From "Going, Going" by Philip Larkin:
And that will be England gone,
The shadows, the meadows, the lanes,
The guildhalls, the carved choirs.
There'll be books; it will linger on
In galleries; but all that remains
For us will be concrete and tyres.
Most things are never meant.
This won't be, most likely; but greeds
And garbage are too thick-strewn
To be swept up now, or invent
Excuses that make them all needs.
I just think it will happen, soon.
environment, environmentalism
March 18, 2012
March 17, 2012
Into the tumbril!
Jeffrey St. Clair writes:
The environmental movement has become freighted with more and more deceptive terms. Let’s begin by banishing the tiresome phrase sustainable development. Coined by NGOs in the 1970s, this discreditable term has been used to put a green gloss on everything from mega-dams to rainforest logging. Endless development is a more accurate description.
Next, let us eliminate the Mephistophelean phase win-win solution, a verbal potion of the Clinton era that was used to justify oil drilling in the Arctic, logging in the redwoods, and rollbacks in air pollution standards. In win-win solutions, industry gets what it wants and environmental groups get paid in grants to go along with the deal.
Finally, let us jettison the term holistic, especially when affixed to “ecosystem” or “resource management.” Holistic is a merely a New Age-update of the venerable term “multiple use,” one of the oldest cons in the history of conservation. Multiple use was the ludicrous notion that public lands could be all things to all people (or more properly all industries). In other words, wildlife could peacefully co-exist with mining, logging, livestock and off-road vehicle use. Holistic ecosystem management posits the same battered notion, but escalates the deception by suggesting that logging and grazing are actually beneficial to the long-term health of the ecosystem.
environment, environmentalism
The environmental movement has become freighted with more and more deceptive terms. Let’s begin by banishing the tiresome phrase sustainable development. Coined by NGOs in the 1970s, this discreditable term has been used to put a green gloss on everything from mega-dams to rainforest logging. Endless development is a more accurate description.
Next, let us eliminate the Mephistophelean phase win-win solution, a verbal potion of the Clinton era that was used to justify oil drilling in the Arctic, logging in the redwoods, and rollbacks in air pollution standards. In win-win solutions, industry gets what it wants and environmental groups get paid in grants to go along with the deal.
Finally, let us jettison the term holistic, especially when affixed to “ecosystem” or “resource management.” Holistic is a merely a New Age-update of the venerable term “multiple use,” one of the oldest cons in the history of conservation. Multiple use was the ludicrous notion that public lands could be all things to all people (or more properly all industries). In other words, wildlife could peacefully co-exist with mining, logging, livestock and off-road vehicle use. Holistic ecosystem management posits the same battered notion, but escalates the deception by suggesting that logging and grazing are actually beneficial to the long-term health of the ecosystem.
environment, environmentalism
March 14, 2012
A friend writes
Good god, women have enough problems and then to be "defended" by the likes of this Queen of Banality Maureen Dowd. Disgusting and dull as always, a free ad written for the too awful to even adequately describe Hillary Clinton. Maureen Dowd writes this embarrassing, dumb ode to female power, yet more men are mentioned in the column than women, and the only two who qualify to be in this faux-feminist bit of dreariness are military/industrial complex good soldiers Hillary Clinton and Olympia Snowe. O saintly Hillary Clinton, she has "fought for women's rights around the world", she has. And O, the "mass misogyny" of the Republicans! Poor ole Olympia Snowe -- fed up and leaving, and she be a woman! O if ye be female clasp your hands and shake them at the bitter heavens in despair and rage, rage rage at the Republicans, except if they be women.
Hillary should run for President in 2016, opines the ever vulgarian Dowd. Women are beginning to think Obama is not enough -- (surely not!) so, naturally, "they " are turning to Hillary, who as we know is so different from Obama in that she is apparently a female. She writes "If women are so vulnerable, they may need one of their own. Is she inevitable?" Excuse me while I throw up. I am channeling Santorum now. Wow. This monster known as Hillary Clinton is a champion for women's rights, as long as they are in her peer group, and they certainly don't include the women and female children she has consigned to a violent death in her endless war-mongering and support of drone attacks -- was it not she who said she would obliterate Iran? And applauded her vile husband's ending of welfare for poor mothers, and decided that desperate people, many of them undoubtedly women, should not be allowed to declare bankruptcy? How in any way is this charlatan lauded as being for women's rights? Is feminism defined as merely a privileged class of women "taking over", identical in nearly every way to the men who now hold power? How sad and pathetic.
The Republicans are barbarians when it comes to women, there is no doubt. But they have gotten this far in erasing abortion rights because the Democrats never fought back viciously and relentlessly against these deadly thugs. The Dems, including Clinton, (who described abortion as a "tragedy") apologized every fucking step of the way and pathetically tried to seek "common ground" with anti-abortion, anti-women forces, and so they lost this war, and THAT is a tragedy for women.
WHAT IS THE WORST thing is not Dowd's ignorant, trashy chick-lit-style column -- it is that every single commenter agrees with her -- every single one. Not one person not extolling Cinton to the skies, not one person pointing out what a war-mongering piece of shit she is -- opining all over the place that the head of the World bank is the place for her, the Supreme court, the presidency -- oh my god! The place for her is in the dock answering for her war crimes, but as these comments indicate, what passes as the "left" is essentially dead in this country -- they are brain-dead, banal, only think in the lifeless, claustrophobic terms handed to them by the media, can no longer think critically and have become Republicans albeit ones that believe in abortion rights (to a degree) and the difference between the parties has been essentially erased but the team players on both sides are so brainwashed they don't even see it. Now because Repubs hate women, the Dems now LOVE women (except for those women who made the bad decision to be Palestinians or Afghans, Pakistanis, Libyans, Yemeni, Iraqi, Irani, etc etc....) Dems even lauding that vicious creep Snowe, who quit only because she and her corporate sleaze husband are facing a big corruption lawsuit.
