Like many people, I served time in a college dormitory. Two years in college were preceded by eight weeks in high school as part of a National Science Foundation physics session for smartasses “smart” kids. I have a few memories from those times long ago. In an act of self-indulgence, the likes of which have become infamous in this space, I’m sharing them.
I grew up in a backwoods, redneck logging town in northern Idaho in the 1960s and 1970s. My educationally inclined parents steered me away from dangerous jobs working in the woods and, ultimately, toward the academic life. Ergo the opportunity to spend a summer beyond sight of my racist, misogynist contemporaries at the age of 17.
Hot to hotter
From a region filled with white people, characterized by male white privilege, and dominated by fear of “others,” I flew to Greenville, North Carolina. There, I spent the summer of 1977 on the campus of East Carolina University surrounded by people who looked different from me. I shared a dorm room with an African American student as tall and skinny as I was. He hailed from Washington, D.C.
We studied physics, pursued the young women in the program, pulled ridiculous pranks on our peers, and played basketball all summer. Despite our obvious differences, we had a lot to talk about. After we parted ways, I never heard from or about Michael again. But, without trying, he changed my life for the better.
From campus we proceeded into downtown Greenville via the sidewalk along a primary street one sultry afternoon. Maria from the Philippines accompanied me, while clinging to Michael’s arm was Emily, a blonde, blue-eyed, Caucasian woman. We weren’t a block from campus when racial epithets came from a passing muscle car.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire. Hate wasn’t restricted to northern Idaho. Three of us were horrified. Michael, familiar with the experience, acted as if it hadn’t happened.
Awareness isn’t nirvana. It’s hell.
College bound
Driving as far as I could from my hometown while still availing myself of a generous scholarship from the state of Idaho, I pulled into Pocatello in late summer 1978. I’d been looking forward to maximizing the distance between me and Hicksburg. Yet I couldn’t fight the tears of fear and loneliness as I drove into the city and approached the campus of Idaho State University.
I was assigned a room with three seniors who’d roomed together for years. I was as welcome as Deep Throat to Richard Nixon Bradley Manning to Barack Obama. I was sent packing before I unpacked.
A week and three dorm rooms later, I was frazzled down to my last, raw nerve. Trying to “fit in” while finding my way was posing quite the challenge. Nobody was particularly impressed that I’d been valedictorian of my high school graduating class (N = 37). Or that I’d been quarterback of the unknown football team, shooting guard on the obscure basketball team, shortstop of the pathetic baseball team, and member of the National Honor Society. Out of the kiddie pool, into the reservoir.
Not much later, the fun arrived. I spent most of the subsequent two years majoring in basketball and Women’s Studies: shooting hoops as a walk-on for the major-college basketball team and studying women. I didn’t exactly fail at either endeavor, although I received quite the up-bringing in humility. I was more intramural wannabe than Michael Jordan, more Don Quixote than Don Juan. And my extracurricular pursuits nearly cost me the aforementioned scholarship, too.
I’m pretty sure I’m the only major-college basketball listed on the official program smaller than my actual height. I was 6’3″ tall, but I was listed at 6’1″ because I played so much shorter than suggested by my height.
In a futile attempt to overcome my lack of talent, which included legs with no springs and the sluggish feet you might expect on somebody a foot taller than the shortest player on the team, I ate well and tried to sleep a lot. However, my sleep was often interrupted by a wayward cat that took advantage of the window often propped open by one of my roommates. Tired of the cat’s frequent attraction to my face on Pocatello winter nights, finally I grabbed him by the belly, took him into the hall, drew back my throwing arm, and started to fling him down the hall. Naturally, he latched onto my forearm with all four clawed feet as I released him. He landed a mere six inches from me, on his feet, as blood sprung from a dozen deep scratches on my right forearm. Adding insult to literal injury, he even dodged my swift kick. Add cat-throwing to basketball and women on my long list of mediocre pursuits.
I had something of a fan club at one point in a long-lost basketball season. When the game would get out of hand — as it often did — my drunken brother and his drinking buddies would begin chanting on my behalf. I did play a few minutes, and even earned a spot on the travel squad by the midpoint of the season. My total statistics for the single season I participated: 50% from the field (one basket in two attempts) and 50% from the free-throw line (ditto).
Missing 42 consecutive days of every class presented something of a drag on my grade point average. The fact that my dorm room was the campus hot-spot for partying probably didn’t help. Every weekend was a haze of blue haze. I had the opposite of the Bill Clinton experience: I didn’t smoke marijuana, but I inhaled.
From an academic perspective, the rare days I spent in class with my eyes open were disappointing on many levels. Having earned a solid F, I nonetheless received the only C of my collegiate career in my introductory macroeconomics course. At semester’s end, I attempted to negotiate a higher grade from the instructor I was seeing for the fifth time: I showed up for all three in-class exams after I picked up the syllabus during the first class meeting. I thought I deserved at least a B. She wondered who I was, and kept smiling as she shook her head. Despite rarely making an appearance in her classroom, the class contributed to my contemporary definition of waste: a busload of economists goes over a cliff with an empty seat.
_______________
Paul Handover reviewed Walking Away from Empire. The link is here. The full set of reviews from my latest book is here.
March 10th, 2013 at 9:03 am
Guy, thanks for sharing more of your life with us. Your college days sound very similar to mine – although I had to make several runs at it before it finally took – and I both smoked and inhaled.
I suspect we were among the last few classes for whom college education was actually a bargain. My first semester at Arkansas State University (Fall 1978) cost a whopping $300 for full-time tuition. A single one-hour course credit at the same institution comes close to that now. Gotta pay for that multi-million dollar sports program after all.
March 10th, 2013 at 12:29 pm
Well…, let us all hope that you engage in much more “self-indulgence” here Guy. It certainly brightened an otherwise dreary day here in The Rain Forest…, right on partner…, write on.
March 10th, 2013 at 3:31 pm
Guy,
some interesting experiences there.
I am a little confused on a few points.
What is a walk on part of a basketball game? Is it a sub who gets a few full games and a lot of subtime, or is it a star player who ‘walks on’ to the team and sort of gets a free ride into top spot?
Also you have reported elsewhere you played quarterback as a second string, and got your shot when the chosen quarterback got injured, is that right?
Also on another topic you write:
“Awareness isn’t nirvana. It’s hell.”
This reminds me of Colonel Walter E. Kurtz, who gained his ‘awareness’, by freely killing anyone he liked, which was such a horror.
‘The Horror.AVI’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNUr__-VZeQ
Full awareness includes the freedom to ‘do’ anything, but IMO has little motivation to enact the ‘horror’ or ‘hell’ scenarios. The desire or tendency is just not there, and although always an option, violence and brutality and aggression are weaker pathways to existence, IMO.
March 10th, 2013 at 3:39 pm
OzMan, a walk-on is an unrecruited, non-scholarship player.
I was back-up QB as a sophomore in high school, but I started as a junior and senior.
March 10th, 2013 at 6:41 pm
Guy “Awareness isn’t nirvana. It’s hell.”
It is but so is non-awareness is not nirvana either. AT least to me. I would never trade the pain of awareness for opium or hopium.
For example one time my sister told me that war wasn’t bad – in WWII those farm boys got to see gay Paree, and look at how much fun those folks in N. Korea had as depicted on MASH. I guess she just zoned out on the scenes of “incoming wounded”.
I suppose most of the time denial works for those who use it, but pretty soon denial is going to become hell. Of course pretty soon it will be hell for everyone, but at least some of us will be expecting it……
March 10th, 2013 at 8:12 pm
FWIW, the Paul Handover review link gives me a web-threat warning.
March 10th, 2013 at 8:49 pm
I went to UCLA… dropped out, hitched and hopped freight trains around the country and then went back to UC Santa Cruz which was a hell of a lot better fit. In other words:
“Location. Location. Location.” (which, not coincidentally, is one of the better entries to my slogans-to-go-with-earth-posters contest:
http://www.freewayblogger.blogspot.com/2013/01/second-annual-slogan-contest.html
Winner gets a thousand dollars and a couple hundred thousand viewers.
March 10th, 2013 at 11:55 pm
Hey Guy
Super weird ! I just posted that song/ video on my facebook show?!
Oh yeah i really enjoy your writing. (Sort of!!)
March 10th, 2013 at 11:58 pm
Oh I almost forgot, in my head I say your name Gee because I grew up with frenchmen in
Quebec!!
March 11th, 2013 at 12:46 am
Kathy C
You wrote:
“….look at how much fun those folks in N. Korea had as depicted on MASH. I guess she just zoned out on the scenes of “incoming wounded”.
I suppose most of the time denial works for those who use it, but pretty soon denial is going to become hell. Of course pretty soon it will be hell for everyone, but at least some of us will be expecting it……”
I watched a fair bit of MASH for a number of seasons, and the (Great) original movie. I was not so aware of the relevence of this show to bringing the unsavoury aspects of the Korean War to the mostly American public. After the two great wars ware smeared all over TV screens, and movie theatres for 3 decades, it took the absurd ‘catch 22′ style in the film to grab American audiences, and bring up the violence, corruption, and pathos involved in modern war.
The strident anti-authority and anti-military heirarchy was a central theme embedded in the opposed viewpoints of Hawkeye Pearce, and Frank Burns, along with their willing accomplices on each side.
The earlier commander of the 4077th in the TV series had to be someone on both sides or none, to make the show work. So they made him humanly incompetent, a kind of dreamer with administrative backup in Radar O’Reily keeping the form signing and skullduggery under the table enough to get things moving.
After several seasons the characters are well understood, and the slapstick is the device to get the audience to relax, then the producers would have to stay true to their origins, (The Movie) and the far left anti war supporters, of which there were many, and hit ‘you’ between the eyes with a death or some more carnage, or theloss of a young soldier.
When I look back now, and I saw a few episodes recently, I can only feel it was all voyurism, and no matter how much reality of war was shovelled to living rooms throughout the Anex-1 nations, the humour, like the adds between seem like the hook to keep you coming back. Or better stated, the fact that there will be some humour soon, to assuage the deep feelings of unease brought up by the violence and carnage, is what keeps audiences coming back.
When life has become voluntary slavery and servitude, extreme violence and carnage, in small timeslots delivered to your living room would seem to be the balancing tonic for mmany.
I rather think that your sister, and many others, was sucked into the draw of living without the usual hard edges of survival braying at the edges of daily life. Not that I single her out, I fell for it too, once upon a time.
Many people in NorthAmerica have written how this show woke them up to the manipulation that gets these wars to happen, and hiding of the brutal evidence and aftermath.
But did this ‘waking up’ actually stop this imperial hegemony from still rolling on?
No, and now we have DU babies and all the SHTF in Iraq etc etc, as you well know.
So does seeing the closer to real situation on tv stop it…? No.
Then it only adds to it by serving in some way or other, and if in no other way by distraction and desentisation.
I knew I watched too much TV as a kid, but fortunately I played in the wild bush a lot at a young age as well.
(Nothing personal about your sister, just sayin…)
March 11th, 2013 at 2:23 am
This fellow argues that some will survive the “end”. He admits that his views have changed many times and I will add that maybe his view needs to change again. He seems to still have some “non-awareness”.
http://www.doomsteaddiner.org/blog/2013/03/10/are-we-evolving-as-the-end-nears/
March 11th, 2013 at 2:38 am
Now that I think about it, I don’t think their was ever a show on US TV that was ever critical of the US military in any way until MASH–and there aren’t any such shows today, as you would expect. But the show did go on way too long and lost its edge, I couldn’t stomach it the later years. Watch the early years when Maj Burns was still there, and any episode with the CIA Col Flagg character, he was amazing.
March 11th, 2013 at 3:37 am
OZman, You don’t have to say anything personal about my sis – I’ve said plenty in my mind. We had a high school teacher who was imprisoned in a concentration camp in Germany during the war. When he would do the history section about the war he would put a map of Germany on the floor and throw erasers at the places we bombed. I guess the significance of his anger passed her by too. We studied world history in High School. (NY State requirement) While of course skewed and not truthful it did cover WWII and how could she have missed our invasion of Normandy and the huge losses of life…
Ah well we had a suggested reading list for HS English – I don’t know what she chose, but I read from that list The Jungle, 1984, The Grapes of Wrath, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Good Earth among others. I presume she didn’t read them, or if she did it flew right over her head. She learned denial well and has put it to use in many other ways
I don’t think it makes her happier.
You know those warnings on programs or web sites that some may find the pictures shown disturbing. You could call me morbid I suppose but I always look. I want to know. I feel the injured and dead deserve to at the very least be seen, not relegated to disturbing facts you don’t really want to know.
Warning – disturbing images at this link – right up front, so don’t click on it if you don’t want to see http://www.chris-floyd.com/fallujah/gallery/images/
Any rate after sending her a few links and the numbers of Americans who died or were injured in WWII and Korea I got no response. We don’t talk anymore.
March 11th, 2013 at 5:17 am
MASH was propaganda. ALL tv is propaganda, but MASH especially so. Never knew war could be so hilarious until I watched MASH. “War may be intolerable, but if you approach it with a sense of humour, it makes it SO much easier to bear!”
March 11th, 2013 at 5:19 am
dmd: did you once post a video of the damaging effects of feeding GM silage (sp?) to dairy cattle? If you could repost it, i’d appreciate it (i can’t find it and could use it now to make a point).
Guy: good anecdotal stuff there – thanks! i was at a community awareness organizing meeting last evening and no one there (basically young college students) has the faintest idea of what’s coming and, though i feel bad for them, i won’t say anything until the opportunity arises. They’re still talking about “renewable” this and “sustainable” that and are still all bubbly and vivacious putting energy into getting the larger community to concentrate on stopping the fracking in the state (PA) and blocking the pipelines which are scheduled to come right through our community – which i support wholeheartedly. Apparently the gas extraction people got approval for this a year or two ago from “our” state legislators, so we’re playing catch-up ball for sure.
Scarlet P: love your work! Consider using some of Benjamin The Donkey’s limericks on your signs. They’re amazing and get right to the point in a pithy way. Examples abound on previous posts on this site and he has his own blog with way more.
Remember Fukushima? It’s been 2 years already and we STILL have debris washing up in the Pacific:
http://news.yahoo.com/2-years-japan-tsunami-debris-still-washing-ashore-104512436.html
March 11th, 2013 at 5:31 am
i have one college experience i won’t forget. This was during the Viet Nam war and concerns the lottery that was drawn to conscript college kids as canon fodder. On the night of the drawing most of the college was out on the quad with a few tv’s from the dorms wheeled out for viewing. i sat next to a guy who was in a class with me (but i didn’t know his name or have any interaction with him). Most of us were drinking beer in silence waiting for our numbers (birthday) to be called. The guy next to me heard his number early on, put down his beer and walked off – never to be seen or heard from again (he wasn’t in any of the rest of the term’s classes and nobody knew what happened to him). i hoped he escaped to Canada, but he may have just gone to report for duty or threw himself in front of a train for all anyone knew. My number was so high it was statistically unlikely that i’d be called to the war effort. It was one of the most tense nights i’d ever experienced. i spent the rest of my college years resisting the war with the growing support of the masses and was overjoyed when we actually got them to stop. Protests don’t have much effect now, since they’re largely ignored.
March 11th, 2013 at 5:37 am
This might be cause for some concern:
http://beforeitsnews.com/earthquakes/2013/03/a-volcano-buried-in-se-louisiana-door-point-a-buried-volcano-in-southeast-louisiana-2452096.html
A Volcano Buried In SE Louisiana? “Door Point: A Buried Volcano In Southeast Louisiana”
This one is straight out of the sit back and hold on to your hat category; according to a paper written in 1976, there is a buried volcano in Southeast Louisiana. This CANNOT BE the SAME part of Louisiana that is now being impacted by the dreaded Louisiana Sinkhole in Assumption Parish could it? You won’t believe this! From a 1976 paper done for the Gulf Coast Association Of Geological Societies, Volume XXVI, 1976 by Jules Braunstein and Claude E. McMichael we get “Door Point: A Buried Volcano In Southeast Louisiana.” Is THIS why BP is so concerned about Volcanoes all of a sudden? Check out the map below of what the Earth and America looked like during the Late Cretaceous Age when this buried volcano was last active. For all those who doubt this report, the original source can be found here.
An exploratory well, the Shell Oil Company, State Lease 3956 No. 1, Offshore St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, was completed in 1963 at a total depth of 8538 feet. The last 1300 feet of hole was cored and drilled through volcanic material of Late Cretaceous Age. Pre-drilling seismic data had revealed the presence on this prospect of intrusive material with a density slightly higher than that of the surrounding sediments. Gravity data defined a weak maximum here, and no salt was believed to be present.
The igneous material consisted of angular fragments of altered porphyritic basic rock. In cores it proved to be evenly bedded and cemented by sparry calcite. Radioactivity age dating fixed a minimum age of crystallization of this rock at 82 m.y. + 8, or middle Late Cretaceous (Austin). Bulk density of the igneous rock ranged from 2.02 gm/cc near the top of its occurrence to 2.53 gm/cc near the bottom of the well.
Three gas accumulations, with an aggregate thickness of 38 feet, were encountered in the Miocene section between 5092 and 6219 feet in the Shell well. Gas-bearing sands were not present in two other wells drilled later on the same structure (Fig. 2).
Although evidence of Late Cretaceous volcanic activity is widespread in northern Louisiana, as well as in Mississippi, and southeast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico, the Door Point prospect lies within an area that had been previously designated as being free of volcanism.
(more at the link)
March 11th, 2013 at 5:58 am
Too cheap to meter?
http://fairewinds.com/content/follow-money
This week’s show is all about money. We look at how some utility owned U.S. nuclear power plants continue to drain the public’s pocketbook, sometimes to the tune of fifty million dollars a month, without generating a single watt of electricity.
March 11th, 2013 at 6:00 am
Sadie, yes Mash was propaganda, still pretty much each session had “incoming wounded” with blood all over the operating theater. Thus that anyone such as my sister could think that it was all fun in Korea is ridiculous. We watched the same show and she saw medics and surgeons making jokes. I saw medics and surgeons making jokes in order to deal with the horror.
March 11th, 2013 at 6:21 am
Thanks for that update on the LA sinkhole Tom. Speaking of Volcanoes – Fukushima diary posted this this AM..
http://fukushima-diary.com/2013/03/the-water-level-of-kawaguchi-lake-is-rapidly-decreasing-beside-mt-fuji-there-is-no-natural-outlet/
Maps and charts at the link
The water level of Kawaguchi lake is rapidly decreasing beside Mt. Fuji, “There is no natural outlet”
Posted by Mochizuki on March 10th, 2013
The water level of Kawaguchi lake is rapidly decreasing for some reason. Local newspaper comments it’s due to the shortage of rain, but because the lake has no natural outlet, it is hard to explain this rapid decrease of water only by evaporation.
Kawaguchi lake is located beside Mt. Fuji. Some experts suggets the possibility of the eruption of Mt. Fuji and Hakone.
(cf, Potential eruption of Hakone would trigger the eruption of Mt. Fuji [URL])
About Kawaguchi lake From wikipedia..
Lake Kawaguchi is the one of the Fuji Five Lakes and located in Fujikawaguchiko, southern Yamanashi Prefecture near Mount Fuji, Japan. It is the second largest of the Fuji Five Lakes in terms of surface area, and is located at the lowest elevation. It is situated at an altitude of approximately 800 metres, which accounts for its relatively cool summers and frequently icy winters. It also has the longest shoreline of any of the Fuji Five Lakes.[1]
The lake is within the borders of the Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park.[2]
The lake has no natural outlet, and flooding of settlements on its shores was a problem until the construction of a canal, completed in 1914, to connect it to a tributary of the Sagami River.
It is reported that the water level decreased by 6m from 3/1 to 3/4/2013. However, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism stopped updating the real time monitoring data for some reason
March 11th, 2013 at 7:55 am
Scarlet P. says: slogans
Thanks, Tom!
Slogans
We’re all dead. Give it up. Say goodbye.
Don’t even bother to try.
It’s all over, my friend.
This is the end.
It’s too late. We’re all going to die.
March 11th, 2013 at 7:55 am
I”m just sittin’ here watching the wheels go ’round and ’round…
March 11th, 2013 at 8:29 am
Watching The Wheels
My mind is lost, run aground,
Snagged by doom, a subject profound;
It’s just evolution,
There is no solution—
I’m watching the wheels go round.
March 11th, 2013 at 8:37 am
“Experts estimate closing the damaged Fukushima reactors down will cost around US$15 billion and will take about 30 to 40 years.”
High cost of cheap energy: Fukushima tragedy 2 years on
30 to 40 years to remediate because the technology hasn’t been invented yet to clean up the corium.
—
@Tom
I had a very similar experience concerning the Vietnam Draft lottery. My roommate and I were in our dorm room at college the day of the lottery. We had the radio turned on and were listening to the dates being called. My roommate’s birthday drew a number 5 slot so he was definitely bound for some branch of the military. I drew slot number 148. The military were taking slots one through fifty that year. When my roommate heard his number so early in the lottery he told me he was going to Canada. The next day he left college and I never saw or heard from him again.
March 11th, 2013 at 8:39 am
Btd capturing doom
As he watches the horror loom
A limerick or two
Beats being blue
As the temperatures continue to zoom
As always thanks Btd for your limericks. They provide some poetic relief from links to disaster
March 11th, 2013 at 8:51 am
My pleasure!
March 11th, 2013 at 9:02 am
Not Watching the Wheels
We’re painting the roses red,
The way that the boss man said;
It won’t do any good
But then, nothing would:
What’s the difference, when we’re all dead?
March 11th, 2013 at 9:24 am
@Sadie
Yes, all TV is propaganda. One part of MASH has stuck with me all these years, though.
It was at the very end of the series when Hawkeye cracked up psychologically. He worked with a psychologist character named Sydney Friedman. In the show Hawkeye retrieved the repressed memory of being in an evac bus that was in danger of discovery by the NK army. A civilian woman on the bus had her baby with her, and the baby started to cry. In order to avoid discovery and keep the others safe the mother voluntarily strangled her own child.
Nowadays the memory of that show speaks to issues like acceptance by Hunter gatherer cultures of the necessity of infanticide for the sake of the tribe’s survival. More generally it addresses the issue of lifeboat ethics, something that is not often tackled by mass media.
March 11th, 2013 at 9:29 am
.
