Saved comments from May 2015
Jan. 18th, 2018 02:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
neonvincentYesterday, I received an unexpected bonus from posting my saved comments and monthly summaries here on Dreamwidth. My main blog, Crazy Eddie's Motie News, had 279 page views from links on my Dreamwidth journal. That was enough to help push the other blog over my page view goal for this month. Whoever was doing that, thank you. You're encouraging me to keep it up.
Now for the comments. I did a lot of commenting about "Mad Max: Fury Road" in May 2015. Then again, it was that good a movie.
My comment on The Death of the Internet: A Pre-Mortem
A Blessed Beltane and Happy May Day to all!
@Roger "I didn't meet my wife on-line but on campus...Don't neglect real life. Cyber-space is a pale shadow."
I agree that cyberspace is a pale shadow, but I've found it to be very useful as dress rehearsal for real life. Just about everything I ever wanted to do in real life, I was able to put it in practice online first, then transfer into the rest of my life when I felt ready. This includes my love life, where I found more suitable mates than I did in person. I was able to take my time and achieve a better understanding of them in a low-risk environment before I ever approached them. Consequently, I wasn't fooled by looks or superficial charm, although I did end up with good-looking and charming women just the same. I also found that I was more interested in women relatively far away from me, which meant that I was involved in long-distance relationships that required communications technologies to maintain. This was true even of my ex-wife, who I met before either of us got on the Internet and lived 60 miles away, so we did a lot of phone communication while we were dating. I met both the girlfriend I dated between marriages and my current wife online. Both lived more than 250 miles away at the time, which meant that I used the Internet a lot while dating. In retrospect, I probably wouldn't have gotten together with my ex-wife if I had met her online; she didn't express herself well in writing. That would have saved me a lot of trouble; there are reasons she's my ex-wife! I was much happier with my ex-girlfriend, even though that ended badly, and even happier with my wife. I don't know if I [would] have [had] such good fortune without being able to cast a wider net through the Internet.
That reminds me of a topic our host talked about last year--the wandering of peoples and the formation of new ethnic and national identities. Yes, people may migrate long distances, but once that is done, I expect their horizons will shrink dramatically. I suspect that most people in the post-oil future will not travel more than 20 miles, much as they did before the Industrial Revolution.
On the topic of both May Day and my love life, I leave you all with a photo of my ex-girlfriend and some of her friends dancing around a maypole while performing with a drum and bugle corps. Unfortunately, I can't tell which one is her, but she's there.
My comment on Money Worries.
Happy May Day, everyone!
On the topic of complacency, we're getting a weird case of it here in Michigan. A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned in a comment here that the voters in Michigan can't seem to be bothered to raise taxes to improve their infrastructure; they'd rather legalize pot. Sure enough, the latest polling has the sales tax losing badly while a majority favor legalizing marijuana. In addition, most of Michigan's state legislators couldn't be bothered to say what their position was on the taxes for infrastructure measure. In the case of the politicians, I would guess cowardice or expediency. In the case of the voters, I guess they really do subscribe to Freewheeling Franklin Freak's philosophy--"dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you though times of no dope."
Top ten for April 2015 as of Midnight, May 1, 2015
April was a record-setting month at my blog as it received 14,278 page views, over 1,000 more than the previous record of 13,251 set in December 2014 and 1,200 more than last month. To celebrate, I'm sharing four bonus posts that appeared in the top ten during the month plus one that should have been in the top ten for a total of 15. The first honorable mention goes to "'Insurgent' tops box office in opening weekend," which briefly appeared on the leader board with 92 page views (108 according to the raw counter). It earned its page views from routine social media promotion and web search.
The second honorable mention belongs to "I converse with The Archdruid and his readers about Le Nain Rouge." It appeared on the leader board briefly with 93 page views, 117 according to the raw counter. Like the previous honorable mention, it earned its page views from routine social media promotion and web search plus linking to it in a comment at Michigan Liberal.
I present the third honorable mention to "Game of Thrones drinking game, drink, and music." It never did crack the leader board, but it had more page views according to the raw counter (129) than one of the entries that did make the top ten at the end of the month along with the two previous honorable mentions, both of which did make the monthly top ten, however briefly. Like the rest of the honorable mentions, it earned its page views through routine social media promotion and web search.
Honorable mention number four goes to "Alice Cooper for Friday the 13th." It appeared on the leader board for a couple days before April 13th with 95 page views, 136 according to the raw counter. I performed a little more than routine social media promotion for it back on Friday March 13th, as I shared it to a Facebook group that had a special interest in the concert described, as they were performers in it. The rest came from web search.
The final honorable mention for April 2015 belongs to "D&D alignment charts for 'The Walking Dead'." Before it fell off the monthly top ten a couple days before the end of the month, it had 135 page views, 192 according to the raw counter. It earned nearly all of its page views from normal social media promotion and web search. The rest came from sharing the link in a comment at Michigan Liberal.
