Sources of Unconventional Sagacity

I recommend going over to the blog Groovy Green, which was started just down the road from me in the small city of Ithaca, New York. Groovy Green has got a lot of great articles that show how people around the world are working hard and thinking smart in order to try to diminish the environmental crisis that we’re all suffering under. Kudos to them for their hard work… and one pesky question…

Is Groovy Green really groovy? I have to say no. It’s a serious information resource with lots of great technical information and links to detail-oriented engineers. It’s got stuff that you just won’t find on in mainstream news channel, much less your morning paper. But groovy? No.

That’s just fine with me. If you ask me, the world is suffering from an overdose of groove. Groove is funky, but it’s also junky. Groove doesn’t think about the future. It just blisses out in the now.

It’s time for us to get serious, and get to work. Economically and environmentally, we’re up to our necks in groovy mess. Thanks to Groovy Green for giving us some tools for digging ourselves out.

Popularity: 83% [?]

It’s become clear that alternate energy isn’t just good for the environment, it’s desperately needed for the economy as well. The fossil fuel economy has failed us, as stocks are crashing downward and foreclosures are rocketing upward. The Earth’s climate is careening on a helter skelter path of wild fluctuations that are sending natural ecosystems and human communities alike into crisis.

For too long, corporate right wing political leaders have pretended that nothing is wrong. They’ve left us a disaster of neglect and denial. It’s time to consider the alternative visions offered at AlternativeEnergy.com instead. AlternativeEnergy.com offers news and social networking centered around cleaner and more efficient ways to power our lives.

Popularity: 78% [?]

Thank you to the activists of Sea Shepherd for showing the world what real commitment looks like. Instead of just bemoaning environmental decline in the world’s oceans, Sea Shepherd gets active, and directly confronts those who, like those on the Japanese whaling vessel Yushin Maru, break the laws that protect the seas.

When the whalers aboard the Yushin Maru took two activists from Sea Shepherd prisoner, the world responded with well-deserved anger. Now, on their protest ship the Steve Irwin, the people of Sea Shepherd are giving inspiration to all of those who are tired of seeing the riches of their planet harvested from beneath them for the sake of temporary profit.

Popularity: 75% [?]

Here’s what I want to know: How is it possible that I have gone for more than two weeks already in the year 2008 without knowing that it is the International Year of the Potato?

Is it not properly reverential to have a tater tot? I did have hash browns for breakfast this morning, and so I feel like I’m doing my part.

I wonder how Ron Paul feels about this international conspiracy of tubers. Would he buy a potato with an Amero?

Popularity: 48% [?]

2008 is an important year. Reactionary industrialists like Ron Paul are still out there claiming that there’s no big problem with global warming, that there isn’t anything that they do that harms the environment at all, and that if there ever is any problem with the environment, market forces ought to be left to deal with it, or leave the Earth in the dust, if that’s what’s profitable.

Then there are the people at places like the Natural Resources Defense Council. They want to cherish the Earth, and save it for future generations, not just exploit it for short term gain in the present generation. The NRDC has set up a beautiful web site called BioGems, highlighting the most biologically critical places on Earth.

Visit these BioGems online to remind yourself what’s really worth working for.

Popularity: 49% [?]

One of the greatest challenges there is to marine conservation efforts is that most people don’t have much of a conception of what lies beneath the surface of the ocean’s waves. Most of us have never been diving - and a lot of people have never actually been to the ocean.

So, BlogFish does a simple thing. It familiarizes people with the creatures that live in the ocean, so that we can understand the need to conserve their habitat. Seeing is the first step toward appreciation, and appreciation is a step toward protection.

The blog is written by Mark Powell, a scientist by training, and Vice President for Fish Conservation at the Ocean Conservancy.

Popularity: 54% [?]

A couple days ago, I wrote about a collection of political gear all with the theme of Yuckabee, expressing revulsion at the idea of Mike Huckabee becoming President of the United States in 2008. Well, it turns out that that collection of campaign gear against Huckabee is related to a new web site that is in the process of being developed, a kind of Yuckabee headquarters.

Will Yuckabee become one of the political catch phrases of the 2008 presidential election season?

Popularity: 53% [?]

It’s the day after the Iowa caucuses, and the day before the Wyoming Republican presidential conventions. The Wyoming conventions are something like the Iowa caucuses, determining which candidates the Wyoming Republicans will send delegates to the national convention for. Wyoming’s Democrats will have their presidential election later, so the big energy in the 2008 presidential election today is with the Republicans.

