archives
| 2007, December 31, Monday. | |
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NOTE: I'm not trying to urinate on the holiday; if you don't want to read the doom, scroll down for a bunch of funny Harry Enfield clips on youtube.
And so another year arrives; will this be The One? Just remember: 2008 will see the continuation of the credit crisis that continues to threaten the world's financial system. In a worst-case scenario there could be (more) bank failures, along with the near certainty of further dollar depreciation and inflation, both of which will effectively eat the savings of US residents.  In March 2008 (the Ides of March again, sigh), a huge number of ARM mortgages will "reset", allowing the lenders to hike up the payments of the suckers who bought them.
What follows is what I have done to reduce my exposure to the possible collapse: Live cheap;And, just in case things get really hairy: Keep an emergency food reserve. In my case, that's enough for between 3 and 4 months. I know I sound like a nutball, but that's because I read about three to four hours of news a day (and I'm not talking about MSM pablum).The above measures reduce my chance of being destroyed if a big institution comes crashing down - basically they give me a little "wiggle room". I just can't believe how many people have all their savings in their nearest bank...this is a recipe for disaster. DIVERSIFY. Your mileage with the above may vary. I don't mess with IRAs or Mutual Funds. I know that I could make better interest if I invested in various financial doo-dads, but I just couldn't be bothered. I don't know enough to make an informed decision, and wouldn't be comfortable with the risk even if I did. That said, have a Happy New Year. British PM Gordon Brown predicts an unpleasant 2008. He has nothing to offer but blood, sweat and tears. Kunstler: 2008 forecast. Jim tends to be off with specific predictions (e.g. he's issued several erroneous dates for the stock market to crash in the past), but in the broad strokes he's eerily on the money. Far fewer people would have been suckered by the Real Estate shysters had they read his blog over the last few years. Financialsense.com (a gold-bug site) has a less catastrophic take, though their long term forecasts aren't exactly hunky-dory... The US is threatened by the new world order. Tom Whipple's 2007 peak oil roundup. Mars Rovers struggle to survive yet another Martian winter. British comedian Harry Enfield created these superb pastiches of early BBC information films. Great stuff: Women, keep your virtue! Advertisement breaks. Women, don't drive! Life in 1990. The working classes. L is for Labour. Christmas tidings. Methods of self defence. Association football. Frightening diseases of the mind. Conjugal rights. Women, know your limits. On death. Animals. | |
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| 2007, December 30, Sunday. |
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More erratic posting from me. I'm still in LA, and will be here for a few more days to sort out some personal business. Bear with me. Bizarre: Hybrid fish with human faces. Truly disturbing footage. Thing like this make me wonder about the activities of mad scientists around the world...inject a few human genes into a fish, and off we go. Monbiot dismantles Al Gore's Green street cred. It really makes you wonder about the Gorebot... One of the engineers of the BBC MICRO computer from the early 80s is working on a BRAIN BOX, which will have 1% of the complexity of the human mind. Hm. Mystery container found on beach. Note to locals: AVOID. A most useful tattoo. The US just legalised Absinthe - a drink that was the victim of nonsensical myths in the early 20th century. Everything you know about Absinthe is wrong! Here's a lovely painting of an Abaholic by Degas. Alas poor Yorick, I built him well... Norman Mailer: Lego purist extraordinaire... Lego version of the Croatian National Theater. |
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| 2007, December 23, Sunday. |
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There's a 1 in 75 chance that Mars will be hit by an asteroid in January 2008. Better them than us. Face-on-Mars advocate Richard Hoagland debunked. This is, like, SOoooo 1929: Tent Cities in Suburbs. Dutch cops to use Zeppelins instead of helicopters (quieter, less CO2). The effects of deforestation on the nutrient cycle of the Amazon. Newsflash: its bad. Scary: Food riots are possible due to soaring prices. How to grow food for yourself... Animation showing the SpaceX capsule docking with the ISS. Great: a Fatwa against the dollar? Great survival toy: Water purifying straw. Via survivalacres.com, an amazing animgif showing the sizes of the Earth, compared to the sun and some of the largers stars known to us. This will blow your puny mind, hu-man. Jesus: Too Liberal for America! More hard-hitting journalism from CNN! |
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| 2007, December 19, Wednesday. |
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I've been in LA for the last week, having taken the train down from Portland. 32 hours = long time, but I met some interesting people on the way (and at no point did I have to take off my shoes or belt, or be made to feel like cattle in a veal crate). I'm in LALA land until the 29th. A financial tsunami is upon us... The collapse of the modern day banking system. Hoo-ah! God's basic training. The soldiers need to watch this video: Pagan Christ. Photos: Large burdens in China.. Here's more. Map readers in Chicago = TERRORISTS. Add the windy city to the NO-GO list. Maybe the Chicago Tourism board can have a new slogan: "Visit Chicago, and we'll arrest you, taser you, send you to solitary where you'll be kept awake 24 hours a day, force fed with a plastic tube to prevent you from finding the sweet release of death, rendering you a twitching psychotic wreck, at which point we'll realise that you were innocent all along and dump you on the side of the street without a word of apology. Enjoy your stay." Icelandic tourist arrested and shackled, abused by DHS. Ah, the xmas warriors, and their gritted teeth snarling Happy CHRISTmas!!! The history of Saudi Arabia in 2 minutes, via the Hollywood movie The Kingdom Wheat prices soar over $10 a bushel. Lego: Japanese castle. |
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| 2007, December 10, Monday. |
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Voyager 2 finds that the solar system is bent. I knew it. Global warming is melting NORAD. A victim of a Halliburton gang-rape. It's an actual woman, not the State of Iraq. Rare desert mammal caught on film. Check out the video on the BBC site: it's fantastic! Forum thread: I'm never eating here again! Major US Airports offer flu shots. What's next? Free showers? Dizzying: The planned collapse of the USA. An elegant post by Fred Reed on the decline of our civilisation. Cartoon: Dear Jenna... |
