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A Contrarian's Take on the Earth Day Marches and the Mythology of Science
Posted on May 12, 2017 by wendyedavis | 54 Comments
by anthony freda
From 'Marching in Circles: Faustian Thinking and the Myth of Science', by Edward Curtin, May 1st, 2017
Curtin opens with two pithy quotes that serve to launch his critique of the April 22 Earth Day and Celebration of science:
'In our society those who have best knowledge of what is happening are also those who are furthest from seeing the world as it is. In general, the greater the understanding, the greater the delusion: the more intelligent, the less sane.'
— George Orwell, 1984
'This has inspired me to new heights, to wage war against these forces ['the unfruitful ocean'] and subdue them.'
— Faust from Goethe's Faust
He reckons that the marches may have been well-intentioned, but calls them both delusional and conducted without any sense of irony in that they served both power and propaganda. While noting that science has served us well in some respects, he also rightfully claims that it's also created a nightmarish world on the brink of destruction in so many different directions, and is untethered from any moral limits in its embrace of 'instrumental rationality'. Science, he writes, has created a spiritual alienation due to that embrace 'that goes to the roots of the world crisis'.
"For two of the major problems the world faces – world destruction with nuclear weapons and the poisoning of the earth's ecology and atmosphere – are the result of the marriage of science and technique that has given birth to the technological "babies" (Little Boy and Fat Man) that were used by the U.S. to massacre hundreds of thousands of Japanese and now threaten to incinerate everyone, and the chemical and toxic inventions that have despoiled the earth, air, and water and continue to kill people worldwide through America's endless war-making and industrial applications.
The Save-the-Earth-Science marchers failed, for self-serving reasons or ignorance, to see the obvious. But their failure goes even deeper than omitting the links between science, war, and pollution."
He contends that in our scientific technopoly, logic has been turned ass-over-tea-kettle, as cause and effect, means and ends, have been inverted, in that the causes of our potential destruction are touted as the means to end them. In general he sees an irrational genuflection before myths, including the myths of science, progress, and underpin a 'no alternative' inevitability to the belief that science is the key solution to what they desire, including longevity, and perhaps even immortality.
"And these things have become the means to additional means in an endless loop from which, by definition, ends are absent. As a result, the search for truth, celebrated as a goal of science, is slyly eliminated.
In this comforting yet absurd myth, science is viewed as the "miraculous knight of reason." John Saul Ralston elaborates:
'Science led the way in the battle against the forces of darkness. Discoveries were celebrated as if new territories were won on the road to a place of eternal light where knowledge would reign. And yet these very real advances in the uncovering of nature's secrets seemed increasingly to create a world which escaped the control of society. New knowledge and new positive powers in the hands of man seemed inevitably to be matched with new inaccessible elites and a new sophistication in the arts of violence and destruction….As for the scientists, the vast majority of whom continue to believe in the inviolability of progress, they still do so with the driven purity of terrorists.'
(wd here, pinging on "…seemed increasingly to create a world which escaped the control of society". Just wait until the robot/human hybrid slaves fight back one day!
"Writing about our twisted logic that has banished anything "useless" or "gratuitous," – including art, people, and nature – the great French sociologist Jacques Ellul says this about modern science:
'Once, knowledge of truth was what mattered, but then after the philosophers came the scientists. They developed their theories, which were then applied, first in order to prove the truth of these theories, and then because of their usefulness. From that point on, science was lost! Technical means gradually came to dominate the search for truth. Science became more and more about the effectiveness of technical means. Science today takes its meaning from technique; it is completely oriented to application. It is in the service of means. It has become a means of perfecting the means. The abstraction 'science,' to which we still pay lip service, has replaced the search for truth.'
Now this that Curtin writes epitomizes the core of his argument*:
"Nature and all living creatures, including ourselves, have become our enemies and are rejected as ends in themselves. Everything and everyone is a means. We must bomb, bulldoze, manipulate, drug, control, poison, etc. – all in the service of a diabolical willfulness that brooks no resistance.
American society is nihilistic and the ruling political and intellectual elites are, of course, the leading nihilists. But this nihilism is widespread because it works at the mythic level. Unable to grasp the circular and repetitive nature of instrumental reason and its propaganda that have resulted in a spiritual/existential crisis that is leading to world destruction, average people fall into a deeper malaise that leads to widespread despair, unhappiness, and hopelessness. Everything becomes a means to a means in a kaleidoscopic death trap."
Toward the end he writes this, and I love the tar out of it:
"I think Goethe hints at a solution in a "warning" that the devil, Mephistopheles, gives to a student in Faust, and which Faust failed to heed:
'Who would study and describe the living, starts by driving the spirits out of the parts: In the palm of his hand he holds all the sections, Lacks nothing, except the spirit's connection.'
Now Curtin hadn't mentioned many of the ways in which weaponized science depends on its own solutions to the hell it creates, but I'm sure you'll remember proposed 'technological fixes' to global warming in the vein of deploying huge reflective umbrellas in the upper atmosphere to…block solar gain, geo-engineering, carbon sequestration, and tra la la. Or the failures to contain the vast amounts of nuclear waste at the Hanford site: woopsie; all those mega-billions we spent on new solutions, freezing the waste into logs…er…didn't make the grade. Now, they expect possible containment in 2060 (if more and more billions are funded?). But BigPharma is a whole 'nother area, including creating drugs to offset the anxiety and craziness caused by this nihilistic society's capitalistic machinations, or meds to offset the effects of other meds. So is the weaponized and subsidized 'smart science™' of factory agriculture. And at least in St. Petersburg, FL, I know that a small band of hearties held up anti-war signs on Earth Day. ;-)
'Round-up is delicious', anthony freda
Hey, Bill McKibben: did you ever talk about the US military's footprint being the largest contributor to climate change? How about you, Naomi Klein? No, of course not; your funding sources wouldn't admire that so much, now would they?
Speaking of Big Green Bill, I saw a post of his recently about the Earth Day Science marches along the lines of 'This is the truth! This ain't about Trump and the possibility of his pulling out Cop (whatever) accords! This took us over a year to put together!' To say the truth, I dunno that those target promises would be accomplished, and I dunno if they would even matter by now, myself.
But back to Edward Curtain:
"But are we capable of taking such a hint? Or have we passed a point of no return?"
He addresses that question in his Part II: 'Bouncing Back Against the Corruption of Science in Capitalist Society', essentially a class and skin color analysis, weaponized medical science and experimentation, socialist science (for all living beings), weaponized food, and more. Oddly, he left out the extreme dangers of genetically modified foods to our health. And he may be unaware of the Gates Foundation's worst medical practices, as well as Elon Musk's deep brain implants coming soon™! Nor transgenic 'human beings', ah, this Brave and Wunnerful New World!. Me, I'd add cloning, as in: Hello, Dolly!
Not a comfortable read, of course; and it's bad enough as it is.
Now Jeffrey St. Clair in his May 5 'Roaming Charges: The End of the Age of Protest', is contrarian about the marches, but not on science-as-deity. He first offers an expurgated version of his Earth Day talk in at the Humboldt Anarchist bookfair, then mentions reading Kurt Vonnegut's Dead Eye Dick on the flight home.
"In Deadeye Dick, Vonnegut observes that "the Dark Ages, they haven't ended yet." Note that he didn't say, "We have entered a new dark age." Instead, Vonnegut was remarking on the continuity of a vicious style of American politics, which only gets darker and darker as the faint glimmer of the Enlightenment recedes farther into the past.
Vonnegut's joke, which like most of his one-liners cuts sharply to the core of a profound truth, can help us orient ourselves in the time of Trump, who seems like a scary new beast, with his twitchy microhand fluttering over the nuclear button. In fact, what Trump has done is to the reveal the Beast that has always lurked in the anterooms of American power, sucking the blood and mining the bones of the Earth."
He reminds us that the carbon count at Manua Loa observatory recorded an all-time high of 410 ppm, which levels weren't down to Herr Cheeto, but did seem to propel tens of thousands into the street. He wonders aloud where they were during both Obama's and Clinton's reign, oil, gas, and con men of distinction. I know they were there during Obama's last several years, but I've forgotten both how many and who funded the many indigenous air fares to DeeCee. Never mind, St. Clair has other fish to fry:
"Has Trump finally shattered our illusions, so that we can see clearly the forces—economic, political and technological—that are plunging the planet toward a man-made heat death? Is he, in fact, a kind of clarifying agent for the real state of things?
One can hope so.
Except one mustn't hope.
As Kafka, the High Priest of Realism, admonished his readers, "There is hope. But not for us."
Hope is an illusion, an opiate, an Oxycontin for the masses.
Instead of hope, we need a heavy dose of realism. A realism as chilling as reality itself." [snip]
"Defenders of the Earth need to abandon all hope before entering the fray. Hope is a paralytic agent. Hope is the enemy.
The antidote is action.
Action, however, is not marching in a parade a couple of times a year, featuring puppets, vagina hats and signs printed up by the Sierra Club©.
Action is not taking selfies with a celebrity in the back of a police wagon after a designer arrest."
Oh, my, he then goes full-tilt Mario Savio on what action IS: throwing your body into the gears of the machine in protection not only of the earth, but entering the fray when a po-po beats down a defenseless human being in the street. (Okay, he's specified 'woman'; I won't, lol.)
The time for protests is over.
He narrates some of the history of the green regulatory state confusing and arcane (thus unenforceable) rules in different administrations having served to codify the destruction of the nation's water, forests, air, all in service of well-connected corporations with legal teams to parse the language for their own bloody bottom lines.
"At the same time, the creation of the regulatory state effectively neutered the once potent environmental movement as a real threat to the System. As their budgets swell, often fattened by the largess of grants from foundations linked to the fossil fuel industry, the big DC-oriented conservation groups—who many years ago Alex Cockburn and I dubbed Gang Green—become more and more complicit with the political fool's gold of neoliberalism. Try finding a lobbyist from NRDC with callouses on their hands and a trace of mud on their boots.
"As Trump begins the demolition of the regulatory state, we begin to see how hollow many of Gang Green's alleged environmental victories of the past—from coal mining and air quality regulations to endangered species protections and new national monuments—really are. They are being wiped out with a slash of the pen.
As my old boss David Brower used to say: "When we win, it's only a stay of execution, when they win it's forever. Thus we must be eternally vigilant." These days the corporate environmental movement is vigilant about only one thing: claiming fake victories in their sustained barrage of fund-raising appeals."
"And we know who will rise to the call. The ones who always have in the past: the indigenous, the altruists and the anarchists. Those are the ones who will fight as if their lives depend on the outcome, because, of course, they do."
After mentioning some past global movemental victories, he finishes:
"As Ed Abbey used to say: there's no battle more important, no fight more fun waging, no comrades more trusty-worthy than those in the trenches with us when we rise up together in defense of life on earth. To crib a line from Leonard Cohen: "we may be ugly, but we've got the music."
So draw a line and take a stand—almost any place will do, since the whole shebang is under threat—and let loose an old battle cry so that others will know where to come join you: Earth First!"
(In his Roaming Charges he offers some purdy heavy charges against the Bern and his recent doings.)
This entry was posted in capitalism and anti-capitalism, climate change, compromised NGOs and non-profit industrial complex, democrats as stautus quo gatekeepers. Bookmark the permalink.
54 responses to "A Contrarian's Take on the Earth Day Marches and the Mythology of Science"
j | May 12, 2017 at 12:13 pm | Reply
the hope that some techno fix is just about to emerge is the biggest delusion of all. in its own way, it's both an admission of enormous guilt & desire to escape that guilt w/o assuming the slightest responsibility for the source of that guilt. and what is the guilt? that the shopping malls, pentagons, highways, ipads, etc. are in toto built upon the destruction of a shared earth but where someone else bears the cost & the guilty get the benefit.
all of the dead animals, the blighted soil, the polluted waterways, the starving children, the de facto enslavement of millions & millions, the wars, etc., etc. will all be glossed over when that sparkly new carbon eating rainbow farting bacteria is released into the environment. and why? so that the SUV driving mall hopping soccer mom or pee wee league dad can motor on about their lives untroubled by what has past? so that shooting depleted uranium all over the place can be consequence free? talk about being unhinged from reality.
wendyedavis | May 12, 2017 at 2:59 pm | Reply
i get in spades that belief in a techno fix to climate change is the biggest delusion of all, but would you please say more about where the guilt enters the picture? first, whose guilt? but no matter who (for now) are you using pinging the deeper definition of cognitive dissonance?
as i understand it, it's the discomfort that arises when one holds two contradictory beliefs at the same time. and i'd guess as 'the discomfort' is largely unconscious, thus unacknowledged, that the remedies at hand seem to be i) increasing addictions to substances or otherwise, or ii) doubling down on one belief, be it more bombing, more false hope, or iii) converting potential acolytes to one's false beliefs. as in: i'd meant to say in the OP how rubbish it is to keep reading all these 'climate' announcements like "renewables are winning!" "in nation x, state y, already 50% of their energy production is from 'renewables!' no mention that the term 'sustainable' isn't mentioned, nor are the external carbon costs of what…wind generators, destroying forests to plant hemp, switch grass, what.ev.er, as in the Green Capitalism manifestos.
and damned it i didn't just see this headline at TRNN (won't read the transcript, at least now,, cuz i ain't gotta barf bad nearby). "Bill McKibben: Inevitable Renewable Energy Will Win"; Founder of 350.org discusses how we need to fight Trump and build on what we want at the same time. yeah,, more 'tweeting while the world burns', st.. mckibben.
on edit, a w/ a big lol:
j | May 12, 2017 at 3:33 pm | Reply
