'Waste'
Material is energy in potential. M = e / C^2 *. So that even a rusty old bicycle has an enormous amount of energy locked within its environmentally unsightly form in the landfill. Because, look at the equation. To make a small amount of mass, like a turd let's say, you need to pack in a tremendous amount of energy in joules because you are going to divide this number by approx 900 million (meters / second of light speed) to get the weight in kilos. Ie. matter doesn't tend to get made very often. It gets RECYCLED. By nature. Stuff gets combined and recombined. Saves having to wait for a star system to collide if we want something new...that would be a billion year wait.
'Climate Change'
The last ice age was about 10,000 years ago. It seems that we are STILL THAWING. Some natural phenomenon happen slowly, like the normal cogitation of your average environ-mental-tits. How else would we have evolution, if it wasn't for constant change and challenge? Loser species become extinct, whilst the successful-in-adversity have enough time to grow legs, lungs and a larynx.
I know it is hard to believe but climate change is normal and continuously drifting, albeit slowly**. Could it be that a bunch of monkeys in clothing don't have much say in the matter? It is debatable.
*kilograms = energy / 900 million (need to check this)
**rate of change seems to be the key issue
Last night was a good one. Discussing how a number of primary schools can get access to a new application - some kind of novel musical dukebox - with the minimum of installation bollox (IB). It turns out that a web-based approach was fraught with disrupting detail (DD) like incompatible audio plugins and database problems, not obvious at first, and in desperation my client was almost persuaded to look at Java. "NOOOOOOO!," I typed and so we set about trying to find a practical answer (PA).
He was unwilling to accept anything that required installation of software on to classroom machines.
After lots of discussion we thought, how neat it would be to have a bootable environment on a DVD with the application pre-loaded and ready to go. After a quick google, there it was.
KNOPPIX.
Take your CD over to a spare machine, boot from it and bingo, you have taken over the machine, bodily.
The bloomin' Germans have done it again.
Originally I just wanted to chop out the sentimental components of the Gottfried Huppertz' score which is awesome in places, but dated in others. Then I couldn't stop cutting...it was a fun exercise. But I was only thinking about music initially which means it might all look surreal and strange.
Once upon a time, when the science and art of gardening was not yet well established among men, there was a master gardener. In addition to knowing all the qualities of plants, their nutritious, medicinal and aesthetic values, he had been granted a knowledge of the Herb of Longetivity, and he lived for many hundreds of years.
In successive generations, he visited gardens and cultivated places throughout the world. In one place he planted a wonderful garden, and instructed the people in its upkeep and even in the theory of gardening. But, becoming accustomed to seeing some of the plants come up and flower every year, they soon forgot that others had to have their seeds collected, that some were propagated from cuttings, that some needed extra watering, and so on. The result was that the garden eventually became wild, and people started to regard this as the best garden that there could be.
After giving these people many chances to learn, the gardener expelled them and recruited another whole band of workers. He warned them that if they did not keep the garden in order, and study his methods, they would suffer for it. They, in turn, forgot - and since they were lazy, tended only to those fruits and flowers which were easily reared and allowed the others to die. Some of the first trainers came back to them from time to time, saying : 'You should do this and that,' but they drove them away, shouting :' You are the ones who are departing from truth in this matter.'
But the master-gardener persisted. He made other gardens, wherever he could, and yet none was ever perfect except the one which he himself tended with his chief assistants. As it became known that there were many gardens and even many methods of gardening, people from one garden would visit those of another, to approve, to criticize, or to argue. Books were written, assemblies of gardeners were held, gardeners arranged themselves in grades according to what they thought to be the right order of precedence.
As is the way of men the difficulty of the gardeners remains that they are too easily attracted by the superficial. They say : 'I like this flower,' and they want everyone else to like it as well. It may, in spite of its attraction or abundance, be a weed or food which the people and the garden need for their sustenance and permanency.
Among these gardeners are those who prefer plants of one single colour. These they may describe as 'good'. There are others who will only tend plants, while refusing to care about the paths or the gates, or even the fences.
When, at length, the ancient gardener died, he left as his endowment the whole knowledge of gardening, distributing it among the people who would understand in accordance with their capacities. So the science as well as the art of gardening remained as a scattered heritage in many gardens and also records of them.
People who are brought up in one garden or another generally have been so powerfully instructed as to the merits or de-merits of how the inhabitants see things that they are almost incapable - though they make the effort - of realising that they have to return to the concept of 'garden'. At the best, they generally accept, reject, suspend judgement or look for what they imagine are the common factors.
From time to time true gardeners do arise. Such is the abundance of semi-gardens that when they hear of real ones people say : 'Oh, yes. You are talking about a garden such as we already have, or we imagine.' What they have and what they imagine are both defective.
The real experts, who cannot reason with the quasi-gardeners, associate for the most part among themselves, putting into this or that garden something from the total stock which will enable it to maintain its vitality to some extent.
They are often forced to masquerade, because the people who want to learn from them seldom know about the fact of gardening as an art or science underlying everything that they have heard before. So they ask questions like : 'How can I get a more beautiful flower on these onions?'
The real gardeners may work with them because true gardens can sometimes be brought into being, for the benefit of all mankind. They do not last long, but it is only through them that the knowledge can be truly learnt and people can come to see what a garden really is.
--Extracted from an anthology of sufi writings by Idries Shah called The Way of the Sufi.
Software development. It is not like Wacky Races, or is it??? I don't know any more>>>HelP
Looking at SD for inspiration for a new line-up, here are a few new entrants...
Blue-blanket-boy is kite surfing. Everyone look at the rich-brat having his fun and making you look like a dim tit. PY.WEB2.0
Steel Knight is Vauxhall Dog-shitting at stop speed - when not in a jam or facing mechanical problems. PHP-ERP
Nazi Trooper is enjoying Jodel at high sky with acrobatics. Ooh nice but not (yet) on porn-space. PYGTK.
Dairy Dude is on Rails - Steam. PERL, C
Hot Wod AND HIS PALS are on a train - Diesel. Don't make them go ad-hoc or off PS! Java
Whimsy Wild is hair-drying at 125cc. It is a sight to behold. But ineffectual. PHP-CMS.
Wayne Fingers is cruising in a Bentley. Making regular delivery, in comfort. Py-DJANGO.
Hevvy Bean is moving everything, barely on a tanker. There is a lot of stuff to carry. IBM-RPG.
Eddy Face is going by bus. It is cheap PLUS tried and tested. WFC++
Tidying up today I found an old book by Fougasse. The Changing Face Of Britain
a collection of cartoons published in 1941. His most famous war-time
propaganda cartoon, everybody knows : "Careless Talk Costs Lives." I scanned a few in, and will post them on here. I admire the masterful economy of line in these cartoons.
