Archive for the 'General' Category
90 billion barrels
Today the news was out that the US Geological Survey has provided new estimates for the nautural gas and oil reserves in the Arctic.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080724/ap_on_go_ot/arctic_oil
http://www.france24.com/en/20080724-arctic-vast-oil-reserves-energy-environment-gas-study-usgs-billion-barrels&navi=SCIENCES
Enough oil to cover demand for three (3!), yes, three whole years! Of course the irony of it all is that global warming caused — at least for an important part — [...]
Filed under: Environment, General, Politics | Leave a Comment
Celebration?
The T-Ford, the first mass-produced car, has been on the road for 100 years. This important date in transport engineering is being celebrated right now.
http://www.ford.com/about-ford/heritage/vehicles/100-years-ford-model-t-innovation/100-years-ford-model-t-innovation-688.
Or is it? Just 100 years!? It is totally incredible how the car has managed to completely ruin our world in so short a time.
Filed under: General, History, Obituaries, Things of beauty | Leave a Comment
Homer and astronomy
Constantino Baikouzis and Marcelo O. Magnasco have argued that the individual who described the killing of the suitors in the Odyssey (whom we know as Homer) has situated his story at a particular date, or rather at a specific moment in time, viz. a particular solar eclipse. I give you the authors’ abstract: ”Plutarch and Heraclitus believed a certain passage in [...]
Filed under: Archaeology, General, Greece, History, Religion | Leave a Comment
Extinct is forever part 2
There was a lot of attention in the media for the past few days being paid to the existence in the furthest reaches of the Amazon forest, on the border of Brasil and Peru, of Indian tribes which have lived there ‘isolated’ for many centuries at least. This is not true of course: they were [...]
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One sits behind one’s desk
This week an agreement was reached on a treaty banning cluster munitions. See Cluster Munition Coalition: http://www.stopclustermunitions.org/ and Human Rights Watch: http://www.hrw.org/doc/?t=arms_clusterbombs. Being a pessimist — as far as the future of our society and our world is concerned – I don’t think this means that cluster munitions will soon be a thing of the past, and if [...]
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Eleven elderly women were burned alive in Kenya because they were suspected of being witches. See the BBC news report: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7413268.stm. Typical for Africa, you say? Where believe in magic lingers on? Certainly many of the news reports on this sad occurrence carried overtones of “Darkest Africa”.
In France some 15 graves are desecrated every day (!) by [...]
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Surrealist, to be sure
Sotheby auctioned a hand-written copy of Andre Breton’s Manifeste du Surrealisme for 3,6 million euros. The auction house had valued the 21-page manuscript at 200.000 to 500.000 euros.
This is all SO ironic, considering the anti-establishment, especially anti-art-etablishment, character of the surrealist movement. Once again, it has been shown that money perverts all original thought. The only appropriate [...]
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PVV shows racist face
The Dutch right-wing party PVV, whose leader Wilders drew international attention with his anti-Koran movie Fitna (the stupidity of which was so glaring that even a majority of Muslims did not waste their anger on that, in spite of the insults), now shows its true face: they protested against the commemoration of North-African soldiers who [...]
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Extinct is for ever
The BBC World Service today quoted the Living Planet Index of the WWF and the Zoological Society of London as saying that between a quarter and a third of the world’s wildlife has been lost since 1970. Well within my life time, so the speed at which this is happening is truly staggering. The losses [...]
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History destroyed
Amidst sad news coming in about the destruction of human settlements in Birma and China, with enormous loss of life, today is commemorated the annihilation of the inner city of Rotterdam, not by the forces of nature, but by enemy action. German bombers wiped the heart of Rotterdam off the map in 15 minutes time. [...]
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