What-Fi-Sees

Done

2009-07-17T13:34:00.001-04:00

Closing the blog on that note.

Words

2009-07-11T22:59:00.011-04:00

Martin Streek

2009-07-07T21:08:00.005-04:00

Contrary to what it may seem...I've never blogged under the influence before,

but tonight is an exception.

I'm under the influence of the memory of working, albeit indirectly, with Martin Streek.

I was never a club goer in Downtown T.O. but nevertheless I worked with Martin for 5 years at
CFNY, more commonly known as 102.1 The Edge.

cause everyone has a little edge in them.

And Martin, certainly had the edge in him.

He was heard by thousands every week, and energized those around him.

Martin. You were a good soul in a corporate world.

You gave far more, to so many people, than you could ever receive, or know.

And likely gave, because you knew the need to give.

But were not adequately appreciated for all that all you always gave.

And you gave in spades.

What kills is...

seeing what looks like a lack of vision, of your own creative capability, of your future,

of life itself,

and all it's endless possibilities,

and all that newness yet to be discovered, seen, known, and felt.

In that kind of moment,

in these kind of days,

at this kind of time,

might have been enough,

to make you feel you what you clearly felt,

was the only answer.

I say felt, because it is a sensitive soul who feels these things so profoundly.

You are not alone despite all you may have felt.

These are the times that tries men's souls.

Your loss is greater than you individually.

Though as an individual - you were lovely, and a serious loss.

Your loss is for everyone who remains.

The key is to find that new way.

That is always the purpose of life.

Despite or in spite of it all.

Especially when one cannot see their way through, or in it,

at the time they most cannot - that's when it is most key.

Martin, you were the consummate professional to have worked with.

You were a generous soul.

You were a charming soul.

You were a warm, and loving, and inclusive soul.

You were a deep soul who felt greatly, loved greatly, and knew far more than was ever articulated.

Your influence will be missed. Your energy will be missed.

You will be missed.

But you will be remembered by those who knew you, and who remain.

I guess that's how we live on.

Love to you...

Be at peace.

Sport of Kings and Queens-with-Plates to give away, and Leopards oh my!

2009-06-21T20:20:00.003-04:00

Man's exploitative use of the horse has been ongoing, in every culture on earth, since 4500 BC.

Ah yes...Exploitative Man (which came immediately after prehistoric man), millennia and horse....
Where would any of us be without the trusty steed to have gallantly brought us to the wincing days of the V8 Mustang GT?

If we look back, it was somewhere in all that evolving of going from nomadic to an agriculturally inclined people...and all that sitting cross legged waiting around for the crops to take root and grow, man found he suddenly had some extra recreational time on his hands....add to that manure mix, annoying neighbours!

Notice how the term never came to be "yeabours"...no? Ever wonder why? Cause they make us whinny, and snort, and scoff, and shake our heads, and neigh at them as soon as we round the corner of our purposely built blocking buildings.

So it wasn't long before aggravated-cultural-neighbour-man-challenged-neighbour, to see who indeed had the stronger steed, who's horse was the most loyal to it's owner and would go the extra mile, or die trying, not to let it's master down.....with the horse knowing full well he'd probably get a thrashing once back in the barn, if it didn't out perform & outrun a comet in front of everyone, when reputations and high stakes are riding on it most.

Thus the horse race of testosterone stetsonhood was likely born.

Don't quote me, I may be having a Farley Mowat moment with my historical info.

But I bet you $20 on a 2-1 I'm not far off.

To gallop through the years at breakneck speed...

Genghis Khan [aka: Temüjin], Alexander-the-debateable-great, Joan of Arc, everyone who ever competed in all those Greek and Roman smash 'em crash em up chariot races, the Knights who say Ni...no wait, they only had coconuts for horses, but there were those who came back from those pillaging crusades with shiny sleek new preowned Arabian horses, which made their dowdy old frumpy lumpy saggy back droopy eyed English horses (who looked that way cause they knew damn well how depressing 364 days of unrelenting rain was) look a bit portly and peely wally, which reminds me...there was also John Wayne.

So, there it is.

Everyone who was anyone rode into history on horseback.

Like the guy who was on Eye Of The Leopard today at the 150th Queen's Plate at Woodbine Race track Toronto.

That horse ought to be eating off the fine china from Queen Elizabeth's very own dining room hutch and sitting at her table, for being at the top of his game today.

All the Kings horses and all the concerted efforts, from prehistoric man right up to today's exploitative man can sit back and simply chew in their feed bag knowing that's one more natural damn-hard-day in the life of a horse done.

Congratulations to Eye of the Leopard for devastating my Milwaukee Appeal choice into a state of on-the-track-ennui which resulted in third place race for him...poor wee colt will get a thrashing tonight even if it's only a tongue lashing thrashing - but not by me!!!!

I just hope these gorgeous animals are treated far better than royalty is. Every single day of the year, throughout their entire lives.

They are utterly regal, elegant and stunning. And humbling to watch go full out.
Nothing like raw natural thunderous power to stir the senses.

The appeal is real.

My only appeal would be that they, along with every animal species that have somehow managed to exist with exploitative man, is appreciated, loved, respected and taken care of.

We hardly deserve the beauty that exists.

But what a sight when we see it !

Horses Without Carriages

2009-06-06T06:00:00.007-04:00

Did you know that June 6, 2009 is the Global Day to End the use of Carriage Horses?

Well now you do.

"Horses Without Carriages International" will hold a Global Day. In addition to Toronto, many other cities will be participating, including Atlanta, Chicago, Philadelphia, Montreal, Belgrade, Rome, Vienna, Tel Aviv.

The goal to secure a win for animals everywhere, by animal lovers everywhere.

In New York City Alec Baldwin, Pink, Rosie O'Donnel, Rhue McClanahan, and Betty White will be up in hooves and have agreed to join in, to speak up for the horses, who would also be up in hooves, but are slaving away in the tourist trade.

It is for we tourists horses labour...and put at jeopardy everyday.

For more information, and some awful images of the carnage the carriage trade causes, please go to:

http://horseswithoutcarriages.org/

Some facts about New York City's Horse-Drawn Carriage Trade.....

There are (5) major stables that are involved in the horse carriage industry. They are all on the far west side of Manhattan from 37th St. to 52nd St around 11th and 12th Avenue.

1. Bryne Stable - 547 West 37 Street
2. Westside Livery - 538 West 38 Street
3. Shamrock Stable - 522 West 45 Street
4. Chateau Farms - 608 West 48 Street
5. Clinton Park - 618 West 52 Street

To get to work, horse carriages generally travel up 10th Avenue to the Central Park area, which begins at 59th St., and return to the stables by 9th Avenue. There are two hospitals in this area – St. Vincent’s Midtown and Roosevelt Hospital. The entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel is at 37-38th St.; there are several entrances to the West Side Highway in this area.

There are no restrictions as to when horse carriages can travel to and from the park. Unlike Local Law 89, which expired in 1993, carriages may travel during rush hour.

There are 68 carriage horse medallions or licenses -- one per cab.

There are over 200 horses – according to an October 2005 list from the Department of Health.

There are approximately 350 carriage drivers in the industry – according to the NY Post – January 2006

In 1982 there were 141 carriage drivers. In 1993, there were 296 … Peggy Parker testimony before City Council committee – 11/29/93

Most of the stables house horses on different levels, accessed by steep ramps.

Most of the stables do not have adequate fire protection and are not required to have sprinkler systems.

Most of the stables have stalls too small for a horse to turn around comfortably or to lie down.

The average working life for a NYC carriage horse is 4 years – compared to 14-15 years for a NYC police horse – according to research by the Carriage Horse Action Committee.

According to current legislation - Horses may not be worked when the temperature is 90 degrees or more, nor when it is 18 or below. There is no consideration for humidity index or wind chill factor.

The law requires the ASPCA Humane Law Enforcement Officers to order the drivers to return to their stables when the above temperatures are reached. The drivers do not have to return on their own volition since it is the ASPCA officers who have access to the thermometer.

“Manhattan asphalt [street] temperatures reach - well over 200 degrees – hot enough to melt asphalt.” NYTimes 7/29/89 – quote by then Commissioner of Department of Transportation.

When the sum of ambient temperature (Fahrenheit) and relative humidity exceeds 150 (especially if humidity contributes more than half the sum) the evaporative cooling mechanism by sweating is severely compromised. (published in Equine Exercise Physiology - 9/22/82

According to current legislation - Each horse can work up to nine hours in any 24 hour period. A horse can be worked every day according to the law.

Horses are kept standing for extended periods of time on hot asphalt without shade. There is no shade on Central Park South on the hack line. Boredom is just one of the feelings these horses experience.

In An Instant

2009-05-14T20:16:00.004-04:00

Everything can change in an instant.

Everyone knows this.

But when such an instant happens

even if you just happen to witness an instant happen to someone you don't even know

it stops you in your tracks. Today I was stopped in my tracks.

And your heart goes out.

Because we will all have instances. Moments you can do nothing about, but are on the road of,

but you don't know it, nor can you alter the course of it.

An instant was all it took.

I just so happened to cast my eyes to my driver side door mirror
and saw the whole instant happen.

Then I heard my instant fear confirmed.

Then it got worse.

Which made me pull the car over and run back knowing I can't do anything, but I was just as stopped
as the poor innocent guy lying face down, not moving in the middle of the road.

Everything was moving along as normal as ever. Everyone going about their Thursday, pre-long weekend business
in the warm 5:30 pm sunshine.

The guy on the motorcycle who had just passed me was humming along perfectly, I don't know why I even cast my eyes down to my driver side mirror, but there he was simply continuing on

then I saw the full side length of a black car suddenly in front of him

but because of the distance I couldn't tell if the car was 5 feet in front of him, or 25 feet in front of him, or if the car had just jutted out of a street without looking, or if it was parked and just did a u-turn to go in the opposite direction.

But we all heard the guy on the motorcycle hit the brakes.

Then hit the car.

He, and bike parts, and glass, and everything was air bound.

Then he landed sprawled face down on the road.

Then the bike landed on him.

Gas leaked everywhere.

Everyone.

All of us who were going about our business stopped as instantly as he did.

Everything just stopped.

That instant was felt and shared and attended to by everyone there.

How could one not?

Poor guy.

It wasn't his fault.

It was particularly bad.

Motorcycle accidents generally are bad.

But this was genuinely bad.

I know this happens everyday, but there was just something about that instant.

I hope he will be okay.

But some instances are indefinite.

The Butterfly Effect

2009-04-24T20:00:00.005-04:00

The "butterfly effect", and term, is the work of Edward Lorenz,
and is based in Chaos Theory and sensitive dependence on initial conditions,
first described in the literature by Jacques Hadamard in 1890.

The idea that one butterfly could eventually have a far-reaching ripple effect on subsequent historic events seems first to have appeared in a 1952 short story by Ray Bradbury about time travel, but it was Lorenz
who made the term popular in 1961.

Lorenz was using a numerical computer model to rerun a weather prediction, when, he shortcut on a number in the sequence, and entered .506 instead of entering the full .506127 number the computer would hold.

The result was a completely different weather scenario.

Which caused quite a flap.

Lorenz published his findings in a 1963 paper for the New York Academy of Sciences and he noted;
"One meteorologist remarked that if the theory were correct, one flap of a seagull's wings could change the course of weather forever.". In later speeches and papers by Lorenz used the more poetic butterfly.

According to the actual theory, if history could be "changed" at all (so that one is not invoking something like the Novikov self- consistency principle which would ensure a fixed self-consistent timeline), the mere presence of the time travelers in the past would be enough to change short-term events and would also have an unpredictable
impact on the distant future.

Therefore, if one could travel into the past, they could never return to the same version of reality he or she had come from and could have therefore not been able to travel back in time in the first place, which would create a phenomenon referred to as a time paradox.

Chaos theory describes the behavior of certain dynamic systems – systems whose states evolve with time – that may exhibit dynamics that are highly sensitive to initial conditions

Chaotic behavior is also observed in natural systems, such as the weather...politics and the economy.

This may be explained by a chaos-theoretical analysis of a mathematical model of such a system, embodying the laws of physics that are relevant for the natural system.Turbulence in the tip vortex from an airplane wing shows the critical point beyond which a system creates turbulence which is important for Chaos theory, analyzed by Soviet physicist Lev Landau who developed the Landau-Hopf theory of turbulence.

The Chaordic Age, as coined by Dee Hock, refers to a system that blends characteristics of chaos and order.

The mix of chaos and order is described as a harmonious coexistence displaying characteristics of both, with neither chaos nor order behaving predominately. Some maintain that nature, and the universe, is largely organized in such a Chaordic manner; particularly, living organisms and the evolutionary process by which they arose are often described as chaordic in nature.

oh the chaordic turbulence we unwittingly incur.

Here's Looking at you Earth Day

2009-04-22T11:39:00.006-04:00

Responding to a huge oil spill off the Californian coast in 1969, Gaylord Nelson, a United States Senator from Wisconsin, called for an environmental teach-in, or Earth Day, to be held on April 22, 1970.

Over 20 million people participated that year. Earth Day is now observed each year by more than 500 million people and national governments in 175 countries.

oh the irony given that, in September 1969 at a conference in Seattle, Washington, U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson spoke of the great concern about overpopulation and about a movement towards "Zero Population Growth."

Nelson viewed the stabilization of the nation's population as an important aspect of environmentalism and later said: "The bigger the population gets, the more serious the problems become...We have to address the population issue".

Earth Day 2007 was one of the largest Earth Days to date, with an estimated billion people participating in the activities in thousands of places like Kiev, Ukraine; Caracas, Venezuela; Tuvalu; Manila, Philippines; Togo; Madrid, Spain; London; and New York.

More than a half billion people participate in Earth Day Network campaigns every year.

Senator Nelson chose the date as the one that could maximize participation on college campuses for what he conceived as an environmental teach-in. He determined that the week of April 19-25 was the best bet. It did not fall during exams or spring breaks, did not conflict with religious holidays such as Easter or Passover, and was late enough in spring to have decent weather. More students were likely to be in class, and there would be less competition with other events mid-week, so he chose Wednesday, April 22.

Asked whether he had purposely chosen Lenin's 100th birthday, Nelson explained that with only 365 days a year and 3.7 billion people in the world, every day was the birthday of ten million living people.

“On any given day, a lot of both good and bad people were born,” he said. “A person many consider the world’s first environmentalist, Saint Francis of Assisi, was born on April 22.“

April 22 is also the birthday of Julius Sterling Morton, the founder of Arbor Day, a national tree-planting holiday started in 1872. Arbor Day became a legal holiday in Nebraska in 1885, to be permanently observed on April 22, to coincide with the best tree planting weather."

Butterflies are notable for their unusual life cycle with a larval caterpillar stage, an inactive pupal stage, and a spectacular metamorphosis into a familiar and colourful winged adult form.

Butterflies migrate over long distances. Particularly famous are the migration of the Monarch butterfly from Mexico to North America, a distance of about 4,000 to 4,800 kilometres (2500-3000 miles).

Other well known migratory species include the Painted Lady and several of the Danaine butterflies. Spectacular and large scale migrations associated with the Monsoons are seen in peninsular India.

Butterflies are seen as the personification of a person's soul. And symbolize immortality.

One Japanese superstition says that if a butterfly enters your guest room and perches behind the bamboo screen, the person whom you most love is coming to see you.

The Russian word for "butterfly", бабочка (bábochka), also means "bow tie".

In some old cultures, butterflies also symbolize rebirth into a new life after being inside a cocoon for a period of time.

The Earth, and every living thing upon it, would benefit if we all morphed meta-lly, like the butterfly, and lived with a light footprint, so as to strengthen the fragile and retain that which has taken literally eons to evolve and be, and marvel at how everything has come to be.

