Update
Trish got fired/quit preemptively from the live-in position, so we had to relocate. We're now back about a block from the townhouse I'd been in for the previous few years. She's found another job, which she's not excited about, but it beats the hell out of continuous 12-hour days and being perpetually on-call (and no, I'm not exaggerating).
I spent a week in Chicago with the other hippo hacker, attempting to be productive, with fair success. Just before skipping town, I performed (balls, clubs, contact, and boxes) in the class of her physiologist friend who was really excited about me coming to town. From the sound of it, I may wind up on his final exam. Video of me juggling clubs may also appear on a physics final exam.
I haven't posted much about my sentiments regarding these, the End Times. And yes, I know that when I get going I sound exactly like one of the religious whack-jobs I rant about, but if you look around, listen to the laundry list of things that are going wrong ecologically (how much damage is occurring, how quickly, and how soon the fit will hit the shan), and recognize just how little is being done to fix it (too little too late and too slowly, a Band-Aid tm on a fatally hemorrhaging wound), you gotta recognize that civilization as we know it is going to end in the (relatively) near future.
I give it 10 years, 20 max, before things start seriously deteriorating. The problem is that a crisis is necessary to force change, to shock people out of their complacency. The people in power are now, finally, recognizing the necessity of and conceding to the measures that environmentalists have been kicking and screaming about for the past decade. But it's too late already, we're now at the point where many additional measures are necessary, because all of the changes that are being applied now weren't applied ten years ago. And by the time it's recognized that these additional radical changes have to be implemented, it'll be too late again.
I'd been having these kinds of thoughts for a good long time, but it was really brought home this summer. Daniel Quinn's Ishmael was a big part of it. A few weeks ago, Trish, Lindsay and I attended a screening of What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire. Think Inconvenient Truth, only more so - more information, wider scope, etc - but with less masturbatory ego-stroking. I now need to track down a bunch of the authors, etc. that were interviewed there. For those of you in town, there was some talk about another screening at the library next Monday, and I'll post again if I hear more about that. I've also got a copy of the DVD that I'm willing to lend out.
I'll likely be posting more of this kind of thing from now on. Assuming I post at all. Whatever.
I spent a week in Chicago with the other hippo hacker, attempting to be productive, with fair success. Just before skipping town, I performed (balls, clubs, contact, and boxes) in the class of her physiologist friend who was really excited about me coming to town. From the sound of it, I may wind up on his final exam. Video of me juggling clubs may also appear on a physics final exam.
I haven't posted much about my sentiments regarding these, the End Times. And yes, I know that when I get going I sound exactly like one of the religious whack-jobs I rant about, but if you look around, listen to the laundry list of things that are going wrong ecologically (how much damage is occurring, how quickly, and how soon the fit will hit the shan), and recognize just how little is being done to fix it (too little too late and too slowly, a Band-Aid tm on a fatally hemorrhaging wound), you gotta recognize that civilization as we know it is going to end in the (relatively) near future.
I give it 10 years, 20 max, before things start seriously deteriorating. The problem is that a crisis is necessary to force change, to shock people out of their complacency. The people in power are now, finally, recognizing the necessity of and conceding to the measures that environmentalists have been kicking and screaming about for the past decade. But it's too late already, we're now at the point where many additional measures are necessary, because all of the changes that are being applied now weren't applied ten years ago. And by the time it's recognized that these additional radical changes have to be implemented, it'll be too late again.
I'd been having these kinds of thoughts for a good long time, but it was really brought home this summer. Daniel Quinn's Ishmael was a big part of it. A few weeks ago, Trish, Lindsay and I attended a screening of What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire. Think Inconvenient Truth, only more so - more information, wider scope, etc - but with less masturbatory ego-stroking. I now need to track down a bunch of the authors, etc. that were interviewed there. For those of you in town, there was some talk about another screening at the library next Monday, and I'll post again if I hear more about that. I've also got a copy of the DVD that I'm willing to lend out.
I'll likely be posting more of this kind of thing from now on. Assuming I post at all. Whatever.