Another month gone by. Sint is back to Spain and Christmas is upon us. Getting the tree in today and needing no excuse to drink port of an afternoon. Outside the grachts and sloten are frozen over after our first decent night's freeze in a year. Cautious mumblings of White Christmases and Elfstedentocht are being kept under wraps.
I'm even reasonably optimistic that we'll manage to score that Wii for the kids for Christmas...

In the world outside there has been a Climate Change agreement to act. It was vague and wishy washy of course, but there was at least an agreement, even from the US. Mind you, if all the delegates had agreed not to travel all the way round the world to Bali, that might have saved some exhaust gases. Cheeky buggers - ever since Kyoto they seem to have been determined not to go to some poxy little industrial city again. "We did Rio last time, how about Bali this year?"
Surprisingly, the Northern hemisphere is pretty wintry right now. After last year's non-winter, everyone got scared, and there's the worry now that the North Pole will be ice free in summer in just 5 years. I think that's probably overly scaremongering, and came as a result of the very hot year we had between October 06 and September 07. If anything, feedback loops and chaos theory would tend to suggest we may well go the other way for a period - and it wouldn't surprise me to see a very cold event. Certainly the US is getting hammered with ice storms and blizzards, the Alps have had very early snow and the Mediterranean is getting alot of snow too.
I just hope that doesn't breed complacency.

Right. Gonna read the papers...

Iceberg boat

MV Explorer hits iceberg and sinks. Good pictures. Luckily everyone out OK.

Can we have dichotomies again?

Hell, it's been a long time. Just been busy with life I guess.
A couple of main themes. I got back in touch with my best mate from long back, the only person who knows me back from my real drongo days, even before I got to Amsterdam. He knows that side of me better than anybody I'd reckon. And then, at the same time, I'm out interviewing for work as the "young" executive dressed in my Hugo Boss suit and talking with the arrogance of the rich.
Now, this isn't the obvious split personality shit. Work tends to be putting on a front no matter what. If you're in charge of stuff, there's more expectations on you fulfilling a certain behaviour. I'm actually quite good at going against that, but they won't know till they've hired me ;-)
Still, doesn't mean I wouldn't prefer to be monged out at a Subs gig. Fact is though that I'm wanting to play with the big boys, cos I still want to change the world. I don't want to gather power to myself, but I do want to be familiar with power, know how it works and see how to bring it down.
Of course, real power is the sort my old mate has. But that's a whole different ball game: when the magic and real meaning takes over, the superficial bullshit of culture fades and we know that it's all just a ride.
So, Sint arrived today. And Sven Kramer rode the most amazing world record.
Balance.

Deep breath

SO, a month since the last blog, and an awful lot happened since then. Normally would have been reason enough to jot down a few thoughts, but I guess this is one of the consequences of daily life being a grind: it demotivates beyond the scope of working life.
Big thing at work has been the destruction of the project we've been working on, sacking of Robert, etc... So I'm not sure still whether they'll sack me or promote me, though it now looks like the latter. Either way, I don't see a future there and it looks like time to move on...
In the world at large there have been a couple of headlines that have grabbed attention; both important and both illustrative of the nature of the media and the world's politicos. The uprising in Burma was of course impressive, even if the crushing was as sadly inevitable as I hoped it wouldn't be. The scum that fell on board, like Bush, supporting "democracy", and the scrabbling of the media to promote this as the next democratic revolution, was angering to those of us who fought for disinvestment over years. Time to dig out the Beer is Murder attitude here I guess. The horror stories coming out of Burma now are sick as we could expect. And the trumpetting of modern technology, which ensured that the world's eyes were on Burma, has turned on itself as the military intelligence in Rangoon scours the YouTube videos and sends out its death squads in the night. The online support needs to learn a lesson about the nature of resistance and oppression: their publicity has cost blood and tears. The people of Burma need to learn, like the rest of us old farts, about the value of masks and a well-placed petrol bomb in place of a prayer wheel.
And then today, AL Gore and the IPCC won the Nobel Prize for Peace. This in the year that the Arctic Ice Cap shrank to such an extent that the North-West Passage opened for the first time in perhaps 120,000 years. And still I read comments from well-informed amateur meteorologists such as "why wasnt all this brought to our attention 10 years ago, 20 years ago when the issue was first starting?". Damn, if peoples' ability to block out their ears isn't even more impressive than their ability to place their self-interest above the interests of the community and the species as a whole. Ten or twenty years ago? Fucking moron.
I'm still really hoping for a freezing cold winter to maybe flip the feedback the other way: frankly I'd rather snowball earth than Venus at this point. But the talk even in the news now is of the feedback loop, of ice-albedo loops, and it's urgent and terrifying what might be upon us.
I'm getting older, and it seems that I've finally become negative about my species, and I would like to get out of that particular feedback loop. I was singing 'Anna' to Ayla the other day. "Ayla, de wereld is niet mooi" I sang. "Papa" she said, "de wereld is wel mooi".
"Papa, the world is beautiful".

