Dogs and Chocolate
I’ve been engaging in a little debate over at the Oil Drum, on the relative merits and risks of nuclear plants (for generating electric power, that is). My primary pro-nuke “learned friend” has come right out and said openly that in his (I am pretty sure he is male) opinion, Chernobyl and Fukushima are no biggie:
If we keep up the failure rate of every 25 years, then we might have perhaps eight such zones in a stable state, as in 200 years, the first exclusion zone (Chernobyl) will be back to normal.
Eight circles with 30 kilometers radius = 22600 km^2, that’s like New Hampshire, or half the size of Denmark. Not much. I think you may choose to get worked up about me saying this, but you guys need to get down to Earth and put things in perspective.
[...] I take the costs. I get power, my child gets power, his child gets power and the grandkid also builds a new plant with the knowledge and economic growth the nuke has provided him with. The easily handled waste is nothing in comparison to that.
I’m going to skip the “global cannibalism” aspect of this argument (since we’ve already gone there). I’d like to touch on another aspect of the “economic growth” mantra, and that is the assumption that if X is good, more of X must be better — that more of what we want is always better than “enough”. We like toys, so some toys are better than no toys, and more toys are better than some toys. We like stimulation and novelty — some novelty is better than no novelty, so more novelty is better than some novelty. And so on.
There are several real-world cases in which either “what we want” is not good for us, or “too much of what we want” is not good for us. These cases are erased by the Party of More (the neolib/cornucopian social contract of ever-expanding markets lifting all boats).
For starters, we might consider the curious case of dogs and chocolate. Most dogs like chocolate — they really like chocolate. They will eat prodigious quantities of chocolate given the chance. But the odd thing is that chocolate doesn’t like dogs. It contains theobromine, a toxin which humans can filter out and excrete quickly; the canine liver apparently doesn’t do nearly so good a job of filtering this particular compound, and the theobromine stays in the dog’s body for far longer, causing discomfort and even cardiac arrest. The dog is vulnerable to the toxicity of chocolate, as well as to the reward/addictive properties that endear it to other eaters.
Are there things to which we humans are vulnerable, which can damage us, yet which seem very tasty and desirable, so that we want to consume large quantities? I suggest that there are, and that More of these things is not, therefore, a Good but a Bad. Obvious “vulnerability window” substances are alcohol, sugar, etc. But there may be vulnerabilities in our personalities — or souls, if I may trespass for a moment on theological territory — to certain desirable things which have toxic effects. Back to this later.
Aside from idiosyncratic vulnerability, there is toxicity via brute overdose. Kitchen salt is not severely toxic, but if you eat enough of it you can make yourself quite ill. Eating just a little too much of it over a long time can also make you ill in various ways (hypertension for example). Another case where More is not a Good but a Bad: the substance is not in itself harmful in moderation, nor is the consumer uniquely vulnerable to it, but too much of it is not good for anyone.
Now combine these possible toxicities (literal or metaphorical) with what we know of the habituation effect. We are gratified by experiences like novelty, ownership of positional (Veblen) goods, the act of choosing and acquiring things, social status, sexual excitement, achievement, comfort, and so on. But if we experience one of these gratifications frequently or continuously, it loses its “thrill” — we become habituated.
To rediscover the thrill, the feeling of gratification which we remember, requires one of two strategies: (a) go without the gratification for some time and then re-encounter it later, or (b) increase the intensity of the gratifying experience. Simple example: if you spend some time hiking in the back country or cruising in a small boat, you will be living on “camping food” for a while, without fresh fruit and vegetables for the most part (unless you do some successful foraging). The taste of the first fresh vegetables — a sweet carrot, a crisp fresh apple — after a few days of deprivation, is an unforgettable thrill. Two weeks later, back in “ordinary life,” with supermarket produce always available every day of the week, an apple is just an apple and a carrot is just a carrot. Moreover, a 5lb bag of apples isn’t any more thrilling than one apple.