So get out there and hug the earth with your eyes and heart.

Wooden Post

2009-04-19T23:01:00.002-04:00

So as not to splinter too far from the previous post...

On Kizhi Island, in Lake Onega, in Karelia, Russia is a work of wooden wonder, art & architecture.

With it's twenty-two Aspen wood spires, The Church of the Transfiguration was built in 1714,
and was only added to UNESCO's Heritage List in 1990.

The wooden church is a testament to man and Nature's capability, complexity, adaptability, beauty, harmony of form and function.

It defies every can't ever uttered.

It inspires, as only nature can.
Is there a better built environment to and for worship than with Nature's elements itself?

It stands as a symbol, without using a single nail.

The nature of wood, being wood, it has a penchant to disintegrate, so it has been a continual struggle for people to learn the ancient artisan's ways and replace the decaying wood before the structure [and people's] integrity is lost to time.

The most stunning image of this church I've seen was taken by Yann Arthus-Bertrand, in his book: Earth From Above. 366 Days. Sadly, it is neither of these photos, but I highly recommend Yann's photography. His are some of the most beautiful images, and locations to behold. Seek it. Find it.

If only to remind yourselves....to let your imagination soar, and look at the beauty that is all around.

Wooden Church & Easter Pysanky

2009-04-11T14:17:00.008-04:00

I noticed a gorgeous wooden church from the road today, so took a detour to have a better look and learn more.

It was St. Elias Toronto Ukrainian Catholic Church a waaaaaay out on rural Heritage Road.

And, it turned out they were selling pysanky Saturday 12pm - 3pm!

In Eastern Europe

Elijah was described as ascending into heaven in a fiery chariot, the Christian missionaries who converted Slavic tribes likely found him an ideal analogy for Perun, the supreme Slavic god of storms, thunder and lightning bolts. In many Slavic countries Elijah is known as Elijah the Thunderer (Ilija Gromovnik), who drives the heavens in a chariot and administers rain and snow.

And, in Eastern-European folklore, Elijah is portrayed in his "Thunderer" persona:

It was said; Jesus, the prophet Elijah, and St. George were going through Georgia. When they became tired and hungry and wanted to eat. They saw a Georgian shepherd and decided to ask him to feed them. First, Elijah went up to the shepherd and asked him for a sheep. After the shepherd asked his identity, Elijah said that he was the one who sent him rain to get him a good profit from farming. The shepherd became angry at him and told him that he was the one who also sent thunderstorms, which destroyed the farms of poor widows. (After Elijah, Jesus and St. George made attempts to get help and eventually succeeded).

As in many ancient cultures, Ukrainians worshipped a sun god (Dazhboh). The sun was important - it warmed the earth and thus was a source of all life.

Eggs decorated with nature symbols became an integral part of spring rituals, serving as benevolent talismans.

A pysanka Ukrainian: писанка, plural: pysanky) is a Ukrainian Easter egg, decorated using a wax-resist (batik) method.

The word comes from the verb pysaty, "to write", as the designs are not painted on, but written with beeswax.

Pysanky were thought to protect households from evil spirits, catastrophe, lightning and fires.

The Hutsuls––Ukrainians who live in the Carpathian Mountains of western Ukraine––believe that the fate of the world depends upon the pysanka. As long as the egg decorating custom continues, the world will exist. If, for any reason, this custom is abandoned, evil––in the shape of a horrible serpent who is forever chained to a cliff–– will overrun the world. Each year the serpent sends out his minions to see how many pysanky have been created. If the number is low the serpent's chains are loosened and he is free to wander the earth causing havoc and destruction. If, on the other hand, the number of pysanky has increased, the chains are tightened and good triumphs over evil for yet another year.

Many other eastern Europeans, including the Belarusians (пісанка), Bulgarians (писано яйце, pisano yaytse), Serbs (pisanica), Czechs (kraslice), Lithuanians (margutis), Poles (pisanka), Romanians (ouă vopsite or incondeiate), Slovaks (kraslica), and Slovenes (pisanica or pirh) decorate eggs for Easter.

Happy Easter

Traditional & Modern Ukrainian Pysanky

All a Twitter

2009-04-08T18:00:00.003-04:00

The streets of Chişinău Moldova were quiet Wednesday morning.

Protesters had left the scene of the rioting on Tuesday night, and police retook control of parliament.

But opposition leaders said protests would continue.

Vlad Filat, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, called the demonstrations
"a spontaneous action by protesting young people".

He said the opposition had tried to prevent excesses, like the attacks on parliament, but said:
"We are not scared of arrests or intimidation. The people do not want to live like this and want
to live free and without fear."

Word of the demonstrations was spread by text message, via the internet, and on social networking tools.

"We sent messages on Twitter but didn't expect 15,000 people to join in. At the most we expected 1,000," Oleg Brega, of the activist group Hyde Park told the Associated Press news agency.

In Moldova's general election on April 5, 2009 the Communist Party won 50% of the votes, followed by the Liberal Party with 13% of the votes and the Liberal Democratic Party with 12%. The opposition leaders have protested against the outcome calling it fraudulent and demanded a repeated election.

A report by OSCE said Sunday's vote was "generally free and fair".

However, one member of the OSCE observation team questioned that conclusion: Baroness Emma Nicholson said that she and a number of other team members feel that there had been some manipulation, but they were unable to find any proof.

But opposition leaders organized a protest demonstration on April 6 and 7, 2009, with thousands of young protesters in Chişinău, accusing the Communist government of electoral fraud.

The demonstration spun out of control and turned into a riot when a crowd attacked the parliament building and broke into the presidential offices, looting and setting them on fire.

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE REPUBLIC OF MOLODVA
Adopted on the 29 th of July 1994

“The State of the Republic of Moldova
(1) The Republic of Moldova is a sovereign, independent, unitary and indivisible state.
(2) The form of government of the State is the republic.
(3) Governed by the rule of law, the Republic of Moldova is a democratic State…”

After 188 years of ink...

2009-04-01T10:30:00.002-04:00

The Guardian Switches to Twitter (2009)

The Guardian announced it would become "the first newspaper in the world to be published exclusively via Twitter, the sensationally popular social networking service that has transformed online communication," thus rendering its printing presses obsolete. It also revealed an ongoing project to rewrite its entire news archive in the form of "tweets" (Twitter's text messages that are limited to 140 characters each).

Twitter switch for Guardian, after 188 years of ink

• Newspaper to be available only on messaging service
• Experts say any story can be told in 140 characters

Consolidating its position at the cutting edge of new media technology, the Guardian today announces that it will become the first newspaper in the world to be published exclusively via Twitter, the sensationally popular social networking service that has transformed online communication.

The move, described as "epochal" by media commentators, will see all Guardian content tailored to fit the format of Twitter's brief text messages, known as "tweets", which are limited to 140 characters each. Boosted by the involvement of celebrity "twitterers", such as Madonna, Britney Spears and Stephen Fry, Twitter's profile has surged in recent months, attracting more than 5m users who send, read and reply to tweets via the web or their mobile phones.

As a Twitter-only publication, the Guardian will be able to harness the unprecedented newsgathering power of the service, demonstrated recently when a passenger on a plane that crashed outside Denver was able to send real-time updates on the story as it developed, as did those witnessing an emergency landing on New York's Hudson River. It has also radically democratised news publishing, enabling anyone with an internet connection to tell the world when they are feeling sad, or thinking about having a cup of tea.

"[Celebrated Guardian editor] CP Scott would have warmly endorsed this - his well-known observation 'Comment is free but facts are sacred' is only 36 characters long," a spokesman said in a tweet that was itself only 135 characters long.

A mammoth project is also under way to rewrite the whole of the newspaper's archive, stretching back to 1821, in the form of tweets. Major stories already completed include "1832 Reform Act gives voting rights to one in five adult males yay!!!"; "OMG Hitler invades Poland, allies declare war see tinyurl.com/b5x6e for more"; and "JFK assassin8d @ Dallas, def. heard second gunshot from grassy knoll WTF?"

Sceptics have expressed concerns that 140 characters may be insufficient to capture the full breadth of meaningful human activity, but social media experts say the spread of Twitter encourages brevity, and that it ought to be possible to convey the gist of any message in a tweet.

For example, Martin Luther King's legendary 1963 speech on the steps of the Lincoln memorial appears in the Guardian's Twitterised archive as "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by", eliminating the waffle and bluster of the original.

At a time of unprecedented challenge for all print media, many publications have rushed to embrace social networking technologies. Most now offer Twitter feeds of major breaking news headlines, while the Daily Mail recently pioneered an iPhone application providing users with a one-click facility for reporting suspicious behaviour by migrants or gays. "In the new media environment, readers want short and punchy coverage, while the interactive possibilities of Twitter promise to transform the online media guru Jeff Jarvis said in a tweet yesterday, before reaching his 140-character limit, which includes spaces. According to subsequent reports, he is thinking about going to the theatre tonight, but it is raining :(.

A unique collaboration between The Guardian and Twitter will also see the launch of Gutter, an experimental service designed to filter noteworthy liberal opinion from the cacophony of Twitter updates. Gutter members will be able to use the service to comment on liberal blogs around the web via a new tool, specially developed with the blogging platform WordPress, entitled GutterPress.

Currently, 17.8% of all Twitter traffic in the United Kingdom consists of status updates from Stephen Fry, whose reliably jolly tone, whether trapped in a lift or eating a scrumptious tart, has won him thousands of fans. A further 11% is made up of his 363,000 followers replying "@stephenfry LOL!", "@stephenfry EXACTLY the same thing happened to me", and "@stephenfry Meanwhile, I am making myself an omelette! Delicious!"

According to unconfirmed rumours, Jim Buckmaster, the chief executive of Craigslist, will next month announce plans for a new system of telepathy-based social networking that is expected to render Twitter obsolete within weeks.

April Fool.

The Power At Your Fingertips

2009-03-27T20:55:00.003-04:00

There is an electrical election tomorrow, Saturday March 28th, and the ballot box is right in your home, and right at your fingertips.

1,429 cities and towns in over 80 countries will flip the switch this year, and cast their votes.

Stand tall along side some of the most recognizable monuments across the globe like the Sydney Opera House, The Golden Gate Bridge, New York's Empire State Building, and Toronto's CN Tower who will all be participating.

Earth Hour started in Sydney, Australia in 2007 when 2.2 million people agreed to turn off their lights for one hour.

Earth Hour apparently spread at the speed of light last year and went global with approximately 50 million people turning off their lights around the world.

Earth hour's goal this year is to see, by way of not seeing, 1 Billion people make their silent statements from the comfort of their intimately cosy homes.

For the first time in history, our silent personal action will be counted as a vote.

And the number of 'voters' (even if your not 18, here's your opportunity to vote, so flick those switches off)
will be presented to the UN Global Climate Change Conference being held in Copenhagen this December.

This very conference will determine official international government actions to address climate change and global warming

which will replace the Kyoto Protocol.

If you've ever wanted to "do" anything about that which you always felt was way beyond anything you could do to effect any change....don't tell me flicking every light switch off, that is in your house, is beyond your capacity.

If so, then the world really is in trouble, and so are you, should we call someone to help you? Contact us by morse code using your light switch....oh wait, I see the problem there...ah well...I guess it's lights out for you.

I think I would rather be left in the dark than learn how extensive our complacency really is.

But I will certainly wait to be enlightened about how many people stopped and thought, and cared enough to give a damn about this gorgeous, this singularly unique, this wondrously enchanting planet we have the privilege of living on.

Plus, we need to practise for when no one can afford fuel or energy, heat or light....we need to get over our fear of the dark, and let go of our electric security blanket, at least as long as a rinse cycle would take.

One hour, a year at a time.

We can do it.

We have to!

Evidently Governments around the world won't take active measures of doing anything vital UNTIL a lot of us make a silent and peaceful statement, so let's not let conveniently unconscionable forgetfulness and laziness be the death of democracy, along with every living species, and ourselves, and our children's-children's life, livelihood and future.

Cut and paste this and have a listen, and stop and think.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd1BsNvEXqo

or hit www.earthhour.org

What is more important, than the earth that enables us to do it?

Stop The Silence Canada

2009-03-23T13:18:00.007-04:00

Canada's freedom of speech is currently hanging in the Harper-built-gallows as we speak....

so to speak.

ahhh....to be able to speak soto

...freely.

Dundee born, George Galloway, 5 time elected Liberal MP from Scotland, who was, yes yes yes, admittedly expelled from Parliament in 2003 for articulating his views on the illegal war that was about to be embarked upon by Bush and Blair as those two were hopping and skipping merrily, headlong, arm-and-arm together into an illegal and insane war and occupation of undeniable, blatant and ridiculous proportions.

George Galloway is anti-war. ....and not an angel, but this is about nothing other than

freedom of speech. (and the Scots have a thing about freedom)

But, being Scottish, and a wee bitty over the top, he takes staunch stands on silly little things like the insanity that was the war in Iraq and Afghanistan...and generally feels compelled to champion any underdogs causes, he speaks to & for those who are set up to lose their lives and livelihoods, he's for the humanity that tends to get caught in the unfair cross hairs of otherwise unbalanced powers, and renown International....

....bullies.

Harper is anti-freedom of speech.

But, being an eyelash fluttering admirer of George Bush....and being such a fuddy duddy wanna-be bully himself, Harper and his boy wonder, Jason Kenney Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, have been 'advised' by a very defensive Jewish Defence League, to not let George Galloway step foot in Canada because he has allegedly financially helped Arab under dogs who have been on the receiving end of Israeli offensives.

Why is no one questioning how such offensives are even afforded and funded?

It's like a kid with a shiny new knife crying because someone might have tossed his already beaten up, bleeding worrying victim a rock. Can't ever have a fight when both sides are actually armed now can we?

That is so not fair.

Thus, Harper and boy wonder are holding potential truths hostage, thereby sending Canada digressing so far back into the dark ages, we can't see our ground-scraping-knuckles in front of our half opened eyes, let alone say or type out a few words on the subject.

By not letting George Galloway the anti-war MP (who currently serves on dissertation committees at the University of Toronto and the University of Ottawa) into our once, strong-and-free-country, to honour his scheduled four-city Canadian tour of speaking engagements that were to begin in Toronto March 30, March 31 in Mississauga,
April 1 in Montreal, and in Ottawa on April 2, freedom of speech, and the expression of ideas and the prevention of open discussion is more of an affront than what the guy might actually say. But now we'll never know that will we?

Tell you what...what's say we let the guy speak and hear first-knuckle-scraping-hand what he has to say, and see if and how and where he offends, and then address the matter, openly, diplomatically, and publicly.

Let the man commit a mistake first (if he's even going to) it's what we let our criminals do everyday, why should he get special treatment?

This freedom of thought prevention thing has a bit of a serious connotation to it don't you think?

No oh wait...you're not supposed to be doing that. Thinking is dangerous, and evidently liable!

But if you're feeling particularly dangerous ask yourself this....

Since when is anti war something to be smothered, suffocated and silenced in Canada?

Since when does the views and opinions of one group, outweigh all other opinion from even being heard?

And just when exactly did Canada get the brain by-pass surgery?!?!

What happened to critical thinking and open debates? Freedom? hellooo...it's in the dictionary, must freedom only exist there?

How on earrrrrrth is this suffocating blanket of silence GOOD for anyone, or any country anywhere, I ask you?

How insecure must a person / un-primed minister / group BE to be so a-feared of anyone saying anything
they don't wanna hear? Are they so flimsy and cannot survive without pulverizing that which they cannot win in an intelligent debate?

...or are these questions not allowed to be debated or discussed publicly lest a blanket gets thrown over our heads and we get whisked away never to be heard or seen again?