Still what I said years ago: the great sadness is not that we can achieve so little, it's that we can achieve so much.

Oh, and Hurricane Jerry turned into the most pathetic wanky little subtropical fish storm seen in many a long year, so so much for predictions and I guess he'll be back round in a few years...

Too much

So, a lot going on since the last blog post, and really no excuse since I've had quite a lot of time off. Guess I wasn't in the mood or something.
An event driven quick post this time. Two things: seems the NorthWest passage is now navigable. This should have been the lead news on every bulletin and every newspaper in the world. It seems to be incontrevertible proof that the feedback loop hs kicked in. The Arctic will now be free of ice within 30, probably within 20 years. If the feedback escalates, it could be a mere handful of years. Put it this way - there are 3 million square kilometres of ice coverage left. That is fully 1 million less than last year's minimum (which was a record). We know how feedback escalates such an event - it is not unrealistic to expect that the Arctic might - and I say might - be ice free within 2-3 years.
Looking back, I'm pleased we had such a lousy summer, and desperately hoping for a really cold winter!

The other thing that's driving a midweek blog, is that it looks like Hurricane Jerry is going to form on Thursday. At the moment the models give it a good chance of blowing into Nola. I guess that would be pretty much the death knell for that city. I gather it's already not really recovering - got a lot of problems with crime and people leaving - so another direct hit and levee failure would probably finish the place off.

Within 5 years - no Arctic and no New Orleans. Almost as surprising as the Berlin Wall coming down I guess. But that happened too, real sudden.

Reasons to be...

Just a few quick comments then.
So, our new dog came to live with us last Sunday. She's a sweet 10 week old puppy called Ziggy (which could be Stardust or could be Marley, but I prefer to think of her as 'Ziggy Pup'). I'll doubtless up fotos here or on the family blog in the coming years. It's nice to have a dog again, even though she reminds me of Luna, because she also reminds me of Luna when she was a puppy and not as the old lady of more recent years.
Another one of my obsessions - Dean is about to turn hurricane, and will likely hit the Caribbean this weekend and the US in about a week's time. He looks like he'll get big and nasty. It's fascinating to watch the satellite and the tracking as a storm moves off the West African coast and tracks across the Atlantic, watched by thousands; we see it grow and at times like now as the storm grows intensely but no land is threatened, it's even fun. But I imagine being in the projected path of this thing is scary - if I ws in Jamaica right now, I'd want to get off the island as soon as possible.
Last thing - I'm 40 soon, and trying to get a party together for a week or so's time. Of course - will anyone show up? Now that I'm working for the corporate yoke and living the family life in the suburbs, do I still have any friends left?

Old friends

I'm preparing the invites for my 40th birthday party this weekend. (The party's not this weekend, just the preparation).
So I've got this idea to gather a few old mates around. It's a sort of nice taking stock and celebration moment in one. There's a few mates from the last few years that I've lost track of more or less. Even more unusually, I was googling a couple of my very best old mates from the way off past, and have come across them too. (As not many people read this blog, it being a sort of personal ramble, you may well be one of those reading this now ;-)
It's an unusual thing to be able to go back and make contact with your history. I've always been a one for burning bridges quite freely and brightly throughout my life, and suddenly here I find myself middle-aged and mortgaged, breadwinner for a wife and kids, yuppie job and accidental career, and I'm able to bump back into my past. For better or worse, I figure I at least should have the balls to face it. I don't really feel ashamed or overly guilty about anything, though that might just be my psychopathic tendencies ;-)
Je ne regrette rien, in ieder geval...
And if those folks who were such good friends would still like to come over and meet me now and share a beer or ten, then it should also be a fascinating time, to see my present and past collide. I know where my heart is, being not a rich hippie but a punk yuppie these days, and I wonder what may come...

Twister over Amsterdam

One more then. Here: http://www.at5.nl/speler_at5nieuws.asp?newsid=28189
and here http://tip.at5.nl/2007/07/19/windhoos/ for amusing - I left work at this time and thought the cloud looked supercell, but we've had a few supercells the last few weeks.

