I live in a walkable village, but I rarely walk anywhere. I'm usually picking up or dropping off cameras and recording equipment when I leave the house, or I'm going to the grocery store, so I need to drive, even though the distances involved are ones that I could easily cover on foot. Easy in the summer time that is. I was filming a selectboard  ( Read more... )

I mentioned recently that it's hard to hang tough with the Peak Oil narrative when the mainstream media narrative is that oil has never been more plentiful and that the real problem is low prices. Add to that the techno-utopian narratives of electric cars and power walls and super batteries, and the idea that industrial civilization is crucially ( Read more... )

I'm not the Doomer I once was. I don't know what the future holds, but I still take the possibility of the irrevocable collapse of techno-industrial civilization seriously. In fact, I've been thinking about it a lot while reading Dmitry Orlov's new book, Shrinking the Technosphere: Getting a Grip on Technologies that Limit our Autonomy, Self- ( Read more... )

As a former starry-eyed techno-utopian and also a (mostly) former peak oil doomer, I can switch hit when it comes to participating in conversations about both rapid advances in artificial intelligence and the industrial civilization's crucial dependence on fossil fuels. There are others with a foot in both camps, but not many.

It seems as though the ( Read more... )

http://c-realm.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-smell-of-betterness.html

Thanks to peristaltor, prester_scott and  autopope for your feedback. I have incorporated all of your suggestions into the finished post.

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Here's an excerpt from Albert Bates' most recent blog post:

One of the terms Demarest uses to describe the Classic Maya period is a “theater-state.” The ruling elite, known as the K’uhul Ajaw, or Holy Lords, were relatively hands-off with respect to economics, social welfare and trade but devoted lots of resources to legitimizing their political and ( Read more... )

http://etcjournal.blogspot.com/2011/06/reflections-on-recent-trip-to-nyc.html


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