Big Famine Moon

                                                                                                                                                                  Up, Down.                        Full Moon 

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Contents:   Software:(BookOS, Caveat I (Douglas Adams), Open Source, Caveat II, Handel), ppm & ppb, Honey Bees vs Neonicotinoids, Confusion, Beyond the Zero, Bit of News, Coming Up Soon.

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Big Famine Moon will be full at 5am; aka Crow Moon, Crust Moon, Sugar Moon, Sap Moon, Chaste Moon, Death Moon, Worm Moon, Lenten Moon; & for Hindus, Holi.

A simple confluence of two cosmic events, one solar and one lunar - spring equinox & the full moon ... one really, since every cosmic event has a full moon somewhere within a few weeks - and what do we get? (Another year older and deeper in debt.) Myths of death defeated and life renewed; some in anticipation: Tibetan New Year, Chinese New Year, Bahá'í annual fast and New Year ... (a long list ... Nowruz); some on the date: Holi ... and Easter of course, spanning the zone (or trying to put it in parentheses).

And a confluence of tendencies too: religious co-opting of human physiobiology - the bone-deep flavour of certain irrefutable psychology in our intimate relations with Terra spliced into (essentially Fascist) doctrine. A veritable harmonic convergence!

	Romeo:      Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear      That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops— Juliet:      O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon,      That monthly changes in her circled orb,      Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.                                                                         Act II scene 2.

The music is Outlaw Blues; and then (another one from early days) Sixteen Tons: Merle Travis in the mid 50s, and again in the 70s or 80s (he died in 83); and by Tennessee Ernie Ford. 

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BookOS!

[Some things do come clear in the murk, often too late to do any good - I should have followed through on Ryerson's system courses while I could still do them.   :-)   I let that silly woman put me off. ... Oh well.]

A friend mentioned Philip Wylie, two books: The Disappearance and Generation of Vipers; and I wanted to follow it up and ... Lo and Behold! Google steered me to BookOS. Two million books including most of Thomas Pynchon, Charles Taylor's 'A Secular Age', Stephen Gardiner's 'A Perfect Moral Storm', some Northrop Frye ... The interface has some limits - you can't search for all by a specific author easily f'rinstance - but the 'direction' of the interface seems right: towards simplicity, good pop-up window management, language support.

This ranks for me with Wikipedia. It almost makes me hold my breath waiting for the copyright bullies & tyrants to attack it.

And a companion site BookSC (not so much, see below for a test).

It doesn't do to try to read things electronically, just doesn't - those people with e-readers on streetcars busses and trains are ... only pretending to read, and if anyone cared and measured comprehension we could all know this; but electronic copies make some of the very important secondary activity around reading orders of magnitude easier. Particularly quoting accurately during discussions; but also, for (possible) Alz' sufferers, a quick way to verify that some notion actually did come from some book. 

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Caveat I: (Good from far but far from good.)    As I was writing this I took a break and came across something in the NYT: Iceland Baffled by Chinese Plan for Golf Resort. Didn't baffle me: aside from the obvious oil & other commercial alignments, playing golf at the edge of an active volcano, or at least with a volcano in sight, makes perfect sense. I remembered Douglas Adams' 'The Restaurant at the End of the Universe' but unfortunately these books are no longer on my shelf so ... naturally, I went looking for it in BookOS. Here's some of what I found:

That's the thing about pdfs - the severe conversion problems - and provenance. Not one of these BookOS offerings looks like it was scanned - they were all (almost certainly) converted from some other format, more-or-less successfully. So I thought ... Google Books! - they use scans surely. Here are comparable pages in some of what I found:

Same schtick. There are no gross mistakes in what I have shown here - but trust me, you inevitably find fragmentary HTML showing up, usually in the vicinity of missing sentences, paragraphs ... who knows? Sometimes it works the other way too - you buy a 'print on demand' and find mistakes created by scanning software. And it is nothing new - there are lots of typos, some quite serious, in the KJV.                         So what. 

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And Open Source:

I have always disliked Adobe. Never quite on spec, difficult to Copy&Paste from, difficult to search, very expensive to modify ... In the experience with BookOS I came across several new formats - open formats with open readers to accompany. So I downloaded a few and played around with them.

All good ... and if you have nothing else to do, or if your energies are consistently directed at learning new (arcane & eminently forgettable) details, then ... even better. 

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Caveat II:    A corollary of Caveat I possibly, or concommitant ... intimately connected let's say.

The advantage of a standard, even a de-facto one like pdf, is that you get to know it and don't have to re-learn it repeatedly. Efficient use of time and all that.

So, a tradeoff then: many open-source replacements, each with advantages - smaller file size etc. - but each with bugs and quirks and shortcomings too. 

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All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.                                                                           Isaiah 53:6.

