Martin Wolf: Last chance for the climate transition – Financial Times*
/ includes links to Davos speeches by Thunberg and Trump cited by Chomsky
*a link – see a note on notes and links
*a link – see a note on notes and links
*a link – see a note on notes and links
image: still from the movie Lord of the FliesVery cool article about a real life “Lird of the Flies,” and how differently it turned out from the Golding novel. https://t.co/6ihgCNi6Gh
— Harry Litman (@harrylitman) June 10, 2020
Rutger Bregman:
This story never happened. An English schoolmaster, William Golding, made up this story in 1951 – his novel Lord of the Flies would sell tens of millions of copies, be translated into more than 30 languages and hailed as one of the classics of the 20th century. In hindsight, the secret to the book’s success is clear. Golding had a masterful ability to portray the darkest depths of mankind. Of course, he had the zeitgeist of the 1960s on his side, when a new generation was questioning its parents about the atrocities of the second world war. Had Auschwitz been an anomaly, they wanted to know, or is there a Nazi hiding in each of us?
I first read Lord of the Flies as a teenager. I remember feeling disillusioned afterwards, but not for a second did I think to doubt Golding’s view of human nature. That didn’t happen until years later when I began delving into the author’s life. I learned what an unhappy individual he had been: an alcoholic, prone to depression; a man who beat his kids. “I have always understood the Nazis,” Golding confessed, “because I am of that sort by nature.” And it was “partly out of that sad self-knowledge” that he wrote Lord of the Flies.
I began to wonder: had anyone ever studied what real children would do if they found themselves alone on a deserted island? I wrote an article on the subject, in which I compared Lord of the Flies to modern scientific insights and concluded that, in all probability, kids would act very differently. Readers responded sceptically. All my examples concerned kids at home, at school, or at summer camp. Thus began my quest for a real-life Lord of the Flies.
source: archived*
*a link – see a note on notes and links
2021-04-28 …Telegraph Obituaries, 23 April 2021:
Peter Warner, who has died in a boating accident aged 90, was an Australian sailor who made headlines around the world after rescuing six Tongan schoolboys who had been marooned on a remote Pacific island for more than a year.The story, widely compared to that of Lord of the Flies, William Golding’s dystopian 1954 novel about a group of British boys stranded on an uninhabited island, began in 1965 when the boys …*
from Joe Rogan Experience #1485* – Krystal & Saagar
Why Are Corporations Really Supporting the George Floyd Protests? https://t.co/jHH0Bn03ER
— Chris Hedges (@ChrisLynnHedges) June 15, 2020
*a link – see a note on notes and links
Engels left Manchester in 1870 and moved to Primrose Hill, London, where he held parties on most Sundays
In 1890 Friedrich Engels, co-author of The Communist Manifesto, celebrated his 70th birthday. ‘We kept it up till half past three in the morning,’ he boasted to Laura Lafargue, daughter of his old friend Karl Marx, ‘and drank, besides claret, sixteen bottles of champagne — that morning we had had 12 dozen oysters.’
This was not an isolated act of indulgence. During the 1870s his Primrose Hill home had become a popular venue for socialist excess. ‘On Sundays, Engels would throw open his house,’ recalled the communist August Bebel. ‘On those puritanical days when no merry men can bear life in London, Engels’s house was open to all, and no one left before 2 or 3 in the morning.’ Pilsner, claret, and vast bowls of Maitrank — a May wine flavoured with woodruff — were consumed while Engels sang German folk-songs or drunkenly recited ‘The Vicar of Bray’.
source: archived
Friedrich Engels and the Cheshire Hunt (!?)
*a link – see a note on notes and links
sung by John Potter
for more or less the same words, see sheet music*
Bray, UK (!m)
*a link – see a note on notes and links
video credit: Mark Rober*
not as much fun, but a simpler solution: place the feeder on a support far enough from anywhere a squirrel can jump from to reach it in one leap, and surround the support up to the height of the base of the feeder with single sheets of glass – each too wide for a squirrel to reach across – held in place only at the top and bottom
also: side-by-side pieces of lumber could hold the sheets of glass in place and allow easy removal for cleaning
also: side-by-side pieces of lumber could hold the sheets of glass in place and allow easy removal for cleaning
on second thought, just enjoy the video
*a link – see a note on notes and links
Marilyn Sewell mentions in passing some quiet support on a bad day from people at the Cadillac Café*
recently – from the publisher’s blurb:
In In Time’s Shadow, minister, author, and activist Marilyn Sewell reflects on the everyday … Using a variety of short literary forms, ranging from dramatic monologues, vignettes, and letters, to prose poems, fantasy, and more, Sewell’s fiction offers insightful, compassionate slices of life that will bring laughter and, at the same time, take you deeper into the mysteries of life … We love, we lose, we die, and through it all, we ask, “What’s it all about?” Sewell invites us to ponder with her and perhaps come to trust our common humanity and our most noble instincts.*
a while ago – from elsewhere:
original:
“An awe-filled agnosticism is perhaps the better part of wisdom,” says Rev Dr Marilyn Sewell (!?) of when one is, as she puts it, “entering the ground of the infinite with the powers of a finite mind.”
original:
When we venture into the Mystery, we are entering the ground of the infinite with the powers of a finite mind. An awe-filled agnosticism is perhaps the better part of wisdom. (!?)
*a link – see a note on notes and links
Here is the referenced piece by John Updike commenting on The Umbrella Man of 1963 pic.twitter.com/0C298A2Thl
— @hamiltonmorris (@HamiltonMorris) June 3, 2020
Josiah Thompson: Six Seconds in Dallas (!?)*
see also “Bubbles in the Surface of Circumstance” in a book by another author:
*a link – see a note on notes and links
Senator Booker starts at 35 seconds
This is a truly extraordinary speech. I’ve never heard anything remotely like it from a politician. It’s long, but it’s well worth it. It captures, like nothing else I’ve heard, the experience of growing up black in America.
—John Naughton*
Lawrence Hamm – a Newark, New Jersey, elder and longtime activist now challenging Cory Booker for a seat in the United States Senate (!?) – led the singularly nonviolent protest in Newark last week and said this to the New York Times:
People have a right to be outraged. … I would even say that it is unhealthy for people to repress their strong emotions.*
*a link – see a note on notes and links