Archive for August, 2006

China’s water crisis

From The Anthropik Network:
According to hydrologists, government officers and industrial leaders, water and waste pollution is the single most serious issue facing China. Presently, one in three rural inhabitants lacks access to safe drinking water. The urban situation is not any more heartening. More than a hundred large cities are short of water and half [...]

At the crossroads


The politics of blind allegiance

Last year the Australian federal government, led by John Howard’s conservative Liberal Party, introduced legislation which tied significant school funding to compliance with certain conditions, including:

Flying the Australian flag at the school.
Displaying a poster identifying what the Education minister called “Australian Values” superimposed over a picture of World War I hero Simpson and his donkey.

In [...]

August 19, 2006 • Posted in: society • No Comments

Earth First! and the FBI

Edgar Jacobi: Heh. Well, you know that kind of cancer that you get better from eventually?

Rorschach: Yes.

Edgar Jacobi: Well, that ain’t the kind of cancer I got.

Judi Bari and Earth First!
In the 1980s some environmental activists, including Dave Foreman, in the western part of the United States began consider using direct action and even sabotage. [...]

Disco Tex and the Sex-o-lettes

As John Allison points out so clearly here
what the middle east needs is not Disco Tex and the Sex-o-lettes but for Israel to help Lebanon to casualty
and hang around for 8 hours to make sure she’s alright.

George Galloway tells it like it is

Funny and sad. George Galloway
has a few things to say to the US Senate.

August 15, 2006 • Posted in: law, observations, world • No Comments

The ethics of altruism

The Ethics of Selfishness was always intended as an introduction to this article, which broadly speaking deals with altruism. I wanted to outline a proposal for a system of public ethics which was sufficient in scope to provide a useful framework for legislation of society, business, and government - even between nations - but at [...]

August 8, 2006 • Posted in: law, philosophy, society • No Comments

To assuage the guilt

From Vasco Pyjama:
Two years ago, when I was in the Philippines, I didn’t help a friend enough when she was sick. And she died. It is something I regret deeply, and have carried with me ever since.

Yesterday, as our para-vet stopped to vaccinate a flock of sheep and goats, a woman came up to me [...]

August 7, 2006 • Posted in: society, world • No Comments

The destroyer of worlds

Sixty one years ago the human race left behind the unconscious cruelty of children to demonstrate a studied and mature capacity for evil. Seventy five thousand lives were snuffed out in an instant, and as many again died more slowly and horribly over the years. This was the penultimate act in a grinding tragedy [...]

The real history of oil

Hilarious, educational. Please watch it.
Link to google video 45 minutes.

August 2, 2006 • Posted in: observations, world • No Comments