Bellingen floods... again

Hi there Blogmanacs, this isn't Pip as advertised but guest blogger John, Pip's brother. Pip is once again in the middle of floods in his home town of Bellingen, with lightning strikes, hail, a fried modem and other catastrophes together conspiring to keep him offline for a while. But the good news is that at 7:45pm tonight (Tuesday) Pip reported to me that he's `high and dry and well - though Bellingen's not'. So Pip's ok but looks like Bellingen is in for a tough few days.

The starry night of Vincent van Gogh

On this day in 1853, Vincent van Gogh was born.

In 1889, a little more than a year before his death, at his own request the artist was admitted to the psychiatric centre at the Monastery Saint-Paul de Mausole in Saint Remy de Provence, Bouches-du-Rhône, France. Here, looking out his east-facing window, near dawn on the morning of June 19, 1889, he saw the blazing sky that he immortalized in the painting, 'Starry Night'.

American art historian Dr Albert Boime enlisted the aid of astronomer Dr Ed Krupp from Griffith Observatory in California to recreate the night sky as it would have appeared to Van Gogh on the night he painted it and amazingly the basic image was the same (with the significant exception that the Moon on that night seems not to have been a crescent, but a gibbous moon). In the painting we see three stars of the constellation Aries as well as the Moon and Venus. There are eleven stars in total, reminiscent of the Biblical Joseph reporting his dream to his brothers:

And he dreamed yet another dream, and told it his brethren, and said, Behold, I have dreamed a dream more; and, behold, the sun and the moon and the eleven stars made obeisance to me.
Genesis 37:9

Categories: art, history, biography

Earth Hour - Join us on March 28

From Extra! Extra!

"Earth Hour began in Sydney in 2007, when 2.2 million homes and businesses switched off their lights for one hour. In 2008 the message had grown into a global sustainability movement, with 50 million people switching off their lights. Global landmarks such as the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, Rome’s Colosseum, the Sydney Opera House and the Coca Cola billboard in Times Square all stood in darkness.

"In 2009, Earth Hour is being taken to the next level, with the goal of 1 billion people switching off their lights as part of a global vote. Unlike any election in history, it is not about what country you’re from, but instead, what planet you’re from. VOTE EARTH is a global call to action for every individual, every business, and every community. A call to stand up and take control over the future of our planet. Over 74 countries and territories have pledged their support to VOTE EARTH during Earth Hour 2009, and this number is growing everyday.

"We all have a vote, and every single vote counts. Together we can take control of the future of our planet, for future generations.

"VOTE EARTH by simply switching off your lights for one hour, and join the world for Earth Hour."

Saturday, March 28, 8:30 -- 9:30pm.

www.earthhour.org

Categories: environment, activism

Sun Myung Moon and his power in Washington

2004 Self-styled Messiah and genuine wacko, Rev. Sun Myung Moon (b. 1920), and his wife, Hak Ja Han, were crowned the 'King and Queen of Peace' on Capitol Hill, inside the Dirksen Senate Office Building with Members of Congress participating.

"It was the spirit world that said he was the Messiah," said Archbishop George A Stallings, Jr, pastor of an independent African-American Catholic congregation.

Moon, who is not only the head of the multi-million dollar Moonies cult and owner of The Washington Times, is also the font of such wisdom as: "Homosexuals and fornicators are like dirty dung eating dogs", and advice to men: "If your love organ does not listen to your conscience, then you should cut off the tip".

According to a Washington Post description of the event, more than a dozen US lawmakers attended. One of them, Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill.) "wore white gloves and carried a pillow holding an ornate crown that was placed on Moon's head" ...

Watch the BBC documentary on Moon, 'Emperor of the Universe'.

Also: Blog by anti-Moonies activist :: The King of America (documentary)



Categories: religion, usa, congress, cult, fraud

18 Things That Guys Wished Women Knew

Author unknown.

