|
Another Dark Little Corner
|
||
Started this before change to "New Blogger", as backup in case of trouble with digiphoto blog "In a Small Dark Room", or rants & links blog "Hello Cruel World" . Useful - at one stage Dark Room was there, but like the astrophysical Dark Matter, we could't see it ... better now, but kept Just In Case.
MY OTHER PLACES
Hello Cruel World (mirror) Chris' Memorial Site In a Small Dark Room 
My Profile ...
 Systema Naturae 2000 
OTHER'S BLOGSMaking Light Neil Gaiman's Journal Creek Running North Nothing New (Bellatrys) Body & Soul Digby (Hullabaloo) OzBlogs Corpuscle Olympics Road to Surfdom M Klishis (Random) Uncertain Principles --> Respectful of Otters Respectful Insolence on Mbaye Diagne Orcinus  TinyURL — useful utility a Big Day To Main Page ARCHIVES 2002-10 2002-11 2003-03 2003-05 2003-06 2003-07 2003-08 2003-09 2003-10 2003-11 2003-12 2004-01 2004-02 2004-03 2004-04 2004-05 2004-06 2004-07 2004-08 2004-09 2004-10 2004-11 2004-12 2005-01 2005-02 2005-03 2005-04 2005-05 2005-06 2005-07 2005-08 2005-09 2005-10 2005-11 2005-12 2006-01 2006-02 2006-03 2006-04 2006-05 2006-06 2006-07 2006-08 2006-09 2006-10 2006-11 2006-12 2007-01 2007-02 2007-03 2007-04 2007-05 2007-06 2007-07 2007-08 2007-09 2007-10 2007-11 2007-12 2008-01 2008-02 2008-03 2008-04 2008-05 2008-06 2008-07 2008-09 2008-10 2008-11 2008-12 2009-01 2009-02 2009-03 2009-04 2009-05 2009-06 2009-07 2009-08 2009-09 2009-10 2009-11
There is nothing. There is no God and no universe, there is only empty space, and in it a lost and homeless and wandering and companionless and indestructible Thought. And I am that thought. And God, and the Universe, and Time, and Life, and Death, and Joy and Sorrow and Pain only a grotesque and brutal dream, evolved from the frantic imagination of that same Thought. Mark Twain (letter to Joseph Twichell after his wife's death) [me, on a bad day] WRITER'S LINKS Absolute Write Paypal donation button: Absolute Write is one of the leading sites for information on writing and publishing, especially the scam versions thereof. It has a broad, deep online community with an enormous message base going back years. Now it needs help. See the details and discussion here Preditors and Editors Everything you wanted to know about literary agents On the getting of agents Writer Beware Miss Snark Writer's Net (and my Wish List) 
|
2005-02-24
Different Lives Whew! How's that for The Onion. www.theonion.com/opinion/index.php?issue=4108&o=2 The Soapbox By James W. Henley "I Support the occupation but I don't support our troops" Fear, Loathing, and Great Reportingwww.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/shoptalk_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000809389 Dr. Hunter S. Thompson is most remembered for over-the-top writings and personality. But it's worth remembering that he was also a damned fine reporter, with a gift for details and one of the best crap detectors in history. by Sam Smith (February 22, 2005) -- One of the brightest lights in the American firmament blinked out Sunday. Word of Hunter Thompson’s death arrived at our house via the crawl on the network happy news this morning, and there’s irony enough in that fact alone. Hunter Stockton Thompson, the Good Doctor, is most remembered for his over-the-top tours des excès – "Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas" being the most famous. But it’s not the gonzo high spots I’ll remember him for. What has gotten so lost in the legend that Thompson became (and the self-parody he sometimes lapsed into later in his career) is that he was a damned fine reporter. 911digitalarchive.org and www.911digitalarchive.org/about What is a Backyard Habitat? One House Can Make A Difference! www.projex.com.au/wolfin/spec.html Wolfin is only sold to licensed Wolfin applicators. We recommend you check the license status with Wolfin Membranes Australia (phone 02 8336 1666 or email mail@projex.com.au ) because many applicators claiming to be licensed and/or experienced Wolfin applicators are in fact not – and therefore cannot be supplied www.livejournal.com/users/jmhm/ www.livejournal.com/users/jmhm/1231232.html Why did nobody report this? Well, as it happens, these parents were homeschoolers, so there were no mandated reporters to tell the state that the children were coming to school emaciated and with cattleprod marks and sans toenails. As a matter of fact, the Dollars were doing such a fabulous job as the completely unsupervised caregivers and homeschoolers and "biblical" chastisers of five children that they decided to become open a completely unsupervised Christian school www.tennessean.com/local/archives/05/01/65897337.shtml?Element_ID=65897337 Before they were accused of torturing five children, John and Linda Dollar ran a private Christian school out of their home near Knoxville. The Mountain View Christian School opened in fall 1999 in rural Strawberry Plains, about 15 miles east of Knoxville ... Children aren't that big. They're kinda likely to fall through when you take out all the boards between the cracks. The Labor Department is going to investigate why they've agreed to notify Wal-Mart fifteen days in advance of inspections as part of a settlement against Wal-Mart for underage labor violations. Yep. In order to keep from getting prosecuted, Wal-Mart was forced to agree that the Labor Department would stop checking if they're breaking the law www.nytimes.com/2005/02/21/politics/21walmart.html?pagewanted=all. The inspector general of the Labor Department has decided to investigate its agreement to give Wal-Mart Stores 15 days' notice before investigating any stores facing complaints of child labor violations, according to department officials. The inspector general's decision comes after lawmakers and children's advocacy groups criticized the department's settlement of child labor complaints against 24 Wal-Mart stores in Connecticut, New Hampshire and Arkansas. Without admitting any wrongdoing, Wal-Mart agreed to pay $135,540 to settle complaints involving 85 youths. 