short notes: will brady's ruminations

A blog adjunct to rondak.org [click on the globe] | Perspectives on: human rights; environmental concerns; life as a visual artist; 21st century feudalism; progressive politics; aboriginal culture; new urbanism; permaculture; sustainable technology; non-traditional families; achievable utopias

2005-02-26

SPACE | WEATHER

Solar Flares

The National Aeronautics & Space Administration's [NASA] SOHO Data website has posted an impressive solar flare sequence | The gif image above this text is a huge file [32 meg] but if you have the time, patience, the disk space, a high speed connection ...you can download it | I find the slower paced gif file worth downloading in order to better observe subtleties of motion | You could also download a faster MPEG file from NASA |
I came across it from a site whose author indicated the clip offered proof of UFOs | I don't know about that, but I'm curious how these solar flares might affect Planet Earth's weather patterns in the next days and weeks |
In the short run, weather blogging maven Don Foot reports that some forecasters [Foot may or may not be among them] project that next week may very well be the probverbial "Storm of the Century", s in the most intense in 100 years [50 years counting forward and back] | Check the Feb 27th posting at Foot's Forecast |
MORE ON SOLAR FLARES NASA explains how this picture came to be | The latest solar corona image | A Primer on Space Weather | NASCA reports on Solar Flare Activity and on the increased activity of the sun | NASCA, incidentally, stands for National Association for Scientific and Cultural Appreciation an organization devoted to areas of science that are otherwise poorly covered |

Posted by: Will Brady / 17:21 (0) comments

WORLD HISTORY

"If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."

G W Bush ~December 18, 2000

72 years ago | He was concerned about terrorists and immoral people pushing their decadent values on the populace | 72 years ago, the man who didn't get elected into power took over and implemented absolute rule | At the time, he enjoyed immense popularity, was rarely questioned by the media, and promised to usher in a new era of glory and pre-eminence for the Homeland | You may call me paranoid, but in so doing, don't forget that ~ sometimes ~ one can be both paranoid and accurate | Food for thought | The burning of the Reichstag |

"To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us and make a broken tyrant into a latter-day hero ... assigning young soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a securely entrenched dictator and condemning them to fight in what would be an un-winnable urban guerilla war. It could only plunge that part of the world into even greater instability."

A World Transformed (1998) George Herbert Walker Bush

Do we suffer some collective amnesia about the past? Are we doomed to repeat the past for lack of knowledge? Others remember things differently and won't let us forget that past | We might do best to heed their calls:

          Thom Hartmann When Democracy Failed
          Infoplease Hitler and the Reichstag Fire
          Oil Empire.US 9/11: The American Reichstag
          Slimey Slug's the Reichstag and September 11th
          G W Bush.net

Posted by: Will Brady / 08:48 (0) comments

2005-02-25

ENVIRONMENT | WATERSHEDS

The Eight Mile River comes closer to Wild + Scenic River designation with the introduction of a bill, H.B. No. 6414, now before the Connecticut legislature | This is in keeping with the Nature Conservancy's Tidewater chapter long term goals, the NEMO initatives, and fits nicely into our town's open space planning goals which has long identified the Eight Mile River watershed as a top priority for preservation |

Language of the bill reads "to preserve the portion of the Eightmile River watershed which is the subject of the authorized study by the Eightmile River Wild and Scenic River Study Committee as provided for in the federal Wild and Scenic Rivers Act and, if passed, would be enacted October 2005 |

Posted by: Will Brady / 08:39 (0) comments

2005-02-24

SOCIAL MORAYS | GAY MARRIAGE

One Connecticut Legislator speaks clearly while other slither about each trying to be more ingratiating or servile than one another | The clear voice is James Amann, legislator from Stamford | When asked by the Hartford Courant recently about the subject of gay people having their commitments to one another recognized as marriages, he had this to say:

     When I was young, [I heard] my mother and a neighbor talking about -I must have been 6 or 7 years old, I remember it vividly- "Did you hear about so-and-so? She is marrying a Protestant" We were Catholic. The lady almost fell over. "You've got to be kidding me! How could she do that?"
     I remember, a few years later, my father and a few others talking about a neighbor who had an interracial marriage. Oh my Lord, we thought the whole neighborhood was going to burn to the ground.
     I [recently] went to Johnathan Moore High School in my town and I asked the question with a group of high school kids, "Is anybody here opposed to gay marriage?" None of them raised their hand.
     I think it's generational. I think that for youths, they don't think it's a big deal.
     The most amazing thing is that in my family we have interracial marriage now, we have Cathotics marrying Protestants and yeah, believe it or not, we have a couple of gay cousins. So it hits us all and we should really be aware that that's the reality of the world."
     We've had this issue now three or four times before the Judicary Committee. I think that if there was a chance of civil union, at least for the Democratic Caucus, it would have been palatable and probably would have gotten momumentum, passed and gone onto the floor of the House.

Over at NVSH, another remarkably clear perspective gets expressed |

Posted by: Will Brady / 08:53 (0) comments

OUTDOOR SPORT

The MSC Ice Fishing Tourney was held, now two weekends ago but it's not that I didn't cover it | Just that since the digital

camera died, I'm sometimes at a loss on writing and not posting the pictures | So I save the writing until later | Not a good thing, especially when some folks come to read and could care less about the images |
But enough already | Here's the story of the Fishing Tournament | It did, after all, take up as much of my time as the visit to The Gates |

Posted by: Will Brady / 08:22 (0) comments

NOTABLES

Hunter S. Thompson | 1937-2005 |
Yeah, I know, he blew himself away last weekend | I get the news | Just didn't get to

make note | Hunter Thompson's passing will be a great loss to all of us, no matter what one thinks of his drugs + guns + calculated insanity take on life | You could hardly call him dispassionate |
Known for his racous take on reportage, Thompson was a private man dispite his oft caricatured way of life | He was a keen social critic and acerbic in his coments about people and causes he disliked | His voice will be a great loss, a great loss |
More cynically, do you suppose this means my first edition copy of Fear + Loahting in Vas Vegas will spike in value?

Posted by: Will Brady / 07:26 (0) comments

2005-02-20

ART SCENE | CHRISTO'S GATES
The Gates are unfurled | Yes, it's a week later, but I've finally got to getting my pages up about the exhibit | Over the next couple of days they shalll all be up |
Here's the link to my experience with Christo + Jeanne Claude's Gates Project as well as a side trip of interesting architectural visits through other parts of Manhattan that Bruce + I took later that day |

Chirsto + Jean Claude talk about the gates Project

Posted by: Will Brady / 07:05 (0) comments

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