"a plant can only live by adapting itself to the environment when its seed is first planted in the ground somewhere. If the seed is dropped in myself, then it must acclimatize to the environment which is me. It just so happened that I was a person who sculpted wood. Therefore, within myself, the plant forms itself into a state that is sculpted wood"
I discovered a sticker on the wall saying "morning glory, painted wood." I was momentarily puzzled by this because the space around the sticker appeared to be empty. In my search to locate the work, I looked up and saw an exquisitely carved flower curving out of the wall above my head. From then on, I spent the rest of the show having quiet discoveries in the gallery ...
Dolphins and other aquatic mammals were trained by Russian experts to attack warships and enemy frogmen, but when funding for the project ceased, many were moved to a private dolphinarium to perform for tourists.I wonder how this went on? The date of the story is 8 March, 2000 | BBC News | MIDDLE EAST.
Their chief trainer, both in military and civilian life, was Boris Zhurid, who began his career as a submariner before graduating from a medical academy. "But I cannot bear to see my animals starve ... We're out of medicine, which costs thousands of dollars, and have no more fish or food supplements."
In total, 27 animals, including walruses, sea lions, seals, 3 cormorants, and a white beluga whale, were loaded with the dolphins into a Russian transport aircraft for the journey from Sevastopol, on the Crimean peninsula, in the Black Sea, to the Persian Gulf.
Four of the dolphins and the white whale underwent training with Mr Zhurid at a Pacific naval base, before being transferred to Crimea in 1991. (Told to the BBC by Arkady Volondyn, Komsomolskaya Pravda)
City of Sevastopol
Dolphin Institute
Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society
I'm a fighting liberal
You know, I've studied history, I've read about America and you know something, if it weren't for liberals, we'd be living in a dark, evil country, far worse than anything Bush could conjure up. A world where children were told to piss on the side of the road because they weren't fit to pee in a white outhouse, where women had to get back alley abortions and where rape was a joke, unless the alleged criminal was black, whereupon he was hung from a tree and castrated.
What has conservatism given America? A stable social order? A peaceful homelife? Respect for law and order? No. Hell, no. It hasn't given us anything we didn't have and it wants to take away our freedoms.
The Founding Fathers, as flawed as they were, slaveowners and pornographers, smugglers and terrorists, understood one thing, a man's path to God needed no help from the state. Is the religion of these conservatives so fragile that they need the state to prop it up, to tell us how to pray and think? Is that what they stand for? Is that their America?
Conservatism plays on fear and thrives on lies and dishonesty. I grew up with honest, decent conservatives and those people have been replaced by the party of greed. It is one thing to want less government interference and smaller, fiscally responsible government. It is another thing entirely to be a corporate whore, selling out to the highest bidder because the CEO fattens your campaign chest. They are building an America which cannot be sustained. One based on the benefit of the few at the cost of the many. The indifferent boss who hires too few people and works them to death or until they break down sick. Cheap labor capitalism has replaced common sense. "Globalism" which is really guise for exploitation, replaced fair trade, which is nothing like fair for the trapped semi-slaves of the maquliadoras. In the Texas border towns, hundreds of these women have been used as sex slaves and then apparently killed,the FBI powerless to do anything as the criminals sit in Mexico untouched by law.
For the better part of a decade, the conservatives made liberal a dirty word. Well, it isn't. It represents the best and most noble nature of what America stands for: equitable government services, old age pensions, health care, education, fair trials and humane imprisonment. It is the heart and soul of what made American different and better than other countries. Not only an escape from oppression, but the opportunity to thrive in land free of tradition and the repression that can bring. We offered a democracy which didn't enshrine the rich and made them feel they had an obligation to their workers.
Bush and the people around him disdain that. They think, by accident of birth and circumstance, they were meant to rule the world and those who did not agree would suffer.
Liberal does not and has not meant weak until the conservatives said it did. Was Martin Luther King weak? Bobby Kennedy? Gene McCarthy? It was the liberals who remade this country and ended legal segregation and legal sexism. Not the conservatives, who wanted to hold on to the old ways.