It begs an addendum to the background Musak® for this post: 'All We Like Sheep' from Handel's Messiah; a version on Vimeo, and one on YouTube showing the choir & orchestra.

[And on the strength of that I go out to The Messiah for Easter at Knox Presbyterian church over on Spadina. It is always thrilling to witness a choir and orchestra working together more-or-less humbly - and indeed, there are some sublime moments in this performance. Unfortunately the music and KJV texts are not enough for the leaders of the gig, Rev. Reinders and the choirmaster Roger Bergs. They have to interrupt with commentary throughout, paraphrasing and recapitulating - redundant sententious nonsense. Trying to understand why they are doing such a thing the best I can imagine is a hard-core Presbyterian fear of any un-certified aesthetic transcendence. (There is worse but I'll spare you.) But really - second guessing Handel & Lancelot Andrewes? Doh! No wonder these churches are empty and being recycled into condos.] 

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(Still) trying to find simple (minded) rules of thumb around ppm & ppb:

Wikipedia gives a 'drop', and says, "in medicine, IV drips deliver 10, 15, or 20 drops per mL for macrodrip, 60 per mL for microdrip." A simple average makes it 25 drops/mL.

A million drops then is 40,000 mL, 40 litres, ~10 US gallons: so ... one drop in ten US gallons is ~1 part per million (ppm). And a billion drops is ~10,500 US gallons: so ... 3 drops in a tank car is ~1 part per billion (ppb). (A tank car is ~35,000 US gallons according to 49 CFR 179.13 in the US Code of Federal Regulations on tank car capacity.)

Another way to go after it is time: 1 million seconds is ~11½ days, call it two weeks: so a second a week is ~2 ppm, or a second a month ~½ ppm. 1 billion seconds is about 32 years: so ... two seconds in a lifetime is something like 1 ppb.

Or how many molecules of H₂O in a drop? Goes by weight. The density of water is 1g/mL so a drop is .04g. Take the molar mass, 18g/mol for water and compute .04g/18g = .0022 moles in a drop; multiplied by Avogadro's number (6.022x10²³ molecules per mole) to get 1.32x10²¹ molecules. 1 ppm is then 1.32x10¹⁵ - many, a lot, too many to count; and 1 ppb is 1.32x10¹²; not intuitively useful numbers.

What about drops in a human body? An average human is 70 kg/150 pounds, close to the density of water makes it 1¾ million drops: so 2 drops is ~1 ppm and 1/500th of a drop ~1 ppb.

Getting there ... tiny amounts but very many molecules in 'em (and we have come full circle). I hope exercises like this are being done in high-school physics courses; probably not.

[If I told you how often I re-calculated these numbers to get even vaguely confident in them ... I won't. But don't trust me, do the sums yourself; and then consider that <5 ppb BPA in their water stops reproduction in trout. (This article is in BookSC.)] 

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Honey Bee vs Neonicotinoid (again):    Last year it was news. In March a Guardian article Pesticides linked to honeybee decline, referring to two (then) recent studies:
1) Pesticide Decreases Foraging Success and Survival in Honey Bees:

Nonlethal exposure of honey bees to thiamethoxam (neonicotinoid systemic pesticide) causes high mortality due to homing failure at levels that could put a colony at risk of collapse. Simulated exposure events on free-ranging foragers labeled with a radio-frequency identification tag suggest that homing is impaired by thiamethoxam intoxication. These experiments offer new insights into the consequences of common neonicotinoid pesticides used worldwide.

2) Pesticide Reduces Bumble Bee Colony Growth and Queen Production:

We exposed colonies of the bumble bee Bombus terrestris in the laboratory to field-realistic levels of the neonicotinoid imidacloprid, then allowed them to develop naturally under field conditions. Treated colonies had a significantly reduced growth rate and suffered an 85% reduction in production of new queens compared with control colonies.

And again in October: Evidence of pesticide harm to bees is now overwhelming, referring to an article in Nature:
3) Combined pesticide exposure severely affects ... traits in bees:

Here we show that chronic exposure of bumblebees to two pesticides (neonicotinoid and pyrethroid) at concentrations that could approximate field-level exposure impairs natural foraging behaviour and increases worker mortality leading to significant reductions in brood development and colony success. We found that worker foraging performance, particularly pollen collecting efficiency, was significantly reduced with observed knock-on effects for forager recruitment, worker losses and overall worker productivity. Moreover, we provide evidence that combinatorial exposure to pesticides increases the propensity of colonies to fail.

BookSC was not much help in finding the source documents. 1) is there; 2) seems to be there but the download gives something else; and, 3) is not there at all. So ... one in three. ... It may improve with use. 

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I eventually found them elsewhere: 2) Neonicotinoid Pesticide Reduces Bumble Bee Colony Growth and Queen Production, and, 3) Combined pesticide exposure severely affects individual- and colony-level traits in bees.

