Tensegrity [i].

(... for he was a tidy pachyderm.)
Up, Down, References, Addenda.

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What this is:

Thought experiment: Put some toothpicks in a baloon with some white glue, blow it up, shake it around so the toothpicks stick to the inside surface of the baloon, let out the air. What happens?

The 'Love Knot' tensegrity, which takes a pentagon (sometimes thought of as a symbol of humanity) into another pentagon and whose fifteen struts form one continuous circuit ... has fascinated me for many years. Recently I was dreaming of a model formed of curved chrome tubes joined with tiny chrome springs. Maybe I will get around to it ... and maybe not. This post is just to document some of the initial design stages (on the umpteenth reiteration).

[Dedicated to two sisters, Phoebe and Tanaquil (and to their father who had passed before I got a chance to meet him).]

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Contents:
Prisms:
          Triangular Prism with 1 layer
          Modified Triangular Prism (O Minimo)
Capturing the imagination:
          Expanded Octahedron
          Truncated Tetrahedron
Odd-numbered Prisms (with continuous circuits):
          Pentagonal Prism with 2 layers
          Pentagonal Prism with 3 layers (Love Knot)
          Heptagonal Prism with 2 layers (7 sided)
          Hendecagonal Prism with 3 layers (Loonie) (11 sided)

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Triangular Prism with 1 layer:



There is a 'twist angle', a rotational displacement in the two polygons at the ends of the prism - which can be computed - the arithmetic involved is described near the end of 'Geodesic Math and How To Use It'.

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Modified Triangular Prism (O Minimo):



A triangular prism with an additional strut through the centre - four struts held by nine tendons, or 2¼ tendons supporting each strut. Consider the minimum number of guy-wires necessary to hold up a pole ...

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Expanded Octahedron:



You can also think of it as a 2 layer triangular prism.

There is a transformation that takes this tensegrity into the truncated tetrahedron. I had hoped to do a bit of an animation ... but I don't know how, so words will have to do - there is a description in 'Introduction to Tensegrity'.

The divine proportion turns into 1:2 in the process.

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Truncated Tetrahedron:





The only model to survive all of the travels and upheavals is this truncated tetrahedron. It lived on the dashboard of my van for some years, got banged around, hung in there somehow. Pugh calls this configuration the 'zig zag' - got that right.

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Pentagonal Prism with 2 layers:

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Pentagonal Prism with 3 layers (Love Knot):



The notion took root in the late 70's - from a single comment in 'Introduction to Tensegrity': "The struts form one continuous circuit." It turns out there is a family of such structures. Knowing how to tie a Turk's Head led to experiments with rope as well, though it was difficult to join the end to the beginning neatly.

The atomic number of (good old polymorphic) Phosphorus is 15. The Phosphorus molecule P₄ (in the white forms) is a tetrahedron and in red is approximately so. I am working at determining what the standard Phosphorus allotropes look like: α is body centered cubic, and β is triclinic - but of course the Internet is not that useful at this level.

Hanging in the window of an apartment in Ipanema is the beginning, in 2002, of a love knot to be made with (possibly) curved & coloured florescent neon tubes - the ballast concealed in clever hubs - for the centre of the arch at Canecão. Didn't get very far (distracted by oil) ... Nor in 2005 with soda straws - a single elastic band serving as the four tendons of each diamond.

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No struts to be had in Toronto, so it goes. The carpenters are all too busy except one guy who says, "Sorry, not keen to do this," duh. Oh well. ... The only problem with soda straw models is that the elastics soon turn to dust. Ai ai ai.

Prisms with odd numbers of layers tend to be pretty close to actual prisms (where the end polygons align) - with even numbers of layers they are closer to anti-prisms (where the end polygons are rotated half an edge).







Being odd, the circuit pattern love knot is close to a prism, and joining the ends of the struts makes it just about exactly so. This will simplify the metrics since it will not be difficult to compute coordinates for all the joints, and hence angles, radii &etc. The difficulty will be finding a 3D modeller to hold it - AutoCad I guess. Bleah! Expensive and hard to use ... maybe there is something else out there by now. (?)

When the diamond becomes the chord of a curve ... my son quickly saw that it will be not be the chord of a circle but will be twisted - have to watch for that capability in the modelling software.

A tool that would compute a minimal static system is probably too much to ask. (?)

Back in the 70's we stuck a tensegrity into Stardyne and it just went berserkers - infinite displacements with zero loads and so on :-) The smart guys I worked with in those days have cashed out and vanished - and I am wishing I had done the same.

143 mm,107,81,57 - 1:.75:.57:.42 (Happy Birthday Babe!):

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Heptagonal Prism with 2 layers: (7 sided)



If you look closely at that last image you can see squares emerging from the murk.

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Hendecagonal Prism with 3 layers (Loonie): (11 sided)



If it looks somewhat cone shaped it is because I was shrinking one of the 11-gons to see what would happen - more on that later.

One thing you can see in this model is how the ends of the struts come closer together as the frequency increases.

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Stories:

Just after my son was born (and a few weeks after I started architecture school) a mathematician friend of mine told me about a figure constructed of three intersecting rectangles. If the sides of the rectangles were in the divine proportion the corners would form a regular icosahedron. So I made one with paper and sticky tape, connected the corners with a needle and thread - sure enough, there was the icosahedron. I hung it up high in the corner of the room.

In the other corner of the room was the bed. I used to lie there sometimes and doze with my new son on my chest, pretending to match our heartbeats as he fell asleep; and one day I thought I saw another figure there - one with the long edges of the rectangles as sticks - and when I made that one (with chop sticks and string and clove hitches) I found that six of the strings seemed to be unnecesssary. (?) So I replaced the strings with rubber bands, removed the redundant ones, and ... Presto Whiffo! There was the Expanded Octahedron. Eureka!

When I ran to show my prof the next day, he gave a glance, said, "Yup, the six-strut tensegrity," and carried on past me down the stairs. ... Someone had been there first. ... Euclid maybe - not Kenneth Snelson though some pawits think so (and definitely not our Bucky).

