two fish

Emory College hosted a debate on war, between James Hillman and Deepak Chopra. Here are a few summations, reported online:

Psychologist James Hillman based many of his arguments on the theory of basic personality types proposed by psychologist Carl Jung, whom Hillman studied with in the 1950s.

Hillman said people in general, and Americans in particular, lack imagination, which causes conflicts to lead to violence. He said more creative solutions to conflicts can be found, [and that] part of the blame falls on lack of education. “If we don’t imagine, we get Iraq, we get New Orleans, we get criminal irresponsibility,” Hillman said. “Where does imagination go to school in the U.S.?”

A sold-out crowd of about 1,200 people, mostly local residents not affiliated with Emory, packed the pews of Glenn Memorial. Jean Houston, a researcher in human development from New York, moderated. According to both speakers, aggression is so ingrained in human nature that war might be inevitable.

Chopra said the “fight or flight” response originates in the limbic system, the same part of the brain responsible for instinctive behaviors such as eating or the urge to procreate.

Hillman mentioned that the prevelance of wars outnumber years in recorded history.

Chopra said peace might be more likely to occur if nurturing female archetypes replaced the violent male archetypes now dominant in much of human popular culture and mythology. But Hillman saw no such reason for hope. “Why are we talking about evolution, about the future?” he said. “We don’t know what the hell’s coming. It’s pretty bloody serious, what’s here. It does no good to be hopeful.” He added that humanity must be mindful of the struggle it faces in attaining peace to make peace possible.

Chopra and Hillman also disagreed in their definitions of peace. When Chopra identified the passive resistance of figures such as Rosa Parks and Mahatma Gandhi as peace, Hillman said such actions constituted strength, not peace. “That’s a Judeo-Christian interpretation,” Chopra said. “Peace in the East is a transcendence of opposing energies that allows one to dwell in a state of pure consciousness.”

Both participants and the moderator offered numerous criticisms of President Bush and his administration’s foreign policy, and Hillman called for “doves” in the audience to take over the business of war. “You must turn to war and give it deep thought,” he said. “Otherwise, it will be left to the hawks, to Kristol and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz.”

Tuesday’s event was organized by the Mythic Imagination Institute, which seeks to foster understanding and respect through stories and archetypes, as well as the Alliance for a New Humanity — a forum co-founded by Chopra — and the Emory Public Issues Forum.

   N’Kisi

“Fascinating story about Alex, but there is another grey parrot even more amazing than Alex, called N’Kisi. Why is Alex now a star and N’Kisi still obscure after years of amazing scientific results? Simply because the scientist who studies N’Kisi happens to be named Rupert Sheldrake, and the scientific establishment has quietly agreed to ostracize and marginalize Sheldrake as much as possible. N’Kisi is not only the most highly accomplished animal speaker known today — of any animal species — he is also very gifted telepathically — at least with his owner, a woman with whom he has a unique bond. Check out this link: sheldrake.org/nkisi” – JR

Hear N’Kisi Speak!          Interview, and more about Sheldrake
  

Interspecies Telepathy Experiments
N’kisi would often describe what Aimee was thinking about, reading, or looking at in situations where there were no possible ordinary clues. When Aimee saw Rupert Sheldrake’s book Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home she contacted him, and they collaborated in designing an experiment to try to replicate and document this phenomenon under controlled conditions. . . .N’kisi has already shown aspects of intelligence that animals were thought to be incapable of, particularly a species that shares so little genetic similarity with humans. Globally, parrots are the most endangered of all birds, with the greatest number of species currently facing extinction due to poaching and habitat destruction. We hope our work will help people to realize the amazing abilities and awareness of these intelligent birds, and encourage greater care of these precious beings and the planetary environment we share.

The BBC reported on N’Kisi, Chatty Parrot Stuns Scientists ( 26 January 2004).

Interview, and more about Sheldrake

Rupert Sheldrake is best known for his controversial theory of “formative causation ” which implies a non-mechanistic universe, governed by laws which themselves are subject to change. Born in Newark-on-Trent, England, Rupert studied natural sciences at Cambridge and philosophy at Harvard, where he was a Frank Knox Fellow. He took a Ph.D in biochemistry at Cambridge in 1967, and in the same year became a Fellow of Glare College, Cambridge. He was Director of Studies in biochemistry and cell biology there until 1973. He was a Rosenheim Research Fellow of the Royal Society and at Cambridge he studied the development of plants and the aging of cells. From 1974 to 1978, he was Principal Plant Physiologist at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in Hyderabad, India, and he continued to work there as a Consultant Physiologist until 1985. Rupert is the author of A New Science of Life and The Presence of the Past, in which he presents his theory for explaining the mysterious process of morphogenesis. In 1981 the British science magazine, Nature described A New Science of Life as “the best candidate for burning there has been for many years, ” while the New Scientist called it “an important scientific inquiry into the nature of biological and physical reality. “

Chaos, Creativity, and Cosmic Consciousness
($10 new, under $5 used)
by Rupert Sheldrake, Terence McKenna, Ralph Abraham, Jean Houston
(2001).

     Halfway squared equals twice back to zero. Primordial rhythms surge against the neonate. Blue hall, blue wall, blue crystal ball. I don’t know yet what I am. Always returning, resurging, resurgence. Gathering documents from an internal realm. Ali Akbar Khan showed his tabla player how to become more powerful, how to pulse with a new beat in the midst of metaphysical ecstacy. Damaged hands re-enact helplessness.

Past life):

     I sit there with my fallen self, heiroglyphic belt trapped outside. Dark tall cell, golden wall, window-slit of light above. The room is a three-dimensional trapezoid. A woman dances in red on a stone-covered courtyard. Children with golden halos, around their small heads. Was it a priest, lost them

         –  remainders .

James Hillman in “A Terrible Love of War” (PDF review here) writes of America (pp. 127-28):

Mars is battle rage, an insane red fury in a field of action. Firing the weapon brings Mars immediately into the scene, saving a man from cowering and trembling, from feeling himself a victim, and shakes him from his self-occupied inertia at a loss to himself and to his unit.

Since the god is in the gun, the passionate love for these weapons may express less a love of violence than a magical protection against it. Handgun – a fetish or amulet to hold at bay the fear of injury or death, the passivity of inertia, and, in ordinary civilian life, to have in one’s hands a charm against the paranoid anxieties that haunt the American psyche. The continent is filled with roaming revenants, giant spirits of destroyed forests, buffalo spirits, slaughtered tribes, drowned valleys behind dams, ghosts of the lynched hanging from trees, miasma hovering over rapacious levelings and extractions, unjust executions named “due process,” knifings, abattoirs. The land not only remembers, it is humming with agonies, a pulsing layer of the collective unconscious deposited there by American deeds recorded as American history.

“Iron all of itself works on a man.” The automatic in my hand brings Mars to my side. God in his heaven may not smile on me or deliver me from the valley of death; he might long ago have forgotten my name and I may not be among the chosen, but so long as my gun is within my reach the ghosts can’t get me.

Caputo in Vietnam remembers one of his men who suddenly pops an old woman they were holding. The man later explains, “Phil, you know the gun just went off by itself.” Automatic. The autonomy of the god. Because a god is in the gun it is demonic, so that control of the gun in your hand is not altogether in your hands. The question remains whether control of weapons by humans can ever be achieved without a more radical appreciation of the inhuman factor.

