Global warming is moving much more quickly than scientists thought it would. Even if the biggest current and prospective emitters - the United States, China and India - were to slam on the brakes today, the earth would continue to heat up for decades. At best, we may be able to slow things down and deal with the consequences, without social and political breakdown.
Gwynne Dyer examines several radical short- and medium-term measures now being considered - all of them controversial. CBC RADIO: THE CLIMATE WARS ____The Geo-Politics of Climate Change_____
: There was a time when learning new skills either meant sussing the information out of dry textbooks, or taking lessons from someone who already possessed those skills. This is no longer the case, with the newest trend in making self-training less painful since the inception of the For Dummies Series.
For example, if you don’t already possess the necessary information to be useful with a database, or if you must teach someone that skill, Mana Takahashi, a graduate of the Tokyo University, Faculty of Economics, has published the answer to your problem in January 2009.
The Manga Guide to Databases, written in English, is a unique combination of Japanese-style comics and serious educational content containing examples and exercises to help the student learn.
: A new way of searching the Internet will be arriving this month under the label Wolfram Alpha, a "knowledge engine" built by Stephen Wolfram. It will give a single definitive answer to users who ask a question rather than pointing to pages of results which may hold the answers for which they look.
Wolfram Alpha, the new system showcased at Harvard University, is the first step toward the Internet's Holy Grail – a global store of information which responds to ordinary language. Although still new, the system has already produced great excitement with Internet watchers.
Computer experts believe the Wolfram Alpha search engine will be an evolutionary leap in the development of the Internet that could prove just as important as Google. :
: Some observers believe Wolfram Alpha is a possible Google killer, while others think its importance could equal that of Google, suggesting that potentially Google could be interested in acquiring it.
Still others wonder whether it will affect Wikipedia’s use more than that of Google. Although it won't eliminate the need of Wikipedia for collections of information, biographies, and citations, etc. But for those looking for direct facts, the number of Wikipedia queries could go down - if Wolfram Alpha catches on.
UPDATE:Wolfram Alpha's main page is here, It is already allowing early access to selected individuals, and tentativelyly slated to become accessable to the general public sometime this month.
: As I mentioned in the previous entry, I’m a big fan of the Thursday Sixties series in distributorcapNY. I have always been a fan of the history of popular culture, and now I am of an age to truly appreciate nostalgia.
I won’t try to compete, but I did run across something on YouTube which brought back some of my good old days.
I misused the knowledge I gained from the Filmmaking and History of the Cinema courses I attended, for nothing more important than writing and producing television commercials. But I did remain friends with my old professor, dropping by every couple of weeks, to share what I was doing, and critique the latest crop of student films.
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In the fall of 1969 he asked me to help him with a special series of illustrated lectures that he had planned. Since all he needed was someone to operate the projector – I think he had shot the budget on film rentals, and couldn’t afford to pay a student – I agreed to help. The result was, during that spring I was exposed to an amazing number of high quality short features, plus his insight into their making, and their importance.
By far, the hit of the series, was a thirteen minute live action short subject filmed by Norman McLaren of the National Film Board of Canada. It had been nominated for an Oscar, and won a BAFTA, the year before, in 1968. The film was entitled'Pas de deux'.
The film’s subject is simply two ballet dancers, photographed on high contrast black and white stock, on a bare stage, with harsh side lighting. It was in its post production manipulation, however, that the film became truly memorable. McLaren passed the original image through an optical printer, up to eleven times at some places, to produce a beautiful stroboscopic image of movement.
The film tells the story of a female Narcissus who is completely self -involved until a young man appears to win her attention. It is a plea that we must look outside ourselves and love others, the same theme which underlay McLaren’s Oscar winning 1952 short feature, Neighbours.
If you have ever seen it before, you will remember this film. If you have not seen it before, it is well worth the expenditure of time, regardless of whether you do, or do not, enjoy ballet. Last week I found this film in two sections, on YouTube. Here is 'Pas de Deux' by Norman McLaren.
Pas de deux Section One
Pas de deux Section Two.
I also found the earlier work by McLaren that I mentioned before, Neighbours. It is probably better known, since it won a Short Documentary Oscar, and was nominated for a BAFTA in 1952.
The film is an experimental live action stop-motion film which tells a story as current now as in 1952, entitled, Neighbours.
: Last week UTAH SAVAGE presented me with an award.
Here it is:
Truthfully it was for the Cinema Burlesque site, but that is a one trick pony sort of outlet, which is why I started Stuff + Nonsense. I know Utah is expecting a Cinema Burlesque sort of response, so here that is : :
: : While I don’t understand what it is that the award signifies as laudable, I believe the recipient’s response is to thank those who got him started on his blog, and to pass it on to others whose work he thinks is also praiseworthy.
My first experience reading a blog began early in 2004, when I accidentally read Obsidian Wings. In truth, it was the logo that attracted me — a pussycat looking down the sights of a rifle. That day's entry by Katherine R discussed the strange case of Maher Arar.
It was the first time I heard of the man. Arar was the first person to go public after being the subject of a rendition and torture. That was also the day when I first encountered the term Extreme Rendition.
I began following blogs, discovering stories of common knowledge that I had never heard about on the nightly news.
