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I don't usually self-identify as a veteran. My service was short, voluntary, and at no time was I in any serious danger. It simply doesn't compare to the sacrifice that is faced by service members today, or even many of my fellow soldiers at the time. Which makes me reluctant to include myself in their ranks, as it seems to suggest that my experience or sacrifice was similar, which it was not. And my evolving attitudes about the efficacy of military action to achieve long lasting change, make me similarly reluctant to embrace all of my past decisions.
I enlisted in the Texas Army National Guard as a medic in 1990 - it seems longer ago now - at a time when the well orchestrated plans I had for my life had all fallen through at more or less the same time. The most heart-breaking of these was my Peace Corps assignment to Nepal being revoked at the last minute due to tangled red-tape between the governments in Kathmandu and the Washington Peace Corps offices. I had quit my job, put my things in storage, and was up visiting my mom. About a week before I was supposed to get on the plane for Nepal, I got the news. The offered to post me to Nepal the next year, or they could send me to the Solomon Islands in six months. I was the third volunteer that I knew this had happened to, and I told them never mind.
So for reasons that seemed reasonable at the time (mostly a desire to get moving in some direction, any direction, just get moving) I enlisted in the Army - the Texas Army National Guard technically, but the lines have been greatly blurred since the first Gulf War, and especially since 9/11. I finished basic training and medic training, was assigned to a guard unit here in Texas, trained with them for a couple of years, and then got out. As I said, short, voluntary and reasonably pain-free.
Still it was a valuable experience - especially basic training.
I met people I never would have met otherwise. As a general enlisted grunt, my platoon was made up a variety of young men from around the country (later in medic training it would include women as well, but basic training is gender-segregated). Some of them came from neighborhoods and situations that were completely foreign to my privileged middle-class upbringing. The stories of police hostility and jokes about government issued cheese were eye-opening. For almost everyone there, the military was not a first choice - but a way out - from situations that ranged from small town boredom to simple survival. One of my platoon mates was from DC, and had two older brothers. Both had joined a gang, and one was dead because of it. If he stayed in DC he didn't see any real choice besides joining the same gang, and, as he figured it, probably being dead by 25. I gained a lot through those friendships.
The military itself was interesting to experience. It may be as merit-based and race-neutral of an organization as is possible in the United States today. The officer corps is still disproportionately white, but the number of minorities at every level, and the requirements of uniformity demanded by the organizational mission, make for a reasonably color-blind institution. It's also staggeringly homophobic and the role of evangelical christianity is often unnerving.
I also really understood, for the first time, the allure of fascism, and of other absolutist ideologies and movements. Especially in boot camp, there simply are no worries. Everything is taken care of for you, and all that is asked is complete, immediate obedience. Perversely, basic training was one of the most relaxing times of my life. I was fed, clothed and sheltered. I had a group to belong to and we shared common goals. The sense of surrender was absolutely liberating. The physical exhaustion and the drill sergeant theatrics were just part of the day. Neither good nor bad, they just were. By the end of couple months it was getting seriously old, but for someone truly in fear, or hungry, or isolated and alone, I could see how the trading of freedom for security could be a welcome bargain.
I should also mention that part of our training explicitly stressed that we were both morally and legally required to question, and if necessary disobey, illegal orders. But the 45 minute post-Nuremberg required training block did not offer much counter-balance to the overall authoritarian environment.
On the whole, my time in the military was a valuable life experience for me. A mixed experience, to be sure, but most are.
Thanks for listening.
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From the Boston Globe.
And now it has a taste for blood....
For five months, he has slaked its thirst with a garden hose, shaded it from the sun with a cotton sheet, kept off the rain with a plastic tarp. He regularly fed it an exotic recipe of ground bone, blood, fish, molasses, and cow and chicken manure. Now more than 16 feet around and weighing an estimated 1,878 pounds, it is packing on 11 pounds a day.
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One of the most inspiring bits of news I've heard in a while...
From the New York Times
October 8, 2008
"Facing a Main Street dotted with vacant stores, residents of this hardscrabble community of 3,000 are reaching into its past to secure its future, betting on farming to make Hardwick the town that was saved by food. With the fervor of Internet pioneers, young artisans and agricultural entrepreneurs are expanding aggressively, reaching out to investors and working together to create a collective strength never before seen in this seedbed of Yankee individualism. Rob Lewis, the town manager, said these enterprises have added 75 to 100 jobs to the area in the past few years." Feeding people, creating jobs, building community, reducing energy use - hell, they are even taking on the credit crisis. "More important, [the farmers] share capital. They’ve lent each other about $300,000 in short-term loans...."
