inspired indie rock
i've been listening to
the national's new album, alligator, for about the past month or so, but this morning, listening to the album (yet again) i've decided it may be the most perfect album of the year. it can be listened to
hereaudio:product placement
secret global warming pact
what the fuck?
The Bush administration, which is pushing alternatives to the Kyoto treaty on global warming, unveiled a six-nation pact on Wednesday that promotes the use of technology to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The deal between the United States, Japan, Australia, China, India and South Korea will build on existing bilateral agreements on technology sharing. It includes no Kyoto-style caps on emissions.
from reuters uk
Already being criticized by the
NRDC as just trying to muddle up Kyoto. I wonder if it would override the Kyoto pact that 161 U.S. cities signed on to?
kyoto
but i love bmws...
never mind that the epa tried to suppress the fuel economy report on the eve of the signing of the energy policy (at the bidding of the administration i'm sure), but sadly there's also a reason to not love bmws (well, as much as i do now, anyways)
Some foreign companies do not even trouble themselves to follow fuel economy regulations. BMW, in fact, has paid more than $70 million in fines since the 2000 model year for noncompliance. The company has argued that American fuel regulations, which are taken as an average over a company's entire fleet, put luxury makers at a disadvantage.
"We sell the ultimate driving machine and people expect us to offer them the kind of BMW vehicles they really want to drive," said Dave Buchko, a spokesman.
from the nytimes
but there lies the paradox right? we as a species hurtling towards what feels good and is fun -
for me. driving a bmw is so fun! meanwhile, we're going to cook ourselves right out of this nice home we have, even though a couple billion of us have signed to trying to do prevent that. a pot of boiling lobsters comes to mind.
i don't like to rant for too much about a war that is so distant and buffered from us that it has virtually no impact on our daily lives, cleverly engineered by fatcats to keep shoveling more and more resources at an effort that made no sense from the beginning. it's like endless credit to buy all the things we can't afford; household debt being a nice, individual level analogy.
but just think, if we drove (and used) less, maybe we won't have an obesity epidemic, either?
oil:culture
not the siren festival
yesterday we went to
governor's island which is one of the stranger places i've been to in nyc; it involved taking a ferry, all to check out the opening day of
set and drift. the art was ok, the best were two pieces that keyed off the old officer's houses, spawning quotes such as "
it's like the house vomited" and "
it's just so pretty".
it's also funny how your neighborhood comes back and bites you - part of the evening involved a screening of some short films by
rooftop films, which i remember many years ago originating on a rooftop in bushwick; so different from governor's island! the show then involved walking through a loft that clearly somebody lived in, as well as dodging the ol' bullets flying around the neighborhood, and several kegs. All very different from the oh-so-fun national park service guy that confiscated our wine as we boarded the ferry. grrr. i guess at least he let us keep our smoked fish.
free:picnics
presidential libraries
WASHINGTON (Reuters)- A tragic fire on Monday destroyed the personal library of President George W. Bush. Both of his books have been lost. Presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer said the president was devastated, as he had not finished coloring the second one.
many thanks to
marketa for passing this tidbit along!
books:fake news
that hamburger on the grill
why is nobody talking about the USDA slaughtering cows in Texas?Washington — The government has killed and is testing 29 cows from the herd of the Texas cow infected with mad cow disease, the Agriculture Department said Friday.
Investigators have been working to identify offspring and herd mates born within a year of the infected cow's birth. The infected cow was a 12-year-old Brahma cross beef cow.
Twenty-nine adult cows were removed from the herd on Wednesday, the department said. They were taken to a collection site and killed, and tissue samples were removed for testing, the department said.
Even better, said mad cow was found back in November. And yes, it is now July.
food
bambi strikes again
clearly i'm a bitter and evil person because i am appalled by this
better-than-Disney account of a rescued fawn being taken in by the family dog.
some immediate thoughts come to mind:
it's a deer (there are too many of them anyways)
the family should triple check it for ticks (lyme disease)
the hilarious mental image of a full-grown deer trying to snuggle on someone's lap on the couch
it's the attack of the warm fuzzies - ironic because this is exactly what environmentalists want people to feel when they see small baby animals - that we must protect them. unfortunately i feel that this has worked all too well - people care so much about the glamour species that are endlessly promoted as poster children. so much so that less aesthetic and impressive fauna can only hope to be lucky enough to live in the same place as one of them. the cuteness factor dominates in cultural ideas of nurturing nature - everything else is scary and potentially dangerous, unknown or mysterious (as illustrated by television nature programming?). and i think we all lose in the long-term as a consequence of these ideas, except maybe for that little deer.
dogs:wildlife