Working Class Hero
Survival means jungle law still,
But we’re cultured, and smile as we kill;
More dough in the bank
Means an increase in rank,
If you want to live on the hill.
March 11th, 2013 at 9:51 am
.
The Dream is Over (from “God” in the same album)
Once doom’s something you comprehend,
You no longer have to pretend;
Catton’s overextend
Means this is the end:
The dream’s really over, my friend.
March 11th, 2013 at 10:51 am
Btd: Awesome! Readin’ your rhymes is like watchin’ Kobe or James play ball, just so smooth and makin’ it look easy.
If anyone can help me with that article about GM feed making dairy cattle sick and passing the crappy milk on to us – i’d appreciate it.
Still no luck finding it (i should have saved it when i read it.)
March 11th, 2013 at 11:17 am
Tom, it’s really weird, but sometimes it happens (unexpectedly).
MASH
The show was a monster smash;
We’ll soon need triage care like MASH,
Where freakouts from doom
Get first aid for their gloom
When they find out what’s up with the crash.
March 11th, 2013 at 12:05 pm
Tom – this article says A Testbiotech survey released in August 2010 shows that DNA fragments from transgenic plants are increasingly found in animal tissue such as milk, inner organs and muscles. In April 2010, scientists from Italy reported DNA sequences stemming from genetically engineered soy in milk from goats. These DNA fragments are presumably, entering the blood stream from the gut and then from there reaching the udder and the milk. Traces of specific DNA were also identified in kids fed with the goat’s milk. These findings are not the first to be reported after DNA fragments have been found in the tissue of animals fed with transgenic plants. A few years ago, DNA from genetically engineered maize was found in samples from pigs. More recently, research found traces from transgenic plants in the organs of fish, namely rainbow trout and tilapia. In fish, the gene sequences were found in nearly all inner organs.
http://www.bangmfood.org/stealth-gmos
Is that what you were looking for.
Google these words “gmo dna fragments found in milk” for more such articles
March 11th, 2013 at 1:09 pm
Tom, I remember reading about this. The ag argument is that all feed intake is broken down into basic amino acids and from there the body builds its own proteins, so it doesn’t matter. Problem is some nutrients get through without being broken down. GMO is everywhere, we plant GMO, we buy GMO feeds, we buy GMO groceries, and our farm is full of Aluminum. We all must die from something…I don’t want to reach a point in my life where I envy the dead. My mother is 96 and she wishes she was dead.
March 11th, 2013 at 1:44 pm
One of First Iraq Veterans to Publicly Oppose War Will Die for Our Sins
Monday, 11 March 2013 09:44
By Chris Hedges, Truthdig | Op-Ed
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/15045-one-of-the-first-iraq-veterans-to-publicly-oppose-war-will-die-for-our-sins
March 11th, 2013 at 1:47 pm
I remember listening to an NPR show one time about extending lives. They took calls and a Dr. called in. He said he had elderly patients that would say to him “why am I still here?” So the NPR host asks, what kind of Dr. are you – he was most surprised when the Dr. said he was a podiatrist. But heck if your feet hurt all the time, it limits what you can do, and when you can’t do much, well what’s the point. The article above is an extreme example of that.
March 11th, 2013 at 3:31 pm
Kathy – great article by Hedges. The link to the GM article is close enough, thanks for that too. i don’t know why i didn’t think to list dna in the search (i thought the GM was the important part).
dmd: You’re correct of course, i was merely looking for some evidence that the GM stuff isn’t helping. In the original article, the scientists spoke of the diseases of the udder that the cows would suffer and that pus would develop (among other nasty stuff) as a result and it transferred into the milk product (yech). i’m sorry to hear that your farm got bombed by the chem-trail people (sorry, “cloud seeding entrepreneurs”). One of the few pleasures that the collapse is going to bring me is that the ultra-rich (“powers that be”) will lose everything in the process – their money won’t buy anything, nothing will have any value and their entire world-view will become the biggest sick joke on the planet. i hope they choke on it all, the rat bastards. (Oh, do i sound bitter and vindictive?)
more on Fuk (8 min vid):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZpsFxeBSBw&feature=player_embedded
If it’s gonna take somewhere around 40 years to decommission the damaged plant (and i don’t think we have 40 years before it’s all over), what will be done with all the others that we aren’t even thinking about decommissioning now? Gyad Kathy, your Fuk x 400 is looking more and more plausible as time goes on. Just listen to the mess the poor victims of the radiation face. It’s terrible!
March 11th, 2013 at 3:40 pm
In Japan and China large sandstorms have closed airports and, combined with high winds, have damaged roofs, caused fires and forced people to wear masks (if they dare to go out at all). The common people say it’s an omen that the leader or ruler should realize his mistakes and correct them.
Here’s the vid of China:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rOuFxd7c3AY
March 11th, 2013 at 3:48 pm
This should have us all spooked:
http://theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com/
Wake-up call or omen? Three ‘near’ misses in one weekend
March 11, 2013 – SPACE – Discovered just six days ago, the 140m Asteroid 2013 ET passed about 966,000 km from Earth on Saturday. That is about 2.5 times as far as the moon, fairly close on a cosmic yardstick. “The scary part of this one is that it is something we didn’t even know about,” Patrick Paolucci, president of Slooh Space Camera, said during a webcast featuring live images of the asteroid from a telescope in the Canary Islands. Moving at a speed of about 41,843 km/h, the asteroid could have wiped out a large city if it had hit Earth, added Slooh telescope engineer Paul Cox. Asteroid 2013 ET is nearly eight times larger than the bus-sized asteroid that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia last month, injuring 1500 people. The force of the explosion, equivalent to about 440 kilotons of dynamite, created a shock wave that shattered windows and damaged buildings. Later that day, a small asteroid, known as DA14, passed about 27,680 km from Earth, closer than the orbiting networks of communications and weather satellites. “One of the reasons we’re finding more of these objects is that there are more people looking,” Cox said. Two other small asteroids, both about the size of the Russian meteor, were in Earth’s neighborhood at the weekend. Asteroid 2013 EC 20 passed just 48,28 km away on Saturday, said Cox. Yesterday, Asteroid 2013 EN 20 flew about 449,007 km away from Earth. “We know the solar system is a busy place,” said Cox. “We’re not sitting here on our pale-blue dot on our own in nice safety. This should be a wake-up call to governments.” The US Congress has asked NASA to find and track all near-Earth objects of 1km or larger in diameter. NASA estimates about 95% have been identified. But only about 10% of smaller asteroids have been discovered, it says. The effort is intended to give scientists and engineers as much time as possible to learn if an asteroid or comet is on a collision course with Earth, in hopes of sending up a spacecraft or taking other measures to avert catastrophe. About 100 tons of material from space hits Earth every day. Astronomers expect an object about the size of the Russian meteor to strike about every 100 years. -Time Live
March 11th, 2013 at 3:55 pm
Of course this is much more of a wake-up call, if anyone were paying attention:
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/03/11/1700581/a-dry-spring-drought-expands-in-texas-and-florida-pounding-state-economies/
A Dry Spring: Drought Expands In Texas And Florida, Pounding State Economies
According to the latest report from U.S. Drought Monitor, drought conditions expanded in Florida and West Texas last week.
While storms and heavy precipitation rolled into much of the eastern United States, several weeks of low rainfall have pushed Florida’s peninsula into “abnormally” — and in some areas “moderate” or “severe” — dry conditions. And much of Texas remains blanketed by “moderate” to “severe” drought, with significant areas sliding all the way into “extreme” and “exceptional.” The state’s climatologist has warned that if the drought persists through the summer, only the record cumulative dry spell Texas suffered in the 1950s would be worse.
The latest outlook shows drought conditions persisting in both states through the spring, and possibly expanding in California and Oregon as well. And the massive drought conditions that’ve been pummeling the midwest remain as brutal as ever, as Climate Central reported late last week:
Although this is the climatological dry season for Florida, the current level of dryness is more intense than in normal years. Since Nov. 1, 2012, Daytona Beach has received just a little more than 40 percent of its normal rainfall, making it the 7th driest period in 80 years.
The past several weeks saw the drought in Texas intensify as well, which is a troubling sign moving into spring. Texas typically receives little widespread, steady precipitation during the spring and summer months and relies on the rains from the fall and winter to carry it through the year. Most of Texas has been under drought conditions since the summer of 2011, and that prolonged aridity has left reservoir levels across the state at record low levels, leaving the state vulnerable to water shortages and restrictions if conditions do not improve. [...]
According to the latest drought outlook, also released on Thursday, drought is forecast to develop and persist in both Texas and Florida this spring, but also may expand in the West and intensify in California and southern Oregon. The normal wet season in California begins to wind down in March, and precipitation is usually scarce by May. Parts of the West have already had well below normal amounts of precipitation for the winter season, and if that trend continues through spring, the drought could intensify significantly.
March 11th, 2013 at 4:53 pm
Kathy C. It is reported that the water level [in Lake Kawaguchi] decreased by 6m from 3/1 to 3/4/2013. However, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism stopped updating the real time monitoring data for some reason
Just for kicks, I calculated the amount of water being talked about here; it is roughly 9.7 million gallons! And it evaporated in 3 days?? No wonder the government stopped updating the real time monitoring – if that data is accurate, then it certainly seems like a very high rate of evaporation. There are lots of factors which can affect evaporation rate including surface area, temperature of the water, temperature and humidity of the surrounding air, air pressure, altitude, wind, sun exposure, rain, etc. The lake isn’t really that large, less than 3 square miles of surface area, but as it’s winter the sun and temperature are likely not increasing evaporation significantly. Perhaps those of you with more physics training than I have can provide a more educated response.
My guess is that this doesn’t bode well for the people of Japan, and based on the status of Fukushima, probably not for us either (in the U.S.).
March 11th, 2013 at 5:22 pm
Tom; We have less udder trouble in our herd now than during any other time in my 60 years of farming. I don’t know why. Back when BST was introduced, we were excited to use it and it did work OK. Most of the stuff that was written condeming it was not true. What you are hearing about GM isn’t true either. After 10 years, we quit using BST because I didn’t want to go down that road any longer. We made just as much or more money without it. If I don’t use GM corn, I will need to use more sprays. Which is worse? My wife and I drank BST milk and now we drink GM milk. We are both very healthy and neither take any pills. Guess we are just lucky.
March 11th, 2013 at 5:24 pm
I did some research on Aluminum levels in New York State.
http://www.dec.ny.gov/docs/remediation_hudson_pdf/appendixde.pdf
Seems that we do not have an Al problem in NY. I only wish I could say that NTE isn’t true either. I’m still working on it.
March 11th, 2013 at 5:57 pm
The latest from the Arctic News:
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/
March 11th, 2013 at 6:12 pm
Dmd – I read that Arctic news post some days back – sounds like they are getting it that we are in deep deep shit, and desperate to find a geo-engineering solution. In fact they are beginning to sound panicked. But it seems time to stop solving ourselves into whatever unknowns the geo-engineering might bring. Sometimes I start thinking the economy is shaky enough that maybe we might get collapse deep enough to stop the CO2 and maybe soon enough to ward off disaster. And then I remember the 439 nuclear power plants and go read one of Benjamin’s poems.
March 11th, 2013 at 7:03 pm
http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2013/03/the-climate-train-has-left-the-station.html
March 11th, 2013 at 7:14 pm
‘I was 6’3″ tall, but I was listed at 6’1″ because I played so much shorter than suggested by my height.’ white men can’t jump! lol
made me laugh several times, guy. i like your ‘self indulgent’ writing. u know how to tell a good story and keep it blessedly brief. quality over quantity. thanks as always.
March 11th, 2013 at 7:23 pm
Makes you wonder about all the other so-called conspiracies:
http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/shocking-new-evidence-reveals-depths-treason-and-treachery-watergate-and-iran?paging=off
March 11th, 2013 at 8:43 pm
Conference organized by Helen Caldicott, in New York, re the second anniversary of Fukushima, http://www.nuclearfreeplanet.org/symposium.html
You can get live streaming. Arnie Gunderson was one of the speakers today, he was broadcast on KPFA, see http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/89660 Gunderson is first up.
The same show will also broadcast conference events tomorrow.
March 11th, 2013 at 9:03 pm
I did a long interview for American Freedom Radio today via Skype, via Vince Eastwood, and gave Nature Bats Last some promotion, along with Albert Bartlett, M King Hubbert, power-down and permaculture. I introduced the term NTE, and pointed out we are on track for a largely uninhabitable planet by 2040 to 2080 -nobody knows exactly – as a direct consequence of fossil fuel emissions.
How many listeners there are and whether they are at all receptive to reality I cannot say. We do our best.
In the meantime NZ is suffering from a ‘historic; drought which is in the process of bringing NZ’s biggest industry -dairy farming- to its knees. Who knows when the next rain will arrive: not for 5 days at the earliest, which will be too late for many regions.
Here in Taranaki the grass is still green (just) but the situation will become dire if no significant rain comes by April.
Sadly, environmental catastrophe or economic catastrophe seem to be the only things that will shake people out of their state of industrial trance.
March 11th, 2013 at 9:05 pm
@Paul C
Yes I remember that episode. I must have seen the whole MASH series 3 or 4 or 5 times over, growing up.
Funny, I was just googling infanticide this week. Looks like we may soon have to reacquaint ourselves with the issues pre-historic humans dealt with on a daily basis.
But I think that’s far too kind a reading of what this MASH episode was dealing with. Looking at it as propaganda, the super-sensitive super-humans, Hawkeye and Dr Friedman, are grappling with an issue not of their own making. They’re in Korea* only to do good, but Hawkeye is thrust into a barbaric situation which overwhelms his psyche. The North Koreans* are feared to such an extent that a mother will kill her own child to avoid an encounter with them, and the mother does kill her baby, right there in front of Hawkeye.
That poor woman, with her dead baby. And poor sensitive Hawkeye, who only wants to do good. How can such evil exist in the world? Whatever its origins, we mustn’t be so weak that we would run from the obligation to fight it when it confronts us!
*Korea/Vietnam. Most viewers couldn’t tell the difference and many assumed MASH was set in Vietnam.
March 11th, 2013 at 9:16 pm
We may be doomed, but you can be certain once the GW deniers realize it’s a problem that must be dealt with immediately, in no time at all it’s going to be Planet Frankenstein via all sorts of geoengineering programs. Beginning with a magic bullet cure, and then moving on to a string of stop-gap fixes to minimise the unintended consequences of the initial intervention.
Cloud brightening sounds okay, but the way the deniers think, they’ll never accept a big problem can be solved with something as simple as water.
March 11th, 2013 at 11:31 pm
Yeah, war on tv is such fun.
American major slapping his troops around the head for having shot dead the wrong guys.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia/2013/03/2013311113555455539.html
March 12th, 2013 at 3:37 am
Kathy C
And don’t forgetfed and play with the chickens, rake their poo and leaves and straw, and take in a few eggs, ‘n’ such.
Stress-busters ?
Chickens ‘r’ us!
March 12th, 2013 at 3:43 am
Sadie Cloud brightening sounds okay, but the way the deniers think, they’ll never accept a big problem can be solved with something as simple as water.
Cloud brightening sounds OK and certainly better than putting more chemicals in our air BUT when you mess with something as big as the climate you really don’t know what will happen and if you do it on a large scale you can’t take it back. It has been shown that global dimming by industrial pollution did cut back some warming, it also changed climate patterns causing a massive drought in the Sahel with all the attendant starvation.
NARRATOR: The 1984 Ethiopian famine shocked the world. It was partly caused by a decade’s long drought right across sub-Saharan Africa – a region known as the Sahel. For year after year the summer rains failed. At the time some scientists blamed overgrazing and poor land management. But now there’s evidence that the real culprit was Global Dimming. The Sahel’s lifeblood has always been a seasonal monsoon. For most of the year it is completely dry. But every summer, the heat of the sun warms the oceans north of the equator. This draws the rain belt that forms over the equator northwards, bringing rain to the Sahel. But for twenty years in the 1970s and 80s the tropical rain belt consistently failed to shift northwards – and the African monsoon failed. For climate scientists like Leon Rotstayn the disappearance of the rains had long been a puzzle. He could see that pollution from Europe and North America blew right across the Atlantic, but all the climate models suggested it should have little effect on the monsoon. But then Rotstayn decided to find out what would happen if he took the Maldive findings into account.
DR LEON ROTSTAYN (CSIRO Atmospheric Research): What we found in our model was that when we allowed the pollution from Europe and North America to affect the properties of the clouds in the northern hemisphere the clouds reflected more sunlight back to space and this cooled the oceans of the northern hemisphere. And to our surprise the result of this was that the tropical rain bands moved southwards tracking away from the more polluted northern hemisphere towards the southern hemisphere.
NARRATOR: Polluted clouds stopped the heat of the sun getting through. That heat was needed to draw the tropical rains northwards. So the life giving rain belt never made it to the Sahel.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/dimming_trans.shtml
I fear that even large usage of solar, wind or tidal power would have similar unknown unknowns, effects that we are unable to predict until we try the global experiment. Sunlight, wind, tidal energy are not sitting around doing nothing, they are doing something, and should we expropriate large amounts for our energy uses we would get to find out what might happen – too late. It sure looked like coal and oil were doing nothing but sitting under the ground. We discovered too late (although some warned early) that they were sequestering Carbon from the atmosphere.
We get one chance to do any global experiment…..
March 12th, 2013 at 3:58 am
Reading David Graeber’s eye openner book, ‘Debt – the first 5,000 years’ at the moment.
It looks at exchanges, communities, civilizations, (the major ones) and concepts of Debt, credit, slavery and of course money and war.
As I did not read much history early in my education, specifically I did not trust the victors, I am always surprised as an adult to wade in and pick up infomation, and key concepts I perhaps missed earlier in life than otherwise may havebeen.
I am glad I get to use a reasonably mature mental aparatus to look into things now.
So getting to think, or rethink that thing called ‘collapse’ at present.
I am siing on humans being pretty resilliant in how they network, at least in some locations. But I suppose the dependent ones on any setting are going to be easiest to lead by the asses out there, and maybe that will mean plenty of willing workers, in the short term.
however, I am thinking like an older work colleague Peter B use to chime in at odd moments. He would round off with, “I’m convinced the barstards will not stop until it is all cut down, all dried up and all choking filthy, full stop”
Machines don’t know when to stop.
Growing some corn to make biodiesel to run machines when the oil is too expensive or gone will ust keep it going.
I’ve also got a side bet each way that Fuk Kathy C’s odds of 439 nuclear power plants all hatching within a few weeks of eachother too.
I try to look on the bright side of NTE…..
We have only ever had today…. and we still have it, at least last time I looked.
I really recommend highly ‘Debt – the first 5,000 years’. The last few chapters are lengthy, but by then one is deeply needing some real answers to WTF is going on with the debt slavery, work slavery epidemic emerging everywhere.
March 12th, 2013 at 4:05 am
Speaking of drone warfare…
If you end up fighting a drone worrior, for your family, your land or your ‘right’to seem free, does it matter if it is autonomous, or is directed at a distance by a wage slave in a neocon office in an Anex-1 nation ?
Either way perhaps TERMINATOR here we come.
We will still be figting machines for freedom…..or the semblence of it.
Best of luck to all the ‘Connors’ out there….( and don’t count on using one of ‘them’ in your fight against the Machines. Once a cockroach, always a cockroach, unless they want to re-human-ise.)
March 12th, 2013 at 4:10 am
Worth posting from the recent link to Arctic News….
“…In winter the ex tundras will dry out. Releasing yet more NO2 and CO2.
Global Warming will spike through the roof.
And…
The by now over 20 degrees Celsius temperatures of the upper layer of the polar ocean will be sending a massive thermal pulse down through the East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS) and other shallow submarine permafrosts in the arctic. This pulse propagating fast through liquid water in cracks and methane eruption vents. The hydrate layers containing over 1000 billion tons C of methane at the bottoms of these permafrosts will destabilise fast, bottom up, when that thermal pulse hits them. Quite possible the pressure building up under these shelves, most particularly the ESAS will shatter them and release most of the hydrate methane, free methane, and undecomposed organic carbon, they are holding very fast indeed. Best estimate around 2750 billion tons C total in shallow submarine arctic permafrosts.
Kinda like a warm well shook champagne bottle when you pop the cork.
Lots of this methane will hit the atmosphere.
With even more water vapour, more methane, more NO2, more ozone being produced by the methane, less SO2 forming clouds because methane destroys it….
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Hmr7YjheK5w/UT7qTHJVhMI/AAAAAAAAJdo/seHoP4Ruhcw/s640/26485604364956.jpg
….We’ll have a greenhouse effect like the earth has not seen before in its 4.5 billion years of existence.
What REALLY concerns me looking at this chart is how much it would take going from this point to the Tipping Point for the Venus syndrome.
The situation in this chart would lead to a lot more stratospheric water vapour feedback. That could start to run away until the equatorial oceans boil, and there’s no stopping things from there.
Lots of methane will get sucked down the Arctic plughole into the new anoxic intermediate ocean layer.
Archer 2007 states that 1000 billion tons C of methane (and/or other dissolved organic carbon) is sufficient to remove all oxygen from the worlds oceans. That won’t take long….”
The link is a graph in the middle of the article and referred to in the quote above.
What is rather more alarming than the whole import of the article is the fact the guy thinks there is still time to do anything of significance to stop the whole thing going ‘Bonanza Sunday’.
Wasted your beer if you drunk it before reading this whole article, IMHO.
March 12th, 2013 at 4:21 am
So the latest thing for the “money people” is to PROFIT FROM CLIMATE CHANGE! [what did you expect?]
Woo-hoo! The party continues!
http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/bulletin/meet-the-companies-looking-to-profit-from-climate-change/14398
Meet the companies looking to profit from climate change
For some investors, the time for spending huge sums of money to stop climate change has passed. It’s happening. Now, working under the assumption that significant change is inevitable, some firms are investing in businesses that stand to profit as the climate warms. Bloomberg Businessweek reports.
Companies such as Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs have purchased stakes in alternative energy projects including wind farms and tidal energy plants; they also set up carbon-trading desks. But now that efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions in a major way have largely faltered, the appeal of investing in cleantech firms and carbon offset schemes has dimmed.
The costs of adapting to climate change may reach $130 billion a year by 2030 — bad news for many of us, but good news for investors who foresee opportunities. Here are some companies looking to capitalize on the planet’s warming trend.
