smokerings

its a strange thing, lonliness. its the feeling of walking away very fast and realising that no one is following you. or entering an empty room and hearing your own breath echo off the walls. when we were kids, we'd run away and hide in very secret and clever places and if no one came looking, it would hurt. inexplicably.
we drove forever, it seemed. drove miles and miles along winding mountain paths, the van lurching this way and then that. compassion is a universal language, isnt it? at some point i wonder why people dont throw me out of their houses, when i come around in my shapeless grey kurta and surveyor's rude hiking boots and clipboard. because no one ever crossed their thresholds, sat on their charpais, drank their tea and asked them.. so, how's life? so, what do you think? so, how are the kids? how's it going? no, tons of people are in and out every day. why welcome the outsiders? oh, and its not a kashmiri thing. its not a rural-people thing. its not a muslim thing. i don't, i don't understand why they've always been so goddamn nice to me, the outsider.
(the rudest, most reluctant respondents ive ever met, in my years of surveying and interveiwing, are the uncles and aunties of Sector U, Defence.)
so anyway. if you're interested, the WB/ERRA 3000 bucks program was the biggest joke, the most pitiless scam i have ever seen played on poor people. im not even going to start with what they've lost already, between the earthquake of oct 2005, the landslides of jan 2006, and the mudslides of august 2006. on top of everything, we've driven them crazy with roumers instead of just letting them get the hell on with their lives. god alone knows what the designers of this program were thinking. just goes to show that the only people worse than the senseless technocratic assholes that run this country are the senseless technocratic assholes who give them the money to do it.

and...

Green paint

Journalists and wonks treated by the Whitehall PR machine to early drips of Stern have made much of the report's likely impact on the world stage.

That's not surprising, as those journalists and wonks are British, and we just love to see ourselves painting the world green as we once covered it in pink.

On the international stage, getting Stern accepted and acted upon faces four major problems:

* continued resistance within the US to the scientific consensus
* the reluctance of major developing nations to accept any constraints on their economic growth
* the absence of global economic drivers which will make it more profitable, say, to invest in clean coal technology over conventional plant
* in democracies, parties advocating any degree of economic pain typically fare poorly

If those arguments look familiar, that is because they should be; they were major obstacles to climate action even before the Kyoto Protocol was born almost a decade ago.

They are as real today as they ever were; and until we see politicians the world over prepared to campaign on a platform of pain today in exchange for a smaller reduction in jam tomorrow, the jury must be out on whether the Stern report will bring any change to the international climate field.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6098124.stm


clearly, conventional economics doesnt have much room for long term growth at all. only you have to be a Ph D in Economics to be able to say things like that and get heard. and how likely is a PhD economist to say "well, lets face it, everything i've studied so far is mostly bullshit"?