Photo: Wikipedia
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"Fuck the encryption!"
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"Hear those clicks, Goeff?"
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Photo: NASAApocalypse Earlier
Close Encounter With The 18th Century
Wednesday, 30 July 2014
Hairy Image: NASA
NASA reports on a near wipeout of Earth's electricity, telecommunication, and satel- lite navigation infrastructure when a huge solar storm two years ago nearly relegated our electricity-based civilization back to the 18th century.
Monday, 28 July 2014
Howie speaks, you listen Photo: FanPix.net
We have known for a long time that to be anti-American—for example, by not having supported the war on Irak—was automatically to be anti-Semitic. Now we learn that to be anti-Israel is automatically to be anti-American.
The truth comes from the American lout Howard Stern, hastily enlisted by Bibi to boost the sagging ratings of Israel's latest mugging of Palestine.
The target audience was the America's Zionist Christians, which have become essen- tial part of Israel's artificial life support system. The technique du jour was the "demo- lition of a straw man", in this case, a fictional caller to Howie's Tea Party News Net- work rant show, who was given the role of a defender of the Palestinians.
Howie hit him with nuclear weapons, at one point calling him a "cocksucking fuck", which, as a sacred cow, he can afford. Here's a link to the spectacle, kindly forwarded by our Seattle correspondent.
Sunday, 27 July 2014
Percentage of Republican women who say it would “make no difference” to them if there were more women in Congress : 67
This and more in this month's Harper's Index.
Friday, 24 July 2014
Regev is confused Photo: BBC newsnight
Bibi's personal disinformation chief says he doesn't know who is firing the ordnance which is landing on Palestinian schools and hospitals. Poor lamb.
Daily Detox hastens to help.
These missiles, Mr Regev, are being fired by the Chinese.
Being so disoriented, Regev probably isn't also noticing that the International Criminal Court in the Hague is busy dusting off the dock where to put him and the rest of the murderous junta to which he belongs.
Updated Friday, 25 July 2014
Pass the popcorn Photo: AP/Khalil Hamra
In the border town of Sderot, Israelis gathered on a hilltop to eat popcorn and cheer strikes on Palestinian towns below."
This and more in this week's Review from Harper's.
UPDATE Schools, hospitals, and UN facilities are now fair game for the IDF exter- mination campaign. Warnings previously issued to the Palestinian population before attacks are not longer seen by the Israelis as necessary.
Sunday, 20 July 2014
Victims on the move Photo: Reuters/Ronen Zvulun
Daily Detox finds no words of contempt for the meek passivity and cowardice of the West vis-à-vis Israel's sadism in Gaza.
Hollande (may Julie dump him) has just banned a pro-Palestinian demo in Paris. Angie (may she always look frumpy) keeps quiet so as not to compromise the submarine deal with Bibi, Cameron, never prepared to sacrifice a weapons contract on the altar of humanitarianism, cannot be counted on, and Obama (may his birthpla- ce be proven to be Nigeria), held so firmly by the genitals by the AIPAC that he cannot move an inch, is afraid to inflict the slightest pain on the Zion.
With minor exceptions, the media look the other way, or withdraw correspondents who have seen too much and may get the idea to write about it.
Silence emanating from Scandinavia particularly pains us, because in the past Scan- dinavia spoke for the oppressed. That voice is no longer heard, having succumbed to the homogenized market barbarity which is beaten into the heads of the ambitious thirtysomethings in business schools.
Canada used to be a vice of conscience in those good old days. Now, Harper (may he choke on a hockey puck) tries to outlikud Bibi.
Golda Meir had once rhapsodized about dispersing Palestinians "like the dust in the wind". The opposite is actually happening, though it probably wouldn't displease her: they are being bombed in a concentration camp from which there's no escape.
Thursday, 17 July 2014
He violated the curfew Photo: Reuters
Mouin Rabbani writes about the Israeli contempt for the Palestinian life. Essential reading from the current issue of LRB.
Monday, 14 July 2014
It ain't gonna fly, Donald Photo: Monty Python's Flying Circus
"The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders," observed Her- mann Goering. "All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
This for firing up nationalist fervour. To boost sagging popularity ratings, one goes to Mars, or at least into space.
