Wreckonomics

-- by Horatio Algeranon

Greed is good and so is growth

To live the good life, we need both.

Banks are for billionaires and their buildings

Filled with gold and adorned with gilding.

Resources are for raping and for reaping

Profits in a mammoth heaping.

Nature isn't necessary -- don't be nervous

We don't really need her service.

Ecology is for environmentalists and other elitists

Naught but alarmists and defeatists.

Economics is for economists whose evaluations

For the "down and out" show little patience.

People are for profits (including the poor)

And when they die, there's always more.

For a slightly different (albeit pinko commie) take on economics, listen to what Chilean Economist Manfred Max-Neef (author of Outside Looking In: Experiences in Barefoot Economics) says on Democracy Now!

"[We need] an economics now that understands itself very clearly as a subsystem of a larger system that is finite, the biosphere, hence economic growth as an impossibility...a system that understands that it cannot function without the seriousness of ecosystems. And economists know nothing about ecosystems...that we depend absolutely from nature. But for these economists we have, nature is a subsystem of the economy. I mean, it’s absolutely crazy. "

[The fundmentals of economics should be that] "One, the economy is to serve the people and not the people to serve the economy. Two, development is about people and not about objects. Three, growth is not the same as development, and development does not necessarily require growth. Four, no economy is possible in the absence of ecosystem services. Five, the economy is a subsystem of a larger finite system, the biosphere, hence permanent growth is impossible. And the fundamental value to sustain a new economy should be that no economic interest, under no circumstance, can be above the reverence of life."

Radical stuff, right? -- especially the wacky idea that the "economy is to serve the people" (and not in the sense of the Twilight Zone episode "To Serve Man")
 
For equally outlandish ideas, read Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered by radical ultraleft-wing British economist E.F. Schumacher (who worked with other left-wing radicals like John Maynard Keynes and John Kenneth Galbraith)

Unknown Knowns

-- by Horatio Algeranon

It's widely known

(To them alone)

That physicists own

A Rosetta Stone,

To unlock the zone

Of the Great Unknown.

It's also widely known (again, to physicists) that physicists are a very humble lot, having laid claim to a Theory of Everything (that explains nothing [quite literally]).

Such humility may well have its roots in the writing of the great French physicist and philosopher Runawé Horsencartes, who once made the unassuming remark: "I think therefore I know".

Compare that to the pomposity of the Greek philosopher Socrates: "I know that I know nothing".

Oldly Oiled

-- by Horatio Algeranon

"There's no new oil coming ashore."

"There hasn't been for weeks."

The BP rep said on the phone

"I knows of what I speaks"

"But the new oil's there" the reporter said

"My source saw it with his own eyes"

"There was no oil yesterday,"

"And today, it's 'Oil Surprise!' "

"New and black and gooey and thick"

"And covering the sand."

"It wasn't an oillusion,"

"He felt it with his own hand."

"There's no new oil in the Gulf."

"Who told you that was wrong."

"It's merely old oil reappeared "

"After oh so very long."

"So, newly oiled  is oldly oiled "

"To the crab and shrimp and bird?"

"That's not the point" said the BP rep

"And don't be so absurd."

The above is based on a truly bizarre account by The Times-Picayune reporter Bob Marshall ( Old or new, oil will be here for a while, September 19, 2010)

Orwell is alive and well, even if the oilwell no longer is.

The Earth Doesn't Care

-- by Horatio Algeranon

The earth doesn't care if we drive a hybrid

Use wind power and recycle stuff.

She doesn't care if comsumptive humans

Ever say "Enough's enough".

She's been 'round the block a billion times,

Weathered hurricanes, been hit by rocks.

You think she cares about a little warming

And all this alarmist enviro-talk?

The earth doesn't care if we kill our own species,

She has no interest in our plight.

Besides, she believes in the Constitution,

And suicide is a sacred right.

An article by George Will (The Earth Doesn't Care About what is done to or for it) reminds us once again that every insight of great thinkers like George Will and Nobel physics laureate Robert Laughlin is precious (and that Horatio does not have a monopoly on goofy writing).

Arctic Sea Ice Recovery

Home Depot-engineering

-- by Horatio Algeranon

The ice recovery is now complete

They've covered the pole with a plastic sheet,

A huge white cap to block the heat

Prevents the melting (Really neat),

Reflects the sun on summer days,

Acts as a raft, where the polar bear plays --

Lounging and soaking up solar rays

In Hudson, Baffin and other bays.

Protects the sea-ice just below it;

Stops the warming -- or, at least slows it,

Preserves the climate as we know it,

And inspires the verses of the poet.

While the above would hardly be feasible, the basic concept is nonetheless sound and has actually been employed by a Swiss ski resort in Andermatt to preserve a small part of their glacier in summer (see Plastic sheet saves Swiss glacier from meltdown).

Unfortunately, as geography professor Wilfried Haeberli of the University of Zurich has pointed out: “It may be useful very locally, but it would be totally unfeasible — economically and ecologically — to cover completely even a small glacier"  (Melting glacier gets sheet to reflect heat) ...to say nothing of the entire arctic sea-ice cap.