1. If you think you're fat, you probably are. Don't ask us.
2. Learn to work the toilet seat; we've worked out how to put it up if it's down, so please learn how to put it down if it's up, and stop griping.
3. Sometimes we're not thinking about you. Live with it.
4. Get rid of your cat.
5. Anything you wear is fine. Really.
6. Women wearing Wonder bras and low-cut blouses lose their right to complain about having their breasts looked at.
7. You have too many shoes.
8. Crying is too often blackmail. Use it if you must, but don't expect us to like it.
9. Ask for what you want. Subtle hints don't work.
10. Yes and No are perfectly acceptable answers.
11. Anything we said 6 or 8 months ago is inadmissible in an argument.
12. If something we said can be interpreted in two ways, and one of the ways makes you sad and angry, we meant the other one.
13. You can either ask us to do something, or tell us how you want it done -- not both.
14. Christopher Columbus didn't need directions, and neither do we.
15. You have enough clothes.
16. If you ask a question you don't want an answer to, expect an answer you don't want to hear.
17. You have enough clothes.
18. You have enough clothes.

The debt we owe to Stephen Pearl Andrews

1812 Stephen Pearl Andrews (d. May 21, 1886), anarchist abolitionist, Modern Times community founder (with Josiah Warren; 1799 - 1874); born at Templeton, Massachusetts, USA.

He was a lawyer, author (The Sovereignty of the Individual; Science of Society) and free-love advocate; it is said that he knew 32 languages.

He started with a brilliant career at the American bar and sacrificed it by his zealous work for the abolition of slavery. Andrews also contributed frequently to the Truth Seeker, a journal of rational thought that is still in publication (other eminent contributors included Thomas Edison, Clarence Darrow, Mark Twain, Robert G Ingersoll, HL Mencken, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Margaret Sanger). By the 1860s he was propounding an ideal society called Pantarchy, and from this he moved on to a philosophy he called "universology", which stressed the unity of all knowledge and activities.

Andrews was cited in the article on Anarchism by none other than Prince Peter Kropotkin in the famed 1910 edition of The Encyclopaedia Britannica ...

See also Early progressives in the Book of Days

Categories: anarchism, progressive, activism, activist, free-thought, free-love, community, alternative-lifestyle, radical, history

Daily Planet News with 650 headlines every 15 minutes

When DPN had 150+ newsfeeds all on one page it was probably the biggest one-stop news source to be found anywhere. I've added a lot more, and now there are 200+ newsfeeds, still with the auto-refresh feature (in Internet Explorer) so that if you keep the page open and minimized you get the latest updates from those 200 sources every 15 minutes.

I don't mean you get 200 headlines every 15 minutes.

I mean you get more than 650 headlines from more than 200 worldwide sources, refreshing four times an hour. Check it out and for variety of information compare it with CNN, Google News, Yahoo! News, NY Times, your local newspaper or Fox News, etc, etc. Let me know what you think.

Why get news from one corporation, or even five or ten? I suggest you try Daily Planet News and I feel pretty confident you'll find it worth bookmarking. I myself check in several times a day just to see what's going on in the world. Get the news before TV, radio and printed newspapers. If you like it, thank you for spreading the word.

Categories: internet-resources

The Preacher and the Slave

By Joe Hill, 1879 -1915.

Long-haired preachers come out every night,
Try to tell you what's wrong and what's right;
But when asked how 'bout something to eat
They will answer in voices so sweet

You will eat, bye and bye,
In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray, live on hay,
You'll get pie in the sky when you die

And the Starvation Army they play,
And they sing and they clap and they pray,
Till they get all your coin on the drum,
Then they tell you when you're on the bum

Holy Rollers and Jumpers come out
And they holler, they jump and they shout
Give your money to Jesus, they say,
He will cure all diseases today

If you fight hard for children and wife-
Try to get something good in this life-
You're a sinner and bad man, they tell,
When you die you will sure go to hell.

Workingmen of all countries, unite
Side by side we for freedom will fight
When the world and its wealth we have gained
To the grafters we'll sing this refrain

You will eat, bye and bye,
When you've learned how to cook and how to fry;
Chop some wood, 'twill do you good
Then you'll eat in the sweet bye and bye

You will eat [You will eat] bye and bye [bye and bye]
In that glorious land above the sky [Way up high]
Work and pray [Work and pray] live on hay [live on hay]
You'll get pie in the sky when you die [That's a lie!]

You will eat [You will eat] bye and bye [bye and bye]
When you've learned how to cook and how to fry [How to fry]
Chop some wood [Chop some wood], 'twill do you good [do you good]
Then you'll eat in the sweet bye and bye [That's no lie]

Categories: music, progressive, radical-history

Mr. Bojangles

A nice version by Bob Dylan of Mr. Bojangles, written by Jerry Jeff Walker.