And that was about as close as I ever got to an original idea (and a good time to abandon jealousy as well, envy, property - intellectual and otherwise ... other things).

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Some thirty years later, as we sat in a sidewalk barzinho a little south of the Tropic of Capricorn one evening (that same son of mine and I), we decided to solve the pesky climate change crisis once and for all.

How to get maximum bang for a policy buck?

After many Antartica's, first prize went to establishing no-car zones a dozen or so miles in diameter around all substantial city centres. Success would depend upon citizen satisfaction & uptake - so: secure parking at the perimeter, effective public transit within the zone, and set the planners to re-allocate the streetspace.

Runner-up was diverting and separating urban sewage at neighbourhood scale to generate methane for fuel, street lights and the like; and fertilizer and water for urban farming (possibly in those re-planned streets).


Which brings me to an upcoming event here in Toronto - hopefully worth the fifty buck ticket: An Evening with the Pembina Institute: Help “fuel” transportation progress, Wednesday 30 May 2012 from 5:30-8:00 PM - more about the Pembina Institute on their website.

It would be fine to see you there gentle reader. Be well.

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References:
Kenneth Snelson, and here.
Geodesic Math and How To Use It, Hugh Kenner, 1976.
Introduction to Tensegrity, Anthony Pugh, 1976.

Building Models:

In the event that you decide to make some of these models, a word of caution: WEAR SAFETY GLASSES ... because, as you assemble models with elastic bands they will inevitably slip from time to time and the struts will suddenly come flying at you, and if you are not wearing protection you may put one of your beautiful eyes out.

Then again, in all the years I have been making these things I only began to wear glasses, nevermind safety lenses, when I could no longer see to do the work without them, so ... fatuous phatic flatulence (aka ignis fatuus) with phallic undertones.

A Note on Tools:
If someone offers you an Olympus Stylus pocket camera - JUST SAY NO! ... On the other hand, there is no way to appreciate these structures through photographs, you have to make and handle them (like it says in the communion hymn, "touch and handle things unseen").

Brass wire is not ideal - it is very difficult to get it tight enough to take out the kinks - but for some reason elastic bands these days deteriorate quite quickly, in this apartment at least. Someone said to me that it is my smoking - that could be - or maybe a slow Freon leak in the fridge.

Do not underestimate simplicity - making the struts for example: putting the finishing nails into the ends requires a punch and a drill-press. Really (I had these ones made for me and it was too complicated to explain this step to the cabinet maker), it is better to put the blanks into a pencil sharpener after the holes are drilled and before the nails are driven ... &etc. (Thanks again Glen.)

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Addenda & Ruminations: I ran myself out of struts and now I'm stuck finding someone to make some more, and it's Toronto so ... an hiatus ...for the best maybe. My son came and made some space to hang up the models. Trying to visualize the love knot as an actual knot-knot is difficult, frustrating even, and being able to hang the model just above the screen of this computer makes it easier to look at. These kinds of things used to just leap into my head - now they sort of stumble & crouch :-)

Eschenbach and his Parzifal/Parzival/Percival/Percy is on my mind. I remember the first time I read it and visions came of my young wife's gracious innocence ... a cynic might call it a 'sexual connection' with the text, and there is some truth in that - but not the whole truth.

The point on which the story really hangs, sticks, and persists, is Percy's question, his two last chances at finding the grail: "What ails thee?" And the huge dramatic inertia that surrounds not asking the question, and then maybe not asking it again, and then, finally, asking it - and all the lights come on.

You could easily reformulate it as simply: How are you? Such a ubiquitous phrase and so often repeated that it might (going back to the top of the post) be merely phatic. Surely it must have been about the same in the 13th century? People greeting each other with "Hi. How's it goin'?"   "Good day and how are you?"

So ... how to imagine that the warp-speed cosmic worm hole leading to ultimate spiritual fulfilment is nothing more than one of the commonest of human exchanges? (?)

Going along the Queen Street East sidewalk on a sunny Sunday afternoon in May, crowded with all the good burghers walking their children and dogs, each other, and lots of brown girls with white babies in the most expensive strollers available. What if Percy in his armour and the glistening grail are right here in the middle of it?

There is an implicit irony in the movies and TV programs when they portray religious rituals these days, or there seems to be. Priests and rabbis and the like, repeating prayers; choirs of schoolboys singing well worn hymns, the chestnuts that we all remember, or at least that those of my generation remember: "Bring me my chariot of fire."   "All ye who hear, now to his temple draw near."

What if all the sanctimony and doctrine and holy writ (and the irony as well), however "ful of hy senténce" it may be, is ... fol-de-rol and unnecessary nonsense, and it, the shekinah, is all right here in all of our hands all of the time - as I have quoted from Northrop Frye so often: "In the double vision of a spiritual and a physical world simultaneously present ... our life in the resurrection is already here, and waiting to be recognized." [Slightly changed from the original which is here.]

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Back in the day there was a gig at Place des Artes, a Jazz Festival - Murray was doing some kind of radio reportage and I was running him around on my motorcycle - and somehow I found myself 'in the wings' with this remarkable noise.

Many years later when Cynthia the shrink thought she had me pinned I would pull out something like "Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds" and she would mutter in frustration, "Damned transcendence!" Eventually she kicked me out. :-)

There he is, our Pierrot le Fou on the hill in his red-yellow-and-blue 'nitramite' outfit, also muttering ... and then the last whispered (transcendental?) exchange, it might be: "We found it again. What? Eternity. That's the sea moving, with the sunlight."

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Another dipthong or two, logorrhœa, prolixity:

1. The mid-year round of UNFCCC gum flapping is on at the Marlim hotel in Bonn. Climate Action Network International puts out a daily newsletter. Reading it carefully is an exercise, almost an archæological dig, into layers upon layers of detritus ... psychopathy. My heart goes out to the editor, Kyle Gracey.