It's now time for April's final top ten. April was a good month for entries from the back catalog with six posts from previous years filling out the roster and only four from April 2015 appearing on the leader board at the end of the month. One of the lucky entries posted during last month was "Driving update for April 2015: Dez," which came in tenth with 96 page views (113 according to the raw counter). It earned its place through promotion at both Kunstler's and Greer's blogs.
The ninth most read entry during April has been in the top ten for eight consecutive months since I posted it in October. "Corn questions from 'Food, Inc.' worksheet" earned 131 page views last month, all through web search. It continued to advance up the all time top ten since it broke into it in March, as it's currently the fifth most read entry in the history of the blog with 898 page views.
"Despite hype, oil and gas prices actually down this week" was tied for the seventh most read entry with "My thoughts on Michael Ruppert" at 144 page views (164 according to the raw counter). The post earned its readers by being shared at The Archdruid Report. It was also the third most read entry actually posted last month.
The other entry tied for the seventh most read of April was "My thoughts on Michael Ruppert." I shared this entry at Greer's blog to mark the anniversary of his death, earning it 144 page views.
There was another tie in the top ten, as two entries both earned 146 page views to come in fifth. "On BlogTalkRadio for Earth Day today" was one of them. It earned its page views by being shared at Kunstler's blog. It came in second with 161 page views according to the raw counter among all entries actually posted last month.
The other entry that came in tied for fifth with 146 page views was "Nablopomo for July: Connect." This post from the back catalog earned its readers by being shared at Greer's blog.
The fourth most read entry of the past month was "Guide to entries that contain answers to 'The End of Suburbia'" Near the end of last month, I shared it at both Kunstler's blog. Early this month, it was Greer's turn, which earned it 173 page views for the month. I also printed it and passed out copies to my students. Those were enough to put it on the all time top ten list with 741 total page views. That was enough to knock "First post: Why this blog?" out of the top ten. With that, all the posts that composed the first year's top ten have been replaced on the leader board.
The highest ranking of any entry actually posted last month was "Three Star Wars trailers: movie, television, and video game," which earned 174 page views (177 according to the raw counter), good enough for third place overall. I shared this only through social media, which means that it got most of its readers via web search.
The second most read entry during April was "'No Impact Man': Student sustainability video festival 22 and a conversation with The Archdruid," which earned 309 page views during the month. Essentially all of its readers came from being shared at The Archdruid Report. They wanted to read a good example, and the star of the film provided one. The post was the 19th most read of last year with 329 page views as of March 20th. Over its history, it now has 653.
The most read entry during April and the winner of the Revenge of the Back Catalog Awards was "Game of Thrones D&D character alignment charts." It earned 323 page views entirely from web search and minor social media promotion tied into the season premiere last month. This entry came in tied for fifth during March and was the second most read entry according to the raw counter during the year it was posted. It had 1561 total page views according to the raw counter at the beginning of April and 1930 now. Despite all the views, it still hasn't found its way onto the official top ten.
My comment on English Spoken Here
"Things sure have gotten a lot worse, relative to when you wrote ‘that book’ about a decade ago."
In a retrospective of popular entries at my blog that referenced our host, I linked to another entry that featured his TED talk, then metioned in passing his update on "The Long Emergency" that he gave to TEDxAlbany a few years back. His take was that things certainly have gotten worse.
Speaking of things getting worse, Michigan's Proposal 1 is polling terribly. The roads are terrible, but the people are not willing to go along with the legislative compromises required to fix them. Therefore, the potholes I'll be driving over and around on my way to work today will still be there next year. Meanwhile, marijuana legalization is likely to pass next year. In a choice between potholes and potheads, Michigan will choose potheads. I'd rather they do both.
"This is why voters want marijuana. In such a FUBAR situation, might as well get stoned."
That reminds me of a meme I used in my post saying farewell to Ron Paul's candidacy. "At least in a Ron Paul presidency we'd be able to legally get high to deal with a Ron Paul presidency."
My comment on The Whisper of the Shutoff Valve.
As a resident of the inner northern suburbs of Detroit, I have a front row seat on all the features you described for Motown. In one case, I even got on stage or the playing field, as I joined a protest against the water shutoffs, the same one that the article in The Star that you linked to showed. That worked, after a fashion, as a few days later Detroit suspended shutoffs. Still, it was only temporary, as you described, for water shutoffs resumed two months later. Those shutoffs are no longer in the local news, as they aren't new anymore and the bankruptcy they were part of is over. Just the same, they're happening, and it's up to the foreign press to report them as the domestic outlets have moved on.
As for closed malls, I have one literally next door to where I teach. It was only a few months ago that the closure of Northland Mall was approved. Northland Mall was one of the oldest, if not the oldest suburban shopping malls in the U.S. That has been a long time coming, as the mall has been in decline since 2001. That makes it no less a sad sign of our times, as shopping malls are closing all over the country. Speaking of which, there is another mall north of me near Pontiac that's been closed for years. Its claim to fame is that it has a circus elephant buried in the parking lot. It would be too fitting if the deceased pachyderm had been white, but such was not the case.
