my blood is tired

Hey, it’s after 12:30 AM, I just got home from work, and I have to turn around and go back in a few hours, so I don’t think there’s going to be a post tonight… If you have something interesting to share though, please leave a comment. I’d appreciate it.

Posted in Mark's Life | 13 Comments

corporations, theocracy and the lou that holds them together

No time to really blog tonight (I’m in the middle of a big project at work, and it’s going to keep me busy all night long), but I did want to point out a few good clips that I stumbled across just now while eating dinner. The first one is of CNN’s Lou Dobbs on Bill Maher’s show. I don’t really care for Maher, and I’m not all that familiar with Dobbs (although I hear he tends to lean toward the xenophobic), but the clip, which deals primarily with the threat to democracy posed by multi-national corporations, seems to be right on the money. The second clip, also starring our featured performer of the evening, Mr. Lou Dobbs, is an interview that he just conducted with Kevin Phillips, the author of a new book I mentioned here a few days ago entitled “American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21stCentury.” I think you’ll find that the two clips, watched back-to-back, make a pretty nice double-feature. (And, by “pretty nice,” of course, I mean “wrist-slashingly depressing.”) OK, I have to get back to work now. I promise I’ll deliver the goods tomorrow (or the day after that).

Posted in Church and State | 1 Comment

it’s like that story about the and and the grasshopper

A few days ago, I posted something about Sweden and how it had occurred to me that, in the long run, it might have been better for my family if my ancestors had just stayed there. Sure, thanks to their courage, our family has had a few good generations here in America, but, in the long run, I’m wondering if Sweden might not come out on top. While our country seems content with burying its head in the oily sand, Sweden, is actually taking bold steps toward sustainability. (The Swedish government has stated that they are working toward an oil-free ecomony by 2020. As some of my friends have pointed out, it’s significantly easier to do that in a country of Sweden’s size than it would be here, but I still think it speaks well of their leadership and their ability to both acknowledge reality and plan intelligently… At any rate, with that as a backdrop, I thought that I’d share clips from two stories that I happened across this evening. The first, about Sweden, comes from the MIT Technology Review:

A Swedish environmental engineering company said Monday it has received a 30 million kronor (euro3.2 million; US$3.9 million) order to build the world’s largest biogas plant.

The plant to be built in the city of Goteborg will have a capacity of producing 1,600 cubic meters (56,000 cubic feet) of biogas per hour, said Hans Malm, chief executive of the Lackeby Water company.

Biogas is made from decomposing organic material and can be used as fuel in cars with special biogas engines, which emit a fraction of the carbon dioxide released by diesel engines. In Sweden, the interest in biogas has increased as the price of oil soars. Sales of biogas-powered cars increased by 49 percent in 2005…

Sweden’s first passenger train running solely on biogas, billed as the world’s first, will start scheduled operations later this week. The train, which is fitted with two biogas bus engines, can carry up to 54 passengers and run for about 600 kilometers (400 miles) on a full tank. The top speed is 130 kph (81 mph)…

And now, from America, we have this USA Today story:

Americans continue their march away from congested and costly areas halfway through the decade, settling in more remote counties even if it means longer commutes, according to Census population estimates released Thursday…

It’s not just the decade of the exurbs but the decade of the exurbs of the exurbs,” says William Frey, demographer at the Brookings Institution. “People are leaving expensive cores and going as far out as they can to get a big house and a big yard. Suburbia is moving much further out.”

Some of the fastest-growing counties from July 1, 2004, to July 1, 2005, include Caroline and King George counties in Virginia, north of Richmond and south of Washington, and Grundy County, Ill., about 60 miles southwest of the Chicago Loop.

Cook County, which includes Chicago and older suburbs such as Schaumburg and Arlington Heights, lost more people since 2000 than any other county: 73,000 to 5.3 million. “They’re flowing out of Cook into the fringes,” says Kenneth Johnson, a demographer at Loyola University in Chicago. “People move out of Chicago and into suburban Cook County and now they’re losing to the outer suburbs.”

Rising gas prices do not seem to have steered Americans away from this outward push. Skyrocketing housing prices in major markets are a major contributor to growth in far-flung areas, Frey says…

Virginia’s King George County, for example, is attracting people who commute 90 miles to Washington. The spillover began along Interstate 95 south of the capital and then moved east toward King George. The county grew 6.7% to 20,637 from 2004 to 2005…

So, I ask you, which country do you think will be more viable in the longterm (when fuel scarcity makes 90-mile commutes impossible), the one investing in biofuel and masstransit, or the one building increasingly larger homes farther and farther from city centers? (And, by the way, I think that Frey’s comment about “skyrocketing housing prices” in cities being responsible for people moving to ever more distant suburbs, is ridiculous. The truth is, there are very affordable homes in cities. What there aren’t, however, are these virgin little castles that a majority of our fellow Americans seem to want. What Fry is really saying isn’t that home prices are too high in cities, but that it would cost a hell of a lot to tear down a historic neighborhood and fill it with the kinds of whitebread, history-free McMansions that today’s American consumers demand.) Sure, maybe it’s not fair to compare Sweden with its 9 million citizens to the US and its 298 million, but I do think that we’re going to start losing our best and brightest citizens to countries, like Sweden, that have at least started to draft a somewhat coherent plan.

Posted in Alternative Energy | 7 Comments

reading about the american theocracy

I’m busy tonight with my new cartoon for the Ann Arbor Paper, but, if I weren’t, I think I’d be driving out to the bookstore to buy Kevin Phillips’ new book, “American Theocracy : The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21stCentury.” Here’s a clip from the review in Salon:

…Phillips’ book is very valuable in the way he brings all the strands together and puts them in context. He has a history of good judgment that affords him the authority to make big-picture claims: In 1993, the New York Times Book Review wrote of him, “through more than 25 years of analysis and predictions, nobody has been as transcendentally right about the outlines of American political change as Kevin Phillips.” Other recent books foresee American meltdown; James Howard Kunstler’s “The Long Emergency” deals with some of the same gathering threats as “American Theocracy.” Kunstler is a far more engaging writer than Phillips, but he’s also more prone to doomsday speculation, and he sometimes seems to relish the apocalyptic scenario he conjures. It’s Phillips’ sobriety and gravitas that gives “American Theocracy” ballast, and that makes it frightening…

Speaking of Kunstler, I just heard from a friend that he’s scheduled to speak in Ann Arbor, at the Shaman Drum Bookshop, on April 21. I don’t know that he’ll agree, but I’ve written to him and asked if he’d be willing to answer a few of our questions here at MM.com. I’ll keep you posted. And, if he says yes, I’ll start a thread for potential lines of inquiry. In the meantime, read his book, “The Long Emergency,” and start thinking about what you’d like to ask him. (note to self: Maybe it’s time to restart the Ypsi/Arbor Progressive reading group.)

Posted in Church and State | 2 Comments

an update on the corner brewery



Yesterday, on their blog, Matt and Rene Greff mentioned that they were looking for volunteers to come and help them work on their new brewery (in exchange for free beer). Being the dick that I am, I showed up bright and early this morning with Clementine and my camera, and no intention whatsoever of helping. What you see here are a few of the resulting photos… As you can see, there’s still quite a bit of work to be done, but they’ve made a hell of a lot of progress over the last month, and, according to Matt, they’re still on schedule for a mid-April production run and a May launch. So, start saving your pennies – the first annual “Buy Mark Maynard a Beer Day” will be here before you know it.

Posted in Ypsilanti | 7 Comments

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