The Frogs Have More Fun...

Flowers



"All the names I know from nurse:
Gardener's garters, Shepherd's purse,
Bachelor's buttons, Lady's smock,
And the Lady Hollyhock.

Fairy places, Fairy things,
Fairy woods where the wild bee wings,
Tiny trees for tiny dames.
- These must all be Fairy names !"

(from Child's Garden of Verses
by R.L. Stevenson)


"Anyone can write a short-story.
A bad one, I mean."

(R.L. Stevenson)
----------------

"Science without conscience is the Soul's perdition."
- Francois Rabelais, Pantagruel
- Acc to/above is citated from: Medical Apartheid. The dark history of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present, by Harriet A. Washington (Doubleday ; 2006 ; p. 1.)

----------------
"In the high society of the first half of the century, marriage, despite it's bestowal status upon the wife, was the most absurdity. Marriage, conferring instanteous rank or money, ... lost most of its prestige and moment right after the wedding. ...By the end of the century, spurred by Rousseau's moralistic Nouvelle Hèloíse, a contrary cult, that of virtue, arose. After 1770 conjugal and maternal love became not merely admissible, but, for some, moral imperatives. ...

[...]
...Rousseau, who sought for himself the crown of morality in ostensibly defending marriage, presents in his Nouvelle Hèloíse the most enticing and extended defense of illicit love ever penned. The root of the problem is that as the century progressed sensibility became confused with morality: passionate feeling, if expressed in a highly civilized mode with grace and nuance, makes us forgive the Rousseau of The Confessions, for example, his pettiness, his jealousies, his betrayals. This moral-amoral byplay, present already in the novels of Richardson, was to be more intense as the century unfolded."
-
Madelyn Gutwirth : Madame De Staèl, Novelist. The emergence of the Artist as Woman (10,15.)

;
"...As the social contract seems tame in comparison with war, so fucking and sucking come to seem merely nice, and therefore unexciting. ... To be 'nice', as to be civilized, means being alienated from this savage experience - which is entirely staged. [...] The rituals of domination and enslavement being more and more practiced, the art that is more and more devoted to rendering their themes, are perhaps only a logical extension of an affluent society's tendency to turn every part of people's lives into a taste, a choice; to invite them to regard their very lives as a (life) style." - Susan Sontag , on 'Fascinating Fascism' (-74; p 103;104-5 at Under the sign of Saturn)
; "Anyone who cannot give an account to oneself of the past three thousand years remains in darkness, without experience, living from day to day." (Goethe) - as cited by Sontag (on same compile; p. 137.)

;
"It is widely accepted that we are now living in the 'Anthropocene', a new geological epoch in which the Earth's ecosystems and climate are being fundamentally altered by the activities of humans. I loathe the term, but I can't deny that it's appropriate."
; (Goulson), Silent Earth : Averting the Insect Apocalypse (2021; p 47.)
;
"It is sometimes said that humanity is at war with nature, but the word 'war' implies a two-way conflict. Our chemical onslaught on nature is more akin to genocide. It is small wonder that our wildlife is in decline."
; (Goulson, 2021 ; 118.)
;
----------------
"If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities." (Voltaire)
- Citated from; (Joy, Melanie), Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs and Wear Cows : An Introduction to Carnism(2010; p. 95.)
;

"In the presence of the monster, you have eyes and ears for nothing else."
; (Flora Tristan) : London Journal of Flora Tristan: the Aristocracy and the Working Class of England ; 1842-edit. (tr: 1982. ; p. 71.)

;
"Every minority invokes justice, and justice is liberty.
A party can be judged of only by the doctrine which
it professes when it is the strongest."
Mdme de Staêl
(on) 'Consideration sur le Révolution de la Francaise' [1818]


12/9/08

Newspost#111208



December hindered far longer than we expected it to, almost mid, and so we are now to turn on these 'stuff-and-happenings' posts for a change. So, this time we mainly have some hi-tech prods and progs from those ever faster-and-speedier growing markets; phones, players, devices. Perhaps so because our recent posts mostly were dedicated to completely different variety of topics. On the second thought, considering these news, latest wonders oriented especially...it may appear as time to letting go from 'em. Possibly, we could devote more effort on specified stories on certain topics that raise aforth and make them for more comprehensive articles. It seems that these are always 'running' in lenghty sentences, can't help that as natural consequence. As following, then it would mean quitting (the news) area in the future ...But this time, in passing the latest wonders we here first just mention; they've noticed considerable growth underwater noise at seas (doubled every 10 ten years since 1950s). Due to increase in overseas transcontinental traffic? Or just increases of traffic, all in all? Or just traffic? Or...just good business?


