Birth of a Diner: Born to Rewild
May 19, 2013Off the keyboard of RE Published on the Doomstead Diner on May 19, 2013 Discuss this article at the Primitive Living Table inside the Diner Here on the Diner this Sunday, the Population of the Diner Tribe increased by a New Member, Harper Tribann, or “HT” as he will be known in the future. You won’t find HT in the Member List of Diners, as of yet he can’t Read, Keyboard, or Talk. He can already Pitch Napalm though, Cryi...
The Week That Was in Doom May 19, 2013
From the Keyboard of Surly1
Originally published on the Doomstead Diner on May 19, 2013
Discuss this article here in the Diner Forum.
In which we walk around the weekly cultural signifiers that indicate that we are, week by week, proudly and confidently approaching the zero point with the same cheery sense of self-assurance with which lemmings are said to approach a cliff. The Week That Was In Doom, might otherwise be known “as things that make you want to guzzle antifreeze,” with apologies and a tip o’ the Surly Crown of Thorns to Charlie Pierce. Pass the Prestone, hold the ice. And see what the rest of the crew will have, will ya barkeep?
”Violence is as American as cherry pie.” –H. “Rap” Brown
We started out the week by celebrating Mother’s Day in traditional American fashion, meaning blowing the shit out of a bunch of people with guns.
Nineteen people have been wounded in a shooting at a Mother’s Day parade in the US city of New Orleans, police say. The victims included two children who were grazed by bullets. Police say most injuries are not life-threatening. It is unclear what sparked the shooting in the city’s 7th Ward on Sunday afternoon. Police say three [...] Continue Reading…
Paleo or Phyle? Part II
Off the keyboard of RE
Published on the Doomstead Diner on May 2013
Discuss this article at the Doomsteading Table inside the Diner
Note from RE: This article is another re-edit of discussions held on Reverse Engineering in June 2009 on the concepts of Rewilding, Primitive Living and Tribal Formation. As with Part I of this series I will be adding substantial new material to this post.
One of the long running arguments on Peak Oil revolved around whether we were bound in the end to return to the Stone Age. I generally argued that Stone Age devolution wasn’t necessary, we could return Sustainably to 1750s era technology, sail powered boats, horse drawn Plows, etc. I am rethinking that idea to some extent now.
One of my postulates was that all the metals we use, Iron, Steel, Aluminum etc are endlessly recyclable. They never really DISAPPEAR, they are always here in one form or another. As Iron Rusts, you can always smelt it back into usable form. At least you can so long as you have enough ENERGY to do so.
So let us look at the progress of Civilization through the Bronze Age and Into the Iron Age and finally the Plastic Age of [...] Continue Reading…
Making an Iota of Difference
Off the keyboard of Jason Heppenstall
Published on 22 Billion Energy Slaves on May 19, 2013
Carvaggio’s David & Goliath
Discuss this article at the Epicurean Delights Smorgasbord inside the Diner
Iota: noun
The ninth letter of the Greek alphabet (Ι, ι), transliterated as ‘i’.
[in singular, usually with negative] an extremely small amount:nothing she said seemed to make an iota of difference
Yesterday evening I attended a talk by a man who lives in the nearby village of Mousehole. The talk was about creating sustainable communities – whatever they are – and was given by Anu van Warmelo. It took place in a Penzance venue called Open Shed, which is a kind of cafe where you can get your laptop or sewing machine refurbished and your bike repaired while you sip on a latte and flick through the latest issue of Resurgence. It’s exactly the kind of place that I had been missing during my years in Denmark and, I was to learn, the kind of participatory open place where you can chat with the locals that’s been heading towards extinction in recent years.
The talk seemed to get a good reception from the 20 or so of us in there, perched as we were [...] Continue Reading…
The New Abnormal
Off the keyboard of James Howard Kuntsler
Published on Clusterfuck Nation on May 20, 2013
Discuss this article at the Favorite Dishes Smorgasbord inside the Diner
The collective state of mind in the USA these days may be even more peculiar than what went on in Germany in the early 1930s, when the Nazis were freely elected to lead the country and reconstructed the battered national psyche into a superman cult that soon beat a path to mass death and ruin. America has its own way of going crazy. We don’t goose-step to tragedy; we coalesce into an insane clown posse and stumble into it by pratfall — juggaloes dancing backwards off the cliff edge.
