Archive for April, 2010
Berry Go Round #27
Berry Go Round #27 is up now at A Neotropical Savanna. If, like me, you’re still wearing wool coats and winter boots and looking longingly at the teeny tiny buds hoping spring will JUST HURRY UP, it might help you forget that it’s 24 degrees out right now. It could also make you even crankier […]
Pretty Things
Not enough
Oil isn’t the only thing we’re running out of. Rare earth minerals that you’ve probably never heard of but that are essential for modern technology are, well, rare. Many are located in countries we compete with and getting them out of the ground requires willingness to absolutely destroy that local environment. We’re going to have […]
Oil
Something terrible is supposed to happen on my birthday in 2012. I don’t put much stock in the predictions of the Mayan calendar, but the world oil shortfall that’s predicted to occur in 2012 probably won’t have many good consequences. We are completely unprepared to transition to a non-fossil fuel based economy, so I can […]
High density cities
If we all lived at the density people in Brooklyn do, everyone in America would fit in New Hampshire. I’m not suggesting that we all move to New Hampshire, of course. But imagine the problems we’d solve if our major cities were condensed. If places are closer together, people can walk more. This doesn’t just […]
Pretty Things
Where is your god?
From Karen Armstrong’s A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam: One day the Gestapo hanged a child. … The child who, Wiesel recalled, had the face of a “sad-eyed angel,” was silent, lividly pale and almost calm as he ascended the gallows. Behind Wiesel, one of the other prisoners asked: “Where […]