Monday 13 October 2008

The end times?



When I first saw this my first thought was 'cool, I want one of those', then of course I realised I wouldn't be able to fit it on my drive and the neighbours might complain.
This peice of artwork is constructed by Kuksi It seems he does a lot of this kind of stuff - some of it looks quite gross. However it appeals to me on some level, maybe it is the intricate detail, maybe it is the fact that it reminds me of some of the artwork in warhammer 40,000 which I used to really enjoy playing.


The church tank also reminds me of the following

'And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, "O Lord, bless this Thy hand grenade that with it Thou mayest blow Thine enemies to tiny bits, in Thy mercy." And the Lord did grin and the people did feast upon the lambs and sloths and carp and anchovies and orangutans and breakfast cereals, and fruit bats and large chu... [At this point, the friar is urged by Brother Maynard to "skip a bit, brother"]


... And the Lord spake, saying, "First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin, then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it." Amen.
Link
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Friday 10 October 2008

Truth?




It's never good when a major advocate for clean energy gets blocked my mainstream media.

ABC has allegedly blocked this ad by the We Can Solve It campaign, an ad begins to divulge facts about the oil industry and our ability to switch to renewable energy - facts that have political implications, especially leading up to the US elections.


As EcoGeek put it:

It is absolutely true that America's oil and coal lobbies have consistently blocked legislation and mis-represented facts about global warming to the American people. The travesty was when the oil lobby aired the "carbon is life" advertisement, not when the We Can Solve It campaign tried to set the record straight.


More on Big Oil:Link

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Wednesday 1 October 2008

Walking more damaging to the planet than going by car’


If you thought about it you would assume that walking was less damaging to the environment than driving - after all driving pumps out CO2 that has been naturally sequesterted for millions of years.

However walking does more than driving to cause global warming, a leading environmentalist has calculated. The sums were done by Chris Goodall, campaigning author of How to Live a Low-Carbon Life.

The sums were based on the greenhouse gases created by intensive beef production. “Driving a typical UK car for 3 miles [4.8km] adds about 0.9 kg [2lb] of CO2 to the atmosphere,” he said, a calculation based on the Government’s official fuel emission figures. “If you walked instead, it would use about 180 calories. You’d need about 100g of beef to replace those calories, resulting in 3.6kg of emissions, or four times as much as driving.

“The troubling fact is that taking a lot of exercise and then eating a bit more food is not good for the global atmosphere. Eating less and driving to save energy would be better.”

Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance. The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes. Provided, of course, they remembered to switch off the TV rather than leaving it on standby.

Catching a diesel train is now twice as polluting as travelling by car for an average family, the Rail Safety and Standards Board admitted recently. Paper bags are worse for the environment than plastic because of the extra energy needed to manufacture and transport them, the Government says.

Fresh research published in New Scientistlast month suggested that 1kg of meat cost the Earth 36kg in global warming gases. The figure was based on Japanese methods of industrial beef production but Mr Goodall says that farming techniques are similar throughout the West.

What if, instead of beef, the walker drank a glass of milk? The average person would need to drink 420ml – three quarters of a pint – to recover the calories used in the walk. Modern dairy farming emits the equivalent of 1.2kg of CO2 to produce the milk, still more pollution than the car journey.

Cattle farming is notorious for its perceived damage to the environment, based on what scientists politely call “methane production” from cows. The gas, released during the digestive process, is 21 times more harmful than CO2 . Organic beef is the most damaging because organic cattle emit more methane.

Simply cutting out beef, or even meat, however, would be too modest a change. The food industry is estimated to be responsible for a sixth of an individual’s carbon emissions, and Britain may be the worst culprit.

“This is not just about flying your beans from Kenya in the winter,” Mr Goodall said. “The whole system is stuffed with energy and nitrous oxide emissions. The UK is probably the worst country in the world for this.

A chilled ready meal is a perfect example of where the energy is wasted. You make the meal, then use an enormous amount of energy to chill it and keep it chilled through warehousing and storage.”

The ideal diet would consist of cereals and pulses. “This is a route which virtually nobody, apart from a vegan, is going to follow,” Mr Goodall said. But there are other ways to reduce the carbon footprint. “Don’t buy anything from the supermarket,” Mr Goodall said, “or anything that’s travelled too far.”Link

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Jesus is no good with computers



I suppose this doesn't matter too much, after all Jesus saves so he won't have lost any data.
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