Transition Towns

 

Locally grown foods sold at a farmers market

So I just heard of this thing called Transition Towns, and I am in the process of joining one.  The overall idea is to adjust to life without oil and with climate changes in order to make life “Post Oil” livable and even enjoyable.  Read more here.

The first problems which come to mind are our oil dependencies in the areas of food and heating.  

I am writing from central Illinois, so food is all around us, but delivering it to the rest of the country/world will become impossible.  Industrial agriculture is also dependant on oil.  Without our tractors, combines, and other oil driven machines our capacity to produce will be diminished.

Living in the mid-west is an exercise in suffering the elements.  This year we had several cold snaps lasting for more than a week during which the temperature did not raise above zero degrees Fahrenheit.  No amount of insulation would have kept our house warm enough without gas heating.

Further Post Oil challenges include but are not limited to transportation, medical care, law and order, art, and education.

The climate change element is something I am not certain we can completely prepare for.  The idea of unpredictable weather patterns disrupting agriculture and displacing large urban populations is staggering.  Does that mean the interior of continents should prepare to host millions of refugees?  To do so while facing food and transportation shortages is going to be a challenge if we don’t have an oil free solution ready to implement when crisis strikes.

Email Fraud

I don’t know if that is a real crime but I just got an email that smacks of the Nigerian 419 Scam.  I replied to it, I hope to hear from Dr. Terry Williams soon reguarding my prize.  Here is the text:

OXFAM INTERNATIONAL
Oxfam House, John Smith Drive,
Cowley, Oxford, OX4 2JY.,
United Kingdom.
Date: 21th July, 2008.

Dear Funds Beneficiary

This is to notify you that you have been officially chosen by the Board of
Trustees of the Oxfam GB (NGO UK) as one of the final recipients of a Cash
Grant/Donation for Economic Growth and a Poverty  Alleviation Scheme through
your email.
Oxfam GB (U.K.), a Multi-Million Pounds NGO group, was established with the
objective of Human Growth, Poverty Alleviation,Educational and Community
Development around the world. In line with the 61st anniversary program,
Oxfam
in conjunction with the European Council is giving out Twenty-Five
Million,Five
Hundred Thousand Pounds Sterling as specific Donations/Grants to 10 lucky
International recipients worldwide in different categories for their
Business
and Social Development.

These funds are freely given for your Business,Economic and Educational
Development, as well as the enhancement of the overall standard of living of
the less previledged people in your region.
It will interest you to know that your email was selected from your
country’s
chambers of commerce,due to an internet random selection and you have been
confirmed as one of the lucky recipients of this year’s donation programme.
You are also entitled to the sum of Two Million,Five Hundred and Fifty
Thousand  Pounds Sterling(2,550,000.00 GBP) as charity donations/aid
from the
Oxfam GB (UK) International donation scheme.

Further information on the processing and disbursement of your grant
entitlements, alongside the provision of your qualification documentations,
will be dislosed to you by the National Secretary of the foundation, Dr.
Terry
Williams.
Please contact him with your Qualification Number [OXG /101/231/BDB]
as soon as
possible.

Dr. Terry Williams
Tel: +44 704 578 1442.
Email: oxfamgb.intl47@googlemail.com
Oxfam-GB, United kingdom.

Signed:
Sir. William Boykin
Programme Manager.
?xfam-GB

I hope he gets back to me, I would like to know if he is in England or Africa.

Obama and Racists

This is sort of funny sort of deep.

Racists for Obama?

Included is this gem:

it’s perfectly possible to hold a negative view of at least one aspect of African-Americans and yet simultaneously prefer Obama, racial feelings are not as cut and dried — not as black and white — as people often say.”

Onion or Real

The Onion is a humor news paper and it does it’s job well.  I read it and am consistently impressed.  I write here and I try to string ideas together coherently, sometimes I do.  I write for Fact Checked, and sometimes I’m funny, never as funny as the Onion, I don’t think.

