Sept. 11, 2001 re-embedded

It's Sept. 11 again -- the day in 2001 on which the demolition of the world trade towers in New York took place. Approximately three thousand died at four sites on that day. Again and again the "terrorists" have been named and blamed.

I wonder if the terrorists will ever be named.

Yes, I am one of the few who feel more trust in the science adduced or demanded and the insurance payments made. [Interesting how many links have been disabled since I last tried to look up a really good documentary that came out shortly after the tragedy. I believe copyright is the most frequent excuse.]

I do not generally leap on any conspiracy bandwagon that comes along. In this case ... well, the evidence I recommend anyone with energy to look up (engineers, chemists, demolition experts ...) makes this case different.

Asbestos abatement ain't cheap. An eight billion insurance payoff might be nice.

Neatly snipped steel I-beams....
A mesh embedded specifically to ward off errant projectiles ... like planes.

One (but not the one I wanted) documentary.

rarest and most secret silk

Chiara Vigo at her 200-year-old loom.

For 24 generations, the secret has always lain with the women.  Royalty and pontiffs have been recipients of sea silk. It is mentioned in holy texts. But it has never been sold -- that would defy the magic. Now the tradition hangs, as it seems, by a thread. Why is it that a good secret cannot simply be protected and left to rest?

“If you want to enter my world, I’ll show it to you,” [Chiara Vigo] smiled. “But you’d have to stay here for a lifetime to understand it.”

Byssus, or sea silk, is one of the most coveted materials in the world – but after more than 1,000 years in the same matrilineal family tree, this ancient thread may soon unravel.

Vigo has been offered enormous prices. Of course she turned them down.

 

erase the blackboard

I suppose it's an old-fart's plaint, this image that came to mind this morning ... of the grade-school days when, at the end of all those academic throes, some child would be assigned to erase the huge blackboard at the front of the room. Math, English, science, geography ... all the hard work that had filled the space, been erased, been written over, been improved ... during the day would be eradicated.

The eradication might be half-baked and accomplished with erasers, which would leave behind a sheen of not-quite-clean dust ... OR ... a wet cloth might be applied and eradicate figures, letters, outlines, dust and whatever all else and take the blackboard back to a black tabula rasa. Black, black, black. Clean and new, as if it had never been used.

These days -- specifically today -- I wonder if someone might not just eradicate everything and begin again. No more Donald Trump and his ill-educated tap-dancing; no more North Korean playtime threat; no more multiple hurricanes swirling in and around the Caribbean; no more additional troops to Afghanistan; no more military equipment for police departments around the country; no more hard-luck stories of coal miners or others trying to get by; no more Democrats or Republicans; no more TED talks ...

Erase it all and begin again ... assuming I'm around and have not been likewise erased.

Silicon Valley welcomes right wing

The leaders of the world’s biggest technology companies are liberal on social issues and trade, but anti-union and anti-regulation.
... [M]any online services now prize “personalisation” above all else. And the last thing the entrepreneurs of the gig economy want is trade unions enforcing collective bargaining, bringing legal pressure to protect workers’ rights and generally putting sand in the gears of disruptive innovation.
The Silicon Valley moguls will doubtless eventually have their way with the Democrats, just as the Koch brothers have theirs with the Republicans. That kind of money always talks, especially in American politics. But for anyone interested in workers’ rights and labour solidarity the prospects don’t look good. In Silicon Valley, it seems, trade unionists are yesterday’s men and women.

the handwriting is not on the wall

The increasing illegibility of students’ handwriting has prompted Cambridge University to consider ending 800 years of tradition by allowing laptops to replace pen and paper for exams.
Academics say that students are losing the ability to write by hand en masse because of their reliance on laptops in lectures and elsewhere.
Sarah Pearsall, a senior lecturer at Cambridge’s history faculty, said: “Fifteen or 20 years ago, students routinely wrote by hand several hours a day, but now they write virtually nothing by hand except exams.

This feels to me like a trend of the future and makes me wonder what happens when the electricity goes out.

gunmaker adopts 'most ethical sales policy'

Heckler & Koch, the German weapons manufacturer whose guns are estimated to have killed more than 2 million people since the company was founded in 1949, has quietly adopted the most ethical sales policy of any gunmaker in the world.
The company has pledged no longer to sell arms into warzones or to countries that violate corruption and democracy standards, including Saudi Arabia, Israel, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia, or any African countries.
Though never officially announced, the new strategy was included in Heckler & Koch’s latest yearly financial report, and confirmed at an annual general meeting in August.

