The Bear is back

The Pussy Riot have been found guilty, the sentence has been passed. Putin‘s Russia is being portrayed as descending into a Stalinesque condition.

I have mentioned the Pussy Riot before. Not being religeous it doesn’t particularly bother me that they did what they did in a church. I can see it would upset believers. But whatever happened to turning the other cheek?

To quote from CNN:

‘While their actions outraged many of Russia’s faithful, their high-profile trial prompted international concern about freedom of speech in Russia.’

The piece, which can be found here:

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/08/17/world/europe/russia-pussy-riot-trial/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

appears to be broadly supportive of the girls. I wonder what would have happened if a similar protest had taken place at a similarly holy site in the US? I specifically exclude Native American holy sites because we know how they have been treated by the whites over the years. No, I am talking specifically about a WASPish or Catholic house of worship. In my bones I feel the result would likely to be the same.

What is it with footballers

So, Michael Owen when known footballer, apparently, wonders why football PLAYERS are being dealt with unkindly by some sections of the public.

 

To quote the great? Man;

 

“I turned to my wife, Louise, while sat in our lounge at home watching the Olympics, and said, ‘just you watch footballers get hammered once this is over’.

 

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19281103

 

Well let me see if I can think of any reason why overpaid prima donnas may be the object of scorn from some people. They are normal human beings with an extraordinary talent … aren’t they? If this were the case then perhaps they could win an occasional game, and I don’t mean against a team from Tristan da Cuhna.

 

Footballers, with a few notable exceptions, behave appallingly on and off the pitch. They expect mere mortals to fawn and toady to their every whim. The sums of money they demand are obscene and not in any way, apparently, linked to performance. (Who do they think they are, bankers?) The attitude has driven some clubs to bankruptcy, players demanding ever more money without necessarily returning the performance the clubs pay for.

 

Players are often loutish, boorish, mean spirited and far from being the ambassadors of sport Olympians like the brilliant Jessica and the marvellous Mo. They are no longer hungry for success because, along with most of society apparently, they are consumed by greed.

 

This can be established as a truth, I believe by reference to another sport, Rugby Union. Now, being of a certain age, I recall with no difficulty at all the ‘amateur’ years of greats like JPR and Billy Beaumont. I am sure they were not angels, indeed characters like Jason Leonard have admitted as much. However, in the days of amateur competition there was no real publicity around the players. This can only be because 1) they were gentlemanly and discreet 2) saved their worst excesses for ‘safe environments’ or 3) the press weren’t interested. This is in stark contrast to the behaviour and press coverage of the current England team.

 

Is it money that makes the players monsters, or that attracts the attention of the media?

 

Whatever the answer, money is at the root of the problem. I am quite happy for the sports people to earn a decent wage but the obscene amounts are counter productive.

Green Olympiad

According to CNN (because that’s who I chose to look at) the recently dearly departed London Olympiad was very green.

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/07/10/world/europe/london-2012-olympics-environment/index.html

It’s good to see that we, here in the UK, made an effort to do things right. Using recycled materials as much as possible. Surplus gas lines were used.

The boards in the velodrome are from sustainably sourced Siberian Pine.

Does it strike anyone else as odd?

Hang on, why were the pipes surplus, because someone made too many, or have we stopped piping gas therefore will never have to repair the existing lines or because there was a special order for gas piping to build the roof?

The sustainable timeber, how much CO2 was emitted in it’s transportation? Come to that, has anyone calculated the carbon damage to the world from flying in athletes, dignitaries, families, supporters, fans and holiday makers?

Was the concrete poured of an environmental kind, I doubt it because of the strictures on budget.

I do applaud the archaeological work undertaken before the land was forever buried. I also applaud the wetland regeneration, as reported. I wonder ow long funding will remain in place to maintain the systems until they become properly self sustaining.

The greensest way to host an Olympics would be to have athletes compete at home, beamed around the world by sustainably produced electricity the results being reviewed and medals presented to those that had the longest throw, best time whatever. No travel, no expensive stadia, no gas burning torch to pollute the atmosphere.

Or am I just a miserable git?

How hard can it be …

I have been looking at some Neolithic jewellery here

http://www.shee-eire.com/Arts&Crafts/Neolithic/photos/Carrowkeel-beads001.jpg

I am blown away by the simplicity and plain designs. But, and here is the $60,000 question, how did they do it?

Has anyone ever tried to cut, grind, drill or polish flint. It’s too hard for my POWER tools, which they didn’t have of course. These primitive, uncultured and uncivilised people have us beaten hands down when it comes to art culture and living in the world. Taking what they needed without causing massive permanent harm to the planet.

Just wanted to say that really.