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| 2007, December 9, Sunday. |
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For Xmas: The lost ending of "It's a Wonderful Life". Real-time edits to Wikipedia on Google Earth (hypnotic). Teleportation in the 1500s? The Mystery of Gil Pérez... Super heroes = Zombies? America ate my brain. Chinese crematoria are so short on fuel that they're half burning the dead. Paddington Bear is hassled by immigration. Half of Amazon lost by 2030. Americans love lists. Saturn's flying saucer moons. |
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| 2007, December 6, Thursday. |
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Choke, gasp: Saint Joe and the Impending Global Financial Crisis In the early nineties I visited a stone circle in County Cork (Ireland) called Drombeg. We had to climb a ditch to get to it - a finely preserved monument, spared the usual "interpretation centre". It's a pleasure to have an unmediated experience with ruins. I hope it hasn't changed in the last ten years. There was a shallow stone bowl next to a spring - that would have been used to boil water (rocks heated in a fire are dropped into the bowl, causing the water to heat rapidly). It's possible to make cheese in seconds using such a technique. Anyway, I was reminded of that trip by reading this account of ancient Irish breweries. Ah, for a time machine... Behold these pedal powered lovelies: multi-passenger cycling machines! When a modern house burns, prepare to be poisoned. Creepy: Virus hit island seeks emergency aid. NASA image of crescent Saturn. |
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| 2007, December 5, Wednesday. |
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I've been on some online forums recently where westerners (christianists) have been ridiculing some of the loopier aspects of Islam (following the Teddy bear incident in the Sudan). The posters are too young to remember the furore in the eighties about Martin Scorcese's "Last Temptation of Christ" apparently.
Anyhow, a while ago, I was talking to a co-worker. We were talking about Scientology, and how crazy their beliefs are - Xenu the galactic overlord, millions of alien souls inhabiting our bodies, etc. “You know, there’s another crazy cult even loonier than that!” says I. “There is?” “Yeah. There’s this religion that says that God made the world in six days, and made one man and one woman to live in it. He put them in a garden with a magic tree, but told them not to eat the fruit. A snake told the woman to eat it, and she did, then God got angry and kicked them out. The problem was that all the people born after that went to hell, and the only the way that God, the creator of the universe, could fix this was to incarnate a part of Himself as his own son, and be born by a virgin, and have his son/himself crucified, so that his suffering could redeem mankind and people could go to heaven again. But only if they choose the right form of the religion, as there are thousands.” She was laughing by this time. Point taken. “Oh, and once in a while, this all-powerful God, (or his son, or mother) appears on a tortilla chip in Mexico, just to prove that he really exists.” My point is, all religions have some crazy notions in them...and life is so much easier if you read them selectively, and recognise poetic truth instead of literal truth. But that's asking too much of shaved monkeys, apparently. Pass the six pack. Arizona realtors are totally nuts! They should watch this 20 minute James Howard Kunstler lecture, given to the googlebots in 2004. Joe Bageant delivers a smack-down to accusations of anti-semitism. Good work JB! Japan is kicking lunar ass, making 3D movies of the surface. The clips load very slowly, so click the links, wait 10 minutes, and then watch them: 1 and 2 The more I read about the technical challenges being faced by a permananent lunar base, the more pessimistic I become. The latest challenge is lunar dust kicked up by lunar landers. This wasn't a problem during Apollo, as each mission consisted of one lander. A permanent base, however, will be scoured by dust, which will wreak havoc on it. This challenge, combined with the dangers of long-term exposure to cosmic rays, gamma rays and solar flares, and the difficulty in keeping lunar dust out of the interiors of the crafts, doesn't exactly fill one with confidence. At the risk of losing Green-points, I will buy shares in this company asap: SpaceX may go public in 2009. The discovery of a dinosaur mummy. |
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| 2007, December 3, Monday. |
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Over the last few weeks I've been finding it harder to read through some of the gloomier articles - spefically the economic ones; this isn't that I don't believe them - it's more a case of "information overload". Things seem to be moving speedily to an almighty crash, sooner rather that later. So you may notice an uptick in lighter material. I'll still try to dig out some gloom, as best I can - as that's the critical stuff. Now that I'm safely moved into my new home, I hope my posting will stabilise. I've got lots of work to do, and not enough time in which to do it. Iran Holocaust drama is a big hit. No quakes please: Architectural mayhem meets technical wizardry in China. Dumb blonde fails a 3rd grade question. "Isn't Europe a country?" "Is France a country?" "Do they speak Frence in Europe?" Lady, just two pieces of advice: 1. Don't Vote. 2. Don't breed. Scotland spends $125,000 on a new slogan: Welcome to Scotland. So much for the stereotype of Scots being mean with money. Hell, I'd have given them "Welcome to Scotland" for $10K and a bottle of Single Malt. Happy news: Brazilian Ocelot born. Cute - very cute! My kind of gal: Woman sterilises herself to save the planet. I hope she never finds out about "Jevon's paradox", "The Rebound Effect" or "The Khazzoom-Brookes Postulate." Basically, self denial in a society where only a section of the population is pointless, as the resources saved are simply used up by someone else (in this case, a welfare slag-heap with 7 brats living off the tax-payer). All this lady has done is to de-select her "ethical" genes in favour of selfish ones. It's the thought that counts though. More yahoo goofery: Ads in pdf files. Another reason to use Foxit instead of Acrobat, no? Flag pin etiquette. I think this is an update of a older page, but it's still funny. |
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