Easter Island Economics

2008-06-19T04:14:00Z

Easter Island from Wikipedia:

"The overall picture for Easter is the most extreme example of forest destruction in the Pacific, and among the most extreme in the world: the whole forest gone, and all of its tree species extinct." (Diamond, Jared. 2005. Collapse. How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: Viking. ISBN 0-14-303655-6).

Trees are sparse on modern Easter Island, rarely forming small groves. The island once had a forest of palms, and it has generally been thought that native Easter Islanders deforested the island in the process of erecting their statues.[citation needed] Experimental archaeology has clearly demonstrated that some statues certainly could have been placed on "Y" shaped wooden frames called miro manga erua and then pulled to their final destinations on ceremonial sites.

The disappearance of the island's trees seems to coincide with a decline of its civilization around the 17th and 18th century. Midden contents show a sudden drop in quantities of fish and bird bones as the islanders lost the means to construct fishing vessels and the birds lost their nesting sites. Soil erosion due to lack of trees is apparent in some places. Sediment samples document that up to half of the native plants had become extinct and that the vegetation of the island was drastically altered.

Can someone please pass this on to G. W. POTUS for me please? I just heard his latest ideer--offshore drillin'. Next thing you know he'll be pushing Brown's Gas kits. So easy it to install won't even void your warranty!

I mean President POTUS has to do something now that he doesn't even matter enough for Europeans to protest him anymore. I suppose Bush has Jumped the Shark. Oh, was that established already? Sorry.

The dollar has been the new carry currency for a couple years now. The greenback is itself basically marked to model. This time when the Argentine currency goes belly up, so might the rest of the fiat currencies.

And maybe then, somewhere in the aftershock, just maybe we can start the next economy by engineering our industrial products from cradle to grave. Imagine an economy where planned obsolescence meant a product was re-usable or easily recycled rather than stuff just engineered to prematurely wear out.

Sorry for the lack of entries. Some guy (I'm assuming) named Rugbylvr says (s)he has hacked my site and is threatening drive-by vandalism if I don't find some chick named Alice Hate from South Street in Philly. Being as I am not anywhere near Philly and am not about to go there anytime soon; if Rugbylvr does have me hacked, this site may get violated. I claim no responsibility. My only clue was this subject line of his threat-mail: Book of Weapons Ch.2 vs. 1 - 12

NCMR Coming Out

2008-06-09T06:24:00Z

I attended the 2008 National Conference on Media Reform in Minneapolis, MN this weekend. Am needing a quick sleep before getting too much into it.

Big points I came to make:

1. Nothing evil about "corporate" per se, it is after all just a legal means of organizing, let's just agree to call them Consolidated Media
2. The consolidation of media is half the reason we have this opportunity to report the news--instead of bemoaning their loss, take advantage of it! But if we, the Distributed Media, ever does hit on a model that is financially successful, we'd better be ready for Consolidated Media to copy it and muscle us out.

Came away with some good info and better thoughts about what media online requires. Writing about that tomorrow...

The HutLog

Easter Island Economics

NCMR Coming Out