Prize the Lard

The US mid term elections continue to fascinate. It seems to me that the astroturf phenomenon that is the tea-party is a scary slice of willful ignorance that panders to the spooky defeatist delusions of the Christian right.
Bur then I'm probably going to Hell.
Oh - we all are!

Apologies for the gratuitous cut and paste of earlier drawings

In the Psychiatrist's chair

Thanks to the tireless Andy Revkin for the link

If you will indulge me for a moment. I've been trying to assimilate my recent trip to Boston ( a heavily footprinted week to attend a climate change symposium to which I was inexplicably invited). I've been trying to put the affects and effects together in my head. Some first impressions:-
The "take home" message I came away with was rather pessimistic, but curiously liberating. I was duly impressed by the comprehensive command of the issues displayed by so many, and by the genuine concern and dedication to the process of communicating the dangers, challenges and opportunities of global climate change. But I was also struck by the insularity of the whole process. I felt alienated by the sheer professionalism of the participants (apart from myself, obviously) and was constantly aware of the gulf between that world and the "reality" of my everyday experience.
On such brief experience of a nation it would be foolish to judge, (that's never stopped me before) but the impression of deep polarisation is hard to discount. So I was left with a feeling that the contrarians are far more more skilled at manipulating the discourse and that the reliance on honesty and integrity on the part of the climate-aware is poor competition to the cynicism and nous of the forces of (prideful) ignorance. This does not suggest any comfortable solutions.
I was also strongly affected by the sheer wealth of the place. The land, the infrastructure, the environment. No wonder they don't feel the potential for calamity. No wonder the American dream continues to seduce.
The curiously liberating part? Well, that's a hard one to pin down. But it boils down to an unavoidable impression that the US (and where the US goes, so goes the western world) is a generation away from addressing what it needs to address. But...it can turn on a dime once it feels it has been granted permission to do so (thanks, Mike Bonano). So in the meantime. we keep going. When the table tips there must be nets in place to catch the crockery and that, in itself, is a noble, worthwhile and unavoidable endevour. If we conceive of that net as a cultural re-imagining, then it is possible to keep putting our shift in; to keep turning up and walking into the tide..
And the American work ethic - so honourably manifested in Mr Revkin - has a potential that a stranger cannot really calculate.
On the whole - weird, expensive and enlightening, in an "oh shit" kind of way.
Ho hum - Back to the drawing board.


On an entirely unrelated matter - Frank would just like to say to Mark "Flash" Stone (from one fictional character to another) , "Fuck you!"

Action Man

I've never been a particular fan of the Schwarzenegger ouevre (Terminator aside) but credit where it's due
Thanks to Shaz and Marc for pointing this out

Gunboat Diplomacy

Oil free gunboats to be used to secure oil fields. Hmmm

Elsewhere, Self obsessed multibillionaire arseholes will soon get to be even more destructive than they already are.

and We continue to get our priorities spectacularly wrong

Thinking Tanks

Musing on the wisdom of think-tanks and Institutes and the bogus legitimacy their business can sometimes confer. Perhaps these guys have been drinking at this trough

Debrief

I've been to Boston to take part in a Goethe Institute symposium on Communication and Climate Change at Boston University. A somewhat baffling and deeply alien experience for me, but one that will undoubtedly leave a lasting impression. So many well informed and highly qualified people; so many well thought out positions. So what on Earth was a misanthropic paint-monkey like myself doing there? I haven't quite figured that out yet. I don't know whether my contribution was worth the carbon footprint I left getting there. I suppose that's not for me to say. People laughed, and kind words were spoken. But it was a long way to go for fart-gags. Don't get me wrong - I'm grateful for the opportunity and it was great to meet some people that I greatly admire.
So if it seems somewhat churlish to post this particular cartoon on my return, I don't mean it that way.
The Ern i my head won't let it lie, and the Frank has no reply.

Butterflies

NEW WEBSITE
NEW WEBSITE
NEW WEBSITE




You may have noticed that the site was down a few days ago. This was due to a hotlink that, after 89,000 hits, drained my bandwidth and left it exhausted in a ditch. My woeful ignorance of these matters necessitated a day off work and a great to-ing and fro-ing of e-mails whilst I figured out what was happening and sorted it. The website's owner apologised and I guess no harm was done. I even learned something.

Website discombobulation

APOLOGIES for the main website being currently down. The server says that the bandwidth has been exceeded but the traffic counter says that's complete bollocks because only myself and the cat have visited all week - so I'm in the dark untill the Sherrif comes to my rescue.
In the meantime, talk amongst yourselves...

10;10 til we do it again

Oh dear oh dear oh dear