But sometimes I find an article in a serious newspaper (note I didn’t say real) that feels like it would be at home in the Onion, or I would be proud to have thought of it an put it on Fact Checked.  Politico delivered such a headline just today.

Joe not a licensed plumber

This will only make sense if you watched the last Presidential debate.

Out With the Old

This is across the street from the Cornerstone office.  Illinois State University is going to build a student recreation center on this site.  This building was once a dorm, now upperclassmen are forced to live off campus and only freshmen are required to live in the dorms, I think.

The University should have had housing built before they tore it down, but now we have a taxing number of people all hunting for apartments.  I should be thankful because the tight apartment market pushed us towards a house, but still.

Americans Must Always Act On Conscience.

You might not have heard about this at the time but I did, and it has been bouncing around in my head for a few months.  A pharmacist refused to fill a prescription for birth control because of his religious beliefs.  At first, I rolled my eyes and thought about how so many Christians push there convictions on others, but then I watched something the History Channel (sometimes called the Hitler Channel for its large focus on World War Two).

Under the Third Reich terrible things were required of the citizens by law.  In my heart I believe the people of Germany are no more evil than any other people group, but they did the worst things in all of history.  Why?  Well, they had a leader who had charisma and a hate filled goal.  They had hate of their own, anger, and the technology to carry out revenge.  Many countries have these things, why did Germany succumb to it all?

It was the State ethics and morals usurping the place of individual conviction and conscience.  The laws said one must carry out orders, and orders were carried out.  If the people of Germany decided that they would not participate in the brutality, than the brutality would not have happened.

The pharmacist sees birth control and wrong, the United States government sees it as a right of an individual to prevent a pregnancy if she chooses.  If we as a people stand up and refuse to allow the government to determine right and wrong for us, and always seek the highest ethics and morals, we can ensure that no massacre is on our heads.  We can ensure that no people are trampled beneath us.

Repressive Left

French air-bag convicted of downplaying the Nazis

The person in question is historically wrong, and morally suspect. But that is not the point. When we say thing like, “We have the right to say what we think.” It would sometimes be followed by an example to the contrary of a notorious county (USSR, East Germany, China). But this is France, the cradle of the Enlightenment and the Rights of Man.

Can a people be so concerned about protecting the population from oppressive ideas, like fascism, they become oppressive?

Update: What the hell is going on in France?  French Police ‘made Nazi salutes’ 

A Return To Simpler Times

Putin vows ‘arms race’ response

Is the devil we know really better than the devil we don’t?

The House Loses on the Super Bowl

Gambling Article

From the article:

World Vision, a Christian aid organization, plans to take the T-shirts, sweatshirts and hats that the Patriots, Green Bay Packers and San Diego Chargers never got to use and send them to poor children in more than 100 developing countries, in what has become a feel-good footnote for losing teams in the past few years.

Or as Rachael Boyer of World Vision said in a news release, “Even though they didn’t win the Super Bowl, the New England Patriots will still be champions in several countries around the world.”

It has been a funny fact to me for years every time those championship hats and t-shirts are on the spot, and I get to point out those items have useless counterparts that turn up in pictures of the third world.

Desperate Times…

call for desperate measures.

I thought this was mostly hilarious. But the guy gave is own dimensions (5′11, 230 pounds) and said he might be considered obese. Well I am 5′9 250 pounds. I know the BMI says I’m obese, that is old news. I would need to weigh 202 pounds before I would be considered overweight and I would need to weigh 165 to be at a normal weight, or I could become seven feet tall.

In recent years America has been told how fat we are, but in 1998 the threshold shifted to a lower weight standard. Medicine should be above this, but it seems that it is going along with the “thin is in” sort of movement in our popular culture.

Please do not misunderstand me. I know I need to lose weight, so do most Americans. But this system does not account for muscle mass at all. 165 pounds is not a healthy weight for me.