25 Jan 2011

Posted on by Duncan Toms

Steps I stepped: 4864. A walk around the supermarket this evening was 1300 steps. Step step step.

I’m so very tired now. If I write little bits of the blog during the day, that’s going to be easier.

Our new Outwell tent, porch, carpet and footprint arrived today. We haven’t opened up the bags but it’s looking like it’s very good quality. Little Danish flags on each bit of kit. I don’t like flags but on kit they say ‘good quality’, don’t they? Especially Scandinavian ones.

Nearly finished the yoga course. Today you are finally allowed to headstand after three weeks of preparation. Fair enough if you are new to it. The common mistake is headstand before one’s arms are strong enough, so too much weight comes through the head and neck. So this course builds up the muscles needed ahead of the short hold.

The foundations for the Pavilions project are proceeding. It’s really happening after some years of planning and permissions. Today there was a very long drill on site:

Who is the biggest polluter on the planet? The US Military. Not including all the contractors they contract, they are using up nearly a third of a million barrels of oil every single day. That’s preposterous.

Environmental journalist Johanna Peace reports that military activities will continue to be exempt based on an executive order signed by President Barack Obama that calls for other federal agencies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. Peace states, “The military accounts for a full 80 percent of the federal government’s energy demand.”

As it stands, the Department of Defense is the largest polluter in the world, producing more hazardous waste than the five largest US chemical companies combined. Depleted uranium, petroleum, oil, pesticides, defoliant agents such as Agent Orange, and lead, along with vast amounts of radiation from weaponry produced, tested, and used, are just some of the pollutants with which the US military is contaminating the environment. Flounders identifies key examples:

– Depleted uranium: Tens of thousands of pounds of microparticles of radioactive and highly toxic waste contaminate the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Balkans.

– US-made land mines and cluster bombs spread over wide areas of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East continue to spread death and destruction even after wars have ceased.

– Thirty-five years after the Vietnam War, dioxin contamination is three hundred to four hundred times higher than “safe” levels, resulting in severe birth defects and cancers into the third generation of those affected.

– US military policies and wars in Iraq have created severe desertification of 90 percent of the land, changing Iraq from a food exporter into a country that imports 80 percent of its food.

– In the US, military bases top the Superfund list of the most polluted places, as perchlorate and trichloroethylene seep into the drinking water, aquifers, and soil.

– Nuclear weapons testing in the American Southwest and the South Pacific Islands has contaminated millions of acres of land and water with radiation, while uranium tailings defile Navajo reservations.

– Rusting barrels of chemicals and solvents and millions of rounds of ammunition are criminally abandoned by the Pentagon in bases around the world.

…

So Wikileaks are due to release the tax records of 2,000 fat cats, potentially exposing large scale illegal tax evasion and money laundering. The guy who handed Assange the data has been charged with breaking Swiss secrecy laws. No one is safe.

In a carefully choreographed handover in central London, Rudolf Elmer, formerly a senior executive at the Swiss bank Julius Baer, based in the Cayman islands, said he was handing the data to WikiLeaks as part of an attempt “to educate society” about the amount of potential tax revenues lost thanks to offshore schemes and money-laundering.

“As banker, I have the right to stand up if something is wrong,” he said. “I am against the system. I know how the system works and I know the day-to-day business. I want to let society know how this system works because it’s damaging our society,” he said.

…

Today’s Watsky video. He kind of reminds me of Mike D.

24 Jan 2011

Posted on by Duncan Toms

I walked 4063 steps today.

I need to rest.

The two sentences above are not related.

25 Tons of Bombs Wipe Afghan Town Off Map

An American-led military unit pulverized an Afghan village in Kandahar’s Arghandab River Valley in October, after it became overrun with Taliban insurgents. It’s hard to understand how turning an entire village into dust fits into America’s counterinsurgency strategy — which supposedly prizes the local people’s loyalty above all else.

