THE 2700 YEAR OLD STASH

The link to this surprising and fascinating story was sent by EF…

“Researchers say they have located the world's oldest stash of marijuana, in a tomb in a remote part of China.
The cache of cannabis is about 2,700 years old and was clearly "cultivated for psychoactive purposes," rather than as fiber for clothing or as food, says a research paper in the Journal of Experimental Botany.
The 789 grams of dried cannabis was buried alongside a light-haired, blue-eyed Caucasian man, likely a shaman of the Gushi culture, near Turpan in northwestern China.
The extremely dry conditions and alkaline soil acted as preservatives, allowing a team of scientists to carefully analyze the stash, which still looked green though it had lost its distinctive odor.
"To our knowledge, these investigations provide the oldest documentation of cannabis as a pharmacologically active agent," says the newly published paper, whose lead author was American neurologist Dr. Ethan B. Russo.”

Click here for the whole weird tale. (Although it does fail to explain how a light-haired, blue-eyed Caucasian came to be a shaman of the Gushi 2,700 years ago.)

The secret word is Inhale

HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM

TWILGHT OF THE BEES

Aeswiren brings us back from turkey euphoria with a dose of sobering reality.

“Right now the gathering crisis of the honeybee is out of the headlines, because it's winter in the Northern Hemisphere. But as soon as spring arrives--beginning with the great Almond pollination in California in February, the disintegration of the US Beekeeping industry will be glaringly obvious once again. CCD-- Colony Collapse Disorder was the big story last summer and spring. The question posed by mainstream media was "what's killing the bees?" The answer is not one that either the media or the world will really want to hear.Read "Fruitless Fall-- the Collapse of the Honey Bee and the Coming Agricultural Crisis" by Rowan Jacobsen (Bloomsbury USA) for all the details. Essential points:-- Square large cell industrial hive "frames"-- with 5.4 mm sized cells-- are as alien to bee nature as factory farming is to cows, pigs and chickens. CCD is most probably the result of multiple stresses on bees-- from being shipped around the country to work various crops, to being exposed to pesticides, especially the new, insidious neonicotinoids like imidacloprid, to the horror of infestation with Varroa Mites (imagine doing hard physical work with two or three ticks the size of teapots sucking your blood). At a certain point, the bees are so weakened they can't keep up bee life, the neonicotinoids overwhelm their ability to "think" straight as a group mind and they disperse and die.Africanized bees-- smaller than the gentle Italian origin industrialized bees, build smaller combs with smaller cell size and destroy Varroa mites. However, they are impossible to use in an industrial way, for their famous orneriness.However-- allow industrialized bees to work with small cell sizes – closer to their natural range-- and they too get rid of Varroa Mites. The difference seems to be that in the 5.4 mm cells the mites can hide behind the larvae and pupae they are parasitizing without making noise. In 4.9 mm cells, they can't help but make sound moving around. Nurse bees detect them and chew their legs off and toss their bodies out of the nest.In the wild, bees make different sizes of cells and bees through the season, and produce small bees for over wintering, and in the spring, but larger bees in mid summer and fall. The industrial bee hive doesn't allow for this, being one size fits all, all year round.As a business, Bee Keeping is as underwater as a Sub Prime Mortgage. Costs have reached something in the order of $100 a hive per year, but today, hives can only produce about $50 to $80 worth of honey. This is why the huge Almond Pollination Frenzy in California every February is crucial to bee keepers now. California produces 80% of the world's almonds, and world consumption of almonds is soaring. Almond Growers must have bees to pollinate their trees or they get no almonds and currently they are spending about $2000 per acre to produce between 2,000 and 3,000 lbs of almonds for which they are averaging $2 a pound. Out of the $2000 they now pay beekeepers $150 to $180 per hive. However, so many industrialized hives are sickly, weak or dead, that there is now considerable tension between almond growers and beekeepers over the issue of insufficient pollination. On the other side of the coin, so many hives die from being shipped to California-- whether from stress or disease picked up from other hives-- that beekeepers have to factor in losses of as much as one third of their hives.Without honeybees a huge range of crops-- from Oranges to those Almonds will either cease to exist, or have to be pollinated by hand. Hand pollination is becoming common in parts of china that are too toxic for bees or any other pollinators to survive in. Hand pollinated fruit in the USA? Likely to be very expensive. Without pollinators, large sections of US Agriculture are quite likely to collapse and disappear. Honeybees are the canaries in the coalmine when it comes to industrialized agriculture. The whole system is perversely exploitative, unhealthy and unsustainable. As it decays and quite possibly breaks down, food quality will diminish even further and prices will rise quickly.”

