Ziggurat

01


Logan's Run (film).

Warcraft III.


















The uber-panopticon.

Soylent green.

These are all things that come to mind when reading about Timelinks proposal to cram 1 million people into a carbon-neutral footprint pyramid-like 2.3 km structure that does away with the need for cars, a lawn, a garden, personal space, and privacy.

Ridas Matonis, Managing Director of Timelinks, said: “Ziggurat communities can be almost totally self-sufficient energy-wise. Apart from using steam power in the building we will also employ wind turbine technology to harness natural energy resources.”
...
The concept will also aim at a better quality of life for the inhabitants. Transport throughout the complex would be connected by an integrated 360 degree network (horizontally and vertically) so cars would be redundant. Biometrics would provide security with facial recognition technology.

Oh, dude. My dystopic sci-fi novels are sooo right on. Tom Cruise's version of Minority Report here I come! Whoo-hooo!!

Picture it...you walking down the Zig-hall, and a Zig-scanner reads your retina and instantly cross-checks your identity with the Zig-repository, establishes interests from recent email communications, utterances made in your bathroom, recent purchases from the Zig-store, and a Zig-avatar appears and starts walking next to you, slyly suggesting items or services in which you might be interested...like sponsored listings you see in various search engines.
Instead of DUIs or PI crimes, there'll be Zig-infractions and in order to maintain societal balance, there'll be strict re-education policies in place since there's no space for prison...or maybe there'll be a Penal-Zig?

Excursions to the surrounding pastoral areas would be frowned upon, as the lands would be snatched up by mega-conglomerates, and seeded with powerfully mutated agricultural products that aren't so much healthy, as they are cost-effective, so Zig-officials would want to limit the amount of exposure to zigizens (like 'citizen', but for Ziggurat, sweet!) else the highly condensed populace would vector biological contaminents at a brisk pace.

Nations will collapse, and Zig-States will replace modern continent-oriented governmental paradigms. Alliances with neighboring Ziggurats will be established, and battles will be fought to control water sources as they'll be the sources for both hydro-electric power and for treating 1 million people's worth of excrement per Ziggurat.

Urban centers will collapse and will become vestigages of humanity's triumphs and folly, eventually fallen prey to managed lifestyles.

My new home cheer:
Zig-gu-rat!
It's where it's at!
Zig-gu-rat!
It's where it's at!
[repeat it...or else]

Noble Nobel Prize

Dubya will be known as a great president. Great in the sense that:

• his butchering of the English language was complete and pronounced
• he consistently marred the global perception of American democracy and liberty
• his drinking and drug habits rivaled those of coca lords portrayed in Miami Vice
• he probably did more to widen the chasm between the rich and poor, a more than any other president since Reagan
• he ushered in a new wave of privacy violations (I'm looking at you Patriot Act and illegal wiretapping)
• he exuded the general complacency and smug attitude that afflicts Americans, thereby maintaining the status quo, and (it could be argued) accelerated the process of dumbening that we've witnessed in recent years
• he unswerving demonstrated his lack of interest and responsibility in global warming (remember the 1997 Kyoto Protocol?) and essentially whored himself out to corporate sponsorship and 'market-based' solutions.
  

I could go on...okay, let's at least honor the wonderful contributions he made to the state of Texas in his 1994 term as governor when he made it legal to carry concealed weapons and supported laws against sodomy. I think this was also the same term in which he so famously mocked the soon-to-be executed Karla Faye Tucker. Classy G-Dub! You da man!

Yes, folks, he was the 'compassionate conservative'.

But you know who was the greatest un/almost-President of recent years? Al Gore. You know the guy who won the popular vote but lost the electoral college votes back in the 2000 election? Yeah that guy. It might've been the best thing that ever happened to him, and to the issue of global warming (eff that politically correct 'climate change' nonsense).

Today Gore and the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In 2006, he won an Academy Award for his documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. Here he is from Barbara Boxer's fundraising event this Thursday in San Francisco. You can see what he has to say about his nomination, which was ratified today.