I despise the repubs for their hatred of women, but I despise the Dems for the same. I know that women are just as vile as men, and take no comfort in the prospect of seeing "one of my own" as President, unless perhaps it was Green party candidate Jill Stein, which will never happen. The only kind of woman who would be electable in this backwards kind of culture are women like Clinton, who are utterly indistinguishable from the men who run this country -- psychopaths all.
Hillary should run for President in 2016, opines the ever vulgarian Dowd. Women are beginning to think Obama is not enough -- (surely not!) so, naturally, "they " are turning to Hillary, who as we know is so different from Obama in that she is apparently a female. She writes "If women are so vulnerable, they may need one of their own. Is she inevitable?" Excuse me while I throw up. I am channeling Santorum now. Wow. This monster known as Hillary Clinton is a champion for women's rights, as long as they are in her peer group, and they certainly don't include the women and female children she has consigned to a violent death in her endless war-mongering and support of drone attacks -- was it not she who said she would obliterate Iran? And applauded her vile husband's ending of welfare for poor mothers, and decided that desperate people, many of them undoubtedly women, should not be allowed to declare bankruptcy? How in any way is this charlatan lauded as being for women's rights? Is feminism defined as merely a privileged class of women "taking over", identical in nearly every way to the men who now hold power? How sad and pathetic.
The Republicans are barbarians when it comes to women, there is no doubt. But they have gotten this far in erasing abortion rights because the Democrats never fought back viciously and relentlessly against these deadly thugs. The Dems, including Clinton, (who described abortion as a "tragedy") apologized every fucking step of the way and pathetically tried to seek "common ground" with anti-abortion, anti-women forces, and so they lost this war, and THAT is a tragedy for women.
WHAT IS THE WORST thing is not Dowd's ignorant, trashy chick-lit-style column -- it is that every single commenter agrees with her -- every single one. Not one person not extolling Cinton to the skies, not one person pointing out what a war-mongering piece of shit she is -- opining all over the place that the head of the World bank is the place for her, the Supreme court, the presidency -- oh my god! The place for her is in the dock answering for her war crimes, but as these comments indicate, what passes as the "left" is essentially dead in this country -- they are brain-dead, banal, only think in the lifeless, claustrophobic terms handed to them by the media, can no longer think critically and have become Republicans albeit ones that believe in abortion rights (to a degree) and the difference between the parties has been essentially erased but the team players on both sides are so brainwashed they don't even see it. Now because Repubs hate women, the Dems now LOVE women (except for those women who made the bad decision to be Palestinians or Afghans, Pakistanis, Libyans, Yemeni, Iraqi, Irani, etc etc....) Dems even lauding that vicious creep Snowe, who quit only because she and her corporate sleaze husband are facing a big corruption lawsuit.
I despise the repubs for their hatred of women, but I despise the Dems for the same. I know that women are just as vile as men, and take no comfort in the prospect of seeing "one of my own" as President, unless perhaps it was Green party candidate Jill Stein, which will never happen. The only kind of woman who would be electable in this backwards kind of culture are women like Clinton, who are utterly indistinguishable from the men who run this country -- psychopaths all.
March 6, 2012
March 3, 2012
Vestas V112 uses less power
A full page ad from Vestas in the March North American Windpower (below, or the part that fit in my scanner) boasts that its 3-MW V112 wind turbine "uses less power", that it has a "unique system that uses the wind's own energy to cool the nacelle and reduce power consumption".
This is interesting because the industry and its apologists have long insisted that power consumption by large wind turbines (which can not operate without power from the grid) is insignificant.
But if it is insignificant, then the energy savings of the Vestas "Cooler Top" design would be insignificant. Yet they devoted a full-page ad to promote it.
Which clearly suggests that energy consumption by wind turbines is indeed substantial.
Update: The new design may not work so well to prevent overheating, as a model in Germany was destroyed by fire of "undetermined" cause.
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines
This is interesting because the industry and its apologists have long insisted that power consumption by large wind turbines (which can not operate without power from the grid) is insignificant.
But if it is insignificant, then the energy savings of the Vestas "Cooler Top" design would be insignificant. Yet they devoted a full-page ad to promote it.
Which clearly suggests that energy consumption by wind turbines is indeed substantial.
Update: The new design may not work so well to prevent overheating, as a model in Germany was destroyed by fire of "undetermined" cause.
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines
February 27, 2012
Capitalism versus individual freedom
Capitalism is antithetical to individualism. Capitalism replaces individualism with commodification. People are nothing more than units of production and consumption in the accounting of capital. Even the "masters" of capital are mere servants to the cancer of profit. Individualism is a threat to capitalism.
(Conversely, only with socialism can the individual be free to be him- or herself. See Oscar Wilde's essay "The Soul of Man under Socialism".)
human rights, anarchism
February 26, 2012
Lim’rick
There once was a foolish young clerk
Who was after some fun in the park
Who was after some fun in the park
With two saucy sisters
But three loyal fisters
Had bites that were worse nor his bark.
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