Categories: music, dylan

The death of Pocahontas

1616 Pocahontas (Mataoke), a Native American of the Iroquois peoples, died in England (approximate date; sources vary).

Before she could set sail for her homeland, in March 1616, Mataoke died of pneumonia (some say smallpox), aged about 20, just one month before the demise of William Shakespeare on April 23. The much-misrepresented Mataoke/Pocahontas was buried at St George's Church, Gravesend, Kent, which operates a tourist facility and website that maintain the Pocahontas fictions, as does Hollywood – and not a few educators.

Pocahontas is known throughout the world, especially to Americans and Britishers, as an example of friendly relations between the races as well as an epitome of the Rousseauvian 'noble savage'. Her images adorn Washington's Capitol building in portraits and friezes, and she has been a character in numerous dramas, beginning in the 17th Century with Ben Jonson.

In 1995, Walt Disney’s studios made an animated movie of the famous Smith-Pocahontas tale, in which the native princess is portrayed as a rather voluptuous and beautiful woman. Her body is scarcely contained within a buckskin outfit that is not only split on both sides of its skirt, but is several inches shorter than the dresses of the other women in Disney’s unhistorical Indian tribe. We know that when Captain John Smith, 42, met her, Pocahontas was only 11 years old, and we also know that she did not resemble Disney’s ridiculous heroine. (There are numerous assertions on the Internet that Smith raped her and left her with a child, but I have found no verification of these.)

The only portrait known to have been made while she was alive was an etching made in England by Dutch engraver, Simon Van de Passe (used on an American stamp in 1907), prints of which were sold at the time to the curious. Over time, images of her (as in the case of Cleopatra) were beautified to suit contemporary tastes, but John Chamberlaine, a member of the English nobility, commented that she was "no fayre [beautiful] Lady" ...

Categories: american-history, history, british-history, womens-history, indigenous

Ostara and the Equinox

(Ostara, Alban Eiler, Esther, Eostre, Ostarun, ôstartag', Eastre, Eoastrae, Oestre)

One of the Lesser Wiccan Sabbats, Ostara is one of the eight solar holidays or sabbats of Neopaganism. It is celebrated on the Spring Equinox, in the Northern Hemisphere circa March 20 and in the Southern Hemisphere circa September 21, but, because of its origins, may instead be celebrated on the fixed date of March 25.

The name may refer to an ancient Germanic goddess named Eostre; it is alleged that this name was used in English when the Paschal holiday was introduced, and this name (not the holiday) was converted to Easter, in German Ostern ...

Categories: pagan, neopagan, calendar-customs

More Net censorship skullduggery from Australia

Australia: "The Department for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy has refused Tech Wired access to documents containing information regarding the National Broadband Network."
Source

See our previous blog posts, Australia censors Wikileaks page and Conroy's Great Firewall Reef parodied.

Thanks, Baz le Tuff.

Categories: freedom-of-information, internet, censorship, australia, authoritarianism

Dramatic opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge

1932 Australia: At the height of the Great Depression which it is said hit Australia harder than any country but Germany, Sydney Harbour Bridge was officially opened by left-wing New South Wales Premier Jack Lang (brother-in-law of Australian author Henry Lawson).

However, before Lang could do the honours of cutting the ribbon with scissors in the traditional fashion, an ex-soldier by the name of Francis Edward de Groot (pictured) charged ahead on a horse, in full military garb, and slashed the ribbon with his sabre on behalf of the New Guard, a right-wing paramilitary organization opposed to Lang's politics. According to Australian author and broadcaster Gerald Stone, in his book 1932, the New Guard had at that time 100,000 members, many of them armed, and constituted the largest militia in the world.

Sydney Harbour Bridge is still the world's largest steel arch bridge ...

Categories: sydney, australia, history, fascism, henry-lawson

Peter Garrett, sellout

This funny song parody says it all. Is Peter Garrett, former Midnight Oil singer and now Australia's Minister for the Environment, a complete sellout?