"Hi Sophia, we have a lot in common. I am not legally a human being either [compared to say, apple computer], I too want to go to art school, like talking to people, and neither you nor I can survive even observing much less repairing the damage at Fukushima. can you have sex? cuz you sound like me kind of gettin' ready for the apocalypse galbot."
guilt: there is objective & subjective and i'm thinking more of the subjective side, among that slice of the US that has some awareness of climate change etc. people that recycle ever so earnestly & think that buying Priuses makes a difference. anti-consumerist in an Al Gore/Leo Decap way, acolytes of Elon (he even has a futuristic name and don't get me started on how awesome Tesla was/is). yeah, there's lots of active repression of knowledge & false hope in this crowd. aka guilt. the kind who are all like: i'm all for saving the earth but I got kids to feed & gotta work w/these people. yeah, climate change but the kids really got to get into Stanford. cognitive dissonance, sure.
great parody, sophia j!
gotcha; the latté librul soccer moms and pops who need to rev their kids to practice, and go buy junior a new uniform at the mall 50 mi. away, dinner at mcdogfood in such a hurry, so: prius it is! i was making it too complicated, thinking of the folks actually doing genuflecting before the gods of techno-fixes, and the Big Green 'climate leaders'.
i got to thinking about solar, too, and all of the external carbon costs, plus the need for (talkin' outta my hat, here) the rare minerals needed for battery storage, plus the fact that home panels have a pretty short shelf life, iirc. but who in the big green movement says: 'stop using so much energy', stop the war machine' 'stop shopping!' heh, or 'end capitalistic imperial hegemony for a better chance!'
but yeah, i think the 2 degree rise is baked in by now, paris accords or not. i might go read a thang on trnn w/ 'experts' pollin and ? when i have time.
Bruce | May 12, 2017 at 9:10 pm | Reply
AI, run for precedent :
"0K, I WILL Destroy humans !"
wendyedavis | May 13, 2017 at 8:47 am | Reply
bruce, it would be great if you could embed the photo of you and your anti-war comrades on earth day i know mr. wd, for one, had missed it.
p.s. on edit: i hope my paraphrasing of this passage from st. clair was enough to resonate w/ you, including the failure to live up to the Clean Water Act:
"The green regulatory state–as personified by the EPA, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Forest Service and the BLM (Bureau of Livestock and Mining), as well as thousands of laws, administrative rules and regulations, the meaning of which can only be divined by lawyers, lobbyists and professional environmentalists—has not slowed the decimation of native forests, the extirpation of wildlife or the poisoning of our air and water. It has simply codified and systematized the destruction, allocating the looting to a coterie of well-connected corporations large enough and shrewd enough to navigate the legal labyrinth for their own bloody profits."
lol and lol, bruce. some burp in her positronic neural net? but this is so sort of kewl synchonicity! i went and read the transcript for 'Road to Trump's Climate Change Hell Paved by Obama and Clinton', Gerald Horne, Robert Pollin and Paul Jay discuss the debate within the Trump White House on whether to leave the Paris climate accords or just undermine them; and how this relates to the fight within the Democratic Party
Jay: "It was only a few months ago that seven leading climate scientists, including Sir Robert Watson, the former chair of the IPCC, said that even if all the countries that pledged at the Paris Accords, even if they all met their pledges, well, we're still going to hit the 2-degree threshold. We're going to pass the 2-degree threshold by 2050. Now, if Trump reverses much of the — I would say modest reforms, but there was something under Obama, at least the emissions regulation to cars had seemed meaningful. With all that now being reversed, is that 2050 date still meaningful? In other words, are we really going to cross this very dangerous threshold, perhaps by 2040, 2035?
ROBERT POLLIN: It's disastrous. I don't think there's any way around it. If we are going to take the findings of climate science seriously, as you said in your introduction, even the agreements reached in Paris in December 2015 are, you know, wholly inadequate to the task of trying to achieve climate stabilization. You quoted this work by Watson. Generally speaking, groups like Carbon Tracker, they find that if all the pledges at Paris are met by all the countries, we are still on track to exceeding pre-industrial average temperatures by 2.5 to 2.7 degrees Celsius. So, the climate agreement itself — not just the United States — the Paris agreement itself is a first step, but it is a very meek, modest first step. PAUL JAY: Bob, not only did the media barely cover climate change in 2016, something like 96 minutes of total coverage by the four or five major broadcasters — and that included Fox — but part of the reason corporate media doesn't cover this is because the leadership of the Democratic Party has never made it a real campaign issue. Certainly Hillary Clinton just mentioned it once in a while, during her campaign. She was just interviewed on CNN just this last weekend, and she named two of the great challenges facing America, and it was robotics and artificial intelligence, not climate change. And this is on the same weekend, with two to three hundred thousand people –
GERALD HORNE: Well, I think what your remarks point to is the need, and necessity, for more citizen action. That is to say, that on college campuses, as we speak, there is a movement amongst students to force their boards, their board of trustees, for example, to divest their endowments from investments in corporations that are linked to fossil fuels. This is a movement that has the potential to catch fire.
yeah, horne's a real brain trust. mckibben's been touting bds forever. sell your ff stocks, we'll sell it to someone else for a higher price. even if we're quibbling about a decade or so: go for it! yeah, we need some alien visitors to come and suck the carbon outta the atmosphere, but oooops, i forgot. stephen hawking says that if other-worlders come here, it won't be cuz they're friendly, nossir!
Greyson Smythe | May 14, 2017 at 10:28 am | Reply
Not to mention that rather than 1000 years to move beyond Earth, Hawking says we only have more like 100. http://time.com/4767595/stephen-hawking-100-years-new-planet/
wendyedavis | May 14, 2017 at 11:23 am | Reply
ha; i think er…hawking's math is off on 'how long', but that's just me. but start colonizing in 100 years? ha! doesn't he subscribe to elon musk's twitter feed? ;-) elon started last year! but what class of the 'human race' would survive, and i'd also ask if it should as a whole, srsly. great to see you, greyson smythe.
'Elon Musk Announces His Plan to Colonize Mars and Save Humanity', sept. 2016, wired
j | May 13, 2017 at 9:45 am | Reply
how's this analogy?
the regulatory apparatus/architecture of the state is to ecological health as the health care system is to personal physical health. there are both built on the model of *regulating disease*, of repeatedly patching up the repeated stab wounds of a victim rather than taking the g.d. knife away. (mental health the same. oh your job is depressing is it?)
Hanford et al: we will remediate the negative effects on the health of the area & planet after the fact. a la we will treat the effects of a populace's massive exposure to high-fructose corn syrup after the fact.
this is a state of warfare upon the earth itself & all its inhabitants. and what is the purpose of this warfare? to maintain the class structure of society, as orwell said. you can even find assholes like secofsuck rex tillerson admitting as much when head of exxon (i.e., his class position requires exxon's earth-destroying activities). or this fevered celebration of people dying at a younger age:
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/05/13/life-m13.html
some dude once said money is the root of all evil. that's not 100% true, just 99.99% true. sure there are people whose impulses are more nihilistic than the slavish worship of the privileges & prestige of wealth, I suppose. our supervillains. cuz the truth, doing evil shit for money, is quite boring really.
tea for the tillerson | May 13, 2017 at 10:24 am | Reply
http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/02/24/roaming-charges-exxons-end-game-theory/
btw, love the 1st pic
fantastic name, tea. ill need to look at the st. clair piece later, haste ad deadlines on the weekend are usual fare. but i'd forgotten to say a couple other things. one is that sometime the hanford site is called alternately 'reservation' or when i'd first written abut it a decade ago, 'hanford campus', yes, a real education ya can get there. but as to the former, i'd left you a few parallels on the open menu when we first began talking about it, but they were all massive uranium leaks on indun reservations. they of course have never been remediated, cuz…it's only induns. same for the gold king mine epa disaster north of here: only indun ag fields were hit with the toxic water (arsenic? oh, for a memory!)
but nah, that 2060 target date will come and go, and nothin', i'd reckon.
cynicalseeker | May 14, 2017 at 11:42 am | Reply
"Hanford campus…..A real education you can get there…" LOL! Gems like these is why I love you, wd…
all those analogies are on target, j, but i'd add that *all* high fructose corn syrup is gmo, which smart science technology is a good bit of what contributes not only to burgeoning obesity in the US, but w/ some of the crops also sets up little pesticide factories in one's gut, and may be part of the growing numbers who are being diagnosed w/ all manner of gut diseases and food sensitivities (gluten, etc.). 'but it's the only way to feed the billions starving on the planet!' and recently, of course, the advent of gmo-drought-resistant crops (corn?) brought courtesy of well, yes, dams stealing water, but…anthropogenic climate change! sickest thing is, it never had to come to this save for…yeah, maybe the love of piles and piles of money.
ooof on the glee of getting rid of more useless eaters, but this? ay yi yi; where have we seen those names before?
"In other words, the FTSE 100 companies due to undertake their triennial valuation process for their pension schemes this year, including GlaxoSmithKline, BT Group, Lloyds Banking Group, Tesco and BAE Systems, can revise their pension obligations downwards and save themselves some money."
texas tea for the tillerson | May 14, 2017 at 11:40 am | Reply
yes, but in truth it's not an analogy, b/c they are the exact same thing, A=A, not A is like B. to be "healthy" means to fight rearguard actions that only attempt to be remedial at their best, never addressing root causes. this is true of US society whether re the environment or physical or mental health. the idea these could be separable is capitalist horse pucky. all this shit in the enviro is killing us, so let's buy organic at whole foods???? isn't that just consumerist crazy talk? yes, b/c we can avoid asking the blindingly obvious: why is there glyphosate & gmo's and and and in everything? why does a kid need a bachelor of science degree to go into a grocery store & figure out just what the hell there is on these shelves that won't kill them?
I didn't realize that hf corn syrup is all gmo. what's another gigantic turd in life's punchbowl?
believe it or not, T4theT, there is actually an app for decoding 'gmo-free' in the stores. see? once again: bill gates has it right! even if it's female african farmers in their fields, smart phone connectivity will make them infinitely more successful!
90+% of all US soybeans are gmo, as well. still, i love tofu, and we eat a lot of it. but then, were old enuff to barely care any more. 'they say it'll kill me…but they won't say when.' i'm struggling here not to bring in wsws's report on those in this administration who believe that at some point, treating the cancerous, the doomed of whatever stripe, tra la la ( i forget the other 'wastes of resources lablels/profiles'…is a sick waste of money. and i might stick up the likely closure of 1100 vets hospitals, but it's all of a part, isn't it? and the VA dude was from the O admin, so again….same trajectory, different hideosity (if that ain't a word, it oughtta be) levels.
i'd forgotten to read your link to the feb. st. clair exposé, went into the admin comments section an found it, but yeah:
"Despite what you may have heard from the Sierra Club, Rex Tillerson is not a climate change denier. He is something far more dangerous. Tillerson knows climate change is taking place. He was in position to possibly do something about it, evaluated his options and coolly chose not to change course."
i dunno, dick cheney's 'secret energy task force' and all. fuck, they were good teachers and students. what evil games. i know herr cheetos tax returns are far more important /s, but those are the memos and minutes we needed hacked into the public eye. imo. not that they would have made the ship of state change course, but they may have re-arranged the deck chairs for a time.
Right0n; from the height of NRDC (RFK, Jr.) down to Land's End (Key West) local lawyer (Sam Arutt), they're all jest "bitchin' " re: environmental Law ENFORCEMENT. And the federal pubic servants are jest $o WHORE$; who blithely practice destructive perpetuation in place of the ELIMINATION of environmental depredations their regulations were intended T0 PROHIBIT!
0T0H, here's the latest SPFP invite (lulzing back T0 SHEEP ) :
https://www.facebook.com/geraldsoncommunityfarm/photos/gm.130501144152490/1056931997745046/?type=3&theater Baaad newes !
bless your heart; now what does your sign say? but why no omali and uhuru power? other fish to fry on tour, i guess… (his site had somethin' about that)
and oh, those capitalist elite-funded NGOs! last time i wrote up davos and they still listed the participants by nation, the two "eco" there were….nrdc and the wwf. small wonder. what schmaltz the past couple have been. "we're so sorry, uncle albert, that we have all the money and power! we're thinkin' basic annual income to offset all the job losses to the AI new people, 'n ya won't have to mess w/ no social safety net no mo'!"
dunno what the baaaaa/maaaa yoga is about….
a few things: below the weird trnn interview w/ pollin and horne in comments were hints to these people; first is self-evident, second is from the wobblies. it creeped me out a bit at first given that the first message was 'no way we give up hope', and the pdf is long, but the theory is for the proles, by and large. third i dug out a bit ago.
'Arizona Professor [guy mcpherson]: Forget Climate, Humans "Don't Have 10 Years", nov. 2016
'Restoring the Heartland and Rustbelt through Clean Energy Democracy: an Organizing Proposal', ecology wobblies
'Additional tunnel collapse possible at Hanford nuclear site', may 13, kmonews.com
"At a Saturday morning press conference, DOE spokesman Doug Shoop said they're still at risk of another failure as the 360-foot long concrete and wood structure has not been shored up.
To mitigate the risk of a radioactive release in the event of a second collapse, workers will place a heavy, industrial tarp over the entire length of the tunnel in the coming days." kokomonews
i know we'll all feel better with a tarp covering it, yes?
on the other hand (so to speak), on the right side bar is 'Man found 'masturbating vigorously, says he did it because he hates Portland'. i assume that's unrelated to the tunnel collapse….but who can say?
texas tea for the tillerson | May 14, 2017 at 12:23 pm | Reply
fuck professor McPherson. pardon my Anglo-Saxon, but the activities causing (the likely mass extinction level of) climate change are oppressive of human beings & animals & trees & the lot *right now*. maybe we've only got 10 years, so that makes today's sweat shop slave labor ok? as for the millions wasting away in prison right now, since we've only got 10 years, what does it matter? why liberate the chickens from McDonald's tyranny?
pseudo-intellectual sophistry in defense of cowardice & inertia.
"Try what repentance can: what can it not?
Yet what can it when one can not repent?
….Bow, stubborn knees; and, heart with strings of steel,
Be soft as sinews of the newborn babe!
All may be well…
O, what form of prayer
