A moment of rest

So, Christmas has been and gone again for another year, New Year's nearly here, and I've found myself with surprisingly little time to write anything. This is the first day since Christmas Day that we haven't had people staying over. Even this morning I was up at 07:30 with the kids and one of Willow's friends who stayed over.
In fact with all the visits and parties; being a bit under the weather; the need to cook and clean and drink too much, there's been very little time so far to actually do anything. Or rather, I should say, to do nothing. Because that's one of my great pleasures - putting my feet up and doing nothing for hours on end! Or sit here at my computer and listen to music and write nonsense perhaps.
Tomorrow we're supposed to go to Sprookjeswonderland, which I've been promising to take the kids to for ages. But I'm a little wary of the weather alarm that has been put out for tomorrow afternoon, so we'll make a call on that in the morning I guess.
Frankly, I feel like sitting here and drinking a couple more beers. I've just upgraded this box, so it's running more pleasantly - and quietly - than it has done in ages. (I used to have a ATI 7500 Radeon All-in-Wonder in here, which was quite a reasonable card for its time and price, but made an unbearable fucking racket!)
Well, I don't have to get up super early - I daresay I can manage an hour ot two yet :-)
After all, the coming six months is going to be a fucking hard slog - unless Es wins us that lottery money she's already dreaming about...

WinMX

I know it's not as quick as torrents, but there's two reasons I'm still smitten with WinMX.
Firstly, it's a passive, patient application: it rewards those who are willing to wait and encourages an open sharing of files. I like that, rather than the frenetic ratio-counting world of torrents.
Secondly though, and mostly, it's so sweet because it's now completely autonomous. Since the RIAA shut down WinMX in September, it has been revived by its users. It's now got no centralised body at all for RIAA to attack. (Theoretically, they could go after users, but as a) it's pretty difficult to identify users with WinMX and b) they would be using an application they claim is illegal to track people anyway! then that seems unlikely.)
The users have taken over the means of production, it's a little bit of true online anarchy.
It's a beautifully distributed, example of Out of Control software. So it may not be the best application in the world, but it's showing us the direction of the future!

2 more thoughts

Good luck to the NY Public Transport workers on strike!
You might have heard that this is happening, but you're buggered if you can actually find anything in the mainstrream media about *why* they're actually on strike.
So, on the principle of supporting striking workers, I wish good luck to them and a happy christmas without crazy drunk people and working bad shifts when everyone else is off work; and I shall try find out what the actual strike's about! This picture on the left gives at least a hint.

And, I see the Dutch have finally agreed to join the British assault on Afghanistan scheduled for next Spring. Sorry - hadn't you heard about that? It's been planned for almost a year now.
Basically, the Yanks are pulling out, not being into this whole nation-building deal, and NATO, led by the Brits, is going to try expand its control to the entire country, starting, if I remember correctly, with Kandahar province.
Should be fun and games and blood and guts. Makes you wanna party like it's 1842. So carry on up the Khyber chaps.

Yule

So Iwas trying to explain some of the idea of Yule to Willow today. Basically, I want to get across to her the idea that Christmas is not a Christian holiday, but a deeply pagan one. I think this is our most important holiday, the resonances of feasting in the face of potential famine, of death and rebirth, of rest and recuperation and escape from the industrialised timeclock, of blood and redemption, and of giving and receiving, are so deep and profound that even in these shallow times the archetypes swim and swirl around us.
If you want a look at the whole history behind Father Christmas, or Sinterklaas, or Santa Claus, or however you know him, this book is well worth a read. A bit of a dry historical-anthropological text sometimes, but it might make you believe again :-)
Of course, the real excuse that our ancestors had to party at this time of year, before the christians came along with their birthday party, was the Winter Solstice. And that's today - a couple of hours ago, as I write. So, as we go into winter, we are in fact, moving back towards the Sun.
And then, there's the real reason that the folks long ago partied at this time of year, and it's beautifil in its simplicity. Just that, there wasn't much to do in the fields at this time of year - all the harvest was in, and the ground would freeze, so no need to do anything there. Perhaps animals would need taking care of, but there'd be no young and no shearing. So it was a time of relative relaxation, and if you were lucky enough as a village to have some supply from the harvest, you'd have some idea by now how much of it you could lash out on a party. Probably the mead with the year's grains had fermented enough by now too :-)
I guess lots of kids got born in the autumn back then.
It's one of the main things I love about this time of year still - that even this nasty, narrow-minded capitalist world is brought to a halt. Not as effectively here in Holland as in England or Germany perhaps, but there's even here a bit of space for silence and contemplation.
So kick back, take a glass of whiskey, and enjoy another Christmas special on TV.

Woo-hoo!

Holidays have started. 2 weeks off work - so there will be more blogs a-coming. And I really need a break. As it looks right now, the next one will be August - positively American in its austerity.

