Rethos.com - blue_goose's News Feed

Preventing Climate Destabilization: Three Obstacles

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 07:17:41 -0400

Now that only a handful of critics seriously object to the notion that human activities are destabilizing the climate on a global scale, you would think that there would be a monumental, coordinated worldwide effort to reverse this potentially catastrophic trend. Instead, the human community is behaving more like a family of Floridians that, when faced with an impending Category 5-level hurricane, start gathering up the pink flamingoes and lawn furniture from the front yard in leisurely fashion, instead of quickly boarding up the windows and preparing to evacuate...

Casual Cruelty: Accepting Institutional Terrorism

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 11:04:50 -0400

A bomb goes off in a busy Middle Eastern restaurant, shredding limbs, eviscerating bodies, delivering a fiery measure of injury and death. Innocents pay the price, with life or limb, suffering from what is clearly an act of terrorism--the deliberately inflicting of harm through violence in the pursuit of a political goal.

The perpetrator was a nineteen year old member of a religion with a fundamentalist credo, convinced up until the moment of the explosion that the suicidal act was the ultimate expression of piety.

Or, alternatively, the perpetrator was the pilot of a jet...

Nuclear Power, By the Numbers

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 21:39:24 -0400

Nuclear power, the most expensive technique for boiling water ever invented, is perhaps best described by the numbers.

Amount that a dollar spent on energy efficiency and renewable energy goes toward reducing CO2 emissions compared to a dollar spent on nuclear power: 7 to 10 times

Number of dirty, coal-fired plants required in Kentucky to operate two uranium enrichment plants: 4

Science last week caught everyone's attention. The title says it all: Use of U.S. Croplands for Biofuels Increases Greenhouse Gases Through Emissions from Land Use Change. In a world where many governments are mandating a shift to ethanol, this sounds like trouble. It's trouble on top of trouble, since we're hearing more about how growing corn, soybeans, and sugar cane to convert to ethanol is ...

Medium for Social Change or Channel for Mass Manipulation?

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 10:46:26 -0500

We’ve seen the promise and the disappointment of many communication tools over the last century: the telephone, radio, print journalism, television. Now, another important tool seems to be at the crossroads. The tremendous force of the Internet as a communication medium continues to grow even as those governments and corporations who view the free flow of information as dangerous try to find ways to suppress and control it. And at the same time, marketeers desperate for eyeballs and attention look for new ways to exploit it.

The telephone was initially condemned by some as ...