Endless Summer

One of my Exhibition Pics.

Runner's World

I've just ordered two books on Amazon.com:

Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting
and
The Road (Oprah's Book Club)
Haven't done that in a while.

I felt cold and prickly after work so decided not to go for a cycle. Called Lindsay Saker though, and they're keen for me to join. I went to Cyclopede and all the Lindsay Saker entry forms were gone; meanwhile a whole pile of Tokkie Wheeler (say what!) forms were lying around that nobody wanted. Who came up with a name like that?

After that went for an easy 9km run. Took it very easy. Did it in an hour. Plenty of stretching before and after. Haven't run in a while and I could feel like my running muscles had shut down, and the tissue wires were working against the over-developed cycling muscles. Ouch. Bit of ITB happening there.


But a nice run, then cooked dinner. Spaghetti + mince. Have a morning off tomorrow so I'm going to get in a long cycle. Going to pick up the keys from Suki later in the day. Looking forward to that. Also have to have another 15 pictures mounted for the exhibition. Must get that done tomorrow as well.

Stuart 'O Grady Wins Paris-Roubaix

from: www.cyclingnews.com:

The Australian cycling fraternity is celebrating following the first victory by one of its countrymen at the famed Paris-Roubaix monument race overnight. Down Under cycling enthusiasts who followed the race into the wee hours of the morning were well rewarded for their late-night commitment when reports flowed in that South Australian Stuart O'Grady was the first to roll into the Roubaix velodrome, some 52 seconds ahead of his nearest rival Juan Antonio Flecha (Rabobank).

"To tackle the 'Hell of the North' event and win is an outstanding achievement for any professional cyclist," said 1984 Olympic Gold Medallist and Tour Down Under event director Mike Turtur. "But for Stuart the victory is all that much sweeter as I know from a personal perspective that he had a burning desire to win the event."

O'Grady's victory claims the 33 year-old a unique piece of history: he's not only the first Australian to take victory at the event, but is also the first native english speaking winner since Classics legend Sean Kelly lifted the cobble stone trophy some 21 years ago.

"Its bigger than that," explained Cycling Australia High Performance manager Kevin Tabotta, "there's only a handful of guys who can claim to have won the Paris-Roubaix. It's arguably the biggest race in one day cycling other than the world championships. Some will say Milan-Sanremo, some will say Tour of Flanders, but there's no denying that the Paris-Roubaix is either first or second in anyone's mind."
"I've dreamt of winning this race since I was a kid, and it actually still feels like a dream now it's actually come true."

O'Grady's victory tops off a strong start to the 2007 season for the Team CSC rider. He built up to Roubaix gradually with a strong campaign in Belgium and Italy, which included two fifth places in one-day races. The first came at Omloop Het Volk, where O'Grady rolled in two seconds behind winner Filippo Pozzato (Liquigas) and then again at Milan - Sanremo, where he sprinted to the line in a bunch finish behind fellow countrymen Allan Davis (Discovery Channel), who took second and Robbie McEwen (Predictor-Lotto), who placed fourth.

"Stuart's result is not just good for Stuart, that's a huge step for Australian cycling," added Tabotta. "It's really confirmed, I believe and I'm sure anyone involved in High Performance Cycling Australia will tell you, it's confirmed his abilities which have been there since year dot, when he was a 17 or 18 year-old racing with the national track team and Charlie Walsh, heading to the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona.
"Since that event Stuart has always been ready for the big results," pointed out Tabotta.

O'Grady's arrival at the famous finishing venue was the realization of a career-long dream and while he may have been ready for years, the glory hasn't come easy: with injury and illness striking him down during his buildup in years gone by.

"In the last few year's he was ready to do a big result and he'd have a fall or he'd get ill, I think everything came together for him for this race," noted Tabotta. "I just think everybody has been waiting for Stuart to do this big result and here it is. I think he's worked for it very, very hard too."

One of those falls includes a massive spill by the South Australian in last year's Tirreno-Adriatico. The early-season encounter with a pothole grounded O'Grady with brute force on the event's second stage, breaking his collarbone and busting five ribs. That five week vacation wasn't the first in recent years to hamper the Australian's Classics bid, with a crash during a sprint finish at the 2004 E3 Prijs Vlaanderen leaving him with a dislocated bone in his wrist and a broken rib.

The 2004 accident was only compounded when management at the Confidis squad he competed for sidelined the squad from most of that year's Spring Classics as a results of some well-founded doping allegations. While O'Grady himself was never implicated in the allegations, the issue which affected selected members of the squad obviously has an impact on the whole team.
Of course, all of these events followed the career-saving surgery the 2004 Olympic Gold Medallist underwent in 2002. While O'Grady remembers problems with his leg as far back as 1997, it wasn't until 2002 when it became a frequent issue that he had it checked out. The result? His common iliac artery - one of two main arteries going down each leg from the heart, each about five centimetres long - was blocked. O'Grady went under the knife, and subsequently spent two months off the bike, to correct an ongoing problem once and for all.

The hurdles during O'Grady's 15-year career have been paired with plenty of success. The sprinter's palmares includes multiple Tour de France stage wins, an Australian National Championship, and both stage and points competition wins at Dauphiné Libéré. These are but a few on the long list of accomplishments by one of Australia's greatest cyclists, who can now add Paris-Roubaix victory to the growing list.

"I've dreamt of winning this race since I was a kid, and it actually still feels like a dream now it's actually come true," O'Grady told the media on arrival in Roubaix. "It's gonna be days before it hits me for real. I was going to win today or die trying."

Such was the impact of his emotion-charged victory that the South Australian State Government-owned Events South Australia, which owns and operates the Tour Down Under, issued a press release offering its congratulations to the rider. While it may not be as unusual an honour as United States congress passing a motion to formally congratulate last year's NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson on his success, it is, in effect, the Australian equivalent.
"Winning the Paris-Roubaix is like winning a Grand Slam, a F1 Grand Prix, or the US Open and is very, very important in the world of cycling," said Leeanne Grantham, general manager of Events South Australia.

The stunning 52 second win, coupled with the accomplishments of his Australian counterparts this season, holds the nation in good stead for the future, believes Tabotta.

"How do you asses such an impact? It's a difficult question, I think," concluded Tabotta, who is overseeing the future O'Gradys back at home on Australian soil. "Everyone's aware of Stuart's standing in Australian cycling. Juniors coming through know who Stuart O'Grady is, and they know the level he's at. All this does is refreshes their memory with another great result.
"He was already in a league of special road and track cyclists in Australia, this just simply puts him up into another level again," concluded Tabotta. "I think your junior athletes, coaches, clubs and general cycling fraternity are now going to hold Stuart O'Grady up on another level altogether."

Sport Without Logic

The failure to think in sport and life has a high price

How do people deal with unscripted reality?

The perfect sporting example of this is a cricket umpire suddenly facing a bowler and fielders screaming “HOWZAAAAAAT.” Infuriated audiences for many years watched slow motion replays that showed just how defective some of these decisions were. How long did it take cricket boards worldwide to concede that any unclear decision would be logically and far easily settled using television as a third umpire? An obscenely long time. Since then the same logic has been applied to other sports like rugby (but not, tennis or soccer).

When the uncertainty factor is high, the last thing people want to do is think. Thinking about real issues scares us. When we’re usually thinking whatever it is we like to think about it is commonly a fairly meaningless jumble. We mostly avoid thinking that involves clear concentration, and careful and precise evaluation. Because at the end of it we have to make choices. Yet exactly what is required when facing unscripted reality is this: thinking out of the box.

