500 feared dead in Baghdad stampede

"Up to 500 people have been killed after a crowd of Iraqi Shiites stampeded off a bridge over the River Tigris in Baghdad, Iraq's deputy Health Minister Jalil Al-Shumari says.

"The crowd was on its way to the Kadhimiya mosque for an important religious ceremony.

"People reportedly panicked as rumours spread that a suicide bomber was preparing to blow himself up, and many worshippers were crushed.

"The iron railings of the bridge gave way, throwing hundreds into the River Tigris.

"'So far we have 500 dead,' Mr Al-Shumari said.

"However, hospital and police sources say 575 people have been killed and 255 people injured."
ABC News Online

Katrina's Real Name

"The hurricane that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service. Its real name is global warming.

"When the year began with a two-foot snowfall in Los Angeles, the cause was global warming.

"When 124-mile-an-hour winds shut down nuclear plants in Scandinavia and cut power to hundreds of thousands of people in Ireland and the United Kingdom, the driver was global warming.

"When a severe drought in the Midwest dropped water levels in the Missouri River to their lowest on record earlier this summer, the reason was global warming.

"In July, when the worst drought on record triggered wildfires in Spain and Portugal and left water levels in France at their lowest in 30 years, the explanation was global warming.

"When a lethal heat wave in Arizona kept temperatures above 110 degrees and killed more than 20 people in one week, the culprit was global warming.

"And when the Indian city of Bombay (Mumbai) received 37 inches of rain in one day -- killing 1,000 people and disrupting the lives of 20 million others -- the villain was global warming.

"As the atmosphere warms, it generates longer droughts, more-intense downpours, more-frequent heat waves, and more-severe storms.

"Although Katrina began as a relatively small hurricane that glanced off south Florida, it was supercharged with extraordinary intensity by the relatively blistering sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico.

"The consequences are as heartbreaking as they are terrifying.

"Unfortunately, very few people in America know the real name of Hurricane Katrina because the coal and oil industries have spent millions of dollars to keep the public in doubt about the issue.

"The reason is simple: To allow the climate to stabilize requires humanity to cut its use of coal and oil by 70 percent. That, of course, threatens the survival of one of the largest commercial enterprises in history."
CommonDreams

Daihatsu to release first hybrid commercial minivehicle

OSAKA, Japan -- "Daihatsu Motor Co. said Monday it will release a commercial minivehicle next month that is powered by an electric-gasoline hybrid system, the first of its kind in the industry."
ENN

Katrina: Gulf learns who's the boss

"As people learned too late, the landscape of South Louisiana depends on floods."

"Check out "After Centuries of 'Controlling' Land, Gulf Learns Who's the Boss," a thorough, readable, straight talking, and slightly arch article in today's New York Times on the suite of environmental factors that have contributed to Katrina's enormously devatating impact on the Gulf Coast."
WorldChanging.com

Protestors besiege CEOs in the Sydney Opera House

A critical mass of people marched to and rallied near the Sydney Opera House to protest the Forbes Global CEO Conference on Tuesday night.

A portion of the fence surrounding the conference and excluding the public from participating was pushed down. It was reported that conference delegates were bussed out of the Opera House for the opening evening dinner elsewhere. Police have arrested at least eight protesters according to early reports and used dogs as part of 'crowd control'. Protests will continue for the rest of the conference, which finishes on Thursday.
Photos of first day: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Reports of first day: Sydney IMC : Live from 30A :: From the Indy van :: Police arrest report :: At the Opera
Video of first day: Rocking the fence :: Fence going down :: Police brutally arrest protester
Background: 30A.org :: peacebus.com

Indymedia

Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii

1863 Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (Gorsky; d. September 27, 1944), Russian pioneer of photography.

Click the thumbnail for Prokudin-Gorskii's amazing self-portrait of 1915; 168kb.

Almanac: Edition 1800

Well, we have a while to go before a big milestone, but if I send out the Almanac free daily ezine on August 31 it will be edition 1800. Coincidentally, one of the earliest subscribers, Sharon Hoff, from Bonney Lake, Washington, USA, today left a really encouraging message in the guestbook.

Don't want any conga-rats for turning 1800 (I'll be pretty chuffed when it's 2000), but I do enjoy reading messages there, so I hope you'll drop in.

How flash mobs started

Remember flash mobs? Stay Free! Magazine has an interview with the guy who started them:

"STAY FREE!: I didn't realize it had started out as kind of a con job.

"BILL: Yeah, I wanted it to appear like one of those things circulating around the internet.

"STAY FREE!: If you'd just sent it from the Mob Project, they would wonder: how did they get my email address?

"BILL: Exactly. The original idea was to create an email that would get forwarded around in some funny way, or that would get people to come to a show that would turn out to be something different or surprising. I eventually came up with a lazy idea, which was that the thing would just have one simple, in-your-face aspect to it--there wouldn't be any show, and that the email would be upfront about the fact that it was inviting people to do basically nothing at all."

altweeklies.com: Good reading

Have you seen AltWeeklies.com? It's really something else: sort of an alternative Reader's Digest (yes, I know Utne sort of has had that tag for 20 years or more). And it has a few RSS feeds. Highly recommended.

RSS enables Google News junkies

"In a real-time world, e-mailed news alerts can seem slow, so Google News added RSS (define) feeds to its offerings ... Users can subscribe to feeds from Google News in either RSS or Atom format by several means. RSS and Atom buttons appear on the left side of the page, allowing users to subscribe to the contents of the Google News home page. The buttons also appear aside news search results, allowing users to receive further news stories that match the search query as they appear. Similarly, they can subscribe to feeds from custom news topics they've created through personalization. "
Internet News

[Sorry this is 3 weeks old. I didn't know till today.]

What's the data?

What's the Data? (audio)

"Massive data banks are cross-checking all of us. High-tech surveillance is matching faces, gait, behaviour patterns and even stress levels to suss out terrorists. All OK, providing they get it right."
Background Briefing

Falwell-Robertson-Bin Laden Quiz

Falwell-Robertson-Bin Laden Quiz. You don't need to tick all the boxes, you can just click 'Answers' to discover who said what. An eye-opener.

Green China?

"To a very great degree, whether or not we as a planet manage to win the Great Wager depends upon China. The combination of its size, course of economic growth, and existing reliance on pollution- (and carbon-) intensive industries and energy sources lead us to a world in which China's choices mean the difference between success and failure. We've maintained a focus on China's massively ambitious and deeply uncertain plans to turn itself into a green superpower for awhile now, and a review of where we stand is in order.

"The immediate spur for this is that Neal Pierce mentioned us in his column on energy today, and so there may be some new readers coming by looking for that information. It's also likely that many of our regular readers missed some of these stories the first time around, as well. In either case, if you're interested, you can read more in the extended entry below.

"'This Miracle Will End Soon' is an essential starting-point. Pan Yue, Deputy Director of China's State Environmental Protection Administration, has been remarkably candid about the magnitude of the environmental crisis facing China:

We have no turning-back if we make mistakes on environmental protection. Environmental problems do not merely concern our offspring, but determine whether people of our generation can live safely. Our environmental capacity has already reached the limit of sustaining economic growth. Environmental problems have become bottlenecks that restrain China's economic and social development.

"China's responses to this situation vary in both scale and aggressiveness, but it has become increasingly clear that many in Beijing are beginning to recognize the magnitude of the problem. The upcoming Olympics gives the nation an all-too-short deadline for making big changes. As a result, the emerging "Green China" policies cover a variety of arenas.

World Changing

Happy birthday, 'R'

1943 R Crumb, amazingly prolific US ‘underground’ cartoonist, creator of “Keep on trucking” as well as such memorable characters as Mr Natural, the Snoids, Whiteman, Angelfood McSpade, Bo Bo Bolinski, Flakey Foont and, of course, himself as he appears in countless comix.

Crumb published the first issue of his Zap Comix in early 1968; other artists who gained fame through Zap include S Clay Wilson, Spain Rodriguez, Rick Griffin, Victor Moscoso and Gilbert Shelton.

Crumb, or ‘R’, as he is known to his many fans worldwide, has also produced volumes of non-comix artwork, including an illustrated version of James Boswell's 18th-century London Journal.

Categories: crumb, comix, underground, comics

Writing le Tuff

Part of today's episode of the The Legend of le Tuff was suggested by a reader. You suggest it, I'll try to write it.

Coffee high in health-giving antioxidants

"Coffee might soon be considered a health drink following a study showing it is a surprisingly rich source of anti-cancer agents.

"A study has found that coffee contributes more antioxidants - which have been linked with fighting heart disease and cancer - to the diet than cranberries, apples or tomatoes."
Independent

Another view of Afghanistan

By Keith Suter

Since September 11, 2001, Afghanistan has been very much in the news because of the war on terrorism. All the current interest tends to obscure the long and colourful history of the country. For example, Afghans used to hunt lions by fooling them with pictures of lions.

Last weekend I was at the opening of an exhibition of Afghan hunting cloths in Sydney at the Royal Australian Institute of Architects. The exhibition curator is Andrea Nield and it was opened by the Afghanistan Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dr A. Abdullah, who was visiting Australia.

It now seems hard to imagine that the harsh barren desolate mountains of Afghanistan could be a host to wild lions and leopards. But Afghanistan used to have both savage animals and trees.

Afghanistan is at the heart of Asia. It is sandwiched between Pakistan, Iran, China and the Islamic republics of the former Soviet Union. It has been on the crossroads of history for thousands of years. It has been a melting pot for trade, culture and religion.

Herat, high up in the Hindu Kush mountains, the westerly end of the Himalayan range, has been a city for 2,500 years. A family of artists are based there who are trying to revive the hunting cloth artistic tradition.

The original hunting cloths contained images of the animals being hunted. They were painted on large cheap locally produced cotton squares. The fabric was thrown away after the hunt or used to wrap the dead animal.

Asian lions and snow leopards — unlike their African equivalents — were loners. They lived and hunted on their own. They used to see these “intruders” and come close up to check them out. The villagers would be in hiding and then (if all went well) they would kill the animals at close quarters. I find it hard to imagine that lions and leopards would be fooled by such drawings but contemporary visitors to northern Afghanistan said that this is how it was done.

This hunting was not (as on African safaris) done simply for sport and pleasure. The animals were attacking domestic animals and so they were a farm hazard — or they could themselves be used for food.

The hunting cloths were purely for utilitarian purposes. They were used for hunting and then discarded. No one at the time thought that they were producing works of art. Being a tool of the trade enabled them to survive periodic crackdowns by fundamentalist Islamic rulers who disapproved of the depiction of animals in art. This was not “art” — this was a hunting tool.

Hajji Abdullah Wakil Zadhah and his family of artists in Herat are now trying to revive the skill of producing hunting cloths (or “chireh”). It is a three-generation affair: he sketches the outlines, his sons produce the bold drawings, and the grand children colour them in.

Now that the Taliban have gone from power and the country is trying to get back to normal, this family is trying to get back to business.

The Royal Institute’s Andrea Nield said that she would also like to see a revival of the glass blowing skills lost during the 25 years of war. She hopes that an Australian could be found who would be game enough to go to Afghanistan to teach these skills.

Overall, as the Foreign Minister said, the exhibition is a sign of how the country is trying to get back on its feet after so many years of war and invasions. It is good to see Australians playing a part in the recovery.

Keith Suter, Consultant for Social Policy, reprinted with permission from Keith Suter Comments.

Trouvelot's UFOs

1871 At the Meudon Observatory in France, astronomer Etienne Leopold Trouvelot (December 26, 1827 - April 22, 1895) saw several flying objects high in the atmosphere. He described one object as descending like a disc falling through water. Ufologists suggest this might have been the first description of the ‘falling leaf motion’ that is known in modern UFO cases. Some sources say Trouvelot’s objects resembled those seen at Basel, Switzerland, on August 7, 1566.

Trouvelot, by the way, made a living as an artist, painting mostly portraits, but he had an amateur interest in entomology. was the person who introduced gypsy moths to North America, bringing them back from a trip to Europe between late 1868 and early 1869 with a view to raising them to make silk, a plan which failed. Over the next seventeen years, the gypsy moth population exploded and it is now a major pest.

Fed up with entomology, Trouvelot turned to astronomy and became famous for his illustrations of astronomical details of the sun and of Venus. In 1872 he was given a faculty position at Harvard University in astronomy. A crater on the moon was named in his honour and he won the French Academy’s Valz prize for his astronomical research.