We’ve been softened up and made extra-stupid on a 60-year-long diet of TV and kreme-filled donuts. Instead of a “master race,” our political fantasies revolve around a master wish – to get something for nothing. Want to feel good about yourself? Smoke some crank. Want to become economically secure? Buy a Powerball ticket or drive to the local casino. Want political esteem? Plug a flag pin into your lapel. Want status? Borrow free money from the Federal Reserve at zero interest and arbitrage it into massive [...] Continue Reading…
The Elephant in the Sustainability Room
Off the keyboards of Monsta666 & A. G. Gelbert
Discuss this article at the Favourite Dishes Table inside the Diner
Often I hear argument that if we deploy various renewable energy solutions then our modern industrial society can transition to a sustainable society. While many of these renewable solutions do indeed provide better outcomes than the current fossil fuel paradigm they will not – on their own – make our economy any more sustainable. The reason this is the case is because of the issue of perpetual economic growth that our economy demands which is largely (but not solely) driven by our debt based currency system. Until this fundamental issue of growth is tackled then achieving sustainability becomes an impossible task.
In the dialogue below is an exchange between me and fellow Diner and moderator agelbert who is one of the strongest advocates we have in the Diner in renewable energy solutions. Just to be clear, even though I do not see renewable energy as the ultimate solution to providing a sustainable environment this is NOT an argument against renewable energy. Moreover, I am of the belief that a technological solution is possible in the process of reverse engineering into a sustainable [...] Continue Reading…
Birth of a Diner: Born to Rewild
Off the keyboard of RE
Published on the Doomstead Diner on May 19, 2013
Discuss this article at the Primitive Living Table inside the Diner
Here on the Diner this Sunday, the Population of the Diner Tribe increased by a New Member, Harper Tribann, or “HT” as he will be known in the future. You won’t find HT in the Member List of Diners, as of yet he can’t Read, Keyboard, or Talk. He can already Pitch Napalm though, Crying comes naturally straight outta da tunnel. LOL
HT is the Newborn Son of Diners Lucid Dreams and Gypsy Mama, and all the Diners are Celebrating his arrival, Cigars with Suspect Contents are being Smoked across the Diner World, which goes from Oz to Kiwiland to Jolly Old England to The Last Great Frontier through the Midwest of the FSofA in Cheeseland, down to the Border of Mejico and right back to Old Dixie in Virginia and South Carolina, where HT was just Born. There are Diners all over the World now.
So now there is a new Diner, HT, and he is a Healthy Baby Boy who knows not yet the world he is destined to grow up in, but we Diners do, and [...] Continue Reading…
Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus
Off the keyboard of John Ward
Published on The Slog on May 14, 2013
Discuss this article at the Epicurean Delights Smorgasbord inside the Diner
The boy v girl friendship thing
Perhaps the most crushing offer a girlie ever gives to a bloke is “Can’t we just be friends?”….a line I can only be grateful for not having been handed for over fifty years now, although the elation-to-deflation plummet associated with it lives on in my psyche as if it was yesterday.
It has been one of the relative oddities of my life that I have, on the whole, greatly preferred the company of women to men. I don’t mean by that ‘the company of women in a group’, because to be honest they’re awful in hen-party mode. Rather, I’m talking about the far greater ability to be frank with female friends about one’s doubts, demons, feelings about ongoing sex relationships and, well, just being open about it.
That said – and think about it, there is no contradiction here – the truly close male friends I have are the best friends I have. The reason is simple: they’re far more willing to accept criticism from time to time – and far more constructive in [...] Continue Reading…
The Pleasures of Extinction
Off the keyboard of John Michael Greer
Published on the Archdruid Report on May 15, 2013
Discuss this article at the Favorite Dishes Table inside the Diner
One of the wry pleasures that’s repeatedly come my way since the beginning of this blog seven years ago is that of watching a good many of my predictions come true in short order. Now it’s true that I’ve also made a certain number of failed predictions over that time. Back in 2007 and 2008, for instance, I insisted that the US government wouldn’t be dumb enough to try to cover its ballooning budget deficits by spinning the printing presses; some idiocies, I thought, were too extreme even for the inmates of the current American political class. As th Fed proceeds merrily through yet another round of quantitative easing, that assumption has proved to be rather too naive.
