Still lovin this. It’s all gone Pete Tong

Interesting excerpt from a post on James Altucher’s blog, Altucher Confidential:

DO I HAVE ANY ENVI­RON­MEN­TAL CON­CERNS

Main Event ‏ @djmain­event  envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns?

 

ANSWER: The rea­son he was ask­ing is because ear­li­er he asked about the oil short­age prob­lem and I replied, “we won’t have an oil short­age prob­lem if we accel­er­ate the frack­ing we are doing in places like Texas, North Dako­ta, etc. If we start doing that then the US will be the biggest sup­pli­er of oil on the plan­et and the price of gas will go down to $1 a gallon.”

So, the nat­ur­al next ques­tion, which he asked, is “envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns?”

So I have to ask: Why do peo­ple like to worry?

First, every­one is wor­ried about the price of gas. Then every­one is wor­ried about our depen­dence on Mid­dle East­ern oil? Then every­one, includ­ing me, is say­ing, we are we always at war some­where in the Mid­dle East? The obvi­ous answer is because of our depen­dence on Mid­dle East­ern oil so we send over 18 year olds to fight and kill civil­ians.

I once post­ed this anti-war piece on the most lib­er­al site I could think of, The Ele­phant Jour­nal. I got so much hate mail it aston­ished me. Peo­ple love shed­ding blood, killing babies, and send­ing off Amer­i­can 18 year olds to die and be maimed. They love it. The more the mer­ri­er. So I com­ment­ed back, “you know, 40 year olds can also enlist in the Army. Why don’t you guys all enlist instead of telling me about how the US Army is defend­ing “my way of life”. This is on the most pro-peace site out there.

And, of course, nobody respond­ed. How could they? Nobody wants to die by step­ping on a mine. What a stu­pid way to die. And yet, let’s send over our 18 year olds.

Now we have an actu­al way to reduce our depen­dence on Mid­dle East­ern oil. It’s called frack­ing, which allows us to go back to the wells in Texas that we thought were dry, dig deep­er and dig hor­i­zon­tal­ly, and find more oil.

Hey, let’s find more things to worry about. Envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns. What the hell else do you want to worry about? Should peo­ple just get back to mak­ing their own food and liv­ing in caves? Peo­ple have to drive to work. The unem­ploy­ment rate is 8.3%. Let’s get peo­ple work­ing first. But the price of gas is too high for poor peo­ple to work. So I just solved your prob­lem and you’re wor­ried that maybe the water is get­ting dirty.

My answer: who knows? But frack­ing has been going on for over 60 years and has been involved in over 1mm wells.

Here’s a state­ment from energytomorrow.org:

“Drink­ing water con­t­a­m­i­na­tion — U.S. gov­ern­ment stud­ies have found no evi­dence of drink­ing water con­t­a­m­i­na­tion from hydraulic frac­tur­ing. In 2004, the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency (EPA) con­duct­ed a study to assess the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion poten­tial of under­ground drink­ing water sources (UDWS) from the injec­tion of hydraulic frac­tur­ing fluid into coalbed methane (CBM) wells. EPA found “the injec­tion of hydraulic frac­tur­ing flu­ids into CBM wells poses lit­tle or no threat to USDWs and does not jus­ti­fy addi­tion­al study at this time.” EPA also reviewed inci­dents of drink­ing water well con­t­a­m­i­na­tion believed to be asso­ci­at­ed with hydraulic frac­tur­ing oper­a­tions. It found “no con­firmed cases linked to frac­tur­ing fluid injec­tion of CBM wells or sub­se­quent under­ground move­ment of frac­tur­ing fluid.””

Is there a prob­lem?  I bet there is. I bet lob­by­ists are spend­ing money to get quotes like the above. But in 60 years nobody has died yet from frack­ing so I expect it to con­tin­ue. Mean­while the frack­ing indus­try employs 9mm peo­ple and will even­tu­al­ly end this oil short­age issue, mak­ing it a lot eas­i­er for more peo­ple to drive to work.

Let’s worry about one thing at a time. My first worry is get­ting peo­ple jobs, and help­ing peo­ple reduce the stress of hav­ing their last pen­nies in the bank. Worry about the envi­ron­ment is a lux­u­ry.

March. Spring is approaching. Before I came to LA I had an idea that there were no seasons here. Turns out they’re just more subtle than in New York and London. It’s about the quality of the light, the wind and the changes in vegetation.

Where I’m at today.

Working every day, seven days a week, while certainly not the worst thing that could happen to someone, is, after a while, like a couple of months, a drag. I’m feeling a little bored now, as I’ve been saying. I take mini-vacations during the day, browsing through Flipboard or adding things to Evernote instead of doing my work. This is at the web content-building job of course – not the restaurant. There I sometimes zone out for a few seconds, or go out back for a smoke break. Mostly I keep involved with what’s going on there though. I look forward to the weekends and being in an environment I’m comfortable in.

I have been telling myself I should be writing every day, but somehow never find the time to actually do it. Instead, I waste time on TV, banking… hmm… what else? Oh, yeah, not much actually. Between work and meetings, that’s pretty much all my time. I’m tired. Tired and bored.

duckarma, youtube.com

Friday night at the Fox and Hounds in Deanshanger. I’m in the kitchen cooking, often alone, making food for 30 diners plus bar snacks for a full bar. Out front, Anz and Sophie have the eclectic soundtrack to keep them and the customers happy. Meanwhile, I go from Zane Lowe to Pete Tong and a hot, stressful chef shift becomes a dance party for one as I groove to the artistry of this legend. Simply brilliant.

So I fell on this idea, via Flipboard, to make water the only fluid to drink for 30 days (part of a 30-day health program) and I’m considering it. The whole coffee thing’s definitely gonna be a problem though. The alternative option is to have no refined or added sugar for 30 days. That seems a ton easier, so I think I already know which way I’m leaning. Maybe next month for the water…

lettersandlight:

The other day, I added the entire six-season run of The Larry Sanders Show to my Netflix Instant queue. I’ve been meaning to watch it for a while, and I plan to take it down in one big gulp—a few solid days of rigorous sitcomming during the winter months.

Obviously, I’m not alone in this…

Looks like I might be spending quite a bit of time here.