Every rocketeer knows that going to orbit is best done from launch pads located near the equator. This is because Earth's rotation gives a free extra boost to the rocket, which can then carry more payload, or get to the orbit on less fuel. For that reason, the European launch facility is situated in the French Guyana, practically on the equator. The farther away from the equator, the less the effect. At the poles, the effect vanishes altogether. At 56° of latitude, Scotland is an example of a bad location from where to launch space rockets.
Yet, it is precisely from where Cameron wants to boldly go to where others, more cheaply, have gone before. Desperate times call for desperate measures, we guess.
Wednesday, 9 July 2014
"You send us the firecrackers, we send you the real thing" Photo: Reuters
The programmatic pulverization of Palestine, having just acquired a fresh alibi, resu- med with a renewed vigour. While the coal-fired Palestinian missiles fall randomly on the Israeli border wastelands, occasionally frightening some old women out of their wits, real munitions rain on the Palestinians, making what had previously resembled one big rubble heap, resemble an even bigger rubble heap, with body parts sticking out here and there.
The world, as is its habit, takes pictures and does absolutely nothing. Uncle Sam him- self keeps the good eye on Israel's munitions stockpile to make sure it isn't wanting, and the glass one on Gaza.
Chomsky had treated both Israel and the US to rogue states. This now seems almost polite.
Thursday, 8 July 2014
A customer entered a Barclays bank in Andover, England, defecated on the floor in several places, and left. “He didn’t look ill,” said a witness, “he just looked a bit smug as he walked out."
His deposit may not be credited today.
This and more in this week's particularly rich Review from Harper's.
Sunday, 6 July 2014
"Let me tell you, it hurts" Photo: Reuters
Writing for the Nation, Noam Chomsky urges caution about the boycott, disinvest- ment, and sanctions diet prescribed for the Israelis to get them off the Palestinian back and land. There's something in it, and we appreciate the difference which Chom- sky points out between the South African apartheid and the Israeli one.
But to see Bibi squirm is a hugely gratifying sight and a sign that the punches are landing where it hurts, contradicting previous consensus to the effect that, being pro- tected by the Americans, Bibi was immune to all pressure. Now proven untrue, this new knowledge must be exploited to inflict pain on Bibi and his likudniks.
So, as much as we don't want ot disagree with Noam Chomsky, we will support the BD to the bitter S.
Tuesday, 2 July 2014
Sir, here is your toothbrush, razor, and a change of shorts Photo: P. de Cosette/Europe 1
At 7.30 yesterday, the French Judiciary Police took the former president Nicolas Sarkozy into custody in order to give him a chance to explain in his own words how he stayed abreast of the details of a confidential inquiry into the financing of his 2012 election campaign. This is not to say that this isn't known.
At the police headquarters in the Paris suburb of Nanterre he will join a select group which had arrived earlier and includes his lawyer, Thierry Herzog, and two magistrates from the Cour de cassation (France's Supreme Court), who fed him the information.
It is poignant that Sarkozy's political life come to an end a stone's throw from where it began 30 years ago, in his fief of Neuilly-sur-Seine. It is customary in such situations to invoke the concept of 'closure', though, given that he is in one, it would be at the risk of being accused of undue levity in face of a grave (we hope) circumstance.
Monday, 30 June 2014
Soon to be replaced by a Jacques du Rozier Image: France Inter
It's a joyous moment for hooligans of all stripes.
The first move of Laurence Bloch, the new directrice of France Inter, the most important of France's nine public radio channels, was to pull the plug on Daniel Mermet's famous program Là-bas si j'y suis, which has been on the air for the last 25 years. In other words, to pull the plug on Mermet.
None is more pleased than CRIF, France's answer to the American Anti-defamation League. CRIF was saddled with a stiff bill after losing a legal attack on Mermet. It had accused him of anti-Semitism, which is understood to be any form of defence of the Palestinians against the Israeli land grab. Mermet had a nasty habit of inviting pro- Palestinian people, including a number of Israelis opposed to the occupation. The court had disagreed. In France a losing plaintiff coughs up for everybody's legal fees. The pain was intense and the memory bitter.