Zero is an abstract notion
that humans don’t typically understand
until ages 3 or 4.

Parrotic Zero

Alex, a 28-year-old African grey parrot, lives in the lab run by comparative psychologist and cognitive scientist Dr. Irene Pepperberg. The parrot spontaneously and correctly used the label “none” during a testing session of his counting skills to describe an absence of a numerical quantity on a tray.

The discovery prompted a series of trials in which Alex consistently demonstrated the ability to identify zero quantity by saying the label “none.”

The findings, published in the current issue of The Journal of Comparative Psychology, add to a growing body of scientific evidence that the avian brain, though physically and organizationally different from the mammalian cortex, is capable of higher cognitive processing than previously thought.

   Dying Hope

You’ve been dreaming of this moment all your life. An entire city and its beleaguered citizens are in desperate need of heroes. You have the powers. You have the talent. You have the heart. You are a hero.

Dual Identities & Anonymity

Dual identities and anonymity can be found in modern day comic book heroes. Some would say that their masked identity intrigues us because we want uncommon heroes with virtues and powers we only dream of; that like the Greeks and Romans, we must have our minor gods too, even if belief in them sprouts only in the entertainment of our imagination. However, it is possible the real appeal of these dual-identity heroes is something else. . . we have an opportunity to imagine ourselves in yet another role. And since nobody is supposed to know who the masked one is, it is easy to believe for the moment it could be us. (The Ant/Henry Pym)

Avatar Lawsuits

Is it a violation of copyright to make up a character in the virtual world or is that fair use? This is really untested ground in the courts.

   Gliese 876 – Howdy Neighbor

Extrasolar Life Briefing
3,000+ visible galaxies (Hubble Telescope)
100 billion stars in the Milky Way
20-50% of stars may have planets
1-5 planets per star may be capable of sustaining some life
Expected lifetime of Sun and Earth: 10 billion years
Credit: NASA

This newly discovered planet is about seven times the mass of Earth, and therefore the smallest extrasolar planet found to orbit a main sequence, or “dwarf” star (stars that burn hydrogen).

Although this new planet is advertised as Earth-like because of its relatively low mass, earthlings wouldn’t want to rent a house there any time soon. For one thing, the house would melt. The surface temperatures estimated for this planet - 200 to 400 degrees Celsius (400 to 750 degrees Fahrenheit) - are due to the planet’s kissing-close distance from its star.

Gliese 876 is a close neighbor at only 15 light years away,
and located near the constellation Aquarius. A 10th magnitude star,
it is too faint to be seen with the naked eye, so a telescope is needed
to see it in the sky.
Red arrow below Aquarius.

The planet resides a mere 0.021 AU from the star Gliese 876 (1 AU is the distance between the Earth and the sun), and completes an orbit in less then two Earth days. The closest planet to the sun in our own solar system - blazing hot Mercury - is nearly 20 times further away, orbiting at about 0.4 AU.

“Because the planet is in a two-day orbit, it is heated to oven-like temperatures, so we do not expect life,” says science team member Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

In our solar system, the habitable zone - the temperate region where water could exist as a liquid on a planet’s surface -is roughly 0.95 to 1.37 AU, or between the orbits of Venus and Mars. The star Gliese 876 is about 600 times less luminous than our sun, so the proposed habitable zone is much closer in, roughly between 0.06 and 0.22 AU.

   Super earth sought and found

Extrasolar Earther
Alien KathleenX
(encased in spun super-gravity body tube)

A tipping point, brought to my attention by my friend Jeff:

Val Valerian writes:

Earther vs. Earthling

If you live on Earth, you’re an Earther. Earthling is a derogatory term used by Dark aliens and accepted by fools as real. Think of duckling – a baby duck; hatchling – a helpless newborn from the egg. The origin is from the reptilians who look on Earthers as food/slaves/surrogates. The -ling addition says how they look on Earthers as under them, children to be ‘taken care of’ (that’s another topic). As long as you allow that term by using it or not correcting others who do use it, the vibration of the term will continue. There have been some efforts made to change that. In the Babylon 5 series, for example, people were always Earthers. For some reason, in Star Trek, Earthers are never called such, but rather humans, making it sound like ‘all humans’ live on Earth!

In order to uncover the true history of human endevor, the relatively overlooked topic of duck psychology must be studied:

Probably the most balanced Ducks are those who belong to the Loyal Nests. They have no illusions of a great history and do not try to be what they are not. They simply live their lives and try to be as happy as they can. It is only when Ducks mingle with outsiders that their natural inferiority complex comes into play and they try to escape through swagger, bluster or cunning and deceit.

It’s a bit tragic that, if glimmers become dreams and dreams become social realities, if the realities are consuming enough, the manifestation appears as organic, simply part of the existing landscape, thus relatively unnoticed. The glimmer of a dream - instantly being able to freely access those most-condensed fonts of human wisdom: books, works of intense labors, devotion – just beyond reach. No more! A panoply of sacred texts translated, straight no chaser.

Sacred Texts Online

Sacred Texts: Timeline

World Mysteries dot com

Bibliography of Sacreds Texts - with online links

Comparative Religion dot com

Some 2000 free eBooks - relating to Asian cultures and and cultural studies generally

here at the U Virginia eText Center

Beyond Reading: Papyrology Links

Sappho and

Other Women’s Voices: Translations of Writings Before 1700

What greater good can be done for the future without learning, growing into knowledge. Even without a friend, impoverished, with only food, an Internet Cafe and a few bucks – open your mind.

Notations of the Wild: Ecology in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens by Gyorgyi Voros is a wonderful book reframing Wallace Stevens as a poet of nature. This book seems to have met with but a peep from the literary community, though praised by John Ashbery, who wrote, “a dazzling, multi-tiered account of the poetry,” and Harvard Prof. Lawrence Buell (known for his works on 19th century literary transcendentalism), notes her work is “incisive, ambitious, original, timely.” If you’re into haiku and/or Stevens, or wish to contemplate a modern philosophy of nature, a sensible ecocritical adventure, you could do worse.

Gyorgyi

    Voros

First,

The Idea of Order at Key West
    (Stevens reads it here)
      Wallace Stevens (1935)
 
 

She sang beyond the genius of the sea.
The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
That was not ours although we understood,
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.

The sea was not a mask. No more was she.
The song and water were not medleyed sound
Even if what she sang was what she heard.
Since what she sang was uttered word by word.
It may be that in all her phrases stirred
The grinding water and the gasping wind;
But it was she and not the sea we heard.

For she was the maker of the song she sang.
The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea
Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.
Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew
It was the spirit that we sought and knew
That we should ask this often as she sang.

If it was only the dark voice of the sea
That rose, or even colored by many waves;
If it was only the outer voice of sky
And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled,
However clear, it would have been deep air,
The heaving speech of air, a summer sound
Repeated in a summer without end
And sound alone. But it was more than that,
More even than her voice, and ours, among
The meaningless plungings of water and the wind,
Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped
On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres
Of sky and sea.
It was her voice that made
The sky acutest at its vanishing.
She measured to the hour its solitude.
She was the single artificer of the world
In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,
Whatever self it had, became the self
That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,
As we beheld her striding there alone,
Knew that there never was a world for her
Except the one she sang and, singing, made.

Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,
Why, when the singing ended and we turned
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
As night descended, tilting in the air,
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.

Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,
The maker’s rage to order words of the sea,
Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,
And of ourselves and of our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.

Below, an excerpt from Notations of the Wild: Ecology in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens (University of Iowa Press, 1997), partly commenting on the poem:

Stevens’s sense of the American experience of the Nature / culture relation was that modern awareness of Nature – whether Nature be manifest as wilderness, as the human body, or as the human unconscious – had diminished dangerously. Stevens complained, “The material world, for all the assurances of the eye, has become immaterial. It has become an image in the mind.” Human preconception had so blunted the human experience of and relation to nonhuman Nature, upon which the human rested, that indeed nothing but empty anthropocentric image remained. Stevens knew that a cancerous humanism diminishes human experience. “The imagination loses vitality as it ceases to adhere to what is real,” he asserted.

This interdependence of imagination and reality is, of course, the subject of “The Idea of Order at Key West.” The poem’s speaker, walking on the shore, listening to the singer, posing questions and propositions about the nature of art to his companion, posits a series of antinomies which can be reframed as usefully within the categories of Nature and culture and human and nonhuman as they can within reality and imagination. The speaker pits mind against Nature’s “body wholly body,” singer’s song against the “meaningless plungings of water and the wind,” the glassy lights of the town against the darkness of the sea, and language against the “words of the sea.” While he asserts the mutual influences between sea and song, he emphasizes an essential discontinuity between them and averts any suggestion of an easy synthesis: “The song and water were not medleyed sound / Even if what she sang was what she heard,” he cautions and stresses that “it was she and not the sea we heard.”

The poem’s central question asks, “Whose spirit is this?” That is, what interface exists between human and Nature in song, the poem’s metonym for art? The speaker has already shown that the singer’s song fails as direct translation of the sea’s “constant cry,” nor can song effect a seamless identification between singer and natural elements. Is it then a production of individual vision against the spectacular stage set of Nature? After all, “she was the maker of the song she sang. /… [the] sea / Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.”

The poem’s final third is customarily read as an avowal of the romantic doctrine of the mind’s ultimate superiority over Nature: after all, “It was her voice that made / The sky acutest at its vanishing” and the aftermath of her song that answers to the human “rage for order.” In the resounding silence that follows the song, the lights of the fishing boats

Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.

Indeed, Helen Vendler’s reading of this poem places it within the Wordsworthian mind / Nature dichotomy and reads it as asserting the romantics’ sense of “the power of poetry over nature.” Similarly, Harold Bloom writes that the poem “remains equivocal and perhaps impossible to interpret” because it simultaneously “affirms a transcendental poetic spirit yet cannot locate it, and the poem also remains uneasily wary about the veritable ocean, which will rise up against Stevens yet again.”

Placing this poem too squarely within the romantic framework of mind over Nature, however, discounts the poem’s true dynamic, which does not rest solely on the dichotomy between singer and song. The two listeners themselves engage in creation (song making) by attending to sea and singer. The stimuli around the speaker – singer, song, companion, “bronze shadows heaped / On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres / Of sky and sea,” night descending, lights emerging – engender in him a flow of propositions, questions, and highly charged perceptual experiences. Rather than depicting the power of poetry over Nature, the poem depicts the power of the sum of perceptual experiences created by human and nonhuman components in the speaker, whose main role in the poem may be summarized as that of creative listener. . . .The night deepens after the song has ended; the resounding silence, as it were, heightens the effects of song and what might be regarded as the visual analogues to song, the lights, boats, town, and other human productions that order and “portion out” the natural scene. This difference – the juxtaposition and interface between before and after – is more significant than any element of the experience. It is finally the speaker, not the singer or the song, who effects the enchantment of the night . . .

Gyorgyi Voros

A couple of quick downloads for this Christmastime full moon.

1) a beautiful jpg from NASA

2) This free javascript ‘moon phase’ html for your webpage:

3) Update - here is a larger page with beautiful composite realtime phases and full moon / new moon times

4) complete realtime rendering of sun disk, earth day/night and moon disk.

I am reminded of Shelley [PBS], who in my view was a keen influence on the early
Stevens of Harmonium.

In his Prometheus, PBS puts into the mouth of Demogorgon (itself a . . . ‘mighty darkness . . . ungazed upon and shapeless’ (II.4., 2-5) the statement that ” . . . the deep truth is imageless.” (II.4., 19).

And Stevens himself famously observed that ‘ . . . the poem must resist the intelligence almost successfully.’

(reprinted from a Wed, 15 Dec 2004 wallace_stevens listserv post)

Demogorgon - Prince of Demons
From Monster Manual I, Gary Gygax:
“Demogorgon appears as an 18-foot tall reptilian-humanoid.
He has two heads that bear the visages of baboons.
His blue-green skin is plated with snake-like scales, his body
and legs are those of a giant lizard, his twin necks resemble snakes,
and his thick tail is forked.
In place of arms, he has two huge tentacles.”
While MMI indicates that this demon has baboon heads,
I decided to model them more after baboon skulls
to enhance the general evil look of the thing.
Keep in mind that a human to scale to this drawing
would only come roughly to the middle of its thighs.

To contine the “motorcycle” thread – let’s take a look at some contemporary social issues. What do women riders think of male motorcyclists? An article by Amanda Kidd, which appeared in a Super Streetbike editorial is revealing.

Everyone from feminist scholars to third-rate rock stars has identified motorcycles as potent metaphors for sex. The speed, the danger, the leather clothing, the excitement of a good ride are all very similar to the sensations most of us associate with great sex. And who would argue that a Ducati 998 isn’t every bit as gorgeous as a naked woman, or that the rush of going knee down or carrying a sick second-gear wheelie isn’t orgasmic? Motorcycles are damn sexy. So guys, it goes without saying that the motorcycle you ride makes a powerful statement about your sexual prowess. Quit snickering–you’d be surprised at how much a savvy woman who rides (and what savvy woman doesn’t?) can tell about your skills between the sheets by just a quick glance at your bike. For instance, intelligent women know that ratty stunt-bike riders make the best lovers. Their, um, “services” are in such high demand that they’re barely able to find time to lube the chain, much less hand-rub 30 coats of clear lacquer. Keeping this in mind, it might be helpful to consider the particular statement your own scooter makes about your sexuality.

I’ll start with those cruiser guys, because aside from a red Corvette and a pneumatic, 19-year-old “personal assistant,” nothing screams midlife crisis quite like a chopper. Start with the pipes–even a nun knows a rider’s package measurements are inversely proportional to the length and girth of his exhaust pipes. Other accessories can betray as well. See mudflaps tacked onto the fenders? He irons his socks and wears them to bed, too. Naked-lady murals on the tank? Never seen a real pair of breasts in his life. And ladies, watch out for Harleys with sky-scraping sissy bars out back. His favorite bedroom accessory straps around your waist.