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What I really really REALLY REALLY   do not understand is how most people go on about their lives as if none of this were happening? When I see friends and family getting onto airplanes to go south and get warm - it's not a judgement, I tell you true, but I am shocked, dismayed. As for the politicians and business people, successful ones, admired and respected, who must know what is happening - I am unable to imagine a scenario for them. Their bureaucrats may be driven and confused to stupidity - but Stephen Harper is not stupid; nor Barack Obama; nor these 'honourable' ministers: Peter Kent, Joe Oliver, John Baird; this woman in Alberta - Alison Redford; Rex Tillerson, the Koch brothers David and Charles ...

WHAT THE FUCK'S GOIN' ON HERE?! 

I can understand some struggle over exactly what to do, how best to tackle this enormous problem of which the honey bees are a small part, sure. But ... short of rekindling a superstitious belief in evil and devils I am stumped. All I can come up with is the possibility of some tipping point within the 'social imaginary' (as Charles Taylor calls it) that may trip in their minds and permit them to begin to think properly. Soon I hope.

Lame I know. ... Some time ago I posted a link to the video of Elizabeth May saying, "Any honest person who has looked at this science should be screaming from the rooftops!"; yet she sits in Ottawa (as I sit here) ... doing busy work.
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¡?¿!¡?¿!¡?¿!¡?¿!¡?¿!¡?¿!¡?¿!¡?¿!¡?¿!¡?¿!¡?¿!¡?¿!¡?¿!¡?¿!Back with the 360's & 370's when you tried to divide by zero or multiply a number by a text string you would get an exception and a core dump. Some of us got pretty good at reading hex.

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Dissemblers, hypocrites, thieves, liars, even murderers, rapists, torturers; even the burnt ones with nothing left - I have some idea of how these things work, can work, could work, might work - but this makes so little sense I cannot fathom it. I don't understand kiddie-diddlers either gentle reader. So ...

Maybe Paul Rose understood. D'you think? He died a few weeks ago. Some of the dimwits are trying to lionize him now. You have to laugh.

Here, try the Outlaw Blues again: "Don't ask me nothin' about nothin', I just might tell you the truth." 'Cept in this case I don't know a thing about it.

Be well. 

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Beyond the Zero:    A few more words about 'Against the Day'. (I will have to re-read that last chapter again before I write this; hang on a sec ...)

One could expect to find important things in the last chapter - Deuce Kindred was summarily gotten rid of in the previous one, we do not see Lew Basnight again - what I pick out are four: 1) who remains - Merle & Dally, Dally & Kit, Reef & Yashmeen, Frank & Stray, Yashmeen & Stray, Ljubica & Jesse, The Chums of Chance & consorts, Pugnax & Ksenija ... all in pairs more-or-less, except Professor Heino Vanderjuice, an odd person to encounter (and he disappears, a version of the author perhaps); 2) Yashmeen's sexuality; 3) the cover image explained, una picchiata!; and, 4) Stray's (?) notion of 'good unsought and uncompensated'. There are more: simultaneity, technology, vegetarianism, the Inconvenience becoming its own destination ... but these four stand out for me (for various reasons no doubt).

A memorable sentence: "It is no longer a matter of gravity—it is an acceptance of sky." A-and the last paragraph goes like this:

Pugnax and Ksenija’s generations—at least one in every litter will follow a career as a sky-dog—have been joined by those of other dogs, as well as by cats, birds, fish, rodents, and less-terrestrial forms of life. Never sleeping, clamorous as a nonstop feast day, Inconvenience, once a vehicle of sky-pilgrimage, has transformed into its own destination, where any wish that can be made is at least addressed, if not always granted. For every wish to come true would mean that in the known Creation, good unsought and un-compensated would have evolved somehow, to become at least more accessible to us. No one aboard Inconvenience has yet observed any sign of this. They know—Miles is certain—it is there, like an approaching rainstorm, but invisible. Soon they will see the pressure gauge begin to fall. They will feel the turn in the wind. They will put on smoked goggles for the glory of what is coming to part the sky. They fly toward grace.

Shekhinah perhaps, שכינה.

That's it gentle reader. The effort I put into editing the teasers for presentation in HTML may seem wasted, could be; at least what is there is more easily searched with CTRL-F and grabbed with Copy&Paste ... and I am more intimately acquainted with Pynchon's style - so it was useful in that way. And I did not notice one single typo. (!)