It's time to regain the sprit of FDR and Truman and the people around them. People who believed in the public good over private gain. It is time to stop apologizing for being a liberal and be proud to fight for your beliefs. No more shying away or being defined by other people. Liberals believe in a strong defense and punishment for crime. But not preemption and pointless jail sentences. We believe no American should be turned away from a hospital because they are too poor or lack a proper legal defense. We believe that people should make enough from one job to live on, to spend time on raising their family. We believe that individuals and not the state should dictate who gets married and why. The best way to defend marriage is to expand, not restrict it.
It was the liberals who opposed the Nazis while the conservatives were plotting to get their brown shirts or fund Hitler. It was the liberals who warned about Spain and fought there, who joined the RAF to fight the Germans, who brought democracy to Germany and Japan. Let us not forget it was the conservatives who opposed defending America until the Germans sank our ships. They would have done nothing as Britain came under Nazi control. It was they who supported Joe McCarthy and his baseless, drink fueled claims.
Without liberals, there would be no modern America, just a Nazi satellite state. Liberals weak on defense? Liberals created America's defense. The conservatives only need vets at election time.
It is time to stop looking for an accommodation with the right. They want none for us. They want to win, at any price. So, you have a choice: be a fighting liberal or sit quietly. I know what I am, what are you?
1) A "street" is not simply space devoted to automobiles. It's a place of movement, outdoors, that connects different destinations.
2) Cities could be designed to look like college campuses, full of trees and paths and benches and interchangeable varieties of long walks between different locations – whether those locations are churches, bookstores, police stations, football stadiums, private homes, or hash bars.
3) The reason you need a car is because you're surrounded by highways and parking lots – it's not the other way around. City planners need to realize this.
Don't you hate spending half your vacation in a new city poring over guidebooks, trying to figure out whether this art gallery or that club is worth visiting or is just a tourist trap? If you wish you could feel like a local wherever you travel, Miss Information (www.miss-info.net) has just the remedy. Partners Alexis Owens and Colleen Cavanaugh Anthony create custom guidebooks with all the crucial tips for your trip.[From Venus Zine (Winter 2006) www.venuszine.com ]
Although they're pretty and palm-sized, the hand-bound books pack tons of useful information on events and destinations for your trip. Each guidebook is personalized with listings based on your interests and accompanied by photos and other thoughtful extras, such as a library card bearing your name.
Miss Information has profiled destinations ranging from Los Angeles to Jaipur, India, for clients who include fashion-shoot teams, wedding parties, and individuals. The price of a guidebook differs with each project and is based on the amount of time spent doing research and the number of books ordered. Owens and Cavanaugh Anthony keep detailed files on popular destinations and can put together a guidebook in a matter of days.
This government is like an abusive partner or parent. After beating &/or abuse &/or deprivation — all said to be 'for your own good', or because 'you made me do it' — come the gifts and attention and 'I love you, you know that'.
Super chocolate being developed for armyI also note that the Cadbury chocolate factory 'betweeen the mountains and the sea' has for long been a tourist attraction in Tasmania.
"Scientists from the Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) at Scottsdale in Tasmania are working on a new ... vitamin-packed dark chocolate that won't melt in the heat of battle and will last for years (AAP)"
au.news.yahoo.com/ 070504/ 2/ 13cp1.html
The decommissioned aircraft was being driven through the city at the weekend when the driver got lost and then abandoned the plane.
It appears that after taking a wrong turn, the driver found himself facing a flyover that was too low for him to take the plane under.
The driver has not been seen since and no-one is assuming responsibility for the 737...
"The high fat content of bogong moths – 38.8 grams of fat for a 100g portion, more then [sic] three times that of a hamburger, provide an energy dense food for indigenous groups in cold climates".100g (nearly 4 oz) is the standard amount used on food packaging here to list the amount of things like sodium, fats, sugars, kilojoules, etc. I think you'd need a fair amount of moths to make that up, but in season there'd be feasts.
