My hard drive seems to be playing tricks on me. Now I'm paranoid.

This article by zogger (one of the primary stewards of technocrat.net) discusses the fact that there is currently no viable replacement for fossil fuels as an energy source to sustain industrial lifestyle in anything resembling its present form. It's interesting to see people who hold what Ran refers to as an "accelerationist" mindset beginning to grapple with the possible reality that the basis for their entire paradigm -- deifying "progess" as an almighty constant -- may be running on empty.

Electricity is energy, there's lots of ways of making it, but all the best ones require consuming some sort of fuel, whether it be coal or gas or diesel or isotopes, and I say "Best" to mean all the ones capable of generating enough electricity to avoid a total global industrial collapse...

No gigawatt for 24 hours a day electricity generation sites and you have no metal production, of any kind, anywhere in anything above jewellery / trinket volumes, and you have no coal production either, and no gas production, and of course no petrochemical production, so that's all your fossil fuels and plastics gone overnight.

Suddenly wind farms and hybrid cars don't look so practical, in fact the only wind farms there will be will be those already built, and as they wear out or break down, that's it.

None of these "green" morons has the slightest conception of what this will mean, for them, and everyone else.

If "green morons" are defined as people who think we can continue our plastic-suburban-car lifestyle unchanged by simply replacing power plants with windmills and recycling aluminum cans, then I tend to agree with him. Of course, neither he nor anyone posting in the comment section (so far) has even broached the possibility that "global industrial collapse" might actually be the best possible scenario for the long term health of the planet (and thus, in turn, human beings).

Some of the comments are worth reading too. They range from outright denial, to funny statements like this one. "It doesn't make sense to drive an electric car when gas is $3 a gallon, but at $30 a gallon, people will put up with the 150 mile range and the battery replacment costs if the alternative is to take the bus to work."

It's so laden with assumptions likely to pass unnoticed by anyone who has not taken a moment to step out of the dominant cultural mindset that a little dissecting is in order. First off, it's assumed that people must travel a long distance every day to get to "work", and will continue to do so no matter the expense or inconvenience. Second, for reasons unexplained, the bus is something to be avoided at all costs! (That statement is especially myopic considering that there are already plenty of people in America who make it to work every day on mass transit; although when the oil crunch really comes, even many mass transit systems will be pushed to the limits of economic feasibility.)

We are indeed due for a new technological leap in human evolution, as the mode we've grown accustomed to is far too inefficient to last us much longer. But some of the most obvious modes of optimization are left completely off the table by these folks. In the above-linked essay, Ran wrote:

What if they build a world-simulation program to tell them how best to administer progress, and it tells them the optimal global society is tribes of forager-hunters? Now that would be a new evolutionary level -- in irony. Then would they cripple their own computers by withholding data or reprogramming them until they got answers compatible with their human biases?

The ethnocentric cry of "our present way of life is the only way, the best way." *sigh*

I've managed to turn this little link post into quite a little rant of my own. Just felt the need to share, I suppose.

Despite the fact that the bulk of my hourly earnings fall on weekends, I still manage to find time for all sorts of random hijinks. Bits and pieces here, for those who like to read that sort of day-to-day stuff.

Putting a link to Sarah-Katherine's custard recipe here so I'll be able to find it easily later. Looks like something simple enough that I could make it! (Of course, in my usual style, I'm likely to deviate in random ways.) Sounds pretty yummy.

Just when consumers thought we had kept them at bay for another round, the sneak attack goes through without debate or discussion. While everyone was distracted by the White House indictments, Congress gave the processed food industry everything they wanted. The word "organic" will now mean virtually nothing. Expect it to start showing up on labels of big name brands on the shelves of Wal Mart, while the substance of their products remains essentially the same old crap. (Though they may use the opportunity to mark up prices, creating an new artificial differentiator for consumer demographics with more disposable income.)

(On a semi-related note, I've already started seeing a bunch of chips at the gas station advertising "0 Trans Fats", even when a brief look at the ingredients reveals this is a lie for some of them (i.e. partially hydrogenated oils in the ingredients). The reason? While the FDA will now require food manufactures to list trans fats in the nutritional information, they are allowed to round down to "0 grams" if there is less than 0.5 grams PER SERVING. This effectively means that a bag of chips containing 10 grams of trans fats could say "0 trans fats" if there are 21 servings per container. Don't we love our bought-and-paid-for government?)

So what is the hapless consumer to do? Ran had some good ideas. Buy from small local producers you can trust. Ditch the word "organic" when evaluating what to get. Instead, ask questions about where it came from, how it was grown, or if it's an animal product, the conditions under which it was raised. This also means figuring out what's important to YOU. Maybe with time, some new "keywords" will come into being, but I'm not holding my breath. And for those just joining us, welcome to the Brave New World of Empire. All Your Organic Are Belong To Us.

