Friday, July 01, 2011
Thursday, June 30, 2011
THE SCIENCE OF CALAMITY
Whether you believe in the concept of Gaia or a totally rational physics-based approach to the problem, surely only cretins and liars can now hold on to their denial.
“Extreme floods, prolonged droughts, searing heat waves, massive rainstorms and the like don't just seem like they've become the new normal in the last few years—they have become more common, according to data collected by reinsurance company Munich Re (see Part 1 of this series). But has this increase resulted from human-caused climate change or just from natural climatic variations? After all, recorded floods and droughts go back to the earliest days of mankind, before coal, oil and natural gas made the modern industrial world possible. Until recently scientists had only been able to say that more extreme weather is "consistent" with climate change caused by greenhouse gases that humans are emitting into the atmosphere. Now, however, they can begin to say that the odds of having extreme weather have increased because of human-caused atmospheric changes—and that many individual events would not have happened in the same way without global warming. The reason: The signal of climate change is finally emerging from the "noise"—the huge amount of natural variability in weather. Scientists compare the normal variation in weather with rolls of the dice. Adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere loads the dice, increasing odds of such extreme weather events. It's not just that the weather dice are altered, however. As Steve Sherwood , co-director of the Climate Change Research Center at the University of New South Wales in Australia, puts it, "it is more like painting an extra spot on each face of one of the dice, so that it goes from 2 to 7 instead of 1 to 6. This increases the odds of rolling 11 or 12, but also makes it possible to roll 13." Why? Basic physics is at work: The planet has already warmed roughly 1 degree Celsius since preindustrial times, thanks to CO2and other greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere. And for every 1-degree C (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) rise in temperature, the amount of moisture that the atmosphere can contain rises by 7 percent, explains Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring and attribution at the U.K. Met Office's Hadley Center for Climate Change. "That's quite dramatic," he says. In some places, the increase has been much larger. Data gathered by Gene Takle, professor of meteorology at Iowa State University in Ames, show a 13 percent rise in summer moisture over the past 50 years in the state capital, Des Moines.” (Click here for more)
Click here for Helen Shapiro
The secret word is Distruption
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
BUNNIES ON DOPE
While felines conspire rabbits just get high in the flowers.
“Police in Brandenburg who discovered a large plot of cannabis called on the neighbouring house only to find an 84-year-old woman who had been feeding her rabbits with the plants. “The rabbits really like it,” the woman told officers who called on her in the village of Golzow near Belzig, according to Saturday’s Tagesspiegel. A police officer had seen the healthy, metre-high plants from the road while on his way to work and told his colleagues, who visited the plot’s owner – the elderly woman. She told them that she had not grown the plants herself, but that they had simply started growing there, and had proven to be excellent rabbit food. Not only did the rabbits love eating the plants, they grew back very quickly after she cut them down, she told the investigating officers. A spokesman for the Brandenburg police said her explanation had sounded plausible, but the officers could not leave her with the plants, rather cut them all down and took them to the forensics laboratory for testing. The three large plastic sacks of weed will now be tested to determine the level of THC – the psycho-active ingredient in cannabis - they contain. There was no official comment on what the elderly woman was expected to feed her rabbits with now.”
Click here for Harry Bidgood
The secret word is Thumper
THE FROZDICK FAMILY
At a very early age Little Jackie Frozdick betrayed humanity to the alien women from Zolar.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
THE VICIOUSNESS LOOSE IN AMERICA
"Rennie Gibbs is accused of murder, but the crime she is alleged to have committed does not sound like an ordinary killing. Yet she faces life in prison in Mississippi over the death of her unborn child. Gibbs became pregnant aged 15, but lost the baby in December 2006 in a stillbirth when she was 36 weeks into the pregnancy. When prosecutors discovered that she had a cocaine habit – though there is no evidence that drug abuse had anything to do with the baby's death – they charged her with the "depraved-heart murder" of her child, which carries a mandatory life sentence. Gibbs is the first woman in Mississippi to be charged with murder relating to the loss of her unborn baby. But her case is by no means isolated. Across the US more and more prosecutions are being brought that seek to turn pregnant women into criminals. "Women are being stripped of their constitutional personhood and subjected to truly cruel laws," said Lynn Paltrow of the campaign National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW). "It's turning pregnant women into a different class of person and removing them of their rights." Click here for more.
Click here for Patti
The secret word is Vindictive
Monday, June 27, 2011
WE HAVE OUR FIRST GLASTONBURY VIDEO
My intention was to write all about my impressions of our excursion to Glastonbury Fayre as soon as I’d cleaned the mud off my wandering boot heels. But then – lo and behold, and thanks to the wondrous Helga – the first video of The Last Men Standing playing our song “Taste The Blue”. So I’m going to share that with you all for now and the commentary will have to wait until later.