Funny Guy

So it's getting late on a Friday night and I've drank a few beers so it seems like old times again.
One thing that I've been puzzling a bit over is Barack Obama. He actually seems interesting. Seems like a genuine idealist, give or take. And this is the weird thing about the American political system, it means someone who has essentially no "political" experience like this guy - and is therefore less exposed to the pollution of compromise - has a shot at the White House. To the best of my memory, he's even ended up in the Senate by accident. Sure he was spotted by the watchers even before that convention speech. But from his books there's no doubt he's both intelligent and idealistic - even passably honest for a politician.
So the Democratic race is interesting. A woman and a Black man facing off. Against a party that has caused a war to make Viet Nam look sensible - you'd think one of them has to make history.
And I don't like Hilary Clinton. She's part of the political class, part of those who subsume power. Obama seems much more interesting. I watched his announcement speech, and there was a something to the guy. All those West Wing viewers who yearned during the first Bush administration for the sort of president who was intelligent and thoughtful and leaned left should be flocking to help this guy: he's an even more photogenic version of Jed Bartlett, only without the New England WASC history.
So despite my well-earned attitude to politicians, I do accept that there's something still sincere about this guy. he has actually got into politics from an idealistic position. That's common enough - the new UK PM Brown is also an idealist, or at least a moralist. But Brown is terminally compromised by the dirty little deals he's made to get to where he is. Obama is busy making huge amounts of money, but he doesn't seem so far to have made any huge sales.
Can he win? I don't know enough. It's probably as likely as him getting assassinated, so either way I'd say that's a fairly high odds. America with an intelligent Black internationalist left president would be very interesting. Perhaps thoug, all it would teach us, is how little a president really has when positioned against the stranglehold of the multinationals.
So unless the US of A is going to finally address its system of business, then the figurehead is probably irrelevant.

Notes from the maelstrom

So, here I am a few weeks later. River's coming up to her third week and has successfully been assimilated into the chaos that is this family. I seem to be successfully maintaining balance on the catastrophe curve wave at the right equilibrium that's supposed to ensure creativty, stave off entropy and veer away from collapse. Not that that's easy - I feel like a surfer going into a tunnel wave and it merely continues forever.
Having a little baby around for the last time is intense and rewarding, wonderful and also of course hard work.
The work that I'm paid money for has entered the build phase, this is where I need to juggle nine chainsaws at once to ensure that it comes out right.
The book needs one last heave and push to finish the first draft and leave me in the position to start selling it.
So as summer approaches and everyone's readying for their holidays, I think it's fair to say that I'm not exactly ready to kick back and relax right now.

Storming

Bloody awful weather. Took the kids to school this morning before going into work, and got pretty much soaked. Which i could live with, but expecting summer storm, I wasn't really prepared for the cold on top of the torrential rain and high winds.
I'm a geek for this stuff, and someday want to do a bit of storm chasing. The only twister I've seen so far was here in Holland, and was a minor one. But there are, occasionally, very serious twisters that hit.
40 years ago, on 25th June 1967, 7 died in the tornado that went through Tricht and Chaam. (Both these photos are from that tornado, approaching a roundabout near Deil).

On 23 August 1950, an F4 was on the ground for 46km in the Veluwe forest. 25th August, 1925, three died in the Borculo "Cyclone". And the worst death toll came in the Neede tornado, on 1st June 1925, when ten died in the destruction.

And extreme events will become more common. The flooding in the UK now is extreme: both my old schools, in Alkborough and Winterton, were closed today due to flooding. But they're both on hills- they shouldn't be flooded! I haven't heard enough from there to figure out how that's possible.
Over here, we haven't had a heavy tornado for a while, but Esther's hometown of Hoogeveen was mashed up badly by what at first was thought to be a twister, but is now thought to be a downburst just a few days ago.

Mind you, my mum was telling me about when I was 6 we had a week in June that began hot, became wet, cold, foggy and ended up snowing! So the climate will always mess with our heads - I still think it's advisable that we mess with it as little as possible in return...

Birth

The girls are all to bed.
It's nearly 9:30 in the evening here and the girls are all to bed. All four of them now, after River has joined us.
I'm drinking a glass of wine and recovering, letting the last of the adrenaline seep away and allowing me to sleep too. No doubt I'll be awoken several times in the night, and will be up and about early again tomorrow.
SO, we've been through a birth again, for the last time. This was different than the other two. The adrenaline rush was very intense because the baby decided to come so suddenly. It was touch and go whether the midwife would make it in time for the delivery. As it happened, she walked through the door about 30 seconds before the head appeared.
It's a visceral, overwhelming experience no matter how you approach a birth. I can only imagine what it must be like for a woman: something so animal, so real, in our world that is so distanced from the animal and the real. No wonder so many women these days give birth doped up and by caesarian. The reality is hard to deal with. For men too - I think most of us have times when we wouldn't mind the old days of "show up with cigars" when all the blood and screaming have been washed away.
She's a beautiful child. I'm lucky - I am abu el banat - "father of daughters". And I know it's a sort of insult in Arabic - comparable to being called impotent - but I wouldn't have it any other way.
I'm kind of dreading in a dozen years time having three teeenage daughters and a menopausal wife mind ;-)