The list of celebrants today will be long. From Sarko, to the arms manufacturer and dealer Serge Dassault. From the oligarch Bernard Arnault to the oligarch François Pinault. From the Rotary Club, to the Bilderberg Club, from Monsanto to Exxon, from the likudniks in the Knesset to those on Capitol Hill. We cannot think of any other individual with so many high-power enemies as Mermet. Nor of one with so many friends.
One time he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. He immediately announced he wanted nothing to do with it.
He has a huge support across France, and the hostile move of Mme Bloch acting on orders will be met with a protest. There's been talk of a siege of the Maison de la radio at the Trocadéro.
DD has had some pleasant interaction with Mermet and with his staff at Radio France, and at the unofficial La-bàs site, la-bas.org. The scoundrels may have succeeded in kicking him out of RF, but we doubt he will remain silent for long.
Bonne continuation, cher ami !
Thursday, 26 June 2014
He wanted clean air Photo: 20th Century Fox
Following up on our June 21st TAFTA essay, our Munich correspondent signals an earlier piece on the same topic, which we'd inexplicably missed when it first appeared back in December 2013. We thank Michael for saving it from oblivion.
21 June 2014
A bright moment with a dark outlook Photo: NASA
Summer solstice in Northern Hemisphere had arrived on 21 June at 10:51 Universal Time marking the beginning of a slide toward winter.
Saturday, 21 June 2014
He will be always right Photo: 20th Century Fox
Something nasty is hatching.
"What doesn't kill you," says the philosopher, "makes you stronger". Thus, Obama's failure to bludgeon Wall Street after the sub-primes swindle has spawned a beast so fearsome that it will put an end to the West's silly experiment with Democracy, and, more particularly, will finish off with the frivolous idea of a united Europe.
The TAFTA talks, conducted in secret, have produced one thing that is known thus far—special courts, run by corporate lawyers, to deal with 'trade' matters. To give an example of a trade matter, consider the 'problem' of the minimum wage. A multi- national will now have the right to sue in front of these courts a country for enacting a minimum wage law, if it feels the law steps on its bottom line, which it surely will. The court will then award said multinational a compensation for the future lost income.
These figures normally run in billions, as Ecuador, among others, has found to its chagrin. Enacting legislation to protect population against dangerous pesticides or food additives will have a similar effect. There won't be any need to produce anything to ascertain future cash flow, just to sue a country which had the cheek to put in such reckless laws. Try to object and you'll have your head bitten off (see above.)
The multinationals will be reimbursed with public money for the projected losses. A law enacted by a sovereign body, in other words, will be subject to a penalty. Spot the error. Yet, this is what's being concocted in complete tranqulity, with elected officials looking the other way.
Owing to the strong structure of social and environmental protection which will come under fire, Europe will be a big looser. The little people, who might think that TAFTA will let them move freely between the New and the Old worlds, should not hold their breath. It's not for them.
Sunday, 15 June 2014
Percentage of children in single-mother Scandinavian families who are living in poverty : 11
This and more in this week's Harper's Index.
Thursday, 12 June 2014
Pre-recorded from the Lincoln Center Photo: Paul Masck
Peter Gelb, New York Metropolitan Opera's General Manager, just back from a ma- nagement refresher sponsored by Goldman Sachs, fumed against a third of his bud- get "going to the unions", by which he meant the people working at the Met. We were relieved not to hear that the money went "to the union bosses", as the reacs had the habit of putting it back in the halcyon day when the unions actually existed.
Gelb says the house is on a bankruptcy track. If so, we feel his pain. But neo-fascist stunts aren't the way to fix it. He ought to go to Obama and ask for a few minutes of the annual war-on-terror budget to save the bottom of an important American cultural venue, which is the Met.
For other Met news, the diva Anna Netrebko cancelled a performance in Japan for fear of the slow neutrons from Fukushima lurking in the wings at the Tokyo Opera house. Pity, Japanese food is great for losing weight.
Thursday, 5 June 2014
The Obama Administration proposed an Environmental Protection Agency regulation that would establish the country’s first official limit on carbon emissions, targeting a 30 percent reduction by 2030 in carbon pollution from power plants compared with 2005 levels. “Today’s proposal from the EPA could singlehandedly eliminate [our] compe- titive advantage,” said the CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers.”
