Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government; whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights. -- Thomas Jefferson, 1789 In this installment of my saga, I'd like to suggest a corollary to Mr. Jefferson's observation: "Whenever the people are ill-informed, their government can trust them to do...

kmo delivered another great podcast the other day, interviewing economist Frank Rotering . Prof. Rotering has an interesting take on human progress and the limits the planet itself places on our expansion, part of which resonates well with what I accept. For example, I whole heartedly agree that our biological imperative drives our expansion, the desire to eat the richest food (to give...

Today, I went to the premiere showing of The Age of Stupid , a documentary on climate change. While the premiere event was mostly boring (save for a very amusing appearance by The Yes Men ) and marred by technical difficulties (in a record-breaking stunt, they decided to broadcast the premiere by satellite instead of actually shipping the film to theaters), the movie was awesome. Despite covering...

Jim Kunstler whipped out another gem in which he wrote : For decades we measured the health of our economy (and therefore of our society) by the number of "housing starts" recorded month-to-month. For decades, this translated into the number of suburban tract houses being built in the asteroid belts of our towns and cities. When housing starts were up, the simple-minded declared that things were...

I'm sorry, but I'm still on this telly, telly, everywhere tear. It's something that is pretty much turning into an obsession. In case you missed it, yesterday, I moaned about a television in waiting rooms that I legally couldn't leave or turn away from either the sound or the image. I was spared the trauma by a helpful receptionist, but had I been forced to be there later in the day things could...

Permaculture. Permablitz. Permablitz of Oz. Blitz Blizzard. Blizzard of Ozz. Ozzy. That's it, I forgot to play Ozzy in this episode!!! Episode 2 LINK This episode features an interview with Adam Grubb , a coordinator for the Permablitz network out of Australia. These guys have a very nice system involving bringing permaculture home-practices to people, and also providing a learning experience...

Cool visual meme ganked from remuslives23 My LiveJournal Friends _s0_broken_ clockworkmoody fucktart_ ...

Two days ago, I posted about 2/3rds of kmo 's C-Realm interview with Thomas Homer-Dixon, author of The Upside of Down . I cut the final portion of the interview. It seemed more of a stand-alone section. I've gone back and appended this last portion to the original post; but for convenience, here's the final section. After a musical interlude, kmo continues: kmo: . . . . I would...

(By alobar 's suggestion, I'm sharing this recent entry from my LJ. I hope you find it cromulent.) kmo has done it again. Yet another of his C-Realm Podcast guests has given me actual food for thought, valuable nutritional content. By contrast, what mostly passes through our mainstream media emerges as undigestable waste. This time the guest was Thomas Homer-Dixon, author of The...

kmo has done it again. Yet another of his C-Realm Podcast guests has given me actual food for thought, valuable nutritional content. By contrast, what mostly passes through our mainstream media emerges as undigestable waste. This time the guest was Thomas Homer-Dixon, author of The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and The Renewal of Civilization . I've taken the liberty of transcribing...