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Climate Change at the American Museum of Natural History

by ThePete 9:00 am 2008-11-18


The Climate Change exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History is open now and runs until August 16, 2009. Tickets are $24 for adults (cheaper for kids, students and seniors). Check out the ANMH website for more info: www.amnh.org/exhibitions/climatechange
Read on to find out whether I think it’s an exhibit worth checking out!

Recently, I got invited to a thing last night at the American Museum of Natural History–they opened up the Climate Change exhibit and their Butterfly Sanctuary for families and media (like me!) to come check it out sans crowds. They fed us and let us have at both exhibits.


In the shadow of a dinosaur skeleton they fed us. :)

Now, if you’re wondering if it’s worth it to check out an exhibit on Climate Change, don’t doubt it–it’s worth it. Especially Climate Change which is now open at the American Museum of Natural History until August 16, 2009. Now you may be wondering how I can fairly say that since I didn’t have to pay to get in–well, just keep readin’ tough guy!

It’s easy to assume that you know everything there is to know about Global Warming and Climate Change, but have you seen what a fricken’ 1 ton piece of coal looks like in person?

Have you ever seen a timeline, right in front of you, that chronicles the temperature of the Earth from the dawn of man through to present day? This isn’t some cinematic Powerpoint presentation (not that there’s anything wrong with that)–this exhibit allows you to get up close and personal with the facts–the seemingly endless stream of facts that all point to one thing–the climate is a-changing.

Maybe you’re a naysayer or know someone who doesn’t “believe” in Climate Change. This is an exhibit for the naysayer, too–I’m a healthy skeptic myself and while I knew the evidence is overwhelming, I found all of the evidence in one exhibit to be pretty damn persuasive. I think if people are unsure or even think Al Gore’s movie is just propaganda they should check out the Climate Change exhibit at the AMNH. The amazingly long stack of evidence that Climate Change is a real and growing threat will help those on the fence get off of it.

Check it out–one of the things they have in the exhibit is a bank of three touchscreen computers that connect to one large projection screen. Each of the touchscreens allow you to work out just how much CO2 you spew into the sky due to the car you drive or the light bulbs you use or how many trees you don’t plant. As you work through your answers, they show up on the bigger projection screen in one of the three rows. The thing that I found most interesting about this part of the exhibit was, that for me, the one with the cars was useless since I don’t drive (I sold my car back in 2003 and now I’m a New York City resident). So first, I told it my commute from back, before I sold my car: 45 minutes into Hollywood and 45 back to Westwood, every day.

It told me my car and I were responsible for over 22,000 metric tons of CO2 for each year I drove. Then it asked me how much I could cut back–I told it I’d cut back to zero miles driven, the reduction in CO2 was obvious–but then, on the bigger screen in front of us, it showed us how much CO2 would NOT be in the atmosphere if everyone in America cut back to the same level:

Yeah, man–that’s right–if everyone stopped driving we’d stop nearly 1.3 billion metric tons of CO2 from getting into the air.

See, I think it’s these (not-so-)little facts that really put things into perspective.

Sure, you can sit around searching Wikipedia all night for this stuff, or you can go check these facts out in person.

There’s plenty more to see there, too–videos, murals, and an actual-size model of one metric ton of coal. There are also plenty of things for kids to be entertained and educated by, as well. They can play with little wooden ice-shelves, learn about weather patterns on cool spherical video screens (I want one of these for home!!) and check out this poor polar bear:

I actually heard one little girl ask her mom why the polar bear was sad. Turns out that as Climate Change messes with the weather, the eating habits of polar bears are being changed, too. As a result they’re moving further south in search of food and end up stumbling into areas where we humans live. I’m guessing that bear has just trashed an Inuit’s summer home (the placard wasn’t specific for what was in front of us, just saying the poor furry white guys sometimes end up in people’s trash).

There’s one last thing I want to point out to people about the Climate Change exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History, whether they go or not–it’s this picture:

That’s a chart they had on display that makes one of the most important points there is to make about Climate Change and Global Warming and oil, coal and all of this stuff.

There is not just one solution–there are several. We all need to change in many different ways. Something else to note about that great chart is that most of that stuff isn’t up to you and me to do–it falls on the doorstep of big business and government. We can’t make sure that nuclear power or renewable energy sources are used by our power companies. What we can do is contact businesses we deal with, like our electric companies, for instance, and ask where they get their power from. Is it coal? Nukes? Solar? Hydro? What? If they’re not talking alternatives, then see if you can find another supplier for your electricity.

But there’s a lot more we can all do on our own and there’s a lot more we can pressure big business and even government to do to help save the world. A fact that I wish the exhibit had included was the fact that too much pollution is created by factories, refineries, plants and even just buildings. One other note, I’m against nuclear power of any kind–it’s ultimately unsafe and if we spent the money on developing solar, hydro or wind technology, we wouldn’t ever have to worry about meltdowns. :)

But aaanyway, so it was a pretty fun exhibit. If you’re in NYC or are planning a visit sometime before August 16, 2009, and have a spare $24 per person, it’s definitely worth stopping in and hey, with that price you can check out the rest of the American Museum of Natural History while you’re there. For twice the price of a movie ticket you can get yourself some knowledge–which is probably a heckuva lot more than you’d get at the movies. ;P

But here’s a tip–if you’re not able to make it or want to get a better sense of what’s at this thing, check out the AMNH website for the Climate Change exhibit: www.amnh.org/exhibitions/climatechange

It’s got a lot of great stuff right there. Of course, it’s no match for being at the museum in person.

You can also check out my Flickr photoset here: flickr.com/photos/thepete/sets/72157609325527271/

Is it the perfect exhibit? Probably not, but pound-for-pound you really are going to get your $24 worth.

Just my ¥2, as always!

by ThePete 9:00 am 2008-11-18 In TheNews, ThePete.Com, TheTech.ThePete.Com, TheWarnings | Tags , , , , , , , | $ |

Democracy In Peril: The Ongoing Dramacracy

by ThePete 11:24 am 2008-10-27

Ahh, this is FUN. I LOVE it when my greatest fears about my democracy come true!