Drought and abnormal weather can help spur business.
•Water Asset Management buys water rights and makes investments in water treatment companies. “Not enough people are thinking long term of [water] as an asset that is worthy of ownership,” says Chief Operating Officer Marc Robert. The New York hedge fund has about $400 million under management.
•Switzerland-based Land Commodities advises individuals and funds on purchases of Australian farmland, which could become more valuable as arable land becomes more scarce. According to the firm’s pitch, inland cropland Down Under is far from rising seas yet close to Asia’s hungry customers. The Switzerland-based company worked on more than $80 million in transactions last year.
•New York-based investment firm KKR bought a 25 percent stake in Nephila Capital, an $8 billion Bermuda hedge fund that trades in weather derivatives. “More volatile weather creates more risk and more appetite to protect against that risk,” says Barney Schauble at Nephila Advisors.
•Arcadis is a Dutch engineering firm that offers flood-protection services. Their revenue was up 26 percent last year to $3.25 billion thanks in part to superstorm Sandy. The company has contracts with New York’s Nassau County and New York City to bring water treatment facilities back online. Arcadis recently bought ETEP, a Brazilian water engineering and consulting firm.
With glaciers disappearing, there’s suddenly access to a lot of ground that no one has ever seen.
•NunaMinerals, a mining company in Greenland, spent last summer prospecting for gold in the southern part of the island. Mining companies spent $91.5 million on mineral exploration in the Danish territory in 2010.
•Additionally, Anglo-American and Danish mining startup Avannaa Resources have committed more than $15 million on a joint venture to explore for copper in the eastern part of Greenland.
Hotter temperatures and increased humidity are leading to outbreaks of the mosquito-borne disease dengue. There were 66 cases in the Florida Keys in 2011.
•‘Eco-entrepreneur’ Jason Drew is one of the investors who has bet about $30 million on Oxitec, a startup in England that has engineered a mosquito that can’t reproduce. When their transgenic mosquito mates with a wild female, their offspring don’t survive into adulthood.
fuckin’ lunatics
March 12th, 2013 at 4:25 am
speakin’ of makin’ hay while the sun shines:
http://investmentwatchblog.com/private-prisons-the-more-americans-they-put-behind-bars-the-more-money-they-make/#QppJHWE51FItrvKy.99
Private Prisons: The More Americans They Put Behind Bars The More Money They Make
How would you describe an industry that wants to put more Americans in prison and keep them there longer so that it can make more money? In America today, approximately 130,000 people are locked up in private prisons that are being run by for-profit companies, and that number is growing very rapidly. Overall, the U.S. has approximately 25 percent of the entire global prison population even though it only has 5 percent of the total global population. The United States has the highest incarceration rate on the entire globe by far, and no nation in the history of the world has ever locked up more of its own citizens than we have. Are we really such a cesspool of filth and decay that we need to lock up so many of our own people? Or are there some other factors at work? Could part of the problem be that we have allowed companies to lock up men and women in cages for profit? The two largest private prison companies combined to bring in close to $3,000,000,000 in revenue in 2010, and the largest private prison companies have spent tens of millions of dollars on lobbying and campaign contributions over the past decade. Putting Americans behind bars has become very big business, and those companies have been given a perverse incentive to push for even more Americans to be locked up. It is a system that is absolutely teeming with corruption, and it is going to get a lot worse unless someone does something about it.
March 12th, 2013 at 4:36 am
Can’t resist this because it has a reference to “Adjunct Professors” being underpaid…..
‘Managed expectations in the post-employment economy
- In a post-employment economy, many are working simply to earn the prospect of making money.’
Sarah Kendzior
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/03/201331116423560886.html
Practicaly all of it:
“On March 4, Olga Khazan, the new editor of the Global section of the Atlantic, sent an email to Nate Thayer, a veteran journalist covering Asian political affairs. Khazan had seen an article Thayer had written about North Korea and liked it. She wanted to know if he could “repurpose” it for the Atlantic website.
“We unfortunately can’t pay you for it,” she wrote Thayer. “But we do reach 13 million readers a month.”
Thayer was appalled. He explained that he was a professional journalist “not in the habit of giving my services for free to for-profit media outlets so they can make money by using my work and efforts by removing my ability to pay my bills and feed my children”.
Khazan apologised and explained that the Atlantic was out of money. She told him the most they paid for an original story was $100, but they did not have $100 at the moment. All they could offer Thayer was “exposure” to benefit his “professional goals”. Thayer’s professional goal was to pay his bills. Outraged, he posted the exchange on his blog. It went viral within hours.
Who pays?
The news that the Atlantic – one of the oldest and most venerated publications in America – paid its writers little or nothing came as a shock to many, but not to journalists struggling to make a living in the post-employment economy. Freelance rates have plunged over the past decade, a decline tracked on the crowd-sourced website Who Pays Writers? (the answer: hardly anyone).
Some journalists say this is not a big deal. Unpaid labour should be expected, even treasured. In an article called “People Writing for Free on the Internet Is an Enormous Boon to Society”, salaried Slate columnist Matthew Yglesias arguedthat if people demanded money for their labour, the world would be deprived of important works. “This Nine Inch Nails/Carly Rae Jepsen mashup is amazing, for example,” he wrote.
“The problem in journalism is not that people are writing for free. It is that people are writing for free for companies that are making a profit.”
Atlantic employees say they feel the freelancers’ pain, but there is nothing they can do. Editor James Bennett apologised for offending Thayer and added that “when we publish original, reported work by freelancers, we pay them”. This claim was dismissed by Atlantic contributors who were paid nothing for their original, reported contributions. In a lengthy defence of the Atlantic’s publishing practices, Technology editor Alexis Madrigal argued that while the game of journalism “sucks”, it was too late to change the rules: “You still have limited funds. You still can’t pay freelancers a living wage.”
But then where is all the money going? “The Atlantic is two things every legacy publishing company would like to be: profitable and more reliant on digital advertising revenues than on print,” writes Forbes magazine. 2012 brought the Atlantic a record profit, beating out the record profit of 2011, with 59 percent of earnings coming from digital revenues. Not every writer at the Atlantic is suffering for their craft. When the Atlantic recruited staff writer Jeffrey Goldberg, they sent his daughter ponies and offered him a lavish six-figure salary. Thayer had once been offered $125,000 by the magazine to write six articles.
The problem in journalism is not that people are writing for free. It is that people are writing for free for companies that are making a profit. It is that people are doing the same work and getting paid radically disparate wages. It is that corporations making record earnings will not allocate their budgets to provide menial compensation to the workers who make them a success.
The post-employment economy
The Atlantic is far from the only publication to withhold wages, nor is journalism the only field. In academia, adjunct professors live in poverty doing the same work as the average professor paid $73,207 per year. In many industries – including policy, entertainment, and business – interns do the same jobs as salaried employees and are paid nothing or next to nothing. “We need to hire a 22-22-22,” said one new media manager quoted in the New York Times, meaning a 22-year-old willing to work 22-hour days for $22,000 a year.
Shortly before the Atlantic story broke, a video depicting income inequality in the United States went viral. Based on data from a 2011 study, the video showed that most Americans seek a more equitable distribution of wealth than what they believe exists – but that the reality of income inequality is far worse than they had imagined. When income was graphed, the middle class was barely distinguishable from the poor. 80 percent of Americans have 7 percent of the nation’s wealth, while 1 percent of Americans have 40 percent of the nation’s wealth.
The video noted that 92 percent of Americans think this is wrong. So why does it continue? The answer lies in a combination of fear and myth-making that has characterised public perception of the economy since the 2008 collapse. Americans are taught to believe the economy is in a permanent crisis – a position seemingly validated by their own experience.
But has the permanent crisis become a self-fulfilling prophecy? Economic analyst Eric Garland notes that since 2008, executive compensation has steadily risen, but the myth of hard times is peddled to both frighten and lure a permanent supply of unpaid, precarious labour.
“You’re only 28. Or 33,” he writes, mocking the corporate pitch. “You have a long career ahead of you. You can get paid later! After all, we don’t have budget for interns this year. We used that money to increase executive pay at a rate five times greater than the cost of living. Because the economy is terrible right now! And we’re at all-time record highs of corporate cash reserves and profits. But it’s terrible!”
The economic crisis is a crisis of managed expectations. Americans are being conditioned to accept their own exploitation as normal. Ridden with debt from the minute they graduate college, they compete for the privilege of working without pay. They no longer earn money – they earn the prospect of making money. They are paid in “connections” and “exposure”. But they should insist on more.
I understand why they do not. When the Atlantic story broke, many journalists were tempted to write about their own mistreatment. Some did, but others held back. They did not want to seem angry or ungrateful. They did not want to risk losing what little they had. They were told to pay their dues, and now they are paying for it with their dignity.
In the post-employment economy, is self-respect something we can afford? Or is it another devalued commodity we are expected to give away?”
Yes, it would explain the new trend of massive profits being gobbled since the GFC in 2008-9 and the rising debt, and lowering wages, and the vast working poor.
Methnks a change of government is coming here soon (Sept 14) in Australia …. so … back to the Reagan-Thatcher-Howard era, and its all over red rover, as slavery will be endemic, one way or the other.
If so I may be living in the bush, (forest).
I vote for Kevin Rudd !
March 12th, 2013 at 4:41 am
http://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/
“Your Ignorance Makes Me Ill and Angry”
enjoy
March 12th, 2013 at 4:57 am
Cannabis is an old-world native, and Cannabis indica is literally a weed in the Indian subcontinent. It has a corresponding social status. Smoking it instead of tobacco (bidis, cigarettes, hookah, etc.) marked one as being at the bottom of the social pecking order when and where I grew up. Sort of like having dog food for dinner here.
My father had a story from his medical school days when a classmate’s father came to visit in the hostel (dorm) and found his son smoking cigarettes. The father forbade his son to smoke cigarettes, and promptly bought his son a hookah instead.
Much of that area will go underwater, too fast for humans to evolve into fully aquatic apes.
he was most surprised when the Dr. said he was a podiatrist.
One who helps people cope with the agony of de feet.
Gyad Kathy, your Fuk x 400 is looking more and more plausible as time goes on.
A massive clusterFuke?
When I was stationed there, a different problem was so prevalent among the troops that some referred to the place as Korrhea.
March 12th, 2013 at 5:35 am
” …they compete for the privilege of working without pay. They no longer earn money – they earn the prospect of making money. They are paid in “connections” and “exposure”…”
This quote from my previous comment, (itself a quote), reminds me of a recent public education moment.
A minister for Education honcho and some high school teachers and parents and kids were all cheering because a state high school(public) had just opened an auditorium for performing arts and dance.
I don’t recall how much it cost, but my heart sank,( as a poorly trained educator), becuse all I could imagine was the equivalent support in real educational terms as giving a child a instant scratch lottery ticket for their birthday.
(That’s what I got from a Motherfu… in Law two days ago for my 50yth birthday, can you believe it…?)
I mean who the Fuck is going to get a decent job from performing Arts. Some will, yes, of course, the ones with some talent, who were probably going to anyway, (pushy parent should never be underestimated). And it has its rightful place in a culture, but in out region all we see is hospitality, (code for hotel gaming bar licences and/or waitering while still young and pretty) or performing arts halls( perhaps code for well constructed disaster rally centres for civilian population relief, soon to be tested).
So I ask, would not the money be better spent on some upskilling in other core education areas, more aligned with needed skills to survive this time and place ?
I don’t think the next gens are all going to be ‘dancing with the stars’, or ‘the voice’ or some giltzy childrens dreamy thing, more like buskers and tumblers for a meal and somewhere to sleep that’s dry for a night….
“Hey mister, can I milk your goats today for the night’s rest in your barn frr me and the family?”
“Sure, but if I ketch yer (spit) drinkin any of them there’s milk, you’ll be next weeks supper, ya hear, wanderer ?”
“loud and clear old timer, and thankin you kind sir”
” Them manners just got you the chore of cleanin out the pig pen tomorrow mornin, and then you’ll all have a sachel of grits to tide yer over on yur next travels. (aside) Ya see Mable, I told yer there still some peacable polite folk out there abots, keepin to the good ‘ol ways.”
Either way it is selling out the generations to spend what little money there is left in Public Education, on the 1-in-1000-ratio-of-performing-dance-aholics-sing-along-with-the-tv-show-dreamy-kids-and-alults-too- wanabees to those who make it, or creatively get some livlihood from it.( yes, yes… or stay indigent and drunk, but leave great art behind, less an ear perhaps)
I’d definitly go for the Clown option, IIHMTA.
( Angry, irate climate change clown…? )
Maybe here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/iowahawk_blog/4193205683/
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_khuG39LG1dw/TCu26gShfXI/AAAAAAAAACg/22M6yhRLEzo/s1600/zombie-clown-2.jpg
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7190/6956632533_b21ec0f8fe_z.jpg
http://www.ahajokes.com/cartoon/clown2.jpg
or this…
http://guycodeblog.mtv.com/wp-content/uploads/clutch/2012/06/clown14.gif
Some one’s education payed off.!
March 12th, 2013 at 5:56 am
ulvfugl, Paul, BCNP, (anyone else that enjoys physics and math, biology):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFFVSvAr7Wc
Geoffrey West on COMPLEXITY
Everything lives at the same rate.
March 12th, 2013 at 7:29 am
De-extinction and other tales
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/03/11/resurrecting-a-forest/
March 12th, 2013 at 8:23 am
http://arctic-news.blogspot.co.nz/
The worst-case and – unfortunately – looking almost certain to happen scenario
(regarding the consequences of the loss of Arctic sea ice)
March 12th, 2013 at 8:54 am
Humanity appears to be in the grip of a planet-wide thermodynamic delusion – the delusion that our thermodynamic impact is somehow “manageable”. The diametric opposite of that statement comes much closer to the truth.
What some people call “problem behavior” – growing human numbers, consumption, complexity and environmental impact – is in fact natural behavior that follows a natural law, much like falling follows the law of gravity. What we are doing to ourselves and the planet is a consequence of following this law. Our situation is not the product of some genetic, moral, educational or narrative failure that is somehow forcing us to violate a natural law.
There is no more a solution to our overshoot than there is a “solution” to having fallen off a cliff. As activists we can scream and flail our arms on the way down, but the irresistible force of gravity ensures that we will fall until we strike an immovable object.
Point finale, as they say in Québec.
March 12th, 2013 at 9:03 am
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/13/business/global/japan-says-it-is-first-to-tap-methane-hydrate-deposit.html?partner=yahoofinance&_r=0
March 12th, 2013 at 9:08 am
@ Paul C.
The 64 trillion dollar question is, “How close are we to the point where the earth’s systems can no longer cope, and finally force us to cease and desist?”
I think it must be possible to calculate this mathematically then, as a theoretical limit beyond which it is impossible go ? Even though we could never reach that limit because all the life support systems would have broken long before.
http://www.paulchefurka.ca/TF.html
March 12th, 2013 at 9:48 am
Oz Man – you are so right, chickens are a great stress buster. And gardening.
However, last year we got warm (70′s) in March and it just stayed that way. This year we are up and down like a yo yo. After some 70′s tomorrow is supposed to be 58 with 30 at night, but a high of 80 6 days from now. Had the same yo yo a month ago, blueberries bloomed early and now appear to have been decimated by frost – looks like 2/3 of more of the blossoms are gone.
So gardening is getting stressful in the planning, while still stress busting when I just get out and get my hands in dirt.
Meanwhile young roos are feeling spring and doing what young males do – fight, fight, fight. So far looks like all the bloodied combs haven’t really changed the whole scheme of which hens hang with which roos….our own little soap opera.
March 12th, 2013 at 10:10 am
I’m wondering if this is another feedback loop, as the climate warms, trees and shrubs move north onto what was frozen tundra, which, I think makes the Earth surface darker, changing the albedo so it will absorb more sun’s warmth…
http://www.countercurrents.org/cc120313A.htm
March 12th, 2013 at 10:17 am
The Arctic Methane Emergency Group http://www.AMEG.me are very right to name this War….We must fight it tooth and claw, but in this war our teeth are our knowledge and our claws are our technology.
—The Greatest War Ever
http://arctic-news.blogspot.co.nz/2013/03/the-greatest-war-ever.html
You can war against lands large or small,
Against evil or drugs—it’s your call;
But with doom, who’s the foe?
The way things will go
Is war of all against all.
March 12th, 2013 at 11:36 am
.
The denier (what a maroon!)…
Your future looks inopportune…
When your nerves start to fray,
Just remember to say:
“This shit will be all over soon.”
March 12th, 2013 at 11:41 am
Think of all the soldiers, police, FBI, NSA, Homeland Security, Rent a Cops, Wannabes and Baby Fascists and all their wives, girlfriends and significant others who will fight to the death AMEG, you, me and anyone else who wants to save life on earth. Kinda funny really.
March 12th, 2013 at 12:11 pm
-Wester
I hear you, we cannot win against B-1 bombers, tanks, nuclear subs, etc.
That’s why we only have one chance: catastrophic collapse asap!
It could be pandemic, meteors, or volcanos. But something has to happen to basically ruin 90% of the infrastructure of industrical civilization and kill a lot of people…
even if everyone woke up tomorrow and said “you’re right, we cannot live like this anymore!” then what? I would love to see how that would play out.
March 12th, 2013 at 12:44 pm
Wester, Paul, ulvfugl:
i’m interested in trying to calculate the upper limit (as well as the lower, if only slightly better than “any day now”)
to when the big step down happens. For example, Wester says that the whole security apparatus will stay intact all the way down. i don’t think it’s going to procede that way.
See, but it depends on so many interacting factors (differential equations anyone?) that are all getting worse at differing rates and impacting others. Add to these the fact that here in the US we’ve by-and-large neglected our infrastructure for between 1 and 5 decades (or more in some cases) so that own contribution to the entropy production is significant:
old gas and water mains fail, roads are ignored and bridges collapse, the electrical grid is held together with bailing wire and thumbtacks, fires happen more often, and nobody’s improving the nuke plants. There are many more areas here, but i’m just listing parameters. We’d probably have to take into effect the asteroids buzzing us, solar flairs and EMP events too.
A mental back of the napkin calculation (guess) for me was within 20 years of 2007 when i extrapolated [after adjusting the ol' IPCC (cupcake) scenario they presented so as not to panic the public].
We’re just shy of the 1/2 way mark and it’s gotten significantly worse each year since then so that we’re just coming off the bottom part of the exponential curve now – where the changes per unit time are becoming more noticeable.
Going forward i may be inclined to move the date UP, much as i try to resist (life bias?), to maybe 2023-25 for the real problems to become overwhelming (heat, drought, ridiculous storms) and from which there will be no “recovery”: financial collapse, food shortages, no muni water or sewage, etc. And i think HERE is where the police, military etc will see the futility of keeping up the charade for the powers that be once we get to Guy’s “light’s out” phase (when the “fun” begins).
Anybody want to try their hand at prognostication? How do you think it’s gonna “go down”?
March 12th, 2013 at 12:59 pm
@ Tom, others,
The way I was seeing it, following Paul’s analogy of gravity, and the TF and entropy, etc, so if we are in freefall, then someone could calculate the velocity and the distance to the ground, sort of thing. Yes, we all die long before impact, because the air conditioning fails so we can’t breath, the G forces tear our limbs off, etc, but that figure would be a maximum.
A minimum would be much more difficult because of all the variables, I think it’s impossible. You can tell a plausible story, like the guy on the link you provided, re the loss of Arctic sea ice, but there again, there’s so much uncertainty… one way or another, looks like we’ll find out…
March 12th, 2013 at 1:15 pm
Is this going to be a NBL wager? Are we all going to chip into a kitty and whoever guesses the closest gets the pot?
March 12th, 2013 at 1:20 pm
Paul, I’m glad that you mentioned the topic of “life boat ethics.” If any humans are going to survive the collapse, egalitarian values (which have been the product of Christian ethics and unprecedented prosperity in the industrialized West … i.e., since the pie became so huge, sharing didn’t hurt) must be abandoned. Ancient societies were based on blood, they were bellicose, they practiced infanticide, they were patriarchal, hierarchical and would have been appalled by modern utopian dreams of global human fraternity.
So here we sit, say 50 people in our lifeboat. To be generous, let us assume it has room for 10 more, making a total capacity of 60. Suppose the 50 of us in the lifeboat see 100 others swimming in the water outside, begging for admission to our boat or for handouts. We have several options: we may be tempted to try to live by the Christian ideal of being “our brother’s keeper,” or by the Marxist ideal of “to each according to his needs.” Since the needs of all in the water are the same, and since they can all be seen as “our brothers,” we could take them all into our boat, making a total of 150 in a boat designed for 60. The boat swamps, everyone drowns. Complete justice, complete catastrophe.
http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles/art_lifeboat_ethics_case_against_helping_poor.html
March 12th, 2013 at 2:49 pm
Kathy C
You wrote:
“Meanwhile young roos are feeling spring and doing what young males do – fight, fight, fight.”
Whoo!For a minute there I thought you were talking about Kanga-roos, I was just trying to figure how they hopped all that way… Ha!
And yes, my sentiments exactly on the private soap opera. Who needs TV?
March 12th, 2013 at 2:50 pm
pat: hahaaahaahahahhahah-haaaaa! That’s GREAT! We could each chip in a proverbian MILLION BUCK$ since by the time we agreed it was the end, the internet would be down, it would be total mayhem everywhere and there’d be nothing to buy! I’M IN!! But let me sharpen my pencil a bit and try to come up with a (what do you want to say?) 5 year range of dates between which it’s LIGHT’S OUT – no electricity, no food, total collapse of government, chaos abounds.
Anyone else who wants in just come up with two dates between which it all goes to shit and state it here on NBL. Closest range wins, in case of tie – you split the pot.
Come on people, give it a whirl. Waddiya got to lose? HAAA-HAAAAAH!!!
March 12th, 2013 at 2:52 pm
pat – we also have to have a cut-off date for entries (like May or June?) Remember things are going to continue to degrade while we’re waiting, so we should make it before the 1/2 year mark (summer solstice?). Waddiya say?
March 12th, 2013 at 3:11 pm
It was July 2010, the first west coast meetup of Romm’n'Legions when we went around the dinner table with the questions, first:
When and why did you first realize we’re f*cked?
and second:
how much longer have we got till (loosely defined) the SHTF?