As for the residents' reactions to all this, they had an opportunity to raise Michigan's sales tax to pay for road, bridge, and highway maintenance on Tuesday. They declined overwhelmingly. The measure was defeated by a 60% margin, 20% to 80%. That's the greatest drubbing a state ballot measure has ever received in Michigan. In contrast, marijuana legalization is being favored by a majority of those polled. My take is that Michigan voters subscribe to Freewheeling Franklin Freak's philosophy--"dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you though times of no dope."
My comment on Muskular Magic
"Musk’s battery is just a distraction which keeps us from focusing on the real problems we face."
That's something Greer brings up regularly. The response to peak oil and all the related issues that flow out from it has not been to face what Kunstler, Greer, Heinberg, Bardi, and the people who read and comment on their writings see. It's been to figure out how to maintain as much as possible of our current lifestyle for those who can afford it. It's also been to keep enterprises in business that enable those lifestyles. Hence, a lot of emphasis on sustainability in cars among companies like Ford and Tesla, both of which are attempting to continue business as usual while adapting to conditions. My students have picked up on this and found two examples of PR for green cars, one each from Ford and Tesla.
As for our host's comment about "a freeway that the State of California hasn’t been able to repair in five years," that's starting to happen here in Michigan and the residents of this state are balking at doing something about it. They had an opportunity to raise Michigan's sales tax to pay for road, bridge, and highway maintenance on Tuesday. They declined overwhelmingly. The measure was defeated by a 60% margin, 20% to 80%. That's the greatest drubbing a state ballot measure has ever received in Michigan.
My comment on Furious about Furiosa: Misogynists are losing it over Charlize Theron’s starring role in Mad Max: Fury Road
The MRAs would be even more ticked off if they read actual news reports instead of using the voices in their heads as reliable sources. For starters, I present this headline from Reuters: Actress Charlize Theron urges women to stand up for equal pay.
Comment on "The Era of Pretense"
"[T]he closer the fall of Rome actually came, the more certainty Roman authors expressed that the Empire was eternal and the latest round of troubles was just one more temporary bump on the road to peace and prosperity."
The irony is that the population of the city of Rome had been falling for a couple of centuries before Alaric showed up and that the Roman Empire itself was also beginning to decline during the century before the Western Empire collapsed. I discussed this last July when you posted Bright Were The Halls Then. I added graphs that show these declines along with some commentary and posted the result as The Fall of Rome for the Ides of March. The data are quite clear to anyone who would look that something was going wrong. I guess the Romans were afflicted by Fourth and Fifth Century versions of what Kunstler calls the Consensus Trance that led to the delusional pronouncements you described.
As for revolutions, I think the crunch will be the loss of bread and circuses. Loss of electricity will slow down but not stop the circuses, but losing the bread whether from outright shortage and famine or just plain high price will be the cause of a lot of violence. A whole list of countries are suffering from too expensive food, which leads to unrest.
In the midst of our period of decline, there is some good news. Liberia has been declared free of Ebola. That's a relief, but not after nearly 12,000 people in all affected countries have died during the epidemic.
Greer: Pinku-sensei, the "consensus trance" is exactly the pretense I'm discussing. The main difference is that I'm not at all sure that it's a matter of trance -- there's a fair bit of deliberate refusal to look involved!
My comment on Dead Nation Walking
Every semester, I show "The End of Suburbia" to my students. Our host's comment about the U.S. having "a rail system the Bulgarians would be ashamed of" usually goes right over their heads; they're more worried about what peak oil will do to roads and cars. One semester, I had a woman from Bulgaria in class. She was offended by that comment. "In Bulgaria, we have good trains!" She also described how good the streetcars are. She didn't realize that she was making our host's point for him instead of rebutting him.
I also feel sorry for our host when he takes the train into NYC. I used to take the train from Detroit to Chicago for much the same reasons, and I could at least buy dinner and a beer in the cafeteria car. However, the same problem, that the tracks belong to CSX, so their freight trains have priority, applies. I've often wished that Amtrak had a designated track for passenger rail; I got tired of waiting for freight trains to pass.
Speaking of getting people out of cars, the week just past had two days for it. May 9th was National Train Day, a day set aside by Amtrak to commemorate the driving of the Golden Spike that completed the first transcontinental railroad. The day also exists to spread information about the advantages of rail travel. I don't know if our host knew about the occasion, but he's doing his part. Also, last Friday was Bike to Work Day. That got more notice. Here in Detroit, there were five organized group rides from the suburbs to downtown. In addition, the number of people commuting by bike in Michigan has increased 69% since 2000.
As for our host's comment on Americans becoming "The Walking Dead," people will have to wait a month or two for their zombie fix when "Fear The Walking Dead" debuts. Until then, they can get another take on a post-apocalyptic world in Mad Max: Fury Road, which had a lovely weekend, coming in second at the box office. The movie got a lot of critical praise for its artistic use of action, great performances, and exploration of themes as diverse as feminism, resource use, and the place of the individual in society. Yes, it's a serious film in the middle of driving across the Outback and blowing things up. Just the same, it shows how Americans (and Australians) having difficulty imagining a future where one is unable to drive, peak oil not withstanding.