The new age of the toilet

I see that Bill Gates is spending a fortune of supporting scientific work into alternate toilets.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19271061

I quote:

‘The project challenged inventors to come up with a toilet that operated without running water, electricity or a septic system. It needed to operate at a cost of no more than five cents (3p) a day and would ideally capture energy or other resources.’

Er what about composting toilets, they don’t cost anything to run, in real terms. They are undemanding of resources do not use water electric or septic systems, can be made out of almost anything and capture compost which helps build soil fertility. No techy solution difficult to repair or obtain replacement parts produced at a cost of CO2.

I strongly believe in the KISS principle. If you want alternate energy, install solar or wind, use your poo to grow food.

 

Playing by the rules

There was a time, I seem to recall, when playing by the rules was really important. In many ways it summed up being British.  I have of course posted about this attitude elsewhere with my tongue planted in my cheek. One example alone, PC Yvonne Fletcher. Murdered in central London by a Libyan ‘diplomat’ who shot her from inside the embassy. The principle of diplomatic immunity was clear. No effort was made to enter and search, no threat of any kind.

Fast forward to a more modern, dare I say corrupt, time.  Julian Assange is wanted by the US because he excercisd a form of freedom of speech frowned upon by that ‘democratic’ nation. The history of the saga is well documented. It is postulated that the Swedish charges of sexual misconduct are trumped up. A ruse in order for the US to get it’s Pilate hands on Mr Assange. His real crime it seems is the ability to have others, disgruntled souls not Politically motivated in the main, tell the truth about goings on that governments would rather keep out of the public eye.

The latest seems to be that the UK, who wouldn’t extradite Assange to the US because he would risk the death penalty, want to extradite him to Sweden, who will send him to the US, where he will run the risk of the death penalty. In order to achieve it’s goal the UK have apparently threatened to storm the Ecuadorean embassy. What happened to diplomatic immunity?

A country so concerned about fairness that it struggles to extradite alleged terrorists, a haven for people claiming political asylum on what appear to be relatively weak grounds in order to be fair, seems to lose all sense of fair play when it comes to the bidding of it’s favourite uncle.

If Mr Assange committed the crime alleged in Sweden he could be tried in the UK. The Sexual Offences Act 2003 states (I paraphrase) if a sexual offence is committed any where in the world by a person who meets the nationality or residence condition at that time he can be tried in the UK for that offence. Frankly I don’t know what chicanery may or may not be employed, but the last time I checked Australians are allowed to live in the UK, Mr Assange is an Australian a member of the commonwealth.

If the role was reversed. Say a Libyan civil rights activist was holed up in the UK embassy in Tripoli and the Libyan government threatened to storm the building to carry out a search and arrest, can you imagine the outcry!

It is high time we, in this green and sceptered land learned to be consistent, perhaps as a nation we need to be prepared to show the world that Right is Might and that bullying, from whoever, will not pay off. Mr Churchill showed the size of his cahunas when necessary. It is time for the government to stand up and say we believe in fair play by the rules. If Ecuador wish to provide a safe haven for Mr Assange what right has any other government got to interfere.

Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa

I have been guilty of a most heinous offence against nature. It was entirely unintentional and purely accidental. I seek absolution for this sin.

I have been moving things in my shed. Winter approaches (did it actually leave?) Logs for my burner moved to a more convenient position for bringing indoors when it rains. I worked for several hours when, to my horror, I realised I had been the unwitting bailiff in Gods creation and a poor little field mouse had lost his home.

Yes, it’s true. I knew we had field mice overwintering in my garage. Every year I make sure there is plenty of material for bedding and food for my little visitors. I had no idea they had expanded to the point where they had taken up residence in Chez Shed. I suppose the only good thing is that at this time of year they will have returned to wherever they come from.

So there we have it, my unexpected house / shed guests have had their beds destroyed by an unthinking pigpen.

Later this year I will have to get a box for them so I don’t disturb them when I start taking the new logs which will soon replace the old.

A great Huzzah for mankind

I see that we, (as a collective species) once again reached out to the universe. We, well NASA, have managed to overcome many complex problems requiring brains larger than Marvin the Paranoid Android to solve and landed on Mars.

I look forward in the coming weeks / months / years to receiving periodic updates as to how well / badly things are going with the Curiosity Rover. What an exciting time of exploration we all live in. I have added the link to the BBC coverage so that we may all share in the wonder that is this fantastic event.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19159382

Of course, …

Now you wouldn’t expect me to be enthusiastic for long would you. The mission is reported to cost £1.6Bn. (For any non Brits $2.5Bn US) Oh there’s another topic in itself, why is everything always quoted in $US?