This and more in this week's Review from Harper's.
Thursday, 29 May 2014
Percentage of Egyptians who say it is necessary to believe in God to be a moral person: 95
This and more in this week's Harper's Index.
Sunday, 25 May 2014
And la cucaracha in the cell phone Photo: Wikipedia
The Intercept reports that NSA has comprehensively bugged the island nation of Bahamas, intercepting all electronic communication and recording it for later analysis. A similar operation is under way in another, unnamed, country.
So what's going on? And why the Bahamas?
As we suspected, and as the article confirms, the Bahamas serve as a rehearsal stage for a similar operation on the territory of a more important target. The Bahamas just happened to offer a convenient alibi—fight against narco traffic—that allowed DEA to tap into its telecommunication infrastructure. Under the pretext of chasing drug smugglers, the agency installed a fancy and potent data collection infrastructure, and put it to use while opening the shop to the NSA. "The DEA and the NSA", as one memo puts it, “enjoy a vibrant two-way information-sharing relationship”.
Nice. If it only squared with the law.
Tuesday, 20 May 2014
Enigmail v. 0.1 Image: Greg Goebel/Wikipedia
If you want to massively boost your privacy, download, install, and use Enigmail.
The adverb "massively" is actually inadequate. It should be "infinitely", because the underlying PPP encryption is unbreakable, and will remain so until someone (NSA) comes up with an operational quantum computer.
Sunday, 18 May 2014
The last two bastions of banking secrecy, Switzerland and Singapore, have suc- cumbed to the pressure from the cash-strapped governments to sign the full disclosure agreement with the 34 members of the OECD plus China and Russia, designed to help pursue tax cheats. At first, banking data will be released case by case, upon a specific request from fiscal authorities, but beginning with 2017, the fisc will have an automatic free access to the information.
That sounds nasty if you're a tax optimizer.
DD, however, has learned from a source intimately familiar with the subject that not all is lost, for it is possible to circumvent the requirement by the following simple strata- gem. The moment a financial institution hosting an account wishing to remain anony- mous receives a request for information, it transfers the account to itself, so it can truthfully answer that it hosts no account of the person in question. As soon as the intruder goes away, all reverts to the original status.
Complications will come in 2017. But we will be surprised if they are not met with a satisfactory workaround.
Thursday, 15 May 2014
Strange sightings in West Texas Photo: Blue Origin
Noting a continuing paucity of interesting space news, we thought to check on the progress of the private rocketeering by the retailer Jeff Bezos.
While we've found the countdown at the Corn Ranch space facility (a concrete slab, basically) on hold, and the technicians out scouring the downrange perimeter for the bolts that fell off the New Shepard vehicle on its maiden flight, we have discovered that an escape capsule had been successfully tested, and that a new liquid fuel rocket engine underwent a full-cycle static firing in situ.
Barbecue picnics were held at a nearby shack to celebrate the progress of the project Blue Origin.
There are, alas, signs that Bezos has filed an amended flight plan for his undertaking, which calls for the lowering of the flight level, and a group performance with Richard Branson, rather than a solo stunt. This may have something to do with a realization that came more or less simultaneously to both rocketeers of the enormity of the costs which are involved.
Spreading the immediate pain might help for now, but it won't alleviate the pain to come. Bezos' declared intention to put "2 to 3 million people into hotels and luna parks" in orbit should draw attention of the mental health and law enforcement commu- nities, for the amount of pollutants which such an endeavour would inject into the alrea- dy fragile atmosphere would drive the final nail into its coffin.
An Orange-brown Finale to a megalomaniac lunacy, one might say.
Tuesday, 13 May 2014
Russian president Vladimir Putin... signed a law banning cursing in public performan- ces. “It is a common practice to swear,” said Russian philosopher Vadim Rudnev, “among the intelligentsia.”
This and more in this week's Review from Harper's.
Friday, 9 May 2014
The incurious Image: ixquick
If you don't want to be spied on, if you don't want another piece of information about you added to your digital profile every time you search the Internet, if you don't want that profile to be sold to advertisers, then use ixquick.