Wait. No, I don’t. This sucks.

I want to just blog about my custom toys and draw comics and write novels.

But nooooo, the government has to go and be all corrupt and whatnot! OK, so, here’s a nice little round up of election irregularity news from around the web, most notably that first link–yep, that’s CNN.com covering voter purging! Amazing! But let’s get to the links:

Some voters ‘purged’ from voter rolls
www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/26/voter.suppression/index.html
(It’s funny, this article’s headline refers to “some” voters being purged but if you read the article, tens of thousands in various states could lose their ability to vote.)

WIDESPREAD TOUCH SCREEN VOTE FLIPPING!!
www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/10/26/112912/81/554/642200
(I hate linking to (let alone Digging) a post at DailyKos–they might as well be called “DailyBias” or “DailyDemocratMouthpiece”. I’ve heard so many bad things about them shutting people down for dissenting with the Democrat POV–but if they’re covering voter probs, what can you do?)

Election Developments & Problems in FL, GA, VA, IN, OH, NM, TN, WV
www.bradblog.com/?p=6561
(LOADS of great info here on all sorts of bizarre crap, including a Florida Elections Supervisor saying: “No one could have anticipated that this election would be so historic and draw as much attention as it has,” Seriously? Because the news has been saying that for months, lady!)

11,000 Absentee Ballots Not Mailed Out in Colorado
www.democracynow.org/2008/10/27/headlines#6
(Sequoia Voting Systems failed to deliver half of the absentee ballots they were supposed to deliver to the post office, as a result 10k+ people may not vote.)

Justice Department Pressed by Bush to Contest 200,000 Ohio Voters
www.democracynow.org/2008/10/27/headlines#8
From DN’s headline story for this:

The White House has asked the Department of Justice to look into whether 200,000 new Ohio voters must reconfirm their registration information before the Nov. 4 election because their records don’t precisely match other government databases.

Here’s another one from BradBlog.com:
‘AWOL’ Obama/DNC Attorneys Found! Turns Out They Were Working in Secret, Reports Alternet
www.bradblog.com/?p=6571
Here’s an excerpt from the post:

We’ve had to report on Democrats in PA being sued by the NAACP, because neither the DNC nor the Obama campaign was willing to stand up for voters to demand that emergency paper ballots be made available to voters in PA before every machine in a precinct breaks down, as decreed a month ago from PA’s Democratic Sec. of the Commonwealth.

We haven’t even had time to report that the Republicans have attempted to intervene in the case, to take the side of the PA Democrats to keep paper ballots from being given to voters.

Yeah, that’s pretty bizarre, huh?

Can you think of a reason why voters who want to vote with paper ballots should be kept from voting with paper ballots?

Meanwhile, here’s a headline and link to that Alternet.org story Brad blogged about:

Democrats Describe Efforts to Limit Voting Machines Problems
www.alternet.org/democracy/104635/democrats_describe_efforts_to_limit_voting_machines_problems/
It goes into what the Dems are supposedly doing to protect the vote, but the article admits:

Whether these resources and responses will satisfy election integrity activists is an open question. That e-voting problems continue to surface undermines their confidence. One big difference between the activist community and DNC is the activists want to end the use of troubling technologies altogether whereas the DNC wants to ensure the election machinery, however flawed, works as best as it can for the public — because the voting systems in place are the systems that will be used in 2008.

Here are a few sites to check out for more on voter irregularities:

bradblog.com
votersunite.org

More to come! (Sadly)

by ThePete 11:24 am 2008-10-27 Politricks, TheCultureJam, TheWarnings | Tags , | $ |

Bad Economy = Violence +Cop Cutbacks = Mad Max?

by ThePete 6:26 pm 2008-10-23
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So, apparently, police forces are facing budget cutbacks. The above screencap comes from an October 23, 2008 article (here: http://www.cnn.com/…index.html ) at CNN.com. It seems there are a lot of not directly-obvious dangers connected with this economic mess. Seems that while people aren’t paying their mortgages, they’re also not paying their taxes. Or maybe they’re choosing one over the other? Regardless, police forces are facing budget cuts–but that’s not what I’m worried about.

When I saw this article, I immediate remembered an AP.org article I had meant to blog on that was posted on CNN.com back on October 13. Check it out here: http://www.cnn.com/…index.html

It’s all about how people are turning to violence to deal with their own economic woes.

Now, the AP article talks about people who have tried or succeeded in killing themselves and/or their family in attempts to avoid taking responsibility for their debts. Disturbing stuff.

But I’m concerned with how far people are from using violence on others to solve their economic problems. Combine this with a shortage of police and we’re looking at a disturbing coincidence.

Now, I don’t think we’re at all close to "Road Warrior" stuff, but I don’t think it’s a bad thing to think about. How close do we want to get to hiring Mad Max as a policeman before we start talking about priorities in this mess?

Perhaps this is why our government believes we need an active duty army unit on American soil now–don’t know what I’m talking about? Go here: http://thepete.com/…de-the-us/ and/or here: http://thepete.com/…-inside-us

I think I’m going to stock up on motorcycle jackets and those bats with nails through them–just in case!!

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by ThePete 6:26 pm 2008-10-23 In TheNews, TheCultureJam, TheMoney, ThePete.Com, TheWarnings | Tags , , , , | $ |

Water Vs. War: Which Would You Fight For?

by ThePete 6:24 pm 2008-10-14

A couple days ago, fellow blogger and all-around concerned individual Leslie Bradshaw posted something on her blog about the 100th anniversary of the treatment of water here in the US. Yep, we’ve been using chemicals like chlorine to treat our water for a century. Normally, I say chemicals are not the way to go–however, there are things that live in water that can kill us. I say do what you have to do to get things like cholera and typhoid out of the water we’re drinking–and that’s just what started to happen one hundred years ago last month.