"Fifty investors who put in $1,000 each [into a new restaurant] will have the money repaid through discounted meals at the restaurant over four years."Okay, here's the whole article... From the New York Times October 8, 2008 HARDWICK, Vt. THIS town’s granite companies shut down years ago and even the rowdy bars and porno theater that once inspired the nickname “Little Chicago” have gone. Facing a Main Street dotted with vacant stores, residents of this hardscrabble community of 3,000 are reaching into its past to secure its future, betting on farming to make Hardwick the town that was saved by food. With the fervor of Internet pioneers, young artisans and agricultural entrepreneurs are expanding aggressively, reaching out to investors and working together to create a collective strength never before seen in this seedbed of Yankee individualism. Rob Lewis, the town manager, said these enterprises have added 75 to 100 jobs to the area in the past few years. Rian Fried, an owner of Clean Yield Asset Management in nearby Greensboro, which has invested with local agricultural entrepreneurs, said he’s never seen such cooperative effort. “Across the country a lot of people are doing it individually but it’s rare when you see the kind of collective they are pursuing,” said Mr. Fried, whose firm considers social and environmental issues when investing. “The bottom line is they are providing jobs and making it possible for others to have their own business.” In January, Andrew Meyer’s company, Vermont Soy, was selling tofu from locally grown beans to five customers; today he has 350. Jasper Hill Farm has built a $3.2-million aging cave to finish not only its own cheeses but also those from other cheesemakers. Pete Johnson, owner of Pete’s Greens, is working with 30 local farmers to market their goods in an evolving community supported agriculture program. “We have something unique here: a strong sense of community, connections to the working landscape and a great work ethic,” said Mr. Meyer, who was instrumental in moving many of these efforts forward. He helped start the Center for an Agricultural Economy, a nonprofit operation that is planning an industrial park for agricultural businesses. Next year the Vermont Food Venture Center, where producers can rent kitchen space and get business advice for adding value to raw ingredients, is moving to Hardwick from Fairfax, 40 miles west, because, Mr. Meyer said, “it sees the benefit of being part of the healthy food system.” He expects it to assist 15 to 20 entrepreneurs next year. “All of us have realized that by working together we will be more successful as businesses,” said Tom Stearns, owner of High Mowing Organic Seeds. “At the same time we will advance our mission to help rebuild the food system, conserve farmland and make it economically viable to farm in a sustainable way.” Cooperation takes many forms. Vermont Soy stores and cleans its beans at High Mowing, which also lends tractors to High Fields, a local compositing company. Byproducts of High Mowing’s operation — pumpkins and squash that have been smashed to extract seeds — are now being purchased by Pete’s Greens and turned into soup. Along with 40,000 pounds of squash and pumpkin, Pete’s bought 2,000 pounds of High Mowing’s cucumbers this year and turned them into pickles For the past two years, many of these farmers and businessmen have met informally once a month to share experiences for business planning and marketing or pass on information about, say, a graphic designer who did good work on promotional materials or government officials who’ve been particularly helpful. They promote one another’s products at trade fairs and buy equipment at auctions that they know their colleagues need. More important, they share capital. They’ve lent each other about $300,000 in short-term loans. When investors visited Mr. Stearns over the summer, he took them on a tour of his neighbors’ farms and businesses. To expand these enterprises further, the Center for an Agricultural Economy recently bought a 15-acre property to start a center for agricultural education. There will also be a year-round farmers’ market (from what began about 20 years ago as one farmer selling from the trunk of his car on Main Street) and a community garden, which started with one plot and now has 22, with a greenhouse and a paid gardening specialist. Last month the center signed an agreement with the University of Vermont for faculty and students to work with farmers and food producers on marketing, research, even transportation problems. Already, Mr. Meyer has licensed a university patent to make his Vermont Natural Coatings, an environmentally friendly wood finish, from whey, a byproduct of cheesemaking. These entrepreneurs, mostly well educated children of baby boomers who have added business acumen to the idealism of the area’s long established hippies and homesteaders, are in the right place at the right time. The growing local-food movement, with its concerns about energy usage, food safety and support for neighbors, was already strong in Vermont, a state that the National Organic Farmers’ Association said had more certified organic acreage per capita than any other. Mr. Meyer grew up on a dairy farm in Hardwick and worked in Washington as an agricultural aide to former Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont. “From