What was the one toy you wanted as a kid that your parents never bought you?
Submitted by Princess of Darkness.

A set of the World Book Encyclopdia.

(I know, I was a weird kid.  But I did become a librarian...)

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Yahoo! sucks but I'm sticking with Flickr

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So, how much more blood?

How Much Blood? (a CC remix)

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I cannot even begin to explain this one:  the Complaints Choir of Birmingham.

And even if you don't speak a word of Finnish, don't miss the Complaints Choir of Helsinki.

(Source: Seth Godin's blog)

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The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization

Thomas Homer-Dixon

★★★★

Having read a couple of favourable reviews of this book, I decided to buy it.  I "woke up" to the potential for catastrophic societal change in summer of 2005, when I first began reading about avian flu.  Two books I had read prior to The Upside of Down this were similar volumes: A Short History of Progress, by Ronald Wright, and The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler.  Both of these 

The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century

books cover pretty much the same territory, warning that modern society

A Short History of Progress

is inevitably going to come face-to-face with some pretty critical problems, e.g. a global oil shortage, and that our healthy and unhealthy responses to them are going to have a deep impact on our future.

One of things I like about Thomas Homer-Dixon's writing is that he makes his arguments so easy to comprehend; he's not here to show off how clever he is or to talk down to his readers.  It's almost like having a conversation with a learned friend, who knows you are starting from scratch on the topic.  The many clear examples offered in the book speed the learning process.  For example, in discussing the steady energy needed  to keep a civilization going and avoid its collapse:

But maintaining this order is a bit like holding a marble on the side of a bowl with your finger: the marble wants to sit at the bottom of the bowl--that's its equilibrium point; so holding the marble on this side takes a constant inputof energy.  Similarly, cities, ecosystems, and human bodies must have a constant input of high-quality energy to maintain their complexity and order...in the face of nature's relentless tendency toward degradation and disorder.  And, as the system gets larger and more complex, more and more energy is needed to keep it operating.

....

In other words, our societies are like the marble that wants to roll back to the bottom of the bowl, and compared with ancient Rome we're holding that marble much farther up the bowl's side.  Colossal flows of high-quality energy make this possible.  If we can't sustain these flows, our societies will fall back toward equilibrium--which menas, essentially, that their complexity will unravel.  And that unraveling, should it occur, would make Rom's decline pale by comparison.

I'm already on the third chapter and I can't put the book down.  The Upside of Down is definitely a book to recommend for those who, as Homer-Dixon puts it, are driving too fast for safety in an enveloping white fog.  It will definitely be a wake-up call for some people (politicians, business leaders, policy wonks, etc.) who expect that the future is going to be like the present, only more so.

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I can't believe it, but for once I am in agreement with Stephen Harper's government: I'm happy that they are raising the issue of human rights with the Chinese.  The video in the link below comes from another one of the "new YouTubes", called metacafé, and it shows how disenfranchised the poor in China really are:

Underground Video Of Tyranny In China - video powered by Metacafe
 

Now think about this: If I were posting this video in China, I could probably expect a visit from the police and a quick escort into the Chinese prison system.  Kind of puts our problems with our various levels of governments into perspective.

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Radio Paradise is an Internet based radio station devoted to offering alternative music. Based in Paradise, California, this little “radio station” is a throwback to those early experimental days of FM of the 1970’s. In those days a DJ was a disk jockey, not just an employee of a large corporation.

“It seems that everyday it gets harder making an honest dollar without giving up a little piece of your soul to the corporate reaper.” So William (Bill) Goldsmith felt when he started Radio Paradise. Yet as time went on it became apparent that he wasn’t the only one who felt this way as more and more people tuned in. Internet radio had come into its own thus allowing new avenues of creative expression that traditional radio couldn’t achieve. (Source: Case Study: Radio Paradise)

Now with over 35,000 registered users from around the world (there's an interactive global map for you to see where they are), Radio Paradise seems to be doing quite well.  And for once, I have found an Internet radio station that plays music very similar to my own eclectic tastes: everything from 10,000 Maniacs to Neko Case to Jimi Hendrix to Neil Young to Louis Armstrong, all mixed in together.  No rap, no hip-hop, just good tunes :-)  The only downside is lack of support for Audioscrobbler. 

