 12th, 2013 at 10:45 am
@Kathy C
“leaves work just fine. It is all I have ever used in our humanure. Some leaves work better than others as far as breaking down in the compost pile. Bradford Pear are terrible, pecan are best but you can’t get as much in a bucket because they curl up.”
Aren’t you concerned about the phytotoxin juglone found in the roots, leaves, fruit, hulls, and bark of Pecan trees – Carya illinoinensis?
February 12th, 2013 at 10:47 am
@Kathy C
I am in North Georgia. I can walk into a Federal Wildlife Management area from my back yard. I have a garden carved out of the forest that cannot even be seen by Google Earth (yet). In the early spring, I take my chicks out to areas along the creek and turn over logs for them to access termites and tender pupae; sometimes I get a prize too: the red eft. Of course, there are less salamanders and mud pups; amphibians are very sensitive to environmental changes. Im not sure it it is temperature or less breeding or maybe I just lost my ability to find them.
The squash vine borer is a very bad actor. You have probably seen the moth moving about the squash blossoms – looks like a paper wasp – she will lay her little brown eggs and you can see them on the vine. You can drown them with hose blasts or spray with soap and cayenne. I cut a few of the worms out of my stems last summer and packed the vine with compost – extended the life a bit but once you see that wilted vine, it is almost always certain death.
February 12th, 2013 at 10:58 am
@wildwoman:
No there aren’t as many animals. I still see lots of deer, soon I will see black bear, lots of woodchucks and squirrels, coyote, i see a fox now and then but they are very elusive if they can smell me its not possible; lots of rabbits and raccoon, opossums galore, field mice, many birds, not as many songbirds as my childhood though. I used to see otters in the deeper part of the creek but I havent in years. Beaver though, when my idiot neighbor isnt killing them for damming.
February 12th, 2013 at 11:03 am
To Freidrich Kling re:humanure
We have used a combo of leaves,sawdust and ash for 5 years now and had no problems. We only use sawdust when it is offered up as a “waste product” from local carpenters and sawmills. We use it on fruit trees because we already make plenty of compost from other sources. One thing I have noticed is that many people don’t want to try humanure because the idea of going in the bucket doesn’t fit in with their idea of themselves and their precious lifestyles. What I like to show people is that they can have their Martha Stewart bathroom and their bucket too. What we did was to make a box with a toilet seat that is simple,attractive and matched the existing bathroom. We also built a small outhouse with all reclaimed materials and a big picture window (facing the woods). The humanure bucket and it’s attractive housing is in the pleasant outhouse the bulk of the year and fits nicely in the bathroom during the serious winter weather. To encourage people to “enjoy” the outhouse we call it the poetry seat and leave a pad and pen for people to create and tack their poems up.
Any offerings BTD?
February 12th, 2013 at 11:03 am
“Beaver though, when my idiot neighbor isnt killing them for damming.”
Just think if some greater species killed us for the damming we do. There would be blood 3′ high in the streets.
February 12th, 2013 at 11:18 am
There are definitely less of most of the familiar animals where I live. Hardly any swallows in the spring anymore, warblers are almost non-existent here, no turtles,one or two lonely bats even a diminished population of crows and jays.
I have also been reading that some common invasive species such as house sparrows and starlings are on the decline here and are declining even more quickly in their native habitats. As I write these words I feel that humans surely Suck!
The animals that are absolutely thriving here are rats. Our entire area is overrun with them.
People who have never had them are trying to learn how to deal with them.
February 12th, 2013 at 11:22 am
For some of your bug problems you may want to try Pyrethrin, commercial name is Pyganic. It is expensive, the cheapest place we have found is domyownpestcontrol, in Norcross GA. We were unsuccessful in trying to grow Pyrethrin last year but will give it another try this year. Certified organic. A good way to get the eggs off the leaves is wrap duck tape on your fingers sticky side out.
February 12th, 2013 at 11:22 am
.
War Is Over If You Want It pt. 3
The Japanese island defender,
Knowing his chances are slender,
Still tries to be brave,
Holed up in a cave,
Not knowing there’s been a surrender.
February 12th, 2013 at 11:39 am
thestormcrow, IMVHO, the quintessence of limerick is the man from Nantucket, and for bathroom grafitti:
Those who write on shithouse walls
Roll their shit in little balls;
Those who read these words of wit
Eat those little balls of shit.
February 12th, 2013 at 12:05 pm
ogardener, we heavily supplement vegetable gardens with fowl manure (from this property) and horse manure (from neighbors), so there’s no need to augment with humanure. On the other hand, humanure is the only fertility we add to the orchard plants. Soils here are alkaline, so ash is not a problem. In fact, we add compost created by churning ponderosa pine chips to beds in which we want to decrease the pH (i.e., increase acidity).
February 12th, 2013 at 12:53 pm
@ Guy,
Soils here are alkaline, so ash is not a problem.
But why would you want to further increase ph and make it more alkaline? On the other hand, I understand that ash foster certain bacteria which can have a favorable effect on odor (and of course, increases potassium).
February 12th, 2013 at 12:58 pm
We’re not particularly worried about increasing pH in the small area around the tree where we add humanure and, as you point out, we probably increase available potassium in the same area. There’s probably little or no net impact. The ash and bits of charcoal improve odor, too.
February 12th, 2013 at 1:15 pm
Ogardner Aren’t you concerned about the phytotoxin juglone found in the roots, leaves, fruit, hulls, and bark of Pecan trees – Carya illinoinensis?
No I am not concerned, since I have been mulching my whole garden with pecan leaves for several decades and the garden produces better every year. I use other leaves as well, but pecan leaves make beautiful rich soil that grows just fine. Sometimes you have to forget what the experts tell you and just do what works.
However some experts have noted this Other trees closely related to black walnut also produce juglone, including butternut, English walnut, pecan,shagbark hickory, and bitternut hickory. However, all
produce such limited quantities compared to the black walnut that toxicity to other plants is rarely observed.
http://www.extension.purdue.edu/extmedia/HO/HO-193.pdf
February 12th, 2013 at 1:26 pm
Red Eft, to date I have never seen the egg of the Squash borer but not for lack of looking. However move the stems too much to look underside and you break them. I know the moth that lays them and succeeded in killing one or two last year. Pretty things. I hate them. I’ll try soap this year. What I have started doing is giving up as soon as they wilt, pulling the whole vine and cutting it open to kill all the grubs – I discovered that cutting a hole and killing a grub never works because there will be as many as 20 of them all along the stem. I have also read that they can lay their eggs on the leaves as well as the stems. Any rate I hope by sacrificing early and killing all the grubs I will lower the population each year.
I hate squash bugs too, but they are slower and their eggs are more obvious. I also found that if I watch while I water a squash plant the squash bugs in the soil will come out after a bit and head up a stem to get out of the water. I get a lot that way. I also spend a lot of time turning over leaves and killing bugs and eggs. But the borer that is the beasty to beat.
Sometimes Yellow Squash just doesn’t seem worth it – that is until you eat it.
February 12th, 2013 at 2:14 pm
But here is a thought about things that folks have mentioned in relation to gardening.
Sprayers – plastic bottles made from and by fossil fuels
Hoses – plastic made from and by fossil fuels
Dichotomous earth – anyone have their own source for it
Rock dust – I guess we can try make that ourselves except damn if our hammers aren’t made using fossil fuels
Soap – that we can make ourselves if we have an oil source (pigs, olives, cattle?) and know how to make lye from our wood ashes – ooops need a metal pan to cook it up in
Plastic buckets for humanure – ditto
etc etc. Without fossil fuels we have a ton of new skills to learn – forging, pottery making, etc. Some things become unavailable – if we have bamboo we can make some sort of thing to “hose” water from one place to another but unless we live where the rubber trees grow we aren’t going to have flexible hoses to run from our wells. Ah well without electric pumps we aren’t going to be able to irrigate much anyway, even solar pumps will give out after a time and never be replaced.