Last fall, I ran across Tengrain’s Mock, Scissors, Paper, and found a home. Eventually, I was seduced into trying my own blog. Something with a gimmick, which would allow me to make use of my obsession with the cinema, an interest in politics, and my commercially acknowledged sense of humor, from back in the seventies, when I was the comedy specialist in a stable of radio and television commercial writers. (In passing, there is a reason they are called a stable of writers and it has nothing to do with stability.)
Considering how I started out in this life, friends could have been forgiven for expecting that I would become the world’s greatest camouflage expert. I was almost terminally shy, but all that was before I was hospitalized.
Anybody who has spent time in the hospital as a child can attest to the fact that most people should be barred from visiting children. Most visitors – adults, who should know better – step inside their hospital room with the trepidation of a rube entering an unsettling carnival freak's tent. Either that, or with a loud false bonhomie which fools no one. The latter merely shatter eardrums and crushes the spirit, while the former raises the patient’s suspicion that he is lying upon his death bed.
“Er ... um ... how do you ... ah ... feel?”
“Okay.”
“You look pale, are you sure you feel all right?”
“Um ... er ... yeah?
Three minutes silence.
“We came to see how you are.”
The following pause stretches until the visitor realize that the ball hasn’t cleared their conversational court.
“And you said you’re okay, right?”
“Right.”
Sweat begins trickling down their temple. Fingers steal upward to pull at their shirt or blouse, where the collar has gradually tightened around their windpipe.
Meanwhile, I've begun to feel like a mean little kid who tortures puppies.
So, to break the tension, I tell a joke. It's not very good joke. In fact, it rates less than a three in a scale of ten, but my visitors are so relieved, they even laugh at an elephant jokes.
Example:
Q: Why do ducks have flat feet? A: To stamp out burning forest fires. Q: Why do elephants have flat feet? A: To stamp out burning ducks,
Well, it was funny to an eight-year-old.
Feeble though it may be, it got a laugh, and I gradually learnt to appreciate getting laughs from my helplessly captive audience.
During that hospital stay, I had my spleen remove, contracted a post operative infection, spent a week in the isolation ward with a fever of over a hundred and three, followed by another three weeks recovering enough to be discharged.
By the time I reached home, I had lost my spleen, but I had developed a sense of humor, and enough self confidence to use it. In fact, there are some who will tell you I developed a bit too much confidence, because I did, after all, have considerable reason to be shy.
In all events, I now have a blog, and Utah Savage has given it an award for some merit she failed to identify. I doubt that I will get more. At least I hope not, but however long the blog lasts, Cinema Burlesque has received far more recognition than I ever expected.
Eventually, President Obama will fix everything that is broken, the Republicans will recognize their perfidy in obstructing him, and the world will start humming along again on greased grooves. Or else, Google will no longer be able to find pertinent movie stills, or finding them, I will be unable to come up with a caption, no matter how obscure, to link the picture to a current event. Until either of thos situations arrise, I will keep riding that poor. benighted, hackneyed, yet award-winning, one trick pony.
Considering the frivolous nature of Cinema Burlesque, I am continuously surprised at the serious, adult themed boggers who have linked to my site. While I seldom make any comment which rises above the sophomoric, I do appreciate their efforts, quality, and talent. drinking liberally in New Milford by Connecticut Man1 is an always interesting read, plus an excellent source of the often overlooked regional stories from New England.
distributorcap NY by distributorcaphas an excellent general political blog, however, this award is especially presented for his regular Thursday series on the Sixties. It is an era which we both passed through on our way to the present. For all old fogeys, or kids who want to check out what their parents got up to before turning into old fogeys, this feature is a weekly delight.
That’s Why byLisa, because of the engaging way she draws readers into the high drama of everyday life and good times with her family – Mathman and The Spawn: the Dancer, Garbo and the Actor.
For the reasons stated, I present this Neno Award to these blogs, with the instructions I received from Utah Savage, to:
“Answer the award's question by writing the reason why you love blogging.
Tag and distribute the award to as many people as you like.
Don't forget to notify the award receivers and put their links in your post.”
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
The Cloy of Tea- Bagging ::
Conservatives gather together to do the thing that should not be, in a cause that makes no sense, over a complaint which comes to late, with a group that has no purpose. : :
Kacie Kinzer has created a most interesting experiment, which explores our relationship to space, and our willingness to interact with what we find there? To do that, Kacie is invading the streets of New York City with a fleet of robots called Tweenbots.
Instead of the formidable laser-wielding juggernauts from bad science fiction, Kacie has created a fleet of Tweenbots — small, fragile, simple, cardboard robots — and tasked them to roam through the streets of the city, following a course that is beyond their capability to complete.
Tweenbots cannot turn, merely travel in a straight line. So, their only hope of reaching the assigned destination is through receiving the assistance requested on a help flag, which asks anyone to point it in the proper direction.
What will be the Tweenbots’ fate on the mean streets of New York City?
Global warming is moving much more quickly than scientists thought it would. Even if the biggest current and prospective emitters - the United States, China and India - were to slam on the brakes today, the earth would continue to heat up for decades. At best, we may be able to slow things down and deal with the consequences, without social and political breakdown.