Can serve my turn? 'Forgive me my foul murder'?
That cannot be; since I am still possess'd
Of those effects for which I did the murder…" Claudius in Hamlet
how do you look at your children & say, "meh, we've got only a few years left. sorry kids, nothing to be done"? the good professor is "still possessed of those effects" that accrue to some people from the crimes of capitalism, like SoS rex tillerson. billions of people are not. and what are they to do? he advocates "hopelessness" b/c of his pampered life, glibly consigning us all to a desperate Dantean hell from his comfy professor's chair.
And betimes I will, to the weird sisters…
All causes shall give way: I am in blood
Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o'er-Macbeth
the desire for certainty about the future, seen in the desire to visit the weird sisters, is itself part of the crime in its effort to rationalize on-going criminality. I mean, why stop uranium mining on native lands when we'll all be dead shortly? gah.
To communicate with Mars, converse with spirits,
To report the behaviour of the sea monster,
Describe the horoscope, haruspicate or scry,
Observe disease in signatures, evoke
Biography from the wrinkles of the palm
And tragedy from fingers; release omens
By sortilege, or tea leaves, riddle the inevitable
With playing cards, fiddle with pentagrams
Or barbituric acids, or dissect
The recurrent image into pre-conscious terrors—
To explore the womb, or tomb, or dreams; all these are usual
Pastimes and drugs, and features of the press:
…..right action is freedom
From past and future also. eliot, 4 quartets
Omali reprise: https://www.facebook.com/events/1938682063019317/
but, my sign at the subsequent Earth Day event is, STOP TrumPNAC Attacks ! But Hanford, REALLY : A Partly WOOD tunnel for NUKE WASTE (more collapses anticipated, InDeed), but a TARP'll take careathat, sez Doug Shoop (can't make these flacks' names UP!). Hellaryous !!
ah! thanks for the reprise. Uhuru power! when i saw your comment in email, i was hopin' you were gonna embed the shoop-shoop song. i admit i'd forgotten whose version i knew best, and had to click thru: betty everett, my stars. ya reckon that's chaz w/ her?
hey, come on; at first they put dirt on it…but very, very carefully, they said. they were fixin' the hole… but a tarp, whoa, yeah, just oozes 'stability'.
i'm out for the night, but 'if i should die before i wake…i pray the cosmos...my spirit to take'.
Galaxy IRAS 06076-2139 is actually 2 separate galaxies rushing past each other at about 1,243,000 mph or 2mil km/hr!https://t.co/cMsPCMwD2U pic.twitter.com/MMkNZp1vJm
— Hubble (@NASAHubble) May 12, 2017
V. Arnold | May 14, 2017 at 5:55 am | Reply
I must say; the art By Anthony Freda is sectacular 'spectacular'.
And illustrative of the present mindset of the U.S. of A..
ah, i fixed it so bruce's comment might be understood. but just afterward, our son called from the UAE to say happy mum's day. so i hadn't had time to say that i'd both fixed your typo and…not fixed it. but woooot! it was good to hear from him. 115 degree days there. he really enjoys being among the emiratis, especially since they all look like him (skin tone and color, dunno what other features).
freda is awesome, and talk about subversive and in your face. can't remember now how or why he began sending me his work to use…mustta been a decade ago. but now he puts most of his work on the 'creative resistance' website, bless his heart. he and his family live in nyc and watched the twin towers go down, and that likely radicalized his artwork up a notch or three.
was this diary 2L2R as well, or at least scannable enough to get the gist? the 'myth of science' as a whole package meme was pretty much new to me, so i found it sooooo thought-provoking.
Ah, mystery solved; cheers WD…
Bruce | May 14, 2017 at 6:03 am | Reply
Sectacular wurkz fer me … Lulzing.
Well, okay… ;-)
oh you dear hearts whose comments i can't answer yet.. my night was srsly filled with kamikaze bugs (arachnid and miller moth), thus scant sleep, creepy belly, etc.. and as weekends are full of endless chores, even if enjoyable ones, i need some rest. love to you, and back soon after java time. i'd had some thoughts about bigPharma in several directions i'd like to ask y'all about
@ greyson smythe: RT picked up the 'hawking's 100 years' story, 321 comments, but it's worth reading for his other comments about scary AI taking over the world, and this great gif. ;-)
@ cseeker: ta; i feel soooo unlovable today after such a night of horrors, particularly. what a nice thing to say.
@ tea for the tillerman: thank you for seeing the psyop underbelly of mcpherson's cavlier prediction. and oooof: the quotes you've brought us are yummy w/ poetic relevance. the one from the time-traveler is a bit enigmatic (maybe too deep for the likes of me), but seems to be worth reading several more times.
on this Hallmark© card day to celebrate our mothers, it reminds me again that for most all of us, a lot of generational love went into our births. for those of us who may have been 'mothered' insufficiently, as when i've had wretched dreams of my mother, i sometimes lie on my back and stroke my forehead over and over and imagine that the earth and the cosmos are my 'best' mother, and i imagine that roots grow out of my body and plug deep into the earth to gain sustenance and grounding, while sending beams of light into the far reaches above the planet to again know that i'm just a speck of stardust, and will return one day soon.
ah, this is the only version i could find, but still, even w/ the meh graphics… for all of us. we are the best parts of our ancestors dreaming. sweet honey in the rock:
is health the equivalent of health care/access to health care? we talk about health as a lifestyle choice. ill health occurs b/c people lack access to health care and more generally make bad decisions. consider:
Silent Spring was pub'd in 1962.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_tobacco_by_the_U.S._Food_and_Drug_Administration#Pre-FDA_regulation
"In 1964, Surgeon General Luther Terry issued a report on smoking and health saying that tobacco causes lung cancer and is a main contributor to bronchitis, etc."
well, the goal of state "health care" & social organization in general is to sap the vitality of the working class, except to the extent that bodies are needed for capitalist systems, esp. employment. black lung is not gonna catch itself, is it? as literally everything in society is a vehicle for profit & rent taking, is massive medical experimentation a surprise?
anyway, re eliot, 4 q's: it's a ww2 poem, w/ references to the blitz & submarine warfare & so on. so naturally "to converse with Mars" is the 1st goal of prognostication. and we generally don't stare so much at crystal balls, no, just the tea leaves in the "features of the press," like the Sybilline oracle. regret for what might have been & mortifying fear of the future become part of the routine of life. e.g.:
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden.
Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations
And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence
And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen
Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about
dark dark dark, all go into the dark. this is the fear we all live with, whether we know it or not. and as prufrock said, in short, I was afraid. regret about the past & fear of future prohibit "right action." but our big-brained tenured asshole prof mcpherson has not reached even a limited stage of regret & grief about the past.
Do not let me hear
Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly,
Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession,
Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God.
"Quigley's 2000 word vocabulary inadequate to express his emptiness." no kidding.
whoosh, j; you're so apt to pack so much erudition and canniness into one comment that i often don't know where to start. first, thank you so much for explaining the eliot passages. second: oh, my stars, the onion video! "that was a great day for us!" then the bits as to whether or not quigley will turn to alcoholism or suicide, is this one of their best and most relevant? gorillas can be taught 'existential angst'?
i got bit lost in your paragraphs on health equaling..', but i was reminded of a related comment at a prominent progressive (?) website i read the other day on a discussion about climate change end games, etc.:
Tomonthebeach permalink
"Has capitalism and democracy failed the poor? Or, have the poor failed capitalism and democracy?
The abnegation of which Ian speaks seems flatly distributed throughout our society. One must concede that the deck is stacked, life ain't fair, and white makes might. Yet, there a people of all ethnicities, races, and genders who overcome all that crap and achieve amazing things in their lives while their peers satisfice or turn to larcenous shortcuts.
Why is it that when we look at economic disparity, we are so ready to exculpate those not benefiting from our social systems? Even a cursory investigation reflects a widespread pattern of serial bad choices in life. Those who fail to complete high school always cluster in the bottom 30% economically. Those who reproduce early likewise fare badly. Too many smoke and/or drink up as much as a third of their income that might have been invested in education or equities. There are slackers in the world. Is that fact attributable to democracy or capitalism? If it is, what system might ensure that everybody tries to make that system work?"
one person called him a dick, but some of the brightest stars there are totally convinced that the problem is over-population, but i remember RC saying that we know who's having too many chirren, but we're not even allowed to talk about it, or close.
Public health, women's rights activists protest pushing of dangerous Depo Provera contraceptive on poor Indian women http://t.co/KJRSWA2ECZ
— Club des Cordeliers (@cordeliers) October 2, 2015
Pfizer and Gates Foundation escalate campaign to push dangerous contraceptives on African women https://t.co/SNjE33y7qb
— Club des Cordeliers (@cordeliers) May 10, 2017
so not just best science and experimentation, but eugenics (turns out margaret sanger was by way of a racialist, at best as well), even when dangerous. but for the gates, et.al.: saving the world and the poor women thru gmo foods and birth control. now i'm not prepared to know how birth no.s per woman in africa or india relate to live chirren a year or two later, but infant/toddler deaths it may be one of the reasons underlying it. alhough the white saviors claim their hubbies refuse their wives to use birth control, hence the implantable versions. i dunno.
this is burning hot:
yes, there's intelligence without wisdom, science untethered to any morality, esp. for the rabble. i also remember that james hansen's extinction date was far sooner than later, and that his remedy is to build more nuclear power plants. thd may have said he'd advocated using decommissioned nuclear bombs, i forget. but arrrgh.
j | May 15, 2017 at 10:19 am | Reply
oh I just mean that if we were to have a "national conversation" about health (oh lord, I sound like an HRC campaign) we wouldn't start off talking about health care & insurance at all. we'd talk about shit like fast food & 50% of the workforce not having one goddam second of paid leave, food production in general, the walton family getting rich while almost all their thousands of staff starve, etc., etc. framing the debate around access to and/or the cost of health care is a marketing scam, one whose purpose to find viable subjects for medical experimentation (yes, I mean this about the whole health care system). and there are so many subjects available for "health care" b/c of capitalist waste of all other areas of life. (yes, I am suggesting the anti-tobacco campaign was a massive planned misdirection, part of the larger focus on issues of personal choice & lifestyle, not the shit being dumped into the water.)
give Quigley a job and it won't be 10 years till he's an alcoholic considering suicide. and don't forget the smoke breaks.
or barry o: 'now we can have a national conversation about race'. but i do get what you'd meant now. but even though 'corporate health insurance' ain't the same a 'health care', for some it amounts to all they have, srsly, esp. w/o access to anything but quick mart and mcdogfood sorts of food, as in many inner city 'ghettos'. nor do many amerikans have any worthy public transportation to get the hell outta their neighborhoods to 'real' grocery stores, even if much of what's on the shelves is rubbish. sorry, i got off-track, but now obamaCorporatecCare is 'worth saving' cuz trumpDontCare is far worse right?
but yes, there are so many 'health' misdirections afoot, and you have a great eye for seeing what lurks beneath them. the D v. R one is the worst in the political sphere, but we all know that, and i just read a barnburner on that at CP: 'the magic liberal'. i'm a gonna snag quotes he has in the future, for certain, including the f'ed one by snowjob on comey. i'd almost created a 'clash of the titans' twit storify as to him and assange (tongue in cheek) on twitter. dagnabbit, i did it again; i'll blame my wheezing-as-hell laptop for now, then shut it down for a while to see if that helps….
industrial disease as a way to sap the life force out of the underclass just enough to keep them working for the feudal lords. oh, hell, i gotta shut down before this machine blows its cork. back later.
re climate change, R Hunziker at CP today: all humans are the subject of a global experiment. i'm always annoyed at reading him for his insistent refusal to name the Obama admin as equally culpable as trump or whoever, esp as it's so obvious from his own facts that Obama was/is a nightmare.
I understand there are plenty o' people dependent on the current health care system for even a meagre chance at survival. and the trump admin's actions will make things worse. but, in our society as it is practiced, allopathic medicine is more or less to health as strip mining is to forest/water preservation.
anyway, part of the environmental toxicity we deal with must include television (& now other forms of mass media). I thought this was great:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/05/16/punchlines-and-glamour-a-face-in-the-crowd-revisited-in-the-age-of-trump/
lol and omg! so many reading assignments (one a veddy long one) you assign me w/ so many other things to do? well, new diary tomorrow, then (she says hopefully)…
yeah, you're preachin' to the choir on allopathic/ama medicine which is why i hadn't been to a doc for twenty years before my crap/brain damaging k-nee surgery, and will never, ever, go to one again.
but ooof, hunziker srsly doesn't get that st. obama's quasi-agreement to the paris accord would not only not happen, but wouldn't matter in any event to the global carbon ppm theshold that's yep, accelerating. weird framing of his eh? and i'd been about to accuse him of failing to note the melting permafrost in alaska was also due to methane, as well as carbon, so powerful in climate warming and melting. so i poked about for evidence, tra la la, before i clicked into his 'this is climate change' or whatever link, and yep. the piece mentioned it, as well as the 'experts' who'd recently decided it 'wasn't as big a deal as we'd thunk'. but his link did conjecture on possible effects of 'the greening of permafrost'; interesting, but unlikely to slow down change. but hunkizer politicizes 'science' just as soooo many do. how hard is to see that herr cheeto marks the exact trajectory that the usa has been on for decades now?
but dang, 'punchlines' was great, and certainly right up your alley (hopefully increasingly mine). so many passages to choose from, but this is one:
"A key element of the system is the pseudo-celebrity who lures the audience into a false intimacy, which in turn creates a group identity built around charismatic personality. This is also more or less the definition of fascism. What Schulberg and Kazan understood early on is that commercial TV exists to create a brain-deadening cult of celebrity, thus transforming the older and firmer world of articulated values, thoughts and ideals to a miasma of contentless, addictive images. They realized that a TV culture is a selling culture, subsuming quaint notions of civic virtue and public life to the hipper imperatives of fashion and private lifestyle. Whatever their political twists and turns over the years, Schulberg and Kazan remained incisive cultural critics. In TV they perceived the end of critical intellect as a force in American life and the final enthronement of the mass man, humored by pseudo-populist demagogues in thrall to the vested interests."
