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Something Worth Honoring-Especially In These Times

Posted by BLOGASSAULT on Friday, February 06, 2009 12:11:30 PM
   Here is story worth reading just to remember what things used to be like. It's hard to believe just 20 years ago governments still controled people in that way.
 
Berlin paid tribute Thursday to the last person shot trying to cross the Berlin Wall. Chris Gueffroy died in a hail of bullets as he tried to flee East Germany on the night of Feb. 5-6, 1989. He was the last person to fall victim to the East German policy of shooting people trying to flee across the Berlin Wall -- although more were to die trying to escape from East Germany before the borders were opened on Nov. 9, 1989.
 
   Here is a related story on a apartment that was found untouched since the communist era in East Germany.
 
Mark Aretz, an architect who renovates buildings in eastern Germany, inadvertently walked into history while he was refurbishing a building in the Leipzig district of Reudnitz last week. When he unlocked an apartment on the third floor it was as if he had stepped out of a time machine into the humdrum surroundings of the kind of apartment millions of East Germans once lived in.
A wall calendar showed August 1988, and the kitchen cupboard and drawers contained plastic crockery and aluminium cutlery along with food brands that would delight fans of GDR nostalgia these days: an empty bottle of "Vita" Cola, "Marella" margarine, "Juwel" cigarettes and a bottle of "Kristall" vodka.
 
   It is hard to believe that this building went unnoticed for so long. Glad those days are gone.
 
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Will Kevin Costners "WATERWORLD" Be The Future?

Posted by BLOGASSAULT on Wednesday, February 04, 2009 7:49:46 PM
   David Zax from Slate.Com asks the question of whether or not Kevin Costners really bad movie about an Earth covered in water is really a look into our future.
 
   But has Waterworld's moment finally arrived? The movie opens with an image of the globe as we know it slowly being swallowed by blue while a narrator explains that in the future, "the polar ice caps have melted, covering the world with water." Something similar, if less dramatic, is happening right now on Earth. Global warming is causing seas to rise (though the polar ice caps have little to do with it). In its 2007 report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projected a sea-level rise of between seven and 23 inches by 2100. While that might not seem like much, it could be enough to make a low-lying island untenable: Recently, the Maldives' new president announced his intention to buy land to relocate his entire nation if necessary. What if Waterworld were an eco-parable whose message was merely ahead of its time?
 
   Think Mr. Zax has bought into the whole global warming thing? He goes on to pull several vague ideas of what the movie is and how it could be related into a story about being more eco-minded or something. The problem he says is that it didn't go far enough...
 
But despite being a better movie than most people remember, Waterworld has its limitations as an eco-parable. It doesn't begin, as does The Day After Tomorrow, with a standoff between a climate scientist and a Cheney-esque symbol of corporate greed, nor does it issue an implicit ultimatum, as did last year's remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still (in which Keanu Reeves played an alien sent to Earth to assess whether humans could change their planet-abusing ways or whether they should simply be exterminated). In fact, the film never even definitively pins the blame for the flood on mankind. The narrator's declaration that "the polar ice caps have melted" is a little vague.
 
   I don't remeber it being a good movie at all. In fact, I have never liked any movie he has acted in. Movies like Open Range or Dances with wolves would have been great movies if somebody else had been the main character. Even the great cast members those movies had could not save them from the monotone, lifeless, drudgery you get from Kevin Costner.
 

In the end, what stymies the environmentalist who would tease a message out of Waterworld is this: It isn't grim enough. When the protagonists aren't in the middle of a swashbuckling set piece, they're patiently coping and demonstrating hope. "We'll just start over again," says that old inventor good-naturedly after his city is sacked. The film ends happily with the discovery of Dryland (Mount Everest, it turns out), an abundant paradise with cascading fresh water and galloping wild horses. Less an alarmist film than an oddly reassuring one, Waterworld seems to tell us that as bad as the coming apocalypse may be, a scrappy band of (mostly white, English-speaking) men and women will persevere. It offers the message of all summer blockbusters: Things will work out in the end. All we'll need to get by is floating architecture, decent windmills, and a healthy dose of stick-to-it-iveness. Oh, yes, and gills.

