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If you're unhappy with google (and Big Brother) tracking what you surf, use scroogle instead. They scramble your IP number. Sexy sheep in lingerie await!
Use google maps to see how sea level rises affect the coastline!
Haha! A republican (of course) is caught trying to pass off peaceful Istanbul as Baghdad. Mission accomplished, eh?
Interesting - expiration dates of different products.
Make your own toothpaste.
That perfect lawn on the front of your house is a pile of shite. Try replacing it with a GARDEN.
Is Peak Oil a shattered myth? - um, no.
Glaswegians were healthier in 1405 than today. I'd say the same thing applies to a great many other nations in our glorious civilisation...
| By analysing cesspit material, archaeologists discovered medieval citizens ate a healthy diet of fruit, vegetables, cereals and fish. It is a long way in time and culture from modern Glasgow, where obesity is so commonplace because of a junk food diet of pizza, burgers and fish suppers that the Scottish Executive is considering opening an NHS-funded stomach-stapling clinic in the city. |
2006 March 29, Wednesday
An account of consumers' mental illness in the UK:
| A neat, middle-aged woman comes out of the shop with three full carrier bags. What has she bought? The woman gives a satisfied look. "All sorts. Baby clothes for my grandson ..." She pauses. "Well, handbags mainly, actually." She opens one of her carriers and offers a glimpse of a woven handbag in a pleasing pastel. How many bags has she bought? Her expression sharpens to something between guilt and mischief: "Nine." How much were they? "£3 each." But what is she going to do with nine handbags? Is she going to sell them? "No." She pauses again, as if the answer is quite obvious. "You never know when a bag is going to come in handy when they're £3 a time." |
| In Europe, people make 33% of their trips by foot or bicycle, compared with 9.4% for Americans. American suburbanites weigh on average 6 pounds more than their counterparts in walkable cities. They have higher blood pressure, are more susceptible to diabetes, and live two years fewer on average than Europeans. Pedestrians in the US are three times more likely to be killed in traffic than in Germany, six times more likely than in Holland. Bicyclists here are twice as likely to be killed in traffic than Germans, three times as likely as Dutch. |
more:
| This pervasive situational loneliness, of being stuck alone in your car, alone in your work cubicle, alone in your apartment, alone at the supermarket, alone at the video rental shop -- because that's how American daily life has come to be organized -- is the injury to which the insult of living in degrading, ugly, frightening, and monotonous surroundings is added. Is it any wonder that Americans resort to the few things available that afford even a semblance of contentment: eating easily obtainable and cheap junk food and popping a daily dose of Paxil or Prozac to stave off feelings of despair that might actually be a predictable response to settings and circumstances of our lives? (I'd add pornography to the list also, a substitute for sex with other real people who cannot be accessed in the condition of pervasive situational loneliness). How depressing. |
2006 March 28, Tuesday
Behold - The Lego Suicides! - be sure to check out my personal favorites: The Flag Burner and The Suicide Bomber!
Here's how my ancestors "supported the troops", 1800 style:
| Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye You haven't an arm, you haven't a leg, Haroo! Haroo! You haven't an arm, you haven't a leg, Haroo! Haroo! You haven't an arm, you haven't a leg, You're an eyeless, noseless, chickenless egg. You'll have to be put out with a bowl to beg. Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye! |
From the comments section of Clusterfuck Nation, a funny analogy for Iraq:
| Let's so you decide to walk up to Hulk Hogan and kick him in the nads. Your friends are horrified by your idea, but you do it anyway. Catching him by surprise, you drop him. Now, is too late to surrender. It's too late to quit. You have to keep going. So you kick him while he's down, as he tries to fend off your blows, and is eventually going to get up. Your friends are gone. Clearly, you must stay the course. |
| all the time behind the scenes, Iraqi oil is in fact being quietly siphoned off and being put in storage somewhere in the US, and possibly the UK, in readiness for when the brown smelly stuff really and truly hits the fan? Who knows, I certainly don't; but I certainly don't trust our so called leaders to tell me the time. So how come they're so happy to encourage this idea that the Iraq war has been some huge mistake from which they have no idea how to extricate themselves? |
2006 March 27, Monday
Here is a super-useful site which explains the best options when choosing fish. The site has regional breakdowns for the different areas of the U.S., and a printable chart that you can take with you when shopping or dining:
Matt Savinar has a thorough overview of the debate on the signifigance (or otherwise) of Iran's Oil Bourse. Whether the Bourse is going to threaten the Dollar's hegemony or not, do you really think the nutjobs in the Whitehouse would even allow a Middle Eastern country to attempt it? These guys can't bear the sight of peaceful anti-war protesters in their own country. We shouldn't expect rational decisions from a bunch of allegedly reformed Trotskyist revolutionaries.
