Nixon was Bad. These guys are worse.
– George McGovern, WaPo op-ed today

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Whirlpool has announced a refrigerator with embedded wi-fi.

“Hello, this is Refrigerator Tech Support, how may I help you.”

“My refrigerator door refuses to open. It says my authorization has been revoked.”

“Let me log on to your fridge to determine the problem… Ah, it appears your wi-fi bathroom scale notified the refrigerator that your recent weight gain is outside the optimum range, so the refrigerator, as per its instructions as clearly detailed in your owner’s manual, is not allowing you entry.”

(sputtering angry noises)

“It has also revised your weekly food order that it sends to the grocery store so as to insure a quick weight loss. I see you’ll be eating lots of sprouts this week.”

“Aaargh.” (Hangs up, googles “disable refrigerator security” and discovers that HackrDawgz has a program to force the bathroom scale to report a weight of one’s choosing.)

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It sounds too good to be true: a machine that turns trash into oil. But it exists— and the first commercial model has been sold to a company in Arizona to turn junk tires into oil, natural gas, and other reusable products.

Solutions like this having been popping up everywhere lately. Whether it’s continual power from solar, warming an office building by piping in the too-warm air heated by human bodies in the nearby RR station, or trapping the warmth from an asphalt road to heat a house, all manner of macro and micro solutions are being created now.

There will be huge amounts of money and research poured into slowing global warming and creating renewable energy in the coming years, with major breakthroughs sure to come.

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Ray Kest, a business professor at Hodges University in Fort Myers FL who follows the local economy, said banks and other lenders are unable to process the increasing numbers of people who aren’t making their payments. “I understand they’re backed up so far, it’s a tidal wave coming.”

That wave is nowhere near creating, as millions of ARM resets come due this year, which means sharply higher mortgage payments for those whose home is no doubt dropping in value too. Many will walk away from the house, either voluntarily or involuntarily.

So, what happens to communities like Fort Meyers when huge numbers of foreclosures tanks their real estate market and economy? Blocks and blocks of mostly vacant homes and a city government no longer able to provide basic services because the tax base evaporated are some obvious results. This will trigger a further exodus of residents and businesses, making things even worse.

I genuinely think we will be seeing dead towns as a result of the real estate collapse. What happens when large numbers of people lose their homes? Where do they go? Will we have any real safety nets for them to bounce off of?

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From The Left Coaster

The hippies were right

One of Duncan Black’s favorite minted expressions, rightly so, is dirty fucking hippie, the instant dismissive moniker chucked at any liberal idea to crush its legitimacy.
…
Those environmentalist hippies were and are right, in other words, to survive American has to become radically different with vastly different leadership, but it’s hard to remain optimistic when current political leadership yaps about nothing on purpose to prop up the status quo.

I’m proud to say it, I was a DFH. More of a yippie actually, those being the politicized hippies, usually as a result of getting arrested. Yes, much of what we did and proclaimed, stoned and naive as we were, proved true. Environmentalism and feminism came directly out of Hippie. So did a mistrust of government. Back then, to say “our government lies to us” was to invite hostility and incredulity. Today everyone, conservatives included, just assumes it. Sure, many of those ideas were already present, but it was the cultural explosion of the 60’s that pushed them into national consciousness.

The Greens were right too. They were talking global warming and the need for change back when to do so put you in the fringe of the fringe. Now it’s a mainstream belief.

So, for all you DFHs out there, do what the European eco-Left did when the Right tried to slime them by calling them watermelons (green on the outside, red on the inside) - they turned it around and used it as a compliment.

The hippies were and are right, it turned out in the end, completely and totally. Until our political leadership unabashedly trumpets that fact with an agenda of real change I’ll continue to be pessimistic for long term political American existence, radical change in how we live is absolutely necessary, starting with abandonment as a species of internal combustion.

I’m actually optimistic. Signs of change are everywhere. Most governments and businesses now get it about global warming and renewable energy, a sea change from just a few years ago. The coming regime change in D.C. will speed the process here too.

(The photo is Country Joe, a true DFH, just before going on stage at Woodstock. I was there too.)

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