Iraq marshes recovering

"Bob at Howling at a Waning Moon has linked to two articles (here and here) documenting the recovery of marshes in southern Iraq that Saddam Hussein had drained in order to punish 'people living there for acts of rebellion.'"
Sustainablog

Iraq's missing nuclear scientists

"The Iraqi scientists from Saddam Hussein's nuclear and biological weapons programs posed a huge risk to international safety after Saddam's fall. So why did the Bush administration refuse to track down the scientists after the 2003 invasion of Iraq? Mother Jones reports that all but three of Saddam's top 200-some nuclear scientists are missing."
Mother Jones

It really is that bad: educational standards in UK

It really is that bad

After marking GCSE exam papers for the past two weeks, Tom Smith says standards are not only dropping, but they are unbelievably low

"It's that time of year again when British newspapers will be reporting on the now annual increase in the number of school pupils getting higher grades for their GCSE and A-level exams. Yet again, education pundits, employers and parents will be asking themselves whether or not this means students are getting better at exams or standards are dropping.

"... after marking GSCE exam scripts for a major UK examining board for the past two weeks, I can honestly say that not only are standards dropping, but also they are unbelievably low ...

"The handwriting, most of the time, resembled that of a five-year-old toddler or a drunk (grotesquely simple or an illegible scrawl). A lack of basic punctuation, such as full stops, commas, capital letters etc, was commonplace. There were countless inarticulate, immature sentences, which did not make any sense to the reader ...

"Inarticulate or just inappropriate answers (eg 'I don't no [sic], I don't no, I don't know', 'only the smarties no the answer to that' ... if you didn't laugh it would have been far too depressing. Every now and again we'd get a decently written, reasonably intelligent answer, which felt like a welcome breath of fresh air amongst the dross. Still, there was a spoken about fear among the exam markers that these responses might be subconsciously marked higher than they should, only because, in comparison with the majority of exam scripts, they appeared much better than they in fact were.

"However, it was not just the very poor knowledge and written skills of the students that were at fault. After all, one would think that such poor responses would be marked accordingly low. Yet, the guidance given in the marking scheme meant that people with very poor knowledge and written skills were able to get reasonable, if not good, marks ..."
Education Guardian with thanx to Nora from extra!extra

Julian Beever's pavement art

Too, too much. One patient, talented guy. Check out the Coke bottle and the gold prospector series.

Podcast page

Click for podcasts. Refreshing every 20 minutes.

Honest Abe’s night of the “moon riding low”

1857 Abraham Lincoln’s night of the “moon riding low”

When he was a lawyer, Abraham Lincoln defended a man, one William Armstrong, who had been charged with murder. The prosecutor said that Lincoln’s client had murdered a man on August 28, 1857 in the “light of the moon”. Holding up the 1857 edition of the Old Farmer’s Almanac for the jury to see, Lincoln pointed out that on the night in question the “moon was riding low”. Thus was Armstrong acquitted of all charges in a real-life scenario that has had its echo in countless crime fictions since then.

Unbelievable, but true: MP urges headscarf ban

MP urges school headscarf ban

Australia: "Federal Liberal MP Bronwyn Bishop has advocated a ban on Muslim girls wearing headscarves at public schools."
ABC News

Note: Despite this above, Bronwyn Bishop is not considered to be on the lunar extreme right of the so called Liberal Party, in which she has been a central figure for many years and at one time considered a potential party leader. She is quite centre-right, which is even more scary.

One fears that such attitudes are widespread in that party and bode ill for all of us, whether Muslim, Jew, Christian, atheist or whatever does not suit the conservatives.

Write: Sydney Morning Herald :: The Australian ::

Sydney Tower Restaurant and the illusion of view

Last Saturday I lunched with family and family friends at the revolving restaurant atop Sydney Tower. Everyone made the obligatory comments about the spectacular view. I noticed, however, that very rarely did any of the hundreds of diners seem to look out the window. This, in my view, is because the view, which all the tourist brochures assure you is beautiful, is breath-takingly ugly. Except for some glimpses that pass by, it is at least as bad as the officially lauded view from that other hideous Sydney tourist attraction, the Monorail.

In 1770, when Captain James Cook sailed into Sydney Harbour, or Port Jackson as he named it, he excitedly wrote of the best harbour in the world. It is indeed a huge, beautiful and deep harbour, with tributaries and arms all over the place, so Sydneysiders are blessed with the presence of lots of waterways. An early diarist noted that his ship had to move slowly through the harbour because of the abundance of marine life. Today Port Jackson is all but dead. And this is the best bit of the view from Sydney Tower, when not obscured (as it mostly is) by filthy, disintegrating, jerry-built architecural monstrosities.

Unfortunately, the undisputed glory of the harbour, from a bird's eye view, is nothing compared to the disgusting sprawl of a city of four million people, and the polluted film of the sky. What you see from Sydney Tower is perhaps the most graphic example one can imagine of wrong planning, execrable architecture, human misery and downright aesthetic and environmental vandalism that Australia can offer all in one place. No one wants to view it, but to admit that is seen as infra dig.

As in the case of the appalling rough concrete interior design of the Sydney Opera House, no one wants to expose the naked emperor. I kept my mouth shut because it was a luncheon for a family member's birthday, but it was clear no one wanted to see what may well be the most expensive and most-touted view on this continent. I saved my comments for this blog.

Gideon Polya: Australian complicity in Iraq mortality

"Former Associate Professor of Biochemistry, Dr Gideon Polya researched and analysed avoidable global mass mortality. He also talks about the refusal of Anglo/American media to report avoidable mass mortality and other atrocities linked to Western activities:

Gideon Polya: "... an extraordinary feature of the post-war world has been the resolute refusal of Anglo-American media to report avoidable mass mortality and other atrocities linked to Western activities. Thus in 1943-44 a man-made, market-forces famine killed an estimated 4-million Hindu and Muslim Bengalis in British-ruled India, but most Australians will simply never have heard of this ‘forgotten holocaust’ ...

"The post-1950 avoidable mortality has been 1.3-billion for the world, 1-billion for the Third World and 0.5-billion for the Muslim World, a Muslim Holocaust 100 times greater than the Jewish Holocaust or the contemporaneous but ‘forgotten’ Bengal Famine in British-ruled India.

"... I have written widely on this matter and a Google search for ‘Gideon Polya’ will allow ready access to this information.

"For example, the post-1950 infant mortality in Asian and Pacific countries in which Australia has been involved militarily in that period totals 34-million.

"... US authorities have repeatedly stated that they do not keep records of civilian casualties. However as with the children overboard, the weapons of mass destruction and the torture of Iraqi prisoners, the truth eventually emerges.

"The latest UNICEF report in 2005 estimates that for the year 2003 the under-5 infant mortality was 110,000 in occupied Iraq, 292,000 in occupied Afghanistan and 1,000 in the invading and occupying country Australia (noting that these countries have populations of about 25-million, 24-million and 20-million respectively).

"... one can readily calculate that there have been about 0.4-million avoidable deaths in post-invasion Iraq.

"... I have calculated that the under-5 infant mortality was 1.2-million for Iraq since 1991; 0.2-million for Iraq since the 2003 invasion; and 0.9-million for Afghanistan since the 2001 [sic] invasion ...

"Jihadist violence has taken roughly about 5,000 Western civilian lives over the last 20 years, with most of the victims dying on 9/11 (about 3,000) and the remainder including murdered Israeli civilians and the victims of atrocities such as Madrid, Lockerbie and Bali.

"However this jihadist violence has had immensely bloodier consequences through the hysterically and dishonestly promoted War on Terror that has been associated with post-invasion avoidable deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan alone that total 1.6-million.

"The War on Terror has substantially helped to produce a post-9/11 extra profit for the US military-industrial complex of about $US500-billion ...

"Silence kills. Silence is complicity. Please inform everyone, discuss this with your associates and then act as responsible citizens. We cannot walk by on the other side."
Ockham's Razor

Listen in Real Media
Download MP3 [PCs: Right click + 'save target as', Macs: Ctrl + click]
Podcast :: Help [Average file size: 5MB]

Google Gideon Polya
Gideon Polya links

The death of the cheque

"The death knell is sounding for the cheque. It's about to be replaced by credit cards, debit cards, ATMs, and the sleeping giant -- the mobile phone."
ABC Perth

Podcast URLs for those interested

I've been surfing a bit for interesting and progressive podcast info and along the way collected a few dozen URLs. I've zipped the list from Favorites and uploaded here if you can use them (28kb zip file). Not all the links are great, but many are worthwhile.

Abu Ghraib general lambasts Bush Admin

Abu Ghraib general lambasts Bush Administration is the week's top story at Yellow Pages (free email subscription).

Flying Spaghetti Monsterism

Open Letter to the Kansas School Board

"I am writing you with much concern after having read of your hearing to decide whether the alternative theory of Intelligent Design should be taught along with the theory of Evolution. I think we can all agree that it is important for students to hear multiple viewpoints so they can choose for themselves the theory that makes the most sense to them. I am concerned, however, that students will only hear one theory of Intelligent Design.

"Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him.

"It is for this reason that I’m writing you today, to formally request that this alternative theory be taught in your schools, along with the other two theories. In fact, I will go so far as to say, if you do not agree to do this, we will be forced to proceed with legal action. I’m sure you see where we are coming from. If the Intelligent Design theory is not based on faith, but instead another scientific theory, as is claimed, then you must also allow our theory to be taught, as it is also based on science, not on faith.

"Some find that hard to believe, so it may be helpful to tell you a little more about our beliefs. We have evidence that a Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe. None of us, of course, were around to see it, but we have written accounts of it ..."
Source

Responses from the K. S. Board

Podcasting for Geezers?

"A survey from CLX, a company that polls via cellular phones and text messages, suggests that it's not young people driving the explosive growth of podcasting, but listeners 45 and over.

"According to CLX's survey of 8,000 Americans, podcasting is most popular with those over 45, with 21 per cent of those questioned listening to podcasts. This compares to just 13 per cent of 15 to 24-year olds.

"'The results of this poll show that companies can't just accept the conventional wisdom when trying to understand their markets,' said Dave Williams, chief executive of CLX.

"Based on the information currently available to Podcasting News, it's unclear whether the results highlight a real trend, a survey bias or the appeal of currently available podcasts."
Podcasting News

Get a dose of Gomhoria

You know the trouble with most online newspapers? They're too damn static. That's why I'm switching to Egypt's Al Gomhoria. These guys really know how to move me. I just wish they'd add some audio; maybe a Disney soundtrack or something from Metallica.

Telstra SMS snailpace

I just got a text message from Telstra informing me of a phone message that my son left on my message bank at about 11pm on last Saturday, August 20. My previous record was about 24 hours late.

Roman invasion of Britain

55 BCE Julius Caesar landed in Britain. Some sources, however, place this event on August 26.

I'm placing it on this date, Tuesday, August 27, because in his journal Caesar said that he proceeded on his expedition when the people were engaged in harvest, and he returned three weeks later before the Autumn Equinox. The full moon, under which the peasants would have harvested, occurred on August 31 that year, four days after his landing.

China rise rewrites rule book

Australia: "BHP Billiton's stunning profit captured both the dramatic global impact of China and the particular benefits it bestows on Australia. BHPB's bonanza was very much Australia's bonanza.

"Striking was not just the sheer size of China's economic boom, and so its voracious appetite for raw material, revealed in the BHPB numbers. But also the speed with which it has erupted.

"Even just three years ago when BHPB was bedding down the first results from its merger, no one could have and no one indeed did anticipate the coming size and speed of the China impact.

"In 2002 group revenue was 'just' $US15 billion.

"In three years it's more than doubled, to $US32 billion ($42.2 billion). Profit has grown even faster - at the EBITDA level, from $US4.7 billion to $US11.4 billion.

"With China leapfrogging Japan to become the company's single biggest geographic customer. Japan! The country on which BHP - and Australia - had built prosperity, running back over nearly 40 years, caught and supplanted in just a few years.

"China benefits BHPB - a pretty good proxy for Australia more broadly - in two direct ways. Obviously, what it actually buys and the price it pays.
The most striking example is iron ore to feed its exploding steel industry. The volumes it buys have been rising exponentially and, after the latest price negotiations, it is going to pay 70 per cent more on every tonne of those higher volumes.

"The second benefit is less obvious but just as direct. The way Chinese demand is pushing up the price of all commodities. So BHPB, and Australia, gets the benefit on stuff it/we sell to someone else.

"The most striking example is oil and gas. It is Chinese demand that is the new kid on the block - since the late-1990s rising Chinese consumption has been the crucial "swing factor" between global demand and supply of oil and gas, but especially oil.

"Depending on which measure you use, China is somewhere between 5 per cent and 10 per cent of the global economy; and even in population terms is only a little bit more than 20 per cent of the world. Yet, it has been driving one-third of the increased global demand for oil."
News.com.au

BHP profit 'may touch $11bn'
"Perth - With net profit shading US$10bn in the next year or so, BHP Billiton's (BHP) growth trajectory is leaving rivals in its wake.
Having struck a rich vein of iron ore, copper and oil prices, $11bn or more might be in reach for the global mining company if the China-driven commodities boom lingers for another 12 months, analysts believe."
Finance24.com

What's mined is yours
"COMPANY profit reports come and go but the $8.6 billion jackpot revealed by BHP Billiton on Wednesday was no run-of-the-mill result. Not only did it smash the Australian corporate profit record, it epitomised powerful forces at work in the economy, illustrating how the biggest commodity price boom in more than a century is boosting the economy.