08:44 am February 21st, 2005 Alternative Minimum Tax The A.M.T. effectively sets up a parallel tax system for all households, in which few deductions are allowed. Taxpayers whose alternative tax is higher than their regular federal income tax must pay the alternative one. More ... 1950s or 1850s? webdiary.smh.com.au/archives/margo_kingston_comment/000280.html Mark wrote: "These people are supposedly so concerned about what their interest rates will be over the next three years that they are happy to leave to their children and grandchildren a world in which international relations looks more like the end of the nineteenth century than the end of the twentieth, and all that implies." Interesting. For some while now I've been contradicting people who say "John Howard wants to take us back to the 1950s", by pointing out that what his policies seem to prefer as a society is closer to the 1850s. Those who've read Dickens, Hardy, and perhaps a bit of social history would recognise the structure, with all the social and human gains (not to mention ecological awareness and new understandings in biology, psychology, comsmology, spirituality) bought with such struggle and cost stripped out. With all the lessons of both the evil and good humans can do denied and forgotten. Do you think we could characterise the current "Liberal" Party idealogues as following the philosophy of Harry Lime, who dismissed several hundred years of peace and justice as only producing cuckoo clocks? Posted September 27, 2004 10:11 PM [tag: history][tag: politics] More ... 2005-02-23
A few interesting things, including reflections on some unpleasant numbers How to Write an Epic Poem http://www.ehow.com/how_3334_write-epic-poem.html Related eHows: Write a Short Story http://www.ehow.com/how_3337_write-short-story.html Write a Sonnet http://www.ehow.com/how_3335_write-sonnet.html Write a Haiku http://www.ehow.com/how_3336_write-haiku.html Find a Literary Agent http://www.ehow.com/how_2716_find-literary-agent.html Write a Limerick http://www.ehow.com/how_3332_write-limerick.html http://elisson1.blogspot.com/2005/02/on-friday-we-blog-them-cats.html Another Friday cat-blogger - see also http://www.flickr.com/photos/49756365@N00/4193674/ (Marble eyes - cat photo) see also http://www.flickr.com/photos/plebon/4149980/ for another cat photo from a contact of mine. Readers Digest building garden waterproofing - the home page http://www.projex.com.au/wolfin/ Collection of links to arty blogs (much in French) http://awad.over-blog.com www.fotocompany.com (the other kind of arty pictures ... ) ( some pretty flowers at http://www.arcticzoo.com/archives/2004_01.html along with some other links, thoughts & stuff that it find mildly interesting ) Some observations from an absorbing discussion thread at Whatever, John Scalzi's blog. http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/003416.html The state that has the lowest incidence of divorce in the US is Massachusetts, which as we all know is so flamingly liberal that they even let the gay people get married, to other gay people, even I call myself a recovering catholic. Being a recovering catholic is like being a recovering alcohilic; If you're an alcoholic, you're always an alcoholic, you're just in recovery; the same thing goes for being catholic. Getting a Sense of Proportion (A very dangerous thing, according to Douglas Adams, see HHGG2 ) You are here (Solar System) http://www.troybrophy.com/projects/solarsystem/index.html This is a work in progress... 1 pixel = ~1,000 km; images are to scale with each other (This page does not display properly in Safari and Opera; they do not support super-wide tables or images, apparently.) http://www.troybrophy.com/projects/solarsystem/planetaryscale.html 1 pixel = ~1,000 km; planet sizes are approx. to scale http://www.topleftpixel.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=239 A PhotoShop tutorial on processing a very popular image from topleftpixel. And the unpleasant bit, not an unexpected set of stories, but good to see that some people are picking them up. http://suburbanguerrilla.blogspot.com/2005/02/in-memoriamtoday-im-going-to-d o.html Monday, February 21 was "Presidents' Day" holiday in the USA. This may be looking at the effect of the current president. Some extracts. (NB these are US casualties, we're not looking at Iraqi civilians, etc, here.) The site has links to different sources. "It's difficult to estimate what the total number is," says John Pike, director of a research group called GlobalSecurity.org which publishes an informed estimate that goes well beyond what the Pentagon has released. "You have