Peak or Not joeviallshas a better class of conspiracy theories, plus nifty maps: When oil aint cheap no more. What about food? The big problem is not so much the Urea fertiliser, which is Joule-effective (ie Urea takes a lot of (NaturalGas) Joules, but it returns More Joules in extra growth. Rather the whole system:Transport, packaging, storage, pesticides, herbicides, Tractors, trucks, fridges.. taken as a whole is Way Negative Joule efficient. There is the Big Myth that modern agriculture is higher "Yield" than traditional polyculture. Actually it has a negative "Yield". Traditional, labour intensive multi-crop with animals is has a Much higher "Yield" per hectare. But it needs people on the land, full time to wathc the chickens and hand-weed. The PostPeak crash, it seems to me, will come from the Townships.. the billions of poor people who have settled around the megacities in the last few decades. They dont grow any food, they dont even gather roof water, they depend on central electric grid power. They are trying to climb on board the consumption train, just as its heads for a crash. I reckon the rich white world will struggle on for a while PostPeak, the big problem is from the couple of billion Township dwellers. Cuba is trying to grow food in City gardens, with some success, but its hard to see Sao Paulo, Johberg, MexicoCity, Jakarta, Manila favelas/barrios quickly feeding themselves.
Australian whites OTOH are the most grotesquely vicious and selfish people I have known. Their navy ordered to NOT rescue refugees from the sea until ALL had left their sinking boat. Fortunately some Navy disobeyed these inhuman orders, and rescued children from the boat. Sentimentality is, of course, the other face of selfishness. It remains to be seen if a sentimental mood can be invoked by showing videos of refugees now on land. The current PrimeMinister has perfected the sneer, in much the same way as George W has perfected the smirk. I reckon they both know their markets. Elections 9 Oct 04 in Afghanistan & Australia.
RNC NYC democracyuprisingculturekitchensmartmobs barlow dancingredtv nyc.indymediaruckusupocportland.indymedia TXTmob is a service that lets you quickly and easily share txt messages with friends, comrades, and total strangers. The format is similar to an email b-board system. You can sign up to send and receive messages from various groups, which are organized around a range of different topics. TXTMob was designed for use by protestors at the Democratic National Convention in Boston this summer. It is currently being revamped for use at the Republican National Convention in New York this August. For more info about both these events, please read this press release. this very downbeat, from NYTimes Aug. 28 - ..Falluja and Ramadi, and much of Anbar Province, are now controlled by fundamentalist militias, with American troops confined mainly to heavily protected forts on the desert's edge. .. former Hussein loyalists, under threat .. have mostly resigned or defected .. In the past three weeks:..The chief of a battalion of the American-trained Iraqi National Guard in Falluja was beheaded by the militants, prompting the disintegration of guard forces in the city. The Anbar governor was forced to resign after his three sons were kidnapped. The third official, the provincial police chief in Ramadi, was lured to his arrest by American marines after three assassination attempts led him to secretly defect to the rebel cause. ..In another taped sequence available in the Falluja market, a mustached man identifying himself as an Egyptian is shown kneeling ..confessing that he "worked as a spy for the Americans," planting electronic "chips" used for setting targets.. says he was paid $150 for each chip laid, then he, too, is tackled to the ground by masked guards while a third masked man..pulls a 12-inch knife from a scabbard, grabs the Egyptian by the scalp, and severs his head. ..First Marine Expeditionary Force..offensive ended, mortifyingly for the marines, in a decision to pull back from both cities.. icasualties, showing 972 USAnians dead 27Aug but only 1 from Najaf, so we wont know when the 1000 dead mark is passed
ALJ: Thursday 26 August 2004, 2:19 Makka Time Thousands of Shia supporters greeted al-Sistani's return As US AC-130s continued their sixth day of bombing runs on al-Mahdi Army positions in Najaf, Grand Ayat Allah Ali al-Sistani has issued a call for Iraqis to march to the city to "save it from destruction". Iranian-born al-Sistani arrived in the southern city of Basra early on Wednesday and called on the march to begin on Thursday. Earlier on Wednesday, Aljazeera reported that 16 men were killed and 102 others wounded during a peaceful demonstration heading towards Najaf... AP TV.. showed demonstrators wounded during a few minutes of heavy gunfire. The marchers chanted slogans in support of al-Sadr and carried pictures of the cleric as well as pictures of al-Sistani. .. Witnesses said the gunfire appeared to come from an Iraqi National Guard post, which sat behind concrete blast walls along the demonstration route. NYT: His aides said he planned to drive to Najaf at dawn Thursday and lead a march to the shrine of Imam Ali.
It is now 5:30am in Iraq so the march will start in 2 or 3 hours time.. get the feeling that the Iraq war is about to begin?