You sportbike guys are almost as bad. A Gixxer with a neon-lime windscreen and polished wheels screams, “I’ll pick you up for our first date in a jacked-up Cutlass with a silly sticker of a cartoon character pissing in the back window, and we’re going to Red Lobster.” Race leathers worn on the street are another red flag, especially those pasted with phony sponsor decals. You still buy Underoos from the little boy’s department and play Dungeons & Dragons. Online. Other sportbike warning signs: fender eliminator? Castration anxiety, and he’s only gonna get off if there are garden shears in the bed. Stealth turn signals? Subscriber to Close Shave. Rollin’ on 190-series rear tires? See “exhaust pipes” above. And pity the poor fool rockin’ a Ducati 9xx with a tank bra and a color-matched seat cover–his bike just screams cross-dresser with a possible secret diaper fetish.

Sport-tourers are definitely the worst, though. VFR/ST4/Sprint ST riders are perpetual adolescents–they play like they’re down with the mortgage and 2.5 kids, but every other Saturday they’re slurping tequila from the navel of some girl named Mindy and conducting field research on the “Mutation and Proliferation of Common STDs.” And nothing says poseur like an adventure tourer. He’s a wannabe rugged individualist who spends all night downloading maps of exotic destinations he’ll never see. Speaking of that GPS clamped to the handlebar–gadget fetish, and definite robot-sex fantasies.

No matter what sort of bike you ride, it broadcasts a crystal-clear message about your sexual peccadilloes. Naked bike? Exhibitionist and nude-beach freak with more hair on his back than his head. Dual-sport riders like to get freaky outdoors, not to mention that they’re not very good about washing “down there.” If you ride a V-Max you’re an S&M enthusiast with a flogger made from spark-plug leads. If you ride a Warrior (or other “performance cruiser") you’ve got the same S&M inclinations, only you repress these by coaching Little League on the weekends. I could go on, but I think you get the picture.

So where, exactly, does all this leave a worldly woman rider wishing for a motorcyclist with just the right mix of studliness and sensitivity to sexually satisfy her for all eternity? In my experience, wheelying off into the sunset, solo, astride an SV650. (Which, by the way, boys, is definitely not a girl’s bike!) Most of you biker boyz are too busy standing around the parking lot at some Hooters bike night comparing one another’s “camshafts” to even notice a classy babe like me.

On the money and some fine writing. Got to admire her choice of bike, and therefore man, but I wonder if she’s a bit “cc shy,” choosing a putter like an SV650 as a mount for her perfect guy, when the SV1000 its big brother crouches like a jaguar and handles like Nureyev.

Wangari Maathai’s Green Belt Movement

Nobel Peace Prize, 2004
“for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace”

Nobel Lecture
(excerpt)

As we progressively understood the causes of environmental degradation, we saw the need for good governance. Indeed, the state of any county’s environment is a reflection of the kind of governance in place, and without good governance there can be no peace. Many countries, which have poor governance systems, are also likely to have conflicts and poor laws protecting the environment.

In 2002, the courage, resilience, patience and commitment of members of the Green Belt Movement, other civil society organizations, and the Kenyan public culminated in the peaceful transition to a democratic government and laid the foundation for a more stable society.

Excellencies, friends, ladies and gentlemen,

It is 30 years since we started this work. Activities that devastate the environment and societies continue unabated. Today we are faced with a challenge that calls for a shift in our thinking, so that humanity stops threatening its life-support system. We are called to assist the Earth to heal her wounds and in the process heal our own – indeed, to embrace the whole creation in all its diversity, beauty and wonder. This will happen if we see the need to revive our sense of belonging to a larger family of life, with which we have shared our evolutionary process.

In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other.

That time is now.

Links

Full text: Reasons why Wangari Maathai was selected

NPR audio interview

BBC Dec. 10: Kenyan collects Nobel Peace Prize

On climate change

I was asked, “How does this zeal for life shape your haiku and haiku spirit?” (what zeal you ask . . .) by Robert Wilson, co-founder of the new and exponentially growing site Simply Haiku. His question inspired the below speculations on haiku and sacred space.

What is poetry, why do we need it, what does poetry do—to us, for us? In The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, Lewis Hyde affirms a sense that the poem, indeed all art is created fundamentally as an offering. Our culture commodifies artworks, a rather aberrant activity, apparently. Hyde reminds the reader of a truth concerning artwork – the desire to offer a gift, not only to humanity but to the cosmos, the sky, sun, moon, animals, plants, universe, to the moment, to history, one’s ancestors, to the invisible. To offer in a sacred way. Mircea Eliade discusses another aspect of offering in The Myth of the Eternal Return, the means for constructing sacred space, and of enacting life within that space (and timeless time) of the sacred. Experientially investigating the absence and presence of the sacred has been a high value in my life, and also a “saunter: a sense of being sans terre, without Earth, has involved a meandering desire for holiness, a goal echoed in the last stanza of Goethe’s The Holy Longing:

And so long as you haven’t experienced
   This: to die and so to grow,
   You are only a troubled guest
   On the dark earth.

A portion of my research has been concerned with oblivion: the figure of Lethe, mother of the Graces. Why might Forgetting give rise to Splendor, Delight and Blossoming, the three Graces? Heidegger writes,

       The oldest of the old follows behind
   us in our thinking and yet it
   comes to meet us.

      That is why thinking holds to the
   coming of what has been, and
   is remembrance.

      ("The Thinker As Poet,” Poetry, Language, Thought, Harper & Row, 1971, p. 10)

To remember that thinking is remembrance. . . It seems the sacred is easily forgotten, and entering again, in the encounter is a sense of remembrance, a return of “the oldest of the old. I’ve been interested in why not only the sense of poetry but the experience of poetic dwelling becomes lost. The danger inherent in a world, in any society, which loses poetic dimension and thereby becomes overtly literalistic, is a danger perhaps greater than that of terrorism. To know or feel the sense of poetry in life is to know “the coming of what has been, to desire remembrance: to re-member the world, cosmos, oneself, a leaf, a tree. It may be that a necessary means of entering the zone of the sacred is the experience of oblivion.

Haiku are not always instantly irruptive, do not always enact a sudden shift, yet they seem to draw us into a new resonance, creating a sense of the sacred, a context. Hoshinaga Fumio’s haiku,

nigemizu e sengo no chichi wo oitsumeru

      towards the mirage of water
the postwar fathers
            chasing after . . .

       (Kumaso-Ha, Honami Shoten, 2003)

is a haiku which seems to have layers (allusive adumbrations) of mirage: of image, time and space – heads curling Esherlike around tails. It’s a haiku I work into, never quite out of. There is an unfolding which I sense as lament, echoing back through millennia, through a myriad of cultures. I recall this haiku,

spring evening -
   the wheel of a troop carrier
   crushes a lizard

        (Knots: The Anthology of Southeastern European Haiku Poetry, Red Moon Press, 1999)

by Dimitar Anakiev. Its main image is violent, shocking. But this haiku is not merely violent. There is also a sense of sacredness, the context or field of reality which is only partly given by the poem; the haiku also requires rapprochement on the reader’s part:

The genre itself indicates the boundary lines of the sacred, as context, and it is within the landscapes of the sacred, oriented by the genre as a whole, in which image and action occur.