But it’s the latest indication that Gen. David Petraeus, the counterinsurgency icon, is prosecuting a frustrating war with surprising levels of violence. Some observers already fear a backlash brewing in the area.

…because obviously every single person in the town was a baddie.

Night night.

23 Jan 2011

Posted on by Duncan Toms

What’s going on? Two days without going out. Well, one trip out to the bathroom, down to Room 7 while the new tiles set in ours. Just four days left of the yoga course, day 23’s practice, focussing on leg poses, on getting up around 10. So quite a bit of reading, watching, listening and browsing today, along with sleeps whenever I’ve needed to.

24 years later, a video continuation of Fight for Your Right to Party starring Frodo and Seth Rogan. For real. Coming soon.

Got a spare hour and twelve minutes? Of course you haven’t. But if you have, this is a good watch, if just for the guided meditation at 20:00. He’s even talking about choiceless awareness at one stage. So many good lines in this speech by Jon Kabat-Zinn, talking at Google HQ no less. I have a lot of respect for the Mindfulness bunch. They always have the assumption of a witness, an entity beyond or above all this ‘small self’ stuff, but as far as it goes, this is excellent.

Came across George Watsky’s work. Rapper, poet, actor as far as I can tell. The rap stuff is kind of Geek Rap but not quite, and it’s very listenable. For sure not your average kind of rapper. “The ghost of Gandhi loves me”

He sure can rap fast (while stroking a cat):

Cities going bust:

$2tn debt crisis threatens to bring down 100 US cities

Overdrawn American cities could face financial collapse in 2011, defaulting on hundreds of billions of dollars of borrowings and derailing the US economic recovery. Nor are European cities safe – Florence, Barcelona, Madrid, Venice: all are in trouble

And a little old Frenchman writing about resisting the system that’s causing this mess, is breaking publishing records with his little red book:

Take a book of just 13 pages, written by a relatively obscure 93-year-old man, which contains no sex, no jokes, no fine writing and no startlingly original message. A publishing disaster? No, a publishing phenomenon.

Indignez vous! (Cry out!), a slim pamphlet by a wartime French resistance hero, Stéphane Hessel, is smashing all publishing records in France. The book urges the French, and everyone else, to recapture the wartime spirit of resistance to the Nazis by rejecting the “insolent, selfish” power of money and markets and by defending the social “values of modern democracy”.

The book, which costs €3, has sold 600,000 copies in three months and another 200,000 have just been printed. Its original print run was 8,000. In the run-up to Christmas, Mr Hessel’s call for a “peaceful insurrection” not only topped the French bestsellers list, it sold eight times more copies than the second most popular book, a Goncourt prize-winning novel by Michel Houellebecq.

If you like presidents and hams, look no further. This is indeed proof that Obama is NOT a muslim.

http://presidentialham.com/

How about this? 33 Classic album covers redesigned by artists:

http://cargocollective.com/thirtythreepointthree

And these are just the credits… imagine what the film is like… Enter the Void (at your own risk)

And finally did you know salads make you happy? They sure do. No joke.

22 Jan 2011

Posted on by Duncan Toms

An indoors day. Watching several episodes of Everest: Beyond The Limits. Why is it the only thing climbers think to say is: “There’s no one higher than me in the world!” “Top of the world, baby!” Such long queues going up and down, with gridlock at the Hilary Step, the last technical climb before the summit. People are leaving earlier and earlier to get ahead of the crowds. In Into Thin Air, they were leaving around midnight, and now some climbers leave around 21:00, meaning its still dark when they summit. Ummmm, a bit daft really.

The afternoon, researching tents with Caroline. I have a The North Face tadpole, a little green 1-2 man which isn’t so comfortable for two-man car-camping. On other trips we’ve borrowed one of the school’s, but we wanted one of our own. After looking around, fixing a price and checking reviews, we went for an Outwell Nevada M. This is a family tent, so loads of space. We got a deal that included a footprint groundsheet, floor blanket and front extension. As soon as it gets a bit warmer we’ll try it out, maybe on the Isle of Wight. It’s kind of both our birthday presents.

