>/For example, China has an atrocious ratio of energy consumption per
/>/unit of GDP.
/
Sez who? According to the World Bank
<http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/GDPPerEnergyUnit.gif> it's
surpassed the US in energy efficiency.
Sez the Energy Information Agency of the DOE in 2004, although I probably mistated either petroleum consumption or combined fossil fuel consumption as energy consumption. But Doug, your quick draw statistical prowess leaves me unmoved because it leaves my point of view entirely unaddressed other than rhetorically "discredited" by elevating a bit of copy editing to a matter of life or death. And no, I won't bother to search out the exact statistic because that wasn't what your challenge was about. It was about being a challenge. It was about you being right because I made some kind of mistake.
In lieu of the EIA spreadsheet, here's a little Martin Buber from 1929:
"The eros of dialogue has the simplicity of fulness; the Eros of monologue is manifold. Many years I have wandered through the land of men, and have not yet reached an end of studying the varieties of the "erotic man" (as the vassal of the broken-winged one at times describes himself). There a lover stamps around and is in love only with his passion. There one is wearing his differentiated feelings like medal-ribbons. There one is enjoying the adventures of his own fascinating effect. There one is gazing enraptured at the spectacle of his own supposed surrender. There one is collecting excitement. There one is displaying his "power". There one is preening himself with borrowed vitality. There one is delighting to exist simultaneously as himself and as an idol very unlike himself. There one is warming himself at the blaze of what has fallen to his lot. There one is experimenting. And so on and on -- all the manifold monologist with their mirrors, in the apartment of the most intimate dialogue."
The Sandwichman