"The greatest ‘crime of the century’ in the US was...the systematic dismantling and destruction last mid-century of efficient rail mass transit systems in cities and metropolitan areas around the country by a consortium of fossil fuel, tire, and auto companies."
Welcome to the kernel of truth at the heart of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" I call the story Judge Doom and the Red Car.
My comment on "The Era of Impact"
Of your two historical examples, I can think of only one where there was a reasonable counterstrategy to the conventional wisdom, the 1929 crash. There, if one held onto cash, preferably in a mattress and not in a bank, and kept ones mouth shut about it while learning a practical skill and cultivating good relations with the neighbors, one could do OK. As for not trying to build a utopia of reason during the French Revolution, what was the alternative--emigrate to the U.S. or a present or former French colony (except Haiti, where the colonial overseers would be run out in a little over a decade) and live life in exile until the rubble stopped bouncing? I have a feeling that surviving the coming age of impact might look more like the latter than the former.
Speaking of people trying to avoid or mitigate consequences, last Friday was National Bike to Work Day. That's a small way to "collapse now and avoid the rush." Some people in Michigan are doing just that, as bike commuting in the U.S. has increased 62% since 2000 while it has increased even more-69%- in Michigan during the same time period.
On the other hand, the latest environmental initiative from the White House, a plan to preserve pollinators, has nothing to do with "collapsing now to avoid the rush." Instead, it's an attempt to prevent an environmental catastrophe from ruining business as usual.
As for "apocalyptic fantasies [being] common and popular in eras of pretense," the second most popular movie last weekend was "Mad Max: Fury Road." The critics loved it for its artistic use of action, great performances, and exploration of themes as diverse as feminism, resource use, and the place of the individual in society. Yes, it’s a serious film in the middle of driving across the Outback and blowing things up. Just the same, it shows how Americans (and Australians) have difficulty imagining a future where one is unable to drive, peak oil not withstanding. I'm looking forward to seeing how it fares in competition with Disney's "Tomorrowland" this weekend. That movie's about how the shiny retro future we were promised 50 years ago is in danger. Disney has no idea.
My comment on Yesterday’s Tomorrowland
I was expecting our host to opine about Grexit, but I was hoping he'd mention these movies. I should be careful what I wish for; I might get it
As for which viewpoint, "wisher" or "doomer" is winning, the weekend box offices for "Tomorrowland" vs. "Mad Max: Fury Road" suggests that optimism isn't selling as well as dystopia. In its first weekend, "Mad Max: Fury Road" grossed $44.4 million, while "Tomorrowland" grossed $32 million. Of course, it may not be the message, but the execution. The "Mad Max" movie is being critically praised, while "Tomorrowland" got tepid reviews despite the critics wanting to like it. They got turned off by Brad Bird's Objectivism and Damon Lindelof's fascination with overcomplicated back stories both bleeding through into the script and spoiling the fun. "Pirates of the Caribbean" "Tomorrowland" isn't.
As for ISIS AKA The Sith Jihad, they got double billing with the Men's Rights Advocates (MRAs) in Reactionary movements for the fourth year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News. The MRAs objected to Charlize Theron's character and organized a boycott. I'm sure The Sith Jihad would agree with them.
My comment on The Era of Response.
"[T]he spreading crisis of legitimacy that grips the country these days is exactly the sort of thing you saw in France before the Revolution, and in any number of other countries in the few decades just prior to revolutionary political and social change. Every time a government tries to cope with a crisis by claiming that it doesn’t exist, every time some member of the well-to-do tries to dismiss the collective burdens its culture of executive kleptocracy imposes on the country by flinging abuse at critics, every time institutions that claim to uphold the rule of law defend the rule of entrenched privilege instead, the United States takes another step closer to the revolutionary abyss."
You aren't alone in thinking that. Intelligence expert Robert Steele had the following to say in a post yesterday on The Public Intelligence Blog: "From the perspective of a long-time intelligence professional – a former spy who helped create the Marine Corps Intelligence Center and spent 20 years as a CEO pioneering commercial intelligence – not only do most of the preconditions for revolution exist in America right now, but the federal government seems determined to ignore realities across the board."
He then referred to a graph listing the preconditions for revolution; the ones that currently prevail in the U.S. were printed in red. Of the 45 cells in the table, 33 were completely red and five were half red, leaving only seven that did not completely or partly signal impending revolution.
On another topic you raised, the nature of money in relation to the U.S. going off the gold standard, I have two links to share with you, both of them about money as a legal institution, which includes the idea that money doesn't really exist without taxation or its equivalent. The first, a scholarly paper, also addresses fiat money as a solution to money creation under circumstances where commodity money, such as the gold or silver standard, fails.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2321313
The second is a blog post that summarizes and comments on the paper.
https://econoblog101.wordpress.com/2015/05/19/money-a-legal-not-an-economic-thing/
Happy reading and don't let the goldbugs bite!
Now for the comments. I did a lot of commenting about "Mad Max: Fury Road" in May 2015. Then again, it was that good a movie.