Half the blogs I follow seem to be linking to this, so I figured I'd pass it on too. Most noteworthy is the author, and the publication it appeared in. Peggy Noonan was a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan and Bush Sr, and she now writes for the Wall Street Journal.

There's a general and amorphous sense that things are broken and tough history is coming...

Do people fear the wheels are coming off the trolley? Is this fear widespread?

And how the elites are dealing with what they see coming?

I suspect that history, including great historical novelists of the future, will look back and see that many of our elites simply decided to enjoy their lives while they waited for the next chapter of trouble. And that they consciously, or unconsciously, took grim comfort in this thought: I got mine. Which is what the separate peace comes down to, "I got mine, you get yours." ...

Not all of course. There are a lot of people--I know them and so do you--trying to do work that helps, that will turn it around, that can make it better, that can save lives. They're trying to keep the boat afloat. Or, I should say, get the trolley back on the tracks. ...

I suspect those in the latter group privately, in a place so private they don't even express it to themselves, wonder if they'll go down with the ship. Or into bad territory with the trolley.

Meditation, meditation, meditation. And a little Bajoran love tale in the holosuite, for old times sake.

6. Find Your Tribe. (How to Survive The Crash and Save the Earth.) Have I found my tribe, or am I still looking?

And damn, was it ever beautiful outside today!

Tonight while I was out adventuring, I found a $20 laying on the sidewalk. Or so I thought, for a moment.

Jeremy Puma returns from his vacation to bring some balance to the anti-civ crusade.

It's fun to read anti-civilization literature, but it's also worth considering that quite a bit of what passes for anti-civ lit in this little corner of the web comes from people who have a rather limited understanding of just what civilization means, and I include myself in that assessment. I think many anti-civ arguments make the rather sinister mistake of focusing so much on the past and future that they ignore the idea of living in the present, experiencing humanity and civilization without assessment, taking the time to simply experience and let be.

Here's my confession: On this website, I think I have tended to somewhat over-emphasize my anti-civ side, because 1) I want to give readers something to think about that doesn't generally find voice in mainstream sources, 2) at this point in my life, it feels like the web is the only place I can give vent to these ideas without receiving strange looks from people. So I do it all the more here, to the point that I may at times come off as a total crank. (Or perhaps not, you be the judge.) I think I also have a tendancy to spout more words and theories when I want to take stronger action, but don't, because of my own fears, so I try to make up for it by writing. End confession.

He goes on...

So where am I going with all of this? Heck if I know. I guess it all comes back again to the question of what really has value in all of our blathering, and the answer, which is "Know Thyself." There is no external change; all change is inside one’s self -- internal change occurs as the universe observes and learns from its own actions.

Aye. So what else have we learned today?

In today's article on Rigorous Intuition, Jeff Wells discusses the idea that agents of the Black Iron Prison (he doesn't use that term) work to propagate conspiracy theories that are easily debunked or refuted so that anything that looks like a "conspiracy theory" will automatically be rejected by most people, without even looking at the evidence or rationale.

He uses as examples several of the less credible (but more widely circulated) theories about the U.S. government's involvement in 9/11, and contrasts them with the relatively scant treatment given by the State Department to the more damning stuff, such as the rash of insider trading that occurred shortly before the planes were hijacked.

On a broader level, there are those who go around mixing racist ideologies with what might otherwise be valid critiques of the system, thus discrediting, in the public mind, anybody who questions the foundations of these institutions. Over the years, I've come across more than a few articles that, on the one hand, explore the treacherous history of the banking industry, but then go on to conflate that with a bunch of overarching statements about Zionist conspiracies and evil Jews.

I believe it is possible to reach some rough understanding of the truth, but it requires a great deal of sifting, critical thinking, and a continuous devotion to awereness of Self as well as Other. I also don't buy into the "Trust No One" philosophy. Some people, some sources, some websites (*wink*) will, with time, prove more reliable, both in terms of intent and factual accuracy. That doesn't mean we should automatically stop thinking critically after deciding to "trust" a source. (Who knows? If the CIA gets a hold of Ran Prieur (heaven forbid), he might start spouting stuff about how we should throw bombs at government buildings to hasten the crash, at which point I would have to seriously reconsider his vouchability.)

