What is Earth Overshoot Day?

September 23 this year marks an unfortunate milestone: the day humanity will have used all the resources nature will generate this year, according to Global Footprint Network data. Earth Overshoot Day marks the day when humanity beings living beyond its ecological means. Beyond that day, we move into the ecological equivalent of deficit spending, utilizing resources at a rate faster than what the planet can regenerate in a calendar year.

Globally, we now now require the equivalent of 1.4 planets to support our lifestyles. But of course, we only have one Earth. The result is that our supply of natural resources — like trees and fish — continues to shrink, while our waste, primarily carbon dioxide, accumulates.

Hooray!

The Saturday before last (September 13th) Hurricane Ike came by and decided to kill some people, destroy lots of stuff, cancel school until next Monday (the 29th), knock down loads of trees and powerlines blocking roads and leaving me without power until yesterday afternoon, with many others still waiting for returned power. This was only one of the things that made this last week and a half suck. Others include David Foster Wallace’s suicide by hanging and some more crap I wont go into in public. And no, I didn’t get an accidental sex change or anything like that.

On the bright side I re-watched (this time on Blu-ray and a friend’s nice HD TV) Speed Racer,  which was surprisingly awesome the first time and still amazing the second time. Its complete over-the-topness is an obvious attributer for its mixed to cold public reception, but screw that, Speed Racer kicks so much ass for so many reasons I don’t even need to defend my liking it.

Damn. Just, damn.

HP has put together a laptop that, thanks to Intel solid-state hard drives (SSDs) and mercury-free LED monitors, can run for 24 hours without needing a recharge. Now, I seriously doubt that you’ll really be able to work on that computer for 24 hours without it needing to be recharged (Maybe if you’re doing nothing but word processing with Wi-Fi turned off and your monitor brightness all the way down. Maybe.), but even an 8 or 12 hour battery life is fantastic news for mobile computing. The first of these laptops are set to come out in October.

Now don’t get too excited yet, these things are going to be damn expensive. How expensive? Well, we don’t know quite yet, but taking into consideration that Intel is selling the SSDs to manufactures at a price of nearly $600 per drive (a traditional laptop hard drive of the same size can be publically purchased for about $60), along with this information from this BBC News article…

It is worth noting that the 24-hour figure can be reached only by purchasing the ultra-capacity battery and upgrading the base model of the 6930p to include the Illumi-Lite display and 80 gigabyte version of the SSD.

…there’s no telling how much these things are going to run. I’m scared. I’m also scared of what that battery is going to look like.

Regardless, it’s great news overall and (hopefully) it’s only a matter of time before this kind of technology will become standard. Hooray for laptops that you can actually work on for more than thirty minutes without being plugged into something!

So remember a while back (you probably don’t) when I said I was going to avoid talking about politics on my blog? Well it’s a rule I keep breaking and I’m going to do it again.

I like Joe Biden. Sometimes he doesn’t know when to shut up, but for the most part he’s an asshole and hey, I respect a guy who don’t pussyfoot around what he’s trying to say. Besides, any politician who says “bullshit” and “malarkey” in neighboring sentences is alright by me. I was personally rooting for Kathleen Sebelius to get the VP spot, but I think Biden was the more logical choice so I wasn’t really surprised when he got tapped. Maybe it was just me, but he did seem a bit quiet for a little while there, but I’m happy to see he’s back to his jerk self.

Also, check out this disturbing interview with McCain about his VP pick.

Claiming that Palin has foreign policy experience because “she understands that Alaska is next to Russia?” Well I live pretty close to Mexico, McCain, maybe I should have been your VP?

I can’t wait for the debates.

I’m not sure who Todd Diamond is, but I’m glad Warren Ellis does.

On a more serious note, Sam Harris, the author of Letter to a Christian Nation, recently wrote an opninion piece on McCains VP choice for the LA Times.

So let us ask the question that should be on the mind of every thinking person in the world at this moment: If John McCain becomes the 44th president of the United States, what are the odds that a blood clot or falling object will make Sarah Palin the 45th?