According to Don Herbison-Evans, "a Bogong was unjustly blamed for embarrassing Yvonne Kenny while she was singing the Olympic Hymn in the closing ceremony of the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, as it landed for a while on her [dress]. In fact there were several moth species including Bogongs attracted to the brilliant arena floodlighting that evening, and the one on Yvonne's dress appeared actually to be a hawk moth of the species Hippotion scrofa."List of Links
There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world. The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas-covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be,Quoted in Richard Dawkin's eulogy for Douglas Adams in 2001 (see edge.org/ documents/ adams_index.html )
— Douglas Adams, Digital Biota Cambridge speech, 1998 (www.biota.org/ people/ douglasadams/ index.html)
April 06, 2007Rwanda: Genocide And A Hero
by hilzoy
obsidianwings.blogs.com/ obsidian_wings/ 2007/ 04/ rwanda_genocide.html
Thirteen years ago today, a plane carrying Juvénal Habyarimana, the President of Rwanda, and Cyprien Ntaryamira, the Hutu president of Burundi, was shot down. This event started the Rwandan genocide, which lasted for about three months. During that time, about eight hundred thousand people were killed, many hacked to death with machetes. To commemorate this, I want to repost something I wrote two years ago.
**********
Instead of writing about the genocide, I want to focus on Mbaye Diagne, a Senegalese military observer who was profiled in the excellent Frontline program Ghosts of Rwanda. His background was unremarkable: according to the profile on the Frontline site, "Capt. Mbaye, a devout Muslim, was one of nine children from a poor family on the outskirts of Dakar, Senegal's capital. He was the first in his family to go to college. After graduating from the University of Dakar, he joined the army and worked his way up through the ranks."
But what he did during the Rwandan genocide was extraordinary. Again, from Frontline:""A real-life Cool Hand Luke…"Here's an interview with Gromo Alex, the head of the U.N. Humanitarian Assistance Team in Rwanda:
"The bravest of the brave…"
"...the greatest man I have ever known..."
These are the words of those who knew Capt. Mbaye Diagne, a young Senegalese army officer who served in Rwanda as an unarmed U.N. military observer. I have never heard another human being described in the way that those who knew Mbaye describe him: he was, as one of his colleagues told me, "the kind of guy you meet once in a lifetime."
He was a hero.
From literally the first hours of the genocide, Capt. Mbaye simply ignored the U.N.'s standing orders not to intervene, and single-handedly began saving lives. He rescued the children of the moderate Prime Minster Agathe Uwilingiyimana, after 25 well-armed Belgian and Ghanaian U.N. peacekeepers surrendered their weapons to Rwandan troops. The Rwandan troops killed Madame Agathe (and, later, ten Belgian peacekeepers), while the unarmed Capt. Mbaye — acting on his own initiative — hid the Prime Minister's children in a closet.
In the days and weeks that followed, Capt. Mbaye became a legend among U.N. forces in Kigali. He continued his solo rescue missions, and had an uncanny ability to charm his way past checkpoints full of killers. On one occasion he found a group of 25 Tutsis hiding in a house in Nyamirambo, a Kigali neighborhood that was particularly dangerous. Capt. Mbaye ferried the Tutsis to the U.N. headquarters in groups of five — on each trip passing through 23 militia checkpoints with a Jeep-load of Tutsis. Somehow, he convinced the killers to let these Tutsis live."" — "Who was Mbaye Diagne and what was he doing?Unfortunately, he was killed at a checkpoint. Gromo Alex again:
He had access to most of the areas … the military or gendarme or presidential guard. He covered all the territory, knew most of the people in the command structure. But fairly early on, we could see in this back room in the Amahoro hotel [that] large groups of people all of a sudden appeared and [the] next day were gone. We began to put together that Mbaye was bringing people from all over to the headquarters and then evacuating them or having them picked up and taken to safety elsewhere. And I don't even know the numbers of the people that he saved. But a lot of people know who he is. A lot of people were saved by him, and not just Rwandans but famous journalists. I think they were put in positions where their lives were pretty close to an end, and he stepped in and saved them. (...)
— But wasn't it against orders to go out and start saving people?
Yeah, it was against orders, and the orders were not to intervene in the conflict. Mbaye ignored those orders, and at the same time his general [Gen. Dallaire] knew what he was doing, never stopped him.
… I would think that the general saw him as some expression of what we were supposed to be doing. … But here's someone who stepped out of line and [the general is] not going to discipline him because he's doing the right thing. And he saved at least hundreds of people. And we're talking about saving hundreds of people three or four at a time. So you imagine y'know, when we talk about the 23 checkpoints. And you take even 200 people, you divide it by the maximum 5 -- that would mean he [would] have 5 people in a vehicle, which is too conspicuous too. So he would do it in smaller numbers so that he wouldn't draw so much attention to people. But he'd go through all these checkpoints. And at every checkpoint you have to explain yourself. ...