Otherwise, apart from the daily yoga, some browsing of the horror and the humour…

How not to streak:

The possible use of synthetic biology to clean up the Gulf oil disaster:

SYNTHETIC GENOME BIOREMEDIATION

Toxic crude oil and gas can be changed, altered, or eliminated by microbes. Natural microorganisms in all the oceans, such as bacteria, have been known to do this over time, usually lasting decades and beyond. It’s a slow natural process. Yes, natural biology can do the job, but under continual flow conditions there is no possible way all the hydrocarbon-hungry microbes in the entire world can eliminate that much oil and gas fast enough. Time is the critical factor.

For the past decade, synthetic biology has been the new science realm. We now have engineered genetic biology that synthetically creates RNA and DNA sequences for both viruses and bacteria.

In the 1980’s, the fad was designer jeans. Now, we have designer genes.

Soon after the Deepwater Horizon inferno, U.S. government scientists – with grant funds supplied by British Petroleum – started giving us solid clues as to what they were doing with all that crude oil and gas. In May 2010, National Geographic quoted Dr. Terry Hazen from the U.S. government’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who said,

“…we could introduce a genetic material into indigenous bugs via a bacteriophage – a virus that infects bacteria – to give local microbes DNA that would allow them to break down oil. Either that, he said, or a lab could create a completely new organism that thrives in the ocean, eats oil, and needs a certain stimulant to live…”

The robots to replace you:

Between the global economic downturn and stubborn unemployment, the last few years have not been kind to the workforce. Now a new menace looms. At just five feet tall and 86 pounds, the HRP-4 may be the office grunt of tomorrow. The humanoid robot, developed by Tokyo-based Kawada Industries and Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Sciences and Technology, is programmed to deliver mail, pour coffee, and recognize its co-workers’ faces. On Jan. 28, Kawada will begin selling it to research institutions and universities around the world for about $350,000. While that price may seem steep, consider that the HRP-4 doesn’t goof around on Facebook, spend hours tweaking its fantasy football roster, or require a lunch break. Noriyuki Kanehira, the robotic systems manager at Kawada, believes the HRP-4 could easily take on a “secretarial role…in the near future.” Sooner or later, he says, “humanoid robots can move [into] the office field.”

Incredible night time LED-lit surfing:

Mark Visser Rides JAWS at Night! from Fortrus Sports on Vimeo.

Chase No Face the mutant kitteh.

And, the funniest expression as this Weimaraner sniffs a fart:

21 Jan 2011

Posted on by Duncan Toms

The plan was to drive to Selborne, bus to Alton and walk part of the Hangers Way back to Selborne for 10 miles or so. It was so cold, grey, misty when we were waiting for the bus that we quickly decided not to do a long walk, instead scooting up the 250 year old Zig Zag Path to Selborne Common. It’s always a little spooky up there with the old trees, mosses, twisting parasite plants and enclosed feeling, and the mist only heightened that. Still, it was pleasant to walk for an hour, remembering our very first walk together in Rishikesh, nearly twelve years ago. That time and this, C got a thorn in her foot.

Scenes on Selbourne Common:

Two Tone Tree

Fallen Tree

View from the Zig Zag Path

Misty Selborne Common

Then we piled down the A3 to good old Pompey for some shopping and cinema. The big sports shop is closing down. We picked up a couple of camping mattresses for £7, a foot pump for £3. A solar pedometer for £5 and some camping cutlery for a quid.

Saw a film: The Kings Speech. It’s a good one, especially for anyone who, like me, is afraid of public speaking. Poor guy, muddling along as a mere Lord and next minute he’s the bloody King thanks to his love-stricken brother (who due to odd casting is way to young to be his older brother). The speech therapist comes across well, a healthy dose of irreverence to position and tradition within a kind heart, with real ability to help. The overall feeling is that despite privilege and power, these people are just like the rest of us. I also enjoyed seeing Helena in a non-weirded-out rol.