The actuarial tables on the Social Security Administration website suggest that there is a better than 10% chance that McCain will die during his first term in office. Needless to say, the Reaper’s scything only grows more insistent thereafter. Should President McCain survive his first term and get elected to a second, there is a 27% chance that Palin will become the first female U.S. president by 2015. If we take into account McCain’s medical history and the pressures of the presidency, the odds probably increase considerably that this bright-eyed Alaskan will become the most powerful woman in history.

As many people have noted, placing Palin on the ticket has made these final months of the already overlong 2008 campaign much more interesting. Is Palin remotely qualified to be president of the United States? No. But that’s precisely what is so interesting. McCain not only has thrown all sensible concerns about good governance aside merely to pander to a sliver of female and masses of conservative Christian voters, he has turned this period of American history into an episode of high-stakes reality television: Don’t look now, but our cousin Sarah just became leader of the free world! Tune in next week and watch her get sassy with Pakistan!Americans have an unhealthy desire to see average people promoted to positions of great authority. No one wants an average neurosurgeon or even an average carpenter, but when it comes time to vest a man or woman with more power and responsibility than any person has held in human history, Americans say they want a regular guy, someone just like themselves. President Bush kept his edge on the “Who would you like to have a beer with?” poll question in 2004, and won reelection.

This is one of the many points at which narcissism becomes indistinguishable from masochism. Let me put it plainly: If you want someone just like you to be president of the United States, or even vice president, you deserve whatever dysfunctional society you get. You deserve to be poor, to see the environment despoiled, to watch your children receive a fourth-rate education and to suffer as this country wages — and loses — both necessary and unnecessary wars.

McCain has so little respect for the presidency of the United States that he is willing to put the girl next door (soon, too, to be a grandma) into office beside him. He has so little respect for the average American voter that he thinks this reckless and cynical ploy will work.And it might. Palin’s nomination has clearly excited Christian conservatives, and it may entice a few million gender-obsessed fans of Hillary Clinton to vote entirely on the basis of chromosomes. Throw in a few million more average Americans who will just love how the nice lady smiles, and 2009 could be a very interesting year.

Tune in next week and watch cousin Sarah fuss with our nuclear arsenal …

I’ve received more than the usual amount of criticism for my recent opinion piece on Sarah Palin, most of it alleging sexism and/or an unseemly infatuation with Barack Obama.  For those who care, I’d like to briefly respond:

My alleged sexism: It is true that I used some hackneyed, gender-slanted language in the piece (“get sassy,” “girl-next-door,” etc.). This was deliberate. Clearly, I played this game at my peril. I can say that if Sarah Palin were a man of similar qualifications, I would have used equally slanted language to describe him. I might have called Mr. Palin a “frat-boy” or a “lumberjack.” I would have invoked some silly macho phrasing like,“Watch Cousin Jim flip Putin the bird.” My concern is not that Mrs. Palin is a woman. My concern is that she is a totally unqualified and poorly educated woman who was added to the Republican ticket as a token woman (and Creationist wacko). For what it’s worth, the article was vetted by the two women closest to me (wife and mother) and by two female editors at the LA Times. If anything, the editing at the Times made the piece even more “sexist.”

My alleged Obamamania: Many McCain supporters have written to say that (1) Obama is also unqualified (or even less qualified than Palin) and (2) I have shown myself to be a hypocrite by not objecting to Obama’s religiosity. Briefly: My criticism of Palin should not be construed as uncritical acceptance of Obama. Needless to say, I find Obama’s religious pandering repulsive. The suspicion that he is pandering, out of obvious necessity, and not quite as religious as he makes out, is somewhat comforting, however. But even if Obama were precisely as religious as he appears, he is not a Creationist, Rapture-Ready blockhead. Palin, by all appearances, seems to be one. This is a difference worth noting. Whatever you may think of his politics, Obama is very intelligent and reasonably well educated. Palin thinks the universe is 6000 years old. Unfortunately, I wrote my article before some of the most disturbing signs of her religious extremism came to my attention.

So, let me simply declare that I would be overjoyed to have a qualified woman in the White House. I would, likewise, be overjoyed to have a qualified African American in the White House. In fact, I would be overjoyed to have a qualified WASP man in the White House. I will be guardedly optimistic to have a very smart (and somewhat qualified) Barack Obama in the White House. And I would be frankly terrified to have a religious bumpkin like Sarah Palin in the White House. I think you should share this last conviction. Hence my latest opinion piece.