It’s a great parlor game Tom!
http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/2010/07/diva-of-doom.html
March 12th, 2013 at 3:12 pm
depressive lucidity
You wrote:
“Ancient societies were based on blood, they were bellicose, they practiced infanticide, they were patriarchal, hierarchical and would have been appalled by modern utopian dreams of global human fraternity.”
Look I don’t agree with the truth of these assertions. Some or most older civilisations were heirarchical and patriarchal, yes, and they led to us, even as they failed, or morphed.
But clear;y pre aggricultural groupings were overwhelmingly matriarchal, or matrilinial. Australian Aborigines still are. I had to ask permision from a local female elder to walk in a sacred manner on her ancestral land(on which I presently live).
Dare I also draw a long bow and say from my own research, looking at others too, the ancient hunter gatherers in the Mediterainian and the(now so called) Middle East changed significantly from tribal groupings to city state entities in a direct cause and effect manner to patriarchy by the application of stories about deities.
The city of Ugarit:
“…Though the site is thought to have been inhabited earlier, Neolithic Ugarit was already important enough to be fortified with a wall early on, perhaps by 6000 BC. Ugarit was important perhaps because it was both a port and at the entrance of the inland trade route to the Euphrates and Tigris lands….
The polity was at its height from ca. 1450 BC until 1200 BC.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugarit
…was sacked at a certain time and never reoccupied, and thus when excavated in recent times gives a credible account of what occurred.
A good friend and middle eastern ancient languages scholar has related to me that there was a change in the stories recounted about the deities. In earlier origin stories the mature female Deities were well respected and looked after the rains the weather and the good hearth, and in return the cults of veneration to them were strong. As time passed there were younger male gods from northern regions coming into their lands and wreaking havoc, destroying all the landscape and muddying the water, so to speak, and most significant of all showing hitherto unseen disrespect for the female deities. Soon the younger male gods had cults of their ownand these led to a struggle for stewardship or power, and the older female dieties receeded, replaced by the emerging patriarchy. The salient thing is the scholars were able to deterine that the stories preceeded the actual cultural changes by upward of 5-10 generations, or between 3-4 hundred years.
So the short of it is:
1. the stories do inflence the outcome of culture(not something you asserted I agree), but also
2. a stable interaction with the biosphere was always relativly in sight with Matriarchal and Matrilinial kinship groups. We really only get to here through those worrior gods, which came into most cultures, in deffering ways, pushing aside the female deities of Earth and cyclic nature.
3. we are paying the price of sour story-telling ow and form now, IMO.
March 12th, 2013 at 3:15 pm
OKAY TOM!
but, you make it too complicated with the “no electricity, no food, total collapse of government, chaos abounds.” so, let me suggest to define the “winning condition” as no electricity for more than 25% of the mainland USA population on a continuous basis for more than one week. That, IMO, should start the wheels turning towards inevitable collapse, however, other suggestions are welcome!
and, “a five year window?” really, let’s get more specific, I suggest we have to guess one date, and whoever is closest (absolute value of days) wins.
To: Everyone
if you want to join the pool, please preface with “My Doomer Entry.”
here’s My Doomer Entry: August 31, 2014
here’s why: late summer, everyone is going crazy, it’s hot, everyone is using their air conditioners around the clock, inflation out of control, empty shelves at grocery, drought, urban riots, stock market crash, gold at $5,000 an ounce, wars raging in Africa, Turkey, Middle East, India, China, Korea, and Japan.
If you are still in the US by then, good luck.
March 12th, 2013 at 4:45 pm
OzMan, some words of wisdom from Survival Acres:
http://survivalacres.com/blog/the-cannibal-cabal/#more-4560
The “secret” to why this happens, over and over again, throughout history, is that we are not suited to living in large groups and never will be.
We can only exist, within our environment and with each other, peacefully and without vying for an endless quest for power, in (very) small groups, where we can directly maintain control over each other and the “leaders” in out midst.
Once we abandon this societal approach, we open up ourselves to unchecked corruption, with the most corrupt striving for leadership of the common band of criminals, who eventually discover they can do almost nothing but control / manipulate almost everything, easily “violating” any and all laws and restriction once put into place to try and control this.
In truth, there never was any need for any laws (and never was there any laws, or taxes). They do not work as a means to “control men” and never will.
The more distant we became from all this, the more corruption was tolerated and permitted. Now, our leaders are untouchable (allegedly, it’s not true) in “free speech zones” and protected enclaves.
This failed group dynamic has led to everything else. Real freedom, individual liberty has only existed when this group dynamic didn’t.
This is at the root of every city, state, political party, corporate power — all which by design promote from their own ranks the most corrupt as a means of survival and advancement for the group. Psychologist know this, but I forget what it’s called.
We’re not capable and never will be, to live this way. Humans will try to control (govern) other humans, piling on top of them all sorts of demands, decrees and enforcing this with others who will use violence to get their way, including offering a “better quality of life” in exchange for complicity and “cooperation”.
This works — until it doesn’t, which always happens, because this group dynamic is unsuitable at its core for how humans evolved.
We’ve tried many countless attempts to “evolve” ourselves and make this work, but it never does. Always the more corrupt vie for position and power and make their demands known.
March 12th, 2013 at 5:26 pm
A permanent URL for today’s Arctic News item by Aaron Franklin that the worst-case scenario is looking almost certain, posted earlier with a generic URL for the site.
http://arctic-news.blogspot.co.nz/2013/03/the-worst-case-and-unfortunately-looking-almost-certain-to-happen-scenario.html
March 12th, 2013 at 6:52 pm
pat: Oh, i see you want to do the beginning of the fall. One big power outage isn’t enough though – we did that a ways back (because of a falling tree branch and cascading failure, you remember around 1965 or something) and it didn’t bode the collapse of civilization. We need something significant or some really bad combination of things that clearly shows we “ain’t gettin’ aroun’ this!” Also it has to be GLOBAL (although if we in the US are going under i can’t imagine the rest of the world being too far behind). i like your time selection though and your reasons may actually occur. Lemme think about this a little more tonight. Anybody else want to chime in, please feel free.
OzMan: to your educational comment further up the thread – i agree, the Arts are so dissed in public education, and yet that’s the only good part of our civilization if you ask me – art, dance and music. All the rest of the subjects have been turned into awful drudgery with no purpose (“Hey Mrs. Crabtree, why do we have to read Shakespeare when i can’t even fill out a job application?”) and as far as jobs goes – it doesn’t matter WHAT you study or what it says on your degree unless you know somebody that can employ you. The year i graduated from college, well before 2000, we had more PhD’s driving pizza delivery vehicles than ever before in the US. i can’t imagine how bad it is now and will get in the future.
Jeff: yeah i saw that. The scary part about it is it’s just a matter of time – and we don’t know how much (but it isn’t going to be even 20 years the way it looks)!
March 12th, 2013 at 7:08 pm
In World First, Japan Extracts Gas from ‘Fire Ice’ Deposits Off Coast
“As the planet heats up and the exploitation of harder-to-get-at fuels continues, Japan announced on Tuesday that it had achieved a world first by extracting natural gas from methane hydrate, known as “fire ice,” from the seabed off its coast….
“… Brad Plumer points out in the Washington Post that exploiting methane hydrates brings climate worries. Even figuring a lower estimate of 2,500 gigatons of carbon-dioxide in gas hydrates, ‘it could prove impossible to keep global warming below the goal of 2°C if a significant fraction of this natural gas gets burned.’
“Also, if drillers allow methane to leak, they release a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide.”
More at http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/03/12-8
March 12th, 2013 at 9:26 pm
Some thoughts on 450ppm CO2 by Tad Patzek, Professor and Chairman of the Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering Department at The University of Texas at Austin.
Climate Change: It’s Too Late For The Truth
He has a great new coined phrase: Lethal Distractions
Hey, it’s what keeps the public from dealing with Reality
.
March 13th, 2013 at 12:40 am
For me the horror begins precisely here:
“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”
Humans are not Gods, despite their ceaseless desire to be so.
And they do not have nor deserve dominion over any of it.
Pity and a shame that this particular ethic, worldview and delusion infested so much of the ultra-conquering portion of humanity, and then rubbed off on all the copycats and wannabes.
“Decay, and decay for a period whose end I cannot fix – is our lot…
I shall witness the evil only, I shall die in the midst of the darkness.”
- Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
March 13th, 2013 at 3:34 am
Wester: i always wondered about the plural when “god” speaks (to whom?) in your first quoted sentence – “what do you mean ‘our’ there, god? ‘r youse guys a buncha UFO-ridin’ innerplanetary yahoos spreadin’ yer seed all over the dang universe ‘r sumpim’?”
Speak Softly: good one, thanks!
bluebird: yep, here we go with the “opportunity” people makin’ money off what’s going to end up killin’ us off in short order . . . and what could go wrong . . .?
March 13th, 2013 at 3:52 am
@Gail,
The interesting question for me is, “Why does the small-group dynamic fail so consistently?” As we develop social groupings much above Dunbar’s Number there seems to be a consistent emergence of hierarchy. As they get significantly larger, patriarchy seems to emerge spontaneously.
The research I’v been doing recently suggests that both phenomena are points on a curve of increasing social complexity, that happens as a consequence of rising energy availability within society. The greater the amount of energy that a society has at its disposal (i.e. that needs to be transformed efficiently into work) the more order appears to facilitate that process. The most order, energy-transformation efficiency and energy-transformation capability appears in a tree-structured social hierarchy. The more the amount of energy involved increases, the more the distance between the top and the bottom of the hierarchic pyramid increases in response.
In this interpretation, patriarchy emerges because hierarchies depend on consistent power to become established and maintain cohesion. Men supply the power in the early non-technological days because they are physically stronger, and they supply the consistency because they don’t need to take time out of their managerial/enforcement duties to bear children.
This explains the consistent appearance of hierarchy and patriarchy in advancing human societies. It also explains other things like the appearance of cities, nation-states and trans-national empires. It’s all in the interest of transforming as much available energy into work as possible.
I’ve become convinced that most of the social effects we normally see as causative are actually consequential, and are rooted in the thermodynamic imperative of transforming as much available energy as possible into work and waste heat (aka increasing entropy). This is why the pernicious social effects are so hard to mitigate.
March 13th, 2013 at 6:00 am
“As we develop social groupings much above Dunbar’s Number there seems to be a consistent emergence of hierarchy. As they get significantly larger, patriarchy seems to emerge spontaneously.”
My hunch is that one reason Neanderthals died out, as a species, is because their brains had an even lower Dunbar number hard wired into them than H s. sapian. Hell, they co-existed with H s. sapian for 15,000+ years in Really Old Europe and never figured out the ‘magic’ of a bow and arrow.
“I’ve become convinced that most of the social effects we normally see as causative are actually consequential, and are rooted in the thermodynamic imperative of transforming as much available energy as possible into work and waste heat (aka increasing entropy). This is why the pernicious social effects are so hard to mitigate.”
I pretty much agree with that up to the point where you have ironically demonstrated ‘self-awareness’ of this very phenomenon and hence can claim no ‘plausible deniablity’, as a modern human, that you can’t help doing it, you’re hard wired for it!
To most Sheeple People, in their own minds, their very cultivated ‘unawareness’ morally then ‘let’s them off the hook’to correct it! Hurrah!
Look, the willfully ‘ignorance is bliss’ crowd that comprises the vast majority of ‘Duhmericka’ think they have an air tight excuse for in-action and self imposed stupidity on changing their behavior, as long as they don’t reflect on the truth of our collective dilemma.
Think of the Three Monkeys, hear no evil……..think no evil?
You have just laid out the whole human mechanism for climate denial yet that self awareness is it’s self an Answer that humans can in fact ‘rise above it’.
Are you some different species of human like h s sapian was above the hapless h neanderthalensis?
H sustainablus?
Are there more of your ‘kind’? Can this be learned or is it something you just ‘have’ as part of your genome?
Could you have taught this message to h neanderthalensis so they could have competed with those evil little No-limits, to Infinity and Beyond twirps of the homo sapian sapian variety?
Are h s sapians doomed by their Dunbar number the way h neanderthalensis were doomed by their much lower Dunbar number?
Please expand on this
March 13th, 2013 at 6:37 am
OZ “Arts are so dissed in public education, and yet that’s the only good part of our civilization if you ask me – art, dance and music. All the rest of the subjects have been turned into awful drudgery with no purpose”
Art and dance and music IMO have been co-opted by the system as well. Rather than enjoying the ordinary art that humans are capable, the music of a human singing or humming, or the spontaneous dance of a child, we create forms of proper art, music and dance. Ballet dancers go bulimic to stay the appropriate size. Young males were castrated for the perfect tenor in the past. Grants from Dukes and Kings supported artists in the past – made from the taxes on peasants. Grants funded by taxes now support the arts.
Art and dance and music are vital, but we can live without Bach and Beethoven, given that until their time people did live without them. I love them, but I don’t need them. But can we live without the music of crickets, the sound of the wind, the exuberance of our own free form dances, the beauty of a flower etc.
March 13th, 2013 at 6:58 am
Kathy: good point on the arts and nature. i guess it’s all used in service to the dominant hegemony.
Gail: re parlor game – did you or your friends/family come up with a date when things would begin to go irrevocably ‘south’? Just curious.
pat: i’m thinking it’s probably closer to 2019/2020 when all is said and done, but of course i don’t know. Lemme posit: Dec. 17, 2019 as the end of the line for civilization on the globe. i think the chance of either of us being correct is miniscule and it could happen much quicker if the Arctic methane bomb goes off beforehand.
March 13th, 2013 at 7:06 am
@SpeakSoftly
I pretty much agree with that up to the point where you have ironically demonstrated ‘self-awareness’ of this very phenomenon and hence can claim no ‘plausible deniablity’, as a modern human, that you can’t help doing it, you’re hard wired for it!
Yeah, we may be the first case of the universe looking squarely at itself and going, WTF!!! Maybe the sudden awareness of millions can send depth charges into the ‘ground of being’ (to what end I don’t know).
March 13th, 2013 at 7:37 am
If humans are at the mercy of the universal thermodynamic imperatives of energy, mere straws in the wind, how come they don’t fuck in the middle of the road?
The vast majority of modern human cultures highly discourage fucking in the middle of the road.
John Lennon proposed the opposite in a song once, but the normal is to not ‘do it’ in the road.
OMG humans have rules! Even though dogs and horses and birds do it in the road, humans decided that was too much.
Over populating however is OK if done in private. Another conscious Choice! OMG, these humans are amazing in their mental gymnastics!
Conscious unconsciousness. Learning to keep it in their pants under one set of circumstances, but not in another.
Brilliant.
Selective memory, selective hearing, selective awareness. Clever those naked apes.
Go forth and multiply …until you destroy the very basis of your existence. Holy words or thermodynamic imperatives, you be the judge.
Forgive them, they know not what they do…anyone expressing such a lame disingenuous non excuse for inexcusable lack of responsibility deserves to be crucified, don’t ya think?
The time for cheap shallow rationalizations, enabling behavior and hubris as to why humans are so ‘gifted’, and ‘resourceful’, and ‘adaptive’, and drum roll, ‘inventive’ are thankfully coming to an End.
Geo-engineer has been going on in the wings for quite awhile. The Owners and their lackeys, the MIC Maggots, have known the message since the 70′s, and yes, they actually did read Hubbert and understand it. But like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, they will cocked it up, human style, until it fails miserably, and then bleat; it was fate (i.e. thermodynamics) that ‘made’ us do it (in the road?)
Why Don’t We Do It in the Road
NOT to be confused with Why Don’t We Do It in The Road
March 13th, 2013 at 7:41 am
“My Doomer Entry” Update:
Pat 08/31/14
Tom 12/17/19
As yet, there are no agreed upon parameters to determine the “winner.”
It seems to me there are several major themes being addressed here on NBL:
First and Foremost: Collapse. It seems the majority of posters here agree that collapse is happening and there is no way to stop it. Most of the posts are providing links to third party data corroborating same and a small subset of links to idiots saying “all is well.”
After that, the posts are either about “prepping” (as if anyone is going to survive), or waxing poetically about how things could have been different (not to mention the philosophical discussions on the nature of being, the meaning and the fate of the universe, etc).
When I became collapse aware, around 2006, I became a prepper. Now I’m mostly looking to escape the US somehow. Leave my guns, ammo, water purifiers and freeze-dried food behind… and all my attachments to “The Machine” that has doomed us all. I don’t want to be in the US when the riots start. I don’t want to face the very difficult choice of eating my cat or eating my neighbor (before he eats me). I don’t want to live in a FEMA camp.
So, the question is, where to go and how to get there and Then What?
March 13th, 2013 at 7:48 am
correction: Paul McCartney wrote and sang the song, but John was listed as co-author. I’ve lost more brain cells than I thought smoking Hopium all those years.
March 13th, 2013 at 7:49 am
Pat, my best advice (if you have no idea or connections outside the US) is to cultivate community and relationships however possible. If you are living in an climatically or environmentally unsafe place in the US, try to find as optimal an area as possible. I have started trying to connect more locally even though only one other person thinks like I do. The time will come when everyone will get what is happening (whether they acknowledge the cause or not). In my area, most will attribute it to sin, not enough prayer in schools, God’s judgement yada yada – but at least I feel they will be the less likely to eat me!
March 13th, 2013 at 7:55 am
“..In my area, most will attribute it to sin, not enough prayer in schools, God’s judgement yada yada – but at least I feel they will be the less likely to eat me!..
hahaha
Make sure you don’t have any mint sauce on you!
March 13th, 2013 at 8:02 am
Gail says: …we are not suited to living in large groups and never will be.
We can only exist, within our environment and with each other, peacefully and without vying for an endless quest for power, in (very) small groups, where we can directly maintain control over each other and the “leaders” in out midst….
In early tribes, there was no crook—
Every life was an open book;
And it’s sometimes portrayed
That those folks had it made:
They’d just lie around, eat, sleep, and fook.
March 13th, 2013 at 8:07 am
Bailey,
I hear you. “Cultivate community and relationships” is always good advice!
March 13th, 2013 at 8:10 am
Some of the finest, most stirring music I have heard was recorded by Louis Sarno of the the songs of the Bayaka Pigmy clan in Central African Republic – Bayaka: The Extraordinary Music of the BaBenzl Pygmies (CD and book). Louis fell in love with the people and married into the clan. You can hear the music of these people here on line as well http://www.baka.co.uk/baka/index.html
March 13th, 2013 at 8:13 am
They make a few simple instruments and even use water as an instrument http://www.baka.co.uk/baka/index.html
On Sarno’s CD there are some songs like – women gathering mushrooms that are hard sometimes to even tell from jungle sounds, yet incredibly moving (to me at least). This music speaks to what we have lost and I believe our civilized attempts, however sophisticated and complicated pale compared to the music of these jungle people.
March 13th, 2013 at 8:17 am
Samples from Sarno’s recordings at http://www.allmusic.com/album/bayaka-the-extraordinary-music-of-the-babenzele-pygmies-mw0000646278
March 13th, 2013 at 8:35 am
“Gail says: …we are not suited to living in large groups and never will be.
We can only exist, within our environment and with each other, peacefully and without vying for an endless quest for power, in (very) small groups, where we can directly maintain control over each other and the “leaders” in out midst….”
Sounds like what the Neanderthals.
They’re gone, they couldn’t ‘Compete’ with the Hall Mark Cro-Magnon, super smartass ape extraordinaire.
A variation of the light-bulb joke.
So how many Cro-Magnons did it take to produce one Mozart?
About a Billion.
March 13th, 2013 at 8:39 am
So how many Cro-Magnons did it take to produce one van Gogh?
About a billion, but they just produced Mozart about a hundred years earlier so they had to double their population to square the books.
March 13th, 2013 at 8:46 am
Hugo Bardi has a post that is on this topic: http://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-world-is-fountain.html
Here’s the beginning:
The world is complex, variegated, convoluted, multi-faceted, interconnected, complicated, circuitous, and more. And, yet, there is a logic in the way it works.
Look at the Trevi Fountain, in Rome, it is complex and variegated, but in the end there is a logic: water always goes down. It is physics: it is the gravitational potential that makes water move.
The same is true for the whole world. Lot’s of things are going on, but there is a logic: energy goes down, it degrades, it is a chemical potential driven by the second law of thermodynamics.
So, no matter how complicated the Trevi Fountain is, water always goes down. No matter how complicated is the world, chemical potentials always “go down.”
This is the idea at the basis of the paper that I published in “Sustainability”, titled “Mind-Sized World Models.” as part of a special issue dedicated to the 40th anniversary of “The Limits to Growth”
March 13th, 2013 at 8:49 am
Tom: we were all over the map. I was the doomiest – and wrong, as I thought things would be further along by now than they are.
In the race between converging catastrophes, I still think we all can consider ourselves privileged, as we have ring-side seats at the finish line!
March 13th, 2013 at 8:52 am
I sent the following question to Jay Hansen this morning (but he’s not awake yet in Hawaii) and I’m interested to see if anyone here has thoughts/opinions/greater knowledge about it:
Re: the following idea from another blogger – I wonder if you think it has any validity, or whether it has been written about before. He claims that the reason humanity is committing ecocide is that we were never meant to live in large groups and cannot organize or accomplish anything when there are too many people to police the miscreants on a personal level. Thus the nastiest always sieze control and abuse the rest (including the environment).
This intrigued me having been to quite a few OWS and other protest general assemblies where there is an attempt to self-govern and make decisions without any hierarchy, and wondering how on earth that could scale up especially since it’s pretty inefficient even in smaller groups (maybe because a lot of them are strangers and there are no kinship ties).
Anyway I bring this to your attention because I want to know if it has any relevance in terms of other species. I was thinking about other creatures that do live in very large groups – bees, ants, flocks of snow geese. How do they “make decisions”? Do they all have one leader? Does it vary by species? If there are large herds without a designated leader how do they know who to follow?
March 13th, 2013 at 9:00 am
@Speak Softly
I never expected to catch flak on NBL for being a doomer :-0
I’ll write about this more tonight.
March 13th, 2013 at 9:21 am
Radio Echshock (not yet on board with Near Term Extinction):
Citizens Lobby with Life on the Brink
March 13th, 2013 at 9:26 am
My chickens are social creatures. We run about 100 on one acre and during the day they separate out into distinct flocks. Each flock has 1 rooster that seems to be head guy and several others that he allows to hang around. We have been watching this for several decades. If passing on genes is the criteria for genetic success (how could it not be) many times the subservient roosters have an advantage – when the more aggressive roos are fighting they are mating. Since we have mixed in all sorts of breeds, colors, comb types, some roos are enough unique that they can be confidently declared father to a chick, so we know the subservients not only mate, but pass on their genes.
