Relaxation and Enjoyment

I've had a lot of enjoyment looking through the list of 50 Greatest Cartoons

It includes, naturally, "What's Opera, Doc?" (pedantry), and Rabbit of Seville? (Una la volta!)

Mysterious Typeface Change

'For some most mysterious reason, this isn't the blog I once knew'*. Unaccountably and apparently of its own accord, the Title, Headings and Body changed from a serif to a sans-serif typeface. At the moment the sidebar Text and Headings seem to have retained their original serif selves. Who knows how and/or why.

I've checked through the template file and can't find any reason. Adding in specifications for assorted serif faces doesn't seem to have made a difference. The template may need "upgrading", but that will mean it loses a lot of the customization I've spent so much time on. It will all need to be re-done. I don't feel up to spending that time, concentration & energy all over again at the moment.

UPDATE: Viewing this blog on other machines shows it still with the approved, preferred, desired, serif typeface. So I dunno. Am leaving it alone now in case I make it worse.

* Music, sung (not very good version, RealPlayer); lyricses

Lake George in Others' Eyes

Lake George. A popular name. There are a number around the world. We have a few (4) in Australia, but I think the most famous, or notorious, is the one in NSW, near Canberra. Tho' as one of its photographers on Flickr says: "traditional definitions of 'lake', 'river', and the like don't really hold in Australia".

Lake George's Geomorphology; A brief but clear description down near the end, around Figure 7. (In the context of the detailed broader geological area). Also (cautiously) check out the Wikipedia article. From the Sydney Morning Herald:

Getting to the bottom of the Lake George mystery
by James Woodford
November 30 2002
www.smh.com.au/ articles/ 2002/ 11/ 29/ 1038386313869.html

People's Pictures of Lake George

LAKE GEORGE

LAKE GEORGE
Originally uploaded by fotonchop

This lake has a fence in it. An old photo, with water.


Lake George NSW Australia

Lake George NSW Australia
Originally uploaded by sandown

Lake George around 1980, wet version. A now-rare photo of Lake George with water — quite a substantial amount of it too.


lake george

lake george
Originally uploaded by omnia

Sunrise behind the wooded ridge.


Australia - Lake George

Australia - Lake George
Originally uploaded by Celeste33

Lake George isn't in official "big sky country", but sometimes it's just there anyway.


Lake George from its western shore 180d panorama

Lake George from its western shore 180d panorama
Originally uploaded by robt

Panorama and an indigenous opinion, driving north from Canberra


Golden Summer, Lake George

Golden Summer, Lake George
Originally uploaded by carlmonus

Art & Life. This lake has livestock.


Lake George (dry lake) just outside Canberra

Lake George (dry lake) just outside Canberra
Originally uploaded by Aschaf

Mmm. Brings back some of my favourite memories travelling along the border of the lake towards sunset. Just gorgeous.


lake george, canberra

lake george, canberra
Originally uploaded by tEE.bEE

Another enduring memory, the pale straw colour of the broad flat grassy plain.


LakeGeorge

LakeGeorge
Originally uploaded by totalisator

How lovely it is to watch the clouds come and go, and the shadows and light changing across the 'lake bed' and mountains.


Lake George in sombre mood

Lake George in sombre mood

A very dramatic version of Lake George by Chris Lane, used with a newspaper story about conflict in the area. 'Gales buffet turbine project', by Wendy Frew in April, 2006



PoD — Lake George

PoD
Originally uploaded by The Department

Lake George under fluffy clouds in a high clear sky


DSC_0016 - Lake George mistier, greyer

DSC_0016
Originally uploaded by DC Maggie

This lake has a road across it. Lake George under a mistier, greyer kind of cloud.


Lake George - dry and sheep grazing in distance

Lake George - dry and sheep grazing in distance
Originally uploaded by China Shutter Bug

Even more livestock on the lake.


I tried to make a Flickr set out of other people's Flickr photos, couldn't work it out. Tried to set up a link for a search for "George" in my Favourites set, but that only works for me and when I'm signed in. Can't just put in the general "Lake George" and Australia search unless you too want to sort through the hundred or so.

So I'm trying to set up a type of set (heh) by making an entry here with thumbnails of my selected images, which I can link to. An advantage is that I can include non-Flickr images. It'd be nice to have it as a table with 3 or 4 thumbnails across, but for now I'll just have to go with the standard image uploads that Blogger has.