He muses on what 'deep concern' might mean (in a blizzard of non-meaning which he does not, probably cannot, acknowledge): Quantified Emission Limitation and Reduction Objective (QELRO), Adaptation Fund (AF), Board of the Adaptation Fund (AFB), Certified Emission Reductions (CERs), Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), 'key demanders', 'accreditation process', Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs), Measuring Reporting and Verification (MRV), Mechanism for Monitoring and Reporting (MMR) - all buffered with fluffy-puff collectible fast facts.

What a joke. Fuct! But you have to do something, so I read carefully, look up the acronyms, try to understand, comiserate ... He could write about what the AF budget looks like - how many additional bureaucrat maggots are suckling in that sector of the trough.

The best news is that Saudi Arabia is making renewable noises - that could work - setting an excellent example for tar sand billionaires in, say, k-k-Canada. (Eh?)

2. The global economic foofaraw goes on and on. Individuals suffer greatly but we focus on the aggregate, easier that way. The orthodox liberal views seem to cluster around: "... austerity ... is putting the already-weak recovery in the United States at risk and is fueling instability and extremism in Europe," "a euro-zone growth package," "stimulus to spur growth, employment and development," and "a program to promote growth across recession-racked Europe" (from a NYT Editorial and here). Just how did 'austerity' and 'growth' get into the same category? How did they become something like opposites? And then there is Paul Krugman alternately promoting growth and wringing his Apocalypse Fairly Soon bells like a knee-socks altar boy at mass.

3. Invisible Children send me an email titled 'LRA Top Commander Captured Alive', but it's Caesar Achellam not Joseph Kony. Their transparent self-promoting rhetoric just reminds me of the way they sold out Jason Russell - another facet sparkling on their fundamentalist jewellery. The package with the t-shirt and posters is still unopened on my hall table with the bushels of paper flyers from Ikea & Loblaws & tanning salons and all the rest. Bound for use as absorvente at the bottom of a garbage bag.

4. Austerity is certainly an engine of extremism. The raw (uncooked that is) fuel of the disenfranchised & disentitled - AND - the innate knowledge of waste, incompetence, squandering, stupidity (the 'official' kind).

Ideas (like the one at the right) work, exercise 'traction', because everyone knows what the trough is - government does need a haircut, a para-dig-em shift, a bowel movement.

5. Almost no one speaks to me so when they do, I listen and consider. Someone says, "The alienation that you feel is directly attributed to your attitude towards your own life," and, "It doesn't turn me off to hear how you have given up." I am deeply moved that someone has spoken to me ... but I am soon wondering who has given up on whom? Knowing (imagining?) that amidst total confusion a mirror reflection, 180° backwards, may look like an explanation, an 'answer'.

We make principles of our incapacities and carry on. (Eh?)

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Down.

Shibboleth.

(I went down to the demonstration, to get my fair share of abuse.
                    Rolling Stones, 1969.)
Up, Down, Appendix. 

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Near the beginning of Toronto's second summer (or third if you count last winter), on the occasion of the Enbridge AGM ... a march, beginning at David Pecaut Square (a name that Google Maps does not know) and going to the King Edward hotel, a few blocks east, where the so-called 1% were gathered to count their money.

The dynamic Exxon Valdez sculpture seemed an apt homage to Bill Reid. Pleasant and graciously smiling young women from Greenpeace went about distributing TTC tokens and apples, and later on when it turned rainy and cool - granola bars. The police were gracious too - proving once again that learning does go on, even in Toronto.

Quite a few people from Aamjiwnaang were there including Ron Plain. What can you say to someone who lives in such a place? Whose home has been turned into a living hell? And not suddenly either - a creation executed with careful planning over well more than fifty years. A hundred years? Five hundred?

In fact the march did not start anywhere near Toronto but in Prince George (B.C.). The Globe tells me that the RCMP are now scurrying about after the Yinka Dene Alliance - so they must be doing something right. Even Clayton Thomas-Muller, whom I criticized over his loutish conduct during the panel discussion with Jim Hansen a year or so ago, is getting better, more effective - as his performance yesterday as MC of the march proved.

If the only leadership on these issues is coming from the First Nations - then I for one am WITH them. 

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So ...

I spoke to a few people I recognized, I remembered some of their names; some others I knew turned their backs on me, passed me by - just one person spoke to me, Mari, the poet from the Waglisla fast (see her here).

Paranoid creatures do still function according to 'rules' in a way. There are patterns - that is why the word exists at all, isn't it eh?

In the end, and before Martin Louie, Na'Moks, and Jackie Thomas returned to the street from the meeting, my feet began to hurt.

There was nowhere to sit down so I made my thankyous and hobbled away in the rain to catch the eastbound 504 car thinking of the word 'shibboleth'. 

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One of those christians could make a dandy sermon around this word - maybe someone has, but I have never heard of it - and maybe you will understand what I mean if you read this carefully. Echoes of Old Testament structures in the New Testament and all that ...

You will certainly not understand without knowing something of the word itself. You can see Wikipedia and an article by David Curwin for an overview.

It is not a word one employs every day. I was talking with a woman activist a few months ago and went out on a limb a bit to use it to refer to bourgeois reactions to 'despair', that ubiquitous psychology which must never be acknowledged - a taboo.

Later on I wondered if I had spoken correctly - and the OED kept me wondering until the very last entry, (a quick precis):

1. The Hebrew word used by Jephthah as a test-word by which to distinguish the fleeing Ephraimites (who could not pronounce the sh) from his own men the Gileadites (Judges xii. 4–6).

2. A word or sound which a person is unable to pronounce correctly; a word used as a test for detecting foreigners, or persons from another district, by their pronunciation.

3. A peculiarity of pronunciation or accent indicative of a person's origin.

4. A custom, habit, mode of dress, or the like, which distinguishes a particular class or set of persons.

5. A catchword or formula adopted by a party or sect, by which their adherents or followers may be discerned, or those not their followers may be excluded.

6. The mode of speech distinctive of a profession, class, etc.

[and finally ... Whew!]

7. Additions 1993: A moral formula held tenaciously and unreflectingly, especially a prohibitive one; a taboo.

Being a Hebrew word, it occurs here and there in biblical text; in verse 2 of Psalm 69 for example, where it means the 'flowing current of a stream':

"I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing: I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me."

and elsewhere where it can mean a corn cob or 'the kernel of the seed'. 'The force that through the green fuze drives the flower' as it were.