The hens have a say too – they often choose a roo who is relatively “nice” (share food, don’t jump them all the time) vs. one who is overly aggressive and cheats (call to food and jump the hen before she can even eat).
The hens also pass on their genes, and we have some timid hens who hide their nests very well from us egg stealing humans and thus pass on their genes that way. One did it twice last summer. A low status roo not in her flock was clearly the father of one of her offspring.
A lot is often made of Ghengis Kahn killing men and appropriating women in the countries he invaded and thus being a super gene machine. Yeah, but he was mating with the sisters and daughter of the men he killed – so the gene base of their clans was not lost, just got some variation added in.
In nature, camouflage, timidity, small size have worked well for many creatures. The biggest, strongest, meanest is not always the best strategy. In social creatures, inter tribe, cooperation is the key to success – the combined skills benefit the whole tribe and therefore certain mores are embedded in our gene programs in order to facilitate cooperation.
March 13th, 2013 at 9:52 am
to Kathy C
Great point about ‘inter tribe cooperation is the key to success’
Unfortunately, our particular variant of hominid, unlike h neanderthalensis, is hard wired for unlimited competitive growth into larger and larger units, even though many in their numbers know it’s ecocide.
All the surveys I’ve seen on all continents and cultures in the last few decades shows small town village people wanting, by an overwhelming majority, wanting to move to Big Cities, especially the young.
I have seen NO surveys supporting vast numbers of city dwellers wanting to move back to the Sticks. It simply does not happen except for the Cultural Revolution and Pol Pot experiments.
Granted, cities are made of neighborhoods, but hundreds of them crammed together into hyper density entities, all near impossible to know’ or care about any more than your Dunbar number limits you to.
Dmitry Orlov once ridiculed anyone claiming they care about humanity or global causes because their Dunbar number limits any real genuine empathy for a super-sized group of ‘them’. Care about anyone outside that number was intellectual lip service to a assuage a guilty conscience.
You can care about having local water, food and shelter from a balanced environment without devotion to a global community you’ve never meet and never will.
March 13th, 2013 at 10:08 am
Hahaha, a view of Amerika, it’s coming, it’s coming sooon…
http://youtu.be/84saI5yL158
March 13th, 2013 at 10:18 am
Gail says: I’m interested to see if anyone here has…opinions…about….groups….without any hierarchy….
Always Hierarchy
Equality? Here is the scoop:
Social rank’s found in herd, pack, and troop;
It’s hierarchy’s way
At work and in play
And in everyone’s family group.
March 13th, 2013 at 10:23 am
Although, Speak Softly, I haven’t seen any surveys that I can recall, but a lot of reason people move to the cities is that the land they farm has been either stolen from them, or ruined by climate change. I’ve seen interviews with people who would love to go back to a rural existence rather than live in filthy slums, but it’s just not there for them anymore.
March 13th, 2013 at 10:43 am
When Robin Dunbar’s number is exceeded in having to deal with people, a substitute has to be made for the personal connexion with the other person, so that both can readily interact on the same wavelength. With friends, family and community, specific words, phrases and gestures and actions may convey a wealth of meaning unique to that friend. Things left unsaid may be of as great import as what is said.
The substitute for this outside community is the norms enforced by society. Wielding the societal cookie-cutter enforces the needed uniformity to make hierarchical transactions possible, while stripping away much if not most of the richness of human interaction. The greater the stress on the society, the greater the regimentation to cope with the stress, and the less community is fostered.
March 13th, 2013 at 11:05 am
to Robin Datta
Well put.
March 13th, 2013 at 11:19 am
pat Says: So, the question is, where to go and how to get there and Then What?
There’s really nowhere to go,
Even with shitloads of dough;
Just try to have fun:
Since there’s nowhere to run,
Sit back, relax, take it slow.
March 13th, 2013 at 11:19 am
re: Tom’s question how soon. I always thought of New Zealand as the last refuge – not that I’d go there, it’s too far away from my family, and I want to be near them even if they think I’m a crazy doomer!
But at this rate, we COULD have food shortages in unexpected places very, very soon:
http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/wellington-has-20-days-water-left-in-drought-5367305
March 13th, 2013 at 11:44 am
@ Tom “Anybody want to try their hand at prognostication? How do you think it’s gonna “go down”?”
The past is prologue. Unless some miracle energy source appears like manna from heaven, our little 200 year run as energy slave masters will revert to tradition, whereas WE are once again the slaves.
So, that being said, if you want to know how it goes down, simply review the decline & fall of Rome. Once the center cannot hold, then regional fiefdoms will once again appear, with strong ties formed by race, family & clan.
It’s not hard to understand the hairless ape – since he is actually part of nature, he ultimately conforms to those self-same rules. Morals, ethics, justice, etc are all figments of our imagination, nice to have when times are flush, but utterly useless otherwise.
March 13th, 2013 at 12:12 pm
so much for the climate change activist strategy of targeting Keystone:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/johnstanton/republicans-obama-said-he-would-approve-keystone-pipeline
March 13th, 2013 at 12:32 pm
I was at a party with the gentry recently and someone brought up the subject of increasing storm damage and environmental degradation: is there a connection, hmmmm?,you be the judge, and they were shocked at news reports rolling in like distant thunder. I never bring anything like that up at soirées anymore, but it must have just slipped out as a toss away line, “Well, Humanity has been grinding up Nature at breakneck speed for the last 200 or so years, I guess it’s time for Nature to start grinding up Humanity, you know, to equal things out.”
My comment apparently was ‘insensitive’. What about all those people who will be hurt?! (i.e. can’t continue to keep consuming ever increasing amounts of the Earth, you know, their Birthright!)
Poor puppies!!!
March 13th, 2013 at 12:45 pm
@KathyC “we can live without Bach and Beethoven, given that until their time people did live without them.”
And even then, 99.99% people OF their time lived without them. Then, as now, live bespoke musical performances were a luxury.
Still, fossil-fuel use has allowed for vastly more individuals to’ve heard a live concert of Beethoven’s music in, say, 2012, than in all of Beethoven’s lifetime, I would wager.
A sad paradox of the fossil-fuel/industrial capitalist era is that more music is consumed, but less is created per capita.
March 13th, 2013 at 12:54 pm
@pat: “I don’t want to be in the US when the riots start.”
Hard to imagine somewhere immune to the effects of financial and ecological collapse. I was in Europe, but Europe is vastly more crowded than the US, plus has the problem of populations who are even more dependent on the gov. than in the US.
See Jason Heppenstall’s entry on why he chose England over the ostensibly happier Denmark: http://22billionenergyslaves.blogspot.com/2013/01/staring-at-sea.html
Africa and the Middle East seem pretty messed up, as does Asia. Parts of South America might work (Bush chose Paraguay) but you better have good connections or speak excellent Spanish/Portoguese…
March 13th, 2013 at 1:00 pm
@Bailey: “less likely to eat me!”
Instead, you could wind up the scapegoat driven away to atone for the sins of the community!
Since I’ve moved to this new-to-me town in supposedly-not-very-religious VT, I’ve been approached by lots of religio-bots compared to where I lived before (Italy/Boston). I find them un-nerving. I wonder whether religious mania is increasing and will continue to increase as things get worse.
March 13th, 2013 at 1:11 pm
@KathyC, thanks for the music links. I would like to buy a simple instrument, like a recorder, and learn to play it. I used to play the accordion and the piano when I was young, but those are instruments without much of a post-industrial future… except here I am imagining a post-industrial future. Force of habit!!
March 13th, 2013 at 1:19 pm
Went to a garden club presentation (“ornamental grasses and stonework”) last night as part of my local connection-making duties. The presenter said he had just been to a (not-further-defined) conference about climate change, and—not to worry—”it’s all part of a millenial shift…”!
March 13th, 2013 at 1:38 pm
@Gail, even better than Bardi’s “world as a fountain” post is the one he references early on: http://cassandralegacy.blogspot.it/2011/05/peak-oil-thermodynamics-and-stoic.html
I love his connecting to the Stoics…
Marcus Aurelius: “The whole universe is change and life itself is but what you deem it.”
Beyond that, it’s a great one-stop-shop for skeptics of limits. I am really tempted to send it to my husband’s Italian family, but I am wrestling with guilt over it, even without having done it! They are all excited about the entire raft of new babies born this past year to my nieces and nephews.
(
March 13th, 2013 at 2:20 pm
Lidia, I was hoping people would follow to the stoic link! He is a very lucid writer and I admire his brevity.
As I was in the process of learning about first climate and then ecosystem collapse and also peak resources I shared my thoughts and feelings with my family. If it hadn’t occurred in quite that way, I’m not sure I would ever have told them. They certainly don’t appreciate it (I don’t think – unless they just like to complain and blame the messenger).
But what good does it do really, for them to know? If it dissuades my daughters from reproducing, then it would be worthwhile, but I’m not sure it will. Luckily the first doesn’t want children (she loves horses more) and the younger two aren’t in a place yet to start a family.
March 13th, 2013 at 3:23 pm
Gail
Point taken about larger groups destined to fail. I don’t have a conclusion on that yet in my own roundabout thinking, but I will consider it more here-after thanks…
then to….
Paul Chefurka
You wrote:
” “Why does the small-group dynamic fail so consistently?” ”
This and Gail’s comment got me thinking.
In man cases small group Hunter Gatherers wre never really isolated, they all had kinship, or at least strong historical ties to neighbouring groups. This suggests they were very smat to keep in small groups and spread out, not concentrating into megalopoloses.
I recently re viewed the 1980′s farce film ‘The Gods Must be Crazy’
and found it very insightful.
I wont go into it here but much thought went into describing how ‘crazy’ industrial living is,(as many here know already).
So I think the ‘small groups’ theory requires some fundamental qualidfications, because it is certainly two very different conditions to be an isolated human group of 75-150 individuals, and then the same number to be related and in frequent ceremonial and cultural contact (not only war or difficulty) with a ‘mother culture’ so to speak.
Perhaps they were way smarter than we can ever remember…IMO most likely.
Thanks both for the comments and stimulating views.
March 13th, 2013 at 3:44 pm
B9K9, re the fall of Rome I agree except that another principle comes to play as summarized in the football cheerleaders chant “The bigger you are the harder you fall”. We live in the first and last global civilization. When we fall it will be, IMO harder and faster than any civilization has fallen before.
Good reading on collapse is Joseph Tainter’s Collapse of Complex Societies.
However this collapse carries with it human caused climate change that is going to be unlike anything humans have faced before, and the meltdown of 439 nuclear plants. Thus we will not stop at descending to small groups for very long if at all, we might go right on into extinction.
As for dates – dates of collapse seem unimportant now, dates for extinction all important – although the winner of that lottery will not be alive to collect as extinction means everyone. But I will put my money on Arctic News’ timeline – for us in the northern hemisphere then extinction begins in 7 to 13 years and completes in about 44 years. A little collapse of the economy, end of oil, etc seem irrelevant
Figure 8 shows a different method of interpreting the extinction fields defined by the (12 +-3) + 6% year long lifetime of methane (IPCC, 1992) assumed to have been instantaneously injected into the Arctic atmosphere in 2010 and the lifetime of the globally spreading methane atmospheric veil at different methane global warming potentials. The start of extinction begins between 2020 and 2026.9 and extinction will be complete in the northern hemisphere by 2057. Extinction will begin around 2024 in the southern hemisphere and will be completed by 2087. Extinction in the southern hemisphere, in particular in Antarctica will be delayed by some 30 years. This makes property on the Transantarctic mountains of premium value for those people wish to survive the coming methane firestorm for a few decades longer.http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/global-extinction-within-one-human.html
March 13th, 2013 at 4:51 pm
This clip by Arnie Gundersen on Fukushima is evidence that our society was likely doomed to suicidal destruction even without AGW. Our society decided that the right of General Electric executives to make enormous fortunes came before the right of some part of the world (like Fukushima) not to be radioactive for 100,000 years. Fukushima never stood a chance, the NRC declared that this type of containment was virtually designed to fail if it lost power, and they put the plant in one of the most flood prone areas, practically guaranteeing that it would lose power. A safer design would have meant that GE wouldn’t be able make enough profit, but that outcome was inconceivable, so GE rammed this down the world’s throat.
http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/89660
http://fairewinds.org/sites/fairewinds.org/files/reports/fairewindsenergyeducation-calcicottsymposium_2013-3-11.pdf
March 13th, 2013 at 4:53 pm
Resubmitted with one one link.
March 13th, 2013 at 4:51 pm
This clip by Arnie Gundersen on Fukushima is evidence that our society was likely doomed to suicidal destruction even without AGW. Our society decided that the right of General Electric executives to make enormous fortunes came before the right of some part of the world (like Fukushima) not to be radioactive for 100,000 years. Fukushima never stood a chance, the NRC declared that this type of containment was virtually designed to fail if it lost power, and they put the plant in one of the most flood prone areas, practically guaranteeing that it would lose power. A safer design would have meant that GE wouldn’t be able make enough profit, but that outcome was inconceivable, so GE rammed this down the world’s throat.
http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/89660
March 13th, 2013 at 4:55 pm
http://fairewinds.org/sites/fairewinds.org/files/reports/fairewindsenergyeducation-calcicottsymposium_2013-3-11.pdf
This is the 78 page visual presentation of previous audio.
March 13th, 2013 at 5:44 pm
“….This makes property on the Transantarctic mountains of premium value for those people wish to survive the coming methane firestorm for a few decades longer….”
I wonder what the ad campaign for condos in the Trans-antarctic mountains would look like. Are they time shares? hahaha
Palm trees and flaming sunsets. Really big monster sized umbrella drinks to keep you thoroughly hammered while you take the shuttle bus trips down to the blazing antarctic beaches and the famous ‘way above body temperature’ ocean water.
The penguins are long gone but they have stuffed ones that move to the beat of the Extremely Ultra Hot (literally) Latin dance band.
I can see the brochure
Paradise Lost, Be There or Be Square
March 13th, 2013 at 6:13 pm
“Property,” especially in relation to land. Buying and selling land.
I just can’t get my head around that. As Marcelo Saavedra says – prove that this piece of land belongs to you. Doesn’t the land own you?
Civilization was global back in 500 BC and before. It just wasn’t as fast.
March 13th, 2013 at 6:43 pm
RE: slavery
I think with daily average highs of 180 degrees F, there won’t be too many slaves or masters doing much of anything outside of caves in Kentucky or New Mexico.
March 13th, 2013 at 8:18 pm
There, there, Fester, the future looks bright, our rulers will survive, they even assured us of this on film.
Dr. Strangelove: I would not rule out the chance to preserve a nucleus of human specimens. It would be quite easy…heh, heh…at the bottom of ah…some of our deeper mineshafts. Radioactivity would never penetrate a mine some thousands of feet deep, and in a matter of weeks, sufficient improvements in dwelling space could easily be provided.
President Muffley: You mean, people could actually stay down there for a hundred years?
Dr. Strangelove: It would not be difficult Mein Fuhrer! Nuclear reactors could, heh…I’m sorry, Mr. President. Nuclear reactors could provide power almost indefinitely. Greenhouses could maintain plant life. Animals could be bred and slaughtered. A quick survey would have to be made of all the available mine sites in the country, but I would guess that dwelling space for several hundred thousands of our people could easily be provided.
March 13th, 2013 at 8:34 pm
@Speak Softly
I think I was in a grumpy mood when I read your post this morning. Now it’s funny as hell
But, “Holy words or thermodynamic imperatives, you be the judge. should probably have read, “Holy words and thermodynamic imperatives…”
I am GROWTH your God, who brought you out of the land of Olduvai, out of the house of poverty.
1. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
2. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image – except for the Golden Bull on the Street of Walls.
3. Thou shalt not take the name of GROWTH thy God in vain.
4. Remember the entropy, to keep it holy.
5. Honour thy father and thy mother – and all thy brethren and cistern, yea even unto the hundredth generation.
6. Thou shalt not kill – unless it shall be for the oil of the deserts.
7. Thou shalt not commit adultery – unless in the back seat of a powerful German automobile.
8. Thou shalt not steal – unless it be thy neighbour’s oil.
9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour – unless thy oil be buried beneath his sands
10. Thou shalt not covet – unless it be thy neighbor’s house, or his wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s. Especially his oil…
March 13th, 2013 at 10:58 pm
Ripley
Very grateful for the execllent links to the latest info on Fukushima.
These links are clear evidence of complicity, greed, obfuscation and crimes against humanity and the Biosphere for many hundreds of thousands of years to come.
If you listen carefully Mr Gundersen expressly says thet the water contamination is 10 times the radiation released from Chernobyl.
That water is going everywhere, and into seaweeds, fish, plankton and us.
Those responsible are lost, urtterly lost beings with no human components left of wroth to a world such as ours. There is a slim chance they are redeemable as humans, but only through public confessions and public immolation suicides. That would seem appropriate.
If that ever happens, I ask the Lawyers to go first, the Politicians to go second, and the shareholers can light them.
Exptreme sickness requires extreme cure. If nothing else, think of the children, the world over who are and will suffering, then die. Then think of their parents and relative who will suffer.
Consequences…..!
It is enough to radicalise even the most ardent pacifist into violent revenge and justice carnage.
It is far too easy to turn away and concentrate on your burger and fries, i-gadget or new fat-buster ‘abflex home gym’, oreven go seethe latest movie.
That will surley mean zero consequences.
Bring on the Clowns…
Fukushima Clowns:
http://binaryapi.ap.org/88cc3c36a1ee4c60b0326da10be39acf/460x.jpg
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-g9qwit57JNE/UEPTQGZmXCI/AAAAAAAAFYE/EAtrAiBjUUY/s640/nuclear_clown_bomb.jpg
What can one actually say….?
March 13th, 2013 at 10:59 pm
Anothe anti nuclear Clown:
http://www.cbc.ca/gfx/images/news/photos/2012/07/01/li-japan-nuclear-protest-620-rtr34frn.jpg
March 13th, 2013 at 11:10 pm
And also the climate change clowns:
http://static1.demotix.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/a_scale_large/1500-8/photos/1350955481-portraits-of-tuc-led-austerity-protest-in-london_1542158.jpg
March 13th, 2013 at 11:26 pm
@Paul
I am GROWTH your God, who brought you out of the land of Olduvai, out of the house of poverty.
—-
I haven’t followed the entropy thread completely, so forgive me if I ask some elementary questions. Why was there no evidence of this energy growth or of any significant population growth until the beginning of agriculture 6000yrs ago rather than earlier? Big brained humans have been around for at least 100,000yrs. Homo Erectus was around for nearly 1 million yrs, yet no sign of energy growth/entropy, why not?
March 14th, 2013 at 3:17 am
B9K9: Kathy explained it the way i see it too, that we’re way more complex and intertwined than the Roman Empire and that we’ll fail spectacularly as a result.
Ripley: that’s what i was asking earlier but with a different slant. i now think it took the universe (the exact amount of) time to create us and develop our brains to do the math and physics required to make us even more complex and interrelated via electricity, engineering, architecture, systems design, computers, and all forms of heating and cooling (esp. nuclear – that looks to be the “killshot”) in order to maximize entropy.
Gail: i had a bad feeling that Obama was going to cave in and allow the Keystone XL pipeline to go through. He’s been the biggest political disappointment since we voted him into office the first time on his Hope and Change bullshit – complete fabrications, and just another puppet of the powers that be. Either that or he knows it’s too late and that it won’t matter.
Wester: i’ve asked that same question since i was a kid – how the hell can you own land (especially since we stole it from the native Americans)? i never understood real estate or banking as anything other than fictitious control groups (like the cops of the social arrangement scene).
March 14th, 2013 at 3:34 am
Wester “Civilization was global back in 500 BC and before. It just wasn’t as fast.”
There were civilizations throughout the globe in 500 BC. They weren’t all interconnected. The Incan’s had no connection with the Romans for instance. The fall of the Roman Empire didn’t affect the Chinese empire. What we have now is one interconnected civilization that is global – all parts connected. Offshoring is part of that. I bet that all the latex gloves and masks that we use in our hospitals are made in China or India. Finances all have a global connection.
When the volcano in Iceland shut down air traffic it didn’t just affect Iceland, http://www.nbcnews.com/id/36543312/#.UUGmohfI7oI With airlines across the continent – frozen fish melted because they couldn’t be shipped. Flower farmers in Africa couldn’t ship their goods to Europe so ladies could have fresh cut flowers on their tables. That is just one small example. We won’t know the full affect of any event until it happens because the complexity is too great to predict anything.
In 2008 letters of credit almost froze up all international trade. Letters of credit are used to guarantee that if you ship your goods from China to the US you will get paid. If banks are afraid to issue them for fear of getting stung, trade seizes up.
March 14th, 2013 at 3:35 am
From 2008 International Trade Seizing Up Due to Banking Crisis (Updated)
I have been more than a tad concerned about near-paralysis in the money markets and imploding equity prices. But this e-mail, from a well connected international investor not prone to alarm or (normally) the use of capital letters says that the banking crisis is staring to bring international shipping to a halt.
Read more at http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2008/10/international-trade-seizing-up-due-to.html#8bCthR5U7OmgwYh6.99
March 14th, 2013 at 3:40 am
So long and thanks for all the fish?
Ukrainian Killer Dolphins Deserted to Seek Mates – Expert
http://en.ria.ru/world/20130312/179963392.html
March 14th, 2013 at 4:03 am
@Ripley,
My guess (and it’s only that) is that it had to do with the convergence of human evolution and conditions. We had to be primed in terms of intellectual capability and accumulated knowledge, and the physical conditions had to get warm enough to permit widespread agriculture. In other words, there had to be just enough excess heat in the environment to permit the next phase of self-organization to begin. It didn’t need to be much, because our brains could leverage the small energy gradient presented by the end of the last glacial period and concentrate it into a larger one through agriculture. When that condition presented itself we were ready, and naturally took advantage of it within a fairly short period of time (~2,000 years).
Earlier, (for the previous 100,000 or more years) there wasn’t quite enough of an energy gradient available due to the last glacial period of the Quaternary Ice Age.