— How would he get through?
That's just the way he was. People laughed. Even they have, or had, some attachment to a real world where there's real laughter. Even in all this gore, hatred; as long as you can have that brief glimpse of his smile, or laugh about something that's good, you'll grab onto it. And with Mbaye I think that's what everybody did. At all those checkpoints, they all knew him. …""[Once] it was time to leave, the plan was that we were all just going to leave at the same time. … Then Mbaye said no, [because] he had some other things to do. It turned out that he was making arrangements to go get some other people. … But he had to go to headquarters first. So we went down the hill to ICRC. … We stopped there for a couple minutes. …While my government was devoting its energies to figuring out how to describe what was happening in Rwanda without using the word "genocide", Mbaye Diagne just saw what had to be done and did it, at the cost of his own life. He is one of my personal saints. I think that when you find a saint, you should reflect on his life, try to learn from it, and do him honor. If anyone agrees, link to this post: Mbaye Diagne and what he did deserve to be better known.
So we're coming up the hill and hear something on the radio. … We heard it was [Mbaye] had, I guess, pulled up a minute after we'd gone to the bridge, the last checkpoint. A mortar had landed behind his car and shrapnel came through the back window and [hit him] in the back of his head, and apparently killed him instantly. …
This was the day that General Dallaire had gone to Nairobi to meet with some U.S. congressmen to convince them of the gravity of the situation. [So] we're stunned, and we're trying to figure out what's happening, what we can do. People are talking about going [and] getting his dress uniform. They're calling around for a body bag. But there's no body bag. Not a body bag in the whole U.N. The ICRC doesn't have any body bags that they can spare. At this time, we're starting to put together and we're saying, you know, "Here's a guy who gave his ultimate, did everything, and we don't even have a body bag to show him some respect." So we're scrambling [and] people are asking us -- we're the humanitarians, we can get some plastic sheeting, we can make something. I can't even remember [the details]. It was kind of a daze. …
We had some UNICEF plastic sheeting, and we had some tape. Mbaye's body comes, and he's a big man, tall, big feet. He's on a stretcher now. Nobody knows exactly what to do, but we're going to make a body bag. … You want to do it right. You want to … zip it, [but] you got this U.N. light blue body bag, and we're going to make and fold the edges over. We're folding them up, and the creases aren't right, because his feet are so damn big. … You don't want that for him. You want it to be, like, just laid out perfectly, so that when people look at him, they know that he was something great."
Posted by hilzoy at 11:07 PM
In midst of life is death, and life goes on
And that's the hardest thing, for those who stay
For love and spring and work get in the way
Are consolation, balm, but still you're gone.
We live life day by day, and days accrete
To bury you in stratigraphic time
Remembered in a place, a new-found rhyme,
Caught in the finished past, enclosed, complete.
We rage in helplessness at time and death
But onwards is the one direction left
The hope of future joy, although bereft,
For we must dare to live, while we have breath.
(On Easter morning, roll away the stone
Behold the empty tomb: but still alone.)
— Jo Walton
there's an author writing a book with a tentative title of Where the Girls Aren't: What's Holding Women Back from Careers in Science? who is looking for interview subjects: both women who have left science-related disciplines and those who are still there.
More details at www.nasw.org/users/lhall/wtga.html
(Photo by James Bridgewood)Why are we so good at recognizing music?”
... Dr. Daniel Levitin has devoted his career to exploring this question. He is a cognitive psychologist who runs the Laboratory for Music Perception, Cognition and Expertise at McGill University in Montreal, perhaps the world’s leading lab in probing why music has such an intense effect on us.
“By the age of 5 we are all musical experts, so this stuff is clearly wired really deeply into us,” said Dr. Levitin, ... surrounded by the pianos, guitars and enormous 16-track mixers that make his lab look more like a recording studio.
Dr. Levitin is an unusually deft interpreter, he recently published a layperson’s guide to the emerging neuroscience of music,“This Is Your Brain on Music” (Dutton).
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