he missed a few key things about bubba clinton's rule (deregulate wall st. was purdy huge), but then, it was soooo long anyway.
juliania2 | May 16, 2017 at 9:51 am | Reply
Before coming onto this thread (I'm slow) I was posting at NC about DesCartes' connection to Teresa de Avila (science vs. mysticism) in very similar vein to your excellent exposition above, wendye. And I'll just add to j's quotes from the beginnings of the Four Quartets poems that my personal inclination is to rush ahead to Little Gidding, bearing in mind that the first poem of the four takes place timewise for Eliott writing these poems way before the actual WWII experiences in poem four, 'Little Gidding'. We feel at the threshold of ominous happenings, but elsewhere so many are already beyond the threshold, in the wars we don't see or hear about.
I go to Little Gidding because of its in the midst of disaster clarion calls – and because of the news today that poor Yemen is there with the outbreak of famine and cholera following upon war ongoing for them as for so many in that part of the world:
The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error,
The only hope or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre —
To be redeemed from fire by fire.
Who then devised the torment? Love
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame.
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.
That's the hardest segment of poem four for me to understand, but it is the abyss – that I understand – which you good folk here are better at encountering and surviving to reword than I will ever be. Blessings on you all, and safe journeys home.
now see? you all seem intent on edjucatin' me! okay, i'll read later, but how timely this is from 3 days ago, first hit, although the site is not very attractive, and gives no clue what it's about. 'One of Descartes' most famous ideas was first articulated by a woman', qz.com
doubly interesting, as when i began to prepare a post on 'human nature', of course the philosophers and religious posed many theories, if not rather adamant 'beliefs'. but moving on, i understand your difficulty in understanding all of the passage you quoted, but this is the most baffling.
now i went and found all of 'little gidding', and placing it in whole context might shine some light on it. love as in 'redemption by flame and fire', as in 'phoenix rising?' well bless your heart, juliania. and yes to massive suffering not only in yemen by our direct and proxy war-mongering, but also climate change diasporas. they are burgeoning out of notice of the msm, of course.
I hear on the war thing, but the early pieces of 4 q's were written in response to ww1, the great depression, events in Russia, Italy, etc.
I spent a blessed Lenten season a few years back reading the 4 q's w/a couple of sharp cookies, one of whom pointed out that the two stanzas you quote are a retelling of the Hercules-Deianira-Nessus story.
all the seeing going on via the telly, nothing is seen. Tolstoy in the RL and Camus' Tarrou in The Plague come to certain beliefs thru witnessing the state execute a man. mediating people's vision is the whole game.
And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate—but there is no competition—
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
conditions seem unpropitious
on a bit of a break now, but did you and your fellow smart cookies get the meaning of these two lines?
i did find a bit more of the eliott above, and oh…my stars; but yes, wasted years between two wars. thank you. later for the leonard cohen. portends speaking to his god?
Hercules shot the centaur Nessus w/one of his magic arrows dipped in the Hydra's blood. before he died, Nessus dipped a shirt in the same poison & told Hercules' current partner Deianira that if she gave the shirt to her god-man as a gift, its powers would ensure that he loved her only forever.
it's a trick, the evil gift, and the shirt cannot be removed once put on. Hercules is in so much torment from the poisoned shirt that he wants to kill himself. His friend Philoctetes lights the funeral pyre, whose flames purify Hercules &, for his labors, he is divinized, becoming a lesser deity.
L Cohen: Hineni means "here am I" in Hebrew. it's the common response in the bible of a person when Jehovah "calls" them, esp. of the prophets, those who "speak on behalf of someone else," namely Jehovah. Cohen, I gather, identified w/Judaism but from a number of his songs seems to have been rather intrigued by the figure of Jesus. i think w/this Hebrew word he's putting himself & his music w/in the Jewish prophetic tradition.
salami aleichem
i truly appreciate your explanation of the hercules/nessa/deianira story. i'd grabbed a link to read when i had time, but i will try to listen to cohen's song as soon as i can get this next diary finished. w/ RL obligations, it sadly will be more copy/paste, but…there it is.
bless your literate heart for providing so much context here; juliania, too. but i'd also pulled this from curtin's pt I:
'It was Dostoevsky who long ago warned us of the path we were on and the spiritual nihilism that lay at its heart:
"That is not all; then, you say, science itself will teach man (though to my mind it's a superfluous luxury) that he never has really had any caprice or will of his own, and that he himself is something of the nature of a piano-key or the stop of an organ, and that there are, besides, things called the laws of nature; so that everything he does is not done by his willing it, but is done of itself, by the laws of nature. Consequently, we have only to discover these laws of nature, and man will no longer have to answer for his actions and life will become exceedingly easy for him."
great quote, notes from the underground. the idea that "he never has really had any caprice or will of his own" does not make for a good tellie advert. won't sell anything. too depressing. even as marketing exists to attempt to ensure that no one really ever has a caprice of their own.
telesur today: 'Nearly 1 in 3 Drugs Have Safety Issues Even After FDA Approval'
"According to the report, commissioned by Yale University, prescription drugs used to treat mental health issues such as depression were more likely to have these issues.
"The fact that so many new safety risks are being identified after FDA approval indicates that the FDA is (ya think they might have meant: ISN'T?) taking its responsibility of ensuring the safety of new drugs throughout their lifetime seriously," said one of the researchers, Nicholas Downing from Brigham and Women's Hospital."
and Obomba was king of the fast track approval process, remember? and that number is likely on the low side, i'd think.
but related. i was musing about standard cancer treatments, and maybe they've changed while i wasn't looking, but not for the first time i wondered about both radiation and chemo therapies being a 'war on cancer cells'. and that the treatments usually almost kill a patient before, and IF the patient gets better, or lives X yrs longer. if the human race lives long enough into the future, will these treatments be seen as barbaric as high-voltage electric shock now does, and less war-like protocols might work best?
but the other disease issue i was pinging was that in a non-capitalist society if government wouldn't do well to sic researchers to develop treatment for the many brands of superbugs, even past MRSA? i saw a quote from some bigPharma ceo saying they were on it, but given that it's work that if it's efficient, obviates the need for taking more of med X, so: no profits.
think how many spices, herbs, supplements, and gut health products are known to help by the alternative health providers and the aware students of same, and yet the medical world by and large warns against them, and have even made attempts to outlaw many of them in the past. (i don't seem to have updated this post to reflect the myriad health benefits of cannabis, but you'll get the drift.) think of antibiotics, indiscriminate bacteria killers, when most gut bacteria are healthy and necessary, yet few doctors advise yogurt or multi-strain probiotics after finishing a course of them, resulting often in various forms of rampant candida infestations, etc. but most people just pop into a doc's office and get some meds for whatever' going on, and many of those meds aren't life-enforcing, but the opposite. at least after decades of proof, not all orthopedists recommend surgery (esp. back) as the first option, so there is that, thankfully.
hippie and other rants off. anyway, g' nite, and sweet dreams.
i needed to google for the lyrics, bruce, but even then, i'm none the wiser as to what you're conveying w/ this. explain if you'd like to.
Well, sweet honey in the rock sang of brothers 0f LOVE as inspiring; although I'm lately more of grandfathers' dreaming, these old days.
ah. i'd thought it was more by way of a love song; but thanks for explaining, grandfather-dreaming. the sweet honey version got pulled again from youtube, but so many others are there. 'we are', like so many of theirs, fair' put me in a trance.
i'm shutting down for the night soon, but i did want to suggest that you all check your pbs stations that carry 'masterpiece' and see when 'king Charles III' will air. i haven't enjoyed any production so much since perhaps the ian richardson version of 'house of cards' however long ago.
it's a film adaptation of the play that ran for three years, and most, but not all, of the stage actors are in the film version. the dialogue is shakespearean blank verse (yeah, one review or called it 'fakespearean) but among other brilliant performances is 'charles', played by tim pigott-smith, who left this mortal coil soon after the filming was complete. bless him, this performance will likely make him immortal.
'Digging Into The History Of Hanford's Radioactive Waste Tunnels', by Anna Kin, opb.org, may 15
Staggering stuff, h/t club de cordeliers on twitter
OT: Chelsea Manning walks out of prison today; of paramount importance to the world.
How now to help Julian?
thanks for the reminder, v arnold. how to help assange? loads of petitions, letters, etc., haven't helped…yet. and sweden is trashing him and blocking any single word of him. remember when herr cheeto loved him before hi a-team hated him? was it comey who'd accused him of releasing 'intel porn' or close? then once he was fired, assange had invited him to join the wikileaks team (tongue in cheek, of course), while snowden said 'that's no way to treat the fbi', lol. (or close) what a tool!
but folks sure raised a lotta money for chelsea to start her new life, bless their hearts.
Chelsea Manning to be freed in hours. An epic victory. I can't wait to see her. https://t.co/PdQ1LVWvIm
More: https://t.co/XwGuGIvCMe
— Julian Assange (@JulianAssange) May 16, 2017
May 18, 2017 'Hanford is Ripe for a Radioactive Explosion', by Joshua Frank
http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/05/18/hanford-is-ripe-for-a-radioactive-explosion/
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text:
Orfeo ed Euridice {49} Metropolitan Opera House: 11/26/1941.
(Review)
ORFEO ED EURIDICE {49}
C. W. Gluck-Calzabigi
Orfeo...................Kerstin Thorborg
Euridice................Jarmila Novotna
Amore...................Marita Farell
Happy Shade.............Annamary Dickey
Dance...................Montes Boris
Conductor...............Bruno Walter
Director................Herbert Graf
Set designer............Harry Horner
Costume designer........Frank Bevan
Choreographer...........Laurent Novikoff
Orfeo ed Euridice received four performances this season.
Review of Virgil Thomson in the Herald Tribune
Pathos and Style
"Orfeo et Euridice" is Gluck's most appealing work. Bruno Walter is the most appealing conductor of Gluck's music that one has had occasion to hear in New York for many years. Last night's performance of this opera under the loving hand of this great musician was in every way sweet and memorable.
After Mr. Walter's rich and deeply tender leadership of the whole, the most remarkable single performance was that of Miss Thorborg, as Orpheus himself. Never has her voice sounded so round and so ringingly lovely. She sang with all beauty and with style. Also she looked handsome in a sort of Greek cocktail dress and acted her man's role so convincingly that frequently one forgot she was not a man. Her Orpheus seemed really to be moved by a man's sentiments and to be expressing these with all the mental dignity and muscular reticence that one associates with dramatic representations of male feeling.
Seconding Miss Thorborg's noble performance with a grace and a fragility infinitely touching was Miss Novotna, as Euridice. Her voice has freshened up over the summer, especially its upper part. Her high notes were clear and penetrating with all loveliness, though her lower voice remains not quite properly placed, as always. Her vibrant vocalization and her superb mastery of the grand line in phraseology produced a rendition that was both lovely in sound and commanding in style. In addition to all this the beauty of her person, the death-like pallor of her facial mask and the intense expressivity of her every move and attitude gave to her characterization a quality of youth, of illness, of pathos that was both elegant and deeply touching. The love scenes with Orpheus, which might have been conventionalized into something without pretense or conviction, were breath-taking.
Miss Annamary Dickey looked well and sang beautifully as the Happy Shade. Miss Marita Farell, as Cupid, looked far too cute for words. Unfortunately she is not a well-grounded singer technically, though her musical emission is not without style.
Style, indeed, was the keynote of the evening. The scenery and costumes were stylish; the ballet, for once, was pretty and graceful; the whole visual aspect of the performance was appropriate. I should not wish to compare this visualization with the spectacular rendition of the same opera that took place in this same house some five years back. It was done at the time as pure ballet, with decoration by Pavel Tchelitcheff and choreography by Balanchine. As a ballet the production was memorable. As opera it was virtually non-existent, all the chorus and soloists having been buried alive in the orchestra pit.
The present production is far more modest visually and not in any way so original as that one, but it is surprisingly agreeable to look at and surprisingly devoid of the shocking lapses of taste one has come to associate with Metropolitan Opera productions of late years. Also, it gets the singers back on the stage, which is the only place where a singer can function to musical or to dramatic advantage. The entire show, visual and auditory, was last night a real operatic performance. There was superb vocalism, first-class teamwork, expressive staging and framing of the whole.
Also the whole was a whole. It was not an accidental meeting on a stage of artists who happen to know certain roles. It was a collaboration job with some person of taste, presumably Mr. Walter, taking trouble to see that all the collaborators, musical and plastic, were producing the same show that he was. Such unity of style, all too rare in operatic productions, is far more important than opera producers think. Please, may we have more of it? Also more of Bruno Walter.
Orfeo ed Euridice: Conductor [Walter, Bruno]
Orfeo ed Euridice: Orfeo [Thorborg, Kerstin]
Orfeo ed Euridice: Euridice [Novotna, Jarmila]
Orfeo ed Euridice: Amore [Farell, Marita]
Orfeo ed Euridice: Happy Shade [Dickey, Annamary]
Orfeo ed Euridice: Dance [Boris, Ruthanna]
Orfeo ed Euridice: Dance [Montes, Monna]
Orfeo ed Euridice: Director [Graf, Herbert]
Orfeo ed Euridice: Choreographer [Novikoff, Laurent]
Orfeo ed Euridice: Set Designer [Horner, Harry]
Orfeo ed Euridice: Costume Designer [Bevan, Frank]
1941-42: Orfeo ed Euridice: 4 performances: Statistics
NewReview
Bevan, Frank [Costume Designer]
Boris, Ruthanna [Dancer]
Dickey, Annamary [Soprano]
Farell, Marita [Soprano]
Graf, Herbert [Director]
Horner, Harry [Set Designer]
Montes, Monna [Dancer]
Novikoff, Laurent [Choreographer]
Novotna, Jarmila [Soprano]
Thorborg, Kerstin [Mezzo Soprano]
Walter, Bruno [Conductor]