   I was worried that he would leave the gills part out, never mind the fact that if darwinian evolution was even correct, growing gills in a couple of generations is ridiculous.
 
    Sufice it to say that, I won't be buying the new  extended version of  Waterworld; it was to long to begin with.
 
Waterworld (2-Disc Extended Edition)
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Advocates Admitting To The Obvious

Posted by BLOGASSAULT on Sunday, February 01, 2009 11:57:13 PM
   Even those that advocate the use of compact flourescent bulbs don't like them. We put a couple in our bedroom last year, and have grown accustomed to them. But we, like so many others, don't like the color of light they give off.
 
Some fluorescents are very good, but many are not. I think what we’re seeing today is we’re starting to bump up against our expectations for color quality in the home not being met by the energy efficient technologies. So consumers are dissatisfied — and rightfully so.
 
The next big [issue] is dimming. Many fluorescents that are available do not dim well. Incandescent lamps dim very nicely. They dim all the way from 100 percent light all the way to 0 percent light. They do it very smoothly and very predictably. Consumers are used to that kind of smooth dimming.
 
They will get it eventually, hopefully soon though. Looking in our local big box hardware store the other day, I noticed that the number of  Incandescent bulbs vs. CFL's is starting to drop. Won't be long until CFL's will be all that is available.
 
 
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Ethonal: Is It Good Or Not?

Posted by BLOGASSAULT on Sunday, February 01, 2009 11:19:15 PM
   There is a new study out that makes the claim that ethonal is actual good for the environment. It has been debated back and forth for awhile now, and this will just add more fuel to a fire that should have never gotten started to begin with.
 
This new study promises to give fresh ammunition to ethanol boosters, especially in the midwest , where the study’s lead researchers are based. The study’s six authors are affiliated with the University of Nebraska, and they acknowledged support from the Western Governors’ Association, the U.S. Department of Energy, and others.
 
   What about the fact that the study is being done by the Universtiy of Nebraska (never mind they are the "Cornhuskers"), one of the largest corn producing states in the nation?
 
Biased? Oh, come on, surely not.
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Can't Say I Didn't Tell You So!

Posted by BLOGASSAULT on Sunday, February 01, 2009 10:26:15 PM
   This article from the MailOnline starts to prove my point regarding population control. It now seems that nothing is taboo when it comes to the environment.
 
Couples who have more than two children are putting an ‘irresponsible’ burden on the environment, the Government’s leading green adviser
has warned.

Jonathon Porritt called on ministers to take action to reduce population growth in Britain, and criticised fellow green campaigners for ducking the ‘controversial’ issue.

Mr Porritt, chairman of the Sustainable Development Commission, which advises the Government on green matters, said the SDC was due to publish a report on the subject next month.
 
   He isn't calling for restrictions like China, but it is a small step towards the government regulating population.
 
It is my thought that if those that keep alive the global warming hysteria will now try to get the population conversation started in this country. The sad thing is it will probably be sooner than later, being it has already been brought up by an Obama advisor:
 
In a speech at Harvard last November, Harvard physicist John Holden, President-elect Obama's choice to be his science adviser as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology, presented a "top 10" list of warming solutions.
Topping the list was "limiting population," as if man was a plague upon the earth. This is a major tenet of green dogma that bemoans the fact that the pestilence called mankind comes with cars, factories and overconsumption of fossil fuels and other resources.
 
   What else can I say?
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Rain Forests Are Growing?

Posted by BLOGASSAULT on Sunday, February 01, 2009 11:14:27 AM
   Seems we have all been duped by those that say the rain forest is vanishing.
 
These new “secondary” forests are emerging in Latin America, Asia and other tropical regions at such a fast pace that the trend has set off a serious debate about whether saving primeval rain forest — an iconic environmental cause — may be less urgent than once thought. By one estimate, for every acre of rain forest cut down each year, more than 50 acres of new forest are growing in the tropics on land that was once farmed, logged or ravaged by natural disaster.
 
   This, of course, does not mean we just ignore the fight to save the rain forests, but what it does mean, is like so many other things the enviromentalists guilt us on, we just are not getting all the information. They probably didn't have all the information either, since they don't actually do any reasearch other than what is good for their desired outcome.
 
   
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