Universal poverty,Visual Pollution is Trivial

Universal poverty. my recipe for Convivial Civilization (CvCv)

"Were all Socialists now" - Newsweek cover
Picking winners : Key Govt says it wont let Fisher&Pykel fall into "the wrong hands" - presumably meaning foreigners
so protectionism and Govt corporate socialism as the last gasp of Capital

Universal poverty. my recipe for Convivial Civilization (CvCv)
Involves picking the minimal set of technology that we need
My opinion: Washing machines are in the essential set. And F&P's washing machines are particularly fine: solid state electronic switches instead of mechanical/electric clunkers, and electronically controlled motor, instead of clunky belts.
So F&P are a winner. But I dont believe that electric dish-washers are in the minimal essential set. Here the bulk of neat clean middle classes (NCMC) would undoubtedly disagree with me. They and those who feel they can reasonably expect to join the NCMC, all aspire to those grand machines which promise a sparkle to your glassware. Well thats where I draw the line. I've lived in the 3rd world, and I hold that washing machines are a great tool for womens liberation.
(Noam Chomsky's daughter lives in voluntary poverty in a Nicaraguan village. Noam thinks this is fine, but he wishes she would at least get a washing machine).
Cold water phosphate laundry detergents are another great invention of our Clean Civilization. (Soap operas teach the people to wash, at least) But hand washing of clothes with these powerful powders scars and fissures the hands of women and girls, and takes far too much time. So 'washing machines for all' is my demand. On Stephen's Tennessee farms they had communal laundromats. Perhaps thats the best idea. All machinery should be utilised to the max, so laundromats may be the solution. Dense housing is another demand that I make for CvCv. If your house has enough people, then you can almost fully utilise a washing machine. But at the same time there will be enough kids to wash the dishes without a machine, only takes a few minutes, no harsh detergents required. An aside: children need desks and lights to study - another element in the minimal list of technology required in the CvCv. (Broadband?, music keyboard? definitely chickens and chives)

In a CvCv , news that people were consuming less would be greeted with delight and approval. We wouldnt see Capitalist politicians throwing fortunes about, beseeching 'consumers' to consume. If Barry Hussein Obama is actually funding low-carbon energy we just may believe some of our grandchildren may survive the Dieoff.

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Visual pollution is a trivial portion of conservation
the NCMC confuse neat and clean and tidy with conservation.
They want to ban wind turbines because they feel they arent pretty. They believe that a white man who stabs a 15 year old Maori 'tagger' to death shouldnt do jail time.
Conservation is about preserving biomes, regions of original 'native' biology. This may include emergency action to protect endangered species.
Conservation has very little to do with picking up trash. Plastic bags may look 'unsightly' but their Joule content is trivial compared with the Joule content of the food inside.
Wind Turbines may reduce the pleasure we feel on gazing at a skyline, but they dont destroy any biomes. Dams and coal mines are truly damaging.
The Dept of Conservation does well to take money for Falcon studies in return for ceasing to object to a wind farm.
People, people, we are in a global carbon energy emergency here. I personally feel a certain thrill that West Antarctica will drown most major cities in the next couple of centuries (wooden ship wharves, pirate capitals, drown the bastards) but really, do we want the Thames barrage overtopped and London join the lost civilizations of Sunda?

I spent a fair amount of the early 70s hitching, shuffling along highway 1 in NZ. Saw many squashed hawk corpses, but never a falcon. Falcons were a rare sight in the 60s. So the 4 falcon nests somewhere near the Mahinerangi wind farm should certainly be watched. Thanks Meridian Energy for coughing up some $ to do so.

