illi goes to Harvard

Drew Faust
President
Harvard University
Massachusetts Hall
Cambridge, MA 02138
USA




Dear Mr Faust,

The above photo [of Dr Martin Luther King -ed.] is taken from your website, today 6th April.

I would also like to use Reverend King’s good name and image to promote an idea, the idea that you should not harbour enthusiasts for crimes against humanity among your staff.

I refer to Alan Dershowitz, who has been proven by Norman G. Finkelstein to be racist and bigoted, to have attempted to paint a false picture of history so that Israel may escape the withering justice of history that it so deserves, and even to have promoted torture and murder of innocents. A more minor point is that he has been proven to be the author of specious, false and biased claims, with a total disregard for research and truth.

This is all proven in Finkelstein’s work ‘Beyond Chutzpah’.

I wonder if Reverend King would have approved of this situation? Dershowitz’s position at Harvard is perhaps one reason why his outrageous claims are quoted as fact by so many, and his removal from your directory would only serve to enhance its reputation, as well as to shine light more clearly upon the ‘facts on the ground’ in Palestine.

Yours sincerely,

Illinois Cook

ELECTRIC CARS!!!

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/02/27/one_ev_investment/

Seriously, if you have any spare cash - NOW is the time to invest in Tanfield!

Time to end the mult-generational ponzi scheme

Check out these posts below. Quite short, they made by people familiar with energy problems and have reached conclusions about the way our economy works or doesn't work today.
http://energybulletin.net/node/48393

Link to another short post. He raises a question I've thought about before. What if Reagan never happened, but Carter or people like him carried on and moved the world towards sustainability in the 1980's? One for counter-factual historians...
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007751.html

Back to reality. Have a read of Herman Daly's take on the financial crisis - the ecological economics explanation.
http://rs.resalliance.org/2008/10/09/herman-daly-on-the-financial-crisis/

Finally, check out this article from Rolling Stone magazine about the bailouts in the US. It's quite long, read it when you have time, but it's entertaining, I laughed out loud several times. Well worth reading the whole thing.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_takeover/print
This is an extract from the very end of the article that gives you an idea:
"The most galling thing about this financial crisis is that so many Wall Street types think they actually deserve not only their huge bonuses and lavish lifestyles but the awesome political power their own mistakes have left them in possession of. When challenged, they talk about how hard they work, the 90-hour weeks, the stress, the failed marriages, the hemorrhoids and gallstones they all get before they hit 40.
"But wait a minute," you say to them. "No one ever asked you to stay up all night eight days a week trying to get filthy rich shorting what's left of the American auto industry or selling $600 billion in toxic, irredeemable mortgages to ex-strippers on work release and Taco Bell clerks. Actually, come to think of it, why are we even giving taxpayer money to you people? Why are we not throwing your ass in jail instead?"
But before you even finish saying that, they're rolling their eyes, because You Don't Get It. These people were never about anything except turning money into money, in order to get more money; valueswise they're on par with crack addicts, or obsessive sexual deviants who burgle homes to steal panties. Yet these are the people in whose hands our entire political future now rests."

Umbrellas. WTF?

Really, WHAT THE FUCK IS IT WITH UMBRELLAS, that they need to be brought to the office, and then left out, all over the place, wide open.

Has it been raining? Oh, that means it might also be raining later, and therefore leaving your umbrella out to dry will cause it to be more protective when you return to the inclement weather. No! It makes no difference! But it will make a bloody difference when I have to walk around the office trying not to trip over them!

Electric is the way to go!

Forget the hydrogen fuel cell, forget biofuels, forget hybrids (they are only a 'bridge'), ELECTRIC is the future for automotive transport!!!

It is the only logical conclusion (to me at any rate!), given that hydrogen is still on a very far off drawing board and hybrid is merely the bridging of old tech (fossil fuels) to new (electric).

Don't get me wrong, hybrid is going to be here a while as the world as a whole gets to grips with letting go of the internal combustion engine and embracing the concept of simply plugging your car into the wall and you're good to go!

This is not some far off future doohicky, or the cute but lightweight G-Wiz - this is 0-60 in 4 seconds and a top speed of 125mph (limited) in the form of the appropriately named 'Tesla': http://www.teslamotors.com/

If that's too fast, then check out Smith's electric vans and trucks. The Edison, Ampere etc, Ohm my God, they'll be running out of suitably cheesy names before long! ;) : http://www.smithelectricvehicles.com/index.asp

Actually, on the latter company, Ford have recently announced their partnership with the parent company whose share prices are currently at a historically low level - EPIC:TAN Buy, buy, buy!

"... the 41st guy and the 43rd guy simply don't need to worry about it."

Check out this column about the recent joint interview of the 41st and 43rd presidents, Bush's junior and senior.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/12/presidents-bush-joint-interview-fox

If you've ever wondered whether Bush junior worries about how he will be thought of by history, here's the answer:

How would both their presidencies be remembered? Dubya leapt at the question, saying he was still reading biographies of George Washington. "If they are still writing about the first guy, the 41st guy and the 43rd guy simply don't need to worry about it."

The world has been "blessed" for the last 8 years with an incompetent president. It may not be true for much longer, but for that period the US president was the de facto leader of the world. Those 8 years may well have been the very peak of exponential growth of the world economy, the period of fastest growth of fossil fuel use and pollution and the most critical time for turning the world around, to start changing course away from danger. It's an interesting thought experiment to imagine what the world would be like now if the US president had been different.

What I would like to conjecture is that all our minds have been polluted by George Bush for the last 8 years. This is because it doesn't matter how well we know he is a fool, we all had an implicit assumption that either he had a basic level of competence or his advisors did. Then again, maybe we shouldn't be too hard on dubya. If the entire history of capitalism has been effectively a giant ponzi scheme fueled by cheap fossil fuel energy, the guy in charge when it starts to fall apart can't be blamed for just trying to keep it going.

PS If you think that ponzi scheme (good recent example, Bernie Madoff's fund) is bit strong read this
http://www.pimco.com/LeftNav/Featured+Market+Commentary/IO/2009/IO+Gross+Jan+09+Andrew+Mellon+vs+Bailout+Nation.htm
It's by Bill Gross, he heads up Pimco a massive fixed interest fund in the states. Gross is about the number one fixed interest investor in the US. He's not calling the whole of capitalism a ponzi scheme as I am, but he most certainly is calling the current version in the USA a ponzi scheme - quote "ponzi, ponzi, ponzi".

Radical Retrenchment

Just read the following on The Oil Drum website:
http://campfire.theoildrum.com/node/4928

Would be interested to see what you think of it, and of the discussion underneath.