Life Extinction

Bigger Threat Than Global Warming: Mass Species Extinction

11 months after this Independent article, is anything better?

So here we have the New Generation of British Environmentalist Celebrity, Chris Packham trying to spread the discussion to the Youth of Today.

Extinction is still Not Okay. Chris Packham's little provocation is only useful in drawing attention to the fact that Conservationists around the world have very limited resources, and the Planet has got a lot of species dying out.

Meanwhile, lots of money is still spent on wars.

Saving Guyana Tropical Rainforest and ALL its species

The Economy is a subsidiary of the Environment, and NOT the other way around.

The best way of saving any species is to save it where it normally lives, namely in its natural habitat. This is because you save all the things that live with it, and all the things that are interdependent with it, including its food chain.

That is why it is so important to save the few wild places left on this tiny planet called earth.

So news of a way of saving the Guyanese tropical rainforest comes this week and is the first hopeful example of Global Enviromental Economics.

You can also hear about this in the interview with Hylton Murray-Philipson on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme (at about 11.5 minutes into the clip).

Here is a transcript...

BBC's Greg Wood: Canopy Capital has bought 371000 hectares (that is about the size of the island of Majorca). Now, this is about recognizing that Rainforest doesn't just store carbon, which is tradeable, but that they can also provide other services, if you like. For example, they are a catalyst for rainfall in other areas of the world - a commodity which potentially has value for farmers cultivating crops. Canopy Capital claims the deal puts a financial value on rainforest for the first time, and its director, Hylton Murray-Phillipson is here. Good morning. How do you put a value, a tradeable value on the rainforest and those benefits that you outline?

Hylton Murray-Phillipson: That is extremely difficult to do. I could say, invite me back in 12 months time and I will tell you. What I am absolutely convinced of is that the world cannot go along the model that we established since the 19th Century, treating the environment as an externality to economic growth. That was fine when the population was 1.5 billion in 1900, now we are 6.5 billion heading towards 9 billion in the middle of this century. Every single thing in this planet depends on those ecosystem services. The Economy is a subsidiary of the Environment, and NOT the other way around. Whether you want soya in Brazil, rainfall in Lima, or whether you even want crops in the American Midwest, you have to place a value on the rainfall generation of the forest.

I would like to IMMEDIATELY correct the misimpression created by your introduction that we have bought land in Guyana. We have definitively NOT done that. What we have entered into is a partnership to bring value to the ecosystem services of that forest. The forest remains the property of the people of Guyana and specifically the Irokwama reserve.

Greg Wood: But you still expect to make a return, a profit, out of it, and to many people, while your aims will be laudable, perhaps not the right way to go about preserving the environment and the benefits that you set out.

HMP: Well I think that would be a great pity. I think that the only way we are going to turn around the trend of destruction of tropical rainforest is to harness the power of money and markets in conservation. We HAVE to engage the profit motive. It is very important, I would like to make clear, that we DO manage to turn these assets into a profitable enterprise; that 80% of the upside benefit will go to the local communities and local stakeholders.

Laugh In Laugh Out

Last In Last Out
Laugh In Laugh Out

He who laughs First laughs Last.
(First In Laugh Out First Out?)

He who laughs not at all?
Is not getting his share of Laughter.

So that's why socially cohesive populations permit themselves only timid giggles and restrained chuckles?

Naive liberalism is ignorant or immoral

All freedoms, like the rolling of dice, give different outcomes that are either successes or failures.

Liberals are quick to champion the right to a freedom,
Many are quick to claim credit for the successes.

But what of the failures and adverse outcomes?
Even the few who are noble enough to accept the responsibility rarely have the ability or power to make amends.

For once something is broken, it often is impossible to repair.

Prevention is better than cure.

Naive liberalism that does not provide for the outcomes of the liberties championed, is a disservice to society. Naive liberalism is politically useful to individuals whom wish to profit from others' miseries.

Extinction is not okay

Extinction is a part of Evolution.

Ordinary people now say it. Ordinary people who once had the passion to care for all the living species on this planet.

But

Extinction is only as much a part of Evolution, as Death is a part of your Life.

...in relative time.

So why are ordinary people now talking the walk of the Dead?

And is it good to let them stop caring?

No.

So solve it.