Here’s a firsthand example:

This Saturday morning I arrived at the registration tables for a cycle race. Not just any fun ride, but a Provincial Event. As a result of plenty of botched communications, and a failure to follow up on my part, I was told that if my name didn’t appear on a list I would not be able to ride. I asked: “Is it absolutely impossible that I can ride my bicycle in today’s race?” The woman whose job it was to find names on a list kept insisting I fall in line, and then proceeded to ignore me in favor of people not in line, proffering their licenses. The lawyer in me stormed, somewhat reluctantly, into action. I pointed out that I had called the event’s organizer, I had spoken to numerous heads of state in my club, and although promises were made and intentions were declared, my registration was left undone. Deaf ears.

Then, after indicating that I had just returned from a 10 day, 850km cycle tour, in part to prepare for this event, an impromptu meeting was held on my behalf. It was decided that since someone else had also been turned away, I should be turned away too, since no exceptions should be made. It occurred to me only a few moments later, with time to the start of my event fast running out, that unlike the other gentleman who had completely forgotten, I had made attempts to register and ultimately assumed backroom work had been done on my behalf. The problem was, everyone else had made similar assumptions. In the end, I didn’t ride. While the riders gathered for the 100km race, I got into my car and drove home with my bicycle in the back.

The point of the above is you have a problem with an unclear solution. If you want to hide in the paperwork you can confidently proclaim that without a license, in this case, without a name on a list, you cannot participate. That may make sense, especially if your job is to work with and administer pieces of paper. It may also make sense if your job is to write rules for cycle races. It may even make sense if you are the organizer of the event. It makes very little sense to someone who is actually participating, someone who has just taken annual leave in order to train day in and day out for events exactly like this one.

While Schindler’s list (‘the list is life) made sense in the madness of war, a list for a cycling event is less easy to justify.
If we’re going to think logically about our example, we can also pose this question: what if your name is on a list but you are not present? Isn’t that another version of being present but one’s name not being present? I mean, just how useful then, is the list, as an absolute token of How Things Stand. For example, my brother’s name was on the list, and he was probably 2 km away in his townhouse, applying paint to a canvas and happily remembering his Friday night movie date, while his license lay tucked away in some drawer. What is the point of that? What if most of the names on the list aren’t represented by real, present people? Now it becomes obvious that the list is meant to add credence to reality, the list is meant to backup firsthand reality, not prevent it from taking place. What good is a marriage license without two people willing and able to actually pitch up and get married, and be married? It’s worthless. Reality starts not with paperwork, but with reality itself. We human beings seem to be getting mixed up with that part.

Where thinking becomes useful, is looking at the mainframe, the mission, the guiding paradigm. In this case, you have a cycling event which is intended to measure and test the performances of the best cyclists in the state. Simple as that. In the same way that a car on the road ought to have a license, so should cyclists in these circumstances. A license is there to protect the driver and fellow road users. It’s given when it is clear that the car and its user are roadworthy. It’s a way to organize road users in a way that’s meant to help them. If you are caught driving without a license, you can be fined. You are not asked to remove your vehicle from the road, because it’s assumed that you can pretty much use the road without perfect administration behind you. In the case of this cycle race though, the thinking didn’t progress very far. Without a license you weren’t allowed on the road. To the organizers it seemed worthwhile to simply ban unlicensed riders, whatever their status, in order to get the desired result in future (100% use of licenses). As you can immediately see, no out of the box thinking, in fact, it’s fair to suggest that no thinking occurred of any kind. Meanwhile, the actual premise is lost. The highest priority is not to:
1) present a race to test the best local riders
and then:
2) make sure all competitors are licensed either on the day or immediately (but retrospectively) after.
No, the highest priority is:
1) Riders must be licensed.

They don’t have to ride, they must just be licensed. Great.

Thus it’s possible to hold an event in a scenario where no riders are licensed, meaning in reality there is no event actually taking place (but in terms of paper, there theoretically is). Should paper then predicate what happens? So if there is no paper or printer available in my chosen Italian town where I want to get married, does that mean I don’t/can’t? Surely it can be arranged post event?

So I wonder, if I was Lance Armstrong, pitching up out of the blue (without a license), if these officials would have been similarly intransigent. Sorry Lance, you can’t ride, see it’s only licensed riders. Oh you didn’t know. Too bad. You can sit and watch if you like.
It’s a very fair question. It’s based on the preference of written rules, and thought codes, over individuals. It may seem justified when dealing with the invisible person in the populace. It’s very, very difficult to justify when you have a finicky little rule preventing a force of nature, with a passion for cycling, someone who took a lot of trouble to show up. It’s easy to justify of course if you don’t think, don’t care and of course, suffer from a failure to use your own imagination.

Imagine my case then: Wilbur and I were at the cycle shop on Friday night until around 8pm swapping my triathlon bars for regular bars and having my rear wheel aligned. The point of the image is merely to demonstrate that people’s lives are involved beyond black and white names on a list. There is life beyond the confines of an a4 sheet of paper. Life is what’s urgent and important, not the piece of paper attempting to render it.

Another example of ridiculous psychology is in the case of South Africa’s World Champion swimmer, Roeland Schoeman. He recently competed at a world championship and won at least one gold medal. The cost to get him to Melbourne was around R50 000. A sponsor who had undertaken to assist him reneged on their commitment, and now Schoeman is stuck in Melbourne and unable to return to South Africa to compete in National Trials. Swimming South Africa are now moving to cut off their stipends to Schoeman (around R10 000 a month), and to basically disqualify him, not because he will not return to South Africa, but because he cannot. Naturally their move merely aggravates his situation.

Once again, the overall picture isn’t even glanced at. Here you have the world’s fastest swimmer, trying to get around, and his attempts to simply participate are being sabotaged by the fineprint. In the end, it really is about a lack of empathy and a lack of real support not only for the sport, but for the sportsman. Ryk Neethling in contrast is able to attend events willy nilly, but his sponsorships are less based on his performance (he is not a world champion in anything) than on good looks.

The fact that Swimming South Africa can even imagine, even suggest cutting the funding of their best swimmer (and the world’s best) not because of his failure to attend events, but because of their failure to support him (in contrast a foreign Middle Eastern country offered a multimillion dollar sponsorship deal), is so lamentably insane, all officials associated with this decision ought to be sacked with immediate effect.

The job of sports officials and any other person serving on a council, or a committee, or some or other body, is to serve its constituents.
But we already know that once people find themselves in a position of authority (however humble that authority may actually be), they find that very quickly their internal focus shifts from the original values that promised to espouse and to promote, to promoting themselves as authority figures, to having their say, with a say above those they are meant to help and represent. Thus you’ll find people who are older and fatter, giving instructions to a young and enthusiastic populace, and in that, I feel, is a kind of voyeurism. By expropriating power, by in fact denying someone who is ready, a chance in the sun, to perform, perhaps for them there is a kind of satisfaction. Perhaps it is based on a sense of: I am too old, and in any case not good enough. You who are not, need to feel what that’s like.

There may be some justice in that, if a particular twisted kind of justice. These sort of people, who are in authority, who quote bible verses or minutes of some meeting, or some rulebook, who do all these things without pausing a moment to actually absorb what is happening around them, or contemplate the sense of their actions, they ought to be immediately rooted out and ejected from their positions. People who do not swim should not sit on any kind of committee representing swimmers. People who do not cycle (and have never cycled) should not have any involvement in the lives of cyclists. Presidents who have not been to war should not be allowed to send his countrymen to war.

It should be made very clear that those who serve, serve. And that policy stems from constituents, not from those merely in positions to implement them. These same people who do nothing but paperwork, who stand up and oppose, should be prevented from contaminating the hearts and minds of people who love what they are doing. Words on a piece of paper ought not to be the most important thing on any given day. Human beings, for which those words were made, ought to have the sense to know that.