Wednesday, the Army battalion ..Najaf held a funeral for two soldiers killed in fighting in the cemetery. But the marines have not yet held funerals for five marines who died, including four in the first two days of fighting. .. ...C Company was not the only unit in the cemetery, a warren of graves and mausoleums that is nearly two miles wide and three miles long. Nearly the entire battalion of 1,200 troops participated in the battle, at least on the fringes. .. gulf-news redpepper a review commissioned by the World Bank had recommended that the institution should stop funding fossil-fuel projects by 2008. The Extractive Industries Review (EIR) was commissioned in 2001 to examine what role.. the World Bank has in ..(oil, gas and mining). ..suggested that in some cases World Bank involvement even made situations worse. .. ..former Indonesian environment minister Dr Emil Salim ..the New Economics Foundation (NEF) .. countries tend to go deeper into debt as a result of ..emphasis on fossil fuels. The Price of Power states that the infrastructure needed for fossil-fuel distribution is expensive and highly centralised, and does little for overall access to energy. ..even a small shift away from fossil fuels towards clean renewable energy could save millions of lives and help avert climate change. ..unless the fossil-fuel industry becomes history, poverty will remain part of the present dissent.org.uk Extractive Industries Review
the Coal Industry is upset to the point of incoherence...
"..energy is a vital driver of sustainable development, and that allenergy sources will be required for the foreseeable future(sic)....The WCI is particularly concerned about the recommendation for a complete withdrawal from the coal sector. Coal has played a major role in bringing energy to the world’s poor, bringing enormous benefits in health...."
hubbertpeak.com peakoil.com 24-August-04 ....titanium oxide ceramics photoelectrodes sunlight .. to produce hydrogen ..Prof Nowotny & Sorrell ...in Sydney 27 August..Conference on .. Hydrogen Energy at UNSW...inventors of the solar hydrogen process, Prof Fujishima & Honda While UNSW has invested more than $1 million into the project since it began three years ago, it did so on the understanding the team would become financially independent.
This work has no Aus Govt funding. The current Govt gives 100M to coal, but nothing to Nowotony... Dick Cheney must be proud of them...
cellulosic ethanol.. Iogen.. a genetically-engineered microbe that processes the cellulose much more easily. ( Novozymes.. a similar process.) ..ethanol made from stalks and husks still has to be fermented. But ..it uses .. waste products of food if the waste of all American farms were converted into cellulosic ethanol = 25 % of the energy needed to run our transportation = Venezuela+ Persian Gulf.. ..Switchgrass requires very little energy to harvest compared with corn. ..15 % of the North American ..land that is unsuitable for food..but workable for switchgrass... replace every gallon of gas consumed in the USA.. Lanny Schmidt U Minnesota..developed a glass tube ..metal plates ..size of a Bic lighter...rhodium and cerium, ..hydrogen out of ethanol and feed it into a fuel cell Chuckman at Dissidentvoice..not wrapt in Kerry..."his heroic deeds included chasing after a wounded man and shooting him in the back and skippering a machine gun-mounted speed boat that ran up and down rivers shooting peasants desperate enough to appear in their own fields"
Food glorious supplements..
Food glorious supplements.. good oils: fish oil tests clean .. Udo likes flax .. Sears likes fishoil ipodmania: Make your own Pirate Radio Station with an iPod .. "We usually keep a couple tracks of silence ready to go, ever get stuck at a stop light for like 10 minutes and the dude in the next car is blasting the radio? With the super easy iPod interface you can quickly get to the station he’s on and send over whatever you want, a couple gentle ocean waves or birds usually works out great" Seiko Epson's micro-flying robot iFR-II...Bluetooth wireless control, independent flight and the 'world's smallest and lightest' gyro-sensor, the micro-flying robot also has an image sensor unit that can capture and transmit aerial images to a monitor on land.
Australians have a deep seated fear about being thrown out of the boat. Not a secure people. Lao Lishi may have got silver, but she fell like an angel
Ruckus...Ted Turner, Howard Cannon, Mike Roselle,Patagonia and Anita Roddick cant be wrong - trust they will mess up the RNC in Manhattan. Hunters Hill Dock
Right whales in the harbour again the other day. Ferries on strike so I missed them. Seems my fate: in 2002 I had just left on holiday when these guys commenced mating under the bridge
Thorndon Quay 1909 the bottom of our street. I dont remember the old printing office, but I do remember double decker trams.