"Access Economics estimates that a surge in prices for some of Australia's main mineral exports, fuelled by resource-hungry China, is pumping $40 billion a year extra into the economy, compared with 2003."
Sydney Morning Herald

Overall, it's boom time, China
Demand for Commodities Sends BHP Billiton Profits Soaring

Get the latest news on china with Google Alerts.

Review: American Mania: When More is Not Enough

USA: "In American Mania: When More is Not Enough, renowned psychiatrist Dr. Peter C. Whybrow skillfully and sensitively critiques the mess America has made of its consumer culture.

"What have we become? According to Whybrow's scientific and philosophical analyses, we've devolved into a nation of overindulging, overstimulated flakes addicted to easy access and instant gratification.

"Dr. Whybrow argues that our seemingly interminable quest for more -- more money, more power, more toys, more cars -- has in fact become a form of clinical mania marked by symptoms such as anxiety, depression and obesity."
AlterNet

1883: Krakatoa Scream

Munch painted in volcano's sunsets

1883 On the Indonesian island of Rakata, the volcano Krakatoa (real name, Krakatau) erupted with one of the biggest volcanic explosions ever in human history (some say Santorini’s eruption in 1628 BCE was three times as forceful. Krakatoa was heard over 7.5 per cent of the earth’s surface).

The sound of the eruption was heard as far as 3,540 km away, in Australia. By way of comparison, an equivalent phenomenon in Australia would be an explosion in Perth being heard in Sydney, or in the USA, a New York explosion being heard in San Francisco. Tsunamis caused by the great blast killed 36,000 people in Java and Sumatra.

‘Modern’ communications helped the world know about Krakatoa in a short time and helped changed the world view of the day. Whereas news of Abraham Lincoln’s 1865 assassination did not reach London for 12 days, Europeans and Americans knew about the explosion of Krakatoa in four hours. The difference: in the years between 1865 and 1883 there had been three great developments: the invention of Morse Code; the global spread of the telegraph, and the establishment of Reuter’s news agency. No longer could the world be seen as vast and unknowable.

The eruption is also the subject of a 1969 Hollywood film entitled Krakatoa, East of Java starring Maximilian Schell – which is notable chiefly for getting the volcano’s location embarrassingly wrong; Krakatoa is in fact west of Java.

It has been discovered that Edvard Munch painted The Scream when Norway was experiencing brilliant sunsets following the great explosion, no doubt influencing his depiction of the sky in the famous painting stolen in August, 2004.

Human ape show at London Zoo

"The Human Zoo exhibit at the London Zoo aims to 'demonstrate the basic nature of man as an animal and examine the impact that Homo sapiens have on the rest of the animal kingdom.' The public takes part in the display (fig leaves required). 'Over four days the "animals" will be cared for by the zoo's keepers and "kept entertained through various forms of enrichment..."' There are even some photos of them monkeying around."
Metafilter

The Legend of le Tuff: The Meeting

The Legend of le Tuff begins today at fishpond: a prophecy.

The Great Moon Hoax

1835 The New York Sun perpetrated The Great Moon Hoax.

The articles were falsely attributed to Sir John Herschel (1792 - 1871), perhaps the best-known astronomer of his day (and nephew of Caroline Herschel).

The headline read:

GREAT ASTRONOMICAL DISCOVERIES
LATELY MADEBY SIR JOHN HERSCHEL, L.L.D. F.R.S. &c.

At the Cape of Good Hope

America's Top 10 green schools

"The editors of the The Green Guide went out in search of the greenest schools in the U.S. They looked to the Green Building Council's LEED standards, as well as a number of their own criteria. At the top of the list was the award-winning Clackamas High School in Oregon. For this school, Boora Architects secured a 44 percent reduction in energy consumption. They encouraged the students to join in creating full-scale mock-ups of buildings to test daylighting and ventilation through convection along with both sustainable energy and long-life materials."
Treehugger

Energy and Asset Technology, Inc and Comments spam

I have been getting spam in my blog Comments from Energy and Asset Technology, Inc.

As a quick Google search of Energy and Asset Technology, Inc. found, this is one of many pages on the Net with press releases from Energy and Asset Technology, Inc and it has a name and address:

Energy and Asset Technology, Inc.
George McMillan
US: 561 620 4949
Australia: 617 5570 4500

as you can see here, they do put out a lot of press releases.

I don't know whether Energy and Asset Technology, Inc. (selling timber products) and George McMillan exist, but if they do it looks like someone is trying to make George McMillan look like an unethical, creepy bastard who deserves to get Telephone spam from friends of blogging. But I doubt it's a real human being.

Then I searched Google on Energy and Asset Technology, Inc spammer

Then I found it's a Pump and Dump scam: "Did you know that all the 'share recommendations' and 'company investments' spams I have received have all been for the Pump & Dump scam, known in the U.K. as 'Share price ramping". It is a scam where the spammer buys cheap shares in a company, hypes up the share price based on spammed e-mails and bulletin board stories. Once the gullible have bought shares and caused the share price to rise, the spammer sells their shares at a profit."

Let's hope someone finds the spammer ... like the FBI.

Are sharks in danger of extinction?

"Dozens of biologists believe the seas have reached a tipping point, with scores of species of ocean-dwelling fish, birds and mammals edging towards extinction. In the past 300 years, researchers have documented the global extinction of just 21 marine species -- and 16 of those extinctions occurred since 1972. Since the 1700s, another 112 species have died out in particular regions, and that trend, too, has accelerated since the mid-1960s: Nearly two dozen shark species are on the brink of disappearing, according to the World Conservation Union, an international coalition of government and advocacy groups.

"'It's been a slow-motion disaster,' said Boris Worm, a professor at Canada's Dalhousie University who wrote a 2003 study that found that 90 percent of the top predator fish have vanished from the oceans. 'It's silent and invisible. People don't imagine this. It hasn't captured our imagination, like the rain forest.'"
Washington Post

Help Save The Sharks
New repellant might save sharks
The 2004 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species

Least church-going rich countries give most

"WASHINGTON - Nations where fewer people attend church tend to be more generous in their support for development in poor countries than those where church attendance is much greater, according to the third annual edition of the "Commitment to Development Index (CDI), published this week in Foreign Policy magazine.

The Index, a joint project of Washington-based Foreign Policy and the Center for Global Development (CGD), found that Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, Australia, and Norway retained their top rankings among wealthy countries for their helpfulness to poor countries from last year. Italy, Ireland, Greece and Japan were the least helpful of the 21 countries ranked by the Index."
CommonDreams

Opening of Mundus Cereris, ancient Rome (first day)

Mundus Cereris was the womb or labyrinthine passage to the underworld, the domain of Ceres, the great Mother of vegetation. The structure was vaulted in the shape of an inverted sky, divided into two parts, and had a cover. We do know know for certain where the Mundus Cereris was, or is, but in 1914 Giacomo Boni discovered on the Palatine Hill in Rome a subterranean structure which he identified with the Mundus.

The cover was removed on August 24 (it is believed by some, the European St Bartholomew’s Day festivities on this day grew out of this ancient festival), October 5 and November 8, and these days were religiosi, when the way was supposed to be open to the lower world. First-fruits of the season would be offered to the Manes (ancestral spirits) and placed in the pit.

Because the cover to the Mundus, the Lapis Manalis (Stone of the Manes), is considered an Ostium Orci (Gate of Hades), the Manes are freed to roam for the day, so marriage was not permitted today, and nor were battles nor business considered advisable.

One of the numerous spheres over which the goddess Ceres had influence was liminality, that is, boundaries and transitions between different stages of social life, a function that she shared with Janus. We note that this commemoration in its November occurrence almost precisely coincides with the Celtic Samhain (October 31), at which time the veil between the living world and that of the dead is said to be its thinnest, and its Christian corollaries, All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day, November 1 and 2 respectively.

Departed ancestors were remembered at this time.

Utah cops use gas, dogs on ravers

"Last night, I was booked to play an event about an hour outside of Salt Lake City, Utah. The hype behind this show was huge, they presold 700 tickets and they expected up to 3,000 people total. The promoters did an amazing job with the show ... they even made slipmats with the flyers on them to promote in local shops.

"So, we got to the show around 11:15 or so and it was really cool. It was all outdoors, in a valley surrounded by huge mountains. They had an amazing light show flashing on to a mountain behind the site, the sound was booming, the crowd was about 1500 people thick and everything just seemed too good to be true really. Well...

"At about 11:30 or so, I was standing behind the stage talking with someone when I noticed a helicopter pulling over one of the mountain tops. I jokingly said "Oh look, here comes big brother" to the person I was with. I wasn't far off.

"The helicopter dipped lower and lower and started shining its lights on the crowd. I was kind of in awe and just sat and watched this thing circle us for a minute. As I looked back towards the crowd I saw a guy dressed in camoflauge [sic] walking by, toting an assault rifle. At this point, everyone was fully aware of what was going on . A few 'troops' rushed the stage and cut the sound off and started yelling that everyone 'get the fuck out of here or go to jail'. This is where it got really sticky ..."
InformationClearingHouse has video

Secret film of Zimbabwe 'squalor'

"Amnesty International has released a secretly-shot film from Zimbabwe, showing what it says is the squalid aftermath of Harare's slum clearances. [See video here]

"The clearances have left about 700,000 people without their homes or livelihoods, according to UN estimates.

"The human rights group said its film showed people made homeless and then dumped at an informal site ...

"'Rather than confront the massive humanitarian crisis that its actions have created, the government of Zimbabwe is compounding suffering and human rights violations by attempting to hid the most visible signs of internal displacement', she [Amnesty International researcher Audrey Gaughran] added."

Source and video link: BBC

I got it, with thanks, from Nora's extra!extra, an excellent blog that goes from strength to strength. It has a truly global consciousness, very rare in blogs from any country. Check out Nora's subscription box in her right-hand column.

India: Everything Gets Worse With Coca-Cola

PLACHIMADA, India - "In the end it was the 'generosity' of Coca-Cola in distributing cadmium-laden waste sludge as 'free fertilizer' to the tribal aborigines who live near the beverage giant's bottling plant in this remote Kerala village that proved to be its undoing.

"On Friday, the Kerala State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB) ordered the plant shut down to the jubilation of tribal leaders and green activists who had focused more on the 'water mining' activities of the plant rather than its production of toxic cadmium sludge ...

"In January 2004, the agitating villagers received a boost when global activists converged on Plachimada for a three-day World Water Conference and joined in demonstrations in front of the main gate of the Coca-Cola plant, one of the largest in its chain of 27 plants in India."
Common Dreams

On Beyond Organic Radio: Permaculture

"Permaculture, said Bill Mollison, the inventor of this food/farming/environmental concept, is being able to look out your backdoor and see your friends gathering food.

"A permaculturist’s skills may include straw bale house building or edible forest gardening. They may have set-up a rainwater collection system on their roof, or turned their livestock fences into a food source. All this is part of a design concept that takes its cues from the workings of a healthy eco-system.

"The good news is you’re probably already practicing some of permaculture’s principles.

"Join host Jerry Kay, publisher of the Environmental News Network as we talk to three prominent practitioners and learn to think like a permaculturist. The Beyond Organic one-hour radio show airs every Wednesday at 10 a.m. (PST), reaching thousands of listeners across North America via traditional radio stations, satellite radio, webcasting and podcasting. Shorter segments are rebroadcast on the CBS Radio Network and Armed Forces Radio. For information on this week's guests and to tune in, visit http://www.beyondorganic.com/. You can also listen at www.iciclenetworks.com and www.wisdommedia.com."
ENN

The Tomainis

Jeanie and Al Tomaini

Unloved 4WD owners feel they're picked on

Looks like we're making some progress at last. From today's Sydney Morning Herald, on the topic of bully cars:

Sydney, NSW, Australia: "More than 77 per cent of four-wheel-drive vehicle owners in NSW believe there is a backlash against them, a survey has found, and almost 20 per cent say other drivers have become more negative towards them since they bought their big cars.

"'Without doubt, four-wheel-drive owners have an image problem, whether they deserve it or not,' said Selina O'Connor, the corporate affairs manager at the insurance company AAMI, which conducted the survey.

"The research, based on interviews with 2400 NSW motorists, found 68 per cent of respondents believed that four-wheel-drive vehicles might be safer for their occupants but were a greater threat to other road users."

Check out www.nosuv.org/ and also read about the Sandy Beach Wave (one way to get SUVs off our beaches).

Wilson's Almanac back on the road

[Pictured: Live webcam of Sydney Harbour Bridge traffic]

I had a busy time in Sydney, a city which may be defined as four million people driving on roads designed for one million people, and it's great to be back.

Thanks to Baz le Tuff (once again) I have a new Esmeralda the Computer, and she is working "like a bought one", to use an Aussie expression. Also pleasing was to find the following message from Bloglet in Esmeralda's in-tray this morning:

"Your site 'Wilson's Blogmanac' received 1 new subscribers today.
It has 250 total subscribers and is ranked #215 on Bloglet."