Bogong Moth season in Sydney 2007

Bogongs – first the recipe, now the film!
10 Oct 2007. ABC Sydney. (Australian Broadcasting Corporation):

It's not just the young and foolish attracted to the bright lights of the big city. Swarms of Bogong moths have descended on Sydney during their annual seasonal migration from southern Queensland and northern New South Wales to the alpine region as they migrate to escape the summer heat.

The Herbison-Evans/Crossley story on Agrotis infusa: http://linus.it.uts.edu.au/~don/larvae/noct/infusa.html

Short report with nice pictures from TV news


Long rambling description from a recent resident. Very "actuality"-style camerawork. She seems rather freaked out by the poor little harmless, helpless Agrotis infusa (CSIRO).

Portrait of a Young Man

Charles Darwin painted by George Richmond in the late 1830s, not all that long after the voyage of The Beagle.

Reminder: A BOOK WRITER SPEAKS

K.A. Bedford (Modem Noise) FAQ

"11. What's it like seeing your book in print? Must be awesome! It is! The first time I saw ORBITAL BURN as a physical, finished object, at Torcon 3 (the 2003 Worldcon), I was also fried out of my mind with epic jetlag and fatigue and, it also being my first overseas trip, and my first Worldcon, crazy nervous energy" …

Having a book published doesn't "fix" anything in your life. During the long years in which you struggle to get a book published, you imagine that having your book published will change everything. Life will be better. Your problems will be over. This is not so. What happens is you change problems …

(www.kabedford.com) Book links: Orbital Burn; Eclipse; Hydrogen Steel

Living without memory

The situations that the different people described are in are disturbing and distressing, but what extraordinary things they are capable of, and what strange aspects of knowledge, consciousness and how humans (& perhaps other animals) function their capacities throw some illumination onto.

Sometimes I feel that what I'm aware of as “self” is like a little sailboat scudding along over sunlit wavetops on a wafer-thin surface — a bit like a scale diagram of the biosphere in relation to the size of the earth — while all kinds of life and currents are going on unseen beneath.

A Neurologist’s Notebook

The Abyss

Music and amnesia.
by Oliver Sacks, The New Yorker, September 24, 2007

www.newyorker.com/ reporting/ 2007/ 09/ 24/ 070924fa_fact_sacks?currentPage=1

Clive Wearing now has “a memory span of only seconds – the most devastating case of amnesia ever recorded. New events and experiences were effaced almost instantly … he did not seem to be able to retain any impression of anything for more than a blink. Indeed, if he did blink, his eyelids parted to reveal a new scene. The view before the blink was utterly forgotten …
In addition to this inability to preserve new memories, Clive had a retrograde amnesia, a deletion of virtually his entire past.”

Some Online September 11th sites

Trade Center Memorial Foundation: www.buildthememorial.org
Voices of Sept 11 family Web site: www.911livingmemorial.org
Sept 11 digital archive: www.911digitalarchive.org
New York State 9/11 archives: www.nyshrab.org/ wtc/ s_wtc_projects.shtml

Images from Burning Man 2007

A gallery of pictures from the playa, called NoSuchImages – burningman2007

Aren't they a lovely couple?

APEC_2005-Howard_Bush-Busan
Originally uploaded by Epacris

John W Howard & George W Bush at APEC 2005 (Busan)

For an overview of APEC leaders group photos, see this Sydney Morning Herald blog link: blogs.smh.com.au/ photographers/ archives /2007/ 08/ ok_some_targets_are_just.html

From A Feast of Hate and Fear

An archive of FHF interviews, old and new. Plus hoaxes, rare pamphlets, obscure writings and a few classics.: "ARCHIVES & TEXTS"

Million-to-One Shots

Standing on a mountaintop in northern Siberia under the rapidly descending bulk of asteroid McAlmont, with a calculating expression and a baseball bat — Everything2.com
Somehow this is linked in my mind with the XKCD comic No. 254, viz

Yoshihiro Suda

Yoshihiro SUDA (nmp net gallery)
www.dnp.co.jp/ museum/ nmp/ nmp_b/ gallery/ shokudo/ suda_e.html

"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"

Yoshihiro Suda and Takehito Koganezawa: Ma, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin
www.recirca.com/ reviews/ yoshihiro/ index.shtml

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 ...

