super saturation or bit torrent

I know people near and far are unfortunately dealing with more devastating flooding, but it does come as a rather dramatic and menacing change from speculation over a white Christmas to having our little stream threatening to spill over the streets. All the heavy snows from the past week are melting fast and producing more water than the rivers and tributaries can handle, and though this is not the first or worst we’ve seen of it, it generally came in late winter and never this early.

The outlying fields then become an expansive inland sea as there’s too much water to soak up and the town’s landscape is transformed by this shimmering, temporary reflecting pool and little torrents turn before spring begins, but it all seems to be coming to soon and too frequently. It is strange to see the tolerance for the tipping point, the range that buffered imbalance, grow more and more narrow.  Improving environmental practices is always challenging because it is not just changed behaviours (good climate karma that may still not be enough to turn the tide) locally, though much evidence and hardship is a local matter—where ever local is, that makes change but rather globally, in attitude and deed, that can lessen negative effects and allow nature to heal.

cliffhanger

Loggerheads, not develop- ments or discourse regardless of tone, concerning the state of the budget and forward-policy regarding taxation and funding for prosecuting wars of all ilk in the US is diabolical in the detail and shortfalls, and despite whether trailing or leading discussion and coverage of the issue, I suppose that these particulars do not matter overmuch nor ever survive the next cycle of austerity American-style.

A polarized, frightful and fear-mongering legislature, with an array of cadet tentacles and inventive pseudopodia (ψευδοπόδια, false feet), is projecting away from any language of compromise, familiarly and characteristically stalling, a move taken from a playbook that could be transposed anywhere and for any episode, showdown that has passed recently and for the foreseeable future. Such inflexibility and laming division allows government to conveniently ignore the mandate of the people who they are supposed to represent and stoke other external pressures, like business and the markets, which always trump congressional indolence and force many hands. It is a vicious cycle of dismantling and up-building inverted, where the conventions razed or raised are the opposite of what’s in anyone’s long-term interest and more and more dulling with each passing deadline and limit.

central equatoria or space-time coordinates

We mostly take for granted the fact that we live in charted territory and that almost any route imaginable has been scouted out, the path is well-worn and clearly marked, and that the starting point and destination have fixed addresses, precise under any number of conventions, by the postal system, government and satellite telemetry. The planet’s newest nation, South Sudan, however (and with its capital Juba situated in a district called Central Equatoria, one might be excused for thinking one ought to be able to pin point whereabouts precisely), possesses a paucity of cartographical information about itself, which is a disservice to the young country in terms of understanding demographics, infrastructure and its own resources and moving forward after years of strife.

The lands of South Sudan, including geological data (albeit dated and limited) concerning where mineral and oil wealth might be found, have been mapped to a certain extent before, but since gaining independence from Northern Sudan, all records have been sequestered there and the former powers are not willing to share, possibly begrudging the break-away state success by ransoming decades old geological surveys, not to mention street maps. Students from universities in Juba and Berlin aim to stake South Sudan’s autonomy further by creating a new, advanced atlas of country and the environment, and they hope this collaboration helps the people not only better understand and describe their urban landscapes and know the value of what may lie undiscovered underneath but also understand how best to work the land (mapping in depth the crops that are grown on farms and how different seed fare) in a sustainable way and better care for the environment. Surveyors are constantly re-assessing and re-evaluating plots and parcels, and it is a base of knowledge that certainly deserves re-thinking from time to time but usually not something reinvented or made from scratch—questions of ownership of these charts and tables aside. Maybe having to literally and figuratively map one’s world is an occasion to treat those emergent features with utmost care.

selected traits

I have noticed an overarching theme in portrayals of the near future, usually of the dystopian or post-apocalyptic varieties, which include as a strange, albeit convenient, deus ex machina of a human sub-species with telekinetic or telepathic powers. Cinematically, to me, this seems as troublesome as the paradoxes of time travel, and it seems terribly unlikely that such a patently useful and fulfilling trait would evolve or a mutation pedigreed. I think man has little impetus to evolve, because environmental factors and disadvantageous qualities can and should be accommodated. It’s hard to say what humans would have tended towards, left to the brute elements, had empathy and industry not converged along with natural developed, and we probably would not have liked it—especially since evolution is not a matter of wish or sophistication but practicality and claws and fur and spider-sense, I think, would return long before the debut of psychic powers.