Though I have come to believe through reading him that Jeff Wells is an honest seeker, I still take every Rigorous Intuition article I read with a dose of doubt. But the same goes for snopes.com. (I have yet to hear a reply from them regarding the question I sent months ago about the "Conspiracy of Silence" documentary. Google it if you're curious, but be sure to get the documentary, not the more recent unrelated Hollywood film bearing the same title.)

I can't sleep, so I'll write.

Today, I slept away much of the day. Last night, I was up quite late burning nervous energy playing with html and hacking up my web code. Now, I write a few thoughts briefly before I go to work.

Around and around

As the holiday season comes around, I imagine we'll see more of those guys ringing bells outside stores. But this article points out reasons why they might not be such a great and innocent "charity".

Several Salvation Army employees refused to take the Salvation Army's pledge "proclaiming Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord," reveal which church they belong to or identify gay co-workers -- and were summarily fired.

I had no idea they required their employees to take such a pledge, or tell the organization about their religious affiliation! At least now I know, so I can avoid contributing any money into their baskets. Unfortunately, as the article points out, thanks to Bush, they now receive a bunch of taxpayer money anyway.

Purportedly, this recording is from an actual sermon given by a preacher to a black church in D.C. It's gotta be one of the most hilarious things to find its way around the internets in recent times.

"Lot of the sistas makin more money than brothas, and it's creatin problems in families. That's one of the reason families are breaking up, and that's one of the reason our women are becoming LESBIANS."

He then goes on to pontificate about how his son couldn't find a date for the prom, because (his son reports) all the girls in his class were lesbians, except, of course, the ugly ones. (Yes, that's one way to win friends!)

And from there.... Well, you can hear raving about the anatomical details, including strap-ons, "blood vessels and membranes in yo behind", and "a screw and a nut!"

Oh goodness, I think I just lost it laughing again. Hear it for yourself. This guy should be on comedy central!

Tonight, I went to potluck and class again at the church. For this session, we looked at a few of the readings in the back of the hymnal. Again, we got to borrow the hymnals to study at home.

Just now, I was looking over a few more of the readings, and finding some of them quite resonant. I'm going to copy a few of them here, both for the benefit of readers, and for my own future reference.

Fascinating article about the postmodern "alt.worship" movement.

The baby boomers made worship relevant. Gen-Xers made it authentic. The next big shift could make worship non-linear, multisensory and art-driven. It’s called "alt.worship" and it’s emerging from an unlikely source - the global alternative Christian subculture.

Today, I was able to get off work early enough that I was able to go to the Full Moon Circle. There, I observed my first Neopagan ritual conducted in a group setting.

I like this bit, especially when it comes time to face some of the more sinister possibilities as civilization collapses. We need to remember where our strength comes from.

The lesson is that no measure of secular power that we can possess – military, financial, political – can withstand the onslaught of Archonic forces should they choose to exert themselves, regardless of either our innocence or ignorance on one hand or our spiritual gifts on the other. There is no physical castle we can erect against greed, against totalitarian megalomania. Only with gnosis, with Wisdom, with compassion, can we erect the citadel of the heart.

deconsumption poses the following question: If you came upon the knowledge that in two weeks, everyone will finally realize that the gig is up, and the markets will then plummet (speaking hypothetically, of course, wink wink), what would you buy?

My thoughts: I'd SELL my car, pronto. I should have done that already anyway, dammit. I'd use the money from that to buy some books on topics such as how to identify and prepare edible plant species in the local region. Spare bike parts and tools (as one of his commenters already suggested). Several nice big bulk bags of beans and rice for the short term. A bunch of 5-gallon bottles for water. I hate to say it, but I think cigarettes would have good barter value. And liquor. Guns? Much as I cringe at the thought, I know they would have value, both for trade and protection. I guess then the question is whether I could live with myself.

I hope the big crash doesn't happen this winter, but it could. It's good that he's bringing this up, because the sooner we face reality, the better prepared we'll be to deal with it.

Wherein I chronicle my Thursday afternoon adventuring.

The latest post from Dan on Taognostic hits a zinger. A little taste:

Suppose that tomorrow, some sharks got fed up having to hunt for prey daily. They decide that nature is no longer sufficient for their needs. Instead of constantly staying on the move, the sharks decide to set up camp in one region where there is abundant prey to feed on. The sharks develop a net from surrounding materials and begin to catch hundreds of fish at once. They can’t eat everything they catch, so it becomes necessary for some shark to guard the fish that aren’t immediately eaten. This immediately disrupts the food web. The other creatures of the sea are puzzled as to why they can’t eat the fish that the shark are guarding. Many unnecessary deaths follow trying to protect the fish stocks and eventually the sharks realise that other predators are getting incredibly frustrated because the shark are catching all the available fish in the area. The shark realise that it would just be easier to wipe out the competition. So a widespread hierarchy is created with the commanding sharks at the top. These sharks draw up the plans and make sure the guard sharks do their job protecting the surplus. The other sharks are either sent off to kill competing species or are waiting at the bottom of the chain. Most sharks cannot catch their own fish anymore because the sharks using a net have taken all the fish. They are forced to submit to the ruling shark rules which means helping protect the fish and re-enforcing shark dominance. This is now the only way they can obtain food.

