Big dipper

Not only does their brew taste like shite, but they're environmental criminals as well. Starbucks wastes millions of gallons of water every day through leaving taps running for no good reason, just as the UK is looking at massive water-price rises and restrictions (despite flood warnings).

His master's voice

The entire planet's financial well-being hung by the one thread of lending increasingly unsustainable amounts of debt into existence. Should the planet's nutritional well-being be hung on the single hook of oil dependent, genetically modified monocultures copyrighted by the Transnationals? The GM debate rolls on.
As the range of insects and diseases spread, and those of most animals decline with a changing climate, the possibilities for a domino effect toppling any single strategy seem quite large.

The good news is that the dirty coal bandwagon has been slowed by an EU vote.

We're not in Kansas anymore, toto...

As if the life of a penguin wasn't shaky enough - climate change is interfering with their familiar ocean-currents and driving them thousands of miles off course, to cast them up starving and battered on the beaches of Brasil.

In a desperate bid to secure re-election our glorious leader has resurrected the prince of darkness to spin the world back into it's right mind, and created a department for energy and climate. This sounds useful and is just in time to address the godawful and unstable state of the nuclear energy industry, the impending nationwide water shortages caused by rainfall shortfalls and river depletion, and the heir to the throne's misquoted pokes at the oil-based food lobby.

Meanwhile our betters are planning wide scale snoops into our e-mail and text lives - presumably part of a wider plan to follow our imperial masters down the road to torture and dissappearances - and the genuinely moving cult of the ghost-bike continues to spread.

Big Brains

In the spirit of the times Throbgoblins International have withdrawn all our collective dosh out of the bank and given it to the richest person we could find. He'll know what to do. Everything'll be alright now.

On further consideration, however, we think that we would have been better advised to send it to the Kew seed bank - which is trying to safeguard plant biodiversity before it all goes bump, so we still have a genetic pot to piss in, as it were. It faces closure due to a lack of funds.

I marvel at our cleverness, don't you?

and I'd just to say.... Peter fucking Mandelson??????

Rant

No joke today

Frank has been doing a lot of research. He is being struck by the scale of the edifice that is about to crash down around our ears over the next generation or so, and is struggling to stay in a comfort zone where there are still answers to the problems everyone is ignoring. He is trying to figure out a programme of dismantling that will make the crash bearable, and the segue to a new dispensation as painless and fruitful as possible. He sees that if the tower falls from its present height there will be no survivors below. He sees no magic bullets. No secret gardens. He is anxious and afraid for his children. His sarcasm has deserted him. This process has made a lot of the mainstays of Frank's world redundant. A yawning unknown has opened up where once there was faith. He is a little in shock. He may have to rearrange some furniture in his mind, as well as on this Titanic that so resolutely ignores his entreaties to turn. Some lunacies may have to be considered as cushions for the fall. Things are a lot worse than he thought.

Short film

A link to a fine short film from Leo Murray

The public gets what the public wants

I was looking through a survey the other day that sought people's opinions on difficult subjects requiring specialist knowledge and a broad command of a range of complex issues. It wasn't child's play, and it's purpose was serious. But it's tone reminded me of the tone of appraisal documents the world over - Are you satisfied, very satisfied, unsatisfied, very unsatisfied, not bothered, suicidal etc. As if how the respondent felt about the situation was the important thing.
I might be reading rather too much into this, but - We find ourselves strapped into a car that's hurtling up the sharp incline of half a dozen exponential hockey-stick graphs towards almost certain calamity on a roller coaster without breaks - and we are being asked if we're comfy. Something is amiss. Maybe it's just me, but I think it might be time to put our feelings on the back burner and concentrate on issues for a while. Maybe we should be saying to ourselves, "Never mind how you feel - read a few books and have a bit of a think. Leave the comfort zone. You don't have to like it, and you probably won't. Grow up and put your fairy tales away"
Maybe we could all specifically ponder...
How does one run a democracy when no one is paying attention? When most of the people think that more and more people can have more and more forever?; when most of the people think that the looks and style of a politician are the most important considerations?; when most of the people are watching X-factor?: when most of the people want a Beamer, a boob-job and a McMansion?: when most of the people spend more time cultivating their appearance than their understanding? when most of the people are under the impression that they are only here to have a good time and that some supernatural superbeing tucks them in at night? Can serious and necessary work be undertaken under those conditions? And if not, how do we change those conditions? Or do we wait for circumstances to change them for us?

Fucked if I know.

Anyway - I colourised these old strips for a Brasilian biofuel-awareness campaign, which gives me an excuse to re-up them, and an opportunity to cheer the demise of the Hummer that was so recently considered acceptable in some quarters