Sunday Odds & Ends (5)

1. Global warming is pretty much an inevitability. It isn't the classic US SUV driver that is the problem really, it is rapidly booming industry in China and India, in the long run. You can be all puritan and holier than thou and beat yourself up all you want (the environmental movement, especially David Suzuki, frequently puts me in mind of the penitants in Monty Python & The Holy Grail, bashing themselves in the forehead after every verse). But at this point, the case is clearly proven, and I so wish we were hearing more about how to deal with it, than how to prevent it, which we so clearly can't. Does anybody out there have a plan, for what to do when Manhatten is under a foot of seawater and Kansas hasn't produced a crop in five years? When the Athabasca becomes the new breadbelt and the Northwest Passage is viable? Its gonna be a whole new world, and we aren't thinking about it much.

2. Still working on the Enemies List. I'm up to six, gotta find four more. I still have to decide if the CBE and CIC belong on it.

3. I have a piece on aggression I've been chewing over for a while. I think aggression is a Good Thing in some contexts, and natural and inherent in any case, and many things go wrong in the world when we attempt to suppress it.

4. I would really like to say something about the despicable practise of torture, now that US government has pretty much endorsed it (and has certainly practised it). But even to talk about such a sickening thing is almost to validate it. Well this: torture for information is (logically) ridiculous, it just cannot be useful. The shits who do this know this of course, though they won't admit it. Almost all torture is practised for the purposes of instilling fear in civilians, that is, you. You, me, our children and grandchildren, we are meant to be scared by it.

"And then they came for me....."

Well they aren't coming for you yet. Make some choices while you still can.

There is a good deal of torture-type mission-creep going on. Pay attention.