EARLIER IN THE WEEK WE WERE TALKING TOAST

Here at Doc40 things are moving kinda slow. Hence more pictures than profundity. But don't go away, y'hear? We'll start thinking again very soon. (Image supplied by Valerie.)

DOC'S PAPERBACK CLASSIC'S # 51

Don't leave Earth without it.

(lifed from Peromyscus)

The secret word is Exterminate

AS JOHN WAYNE ONCE REMARKED, "GOOD LUCK, PILGRIM"

Despite all the manifold horror in the world, it is still Turkey Day in the USA and we will do what’s expected of us. Maybe the fact that we can eat, drink, and be merry while all goes to hell around us is the nature of human resilience.

Noudela also sent us a link to a video of turkey revenge.

The secret word is Yam

OUR WHACKY UNCLE BILL

Uncle Bill draws down on the flightless butterball.

(And here’s link to Uncle Bill’s Thanksgiving Prayer)

PLANS SUDDENLY CHANGE

I had a bunch of Doc40 fun stuff prepared for Thanksgiving, but suddenly it no longer makes sense as the reports roll in about the attacks on Mumbai. Now, as the TV and the computer bring in the bad news, and all I can do is wait and watch impotently, see what happens next, and offer our collective sympathy to our friends in India.

SOCIALISM IS A NINE-LETTER WORD

The shape-shifting Republican reveals it’s true form to Vincent Price.

Not many Republicans stop by Doc40 and usually it’s a brief and accidental visit. If there are any of you out there, however, isn’t it time you read the memo? You lost the election. You lost because, for eight years, you ran with a vicious idiot of president, and, for even longer, the country was conned into organizing itself according your deregulated, market-driven economic theories that have finally launched us into the abyss of disaster. You are not credible. Fuck off and shut up. I do not want to hear you bleating from the sidelines about the evils of deficit spending, tax cuts, unions, or universal healthcare, or expecting auto workers to give up their pensions, or using socialism as a dirty word. The discredited Bush also has to stop laying a leaving-office minefield for the President Elect in the form of executive orders that will do everything possible to mess up the environment, enrich the oil barons, and allow the crooks and torturers to get away with murder. You have to realize that neither Jesus nor the idiotic Sarah Palin will rescue you and your illusions of greed-as-a-virtue. The only thing that will save this wretched, ruined superpower is massive government intervention. So please, go away and shut the fuck up. Take your licking and stop ticking. This mess has to be cleaned up, goddamn it!

The secret words are Cease and Desist

BREAKFAST REDUX

HCB sent over this picture of the Darth Vader toaster that actually burns an image of the Dark Lord of the Sith into your toast. I recall a breakfast cereal called Force existed when I was a kid back in England. I guess the two would have made a highly symbolic pairing (along with some marmalade, dairy products, and a bloody Mary.)

The capacity to burn images into toast also opens a weird wealth of possibilities. (And shuts down some damned absurd sales on eBay.) Elvis, Jesus, Batman, Cartman, a marijuana leaf, the Virgin Mary, and the President Elect could all become a brand on bread. The nation eats its idols and I worry about the symbolism.