In Judges 12 it is used as a verbal image, indirectly, even metaphorically - an apt use given its connection with rivers:

"And the Gileadites took the passages of Jordan before the Ephraimites: and it was so, that when those Ephraimites which were escaped said, Let me go over; that the men of Gilead said unto him, art thou an Ephraimite? If he said, Nay then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him."

A means then to identify and sort out the elect from the praeterite as they try to cross the Jordan. 

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A republican (gun toting) Texan fix-yourself guru, Brené Brown, makes an interesting distinction between shame and guilt: shame is focussed on the self - "I am bad"; and guilt is focussed on behaviour - "I did something bad".

At least a shibboleth removes some measure of responsibility from the sinner; since the way one's tongue forms 's' or 'sh' is hardly a matter of choice, more like DNA - something which can be determined scientifically and in advance.

Be well gentle reader.

 

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Appendix:

1. Game Over for the Climate, James Hansen, May 9 2012. 

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Game Over for the Climate, James Hansen, May 9 2012.

GLOBAL warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves “regardless of what we do.”

If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate.

Canada’s tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with bitumen, contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now. That level of heat-trapping gases would assure that the disintegration of the ice sheets would accelerate out of control. Sea levels would rise and destroy coastal cities. Global temperatures would become intolerable. Twenty to 50 percent of the planet’s species would be driven to extinction. Civilization would be at risk.

That is the long-term outlook. But near-term, things will be bad enough. Over the next several decades, the Western United States and the semi-arid region from North Dakota to Texas will develop semi-permanent drought, with rain, when it does come, occurring in extreme events with heavy flooding. Economic losses would be incalculable. More and more of the Midwest would be a dust bowl. California’s Central Valley could no longer be irrigated. Food prices would rise to unprecedented levels.

If this sounds apocalyptic, it is. This is why we need to reduce emissions dramatically. President Obama has the power not only to deny tar sands oil additional access to Gulf Coast refining, which Canada desires in part for export markets, but also to encourage economic incentives to leave tar sands and other dirty fuels in the ground.

The global warming signal is now louder than the noise of random weather, as I predicted would happen by now in the journal Science in 1981. Extremely hot summers have increased noticeably. We can say with high confidence that the recent heat waves in Texas and Russia, and the one in Europe in 2003, which killed tens of thousands, were not natural events — they were caused by human-induced climate change.

We have known since the 1800s that carbon dioxide traps heat in the atmosphere. The right amount keeps the climate conducive to human life. But add too much, as we are doing now, and temperatures will inevitably rise too high. This is not the result of natural variability, as some argue. The earth is currently in the part of its long-term orbit cycle where temperatures would normally be cooling. But they are rising — and it’s because we are forcing them higher with fossil fuel emissions.

The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen from 280 parts per million to 393 p.p.m. over the last 150 years. The tar sands contain enough carbon — 240 gigatons — to add 120 p.p.m. Tar shale, a close cousin of tar sands found mainly in the United States, contains at least an additional 300 gigatons of carbon. If we turn to these dirtiest of fuels, instead of finding ways to phase out our addiction to fossil fuels, there is no hope of keeping carbon concentrations below 500 p.p.m. — a level that would, as earth’s history shows, leave our children a climate system that is out of their control.

We need to start reducing emissions significantly, not create new ways to increase them. We should impose a gradually rising carbon fee, collected from fossil fuel companies, then distribute 100 percent of the collections to all Americans on a per-capita basis every month. The government would not get a penny. This market-based approach would stimulate innovation, jobs and economic growth, avoid enlarging government or having it pick winners or losers. Most Americans, except the heaviest energy users, would get more back than they paid in increased prices. Not only that, the reduction in oil use resulting from the carbon price would be nearly six times as great as the oil supply from the proposed pipeline from Canada, rendering the pipeline superfluous, according to economic models driven by a slowly rising carbon price.

But instead of placing a rising fee on carbon emissions to make fossil fuels pay their true costs, leveling the energy playing field, the world’s governments are forcing the public to subsidize fossil fuels with hundreds of billions of dollars per year. This encourages a frantic stampede to extract every fossil fuel through mountaintop removal, longwall mining, hydraulic fracturing, tar sands and tar shale extraction, and deep ocean and Arctic drilling.

President Obama speaks of a “planet in peril,” but he does not provide the leadership needed to change the world’s course. Our leaders must speak candidly to the public — which yearns for open, honest discussion — explaining that our continued technological leadership and economic well-being demand a reasoned change of our energy course. History has shown that the American public can rise to the challenge, but leadership is essential.

The science of the situation is clear — it’s time for the politics to follow. This is a plan that can unify conservatives and liberals, environmentalists and business. Every major national science academy in the world has reported that global warming is real, caused mostly by humans, and requires urgent action. The cost of acting goes far higher the longer we wait — we can’t wait any longer to avoid the worst and be judged immoral by coming generations.

 

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Down.

Veta TUDO, Dilma. (1)

Up, Down.

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Something is very wrong when the majority of parliamentarians, against the will of the social majority, prefer a model of development that, for quick profit, compromises the future of their country.

The article below was printed in the Folha de S.Paulo on April 27th - reproduced here because the original is (unfortunately) locked. Apologies for my lame translation.

