USA

In America for kicks... right now listening to Son House 'Empire State' and it's blowing my mind... got limited internet access so here's a log:

5th April
NY is a bizarre place - feels like I'm witnessing the end of an era right in the heart of the Empire here... as the oil price creeps back up again and the high-streets get boarded up - already! Seems like a
quarter of the shops have foreclosed downtown.

Fascinating city though, Chinatown and Little Italy are bursting with colour and you get the feeling the people aren't going to quit no matter how bad things get... be interesting to see how things pan out
for the 150 million suburban folk in this country as the energy runs out..

7th April
Visiting my mate Christian Nold's art project in Bethlehem PA, an excellent community focused physiological stress map something along these lines... it's a post-industrial town and the current development plan focuses around, can you believe it - a CASINO, in this economic climate! Interesting to see the wider community's thoughts on the situation develop.

8th April
Just been chatting onna email with Caryl Johnston who I will visit next week in Philly - she wrote a very interesting post-peak-oil book, "After the Crash"...

Also, will be playing a matinee solo gig at Silent Barn in Brooklyn on Friday:

Friday, April 10th
Matinee show! - doors 4pm
$5 cover

MRS. (Brooklyn)
http://www.myspace.com/houseghosts

Doog (Indiana)
http://www.myspace.com/brotherdolphin

Bill Infant (London)
http://www.myspace.com/billinfant

The Cook Sisters from Brooklyn:
http://www.myspace.com/safebankaccounts


Directions:

915 Wyckoff Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11385
L train to Halsey
M train to Myrtle/Wyckoff

Age of Stupid

Also... saw this film the other day, well changed my view on climate-change, great stuff, go see:



http://www.ageofstupid.net/

Gotta love the UK

Cardiff at it's finest. Click if you dare...

Stephen Colbert's Doom Bunker

It's not if, but when folks:


(spoof's Glenn Beck's "War Room")

Orlov smackdown on William Halal

Pretty hilarious interview here featuring William Halal and Dmitri Orlov. Halal seems to think such mind-numbing wonders as space-tourism are the wave of the future (thanks, Branson) and is generally cut down to size by Orlov - it sounds like he's starting to doubt his mantra-like rhetoric of "the experts, the experts" by the end of the show, but it's a pity his air-headed sensibilities can't fully appreciate the biting satire that Orlov lays down for him.

"I don't care what these billionaires do with their money - if they pile it on the ground and burn it or fly themselves around in a rocket - they're obviously not doing anything useful with it."
(Paraphrased from Orlov)

Techno-wonderland or Collapse:
Two Visions of the US' future (Part 1 of 3)

23:43 minutes (10.86 MB)
February 23, 2009. Part 1.

Techno-wonderland or Collapse:
Two Visions of the US' future (Part 2 of 3)

17:55 minutes (8.21 MB)
February 23, 2009. Part 2.

Techno-wonderland or Collapse:
Two Visions of the US' future (Part 3 of 3)

10:57 minutes (5.01 MB)
February 23, 2009. Part 3.

From Vermont's excellent Equal Time Radio

PowerSwitch :: View topic - The case for a slow transformation rather than a fast crash

Persuasive post on an excellent forum:

"Future historians might indeed call the coming transformations of our societies a "crash", but it is not unthinkable that it will be a slow and gradual process, and that the generations who live trough it dont percieve it as a crash at all. We have a tremendous way to go before we actually start to die off on a grand scale. Our material standard of living could propably be reduced to less than 5% of what it is today before we get to starvation. "

PowerSwitch :: View topic - The case for a slow transformation rather than a fast crash

Ed Balls: Labour minister fears rise of fascism amid economic gloom

Well, I'm glad people in government have started talking about this terrifying prospect at least - if no-one with any say talks about it, it's bound to happen:
Ed Balls: minister fears rise of fascism amid economic gloom - Telegraph

Peak Oil Game

This game is kind of old already (last summer) but I just came across it. Scary:
Frontlines: Fuel of War Trailer

Interview with Mike Klare, contributor to TomDispatch

Bit of an abrupt interviewer but this guy makes a good summary of the basics of the short-term geopolitical situation:

Mike Klare discusses his latest article, "The Problem with Cheap Oil."

Play:
For cable:
For dial-up:

Download: MP3 File Interview with Mike Klare, contributor to TomDispatch

Short Term Invstment - Long Term Security

This website blew my mind - they are marketing this warplane like it's some kind of charity mission...