Happy Christmas everyone! And especially to Judge John Jones, who has just ruled against "Inteliigent Design" being taught in Pennsylvania schools as a scientific equivalent of evolution, as apolicy of "breathtaking inanity". He could have been channelling Steven Jay Gould.

Climate and the Edge of Destruction

It's a bit weird being a long-distance weather geek. I can't be a stormchaser, because I'm in Europe being merely an observer. So what's the point?
Well, I think that it's more relevant to watch the weather these days than to watch politics. The whole "government" performance is just a shadowplay, a piece of dull puppetry. The only thing that can possibly come from it is negative and predictable, so i guess even I'd be better off watching one of those atrocious "reality" shows.
Weather, on the other hand, is signalling to us the truth about what we are doing with our planet, our lives, and our childerns' futures. I cannot imagine a bigger or more serious topic deserving of our attention. But - if you'd rather watch a rerun of "Idiots Undressed" -well, help yourselves.
I read a piece last week that said an event of more than 35cm of snow falling in Holland, only happens once or twice a century. (This is a very unsnowy land!)
It's happened twice this year.
Unfortunately, it didn't happen here last time, 2 weeks ago. but then, it did happen here in Alkmaar twice intwo days back in March, so we can't complain :-)

More seriously though, and going back to my post at the end of November; there was an article in Nature last week, that the North Atlantic Conveyor had weakened. This was widely reported, but as usual, the details seem to have been misinterpreted to provide the feather bed of security to the readers.
Basically - the North Atlantic Conveyor is part of the mechanism that creates a warm climate in Western Europe that is apparently inappropriate to its latitude. The article as reported in the newspaper, said that it has been faltering over the last 30 or 50 years. In fact, if you look a bit closer, the change might in fact have occured over the last few years. I haven't got the data to hand, so please bear with me. For something like this to happen over 50 years is climatologically speaking potentially disastrous. If it is actually happening on an almost visible level, then the results are catastrophic. To put it mildly.
If the movement of warm water from the Western Atlantic to Western Europe was failing, I believe the first thing we would see would be more intense, major hurricanes.
So, on that, the conclusions are prettily easily drawn.
It is though, one small example of what appears to be the gathering evidence that climate change is now not merely theoretical, but is happening ona scale that is about to inundate us. Here's the Independent, which in Britain is leading the newspapers' attempts to put Climate Change on the political agenda:
"It is as if we were living on two planets. Here, in the real world, the evidence that global warming is already doing immense damage to the earth is mounting with terrifying speed. In the past two weeks alone, we have learned that the Greenland ice cap appears to be on the point of irreversible meltdown, that the Kalahari Desert is to double in size, that sea and bird life has collapsed dramatically off the US Pacific coast and that the mighty Gulf Stream (which keeps Britain habitable) has abruptly weakened. This year is expected to be the hottest ever, and hurricanes are breaking all records. It is impossible to dispute the conclusion last week of the Environment Secretary, Margaret Beckett, that this is "the greatest threat facing mankind".
The other world, that they refer to, is the "UN Climate Change Conference" that has just finished in Canda. That it was an absolute fucking joke is being circumspect in my judgement. Talk about fiddling while Rome burns.
And this is led by America, who continues to deny the truth of climate change, whilst its oil platforms are receovering from the assault in the Gulf and its young people are dying in a genocidal war to protect the interests of the oil capitalists.
My mother-in-law just came back from Egypt. There, she could pick up fossils of sea creatures in the Sahara, which just 40,000 years ago was the bottom of the ocean. The Earth is in constant flux, and it seems that we've lived ina relatively quiet period, but that's all over now.
I guess we're going to have to get to La Gomera real quick, and try not to be one of the refugees trying to escape the cold and the unnamed storms and HN51.

Superficial

I was watching some adverts and TV earlier tonight. It was one of those unpleasantly revelatory experiences, because the level of intelligence that was assumed and preached for in the audience was disappointing, even after years of being constantly amazed that people would watch the total tosh on offer. This synapse-numbing "makeover housemate get-a-brain retard on sale for the lowest bidder, would you meet my mother and blow my spaniel" reality show special that seems to be the point of TV these days. Is there any fucking wonder I don't want to work in that industry?
So, congratulations to my brother-in-law, whose first job after we stopped making indy documentaries together, was as cameraman on the first ever series of Big Brother, where it was invented, here in Holland! Not exactly the spawn of Satan that show, but spawn of a type, for sure.
Of course, the middle class wannabe intellectual stuff is, if anything, even more nauseating. I just caught a piece of "Newsnight Review" on BBC, a sort of "arts" review show for the ironically-challenged subnormal set from Islington and its associated hopefuls. I may be Northern, but I don't think that's the only reason why I'm not sure if those accents are caused by them talking out their arses or not.

And it's such a shame, when there's so much hidden culture in the world. And the last bit I heard before posting this, was Marilyn Monroe, singing 'Santa baby'. Possibly the sexiest thing in the world: "Come and trim my Christmas tree...Santa baby, hurry down the chimney tonight".