We interrupt this programming for a moment of faddish blogosphere stuff: Thinking Blogger Award and Why I Blog

On Thursday, the Russ Hopfenberg post will be featured.

In the meantime, there are these things called “memes” going around the blogosphere. “Meme” is a real word, though it shouldn’t be. It refers to a “unit of cultural information” which can spread from person to person or generation to generation. Spreading little themes and calling them “memes” has become a kind of blogosphere fad. Someone comes up with a theme like “what my mom told me about chain letters,” writes a post on it, and “tags” several other bloggers to do the same. Thus it spreads from blogger to blogger, much like those emails you get urging you to pass them on to others or, yes, like the goofy chain letters you mom warned you about.

Well, Trinifar caved in to this nonsense, and tagged me to do the same. Look, I’m the guy who turned off smilies on his blog. (Plain text smilies are encouraged, but do you think we’ll get Paul Ehrlich over here with little yellow faces everywhere? 😉 ) [Update: Obviously, as of May 14th, I’ve turned them back on. My judgment is likely failing. 😐 ] This memeing stuff is not my normal style on GIM. But to show I’m a good sport, I’m embracing this silliness for a minute and doing the meme thing. This will cover both the “5 Blogs that Make Me Think” meme, and the “Why I blog” meme with which Trinifar flogged tagged me.

Thinking Blogger Award

First, I thank Trinifar for tagging me with a Thinking Blogger Award (check there for the rules of this thing), which bestows on me the obligation to tag five other “blogs that make me think.” Here are six which are hereby tagged (one extra for good measure, and which I sacrilegiously say is without obligation to take up the meme! 🙂 ), with a quick quote from each:

• Guerillas in the Matrix

Racism lies at the heart of capitalist imperialism, because when you have a system that puts profits over people, then you have a ‘justification’ for racism, exploitation, and plunder, even extending to the animal kingdom and the earth itself.

[Update] Unfortunately, Guerillas in the Matrix is no more, the victim of too few visitors. Sometimes even the best content can’t draw a crowd.

• Sustainable Population:

The idea of moderating, stabilizing and eventually reducing the global human population – population being one of the basic drivers of human environmental impact — remains a radical challenge to entrenched economic, and in some cases social, doctrine. This is especially true in the United States, where politicians suffer real anxiety and fear when their population show signs of decrease — as this decrease offends the basic operating principles of modern economics.

Trinifar tagged this new blog previously, but I’m doing so again as it’s one of the tiny number of blogs addressing the population issue on a regular basis.

• sustainability theory dharma:

Stop this senselessness before it causes any more suffering. Say “less to technology” and more to living. Open a window instead of opening your browser.

Blogger signature103 is taking a break from sustainability theory dharma, but that takes nothing away from the value of visiting and reading his thoughts on sustainability.

• Logical Science:

A common argument among skeptics/deniers is that scientists fabricate scares just to raise grant funding. If this were true then one would expect scientists to be, on average, a very deceitful and greedy bunch. So lets analyze a few scientists and see exactly what kind of people we are dealing with.

• The Solemn Monkey:

And when I’ll go, I’ll go. And if humanity goes, it will go. If life has to go, it will go. Maybe it’s part of a bigger plan, like death is part of life. But if I had to choose, right now, I would sacrifice music and self-consciousness, I would sacrifice this proud race that take itself too seriously, I would sacrifice humanity, so that Life can goes on. Because I cannot think of anything more beautiful. And miraculous.

• Gaian Economics:

Because of the pressure to extract profits and rents for the wealthy, capitalism has been marked by schemes to avoid the natural limits of ecological and social reality.

[Edit:] While we’re at it, let’s add another. Really, I could pick from nearly any in my blogroll, but these are a few which I don’t think have been tagged yet, and to which, at this moment, I’d like to call your attention.

• Ruminations:

History will judge John Howard as the Australian Prime Minister who fiddled while his country burned.

Okay, now all the above can considered themselves tagged as well for the “Why I Blog” meme, again at no obligation.

And why I blog

And here’s why I blog. I cover this on the “About GIM” page, but only mention briefly what is for me the most salient reason. We’re facing global ecological collapse, with the threat of surprisingly dire consequences for we humans as well as other species. Statistically speaking, I have maybe 30 years left to live, perhaps 40 if I do my yoga and practice calorie restriction . 🙂 Though we’ll definitely feel serious effects from this crisis in that time, it’s my kids I worry about. They have something like 80 or more years to go, and I worry about what they’ll be facing after I’m gone. I’d like to think I’d be doing this even if I didn’t have kids, but I’m not sure. They provide the daily, tangible reason for my work on GIM. I enjoy writing, and so choose it as my form of activism, hoping I can make some small dent that will increase the hope for their future. We need hope.

Oops, I believe I was supposed to list five reasons. Okay, pick any five of the millions of species at risk. :-b

Maybe I should turn the smilies back on. [Edit: I did. 🙂 ]

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