Why did it hurt?
They cared once.
They cared so much that it hurt.
It hurt too much for them to care any more.
Someone talked them into facing ~death~,
But talked them out of Living.
Instead they walk like zombies in the global consumerist economy.
Talking the Death of the Planet,
Looking how to fit into the whirl of money,
And clutching the mantra of The Economist,
Entirely distracted by Climate Change.
The species?
They have forgotten that they should
at least
leave the Earth
as they found it,
so that a future child
can stare in wonder
At species in the Wild.

Dave Gorman joins the Disillusioned

It is so nice to know that the celebrities are catching up with the real world. You're not alone, Dave. And you're not the last to find out that the world you thought was still out there, is already ALL gone, thanks to Globalization. Global Corporations, Mass Production, Industrialization of everything.

So maybe the other celebrities will finally let on that there is no dream out there, so put out the stars in your eyes, and save what you can while the sun shines.

Contemplation of Hermitage

Is hermitage good or bad?

Has the individual become a hermit through choice, or not? Is it good for the hermit, or good for the Group, or not?

Man is a Social Animal.
So shall Animals be as Man..

In Nature, what there was once of it, the lone wolf was cast out by the pack.

What combination of individual choice or external circumstance caused a wolf to become lone?

The casting out depends on the season as well as on the explicit inavailability of food. The alpha male will drive out other males whom: threaten his mating rights; will not grovel; or do not contribute adequately to the pack's hunt. The alpha female will drive out other females whom: have lost the attention of the alpha male; do not contribute adequately to the raising of the offspring or to the hunt.

There will be others whom will become lone voluntarily even though it appears that there is no apparent pressure for them to be cast out.

Given that there are Hermits, and there are Lone Wolves, and that some are Outcast, and some are Voluntary:

in Man, the Voluntary Hermit will be the individual who either:
- foresees and preempts the eventuality of the casting out
- through randomly inherent difference, seeks his chances separate from the group.

Is the Outcast Hermit lesser?

What are the evolutionary opportunities for the different options?

The voluntary hermit will have the advantage of seeking new territories while there is still adequate food locally and while there is no competition from the later hermits. The voluntary hermit has the disadvantage of enduring risk that might never have become forced upon him.

The outcast hermit has the advantage of having nothing left to lose, but at a time when there might be nothing else left to gain.

*******

Can the voluntary hermit rejoin the Group at some future time? Yes, if conditions are suitable for him to rejoin. If the conditions are not suitable, then these are likely, but not certain, to be the conditions where he would have become an outcast in any case.

********

The condition of hermitage is sometimes voluntary, sometimes not.

Where it is voluntary, there is at least the option of checking if the Social Group is more beneficial.

Where it is involuntary, hermitage is a challenge, which might as well be seized as an opportunity.

That's Life, in a snail shell.

The Globalists: World Economic Forum

So this is in the news today.

The ultimate collection of Globalists. People who want to set policies that affect the whole planet.

And organised by people in Geneva. And you thought the Swiss just kept time and sold substitutes for sex?

They also sell a value system (the sort that buffered Einstein), and lots of tourism. Environmentally damaging international tourism, from Weekend ski trips to Long-haul World Seminars.

Why do the Swiss let this happen? From their lofty position high in the leafy melting Alpine mountains, maybe they think they can look down at the world more successfully than everybody else? Or maybe the Swiss spend so much time brokering between divergent cultures that they are the quintessential globalists and peace seekers.

The Alps have a good ski season this winter, global warming not withstanding, so there won't be much complaint heard from them about how their Globalism is destroying their local environment. But what is left of the Swiss local culture?

There is not a lot of local culture left in Switzerland. And they seem to do nothing to stop the damage, let alone begin to reverse it. Think Nestle. Do the Swiss drink milk squeezed the same morning from the dairy cow on their local farm. Of course not. And they can't remember how to do it, even if they wanted to. They have sold their souls and their culture and their land for an easy life, for World Peace, in a way that was directed by their World War 2 experience. They have been pushed this far by the experience of a war that finished 62 years ago. How long can you be pushed, before it becomes time for you to be pulled?

Is there a famous Swiss Luddite in history? Or is there still to be one?

Is it possible to have World Peace without all-pervasive and inexorable Social and Industrial Globalism?