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Veta tudo, Dilma. Marina Silva Sexta, 27 de abril de 2012. Algo está muito errado quando a maioria dos parlamentares, na contramão da vontade da maioria da sociedade, prefere um modelo de desenvolvimento que, em razão do lucro rápido, compromete o futuro do próprio país. O novo Código Florestal aprovado pela Câmara é tudo, menos "florestal". Virou uma regulamentação de atividades econômicas no campo, nas cidades e nos litorais, de forma a dourar a pílula e apaziguar consciências. Está longe de representar equilíbrio, sustentabilidade, respeito às pessoas e aos bens do país. O que saiu do Senado, tido como de "consenso", já ignorava o parecer das autoridades científicas e de especialistas de diversas áreas. Em nome dele, lideranças de quase todos os partidos classificaram como "radicais" as vozes críticas que defendiam as salvaguardas da legislação ambiental, capazes de garantir a qualidade de vida das gerações presentes e futuras. As mesmas lideranças, porém, contemplaram os interesses verbalizados pelas outras vozes mais radicais de um Brasil atrasado, que se recusam a entender que desenvolvimento econômico e preservação ambiental são indissociáveis. Tais escolhas colocam a presidente Dilma diante da tarefa de fazer o que sua base de apoio não fez. Veremos debates nos próximos dias, principalmente sobre o que deve ser vetado. A discussão será algo do tipo: o quão menos ruim o projeto pode ser para não ter um caráter imediatamente fatal. Como foi aprovado no Congresso, já é praticamente unânime que ele trará implicações nas taxas de desmatamento. Discutir o veto parcial é como avaliar se desejamos colapsar os nossos ecossistemas (e, com isso, inviabilizar nossa agricultura) em 10 ou 20 anos. O veto deve anistiar os desmatadores ou desobrigar a recomposição de matas ciliares? Deve ser pelo fim dos mangues ou pela redução de reserva legal? Fragilizar as veredas ou as nascentes e mananciais? Não é isso que deveríamos discutir. Temos todas as condições de liderar o processo de transição para o desenvolvimento sustentável. O Brasil pode ser para o século XXI o que os Estados Unidos foram para o mundo no século XX. Mas são necessárias visão antecipatória e determinação de perseguir nosso destino de grande potência socioambiental. Não é fácil fazer a melhor escolha, porém é na pressão dos grandes dilemas que se forja a têmpera dos que estão afiados a talhar os avanços da história. A presidente Dilma terá que decidir qual modelo de desenvolvimento quer para o país. Não dá para ter na mesma base de apoio o sonido da motosserra e o canto do uirapuru. Agora, resta a ela usar seu poder de veto ou compactuar com o que está posto. Chegou a hora da verdade. Veta, Dilma. Veta tudo, não pela metade.

Veto all of it Dilma. Marina Silva Friday April 27, 2012. Something is very wrong when the majority of parliamentarians, against the will of the social majority, prefer a model of development that, for quick profit, compromises the future of their country. The new Forest Code passed by the House is anything but "forest". It has become a regulation of economic activities in the countryside, in cities and coastlines, in order to sweeten the pill and appease consciences. It is far from representing balance, sustainability, respect for people or the good of the country. What came out of the Senate, considered a "consensus", ignored the opinion of authorities and scientific experts in many fields. Leaders of almost all parties classified as "radical" the critical voices who defended the safeguards of environmental legislation, which could guarantee the quality of life for present and future generations. The same leaders, however, contemplated the interests verbalized by other more radical voices of the old Brazil, who refuse to understand that economic development and environmental protection are inextricably linked. Such choices present president Dilma with the task of doing what her supporters did not. We will see debates in the coming days, especially on what should be vetoed. The discussion will be something like: how much less bad can the law be made so as not to be immediately fatal. As approved by Congress, it is virtually unanimous that it will bring implications in deforestation rates. To discuss a partial veto is to evaluate if we want to collapse our ecosystems (and thereby cripple our agriculture) in 10 or 20 years. Should the veto grant amnesty to the loggers, or release them from the recovery of riparian areas? Must there be an end of mangroves or a reduction of the legal reserve? Must we weaken the paths or the springs and fountains? This is not what we should discuss. We have all conditions to lead the transition to sustainable development. Brazil may be for the twenty-first century what the United States was to the world in the twentieth century. What is necessary is an anticipatory vision and the determination to pursue our destiny as a great socioenvironmental power. It is not easy to make the best choice, but it is the pressure of great dilemmas that forges the temper of those who are determined to change the progress of history. President Dilma will have to decide which model of development she wants for the country. You can not support both the sound of the chainsaw and the song of the uirapuru. Now it falls to her to use her veto power or collude with what has been passed. It's time for truth. Veto it, Dilma. Veto all of it, not half.

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There is a certain wilful illiteracy to this Internet thing. Nevermind that there is little or no understandable english coverage of such an important issue. Even the Guardian (Brazilian congress adopts controversial land use law) translates "Código Florestal / Veta, Dilma," incorrectly as "Forest Code, Veto Dilma". I sent them an email - maybe they will fix it eventually.

Pictured at right is Marina with Stephen Schneider ... some time ago in what I would say were happier days.

In a recent video on YouTube she seems to include herself in the 'terceira idade' category - I didn't think she was so old, whatever ... she's still a beauty to me.

So ... passed in the Câmara dos Deputados on April 25th, 15 days makes it the 10th of May give or take ... next Thursday or Friday then, maybe get the news the following Monday say, on the 14th?

Elsewhere I read that she has until the 25th - For politicians fifteen days make a month.

Cartoon from J.Bosco.

Be well.

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Down.

I am fixing my window.

Up, Down.





Down.

Ai ai AI! ... [Ha ha, ho ho, hee hee.]

Up, Down, Appendix. 

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The fast in solidarity with Bella Bella was a bust - but I am still here today so I guess I must be getting over it. Who knew despair ran so deep? Could run so deep without breaching Cohen's 'order of the soul'? Not a word from anyone except an anti-windmill bohunk (who simply will not shut up) engaging in ludicrous 'debate' with my friend in the Green Party. Nothing at all on where to go from here. Incredible! On the other hand, looking straight up this particular shotgun barrel has got me laughing again - all good. 

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Thanks to Kwesi Abbensetts for this, and for his excellent bit of commentary:

"I feel like the computer keys say my life has been one of taking orders and subjugation and the laughing faces on the body tells a story that my body was not mine, it was slaved, traded, worked, jailed etc and its one big joke unbeknownst to me. And now I just trying to make this body of mine, mine."

It is not clear if he means 'its' or 'it's' in that first sentence, no matter. He gets over the gender divide, the sex divide. I wonder if he will understand a fat old white man sharing the feeling?