So thank dog for the nuke plants – we all get to die before we find out how totally inadequate any of our plans are without oil and the whole civilization built around it that supplies whatever we want when we want it.
I remember asking someone once to think of anything that was made that didn’t use oil. He said a ceramic toilet – hah I said, oil used to manufacture it even though it has no plastics, oil used to mine the minerals, oil used to transport them, oil used in the manufacture, oil used to bring it to a store, oil used to bring it home.
February 12th, 2013 at 2:22 pm
Lovely discussions here today, despite the fact that the last few days before that have been……
http://cheezburger.com/7037639680
February 12th, 2013 at 2:48 pm
@ BC:
Yes, lovely day. love how we moved from the Nulear Power Plant issue to humanure to garden insects to etc…
I don’t have a garden, I don’t have stored foods, I don’t have a gun, and when the grid goes down and the nuclear plants start spewing radiation and the marauding hordes are unleashed, I will wait on my porch for the FEMA truck to come by, pick me up and take me to camp.
February 12th, 2013 at 3:01 pm
At the camp…. and there you will be fed glop in overcrowded conditions where totally resistant TB will be rampant. Not a good way to die.
Now we have accelerating permafrost melt:
“Ancient carbon trapped in Arctic permafrost is extremely sensitive to sunlight and, if exposed to the surface when long-frozen soils melt and collapse, can release climate-warming carbon dioxide gas into the atmosphere much faster than previously thought.”
The PNAS article:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/02/05/1214104110
February 12th, 2013 at 3:02 pm
The Science Daily Report on the permafrost melt:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130211162116.htm
February 12th, 2013 at 3:21 pm
@ BC Nurse Prof
At the camp…
I thought the plan is to shuttle people in, on twin level railroad carriages, shackled to the seats, gas them in the sealed sheds, then into the black plastic coffins.
February 12th, 2013 at 4:03 pm
Yes but per wiki “Between 1986 and 1992, it is thought between 600,000 and one million people participated in works around Chernobyl and were exposed to some level of radiation.” In the world’s 439 plants there are about 700 total reactors. So 1/2 million at least to clean up each reactor gone Chernobyl means they need to keep at least 350 million folks alive to be sacrificed on the nuclear fires so they can have any sort of world at all.
Penny do the know if the vaccine will prevent the XDRTB much less the totally resistant tb?
February 12th, 2013 at 6:40 pm
weird thought: perhaps the high global background radiation levels that shall persist for a relatively long time as one of humanity’s parting ‘gifts’ to gaia will assist whatever life remains in the wake of the anthropocene extinction to rapidly evolve/adapt to the dramatic changes we have wrought. radiation causes genes to mutate. more radiation, more mutations= faster evolution, doesn’t it?
February 12th, 2013 at 6:47 pm
yes, faster mutations, so we’ll have 2-headed cockroaches…
February 12th, 2013 at 6:55 pm
And, as the expression tells us, two heads are better than one
February 12th, 2013 at 7:09 pm
sorry, i should have said one of civilization’s parting gifts to gaia, rather than humanity’s. i retain a perhaps delusional need to discriminate between ‘our’ culture and us. i like to think that without civilization, none of this would have happened, which of course is true. besides that i’m not nearly as certain as many of u express yourselves to be re. our nte, but i am quite certain that civ.’s going down, and few if any shall survive it’s traumatic collapse/ self destruction. i like chefurka’s tentative timetable for collapse he’s expressed here previously. coming decades are going to be quite a ride, not fun for most. it’ll take a special sort of sherson to find consistent fun in collapse. someone who isn’t fearful or traumatized by megadeth and hardship. might be a good time for sociopaths, banner times for suicides. as is repeated over and over here, ‘count your blessings’ while they last. savor life while u still can, if u can.
February 12th, 2013 at 7:10 pm
to pat and guy: lol.
February 12th, 2013 at 7:49 pm
OzMan: Morocco Bama “oncd upon a time” had posted a link on NBL to the film:
Onkalo: The Place You Must Always Remember to Forget – Nuclear Waste the film
February 12th, 2013 at 7:56 pm
‘Those who write on shithouse walls
Roll their shit in little balls;
Those who read these words of wit
Eat those little balls of shit.’
it’s been quite a few years i think since i last encountered this bit of outhouse wit. thanks for the reminder, btd. must be a fairly widespread little poem, for at least 2 nbl-ers to have come across it. i’m sure i’ve read it many times before, in different places. i guess u can’t keep a good rhyme down! rofl
February 12th, 2013 at 8:38 pm
Robin Datta
Thanks
February 12th, 2013 at 8:46 pm
Guy
Just so you know, I had no doubt about the kind of explaination you gave about my implied question would confirm my equally implied view. I just felt that since I had brought up Dimity orlov, whom I have some rspect for, I should tease you out to declair what happens with NBL.
I hope that did not feel like it was a vote of doubt, or lack of confidence in your integrity. On the contrary, I applaud the type of ‘teaching’, and ‘living’, you have moved on to when the Academy found you had literally outgrown their norrow definition of Education.
It was a bit sneaky I’ll admit, but not insincer on my part. I hope that is not experienced as a challenge, or so.
I would like to have that cup of tea one day…..
February 12th, 2013 at 8:47 pm
Overlooking NTE, different point of view on the prospects for evolution (including human evolution):
How did Mammals and Birds Survive the End-Cretaceous Event?
February 12th, 2013 at 8:54 pm
A segue from filling buckets:
“Education is not about filling buckets, but lighting of fires” – Stuart Firestein
February 13th, 2013 at 3:30 am
Robin Datta; Higher education, then, must be about how to put the fires out. Where is that?
This man, George Perkins Marsh, talked a lot about Vermont 150 years ago. He understood soil structure and how it makes Vermont work. It’s not about a few plants or a few trees in your back yard. It’s about the whole property, the whole farm, the whole county, the whole state, the whole country, the whole world. As a farmer, I can have control over at least a few hundred acres and help make the soils better, not worse. That’s one reason I did it.
Here’s an exercise on sustainability. Draw an imaginary line around your property (or community) and add up all the nutrients entering your area and all the nutrients leaving your area. They must be equal or positive or “you’re done”. Thus, farmers must buy fertilizer, whether organic or not. Without that supply, we’re done, too. Think about it. Mr. Marsh was thinking about it 150 years ago. Guess the fire died out…and the buckets have leaks.
February 13th, 2013 at 3:46 am
In case it was missed I will post this link again – Penny and Bailey both posted it previously
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130211162116.htm
Sunlight Stimulates Release of Climate-Warming Gas from Melting Arctic Permafrost
As I read it this means that not only will warming release more CO2 and methane, but sunlight will have an accelerating affect on that release.
From the article the key words are faster than we previously thought
“We know that in a warmer world there will be more of these thermokarst failures, and that will lead to more of this ancient frozen carbon being exposed to surface conditions,” Kling said. “While we can’t say how fast this Arctic carbon will feed back into the global carbon cycle and accelerate climate warming on Earth, the fact that it will be exposed to light means that it will happen faster than we previously thought”
February 13th, 2013 at 5:22 am
Kathy C
So were done….. (faster)!
February 13th, 2013 at 5:40 am
I failed to post the link to the George Perkins Marsh climate speech:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2011/jun/20/george-perkins-marsh-climate-speech
February 13th, 2013 at 6:39 am
dmd, all:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2013/feb/09/soybean-farmer-monsanto-supreme-court
Indiana soybean farmer sees Monsanto lawsuit reach US supreme court
As David versus Goliath battles go it is hard to imagine a more uneven fight than the one about to play out in front of the US supreme court between Vernon Hugh Bowman and Monsanto.
On the one side is Bowman, a single 75-year-old Indiana soybean farmer who is still tending the same acres of land as his father before him in rural south-western Indiana. On the other is a gigantic multibillion dollar agricultural business famed for its zealous protection of its commercial rights.
Not that Bowman sees it that way. “I really don’t consider it as David and Goliath. I don’t think of it in those terms. I think of it in terms of right and wrong,” Bowman told The Guardian in an interview.
