Business models.

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People's  Climate March, September 21 2014.   One or two of us were surprised there weren't more people out: I ain't complainin' y'unnerstan', just sayin'. ... This is what Love looks like? (Oh please.)   Thanks to Gordy for sending me this (he called it "an answer to the video promoting the People's Climate March" which I had sent him): The Last Gasp of Climate Change Liberals, Chris Hedges, August 31 2014. Then, wondering what Chris Hedges did during the march, led me to this: The Coming Climate Revolt, Chris Hedges, September 21 2014; and, a video of the entire panel discussion. I am going to leave all of that with you to draw your own conclusions (or not, as you wish). "Don't make principles of your incapacities." Good advice. (Thanks to Daphne Savides.) "Small, self-sustaining communities" looks like a key ingredient. Where do they come from I wonder? How does one set about finding or establishing such a thing? (I do wish there really were a catcher in the rye.) It's a Hard Rain's A'Gonna Fall. "It was the best of times,  it was the worst of times,  it was the age of wisdom,  it was the age of foolishness,  it was the epoch of belief,  it was the epoch of incredulity,  it was the season of Light,  it was the season of Darkness,  it was the spring of hope,  it was the winter of despair,  we had everything before us,  we had nothing before us,  we were all going direct to Heaven,  we were all going direct the other way ..."   (Charles Dickens begins 'A Tale of Two Cities') Global Climate Convergence: People's Climate March: Global Climate Convergence website. Two excellent concepts, two separate cross links, no apparent synergy or What's up   It's OK to ask for donations. Almost anyone with enough sense to have cash to donate in the first place knows that it takes money to turn the wheels. But, if the asking is too far towards the front then you must be aware of the risk of appearing either desperate or ungracious. Five years on and the map Are you I observed in 2009 that 350.org occupied more energy counting web hits than fixing community platforms are just like Facebook - For show Two Solitudes? People's Climate March website. organizations, no evident unity, minimal any'a that stuff. with that? If you want to evaluate whether or not a website 'works' you have to use it; and if you are using it repeatedly as you analyse you may want to guard against whatever skills you develop to get over the rough spots. This can be difficult if you are also the developer. interface still doesn't work?! kidding me? the high ground, but seemed to spend or tuning up the web presence. All of these nothing but consultant's handkerchiefs. not blow. Is That It?