THE ADVENTURES OF MARILYN (Part ERB710)

In which Marilyn taps her perfect teeth impatiently. She is anxious, although trying to maintain a calm demeanor in front of the Green Warriors. She knows that, without power, and unable to flee the Barsoomian reality quadrant, she will soon fall under the spell of the Therns from the River Iss, who – led by the assassin Gor Hajus – will undoubtedly sell her as a warmbody to Vobis Kan, the Mastermind, for his evil research in the laboratories of Morbus. Marilyn is nervous. What has become of Thuvia, her airship, and her banths? Is Tul Axatar still sacking Raxar to make himself the Second Padwar? Most important, where is Tars Tarkas, the Jeddak of Thark, and the crucial relief column?

THEY DON'T STAGE SHOWS LIKE THIS ANY MORE #11

BREAKFAST REVISITED

To add to the general culinary confusion, Valerie as sent us a picture of Catalan black pudding. (See post for Saturday November 15th. )

SURREAL SATURDAY

Our pal Doug the Bass sent over the following note and a culturally alarming link to pictures of Abba-era Swedish dance bands that have to be seen to be believed. “OK, my friend Chrissy Shefts sent me this link. No wonder why ABBA never broke big in the States. Truly hilarious and frightening...” Maybe this is why death metal is now so popular up in the fiords. And doubtless the Republicans (if we had any) would point out that all this retro-scand is, in fact, a symptom of the hell that is created by the satanic horror of socialized health care. (But then ask them to find Sweden on a map.)

The secret hyphenation is Bork-Bork

NO MORE WORRIES ABOUT BARS

Lifted from Tom Sutpen

A FUTURE WITHOUT DETROIT?

The suits of the motor industry are without shame or even a sense of theatre. They show up in Washington in their private jets, with their seven and eight figure salaries, and expect the government to spot them a fast $25 billion, under the old George Bush socialism-for-the-mega-rich safety net. These clowns haven’t made a decent car since the Dodge Challenger, and they drove Detroit into the ground as their unholy alliance with the oil barons produced vehicles that were nothing more than heavily promoted, two-ton chunks of gas-guzzling ugly metal, but they still have the infinite and unmitigated gall to give the nod and wink to their Republican toadies to bounce all over my TV claiming that the destruction of the big three automakers is all the fault of the UAW and shiftless workers with too much healthcare. I totally believe that Ford, GM, and Chrysler should get their bailout ASAP, but on the solid proviso that current management is immediately taken out back and executed by a union firing squad.

The secret word is Drastic

"SOYLENT GREEN IS..."

The only difference between Soylent Green and Burger King is TV commercials and cheap promotional toys. (Have it your way.)

A SIGN OF THE TIMES

Today Gene Simmons – currently hawking a reality show, and every kind of Kiss merch he thinks he can get away with, from Kiss condoms to Kiss coffins – rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange. The Dow promptly plunged more than four hundred points to yet another record low. I think it’s time to disband the Kiss Army.

Oh yeah, and seemingly Simmons also has a sex tape in circulation.

OUR WHACKY UNCLE BILL

In the woods, Uncle Bill is ready for absolutely anything.

PIRATES OF SOMALIA

When I read this story in the New York Times, I have to admit that I was intrigued and delighted. Okay, so some would claim this is some kind of terrorism, but all I can do is smile. These Somali pirates have the Devil’s own gall to highjack a fully loaded Saudi oil tanker the size of a goddamned aircraft carrier, and are definitely plying what the epic Victorian poet, Sir Henry Newbolt, called the “Old Trade.” Not only do they represent a kind of Waterworld phase in the steady slide to global cyberpunk dystopia, but I have to sympathize with their audacity. The entire British Empire was founded on the proceeds of piracy, and the Golden Age of Elizabeth I and William Shakespeare was only bankrolled by robbing the Spanish.