Either way, in the next few weeks Bowman and Monsanto’s opposing legal teams will face off in front of America’s most powerful legal body, weighing in on a case that deals with one of the most fundamental questions of modern industrial farming: who controls the rights to the seeds planted in the ground.
(article continues)
Go Vernon!
February 13th, 2013 at 6:54 am
@pat
“the Saboteur link was interesting, what possessed you to post it here? “
Hello Pat,
Sorry it took so long to respond to your question. Busy-ness has a way of creepin’ up on me. One finds oneself in the zone sometimes. You know what I mean? I posted the Saboteur story because it relates to Dan Allen’s topic…“How to Quickly and Easily Destroy the United States of America”. Just another person’s approach at chipping away at empire although much less drastic than forcing an NPI into criticality.
Tax payer funded you say? I think that’s the saboteur’s modus operandi. He hopes that sooner or later his efforts will put a dent in the war machine’s ability to wage war.
As far as prepping goes I’m just an organic gardener living in the forest trying to do the best that I can. I don’t have caches of Polish canned ham buried in the woods.
Loved your Matt Damon link btw.
February 13th, 2013 at 7:13 am
This information came out this morning:
“Fifty American leaders–including Michael Brune (Sierra Club), Bill McKibben (350.org), Reverend Lennox Yearwood Jr. (Hip Hop Caucus), civil rights legend Julian Bond, actress Daryl Hannah, Nebraska rancher Randy Thompson and others on the frontlines of climate change–will risk arrest in front of the White House to demonstrate the depth of their support for decisive action against climate change. For the first time in its 120-year history, the Sierra Club will participate in this civil disobedience action to convey the severity and urgency of action on climate.”
I know I wasn’t the only one who got an earlier notice from the Sierra Club that they had decided to undertake a civil disobedience action that was BY INVITATION ONLY and reacted by saying WTF?? And now I see it’s not just the Sierra Club insiders, it’s others “on the frontlines of climate change”.
This pathetic velvet cord, status-seeking mentality is constantly on display in so-called progressive movements. It’s been called out in many organizations, including at supposedly horizontal OWS, and was flagrant at the demonstration last week in New York to support Hedge’s suit against the NDAA.
Well, it’s only human nature I suppose so there’s not much point complaining about it, except it’s going to be the death of us because nobody will tell the Emperors that they have no clothes.
Targeting the pipeline is pointless and was always a poor choice as climate strategy. Obama is going to approve it – he was just waiting until after the election – because it’s part of a geo-political, anti-Venezuela move that Kerry will support because he hates Chavez. Likewise a campus divestment campaign is silly. The only thing that would help would be massive conservation and rationing of fuel. This video is really disturbing:
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=9633#.URuT8qE5y1k
Grrrrr the whole thing has me wondering if I should bother to go to DC this weekend for the rally.
February 13th, 2013 at 7:32 am
@ Ogardener
Yes, taxpayer funded, but I’m surprised that I’m still surprised at how much the taxpayer seems willing to fund!
Thomas Jefferson: A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have.
The industrial military complex employs a giant chunk of the workforce, directly and indirectly, so they have lots of people on their side, some that probably agree that the whole thing is way out of control and way bigger than really necessary to protect our nation. Besides, like the Dan Allen article suggests, the nation’s nuclear plants are not protected at all – a major oversight! Our borders are not protected – a major oversight! For the money it spends, the result is pathetic.
From Anthony Gregory:
Foreign policy is just another example of government’s failure to protect us. None of the government’s multi-billion-dollar weaponry, its imperial foreign bases, its aircraft carriers and thousands of nuclear bombs could defend the 3,000 Americans who lost their lives to a handful of fanatics with enough crazed determination and a few dollars worth of box-cutters. The ridiculous and horrifying military industrial complex offers no real protection against terrorism. Nothing that it is doing can stop another attack. The U.S. government’s diplomatic and military policy is not defense at all, and only puts us in great danger by inciting half the world to hatred and resentment and making the other half uneasy about being friends.
The state is a protection racket, not much different in kind from any organized crime syndicate. Just as the state fails in its ancillary functions, such as schooling and caring for the poor, so does it fail in its advertised primary function as an institution of protection. That’s why it’s a racket. That’s why it’s a fraud.
Even if one thinks the state can be set up so as to protect people’s rights more than it abuses them, we should probably look at the current situation and conclude that the state does not, in fact, protect us on balance. As it now stands, we’d be safer without the government’s cops or its soldiers, especially if the lion’s share of the state apparatus were brought down, its wholly inimical functions eliminated and its few desirable ones privatized. The state now seizes about half the wealth in the country. Does it not seem odd that the organization claiming to protect our lives and livelihoods needs to expropriate an entire half of our resources to do so? And what is it protecting us from, again? Could private criminals on their own really steal the trillions of dollars in wealth consumed annually by the bureaucracy, kidnap as many innocents as the police state, and kill as many as the federal war machine? To ask the question is to answer it.
February 13th, 2013 at 8:05 am
David Graeber talk, Political Pleasure
http://youtu.be/5eR_95slEFw
February 13th, 2013 at 8:19 am
“As long as politics is the shadow cast on society by big business, the attenuation of the shadow will not change the substance.”
- John Dewey
February 13th, 2013 at 8:20 am
This is one of the visitors to my patch of Eastern woodland. She’s a charmer. Man do the wood chips fly when she starts a knockin’!
February 13th, 2013 at 8:34 am
Champion Predator Overshoot
Animals overextend
And keep fighting on till the the end;
No time for losers
While we’re the abusers:
We are the champions, my friend.
February 13th, 2013 at 8:53 am
ogardener: i have a different colored woodpecker here in my front yard at the feeder, a few little ones in tow, that i hear knockin’ away in the woods behind my house. Beautiful bird.
Kathy C.: Not that it matters either way, but i’m gonna try to get downtown to Philly where there’s a supporting rally for those who can’t afford the travel.
all: Just one more reason to go extinct, slavery is alive and well
http://news.yahoo.com/un-says-human-trafficking-found-118-countries-003912967.html
February 13th, 2013 at 9:23 am
.
The message is out: we’re all dead,
But because that can play with your head,
The memo of dread
Gets ignored instead,
And most of the time’s left unread.
February 13th, 2013 at 10:14 am
just read in a French newspaper that part of the sarcophagus over Chernobyl collpsed yesterday (with MIRACULOUSLY, no danger for the public! YÉ!)
http://www.slate.fr/lien/68309/sarcophage-tchernobyl-ecroule
February 13th, 2013 at 10:23 am
@ michele
I heard it’s not the sarcophagus, but a building next to the sarcophagus
however, it also said that it has been long known that the sarcophagus does have cracks and needs to be redone, big money!
February 13th, 2013 at 10:25 am
The roof was constructed after the 1986 disaster but is not part of the sarcophagus structure covering the reactor, it said.
However the collapse underlines concerns about the condition of the now defunct nuclear plant over two-and-a-half-decades after the world’s worst nuclear disaster.
http://news.discovery.com/earth/weather-extreme-events/roof-collapses-at-chernobyl-nuclear-plant-130213.htm
February 13th, 2013 at 10:49 am
Economic collapse being acknowledged in the mainstream :
More than 200 years of economic expansion may be drawing to a close, says a new report from inter-dealer broker Tullett Prebon. The global economy is facing a lethal confluence of four critical factors – the fallout from the biggest debt bubble in history; a disastrous experiment with globalisation; massaging of data to the point where economic trends are obscured; and the approach of an energy-returns cliff-edge – explains Dr Tim Morgan, Global Head of Research at Tullett Prebon in Perfect Storm – energy, finance and the end of growth. “Combined, these factors have started to throw more than two centuries of economic expansion into reverse,” says Dr Morgan. “If the energy surplus ratio continues to decline as it has been, the economy as we know it is finished.”
http://www.tullettprebon.com/announcements/press/2013/TPI20130121.pdf
February 13th, 2013 at 10:54 am
Cryosat spots Arctic sea-ice loss in autumn
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21437680
February 13th, 2013 at 11:14 am
oh my dog Michele, and the new sarcophagus still not up – you can read about the project status here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Safe_Confinement#Project_status
” Ukrainian officials on Wednesday sought to reassure the public that radiation levels were unaffected at Chernobyl and there was no safety threat after a partial roof collapse at the exploded nuclear power plant.” from Fox News
Whatcha think – should we trust them?????
