Galleries:
Liz Coates
in Utopia at Danks St
"The challenge is to maintain concentration.. image field ..crystallography"
A fierce vision at work..I hear that LC has returned to Wanganui.
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          Oil Eaters...cont...
May day, I was feeling remiss, not going to the "Reclaim the Streets"
however, it came to me.
Top of my street blocked by 30 odd ferals.
The idea is to protest against oil-eater car culture.
5 years ago we would block King St, have a street party, drums, happy days
That was a millennium ago.
Now the NSW polize arrive with horses
Violence... so you thought the oil-eaters werent serious?
Check the banal smiles on the woman soldier, under a woman general,
torturing Iraqi men in the name of oil.

Anyway I hate polize horses, used against peaceful protest
the reliance on sentimentality....
Any harm to a horse would get bad press
Actually they would easily be disabled.
A handful of marbles on macadam, and over she goes.

In the middle ages, no European battle was ever won
by horsemen with couched lances against footsoldiers.
[It is said that in 1683 outside Vienna the Hussar lancers routed
Mustapha's Janissaries]

Protesters undoubtedly lack pike-square holding discipline
Duke Wellington was infamous for his sabre charges against English demos.

The oil-eater culture is so persuasive
that protest seems pointless.
I understand car fever...
Once had a mini with twin SU carbs
and freeflow manifold.

Also owned a 2-door Valiant
got lost on the New Jersey Turnpike
("All gone to look for America")
man, I was so happy to find that Lincoln tunnel.
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      The Spike... cont...

I stole the term from Brodericks book.
and Vernor Vinge's notion of the technological Singularity
He reckons all will be changed utterly
around 2030CE
I lack his optimism about nanotech and biotech.
I reckon that about 10 years after Hubberts peak in 2012
no more cheap oil will mean total collapse
of our oil-eater culture.

Nanotech: expect a nano-factory sometime after
a full-sized automated factory with no humans at all
ie its actually a hard problem to run a factory with no
human smarts at all.
I reckon its 2 to 4 generations off (40-80 years)

Biotech: we dont actually know how a cell works, or how an embryo works
Merely reading a DNA sequence is not understanding biology
shotgun splicing does not mean we are close to N-fixing rice.

Genetic engineering wont feed us
We are oil-eaters...
The irrigation pumps burn oil
The Haber-process Nitrogen burns oil.
The trucks and harvesters & plows burn oil

So between Hubbert & Vinge is a 20-40 year gap
when we aint got no answer to that oil hunger.
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      What might be done
grow some kumara?
Maori in Aotearoa grew kumara
using seaweed, ash, burnt shell? but _not_ latrine N?
with careful composting the , latrine nitrogen could be used.

Once kumara were grown and stored,
organised warfare developed
hill forts, wondrous jade and whalebone Wahaika