But this is not to say that the rest is history. Sure, cholera and typhoid are not an issue in the US of the 21st century. However, that’s not the case in the developing world. Back in March of 2008 I wrote about a new water treatment device from inventor Dean Kamen. Kamen had been on The Colbert Report demonstrating the device and informing us on some water statistics. He talked about how implementing this device would stop 50% of the world’s diseases in their tracks.

This is how important clean water is, yet it’s being ignored constantly by damn near everyone.

TheLeslie blogs about the 100th Anniversary of water treatment here in the US, and as far as I can tell, she’s practically the only person who’s talked about it. She linked to a post on HuffPo about it and an article at Independent.co.uk about cholera in Iraq, but when I Googled for “water treatment” all I got were stories about the process of treating water (the Wikipedia article, a page from the EPA on it, etc). I found nothing about the 100th Anniversary and nothing about how most of the developing world desperately needs clean water. Maybe the blogosphere moves too quickly and it’s already moved on from this subject?

Should it be this hard to find news and info on one of the most important things on the planet?

Regardless, the importance of clean water has not gone away in the last 100 years.

So, I’ll stand firmly on my soap box and ask you one question:

Why are we spending hundreds of billions on a war in Iraq, hundreds of billions more on a war in Afghanistan, hundreds of billions more on a bailout for Wall Street, when hundreds of millions of people are suffering from diseases related to a lack of clean water.

As a race of humans on this little blue ball, you’d think we’d be able to secure clean water for all 6 billion of us.

How can you and I help get clean water to everyone who needs it? To be honest, I don’t know. Leslie links to a quiz about water that, for every right answer, promises funds to be donated to delivering clean water to households in west Africa. That’s a cool start for sure. There is also Ethos Water–at their website, EthosWater.com, you can learn about how they are helping bring clean water to kids in the developing world. It has something to do with Starbucks–yeah, this has kind of derailed the end of my post.

All I know how to do really well is blog. And blog is what I’ve been doing. For several years now, I’ve been following the topic of water–ever since my best friend, Britt, told me about water rights wars he had read about in Africa. I did some research and read about a war for water rights here in North America back in 2003. I even stumbled across a copy of a GREAT miniseries called H2O. It’s directed by Charles Binamé, co-written by and stars Paul Gross, and is a fictional account of political intrigue, corruption and water rights in Canada that involves the first black President of the United States.

Sadly, I can’t find H2O on DVD anywhere. If you can find it, I HIGHLY recommend watching it. It’s some of the best writing I’ve seen. Also, if you find it, please let me know where you got it. I can’t find my copy after my recent move to NYC :(

Another funny connection I have to water rights is a show TheWife was in three years in a row back in Los Angeles. In fact, they’re in rehearsals right now for this year’s production of A Mulholland Christmas Carol (sans TheWife, sadly). Mulholland Christmas Carol written by Bill Robens and Kiff Scholl, is a musical comedy that tells the story of how William Mulholland legally stole water from a far-away county in order to allow Los Angeles to survive, thrive and grow (while that far away county all but dried up and died). You can learn more about this year’s production at TheatreOfNote.com. If you live in LA or will be there between Thanksgiving and Christmas CHECK THIS SHOW OUT! It’s truly a lot of fun and it does a great job of weaving historical facts, pop culture, great music and humor all together to teach the audience about how LA came to get the water that flows from it’s taps.

Water is very likely the most important thing in our lives. Yet it’s something we hardly ever think about. So while I have no idea how we can help get clean water to the people who need it most, at least some of us are blogging about it.

Do you know how to help bring clean water to the developing world? Post a comment, I want to help, too.

For more facts about water treatment a hundred years ago and today, check out Leslie’s post here: lesliebradshaw.com/?p=158

UPDATE 20081121: I found my copy of H20! And check it out! We have a black president for real now! o_O Whoa… spooky…

by ThePete 6:24 pm 2008-10-14 In TheNews, ThePete.Com, TheWarnings | Tags , , , , , , , , | $ |

More On the Status of Posse Comitatus in the US

by ThePete 3:20 pm 2008-10-10
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I’ve blogged on US Army troops serving on American soil before (here: http://thepete.com/…-inside-us and here: http://thepete.com/…de-the-us/ ) and on Tuesday of this week (here: http://www.democracynow.org/…it_will_be ) Democracy Now covered the topic as well. They had a mini-debate on the topic of the Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Team serving under US Army North, which, Amy Goodman explained, is "the Army service component of Northern Command". She had on Army Col. Michael Boatner, future operations division chief of USNORTHCOM, and Matthew Rothschild, editor of The Progressive magazine to discuss the issue.

The transcript does make for good reading and, to be fair, Boatner does assuage some fears about a unit of active duty soldiers functioning on American soil. However, what the debate doesn’t discuss is the slippery slope argument. There’s another phrase that can describe the danger more accurately: Mission Creep.

This is when your mission is to achieve one goal, but along the way you see something else you can do so you just do it, rather than getting permission or get any other feedback about it. This is fine if you’re doing chores around the house, but when you’re a soldier trained to kill insurgents (and have just came back from doing exactly that) I don’t think even an inch of mission creep is acceptable.

In the Democracy Now segment, Boatner assured us that soldiers wouldn’t be bringing their "heavy weapons and combat vehicles" with them on this domestic service but that "They would bring their individual weapons, which is the standard policy for deployments in the homeland."

Now, think about this–do you really want to have some guy with an M-16 patrolling the streets during a disaster? What if he makes a single mistake and mis-identifies someone as a threat who really isn’t one? During Katrina I remember members of the press identifying black people wading through flood waters with garbage bags in their hands as looters. Meanwhile, white people wading through the water with suitcases were identified as refugees.

Any human is capable of this kind of mistake. What makes this mistake even more dangerous is when someone trained to defend themselves with a gun makes it.