If you would like to be one of the subscribers to posts in this Almanac blog (I call it the Blogmanaczine), you will find a subscription form on this page. I invite you to make our total 251.

The overheated Esmeralda

Esmeralda the Computer is freezing every seven or eight minutes, which is ironic because it might be from an overheated disposition.

This, and the fact that I am going to Sydney until Tuesday, will ensure that I won't be online till then. Must go, Esmeralda seems rather warm. :) BFN

Four-star US General relieved of command for disagreeing

"Another U.S. Army General Rebuked. After further top-level military confirmation to WMR that four-star General Kevin Byrnes was relieved of his command as commander of TRADOC for disagreeing with the neo-con cabal in the Pentagon (not for an extra marital affair as reported by the main stream media), now comes word that General George Casey, the commander of all U.S. ground forces in Iraq, has been admonished by the Pentagon and the White House for suggesting that U.S. forces could be drawn down by 30,000 troops during 2006. The actions against two top U.S. Army generals are indicators of widespread disgust among the flag rank officers with the Bush administration. "
Wayne Madsen Report

Thanks Jim, one of the 200+ pagans4peace who help keep people informed.

Big Dreamers receives investment from AFC

Big Dreamers receives post-production investment from Australian Film Commission

BarkingCat Productions are very pleased to announce they have been selected to receive post production investment from the Australian Film Commission for their comedic feature documentary Big Dreamers – a film focussing on one man’s quixotic struggle to build The Biggest Gumboot in the World.

Big Dreamers is a hilarious comedic documentary following life-long Rotary Club member, Ron Hunt as he struggles to erect the World’s Biggest Gumboot in the tiny township of Tully, Far North Queensland, Australia, in honour of Tully’s reputation as the wettest town in Australia. Ron is a very dry character in a rather wet town, and soon finds himself stuck between the two commissioned artists as they compete against other to build the boot. Even though Ron sometimes wonders whether the townsfolk will accept his totemic 8 metre-high offering, the maze of financial hurdles, feisty small town politics and bureaucratic engineering difficulties can not halt Ron’s quixotic determination, but perhaps the relentless rain will. Big Dreamers holds an audience appeal from six to sixty and nine to ninety.

After three years of hard slog getting the film made, director Camille Hardman is very pleased with the AFC’s investment, and is looking forward to refining the rough cut in preparation for the global festival circuit. “The competition in this round was extremely high, and the feedback from the AFC was very encouraging, so this is a real boost.” Says Camille, who shunted her "real job" in the film industry to follow her dream of making this film as an indie.

“There are so many well made documentaries out there telling us how bad things are, so from the beginning I set out to make a film that affirms life, makes us feel good about who we are, no matter what part of the world we might live in.”

Big Dreamers
Produced By John Fink & Camille Hardman
Directed By Camille Hardman
Written By John Fink
Edited By Peter Barton
Music & Underscore By Neill Duncan
Consultative Editor - Andrew Aristedes
Critical Consultant - Bob Connolly, Karin Altmann

If you want to find out more about the film Big Dreamers, or BarkingCat Productions, please reply to this email, or call John Fink at BarkingCat Productions on (02) 9261 4055 – or 0414 610 225.

Mary Gilmore, activist and poet

1865 Mary Gilmore (born Mary Jean Cameron; later, Dame Mary Gilmore; d. December 3, 1962), Australian poet, utopian socialist, Communist, close friend of leading Australian socialist William Lane and fellow poet Henry Lawson. She is the woman on the $10 note.

Lawson once asked her to marry him but she gave him a "no", noting in her diary "a curious immaturity" in him – like a "sappy twig".

When Lane led several hundred (figures vary according to source) Australians on the Royal Tar to Paraguay to form a utopian community, first New Australia and then Cosme when they abandoned the former, Gilmore was the colony's schoolteacher and 'newspaper' editor (the paper was read out daily to the colonists). After her return to Australia some six years later (she and her husband were among the first to leave Cosme, disillusioned), she continued to write poetry and became active in campaigns for the aged and under-privileged ...

On W's words of wisdom

"President Bush' s struggles with his mother tongue are legendary. Collections and analyses of 'Bushisms' even predate his ascendence to the White House. But in defending his refusal to meet with grieving Iraq war mother Cindy Sheehan, George W. Bush reached a new plateau of verbal incontinence:

"But whether it be here or in Washington or anywhere else, there's somebody who has got something to say to the president, that's part of the job. And I think it's important for me to be thoughtful and sensitive to those who have got something to say. But I think it's also important for me to go on with my life, to keep a balanced life."

"This latest incomprehensible utterance illustrates the last of the four types of Bush gaffes. The first, Accidental Truth, involves Bush inadvertently saying what he actually feels or believes. The second, What He Really Meant, are those cases where the discerning observer can find the actual intent of Bush's words that had been sadly lost in his lack of familiarity with English. The third, Post-Modern Dyslexia, involves President Bush changing the order, conjugation or tense of words to render the mundane incomprehensible. Last, as in the case of Bush "going on with his life", is the What the F**k? category, where the meaning of Bush's words are hidden to man and God alike.

"Bush's need to 'go on with my life' rather than meet with Cindy Sheehan is one of those What the F**k moments ..."
PERRsepectives blog (thanks Nora)

When real news dents the fake news business

"There's good news for citizens and bad news for investors in the latest quarterly financial report of Medialink Worldwide, the biggest player in the fake news business.

"In the three months to the end of June Medialink the company lost $923,000. This was on top of the $1.13 million loss for the January to March quarter. The losses, the company's latest quarterly financial report states, are just over double the amount lost in the first half of 2004. "
PRWatch

Pomos: formerly in your university, now in your kids' school

What the article Alas, poor students, from today's Sydney Morning Herald is saying, but doesn't put in so many words, is that our children are being fed a diet of postmodern literary theory which is as toxic as it is prevalent.

I don't know why Justine Norrie doesn't point the finger at the pomos, and wish she had, but the article is good anyway.

Baz le Tuff sent me the link this morning, and I mentioned to him a few lines of verse I wrote (in January, 1995, and I mistakenly told him it was a decade earlier, but le Tuff once forgave the sins of a whole species so I guess I'm safe):

In English departments
all round the world
Shakespeare's Julius Caesar
the students are making cardboard shields and swords.

Interestingly, these words rebounded on me as my own high-school-age son tells me that basically what they do in English classes is "watch videos".

Here's a bit from the SMH article (note the telltale pomo word 'texts'):

"Parents complain the HSC English syllabus is full of confusing jargon. Now educators are agreeing, writes Justin Norrie.

"As year 12 boys from a North Shore school walked out of an English exam a couple of weeks ago, they gathered to compare notes. Adam, studying advanced English, says the conversation turned into 'a competition to see who had out-bullshitted the others. It was like comedy hour.'

"In an essay on the Australian poet Gwen Harwood, he wrote his interpretation of her poem At Mornington 'reflected the personal or economic values and beliefs of the responder and the analysis of binary opposites or art versus science and its importance in affecting the action of the poem'.

"The disaffected student says he 'had to write like this to get the marks' ...

"Glossary from English syllabus

"Meaning
The dynamic relationship between text and responder involving information (explicit and implicit), the affective and the contextual.

"Affective
Relating to a thoughtful consideration and evaluation of emotions and values associated with an idea or set of ideas.

"Texts
Communications of meaning produced in any medium that incorporates language, including sound, print, film, electronic and multimedia representations.

"Composing
The activity that occurs when students produce written, spoken, or visual texts … involves the shaping and arrangement of textual elements to explore and express ideas and values."

The Truth, in name but not in nature

1890 Mid-August: Truth, a journal published in Sydney, Australia, first hit the newsstands. A former actor-turned-journalist, William Nicholas Willis, founded it, and Adolphus George Taylor and William Patrick Crick were its other leading lights from the beginning. John Napoleon Norton (pictured), who had a gossip column in the first edition, was Associate Editor by the following month and went on quickly to become its most famous editor, amassing considerable wealth, influence and notoriety on the way. One of its earliest contributors was Australian poet Henry Lawson. The first issue preceded the Maritime Strike of 1890 by a fortnight and the earliest issues commented on the labor unrest.

There had been a preceding paper of the same name in Sydney, founded in 1879, a little more than two years after Henry Labouchere began his Truth journal in Britain. However, it was short lived, but it was a progenitor in name and the fact that it, too, was a guttersheet.

In its early days, Willis's Truth, like Smith's Weekly and The Bulletin a republican paper with a larrikin spirit, was published out of Waters Lane, off King St, between George and Pitt. The office was strongly fortified, mostly with copious amounts of spiritous liquor. On one occasion, due to defamation suit with an Englishman named Seymour Allen, the Truth office was besieged by sheriffs and Taylor wrote in the paper, " ... the first private detective, or detective's bravo, that puts unlawful hands on our castle, will sleep with his fathers ..." He added a PS: "The staff will meet for revolver Duties after Church Parade to-morrow. By Order."

BBC punks Wikipedia in marketing ploy?

"Someone has apparently abused collaborative reference site Wikipedia in a viral marketing campaign for a BBC online alternate [sic] reality game. Boing Boing readers ask whether the BBC (or someone acting on their behalf, like a promotional agency) is responsible. Here's the Wikipedia entry Link ...

"Reader Comment: Anonymous says,
"'I can't say who I am, but I do work at a company that uses Wikipedia as a key part of online marketing strategies. That includes planting of viral information in entries, modification of entries to point to new promotional sites or "leaks" embedded in entries to test diffusion of information. Wikipedia is just a more transparent version of Myspace as far as some companies are concerned. We love it (evil laugh).
On the other side, I love it from an academia/sociological standpoint, and I don't necessarily have a problem with it used as a viral marketing tool. After all, marketing is a form of information, with just a different end point in mind (consuming rather than learning).'"
BoingBoing

Bush vows to cut US dependence on oil by 4920

"WASHINGTON, DC—President Bush unveiled an aggressive initiative Monday that would make the U.S. free of petroleum dependence by the year 4920, less than three millennia from now.

"'Our mission is clear,' Bush said in a speech delivered at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. 'We must free ourselves from dependence on fossil fuels within 85 generations. A cleaner, safer America is my vision. And it is our great, great-great-times-80 grandchildren who will realize that vision.'"
The Onion

Germany says auf Wiedersehen to nuke power

"For a people as addicted to order as the Germans, this country is floundering in uncertainty. The economy has sputtered to a post-World War II record 5 million unemployed. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's exhausted left-of-center coalition is close to coughing up the fall elections to conservatives. And soccer fans aren't even sure if their team can defend the country's pride when it hosts the World Cup next summer.

"About the only thing most Germans are sure about right now is the dire need to abandon nuclear power, evidenced by the 'Switch Off and Rethink' mantra stamped on billboards and in newspapers, buzzing from television sets, and crossing people's lips throughout the nation. And tough policies enacted by the red-green government have laid an incredible groundwork for that move -- not just for Europe's wealthiest nation to become nuclear-free in the next 15 years, but for renewable-energy suppliers to double their output to provide one-fifth of Germany's power within the same period. By mid-century, the country expects to derive more than half of its power from renewables."
Grist

Push of amphetamine medications sparks abuse

"A new report from the [USA] National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University shows that prescription drug abuse among teens tripled from 1992 to 2003. The survey indicated that one in 10 teenagers (10 percent), or 2.3 million young people, has tried prescription stimulants Ritalin and/or Adderall without a doctor's order."
YahooNews

How are Mick Jagger and Cindy Sheehan connected?

"Fox is trying to get the NFL to cancel Mick Jagger's contract because he wrote a song they consider anti-American. Yesterday on Fox & Friends the issue was raised with an impromptu poll and last night Brian Kilmeade took the campaign to The Factor. Kilmeade and John Gibson had the traditional Fox smear rally getting viewers to turn on Jagger for speaking out against the war and their President Bush ..."
NewsHounds

foodnotbombs.net to feed Cindy Sheehan camp

"It's official, foodnotbombs.net is mobilizing to feed the army that will end the war! Namely the protestors in Crawford Texas all supporting Cyndi Sheehan and an end to this 'war'.

"You can feed a protestor or pay for a volunteers gas money by making a donation at http://foodnotbombs.net/dollar_for_peace.html If you are using the PayPal(tm) link just adjust the number on the left for the amount of dollars you can chip in. And you thought you couldn't play an important part in ending the war."
Progressive Blog Alliance

Brown urges PM to visit petrol-sniffing communities

Australia: "Tasmanian Greens Senator Bob Brown has called on Prime Minister John Howard to visit central Australia and see the increasing problem of petrol sniffing for himself.

"A coronial inquest in Alice Springs last week heard there could be up to 700 sniffers across the region.