More of Maurice Mbikayi on ArtBoom. 

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I discover that the only function of this blog is to alert one of my children that I am still alive - not that she actually reads it, apparently it is enough just to see new posts appearing regularly.

That might sound cutting ... (there is another word which I cannot remember at the moment - later perhaps - ahhh: sarcastic!) ... or even bitter - but it is not. This post is proof that any notice is sufficient encouragement. Try Coetzee's 'Life and Times of Michael K' for additional clues. (Not likely.) 

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Google has revamped the Blogger interface. A devolution so astounding ... well ... these youngsters can't spell (and don't care) and can't read (and don't notice) so it should come as no surprise that the software they write is ... What Ever.

Google has taken the incomprehensibility of HTML & CSS to a whole new level. And the constant messages telling me to close tags are ... exquisite. "No evil," indeed. E-waste (the title of Maurice Mbikayi's first collage above) indeed. 

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I met an old fellow named Jim at a seed exchange. He was giving his seeds away instead of selling them. We had a brief chat. He wasn't thinking of the Song of Solomon and didn't want to, but he gave me a smile and a recycled envelope with a few Rose of Sharon seeds in it.

Four of them have sprouted in my window. The remainder were consigned to a bit of ground in the park next door - my contribution to guerrila gardening in Toronto ... only sorry that Purple Loosestrife cannot possibly grow there.

Crazy Jane Talks With The Bishop, William Butler Yeats

I met the Bishop on the road
And much said he and I.
'Those breasts are flat and fallen now,
Those veins must soon be dry;
Live in a heavenly mansion,
Not in some foul sty.'

'Fair and foul are near of kin,
And fair needs foul,' I cried.
'My friends are gone, but that's a truth
Nor grave nor bed denied,
Learned in bodily lowliness
And in the heart's pride.

'A woman can be proud and stiff
When on love intent;
But Love has pitched his mansion in
The place of excrement;
For nothing can be sole or whole
That has not been rent.' 

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I have copied an interview of Bill McKibben by Elizabeth Kolbert below. Only because of two words - "one of" - in the first sentence. Really I would have just linked to the article - Guardian pages seem to stay on-line for a fair length of time - but there are some formatting issues in the original, so I tried to fix them ... yadda yadda.

I updated Wikipedia repeatedly with these two words - and had them changed back again by whatever flunky McKibben has doing that work. And I sent numerous emails to all and sundry ... and FINALLY ... there it is in print, and McKibben has obviously at least seen it.

This is my entire contribution to the environmental movement - forgive me if I am pleased.

He still doesn't fully understand just what his "Big news we won, you won." did - but she does and he is maybe getting there. And, like Christians in general, he mistakes existentialism for something else. Lame as a motherfucker - but then, so am I. 

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Kony 2012 is sending one email after another exhorting me to go out on their errand tonight. I will not go. The kit arrived by courier but I cannot even open it. I think I understand what went wrong and I am trying to compose an essay on the subject worthy of being read.

An anonymous colleague at Unperson turned me on to David Simon. I have downloaded quite a great deal of the corpus and several lengthy remarks by Simon himself (blowing my Bell download limit in the process which will thus make it a very expensive investigation) ... and I have some thoughts on that as well.

That to say there may eventually be another post some when on these subjects.

Be well.

 

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Appendices:

1. Bill McKibben on Keystone XL and the power of fossil fuel industry, Elizabeth Kolbert, April 3 2012.

 

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Bill McKibben on Keystone XL and the power of fossil fuel industry, Elizabeth Kolbert, April 3 2012.

Bill McKibben is a patient man. Twenty-three years ago, he published 'The End of Nature', one of the first books written for a general audience that laid out the issue of global warming. Nearly two decades later, after the U.S. and the international community continued to fail to take action, he moved from journalist to activist, founding 350.org, which has grown into a global movement to solve the challenge of climate change. In January, he and 350.org won a surprising — if short-term — victory when President Obama put the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline on hold pending further review.

Last week, McKibben sat down with Yale Environment 360 contributing writer Elizabeth Kolbert to talk about the Keystone project and about what the pipeline battle has taught him about how Washington, D.C., operates. In a wide-ranging discussion, he explained why he believes environmentalists only win temporary victories, why activists must keep up pressure on the Obama administration, and why he's concerned about the president's "all-of-the-above" energy strategy. One thing he was unprepared for, McKibben said, was the true extent of the influence the fossil fuel industry's campaign money has on Congress and how difficult it will be to end federal oil and gas subsidies.

"It's as if the politicians are sort of pillows in front of the fossil fuel industry," he told Kolbert. "And you spend all your time going after them and don't get at the guys behind them."

Elizabeth Kolbert: You led the fight against the Keystone XL pipeline this summer and fall and the Obama Administration rejected the application for construction of the northern leg of the pipeline. But just a few days ago the president announced that he was expediting the permitting process for the southern leg. So what's going on?

Bill McKibben: Well, part of it is just a little bit of the rooster taking credit for the dawn — you know, they didn't need a permit from the president for the southern leg, unfortunately. It's a great shame, and we're working hard with our friends in Texas and Oklahoma to try and block it. And it was also a great shame to see the way in which the president did it. It has to make one have some foreboding. If he's really as completely into pipelines as he was saying, that increases the odds that eventually he'll approve the [Canadian] border crossing.

Kolbert: Back in November when the administration turned down the application for the pipeline you wrote to opponents of the pipeline, "Big news we won, you won." Now was it a win or was it just a temporary reprieve?

McKibben: Well, as I said in that letter, and as I've said probably 5,000 times since, all environmentalists ever win is temporary victories. That's the only kind we get. And this one may be more temporary even than most. We'll see. We'll see some time before or after the election. I mean, clearly, if Mitt Romney wins the election, then definitely they get to build a pipeline. And if Barack Obama wins they may get to build it. He says he'll make a decision in 2013. And the Senate may push him to do it sooner. Who knows? We barely won the fight we had in the Senate a few weeks ago, a couple of votes. But we sent 800,000 messages to the Senate. It was the biggest burst of concentrated environmental activism in many years.