Jason Godesky at anthropik.com is on the paleo diet - he's trying to lose 100 lbs (he's currently at 280, and falling. It should be very interesting to see how he does.
2006 March 24, Friday
Salon.com interviews Matt Savinar of lifeaftertheoilcrash.net!
| But here's what really drives Savinar crazy. As our whole world is about to go hurtling, sickeningly, down the other side of peak oil, we cling to the vain hope that better fuel efficiency, more conservation and alternative energy will step in to save the day. He can't believe our ignorance. Just look at his lunch: chicken fajitas with red and green peppers, brown rice and green salad. Sound wholesome and healthy? No, Savinar reminds me, it's brought here courtesy of cheap energy. "It's fossil fuels -- petroleum, coal, natural gas -- that have been converted into food," he says. Then, there's the wooden table he's eating it on, which was built god-knows-where and likely shipped here inexpensively courtesy of fossil fuels. Then, there's the financial system underpinning the bank loan that the owner of this restaurant likely got to open the joint, which is predicated on the idea that the economy will grow in the future, not shrink precipitously when oil prices spike. Then there's the asphalt on the four-lane of traffic outside, and the cars, trucks and, oh yes, SUVs zipping along on top of its smooth surface, as well as the concrete of the sidewalk bordering the mall across the street, where Ann Taylor and Talbots sell clothes surely imported from halfway around the world. |
| ...the prospects for growing a lot of food locally, à la the victory gardens during World War II, in these parts (San Francisco) don't look good to her, given the built environment and population density. Even assuming "bio-intensive" farming methods, where just 4,000 square feet of land can produce enough food to feed a vegetarian diet to one person, there's nowhere near enough land in Oakland, where she lives, that's not in the shade of homes or buildings, covered in concrete, or on steep parkland with poor topsoil. How bad does Friedemann really believe things are going to get? "I believe that we're going back to the 13th century at some point," she tells me... ..."How do you reengineer society to go backward? How do you carve up container ships and turn them into sailboats? We can't go back to steam engines burning wood because we burned all that wood when we were clearing the fields for farms," she says. And even going back to beasts of burden, using the muscle power of horses for transportation, isn't straightforward, not when horses and people are competing for local, arable land. "On average, a horse needs six acres of pasture," she says. "So you can't use that for food if you're growing the food to feed the horses." At an upcoming meeting of the East Bay peak oil group, she'll be teaching a class on milling your own grain and cooking it. "These are skills that would be useful to have. I suspect that there'll be oil shocks and food shortages but grain is something that keeps for years and years and years. It's something that you can have at home as the grocery store shelves empty. It's going to be more Third World-like and people are going to need to cope." |
The Keystone Cops meet the Brownshirts.
2006 March 23, Thursday
Here's a great source of goodies for the survival minded: BePrepared. Water drums (for emergency drinking water), Food supplies (you can buy a pre-made 1 year emergency store of food for under $800), even iodide capsules (in the event of a nuclear emergency). Take a good look at the maniacs in the WhiteHouse, and consider!
This is hysterical - remember the aftermath of the U.S. "victory" in Iraq three years ago? All the right-wing chickenhawks were crowing about how the anti-war commentators were wrong. There they were, demanding abject apologies from their opponents - we were supposed to ritualistically grovel before their fascist President and beg forgiveness.