Zeppelin versus Pterodactyls, and writings

Some fun stuff put together on Utoob — Zeppelin versus Pterodactyls
www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2PkY3zSuw4

Inspired by this, apparently
ratmmjess.livejournal.com/170419.html
(Some casting ideas are: "Christopher Walken as the Zeppelin Luftkapitan, Alan Ford as the pissed-off British pilot sent to stop him, Nathan Fillon as the American mechanic for the British ... Tilda Swinton as Walken's frightening Lieutenant, Angelina Jolie as the, hmm, Russian spy/assassin sent to take care of Walken. And Dakota Fanning as the first victim Walken throws out of the zeppelin's windows so that the pterodactyls can feed.
The sequel, of course, would be Raptors on a Zeppelin, starring Sam Jackson as the brilliant native of the Lost Continent who seizes the zep' from the Nazis by infesting it with his trained raptors ...")

Which is also discussed here: s8.invisionfree.com/ MHVF/ index.php?showtopic=1073

I found Orwell's works here. Turns out there's considerably more, up & down the scale
Edgar Rice Burroughs: whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/ words/ authors/ B/ BurroughsEdgarRice/ index.html
Miguel de Cervantes: whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/ words/ authors/ C/ CervantesMiguelde/ index.html
William Shakespeare: whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/ words/ authors/ S/ ShakespeareWilliam/ index.html

Defending Bulwer-Lytton nofearofthefuture.blogspot.com/ 2007/ 07/ defense-of-bulwer-lytton.html

Ice Cool Buildings

System Relies on Ice to Chill Buildings
Saturday July 14, 3:45 PM EDT
NEW YORK (AP) — As the summer swelters on, skyscrapers and apartments around the city will be cranking up the air conditioning and pushing the city's power grid to the limit.
But some office towers and buildings have found a way to stay cool while keeping the AC to a minimum — by using an energy-saving system that relies on blocks of ice to pump chilly air through buildings.
The systems save companies money and reduce strain on the electrical grid in New York, where the city consumes more power on hot summer days than the entire nation of Chile." (AAP: Excite Money & Investing)
[Like about 100 years ago, except they're not storing ice from winter. Maybe they'll get onto that later?]

Eucalyptus origins; Cat at Sea

Scientists up a gum tree over Eucalyptus origins (Yahoo! News)

San Bernardino County Sun - Curious cat survives 18 days on high seas

Kamikaze dolphins (from 2000)

Iran buys kamikaze dolphins

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.
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 wonder how this went on? The date of the story is 8 March, 2000 | BBC News | MIDDLE EAST.

Currently in headless chicken mode, not necessarily getting much actually done.

Two of my loves, gathered together

Biology in Science Fiction, includes Biotech Art

Death of a Fighting Liberal

The blogosphere is mourning the death of Steve Gilliard, editor of NewsBlog. Leslie Turek reprinted one of his posts that made the greatest impact on her, and I am copying it as applying in some part to Australia, tho' "Liberal" is far less of a term of abuse here, being the name of the local conservative party.

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?

Mirrored Thoughts

from the BLDGBLOG (Architectural Conjecture, Urban Speculation, and Landscape Futures) — soon to be available: BLDGBLOG: The Book!
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Great streets, campuses, and pedestrian nostalgia
bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/great-streets-campuses-and-pedestrian.html

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.

Double Agent: tinyurl.com/2x5npb

Dreaming …

Tailor-Made Travel
Dump the generic guidebook and get a key to the city
—By Angie Vo, Venus Zine
Utne Reader May / June 2007 Issue
www.utne.com/ issues/ 2007_141/ promo/ 12553-1.html

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.

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.

[From Venus Zine (Winter 2006) www.venuszine.com ]

Approaching Asimov's light sculpture from The Naked Sun (sequel to The Caves of Steel): Philip's 'Drag and Draw' — www.pixelsumo.com/post/drag-draw

Saturday Night Fireworks; Sydney, Autumn, 2007

Don't know why they're doing it, but these last two Saturday nights, around 10pm, there's been a fairly big burst of fireworks, it looks like between the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Sydney Opera House.
Tonight, as soon as I heard them I threw on outdoor clothing, grabbed my trusty Canon A80 and headed for the closest vantage. This is the result, run through iMovie to join two parts, and with title added. I'm interested to see if there's any noticeable difference in quality from the raw footage, also uploaded.

No idea why they're doing this, but it's nice to watch from my nearby salient.

One Budget Rumination

Thinking & listening to discussion after the Federal Budget speech for 2007, I came up with a slightly new slant to the ones that I've had before on earlier budgets:

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; slogans; Hazards of aeroplane towing

I'm not sure if this story is good news for chocophiles or bad. Actually, some of the work they're doing sounds like it could be quite useful in more general spin-offs.