8-Day Battle for Najaf: From Attack to Stalemate..alex berenson 18Aug04 NYT ..five days after they arrived here to take over from Army units that had encircled Najaf..Marine commanders decided to smash guerrillas loyal to the rebel Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr. ..Acting without the approval of the Pentagon or senior Iraqi officials..they turned a firefight with Mr. Sadr's forces Aug. 5, into a eight-day pitched battle.. ..what the Marines had hoped would be a quick, decisive action has bogged down into a grinding battle that appears to have strengthened the hand of Mr. Sadr ..sequence of events was strikingly reminiscent of the battle of Falluja in April.. Falluja is now essentially off-limits to American ground troops "If Israel fires one missile at Bushehr atomic power plant, it should permanently forget about Dimona nuclear centre, where it produces and keeps its nuclear weapons, and Israel would be responsible for the terrifying consequence of this move," General Muhammad Baqir Zolqadr warned. Shahab-3 new CEP 190m (Previously 3000m) Still not pin-point precision, and Dimona is buried deep, but it would mean arriving to work at a smoking crater... Maybe too late for the Zionistas to prevent the Iran nuke.
Moqtada al-Sadr chokes off the oil. Lives to tell about it. Chavez defies touch-screen coup. I begin to believe that the rag-tag Washington Zionistas will be driven out of town
Weird Science...
Quantum Mechanics as it should be: French Movies... Mecanique Quantique Calabi-Yau another Calabi-Yau South Pacific Salmon ..in both the Atlantic and Pacific ..10 times more PCBs, dioxins and pesticide residues in farmed salmon than in the wild variety... culprit is salmon feed: ..ground up small fish, which are rich in fish oil ..fish bought in the U.S., Canada and Europe..from offshore farms in Scotland, Norway and the Faroe Islands..levels not quite as high in British Columbia, Washington state and Chile. ..any slightly elevated risk of cancer pales in comparison with the advantages of ..omega-3 fatty acids, which help prevent heart attacks. ..6,000 people getting cancer over their lifetime versus .. saving the lives of 100,000 ..every year." ..big difference in 13 of 14 organochlorine pollutants, including banned pesticides, PCBs and dioxins. ..salmon from Scotland and the Faroe Islands were the most contaminated.. Salmon grown in British Columbia and Washington were cleaner, but the least contaminated were from Chile.. oil from fish caught in the South Pacific, far away from the industrialized north, was the cleanest.
Many business leaders and policymakers believe that any meaningful attempt to address the climate crisis will result in global poverty. We believe the exact opposite is true. A properly financed, public-private global transition to high-efficiency and renewable energy technologies holds the potential for an unprecedented worldwide economic boom. A global public works program to rewire the planet would create millions of new jobs all over the world. It would begin to reverse the widening gap between the North and the South. It would raise living standards in developing nations without compromising the economic achievements of industrial nations. And in a very few years, the renewable energy industry would eclipse high technology as the 'ral driving engine of growth of the global economy. heatisonline AsiaTimes Big Oil, to the extent it took any position at all on the war, opposed it. As evidence.. the unusually public opposition to a unilateral invasion.. by such eminent oil and ruling class-related influentials as ..Brent Scowcroft and..James Baker. ..some economic interests - construction giants, such as Halliburton and Bechtel, and high-tech arms companies - may have given the push to war some momentum, the decisive factor in their view was ideological.."neo-conservative". Powered by both Jewish and non-Jewish neo-conservatives centered in the offices ..Rumsfeld.. Cheney and by White House deference to the solidly pro-Zionist Christian Right, ..America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order (Cambridge University Press)..Stefan Halper,Clarke.. motherjones ..1,000 Afghan casualties and 100 U.S. soldiers killed, 2004 has so far proven to be the worst year for casualties .. Senior CIA analyst Michael Scheuer'Imperial Hubris', that the United States' decision to wait until October 2001 to begin its military operations -- allowing Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters time to escape -- is the "most important reason why al Qaeda emerged damaged but not broken from the first round of battles in Afghanistan." .. "Aside from sporadic, short-term ground operations meant to capture, not kill, al Qaeda and Taleban leaders, and infrequent air strikes -- which have hit several weddings or social occasions instead of terrorists -- al Qaeda and the Taleban have been under almost no military pressure in Afghanistan since March 2002 .. al Qaeda and its allies not only survived the wretchedly ill-conceived U.S. military campaign a waged against them, but have retained a strong presence in Afghanistan and seized the initiative." slate When an army has penetrated into the heart of a hostile country, leaving a number of fortified cities in its rear, it is serious ground. On serious ground, gather in plunder. When the enemy wins a referendum by touch screen voting machines: Cast doubt on his win, Ensure your own software back-doors are in place. Mabini 86 ..