This was a great scene, where Lionel the therapist has been found out not to be an actual doctor, and due to appearances the King is dismissing him:

King George VI: [Logue is sitting on the coronation throne] Get up! Y-you can’t sit there! GET UP!
Lionel Logue: Why not? It’s a chair.
King George VI: T-that… that is Saint Edward’s chair.
Lionel Logue: People have carved their names on it.
King George VI: L-listen to me… listen to me!
Lionel Logue: Why should I waste my time listening to you?
King George VI: Because I have a voice!
Lionel Logue: …yes, you do.

and this:

Lionel Logue: [as George “Bertie” is lighting up a cigarette] Please don’t do that.
King George VI: I’m sorry?
Lionel Logue: I believe sucking smoke into your lungs will kill you.
King George VI: My physicians say it relaxes the throat.
Lionel Logue: They’re idiots.
King George VI: They’ve all been knighted.
Lionel Logue: Makes it official then.

(See clip below)

But my favourite thing dear old Lionel said was:

“You don’t need to be afraid of the things you were afraid of when you were five years old.” How very true, yet here we are, children in adult’s bodies.

We left Portsmouth at sunset:

20 Jan 2011

Posted on by Duncan Toms

Pulled from dreams
Pull my limbs gently
Limber up
Up and at ’em
Computers and web stores
Indian and UK weddings
The main difference?
Bride and groom have never met
Lasagne and rota lunchtime
The best mopper she’s ever seen
No lunchtime walk
No lunchtime snooz
While the bathroom is being done
Thursday is my Friday
And bed before ten

‘Baby swinging’ video and interview

Posted on by Duncan Toms

http://img.mail.ru/r/video2/player_v2.swf?movieSrc=mail/mimozachina/2688/2690 Sorry, I couldn’t get it to embed.

Here’s an interview extract with the spectacularly named Lena Fokina, the woman in the video:

The first thing everybody here thought when they saw your baby-swinging video was “Holy shit!” Then they thought, is it real or fake? So: Is it real? If so, who is the baby?
The child was born in the Black Sea region. Her name is Platona, and she was two weeks old when we took that video. We have a lot of children like her here. They are early readers, singers, talkers, swimmers. You haven’t seen anything like it anywhere!! And there’s swimming with dolphins, scuba diving with them… Come to Dahab!

And are they early readers, talkers, and so on because of baby yoga?
Not only this. It’s just one reason.

What else makes them so talented then?
Love for each other and to one another.

I have two small children and I was, you know, careful with them when they were newborns. So it was hard for me to watch your video. It looks like it has to injure the child. Their hands? The cartilage in the joints? Their brains?
No. It makes the hands stronger.

Did you know that YouTube took the video down because it was in violation of their policy on “shocking and disgusting” content? What is your response to that?
Did they notice that the babies aren’t crying—they’re even laughing—and that this system has been used for over thirty years in Russia and the children are all alive and healthy? If you need more proof, the best thing is to come see us.

Have you heard from people who are upset about the video?
Everybody in Dahab is satisfied. What’s more, a British film crew made a documentary about us, and interviewed the parents.

At the end of your video, it looks like you’re trying to get the two-week-old baby to walk. Is mobility the goal of your baby yoga?
Yes, more mobility, and other goals. First off, more trained skills. Second, more freedom. Third, independence. We learn from nature and teach our offspring to survive. Come to Dahab; we’ll be glad to show our classes and our children. How old are your children?

Four and two years old.
The happiest age!

Da, da. You say you “teach offspring to survive,” but it looks like what you’re doing could kill them. Have you ever had an accident while swinging around a baby?
I don’t recall any. Another objective of our yoga: to teach parents and children to interact so that everything will be in harmony.