Habituation is a concept we all understand as part of the pathology called “addiction”: the addict receives large neurochemical rewards for the first few experiences of the stimulant of choice, but thereafter the “thrill” or gratification from each subsequent dose diminishes and the addict responds (according to simple logic) with the More strategy. More of the same substance re-creates the original experience… sort of. But by now, neurophysical changes are taking place so that the absence of the substance is not just dull or tedious: it’s unpleasant or painful, and it takes a baseline consumption level just to feel “normal.” More is not only not Good — it’s not even “more” any more 
[Though I've been thinking about these topics for many years, Nate Hagen's recent article prodded me into this exploratory essay. He goes into more detail about diminishing returns, novelty, appetite, etc., possible reasons why we hominids might have these proclivities, and implications for cultures and societies and their resource bases.]
I’m going to herd the cats (tentatively) in two parallel directions from here (with no pretence at making any kind of finished argument, position statement, or proposal — just asking Socratic questions). There are two areas in which we notoriously insist that More=Good. One is energy/technology: it’s quite heretical to suggest that technological progress may not result in a better life for one and all, or that higher energy consumption may not equal greater happiness. Another (for liberals at any rate) is sex.
Sex is good, so more sex is better, and so 24×7 sexual stimulation and titillation is therefore a great good and should lead to increased happiness.
A recent study suggested that a sample of “normal” men (whatever that means) were oddly affected by viewing photographs of attractive women.
Male participants answering the war-related questions “showed more militant attitudes” if they had viewed the photos of attractive women.
Men did not adopt more aggressive attitudes when answering questions about trade or other international issues after viewing similar photographs, but they responded with heightened belligerence specifically to war-related questions. It seems like our neuroscientists report every few months the result of some new brain-scanning experiment that co-locates the neural clusters for aggression and sexual arousal in males, so it’s not entirely surprising that sexual stimulus might elicit some kind of competitive or aggressive response. If this is the case, then (contrary to the claims of the “safety valve” theorists), a continuous visible presence of, say, pornographic imagery in a culture could lead to a more pervasive state of aggression and militaristic enthusiasm among men in that culture.
Like dogs and chocolate, might men be vulnerable to certain types of stimulation which have potentially harmful side-effects even though they seem tasty and whet the appetite for more? In other words, could this be another case where More is not the same as Good? (I am sidestepping for now the whole question of the aggressive content of porn as a form of propaganda and the social justice issues involved in its production, and concentrating solely on the individual and social effects of porn on the male consumer — begging a whole bunch of questions in fact, but sometimes it’s interesting to approach an apparently intractable problem from a different angle.)
Male porn consumers report a consumption spiral similar to other habituation effects, in which initial exposure is highly gratifying or stimulation, but repetitive exposure nullifies the effect and novelty is required in order to jolt a jaded palate. This is not the response predicted by the “safety valve” theory, which suggests that porn satisfies male sexual appetite in a “harmless” way (again begging the question of harm done in the course of producing it) and should result in lowered demand and appetite.
From a marketing standpoint, habituation is wonderful news. It means that consumers can become locked in an escalating spiral of consumption (therefore spending more and more to achieve the same result); it’s good for sales. If there are “externalised costs” associated with meeting that demand (and when aren’t there?), however, the habituation effect may be extremely negative for the community. Giving men “everything they want” (in the form of sexual stimulation via porn) may just up the ante for what they expect and want; indeed, with the ubiquitisation of porn over the last forty years has come an increase in demands placed by men on their female partners to re-enact sexual practises depicted in porn.
Maybe getting “everything we want” (predict and provide) is not the same thing as getting what is good for us, or what is good for our community. There is plenty of published testimony emerging that even committed relationships can suffer from “too much sex” (for reasons related to habituation, overstimulation, etc); that frequent and intense lovemaking (a Good Thing, right?) can actually lead to alienation and disaffection. Counterintuitive, and yet quite consistent with other human experiences around appetite, satiation, stimulation, habituation, and so on.
Proponents of technocornucopianism also believe that More is Good; they believe that more energy consumption always means happier people, and that more energy consumption means growth — like the debating opponent quoted above, who believes that with sufficient electricity each generation will enjoy a superior life to the one before it, ad infinitum. However, one major side effect of the explosion of cheap energy unleashed by the fossil fuel era has been that humans can now consume planetary resources far faster and more lavishly than ever before. Like dogs and chocolate, we seem unable to stop consuming even when the result may be to make us very ill. We also become very swiftly habituated to energy availability and technological novelty: what seemed really cool just five years ago is already dated and “backward,” and we expect and demand fresh “breakthroughs” and “miracles” on a regular basis.