Let me get this straight: There are "corruption and democracy standards" out there somewhere? On the other hand, if you go around shooting everyone, pretty soon there won't be anyone left to shoot.

platics invade salt

Sea salt around the world has been contaminated by plastic pollution, adding to experts’ fears that microplastics are becoming ubiquitous in the environment and finding their way into the food chain via the salt in our diets.
Following this week’s revelations in the Guardian about levels of plastic contamination in tap water, new studies have shown that tiny particles have been found in sea salt in the UK, France and Spain, as well as China and now the US.

Am I wrong or have all sorts of foods begun telling me on their packages that they contain (a good thing, I assume, since it's being advertised) "sea salt?"

reintroducing tigers

Leave it to Kazakhstan to lead the way!

Wild tigers are to be reintroduced to Kazakhstan 70 years after they became extinct in the country....
Poaching and habitat loss has decimated the wildlife on which wild tigers once fed, including the kulkan, or wild donkey, and bactrian deer, both native to central Asia. The animals will be reintroduced to the nature reserve to provide enough food for the tigers when they are relocated from elsewhere in Asia.

LGBTQ and free speech

Giving a TV platform to a ‘gay cure’ quack highlights a trend. The idea that free speech guarantees the right to incite hatred of minorities must be resisted

A well-argued column in The Guardian. It ranges well beyond the "gay cure" clap trap.

"flash drought"

The Caribbean may be in all but death throes as hurricanes racket around like pinballs, but in Montana, North Dakota and environs, a no-fooling-around drought has descended like the funnel of a tornado.

... [O]ne of the country’s most important wheat growing regions is in the grips of a crippling drought that came on with hardly any warning and, experts say, is without precedent.

the religio-wacko's are baaaaaack

Passed along in email and inspiring an oh-thank-god from me....

The religio-wacko crowd has belatedly gotten its act together and blamed the recent punishing weather of the Caribbean on the gays and transgenders who are so clearly responsible. Remember them? The sweet-Jesus ones who said god doesn't like the LGBTQ community and would pound the shit out of them as punishment?

Harvey, Irma and who knows what other frightening, stormy assaults ... duck and cover! Take that, you weird wonkers!

Seriously, I was almost lost without the biblical, idiotic claims. My universe was positively skewed. Now, all's right with the world. Climate change is bullshit once more and who and how you fuck is on the front burner where all saints and other fuckers deserve to be.

cop apologizes to friend he shot

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio (AP) -- A sheriff's deputy who mistook a news photographer's camera for a gun shot the photographer without any warning, according to video footage released Wednesday....

Shaw realized his mistake immediately as he rushed to the aid of the photographer, Andy Grimm, whom he knew, according to the video." Andy, I'm sorry, brother," Shaw said. "Listen, dude, you pulled that out like a gun out of the back of the Jeep." "I thought it was a freaking gun, Andy," Shaw said a minute later....

Later, Shaw is heard crying and praying that Grimm, who was shot in his side, will be all right. The deputy keeps pressure on Grimm's wound as he urges first responders to hurry.

Earlier stories indicated the community was a small one in which everyone knows everyone, including the two men in the incident. The wounded man is OK.

parasites under threat

Climate change could wipe out a third of all parasitespecies on Earth, according to the most comprehensive analysis to date. ... 

“Parasites are obviously a hard sell,” said Carlson. “Even if you are grossed out by them – and there are obviously downsides for individual hosts and for humans – parasites play a huge role in ecosystems.” They provide up to 80% of the food web links in ecosystems, he said. Having a wide range of parasites in an ecosystem also means they compete with one another, which can help slow down the spread of diseases.

“If parasites go extinct, we are looking at a potential massive destabilisation of ecosystems [which] could have huge unexpected consequences,” Carlson said, with other parasites moving in to take advantage. “That doesn’t necessarily work out well for anyone, wildlife or humans.”

dwindling legal precedent

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) -- A jilted husband's lawsuit against a doctor accused of stealing his wife's love can proceed, thanks to an appeals court ruling in North Carolina that lets people sue their spouse's lover and collect damages.

The state Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that a trial court was wrong to throw out Marc Malecek's lawsuit due to concerns about constitutional protections of free speech and free expression. The decision resurrects the case he filed over what he said was his wife's affair with a physician at the hospital where she works as a nurse.