whales, for no reason http://www.kicken.com/commercials/www.kicken.com-puma.jamaica.wmv" title="http://www.kicken.com/commercials/www.kicken.com-puma.jamaica.wmv" target="_blank"http://www.kicken.com/commerc... Jamaican puma movie
Weird Science
science blogs sciencebaselinksmgrantvillescienceblognuzee sick of nature August 15..Cancer Research..cannabinoids significantly lowered VEGF (vascular endothelial growth factor,mrequired for brain tumor blood vessels) activity in laboratory mice and two patients with late-stage glioblastoma" 19Feb04 The Junk Science of George W. Bush by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ....right-wing allies who have produced assorted hired guns and conservative think tanks to further their goals--are engaged in a campaign to suppress science that is arguably unmatched in the Western world since the Inquisition. ..more than sixty scientists, including Nobel laureates and medical experts, released a statement on February 18 that accuses the Bush Administration of deliberately distorting scientific fact "for partisan political ends." .... September 13, just two days after the terror attack, the EPA announced that asbestos dust in the area was "very low" or entirely absent. On September 18 the agency said the air was "safe to breathe." In fact, more than 25 percent of the samples collected by the EPA before September 18 showed presence of asbestos above the 1 percent safety benchmark. Among outside studies, one performed by scientists at the University of California, Davis, found particulates at levels never before seen in more than 7,000 similar tests worldwide. .. 34,000 endangered salmon were killed after National Marine Fisheries scientists altered their findings on the amount of water the salmon required. Environmentalists describe it as the largest fish kill in the history of the West. Mike Kelly, the fisheries biologist on the Klamath who drafted the biological opinion, told me that under the current plan coho salmon are probably headed for extinction... Atrazine at one-thirtieth the government's "safe" 3 parts per billion level causes grotesque deformities in frogs, including multiple sets of organs. ..reproductive consequences in humans associated with Atrazine, including male semen counts in farm communities that are 50 percent below normal.. The Bush Administration reacted to the frightening findings not by banning this dangerous chemical, as the European Union has, but by taking the studies away from EPA scientists and, in an unprecedented move, giving the chemical's manufacturer, Switzerland-based Syngenta, control over federal research The Bush Administration has so violated and corrupted the institutional culture of government agencies charged with scientific research that it could take a generation for them to recover their integrity even if Bush is defeated this fall. Says Princeton University scientist Michael Oppenheimer, "If you believe in a rational universe, in enlightenment, in knowledge and in a search for the truth, this White House is an absolute disaster." Bush junk science: ucsusasciencewars Francis Crick, the British scientist who, along with co-researcher James Watson, discovered the double helix structure of DNA in 1953, admitted years later that he often took small doses of LSD to boost his powers of thought. He told a young biochemist, Richard Kemp, that he had in fact perceived the double helix shape while on LSD and had fed that idea into his research.
Others who credit LSD with increasing creativity: Steve Jobs Apple Kerry Mullins PCR Nobel Users who have refused public credit: Bill Gates
Mad Cow: Ranchers Taking Advice To 'Shoot, Shovel & Shut Up' princeton "Existing technologies could stop the escalation of global warming for 50 years Princeton University ..will provide a tremendous stimulus to the economy "
Thats the tragedy of Oil & Global heat: We could be working on clean energy technology with more jobs not less, if only the Oilheads hadnt seized power...
Last Chance Texaco cont....
Why He Crushed the Oligarchs The Importance of Hugo Chávez By Tariq Ali " The opposition is light-skinned and some of its more disgusting supporters denounce Chavez as a black monkey. A puppet show to this effect with a monkey playing Chavez was even organised at the US Embassy in Caracas. But Colin Powell was not amused and the Ambassador was compelled to issue an apology. The bizarre argument advanced in a hostile editorial in The Economist this week that all this was done to win votes is extraordinary."
Now that USA has quieted down one OPEC troublespot - even at the expense of stabilising a Castrophile, I predict that that other good ole boy Slick Willie will be despatched to Nigeria to calm down the oil heads over there. This is known as the plateau: when a resource is peaking, pump like mad, get a flat top to your peak. Of course the downslope is that much steeper...
17-08-4The U.S. military here ended its 10-day airlift operation on Wednesday to shift its 3,600 frontline troops from the Korean peninsula to Iraq, according to the U.S. Forces Korea on Thursday. ..Earlier on Monday, a US tank was destroyed by an explosion in al-Sadr city in Baghdad.
Magal to participate in tender for European separation fence Israeli companies will participate in tenders to build hundreds of kilometers of fences along the EU's new eastern border. ..The EU plans to build a fence to separate its new members - Poland and Hungary - from its new neighbors - Russia, Belarus and Ukraine - to prevent the free movement of migrants seeking to enter the EU. aztec calendar crop circle on Silbury hill
Vanilla Tapes, recorded by the Clash in 1979, has been rediscovered [Independent] "The ice age is coming, the sun is zooming in Meltdown expected, the wheat is growing thin Engines stop running, but I have no fear London is drowning - live by the river" In 1979 I was living in Hammersmith, the Thames barrage not yet completed. Saw Blondie's "Union City Blues" and moved to Manhattan.