Anyone who could magically provide humanity with energy “too cheap to meter” today would, contrary to popular opinion, not be doing us any favours; they would be accelerating the drawdown of our last reserves of topsoil, forests, fish, freshwater, etc. More is not necessarily Good; if you have a friend who’s hooked on heroin, giving him more heroin is not such a great idea.
Aside from the “externalised cost” of planetary liquidation, many of the benefits of this explosion of cheap energy turn out to have associated disbenefits even for their recipients: the convenience and thrill of personal flying carpets (aka automobiles) and affordable private entertainment technologies is not unrelated to an epidemic of sedentarism and related pathologies plus atrophy of many social networking behaviours and skills; to the re-engineering of urban and suburban environments and architecture to new, alienating, crime-encouraging, pedestrian-hostile forms; to the death of traditional urban centres, and so on [obligatory Jane Jacobs hat tip]. More — more GMOs, more and bigger cars, more “sophisticated” pesticides, more “advanced” pharmaceuticals, more automated industrial processes, more “streamlined” commercial protocols — is not looking so much like Good as it used to. [Obligatory hat tip, as ever, to Illich and his "watersheds" meme.]
An overdose of cheap energy might be as bad for us as an overdose of salt.
Or maybe we are uniquely vulnerable to, say, technology and energy? Have we considered the possibility? Why is an iPhone so damned attractive, when you can’t eat it and it has no particular scent? Someone on a doomy discussion thread recently [apologies if it was one of our readers -- I'm a bit scattered lately due to overwork and having a hard time remembering where I saw/read things] mentioned field observations of chimps compulsively handling plastic objects (iirc to the exclusion of normal social and gathering activities), hypnotised, fascinated by the slick unnatural surfaces. Maybe there’s something about the seamlessness and perfection of manufactured objects that pushes buttons we don’t even know we have. Certainly we’re wired for laziness (apparent high EROEI), and hence primed to embrace with enthusiasm anything that looks or smells like a free lunch (aka labour-saving devices or “energy slaves”).
E M Forster speculated about where this vulnerability might lead us (“The Machine Stops”).
OK, running out of steam here and it’s nearly bedtime for this chimp, time to break out of that fascination with the glowing little screen and the smooth plastic keyboard. Time to summarise, or wind this ramble up somehow.
So the questions I’m left with — and I’ve reached this same point from different starting gates over the last few years — are “when is More not equal to Good?” and “what does Enough mean?”.
Exploring “when is More!=Good” has led me to these talking points of idiosyncratic vulnerability, overdose, and habituation which I think could do with more exploration.
Because all our arguments with the technocornucopians, the would-be providers of nuclear power, those who dream of space elevators, the Growth Merchants, the entire economic orthodoxy of our time — all those arguments are with people whose fundamental credo is that More=Good. To combat that fundamental belief we need compelling stories, counterexamples, other ways of seeing the pattern of More and Consumption in which negative consequences are well understood, vivid, immediate, easily understood.
Like dogs and chocolate.
Stan:
That “golden mean” thing is not so archaic after all.
Applies to character-things like “courage,” too. Too little is timidity or cowardice, too much is recklessness. I wonder where the fascination with extreme sports figures into your template here (mindless courage without any object… daring for daring’s sake). Very much a boy-thang fer sure.
Also have to wonder how much more vulnerable we are to these temptations when we are separated from a natural environment. Something I’ve noticed with babies… I’ve had a fair amount of experience with babies. They get into things constantly inside the house, and have an unerring instinct to go for exactly those things you don’t want them to touch (electrical sockets, tufts of animal hair, pennies that fall out of your pocket, etc). TV remotes and cell phones.
They are also much fussier when they are indoors. In most cases, if I’m dealing with an agitated baby, if I take them outside to a place where there are natural things (trees, wind, bug and bird noises), they calm down almost instantly and fall into a contented trance.
As they get older, still restricted to an indoor, predominantly dead environment, they fatten up on frankenfood and settle into the virtual thrills of video games.
I have to wonder in what ways our built environment and its relentless artificiality drive us to seek the kinds of unhealthy stimulation you are describing. “Comfort food,” for example (usually a manufactured dose of fructose, sodium and transfats). Does our built environment make us more susceptible to the addiction to more? Does it naturalize addiction?