My comment on The Death of the Internet: A Pre-Mortem
A Blessed Beltane and Happy May Day to all!
@Roger "I didn't meet my wife on-line but on campus...Don't neglect real life. Cyber-space is a pale shadow."
I agree that cyberspace is a pale shadow, but I've found it to be very useful as dress rehearsal for real life. Just about everything I ever wanted to do in real life, I was able to put it in practice online first, then transfer into the rest of my life when I felt ready. This includes my love life, where I found more suitable mates than I did in person. I was able to take my time and achieve a better understanding of them in a low-risk environment before I ever approached them. Consequently, I wasn't fooled by looks or superficial charm, although I did end up with good-looking and charming women just the same. I also found that I was more interested in women relatively far away from me, which meant that I was involved in long-distance relationships that required communications technologies to maintain. This was true even of my ex-wife, who I met before either of us got on the Internet and lived 60 miles away, so we did a lot of phone communication while we were dating. I met both the girlfriend I dated between marriages and my current wife online. Both lived more than 250 miles away at the time, which meant that I used the Internet a lot while dating. In retrospect, I probably wouldn't have gotten together with my ex-wife if I had met her online; she didn't express herself well in writing. That would have saved me a lot of trouble; there are reasons she's my ex-wife! I was much happier with my ex-girlfriend, even though that ended badly, and even happier with my wife. I don't know if I [would] have [had] such good fortune without being able to cast a wider net through the Internet.
That reminds me of a topic our host talked about last year--the wandering of peoples and the formation of new ethnic and national identities. Yes, people may migrate long distances, but once that is done, I expect their horizons will shrink dramatically. I suspect that most people in the post-oil future will not travel more than 20 miles, much as they did before the Industrial Revolution.
On the topic of both May Day and my love life, I leave you all with a photo of my ex-girlfriend and some of her friends dancing around a maypole while performing with a drum and bugle corps. Unfortunately, I can't tell which one is her, but she's there.
My comment on Money Worries.
Happy May Day, everyone!
On the topic of complacency, we're getting a weird case of it here in Michigan. A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned in a comment here that the voters in Michigan can't seem to be bothered to raise taxes to improve their infrastructure; they'd rather legalize pot. Sure enough, the latest polling has the sales tax losing badly while a majority favor legalizing marijuana. In addition, most of Michigan's state legislators couldn't be bothered to say what their position was on the taxes for infrastructure measure. In the case of the politicians, I would guess cowardice or expediency. In the case of the voters, I guess they really do subscribe to Freewheeling Franklin Freak's philosophy--"dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you though times of no dope."
Top ten for April 2015 as of Midnight, May 1, 2015
April was a record-setting month at my blog as it received 14,278 page views, over 1,000 more than the previous record of 13,251 set in December 2014 and 1,200 more than last month. To celebrate, I'm sharing four bonus posts that appeared in the top ten during the month plus one that should have been in the top ten for a total of 15. The first honorable mention goes to "'Insurgent' tops box office in opening weekend," which briefly appeared on the leader board with 92 page views (108 according to the raw counter). It earned its page views from routine social media promotion and web search.
The second honorable mention belongs to "I converse with The Archdruid and his readers about Le Nain Rouge." It appeared on the leader board briefly with 93 page views, 117 according to the raw counter. Like the previous honorable mention, it earned its page views from routine social media promotion and web search plus linking to it in a comment at Michigan Liberal.
I present the third honorable mention to "Game of Thrones drinking game, drink, and music." It never did crack the leader board, but it had more page views according to the raw counter (129) than one of the entries that did make the top ten at the end of the month along with the two previous honorable mentions, both of which did make the monthly top ten, however briefly. Like the rest of the honorable mentions, it earned its page views through routine social media promotion and web search.
Honorable mention number four goes to "Alice Cooper for Friday the 13th." It appeared on the leader board for a couple days before April 13th with 95 page views, 136 according to the raw counter. I performed a little more than routine social media promotion for it back on Friday March 13th, as I shared it to a Facebook group that had a special interest in the concert described, as they were performers in it. The rest came from web search.
The final honorable mention for April 2015 belongs to "D&D alignment charts for 'The Walking Dead'." Before it fell off the monthly top ten a couple days before the end of the month, it had 135 page views, 192 according to the raw counter. It earned nearly all of its page views from normal social media promotion and web search. The rest came from sharing the link in a comment at Michigan Liberal.
It's now time for April's final top ten. April was a good month for entries from the back catalog with six posts from previous years filling out the roster and only four from April 2015 appearing on the leader board at the end of the month. One of the lucky entries posted during last month was "Driving update for April 2015: Dez," which came in tenth with 96 page views (113 according to the raw counter). It earned its place through promotion at both Kunstler's and Greer's blogs.
The ninth most read entry during April has been in the top ten for eight consecutive months since I posted it in October. "Corn questions from 'Food, Inc.' worksheet" earned 131 page views last month, all through web search. It continued to advance up the all time top ten since it broke into it in March, as it's currently the fifth most read entry in the history of the blog with 898 page views.