The collection of teasers:
                         One: The Light Over the Ranges part 5 - Lew Basnight becomes a detective,
                         Two: Iceland Spar part 12 - Lake Traverse marries Deuce Kindred.
                         Three: Bilocations part 5 - Yashmeen Halfcourt & Cyprian Latewood.
                         Three: Bilocations part 6 - Kit Traverse on the S.S. Stupendica (short excerpt).
                         Three: Bilocations part 12 - Lew Basnight encounters Lamont Replevin (excerpt).
                         Three: Bilocations part 17 - Kit Traverse's choice (excerpt).
                         Four: Against the Day part 4 - Yashmeen & Auberon Halfcourt (excerpt).
                         Four: Against the Day part 7 - overture and possibility (short excerpt).
                         Four: Against the Day part 11 - A trio (an excerpt some may find salacious).
A-and Entropy. 

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Gleanings from the Bin: (Digging about in the oyster-shell midden near the shore.)

* Coast Guard rescuer describes ‘eerie’ scene where Queen of the North sank.
  Karl Lilgert is now on trial for criminal negligence causing death.
  Previously: March 2006, June 2006, May 2007, March 2008.
* Windfarm sickness spreads by word of mouth, Australian study finds (I knew that).
* World Bank told to investigate links to Ethiopia 'villagisation' project (that too).
* Índios e ribeirinhos fazem nova ocupação de canteiro de obra de Belo Monte (source Xingu Vivo).
  Natives and river-side people (fishermen) occupy Belo Monte work sites again. Good on 'em!
- It looks like the cops grabbed one of the demonstrators: PF prende ativista em Belo Monte.
  Seu paradeiro é desconhecido. / His whereabouts are unknown.
- And they are bringing in the army to ensure that this Belo Monte abomination gets built.
  (The Amazônia website is down at the moment - ructions with Cyberbunker apparently - ... link to follow.)
  Força Nacional tenta impedir novas paralisações das obras de Belo Monte, source Agência Brasil.
* This: SA troops killed in Central African Republic: Why, Mr President?, may appear parochial.
  More from Reuters: U.N. chief condemns rebel seizure of power in Central African Republic, and
  NYT: President Is Said to Flee as Rebels Seize Capital of the Central African Republic.
  Another failed state and it has been for quite a while (I didn't know that).
  But nothing on Joseph Kony. What about him? Wasn't he active in Central African Republic?
- The thing about the Daily Maverick newsletter which distinguishes it from all others, puts it in a class by itself,
       is that it includes (up front, at the top) links to other news organizations with relevant stories.
* Even Zimbabwe’s new constitution is waiting for Mugabe to die.
- EU suspends sanctions against most Zimbabwe officials.
- (From 2011 mind you) Marange diamond field: Zimbabwe torture camp discovered.
* Marikana: Under oath, Phiyega’s bald-faced lie exposed.
- Marikana: Sangoma’s death and Phiyega’s understanding of truth.
* Steve Biko, Mamphela Ramphele, & Andile Mngxitama, and the
  offending piece by Jared Sacks: Biko would not vote for Ramphele.
* Pension Funds Wary as Bankrupt City Goes to Trial,
  (map showing Stocton, California). Bankrupt in one way ...
* ... and bankrupt in another:
  Los Angeles Frets After Low Turnout to Elect Mayor.
  Just 21 percent of registered voters turned out.
* Frank’s feet of Catholic clay. Last mention here of the new Pope I hope.
* Haiti recycles human waste in fight against cholera epidemic,
  and a link to the US NGO Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods SOIL.
* Chinese Solar Panel Giant Is Tainted by Bankruptcy.
And finally, I don't know what to make of this:
  U.S. Example Offers Hope for Cutting Carbon Emissions. (?) 

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Coming Up Soon:

Peter Victor - Managing Without Growth: Slower by Design, Not Disaster, April 4th 7pm at UofT.

[I wonder if Joseph Kony is 'related' to Séléka? They must know one another, or at least know of one another. What does Michel Djotodia think of Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army? It won't likely be a high priority for his 'government' to go looking for Kony anytime soon. How different are they, Joseph Kony & Michel Djotodia and his allies? How different are any of them from Francois Bozizé?] 

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Down.

Doh doh ... DOHA (!)

The whole shitteree is a death machine, an apparatus for extinction.
Up, Down. 

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Background music from our Jimi.    Contents: OK THEN, Doh doh ... DOHA (!), Fossicking Among Root Causes, Postscripts: Elizabeth May, Peter Kent, Christiana Figueres, Apology.

OK THEN, HOW ABOUT THIS?
Lord Stern uses two phrases in an article today: "it's a brutal arithmetic," and "I am ... just calculating what is needed." He then goes on to make milquetoast of it.

But his words got me thinking: What IS needed? How CAN we force our political masters to speak truth to the science before it is too late?
How about hunger strikers demanding a formal public debate?
One would need some savvy environmental champions and a moderator above any possible reproach ... a-and some individuals ready to lay their lives on the line (for something that just might be achievable).

Eh? Are you ready to step up for that? 

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From Copenhagen to Doha - the UNFCCC clusterfuck (aka UNfuct):

(Thanks to tOad, cartoonist at Le Monde. The thumbnails are clipped - click to view complete images.)