It's like the rest of the world is saying, we know, America. We know 2008 and the future years will be better. These past 8 years have been hard on us all, but we know that we're going to be able to get on with our plan to make this place better for everyone, and it's people like this who are going to be instrumental in making this happen.

Is that a Tesla in your pocket?

Condi recently rode in the Tesla, a 100% electric vehicle that outperforms most cars on the road today and boasts a decent driving range on a single charge (about 200 miles). I think the driver is telling her, "you like that vibrating seat? It's powered by the gleam of your smile, hot stuff. Whaddya say we lay into the lithium capacitors and get you some ungassed glow, girl?"

Right now it costs just below $100k, so it's a little pricey. Regardless, it goes to show petrol addicts like GM, Daimler-Chrysler, and Ford that the technology does exist to make cool cars that are solid performers.

Tesla isn't the first fully electric vehicle, you know. The EV1 was leased to a small group of folks. The car did amazingly well, but strangely enough all the cars were recalled and destroyed. General Motors developed the car and managed the leasing program. When pressed for a reason why they were cancelling the lease program and recalling the vehicles, they stated that they could not sell enough of the cars to make the venture profitable. A questionable fire safety issue was used to legitimize the recall.

uh...hello...Prius cars being more valuable after they drive off the dealership?

Check out the video of Rice touring with the Tesla.

Would God walk or drive to support reducing carbon emissions?

If ever someone summed up how caring about the air became a "liberal" plot to undermine family values, then it would be Jon Carroll. Did you see his piece in the Chronicle?

Excerpt:

One of the stranger things to happen in recent political discourse -- and this is a crowded field -- is the morphing of global warming into a left-wing plot, a conspiracy by godless scientists to ... well, it's not clear what benefit the scientists get from spreading lies about global warming. Maybe they just want research money to study this nonexistent warming thing.

I have a pretty good idea where that meme started. If you believe that global warming is man-made, then you believe that greenhouse gases are a bad thing. If you believe they're a bad thing, you believe they should be reduced. And reducing greenhouse gases would mean using less petroleum, in all its myriad forms. And since the current administration is dedicated to the protection of petroleum companies, it is only natural that it would try to convince its base that somehow global warming is being promoted by the same people who approve of gay marriage, abortion and secular schools.

It gets better. There's detailed information on the backgrounds of folks who Dubya nominated to government positions that could affect the environment on a global scale. Since when did caring about your progeny and the biosphere we'll leave them become a bad thing?

Those damned bespectacled eggheads with their "facts" and their "knowledge". What do they know about [wait for it] coming straight from the gut? Do you know you have more nerve endings in your gut than you have in your head? You can look it up. I know some of you are going to say "I did look it up, and that's not true." That's 'cause you looked it up in a book.

Seriously, though. The notion of post-partisanship is very appealing, but I don't see the situation getting any better with this administration. 2008 is so close. Please don't let me down, America. Please let's make it better the next time around.

"The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it." Marcus Aurelius

Is Al Gore the new Bill Graham?

He used to be called the "dull" one. Now he's nominated for an Oscar for his documentary, at which nay-sayers (read: people who still think the Earth is flat) scoffed at his "facts" and "scientific evidence". He's also recently announced the July-launching campaign: Save Our Selves — The Campaign for a Climate in Crisis. The concert is set up like Live Aid, and according to the AP, is being euphemistically referred to as "Earth Aid". It's got a stellar list of performers...although so far I haven't seen the Dixie Chicks listed, which would be cool given their take on Dubya.

Yes, this is the same Al Gore who was the U.S. VP for 8 years. Not "Bore", as we used to call him. This guy's got stupid crazy charisma now because it seems like he's really finally doing what he cares about, and couldn't do before as a candidate for the White House. Why? Because he would've scared off the conservative vote with his ridiculous and Satanic comments about this great God-fearing nation of carbon emitters. "HE WANTED TO TAKE AWAY MY GOD-GIVEN SUV (read: 2007 Earth Destroyer)! HE'S A COMMIE PINKO TERRORIST!", they'd say. Then they'd burn their daughters at the stake for doing calculus and smack their wives around, "cuz, they were gittin' uppity".