"Despite hype, oil and gas prices actually down this week" was tied for the seventh most read entry with "My thoughts on Michael Ruppert" at 144 page views (164 according to the raw counter). The post earned its readers by being shared at The Archdruid Report. It was also the third most read entry actually posted last month.
The other entry tied for the seventh most read of April was "My thoughts on Michael Ruppert." I shared this entry at Greer's blog to mark the anniversary of his death, earning it 144 page views.
There was another tie in the top ten, as two entries both earned 146 page views to come in fifth. "On BlogTalkRadio for Earth Day today" was one of them. It earned its page views by being shared at Kunstler's blog. It came in second with 161 page views according to the raw counter among all entries actually posted last month.
The other entry that came in tied for fifth with 146 page views was "Nablopomo for July: Connect." This post from the back catalog earned its readers by being shared at Greer's blog.
The fourth most read entry of the past month was "Guide to entries that contain answers to 'The End of Suburbia'" Near the end of last month, I shared it at both Kunstler's blog. Early this month, it was Greer's turn, which earned it 173 page views for the month. I also printed it and passed out copies to my students. Those were enough to put it on the all time top ten list with 741 total page views. That was enough to knock "First post: Why this blog?" out of the top ten. With that, all the posts that composed the first year's top ten have been replaced on the leader board.
The highest ranking of any entry actually posted last month was "Three Star Wars trailers: movie, television, and video game," which earned 174 page views (177 according to the raw counter), good enough for third place overall. I shared this only through social media, which means that it got most of its readers via web search.
The second most read entry during April was "'No Impact Man': Student sustainability video festival 22 and a conversation with The Archdruid," which earned 309 page views during the month. Essentially all of its readers came from being shared at The Archdruid Report. They wanted to read a good example, and the star of the film provided one. The post was the 19th most read of last year with 329 page views as of March 20th. Over its history, it now has 653.
The most read entry during April and the winner of the Revenge of the Back Catalog Awards was "Game of Thrones D&D character alignment charts." It earned 323 page views entirely from web search and minor social media promotion tied into the season premiere last month. This entry came in tied for fifth during March and was the second most read entry according to the raw counter during the year it was posted. It had 1561 total page views according to the raw counter at the beginning of April and 1930 now. Despite all the views, it still hasn't found its way onto the official top ten.
My comment on English Spoken Here
"Things sure have gotten a lot worse, relative to when you wrote ‘that book’ about a decade ago."
In a retrospective of popular entries at my blog that referenced our host, I linked to another entry that featured his TED talk, then metioned in passing his update on "The Long Emergency" that he gave to TEDxAlbany a few years back. His take was that things certainly have gotten worse.
Speaking of things getting worse, Michigan's Proposal 1 is polling terribly. The roads are terrible, but the people are not willing to go along with the legislative compromises required to fix them. Therefore, the potholes I'll be driving over and around on my way to work today will still be there next year. Meanwhile, marijuana legalization is likely to pass next year. In a choice between potholes and potheads, Michigan will choose potheads. I'd rather they do both.
"This is why voters want marijuana. In such a FUBAR situation, might as well get stoned."
That reminds me of a meme I used in my post saying farewell to Ron Paul's candidacy. "At least in a Ron Paul presidency we'd be able to legally get high to deal with a Ron Paul presidency."
My comment on The Whisper of the Shutoff Valve.
As a resident of the inner northern suburbs of Detroit, I have a front row seat on all the features you described for Motown. In one case, I even got on stage or the playing field, as I joined a protest against the water shutoffs, the same one that the article in The Star that you linked to showed. That worked, after a fashion, as a few days later Detroit suspended shutoffs. Still, it was only temporary, as you described, for water shutoffs resumed two months later. Those shutoffs are no longer in the local news, as they aren't new anymore and the bankruptcy they were part of is over. Just the same, they're happening, and it's up to the foreign press to report them as the domestic outlets have moved on.
As for closed malls, I have one literally next door to where I teach. It was only a few months ago that the closure of Northland Mall was approved. Northland Mall was one of the oldest, if not the oldest suburban shopping malls in the U.S. That has been a long time coming, as the mall has been in decline since 2001. That makes it no less a sad sign of our times, as shopping malls are closing all over the country. Speaking of which, there is another mall north of me near Pontiac that's been closed for years. Its claim to fame is that it has a circus elephant buried in the parking lot. It would be too fitting if the deceased pachyderm had been white, but such was not the case.
As for the residents' reactions to all this, they had an opportunity to raise Michigan's sales tax to pay for road, bridge, and highway maintenance on Tuesday. They declined overwhelmingly. The measure was defeated by a 60% margin, 20% to 80%. That's the greatest drubbing a state ballot measure has ever received in Michigan. In contrast, marijuana legalization is being favored by a majority of those polled. My take is that Michigan voters subscribe to Freewheeling Franklin Freak's philosophy--"dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you though times of no dope."
My comment on Muskular Magic
"Musk’s battery is just a distraction which keeps us from focusing on the real problems we face."