How much training do you need to do this baby yoga?
It depends on the sensibility of the child’s mother. Sometimes it only takes one training session.

Do you think mothers who are afraid of this kind of baby yoga just aren’t brave?
Yes, those people have problems of their own. One more objective here is to get the parents’ own activity and movement levels up.

From here.

19 Jan 2011

Posted on by Duncan Toms

Having completely not gone to my dentist check-up last week, I rebooked. In my mind, today’s the 12:50 appointment meant 13:50. So there I am outside a closed-for-lunch dentists, feeling sheepish. Then I thought, hey, I get £200 a year dental allowance, why am I going to this cheap-ass NHS dentist who rush me through a check-up and hygiene session in 10 minutes, with a dentist that changes every other year? So I’m looking around for a new one, and will probably go for one in Alresford.

C didn’t pass the driving test. She drove away from a zebra crossing while the pedestrians were still finishing crossing (over in the other lane). So while it wasn’t dangerous, it was breaking the law. The repeat test is in four weeks. But she had a good day for it, after all the rain. We had a deep frost followed by sun and a glowing sunset. Here’s the tower at around 08:20 this morning:

After my failed dental appointment I ate lunch in the Cathedral grounds. Leaning against the wall of an adjacent building, the sun-warmed bricks oozed into my back, while I sunbathed and ate. It felt like spring.

I’m not saying there is nothing in astrology but I don’t think there’s much wisdom in the ready horoscopes you get in papers and online. Perhaps as proof, here’s a graphic of analysis of 4000 ‘scopes. The grey words are common to all, the red words unique to a star sign:

…and this is a horoscope made from the 4000 samples:

…basically, feel-good common sense then.

Took a bath after work and read The Word Magazine. But what I really needed to do was rest my eyes from all the looking looking looking. C has a timer on her Mac for this – I need one for my PC at work to take a rest every hour, and micro-rests every ten minutes.

Meanwhile, back in 1997, on the train to work

Posted on by Duncan Toms

The next morning, a long long time later.

I walk to the front of the train looking for an empty four-seater section but no joy and I sit opposite a tired-looking man in a suit. He has dark putty arcs underneath each eye, cumulative lack of sleep. The same old thoughts going round and round have gotten to him. A girl over the aisle is chatting about work and about Christmas eve. Now she is yawning exaggeratedly. This is part of her conversation. Now she’s talking about golfing presents for Larry. When you are older, perhaps people will associate me purely with my pastimes. Perhaps they already do. But if you have no particular hobbies your present becomes ‘smellies’. Or socks. The Asian lady behind her looks more peaceful with a book, but the chatty girl also has an open book, thumb in the crease. The man she is talking at is now responding with one word answers while she gently massages her left index finger.

At Fareham she quickly moves her bag as lots of commuters board. My pack stays right where it is, on the seat to my left. Most people have a tabloid, necks bent forward, reinforcing their entrenched ideas about the world given by fathers with their tabloids. A woman is looking at the TV pages. No, a complete magazine dedicated to TV. TV Quick. TV, quick! The different channels are highlighted with pastel shades. Another man opposite looks vaguely permanently amused so I assume it is to do with me. Another man in cheap thermal gloves and rectangular glasses, light brown jeans and sensible brown shoes. His hair is thinning and his ears are pink from the morning chill. I realise mine probably are too. His interesting feature is his down jacket, not the shiney space age style of the clubber, but matt orange. The Simpsons stare at me from the TV mag. I once thought they were radioactive, that was why they were yellow.

The train moves on through the urban scenery. On boarding, it was dark hedges and shabby woods, green fields and mist. Now its rows of back-to-backs and NO BALL GAMES housing, brightened by coloured panels fading fast. A red brick church, but they didn’t bother with a tower or spire. The crows have gathered in the corner of the football pitch and then we are back to the terraces of houses, viewed from the back as we move south on Portsea Island.