Hoodwinking. How archaic can you get?!

Dark ages indeed.

It's times like these, the argument for evolution really has a hard time standing upright doesn't it?

Equality Twice A Year

2009-03-20T11:44:00.001-04:00

March 20th 11:44 am is the precise moment,
the earth's equinox occurs.

Where day and night are equal to one another...
and there is equality whether people want it or not.

When Spring arrives and we crash to our knees
for having survived yet another winter

...or is it just me who feels this way?

Some facts

* World Storytelling Day is a global celebration of the art of oral storytelling,
celebrated every year on the spring equinox in the northern hemisphere,
the first day of autumn equinox in the southern.

* World Citizen Day occurs on the March equinox.

* Earth Day was initially celebrated on March 21, 1970,
on the equinox day. But was likely thought to be too pagan.
So it is now celebrated in various countries on April 22.

People in the Americas and Asia are accustomed to expecting the equinoxes to occur on March 21,
which did, in fact, occur quite frequently in the 20th century and will occur occasionally in the 21st century,
but due to some high precision clock that tracks these things (which is at least four hours in advance of any clock
in the Americas and as much as twelve hours behind Asian clocks), there will be no spring equinox later than March 20 in the Americas in the 21st century.

sproing!

Read All About It !

2009-03-19T18:00:00.005-04:00

That sequence of silence this month was performance art on my part....

My silence was a representation of the-quiet-silencing-that-is-slowly-creeping-over-the-world-like-a-thick-fog.

As newspapers run their last editions, and as television media companies cauterize their costs which, more often than not, are found in the way of eliminating employees and shedding their assets like a snake skin....leaving husks, reducing reporters and leaving what few journalists left, with less forums in which to articulate the silent strep throat scream that is spreading faster than-said-virus in every city, country and industry around the world.

The poetic injustice of only being able to print and report THAT they are having to shut down their century old institutions, but nothing of the aftermath, the human fallout, the implications, ramifications, result or consequences closing and boarding up physical and proverbial doors have, IS the ignorance and darkness we'll be left sitting in as more cities lose their local news papers, radio and tv stations, until there are fewer windows to let in the light of day and clarity of integral reporting and information, which the eyes, ears and minds of millions will forever need (if they are sentient). That being, objective, insightful, independent, well researched, intelligent critical thinking and information they can trust and rely on.

not stuff like you find in blogs like this for gawds sake...but the real McCoy.

Imagine what life would be like if we didn't have independent, unembedded information that miraculously made its way to our eyes, ears and mind?

We'd be dumber than a stump by twelve noon.

But we'd never know it.

It's that not-knowing how much we were never-informed-of that will be the death of us.

That's like not knowing our history....the worlds history....or science....biology....physics.....
the environment...evolution....cosmology....philosophy....ethics and morality....

Don't ask me HOW it's like these things, only THAT it is as fundamentally essential as all of these things....

...such knowledge is vital to our well rounded personal comprehension and collective growth.

Last month, Colorado's Rocky Mountain News published their final issue, 55 days before it could turn 150 years old leaving the city with one last remaining paper, The Denver Post.

In other news - In 1863 The Settle Post Intelligencer printed it's first newspaper issue, and on March 16th 2009 printed its last newsprint edition.

It now only exists online existentially.

France, despite that French penchant for striking every 2 minutes, have suavely stepped up to the print industry's current situation, by saying the government has a duty, a responsibility to ensure there is future in the print industry in a speech to industry leaders, President Nicolas Sarkozy said it was legitimate for the state to consider the print media's economic situation."It is indeed its responsibility ... to make sure an independent, free and pluralistic press exists,"he said.

In measures that took effect last month, the state increased its annual support for newspaper and magazine deliveries to euro 70 million ($90 million) from euro 8 million last year, and spend euro 20 million more a year for its advertisements in print publications. The state will also defer some fees the publications face.
The initiative is designed to help the sector over three years "to modernize and invest in the print media sector in exchange for important structural reforms," he said. The measures he announced recently came from recommendations that were printed in a three-month study into the industry's health that was released in Jan. 2009. The study also recommends that newspapers restructure their finances and that journalists be better trained for multiple forms of media, including online.

"None of the proposed measures ... will be useful in the end if the profession doesn't meet its challenges," he said. "The industry has a future to reinvent...."

What-Fi-Sees is - every person, industry and country will find it is time to reinvent, re-envision & re-present themselves.

In a word: evolve

...that tricky little thing that has plagued people for eons heaped upon eons
but there it is, as has it always been, it's our only way forward...cause there ain't no goin back!

I look forward to reading about it when it happens.

Iraq's National Museum Reopens

2009-02-23T19:20:00.005-05:00

Iraq reopened it's National Museum today after being ransacked
by a US led invasion in 2003 under the command of George W Bush.

50,000 artifacts of antiquity disappeared in one of the worlds worst,
and concerted cases of erasing 7000 years of human history.

And it was done in 48 hours of unparalleled 'looting'.

Only 15,000 artifacts have been returned.

