I just ran across an article that ran in Rolling Stone last year about ‘eco terrorism‘ and the ongoing campaign of terror by the feds that seeks to portray radicals who use property destruction as terrorists, and it pissed me off. a lot. now i’m normally not a particularly angry person - i realized as part of an anger management class i took some years back that anger is a choice and it’s not a choice that I make very often because it’s usually not particularly productive. Anger is a weapon. It feels good and it lends power and force, but it clouds the mind; and I realized a long time ago that my mind is one of the best things I’ve got going for me and I’m better off to avoid anything and everything that could cloud my judgment. Still, there are some situations where anger is the only honest response, and this is one of those times. Read more »

Posted: June 3rd, 2008 under culture war, ecology.
Comments: 5

found an interesting article on chimpanzees that touches on culture, intelligence, and social norms among our closest living relatives. Aside from the revelation that in some respects chimpanzees are actually more intelligent then humans - they have a much more developed short-term memory - I found the article particularly interesting for its description of the way tribes of Chimps take care of disabled members, and the specific example of a tribe that all cooperates to take care of a member with Cerebral Palsy.

Among humans (at least in “Western” cultures), children often pick on and abuse disabled peers. Not so among chimps. And Bonobos, well let’s just say that if Chimps reflect some of our worst most antisocial tendencies then Bonobos are the hippies of the primate world. At least most of the time. Probably. Maybe. Actually, no one really knows because human wars have destroyed most of their natural habitat so almost all the data on them is based on studies of Bonobos in captivity. But I digress…. In any case, what is certain is that despite their very human capacity for violence, both Bonobos and chimpanzees are far better at taking care of members of their own tribes who can’t take care of themselves then we humans seem to be. Or at least better then we Americans, here in “God’s Country,” seem to be. Read more »

Posted: August 6th, 2007 under ecology, gods & religion, science and history.
Comments: none

like any self-respecting hip hop head I love me some graffitti art.  the downside, of course, is that the paint is toxic and the propellants used in the cans are addictive and carcinogenic.  not that the prospect of getting cancer matters to most of the folks who risk their lives daily to sneak in out out of train yards and  through the subway tunnels to bring coolness to the dull grey monotony of our city walls, but still.

here’s an idea for something cool, something a bit more subtle - it’s a spray on mixture you can make at home.  when sprayed on stone it encourages moss and lichen to grow so you can literally paint with greenery.  It also has the added bonus to not being immediately visible so if you get caught by the po’s they can’t charge you with felony vandalism ‘cuz your tag won’t even show up for a couple weeks.

get the recipe here.

Posted: July 3rd, 2007 under ecology, hip hop.
Comments: none

so i’ve never been much of a fan of the ‘zero population growth’ people, not because I’m in favor of runaway population growth but because most of the ZPG folks i’ve encountered have been closet racists and classists who think the solution to population growth is to forcibly sterilize the worlds poor. talk about your evil bullshit disguised as progressive politics!

however, i just ran across this site - http://www.breathingearth.net/ - which was apparently created to help people understand carbon emissions globally. One major flaw in it is that it sorts carbon emissions per country instead of per capita, so of course the big countries with millions of people end up showing huge carbon emissions and small countries show smaller carbon emissions. The U.S. is of course the most populous industrialized nation, so it shows up as the worst offender. It’s also the worst offender per capita, of course, but the difference is not as dramatic as the map might lead one to believe.

Aside from the carbon emissions though, the map displays numbers of births and deaths globally, and it becomes very quickly apparent that the global birthrate is more then twice the global deathrate, which has obvious and unmistakable ramifications for global population growth. Obviously there are limits on how many humans our planet can sustainably support, so the question becomes how can we bring down the global birthrate without resorting to authoritarianism? Sure, education helps and so does increased economic opportunity so the abolition of capitalism would go a long way. Unfortunately I don’t think it would go nearly far enough…
anybody out there have an answer? ‘cuz i sure don’t.

Posted: July 2nd, 2007 under ecology, economics, science and history.
Comments: none

ok ok, just one more post today and then i’m going to go deal with the real world. but i found a truly great article just now on evolution, economics, and why our current economic and political system sucks. check it out.

Posted: June 7th, 2007 under ecology, economics, science and history.
Comments: none