There are three groups on Facebook challenging him:
Peter Garrett Hates Australia and Everyone in it
Peter Garrett is Australia's most disappointing man
Peter Garrett needs to stop selling out. Speak the truth P.G

Also, google "peter garrett" sellout and see http://newmatilda.com/taxonomy/term/3717

Categories: australia, environment, politics, video, youtube, parody, humor, humour

Australia censors Wikileaks page

"Australia blacklisted a webpage on Monday from the whistle-blowing site Wikileaks that contains an index of URLs censored by Dutch authorities, a move adding to the country's debate about whether the government should mandate internet filters."
Source

Thanks to Senator Conroy's and the Australian Labor Party's infantile Internet witchhunt, Australians can no longer access www.wikileaks.org.

Internet clean feed list 'leaked' Sky News Australia

Whistleblower site publishes Internet blacklist The Tech Herald

Whirlpool - Sydney Morning Herald

all 114 news articles »

See also our post: Conroy's Great Firewall Reef parodied

Read more

Categories: internet, pornography, sex, satire, censorship, australia, authoritarianism

Billy the Kid meets author of Ben-Hur

1879 American outlaw Billy the Kid (Henry McCarty, c. 1860 - '81; alias William Henry Bonney) had a meeting with General Lew Wallace (pictured), Governor of New Mexico (and also author of the classic book Ben-Hur), in the governor's home.

Billy, reputed to have killed 21 men, made an arrangement with the governor to turn state's evidence against other criminals in return for an amnesty for the crimes he had himself committed.

In typical fashion, McCarty greeted the governor with a revolver in one hand and a Winchester rifle in the other. After several days to think the issue over, Billy the Kid agreed to testify in return for an amnesty.

Categories: usa, biography, history, crime, law, legal, literature

O Ramtha, thou artest most worshipfulleth

1946 Judith Darlene Hampton (aka JZ Knight and Ramtha), American woman who claims to "channel" the spirit of a 35,000 year-old (Cro-Magnon?) male spirit-warrior named Ramtha (7 feet tall, with "black dancing eyes"), who first appeared in Knight's kitchen in Tacoma, Washington in 1977.

"What be you? You are God!"

Ramtha inexplicably speaks in accented semi-Jacobean English – the language of the age of King James I of England – which perhaps he picked up on the way from Atlantis via Lemuria, two of his former mythical nations of residence. (Or perhaps he got it from the angel who gave the golden plates to Mormonism founder Joseph Smith, as they exhibit the same anachronistic linguistic quirk – note that Hampton is not the first such charlatan, nor will probably be the last, to invoke the language of the King James Bible (the AV) and Shakespeare to impart a ring of authority.) Hampton is also known for adopting physical poses that look something like the characters on pyramid walls.

Hampton has thrown together a hodge-podge of all the usual essentials of phoney New Ageism: a bit of gnosticism, add some Edgar Cayce and Madame Blavatsky, mix with some UFO alien stuff (Hampton was born in Roswell, NM, after all), stir with high school science, add a pinch of ersatz Egyptology and roast in a moderate brain. Ramthaism is perhaps not as dangerous (yet) as some cults such as Jim Jones's People's Temple (Jonestown), Marshall Applewhite's Heaven's Gate and L Ron Hubbard's Scientology, but it has to be one of the silliest, and somehow is making Hampton a very rich Cro-Magnon man: it has been estimated she's raking in $10 million a year from seminars and merchandizing.

As if to underline Hampton's contempt for the credulity of her thousands of dupes, it has been asserted that Ramtha revealed in September, 2004 that [wait for it ... drum roll!! ...] a sugary American kids' snack called Hostess Twinkies contain an ingredient that can prolong life. Apparently Twinkies are selling well in Yelm, Washington, where Hampton's followers have congregated.

'Ramtha' Hampton gained quite a bit of publicity in the mid-80s, most of it ridiculing her, so she went underground during much of the 1990s. Apparently she continued building her money-making machine, and she is making waves again, gaining many more followers and about 75 pounds in weight. The movie, What the Bleep do We Know ('Bleep' apparently being an American euphemism for an expletive), starring Marlee Matlin, was produced by followers of Hampton ...

Categories: usa, hoax, fraud, superstition, movies, religion, new-age, biography

Dawkins seeks more converts to atheism

Dawkins seeks more converts to atheism (audio).

Oh, Richard Dawkins, you've done it again. Well-argued concepts for rationality, from the author of The Extended Phenotype; The Selfish Gene; The Blind Watchmaker; A Devil's Chaplain; The God Delusion.