Three years later, their army is still spinning its wheels in the sand. Re-read their post-war gloating. It would all be funny if it hadn't cost tens of thousands of lives...
To keep the troops in Iraq from deserting, the U.S. is making an example of Vietnam era deserters and arresting them FORTY YEARS LATER.
How to tell if the fruit you buy is organic, GM, by the numbers on the sticker!
2006 March 21, Tuesday
The farcical end of the American dream by Robert Fisk, demolishes the crediblility of the LA Times' reporting on Iraq by revealing their "sources":
| Here are the sources - on pages one and 10 for the yarn spun by reporters Josh Meyer and Mark Mazzetti: "US officials said", "said one US Justice Department counter-terrorism official", "Officials ... said", "those officials said", "the officials confirmed", "American officials complained", "the US officials stressed", "US authorities believe", "said one senior US intelligence official", "US officials said", "Jordanian officials ... said" - here, at least is some light relief - "several US officials said", "the US officials said", "American officials said", "officials say", "say US officials", "US officials said", "one US counter-terrorism official said". I do truly treasure this story. It proves my point that the Los Angeles Times - along with the big east coast dailies - should all be called US OFFICIALS SAY. |
| The US military openly admits it attacked the house in Ishaqi where the incident took place. Reuters reports that, “Major Ali Ahmed of the Ishaqi police said US forces landed on the roof of the house in the early hours and shot the 11 occupants, including five children.” “After they left the house they blew it up”, he said. “The bodies, their hands bound, had been dumped in one room before the house was destroyed,” (policeman) Hussein said. Police had found spent American issue cartridges in the rubble.” (Reuters) The autopsy report at the Tikrit hospital said, “All the victims had gunshot wounds to the head”. Iraqi policeman Farouq Hussein noted, “It is a clear and perfect crime without any doubt”. The evidence provided by Reuters suggests that we have entered the “My Lai phase” of the Iraq war, where the pretensions about democracy and liberation are stripped-away and replaced with the gratuitous butchery of women and children. The carnage in Ishaqi illustrates the growing recklessness and desperation of Washington’s failed crusade. |
| ...No more fruit from Chile or techno-toys from China. As we increase petroleum dependence and enjoy lower-labor-cost goods from afar, we lose local self-sufficiency. The reduced self-reliance in the U.S. includes the areas of manufacturing, processes, and hand-crafts. For example: an old-school shoemaker and observer of globalism's ravages informed me recently that there is not one leather tannery left in the U.S. So, the next economic downturn and the non-possibility of another petro-fueled boom means no recovery of the present economy. |
2006 March 20, Monday
Let's start the week off on a happy note: Sky falls in on Bush the outcast
I received my still on Friday (it can distill 16 gallons of pure drinking water a day). No more Lockheed-Martin rocket-fuel for me! I also acquired a clothes horse, allowing me to dry clothes without electricity. The weekend was taken up with a lot of cleaning, finding foom for the new gizmos. The tricky thing will be developing the habit of using the new toys - it's far too easy to put them aside and use tap water, or dry clothes with the electric dryer.