More…

by ThePete 3:20 pm 2008-10-10 In TheNews, TheBig Brother, ThePete.Com, TheWarnings | Tags , , | $ |

Arctic Ice Subject to Rapid Changes

by ThePete 8:14 pm 2008-09-14
utterz-image
Here is a pic that shows how rapidly things are changing in the Arctic (source: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/…g/PIA11086 ). Over the span of 2 days, a dramatic amount of new melting ice became visible to NASA’s QuikScat satellite scatterometer. Here’s what NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has to say about the above image:

"There has been considerable interest in the recent state of Arctic sea ice for scientific research and for operational applications especially along the Northern Sea Route and the Northwest Passage. This pair of sea ice maps was derived from radar data from NASA’s QuikScat satellite scatterometer on September 2, 2008 (left panel) and September 5, 2008 (right panel).

QuikScat’s unique features make it a powerful tool for mapping sea ice and accurately identifying sea ice conditions. It can distinguish sea ice from open water, differentiate different classes of ice, and compensate for effects of strong winds on ocean surfaces and effects of melt on ice.

In the above images, red areas denote sea ice that was undergoing active melting on the ice surface, magenta areas show sea ice with reduced melt, cyan areas are refrozen sea ice that had some residual wetness from earlier melting, and white areas represent sea ice that had been refrozen for 10 or more days. Ocean areas with less than 15 percent ice cover on the surface are blue, while land surfaces are shown in brown and missing data are depicted in black."

They go onto explain that the red areas on the right are from "Warm air transported by northward winds" that caused: "extensive areas of active melt (red) over a larger region extending from the Barents Sea across the Kara Sea to the Laptev Sea on September 5. That melt event was so large that some parts of it reached as far north as the vicinity of the North Pole."

PLEASE NOTE: The original caption for the image also explains that: "The sea routes may be opened or closed rapidly by transient weather events. Such unstable sea ice conditions in the passages can cause a significant navigation risk."

So, I post this not as "The sky is falling and it’s because of Climate Change!" kind of post but rather a post that says: "Whoa, that’s some serious flux! A bit of warm air and voila, instant Arctic Sea Routes–that’s kinda scary that it can happen so quickly." Still a sign of Climate Change, but it’s not the sign you might expect.

I almost think it’s more important to note that instability is sometimes worse than stability regardless of the effect. In this case, we don’t know what’s going on up there. At least, that’s what it seems like to me.

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by ThePete 8:14 pm 2008-09-14 In TheNews, ThePete.Com, TheScience, TheWarnings | Tags , , , , , , | $ |

Freddie/Fannie Seized in a Free-Market, Whahappa

by ThePete 3:10 am 2008-09-08

utterz-imageI saw this earlier tonight and couldn’t help but shake my head. I saw this coming. Hell, I’m not sure who couldn’t, assuming you were looking.

They keep trying the same band-aids to save our economy, but said bandages don’t work time and time again. What’s worse is that everyone is too scared to consider the worst. Now, I’m far from an expert but I don’t see how taking over two huge banks will help a system which is exhibiting some serious symptoms that something very big is wrong with it..

Our system is built to expand for ever–inflation never stops–the thing is value does. Our country’s ideas are largely all it has left because of outsourcing and the greed behind the outsourcing..

It’s my opinion that the US economy is at it’s weakest since after the Great Depression. By "weak" I mean in terms of it’s ability to function, not in terms of how much the US dollar is worth.

I feel like one more financial crisis will send everything tumbling down.

We can’t get out of oil because our ecomomy is tied too greatly to it. Google "petrodollars" for a good example and for another, consider the absolutely huge number of things in our lives that are made from oil. So very much of our lives revolve around the use of oil-based products. Clothes, makeup, plastics, chemicals all come from the black stuff.

Then think about the trillion bucks we’re "spending" on TWAT (The War Against Terror) and understand that a buttload of that money (remember, it’s in the many hundreds of billions) goes back to American military-industrial contractors and thusly back into our economy.

What all this means is that aside from war, oil and ideas (intelectual property, like movies, TV, design, etc) we have very little going for us.

If we lose the very system that manages our money (banks) we lose the scaffolding holding everything up.

Once again, I have no official training with money. I just read a LOT and feel like I can spot trends and generally understand why (I think) they might be happening.

So, please, do your own research and if you come to a different conclusion, please let me know so I can relax.

All I know for sure is that I’ve been right so far.

Hopefully, a new party in control of the White House will change things.

Of course, that won’t remove the inherent flaws in the system, but hopefully it’ll buy some extra time for our leaders to catch a clue about this and star making serious changes.
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by ThePete 3:10 am 2008-09-08 In TheNews, TheMoney, ThePete.Com, TheWarnings | Tags , , | $ |

Moron the US Economy–I mean–More On the US Economy

by ThePete 7:10 pm 2008-08-19

I was inspired to write this post by a combination of things. First, my post on that IMF guy saying another of our banks was going to withdraw itself from existence and then a reply to said post on Utterz by Maharet (listen to it here: www.utterz.com/u/utt/u-NTEyNTkzOA#utt-NTEyNTkzOA ).

As I responded to Maharet’s post, I realized something about the complexities of what our country is facing. In fact, I recognized that there are NO complexities to these problems at all.

Sure, the news likes to talk about sub-prime mortgages and greedy lenders and people who can’t pay their loans back and selling off bad loans as investments and blah, blah, blah, but I think it’s much more simple than all of that.

I feel like the strongest, most stable systems are the most simple systems. Our system is not simple.

In a nutshell, though, the problems, themselves do seem very simple. Check it out:

Unending inflation (devaluing of the dollar) combined with unending outsourcing (devaluing of the American worker) equates to an empty country, economically speaking.

Unemployed workers with no money (or money worth very little) to buy with, leaves the United States completely wiped out as any kind of economic power.

It seems to me like that scenario does in our very way of life.

