Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
A little book with a big title, Dark Age Ahead, published last year, tracked the ebbs and flows of civilisations over centuries. It came to this chilling conclusion: “We show signs of rushing headlong into a Dark Age.” Not slipping towards a Dark Age. Rushing.
[Retooling Detroit for fuel-efficient vehicles] would be a good thing, since time is running out — whether it’s measured in terms of climate change, our dependence on foreign oil, or the national security risks inherent in that dependence. Meanwhile, the benefits of such a solution — cleaner air, lower fuel prices, energy independence — are immeasurable.
Two private U.S. companies have designs on building the first luxury recreational vehicle that could withstand nuclear radiation.
Near the beginning of “Saturday Night Fever,” John Travolta’s Tony Manero, frustrated that his boss thinks he should save his salary instead of spending it on a new disco shirt, cries out, “fuck the future!” To which his boss replies: “No, Tony, you can’t fuck the future. The future fucks you! It catches up with you and it fucks you if you ain’t prepared for it!” Well, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but America has morphed into a nation of Tony Maneros.
Hundreds of demonstrators stoned government vehicles, blocked traffic and battled riot police in the Nepalese capital Tuesday to protest the increase in fuel prices by the government.
Because the scientists are challenging fundamental assumptions of our culture, such as the basis for “progress” and the consequences of “economic growth,” many cannot agree with the scientists without losing their identity. This threat to the mental model is simply too great to accept.
One of the surprises in the oil world in 2004 was the success of an underground documentary on the perilous state of world energy. [New film coming from a maker of the End of Surburbia.]
For all our technical advances, says the noted thinker, we’re forgetting a lot of crucial stuff.
Why did once flourishing societies collapse and disappear? Jared Diamond, a Pulitzer Prize-winning geographer at UCLA, has spent much of his career wrestling with this profound question.
Higher heating oil prices in the US are encouraging consumers to turn to back to firewood.
The lesson of “Collapse” is that societies, as often as not, aren’t murdered. They commit suicide: they slit their wrists and then, in the course of many decades, stand by passively and watch themselves bleed to death. (Review of Jared Diamond’s new book.)
Where do people get the idea that Las Vegas is America’s city of the future?