Here's your Monday morning medicine: The End Of Civilization
| I’ve come to the conclusion – and I don’t want to be a “Chicken Little” here – that civilization as we have known it for the last century is doomed. Our wasteful manner of living – heck, the sheer size of our human population – is unsustainable. Everywhere you look you can see signs of strain on the Earth, from spreading pollution of the air, water, and land, to disappearance of life in the seas, to depletion of natural resources. Something’s got to give. Things simply cannot continue as they have... ...So what fantasy world are Bush’s critics living in? The fantasy world in which civilization can continue as it has in the past. That we can continue to improve the standard of living of everyone in the world if we just return to a more sharing and egalitarian way of life, like that which we enjoyed between World War II and the mid 1970s. This is a fantasy. The Earth has finite limits. We are finally starting to grasp that fact with respect to oil. But oil depletion is merely the first in a series of coming crises ensuing from the finite confines of our planet. The fundamental problem – and I’m not a Malthusian – is that there are simply too many people for the Earth to sustain. This is why fish are disappearing from the oceans, why the supply of oil is unable to keep up with demand, why the globe is being deforested, why animal and plant species are going extinct, why water wars are in the offing. |
| It's not just that America is being ruled by small and venal men, or that its reputation has been demolished, its army overstretched, its finances a mess. All of that, after all, was true toward the end of Vietnam as well. Now, though, there are all kinds of other lurking catastrophes, a whole armory of swords of Damocles dangling over a bloated, dispirited and anxious country. Peak oil -- the point at which oil production maxes out -- seems to be approaching, with disastrous consequences for America's economy and infrastructure. Global warming is accelerating and could bring us many more storms even worse than Katrina, among other meteorological nightmares. The spread of Avian Flu has Michael Leavitt, secretary of health and human services, warning Americans to stockpile canned tuna and powdered milk. It looks like Iran is going to get a nuclear weapon, and the United States can't do anything to stop it. Meanwhile, America's growing religious fanaticism has brought about a generalized retreat from rationality, so that the country is becoming unwilling and perhaps unable to formulate policies based on fact rather than faith. |
2006 March 19, Sunday
Clusterfuck Nation's James Howard Kunstler has an interesting piece on the jitters in the U.S. real estate industry. I can vouch for what he's saying - here in Pasadena (LA), the "For Sale" signs are popping up like mushrooms...and they're staying there. Here's a great post from the comments section of "jitters" which sums up so much of modern life in America:
| We walked past shop after shop after shop. And hundreds of people. Probably from the many suburbs that surround Austin & San Antonio. There were license plates from Mexico, too. And as we moved with crowds, we heard Spanish, various Indian & Chinese dialects. People carrying huge bags like it was Christmas. I asked a salesperson about the crowds, & she said it's like this EVERY Saturday & Sunday, all year. An eternal Christmas "rush". Teenagers flashing credit cards. Children screaming for this or that. Dazed elderly persons. A kind of mania in the air, & subtle panic/agression -- especially in the long lines to get in & out of the parking lots. Where does all this "stuff" come from? Who makes it? Where do we put it all after we buy it? What else is there to do? Where else is there to go? Shop, eat. Eat, shop. Go to a movie. Drive around. Eat. Fuck. Sleep. Sit in front of a television or a computer. Talk on a cellphone. Live from paycheck to paycheck. Listen to reports of "the war". Read another magazine. Go back to work on Monday. The comfort of unanimous stupidity. |
2006 March 16, Thursday
Via strike-the-root.com: How Evil Are you? I'm only 46% evil, surprisingly.
The "liberal media" and their beloved Fuhrer get together for a circle-jerk, where they crack jokes about torture. Just another day in Kafka-land for the fascists and their media whores.
Dear reader, if you happen to be of the black persuasion, you might want to remove food and drink from your mouth before reading this gem from a Southern Republican crazy-woman: God’s Freedom through Slavery
| slavery ... was the ticket to America for black people. I have long urged blacks to consider their presence here as the work of God, who wanted to bring them to this raw, new country and used slavery to achieve it. A harsh life, to be sure, but many immigrants suffered hardships and indignations as indentured servants. Their descendants rose above it. You don’t hear them bemoaning their forebears’ life the way some blacks can’t rise above the fact theirs were slaves. |
Lawdy me, where is that chald with mah mint tulip?
I hope that shrivelled old hag lives for twenty more years. That should be more than enough time for Peak-Oil / Climate-change / Bird-flu / Derivatives-Bubble / Peak-water / Global-Financial-Collapse to bring a little humility. People like her deserve to die with their faces in the dirt.
Via EnergyBulletin.net: U.S. about to become net food importer and Is America facing yet another dust bowl?
Fascism on the march! FBI comes to Class. Watch out, left wing websites. Uh-Oh...
2006 March 15, Wednesday
Yesterday I received my Global Sun Oven (a solar oven), and what a beauty it is! More on this when I get it working.