my time in Washington,” Mr. Meyer said, “I recognize that if Vermont is going to have a future in agriculture we need to look at what works in Vermont, and that is not commodity agriculture.” The brothers Mateo and Andy Kehler have found something that works quite well at their Jasper Hill Farm in nearby Greensboro. At first they aged their award-winning cheeses in a basement. Then they began aging for other cheesemakers. Earlier this month they opened their new caves, with space for 2 million pounds of cheese, which they buy young from other producers. The Vermont Institute for Artisan Cheese at the University of Vermont is helping producers develop safety and quality programs, with costs split by Jasper Hill and the producers. “Suddenly being a cheesemaker in Vermont becomes viable,” Mateo Kehler said. Pete Johnson began a garden when he was a boy on his family’s land. Now his company, Pete’s Greens, grows organic crops on 50 acres in Craftsbury, about 10 miles north of here. He has four moveable greenhouses, extending the growing season to nine months, and he has installed a commercial kitchen that can make everything from frozen prepared foods and soup stocks to baked goods and sausages. In addition he has enlarged the concept of the C.S.A. by including 30 farmers and food producers rather than just a single farm. “We have 200 C.S.A. participants so we’ve become a fairly substantial customer of some of these businesses,” he said. “The local beef supplier got an order for $700 this week; that’s pretty significant around here. We’ve encouraged the apple producer who makes apple pies to use local flour, local butter, local eggs, maple sugar as well as the apples so now we have a locavore apple pie.” “Twelve years ago the market for local food was lukewarm,” Mr. Johnson added. “Now this state is primed for anything that is local. It’s a way to preserve our villages and rebuild them.” Like Mr. Johnson, Mr. Stearns of High Mowing Organic Seeds in Wolcott, who is president of the Center, knew he wanted to get into agriculture when he was a boy. His company, which grew from his hobby of collecting seeds, began in 2000 with a two-page catalog that generated $36,000 in sales. Today he has a million-dollar business, selling seeds all over the United States. Woody Tasch, chairman of Investors Circle, a nonprofit network of investors and foundations dedicated to sustainability, said: “What the Hardwick guys are doing is the first wave of what could be a major social transformation, the swinging back of the pendulum from industrialization and globalization.” Mr. Tasch is having a meeting in nearby Grafton next month with investors, entrepreneurs, nonprofit groups, philanthropists and officials to discuss investing in Vermont agriculture. Here in Hardwick, Claire’s restaurant, sort of a clubhouse for farmers, began with investments from its neighbors. It is a Community Supported Restaurant. Fifty investors who put in $1,000 each will have the money repaid through discounted meals at the restaurant over four years. “Local ingredients, open to the world,” is the motto on restaurant’s floor-to-ceiling windows. “There’s Charlie who made the bread tonight,” Kristina Michelsen, one of four partners, said in a running commentary one night, identifying farmers and producers at various tables. “That’s Pete from Pete’s Greens. You’re eating his tomatoes.” Rosy as it all seems, some worry that as businesses grow larger the owners will be tempted to sell out to companies that would not have Hardwick’s best interests at heart. But the participants have reason to be optimistic: Mr. Stearns said that within one week six businesses wanted to meet with him to talk about moving to the Hardwick area. “Things that seemed totally impossible not so long ago are now going to happen,” said Mr. Kehler. “In the next few years a new wave of businesses will come in behind us. So many things are possible with collaboration.”
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10 Unknown Facts about Wil Wheaton:
1. The more Cthulu learns about Wil Wheaton, the more insane he becomes.
2. Wil Wheaton won Gary Gygax's lucky 20 sider when the D&D (co)creator bet him he couldn't fit an entire 3rd edition Monster's Manual (vol.1) in his mouth. Wil fit the first four volumes.
3. Wil knows whether or not the Johns Linnell and Flansburgh are, in fact, giants.
4. Contrary to the Trekkie popular belief, Wil Wheaton cannot travel around time. However, when he desires it, time will travel around him.
5. Wil Wheaton started a real AADA, but had to disband it after simultaneously defeating all five other co-founders with nothing but a Radio Flyer wagon and a single flaming oil jet. To be fair to his competitors, I must point out that it was an HD flaming oil jet.
6. Accurately depicted in GURPS, Wil Wheaton as a character would cost 413 points.
7. Wil Wheaton has access to seventh level disciplines.
8. Wil Wheaton once visited the eighth dimension using his own home-made oscilation overthruster.
9. Wil Wheaton is the Kwisatz Haderach.
10. Wil Wheaton is Three Laws Safe!
11. Wil Wheaton is Security Clearance ULTRAVIOLET.
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Stars, Songs, Faces
Gather the stars if you wish it so.
Gather the songs and keep them.
Gather the faces of women.
Gather for keeping years and years.
