R.I.P. Oklahoma

rich richard.romeo at gmail.com
Wed May 22 12:44:08 CDT 2013


I'm reading Ken Kalfus' new novel Equilateral, the attempt to build a huge
triangle in the Sahara and set it aflame (this is the 1890s) to signal Mars
of the intelligent life on Earth. The assumption is that the Martians are
more advanced than us since they are farther from the sun and therefor have
had more time to think of ways to adjust to the lack of water. The
interesting thing is the attitude of the scientists aided by engineers
(wont be a surprise to Pynchon readers) into the thought of progress and if
we can only get the backwards folks (in their words) to get with the
program and adjust to a new society of masters and slaves (I'm somewhat
simplifying here), with the cross as the mighty bellwether, well things
would be dandy. I guess my point is that we are the inheritors of that
mindset in the west; it made perfect sense back then. But now, we can see
how foolish our ideas for progress have brought us. How do we change such a
mighty beast that we've created? I fear humanity is not up to to the task.
and yes, we are all part of the problem





On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 12:27 PM, Laura Kelber <kelber at mindspring.com>wrote:

> I third the motion!
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On May 22, 2013, at 11:04 AM, Bekah <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
> > Clap, clap, clap, clap, clap!   I hear ya',  Joseph!   It's about the
> money - in ND oil and cheap Indian labor and an incredible Chinese consumer
> base, etc.  Can't have these tree-huggers and socialist-types messing
> things up.  It's too late anyway,  it's about he who gets the last tree
> wins.
> >
> > Bek
> >
> > On May 21, 2013, at 6:39 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> >
> >> After reading the replies it just makes me wonder what is it that makes
> someone so willing to dismiss the massive scale of human suffering that
> seems to be headed our way and to minimize the importance of the global
> threats of  greenhouse gas induced climate change. While taking a 14 hour
> flight from Toronto to Okinawa I watched a movie that was totally
> inappropriate to my 9 x12 screen called Chasing Ice. The photographer,
> originally a global warming skeptic, goes to heroic efforts to create a
> video-document which shows miles-wide glaciers in various places from
> Greeenland to Columbia shrinking dramatically over a few years. In his 2nd
> major book on Global warming called Earth, Bill Mckibben gives a thorough
> global overview of the progress and momentum of GW. It shows how deep the
> shit is.
> >>
> >> While extreme storms cannot be individually related to a global change
> in climate, it has to be noted that  the increased frequency and strength
> of hurricanes floods, droughts, heat waves and tornadoes are all predicted
> by the climate models.  The oceans are also getting measurably more acidic
> directly from carbon forming carbolic acid.
> >>
> >> Will climate change denier and Fema antagonist J Inhofe will have a
> harder time getting elected?
> >> What about Obama and the Democrats? : yes to fracking, yes to tar
> sands, no to Copenhagen, no in Durbin, yes to petrochemical dispersants to
> "fix" the gulf spill, yes to continued drilling, yes to seizing reporters'
> private communications, yes to big banks, yes to growing military
> budget....... In the spirit of George Carlin and at the risk of repeating
> myself:
> >> Fuck Jason Velveeta and fuck his little dog too.
> >> On May 20, 2013, at 8:40 PM, bandwraith at aol.com wrote:
> >>
> >>> This is fucking unbelievable. During a quiet moment at the office this
> afternoon I turned on the tube. There was a helicopter shot of this massive
> funnel cloud just hovering over a suburban area- it seemed like forever.
> The commentator was rather dispassionately describing the scene,
> commentating on tornadoes of the past and what causes them to form, etc.,
> as people were obviously being mutilated in the distance.
> >>>
> >>>
> http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57585407/at-least-51-dead-after-massive-okla-tornado/
> >>>
> >>> Is this up-tick in these mega-twisters and other weather phenomenon,
> like Sandy, the result of global warming?  If so, we're in deep shit.
> >
>
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