Then there is the question of ethical sensibility again. The golden mean is not something anyone believes in any more (in fact, it is highly subversive). The same liberalism you describe that refuses to define excess because it undermines some abstract and apotheosized “rights” claim… posits the anti-ethic of “as much as you want,” and then grants the same ethical amnesty to those who engage in demand-production to stimulate people to want more. Advertizing directly to children is perhaps the most egregious example of this.
Here is a long documentary on the history of “public relations.” Well worth the time.
One central question is not why people fall for this, but why some people don’t. Therein are some of the answers we seek, I suspect.
19 June 2011, 7:14 amC.C.:
Good post, De. I ran across a similar youtube video about the addicting/loss of thrill aspect of pornography in young men. The video suggests that male addiction to porn is the direct cause of erectile dysfunction in teenage to middle-twenties men.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQHLF5BL9e8
I’m not a neurosurgeon, so I couldn’t really view this video with a critical eye. I’ll admit that, for the most part, this video preaches to the choir for me, and I didn’t watch this video with a lot of skepticism as I usually do.
BTW, Happy Father’s Day, Stan! Hope you get to spend some time with your children/grandkids!
19 June 2011, 1:49 pmStan:
Thanks, and damn! Porn addiction creates a dysfunction that can be treated with new drugs… because erectile dysfunction is The End!!!, etc etc… of course, this makes perfect sense, though this is the first time I’ve seen this correlation. Good snag.
19 June 2011, 1:59 pmC.C.:
Actually, Stan, you’re going to love this because this will further your point. If you look into the other parts of the video, this maker of the video suggests that E.D. pills such as Viagra and Ciallis do not work for this type of porn-addicted-E.D..
Damn!! I guess this is one of those problems that can’t actually be easily sidestepped with medication (although I suspect that drug companies are looking into this “problem”).
“Damn, you mean I’ll ACTUALLY have to confront my problems with masculinity and the fact that patriarchy is reaping a toll on my intimacy with women? This is not convenient, I want a new drug.”
Yes, my fellow males, you are actually going to have to do this the hard way on this one (no pun intended).
19 June 2011, 3:06 pmStan:
musical interlude
Important to note the sterile apolitical nature of this (PORN-ED) vid, and its default to phallocentrism.
19 June 2011, 3:15 pmcabdriver:
Come on, Stan. It’s a lightweight tongue-in-cheek rock song. Does every work of art have to carry a political message, or require a political subtext to be assigned to it?
As for “phallocentrism”- well, let’s just jettison 98% of the entire canon of rock and blues music. Then with the rest, you can hear what “sterile” really sounds like.
Blues, rock, R&B music overwhelmingly comes from, and expresses, one sexual (or “gendered”, if you prefer) point of view or another. Some particular expressions have undeniably been offensive or power-trippy. Others, not so much. Some are just funny.
And it’s entirely possible to express a viewpoint that’s both “phallocentric” and confessionally vulnerable, sugar pie honeybunch.
But what is really bothering me about this discussion- and discussions similar to this one- is how it’s digressed into a hunt for ulterior motives, and an attempt to center the discussion around sexual politics rather than simply seeking an honest discussion of the merits and risks of nuclear power technologies.
A commentary centered around the idea that “you’re in favor of nuclear power because you’re a male” does not constitute much grist for responsive discussion, in my view.
Similarly, I don’t care for discussions of energy policy that degenerate into two sides each accusing the other of being in the pocket of competing sectors in the energy industry.
Ulterior motives are easy to attribute, even easier to insinuate, and it’s often virtually impossible to indemnify oneself against such accusations- especially when the accusation relates to one’s attributed status. The most obvious gambit in response is usually counter-charging. And I’ve had enough of wading through that nosie. It isn’t discourse, it’s miasma.
When it comes to nuclear power, I’m interested in nuts and bolts (and how they fail, or not). My personal viewpoint is that I’m open to the technology- particularly in regard to the promise of it’s improvements and advances over the past 30 years, many of which have been tested, although scarcely implemented at all.
That said, I think that the nuclear power industry may have sounded it’s own death knell with Fukushima, as well as with the other recent faults and vulnerabilities found in recent inspections. In too many cases, they’ve fallen down on their responsibility on the basics- openness, due diligence, maintenance, the need for upgrades and improvements- and now they’re liable to pay the ultimate price: the demise of the entire nuclear industry.
