tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-142232702013-05-18T02:50:18.206-07:00Captain Future's Dreaming Up DailyWhile Downward Bound: Hope in a Darkening Age...
news, comment, arts, ecology, wisdom, obsessions, the future...
"THE END OF ALL INTELLIGENT ANALYSIS IS TO CLEAR THE WAY FOR SYNTHESIS."--H.G. Wells. "It's not dark yet, but it's getting there."--Bob Dylan.Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.comBlogger4481125This is an XML content feed. It is intended to be viewed in a newsreader or syndicated to another site, subject to copyright and fair use.tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-1246072981099323282013-05-18T02:02:00.003-07:002013-05-18T02:02:55.428-07:002013-05-18T02:02:55.428-07:00Scandal of the Week
To be more explicit, quoting from this piece by Robert Liddy in the Portland (Maine) Daily Sun:
"The moment marks the highest concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the entirety of human history; at current rates of growth NOAA predicts eight hundred parts per million will be the norm by the year 2100. We are on a climate change path that will make a mockery of political name Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-25739876329089284482013-05-18T01:56:00.000-07:002013-05-18T02:50:18.231-07:002013-05-18T02:50:18.231-07:00Tiny Giants NoteAfter a homestand of heroics, the San Francisco Giants went on the road to play with flashes of brilliance (coming back from 6-0 to win over the Rockies), but also awfully like a Little League team, making odd distracted errors in Toronto and Colorado. Entertaining still, but still...
One cool note: The Giants brought up Brett Pill, formerly of the Humboldt Crabs, and he doubled and scored Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-57718193971635066192013-05-16T01:14:00.000-07:002013-05-16T01:18:46.416-07:002013-05-16T01:18:46.416-07:00Breaking!The week's biggest scandal!!!
(Unless it's this one!!!!!!)Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-83888331041270183702013-05-09T00:41:00.001-07:002013-05-16T01:14:36.492-07:002013-05-16T01:14:36.492-07:00State of the Climate
Stop me if you've heard this one--summer ice melt in part of Antarctica is the most extensive in a thousand years. Arctic summer sea ice is melting faster than previously believed, and scientists now expect that it will be gone completely in 2050.
A Peruvian glacier has melted 1600 years worth of ice in the last 25. Professor Wagstaff (author of the article in The Week) sees this as A Bad Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-25328288481452853362013-05-08T23:28:00.000-07:002013-05-08T23:28:12.853-07:002013-05-08T23:28:12.853-07:00Political GrumblingI've had better things to be depressed about than politics recently, but it's hard to go completely cold turkey.
And the news is not all bad: President Obama's approval is up, congressional GOPers are less than half of it, most people believe they're to blame for screwing things up. But of course that doesn't change anything.
Pew also analyzed the 2012 numbers and found that Romney got all Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-6590254649589695562013-05-06T01:12:00.001-07:002013-05-06T01:18:04.762-07:002013-05-06T01:18:04.762-07:00It's Outa Here!Well, before we get into this week's bad news let's talk some sports.
The NBA playoffs are going into their second round. If you had to choose which of the three California teams would make it at least that far, it probably wouldn't be the Golden State Warriors and the classic shooting of Stephen Curry (pictured with Kobe), but that's the facts. The Kobe-less Lakers got decisively swept, but Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-27794364163352110412013-05-05T01:41:00.000-07:002013-05-05T01:41:37.244-07:002013-05-05T01:41:37.244-07:00American Taliban
The otherwise incomprehensible hysteria of rabid rightists about the imposition of Sharia law--which absolutely nobody is really trying to impose--is itself a signal of what's really at work. Scratch a hysteric and you'll often find that what they fear is what they really want to do, at least in the cases where the opposites are the same.
This is one of them. Rabid rightists in North Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-9926879395001264012013-05-05T01:32:00.001-07:002013-05-05T01:32:30.270-07:002013-05-05T01:32:30.270-07:00Kill the Poor
There's unfortunately nothing new in the Pew study of the US 'recovery' from the Great Recession, which showed that it was a spectacular recovery for the rich at the expense of everybody else (whose net worth actually dropped between 2009 and 2011), or in New York's analysis, based on its own more sophisticated criteria, that nearly half the city (all four boroughs) is in poverty.
It's againstCaptain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-11807965779716428342013-04-26T01:10:00.000-07:002013-04-26T01:10:01.762-07:002013-04-26T01:10:01.762-07:00RevelationsThe Boston Marathon bombing and aftermath brought out the best and the worst in American life. You could see them both for example on the same Rachel Maddow program (Wednesday's): the millions in contributions to help the victims, the Rabid Right conspiracy theories and xenophobia.
There are also many kinds of attempts to figure out how to prevent such destructive actions in the future. Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-48269822680707776162013-04-22T23:52:00.000-07:002013-04-22T23:52:08.568-07:002013-04-22T23:52:08.568-07:00The Forest Planet
Earth was a forest planet. Forests and oceans. Humankind cut down most of the forests, thereby longterm cutting its own throat.
Emerald Isle? Ireland has no forests anymore. The Black Forest of Germany? It's a cake. Greece? Not for milennia. The great pine forests of eastern America, gone, gone, gone. The precious redwoods of California, 95% gone.
Forests (and oceans) have been Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-32979576363822679962013-04-21T23:12:00.000-07:002013-04-21T23:14:45.060-07:002013-04-21T23:14:45.060-07:00The Week in Review
Of all the moments in the Boston events last week, this is the one that sticks most in my mind--the audio of the firefight in Watertown, recorded from a home that's both near and far from the action--far enough that amidst the sound of the shooting, there's the sound of barking dogs and a bird. It's the barking dogs and the bird that got to me.
