.....Or on a much more interesting note

Hopefully this speech will provoke some thoughts.

Derrick Jensen's speech in Maine

As Not Seen On TV

Here is episode 10 of the series "The End of the World As We Know It". It has some interesting footage and a brief interview with Derrick Jensen. While I'm suspicious about the cell-phone/colony collapse, the rest is pretty good. I especially like the host of the show.

Quite a bit less cool than snails...

Lately I have taken to reading James Howard Kunstler's blog. This photo is on his "eyesore of the month" feature. I suppose it needs no caption really.

Snails are pretty cool

The Slow Food Manifesto

The Slow Food international movement officially began when delegates from 15 countries endorsed this manifesto, written by founding member Folco Portinari, on November 9, 1989.

Our century, which began and has developed under the insignia of industrial civilization, first invented the machine and then took it as its life model.

We are enslaved by speed and have all succumbed to the same insidious virus: Fast Life, which disrupts our habits, pervades the privacy of our homes and forces us to eat Fast Foods.

To be worthy of the name, Homo Sapiens should rid himself of speed before it reduces him to a species in danger of extinction.

A firm defense of quiet material pleasure is the only way to oppose the universal folly of Fast Life.

May suitable doses of guaranteed sensual pleasure and slow, long-lasting enjoyment preserve us from the contagion of the multitude who mistake frenzy for efficiency.

Our defense should begin at the table with Slow Food.
Let us rediscover the flavors and savors of regional cooking and banish the degrading effects of Fast Food.

In the name of productivity, Fast Life has changed our way of being and threatens our environment and our landscapes. So Slow Food is now the only truly progressive answer.

That is what real culture is all about: developing taste rather than demeaning it. And what better way to set about this than an international exchange of experiences, knowledge, projects?

Slow Food guarantees a better future.

Slow Food is an idea that needs plenty of qualified supporters who can help turn this (slow) motion into an international movement, with the little snail as its symbol.

A Worthy Book

I have recently finished James Lovelock's, The Revenge of Gaia. It would be ever so calming to be able to dismiss him. As has been said elsewhere, someone please tell me this man is senile.

Broken Memory

"The media and the schools don't do much to help us integrate reality and memory. Every fact appears divorced from the rest, divorced from its own past and the past of every other fact. Consumer culture, a culture of disconnectedness, trains us to believe that things just happen. Incapable of recalling its origins, the present paints the future as a repetition of itself; tomorrow is just another name for today. The unequal organization of the world, which beggars the human condition, is part of eternity, and injustice is a fact of life we have no choice but to accept.
Does history repeat itself? Or are its repetitions only penance for those whoe are incapable of listening to it? No history is mute. No matter how much they burn it, break it, and lie about it, human history refuses to shut its mouth. Depsite deafness and ignorance, the time that was continues to tick inside the time that is. The right to remember does not figure among the rights consecrated by the United Nations, but now more than ever we must insist on it and act on it. Not to repeat the past, but to keep it from being repeated. Not to make us ventriloquists for the dead but to allow us to speak with voices that are not condemned to echo perpetually with stupidity and misfortune. When it's truly alive, memory doesn't contemplate history, it invites us to make it. More than in museums, where its poor old soul gets bored, memory is in the air we breathe, and from the air, it breathes us."

-Eduardo Galeano from his book, Upside Down

Copenhagen ist die spitze!

Take a look at this film about reimagining streets away from the use of cars. What a hopeful and positive (and practical) notion!http://www.freespeech.org/fscm2/contentviewer.php?content_id=1563

A view of consumption

On a related note:http://www.chrisjordan.com

Sebastiao Salgado

A very human and humane photographer. One of my favorites.http://www.terra.com.br/sebastiaosalgado/

Wombat ist die Spitze!

A century of dumping returns to haunt NY

http://nymag.com/news/features/32865/