University Romances: Can They Survive The Long Term?

From www.bbc.com

Life after university requires re-adjustmentLove had blossomed between Prince William and Kate Middleton at St Andrews but then floundered a few years later. It's a typical story for many graduates. Why?

Although a relationship involving a future king of England makes the circumstances extraordinary and unique, there is one dimension that millions of people can relate to.
The reality check that awaits graduates as they leave the cloistered surroundings of university can as easily apply to the love life as the career.

Relationships that appeared rock-solid for one, two or even three years undergo a stern examination when the lecture hall is replaced by the workplace.
Amy Jenkins, creator of This Life, which for many BBC viewers characterised post-university life, believes the odds are stacked against such romances surviving.

"You're probably too young to settle if you met at university," she says. "You haven't found yourself then and don't know what you're going to do, necessarily. Your most important relationship is with yourself."

She had been horrified to learn some time ago that Prince William and Kate Middleton could get married.


The kind of man I would have picked at university is very different from the man I ended up with...

"It's the last bit of growing up and some people manage to do that in a relationship but it's difficult. In most cases it's much too soon because if you're not careful you start to define yourself in reaction to the other person rather than just defining yourself."

Being single in your 20s is important because it's a time when, without parental support, you can think about what job to have, what person you are and what life you want, says Ms Jenkins.
"The kind of man I would have picked at university is very different from the man I ended up with. If I had met someone who wanted to have a family I would have wanted to break out in my 30s to become the writer I've become."

Crisis point

University provides a cocooned existence which acts as a safety net, says Glenn Wilson, a psychologist at King's College London.
"It's like a shipboard romance, isolated from the real world and its additional stresses, so when people emerge they begin to meet new people and go separate ways. The world changes around them and that might well be what has happened in this instance."

Happier times... but were the odds stacked against it?
People may feel if they get hitched irrevocably at the end of university they are going to miss out on testing a lot of new waters and fresh fields, he says, which can prompt a point of crisis or re-evaluation.

There are points in favour of a university romance lasting. Relationships which are built on common ground, including intellectual similarities, have a better chance of lasting than those that cross all kinds of divides, he says.

But women are seen as more attractive at a younger age than men, and males with a strong social standing often pick a more youthful female partner.
"It's good they both have a university background but it might be that William's eventual partner is going through university now, five years later," says Mr Wilson.

"The wanderlust in males takes a bit more cooling to settle than it does for females who are looking for bonds and love from an earlier age."

Meet The Robinsons

from www.worstpreviews.com:

Theatrical Review:

When it looked like Disney and Pixar were about to part ways a few years back, Disney decided to ramp up its own 3-D animation studio in order to keep putting these lucrative movies on the market. The results (Chicken Little, for example) have been lackluster so far, but after years of effort it finally looks like Disney has again figured out how to make animated movies that work... just in time to complete its multi-billion dollar acquisition of Pixar.

Now that they're all one company, I'm not sure what the future holds for Disney's in-house animation studio, but Meet the Robinsons will probably be the best thing it ever produces, no matter what happens at this point. But that's not damning with faint praise: Meet the Robinsons is really a great film that I unilaterally recommend.

Based on a children's book from William Joyce, the story tells us of an orphan named Lewis who's far more interested in inventing crazy things than playing baseball with other kids. Sadly, his inventions never work right, and various mishaps have conspired to keep him unadopted on the eve of his 13th birthday. Lewis decides to create a machine that can recall lost memories (so he can track down the mother who gave him up), but his science fair unveiling ends with the predictable room full of chaos.

Then things get really nutty: An evil genius (well, not so much a genius) from the future arrives to abscond with the invention, as does a young boy named Wilbur Robinson, who brings Lewis with him back to the future. Here, the adventure continues, with Lewis meeting Wilbur's eccentric family, and battling the evil "bowler hat guy" who stole his experiment. (One of the best villains ever, he keeps his master plan in a unicorn-logo binder.) Eventually he'll discover the meaning of all of this and what it all has to do with him.

For a kiddie flick, it's actually a complex little film, with shades of Back to the Future and The Matrix running throughout. However the movie never feels derivative. By keeping things light and avoiding such concerns as what could happen when you meet your future/past self, Meet the Robinsons remains a pretty feathery adventure. And yet, surprisingly, the movie has plenty of depth that will resonate with grown-ups. Robinsons humor is far more intelligent than the juvenile puns of, say, Finding Nemo: A T-Rex bemoaning his "giant head and little arms" -- in subtitles -- is a highlight, as are crooning frogs that are subtly revealed to be gangsters, complete with a dark suits, a Cadillac, and a tire iron in the trunk.

More importantly, its messages about failure being a learning experience (and something to be celebrated) and the importance of a good support network put most animated movies to shame. I was actually touched by Lewis's emotional journey while being thrilled by the film's actual adventure. And to think... this movie might actually get kids interested in science.

My focus on the film's few non-human characters shouldn't make you think the movie is replete with talking beasts cracking wise. Wilbur's extended family stands in for the usual movie sidekicks, and for the most part they're (animated) flesh and blood. That said, the future is obviously a weird place -- and a curvy, '50s-inflected, pastel-colored utopia -- so giant octopi and lanky robots are par for the course. And while the film might very well have been better off without the surfeit of excess characters that parade throughout the movie's second act, it would be hard to imagine Meet the Robinsons without, well, the Robinsons.

Technically speaking, the movie is crisply animated and pretty to look at. It doesn't push any CGI boundaries, instead settling into a hyperrealistic cartoony style, which works just fine here. That said, you'll see plenty of fine detail in Lewis's spiky hair and myriad places where you can get lost in the futuristic eye candy. I also had the luxury of seeing the film in Disney Digital 3D (it'll be on about 600 screens in this format) and was extremely impressed with its effectiveness. Frankly I can't imagine seeing the movie in regular 2D now.

The celebrity voices are kept to a minimum, and all the major characters are nobodies. Adam West, Tom Selleck, and Laurie Metcalf have a few lines each in smallish roles. Otherwise, director Stephen J. Anderson, with his first non-direct-to-video feature, does an impressive job keeping the focus on the story and the grand adventure. Did Pixar really do a script touchup, as rumored, to keep the movie from bogging down? If so, that just might be the best $7 billion anyone's ever spent.

Kunstler: Grunting and Gnashing

from www.kunstler.com:

Sexual Abstinence

Where our tax dollars go: WASHINGTON, April 14 (AP) — Students who participated in sexual abstinence programs were just as likely to have sex as those who did not, according to a study ordered by Congress. Also, those who attended one of the four abstinence classes reviewed reported having similar numbers of sexual partners as those who did not attend the classes. And they first had sex about the same age as other students — 14.9 years, according to Mathematica Policy Research Inc. The federal government spends about $176 million a year promoting abstinence until marriage. Critics have repeatedly said they did not believe the programs worked. Bush administration officials cautioned against drawing sweeping conclusions from the study. . . .

Green Smoke

April 16, 2007
Tom Friedman, celebrated New York Times columnist and author of The World is Flat, riffed on (or around) the issues of climate change and energy in that newspaper's Sunday Magazine this week ("The Power of Green"), and managed, in the process, to misunderstand just about every implication these conjoined problems present. Friedman's specious thinking is symptomatic of exactly what is wrong with our public discussion of these matters generally, and their presentation in mainstream media in particular.

