Strangely Perfect

Coroner and Law I’m often struck when reading the papers or news, to see the coroner’s verdict on someone’s death as: Ending his own life while the balance of his mind was disturbed Well they have to say something, it’s their job, but the phrase is very peculiar. Take this couple, the Milners, who were [...]

This week, I’ve become aware of three excellent initiatives that are focussing people’s energies, creativity, and cash(!) into positive solutions to the global energy crisis.  It just shows what can be done – and these projects are not difficult or hard to creative creatures like ourselves. Big Mirrors in the Desert This is a $400billion [...]

The statements this week, by the UK government’s chief energy scientist, are right up my street.  See Britons creating ‘more emissions’ on the BBC. It’s obvious really. Over the last few decades our (meaning the UK and all western nations’) manufacturing industries have collapsed. Yet we can still buy stuff, more and more stuff actually. [...]

New Jaguar XJ In common with most cars like this, it’s a lovely looking machine – a style marvel; sleek and vapid, mercurial. It’s also a waste of space and a waste of effort. It’s two tonnes of mass for a 400kg payload is pants.  An ecological disaster zone. Money for Old Rope Not only [...]

From the Department of the Bleeding Obvious World Bank warns of social unrest In this little snippet we find that bad things are going to happen because of the financial crisis! I we consider that the top bank in the world is “The World Bank” (i.e. it’s in the name), and the top bank has [...]

Why Economists and Scam Merchants are the Same Today’s news that the cost of the global credit crunch meltdown has quadrupled in a year should come as no surprise to followers of the GoogleTreasureChest scamsters.  See : Meltdown losses of ‘$4 trillion’ Last year, the highly salaried ‘professional’ economists at the IMF, many having spent [...]

Nichiren …if the minds of living beings are impure, their land is also impure, but if their minds are pure, so is their land. There are not two lands, pure or impure in themselves. The difference lies solely in the good or evil of our minds. – Nichiren Daishonin, from his writings, page 4.  Written [...]

Willie Sutton In a curious parallel with the Great Depression when many millions lost their homes and money, I’m reminded about the phrase reputedly said by a USA bank robber of the time, and how it could equally well be applied to our current predicament…. When asked “Mr Sutton, why do you rob banks?”, he [...]

Chinese Censorship: As part of the BBCs “take” on the international views on the new, 44th President of the United States, their China correspondent Michael Bristow has reported that his inauguration speech was censored in China. Apparently, the English version on the Xinghua News site is okay, but the Chinese version for the locals has [...]

Our weirdly bipolar government, will spring a few surprises today for most people.  (The realisation that bi-polar disorder affects organisations as well as individuals fully explains their behaviour and thus, holds no surprises for me, any more ). Coloured comments added later on Wednesday, 3rd Dec 2008. Predictably, even though a few thousand gambling bankers [...]

Yay!  Today, 15 Nov 2008, with only a few weeks of his tenure as US President left to go, he still can’t stop saying one thing and doing the other. Bush warns over ‘protectionism’ is the news today.  This is at the Washington meeting of 20 countries, the G20, which represent 85% of the global [...]

Finally it’s starting to dawn on a few people that battery powered cars are not the way out of our low-carbon energy conundrum. Bolivia holds key to electric car future.  In this piece, the BBC note that Lithium, the 3rd element in the periodic table, a major power source for everyone’s laptops and mobile phones, [...]

Many moons ago, I read a short Sci-Fi story in a paperback book I’d bought called Business as Usual, During Alterations by Ralph Williams The book is a 1972 Pan edition of an earlier compilation by Damon Knight called “100 Years of Science Fiction” and is well worth a read if you can get a [...]

Some wonderful news this week for people worried about the real future of our world. The EU are hammering down on car emissions! EU rejects efforts to delay CO2 limits on cars RPT-UPDATE 2-EU lawmakers snub big carmakers over carbon curbs Blow to carmakers Climate package: Carbon-free cars? (pre-vote EU Parliament post) Reducing CO2 emissions [...]