“A hijacked Saudi-owned supertanker carrying more than $100 million worth of crude oil was anchored off the coast of Somalia on Tuesday and the ship’s owner said it was working to free the ship and its 25-member crew.
The owner, Vela International, a subsidiary of the Saudi Arabia-based oil giant Saudi Aramco, said in a statement that the company was awaiting further contact from the pirates who seized the vessel about 480 miles off the coast of Somalia. Earlier reports had said that the 1,080-foot-long ship, Sirius Star, had been hijacked off the Kenyan coast.
The company did not say specifically that it had begun negotiations with the hijackers. The supertanker, about the same length as an American Nimitz class aircraft carrier, is the largest ship known to have been seized by pirates, and it was fully loaded with two million barrels of oil.
“Our first and foremost priority is ensuring the safety of the crew,” Salah B. Ka’aki, the president and chief executive of Vela, said in the statement. The crew members are citizens of Britain, Poland, Croatia, the Philippines and Saudi Arabia.
Lt. Nathan Christensen, deputy spokesman for the United States Fifth Fleet, said that the tanker had been anchored within sight of the coastal town of Xarardheere. The town is 260 miles north of Mogadishu, the Somali capital, and is part of a region known as a hub of pirate activity.” (Click here for more.)

The secret word is Hook (or maybe Parrot)

A COKE CONFESSION

No, this is not any tall tale of Peruvian paranoia powder, but actually about my lifelong addiction to Coca-Cola. (I guess it’s one of those things that float through the mind in this weird lull between the Obama election and the End of Civilization As We Know it, and as LA is once again, almost tediously, on fire.) Some recent posters of comments on Doc40 seemed to find this either distasteful or wholly unbelievable, but it is the truth and I refuse to succumb to shame, especially as others seem to share and understand my supposedly imperialist weakness.
I met my first Coke in England when I was somewhere around the age of four. My mother and a friend had taken the tiny Michael to a somewhat smart restaurant, and, by a process that I don’t really recall, I found myself looking at a tall glass of brown sparkling liquid with ice and a slice of lemon. Much of this may be clouded by memory distortion My first though was “wow, I’m getting a cocktail of my very own”, and then I tasted the thing and that was it. That first Coke was infinitely superior to the weird domestic soda-pops like Tizer, Vimto, ginger beer, or dandelion & burdock. I became a lifelong slave to the Bottlers of Atlanta, and totally understood how precise the commercial was that made reference to “an ice cold coke on the back of my throat.”
Not that just any Coke would do. Forget your plastic two-liter bottles. Coca-Cola should come super-chilled in the traditional waisted bottle, with a tightly sealed crown cap. The only other acceptable Coke delivery system is from a commercial spigot machine with the refrigeration and CO2 turned way up, and the syrup tuned down. I discover this as a teenager when I worked at London Zoo as a fry cook and frequently stumbled into work flying sideways from the previous night’s dose of blue or yellow mod pills.
Thus, to make a long story bearable, the ideal hangover cure has always been a Coke with the taste dulled by extreme cold and the caffeine forced into my system by the maximum possible carbonation. Around the same time, I was clued into the joys of Coke and alcohol by Fidel Castro (the Cuba Libre) and The Beatles (scotch and coke), but that's a whole other story that concludes with why I like to drink Jack Daniels and Coke on airplanes.

And now for some trivia from Wikipedia…
"In the United States, Stepan Company is the only manufacturing plant authorized by the Federal Government to import and process the coca plant. Stepan laboratory in Maywood, New Jersey, is the nation's only legal commercial importer of coca leaves, which it obtains mainly from Peru and, to a lesser extent, Bolivia. Besides producing the coca flavoring agent for Coca Cola, Stepan Company extracts cocaine from the coca leaves, which it sells to Mallinckrodt, a St. Louis, Missouri pharmaceutical manufacturer that is the only company in the United States licensed to purify cocaine for medicinal use."

The secret word is Better

THE ADVENTURES OF MARILYN (Part Five-Oh)

In which Marilyn, stranded by the total inefficiency of Post-Apocalypse Airlines and missing her shoes, finds herself confined in the backroom of the Happy Skull Casino and Roadhouse, guarded by two very stupid deputy sheriffs from Parsec 19347494738/W – also know as the Exceptionally Dumb Dimension – that has an economy based on implausibly fixed gambling and ancient pork, and a political structure of down-home, beer-drunk fascism. Knowing this is not a happy situation, and these hick cops are wholly unaware of her Goddess Status, she employs the only tactical alternative left in her arsenal. She ignores them in the hope that they will vanish.