Concision, disjunction and image elements largely contribute to a haiku’s effect, but these elements alone aren’t enough. If one reads the above poems without a pause, they quickly lose much of their drama and vividness. So, what happens when we slow down, allow this unique poetic form to come to life? I would argue that in some measure we experience oblivion(s), if for instants, and through such psychological moments, remembrance. Mnemosyne, anamnesis, Lethe’s sister, is mother to the Muses. Such may be said for any art one becomes absorbed in and passionate toward; nonetheless, haiku are quite uncompromising in the way they cut into reality. There is extreme and concise rupture. To my knowledge, the phenomenology of poetic process has not been explained by science. In fact, qualitative conscious experience itself has not yet been demonstrably elucidated—there is so much we experience and feel which is immeasurable. Without being able to precisely measure or define, it is nevertheless apparent that haiku becomes a genre due to demonstrably unique modes of poetic encounter and dwelling. I should say that what is truly unique isn’t the experience itself, but its prevalence and intensity, when compared with other poetic and artistic forms.

We may tend to devalue the significance and importance of poetic movements which open us to the sacred, to remembrance because of their immateriality, contrastive with the predominant materialist cultural ethos. I know I have, and it is one reason for my returning to the wellspring of haiku. The haiku genre (which includes a reader) constructs an environment within which its language (i.e. symbolic representation) uniquely occurs. It may be a zest for life that draws me to haiku, but likewise a zest for oblivion and erasure. Though not erasure in itself so much as what happens through it.

Some years ago, Barbara Dilley (a Merce Cunningham dancer, Naropa teacher and former Naropa President) introduced me to “square work, in which a length of bright red yarn is made into a large square on the dance floor, tacked down with a few bits of masking tape. What is within the square is defined as sacred space. Dancers (people) relate to the fact of the square, and to entering and exiting that space. It is quite difficult to remain conscious as one steps across the boundary, quite hard indeed. A gap in consciousness nearly always occurs right at the apotheosis of transition. This is one of the consciousness research-questions we explored in an embodied manner as dance. There’s nothing much to taking some twine and making a square on a patch of bare ground. The square has only as much meaning and significance as is intended by the participants; and, what grows from experiences of many crossings and movements (object and human arrangements) within and without. After the dancers have gone, seeing that red twine on a darkened stage, would an aura exist? Is there a magical quality to that bare ground, so carefully demarcated? I would say, yes, to a sensitive reader there is, because there is an intentional architecture, much like a temple or church, just much more minimalist. Haiku likewise possess an intentional architecture; hence, natively embody natural and nuministic aspects of being.

These days I watch Sumo on television; the dohyo, or fighting square, is a sacred space. Rikishi (wrestlers) climb the steps and enter throwing salt, an act of purification, as they step across the sacred rope boundary embedded within the clay ground, into the inner ring. Above, a temple roof hangs suspended, emblemizing the divine. Such an arrangement of objects in space is an example of an archetypal sacred architecture, explored in detail in Eliade’s works, among others. The sense of sacred space existing or inhabiting cultural constructions is no doubt a deeply archaic if not an intrinsic aspect of the human spirit. Haiku as poems are a bit like that length of red twine, though the boundaries and evidences of sacrality may appear more subtly. An objectively intentional aspect exists, not necessarily in the poem itself, but in the fact that sacred space inhabits the poem, out of which the poem presents new ideas of reality. Isn’t this what is implied by the term, “poetic tradition. The oldest of the old follows behind us in our thinking and yet it comes to meet us.

mirai yori taki o fukiwaru kaze kitaru

From the future
   a wind arrives
   that blows the waterfall apart

      (Ban’ya Natsuishi, A Future Waterfall, Red Moon Press, 2nd. ed. 2004)

In that art is an offering to the cosmos, the reader is returned by that offering to a cosmic sense or scene. Returned to the world purified and renewed by the “first moment, the moment before creation.

Rising out of the sea and shedding the tank it’s a bit surprising to not be with fish, feeling weightless in the strangeness of air. What was that dreamlike place, filled with unblinking creatures, turtles with flippers, sharks large enough to blot out the far-off sun? The twine, like sunlight is imaginal, extending along an invisible line between land and sea. Returning, instants of vivid memory quickly fade. But a drop of ocean coheres within, adamantine. It is for that one drop, so pure and crystalline, that haiku seem to speak.

November 3 update: Following the election. Bob writes a brief comment here. A grateful thanks to you for your commitment and energy. It’s time to take on the role of a dedicated opposition – and – not to lose heart.

And, thank you all for voting in this election!

Our collaborative blog mentioned below can be found here.

Recently, Howling At A Waning Moon asked eleven bloggers from around the world to write a short piece and post all the contributions on each of our blogs. The theme:
 
 

From Harpers:

The European Patent Office revoked the patent previously granted to Monsanto on the Indian Nap Hal variety of wheat. It was proved by Greenpeace that the variety was bred by Indian farmers; Monsanto claimed to have invented it via genetic engineering.

More here:
4-Patents: The European Patent Office revoked Monsanto’s Indianwheat patent

And the Greenpeace article:
Chapati Chor Monsanto’s Wheat Patent Withdrawn in Europe Following Greenpeace Opposition: Bio-pirates Beware!

Spoken after one of his advisers briefed him fish that do not control any of the world’s oil,

“I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.”
- G.W. Bush, Saginaw, Michigan Speech, Sept. 29, 2000

On Bush’s Radical Dismantling of the Environment (October 3, 2004)

( bushisms excerpts ebookdownload)

Here’s the abstract from Property, Intellectual Property, and Free Riding, by Mark Lemley, a paper you may want to download / read if the topic interests you.

Abstract:
Courts and scholars have increasingly assumed that intellectual property is a form of property, and have applied the economic insights of Harold Demsetz and other property theorists to condemn the use of intellectual property by others as free riding. In this article, I argue that this represents a fundamental misapplication of the economic theory of property. The economics of property is concerned with internalizing negative externalities - harms that one person’s use of land does to another’s interest to it, as in the familiar tragedy of the commons. But the externalities in intellectual property are positive, not negative, and property theory offers little or no justification for internalizing positive externalities. Indeed, doing so is at odds with the logic and functioning of the market. From this core insight, I proceed to explain why free riding is desirable in intellectual property cases except in limited circumstances where curbing it is necessary to encourage creativity. I explain why economic theory demonstrates that too much protection is just as bad as not enough protection, and therefore why intellectual property law must search for balance, not free riders. Finally, I consider whether we would be better served by another metaphor than the misused notion of intellectual property as a form of tangible property.

I submit Justice and Beauty are such [formulations of universal] principles from which an ecological psychology could be derived. James Hillman

Half of a lecture Justice and Beauty: Foundations of an Ecological Psychology is excerpted below:

First, psychology is anthropocentric. Its definition of consciousness, for instance declares (per definition) it impossible for anything but humans to be conscious. The self is still imagined like a pineal gland, a self-enclosed atomistic unit, neither inherently or necessarily communal. The planet is an alien place, essentially nihilistic, into which the individual human is thrown, alienated and anomic. Second, human-centered psychology fosters a disordered, senseless, and enslaved planet. By ripping the human soul from its womb in the anima mundi, the world soul, this mother of all phenomena becomes a corpse, reduced to measurement, experimental dissection and cannibalization of its body parts. Rivers and rocks, flowers and fish, defined as soulless in themselves can find value only by human assessment. For many centuries of our history and in most other cultures, an idea of the world soul endows all phenomena with meaning and intelligible intentions—and their own individual inwardness. Depth of soul lies not just in us; it resides in the planet’s own nature.