Even so, my batting average so far has been pretty respectable. In the early days of this blog, for example, Daniel Yergin was insisting at the top of his lungs that the price of oil would settle down shortly to a long-term plateau of $38 a barrel, while fans of a dozen different alternative technologies were claiming just [...] Continue Reading…
Eustace Conway: Around the Blogosphere in 80 Days
Off the keyboard of RE
Published on the Doomstead Diner on May 16, 2013
Discuss this article at the Doomsteading Table inside the Diner
When I came up with the notion of running a Blog-a-thon, I thought it was at least plausibly possible a few other of the Collapse Bloggers would join in and contribute a support post for Eustace Conway and Turtle Island. How WRONG I was! Out of 8 or so Collapse Bloggers I emailed on Saturday who we cross post here on the Diner, not a single one to date has written anything on this topic on their Blogs. Only Lucid Dreams of Epiphany Now who is also a Native Diner also Blogged about Eustace so far.
Not to say there has been Zero support, Jim Quinn of The Burning Platform who I used to blog with and get into innumerable Napalm Contests with during our Tumultuous Association cross posted the kickoff article on TBP and Featured it also, which definitely has helped bring more people to the change.org petition as Signatories. Last I checked, the Countdown Number was down to 7890 or so, down from about 8290 when we got going with this at the beginning of the week. [...] Continue Reading…
Eustace Conway: Anomalies & Loopholes
Off the keyboards of the Diners
Published on the Doomstead Diner on May 15, 2013
Discuss this article at the Doomsteading Table inside the Diner
The debate inside the Diner on the Turtle Island project has evolved into a discussion of means & method; and whether Eustace Conway is a Visionary and valid example for moving off the Oil Economy, or merely a Media Whore more interested in Self-promotion than in helping others to change lifestyle to a more sustainable and ecologically sound way of life. I will add some of my thoughts on this at the end of this installment of the Blog-a-thon, but first I want to bring up a few anomalies in the story which don’t add up well for me, and after that bring some of today’s debate inside the Diner onto the Blog so readers can get a better idea of how the two sides of this debate have lined up.
My main issue here at the moment is exactly how Eustace put together the money to buy the 1000 Acres in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina, beginning it is said at the age of 17 with nothing but the clothes on his back and a few [...] Continue Reading…
Eustace Conway: Render Unto Caesar
Off the keyboard of the Diners
Published on the Doomstead Diner on May 14, 2013
Discuss this article at the Doomsteading Table inside the Diner
Already inside the Diner the discussion regarding the feasibility of Turtle Island in the face of Goobermint Regulation are heating up. Steve from Virginia of Economic Undertow dropped on the following two BOMBS on the regulatory aspect of the Turtle Island Project:
Conway needs to
hire a lawyer. Right now he’s trying to operate a business that is open to the public and he has little room to maneuver vis the authorities.He might be more successful operating a private club where interested parties would become members before being allowed entry.Not only does he need sprinklers and a rest room it must be an ADA compliant rest room; a certain number of stalls per planned number of occupants.He’ll also need parking places, fire exits, etc. If he gets an exemption then every business in North Carolina will demand the same exemptions.