And then . . .
Loosen your hands, let go and say goodbye.
Let the stars and songs go.
Let the faces and years go.
Loosen your hands and say goodbye.
Carl Sandburg
http://www.legacy.com/statesman/Obituaries.asp?Page=LifeStory&PersonID=118046253
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Just as bright and toe-tapping as they come... Camping by the Sun by Peter MayerI like it here and so do you On the one that’s green and blue With everything that life requires A big hydrogen camp-fire We could be here quite a few days The next place is four light-years away When you’re camping by the sun Yippee-yay-yeh, yippee-yay-yo Outer space is mighty cold Unless by chance, you have found A nice, warm star to fly around Unless you’re camping by the sun Like the earth roped the moon The sun’s got us in it’s own lasso We’re doing dishes and we’re taking showers At sixty-five thousand miles and hour It makes you want to play the guitar And sing songs with Jupiter and Mars When you’re camping by the sun Yippee-yay-yeh, yippee-yay-yah Outer space is very dark Unless with luck, you have found A nice, bright star to fly around Unless you’re camping by the sun Yippee-yay-yeh, yippee-yay-yo Outer space is dark and cold Unless by chance, you have found A bright, warm star to fly around Unless you’re camping by the sun And just before you close your eyes When the sun’s on the other side You can wonder at the countless thousands The other fires and who’s around them And if the sticks for their hot dogs Are ninety-eight million miles long When you’re camping by the sun
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From a radio news site:
KTXZ Austin, owned by Encino Broadcasting, has changed formats. The new format will feature Tejano, norteno and grupero music.
The station, normally on AM 1560, will be simulcast on new FM station 95.1 in Austin. They look for 95.1 to make it on the air in the next few weeks.
********************
95.1 had been the home to an amazing private station in Austin. I'm hoping that they have merely switched frequencies, but if so, I haven't found them yet.
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"Oh, no!" I cried. "No, no, no! I don't believe anything. I answered you with the first thing that came into my head. Don't you see--I am very busy with matters of consequence!" He stared at me, thunderstruck. "Matters of consequence!" He looked at me there, with my hammer in my hand, my fingers black with engine-grease, bending down over an object which seemed to him extremely ugly . . .
-From The Little Prince
In Austin, Pet Services is a prohibited use in properties with Central Business District (CBD) base district zoning.
So in the heart of downtown, you cannot get your dog groomed, or go to a vet, or board him overnight.
I don't know why. There's no real justification for the prohibition.
What I do know that is I have been given the task of righting this egregious wrong.
So my noble quest begins - and I will not rest until dog grooming is legal in downtown Austin.*
Stay tune for further updates.
*This should be considered a rhetorical flourish, and not a schedule. Amendments to the Land Development Code require internal staff review and proper notification, and at least two public hearings. Over the course of the weeks this will take, I do, in fact, plan to rest.
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"In through the front door,
Run around the back,
Peek through the window
And off jumps Jack."
Is my new mantra. Which is to say I am learning to knit.
I'm going to make some juggling balls and then learn to juggle.
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No word yet on any plans for a sequel....
New York Times
September 9, 2008 Music Review | ‘The Fly’ The Song of the Brundlefly LOS ANGELES — Given its location, it makes sense for Los Angeles Opera, of all companies, to recruit creative talents from the film industry to try their hands at energizing opera. This has certainly been a priority for Plácido Domingo as the company’s general director. The latest manifestation of that effort came on Sunday afternoon, when Los Angeles Opera presented the American premiere of “The Fly” by the Oscar-winning composer Howard Shore, best known for his scores for the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. With a libretto by the playwright David Henry Hwang, the opera is based on the director David Cronenberg’s 1986 film, for which Mr. Shore wrote the music. Mr. Cronenberg, working closely with Mr. Shore, directed this opera, a co-production with the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, where the work had its world premiere in July. But despite the inventive staging and all-out efforts of an admirable cast — especially the courageous performance of the Canadian bass-baritone Daniel Okulitch as Seth Brundle, the obsessed scientist who morphs into the hideous creature he calls Brundlefly — “The Fly” is a ponderous and enervating opera, and the problem is Mr. Shore’s music. Mr. Shore’s scores for films like “The Silence of the Lambs” and, more recently, Mr. Cronenberg’s “Eastern Promises” evince his indisputable skills, keen ear for harmony and feeling for instrumental color. And moment to moment there are intriguing qualities in “The Fly.” As the opera begins, the ominous mood is introduced through pungent, elusive and quietly restless chords spiked with prickly dissonance. Film composers, who need to work in all manner of styles, tend to develop suction-cup ears, and Mr. Shore shows off his with music that recalls everything from Berg to Bartok and a swath of classic movie scores. But