Otherwise, there's this summary of the events, Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-83093062764345289842013-04-21T03:49:00.003-07:002013-04-21T03:49:41.538-07:002013-04-21T03:49:41.538-07:00The Dreaming Up Daily Quote
"The most inspirational literature I ever read was Dostoevsky or Camus. Then I believe his assertions when he says you only have one choice in your life: it's whether or not to commit suicide. If you don't commit suicide, you have to treat your life with a great deal of energy and assertiveness."
Jim HarrisonCaptain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-79805859924121735192013-04-19T23:00:00.000-07:002013-04-23T02:56:49.796-07:002013-04-23T02:56:49.796-07:00A brief personal coda. I'm reminded that the last time I was in Boston, we stayed with friends in Watertown. Even that was more than a decade ago. They still live there, and teach at universities in Boston. We knew them from Pittsburgh, and we hope they got through all this okay. Update: We've heard from them, and they did.
Looking back on these posts, somewhere between a third and a halfCaptain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-46384843285563681642013-04-19T20:35:00.000-07:002013-04-21T23:16:16.981-07:002013-04-21T23:16:16.981-07:00Now things go into the longer process. Already conflicting information on the suspects, though the older is getting really bad press. Already politics is entering, on how the suspect is to be prosecuted--the Obama administration is insisting on civilian courts, and I think commentators are right that Boston public will insist on it.
It turns out that these guys did live on Norfolk St. in Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-73304778122747999982013-04-19T18:17:00.004-07:002013-04-21T23:16:17.051-07:002013-04-21T23:16:17.051-07:00There are so many police vehicles and so many people on the street in Watertown cheering, it's like a nighttime parade.Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-62947957696949129782013-04-19T17:59:00.001-07:002013-04-21T23:16:17.000-07:002013-04-21T23:16:17.000-07:00People in Watertown have come out of their homes, lining the street, cheering the police as they leave.Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-66289944131313210672013-04-19T17:43:00.001-07:002013-04-21T23:16:17.012-07:002013-04-21T23:16:17.012-07:00Suspect is alive and in custody, NBC is reporting.Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-39482747383254398912013-04-19T17:33:00.001-07:002013-04-21T23:16:16.978-07:002013-04-21T23:16:16.978-07:00At the very least the police forces have the boat surrounded, and as night falls they have night vision. There are conflicting reports on whether the suspect is still alive, perhaps even talking to police. Now it's not certain there was a fire. So nothing much is clear except they think they have the suspect cornered. A resident noted that thing are very quiet.Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-35539444398098094742013-04-19T17:19:00.004-07:002013-04-21T23:16:16.974-07:002013-04-21T23:16:16.974-07:00It's about 12 hours after I last posted and essentially nothing happened until the last few minutes. It looks as though the suspect is cornered in a boat in a driveway. It is just outside the original 20 block perimenter in Watertown. One answer to why they were fairly confident he was still here is that he was wounded in the original firefight. Still, they were almost ready to give up the Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-53701700134373075582013-04-19T05:12:00.000-07:002013-04-21T23:16:16.993-07:002013-04-21T23:16:16.993-07:008 am in Boston, as the "shelter in place" reccommendation is extended to the city of Boston, as well as the other towns. So essentially Greater Boston has stopped everything. Nobody is supposed to leave their homes, or let anyone into them. This may be the first shelter in place order for a major American city ever.
A police spokesperson says this may go on for hours.
Several of the NBC Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-59919421062204207732013-04-19T04:38:00.000-07:002013-04-21T23:16:16.997-07:002013-04-21T23:16:16.997-07:00Boston Police etc. are warning people away from Norfolk St. in Cambridge, maybe a block or two from where I used to live in Cambridge. It may be where they're detonating a bomb, maybe something else. A dangerous situation they're saying.
Now they're reporting that these brothers have been in the U.S. for more than 10 years, since they were children. Though they were born in Russia, it seemsCaptain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-64109871900467563352013-04-19T04:23:00.002-07:002013-04-21T23:16:17.008-07:002013-04-21T23:16:17.008-07:00The whole MBTA is shut down. So is Amtrak from Boston to Providence. So people waking up in the Boston area are waking up to this. I think I heard someone say that the violence last night started in Central Square, which is very near where I lived in Cambridge. I bought groceries every Saturday at the Purity Supreme supermarket there. I'm not sure why an MIT police officer would respond to aCaptain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-63383916924172221992013-04-19T04:04:00.004-07:002013-04-21T23:16:17.005-07:002013-04-21T23:16:17.005-07:00AP is reporting the bombing suspects are from Chechnya in Russia. Pete Williams is being quoted as saying they are apparently Chechnan who had been living in Turkey. NBC is not yet confirming this, but a commentator slipped up and mentioned it, mentioning also the Islamicist terrorism in Chechnya.Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-48748021040966643442013-04-19T03:56:00.003-07:002013-04-21T23:16:16.985-07:002013-04-21T23:16:16.985-07:00At this point it seems Cambridge and Boston in general is shut down and locked down. The universities and schools across Boston are closed. People are literally being kept off the streets. Incredible.
Pete Williams is reporting that they are brothers, 19 and 20. The one at large is Cambridge resident. Tsarnaez is the name being identified. No nationality given, but repeated that they've Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14223270.post-49668441042268271612013-04-19T02:58:00.002-07:002013-04-21T23:16:16.990-07:002013-04-21T23:16:16.990-07:00It's almost 3 a.m. here, 6 am there, and the start of the day. But Watertown is locked down--no transit, no businesses opening, nobody going out or in. Pete Williams is reporting that the police believe they know the building where the guy at large is holed up. That answers my question, which is how do they know that he is still in Watertown. He got away reportedly by flooring an SUV and Captain Futurenoreply@blogger.com0