[cranes] dancing across the sky

Interesting things happening across the road and I don't think I'd do them.

There are three tall houses being built and the eighteen story variant had men on the very top floor just now, being supplied by three cranes.

All very colourful and even graceful - a dance of tubular steel in gold, red and blue - wish I owned a camera. One arm of the mother crane was hovering over the baby crane, almost protecting it.

Another crane, presumably the daddy, carrying a metal grill across against the clouds, reached the concrete edge of the top floor, one worker leant over to pull it in and it looked to me as if he had no safety harness of any kind.

At least it would be mercifully quick.

On the ground are the foundations of whatever - jagged metal rods sticking vertically out of concrete blocks - and I couldn't help feeling that this called for some jaunty doggerel. So here is one I cobbled together just now:

Cranes in their natural habitat,
Motionless stand and wait;
An innocent workman approaches the edge,
Just metres form his fate.

The whir of the motor, the high crane swings;
He reaches out in space,
As five passing seagulls drop their load,
Hitting him in the face.

Spluttering, it briefly slips his mind -
His precariously positioned perch -
As he tumbles, clutching at the grill
And the crane gives a mighty lurch.

Swift as an eagle, the grill is dropped,
The workman hears no roar
As the grill swings back like a cricket bat
And he hits the 13th floor.

Hands frantically clutch, he's safely dragged;
They can see he'll live some more.
"Well, you'd best get back then," the foreman grunts;
He returns to the eighteenth floor.

Just looking over there again now and there's another madman striding across the steep roof of the little house above the top floor. Better man than I am, Gunga Din.

[kylie] fishing in the wrong pond

Michelle Johnson is sadly astray:

Word on the street is that Kylie Minogue has hired a team of assistants to help find her a man. High on the list of must-haves for her new toy boy is looks and lots of money. But since the singing budgie is in Cannes for the film festival, I think her time and money would be better spent getting out on the town herself and nabbing one of those yacht-loving pretty boys with a lovely French accent. And when you're looking as hot as the pop princess is nowadays, that should be no problem at all!

If that's the pool she's really fishing in, then she's a sad case indeed. Time's running out and she's persisting in the wrong type of guy, like most women below a certain age and sometimes even after it. There's no happiness in that pond. As travellers know, if you sometimes go off the beaten track, away from the main resorts, then you can often stumble upon hidden gems.

[democrat cave-in] what's the big deal

Pat Buchanan amazes me:

[A] Democratic Congress is now voting to fully fund the war in Iraq, as demanded by President Bush, and without any timetable for a U.S. troop withdrawal. Bush got his $100 billion, then magnanimously agreed to let Democrats keep the $20 billion in pork they stuffed into the bill -- to soothe the pain of their sellout of the party base. Remarkable. If the Republican rout of 2006 said anything, it was that America had lost faith in the Bush-Rumsfeld conduct of the war and wanted Democrats to lead the country out.

What I find remarkable is that supposedly seasoned observers are marvelling at this. Do you really think the Democrats weren't softened up first? Do you really think that deals were not cut? Do you really suggest that Washington is squeaky clean? Do you really think Congress or the Executive run things in America?

And who bankrolls the deals? Who's the source of the money? And who has a history of playing hardball and who has this blog been consistently railing against? But bankrolling is only part of the whole deal. The presence in Iraq is part of a much wider issue and the Democrats were simply let into the secret, in highly patriotic terms, no doubt, and given their choice.

Nothing remarkable whatsoever. Just follow the money. Oh, and quiet, well-heeled groups with strange ceremonies and traditions.

[tele-evangelism] the old three card trick

A little discussion going on about the Falwell business on various sites.

My position on this - I have exactly the same target as my mentor, the Nazarene Handyman. Countless times worse is the seeming holy-man, who actually draws his pay from mammon, than the openly evil man:

The Moral Majority's influence dropped sharply following sex scandals in the late-1980s involving two other television evangelists, Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart.

It's not as if we weren't warned:

Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them.

It's the old three card trick:

1 Take a simple scripture such as Matthew Chapters 5 to 7 and add your own unsustainable embellishments which blur the distinction between right and wrong, establishing a link between money and faith and calling the new hotch-potch modern and relevant to the times. In other words - more palatable to a clientele.

2 Publicly indulge in the more sensationalist references, such as miracle cures, which you palpably have not the power to perform, being faithless in yourself in the first place and concentrate on these rather than on pointing people to the readily available texts. Hype it up with constant references to "faith healing".

3 Sit back and allow the the whole damn thing to implode under its own weight, revealing you to be a hollow charlatan and your "faith" to be nothing but empty jingoistic claptrap, based on dubious literary sources. Be found out having sexual liaisons with your "parishioners" and a double effect is achieved:

a the non-believer snorts with sardonic disgust and now has further ammunition to dissuade any would be superstitious "believer";

b the new-believer now doubly rejects the tele-evangelist and his whole cursed mumbo-jumbo and wants nothing more to do with it. Forever. The ex-believer is not only innoculated against hope but is openly antagonistic and useful to the other side.

In the process, all that's been lost are a couple of corrupt tele-evangelists, cheap at the price. What's been gained is the alienation of a whole tele-audience plus the vindication of the humanistic community.

