quarta-feira, janeiro 31, 2007

Watchtower

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This on blogging in the Globe today: 31/01/07, Bill Graveland, Laments lonely life of bloggers, (Archive).

"There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief. Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth, and none of them along the line know what any of it is worth." Bob Dylan, All Along the Watchtower, 1967.

Click to Enlarge / Click para AumentarBob's statements, like this one, "know what any of it is worth"; are more like questions. What is anything 'worth'? What's 'worth' mean? Like dignity - he takes it into a conundrum.

I sit at the Nova Esperança drinking beer and smiling out loud at the pregnant Brasilian women walking by, naked tummies entirely flaunted, naked from loin to breast - wonderful! As I see it this is all coming to an end; call me what you like; and like the guy says about bloggers - they get stuck in the virtual and are often unable to formulate real actions. So it goes. I still take delight in the small moments I witness on the sidewalk at the corner of Gavião Peixoto & Alvarez de Azevedo, the occasional word from Pelem the bar-man, sometimes a smile.

A-and I remember wondering what the Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses were on about with their Watchtower - which had a physical presence for me as a child in Toronto where there is an actual neon-lit tower (or used to be) up on the 401 near Jane Street.

That and a few details that have slipped through: Ken Kesey, Sometimes a Great Notion, and the two of them in the water, one trapped under a log, and dying finally in a gasp of laughter; and Oscar Wilde, a story Iremember being told was his favourite, about a man with blood red eyes following women through the streets (?). Neither of these found anywhere on the net - yet.

Dengue fever reported in São Gonçalo, not far from here; and the mosquitoes nipping my feet and ankles as I type, but someone tells me they are not Aedes aegypti - the difference is supposed to be that Aedes aegypti have white horizontal stripes (rings) on their legs which regular mosquitoes do not; I guess you have to catch one to find out.

01/02/07, Austin Mitchell, Treatment of model family makes me ashamed to be a Labour MP,
(Archive), Austin Mitchell personal site.

A far-from-peaceful demonstration in Bangladesh early in January:
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terça-feira, janeiro 30, 2007

RCMP - not fixed yet

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segunda-feira, janeiro 29, 2007

Stephen Lewis, NDP, Twaddle

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Next, Back, Thread Ahead: Rapture, Thread Back: Integração / Integration.

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Here's the story: My sister heard Lewis giving the Massey Lectures on CBC Radio and liked what she heard and we discussed it. I cannot bear to look at the man, never could; cannot bear to hear his voice, never could; so she accused me of prejudging him - a possibility let's say.

In the airport yesterday looking for a book - and there he is! CBC Massey Lectures - Race Against Time, Stephen Lewis. A-and in a spirit of ... it is a bit complicated, maybe you can guess. So I bought it and read it between Montreal and Rio de Janeiro.

WHAT APPALLING & DISGRACEFUL TWADDLE !!!!!!!

I do not normally mark up books with underlining and folding pages and what not. This one I marked up you bet. To think that I read Northrop Frye and Charles Taylor from the same editors. This Lewis is a drop out - and it certainly does show. So I marked it up ... and in the next while I will copy some bits of it here and post pictures and so on.

NO WONDER THE UN IS AS USELESS AS IT IS.

Not to mention the NDP - Nepotism is what brought them down according to what I read in this book - and we can only hope that Elizabeth May and the Greens will wipe them out.

More later ...

Stephen Lewis in Wikipedia.

He says:
"I've deliberately chosen anecdotes as the narrative vehicle, in order to give the pandemic an accessible face, rather than relying on the dehumanizing swamp of numbers." (page 46)

There was a third way - to present analysis and strategies - too deep for this trivial mind. I can't really be bothered with this anymore tonight. He cannot prioritize - I have to go back and find the evidence; and again and again he admits to simply indulging his emotions without positive effect.

Maybe I will come back to this ...

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domingo, janeiro 28, 2007

A menina afegã, de Steve McCurry

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sábado, janeiro 27, 2007

Tide

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Up, Down, Thread Ahead: can't stop Progress eh?, Thread Back: evidence of something ....

Friday February 2 2007

IPCC Summary (pdf), and a good discussion: Real Climate on the IPCC Summary.

02/02/07, Marco Evers, An End to Green Romanticism: Environmental Guru Lovelock Urges Expansion of Nuclear Energy - Part I & Part II, (Archive).

Monday January 29 2007

A-and what do the dinosaurs do?

Go with Ad Hominem arguments against Stephane Dion, natch - the dipsticks!
29/01/07, Steven Chase, Wary Tories rip Dion in TV ad blitz, (Archive).

Click to Enlarge / Click para AumentarI am not even going to bother clipping for this - the attack ads (understandably) do not go over well; soooo they cut some kind of amorphous deal with the NDP on climate. Losers on both sides! If they had aligned with the Greens on climate change ... but of course they could not do that because the Greens would certainly suggest something substantive that would stand a chance of actually doing something - can't have that, no, might affect PetroCanada's bottom line. Bone heads!