Click here for all the fun of The Fayre
The secret word is Blue
Friday, June 24, 2011
Thursday, June 23, 2011
WITH OUR FOG, OUR AMPHETAMINE, AND OUR PEARLS…
Click here for The Song That Goes Like This
The secret word is Grail
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
WHO WOULD HAVE SUSPECTED?
While the rest of us scrabble, the super rich are doing just fine if not better…
“We are not all in this together. The UK economy is flat, the US is weak and the Greek debt crisis, according to some commentators, is threatening another Lehman Brothers-style meltdown. But a new report shows the world's wealthiest people are getting more prosperous – and more numerous – by the day. The globe's richest have now recouped the losses they suffered after the 2008 banking crisis. They are richer than ever, and there are more of them – nearly 11 million – than before the recession struck. In the world of the well-heeled, the rich are referred to as "high net worth individuals" (HNWIs) and defined as people who have more than $1m (£620,000) of free cash. According to the annual world wealth report by Merrill Lynch and Capgemini, the wealth of HNWIs around the world reached $42.7tn (£26.5tn) in 2010, rising nearly 10% in a year and surpassing the peak of $40.7tn reached in 2007, even as austerity budgets were implemented by many governments in the developed world.” (Click here for more)
Click here for The Everly Brothers
The secret word is Plunder
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
THE ACCEPTABLE FACE OF PORNOGRAPHY?
Do you think this post might help remove the content warning that was arbitrarily slapped on Doc40 and has caused more than a little inconvenience? No, of course it won’t. In cyberspace no one can hear you appeal, especially against absurdity. And, when we get down to it, we all know this is not about morality, offense, or even sensitivity. It simply about shutting people up who say things you don’t like. (The image is by von Brandis)
Click here for sin
The secret word is Repressed
THE EDGAR ALLAN POE BLUES BAND
Click here for the song Aztec Calendar from last Friday’s live show.
DON'T YOU MISS THE 20TH CENTURY?
…when we were so blissfully ignorant and so easily blinded by a sales pitch.
Monday, June 20, 2011
WORKER’S PRIDE?
I was never a great one for the idea of the Dignity of Labor. It seemed like one of those patronizing Victorian concepts like the Noble Savage and I wanted nothing to do with it. To be absolutely truthful, I was not especially keen on hard, dirty, manual work in any shape or form. In my youth, I had worked in factories, kitchens, and even dug up the roads for the local council. I saw first hand the disdain with which the fat cats treated their employees and their employees’ pride, and quickly realized that any measure of dignity was not a gift handed down from on-high but a prize fought-for and hard-won at the grass roots by organization and the collective power of trade unions official or otherwise. Why am choosing this moment to state the obvious? Just because, now and again, the obvious needs a bit of stating. Especially at a time when a power elite that has already reduced to wealth to an abstraction and devalues labor as a disposable commodity – and dares to call it necessary austerity – but simultaneously a new seismic class-struggle spreads across Europe, the Middle East, and (I hope) Middle America, and the fight for decency, dignity, and pride, plus a socially acceptable income, healthcare, education – and all that should follow with humanity and civilization – is rejoined.
Click here for hardworking Beefheart and Cooder
The secret word is Unity
Sunday, June 19, 2011
SUNDAY BREAKFAST
May I have one of these beside the bed, nurse? So Finn and I can gorge on pancakes while we ruminate on the upcoming adventure in the corporate mists of Avalon and what might lay beyond in creativity, theatre, and mayhem? The band played like aces on Friday night. One witness on Facebook (our poet pal Ben Graham) referred to us as “The Edgar Allan Poe Blues Band”. That made me very happy. And so now it’s on to Glastonbury and whatever that may reveal for possible futures. But how do we resolve that with the news that the biggest industrial action since the 1926 General Strike looms large a few days later? The shit still piles up so fast you need wings to stay above it, comrades. But could you mix me a Bloody Mary while you’re up?
Click here for faux-Bob
The secret word is Solidarity
Clarence Clemons -- RIP
Larry (Wild Man) Fischer -- RIP
THERE’S A RIOT COMING ON
Like I said, the biggest industrial action since the 1926 General Strike looms large. What did the barefaced Cameron expect? I highly doubt, though, he has the unctuous, rip and gouge, tooth and claw, mother alien, union busting chops of his old boss, Attila the Hen. But it does tangentially occur to me that in the quarter century since Scargill v Thatcher, subversive technology has made massive advances.