June 1st

Arseing internet connection is down. At least, ASDL from useless Tele2 arseholes is down. I'm pretty pissed off about it, but you can't slag the poor sods at the Customer Service call centre, so at least they're nice, even if there's bog all they can do.
Luckily, i do have wifi connection, lifting on a free one, but unfortunately it's only available in the office, and my mother-in-law is sleeping here soon, so I shall have to move. She's buying us a dishwasher: something I always swore I wouldn't get. But my brother-in-law Richard and Esther's studying and a blocked sink persuaded me that it wasn't the work of the devil after all :-0
It's the first day of the North Atlantic Hurricane Season today, and I'm being impressively geeky already, as the NHC is about to announce Tropical Storm Barry in an hour or so's time, and blog contacts inform me that the name will be given before it's officially made known. That's geekdom for you.
But if I have to leave my connection before 11, I won't \see it officially till tomorrow probably.
Looks like it may be another cracker season. Interestingly, Jerry is in the list of names this year. And falling where it does in the alphabet (alongside Jeanne, and next to Katrina, for example) - well, I met get a few comments at work if Hurricane Jerry destroys Tampa.

List your obsessions

Look back at this over the last 18 months, and it's pretty obvious that the things I think most important are Climate Change, Iraq and my family. As my family's mostly private, that tends sometimes to lead to a bit of a two-toned theme to this blog.
I'm not bothered with that. If I look back on this in 10 years time, that shouldn't surprise me. If I and the net were around to look back on it in 50 years time, the perspective would be somewhat different.
Probably one of the most important things happening in the world now is the deaths of tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of people every year trying to get to the West, or being deported back to another country and murdered there. That this is not a "story" is because of the reasons that drive people to try and migrate here: the devastating consequences of neo-colonialisation. Thousands more die every day as a conseqquence of the starvation and warfare that are a result of this neo-colonialisation.
And it's not in the news. It's not discussed. Conservatives or liberals or revolutionaries - nobody in the West is discussing it. Because we are collaborators in an act of genocide. Like the Polish peasant in 'The Sorrow and the Pity' who would claim that he didn't know what was going on at Auschwitz, we'll tell the future that we didn't know.
Not that this should come as any surprise to an Englishman. After all, we've had an empire intent on genocidal acts for the best part of a millenium.
So I thought I'd write this quick note on the net. And then at least it's out there. We did know. We do know.
And we're doing nothing.

Gorilla on the loose

So, strange story today. A silverback gorilla escaped from his enclosure at the Rotterdam Zoo today. He seems to have jumped over a ditch, which is unexpected because he's supposed to be scared of water, then sat next to a woman who began to scream. So he smacked and bit her and dragged her around, then let go of her and went to the full restaurant where everyone had tried to hide. He smashed through the glass door and scared the shit out of everyone in there, injuring a couple more.
Eventually he was shot with a trank dart.
He was born and raised in Berlin, where he also escaped in 2004 (without anyone being hurt), before being moved to Rotterdam the following year.
Apparently this picture is of him (Bokito) yesterday. Doesn't look too happy.

Once again then, zoos aren't good for animals. The primary argument here would be that in the wild his chances of survival are minimal, but let's be honest. As long as you're charging people by the thousand money to come and gawk at him, caged together with his woman and child, then it's pretty clear where the primary motive lies. If zoos want to reinvent themselves as conservationary institutions, then a radical rethink is required.
Apparently Bokito tends to agree.

New pictures here underneath from The Guardian.

Subtropical Storm Andrea

Throw away the calendar, hurricane season is here!

Well, that didn't take long. The first named storm of the Atlantic season got called Andrea 3 hours ago. Nothing spectacular is forecast for it - nothing more spectacular than its mere presence that is, but as the chance of it being named was put at 10% just three days ago, that means little.

Radishes and Polar Bears

So a few days ago I ate the first thing out of the little vegetable plot I've made in the garden. A quarter of a radish. (Of course, I picked a whole radish, but shared it between 4 of us. I'm not sure how it works when there's five).
April's just finished with Koninginnedag and a four day weekend for me. It's been the hottest April on record by a country mile. Over here, almost 5 degrees above normal for the month. It was the climate of the South of France (according to the KNMI, normal for Nice). Rather pleasantly, the Med & the northern Sahara have been having heavy rain and cooler weather, which emphasises how unpredictable Climate Change will be. In many respects, it wouldn't surprise me to see some greening of the Sahara - at least at the fringes - and with the recent rain and the earlier reports from Mali & the Western Sahara, that optimism might yet be borne out.
Another piece of positive climate news was that the Kilimanjaro glacier appears to be disappearing more slowly than was thought, and its receding has more to do with the lack of moisture in the air blowing in from the Indian Ocean rather than the rise in temperatue - it seems that the temperature at the top of the mountain continues to remain below zero.
Ice in the Arctic has been in the news again - the National Snow and Ice Data Center has issued a press release suggesting that the ice loss in the Arctic might be faster than previously thought. However, I'm rather suspicious of this one, as it's extrapolating on part of a winter, and not taking full account of the very cold March and April that hs been there so far. It's looking at September ice loss, rather than an annual mean as well. Just smells of dodgy science.
More positively too, the Anatarctic ice sheet is currently thicker and larger than usual going into winter.
All of this is making me refine my own ideas about Climate Change - I continue to be very suspicious of the Black/White scare story that is being put about. I still suspect that the current political climate has more to do with the dwindling oil supply than the real climate change; and as usual we're seeing scare stories and media hype in place of science and strategy.