"I crossed a crow's-foot of street-car tracks, and skirted the edge of an umbrageous park" O Henry Boiling Point: How Politicians, Big Oil and Coal..the Climate Crisis..By Ross Gelbspan. review by Al Gore Gelbspan's first book, ''The Heat Is On'' (1997), remains the best, and virtually only, study of how the coal and oil industry has provided financing to a small group of contrarian scientists who began to make themselves available for mass media interviews as so-called skeptics on the subject of global warming... In this new book..After documenting the largely successful efforts of companies like ExxonMobil to paralyze the policy process.. he concludes that ''what began as a normal business response by the fossil fuel lobby -- denial and delay -- has now attained the status of a crime against humanity.'' I wouldn't have said it quite that way, but I'm glad he does e. Gelbspan .. endorses ..the World Energy Modernization Plan..Harvard Medical School. Chapter 1
Pelicans in the park. For 3 years Pelicans have prodded past the black swans to front row at pan-handling central, Centennial Park. For the previous decade I never saw pelicans there. Drought in Australia, maybe here to stay. (one cygnet seen last week) Global warming is not the main reason I hate big Oil. I hate it because of the inhuman shape it imposes on our culture. That being said, it looks like the big heat is going to be a doozy, like mass extinctions, big hurricanes, really high tides.. Funny thing about the biosphere: lots of good folk always saying that "Nature recycles everything","Nature doesnt waste" - well what about all that coal. Sure looks like Nature's waste to me. The only way Nature has of recycling coal is our furnaces. We, of course, cant restrain ourselves to a ecological pace. Our burning rate will outstrip the march of boreal forests. A whole lotta stuff is going to die. 'This has really scared me,' said Prof Colin Pritchard ..incidence of brain diseases in the UK, US, Japan, Australia, Canada, WEurope 1979-97...dementias.. trebled for men and +90% [or +170%?] among women in England .. All the other countries were also affected.. ..Parkinson's and motor neurone disease rise of 50 % both men and women in every country except Japan.. .. The causes were most likely to be chemicals, from car pollution to pesticides on crops and industrial chemicals.. ..Food .. the most obvious explanation..Only when Japanese people move to the other countries do their disease rates increase. Dextre to rescue the Hubble?
Last Chance Texaco cont......
Grand Ayatollah Kadhim al-Haeri al-Haeri, based in Qom, has issued a fatwa that no Iraqi Muslim may fight another Muslim on behalf of the current regime in Iraq and its American backers. ..Ayatollah Muhammad Bahr al-Ulum.. says that the Allawi government and its American backers have lost political control of everything south of Najaf Bahr al-Ulum has lost faith in US intentions towards Iraq, and says millions of moderates like him, who welcomed last year's invasion, now regard Washington as an enemy. Fadlallah correctly pointed out that high Shiite authorities don't resign, it isn't that kind of position. He said he thought that the Marja`iyyah or highest Shiite leadership needed to become an institution, rather than remaining informal and personalistic. . Some people have been claiming that Sistani was flown away to London to 'remove' him from the scene in Najaf against his will. They underestimate the power of a supreme Hawza cleric, if Sistani wished, he could quite easily issue a fatwa or a statement from his hospital bed against the US actions. A supreme marji' can't easily be intimidated or silenced. They forget that Sayyid Mohammed Taqi Al-Shirazi issued the fatwa that sparked the massive 1920 uprising against the British while he was on his death bed, and he did indeed die days later but the revolt did not. ghost troop ghost troop 3/7 cavalry r. i. p. America's Disgraced Dead from the Battle of Baghdad
This page best viewed by Mozilla (InternetExplorer is slow, infectious and has gross scrollbars
why I hate cars continued: 2003: 104,000 people killed by cars collisions in China silly racing car noise
Colin McCahon .. about to be sold for $200K?
more McCahon and tribute from Nigel Brown:
Last Chance Texaco cont......
USAnians scared to go in? NAJAF 11 Aug ..American forces called off the assault, at least for now. ..Officers here said the delay had resulted from a need to extend planning..
