segunda-feira, dezembro 31, 2007

Roses

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The Sick Rose, William Blake.

O Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy;
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.



My Pretty Rose Tree, William Blake.

A flower was offered to me,
Such a flower as May never bore;
But I said "I've a pretty rose tree,"
And I passed the sweet flower o'er.

Then I went to my pretty rose tree,
To tend her by day and by night;
But my rose turned away with jealousy,
And her thorns were my only delight.


Four Quartets - Little Gidding, T.S. Eliot
...
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.




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sábado, dezembro 29, 2007

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"Só não muda de idéia quem não as tem."

(Who does not change his mind, has none.)

     Alberto da Costa e Silva.



Easter: First Sunday after the full moon that occurs on or following the spring equinox (March 21).

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segunda-feira, dezembro 24, 2007

starting with Six Degrees

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Six Degrees, reviewed on RealClimate.
Mark Lynas dot Org.

Six Degrees is not well written (phrases like 'truly unique' gave me a clue), but the science is solid according to people who can judge such things, and the shift in perception that 2 degrees (which really doesn't seem like much) is about the limit.

One section that interested me is near the end, entitled 'States of Denial', which begins:
"Energy realities are not the only reason why our response to global warming has hitherto been so half-hearted. Our evolutionary psychology preconditions us not to respond to threats which can be postponed until later. We are good at mobilising for immediate battles, less good at heading off challenges which still lie far into the future. Hence the most appropriate term to describe both individual and societal responses so far is probably 'denial'."

Stabilization Wedges: Solving the Climate Problem for the Next 50 Years with Current Technologies (inaccessible source in Science).
Stabilization Wedges: Solving the Climate Problem for the Next 50 Years with Current Technologies Cambridge presentation.
Solving the Climate Problem, Socolow & Pacala.

Portland Cement ~1 kilo CO2 per kilo cement.

Methane clathrate - 500-2500 gigatonnes carbon.

Refrigeration.
Propane Refrigeration.
ThermoElectric Cooling.

Tags: (not).
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domingo, dezembro 23, 2007

Calvin meets the Golden Toad

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"If it's true that our species is alone in the universe, then I'd have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little."
     cribbed from United Online - S. Lyster, White Rock, B.C.


: Dad says that the Sun is not going out.
: He says it's colder because the orbit of the Earth is moving away from the Sun.
: He says Winter is coming.
: Isn't it sad that there are people who have such a tenuous grip on their life that they prefer to believe in some absurd illusion rather than face up to raw reality once in a while.



Calvin & Hobbes (Português), Golden Toad - Bufo periglenes.

Tags: Technorati, Bah Humbug!
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sábado, dezembro 15, 2007

Questions

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On Monday of this week in Salvador, Bahia, an old lady was getting off a bus and fell, maybe it was because the bus driver didn´t fully stop. She didn´t hurt herself but when she got home she told her son, a policeman. He got in his car and drove to the end of the line to talk to the driver. Naturally he took his gun. They argued and he shot the driver and killed him. He was arrested and put in jail.

The four goons who killed Robert Dziekanski are still walking around and Elliott can´t even properly manage to limit the use of tasers. Why is this disgraceful conduct permitted? Shame on Canada.


My prayers go out for Dom Luiz Cappio, Bishop of Barra, in the 20th day of a hunger strike to try to get the official nonsense of the Rio Sao Francisco diversion stopped. They can only work with the assistance of the army to keep citizens from interfering. They have stopped temporarily but are likely to recommence on Monday.



The stupid cunts! I want to come back there and start a graffiti campaign to get cars out of cities and establish effective public transport - why is this not being done you dipshit weenies?!

Tags: Technorati sucks.
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sexta-feira, dezembro 07, 2007

Canada (?)

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Just about coming a distant second-last.



Spiegel - Sweden First, US almost Last, Says Study.
Climate Change Performance Index 2008 (if this disappears let me know, I kept a copy).

Tags: Technorati ... Bah! Humbug!
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sábado, dezembro 01, 2007

what to do?

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what to do? and, where to go from here? ... the age-old question: fish? or cut bait? ...


They have not only exonerated Paul Koester for the murder of Ian Bush, they are now elevating him to an object of compassion - a-and they have promoted him!