You can follow along if you like with the IISD or ECO newsletters, or on the CYD blog ... or, if you want to see some of the smiling faces on the NGO side, try IISD's ENBOTS newsletters.

[It is incredible and unbelievable but the silly boogers have tried to bar Anjali Appadurai from COP 18. (!?) You can read about it in The Guardian. That said, one wonders why she would want to go there - speaks to the lame alternatives I guess. You can find some of her recent writings on [Earth in Brackets].]

Michael Bloomberg gets it, sort of more-or-less. Barack Obama does not. This speaks as much and more to their relative positions in the power hierarchy as it may to whatever intelligence, understanding, personality etc. they may have. (There is an important lesson here about scale, scope ... discretion.)

'Cryoconite' (the black smear in Birthday Canyon pictured above right) could just as accurately have been called 'dust' - so much for the scientists lost in their own belly buttons - umbigophiles.

Two sad stories from Brasil: (em defesa da ganância / in defence of greed)

BBC: Mass protest in Rio de Janeiro November 26    &    22 billion R$ (more) for Belo Monte (2/3 of it public money).

(Compared with Doha - 1,000 folks at $1,000 per day all in for ten days makes ... 10 million conservatively or just a drop in the bucket. But again, this is public money, extorted from the poor and transferred to the already rich & comfortable & their tax lawyers.)

Government politicians & bureaucrats, labour unions, financial institutions ... and the captivated populations with upturned hopeful faces ... the whole shitteree is a death machine, an apparatus for extinction. Harsh.

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
(Ezra Pound, 1913)

The only bright points I can see just now are the Unist’ot’en/Wet'suwet'en blockade in northern BC and the continuing native struggles at the Belo Monte site in Altamira:


You can learn more about them and donate (that is the very least you can do): Unist’ot’en Camp    &    O Movimento Xingu Vivo para Sempre (MXVPS). 

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Who gets the blame?
It is easy enough to blame institutions such as RBC & BNDES or groups such as the so-called 1%, they deserve it no doubt, but a short meditation on concupiscent consumers (or even, cringeing conned complacent cretinous ... concupiscent consumers) may show that this line of approach doesn't really wash very well.

A more satisfying hypothesis is that almost the entire human species is mad. Homo Grǽdum is insane, off the rails, berserkers!

Two short excerpts from two eminent and perspicacious observers on that axis:

Northrop Frye, 1968:

There are two contexts in which the question of mental health exists, and they are directly opposite to one another.

The first is the therapeutic context. Here society is the norm, and the individual suffers from some psychic disability that prevents his full social functioning. All forms of mental illness, including the schizophrenic and the manic-depressive, come under this category, and their antisocial actions range from committing suicide to murdering public figures.

In the other context, society as a whole is sick and paranoid, and mental health can be attained only by the individual as a result of some detachment from the hysteria around him. Some societies, like Nazi Germany, are more obviously insane than others, and some are more obviously controlled and manipulated than others. But the same principle, that the mob is always insane and that only the individual can be sane, is always present.

Society itself, of course, cannot distinguish the mentally sick person from the healthy person who repudiates its own sickness. ... Frequently individual detachment and neurosis are found in the same person, and many forms of rejection of social values have themselves their neurotic aspects. ...

Martin Buber, 1948:

The doctor who confronts the effects on the guilty man of an existential guilt must proceed in all seriousness from the situation in which the act of guilt has taken place. Existential guilt occurs when someone injures an order of the human world whose foundations he knows and recognizes as those of his own existence and of all common human existence. The doctor who confronts such a guilt in the living memory of his patient must enter into that situation; he must lay his hand in the wound of the order and learn: this concerns you. But then it may strike him that the orientation of the psychologist and the treatment of the therapist have changed unawares and that if he wishes to persist as a healer he must take upon himself a burden he had not expected to bear.

I have been learning what I can of the holocaust, the Shoah; two books in particular stand out: Bauman's 'Modernity and the Holocaust' (from Cornell) and Agamben's 'Remnants of Auschwitz' (from Zone Books).    I wonder if the 21st C (not to be outdone by the 20th) will trump all previous evils by killing every living thing on the planet north of blue-green algae?

A.S. Byatt's Ragnarök: The End of the Gods (review here, available from Canongate) is worth reading several times.

It goes without saying that Buber's remedy, prescription, what you will ... operates only between two individuals, or at most in a small group ... which brings me back (again again again) to Ivan Illich (wanting to end, you know, on a positive note here today) and the Good Samaritan.

(It also goes without saying that this cannot be done alone.)

Be well. 

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A postscript (of course):    Elizabeth May's press conference of November 29, too long and meandering but still ... here is the video. She ends by saying, "Any honest person in political life who has looked at this science should be screaming from the rooftops ..."

