August 2010
1 post
Whenever something actually interesting happens to me I get so excited that it would never even occur to me to sit down at my computer and blog about it. Then weeks later when I have nothing else to do, I might log onto tumblr and write something to pass the time. If anyone actually ever read my blog, they’d probably think I led the world’s most boring life.
Anyway I have SO much on...
June 2010
12 posts
Me: I've never posted a chat before. I wonder what it looks like.
I wonder how Bill Richardson woulda turned out as president. The following is copied and pasted from a 2007 piece by David Roberts on Richardson’s climate plan.
As of today, Bill Richardson has become the boldest, most visionary Democratic presidential candidate on climate and energy policy. (John Edwards is a close second.) No politician from either party has put forward a plan that...
I was reading the introduction to Bertrand Russell’s Proposed Roads to Freedom about how radicals become pessimists precisely because their optimism makes them have much higher expectations than most people. I’m suffering from such a bout of radical pessimism right now. To escape it, I have to remind myself why I think humanity is so invaluable. So here goes my exploration.
First, is...
How useful is your job?
I’ve been playing around with the data in the study “A Bit Rich” by The New Economics Foundation.
An investment banker destroys $5.5 for every $1 ze makes.
An advertising executive destroys $0.20 for every $1 ze makes.
A tax accountant destroys $47 for every $1 ze makes.
A nursery worker creates $7.27 for every dollar ze makes.
A hospital cleaner creates $10 for every $1 ze...
May 2010
18 posts
Stop Burning Fossil Fuels. Part 1- The Climate...
Here is our federal government’s flawed story about stopping rapid climate change:
1. Stabilizing temperature below a 2° Celsius rise above pre-industrial levels will maintain a stable climate.
2. Keeping atmospheric CO2-equivalent at 450 parts per million CO2-equivalent (about 400 CO2) will keep us below 2°.
3. Passing a bill like ACES in the United States will set us on a path...
Albert Einstein was having a conversation about war and nuclear weaponry. His interlocutor, an “intelligent and well-disposed man,” “very calmly and coolly” responded.
Why are you so deeply opposed to the disappearance of the human race?
Einstein was taken aback by the question.
I am sure that as little as a century ago no one would have so lightly made a statement...
Taken from my notes on Robert Heilbroner’s Marxism: For and Against:
Marx was right
-rise of large-scale industry
-internationalization (expansion) of capital
-technology reducing employment from baseline
-mechanization of capital
-immiseration from extreme division of labor
Marx was wrong
-revolutionary mood has evaporated
-capitalism has been softened by the welfare state
...
Wolves are the best. I’m reading Barry Lopez’s Of Wolves and Men.
Wolves are great strategists. “When antelope were abundant on the Great Plains, wolves reputedly lay low in the grass, switching their tails from side to side like metronomes to attract the curious animals close enough to jump them. And they apparently once herded buffalo onto lake ice where the huge animals lost their footing, a...
A cool 2003 study on mindfulness meditation by Richard Davidson et al. Mindfulness meditation correlated with increased brain activity in the area related to enthusiasm and happiness, decreased activity in the areas related to anxiety, decreased reported anxiety, as well as an apparently improved immune system.
Some background on the brain: Distress, anxiety, anger, depression occur as the right...
I’m reading the 1968 Whole Earth Catalog. Stewart Brand’s introduction to the Catalog: ”We are gods and we might as well get used to it.” Here’s what I might have ordered:
-a meditation mat for $4.25.
-attend “A Grand Exhibition on the Effects Produced by Inhaling Nitrous Oxide, Exhilerating, Or LAUGHING GAS” where “The gas will be administered...
Tony Juniper (former executive director of Friends of the Earth) on what the future could be like:
“There will be more sounds of people and less sounds of machines, because communities would have been rebuilt and there would be people back in the streets once more, meeting each other rather than exchanging abuse through their car windscreens…It would smell fresher, there would be less...
Earthbound
I have the last bunch of final papers due today at three hours.
I’m listening to the Earthbound soundtrack on iTunes and am getting very, very homesick. Not for my actual home, but for my home in Earthbound, which, as I’m aware, doesn’t even exist.
I typed into Google images “New Age Retro Hippie” and “Earthbound,” and here’s some of what came up.
...
You better run for your life
Well you know that I’m a wicked guy
And I was born with a jealous mind
And I can’t spend my whole life trying
Just to make you toe the line.
I read somewhere that Lennon really hated this song. I beg to differ. It’s catchy as hell, and, barring the sexist lyrics, quite fun. I tend to associate the song with the time Zack and I were on a run for outdoor track and we sang it...
Today was Mothers’ Day, and my family visited me at school. My dorm building smelled rather strongly of weed, and my grandparents found the smell extremely repulsive but didn’t recognize the smell. “It’s like dead fish! What kind of school smells like that?,” my grandfather said. “I bet Cornell doesn’t smell this bad. I bet Yale doesn’t smell this...