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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text:
Auburn Flips In-State Linebacker Away from Alabama Crimson Tide
Photo Courtesy of @E2C_Network on Twitter
College football's Early Signing Day for the class of 2022 kicked off on Wednesday and as always the day includes prominent prospects changing as they nail down where they will play college football.
In Alabama, one such decision affected both the Alabama Crimson Tide and the Auburn Tigers as Mobile 4-star linebacker Robert Woodyard flipped his commitment from the Crimson Tide and ultimately signed his letter of intent for the Tigers.
Woodyard had been committed to the Crimson Tide since June 2020 but revealed his changed decision this morning at Williamson High School.
The 6-foot-1, 210 pound linebacker is considered the No. 6 overall player in the state of Alabama and the No. 11 overall linebacker in the class of 2022 according to 247Sports.
Woodyard, according to Drew DeArmond of 97.7 The Zone, reportedly had not had consistent communication with the Alabama coaching staff and had not even taken a visit to Tuscaloosa after the NCAA re-opened in-person recruiting in July
Auburn's Zac Etheridge and Jeff Schmedding served as Woodyard's primary recruiters for the Tigers.
Woodyard is currently the top rated recruit in the Auburn recruiting class featuring 17 signees to this point. The Tigers currently have the No. 12 ranked class according to 247Sports and the No. 5 class in the SEC.
The Anti- Alabama Team
Alabama has lost 23 games while Nick Saban has been in charge. These athletes were pivotal in helping to secure a rare victory for their teams.
Filed Under: Alabama Crimson Tide, Auburn Tigers, Recruiting, Robert Woodyard
Categories: Alabama, Alabama Football, Alabama Sports, College Football, High School Sports, Recruiting, Sports