considering that Mr. Shore has worked on some feverishly intense films, his writing here is curiously tame. Singers exchanging dialogue in winding vocal lines are often accompanied by chords that pass by with strangely metronomic regularity, while a meandering counter-line in the lower strings is tossed in to keep things tense. A large contingent of offstage and onstage choristers portray guests at a party for science writers, boisterous regulars at a pool hall and others. But the choral writing is terribly ineffective. Words are typically set in block chords, with pummeling rhythms, like something out of “Carmina Burana.” The most exasperating stretches of the score come when Mr. Shore is most somber. Wandering vocal lines intertwine with every-which-way instrumental lines that skirt tonality, while sustained orchestral harmonies provide a static support. With hints of 12-tone rows and Bergian richness, the music shows signs of Mr. Shore’s craft in almost every measure. But it never adds up. It’s as if Mr. Shore had abandoned his cinematic imagination to write a dutifully contemporary opera. Mr. Domingo conducted. The score is outside the realm of the standard repertory works he has mostly led. The performance he elicited seemed fairly assured and texturally balanced. Still, a conductor with real credentials in contemporary music might have made a better case for Mr. Shore’s work. (Israel Gursky is to lead two performances.) The opera is based not just on Mr. Cronenberg’s film, which was set in the 1980s, but also on the original short story from 1957 by George Langelaan. The setting has been moved back to the late 1950s. As depicted by the set designer Dante Ferretti, the computer in Brundle’s lab that connects the two huge teleports he has invented is a big, old-fashioned thing with knobs, lights and control panels. Mr. Hwang’s libretto uses a flashback structure to tell the story. So the opera begins with a police officer interrogating Veronica, the science writer who falls for Brundle, at his lab after his death. Some scenes in which the characters introduce themselves are absurd, as when the barflies sing in droning, pummeling block chords: “We haven’t done much with our lives./Our high school dreams lie shattered in the dust.” The opera emphasizes the philosophical elements of the story. Thankfully, the biggest gross-out part of the 1986 film, which starred Jeff Goldblum, has been eliminated: as Brundle became the fly creature, he turned toothless and gumless, able to eat only by vomiting milky digestive fluids onto junk food and slurping it all back up. In the opera we are simply told about Brundle’s eating habits in one of those clunky, offstage choruses, voicing the thoughts of the computer. But the conception of Brundle, at least as portrayed by Mr. Okulitch, has poignant allure. Mr. Goldblum was a mad, wiry scientist with raging eyes. The young, boyishly handsome Mr. Okulitch makes Brundle more of a dreamer, awkward and soulful, who has lived in near seclusion, building his telepods and fantasizing about transporting himself, transcending the flesh. At the opera’s turning point, when Veronica fails to appear at Brundle’s studio to celebrate a breakthrough in his work, he turns to his telepods as a way to consummate the fantasy of liberating himself from his flesh. Stripped naked, Mr. Okulitch enters one telepod in a trance and emerges from the other amid smoke and eerie light. At one point in Act II, Mr. Okulitch, his skin now covered in hideous scales, is suspended by wires. He enters his studio upside down, crawling along a ceiling crossbeam and then slithering head-first down a metal column, singing all the while. This is something voice students are not prepared for in conservatory training. Mr. Okulitch, who has a warm and lyrical voice, sings with conviction, intelligence and volatility. His voice is not large, and he is sometimes drowned out, though that may be the fault of Mr. Shore’s sometimes misgauged orchestration or Mr. Domingo’s conducting. The lovely Romanian mezzo-soprano Ruxandra Donose sings Veronica, the most dramatically pivotal role, with vulnerability, quiet intensity and lush colorings. She too takes risks with her portrayal. Wearing just a slip in an intimate romantic scene with Mr. Okulitch, she writhes with pleasure as he fondles her breasts and strokes her crotch. It’s hard to imagine even a go-for-broke artist from earlier times, like Teresa Stratas, consenting to such a thing. For better or worse, opera is breaking new ground. The tenor Gary Lehman brings his Wagnerian-size tenor voice and burly presence to the role of Stathis Borans, the editor of a science magazine and Veronica’s ex-lover. For all the brilliant touches in the production, there were some oddly clunky moments. As Act II opened, to demonstrate that Brundle now had the athletic agility of an insect, an acrobat look-alike performed headstands and tumbling. But as the stand-in exited stage right, Mr. Okulitch entered stage left. No attempt was made to keep the identity of the acrobat vague. The audience roared with laughter, and you felt bad for Mr. Okulitch, who nevertheless won an enormous ovation during curtain calls. Now and then the music grabs you, as in an extended love duet for Brundle and Veronica. Finally, here are captivating lyrical phrases that flow with halting, elusive restraint, cushioned by bittersweet orchestral harmonies. Mr. Shore has clear strengths as a composer and may have a good opera in him. “The Fly” is not it. “The Fly” runs for five more performances at Los Angeles Opera, through Sept. 27; (213) 972-8001, laopera.com.