We have it on the authority of the nerds at Radio France, who had dissected it, that ixquick is what it claims to be on its front page.
We have reported (see Pretty Good Privacy below) that Gmail objects to being used from the Tor network. Our Munich correspondent adds that Google search some- times doesn't work when accessed from the Tor Browser. We have seen no such beha- viour from ixquick.
Happy searching.
Tuesday, 6 May 2014
Surfing from another jurisdiction Image: The Tor Project
If you're innocent, says the snoop as he sticks his hairy nose into your life, you have nothing to worry about.
We prefer not to worry unconditionally, by leaving him no place where to put his nose.
Please say hello to the Tor Browser, which allows you to surf the Internet with total anonymity. Goodbye to being tracked, having your digital profile built, being targeted by who knows whom and who knows where, hello to anonymity and a poke in the eye of the corporate and government spy. Goodbye to selling your profile to the advertiser; they won't have any information to build one.
The Tor Browser (TB) is a modified version of Firefox, so those who already use it will be on a familiar ground. (You may of course use your old browser as you wish, but you won't be anonymous.)
The difference comes on the other end, so to speak. To someone who happens to watch your browsing, you will be in Mongolia. Or in Bolivia, or Timbuktu. The IP address which he thinks is yours, won't be yours. To put it differently, your internet identity, as it presents itself to the curious, will have nothing to do with you, or anyone in particular. In addition it will be changing all the time.
That's as good as it gets, especially compared to the full frontal nudity of the conven- tional browsing. And Tor's pedigree is great—Snowden used it to pass to the Guardian the Prism scoop.
To get the Tor Browser, go to the website of the Tor Project, click on the big purple button, and follow the instructions in the documentation. It's a good idea to do all the authentications and verifications of the source code, as recommended therein. Some minor nerdy skills on your part, or on the part of someone you know, will come handy.
Take a look at the Wikipedia article on Tor.
Happy browsing.
Postscriptum. You will begin noticing funny things when you start Tor browsing. For example, looking at an article at the USA Today had triggered the following message from the TB,
Well, thank you!
Often, but not always, upon closing TB, Windows will growl at you saying it closed the TB (no, it didn't, you did) to protect you against "data execution". We think it's a form of intimidation on the part a card-carrying member of GAFA.
Trying to send Gmail from TB, which combination is said to offer discrete email com- munication, will engender all sorts of anxiety on the part of Google, this other card- carrying member of the club. Immediately upon logging in, they ask you to provide an alternative email address as a verification that you are you. Fair enough.
Then, about two minutes into the session, a message pops up saying they have a difficulty identifying you and to please log in again. We don't, suspecting it's a ruse to find out who you are. We think that for the second log in, they drop the (secure) https protocol, which, upon your initial log in, had protected your credentials. Pure fun. Enjoy.
May Day 2014
New Harmony (work presently outsourced to China.) Painting by F. Bate
We wish to signal progress.
Last year we quoted from Wikipedia that May Day was "an ancient Northern Hemis- phere spring festival and usually a public holiday; it is also a traditional spring holiday in many cultures." This year the following has been added, "May Day coincides with International Workers' Day, and in many countries that celebrate the latter, it may be referred to as "May Day".
Times must be harder than we thought for such a bolshevik addendum to get bolted on.
The reality on the ground is even harder. The class war appears to be over, as explain- ed by Warren Buffett*, the Occupy movements in hiding, and the governance, in fulfil- lment of Rockefeller's wet dream, taken over by the monied interests**.
Happy May Day.
Tuesday, 29 April 2014
Our Vienna correspondent, having recently organized a show for his friend, the reno- wned Austrian painter, Heinz Anger, wishes to present him to our Readers. Anger, born in 1941 in Karlstetten, a year later moved with his parents to Vienna, where he has been living since. He received his artistic schooling at the Vienna College for Graphic Arts and at the Academy of Visual Arts. Since 1965 Anger followed the style of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism, then Pop-Art, finishing in Impressionism.
Some of his works can be seen at his website, and the Wikipedia entry for the legen- dary Austrian soprano Leonie Rysanek is accompanied by a portrait he was commis- sioned to paint in 1962. To us, it reflects her beauty and intelligence, and his own love of the opera.