North Carolina is one of about a half-dozen states that allow lawsuits accusing a cheating spouse's lover of alienation of affection and criminal conversation. Most other states have stopped allowing such disputes to go to court.

Uhhhhhhhhh.......

beyond my means

Digging into corruption ....

Here's an article from The Guardian that makes me applaud for thoughtful people, even when I can't possibly keep up with their thoughts and probes and hard work.

UK at centre of secret $3bn Azerbaijani money laundering and lobbying scheme

Exclusive: Leaked data reveals thousands of covert payments, including to European politicians and journalists.

It's enormous. It's ornate. And I'm sure those who worked on it feel they have barely scratched the surface of how this particular 1% operates. But all I can do is play the "dumb" card. I can't/won't connect the dots that I sense are important.

I salute those who worked and apologize to them for my faltering.

tax the robots that take the jobs?

...[O]ne official is pushing a statewide "tax" on robots that automate jobs and put people out of work.

third world war?

Alex Hern

Monday 4 September 2017 06.58 EDT 

Last modified on Monday 4 September 2017 09.15 EDT

Elon Musk has said again that artificial intelligence could be humanity’s greatest existential threat, this time by starting a third world war.
The prospect clearly weighs heavily on Musk’s mind, since the SpaceX, Tesla and Boring Company chief tweeted at 2.33am Los Angeles time about how AI could led to the end of the world – without the need for the singularity.

I'm not much of a fan of the womb-gloom-tomb persuasion, but I also find it hard to disagree with this particular fear.

PS. On a related note:

Anti-war activists have begun a week of protests in east London in an effort to stop weapons and military equipment arriving at Britain’s biggest arms fair.
The biennial Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI), which bills itself as “the world leading event” for buyers and sellers of military equipment, begins next week at the ExCeL centre in Docklands.
More than 34,000 visitors are expected to attend the arms fair, including delegations from regimes accused of human rights abuses such as Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, as well as representatives of the world’s 10 biggest arms companies.

Labor Day

The country’s first Labor Day parade in New York City on Sept. 5, 1882. This sketch appeared in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper.

If Labor Day (today) once honored the working men of the United States, well, a day of rest is hardly the meaning any longer ... any more than God's resting on the seventh day (Sunday) is a day for spiritual observance and reflection. Shop till you drop!

Still, it puts a quasi-focus on labor -- the folks who make whatever widgets need to be built and on the economic disparities that seemed to contribute to Labor Day's nationwide ascendancy.

I wonder: If "productivity" -- a buzz word on the labor front these days -- is largely defined by widget-producing management, at what point does labor get a chance to determine productivity of that management?

$100,000 prize waiting for your inner psychic

There's a $100,000 prize waiting for you if you can read minds, see the future or talk to the dead.

As long as you can prove it, that is.

Submit your superpower to scientific testing, and if you pass you'll be the first to win the prize in its 37-year history.

drinking at the 'bonus' trough

A bit more than anyone might want to know, but nevertheless, some heart-withering observations: 

When did executive 'bonuses' become standard and not earned? 
By Ian Verrender

Guardian photos

Naoshima island, Japan

A sculpture by the renowned Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama

Photograph: Belinda Merhab/AAP

Dorchester, UK

Mr & Mrs Flora are a show favourite at the Dorset county show

Photograph: Finbarr Webster/REX/Shutterstock

Geneva, Switzerland

Janus, the Geneva natural history museum’s two-headed Greek tortoise, is photographed on the day of its 20th birthday

Photograph: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images

Xi’an, China

Firefighters and excavators work to save a 20-month-old boy who got stuck in a disused well

Photograph: VCG/Getty Images

California, US

The La Tuna Canyon fire, one of the largest wildfires in Los Angeles’ history

Photograph: Kyle Grillot/Reuters

falling

A wonderful encouragement may be found in the Japanese (?) saying, "Fall down seven times, get up eight."

But in what way does it respond to the American TV advertiser who addresses the aging individual: "I've fallen and I can't get up"?

Such -- the latter -- is the world of my mind lately.

I told you god was pissed!

Does anyone else wonder ... where are all the apocalyptical, sky-is-falling-as-our-punishment Christians who told us in the not so distant past that God would rain all sorts of shit down on us?