Not that I want this to happen–hell, I don’t even want to be right on this. But to me, I feel like a few failed banks should not crush our economy like they seem to be threatening to. If our economy was strong, and hadn’t given away most of its jobs and much of the value of it’s currency, we’d have, you know, an actual foundation to stand on in case the scaffolding of banking falls on our heads. Since we don’t have a solid foundation of value and labor in our country, when our banks fail, there’s nothing else left.

PLEASE TELL ME I’M WRONG!!

I really want someone to tell me I’m wrong!!!

Just make sure to include clear explanations a child could understand. I went to film school. ^_^

by ThePete 7:10 pm 2008-08-19 In TheNews, TheMoney, ThePete.Com, TheWarnings | Tags , , , , , , , , | $ |

Another US Bank to Crumble?

by ThePete 6:00 pm 2008-08-19
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Weee! It’s so hard to not be cynical when things just keep getting worse.

So, the above is a screencap of an article capped just moments ago at http://timesonline.co.uk/ and it talks about how an ex-IMF guy (that’s International Monetary Fund, not Impossible Mission Force) says that another US bank is about to tank and that the US economic crisis is only half over.

The Fed and the USG have been trying for months (years?) to get this thing under control and this guys says it’s only half over?

Half over???

All I feel like saying to that is…

Weeeeee!

(You know, it’s like that feeling you get when you’re on a roller coaster that is hurling toward the ground!)

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by ThePete 6:00 pm 2008-08-19 In TheNews, TheMoney, ThePete.Com, TheWarnings | Tags , , , , | $ |

Oil Surges to $109 But EVERYTHING Costs More

by ThePete 10:55 am 2008-03-11

Mostly, these days, people are only worried about how the ever-rising oil prices will change the price of gasoline. This is a logical worry, but prices at the pump are just the first step in this new version of trickle down economics. In this case, the costs trickle down a chain-of-use.

Oil costs $109 per barrel today (http://snipurl.com/21io3 ) and that will make gasoline prices higher and then other things made with oil will cost more (like gasoline and plastics). After that, the things that we need oil-related products to get will cost more. These are things like FOOD.

See, you need gasoline and oil to farm the land. You need more to get the food to market. Every step of the way we rely on oil-products and, therefore, every step of the way will get more expensive.

In fact, food prices in the US have already started to climb. The above screencap comes from a March 9, 2008 article from Boston.com (here: http://snipurl.com/21iom ) that reports:

"After nearly two decades of low food inflation, prices for staples such as bread, milk, eggs, and flour are rising sharply, surging in the past year at double-digit rates, according to the Labor Department. Milk prices, for example, increased 26 percent over the year. Egg prices jumped 40 percent.

"Escalating food costs could present a greater problem than soaring oil prices for the national economy because the average household spends three times as much for food as for gasoline. Food accounts for about 13 percent of household spending compared with about 4 percent for gas."

Of course, our gas is already more expensive. Now our food prices are going up. Those are the two most immediately important things to spend money on. This means we’ll spend less on the other things we enjoy in life.

If it gets much worse, we’ll only be spending money on food to keep us alive and fuel, which allows us to get to work. Work gives us money to buy food and fuel and…the circle of life continues!

I’m just glad I’m planning on moving to a city with a good public transit system!
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by ThePete 10:55 am 2008-03-11 In TheNews, TheMoney, ThePete.Com, TheWarnings | Tags , , | $ |

Oil Hits $100 A Barrel

by ThePete 1:03 pm 2008-02-19

The above screencap comes from an AP.org article at Biz.Yahoo.com (find it here: http://biz.yahoo.com/…rices.html ). The article reports some interestingly conflicting news. Mainly it says that oil prices have broken $100 a barrel despite falling demand. This kind of journalism cracks me up. According to a Bloomberg article I found (here: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news ) the *US* demand for oil has dropped a whopping (not) 1.8 percent–this is US demand only, however. So, it’s odd for the AP article to point out that oil prices are rising "despite" falling demand.

The fact of the matter is that there is a finite amount of oil on this planet and since more and more people are born every day it only makes sense that, unless major cultural changes are made, demand for oil will go up and up and up, planet-wide, while supply goes down and down.

OK, so a 1.8 percent of people who were using oil in the US aren’t using it now (which makes no sense in itself), big deal–what about the millions of new people using oil today in China? What about people in other developing nations that are inching their way toward 1st World status?

Of course, the main news here is that the crack-cocaine of American life just got even more expensive. This means that it’ll get more expensive to:

1) fill up your tank
2) heat your home
3) cook
4) buy anything with plastic or petroleum products in it

Yep, things like computers, DVDs, make-up, and just about anything else you use has oil in it. So, as oil prices rise, eventually, that rise in price will trickle down to each of us.

Too bad we can’t, oh, I don’t know–find some *other* way to power our cars, heat our homes or make plastic!

Of course, we have (even vegetable-based plastic exists: http://www.sony.net/…04/01.html ), but no one wants to talk about those things.
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by ThePete 1:03 pm 2008-02-19 In TheNews, TheBig Business, ThePete.Com, TheWarnings | Tags | $ |

Wikileaks.org Threatened by "Legal" Action

by ThePete 12:10 pm 2008-02-19

So, I see an article at the BBC News website today (here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/…250916.stm ) and it reports on how a California court has ordered the website Wikileaks.org to be taken offline. From the article: "A controversial website that allows whistle-blowers to anonymously post government and corporate documents has been taken offline in the US.

Wikileaks.org, as it is known, was cut off from the internet following a California court ruling, the site says.

The case was brought by a Swiss bank after "several hundred" documents were posted about its offshore activities.

Other versions of the pages, hosted in countries such as Belgium and India, can still be accessed.

However, the main site was taken offline after the court ordered that Dynadot, which controls the site’s domain name, should remove all traces of wikileaks from its servers."

The catch is, that the above screencap was taken by me *after* I read the BBC News article. Seems like folks at the BBC, good as they are at reporting news with reasonable depth, still make mistakes. Of course, the real problem here isn’t that the BBC makes the odd mistake. It’s that a site like Wikileaks.org is being threatened in this way.