Harrold Texas has authorized it's teachers to come to school armed. But at least...
"Teachers will use special ammunition intended to cut down on ricochets. "
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The great thing about songs with same meter is you can sing the words of one to the tune of another.
Try mixing and matching the following - great at parties.
Amazing Grace
Greensleeves
The House of the Rising SUn
Ode to Joy
The Marine Corps Hymn (aka From the Halls of Montezuma...")
The Yellow Rose of Texas
I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing
Darling Clementine, and of course
The theme from Gilligan's Island.
Some are easier than others. My favorite is Amazing Grace to the tune of the Marine Corps Hymn
There's more going on in the world, but for now, that will have to do...
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Yes, another lyrics post.
Just Us Kids -
by James McMurtry
I've had enough of this small town bullshit
I'm not stayin' in school
I'm makin' good dough workin' with my brother
Cleanin' out pools
I'm going out to California
And man it won't be long
As soon as I get my license
Color me gone
Oh knock it off Johnny
Man, your livin' in your head
You ain't even got a car
And those chicks don't believe a word ya said
But you're doin' all the talkin'
So I just keep quiet
And this'll probably go no where
But I can't blame ya for tryin'
It's just us kids hangin' round the park at night
Hangin' round 'neath the vapor light
We got no drugs and we got no guns
Not even botherin' anyone
I don't have to wear a necktie
I don't have to punch a clock
I started up a dot com company
And man it rocks
Won't you come with me down to Mexico
In the winter with some friends?
My divorce will be final
Along about then
Meanwhile I got a gram and a real good ride
And don't you know I hurt way down inside?
Just us kids in the parking lot
Out here givin' it all we got
We don't want to get old and die
And there ain't nothing we wouldn't try
Ya know we could really have it all
Our kid's gonna graduate next fall
I could take retirement in 10 years
It's a damn short movie
How'd we ever get here?
Just us kids hangin' out today
Watchin' our long hair turnin' gray
Not so skinny maybe not so free
Not so many as we used to be
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- I WHO am dead a thousand years,
- And wrote this sweet archaic song,
- Send you my words for messengers
- The way I shall not pass along.
- I care not if you bridge the seas,
- Or ride secure in the cruel sky,
- Or build consummate palaces
- Of metal or of masonry.
- But have you wine and music still,
- And statues and a bright-eyed love,
- And foolish thoughts of good and ill,
- And prayers to them who sit above?
- How shall we conquer? Like a wind
- That falls at eve our fancies blow,
- And old Maeonides the blind
- Said it three thousand years ago,
- O friend unseen, unborn, unknown,
- Student of our sweet Engligh tongue,
- Read out my words at night, alone:
- I was a poet, I was young.
- Since I can never see your face,
- And never shake you by the hand,
- I send my soul through time and space
- To greet you. You will understand.
- James Elroy Flecker
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<Been a bit on the swamped side. Hope to resume semi-regular posting soon-ish...>
Both heard yesterday...
An amazing seven minute version of "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" done by Isaac Hayes....
followed by
"Like A Friend" by Pulp (here's a video version)
Don't bother saying you're sorry / Why don't you come in
Smoke all my cigarettes again / Every time I get no further
How long has it been? / Come on in now, wipe your feet on my dreams
You take up my time / Like some cheap magazine
When I could have been learning something
Oh well, you know what I mean, oh / I've done this before
And I will do it again / Come on and kill me baby
While you smile like a friend / Oh and I'll come running
Just to do it again / You are the last drink I never should have drunk
You are the body hidden in the trunk / You are the habit I can't seem to kick
You are my secrets on the front page every week
You are the car I never should have bought
You are the dream I never should have caught
You are the cut that makes me hide my face
You are the party that makes me feel my age
Like a car crash I can see but I just can't avoid
Like a plane I've been told I never should board
Like a film that's so bad but I've got to stay till the end
Let me tell you now: it's lucky for you that we're friends.