Tuesday, 29 April 2014
Israel suspended peace talks with the Palestinian Authority after President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party agreed to form a unity government with Hamas."
This and more in this week's Review from Harper's.
Monday, 28 April 2014
Percentage of US married men who say their spouses vote the same way they do: 73. Of US married women who say so: 49
This and more in this week's Harper's Index.
Tuesday, 22 April 2014
Not to confuse with Virgin Comics Photo: Virgin Galactic
Noting a certain paucity of interesting space news, we thought to check on the sta- tus of the private rocketeering by the entrepreneur Richard Branson. While we've found the countdown at the Spaceport America on hold and windows shuttered, we did come across this excerpt in a recent LRB piece about his exploits.
For other space news, Elon Musk has just delivered a load of groceries to the ISS, where there are apparently some people, though no one knows for exactly what purpose.
Saturday, 19 April 2014
And We the People who count Photo: National Archives
One of DD's constant themes, as regular Readers have no doubt noticed, has been the grotesque farce which is the 'American Democracy'.
Our Seattle correspondent forwards an article which gives a preview of what seems like a scholarly look at the sham. We are looking forward to reading the paper, even though aren't entirely thrilled about its apparently high-fibre style.
Thursday, 17 April 2014
A touch of headache, Vladimir Vladimirovich? Photo: AP/Yves Logghe
There is something intensely gratifying about small causes triggering big effects.
Such a big effect is now buffeting Vladimir Putin. It was triggered by the seemingly innocuous sanctions put in place against him for raiding the Crimea. At first they seemed like a slap on the wrist unlikely to go noticed by the thick-skinned siloviki at the Kremlin, and they were decried as such by the more junior members of the Western press corps, or those who have never grown up. But the more perceptive observers have immediately seized their portent
The biggest pain has been immediately felt by the apparatchiks and the oligarchs in Mishka's entourage. What's life worth if you can't go to see your mistress in London or pop in to Saint-Tropez to check on your carbon superyacht?
From one moment to the next they had to say goodbye to jetsetting and hello to kartoshki and rotgut vodka at the Griboyedov. Vladislav Surkov, Putin's evil hunchback, has been heard making light of the pain, but not convincingly; he himself had the habit of flying to Stockholm to take luncheons. That's over now. He will be one of the first to jump ship when the crunch comes.
The crunch will be economic. We had mentioned previously that $70bn had fled Russia in the first spasm of panic. That figure has been now upped to $100bn and counting. In a country with an economy of Holland, that begins to look like real money, and the bad news doesn't end there.
For Mishka has been stabbed in the back by the "middle-income trap", a phenomenon well known to rapidly growing economies, wherein they seemingly cannot progress beyond the $10,000 to $11,000, or $15,000 to $16,000 GDP per capita, a malaise described by a Berkeley economist Barry Eichengreen. While countries such as South Korea had managed to extricate themselves from that ditch, Russia seems stuck in the $15,000 to $16,000 bracket for good. This will be Mishka's undoing, and he knows it.
It's been calculated that in order to keep Putin's promises to the middle class, Russian economy has to grow at an annual rate of 5 to 6 percent. The actual figure is 0.5 per- cent. The middle-class natives have already been restless comparing and contrasting their lot with that of the Europeans. Hitherto docile, Mishka's bronco is bucking.
Desperate times, say experienced persons, call for desperate measures.
Contrary to the propaganda, which has it that Europe cannot survive without Russia's gas, it is Russia that cannot survive without the petro-euros. Gazprom has been aggressively expanding in Western Europe, fighting tooth-and-nail for the market share with local gas distributors. Mishka, meanwhile, has dipped into the rainy day kitty which he managed to accumulate in the halcyon day of the peak oil price. These reserves are now vanishing before his bewildered eyes, and Russia's rickety economy offers few alternatives to plug up the hole.
Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton had propped up their sagging popularity ratings by bombing Grenada and the Sudan respectively. François Hollande, by raiding Mali. Mishka, under the pretext of defending ethnic Russians, grabbed the Crimea. This gave him his imperial moment. His domestic ratings shot up. They will crash so much the harder.
Speaking to Die Welt, Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany's Finance minister, predicted that "Russia's imperial moment will be just that, a moment".