So, the laughably titled "Environmental Protection Agency" wants to test pesticides on retarded children. And some think I'm being extreme when I refer to our "governments" as fascist. They received tens of thousands of complaints from the public, but have done little to change the proposed testing.
Good 'ol EPA - the clowns have been busy: EPA TO APPROVE REGISTRATION OF HIGHLY CARCINOGENIC PESTICIDE
Want a soft drink? Would you like some BENZENE with that? It's amazing that our mighty civilisation is incapable of making the most trivial products without adding a toxic or carcinogenic chemical. Fuck - we've got rocket fuel in our drinking water, so why should sodas be any different? Besides, our glorious leaders tell us not to worry - rocket fuel is probably OK to drink. Yes George, I believe you. Our leaders wouldn't lie to us, would they?
What's the solution to the above? - eat local, organic food.
Next on my list of projects: buy or make a solar still so I don't have to drink Dick Cheney's piss any more.
2006 March 14, Tuesday
Here's a folder of photos of yours-truly at the amazing Cal-Earth in Hysperia. The place is well worth a visit. The earth buildings have been approached by the ugliest suburban sprawl imaginable. It must be quite annoying for the pod-people in their McMansions too look out on these beautiful buildings. If I have the time I'll post more on the place. Time...
Speaking of the suburban crap-fest, here's a book which examines the possiblity of trying to salvage it (or parts thereof)...
Does anyone know what dandelion wine tastes like?
2006 March 13, Monday
Woo-Hoo! I just got back from the gun range, where I had my first experience with shooting - and I likes it!. I fired a 9mm Glock and a Colt. The Colt was quite a beast - at first it's a bit scary, but you adapt to the recoil and the sound pretty quickly. I managed to riddle the paper-man target pretty accurately, which was a good thing. I may buy a gun in the near future, which should make future death-threat-makers think twice:
Oh sweet Jesus - a librul tree hugger with a GUN? MAW, ah dunno what to make of it all! It's lahk somethin from the Book of Revelations!!!
Jesusland strikes again! More Than Half of Americans Reject Evolution. You could reverse the headline, and it would still be accurate: Evolution rejects more than Half of Americans.
Hooray for fascists: Woman fired for Air America bumper-sticker.
This movie looks good: “America…From Freedom To Fascism”
WTF? Bush can't stop talking about his wife's rug... As the ancient Greeks said: Those whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.
Here's an awesome item to have in the event of a meltdown: a solar still. Drinkable water from sludge, and there are no electronics involved. Here's a good introduction to solar stills.
Telescopes worthless by 2050, due to climate change and aircraft contrails. I wouldn't worry if I were them...there won't be many aircraft in the sky by 2020, never mind 2050...every cloud has a silver lining!
2006 March 10, Friday
Oops. Looks like some christian child got left behind in grammar class...
Even the dummies are wising up to Bush. What's wrong Cletus? Don't wanna get drafted to fight the Iranians? Don't worry - they'll send a nice letter of condolence to your widow, signed by Rumsfeld's autograph machine. Heh Heh Heh.
2006 March 9, Thursday
Steve Bell cartoon on torture.
Via lifeaftertheoilcrash.net - how to protect yourself from the Fiscal Hurricane.
2006 March 10, Friday
Oops. Looks like some christian child got left behind in grammar class...
Even the dummies are wising up to Bush. What's wrong Cletus? Don't wanna get drafted to fight the Iranians? Don't worry - they'll send a nice letter of condolence to your widow, signed by Rumsfeld's autograph machine. Heh Heh Heh.
2006 March 9, Thursday
Steve Bell cartoon on torture.
Via lifeaftertheoilcrash.net - how to protect yourself from the Fiscal Hurricane.