to say that the total number of casualties due to wounds, injury, disease would have to be somewhere in the ballpark of over 20, maybe 30,000," says Pike... [In November 2004] Information about the number of US casualties in Iraq is available on a web site of the Pentagon or known as the "War Hub" at www.pentagon.gov. This information covers only those who are officially US citizens enlisted with different military services. Hired security contractors, or mercenaries, and recruits who are not citizens who enlisted to obtain a "green card," are not counted or mentioned. A large number of the green card recruits are from Mexico and Central America. There are no organizations to look after their rights or help them once they're in Iraq. Most of them are buried in Iraq when killed ... It is estimated that as many as 40% of the US troops serving in Iraq are green card recruits. WASHINGTON, Jan. 20 (UPI) -- A soldier who served in Iraq apparently hung himself with a bedsheet last week at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, but the Pentagon did not count that death two days later when it announced "a very small increase" in the suicide rate from Operation Iraqi Freedom ... The Pentagon said it is not counting suicides among troops who killed themselves after they left Iraq ... Thirty-six journalists - and 18 media support workers - have been killed since the beginning of hostilities in Iraq in March 2003, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). At least nine have died as a result of American fire, said Ann Cooper, executive director of the CPJ ... [including] Mazen Dana, a 43-year-old Palestinian [who] was described by Reuters as one of its finest cameramen ... According to [various] sources, Dana's family, when interviewed after the murder, had stated to investigators that Dana was murdered because he was shooting video footage of mass graves of US soldiers --- i.e., soldiers killed who were not counted in the official Pentagon casualty figures --- for a television documentary on the subject for Reuters. Which makes an interesting companion to The Onion. http://www.theonion.com/opinion/index.php?issue=4108&o=2 The Soapbox By James W. Henley "I support the occupation but I don't support our troops" More ... 2005-02-17
Other kinds of fireworks elsewhere http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/02/man-called-jeff.html see also http://rampagingpms.blogspot.com/ (also see frinstance Friday ... Toy Blogging for February 11th (following Hunk Blog on Thursday)) http://www.boxjamsdoodle.com/ (I'm looking at St Valentine's Day version) http://www.livejournal.com/users/catelin/179683.html Attitudes http://www.strangeradiation.com/gallery/gates (photos of Central Park with "The Gates") http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,1409903,00.html Tammet is calculating 377 multiplied by 795. Actually, he isn't "calculating": there is nothing conscious about what he is doing. He arrives at the answer instantly. Since his epileptic fit, he has been able to see numbers as shapes, colours and textures. The number two, for instance, is a motion, and five is a clap of thunder. "When I multiply numbers together, I see two shapes. The image starts to change and evolve, and a third shape emerges. That's the answer. It's mental imagery. It's like maths without having to think." Heaven Ian Stewart & Jack Cohen Aspect, May 2004, $24.95, 343 pp. ISBN 0446529834 Since Ian Stewart is an enormously published Mathematician and science writer, and Jack Cohen a biologist who has worked with SF authors before, this work is extraordinarily interesting to Mathematical Biologists http://www.livejournal.com/users/xopher_vh/6304.html What I Want: I want to awaken from this terrible dream, and find him sleeping contentedly beside me, and not for the first time, or the 100th. More ... 2005-02-16
www.naa.gov.au/Publications/research_guides/guides/ sydney/pages/intro duction.htm www.naa.gov.au/Publications/research_guides/ guides/sydney/pages/appendix1.htm www.naa.gov.au/Publications/fact_sheets/FS111.html The Sinking of HMAS Sydney A Guide to Commonwealth Government Records The National Archives of Australia The loss of HMAS Sydney with its full war complement of 645 virtually without trace remains to this day Australia’s single worst naval disaster. The circumstances surrounding the loss have never been fully explained ... www.awm.gov.au/encyclopedia/hmas_sydney/ HMAS Sydney II and the Kormoran The loss of HMAS Sydney, 19 November 1941 The most grievous loss suffered by the Royal Australian Navy occurred on 19 November 1941, when the cruiser HMAS Sydney was lost in action with the German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran off the Western Australian coast. None of the Sydney's complement of 645 men survived. The Kormoran was also sunk in the action. www.navy.gov.au/spc/history/ships/sydney2.htm NAVY: Sea Power Centre - Australia: HMA Ship Histories HMAS SYDNEY (II) (also see www.navy.gov.au/spc/history/ archives/kormoran/kormoran.htm RAN History - Archives ... images of original documents relating to the HMAS SYDNEY / KORMORAN engagement on 19 November 1941.) A nice private site is at members.iinet.net.au/~gduncan/HMASSydney/HMASSydney-1.html [tag: history] More ... linklog Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own |
|