Somebody has to tell John Baird that a green tie is not enough.

A-and they pressure Frazer into firing her environmental lieutenant ... DUMB!
Here is her report (until they trash it): 2006 Report of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development.

A-and Stephen Harper is revealed: 31/01/07, Brian Laghi, Harper sought money for 'Battle of Kyoto', (Archive).

Meanwhile:
IPCC: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Part I of their 2007 report will be oficially published February 2. Even the Table of Contents is daunting:
   I The Physical Science Basis - Contents (.pdf), release February 2.
   II Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability - Contents (.pdf), release April 5.
   III Mitigation of Climate Change - Contents (.pdf), release May 4.

We will depend no doubt on sites such as Real Climate for evaluation and criticism.

Some early details from the Globe: 31/01/07, Martin Mittelstaedt, The fallout of global warming: 1,000 years, (Archive).

Saturday January 27 2007

Tide is turning, that is ...

Bahá'í: World peace is inevitable.

- Editorial, Hot on the environment ..., (Archive).
- Edward Greenspon, It's crystal clear ..., (Archive).
- Rex Murphy, And now politicians will fix the weather?, (Archive).
- Margaret Wente, Climate change a 'questionable truth', (Archive).
- Jeffrey Simpson, Climate-change scoffers have seen their day, (Archive).

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sexta-feira, janeiro 26, 2007

Javier Silva Meinel

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Google "Javier Silva Meinel" for sites, Google "Javier Silva Meinel" for images, Throckmorton - some decent images & time-line.

These are from an exhibition titled 'La Piel Del Amazonas' (Amazon Skin), the upper Amazon that is - in Peru:
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There is getting to be a bit of a collection of photographers blogged here; I will make a list after a while:
Araquém Alcântara, of the Amazon.
Art and Life, Phan Thi Kim Phúc by Nick Ut.
Life, the Universe, and Everything, Flor Garduño.
Yeah ..., Adri Berger & Brent Stirton.
Na Estrada Própria, Thierry le Gouès.
A River Runs Through It, Igor Fedorovitch Kostine on Chernobyl.

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quinta-feira, janeiro 25, 2007

Araquém Alcântara

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A remarkable photographer; wonderful photographs of Brazil and the Amazon.

Araquém Alcântara, & Terra Brasil Imagens.

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quarta-feira, janeiro 24, 2007

evidence of something ...

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Up, Down, Thread Ahead: Tide, Thread Back: Kerry Emanuel: Phaeton’s Reins.

Click to Enlarge / Click para Aumentar"Mr. Ritchie, who does not use a computer or watch television, ..."

Robert Matas on Peter Ritchie, defence lawyer for Robert Picton, (Archive).

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"Well, I don't see why not, ..."

Globe editorial on Stéphane Dion, Liberal Opposition Leader, on including Elizabeth May in televised leaders' debates, (Archive).

Stéphane Dion Liberal Campaign website.

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"It's mostly to stay current and get a chance to be out on the line, watching what's going on."

Brent Jang on Donald Bell, WestJet Airlines Ltd. co-founder, (Archive).

WestJet website.

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"Ethanol is a bridge to nowhere. You can't produce ethanol in North America without increasing natural gas imports from outside North America since it takes 36,000 BTUs of natural gas to produce a gallon of ethanol." (paraphrased)

Neil Reynolds on Matthew Wald, New York Times science writer, (Archive).

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“I think when the Canadian government was elected, the present one, their intention was to kick the whole climate-change issue into the long grass, basically,”

Bill Curry on Elliot Morley, British special envoy on global warming, (Archive).

Elliot Morley in Wikipedia, Elliot Morley website, and Elliot Morley, another website.

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“Canadians are convinced that it's real because they touch it. Secondly, people know that the life of conspicuous consumption is out of control. They've been hearing it long enough.”

Brian Laghi on Allan Gregg, pollster, (Archive).

Allan Gregg, Another View - his blog, Allan Gregg in Wikipedia.

A-and then there are the dinosaurs ...

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"There will be specifics of the exact storage ... but you're going to have to wait."

Richard Blackwell on Gary Lunn, Minister of Natural Resources, (Archive).

Mr. Lunn told reporters after his speech that he also supports the idea of using a nuclear reactor to replace the natural gas that is currently required to generate power and steam used in the extraction of petroleum from the Alberta oil sands.

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As for the environment, he said: "I think they will need to discuss among themselves and then explain to Canadians why they have suddenly had this remarkable epiphany. It was only in December when Mr. Harper was referring disparagingly to 'so-called climate change.'"

Ralph Goodale on Stephen Harper, (Archive).

Ralph Goodale at Parliament, & Constituency Office.

I emailed him to know the source of his quote but have had no response.