That's something Greer brings up regularly. The response to peak oil and all the related issues that flow out from it has not been to face what Kunstler, Greer, Heinberg, Bardi, and the people who read and comment on their writings see. It's been to figure out how to maintain as much as possible of our current lifestyle for those who can afford it. It's also been to keep enterprises in business that enable those lifestyles. Hence, a lot of emphasis on sustainability in cars among companies like Ford and Tesla, both of which are attempting to continue business as usual while adapting to conditions. My students have picked up on this and found two examples of PR for green cars, one each from Ford and Tesla.
As for our host's comment about "a freeway that the State of California hasn’t been able to repair in five years," that's starting to happen here in Michigan and the residents of this state are balking at doing something about it. They had an opportunity to raise Michigan's sales tax to pay for road, bridge, and highway maintenance on Tuesday. They declined overwhelmingly. The measure was defeated by a 60% margin, 20% to 80%. That's the greatest drubbing a state ballot measure has ever received in Michigan.
My comment on Furious about Furiosa: Misogynists are losing it over Charlize Theron’s starring role in Mad Max: Fury Road
The MRAs would be even more ticked off if they read actual news reports instead of using the voices in their heads as reliable sources. For starters, I present this headline from Reuters: Actress Charlize Theron urges women to stand up for equal pay.
After negotiating a salary equal to her male co-star for her upcoming movie, Hollywood actress Charlize Theron has called on other women to take a stand when it comes to equal pay.Go, Charlize! That's one way to get equal pay for equal work in Hollywood.
Theron said she was outraged when leaked Sony emails showed a gap in what male and female actors were paid for the film "American Hustle" and she insisted on being paid on par with co-star Chris Hemsworth for the Snow White sequel "The Huntsman".
"I have to give them credit, because once I asked, they said yes," Theron said in an interview with British magazine Elle UK.
"They did not fight it. And maybe that's the message: that we just need to put our foot down."
Comment on "The Era of Pretense"
"[T]he closer the fall of Rome actually came, the more certainty Roman authors expressed that the Empire was eternal and the latest round of troubles was just one more temporary bump on the road to peace and prosperity."
The irony is that the population of the city of Rome had been falling for a couple of centuries before Alaric showed up and that the Roman Empire itself was also beginning to decline during the century before the Western Empire collapsed. I discussed this last July when you posted Bright Were The Halls Then. I added graphs that show these declines along with some commentary and posted the result as The Fall of Rome for the Ides of March. The data are quite clear to anyone who would look that something was going wrong. I guess the Romans were afflicted by Fourth and Fifth Century versions of what Kunstler calls the Consensus Trance that led to the delusional pronouncements you described.
As for revolutions, I think the crunch will be the loss of bread and circuses. Loss of electricity will slow down but not stop the circuses, but losing the bread whether from outright shortage and famine or just plain high price will be the cause of a lot of violence. A whole list of countries are suffering from too expensive food, which leads to unrest.
In the midst of our period of decline, there is some good news. Liberia has been declared free of Ebola. That's a relief, but not after nearly 12,000 people in all affected countries have died during the epidemic.
Greer: Pinku-sensei, the "consensus trance" is exactly the pretense I'm discussing. The main difference is that I'm not at all sure that it's a matter of trance -- there's a fair bit of deliberate refusal to look involved!
My comment on Dead Nation Walking
Every semester, I show "The End of Suburbia" to my students. Our host's comment about the U.S. having "a rail system the Bulgarians would be ashamed of" usually goes right over their heads; they're more worried about what peak oil will do to roads and cars. One semester, I had a woman from Bulgaria in class. She was offended by that comment. "In Bulgaria, we have good trains!" She also described how good the streetcars are. She didn't realize that she was making our host's point for him instead of rebutting him.
I also feel sorry for our host when he takes the train into NYC. I used to take the train from Detroit to Chicago for much the same reasons, and I could at least buy dinner and a beer in the cafeteria car. However, the same problem, that the tracks belong to CSX, so their freight trains have priority, applies. I've often wished that Amtrak had a designated track for passenger rail; I got tired of waiting for freight trains to pass.
Speaking of getting people out of cars, the week just past had two days for it. May 9th was National Train Day, a day set aside by Amtrak to commemorate the driving of the Golden Spike that completed the first transcontinental railroad. The day also exists to spread information about the advantages of rail travel. I don't know if our host knew about the occasion, but he's doing his part. Also, last Friday was Bike to Work Day. That got more notice. Here in Detroit, there were five organized group rides from the suburbs to downtown. In addition, the number of people commuting by bike in Michigan has increased 69% since 2000.
As for our host's comment on Americans becoming "The Walking Dead," people will have to wait a month or two for their zombie fix when "Fear The Walking Dead" debuts. Until then, they can get another take on a post-apocalyptic world in Mad Max: Fury Road, which had a lovely weekend, coming in second at the box office. The movie got a lot of critical praise for its artistic use of action, great performances, and exploration of themes as diverse as feminism, resource use, and the place of the individual in society. Yes, it's a serious film in the middle of driving across the Outback and blowing things up. Just the same, it shows how Americans (and Australians) having difficulty imagining a future where one is unable to drive, peak oil not withstanding.
