quarta-feira, fevereiro 21, 2007

done (like dinner)

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Next, Back, Thread Ahead: None, Thread Back: Bob Dylan Modern Times Lyrics.

fechado por Quaresma / shut for Lent.



Mama take this badge off'a me
I can't use it anymore.
It's gettin' dark, too dark to see
An I feel like I'm knockin' on heaven's door.

Knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door
Knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door
Knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door
Knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door
Just like so many times before

Mama, put my guns in the ground
I can't shoot them anymore.
That long black cloud is comin' down
Feel like I'm knockin' on heaven's door.

Knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door
Knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door
Knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door
Knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door
Just like so many times before

Mama come wipe the tears from my eyes
I can't see through 'em anymore
I'm lookin' inbetween the dark and empty skies
And I feel like I'm knockin' on heaven's door

Knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door
Knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door
Knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door
Knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door
Just like so many times before


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Ash Wednesday / quarta-feira de cinzas

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Ash Wednesday, quarta-feira de cinzas.

Pai Nosso Lord's Prayer
Pai Nosso
Que estais nos Céus,
Santificado seja o Vosso nome.
Venha a nós o Vosso reino,
Seja feita a Vossa vontade
Assim na Terra como no Céu.
O pão nosso de cada dia nos dai hoje.
Perdoai-nos as nossas ofensas
Assim como nós perdoamos a quem nos tem ofendido
E não nos deixeis cair em tentação
Mas livrai-nos do mal.
Amén.

 Our Father, which art in heaven,
Hallowéd be thy Name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive them that trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
The power, and the glory,
For ever and ever. Amen.

A Paróquia de São Judas Tadeu, Icaraí.

CNBB - Conferência Nacional dos Bispos do Brasil - Campanha da Fraternidade.
Hino da Campanha da Fraternidade 2007 - Boi-bumbá.
Mensagem do Papa para a abertura da Campanha da Fraternidade.

23/02/07, Papa pede atenção para a Amazônia, (Source).
22/02/07, Campanha da Fraternidade recebe críticas, (Source).
22/02/07, Rogério Rocco, Sustentabilidade e soberania na Amazônia, (Source).
22/02/07, Sócio-ambientalismo, (Source).
22/02/07, Maurício Savarese, Igreja mira Amazônia para acertar governos e globalização, (Source).
22/02/07, Amazônia: ministra rebate críticas da CNBB, (Source).
21/02/07, Amazônia é tema da Campanha da Fraternidade 2007, (Source).

26/02/07, Leonardo Boff, O desafio amazônico, (Source).
26/02/07. Fausto Wolff, Olhe-se no espelho e pense, (Source).

Automated Translation - gibberish but interesting..

This internet thing is stupid (mostly) and worse than that it is BORING! Simply because it is sooooo slooooow. Who could put up with it? Me (obviously)! An-and I keep thinking - this could be the last time, could be the last time I don't kno-ow ... (Stones); but I keep coming back ...

Stupid HTML isn't bad enough, even when you get adept enough to have clippings ready the STUPID FUCKING servers are too slow to service anything ... AI AI AI!!!

Nobody with half-a-brain could use this and stay with it - Coxeter never even used a computtor nevermind tried this nonsense! FUCK!!!!!

Melanie - Brand New Key 
I rode my bicycle past your window last night
I roller skated to your door at daylight
It almost seems like you're avoiding me
I'm okay alone, but you got something I need
 
Well, I got a brand new pair of roller skates
You got a brand new key
I think that we should get together
And try them out you see
I been looking around awhile
You got something for me
Oh! I got a brand new pair of roller skates
You got a brand new key
 
I ride my bike, I roller skate, don't drive no car
Don't go too fast, but I go pretty far
For somebody who don't drive
I been all around the world
Some people say, I done all right for a girl
 
Well, I got a brand new pair of roller skates
You got a brand new key
I think that we should get together
And try them out you see
I been looking around awhile
You got something for me
Oh! I got a brand new pair of roller skates
You got a brand new key
 
I asked your mother if you were at home
She said, yes .. but you weren't alone
Oh, sometimes I think that you're avoiding me
I'm okay alone, but you've got something I need
 
Well, I got a brand new pair of roller skates
You got a brand new key
I think that we should get together
And try them out to see
La la la la la la la la, la la la la la la
Oh! I got a brand new pair of roller skates
You got a brand new key
 

Desperado 
Don Henley & Glenn Frey they say, I knew it from Linda Ronstadt 
Desperado, why don't you come to your senses
You've been out riding fences for so long now
Oh you're a hard one
But I know that you've got your reasons
These things that are pleasing you will hurt you somehow
 