I would say not only those in 'political life' but every one. That they ... we ... are not (screaming from the rooftops), proves, conclusively and categorically to me at least, the diagnosis of madness, insanity, death wish. 

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2nd Postscript:    I guess some of Peter Kent's words on the subject should be knitted into Madame Defarge's scarf:

Our Economic Action Plan 2012 focuses on the drivers of growth and job creation—innovation, investment, education, skills and communities—underpinned by our commitment to keeping taxes low, and returning to a balanced budget by the end of this Parliament.

While the federal government is working to be a partner with the private sector in economic growth, my role is to ensure that this growth happens in an environmentally responsible way.

Putting 'growth' and 'environmentally responsible' in the same sentence in this way is an insult to anyone with even rudimentary arithmetic - the statement is categorically, ineluctably, incontrovertably ... impossible! False! These silly boys, so 'smugge and smoethe' (such schmucks) are nitwits! How can everyone not see it?

Peter and his master, Stephen Harper, are so deeply enmeshed in the ideology of denial ... but really (as a once-upon-a-time good 'ol boy myself, I have to say), denial (and concomitant defiance) are such ancient and effective strategies and could even be admired if the consequences in this case were not so dire and general - involving as they do the entire planetary civilization.

An interview has turned up with Dan McDougall, Canada's negotiator in Doha, as he mumbles and chokes out the party line. The interview originates with CCTV, but since things come and go quickly on the uddernet I have posted a (poor) copy on YouTube.

Might as well get to know him a bit; here is the blurb from Environment Canada: Mr. Daniel (Dan) Edward McDougall.

"Keep your hand upon the throttle, and your eye upon the rail," goes the old hymn Life’s Railway to Heaven. It's growth or be damned!

In some future, when the shit really hits the fan, these politicians and their lackeys may be dragged out of their comfortable hidey-holes and lynched as the environmental criminals they are - by another, even more devolved generation of Canadians, maybe the last, not nearly so polite and reserved (more like Clockwork Orange) - but it will do no more good then than it would do now: by then it will be too late, and now it would only play into the law-and-order agenda which is doing just fine already (in the face of a declining crime rate). 

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Last and final:    There was (is?) a genius in some South African ministry - the person who designed the eloquent logo for the Durban meeting last year. And there is obviously another - who selected Louise Bourgeois' sculpture Maman for the entryway to Doha.

Such thoughts are difficult, as evidenced by J.M. Coetzee's convocation address at Witwatersrand this week. Of course sex has nothing, or very little, to do with it.

If Christiana Figueres were the son of the (then) President of Costa Rica the spectacle of quintessential bureaucratic (mindless) glee would be no different.

Much better, coherent, summaries have been provided elsewhere by Kumi Naidoo and Elizabeth May. 

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Apology:    Oh yes gentle bourgeois burghers I am rude & impertinent (and lost and despairing), but do not fear - it could be worse don't you think?

Here, we can all have a laugh with Monty Python's Argument Clinic, which is, one presumes, where Kent and Harper and the rest of the cabinet learned their rhetoric skills. 

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Down.

eighth blackbird, is that VIIIb then? or bVIII?

(with a sub-theme of 'grateful for small mercies')
Up, Down, Nothing much.

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If you are in Toronto, please consider attending this important event - details here: Hungry for Climate Leadership.

A candle-lit vigil of hope and solidarity, on the longest night of the year (in so many ways); at the Constituency Office of Peter Kent (sleveen), Canada's Minister of the Environment:
       7600 Yonge Street, Thornhill.
       (not the 7600 in Richmond Hill).

(Why not straight in front of his house, I wonder? Doesn't he live there somewhere?)

Wednesday December 21, 4:00 to 6:30 PM. Rallying at Yonge & Steeles (a 20 minute walk away) at 3:30 PM.
(You can't get there by TTC apparently. If I find a way I will post it here.)

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Elizabeth May has her moments: She doesn't call Peter Kent the P.O.S. he really is - but she doesn't tell us how much she likes him either, at least not this time (and I am grateful for that).

In this press conference she several times hits the shiny little nail right on its shiny little head:
       - the original at CBC 30 minutes (better sound quality),
       - posted by the Green Party as part 1 & part 2 (not so much).

And in this post: Kyoto withdrawal: There must be a political price to be paid.

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Looks like Barack Obama has caved in / is caving in / will cave in / might cave in / might not cave in ... on the Keystone XL pipeline.

Bloomberg: "... Republicans fell short on efforts to force the permitting of TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL oil pipeline ..."
Globe: "... would require Mr. Obama to decide within 60 days whether to grant a permit for the pipeline. But the legislation also allows Mr. Obama to decide not to do so ..."
NYT: maybe so ... maybe not ...