“Is the big fight on? Union responses to the Tory cuts have so far been fairly muted - the M26 outing (see SchNEWS 765), resembling a cross between a family picnic and a Labour Party rally. However on June 30th the largest public sector strikes since the 80s are planned. With the Daily Mail claiming that ‘Union Barons’ plan to ‘unleash hell’, what’s actually going to happen? Well who’s on board? On J30, up to 750,000 public sector workers, including many members of the UCU, NUT, PCS and ATL unions, including teachers, health workers, air traffic controllers, job centre wallahs, police support staff etc, etc. will go on strike. It remains to be seen whether the strike will unfurl as another generalised ‘day of action’, but marches are planned across the country and activist groups are planning to support picket lines and hold solidarity actions. Ostensibly about public sector pension cuts (unions legally have to ballot to strike over a specific issue), the strikes are the first wave of mass industrial action against the proposed austerity measures. To keep hammering home the point - these austerity measures are only necessary because of the ruling classes determination to ensure that the pain caused by the banking crisis is borne by anyone except the people who caused it. This has immediately led to Tory calls for harsher anti-strike legislation, despite the UK already having the most draconian anti-union laws in Europe. Notwithstanding the already restrictive regime, the government has now said that any trades union action that it deems ‘disruptive’ might cause a further clamp-down. With the ConDems not budging, will the union movement finally see the need to move beyond legalism and put up a real fight? Here’s hoping.” (Click here for more)
Click here for Woody
GIVE THE ANARCHIST ANOTHER CIGARETTE
I used to smoke cigarettes. I used to smoke cigarettes like a bloody chimney. I don’t any more – except the odd guilt-tripped drag – because it totally ruined my health. But, hey, is making butts unaffordable the only way to make folks see the light and lay down the lighter?
“If you're still a smoker, you're probably not smoking while reading this unless you're using a hand-held device and situated safely eight or so miles from the nearest building or public park. Anyway, The Awl has compiled a shocking list of how much a single pack of cigarettes costs in each state, including District of Columbia. Blogger Nate Hopper explains the methodology: "Prices were obtained by calling a gas station in each state's most populous city and asking the clerk for the price of a pack of Marlboro Reds with tax. Memphis, Tenn., was toughest (nine phone calls). The gas station in Milwaukee, Wis., had the only employee who ended the conversation with 'have a good one.' We'll tell you that West Virginia was the cheapest, at $4.74 a pack, and New York, of course, was the most expensive, at $11.90. (Although, last week the New York Post complained that a new tax on cigarettes had raised the price of a pack to $14.50 – or what we used to pay for a carton.) After the jump, see how much you'll pay for a pack o' butts in your state.” (Click here for more)
Friday, June 17, 2011
BUT WILL THERE BE AN EXOTIC AFTER-PARTY?
With opium and odalisques, cocaine and concubines, reefer and rent boys, Mandies and mescal, donuts and the doomed? Damn, I dunno. Do those things really happen or does Keith Richard just go home to bed these days because hell no longer follows him? Was all the terminal debauchery just a figment of the 20th century? I fear that may be the truth, in which case I can only pass along UK Steve’s reminder that tomorrow is “I Don’t Give A Fuck Day” and Tim’s final communique…
"LAST WARNING - HYDRANT, LONDON ROAD, BRIGHTON, TOMORROW NIGHT (FRIDAY 17TH JUNE) PARADISE 9 SUPPORTING MICK FARREN & THE LAST MEN STANDING (INC PINK FAIRIES & DEVIANTS). £8 & 8.30PM. BE THERE EARLY OR BE VERY VERY SAD - THIS MEANS YOU!!!!!"
Click here for extra invocation of Elvis
The secret words are Good Rockin’
Thursday, June 16, 2011
WE’RE COMING BACK
Click here for Elvis
The secret word is Stagefright
THE OREO CODE
And for those of who can’t make it down to Brighton for the fun, we offer (for your consideration as Rod Serling used to say at the start of The Twilight Zone) the odd idea that the secrets of the Great Conspiracy may be engraved on a humble Oreo cookie.
“The circle topped with a two-bar cross in which the word “OREO” resides is a variant of the Nabisco logo, and is either “an early European symbol for quality” (according to Nabisco’s promotional materials) or a Cross of Lorraine, as carried by the Knights Templar into the Crusades. Continuing the Da Vinci Code-theme, the Oreo’s geometric pattern of a dot with four triangles radiating outward is either a schematic drawing of a four-leaf clover or — cue the cliffhanger music — the cross pattée, also associated with the Knights Templar, as well as with the German military and today’s Freemasons.”
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
OUT OF CHAOS COMES THE SHOW
Folks have been emailing me wondering if I’m okay because I’ve rather been off the air for a few days. The answer is that I’m okay, if dog tired. The train takes the curve too fast. The planet is exploding. Gas vents. Wolves howl. Government agents know fear. Invertebrates double the medication and I ask myself why I keep on doing this as the band rehearses like a inspired maniacs. I have no answer but I do. It’s rock & roll. And I’ll be doing it this coming Friday at a pub called the Hydrant here in Brighton. Yes, my droogs. The big fabulous full-band warm-up show for Glastonbury is at The Hydrant in Brighton this Friday night and it’s going to be great – and then it’s on the Mists of Avalon (or the rock & roll equivalent.) Details follow as soon as I catch up and eat something.
Click here for some kinda creepy Gene Vincent
The secret words are Last Stand
THE FROZDICK FAMILY
When Maxim and Leonid Frozdick started attending party meetings naked, Lavrenti Beria had them quickly executed.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
.JPG)