February 13th, 2013 at 11:33 am
Christopher Dorner’s wallet and ID cards were found near the U.S./Mexico last Thursday, according to the Los Angeles Times. And then, they were found in the ashes of the cabin.
Move along folks. There’s nothing to see here.
February 13th, 2013 at 11:41 am
You can here cops yelling burn that fuckin’ house down:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1T6cG7FC71c
February 13th, 2013 at 11:47 am
Ulv, the ‘mainstream’ in my parts cannot even see the shadows in Plato’s Cave.
February 13th, 2013 at 11:48 am
..”My part” as in the area where I live lol.
February 13th, 2013 at 11:50 am
Folks, this may have already been posted somewhere, but it really does lay out the essence of why our progamming via evolution makes it almost impossible to recognize our plight. Only higher brain function can overwrite this programming (yeah, like that is going to happen)..
For Humanity, Do Not Weep
http://questioneverything.typepad.com/question_everything/2012/12/for-humanity-do-not-weep.html
February 13th, 2013 at 12:05 pm
Guy, I see that the LA Times is using the three name meme to make Dorner more frightening.
Myself, I’m hoping he staged it all and is alive and well and planning his next move. The “environmental movement” could use a few good assassins.
February 13th, 2013 at 12:45 pm
Attn: Prospective environmental assassins
One Shot = One Kill provides obvious tactical advantages in your new line of activity.
In case you decide to return to your previous non-lethal-to-people programming, or need to take a break based on any number of considerations, or if you just hit a dry spell and run out of guilty human targets, this gear will also save on ammo used in hunting medium to large sized food animals.
There may not be enough time remaining pre-NTE for the lower ammo cost to completely offset the admittedly high cost of acquiring this equipment, but whaddya-gonna-do?
http://tracking-point.com/
February 13th, 2013 at 12:50 pm
A response circa 1978 by Richard Feynman in a Q&A session after a lecture on theoretical physics seems relevant to the difficulties many here have had trying to educate family & friends about climate chaos and NTE.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMDTcMD6pOw&list=FLbXK5JLR1fZL-WIzoKtGYFQ&index=37
February 13th, 2013 at 1:08 pm
Bailey, I read that essay and it’s pretty darn good. But I question some of it even though the author is an expert on evolution and I know very little. He makes a lot of points about why our species evolved to be psychologically predisposed to follow received wisdom and that is why we are in our current predicament.
But it seems to me that in fact, humans are incredibly innovative. And so I wonder if the reason he prefers that explanation over, say, the more believable observation (to me) that humans are innately obsessed with status, because it allows him to have hope for our future, that I doubt is warranted.
He writes:
“But my intuitions tell me that there will be survivors to carry on into the longer term future of the planet.”
“If so, could those future humans evolve to a point where they could collectively manage their biological mandate? Could they learn to quell their desires for creature comforts in the interest of the whole system? I think so.”
Curious as to any opinions.
February 13th, 2013 at 1:35 pm
Gail: my last comment (above) was mistakenly addressed to Kathy but was meant as a response to you (on whether to travel to DC this wkend). As to your most recent comment – i don’t think people are made to accept limits and always push the envelope in every way they can. When we’re kids we try sassin’ mom and/or pop to see how far we can get before we get the backhand across the dinner table or the paddle. Later it’s about the speed limit, sexual relations, and ingestion of “spirits” etc. People do it at work, with respect to eating all the wrong stuff, and almost always “bend the rules” when it comes to morality/ethics. Very few of us are “pure” or “untainted” until we “learn” that all our actions have consequences – but by then the damage is done (loss of reputation, job, illness, addiction, trouble with relationships, etc.). So here we are on the grandest scale demonstrating that we just aren’t all that sapient (to even deserve the name) and that we haven’t learned the most fundamental lessons at all as a species. Someone always wants to have more or to be “better than” or to “be the boss.” We’re never satisfied and have no idea what tranquility even means. Our world is a cacaphony of noise, pollution, greed, eating and sex. We’ve forgotten how to cooperate, live simply and be at peace. The entire world is a mess now and there’s only one way it’s going to end (since things will probably keep going the way they are now) – with humanity being kicked off the island. The author’s quote about survivors is wishful thinking IMHO.
February 13th, 2013 at 1:40 pm
@ Gail:
The “Question Everything” posts are, IMO, very interesting. He’s like the really smart guy in the room that everyone listens to because he’s the really smart guy in the room. He’s eloquent.
It’s hard to come to grips with some of the things he puts out there – like the evolution of homo sapiens. I agree with you that it seems that people are really hard to “nail down” as to the reasons for their behaviors – but, to be fair, I think he is talking about “the general public” which we like to call “sheeple.” There will always be the folks beyond the standard deviaton, and (on the “good” side) they are the innovators and the heretics and (on the “bad” side) they are the ambitious and conquerors.
February 13th, 2013 at 1:47 pm
@ Gail
…that humans are innately obsessed with status…
This Joseph Henrich mentions two types of status, amongst other things.
He says “…should stop distinguishing cultural and biological evolution as separate in that way. We want to think of it all as biological evolution”
I don’t agree myself, I don’t think that helps, but anyway, I’m posting it because it gives some idea as to what’s known and what’s not known. The uncertainty means there’s many possible interpretations. People state how similar we are to chimps, but he mentions, e.g. how we are built as long-distance runners, and that’s very different from chimps, and so forth…
http://www.edge.org/video/how-culture-drove-human-evolution
February 13th, 2013 at 1:52 pm
Meanwhile, inside the Sarcophagus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G6IA9ni2RM
Published on Jan 19, 2013
Inside Chernobyl’s Sarcophagus is a fascinating documentary on the scientists that risked their lives to go inside the Chernobyl reactor. It covers the sarcophagus built to contain the remains of the destroyed reactor and the work of the Russian scientists, staff and soldiers who risked and continue to risk their lives in the clean-up operation. Horizon takes an look at the horror and effects of Chernobyl 10 years after the disaster. Watch the true story of what is really happening inside of chernobyl’s sarcophagus.
February 13th, 2013 at 2:07 pm
@ Guy McPherson
Move along folks. There’s nothing to see here.
“Uncritical audiences believe something if they hear it first and hear it often…” etc, etc.
The Hasbara Handbook
http://www.middle-east-info.org/take/wujshasbara.pdf
February 13th, 2013 at 2:15 pm
Don’t think this has been mentioned, has it ?
Highly radioactive nuclear reactor fuel rods are to be clandestinely shipped by road from Chalk River to the United States under a non-proliferation effort to rid the Upper Ottawa Valley site of bomb-grade uranium.
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/health/Chalk+River+spent+fuel+rods+shipped/7954672/story.html
February 13th, 2013 at 2:17 pm
Tom said:
“We’ve forgotten how to cooperate, live simply and be at peace.”
I guess that’s where I get confused. I’m not convinced we ever fit that bill (although we lived more simply for sure – but not by choice).
Your comment that it starts as kids reminded me that I found proof positive that humans are innately incorrible and evil:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EVzoolYugA
February 13th, 2013 at 2:19 pm
As for going to Washington, I’m not sure I’ll be welcome after leaving a comment at the Washington Post, which articulated my point exactly when they said:
“The protest was well orchestrated and had an exclusive air about it, bringing together the elite of the environmental movement.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/activists-arrested-at-white-house-protesting-keystone-pipeline/2013/02/13/8f0f1066-75fa-11e2-aa12-e6cf1d31106b_story.html
February 13th, 2013 at 2:20 pm
Paul Craig Roberts :
Already a year or two ago, the director of Homeland Security said that the federal police agency’s focus had shifted from terrorists to “domestic extremists,” another elastic and undefined term. A domestic extremist will be all who disagree with Washington. They also are headed for the Kill List.
