Woman gets 10 years in exorcism death Why isn't this just treated as murder pure and simple? 10 years is usually for manslaugter? Is this government leniency because ...

World Tribune.com -- OPEC sees threat from 'alternative energy'

It's official. An exhaustive new study has correlated religious belief to high rates of social ills. Comparing the United States to other more secular democracies, the study, in the ...

Societies worse when they have god on their side

Journal of Religion and Society It's about time

Epic storm Rita has not even played out, and already observers are predicting an even worse impact on oil production than little sister Katrina. We can only hope the good people of Texas will be spared a cataclysm this time. Whatever happens, cities and oil rigs are already preparing for the worst. Alert emergency teams are out in force, and we will probably escape the level of human tragedy and ineptitude seen earlier this month. But we should take a pause and realize that we have set ourselves up for these unfolding disasters:

Scientists: Cut Air Travel for Environment

Words of wisdom. 'Nuff said.

The name "Black Sun Journal" refers strictly to this blogs' approach to intellectual, political, and psychological inquiry. Themes hidden or underexplored in the mainstream culture or media ...

A simple consideration of the energy content of a barrel of crude oil can show us what a tremendous bargain it is even at current near-record ...

The Drudge Report trumpeted on 9.14.05 the headline "unconstitutional" showing a picture of young children saluting a flag. What is at issue are the words "under god" in the pledge of allegiance. Some time ago, an atheist named Michael Newdow sued Sacramento to prevent his child, and others who did not believe, from being forced by the school to recite what is essentially a prayer. U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton ruled that the pledge's reference to one nation "under God" violates school children's right to be "free from a coercive requirement to affirm God."

What solutions are best in the long run? Won't substituting for fossil fuels inevitably mean a lower net energy yield? At some point, aren't we bound to eventually dissipate earth's energy and mineral resources? Isn't it futile to try to grow our way out of this predicament? Don't we need to discuss other options? Can't we reduce our consumption? Isn't happiness to be found in consuming less?

Confronting the fourth anniversary of the horrific September 11 attacks wasn't enough. Today brought new mourning for the victims of hurricane Katrina, and a new darkening of the American mood. Adding insult to injury, we have the religious gloating of rising Al Qaeda bogeyman Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and a new terror tape from former Orange County resident and self-styled jihadist Adam Gadahn.

Deconsumption Nazis, shrill advocates of "peak-oil" induced collapse, and "die-off maniacs" have missed the point. So have the so-called "cornucopians." No rational person would assert that earth's resources are unlimited. But humans today are limited by our concepts and approaches as to what constitutes an effective solution to a problem. Most governments have chosen oil subsidies as their solution to almost everything. This has led to ever increasing technological efforts to extract more energy, faster. We are quickly approaching the limits to this type of growth. Oil production will peak sometime between now and 2014, depending on whose estimates you believe. World production will then begin an inexorable decline, much as U.S. production has declined since 1971. But the surface of the earth is not a closed system, so Malthusian arguments about the Second Law of Thermodynamics do not apply. The earth receives constant massive input from the Sun, which for any human purpose, is virtually unlimited. There is also a large amount of heat energy in the form of radioactive decay within the earth, which is again for all intents and purposes unlimited. Ocean temperature differentials, wind power, etc., etc., but they are all derivative of solar energy.

Articles of Interest - The Real Price of Gas Gasoline externalities revealed: $5 to $15 per gallon.

Hydrogen is an energy carrier, not a source. It is extremely abundant, but only bonded to other atoms--it must be separated before it can be used--which takes energy. So it ...

The finger pointing and blaming is only just beginning. But we should look beyond the specifics of New Orleans and face our unwillingness as a nation to confront problems we do not consider imminent. Here are a few problems for which we are woefully unprepared:

Over the past few months, I've been compiling links and information related to the coming world energy transition. The world is waking up to the fact that it cannot continue on with business as usual. The recent oil price runup, coupled with the vulnerabities to supply disruption spotlighted by hurricane Katrina, makes this a certainty. My current interest in this phenomenon was sparked by an author with whom I very much disagree. James Howard Kunstler's "The Long Emergency" sent me on a journey of research and soul-searching. My first reaction to his book was extremely negative. But the more research I did, the more I found that the first part of his thesis is correct--namely that we are nearing the peak of world oil production. There are few analysts (aside from Daniel Yergin) who will say otherwise.

Man commutes on horse Right in line with JH Kunstler.

Scientific American: Drowning New Orleans Very prescient article on New Orleans from 2001.