"Senator Brown says he will introduce legislation into Federal Parliament to put the non-sniffable fuel into all central desert communities to combat the problem."
ABC

Drug council doubts usefulness of petrol-sniffing inquiry
Google News alerts on: petrol sniffing

"They want the deceptions to be truth": Cindy Sheehan

"In my travels, and from hundreds of emails, phone calls, and cards and letters, I am discovering that people who formerly supported the invasion of Iraq are withdrawing their support. I even believe that many of our fellow citizens who still support the ignominy of Iraq are doing so because they are clinging to the deceptions so desperately, because they want the deceptions to so be the truth."
Cindy Sheehan
Co-Founder
Gold Star Families for Peace

"Re-Measuring the Cindy Web Phenomenon By David Swanson, http://www.meetwithcindy.org/
(An update to http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/1369 )
Measured by Alexa.com, http://www.meetwithcindy.org/ continues to climb. It is now ranked 12,422 and is reaching 195 of every million internet users."
Cindy Takes Over
the Internet

Assumption Eve festivities, Messina, Sicily

Today the festivities include the parading of two huge statues, I Giganti, a pair of 8-metre papier-maché giants representing Messina’s legendary founders, Mata and Grifone.

Once upon a time there was gigantic Moorish Saracen, by the name of Grifone, who landed at Messina (the third largest city on the island of Sicily) and proceeded to sack the town. As soon as he met the beautiful Mata in Camaro, he fell in love with her and wanted to marry, but the giantess refused because he was cruel and Muslim, whereas she was very kind and Christian. I believe the Muslim version of the tale differs slightly.

However, the dark, nasty Grifone fell so madly in love with the beautiful blonde Mata, or perhaps, like George Bush, he had such a spiritual turnaround, that he became kind and was baptised, so naturally Mata married him and they happily ever after with many children. Thus was Messina founded ...

Chilled by publishers, Google Print halts some scans

"Google today announced that it has temporarily halted scans of copyright-protected books from libraries into its Google Print database." BoingBoing has a roundup of discussion on the matter including a link to full text of a post on the Google blog.

Effects of global warming

Wikipedia has an article called Effects of global warming which is very interesting.

New Zealand: Save Happy Valley Campaign

"The Save Happy Valley Campaign has taken the fight against Solid Energy to a new level. In a carefully planned protest, three activists ‘locked on’ to train tracks at about 11.50am today preventing Solid Energy’s coal trains reaching Lyttelton port [first press release]. Two were locked onto the track directly and a third was hanging from a tree 30m up with his support rope connected to the track.

"Three trains were forced to stop and police quickly turned up [second press release]. Those locked-on refused to move and police were forced to dig up the concrete that been laid to remove the two directly connected. The third in the tree took longer for the police to get down. In all, the protesters held up the coal trains for just under 4 hours.

"Solid Energy has been pushing very aggressively to destroy Happy Valley, a beautiful area of native bush, fragile wetlands and a thriving ecosystem of native birds and animals located on the West Coast of New Zealand, with an open-cast coal mine and have just recently cleared the neccessary legal hurdles. The mine will not only destroy the valley and the surrounding area, but further add to climate change which is expected to have devastating global consequences if left to continue unabated."
Indymedia

New online magazine wants RSS quote

~ Advertisement ~

Webmaster and editor need advice and implementation solutions on RSS strategies, both to and from our site. Web site is php and mySQL driven, uses html 4 loose document declaration and will be viewed on all main Mac and PC browsers. One of our main needs is to blend incoming *full* article feeds into our site architecture & design. Please email nick[AT]nicholasmarshall.com.au before September 30, 2005 for further details before quoting. Please put *RSS quote* in subject header, thanks.

Malaysia under smog attack; emergency state declared

"Malaysia's government has declared a state of emergency after smoke from forest fires in the neighboring Indonesia engulfed the country. The government has also initiated talks with Indonesia over the smog, resulting from fires by Indonesian farmers to clear land."
Earth Times

Malaysians told to pray for rain

Global Warming hits 'Tipping Point'

Siberia feels the heat: A frozen peat bog the size of France and Germany combined contains billions of tonnes of greenhouse gas, and for the first time since the ice age, it is melting.
By Ian Sample

"A vast expanse of western Siberia is undergoing an unprecedented thaw that could dramatically increase the rate of global warming, climate scientists warn today.

"Researchers who have recently returned from the region found that an area of permafrost spanning a million square kilometers - the size of France and Germany combined - has started to melt for the first time since it formed 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age.

"The area, which covers the entire sub-Arctic region of western Siberia, is the world's largest frozen peat bog and scientists fear that as it thaws, it will release billions of tonnes of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere.

"It is a scenario climate scientists have feared since first identifying "tipping points" - delicate thresholds where a slight rise in the Earth's temperature can cause a dramatic change in the environment that itself triggers a far greater increase in global temperatures.

The discovery was made by Sergei Kirpotin at Tomsk State University in western Siberia and Judith Marquand at Oxford University and is reported in New Scientist today."
Guardian via CommonDreams

Subscription Rocket down?

Subscription Rocket's homepage is not down, but the login is not working for me (it just gives me a link back to Home), and Troy McDonald has not replied to my emails over two weeks. Does anyone else have this problem? It's important to the Almanac as we have literally hundreds of links for his normally reliable services, and all the subscription boxes from my site are empty.

International Left-Handers Day

Promotes awareness of the inconveniences facing left-handers in a predominantly right-handed world.

Today we have a big list of famous left-handers, and, as always in the Book of Days, some interesting links for further reading.

Right dominates left in the Top 250: study

"The study from political think tank The New Politics Institute has found that right wing political blogs out number left wing political blogs 149 to 101 amongst the Top 250 political blogs online.

"The report 'Emergence of the Progressive Blogosphere: A New Force in American Politics,' found that left wing blogs lead their right wing rivals in the top 40 by 24-16 but suffered greatly after this, and that the dominance of right wing blogs at a more grassroots level presented a 'a serious problem that progressives must confront'."
Blog Herald

On the trail of the celebrity activist

"The biggest names are recruited by all major charities to put forward their cause. Some, like the singer Natalie Imbruglia, have chosen to champion the least picturesque causes. In her case, fistula in women in Africa.

"As she admits, faeces, incontinence and nasty smells are not popular causes. Others like Angelina Jolie are regularly pictured hugging children in refugee children in camps around the world, or in her case even adopting an orphan with AIDS in Ethiopia.

"But don't be fooled. Angelina knows what she is doing ..."
CNN

Fox News perfects its Cindy Sheehan smears

"One of Neil Cavuto's guests on Your World w/Neil Cavuto today (August 12, 2005,) was Lance Cpl. Klay South. South, who sat rod-straight and was dressed in a Marine officer's evening dress uniform, was shot in the face and in the foot in Fallujah in November, 2004. His facial scars are quite prominent but he is nonetheless a good-looking, articulate man.

"He is not unaccustomed to attention. He was mentioned in a November, 2004, Washington Post article, and in that same month he sat very close to George W. Bush during an event at the MCI Center in Washington, D.C. He will also be one of the soldiers profiled in a Fox News special to air Sunday evening titled, Company of Heroes.

"Early in the segment Cavuto said, 'Cindy Sheehan is a mom who's hurting, obviously. She lost her son. She's mad at the President. Are you?' (Note: Cavuto didn't say Sheehan lost her son in Iraq.)

"Fox went to a split-screen, showing video of Sheehan in Texas as South responded; a disheveled Sheehan pictured next to the crisp soldier. 'No,' he said. 'I can't be mad because I love my corps. I love my family. I love my country. Being in the hospital, I was with a lot of people and I never came across one military person that was bitter or family [sic] bitter about being injured or losing any loved ones. It's what you signed up to do. You're serving your country. It's an honor.'

"Comment: Voila. Fox takes an extraordinarily complex issue and turns it into a 40-second sound bite. Cindy Sheehan is unpatriotic, she doesn't love her country and she's dishonoring it and its soldiers. Beginning, middle, and end, of story."
NewsHound

"I think Bush has cornered himself by now; It’s a no win situation for him. If he meets with Cindy Sheehan after such an extended, callous refusal, he appears weak and will potentially invite even more protesters. Besides, nothing will sound heartfelt at this point. If he doesn’t meet with Cindy, his polls will continue to plunge. Thank you, Cindy."
We are mad as hell (AlterNet)

Texas black 'minority' now a majority

Thanks, Nora from Extra!Extra!, a blog you can subscribe to through Bloglet.

We are not monolithic
"According to the last census, 36.4 million Americans -- 13 percent of the nation -- considered themselves black. The poverty rate in the U.S. according to 2003 data, was 24 percent for blacks while only 12 percent of the U.S. population overall was at or below the poverty line.

"But what about the other side of that statistic? 76 percent of blacks do not live in poverty. Why do we rarely hear about these people? It seems as if the black upper and middle classes do not exist.

"We do hear about black entertainers and professional athletes, but we know
little about other black working- and middle-class professionals. According to the Congressional Black Caucus, there are roughly 175,000 black doctors, lawyers and engineers in the U.S. Apparently these people exist."
CivilRights.org

Bush's Energy Disaster

"The long-delayed energy bill signed into law last week will wreak havoc on the planet while padding the pockets of the oil industry.

"As the Senate cast its votes on the energy bill last Friday, giving Republicans a little legislative victory before everyone skipped town for the summer, Bush issued a congratulatory statement. 'I applaud Congress,' he said, 'for a bill that will help secure our energy future and reduce our dependence on foreign sources of energy.' A nice sentiment -- except that 'securing our energy future' is the one thing the bill won't do.

"Then again, that was never the intention. This was Bush's baby from the start, the fruition of Cheney's infamous task force, to which he invited every industry honcho he could find to write their own tickets right into the country's energy policy. After that, of course, it was larded with extra tax breaks and subsidies, like $500 million in deep-water drilling that will likely wind up in Tom DeLay's hometown, Sugar Land, and billions more that will drain straight into industry coffers.

"This at a time when high oil prices are sending industry margins soaring: Exxon-Mobil's third quarter last year was the most profitable corporate earnings in history. Boone Pickens, head of BP Capital Management, a billion-dollar hedge fund that makes people wealthy trading energy futures and related investments, sums up the high times like so: 'I've never had so much fun in my life.'"
AlterNet

Climate warning as Siberia melts

"THE world's largest frozen peat bog is melting. An area stretching for a million square kilometres across the permafrost of western Siberia is turning into a mass of shallow lakes as the ground melts, according to Russian researchers just back from the region.

"The sudden melting of a bog the size of France and Germany combined could unleash billions of tonnes of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere.

"The news of the dramatic transformation of one of the world's least visited landscapes comes from Sergei Kirpotin, a botanist at Tomsk State University, Russia, and Judith Marquand at the University of Oxford."
New Scientist

The 'Language of Values' in politics

"As part of Tikkun’s Spiritual Activism Conference in Berkeley yesterday, UC Berkeley psychology professor George Lakoff spoke to the nearly 1,200 attendees about moral politics, spiritual beliefs, and some of the fundamental differences between right-wing and left-wing politics.

"'Lots of people are partial progressives, and those are people that we can talk to,' Lakoff told the conference. He continued ..."
AlteNet

Kelley's Army marches on Washington

1894 USA: Kelley's Army – Federal troops drove some 1,200 protesting jobless workers from the nation’s capital across the Potomac River. Led by an unemployed activist, Charles ‘Hobo’ Kelley, the motley group came from western states and camped in Washington, DC beginning in early July. The ‘soldiers’ in Kelley’s Hobo Army included a young journalist named Jack London (1876 - 1916) and labour leader William ‘Big Bill’ Haywood (1869 - 1928). Coxey’s Army, another group of unemployed men, also marched on Washington at around the same time.

What role will web designers play in an RSS world?

"Right now the number of Internet users who subscribe to RSS feeds is tiny. Have no fear, it will rise dramatically in the years ahead. As I told Debbie Weil today, I think RSS is the second coming of the web. But what will web design look like on that fateful day when more people subscribe rather than browse sites? The final answer to this open question has huge implications not only for the design community, but for toolmakers like Adobe and advertisers too.

"According to a new study from Glamorgan University Business School in Wales men and women view web design as differently as Mars and Venus. If there's anything important to take away from this survey it's this - web design matters and it will continue to matter in an RSS world. But how will web designers differentiate their branded feeds if the aggregators are large and in charge?
Today way too much of a feed's style sheet is left up to the aggregator - and the user. That's not their fault. My understanding is that it's the RSS spec (correct me if I am wrong) ..."
Source: MicroPersuasion

SourceWatch

"Volunteer contributors continue to be the mainstay of SourceWatch, our open-source encylopedia of the people, organizations and issues shaping the public agenda. SourceWatch (formerly the "Disinfopedia") is a 'wiki,' which means that anyone (including you) can edit existing articles or create new ones about the topics of your choice. Since its launch in 2003, it has become the 14th-largest wiki on the Internet, and usage continues to grow. It now includes more than 7,400 articles. In July approximately 1.86 million pages from SourceWatch were served to web users."
Center for Media and Democracy

Waste plastic in steel making

"SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian scientists have developed a technique to use waste plastic in steel making, a process that could have implications for recycling scrap metal that accounts for 40 percent of steel production.