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2013/02/11/obamas-expanding-kill-list-paul-craig-roberts/
February 13th, 2013 at 2:20 pm
@ ulvfugl
One of the liberating aspects of NTE is I don’t have to care anymore about the differences between cultural and biological evolution…
February 13th, 2013 at 2:29 pm
@ pat
Yes. NTE breaks all the stories. Except the End Times, Apocalypse types of story, they have some mileage left, and commentary on the steps as we descend…
There’s clever guys like that Henrich, well fed and in comfy offices, getting grants to think… and ignore the real world…
But we’re standing on the Beach of Doom, talking about…. whatever ? to pass the time…
Oh look, there’s a bird !
February 13th, 2013 at 2:34 pm
@ Gail
LOL that was SO funny! sprinkle faced kid!
I totally did that when I was a kid – and, it wasn’t that I was afraid of the punishment, it was that I was testing my parents’ resolve. How long would they persist as I continued to lie? It seemed they would go a pretty long time trying to get me to admit it! Then, once they gave up trying to get me to admit it, the punishment came – but, in my mind two things were realized: 1) the punishment was no different, so why not lie to the end?; and 2) the fact that I never admitted it was a victory. I was a sick child!
February 13th, 2013 at 2:39 pm
pat there is some kind of mutation that sets us NBL’ers apart.
Turns out, if anyone is interested in the sage, that the reason it was “by invitation only” is because the police won’t make any arrests for civil disobedience if there is more than 50 people – because then it’s just a legal demonstration.
My response was well then, you should do a real CD with as many people as want to participate, not an orchestrated, planned CD that’s within your comfort zone.
It makes me sick the way they play a goddamn PR game for their own self-aggrandizement when the future of life on earth is hanging in the balance.
February 13th, 2013 at 2:42 pm
Saga not sage. Pat, the poor woman who put that video up had to disable comments because they were so vicious – insulting her for either being too indulgent, or too uptight, using the most horrible language. If you want to find out how badly people can act, and what it’s going to be like when the SHTF, read youtube comments.
Yeah I thought it was adorable and hilarious too!
February 13th, 2013 at 2:43 pm
@ ulvfugl
I just sit on the porch and whittle… funny, I know the time is passing and the end is near, yet I’m impatiently waiting… I’m not afraid or hopeful, just waiting.
February 13th, 2013 at 2:49 pm
pat
I note a brilliant Oxymoron emedded in Anthony Gregory’s quote you posted.
“…entire half…”
…love it!
February 13th, 2013 at 2:53 pm
@ Gail
if you really want to see the worst of the worst in human beings, read the comments after the Yahoo News articles – it’s unreal, just unreal. I think everyone is just ready as ever for chaos – they can’t wait! They are going to exact revenge upon anyone they can. Just like what you see in the urban riots of the past where the savage acts are like something out of the dark ages. They outnumber us by a very large margin. I’m not sure if I want to fight them to the death (and risk capture) or just take a giant sleeping pill and set my house ablaze!
February 13th, 2013 at 3:04 pm
Anonymous hackers have launched a campaign called Operation Dorner, which comes in response to the way the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) is handling the manhunt for Christopher Dorner, the alleged cop killer.
“The department has proven once more that it is incapable of serving the public, look no further than to the women who became LAPD’s most recent victims. The two were shot without warning and were not even given the chance to surrender simply because LAPD thinks they are above the law. No one is above the law,” the hackers warned.
The hacktivists are concerned about the fact that authorities will rely on drones to track down Dorner. They say this might set a new precedent for the US government to kill innocent citizens “for little to no reason at all.”
“But do not misinterpret us for we do not condone the vicious acts that Dorner has allegedly partaken in. Instead we sympathize and resonate with his struggle. Dorner was not born a killer he was a law abiding citizen that was tainted by the corrupt and inhumane practices of the Los Angeles Police Department who serve only themselves,” they noted.
“We however do not accept this fate, and call upon our brothers to raise arms against the LAPD, for justice and for the lulz we will rise to disrupt, dismantle and dissect all aspects of the manhunt whilst revealing the LAPD’s unwarranted hypocrisy.”
The hacktivists have already claimed to have taken down an LAPD website after police opened fire upon two individuals whose vehicles matched the description of the one used by Dorner.
In addition, they’ve also released the dox (private details) of the LAPD command staff. The police have launched an investigation into the information leak.
Here is the video released by Anonymous:
Vid at the link http://news.softpedia.com/news/Anonymous-Launches-Operation-Dorner-Hackers-Threaten-the-LAPD-Video-328897.shtml
February 13th, 2013 at 3:09 pm
” to expropriate an entire half of our resources”
not the same as: “he played an entire half of the football game”
I’m no English professor but it seems he was trying to amplify “half” in some way, and technically failed, although it reads fine and definitely conveys the point. maybe he could of said: “to expropriate the exorbitant sum of half our resources.”
anyway, cheers!
February 13th, 2013 at 3:16 pm
ulvfugl
Re:
Movement of Nuclear Material, (note… not Nuclear waste)
There was for many years, (and still may be), a hand written/painted sign on a brick fence in an central inner Sydney suburb stating that:
” at 2;25 am on (a particular date in the 1970′s, which I did not learn it way back then), three truck loads and two armed military AND police escorts passed this point carrying Nuclear Material, Plutonium, Uranium, and Yellowcake, against the express civil code of health and saftey, putting all residents in danger”.
I never found out who painted it, even though I asked the owner of the brick fence, who obviously did not want to get rid of it…maybe it was her?
This was not too far as the crow fies from another long term peice of famous 1970′s grafitti on a suburban train line brick wall, which was IMO as educative to me as to how this culture works as all the public schooling I ever got.
It read:
“Consume, be silent, die”
Great poetry is able to be read at any age and in any time and still convey an important message to those reading it.
BTW, we also had a piece of grafitti which survived on a railway underpass which I could read from the train window whenever I went by.
It was an anthem for many working class guys with a guitar fettish for r’n'r. it read:
“Bon Scott lives on”
I did some syudy smen years ago for my Art Credentials from Empire, and I undertook a project onGrafitti.
It was interesting to note that in terms of grafitti, many of the comodifacation values in mainstream art practice are inverted with grafitti.
For example: in the normal gallery system, a painting say is more highly valued the longer it is in public display or within the market. Like a Picasso, a Monet, increases in value over time. Howerver with grafitti, the more it challenges TPTB or local Authorities, the more likely it is to be taken down or painted over by them, in order to silence the dissent, hence the move ‘value’ that grafitti has. So the longer it stays up, curiously, the less it is felt by the ‘perp’ to be ‘good grafitti’.
Inversion of the system of values is a strange eventuality there.
Those examples I put before are IMO examples that break through that dynamic. In the case of the ‘Consume, be silent, die’ one, I think it was just so valuable to the commuting public then and even the classes above them, no one wanted it taken down.
Dare I echo a line from a Simon and Garfunkle song:
” … the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls..”
A bit trite now I’ll agree.
February 13th, 2013 at 3:26 pm
@ pat
I just sit on the porch and whittle…
I think that’s a noble way to spend time. I gaze at my lap top and pluck guitar. There’s a tune called Falls of Richmond, I think the highest navigable point on the river, at Jamestown or something, dates from the early colonisation, anyway, sure it’s been played by banjos on porches for a couple of centuries, I heard it from my all time favourite guitarist, Alec Stone Sweet, and it sent me into a sublime trance like no other tune ever did, so I’ve been chasing that for years now… sometimes I catch it, sometimes nowhere to be found… getting better and better at finding it. There’s loads of versions on youtube but none have the exact magic I’m talking about that Sweet’s has, it’s from Edn Hammons, he’s got it too. Old time porch music. Hammons spend so much time playing fiddle, his shadow wore a mark into the wall of the house.