More than 100 performers are scheduled to appear at the July concerts, including Melissa Etheridge (whose song in "An Inconvenient Truth" is nominated for an Oscar as well), the Foo Fighters, Lenny Kravitz, Sheryl Crow, John Mayer, Duran Duran, Korn, Pharrell, the Black Eyed Peas, Akon, Enrique Iglesias, Faith Hill and Tim McGraw.

Can't you just see Akon smackin' that a-- for global warming awareness?

Relatedly, and I'll be the first to admit I don't have any data on this, so I'm going straight from the gut on this one (did you know there are more nerve endings in your gut than in your head? Look it up, people), I'm postulating that American children's medical needs are the root cause of the failure of the auto industry. Just allow me some room to drift here...it's all tied up in a neat little package for you:

• Cause A: Kids need good medical attention to become happy healthy members of society;
• Cause B: Medical insurance is expensive to pay for out of one's pocket, and employment that provides subsidized healthcare benefits is the ideal solution;
• Factor A: American car manufacturers produce gas-guzzling vehicles that are of shoddy construction and which pollute the environment and keep us fixed on the sweet tit of foreign oil;
• Primary Effect: Kids get sick from breathing in the crap (this is a scientific term) in the air;
• Secondary Effect: Parents go to work to provide for their families/children illnesses brought on by said crap;
• Tertiary Effect (as related by Factor A): American car manufacturers try to cut costs by reducing healthcare benefits for workers or closing plants altogether (here's where carbon emission pollution and healthcare costs implode upon each other);
• Quaternary Effect: Parents lose their jobs and lose healthcare benefits, thus reducing their socio-economic viability in this country, thus reducing the amount of quality medical care their children can receive;
• Quinary Effect: Children of these parents turn into adults and require even more medical coverage in order to combat health problems that could've been addressed during common preventative doctor visits, of which costs would've been subsidized by the auto maker.

I'm still working on the details, but this is the general gist: get rid of American children and replace them with robots powered by Dick Cheney's evil, soul-sucking smile.

Note that this cause-effect model is intertwined with the issue of carbon emission pollution of which the primary effect is global warming, which effects polar ice caps, which...eh...you get the picture.

Prez Junior gets a performance review?

Recently, in his State of the Economy address, Dubya said:

"Government should not decide the compensation for America's corporate executives....[b]ut the salaries and bonuses of CEOs should be based on their success at improving their companies and bringing value to their shareholders...America's corporate boardrooms must step up to their responsibilities...You need to pay attention to the executive compensation packages that you approve. You need to show the world that America's businesses are a model of transparency and good corporate governance."

Just to contextualize his comments, know that this was coming from a man who had a childhood just like you and me. He's a Washington outsider, as he claimed during his initial run for office...you know, his dad was the Ambassador to China, Head of the CIA, Vice-President of the U.S. for 8 years, President of the U.S. for 4 years and ol' Dubya went to Phillips Academy, then off to Yale, then hung out in the Texas Air National Guard during Vietnam, then off to Harvard to get his MBA, then worked in the oil industry, and finally became a small-town governor from the state of Texas: home to Selena! Yay!

Does this mean that we can cut his pay if his approval ratings dip below a threshold? And how do we go about requesting greater transparency of his *rumored* coke habits of old, because that would just be great fun altogether: definitely a clipping for my wallet! Do we get to grade him on his judgements of leaving the Kyoto Agreement when the U.S. is the number 1 emitter of greenhouse gases, and he doesn't want to impose cap limits on businesses? What about inciting a conflict abroad to distract the masses from Dick Cheney's leaky colostomy bag? Can we at least get a better understanding why his spin doctors have him describe the global warming phenomenon with a name like "climate change"? Is that a transparent description? It's kinda like "killed by one's own troops" and "friendly fire" or "shell shock" and "post-traumatic stress disorder".

Dubya probably doesn't care what the press will say about this. Bush thinks the press is 'elitist' because their background isn't in step with average Joe. See my second paragraph and repeat.

2008 is coming. Get ready America.

Sorry. This was supposed to be a shorter post, but I got carried away. You can probably tell that I'm passionate about this topic. I'm transparent that way...