The Crazy Adventures of Mister Chompy
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Below are the 7 most recent journal entries recorded in
mister_chompy's LiveJournal:
| Monday, January 28th, 2008 | | 4:37 pm |
Dawning of the Epoch of Anthropocene So just this moment I came across an LiveScience article claiming that Humans Force Earth into New Geologic Epoch . It says due to human interaction the geological Holocene can be seen to be coming to an end, resulting in a Anthropoocene Epoch . This proclamation seems dubious to me, not because I doubt human driven climate change, or that if continued at it's current rate of change that it may become irreversible in our lifetime. Rather I think that the demarcation of geological epochs can only be done after the fact. The Holocene, which we are now in began 12,000 years ago, at the end of the Pleistocene characterized by the end of the ice age. In fact many of the characteristics of the Holocene can be tied to humans too either indirectly, extinction of megafauna in the Americas, or directly, the rise of civilization and agriculture. Infact the Pleistocene had several "warm ups" that lasted thousands of years, many lasting more than the 12,000 years that characterize the Holocene. It seems then that this most recent warm up is significant only because it happened to be the one the geologists who were classifying it happened to live in. And if doubt can be placed on a geological epoch that has only lasted 12,000 years, then one that may have begun 200 years ago seems on even more shaky ground. The industrial revolution and its effects on world wide natural systems seems not to fit well with the model of geological time that it is now being pushed with this new term (coined in 2000, so not exactly new, but geologically speaking...) It might be akin to calling a nuclear blast a season, or an economic recession natural cycle. Sure we are messing with the planet, but it might be better named Bonkers Time, because to call it a geological epoch is to imply that it is shaped by the same rules and patterns that have applied in the past, which if we continue may we many increasingly find that is not what we've got with this Anthopocene | | Sunday, January 27th, 2008 | | 1:18 pm |
winter time Me and Nicole bought some $5 sleds from Meijer, and went sledding this morning at the athletic fields near our house.  | | Monday, January 14th, 2008 | | 3:29 pm |
So today I went to see John McCain speak here in Kzoo. I've never gone to a presidential candidate event, and since there is no Democratic primary here none of them are near by. They're too busy back home in Nevada.
I expected it to be more of an ordeal to get into this thing, held at Kalamazoo Christian Highschool, but as I just walked on in, no security check no ticket required, I remembered what a small town Kalamazoo really is. There were police to be sure, but they seemed to be standing back and watching and not much else.
When I got there someone introduced the sheriff of Kzoo County and he talked about how he like McCain, and then he introduced our congressman Fred Upton. It was sort of funny to me, as this was my first time seeing FU, and a couple summers ago I campaigned for his opponent. Finally after a pause between speakers, the Senior and Mrs. McCain showed up.
The lady McCain introduced her husband, talking about his winning family background. She pointed out that two of their sons are in the military, serving in Iraq. In a Fahrenheit 9/11 sort of way I really respect that. They also have an adopted daughter from Bangladesh, whom his wife brought to this country to correct a cleft palette, and that seems admirable as well.
Then she introduced him and he jumped into his thing. One of his first remarks was about water rights, and his position that Michigan and other Great Lake states should maintain autonomy over their waters. He made a reference to AZ loosing out on Colorado river water to CA. I don't know that it's really a concern to Michigan voters that someone will steal their water, and thought that was a strange opening. He referred back to this later on, when talking about oil drilling, saying that each state should decide what they do with their resources.
He went on to talk about wasteful spending and ending earmarks (which for most candidates is just a lot of talk, but I believe him when he says he's against that) before addressing climate change. He was explicit in his belief that it is real, and we should do something about it. He use the axiom that if it isn't real and we cut carbon emissions, then we're better off, but if it is and we don't we'll be screwed. But then most of his environmental talk was geared towards, technology will save us rhetoric, rather than saying we need to change our lifestyle. Some of this was driven by the Auto-industry show ongoing now, and saying that GM and GE are 'going green'. He did say that he supports nuclear power, which in a pragmatic way I think makes sense in some ways.
In his comments on the iraq war, he seemed to say Rummy was wrong, he thought of the surge, it worked, and now the war is all but one. I was in support of McCain early in the war for standing up against the Admins, especially where he hammered Rummy about Abu Ghraib (to no avail), but I think he is entirely too optimistic about the current state of Iraq. He all but admitted that we would be in Iraq forever, and seemed on the attack of global radical islamic extremism (isn't radical and extremism redundant in that term?).
Then he talked about illegal immigration, and the need to 'close the board'. He seems to support penalizing illegal immigrants, but did not call for mass deportations. Though it seemed like he had some sympathy for immigrants, he took a hard line in the speech (to much applause).
The points which I was most disappointed were where he seemed to oversimplify issues, and gave simple and vague promises. But Kerry taught us all the nuanced view points, though very appealing to me, do not make good stump speeches. | | Friday, January 11th, 2008 | | 4:44 pm |
Video of people from 1 to 100 hitting a drum
| | Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007 | | 2:56 pm |
Hello, So I've finally added some moped pictures to my my flickr page . The Harvest Ride was just this weekend, so if you look you can see what Kalamazoo looks like now.  | | Tuesday, August 7th, 2007 | | 7:08 pm |
| | Thursday, July 5th, 2007 | | 4:29 pm |
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