I spent the morning yesterday helping an Eagle Scout rebuild some bridges on a local walk, so I couldn’t move for a few hours, which was good, because one of those Samsung movie channels put up this old Bill Murray movie. Actually it’s a remake, based on a Somerset Maughan story, but anyway. I missed the first few minutes and was a little confused when I tuned in and they were medics in WWI. I had completely forgotten most of the movie.
The movie is “The Razor’s Edge”
A friend of his dies and he bounces around for a while trying to figure out life. What I really like about the movie is how Murray rejects the rich life that he could have, if he married the right girl. The part I remember is when he treks to the mountains in Nepal, for the usual reason people do that.
He uses one of his signature lines, a theme from many of his movies and characters. Bill Murray almost always plays Bill Murray.
Random choice on a Saturday night. Owen Wilson, playing his usual hippie character, Ed Helms (SNL) doing his straight uptight dad character, and Glenn Close as their mother, whoa.
The boys, twins, find out their mom doesn’t know who their dad is. She sends them on a wild goose chase, starting with Terry Bradshaw. It’s a romp through the 60’s and 70’s culture from the perspective of the generation it spawned. Its main redeeming feature is the healing of all of that chaos through the two personalities on their quest to find their roots. You’ll both love and hate both characters as they argue about what “the universe” is telling them and what the next practical step should be. Don’t look for ultimate answers, just enjoy the cosmic joke.
The wikipedia does tell the whole story, but it’s not the plot that makes it interesting. It starts out with a salacious scene but quickly turns to the woman’s interest in the End Times. The signs of it are ambiguous, just like you would expect in the real world, which makes all of the characters reactions to it more interesting.
It should keep your interest until the end. Essentially it’s a long answer to the classic question of “what would you do if you found out God was real?”
If you can watch “Landman”, a new series based on the oil business. It is very informative. If you have followed the conversation about replacing the oil based world economy with renewable energy, this merits watching.
Slapped together with little regard to a sensible framework or even characters whose names you can remember, “Landman” is Sheridan’s laziest work, and his most obscene. The series would be bad enough if it were just dull and insipid, which it is, but it comes with an intensely off-putting bit of male gaze that makes the series read as soft-core porn for old men who want to leer at teenage girls without any repercussions. It verges on outright disgusting, set against a generic setting and plot beats copied from old “Yellowstone” scripts.
Read my post again.
I was not recommending the movie on its artistic merits. I recommended a specific episode where the main character explains the difficulty of transitioning from fossil fuels to non-polluting renewable energy in no uncertain terms.
I felt that my perspective (posted elsewhere) was right on the money.
I just told you that I did not recommend this series for artistic merit, but referenced this episode for pertinent information about transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
It may surprise you.
About half of that is crap, but I do wish people would talk about consumption instead of looking to blame the producers. Drilling for oil was a good idea 150 years ago, but making deals with Saudi Arabia and starting wars over it was not. We discovered the science before we had the wisdom. An error we’ve repeated over and over.
The oil industry would definitely not fold up and go home if people cut back on plastics and Doritos. They would make up new ways to get people to feel better about being fat, dumb, and lazy. How do I know? Because it’s exactly what they did. I don’t blame the scruffy bearded guy who owns a middle-size company, but I don’t blame a billion people for acting like their evolution leads them to either.
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That’s in the half I agree with.
He implies there is no alternative.
He does stipulate that there are alternative sources for energy.
It should be that we are a sun and wind based economy and only use oil as an alternative for emergency use.
He goes on to explain that there is not enough oil left to build a worldwide infrastructure to distribute any alternative energy.
That is what I have been stressing in all these discussions. Any remaining oil should be used to build a worldwide alternative energy distribution system.
In the next 40 years we will be using more than half of all the oil we have ever used in our 200 year industrial history
Age of Oil
Peak oil is the point in time when the maximum rate of petroleum extraction is reached, after which the rate of production is expected to enter terminal decline. Many believe that we are at or close to the peak, positioning us in the second half of the oil age.[11]
Some estimate, assuming current consumption rates, current oil reserves will last through at least the year 2040.[12] In 2004, OPEC estimated, with substantial investments, it would nearly double oil output by 2025.[13]
Or, we put our brain energy into creating homes that don’t need so much energy, distribute farming skills so food is grown and consumed locally, encourage connection to the earth instead of obsession with electronic images, creating educators that talk to each other so global communication happens by talking to each and walking over to your neighbor’s.
Ideally, I agree totally, but I am afraid that we have caused ourselves to be kicked out of Paradise .
It is one of the biblical allegories that have come true. Humans are no longer adapted to nature.
We have created our own environment which is incompatible with maintaining natural balances.
Yes, the majority of electricity in Norway comes from hydropower.
But then they negate their good practices by selling their oil to thirsty neighbors.
Energy in Norway
Norway is a large energy producer, and one of the world’s largest exporters of oil. Most of the electricity in the country is produced by hydroelectricity. Norway is one of the leading countries in the electrification of its transport sector, with the largest fleet of electric vehicles per capita in the world (see plug-in electric vehicles in Norway and electric car use by country).
Since the discovery of North Sea oil in Norwegian waters during the late 1960s, exports of oil and gas have become very important elements of the economy of Norway. With North Sea oil production having peaked, disagreements over exploration for oil in the Barents Sea, the prospect of exploration in the Arctic, as well as growing international concern over global warming, energy in Norway is currently receiving close attention. Energy in Norway - Wikipedia
Seems Russia is busily engaged in that very practice in Ukraine.
Imagine the amount of oil being wasted on killing each other at this very moment, instead of applying it to developing alternative energy sources and distribution networks.
