This, obviously, has not been as easy to keep going as I had thought it might be. With all of the information out there on the Superhighways of the Internets, it's sometimes difficult to collect five of these little nuggets before the first one or two become irrelevant or uninteresting. I am therefore abandoning any notion of making this a regular feature and instead focusing on doing it occasionally. And so...
• Why Republicans Suck #4
Now the enviro-hippies are after Michael Chertoff for sweeping aside environmental regulations in order to fast-track the building of the wall between Mexico and the United States. It’s a bloody good thing that Cormac McCarthy wrote his Border Trilogy novels before the Republicans decided to make hating brown people such a prominent part of their platform. I finished reading All The Pretty Horses not long ago and am about 100 pages into The Crossing, and these novels are just amazing - some of the best writing I have ever read. But back to the fence - why not spend the resources being wasted on this monument to hate on streamlining the process for making it legal to live and work in this country? Lou Dobbs is quoted in the article as saying that “the Sierra Club can stick it.” This country sucks so bad it’s a wonder that anyone would want to come here in the first place. Now that smallpox is gone, can the CDC get to work on eradicating xenophobia?
• When Macro Goes Micro
The folks at Miller Brewing Company are throwing their beer-making hat into the craft ring. You may remember “craft” beer by its original moniker - the microbrew, beer that is brewed in smaller batches with a smaller distribution - often regional, although compaines like Samuel Adams and Sierra Nevada make craft beer that is readily available almost everywhere. The folks at Miller are working on three styles - wheat, amber, and blonde - that should be nationwide by September under the label The Miller Lite Brewing Collection. I don’t care for wheat beer, but I reckon I’ll try the other two - I’ll try just about anything when it comes to beer, from Wiedemann to Samuel Adams Triple Bock - I’ve even tried that beer that has a chile pepper in the bottle.
• "It’s Indiana."
Scott sent this link out to a few people the day of Tom Crean’s press conference when he was hired at Indiana, and Scott included the following exclamation (in caps) at the end of the e-mail - “This guy just gets it!!!” Took me a few days to get around to listening to it, but Scott’s right - he gets it. His enthusiasm is pretty amazing, considering the immense challenge he has in front of him in rebuilding this basketball program. The link also brought me to a pretty good Indiana basketball blog, Inside The Hall.
• GLOBAL WARMING IS REAL!!!
I just put that there to see if Josh would comment instantly on it. (Only kidding, Josh. Actually, I’m not - but it was meant in jest, I promise. Were you about to comment right away?) Josh and I go back and forth on the subject of global warming, or climate change, or whatever the hell they’re calling it today. I still think that we the people are doing the environment significant damage, but I don’t know about the idea that we’re going to destroy the planet. We’re going to make the planet unfit for human life, no doubt about that - absolutely none - but I imagine that the planet itself will survive. The real point of this little blurb was to note that Skeptic magazine, linked to above, has an upconing issue devoted to global warming. Most of the articles you read about global warming take one side or the other, but I suspect that the issue of Skeptic will have a bit of both - and it will be good reading.
• The Big (Green) Apple
Once again we go to the Blue Marble blog, for the story of how New York mayor Michael Bloomberg is seeking bids to outfit city buildings for solar power. New York has also been chosen as one of twenty-five cities that will participate in the Solar America Initiative, an effort by the Energy Department to make solar energy economically feasible. Hopefully I will one day be able to regale Jackson with stories of how we used to use dirty fossil fuels to heat our homes and power our buildings - but have since had the wherewithal to become progressive enough to see beyond the safe and comfortable and known and reach out for something better.
1 comment:
Hell yeah I'm going to comment on it right away you dirty hippie! Kidding, actually it's nice to see a mag where both sides of the argument is presented, I just don't want to spend six bucks on it. Man made global warming to me in a nutshell - the other day I saw a Vanity Fair in our department labeled the Green Issue with Leonardo DiCaprio on the cover looking very serious. The articles were horrific with no scientific sources. The mag was thick as a phone book on non-recycled paper and about to inhabit a landfill that you mentioned in your earlier post. I think they call it a climate in crisis now. We have inflicted serious damage to the environment (volcanos, tsuamis (sp) and other natural events have too) but nature is one tough bitch, it always bounces back.
My wife and I actually looked into solar panels for our house, the cost was something like $20,000, or something outrageous like that just to install. Then I realized that we live in Indiana, where sunshine is pretty rare from December to April. Don't worry John-O technology is getting cleaner and more advanced even with a Republican in office.
I don't mind brown people I just want them to be over here legally. When I read articles about illegals getting into car wrecks with no insurance where we will have to foot the bill to repair our cars or when I read articles where they murder people and get away with it I start thinking a wall is a great idea.
Good articles!
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