Categories: dawkins, atheism, religion, science, philosophy, skepticism

Muslim people are rarely Islamists

I received from an acquaintance a forwarded email concerned with Islamic fundamentalism in Australia. You know the kind, the facile anti-Muslim ones that have been doing the rounds of the Internet for years, rousing a rabble and wasting bandwidth.

I very often try to explain to people that the word 'Islamic' differs from the word 'Islamist' much as the word 'rabbit' differs from the word 'rabid', or the term 'evangelical Christian anti-abortionist' differs from 'Christian bomber of abortion clinics'. A few people get it; millions don't.

Now, believe me, I don't much like Islam at all, or most of the world's religions. But I do have a strong attachment to Reason.

My reply was:

Dear XXXXXX,

Personally, I wouldn't take this as 'gospel'. I've had a lot to do with hundreds of Muslims in Australia and have shared houses with a number of Muslims for long periods of time. Most Muslims in Australia, as far as I can tell, are not very religious and are certainly not Islamists -- more like Anglo-Celtic Australians with their diluted devotion to Christian and Biblical views. They are nominal Muslims like many Anglo-Celtic Australians are nominal Christians. Most of them couldn't give a rat's arse about religion.

I grew up in a very large extended family of Christian fundamentalists, but although I think some of them deluded, I'm sure they are mostly harmless. However, I have heard many Christian fundos say that everyone but themselves were "infidels" and condemned to perdition. There seems to be a small streak of fundamentalism in all the world's religions. Thankfully, such adherents are small in number and mostly harmless. Look at the USA -- there are millions of Muslims but almost never a Muslim terrorist outrage (nothing significant since September, 2001, yet it only takes a 20-cent box of matches to destroy a building-- easy as pie).

In fact, most of the religion-related terrorist outrages in American history, including the last ten years, have been caused by fundamentalist Christians. Let's look at where the word 'fundamentalism' came from. It was a movement that arose mainly within British and American Protestantism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries -- see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalist_Christianity .

With an easy Google search you can extract from Jewish, Buddhist or Christian scriptures at least as as much violence and cruelty as you can from the Qur'an or from Hitler's rants. As far as I'm concerned, most of the scriptures from the world's great religions contain truckloads of mentally ill and violent texts, but most Jews, Christians and Muslims think they're all a crock of shit. I'm not very worried about any of the followers of fundamentalist views, whether Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, etc, etc. Certainly they can be dangerous, but they are very few in number and most Muslims, like most Christians, Jews and Buddhists, are interested in human compassion and personal redemption. Frankly, I'd be more concerned about fundamentalist ne0-conservatives and Marxist-Leninists than fundo Christians, Jews or Muslims.

I recommend reading certain web pages such as http://www.infidels.org/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Christianity among many other pages that will be easily found with a Google search of the word skepticism.

Regards,

Pip

Categories: islam, australia, fundamentalism

Secret emails show Iraq dossier was 'sexed up'

Secret emails show Iraq dossier was 'sexed up'

Categories: iraq, war-on-terror, blair, disinfo, disinformation

Phallic fest, Tagata-jinja Shrine, Inuyama, Japan

A 3-metre (approx. 10-ft) long wooden phallus is carried out of the shrine of the god Izanagi (‘the male who invites’; a deity in Japanese mythology and then Shintoism), at Tagata-jinja near Inuyama in central Honshu and through the streets.

A kind of insemination magic ritual is enacted as the bearers of the phallus offer drinks to farmers, and infertile couples touch the phalluses for luck ...

Categories: japan, calendar-customs, festival, deity

Big Ben strikes the Duchess's death

On the morning of March 14, 1861, the inhabitants of Westminster, London, awoke to the sound of Big Ben striking ten times for 4 o'clock and twelve times for 5 o'clock. The rumour went around that there must have been a death in the royal family.

Strangely, although Big Ben had been uncustomarily malfunctioning on that morning, within a day it was announced that the Duchess of Kent (Queen Victoria's mother) was dying. The next day she was, in fact, dead.

Big Ben is actually the name of the bell hanging in the Clock Tower of the Palace of Westminster, the home of the Houses of Parliament in the UK, but vernacular has it otherwise (ie, that it is the clock itself). It was cast on April 10, 1858 at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, which also cast America's Liberty Bell.

