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by Jan Lundberg
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07 January 2012 |
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[In under 750 words, we identify the problem and perhaps the solution. - Publisher]
I cross yet another polluted river, on an Amtrak bus running late again. I look around the river and contemplate what empties into it, as the nearly full moon illuminates the degraded agribusiness landscape. The 101 Freeway through King City, California has the usual number of typical, inefficient vehicles spewing their exhaust, generating brake dust, tire dust, and dripping toxic crankcase oil and other fluids poisoning wildlife and human alike.
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by Robert Lobitz
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13 December 2011 |
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There are a lot of changes taking place in the world today that are making those who are comfortable with the way things work uncomfortable. The argument you sometimes hear is that when things get disrupted you don't know how things will turn out -- an excuse to keep the status quo.
Among my pursuits and businesses are the caring of birds as protected pets, including via bird cages. It has got me to thinking about humanity and the mind in a fashion that others may never arrive at. |
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by Jan Lundberg
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23 November 2011 |
 There may well be a revolution, peaceful or otherwise, based on the outrageous income disparity perpetrated by greedy, non-civic minded capitalists. However, even if their vast monetary wealth were turned over to "the 99%," divided equally and put to good uses for future generations, the problem is that today's wealth is almost entirely artificial. It has become digital and is little else.
Of useful, lasting value is the land that can grow food, retain water, and withstand climate chaos on the rise. |
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by Peter Crabb
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14 August 2011 |
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As a technology watcher I am fascinated by a particular story that emerges from the archeological record. For over 1 million years, up until about 100,000 years ago, early humans in Africa, Asia, and Europe produced almost identical stone hand axes that barely deviated in design, either across time or space. There was no innovation. That unwavering reproduction of tool templates over the course of so many generations is evidence that the mind of early Homo was well-designed as a high-fidelity replicator of cultural forms.
Today we are also stuck in a technological stasis created by the same blindly replicating mind. |
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by Jan Lundberg
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01 August 2011 |
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When we think of the millions of U.S. Americans who have needlessly attacked or harmed millions of others in dozens of countries, and have harmed themselves -- without fully knowing why -- and when we acknowledge that many in the U.S. seem resigned to allow more of the same, one can extend this phenomenon to the nation's population in general. We can call it a common trait, and find it to be a U.S. tendency upon historical analysis or reading between the lines of corporate news. Let us name the national condition confusion. Under this we can lump poor education, being propagandized, exploitation of the |
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by Jan Lundberg
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11 July 2011 |
 The housing crisis -- foreclosures, homelessness, renters cutting rents, disappearance of credit, slowdown in construction and home-buying -- has gotten much more attention than the food crisis. The growth economy and Wall Street's "financial instruments" have been more important to corporate media and politicians beholden to their more affluent constituents. And rising hunger can be silent, for a time.
But food is coming on strong as more serious: people can double up in a bed to stretch housing, but a plate of food split two ways means two still-hungry people. |
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Petro-addiction 
Songs of Petroleum is available now.