Kolbert: You did get out an extraordinary number of signatures, and you got out an extraordinary number of bodies, and you got an extraordinary number of people who got arrested. And yet we still see this.

McKibben: Well, yes. So this is the thing, and it's instructive. It has been for me. I mean we've had hundreds of thousands, millions of people engaged in this fight, and yet it's still almost impossible even to win small temporary victories. And what it demonstrates is the unbelievable power of the fossil fuel industry.

I mean, I'm not used to Washington so it almost — it didn't shock me, I'm not that naïve — but it startled me that they took a vote in the House of Representatives to speed up construction of this thing. And 234 people voted for it. And they've taken $42 million from the fossil fuel industry. And you can predict exactly how people are going to vote by how much money they took. The first Democrat in the Senate to vote for it, to demand Keystone, was Joe Manchin from West Virginia. He's taken more money from the fossil fuel industry than any other Democrat. I mean, it's almost mathematical, you know. It's elegant in its mathematical precision. And I hadn't quite understood that.

Kolbert: Journalists are not known for their romantic view of American politics. But in the last few years, you've sort of made this transition from journalist to activist that, as you've pointed out, you didn't even expect yourself to make. What have you learned in the process about politics?

McKibben: Well, it's money-soaked, and so without enormous effort nothing happens. It's not clear to me that we aren't kind of, when we take on these political fights, aren't kind of punching ourselves out. It's as if the politicians are sort of pillows in front of the fossil fuel industry. And you spend all your time going after them and don't get at the guys behind them. And I think more and more we're going to have to try and engage the fossil fuel industry itself. So beginning this year we need to really go after the subsidies that they get paid. It's not going to end the fossil fuel industry. Even without them, they're still by far the richest industry on Earth, whatever. But at least it's a way to start challenging them head on. Because they're very much definitely not used to losing. And the most interesting thing with the Keystone stuff, in a way, was that they lost temporarily anyway. And it just drove them nuts. I mean, they're "take no prisoners."

Kolbert: So is that the next step for opponents of the pipeline? What is the next step?

McKibben: It's not clear, at least not clear to me, what the next political stage of it is. But opponents of the pipeline are mostly people who are engaged in this larger fight about climate. And so one of the things that's next for us is just remembering that even if we manage to stop this pipeline, it doesn't really stop global warming. Not even anywhere close. It's one skirmish in a huge, huge war. I guess what's next, in a sense, is trying to figure out how you go from playing defense to playing offense. And this fight about subsidies is one way to do that.

Kolbert: I read an online debate you did on the Huffington Post with Ezra Levant, who had made this argument, which I've actually had people tell me, that getting oil from the Canadian tar sands is the ethical alternative to buying oil from the OPEC dictators. And one of the charges that he made, and I just quote, is "if the anti oil sands lobbyists who pressured Barack Obama to reject the Keystone pipeline proposal really cared about carbon emissions they'd have directed all their energy to campaign against coal power instead."

McKibben: The point is we have to somehow manage to beat all this stuff. There's too much carbon — way too much carbon in those oil sands, and there's even more carbon in the coal fields. Which is why we're deeply engaged in this fight to prevent these coal ports from being built on the West Coast. I was just out in Bellingham [in Washington state] working on that. It's why, in Kosovo, we're in the middle of this big fight to stop this huge coal-fired power plant they want to build. And in South Africa. And it's why we're taking on subsidy stuff all over the world. So in that sense, he's completely right. But it's an absurd defense of the tar sands. It's like, well, there's a lot of other carbon somewhere else. Yes there is. And we'll fight that, too.

Kolbert: Obama and his team are calling his energy strategy "all of the above." There's a piece in the [New York] Times today about how the Republicans are indigant because they point out that was their energy strategy.

McKibben: I said some place the other day, you know, "all of the above" doesn't strike me as a particularly intellectually serious strategy. What if someone running for president says, "I have an all of the above foreign policy? I like all countries equally." Everyone would say, "You do? Really? North Korea and England are sort of the same, in the same category?" So saying we're going to do a lot of oil drilling, and open up every coal seam we can find, and we'll have some solar panels, doesn't engage really with the physics and chemistry of climate change.

Kolbert: I mean does Obama even have an energy strategy at this point?

McKibben: Well, at the moment, like all presidents, he has one — his entire being is focused on re-election ... And to this degree one has to sympathize.

The oil industry, these guys are pouring everything they have at him. The Koch brothers the other day said, "We're going to spend $200 million on the election." if you're Barack Obama's campaign guys, that's terrifying to hear. And to that degree, one understands I suppose the fix he's in.

But it is sad, in part because in the last campaign, when Hillary Clinton and others said, "We have to have a gas tax holiday to deal with rising gas prices," Barack Obama was the one guy who said, "You know what, that's a stupid idea, let's don't do it." And he actually benefited politically from it. Because he talked to Americans as if they were adults on all of this. And I think we're capable of having that conversation.

Kolbert: When I heard about the decision the other day that [the administration was] going to expedite those permits whether or not they actually needed them, I thought it sounded like a classic move of a politician who was taking the environmental vote for granted, that these people don't have anywhere to go. I mean, is he right?

McKibben: Well, you know, it's going to be hard to gin up the "Environmentalists for Romney" campaign... The calculations they were making in the fall, I'm sure, when they were responsive on Keystone, was, "We need people to be enthusiastic." It's a different stage now, and he's campaigning. And the true ugliness of the GOP guys is clearer probably than it was on these issues. The thing that we all have to get out of the habit of is thinking, "Elect the right guy and we're OK." But if you elect the right guy then the definition of the right guy is, "He might listen to you if you put enough pressure on him," OK? You could put endless pressure on Rick Santorum and nothing would happen. This is a guy who is campaigning with a piece of shale rock as his prop.

But the point is Election Day is no more important a political day than any other day on the calendar. It's important, but so is every other day when you've got to get up and push whoever it is as hard as you can. And on Election Day I think the main thing is trying to find someone who might be pushable. Everybody made the mistake, me included, of relaxing after 2008. Which at least in the case of energy was a mistake. Because, trust me on this, the oil industry and the coal industry didn't relax for a minute. They were there every moment of every day. With the ever-present and extremely powerful profit motive to keep them focused and concentrated on their business.