I'm fond of saying that if America could harness the power it wastes blowing smoke up its own ass, we could magically escape our energy-and-climate-change predicament. I say this repeatedly to counter the increasing volume of lies we tell ourselves in order to maintain the illusion that we can continue living the way we do. Like so many other commentators suffering from cranial-rectosis, Friedman believes that we can keep on running our Happy Motoring utopia if we just switch fuels. Friedman gives no indication that he understands the fundamentals of the global oil situation. He writes:

People change when they have to -- not when we tell them -- and falling oil prices make them have to. That is why if we are looking for a Plan B for Iraq -- a way of pressing for political reform in the Middle East without going to war again -- there is no better tool than bringing down the price of oil.

This is a fascinating statement. It's predicated on the idea that the US can achieve "energy independence," which is itself predicated on the further idea that we can accomplish this by switching out gasoline for ethanol. This is such an elementary error in thinking that it would be funny if it wasn't the lead story in the flagship of the mainstream media. As a Pennsylvania farmer put it to me in February: "It looks like we're going to burn up the last remaining six inches of Midwest topsoil in our gas-tanks." Friedman's statement also ignores the facts that running cars on ethanol would make no material difference in the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere, or that ethanol is 20 percent less efficient than gasoline, meaning we would have to produce and use that much more of the stuff just to stay where we are.

Where climate change is concerned, this is a variation of the "Red Queen syndrome" (from Alice in Wonderland) in which one has to run faster and faster to stay in place. It also fails to take into account the tragic ramifications of setting up competition between food for humans and crops for motor fuels just at the point when a growing scarcity of oil-and-gas-based soil "inputs" (as well increasing climate problems in the grain belt) will drastically lower American crop yields. The symptoms of this unintended consequence have already begun to present themselves -- for instance, January's food riots in Mexico, which resulted from Mexican corn being sold to American ethanol distillers rather than Mexican cornmeal millers, who couldn't match their bids. Friedman goes on to tout Wal-Mart's mendacious campaign to "green" up its operations by, among other things, improving the mileage of its truck fleet from 6-mpg to 12-mpg. He writes:

Take Wal-Mart. The world's biggest retailer woke up several years ago, its CEO Lee Scott told me, and realized with regard to the environment its customers "had higher expectations for us than we had for ourselves." So Scott hired a sustainability expert, Jib Ellison, to tutor his company. The first lesson Ellison preached was that going green was a whole new way for Wal-Mart to cut costs and drive its profits.

The smoke Mr. Scott blew up Friedman's ass is leaking out of the columnist's pie-hole here. I've been to dozens of permitting battles over Wal-Mart in the planning boards of America, writing on suburban sprawl, and I can assure you that the the pro Wal-Mart factions in these fights uniformly couldn't give a fuck about anything except saving five bucks on a plastic salad shooter ("we want bargain shopping!!!"). Not to put too fine a point on it, but these are precisely the members of the American public who sold their own local economies down the river, who led their towns into destitution, and who believe with all their hearts that it is possible to get something for nothing (which is why this large cohort of citizens spends so much of its meager income on lottery tickets, trips to Las Vegas, and gets suckered into ruinous "miracle" mortgages).

Friedman's invocation of Wal-Mart here offers another layer of misunderstanding from the work he is best-known for, his best-selling book, The World is Flat, which asserts that globalism is now a permanent feature of the human condition. I demur from this view. I think we will discover (probably painfully) that globalism was a set of transient economic relations made possible by a half century of cheap oil and relative peace between the great powers, and that enterprises that rely on these transient mechanisms -- such Wal-Mart, with its 12,000-mile merchandise supply chain to China, and its "warehouse on wheels" of tractor-trailor trucks circulating incessantly on America's interstate highways -- will be on their knees in a few years as we enter the export crisis phase of post-peak terminal oil depletion and the great powers of the world act with increasing desperation to compete over the remaining supplies.

For someone operating at the top of journalism's food chain, Friedman is astoundingly ignorant. He asserts at another point in this article that climate change will require us to "[r]eplace 1,400 large coal-fired plants with gas-fired plants." Earth to Tom: America's natural gas supply is arguably more tenuous and problematic than its oil supply. To put it bluntly, over the next five years, we will fall off a cliff with natural gas. Apparently Friedman hasn't heard. Nor are we going to make up for this loss by importing liquid natural gas from distant lands. Nor would it make any sense to burn expensive imported methane gas to run power generation turbines. So, you see, there is no chance whatsoever that we will do what Friedman suggests. In fact, the 17 percent of all electric power that we currently get from gas will be lost to us in the near future, which could leave us with Third World style electric service. (Incidentally, the terminal decline of our natural gas supply also means we will lose control of the crucial resource used for making nitrogenous fertilizers, with self-evident further implications for our crop yields and our ability to feed ourselves or manufacture alternative motor fuels.) Friedman's equations regarding continued industrial expansion in China and India are based on the assumption that they somehow will be immune to the global energy crisis and to the ecological catastrophes entailed by climate change. More likely: both nations will be overwhelmed by these things and the only question will be how desperate their political convulsions will be in response (or how rapidly they devolve back to twelfth century living standards). At the heart of Friedman's thesis is his notion that the current incarnation of "the American Dream" is a good thing and can continue. By American Dream he apparently means membership in the Happy Motoring Utopia, with all its accessories, furnishings, and usufructs -- the system broadly known as suburban sprawl. Here's the truth, Tom: suburban sprawl is a living arrangement with no future. It was a tragic mistake to squander the post World War Two wealth of our society to build it. It will come to represent an immense liability for this country's future, as it loses both monetary and practical value. And we will have to make comprehensive arrangements for living differently, if we want to continue this project of American civilization.

A telling omission in this article, by the way, is any mention of public transit. It's especially significant because the one thing we really could do right away to reduce our oil consumption would be to get passenger rail going again in this country. But this blind spot in Friedman's vision is only the flip side to his stupid belief that we can just keep all the cars running by other means.

Tom Friedman has no idea what the implications are of all these things. His fatuous advice to the nation -- served up by a confused and cowardly Times editorial staff -- will only spur more delusional thinking, which is, of course, the last thing we need. The showcasing of Friedman's article may represent an inflection point in the fate of the mainstream media -- the moment when it demonstrates most clearly its failure to make current events comprehensible, the moment when its lost legitimacy is finally recognized. That legitimacy has been passing to the Internet, where commentators have no advertisers to pander to and no need to defend any status quo.

typing in tongues

During my year in the Air Force I was taught to type with all fingers, which proved to be marginally slower than precision guided fingerpoint typing, using just the index finger of the left hand, and the middle finger of the right (strange combination I know).

Today, typing in Susceptibility Test Results, I found myself typing data without looking. It feels a lot like magic, typing in data without looking, and doing it 99% correctly. The error is incidental, typing a 'q' in an attempt to sweep towards the tab key.
It is amazing how intelligent the brain is, and accurate.

I have often hit 'snooze' mode on my cellphone, and at other times set an alarm, only to wake up, or get up on the instant just before the alarm goes off. It's also possible, through experience, to judge very accurately, one's own heartbeat, or even the approximate speed or time doing a set (especially swimming).

The body and mind work together as learning and precision instruments. Learning to be more effective, more efficient, and being adaptive throughout. Compare these results to our abilities as infants? And people say there is no evolution. Efficiency is constantly evolving, and for one simple reason: Necessity. It has to - otherwise we face failure/loss/death.

World Wrecking Starts in the Home

How and why simple living makes sense, and pays off

It’s good to hear that I am not the only person who went ‘a year without’ something. I went for a year without a car. In a huge country like South Africa, where public transport infrastructure is inadequate, that’s tough. Of course it’s easier if you love bicycling. There are people who have committed to living without all sorts of things we consume without thinking about. The most basic version of this, in my opinion, is the vegetarian. In 2004 a group of friends decided to buy nothing new except food, toiletries and essential medication. And the trend is spreading.

