They Don't Make 'Em Like This Any More

I just read this in an email, some quotes by Thomas Jefferson from 200+ years ago. I don't know if they are authentic but they sure as hell ring true. And for you Yankie-phobes, yes I know the quotes are US-centric, but looking around today I reckon they're applicable wherever you live. Sayeth he:

• When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.


• The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.


• It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.


• I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.


• My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.


• No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.


• The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government. [Except when you're facing tanks and F/A-18s :]


• The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.


• I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.

(A note on this last one: A "Central" or "Reserve Bank" is still a bank.)

I think there's something in this for all of us.

Green Power: Why Friggin' Bother?

Ever since the first human picked up a burning stick and used it to warm and light his cave, humanity has relied on combustion for its energy needs. That was at least 400,000 years ago. Now in the blustery heights of our so-called space-age society, nothing has changed. We still rely on the breaking of chemical bonds for heat, light and transportation, just like those first troglodytes squatting around a meagre campfire.

Originally our fuel source was mostly living -- wood, fat. But for the past couple of centuries it's been dead material -- coal, gas, and, overwhelmingly, oil -- that has turned the wheels of civilisation.

"Ah," but you say, "What about Newcular?" P-lease. Nuclear energy might provide a good percentage of electricity in a few European countries, but in most of the world it is coal and oil that burns in the furnaces of power stations. The same can be said for renewable energy sources like solar and wind, which make such a piddling contribution to global generation it might as well be naught. Green sources must also be heavily subsidised by tax-payers to be viable.

Actually, don't even get me started on nuclear. If ever there was a poster child for a sane energy source being killed by luddite irrationality and limp-dick politics, nuclear energy would be it. Thank god for places like France.

But more importantly, electricity makes up only a fraction of the energy consumed by humanity. The other is transportation: cars that drive your arse around, trucks that transport the food and materials you need to live, railways that do the same. The tractors and harvesters that grow the food and mine the materials. The trucks which mine the uranium and transport it, and the vans which drive 100's of kilometres to the remote windfarm for the turbines' bi-annual maintenance. The cars which drive the people to work who grow food and make things. The cars which drive the people which which run the cafe's where the people who make cars and trucks and tractors buy lunch... You get the picture. Take any product or service you see around -- your pants, your TV, your toothbrush, the computer you're looking at right now, the coffee and danish you're stuffing your face with -- it all has a drop of oil in it somewhere. Most people bitch and moan about the problems attached to fossil fuels, but they have no idea how the stuff is absolutely intrinsic to every aspect of their comfortable lives. Even in France.

That's why it always amuses me when you get a bunch of skinny-wristed liberals protesting about the use of fossil fuels. You see them on the news, these hairy hippy types waving flags and bleating about the evils of oil and coal and greenhouse gases and invading the Middle East and what-not. Then they jump in their VW Jettas and drive for a double-decaf-soy-latte, smugly unpop their laptops and Twitter about what a great difference they made today. Not giving a single thought to how fossil fuels contributed to every step of that process. Or more importantly, if it wasn't for fossil fuels they'd be wearing rattan smocks, hand-picking wheat from a field and grinding it with a stone.

So you have to put things in perspective. Fossil fuels are the life blood of our world, short and simple, and will remain so for the time being.

Not that I like the manifold problems associated with fossil fuels. I hate it. To be still relying on essentially the same physics after 400,000+ years is ludicrous in the extreme. If the same money spent on keeping some scumbag oil baron in gold toilet paper, or keeping some sh*tkicking ex-dictatorship from disintegrating, were spent in developing nuclear fusion we might actually move ahead as a civilisation. But noooooooooooo. I tell ya, if any alien researchers were observing us right now, they'd be shaking their heads in disgust.

But in the end, it's all moot. Like it or not the age of combustion will come to a crashing halt. The oil wells will run dry Real Soon Now; I know they've been saying we've only got 30 years of oil left since I was at school, but it is a very limited resource and it will run dry. As for the burning of fossil fuels, people are starting to wake up to the fact that climate change is happening. Whether or not you think it's anthropogenic (i.e. caused by humans) or part of some natural process, we don't want to live on a pressure-cooker planet any more than the Victorians wanted to live in a perpetual fog of smoke and filth. Something's gotta be done.

And therein lies the ultimate problem, but I'll cover that in another article... right now I have a hankering for a danish.

Coming Soon....

I annoyed with myself. I've been pissing about with uni and what have ya, and not made any new posts in like 100 years. I owe it to my readers, all... none of them. Anyway, stay tuned for another witty and erudite blurb from yours' truly...