inocuo

For more than you ever thought you’d need about the Beatles: BeatlesDiscography.com.

I know I haven’t been posting much this week, but I do have a reason, honest. It turns out the Blogger template for this blog was corrupted or something and it was failing to publish. Before this week, I just haven’t felt like posting much.

With respect to the Iraq situation, I was amused this morning to hear the shock with which Bush’s inner circle have received the news that the Iraqis are – horror of horrors – fighting back. And to hear the news that they are taking cover amongst civilians, attacking supply lines once they’re behind the front, and so on. News flash, in case they’ve forgotten the lessons they should have learned from Vietnam – it’s nigh on impossible to fight a guerilla army with a regular army. I’m sure the army people know this, it’s just that the politicians as is usual, just don’t know about the real world.

I’d like to add today this image. Check it out. See that tiny blue dot a little over half way down on the right hand side, in whay looks like a ray of light? That’s the Earth. From 42 million kilometers away. And here’s a quote from Carl Sagan to go with it:

We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.
Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity — in all this vastness — there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It’s been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

Great words from a great man.

After the purchase of a second bookshelf, all my books are now unpacked. I hadn’t realised how many of them I hadn’t seen for ages, thanks to my previous oh-so-efficient system of ‘keeping books under the bed in boxes’. Efficient space and money-wise, but certainly not in terms of book visibility.

Thanks to the fabulous new ADSL plans at TPG, it looks like I may change to ADSL for my at-home internet. For

• the same amount per month
• and a smaller installation fee
• and an UNLIMITED upload/download allowance

than Bigpond Cable, the old cable option is just not looking very good these days. I still haven’t decided though – the factor in Bigpond’s favour is that I already have the cable modem,thanks to my previous contract, but the TPG install is still less than the reconnection fee, even though I get an ADSL modem into the bargain.

Decisions, decisions.

Here’s a good link for those looking to enrich their conversation: Wordspy. It’s a website and mailing list about the creation of new words. The author does his best to find the earliest citation he can for the words he lists, which included gems such as:

• pubilect,
  noun, dialect unique to teenagers (puberty + dialect).
• Wife Acceptance Factor,
  n. In an object, especially an electronic device, that normally appeals only to men, the qualities or features added to or modified in the object to make it acceptable to women. Also: WAF.
• Metrosexual
  (MET.roh.sek.shoo.ul) n. A dandyish narcissist in love with not only himself, but also his urban lifestyle.
• Al desko
  (al.DES.koh) adv. At a desk. As in ‘dining al desko’
• male answer syndrome
  n. The tendency for some men to answer a question even when they don’t know the answer. Also: MAS.
• carnography
  (kar.NOG.ruh.fee) noun. Writings, films, images, or other materials that contain scenes of carnage or other types of violence.

And, of course, there’s the ever popular

• google
  (GOO.gul) v. To search for information on the Web, particularly by using the Google search engine; to search the Web for information related to a new or potential girlfriend or boyfriend.

Of course, there’s thousands more – it’s definitely good for a couple of days worth of time-wastage. I’m off now to wallow in my own crapulence. Cease your calumny, you procrustean flibbertigibbet!

Here’s an interesting read – it’s a web reprint of an Esquire article by Thomas Barnett, one of the strategic advisers to the US Secretary of Defence amongst others. It’s interesting because it’s a chance to see what the US military actually think they’re doing these days.

Basically, his thesis is that there are a group of ‘Core’ countries that subscribe to a certain set of ideas, including free trade, globalisation, etc, that allow their citizens to feel reasonably safe and secure and that create wealth for those ‘Core’ countries. Contrast these with the ‘Gap’ countries, where for whatever reason, the countries are not adopting measures to become part of the global community. Included in this is most of Central Africa and the middle east, and also most of South-East Asia. It’s from these countries that the threat of the ‘Super Empowered Individual’ [sic] comes, and it’s these countries that need US and Western intervention.

As I said, it’s very interesting to read, in broad strokes at least, what the US thinks it’s doing. Also interesting is the tone and frankness of the text – including such gems as

The Middle East has long been a neighborhood of bullies eager to pick on the weak.? Israel is still around because it has become – sadly – one of the toughest bullies on the block.

Although I don’t really agree with the conclusions, it’s nice to see that at least some people in the US military aren’t just out to try out all their funky new toys.

The thing that I find really interesting is when you combine that article with this missive from John Perry Barlow, Grateful Dead member and founder of the EFF. He tells how he worked with Rumsfeld and against him in the past, and how he thinks that the ultimate US plan is the creation of a Pax Americana, where the peace is kept by the threat of overwhelming force on the part of the Americans, the de facto rulers of the Earth.

The scary part about this plan is that one has to ask ‘Would it really be so bad?’ Yeah sure, the US would impose its values on everyone, but the majority of the world might actually be able to spend their lives something like we do. I must emphasize that I don’t think it’s a good idea, but I can see that others who don’t have my distrust of authority might think it was the only way. At the very least, it’s something to consider.

Yay! I’ve successfully moved, and am settling in to my new accommodation. Now all that remains is to get my cable modem again – but that will have to wait for a while, until the monetary situation stabilises. Unpacking proceeds unabated – well actually, that’s not true, for all it sounds cool. Unpacking is at a standstill until I purchase a bookshelf.

Is seven boxes full of books too many?