More from the article: "The case was brought by lawyers working for the Swiss banking group Julius Baer. It concerned several documents posted on the site which allegedly reveal that the bank was involved with money laundering and tax evasion.

The documents were allegedly posted by Rudolf Elmer, former vice president of the bank’s Cayman Island’s operation.

A spokesperson for Julius Baer said he could not comment on the case because of "pending legal proceedings".

The BBC understands that Julius Baer asked for the documents to be removed because they could have an impact on a separate legal case ongoing in Switzerland."

This makes no sense to me. So, a legal case in another country is grounds for people in the US (and the rest of the world) to go without information that they need in order to know who to trust or who to work for or who to avoid? This decision by the California court removes ALL whistleblower information that Wikileaks.org was hosting from the public–not just the stuff pertaining to this Swiss case.

This kind of censorship harms us all and it allows crimes to be committed and it allows the criminals who commit them to get away with it.

So much for freedom of speech.
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by ThePete 12:10 pm 2008-02-19 In TheNews, TheBig Brother, ThePete.Com, TheWarnings | Tags , , , , | $ |

InfraGard: USGov Working With Businesses-Not You

by ThePete 12:42 am 2008-02-12

What do you get when the US government and private businesses work together?

Something fishy, in my mind.

Today on DemocracyNow.org’s podcast (www.democracynow.org/2008/2/11/report_fbi_deputizes_23_000_business ), I heard about a part of the federal government that is working with “business leaders” to help secure the infrastructure of America in case of a disaster or terrorist attack. At least that’s what a group with a name like “InfraGard” suggests.

Here’s a bit from InfraGard’s entry at Wikipedia.org (here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InfraGuard ) that suggests something different: “InfraGard Alliances and the FBI said that they have developed a TRUST-based public-private sector partnership to ensure reliability and integrity of information exchanged about various terrorism, intelligence, criminal, and security matters.”

Sounds more like domestic spying to me. What would business owners have to do with “information exchanged about various terrorism, intelligence, criminal, and security matters”? As good citizens shouldn’t business leaders feel obligated to report anything suspicious they see going on?

Why do they need to be recruited, specifically? Do they get special training? Exactly what the heck is all this about?

In fact, if you have a look at the paragraph in the screencap of the InfraGard website above, you’ll see that they actually describe themselves *three* different ways. Check ‘em out:

1)InfraGard is an information sharing and analysis effort serving the interests and combining the knowledge base of a wide range of members.

OK, so, the FBI helps the members of InfraGard share and analyze information across all of it’s various members–but what kind of information could that even be?

2) At its most basic level, InfraGard is a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the private sector.

Why would the private sector need to partner-up with the FBI? Would my friend who runs a boba drink shop benefit from InfraGard? This kind of vague language could mean anything.

3) InfraGard is an association of businesses, academic institutions, state and local law enforcement agencies, and other participants dedicated to sharing information and intelligence to prevent hostile acts against the United States.

Whoa.

So, this *is* domestic spying. It’s just that the government is having businesses do the actual big-brother routine. Isn’t it the job of the government to protect us from our enemies and not the Coca-Cola company?

Exactly where are our tax dollars going if the USGov needs this kind of “partnership” with some 23,000 business leaders? This is like Blackwater, only much more subtle–and therefore more scary since it’s practically invisible.

What’s worse is that apparently, some of InfraGard’s business leaders have been told that in a time of martial law *they* can use *lethal* force if they see the need. According to journalist Matt Rothschild who wrote a piece on InfraGard for The Progressive magazine (here: www.progressive.org/mag_rothschild0308 ) and gave an interview on today’s Democracy Now: “The business leaders themselves were told, at least in this one meeting, that if there is martial law declared or if there’s a time of an emergency, that members of InfraGard would have permission to protect—you know, whether it’s the local utility or, you know, their computers or the financial sector, whatever aspect. Whatever aspect of the infrastructure they’re involved with, they’d have permission to shoot to kill, to use lethal force to protect their aspect of the infrastructure, and they wouldn’t be able to be prosecuted, they were told.”

He also said: “These companies, these representatives of these companies feed the FBI information about threats. They also can give the FBI information about disgruntled employees and have the FBI investigate them. So the pipeline goes that way.”

So, if you’re not happy at your current work place, I’d be careful how you express it. With the power to call in the FBI, you can bet *some* businessman is going to abuse that power at some point.

Rothschild added: “And the pipeline goes the other way, too. The FBI gives these 23,000 businesspeople almost daily threat warnings that the public never gets. In at least one occasion, a government official, Governor Gray Davis of California, didn’t get, until he heard from his brother, who was in InfraGard, about threats to the bridges in California.”

So, now these businesses are more important than we individual citizens. The USG cares more about businesses than the citizens it is supposed to protect.

And don’t think InfraGard came into being just because of 911. According to their entry in Wikipedia, they were first formed in 1996 in Cleveland, Ohio, but expanded to other cities two years later–more than three years before 911.

So, this isn’t about protecting America from Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda didn’t exist in 1996. This is about being paranoid.

Am I against protecting infrastructure like electricity, water and communications? Of course not–but isn’t that the job of the police, the National Guard and other local authorities? Where is the check and/or balance here?

Also, why haven’t we heard of InfraGard in the last ten years it’s been around?

And why the hell did they spell “guard” wrong in their name?

What is our country coming to??

Wow–this was a long one

by ThePete 12:42 am 2008-02-12 In TheNews, TheBig Brother, ThePete.Com, TheWarnings | Tags , , , | $ |

Fed Moves Again to Save US Economy

by ThePete 9:18 pm 2008-01-30

I screencapped the above from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/…218055.stm

What’s the significance of this?

Rather huge, actually. It was one thing to drop interest rates by 3/4 of a point ten days ago–that was dramatic and was the biggest drop in something like ten years. However, combine it with this new drop by another half makes an interest rate drop of 1.25% which is a truly massive drop.