Just saw the Dirty Projectors. Wow, what an incredible show. Big Boi is on next, but I’m taking a break from Spring Fling to do work. I have my window in my dorm open though and I can hear the whole concert. Maybe when he gets on stage I’ll go back outside.
Anyway, it made me think about this book I read recently called Psychotherapy Without the Self: A Buddhist Perspective. One...
April 2010
14 posts
Bill Maher tweets:
Every asshole who ever chanted ‘Drill baby drill’ should have to report to the Gulf coast today for cleanup duty
I don’t generally pay much attention to the so-called “Tea Party,” but here’s a really good article about them.
“What if the Tea Party Were Black?”
Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And...
I’m supposed to be writing my second comp...
Stuff worth downloading by bands I’ve seen recently:
Movement (EP) by Movement
Youth by Beach Fossils
Books I’m reading:
Reasons and Persons by Derek Parfit
Eaarth by Bill McKibben
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (yes, still)
Books I want to read next:
Thirteen Bankers by Simon Johnson and James Kwak
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
On Liberty by...
Conversation with my soul part 2
I think a good test of how I’m doing in life is whether I could proudly look my eleven-year-old self in the eye. Or if I could proudly look my best friend Red in the eye if he were still alive.
Sometimes I feel myself turning into a utilitarian businessman or academic, and other times I feel myself turning into a lazy bum. At these times I feel like I would feel embarassed to face my eleven...
Conversation with my soul part 1
One time I asked my mom what quote she wanted to be remembered by when she died. She thought for a minute and then said, “Always be satisfied, but always want more.”
What a terrible thing for me to ask, but what a great answer she gave! It doesn’t quite make sense literally (satisfaction=”fulfillment of one’s wishes, expectations, or needs”), but it implies a...
Itunes just put on Stop Dragging My Heart Around. Most of my guitar playing skills came from playing Tom Petty songs. Seeing him with my dad and sister a few years ago was an incredible experience. Usually when I try to put on his songs now they seem really cheezy, but from time to time they sure pack quite the punch.
About 60 hours from now, I will enter into the most intense week of my life. It is when comprehensive exams (comps) are being administered. People have gotten physically sick working on comps in past years from lack of sleep and stress. Others have quit the College and chosen easier majors.
And yet despite having this ahead, I feel so confident, so content, so untroubled in a way I haven’t...
What a crazy week this is:
-Prepare for Comprehensive Exams
-Zonker Harris Day
-4/20 (which thankfully I’m skipping out on)
-Banquet
-Earth Day
-Sleep Outs and associated events each day
(Typing this here as a quick note to myself)
History of 2 degrees:
-Schellnhuber’s paper in Germany (WBGU) defines “tolerable window” as less than 2 degree rise.
-German government adopts 2 degree limit.
-EU adopts 2 degree limit.
-Reading the IPCC FAR, experts say 2 degrees is the tipping point- Hansen, Blair, Stern.
-Stern Review was written to defend 2 degrees. But when...
some stuff to maybe work on once we solve climate...
In my article I listed what I consider to be the half-dozen or so serious contenders with climate change for potentially catastrophic impacts with non-negligible probabilities: biotechnology, nanotechnology, asteroids, strangelets, pandemics, runaway computer systems, nuclear proliferation and went on to give a few tentative reasons why I think that climate change is especially worrisome. It may...
The New Economics Foundation:
Given current, highly unequal patterns of the distribution of benefits from growth,
to get everyone in the world onto an income of at least $3 per day – the level around
which income stops having an extreme effect on life expectancy – implies, bizarrely,
the need for 15 planets’ worth of resources to sustain the requisite growth. Even then,
environmental costs...
Worth watching: Tavis Smiley Reports on the effects of MLK’s “Beyond Vietnam” speech.
http://www.pbs.org/kcet/tavissmiley/reports/episode-two.html
March 2010
7 posts
I’m watching “National Parks” the Ken Burns documentary. It’s pretty good so far. Tomorrow I’ll be doing some street theater to pressure McDonald’s to stop using their Ronald McDonald mascot to target children. It’s for a corporate accountability campaign based on how they made Camel cigarettes retire Joe Camel. Did you know that one in three children...
This is more like it!
The Sierra Club’s new executive director is warning that the powerful environmental group will fight the legislation if the concessions to industry pile up too high.
http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/89399-climate-bill-could-face-threats-on-the-left?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
“There are things that would cause the Club to oppose the bill, and...
A new Harris Poll reinforces the notion that most people in the Republican Party are lunatics.
67 percent of Republicans (and 40 percent of Americans overall) believe that Obama is a socialist.
57 percent of Republicans (32 percent overall) believe that Obama is a Muslim
45 percent of Republicans (25 percent overall) agree with the Birthers in their belief that Obama was “not born in...
Sarah Palin is reportedly close to a deal with the Discovery Channel about a new nature show.
I had to stop watching this video after less than a minute, because it was making me physically sick.
