Wednesday's Trap

Oh --- and I've been slowly, but certainly, filling the Wiki with a proper blog. See every subversive e-mail I've sent for the past three months, here.

Also, I have a minute favor to ask. I'd like your opinion on the following two Wiki articles --- whenever you get the free, unhinged reading time. It's nothing wild or urgent. But, I thought they could make for a promising discussion when we hook it up at Lake Ontario. The first article concerns undergraduate academia, and advice for today's youth on pursuing a degree in undergraduate academia. (Don't worry! It's not all "gloom and doom.") The second article concerns Science and how best to preserve the artifacts and artifice of Science through the coming... difficulties. (Alexis' reply, which I'm beginning to agree with: "Ah, fuck Science. It's had its reductionalistic, mechanistic-silly days of enthralling damage to life and things living. I'll be in the tent, out by the teenage pine trees, doing my apparatus-free experiments on images of plant samples if you need me... 100% vacuum-chamber-electron-plasma-toxic-chemical free.")

• Dmitry Orlov. Quite Possibly the Most Unorthodox Piece of Advice Ever Given to the American Youths. 2005.
• John Michael Greer. Saving Science. 2008-06-11.
  

Oh: and the grand timetable is shifting foreward. It seems that my unseemly, best estimates were off by one or two years. I didn't expect a Children of Men-style dissolution for a handful of years --- certainly, not until 2012.

But reality's conspiring against my estimates. Europe has, slowly, begun imploding! I know; I didn't believe it, either. You probably haven't heard anything about the fuel, farmer, and fishing riots this week in Belgium, France, Spain, or the U.K. If you have, please skip over this. If you haven't, I highly suggest you examine the following links... (Survival's contingent on our getting a good sense of just when, where, and how we'll be asked to change our lives.)

• Thisislondon.co.uk. Europe in Flames. 2008-06-13.
• European Tribune. Europe Blockaded. 2008-06-13.
• BBC. Panic Buying. 2008-06-12.

My favorite photography from the Spanish blockade:

• http://actualidad.terra.es/addon/img/feed/actualidad/20080611/7225229a7160fg.jpg
• http://actualidad.terra.es/addon/img/feed/actualidad/20080611/7225229dd5d7cg.jpg
• http://actualidad.terra.es/addon/img/feed/actualidad/20080610/7225223cccadeg.jpg
• http://actualidad.terra.es/addon/img/feed/actualidad/20080610/7225223daad7bg.jpg
• http://actualidad.terra.es/addon/img/feed/actualidad/20080610/7225223652de3g.jpg
• http://actualidad.terra.es/addon/img/feed/actualidad/20080609/722521cb29b86g.jpg
• http://actualidad.terra.es/addon/img/feed/actualidad/20080610/722522361f9a3g.jpg

Love,
Brian