Clearly, we need to start again. [We need principles that start not in the human mind but are given to the mind with the world.] We need to imagine an ecological psychology that takes its starting point [not in human concerns only but] in the planet’s concerns and its beings concerns, which we humans serve with our mental capacities. [That is, we do not dig in our philosophy, science, or theology for principles, nor turn only to our human experience; rather] we can attempt to formulate the principles already at work within the cosmos, grounding the value of all participants.

I submit Justice and Beauty are such [formulations of universal] principles from which an ecological psychology could be derived.

Justice and Beauty offer universals of archetypal strength because they are recurrent in time and ubiquitous in place, trans-cultural, immensely fecund. They muster emotive and symbolic expression and are instantly recognizable in daily affairs—and not only of humans. [Justice and Beauty are universals on which cultured communities and human dignity rely and aim to further.] Without them, existence becomes nasty and brutish. With them, the psyche finds itself in a cosmos of value, and psychology becomes the study of the ways any phenomenon measures its place in the world.

An idea of Justice has hardly been important to psychology, which has proceeded as if Justice can be ignored. Yet, Justice is the ruling principle of society, and of the natural world, formulated as natural law. The Greeks considered Justice (Themis) foundational, a great earth Goddess like Gaia, whom Zeus had to obey. She lies at the roots of the polis, the city, making civic cohesion possible, giving each its rightful place and cautioning each not to overstep its bounds.

Justice makes possible an inherently co-related society of beings [where mutual dependency is] based not on mutual usefulness and economic exchange, but on the bare fact of participatory existence. If all beings belong, then all are needed and useful, and justice prevails for each and every. Justice lies so deep, feels so innate, it works like an instinct. Transgressions spring quick to the eye; injustice stinks and wounds long fester. A sense of justice comes with the newest soul: the smallest child cries: “That’s not fair.”

Like this innate response to injustice, so there is an innate aesthetic response. All beings present themselves first of all aesthetically to each other as visible forms, textures, aromas, patterns, rhythms. The world is intelligible by means of these displays, allowing all beings to recognize one another. [The old Roman word for the display of phenomena was ostentatio, a Latin rendering of the Greek phantasia; phenomena show themselves as fantasy images giving impetus to imagination and asking for an imaginative response. The arts are thus the first mode of being in the world and responding to its display. Beauty and ugliness derive neither from personal taste, societal norms, or objective rules of form, but are given with the phenomenal cosmos in its presentation of itself. In fact, the original meaning of kosmos means fitting, decorous, the display of adornment, and is closer to our current world “cosmetics” than to the emptied out cosmos of vast gaseous space in which drift weightless cosmonauts above and beyond gravitas. And, because kosmos also means right order, beauty promotes justice.

I submit these principles are basic to cultures everywhere because they are given with the cosmos itself, and, since primordially given they are ecological guarantors. Psychology’s task is to rebuild its learning and its therapies on these ecological archetypals, so that the great wide world and its beings can never be outside its purview. [Because] justice and beauty [are not merely humanistic, religious, scientific or regional, they] allow many modes of implementation; yet transcend all implementation with an ideal claim of transcendental value, inspiring artistry, dignity and respect, and prompting lasting rectification of ugliness and wrong. For precisely ugliness and wrong are the major cause of a suffering planet, that blue ball wrapped in a whirlwind, so fragily afloat in a sea of stars.

When alarmed
the leaf-tailed gecko (Uroplatus fimbriatus)
will open its mouth
to display its red interior.

WWF Announces ‘10 Most Wanted Species’
09/08/2004

“Our list this year reflects the varied nature of the modern wildlife trade,” said Ginette Hemley, vice president for species conservation at World Wildlife Fund. “As well-known species have become overexploited for trade, more-obscure species are increasingly targeted. So lesser-known wildlife like the humphead wrasse,

– a fascinating coral reef fish whose fleshy lips have spawned a dining trend - join the magnificent tiger and Asian elephant on the list of most wanted species in trade.

This year’s 10 most wanted species, based on threats from unsustainable trade and consumer demand, are described here.

Ramin tropical hardwood
from Indonesia and Malaysiais
used to make
mass-produced pool cues
moldings, doors
and picture frames.
Illegal logging of ramin
is driven by global demand.

Link from Howlings Newsletter.

Thank to T for sending this article from salon.com.

Baked Alaska

Sept. 10, 2004: In the Arctic, where flowers are madly blooming, trees are growing to mutant sizes and the snowpack is thinning, researchers are getting an incontrovertible view of global warming. . . .

While it’s unlikely the four horsemen of the apocalypse are saddled up and ready to ride, global warming will likely have an enormous and dire impact on human populations in the Arctic and beyond. Already, native communities that dot Alaskan shorelines are seeing villages crumble. Waves, unhindered by large ice chunks, now swell and break against the shore with a ferocity never seen before. Banks are eroding and high water has consumed so many homes and buildings that two villages have been forced to move inland.

Alaska is not alone. In his alarming book Boiling Point, Ross Gelbspan writes that global warming is disrupting “the normal flow of deep-water currents that determine climactic conditions in much of the world.” For instance, Gelbspan reports, extreme effects of the weather phenomenon, El Niño, have caused China’s Yangtze River to overflow, killing more than 3,000 people, leaving 230 million people homeless, and generating $30 billion in damages. Worldwide, warmer weather means more extreme floods and drought, which creates breeding grounds for countless disease-carrying insects.

“There’s strong consensus now in the scientific community that global climate change is caused by human activities,” says Bret-Harte in her kind, matter-of-fact manner. “There are always a few folks that disagree. But mostly they work for the oil and gas industry.”

And apparently for the Bush administration. Claiming the jury is still out on what causes global warming, the president has written a climate change policy that is about as aggressive as a tortoise. Loath to enact measures that would reduce our addiction to oil and gas – and income to his friends and campaign supporters – the Bush administration has spent the past several years misrepresenting the science on climate change in order to justify a path of inaction. For the Arctic researchers who are watching a landscape in flux, this is beyond infuriating.

“We see the possible consequences of no action and the consequences are looking graver and graver and more and more imminent,” says John Hobbie, the tough co-founder of the Toolik Field Station and director of the Ecosystems Center at the Marine Biological Lab. “We scientists realize that climate change is more than just vague words and models.”

Bush: Global warming is just hot air

The planet’s getting hotter, ecosystems are going haywire, government scientists know it – and still the president denies there’s a problem. Guess which industry continues to fuel his campaign?

Sept. 10, 2004 | Don’t expect President Bush to discuss global warming – the world’s most serious environmental problem – on the campaign trail in the next eight weeks. The former oilman from Texas doesn’t dare alienate his friends in the fossil fuel and auto industries, prime purveyors of global warming. Bush still refuses to admit that burning Chevron with Techron in our Jeep Grand Cherokees, not to mention megatons of coal in our power plants, has brought us 19 of the 20 hottest years on record since 1980.

“You’re talking about a president who says that the jury is out on evolution, so what possible evidence would you need to muster to prove the existence of global warming?” says Robert F. Kennedy Jr., author of the new book Crimes Against Nature. “We’ve got polar ice caps melting, glaciers disappearing all over the world, ocean levels rising, coral reefs dying. But these people are flat-earthers.”