Categories: uk, history

US military chiefs planned terrorism on US soil

Click to enlarge

1962 USA: The Joints Chiefs of Staff (the heads of the US Army, Air Force and Navy) presented a plan to Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara (and possibly to President John F Kennedy himself), that suggested using terrorism in the USA to turn opinion towards a US invasion of Cuba.

Long believed to be residing in the imagination of conspiracy theorists, the Operation Northwoods document (Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba [PDF file: link opens in new window]) was declassified in recent years by the Freedom of Information Act ...

Tagged: usa, military, army, cuba, disinfo, cia, disinformation, terrorism, war-on-terror

What's the story behind Friday the 13th?

But once on a Friday ('tis ever they say),
A day when misfortune is aptest to fall.
Saxe: Good Dog of Bretté, stanza 3

Sir Winston Churchill, it's true, said, "Friday is my lucky day. I was born, christened, married, and knighted on that day; and all my best accidents have befallen me on a Friday".

Scots might prefer Friday for marriage, and Scandinavians might tend to see Friday as lucky, but in the traditions of most European countries, Friday is the unlucky day. When Friday falls on the 13th of the month, as is well known (any month that begins on Sunday will have a Friday the 13th), the day is said to be especially unlucky and articles like these appear all over the Net and in the media, particularly if not much news is about.

The number 13 has long been considered by superstitious Westerners to be unlucky. Even today, many towns and suburbs don’t have 13 as a street number, or 13th Street, and most hotels do not have rooms with 13 on the door. Many tall buildings do not have a 13th storey, with the elevator going straight from Floor 12 to 14.

There are numerous origins given for the persistent superstition that in the West, Friday the 13th is an unlucky day. The most likely of these is that Jesus Christ was killed on a Friday (Good Friday), and that Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed him, was the thirteenth person of Jesus and the 12 apostles.

Just as tridecaphobia (or triskaidekaphobia) is purportedly the official name for the morbid fear of the number thirteen, so various other fanciful terms are given by different commentators for the phobia associated with Friday the 13th, including paraskavedekatriaphobia (or paraskevidekatriaphobia) and friggatriskaidekaphobia, though one suspects these were invented by journalists on slow news days.

In Australia, where people are not too bright and will bet on two flies crawling up a wall, the New South Wales State Lotteries report that Friday the 13th is always one of their biggest days, with turnover about 50 per cent up. Eric W Weisstein, by the way, shows that Friday is slightly more likely than any of the days of the week to fall on the 13th ...
More at Wilson's Almanac

Categories: superstition, calendar-customs

Martyrdom of Hypatia of Alexandria

Hypatia (b. c. 370 CE), daughter of Theon of Alexandria, was known as the Divine Pagan.

Dean of the Neoplatonic School at Alexandria, in Hellenistic Egypt, she was a great neo-Platonic philosopher and mathematician and was assassinated by Christian extremists in the Spring of 415.

Theories of her murder range from a local, spontaneous Christian uprising tolerated by the Christian patriarch Cyril over a conflict between Cyril and the more tolerant prefect Orestes to a conspiracy supported by Emperor Theodosius himself ...

Tagged: pagan, neopagan, history

Bellingen district map if sea levels rise.

This Google flood page shows what will happen to the Bellingen district if the sea level rises by one metre.

Bellingen is 15 metres above sea level, and scientists are predicting at least a 1-metre rise in sea levels by 2100 less than a century from now. Some estimates are very much higher.

So, play with Google's sea level rises and drag the page to Bellingen and its local seaboard to get an idea of what might lie ahead if salt water floods Bellingen. I dips me lid to Almaniac Colin Tonks for this tip.

See also Current sea level rise and Effects of global warming at Wikipedia.

More :: More :: More :: More :: And more

Categories: bellingen, climate-change, global-warming, google, water

America celebrates Johnny Appleseed Day

John Chapman (1774 - 1847), who died on this day (some sources differ), was known as Johnny Appleseed for his large number of fruit tree plantings. He is regarded as the 'patron saint' of orchardists in the USA, and this is celebrated as his day.

The American pioneer orchardist and Swedenborgian Christian missionary was known as 'Johnny Appleseed' because he planted apple trees in large parts of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. He was born in Leominster, Massachusetts, and became an American legend while he was still alive, being portrayed in works of art and literature. He is considered an early conservationist, what would be called today an ecologist.

