aesmael

It has long confused and bothered me that in the question of how to respond to climate change one of the major governmental concerns appears to be "How can we ensure that industries like coal remain profitable?" As concerns go it seems almost nonsensical, since in order to respond effectively to the problem the coal and other industries need to cease existing in their present form - an effective response cannot I think include 'energy producing industries continue to exist profitably as they are'. If they do want to keep existing as companies they probably should be investing in changing what they do and how.

Perhaps this is because 'growing less than fast is a sign of a bad economy' has never made sense to me as a goal either. It seems like a whole lot of people pretending the planet's resources are infinite and putting off any problems to be dealt with in some indefinite 'later'. Any economic focus other than a sustainable, non-destructive one has always struck me as misguided.

I was watching Lateline earlier tonight and the businessperson interviewed seemed much more charismatic than the politicians and political analysts. Maybe that explains this.

Forget the preamble ramble. I want to be reading again. So I am. These are the things I am reading today accompanied by brief reactions. Look how far behind we are!

a denizen's entertainment

1. Geeky, philosophical and scientific things... [Still love the zombie movie. Not interested in reading the environment link again, but recall both agreeing and disagreeing with parts. Now, the paper on the hypothetical weakless universe? That was so fascinating I did not read it last time, wanting to save it for when I could better appreciate it. It looks to me like the purpose of this simulation was to probe the anthropic principle. Which is a tricky thing to phrase and apparently rather contentious, but the experiment appears to demonstrate that whatever factors constrain the laws of this universe to be what they are, at least in the case of the weak nuclear force it is not that were things different there would be no observers to observe this. It seems I misunderstood from the abstract, but what they did is no less fascinating. Please, do take a read of it yourself - it is fascinating and reinforces just how much I want to get back into astronomy.]

Everything Jake
Unlike most times I do this while reading through a comic, I am not going to link to individual strips to give reactions. I want to save talking about this comic until I am caught up.

Google Reader shared items

1. Accordian-style USB drive actually solves a problem [via soltice. Not really clear on how it solves the problem of loseable caps.]
2. I have no words :O [via gentle_gamer. Way back last time I was reading and using Reader, shared some posts I intended later to write on. Seems then gentle_gamer found lost_angelwings's blog interesting enough to inspect from this. And the links here linked, bizarre comic indeed. Manga girl Jesus.]
3. What is Darwin? [via soltice. Interesting. Content took me a bit to find though.]
   

Paradise Lost

1. Introduction [This looks very much in reference to the poem's contents. I will read it after the poem, when I have hopefully some context for this.]

Not really so much for a day, but more than none and I feel okay about it. Got distracted by being happy, which is a pretty decent distraction.

    When I wrote this post I worried I did not have adequate sources to back it up if challenged. I suppose this will do for now. Oh, and this.

    Sydney now under permanent water restrictions.

    Several cities, in including Toronto, apparently are planning to replace civic lighting with LEDs. Apart from the environmental and financial benefits, this will hopefully also be an opportunity to reduce light pollution. Victory all round.

    Courtesy, Corpus Callosum.


(Isn't this neat? After posting here for so long I find I already have tags for nearly everything)