Best of all, you can listen for free, although they do want regular listeners to donate to help keep the station afloat.  You can also register and take part in music rating, discussion forums, and the like. 

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I still sneak a peek into The Flu Clinic discussion group, which is keeping an eye on recent global developments in the evolution of the H5N1 (bird flu) virus.  The day before yesterday, a message from the U.S. State Department to its consulate staff was posted, saying that its staff needs to be prepared to isolate themselves (i.e. "shelter-in-place") for up to twelve weeks if a avian flu pandemic were to hit. 

Interestingly enough, last night somebody re-edited that message.  As reported by a member of The Flu Clinic on this discussion thread:

The date of the newsletter has changed along with the number of weeks advised to prep for a pandemic. Nothing else has changed in the text as far as I can see.

Orig text dated Nov 3:

The U.S. Department of State recently sent a cable to all diplomatic and consular posts entitled "Pandemic Influenza: Preparing for Possible Shelter-In-Place". The cable's main intent was to provide guidance to all staff regarding "shelter-in-place". That is, in the event of severe pandemic influenza with high morbidity, the public may be advised to self-quarantine. Therefore, current guidance notes that families should be prepared to "shelter-in-place" for up to twelve weeks, and maintain sufficient food and water supplies to accommodate that entire period.

http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cach...en&ct=clnk&cd=2 (via Google cache; a screencap of that page is below)

New text dated Nov 9:

The U.S. Department of State recently sent a cable to all diplomatic and consular posts entitled "Pandemic Influenza: Preparing for Possible Shelter-In-Place". The cable's main intent was to provide guidance to all staff regarding "shelter-in-place". That is, in the event of severe pandemic influenza with high morbidity, the public may be advised to self-quarantine. The Department of Health and Human Services, via its pandemicflu.gov website, advises that families have on hand two weeks of emergency supplies (food, water, medicines) in the event of a pandemic influenza.

http://hongkong.usconsulate.gov/ci_...2006110301.html (the re-edited text; screencap below)

The Nov 3 newsletter has been removed from the main newsletter page -- only the one from the 9th is available now:

http://hongkong.usconsulate.gov/acs_newsletter.html

So, what gives?  My guess is: somebody leaned on somebody else in order to tone down the original message, to avoid spreading panic.  It was only re-edited after word began to leak out to the news media and the major bird flu discussion groups. 

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I'm sorry.  I am really sorry. 

But the whole Ted Haggard debacle is such a spectacular trainwreck, with so many colourful, pretty secondary explosions, that I just cannot take my eyes off it.  The latest launch into Ted-inspired lunacy comes from some wingnut fundamentalist pastor named Mark Driscoll, who expounds on the best ways for men of the cloth to avoid such temptations:

Most pastors I know do not have satisfying, free, sexual conversations
and liberties with their wives. At the risk of being even more widely
despised than I currently am, I will lean over the plate and take one
for the team on this. It is not uncommon to meet pastors’ wives who
really let themselves go; they sometimes feel that because their
husband is a pastor, he is therefore trapped into fidelity, which gives
them cause for laziness. A wife who lets herself go and is not sexually
available to her husband in the ways that the Song of Songs is so frank
about is not responsible for her husband’s sin, but she may not be
helping him either.

So... you're saying that Ted's troubles may be his wife's fault?  Shakespeare's Sister rather appropriately rips Driscoll a second asshole:

Yeah, if only Mrs. Haggard had navigated that virgin-whore dichotomy a
little better, Pastor Ted never would have sought solace in the massage
stylings of a male escort. Also, I bet if she’d shaved her pussy, he
never would have bought that meth.

Pandagon has some more info on the "hip" Rev. Mark Driscoll, quoting from this Salon article:

He riffs about waiting in a supermarket checkout line behind a woman
who said to him, “You sure got a lot of kids! I hope you’ve figured out
what causes that.”

“Yeah,” he flipped back. “A blessed wife. I bet you don’t have any
kids.” The congregation hoots and hollers. “That shut her up,” he
mutters.

What a charming guy, eh?

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You know, I always choose my massage therapists by their ability to pose nude with strategically-placed stuffed animals. (link safe for work, but not so safe for good taste in advertising.  but then again, it's not really massage this man was selling.)

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