Environmentalism
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What I’m reading while uploading…
- Hardcore Troubadours – a bio of the Old Crow Medicine Show
- Catalogs of Data Visualization on Coding Horror
- Minorities become the majority in 10 percent of U.S. counties – which has the interesting quote
In northern Virginia, Teresita Jacinto said she feels less welcome today than when she first arrived 30 years ago, when she was one of few Hispanics in the area.
“Not only are we feeling less welcome, we are feeling threatened,” said Jacinto, a teacher in Woodbridge, Virginia, about 20 miles southwest of Washington.
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“I think across the board all of us feel like we’re not welcome,” said Jacinto, who was born in the U.S. and volunteers for an advocacy group called Mexicans Without Borders.Perhaps it’s because she’s feeling unwelcome because she’s advocating an unpopular cause?
- The Old Crow Medicine Show on AT & T Blueroom
- Green Fakers on Radar. The celebrity excuses are funny.
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Finding humor in the little things
Al Gore’s son was arrested early Wednesday on suspicion of possessing marijuana and prescription drugs after deputies pulled him over for speeding, authorities say.
Al Gore III, 24, was driving a blue Toyota Prius about 100 mph on the San Diego Freeway when he was pulled over about 2:15 a.m., Sheriff’s Department spokesman Jim Amormino said.
This isn’t too surprising, he’s been arrested for marijuana before IIRC, but he was dumb (and probably arrogant enough) enough to be going 100 miles an hour while while carrying an illegal drug and four(!) prescription drugs not prescribed to him. In a Prius, which makes it all much funnier.
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Starting somewhere
I came across an interesting article on AJC.com about a couple in Grant Park trying to erect a windmill on their own property. For those who don’t know, Grant Park is a tony neighborhood near the center of Atlanta that prides itself on diversity. Like most areas that pride themselves on diversity, it’s composed largely of childless college-educated types who overwhelmingly vote for the Democratic party.
Needless to say the neighbors are contesting the windmill. While they’re organized enough to put together a website, they don’t seem to be organized enough to utilize the Coase Theorem. Needless to say, I’m for them erecting the windmill on their own property.
Before anyone asks, wind power is usually much more efficient (per dollar) than solar energy, and also has a much lower starting price. Also, modern windmills are geared to prevent fast rotation which protects birds.
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Tuesday rapid fire
- A BBC documentary about Private Military Companies
- Geoengineering
- Amazon.com buys DPReview.com – I’ve bought my last two camera based on DP Review’s recommendations
- High Dynamic Range photography – I’m surprised I haven’t heard of this before. A flickr group is here, and the photoshop tutorial is here. I’ll probably have some examples soon.
- Photoshop madness – unmentioned is American free time
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Characterization of Environmentalism
A random thought: A useful way of distinguishing amongst environmentalism is that people see the world as a museum that can never be changed, and mankind must adapt their behavior to suit it, and not the other way around. A good example would be those who would have us reduce our carbon emissions rather than take positive steps to take carbon out of the air (for instance using the proposed carbon vacuums or the algae-iron flakes method).
I realize it’s the views are seldom in stark conflict.
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Nature doesn’t like you
Watch this video and ask yourself if you still feel bad about the destruction of the Amazon rain forest. Ouch. It’s not graphic on the visual level, but conceptually I cringed.
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Random snapshot of my brain
Whilst waiting for a program to install I came across this article. Blurb:
A North Pole expedition meant to bring attention to global warming was called off after one of the explorers got frostbite.
I then had the thought that there is no evidence that nature, though beautiful, likes us. Then I thought of the metaphor that everyone views the environment like it’s their grandparent’s house. “Oh, everything is so old and irreplaceable, let us gaze in rapt awe and try to be worthy of it someday”. Mind you, what we do with it is another story.
Then I was reminded of an Ayn Rand line which goes something like “Technology is man’s victory over nature”. Then I Googled that trying to find the exact quote. That led me, somehow, to this page about one of my favorite thinkers, Albert Jay Nock. His excellent auto-biography Memoirs of a Superfluous Man is still one of my favorites. Then I started thinking of my other favorite social critics and came up with Eric Hoffer, H.L. Mencken, as well as Nock. All three of them have a distinctive, elegant style which I associate with urban living prior to the fifties. All three of them wrote from cities (San Francisco, Baltimore and New York) and two of them published all their work between 1900 and 1950. I’m also drawn to movies set in cities in that era.
I wonder why those circumstances have that appeal to me, then I decided to write it all down to clarify it in my head.
And there you go.
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Sunday round up
- Interesting post on carbon offsets from TreeHugger.
- DIY efficient cards
- More Flickr printing
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It’s been a little while
Sorry for the light blogging.
Periodically my mind wonders back to the Mathew Paris essay “Nature Does Not Exist“, where he states that there are few meaningful differences in application or effect between religion and science. Then my thoughts turned to Alan Paulk’s line “Religion is first century technology” and how that tracks with Robert Kaplan’s assertion that Islam is an excellent religion for hard times (paraphrase).
Then I think the original (to me) thought that technology does not replace spirituality, or compete with it either, but merely pushes it back to another level of abstraction. This leads me to think that the modern conception of a distinction between the religious and the secular is probably new and not meaningful.
And that’s what has been in the back of my head for the past few days.
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The Church of Global Warming
I’ve had these pages open in FireFox forever
- Average temperature of water near top of Earth’s oceans has significantly cooled – Global warming ‘speed bump’? see also
Dramatic climate changes during dinosaur-dominated Mesozoic Era – Relevant to current climate change discussion - Money and Environmental problems
- Nature Does Not Exist by Mathew Parris
The Parris essay is superb, and summarizes my feelings on everything perfectly. I’ve held off doing anything with the links until I can come up a more detailed ranting of my thoughts, but Parris says it much better than I could. Plus it doubles as my general thoughts on community based views of religion.
- Average temperature of water near top of Earth’s oceans has significantly cooled – Global warming ‘speed bump’? see also