Corporate financial guy: 'The West is finished'

Kind of a remarkable blatt from a corporate executive, saying something many eco and sustainability-minded people have been saying for a long time: The economies of the developed nations can't just keep expanding forever. In fact, he suggests we're at a sun-setting moment now.

"We suffer from no growth and we suffer from imported inflation -- that means we have negative real growth and societies fracture when you have negative real growth and quite simply our society faces fractures for trying to stick Europe back together again is not going to work with that underlying paradigm, unless you can create five percent growth to overcome that imported inflation," Murrin explained.

Murrin said that the East was depending less on the West and the rise of a consumer society was the first step in the expansion of an economic empire.

"If you look at the cycle of an empire system from regionalization to expansion to empire, the first phases of that catalyst are when you have a self fuelled consumer society and so actually that process of building your consumer base which is really what's going on in China, day by day their consumer base increases and the dependence on the West decreases," he said.

Murrin added that while China is by far the biggest emerging economy and would be at the center of a new economic order, other emerging nations were set to join the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) and new political orders and alliances would come about as a result.

"This isn't just a BRIC story, this is the end of the Christian Western Empire versus the rise of the whole emerging world led by China as the foremost and most powerful," Murrin told CNBC.

Oh well! had to happen sometime!

And he's not even taking into account global warming and its catastrophic affects, which are in part the subject of this near-apocalyptic screed, on io9.com. So see, it's not just paranoid right-wingers who are sure the sky is falling. It's also depressed corporate types who see no chance for their 401Ks to recover, and futurist types, though that latter guy is probably a libertarian of the Scott Adams variety.

Lonely, bitter man predicts that in collapse, everyone will become like him

This screed from a collapsitarian contains the usual laundry list of dire predictions of societal collapse. What makes it different is a few side comments the author adds to his prediction. For example:

Alcoholism, drug use and domestic violence will likely soar. I also expect the declining marriage rate to drop at an even faster pace.

Disclosure: I don't believe that a man should get married. There's nothing that marriage offers that he can't already get. Plus, the divorce and family courts will screw him over in a big way. Nevertheless, many women will not be interested in marrying a poor or working class man. And frankly, more men will fall into this category. Moreover, less men will want to get married because they will feel that they have little to offer.

What an insightful view of human behavior! I feel like I know him better now. Let me guess, he's a drunken old asshole whose wife left him after years of abuse, and he feels screwed over by everybody from his ex to the courts.

From what I can gather, this loser mentality seems only too prominent among survivalist and "sovereign" types.

According to the article, the Big Collapse can follow any number of catastrophes, from economic meltdown to a solar storm -- a vague assertion that makes it clear that the author's interest is not in how we get there, but what follows.

I think of this as a primarily pornographic view of the future. Collapsitarians love to repeat to each other the gory details of how bad it's all going to get following the B.C., but they're never too specific about exactly how we would get there. Harrumph, solar storm, ahem! The parallels to the Zombie Apocalypse are unmistakable. No one spends much time thinking about how the Z.A. actually originates; what's important is the stalking, growling, head-exploding, etc. Similarly, what's important to the collapsitarians is the rioting, shooting, general breakdown of everything. It makes them very excited.

Update a few hours later: The same blog has published an entry from one of its regular alarmists, saying that something called a super EMP would disable all electronics in the lower 48 states. Well, I guess it would have to be "super." The entry also includes links to several examples of collapsitarian porn such as the excitingly titled "One Second After."

It's the end of the world but you don't know it

As everyone knows (but will, no doubt, very swiftly forget), a Bay Area preacher named Harold Camping predicted the rapture would happen on Saturday. When it didn't, he professed to be "flabbergasted," and took a few days to do some thinking. This afternoon he more or less squarely faced a press conference and told the press and his radio audience that something "mystical" had taken place on Saturday and never fear, the end of the world will happen on October 21 "just as we have been predicting."

In fact, he has been preaching that the original May 21 date would be only the beginning of a five-month period of terror and that the real end of the world would come as the earth is consumed by fire on Oct. 21. Now he's saying never mind the terror part -- God is merciful! -- but he was right about everything else.

Play-by-play of the event is here, courtesy of a live-blogging HuffPost writer, but I thought the most interesting and telling part of Camping's spiel was when he was asked about the people who had sold their possessions and quit their jobs to advertise the May 21 date. Even if Camping was right about the Oct. 21 date, what did he advise those followers to do in the meantime? After all, Camping had answered a previous question as to whether he would be giving up his worldly possessions by saying in a mystified voice "But I still have to have a place to live... I still have to have a car to drive. Why would I do that?"

So what advice did he have for his followers who were now bereft of possessions? "Look," he said, his voice hardening. "We just went through a great recession. People lost their jobs, they lost their homes, they had to move in with a cousin, perhaps, or cut back very much on spending. But they survived. People cope."