Archaeologically rich topsoil of Mesopotamia was used to fill sandbags as well.

~~~~~~~~

For everyone and everything that has survived dark times....

It falls to us to prevent tyrants from destroying our human history.

History is everyone's story. Every heritage is woven into our human history.

At what point will we evolve to the point of preventing history from repeating itself?

More Scat

2009-02-20T20:06:00.006-05:00

1 year ago I began leaving, some little and some lengthy, deposits for passerby's to stare at, as they strolled and scrolled around the web.

I recall promising to be regular...but have experienced some....lulls.

I find it strange to see that one year ago blogging seemed to help me get through the winter, whereas silence - peace and quiet is what has been required to get through this winter.

But it is my hope that I continue to leave the odd and unexpected steaming little meadow muffin for you.

Space Scat

2009-02-12T09:41:00.005-05:00

Had to share this image and info from the BBC today.

So....an American and a Russian satellite collided over Siberia sending space debris everywhere.

But as the BBC also pointed out, there are approximately 17,000 man-made objects above 10cm in size that orbit Earth - and the number is constantly increasing. This in turn raises the risk of collisions between objects.

Nevertheless, experts say the incident was extremely unusual. The vastness of space means the probability of two spacecraft colliding is very low indeed.

But there are still major capability gaps in current systems set up for this task.

Intact satellites share Earth's orbit with everything from spent rocket stages, spacecraft wreckage to stuff as small as paint flakes and dust.

And that's just in the first 51 years of flinging things into space.

Sweet lord what a messy, self serving species we evidently are.

GUNG HAY FAT CHOY!

2009-01-26T23:03:00.004-05:00

Welcome to the year of the Ox.....
(... is it just me that see a BIG hug and little kiss when I see the word Ox? ; )

Eitherway, whats say we just welcome the year we may hug and kiss an Ox how does that sound?

The Chinese Lunar New Year marks the end of winter and the possibility of there being a spring despite all bitter cold temperatures these day!

And what better way to ring in the Chinese New Year than with a solar eclipse that could be seen in
parts of the African continent, a wee bit of India, South East Asia, and a wee bit of Australia.

The first Lunar eclipse of the year will occur on February 9th. The eastern parts of Canada and the United States, will miss the eclipse because it begins after moonset. But people in the western parts of Canada and the USA will have the best views with moonset occurring sometime after the mid-eclipse. To catch the entire eclipse, one must be in places such as Alaska, Australia, eastern Asia, Hawaii or New Zealand.

But I get ahead of myself....

Have a prosperous and healthy New Year everyone!

Caledonia's Bard

2009-01-25T14:34:00.009-05:00

The world's poet.

'k, if not the world's poet, then he was the Bruce Springsteen or the Bob Seger of the working mans rhyme and life, the Bob Marley of melody, love and music, the Bob Dylan of civil disobedience, humanitarian, libertarian, equalitarian and freewill living.

Robert Burns was born 250 years ago on January 25th 1759 in a wee Ayrshire single room cottage that housed hens, livestock, a dirt floor, and thatched roof.

The cottage stands to this day, though it is better maintained than it would've been in his own day.

He was dirt poor in material life, but rich beyond riches internally, despite serious strife.

Burns wrote and spoke of and for the working man, and wrote using the everyday truncated vernacular of the country chouchter (the hard working farmer) [pronounced chooook'ter], and spoke of every universal plight, sight, feeling, sensation, lament, love, life or fright....but he did so in a truly unique and remarkable way - it was from one of the most unfathomably deep hearts to have beat in a human body.

His passion for life, his love, his humanity, his compassion, his love of laughter and joy for everything that simply is or was, was a different ken [knowing] altogether. One that isn't long for this life, but lives on for centuries for having honoured his innate love and talent, however impractical, in a pragmatic world that is fixed on collecting rent money, and working people to premature deaths, as was his own fathers fate who died at 24yrs of age.

Robert Burns died when he was 37 without a shilling to his name - literally.
Nevertheless, he was recognized as the Bard throughout Caledonia, and beyond.
He was granted the largest funeral in the history of Scotland at that time.

So, although he died utterly penniless, he was loved and respected by countless people.

Scotland itself is flinging open the doors throughout 2009 and inviting all ex-pats to return to honour Burns' life
on his 250ieth anniversary.

So says I....

raise yer snifter glass and wee dram,
and say Slange Va to the man.

tho' you be gone, yer words live oan
and will move emb'dy
wi'' heart enough to read them.

Slange va! Robert Burns

Cheers wee man, cheers.

Painting of Tam O' Shanter
by: Alexander Grant - my grandfather

Inauguration For All

2009-01-20T23:30:00.006-05:00

History was needing today to happen.

In Memoriam [Ring out, wild bells]

2009-01-01T10:51:00.002-05:00

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring fuller minstrel music in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the New Year that is to be.

Lord Alfred Tennyson

The Passing of The Year

2008-12-31T23:47:00.000-05:00

My glass is filled, my pipe is lit,
My den is all a cosy glow;
And snug before the fire I sit,
And wait to feel the old year go.
I dedicate to solemn thought
Amid my too-unthinking days,
This sober moment, sadly fraught
With much of blame, with little praise.

Old Year! upon the Stage of Time
You stand to bow your last adieu;
A moment, and the prompter's chime
Will ring the curtain down on you.
Your mien is sad, your step is slow;
You falter as a Sage in pain;
Yet turn, Old Year, before you go,
And face your audience again.

That sphinx-like face, remote, austere,
Let us all read, whate'er the cost:
O Maiden! why that bitter tear?
Is it for dear one you have lost?
Is it for fond illusion gone?
For trusted lover proved untrue?
O sweet girl-face, so sad, so wan
What hath the Old Year meant to you?

And you, O neighbour on my right
So sleek, so prosperously clad!
What see you in that aged wight
That makes your smile so gay and glad?
What opportunity unmissed?
What golden gain, what pride of place?
What splendid hope? O Optimist!
What read you in that withered face?

And You, deep shrinking in the gloom,
What find you in that filmy gaze?
What menace of a tragic doom?
What dark, condemning yesterdays?
What urge to crime, what evil done?
What cold, confronting shape of fear?
O haggard, haunted, hidden One
What see you in the dying year?

And so from face to face I flit,
The countless eyes that stare and stare;
Some are with approbation lit,
And some are shadowed with despair.
Some show a smile and some a frown;
Some joy and hope, some pain and woe:
Enough! Oh, ring the curtain down!
Old weary year! it's time to go.

My pipe is out, my glass is dry;
My fire is almost ashes too;
But once again, before you go,
And I prepare to meet the New:
Old Year! a parting word that's true,
For we've been comrades, you and I --
I thank God for each day of you;
There! bless you now! Old Year, good-bye!

Robert Service

Enter: The Reductionist Movement

2008-12-07T22:53:00.006-05:00

Circa: now.

It is said, when populations of mice and rats form rapidly, the hungry and stressed survivors tend to kill and devour the weaker.

In the case of Lions; When new adult lions take over a pride, they often kill the young and thus eliminate the chance of any rivalry against offspring he later fathers. Successful males that takeover a pride have about 2 years before another younger, stronger coalition replace them.

One of the main reasons for adults killing competitors is due to males taking over leadership of a group.

All of these mechanisms may seem cruel, but many of the strategies have a logical basis, as they are geared towards survival of animal [read: political] groups.

Danton, celebrated/hated/loved French revolutionary leader, himself executed after coming to power, said; "The revolution...devours its own children." Danton as a man “devoid of honor, principles, and morality”, who only found excitement and a chance for distinction. He was merely "a statesman of materialism".

The old revolution, not unlike Goya's 'Saturn devours its own children', was a common saying during the French Revolution (1789) and that it was most famously uttered by Danton during his trial.

By the period Danton fell out of favor with the Committee of Public Safety and Robespierre, the revolution had become so suspicious of loyalism and foreign intervention, it set up kangaroo courts throughout the country to purge society of counterrevolutionaries.

In the end, the people of Paris took virtual control of the National Assembly and the committee of Public Safety.

Successive waves of radicalization, quickly made conservatives out of yesterday's radicals.

Are you seeing what I'm getting at?

Fortunately this is not a revolution.....good god, this is Canada!! We don't do anything here.

I'm just sayin'...

"...by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned"
Georges Jacques Danton October 26, 1759 – April 5, 1794

Golly GG

2008-12-04T13:31:00.008-05:00

Nice to see our Governor General takes dictation well....*....

This was a lose-lose-lose-lose-faeces situation.

None of this is democratic.

None of this attends to the larger questions, or fills the dire lack that Canada faces.

None of this was or is good, but will plague us henceforth.

None of this prepares, ready's or steady's Canada as we head into 2009.

And still no one, is capable of leading our country.

But our trembling little barking mad chihuahua PM has effectively defended [whizzed on] his dog house.

Coal for Christmas

2008-12-03T22:20:00.005-05:00

eeegahds.....

This slow motion face-down-kiddie-gravel-slide just gets worse.

There's gonna be scarring for sure.

Incredibly (though what else can one expect from non-credible individuals?!) Harper has managed to harpoon himself in the foot. Just like that NY Giants sports guy at a dance bar.

But you know what molocule I am most proud of about our country?

....we don't use bullets or car bombs.

In other countries, people get killed for trying to do this.

Fortunately, we're not as organized as the proverbial third world we belong to.

((yet))

Otherwise, we're not unlike any other destablablized, weak, power mongering, inept, unfit, irrational, incapable corrupt Government.

And, as the old saying goes, if you aren't wise.....you're otherwise.

We are, officially, other-than-wise at this point.

So much has already been put on record of this riveting turtle race, for anyone to peruse and view 24/7, I will not rehash it all without real hash here.

But will say this:

I believe there will be dirty coal doled out for Christmas this year.

...which we all know is a pollutant, and not a sustainable, or viable solution.

Oh Canada....*.....

2008-12-02T15:53:00.008-05:00

Oh Canada.....*.....

OK! So we've got a rugby scrum charging at, and wanting to bring down Stephen Harper in a humbling rumble.

I have no problem with that. Personally, I hope the microphones get in close so we can hear the crunching of broken bones.

What I do have a problem with is the crummy team doing the charging and scrumming.

So let's hypothetically say, Stephen Harper isn't able to suspend-and-or-dance-his-way-out-of-a-delay-by-immaturely-calling-a-
great-big-time-out, and let's just say the Governor General, who was always, up until now, purely a per functionary car hood ornament actually grants the scrum to take place.....and let's just say the potential coalition Gov't form, & win their vote-of-no confidence and take him down....assuming all that gets lined up in the crosshairs....

WTF?

Sadly. They are all the same politickers we've always had playing Pollyanna politics. No one is up for the job in this current economic global crises climate. Which is particularly clear in Canada when our adolescent-elects start doing that punch-each-other-in-the-back-seat-of-the-car-thing-that-is-Canada

...not bothering that no one is driving the thing that is Canada...and we're about to careen over a cliff, only this isn't as cathartically symbolic as that Thelma and Louise car careening scene.

So fast forward this twilight zone compendium of in incapabilities scenario to solutions.....

What's say, we alllllllllll agree, c'mon now, EVERYBODY, just hop on a plane (or just this one freakin' band wagon in your life), now's your chance, I say, if this infantile power struggle takes place, and we end up with Dion / Rae / Layton & Duceppe ((shudder))...I say we ALL - head in droves to Pearson Int'l Airport, from every corner of this once upon a time ( pre 1400's in my eyes ) great land of ours....and, let's all arrive at Pearson in our very own Thai-inspired anti-government "co-abolishing-political-cleanse' from our system.

THAT would trump the unprecedented. What's say WE wrest control of our country and write history together.

Especially given how unutterably Canadian we all are. Which has always been accept-and-complain tactics.

How 'bout we show some strength?

I think we, as a nation could take advantage of the upcoming busy flying holiday season down at Pearson Int'l Airport and just sit in to show our determination to have a capable, functioning Government at a time we kinda need one..we could oust each of our existing nonsensical, incapable governing 'leaders" if we stopped whining and did something.

Admittedly not something citizens want to do....but when you're stuck with these juvenile sandbox kiddies, c'mon man....some disciplinary action demands to be taken. WE are equally responsible....or else these little horrors actually grow old because (a) they were allowed to and (b) they forgot what the hell their post, position, duties and responsibilities were originally all about at one point (see waaay back in some history book for an example of a real leader, as none pops to mind as I type).

I think this is a great opportunity to step up and be as peaceful (however painfully-annoying) as the Thai population were in ousting their corrupt government. It works! ...not that we'll ever know that first hand.

In lieu of that, I say bring Casey our of retirement - that squeaky voiced, blonde little hand puppet from Mr. Dressup and stick him the seat of power (and Finnigan can be our new GG) until we find someone better. Casey may be our best Prime Minister we've ever had.

(or was Casey buried with Mr. Dressup? ...cremated you say?!?!)

AUGH!

See you at Pearson this holiday season people!

the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month ...

2008-11-11T11:11:00.002-05:00

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month ...

Excerpt from "Welcome to Flanders Fields - The Great Canadian Battle of the Great War : Ypres, 1915", by Daniel G. Dancocks, McClelland and Stewart (Toronto, Canada), 1988

Although he had been a doctor for years and had served in the South African War, it was impossible to get used to the suffering, the screams, and the blood here, and Major John McCrae had seen and heard enough in his dressing station to last him a lifetime. As a surgeon attached to the 1st Field Artillery Brigade, Major McCrae, who had joined the McGill faculty in 1900 after graduating from the University of Toronto, had spent seventeen days treating injured men -- Canadians, British, Indians, French, and Germans -- in the Ypres salient.

It had been an ordeal that he had hardly thought possible. McCrae later wrote of it1:

"I wish I could embody on paper some of the varied sensations of that seventeen days... Seventeen days of Hades! At the end of the first day if anyone had told us we had to spend seventeen days there, we would have folded our hands and said it could not have been done."

One death particularly affected McCrae. A young friend and former student, Lieut. Alexis Helmer of Ottawa, had been killed by a shell burst on 2 May. Lieutenant Helmer was buried later that day in the little cemetery outside McCrae's dressing station, and McCrae had performed the funeral ceremony in the absence of the chaplain.

The next day, sitting on the back of an ambulance parked near the dressing station beside the Canal de l'Yser, just a few hundred yards north of Ypres, McCrae vented his anguish by composing a poem. The major was no stranger to writing, having authored several medical texts besides dabbling in poetry. In the nearby cemetery, McCrae could see the wild poppies that sprang up in the ditches in that part of Europe, and he spent twenty minutes of precious rest time scribbling fifteen lines of verse in a notebook2.

A young soldier watched him write it. Cyril Allinson, a twenty-two year old sergeant-major, was delivering mail that day when he spotted McCrae. The major looked up as Allinson approached, then went on writing while the sergeant-major stood there quietly. "His face was very tired but calm as we wrote," Allinson recalled. "He looked around from time to time, his eyes straying to Helmer's grave." When McCrae finished five minutes later, he took his mail from Allinson and, without saying a word, handed his pad to the young NCO. Allinson was moved by what he read3:

" The poem was exactly an exact description of the scene in front of us both.
The word blow was not used in the first line though it was used later when the poem later appeared in Punch. But it was used in the second last line. He used the word blow in that line because the poppies actually were being blown that morning by a gentle east wind. It never occurred to me at that time that it would ever be published. It seemed to me just an exact description of the scene. "

In fact, it was very nearly not published. Dissatisfied with it, McCrae tossed the poem away, but a fellow officer -- either Lt.-Col. Edward Morrison, the former Ottawa newspaper editor who commanded the 1st Brigade of artillery4, or Lt.-Col. J.M. Elder5, depending on which source is consulted -- retrieved it and sent it to newspapers in England. "The Spectator," in London, rejected it, but "Punch" published it on 8 December 1915.

McCrae's "In Flanders Fields" remains to this day one of the most memorable war poems ever written. It is a lasting legacy of the terrible battle in the Ypres salient in the spring of 1915.

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, saw dawn, felt sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up your quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Doctor Major (later Lieutenant-Colonel) John McCrae of the 1st Field Artillery Brigade wrote this poem on May 3, 1915 after the battle at Ypres. The poem was later published in "Punch", December 8, 1915.

1 Bassett, John. page 44, "John McCrae." Markham:Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1984.
2 Public Archives Canada (Ottawa), now the National Archives of Canada, MG30 E209, biographical note by Gertrude Hickmore.
3 Mathieson, William D. page 264. "My Grandfather's War." Toronto:Macmillan, 1981.
4 Public Archives Canada (Ottawa), now the National Archives of Canada, MG30 EI33, volume 4, "Origin of `In Flanders Fields.'"
5 "Canadian Daily Record," 5/3/19.

Barack Obama

2008-11-05T19:16:00.000-05:00

Justice

Just yes.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

2008-10-21T19:51:00.002-04:00

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

"Nothing Gold Can Stay" is one of Robert Frost's most famous poems.

Written in 1923, this poem was published in The Yale Review in October of that year.

Some say the poem helped Frost to win a Pulitzer Prize.

Only eight lines long, this poem is still considered one of Frost's best.

I've been negligent in blogging....not that anyone cares, but this evening's walk brought with it
the first snow from the north, covering Autumns beauty with the dusk's twilight white.

It is the first snow of the new season. Packing snow under foot, and wet.

So we begin a new chapter in our collective reflectiveness...

World Meet Pat

2008-09-30T14:41:00.005-04:00

Pat Tanzola is one of the good guys, fighting the good fight,
running the good race, jumping the good hoops, spinning the good wheels,
twirlin' the good baton leading us on....

and he's winning!

To our dismay, today Pat leaves our pokey old icefloe to make a splash over at UofT.

All I can say is: Damn you Pat.

How could you leave us?

But also want to say thank you Pat, for being one of the nicest people I have had the pleasure of working with,
thank you for thinking my natterings were worthy of a weblog and got me all set up online...I feel I have failed you.
.

But congratulations on your new job, your new house, your upcoming nuptials, and on coping admirably while on that rediculous cleanse ...good lord*+;...at least I know you got real food in you today.

To read a few words from the man himself, may I direct you to the following link:
http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2006/09/30/arrivederci/

You will be missed Mr. Tanzola.

Take care and keep in touch.

Crossing the Blue

2008-09-02T22:22:00.005-04:00