The kids have been away again last night, staying with friends, and Es & myself managed to go out and see a movie which was pleasant to be able to do. We've been giving ourselves a bit more time together lately: it's something that you really need as a preganant couple, so to speak, and something we usually tend to underestimate how much we need.
One last thought that crops up since the last mail, is how disapponting the whole cricket winter has been, and how much of a gutter it was with the final day of the Eredivisie last Sunday.
But at least - Scunny are Champions! Bring on the Premiership!

Happy

So I'm sat outside in the hot sun, drinking a beer, listening to Black Uhuru, reading a comic, following the cricket, and following Scunthorpe's push for promotion to the Championship.
It's too hot for the time of year, but the hottest April day ever in the Netherlands was 1904. We're the hottest area in Europe this weekend. Alaska had the 3rd coldest March on record last month, so the ice pack is in better state than I'd expected. My bronchitis is fading again (and the Independent reports on the front page what I know - I need the sun to be really healthy!) Work's finished for the day, and with my laptop I could do it from home. Es & the kids are at the playground/shopping, so it's quiet.
This could, with a little luck, be a TRULY GLORIOUS SUMMER! (Caplocks hit by accident, but seemed serendipitous, so I'll leave it at that :-)

Oh, and as a belated afterthought - this happy moment has only cost me about 200K and up to 40 years of my life :-)

All quiet out there

I was just rereading some old posts. Mine's a classic blog really, in that it's purely written for myself. I don't know if anyone else ever reads it - occasionally there seems to be a visitor from somewhere else, probably the MT List crew, who hangs around the site to read a few pages.
Funny really that keeping a diary that's theoretically accessible to half the world's population is probably less read than if you wrote in a book and put "Keep Off" on the front.
I like what I've put down on here over the last 18 months. It reminds me of things, it makes me think of things, it's coherent to me at least. There's a regularity here - no more than 2 or 3 weeks absence at most, that I don't achieve with any more serious writing. And it's written to be read, which is different - most of what I write currently is in such an early draft that it's not for reading - unless, of course, it's for my work. Alot of my work these days seems to be writing too, sometimes proposals, sometimes just carefully political emails.
Curious what the future will bring.
Well, being curious, what do I stumble across but this:

The Future Ground Based Air Defence System (FGBADS) is an integrated mixed and layered air defence system consisting of a Command and Control part (BMC4I) and a weapon system part (VSHORAD and SHORAD) for low and very low-level air defence. It is a “system of systems” with “plug and fight” quality. FGBADS has the capability for creating a Local Air Picture (LAP) and exchanging it with other air defence systems. Furthermore FGBADS handles Air Space Control and integrates the external Recognised Air Picture (RAP) into its own air picture. The sum of these capabilities means complete situational awareness in the most optimal form. FGBADS completely controls the usage of the VSHORAD and SHORAD weapon systems.

So WTF is this shit? Some mad fucking Command and Conquer geeks, or is this some real shit? I can clearly see this is something to look at when I'm in a more sober condition. First response ( and if you use the words "first response" they probably launch something or other) is that it's some sad wannabe Dutch action.

The net's a damn weird place. Wish we'd never let these looney's out to play.....

Spudjacking

Apparently there is not one single reference to spudjacking anywhere on the interweb thingy. So here's the first.
Having spent many less than ecstatic hours either grubbing in the semi-frozen dirt or half-frozen on the backs of tractors in the drk hours after school, helping harvest the magnificent potato, I think I'm entitled to at least raise the issue of spudjacking. Further digressions on agricultural heritage and child labour can wait till another time.
I'm starting to teach our kids about growing plants. It's a real simple thing, but gives them lots of pleasure. I suspect it might be useful knowledge for the future. At least if they understand that growing vegetables involves care and nurture and effort, be they relatively minimal for the return. (Animal farming is much more intensive, and if you remove the demands of intensive farming as well, then you start to understand that the old peasants might have had a reasonable amount of free time on their hands if the local lord of the manor wasn't hopgging it all with his stupid demands.)
Might even get them to eat their veg.
Only in dreams.
Work has taken off. Had a sort of new job at the usual place, and then not, in the last couple of weeks. Or rather, i have the new job, but as usual I have to do it for a year first before I actually get the job and the cash to go with it. Still, it's a really interesting thing to do - launch a new business effectively, and migrate a legacy business into the new online model.
Shame we manage to have timed this to coincide with baby number 3 arriving. It's been a while since a baby came into my life. I hope I can remember how to do things - it's a strange concept again, and I'm looking forward to it, but hoping that it gets the attention it deserves in my life. Everything is hard to fit in already, so I'm either going to be exhausted or underperforming or screwed up, or probably all three somewhere this summer.
Still, I'm pretty decent at hanging the different threads together, juggling the different balls.
Only in dreams.