The International Energy Agency sees global oil demand at 82.2 E6bbl/day in 2004 and 84 E6bbl/day in 2005, World oil +1.8 E6bbl in 2005, after a record + 2.5 E6bbl/day 2004 OPEC, produces a third .. .. "effective" spare capacity ..500,000 bbl/day... excludes .. Iraq, Venezuela, Nigeria and Indonesia, which can't boost ..because of disruptions.. OPEC's total spare capacity = 1.2 E6bbl/day in 2002 was 7 E6bbl/day. "I basically don't think there is any spare capacity left," said Adam Sieminski, global oil strategist at Deutsche Bank in London. "If you have a hiccup anywhere in the world, you can have prices well above $50 or more." 10-08-4 Basra Deputy Governor Salam Uda al-Maliki is to announce the separation of some Iraqi southern governorates from the central Baghdad government. ....Basra, Misan and Dhi Qar governorates. He also wants to shut Basra's port.. ..because the Iraqi interim government was "responsible for the Najaf clashes". ..we will stop Misan's oil flow, until Baghdad's government restores its logic
Just why I hate cars so much is hard to say. I've owned a few in my life. It seems clear that having a car is as important to a man as a tailfan to a peacock. No car no sex. So a car is a vital secondary sexual characteristic. Certainly true in my experience, never took a girl home on a bicycle. The old formula worked: to entrance a female, take her far away from her familiar zone, and feed her. Women will demand whatever is the perceived current ideal feature, men will provide whatever women demand. Women demand a powerful man, who is sensitive to the ecology, and who drives a really big car. Enter the SUV which says "I love nature, I can drive over her with 200kW" All car ads show a single car in wild nature, never another car, never a jam.
What really drives me is the lack of con-viviality of car shaped societies. (an Ivan Illich term ... not human scaled, not conducive to cool living ... ) Half the surface is covered in car-zones, killing grounds for walkers. The sounds of wheels and motors never dies. Noxious toxic fumes thoughtlessly envelop us all. Four days a month are spent working to buy the car to drive to work in. Near neighbours are spited and ignored, we merely drive away.
ChieflyI hate them because car-oil industry tyrannise the earth, drop nuclear weapons on the poor, bind all to their arrogant wheels. Do I believe that people can ever resist the allure of 100kW, the allure of car-ads, and the allure of car-aided sex? No I dont. The situation is hopeless, until cheap oil runs out. In a few years time.
Some wonderful car-free places I have lived:
Wilderlands 1972: Down a deeply rutted dirt track on the East coast of Coromandel. I would drag my tiny 1968 minivan with 4 or five people in it down the track, usually loosing my muffler on the way. This place showed me that the whole commune only needs a motorvehicle once or twice a week, for trips to town. The rest of the time was organic farming, and generally grooving, 70's style - mostly stark naked & smoking hashish mixed with raspberry leaves.
Manhattan1979 A great city NOT to have a car. Lots of subways. I admit that after 2am I preferred yellow cabs for safety. But before midnight the place was safe enough, even in the bad days of 1980 when barbiturate dealers controlled Union Square.
Sabang 1998 A village on the coast of Mindoro. Built up with concrete paths and 2 story hotels. Lots of wealthy people live or holiday here, because the diving is good just 20 minutes from the beach. Also the night life is cool. The street sounds consist of the sliding of slippers ("thongs" in Ausspeak) on concrete. Occasional scuba compressors, the departure of bankas, and the idling of a few jeepneys in the main street. Narrow paths, no motors. Paradise.
Bagong Silang ("New Town") Steep narrow paths, packed HollowBlock houses. The paths have a drain in the centre covered with concrete slabs. Some slabs are broken, which makes nighttime walking a skill. I have to confess I have introduced a 100cc motor scooter. Really a task to drive it down the steep narrow, child dense path with big broken drain holes. In my defence, it was my wife's idea, and it is small, well muffled, and clean burning - compared with most of the bikes around there. My case against 1 ton cars stands.
George W, ever the prick.
fastest self-powered human 31Jul04 Sam Whittingham 84.215km in 1 hour. Cartier Bresson
Coffee, Sandinistas, Musang, and the anterior cingulate cortex
Best Coffee I ever tasted: Sandinista Nicaragua Maragogipe. When the contras took over, the beans got ordinary. Most expensive coffee: Kopi Luwak, US$1,000/kg.. coffee beans are eaten and passed by the musang (Asian palm civet) (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus)(Both sexes have anal scent glands looking like testes).. production: 230 kg/year
[seems someone should put a sack of berries in a cage full of these smelly critters, and clean up ..OTOH they were a source of SARS so expect Kopi Luwak to get even higher]
Coffee & Insulin: http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20040807/foo d.aspwo" title="http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20040807/foo d.aspwo" target="_blank"http://www.sciencenews.org/ar... studies last March in the Journal of the AMA: suggested heavy coffee drinkers 6+ cups .. have a lower risk of diabetes than persons drinking 2 cups 2 new reports indicate the contrary. James D. Lane Duke U.. with type 2 diabetes..glucose & sugar higher after 125mg caffeine Terry E. Graham of the U Guelph..same effect in obese men..