2006 March 8, Wednesday
Funny, sad and scary all at once! Who Cares About the First Amendment?
| 21 percent thought the First Amendment guaranteed them the right to own and raise pets (which defies explanation). And 17 percent thought it guaranteed them the right to drive a car (which is remarkable, since driving is a privilege—not a right). |
Ka-Boom: Geography is fate.
| United Arab Emirates is located at the center of an oil-dependent world. This tiny state forms the promontory that juts out into the famed Straits of Hormuz through which 40% of the world’s oil passes every day. Across the narrow straights sits Iran, the next victim on the list of "axis of evil" nations. Any attack on Iran will require that military forces quickly deploy to Dubai to forestall the closing of the straits and the subsequent devastation that would cost to world oil supplies and financial markets. This is the critical point which is being intentionally concealed by America’s diversionary media. This is the reason that President Bush continues to force the Dubai port-plan even though 70% of the American people and Congress resoundingly oppose it. The importance of UAE as a staging area for future hostilities cannot be overstated. No military strategy can hope to succeed without first establishing a beachhead across the straits in Iran so that the danger of blowing up oil tankers and blocking passage is removed. This tells us that plans for an attack may be on track for late March as originally threatened by Israel. |
"Peak what? Peak Oil? Wazzat? Never heard of it buddy."
Bloody 'ell: Is the Bush Administration Planning a Nuclear Holocaust?
We might need America's First Privately Financed Manned Orbital Spacecraft
Ted Rall: Knee Jerk Liars.
2006 March 7, Tuesday
Juan Cole's Headlines to Make You Laugh and Cry at the Same Time.
Matt Savinar: Has Peak Oil gone mainstream?
| In America, our national religion is not Christianity as so many seem to think. It's the pursuit of wealth and oil is the most concentrated form of wealth ever discovered. Our gods, the holy Pumpjack and his son the Drillbit, now provide everything for us: our food, water, medicine, jobs, housing, transportation, entertainment, birth control, etc. We even send our young people across the globe to defend our holy sites, the oilfields. With so much already invested in our worship of the golden calf of the Cadillac, asking the average car-driving American to accept a future in which they are consuming drastically less oil (or some substitute for it) is going to run into about as much success as asking somebody to accept a new religion. |
More on the Iranian oil bourse.
| To this day, when oil trades on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) or the London International Petroleum Exchange (IPE), all of the transactions are made exclusively in dollars. This means that every country in the world has to exchange their currency for U.S. dollars in order to buy or sell oil. Again, if Russia, Argentina, or Iran wants to sell oil to China, India, or France, they must do so in U.S. dollars. Because of this, each country keeps an ample supply of dollars on hand, hence the term "reserve currency." Needless to say, this gives the U.S. certain economic advantages. Yet, all of this is about to change. On March 20, 2006, Iran is scheduled to begin trading oil contracts on its own exchange and, you guessed it, none of the contracts will trade in U.S. dollars. Instead, they will trade in Euros. This threatens the reserve currency status of our dollar, and as such, has huge implications for our heavily indebted and fiscally unbalanced nation. |
Watch your footing - don't fall into the Olduvai Gorge!. It's dark in there.
2006 March 6, Monday
 |
In thrall to the green god
The stench of big agribusiness is all over this one.
I know many people in the Green movement, and none of them look like the duo on the photo at the top of the article - a crude use of the logical fallacy known as the "appeal to ridicule".