Some people call this a conversion to simpler living ‘daft’ and ‘ineffectual’. For those who have committed to this simpler, harder life, it is about an inner desire to minimize their personal footprint, their private impact on the planet. I found myself in this group, and was simply sickened by the underlying reality of our collection consumption. Masses of consumers seem to be sleepwalking towards the next thing, the next kick, the next amusement, but we’ve long since stopped being happy. Not really happy.

Colin Beavan, 43, a historical nonfiction writer recently featured in a New York Times article (My Year Without Toilet Paper*) sums the position of these conscientious objectors on his blog (http://noimpactman.typepad.com/blog/) very succiently:

‘According to Martin Seligman, Ph.D., founder of the relatively new field of “positive psychology.” He writes that the hedonic treadmill…
"…causes you to rapidly and inevitably adapt to good things by taking them for granted…The deeds and things you worked so hard for no longer make you happy; you need to get something even better to boost your level of happiness..but once you get the next possession or achievement, you adapt to it as well…"*
If we want to be happy, Seligman seems to suggest, then setting our sights on getting more money and stuff is the wrong direction. Meanwhile, on a societal scale, that self same consumption plunders the planet’s resources and chokes it with waste. What interests me about this, from an environmental point of view, is that, if you believe Seligman and his crew, we’re wrecking the world with our consumption for reasons that aren’t even making us happy.
Meanwhile Bevan himself, and Michelle Conlin, 39, also a writer, have given themselves wholeheartedly to what can only be called ‘Wholesome Living’. They’ve made the following rules for themselves:
- Do not use transportation that is carbon-fuelled (this included elevators that derive their electrical energy from coal powered stations)
- Do not buy anything except food
- Do not buy food that is not local (produced further than 250 miles away)
- Do not use paper
- Do not produce trash
The implications of this framework implies that the couple (who have a 2 year old) have to expend plenty of their own energy to get around, to grow food, and to avoid the packaging associated with almost all commercially available food. If you’re trying to limit your garbage pile, it means buying food at markets, growing vegetables, and finding creative ways to dispose of certain bodily fluids.

I have also attempted the vegetarian/fresh produce only route, and it’s fair to say that it is an incredibly difficult, but rewarding transition. The benefits are obvious: increased energy levels, better health, and immediate loss of weight. The disadvantage of such a lifestyle is that it is inconvenient and difficult to maintain. It is particularly difficult to find wholesome food at short notice.

While it may seem, initially, to be a patently inconvenient lifestyle, there are elements in it that are very practical. I know that for me personally, smoking and drinking were never really on the cards because I always needed that bit of disposable income for something else, usually associated with sport and travel. And it’s when interest rates or petrol prices rise, that simpler living gains converts. Let’s face it, not everything about Life in the West is convenient or even desirable. Think about:

- traffic jams
- junk food
- television
- current work ethics: working for months, or even years simply to spend that money in a few hours, on additions to a house, car, or a one-off
- paying ludicrous amounts for ordinary products such as water, clothing, coffee and baked bread
- non-integrated, disconnected and often a lonely everyday sense of life, based on ‘connecting technologies’ that eliminate the need for face to face contact
- an overweight, moody, irritable, basically lazy populace wallowing in their own pollution

Living simply is really just about investing less in stuff, and more in people, in relationships, in the capacities of ourselves and others (imagination, creativity, innovation). It’s an arduous existence at times, but often just how difficult it is, and to what extent it runs counter to the Mass Marketing Machine that drives consumption, and consumers, often this comes as a shock to people who buck the system. At times it seems that it is impossible to live outside of the system. Of course it isn’t, it’s just that the system needs money to run its engine, and living simply is a psychology that doesn’t compute. Living simply is incomptabile with the mantra of our society:

MORE!

But 88% of Americans think they are too materialistic, and 81% agree that they (Americans) are too focused on shopping and spending. **
Every time you spend your money, you’re subscribing to a certain set of beliefs. You’re voting. You’re choosing a future along with all the other consumers around you. The next time you are out shopping, take a 5 or 10 minute time out and look at them. They don’t look happy do they? We’re the victims of our own greed, and easily overwhelmed by all the choices out there. But we also have the choice to step away from it all, into a conscious way of living that makes sense, not just to ourselves, but to the wider world around us.

*http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/22/garden/22impact.html?em&ex=1174795200&en=37dc12676509aa61&ei=5087%0A
**According to a study conducted by the Center for a New American Dream

I know how you feel.

Kilimanjaro Closing

From: www.travelwatch.com

Authorities have closed two routes up Mt. Kilimanjaro that lead to Arrow Glacier, a spot where three Americans were killed by falling rocks in January. Park officials determined that the likelihood of similar slides in the area was too great to keep the trails open.

Scientists have warned that global warming is melting Kilimanjaro’s snow and glaciers, and more rocks may be dislodged by strong winds.

One hundred sixty miles west of Kilimanjaro, in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, the volcano Oldonyo Lengai erupted twice in mid April. Authorities have warned people to stay away, but tourists have come to watch the spectacle. No one was injured in the eruptions.

"Keep Moving Forward"

"Meet the Robinsons" is one of the first truely integrated collaborations between Walt Disney and Pixar. In fact, nowhere is Pixar even credited, probably because Walt Disney now owns Pixar. (John Lasseser is Executive Producer of this flick).

But Pixar's quality shines through in this imaginative flick. It feels a lot like you;re Alice falling down the rabbit hole, because the leaps of fancy are quite bewildering. I particularly enjoyed the addition of a T-Rex into a round, green, biscuit and bubbles future-world.

The underlying philosophy also comes off well. It's about a boy-inventor who tries to develop a memory machine (in order to remmber his mother, who gave him up for adoption). When the story covers full circle, and the boy has time travelled to within reach of his mother, the boy realises the futility of moving in the past.

Other nice touches were 'insta-buildings', bubble transport, and the villain (and his hat).

I found this movie enjoyable and appropriate, intelligent and funny.

Free State Cycling a Shambles

Can Free State pull off a successful SA Cycling Championship?

Recently a number of local riders smashed into two bricks lying on the shoulder of the N1 just outside Bloemfontein, this despite being chaperoned by a Commissaire. Instead of removing the bricks from the road, or communicating a warning, the following bunch ploughed into the same road hazard, leading to one rider ripping part of her ear and sustaining head injuries. If this was a one off blapse it might be excusable, but unfortunately, there’s more.

There seems to be disorganization and confusion locally. This week I have received numerous emails about a proposed time trial route, but no one seems to know exactly which one it is. Is it on the Kimberley Road starting from Bains Lodge, or on the Bultfontein Road as proposed earlier?

In terms of administering an actual race, I have my doubts whether the local officials have the ability to deal with, how can I put it, an unscripted situation. The reason I am a little concerned is that I participated in last year’s Road Championships (just provincials mind you), and while the official distance was communicated to us as 120km, it was changed at the last minute (meaning, while the cyclists were gathering to start).
Of course, at the 50km turnaround point no one seemed to know to call me back and what made it more confusing (and compelling for me to continue) was that the route had beacons beyond the 50km mark. Even after cycling 5km then 10km beyond the newly established turnaround, no one had either noticed I had gone beyond the new turnaround point, and no one was sent to bring me back. I hope there’ll be more attention paid to the far more complex route through Bloem’s suburbia.

