• "Throughout evolutionary history, a big surprise would get everyone’s brain thinking," said Clifford Nass, a communications professor at Stanford. "But we’ve got a large and growing group of people who think the slightest hint that something interesting might be going on is like catnip. They can’t ignore it."
  • does my political/vocational paralysis come from too much emphasis on the incoming information and not enough on long-range matters? If I shut off my email and got rid of the catnip, would I be able to do bigger things?
• "Secondhand impressions kill." - Hillary Watson
• "You are so much better in person." - ibid.
• "...mining in a pristine environment such as ours can only lead to environmental problems for the Tribe and our neighbors, that will continue for generations, and money will never repair what is damaged or bring back the clean air, water, and land that we currently enjoy." - Arlyn Ackley, Mole Lake Sokagon Chippewa, 9/4/97
• Me: "when Grandma (Fran Hoover) talked to anyone in the nursing home where she knew everyone and all their family, she had to establish their identity in the context of Fran Hoover. Now that she's in Indianapolis, she has to establish their identity in the context of the cosmos." Aunt Kathy: "Which, for Fran, is actually smaller."
• "a super-saturated solution of sodium acetate." - geeky rocket club participant's geeky dad (awww)
• "A fully-loaded 747 on a full-distance trip gets about 60 person-miles per gallon - better than your Prius and much, much faster." - Nathan Pinney to Madison Peak Oil Group. "Flying is like each person in the plane driving a hummer." - Andrew Dutcher WHO IS RIGHT?????
• “There’s a scholar who talks about ‘heart’s ease,’ ” Albrecht told me as we sat in his car on a cliff above the Newcastle shore, overlooking the Pacific. In the distance, just before the earth curved out of sight, 40 coal tankers were lined up single file. “People have heart’s ease when they’re on their own country. If you force them off that country, if you take them away from their land, they feel the loss of heart’s ease as a kind of vertigo, a disintegration of their whole life.” Australian aborigines, Navajos and any number of indigenous peoples have reported this sense of mournful disorientation after being displaced from their land. What Albrecht realized during his trip to the Upper Valley [of Australia, being destroyed by surface mining] was that this “place pathology,” as one philosopher has called it, wasn’t limited to natives. Albrecht’s petitioners were anxious, unsettled, despairing, depressed — just as if they had been forcibly removed from the valley. Only they hadn’t; the valley changed around them. "IS THERE AN ECOLOGICAL UNCONSCIOUS?" Daniel B. Smith, New York Times Magazine. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/magazine/31ecopsych-t.html?pagewanted=1&sq=orion%20magazine&st=cse&scp=1
• Transposing Brian Wilson's heart-of-darkness take on California dreamin' to Brooklyn's grittier environs, Grizzly Bear's third full-length is a coldly beautiful gem. Singer-guitarist Ed Droste and crew render every sonic detail in the deepest earth tones of gothic prog-folk Americana, seamlessly meshing hooks, harmonies, and delicately ambient orchestration. Veckatimest plays as one long suite, like an evocative soundtrack to a monochromatic documentary about a serial killer who walks among us, smiling. - DAVID MENCONI
• "It was particularly stunning to see how addicted we still are to outdated terms like “developing and developed countries”. These terms embody the linear development that is not only becoming physically impossible, but is also the one that got us into the climate problem in the first place. What we need is green prosperity, or green development, that works with, rather than against the budget of nature." - Report on Copenhagen by Alan Atkinsson and Mathis Wackernagel
• "Why are we putting so much effort into trying to negotiate access rights to zero carbon?" - ibid.
• "I think that the lyrics are the presentation of the idea." - one of the members of Fleet Foxes in an NPR interview
• "Therein lies the best career advice I could possibly dispense: just DO things. Chase after the things that interest you and make you happy. Stop acting like you have a set path, because you don’t. No one does. You shouldn’t be trying to check off the boxes of life; they aren’t real and they were created by other people, not you. There is no explicit path I’m following, and I’m not walking in anyone else’s footsteps. I’m making it up as I go." Found this on InnerNet Weekly, passed on through Sustain Dane: "Meditation is inner service. Service is outer meditation."
• This poem was found in an old cabin in Wisconsin's northwoods:

An old man going a lone highway Came at the evening cold and gray To a chasm vast and deep and wide; The old man crossed in the twilight dim. The sullen stream had no fears for him, But he turned when safe on the other side And started a bridge to span the tide.