I could try to unravel this tapestry of deceit, paragraph by paragraph, but it would take hours. Here's a more interesting experiment. Those crazy "lefties" at the BBC quaintly describe Livermore as:
| ...an independent consultant, with a background in industry, covering a range of science communication and policy issues. |
| Martin Livermore is a PR man who previously worked for the biotechnology company DuPont, as well as for the agri-food giants Unilever and Dalgety. After leaving DuPont in 2001, he set up his own firm, Ascham Associates. He claims to have 'extensive networks in the food chain, public sector, NGO and think tank communities'. The links on Ascham Associates' website are revealing. They include: CropGen, the Sustainable Development Network [a pro-corporate lobby group], Philip Stott's Anti-Ecohype site, TechCentral Station Europe, the International Policy Network, the Scientific Alliance [an anti-environmental group], EuropaBio, Agricultural Biotechnology in Europe, and Spiked Online. Livermore works closely with people involved in many of these organisations and plays a part in some. For instance, Livermore is a Fellow of the International Policy Network and has recently contributed a chapter to an IPN book attacking the Kyoto protocol edited by Kendra Okonski. He is on the Advisory Forum of the Scientific Alliance along with Philip Stott, Vivian Moses of CropGen, and Spiked contributor/ suppporter Bill Durodie. Sense about Science list a 'Mr M Livermore' amongst those from whom it has received 'financial contributions'... ...Livermore has written a number of letters to the national press in support of GM crops in the name of the Scientific Alliance. In late October 2003 The Times reported that, 'More than 100 leading scientists have made a once-in-a-generation appeal to Tony Blair to save British science'. The Times also referred to the signatories as 'leading scientists' and '114 eminent researchers' (Scientists test Blair and find him wanting). Among the 'eminent researchers' who'd signed the letter to the Prime Minister was one listed as 'Dr Martin Livermore Plant Scientist; Independent Consultant'. Not only is Livermore not 'eminent' and without a doctorate, he is not a 'researcher' in the accepted sense of the word and his training was in chemistry not plant science. |
| ...an independent consultant, with a background in industry, covering a range of science communication and policy issues. |
We shouldn't be too hard on poor Martin - he may have ingested too much DDT as a kid...you know...in the days before those crazy environmentalists figured out that it was bad for you.
POSITIVE STUFF that you can do (and piss-off shitheads like Martin at the same time):
Stop using disposable plastic bags. I recently bought these monster bags, and wouldn't go shopping without them. Disposable plastic bags are truly an abomination, moreso because it's so easy to get by without them. Don't forget smaller bags for produce - it's no fun going to all that effort if you still have to use those smaller plastic bags for green beans and such. BONUS: you get to freak out the guys on the cashier!
Find out the best and worst fruits for pesticide contamination. I thought they were pretty much the same, but some appear to be far worse than others. Find out the baddies, and don't buy them unless they're organic. What's that Martin? Us religious freaks should stop worrying and eat your carcinogenic "food"? Oh SHUT UP, you slimy little man - why don't you take your ill-gotten cash and piss off to an island in the South Pacific. Preferably a volcanic one. With cannibals. And dinosaurs.
2006 March 5, Sunday
Find out if the fascists have been spying on you. An interesting project for the week. I'll let you know the results as soon as I do.
Quote of the day:
| "Even as we speak, Ayatollah Razmara and his cadre of fanatics are consolidating their power!" Homer J. Simpson. |
Gawd Bless Amurka's right to cheap oil, and death to lefty bloggers!
HaHa! If you pay off your credit card debt, you might be a terrist! Why did you pay your bills? Why do you hate Amurka? Are you with the terrists or agin 'em? Why do you hate Preznit Bush? - You couldn't invent this insanity if you tried.
The California results for 2008 are in, and Bush has won!
Can the crapulent economy continue? Gentlemen, start your engines...
Argh: Nasa has cancelled the very cool asteroid mission..just to save $30 million. That should pay for an hour or two of the war in Iraq.
2006 March 4, Saturday
Ho-ho: Oops, we helped ruin the planet. The authors of the "Rough Guide" travel books feel bad about the effect travel has on the environment (!!!) This doesn't stop them hopping on planes, however. The solution isn't to fly and plant a tree...the solution is not to fly. It's breath-taking that otherwise intelligent people seem to be incapable of realising this simple fact. Fortunately, Peak Oil will soon take the decision out of their hands. I can't imagine the kind of cognitive dissonance these guys deal with every day.
The really odious part of the article is at the bottom of the page - "How to travel guilt free" - apparently, if you want to offset your environmental damage from travelling to China, all you have to do is pay 15.80 for a tree planting in England.......
Must - suppress - urge - to - kill - these - fucking - posers ...
