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If You Want to Know What Came Before Infinity, Then You Don’t Understand Infinity

Religious believers like to believe we’re special, that Somebody is watching over us. And they use the most stunning logic to explain the notion of Somebody: Science only explains our universe back to the Big Bang. What about before then? And what caused the Bang, and all the matter associated with it? It must have come from something. By which they mean Somebody.
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The End of the Planetary Party for Homo sapiens

In my opinion, which echoes Lovelock's, habitat for our species will be gone by century's end. I strongly suspect this outlook, like most prior predictions associated with global climate change, is hopelessly optimistic. It would not surprise me if our exit from the planetary stage were complete within three decades. Will we make it to 2100? I'd give us about a zero percent chance.
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Three documentaries describe the fall of empire

I haven’t watched television for years. My brain’s in bad enough shape without the brain-cell-destroying intoxicants of alcohol or delta waves, so I’ve foregone both for quite a while. Long enough, in fact, that I’m starting to feel as if I’m obsessing about them, so I suppose I should get back on the wagon to see what I’ve been missing.

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Oil, the American Goddess

I’ve given several talks during the last couple weeks. And I’m spending way too much time preparing for, and then arguing with, the provost. My primary points during each of these exchanges, from the Department of Defense workshop to the discussion in juvey hall, have focused on peak oil and runaway greenhouse. It never ceases to amaze me how deep is the denial of increasingly obvious facts. The audience doesn’t seem to matter much: We all worship the same gawd, after all. Her name is Oil.

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Last Chance for the Hairless Monkey?

Our last best chance to make it through the ever-tightening bottleneck is to bring down civilization. Although Peak Oil will bring down civilization within the next decade, maybe sooner, we can and should hasten the collapse along.
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