NET NEUTRALITY

Our good pal Faux Smoke, between arguing with Aeswiren about nuclear power, sent us the following comment about internet freedom.

“Big deal to me, internet becomes useless if our free access becomes restricted. Fucking Comcast was blocking torrent sites earlier this year & the new bandwidth caps have already knocked some people I know offline... things haven't exactly been peachy the way things have been going & it would be nice to see things play out in a favorable fashion as the new administration gets into office.”

He also includes a link to a report on the latest government moves on internet freedom.

The secret word is Access

BREAKFAST IS LATE TODAY

Yes, comrades, that's black pudding. It's disgusts Americans but is one of the things that made me what I am today. And oh that I had such a heart-stopping plate in front of me right now! (Lifted from BreakfastLiverpool)

NUCLEAR DEBATE ROCKS ON

“I’m Godzilla. Remember how I got started?”

The nuclear discussion continues as Aeswiren responds to Faux Smoke's worries about a nuclear power plant going “BOOM!” Plus the crucial difference between fission (generally bad) and fusion (perhaps potentially okay.)

“Fusion reactors cannot go boom. With Fusion you have to make an enormous electro-magnetic effort to create and contain a superhot plasma within the reaction vessel. If anything turns down the power, or breaks the vessel the plasma cools and the reaction stops either instantaneously or within a second or two. The material in the reaction vessel at any one time weighs a few grams, okay? It's not like an atomic pile of uranium fuel rods that can go critical and melt down. A couple of grams of superhot plasma is not a threat, especially since it won't stay superhot if anything goes wrong.”

All of a sudden, people forget about 3mile island, Chernobyl?

“It's a good thing to understand exactly how and why those disasters occurred. Chernobyl was caused by a bunch of scientists running a dangerous experiment from their base in Moscow on a device they were not completely familiar with, situated a thousand miles away. I'm not arguing for the construction of a lot of old style PWR Fission reactors. But I'm aware that China is putting 562 more coal fired power plants on line. That Europe is adding 50. That the US is dependant on coal for most of its electricity. Global warming is happening, the ice will melt, our civilization will have to move uphill away from the coasts and to do that we will need a new source of high density energy. Renewables, especially solar, could be one solution, but will require pretty large solar farms in places like Spain, Algeria, Australia and Arizona. Coupled with the new wave of efficient fuel cells, that might be enough. But our cities are so wasteful, and so power hungry, as is our industry, that it might not be enough and that would keep energy costs high. I think we might be better served by developing nuclear fusion as fast as possible. Then, we're safe, in a sense. With abundant electric power, fuel cells, electric cars, rail, etc. we have a chance of making it through the great crisis that the rising sea levels are going to bring us somewhere in the next century.”

The secret word is Containment

Jody Reynolds – RIP

OUR WHACKY UNCLE BILL

Uncle Bill wonders about the strange lady in the neck brace and what she might want. Could she be one of the Big Eyed Beans from Venus that the Captain warned him about?

BUSH SEIZES LAST CHANCE TO SLAUGHTER WOLVES

The following email came from Frances Beinecke of the NRDC

"Dear Mick, Nearly 1,000 endangered gray wolves could face slaughter if the Bush Administration's new wolf-killing plan goes through -- and we only have two weeks to stop it. Click to send your Official Citizen Comment right now -- before the administration has a chance to pull the trigger on its scheme to strip wolves of their endangered species protection. This parting shot by the outgoing administration would leave wolves vulnerable to mass killing by the Northern Rockies states. Over 60,000 online activists have already submitted Official Citizen Comments and registered their opposition, but we need 40,000 more by the November 28 deadline. Your Official Citizen Comment could be the last, best hope for wolves, so please take a few seconds to send it right now. We don't have a moment to lose. The administration is taking public comments only until November 28 -- the day after Thanksgiving. Even before this plan was announced, park biologists were predicting a crash in Yellowstone's wolf population this year. And wolf pups are dying from an outbreak of a yet-to-be-determined disease. What these struggling wolves need is a humane national recovery plan, not a state-sponsored massacre. That's why I urge you to click to submit your Official Citizen Comment right now -- before the Bush Administration has a chance to put its deadly scheme into action. Sincerely, Frances Beinecke, President, NRDC Action Fund"

Click here to send a protest

The secret word is Ugly

Mitch Mitchell – RIP
Barrington Bayley – RIP

DOC'S PAPERBACK CLASSIC'S # 50

You’re a happy little dominatrice, aren’t you?

