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Here's an email I got from him today: Attention:
How are you today? Hope all is well with you and family?,You may not
understand why this mail came to you.
We have been having a meeting for the passed 7 months which ended 2
days ago with the secretary to the UNITED NATIONS.
This email is to all the people that have been scammed in any part of
the world, the UNITED NATIONS have agreed to compensate them with the
sum of US$ 100,000. This includes every foriegn contractors that may
have not received their contract sum, and people that have had an
unfinished transaction or international businesses that failed due to
Government probelms etc.
We found your name in our list and that is why we are contacting you,
this have been agreed upon and have been signed.
You are advised to contact Mr. Jim Ovia of ZENITH BANK NIGERIA PLC, as
he is our representative in Nigeria, contact him immediately for your
Cheque/ International Bank Draft of USD$ 100,000. This funds are in a
Bank Draft for security purpose ok? so he will send it to you and you
can clear it in any bank of your choice.
Therefore, you should send him your full Name and telephone
number/your correct mailing address where you want him to send the
Draft to you.
Conatct Mr. Jim Ovia immediately for your Cheque:
Person to Contact Mr. Jim Ovia
Email: zenithbnk4@googlemail.com
Phone: 234 1 7439877
Thanks and God bless you and your family.Hoping to hear from you as
soon as you cash your Bank Draft.
Making the world a better place
Regards,
Mr. Kofi Annan
Former Secretary (UNITED NATIONS) Tags: scammers
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From Sam Smith: I don't own a gun. I was never any good at shooting a gun. I was educated by Quakers and avoid violence every chance I get. Still, I was delighted by the Supreme Court's Second Amendment ruling. Not simply because it upheld the Constitution, but because, in a land whose leaders are increasingly contemptuous of democracy and its people and where the specter of dictatorship has loomed as never before, an armed citizenry is one of the last defenses - both symbolic and practical - left to us.
(...)
It turned out that there was another advantage for a peace loving progressive to oppose taking away other people's guns. Once some of these folks found I wasn't after their guns, they were more willing to listen to my ideas on other subjects. It was something many liberals have never learned: don't mess around too much with the other person's culture. Stick to the big things that can bring us together. link: http://prorev.com/2008/06/swampoodle-report-supreme-court-does.htmlI found the above through a hyper-link in a post to a site called Electric Politics. The author of that post argued, "If we should suffer a catastrophic collapse of society then those with guns will be a heck of a lot better off than those without." To which someone responded: Really? Maybe if you find yourself in a Hollywood movie and have only to survive to the 90-minute mark. But in a situation lasting more than a few days, I'm not sure how much having guns would help you. I lived in Russia in the 1990's, when society did collapse in a lot of ways, and I think you're much better off having some good friends and well placed acquaintances than a bunch of guns.
Put yourself in a "you vs. everybody else" situation (I think having guns encourages this mentality), and I can tell you who will win. While I absolutely agree with the closing paragraph, I don't see how "having some good friends and well placed acquaintances" and owning firearms are at all mutually exclusive. Unfortunately, I am geographically distant from my good friends, and I don't own any guns. I've set myself and my family up for the worst of both worlds. That was not my intention, but here I am.
This is only tangentially related to the stuff above about guns, and it could probably stand alone as a separate post, but it comes up a lot in this context. Urban(e) Blue Staters like to throw the word "redneck" around to express their contempt for the attitudes, tastes, and lack of sophistication of people who live in the red states. Where does the term "redneck" come from? Think about that. A person whose neck is red probably works out in the sun.* At the time the word was coined that person probably worked in agriculture, so to deride someone as a redneck is to denigrate people who work the land and grow food. Food producer = semi-literate doofus. Guess what folks, if you don't know how to grow food but you intend to keep eating it even in the event of a collapse of industrial civilization, you might want to consider how your skill set matches up with that of your archetypal redneck and figure out what it is you have to offer in that situation. What do you have that someone who knows how to hunt, fish, garden and SHOOT might want? If the only thing you can come up with is your ass, then you might want to get back into that pilates class because the supply of helpless/useless city slicker ass will greatly exceed the demand in the event that the power grid goes down and all those ones and zeros in your bank account amount to less than a can of beans.
*According to Wikipedia, this is probably not the original meaning of the term "redneck." The word has a fascinating history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redneck_(stereotype) Tags: collapse, guns, rednecks
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I know that a fair number of the people who listen to the C-Realm Podcast for the "mind-blowing" stuff scratch their heads and shrug at the amount of attention that I pay to peak oil, agriculture, and, increasingly, economics. Of course, the physical realities of living in a post-peak America is compelling as all get-out for those who take the time to think it through, but this is only a portion of what keeps me coming back to this topic. It's a lot like climate change (existential threat, or " the eugenics of our time?") in that, whatever position you're inclined to take, you can find people who obviously spend a lot more time thinking about this stuff than you do who have a dog and pony show complete with data and graphics to support whatever point of view best fits the totality of your pre-existing ideological commitments. For example, two perspectives on Peak Oil. First up, ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) theheretic explains why we're frakked! http://community.livejournal.com/peak_oil/712074.html?style=mine#cutid1 We've seen protests and riots over fuel prices in Portugal, France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, and the UK over the last few weeks. This is only the beginning of troubles. As the prices rise thanks to production falling, the blame game will continue, and further irrational public behavior will worsen. The public have resolutely refused to grasp that oil is ancient energy and it WILL run out. Right now, our leaders here in the USA point fingers to delay tactics, like offshore drilling, domestic discoveries (which would have already been exploited if they were remotely as big or easy as these non-geologists like to claim). ANWR? That's 45 DAYS of oil supply. That's it. If you saved it for US-only consumption, you can stretch it to around 6 months of oil supply. Better than nothing... only it takes 5 years to reach the marketplace. All those pipelines and wells and sideways drilling takes TIME, and by 5 years from now, the price of oil will be around $500/bbl. and something like $20/gal, well beyond the means of humble lower and middle class users to buy. Only the rich will be burning $500 oil. On the other side of the coin: http://www.energybulletin.net/node/14695 In 1965, world oil production was 12 billion barrels. It may peak soon at 30 billion. Estimates project that in 2040, production will have slipped to 12 billion barrels—back to 1965 levels. To descend to that point would require a drop in consumption of 2.2% per year for 35 years. Can we do this? I think so. From 1973 to 1975, and again from 1979 to 1983, consumption fell by roughly this much per year. When prices fell, consumption rose again. For a glimpse of the future, note that when gasoline prices briefly spiked 30% due to Hurricane Katrina, US usage dropped 6% over two weeks. Saving 2.2% each year is well within reach. I've exchanged a couple of emails with Toby Hemenway, the author of the second quote, and I may be getting together with him in tele-space in August to talk about the psychology of catastrophe fetishism. If you had him on the phone, are their any questions you'd like to put to him? Tags: doomer, peak oil
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