Which leads to: All the organic broccoli in the world won't be enough to save the planet
| This pick'n'mix ethical lifestyle is hardly going to start a revolution. You can drink Innocent smoothies while standing in the queue for your transatlantic flight; you can eat locally grown broccoli but be unable to resist the imported blueberries beside it; you can buy a Topshop fair-trade T-shirt alongside a couple of dresses that are so amazingly cheap you just can't imagine how little the women were paid who stitched them. Is it simply a way of taking our minds off the heaps of disposable rubbish that we are buying if we pay for them with our new Bono-endorsed Red Amex card? |
Good news! Trouble for Ronald MacDonald and his toxic sludge...I'm Lovin' It
Living Without Television:
| Becoming informed takes some work. This traditionally involved reading books, newspapers, and magazines to develop opinions about what you believed (or didn’t). Unfortunately, some of the most uninformed people I meet each day receive their news solely from television, which reduces complex social problems into emotional, highly manipulative one- or two-minute segments. And these people vote. The Framers of the Constitution created a decentralized republic, and explicitly not a democracy, because they knew that the latter tended toward centralization and tyranny. Even Jefferson believed that the small role actual voting would play in the new country would only be tolerable with an educated electorate. Not only would he hate television, he’d despair over a culture that promotes democracy and television as goods that must be universally available. What does it mean for freedom when so many voters are only informed to the extent possible through CNN and Fox News? To take one example, consider some recent poll data. Forty-seven per cent of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein helped plan 9/11 and 44 per cent believed that the hijackers were Iraqi; 61 per cent thought that Saddam had been a serious threat to the U.S., and 76 per cent said the Iraqis are now better off. None of this is true, but it is understandable when so many in the electorate depend on television to be informed. |
2006 March 3, Friday
This is both hysterical and scary - Bush's alcoholism (or brain damage) is blatantly apparent when the speed of his speech is reduced by 10 or 15%: Glug glug glug. (Thanks Neil).
This is going to get ugly - the South Central Farmers in Los Angeles have been served with an eviction notice. I visited the farm a few months ago - here's their recent history. The farm is a small miracle in the middle of a concrete jungle...to think that it may be torn down, merely to create the ten-millionth concrete warehouse is sickening. If we're right about Peak Oil (and we are), we'll be needing urban farms by the thousand in the years ahead. Truly, we are governed by morons.
Pity the 90% of US troops who still think that Saddam was responsible for 911! Cut them some slack - that level of ignorance takes a LOT of effort! Those poor bastards: dying for nothing - even the "cheap oil" plan has failed.
The New York Times finally weighs in: The End of Oil.
The more I hear about plastic, the worse it gets. Here's a really cool site which shows alternatives to plastic. (Scroll down to see pics of non-plastic kitchen goodies!) Get the stuff as far away from your kitchen as possible...
I have a list of places I'd rather be if Peak Oil smashes our fragile civilisation to ribbons: New Zealand, Canada (British Columbia), Argentina, Sweden, Ireland. Sad to see Canada's ecosystem already threatened by global warming...
Info overload: Public health in a post-petroleum world
It's amazing that a country can move from Ben Franklin to George W. Bush in two centuries...
Scared? Buy gold...
2006 March 2, Thursday
Thirteen pages of cartoon/photoshop fun which show how America sees the World. Thanks for the link Adrian!
2006 March 1, Wednesday
Beware the Ides of March...
Ward Sutton cartoon: Bush's Expanded Presidential Powers
Bush's approval rating hits 34%!!!
Which explains why he's drinking again...
Which isn't stopping him from selling America to the highest bidder:
| ...parts for our missiles are now made in China, a country that last year threatened us with nuclear weapons. Our oil comes from a country that birthed a Wahabist movement that ultimately led to 14 Saudi citizens flying jetliners into the World Trade buildings and the Pentagon. Germans now own the Chrysler auto assembly lines that turned out tanks to use against Germany in WWII. |
You supported the imbecile Bush when there was still time to stop the war - now it's Too Goddam Late. So get used to it Mommy and Poppy and little Timmy and Britney: you's fucked up, and you's fucked up good.
| The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it. |
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