NUCLEAR DEBATE INITIATED

Our pal Faux Smoke writes…
“Fuck electricity at 10cents a watt... I want to be safe & not have to worry about one of these things fucking up & going BOOM! & what's all this shit with pro-nuclear power? All of a sudden, people forget about 3mile island, Chernobyl? Suddenly, because the cost of gas is on the rise mother fuckers forgot about how many people fought for how long to get major nuclear power plants deactivated... that was just, for shits & giggles or something?”

Meanwhile we’ve heard from Aeswiren over the last few days about how nuclear fusion might be the answer. I find myself seeing possibilities in both arguments which leaves me admitting that I simply don’t know enough. Since we're in the process of bidding farewell and good riddance to a president who never learned to pronounce the word “nuclear” (and a wanna-be vice president with the same ignorant incapability) it might be time for us to actually educate ourselves on the subject. To this end Faux Smoke also sent a link to a disturbing story with the angry comment
“Mini nuclear reactors being buried in concrete in commercial efforts, right under our noses? Isn't this a public safety hazard? Shouldn't the public get a say in this shit?”

From the Observer in London

“Nuclear power plants smaller than a garden shed and able to power 20,000 homes will be on sale within five years, say scientists at Los Alamos, the US government laboratory which developed the first atomic bomb.
The miniature reactors will be factory-sealed, contain no weapons-grade material, have no moving parts and will be nearly impossible to steal because they will be encased in concrete and buried underground.
The US government has licensed the technology to Hyperion, a New Mexico-based company which said last week that it has taken its first firm orders and plans to start mass production within five years. 'Our goal is to generate electricity for 10 cents a watt anywhere in the world,' said John Deal, chief executive of Hyperion. 'They will cost approximately $25m [£13m] each. For a community with 10,000 households, that is a very affordable $2,500 per home.”

Click here for more on these mini-nuke power units.

The secret word is Critical

DON'T TOUCH THAT DIAL!

"Is Fox News off the air yet?"

THIS IS WHY IT’S A REALLY BAD IDEA TO GIVE TAX CUTS TO THE RICH

This is the ‘Angel of the Stars’ cell phone. The damned thing is white gold encrusted with 1,700 natural diamonds, and comes with a price tag of a whopping $276,360.00.

THEY DON'T STAGE SHOWS LIKE THIS ANY MORE #11

ROCKET SCIENCE

Here, as promised is the Nuclear Fusion Rant from our pal Aeswiren...

"Thing to remember is that Fusion research was (deliberately) starved of money for the past 25 years. To the point where Europe is the leader in the field. The fingerprints of Exxon Mobil are said to be all over this, but it's not an easy story to track down. No surprise there. But if the US threw $500 Billion at the problem, the first commercialTritium-Deuterium Fusion Reactors would be online in maybe 15 years. From that to Deuterium-Deuterium would be the next technological jump, and from that toWater-Deuterium in maybe another 25 years.

Fusion is something to explore, no matter what, because that technology, ultimately, is our space drive, it's what will lift us from Stage 1 to Stage 2, get us off-planet, grow up somewhat and ensure that we have a future that wouldn't be cut short by an inconvenient 10 mile wide spacerock. Even if we detected something coming in from way out, like in the orbit of Neptune, and we had maybe two or three years, we could do nothing to save ourselves. Nothing. And a major impact would wipe out civilization and take us back to 100,000 years ago, just like that. Start over, but this time without any easily accessed deposits of copper, coal, iron, oil, you name it. Some folks might say, "okay-- fine, we'd just be bands of hunters and gatherers, fitting into Gaia's envelope along with the wildebeest and the lion." But I think it'd be a fucking, criminal waste of the opportunity to take the big next step and become a Stage 2 Civilization, spanning our solar system, etc. And later, we can rehab the Earth and turn most of it into a nature park, and visit it and go "wow, mom, the gravity's like, heavy."

