Blog P

It begs the question 'why do these people still have this puppet in the top job,' when George W just vetoed a bill that both sides of the house of representatives were united on, to protect their ten million most vulnerable children, with a health plan that the state would administer? This prick has everyone under his thumb? You do the math. That's enough on that subject; I'd like to write a positive article on something out of the USA, but can't find the germ of a kind word; why is that? I love the technology they're fostering there; my only magazine subscription is to Technology Review, from MIT, but what those beancounting suits will squeeze and deform those technologies into, has me sneering and shaking my head. A friend of my partner's now lives in the USA and she blithely describes the place as the 'land of plenty', without any notion, I'm sure, that the cost of that is enormous, and unsustainable, and where and when will people arrive at an awareness that a radius of two metres is not enough to be concerned with? I look at CNN's website and I find their gestures to the environment pathetic. But I also see Google researching a fleet of 'plug-in' hybrid motor vehicles, $11,000,000 for 100 vehicles,(that's $110,000 per vehicle.......) and I think I could run a vehicle on mosquito farts for less... and remember these are PETROL vehicles, just with bigger battery packs in them, AND THEY ARE NOT A SOLUTION TO OUR PROBLEM. (New York State Energy Research and Development Authority will convert their state's hybrid fleet to bigger plug-in batteries - $10,000,000 for 500 vehicles - that's $20,000 per car, AND THAT AIN'T A SOLUTION EITHER.) But someone will be feeling way better about something with all those battery sales, and CRASHES will be so much more spectacular with all those extra chemicals to burn with the petrol these liabilities STILL run on......  I have only twice in my life been close to a steam car; I don't remember the analysis of the carbon footprint, but one of them had a single piston motor of 2.25 inches bore and the same stroke, and it could spin the wheels of the old Ford it was in, to one helluva speed, and later powered a bus, and the other was the Gvang, the Australian supercar, fast as a Ferrari, that disappeared to anonymity forever after repeated arson attacks on the constructor's garage..... so, dear readers, let me assure you that little changes, the cars are still being fabricated by the motor trade, which is still staffed by the same sorts of people that it always has been stuck with, and nothing is going to change till you stop patronising these dinosaurs. Nuff Said

Blog O

I just typed 'organic' into my search engine, and the first up was 'Organic Inc' who are, amongst other things, 'excited by the new Mitsubishi Lancer launch'. They also had some great diversion with a klutz in the back of a taxicab, for twentysomethings to entertain themselves with. I kind of miss the concept of organic as describing a natural thing; OK that carbon based chemistry gets in there; we all need to know what carbon is and isn't doing in our lives, and that the tree huggers have adopted the term for chemical-free agriculture, but where do I get chemical-free rainwater, or chemical-free air to breathe, as my plants (actually my partner's plants) would probably like to consume? This week we will do four trips from home, twice the norm, one to collect friends from the nearest airport, and one to collect specially manufactured insulation materials to lower the carbon footprint of our house renovation project.... but we have gotten to hate the act of going anywhere; the risk of a collision, the risk of failing to achieve the objectives of the trip (empty shelves in the supermarket and hardware stores? A real possibility, regrettably) the delays of queueing in traffic at railway crossings, (where the train might be efficient, but not with the barrier down five minutes for the twenty seconds event of the train passing, and our being the only motorists to turn their engine off, as we don't have AC to keep in equilibrium) and our little valley is pretty pleasant to hang out in, if life has to be slow, which, I fear, is what organic is all about. But I fail to see the rest of the folk in our little village being so laid back. Marija is busy killing all the insects, bugs and wriggly things of the region...(we were impressed to see her traps for hornets, but we now learn that they are an endangered species,) while we have taken a liking to our snake population, which can attain two metres in length, though we have only seen half that size, and only once, but we regularly husband a clutch of odd shaped eggs, and found a cache of 37 quite large empty shells, so we're hopeful of seeing a lot more, and are even planning a snake pit to help them winter over without choosing our domicile as the better alternative..., but I am mostly disappointed that the timeline of our organic house will be doubled by sheer human inefficiency; five hardware stores offer the same limited stock of materials; anything outside that is a special order, which runs from impossible through three days to really almost a month, for a 30° bend for a sewer pipe, for example, as they all stock only 90° and a few 45°, and tool accessories are one mainstram German brand, all packaging and information, but five times the price of world brands who compete for shelves elsewhere. I've been building in my spare time since the 1950s, where the hammer really was all one had, and if you were no good at driving nails in the really decent hardwoods that were still being stripped from our forests, you'd get nowhere fast a bit like I am today..... same old same old. What I'd really like is to eventually disconnect from the power supply. I think 'organic' really means that; there is nothing as polluting as our need for Alternating Current, be it 110 or 220, and while our place will have a very low draw on the mains, eliminating it will be my only true peace of mind, as, while I live a dozen kms from a nuclear power station, this country is still dependant on imports, as is EVERY country in the developed world, and as I can't rely on you to do anything, I will have to double and redouble my own efforts. Nuff said

