Bob Morris @ Jun 2nd 2008 22:10 - Category: Energy conservation, Renewable energy ;
Cheap electricity from waste heat
Hospital to be heated and cooled by artificial geothermal lake
Instead of putting the airbag in the car, put the car in the airbag.
Bob Morris @ Jun 2nd 2008 16:34 - Category: Unfiled ;
James Kunstler on the Iraq War and Peak Oil.
For my money, the “we were lied to” chorus only represents the obdurately self-righteous cluelessness in every band of the American political spectrum. We lied to ourselves. We continue to lie to ourselves every day. The US public barely understands the first thing about the energy predicament we’re in, and what it means for how we live in this country — or how we get along with the rest of the world — and the news media tragically reflects that ignorance. We fantasize about being “energy independent” and still being able to drive to the mall three times a day to eat caesar salads grown on the other side of North America. Get this: we deserve exactly what is happening to us. We might as well keep on lying to ourselves to pretend that we are not descending into a dark phase of our own history. After all, the true basis of American life these days is to feel good about yourself no matter what you do.
This echoes Bill Gross in the previous post, saying how America has been deceiving itself about inflation. These aren’t partisan issues. It’s not Us vs. Them. It’s We. We as a country have big problems that need solving. The first step in solving problems is admitting they exist. The “feel good” ethos is just the other side of neocon American exceptionalism, both imply the US somehow is immune from rules that other countries are bound to. Dream world?
Bob Morris @ Jun 2nd 2008 13:30 - Category: Unfiled ;
In his monthly column for June, and the above CNBC interview, Bill Gross strongly implies the inflation numbers released by the US government are unrealistically low (and deliberately so, no doubt), while the higher numbers reported by other countries are more reliable, and that the US in general is fooling itself.
Alternative energy discussion takes a bleacher’s seat to the latest foibles of Lindsay Lohan or Britney Spears and then we wonder why gas is four bucks a gallon. We care as much as we always have – we just care about the wrong things: entertainment, as opposed to informed choices; trivia vs. hardcore ideological debate.
It’s Sunday afternoon at the Coliseum folks, and all good fun, but the hordes are crossing the Alps and headed for modern day Rome – better educated, harder working, and willing to sacrifice today for a better tomorrow. Can it be any wonder that an estimated 1% of America’s wealth migrates into foreign hands every year? We, as a people, are overweight, poorly educated, overindulged, and imbued with such a sense of self importance on a geopolitical scale, that our allies are dropping like flies. “Yes we can?” Well, if so, then the “we” is the critical element, not the leader that will be chosen in November. Let’s get off the couch and shape up – physically, intellectually, and institutionally – and begin to make some informed choices about our future. Lincoln didn’t say it, but might have agreed, that the worst part about being fooled is fooling yourself, and as a nation, we’ve been doing a pretty good job of that for a long time now.
He advises investing in BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) and foreign currencies. (Gross is Managing Director of PIMCO, they manage $800bn is assets.)
Steppenwolf said much the same thing it in the 60s in “Monster”.
Cause the people grew fat and got lazy
And now their vote is a meaningless joke
They babble about law and order
But it’s all just an echo of what they’ve been told
Yeah, there’s a monster on the loose
It’s got our heads into a noose
And it just sits there watchin’
Bob Morris @ Jun 2nd 2008 13:23 - Category: Unfiled ;
He was a giant, and his influence is still being felt throughout rock and blues.
Bob Morris @ Jun 2nd 2008 11:17 - Category: Election 2008 Tags: Hillary Clinton, Obama;
NPR just reported that Hillary Clinton will be giving a major speech Tuesday night in New York and quoted Obama as saying she’s run a superb campaign and he and she will be working together in November.
Bob Morris @ Jun 2nd 2008 10:30 - Category: Unfiled ;
Urban liberal solutions to gun violence remind me of the way we have dealt with the meth epidemic among working and poor whites, an epidemic which is eating the core out of the heartland working class. Meth is the poor white man’s crack cocaine. Instead of addressing the social dynamics of hopelessness that drive the meth epidemic out here among working class whites, laws were passed to remove over the counter cold medicines. Sure, it was an appropriate move. But mostly it has been moving production of meth to “superlabs” in Mexico, India and good ole China. (Ah, globalism!)
Cutting supply can’t and won’t cut demand. Prohibition showed us that. The market will always find a way to supply a need. Odd isn’t it, that a capitalist society can’t figure that out when it comes to black market goods?
If you want to stop drug addiction, then focus on why people become addicts and how to get them off drugs. If they see a chance for a better life, and have a helping hand available when they need it most, then chances are good they’ll be able to kick drugs and get on with their new life.
But that probably doesn’t happen much in Appalachia. And it needs to. The class bias that both ignores and punishes urban people of color does the same to poor rural whites too.
Bob Morris @ Jun 2nd 2008 07:11 - Category: Unfiled Tags: San Bruno Mountain;
San Bruno Mountain is near where we live. It’s a good-sized mountain in the middle of a densely populated area. I was about the only person on the Ridge Trail on Sunday when I took this picture looking north to San Francisco. It was about 60 degrees and extremely windy, a steady 40-50 mpg on the ridge line with gusts up to 60.
View full-sized photo on Flickr.
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