He did not spread seeds around, as depicted in this attractive but idealized US Post Office depiction (above); rather, he planted apple trees or sold them at 6 cents each ...



Categories: usa, gardening, folklore, agriculture, biography, history

Baby swinging video case warning

"The lawyer representing an Australian charged for republishing, on a video-sharing site, a video of a man swinging a baby around like a rag doll says that if the case proceeds every Australian who surfs the net could be vulnerable to police prosecution.

"Chelsea Emery, of Ryan and Bosscher Lawyers in Maroochydore, represents Chris Illingworth, who was charged with accessing and uploading child abuse material.

"Illingworth, 61, published the three-minute clip on Liveleak, a site similar to YouTube but focused on news and current events ..."
Sydney Morning Herald

Categories: video, civil-rights, liberty, surveillance, internet, children

Is your computer printer spying on you?

"Yes, it's true. In an effort to snare counterfeiters, the US government has persuaded some color laser printer manufacturers to encode each page with identifying information. The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) has recently proven what many have suspected for a long time - that at least some laser printers embed a secret machine identification code on every page they print, which reveals when the page was printed, and the serial number of the printer on which it was printed.

"You might might not think it's a big deal that your printer's serial number is embedded on every page. But if you registered your printer with the manufacturer when you bought it, the manufacturer knows that you are associated with that printer's serial number ..."
Source: Ask Bob Rankin with a dip of me lid to Di Schuetz.

Categories: surveillance, privacy, technology, computer

Australian Weather Bureau page tools

Australia's Bureau of Meteorology, which just about everyone calls "the Weather Bureau", has some very useful pages that are worth going into any Aussie's bookmarks.

For example, you can check the animated loop page http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDE00902.loop.shtml any time for a satellite's view of the continent. Today is a good time to check it out as you can see Tropical Cyclone Hamish just off the coast of Queensland and moving south-east. It's a pretty dramatic scene, as the above static screenshot shows.

http://www.bom.gov.au/watl/ has lots of choices, such as forecasts of wind and frost, and weather warnings (on that page, you can Click More Links for more), while http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/watl/rainfall/pme.jsp, brought to my attention by Colin T from north Queensland, is a nifty computer-modelled rainfall forecast map.

As a shortcut, you can put this page http://wilsonsalmanac.blogspot.com/2009/03/australian-weather-bureau-page-tools.html in your Favorites and have the lot at your fingertips any time you like.

Categories: australia, cyclone, weather

Tibet facing another crackdown from China

Reporter: Stephen McDonell

March 9, 2009

This is part of a transcript from AM, used in Fair Use. The program is broadcast around Australia at 08:00 on ABC Local Radio. On the same page you can also listen to the story in REAL AUDIO and WINDOWS MEDIA and MP3 formats.

TONY EASTLEY: On the eve of tomorrow's 50th anniversary of the failed uprising which saw the Dalai Lama flee Tibet, his family inside China have told the ABC that they miss him and want him to be allowed to return.

In an attempt to prevent a repeat of last year's clashes on the same anniversary China has increased police and military numbers across Tibet.

China correspondent Stephen McDonell reports from the Tibetan Plateau where he's seen the build up firsthand.

STEPHEN MCDONELL: In every Tibetan town and village there's tension in the run-up to tomorrow's 50th anniversary of a failed uprising here.

In 2008, the 49th anniversary of the event which sent the Dalai Lama into exile, produced a violent rebellion.

In 2009, the Government wants no protests, and, if they happen, for them not to be seen.

So up to a quarter of China's land mass is cut off to outsiders, and especially foreign journalists.

On the road to Tongren we came across a checkpoint where every car was stopped. Some officers wore helmets and carried automatic weapons.

They checked our identification and ordered us to drive back the way we came and return to Beijing. One officer said we shouldn't bother trying to return for the next month.

While we were there we saw two young Tibetan monks try to pass. They were taken off for questioning ...

When we knocked on the door of the house the Dalai Lama was born in we met his nephew's wife. She didn't want us to use her name.

I asked if tomorrow there could be a repeat of last year's events.

"It's not good to answer questions like this," she said.

"Do you miss him?" I asked

"I miss him every day," she said ...