A novel by Holly Jean Buck

I had some down time when I was without Internet, and a functional computer, but I was given this book...

If you ever have so much as a weekend...so much as an inkling, curiosity, fascination as to what we might all experience in the future...

the future...post-petrol

the future...post-American-empire

The future... post-infrastructure

I highly recommend you take the Kerouac-road-trip of the future now....while there's still infrastructure enough to send you a copy by post, and while you can enjoy a bevvy or two, to try and distance yourself from the impending, most likely, reality generations after us face...without such luxury.

All that said and done...

Crossing the Blue is one of the most beautifully written books, despite subject matter...I have encountered in a long time.

It is us.

It is the future.

It is both unreal and real...

There is hope, there is love and connection, there is life as it happens when one travels...

...but most of all...

there is a sense of realness.

The characters are as real as anyone you know.

The images of the future is as real as there is likely to be.

The situations continues to be as surreal-but-real, as life tends to be.

The reality is as honest as we see...

...despite the horrors that will bring.

Should you be inclined, and might be looking for an interesting 'read'

may I highly recommend that you pick up 'Crossing the Blue' by Holly Jean Buck

It is a wondrous insight into what can, might, and will most likely be.....our future.

for more information go to: http://www.lulu.com/content/3327469

Labourious Diem

2008-09-01T11:36:00.003-04:00

I think I'm back therefore I blog!

I have missed letting my nonsense ooz out in text form.

I have missed railing at what on earth I might come up with to blog.

I have missed all TECHNOLOGY and all the modern inconveniences they serve!

I have laboured, fussed and fumed and - as ever - discovered it is always the last thing one could imagine or think of that was causing the bain of my existence....I believe after much trouble, and shooting...dust bunnies had gnawed
through actual cables ....though I managed to get this montage of madness working, it remains riddled through and through with other ailments....but who cares about that?! I have typed-text at my finger tips once again!!

So much water under the bridge....so much life, and time has passed I cannot go back...

....so I will commence by going forth.

Welcome to September folks.

This is the slippery slope seasonal time that finds us deposited with a thump on the doorstep of Christmas before we even knew what has happened so be sure to drag your butt and dig in your heels to enjoy every single day as it needs to be enjoyed.

Slowly.

Peaceably.

...with grace.

Enjoy enjoy enjoy

Carpe diem

!#@*&%#

2008-08-26T15:15:00.001-04:00

Adding umbrage to my computer carnage, is my service provider not providing service.

Please stay tuned.

Management

Continued computer issues*+;.

2008-08-25T09:37:00.002-04:00

I am laptopless at the mo', but will try an old 486.

Thanking you for your patience.

Management

Everyday Thoughts

2008-08-21T20:55:00.005-04:00

Walking into Budapest's train station, and through the gate to my train that was already sitting patiently there to take me, without complaint, to Romania...I decided to walk along it's unrelenting length to have a look at it, and get my last walk in for the next sedentary 12 hours. When I finally decided to step aboard it's antiquity, I then found myself walking most of the length back again, along the narrow windowed corridor looking in, and for a compartment that I felt I would like to spend my journey in. Having found the least crowded compartment, containing one man, I stepped in and plunked my bag, and myself down. Once on the move, when asked for my ticket, my eyes literally bugged out when I saw THE very numbered compartment, and THE very numbered seat that I - on an oblivious whim - decided to plunk down in on, was the very compartment and seat assigned to me back in Toronto! I couldn't get my head around that could be the case for an entire mile.

I mention that because, that is, in essence, how I travel. Blindly, by feel. But the things you find are astonishing.
Somehow, I find myself precisely where I need, or am, supposed to be.

This intuiting nature baffles even me. But I love it.

The man sitting across from me is a mystery. We never spoke one word for the duration of his portion of the journey.

But from that man, sitting directly across from me, I could tell...
He looked older than he likely was.
He has known hard labour.
He has known a hard life.
He was likely going back to where he once belonged.
He was leaving either where he worked or where he tried to find work.
He himself was hard....but still so very deeply human.
He was not a broken man, just knows the brink.

From him the follow thought came crashing through to me.....though cliched it may be!

We have, in our grasp, for those with the capacity to stop and really take notice...

Our decisions of yesterday are what brought us here today.
Every brand new day brings with it - literally - a new start. A clean slate. A second chance. Another try.

A cliché, to be sure, but so true all the same.

Every day is a new opportunity for it - life - to be different, not the way it was or has been, or all we know or have been shown, but how it could, might still possibly, or ought to be.

It's always just up to us to 'make it so'.

But so few see or feel this, or brush off this tired and worn out cliche and never try their hand with that experiment, so every day goes wholly unused, unchanged and unnoticed.

Everyday brings us people and places we cannot have imagined or considered.
Everyday shows us something we were just about to forget altogether, or hadn't quite fully known before.
Everyday finds us either closer to, or further away from who we could / ought to be, or were.
Everyday is as individual, and as unique and as taken for granted, as every heartbeat we're allowed, and every breath we breathe.

That's is how much we don't realise we have throughout our journey whether it is just at the beginning of a brand new day, or long on the road in life.

With each person is a real, alive, deep, sentient, thinking, knowing, feeling. living, worrying, wishing, breathing just as yourself being that we may never fully discover. But exist is all does.

Stop and hone in and think and contemplate and consider, and let thoughts and feelings and noticings swirl around you more freely. All I suggest here is you let all that enter into you and your mind, your heart and your soul, and more of life will be yours to enjoy on your own journey, even if you're just going to work.

We came to a stop in Szolnok, Hungary. This was his stop. Many passengers left, fewer got on. But my silent travel companion stopped, after grabbing his luggage, turned and nodded his silent farewell to me, as he took his leave and stepped off.

This is what a lot of life is about.

Communication, comprehension and compassion in silence.

This is what transcends boundaries.

Orchid In The Weeds

2008-08-20T20:59:00.006-04:00

With a little help from a friend, I blog before you using a lovely laptop on loan !!

I vaguely recall mumbling something about striving for quality over quantity.

In all that time I had no means or method to type anything....
I discovered..quality time does not beget quality blog content.

So!

I would like to retract that striving for quality statement.

In looking waaaaaay waaaaaay up at that bar I had so oafishly set, the only thought that occurred to me was....

Perhaps I should strive for quality-within-whack-loads-of-quantity instead.

So that is what I propose to do.

It will be for you, dear reader, to find what you perceive as quality amidst the quantity I will blog. All the while, despite clear and evident failure to achieve such, I will nevertheless strive.

Failure to do even that, I will hope.

It's not about attaining anything....it's the act of caring.

Here's hoping we actually find an orchid [striving] thriving in the weeds.

Weird how I've suddenly got Joe Cocker lyrics of Try With A Little Help From My Friends etc. etc. running through my head now.

Is it in yours now too?!

so much for quality!

(orchids are quiet things)

Kaput computer

2008-08-11T16:35:00.003-04:00

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

Sadly and regrettably, my computer has officially gone kaput.

I have tried to coax it back to its general irritating and aggravating self - but it refuses to budge or oblige.

Whosoever sits at home devising and unleashing brand spanking new computer viruses for fun....

your parents would not be proud.

Compounding my computer kaput-ed-ness...it comes at a time I cannot afford to ~do~ anything about it.

The reason I mention of my computer calamities is it is directly affecting my access to blog.

I can only do so from an outside computer...but once I'm outside, blogging is the last thing on my mind.

So instead of my promissory note to be regular....I will instead strive for quality over quantity.

This is neither quality or quantity.

I said I will strive.

Patience and thank you.

Management

Toronto Neighbourhood Evacuated Sunday

2008-08-11T10:14:00.002-04:00

Toronto police ordered the evacuation of neighbourhoods within 1.6 kilometres of Sunrise Propane.

Thousands of people living between Keele Street, Dufferin Street, Sheppard Street and Wilson Avenue were ordered to leave their homes and are not expected to be allowed to return for approx. 72 hours.

The place is still not secured, at the time of this post, 15 hours after the occurrence.

Census figures for the area suggest that more than 12,000 people live in the affected zone.

Many of the evacuees are being housed at York University, where they can sleep in beds set up in the school gymnasium. The Red Cross is supplying food and water to evacuees, while the Humane Society is providing food and water to pets.

The first explosion, which could be heard seven kilometres away, shook nearby homes and buildings, waking residents at 3:50 AM. Hundreds of smaller explosions would go off at the rate of four every 10 seconds.

A veteran firefighter of 25 years of service, died trying to extinguish a massive fire at a propane depot A no-fly zone was ordered over the area, as emergency workers feared that propane tankers parked on the site might spark further explosions, although those fears were diminishing by about 11:30 a.m. ET.

Natural gas and hydro were shut off to the area as a precaution.

Ignition Temperature in Air for propane to combust - 920-1020°F
Maximum Flame Temperature 3595°F

People reported either seeing, hearing or feeling the explosions from Niagara-On-The-Lake, Aurora, and Mississauga.

Astonishing so few were hurt.

Lovely Karlovy Vary

2008-08-08T09:49:00.006-04:00

Karlovy Vary is a spa town situated in western Bohemia of the Czech Republic.

In Germany it is known as Karlsbad. In other parts it is known as Carlsbad.

Karlovy Vary was named after the King of Bohemia and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, who founded the city in 1370.

It is historically famous for its hot springs, of which there are 13 main springs, and about 300 smaller springs, along with the warm-water Teplá River.

On August 14th, 1370 - Charles IV, gave Karlovy Vary city privileges to the place that subsequently was named after him, according to legend after he had acclaimed the healing power of the hot springs. However, earlier settlements could be found in the outskirts of today's city.

I took this photo while there in July.

638 years later it is still a cool hot spot to see.

Vienna National Library

2008-08-05T15:54:00.004-04:00

I took this photo in Vienna's National Library because it reminded me of Carl Spitzweg's 'The Book Worm'

Carl Spitzweg, who painted The Bookworm in 1850 (similar to the photo only from a different angle and far better lighting ; ) was a German romanticist painter and poet, and is considered to be one of the most important representatives of the Biedermeier era.

Trained as a Pharmacist. He attained his qualification from the University of Munich, but while recovering from an illness he also took up painting.

Spitzweg was self-taught as an artist.

In Central Europe, Biedermeier refers to work in the fields of literature, music, the visual arts and interior design in the period between the years 1815 (Vienna Congress), the end of the Napoleonic Wars, and 1848, the year of the European Revolutions and contrasts with the Romantic era which preceded it.

Biedermeier can be identified with two trends in early nineteenth-century German history.

The first trend is growing urbanization and industrialization leading to a new urban middle class, and with it a new kind of audience. The early Lieder of Schubert, which could be performed at the piano without substantial musical training, illustrate the broadened reach of art in this period. Further, Biedermeier writers were themselves mainly middle-class, as opposed to the Romantics, who were mainly drawn from the nobility.

The second trend is the growing political oppression following the end of the Napoleonic Wars prompting people to concentrate on the domestic and (at least in public) the non-political. Due to the strict publication rules and censorship, writers primarily concerned themselves with non-political subjects, like historical fiction and country life. Political discussion was usually confined to the home, in the presence of close friends.

Carl Spitzweg's 1850 'The Book Worm'

Experiencing Techical Difficulties

2008-08-04T21:41:00.003-04:00

Please Stand by

Do not adjust your set

My computer got nailed with a virus that is frying my computer, along with my brain and won't let me pretty much touch a button or key without freezing and ceasing and threatening to die right in my hands, so I am rendered unable to upload what I had all lined up (in my mind), and as I didn't expect this to occur...I don't have the time or energy to pull a bunny out of a hat for you right now...so please stay tuned, and I'll try again from another computer tomorrow.

With apologies
Management

My Turn To Return

2008-08-03T19:10:00.003-04:00

6 countries, 2 time zones, crossed the continental divide, 4 airports, 2 boats, 5 buses, 2 trains, 4 taxi's and 5000 miles later....

I have returned from one wholly remarkable journey.

Of which I won't bore you with, but will say this...

Had I known the journey, and all the people I was to have the privilege of meeting...
Had I known all the conversations that were in store to be had...
Had I known all the goodness that lay ahead of me, and for me, to simply step into and know directly...
Had I known so much was going to be shared, and given to me...
Had I known what was supposed to be just-a-holiday was going to be filled with so many good souls...

Had I known any of this prior to setting out, it is my belief, any such 'knowing' would have prevented the purity each moment contained within it.

Every encounter, individual, chance meeting, unplanned lunch and dinner companion, every conversation that was had with someone every day, every time, in every city, town, rest stop, train station and compartment, sidewalk cafe, airport and in flight, every hike, park bench, taxi, historic site, shop and restaurant along the way was real in every sense of the word.

Somehow, for some reason, only the real was being shared and conveyed.

The joy and honour for me, was in experiencing how quick people were to open up, and be honest and caring and interested and at the ready to speak of real things on a deep level and connect.

Had I known my journey was going to be so warm, inviting and inclusive, so fascinating and awe inspiring, so compassionate and loving...

Had I known or imagined any of this before setting out, I doubt I would have felt all that I was shown, in quite the same way.

When setting out anywhere, be it your job or a journey, intuit everything around you, and have faith people are more like you - than not. Then reach into it directly.

What you will find is worth more than anything imaginably tangible...you will find the intangible wealth of a soul.

I return from a remarkable journey - renewed and filled with love and remembering.

But promise not to yak on about it. Just marking my return with a blog entry.

to Restaurace Lamberty's - perfect introduction to Prague!
to Hart with the biggest and best heart of them all - you and Carol Ann are a joy (I'm open to adoption ; )
to T.L. Tsim - a drizzeling conversation I won't soon forget either
to Candice and Bob - say hello to Wade for me ; )
to Andy....I will listen and report back...thank you for listening to me yammer on! You have the patience of a saint!
to Petrix, be kind to Lori !!
to Alex...no more motorcycle accidents!
to Josef & my fellow plum Czech hiking train journey friends...please make your website with an English option button
(I have no access to it from here as it currently is)
to Lucian...it falls to you to mark the events - to right the wrongs and write it right.
to Daniela...I kissed your land and sky for you...it was so beautiful to wake up each day, it was natural to do so.
to Antar, stay focused and fun, and keep plodding on and you too could be working your butt off in Canada...it's the same everywhere.
to Reuben who once travelled with a water bottle bearing my name, thank you for that conversation and your kind written words.

to all others...thank you for your conversation, for crossing my path, and entering my heart and soul.

Hiatus Byeatus

2008-07-13T23:12:00.002-04:00

On holiday until August 1st.

Hope you tune back in for some steamin' fresh faeces.
(I hereby swear and promise not to accost any of you with travel stories)

tot ziens!

Henry David Thoreau Born July 12th 1817

2008-07-12T12:14:00.005-04:00

Thoreau's Cove, Walden Pond, Concord Massachusetts between 1900 - 1910

Henry David Thoreau

Writer, philosopher, and naturalist Henry David Thoreau was born on July 12, in Concord, Massachusetts.
Associated with the Concord-based literary movement called New England Transcendentalism, he embraced the Transcendentalist belief in the universality of creation and the primacy of personal insight and experience. Thoreau's advocacy of simple, principled living remains compelling, while his writings on the relationship between people and the environment helped define the nature essay.

After graduating from Harvard in 1837, Thoreau held a series of odd jobs. Encouraged by Concord neighbour and friend Ralph Waldo Emerson, he started publishing essays, poems, and reviews in the transcendentalist magazine The Dial.

His essay "Natural History of Massachusetts" (1842) revealed his talent for writing about nature.

From 1845 to 1847, Thoreau lived in a cabin on the edge of Walden Pond, a small glacial lake near Concord.

Guided by the maxim "Simplify, simplify," he strictly limited his expenditures, his possessions, and his contact with others. His goal: "To live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach."

"I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it…"
Henry David Thoreau,"Where I Lived, and What I Lived for" from Walden: or, Life in the Woods.

Walden: or, Life in the Woods chronicles his experiment in self-sufficiency. In a series of loosely-connected essays, Thoreau takes American individualism to new heights, while offering a biting critique of society's increasingly materialistic value system.

During his time at Walden, Thoreau spent a night in jail for refusing to pay his poll tax.

He withheld the tax to protest the existence of slavery and what he saw as an imperialistic war on Mexico. Released after a relative paid the tax, he wrote "Civeil Disobedience" (originally published as "Resistance to Civil Government") to explain why private conscience can constitute a higher law than civil authority. "Under a government which imprisons any unjustly," he argued, "the true place for a just man is also a prison." Thoreau continued to be a vocal and active opponent of slavery. In addition to aiding runaway slaves, in 1859 he staunchly and publicly defended abolitionist John Brown.

When his writing failed to win money or acclaim, he became a surveyor to support himself. As a result, Thoreau's later years increasingly were spent outdoors, observing and writing about nature. His seminal essay, "Succession of Forest Trees," describes the vital ecology of the woodlands, highlighting the role of birds and animals in seed dispersal. Republished posthumously in Excursions

, Thoreau's essay makes the forward-looking suggestion that forest management systems mirror existing woodland ecology.

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions," Thoreau reminds us, "perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."

Considered something of a failure by the small town merchants and farmers of Concord, Thoreau died at home on May 6, 1862. His place in American letters is secure, however, as many continue to find inspiration in his work and his example.

Bavaria attempt to cream Hitler on this day

2008-07-11T22:54:00.005-04:00

Photo: Berchtesgaden, in Bavaria

Hitler is paid a visit by his would-be assassin on this day in 1944.

Count Claus von Stauffenberg, a German army officer, transports a bomb to Adolf Hitler's headquarters in Berchtesgaden, in Bavaria, with the intention of assassinating the Fuhrer.