Rise up, Luddites versus the Borg, the Antz, the Matrix

Fuse the Borg, the Matrix, and populate it with the Antz, and if you have seen all those, you have a picture of the world you live in.

So why are Luddites so derided and ridiculed? Just because they were shown to be losers at their time? That did not mean that their time would never come. Or that they would never be needed.

Rise up, Luddites. Unless of course you're a Mennonite, which I think is ultra cool, in which case, go and beget.

The Borg, the Antz, the Planet You Were Born in

Big World out there.. Big Planet. You think? Maybe not as big as it used to be.

A shrunken planet, called a global village. Now it becomes a global suburb.

What job do you do? One that is a tiny cog in a machine bigger than ever before in human history. You may live in a suburban house, drive a suburban car, and have a suburban wife, but your part is so small, and part of a huge juggernaut that marches over this globe, this planet this Earth.

Do you have a choice? Did you ever? You play your role because you are tied to the Borg-like system, like one of many Antz, even when you have asked the question, you gave up on finding an alternative. You are afraid of living without those things that are called Wealth. You have less choice today than your parents, or their parents before them. Maybe you live in a poor village that is not part of our Global Economic Borg. It will not be long. Even if you are in the darkest bowels of the Congo, you will be swallowed up soon. We have people whom think that they will rescue you from poverty, while all they have to offer is another version of slavery, after all these centuries. These fools are born too quickly too be stopped. Quickly, teach them what is the meaning of their baubles and gaudy frippery, this wealth that they are beholden to.

Once the Global Economists measured Wealth in Televisions. Once they measured it in cars. Now everyone has a television, and all the fools also have cars, and they cannot live without them. If Wealth is something that you cannot live without, then the great container ships of commerce should be laden heavily with Heroin.

All Wealth is not something to be shied from just because it is Good to do so. Wealth has to be defined, and prioritized. Understand what wealth it is that you really need, what are those most important things to you, and shy from the rest. Help others to understand what is truly of value, and they will be wealthy simply from this knowledge.

Passion in Poetry

Passion only comes through in certain ways. You may have the same or even greater passions than Amy Winehouse, but if you haven't got the diaphragm and vocal cords to express it, who is going to know.

So then there is so called poetry, such as:

Better to Die In Rapture
Than to Lie and Rot Away
You will be My Coffin
And I will be Your Grave
Take My Lips, Suck In My Soul
You're the Half that Makes Me Whole.

I am delighted to say that I wrote it a long time ago, and I have no time for it now. Hence it is being published. It is copyright to me, me, me.

Leave nothing but footprints, take nothing but memories

And Stop Those Who Do Otherwise.

Arrest Them.

Lock Them Up.

Re-educate Them, Or Brainwash Them, Or Get them addicted to something that is only Self-Destructive, for example, computer games, or blogging?

Blogs Live

They come back to life!

Flog a Blog

Either for money or for the fun of it?

Site Under Reconstruction

Building Works. This site is under reconstruction. We apologize for the inconvenience at this time. As most of you are cerebral intellectuals, building works are a bit physical and dirty for you: so in the meantime, stare at the middle of this screen, and contemplate eternity???

It is not Still, Still it is winter,

It's been windy, gusty, not too nice. Heavy floods in Carlisle. Under the numbness, I'm feeling yearnings for summer. I even went back to June in my Archives, to remind myself! How funny it is to read things that I have forgotten I had written! I didn't know it was possible to entertain yourself this way. I always knew that I was two totally different people in winter versus summer.

It gives me an idea that has never really crossed my mind, which must be the engine of some writers. To take your one person, and to write it for another part of you. So SummerMe can write little loving Blog Posts to be read by WinterMe, 6 months later. I really like this idea. Couldn't be more self-loving than that, can you?

**
Dear SummerMe,

My eyes and soul and heart yearn to stand on a beach before the sea, in a warm breeze, the heat of sunshine falling on my naked skin. Blue, in a cloudless sky. Blue on a stretching sea. Flanked on the left and right by protective headlands, green. Trees behind me. Sand on my left. Sand on my right.

I yearn so much I've managed to cry just thinking about it. Tsunamis cannot stop that desire. I will be back to Thailand, one day. Or some such.