February 13th, 2013 at 3:38 pm
“his shadow wore a mark into the wall of the house.”
that’s great stuff.
February 13th, 2013 at 3:49 pm
http://www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/eddn_h.htm
February 13th, 2013 at 6:11 pm
A Decade Late and A Degree Short
February 13th, 2013 at 6:27 pm
Human shadows leaving a mark on the wall….
February 13th, 2013 at 6:51 pm
“will risk arrest in front of the White House to demonstrate the depth of their support for decisive action against climate change.”
“For decisive action on closing the barn door AFTER a full equine moon“.
February 13th, 2013 at 6:56 pm
@Ozman, from a ways back… I copied your sage comment, a very pertinent part of which was
… stimulants… [are] only needed when you do not have the intrinsic motivation and energy to do the task you are doing, and by extension live the way you are presently living. if you were living sanely, the energy would come… It follows then that it is not the ‘right’ way for ‘you’ to live.
…Some compromises are within the ambit, but in general you are either living ‘your’ life, or your ‘life’ is living you.
I notice a huge change in my energy when I have tasks before me which seem coherent and which play to my strengths, vs. more conventional tasks with little sense to them. Got to just suss out the vampiric tasks which don’t reward as much as the energy invested in them.
February 13th, 2013 at 7:21 pm
@Gail:
He writes:
“But my intuitions tell me that there will be survivors to carry on into the longer term future of the planet.”
Gail, that is exactly the main point I remember myself, from that whole essay. It’s the point where the needle screeched off the record for me. I like his brief taking-up of the concept of “BELIEF” in the growth economy, but the essay overall seems like a big grab-bag where no one idea shines.
I’m not familiar with the author, so I don’t know what his “cred” is, street- or otherwise, but I thought the piece was rather a lot of mush… There are so many people who have been trained to pontificate without really saying much of anything at all; that’s as much of a tragedy as the human potential buried in the Black Hole of Calcutta. I mean, look at what’s-his-name–is it Greg Robie?–of NBL posts and comments past. Incoherence in academia has long been a feature rather than a bug.
I have to say that I really have no idea what the “Question Everything” author was trying to put across in the main.
@pat:
The “Question Everything” posts are, IMO, very interesting. He’s like the really smart guy in the room that everyone listens to because he’s the really smart guy in the room. He’s eloquent.
Pat, that made me think of a description I came across of Newt Gingrich: “he’s a stupid person’s idea of smart person.”
I don’t just want to rag on the guy, but prior to posting this comment I check the blogger’s bio: “I have a PhD in CS [I assume that's Computer Science], an MBA in Decision Science…” WTF?
He seems to suffer (not overly, mind you) from the human-centric assumptions that most computer scientists (especially AI folks) suffer from. Plus his diagram is cringe-worthy, what the heck is that blue dot?
February 13th, 2013 at 7:40 pm
In the local press (via AP), it was emphasized that Dorner had made “false claims” against the LAPD, when in my mind it’s unproven whether his claims were actually false (against colleagues who supposedly brutalized citizens/suspects).
“Dorner’s anger with the department dated back at least five years, when he was fired for filing a false report accusing his training officer of kicking a mentally ill suspect. Dorner, who is black, claimed in the rant that he was the subject of racism by the department and fired for doing the right thing.”
http://www.vnews.com/news/nation/world/4427001-95/dorner-cabin-police-officers
Hmmm, racism in the LAPD…? Naaah… the guy must be delusional. He was “fired for filing a false report” but nowhere is it explicated whether the report was actually false. The word parsing is, as always, rather coy.
I really am sort of rooting for a TV-show-style feint: the body in the cabin is someone else’s. Didn’t that happen on NCIS, with that crusty old mentor of the protagonist Gibbs… the one in Mexico? (My husband is a fan of that show; I hate it.)
February 13th, 2013 at 7:44 pm
Seeing as here in VT, an officer was just exonerated after KILLING an unarmed mentally-ill suspect via Taser… a mere kicking would seem par for the course, no big whoop.
http://polizeros.com/2013/01/31/macadam-mason-taser-death-still-festers-in-vermont/
February 13th, 2013 at 7:48 pm
Re. grammar. It’s a little odd, but I don’t see “entire half” as weird when it is in a context where a “half” is seen as a separate entity.
I could also see using “fully half” in these cases, again only as an affirmation/emphasis as to the plenitude of the half-ness!
February 13th, 2013 at 7:58 pm
OzMan, hasn’t grafitti art been evermore readily and steadily coöpted, though? I’m thinking of Banksy right now, but Keith Haring took that ball and ran with it all the way to the bank, along with other “street artists” like Basquiat. The “authentic” made inauthentic commodity traded by the super-rich.
February 13th, 2013 at 10:36 pm
Lidia
It is always nice to be quoted…so thank you for repeating something that I wrote.
To respond I will clarify some of my related thoughts on the idea of one’s own right way to live.
In Astrology, Natal Charts vary in the type of dynamic which individuals live through. Some musicians I have seen have many ‘easy’ or ‘flowing’ aspects between chart planet positions. This is like saying their sub-personalities have a way to communicate well with each other.
Other individuals have ‘difficult’ internal dialogue, with extremes being people who cannot ‘control’ or better, ‘master’ these parts of themselves. In creative enterprises this can be fantastic, like with art, scientific discovery, music composition etc, because the moments of spontaeneous connection is lightening fast and unpredictable, but it can also mean great suffering, where compulsive behaviour can cause havoc.
That said, amongst the hub-hub of an individuals life, there is several key places on the Astrology Birth Chart that you look to to find the highest point of integration in that incarnation. Not a goal as such but an activity or aspect of life that if they engage in will bring all the strings into some kind of common sound, (not to imply it is easy or such a simple matter to do that at will, for everyone).
I find this to be true weather one believes in Astrology, or even if one just uses it as a diagnostic tool, because there are these kind of areas of life for us that just do the work of getting us to ‘sing’ in our selves, and as I denoted before’the energy comes’.
In the Natal Chart it is the Zenith or where the midday sun would be on the day of your birth at your geaographical position. Classically it is the top of the chart, which is the cusp of the Tenth House, and another place to look at is where the Moon’s North node is found.
This is gibberish to non-Astrologers, and I accept that, but it translates into doing something that channels your life energy so that you feel all your parts are giving something to that ‘higher’ goal or activity.
I also think it is where we grow in capacity, and that is why I envisage the energy just comes when you need it.
It is kind of like saying in the old days one has a calling, without the cultural religious overtones.
My own theory is that this activity, specific to each of us, is what allows us to ‘stride in time’ and the ego receedes, for a time, and you feel lie you are creating the world as well as comingling in it. Poetic ? Maybe it is also where life feels like poetry, rather than survival and avoidence of survival challenges,(indulgence).
I don’t know if that adds or detracts from what I wrote before, but I have experienced it in my own life, and spoken to a few others along the way who have agreed they knew what I meant, perhaps through other metaphores or such.
Homespun ideas?…maybe. To me Astrology is just a tool, not a belief system. I use it now sparingly, but originaly, earlier in life, I was motivated to explore older conceptions of what humans ‘were’ that explained ‘better’ to me the human drives and both conscious and unconscious framework for a human being.
A lot of this is Astrology is simply the Greek and Roman divine pantheons of their gods and godesses, precicley because in those times ‘the Gods’ that had these intrinsic abilities, atributes, concers, powers and domains of life, were projected into the world.(or different parts of the world.
After Monotheism submerged and suppressed a lot of this,Science emerged and it kind of just disappeared from the radar, but for Hippies and some time later the Sixties spat it out again. But these gods, and their ascribed domains of life, and concerns, were merely describing a human locus of instinct, which does not change over that short period of time. So it still describes a great deal of human psychological structure and dynamics, as well as accounting for the so called abberations of such.