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Courtesy of 95.1 Radio Austin
Ghost of Corporate Future Written by: regina spektor Lyrics (from the Soviet Kitsch liner notes): A man walks out of his apartment it is raining he's got no umbrella he starts running beneath the awnings trying to save his suit tryin to dryin to tryin to dry but no good When he gets to the crowded subway platform he takes off both of his shoes He steps right into somebody's fat loogie and everyone who sees him says "ewwww" everyone who sees him says "ewwww" But he doesn't care cause last night he got a visit from the Ghost of Corporate Future The Ghost said take off both your shoes whatever chances you get especially when they're wet he also said Imagine you go away on a business trip one day and when you come back home your children have grown and you never made your wife moan And people make you nervous You'd think the world was ending and everybody's features have somehow started blending and everything is plastic and everyone's sarcastic and all your food is frozen it needs to be defrosted You'd think the world was ending you'd think the world was ending You'd think the world was ending right now Well maybe you should just drink a lot less coffee and never ever watch the 10 o'clock news Maybe you should kiss someone nice or lick a rock or both maybe you should cut your own hair cause that can be so funny it doesn't cost any money and it always grows back hair grows even after you're dead People are just people They shouldn't make you nervous The world is everlasting It's coming and it's going if you don't toss your plastic the streets won't be so plastic and if you kiss somebody then both of you'll get practice The world is everlasting put dirtballs in your pockets put dirtball's in your pockets and take off both your shoes cause people are just people people are just people people are just people like you people are just people people are just people people are just people like you The world is everlasting it's coming and it's going the world is everlasting it's coming and it's going it's coming and it's going
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Zimbabwe inflation hits 2.2 million percent by Godfrey Marawanyika
Wed Jul 16, 12:00 PM ET Zimbabwe's inflation rate, already the world's highest, hit an astronomical 2.2 million percent Wednesday after Robert Mugabe's re-election in a one-man poll critics had said the nation could ill afford. The figure is the first from the authorities in Zimbabwe since the announcement of the rate for February, when it was put at 165,000 percent. The impact on consumers of the inflation juggernaut is now such that prices of basic goods like bread, when available, go up by 30-40 percent per day. For example, the price of a loaf of bread on Monday which stood at 60 billion Zimbabwe dollars -- one US dollar at the then black market rate but 400 according to the official exchange -- had risen to 100 billion little more than 24 hours later. A three-star hotel in the capital has been hiking its room rates by around 300 percent every three days and in the latest round of increases, rates shot up from around four trillion dollars to 10 trillion. John Robertson, the economist who prompted the revealing of the official rate, said the rise was partly a result of the election campaign when the ruling party handed out equipment as apparent election sweeteners in rural areas. He insisted that the figure was outdated and did not take into account splurges ahead of polling on June 27. "That figure which was announced is probably for May. The real figure for June could be between 10 to 15 million percent." Once one of Africa's best performing economies, Zimbabwe has been in meltdown since the turn of the decade when Mugabe embarked on a controversial land reform programme which saw thousands of white-owned farms seized by the state.
Copyright © 2008 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AFP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Agence France Presse, except by well meaning bloggers.
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I went to a presentation last fall by NASA about the future programs. It was well presented and informative. The most amazing part of it was "The Gap" - the five year period where the US will lack the capacity to put humans in orbit.
I was stunned. Haven't we been doing this for decades now? What's the issue?
The shuttles are being retired in 2010. The new launch vehicle is scheduled to be completed in 2015. So for a minimum of five years (assuming the new project stays on schedule) we will no way to put people in space. We will have to rely on the Russians to reach the space station, and anything else that might require humans will just have to wait. There are mumbles of private sector partners, but nothing definite.
