Monday, August 21, 2006

[food and drink] join me for afternoon tea

Couple of days old but still ...

More money is spent on eating out than eating at home in Britain, official figures showed on Friday.

Spending on food and drink consumed outside the home doubled between 1992 and 2004 to 87.5 billion pounds, nearly two billion more than spending on food and drink for the home.

Many Brits now pride themselves on their exotic diet, yet the British still do eat in - it being the cheaper alternative. Spending on food and drink at home still rose by more than 50 percent between 1992 and 2004.

[far-east] latest in the lead up to the poll

Old stereotypes come out in the Japanese electoral race.

[latest news] darkness comes to reykjavík

What I adore about this latest front page news from Iceland is that the text below was the leader and then when I clicked – it was the article as well. I love Iceland:

The Reykjavík city council yesterday approved a request from the organizers of the Reykjavík International Film Festival to turn off all city lights for 30 minutes in the evening of 28 September this year, the Festival’s opening day, including all street lights. This is reported in all the main media.

Hrönn Marinósdóttir, Director of the Festival, told Morgunbladid that city residents would be able to see the world’s largest movie screen: “The sky itself. It’s very apt that it should be on the opening night of the Reykjavík International Film Festival.”

[good news] makes a change from the doom and gloom

The press trust of India reports that Pakistan has detained members of banned terror groups. Islamabad has put over 400 members of banned terrorist groups on a 'watch list' and proceeded to detain them.

The Inter-Provincial Coordination Committee (IPCC), which met on Saturday, has put 400 'alleged extremists' on a watch list. They would be proceeded against under the Anti-Terrorist Act and detained for a year. However, their cases would be reviewed every three months, local daily The News quoted officials as saying.

Besides JuD and LeT, the names of other banned outfits like Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) figured prominently in the local and foreign media. While JuD was accused of using the funds for the earthquake relief to finance the plot, the key suspect, Rashid Rauf arrested for the plot was closely connected with JEM. Rauf is married to JeM chief Masood Azhar's close relative and was arrested from Bahawalpur, the headquarters of JeM.

Well, that makes it all much clearer.

[in brief] thoughts for the day

Over increasingly large areas of the United States, spring now comes unheralded by the return of birds; and the early mornings are strangely silent where once they were filled with the beauty of birdsong. [Rachel Carson 1962]

And that will be England gone – the shadows, the meadows, the lanes, the guildhalls, the carved choirs. There’ll be books; it will linger on in galleries but all that remains for us will be concrete and tyres. [Philip Larkin 1974]

If you drive in the Australian outback as well, you’ll see dead animals and the remains of tyres. I’ve seen garbage on the roadside in Vancouver and in Reykyavik. Despite the best efforts of the minority, the desolation proceeds, with little check.

I count myself a conservative – certainly in society and relationships – and conservative, to me, means not so much wanting the status to remain quo but striving for a higher level of responsibility.

[spy v spy] russia’s kgb and the clairvoyants – grasping at straws?

Would you fear an international intelligence service which employed clairvoyants?

Correspondents of the Komsomolskaya Pravda daily said that not long before he passed away, Professor Alexander Spirkin, well-known scholar and co-author of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, admitted in an interview that the Soviet KGB employed clairvoyants to spy on their enemies.

Alexander Spirkin used to head a secret lab under the Soviet government and worked closely with clairvoyants hired to carry out special missions for the Kremlin.

“I used to work closely with hundreds of all sorts of extrasensory individuals,” Mr. Spirkin recalled in a conversation with Komsomolskaya Pravda correspondents.

Full text here.

[environmental disaster in the making] get that tanker up - now!

All the words in the world are not going to get that tanker off the ocean floor and 450 000 litres are ready to spill now. Until that tanker's salvaged, all talk of who's responsible and how deeply Petron is into graft, all such talk is just so much oil on the water.

After that, Sunshine Marine Development Corp., the owner of the Solar I, which sank off Guimaras two weeks ago, needs the most rigorous investigation into how they could commission such a derelict ship through such an environmentally sensitive area on such a mission.

Officials of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources investigating the oil spill have promised to release the results of their inquiry sometime this week.

Oh yes? Like National Power Corp. off Semirara island last year? The NAPOCOR barge spilled 364,000 liters of fuel and ruined vast stretches of the coast of Antique province.

This current oil spill from the Solar I, which sank in rough seas August 11, has affected over 200 kilometers of the Guimaras coastline, including beaches and mangroves—killing wildlife and disrupting the livelihood of at least 10,000 Guimareños.

The cleanup has been haphazard and ineffective, the spill happened right smack in the middle of the monsoon season but much worse is that they plus Greenpeace are expending their energy on ‘why it happened, how to prevent another etc. and meanwhile:

Full text here.

Sunday, August 20, 2006

[environmental disaster] greenpeace finally moving

Black Quill, bless him, is running a piece on the oil disaster and now, finally, after a week and a half, Greenpeace is becoming involved:

As Greenpeace is getting involved, I think James’ worries will be answered soon, however, there are a few confusing things …

Quinlan’s piece over there is good but I don’t share his enthusiasm for Greenpeace. Here is their ‘urgent assistance’:

Environmental watchdog Greenpeace said on Sunday that it was “shocked” by the extent of damage caused by the Philippines’ worst ever oil spill and called on the government to treat the raising of the sunken tanker as a matter of urgency.

“It’s really bad out there,” Athena Ballesteros, climate and energy campaigner for Greenpeace International, said. “The extent of damage to such a wonderful part of the Philippines shocked us all.”

“The government must treat, as a matter of urgency, the raising of the tanker before more damage is done,” she said.

Greenpeace says it will take several months to draw up its report on the full environmental impact of the spill.

Now where is the ‘urgent action’? Go to their site. Where are the banner headlines about it? I hope Black Quill is right [and the anomalies he draws attention to are indeed curious] but again:

Where is the effective action?

[in brief] thought for the day

There's only one way to find out if a man is honest - ask him. If he says yes, you know he's a crook. [Groucho Marx]

[history] the anomalies of kaspar hauser

Many know the story quite well and of the way he was famously portrayed by Klaus Kinsky. If you’re one who delights in reading the fine print though, you can’t help noticing certain anomalies in the story.

Not so much concerning the court intrigues and whether he was royalty or nay – but rather in the boy’s own story. These anomalies are possibly more intriguing than the mystery itself.

The strange and tragic case of Kaspar Hauser first came to public attention in the month of May, 1828, when he stumbled through the New Gate of the German City of Nuremberg.

Full text here.