Dan Carol on WB

Posted by Candidia Cruikshanks, CEO of Wealth Bondage

Welcome to Wealth Bondage, Dan. The Dumpster is out in back, but why don't you sit with me for awhile. Tell me all about your plans to change the world. I need a good laugh.

Comments

[Harry]

I think he's cleverer than you, Candidia :-) Look at the different groups in that project of his.

[Tutor]

Very impressive and exciting. "Signs of hope," if only we look. Linking up one by one. Maybe we are not so alone.

[Harry]

I first saw that project on Max Sawicky's blog, about a year or so ago. I had no idea Dan Carol was part of it until I started exploring his weblog.

In previous threads, we've discussed how energy was the easiest common ground for every group. I believe I've mentioned the "Green Neocons" before. There's also Creation Care, which you blogged. This blogger from the cabal I belong to has a very interesting post about a promising technology.

It would be smart to cheerlead on energy. It has room for everyone from the conservationists, the truly devout, the people anxious for jobs projects to the national security conscious .

[Tutor]

I just read an article or two on that depolymerization technology. Great if it works as well as stated. Did you notice that Van Jones, the guy I have linked to a few times, that I met at Threshold, is on the Apollo Board too? Van is something very special. Tracy Gary pulled me aside to point him out. Wouldn't it be nice if the circles began to close and we found ourselves in middle of an emerging movement? This week I will try to introduce Peter Karoff to David Weinberger, blogger in residence at Harvard. Little by little we can do more than just hyperlink and comment, we can "cheerlead" too and hook people up.

[Dick Durata]

Sounds like a lot of bullshit to me.

[Harry]

Thermal depolymerization? It is being done. Whether it lives up the promise of the press releases is another story. There's a long thread in the biodiesel forum on it. It's at thirty three pages right now, but worth reading for at least the first and last pages.

The biggest potential doesn't come from using it as fuel source, IMO, as much as from reducing the amount of waste we have to find space for.

[Tutor]

Dick Durata, thanks. I enjoy your posts at http://talkleft.com/ You are probably right about WB being mostly a sack of garbage. Can you help up raise the level of the conversation, or suggest a link or topic that is central, from your perspective? Despite the difference in genre (we reject the literal here as too flat-footed), we are on about the same issues. Building a network of like minded people is more important than scoring random points. Hope we can hook up in some way. Thanks for dropping by.

[Harry]

Sack of garbage? WB? Nonense! This is a dumpster. What could be bullshit falls into a number of categories. Where's Dr. Chadawallah we you need him? He's the right man to handle the textual aspects of bullshit.

All I can offer is the observation that even the most disparate groups can reach consensus on ways of doing things that require very few, if any, people to be boiled alive. Less boiling of people is worthy goal. Less boiling of them while they're still alive is even better. That said, I am sensitive to the needs of some people to boil others. It's one reason why I think a well trained police force can be a very positive thing. It's not a deterrent to most people-boiling enthusiasts, but the police can work hard to apprehend them. Once apprehended, their activitiies can be addressed in a court of law, or something.

Dick Durata, I'm sure, opposes the boiling of people just like we do, Tutor. His comment, "Sounds like a lot of bullshit to me", is actually part of the anti-boiling league's mission statement.

[Chadwallah]

WB posts are bs personified. So to say: Each post comes with a byline forgrounding both the bs and the source. WB teaches us to read critically. Durata read in haste and receives a gentleman's C-.

[Dick Durata]

WB, I was referring to Dan and his project for energy Nirvana, along with his posse. Sorry that I wasn't more specific and I accept the C- with humility and gratitude. If WB wants my support in opposing boiling people I'll pitch in. It's the least I can do.
HT, as for raising the level of conversation, I gave my best and got a C- but will continue to strive. And, not boiling people is as good a central topic as any, but could be expanded to include baking, broiling, slicing, dicing and any of the other 101 uses of a Veg-O-Mattic (only 19.99 plus S&H).