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Holocaust compulsion
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[finkelsteins pictures may not load, perhaps Zionists have the grace to be embarassed by his evidence of theur grotesque cruelties, such that they block his site]
As Fisk has said, The comparison between Nazi and Zionist is limited, the ZionistEntity is not gassing Palestinians in special rooms.
As we are legally compelled to believe, as even Il Papa has told us, any denial of the holocaust is a sin and a crime.
Attempted to educate myself, I got roundly confused. Over my lifetime the announced total of gassed at Auschwitz has varied widely, so now I dont know which number I am compelled to believe.
holocaust-history
sanctioned by Holocaust History Project
has a low estimate of 4.2M Jews killed in Europe, 1 or 1.2M by gunshot
The sole gas chamber at Auschwitz is a 'reconstruction' - I think its illegal to call it a fake.
90% at least, of the cyanide used was to kill clothing ..lice, in different chambers, which may or may not have Prussian Blue stained walls from the HCN.
Buchenwald has 2 collapsed chambers. The roof holes where the ZyklonB was tipped in were re-concreted as to be 'undetectable'
- I gave up my research here, honestly I will believe whatever my infallible German Pope tells me I am obliged to believe.

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nybooks
Can We Transform the Auto-Industrial Society?
By Emma Rothschild
For me the sad fact about this article is that ER uses 1979 as the baseline, the 'good old days' when USAutoland was great. Thats when I arrived... I left at the end of 80 after Lennon was shot and Reagun was elected. So my image of the USA is obsolete. Peculiar and regretful is the fact that the USA offered me a Government job, which I turned down. AFS, a sort of volunteers abroad, undoubtedly a CIA front. I refused, not out of any revolutionary fervour, but because I believed I could get respect back in my home country. Well I did have a couple of jobs there, cant really blame anyone but my feckless restless self. My revolutionary fervour would probably get me halted at LAX if I went back to USA now.

Back then I got a plastic plaque from Bankers Trust for my volunteer work. Along with respectable English language coaching , I was also picketing in Brooklyn Heights with the 'Moncada Barracks' group. Hopeless Picketing against gentrification, which in USA frequently involves bashing any non-whites who venture into white neighbourhoods. I also stood around in a "Dollars for Bullets" tee by the UN building as Pete Seeger railed against Salvador death squads. I doubt that these faint pink activities led to my contract at Bankers Trust being axed. My boss said some woman programmer "refused to work with me" - my social ineptness had probably ignored her - I couldnt recall the women he mentioned. Anyway I got 3 other job offers. A cab driver told me that 3 years in Manhattan meant that the rest of the world seemed like the suburbs, so I left town, with my resident alien status, now lapsed. Third world folks are aghast when I tell them I left.

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Wellington batucada Tim Cook - hope next Saturday is fine for Cuba Carnival... It appears that several genuine Brazilians are involved, so I will definitely check it out

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Wasps make virus in ovaries, inject into caterpillars
I had no idea about any of this, even the 1970's stuff:

. Tens of thousands of wasp species lay their eggs inside caterpillars, injecting toxins that paralyze the hosts and allow their young to feast on the innards with impunity. Researchers ...
The first clue to the nature of the wasp's toxins came in the 1970s. Using electron microscopy, researchers found that they consisted of protein-encased, double-stranded DNA particles that were produced in th wasps' ovaries. Because they resemble viruses, the toxins were christened polydnaviruses.

..Genetic analysis revealed the particles harbored mostly wasp DNA and didn't seem to contain any of the proteins most viruses use to replicate. These two observations led some researchers to argue that the particles were actually "genetic secretions" of the wasp itself rather than an independent virus.

..Drezen's team looked at DNA from wasp ovaries, in which the polydnaviruses are made. They analyzed DNA from three different wasp species and checked the sequences against those of known insect viruses. In one group of wasps, 22 genes matched those of an ancient family of viruses called nudiviruses, the researchers report tomorrow in Science. Further experiments showed that these genes code for key structural proteins in the wasps' polydnavirus toxins.
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What this means, explains Drezen, is that nudiviruses infected wasps a few million years ago and that, over time, the viral DNA fully integrated into the wasp genome. As it currently stands, the wasps need the virus to survive, because the virus helps the insects lay eggs in caterpillars. The virus also needs the wasp to survive, because the virus can only replicate in the wasp's ovaries. The virus cannot replicate inside the caterpillar, because all of its replication machinery is inside the wasp.

Seems we have the ideal virus delivery vehicle
sciencemag