**

I have walls, I have lights, I even have enough heat, and now I have somewhere to go from Mondays to Fridays. But it is nothing like the Freedom of Summer. Colin reminded me of the bike ride to Brighton I did last August . It is so long buried by our Season of Darkness, that it is hard for me to imagine how I even got as far as Eltham. The most beautiful thing I remember most, I summarized into one sentence: "I was looking at Ashdown Forest and marvelling at the beautiful Pine trees". How terse I was. No mention that dusk was settling over me. Nor that I had the smooth tarmaced road entirely to myself, even without cars. Nor that the gorse and pine left a crystal sweet scent in the air, the smell of which is heaven to think of, more so now when my sinuses still will not let me breathe clearly. Nor that there was the pristine solitude I felt, of at last getting away from the hell of human population, at last free and unencumbered, even if for just a few hours, at the mercy of Nature's bosom.

**

But in the morning I will be back to my magnolia painted walls, in my battery human farm, under my fluorescent light, faced by the radiant smile of my computer screen. It pays me money. That's civilization. Bring back my God.

Expensive, overpriced, London and its Transport

London tube, train and bus fares went up in the New Year, by much more than inflation. I was furious, because Ken Livingstone, the Mayor (NightMare) of London, is a major self-serving hypocrite.

Everything went up in price. For a simple return (round-trip) journey into Central London, from where I live (which is in Zone 3 of the six concentric fare zones of London), my cheapest option is a one-day off-peak Travelcard costing £5.20. This is up 11% on the previous fare of £4.70. (NOTE, foreigners that this is "off-peak", which means you cannot even use it before 9.30 a.m on Mondays to Fridays). Also:

1. He's gotten rid of the Weekend Travelcard, which used to save 25% on buying two single one-day travelcards.
   
2. Bus Saver tickets, for a single journey on a bus, are up 57% from £0.70 pence to £1.00 each now.
   
3. A one-day bus pass is now £3.00, up 25% from £2.40
   
4. The cheapest adult Tube ticket for any kind of Underground (aka subway) trip is now £1.30, and that is outside zone 1 and within a single one of the other ring zones. In other words, it is only good for about 2 or 3 stops in the suburbs.
   

Ken Livingstone's ability to charm people is undoubted. The trouble with Ken is that he needs to throw around money in order to achieve change. And the people who are charmed by him are lemmings who need a Pied Piper.

Ken Livingstone is just like Napoleon the Pig from Orwell's Animal Farm. He's doing very well himself now, but he's done nothing for the Londoners who are paying their own way and earning low wages of £4.50 to £6.00 an hour. For part-time employees, the Transportation costs in London are particularly painful, since they cannot justify buying 7-day Travelcards, and have to buy expensive daily ones.

**

These annual above-inflation increases in London Transport fares are typical of how skewed is the British economy. Calculations of the Inflation Rate in this country are misleading, because Economists are unimaginative, unchallenged, and self-preserving. The inflation rate which they report takes into account basic commodities mostly. So remember that China and the Far East have allowed us to import piles of goods and commodities at prices cheaper than 10 years ago. Even more importantly, their monetary economic strategy is to keep their currencies near-to-worthless, which makes Western currencies fatly-overvalued. Our "low" inflation is substantially imported. There will be a massive price to pay for this, and it's not far off.

**

So why come to London, unless you're rich, or a package tourist just stopping over for a few days? At least you can leave, and go home. Pity the bastards who are born here, not rich, and don't have anywhere to go back to!

Imagine you work full-time in a shop in Central London, and you're getting £6.00 an hour (for which they expect you to be grateful and smiling, because some jobs only pay £4.50 an hour). You take home about £200 a week after taxes. You can only afford to live in Zone 3 in London, where you have struggled to find a reasonable room in a houseshare at £80 a week, even though it's in the poor part of London. Now your 7-Day Travelcard to travel to work costs you £25 a week, a whopping 12.5% of your take-home pay.

You're left with £95 a week, to eat, clothe yourself, and pay for your Mobile phone bills. When you consider that this is only £40 more than the Job Seeker's Allowance of £55 a week that the Established unemployed are getting on top of housing benefit and council tax benefit (by the way, if you can't speak English, it's a sure way of staying on the dole forever).