Actually, in dreams in the last few days, i've been in a tornado, and been running through the mountains of Catalunya up by Andy's place. I'd like to go there next year. Might go StormChasing too if there's enough money with all this yuppie work.

Online TV

Today, I'm quite excited about being able to watch England play cricket. Live streaming TV online, via P2P application. The quality's not 100%, and the line falls out sometimes, but it's like the old days. It's the first thing for years that has reminded me what it was like online 10 years ago or more. That feeling of being in early on something very big kicking off. And of course I'm not in the first wave, but this is fairly new all the same. I don't yet know why, but it's mostly Chinese so far. Very cool, there's lots of sports out there. Which is a difference from a decade back: the geek quotient is high, but the uptakers are almost normal. Are geeks getting cooler? Are jocks getting geekier? Or - are we all nerds now?

Lots in the news these days about climate change. Or, as the Yanks insist on calling it, Global Warming. I think I shall have to start hanging out on http://www.realclimate.org/ a bit more.
I can't shake some mistrust of this sudden adoption of the issue by the media, by the politicians. Even Bush getting on the bandwagon, and meanwhile signing a treaty with Brazil for ethanol takeup - which is potentially the deathknell for the Amazon. That photo of Lula hugging Dubya was sickening.
And I suppose the worry is that the talk is not about how we change society, but how we get round the issue of our environmental activities. It's not addressing fundamentals, but looking for workarounds. As an IT bod, I'm used to workarounds, but I'm all too aware that they're only postponing the ineviatble day of dealing with a failed system.
And I don't really trust much of the eco lobby. Lots of them are not my cup of tea. Others are essentially criticising one part of the system and not looking at it as an integral whole. I don't like the way the discussion about climate change is being divorced from the discussion about Peak Oil. I understand the point a mate made that politically speaking, the environmental impact of our society would not be made clear if predictions about climate change took into account the effects of the Peak Oil scenario. But I don't really go along with that point.
Apart from the fact that politics makes poor science, and poor science causes all sorts of problems, I also tend not to believe that two disasters cancel each other out. I think Climate Change and Peak Oil are going to be compound disasters, at least from the point of view of human society, at least from a Western point of view, and doging debate and rigging the political agenda isn't helpful, because then we're allowing the politicians to set the agenda and take over the debate and the realities are going to get obscured in bullshit about ethanol and Iranian nuclear capabilities and all the other bollocks that passes for justification and action.
I don't trust neoCons talking about alternative energy and I don't trust middle class eco lobbyists talking about changing the world. And I don't trust the RCP talking about Great Global Warming Swindle.
In fact, I don't really trust any of those groups talking about anything.


I wonder what's going on with the magnetic poles? Maybe it's time to reread Ken Kesey's Sailor Song...

Sport

Alright, it's funny. Being a married man that watches his sport. I don't know what happened. The weird thing is, my favourite ones to watch, with the exception of cricket, are winter sports that i don't do - namely skijumping and skating.
So I've just been watching the skating from Salt Lake City, and it was Sven Kramer at the 10Km, the Cruyff of skating. Absolutely unbelievable. I've never seen a top race like that with one guy - who was in 5th at that stage - getting lapped. Kramer was 20 seconds ahead of the next guy, and knocked something like 10 seconds off his own world record. Which he set the last time he raced 10km. I can't think of anything comparable in sport that I know of where someone is so far ahead of all other competitors. He's almost literally a lap ahead of the rest. And he's only 20. Of course, he might burn out before the next Olympics, but he seems to have a real basic sense of self - he still comes across as a typical 20 year old. And what he's doing is stuff that Tiger Woods or Roger Federer can only dream of - he's not lost a race all year, sets world records almost at will (and not the Sergei Bubkov adding half an inch sort of record, but pulverising them), and is king of the world.
Knowing the ways of the world, this will probably all end bad. Apparently he's already got a supermodel girlfriend, and let's hope he doesn't chase mediocrity like van der Vaart. Still, one of the pleasures of watching sport is the moment. Tonight, I shared an experience with Bart Veldkamp. Such a race, he said, you just sit back and watch with your mouth open, drooling, at the perfection of the moment.