I don’t applaud that prospect. I think it’s going to be difficult to find a replacement that isn’t worse.
And that point in turn leads into to what I find to be the most cogent ground for productive discussion in De’s comment: how much down-sizing of energy demand can the human population realistically stand, over the next 20-40 years?
I don’t know. But I have relatively little interest in a discussion of the ideals of anti-materialism, or the virtue of simplicity and low technology. I want to know HOW MUCH simplicity and low technology we’re really talking about. I’m interested in the probability levels of practical outcomes resulting from, say, a 20% reduction in electric grid power demand in the USA, or Brazil, or China. I want to talk specifics.
And it seems to me that both of the opposing positions on the issue of the global future of energy supply and demand prefer to traffic in hyperbole and vision prophecies, rather than sober assessments of what those visions entail for the most intractable cases- like the masses of people living in cities around the world. It’s easy to talk about going off the grid in rural Canada. How do the grid-dependent inhabitants of Mexico City- or even a significant fraction of them- manage that process?
I’m gratified that people around here know about the Oil Drum website.
I think it would be a good thing to see some Ferals show up in discussions on the Long Now website, now that their blogs are open to comments.
The Long Now Foundation is the most optimistic, hopeful group of techno-utopian futurists I’ve found on the Internet.
Yes, they’re approximately 100% affluent white males with professional credentials, most with long-standing ties as consultants or players in corporate or governmental ventures around the globe.
That’s why I’d like to see them get some input from the folks over here, who are in my view among the brightest bulbs in the Pariah Intellectual community, or whatever the damn thing is supposed to be called.
I personally would prefer that skeptical or critical input directed their way be aimed at practical consideration of the specifics of particular ideas and activities- whether their remedies would actually work as promised; whether any of their projects would amount to more than cosmetic showpieces; the blind spots, vulnerabilities, or unintended consequences of their designs; whether there could be other alternatives that achieve better results without the grand technological ambition that the foundation so often endorses.
By contrast, I don’t think that simply sniping at them with allegations of being old out of touch rich white men indulging their self-flattering fantasies would make for much of a productive discussion. Accusations of sinister conspiratorial collusion or ruling class elite management will amount to a similar dead end.
Even if one or more of those things might be the case- it’s much more informative to an audience to develop evidence in support of those notions in the course of generating a dialogue than by badgering people.
If that last part sounds like too much pre-emptive admonishment- well, maybe it is. But I’ve spent entirely too much time on Salon.com recently, where debates over IDEAS have all too often been subsumed by the sort of petty acrimonies reminiscent of rival cliques in a junior high school.
I’m bored with it. I check out. I spend time in Internet discussion groups to learn something, not to get my rocks off in group encounter therapy.
Anyway, the Long Now Foundation- http://longnow.org/
Check them out. I think they make for a useful Antithesis to the post-catastrophist autonomous anarchism that’s emphasized on this site as the best direction for the human future. Maybe there’s even room to acknowledge a common overlap of ideals, along with productive merging on at least some of the means to get to our goals. Although someone would have to enter into the conversation to get a reasonable idea of that.
21 June 2011, 1:23 pmStan:
I confused you. Sorry. The Huey Lewis vid was a joke (because CC had said in the previous post, “I want a new drug.”). My bad.
The vid I was referring to was the phallocentric one on porn causing “erectile dysfunction” (an almost hilarious example of the medicalization of language). Phallocentric because it focused exclusively on the harm done to the phallus by the numbing effect of constant porn consumption. Not the harm done to anyone else (like women), just the poor male masturbater.
21 June 2011, 1:55 pmcabdriver:
Yes, you did confuse me on that. I didn’t audit the porn-related video.
I know there’s an ongoing discussion on porn around here, and the extent of it’s perniciousness. I simply don’t find porn to be all that important one way or another. That’s just my personal experience of it, and my observation of it’s effect on others.
I have a personal friend- I haven’t seen him in quite a while, but he is still a friend- who binged quite often on some types of porn that I personally found to be quite extreme, distasteful, etc. If the theories of porn exposure carrying over to affect personal behavior were true, he should have been transformed into a terrifying sex criminal from it. But it didn’t. He’s just another hung-up guy. To the extent that he might be judged as a little bit warped, my impression is that porn had nothing to do with it. I honestly can’t even say whether he’d even be better off without the porn.