Eventually, the shark wipe out all of their competition. The sharks are happy as they have control over all the fish at the moment. But due to increased food supply, the shark population explodes and finally the fish population begins to decrease. The sharks give this some thought and finally realise that they should increase the amount of prey for the fish to eat. How can they do this? By exterminating all of the predators who eat the prey of the fish!

Can you see where this is heading? The shark community continues to expand, requiring more guard sharks. As the population grows, it requires more food, and the more food that is caught, the more the population grows. Population always expands to the available food supply. Finally the shark community gets to the point where they have exhausted nearly all fish and alternatives. The materials that were used to make their nets are also becoming rare. The problem is that all the sharks who relied on the net catchings can no longer remember how to hunt on their own. They have forgotten how to be a shark.

This all came about when the sharks decided to catch more fish than they needed, thus eliminating the need to go out and hunt daily. In doing this, they disrupted the careful balance around them, the same balance that is necessary throughout all life. It is clear that as soon as this balance is broken, there is only one way to go; more and more control until it’s all gone. The nature of balance, and thus the nature of life, says that you cannot stay just a little bit out of balance; you are either in natural pendulum balance, or falling towards complete imbalance. When you start taking without giving back, you enter a downward spiral. This story is chilling enough, but I have missed out a number of other large implications that the sharks would have had to face and the effects on their culture, should one arise. Instead, I will present these effects and implications to you in the form of another story. Unfortunately this is a true story: it is the story of man.

List format, not necessarily in chronological order:

• Today, my volunteering at Open Harvest consisted of scooping up honey and putting it into plastic containers. Precious honey. Licking out the bottom of the bucket afterward, I felt like Winnie the Pooh.
• Potluck and class at church. Yeah, the 101 class is over, but there's a follow-up for the newbies who feel like keeping it going. I brought ingredients for salad from Open Harvest, and assembled them in a bowl at the church. The class consisted of looking at stuff in the hymnal. They also loaned us hymnals to take home to look at until next week's class in case there's something inspirational we find and want to point out. Coolness.
• Bought a nice new pair of shoes. From a garage sale. Go figure. Synchronicity is a beautiful thing. They're probably about one size larger than my feet, but that's okay, because they're very comfy, super high quality, and in very good condition. My toes have room to wiggle around. The person who sold them to me said they paid $160 for them originally, and were afraid they wouldn't be able to get rid of them at the sale because they're so huge. I took them off their hands for the asking price of $10. What a deal.
• And damn did the weather ever turn out to be beautiful for riding! Can we have more days like this please?

Heads up. If anyone feels like listening to some interesting net radio late Thursday morning, Jason Godesky (of Anthropik Thirty Theses fame) and Joy Hought (of heretic fig) will be talking on KUCI radio between 11am-12pm CDT. Luckily enough, they have streaming mp3, so anyone with net access and a soundcard should be able to hear it. Good listening for the brain. In fact, I'm tempted to rig up something to capture the stream (which up til now I haven't had occassion to do) so I can listen again later.

Everything you need to know about Real Milk. And getting it ain't gonna be easy for us city folk. Check out the guide to your state for details. Selling it commercially in Nebraska is illegal, but you are allowed to buy it from individual farmers if you can find them.

The Colorado regulations are pretty crazy. If I'm reading this right, if you want to get Real Milk there, you have to buy your own cow, and then arrange for the farmer to give it "boarding", with a nice long list of bureaucratic rules attached. That's messed up.

The following article appeared in the Fall 2005 edition of the Open Harvest newsletter. I'm reproducing it here because I've actually been informally been attempting a similar thing for myself the past several months. Also, I like the points she makes about not getting discouraged if you can't keep to it 100%. Just keep trying, don't give up.

I rambled a little about this the other night, but this article on alternet succinctly sums up both what I like and dislike about the Daily Show.

I suppose this is both its strength -- always being comedy and therefore making its critics look silly for taking it seriously -- and its weakness, for no one does take it seriously.

Satire can be a potent weapon -- look at Michael Moore's films -- but it is only so when followed by something of gravity, of pathos.