Friday, 11 April 2014
A hard act to follow Illustration by FD Bedford
Having read our New Mexico correspondent's welcoming note, our Munich corres- pondent asked his wife who, in her opinion, was an "interesting man".
The answer which he received is the most charming thing we have heard for a long time.
"An interesting man", she said, "is like Peter Pan. He can fly, but sometimes he crashes."
Wednesday, 9 April 2014
"It's over now. Off you go." Painting by Simon de Myle
The just-released Hollywood sword-and-sandals Noah will, to the majority of the Americans, depict the historical truth, and be further proof of God's might and glory. It will be also a handy reminder in these times of 'great recession' that things can get much worse, and a stern warning from Metro Goldman Sachs to those who disobey.
And there are those who do.
Pierre Barthélémy, Le Monde's Science Editor is one. He thought to give the biblical screenplay a back-of-the-envelope once over. The question was, would the ark of the dimensions stipulated in Almighty's blueprint have been able to float holding two specimens each of all of the 8.7 million, minus 2.2 million that swim (and presumably can take care of themselves), or, 6.5 million species on Earth? In working out the answer, he propped himself up on a seminal paper presented in the British journal of irreproducible results called the Journal of Physics Special Topics, published at (if not quite by) the Physics Department of the University of Leicester.
The answer was a resounding yes, it would float! So far as this went, the question was settled.
But God forgot something—the food and drink for the happy menagerie for several months at sea. Which throws the scenario overboard.
We are happy to inflict more pain. For example, where would the huge amount of water needed for the deluge come from? Not from the oceans, surely, because the sea level would have then dropped owing to the evaporation and transfer of the liquid into the atmosphere, thus cancelling the inflow from the precipitation.
All right, say the counters of angels on the head of a pin, God created this water! Very well, but the creation of matter, while allowed by physics according to E=mc2, involves such fantastically huge amounts of energy that creating from scratch several trillion tonnes of water would drain the entire Universe of juice. That is not evident.
There's no choice but to disobey.
Postscriptum. Helena Porter, our Vancouver correspondent, points out that 'waste management' would have proven to Noah an even greater problem than feeding the furry, scaly, and befeathered masses huddled on and under the deck. The following calculation explains why.
Let's assume for the sake of argument that the average mass of the waste material produced per sheep per day was 0.5 kg. (For the benefit of the Literal Truth set—how- ever unlikely they may be to read this text—that's a tad more than a pound.) Multiplied by 13x106 sheep, that's 6.5 million kg, or 6,500 tonnes of fertilizer, handling which would require a big, well equipped, and well-organized department of sanitary person- nel (nowhere mentioned in the Holy Writ) to remove.
Alternatively, let's assume the material would be allowed to accumulate (as it may have had to during periods of bad weather. Since all depictions of ark's voyage show nothing but stormy weather, this may have been a permanent condition at the time.) 6,500 tonnes per day makes for 65,000 tonnes per 10 days of the cruise, in other words, quite a shitload. Furthermore, this exceeds the 50,000 DWT rating of the empty ark (see the scholarly paper mentioned above), and 10 days is nowhere near the months at sea referred to in the Bible.
The scripture set may counter that God himself took care of the sanitary engineering. The problem with this argument is that it's hard to imagine Southern Baptists accep- ting a vision of the Almighty in which He shovels manure.
Saturday, 5 April 2014
BuzzFeed revealed a Pentagon plan to help Yemen develop its own targeted-killing program by supplying the country with crop-dusting planes armed with laser-guided missiles. “As much as you can put a Yemeni face on it,” said an American business- man familiar with the plan, “it feels better.
This and more in this week's Review from Harper's.
Monday, 31 March 2014
This isn't JFK Photo: Flickr/loac
Having flown many times between New York and Venice, the Editor has acquired a certain feel for their respective airports; at Marco Polo, it's pretty much luxe, calme et volupté, at JFK, on the other hand, it is not.
