tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-142232702013-06-18T23:42:09.948-07:00While Downward Bound: Hope in a Darkening Age... news, comment, arts, ecology, wisdom, obsessions, the future... "THE END OF ALL INTELLIGENT ANALYSIS IS TO CLEAR THE WAY FOR SYNTHESIS."--H.G. Wells. "It's not dark yet, but it's getting there."--Bob Dylan.Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.comBlogger4494125This is an XML content feed. It is intended to be viewed in a newsreader or syndicated to another site, subject to copyright and fair use.tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-51079152267290986972013-06-18T23:42:00.000-07:002013-06-18T23:42:09.975-07:002013-06-18T23:42:09.975-07:00

Survived the first of the Pirates-Giants series, which the home team (Pittsburgh) won two of three.  Both teams go on, wounded but always entertaining. I'm not watching the actual games but I am noting the NBA finals--I never thought I'd ever root for the San Antonio Spurs, but they are playing the Heat and now it's all up to a game 7.  It's sort of amazing that the Spurs are still built

Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-16430676761502985242013-06-17T00:05:00.000-07:002013-06-17T00:06:14.078-07:002013-06-17T00:06:14.078-07:00

Last week Colorado was hit with a sudden and surprisingly ferocious series of wildfires.  CNN reported: Over several hellish days, the Black Forest Fire singed more than 15,000 acres north of Colorado Springs. What's left behind, in some areas, "looks like a nuclear bomb went off," according to El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa. In the first few days after the first broke out, for still

Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-65445960739223138002013-06-12T00:55:00.001-07:002013-06-12T00:55:14.004-07:002013-06-12T00:55:14.004-07:00

While some media coverage of the International Energy Agency report this week stressed what it confirmed about the ongoing climate crisis, the Agency itself (and some news reports) stressed its proposals to prevent runaway climate deterioration and collapse that would likely spell the end for this human civilization. The report does confirm the urgency of other science-based studies: that (as

Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-74671409628455346352013-06-12T00:15:00.000-07:002013-06-12T00:17:39.194-07:002013-06-12T00:17:39.194-07:00

The revelations about national security telephone and internet data mining bring up a lot of issues, as well as a lot of misinformation, opportunism and hysterical bloviating.  Here's an explanation and defense of the program, here's what such a program could lead to, and here's Josh Marshall's careful parsing of the whistleblowing part of it. While all of this bears monitoring, I have perhaps

Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-42721832990670681592013-06-11T01:31:00.000-07:002013-06-11T01:31:04.649-07:002013-06-11T01:31:04.649-07:00

"The best you can write is the best you are." Thoreau

Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-6652375536759950482013-06-09T20:56:00.001-07:002013-06-09T20:56:35.065-07:002013-06-09T20:56:35.065-07:00

It's time to step back a bit from baseball, as my two teams begin what looks like a solid month playing each other.  The Giants and the Pirates start visiting each other's spectacular ball parks on Tuesday.  A glass half full way of looking at it is that I win either way.  On the other hand... A sport that I don't follow at all is hockey.  The few hockey games I've watched were Stanley Cup

Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-91237263039883365252013-06-06T20:52:00.003-07:002013-06-07T12:59:02.117-07:002013-06-07T12:59:02.117-07:00

Two of the political news sites I check every day--and fairly often, the only two--are Teagan Goddard's Political Wire and Talking Points Memo, also known as TPM.  They would be characterized politically as not right wing, and I have found them to be dependable in their facts.  The Political Wire is more of an aggregator (so every new poll's conclusion gets a flat headline that so and so is ahead

Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-57931521449715100132013-06-05T20:54:00.002-07:002013-06-05T21:05:50.482-07:002013-06-05T21:05:50.482-07:00

On the 45th anniversary of his assassination, some words on the future, from speeches made at various times and places by Robert F. Kennedy. "The future is not a gift: it is an achievement. Every generation helps make its own future. This is the essential challenge of the present." "The future does not belong to those who are content with today, apathetic toward common problems and their

Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-35146117209214139842013-06-05T20:22:00.000-07:002013-06-06T00:56:30.211-07:002013-06-06T00:56:30.211-07:00

With several appointments and nominations recently, President Obama is saying--among other things--didn't you notice?  I was reelected.  The people he's hiring seem more than ever the people he really wants to be hiring, with hopes that they will move things forward, even beyond his term. Today's big appointment was Susan Rice as National Security Advisor, an appointment I advised that he make

Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-61617828219018764202013-06-01T17:50:00.000-07:002013-06-01T17:51:06.216-07:002013-06-01T17:51:06.216-07:00

On the Stop It! side of addressing the climate crisis, everybody seems to be waiting for the shoe to drop on the Tar Sands Oil Pipeline, with the assumption that sometime soon President Obama is going to approve its extension from Canada to the Gulf. The issues involved continue to be clarified in opposition, however.  Bill McKibben has been leading a vocal and demonstrative opposition on

Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-45416415680160911782013-05-30T00:11:00.000-07:002013-05-30T19:43:25.641-07:002013-05-30T19:43:25.641-07:00

As May ends, my teams are diverging.  After a series of improbable victories, climaxed by the first inside the park home run ever to win a game in San Francisco, the Giants are stumbling.  Some key injuries are hurting them (including to Angel Pagan, who hit that homer and hasn't played since) but they are really struggling away from their home field. That could prove fatal to their season--

Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-44266728960400025902013-05-28T20:54:00.001-07:002013-05-28T20:56:51.560-07:002013-05-28T20:56:51.560-07:00

From: Doonesbury.   Click comic to enlarge to readable size. Meanwhile, Andy Borowitz reports on the meeting between Senator McCain and Syrian rebels: Syrian Rebels Urge McCain to Get Over Losing to Obama:   SYRIA (The Borowitz Report)—During a meeting yesterday with Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona), Syrian rebels told the senator that he still seemed “really bitter” about losing the 2008

Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-76688375996810871892013-05-24T18:19:00.000-07:002013-05-24T18:19:01.087-07:002013-05-24T18:19:01.087-07:00

Well, there's the immigration bill, President Obama's landmark speech trying to inject some sanity into the overreaction to terrorism, etc. etc. and I find myself without the motivation to pay much attention.  I'm not watching the same people say the same sorts of things on television, or offer the same opinions and "news judgment" in print media. Right now I'm enjoying the weather, my

Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-1246072981099323282013-05-18T02:02:00.003-07:002013-05-18T02:02:55.428-07:002013-05-18T02:02:55.428-07:00

To be more explicit, quoting from this piece by Robert Liddy in the Portland (Maine) Daily Sun: "The moment marks the highest concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the entirety of human history; at current rates of growth NOAA predicts eight hundred parts per million will be the norm by the year 2100. We are on a climate change path that will make a mockery of political name

Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-25739876329089284482013-05-18T01:56:00.000-07:002013-05-18T02:50:18.231-07:002013-05-18T02:50:18.231-07:00

After a homestand of heroics, the San Francisco Giants went on the road to play with flashes of brilliance (coming back from 6-0 to win over the Rockies), but also awfully like a Little League team, making odd distracted errors in Toronto and Colorado.  Entertaining still, but still... One cool note: The Giants brought up Brett Pill, formerly of the Humboldt Crabs, and he doubled and scored

Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-57718193971635066192013-05-16T01:14:00.000-07:002013-05-16T01:18:46.416-07:002013-05-16T01:18:46.416-07:00

The week's biggest scandal!!! (Unless it's this one!!!!!!)

Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-83888331041270183702013-05-09T00:41:00.001-07:002013-05-16T01:14:36.492-07:002013-05-16T01:14:36.492-07:00

Stop me if you've heard this one--summer ice melt in part of Antarctica is the most extensive in a thousand years. Arctic summer sea ice is melting faster than previously believed, and scientists now expect that it will be gone completely in 2050. A Peruvian glacier has melted 1600 years worth of ice in the last 25.  Professor Wagstaff (author of the article in The Week) sees this as A Bad

Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-25328288481452853362013-05-08T23:28:00.000-07:002013-05-08T23:28:12.853-07:002013-05-08T23:28:12.853-07:00

I've had better things to be depressed about than politics recently, but it's hard to go completely cold turkey. And the news is not all bad: President Obama's approval is up, congressional GOPers are less than half of it,  most people believe they're to blame for screwing things up.  But of course that doesn't change anything. Pew also analyzed the 2012 numbers and found that Romney got all

Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-6590254649589695562013-05-06T01:12:00.001-07:002013-05-06T01:18:04.762-07:002013-05-06T01:18:04.762-07:00

Well, before we get into this week's bad news let's talk some sports. The NBA playoffs are going into their second round.  If you had to choose which of the three California teams would make it at least that far, it probably wouldn't be the Golden State Warriors and the classic shooting of Stephen Curry (pictured with Kobe), but that's the facts. The Kobe-less Lakers got decisively swept, but

Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-27794364163352110412013-05-05T01:41:00.000-07:002013-05-05T01:41:37.244-07:002013-05-05T01:41:37.244-07:00

The otherwise incomprehensible hysteria of rabid rightists about the imposition of Sharia law--which absolutely nobody is really trying to impose--is itself a signal of what's really at work.  Scratch a hysteric and you'll often find that what they fear is what they really want to do, at least in the cases where the opposites are the same. This is one of them.  Rabid rightists in North

Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-9926879395001264012013-05-05T01:32:00.001-07:002013-05-05T01:32:30.270-07:002013-05-05T01:32:30.270-07:00

There's unfortunately nothing new in the Pew study of the US 'recovery' from the Great Recession, which showed that it was a spectacular recovery for the rich at the expense of everybody else (whose net worth actually dropped between 2009 and 2011), or in New York's analysis, based on its own more sophisticated criteria, that nearly half the city (all four boroughs) is in poverty. It's against

Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-11807965779716428342013-04-26T01:10:00.000-07:002013-04-26T01:10:01.762-07:002013-04-26T01:10:01.762-07:00

The Boston Marathon bombing and aftermath brought out the best and the worst in American life.  You could see them both for example on the same Rachel Maddow program (Wednesday's): the millions in contributions to help the victims, the Rabid Right conspiracy theories and xenophobia. There are also many kinds of attempts to figure out how to prevent such destructive actions in the future.  

Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-48269822680707776162013-04-22T23:52:00.000-07:002013-04-22T23:52:08.568-07:002013-04-22T23:52:08.568-07:00

Earth was a forest planet.  Forests and oceans.  Humankind cut down most of the forests, thereby longterm cutting its own throat. Emerald Isle?  Ireland has no forests anymore.  The Black Forest of Germany?  It's a cake.  Greece?  Not for milennia.  The great pine forests of eastern America, gone, gone, gone.  The precious redwoods of California, 95% gone. Forests (and oceans) have been

Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-32979576363822679962013-04-21T23:12:00.000-07:002013-04-21T23:14:45.060-07:002013-04-21T23:14:45.060-07:00

Of all the moments in the Boston events last week, this is the one that sticks most in my mind--the audio of the firefight in Watertown, recorded from a home that's both near and far from the action--far enough that amidst the sound of the shooting, there's the sound of barking dogs and a bird.  It's the barking dogs and the bird that got to me. Otherwise, there's this summary of the events,

Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-83093062764345289842013-04-21T03:49:00.003-07:002013-04-21T03:49:41.538-07:002013-04-21T03:49:41.538-07:00

"The most inspirational literature I ever read was Dostoevsky or Camus.  Then I believe his assertions when he says you only have one choice in your life: it's whether or not to commit suicide.  If you don't commit suicide, you have to treat your life with a great deal of energy and assertiveness." Jim Harrison

Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0