However, where it comes into its own, is unpacking a persons worldly and inner conflicts, and empowers them , through understanding, to move on to better paths of integration. Outer conflict, even gross moral transgressions can bring an individual to a point at which they need some greater self awareness, and self knowledge than is available at either the local doctor, psych ward, or prison cell, (or graveyard for that matter). This is where IMO, Astrology has the upper hand on modern psychiatry, which now is dominated by the medical model of mental illness,and we know just serves big Pharma, but rarely ‘cures’ or ‘solves’ anything. Some people do say medication heped the through a difficult period, and who am I to disagree, however, for the vast majority, who trust in the modern knowledge of this time, it gets them into a life of dependence and eternal psycological weakness, guilt, and not self mastery.
Not that I have ever been in those classic positions of contemplating suicide or such, but coping with life has never been something I can settle for.
Many people don’t even know that modern Psychology, and Psychiatry has taken a lot of this earlier body of knowledge via Freud and Jung, and now through rigorous research weeded most of the useful stuff out. Go figure?
So to me Astrology is one of the very few diagnostic paths to getting as close to an ‘objective’(used with due caution) map of an individuals instinctive dynamics, which allows for elaboration and conscious identification, with consultation of course, where the individual themselves can actively investigate their own subjectivity and historic growth, formative reactions to family, the world, and culture, and come to reasoned self-understanding of WTF is going on. This tends to clarify a persons options with regard to habitual problems, and life goals, natural talents, aspirations, and some self perceptinos of intrinsic limitations etc.
And as I posited, activities or areas of life, that when engaged in can bring the energy in abundence to keep growing and living with great happiness and daily fulfillment.
February 13th, 2013 at 11:03 pm
Lidia
Re: the NCIS similarity to Dorner scenario….
Perhaps it is just cheaper to use tv scenarios when you know the audience demographic response before you ‘show’ it.
You can hear it at FBI, DHS or NSA situation room, or whetever they decide this sort of thing:
Secret skullduggry briefing room, 10 field agents present.
Agent Smith: Why opt for all that extra set-up, the intel, the backup when the NCIS option worked really well before, and it will cost next to nothing, just a dead body?
Agent Black: Your right Smith, don’t overcook it when the need isn’t there. Good thinking. OK we’ll… if there are no objections, no outstanding issues?…then we willgreen light the NCIS log cabin option . ( Pause ) …Yes, err… Agent Green is it? You have a concern?
Agent Green: Look sir, I know I’m the new guy here, so please don’t take this as a criticism, but you do all realise that the NCIS plan was from a TV show, right?
Agents Smith, Black and all but Agent Green: Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha. That’s a good one…Ha ha.
They rise and file out laughing.
Agent Black: Hey agent Green? Come here son.
Look those TV and Hollywood guys, …well… them and us have been swapping scenarious, here and there, backand forth, for so long now neither of us remembers who first ran it, so don’t worry. And by the way, if you see something in a movie, a TV show, wherever, its definitely happened, and feel free to brief us here if you think it fits. OK? If we use it and it works right, could mean ponts toward a promotion, you know.
Agent Black silently taps her nose and looks upward for a moment.
Agent Green: Yes Maaam!
February 14th, 2013 at 12:00 am
Lidia
Re: grafitti.
Yes there is Banksy.
I hesitate to comment there, but just to say that creative people, even rebellious individuals do things that are to them appropriate to their stage of life.
As a young activist in Bristol in the Thatcher ridden 1980′s when public funding for everything was being given over to private businesses, when public open free airspace was being sold to advertisers, when privatisation and economic rationalism was tearing the heart out of the last vestages of Public Commonwealth ‘assets’, then Banksy’s grafitti was revolutionary, especially in that it was silent, it was unpredictable and it carried the irony of ‘Atomic Mushrooms’ in a compact visual language if not unique, at least it brought home some of the great hypocracyies of Empire: issues like animal cruelty, warfare to sustain the Empire, the people’s desire for peace and honour in everyday life, and others.
But, it is possible the guy got older and took on some responsibilities and needed to feed some kids. It may have even been his idea all along, but I think it is more likely he passed out of the rebellious phase and moved into an option some take as artists, when they get success, to just survive is to keep going in the visual style because it still works.
My own view is that does not inherently invalidate his earlier, youthful works – IMO they are some of the most arresting images I can remember, of the silhouette style kind, in unexpected places.
I particularly like his B/W contrast and graphic style.
‘Freed Caged Tiger’
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61a-F1fpYEL._SL500_AA300_.jpg
This ‘Freed Caged Tiger’ is one of the first I saw of his that caught my attention that showed you could tell a complex but dynamic narritive with so little. But at art school I soon learn from a fellow student that he had produced a Banksy passport that you could buy by mail thatlooked to me like an earlier Richard Branson style mass market earner, and I lost a bit of interest there. The eternal artists dilemna there – keeping to an ideal of inner authentic response to your experience of the the world versus the popular dictates of the market, all over a function of what is your intrinsic level of wealth(and family background) and can you afford to eat tonight?
As another example of TPTB co-opting rebellious artists or art movements…
I remember how the Punk music and later fashion movement in the UK and here in Australia was threatening middle class sensibilities, and a poster for Taronga Park Zoo came out with a Precock on the poster with a punk hair-do. It had some full on Punk guy facing it and the punk was freaking out. It was designed to defuse the Punk social tension and be humourous. “Come to the zoo and get freaked out by the animals, even the Punks get freaked out” sort of narrative. When I first saw it I understood the power of advertising to make things spin into their opposite, just by context and exposure.
Very clever.
The other artist you mention, Keith Haring, I am only slightly familiar with his work, (after a brief internet search just now) but he appears to be simmilar to Mambo designs, which was definitely in the Surfing counter culture genre here, by Reg Mombassa. I thnk some of these guys were in truth commercial artists with some edge, but I would hesitate to split hairs; if you make money and derive income from your art, you are a commercial artist, why quibble,(even if you are dead by the time your art makes any money, I’m not sure?).
This proves the old saying…. nothing is new under the sun…
Cave somewhere in Prehistoric France.
Grug: Hey Nood, look at this Bison, Theedhas put up on the cave wall. Theed has done flowing lines next to the knees. I don’t think Bison have curves there, do you? What’s he doing that for? That’s against so manny moons of out history, the elders will be angry….did he consult them?
Nood: Well Grug, I don’t think Theed ever consults anyone, but Theed rekons we can convince the clan to take up his invention, that round thing to push with, what’s he call it?
Grug: The one that went down the great slope really fast? The wh… wheed?…Whee..The wheel?
Nood: That’s it ….the Wheel, if he gets the curvy image up onto the cave wall, Theed rekons it will seep into what he calls ….our Thubconcus.. or somthing or other.
Grug: That Theed, he’s sure going places. But that wheel, it’ll never work. What could you possibly do with that?
Unless social rebellion and radical activism translates into lastin self transcendence, it andall its signs and agency will inevitably fold back into supporting the social and cultural norms of the time.
Aka… the only way to escape being ‘under the Sun’…. is to become the Sun itself and the sourse of all Light.
February 14th, 2013 at 12:04 am
Gail
As for the ‘entire half’ comment I made as a cool Oxymoron, I was making light. Oxymorons are of interest to me, as are other phenomena that incorporate opposites in proximity.
We are going to get some pretty crazy Oxymoronic weather ‘coming to a station near you’ in parts, from now on….
February 14th, 2013 at 12:06 am
Gail, that last comment was mistakenly addressed to you, was a to Lidia, sorry.
February 14th, 2013 at 1:43 am
Robin’s Hiroshima photos reminded me of something that was pointed out to me about 9/11. And how everyone was suppose to learn that when buildings catch fire they’re always supposed to collapse into a pile of dust with nothing left standing. I’m no scientist, I guess jet fuel is hot, but was it hotter that this?
http://www.fpif.org/files/5678/hiroshima2.jpg
February 14th, 2013 at 2:49 am
Middle East groundwater
http://rt.com/news/nasa-grace-middle-east-groundwater-156/
February 14th, 2013 at 5:46 am
With thanks to Dan Allen for his excellent essay, I’ve posted a narcissistic, self-indulgent essay. It’s here, and you’ve been warned.