Don't you draw the queen of diamonds boy
She'll beat you if she's able
The queen of hearts is always your best bet
Well it seems to me some fine things
Have been laid upon your table
But you only want the things that you can't get
 
Desperado, you know you ain't getting younger
Your pain and your hunger are driving you home
And freedom, oh freedom
Well that's just some people talking
Your prison is walking through this world all alone
 
Don't your feet get cold in the wintertime
Sky won't snow and the sun won't shine
It's hard to tell the night time from the day
You're losing all your highs and lows
Ain't it funny how the feeling goes away
 
Desperado, why don't you come to your senses
Come down from your fences
Open the gate
It may be raining
But there's a rainbow above you
You better let somebody love you
Let somebody love you
Before it's too late
 
 

I can't be bothered with this anymore ... you will have to figgure out for yourself why the Lord's prayer, Melanie, and Linda Ronstadt go together somehow.

I think I'm gonna go back out on the street and find the woman I saw tonight sorting garbage on the road-side - see if I can help her save the world. Mmm-maybe walk down to the church where I heard them talking about Amazônia yesterday, see what that's about ... enough of this wasting time - nobody reads it anyway, and if they do they don't say nothin' useful to me about it! Not even gonna bother with Tags ... STUPID WASTE OF TIME. (PERIOD) .

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terça-feira, fevereiro 20, 2007

more-or-less upright (!?)

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ee cummings'Staggered banged by a billion ...' indeed! Putting on airs maybe, but staggering? yes.

I thank You God for most this amazing
day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

ee cummings.


Susan SolomonFrom Ambiente Brasil: 20/02/07, Cientista do IPCC se diz otimista com reação do público:

"Quando os cientistas conseguiram contar a história de forma clara, o público entendeu."

"When the scientists manage to tell the story clearly, the public understands."

Susan Solomon, NOAA.


Amos Oz (Amos Klausner), How to Cure a Fanatic:

"Let us conclude with my story of the Order of the Teaspoon. I believe that if one person is watching a huge calamity - let's say a conflagration - there are always three principal options. Option 1: Run away, as far away and as fast as you can, and let those who cannot run burn. Option 2: Write a very angry letter to the editor of your paper demanding that the responsible people be removed from office in disgrace. Or for that matter, launch a demonstration. Option 3: Bring a bucket of water and throw it on the fire, and if you don't have a bucket, bring a glass, and if you don't have a glass, use a teaspoon - everyone has a teaspoon. And yes, I know a teaspoon is little and the fire is huge, but there are millions of us and each one of us has a teaspoon. Now I would like to establish the Order of the Teaspoon. People who share my attitude - not the run-away attitude, or the letter attitude, but the teaspoon attitude - I would like them to walk around wearing a little teaspoon on the lapel of their jackets, so that we know we are in the same movement, in the same brotherhood, in the same order, the Order of the Teaspoon. This is my philosophy in a nutshell - or in a teaspoon, if you wish." "Vamos concluir com a minha história de Ordem da Colher de Chá. Eu creio que se uma pessoa está olhando uma grand calamidade - quer dizer uma conflagração - estão sempre três opções principais. Opção 1: Fugir, tanto longe e tanto rapido possível, e deixa eles que não podem correr para queimar. Opção 2: Escreve uma carta bem zangada para o editor de seu jornal mandando que as pessoas responsiveis sejam despedidos no defavor. Ou seja montar uma demonstração. Opção 3: Traz um balde de agua e joga no fogo, e se você não tem balde, traze um copo, e se você não tem copo, usa uma colher de chá - todo mundo tem uma colher de chá. E sim, eu sei que uma colher de chá é pequena e o fogo é imenso, mas nos somos milhões e cada um de nos tem colher de chá. Então eu gostaria estabelecer a Ordem da Colher de Chá. A gente que participam a minha atitude - não a atitude de fugir, nem a atitude da carta, mas a atitude de colher de chá - eu gostaria que eles usar uma pequena colher de chá na lapela de seus casacos, ate que sabemos que estamos no mesmo movimento, no mesmo fraternidade, na mesma irmandade, na mesma ordem, a Ordem da Colher de Chá. Isso é a minha filosofia resumidamente - ou mesmo numa colher de chá."

Amos OzAmos OzAmos OzAmos OzAmos OzAmos OzAmos Oz

Please also see The Gods Must be Crazy, for a very similar story by Herbert de Souza, Betinho.

New York (Reuters) - Police called to a Long Island man's house discovered the mummified remains of the resident, dead for more than a year, sitting in front of a blaring television set.

