Thursday 5 July 2012

What I know for sure.

There really IS a God! (Just kidding.)
Up, Down. 
[Not very much, let's see what will fit into this frame.]
1. We don't think therefore we are not for long (evolution, climate change, growth economics ...).    Euclid 1-5 Pons Asinorum.2. Phyllotaxis (the divine proportion) is not a universal law but a fascinatingly prevalent tendency; that, and a tetrahelix never repeats, no tendency about it. (from Donald Coxeter) And there is no road (royal or otherwise) going anywhere without geometry.    3. 
[three / stability] Love is; ubiquitous and very slightly sticky like Higgs boson; but too infinitesimally tiny to register any effect (or be used for any purpose) however short the fulcrum or long the lever.    Three (more) graces.4. (And) like the man said, it does not alter when it alteration finds.    5. [five / humanity] The Greeks named the graces Aglæa Euphrosyne and Thalia. There are more, often appearing in threes but not always.    6. Carnaval is not about identity; it is liminal.    7. [seven / a lucky prime, pink] It's all personal: ad hominem or ad mulierem, and whatever happens is between individuals, at most a handful. [So, it is looking like eleven.]    8. Learning another language, even badly, lets in more light than any sort of belief.    9. [33] Ditto playing a musical instrument.    10. Penultimate, Northrop Frye (pride of place for feet of clay): Neither paranoia nor dualism nor dialectic nor ideology but interpenetration. Yes.    11. The HTML bureaucrat holding these words (together and apart) is as long, longer than the words themselves. [Eleven then. Lucky eleven and save triskaidecaphilia for another day.]   {~260} 
Measures of inequality.
Where are Lewere? Kurchi? Yida?

[Units: 1 metric ton/tonne (t) = 1,000 kilograms = 2,205 pounds, ton = 2,000 pounds, or 2,240 in the UK; 1 t Carbon Equivalent (CE) = 3.667 t of Carbon Dioxide equivalent (CO2e); 1 t CO2e = 0.2727 t CE. I understand CO2e as a clarifying, simplifying, way of including other greenhouse gasses in one number, but ... Why do we need CE exactly? Was it invented by someone at the UN?]

A ratio of carbon footprints of 50:1 - in 2007 CO2e, Bangladesh 0.3, Canada 16.4 (Ethiopia even less at 0.1 or 100 kilograms, annually) - ok; but consider a minimum economic footprint or per capita daily cost of living (survival) ratio of 100:1 - Bangladesh 0.50 Canada 50.00 (not quite guesses) - nevermind the stress & insecurity of living on even $3 a day (salário mínimo in 2012 Brazil 622R$ per month = ~300$ CDN).

It's the economy that drives the carbon isn't it? And the Antonov bombers in Sudan?
Lewere, Sudan.Lewere, Sudan.Lewere, Sudan.Kurchi, Sudan.Yida, Sudan.Yida, Sudan.Yida, Sudan.Yida, Sudan.Yida, Sudan.
I wonder how long the green between the shelters at Yida will last?

Here's something from the OED: 'apocalypse' revelation, disaster, cataclysm etc. via Latin apocalypsis from Greek ἀποκαλύπτειν to uncover, disclose, ἀπό off + καλύπτειν to cover; and 'discovery' taking off the cover, uncovering, via French from Latin.

So: if we take Hobbes' vision, 'brutish and short' etc. as something covered up with more-or-less imaginary pretence - the Golden Rule, the Rule of Law, diplomacy, bureaucracy - then what would it take to pop the lid? Maybe not very much - relatively minor hardships (from, say, an Ethiopian or Sudanese standpoint), fear, misinformation, inability to think ... BlackBerrys, SmartPhones, complacency ...   
{~285} 
What I will bet single malt on, continued ...
Where is Toronto for that matter? (Remember that Frye found it perfectly congenial.)


Items with "I" in them:    12. When the inquisition 'shows me the instruments' and demands renunciation of Jesus Christ I will earnestly & immediately comply, but with an involuntary smile which they will not like and I will be done for. Ditto: Mohammed, Bahá'u'lláh, whomever ...    13. Three children were born directly into my hands and for a moment I held their lives there. (One I had to kick-start.) And no rubber gloves or masks in those days.    14. If I could tell only one story it would be The Good Samaritan but I resist all attempts to make a doctrine of it.    15. I arrived at tensegrity more-or-less independently from first principles.    16. This blog employs captchas on comments to hinder spam. When someone tries anyway, I briefly admire their indomitable human spirit. "Don't tell me what to do!"    17. I wrote software for Eddie and he liked my work.

18.  More and more feral & furtive in Toronto: At the end of three hours Poor photograph of Northrop Frye portrait 'Frye in the Sky' in the Pratt library UofT.(1, 2, 3 if you can bear David Cayley) Frye calls technological introversion 'simply a hazard'. Even IBM 360's would talk to you when no one else would, and no real surprises. The source I have forgot, but the image of a wirehead plugged into an electronic computer ecstasy leading to death by starvation is etched in the cognitive imaginary. So, could it be a terminal hazard (inconclusive addiction experiments on rats notwithstanding) d'you think?

I already said 'feet of clay' didn't I? And I never said "causes Galileo's math book to get thrown," did I?    OK. That's it then.   
{~300}

Be well. (And be aware,
                  shekinah an' kerygma ain't what them preachers say they are.)
 
Down.

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