And if you’re now muttering about Aeswiren’s taste for interplanetary travel, or dismissing his ideas as advanced Star Trek, let’s just remember that without humanity's inate and insatiable curiosity we’d still be on all fours, in the long grass of some stinking veldt, wondering if it was safe to stand up.

The secret word is Imperative

This blog is approved by the United Planets Space Fleet.

THE ADVENTURES OF MARILYN (Part 711)

In which Marilyn lights a symbolic cigarette and takes stock of the shambles left after the Beasts ceased howling. Perhaps there is light on the quasi-horizon, she muses, but the inter-dimension continuum is such a fucked up mess after all that’s been inflicted on it. The frag-snappers have done their worst, the pseudo-Lords have been acting with total irresponsibility. Slan has woken, and the Old Dark Gods are only kept from running loose and wreaking the ultimate havoc by the most flimsy of virtual membranes. “Oh dear,” she murmurs, quietly exhaling, “but how is one over-worked twentieth century blonde goddess supposed to cope with it all?” And then she smiles, "But the light really is on the horizon, isn't it?"

Pic from Tom Sutpen

HELP NEEDED

Dimitrios has sent us the following. If anyone has any practical ideas please send them to the Jay Babcock email address below.

“Michael Moorcock is ailing a bit and he needs help. He'd be able to get a lot more writing done right now if he had a wireless keyboard with large keys that he could use with his PC. He's been looking around and apparently there are no BIG KEYS keyboards that are wireless. Could that be true? And if it is, could some helpful fan out there build one for him? Surely there's someone out there who loves Mike's work and would like to help him. Anyone interested can write to Mike Moorcock care of Jay Babcock at Arthur Magazine — jay@arthurmag.com.”

HELL HOUND ON MY TRAIL

This comes from the blog of our pal Peromyscus…

“The Devil is selling Robert Johnson's soul on eBay. Apparently he (the Prince of Darkness) is having a tough time making ends meet and is cashing out. Since souls are intangible, all you'll actually be able to wave around is the certificate of authenticity.”

THE ONCE AND FUTURE DEPRESSION

Our really good friend Aeswiren has sent the following highly informative comments on my LA CityBeat Obama cover story. (See last Thursday.)

“One thing though that turned a crisis into the Depression was the Smoot-Hawley Act. America, basically put up trade barriers to European goods, and the Europeans did the same and trade collapsed and nobody made any money.”

“Dustbowl and Okies... yeah, but real story of the Depression, I believe was the decade of privation, hard times, expensive food etc. that the 30s became for a hundred million Americans, most of whom lived in the E. Coast cities. There was actual malnutrition, even starvation out in Appalachia and down south too, but the big theme, I think, is the pinched existence that most Americans endured for ten years or more, until WW2 lifted all boats with huge, Keynesistic money flows.”

“Oil – it's more complicated than that. The essential number to bear in mind, I'd suggest, is this – of the world's 15 largest oil fields, 9 are in decline now. This is the Peak. The big oil companies only control something like 7-10% of world oil reserves. What they possess is the distribution system and the refineries. What remains incredible- really-- is that oil rich countries run by mental rodents, have failed to build enough refining capacity for their own use – Iran. They have to import petrol! Blaming Big Oil is kinda 90s. The oil equation of the near future looks like OPEC+Russia=50% Market Control. Control Breakers include Canadian production, and potential new fields like that of the Amazon delta and the Bakken Formation in Dakota/Manitoba.”