The 70-year-old Hampton Bays resident, identified as Vincenzo Ricardo, appeared to have died of natural causes. Police said Saturday his body was discovered Thursday when they were called to the house over a burst water pipe. "You could see his face. He still had hair on his head," Newsday quoted morgue assistant Jeff Bacchus as saying. The home's low humidity had preserved the body.

Officials could not explain why the electricity had not been turned off, considering Ricardo had not been heard from since December 2005. Neighbors said when they had not seen Ricardo, who was diabetic and had been blind for years, they assumed he was in the hospital or a long-term care facility.

segunda-feira, fevereiro 19, 2007

Rapture

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Bush RaptureSome interesting stuff in this: Globe and Mail: The New Climate Almanac, (Archive).

In particular I got stuck ('raptured' as it were) on this:

"If climate change did not exist, we might have to invent it: Humans like to have an apocalypse looming."

and

"Most apocalyptic panics have been orchestrated by political elites to control the masses."

The Secular Rapture

John CalvinIf climate change did not exist, we might have to invent it: Humans like to have an apocalypse looming. Since the Second World War, a chorus line of apocalyptic threats has strutted across the stage of global awareness — domino-style communism, nuclear annihilation, the spread of AIDS, millennialism, global terrorism and now climate change.

Each bears all the trademarks of the granddaddy of apocalypses, the one in the Book of Revelation. The New Standard Bible Dictionary defines that apocalypse as the uncovering of the "inner and hidden arrangements of the universe [and] the method and original conditions of the creation, but pre-eminently the future of the world and the destinies of God's people" — exactly what the scientists who study million-year old ice cores have been trying to figure out.

Calvin & HobbesThe standard human response in each case has been the same — panic that our survival is threatened, and a blind refusal to believe that our survival is threatened. Ditto the eventual solutions, which always reach beyond mere reason and technology to embrace "respect for creation, the unity of nature, sharing, moderation, compassion [and] holiness," as Ron Graham lists in 1990's God's Dominion, one of the first books to describe environmentalism as a religious impulse, a way of restoring moral order in a world rendered godless by science.

But two details make the climate-change Judgment Day different — quite apart from its scientific inevitability. Most apocalyptic panics have been orchestrated by political elites to control the masses. The atom bomb and Joe McCarthy's Red Scare justified U.S. imperialism; the threat of AIDS is still used to control sexual activity. But the growing awareness of climate change, Mr. Graham says today, "if anything, is not convenient to the elites, to industry and governments, but is instead a populist, grassroots movement."

Thomas HobbesThe second quirk is that science and technology are both the cause of the problem and our best route to correcting it. "What's interesting about global warming," Mr. Graham suggests, "is that science has come along and attached itself to the spiritualism of the new age, and the notion of Gaia, whereas before that, science had been lagging."

You might even say that science has seen the light.

Ian Brown.

Not to mention the bird flu.

"Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan.


"Whoever shall maintain that wrong is done to heretics and blasphemers in punishing them makes himself an accomplice in their crime and guilty as they are. There is no question here of man's authority; it is God who speaks, and clear it is what law he will have kept in the church, even to the end of the world. Wherefore does he demand of us a so extreme severity, if not to show us that due honor is not paid him, so long as we set not his service above every human consideration, so that we spare not kin, nor blood of any, and forget all humanity when the matter is to combat for His glory."
John Calvin.


Rapturegrief cycles:
- denial, anger, bargaining, depression, & acceptance (DABDA)
- shock and numbness, yearning and searching, disorganization and despair, & reorganization


This, from Handel's Messiah, always makes me weep ... and then laugh:

"I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. And though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God."
(Job 19 : 25-26)



A-and finally an optimistic note from Okotoks, Alberta, Canada:
Drake Landing Solar Community, see Domestic Geothermal Heating.

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domingo, fevereiro 18, 2007

Lunar New Year / Year of the Pig

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Hot cross buns!
Hot cross buns!
One a penny, two a penny,
Hot cross buns!

If you have no daughters,
Give them to your sons!
One a penny, two a penny,
Hot cross buns!


StarDate Moon Calendar.

OK, I had some thoughts, they are sorta here now ... but not really ... So it goes ... "The world is too much with us late and soon, getting and spending we lay waste our powers ..." and all that. Not to mention that the technology really sucks.

I worked on a pig farm once, for a few months as a carpenter building some barns. The piglets got out one day and I can attest to their intelligence - it was a struggle for two of us to get them all back in again.

Pigs are quite positive in the Chinese pantheon looks like (according to Wikipedia); children born in this year are supposed to be lucky.

I am a Fire Dog, my children are Ox, Horse, Rooster & Dog. I see no immediate symmetries with anything that makes sense to me - but this is not surprising since I know next-to-nothing about it.

I wonder how it will all turn out?