I can’t speak for this years event because there was such a terrific mess (I prefer the Afrikaans word ‘gemors’) made of my license, that I arrived at the event without one. A meeting was made by the heads of state and some of my club officials and in their wisdom they decided I shouldn’t be allowed to ride without a license. This may make perfect sense, except the contact person they provided (on the entry form) had no idea whether a license, or even a temporary license was even necessary (or would be available on the day) when I called her. She also undertook to call me back but failed to do so.

Now when a sporting body that is meant to promote, serve and protect its sportsmen not only fails to perform a basic function (such as to merely inform prospective participants of its own rules), but then punishes would-be competitors for being left in the dark, well I wonder how a more important event like SA Cycling Champs (to be held in Bloemfontein from June 1st) can be conducted successfully.

Of course today I am a very disappointed cyclist, having taken my annual leave last month to go and train for important events like today’s, and then to find that people who said ‘It’s taken care of’ didn’t take care of anything at all. I made a few calls today to complain about the state of affairs, and I believe I stated a reasonable if somewhat emotional case for promoting the sport, and treating people like myself with a measure of humanity, rather than just throwing the rule book at them, and worse, being unfriendly and unhelpful. During one conversation one official, a tall woman, later apologized, but then these seemingly harmless jabs on my part resulted in a late night call from my own cycling Club saying that following the phone calls made (obviously calls were then made behind my back), they want to distance themselves from me and cancel my cycling membership. This obviously makes getting a license (in order to compete at SA Cycling Championships) impossible. It also makes the process of following up on those officials in the club who made promises and then forgot about them, impossible to establish accountability. And worst of all, it makes the pursuit of cycling, which this brou hah ha is all about, far less enjoyable. In fact, it turns sport into a political, bureaucratic mess. So I have to wonder, if you have clubs and officials confused and ignorant and unsure and sabotaging one another, what are the prospects for a professional Championships in these sleepy, grudge-filled vlaktes?

Today when I attempted to beat the odds, to compete in the provincial championships, and each official seemed not to want to listen or even consider the possibility (of competing without a license), it reminded me of a cricket umpire suddenly facing a bowler, and fielders screaming “HOWZAAAAAAT.” Infuriated audiences for many years watched slow motion replays that showed just how defective some of these decisions were. How long did it take cricket boards worldwide to concede that any unclear decision would be logically and far easily settled using television as a third umpire? An obscenely long time. People are loathe to make exceptions, or to admit that they may be making a mistake. And the longer they take the harder it is to admit an error isn’t it? They prefer a decision that is firm, even if it completely and utterly wrong.

Speaking of which, Swimming South Africa is currently giving Roland Schoeman the short end of the stick. He cannot afford to get back to South Africa, to compete at Nationals (since he has no money – the trip to Melbourne cost him R50 000). Swimming South Africa have responded by threatening to slash his salary. That helps! This is how the world’s fastest swimmer is being treated by a South African sport’s body.

I hope that someone somewhere can wake up those people in charge who sleepwalk into the future, with very few cares besides their own. I certainly can’t do it by myself. They certainly don’t seem to care about the people they represent, whether they be cyclists or swimmers. This mental malaise is everywhere mind you. I think Presidents ought not to send their countrymen to war unless they have served in a war, and people on sports councils ought to have achieved something in the sport to be able to play a constructive role. Otherwise their role, and intentions (in something they know very little about) seems to be a twisted kind of voyeurism. A sense of: I am too old, and in any case not good enough. You who are not, need to feel what that’s like. There may be some justice in that, if a particular sick kind.

In South Africa we need far more promotion of sport than a focus on punishments for violations of the fineprint.

It should be made very clear that those who serve, should serve. And that policy stems from constituents, not from those merely in positions to implement them. These same people who do nothing but paperwork, who stand up and oppose, should be prevented from contaminating the hearts and minds of people who love what they are doing. Words on a piece of paper ought not to be the most important thing on any given day. Human beings, for which those words were made, ought to have the sense to know that.

Simon and the Cyclopede

A New Film For Pixar

Described as the next Walt Disney, John Lasseter responded, saying: “I have a hard enough time being John Lasseter.” This man, behind such magical motion pictures as Toy Story and Cars, seems to me to be inspired wholeheartedly by the child inside. That’s not so far from the truth. He has recently admitted that the spark for these stories came from observing his own children and (in the case of Cars) the experience of taking a road trip with his family.

While Lasseter may not be the driving force behind Ice Age or Shrek, all the movies mentioned here have one thing in common: a celebration of the innocence and wonder of the inner child (and all the imaginings we could associate with the inner child).

I’ve been thrilled by the pictures I have seen, having spent 10 days cycling from the Indian Ocean, across the southern inverted pyramidal landmass of South Africa, to the Atlantic – From Mossel Bay in the East to Langebaan, north of Cape Town, in the West. During those 850km, the faces, the places, the poetry of pictures as seen from a bicycle is unspeakably exciting.

Since people write Open Letters to the President, how about an Open Letter to Pixar (specifically John Lasseter)? It’s about what has delighted my inner child, and I call it: Simon and the Cyclopede.

The Cyclopede, first of all, is the first animation of the peloton. Yes, you heard right. It’s simply a bunch of cyclists meandering across a country or urban road. Well, it may be a simple thought, but the reality, and the rendering of it, is utterly utterly complex, and quite beautiful. First of all, there’s the sound. A giant snake on wheels? A rolling, whispering forest? A steaming flock of color. If you have ever participated being in a rapidly moving peloton, or even watched the Tour de France, it’s easy to appreciate the colors and lines involved in the creature we could call ‘The Cyclopede’. It’s the human equivalent of flying in formation.

Simon, of course, is the young cyclist who learns not only the delight of his carbon fibre machine (propelled using clean, human power, and one of the most efficient forms of energy in the universe), but he also learns about the value and power of the Cyclopede. Joining the Cyclopede means saving his energy, finding safety from the cold, hard wind and belonging to a group that takes care of its own members. And in the same way that ships were not built for harbors, Simon (and his friends) must learn when to work with the Cyclopede, and when to abandon it in search of personal victory.

There’s that, of course, and then there is a yellow bus, marked UN Special Youth Group that breaks down in the countryside, not far from the small town where Simon and his friends, Lance, Duff, his sister Swan and rival, Harry live. All the teenagers in the bus, heading for a debate at the UN on Energy Conservation, must catch a flight over the next two days to attend the conference…The bicycle store in the little town of Amsterdam is a big one. Enough to supply all 15 candidates with bicycles. Now it is up to the 5 strong riders, to teach the others how to ride as a Cyclopede.

The same rules apply in life as they do in cycling. For how long do you stick together as a group, in the safety and security of friends, and when do you decide to break away?
The first group of 5 arrogantly ride off right in the beginning. They quickly disappear, but hours later are exhausted. Another group, struggling to control their nerves, suffer punctures, crashes and cramps. The group that manages to concentrate, trust their companions, manages to make it in time to catch their flight, and report to the UN on how human beings and machines can co-operate against the wind and weather to save energy in many interesting and innovation ways. Think of Boeings, cars etc, flying and driving in slipstreams.

The film also provides an opportunity to demonstrate, in a way only animators can, how the chain slides over its gears, how the frame flexes, how the wind buffers more against the rider than on the lightweight apparatus under him.
The team time trial should private plenty of visual clues and inspiration for the Cyclopede Effect, pixie helmets and booties lined up with a rolling countryside whisking, whirling, opening up and collapsing stupendous views.

Lance Armstrong can provide a cameo as the bus driver. France, New Zealand or South Africa can provide the background terrain.

Simon and the Cyclopede
Together We Can Do More

V is for a Flock of Birds

image courtesy Sam Javanrouh

Speed Wobble

image courtesy Sam Javanrouh

Day 3

Since I had, in the space of a day, managed to make a significant recovery - almost shook off the sore throat - I didn't make use of the downtime in Suurbraak to rest. Instead we wandered to the river, threw stones, kuiered and sat around a fire till late. The latter in particular wasn't what the doctor ordered.

So the next morning the slime had regrouped, and manifested as a sort of mental malaise. I found out later that I was recording people on my Sharp Viewcam in PAUSE mode, and then pressing record once finished. How dumb is that? So I ended up with lots of footage of my upperlegs moving from A to B. PJ, Jean, San Marie and others - all that 'footage' not even recorded in the first place. Sorry guys.

[Place head here: kick at will]

Since the new bus arrived late, the stage to Bredasdorp was cancelled. I had a chance to catch up on an extra hour or two's sleep, in the Much Better Bus.
Bredasdorp was interesting. Didn't feel like the geldinsamel (money collection) but then we found a historic looking building and ended up chatting for 45 minutes to an old geezer, going through albums (quite a sad story of a double divorce, money swindling and deteriorating health), then found a geologist (a very pretty brunette in a pretty roadside house, Vergesog... or something...beside a sparkling silver Golf) and then headed to a Guest House where a long, blonde pony tailed woman - who reminded me of a horse, grilled us about missionary work, confessed to 'having a heart' for 'sendingwerk' (missionary work) and then ran back inside to fetch even more money.

Yolandi, a quiet girl studying Radiology, and I walked back to a splendid meal. Afterwards I quickly rode down to the nearest bike shop in search of a spare tyre (mine was so worn through there was a soft black strip peeking through the worn away red rubber), but it turned out to be a dinky-toy type cycle shop. In fact, I think they sold toys and tricycles and stuff as well.

Then I turned into a superman blur: sprinted back to the bus, scooped up some Gu2O, headed up the carpetted stairs of a nearby house and did the loo thing, then grabbed my bike just as the blue cyclopede was wheeling out of Bredasdorp.

When I saw Yolandi's bike I nearly started crying. It was a R500 (if not less) Klopper's special. It had a water bottle cage situated not on, but under the slanting tube, just behind the front wheel. Try grabbing a drink out of that death trap while cycling. Meanwhile, above around 30km/h the gears were practically useless. This was a bike designed to cycle to the shops 4-6 times in its lifetime (and then be discarded for the rest of its life in the garage).

Meanwhile Yolandi, a tingerige (fragile, waify) girl, managed to unnerve me even more than her bike (which hardly seemed possible). She cycled with rigid elbows, and once over one eggshell climb, she'd plummet down, body rigid, then body and bike would wobble, sometimes with her feet flying out like landing gear, and I'd want to cover my eyes... While I was trying to avoid auditioning (for the leading role) in Imminent Carnage 2, riders around us were engaged in happy countryside stuff like dam-duiking (swimming in roadside dams). It took all my energy and concentration to keep both my tissue and hers from being shredded on tar and orange reflectors inbedded in the road.

Every few metres I explained to Yolandi (who told me she had been headgirl) how to change gears, when to change, how much to change. Then to change back. (Headgirl, who'd never had a boyfriend before.) Then, having only covered 15km, she, following my instructions, jumped 2 gears and the chain gayly skipped into the gutter between the sprocket and the frame. No problemo? Well, not if you have a bike using technology from the latest century. Her wheels had been bolted to the bike (otherwise, yeah, they might wobble off). So without a quick release we had to wait for 'Repairs', the guys who are essentially the broom wagon. With wrench in hand we did the greasy job of simply getting the chain back onto gears. That little chore took around 30 minutes.

From there, we cycled over a series of eggs (very curvy up and down roads), ending in The Road of Death, a very dangerous, narrow, shoulderless, blind-rise infested piece of road ending in Hermanus. We did quite well together I thought, and had even agreed to go for coffee once home and dry.

It was gratifying to be in Hermanus. Back at the sea. Back alive and unshredded. After showering I felt like a human being again. Our sleeping quarters was a stones throw - literally - from the sea, and right beside a Spur restaurant. I would have gone in for a burger except that the grub cooked specially for us was so delish, and so bountiful, it wasn't necessary to go next door to buy food.

A beer wouldn't have been bad though. To put away the worries of the day, and to forget about the unspeakably difficult road that waited for us all the next day.

Road Bubble

One of those days

Vonnegut Dead

from www.yahoo.com

By CRISTIAN SALAZAR, Associated Press Writer 55 minutes ago
NEW YORK - In books such as "Slaughterhouse-Five," "Cat's Cradle," and "Hocus Pocus," Kurt Vonnegut mixed the bitter and funny with a touch of the profound.

Vonnegut, regarded by many critics as a key influence in shaping 20th-century American literature, died Wednesday at 84. He had suffered brain injuries after a recent fall at his Manhattan home, said his wife, photographer Jill Krementz.
Vonnegut's more than a dozen books, short stories, essays and plays contained elements of social commentary, science fiction and autobiography.

"He was sort of like nobody else," said fellow author Gore Vidal. "Kurt was never dull."
A self-described religious skeptic and freethinking humanist, Vonnegut used protagonists such as Billy Pilgrim and Eliot Rosewater as transparent vehicles for his points of view.
He lectured regularly, exhorting audiences to think for themselves and delighting in barbed commentary against the institutions he felt were dehumanizing people.

"He was a man who combined a wicked sense of humor and sort of steady moral compass, who was always sort of looking at the big picture of the things that were most important," said Joel Bleifuss, editor of In These Times, a liberal magazine based in Chicago that featured Vonnegut articles.

Some of Vonnegut's books were banned and burned for suspected obscenity. He took on censorship as an active member of the PEN writers' aid group and the
American Civil Liberties Union.

The American Humanist Association, which promotes individual freedom, rational thought and scientific skepticism, made him its honorary president.
Vonnegut said the villains in his books were never individuals, but culture, society and history, which he said were making a mess of the planet.

"I like to say that the 51st state is the state of denial," he told The Associated Press in 2005. "It's as though a huge comet were heading for us and nobody wants to talk about it. We're just about to run out of petroleum and there's nothing to replace it."

Despite his commercial success, Vonnegut battled depression throughout his life, and in 1984, he attempted suicide with pills and alcohol, joking later about how he botched the job.
"I will say anything to be funny, often in the most horrible situations," Vonnegut, whose watery, heavy-lidded eyes and unruly hair made him seem to be in existential pain, once told a gathering of psychiatrists.

Vonnegut was born on Nov. 11, 1922, in Indianapolis, and studied chemistry at Cornell University before joining the Army. His mother killed herself just before he left for Germany during World War II, where he was quickly taken prisoner during the Battle of the Bulge. He was being held in Dresden when Allied bombs firebombed the city.

"The firebombing of Dresden explains absolutely nothing about why I write what I write and am what I am," Vonnegut wrote in "Fates Worse Than Death," his 1991 autobiography of sorts.
But he spent 23 years struggling to write about the ordeal, which he survived by huddling with other POW's inside an underground meat locker labeled slaughterhouse-five.
The novel that emerged, in which Pvt. Pilgrim is transported from Dresden by time-traveling aliens, was published at the height of the Vietnam War, and solidified his reputation as an iconoclast.

After World War II, he reported for Chicago's City News Bureau, then did public relations for General Electric, a job he loathed. He wrote his first novel, "Player Piano," in 1951, followed by "The Sirens of Titan," "Canary in a Cat House" and "Mother Night," making ends meet by selling Saabs on Cape Cod.

Critics ignored him at first, then denigrated his deliberately bizarre stories and disjointed plots as haphazardly written science fiction. But his novels became cult classics, especially "Cat's Cradle" in 1963, in which scientists create "ice-nine," a crystal that turns water solid and destroys the earth.

He retired from novel writing in his later years, but continued to publish short articles. He had a best-seller in 2005 with "A Man Without a Country," a collection of his nonfiction, including jabs at the Bush administration ("upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography") and the uncertain future of the planet.

He called the book's success "a nice glass of champagne at the end of a life."
Vonnegut, who had homes in Manhattan and the Hamptons in New York, adopted his sister's three young children after she died. He also had three children of his own with his first wife, Jane Marie Cox, and later adopted a daughter, Lily, with his second wife, Krementz.
Vonnegut once said that of all the ways to die, he'd prefer to go out in an airplane crash on the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro. He often joked about the difficulties of old age.
"When Hemingway killed himself he put a period at the end of his life; old age is more like a semicolon," Vonnegut told the AP.

"My father, like Hemingway, was a gun nut and was very unhappy late in life. But he was proud of not committing suicide. And I'll do the same, so as not to set a bad example for my children."
___
Associated Press writers Michael Warren, Hillel Italie and Chelsea Carter contributed to this report.

Find Time...

Sign near Oudtshoorn, March 2007

Women: Explained

Pass

Day 2

After sleeping in solitary confinement (in order to be insulated against several hours of loud log sawing on all sides) and having stuffed nurmerous syruppy and liquorice-like concoctions down my throat, I woke up feeling like a cactus whose barbs had retracted a little. That's code for a little better. A friend from Giant also stepped through the moving swamp of mattresses to give me a red Epic shirt with the word CREW emblazoned on the back. That was a pick-me-upper too.


My partner for the day was Marisa, a spunky chick with a cool Mercatone Uno long sleeve cycling journey (which coincidentally matched one of my pairs of cycling pants).

From the word go the air was crisp and the scenery wide, and mountainous and pristine. Karoo rocks held the cool of the shadows for some time. The blue snake, sometimes bulging into the waisty dimensions of a fat lizard, trickled by a small school whose children chanted: Hou bene hou (hold legs hold), whilst waving flags. Plenty of us chuckled and waved.


We meandered from one road maintenance HQ (a shack with a stop go sign and plenty of yellow chevrons) to another, meanwhile Marisa had asked how old I was, and upon hearing '35' offered an automatic reponse, but when I pressed her: 'Shocked?' she (just 21 years old) admitted she was. Meanwhile she cycled like someone more than 3 times her age. Several times she wanted to quickly scuttle off the road (hearing an approaching car) and since I was pushing her, it meant I was almost pushed off the road a few times. In fact, that second day I came the closest to almost certain carnage, but as a result of another cyclist pushing her, knocking handlebars and then diving away from possible carnage and forcing me to exit the tar road. I hopped over a few brick sized rocks in the road, and somehow managed to escape a fall that for one paralyzing metallic second, seemed inevitable.


I also heard someone call my name - it turned out to be Hennie, leaning out the window of just one of a fleet of Epic Support Vehicles heading to where we were headed: Barrydale.


I stopped at one stage to photograph the Epic guys dusting themselves off as they left another dirt section and joined us for a stretch on the road. I had to dash back to Marisa, and doing so, suprised a few of them. When they caught up to us they offered a few comments, and I also asked them how long their stage was. Just for fun, Marisa and I blew by a segment of riders just to prove we could. As they came by, one of them pushed Marisa for a bit. Later I heard that a few of the (prettier) girls had been assisted. and Jean (aka Curly), who might have been mistaken for a short but sturdy girl (sorry Jean).


That was fun, and we posed for more photos on the roadside while the sun raised itself and began to melt the human will. Since I'd left a foot in a pedal, at one water point, I managed to sort've fall and slice my achilles open (or the skin in front of it) with the chainring. Nice bloody pattern. Then we continued to chase a birthday girl and Flossie - a pair that was determined not to be behind us. We swapped positions a few times.


Marisa gave up with about 15km and some of the worst uphills to go. I took a photo of her lying on the dirt, seemingly passed out. (A camper had sneaked up on us and it's opportunistic male occupant had inquired - hopefully, but apparently innocently- if she needed a lift. She'd declined.) And now here she was, reclining, waiting for a bakkie to carry her home.


I jumped back onto the road and flew down the last section into Barrydale; a section so steep I felt like Heidi skiing down the mountain.


After a short lunch on a lawn, we headed for a small Pass. I immediately kicked my heels at everyone, and once over the pass, dropped like missile down the other side. PJ and Danie managed to reel me in. I reached the church at Suurbraak first, the cheer from the handful of girls (lying on a mattress under a tree) underheard as my iPod thundered loudly into my brain.

Suurbraak. A charming colored village. With a house for sale for R38 000. And a gurgling brook. Jean and San Marie wandered off for some private time. I had coffee with the older folks, while young yellow and black chicks dipped their beaks at biscuit crumbs under our table, and a mother hen admonished them with long, high pitched caws.


I found a corner in the whitewashed house for sleep and to continue my private battle against the toxins in my tissues. Meanwhile, our bus had lost its battle in the mountains. It had been unable to complete its journey, and had retired, hurt, perhaps for good.

Words of Strength

On submission:

Xerxes: Your Athenian rivals will kneel at your feet... if you but kneel at mine. Spartan King Leonidas: That is quite an offer. I'd be crazy to refuse it. But this kneeling business... I'm afraid killing all those slaves of yours has left me with a nasty cramp in my leg.

On Purpose:

Persian Emissary: This is madness!

Spartan King Leonidas: Madness? This is Sparta!

On Attitude:

Persian Officer: Fools! Our arrows will blot out the sun.

Stelios: Then we will fight in the shade!

On Toughness in the face of adversity:

[Dilios is putting a patch over his eye]

Spartan King Leonidas: Dilios, I trust that "scratch" hasn't made you useless.

Dilios: Hardly, my lord, it's just an eye. The gods saw fit to grace me with a spare.

End of the Road

300 in History

from Wikipedia:

In the Battle of Thermopylae of 480 BC, an alliance of Greek city-states fought the invading Persian Empire at the pass of Thermopylae in central Greece. Vastly outnumbered, the Greeks held back the Persians for three days in one of history's most famous last stands. A small force led by King Leonidas of Sparta blocked the only road through which the massive army of Xerxes I could pass.

After three days of battle, a local resident named Ephialtes betrayed the Greeks by revealing a mountain path that led behind the Greek lines. Dismissing the rest of the army, King Leonidas stayed behind with 300 Spartans and 700 Thespian volunteers. The Persians succeeded in taking the pass but sustained heavy losses, extremely disproportionate to those of the Greeks.

The fierce resistance of the Spartan-led army offered Athens the invaluable time to prepare for a decisive naval battle that would come to determine the outcome of the war.[4] The subsequent Greek victory at the Battle of Salamis left much of the Persian Empire's navy destroyed and Xerxes I was forced to retreat back to Asia, leaving his army in Greece under Mardonius, who was to meet the Greeks in battle one last time. The Spartans assembled at full strength and led a pan-Greek army that defeated the Persians decisively at the Battle of Plataea, ending the Greco-Persian War and with it the expansion of the Persian Empire into Western Europe. [5]

The performance of the defenders at the battle of Thermopylae is often used as an example of the advantages of training, equipment, and good use of terrain to maximize an army's potential,[6] and has become a symbol of courage against overwhelming odds.[6] The sacrifice of the Spartans and the Thespians has captured the minds of many throughout the ages has given birth to many cultural references as a result.[7]

I'm 3