If you haven’t seen this video yet, then watch it now. It’s a presentation of a basic analysis on the consequences of getting our position on climate change right or wrong. The arguments contained within it might be useful when you find yourself in a debate with someone who is still arguing against taking significant action.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDsIFspVzfI]
(thanks for Des Paroz for the link)
There aren’t many better ways to arrive home than to find multiple Amazon boxes sitting on your front doorstep! Thanks to Nick Hodge, Caitlin Kelly (Aussies) and Wilson Roberto Afonso (Brazil!) for your most generous contribution to my birthday heist! The pile of books beside my bed just rose by six! This is in addition to Andy Brown from the UK who sent me some Napoleon DVD’s a few weeks ago. You guys have significantly improved my week which, with all the server issues I’ve been fighting through, has been incredibly shitty. Thank you for putting a big smile back on my increasingly dour face and stopping me from drinking rat poison for another day at least.
The books I got are:
Definitely a bunch of great things to challenge my thinking in a bunch of different ways which will no doubt lead to more interviews! Thanks again folks. You rock.
My birthday (Oct 10) is still a couple of weeks away though, so there is plenty of time for the rest of your to spread the love by buying me shit from my Amazon wishlist and stop me from killing either myself or my IT support people.
With this much cash up for grabs, it’s easy to see why war is good for business… for some.
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I’ve never really taken the “Google is watching you” conspiracy theories very seriously, but Cory Doctorow has cooked up a scenario in his new short story “Scroogled” which scares the hell out of me. It’s a story about how easy it would be for Google to do a deal with a neo-fascist Government to provide them with information on everything about everybody. In this era of the decline of Western Democracy that we are living in, Google becomes the new secret police, spilling the beans on your entire history. I’ve always held the opinion that “privacy” doesn’t matter unless you have something to be embarrassed about, but Cory’s story dramatizes the scenarios in which you can become a “person of interest” and then “disappeared” if you get in “their” way. You could end up a suicide in Cabo. Make sure you read it.
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Now playing: Beastie Boys – Off The Grid
via FoxyTunes
“Ayn Rand’s Literature of Capitalism” is the title of a new article written by HARRIET RUBIN for The New York Times.
“The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged” are two of the most influential books I have ever read. I was fortunate enough to have them recommended to me when I was in my early 20s and I have read both of them more times than I can remember since then. They never fail to inspire me to try to achieve everything I can with my life.
In this video from The Real News, Gore Vidal makes the suggestion I’ve heard a number of times that the USA knew Japan was defeated and had surrendered BEFORE they dropped the atom bombs on them. But they went ahead and did it anyway.
http://therealnews.com/permalinkedembed/mediaplayer.swf
I’ve been reading lately about “NSC 68” or “National Security Council paper 68” which was drafted in 1950. That’s pretty much where many of the world’s current problems started and signaled the the beginning of America as a global bully and the corresponding decline of their moral authority. Read about it here and here.
From Wikipeda:
“NSC-68 would make the case for a US military buildup to confront what it called an enemy “unlike previous aspirants to hegemony. .. animated by a new fanatic faith, antithetical to our own.” The Soviet Union and the United States existed in a bi-polar world, in which the Soviets wished to “impose its absolute authority over the rest of the world.” This would be a war of ideas in which “the idea of freedom under a government of laws, and the idea of slavery under the grim oligarchy of the “Kremlin” were pitted against each other. Therefore, the US as “the center of power in the free world,” should build an international community in which American society would “survive and flourish” and pursue a policy of containment.”