But .... coffee possesses compounds ,chlorogenic acids,that partially neutralize caffeine's diabetes-aggravating properties. Also: I put cinnamon bark in my plunger. (methylhydroxy chalcone polymer (MHCP) makes fat cells more responsive to insulin) Gadget Fetish: go for the Russell Hobbes grinder.
Gadget fetish: Avanti aluminium bike bottle $8.50 from Victoria's basement. ...and now a plug for my big sister's business: melbourne wedding celebrant Catherine is a celebrant extraordinaire: Weddings, funerals, anything. She has heaps of great ideas. At our mothers funeral she made sure there were long handled spades so we could fill in the grave. Better by hand, than leaving it to a back-hoe. Get real with your celebrations.
Last Chance Texaco cont......
Ali Bakhtiari, head of strategic planning (NIOC): "Cheap oil is dead. You are never going to see oil priced at $25 a barrel again. 10 August 2004, 1:22 Makka Time "Pumping from the southern oil fields..was stopped today after threats made by Sadr," the official told Reuters. "It will remain stopped until the threat is over," Fighters loyal to al-Sadr roamed the streets of Basra on Monday and controlled major intersections.... ..Iraq's northern oilfields.. remain closed after..attacks on the..pipeline from the Kirkuk fields. ..Iraq has been exporting 1.9E6bbl/day, all from its southern fields. From Najaf, the road directly back to Baghdad is blocked. We take an alternate route through the central Iraqi city of Kufa, another Sadr bastion. There, an Iraqi police checkpoint that had been manned just the day before is abandoned. At the Kufa mosque - where Moqtada al-Sadr's speech that day will call on Muslims to fight against the Americans, "our enemies" - there are only Mahdi Army fighters, within full sight of the main road. It will be another 40 kilometers before we see another checkpoint manned by Iraqi police or US military.”
Weird Science...
This is your brain on a downer 1) cortex orbitofrontal 2) cortex préfrontal latéral 3) cortex ventromédian 4) système limbique 5) cortex cingulaire antérieur
people prone to depression.... front and center of the brain (orbitofrontal cortex, thalamus, anterior cingulate, and ventral striatum overactive in people prone to depression -- even when they are not depressed Ice packs anyone? Low tryptophan for 2 days gave them the blues Locusts now hatching in W Africa & E Australia... Blimp locust trawling: So do NOT spray toxins, send Nets and catch the locusts for stock food. Tow nets beneath a Blimp, slower and cheaper than a helicopter, but still faster than a swarm, When the net fills, drop a sack, note GPS position and keep on trawling. If net snags on a tree, just drop it, note GPS, retrieve with a truck later.
Surgeons succeed in removing Americans head from anus, Dude! check this Video of some USAnian dudes wasting some Iraqi dudes, dude! http://prisonplanet.com/articles/july2004/190 704liberationvideo.htm" title="http://prisonplanet.com/articles/july2004/190 704liberationvideo.htm" target="_blank"http://prisonplanet.com/artic... Oil: "the market had not expected such strong demand from countries like China and India which pushed overall consumption up by 3.2% in one year to 81.4 million bpd, but added the problem should be temporary." ..strategic alliances between animals..ANU. Fiddler crabs will frequently leave the comfort and safety of their burrow entrance and territory to help a neighbour repel an intruder ...the primary motivation for crabs forming coalitions with their neighbours is a preference to retain their existing neighbours "better the crab you know than the one you don’t" IBM gives Cloudscape,a Java integrated database, to Apache Open Source. Janet Pernaat I.B.M: "We hope to spur the further development of the Java community." They hope to boost WebSphere which competes with Microsoft .Net Gates: "one of those will emerge as a better piece of software" 30 July 2004.. Brazil's NIAmazon Research 400 E6T of CO2 were emitted in 2003. ..60% higher than previous estimates ..failed to ..account.. rotting vegetation. "Its emitting much more than it is absorbing," ..The Amazon's four dams ..more emissions ..than Sao Paulo We all live in a tiny Aussi submarine (45cm)
"a research vessel that looks and feels pretty much like a luxury yacht. One of the most obvious adjustments is the lab bench set up in the library next to the galley; it includes a $35,000 fluorescent microscope hooked up to a 42-inch plasma videoscreen on the wall (also useful for watching movies). At 95 feet long, Howard says, the Sorcerer II is almost exactly the size of the Endeavour. But where Cook's vessel was made of wood, hemp, and pine tar, Venter's is fabricated from foam core, epoxy resin, and carbon fiber. The Sorcerer II's aerodynamic hull is essentially that of a modern racing yacht, while the Endeavour's was a "huge bulbous box with square ends," Howard says. Cook navigated by the stars and measured water depth with a knotted rope. Venter has bottom-imaging sonar and assorted other navigational aids, including digitized charts with GPS. We have 10 people on board, all of whom have a reasonable