Focus

Lots of things going on. Work is insanely busy, most people at work don't even know what's going on. I can't write about it either, lots of NDA stuff applying, and on the off-chance that I forget to delete my sig when sending a mail from my home address, I'd best keep it out of here.
There was a "controversial" docu on Brit TV last night, 'The Great Global Warming Swindle'. Mum mentioned it on the phone this evening - as usual, she likes to test you on sensitive spots. I think I surprised her back though knowing that the guy who made the film was a nutter from the RCP.
World Cup kicks off on Tuesday. England warmed up in traditional fashion today by getting thumped by the Aussies.
And of course, got a pregnant wife, trying to get the book first draft finished, two kids going through kids' stuff. It's all busy times.
But it's enjoyable. I don't know that it's appropriate for me, but at least lately I'm using my mind a bit. There's room for more in there - I've started an audio lecture series on the history of Ancient Rome, and still need to sort out the Project Management certification. But it's weird, after years of relative flabbiness, the brain is still able to get into gear with minimal warming up. Kind of reassuring.
I've actually still got a bit of a headache today. This is what I get for drinking half a dozen pints last night? Man, I'm getting old quick ;-) So can't say I'm into much coherence here. Looking forward to having the laptop, then at least I can sit on the couch and do this...

Night in Heaven

Well, I've found myself listening to Erasure. Now, this isn't something particularly to be proud of, but there you go, it's happened nonetheless. Of course, it's to do with a feeling, a memory, and in this case it's back in the late 80's, just before we kicked off acid house. A Saturday night down at Heaven in those days was quite the celebration, nevermind that we were in the midst of AIDS, and incidentally just about the worst period in British popular music since 1954. Being 19 and acceptably cute, I managed to stay out and party regardless of being broke. For example, I remember staying with Chris, but his girlfriend was coming over on Saturday night so I had to be out the house. No problem, I just went to Heaven and danced all night. I actually didn't go home with anyone that night, but fell asleep on the Circle Line about 7 AM. I think the most embarrassing moment was when I was fucked up on poppers and speed, amongst other things, and started chatting up this cute guy, only to realise after 10 seconds or so, that it was a reflection from a wall of mirrors. I looked around in semi-petrification, but nobody had noticed - it wasn't exactly what you'd call an observant crowd in many ways.
Heaven then was a world for me alone. I wasn't part of any gay scene, and even when I knew a few other bi's, and a few gay guys, we were in a punk world where there was neither money nor inclination amongst most of them to go to these nightclub decadent parties. It probably wasn't politically correct or something.
That's one of several negative points I can make about our scene - that they're very uptight about music. It has to be from one of the approved bands, or at least an approved genre, to be acceptable for playing in public. This is a very teenage concept, created from peer pressure, so in many ways it's an example of all the petty oppressions that anarchists are supposed to oppose. And one consequence of this peer attitude of course is that the music that's deemed acceptable is relentlessly straight. There'll be no Weather Girls in the Vrankrijk and no Marc Almond in the Binnenpret. You might get Bronski Beat once a year at a push, but only because Jimmy had such a tediously PC image.
I must admit, I thoroughly enjoyed my hedonist days. I remember going down the IT, which was Amsterdam's equivalent of Heaven, being not only in the unusual position of having enough money to buy a few beers, but also totally speeding off my tits direct from Dave's - at the time, the number one speed dealer in Amsterdam. He'd wished me a good evening, and proffered yet another swig from the bottle of Jameson's and off I'd tootled with my ill-gotten gains (and I can't remember where the money had come from. We're not talking alot here, but I probably had a geeltje in my pocket, which was rare back then). So stood in the queue to get in and pay, I noticed a line of boys around my age walking in a line in another door. They were all cute and knew where they were going, so at the spur of a monet, I tagged on the back of the line. I've read that tagging on the back of a line trick in loads of books, from Lord of the Rings on down, and never believed it would work, so wasn't expecting anything but a knockback, but I got let through. Up some stairs and down some corridors we went, and I never got a chance to talk with anyone. I think we ended in some VIP area. Frankly, I didn't hang around, and went to check out the masses., down the stairs on the dancefloor. Of course, I could have missed a night out with some boybands and Hollywood producer. But frankly, it looked more like another cheap pimped night, and that was never my scene.
A pimp once tried to sell me to a News of the World reporter, and to this day I don't know if it was to fuck me or to give an interview about the Poll Tax riots. Frankly, neither was appetising, so muttering some obscenities about Wapping, I got out of the taxi and went back to the squat.