RE: Jeezus says in the Bible, “Render unto Caesar” what that means if you have some sort of public accommodation you have to play by the rules.I’ve dealt with this sort of thing for 35 years there is no way [...] Continue Reading…
Eustace Conway
Off the keyboard of Lucid Dreams
Published on Epiphany Now on May 12, 2013
Discuss this article at the Doomsteading Table inside the Diner
You’ve likely never heard of Eustace Conway or his Turtle Island Preserve before. Mr. Conway is a very unique individual whom has much to teach those of us concerned with how to thrive in a post-petroleum future. Mr. Conway never really joined society, preferring to remain embraced by nature. At 17 he moved into a Native American style teepee and lived in it for 17 years. At 18 he walked across the U.S. on the Appalachian Trail and shortly after that canoed from the North to the South. He also rode a horse across the United States from the east coast to the west coast twice. There are not many people like Eustace Conway that have been born to a first world country. Around 20 years ago he bought 1000 acres in Appalachia. He then turned that land into the “Turtle Island Preserve” with the explicit purpose of teaching others how to live on the bounty of nature. For the last 20 years he’s been doing just that. Recently the Matrix has decided to zero in on his [...] Continue Reading…
A Mother’s Day tribute
From the Keyboard of Surly1
Originally published on the Doomstead Diner on May 12, 2013
Surlissima with little Surly, ca. 1950.
Today I offer this in tribute to my own mother, 83 years old and still going strong, having survived uterine cancer, several cardiac episodes, diabetes and raising me to what passed for adulthood.
I have been privileged to know several people in this life who, without the benefit of formal higher education, managed to be self educated and extremely intelligent. My mother is one such.
She was working as a clerk in Mannesmann’s department store in East Liberty, outside of Pittsburgh, when she met my father via introduction from a mutual friend. (Guess that’s how things were done before the advent of Match.com and smart phones.) My earliest memories consist of her reading to me. I remember the books: a soft cotton children’s book, with buttons, zippers that worked, and textures–they make them even yet–it became one of my closest friends because she read it to me every day. The Mother Goose books. The stories–fairly tales, the brothers Grimm, the Three Pigs, Aladdin, Red riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk, countless children’s stories. Although neither of my parents was [...] Continue Reading…
The Week That Was in Doom 5/12/2013
From the Keyboard of Surly1
Originally published on the Doomstead Diner on May 12, 2013
Discuss this article here in the Diner Forum.
Plenty of doom and doom-related happenings on the domestic and international front this week, so let’s go right to the videotape:
Across the pond in Greece, where Question Mark and the Austerians are administering the same sort of save-the-rich economic policies that plutocrats like Pete Peterson so dearly wants to bring to the FSA, youth unemployment has reached a staggering 60 per cent.
While the overall unemployment rate rose to 27 percent, according to statistics service data released on Thursday, joblessness among those aged between 15 and 24 jumped to 64.2 percent in February from 59.3 percent in January. Youth unemployment was 54.1 percent in March 2012.
“It is by far the highest youth unemployment rate in the euro zone, highlighting the difficulties young people face in entering the labor market despite government incentives to create jobs,” said economist Nikos Magginas at National Bank.
Athens has lowered the minimum monthly wage for those under 25 years by 32 percent to about 500 euros to entice hiring.
Note that last succulent little datapoint, and keep it in your pocket when the solons in DC look [...] Continue Reading…
BLOG-A-THON: Save Eustace Conway & Turtle Island
Off the keyboard of RE
Published on the Doomstead Diner May 12, 2013
Discuss this article at the Doomsteading Table inside the Diner
Every day on the Internet these days you get treated to something VERY WRONG in our society, but rarely is it possible to do much about it. I am not certain even in this case of complete TRAVESTY and STUPIDITY much can be done to put a stop to it, but in this case it is so ABHORRENT, so RIDICULOUS, and at least for Diners so UTTERLY against all our principles that every means must be undertaken to at least TRY to STOP it. So with this article, I begin a Week Long Blog-a-thon to raise awareness and assist someone who truly has lived a life by principles of living in Harmony with Nature
Out there in the Boonies of North Carolina in the Appalachian Mountains there is a man named Eustace Conway who built a life for himself as a Modern Day Mountain Man, on the Model of Jeremiah Johnson. Jeremiah was a Fictional Character, Eustace Conway is not, he is a VERY REAL Person, and what he built and what he stands for is now under attack by [...] Continue Reading…
Reaching Limits in a Finite World
Off the keyboard of Gail Tverberg
Published on Our Finite World on May 6, 2013
Discuss this article at the Epicurean Delights Smorgasbord inside the Diner
We don’t usually think about it, but we live in a finite world. In other words, in theory we can count precisely how many atoms make up the earth. We can also theoretically count how many humans live on earth and how many of any other species live on earth at a particular point in time.
