day 2: my last-ever global warming post (unless, of course, it's not)

believe it or not, i'm not a global-warming denier; rather, i'd call myself a healthy skeptic.

not just because of the recent exposures of shoddy science, cover-ups, conflicts of interest and outright fraud within the movement.

and not just because the movement's disciples keep moving the goalposts as the planet stubbornly refuses to warm on schedule per their vaunted computer models (thus requiring the awkward branding shift from global "warming" to global "climate change").

and not even because of all the high-living fat cats at the top of the movement preaching austerity to the rest of us as they position themselves to reap huge fortunes from the carbon-offset schemes they've devised to save us from ourselves.

no, my skepticism goes beyond all that--in fact, a wall street journal article from back in february summed up my feelings on the subject in a couple well-written paragraphs:

We do know that carbon dioxide and other gases trap and re-radiate heat. We also know that humans have emitted ever-more of these gases since the Industrial Revolution. What we don't know is exactly how sensitive the climate is to increases in these gases versus other possible factors—solar variability, oceanic currents, Pacific heating and cooling cycles, planets' gravitational and magnetic oscillations, and so on.

Given the unknowns, it's possible that even if we spend trillions of dollars, and forgo trillions more in future economic growth, to cut carbon emissions to pre-industrial levels, the climate will continue to change--as it always has.

as it always has.

oh, and speaking of "solar variability",  get this:  scientists who had up until very recently been convinced we were heading into a period of intense solar activity have--as scientists frequently do-- suddenly changed their tune.

According to three studies released in the United States on Tuesday, experts believe the familiar sunspot cycle may be shutting down and heading toward a pattern of inactivity unseen since the 17th century.  

and how did the sun's "inactivity" affect us here on earth back in the 17th century?  glad you asked, because i was curious about that too.

Experts are now probing whether this period of inactivity could be a second Maunder Minimum, which was a 70-year period when hardly any sunspots were observed between 1645-1715, a period known as...

wait for it--here it comes...

the "Little Ice Age."

got that, folks?  according to the scientists over here, the planet's warming--unless, of course, the scientists over there are right, in which case we're about to get our collective asses frozen off.

see where i'm going with this?

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whenever i'm drawn into a discussion with a global-warming fanatic, i always end it with some variation of the following:

"ok, hotshot, i've just appointed you king of the world, given you carte blanche.  solve global warming--you've got 5...4...3...2..."

and, of course, they can't.

because what it comes down to is this:  the world is not gonna give up its cars, its chemicals and its concrete.  no civilization in the history of humanity has ever voluntarily regressed, and we're not going to, either.

and despite all the pie-in-the-sky bullshit to the contrary, there isn't a green option on the horizon with even a snowball's chance in hell of supplanting oil and/or coal in our lifetime.

is mankind a cancer on the planet?  are we fouling our own nest to the point of engineering our own extinction?  yeah, and yeah.

so let's expend our energies on mitigating our impact where it's practical--like accelerating the development of green technologies, curbing the birth rates of the third-worlders and maybe cleaning up the oceans, for instance--and leave the weather to the gods where it belongs, ok?

day 1: zen and the art of the chopped salad

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enough with the current events--let's kick off the month with something truly important.



it seemed like a lot of money--$50 for a few crappy pieces o' plastic with metal teeth--but what can i say, i was desperate.

having tried everything else, including this monstrosity,

great if you need to make coleslaw for the russian army--but otherwise, fahgettaboudit

i'd pretty much given up on my quest to produce the perfect restaurant-quality chopped salad for my quotidian consumption, until somebody turned me onto the borner v.

a mandoline--seriously?  another one of those cheap plastic pieces o' crap?

"seriously," she said. "this one's different.  but make sure you also order the kevlar gloves, because the holder that comes with the thing is useless--otherwise you're gonna shred your fingers."

and damned if the bitch wasn't right on both counts--you gotta get you one of these things.

[btw:  the true zen of the chopped salad is that there is no art to it--this is truly the sausage of vegetarian dishes.  trust me, push whatever you've got left over in the vegetable bin through the borner v, and it's instant magic.


today's masterpiece:

a base of equal parts shredded iceberg and romaine lettuce
half a cucumber
one roma tomato
a quarter medium red onion
two stalks celery
one medium carrot
four radishes
half a jonathan apple
a few crumbles of bleu cheese
some chopped-up salami
half a can of garbanzo beans

i'd give you the recipe for the dressing i whipped up to go along with it, but i'm holding that back in case i run short of posts before the month runs out.  you understand, right?]

i know i'll regret this later

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but in the here and now (i.e., basking in the warm, benevolent glow of my first mkf cocktail in well over a week), the idea of publicly committing to the production of no less than one blogpost a day during the upcoming month of july suddenly seems like a damned fine idea.

and i'm not gonna let the fact that even back in this blog's drunken heyday i never even approached such prolific output deter me from my new goal for even a second.

