March Of The Solar Powered Penguins
It’s a strange idea really, one that can only be explained if you can understand how my mind works - but so be it, the penguin has a solar panel, and this is why…
Last week I bought March Of The Penguins for my two daughters. I had never seen it before and thought it would be a nice nature documentary to entertain their eco-conscious minds, not realising that by the end of it I would be awe-struck by the incredible resilience and sheer survivability of this most exquisitely evolved creature. It’s aim is simple; to survive and create new life - by walking, sliding and shuffling 70 miles to a place where the ice is thick enough to bear the weight of the massed birds; surviving 2 months of almost motionless incubation whilst the female partner hunts for food with which to feed its new born chick; by circulating bodies in an astonishing ballet of temperature control, ensuring that no bird is exposed to the edge of the huddled mass long enough to freeze to death.
We mock the simplicity of animal lives, the “stupidity” of those creatures who have not reached the heights of our superior evolution - yet by our acts of superiority we destroy the very fragile environments which these marvels of instinctive behaviour have evolved to survive in. And the winter sun which so gently warms the eggs of the penguin to give them the energy to be born, we banish in our increasingly hot lands through our condensers, the effluent of burgeoning air conditioning in our homes, offices and cars, producing the very pollution that will cause the home of the penguins to tumble into the sea.
We squander our natural resources at our peril. That sun, beating down upon us, that is crying out to be harvested, stored and used, is just one more part of nature that has to be beaten. Yet if we had concentrated only a tiny proportion of the efforts that we have spent in exploring for oil, the technological breakthroughs in seismography, the engineering miracles that allow pipes to move through the oil bearing rocks to find the precious product of our animal past; then we could already have the ability to use solar energy as a normal part of our lives, rather than the desperate few watts that trickle into batteries from great sheets of silicon.
So let’s get on with it as a species and use the great brains we have. As a first effort, as a friend remarked to me today, let’s put solar panels on all of our cars, the very latest, most efficient types, constantly charging batteries, so that every car is effectively a hybrid. The auto-industry has the technology to move solar energy forwards decades, the lost decades spent tinkering with efficiency gains of a few percent.
If the penguins - those funny monochromatic, flightless birds - are able to use a tiny glance of the sun to bring life forth, then we should be able to use the same power to prevent life being taken. And use it NOW!
Keith Farnish
www.theearthblog.org
www.reduce3.com
And Proud Member Of The Sietch
Monday Confessional
So its Monday, and its my last day of work for my old job. A sad day because I will miss the people I have worked with for the last year. They have taught me so much, and I have been able to laugh and learn with them. It is also an exciting day because I will be starting my new job soon, and that promises to be full of adventure. Also I have set it up to give me a short period of breathing room in between both jobs. I will use this time to pack up (I am moving), get all my stuff together, and most importantly spend a lot of time with Tess. Because she is awesome. Anyway I have to get going or I am going to be late to my last day of work don’t want that now do we.
Sand Storm In Iraq
(via)
The Shane Doctrine
Over the last couple of years, observing the news, and the events unfolding on this planet I feel I have an answer to the Bush Doctrine (that being blow them up before they blow you up). I have unabashedly taken to calling it the “Shane Doctrine” but perhaps a more appropriate term would be “aggressive charity.”
It would go something like this.
1. We announce to the world that we are radically changing our response to Terrorism.
2. We let that sink in for a week or two.
3. We begin by air dropping food and water onto the poorest places in the middle east.
4. We continue this aggressive food/water drop until the local population is well fed.
5. Every time someone in that region threatens us we drop more food and water.
6. We drop all economic sanctions with everyone in the region and start selling all of our stuff to them at low cost.
7. Every time someone bombs us we drop more food and water, and ramp up our aid package to the region, if they do not bomb us, we increase the aid package by twice as much.
8. We make a law that the nations power supply must be replaced with renewable technology at the rate of 5% a year, we provide massive tax cuts to renewable energy retailers making solar panels and wind turbines almost free.
9. We mandate that any American business that wants to sell products/services in our country must give 1% of its profits to sustainable economic development of the third world.
10. We open our border to the worlds hungry and poor, take them in and give them a free education.
We pay for all this by reducing by 15% our military budget. Fighting a “war on terrorism” is like fighting a war on sadness. You can’t fight a war against a tactic, or a feeling. You have to fight the base cause of these problems. That base cause is poverty, hunger, and economic despair. If we combine a very large economic/food/aid package with a radical reduction in the amount of oil we use we will find that our interest in the middle east will shrink.
Responding to violence with food and money may seem like a foolish thing to do, but how is a radical cleric going to convince one of his followers to strap a bomb to there chest and blow up the people that are dropping food and water from the sky, and funding the roads and schools in town. Its easy to paint America as the “great Satan” because of our military actions, manipulation of governments, and our poor oil policies in the past.
It will be much harder to paint us in a negative picture if we start acting like an aggressive charity. We are going to bomb you with food/water/aid and you are going to buy our good/services for low cost, and we are going to pay for your education, and we are not going to buy your oil anymore. And you are going to like it!
As the middle east develops local infrastructure (aided by our own construction firms, and massive aid packages) we will lower our aid package, as they grow there own food we will stop dropping ours, as they stand up we will stand down!
The Constitution Article I Section 2 Clauses 3-5
Article I Section 2 Clauses 3, 4, 5
[3] [Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.]* The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within ever subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative and until such enumeration shall be made, the State of New Hampshire shall be entitled to chuse three, Massachusetts eight, Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations** one, Connecticut five, New-York six, New Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight, Delaware one, Maryland six, Virginia ten, North Carolina five, South Carolina five, and Georgia three.
[4] When vacancies happen in the Representation from any State, the Executive Authority thereof shall issue Writs of Election to fill such Vacancies.
[5] The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.
*changed by the 14 amendment, section 2
** did you know this is the official name of Rhode Island, well now you do.
This part of the grand document sets out how many Reps will come from each state, and lays out how they will be chosen (one for every 30,000 people). It also lays out that a census should be taken every ten years, and that that number will be used to pick how many Reps a state gets. It gives the house the sole power of impeachment, and contains the infamous “three-fifths” compromise, later abolished by the 13-14-15 amendments.
Incidentally the term gerrymandering (the practice of drawing up districts so they contain all the votes most likely to vote for one party over another) comes from the efforts of Massachusetts Republicans to apportion legislative districts to favor their party in 1812. The name of the governor was Elbridge Gerry which a political cartoonist combined with the image of the mythical beast salamander to portray what the crazy districts lines looked like. Hence the Gerrymander.
This section lays out what each of the original states will have for Representatives, but does not draw the lines for the districts. That power is left to the states.
If a member of the house dies or resigns midterm the governor of that state can call for a special election, with a “writ of election” to fill that seat. Unlike the Senate where a governor can appoint a replacement no member of the house has ever served without being elected.
These clauses also authorizes the House to elect its own Speaker. The Speaker presides over its meetings or appoints another member to do so. By act of Congress the Speaker is next in line to become president if both the President and VP and unable to serve.
The power of impeachment (think of it as an indictment) requires only a simple majority in the House. A two-thirds vote in the Senate is then required to convict and remove from office the impeached official. If a president is impeached the chief justice of the United States presides over the trial in the Senate, not the VP as the VP has too much to gain and could be swayed.
RSS XML Feed