As the war started to turn against the Germans, and the atrocities being committed at Hitler's behest grew, a growing numbers of Germans-within the military and without-began conspiring to assassinate their leader. As the masses were unlikely to turn on the man in whose hands they had hitherto placed their lives and future, it was up to men close to Hitler, German officers, to dispatch him. Leadership of the plot fell to Claus von Stauffenberg, newly promoted to colonel and chief of staff to the commander of the army reserve, which gave him access to Hitler's headquarters at Berchtesgaden and Rastenburg.

Stauffenberg traveled to Berchtesgaden on July 3 and received at the hands of a fellow army officer, Major-General Helmuth Stieff, a bomb with a silent fuse that was small enough to be hidden in a briefcase.

On July 11, Stauffenberg was summoned to Berchtesgaden to report to Hitler on the current military situation. The plan was to use the bomb on July 15, but at the last minute, Hitler was called away to his headquarters at Rastenburg, in East Prussia.

Stauffenberg was asked to follow him there. On July 16, a meeting took place between Stauffenberg and Colonel Caesar von Hofacker, another conspirator, in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee. Hofacker informed Stauffenberg that German defenses had collapsed at Normandy, and the tide had turned against them in the West.

The assassination attempt was postponed until July 20, at Rastsenburg.

Anticipating the inevitable defeat and blaming the Fuher for the German reversals in Russia a team of top Nazi generals that included the famous Field Marshal Edwin Rommel conspired to kill Hitler. The plot codenamed as Operation Valkyrie meant to assassinate the Furher and, simultaneously, to seize the General Headquarters in Berlin.The plotters hoped that without Hitler they would be able to negotiate peace and avoid complete destruction of the German state. On July 20th 1944 Count Claus von Stauffenburg, a Colonel, planted a satchel carrying a bomb in a meeting room in an ill fated assassination attempt on Hitler at the dictator's Wolf's Lair retreat.

The bomb went off killing and wounding several people. Much to the plotter's dismay Adolf Hitler survived the blast getting away with just a few scratches. In a crackdown that immediately insued, an estimated 7,000 people were arrested and dozens were tortured and executed, among them one Field Marshal and 20 Generals. 49 Generals committed suicide to avoid execution. The families of the executed plotters also paid a heavy price for being close to those who dared try and kill Hitler.

July 10th Berne Convention

2008-07-10T22:52:00.004-04:00

Berne Convention signatory countries represented in blue

The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, usually known as the Berne Convention, is an international agreement about copyright, which was first adopted in Berne, Switzerland July 10th, 1886.

The Berne Convention was developed at the instigation of Victor Hugo as the Association Litteraire et Artistique Internationale. Thus it was influenced by the French "right of the author" (droit d'auteur), which contrasts with the Anglo-Saxon concept of "copyright" which only dealt with economic concerns.

Before the Berne Convention, national copyright laws usually only applied for works created within each country. Consequently, a work published in United Kingdom (UK) by a British national would be covered by copyright there, but could be copied and sold by anyone in France; likewise, a work published in France by a French national would be covered by copyright there, but could be copied and sold by anyone in the UK.
The Berne Convention followed in the footsteps of the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property 1883, which in the same way had created a framework for international integration of the other kinds of intellectual property: patents, trademarks and industrial designs.

Like the Paris Convention, the Berne Convention set up a bureau to handle administrative tasks. In 1893, these two small bureaus merged and became the United International Bureaux for the Protection of Intellectual Property (best known by its French acronym BIRPI), situated in Berne. In 1960, BIRPI moved to Geneva, to be closer to the United Nations and other international organizations in that city. In 1967 it became the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), and in 1974 became an organization within the United Nations.

Since almost all nations are members of the world Trade Organization, the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights requires non-members to accept almost all of the conditions of the Berne Convention.

As of April 2007, there are 163 countries that are parties to the Berne Convention.

The Berne Convention states that all works except photographic and cinematographic shall be copyrighted for at least 50 years after the author's death, but parties are free to provide longer terms, as the European Union did with the 1993 Directive on harmonising the term of copyright protection. For photography, the Berne Convention sets a minimum term of 25 years from the year the photograph was created, and for cinematography the minimum is 50 years after first showing, or 50 years after creation if it hasn't been shown within 50 years after the creation. Countries under the older revisions of the treaty may choose to provide their own protection terms, and certain types of works (such as phonorecords and motion pictures) may be provided shorter terms.

Argentina Celebrates it's 192nd year Independent of Spanish Rule

2008-07-09T21:49:00.004-04:00

The Independence of Argentina was declared on July 9th 1816 by the Congress of Tucuman.

One of the places that tourists visit the most is the North of Argentina.

This sector consists of the provinces of Santiago del Estero, Tucuman, Catamarca, Salta and Jujuy.Each one of them has its own geopraphical stamp with big contrasts: mountains, valleys and canyons, exuberant jungles, wild terrains and the astounding puna, that awes the visitor looking for an encounter with nature and authentic lands.

The Quebrada de Humahuaca, or Humahuaca canyon, is a treasure in Jujuy declared Patrimony of Humanity by UNESCO in 2003, in the Cultural Landscape category.

This is a culture that dates back more than ten thousand years, with different native ethnics that make up the ancestry of those who nowadays maintain the thousands of years old languages and customs.

The Quebrada de Humahuaca is 15 kms long, going from north to south along the Rio Grande basin, flanked by the vast puna to the west, and to the east, by exceptionally beautiful landscapes in which colors invade your senses amid this wonderful atmosphere of silence and changing tones, with a scattering of typical little villages with shy but warm hosts that offer services to their visitors.

Photo: Humahuaca Canyon

Paris Celebrated it's 2,000th Birthday in 1951

2008-07-08T22:54:00.008-04:00

July 8, 1951
Paris celebrates it's 2,000th birthday
On this day in 1951, Paris, the capital city of France, celebrates turning 2,000 years old. In fact, a few more candles would've technically been required on the birthday cake, as the City of Lights was most likely founded around 250 B.C.
The history of Paris can be traced back to a Gallic tribe known as the Parisii, who sometime around 250 B.C. settled an island (known today as Ile de la Cite) in the Seine River, which runs through present-day Paris. By 52 B.C., Julius Caesar and the Romans had taken over the area, which eventually became Christianized and known as Lutetia, Latin for "midwater dwelling." The settlement later spread to both the left and right banks of the Seine and the name Lutetia was replaced with "Paris." In 987 A.D., Paris became the capital of France. As the city grew, the Left Bank earned a reputation as the intellectual district while the Right Bank became known for business.
During the French Renaissance period, from the late 15th century to the early 17th century, Paris became a center of art, architecture and science. In the mid-1800s, Napoleon III hired civic planner Georges-Eugene Hausmann to modernize Paris. Hausmann's designs gave the city wide, tree-lined boulevards, large public parks, a new sewer system and other public works projects. The city continued to develop as an important hub for the arts and culture. In the 1860s, an artistic movement known as French Impression emerged, featuring the work of a group of Paris-based artists that included Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

Bohemian Rhapsody

2008-07-07T21:49:00.003-04:00

Gustav Mahler, Bohemian composer born on July 7th 1860 - 1911

Gustav Mahler was born into a German-speaking, Jewish family in Kalischt, Bohemia, then the Austrian Empire, today the Czech Republic, the second of fourteen children, of whom only six survived infancy. His parents soon moved to Jjilhava in German Iglau, Moravia, today the Czech Republic

In Mahler's day Vienna was one of the world’s biggest cities and the capital of a great empire in Central Europe. It was home to a lively artistic and intellectual scene. It was home to famous painters such as Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele.

Mahler knew many of these intellectuals and artists.

In 1897, Mahler, then thirty-seven, was offered the directorship of the Vienna Opera, the most prestigious musical position in the Austria Empire. This was an 'Imperial' post, and under Austro-Hungarian law, no such posts could be occupied by Jews. Mahler, who was never a devout or practising Jew, had, in preparation, converted to Roman Catholicism.

Mahler's own music aroused considerable opposition from music critics, who tended to hear his symphonies as 'potpourris' in which themes from "disparate" periods and traditions were indiscriminately mingled. Mahler's juxtaposition of material from both "high" and "low" cultures, as well as his mixing of different ethnic traditions, outraged conservative critics at a time when workers' mass organizations were growing rapidly, and clashes between Germans, Czechs, Hungarians and Jews in Austro-Hungary were creating anxiety and instability.

The final impetus for Mahler's departure from the Vienna Opera was a generous offer from the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

Having signed a contract to conduct the long-established New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Mahler and his family travelled to America. At this time, he completed his Das Lied con der Erde (The Song of the Earth), and his Symphony No. 9, which would be his last completed work. I

n February 1911, during a long and demanding concert season in New York, Mahler fell seriously ill with a streptococcal blood infection, and conducted his last concert in a fever (the programme included the world premiere of Ferruccio Busoni's (Berceuse élégiaque). Returning to Europe, he was taken to Paris, where a new serum had recently been developed. He did not respond, however, and was taken back to Vienna at his request. He died there from his infection on May 18th 1911 at the age of 50, leaving his Symphony No. 10 unfinished.
The real art of conducting consists in transitions.

"A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything". Gustav Mahler

Photo: Mahler conducting the Beethoven 9th

Historic Amnesia

2008-07-06T22:32:00.003-04:00

July 6th 1609 - Bohemia is granted Freedom of Religion.

Bohemia enjoyed religious freedom between 1436 and 1620, and became one of the most liberal countries of the Christian world during that period of time. In 1609, Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II who made Prague again the capital of the Empire at the time, himself a Roman Catholic, was moved by the Bohemian nobility to publish Maiestas Rudolphina, which confirmed the older Confessio Bohemica of 1575.

Freedom of Religion is the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance. It is generally recognized to also include the freedom to change religion or to not follow any religion. Freedom of religion is considered by many in many nations and people to be a fundamental human right.

In 1558 the Transylvanian Diet of Turda declared free practice of both the Catholic and Lutheran religions, but prohibited Calvanism. Ten years later, in 1568, the Diet extended the freedom to all religions, declaring that "It is not allowed to anybody to intimidate anybody with captivity or expelling for his religion". The Edict of Turda is considered by mostly Hungarian historians as the first legal guarantee of religious freedom in the Christian Europe.

The first full religious freedom law (which wasn't just a tolerance as in other countries) what had "act rank" created by Edict of Turda in Transylvania, and accepted by Hungarian Székely and saxon part of the diet.

July 6th 1939 - The Holocaust: The last remaining Jewish enterprises in Germany are closed.

July 6th 1942 - Frank, Anne(lies Marie) (1929–1945) Jewish diarist Anne Frank and her family take refuge from the Nazis by hiding in the "secret Annexe" attic above her father's office in an Amsterdam warehouse.

During the German occupation of Amsterdam in World War II, they and two other families remained in a sealed off room, protected by Dutch sympathizers 1942–1944, when betrayal resulted in their deportation and Anne's death in Belsen concentration camp. Her diary of her time in hiding was published in 1947. Previously suppressed portions of her diary were published in 1989. The house in which the family took refuge is preserved as a museum. Her diary has sold 20 million copies in more than 50 languages and has been made into a play and a film publicizing the fate of millions.

Today in Berlin

2008-07-05T23:12:00.000-04:00

A man has been arrested after tearing the head off a wax figure of Adolf Hitler at a newly opened branch of Madame Tussauds in Berlin.
The 41-year-old man was held after attacking the waxwork, only hours after the attraction opened on Saturday July 5th.
The inclusion of Hitler in the exhibition has aroused controversy in a country where Nazi symbols are banned.
But the exhibition's organisers said they could hardly depict German history without portraying Hitler.
They said the waxwork depicted Hitler in the hours before his suicide, a defeated figure slumped in his bunker as the Red Army reached Berlin.
The Fuhrer was positioned behind a table, which was supposed to prevent visitors posing with the statue - or damaging it.
Natalie Ruoss, of Madame Tussauds, said: "We did surveys while we were planning the exhibition on the street with Berliners and with tourists, and the result was quite clear that Hitler is one of the figures that they want to see.
"Seeing as we are portraying the history of Germany we could hardly have left him out... we want to show the reality."

The attacker was only the second visitor to enter the exhibition, according to one report.

"Erasing him from history is not going to bring the perished ones back, it's not going to heal the damage that he did, the crimes that he did. That would be counter-productive," he said.
The waxwork museum also includes other German historical figures like Otto von Bismarck, Karl Marx, Beethoven, Bach and Einstein.

Independence Day

2008-07-04T23:23:00.003-04:00

The Declaration of Arbroath was a declaration of Scottish Independence, and set out to confirm Scotland's status as an independent, sovereign state and its use of military action when unjustly attacked.

The Declaration made a number of much-debated rhetorical points: that Scotland had always been independent, indeed for longer than England; that Edward I of England had unjustly attacked Scotland and perpetrated atrocities; that Robert the Bruce had delivered the Scottish nation from this peril; and, most controversially, that the independence of Scotland was the prerogative of the Scots people, rather than the King of Scots. In fact it stated that the nobility would choose someone else to be king if the current one did anything to threaten Scotland's independence.

In Scotland it is the 'people' that are sovereign, rather than the monarch or parliament, as in England.

Excerpt from Declaration of Arbroath

...'for, as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom – for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself'.

The stirring rhetoric of the Declaration has made it famous both in Scotland and internationally, and it has been suggested that it had some influence on the drafters of the United States Declaration of Independence.

More recently: 2008 Kosovo declaration of independence

The 2008 Kosovo declaration of independence was an act of the Provisional Institutions of Self-Government Assembly of Kosovo, adopted on February 17th 2008, which declared Kosovo to be independent from Serbia.

It was the second Declaration of Independence by Kosovo's Albanian-dominated political institutions, the first having been proclaimed on September 7th 1990.

Serbia intends to seek international validation and support for its stance that the 2008 Kosovo declaration of independence is illegal at the gathering of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, in September 2008.

Kosovars decided to unilaterally proclaim the Republic of Kosovo, obligating themselves in the process to follow the Ahtisaari plan's provisions in full. As of mid-April 2008, this has largely been the case, with the new Republic adopting a constitution written by local and international scholars protecting minority rights and providing for a representative government with guaranteed ethnic representation, which law is to take effect on June 15th 2008.

On Feb 17th, 2008, the Provisional Institutions of Self-Government Assembly of Kosovo declared independence, to mixed International reactions.

Photo: Independence Pass

Stone of Destiny

2008-07-03T00:10:00.002-04:00

July 3rd, 1996
British Prime Minister John Major announced, after 700 years, the Stone of Scone [pronounced 'scoon'] - the ancient symbol of Scottish kings - was to be finally removed from London's Westminster Abbey and rightfully returned to Scotland.

Since the time of Kenneth MacAlpin, the first King of Scots at around 847, Scottish monarchs were seated upon the stone during their Coronation ceremony. At this time the stone was situated at Scone, a few miles north of Perth in Scotland.

The ancient coronation stone weighs in at approximately 336 pounds, but on Christmas Day 1950, a group of four Scottish students (Ian Hamilton, Gavin Vernon, Kay Matheson and Alan Stuart) managed to steal the Stone from Westminster Abbey and attempt to return it to Scotland themselves.

Magic what a few pints will do.

But in the process of removing it from the Abbey, they broke it into two pieces.

A major search for the stone had been ordered by the British Government, but proved unsuccessful.

After hiding the greater part of the stone in Kent for a few weeks, they risked the road blocks on the border and returned to Scotland with this piece, which they had hidden in the back of a borrowed car, along with a new accomplice Johnny Josselyn. The smaller piece was similarly brought north a little while later.

The stone's "custodians" left it on the altar of Arbroath Abbey, on April 11th 1951. Arbroath being a poignant place to plunk it...as Arbroath was the place where Scotland drafted and presented their Declaration of Independence (which is heavily borrowed from by the writers of America's Constitution) and was signed by Nobility in the 14th Century.

The Stone was then passed to a senior Glasgow politician who arranged for it to be professionally repaired by Glaswegian stonemason Robert Gray.

The Stone of Destiny was then returned to Westminster, which was in turn, returned back to Scotland, after the turning of 700 years, but is now all snuggled into it's rightful place in Edinburgh's comfy Castle on the land where it belongs.

On This Day In 1937

2008-07-02T22:56:00.005-04:00

July 2nd 1937:

The Lockheed aircraft carrying legendary American aviator Amelia Earhart and her copilot Frederick Noonan was reported missing on this day in 1937.

In 1928, the 30-year-old Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean.

In 1932 she became the first female pilot to cross it solo.

In 1937, she set off around the world, but she disappeared near the end of her global journey somewhere between New Guinea and Howland Island in the remote South Pacific. Radio operators picked up a signal that she was low on fuel--the last the world ever heard from maverick aviator.

During Christmas vacation in 1917, she visited her sister in Toronto. World War I had been raging and Earhart saw the returning wounded soldiers. After receiving training as a nurses's aide from the Red Cross, she began work with the Volunteer Aid Department at Spadina Military Hospital. When the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic reached Toronto, Earhart was engaged in arduous nursing duties, including many night shifts, at the Spadina Military Hospital.

Earhart visited an air fair in conjunction with the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto. One of the highlights of the day was an air show put on by a World War I "ace". The pilot overhead spotted Earhart and her friend, who were watching from an isolated clearing, and dived at them. "I am sure he said to himself, 'Watch me make them scamper,'"Earhart later said. Earhart characteristically stood her ground, swept by a mixture of fear and exhilaration. As the aircraft came close, something inside her awakened. "I did not understand it at the time," she said, "but I believe that little red airplane said something to me as it swished by".