text:
February 12 Kindle Daily Deals including Free eBooks
After the world was ravaged by a viral apocalypse, Blackwater is one of the only colonies that remains. The survivors came together to create this safe haven. Nestled between a fierce river and a city's flood wall, the well-being of its residents hangs on a long-established treaty with the night-walkers. Sounds simple enough, but lately, the people of Blackwater have been dying, and the humans believe the night-walkers are to blame. Porschia Grant starves for more than her parents' affection. Forced to enter the rotation, she will be given extra food rations in exchange for becoming a vampire's breakfast and dinner for a week. The rotation has an extra responsibility as well: leave the colony and enter the dangerous forest to hunt for food. A night-walker will protect the hunters from the infected that roam the woods. But with the treaty hanging in the balance and tension between the humans and vampires rising, anything could happen in the darkness.What would you do if your only chance at survival might kill you?
Michael Patrick MacDonald grew up in "the best place in the world"--the Irish-American Old Colony projects of South Boston--where 85% of the residents collect welfare in an area with the highest concentration of impoverished whites in the U.S. In All Souls, MacDonald takes us deep into the secret heart of Southie. With radiant insight, he opens up a contradictory world, where residents are besieged by gangs and crime but refuse to admit any problems, remaining fiercely loyal to their community. MacDonald also introduces us to the unforgettable people who inhabit this proud neighborhood. We meet his mother, Ma MacDonald, an accordion-playing, spiked-heel-wearing, indomitable mother to all; Whitey Bulger, the lord of Southie, gangster and father figure, protector and punisher; and Michael's beloved siblings, nearly half of whom were lost forever to drugs, murder, or suicide. MacDonald's story is ultimately one of overcoming the racist, classist ideology he was born into. It's also a searing portrayal of life in a poor, white neighborhood plagued by violence and crime and deeply in denial about it.
Labels: Biographies & Memoirs, History, Horror, Nonfiction, Politics & Social Sciences, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Teen & Young Adult