"The greatest ‘crime of the century’ in the US was...the systematic dismantling and destruction last mid-century of efficient rail mass transit systems in cities and metropolitan areas around the country by a consortium of fossil fuel, tire, and auto companies."
Welcome to the kernel of truth at the heart of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" I call the story Judge Doom and the Red Car.
My comment on "The Era of Impact"
Of your two historical examples, I can think of only one where there was a reasonable counterstrategy to the conventional wisdom, the 1929 crash. There, if one held onto cash, preferably in a mattress and not in a bank, and kept ones mouth shut about it while learning a practical skill and cultivating good relations with the neighbors, one could do OK. As for not trying to build a utopia of reason during the French Revolution, what was the alternative--emigrate to the U.S. or a present or former French colony (except Haiti, where the colonial overseers would be run out in a little over a decade) and live life in exile until the rubble stopped bouncing? I have a feeling that surviving the coming age of impact might look more like the latter than the former.
Speaking of people trying to avoid or mitigate consequences, last Friday was National Bike to Work Day. That's a small way to "collapse now and avoid the rush." Some people in Michigan are doing just that, as bike commuting in the U.S. has increased 62% since 2000 while it has increased even more-69%- in Michigan during the same time period.
On the other hand, the latest environmental initiative from the White House, a plan to preserve pollinators, has nothing to do with "collapsing now to avoid the rush." Instead, it's an attempt to prevent an environmental catastrophe from ruining business as usual.
As for "apocalyptic fantasies [being] common and popular in eras of pretense," the second most popular movie last weekend was "Mad Max: Fury Road." The critics loved it for its artistic use of action, great performances, and exploration of themes as diverse as feminism, resource use, and the place of the individual in society. Yes, it’s a serious film in the middle of driving across the Outback and blowing things up. Just the same, it shows how Americans (and Australians) have difficulty imagining a future where one is unable to drive, peak oil not withstanding. I'm looking forward to seeing how it fares in competition with Disney's "Tomorrowland" this weekend. That movie's about how the shiny retro future we were promised 50 years ago is in danger. Disney has no idea.
My comment on Yesterday’s Tomorrowland
I was expecting our host to opine about Grexit, but I was hoping he'd mention these movies. I should be careful what I wish for; I might get it
As for which viewpoint, "wisher" or "doomer" is winning, the weekend box offices for "Tomorrowland" vs. "Mad Max: Fury Road" suggests that optimism isn't selling as well as dystopia. In its first weekend, "Mad Max: Fury Road" grossed $44.4 million, while "Tomorrowland" grossed $32 million. Of course, it may not be the message, but the execution. The "Mad Max" movie is being critically praised, while "Tomorrowland" got tepid reviews despite the critics wanting to like it. They got turned off by Brad Bird's Objectivism and Damon Lindelof's fascination with overcomplicated back stories both bleeding through into the script and spoiling the fun. "Pirates of the Caribbean" "Tomorrowland" isn't.
As for ISIS AKA The Sith Jihad, they got double billing with the Men's Rights Advocates (MRAs) in Reactionary movements for the fourth year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News. The MRAs objected to Charlize Theron's character and organized a boycott. I'm sure The Sith Jihad would agree with them.
My comment on The Era of Response.
"[T]he spreading crisis of legitimacy that grips the country these days is exactly the sort of thing you saw in France before the Revolution, and in any number of other countries in the few decades just prior to revolutionary political and social change. Every time a government tries to cope with a crisis by claiming that it doesn’t exist, every time some member of the well-to-do tries to dismiss the collective burdens its culture of executive kleptocracy imposes on the country by flinging abuse at critics, every time institutions that claim to uphold the rule of law defend the rule of entrenched privilege instead, the United States takes another step closer to the revolutionary abyss."
You aren't alone in thinking that. Intelligence expert Robert Steele had the following to say in a post yesterday on The Public Intelligence Blog: "From the perspective of a long-time intelligence professional – a former spy who helped create the Marine Corps Intelligence Center and spent 20 years as a CEO pioneering commercial intelligence – not only do most of the preconditions for revolution exist in America right now, but the federal government seems determined to ignore realities across the board."
He then referred to a graph listing the preconditions for revolution; the ones that currently prevail in the U.S. were printed in red. Of the 45 cells in the table, 33 were completely red and five were half red, leaving only seven that did not completely or partly signal impending revolution.
On another topic you raised, the nature of money in relation to the U.S. going off the gold standard, I have two links to share with you, both of them about money as a legal institution, which includes the idea that money doesn't really exist without taxation or its equivalent. The first, a scholarly paper, also addresses fiat money as a solution to money creation under circumstances where commodity money, such as the gold or silver standard, fails.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2321313
The second is a blog post that summarizes and comments on the paper.
https://econoblog101.wordpress.com/2015/05/19/money-a-legal-not-an-economic-thing/
Happy reading and don't let the goldbugs bite!
