bradleym

from the oregonian: Oregonian Story just devastating, nothing else to say.

Let's call our new approach to Cuba the Open Door policy--sounds nice and friendly, non?

i'm trying to be cost effective.

should i drink pbr beforehand, or mirror pond?

not that it will matter....

dude, its a cheap pistol, but i think it will do the job. should i buy a second bullet? i don't want to rob my estate.

i bought a pistol and one bullet.

who cares? lets go after the real criminals--cheney, rumsfeld and, oh yes, friedman....

the problem, i believe, is in how do we get to there from here? wind and solar combined deliver less than 3% of our energy requirements right now. at current build rates and efficiency improvements and even with an expected Obama investment, i suspect that number may turn over to double digits in, say, 10 years. in the meantime, yes, we make every effort to reduce per capita consumption, but what fills in the gap until there is a solar panel on every rooftop and a wind turbine on every ridgeline? That is where the choices become increasingly hobsonian, as we trade off carbon output with nuclear waste and, yes, the lead, arsenic and selenium from coal.

I implied no such thing, and your assumption is incorrect. What I did say was that you presented a complaint about the coal you use absent any viable alternative. fair enough, but i think you're being just a tad disingenuous, requiring someone to lay out an entire alternate supply chain, when the point of the posting was that for a particular reason, and any way you look at it frankly, coal is not clean. a better response would have been 'Coal is clean, or can be made to be, and here's how...'.

why not just react, positively or negatively or indifferently, to what friedman said in this op-ed piece? i read lots of people with whom i disagree, often stridently, but i find they also often say things that get me thinking, even if i still disagree. by responding with 'friedman is an idiot gasbag' you miss an opportunity to influence or educate those of us who do not share your experience.

so the tone of your responses on this thread, fw, seems to be that because the energy mix nation-wide is very dependent on coal, that we ought not to try to change that. that because i was a coal-polluter in the past, or may today be the recipient of the good things brought by mountain-top removal (i.e. cheap electricity), that i shouldn't be concerned about it. it took years, decades, centuries to get where we are today, and I for one don't expect that we can unwind things overnight, but shouldn't we try? shouldn't we recognize that even if all the CO2 from coal could be captured and pumped underground safely, that the other waste from coal contains concentrations of lead, selenium and arsenic, and it must go somewhere? could it be that there are costs associated with actions and dependencies that are not naturally captured by the market?

There are plenty of alternatives, but the implementation of alternatives needs politcal will and financial investments. [serious Question] You seem like a guy who has probably made investments in your own home to conserve energy and/or make use of alternatives. What investments have you made in one or the other, and to what extent did financial considerations influence your choices. [serious question/] i don't know about j_b, but I know I've tried to do that. in addition to conservation within my house, i also (supposedly) purchase 'green' electricity, and i'm even signed up now for 'green' natural gas through nwnatural. problem is, the cfls contain mercury, they don't last worth a damn (7 years?, yeah right), even though they have diminished my electricity usage substantially. financial considerations don't really enter into it--i'm paying more than I used to. But I continue to have nagging doubts about the good i'm really doing, what distortions and displacements I might be creating to make me feel better about the old distortions and displacements. for example, if i put solar panels on the house, am i creating toxic waste for poorer people where the panels were produced?

prole, your logic is unstoppable.

might as well lie back and enjoy it, i suppose.

she already hates you. try not to make it worse. [video:youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga-ULeG09QY

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/27/us/27sludge.html?hp anyone?

Changes in the market have not changed the fact that a gallon of gasoline (weighs 8 lbs) burnt creates about 20 lbs of waste, including CO2. i don't think those issues are 'personal value judgments and predictions about various elements of the future'. Nor are they in any way addressed by the market. Congress should respond to such myopia not by dictating what kinds of cars to build, but by implementing a carbon tax (and removing some corporate welfare queens?) to prevent the price of gasoline from falling that low.

I think all Friedman is saying is that the experience of China's new infrastructure points up the need for us to upgrade our own, but that we still remain a more open and creative society, so we'll probably do just fine over time. There are, of course, many ways one might question those assertions, identify and critique his assumptions or demand additional clarification. Faith in technology, for example, might be one place to start. Is the 'green economy' simply the latest whiz-bang myth propagated by our capitalist overlords to maintain control? Is the new boss the same as the old boss, and friedman merely a mouthpiece?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/24/opinion/24friedman.html?em This is why we're currently in trouble... 'In fact, we as a country have become General Motors — as a result of our national drift. Look in the mirror: G.M. is us' This is why things _may_ get better 'We still have the most creative, diverse, innovative culture and open society' its a good read.

I am not sure what you meant w.r.t. to Rousseau but he didn't think that primitive people never imposed their will on the weak or never took stuff that wasn't theirs. Sauvage man was 'innocent' insofar whatever he did was for self-preservation by opposition to accumulating wealth or finding rewards/pleasure in diminishing/hurting others. The social contract permitted sauvage man to become an intelligent man but the terms of the contract are so skewed toward the interests of the elite that it is bound to fail. i don't mean to cast any aspersion on the gentle genevan. he just came to mind as a key figure in discussions about how to construct a society, and i think (i could mis-remember) that he proposed (or at least popularized the concept of) the 'noble savage', an idea that was all the rage among the intelligentsia for a while. He was a critic of the implicit 'progress' model that earlier writers in the so-called 'aufklarung' had proposed, and might be traced as a source for the idea expressed in the video that before people owned things, all were better off.

i didn't even own a car, and many people (including perhaps your aunt) didn't ever bother with licenses. i'm from the west coast, and to encounter someone my age (20-something at the time) who didn't have a license and had never driven a car, was quite strange indeed. where does she live, btw? I used to commute through the south Bronx, up through Belmont. the Bronx contains some of both the worst and the best of new york. it was truly grand, in its day.

who is indignant?

UM, you don't get people to do more of something by charging them more. As for urbanites being lazy, I challenge you to find more out of shape people than in rural America. Woah, Nelly. Guess which community's inhabitants walk more miles per year than any other? That's right, you didn't guess it: New Yorkers. after i left nyc to come out to pdx, i'd visit periodically on business with colleagues. they all complained about how i wanted to 'walk everywhere' and that i walked too fast. they didn't get that it is quicker and a lot less bother, and they were accustomed to sitting on their backside.

and foucault said 'my narrative oppresses your narrative' and derrida said, wait, what the hell did derrida say? i agree with nietzsche's assertion, btw.