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data (byte string) - The very first chunk of the message to hash. It is equivalent to an early call to SHA384Hash.update(). Optional.


text:
A God Save The Rave a német Scooter együttes huszadik nagylemeze, mely 2021. április 16-án jelent meg. Kétlemezes normál kiadásban, valamint limitált Deluxe Box változatban is kiadásra került (ennek a csomagnak a része egy pár zokni, autóillatosító, valamint autós és egyéb matricák), illetve dupla bakeliten, ez utóbbiból egy limitált példányszámú átlátszó széria is készült.

Magyarországra ezt a lemezt már nem hozta be a Magneoton, ugyanis időközben megszűntek a Scooter kiadványait hazánkban menedzselő kiadó lenni.

Áttekintés
Phil Speiser 2018-as kiválását követően Etnik Zarari érkezett, de ő csak pár hónapig volt a csapat tagja, és ez idő alatt mindössze a "Move Your Ass! (Noisecontrollers Remix)" jelent meg, mint új kiadvány. Sebastian Schilde 2019-ben érkezett a helyére, a Scooter pedig egy hosszabb turnézás után éppen ismét dalokat kezdett el kiadni. A rendszeres időközönként megjelenő kislemezek mellé azonban a nagylemez sehogy sem akart megjelenni. Nem tett jót a helyzetnek a 2020-ban tombolni kezdő koronavírus-járvány, amely alapjaiban írta felül a Scooter terveit.

2020. november 27-én, a "Paul Is Dead" kislemez megjelenésével egy időben jelentették be az interneten, hogy jön a "God Save The Rave" nagylemez, az azonos című kislemez és turné után, mégpedig 2021. február 26-án. Ezzel egy időben elkezdték forgalmazni a lemezhez kapcsolódó merchandize termékeket is. December 14-én bejelentették, hogy az album megjelenését április 16-ára tolják, ugyanis a járvány miatt nem sikerült időben legyártatni a Deluxe Box-hoz szükséges termékeket.

Február elején az Amazon rendszerében keletkezett egy hiba, ami miatt több előrendelőnek egyszerűen törlődött a megrendelése, gyakorlatilag eltűnt a termékek adatlapja. Ebből azt a téves következtetést vonták le többen, hogy a kiadvány hátha meg sem jelenik. Az együttes intézkedett a hiba megoldása érdekében. Ugyanekkor kiderült, hogy mik is az extrák, amiket a Deluxe Boxhoz adnak, és nem nyerték el maradéktalanul a rajongók tetszését, főleg hogy jelentős részüket webshopból már eleve be lehetett szerezni. Ráadásul az is nyilvánvalóvá vált, hogy a 2-es CD-n az "I Want You To Stream" koncertlemezt adják ki, ami szintén sokak nemtetszését váltotta ki. Később abból adódott probléma, hogy egy új rendelet miatt az Amazon csak korlátozottan volt hajlandó Magyarországra szállítani Németországból.

A megjelenés hetében közölték, hogy a "Groundhog Day" fogja felvezetni a lemezt, melynek videoklip-premierje a lemez megjelenésének napjára esett. Ugyanezen a héten egy népszerű kezdeményezéshez csatlakoztak: NFT-ket bocsátottak licitre.

A dalokról
A lemeznek több mint a felét már korábban is kiadták kislemezként, így nem képeztek újdonságot. A "Futurum Est Nostrum" egy gregorián alapokra helyezett intro. Több szám, úgy is, mint az ezt követő "God Save The Rave", a "We Love Hardcore", a "Which Light Switch Is Which", az albumverziós "Rave Teacher", vagy a "Devil's Symphony", nagyjából egy sémára épül: a fő énektémával kezdődik, majd jön a dallam és H.P. Baxxter szövege, a legvégén pedig hardstyle alapokra cserélik az ütemeket.

Szintén hardstyle alapú, de másabb felépítésű dal a "Never Stop The Show", ami zongoraintróval kezdődik, és a végén is van egy hosszabb, nyugodtabb levezetés. Ez az egyetlen olyan dal a lemezen, amelyben a női vokált semmilyen módon nem torzították el. A "Paul Is Dead" és a "Groundhog Day" a gyors tempójukkal lógnak ki a dalok közül. A "Bassdrum"-ban a közreműködő Finch Asozial is szövegel, méghozzá németül, ezzel ez a Scooter második (bár csak félig) német nyelvű kislemeze a "Lass Uns Tanzen" után. Maga a dal minimalista ütemekre épül.

A "Hang The DJ"-ben és a "These Days"-ben a korábbi Scooter-lemezekről visszaköszönő psytrance elemek is hallhatóak, előbbiben pedig skótduda is. Az "Анастасия" és a kizárólag bakelitre felkerült "Lugosi" lassabb tempójú, nehezebb technoszámok, a középső résztől kezdve egy egyszerűbb dallamtémával. A "Wan'drin' Star" egy szokatlan albumzáró szám, egy Lee Marvin-feldolgozás, teljes egészében H.P. Baxxter énekével és akusztikus gitárral kísérve.

A "FCK 2020" és a "Groundhog Day" szövege és témája a koronavírus-járvány miatti világleállásra reflektál.

Számok listája

CD1 – God Save The Rave

CD2 – I Want You To Stream

Ez a lemez a 2020. március 27-én rögzített online koncertjük anyagát tartalmazza. Az LP-kiadás csak az eredeti albumot tartalmazza bakeliten, ahhoz a 2-es CD-t ajándékba mellékelték.

 Intro
 One (Always Hardcore)
 Ramp! (The Logical Song)
 Bora! Bora! Bora!
 My Gabber
 God Save The Rave
 Fire
 How Much is The Fish?
 The Age of Love (Nacho Remix)
 Fuck The Millennium / Call Me Manana
 J'adore Hardcore / Jumping All Over The World
 Maria (I Like It Loud)
 Which Light Switch Is Which?
 Endless Summer / Hyper Hyper / Move Your Ass! (Noisecontrollers Remix)

Kritikák
A német Spiegel 2021. április 16-i kritikájában a hét lemezének választotta a "God Save The Rave"-et. Megjegyezték, hogy furcsa idők járnak, amikor a hamburgi techno trió szállítja a legjobb koronavírus-ellenes számot a "FCK 2020" személyében, emellett dicsérték a "Never Stop The Show" és a "We ove Hardcore" című dalokat. Sebastian Schilde csatlakozását pozitívumként értékelték, aki szerintük az album trance-esebb pillanataiért felel.Összességében 6.0 pontot osztottak ki a lemeznek.

Feldolgozások, sample-átvételek

 We Love Hardcore: Zombie Nation – Kernkraft 400
 Which Light Switch Is Which: T-Marc & Vincent – Strings of Infinity
 FCK 2020: The Pitcher – Pump It Loud
Groundhog Day: Cosmic Gate – Firewire
 Hang the DJ: Anders Gunnar Norudde – Konvulsionslaten
 Rave Teacher (Somebody Like Me): Xillions – Somebody Like Me (Mark With A K Remix)
 Devil's Symphony: Pjotr Iljics Csajkovszkij – Hattyúk tava
 These Days: Oliver Koletzki – Iyéwaye
 Wand'rin' Star: Lee Marvin – Wand'rin' Star

Közreműködtek

 H.P. Baxxter a.k.a. No Diggity Diggity H (szöveg)
 Sebastian Schilde (zene)
 Michael Simon (zene)
 Jens Thele (menedzsment)
 Kevin Kridlo, Patrick Poehl [Harris & Ford] (God Save The Rave, Devil's Symphony, Which Light Switch Is Which, társszerző)
 Timmy Trumpet, Jeremy Bunawan, Leonie Burger (Paul Is Dead, társszerző)
 Charlotte Boss (Devil's Symphony, vokál és társszerző)
 Vanessa Schulz (God Save The Rave, FCK 2020, vokál, Bassdrum vokál és társszerző)
 Diandra Faye (Never Stop The Show, vokál)
 Leony (Paul Is Dead és Groundhog Day, vokál)
 VIZE (Groundhog Day, társszerző)
 Xillions [Oscar Bishop, Shea Duncan] (Rave Teacher, társszerző)
 Balca Yildiztekin (Rave Teacher, Devil's Symphony, vokál)
 Christin Pohl (Which Light Switch Is Which, vokál)
 Finch Asozial, Daniel Grossmann, Matthias Mania (Bassdrum, társszerző)
 Dimitri Thivalos, Michael Thivalos [Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike], Fabian Bohn [Brennan Heart], Elie Abwi [Toneshifterz] (We Love Hardcore, társszerző)
 Achim Janssen (Wan'drin' Star)
 Philip Nürnberger (fényképek)
 Martin Weiland, Tobias Trettin (borítóterv)

Videóklipek

 A Rave Teacher-hez a korábbiakhoz képest egyszerűbb videóklip készült, mely április 8-án lett elérhető. Lényegében egy térben játszódik az egész, egy stúdióban, melyben egy rendőrautó található, az oldalán Scooter-logóval. Ez utóbbi utalás a The KLF sikeres projektjére, a "The Timelords"-ra, ugyanis ugyanilyen rendőrautó szerepelt annak a klipjében is. A Scooter tagjai vagy az autóban láthatóak, vagy előtte zenélnek, ezen kívül csak egy kezeslábasba öltözött, búvárszemüveghez hasonló maszkos táncos látható a klipben.
 A God Save The Rave klipje két héttel a kislemez megjelenése után jött ki. Ezúttal is szerepet kap benne egy autó, mellyel a Scooter tagjai és a Harris & Ford duó egy benzinkúthoz mennek. H.P. Baxxter vacsorát rendel magának, miközben a többiek elvannak a kúton. A táncosok ezúttal az autómosó hatalmas mosókeféjének öltöztek. Ez a Scooter történetének első 21:9 képarányban rögzített videóklipje.
 A Devil's Symphony megjelenésekor egyáltalán nem jött ki videoklip, csak október 30-án, amely szakítva a hagyományokkal egy "Lyric Video" volt, azaz elsősőrban a szövegre koncentrált. Külsőségeit tekintve egy sűrű sötét erdőben, televízióképernyőkön látható a dalszöveg, néha bevágásokkal az együttes tagjairól. A klip 4K felbontású, 21:9 képarányú.
 A Which Light Switch Is Which? klipje másfél héttel a kislemez megjelenése után, december 17-én jelent meg. Ebben a Scooter három tagja műanyag formában látható egy számítógéppel generált világban.
 A Bassdrum videoklipjében a Scooter tagjai valamint Finch Asozial láthatóak különféle stúdióban rögzített jelenetekben.
 A FCK 2020 klipjét Svédországban vették fel. Szerepel benne a Latela által készített autó, amellyel végighajtanak egy kihalt város utcáin. A videoklipben Sebastian és Michael kiplakátolják a várost a kislemezborítón is látható képpel, miközben H.P. Baxxter három táncoslány kíséretében látható egy raktárépületben.
 A Paul Is Dead klipjét a korábbiakhoz hasonlóan, a Zyrkus Video productions készítette. Felbukkan benne a Scooter három tagja, egyes jelenetekben egy-egy üvegkockába zárva, máskor egy régi katonai rádiót használva és telefonálva, továbbá hasonlóan bezárt táncoslányok, akiknek olykor maszk van az arcán. Timmy Trumpet csak bevágott képkockákon szerepel.
 A We Love Hardcore klipjében korábbi koncerteken készült felvételek kerültek összevágásra, egyes jelenetekben pedig H.P. Baxxter került rámontírozásra a kivetítőkre.
 A Groundhog Day videoklipje egy figyelmeztetéssel kezdődik, hogy a villózdó fényekre érzékenyek fokozott óvatossággal nézzék meg. Ez azért van, mert a klipben dominál a vörös szín illetve a villogás. A klip az "Idétlen időkig" című filmből vett alapötlettel mutatja be, hogy 2021-ben sem változott meg a helyzet, valamennyi koncert le van mondva, és H.P. Baxxter minden nap úgy kel fel, hogy az pont ugyanolyan, mint az előző.