In fact, Bush’s see-no-evil, hear-no-evil stance on global warming is so intractable that even when his own administration’s scientists weigh in on the issue, he simply won’t hear of it.

In a report sent to Congress at the end of August, government scientists argued that the warming of the atmosphere in recent decades cannot be explained by natural causes but must include such human sources as energy consumption and deforestation. It’s a conclusion that a consensus of the world’s climatologists reached years ago but that Bush has ignored throughout his presidency.

Bush on Global Warming

On Global Warming:
Ms. Bumiller: Mr. President, why did your administration change its position on what causes global warming?

THE PRESIDENT: I don’t think we did.

Ms. Bumiller: According to —

THE PRESIDENT: I don’t think so, Elisabeth.

Ms. Bumiller: You said that it’s almost certainly carbon monoxide — which you hadn’t said in the past, carbon dioxide.

THE PRESIDENT: I think that was my position during the campaign, if I’m not mistaken.

Ms. Bumiller: It changed —

MR. McCLELLAN: You’re talking about the National Academy of Science report?

Ms. Bumiller: Yes, yes.

MR. McCLELLAN: We’ve always talked about how that would - we’d be guided by their science on the issue, and that’s why the President has done a lot in terms of climate change, advancing the science of climate change, and also doing more research —

THE PRESIDENT: Let me get back with you on that, because I think you might — I don’t know why you said what you just said.

Ms. Bumiller: Well, we had a story in the paper this morning saying that you issued a report saying —

THE PRESIDENT: Oh, okay, well, that’s got to be true.

Dear Readers,

I’ve recently returned to Japan, and hope to be posting again soon. Here’s a shot of Mt. Robson, from the spot where our raft put in on the Fraser River:

Located in the Fraser River Valley east of the Robson River; 4 km south of Berg Lake. Mount Robson is not only the highest mountain in the Canadian Rocky Mountains but one of the great mountains of the world, and deserving of inclusion in any select list on account of many striking characteristics and a form, beauty, and grandeur transcending any other of the greater peaks of the Rockies… The mountain is unique, and its massive precipices, seamed with different-coloured rock strata, enhance it in both beauty and stature.” These words were written by Frank Smythe, an English mountaineer who wrote dozens of books about the mountains of the world during the first half of the twentieth century and was widely regarded as an authority on the subject.

A class 3 to 3+ white water run. With a class 4+ to 5 waterfall partway through. Starts off with some easy class 2, then picks up with Goldpan Alley, a straight shot 3. The river calms down and then there comes a BIG hole, followed by a left turn and then two more bends. This is Vuarnet Ledges, class 3 to 3+. After this rapid the river runs straight for about 500 meters, before turning right. This is Rearguard falls, usually a class 5. There is an easy and well-used portage trail on the right.

My friend Jeff organized the trip, a 1500 mile drive (in 3 Aerostar vans) through Western Canada with outdoor activities, for 17 university students from Kumamoto, Japan. We got as far north as Jasper, as far west as Vancouver island, spending a day in Victoria and bungee jumping into a canyon outside of Nanaimo. As for me, I was impressed with the used bookstores in Victoria and would have happily planted myself in Vancouver for a few years . . .

A Tour of the Calculus by David Berlinski, a book I picked up in Banff, contains some amazing writing.

Another beautiful book found is The Encyclopedia of the Motorcycle, by Peter Henshaw. A large well-written book with superb photographs.

Generally speaking, the hardest aspect of living as an expat in southern Japan is the inability to browse English-language bookstores. I’m ready to open up a cafe-bookstore in the right place. Investors, feel free to drop me a line twofish at iyume dot com.

I know very little about water. This post is a collection of links I found, in no particular order: just scratching the surface.

‘A strange new thirst, a craving, unfamiliar,
Entered his body with the water,
And entered his eyes
With the reflection in the limpid mirror. . .
As the taste of water flooded him
So did love.’

(Ovid, Narcissus, trans. Ted

Gaston Bachelard has penned Psychoanalysis of Fire. Harder to acquire is his Psychoanalysis of Water it’s music actually, perhaps the title in error? Try instead, Water and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Matter, obtainable.

Mythology: The Water Deities

March 22: UNHCR marks World Water Day

Plants give up their secret of splitting water (26 Feb 2004)

WASHINGTON — Researchers said Thursday they had taken another step toward understanding how plants split water into hydrogen and oxygen atoms, which may provide a cheap way to produce clean-burning hydrogen fuel.

Water hotspots (a clickable map).

Porous paving and The Earth Sucks (Crumb Trail)

Is this Atlantis?

U.N. Warns of Dead Zones in World’s Oceans

Shared Oceans, Shared Future (US State Dept)

Water on Mars

FAVIGNANA, Italy - Over thousands of springtimes, as far back as Homer’s Odyssey, the fishermen of Favignana have battled giant bluefin tuna lured into vast chambers of intricate netting. This year, the nets were empty. Marine biologists say not only bluefin tuna but also other fish stocks are plummeting across the world, upsetting delicate natural food chains. Some fear irreversible damage has already been done. Even worse, international law experts add, little is being done to stop it. Despite all the evidence, high-tech fleets probe the last deepwater refuges, hardly troubled by authorities.

From the Negev Foundation:

The dramatic rise in human population in this century, coupled with over consumption and inadequate resource management, threatens the quality of life worldwide:

World population will double by 2025; nine-tenths of these people will be born in developing countries.

More than half the world’s population is concentrated on 5% of the land; nearly 90% live on less than one-fifth of the land.
About one billion people, one sixth of the world’s population, live in arid or semi-arid lands, of whom just two-thirds practice farming.

90% of world food aid is directed to populations in unproductive arid zones.

Since 1970, food production per capita has declined by at least 20% in Africa and parts of Asia due to desertification and mismanagement of fresh water.

About 800 million people are chronically undernourished because of poverty, insufficient production, inequitable food access and political turmoil.

Each year, an area the size of the state of Kansas, is impoverished due to encroaching deserts.

80 of the 100 countries experiencing increased desertification are developing countries

Here’s a link to Climate Ark, a portal dealing with world climate, sent to me by my friend Tharpa, a lot to look at. The News Links with Summaries is an immense start.

T also sent me an article from Business Week. Global Warming: Consensus is growing among scientists, governments, and business which you can read here. It’s nice to see such an article in Business Week. Here’s the first paragraph:

August 6, 2004

The idea that the human species could alter something as huge and complex as the earth’s climate was once the subject of an esoteric scientific debate. But now even attorneys general more used to battling corporate malfeasance are taking up the cause. On July 21, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and lawyers from seven other states sued the nation’s largest utility companies, demanding that they reduce emissions of the gases thought to be warming the earth. Warns Spitzer: “Global warming threatens our health, our economy, our natural resources, and our children’s future. It is clear we must act.”

Images are from Friends of the Earth.

Bob Whitson runs Howling At A Waning Moon, a blog containing a feast of environmental topics and issues, and it’s getting better everyday. I enjoy the daily compendium of political happenings; a wealth of information can be found and absorbed in a brief time. Howling also has a weekly newsletter (look for “sign up for email updates” on the right side of the blog).

