End of Suburbia?

Another Peak Oil related post... Looks very eye opening (I still need to watch the video clip, but it was long, so later...)

http://media.putfile.com/end-of-suburbia

Back to demoralizing...

This site is very interesting: http://www.futurescenarios.org

It lays out the post-oil scenarios and implications... Lots of bad outcomes. Have not had a chance to really dig through it, but it does a very good top down job of describing possible futures depending on how things go...

Enjoy!

Finally, Some Good News...

Well, finally some good news... Evidently photovoltaics are finally getting to the point where they can generate electricity in commercially viable amounts, or in other words, cheap enough that it can be sold into the power grid.

http://blogs.spectrum.ieee.org/tech_talk/2008/05/photovoltaic_moores_law_on_tra.html

They are predicting that solar could be competitive as early as 2015. Obviously, solar is not the complete answer to base load requirements, but if it can augment, its a step in the right direction. Interesting stuff!

Tiny Shards of Plastic Will Do Us In...

Oh great, just when I thought I had run out of things to obsess about, I find out there is a massive collection of tiny shards of plastic covering an area in the pacific BIGGER than the entire continental US that is destroying the Ocean...



http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/freeheadlines/LAC/20080519/GYRE19/health/Health



Evidently, all of the trash on the planet that can float, eventually is winding its way out to the ocean where it breaks into a zillion tiny pieces due to the sun and weather, but being plastic and all, it never really goes away. It's killing fish and stuff, which is rippling through out the environment, and guess what, you can't clean it up because there is no way to actually get at the stuff in any realistic way.



Evidently, all the trash collects in the ocean in this "special" spot that has been created by the currents and prevailing winds and so on... I'm sure I'll find more good news, but this is it for tonight... *sigh*

Of Leeches and Mid-Wives?

Boy, here is another interesting bit from the "Oil, be seeing you" blog:

http://oilbeseeingyou.blogspot.com/2006/12/of-leeches-midwives.html

It's basically saying you better figure out how to eat right and practice good hygiene, because big medicine is going down... If the end of oil does not get it, I think economics will... We are putting more and more of our wealth into healthcare for what appears to be very limited benefit at this point and the system is going to collapse, particularly once the bleeding heart libs make it "universal"... Contrary to my sainted mother's assertion that everyone else in the world does it, I can't see us all working our butts off just to pay everyone elses doctors bills because they want to smoke, drink, and over consume to the point of killing themselves.

Oil Be Seeing You

Here is a very interesting blog about peak oil... As this guy points out, there is also an issue with "peak water"... Does the good news never end?

http://oilbeseeingyou.blogspot.com/2008/03/peak-water.html

To see the general blog which has a lot more stuff, just go to this link: http://oilbeseeingyou.blogspot.com/

Good luck out there!! I think I'm going to learn how to can and harvest rain water now... *sigh*

The Man Who Invented Hitler...

I'm currently reading a rather interesting book on the "making" of Adolf Hitler. Evidently, when he was gassed in World War I; he got "hysterical blindness" which the medical class of the time considered a disease of wimps... So the shrink (Edmund Forster) who worked on him gave Hitler a "god complex" and thus cured him. Evidently Adolf couldn't see Germany loose a war, and thus made himself blind. By convincing him that he was going to fix all that, Dr. Forster thus created a monster and ended up signing his own death warrant a few decades later.

This is extremely interesting so far, so I may post again on this as I get farther along... You can check out the synopis at the following link: http://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Invented-Hitler-Making/dp/0755311493