So, anybody who believed this old nutbag and did something stupid like stopped saving for their kids' college tuition or quit their job -- they're on their own for the next five months. Surely some of them will kick themselves, go out and get a new job, and work at not being bitter for the rest of their lives. But others will double down for the real EOTW in October. Those are the people we should be afraid of.

Today's fake: End of the world. So now what?

Okay, it's Saturday afternoon on the 21st, and since Asia is not yet in ruins I think we can assume that series of Christ-sponsored earthquakes, which was supposed to devastate the earth starting in New Zealand and traveling westward, is not happening. I was talking a couple of weeks ago with a friend about this whole EOTW thing, when publicity about it was just starting to bubble to the mainstream. (I had been aware of the May 21 prediction for a year, because I have a morbid fascination with cult figures and frauds, and I have listened on and off to the Bay Area radio station of the Harold Camping cult for years, if for no other reason than his amazingly weird delivery.) My friend said, "How liberating! Wouldn't it be awesome if you really knew the end of the world was coming on a certain day? You could do anything!"

Because she's a shrink, I'm sure she didn't mean that in the "You could finally go out and murder that person on your list" way. She probably meant it in the self-actualizing way. Or she could have meant it the sort of dark-side way, because she also rolls that way. You should read her fiction. (You really should. She's in my writing group. In fact, she is my writing group.)

Right, then, back to work. Rain fell all day the day Sirenita died, but the next morning it cleared up, and since then it's been gorgeous. This is a splendid springtime Saturday, sunny and windy and cool, just perfect. I haven't yet been able to make myself go to my other writing friend's basement and work on my book. I think I'll do it from this nice cafe for a while.

One more from the high desert

Speaking of weird crime in the high desert, this is pretty unbeatable:

Victorville Daily Press, 16 November 2010

Buckets of mercury found in Hesperia home

HESPERIA -- A man and a teen were forced to evacuate their home early Tuesday morning after authorities found buckets of mercury, according to San Bernardino County Fire officials.

Working from a tip, officials were called to a home in the 11900 block of Sixth Avenue at about 1:15 a.m. about liquid mercury being kept in the home.

"They found one pound of the liquid metal in buckets," Jay Hausman, spokesman for the fire department, said.

The man was extracting the metal from computer components, but it's unclear why he was collecting the mercury.

Neighbors said the man actually lived in a trailer in the rear of the home.

"It's a main respiratory hazard if exposed to it," Hausman said. "It's easily absorbed into the lungs through inhalation but it can also be spread very easily by walking through it if there's a spill... Even when a thermometer breaks, it's considered a mercury spill. It's a highly hazardous neurotoxicant."

The man -- whose identity was not immediately available -- was cited for possessing the highly toxic substance. He and the teen in the were forced to evacuate, Hausman said. The residents will not be allowed to return to the location where the mercury was found until a private hazardous material contractor is brought to the location to clean the area, authorities said.

The man was identified today as a 39-year-old resident of Hesperia, a desert town near Victorville, which is between San Bernardino and Las Vegas.

A pound of mercury. I can't begin to know how many people that could kill if it were, for example, thrown into an aqueduct (which run exposed all over rural California). But just think about this guy living in a trailer, patiently collecting the shiny metal for reasons of his own. Think about his teenaged son living there with him. That's the desert.

'Uniquely Southern' panic rooms also serve as storm shelters

Coincidental to my research on nutbag collapsitarians and survivalists (don't miss The Biggest Threat to Your Survival? An American Economic Collapse) is a piece in the Wall Street Journal today about storm shelters-cum-panic rooms which are said to be "the new must-have" in amenities.

These aren't the dank bunkers your father hid in, as we discuss in today's WSJ story. And they aren't cheap. Many of the new shelters are above-ground $4,000-$15,000 prefabricated pads that can be bolted to the garage's concrete pad, or even installed inside the home. They boast names like "StormRoom" and "Iron Eagle II" and often lead double lives of offices, tool sheds and even wine cellars in less turbulent times. DuPont makes one reinforced with bullet-resistant Kevlar. Builder Rhonda House, owner of Uniquely Southern Homes in Ward, Ark. says she regularly includes safe rooms in her new custom homes, calling it a "must-have item."

Did you catch that? Not only is the owner of a house-building company named Rhonda House -- un nom du destin, as my French teacher would say -- but her company is called Uniquely Southern Homes. I think a bullet-proof storm shelter really is a uniquely Southern idea, don't you? Doesn't say if they also come with gun racks.

I also liked this bit:

Above-ground designs are particularly popular among families with elderly members who might not be able to navigate stairs or make it across the yard into a bunker quickly.

Wow, what could possibly go wrong?