When asked if the Communist Party might let him return, she said, "We're not allowed to talk about this", and warned that if we didn't go soon, the police would come and we'd be in trouble.

Has it been tense lately because of the 50th anniversary? "We aren't allowed to talk about this," she said, "So go quickly ...

Up here, military trucks by the dozen can be seen driving to trouble spots. They're packed full of soldiers, or paramilitary police carrying riot shields ...

MiamiHerald.com

Crackdown marks Tibet anniversary

The Australian - ‎2 hours ago‎

CHINA has launched a crackdown in greater Tibet, deploying an extra 20000 security forces and rounding up monks for "re-education" to prevent unrest on the ...

China's Hu urges Tibet stability BBC News

China admits to security surge ahead of Tibetan anniversary ABC Online

Official optimistic about development of Tibet despite global ... Xinhua

Times of India - BBC News

Categories: china, tibet, authoritarianism, communism, liberty

War crime - Allies firebombed up to 200,000 Tokyo civilians

1945 World War II: Less than a month after British Air Force and US Air Force bombed Dresden, Germany (February 13, 1945, killing between 35,000 and 200,000 civilians), the Americans did much the same to Tokyo, Japan.

On this day, 334 American B-29 bombers fire-bombed Tokyo including non-military targets, with nearly 2,000 tons of incendiaries, setting fire to the city and killing about 100,000 innocent men, women and children, also leaving about 1.5 million people without homes. An area of seventeen square miles of Tokyo was destroyed in a day ...

Categories: usa, uk, wwII, japan, military, war-crime

Gandhi items sold to airline and beer magnate

"More than a decade ago, a Los Angeles filmmaker and peace activist named James Otis began collecting items that represented the ascetic lifestyle of Mohandas Gandhi. They were the simple belongings of a man who did not care for possessions: his steel-framed spectacles, a pair of sandals, a bowl, a plate and a pocket watch.

"Those modest possessions of the leader of the nonviolent struggle for Indian independence touched off an international struggle as they went on sale Thursday at Antiquorum Auctioneers in New York.

"The tiny auction room was thick with finely dressed bidders, a throng of journalists and a lawyer for Otis, who was trying to stop the auction after having second thoughts.

"In the end, after days of controversy that roiled India, the lot sold for $1.8 million to Vijay Mallya, an Indian liquor and airline magnate who owns the company that makes Kingfisher beer.

"For the Indian government - which faces general elections next month - the sale was of questionable legality and threatened to deny the country part of the cultural legacy of its founder. For Gandhi's descendants, the sale seemed to contradict his aversion to materialism. Gandhi himself had given away several of the items. For Otis, the sale was to be a means to promote pacifist causes, although the uproar later proved to be upsetting ..."
International Herald Tribune

The irony is deafening. Mahatma Gandi taught and practised the ways of voluntary simplicity, and, like the other avatars Buddha and Jesus before him, rejected a life of comfort and wealth for one of relative poverty, encouraging others to do likewise. Read about him in the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days.

I found this item at Chris Keeley's Daily Dreamtime, with thanks.

Categories: pacifism, satyagraha, india

One-third of Americans unconcerned about losing their jobs - survey

"A New York Times headline Friday horrifyingly screamed '651,000 Jobs Lost in February: Rate Rises to 8.1%, Highest in 25 Years.'

"And according to the Bureau of Labor statistics, almost all sectors of the [US] economy are affected: retail dropped 40,000 jobs over the past month, and 608,000 since December 2007; jobs in leisure and hospitality fell by 33,000; the financial sector lost 44,000 jobs in February, and on and on.

Yet, according to an article recently published on AlterNet, one-third of Americans aren't worried about losing their jobs.

Do they know something we don't know? Is the stat a testament to that vaunted American optimism? Or have Americans been fattened into complacency by years of relative wealth (for some)?"
Source

More on Monday.

Categories: usa, moron, recession, economy, unemployment

Strinennia, Slavic holiday of Spring

Today is an old Slavic holiday. On this day, clay larks were made; their heads were covered with honey and decorated with tinsel and they were carried around the village by revellers who sang vesnjanki, invocations to spring.

Pastries shaped like birds were baked, and given to children who threw them into the air while saying "The rooks have come". Pastries were sometimes tied to poles in the garden. The baking of these pastries would ensure that the birds would return, for it is they who bring back the spring.

Categories: calendar-customs