[LadyRuby]

I consider myself kind of middle-of-the-roader, and I think this board is biased toward the doomers.

But I'm still here. I guess I'm here because there are WAY too many people in the real world who are way too clueless and optimistic. So I don't mind being the optimist here since I'm a total pessimist (to others) off the board.

[Heineken]

I voted "neutral" b/c of all those damned biofuel stories; there's no end to them and they are wielded like clumsy swords by the energy optimists. No one can reasonably claim PO.com has a negative bias after ploughing through the daily feed of switchgrass and cow manure.

In the category of true PO.com confessions, I have a love--hate relationship with this site. I hang out here primarily for the news stories, many of which are greatly elucidating; delving into the forums is for me generally frustrating, unsatisfying, and time-wasting. The forums are like masturbating; they're a bad habit and I know I should quit (and I have quit, for periods). We think we are talking to one another, but really we are merely talking to ourselves. We do nothing and create nothing here; we babble on and dance and skirmish, sometimes hatefully but occasionally with chivalry or even, dare we mix so alien a word with electrons, love, while Atlantis steadily sags into the sea.

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Heineken', 'W')e think we are talking to one another, but really we are merely talking to ourselves.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Heineken', 'W')e think we are talking to one another, but really we are merely talking to ourselves.

[Lore]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Heineken', 'W')e think we are talking to one another, but really we are merely talking to ourselves.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Lore', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Heineken', 'W')e think we are talking to one another, but really we are merely talking to ourselves.

[Lore]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Lore', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Heineken', 'W')e think we are talking to one another, but really we are merely talking to ourselves.

[PenultimateManStanding]

Monte writes, I talk.

[Heineken]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Heineken', 'W')e think we are talking to one another, but really we are merely talking to ourselves.

[rogerhb]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('LadyRuby', 'S')o I don't mind being the optimist here since I'm a total pessimist (to others) off the board.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Heineken', '[')
Look beyond the obvious, Penultimate, and you'll see the light. You're shouting into a vacuum, to people you will never meet or know, and who can never and will never respond to you in the way you hunger for. We imagine we're all "communicating" with each other, but ultimately we're concerned with our own points of view to the exclusion of all else, even the truth. That's what I mean when I say we're actually talking to ourselves on these boards, not one another. Why, I'm doing it right now, mentally masturbating away. Creepy, huh? And that's why our species has no future as it uses up the last of the good stuff.

Do you think you have accomplished something with those 5980 posts, and all those many hours clicking away at your keyboard? Just a monument to your own mind.

[Aaron]

I'm picturing posters furiously googling wiki pages for transendentalism...

Your participation is required, but your understanding is not.

You may think you are "mentally masturbating" by posting here, but the reality is many, many folks read these pages around the world.

Real people, from real places doing real things in the real world.

The idea that this is some kind of transcendental playground may sound witty, but the truth is that people come here everyday, and discover that their world is at once bigger & smaller than they previously imagined it.

Ideas are like a virus, growing and moving through infected populations.

I see PO.com as a kind of anti-virus.

Extracted from the wilderness of ideas themselves, and re-introduced into the population to attack & destroy more conventional ideas.

A tailored anti-meme, which attempts to arrest the spread of the all to lethal memes of our time... the entitlement virus.

Think you are wasting time in here...

lol

You are all pioneers in a brand new thought process sweeping the globe with monumental consequences for ourselves & our descendants.

Thanks

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Aaron', '
')You are all pioneers in a brand new thought process sweeping the globe with monumental consequences for ourselves & our descendants.

[drew]

I love this place....but the subject of PO is certainly treated with a certain sense of conviction that it is occuring right before our eyes. Perhaps because it is. The arguments are very convincing, that's for sure. This doesn't leave much for the anti-peakers, which is why they leave.

I do beleive everyone finds their own sub-goup to hang out with here in cyberspace, and that this site generally treats people quite well.

Of course if one is looking for a fight that is easy to do too.

I've been posting here almost 2 years now quite happily, but then I am generally cynical about modern civilization...

.....I am right at home at PO.com.

Drew

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('drew', ' ')The arguments are very convincing, that's for sure. This doesn't leave much for the anti-peakers, which is why they leave.

[TheTurtle]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('drew', ' ')This doesn't leave much for the anti-peakers, which is why they leave.

[Heineken]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Aaron', '
')You are all pioneers in a brand new thought process sweeping the globe with monumental consequences for ourselves & our descendants.

[Aaron]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'C')ommunicating isn't the same thing as doing. Despite the efforts of a hundred or a thousand PO.coms, we're all hurtling toward the same precipice at about the same rate.

[Heineken]

I agree that one should fight the good fight, Aaron, whatever one's intimations may be about the final outcome individually or collectively. I stand with you in that battle despite my gloomy posts, and I do what I can here on my sweltering farm and in the voting booth to contribute to the cause of sanity. But the options seem miserable and few. My gloom derives from my conviction that we've already lost the war but just don't know it yet---and from the still-exploding human population, which quickly undermines attempts to conserve, innovate, and remediate. Certainly many animal and plant species have already lost the war.

You should win an award for what you've done here. But in this world, the awards (and rewards) go to Cheney and his ilk. The rich, powerful, and famous like nothing more than patting each other on the back.

I'm a Peakoiler until the end (or until I get kicked off).

[Pops]

I probably shouldn’t be weighing in here because I have been hanging drywall and anyone that knows about drywall knows I have been in the ice chest, but:

I do think that relating my experiences at attempting to disengage from the petro-teat are valuable – if only from the standpoint of what not to do.

But sometimes I do wonder if there is anybody out there that wants something other than an interactive option to their 357-channel cable TV.

At any rate, I admit to sometimes going off on long-winded rants on threads about what "The Powers" should do – and on the folks that say: I, we, or They can do nothing.

Either I am trying to help, trying to ease my conscious, talking to myself, or, probably the worst reason: just looking for an option to my 5 channel rabbit ears!