The Woman Scientist, The Union Man and The War Against Nature
Filed under: Books, Global Economy & Politics, Job Safety & Ecology, Unions
It’s humanity’s longest war. It’s the War Against Nature. Some say it began when the first plow broke the soil on humanity’s first farm. But however you reckon its beginnings, here in the 21st century, that war is reaching a critical stage.
You see, humanity is an integral part of nature and when we make war on nature we make war on ourselves. Our weapons of mass destruction come from the very industrialization of death itself. When we level the forests, poison the air and water, exterminate whole species and change the very climate of the planet, we become the collateral damage.
On a planet populated with billions of humans, how do we declare peace in this War Against Nature and thus declare peace with ourselves? Many people have taken up this challenge. Among them were two 20th century American rebels: The Woman Scientist and The Union Man. Read more
I Learned a New Abbreviation Today
Filed under: Global Economy & Politics, Job Safety & Ecology
I learned a new abbreviation: ELE, Extinction Level Event. Yep, the Big One. The Apocalypse. The End Times. The Last Days. The Final Checkout. Neither the BP oil blowout nor the more recent Fukushima nuclear disaster were Extinction Level Events. It takes a cascade of bad karma to create an ELE. How much bad karma? Nobody knows. Ignorance is not bliss. Just more bad karma Read more
No Exit: Our Obsession with Locking Up Immigrants
Filed under: Discrimination, Global Economy & Politics, Job Safety & Ecology, Workplace
In Jean-Paul Sarte’s play, No Exit, 3 people are locked in a room together forever. Eventually they figure out that they are in hell and this is their punishment.
If being locked in a room with 2 other people is hell, what do you call it when the room is on fire and you can’t get out? Read more
The Cranes are Falling
They stand over the city like the great predatory wading birds they are named after. And from time to time, like those great predatory wading birds, they come down swiftly on those below and take a life…often more than one. They are the construction cranes, whose numbers grew with the massive lending sprees that fueled the hi-rise building boom in our great cities.
But the construction cranes don’t take lives with sharp beaks and unerring vision like their avian namesakes. Instead people get electrocuted when the cranes collide with power lines, operators fall out of them, they fall on top of people, or they crush people in the other gruesome ways that heavy complex machinery can destroy the human body. Read more