"Professor Veena Sahajwalla of the University of New South Wales has won a prestigious Australian science award for what she calls 'the hottest research in town,' which she hopes will turn an environmental headache into a valuable resource."
Reuters

'Raging Grannies' -- creative protest

"LOS ANGELES (AFP) - Five greying anti-war activists from a group dubbed the 'Raging Grannies' face possible jail time after demanding to be enlisted in the US Army to fight in Iraq, one of them said.

"The women, aged between 57 and 92, were charged with criminal trespass after turning up at an Armed Forces Recruiting Center in the western US state of Arizona demanding they be allowed to join the fighting ranks.

"'We're very serious about that, we really want to enlist,' 74-year-old 'Raging Granny' Betty Schroeder told AFP.

"We think it would be better if old people were killed at war than young ones,' the retired nurse, whose husband and two brothers were killed in battle in other wars, explained.

"Eight 'grannies,' including Schroeder, are accused of invading military territory by entering a military recruiting office in the city of Tucson on July 13 to sign up.
YahooNews

The Fortsas Hoax

1840 The Fortsas Hoax

On this day, an auction of a unique collection of very rare books was scheduled to be held in Binche, Belgium. Earlier that year, a catalogue with the lengthy title ‘Catalogue d'une tres-riche mais peu nombreuse collection de livres provenant de la bibliotheque de fen M. le Comte J. N. A. de Fortsas’ (Catalogue of a very rich but very small collection of books coming from the library of Monsieur Count J. N. A. Fortsas) had appeared in Europe and received a great deal of attention from book dealers, librarians and book collectors across the continent. Many of them had received the catalogue by mail.

Although only 52 books were listed in this extraordinary auction catalogue, the passions of the bibliophiles were excited because Jean Nepomucene Auguste Pichauld, Comte de Fortsas, who had died aged 69 on September 1 of the previous year, had a special passion of his own: he collected books of which only one copy existed, some of them new and previously unheard of sources. His heir, it seems, was offering the books for sale. “Buy, I conjure you, at any price, the follies of our rascally grandfather”, wrote the Princess de Ligne to her agent, urging him to buy one of the Fortas collection’s listed items, the one and only copy of her grandpere's memoir, Mes Campagnes.

In the days leading up to August 10, the hotels of Binche must have been booked out, for prospective purchasers flocked to the town. However, on the very day, it was announced in a broadside which suddenly appeared that the sale had been cancelled, and that the Count had donated his collection to the local library. The fact that there was no public library in Binche dismayed the buyers even further, but it soon dawned on the throng that they had been duped. Someone discovered that there was no Comte de Fortsas either ...

Play the free McCarthyism word game

Ever tried the McCarthyism word swap game? I do it all the time. It's easy, it's free, and you can become a McCarthyist in just a few easy moves!

Just find a current news item, replace the word 'terrorism', 'terrorist' or 'terror' with 'communism', or variants, and you get a good 50-years-ago time machine effect:

Secret communist courts considered
"Special courts sitting in secret for pre-trial hearings in terror (change it to communism) cases are being considered by the Home Office."
BBC

Try it yourself! Change 'terrorism' in Google News to 'communism' and travel back in time.

If you want to go back about one century, change 'terrorism' to 'anarchy or 'hun'.

It's fun and it's free. Play while we are still free too.

Building a spiritual Left

By Bob Condor

"Rabbi Michael Lerner says progressive social change groups must incorporate a deeper spiritual understanding into their work

"When Rabbi Michael Lerner talks about the need in this country -- check that, make that the desperate need -- to create a 'Spiritual Left,' he wants to remind Americans that God doesn’t belong to the Right. When he thinks of what would make possible the creation of a new openness to spiritual consciousness in liberal circles, his thoughts turn to the women's movement of three decades ago -- because they made huge changes that no one thought were possible when first imagined."
DragonflyVillage

A credible plan to take down the Internet

Robert Vamosi writes:

"Forget the Fantastic Four. As I write, the forces of Good (the White Hats) and Evil (the Black Hats) are fighting for control of the Internet as we know it. At stake is the exploitation of flaws affecting the once-invincible Cisco router hardware, which currently carries most of the Internet's traffic on a daily basis. Once a working exploit for the Cisco IOS Shellcode is available on the Internet, it'll be only a matter of days before someone finds a way to craft it into a network worm. And then it's going to be a rough ride for everyone who uses the Internet. Unless, of course, the forces of Good prevail.

"Hyperbole? Perhaps, but a credible threat to the infrastructure of the Internet does exist. All indications suggest that the clock is ticking toward some kind of showdown between criminal hackers and the good guys. Unfortunately, the bad guys have a head start ..."
cnet

[Thanx and a dip of me lid to George.]

PL Travers and Gurdjieff

1899 Pamela Lyndon (PL) Travers (d. April 23, 1996), Australian author. Born Helen Lyndon Goff in Maryborough, Queensland (though she tended to hide the fact), Travers was the author of Mary Poppins and devotee of Armenian mystic GI Gurdjieff, writing books on the mystic author and on mysticism generally.

In London she became a friend (and perhaps lover) of the poet George William Russell ('AE'), who introduced her to his close friends, WB Yeats and TS Eliot. (Yeats and Russell had met at the Dublin Theosophical Society and conducted experiments into the occult, and held séances.) Russell also introduced her to writer and editor, Alfred Orage, who in turn introduced her to Gurdjieff.

Like her most famous character, Mary Poppins, the motto of Travers appears to be ‘never explain’, and perhaps this derives from the Gurdjieffian philosophy. Travers’s life is difficult to research as she was very private and would rarely if ever discuss her life. One thing that is known is that her father was a banker, like Mr Banks, the father figure in the Mary Poppins books ...

Australian Geographic on Gouldians: 'Winged jewels'

Regular readers will know I'm a Gouldian nut ... I live with two Gouldian finches (John and Elizabeth Gould) that fly free in my house.

The cover of this month's Australian Geographic is superbo (must ask the newsagent to save me a poster), and here's the cover story:

Australian Geographic: Winged jewels

" ... The beneficiary of Mike’s extraordinary generosity is the Gouldian finch, one of the planet’s most beautiful creatures and one of Australia’s most endangered birds. Research into the species’ decline has been under way in Australia for some 20 years ..."

Rupert Murdoch's slick deal with Sydney Council

"Defending Community MediaFree speech, democratic rights and media diversity are under threat from Sydney City Council's decision to allow Rupert Murdoch's MX newspaper to be handed out from city streets - for $362,000 a year.

"On August 1, the Sydney City Council - with no pubic consultation or debate whatsoever - voted to allow a council sub-committee to consider a Development Application (DA) which would grant Rupert Murdoch's News Limited a permit to distribute MX, a free tabloid daily, from city streets. Caving in to powerful corporate interests, all but three councillors voted in favour of the deal.

"In a worrying sign that Sydney City Council may try to use the News Limited deal to clamp down on the street distribution of other publications, Council also resolved - on the same night to develop 'a draft policy to guide footpath distribution of newspapers, other printed material and other commercial activities on footpaths.'

"This is clearly intended to further regulate, and potentially restrict, the use of city streets for the distribution of printed material by the public. Publications that could be restricted include Green Left Weekly, The Hub, Socialist Worker, the Big Issue and Sydney Star Observer."

[ Read More And More Action Meeting (August 8th) ]
Sydney Indymedia

World's first open-source Point Of Sale system tested at People's Food Co-op

"This past weekend People's Food Co-op in Portland, Cascadia made history. During a conference with tech and IT folk from co-ops around the united states these uber-geeks assembled and successfully rang out items on the world's first entirely free, open-source point-of-sale system. A point-of-sale system (or POS) is the software needed to run a cash register and manage the pricing of all the items in a store.

"It all started several years ago when Tak Tang, the Technology Coordinator at The Wedge Co-op in Minneapolis, MN got frustrated at his stores POS system because of his inability to get the information out of it that would really be useful to the store. Like most proprietary software POS systems have a locked core that prevents anyone from copying the source code and also prevents anyone from getting inside to mine data that the software wasn't designed to spit out. Not being able to get inside of the software means expensive service calls to vendors when something goes wrong. It also means having to wait to purchase the next version for new features and bug fixes.

"Well all of this was really cheesing Mr. Tang off so he decided to go ahead and write his own POS system. And he DID! IS4C (Information Systems 4 Co-ops) was born."
Indymedia

The Great Train Robbery

1963 History’s most famous heist, the Great Train Robbery took place in England. A 16-member gang stole 2,631,784 pounds – worth over 26 million pounds ($AU75.5 million) today – in used bank notes which were on their way back to the Bank of England for burning.

Two London gangs combined for the stick-up. Best known of the robbers, the fun-loving birthday boy Ronnie Biggs (pictured, born on this day in 1929), was a member of neither, but was chosen because he knew the train driver. For his minor role in the robbery, Biggs was given a 30-year sentence, considered by many to be out of proportion to his crime. He gained fame by escaping from prison and remaining free for 28 years under the noses of Scotland Yard. Biggs lived secretly in Australia, then publicly in Brazil, made a movie with the Sex Pistols, and became an even bigger celebrity, making a living by being available for barbecues for a fee.

Old and infirm, Ronnie Biggs in 2001 made a celebrated voluntary return to Britain, and despite having lived a reformed life for 38 years, was arrested at London’s airport and remains in prison. One can only presume Biggs decided that English prison was preferable to Brazilian hospital. One might also conclude that British justice has an elephantine memory not only for people who break the law, but also for those who embarrass it.

The story of Buster Edwards, who fled to Mexico but gave himself up, was dramatized in the 1988 film, Buster, which starred Phil Collins in the title role. The Great Train Robbery is also the name of one of the earliest narrative films (1903; more).

Bob Dylan's 'Rolling Stone' named top music event

"Bob Dylan's Like a Rolling Stone, the song that Bruce Springsteen said 'sounded like somebody'd kicked open the door to your mind', has been judged the most important of 100 music, film and television moments that changed the world.

"Musicians, actors and industry experts surveyed for their seminal experiences in the past 50 years included rockers Sir Paul McCartney, Noel Gallagher, Keith Richards, Lou Reed, Patti Smith and Beach Boy Brian Wilson, and Hollywood's Juliette Lewis, Edward Norton and Robert Downey Jr."
SMH

Dylan tribute through iTunes
"WOODLAND HILLS CA, — Drive-Thru Records has made available an exclusive preview of the upcoming release Listen To Bob Dylan -- A Tribute through iTunes. Beginning August 2nd on the iTunes Music Store, music fans can download 14 of the 21 tracks a full two weeks prior to the album release."
JamBase

Rowling, Dylan, King among nominees for Quills Awards
"NEW YORK - J.K. Rowling, Bob Dylan and Stephen King are among the nominees for the first annual Quills Awards, a glitzy literary affair for which the general public will cast the ballots."
Salt Lake Tribune

Bob Dylan tells all to Martin Scorsese
London gallery to stage Bob Dylan exhibition
Expecting Rain, good Dylan site
Tangled up in Jews is another, if quirky

Bob Dylan in the Book of Days

Aussie nukosaurs caught on Google worldcam

"Australia's nuclear regulator has called on Google to censor high-quality satellite imagery of the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor which is freely available on its website.

"Google Earth, a new software program owned by the search engine giant, allows users to zoom across the planet at a height of about 300 metres ..."
Sydney Morning Ikea

UFOs over Basel, 1566

1566 Large black globes were seen in the sky over Basel, Switzerland. The UFOs sped and turned “against each other as if fighting”, according to a contemporary broadsheet.

Appearing at sunrise, “many became red and fiery, ending by being consumed and vanishing”, wrote Samuel Coccius in the news sheet.

Syn, magazine for synesthetes

I have synaesthesia, though not as strongly as I did at around the age of 16 or 17 when I wrote a poem about it although I didn't know other people have it too, so this interested me:

"British graphic design student Claire Mills has created Syn, a prototype issue of a magazine for synesthetes. (Previous posts on synesthesia here, here, and here.)"
BoingBoing

Shabaka's seedlings: EcoVillage Farm

One man carries out his vision to bring land and community back to inner-city youth

"Shyaam Shabaka is a different kind of public health worker. He's tackling Richmond, California's social, health, and environmental ills by empowering inner-city youth with lessons in ecology and gardening at the EcoVillage Farm Learning Center. Students who have never planted a seed or watched a lamb romp through an orchard can travel just a few miles to experience growing their own food and taking care of farm animals.