The West is being fried and re-fried. Hurricane Harvey is dwindling in the environs of Houston, Texas, but Hurricane Irma seems to  be winding up for another wallop. And, for those interested in foreign climes and brown people, "A month of severe monsoon rains, which peaked earlier this week, resulted in the deaths of at least 1,200 people across India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, and left two thirds of Bangladesh underwater."

How come the we've-got-the-answers-so-send-your-money crowd isn't more vocal and smug? "We told you so!!!" Or maybe they are and I just missed it.

reconfigured "socialism" inches forward

Young Americans blame capitalism for crises in housing, healthcare and falling wages. Once demonised, the word ‘socialism’ is back as a new political movement takes root.

This feels as if it were true, though whether it will gain traction is another matter. Neither Republicans (the "no" folks) nor Democrats (who seem unable to capitalize on the stupidity of the Republicans) have found strong footing.

Am I wrong, or is this left-leaning wisp of a political cloud in for a reinvigorated lifestyle? They'd better lose the "socialist" moniker -- too freighted -- but the direction and desires (let's cut to the chase) strike me as correct.

Go get 'em, kids!

exhumation produces empty coffin

Sometimes the arrogance of those in power is breath-taking:

A mother who campaigned for more than 40 years to find out what happened to her dead baby’s remains has found out his coffin was buried without a body inside.
Lydia Reid, 68, was given a court order for the exhumation of the grave of her son Gary, who died at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Edinburgh in July 1975 aged seven days old. But no human remains were found.

covering up for an angel

What do the august realms of medical miracles and the biff-bam-boom concussions of American football have in common? Both, it appears, are purveyors of enormous denial and coverup and reek of the money and awe they can inspire.

The National Football League, to take the second first, has for a number of years bobbed and weaved as evidence mounted that concussions touched off by football play could deeply harm its players. And they were playing hardball.

Commissioner Roger Godell

The National Football League improperly tried to influence a government research center that was studying the connection between concussions and brain disease, according to a new congressional report released Monday.

The National Institutes of Health does not permit private donors to influence its peer-review research process, but the report from Democratic members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce said that the NFL rescinded a gift to the NIH for concussion research when it learned the study’s findings would be detrimental to the league’s image. ESPN reports.... [May 23, 2016 The Atlantic]

Like police departments everywhere, the NFL marshaled its forces into something resembling the "blue wall" -- the mafia's version of "omerta" or silence and obfuscation in the face of criticism. Science?! Fuck that! What would high schools/colleges/professional venues do without the Friday night game?

And then there is the sacrosanct realm of medicine:

Scientific pioneer, superstar surgeon, miracle worker – that’s how Paolo Macchiarini was known for several years. Dressed in a white lab coat or in surgical scrubs, with his broad, handsome face and easy charm, he certainly looked the part. And fooled almost everyone.
Macchiarini shot to prominence back in 2008, when he created a new airway for Claudia Castillo, a young woman from Barcelona....[The Guardian 9/1/17]

In both cases, big money and big ego are involved. Who has got the balls to turn off the money spigot ... or even dent such a holy environment? American football is the most popular sport in the USA. Millions of dollars are generated for TV and universities. Coaches make more than university presidents. And doctors rack up brownie points for the institution they are affiliated with and -- oh yes -- their own bank accounts.

The Guardian article is extremely well written and clear and, in some sense, terrifying. If patients cannot trust their doctors, whom can they trust? The bullshit "caveat emptor" can hardly apply when doctors, like police and football players, create their own wall of silence and agreement.

The corruption drip-drip-drips downward onto -- you get one guess -- the patient and his or her prayers. How many doctors can you consult in doing your "due diligence?" In the medical realm of "do no harm" there appear to be enough gradations of the word "harm" to leave even a Jesuit twisting slowly slowly in the wind.

no English-speakers need apply

There are several things that set my hair on fire about a BBC article that details various companies' banning certain words on their premises.

Apply for a job at Davio’s, a small chain of Italian-style steakhouses in the US, and you’ll never hear one extremely common workplace term: employee. That’s because CEO Steve DiFillippo has banned its use.
“I think ‘employee’ is an awful word,” he says. “Who wants to be an employee? It just isn’t something you strive toward.” Instead, those who work for DiFillippo are known as ‘inner guests.’