Super chocolate being developed for army
"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

I also note that the Cadbury chocolate factory 'betweeen the mountains and the sea' has for long been a tourist attraction in Tasmania.

T-shirts & bumper stickers that actually say funny things
T-Shirt catalogue: www.instantattitudes.com/shirts.html
Bumper stickers: http://www.instantattitudes.com/lists.html (subdivided into subject sections)
The Complete List, Everything, The Whole Enchilada, Too Bloody Many Stickers: http://www.instantattitudes.com/complete.html

Includes "If all the world's a stage, I want better lighting!"
http://www.instantattitudes.com/gifs/bs322.gif

Totally unrelated, this may amuse news.bbc.co.uk/ 2/ hi/ south_asia/ 6620461.stm Boeing 737 stuck in city road (in Chembur, Mumbai)

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...

Lipidoptera

This sounds like an example of Lipidoptera, from the ABC Canberra site »
Would you like bogong moths with that? (by Caroline Salisbury, Friday, April 20, 2007)

"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.
(Bogong's behaviour is the reason I know the words aestivate, and estivation.)

The rest of the article is quite interesting, about getting standards for eating bush tucker during kidney disease, and the problem of good food in remote areas.

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
Factsheet: www.csiro.au/ resources/ ps1qn.html
CSIRO pic: www.ento.csiro.au/ ecowatch/ Primary/ butterflies/ pages/ bogong_cluster.htm
Basic Entomology (Sydney Uni): bugs.bio.usyd.edu.au/Entomology/ importance/ imagePages/ bogongMoth.html
Family info fr CSIRO: www.ento.csiro.au/ ecowatch/ Lepidoptera/ noctuidae.htm
ABC scribbly gum on Moth migration: www.abc.net.au/ science/ scribblygum/ november2002/default.htm
page on Unique Australian Animals site: home.iprimus.com.au/ readman/ bogong.htm
Almanac, a big page with assorted November information: www.wilsonsalmanac.com/ book/ nov26.html
short piece from Wildlife of Sydney site: www.faunanet.gov.au/ wos/ factfile.cfm?Fact_ID=204

Mister Rogers' Neighbourhood

The "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" show either never made it here to Oz, or wasn't very big. (Play School - based on a UK show, Mr Squiggle - "the longest running pre-school children's television program in the world", and the franchise of Romper Room (museum material) are/were our TV classics (The Argonauts for radio)) I think it was back in 2003 when he died and there was a fair fuss, with people remembering their experiences, that I first heard of him. It does sound like a worthwhile show. I wonder if there are recordings around?

I found a clip of his 1969 testimony before a US Senate Committee, supporting PBS (video.google.com/ videoplay?docid=2883185966575573317). It's called "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" A bit about 4:30 in is about settling arguments, he recites song lyrics at around 5:30 "What do you do with the mad you feel?"

Thought - one of many

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,
— Douglas Adams, Digital Biota Cambridge speech, 1998 (www.biota.org/ people/ douglasadams/ index.html)

Quoted in Richard Dawkin's eulogy for Douglas Adams in 2001 (see edge.org/ documents/ adams_index.html )

For Easter; remembering loss, sacrifice & a humble heroism: Mbaye Diagne

At Easter, we remember loss & sacrifice, and heroism of a humble kind. From Obsidian Wings "when you find a saint, you should reflect on his life, try to learn from it, and do him honour":

April 06, 2007

Rwanda: 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…"
"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."

Here's an interview with Gromo Alex, the head of the U.N. Humanitarian Assistance Team in Rwanda:

" — "Who was Mbaye Diagne and what was he doing?
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. …"

Unfortunately, he was killed at a checkpoint. Gromo Alex again:

"[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. …
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."

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.

Posted by hilzoy at 11:07 PM

Tourist-eye View

Sapphire Princess AU&NZ cruise 2007 (YouTube home movies)

A short film; A sad memory

Doll Face
fraser.typepad.com/ frolix_8/ 2006/ 12/ doll_face.html
(via Pharyngula)

Sorry for long gaps in posting, for anyone who cares. A combination of not feeling too good, and having to use times when I am for catching up on a lot of stuff in Real Life. Plus some being distracted by the "ooh, shiny!" web factor and not getting around to blogging it. Some sad memories tonight; sometimes it seems time flies, and other times memories can be so real and strong and present.

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