Hmm…

Brazil blackout cause uncertain, president says

Brazil says it will voluntarily cut carbon emissions by at least 36 percent

This… means… something!

Hemlock and a Straw, Please

My bookshelf is populated mainly by volumes I’ve read at least once.  Every now and again I realize that I’m missing some prized volume, either given away or lent permanently; conversely, on rare occasions I find something I’ve never managed to read that has been patiently waiting years for my attention.  Yesterday I discovered that have and have never read Phaedo.  Given the topic of discussion, I’ve made a mental note to return to this volume in the days before my own death, should I be so forewarned.

Lately I’ve been giving myself over to small pleasures.  [Is this behavior philosophical?  Depends upon your school.]  Today’s was the first cool morning of the season, and I relished taking the hot coffee tumbler in my cold hands.  Disgusted at long last by both AM and FM talk, I’ve tuned my car radio to a place it’s never before been, the Jazz station.  [Excepting this announcement I'm keeping that to myself; like sports and television, Jazz grows harder to like the more I hear others gush about it.  (Come think of it, the Internet probably killed TV for me.)]  Tomorrow I plant to visit the zoo for the first time in a long while.  (With any luck, I’ll catch the tortoises at feeding time; watching them sprint for lettuce never gets old.)

I’m leaning against buying the new Super Mario Bros. You can’t go back, and the same money buys me a copy of BattleTech: 25 Years.  If I’m going to spend money on something I won’t have time for, it should at least look impressive on my bookshelf.

Rogue Stealth

I can’t be the only one to wonder whether Palin is pulling a Colin Powell, but I haven’t seen the suggestion anywhere yet.

Mexico Delenda Est

Is Mexico about to fall?  The Atlantic asks, and answers: “Stay tuned.”

Two lines of graffiti summed up a place where not only law and order but civilization itself has broken down: Mi ciudad pide clemencia en su dementia (“My city asks for mercy in its madness”), and Mi ciudad es un negro lamento un aullido infinito (“My city is a black lament, an eternal howl”).

I’ve actually been to a (different) country that was at the time spiraling down the vortex of the war on drugs.  The great pity is that Mexico isn’t so much a poor country as a rich country with many, many poor people.  Can a large nation survive the complete corruption of its army and civilian government?  We’ll soon know.

Wheelchair Hunt

I’ve never been prouder.  What a country!

A New Jersey judge says a quadriplegic blocked from buying a gun to go hunting has the right to bear arms even though he will have to use a wheelchair mount to use the firearm.  He plans to mount the gun on his wheelchair and operate it with a breathing tube.

Armistice Day

I’ve decided to spend my holiday reading We, a frightening glimpse of a future ruled by mathematicians.  I’m reminded of a quote [I've forgotten whose]: just as lawyers were the ruling class of the United States, the Soviet Union was ruled by her engineers.

Addendum 11/12: I just noticed that “I-330″ is penciled onto the cover of the library’s copy.  I probably saw it earlier and took it for an indexing device of some sort, but in this strange novel “I-330″ is the name of a character.

First the Fall of Rome, now this?

Did Christianity Cause the Crash? From The Atlantic:

Back in Mexico, Gonzales’s pastor talked only about “Jesus and heaven and being good.” But Garay talks about jobs and houses and making good money, which eventually came to make sense to Gonzales: money is “really important,” and besides, “we love the money in Jesus Christ’s name! Jesus loved money too!” “It doesn’t matter what country you’re from, what degree you have, or what money you have in the bank,” Garay said. “You don’t have to say, ‘God, bless my business. Bless my bank account.’ The blessings will come! The blessings are looking for you! God will take care of you. God will not let you be without a house!”

Many explanations have been offered for the housing bubble and subsequent crash: interest rates were too low; regulation failed; rising real-estate prices induced a sort of temporary insanity in America’s middle class. But there is one explanation that speaks to a lasting and fundamental shift in American culture—a shift in the American conception of divine Providence and its relationship to wealth.

I think of a Catholic and a Protestant view of wealth; that is, the Catholic sees his faith as a means of coping with poverty while the Protestant views faith as its cure.  (Mine is an American prejudice; European Protestantism is admirably dour.)  But this isn’t a recent “shift”; the Prosperity Gospel has been popular in America for at least a hundred years.  Is there a sect out there that teaches Jesus as a lover of the status quo and a hater of uppity idealists?  Now there’s a religion with unlimited growth potential!

Tortured English

Just started Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun.  First reaction: while Science Fiction is by no means the only offender in this regard, I’m immediately suspicious of any book that flatters me for reading it (with a spattering of word games throughout the text).  Discerning readers should be rewarded, not congratulated.

Second reaction: I wouldn’t even have noticed, but Wolfe puts so much into his Latin-root neologisms that the use of excruciate for torture not involving an actual cross seems unnecessary, and practically invites nitpicking.

Addendum, 11/10: I think I’ve figured it out.  Wolfe is trying to re-create the experience of reading Dumas after one or two years of High School French.

Bears Weigh in on Kashmir Question

Delicious:

The militants had made their hideout in a cave which was actually the bear’s den, said police officer Farooq Ahmed.

The dead have been identified as Mohammad Amin alias Qaiser, and Bashir Ahmed alias Saifullah.

“Word spread in the village that Qaiser had been killed by the bear,” another police officer said.

A joint party of the police and army personnel went into the forest and collected the bodies of the two militants.

Police say they also recovered two Kalashnikov assault rifles and some ammunition from the hideout.

Further south, the government of Sri Lanka, having acheived the impossible in suppressing the decades-old Tamil uprising, aim to conquer a still more indomitable foe, sin.

Terrorism had been defeated and tobacco,alcohol and drugs would also be eradicated with stringent measures.

NATA Coordinator Dr. Prasanna Cooray said the Act. 27 on the National Authority on Tobacco and Alcohol of 2006 prohibited the sale of tobacco and alcohol to any person under 21 years of age but some of the companies and individuals selling these products were using ruses to go round the law in promoting these products. Therefore, it would be necessary to amend the Act to strengthen it though some positive results were obtained by this Act.

Good luck with that, guys.  Sometimes it’s good to quit while you’re ahead.  Ask the bear-martyrs.

Smokin’!

I’m pretty indifferent to the article, and to the issues mentioned therein, but the poster image that Slate is using on its homepage is gangbusters.