(for Katrina)
Now the sun burns the waters
clears the shredded sky
and peels back the skin
of the exposed.
You are undone, O Great One
Master of the West
your time has come.
When your black blood clots
and your limbs stiffen
who will come to your aid?
What friend have you, tyrant, in this hour of need?
Who will approach,
but to crush a boot against
your swollen neck?
Hooray for dynamic web marketing filters! Check out this actual screen grab from CNN today. KEYWORDS: New Orleans, airport [red highlight by me]
If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break,
When the levee breaks I’ll have no place to stay.
— Led Zeppelin
Another day of horror as History contorts and folds in on itself. We watch in realtime the economic and human ripples spreading out from a disaster which we all saw approaching. For those caught in the middle of it — mostly the poor, who couldn’t escape — the experience is worlds apart from the mediated petri dish you and I enjoy. I watch the weather radar as the giant spider crawls up east and dies in Canada.
What is the point of talking about it? These are just words. But by commanding words I manipulate your mind. Do I use them responsibly? Like CNN does, pretending to be the Id of the nation? 55 KILLED IN MISSISSIPPI scream the headlines. And you watch those reporters. Man they’re having the time of their life. Wading through the sewage, recording the screams. Oh, the humanity, etc. Thanks Katrina, thanks for boosting my career. Thanks 9/11. Thanks Geraldo. You fat FUCKS.
I am inexplicably angry after soaking up coverage today from multiple sources. I hate "coverage" — always have — so I shouldn’t be surprised. Anyway, could I do any better? It’s hard being out there in the field, especially with communications so disrupted, and the sewage and all; so whatever. Cut a poor reporter some slack. Just givin’ the people what they want.
And I am one of those people. Maybe my anger stems from guilt at being attracted to the most gruesome tidbits the news has to offer. Cemetary flooded! Caskets everywhere! Trapped in their attics! I can only imagine. But I haven’t really tried. Why bother, when I can read about it from the safety of my shell, getting off on the novelty of horror?
It is fascinating, though, to watch the mobilization of so many resources to respond to the disaster. The national guard, FEMA, CDC and other persons responding as professionals don’t merit the same condemnation I’m leveling at our corrupt journalists. Hell, if the shit went down here, I’d be one of the schmucks stuck up on their roof (hopefully not in the attic), waiting for the Grid to rescue me, and I’d have nothing but gratitude for that helping hand.
So, tomorrow morning should reveal the fresh extent of the disaster, cause tonight’s going to be bad. Really, really bad.
A bulb has blown in the room where I sit. It makes me feel like my eyes are failing. A wash of papers covers the desk. Beyond these walls, this screen, the Imagination stretches. Neon vectors recede into darkness… Continue reading %s
A slow-moving thundercloud of panic has settled over me. Perhaps I am reading too much, not enough, or too selectively. A few thoughtstreams have converged and are making me feel this way. Continue reading %s
BBC does it again! Check out their excellent series “Planet Under Pressure”.
An excerpt from the introduction;
Planet under pressure is more about questions than answers. What sort of lifestyle can the Earth sustain?
How many of us can live at northern consumption levels, and what level should everyone else be expected to settle for?
How can we expect poor people to respect the environment when they need to use it to survive?
Are eco-friendly lives a luxury for the rich or a necessity for everyone?
And how can we act when sizeable and sincere parts of society say we are already overcoming the problems, not being overwhelmed by them?
Okay, it’s just funny. Scary-funny, but funny.
I found myself reading about the X Prize (now the Ansari X Prize). This is the competition behind last year’s private space flight. Reading their history and mission pages is interesting. They’ve modeled the prize on the aviation prizes of the early 20th Century, which effectively drove the innovation leading to today’s aerospace industry.
These people are using the same model to drive the development of private space flight, and a number of other innovations. It’s really just quite cool.
“The mission of the X PRIZE Foundation is to cause radical breakthroughs in space and other technologies for the benefit of humanity.”
Their motto: Evolution through competition.
And from their Fact Sheet:
Why space?
Space offers adventure
Space provides freedom- a frontier literally without end.
Space can save the Earth
A tiny fraction of the abundant solar energy that flows past the Earth could provide all of our planet’s power needs without greenhouse gasses or nuclear residue-forever. Beyond energy, space offers us unlimited access to the metals and minerals needed for technological expansion and new worlds for our use in developing future societies.
Space flight offers the ultimate personal challenge
Every one of the 500 men and women who have flown in space has said that it was the adventure of a lifetime. They report that viewing the world from higher than the highest mountain is a universally mind-altering experience.
Bowman: “Something wonderful…”
A friend turned me on to The Oil Endgame. You can download the full PDF for free.
I’ve only read the introductory quotes and Executive Summary so far, but this has proven an antidote to my stewing anxiety and anger over what I presumed was a thoroughly-entrenched cultural and economic addiction to oil. The truth is, the economy seeks profit and growth, and the “captains of industry” know better than anyone that oil will increasingly be a losing proposition. Shell and BP may not be pushing energy alternatives out of a deepfelt connection with the planet — but they don't have to. All they have to do is recognize that the successful energy company of the future will manage a diversity of hydrocarbon and increasingly non-hydrocarbon supply chains.
Look, no one is in business in order to pollute; it's just been cheaper historically not to worry about it. No one in the oil business believes oil will last forever; they’re not in denial. The question is who will successfully combine leading-edge technologies with a functional business model, in order to grow themselves out of the oil well?
I don’t believe the transition will be smooth and pretty. But I have full conviction that we’re not going to just watch the oil drain away until the lights go out and society collapses. There are alternatives now and they will have their day, less or more bloodshed later.