Truly amazing. We have a crewed space station and will have no way to reach it. The Russians, Chinese and soon India and Europe will have crewed launch capacity, but, at least for a while, we won't. And we are falling behind in other areas of space exploration too, as this article from the Washington Post describes...(excerpted below)
*******
Dominance in Space Slips as Other Nations Step Up Efforts
By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
China plans to conduct its first spacewalk in October. The European Space Agency is building a roving robot to land on Mars. India recently launched a record 10 satellites into space on a single rocket... Six separate nations and the European Space Agency are now capable of sending sophisticated satellites and spacecraft into orbit -- and more are on the way. New rockets, satellites and spacecraft are being planned to carry Chinese, Russian, European and Indian astronauts to the moon, to turn Israel into a center for launching minuscule "nanosatellites," and to allow Japan and the Europeans to explore the solar system and beyond with unmanned probes as sophisticated as NASA's. While the United States has been making incremental progress in space, its global rivals have been taking the giant steps that once defined NASA: · Following China's lead, India has announced ambitious plans for a manned space program, and in November the European Union will probably approve a proposal to collaborate on a manned space effort with Russia. Russia will soon launch rockets from a base in South America under an agreement with the European company Arianespace, whose main launch facility is in Kourou, French Guiana. · Japan and China both have satellites circling the moon, and India and Russia are also working on lunar orbiters. NASA will launch a lunar reconnaissance mission this year, but many analysts believe the Chinese will be the first to return astronauts to the moon. · The United States is largely out of the business of launching satellites for other nations, something the Russians, Indians, Chinese and Arianespace do regularly. Their clients include Nigeria, Singapore, Brazil, Israel and others. The 17-nation European Space Agency (ESA) and China are also cooperating on commercial ventures, including a rival to the U.S. space-based Global Positioning System. · South Korea, Taiwan and Brazil have plans to quickly develop their space programs and possibly become low-cost satellite launchers. South Korea and Brazil are both developing homegrown rocket and satellite-making capacities. ....
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This weekend I filled up my car, and whoever had used the tank before me had put in $80 worth of gas. And since it was $80 even he probably could have held more. For the really big pick-ups and SUVs, the cost of tank is topping $100. Even members of the Chevy Avalanche fan club are selling their big trucks. My local bus route had to lease more parking spaces at the park and ride lot. The cost of tank of gas is changing people's behavior. This isn't over, not by a long shot.
Here's a great, if not very encouraging article about how this all could have easily been avoided, or at least phased in very gradually.
From the NY Times
Over the last 25 years, opportunities to head off the current crisis were ignored, missed or deliberately blocked, according to analysts, politicians and veterans of the oil and automobile industries. What’s more, for all the surprise at just how high oil prices have climbed, and fears for the future, this is one crisis we were warned about. Ever since the oil shortages of the 1970s, one report after another has cautioned against America’s oil addiction. Even as politicians heatedly debate opening new regions to drilling, corralling energy speculators, or starting an Apollo-like effort to find renewable energy supplies, analysts say the real source of the problem is closer to home. In fact, it’s parked in our driveways. Nearly 70 percent of the 21 million barrels of oil the United States consumes every day goes for transportation, with the bulk of that burned by individual drivers, according to the National Commission on Energy Policy, a bipartisan research group that advises Congress. SO despite the fierce debate over what’s behind the recent spike in prices, no one differs on what’s really responsible for all that underlying demand here for black gold: the automobile, fueled not only by gasoline but also by Americans’ famous propensity for voracious consumption.... According to energy policy experts, it was in the late 1980s and early 1990s — during the administrations of President George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton — that things began to go wrong. Before that point, the country reaped the benefits of the first fuel-economy standards, passed in 1975, known as corporate average fuel economy, or CAFE. Between 1974 and 1989, the efficiency of a typical car sold in the United States almost doubled, to 27.5 miles per gallon from 13.8. LARGELY as a result, oil consumption in 1990 totaled 16.9 million barrels per day, basically on a par with the 17 million barrels per day consumed in 1980, even as the economy grew substantially. Oil prices were in the middle of a long downward slide that would take them from well above $30 a barrel in 1980 to a low of just under $10 in late 1998 and early 1999, interrupted only by brief spike in 1990 after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. In 1990, Richard H. Bryan, a Nevada Democrat, teamed up in the Senate with Slade Gorton, Republican of Washington, and proposed lifting fuel standards again over the next decade, with a goal of 40 m.p.g. for cars. Amid furious opposition from Detroit, liberal Democrats from automaking states, like Carl Levin of Michigan, joined conservative Republicans like Jesse Helms of North Carolina, who died on Friday, to block new CAFE standards. “It was one of the most frustrating issues in my Senate career,” says Mr. Gorton, who left the Senate in 2001. Dan Becker, then a lobbyist for the Sierra Club, still remembers his shock when he saw Mr. Levin and Mr. Helms, diametrically opposed on most issues, walk amiably together onto the Senate floor to cast their votes. “This wasn’t East-West, right-left, or North-South,” he says. “But had we passed that bill, we’d be using three million barrels less oil a day now.” That amount may not sound like much, given total global consumption of 85 million barrels a day, but it’s more than OPEC’s spare capacity now.
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Some friends of mine recently went to a corporate party for Oracle. Oracle hired the Who to play. The Who, you know, one of the greatest rock bands in history - Roger Daltrey, Simon Townshend, Zak Starkey and Pino Pallandino. Pino Pallandio? Eh?
They had a good time, which is I guess what counts.
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