Born July 24th 1897 in Atchison Kansas. Missing July 2nd 1937. Declared deceased January 5th 1939.

From Sea to Sea

2008-07-01T22:28:00.003-04:00

July 1st is Canada Day, formerly known as Dominion Day, and is a glorious civic holiday where everything shuts down and plentiful pints of beer is had by people everywhere.

I am cheating here, I took the day off along with everyone else and have tinkered with the date of this post in order to keep the chronological flow going. Which means, I'm falling behind. And am trying to think of my next post for what is actually today, not the day it says it is, while I post this post.

So lemme think while I post...

Canada turned 141....though who are we kidding, the land itself is as old as all the other land on this earth - but narrow-minded pettiness must be humoured.

Canada is the second largest country in the world—after Russia—and largest on the continent. [by total area including its waters, and by land area - it is fourth].

Canada has the longest coastline in the world: 243,000 kilometres.

Canada's mainland is ringed with a huge archipelago with some of the world's largest islands.

Canada by far has more lakes than any other country and possesses a large amount of the world's freshwater.

Canada's population density is 3.5 people per square kilometre (9.1/ sq mi), and is lowest in the world.

Canada's 2006's records showed a total population of 31,612,897 million. [an increase of 5.4% since 2001 due to an increase in immigration]

But it's damn hot at the height of our Canadian summers and damn cold in the depths of our Canadian winters.

A Mari usque ad Mare

WINNERS OF THE 13th EURO CHAMPIONSHIP: SPAIN !!

2008-06-29T17:45:00.003-04:00

Fernando Torres, seen here in red jersey, finally lived up to his billing as one of the world's great strikers Sunday by scoring to give Spain a 1-0 win over Germany and the European Championship title.

Torres showed why he is rated one of the best strikers in the world.

Torres, who had been overshadowed by teammate David Villa all tournament, scored in the 33rd minute of the final to down the three-time European champions and earn his nation's first major title in 44 years.

Spain was a deserved winner of the 13th European Championship.

From the outset, It was all Spain.

Players gathered to throw 69-year-old coach Luis Aragones into the air in celebration, while the massed ranks of Spanish fans sang themselves hoarse with "Viva Espana" as fireworks went off overhead.

What an exciting Championship!!!

Romanian Radio

2008-06-28T22:02:00.004-04:00

BBC World Service is to close its Romanian language service. The news and current affairs service is proposing to cease broadcasting on August 1 2008 after 68 years of broadcasting.

BBC Romanian broadcasts for almost four hours a day on radio and also runs a complementary website.

It is the last of the BBC's non-English language services specifically aimed at countries that are EU member states. This will be BBC Worlds Service's only language service closure during this current funding period.

This decision, which has been endorsed by the BBC Trust and the FCO, comes after consideration of audience need to continue broadcasts, the changing media landscape in Romania and the declining impact of the service.

The changes are also made within the context of the very tight financial framework in which BBC World Service operates.

The scale of the competition in radio and all media has intensified since Romania acceded to the EU in 2007.

Broadcasts in Romanian for the Republic of Moldova will also cease, as the Moldovan side of the operation cannot be sustained without the infrastructure of BBC Romanian.The closure will affect 46 staff (30 in Bucharest in Romania; four in Chisinau in Moldova and 12 in London) and will save £1.3 million per annum.

BBC World Service Director Nigel Chapman said: "Like the other European services we closed three years ago, BBC Romanian had its roots in the Second World War.

"It has served its audiences with distinction through the Communist era to the present day.

"The contribution of all BBC Romanian staff has been immense: serving Romanians with innovation and commitment for 68 years. The quality of the current output is of the highest standard".

Nelson's Ninetieth

2008-06-27T22:40:00.007-04:00

Art by: Nelson Mandela

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela born July 18th 1918.

At seven years of age, Rolihlahla Mandela became the first member of his family to attend a school, where he was given the name "Nelson", after the Admiral Horatio Nelson of the Royal Navy, by a Methodist teacher who found his native name difficult to pronounce.

His given name Rolihlahla means "to pull a branch of a tree", or more colloquially, "troublemaker"

He said, "Many years ago there was a historic concert in London, which called for our freedom. Your voices carried across the water and inspired us in our prison cells far away. Tonight we can stand before you, free. But even as we celebrate, let us remind ourselves that our work is far from complete. Where there is poverty and sickness including Aids, where human beings are being oppressed, there is more work to be done. Our work is for freedom for all."

The concert raised funds for Mr Mandela's HIV/Aids charity 46664.

46664 charity was named after the prison number which Mr Mandela was given during the 27 years he spent behind bars for his stand against South African apartheid.

Nelson Mandela was imprisoned on Robben Island where he remained for the next eighteen of his twenty seven years in prison. On the island, he and others performed hard labour in a lime quarry. Prison conditions were very basic. Prisoners were segregated by race, with black prisoners receiving the fewest rations. Political prisoners were kept separate from ordinary ciminals and received fewer priveleges. Mandela describes how, as a D-group prisoner (the lowest classification) he was allowed one visitor and one letter every six months. Letters, when they came, were often delayed for long periods and made unreadable by the prison censors.

Following his release from prison in February 11th 1990, his switch to a policy of reconcilliation and negotiation helped lead the transition to a multi-racial democracy in South Africa. Since the end of apartheid, he has been widely praised even by former opponents.

Mandela has frequently credited Mahatma Gandhi for being a major source of inspiration in his life, both for the philosophy of non-violence and for facing adversity with dignity.

Mandela's leadership through the negotiations, as well as his relationship with President F.W. de Klerk, was recognised when they were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.

Mandela has received more than 100 awards over four decades, most notably the Nobel Peace Prize.

"During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to the struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die".

"We say tonight after nearly 90 years of life, it's time for new hands to lift the burdens. It's in your hands now, I thank you."

Nelson Mandela

Throughout history few have left so indelible an imprint on the international stage as Nelson Mandela. His courage, his compassion and his humanity are among the qualities than have led to this Nobel laureate being recognizedNelson Mandela
Throughout history few have left so indelible an imprint on the international stage as Nelson Mandela. His courage, his compassion and his humanity are among the qualities than have led to this Nobel laureate being recognized as the world's greatest living statesman.It is therefore fitting that the extraordinary imprint of his right hand should so closely resemble the shape of the continent of Africa. It is as though its rhythms, sources of strength and dynamism were reflected in the character of this truly amazing man who is now also a talented artist. Never did a single individual more powerfully symbolize the hopes of a nation. South Africa became free in the way that it did because his hand reached out to all and thus his name became a beacon of hope to oppressed peoples throughout the world as the world's greatest living statesman.It is therefore fitting that the extraordinary imprint of his right hand should so closely resemble the shape of the continent of Africa. It is as though its rhythms, sources of strength and dynamism were reflected in the character of this truly amazing man who is now also a talented artist. Never did a single individual more powerfully symbolize the hopes of a nation. South Africa became free in the way that it did because his hand reached out to all and thus his name became a beacon of hope to oppressed peoples throughout the world

Sparring Spain

2008-06-26T23:50:00.000-04:00

Spain beat Russia 3-0 in one highly intense match today.

Vying In Vienna

2008-06-25T23:05:00.003-04:00

Germany won 2- 1 against Turkey today.
But will go on to Vienna to play the victor
between Spain and Russia.

Photo: Vienna, Austria

Poisoned Mind In High Park

2008-06-24T23:18:00.003-04:00

As per CBC news:

Toronto police say a number of dogs appear to have been poisoned in High Park by consuming antifreeze.
The antifreeze was in buckets of water near a hydrant in the off-leash part of the park, according to police.
At least six dogs became ill in separate incidents after visiting the park over the weekend. Two of the dogs died on Monday night.
Police say dogs will drink water containing antifreeze because it tastes sweet.

A police investigation in Toronto into the poisonings of dogs at a popular city park has taken a bizarre turn.
Toronto police Det. Suzanne Pinto says sources have told investigators that dead raccoons have also been found in High Park, in the city's west end.
The carcasses supposedly looked as they had been deliberately posed, Pinto says.
Pinto says police were told one dead raccoon had its paws placed in front of it and was "holding" a bouquet of flowers, while another was with a dead squirrel.

I'm going to try and be unlike me here and say to the person who has done this [as I doubt there are two], as he [yes, he] will no doubt be tuning in to watch his work on tv, and googling to read all the updates about what he's done, so the likelihood of him finding this post is higher than improbable.

To you I say....

if all this brings you pleasure and gratification, not withstanding the help the complicit and equally-messed-media has unwittingly given you, you probably now possess an ever larger distorted false sense of self, a false sense and semblance of accomplishment, and a belief of achievement-like-impressions, or *being*' something you simply are not, but if you can do all that, and think all that, can you ask yourself why you felt the need to do that?

Why, of all methods and manners of expression, would you chose this?

What part of love don't you understand?

Wouldn't you rather know that, instead of us thinking the way we do about you?

There are always two roads - choose the one that is most difficult for you.
And grow.

Brain Droppings - Pooped Out

2008-06-23T22:02:00.011-04:00

George Carlin

May 12 1937 - June 22 2008

I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don't have as many people who believe it.

I'm always relieved when someone is delivering a eulogy and I realize I'm listening to it.

If it's true that our species is alone in the universe, then I'd have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.

Some people see things that are and ask, Why? Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not? Some people have to go to work and don't have time for all that.

Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.

Holy Toledo SPAIN!

2008-06-22T22:01:00.003-04:00

Holy Toledo Spain knocked out Italy 4-2 om spot-kicks

at Vienna's Ernst Happel Stadium after the teams failed

to score in regulation play or 30 minutes' extra time.

Spain will now play in the semifinals for the first time in

24 years.

Photo: Toldeo, Spain

Summer Solstice

2008-06-21T00:05:00.000-04:00

Summer Solstice Meridian

Date: June 21 2008

Moonrise: 23:19

Moonset: 08:04

Distance: (km) 399,353

Illumination: 93.9%

World Refugee Day

2008-06-20T23:15:00.002-04:00

Displacement in the 21st Century. A new paradigm

The refugee challenge in the 21st century is changing rapidly. People are forced to flee their homes for increasingly complicated and interlinked reasons. Some 40 million people worldwide are already uprooted by violence and persecution, and it is likely that the future will see more people on the run as a growing number of push factors compound one another to create conditions for further forced displacement.

Today people do not just flee persecution and war but also injustice, exclusion, environmental pressures, competition for scarce resources and all the miserable human consequences of dysfunctional states.
The task facing the international community in this new environment is to find ways to unlock the potential of refugees who have so much to offer if they are given the opportunity to regain control over their lives.

As World Refugee Day, marked on June 20, approaches, refugees in Turkey are faced with many difficulties.

In Turkey, asylum seekers have to wait four years on average to begin a new life in a third country and, during these four years, they don't have the means to integrate into Turkish society or find work. In theory, they are not allowed to travel within Turkey. Meanwhile, for their residence permits they have to pay YTL 370 every six months, and usually they don't have means to do this.
According to statistics from the Turkey office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the number of registered asylum seekers who are waiting in Turkey to be placed with a third country was 19,594 at the end of May of this year. Nearly 5,800 of them are women. During the first four months of this year the UNHCR was able to find a third country for just 2,667 refugees.
Although the nationalities of the asylum seekers and refugees vary over time, at the end of April, 41 percent were Iraqis, 31 percent were Iranians, 11 percent were Somalis and 7 percent were Afghanis.

Portugal Sails Away

2008-06-19T23:11:00.004-04:00

As Portugal is launched out of Euro 2008 today, the futures of their main two protagonists slid even more sharply into view. The 3-2 defeat by Germany marked the end of Brazilian coach, Luiz Felipe Scolari's five-year tenure. Portuguese is the third most widely spoken European Language in the world and is the mother tongue to about 200 million people. Countries in which Portuguese is the official language: Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe in Africa, Brazil and East Timor in Asia. There are also Portuguese-speaking communities in other countries: large communities of recent immigrants exist in Europe (France, Luxembourg and Germany), in the Americas - United States, Canada and Venezuela, in Africa, South Africa and Australia, there are also small groups of people in the erstwhile Asian colonies. In Portugal a considerable number of citizens can communicate easily in English, French and Spanish.

What a Rush

2008-06-18T22:47:00.003-04:00

Russia beat Group D rivals Sweden2-0 to clinch the last berth of Euro 2008 quarterfinals

while holders Greece bowed out without a win after losing 2-1 to Spain on Wednesday.

The Boot kicked 2 In

2008-06-17T17:06:00.003-04:00

Italy is a country located in Southern Europe, who beat France 2-0, and comprises the Po River valley, the Italian Peninsula and the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia Italy shares its northern alpine boundary with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia. The independent countries of San Marino and the Vatican City are enclaves within Italian territory, while Campione d'Italia is an Italian exclave in Switzerland.

The Germinator

2008-06-16T21:21:00.002-04:00

Germany, with the third largest economy in the world, and located in the heart of Western Europe, needs to avoid defeat to stay in the tournament, looked nervous in the first half against Austria, but Ballack's strike from 25 metres at the start of the second changed the game and took them through as Group B runners-up behind Croatia. They will go on to face Group A winners Portugal in Basel on Thursday.

Czech-ered Past

2008-06-15T21:35:00.002-04:00

Co-host Switzerland of Euro 2008 earned its first ever win at a European Championship football tournament with a 2-0 win over Portugal today.

In Geneva, Turkey made an improbable comeback to beat the Czech Republic, 3-2, and reach the quarterfinals.
The Czechs jumped to a 2-0 lead. But Nihat Kahveci scored two goals in the 87th and 89th minutes to seal the win.

Photo: Switzerland

Russian Remedy

2008-06-14T22:27:00.003-04:00

Russia only scored one goal against Spain's 4.

But knocked Greece out with a score of 1-0.

The History of the Russian Federation is brief, dating back to the collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1991. Since gaining it's independence, Russia was recognized as the legal successor to the Soviet Union on the international stage. However, Russia lost it's superpower status as it faced serious challenges in its efforts to forge a new post-Soviet political and economic system. Scrapping the central planning and state ownership of property of the Soviet era, Russia attempted to build an economy with elements of market Capitalism, with painful results. Even today, Russia shares many continuities of political cultural and social structure with it's Tsarist and Soviet past.

Robust Romania

2008-06-13T23:31:00.003-04:00

Romania and Italy 1-1

The Golden boys held the Favorites off.

Located in South-East Central Europe, North of the Balkan Peninsula, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, Bordering on the Black Sea, Romania has the 9th largest territory and the 7th largest population witih 22 million people among the European Union member states. Its capital and larggest city is Bucharest, the 6th largest city in the EU with 1.9 million people. In 2007 Sibiu,a large city in Transylvania was chosen as European Capital of Culture. Romania also joined NATO on March 29th 2004, and is also a member of the Latin Union of the Francophonie and of OSCE. Romania is a semi-presidential unitary state.

Crucial Croatia

2008-06-12T22:47:00.005-04:00

Croatia beat Germany 2-1 in one well played Croatian lead game.

Some facts:

Croatia is inhabited mostly by Croats, 89.9 per cent of the population. There are around twenty minority groups. Serbs are the largest minority, comprising 4.5 per cent of the total population. The predominant religion is Catholicism at 87.8 per cent, with some Orthodox at 4.4 per cent, and Sunni Muslim at 1.3 per cent minorities. The official and common language is Croatian, it is a South Slavic language, using the Latin alphabet. According to the 2001 census, 96.1 per cent of the population speak Croatian as their first language. And are passionate and focused footballers.

Suisse Done Like Dinner

2008-06-11T23:22:00.003-04:00

Turkey is cooking & good to go, having beaten Switzerland 2-1

Population: Over 70 million, but young.
More than half of the population is below 25 years old.
Religion: 99% Muslim, 1% Orthodox, Gregorian, Protestant, Catholic, Jewish
Government: Founded in 1923 Republican Democracy headed by a Prime Minister.
Currency: Turkish Lira. Exchange rates with foreign currency are published daily.
Banks and post office: Are open five days a week.
Passport & Visa: Required for most European & USA passport holders, can be obtained from the ports of entry. Contact Turkisr consulates. USD 45 for Americans, GBP 10 for British, USD 5 for Italians, USD 10 for Dutch, Belgium and Australians.
Voltage: 220 V AC with standard European plug.
Photo: Turkey

No Spain No Gain

2008-06-10T20:53:00.004-04:00

Spain beat Russia 4-1 with Hat trick scoring by David Villa

Here is David Villa's villa of Langreo.

Langreo is part of northern Spain, in the province and principality of Asturias,

where fruit and cider are produced, as well as coal mines, foundries, and factories for manufacturing coarse cloth.

Population: 47,000

Plus one star.

Orange Juice

2008-06-09T22:11:00.007-04:00

Holland, fortified with Vitamin Dutch enriches the Netherlands.

3 - 0 win over Italy.

Love the Dutch. And their showmanship & sportsmanship.

Didn't get to see the game between France and Romania,

but understand France lost 0 - 0.

Or is that...

Romania won by holding their own, and not letting France to score a goal.

Croatian Corroboration

2008-06-08T17:16:00.004-04:00

Croatia, known for it's coastline, and beating Austria 1-0
in the preliminary round at Euro Football 2008.

With a wee nod to Germany for it's 2-0 win over Poland.

Portuguese Persuasion

2008-06-07T23:09:00.003-04:00

2 nil over Turkey Euro 2008

Toronto The Good

2008-06-06T23:39:00.007-04:00

Toronto, T.O., Hogtown, The Big Smoke, Toronto The Good. T-Dot.
Whatever you want to call it.

Toronto, more specifically Toronto Life Magazine won Magazine of the Year this evening at the National Magazine Awards.

Congratulations to everyone over there for all their work efforts an achievements at http://www.torontolife.com/

A great night had by all.

