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12/29/2007 Now, here is a truly monstrous progress trap!
China's communist rulers have reset their history to start in 1949,
so the Chinese no longer know and heed history (sounds familiar?).
The inevitable crushing collapse of China will eclipse the
historical collapses of the Sumers (now Iraqis), Hittites, Greeks,
Romans, Mayas, Egypt starting from the early 1800s, India starting from
the 1900s, etc. All historic collapses were caused by the
depletion of the environmental resources, mostly soil and water. The
near-future collapses will have the same root causes plus one: the
runaway human population. (click
here) |
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12/26/2007 Another progress trap is obvious in the insanely
expensive medical machines that at best can provide a tiny
improvement of cancer treatment. One of these babies costs as
much as adequately insuring 100,000 - 300,000 uninsured people for
one year. (click
here) |
|
12/23/2007 After shamelessly and mindlessly touting the
benefits of biofuels for a couple of years, Mr. Friedman has
reversed himself with no explanation. The horrific destruction
of Indonesia he describes in his piece is happening in no small part
due to his own complacency. On the other hand, it is better
that he discovered a few facts on the ground before writing his new
book on energy, not after... (click
here) |
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12/18/2007 A progress trap is defined by the following
reasoning: if a little of something is good, then a lot more of the
same thing must be better. An arrow is better than a stone.
A bullet is better than an arrow. A cannon projectile is
better than a bullet. An atomic fission bomb is better than a
cannon. A thermonuclear fusion bomb is better than its atomic
trigger. But now we can exterminate all of us with a push of a
button. Most major civilizations perished, some without a
trace, by falling into one or more of these progress traps.
Today is our turn and we are running into multiple progress traps as
if there were no tomorrow. Here is just one of several listed
on this page (click
here and
here) |
|
12/18/2007 And here is the second half of the progress
trap above (click
here) |
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12/17/2007 Speaking about progress traps, here is an uncritical
panegyric - singing hymns for corpo-academia. It was written by a
distinguished corpo-panegyrist (pronounced as "corporist") from
Stanford. He sees clearly the benefits of corporations using
academia to launch their products. And this may be good.
But the same corporations have destroyed their own research
capabilities over the last 15 years or so. And this is rather
bad. Now, like new potent pathogens, the same corporations are
taking over the still fertile grounds of public research, converting
them to private property, and posting the "No-Trespassing" signs all
over. So, if there is no relevant public research left, and
the corpo-academia just follows orders from their corporate masters,
where will the independent thinking come from? How quickly will our complex
society meet its inevitable demise by the Peters principle?
(click
here) |
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12/16/2007 As always, Michael Pollan has the clearest
picture of our collective insanity and eagerness to fall into progress traps.
(The antibiotic-fed pigs grow in a primordial organic soup in which
the horizontal genetic information exchange among viruses, phages
and bacteria occurs in real time. The bacteria quickly gain
resistance to most antibiotics and we die. So too much of the
cheap industrial pig meat may not be better after all.) I wish NYT
had another journalist who would be
somewhat close to the depth of Michael's thinking. (click
here)
Compare Michael's article with this masterpiece of jumping into a
major progress trap by a flaming idiot from the Washington Post
flanked by the luminaries of yet another shining path to mass
suicide (click
here) |
|
12/14/2007 Another "progress trap" has been unveiled by the
environmental disaster caused by salmon farming. A progress
trap is defined as too much success in achieving one narrow
technological goal (here breeding as many farm salmon as possible),
while endangering the greater environment and humans in general.
How many more such traps must our "advanced civilization" encounter
before it collapses for good? Let me give you a few hints:
large-scale tropical agrofuels, wanton destruction of mature
tropical ecosystems, ocean pollution, water and air pollution,
industrial agriculture, general lack of resource conservation, and
so on. (click
here) |
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12/05/2007 Polluted agricultural water may be causing genetic
mutations in humans (click
here) |
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11/02/2007 Just like New Orleans will never be properly
rebuilt, the Florida Everglades will never be restored. Why?
Because the US is a semi-bankrupt country with a run away military
budget and international debt, as well as a staggering national
debt. So let's issue some more bonds... (click
here) |
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07/16/2007 The Earth is warming and the whales are
starving (click
here) |
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05/19/2007 I thought that there were limits to insanity in
NYT's reporting of biofuel miracles. I stand corrected.
The clueless reporter is telling us about the wonderful idea of
converting 450,000 acres of land on an isolated island biome into a
massive sugarcane monoculture, and burn the rest of the biomass for
electricity (look carefully at the photograph caption) . Let's wait
for the first of the wave of future lawsuits from the people whose
water and soil (whatever is left of it) will be poisoned with the
field chemicals, vinasse and other toxic wastes. Behind this
insanity there are Mr. Stephen Case and Vinod Khosla. I guess,
mismanaging AOL and Sun Microsystems, respectively, was not enough
for them. (click
here) |
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04/16/2007 UC and BP or UCBP? (click
here) |
|
04/11/2007 Exchanging the future of the Earth for bags of salt
and a nice profit? Would the World Bank under the fearless
leadership of the incorruptible Paul Wolfowitz be involved? (click
here) |
|
04/07/2007 The Brazilian environment is being increasingly
dedicated to serving energy needs of US and food needs of China
(click
here) |
02/27/2007 Another bill for our crimes against the Earth has
come due. The bees, relentlessly driven back-and-forth among
distant, poisoned industrial monocultures, are dying. Almost
all of them. So let's let Monsanto or Syngenta synthesize a
new super molecular foundry-nanotechnology-artificial life-micro
robotic-hydrogen powered bee that will survive their own products
(because we may not). Or should we ask our own new
corporation:
Berkeley_BP_We_Create_&_Modify_Life_Because_We_Are_DemiGods.com
to accomplish this? Of course these arrogant fools will waste
billions of our dollars and write a couple papers in Science to hype
biotech, but -
in the end - we will all be much worse off. Oh, our poor naked Mother Earth
stripped of her wild flowers, lush meadows, and wild bees! (click
here
and
here) |
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02/21/2007 Coal-fired power plants are very bad for us, no
matter what are the small improvements. No new ones should be
constructed (click
here) |
|
02/21/2007 Two arrogant economists from Yale, who have already
caused untold damage to the world economy, are again discounting the
future (click
here) |
|
02/17/2007 Will people make the connection between higher
energy costs and higher utility bills? Maybe, but this would
require popping the central delusion of most Americans: Cheap energy
for all is a constitutional right guaranteed by the powerful armed
forces stationed abroad... (click
here)
|
|
01/17/2007 Hey, it's our government that is sinking US all (click
here)
|
|
01/16/2007 Because of budget cuts and Space Shuttle silliness,
we may not be able to watch from space what is happening on the Earth... (click
here) |
|
01/16/2007 ...And Greenland's ice continues to melt rather nicely (click
here) |