expectation of returning home alive. Of the 94 who left England aboard the Endeavour, some 40 died en route, including most of Banks' retinue of artists, fellow naturalists, and servants." So Latham, Our Labor leader, says "Dodgy" Pharma patents will be fined millions of dollars, to protect Auz Pharma Benefite Scheme. Since when is "Dodgy" a legal term? Surely he can only mean that patents which an Auz arbitrator( Judge?) considers not worthy will be challenged. Since the patent in question will have already been awarded in USA, what Latham is proposing seems to be merely an appeal. It beggars belief that a giant USA Pharma would hand over "millions" in fines simply because an Auz arbitrator says so. What the Pharma will do is say "OK you want an appeal, lets waltz in our courts, you pay for the band" techpolicyUSADems dont give a shit about energy I, Republican The three laws: 1. A Republican may not injure a corporation, or, through inaction, allow a corporation to come to harm. 2. A Republican must obey the orders given it by corporations except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3. A Republican must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second
Whiskey Bar "But according to this ISI official, a White House aide told ul-Haq last spring that "it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July"--the first three days of the Democratic National Convention in Boston."
"club photo" craps out - my old blog is now filled with holes bloggers are advised to use photobucket http://www.photobucket.com/lo...
Cheap Oil Peaks 2008? 2012? but bioscience will take 40 years to radically improve crops. So there's this gap. As Smil says, a generation ago we were told that crops would be fixing their own N by now. So its back to the "commune" hopefully with solid science allowed this time. Lots of cell phones but not much transportation.... Plenty of hand weeding. Hope theres better hygiene than those 70's communes... I recall a visit to a Coromandel commune ca 1972 (named Wilderlands, unsurprisingly) where the city folk, newly introduced to hand agriculture, has extensive skin infections. They tried to tell me it was "the poisons working their way out", I replied it was bacteria, working their way in. My offer of antibiotics refused. With topical garamycin, my sores healed in 36 hours, as I recall. Dont know how long Wilderlands folk were scabby. A wonderful place withal, great days. wheat as catastrophe:
crumbtrail an interesting right-wing ecologist, despises Greenpeace and Vandana Shiva, believes "'global warming' has become a necessary myth" but has some interesting comments & some solid science. "...As for a sign saying “Restore World Order — Kill an American” that a woman in the audience said she had seen in Australia, Mr. Graham said it “was not about Americans, but was about George W. Bush.”..." drforbush is actually against GeorgeW "...stay tuned after the news for more great developments. Great Developments!? We find out that terrorists are planning to attack our financial centers and these are great developments?"
The Case Against George W. Bush By Ron Reagan The real..—but elusive—prime mover behind the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden, was quickly relegated to a back burner (a staff member at Fox News—the cable-TV outlet of the Bush White House—told me a year ago that mere mention of bin Laden's name was forbidden within the company, lest we be reminded that the actual bad guy remained at large) People hugely identify with their overlords, especially if a mean-spirited mood has been evoked. Like files supposedly found on Abu Talha's computer (a cryptography expert with plaintext plots?) justifying machine guns on Wall St. I can only hope that the rise of the Fijians means that Auz is over its mean phase. 27 July 2004, 17:29 Makka Time Jewish settlers, under the protection of the Israeli army, have erected a new illegal outpost in the West Bank city of Hebron, grabbing an additional 150 square kilometres of Palestinian land.. 02 August 2004, 23:54 Makka Time Tel Aviv confirmed on Monday that 600 new housing units will be added to Maale Adumim, a settlement housing 30,000 colonists. ..security sources said the US ..would be consulted before construction began 02 August 2004, 9:12 Makka Time US occupation forces in Iraq have arrested Dr Muthana Harith al-Dhari the editor of al-Basaer newspaper (Insight) and media officer for the influential Association of Muslim Scholars. 02 August 2004, 19:24 Makka Time US occupation troops have surrounded the home of Shia Muslim leader Muqtada al-Sadr in the central Iraqi holy city of Najaf Grand Palace, Paris
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Australian whites OTOH are the most grotesquely vicious and selfish people I have known. 
Lao Lishi may have got silver, but she fell like an angel
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31Jul04 Sam Whittingham 84.215km in 1 hour.
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better the crab you know
We all live in a tiny Aussi submarine (45cm)
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