Will Mike Huckabee be able to continue his success onward into Wyoming? No polls have been conducted - a big slight to those in Wyoming, but that’s what you get for placing your state’s equivalent of a primary on a Saturday, I guess. Well, I’ll be paying attention, and my guess is that you will be too.

Let’s look at the substance of Huckabee’s attempt to stay at the head of the Republican pack, then. There are significant reasons to be very concerned about Mike Huckabee’s political ascendence:

1. Huckabee has a long history of corruption as governor of Arkansas, receiving big gifts and using his power to help his family evade legal investigations.
2. Huckabee favored starting the war against Iraq, a blunder that will go down in history as one of America’s worst ever.
3. Huckabee has proposed placing Americans infected with HIV into detention centers.
4. Huckabee has expressed support for converting America’s democracy into a Christian theocracy, with the Ten Commandments posted in the White House and a Christian Heritage Day as a national holiday.
5. Huckabee’s grasp of foreign policy has proved to be exceptionally weak, as he targets ethnic groups for profiling at the nation’s borders, talking about terrorist plots by those groups that only exist in his imagination.
6. He’s declared support for people on strike, and then crossed the same picket lines just hours later.
7. Huckabee not only wants to overturn Roe v. Wade, he wants to forbid state governments from passing laws legalizing abortion.

The list of Huckabee’s problems goes on and on and on, but Republican voters don’t seem to care much. They appear just to want a right wing ideologue, and someone who panders to religious zealotry to boot. Huckabee fits the bill to a T.

As bad as George W. Bush has been, a President Mike Huckabee would likely be even worse.

That’s why the word of the day today is: Yuckabee.

Yuckabee is a simple expression of the revulsion provoked among sane Americans when facing Mike Huckabee’s crude extremism. Think of it this way: Yuckabee is that nauseous feeling you get whenever you hear Mike Huckabee speak. You’ve always known the feeling. Now you know the name for it.

Popularity: 60% [?]

When we think about how far our society is willing to go in fueling its rollocking good time disposable material culture, this ought to be an icon in everyone’s memory: A mountain gone where once it stood, and the land all around laid to waste. Mountains are supposed to be eternal - at least in the scope of human imagination. Now, they’re regarded as just more resources for corporations to exploit.

This is not a mythological imagining from Lorax-addled tree huggers. It’s a reality, and it’s been documented by a dedicated non-profit organization: Appalachian Voices.

470 mountains have been decimated by mountaintop removal coal mining so far. How many more will go?

Are you responsible, with your use of electricity? Don’t guess. You can find out how your energy use contributes to the transformation of mountains into open pits.

Go to I Love Mountains to find out your connection.

Popularity: 50% [?]

The 2008 presidential election season is about to heat up, and so, therefore, is the political button season. Political party activists hustling for their favored candidates, as well as progressive activists struggling against the power of overly-pragmatic party insiders will be wearing their purpose on their lapels, if not on their sleeves, in the form of political buttons.

So, it’s a good time for progressives to focus on the medium of the political campaign button. Never at any time in history has there been such a great variety of political buttons. Activists search for buttons that set them apart, and reflect their individual perspectives on the political climate of the times. It’s not enough just to wear the button of the official campaigns - the dedicated progressive looks for something more individual.

Collectors of political buttons are having a more interesting time too, building collections of pins that reflect their particular interests, not just trying to get one of everything. That’s no longer possible.

For those who are interested in finding political buttons from the liberal side of the divide, and for those who are merely trying to keep track of the medium of campaign buttons in itself, a new central station is opening up: ProgressiveButtons.com.

Popularity: 48% [?]

Why pay attention to the new blog at Progressive Patriots? There are 2,008 reasons - or at least there will be soon. The Progressive Patriots are focusing on ideals, not on personality, for the 2008 presidential election season.

They’re scheduled to come up with a full list of 2,008 reasons to elect a progressive President in 2008 two days before the Iowa caucus on January 3, 2008. Yet, they’re not endorsing any candidate.

Instead, they’re building a list of 2,008 reasons to elect a progressive, not just any Democrat, and certainly not any Democratic candidate in particular.

That’s sadly opposite of how things are usually done these days. Many people pick a personality, and then attach themselves to reasons they can invent for why to support that leader, adjusting their understanding of the facts as it suits their candidate. It’s more like rooting for a sports team than politics.

The Progressive Patriots aren’t going that way. They’re identifying the attributes of the ideal candidate first, and then using those criteria to identify who’s worthy of support.

Thanks to them for their in-depth idealism in this time of superficial cults of personality.

Popularity: 35% [?]