March 14th, 2013 at 4:14 am
Gail: Joe says NO, Obama DIDN’T tell the Republicans that he’d approve the pipeline (i don’t trust this either).
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/03/13/1715131/obama-keystone-decision-republicans/
No, Obama Didn’t Tell Republicans He Would Approve The Keystone XL Pipeline
BuzzFeed reports that House Republicans came out of their lunch meeting with President Obama confident he will say yes to the controversial Keystone XL pipeline. Rep. John Carter (R-La.) said Obama “indicated” he will support the pipeline.
The truth is the Keystone XL pipeline decision is still months away. There is no indication of how the State Department will decide, and it will happen as early as this summer. Administration officials and reporters confirm the report is false: (read the rest)
Kathy: good one!
Ripley: thanks for the Gunderson post!
March 14th, 2013 at 5:12 am
http://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/2013/03/14/fencing-off-nature-to-ward-off-man/
(ends with)
Michel de Montaigne also said, “Every other knowledge is harmful to him who does not have knowledge of goodness.” I take this to mean that a technologically advanced civilization which has no respect for his fellow-man, nature, and the sanctity of a healthy environment, is doomed to the fate of omnicide. In today’s end-stage capitalism, money fetishism rules mankind; technology is used to keep the unruly masses in check; and nature is a doormat for industrial civilization. We have evolved in science and technology, but devolved in terms of social and environmental consciousness.
March 14th, 2013 at 6:24 am
Anybody else see the ads for the new show coming to the Weather Channel?
“Forecasting the End”
First show is March 21, to discuss methane.
March 14th, 2013 at 6:25 am
@ Paul C
“2. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image – except for the Golden Bull on the Street of Walls.”
small edit:
2. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image – except for
the Golden Bull Balls on the Street of Walls
There, a nice end rhyme.
The Masters of the Universe on Wall St look down their noses at mere brass balls. Their brazen thievery and treasonous treachery knows no timely tables or tell tale limits.
Besides, Gold has a much higher energy gradient status value than brass. ;>)
March 14th, 2013 at 6:39 am
Tom
Your quote:
“… today’s end-stage capitalism”
I get the feeling that Capitalism has just begun.
March 14th, 2013 at 7:26 am
@pat
funny story re: The Weather Channel
Summer 2010 we were returning to SD from a visit to Denver & got caught in severe weather. I had to laugh as the storm chaser guys passed us by, while we stopped in Nebraska for the night due to tornado activity. We got home the next day to find a tornado had touched down on our street while we were away. So, the other night we were tuned in to the Weather Channel, and those guys were in our old town and they had caught the very tornado that we missed on film. Do you think we were spared?! Maybe for a higher purpose, or something, haha!
I often joke that it must take a PhD to be a meteorologist these days, but then they’re always showing some idiot out in a hurricane saying it’s windy. Nature WILL bat last, even before we drown in nuclear sludge, I do believe.
March 14th, 2013 at 8:23 am
Just like most animals don’t choose their comouflage, it being the blind spots in the visual acuity of their predtors that does, we don’t choose our time and place of birth into this world, we just arrive and get what we get.
This is the ‘skin’ we are all now in, this sanctuary, Earth.
So great a Gift we call it Mother, and know deeply that it is our ver sourse of being, or sense of Love.
Why that Love ever got torn from Her boosom and was storyboarded up into the sky remains a full mystery.
This world cannot shed a skin, so we will have to, or perish, or perhaps, ‘and’ perish…
We’ll see, but Love the Earth as we go.
March 14th, 2013 at 8:35 am
digiphrenia — digitally provoked mental chaos
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/14/books/present-shock-by-douglas-rushkoff.html
March 14th, 2013 at 8:39 am
Arming Sisters
http://youtu.be/apztpA6H6-U
March 14th, 2013 at 9:07 am
@ Ozman
Just like most animals don’t choose their comouflage, it being the blind spots in the visual acuity of their predtors that does…
Pretty difficult to explain how a fish manages to look almost exactly like a sponge.
I have yet to hear any satisfactory explanation how evolution does that. How does the fish know what it needs to look like ? How does it go from whatever it looked like before, to that close match ? Transitional stages ? How does it know that it wants to end up looking like a sponge, because looking like a sponge is in some way advantageous ? You’re saying that the predators overlook some frogfish that happen to look a little bit spongy and gradually that selects for frogfish that look very very spongy ? Or is it that the frogfish’s food thinks it’s just a harmless sponge and becomes an easy meal ? Hmmm ‘Paging Prof. Richard Dawkins…’
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/11/29/the-amazing-mimicry-of-frogfish/
March 14th, 2013 at 9:21 am
From NTE, courtesy of Brad
It’s too late for the truth…
http://youtu.be/PXsvsksHi5g
March 14th, 2013 at 9:30 am
Tom, as fast as that headline was posted it was revised, refuted and denied. My impression, it’s like not being sure of the answer when taking a multiple choice exam – your first guess is usually the best.
Obama can not be seen to have prejudged the pipeline until the public comment period is over so of course he has to deny even giving that impression.
As far as complexity and speed of collapse, check the Seneca effect aka cliff – why decline is faster than growth:
“It would be some consolation for the feebleness of our selves and our works if all things should perish as slowly as they come into being; but as it is, increases are of sluggish growth, but the way to ruin is rapid.” Lucius Anneaus Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, n. 91
http://cassandralegacy.blogspot.it/2011/08/seneca-effect-origins-of-collapse.html
March 14th, 2013 at 9:32 am
http://robrhinehart.com/?p=298
How I Stopped Eating Food
March 14th, 2013 at 10:30 am
Tom,
“i’ve asked that same question since i was a kid – how the hell can you own land (especially since we stole it from the native Americans)? i never understood real estate or banking as anything other than fictitious control groups (like the cops of the social arrangement scene).”
Charles Eisenstein has written two books that have helped me understand.
“Ascent of Humanity” and “Sacred Economics”. Both are available at his blog site on a pay what you feel is right basis.
March 14th, 2013 at 10:45 am
The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said “This is mine,” and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, 1754
March 14th, 2013 at 11:06 am
Looks like TED is completely f****d up
http://youtu.be/_hwLMBdnbXk
March 14th, 2013 at 11:20 am
U – amazingly changes that pop up in critters aren’t always small changes – and one change on a gene can make several changes. We had one hatch of chickens that had a chick with a crossed beak. Not a little crossed, a full scissor cross. Nothing else wrong with the chick but it couldn’t eat well and just didn’t grow. However if there had been around some food that it could eat and eating it gave it an advantage I am sure it would have grown and passed on the beak.
A variety of wild birds have crossed beaks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fi_Kreuzschnabel_m.jpg
which no doubt came about in one major genetic changes not in gradual changes. The assumption that all genetic changes are small is incorrect.
However Dawkins has shown that even small changes that give just the slightest edge will be selected for and begin to dominate. Sometimes the trait is already there but it is a change in the environment that moves it to the fore. Is the resistance to antibiotics or ddt any less major than the change in the outside appearance of a fish. From our standpoint it would seem so, but biologically it might not be so. DDT resistance – 7 years. Roundup resistance – maybe 3 or 4, antibiotic resistance sometimes just a few years.
March 14th, 2013 at 11:25 am
Thanks John, i’ll get one from the library and check it out. Which should i read first?
ulvfugl: and where are the armies of people backing up Rousseau’s claim? Why did (do) we put up with this shit for so long?
Gail: that’s why i think a lot of the (eg.) theories of long periods of enslavement on our way down are bogus this time around because it’ll happen so fast, so thoroughly, from so many directions and on so many levels that the very glue that holds civilization together will be undone. Scenarios like simultaneously trying to handle a pandemic, hurricanes, massive crop failure, financial collapse, drought and weather too hot to be outside without air conditioning in most of the northern hemisphere, while the southern is trying to cope with tsunamis during monsoon season, lots of plant, animal, bird and fish death by poisoning (too much pollution) while social unrest makes everyday living impossible and governments resort to violence to quell their own people who have nothing to lose because they are starving – all in a years time. And the maelstroms and plagues just keep coming faster and worse each year as the trees all die and nothing wants to grow anymore – it’ll be just over, period.
There’d be such a volume of dead people that they’d lay where they died for the most part and the vast majority of people would be constantly on the move – either through fear, necessity or desperation. “War” will be the daily activity between everyone scrabbling for what’s left to try to live another day (- what for?)!
In some cases that would be merciful. A slow drawn out process would be worse than torture.
March 14th, 2013 at 11:26 am
Selection for tameness in foxes had interesting results and shows how one change can affect more than one trait
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2010/09/06/mans-new-best-friend-a-forgotten-russian-experiment-in-fox-domestication/
Belyaev hypothesized that the anatomical and physiological changes seen in domesticated animals could have been the result of selection on the basis of behavioral traits. More specifically, he believed that tameness was the critical factor. How amenable was an animal to interacting with humans?
Belyaev wondered if selecting for tameness and against aggression would result in hormonal and neurochemical changes, since behavior ultimately emerged from biology….
The domesticated foxes were more eager to hang out with humans, whimpered to attract attention, and sniffed and licked their caretakers. They wagged their tails when they were happy or excited. (Does that sound at all like your pet dog?) Further, their fear response to new people or objects was reduced, and they were more eager to explore new situations. Many of the domesticated foxes had floppy ears, short or curly tails, extended reproductive seasons, changes in fur coloration, and changes in the shape of their skulls, jaws, and teeth. They also lost their “musky fox smell.”
The first physiological change detected was in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. This system is responsible for the control of adrenaline, which is a hormone that is produced in response to stress, and controls fear-related responses. The domesticated foxes had significantly lower adrenaline levels than their undomesticated cousins. The researchers hypothesized if the foxes were not afraid of humans, they would produce less adrenaline around them. This explains the foxes’ tameness, but it doesn’t account for their changed fur coloration patterns. The scientists initially theorized that adrenaline might share a biochemical pathway with melanin, which controls pigment production in fur. Further research has since supported this initial hypothesis.
The shape of the frog fish might have happened many times with other fish but never been selected for until it happened in a fish in an environs where that was a benefit. It might be a major change like the cross beak or a change associated with another beneficial change.
March 14th, 2013 at 12:15 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PXsvsksHi5g#!
The You Tube posted early yesterday, Tad Patzek’s Is it too late for the truth…
makes excellent points, including how CO2 level is just one parameter, lowering it does little or nothing about the others, and that all the parameters are disrupted. Once a climate system is disrupted, it takes 80-100,000 years for the disruptions to work themselves out. He sees a coming “reset” of society. But he talks of future generations as if it’s a given. Full of contradictions. He’s done lots of good work re Peak Oil and the folly of biofuels.
March 14th, 2013 at 12:17 pm
@ Tom
and where are the armies of people backing up Rousseau’s claim? Why did (do) we put up with this shit for so long?
Well, they had the French Revolution and Rousseau’s side kinda lost, although some of it lives on, they got Napoleon…
Trouble is, whilst I myself agree that all property is theft, i do myself have some property, and if someone tried to take it from me, I’d be inclined to defend it… unless everyone agreed to share there’s too…
However, I think it’s a matter of scale. I don’t object to each individual having their own house and garden, or even as much land as they can manage with their own manual labour to grow food. That seems fair, and common sense. But when a few hundred families have as much wealth as half of all the rest of humanity put together, and when those greedy selfish fuckers are intent on grabbing even MORE, that kinda offends me…
I think it comes down to the same deal as last time. We just have to kill them all, and take back what they stole and redistribute it more equitably. Nobody seems to have a better idea. THEIR idea seems to be to kill off all the poor people, because they don’t need us. So, I suppose, it’s going to be one or the other. Or both.
March 14th, 2013 at 12:27 pm
@ Kathy C.
The shape of the frog fish might have happened many times with other fish but never been selected for until it happened in a fish in an environs where that was a benefit. It might be a major change like the cross beak or a change associated with another beneficial change.
I think you are talking about standard ordinary selection of advantageous mutations.
I think mimicry seems very different to me. Much more difficult to explain.
Richard Leakey talks about it somewhere. It’s hard enough to understand that a moth or a fly or a beetle can be visually identical to a completely unrelated insect, in that it isn’t easy to explain by the orthodox random mutation and selection mechanism.
It gets even more difficult in an example he gives of a colony of aphids which cluster together to mimic a flower. There are green, orange and red aphids which all position themselves on a twig to form the structure of a plant with a flower that they mimic. Except that it’s not any plant or flower that exists. They have invented their own.
March 14th, 2013 at 1:05 pm
U “It gets even more difficult in an example he gives of a colony of aphids which cluster together to mimic a flower.”
You have a link for that? I googled it and found nothing.
March 14th, 2013 at 1:19 pm
@ Kathy C.
It’s in one of his books, possibly The 6th Extinction, it would take me hours to find.
It’s possible it’s quoted online somewhere.
However, that’s not the only example. Understand, I’m not arguing against Darwinian evolution. All I’m saying is that there are a lot of bizarre oddities that have, as yet, not been adequately understood and explained. Another that comes to mind is the Large Blue Butterfly which has it’s caterpillar raised by ants in an ant heap, in an extremely complicated life cycle. The problem there is trying to envisage how this could possibly have happened in the first instance. It defies the imagination, as being so highly unlikely.
March 14th, 2013 at 1:20 pm
It seems like behavior would be harder to select for than visible characteristics, but don’t forget that humans in a short period of time selected from wolves all the various breeds of dogs we have today – they vary in size, coat, color, form but also behavior. While you have to work with a dog to refine the behavior, you get a bird dog if you want to hunt birds. You get a herding dog if you want to herd (I’ve been told that if you don’t have animals for them to herd, they will herd your kids or anything else they can find). You get a hound if you want a dog that will keep you advised of where they are chasing the rabbit or whatever. A pointer if you want a bird dog that points. ETC. Didn’t take a whole lot of centuries for these various breeds to become specialized in behavior.
BTW again on gradual vs. sudden – our rat terrier has no tail. Since we got her as an adult we thought she had had it removed. However we bred her with a tailed dog and got tailed and tailless. Probably the original genetic change was not shorter and shorter tails, but simply tail vs. tailless.
I note that the frog fish is scaleless – that one mutation might have made the various other mutations in the many variations of frog fish easier to come by.
March 14th, 2013 at 1:54 pm
live lovely open-tuned percussive acoustic guitar music by Antoine Dufour
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnnBpnVn1ck&feature=youtu.be
March 14th, 2013 at 2:05 pm
@ Kathy C.
Yes, but behaviour or bodily form, if it gives some advantage, it’s fairly straight forward to see how selection from a variety over time will give the standard evolutionary explanation.
But the hard cases. There must have been a butterfly that had behaviour like other butterflies, laid its egg on a plant, that hatched, became a larva, ate the plant, formed a chrysalis, probably in the soil or somewhere sheltered, became a butterfly.
Then what ? An ant takes a caterpillar into the ant nest ? Why don’t they eat it ? This is the very first time, remember. Ants kill any foreign invaders. The larvae exude pheromones that deceive the ants into thinking they are friendly, and then eat the ant larvae and eggs. How did they learn all that, the very first time ? And when the larva is ready the ants take it out as an escort to a suitable place… how the heck did that work, the very first time it happened ? I mean, the damn caterpillar even copies the noises made by the ants so that it sounds like an effing ant, how sneaky is that ?
I know this is a variation on the ‘If you found a watch on the beach, wouldn’t you assume there was a watch maker, rather than it just got made by chance’ argument, in a way, but I’ve read a lot of biology books and nobody yet explained to me how this ant-butterfly relationship could have evolved in the first place, and I’d really like to know
I know this is the wrong blog, I ought to ask somewhere else…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Blue
March 14th, 2013 at 2:10 pm
Kathy: i once got a purebred Puli for my kids when they were under 8, because i liked his natural dredlocks for a coat. i couldn’t keep the dog after a few months though because it did exactly what you said – he herded them whenever they were outside playing. i gave him to a family with a big farm and the dog LOVED his new home among sheep, cattle and horses.
ulv: i hear that (“We just have to kill them all, and take back what they stole and redistribute it more equitably.”), but it always gets complicated with a NEW pecking order etc. We never learn.
March 14th, 2013 at 2:17 pm
There is a joke about how farmers always want more land. That isn’t true. They only want the land that borders them.
March 14th, 2013 at 2:42 pm
@ Tom
Guitarists who think their guitar is a bloody drum kit, where’s the tune ? where’s the melody ? that stuff only works because of the pick up and the amp anyway… I look down my nose at it and frown, then yawn, hahaha, like this better, not the very best, but BETTER
http://youtu.be/ceFYm3bl-8Y
March 14th, 2013 at 2:43 pm
Kathy C
Even a small selective advantage is inherited…
Variations can be there in a population for a long time, and when something changes in the environment, the variation is selected for and becomes an adaptation.
Most people do not know about pentadactylism in animals. It is the condition of having five digits on each hand and foot, (or flipper?)
It is a double recessive gene combination, and was for some reason so selectivly advantageous it is almost universal. The dominant aleal in the combination is polydactylism, and leads to any number of digits on hand, foot or flipper. As you know if one parent has it and passes on this gene it will express in the phenotype.
So some recessive genes are the pathway to a trait being selected for, it is just counterintuative to our view of how genes work in the wilds of nature and all that selection.
Just sayin.
Maybe ‘fat’ will be soon selected for, or ‘greedy’, or ‘self-prioritising’. Interesting to watch.
March 14th, 2013 at 2:49 pm
@ Gail. Regarding NZ drought.
Several of NZ’s primary industries -especially dairying, beef, mutton and horticulture- are going to be severely clobbered by the current drought.
Farmers are sending increasing numbers of animals to ‘the works’ because they have little feed. What started as a bumper season for dairy production will end as a dismal season, with most farmers ceasing to milk long before the normal drying off time.
What is particularly significant is that culling now, plus pregnant animals going into the winter in a poor condition, will lead to much reduced livestock numbers next spring (assuming the drought eases).
It’s hard to pick how this will play out. Reduced supply ought to generate higher prices. But there is now a lot of demand destruction around the world due to the general implosion of many economies.
It is now autumn, so temperatures are falling, so at least the evaporation rate is falling.
I note that the US drought monitor shows the central states of the US as being in a poor condition headed into WARMER temperatures of summer.
None of it bodes well for industrial agriculture…. which is surely a good thing. Few people like to see animals suffer, but it is only by way of utter catastrophe that the current system will collapse.
In the meantime, the rain that is headed toward NZ may be enough to wet the top 5mm of soil. We shall see.
March 14th, 2013 at 3:28 pm
Tom,
I started with “Sacred Economics”. Here are a few excerpts from Chapter 4–The Trouble With Property:
What would be the result in heaven itself if those who get there first instituted private property in the surface of heaven, and parceled it out in absolute ownership among themselves, as we parcel out the surface of the earth? –Henry George
Man did not make the earth, and though he had a natural right to occupy it, he had no right to locate as his property in perpetuity any part of it; neither did the Creator open a land-office, from whence the first title-deeds should issue. – Thomas Paine
Throughout the book, Author makes similar connection with the money system, doing in my opinion an excellent job of explaining just why we find ourselves here, facing such overwhelming environmental and social predicaments.
“The slaves, serfs and tenants gave a lifetime of labor to the enrichment of the landowners; today the proceeds of our labor go to the owners of money.”
March 14th, 2013 at 3:33 pm
U this doesn’t answer your specific example but does answer how science is different from “I don’t know must be a creator”
http://www.cincinnatiskeptics.org/blurbs/butterfly-metamorphosis.html
Ozman yes, I was conveying some of that idea but not well. It appears that the gene or gene combination that creates crossed bills in chickens just is there or happens and pops up from time to time. Doesn’t go anywhere with chickens, but in other birds occasionally when conditions changed or the bird got blown off course they find a new environment where the cross beak is an advantage and it takes over.
March 14th, 2013 at 3:34 pm
The eye of a vertebrate or an octopus looks so complex that it can be difficult to believe it could have evolved by natural selection and it has traditionally been an argument against Darwinism by advocates of creationism.
Nilsson and Pelger simulated a model of the eye to find out how difficult its evolution really is.
The simulation does not cover the complete evolution of an eye. It takes light-sensitive cells as given and ignores the evolution of advanced perceptual skills (which are more a problem in brain, than eye, evolution). It concentrates on the evolution of eye shape and the lens; this is the problem that Darwin’s critics have often pointed to, because they think it requires the simultaneous adjustment of many intricately related parts.
Nilsson and Pelger allowed the shape of the model eye to change at random, in steps of no more than 1% change at a time. This fits in with the idea that adaptive evolution proceeds in small gradual stages. The model eye then evolved in the computer, with each new generation formed from the optically superior eyes in the previous generation; changes that made the optics worse were rejected, as selection would reject them in nature.
How long did it take?
The complete evolution of an eye like that of a vertebrate or octupus took about 2000 steps.
Nilsson and Pelger used estimates of heritability and strength of selection to calculate how long the change might take; their answer was about 400,000 generations. Far from being difficult to evolve, the model shows that it is rather easy.
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/ridley/a-z/Evolution_of_the_eye.asp
March 14th, 2013 at 3:39 pm
@ John Stassek
Excuse me intruding… there’s the whole Garrett Harding Tragedy of the Commons thing, which although there’s a great deal wrong with his thesis, which has been used as a right wing propaganda tool, and twisted in all sorts of ways… thing is, look at the areas of the planet that are not owned, the oceans, that have been destroyed because everybody takes and nobody protects.
I’ve seen anarchist communes where everything belongs to everybody, and it’s a total disaster. Nobody fixes anything. Everybody takes anything they want. Simply doesn’t work in practice, except with highly disciplined, very responsible idealistic mature individuals.
March 14th, 2013 at 3:51 pm
@ Kathy C.
this doesn’t answer your specific example
Sure doesn’t.
Biology text books are full of explanations for the evolution of complex structures and behaviours which I find completely plausible and acceptable, all I’m saying is that there are some cases which are so mind boggling that it’s very hard to imagine how they came to be, and I have never read any good explanation anywhere.
March 14th, 2013 at 3:52 pm
ulvfugl:
I’d say Eisenstein would agree with you. He is advocating a wide range of measures to address this rape of our planet and polarization of wealth. I’ve summed up some of these below:
(1) Negative-Interest Currency
Motivation: Embodies the truth about the world in which all things decay. Reverses the effects of interest. Enables prosperity without growth. Encourages the equitable distribution of wealth. Ends discounting of future cash flows so we no longer mortgage our future for present short term returns. Transition: We were on the brink in 2009. Every new crisis in the economy will provide an opportunity for implementation. Effect on Economic Life: For all but the investing class, the everyday experience of using money will remain the same. (Living paycheck to paycheck). For the more affluent, savings would still be possible but the value of savings would decrease over time unless invested at risk. There would be no way to grow money risk free, no way to “make money work for you.”