At Marco Polo, pretty girls in short skirts and not very short heels carry pencils and notepads and ask if it was you who packed the suitcase. Yes, it was you, and you catch yourself hastily devising some stratagem in order to prolong the inspection. At JFK, a goonish oaf barks at you to take off your shoes after you've just disembarked from an American flight, and had undergone the shoes-off routine eight hours earlier, and made no intermediate stops in the tribal regions of Waziristan before alighting from the aeroplane in the City-That-Doesn't-Sleep. There's no need or indeed latitude for any stratagems. Your ill-tempered remark about the redundant gyrations is met with a threatening growl. They wear latex gloves. There's something about it that brings to mind animal husbandry.
The air at Marco Polo smells vaguely of Chanel N°5, of which a huge crystal bottle greets you at the entrance to the departure lounge. The espresso in your cappuccino is Illy and the croissant is hot. Paper cups and plastic utensils remain unknown. Vivaldi joins N°5.
JFK has no restaurant where to kill two hours over a decent dinner. It stinks of toil and trouble, and the 'security' personnel watches over you. For some reason they all seem derived from the 'minority' segment of the America population. As a rule, fat bulges from under the belt on which they carry a pistol.
The best American airport is Cincinnati. It ranks number 27 in a survey
Friday, 28 March 2014
"Yes, darling, these are papa's dacha and boat, but you can't see papa's bank from here" Photo: Flickr
Petroleum, on the sales of which Russia relies to stay afloat, has been showing signs of weakness on world's markets in recent weeks. A significant drop in the price of oil is sure to destabilize Putin politically, and may eventually lead to his ousting. Let's hope for the best.
Tuesday, 25 March 2014
Note the upturned wingtips, conformant to the latest aerodynamic standards.
"Clear to land, Puffin 1-heavy."
The Great American Freak Show
A Stern Message
Statistically Significant
Kinder, Küche, Kirche
Your Land Is Our Land
This Pesky Fog Of War
Tragicomic Relief
Eyeless, Armless, Legless, And Childless In Gaza
Your Land Is Our Land
Silence Of The Lambs
Essential Reading
A Dime A Dozen
Monty Python's Flying Circus
And Now For Something Completely Different
Your Land Is Our Land
Rubble To Rubble, Dust To Dust
Tragicomic Relief
BDS
Acupressure
Le Carré
The Spy Who Bugged Me, Part 2
Broadcasting
Daniel Mermet
Free Trade
In TAFTA's Embrace
Music Of The Spheres
Summer Solstice
Free Trade
TAFTA Bursts On The Stage
Statistically Significant
No Child Left Behind
In single-mother U.S. families : 55
Singspill
Phantoms At The Opera
Tragicomic Relief
Statistically Significant
In God Some Trust
Percentage of Americans who do: 53
Of Chinese: 14
Pretty Bad Privacy
Yellow Bird Up High In Banana Tree
Pretty Good Privacy
Enigmail
Debit Suisse
Full Frontal Nudity
New traffic lights Photo: AFP
To Boldly Stroke Ego
Blue Yonder
Tragicomic Relief
Pretty Good Privacy
ixquick
Pretty Good Privacy
Tor
May Day
From Haymarket To The Financial Market
*) "Class war? Of course there's a class war! It is us who's waging it, and it is us who's winning."
**) "...somebody has to take governments' place, and business seems to me to be a logical entity to do it."—David Rockefeller, Newsweek International, Feb 1, 1999.
See also our April 19th essay.
Presentation
Heinz Anger
Campo Pescheria, Venice. Watercolour by Heinz Anger, 1994 [zoom]
Tragicomic Relief
Statistically Significant
Gender Gap
Branson Galactic
To Boldly Sell Tickets
Oligarchy
One Man, One Useless Vote
Naked Aggression
Russia's Imperial Moment
Inquiry
Interesting Men
Survival Of The Fitted
Lee Kee Shipyard
Tragicomic Relief
Air Travel
The Tale Of Two Airports
Naked Aggression
Expensive Crimea
Putin's mugging of Crimea may not come without nasty consequences, not just to his nomenklatura, but to the entire Mother Russia. It is not clear whether Putin had thought of these consequences before launching the Crimean operation. The Econo- mist makes a good observation with respect to this (Mar 29th).
Aviation
"This is Puffin 1-heavy on the final. Gear down and locked." [zoom]
Photo by Anonymous