February 14th, 2013 at 6:31 am
‘“But my intuitions tell me that there will be survivors to carry on into the longer term future of the planet.”
“If so, could those future humans evolve to a point where they could collectively manage their biological mandate? Could they learn to quell their desires for creature comforts in the interest of the whole system? I think so.”
Curious as to any opinions.’ -gail
come on, gail! u know better, don’t u???!!! this is sheer hopium, the hard stuff we’re all addicted to.
we all want/need to believe that we have some degree of ‘free will’ and that our lives have meaning. we all want/need hope and faith that our desires (including the desire to live in a sane ‘sustainable’ culture) aren’t entirely in vain. even guy (‘resistance is fertile’) mcpherson is guilty of this!
it’s most evident in shit like evangelical christian faith, where simple ‘belief’ (as if one can pick and choose what to believe, i.e. ‘mind over matter’) is sufficient to render eternal salvation from the judgement/condemnation of a ‘perfect’ deity that supposedly us flawed sheeple ‘in his image’ (sorry, ladies! (lol)). forget the absurdity of an omnipotent deity creating a flawed replica of itself, assigning it ‘free will’, and then spitefully condemning it to eternal hell if it fails to exercise this ‘free will’ as the ‘omnipotent’ deity desires! all u have to do is believe, baby, to be saved!
don’t we all know this is bs? we aren’t masters of our own fate. we’re masters over nothing! absurd little creatures in an absurd little world who, in developing ‘sapience’, awareness of our own impotence in the face of nature, of powers we can’t begin to comprehend much less control, in the face of implacable mortality, ‘choose’ hopium over despair, faith over the abyss.
have a nice day, everyone (as if u have a choice!) lol. i too am a hopium addict.
February 14th, 2013 at 6:49 am
dmd: When my brother got back from a trip to remote villages in Mexico (when he was a young man – many years ago), he told me that he watched people in this one village regularly move green scum aside to scoop brackish water for cooking and drinking. Your link is a prelude to what’s happening in many places, including the midsection of the U.S. (our former “breadbasket” states) which has been under severe drought conditions for YEARS now.
Gail: i linked your current “Emporer Has No Clothes” essay to a Question Everything retort of mine there. Hope you don’t mind. Some of the commenters there just can’t get over their hopey-confidence in our species to suddenly become so wise and cooperative that the supposed survivors of our current bottleneck (soon to become collapse) will somehow heal the past wrongs of civilization (and our species inherent inner turmoil) and fix it all in time to bring about a NEW WORLD of sapient-directed living, compatible with the dictates of the Earth. (as Col. Potter once said: “Horsehockey!”)
Quick read for our group:
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2013/02/echoes-of-past-return-of-ubermenschen.html
(quote from article)
This line of thinking rests on the assumption that society today is a naturally efficient meritocracy, despite the enormous advantages of the children of ‘the elite,’ because they would have succeeded anyway.
I succeed, therefore I am. And if you do not, well, we shall have to do something about that drag on the efficiency of the economy and the maximization of profits. Ah, the burdens of the aristocracy, and their far flung sahibs.
February 14th, 2013 at 6:52 am
tvt: i think i just answered your question here -
http://questioneverything.typepad.com/question_everything/2013/02/how-did-mammals-and-birds-survive-the-end-cretaceous-event.html
(scroll down to my comment at the bottom of the page)
February 14th, 2013 at 7:42 am
@ Tom
So, we can see where this is going, back to the disgusting social darwinism and eugenics of the 1920-30′s that lead to the death camps.
Unless you are rich, you must be inferior, and so deserve to be a slave or else eradicated from the gene pool. Only the vicious greedy psychopaths and power freaks are deemed fit to survive.
The liar and fraud Randi, another straw in the wind.
http://www.dailygrail.com/Skepticism/2013/2/James-Randi-Let-Survival-the-Fittest-Act-Itself-Out-Those-Low-IQ-and-Mental-Aberra
February 14th, 2013 at 9:05 am
@OzMan, where life feels like poetry, rather than survival and avoidence of survival challenges,(indulgence).
Thanks for adding this part, which speaks to me because I recognize the latter in my own life and the former all too rarely. Indulgence as a substitute for living because I haven’t got the right living part down yet.
As for astrology, I don’t really have any use for it, but I can see how that practice and similar ones, like numerology or I Ching, can be used as a mirror to reflect what a person already knows about themselves on some less-conscious level.
—
I do love Banksy.. Perhaps radical will always have the tendency to shift into Radical Chic, given the degree of cynicism and depravity of the larger culture.
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@Tom, re. your QE comment: Right on! That main post was an example of what I previously labeled as the disease of protagonism.
February 14th, 2013 at 9:53 am
Thanks Tom for answering the question although I’m not at all sure that cooperation is “a long-forgotten attribute we once had.” Was it EO Wilson who said we have always been warlike?
Oh well, either way we’ve made a mess of things on a global scale, haven’t we?
Perhaps an even better metaphor for our collapsing world than the Titanic is unfolding in real time on the even more ironically named Carnival “Triumph”. People crowded and trapped on a luxury liner, hungry, hot, and drowning in their own shit and vomit. Apparently there is still plenty of booze though. Something to look forward to!
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/02/14/stranded-carnival-cruise-expected-to-dock-in-alabama-after-four-days-with/
February 14th, 2013 at 1:16 pm
Okay folks, I have been giving a lot of thought to the problem of how humans could co-exist long term in co-existence with nature – given as the article I posted that spells out how we have no natural boundaries and are driven (programmed) for maximum replication, consumption, and energy usage. Of course, this may just be mental masturbation since our survival and that of other life’s is doubtful at this point.
Therefore, as I mentioned, it would be imperative (post industrialization) that we self regulate via the reflective features of our higher brain function. BUT, few have or use this higher brain function, so WE COULD NOT just allow tribes to develop autonomously as we would end up right back where we are now. It would be imperative to have a rather benevolent, non micro managing intellectual over arching government that would set some boundaries on regulating advances in technology, population growth, and other vital aspects to keep us in balance and harmony with nature. I know people balk at such a government, but face it folks, the masses are just not smart enough.
Jared Diamond points out how the New Guinea tribes have been so successful with small groups which hash out details and there becomes a ‘ground up’ form of government (but government is A MUST for any organism(s). These local tribes (from the ground up) would select representatives which would make up the intelligentsia that would form the over arching government. This government’s primary role would be education (mostly environmental), conflict resolution, reproduction and technology control.
It is not perfect, but it would allow autonomy with minimal micromanagement while still providing a check and balance to keep things from getting out of control in the above areas. Because it is our nature, we would be forever trying to have more kids, make better gadgets, have more creature comforts, and use more energy (and this most be suppressed as necessary). However, via expression of the arts, community, and other aspects of ‘quality’ living, we would in the long run not miss the technology. Because the government would be from the ground up, and education would be from the top down..the chances of a self indulgent dictatorial form of government would be eliminated.
So, where do I put my name on the ballot LOL?
February 14th, 2013 at 1:27 pm
Correction above to my theoretical model of a workable society; When I said local tribes could not be autonomous, they actually could be – except in the areas I specified which would need to be regulated.
I am curious what other ideas people have for systems of society and government knowing what we now do about our nature (which all past forms of government have never fully embraced). I realize this probably moot at this point, and perhaps just mental masturbation.
February 14th, 2013 at 2:47 pm
Bailey have you seen this?
http://vimeo.com/56447043
It has sort of a plan at the end, which is primarily economic (and will never happen because the banks won’t let it) but it presents an interesting analysis of collapse.
(it’s a full length documentary so it will take a while to watch but it’s entertaining)
February 14th, 2013 at 5:58 pm
No Gail, I have not seen it but will check it out.