Tropical Storm Arthur, 1st of hurricane season, hits Yucatan

2008-06-05T22:22:00.003-04:00

BELIZE CITY (Reuters) - Flash floods caused by tropical storm Arthur have killed at least five people in southeastern Belize, including a toddler, the government of the tiny Central American country said on Wednesday.

Arthur, the first storm of the year in the Atlantic, dumped over 11 inches of rain across Belize this week as it moved inland, also drenching southern Mexican states.

The body of a 2-year-old boy was found on Tuesday evening. His father had struggled for half an hour in turbulent floodwaters before the infant was washed away.

Two people from the southeastern district of Stann Creek were still missing on Wednesday.
Belize, wedged between Mexico and Guatemala with a population of just 300,000, is best known for its laid-back atmosphere, palm-fringed islands and coral reefs.

Torrential rains from Arthur -- which have also left swathes of southern Mexico waterlogged -- swelled rivers in Belize and wiped away two bridges in the south, severing key transport arteries for Belize's farming and fishing industries.

"This was really a kind of freak occurrence that with the best will in the world, and all the resources in the world, we could not have anticipated," Prime Minister Dean Barrow, who became Belize's first black leader on taking office in February, said this week.

Authorities estimated that 13,000 people across the country were affected by Arthur.

Belize is the last unexplored frontier near our borders, a naturalist's paradise! Belize is a beautiful, peaceful country in Central America in the heart of the ancient Maya World. Ruins abound, and it is the archaeologists dreamland. It is also one of the best kept secrets of the Caribbean.The ancient Mayan civilization once lived throughout Belize, and over 600 of their fascinating ancient cities can still be seen here.

The history of the Mayans began a long time ago, around 2500 B.C. The oldest site appears to be Cuello in Orange Walk. Then came the pre-classic era in which the cities of Lamanai, home to the largest pre-classic structure in the Mayan world, and Cerros prospered. In the classic period, the crowning period for the Mayan Civilization, the enormous sites of Caracol and El Pilar rose out of the forest and ceremonial centers like Xunantunich built lovely temples and pyramids. The prosperity of the Maya didn't last forever, and in 900 A.D. most of the great Maya centres collapsed. But the culture and outposts of the civilization were still alive and cities like Santa Rita and Lamanai still were inhabited when the Spanish came. In fact, Lamanai lasted right up into the 1900s until British sugar cane farmers drove the remaining inhabitants out to make way for their farms.

3 Gorges Dam

2008-06-04T21:55:00.002-04:00

The Olympic torch relay has reached Yichang, near the three magnificent valleys, universally known as the Three Gorges, where the Yangtze river snakes through the Daba Mountains.

The region is home to the Three Gorges Dam, the largest hydro-electric power project in the world. Dubbed the biggest engineering feat since the Great Wall, it has taken shape over the last 16 years

The dam has spawned a reservoir 660 km (410 miles) long and about 1km wide, displaced millions of people and submerged many cultural heritage sites.

Environmental groups say the project has wreaked havoc in the region, bringing pollution, soil erosion and landslides, as well as blocking fish migratory routes along the world's third longest river.

But officials believe the benefits outweigh the costs. When its 6,000-tonne turbines begin work - scheduled for next year - they will produce enough electricity to power a sizeable city.

China points out the dam will generate non-polluting power and stop the Yangtze valley flooding, a problem that claimed the lives of an estimated nearly one million people during the 20th Century.

Scientists have claimed the weight of water from the dam reservoir will be so heavy it could even tilt the Earth on its rotational axis by a slight degree, though this will be imperceptible to humans.

Václav Havel's Velvet Revolution

2008-06-03T21:01:00.006-04:00

Václav Havel showed Czechoslovakia, and the world, there is hope when there is change.

“The only lost cause is one we give up on before we enter the struggle.”

Awarded the Ambassador of Conscience in 2003 by Amnesty International, former prisoner to President
one man sought to see if it was in fact possible to put the morality in politics - and found the answer was:

Yes.

Morality is possible.

Change is possible.

Hope is essential and indefatigable.

“Isn't it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness is the very soil that nourishes human hope; perhaps one could never find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity...”

But Václav Havel never wavered. He did not remain silent nor did he move out of the country as the authorities wanted. During the repressive communist rule and although he was forced to take menial jobs, he continued writing, speaking out for human rights, and standing up against the communist dictatorship.

In 1977, he co-founded and co-authored Charter 77, a manifesto signed by hundreds of artists and intellectuals protesting the government's refusal to abide by the Helsinki Agreement on Civil and Political Rights. For his continuing courage, he was jailed several different times, and spent in total five years in prison.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Václav Havel became the leader of the 'Civic Forum', an organization of groups opposed to the Communist Government. I

In November 1989, massive crowds gathered in Wenceslas Square to challenge that government.President Havel showed great leadership and calm in bringing about a peaceful transition. It became known as the 'Velvet Revolution', and in December he became the first president of the new, free Czechoslovakia.

In 1993, he presided over the peaceful split of Czechoslovakia into two independent nations becoming the first President of the new Czech Republic.

“You do not become a 'dissident' just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career. You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances. You are cast out of the existing structures and placed in a position of conflict with them. It begins as an attempt to do your work well, and ends with being branded an enemy of society.”

Again, there is hope when there is change.

Nepal's Kathmandu will come through their democratic change anew.

Let there always be examples of hope steeped in deep integrity to look to, and draw upon.

Nepal's Quiet Revolution

2008-06-02T20:20:00.001-04:00

Nepal's quiet revolution unfolds.
By Charles Haviland BBC News, Kathmandu

Popular opinion turned against the monarchy before its abolition.

Against a yellow-pink sunset sky, the ageing prime minister arrived, waved briefly and walked in so quickly, the band did not even get a chance to play Nepal's new, non-royalist national anthem.
By this time the new assembly members, nearly 600 of them, had been waiting inside all day.

Many are new to politics, one-third are women, and many wore the traditional clothes of their ethnic groups, in a country which until recently stressed uniformity. To this group of men and women fell the task of declaring Nepal a republic.

Towards midnight, they finally did so, voting out the monarchy by an overwhelming 560 votes to four. The crowd in the street roared their approval.

"Vive La Republique!" shouted one banner headline the next morning. The monarchy, the papers said, had been a discredited dynasty that had looted the country and made it one of the world's poorest.

So ends a monarchy which had its roots in a hilltop fortress called Gorkha, the word now used for Nepalese recruits to the British army.

Gyanendra became increasingly unpopular after becoming king.

People liked the fact that his father, the former king, Birendra, would tramp the countryside incognito, asking about people's concerns.

But all that affection was shattered in the 2001 palace massacre.

According to all the evidence, Dipendra, furious at his mother's veto on his choice of bride, gunned down his family and five relatives before allegedly killing himself.

Distraught Nepalis thronged the streets in grief. As the royal cremation pyres smoked, the reverence for the monarchy crumbled. Suspicions worsened for the new king, Birendra's brother Gyanendra, most Nepalis suspected that he and his son, Paras, had planned the killings.After all, Paras and his mother survived the shooting spree, while Gyanendra was out of town. Paras was already loathed. The playboy prince is widely believed to have run down and killed at least two people in drink-driving incidents. Already unpopular, Gyanendra made matters worse by taking on political powers, culminating in a disastrous spell of absolute power in 2005 in which he failed to crush the Maoist rebels and locked up dissenters.

Just as the monarchy was perhaps irrelevant to most Nepalis, getting rid of it will not cure the country's ills.

On Thursday morning, though, the palace staff - their future in doubt of course - quietly lowered the royal standard that used to flutter outside.

What most want above all is peace - which is still not properly in place after the Maoist insurgency. And their next bowl of rice.

They would like justice after years of dismal human rights violations. They would like an end to caste discrimination and corruption.

Those are the counts on which they will judge their new rulers - likely to be the Maoists, who have now entered politics.

Back at the unlovely 1970s royal palace, stray dogs were resting against the gates.

Through the railings could be seen soldiers, checking their text messages in the gardens which may soon be turned into a public park.

There was little on the surface to suggest a quiet revolution was happening.

But late that evening, the staff who had lowered the royal standard in the morning, raised the national flag in its place.

The palace building is no longer the domain of a king, and Nepal is no longer a kingdom.

Life is forever changing.
There is always hope.

Let us all begin a new month, season and way of life then...

Iceland's Sigur Rós

2008-06-01T00:09:00.006-04:00

Iceland's Sigur Ros latest release með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust

[ English Translation: with a buzz in our ears we play endlessly ]

Sigur Rós will release their fifth lp "Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust" June 23rd worldwide. June 24th in North America. The album will be available to pre-order on sigurros.com on June 2nd and a live stream of the album will be available on June 9th for those who have pre-ordered.

"Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust" was co-produced with the band by renowned producer flood, and was recorded in New York City (at Sear Sound Studios), London (at Assault and Battery Sstudios and Abbey Road), Reykjavík (at álafoss, the band's studio, as well as a church in Reykjavík), and Havana, Cuba.

The album title is translated into english as "with a buzz in our ears we play endlessly" with the English spelling of the Icelandic album title being "med sud i eyrum vid spilum endalaust".

Sigur Rós' last release "Heima" took the band to their homeland, their newest creation is the first album in the band's career to be made outside of Iceland.

It is also their first album to feature vocalist Jónsi's vocals in English on one track. In addition to the English, one of the album's tracks is sung without lyrics ("Hopelandic") and the rest of the tracks are sung in Icelandic.

Inspired by the unfettered feeling of the acoustic performances filmed during Heima, Sigur Ros decided to adopt a looser approach in the writing and creation of með suð.

The material for the album was written, recorded and mixed entirely in 2008 and is being released just one month after its completion.

The album glows with the perfect imperfection of live takes, the sounds of fingers playing guitar strings, cracked notes, and a stark, upfront presence not found in previous sigur rós recordings, moving away from reverb-soaked guitar sounds towards something altogether more affecting.

The record also contains some of the most joyous music the band has ever recorded.

Opener "Gobbledigook" sets the tone for með suð í eyrum… with its shifting acoustic guitars, playful vocals, time signature swings and swirling percussion, while "inní mér syngur vitleysingur" ("within me a lunatic sings") sparkles as one of the most anthemic songs Sigur Rós have ever written. "Festival" is epic in its elation and scope, "Illgresi" features one of Jonsi"s finest vocal melodies over a lone acoustic guitar, and "ára bátur" is the largest musical undertaking in the band's career, as it was recorded live in one take with the London Sinfonietta and London Oratory Boy's Choir, a total of 90 people playing at the same time.

The band also utilised the talents of their string-quartet friends Amiina, as well as a five-piece brass section on certain tracks.

For more information: http://www.sigur-ros.co.uk/band/disco/medsud.php

The Last Day Of Wild Animal Month

2008-05-31T22:54:00.006-04:00

Last day of what I believe I can officially and affectionately refer to as the
Wild Animal Month of May!

Arrived home to the welcome a new wild-animal-surprise. This being a far more cute, and welcomed newcomer!

Trudy, a wild, cheeky-devil-of-a-skinny, earthy, perky-eared rabbit, with bona fide white cotton tail, greeted my return home this evening.

Trudy happily sat, unflustered, watching me arrive, and didn't even bother to *go* anywhere upon my arrival, but did sit up on haunches and watched me make a few trips in an out without offering any help.

My final trip meant I was now going to let the dog out!

Trudy the bold, and clearly happy, & uber-confident rabbit didn't bother to budge until my guy was almost on top of her, which gave my big guy some much needed exercise...and lucky for Trudy, he wasn't conditioned of late, or else he would've actually caught her!

I can honestly say, I've seen many things, but I've never seen a loose or wild rabbit in these uninhabitable parts.

So I was doubly stunned when I saw Trudy hop back to where she was when I arrived home from. ((cheeky!!))

From my kitchen window, Trudy went right back, happily sitting in her butt-warmed-spot, facing me with a look of expression: 'so, what's for dinner?'

Hey!?!?!!

Thus - Trudy has earned a formal mention this evening. What a star. What a Diva!

Incredibly - despite my being vegetarian...I didn't even have a leaf of lettuce or carrot or anything for the star!

I felt bad but, jeezo surely she's living off something?! How could I not have anything to put out for her!? Needless, to say I will stop by the grocery store tomorrow and pick a few items up for my new special-needs tenant.

As for why I've named the rabbit Trudy?

Trudy is in a couple of subtle stolen scenes from the old Scottish movie Local Hero.
(assuming you see the unedited version of the movie ; )

Perhaps this Trudy could detect a vegetarian's house when she saw one? ; )

The Spoils Of Ruin

2008-05-30T18:57:00.007-04:00

Needless to say the news of the "untouched tribe" along the border of Peru and Brazil is captivating.

I had lost faith that any such pockets-of-life-and-time could exist in this kind of world.

I had thought the ravaging-marketplace, space sweeping satellite images had scoured, seeped into and stained every nook, cranny and crevasse on earth by now - fuelled by an insatiable hunger for money.

Without glorifying these existing, now exposed, people - the way I see it is:

They are us. We are them.

Will they be allowed to remain 'untouched', unaffected unspoiled? Not so much as one generation from now.

No.

Our [debatable] 'civilised, evolved, modern sapien-selves' are incapable of leaving anything alone for long.

Historically, we have only "learned" and discovered through destruction....even then....

...we really don't appear to truly learn. Which predominantly leaves just destruction as being our path.

It is this 'civilized, evolved, modern' aspect within our world, and selves that we have created, and live within that ruins the majority of things we encounter, and that had existed naturally for eons, prior to our contact.

We only have to look at how we even came to see this 'untouched tribe' for an example of what I mean...the very encroaching illegal logging part took a quick and quiet backseat to the ready exposure of primitive people.

Our unethical, uncivilized, unconscionable, uncouth, unthinking, unquestioning, un-empathetic 'society' is, in my view, far more primitive than authentic primitive.

But who am I to say anything? ....living in this civilized ravaged 'world without'.

The only distinction that I would like to try and make is: any 'extinction of a primitive people' would be, to my mind, evidence of the manifestation of man's own annihilation of itself.

What will happen to them - in time, will happen to us.

By us.

I'm beginning to believe we are, as a species, hard wired to destroy, far more and faster than we can create.

I'm reminded of an old quote I heard - Do not destroy that which you cannot create.

I don't know who said it, but all life, along with our planet,

would do well if more of us lived by that adage.

Dedicated to the Fearless, Witty, Thoughtful Canadians I know

2008-05-29T21:06:00.005-04:00

The one thing that is all too easy to forget as we busily run around in life...

enroute somewhere, forever coming and going,

arriving and departing, our surroundings always temporary, and ever changing.

It's far too easy to forget how special the group of people are, who surround us.

I happen to work with a very special group of people.

As vastly different we may be, there is an inherent decency. A goodness
that makes this particular bunch of people an honour to have the privilege of coming to know, and working with.

I hadn't really noticed the level of true uniqueness that make up this particular group until this evening's BBQ.

of course being deliriously tired might have something to do with my perspective, but as tired as I may be...

What a lovely group of people that is currently assembled doing wonderful things in this world.

It is to them, whom I wish to dedicate my 100th post - of which, had one of those good people not sat down and create this corner, I would not have the forum in which to post such a dedication.

To them.

Thank you for enlightening, engaging and entertaining me.

Profiteering From Prehistoric Paranoia

2008-05-28T20:42:00.007-04:00

Enroute to work this morning, I caught a bit of an interview on Jazz 91.1 FM, for those wondering what radio station I was listening to...there was a first time newly published author, speaking about his brand spanking new book:

RISK: The Science and Politics of Fear By: Dan Gardner.

And here's me, a first time, brand newly unnerved listener, catching this interview about irrational fears and the psychological hard-wiring that exists in our minds, left over from the pre-press, cro-magnon days of survival. A perfect audience.

How anyone survived those early Neanderthal pre-promotional, pre-press days, without books, music, art, architecture and vast sea travel is beyond my imaginative speculation, let alone comprehension.

But, evidently by being hard-wired by fear, humans persisted.

Regardless of logic, our "irrational" fears are what have served us, and enabled far more of us to survive. It has been our irrational over-precaution, our ah-ah-ah-ing from generation to generation - compounded ~ that has taught off-spring the very real likelihood of pain, thereby circumnavigating actual, and potential, fatal causes and consequences.

Our self-inflicted limiting, of our own lives, have paradoxically served to extend our lives.

Isn't life interesting? ...in an uninteresting-kind-of-un-lived way.

So have we, in essence, lived this long by not living.

We've come to "know things" by NOT experiencing.

We have however, insisted in persisting and surviving thus far by recounting the worst of the worst 'bedtime stories' night after night to generation after generation.

The author mentioned we are - at our very core - a species that loves telling stories, and loves to be told a story.

Fact or fiction - regardless - the point is to take us away somewhere, show us things, teach us things, have us imagine, visualize, learn, conceptualize, comprehend if not condone, other things, new things, things we wouldn't have thought to imagine on our own.

Damn Dan, for capitalizing on some of our basic hard-wiring to sell his book, and catapult his career in conjecture.

But he is onto something.

...cause I inherently responded to hearing what we all intrinsically know for reasons prehistorical, and hard-wired, unknown.....we like to be told things - entertained - taught - informed - educated.

Whatever it takes to increase our predictive comprehension....if not collective comprehension

and decrease our premature fatality. Why - who knows?

Clearly, irrationality is about quantity, NOT about quality.

So, here's to another day enjoyed by all.

Thank your paranoid prehistoric people for all our existing highly lucrative fears.

Many have made a lot of money from people hard-wired as us.

But, now we can induct you Dan, to that growing list of prehistoric-paranoia-profiteers.