If Obama were the leader we hoped for he would have led the march Sunday; as it is the situation continues problematic, desperate, hopeless - call it what you will. We Are Being Governed To Extinction. (By our public servants, our economies, and our own incontinent reproduction & consumption.)   Recent science around ocean heat sinks gives us a short breathing space - maybe as much as a decade. See:     Global warming slowdown answer lies in depths of Atlantic in The Guardian; and,     Varying planetary heat sink led to global-warming slowdown and acceleration in Science. I asked the authors for a copy (the pay wall is 20$US) but they haven't answered.     And Why Global Warming Will Cross a Dangerous Threshold in 2036 noted previously. Do American scientists laugh sardonically when they see the 'Scientific' in 'Scientific American' I wonder? A friend bought me a subscription (which I have urged him not to renew) and Michael Mann's article is about the only one in six months and more on the preeminent scientific issue of our times. This month's cover (to the right) perfectly crystallizes it: "The remarkable 7-million year story of US." :-) Is publication in Scientific American a sort of rule-of-thumb for estimating venality? But the breathing space really isn't - the heat is not vanishing or disappearing, just leaving centre stage, temporarily. Robert Lifton, a (to me) perspicacious observer, describes what he calls The Climate Swerve. Totting it all up though, looks like too little too late. I'd guess we'll be depending upon the four horsemen - if they can just mobilize quickly enough. So ... Ebola and ISIS.     COME ON DOWN! Made necessary by a billion or so complacent, self-indulgent arseholes: Not so very different from me.   But if Ebola & ISIS fade, then we'll just have to go at it 'grassroots': On the screen: Batman.                                                                     In the audience: Tarantino. New Age Lecture: Never look a street kid in the eyes.         It's a risky practice ... ... that might even humanize the weakest among you. Nature abhors a vacuum: Rupert Murdoch leaves a sort of vacuum wherever he goes ... and The Guardian is kindly stepping in to fill it up: Lesbians know the secret to the best orgasms you’re not having. There is also the enigmatic conclusion to Blake's 'Nobodaddy' of course, which might bear on this obliquely. (See previously.) Did you come? I came.  Did you come madam? I came.  Did you really come? I came.  Are you sure? In humans the male orgasm is unmistakable (even the so-called 'ruined' male orgasm described in the Guardian article above) while whatever experience corresponds in females is not. (And "Are you sure?" says Laertes' cat.) How much of what we know is driven by this simple fact? The Guardian editors are indulging all sorts of dubious shit (in addition to Anglo American):     Don’t fear growth – it’s no longer the enemy of the planet by Chris Huhne, ex-UK Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change who still believes (or more likely pretends to believe) the nonsense arguments around decoupling & technology of a few years ago which have been thoroughly debunked by professionals.     Help small island states win their battle against climate change, whose author has not figgured out yet that low lying island states are already toasted. The acronym he introduces, Sids - for Small Island Developing States - has already been used, for AIDS. Nevermind that 'developing' or not simply has no bearing. Truth is, this is a VERY serious defecit. The New York Times folded about a year ago and now The Guardian is spiralling after them. So there is now no even remotely comprehensive and/or dependable international purveyor of news on the environmental (and related) issues which are the determinants of humanity's future on this planet. BOOM!  And this is a vacuum that no one is stepping into to fill. The 'alternative' press in k-k-Canada is a joke, see: Rabble dot Ca(ca) and The Tyee. Oh my. Maybe it just doesn't matter anymore. Maybe it really is too late. Easy come, easy go.   All good. I never came like that with anyone!                     Are you messin'with me? !! Sarah Vaughan (1924-1990): Her They Can't Take That Away From Me convinces me, touches, moves; Ain't Misbehavin' don't. She started out with gat teeth (like the Wife of Bath) but somebody (as part of a business plan no doubt) had them 'fixed'. She liked it in Brazil. I wish I could find a picture before they did her teeth. This has all gotta wrap up soon I think. The laptop is showing the signs of immanent demise and I won't replace it. I've begun keeping a flash drive copy and theoretically I can use that on one of the 'free' library-provided computers to keep the rhetorical Boobage going, but ... does the edifice merit the effort? Not according to returns. Meh! I do still have the tooth of a sperm whale that Pius gave me. Neither Gregory Peck nor John Hurt portrays the Ahab I remember from Melville - but I read it a long time ago. Ishmael is easier. The pharmacist in the shop beside my apartment in Ipanema was named Ishmael. I told him about Moby Dick and we had some good chats. I went back to see him a few years later and they just told me "O Ishmael, ele faleceu." And the ah ... stress ... is manifesting. Little things come undone: fretting over the upstairs neighbour watering her plants and splashing on my windowsill; snapping at the librarian who seems to treat me like an idiot (which would be, of course, perfectly apt) and then having to apologize; reluctant to bathe because it seems like every time I get into the shower someone in the building flushes and I get scalded; hurt that the cigar smoking gent on the bench doesn't remember our previous chats. It takes (only, just) two to tango. [How fiercely she hated me when I would say that.] Lively Up Yourself! Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, Fela Kuti - what have they got in common that could possibly fit into a topic like 'Business models'? A:   Lots of women & children - and some curious squarings of their sexual desires with their ... gods, religious ideologies, whatever. The details of these rationalizations are interesting - follow them up and find out if you want to. [I leave a note for myself: "Correctitude viewed as a pachinko variant, pinball," and now have no idea what it means? It can stay, maybe something'll float up after a while.] Difficult not to be distracted by the tragic story of Fela's AIDS. It is so integrally connected. Ditto Bob Marley's toe. I met a Brasilian guy claiming that it was Caetano Veloso who killed Bob Marley - stepped on his foot playing bola on the beach he said. Comparisons with Charlie Manson are inevitable too I guess. It's dodgy territory gentle reader. Feeling around in the dark in the central control box there is always the chance of shorting out a 25 kV main bus and those fuses go off with a bang. They say 'The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse'. But 'apocalypse' is no more than Greek for 'discovery'. What's up with that? Either 'Four Horsemen of Armageddon' or 'Four Horsemen of Ragnarok' seems more sensical. I like it when Bob Marley sings "Armagedd-eeon". Of all the things I lost I miss my mind the most. Be well gentle reader.