"Old man," said a fellow pilgrim near, "You are wasting your time building here, You never again will pass this way, Your journey will end with the closing day, You have crossed the chasm deep and wide, Why build, then, a bridge at eventide?"

The builder lifted his old, grey head, "Good friend, in the way I have come," he said, "There followeth after me today A youth whose feet must pass this way; This storm that has been as nought to me To the fair-haired youth might a pitfall be; He, too, must cross in the twilight dim, Good friend, I am building the bridge for him."

• "Fossil fuels have artificially boosted the carrying capacity of earth for human occupancy (if you ignore the damage we've done to other species)." (some end-of-the-world-proclaiming book reviewer. but I do believe him on this one.) http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5954
• "no one has shown how real time solar energy in all of its many forms (thermal, photovoltaic, wind, even hydroelectric) will ever match the power in fossil fuels. These came from ancient photosynthesis over millions of years compressed and cooked into a convenient package over more millions of years. The scope of concentration is literally unimaginable (apparently) yet very serious people dream of capturing current solar influx and replacing fossil fuels with it." - ibid.
  • tis true - he also remarks that any attempt at sequestering solar energy will take too much of the earth's surface to be practically feasible. the reality is, no matter how many wind turbines we get online, we simply cannot consume electricity in the way we are consuming it now, and to think otherwise is to deny that we are artificially extending our knowledge (with computerized data), our ability to communicate (with instantaneous communication software), and our ability to move around (with automotive technology).
• "What I came to realize was that the brain capacity for wisdom (which I have boiled down to: good judgment in complex social issues, strategic thinking, highly developed systems thinking, and strong moral sentiment, coordinated by the most recently evolved patch of prefrontal cortex) was a relatively new emergent capacity coupled with symbolic thinking and language and second order consciousness (conscious of being conscious) for early Homo sapiens. But it was evolved, as Catton notes, to meet the needs of the late Pleistocene existence of our small group-oriented species. It is not, on average, up to the task of modern complex society." - ibid. Hmm. interesting.
• "if Americans lose one serving of meat a week from their diet it would be like taking about five million cars off the road... so we need to move away from this dichotomous, absolutist language and towards something that just reflects where people are in this country." -jonathan safran foer
• "you've been such a good audience... how shall I reward you?..." (pause) "...How about another dirge?" -Baby Dee, the opening act for the Books
• "I am not a tree of sticks but a forest of hemlocks and elms." - ibid.
• "man, I'm from the projects, and this is a country-ass town." (a guy in a laundromat in madison)
• levi (3-year-old): "I like to run fast too. but I run inside. why do you run outside?"
• me: "because outside is bigger."
• levi: "inside is big for me. this house fits me really fine."
• http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/10/AR2009121001914.html
• really cool hand-drawn slides on peak oil
• http://paulgilding.com/fileshare/p091101-The-one-degree-war-plan.pdf
• http://madameguillotine.wordpress.com/2009/11/17/tilt-shift-photography/
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-goldstein/understanding-why-climate_b_225309.html
• http://www.grist.org/article/2009-11-16-nina-pierpont-quest-to-sound-the-alarm-on-wind-turbine-syndrome
• http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/10/get-rid-of-cars-ride-a-bicycle.html
• http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/10/how-to-make-everything-yourself-online-lowtech-resources.html
• http://innovationsnow.net/Cutting_Edge_Pilot_Project.html
• http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/11/bike-trailer-homes.php
• http://digg.com/environment/Climate_Change_from_the_Imperialist_perspective_Usagreenjobs
• http://www.grist.org/article/2009-11-23-jonathan-safran-foer-talks-with-grist-eating-animals/
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvLPun1Z6dI