Anyway, £1.6bn is an awful lot of money. The World Food Programme states it would take $3.2 billion a year to feed 66 million hungry school children. So, in context the whole space programme to send Curiosity to Mars is less than it would take to feed all the starving kids in the world for a year, sounds like a good deal?

My personal viewpoint, and this is NOT political but humanitarian (for any rubber heelers watching), is that we, as a species have not earned the right to visit other planets, stars, lumps of rock or whatever. We have in the span of our existence raped and pillaged mother earth. We denude her of all her resources, we pay her back by polluting her air and water, the dump filth on her land and overpopulate with our kind in the absence of natural predators. We abandon junk in the sky even beyond the atmosphere of out planet and leave rubbish everywhere we go. The moon is still littered with US and Russian garbage. Not a monument to the ingenuity of man, but as a monument to paranoia.

If the total spend of the space programmes of the world, coupled with all the money spent on arms research and production were totalled there would be enough to feed the poor, set up sustainable food programmes based on permaculture principles, meaning food for life for everyone. )Even allowing for the kick backs that would have to be paid to the great and not so good).

The one bitter pill which is even more difficult to swallow is population control. Even if we could have every country to agree on the funding of projects in the way suggested, there will still be too many people.

As Fraser said, ‘We’re all doomed.’

Climate change, a message from the past …

I understand that a new phase of drilling has found evidence that 53 million years ago during the Eocene period there were palm trees, macadamia and baobab growing in Antartica. I can’t wait to see how the nay sayers hijack this. Apparently the scientists have also found Archaea which is a single celled organism that can indicate temperature at the time of their demise.

This is fascinating stuff and shows that life can go on. The investigation concludes that the mean winter temperature in Antartica was ten degrees centigrade, daily summer temperatures were in the 20’s. At the time of the eocene, CO2 levels were, apparently, almost double those recorded today. So in theory if the entire world population were to move to the continental Antartic we could live quite happily, like penguins standing huddled together. Not because it is a way of keeping warm, because there would be no room. The entire world would also have to become pescatorian as it is unlikely there would be much if any land capable of growing food. Who knows how long it would take for the seas to run dry of anything edible.

Furthermore, the Eocene period did not arise, in geological terms, overnight. There was a long period allowing creatures (no humans about then) to adapt to the changing climate. With the rapid increase of CO2 currently being experienced, there is little time for the diversity of creatures necessary to sustain mutually supportive guilds to adapt.  To take just a few examples, plants need to adapt to changed environments, but still need to produce pollen and seed. Bees are needed to pollinate the plants, they need to adapt and the bee population is already stressed by human attack and climate change. Mammals and birds eat fruit and scatter seed in their dung, they too will need to adapt, any one failure leads to a gap in the cycle of nature and, potentially, a failing of the system. These examples are of necessity over simplistic but usefully illustrate the point.

Of course the planet will regenerate, perhaps. But it will do so without people. The ultimate smack in the face from an abused planet.

Think about this, the Eocene was 53 million years ago. Homo Sapiens developed anatomical modernity about 200,000 years ago. The sun has about 5.5 billion years worth of hydrogen left, give or take. It is conceivable that in the time from our demise another civilisation could rise. They will probably use the carbon, stored by the earth from our bodies to fuel their vehicles cause climate change and repeat the sad cycle again.

The earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago, she has run about half of her life, assuming dependence on the sun. Multicellular life is believed to have formed around 580 million years ago. I can’t do the sums but that is about 3.9 billion years for life to even start.

Six million years ago our ancestoral line diverged from that of chimpanzees. The earth was formed 4.5 billion years ago and the planet existed quite happily for 4.4998 billion years before we pitched up 200,000 years ago. For 5800000 years the planet suffered no lasting consequences of our ancestors existence. It would seem that in what the beat of a gnats wing Homo Sapiens have managed to despoil our planet almost to the point of no return.

There is an expression used in these parts, ‘You don’t shit on your own doorstep’. Well, it seems we do.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19077439

Skullduggery in ‘Old London Tahn’

I see the Chinese have come clean. The coach has apologised for telling his team the best way to win. Now, there are two ways of looking at this. The banning of the team from the games is, I would suggest, in the true spirit of the Olympic ideal. To be the best you can, compete fairly and with vigour against all comers to overcome.

On the other hand, in this day of professional sport (and I think I can take it as read that no-one imagines the Olympics are amateur) the goal is to come first at all costs without regard to rules that get in the way.

I hope that all teams, and individuals, learn that they live on the support of people who pay to see them perfom. To give less than 100% is disrespectful. I wonder what my employer would think if I decided to take it easy because I thought I didn’t need to work as hard as usual on any given day? He would stop paying me, and that is what the sports supporters should do.