This except of the Kerry speech was posted in the August 6 newsletter (you can find the entire Kerry speech to the Democratic convention here):

“We value an America that controls its own destiny because it’s finally and forever independent of Mideast oil. What does it mean for our economy and our national security when we have only 3 percent of the world’s oil reserves, yet we rely on foreign countries for 53 percent of what we consume?

I want an America that relies on its ingenuity and innovation, not the Saudi royal family.

And our energy plan for a stronger America – our energy plan will invest in new technologies and alternative fuels and the cars of the future, so that no young American in uniform will ever be held hostage to our dependence on oil from the Middle East.

Sounds good. But will you be able to keep your SUV?
Snazzily fuel-efficient cars are here, also an
American Auto Fuel Consumption Debate blog
Cars may get smaller.
The world’s smallest car is here.
The size of a rice grain. Maybe the Aussies are on to something.

Oil. Here in Japan regular gas is close to $4.50USD/gallon, I’m happy to be riding a 400cc bike getting 55mpg in stop&go. What is the future of oil, for the world? Today, a scary story comes from Harper’s Weekly Review:

“Analysts at Deutsche Bank warned that oil prices could rise
to $100 a barrel.” For a fuller story, read the article here.

Scary story 2: the Guardian has a freaky what-if oil scenario, which begins:

It’s 2006. Bin Laden conquers Arabia. Crude prices are nudging $100. A far-off fantasy? Don’t you believe it, writes Oliver Morgan . . .

Scary story 3: Arab Media Watch has some dirt on oil and the Iraq war, from the Arab-British angle:

The physical supply and pricing of oil were central concerns, true, but so also was the investment of Kuwait’s share of oil profits in British financial markets. Declassified US documents note that ‘the UK asserts that its financial stability would be seriously threatened if the petroleum from Kuwait and the Persian Gulf area were not available to the UK on reasonable terms, if the UK were deprived of the large investments made by that area in the UK and if sterling were deprived of the support provided by Persian Gulf oil.’

This is not a war for oil. It is a war to control the profits that flow from oil.

Speaking of Kuwait, Scary (for some) story 4: Fahrenheit 9/11 was just banned there. The reason for the ban is logical:

Kuwait has banned Michael Moore’s anti-Bush documentary, deeming it critical of the Iraq war and insulting to Saudi Arabia’s royal family. An information ministry official from the Arab state, which was invaded by Iraq in 1990, said it could not show a movie that was disrespectful of an allied country. “We have a law that prohibits insulting friendly nations, and ties between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are special,” Abdul-Aziz Bou Dastour, cinema and production supervisor at the Kuwaiti information ministry, told Associated Press. He said the film “insulted the Saudi royal family by saying they had common interests with the Bush family and that those interests contradicted the interests of the American people.”

Scary story 5: National Geographic has an article, “How soon will the vital fuel become so scarce and expensive that we’re forced to make hard choices about how we live?”

Humanity’s way of life is on a collision course with geology — with the stark fact that the Earth holds a finite supply of oil. The flood of crude from fields around the world will ultimately top out, then dwindle. It could be 5 years from now or 30: No one knows for sure, and geologists and economists are embroiled in debate about just when the “oil peak” will be upon us. But few doubt that it is coming. “In our lifetime,” says economist Robert K. Kaufmann of Boston University, who is 46, “we will have to deal with a peak in the supply of cheap oil.”

Scary story 6 is from the future. The Sri Lanka government website poses the question of whether it is truly oil or water that will be the scarier story.

It’s surprising that the future of oil does not seem a highly newsworthy topic. Fish don’t think about water, right.

The images in this post are from the aesthetics + computation group at MIT, at the jarfish gallery page.

“Find out if you are a hero or zero” taking this short quiz on energy efficiency. The questions and answers are worth contemplating, the quiz is short, and when you click for the answers, right or wrong, the rationale for each is explained. Fyi: Prof. James Lovelock, “the Kyoto Protocol, is simply an attempt to appease a self-regulating Earth system . . . [as] the Earth’s attempts to restore its equilibrium [it] may eliminate civilisation and most humans.

BBC online also has a colorful, graphic and intelligible page with a selection of articles on global warming here, including articles like, Why Kyoto Matters, a very cool realtime 100-year video comparison of temp. rise/fall around the (revolving) globe, showing highest/lowest emmisions predictions, plus other tabbed links to articles on the Gulf Stream, carbon cycle, greenhouse effect.

A country chart of the biggest greenhouse gas emitters adds a basic overview:

USA
The US emits more, absolutely and per head, than any other country – although it also produces more wealth. When Kyoto was agreed, the US signed and committed to reducing its emissions by 6%. But since then it has pulled out of the agreement and its carbon dioxide emissions have increased to more than 15% above 1990 levels.

EU
Despite its tough stance on Kyoto, the EU is some way off its own target. It pledged to bring total greenhouse gas emissions to 8% below 1990s levels by 2008-2012, but by 2002 they had dropped only 2.9% - and CO2 emissions had risen slightly. Only four EU countries are on track to achieve their own targets.

JAPAN
A major world economic power, Japan is a leading member of Kyoto, committed to cutting emissions. It was responsible for 8.5% of emissions in 1990 and its support for the agreement is critical in the absence of US participation. Although previously reluctant to ratify the protocol unless the US also committed, Japan ratified it in June 2002. It committed to reduce emissions by 6% from 1990 levels, but 2002 figures showed total greenhouse gas emissions had risen 11% above the baseline figure. The country recognises that its economy could benefit from the Kyoto agreement, as Japanese companies could capture markets for new, clean technology.

RUSSIA
Russia has signed the protocol and committed to cutting emissions. But its economy has shrunk so drastically since 1990 that industrial activity has dropped, leaving emissions reduced by about 35% and well below the level allowed under Kyoto. In the short-term, Russia stands to gain billions of dollars through emissions trading - selling its unused emissions entitlement to developed countries which want to emit more than the protocol allows them to.

CHINA
China is the world’s second biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, but as a developing country is not yet required to reduce its emissions. With China accounting for a fifth of the world’s population, increases in its emissions could dwarf any cuts made by the industrialised countries.

INDIA
Developing countries like India are not obliged to make any cuts in greenhouse emissions under Kyoto. But as they raise living standards their emissions will increase. India’s emissions are estimated to have risen by more than 50% in the 1990s . . . with India’s economy and population, like China’s, continuing to grow, it is clear that the thorny issue of developing country emissions commitments will have to be tackled soon in future rounds of negotiations.

Here is an impression made of fragments from Book One, the Mandelbaum Translation.

two fish

Nicholas Lezard, someone who knows something about Ovid, in a review of a new translation (by David Raeburn) writes in the Guardian (excerpts):

. . . while it seems as though the Metamorphoses has never really gone away – Ovid’s line at the end about his own poetic immortality is still borne out – people don’t necessarily feel any urgent need to read it.

This is not exactly the case around my neck of the sacred woods. I have been doing some work for the last few years that has involved steeping myself in, among other things, a good deal of Graeco-Roman mythology. One unforeseen side-effect of this is that I have come closer to accepting this mythic corpus as a convincing explanation of human motives than any other philosophical system. I may not have a shrine to Jupiter in the back garden, but it feels like it’s only a matter of time.

The now