Blog N

I've noticed that the images of Darfur seem very much absent of late, and Israel gets 95% of the coverage in the Palestinian dispute, and the truth of both is far from correctly reported, and do you 'watch the news' on a regular basis? and if you do, why do you accept this crap as the 'news' when in fact it is the spin/hype/warp/concealment of the reality that many of us are really distressed to know you're watching? Did you know that one BILLION people will jump on an airliner this next year? 40% of them will have a non-scheduled 'event' in that experience, too, and that is my extrapolation; between customs holdups, checkin snarlups, takeoff delays, security scares, maintenance emergencies, flight emergencies, terrorist intervention (that'll get .0002% of the action) and WEATHER.... don't forget the weather..).... plus if you plan to cross the United States of Anal Retentivity, you can double your chances of a snarlup, and New York? treble it.... So there's a bit of news for you; air travel is going to be more a hassle than driving, but, in the wisdom of putting smaller airliners on routes with more frequent flights, (completely contra the Airbus A380 behemoth that the French have so succinctly created,) we have allowed all that is grossly inefficient in human nature to stab another great wound to the heart of this fragile globe of ours, while Darfur and Palestine go to the spin doctors too. Might I suggest we frequent flyers make a resolution to include one diaster zone to their list of destinations? I actually have seen a few in my life, and have deliberately tried to access the Vietnamese Highlands, for example, which is the scene of one of the least reported ethnic catastrophes of the world, only to be rebuffed by that very prevalent institution in disaster areas; men in uniforms; wherever I go with a negative outcome in the 90%+ probability range, men in uniforms have the whole action sewn up. You do the math; can we honestly allow military agents to uphold law and order in the world? The answer is an absolute 'NO', and the aforesaid USA's privatisation of the foreign security business is an even worse scenario; 'Thugs in uniform'; who, in every event I have ever witnessed, and a lot I've seen covered by independant docos, (e.g.'Lessons of Darkness', Werner Herzog) are the very worst representation of foreign interest in the many unfortunate countries of this world. So, you who are informed of sweet fuck all by your personal choice of news coverage, can you start to show a little innate intelligence; a little 'personal involvement' in world affairs? Can you line up with the masses at a Burmese rally, or help out in a food delivery run to Darfur, or, for my preference, try to stop the displacement of the aboriginal natives of the Montagnard Highlands (the true Vietnamese are NOT Asian, OK?) from their very fragile predicament in Pleiku Province? I know very well that in Pleiku Province all the money action is illegal, criminal and corrupt; a totally forsaken borderline between no man's land and hell, and no one goes there as you'd have to be a bigger warlord than George W to even think of it. How do we stop that? Same way we stop Afghanistan and it's drug and crime ridden wastelands. Oh, tfff tfff tfff sniff sniff sniff, have another pain killer... Nuff said