I might be paranoid, but this sure seems like a huge warning bell to me. When the richest/biggest bank on the planet (the Federal Reserve) lowers interest rates at all, it’s a sign they’re concerned. When they drop them by more than a percentage point that represents millions (billions?) lost in interest payments.

When any bank is willing to sacrifice that kind of cash, it probably isn’t a good sign.

Just my 2 yen, of course. Please let me know if I’m wrong.

I really, really, want to be wrong…

EDIT: Haaaay–Utterz cut off the first 15 seconds of my audio! I even re-recorded it and both times when I loaded the page the first fifteen seconds were missing. :(

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by ThePete 9:18 pm 2008-01-30 TheMoney, ThePete.Com, TheWarnings | Tags , , , , | $ |

Defunct Spy Satellite Falling From Orbit

by ThePete 1:41 am 2008-01-27

Defunct Spy Satellite Falling From Orbit (AP.org)

A large U.S. spy satellite has lost power and propulsion and could hit the Earth in late February or March, government officials said Saturday.

The satellite, which no longer be controlled, could contain hazardous materials, and it is unknown where on the planet it might come down, they said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the information is classified as secret.

Just something to think about in a month or two…

 

KEEP WATCHING THE SKIES! 

by ThePete 1:41 am 2008-01-27 TheMiniBlog, ThePete.Com, TheScience, TheWarnings | Tags , , | $ |

MERRY CHRISTMAS! Your Present? A Crappy Economy!

by ThePete 6:00 am 2007-12-25

Took the below screencap last night from Telegraph.co.uk just before hopping on the bus down to LAX:

Weee! Turns out there’s WAY more wrong with the economy than just the mortgage mess. There’s way more to go before we get to the part where we learn that our entire economy is based on debt. Not just you taking out a loan to pay for your college tuition, car or house, but the very money you carry around or spend from your bank account is borrowed from the Federal Reserve.

It’s all owed to someone, folks. The US economy is like a single giant Amazon.com and we only get to use those damn Amazon giftcards. :\

by ThePete 6:00 am 2007-12-25 In TheNews, TheMoney, ThePete.Com, TheWarnings | $ |

BTW: We’re Still Doomed

by ThePete 9:00 am 2007-12-19

So, with all the craziness going on with Turkey invading northern Iraq and the “presidential” race “heating up” I thought it would be a good thing to point out that on top of the bullshit excuses for war, the actual acts of terror, the illegal behavior of many of our leaders and Climate Change, we actually have MORE and BIGGER problems to worry about.

A couple of weeks back, I blogged about how the US economy is tanking. I pointed our briefly at the end of the post that we humans, as a species, are using up 140 percent of the Earth’s resources just for food. Well, it turns out I must have misread my source because the number actually represents the amount of Earth’s resources we’re using up for power. I got that little fact from TheNakedScientists.com. Here’s another disturbing fact from the same post:

If you look at fishing the amount of exploitation of the oceans is thought to be 250% of sustainable levels of fishing in the long-term.

That was a few weeks ago–just last night I came across an IHT.com article reporting on how the UN says world food supplies are dwindling rapidly. Here’s a cutting with some emboldening by me:

In an “unforeseen and unprecedented” shift, the world food supply is dwindling rapidly and food prices are soaring to historic levels, the top food and agriculture official of the United Nations warned Monday.

The changes created “a very serious risk that fewer people will be able to get food,” particularly in the developing world, said Jacques Diouf, head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

The agency’s food price index rose by more than 40 percent this year, compared with 9 percent the year before - a rate that was already unacceptable, he said. New figures show that the total cost of foodstuffs imported by the neediest countries rose 25 percent, to $107 million, in the last year.

At the same time, reserves of cereals are severely depleted, FAO records show. World wheat stores declined 11 percent this year, to the lowest level since 1980. That corresponds to 12 weeks of the world’s total consumption - much less than the average of 18 weeks consumption in storage during the period 2000-2005. There are only 8 weeks of corn left, down from 11 weeks in the earlier period.

This is some serious shit right here–we’ve got an abundance of corn in the US, but if this article is accurate, that means that if we were to divide up all the corn on the planet and distribute it evenly to everyone, there would be eight fucking weeks of corn left!

But wait, there’s more:

“We’re concerned that we are facing the perfect storm for the world’s hungry,” said Josette Sheeran, executive director of the World Food Program, in a telephone interview. She said that her agency’s food procurement costs had gone up 50 percent in the past 5 years and that some poor people are being “priced out of the food market.”

To make matters worse, high oil prices have doubled shipping costs in the past year, putting enormous stress on poor nations that need to import food as well as the humanitarian agencies that provide it.

“You can debate why this is all happening, but what’s most important to us is that it’s a long-term trend, reversing decades of decreasing food prices,” Sheeran said.

Weeee!! LOVE OIL!!

But yeah, we should really concentrate on how John Edwards may have fathered a child out of wedlock, according to DrudgeReport.com and the National Enquirer:

Ah, DRUDGE! Using the National Enquirer as a source! GOOD PLAN, MATT.

by ThePete 9:00 am 2007-12-19 In TheNews, ThePete.Com, TheWarnings | $ |

WATER SHORTAGE COMING–SERIOUSLY.

by ThePete 3:49 pm 2007-11-02

Here’s another one for the “Things We Ought To Be Paying Attention to But Aren’t” file. I won’t even set this up beyond the headline above. Just have a look at this cutting from an AP.org article at MyWay.com from a week ago covering the coming, nationwide water shortage:

An epic drought in Georgia threatens the water supply for millions. Florida doesn’t have nearly enough water for its expected population boom. The Great Lakes are shrinking. Upstate New York’s reservoirs have dropped to record lows. And in the West, the Sierra Nevada snowpack is melting faster each year.

