Kurt Vonnegut's elaborate preparations for Armageddon

Kurt Vonnegut knew Armageddon. He could describe Armageddon. It looks a little like this:

I was sitting in a bar one night, talking rather loudly about a person I hated -- and a man with a beard sat down beside me, and he said amiably, "Why don't you have him killed?"

"I've thought of it," I said. "Don't think I haven't."

"Let me help you to think about it clearly," he said. His voice was deep. His beak was large. He wore a black mohair suit and a black string tie. His little red mouth was obscene. "You're looking at the situation through a red haze of hate," he said. "What you need are the calm, wise services of a murder counselor, who can plan the job for you, and save you an unnecessary trip to the hot squat."

Convert your dollars into yuan

In another stunning blog to American hegemony, oil countries are contemplating switching their trading currency from dollars to yuan. Or yen. Or euro. Or gold. Anything but $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.

Except American oilmen. They will be trading in Confederate dollars.

The Americans, who are aware the meetings have taken place – although they have not discovered the details – are sure to fight this international cabal which will include hitherto loyal allies Japan and the Gulf Arabs. Against the background to these currency meetings, Sun Bigan, China's former special envoy to the Middle East, has warned there is a risk of deepening divisions between China and the US over influence and oil in the Middle East. "Bilateral quarrels and clashes are unavoidable," he told the Asia and Africa Review. "We cannot lower vigilance against hostility in the Middle East over energy interests and security."

What is the U. S. going to do? Invade their countries and kill their leaders, like they did when Saddam Hussein switched to the euro?

prepare to take back reality

But first - learn how to talk to stupid people!

Evolve. Or die.

Humans are evolving faster than scientists thought they were.

The pace of human evolution has been increasing at a stunning rate since our ancestors began spreading through Europe, Asia and Africa 40,000 years ago, quickening to 100 times historical levels after agriculture became widespread, according to a study published today.

. . .

Until recently, anthropologists believed that evolutionary pressure on humans eased after the transition to a more stable agrarian lifestyle. But in the last few years, they realized the opposite was true -- diseases swept through societies in which large groups lived in close quarters for a long time.

Of course, disease is evolving faster, too. The animals we process for food are treated so callously that their stressed bodies are desperately trying to produce defences to their chief predator - we call them diseases - to slow or stop us. Remember this the next time you decide to scarf a 99¢ hamburger.

Now the question should be: Will humans evolve fast enough to survive their unrelenting desire for apocalypse?

Teach Your Children Well

Can we get children involved in the health care debate? Yes we can!

Conservative experts are learning that innocent children across America are having trouble sleeping at night. They live in constant fear. They can't stop thinking about President Obama's diabolical plan to mandate Death Squads to kill their grandparents, and take from them everything they hold dear! Their screams can be heard across the nation and our tears are falling into a puddle that cries out for restoration!

Prepare now to avoid con artists

How do you avoid the next Bernie Madoff? Avoid churches, temples and mosques, maybe?

Good con artists are loved....until people find them out. Trusting someone simply because you like them, is not enough. Also realize that con artists, in the financial field, scout for clients in places like churches and workplaces -- places where they can strike up a friendly relationship.

Earth as a Garden of Eden (the original geoengineering project)

For too long the "controversy" of global warming has centered on:

1. Changing the name to the more neutral "climate change" so it doesn't sound so scary or dangerous.

2. Framing the debate as a choice between doing nothing (because you don't believe there's a problem) or ending all technological progress (because you believe there's time to let Mother Nature fix the damage).

Maybe we can pursue the third option. Maybe we can geoengineer Earth.

The global warming situation has become so dire that Barack Obama's chief scientific adviser has raised with the president the possibility of massive-scale technological fixes to alter the climate known as 'geo-engineering'.

. . .

The suite of mega-technological fixes includes everything from placing mirrors in space that reflect sunlight from the Earth, to fertilising the oceans with iron to encourage the growth of algae that can soak up atmospheric carbon dioxide. Another option is to seed clouds which bounce the sun's rays back into space so they do not warm the Earth's surface.

Trouble is, niether side wants to pursue this option, because neither side trusts the scientists and engineers who would be needed to create the solutions. So geoengineering proponents are planning for a day when the problem is much, much worse.

Salter said that geo-engineering techniques were the only methods that would lower world temperatures quickly enough. Even if the world stopped emitting CO2 tomorrow, he said, the world would continue to get hotter for several decades. "Opponents say it would take the pressure off getting the renewables developed. I've been working on renewables since 1973 and stopped because we're too late, we wasted too much time. We may have a panic very soon because of the way the Arctic ice is going."

. . .

Writing last year in a special edition of the Royal Society journal Philosophical Transactions that was dedicated to geo-engineering, Brian Launder of the University of Manchester and Michael Thompson of the University of Cambridge said: "While such geo-scale interventions may be risky, the time may well come when they are accepted as less risky than doing nothing. There is increasingly the sense that governments are failing to come to grips with the urgency of setting in place measures that will assuredly lead to our planet reaching a safe equilibrium."