Two news

Ma Tambo died the day before yesterday. I can't say I knew her, although we met sort of, but she sounds like on of the old school. Apparently she was well known in diplomatic circles, yet at the same time she would work as a nurse, without special recognition and the same slogging hours as the other nurses.The first true post in this blog was to do with a woman very like her.Rosa Parks.
Adelaide 'Ma' Tambo was similar. Her husband Oliver was President of the ANC in exile, and he retained the post even after Mandela was released and they returned to SOuth Africa. She took an early stance against the corruption and tyranny of Winnie after returning, leading a walkout of women from the Women's ANC group. But by all accounts she was herself a very strong, even domineering, figure. I suspect that she had a bigger influence on the anti-apartheid movement than any of us know.
I danced alongside Oliver Tambo and Jesse Jackson, and I guess the woman I vaguely remember being there was probably Ma Tambo.
Obviously my being there was a bit of a mistake, the result of being alone on a demo and being the only white boy in the middle of 3000 ANC & SWAPO comrades toy-toying up Oxford Street. Probably somewhere there is a photo of the fact, because there were lots of camera flashes as I stood there in the front row. Doubtless the journos were snapping in case I turned out to be the son of someone well-known.
The news today has been leading with the IPCC report on Climate Change (or, as they call it in the US 'Global Warming'). The report is being trailed as a harbinger of doom; yet personally I found it rather an inadequate compromise.
In trying to attain credibility, it seems to have sacrificed any theory, perhaps even integrity. Temperature rises are forecast with a range that is essentially meaningless. The sea level rises are equally flakey - deliberately excluding any Greenland or Antarctica glacier melts by all accounts - despite forecasting temperature rises up to 4 degrees.
There are though, some positive signs. That this is finally news, that there finally appears to be some consensus on action, that even the bosses of energy corps and Wal-Mart in the US seem to be getting round to the understanding. Of course they have to some day if they want to survive, let alone old Hubbert's Peak threatening to wipe out their business and their system.
There will only be one story in the coming years. Iraq and the other resource wars have to be recognised as parts of that story. There is only this: how we treat the world we live upon, and how that world treats us.
The last few days, perhaps irrationally, I feel a tad more optimistic, that we may finally act together.

So, the year's getting rolling. It is, of course, more of the same essentially. There's no new insights as such. I've got more of a perspective on fuel use, which was an interesting prism through which to view Bush's State of the Union, which was - from that perspective - two thirds concerned with securing energy sources. The very warm winter in the States has also driven cynical merkins to suspect that there's something going amiss with the climate, and even concede the faintest possibility that they may bear some responsibility for the situation.
If I were an astrologer I'd be tempted to look for something or other in retrograde or occulting or eclipsing or whatever. There seems to be change and strife and disruption around - or perhaps that's just me? At work, at home, looking around me, there seems to be shifting sands and uncertainties, disruption, change and dis-ease. It's nebulous, difficult to put a finger on, but I feel there's something tangible too - something coalescing into events.
In many ways, this is the typical weekend - not like last week, when I finally put the floor in our bedroom. We do have a party for Esther on Sunday coming up, but that should be fairly chill.
Of course I watched the ski jumping last weekend. Jan Mazoch had a horror fall. To be honest, I'm surprised he's still alive. I thought he was done for when I watched it.

Reasons to be cheerful...

So, the Aussies finished their hammering of England in the early hours this morning. Goodbye then especially to Warne & McGrath. They were bloody awesone, and even if England were rubbish this series, those two have been bowlers beyond comprehension.
Noticeable was that Shane & Pigeon & Justin Langer were all tehre with their kids in arms, running around on the ground, that their fathers wanted them part of the experience. Of course I understand that - if I was in the same situation I'd do the same. But it's only in about the last 10 years that this has been acceptable - that men, and especially sportsmen show that their life is about their kids and not just a narrow focus on the sport. It probably started with Bergkamp & Beckham - at least that's when I noticed it - but now it's standard practice for a young dad. For the English team, fathers have been given leave from Tests, even flown back from Asia, to be there when their kid is born , and that's something inconceivable a decade ago.

Other reasons to be cheerful: plastic semiconductors and 100 dollar laptops. Greening in the Sahara. Climate change actually moving up the Western political agenda (Gordon Brown says it's one of the top two, the Democrats are talking about it).
I think we have to move beyond politics, beyond revolution & representation: we're into survival realms now. Preconceptions to the wayside and let's see what happens.

It's going to be a long hot year.

Time flies but aeroplanes crash

New Year's Day too done and dusted for another year.
I used to wonder why people said that time went quicker as you got older, but the last few years it has done just that. I think this is largely to do with the lifestyle though - the married with kids, working 47 weeks a year, 9 to 5: well, who wouldn't get hypnotised into a sort of daze living like that? Days seem much longer when you go to bed at 4 in the morning and lurch from hangover to hangover. Luckily, I booked a couple of days extra holiday from work again so I don't start back on the treadmill till Thursday.
Should be off to the pool tomorrow, but looks like the kids might be getting sick again. I swear we have our own private germ unit here.