And this calculation doesn't even factor in what happens if you have children.

The most deprived class of person in London today is in fact the low-waged single, childless, male without family/community connections. Sadly, there are many more such men indigenous and born in this country who have no Social Network to help them out. Their better bet is the prison system. Even new immigrants fare better than the estranged low-waged, English-born single childless male. This is simply because most immigrants who arrive in London are following in the footsteps of friends and relatives, who are eager to offer them support. Many indigenous, English-born men are spurned as trash by their own countrymen. (And I hasten to add, once again, that even Lefties who read the Guardian will always heap scorn upon their compatriots who buy the Sun/Star newspaper, even though the Tabloid reader does so out of desperation and illiteracy that is sometimes psychiatrically beyond correction).

No, no, no. It would really have been a proper Boxing Day if the Tsunami had killed 150,000 dogs and cats. Then you would have seen England at its most ridiculous: fucked up and celebrating its piety.

Freedom of Information Act

Tsunamis are distracting people who are wasting time feeling over-sentimental, when sentimentality is less productive than genital masturbation.

The Freedom of Information Act is now fully alive. So far the media has used it to feed us silly tidbits about "what happened 30 years ago". Big deal. The power now is the right of anyone to find out where money is being spent in every public institution up and down the land.

Here's a summary of features:
1. The public should not have things hidden from them. Information should be released unless there is a strong justification for withholding it.
2. Any person, who makes a request for information, must be informed whether the information is held and, if so, that information must be supplied. People making requests do not have to be British citizens, nor do they do have to prove their identity. The person making the request does not have to state why they want the information.
3. Requests must be in writing, and can be on paper, email or fax. The person making the request must give their name and address, and describe the information they want.
4. You must be provided with as much information as is available. A publication scheme may list all documents and publications that are available to the public, which are free or not, and how they may be obtained. You can ask for any recorded information held.
5. The exemptions are set out in the Acts. At local government level, it will be unusual for all the information in a document to be exempt, so while some part may be removed because of an exemption, the rest will be released.
Some information is exempt from provision under Freedom of Information, but is available under other legislation. The Data Protection Act 1998 controls the release of personal information. The Environmental Information Regulations 1992 gives the public access to information held by us relating to the state of water, soil or land, air, animals or plants.
6. On the state of water, soil or land, air, animals or plants, response must be within two months. For any other non-personal information, in general, response must be within 20 working days.
7. If a charge applies, you should be told before you are provided the information and also what the charge is likely to be.
8. If someone is not happy with the response to their request, they can complain to the Information Commissioner, who can instruct the government agency to give them the information they asked for.

%^&*

Moderately irritable, unable to just veg out, can't smell properly, taste properly, or think properly, and yearning to feel just a bit of fun, any kind at all! And this isn't even a bad cold, just one that is stuck in my sinuses! At lunchtime I was wandering inside Marks & Spencers, feeling so lightheaded that I thought I was been ghost-partnered in a Nutcracker Suite dance.
AARRGGGGHHHH!!!!!

I really want to get blasted drunk when it's gone! Sudafed gave me about 3 hours of feeling nearly normal, but that pseudoephedrine hydrochloride stuff has never served me well whenever I've used it for a regular dose.

But it was such a delight when I got into the office this morning, and a female colleague remarked with concern, as soon as I opened my mouth, "was I all right, I sounded all nasal!". Well, I can surely tell you, all the partners I have had in the past ever did fail to notice anything wrong with me until I was screaming blue murder that I was ill. So really, to be true, I'm not missing anything more by being single, than if I had someone around. Sad, but true.

I guess I'll just have to wait for it to blow over. But perversely, in the meantime, I wouldn't mind a rough scrap right now. When no pleasure seems to counter an inner physical pain, only an external pain (well, a gentle version thereof: I'm no Mike Tyson) can distract it and charge the body with adrenalin and testosterone, (the deficit of which, leaves you feeling half dead anyway). No, that sentence is not as long as one of Darwin's.

Blogs in the UK versus USA versus Canada

Tao of Poker

I came across the gambling poker-playing subculture of blogging here, and the foreign language so amazed me. It reminded me how puzzled I am about the differences between the blogging worlds in the USA, Canada and the UK. The Internet might be global, but its peoples are still very, very different.