And more of the same nonsense equivocation from McKibben & Meisel (with exaggerated emotional overtones worthy of a basketball). At least they have stopped spouting, "WE WON! WE WON!" and I for one am grateful for small mercies.

Just have to wait and see. (But we don't like waiting, do we?)

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THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT A BLACKBIRD I            Among twenty snowy mountains,       The only moving thing       Was the eye of the blackbird. II            I was of three minds,       Like a tree       In which there are three blackbirds. III            The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.       It was a small part of the pantomime. IV            A man and a woman       Are one.       A man and a woman and a blackbird       Are one. V            I do not know which to prefer,       The beauty of inflections       Or the beauty of innuendoes,       The blackbird whistling       Or just after. VI            Icicles filled the long window       With barbaric glass.       The shadow of the blackbird       Crossed it, to and fro.       The mood       Traced in the shadow       An indecipherable cause. VII            O thin men of Haddam,       Why do you imagine golden birds?       Do you not see how the blackbird       Walks around the feet       Of the women about you? VIII            I know noble accents       And lucid, inescapable rhythms;       But I know, too,       That the blackbird is involved       In what I know. IX            When the blackbird flew out of sight,       It marked the edge       Of one of many circles. X            At the sight of blackbirds       Flying in a green light,       Even the bawds of euphony       Would cry out sharply. XI            He rode over Connecticut       In a glass coach.       Once, a fear pierced him,       In that he mistook       The shadow of his equipage       For blackbirds. XII            The river is moving.       The blackbird must be flying. XIII            It was evening all afternoon.       It was snowing       And it was going to snow.       The blackbird sat       In the cedar-limbs.

Could be way misleading, what with Obama and 'blackbird' and pictures of a young black woman mixed up into it and all. Oh well. Can't be helped; or could have been maybe but wasn't; suffice to say it's about what the 1% or the 99% (or whoever the fuck they are) are not stopping doing anytime soon. Makes me want to hear Caetano's Terra or here or here. Photographs of Geli Forlefac from Kwesi Abbensetts.

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Nothing needs to be said here about eighth blackbird, or very little - their website is one of the few I've seen that actually works, both comprehensive and intuitive. The notes that follow are just reminders to myself:

formed in 1996

• Tim Munro, flutes (Molly Barth to 2006)
• Michael J. Maccaferri, clarinets
• Yvonne Lam, violin & viola (Matt Albert to 2011)
• Nicholas Photinos, cello
• Matthew Duvall, percussion+
• Lisa Kaplan, piano

- Round Nut Tool
- beginnings
- thirteen ways
- fred
- strange imaginary animals
- Double Sextet • 2x5
- On a Wire • QED: Engaging Richard Feynman
- Lonely Motel: Music from Slide

None of their music shows up on the pirate sites, not much on YouTube either - and downloads are only available in the US, so ...

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Reading Empire of illusion, the end of literacy and the triumph of spectacle from 2009.

Why thirteen pages of wrestling up-front? I thought I had taken the point after a page or two. And the writing often seems so ... all-over-the-place, tendentious (is that the word?) ...

That said (and nevertheless), parts of this book are making me take long uncomfortable looks at myself.

The little piece of lyric from eighth blackbird's 'addiction': "one too many unchecked fantasies / one too many unchallenged assumptions /one too many unexamined beliefs /and you slide into addiction ..." which I found as I was finishing up the last post - seems to be a harmonic convergence.

And what comes around seems to go around too (or something) - this review of three Orwell biographies turned up in the free section of the LRB: Reach-Me-Down Romantic, which (going around yet once more) also touches on Christopher Hitchens (though the review is dated 2003 it seems to acknowledge Hitchens' recent death - ambiguity is good I guess).

I read some of this on Gutenberg Australia: Fifty Orwell Essays, particularly 'The Lion and the Unicorn' mentioned at the end of the review.

Depressing ... I hadn't realized that he was given to such concluding sentences as, "I believe in England, and I believe that we shall go forward." Oh well.

That's it; running out of candles.

I did find a bakery this week with a woman there (one of the owners) who both knows how to make bread and run the slicing machine (unlike the wage-slaves at Weston's & Cob's Bread respectively), and she was not in a hurry; and the bread is about half the price. And with croissants. A TTC ride away, but I like riding on streetcars - I was smiling the whole way back carrying my weekly supply of bread.

Something to look forward to on Sundays.

Be well.

( ... hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain ...)

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Nothing much:

An interesting survey from the Globe: Poll: C’mon, be honest: Answer these highly personal, somewhat inappropriate questions posted on the 16th, response as of the 18th here (but the wankers haven't said how many responded and have not published the geographical & age stats, yet - 'stay tuned' they say).