Kolbert: Another big issue which I'm sure you get asked about all the time in the energy climate realm nowadays is fracking. And you hear a lot of talk about how natural gas could be a bridge fuel that's going to lead us away from coal and toward renewable. What are your thoughts?

McKibben: Three or four years ago there was a certain part of me that was hopeful that we were going to find a lot of natural gas, and it was going to be a bridge fuel. It just turns out that the math doesn't work. You've got this problem — a big problem, it looks like — with these fugitive methane emissions. We don't know exactly how much. But even if you just converted the whole world to natural gas... The IEA [International Energy Agency] ran what they called a "Golden Age of Gas" scenario, and it had all of us off coal or something by 2025 and we're all on gas... I can't remember all the details, but it was a gas-run world. And the atmosphere then was still 660 parts per million C02. What we actually need is a bridge away from fossil fuels, or maybe we should dispense with the "bridge" metaphor and just nerve ourselves up to take the jump across the chasm into the new world.

Kolbert: I certainly don't need to tell you, we just had a winter, in the Northeast at least, without snow, and now we've had this really weird June-in-March heat wave. And I saw on the 350.org website that you're planning an event in May on the theme, "Time to connect the dots." Do you think people are starting to connect the dots?

McKibben: I do. The polling shows that by six or seven percent increase this year in Americans who believe in and take climate change seriously. It's back up near two-thirds or something. And the biggest reason that people cite is extreme weather, which we've had a lot of. Last year had more multi-billion dollar weather disasters than any year in American history. So this last week it's been just insane. If you're looking at the numbers instead of just kind of enjoying the heat, it's not just creepy. It's wild. I mean there's no way that you should be breaking old temperature records by 30 degrees? There's no way that places should be, you know, the record low for the day is higher than the record high previously for the date? There's never been numbers anything like this... And this "connect the dots" day is important because our tendency is to think of these things as a one-off. It's just how our psychology is.

Kolbert: In a couple months, there's going to be another UN summit in Rio. But it seems like people have basically given up at this point on international agreements. Have you?

McKibben: The same problem as in this country. We do need an international framework because this is a global problem and eventually we're going to have to solve it with a global agreement. But we can't get anywhere near it as long as the fossil-fuel industry exerts the power it does in one national capital after another. That's what happens. I mean you get to Copenhagen and just everybody, every leader who's there knows, "I can't get this deal through, you know, whatever system I have — my politburo, my parliament, my congress — even if I want to do it because there's too much power in the fossil fuel industry." So all we can try to do is just kind of keep this creaking thing alive in case we make some real political progress ...

The thing we can't let it do is be a distraction from the actual work of movement building. We can't go to these things expecting that that's where the problems will be solved... I mean I remember being at Kyoto and at the end of it the lobbyist for the oil industry — they'd actually done something in Kyoto, they actually agreed to some actual agreement — and this lobbyist said, "I can't wait to get back to the Congress where we have these things under control." I thought he was blowing smoke, but he was absolutely right. That's how it works.

Kolbert: Wow, that's a great line. The failure of the U.S., in particular, to confront climate change is sometimes cited as an indictment of the country's major environmental groups. And your own turn to activism could also be interpreted as an indictment of those groups. Do you think that that's fair? Do they deserve some of the blame?

McKibben: Who knows? I'm not a good enough historian. But I know that when we had this Keystone fight, everybody joined in. And it was really fun to watch and fun to work with. And everybody did the parts that they were good at. So we get to the Senate and then people from NRDC [Natural Resources Defense Council] and LCV [League of Conservation Voters] and the Sierra Club and National Wildlife Federation — man, they're good at getting into senator's offices and giving them briefings and showing them PowerPoints. And, I mean, not only am I not good at that, I'd be terrible at it. I am not good at kind of pretending to respect people I really don't – [laugh] all kinds of skills that I'm afraid it requires.

Kolbert: So it's been more than 20 years since George Bush Sr. signed the "Framework Convention on Climate Change." And by that point already your own book, The End of Nature, which had really introduced climate change to a lot of people, was already a couple years old. But as you put it recently, we're no closer to dealing with climate change than we were in the late 1980s. So 23 years after the publication of The End of Nature, what gives you any reason, any optimism at this point, that it is going to get dealt with?

McKibben: Well, I'm not all convinced it is going to get dealt with. You know, you wrote that we seem to be on kind of a suicide mission as a civilization. And that case is easier to make than the case that we're going to figure out how to deal with it. So I don't know. I'm very hopeful that in the last few years we've finally built a big global movement that gets bigger all the time that didn't exist before. And I'm hopeful that we're getting closer to the nub of the problem.

We spent 20 years basically working on the model — let's have our great scientists go talk to political leaders and tell them the problem, and then we'll do something. This was a perfectly good model for what to do, but what it didn't reckon with was the fact that while they were talking, the fossil fuel industry would be bellowing in the other ear — just bellowing this toxic mix of threats and promises and whatever else. I think we're at the point where we kind of understand what the problem is in a way that we didn't. And we'll see if we can take it on ... Mother Nature provides an almost endless series now of teachable moments. We'll see if we can take advantage of them.

If you were a betting person, I'm afraid you'd be wise to bet that we might not pull this out. But I just don't think it's a bet you're allowed to make. I think the only thing that a morally awake person can do when the worst thing that ever happened is happening is try and figure out how to change the odds — with not any guarantee that it's all going to come out OK. Because it may not. I mean it clearly isn't going to come out 100 percent OK. We've already had big losses and they will get worse. Whether or not we can stop short of complete catastrophe, we'll find out. And we won't find out in a hundred years, we'll find out rather more quickly than that. Our lifetimes will be more than long enough to see whether or not we actually grabbed hold of this problem or not.

I guess the only other thing is just that this, what's the alternative? [laugh] Existential despair just seems like a kind of poor strategy in many ways.

 

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Down.