email archives		2007, April 30, Monday. How does this go unreported? Stupid question, sorry for asking: Irish Nobel Peace Prize winner shot by Israeli troops. Yeltsin's pickled corpse my be resting in a cryogenic tank, but this is how the Irish will remember him: drunk as a proverbial skunk in Ireland, leaving the dumb yokel Irish P.M. waiting on the tarmac. Thanks for the memories, B.Y. I love the symbolism: wash useless prayers off medieval parchment, and find something really interesting. Interesting comparison of the varying yields of nuclear weapons. I think the point may be to downplay the force of a "tactical nuke" by comparing it to the "real thing". Maybe a comparison in the amount of radioactive fallout we'll all get to breathe in would be helpful too? The chaps at the Oil Drum cast a cold eye on the recent oil discovery in Iraq. Permalink --- Discuss this post in the idleworm forum. 2007, April 20, Friday. The drought in Australia seems to be approaching critical mass - unless it rains soon, things will get ugly, fast: Australia has warned that it will have to switch off the water supply to the continent's food bowl unless heavy rains break an epic drought - heralding what could be the first climate change-driven disaster to strike a developed nation. The Murray-Darling basin in south-eastern Australia yields 40 per cent of the country's agricultural produce. But the two rivers that feed the region are so pitifully low that there will soon be only enough water for drinking supplies. Ironic that this is happening to a nation whose Prime Minister makes Bush look like a tree-hugger: Until a few months ago, Mr Howard and his ministers pooh-poohed the climate-change doomsayers. The Prime Minister refused to meet Al Gore when he visited Australia to promote his documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. He was lukewarm about the landmark report by the British economist Sir Nicholas Stern, which warned that large swaths of Australia's farming land would become unproductive if global temperatures rose by an average of four degrees. It's been a while since I served some mystery meat:     And if you're in the mood for more grim, evidence that Saudi Arabian oil production may be disappearing down the crapper... Permalink --- Discuss this post in the idleworm forum. 2007, April 18, Thursday. Thanks Caragh, for this laugh: Jesus Action figure What is wrong with these right-wing U.S. nutjobs? First they attack the students in Virgina for the attack (they were supposed to stop an armed gunman with their skin, apparently) - the tsunami of verbal diarrhoea continues: Tommy Thompson makes an anti-semitic slur, Fox "NEWS" attacks Kurt Vonnegut's still warm corpse a "Republican" complares democrats and blacks to masters and slaves ... !!! Keep it up boys. You're redefining the words "lunatic"...and stupid. How much pollution comes out of a car in one day? this much! Compare ads for junk food with real thing. Bon appetit! Three cheers for the Government of Oceania for their marvellous talking cameras! I love Big Brother... The Latest Dirty Little Secret Of Terra Nullis "If you take sloping land and strip the plants away, it leaves the soil bare and exposed. There will be a huge impact the next time it rains or when the wind blows," he said. "Plow-based agriculture can change the erosion rate of even a flat place like Kansas into the erosion rate of a place like the Himalayas. Basically that type of farming is remaking the surface of the planet." When the Earth's population was smaller people could move from one place to another and give soil a chance to regenerate. But now, with more than 6 billion people on the planet, that option no longer exists, Montgomery said. "We're farming about as much land as we can on a sustainable basis, but the world's population is still growing," he said. "We have to learn to farm without losing the soil." Worse than Peak Oil is Peak Soil. Once you recognise the importance of soil to the process of civilisation, the "mysterious collapse" of Mayans, Aztecs, Romans et al is not so mysterious any more. You run out of stuff to rape, then you die. THE CENTURY OF ROOTS The 21st century is still young as there are another ninety-three years to go. So it might sound over-ambitious to claim that 'The Event of the Century' is already behind us. But I'll gladly take the risk; for I seriously believe that the peaking of the global production of crude oil --- commonly know as 'Peak Oil' --- has occurred in 2006 [1] and will be 'The Event' bound to dominate the history of the 21st century Cryptogon: China to Raise Oil Imports by 14%, Sinopec Group Says I've wondered about this before - does a bright coloured computer desktop consume more energy than a dark one? Answer: YES. The Powers That Be want to install microphones and cameras in all airline seats to "protect us from tewwowists". Permalink --- Discuss this post in the idleworm forum. 2007, April 18, Wednesday. The right wing nutjobs have sunk EVEN LOWER than I thought possible: they're blaming the victims of the crazy gunman for their own deaths. Fine talk from a bunch of piss-in-the-pants chickenhawks who've probably never had a gun pointed in their faces. It's not just Mad John Derbyshire yesterday -- "Where was the spirit of self-defense here ... [W]hy didn't anyone rush the guy?" That was bad enough. Today the National Review's Mark Steyn blamed the "awful corrosive passivity" of Virginia Tech students for not defending themselves against Cho Seung-Hui. He even mocks the male students as somehow not quite being men. (I found this at Think Progress.) Wow. Permalink --- Discuss this post in the idleworm forum. 2007, April 17, Tuesday. I say, old chap: A bluffers guide to being posh: One Friday in the Commons, Tim Sainsbury, a Tory MP whose family founded the supermarket chain, met Nicholas Soames, descendant of the dukes of Marlborough, who was kitted out in his hunting gear. "Going rat catching, Nick?" Sainsbury asked, surprised. Soames replied: "F*ck off, you grocer: you don't tell a gentleman how to dress on a Friday." Apparently, it's not polite to refer to The Queen as "Fat Arse". I never knew. Permalink --- Discuss this post in the idleworm forum. 2007, April 16, Monday. BREAKING NEWS: DERMOT MOVES TO PORTLAND, OREGON! Regular readers will know that I recently moved to Canada from L.A. (having moved to L.A. from Ireland in the early 90s). I'd been planning on moving back to Ireland in August - however, a new option has recently arisen. I'm now 99% certain to move back to the U.S., to Portland Oregon. I don't have a job lined up...although I do have some freelance work on the way, enough to pay for a small apartment and my frugal lifestyle. I'm sick and tired of working on commercial products for large corporations - I've been doing that for TWENTY YEARS now, and I have nothing to show for it. Simply put, I want to work on idleworm full time. I've been working on a six minute animated documentary of my own creation, which looks like being the best work I've ever done. The six minutes stand alone, though I could expand the thing to 20-30 minutes if I have the time and resources. It should be complete sometime this summer. So, the plan is this: move to Portland (one of the Greenest cities in N.America), work on idleworm full time, do a bit of freelance to pay rent, and try to make this site go some way to paying me money. I've got a few ideas on how this may be possible. If all fails, I head back to Ireland in 12 months, a few thousand dollars poorer. So, if any of you hippie freaks in Portland want to give me a holler, let rip. I can't say for certain when I'll be there, but it won't be later than August. More as things develop. Feel free to discuss this here, if you like. The Secret: The Cult of Positive Thinking. Giant squid captured = not good news. People are starting to sweat about the bee die-off Could the culprit be cel-phones? Think twice about eating imported food from China. Permalink --- Discuss this post in the idleworm forum. 2007, March 26, Monday. Posting erratic - lots going on in my life right now. Big changes ahead. More on this later. I've tried to think of chemtrails as a figment of the imagination of the overly paranoid - until I found this site, via cryptogon.com. Astonishing images...and definitely NOT contrails... Stop shopping, or the planet will go POP! An interesting documentary: Crude Impact. It's getting good reviews. Rudy Giuliani is testing the stupidity of the public by blaming IRAN for 911!!! Monbiot: feeding frenzy Permalink --- Discuss this post in the idleworm forum. previous posts - about us - contact