 
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Te-oo banches o' voylets trad in the maad.

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Two Weeks To Go.   Make Up Your Mind! The People's Climate March website is replete with good information. The good folks at 350 Toronto are coordinating return bus from Toronto and lodging in NYC including on-line ticketing. If you can't get to NYC, please find a way to support this important and historic event.  In Toronto Avaaz, 350 & Greenpeace are organizing a solidarity march: Sunday, September 21 @ 1:00 pm, Nathan Phillips Square/In front of City Hall. Call this 'the ground' or 'the range' or 'the domain' ... whatever: Here's 1$ after bank charges - 25¢.   [I was going to explain but you get it, right?] And this, a preliminary vision of Saint George: It doesn't make the least difference to me if Marina is a candidate.   A brief digression through Canadia & Austria: Tony Abbott’s scientific and business advisers at odds over climate change. Hahahaha, that's funny - The Guardian changed the headline - on the 17th it was "Australia’s chief scientist tells PM's business adviser to stick to economics". We certainly don't want to insult Maurice and make him feel stupid do we? Dallying with cynicism: Attention.                     When the Herald blows the trumpet                                     I want you to give me all your love.       Blow Herald. Dallying with dalliance: It looks like Brasilians have a real choice for their next president on election day, Sunday October 5th (and possibly again in a run-off Sunday October 26 - a simple majority doesn't do, must be more than 50%). How long has it been since there was a really really REAL election anywhere in the so-called free world? Where the candidates are far enough apart that you can actually see light between them? If you don't vote in Brazil you are penalized, quite heavily - both fines and loss of perks; so nearly everyone will vote. Marina's candidacy is being reported just a few days old in English in instruments like The Wall Street Journal - this is news in itself. [The link may lead to a pay-wall but the article is not really worth archiving. Standard bumph. The important thing is seeing Brazilian news in English the day after it happens. That is noteworthy.] Her running mate is Beto Albuquerque; from the south, Passo Fundo (350 clicks north west of Porto Alegre where Verissimo comes from); and a socialist, or rather a Socialist. Could this be the long awaited emergence of a New Left equal to the name? Is this the Second Coming? Many of the cartunistas are not being kind to our Marina; everything from 'communist threat' to 'Madama of La Mancha' - conservative bunch I guess. It could be a secular backlash at her christianity, or ... fear of change? Dunno. Interesting (a uniquely Brasilian sensibility I believe) that her racial features are often exaggerated, caricatured, but without the bigot edge. Anyway, Luiz Fernando Cazo & Reginaldo Moreira seem to have it about right: Analysts say that Marina's entry will make things worse for Dilma and Aécio: It looks like there will be a struggle in the middle of the field. [In the upcoming debates] Dilma intends to leave the direct confrontation with Marina to Aécio: You go first! Ibope [Brazilian pollsters]: Marina will beat Dilma in the second round. [Since this cartoon was drawn the 29% has gone to 33%.]   Notwithstanding a suspicion (verging on outright prejudice) of anyone carrying any religious imprimatur whatsoever but especially of all officially certified Romans, Moslems & Evangelical Protestants; Notwithstanding a pronounced pretty princess psychological pathology known as the 'Fuck Little Miss Muffet AND The Tuffet She Rode In On' syndrome; Notwithstanding a 0% success rate on rubbings of various old lamps found on beaches and a firm conviction (if only occasionally deployed) to be careful what you wish for; IF I WERE a prayin' man and thought it would help Marina, I would be down on my knees. Silly eh?

 
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