(2) Elimination of Economic Rents and Compensation for Depletion of the Commons
Motivation: Economic rents accrue to people who profit from merely owning something without producing or contributing to society. This causes polarization of wealth. It is also possible to profit by depleting the commonwealth, which should belong to all of us. All this should cease. Transition: Some states and nations already levy land-value taxes and/or nationalize oil and minerals. Shifting the tax burden away from labor and towards property will increase as wage-earners situations become more desperate. Effect on Economic Life: Shift in taxes onto property and resources and away from sales and income will create a strong incentive for conservation. Eliminating economic rents will foster a more equitable distribution of wealth.
(3) Internalization of Social and Environmental Costs
Motivation: Allowing for the depletion and pollution of natural resources without fair compensation is blatantly unfair to present and future generations. It must be stopped. Transition: Regulations and penalties are presently the primary means to reduce the economic incentive but is a flawed approach, providing an incentive to meet but not to exceed standards. Cap and trade systems and green taxes, done regionally and locally, will provide the best means, especially if the money system was changed so that currency would be backed by the Earth’s resources. Effect on Economic Life: These measures would end the opposition between economy and ecology. Best business decisions would align with best, long-term environmental decisions. Manufactured items would become durable and repairable. Residential areas small and compact.
(4) Economic and Monetary Localization
Motivation: We have seen our communities disintegrate around the world. We want this to change. We want to return to living within our local community, where we know everyone. Transition: Has already started. Buy local. Fresh local foods. Local currencies. Internalization of costs will help speed this movement. Effect on Economic Life: Will improve our lives
(5) The Social Dividend
Motivation: Production of our basic needs is easily met, thanks to technological advances over time. These advances, the gifts of our ancestors, should be free to all. This is also true of the natural wealth of our planet. The current system forces us to work for what is already ours. All this should be seen as a social dividend, payable to all citizens of the planet. Providing these essentials would free up our time and labor to do what we want to do. Transition: Alaska pays out a dividend to all its citizens for oil revenues. Welfare to the poor is another example, but should be extended to all. Effect on Economic Life: There will still be poor and rich but extreme poverty will cease to exist, along with its attendant stress and anxiety. Not having to make a living will free people to pursue a happier and richer life.
(6) Economic Degrowth
Motivation: At every turn we have chosen to consume more instead of work less, as technology has increased productivity. This option is no longer available to us as we bump up against finite restraints. Transition: Already happening with high unemployment and overcapacity of production. What if everyone worked 20 percent less instead of 20 percent not working at all? Effect on Economic Life: The poor and middle classes will experience greater affluence. More time and money would be spent in noneconomic activities.
(7) Gift Culture and P2P (Peer to Peer) Economies
Motivation: Money is unsuited to facilitate the circulation and exchange of the unquantifiable things that make life truly worth living and rich. Transition: Internet has started the ball. Governments can liberalize tax and banking regulations and provide and support mutual credit systems for local economies. Effect on Economic Life: People will meet their needs in a variety of ways. Gift circles will bring about a closer, more in tune sense of community, hereby improving quality of life.
March 14th, 2013 at 4:20 pm
@ John Stassek
Very nice guy, very smart, I read his book on the website when I was on Unciv.
Wish everyone had been into all that years ago. I think it’s too late. The mainstream seems to be going towards some form of dystopian corporate fascism, nothing like Eisenstein’s utopian vision. We’re losing our civil rights in UK, just like in USA, because of pressure from USA, they won’t share intel re terrorists etc, which is total crap and blackmail, there are no terrorists, except the ones invented and created by CIA and FBI and MI6 and Mossad.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/09/lib-dems-civil-liberties-rights
March 14th, 2013 at 5:15 pm
Radioactive contamination of American sailors
http://www.rogerwitherspoon.com/all.html
March 14th, 2013 at 6:23 pm
In a nutshell, this is why I am fairly convinced that there will be no economic collapse until it is well too late, and it dovetails into the point that Paul has been expounding on; Energy and resources = economy.
Though we are depleting both, through our technology and increased efficiency of our current energy, we are tapping the remaining energy and resources at an exponential rate. Therefore, there are no ‘economic fumbles’ which will not be hurdled towards this nasty end. We have seen this pattern for years, and it will just be one bubble on top of another until nothing is left.
March 14th, 2013 at 6:54 pm
Potential Cost Of A Nuclear Accident? So High It’s A Secret
“…Catastrophic nuclear accidents, like Chernobyl or Fukushima, are very rare, we’re incessantly told. But when they do occur, they’re costly. In every way. So costly that the French government, when it came up with estimates, kept them secret. But the report was leaked: an accident at a single reactor in a thinly populated part of France could cost over three times France’s GDP. Financially, France would cease to exist as we know it……”
March 14th, 2013 at 6:57 pm
U – if not evolution what. If a creator – why such a sadistic world
The grisliness and apparent cruelty (at least, from a human perspective) of Ichneumonidae larval cannibalism troubled philosophers, naturalists, and theologians in the 19th century, who found the practice inconsistent with the notion of a world created by a loving and benevolent God.[9] Charles Darwin found the example of the Ichneumonidae so troubling, it contributed to his increasing doubts about the nature and existence of a Creator. In an 1860 letter to the American naturalist Asa Gray, Darwin wrote:
I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice.[10]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ichneumonidae#Darwin_and_the_Ichneumonidae
And then of course there is the creators all the way down problem. So while no one has figured out how evolution works in some cases, they have figured a whole lot out and keep on working on it.
BTW still haven’t seen your link for the aphids that arrange themselves to look like a flower. Please back up that claim. I would find it most fascinating but web searches have failed so far.
But doesn’t matter as entropy will get us if 439 nuke don’t.
March 14th, 2013 at 7:00 pm
If in the French study an accident at a single reactor in a thinly populated part of France could cost over three times France’s GDP, what do you think Fukushima is costing Japan.
They were already in a slow motion deflationary depression for almost twenty years, and now they are intentionally debasing their currency by money printing at BOJ in a vane attempt to keep their export market from completely collapsing again Chinese and Korean exports.
Fukushima was also the financial death kneel for Japan in addition to it’s health and food production spiraling into the ground.
March 14th, 2013 at 7:20 pm
Jean Luc Ponty, Al Di Meola, Stanley Clarke – Rite of Strings – Renaissance
March 14th, 2013 at 7:26 pm
If this was posted twice, sorry.
OzMan Says:
Ripley—Very grateful for the excellent links to the latest info on Fukushima.
You’re welcome. I noticed that Jeff S posted a link earlier, that we both missed so thanks to Jeff. There was more great talks from that conference today on the kfpa.org Flashpoints program. Very comprehensive info on the history of the criminal nuclear industry. Kudos to Helen Caldicott and Arnie Gundersen.
Speak Softly —- thanks for the Tad Patzek youtube vid
Dmitry Orlov once ridiculed anyone claiming they care about humanity…
If you want to hear an interview where Orlov talks about that, you should check out this interview. 04-04-11 Dmitry Orlov // Reinventing Collapse
http://www.pantedmonkey.org/
I still get a laugh just thinking about it, because Orlov is just so relentless (could have something to do with the fact that Fukushima blew two weeks earlier), but in a completely calm manner. The interviewer, Ken Rose is the very definition of a hopeful humanist, I have to admit I sympathize with him, he definitely means well and is obviously a compassionate person. Plus I try to remember he’s basically doing these interviews without compensation and he’s not a professional so the guest sometimes the guest has to interview himself, which can be a bit irksome. In the interview 12-19-11 with the ecologist Safina, the lack of happy talk sometimes gets to be a bit too much for Ken.
March 14th, 2013 at 8:01 pm
Apropos of nothing…but I just realized that the movie “Compliance” is now available to rent online – I watched it on itunes for $5. It was so offensive that people walked out of screenings, even though it is based on a true story. The NYRB review and other links are here – http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/2012/08/synonymous-with-failure.html
It’s a very interesting exploration into the servile mentality that allows ordinary people to be easily manipulated into doing things they wouldn’t have imagined themselves capable of doing.
March 14th, 2013 at 8:03 pm
I don’t know if it was this main blog or the forum that U posted a question about this, so I thought it was interesting..
Life Deep Within Oceanic Crust Sustained by Energy from Interior of Earth
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130314144340.htm
March 14th, 2013 at 9:40 pm
Fortunately, I stifled the temptation to be triggered by several key words in this scientist’s recent TED presentation and became fascinated by his apparent solution to desertification.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI
March 14th, 2013 at 10:10 pm
Bluebird Says:
March 14th, 2013 at 9:40 pm
“Fortunately, I stifled the temptation to be triggered by several key words in this scientist’s recent TED presentation and became fascinated by his apparent solution to desertification.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI
….”
If things weren’t so advanced in the direction of global climate disaster already, i would have said his ideas might have merit, in spite of the fact that other ecologists have not backed them up. Way too little, too late.
March 15th, 2013 at 12:11 am
Bluebird
I watched the talk and was reminded of a peice of wizdom that came from a conference in the 1970′s on world hunger. A person made the observation that it was the artificial borders in Africa(and by extention other continents) that inhibited migration of ‘peoples’ where the food was. it is possible that ths idea was chineses whispered and some of that central idea was about the big hurds, not just humans.
Why not give it a go?
Very interesting as a ‘solution’ scenario, or path to our situation. Other practices would have to stop as well, but yes, s there enough time?
March 15th, 2013 at 2:30 am
Every year that there is not a new Fukushima is good year. How long will our luck hold out? America will probably be next up for a meltdown since our plants are the oldest. France has been lucky so far. When all that expensive wine gets dowsed with radioactivity, maybe our billionaire class will notice. Probably not.
March 15th, 2013 at 2:54 am
@ Kathy C.
U – if not evolution what.
I never suggested anything other than evolution, or cast doubt on evolution. Your attempt to cast me as a creationist is disingenuous, to say the least. If you want to argue against creationism go find a creationist. As far as I’m concerned that debate was settled 150 years ago.
BTW still haven’t seen your link for the aphids that arrange themselves to look like a flower. Please back up that claim. I would find it most fascinating but web searches have failed so far.
Why ? Are you suggesting it’s not true, that I made it up, that it’s a lie ? I told you, I read it in a book by Richard Leakey, whom I trust was telling the truth, and I think the aphids were found somewhere in East Africa, but I read it probably 15 years ago, and if you think I’m going to hunt through my house for hours for a book and then for a paragraph in that book, to satisfy your whim, think again. I really don’t care whether you believe it or not. If you ask me why I take this attitude, it’s because, in my experience, regrettably, you don’t discuss in good faith, to extend understanding, but only to confirm your own extremely narrow personal world view.
March 15th, 2013 at 3:10 am
@ bluebird, Ripley, Ozman
I think the Savory stuff is interesting, in terms of ecology, quite apart from whether it’s going to ‘save’ us or the planet, or any of that stuff, which, frankly, is all illusion or delusion, isn’t it ? People want to clutch at straws, naturally enough, because they don’t know what to say to their children or how to face themselves in the mirror or how to get to sleep at night, because reality is not so nice to contemplate…
I’m standing on the beach of doom. There’s a few others here who understand exactly what that means. I think we make conversation just for the sake of conversation, to pass the time. Anything interesting is interesting.
There was a split of opinion, if memory serves me, between two schools of ecological thought, was it Tansley at Oxford ? in the 1920′s ? and Jan Smuts, prime minister of South Africa, who invented the idea of holism. Holism is probably a very good idea, but unfortunately, Smuts is associated with racism and white supremacy and so forth, so the idea is tainted by that heritage. Savory comes from that holistic tradition.
Again, if memory serves, the Tansley school had the idea of a static climax in ecology, which I think can no longer can be supported.
March 15th, 2013 at 3:48 am
U you wrote to Ozman “Pretty difficult to explain how a fish manages to look almost exactly like a sponge. I have yet to hear any satisfactory explanation how evolution does that. ”
I see now, you were just asking if evolutionists had come up with the answer yet. I thought you were implying that evolution might not be able to answer that and therefore some other explanation was in order.
I hope the links I found went some way to show how that might be explained by evolution. Epigenetics might provide some answers that genetic evolution has trouble with but it is a new offshoot in the field and changes resulting in this way would still be subject to natural selection.
My apologies for jumping to the conclusion that you might think a creator would be the answer if evolution isn’t. That is the only alternative I have ever heard proffered so I just stupidly jumped to that conclusion. Mea Culpa – if not evolution tho, what?
RE the aphids, I am truly surprised that something as astounding as aphids arranging themselves in a flower shape hasn’t a single mention in the web. If you remember the title of the book I really would love to read about it. Honest.
I am almost done with John Sayles 900 page novel, Moment in the Sun. Ready to plunge back into non-fiction. This book is about the Spanish American War and is incredible. I swear Sayles must have spent 20 years researching it. He is a master story teller though perhaps better known for his movies such as Matewan
March 15th, 2013 at 4:14 am
http://enenews.com/hidden-noaa-animation-shows-ocean-all-along-u-s-west-coast-wtih-fukushima-cesium-by-april-2011-video
Great. My youngest and his wife just moved to the west coast of CA (job). i feel obliged to tell him that they ought to start popping iodine pills like vitamins . . . Gyad, this is so awful.
ulvfugl: Dude, i can’t even turn you on to some music and you throw a hissy? Ease up, man. i liked your “better” vid, but they’re just different and “good listening” imho. i’m also enjoying your current thread regarding the anomalies in evolution – good stuff.
John: Thanks – i’ll pick it up this weekend and give it a read. It’s always good to have some “ammunition” (alternate ways of doing economics so that it’s a bit easier on the populace or more equitable)against the current form of keynesianism/disaster capitalism that is staunchly defended in some of the financial blogs i read (where i only occasionally post evidence of the problems, mainly ecological, it creates as a result).
ogardener: yeah, i’m a big fan of these guys, McLaughlin, Corea, Emmanuel, etc. thanks for the link! i had never heard of the guy i posted and thought he was pretty creative. No accounting for some peoples taste i guess.
Ripley: i think our “luck” has run out at this point and that our fatal (willful?) ignorance is about to be revealed completely. As ulv says above, we’re just “standing on the beach of doom” passing the time until the shtf with conversation and information sharing. It ain’t gonna get any better.
Bailey: cool link, thanks.
March 15th, 2013 at 4:18 am
@ Kathy C.
I told you the probable book title, Sixth Extinction, but that’s not a 100% guarantee as I have some others by Leakey and my memory is not perfect, and this is from the time prior to the internet.
You seem incapable of understanding any nuanced or subtle argument beyond black or white, either / or, on / off, logic.
You know, it’s not my position, I’m not one of them, but there are actually plenty of Christians, who believe in their Christian God AND and accept Darwinian evolution.
I have already had this very same argument with you several times on this blog. It is pointless to keep on repeating it going around in circles.
…something as astounding as aphids arranging themselves in a flower shape..
It’s not so astounding, the whole of existence is astounding, the fact we are here at all is astounding, the whole animal and plant world is full of astonishing incredible miraculous stuff wherever you look, the point is, that much of it can be understood, which itself is wonderful and only recent, the result of science, the study of the Large Blue Butterfly is one of the greatest achievements in the history of biology, in my opinion, by a field ecologist observing the insects.
The point is, how to explain how various forms and behaviours evolved. Some are relatively easy to explain. There’s a long list, which have as yet got no explanation, and await some brilliant PhD student to unravel, before the species go extinct and NTE brings an end to the scientific project.
Re Ozman’s initial comment re the predators being the driver of the camouflage, seems with butterflies, it’s not birds, as had been thought, but tiny jumping spiders.
http://www.heritagedaily.com/2013/03/uf-study-shows-spiders-not-birds-may-drive-evolution-of-some-butterflies/
March 15th, 2013 at 4:57 am
@ Tom
ulvfugl: Dude, i can’t even turn you on to some music and you throw a hissy? Ease up, man. i liked your “better” vid, but they’re just different and “good listening” imho.
Man, I’m a guitar picker with strong views, I don’t like to see cruelty, I have to speak up.
The instrument can produce refined delicate sensitive MUSIC, yet those guys turn up the eelectronic effects, make some chord shapes and harmonics, and give it a slapping, and everybody thinks they are brilliant ? I don’t get it. No accounting for taste though, and if someone will pay to treat a guitar as if it was bongos, then I suppose someone will do it.
http://youtu.be/SW3jHEPUMiU
March 15th, 2013 at 5:41 am
@ Tom
Give the slapping and tapping job to someone else, I say, spread the work around
http://youtu.be/Og5PdU2V7cA
March 15th, 2013 at 5:57 am
Sorry I missed that U – I just ordered the book.
“but there are actually plenty of Christians, who believe in their Christian God AND and accept Darwinian evolution.”
Oh that is not hard. Christian theologians are tricksy. All you have to do is say God USES Evolution to create and you are home free. Leave God as the first cause, the uncreated – just say it is so and it is.
From the Athanasian Creed 8. The Father uncreated, the Son uncreated, and the Holy Spirit uncreated.
Some of my points however were that we think of evolution as small changes that increasingly move towards a major change by selection. And the eye evolution on computer seems to verify that even a small increase in photo sensitivity of a photosensitive spot can lead to selection of the trait and that going from a photosensitive spot to an eye doesn’t take as long as it would seem.
The beak and the dog’s tail, show that what seems a major step may be a very small step. The first cross bill might not have come from a long line of increasingly crossed bills but rather a dramatic change at a time when some food was now available that a cross beak was good for. Thus the cross bill may have appeared many times but not become an advantage until the bird was blown off course into a new environs. It looks pretty amazing but may be pretty simple.
And we see from the fox experiment that changing one thing in the genome may have multiple effects on the phenotype. The change in the frog fish to become scaleless may have triggered some other change that made variations in phenotype easier for them than for scaled fish.
The fact that so many fetuses look so similar means that variations on a theme are just that – even tho the finished animal looks very different, it is just modifications on the basic type.
And behaviors can clearly be selected for. No wolf pointed like a pointer dog with foot raised and tail out (that I know of) but they may have stood still and directed their gaze so other wolves could see what they saw. No wolf herded antelope, but they used herding like behavior to single out a young or sick animal. By selecting in one case for pointing like behavior and in the other herding like behavior the wolf behavior got fixed in exaggerations of original behavior. While some insect behavior may seem far more complex they have had longer for such things to be selected for than domestic wolves. And while the observed behavior may seem more complex to us, genetically it may be not so difficult.
And of course since fossils are few and far between and can only suggest behavior, not prove it, finding any intermediaries is difficult in form and pretty much impossible in behavior.
I don’t know what else has ever done such a good job of explaining things and if we humans had time I am sure far more would be explained by evolution and natural selection.
March 15th, 2013 at 5:58 am
I suppose this is going to be the new morality in many, many situations. Not just for diseases, but for food and water and housing, it’s just going to be impossible to cope with climate refugees, 2 extra China’s worth of additional global population expected, and continually depleting resources.
He said doctors may soon face the ethical dilemma, where it might be “more humane not to treat them and let them die,” as the disease was untreatable.
http://theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com/2013/03/14/young-womans-death-sparks-fears-of-a-killer-tb-strain-on-australias-doorstep/
March 15th, 2013 at 6:32 am
@ Kathy C.
I just ordered the book.
It will be somewhat dated by now, I fear, he was well ahead in his thinking, regarding a mass extinction event.
“but there are actually plenty of Christians, who believe in their Christian God AND and accept Darwinian evolution.”
Oh that is not hard. Christian theologians are tricksy. All you have to do is say God USES Evolution to create and you are home free. Leave God as the first cause, the uncreated – just say it is so and it is.
Hahaha, but it’s no different to what the scientists say, re the Big Bang, which appears from nothing and nowhere !
As McKenna says, the scientists say ‘Give us one free miracle and then we’ll use science to explain the rest’
Many Christian theologians are far more sophisticated than that, have no personalised deity involved at all, but rather a concept of God as the omnipresent Ground of Being, or some such. But there’s a great variety of views.
…we think of evolution as small changes that increasingly move towards a major change by selection.
I don’t think that. If some grotesquely malformed embryo survives and is born and happens to have some advantage and is able to breed, I don’t see any reason why there wouldn’t be pretty much a new species very fast, well, maybe not a new species because all dogs are supposed to be the same species, but a new breed of dog. I don’t see why there has to be gradual transitional stages for everything.
However, in the case of the Large Blue Butterfly, there has to have been a first time that it happened. It’s just really hard to imagine the sequence of events. Not only does the larva have to be taken into the ant heap, and survive in this completely new environment, but it has to come out again, and somehow, transmit this behavior to the next generation of butterflies, so that it becomes successfully established.
The caterpillar copies the sounds that the ants make, so that they are fooled, and don’t notice that it’s eating the ant eggs and larvae… it surely didn’t learn that trick the very first time it happened, I mean, let alone the question as to HOW it learned that trick at all…
And yes, presumably, given long enough, millions and millions of years, all kinds of amazing things can happen. But these ant heaps can only exist themselves in very special locations with the right soil types and where sheep or rabbits keep the grass very short. So the locations where the evolution could have occurred must have been limited, and then glaciations happened, and the whole ecosystem had to move on several occasions… how did ants and butterflies and grazing animals and grasses all travel as a package ?
March 15th, 2013 at 7:16 am
For another glimpse of the mind boggling complexity that goes on in evolving organisms see this comment on book review, particularly the first part, don’t know about the second half not having read the book.
There is a spectacular denizen of California tidepools that goes by the imposing name of Hermissenda crassicornis. It is an electric blue and orange sea slug with wavy appendages on its back called ceratae. At the white tips of these ceratae are cellular structures called cnidosacs. Housed in the cnidosacs are nematocysts, microscopic harpoons that hook and inject venom into the mouth of any fish that decides to make a meal of Hermissenda. The truly amazing thing about the nematocysts of this Aeolid is their origin. Hermissendas do not grow their own nematocysts; they obtain them from their prey, in this case, the Proliferating Anemone. Instead of digesting the nematocysts along with their surrounding tissues, Hermissendas sequester them and transport them out to the tips of their ceratae via perpendicular tubes that line their guts called diverticulae. There they are incorporated into Hermissenda’s metabolism whole and fully functioning. It is a case of an intracellular symbiotic association called kleptoplasty.