In all of this the original text is selectively quoted, as I'm doing now. The question is which text you quote. Text such as:

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in Heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

That excerpt from Matthew is in sharp contrast to the Mercedes riding tele-evangelist. You need no intermediary to read this text. Here's a url if you're interested. And here's an example:

The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

So when you gaze on someone, is it with kindness and a desire to be friends or is it with a view to how that person can help you up the ladder, or with lust or with hate, e.g. in the Middle-East?

There is pure life-philosophy in this text - providing a blueprint how to act.

Even the barely intellectual reasoner can see that, if followed through to its logical conclusion, it would do away with wars, human destitution, despair, avarice, striving for the unattainable and so on and replace it with respect, decency, wholesome laughter, friendship, striving for goals only slightly beyond reach but most of all - it leads to contentment.

There are forces who don't want that to occur under any circumstances.

[tony blair] great peacetime prime minister

I didn't think I'd ever agree with Bob Piper but check this out:

Now, I suppose you can overlook Thatcher's little skirmish in the South Atlantic when talking about wars, but can someone please explain how Tony Blair can be included in a poll of peacetime Prime Ministers!

But the best thing about Bob is that he supports Yorkshire in the Roses so the man's clearly no fool.

[blogfocus thursday] bookended by classicists

1 The thinking man's blogger, Heraclites, [please note - Tiberius], says most people would agree that one of the key political issues is this:

"How can talented children from poor backgrounds have the same opportunity as those from wealthier backgrounds?" To assess where we are in terms of this goal, we can look at data on social mobility. The problem is, the data can only be interpreted in conjunction with data about heritability of talent.

Say, for the sake of argument, that “ability” is 100% inherited and has no environmental component.

Another reason to check out this blog is that it is a watering hole for the excellent Nigel Sedgwick, whom I miss.

2 Martin Kelly is back and breathing fire:

"Do not read further if you want balanced commentary and thoughtful nuance." Thus does the Eastern European correspondent of 'The Economist' headline his reproduction of his most recent wordvomit concerning Beast Putin.

I am perfectly prepared to go toe to toe with Lucas about Russia, in a time and place of his choosing - does he have the guts to go for it?

3 Robert Sharp reflects on the contest that is Eurovision:

After watching the annual song contest, beamed to us this year from Helsinki, I cannot help but think that we British are very different from the rest of our European neighbours. There must be something in the water. I thought the commentary of our own national treasure, the Irishman Terry Wogan, epitomised these differences — although perhaps not in the way he might expect.

Year after year, he and we mock Eurovision with glee, pointing out how seriously everyone takes the contest, while we participate with our tongues in our cheek. This year, however, that same attitude boomeranged back to slap us in the face.

4 Char has discovered this nifty thing about birthdays. If you want sheer unbridled joy in a blog - Char's your girl:

I just found this really nifty thing over on one of my fave bloggity reads... Do you know what day you were born? Not date silly! What day of the week? Don't worry, neither did I. Wanna find out? Sure you do. Go and have a look.

5 MJW is another from the stable of britpolit bloggers and he does it well:

I’m glad that the Government has finally come out and admitted that there is a possible future for nuclear power. I know there is a huge anti-nuclear lobby out there who’ll scream blue murder at this and there is also a closely related and increasingly rabid green lobby that will see it as a missed opportunity to push renewable energy sources no matter if they are still some way from being a serious practical solution to the UK’s energy needs.

6 Six for the price of one today with Bob from Brockley and while you're there - check out the post below it as well:

Here are some of the things I've enjoyed in the last couple of days.

Paul Anderson posted a couple of great blues videos from YouTube.

The Bristol Blogger on the strange death of anarchist England (on the BNP and Indymedia)

Jonathan Freedland finds reasons to be optimistic about the Ehud Olmert debacle

Hak Mao on Scottish so-called socialists

A good old lefty joke at Red Left Review

Added at the end of a long Friday afternoon:

Chris D re-assures us that mid-life crises are the beginnings of true knowledge (with quotes from Adam Smith to prove it). So that's OK then. Have a good weekend.

7 Beaman gives us the tale of Malcolm, which Wife in the North might find interesting::

The terrible image of a cat dangling from the fence, caught on a nail or wooden lattice, swamped my mind. I visualised the animal scrapping desperately at the wall, trying to free its leg or tail from some flagitious fixture. The squeaking could only be the whimpering of the poor beast in abominable pain. There was only one thing to do.

I jumped out of bed as quickly as I used to on Christmas mornings as a child. Unfortunately I had forgotten the pile of books that decorate my floor and tumbled over. I got up, brushed myself down and without bothering with the task of putting underwear and clothes on, rushed to the window and ripped the curtains open.

8 To book-end this evening's focus on a classical note, football is a classic sport, as Electro-Kevin would tell you:

The phrase 'bread and circuses' was first penned by the Roman poet Juvenal to describe how low cost/low quality food and entertainment was used to keep the masses happy whilst the Arts, public works projects, human rights and democracy were degraded - does some of that sound familiar to you ? Are we all trapped in Juvenal's play, Satiracal X ? It seems an essential attribute for politicians to have is an interest in 'the beautiful game' and I wonder if this is because football is so good or if it is simply because football is so powerful at this time?

Hope to see you Saturday evening.