So we first turn on to Nokia's new high-techs phone, N97. It is already contended as an Iphone rival, and there is (ao) social localization, 3'5 inch touch-screen, 32 GB mem ...the price has raised some moans, and we neither find it as competitive...and so it appears quite conventional hi-tech, not anything remarkable inventive, but probably pretty stable choice. Anyway, taking it to close look mainly because Nokia scored best on recent Greenpeace's list of manufacturers to having taken (or not taken...) greenish steps. So, we also notice them having 'evalued' in that area and there's now 'Evolve' a phone made in respectable amount (around 50 per cent) from renewable materials. However, the price again, isn't quite just what you could expect from such device but not totally over the-top either. So, a very welcomed development and we are just proposing the manufacturer to really take on this direction in starting to offer greenery products in larger scope as well. All the parts cannot possibly be manufactured sustainably (especially, just because more functionalities including devices there's possibly more usages that cannot yet be made that easily environmental friendly way...) but for a start this does pretty nicely. And there will be markets for more models from the cheapest to more expensive ones...


Then there's...Another media player? Oversupply on the market or not,we find this Bird of Joy, OS-project Songbird based on Mozilla Firefox-engine, which definitely makes best of both worlds. It has a far nicer and simpler viewing panel than most we've seen so far (and you can use the mini player too) and I especially like the division of panels on UI; you can most easily scroll to songs on basis of main categories like music-style, artist, album name...the outer appearance may seem 'puritanist' but is just functional and pretty easy to use. In addition, there's this availability of user-generated add-ons (some 70 to choose from...) in collapsible side-panels (fx for music lyrics viewing, the feature you could suppose having 'til now become more of standard, and perhaps they are more common, but we've not seen such before...Songbird has also other benefits like integrating lyrics to meta data of music-files, nice...). Continuing on praises, this Bird of Prey really catches (and easily digests) most formats you'd expect, like MP3, FLAC, Vorbis, Windows-version also AAC. Video playback they're still working on (at least xvid and x264 we could hope for, since the next windows is said to support those too). Other functionalities include integrated browser, so plenty support for all these popular developing 'music-cloud services' for a Bird-on-a-wire. Then there's also Shoutcast radio, Mash tape (add-ons), flexible playing lists, LastFM support for streaming, scrobbling and so on. One might also appreciate these functionalities quick and easy when looking album info fx from that Zombie Birdhouse or that old obscure outfit you just noticed having existed (like Joe Byrd and the Field Hippies). Also support for integration with more devices coming (now there's mostly just Ipod), so conclusively we just answer the question in beginning; sure, another music player most welcomed to make its nest. Best in this project, it just makes me imagining the (close?) future where one gathers the feathers from Birdcage – that is, ask this (not yet) Migratory bird to wrap-up ones music-library (or at least part from it) to ultra-compressed package, copying the-whole-of-it to the futuristic device of choice (music player, stick, perhaps phone) and then take that all on-the-go, having the player and songs along even more nicely... Sounds like cheap sales of chicken and tuna sandwiches straight from sales desk, not quite like anything the Notorious Byrd Brothers would prefer mainly, but actually I was just supposing the quite possible directions these apps could develop towards...


….newly built uTorrent UDP-protocol threatens to (this time...) sink internet? ...Or, ar least causes lots speculation whether it will suck all the band(width) with it's file transfer trafficking via UDP instead of earlier more common TCP(and this causes concerns mainly because UDP is also favored by VOIP and other such communication transfers). We notice these discussions having started from newly raised and popularized old phrases from 1980s like 'congestion collapse' and also still remains unanswered whether torrents actually are improving nets effective usage, or causing overloads of traffic...So we just pass these by and wonder if the IPv6-question, more probable internet bottleneck, is soon going to cause more worries ...Instead, we find more interest on Google's (not so recent any more) Clean Energy 2030 plan for U.S. Electricity production. All of this seems indeed ambitious if not the most realistic concerning goals set; there's fx targets like renewing the vehicles in traffic merely to plug-in electrics, that is hybrid or PEV(purely electric vehicles) until 2030, which means increase of some 90 per cent in sales, from some modest 100 000 to about 16 M, totalling basically the whole of new (auto)-mobiles taken in use. Also, one notices ao in this renewables favoring plan, (whose one main goal seems to be getting rid of coal produced electricity, currently consisting some 40 per cent of total), fx the usage of Photovoltaics - in which case the numbers of current usage of California's production capacity, are perhaps(?) not comparable to every other area. Whether these plans as whole, or at least partially are to be fulfilled depends, of course (mostly) from decisions by state. Probably they have better chances to make it work (at least partially) in practice than in some other parts of globe. And also notwithstandingly, it's been noticed that companies to start on this path in time are to have better chances to carry on with that in future. So, because somebody's have got to show the way on these unconquered and rejected final frontiers of green energy fields and production, we give full points for these innovative plans and place the company past Nokia to the top of our own greenery-list. Whether and when the actual fulfillment of these plans are to be seen...remains to be seen, though we notice they've recently granted more money for transportation vehicles, I guess (well ...actually for the big companies in economic downturn on that area of business. Whether that(a lot from it?) goes for the renewable cars production...remains to be seen.) -Later addit; Just read from latest briefings, they've rejected the whole support packet...but we also have this article to speculate on whether the bio-fuelled vehicles are most recommendable solution in the first place...remains to be seen.




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