It’s also worth nothing that approximately 100% of my male friends have some propensity to view porn, as do some of the women I’ve known. But of all of those folks, the case described above is the only one that has a taste for the more extreme material (BDSM fetish, in this case).
I’ll grant that the entire phenomenon of porn is sort of a swindle, in the sense of being a vicarious fantasy experience rather than the actual authentic event itself. And it was none other than Norman Mailer who said “the ultimate direction of masturbation is always toward insanity”. But most people only do it until they’re half-crazy, apparently.
I really have spent many years as a cab driver, and I really do withhold judgment on where people are at with their sexual tastes. I’ve been shown quite convincingly that outside appearances and surface images do not dovetail neatly into accurate surmises about behaviors like that, which partake of such a high quotient of idiosyncrasy that it’s impossible to make accurate predictive statements about correlative behaviors. Still less is it possible to make group associations about groups on a topic like this.
Given the latitude, people can be some crazy monkeys, I know that. Some more than others. And some of it is criminal and abusive and violent and impermissible. But in general, I’m neutral about the sexual pursuits of others. People can and do make mistakes in that arena, like everywhere else in life. But you can’t run everybody. And trying to do so causes more problems than it stops.
21 June 2011, 5:42 pmcabdriver:
correction–
for “make group associations about groups” read: “apply categorical associations to groups”
21 June 2011, 5:45 pmcabdriver:
drat, another correction (actually, there are more, but this is the last one I’ll put the readers through)–
“It’s also worth nothing [NOTING] that approximately 100% of my male friends have some propensity to view porn, as do some of the women I’ve known.”
In this case, the intended meaning of my words is ultimately about the same- feel free to read it either way.
21 June 2011, 5:52 pmgdenby:
I’ve paid some attention to the Long Now Foundation since it started. I think their position is to establish something that is anti-catastrophic, and as such, isn’t very different than much of what is discussed here at FS. Just checked, and noticed they have a proto-type for a solar time corrector for the clock. Good, a redundancy feature.
“I want to know HOW MUCH simplicity and low technology we’re really talking about. I’m interested in the probability levels of practical outcomes resulting from, say, a 20% reduction in electric grid power…”
I think it is always desirable to speak as specifically as possible. So, concerning grid power reduction, consider one factor that is noticed early on by folks trying to get off the grid. Its the “vampire” load of always on, but “sleeping” appliances, and makes up about 5% – 7% of most household load. It represents a convenience that did not exist before I was an adult. I do not recall people suffering all that much then from not having an instant on TV, or from needing to wind their alarm clock before bed. So, specifically, a lot of convenience will be lost, but the sort of services I took for granted when I was younger will not.
Here’s another observation from recent history. The town I live in, a rust belt city, when at its maximum population, had cars for only 70% of the households. The area now has the U.S. average of more than one car for every driver. So something like a 50% reduction in autos would still leave the population with more transport than when the city was at it peak.
As for myself, I’ve found it really hard to turn off the little box that goes beep to tell me its time to drag my carcass out of bed. Unlike the Long Now clock, carefully calibrated to the sun, my clock is synchronized to a completely idiotic regulation that says solar noon is 1:30 pm, so the convenient prompt of bird song, and a faint blue on the horizon letting me know its time to rise is replaced by yet another entanglement in a society gone hay-wire from conveniences.
22 June 2011, 2:31 pmDeAnander:
This is about as scary a story of addiction as I could imagine. Stephen King stuff. But apparently it’s for real.
It seems fairly analogous to the addiction to cheap oil and gee-whiz toys that is making us the agents of gangrene and necrosis all over the biosphere…
26 June 2011, 2:22 amSt. Jude as Claus:
Shezaam! I sure can second your comment. One thing that I found interesting about this report was the implication that the addicts are not having this stuff sold to them but that they are ususally making it themselves. This report and the one I am listening to on CNN right now about three drug gangs that made peace so that they could engage in the even more profitable activity of sex trafficing near Camp Pendalton could easily lead a person to believe that no good government policy goes unpunished.