"That's right brothers and sisters - old, fat, black, or female - you too can find a GREEAT job making hi-tech death for Infidels.... and America NEEDS these jobs - reach out in your heart, and just pray, children - repeat after me -

'Verily, we will have this Rrraptor .... and yay, it will preserve the right to buy twinkies on credit for Americans everywhere, and yay, it will deliver high yield explosives unto the heads of non-believers, it will produce 10000's of USEFUL JOBS for TRUE BELIEVERS.... Nations of Evil-Doers will quake in FEAR before our might, but yay, they will love us, for we are The Land of The Free, and the Home of DISNEYLAND - SAY AMEN!"

An advocacy page? Unbelievable... Thankfully preserveraptorjobs.com doesn't work - let's hope their jumble sale to raise the funds was a flop.

F-22 Raptor

Link from here: Tomgram: Chalmers Johnson, Economic Death Spiral at the Pentagon

UK Companies Sort it All Out

Panic's off - Richard Branson's on the case. No worries, nothing to see here, get back in your car and drive to Virgin Megastore, er I mean Zavvi - no, didn't they shut already?:

Nice Maps

Oh man, here we go again - time to invent your enemy folks, know him well: The new boogy man



Here's one we took control of earlier:



Meanwhile in Africa... The oil protection agencies (sorry, I mean U.S. military) work continues...

Click this for an interactive version:Africom on Google Maps

I wish I was making this up.

Slo-mo Splat | Post Carbon Institute

Heinberg laying it down like he does:

"Remember the wall that environmentalists (like the 1972 "Limits to Growth" authors) have long been saying that industrial society would eventually hit?

Permit me to make the formal introduction: Industrial society, meet wall; wall, meet industrial society."

Slo-mo Splat | Post Carbon Institute

Also good:
The shape of the recovery | Post Carbon Institute

Alternative Fuels

You never know, renewable resources just might save the day:

"Miami's Jackson Memorial Hospital reportedly has signed a deal to supply Norwegian entrepreneur Lauri Venoy with 3,000 gallons-per-week of liposuction leftovers harvested by its clinics. This bio-fat could produce 2,600 gallons of biodiesel, sufficient to fuel a Hummer for a year."

Is this really how desperate things are getting!?

On America's New Energy Future / Tapping the fat of the land

Failing ocean current raises fears of mini ice age - environment - 30 November 2005 - New Scientist

This was a while ago but made interesting reading this morning - horizontal snowfall outside! Anyone heard of an update? Couldn't find any..

"The last shutdown, which prompted a temperature drop of 5°C to 10°C in western Europe, was probably at the end of the last ice age, 12,000 years ago. There may also have been a slowing of Atlantic circulation during the Little Ice Age, which lasted sporadically from 1300 to about 1850 and created temperatures low enough to freeze the River Thames in London."

Failing ocean current raises fears of mini ice age - environment - 30 November 2005 - New Scientist: "... prompted a temperature drop of 5�C to 10�C in western Europe, was probably at the end of the last ice age, 12,000 years ago. There may also have been a slowing of Atlantic circulation during the Little Ice Age, which lasted sporadically from 1300 to about 1850 and created temperatures low enough to freeze the River Thames in London."

Comic Relief

This guy's band parody shots are pretty funny:
Andersen Ben-Hilliens Rock Paparazzi: The Pixies


"My Flashgun GOOONE to HEAVENS
he he
$5318008"

Wisdom of the Elders

This guy is heavy.

Some great quotes in here: “Fate is what happens when innumerable people make innumerable small decisions about other matters that have a collective cumulative effect that nobody intended.”
C. Wright Mills

Content is pretty terrifying, but I like his attitude, and the way he points out that feeling guilty about the situation we are in as a species is not a very useful way to go... he makes the analogy of a friend's dying mother who got involved in a religion that taught her she had contracted her disease due to lack of faith - and spent her final weeks in guilt-ridden misery.

He suggests that there's not much point in humanity doing the same - we children of the fossil-fuel age were pretty innocent in our decisions. Obviously we still need to do anything we can to mitigate the crash we are now facing, but we might as well do it with a smile on our faces!

He's definitely not an 'entertainer' but I recommend you put this on while you're doing the washing up or something.

Interview with William R. Catton, Jr.

YouTube - Peak Oil & The Four Futures - Tim Hudson

Interesting summary of future scenarios at the "Michigan's Future
Energy, Economy & Environment Conference" in Nov 2007:

YouTube - Peak Oil & The Four Futures - Tim Hudson - Parts 1 and 2

Beards get radical

Don't let appearances put you off, this man talks an amazing amount of sense:

YouTube - The Twilight of an Age

YouTube - AMERICANS ARE NOT DUMB

Lulz. Please prove this video wrong, yanks: