Breach: An Anecdote on Logic and Life

In the cool vaults of water I floated the day before yesterday night, gliding slowly forward, water moving against skin with a soft murmur, a distant whoosh…
Oxygen starvation was an urgent but far-off pull.
And it was with perhaps a few metres to go, having advanced most of the way across the rectangular body of water, that I watched my shadow and a lighter double of my shadow, tailing me. What is this?
What is this body of mine that glows under the florescent lights, that flies through soft water?
What is this shadow that I cast? Is it part of me, and will it ever be?

I try to see beyond the shadow, a reflection of color in the cold blue tiles, in the narrow white line. I tried to see myself reflected back at me; floating in the water, but all I see is the shadow. The tiles are not dark enough, the light on them too bright, too cold, to reflect any more than a shadow.

It was then that my lungs constricted painfully, began to scream. Panic had set in. despite the poer ofmy will, there are limits to life. Holding one’s breath for long enough can kill you. Life is not eternal, or invulnerable, or invincible.

I have swam much further underwater, endured entire minutes without oxygen, but the truth – right then – suddenly sucked the life out of my lungs. I tore through the revolving silver foil, and surfacing at the other end, I realized that truly, logically, despite our desires, despite every effort, we will come to death. I will come to death, and despite the poems and books and sermons, once asleep, I will not wake again. No one will.

And there where we sleep, we will not gather, or sing, or walk. We will not be reunited with long lost loved ones. We will not be alone. Because, we simply will have ceased to Be. Is it possible to be unemotional about the end of one’s existence? When we sleep, when we are too tired for dreams, is there an emotional thread that matters? There is a simple, natural, non-existence period. It seems that even life, even in life, there must be outages for rest, for recovery, for the tremendous engine of energy to be restored, for another session, until the finite store is finished.

If our waking sessions are countable, this makes – this means – our every act is a vital act. A smile, a glance, a call, a gesture, a turn, a garment, a gift, an insult, a reaction, an offer, an opinion, a hope, a movement – every single act. We ought to, in each and every day, give the gift of life, enhancing life for others, finding ways to thrive while we are still here. Because being here, now, is all we have and all we ever will have.

Is there life after death? Yes, but not for us. If we have had children, from a particular point of view, something similar to ourselves, continues to imprint itself on the world, is the world, beyond our very selves. Do we continue to exist? No. A part of us, nevertheless an automated independent entity borne of ourselves, can continue to operate in the world without us. We can share with them our consciousness, the vital essence of ourselves, our memories. This lives on. But let us not con ourselves; when it comes down to it we know the answer. In death, we die.

Our children, our brothers and sisters, our parents - it is all part of who you are, and yet it is not you. In the same way, God exists (everything that is exists) yet everything that is does not know itself to exist (everything that is, is not). There is death. There is life. Both are part of Is, both comprise the reality of Existence. Being able to read this and consider this, means we are alive. In time, that duty will fall to others as they ask the same questions, seeking their answers. Being dead, we are not elsewhere, we arenot listening or dreaming or watching. We will no longer exist apart from the universe, the fragments of energy will be re-assimilated in air, and soil, and subsumed by various other living things. To be clear: we will be dreams and dust.

The shadow and the light, and the being that floats in between. Water, air and drowning. We must find our way throughout the circle, across the extremes. But getting to where we must go may not be conscious the entire way. It may simply be destiny, like a cube of ice gradually surrendering its grip, and transitioning into something it is, but also, something it is not. When it is in a liquid state, other laws will quickly move it, losing itself in the stream.

The vital, logic constant in this, the identity, the integrity, the personality of life, simply cannot be sustained during the transition. The energy given to our bodies may be eternal, but it does not belong to us forever. It only arranges itself in the pattern, the arrangement that describes our being, and then, that arrangement is relinquished.

In this sense it is natural to fear death. In another sense, when we fear life, we cannot also fear death, and the the balancing context is restored. All we can do, is Be. Not Being is a certainty that we can DO nothing about. So yes, fear death, embrace life; fearing life, embrace death, but the answer to the question is obvious (to all who live), isn’t it: to be or not to be?

NVDL: This came about trying to see something where there was nothing to see, and being simultaneously forced to breach, being underwater, I was rapidly approaching the limits to living. As such it was something of a stark revelation. Do you think it was accurate?

For more on swimming and the soul, go here or here.

Are Computers Logical?

The hit and miss approach to computers usually results in a miss. We've all done it. You're attempting something simple, something that perhaps has usually worked in the past, and then, for whatever reason, no longer does. Yet we then insist on the same procedure and the computer insists on an error message. BEEP. Hit the same key again and again...well, it's like a fly banging its head against a window pain isn't it? Painful!

So where does the logic breakdown, with ourselves or the computer?

In fact, it is a logistical war, but at the end of the day, the computer is simply a logical mathemathical equation providing a result. But you do have two systems basically, at work: the designed logic and then a particular logic of the user, which may be high level (informed logic) or low level (uninformed logic).

Eye In The Pie

It is because we as users cannot possess all the information (for example the repercussions of a download, or the consequences of a request to default a different set of software) that may bring about unexpected, seemingly illogical results, even if we are applying high level logic to an already sophisticated, fundamentally logical system. Actually, these conflicts may not be logical at all (you could argue the intention to download a lot of bunkum software isn't either), but users cannot be expected to keep track (or know) the extent of every conceivable software conflict.

Anecdotal Evidence

Enter a very specialised piece of equipment, the infrared device, on a USB lead. Conventionally you can download to an IRDA on any notebook computer as these are built in. Most users would probably load up through other mobile tech such as mobile phones, blackberries and the like. It just so happens that Heart Rate monitors can conventiently piggy back on this already set-up system, as POLAR have.

So when I chucked my notebook in order to save on excess baggage, when I left Korea (I was already lugging an oversized flatscreen, and through special intervention was allowed to drag it - like Obelix and the menhir - onto the plane), I bought an infrared device to plug into my desktop. I installed the driver, then went on my merry way. But when I flew to South Africa, the computer itself was dismantled, and shipped to South Africa.

Piecemeal

Once the shipped parts arrived, it turned out that humpty dumpty was lucky. Fortunately, between the crumbs of ex-viable computer parts, the hard drives were still intact. But once the newly built machine saw the light of day, the infrared device did not work; it did not read the heart rate monitors urgent, but silent, infra red beam. Why? Because without the original memoryboard, you lose all that 'floating' information, including programs, instals, operating systems and the like. And my device didn't work because it was lost in the plethora of 'floating' information that got washed away by the equiavelent of a tornado.

The device needs a driver

Imagine a small little man that looks like Elmer Fudd, sitting at the door to your computer, and all he does all day is press a switch beside a big INCOMING sign. The name on the switch is: Accept/Deny.

DENY DENY DENY

Well for the passed - what is it - two weeks my Elmer has been denying me the use of my infrared device. Because just like when I had a newly pieced together computer after returning from Korea, my recent foray into upgrading (aka the ability to use your computer more effectively, and in particular utiliting technologies faster speeds...)had the unexpected, and highly counterintuitive result of disallowing any infrared downloading. Yes, this 2 week delay flies in the face of the idea that upgrading your computer is going to make your life that bit easier, at least over the short term. It's frustrating.

As Easy as PII

You'd think downloading an infrared device driver on google would be easy. Actually, it is easy, it's just that selecting the right one is not. Sure you can select drivers to download but they just won't work, or you'll get funny small boxes that mess up your display. In this respect, computers for all their logic, become damn complicated.

In the end, on my own, I managed to source a driver, one that allowed me to download through my IRDA device, but woe betide me when I got home, it did not work on my home computer. How logical is that?

In the end the person who went with me to Yongsan Electronic's Market in Seoul - one of the world's biggest - to buy the original InfraRed Device (since I was selling him my notebook) sourced an appropriate driver within a day on the net. It worked first time.

Computers are logical, and sometimes people are, but never the twain shall meet. Perhaps that's a good thing in the scheme of things. Right now, I'm not convinced. There's a test for your logic stream.

Future Shock: A World Filled With Batteries (L)

South Africans have been told to expect load shedding and power outages for the next few years, with the next winter season projected to have more blackouts than the last. I've personally experiened a number of surges and the like in suburban Johannesburg, resulting in computer failures and all the rest.

One useful resource to at least save your data during a possible power failure is a UPS: uninterrupted power supply. Basically you route all your electricity through this box - about the size of a shoebox, sometimes bigger - and when the power goes out, the charger in the your UPS kicks in and gives you a chance to shutdown your computer at your leisure. I think it gives you up to 4 hours additional computing time. But this is the sort of thing all Jozi residents should have.

In the wider context of the world - South Africa is not the only country with aging electrical infrastructure and a looming energy capacity/supply crisis - batteries are likely to make a comeback. Unfortunately, the laws of the universe once again demonstrate just what a wonderful and magical resource oil actually is. Despite great minds working on the issue, it turns out that the electrical car's batteries are not only extremely expensive, but the limits to the power storage are not easily extended. Smaller batteries like the lithium batteries in cellphones and notebooks unforunately do not extend much further, certainly not porportionally, as we expect the same sort of power (energy) output motoring through suburbia over the next era.

Jim Kunstler says it best: No combination of alternatives is going to allow us to use the highway systems and continue our easy motoring culture as we are doing now.

Climate Change For Dummies (SHORT FILM)

In the past 2 years an ice mass larger than the entire land area of South Africa (that's 1.22 million km²), which is also an area 5 times greater than Great Britain (241,590km²) has melted. This staggering statistic coincides with an incredible accelaration in CO2 levels over the past 2 decades, and we naturally see a concomitant warming that has also accelarated (doubled) in the Arctic in particular since 2000.

This is a single statistic. What's happening is warming at the much higher latitudes is much greater, but these areas are sparsely populated, or populated by people who do not conventionally have laptops, emails or cellphones. The exception is Norway. And it's out of Norway that we learn that the 'skiing season' has halved. Perversely, Norway is embracing climate change, as warming there allows for a more amenable climate.

But the overall result is that alarm bells aren't ringing. And so it may seem for someone in an office in New York, or Amsterdam, or Hong Kong, at the lower latitudes, that things - if (the idiots still say) they - are changing, are doing so incrementally, 'if' at all. Not true. The AVERAGE temperature change in high latitudes like Norway are already in the double digits.

Jorgen Randers (author of LIMITS TO GROWTH, 1972): Norway is a country where the elite is concerned about climate change, and people are not at all concerned about climate change.

Let's be clear: when we say temperature change we're really saying temperature INCREASE.

So Norway for one is experiencing 12 degree Celcius higher AVERAGE temperatures. Since the warming is on a slight lag to CO2, and CO2 emissions are staggeringly high, we can anticipate a long sustained period of warming. The crucial question to ask is this one: since warming has started, year on year, when will we see the first year when warming may level off?

The last decade and a little more have shown the warmest years on record. The next decade will top that, and the decade after that. But there are still plenty of stupid human beings, perhaps still a majority, who can't do the math.

For an excellent short movie giving backdround to this topic, go here. For an excellent article/interview on Jorgen Randers speaking about Norway and Climate Change, go here.

NVDL: I've also written a fictional account [HOLIDAY], a hardcore version of climate change beyond tipping point. I wrote it with the intention to overemphasise the threat. Now I am beginning to wonder whether it can be overemphasised. To read Holiday, click on the HOLIDAY tag below.

Kunstler: Peak Universe (ENERGY COLUMN)

The big Peak Oil conference of the year took place in Houston last week – but before we get to the substance of that, a few words about where we were. It is hard to imagine a more horrifying urban construct than this anti-city in the malarial swamps just off the Gulf of Mexico. And it is hard to conceive of a more desolate and depressing urban district, even of such an anti-city, than the utter wasteland around Houston’s convention center.

Luckily, we didn’t have to enter the convention center itself across the street -- a baleful megastructure the size of three aircraft carriers, adorned with massive air-conditioning ducts to counter Houston’s gym-sock-like climate. And when I say “street” you understand we are talking about four or six-laners, with no curbside parking, which is the norm for this town. The effect is that every street behaves like an extension of the freeway at the expense of pedestrians – but pedestrians have been eliminated anyway because in ninety percent of Houston’s so-called downtown of glass towers there are no shops or restaurants at the ground-floor level, only blank walls, air-conditioning vents, parking ramps, and landscaping fantasias.

We were informed that in parts of downtown there existed a network of air-conditioned underground corridors with shopping, but that everything in it closed at 7 p.m. when the last office workers straggled home. Anyway, none of it extended as far as the convention center. The rest of district was devoted to surface parking.

It has often been stated that Houston’s ghastly development pattern comes from having no official zoning laws. But all it really proves is that you can achieve the same miserable results of typical American boneheaded zoning with no zoning – as long as your don’t give a shit how people feel in their daily environments.

The convention center itself, though, demonstrated something beyond even that degree of thoughtlessness. Its pharaonic hugeness was a metaphor for the fatal grandiosity at the heart of contemporary life in American today, the utter disregard for a scale of human activity consistent with what the planet has to offer within its ecological limits – and of course the oil issue was at the center of that story.

Oh, one final thing about Houston life per se. Judging by the local items in the daily newspaper, the so-called city enjoys a level of mayhem that makes Baghdad look like a Sussex garden party. Sample headlines: “10 Charged in Burglary Spree,” “Pit Bull Shot Dead After Pony Attack,” “Jury Gives Man Life in Carjacking Death,” “Two Killed in Home Invasion.” One particularly insane story told of a man who shot and stabbed a visiting friend who “dissed” his dog. We didn’t see any of that action around the convention center's Hilton Americas, where the ASPO conference actually took place, but the news didn’t exactly make you want to venture out beyond the lobby. Anyway, you couldn’t buy a stick of gum within a mile walk of the place, and the thought of traipsing past all those surface parking lots in 90-degree heat was like an invitation to reenact the Bataan Death March.

It was a sublime coincidence of fate and history that throughout the ASPO conference, the price of a barrel of oil surged up through the high eighty-dollars range and briefly touched $90-a-barrel on Friday (just as the stock market was tanking by 360-odd points). It was also interesting that as all this action was unfolding, MSNBC was running an interview with Senator Larry Craig (R. Idaho), lately accused of soliciting sex from a policeman in an airport toilet. Apparently what the nation really wants to know about is the Senator’s self-described “wide stance” in bathroom technique. Perhaps when Craig is finally forced from his senate seat, he can get a job as a “personal toilet coach,” and become the pioneer in a whole new realm of self-improvement science, teaching others how to assume the manly “wide stance” and become more effective leaders.

So, while the price of oil ratcheted up hour by hour, the ASPO conference members heard from an impressive range of experts who have been leading the public conversation on the Peak Oil story – with no help from the mainstream media or the political sector. Among them were Robert Hirsch, co-author of the now-famous 2005 Hirsch Report, commissioned by the US Department of Energy, which, much to the consternation of its sponsor, first told the nation in no uncertain terms that it was heading for a catastrophic set of disruptions in “normal” American life if we heedlessly continued energy business-as-usual. Hirsch went a little further now, two years on, than he had in his famous report, predicting a future of “oil export withholding,” panicked markets, and allocation disturbances that would make the 1973 OPEC embargo look like a golden age.

Matt Simmons, the leading investment banker to the oil industry, who has worked tirelessly to lift public awareness of Peak Oil, also raised the specter of shortages, telling the audience that market allocation problems in the near future would almost certainly induce “hoarding behavior” among the public that would cripple the economy, lead to enforced rationing, and shock the nation. Simmons compared the current public mood over energy issues to a “fog of war.” He also repeated his oft-stated opinion that the drilling rigs and other equipment used around the world to pump oil out of the ground are so uniformly old and decrepit that they pose a problem every bit as dire as peak oil itself. In the meantime, he said, to offset climbing prices, the developed nations have lately dipped so deeply into their accumulated stocks of crude and “refined product” that some countries may breach what is called their “minimum operating levels.”

Offstage, he told me, “We’re too preoccupied trying to figure out the exact date of the peak. Meanwhile, we’ll drain the gasoline pool and it will be gone forever.”

The other most significant contribution came from Texas geologist Jeffrey Brown who presented a full-blown version of his theory that world export rates from the countries with oil to sell are liable to decline so much more sharply than their actual production decline rates that the world would be thrust into an oil export crisis within the next five years – and that this export crisis would turn out to be the defining condition of the Peak Oil story.

There were plenty of other fruitful contributions on subjects ranging from the future of the airline industry to reviving passenger rail service, to the question of nuclear power. And there was one real clunker presentation by a shill from the Toyota corporation, designed to blow green smoke up the audience’s ass about the future of happy motoring (Toyota’s products will save it from Peak Oil).

For coverage of the particulars, visit TheOilDrum.com, the nation's best energy discussion website. If there were reporters from the mainstream media present at this event, I didn’t run into of them. They are apparently uninterested in the fate of industrial economies, at least as long as Senator Larry Craig is out there on the frontiers of toilet coaching science, and Britney Spears is still sparring with K-Fed, and Diddy is beating people up in nightclubs, and others are murdering their friends for dissing their dogs.
From Kunstler.com

NVDL: Once again, I can't top the urgency implicit in Jim's message here. GROOT KAK is a certainty, and within 5 years. Happy motoring until then.

Who Is SA's Greenest Candidate?

NVDL: I ask the question because I don't know. Does anyone? I'd guess Helen (is she even a candidate at this stage), just because living in Cape Town she ought to be touched more by nature than say, Cyril, caught in a traffic jam in Jozi. But of course, I could be wrong.

Meanwhile the NYT's Thomas L. Friedman writes intelligent on this topic here.

Nature: The Future is Drying Up (NYT)

“There’s a two-thirds chance there will be a disaster,” Chu said, “and that’s in the best scenario.”
By JON GERTNER

Scientists sometimes refer to the effect a hotter world will have on this country’s fresh water as the other water problem, because global warming more commonly evokes the specter of rising oceans submerging our great coastal cities. By comparison, the steady decrease in mountain snowpack — the loss of the deep accumulation of high-altitude winter snow that melts each spring to provide the American West with most of its water — seems to be a more modest worry. But not all researchers agree with this ranking of dangers.

Last May, for instance, Steven Chu, a Nobel laureate and the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, one of the United States government’s pre-eminent research facilities, remarked that diminished supplies of fresh water might prove a far more serious problem than slowly rising seas. When I met with Chu last summer in Berkeley, the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada, which provides most of the water for Northern California, was at its lowest level in 20 years.

Chu noted that even the most optimistic climate models for the second half of this century suggest that 30 to 70 percent of the snowpack will disappear. “There’s a two-thirds chance there will be a disaster,” Chu said, “and that’s in the best scenario.”

In the Southwest this past summer, the outlook was equally sobering. A catastrophic reduction in the flow of the Colorado River — which mostly consists of snowmelt from the Rocky Mountains — has always served as a kind of thought experiment for water engineers, a risk situation from the outer edge of their practical imaginations. Some 30 million people depend on that water. A greatly reduced river would wreak chaos in seven states: Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California.

An almost unfathomable legal morass might well result, with farmers suing the federal government; cities suing cities; states suing states; Indian nations suing state officials; and foreign nations (by treaty, Mexico has a small claim on the river) bringing international law to bear on the United States government.

For the rest of this New York Times article go here.
Image courtesy Simon Norfolk/NB Pictures, for The New York Times.

NVDL: So you begin to notice the convergence of these unexpected strains on human populations (which Kunstler describes as 'converging catastropjes'.) Not having fresh water is obviously ANOTHER fundamental flaw to a society that plans to continue to flourish, or simply remain self-indulgent. When you follow the information streaming in, it turns out we are not as smart - as a species - not nearly, as we thought. For that we will pay our price.

Bullard: Out to Lunch TV Talk Show (INTERVIEW PART 3)

Bullard: Somebody wants to do that. I mean they want to do an Out to Lunch show. It’s like radio. I was asked to do a radio show as well. You’re tied down. I don’t want to be tied down. I don’t want to do [GARBLED] Jenny Crwys-Williams; being in the studio every lunch time to do a show between 1 and 4.
RP: Mmm.
Bullard: I mean I go away for four days on car launches because I can.
NVDL: Where do you go?
Bullard: Umm – where ever they go. Spain – a lot of overseas launches – Spain, America, UK…
NVDL: It’s a nice life hey?
Bullard: Well it sounds a nice life, but there are a lot of delays at airports and the security in Europe, and you go and drive a car on the wrong side of the road for a day or two. If Porsche is hosting it’s a fabulous life. You have a bloody good party that night, get very pissed, get up the next morning, drive a Porsche and then fly back, Business Class, in the afternoon.
RP: [Chuckles].
Bullard: But with three connections. So there’s an upside and a downside. You’ve still got to produce the words. But the problem is I couldn’t do that if I was doing a radio show or a television show. I couldn’t do any of this stuff; and I do a lot of MCing.
NVDL: But you could [do the stuff you do] after a few seasons.
Bullard: No. You could but… [Hesitates a moment] For example if I’ve got an evening show I can’t do any MCing. So somebody phones and says, ‘Will you MC an event,” I have to say I can’t, I have the evening show. So evening shows are way out. Can’t do that. Could record something. Possibly could record a few things and stack them up. And that might help. But on a regular live show it’s just…
NVDL: Then you don’t do it live you do it all prerecorded.
Bullard: Could do that.
RP: Yeah. And that way you’re not tied down.

Sponsor Wanted

Bullard: The thing with that – and it’s been as I say mooted a couple of times; and everyone says, the SABC says – ‘who is the sponsor Bring the sponsor?’ Because they’re not prepared to put up the money for it. So you go to them and say right: ‘It’s sponsored by Vodacom; here’s a large portion of money. Mr Bullard’s wardrobe by so and so; his hair by so and so. Dancing girls, full orchestra in the back and that’s great. And they then take all the advertising, because that’s the way they run the business. So if you’ve got a sponsor you can do it.
NVDL: Mmmm.
Bullard: We have one or two people looking… It’s a question of commitment, really. Unless someone’s got to, say, rack in a couple of million for production costs, then it’s not going to happen.
NVDL: We need – you know like you get Oprah in America – we need that sort of personality here.
RP: Yeah.
NVDL: And we’ve got Noleen [making a slight face].
RP: Exactly.
Bullard: Well it gets viewers. People like that sort of thing.
RP: But we need some talk show hosts that thinks in controversial aspects.
NVDL: I also think you express – like in your column – what you say is stuff that is quite urgent actually.
Bullard: Yes.
NVDL: And it’s almost like a form of leadership. And I think more people need to join that conversation. Because what’s happening is: a lot of what you’re saying is needed and people are thinking that, but they’re not expressing it.

Let's Talk About Leadership

Bullard: Couldn’t agree more. Because it is a sort’ve ‘zeitgeist’ – to use that overused word. Because a lot of people are saying: “Gee whiz, we read your column and it’s exactly what we discussed over dinner on Saturday night.” Well it’s very read what we’re going to be talking about this weekend. It’s going to be about Mbeki’s dishonesty. I mean my article this week is about Mbeki’s web of evil. And the editor is happy that it goes through, and I think it is a web of evil. But you know, your point is very well made.

It’s kind’ve like aging: I can go to the mirror in the morning and I can now see visible signs of aging. I can now see eyebrows have grown longer and a few more wrinkles. But I mean it’s happening gradually over time. If I look back at a photograph I can see what I was like. Now put that into the political perspective. We look back at a snapshot of South Africa five years ago and we’re very optimistic. Even two years ago. We’re now gradually losing our freedoms. And it’s not until we wake up with all those wrinkles…
NVDL: Yeah.
Bullard: …And we look in the mirror and say: we’re not allowed to say this. Some journalists – that newspaper disappeared, my mates are in prison.
RP: Yup.
Bullard: Or they’ve run out the country. The judges have all been bought off by the ruling party. They’ve gotten rid of anyone in the National Prosecuting Authority who doesn’t please Mbeki or his guys: bloody dangerous. And so you’re absolutely right-
NVDL: And it’s happening right now.

Wanted: Rallying Call

Bullard: You need a rallying call. Well absolutely right. And a lot of people are feeling helpless because business – apart from FNB, which I think was handled pretty badly-
NVDL: That was a shame.
Bullard: But you know Johan Rupert, in a conversation with me, I mean they were banned under the Nats, because they upset them and basically what the government did was hold back their import licenses for a year and starve the company of profits. And business is very aware of the strength of the politicians who can do whatever they like. Because there’s just no control. We actually need a new struggle. I’ve been reading the black columnists; and I hate to differentiate - they have to differentiate because they were part of the struggle, I wasn’t – reading their comments, and about their depression and Justice Malala particularly I think is very vocala and getting a lot of comment and I agree with pretty well everything he says. Um… You know you need some sort of reaction.

NVDL: Yeah. It’s actually an important thing we need. I’ve heard quite a few comments from black people saying – cautiously – that some things under the previous regime were actually better. There was less of this and less of that. Not to say we want to go back to that, but just to say how bad things are now. And to actually say that is like saying: Wow, things are shit. This can’t carry on. We’re actually going way beyond what’s unacceptable.
Bullard: Yeah that’s encouraging because people are recognizing that. On the other hand you go down to the rural areas where you have nothing, and I mean here the similarity is the tornado story last week.

Irrational Behaviour

People went home, and behaved irrationally, only because they didn’t have information to counter the irrational information they’d been given. The skies were dark; it was a tornado, get on the road, get in a traffic jam and behave stupidly. And then realize afterwards you’d been suckered. Now, put that into an election thing. Go to the rural areas and say:
“Jacob Zuma will save you. He will give you houses; he will give you cars," and you vote for him – because that’s what he said. Only afterwards you realize… I mean we all have this madness and delusion in crowds. And everyone is capable of being lead. And I think the government is working to do that very well. Where there is absolutely no counter-opinions. No opposition.
NVDL: Who would you suggest is a good leader [a possible presidential candidate]?

Watch this space to find out who David Bullard recommends to lead this country. To read the previous 2 or the following 2 transcripts, click on the label The Bullard Tapes below.

Bushmen rugby advert under fire

Vodacom should rather fly across the Kalahari and ‘throw funds’ instead of a rugby ball to help the Khoisan

A civic movement has demanded that a "degrading and discriminating" rugby world cup advert featuring Khoisan people be pulled from the airwaves.

"It degrades our Khoisan indigenous, first people as illiterate [and shows them] throwing away their own natural food and resources in exchange for a rugby ball," said national secretary-general of the African Renaissance Civic Movement (ARCM) Richard Huber.

He said his movement had sent complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority, the Human Rights Commission, Vodacom, the SABC and the SA Rugby Union.

The rugby world cup advert shows three Springbok rugby players in a plane. They toss around a rugby ball which falls out of the plane and lands at the feet of two Khoisan men. The men pick up the ball, tossing away their ostrich egg which is used to store water, and return to their community to play rugby.

For the rest of this The Times story, click here.

NVDL: Someone wants a nice settlement of money.

Blacks Less Intelligent Than Whites – J. Watson

NVDL: I'm not sure if it is particularly helpful to rank races according to intelligence. I have a shortlist on this blog titled: How to be unhappy, and comparing yourself constantly (favorably or otherwise) to others features prominently in this respect.
But if you want to insist on being superior; wanting to stroke your own ego, BEWARE. 'They' say that the Indians and Asians are smarter than whites, and the Jews smarter still. Whether that's true or not is less important than this: what sets one individual apart from another, is his or her ability to conceive, to imagine - and to imagine not what our limits might be, but our common potential for excellence.

Imagine

When we imagine - for ourselves and our communities - a scenario that is affirming for one and for all, then that is a higher wisdom, perhaps the highest wisdom, no matter who it comes from. Mandela epitomises this. Intelligence without context is very narrow minded. Wisdom is inspired intelligence, illuminated by the concepts of context and community, and restrained by logic.

From Javno.com:
James Watson claims scientists could set apart the genes responsible for differences in intelligence in some ten years.

One of the most prominent scientists in the world caused public outrage with his claim that members of the black race are less intelligent than whites.

James Watson, who won the Nobel Prize for his discovery of the structure of DNA, was condemned by the public for his comments that preceded his arrival to Great Britain.

Dr. Watson heads one of the most advanced scientific institutes in the United States. He made the claims that stirred public outrage in an interview for The Sunday Times.

The 79-year-old geneticist expressed great concern and scepticism towards Africa’s progress.
All our social policy is based on the presumption that their intelligence is equal to ours and all the tests show that that is not the case – Watson said.

He said he had hoped that all people were equal, but was countered by employers who have black employees and who claim that this is simply not the case.

Watson claims that scientists could discover the genes responsible for the differences in intelligence in some ten years’ time.

There is no sound reason to believe that the intellectual capacity of people who evolved separately by geography was developed equally, Watson said in his new book published this week.

Our wishes for the equality of all people and the need for the creation of a universal human heritage will not be sufficient to prove this scientifically, he added.

The commission for equality and human rights is currently evaluating Watson’s claims.

James Watson is on a tour of Great Britain promoting his latest book, Daily Mail reports.

Law in South Africa

Two recent court cases, have earned the attention of newspaper readers in South Africa

1. One person was fined R1 000 for not having a TV license.
2. Another was released on bail for R500 after being arrested for murder.

The moral of this South African story: If you do not have a TV license and the inspector comes round, kill him.You'll save R500. ...It's the Right Thing To Do ..

NSA's Lucky Break: How the U.S. Became Switchboard to the World

From Wired.com:

A lucky coincidence of economics is responsible for routing much of the world's internet and telephone traffic through switching points in the United States, where, under legislation introduced this week, the U.S. National Security Agency will be free to continue tapping it.

Leading House Democrats introduced the so-called RESTORE Act (.pdf) Tuesday that allows the nation's spies to maintain permanent eavesdropping stations inside United States switching centers. Telecom and internet experts interviewed by Wired News say the bill will give the NSA legal access to a torrent of foreign phone calls and internet traffic that travels through American soil on its way someplace else.

But contrary to recent assertions by Bush administration officials, the proportion of international traffic entering the United States is dropping, not increasing, experts say.

International phone and internet traffic flows through the United States largely because of pricing models established more than 100 years ago in the International Telecommunication Union to handle international phone calls. Under those ITU tariffs, smaller and developing countries charge higher fees to accept calls than the U.S.-based carriers do, which can make it cheaper to route phone calls through the United States than directly to a neighboring country.

"Carriers shop around for the best price for termination," says Stephan Beckert, the research director at Telegeography, a communications-traffic research firm.

The United States, where the internet was invented, was also home to the first internet backbone. Combine that architectural advantage with the pricing disparity inherited from the phone networks, and the United States quickly became the center of cyberspace as the internet gained international penetration in the 1990s.

In those early days, internet traffic from one Asian country often bounced through the first West Coast internet-exchange point, the San Jose-based MAE West, says Bill Woodcock, the research director for Packet Clearing House, which helps create packet-exchange points around the world.

While nobody outside the intelligence community knows the exact volume of international telephone and internet traffic that crosses U.S. borders, experts agree that it bounces off a handful of key telephone switches and perhaps a dozen IXPs in coastal cities near undersea fiber-optic cable landings, particularly Miami, Los Angeles, New York and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Miami sees most of the internet traffic between South America and the rest of the world, including traffic passing from one South American country to another, says Bill Manning, the managing partner of ep.net. "Basically they backhaul to the United States, do the switch and haul it back down since (it's) cheaper than crossing their international borders."

And some internet traffic traveling from Asia to Europe still crosses the entire breadth of the United States, entering in Los Angeles and exiting in New York, says Woodcock.

For the rest of this article click here.

NVDL: Big Brother is watching...

Q&A: Ridley Scott Has Finally Created the Blade Runner He Always Imagined (WIRED)

By Ted Greenwald

Photo: Robert Maxwell Feature

Fresh off his second successful movie, an up-and-coming director takes a chance on a dark tale of a 21st-century cop who hunts humanlike androids. But he runs over budget, and the financiers take control, forcing him to add a ham-fisted voice-over and an absurdly cheery ending. The public doesn't buy it. The director's masterpiece plays to near-empty theaters, ultimately retreating to the art-house circuit as a cult oddity.

That's where we left Ridley Scott's future-noir epic in 1982. But a funny thing happened over the next 25 years. Blade Runner's audience quietly multiplied. An accidental public showing of a rough-cut work print created surprise demand for a re-release, so in 1992 Scott issued his director's cut. He silenced the narration, axed the ending, and added a twist — a dream sequence suggesting that Rick Deckard, the film's protagonist, is an android, just like those he was hired to dispatch.

But the director didn't stop there. As the millennium turned, he continued polishing: erasing stray f/x wires, trimming shots originally extended to accommodate the voice-over, even rebuilding a scene in which the stunt double was obvious. Now he's ready to release Blade Runner: The Final Cut, which will hit theaters in Los Angeles and New York in October, with a DVD to follow in December.

At age 69, Ridley Scott is finally satisfied with his most challenging film. He's still turning out movies at a furious pace — American Gangster, with Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe, is due in November — building on an extraordinary oeuvre that includes Alien, Thelma & Louise, Gladiator, and Black Hawk Down. But he seems ready to accept Blade Runner as his crowning achievement. In his northern English accent, he describes its genesis and lasting influence. And, inevitably, he returns to the darkness that pervades his view of the future — the shadows that shield Deckard from a reality that may be too disturbing to face.

For the Q&A interview, click here.
NVDL: I recently watched Blade Runner on VCD and credit to this flick, it is still edgy decades later. The climate change effect and overpopulated city images ring truer than ever.

Highway Accident (VIDEO)

Accident On Freeway. Always Watch First.... - Click here for more blooper videos
The one who really pays is the driver who leaves his lane without looking (or thinking). Notice the fast moving car maintains its trajectory and the driver probably survived. Don't let this happen to you. Be vigilant and alert on roads and highways.

The Matrix Reloaded (and Reiterated)

NVDL & Morpheus: Your world is an illusion. You have been warned.

From Sunday Times Stock Market oblivious to tales of misery and mayhem:

WE ARE in the midst of the worst financial crisis since 1998. The US housing market is in its worst state — sales and prices are down, foreclosures and defaults are up — since it started keeping statistical records 50 years ago. The fear of a recession is so large that a reluctant Federal Reserve has reversed course and sharply cut interest rates.

The dollar is falling to levels against major currencies not seen in decades. Oil is climbing to record highs. This week, Citigroup, one of the nation’s biggest banks, said that its profit for the three months to September probably would drop 60% from a year earlier. Could somebody please tell the stock market? If you look at the third quarter of this year, you will find tales of misery and mayhem, of credit crunch and crisis. It was a three-month period in which all the grim projections by the bears about the US economy seemed to come true.

Could somebody please tell the stock market?

NVDL cracks Top 20

871 hits in one day, 467 from South Africa. It's a new record. NVDL is currently 14th in the News & Politics Section, and 84th overall. Having said that, it's only fair to say that this blog surfed the hype and panic wave that was - or became - The Great South African Weather Hoax (Or Was It?). Ironically, the very next day there's a report on a large iceberg sailing by St. Francis Bay. It would be great to see images of that.

In fact, climate change is very much part and parcel of the local zeitgeist, which is good to see. With SASOL, South Africa is likely to become, per capita, one of the world's worst polluters. Coal burning or worse, liquifying and gassifying, is one of the most toxic processes. This is likely to gain momentum as oil moves beyond $80 (it is now $76). People will ask themselves: do we want the lights on or clean air? And then later: Do we want a roof over our heads or temporary shelters?

Not surprisingly most of the local hits were based around 'Ground Zero', Gauteng.
I'd also like to thank those people who email me links to stories. Thanks guys.
If you have any suggestions, news and views you'd like to read about, please leave a comment.

Kunstler: Grass Roots Syndrome

From Kunstler.com:

Because I wrote a couple of books about the design of cities (and the shortcomings of suburbia), a lot of blather comes my way about what towns around the nation are planning for the future -- and, off course, I hear plenty on the subject in my own town, Saratoga Springs, New York, which is a classic "main street" type town. I also happen to travel a lot and actually see what's going on far from home. Almost everything I see and hear is inconsistent with what I think reality has in store for us.

Obsessed with Parking

Most American towns, including my own, are obsessed to the point of mania with the issue of parking and more generally the management of cars, and much of their spending is directed to those ends. Municipal leaders (and the public they serve) have no idea what kind of problems the nation faces with oil. Because life in the USA has worked a particular way all their lives, they assume that it will continue to operate that way. Not only will they be disappointed as happy motoring spirals into history, but they will create a lot mischief in the meantime in planning things based on faulty assumptions.

Tourism

My own town, for instance, relies heavily on tourism, in particular tourism based on happy motoring. There is not the slightest apprehension among the people here, or our leaders in city hall, that automobile-based tourism may not be happening as soon as five years from now.

All our political energy is being expended in fighting about what kind of parking structures we will build (with borrowed money) and where to put them, and how these things might incorporate some secondary uses, such as police offices. We have also been debating plans for the expansion of our modest convention center -- in connection with added parking structures. It seems to me that one of the first things to go as the US economy contracts, along with its energy supply, will be activities like boat shows and optometrist's conventions.

Connect the Dots

Now this town happens to be on a railroad line that connects New York City to Montreal. Before 1950, it was the main way that people came to this town. These days, we get one train a day in each direction. The trains are invariably late, and not just a little late, but hours late. The track bed is in miserable shape and, of course, Amtrak is a sort of soviet-style management organization. There is no awareness among the public here, or our leaders, that we would benefit from improving the passenger railroad service, and around the state of New York generally there is no conversation about fixing the railroads. (Governor Elliot Spitzer is preoccupied these days with arranging to give driver's licenses to people who are in the country illegally.)

We are going to pay a large penalty for these failures of attention.

Another aspect of all this has to do with our assumptions about land development. Here in my town, and elsewhere around the country, the assumption is that suburban development will continue just as it has the past sixty years. This assumption is shared both by the developers themselves and their opponents. The developers expect the current "downturn" to reverse before long. From the opponents' point of view, the assumption is based on their legitimate fears and heartaches about what they've seen heedless development do to the American landscape. Consequently, whatever mental energy is left after the parking debates get tabled is dedicated to fighting over projected suburban expansion.

Radical?

My personal view about this is apparently radical -- though I am a man of modest habits and philosophy. My view is that the suburban project, per se, in the United States is over, finished. Like, totally. You can stick a fork in it. What you see is basically all that we're going to get. Not only do we not need anymore of it, but we have way too much of what is already on the ground. We don't need anymore suburban housing pods, and the ones already out there are going to hemorrhage value (and usefulness) as far ahead as anybody can imagine. We need more retail like we need 300-million holes in our heads. Ditto suburban office capacity. Ditto new roads and highways.

Delusional Projects

The projects that people see under construction now are things that went through the torturous permitting process at minimum a year ago and generally even further back. I would imagine that many of the developers of these few remaining projects -- whether they are condo villages or strip malls or chain store "power centers" -- are in deep melancholy as they read the news and desperately search for tenants. Their lenders must be equally depressed -- and in some cases cutting off further injections of capital. What remains is what bankers call "the workout" -- where the financial chips fall when people's hopes and dreams collide with reality's separate agenda.


In connection with the imminent collapse of our investments in suburbia is the fate of all the laws and codes that have governed the creation of it. I think it is a waste of effort at this point to attempt to reform what we generally refer to as "the zoning laws." They will simply become irrelevant. As we get in trouble with oil, and driving becomes more of a problem, it will be self-evident that regulations geared to keeping cars happy can no longer be followed. My guess is that for a period of time we will see a condition of stunned paralysis in the council chambers and planning boards. Eventually, if we are lucky enough to retain effective local governance, a new consensus will emerge that will be more reality-based by necessity.

In saying this, I imply that societies go through cycles of collective thinking that range from being fairly consistent with reality to being dangerously out of whack with it. We're at the latter end of the cycle these days. One of the symptoms of this is the fact that so many Americans believe the only thing wrong with America is George W. Bush, and that if only we could wiggle out of "his" war, every day would be Christmas, with Nascar around-the-clock, time-outs for shopping sprees down the aisles of the Target store, 5000-square-foot houses for all (for $750 a month), and three BMWs parked in the driveway. . . with fries, and supersize it!

In reality, there's a lot more wrong with how we live and how we think about how we live than the mere presence of George W. Bush at the head of the federal government. Our expectations are deeply out of phase with what the earth can provide for us and what the future has in store for us, and this failure of our collective imagination goes down to the grass roots.

NVDL: Well said Jim.

NVDL Cracks Top 100 (SA Blogs)

A lot can happen in 10 minutes on the internet, and in the broiling sky above our offices. In about that space of time this blog has rocketed from around 120-something to around 90th place (SA Top Blog's, by reads).

This is not only a factor of being relevant to South Africans. Right now Google Analytics puts the total number of visitors from the UK just edging out SA surfers, with the USA in 3rd.

The top stories right now on this site:

1) Alert: Storm Warning in Gauteng at 17H00
2) Chaval - The Caveman Cometh (PICTURES)
3) Ngwenya vs Habana

Meanwhile, outside the clouds are gathering, and there are reports of police being dispatched in Pretoria in lieu of the approaching storm. If it gets any darker I think I'm also going to get out of here in the next 20 minutes, but something tells me, so is everyone else.

It also occurs to me that the internet is an incredibly vital and useful tool for the dessimnation of extreme weather warnings, at least, while the power is up and running in those HYPER-local areas. It's likely to become a trend as climate change intensifies around us.

Galapagos - The Evolution of Life

For a long time the islands of enchantment as they were known to some, were not to be found on maps anywhere. But once these islands - 600 miles from the South American coast - appeared as a few incidental blotches on maps, they began to have a greater and greater impact on human beings. Why? Because the life forms here, even the same creatures on neighboring islands looked different, and were so strange and unique that visitors found themselves asking the crucial question: why is life here so different to anywhere else?

Indeed, on Galapagos you will find enormous creatures, like two distinct species of tortoise, and birds like the Galapagos Albatross and frigates. There are other creatures not found anywhere else on earth, like the Galápagon land iguanas, flightless cormorants and blue footed boobies*. The tortoises are giants, one has a unique saddle shaped shell that allows for high neck stretching (these tortoises feed on cactus flowers for example). And it is from these animals, that the islands - many with the same shape and volcanic design - get their name.

It is interesting to see what specialised skills various creatures have developed. Lizards that became marooned on these isolated islands developed the ability to swim in the sea, and feed on seaweed. A species of Finch diversified to fill the niches that would normally be held by many other bird species. So one species of Finch developed a different sized beak - longer, shorter, or thicker. One of these even developed the ability to use tools, cutting twigs to the appropriate size and then lancing grubs inside hard branches.

All these adaptations only came about after plenty of failures, plenty of deaths in a harsh environment. Amazingly, when Darwin visited Galapagos in September and October of 1835 (for just 5 weeks) he missed most of these vital clues. He collected the finches but did not guess they were the same species. He heard about the different tortoises, but only saw the non-saddle-shaped shell species himself. But he did capture a mockingbird, and remembered the same species in South America. And so he asked himself: how come this species, almost identical, has a slightly smaller body and shorter beak on these islands?

Looking at the volcanic structure of the islands, Darwin gradually came to an epiphany. He realised he was looking back through time, to the beginning of life on Earth. He saw that different environments cause life to change to suit these environments. Thus he saw that life adapts to an environment, and these adaptations lead to evolutionary changes.

The strange diversity on this archipelago started, though, with the Mockingbird. These birds that looked so different elsewhere elicited a response from Darwin. The irony then is equally strange: Darwin started on his intuitive journey thanks to mockingbirds, or mocking-thrushes as Darwin referred to them. These birds are fierce defenders of territory, and demonstrate the talent to innovate by, for example, mimicking the songs of other birds. It is appropriate, in my opinion, that mankind, so ignorant for so long of the true state of Nature, should discover it through the Mockingbird;-)

Galapagos, narrated by Tilda Swinton concludes in South Africa next week at 10pm, on SABC 2. Don't miss it.
*Boobies are also found along the Pacific West Coast as far up as Mexico, but are particularly visible at Galapagos.

Cars and Girls: Sexy or Vulgar? (Pictures)

Remember when cigarette ads were sexy? Remember when you went to movies and you saw those incredible Monaco-yacht-filled-harbor backdrops to slick and snowy Stuyvesant ads or black and shiny John Player Special choppers and race cars? Well, we look back at that with a little nostalgia perhaps, but the bullshit marketing has been superseded by scientific logic: Scientists have calculated that each cigarette cuts on average 11 minutes off the life of a male smoker.

I saw an old full page newspaper advertisement for LIFE cigarettes - the newspaper was mid 80's. Now going that far back it's clearly ludicrous. Cigarettes called Life, with ridiculous copy: Light up your Life, or Get the most out of Life - smoke Life. In the same way, these associations - cars and girls being sexy work right now. The picture above with the large gas guzzling Chrysler is sexy, right? Actually, it's incredibly dumb. But it will take time for the zeitgeist to transform. Right now, driving is dumb. It fucks up the atmosphere, and it's propelling this planet into war and absolute ruin. Our absolute dependence on fossil fuels - which allows us to run suburbia, drive to work and run planetwide city highway systems - that's in jeapordy. It's not sexy. It's not a sexy idea.

In a sleepwalking society of course it IS sexy. And in a few years we will see a lot of cars the size of SMART pods. These bigger flashier ships will be FORD: First On Garbage Dump.

Of course it will take a while. In the same way that those Peter Stuyvesant ads about skiing the high life are STILL so seductive, it will take away to cleanse away the marketing bullshit around cars. If you've seen the BMW M3 ad you'll get what I am talking about. What is that commercial trying to say exactly? It's the perfect example of collective insanity, and this mantra: it doesn't have to make sense, it just has to look good.
When you don't have enough to eat, and you can't go anywhere, looks are the least important thing. It's logical but not necessarily a natural way of thinking. Unfortunately.