"Constable Paul Koester deserves the empathy of Canadians. The young officer was doing his job with integrity when he arrested Mr. Bush on a minor charge, and suddenly found himself being choked from behind, and expecting to die. Other officers and ambulance workers who saw Constable Koester shortly after he shot Mr. Bush in the head in self-defence say he was devastated, sobbing, an emotional wreck. All this Mr. Kennedy sets out persuasively, explaining what the evidence was and why he gave some pieces of evidence more weight than others."

     Globe Editorial, 30/11/07, Empathy for the constable.

"In the case of Constable Koester, he had been promoted from field training shortly after the incident occurred and well before the completion of the investigation."

     Final Report on the Shooting Death of Ian Bush, 28/11/07.

By Paul E. Kennedy, Chair, Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP; this is the same Paul E. Kennedy who took the stuffing out of the complaints around the murder of Robert Dziekansi: Watchdog rejects spin charge against RCMP, Jonathan Woodward, 19/11/07, Source.

Adds up, even if I don't happen to like the sum.

"We'll likely never know what really happened in the Houston RCMP detachment the night of Oct. 29, 2005. The only person who knows that is Constable Koester, the lone officer who was with Mr. Bush when he was shot. Like many others, I don't believe his version of events. I just don't see how he could have hit Mr. Bush three times in the back of the head with the tip of his gun and then shot him, all the while being face down on a couch and with Mr. Bush lying on top of him."

     Watchdog's conclusion comes as no surprise at all, 30/11/07.

I think Gary Mason is being generous - my take is that Bush said something about the size of Koester's tool and Koester shot him execution-style because he had the power, and then (given the size of his tool) he started weeping ... that's what I think.

And furthermore ... they simply can't have too many Maher Arars coming down at 10 million a pop, too expensive you see. So, Canadian public mentality being entirely blunted with 'consumer items' (religion is not the narcotic Karl ol' buddy, comfort is) they put out 100 pages or so of long sentences and three-syllable words and they're in the clear. (Having turned the soil well in advance by taking geometry and grammar out of the curricula.)

Nor is it just the RCMP: Globe Editorial, 24/08/07, Blown cover, nor even just police forces: Pandemic politics, Margaret Wente, 23/11/07 - it is ubiquitous & endemic.

Putting your best foot forward:

"Today I talked to the security guard at the Provincial Legislature in Fredericton. I asked if an arrest would follow my refusal to stay out of that building. He let me know that there continues to be a warrant with my name on it. Violation of the warrant will lead to arrest and the charge of assault. I then let him know that I would be returning in the spring. I told him that I would come with witnesses. There would be cameras and microphones. He asked how many? I smiled and said I hoped for 300. Would settle for two. They were to be witnesses to my arrest. He asked who these persons were. I told him they would be members of the Fredericton Peace Coalition. He asked me what day this would happen. I told him Good Friday would be perfect. I asked him if the Legislature would be open on Good Friday. He said it would not. So I proposed Maundy Thursday."

     George Feenstra, Laying out a fleece.....

Finally, I have to give up on them, these United Church of Canada ministers and their petty hand-wringing solipsisms - but it leaves me lonely, oh well.

A-and the disfunctional Technorati tags ... this is really the show stopper because I was always trying to use these tags to access other opinions quickly, and also maybe make mine available to others. But they don't work in oh so many ways; and pointing this out to the developers has gotten me nowhere - they are playing some game that is simply incomprehensible to me. So I have to give up on them too, but what to replace them with? Short of inventing my own blog software there is nothing; thus leaving the explicit structure of this blog, such as it is, in collapse. Mind you, they never worked, so another way to see it is that nothing is lost ...

Also worthy of note: Story time in St. George's, Sabrina Skinner, 13/11/07.

"At Ms. Fearon's session with Level II and III students, she had the students participate in an exercise in which each member of the class added one line to a piece of paper circulating around the classroom.

'A story can be as simple as that," she told the students. "Adding one thought or line.'"


... so, I will go up to Salvador for a week or so and leave the komputor behind - let's see where that goes eh?

OuroborosOuroborosOuroborosOuroborosOuroborosOuroborosOuroboros

A-and, oh yeah, speaking of show-stoppers, here's one:

"The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women ... It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians."

a-and here's another one (this guy is a hoot, or would be if he wasn't serious):

"You say you're supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other thing. Nonsense. I don't have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist."


     Pat Robertson.

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