[Harry]

Dick, to my shame I'd forgotten about the Veg-O-Matic :-(

Here's a collection of stories on the Apollo Alliance. Its existence is flying pretty much under the radar right now and appears only in opinion columns. One critic called "it the same tired collection of Democratic Party fronts". I agree with that to a large extent, though my opinion of the basis for critic's judgement is very low. I also don't like most PhD candidates, which he is. I could make a boiling exemption for people who get PhD's and wind up getting jobs destroying what they study.

At some point in the near future, decision makers in DC are going to be shopping for justifications, setting up scapegoats and looking for ways to enrich cronies as the energy shortage and global warming become imposible to keep denying. The Apollo Alliance will be a in a position to participate in that process. There is a chance some members of it can influence the overall remediation efforts so that they're not too evil.

Dan Carol is a professional in an area that, at best, is filled with shades of grey. I have no doubt that I will wind up appalled by many of the things he and the people associated with him do. That may or may not turn into loathing. At this point, I'm only judging him on the basis of his friendly interaction with someone I like. Up until a few days ago, I'd never heard of him. It's possible that I'll start crying out for his boiling in a few years. Preemptive boiling would be a mistake.

[Tutor]

Dick, thank you so much for seeing this through. WB is off-putting to many who glance at it, see what they take to be rants by crazy people and move on. Over time we have come to speak in codes and in-jokes, as if we were members of a cult, or academic department. Thank you for persisting and joining in.

[Tutor]

Harry, I was referred to Dan by a fellow Dumpster Dweller. As we venture out into the world made real by the fictions of others we had better find a range of friends and allies or the boiling water will be for us. When you run a Bordello you can't be too picky.

[Harry]

When you run a Bordello you can't be too picky.

Hence my nuanced and tolerant yet pessimistic and misanthropic view, Tutor. A coalition of the unboiled is no bad thing. Should we wind up in the kettle anyway, I can entertain everyone with a threnody.

[Bobby]

Dan Carol is just another white-male-50-something trying to "move the progressive agenda forward". The problem is that his colleagues in the effort are all white-male-50-somethings. Too bad the rest of the party does not look like them. We may have won one of the last couple elections. It's good Dan Carol is in retirement and beaching with the family in Hawaii. I'll take Van Jones any day.

[Harry]

50-something, eh? How much is that in dog years?

[Tutor]

Aye to Van Jones, but even the senile can vote. Let's encourage them to hobble out to the polls. I am 56 and look for leadership to those in their 20's. What will motivate the younger people to get more active?

[Robbie Williams]

Younger people are involved. Very much so.

And they'll get more involved when folks like Carol and his cabal step aside and begin listening to people outside their little arena.

Mr. Carol bills himself as joe kumbaya but in actuality is part of the problem that keeps the progressive movement disjointed instead of unitied.

There is hope in Van Jones. But, as Bobby said, until all the Dan Carols step aside look for the same old bullshit.

Secondly, Harry - the Apollo Alliance is far from "under the radar". Perhaps on the national press level but in progressive circles its front and center.

Interesting about Mr. Kumbaya - seems Mr. Carol along with his other coherts at the Apollo Alliance got their feathers ruffled when Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger (Shellenberger I believe was on the board of Apollo Alliance) published a report called "The Death of Environmentalism". The paper is brilliant and provides a much needed analysis of the environmental movement.

Unfortunately they (the authors) choose to present it to a cadre of funders at an annual grantmakers meeting.

Mr. Carol and all the other smart people at AA wiped their hands of the report and Shellenberger/Nordhaus for that matter. Talk about being ostracized.

Instead of engaging in some good conversation about the future of the movement they squelched it, wiping their hands of it to save some possible funders $$.

Maybe the smoke from to many bad camp fires got to me but that does not sound very kumbaya to me.

[Harry]

This is beyond farcical. Dan Carol could be great satan hisself, but the unsourced allegations, outraged anecdotes and innuendo wouldn't leave me any wiser. Where do you all people come from anyway, google his name and then look for places to deposit your comments?

[Robbie Williams]

You're right, Harry. My bad.