Overall some really good points raised. What is Americas obsession with voting for knowingly unqualified people to important jobs, anyway? Even on the Democratic ticket Obama was one of the least qualified hopefuls, and in spite of that, he won candidacy. Or perhaps due to that?

So I know this is one of those stupid 4chan Internet memes, but this picture gets me every time. I’ve been looking it it for a few days and every time I see it I still smile.

While in Austin this weekend I watched a few movies and read a comic. Let’s take a look. But before we do I think I need to make a statement about the movies, books and &c. that I talk about on my blog.

If you’ve been reading my this page for any amount of time you’ve probably noticed that I pretty much like everything I talk about on here. I’m always recommending something,  talking about how much I enjoyed something, or demanding you read something, or whatever. This might make it seem like I like just about everything and that you should ignore any suggestions I make because hey what’s the point if I like everything, right? Well, that’s not really true. The fact of the matter is I’m kind of an asshole about the things I like. I’m legendarily picky and kind of a snob when it comes to things like books and movies and music. The reason why I’m so generally positive on this site is because, well, I pretty much only write about the things I like. It would be really easy for me to primarily write about all stuff I hate, but someone else I know is already doing that and doing a better job than I could anyways. So while I’m sure to bitch about things from time to time usually when I’m going to talk about entertainment in one way or the other, it’s going to be positive. Anyways.

Happy Times by Yimou Zhang. Zhang is a pretty well known director nowadays for movies like House of Flying Daggers, Hero, and Curse of the Golden Flower. While I’m a pretty big fan of these, his best movie (that I’ve seen) is Raise the Red Lantern - a film so far away from kung-fuing and swording and daggering and flipping that the only way you could even start to guess that it’s the same director is the incredible (albeit much more subtle than his more recent stuff) cinematography. When I heard he made a comedy movie about eight years ago I knew it had to be the next on my list for me to see. The story starts out being pretty funny, but by the time it ends it’s much closer to sad than amusing. Describing it as bittersweet is probably overstating its sweetness, but it is there. It’s a good little movie and I’m glad I watched it.

Lake of Fire is a documentary about abortion by Tony Kaye (American History X). The movie is long – about two and a half hours – and NOT for the squeamish. Both sides of the issue are covered with a few mediating voices in between. It’s fair, disturbing, enlightening, and not easy to forget. If you’re undecided on the issue I recommend it. If you’re already solid on one side or the other I highly recommend it. It didn’t change where I stand on the issue, but it made me think a lot about it.

I read Good-Bye, Chunky Rice by Craig Thompson. It’s a sad comic about moving on in your life even when you’re not sure where you’re moving on to or exactly why you’re doing it. It’s about friends and the impact people have on each other before and after they’re out of each other’s lives and how there really is no such thing as “out of each other’s lives.” To make this a short review, the book is striking and brilliant and haunting, but in a non creepy way.

At the end of the weekend I realized that pretty much everything I read and watched was, at least to an extent, fairly depressing. If you decide to go after any of this stuff, I suggest spreading it out a bit.

Also of interest, Derrick pointed out to me that Google just announced a new web browser called Google Chrome. It sounds pretty promising, as outlined in this comic by Scott McCloud of Understanding Comics fame. Who knows if the final product is going to be any good, but I’ll be right there to mess around with it as soon as the beta comes out.

UPDATE: The beta for Google Chrome was just released and I’ve got to say… it’s pretty sweet. It’s faster, the interface is nice and logical and everything feels really open. There are some weird things about it and I do miss a few of my Firefox plug-ins, but hopefully with time people will make versions of those for Chrome. Check it out. I’ll have to play with it more before I decide if I’m switching permanitely, but so far it’s looking good. If you try it out let me know what you think.

Also not of interest, for some reason every time I write “each other” I want to write “eachother” like it’s one long word. It’s annoying and if you search the archives I’d be shocked if you didn’t find more than a few examples of this misspelling. Maybe someday the powers that be will decide that English should evolve (laterally in this case) and “eachother” is how the word(s) is/are to be written, but not now. Not today.