The obvious Orwellian "newspeak" is part of it, I suppose. But worse than that, from where I sit, is 1. the fact that there are idiots who actually buy into this upbeat pablum and 2. the fact that the reporting agency (the BBC in this case) makes no mention of the fact that the sole beneficiary of this linguistic corruption are the owners of the businesses that apply the thumb screws. If you use nice words, lower wages are less noticeable.

Company-wide bans have usually dealt with words or phrases that could bring negative associations to a brand. Documents released in 2014 as part of a General Motors' settlement with the US government revealed that the company had coached engineers to avoid 69 incendiary words and phrases, including ‘defect,’ ‘flawed’ and ‘death trap.’

I guess the signs will soon go up: "No English-speakers Need Apply." Everything will be one big Oriental group hug and translators will be in high demand ... though the word "translator" may be a bit too strong. 

OK, so now what?

Rattling around in my mind like a pinball is the query, "What happens to spiritual endeavor when the upside is OK, but no longer as inspiring, and the other side of the adventure, the slow side that slips away, tiptoes closer with the nearing of death....?"

Just thinking....

At my age, I am willing to say that spiritual life is a peculiar duck. It may walk like a duck and quack like a duck, but anyone claiming to know what that duck is, precisely, has become a captive to logorrhoea. After 50 years of sometimes intensive spiritual training, I really have gotten tired of people with answers, my own front and center. Imagine -- if there really were answers, why would we keep talking about the topic?

Specifically, as far as I can figure out, spiritual life, in whatever raiment, is delicious and inviting and perhaps consoling in its initial phases. But what about the further climes, where teeth get long, body slows down, pills multiply and the need to rely on answers dwindles? What is anyone supposed to do with spiritual life as death beckons? Beckons and, I suspect, chuckles gently.

At birth, no one is freighted with spiritual life, whether pro or con. Babies, if I get it right, are born with one life-affirming capacity: They know how to suck. Only later do Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Jain, Buddhist or other persuasions come into play. Babies know how to suck and there is no doubt about it. Spiritual life is all about doubt. What happens after death; how does anyone transcend a tragedy, what shape or emanation does a god take, etc.

In the beginning, the good news is scraped together like autumn leaves on the lawn. Rituals, texts, disciplines, singing, incense, penance ... all of it heaped together in a whisper and a promise: there is good news to be collated and assimilated. It is reassuring for the one who has outgrown diapers.

But then what? No one issued forth from the womb freighted with good news or bad and on the far side of what can be a steep and perilous and sometimes joyful climb, there is ... what, precisely? Answers have long since lost their credibility. Or rather, perhaps their credibility has shape-shifted. Answers are nice, but there is far too much evidence that answers are for the unwary and, perhaps, those who are merely terribly frightened.

I don't mind so much any more. Being scared is something I have done before and no doubt will do again, but time has passed and the "answer" to being scared is, as far as I can figure out, being scared. At 77, I don't feel comfortable burdening another person or entity with my lack of answers. Not having answers seems entirely sane, if not quite so consoling. Put another way, the only way to love god is to leave god out of it. Why? Because god seems to have done OK before I came along and seems destined to do OK once I am gone. Why ruin a nicely balanced balance?

Believers and atheists have the same problem: They have found or need an answer. But what's wrong with having a question that lacks an answer? My 50 years of spiritual adventure sits neatly next to the fact that I owned a lot of cap guns when I was a kid. I don't begrudge myself the cap guns and I don't begrudge myself the delicacies of spiritual life. It's a fact. Not an answer.

Imagine if your most heart-felt question had no answer. It might be galling at the outset, but in the end, isn't it a relief? And more than a relief, it has the advantage of being a fact.

"Gravy Wrestling"

You heard it right: "Gravy Wrestling." Leave it to the Brits.

Bacup, UK

Competitors take part in the 10th annual World Gravy Wrestling Championships at the Rose ’n’ Bowl pub. Contestants participate in fancy dress and wrestle in a pool of Lancashire gravy for two minutes while being scored for a variety of wrestling moves

Photograph: Oli Scarff/Getty Images

climate change barb

Here is a Guardian column about media-sponsored silences on the issue of climate change. I am too ignorant to know whether its premises are apt or inept, but it feels like something worth paying serious attention to.

Capitalism in the cross-hairs.

The nicest thing thing anyone can say for Hurricane Harvey, which is currently battering Texas, is that it washes away the unbridled attention paid to an unbridled president Donald Trump.