I agree! What they should do is give Amy Goodman a show that airs right after John Stewart. Of course, then it wouldn't be comedy any more, but real news. But for a healthy perspective, we need both the jokes and the straight up serious issues.

Days pass, the weather gradually becomes colder, the sky darker, and my spirit feels like it's fading. Losing sense of purpose. Lost in the maze of routine. What am I doing here? Is my time being wasted?

Via Anthropik... The Martian Anthropologist uses historical evidence to refute the myth we've all been fed that without the "advance" of civilization, humans would be living desperate and pathetic lives. The truth is quite the contrary.

In 1767 the English navigator Wallis discovered the island of Tahiti. His visit was rapidly followed by those of the French explorer de Bougainville, and Captain James Cook. Between them these men opened up the Pacific. All three captains were overwhelmed by their reception at the hands of the people of Tahiti, and by the gifts showered upon them...

Of course, not being civilized, the islanders did not have a "work week." When they got hungry, they simply walked over to a breadfruit tree, and ate.

Those lazy heathens.

The islanders existed in a state of happiness that humans on Earth dream of. But the Christian Missionaries found this to be evil, of course. They eventually threatened all of them into conversion.

Horrible enough, but more to the point: They could not understand why the Tahitians were so "lazy." Why shouldn't they be, of course? They had everything they needed without a "job". Finally, the "civilized" man found a solution:

Mr. Gyles, a missionary who had formerly been a slave overseer in Jamaica, was brought over, along with the necessary mill to set the industry up. "Witnessing the cheapness of labour by means of the negroes he thought the natives of these islands might be induced to labour in the same way."

He was mistaken. The enterprise failed, and Mr Orsmond, believing that "a too bountiful nature on Moorea diminishes men's natural desire to work", ordered all breadfruit trees to be cut down.

This is the true nature of the beast within which we reside. It will cut off our resources, and then tell us that it's "natural" for people to be slaves and serve it in order to survive. A lot like the way Microsoft has been trying to extinguish free software on the basis that it's "UnAmerican", to use the language of Bill Gates.

The only difference in the physical meatspace world is that here, the same thing happened so long ago, none of us have been alive long enough to remember. The propaganda of corporations and governments tells us that thanks to them, we're better off now than ever before.

By this time the population of Tahiti had been reduced by syphilis, tuberculosis, smallpox and influenza from the 200,000 estimated by Cook to 18,000. After thirty years of missionary rule, only 6,000 remained. Otto Von Kotzebue, leader of a Russian expedition into the Pacific in 1823, long before the decline had reached its terminal phase, wrote: "A religion like this which forbids every innocent pleasure and cramps or annihilates every mental power is a libel on the divine founder of Christianity."

I also like the Martian's conclusion...

Do I propose that humans go back?

No, you can't. It's too late. But you can go forward.

Quit buying into the lie that you have to have a job. As Daniel Quinn says, "Tired of dragging stones up the pyramid? WALK AWAY."

Thank you. The future does not have to be the dystopian nightmare (sometimes disguised as a "bright future" in certain forms of scifi) in which every inch of the earth is covered in pavement, and humans proceed to fuck up outer space in the same manner, once this planet has been made totally uninhabitable.

Just walk away from it. What a beautiful motivational message. (The How then shall we live? part is a bit trickier in practice, but that's what we're here to figure out, isn't it?)

Yes, Linknoid posted the same url to Content Solutions, but I wanted to highlight it here as well. A fascinating article about a man who has started a business in which others pay him to let his goats graze on their land. The goats get rid of weeds far more efficiently than spraying them with poison, and without all the nasty side effects.

He tells his story in the foreign press, because apparently the U.S. media isn't interested. Like any good fascist country.

Crazy dreams. Wild, crazy dreams. I became the robot. A database of 63 questions from which I could randomly choose. This would seed the algorithm. Depeding on the answers, the questions could branch out. My mission was to learn. The questions were asked of small children as I wandered through the labyrinth.

Whatever it was that's been inflicting my housemates over the past few days has found its way into my system. It hasn't been enough to incapacitate me, but it's been damn annoying. An "almost" sore throat on Wednesday and Thursday. An endlessly runny nose today; I blew and wiped it so many times that the skin there feels sore. Now, my vaguely insomniacal tendencies prevent me from sleeping, though I'm not quite awake either.

Woah, that was an incredible movie.

This is why America is such a sick, sad country. This guy's neighbors sound like horrible people, but I have no doubt that there are many like them in every American city. What sort of depraved mindset does it take to call someone growing their own food an "eyesore", while garish billboards lining the streets are considered perfectly acceptable?

At long last, Serenity hit the big screen. I liked this movie, but I didn't love it to the degree that I did the tv show.