A-and finally: these links will be gone soon; in any event the headlines tell the story:
BBC: Last-ditch bid to avert British Airways strike over pay and sick leave.
BBC: Ford hit by record $12.7 billion loss.

Well, maybe one more: 25/01/07, Gary Mason, Living large on a small planet, (Archive), from one man who seems to me to be doing his bit.

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terça-feira, janeiro 23, 2007

Kerry Emanuel: Phaeton’s Reins

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Up, Down, Thread Ahead: evidence of something ..., Thread Back: WAR IS PEACE.

It is almost 7pm in Montréal, Québec. The left coast is blogging and the Google servers are straining under the load ...

So for now just this: Kerry Emanuel: Phaeton’s Reins, The human hand in climate change, (Archive), Source & some intelligent discussion.

The important notion here for me, what caught me and kept me reading to the end; is the two ideas of stability, both flawed. An antidote to what I was thinking around Orwell the other day? I don't know ... maybe.

Click to Enlarge / Click para AumentarThis is Icarus son of Dedalus not Phaeton son of Helios/Phoebus, but still ...

A view from k-k-Canada; and one of the US:
23/01, Jeffrey Simpson, The silence of big business on climate change is deafening, (Archive).
23/01/07, Justin Webb, Bush 'must fight climate change', (Archive).

Compare & contrast?

See also: US Climate Action Partnership USCAP, and their report: A Call for Action.

They say: "We are committed to a pathway that will slow, stop and reverse the growth of U.S. emissions while expanding the U.S. economy."

Finally, I watched Bush's State of the Union speech on TV last night. I had to laugh. A smug supercilious twit mouthing words he clearly had no connection with, pausing at each line to receive one standing ovation after another; some kind of queeerly inverted applause-o-meter? A ritual of some kind? How could anyone with anything upstairs partake? But partake they did ... I even caught a glimpse of Patrick Leahy smiling. I used to read these documents (see State of the Union) and more-or-less took them seriously. Silly man! I see now that I had no idea of what was going on.

Spiegel: State of the Union 2007 - The full text of Bush's speech.

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segunda-feira, janeiro 22, 2007

Nova Esperança

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Up, Down, Thread Ahead: Broken Heart Hotel, Thread Back: None.
Also see: Pedras Portuguêsas, & Flamboyán.

Click to Enlarge / Click para AumentarGoogle Maps, Niteroi, Brazil - searching the same for 'Icarai, Brazil' or any of the streets gets nothing ...

Terra Mapas - is not much better ... you can search the streets and eventually find something but without Portuguese it is a trial.

A Onde Fica seems to be off-line (?).

Nova Esperança / New Hope:
Nova Esperançamy haunt in Icaraí - no pictures of it yet but I will post some soon. I like the name; and the colour, green like a Christian's tie; and the life that surrounds it, rich and open. More later ...

Nova Orquidea:
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domingo, janeiro 21, 2007

Percy Saltzman, expurgated

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Click to Enlarge / Click para AumentarExpurgated the salacious bits did they!? the silly Muggles! This is the Canadian way though isn't it? Take someone real and trim off what you don't like? Exposed as well is a Hobbit's misunderstanding of what blogging is all about - the ability to say exactly what you are thinking, right or wrong. No one is perfect. My good opinion of him would not be reduced one bit to know that he had feet of clay (if in fact that is what was revealed), on the contrary. A-and anyway, we all have feet of clay. I bet he is giggling up there; Rave on Percy!

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His two sons, Paul and Earl, who acquired the intellectual copyright to the material after their father died, almost immediately had the more salacious bits removed, including Mr. Saltzman's rather detailed description of his interest in bare female bodies and his sexual difficulties with their mother, Mr. Saltzman's late first wife.

expurgate – verb (used with object), -gat·ed, -gat·ing. 1. to amend by removing words, passages, etc., deemed offensive or objectionable: Most children read an expurgated version of Grimms' fairy tales. 2. to purge or cleanse of moral offensiveness.

20/01/07, Michael Valpy, Family left to weather Saltzman's Internet storm, (Archive).
18/01/07, Sandra Martin, Obituary - Percy Saltzman, TV weatherman: 1915-2007, (Archive).

Percy's Blog (expurgated).

One Expurgated Entry Found: No More Nudies, Source.

Why on earth would they have trimmed that? An Ode to Beauty and Love and inevitable Decline. Ai Ai - there is no sense in these Canadian Prudes, none.

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sábado, janeiro 20, 2007

America

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Up, Down, Thread Ahead: RCMP - not fixed yet, Thread Back: Zaccardelli.

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"We knew damn well, if he went to Canada, he wouldn't be tortured," thundered Mr. Leahy. "We also knew damn well, if he went to Syria, he'd be tortured. And it's beneath the dignity of this country, a country that has always been a beacon of human rights, to send somebody to another country to be tortured."

Democrat Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.


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