Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Memo For File XX
Sen. Inhofe is correct in his commentary on the Fox News special on global warming: French President Jacques Chirac said the Kyoto Treaty is the “first component of an authentic global governance.”
So add Chirac to the long and growing list of global warming advocates, who simply are not behaving, not in any way, or regard, zilch, zero, nada, not acting as if there is really a planet-threatening problem.
Who is behaving as if there really is one?
I remember thirty years ago there was a big-time environmental movement going on. The Ad Council put on television commercials, with an image of an Indian crying over a littered cityscape. Some people did ecologically-friendly things, most people did not. The people who did, acted smug. Sanctimonious. Better-than-you.
I miss the smugness.
Because their successors, today, can lecture you about how the planet is doomed — the planet is doomed! — and if the two of you happen to walk past a Hummer H2 while he’s flinging his environmentalist spittle in your direction, he won’t bat an eyelash. And nobody has the cojones to say, it seems: Hey, you just talked about the human race coming to an end and the planet becoming uninhabitable. Have you no comment on this machine we just walked past? None?
I thought the smugness was tough to take at the time, but it was fused with a sincerity that is missing today. You know, people younger than thirty right now wouldn’t realize it, but back then it wasn’t even popular to say people were threatening themselves through the climate. We had this popular fad going around about “The Next Ice Age”; we had another one going around about nuclear weapons. Yet, if the human race were to snuff itself out with a nuclear war, this would have nothing to do with the climate, and if the human race were to die off because of an ice age, this would having nothing to do with human behavior. Actually, the latter of those two was supposed to be testament to man’s lack of control over his own destiny, his lack of respect for the superiority of nature. It was kind of the “Titanic” paradigm.
So being barely old enough to recall that, I’m a little befuddled. It’s a new milennium. The new boogeyman can do all kinds of things to us, including the placement of our continued survival into jeopardy; we have a public relations war as to whether we are at fault for it or not. And, in a society endlessly fascinated with inviting everybody to participate in everybody else’s business — nobody has anything to say about what anybody’s doing.
It’s all Republican politicians and greedy corporations. The man-in-the-street can’t actually do anything; not to hurt, not to help.
Most of the people who read blogs, are a little too young to identify with me on where I’m coming from on this. I hope with the above background, they can appreciate why I find this all, well, just a little odd. Last time I saw an entire industrialized society mobilized to worry and fret over ecological issues, people drove around in little itty-bitty hatchbacks made of aluminum that a strong man could actually pick up in his two hands. People, today, are commuting to work in hulking monstrosities, carrying nothing but a lunchbox.
I have seen widespread concern over the environment, and doom-and-gloom, before. This isn’t what it looks like.
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My experience has been somewhat different. I have lefties telling me endlessly that Hummers will be the end of all that we know. see here: http://www.fuh2.com/
I’m harrangued by celebrities about my habits of personal consumption as they dash from limo to private jet.
Most people probably don’t confront H2 drivers for fear they’re red state, gun owning cowboys.
- Duffy | 08/07/2006 @ 08:39I can identify where you’re coming from. I’m in my forth decade as well, and I remember the commercial with the sad faced Indian. I’ve also seen lots of doom and gloom, and just as often seen them fade to historical footnotes as the midnight hour passes and nothing happens. Yet these dire endings seem to have a peculiar fascination that inspires lots of pseudoscientific lunacy. That’s what scares me most, how these wild notions can push civilizations over the edge…
Lockjaw
- Lockjaw45 | 08/08/2006 @ 07:13Recent commitments prevent me from commenting further to the extent that I wish to. Maybe that’s a good thing because I tend to lose clarity with length, so I will just say this.
I thought “static scoring” had a narrow definition until I looked it up. It covers a very broad range of things, and it captures the current situation nicely. In sum, it’s a postulation of downright-lunatic future events and measurements, by means of injecting purely linear math into a situation or discipline that doesn’t call for linear math.
- mkfreeberg | 08/08/2006 @ 07:22I miss the smugness.
Hmmm. I don’t think it ever left, but maybe it’s just the company I keep. My enviro-concious friends gaze at me in horror when they visit, drain a can, and ask “Where do the recyclables go?” and I reply: “In the trash.” Audible gasps follow, at a minimum, and oft times as not I get a lecture.
Down here in New Mexico we just throw crap out. It’s a pleasant change from the five or six bins I had to use just to take out the freakin’ garbage when I lived in Berkeley. Brown glass, clear glass, PET-plastics, non-PET plastics, paper, and garbage, as in organic stuff from the kitchen, ad nauseam. I kid you not. And Berkeley had “trash police” that were empowered to cite violators. Call me irresponsible, but I LIKE the way we work here in NM.
- Buck Pennington | 08/08/2006 @ 15:51