tziteras

Today the chocolate factory has been the talk of the neighbourhood. Already a yahoo group has been hijacked and is the subject of much discussion at the local volunteer run free wireless non profit , and maybe soon at the cube or even my work. It's an old ramshackle looking chocolate factory owned by Elizabeth Shaw who used to be called Packer & Co and sell their fancy chocs to marks and sparks. So with the sparks not flying so far anymore, they are closing down. The chocolate factory used to have 2500 employees, workhouses, a school and even the cemetery used to be a part of the ecosystem that was Greenbank in the last century. It was vital for all the people in the area. And this was a very industrial area, with the gasworks and the chocolate factory, the hawks gym - what was that? Mivart St... the big train station (I wish there had been a picture of the mural on that station - it's incredible). They all stand like giants in our wake. Now the tide is turning and I ...

Slashdot | IBM to Oracle - You Can't Buy Open Source IBM? Oracle? Pffft! You're standing on the sky scrapers and only see the giant peaks that come out over the clouds. What happens when the mountain falls? So here I am stuck in Peak oil world - that devastating feeling you get after eating too much and realising you just popped your stomach. Oh shit. But it's just a world, and it'll pass, and be replaced soon enough by my peak oil epiphany. I've known for long and have had glimpses in my dreams. "Daddy - the chickens are sick" - and me, "Stay away from them!". The world where every resource had been taken and was being used to the full amount it could, renewably. So the only way to win over the others would be to destroy a large amount of the land through war or something equally hellish and then run in and invade it. "We have to go on our annual pilgrimage to feed the Chinese soldiers. We will not have to donate a child this year. They ca...

Is this the answer to peak oil? I've spent the easter weekend enjoying children and festivity and friends in Bristol, sometimes coming out of my little happy hole to look out and see really upsetting headlines - another oil price hike, unrest and mad violence at oil sites etc, and a very good documentary on more4 last week which pushed me to finally unite my family's dreams of moving on somewhere permanent, with the peak oil idea that the current society really risks very turbulent economic times within the next 5 years or so, and that after that most resources will dwindle in similar ways - such as natural gas and coal, and we'll be left with whatever we can take to the next level. Just like you shouldn't move to San Francisco if you don't like earthquakes, you shouldn't live in oil dependent areas if you fear recession. The next step has to somehow keep some of what we've learnt during this time. Like the Roman times hugely influenced the middle ages, we...