[having said all that, i totally reserve the right to resort to youtube videos and cute puppy photos if i have to.]

different dance, same ol' song

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one of the pleasures of writing guttermorality is the opportunity it affords me to indulge in the occasional random, drunken rant.

unless you've experienced it yourself, you'll just have to trust me--there's little in life more satisfying than getting a hair up your ass about some dumbass thing or other, letting loose in a satisfying blast, hitting "publish" and stumbling all self-satisfied off to bed.

and such was (almost) the case with this post written back in early may.  problem was, by the time i was done venting my spleen i was too, let's say, exhausted to perform the elementary photoshoppery necessary to create the below composite image--so i hit "save as draft" instead, stumbled my not-quite self-satisfied ass off to bed and promptly forgot all about it.

until tonight, that is.  better late than never, right?

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michelle obama is, i'm sure, a very nice lady, and she's handled her duties as first lady--a job that would have to bore the living shit outta someone with her background--with commendable grace.

but one thing michelle obama is not, is stupid--which makes what she's doing right now not only egregiously dishonest, but laughable.

what am i talking about?  her dancing around the country telling poor and middle-class people to eat healthy when she knows damn well that one of the main reasons poor people eat unhealthy is because a jumbo jack with cheese can be had for less than a third of what a comparably-filling chinese chicken salad would cost 'em, that's what.

and not for any good reason, either.  the cost of producing a bowlful of healthy greens is infinitely less than that of a quarter-pound of hamburger and a slice of cheese (and i'm not just talking dollars and cents--the environmental costs associated with raising, feeding, waste disposal and slaughter of industrially-grown cattle are astronomical).

but you'd never know it when you go to the supermarket, would you?  a pound of hamburger and a pound of arugula will cost you about the same.  it's madness, and all thanks to the way the people over at michelle's husband's department of agriculture--in fact, every department of agriculture since nixon--dole out the goddam subsidies.

basically what it comes down to is, the corn, beef and dairy lobbies throw a lot of campaign money at politicians in washington in order to ensure that shitloads of your tax dollars will be used to keep their respective industries' genetically-modified, excitotoxin-laced, hormone-adulterated products artificially cheap so that you will eat and drink them in abundance and consequently fatten and develop all kinds of mental and physical diseases, at which point the food industry will happily hand you off to the medical and pharmaceutical industries so that they can drain you of whatever dollars you have left before you die.

think i'm being a little harsh, do you? then consider this:  about the same time michelle was kicking off her "let's move" campaign, a division of her husband's department of agriculture euphemistically (and misleadingly) called dairy management, inc. was working with the fast-food industry in an ambitious multi-million-dollar campaign to boost lagging sales by increasing the use of cheap, fat-laden, taxpayer-subsidized cheese in their products by up to 40%.

how did it (and other similar past campaigns) work?  admirably, i'd say--according to the above-linked article,

Americans now eat an average of 33 pounds of cheese a year, nearly triple the 1970 rate.

you really want us to eat healthy, michelle?  then next time you're in bed with your husband, snuggle up to him real close, nibble his ear a little and, in your sweetest, most seductive voice, whisper to him to quit subsidizing fattening, unhealthy foods with our tax dollars, and throw a little of that money to--

oh wait--there's no arugula lobby, you say?  never mind.

fifteen dollars? really?

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if somebody could once and for all please splain me

• why the american "high-end" movie experience of today must include having one's eardrums virtually blasted outta one's skull; and

• why the makers of the american movies of today can't lend even a fraction of the intelligence, imagination and virtuosity employed in the execution of the special effects to the writing of a script that doesn't have holes you could crash a goddam train through

i would be really grateful.

oh, yeah--happy pride

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completely got away from me this year, but better late than never--right, kelly?

[and since i have nothing prepared to commemorate the occasion this year, i'll leave you with my offering from two years ago.  if you haven't read it, do so--it's one of my better efforts, if i do say so myself.]

quote of the month

One of the conclusions that I try to coax, lead, and/or nudge people towards is acceptance of the fact that the economy can't be fixed.

chris martenson

a couple years back when everything really started going to shit and the red and blue teams and their respective cheerleaders were casting hysterical blame back and forth at one another whilst simultaneously assuring us, the scared sheep, they they and they alone knew how to fix it, i looked around for a few voices of reason who could tell me what was really happening.

while i found several--peter schiff and gerald celente among them--chris martenson turned out to be the guy i was looking for.  he's not an ideologue; rather, he's a scientist, and taking his "crash course" was not only among the most productive and eye-opening afternoons i've ever spent, it's also one of the reasons i drink [try it--it's free, it's broken down into easy, doable doses, and i promise once you're done, you won't ever look at the world the same way again].

since then, i've come to depend on his analysis--he strips away all the bullshit like no one else.  a case in point would be the recent post from which the above quote was taken.  read it here--it won't take long, and in a few paragraphs, and after looking at a couple simple charts, you'll understand for yourself what the paul krugmans of the world simply refuse to see, let alone acknowledge.

it really just comes down to math, folks--it's that simple.  the world as we know it is about to change forever, and the sooner you accept that fact, the more time you'll have to prepare for what's coming.

cheerfully submitted,

mkf