"Richmond's inner-city youth are growing up in a community rife with gangs on land made toxic by abandoned industries, Katie Renz writes in Terrain. Shabaka's plan is to motivate them to become involved community members armed with an understanding of social and environmental justice. To that end, he created the EcoVillage Farm, where he teaches classes and provides kids the tools they need to improve their environment ..."
Utne

Aussie families to take stand against Howard

"Tens of thousands of working Australians will converge on Sydney Olympic Park on Sunday (August 7) to voice their concerns about changes to federal industrial laws.

"The 'Last Weekend' family picnic protest marks the final days before John Howard takes control of the Senate and begins his attack on workers rights."
LaborNET

Jonson, English writer, buried standing up

1637 Ben Jonson (b. 1572), 65, British comic genius and satirist, died in London. Like some other great poets and writers – including Dryden, Tennyson, Browning, Masefield, Dr Johnson, Dickens, Sheridan, Kipling and Hardy – he was honoured by being buried (in Ben's case, standing up) in Westminster Abbey’s Poets’ Corner, with the epitaph: “O rare Ben Jonson”.

Poets’ Corner was not originally designated as the burial place of writers, playwrights and poets; the first poet to be buried here, Geoffrey Chaucer, was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey because he had been Clerk of Works to the palace of Westminster, not because he had written The Canterbury Tales ...

Buried standing up
Ben Jonson reposes in an upright position (standing on his feet). One of the explanations given for this is that, dying in great poverty, Jonson begged King Charles I for “18 inches of square ground in Westminster Abbey”. Another says that one day the Dean of Westminster spoke to him about being buried in Poets’ Corner, and Jonson is said to have told him: “six feet long by two feet wide is too much for me. Two feet by two is all I want” ...

Perseid meteor shower, don't forget

"PERSEID METEORS: Don't forget, the Perseid meteor shower peaks on Friday morning, August 12th. No matter where you live, the best time to look will be during the hours before local dawn when the constellation Perseus is high in the sky. While August 12th is best, the nights before and after the 12th can be good, too. Even now, sky watchers are seeing occasional bright Perseids before dawn.

"Also, you can listen to the shower. Meteor radars are monitoring the skies above the USA; when a Perseid flies overhead, they record an audible "ping." Visit SpaceWeather.com for live audio, plus more information about the Perseids.

"10th PLANET: Astronomers have found a new world bigger than Pluto in the outer reaches of the solar system. Some are calling it "the 10th planet." Amateur astronomers can see this new world, temporarily named 2003 UB313, through large backyard telescopes. Some of their photos are displayed on spaceweather.com."
Space Weather News

A message from Yahoo! Groups I got today

Hello,

You recently asked to join the WilsonsAlmanac group.

Because you are already a member of this group, your request will not be processed.

If you have questions about communicating with this group, please visit http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/groups/

Thank you!

Yahoo! Groups Customer Care

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

At last! A sensible chain email

Got the following tonight. I think it's a pretty sound idea, if you don't mix up your mother with your crystal meth dealer:

Following the disaster in London, there has been a groundswell of activity spearheaded by the Ambulance Service in London to provide more information to emergency responders with regard to involved victims. The Department of Public Safety at DFW Airport is confident this initiative greatly benefits the DFW Family.

The process is very simple and could greatly enhance the information gathering required in an emergency situation. The program is called "In case of Emergency (ICE)" campaign.

The idea is that you store the word "ICE" in your mobile phone address book, and against it enter the number of the person you would want to be contacted "In Case of Emergency". In an emergency situation emergency responders and hospital staff will then be able to quickly look at your mobile phone and find out who your first contact should be and be able to contact them. The information remains private and in your control until it is needed.

It's so simple that everyone can do it. Please do. Email this to everybody in your address book, it won't take too many "forwards" before everybody will know about this, and it will become an international practice. For more than one contact name ICE1, ICE2, ICE3 etc. It really could help emergency services workers in doing their job.

New from WalMartWatch

NYT Op-Ed: Bought And Paid For By Wal-Mart? Wal-Mart Watch raises a disturbing question about the objectivity of the recent New York Times op-ed by Pankaj Ghemawat and Ken A. Mark. Their pro-Wal-Mart thesis was that because the stores save low-income consumers money, the company shouldn’t reform its highly criticized business model. Wal-Mart Watch reveals that “business consultant” Ken A. Mark lists Wal-Mart under his firm’s retail consulting services.

Broad Coalition Takes on Wal-Mart Liza Featherstone takes a look at the broad coalition of groups and activists working to reform Wal-Mart, including our efforts at Wal-Mart Watch and those of our friends at Wake-Up Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart Argues Size Does Now Matter Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., the world’s largest company with over 3,600 stores worldwide and a $10 billion profit in 2004 alone, has told a federal appeals court that it’s just not big enough to defend itself against a class action gender-discrimination lawsuit now pending in federal court.

Yet Another State Finds Wal-Mart Tops Medicare Rolls New figures disclosed in Arizona reveal Wal-Mart, yet again, tops the list of companies with employees on state-funded healthcare. “Close to one of every 10 Wal-Mart employees is getting health insurance paid for by Arizona taxpayers, according to figures obtained Friday from the state.”

New Conference To Examine Wal-Mart Role in Economy The Boston Globe reports, “Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest private employer, is sponsoring a conference designed to examine its effect on jobs, inflation, and income growth. The meeting will be run by Lexington-based Global Insight Inc., an economic and financial services firm.”

WalMartWatch

The naive American

"On Tuesday evening, Steven Vincent, a journalist from New York, was kidnapped and killed in Iraq. He was there to work on a book on life in post-liberation Basra. He also kept a blog. These are some of his last entries ..."
Guardian Unlimited

465 BCE King Xerxes I of the Persian Empire was murdered by his uncle, Artabanus the Hyrcanian. He was succeeded by Artaxerxes I, possibly with Artabanus acting as Regent.

I wonder if this was something to do with the following quotation from Herodotus, The Histories, 7.11:

"'Artabanus,' he replied, 'you are my father’s brother, and that alone saves you from paying the price your empty and ridiculous speech deserves. But your cowardice and lack of spirit shall not escape disgrace: I forbid you to accompany me on my march to Greece. You shall stay at home with the women, and everything I spoke of I shall accomplish without help from you. If I fail to punish the Athenians, let me be no child of Darius, the son of Hystaspes, the son of Arsames, the son of Ariaramnes, the son of Teispes, [and let me be no] son of [Atossa, the daughter of] Cyrus, the son of Cambyses, the son of Teispes, the son of Achaemenes!'"

That would get me angry.

X was King Xerxes, whom
Papa much wished to know;
But this he could not do, because
Xerxes died long ago.

Words and picture by Edward Lear, Nonsense Alphabet

Aussie website a la MoveOn.org

"For those with an interest in politics, but no stomach for the grind of branch meetings and number crunching, a new political organisation called GetUp.org.au might catch your attention. Inspired by the Move On organisation in the United States, GetUp is aimed at people who want to have a political say but don't have the time or inclination to be part of the mainstream. GetUp encourages voters to sign up and use the dotcom's resources to make their views known to politicians. The virtual lobby group will begin its life here with a series of advertisements on national television, warning coalition Senators face a backlash if they abuse the Senate majority."
7.30 Report - 04/08/2005: Website hopes to spark political interest

"GetUp was profiled on the 7.30 Report last night. Coalition MP Andrew Robb claimed that Coalition Senators are 'besides themselves' because they have been recieiving [sic] emails from the people they were elected to represent. Andrew Robb is so out of touch that he described ordinary Australians contacting their Senator as 'spam.'"
http://www.getup.org.au/

Australia: Feds seize uranium mines

Australia: "THE Federal Government has declared the Northern Territory open to uranium mining, taking control of the future of its rich uranium deposits.The move came after the NT Labor Government, vehemently opposed to uranium mining, walked away from any responsibility for new mines during a 15-minute meeting between the federal and territory resource ministers in Darwin."
NewsCom

NT uranium mine move 'reshaping federalism'
"A constitutional expert says the Federal Government's decision to take over the awarding of uranium mining licences in the Northern Territory signifies a remodelling of the country's federal system of government.

"The mining industry has hailed the move as offering certainty that will lead to a "prolonged uranium boom"

"Dr John Williams from the Australian National University (ANU) says it is a bold move by the Commonwealth.

"'Federalism in one sense is being reshaped as we speak and in many ways the states are becoming service deliveries, and so is the case for the Territory Government,' he said."
ABC News

Maralinga survivor speaks against uranium mining

Movement Against Uranium Mining
Google News alerts: australia uranium
Yahoo! News RSS on australia uranium
Keep an eye on Oceania Indymedia, Perth Indymedia and Sydney Indymedia for expected updates.

Invitation to bookmark the new Yellow Pages

I invite readers to check out the Yellow Pages.

Most of the Blogmanac's global political news and current affairs will now be found in the Yellow Pages instead of here from now on, but we'll have a few here if deemed appropriate.

US, UK supervision of 'ghost prisons' abroad

"Alleged bomb plotter claims two and a half years of interrogation under US and UK supervision in 'ghost prisons' abroad

"A former London schoolboy accused of being a dedicated al-Qaida terrorist has given the first full account of the interrogation and alleged torture endured by so-called ghost detainees held at secret prisons around the world.

"For two and a half years US authorities moved Benyam Mohammed around a series of prisons in Pakistan, Morocco and Afghanistan, before he was sent to Guantanamo Bay in September last year."
Source: Guardian Unlimited

Poll: 63% think US too quick to go to war

"Some 63 percent of Americans say the charge that the United States has been too quick to go to war is justified and three-quarters worry about losing trust abroad and about the growing hatred of the United States in Muslim countries ..."

Ritalin: The boy suppressant

Sydney, Australia -- "The growing number of children taking prescription drugs for behavioural problems has prompted schools to introduce a special bell to remind students to take their medicine.

"A number of Catholic primary schools has introduced the method across Sydney as part of a 'creative' approach to remind younger students to take drugs such as Ritalin.

"Children at St Fiacres Primary School in Leichhardt are alerted daily at 12.15pm by a "gentle chime" over the PA system to take their medicine."
Source: Daily Telegraph

Say "No" to drugs (but take your Ritalin)
'Children are being needlessly medicated with very powerful drugs'
Ritalin/cancer finding preliminary

Organic farms 'best for wildlife'

UK - "Organic farms are better for wildlife than those run conventionally, according to a study covering 180 farms from Cornwall to Cumbria.

"The organic farms were found to contain 85% more plant species, 33% more bats, 17% more spiders and 5% more birds ..."
Source: BBC News

Soros-backed activist group disbands as interest fades

"A year ago, the liberal group America Coming Together was on the cutting edge of national politics, spending tens of millions of dollars on a massive voter-mobilization project in every presidential battleground state ..."
washingtonpost.com

World turning its back on Brand America

"The US is increasingly viewed as a 'culture-free zone' inhabited by arrogant and unfriendly people, according to study of 25 countries' brand reputations.

"The findings, published online today, will add to concerns that anti-Americanism is hurting companies whose products are considered to be distinctly 'American'.

"The Anholt-GMI Nation Brands Index found that although US foreign policy remained a key driver of hostility, dissatisfaction with the world's sole superpower might run deeper ...

"Australia received the highest overall score, with respondents expressing 'an almost universal admiration of its people, landscapes and living and working environment', according to the report."
Source: FT.com

[Obviously the respondents have never visited an Australian working environment.]

Submit your RSS feed to Google now

Me, I like My Yahoo! best, but this is interesting:

"Last night Google switched on what may be a feature marking an historical evolutionary point in the evolution of the most popular Internet search engine.

"Within the Google Personalized Home Page facility, Google has in fact activated a full RSS aggregator, capable of bringing together on your private Google Home page any and all the feeds that you want to subscribe to.

"It goes with it that for Google to make this possible, it is also capturing, indexing and tracking any and each of those RSS feeds, though what the most popular search engine is exactly going to do with that feed data is not yet visible to the public ...

"The new Google Personalized Home page allows indeed easy addition of RSS feed URLs, though the interface isn't as sleek and functional as the one from Microsoft Start, which I like so far the best.

"With this move Google equalizes somehow the advantage that Yahoo and Microsoft had taken over it with earlier introductions of their Web-based RSS aggregators and officially steps into the RSS-fray for indexing and leveraging at some point or another the full cloud of RSS content that it will be collecting.

"And for those of you interested in increasing the reach and visibility of your RSS feeds, you now have a fast, easy and direct way to submit your those feeds to Google itself.

"While it is hard to say now how and when Google will start leveraging that RSS-based content to augment, expand and diversify its search capabilities, it is almost certain that at it will.

"So, to make your blog and RSS feed part of this new Google index, head off to the Google Personalized Home page facility "
Source: Robin Good's Latest News

Ellen Finkelstein (why did I get stuck with plain old 'Wilson'?) critiques it very nicely.

CommonTimes.org - RSS magic

CommonTimes.org - news you choose. What a great way to get news.

Wikimania!