Another example of the “theft of body” of an intact organelle is the so-called “solar powered leaves that crawl.” The marine sea slug, Elysia chlorotica, sequesters the chloroplasts of the algae Vaucheria litorea. These kleptoplasts reside within the cytoplasm of the digestive cells of Elysia and carry out photosynthesis. The sea slug provides carbon dioxide for the chloroplasts and the chloroplasts provide nutrients for the sea slug. It is possible that there is a redirecting of animal nuclear encoded proteins to the chloroplasts as well as some lateral gene transfer from algae to sea slug. If so, this example of symbiosis represents a true mixing of separate genomes. Perhaps it is also a modern recapitulation of the ancient phagocytotic events theorized to have been the origin of the chloroplast in plant cells and the mitochondria in animal cells. It certainly speaks to the issue that the dividing line between species is more blurred than the lay public is aware.
Symbiosis as a driving force in evolution is the theme of Frank Ryan’s wonderful book, Darwin’s Blind Spot. The history of this controversial concept in the biological sciences is thoroughly examined as the other great process alongside natural selection and mutation by which evolution takes place. The narrative portrays symbiosis as a corollary mechanism to explain the staggering radiation of species descended from a common ancestor that Darwin’s gradualism could not adequately account for. The social and political ramifications of symbiosis versus natural selection are explored as these concepts affected and inspired capitalism, socialism and the Eugenics movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As symbiotic theory approaches our day and age, the reader is given a grand tour through such bold and revolutionary thinking as Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis, Gould’s Punctuated Equilibrium, Dawkin’s Selfish Gene and Margulis’s Serial Endosymbiosis Theory. The discoveries of the pioneering role of bacteria and the influence of viruses upon the human genome could well signal that there is a paradigm shift in the offing for humankind as thinkers interested in these kinds of questions regard their ultimate physical origins.
Although it is completely unstated, there is almost a spiritual quality about Darwin’s Blind Spot, perhaps more by content than design. A spirituality that is neither a violation of nor a negation of our senses. This work will resonate with readers yearning for a holistic view of life on this earth. It is another volume in the small but growing library of books devoted to a radical concept of the oneness and interconnectedness of reality. A oneness expressed across such divergent times and venues as the ancient myths of hunters and gatherers and in the cutting edge physics of entangled subatomic particles whose forces are instantaneous across galaxies.
http://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Blind-Spot-Evolution-Selection/product-reviews/0618118128/ref=cm_cr_dp_synop?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending#R2NDF8U2K2MYPZ
March 15th, 2013 at 7:42 am
“…how did ants and butterflies and grazing animals and grasses all travel as a package…”
They had Time.
March 15th, 2013 at 8:19 am
Hey wildwoman, weren’t you talking about a doomer board game?
http://meltdown-game.com
Well, looks fun/instructional for German kids, anyway. Here in South Dakota, our kids get legislation making it legal for teachers to carry guns in schools. Sentinels, indeed.
March 15th, 2013 at 8:28 am
@ Gail
Sure. They needed that. But I think 4 major glaciations over last million years scraped Europe clean, and then they had to return from wherever, across mountain ranges, seas, rivers.
On the last occasion they didn’t have very much time, a lot of species didn’t make it to Britain before it became an island separated from Europe by the rising sea as the ice melted.
Then they have to find the particular chalk downland where the soil and vegetation are just right, which is quite a limited area… couldn’t have been rabbits that kept the grass short, because they only arrived thousands of years later, so I don’t know what it would have been, maybe sheep from the first farmers… I suppose the queen ants fly and maybe spread a long way on the wind… and some get lucky.
This is the disaster that every living thing will now face. Not enough time to move, or to adapt because everything changes too quickly, and keeps on changing.
March 15th, 2013 at 8:45 am
Badlands AK, great grab! Not exactly what I had in mind, but I suspect we’ll see more of those kinds of things in the future. Make money whilst we can, don’t you know.
ogardener, that link with Jean-Luc Ponty et al brought back some….memories, I think. I saw him play with Frank Zappa back in the college days, during which I inhaled, exhaled, snorted, and dropped just about anything (no needles though). I’m pretty sure I saw Zappa twice, two different bands. I think also that Ponty played with Mahavishnu Orchestra? Amazing violinist.
March 15th, 2013 at 8:56 am
@Ripley “Why was there no evidence of this energy growth or of any significant population growth until the beginning of agriculture 6000yrs ago rather than earlier? Big brained humans have been around for at least 100,000yrs. Homo Erectus was around for nearly 1 million yrs, yet no sign of energy growth/entropy, why not?”
“The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.” Al Bartlett
http://www.albartlett.org/books/essential_exponential_ch1_recollections.html
Ripley, I am positive you well understand exponential growth. The thing is, it applies to ALL physical manifestations, whether energy or matter.
The reason we don’t have any evidence of emerging entropy/energy usage until only a very short time ago is because we hairless apes were still on the flat (starting) side of the curve.
This curve is how I govern my life’s expectations. While NTE can be reasonable debated, there is simply no question on the energy/population outcome. Let me repeat: no ands, ifs or buts.
What should really give people pause is since we were until only, until recently, on the flat end of the curve, what is the trajectory once we got into the true meat of the equation?
Supernova? Mad Max? LOL Look, these discussions are all fine & dandy, but ultimately a waste of time. Look around, and consider the doctor has given you 6-12 mos – would you be wasting any time discussing the fine points of collapse? Shit no, you’d be out there living – so go out and live. There aren’t going to be any ‘winners’.
March 15th, 2013 at 9:15 am
@B9K9
Absolutely. We currently have about 140 billion “energy slaves” working the planet over on our behalf. That number was essentially 0 until we got our act together around that flammable black rock in 1800 or so. Since 1900 or it has gone up at a steady average of over 4% a year.
What amazes me is not that NTE is coming, but how resilient the planet has proven to be in the face of this orgiastic onslaught.
March 15th, 2013 at 9:30 am
I’ve posted a guest essay. It’s here.
March 15th, 2013 at 9:35 am
And let me just add that the reason I give Gail and others a hard time about their efforts in exposing & protesting the existing status quo is because it’s an utter waste of time.
First & foremost, you must realize that these guys not only “get it”, but they’ve long had contingency plans in place to ensure continuity of government once the great unraveling really begins to accelerate.
Look, Lincoln suspended habeas corpus 150 fucking years ago! FDR imprisoned US citizens without trial 70 years ago! These precedences are already set – exigencies of war justify any and all actions.
I have never understood why Bush, and those who proceeded him, never get any credit for crafting the architecture of our coming police state. I mean, really, one should sit back and marvel at the shear genius of categorizing the entire world as a theater of war, and all people, citizens and foreigners alike, as potential enemy combatants.
Really, people should realize that they are so many moves ahead it ain’t even funny. Oh, every now and then you’ll see a little hint that some get it – like the recent ZH article abut revaluing the dollar 10:1. Hmm, I seem to recall posting something along that order when ZH first got off the ground.
So how do you initiate hyper-inflation in order to destroy the nominal value of debt? Well, you need wage/price controls & rationing – all events that have taken place many times before. Oh, but what about destroying the savings of millions? Well, good thing they’re seniors who, incidentally, will be (literally) shown the door, what with non-indexing of SS/Medicare and denial of care.
As for anyone who complains and/or speaks out – perhaps you should review some of the sedition acts passed during WWI & WWII. Again, recall that we will be operating under emergency war powers acts, so that means no complaining, otherwise it’s the camps for you.
Now, you can read this little tirade as some excitable screed, or you can go “yup”, and live your life as if you already are living in this kind of society. Save you outrage, save your time, save your emotional energy – it is what it is. It was fore-ordained billions of years ago – we’re just experiencing the inevitable tail-end blow-off.
March 15th, 2013 at 9:51 am
U-had an inspiration while cutting wood. (followed by carrying wood not water) –
Toxoplasmosis Gondi has a unique lifestyle
http://www.livescience.com/7019-mind-control-parasites.html
Toxoplasma gondii is a common parasite found in the guts of cats; it sheds eggs that are picked up by rats and other animals that are eaten by cats. Toxoplasma forms cysts in the bodies of the intermediate rat hosts, including in the brain.
Since cats don’t want to eat dead, decaying prey, Toxoplasma takes the evolutionarily sound course of being a “good” parasite, leaving the rats perfectly healthy. Or are they?
Oxford scientists discovered that the minds of the infected rats have been subtly altered. In a series of experiments, they demonstrated that healthy rats will prudently avoid areas that have been doused with cat urine. In fact, when scientists test anti-anxiety drugs on rats, they use a whiff of cat urine to induce neurochemical panic.
However, it turns out that Toxoplasma-ridden rats show no such reaction. In fact, some of the infected rats actually seek out the cat urine-marked areas again and again. The parasite alters the mind (and thus the behavior) of the rat for its own benefit.
So we can wonder how this trait of creating hormones to cause rats to act in a way that gets them to be more likely to be eaten by rats
But the article goes on to say
Dr. E. Fuller Torrey (Associate Director for Laboratory Research at the Stanley Medical Research Institute) noticed links between Toxoplasma and schizophrenia in human beings, approximately three billion of whom are infected with T. gondii:
• Toxoplasma infection is associated with damage to astrocytes, glial cells which surround and support neurons. Schizophrenia is also associated with damage to astrocytes.
• Pregnant women with high levels of antibodies to Toxoplasma are more likely to give birth to children who will develop schizophrenia.
• Human cells raised in petri dishes, and infected with Toxoplasma, will respond to drugs like haloperidol; the growth of the parasite stops. Haloperidol is an antipsychotic, used to treat schizophrenia.
So it seems that what T Gondi does in a rat is somewhat different from what it does in a schizophrenic even though the damage bears similarities. As far as we know schizophrenics don’t exibit any behavior that would assist T. gondi to reproduce but if they did we might think that somehow T gondi evolved to do this. But we can see the connection in he cat/rat scenario so we think that they evolved this effect on the rat to assist their reproduction. But it may have turned up by chance and had no affect on some species but fortuitously had this effect on rats. Once that chance connection worked in that way, it opens the way for further changes that might make it work better. Thus complex behaviors might start with a chance change and once in place the stage is set for further changes and it looks like a complex behavior came out of nowhere.
Much more fun to think about how it might come about than to just think “how could evolution explain that?”
What came before the big bang – oh its big bangs all the way down. But you do know scientists are trying to figure that out – and they don’t forbid anyone from asking the question. Obviously we won’t figure it out, our brains are not up to it. But we can rule out a kindly good creator with ease. A god like Q is a possibility http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_(Star_Trek) but doesn’t solve the turtles problem. Nothing does. But evolution doesn’t start at the big bang – it starts with self replicators and thus is a subject that has a greater chance of becoming clear to us.
March 15th, 2013 at 10:08 am
B9K9,
I’ve seen this before.
“Relax and enjoy it.”
Right.
March 15th, 2013 at 10:12 am
Benign Kanine
I totally agree, why am I blogging when I could be out robbing banks and hanging out with hookers.
March 15th, 2013 at 10:16 am
from ulvfugl
“I’m standing on the beach of doom. There’s a few others here who understand exactly what that means. I think we make conversation just for the sake of conversation, to pass the time. Anything interesting is interesting.”
Reminded me of an account from the Titantic where the last life boats had pushed off and those remaining just kept drinking heavily and chatting. It turns out that if you drink enough alcohol, not so much you can’t still dog paddle or lose consciousness, that it raises your metabolic rate so high that you can be immersed in very cold water for hours and hours and not have your core temperature drop to lethal levels. A number of survivors from the Titanic who did survive and were fished from the icy water the next morning were still very drunk.
That’s my plan.
Cheers
March 15th, 2013 at 10:16 am
Yup.
March 15th, 2013 at 10:52 am
B9K9: great rant. i agree wholeheartedly, but if it gets seriously fucked up – i mean the complete breakdown of society, no rules whatsoever, no money, no food, looting and mayhem, pure freaking bedlam – starvation, desperation, people off their meds, roaming street gangs, psychopaths and criminally insane off the leash – won’t it just be complete chaos? i mean during the French Revolution (and probably others) there comes a time when even the GOONS get it and figure out that they’re in the same (sinking) boat as the rest of us “marks” and join the other side, refuse to obey orders, kill themselves, enact brave acts of sabotage, and walk away.
i don’t know how it’s going to collapse, but i feel like it’ll resemble the sinkhole, where the bottom just drops out suddenly, no warning, and the ripple of death, like the shockwave of an atomic explosion, destroys all value, morals and ethics evaporate – all this while radiation rains down on us, the land is poisoned and all the vegetation takes a permanent vacation, the oceans hold no fish, no plankton and are warming considerably, volcanoes are erupting, earthquakes, monsoon- like flooding or no rain for decades, the whole support system is GONE.
Where’s the loyalty to anything when it’s all revealed as bullshit – the whole game of civilization now in its inevitable conclusion: the destruction is DESIGNED IN, whether it’s because we were made in the image and likeness of “GOD” and [HE/SHE/IT] can do whatever [it] wants and ya know, [it] works in “mysterious” ways (hint, hint, wink, wink, nudge, nudge, me uncle was Dutch, say na mor’ . . . or it’s LMEP.
March 15th, 2013 at 10:58 am
B9k9
I don’t disagree with anything you say other than the main thing – exposing and protesting the status quo is a waste of time.
Sure it is, if the reason is to change the status quo. But, that’s not my reason. I do it because its fun and I meet far more interesting people than I would if I just ignored it all and enjoyed what’s left. Plus, it feels like the right thing to do, to me.
I note that you, too, are spending at least some portion of your remaining days posting comments about NTE!
March 15th, 2013 at 11:31 am
found this kinda interesting:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2293701/Long-overdue-mega-quake-tsunami-kill-thousands-Pacific-Northwest-coast-cost-U-S-32-billion-experts-warn.html
March 15th, 2013 at 1:22 pm
Though still a newbie posting here, I have to compliment you all for such moving and thought provoking insights. When I feel like I have had enough of living among those with blinders on, I find peace, insights, and humor from you all! Thank you for that!
@B9K9 and Gail.
I very much resonate with what B9K9 says that it’s a waste of time exposing the elite machine and we should live for today. But, like Gail, I find a desire, call it amygdula in fight mode or ego, driving me to expose all the injustices. Part of me feels compelled to help people even if it’s one person that listens and it helps them prepare emotionally for what’s coming. But with that said, I have a dear friend in the UK who has given me many words of wisdom over the years and she continues to remind me of using caution about discussing NTE and economic collapse in public. Yes, B9K9, the “no complaining or it’s camp time for you” is on the back of my mind. At times it’s just good therapy to get it off my chest! But, your advice is a much needed reminder so I’m going to go plant my greens in the garden now.
March 15th, 2013 at 2:28 pm
@ulvfugl & Tom
How about the piano as a percussion instrument ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oT3jndX2TM
March 15th, 2013 at 2:29 pm
She does it differently every time, but here’s a more or less traditional version.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3e9_4aXrTI
March 15th, 2013 at 3:03 pm
Tom
You write:
“…but if it gets seriously fucked up – i mean the complete breakdown of society, no rules whatsoever, no money, no food, looting and mayhem, pure freaking bedlam – starvation, desperation, people off their meds, roaming street gangs, psychopaths and criminally insane off the leash – won’t it just be complete chaos?…”
I think these are good comments and questions.I asked them a while back, in my freaking out head, and some n this blog too perhaps.
I think it is just normal to imagine how it will go in a future where we feel all the ‘rules’ will collapse and maybe the selfish savage will re emerge.
This is a ‘narritive’ of the hman being created at a time in European history(some help there with what movement it was would be cool …anyone ?)
It is bound up with Christian morality that also presupposed that Hunter/Gatherers ilved barbaric, brutish and short lives.
I wont go on and completely deconstruct this, you can see where I am going.
I feel that unless there is centralised law-based directives, town meetings will get people cooperating again.
The main trouble with duburbia is that money governs most huma gatherings now(sport, mall, car rally, airshow) and we rarely gather for town stewardship in a free way.
Here in NSW in Australia, we have so many tun of the 20th century built town halls, awfull architecture, hardly inspires rich culture, ut nevertheless somewhre prior to almost widespread TV home use we as the people did meet, and discuss public issues.
In our district, we are now on the cusp of turning from a village(a big one) to a commerce centreover ridden by business concerns and that flavour of village life(well…a crafted latter day version) where urban dwellers come for a taste on weekends is about to be squeezed out by the very thing that it was a counterpoint to.
This has happened in so many places, I am just privelaged to have seen it develop as I have been aware of some of these issues.
My point is, I think humans are far more equipped to rearrange their existance when it is ‘required’. The issue with all the ‘talk’ of ‘dependent suburban morons’, especially the Nature deniers etc, is to me a bit overnlown. Of course some percentage of people will be truely dependent, if not literaly geriatric, or infirm, but I am thinking we will probably have some serious town meetings, and take local control back of our towns.
The local government system is still a silly sham of bigger politics, and each candidate is affiliated with a major ‘party’(funny how that term has a celebratory meaning too).
I think it is a stage of imagining what keeps s doing what we do, and when one tries to strip back to what is undrneath the cicil persona, we imagine all kinds of shadow core. But truly, it is the same spiritual question of ….
“What is it to be Human?”
Truth is that has never been a pure experiment, because it has always been explored with a past and within an environment.
This is perhaps why Christianity attempted to wipe ‘time’ and earlier cultures from the slate, and start ‘fresh’. Not sayin I approve, no one asked my opinion or consent for that, done it anyway…Ha ha.
I will admit, there is a significan difference, however, between civ collapse, revolts and revolutions in previous times and the modern situation, which changes some of the figuring and likely outcomes. That is what Guy and many others have pointed out is that in previous ages, when changes were made, people were in the habit, and mostly adapted to growing food, and doing ‘rural’ and aggricultural tasks.
Now so many people are far away in experience to this way of life it is difficult to concieve they will adapt easily.
Guy says he is a good example of someone who was not disposed to ‘farming’ and hard physical work. And if he can learn what a zuucini is from a screwdriver, so can a lot of people.
I think motivation is a key, and also Guy tells of how growing up he and his brother did bale hay, and run behind a tractor when he was a nipper.
I think he is a little closer to the land in experience than he admits, and he wen back to it , where he is now willingly, not kicking and screaming, (maybe a little on the bad days?).
Having written all that, I fear most the slow slide into collase, which is likely the longer we go on in this stalled state.
With no ‘clear’ collapse moment, it will be harder for the majority of peoples to get on another wavelength to make the big changes.
March 15th, 2013 at 3:06 pm
…’duburbia’
It was a typo, but I kinda like it…!
March 15th, 2013 at 4:25 pm
@Gail, B9K9, and Carmen: I’ve been debating all week whether to attend U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ open meeting on global warming at the high school in Montpelier, about a half-hour from my house.
On the one hand, I am fascinated to see what fal-de-ral is passed off as wanting to deal with climate change. If I feel brave enough, I would like to challenge the senator on his support for the F-35 boondoggle to be based in Burlington, VT. [Vermont prides itself on open government and anyone can walk into the State House at any time and go into any of the rooms and attend whatever meetings are taking place.]
I’d like to ask him why—if he is serious about combatting climate change—he isn’t calling for the abolition of the internal combustion engine, seeing as 4 out of every 5 gallons of fuel go to heat and pollution? Why—if he is serious about climate change—is he agitating for defense jobs? Why—if he is serious about climate change—isn’t he working to outlaw clothes dryers and cookstoves (we can easily eat raw food) or revamp zoning laws that impose excess consumption and sprawl and prevent people from raising food on their property or living in high concentrations. Folks have little idea that even those drastic steps wouldn’t be enough, but —ya know?— I’d at least credit them for trying if they brought up these kind of “Victory Garden”/rationing proposals that people adhered to in wartime long ago.
Since people won’t give up driving and clothes dryers and most other mod. con.s, then why are we kidding ourselves? What’s the point? Even if we could (let’s say we could!) turn climate change around on a dime tomorrow, WE WON’T. There’s -generally speaking- no paid work for people who can’t drive to where the workplaces are. There’s very little food to be had that’s not industrial, delivered by supermarkets one has to drive to. It’s a luxury for a very few to be able to lead a near-”pure” life in developed countries. As Nicole Foss put it on a recent Kunstlercast, as we have moved up the energy-consumption ladder we have kicked out the rungs beneath us: the lower-energy social and material infrastructure rungs. There are zero incentives for corporations to forego maximum extraction; there never will be any, because it would infringe on “property rights”.
I would love to see a politician admit that the modern industrial enterprise is killing the planet and killing us, and that his political finger is Super-Glue®ed to the trigger. I would like to see him admit that his policies mean a greater likelihood of many dead constituents in the near future.
On the other hand, why waste the gas…? Why open myself up for more anger and frustration, not at what people are doing as much as the lies they tell about what they are doing…? Why not spend the day seeding flats of plants instead?
@Tom, here in Vermont they still have Town Meetings on state-wide Town Meeting Day, although the bulk of the decisions are increasingly turned over to full-time professional managers and “Australian ballot” (all-day paper-ballot voting) rather than voting right at the meeting, which is on a Tuesday according to the same antiquated reasoning that makes most voting in the US occur on a Tuesday, involving horse travel, market days and the Sabbath. It’s a pretty interesting process, though, and is a great opportunity to see who your neighbors are and what they care about (the minority who show up to TM, anyway).
March 16th, 2013 at 5:43 am
@Lidia
“On the other hand, why waste the gas…? Why open myself up for more anger and frustration, not at what people are doing as much as the lies they tell about what they are doing…? Why not spend the day seeding flats of plants instead?”
Yes, Lidia, why waste your time? I struggle with this so often. It is mind bogglng to me that we can’t get better leadership in our governments to take steps to change the way we live. After attending town halls and writing to my senators and the President, I am left with a cordial ‘thank you for your concerns’…blah, blah…. I have rather given up but then hold some hope that there may be a shift of thinking at some point and hope that it won’t be too late to help salvage some habitat for the future. However, I am certain that this change won’t come without a serious crisis. By then, it’s likely, too late. So the warriors inside us continue to struggle with wanting to help wake people.