At some point, in a finite world, we start reaching limits. There are now about seven billion people in the world. We could probably add some more, but how many? What is it that limits our ability to add more people to the world we live in today?
Too Much Population “Morphs” to an Energy and Financial Limit
One obvious guess as to what might limit world population is the amount fresh water that is available. If we don’t have enough fresh water available, we can’t continue to expand population.
The amount of fresh water that is available can be changed, though, by adding desalination plants. There are many other ways of getting fresh water. To give an extreme example, the amount of [...] Continue Reading…
Abnormalcy Bias
Off the keyboard of Jim Quinn
Published on The Burning Platform on April 23, 2013
Discuss this article at the Epicurean Delights Smorgasbord inside the Diner
“The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does. They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted.” – Aldous Huxley – Brave New World Revisited
The political class set in motion the eventual obliteration of our economic system with the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913. Placing the fate of the American people in the hands of a powerful cabal of unaccountable greedy wealthy elitist [...] Continue Reading…
The Song Remains the Same
Off the keyboard of John Michael Greer
Published on the Archdruid Report on May 8, 2013
Discuss this article at the Favorite Dishes Smorgasbord inside the Diner
If you always do what you’ve always done, a popular saying nowadays has it, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten. Most people accept that readily enough in the abstract. It’s when they attempt to apply this logic to their own lives and thinking that they get tripped up, because self-defeating patterns very often arise from a mismatch between basic presuppositions about the world and the world as it’s actually experienced, and confronting that mismatch is not an easy thing. It’s usually much simpler to insist that it’s different this time, and repeat the same failed strategy yet again.
The logic of speculative bubbles is a case in point. The next time you read some online pundit insisting that a new era has dawned, that the old rules of economics have been stood on their head, and that some asset class or other that’s been rising steadily for a while now is certain to keep on zooming upwards for the foreseeable future, he’s wrong. It really is that simple. Any of my readers who haven’t been [...] Continue Reading…
Paleo or Phyle?
Off the keyboards of Clipney & RE
Published on Reverse Engineering June 2009
Discuss this article at the Rewilding Table inside the Diner
Note from RE: This article is a re-edit from posts made in June 2009 on Reverse Engineering. I am including substantial new material however based on the ever evolving collapse scenario and ongoing discussions inside the Diner.
There is endless ongoing debate inside the Diner, as well as in the Blogosphere as a whole as to what the best methodology is to adapt to a world where energy is in increasingly short supply and jobs and money to buy the products of industrialization are ever more difficult to come by.
The most popular proposed Solution you come by is Relocalization and developing an extension on what I would call the Amish Economy, a kind of 18th Century model of small Family Farms, but even this model is surprisingly Energy Dependent in many ways. Although the Amish foreswear use of many labor saving Machines driven by the thermodynamic energy of Oil, they still do use many Metal farm implements that take a whole lot of energy to mine, refine and manufacture. There are also issues with how agricultural process, even done on [...] Continue Reading…
A Creeping Sense of Futility…
Off the keyboard of Steve from Virginia
Published on Economic Undertow on May 6, 2013
Discuss this article at the Epicurean Delights Smorgasbord inside the Diner
There is a point in your life when you wake up in the morning and realize you have become a cliché …
‘The End is Near’, David Sipress (The Phoenix) … when you realize it is impossible for anyone to take you seriously. You are beating your head against the wall, others laugh at you or they hate you because you are exposed and an easy ‘hate target’. You cannot accomplish anything, you are a boat beating against the current … borne back ceaselessly into ridicule, you are spitting into the wind, up a creek without a paddle, betting the wrong horse. Think of the others who have been pounding that same wall for decades … Nothing changes … the speculators always win, you are a muppet.
Dow Reaches 15,000 as Jobs Growth Exceeds Forecasts!Inyoung Hwang – Lu Wang – May 3, 2013 (Bloomberg)!U.S. stocks rose, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average above 15,000 for the first time, as employment picked up more than forecast in April and the jobless rate unexpectedly declined to a four-year low!!!!!!
So much [...] Continue Reading…