27 June 2011, 4:23 pmRobert Karaffa:
@St. Jude as Claus. I’m surprised concealed carry hasn’t been more destructive in Ohio. But I haven’t studied the stats. Maybe it has been worse than it seems. Where does your comment come from?
1 July 2011, 8:25 amSt. Jude as Claus:
I saw a report on Yahoo that Ohio passed a law allowing guns in bars. Perhaps they should pass a law allowing
1 July 2011, 5:49 pmfireworks to be sold a Dunkin Donuts.
Robert Karaffa:
@st. Thanks..did some diggin and found that story…yeah we need way more guns in church too! I know the guy who sponsored that statute here in Ohio…Jim Aslanides. Fireworks at Dunkin? Bring it! Thank you again sir. Don’t do bars…and have been glad many times that I am not a concealed carry guy..Bad Temper. Ill be nice as long as you are not a racoon eating my chickens…and they do.
1 July 2011, 10:21 pmcabdriver:
De, I saw that story, too.
It’s a comment not only about addiction, but about the irrational religious persecution paradigm underpinning the drug laws. Because the addicts are only using that terrible, poisonous stuff because they have no access to anything less harmful. That’s a “scarcity” that’s artificially induced.
I say bring back OTC codeine cough medicine, with restrictions on the amount purchased.
And so much for that…this oil-dependent society is apparently motivated by much the same desperation, if it’s willing to sacrifice millions or maybe billions of gallons of clean water to extract usable petroleum from tar sands.
If we’ve reached that point, it’s time to do something different.
And for addicts, stepping down the dose is always a move in the direction of safety and prudence. It’s even a way of reminding oneself that one has enough will power to remember what the words “safety” and “prudence” mean.
As for carrying firearms in taverns- even in the Old West, the informal rule was to check your gun with the bartender.
8 July 2011, 3:22 amAlan:
“how much down-sizing of energy demand can the human population realistically stand, over the next 20-40 years?”
A great deal. Most of it is wasted — pissed-away on things that haven’t the remotest connection to the meeting of real human (and other) NEEDS.
My off the top guess is that 80% reduction in energy use, in the developed world, would be possible with no loss of quality of life, and with actual gain of quality of life.
In the underdeveloped world it is different, however. Nuclear power plants might be a good idea for Africa.
An interesting factoid: in 1970, China was consuming about ONE percent of the total global production of oil. That is, a gigantic population was being sustained, fairly well, on that tiny fraction. The health of the Chinese people improved dramatically between the revolution and 1970, with life expectancy taking an enormous leap (from 30ish up to nearly 60). Massive improvements on other fronts, such as education and literacy, were also underway. All this happened on a level of oil and other energy consumption that was the tiniest fraction of that of the developed world.
Moral of the story: a CERTAIN small amount of energy (from oil, nat gas, nuclear, whatever) is required for development and the epidemiologic/demographic transitions, and for decent life in general. But past that level, most of it gets wasted, and it becomes not only non-productive but counter-productive.
Just keep in mind that it IS important to have that “certain small amount”. That’s why, as I say, nuclear power might make sense in Africa. When you’re dirt-poor and looking to claw your way out of a hole like that of Africa, you need some Big Energy. Perhaps 10-20% as much as insane energy-wastrels like the U.S.
19 July 2011, 9:25 pmSt. Jude as Claus:
Yes Alan, No country gets seconds until every country has had firsts. I like the sound of that.
20 July 2011, 7:41 amI think that could apply to oil, natural gas, and coal allocation. I look forward the energy reeducation camp.
Michael Anderson:
I had heard rumors of this awhile back. Now I see what the ruckus is about vis-a-vis Israel and their actions in the region, and it also puts the so-called “Arab Spring’ in a new light. It will be interesting to see how “we” (US/Euro interests)contain Israel and its malevolent belligerency.
http://www.spe.org/jpt/print/archives/2011/03/12Israel.pdf
In late December 2010, Noble Energy
3 January 2012, 2:26 pmconfirmed one of the world’s largest
gas finds of the decade—the 16-Tcf
(450-Bcm) Leviathan field—located
in approximately 5,400 ft of water
approximately 80 miles offshore Haifa,
Israel. The find is 29 miles southwest of
the Tamar field, which is approximately
56 miles offshore west of Haifa and
which yielded the world’s largest gas
discovery in 2009: an estimated 8.4 Tcf.