Across America, the picture is critically clear - the nation’s freshwater supplies can no longer quench its thirst.

The government projects that at least 36 states will face water shortages within five years because of a combination of rising temperatures, drought, population growth, urban sprawl, waste and excess.

“Is it a crisis? If we don’t do some decent water planning, it could be,” said Jack Hoffbuhr, executive director of the Denver-based American Water Works Association.

Water managers will need to take bold steps to keep taps flowing, including conservation, recycling, desalination and stricter controls on development.

“We’ve hit a remarkable moment,” said Barry Nelson, a senior policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The last century was the century of water engineering. The next century is going to have to be the century of water efficiency.”

I don’t know–based on how well the US of A deals with crisiseseses (like Katrina, the recent wildfires and more) I’m thinking we should treat this like a crisis now so it doesn’t become something that results in deaths and (according to how most of us behave these days) worse: a lot of lost money.

The article goes on to say some pretty idiotic things. Check it out:

The price tag for ensuring a reliable water supply could be staggering. Experts estimate that just upgrading pipes to handle new supplies could cost the nation $300 billion over 30 years.

Ha! That’s a laugh, isn’t it? We’re spending around a trillion US dollars on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and this reporter (Brian Skoloff) seems to think a measly $300 billion is “staggering”. I wish!

After all, this is OUR WATER SUPPLY. You’d think we’d be putting that above our “fight” against “terror” but NOPE, better to be secure than, you know, alive.

It’s great living on a planet led by children.

And coming from a guy as childish as me, that’s saying a lot. I mean, my blog’s logo is me at 7 months old, for crying out loud. When the pot has to call the kettle black because the kettle keeps applying layer upon layer of black paint, it gets pretty sad.

by ThePete 3:49 pm 2007-11-02 In TheNews, ThePete.Com, TheWarnings | $ |

Whoops! Today is Blog Action Day on the Environment

by ThePete 5:12 pm 2007-10-15

Almost forgot!

Actually, I did forget, but let’s face it–the environment is kind of a lame thing to do a Blog Action Day on, don’t you think? I mean, the whole point of BAC, according to blogactionday.org/ is “On October 15th - Blog Action Day, bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind.”

This year’s “important issue” is the environment but isn’t it already on everyone’s mind? I mean, Al Gore just won the Nobel Prize for crying out loud–do we really need to “unite” for such an incredibly well-known cause?

How about poverty? How about cancer? How about something that is currently being generally ignored by most people?

Seriously, what’s the flipping point of wasting all of these blogs working together on informing everyone about what we already know?

On top of that, my theory on the environment is that if we just learn to be decent to each other, the environment will be saved as a side-effect. If each one of us wanted to stop causing our neighbor (and ourselves) to breathe toxic, cancer-causing air, we’d sell our car and start taking the bus.

Do we?

Nope!

But if all of us did, imagine how much cleaner our skies would be.

I think the mistake people trying to save the environment make is that they keep making it about the environment. They should be making it about saving ourselves.

One day, I was walking down the street, here in Los Angeles, as I saw a flier that had been glued to a light post. It had been mostly torn off, but what remained warned me that the air I was breathing (and continue to breathe to this day) is carcinogenic. It also said that studies had concluded this. Sadly, there was so much of the flier torn off that I couldn’t find any sources to back up the claim. However, since then, I’ve been haunted by that damn flier.

If I told you the air you were breathing was poison, you’d care, right?

Fuck the polar bears. I don’t want cancer!

by ThePete 5:12 pm 2007-10-15 In TheNews, ThePete.Com, TheWarnings | $ |

ALL ABOUT RFID CHIPS

by ThePete 6:00 am 2007-09-16

Back on September 9, 2007, I stumbled across a post at Engadget.com (here: urltea.com/1hpx) that reports on those fun little things called “RFID chips.” What are “RFID chips”? Well, they are Radio Frequence IDentification chips and they allow all sorts of stuff to be tracked wirelessly. Companies put them in their products to help track inventory. As I understand it, RFID chips are used in those “Fast Pass” gas-paying key chains some gas companies offer so you can pump your gas and not have to “bother” with swiping your credit card. Some want RFID chips implanted into people as a way to replace Social Security cards, driver’s licenses, credit cards and medical records. In theory all of this information (and more) could be stored in one of those tiny little chips.

This would allow people implanted with them to walk into a supermarket and roll out a cart-full of groceries without having to stand in line to pay. The RFID chips in the products you bought would let sensors in the door know what you have and the RFID chip in your ass would tell those same sensors what bank account to take the money out of.

Sounds neat, sure–but machines make mistakes. Register scanners make mistakes already (always check your receipts!!). And what happens if you buy something, like a pack of gum and you go back inside the store later? Wouldn’t the store charge you twice? Also, someone with a fairly inexpensive RFID chip reader could walk around outside your home and pick up the signals those little RFID chips give off and, in theory, compile a complete list of the items in your home. That way he’d know whether your home would be worth breaking into or not.

I won’t even go into how the RFID chip in your ass could be scanned and copied. The point here is that the there are as many reasons not to embrace RFID technology as there are to embrace it. In fact, there’s one more in the “cons” column as reported on in that Engadget post I mentioned earlier–cancer.

Yep, the C-word of diseases is apparently a side effect of implanting RFID chips into your flesh. Here’s a cutting from that post:

a number of studies over the past decade have amassed which link the chips to malignant tumors in animal tests. Besides the potential foul play going on at the FDA and VeriChip Corp. that got the chips approved for human use in 2004, studies showing as little as 1% cancer rates in lab animals led researchers to note that the aggressive tumors which immediately encased RFID implants with cancerous cells were “clearly due to the implanted microchips”, and not random occurrences.

WHOOPS! Well, 1 percent isn’t too bad, is it?

Unless, you’re the one percent.

by ThePete 6:00 am 2007-09-16 In TheNews, ThePete.Com, TheScience, TheTech.ThePete.Com, TheWarnings | Tags , | $ |