Responses to December 19th:

1. In 2011, were you more stressed or less stressed than you were the year before?

	Way more stressed		27%
	A little more stressed		27%
	About the same		23%
	A little less stressed		16%
	Much less stressed. Who can complain about 2011?		7%

2. What's the biggest stress in your life?

	Money		22%
	Family		14%
	Work		35%
	The current political climate		7%
	The environment		1%
	My love life		9%
	My health		6%
	What I'm going to cook tonight		5%

3. How many Facebook friends do you have?

	50 or fewer		19%
	51 to 150		18%
	151 to 250		11%
	251 to 400		10%
	More than 400		7%
	None: Facebook is for chumps		36%

4. How many of those friends would you tell if you had a serious health problem?

	None		9%
	5 or fewer		40%
	Up to 25		20%
	More than 25		5%
	Everyone would know. I'd post it on Facebook		1%
	I told you I’m not on Facebook		26%

5. How much household debt (including your mortgage) do you have?

	None. I'm in the black, baby		38%
	Less than $150,000		32%
	Between $150,000 and $300,000		18%
	Between $300,000 and $500,000		8%
	More than $500,000		4%

6. Is that more or less than last year?

	A lot more. I've racked up at least another $50,000		6%
	A little more. I've added on another $1,000-$50,000		12%
	About the same		25%
	A little less. I paid off up to $ 50,000		25%
	A lot less. I paid off more than $ 50,000		5%
	Let me repeat: I’m in the black, baby		26%

7. How many servings of vegetables do you eat a day?

	Do chips count? I don't eat vegetables regularly		8%
	One to two servings		51%
	Three to five servings		35%
	More than five servings. Just call me Popeye		6%

8. How much chocolate do you eat a day?

	I don't eat chocolate most days		62%
	Less than half a chocolate bar		27%
	Up to one chocolate bar (or the equivalent)		8%
	One chocolate bar and another chocolate snack		1%
	As much as I can get my hands on		2%

9. Did you sext this year, either as a sender or receiver of text, video or photos?

	Yes. What’s the harm?		19%
	No. I’d be mortified		63%
	I don't know what sexting is		18%

10. Do you know anyone who did?

	Yes		28%
	No		64%
	I'm not saying		8%

11. Which of the following did you do as a parent over the past year (check all that apply)?

	I lied to my kids		12%
	I bribed them		14%
	I swore in front of them		24%
	I spanked them		4%
	I ate their Halloween candy		17%
	None. I'm a perfect parent		4%
	I don’t have young kids		67%

12. Which of these foods should be banned (check all that apply)?

	Bluefin tuna		34%
	Shark fin soup		61%
	KFC's Double Down sandwich		40%
	Foie gras		25%
	McDonald's Happy Meals		25%
	None. I don't believe in food bans		27%

13. Who is your favourite royal?

	Harry (of course!)		10%
	Will (of course!)		8%
	Elizabeth (of course!)		17%
	Kate (of course!)		17%
	Does Pippa Middleton count?		13%
	Abolish the monarchy		36%

14. Whose death this year affected you the most?

	Jack Layton		55%
	Amy Winehouse		6%
	Steve Jobs		20%
	Elizabeth Taylor		2%
	Christopher Hitchens		11%
	Hickstead		5%

15. What resolution do you really want to commit to this year?

	Save more money		14%
	Lose weight		27%
	Have a better sex life		12%
	Get a better job		9%
	Be nicer to friends and family		10%
	I'm not making any		28%

16. How much cash do you have on you right now?

	None. I've always got my debit card		14%
	Less than $20		22%
	Less than $100		37%
	$100-$ 500		21%
	$500 or more		5%

17. Did you join a gym this year?

	Yes		24%
	No		76%

18. When was the last time you worked out?

	This week		50%
	This month		14%
	Within the past three months		10%
	Within the past six months		7%
	I didn't work out at all in 2011		19%

19. When was the last time you had a physical?

	Within the past six months		25%
	Within the past year		29%
	Within the past five years		26%
	It's been more than five years		11%
	I've never had one		8%

20. What's your secret vice?

	Junk food		27%
	Porn		26%
	Nail-biting		7%
	Impulse shopping		8%
	Stealing office supplies		1%
	I'm not telling		31%

21. Are you feeling hopeful about 2012?

	Yes		65%
	No		13%
	Not sure		22%

22. What are you most hopeful about?

	Money		14%
	Family		25%
	Work		20%
	The current political climate		2%
	The environment		0%
	My love life		12%
	My health		9%
	What I'm cooking tonight		4%
	I told you I'm not		14%

Ah ... another systematic information twister discovered: Pain in the ass formatting tables - so I pasted the responses into a .jpg with Paint, which .jpg was long and skinny (300 x 5,000 pixels or so); uploaded the .jpg, all done! Wrong! Google sets a maximum dimension on photographs (I guess) of 1,600 pixels, so it was not legible.

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Down.