Meanwhile, back in 1997, on the train home

Posted on by Duncan Toms

We want to escape from suffering as fast and thoroughly as possible. Therefore pleasure is demanded.

On the train after a normal day at work with the telephone, the brokers, the accounts and the incessant chat about shopping and television. Keep out of it. Another train flashes by in the opposing direction. My back is aching slightly and eyes smarting. A man itches his head, concerned for his hairstyle. The train slows for Hilsea, the industrial estate stop. My thoughts turn to my brother who I must phone tonight; since moving I haven’t really kept in touch. Thinking ahead to the two mile walk to home, hoping the skies will be clear to view stars I don’t know the names of. SAVE US TIME. SAVE YOUR TIME. PLEASE SHUT THE DOOR. NO SMOKING. Danger Do not lean out of the window. Do not lean on open door when the train is moving. Everyone does when the train is stopping. Rush, rush, rush. Slow it right down. A girl with clipped back hair at the temples gets off. A woman with lanky hair gets on. I thought she was a teenage boy at first. We move on.

If the door is not properly closed and the train is moving DO NOT attempt to close it – use the emergency alarm. ALARM. Penalty for improper use £50. The train lurches to a stop. People look round, annoyed. I sit quietly, innocently. The Guard arrives with the ticket machine hanging from shoulder, grey coat for the cold, looking like a Russian policeman. Why did you pull the alarm? The door was open and the train was moving and I read the sign. Tuts and sighs and closing of the door. The train moves on. I match the stares from other passengers until one by one they all look away, concerned with their problems or what’s for tea. Hope it’s chips it’s chips. The idea of pulling the alarm chain fades as I realise I too would like to be home.

Deep blue train seats with purple and cyan railway-like patterns zig-zagging. How many arses have sat on them? Grubby black marks where the heads go. Sitting up straight, not wanting my head to touch the filthy grime. Another station. A pretty girl sits down opposite. I don’t talk to her or look at her directly but use the reflection in the dark window. I look at what’s going on in the world of the platform and the reflection of the girl I have named Kim.

Any passengers for Botley please alight from the front six coaches of this train due to the short platform at this station. Am I in the front six? I think so. Otherwise I’ll just jump out into whatever is at the end of the platform. A prickly bush. I loose track of which station is next.

18 Jan 2011

Posted on by Duncan Toms

The wind in the night woke me by opening and clunking the bathroom door. Awake at 0230 after a first and only cycle of sleep. Had a little browsing session. How about this for ultimate rock & roll? Perhaps the least rock performance one can imagine. One robot even smiles at one point:

How about this for a temple? I’ve never seen anything like it.

I’ve been reading on the new Kindle 3 for a few hours in total. Generally I am liking it a lot, comfortable to hold, adjustable font sizes. What I am missing right now is to be able to look at the book cover, something I do when taking a little break from the reading. I also like to be able to check ahead to see how far it is to the end of a chapter, to see if I want to pause now or later, or when deciding whether to start a new chapter. I also don’t like the fact that Kindle files are DRM, so I am going to check out this script to see if I can’t remove the rights. I also want to look into converting them to a non-hardware-specific format. I read that the iPad 2 will have four times the resolution of the current iPad. This makes it more tempting as an ebook reader. But how is it for long reads? I know my laptop screen makes my eyes a little sore after a while.

At work: collecting texts for Ray to edit a new book. In the afternoon as usual working on a transcript, discussions with Brockwood staff in 1976: “Intelligence is perception and action, no ideation.”

Baked potatoes in the over; the room smells delicious. And just as I write ‘delicious’ the timer buzzed, so… spud break!

We received the invite to J & M’s wedding in May. I’m going to be an usher, with J’s brother. The wedding itself is on HMS Warrior at Portsmouth Harbour. This means no confetti, balloons or other corny crap. They used one of C’s images for the invites:

Later, watched more episodes of Everest ER