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sexta-feira, fevereiro 16, 2007

Lunar New Year / Carnaval

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February 16, Kyoto Protocol formally goes into force.

Carnaval: February 16-21:

The ones I saw on the beach at Ipanema in 2003 were fake-gold (they might have been real-gold). Two girls at the front of the parade wore them - wonderful! When you draw two spirals with a continuous line they both turn the same way although the drawing motion reverses. There is a similar confusion in the eye looking at them - especially when drawn on such delicious flesh.

These other images (cribbed from a culture famous for spirals) are from Newgrange (which is a tomb of course).

If I were going to draw three - I would make one of them turn the other way. There you go; not a neanderthal after all. The spiral galaxy has been pictured elsewhere in this blog - 'Mere' Tribalism in Nigeria, and some of Calder's spirals showed up in Marshall McLuhan - Tribal Spiral. I thought I had mentioned Olivier Marc before too, but Google says not - nevertheless, maybe I did, negative Googles prove nothing!



Many years ago I read Psychology of the House by Olivier Marc, in which he observes that in children's drawings there is a progression or evolution from the dot, to the line, to the wave, to the circle and then to the spiral. I watched my own children's drawings and did not see this pattern emerge (although the collection was hap-hazard at best and has not been preserved).

20/02/07, Jens Glüsing, Anarchy in Rio - Carnival of Death, (Source), Technorati.

Samba CarnavalSamba CarnavalSamba CarnavalSamba CarnavalSambaSambaSamba

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quinta-feira, fevereiro 15, 2007

Lunar new Year / Ocean Ranger

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Ocean Ranger, February 15, 1982.

The Ocean Ranger (with 84 names).
The Ocean Ranger - Wikipedia.
Daily News Feature Stories - The Ocean Ranger.



Also that day 33 of the 37 crew on the Russian freighter Mekhanik Tarasov were lost just a few miles away; their names are not recorded.

The Last Goodbye (the link seems to have disappeared).

"There's trouble from within, the rig is listing once again,
And the gallant crew are ordered to abandon;
But the hurricane's too strong, when the morning comes she's gone,
And not a soul survives to tell us all what happened."


Support Vessels: M/V Seaforth Highlander, M/V Boltentor, M/V Nordertor:



Neighbouring rigs, Sedco 706 & Zapata Ugland, were battered but survived:



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quarta-feira, fevereiro 14, 2007

Lunar new Year / Valentine's

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Viagra sold over counter on Valentine's Day.

Viagra?! Tried it once or twice - just gives you a headache. Girls I know don't like it and don't respect the guys who use it. Enuf said.

11/02/07, LONDON (Reuters) - Men will be able to buy impotence treatment Viagra over the counter in Britain for the first time from Valentine's Day, chemist chain Alliance Boots said on Sunday.

Three Manchester Boots pharmacies will sell the prescription-only medication made by U.S. drugs group Pfizer in a pilot program from February 14.

Men aged between 30 and 65 suffering from erectile dysfunction will be able to buy four Viagra pills for 50 pounds ($97) without having to get a prescription from a doctor first.

Instead, they will have a private consultation with a Boots pharmacist, when their medical history will be checked and measurements taken of their blood pressure, cholesterol and blood glucose levels.

On a return visit patients will see a private doctor to ensure they are suitable for a further supply of pills.

"By creating a service that is easily accessible on the high street we hope that we help many more men seek help for a very common condition," said Boots Director of Healthcare Alex Gourlay.

He said it was estimated that only one in 10 men suffering from erectile dysfunction were currently being treated.

Boots already offers similar services for weight loss, hair retention and chlamydia treatment.

A national roll out of the Viagra service will be assessed later in the year.

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terça-feira, fevereiro 13, 2007

Petrobras, bigger than Lula (!?)

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Almir Barbassa (I think), Spokesman / Dilma Vana Rousseff, Chairman of the Board of Directors / José Sergio Gabrielli de Azevedo, President and CEO (b 3 de outubro de 1949).

13/02/07, Sabrina Lorenzi, Petrobras lucra R$ 25,9 bilhões, (Source).

13/02/07, Folhapress, Mercado prevê lucro da Petrobras recorde, acima de R$ 25 bilhões, (Source).

13/02/07, Agência Brasil, Petrobras pode aumentar preço do gás para o mercado interno, (Source).

14/02/07, Sabrina Lorenzi, Petrobras tem lucro recorde: R$ 25,9 bi, (Source).



Anyway ... I was sitting at Nova Esperanca reading about this for the last few nights - 150 billion income, 25 billion profit, not shabby; and the thought came to me that ... what if Petrobras decided to do it right? They could do it, and then I found these images and ... God knows, things can change in a twinkling eh?

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