"Wikimania begins on wednesday (in Germany). Unless you're there, you won't be able to hear the presentations on getting wikipedia into africa, a timeline with all of human history on it, or the intersect of art and science, but the media competion nominees are online. Check out the animations."
Source: Metafilter

WireTap lets journalists listen to youth

"For as long as most of us can remember, newspapers feverishly have courted the young, often with embarrassing results. Looking sometimes like the ultimate outsider tagging after The Kool Kids, we have for decades tried to speak the language and salute the latest icons of youth, frequently only to come across about as hip as a hoedown.

"Perhaps the problem is that we keep trying to speak when we should be listening. The Web affords a world of truly youth-oriented listening posts where patient, insightful journalists can sample the diverse voices of their children.A site I've become interested in recently is WireTap, the 'independent information source by and for socially conscious youth.'"
Source: Editor and Publisher

http://www.wiretapmag.org

Indymedia Server Seizures

"On Thursday, October 7, 2004, more than 20 Independent Media Center (IMC) websites and other Internet services were taken offline pursuant to a Commissioner's Subpoena. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is representing the interests of Indymedia, a global collective of independent media organizations and thousands of journalists offering grassroots, non-corporate coverage of news events. In addition, EFF is working in cooperation with lawyers who represent particular Independent Media Centers all around the world.

The Litigation
"Initially, the disappearance of the Indymedia servers was shrouded in secrecy, with no one willing to provide an explanation. On October 20, 2004, EFF filed a motion to unseal the Indymedia documents in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas. In the motion, EFF attorneys argued that 'the public and the press have a clear and compelling interest in discovering under what authority the government was able to unilaterally prevent Internet publishers from exercising their First Amendment rights.' EFF argued further that secret court orders circumvent due process, undermine confidence in the judicial system, and deny those affected by the order any way to challenge it.

"On July 20, 2005, the court granted the motion, and ordered the majority of the underlying documents unsealed (but with the specific URLs of the pages being investigated redacted)."
EFF: Indymedia Server Seizures

Afghans see forests, tree by tree

"This month, the UN estimated that Afghan forests could be wiped out by 2030 ...

"After receiving 2,600 cuttings from the GPFA, each farmer will make a projected $2,750 over seven years -- and will repay the GPFA in cuttings ..."
Source: csmonitor.com

Irish rebel, Australian convict, US general

Thomas Francis Meagher

1823 It has well been said that one person’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter. This is the story of an Irishman, Thomas Meagher, who was almost hanged and his body chopped into four pieces by the British government, for his terrorist leanings, and who went on to become Governor of Montana, USA. His fellow terrorists also had remarkable careers – but more of them in just a minute.

This day saw the birth of Thomas Francis Meagher, Irish nationalist, and later transported convict, escapee, American Civil War general, and Governor of Montana.

In the 1840s, at the time of the great Irish famine, a party of radical Irish nationalists called the ‘Young Irelanders’ wrote articles in The Nation and The United Irishman newspapers arguing that the Irish people, if they had an Irish Parliament, could better deal with An Gorta Mor (‘the great hunger’), than could British parliamentarians sitting in London so removed from the Irish peasants dying by the hundreds of thousands.

One of the Young Irelanders who came to prominence, at a young age, was Thomas Meagher. Educated in Jesuit colleges, allowing him to receive a better education than most Catholics at the time, Meagher left college in 1843 with a reputation as a great patriot and orator. He took his fervour and oratorical ability to the Loyal National Repeal Association, the nationalist party of ‘the Great Liberator’, the elderly Daniel O’Connell. However, Meagher was of an impetuous nature and O’Connell’s devotion to non-violence could not keep Meagher in O’Connell’s ranks. The Young Irelanders had no such reservations about the use of force, and in 1848 Meagher, aged only 23, gave a firebrand speech that earned him the nickname ‘Meagher of the Sword’ ...

On April 15, 1848, Meagher presented the tricolor national flag of Ireland to the public for the first time at a meeting of the Young Irelander Party. Earlier that year – the year of revolutions in Europe, he had travelled to Paris with a YI delegation. Inspired by the tricolor French flag, he came up with similar design for the Irish flag, with orange, white and green stripes ...

A fearsome sentence
In May, 1849, he was tried for “exciting the people to rise in rebellion”, but the trial was aborted. In July, the Young Irelanders attempted a rising among a people then suffering through some of the worst ravages of An Gorta Mor, which the British called the Potato Famine. The rising had no real prospects of success, and was soon crushed. Meagher was among those arrested, tried for high treason, and sentenced on October 23 to be hanged, drawn, and quartered – the British punishment for high treason ...

Read on in the Book of Days (click book image above): Meagher escaped from an Aussie prison and became a US General and Governor ...

Iraq is "inspiring a worldwide insurgency"

Richard Neville writes:

"When a victim of the London bombers, Louise Barry, was visited in hospital by [Australian Prime Minister] John Howard, she braved the TV crews and her alarming neck brace to suggest her assailants had been motivated by our invasion of Iraq. Taken aback, the PM looked shifty and disagreed. Yet the British newspaper, The Independent, now reveals new research into how the bloodbath in Iraq is 'inspiring a worldwide insurgency'. The paper’s correspondent, Patrick Cockburn, a seasoned visitor to Iraq, quotes an Israeli study of 154 foreign fighters which found that almost all had been radicalised by Iraq alone. Another study of 300 Saudi fighters found that 'very few had any previous contact with al-Qa'ida or any other terrorist organisation previous to 2003'."
Source: Richard Neville's blog

Must read: Richard's photo poem on Iraq.

For the Australian amateur phenologist

"In recent years, many people have noticed that weird things are happening. Cicadas seem to be around later. 'Spring' bulbs are flowering in the middle of winter. Some bird species are nesting months earlier than they did a decade ago. Spiders are still lurking in their webs well into autumn, when most would normally have died off. What's going on?

"Scribbly Gum decided to investigate whether plants and animals in Australia are already feeling the effects of climate change. The first thing we wanted to know was what you have noticed. We invited you to submit your observations on any changes you've noticed during the past 5-20 years in your own backyard or neighbourhood ..."
Source: Scribbly Gum

Become an amateur phenologist, at the Book of Days

Was William Rufus a pagan sacrifice?

1100 England’s King William Rufus (William II of England; b. c. 1056) was killed when shot through the chest by an arrow while hunting.

Was William a pagan sacrifice?
The Celts celebrated the main part of the festival of Lughnasadh from sunset on August 1 until sunset on August 2. On August 2, 1100 English King William Rufus was killed when shot through the chest by an arrow while hunting in the New Forest. Rufus (‘the Red’) was a son of William the Conqueror, and his elder brother, Richard, had also died in the New Forest. Rumours probably abounded that Richard and Rufus were victims of heathen ill will, for William the Conqueror had expelled the dwellers of the New Forest. These were the pagans, for that is what the word pagan originally meant ...

Sacrificial kingship
It’s widely believed amongst neo-Pagans that William and other kings who died violent deaths on or near Celtic cross-quarter days, such as this one, were actually victims of sacrificial kingship. This ritual of pre-Christian times in Europe was related to giving thanks to the sun for a good harvest. Such sacrifice was also practised in ancient Greece, and the Celts might have acquired the practice from there.

Lughnasadh would be the time for the king to reaffirm his sacred ‘marriage’ to the prosperity of the kingdom ...

Top military lawyer condemns Guantanamo trials

"There has been condemnation from one of Australia's top military lawyers of the process set up by the United States to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay, including South Australian David Hicks.

"Yesterday, the ABC obtained emails from two prosecutors with the US military commissions, saying the procedures are rigged and describing the cases being pursued as marginal.

"The Pentagon has dismissed the claims.

"The head of the military bar at the Australian Defence Legal Service, Captain Paul Willee QC, says if the emails are correct, he has serious misgivings about whether the detainees can get a fair trial.

"Speaking on ABC Radio's AM program, Captain Willee says it could be described as a charade despite assurances from the US military.

"'None of those promises would guarantee that they would be fair if the military commissions continue in the way in which it's they are alleged at the moment, because the result is predetermined,' he said."
Source: ABC News

Film: The President versus David Hicks

Fair Go for David

David Hicks at Wikipedia

China tells citizens not to test the law

"BEIJING, July 31 - The Chinese government has warned citizens that they must obey the law and that any threats to social stability will not be tolerated, a sign that top leaders are growing increasingly worried about unrest in the countryside.

"The warning came in a front-page commentary published last Thursday in People's Daily, the chief mouthpiece of the Communist Party.

"'Protecting stability comes before all else,' it cautioned. 'Any behavior that wrecks stability and challenges the law will directly damage the people's fundamental interests.'

"The editorial was also notable in what was omitted, namely any reference to President Hu Jintao's signature catchphrase, 'harmonious society.' Implicit in that phrase is the idea that the lopsided excesses and widespread corruption of rapid development must be corrected.

"But the editorial said widening inequality was an inevitable phase of development. 'It is unavoidable that different people and different groups enjoy the fruits of reform and development to differing degrees,' it said.

"No group is enjoying fewer of those fruits than peasants. Recently, 2,000 farmers in Inner Mongolia demonstrated to try to block local officials from seizing their land."
Source: New York Times

Top 20 sustainable stocks

"Sustainablebusiness.com has published its list of the world's top 20 sustainable stocks. These are public companies that have been deemed by the analysts at Sustainablebusiness.com to be at the forefront of creating a sustainable economy.

"The list is designed both to educate the public and to help investors who want to put their money in socially responsible companies."
Source: ENN, found at Jeff McIntire-Strasburg's great sustainablog

sustainablebusiness.com/

Lughnasadh, or Lammas

In the Northern Hemisphere, halfway between the Summer Solstice and the Autumn Equinox, comes the ancient Celtic pagan festival of Lughnasadh, also called Lughnasa (or the modern Irish spelling, Lúnasa) and Lammas, one of the eight Sabbats – one of the High Holidays, or four Greater Sabbats – of the Celtic Wheel of the Year. (This is the least known of the four seasonal cross-quarter days. Certainly, Samhain (Halloween) and Beltane (May Day) get more press in our age.)

In the Southern Hemisphere, some neo-pagans call this time Imbolc, after the station of the year directly opposite Lammas on the Wheel.

Lammas comes from Old English hlaf maesse, meaning 'loaf mass', the Christian holy repast at which bread baked from the first wheat of the season was blessed. Many cultures have the ceremony of the first of the harvest being sacrificially given to the gods, or god; the ancient Hebrews offered their ‘first fruits’ to Jehovah, just as the Bemanti clan of Swaziland offer theirs to their king during December’s full moon, in the Ncwala ceremony. When Christianity came to the Celtic lands, most ancient festivals such as Lughnasadh were imbued by the Church with Christian symbolism, so loaves of bread were baked from the first of the harvested grain and consecrated on the church altar on the first Sunday of August, a tradition still enacted in many churches.

Some have claimed that the word is from Lamb-Mass, "because on that day the tenants who held lands under the cathedral church in York, which is dedicated to St Peter ad Vincula, were bound by their tenure to bring a live lamb into the church at high mass; others derive it from a supposed offering or tything of lambs at this time" (William Hone, The Every-Day Book, or a Guide to the Year, William Tegg and Co., London, 1878; 1825-26 edition online) ...

Lammas free e-cards

What's the matter with Indymedia?

"Conceived initially to allow everybody to 'be the media,' Indymedia is plagued by everything from fascist messages to paralyzing ideology to good old fashioned laziness.

"In the last week of November 1999, a news website run entirely by volunteers was launched. 'Don't hate the media; be the media' was the battle cry of hundreds of people who converged in Seattle to bring about the birth of the Independent Media Center (IMC, or Indymedia). The project promised the democratization of the media, and more: 'Imperfect, insurgent, sleepless and beautiful, we directly experienced the success of the first IMC in Seattle and saw that the common dream of "a world in which many worlds fit" is possible,' wrote media activist and Seven Stories Press editor Greg Ruggiero. The idea was contagious. Almost 6 years on, there are 149 Indymedia websites in about 45 countries on 6 continents."
Source: AlterNet

Indymedia, I hate to agree, is not reaching expectations. Sydney Indymedia would be lucky to have as many posts a month as we do in a day or two. That's just crazy, and baffling. I can't be too critical, because I want someone to do what I haven't got time to do: put some time into it.

By the way, I really hate that the Australian Indymedias are so hard to find in the left-hand sidebar. Oceania deserves cross-heading status as much as Europe, South Asia or Canada.

Neem "ideal tree for Qatar soil"

"A BANGLADESHI permaculture expert is confident that neem is the ideal plant for afforestation programmes in Qatar.

"'Qatar has the potential to grow neem trees on a large scale,' says M A Hakim who is currently in Qatar on an official tour. Hakim is the chairman of the Bangladesh Neem Foundation.

"Hakim is on a mission to promote awareness about neem and other botanical alternatives to the many problems faced by mankind.

"In an interview with Gulf Times, Hakim said his organisation could make Qatar green in five years 'if given a chance.'"
Source: Gulf Times