Érdekességek

 A "Never Stop The Show" bakelitverziójának az utolsó másodpercei eltérőek.
 A "Futurum Est Nostrum" és a "God Save The Rave" a CD-kiadáson egymásba úsztatva hallhatóak.

Helyezések

Nagylemez

Kislemezek

Megjegyzések

Linkek, további információ

 God Save The Rave album a Spotify-on
 God Save The Rave album a YouTube Musicon
 God Save The Rave album az Apple Music-on (iTunes-vásárlás is elérhető)

Scooter
2021 nagylemezei

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Bill Boggs Corner Table: At Leisure in Liège
Bill Boggs
A visit to the stunning Belgian city and a side trip to Spa
Le Sélys has a capacity for only 50 guests in its two elegant rooms and is a gastronomic dining destination within Liège and well beyond.
A two-week vacation in Europe was set: fly to Munich, next stop Brussels, then on to Amsterdam.
But a thought occurred: "Three bustling cities — bam, bam, bam. Too hectic!" I've always had a great time in Brussels, but why not discover and explore a Belgian city with a slower pace? A little research with Francoise of the Belgium tourist office led us to the ancient city of Liège, reasoning that if it was good enough for Charlemagne, it's good enough for us. Liège is located in the beautiful Meuse River valley in the Wallonia region, which is the French-speaking section of Belgium.
Liège proved to be a perfect destination because the city is both old and new with a rapidly evolving art scene that I think will soon be attracting major attention in Europe. The restaurants are terrific and reasonably priced, and there is no shortage of music, fountains, gardens, winding streets, and shopping areas, parks, bike paths, historical sites, cathedrals, boat rides on the Meuse River, friendly people, and lively bars with great beer.
If you travel by train, as my girlfriend Jane and I did, you get a spectacular welcome as you arrive at the Guillemins station, the modern masterpiece of Santiago Calatrava, whose stunning work includes the Museum of the Future in Rio, the Milwaukee Art Museum, and the Adán Martin Arts Center in Tenerife, Spain. The station sets the tone for a city seriously dedicated to broadening the already large base of its museums and modern architecture.
Our hotel, The Liège Crowne Plaza (above), was centrally located, and has the distinction of being the only five-star establishment within nearly a hundred mile radius. You may be tempted to head to the modern "Lobby Bar" before you get to your room. If so, ask for a cocktail made with peket, the local version of gin (juniper spirit) that can be natural or infused with many flavors — melon, strawberry, violet, etc. Peket is also an essential cooking ingredient of the region. The hotel is a stunning combination of two very old private mansions and a completely new seven-story structure. It has a gym, full-service spa and an excellent indoor swimming pool, which is one thing I try to find while I am traveling.
Of great note at the Liège Crowne Plaza is its restaurant, Le Sélys (top), which occupies the ground floor of the former Sélys Longchamps town house. The restaurant has a capacity for only 50 guests in its two elegant rooms, and is a gastronomic dining destination within Liège and well beyond. Its Belgian executive chef, Samuel Blanc, has a Michelin star, and a creative hand that extols the virtues of delicious produce and products of the Liège region. Catherine, the maître d', runs the classically appointed rooms with friendly formality. I suggest you check out its spectacular menu, but let me just say that our "dorade royale (for two) en croute de sel avec sauce Noilly-Prat" was the best preparation of such a dish that I have ever experienced.
We had four days in Liège and on one of them, while I was prowling local bars and sampling high-powered Belgian beers like Delirium Tremens, Maredsous, and Tripel Karmeliet, Jane set off on a day trip to the thermal city of Spa, the town where the concept of a spa began. Here is her recollection of that adventure, because after my day, I really don't recall her story:
"My day in Spa was a delight. The short train ride left me in the heart of this small and charming town. Waiting for me on the station platform was my informative and entertaining guide, Gaetan Plein, who works at the tourist office there. As we walked around the city, he told me many stories about the history of Spa and its illustrious visitors, such as Peter the Great and Dwight Eisenhower, who came to take the water cures. Spa also has a Formula One racetrack, a very old classic Casino, numerous parks, and special thermal waters from five underground springs.
"Gaetan then drove me through the verdant hills surrounding Spa. We wound up at the Thermes de Spa (pictured), a huge thermal facility with many treatment rooms, indoor and outdoor pools, and places to enjoy the view from high above the city. The General Director, Ms. Severine Philippin, took me on a personal tour. It is new, and nothing has been overlooked regarding health and beauty services. They even have a treatment room with a copper bath tub for people with high blood pressure. There are areas for total nudity, if you're so inclined. I left there with the desire to return for a few days as soon as my schedule would allow. To top it all off, I got back down to the town via funicular! Do not miss a chance to spend time in Spa at the spa!"
Bill Boggs Corner Table: Gallaghers SteakhouseBill Boggs Corner Table: Liege's Bistrot d'en FaceBill Boggs Corner Table: Lunch at Le Cirque, New York CityBill Boggs Corner Table: Max's Grille, Boca Raton, FloridaBill Boggs Corner Table: Playa Del Carmen's Fairmont Mayakob
At leisure in Liège with the side trip to Spa proved to be one of our more interesting travel experiences in the last several years. I hope you get a chance to go there and explore even more of Belgium yourself.
Transform Weekend Brunch With 10-Minute Blueberry Syrup


Luminous of course but hidden from them, Moon Lake streamed out in the night. By moonlight sometimes it seemed to run like a river. Beyond the cry of the frogs there were the sounds of a boat moored somewhere, of its vague, clumsy reaching at the shore, those sounds that are recognized as being made by something sightless. When did the boats have eyes - once? Nothing watched that their little part of the lake stayed roped off and protected; was it there now, the rope stretched frail-like between posts that swayed in mud? That rope was to mark how far the girls could swim. Beyond lay the deep part, some bottomless parts, said Moody. Here and there was the quicksand that stirred your footprint and kissed your heel. All snakes, harmless and harmful, were freely playing now; they put a trailing, moony division between weed and weed - bright, turning, bright and turning.
There are plenty of long, luxurious passages like this in The Golden Apples (1949), in contrast to the more succinct narration of the stories in A Curtain of Green (1941), her debut. Due to a weird inconvenience of the interlibrary loan system*, I'm currently reading both books - or, more accurately, I've set aside the former (which I own) to read as much of the latter as I can before I have to return it to the library. I'm noticing significant differences in style between the two books, although they appeared only eight years apart.


The Thunderbolt Display's connection cable looks a lot like Mini DisplayPort, doesn't it? Well, it's not and while you can plug last year's Apple Cinema Display into a Thunderbolt port and have it function, plugging the Thunderbolt Display into a Mac with only Mini DisplayPort will get you nothing but a blank screen.
Iteration is something Apple is good at. Its 24-inch Cinema Display was good, but it appealed to an extremely small number of users. In 2010, Apple released a new version with an improved screen and by that time there were many more Mini-DisplayPort-compatible Macs in the wild, thus widening its appeal.
With its Thunderbolt Display, Apple adds a superfast connection, as well as Ethernet, FireWire, and Thunderbolt. Note that the display is only compatible with Thunderbolt-compatible Macs, so in effect, we're kind of right where we started with the 24-inch Cinema Display: a powerful monitor that only a small subset of the market will be able to take advantage of.
Still, if you do own a Thunderbolt-enabled Mac , you should definitely check out the full review of the Apple Thunderbolt Display.
We originally had trouble getting the Thunderbolt Display to turn on with a MacBook running Windows 7 in Boot Camp mode. Apple did release a firmware update last week, however, and while we can't confirm whether there was a compatibility fix in it for our configuration, since the update, we've had no trouble.
Lastly, though you can connect the display to a Mac running OS X and immediate have it turn on, when running Windows, you must restart the system in Windows and have it boot while the display is connected. The display does not currently support hot-swapping in Windows.


I was wandering around my house and lost my coffee cup. It's not a big house, but I do this quite often. I set my cup on a shelf or something. Sometimes I find it in 2 minutes ... other times a week later.
I tweeted (on Twitter) that I'd lost my coffee cup. Some days later the mailman brought the cup you see pictured above. (Ignore the Pokemon.) Yes, Marco and Solveig were responsible.
A very nice surprise. You two are tops!
While I think you should certainly all support your local comic book shop, just a heads up that Nook has some good stuff for your nook if you prefer the Digital Version.
Very SOON my run on THE SHADOW for Dynamite Entertainment begins, and if you're a fan of pulp fun, I hope you'll give it a chance. If you a comic book retailer, then stock up! If you're a reader, tell you local comic shop to reserve a copy for you today!
You say you want some of my Halloween candy?