“Nuclear. Modern fission nukes, especially metal cooled (ie liquid sodium) types, can be tuned up to get something like 70-80% of the energy available in Uranium fuel. Which compares favorably with the old gen PWRs that get 15%. But, of course, there's still the waste and the problem that within a century the affordable deposits of Uranium will be gone. Some near future types of fission nukes could, conceivably burn the radioactive waste left behind by the older PWRs. But, handling that shit, and transporting it, and all that looks impossible for error prone human societies without fucking up and turning some tract of Arkansas or wherever into another Chernobyl. Utimately, the answer comes down to renewables, high efficiency solar (recent breakthrough tech there, too...) geothermal etc. etc.”
“Plus-- nuclear Fusion-- for the concentrated high energy needs of huge, wasteful human cities. Thing to remember is that Fusion research was (deliberately) starved of money for the past 25 years. To the point where Europe is the leader in the field. The fingerprints of Exxon Mobil are said to be all over this, but it's not an easy story to track down. No surprise there. But if the US threw $500 Billion at the problem, the first commercial Tritium-Deuterium Fusion Reactors would be online in maybe 15 years. From that to Deuterium-Deuterium would be the next technological jump, and from that toWater-Deuterium in maybe another 25 years.”
“The wonder fungus. Did you read about that? Obscure S. American fungus that converts cellulose to gases that can be combined to make fuel. you should take a look at the wonder fungus... and so should I, so I know what the fuck this is...sounds amazing....could be a complete game changer, the kind of thing that we dream of.”
(Click here for more on the wonder fungus.)

He concludes...

“Good piece though. I like it.”

To which I can only reply, thanks bro, and note that he has also sent a longer and wilder rant on nuclear fusion that I’m holding for later.

The secret word is Education

LIZ PIC FRIDAY

To offset the absurdity of Palin, for retro-romance, and for other mysterious reasons know only to Google, here’s a picture of Elizabeth Taylor. (It also allows Doc40 to take some of today off because he isn’t feeling too good.)

SO LONG CARIBOU BARBIE?

After weeks of conducting arcane and darkly sinister rituals to make Sara Palin go back to the elk and the frozen tundra (well, they worked didn’t they?), and currently telling harrumphing Republicans, “Boohoo. Too bad. Now fuck off”, I actually wonder if the smartest move might be to keep the awful woman around. She could lead a rump fragment of the GOP – the Raving Looney Shotgun Hillbilly Jesus Plumber Party who would, if lucky, constitute some 15% of the electorate and never manage to be more than a noisy nuisance the rest of us could tune out.

The secret word is Isolate

HERE'S AN ODDITY

HCB sent over this logo from the new de luxe Elvis Presley record label.

FUTURE NOW

Here's my take on the problems confronting our brand new president -- and maybe some of the solutions.

Click here

The secret word is not Shazam!

BYE, GUYS (see you at the war crimes tribunal)

(In fact, the FBI should be inside the White House right now, guarding the valuables. Bush will petulantly fuck up everything he can, and Cheney will steal anything that’s left before they’re evicted.)

OUR WHACKY UNCLE BILL

Uncle Bill is pleased with the outcome of the election, but then he sees the picture of Franz Kafka looking at him and has to turn away.

YES!!!!!YES!!!!!YES!!!!!

A FUCKING LANDSLIDE!

MORE THAT I DARED HOPE!

AND WHILE WE WAIT TO LEARN OUR FATE...

"What kind of bloody title is The Quantum of Solace? It sounds like a Czech art film about a pregnant waitress."

IT'S ONLY A DAY AWAY

Finally, after all the harangue, hard work, worry, wonder, disbelief, alarms, and absurdity, the 2008 US presidential election comes down to the wire. I tend to trust bookies more than political pollsters but the chart above seems too good to be true, and I freely admit I’m nervous. Like the guy in the poker game who thinks he’s holding a winning hand, but always fears the unexpected. As I just commented in response to our new pal Gerin, the future under McCain would be unthinkable. The future under Obama might at least be possible. And with an Obama landslide it might even be viable.

Jimmy Carl Black – RIP
Yma Sumac – RIP