"Hello Momma? ... No, Momma, those aren't tornado sirens, that's probably just an ambulance. ... Because I'm looking at the weather on the internet and there's nothing on the radar. ... Well of course the internet knows. ... Momma, please don't lock yourself in the storm shelter again. Hello? Momma? Hello?"

Yes: If your elderly mother locks herself in the tornado-proof, bullet-proof storm shelter and can't remember how to get out, how do you get her out?

Oops, forgot about those rabbits

Australian wildlife managers decided to remove the feral cats from an island to protect the native bird population. Oopsy: without the predatory cats, the rabbit population exploded and consumed the island's vegetation where the birds lived. The result was "widespread ecosystem devastation, and decades of conservation effort compromised."

Those Australians are kind of famous for their brilliant decisions involving wildlife, aren't they? That decision to import rabbits in the first place worked out fabulously.

Satire is dead, no 892134892: Praying with SUVs

A black church in Detroit blessed members who work in the nearly kaput auto industry as "three gleaming sport utility vehicles" shared the stage. In a nod to ecumenism, each car was from one of the Big 3 automakers.

Reinforcing the impression that these people are really stupid was a quotation from a church leader that "We have never seen as midnight an hour as we face this coming week," a sentence I had to read five times before I understood it. (In fairness, it was intended to be heard, not read. But I'm not sure the speaker knows, or cares, that "midnight" is not an adjective.)

technorati: bailout, auto industry, churchesa>, Pentacostals

Where the bigots are

Look at this map from the New York Times, showing the change in voting, county by county, from 2004 to 2008. For example, it shows how Indiana changed from a red to a blue state.

But the most interesting thing it shows is which areas of the country got more conservative in the last four years:
- hillbillies, who are bigots through and through
- areas devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, where all the black people moved away

Clusterfuck in the wake of Hurricane Ike

Hurricane Ike happened three weeks ago, making landfall at Galveston on September 13. Today the almost-always-useless local paper went against type and ran an actual news article, reporting about angry residents of a condo complex called The Landing who have been booted out of their buildings because more than two-thirds of the complex is deemed unlivable.

I was struck by the article because I lived in The Landing in 1970, when it was an apartment complex. (It was the first place my family lived in Texas, at a time when my father wasn't sure he was going to be transferred permanently to the Shell refinery there. We lived there about 10 months.) It is located [satellite map] right on the shore of Clear Lake, and even back then the parking lots would flood during a bad storm because it was so close to sea level. At some point in the 1980s, on one of my trips back for Christmas, I drove by and noticed that the ground around the complex had been built up somewhat, raising it a few feet. Not enough in the case of a major hurricane, and in any case there must have been extensive wind damage, as the eye of the hurricane passed just a few miles to the east.

As I've written many times, I've no love for that area, which I consider a mistake and the worst example of suburban sprawl. It isn't a town and never was; it's just a collection of subdivisions plunked down between two towns, Webster and Seabrook, that were barely more than rural hamlets before LBJ got NASA to locate its headquarters there. As I wrote previously, the area has "no center, no landmarks, no history, no culture, and no taste." I have no reason to go back there anymore, as my mother moved out of the state following my father's death.

It's too bad for the people who were tricked into buying as condos these small apartments which were kind of nice in 1970 but were located in a flood-prone area. But if you choose to live in that area, it's hard to feel sorry for you, because it was a disaster before the hurricane, and the hurricane just made it more obvious.

technorati: Ike, Hurricane Ike, Seabrook, The Landing, FEMA, El Lago

How to go from Olympic hero to douchebag in a week

How do you go from Olympic stud to total douchebag in a week? Wear all your gold medals so that it looks like you have on a really bad belly dancer's costume, and top it off with a face that was never meant to be viewed dry.

I mean, everybody knows the guy looked good wet and naked, right? Why mess with success? Why not run a picture of him exulting in a just-clenched victory? Everybody knows he won the fucking medals.

I guess it's that, having won 8 medals, you never actually get to wear them except on your big SI cover shot. So if you have to have him wear the fucking things, then why not over a shirt of some kind? He's not going swimming in them, so why take his picture in swimming trunks?

Didn't anybody at the shoot say, "Uh, wait a minute. He looks like a freaking douchebag like this. Wardrobe? Can we get a shirt on him?"

technorati: Michael Phelps, Olympics, douchebags

Yee ha

That's not just any tornado, it's a tornado in the desert on Riverside Co. in southern California. It flipped 30 freight cars on a train, among other minor damage.

In the Bay Area, a wildfire burned in the Santa Cruz mountains, and forecasters were, as usual, glum about the coming fire season. Another fire was burning in central California, and even the Everglades was on fire. If you really want to get into the mood, read this excerpt from Joan Didion's famous essay about the Santa Ana winds, a phenomenon of southern California but generally appropriate to the topic.

All too dry for you? You could read about acidified seawater in the Seattle Times.