currier & ives

Over yonder on the indices Mental Floss, contributor Glen Gower (the self- described Cliff Claven of Caroling) features some of his favourite trivia about Christmas carols gleaned from an amazing list of curious facts he is busily compiling. It’s fascinating and some that struck me so far is that O Holy Night was the second song to be broadcast over the radio in 1906, and that Do You Hear What I Hear? was written in response to the Cuban Missile Crisis, and that Silent Night (Stille Nacht) exists as a song in over one hundred forty different languages and has been declared by UNESCO as a treasure of intangible cultural heritage.

yule log or tron, troff

Normally, the last few days in the office before Christmas and the inter-festum week are pretty quiet and peaceful with calling on each and every colleague with season’s greetings, but there has been some ruinous and reactionary business that’s managed to sideline everything else.

 Though I know the urgency, a rolling and universal audit, is not over trifles and reflects the tide of public sentiment over bigger contemporary tragedies and the inertia of delay (until after the holidays) and procrastination is a dangerous thing as well, exculpating policy and exporting blame and failure without perspective is neither an enduring remedy. On top of all that, being exhausted and not of the jolliest persuasion, I feel ashamed for worrying about the little distractions—like my generations’ old laptop having become suddenly less reliable and clenching up when I try to use it normally. There are four other computers to use around the house besides, so I think I am not really justified in devoting more time to tinkering with the boot-log that comes rolling past on start-up and the range of non-functionality that comes out of my experiments—but that’s also been a fount of frustrations and causing a bit of writers’ block. I just need to sing some carols and batten down the mood and everything will work out merry and bright.

MMXII: revue and not for prophet

I am sure that in the moment and even more in the near future, the apocalyptic associations of the year will evaporate, replaced with stauncher stuff and remembered for what’s important. While most of the fretting and hand-wringing involved issues of less cataclysmic proportions, there was still surely a bit of vanity in being the height, the end, or possibly final straw of humanity, the Holocene age, and maybe the shadow of rush or procrastination (else, of satisfaction and contentment, too) in the back of people’s minds. Here’s a poorly remembered selection of just a few moments of the past year. It is a little early for superlatives, maybe, but no one is writing 2012 off just yet and it is certainly not a diminishing but rather the opposite as events past into the chronicle.

January: The European Union and others levy trade embargos against Iran over the countries continuing efforts to enrich uranium and nuclear research in a process and debate that has lasted through the year.

February: Queen Elizabeth II celebrated her Diamond Jubilee on the throne of Great Britain and the Common Wealth States. We had to say goodbye to Whitney Houston.

March: After 244 years of publication, the Encyclopædia Britannica is no longer in print—that is, in book form.

April: World stock-markets drop precipitously in reaction to talk of euro-zone debt realities and rumour. China unpegs the yuan from the US dollar and threatens the dollar’s status as a world reserve currency. The Arab Spring continues with uprisings in Bahrain and Syria. We had to say good bye to long-time Band-Stand and New Year’s Eve gala host Dick Clark—well-played, Mayans, well-played.

May: There was spate of bizarre and gory attacks in the United States that invoked both cannibalism and zombies. We had to say good bye to Vidal Sassoon and Donna Summer.

June: We had to say good bye to visionary author Ray Bradbury. Germany rejects proposals to pool EU debt, arguing it is an individual responsibility, while Greece elects an anti-austerity government.

July: CERN laboratories isolate the Higgs-Boson particle. Electricity blackouts in India leave more than a half-a-billion without power for days.

August: The rover Curiosity lands on Mars and begins exploring. We had to say good bye to astronaut Neil Armstrong.

September: A number of terrorist attacks are coordinated against Western interests overseas, including American embassies in response to outrages over contemptible portrayals of culture and religion.

October: A sky-diver plunged from the stratosphere and descended faster than the speed of sound. A hurricane caused death and destruction from the Caribbean up through the eastern seaboard of North America.

November: Barack Obama was re-elected for his second term as US president. The United Nations voted to grant the Palestinian territories with cadet status. We had to say good bye to Larry Hagman.

December: A horrific school shooting happened in a Kindergarten in Connecticut. We had to say good bye to architect and incubator Oscar Niemeyer, sitar-man Ravi Shankar, and jazz innovator Dave Brubeck.

We will see what the close of the year and the new one to come bring.  A lot of the matter of 2012 appears to be continuation of old business, only to out-do itself and be more glorious or notorious.

And though attention and tolerance usually seek out familiar shores right away, it might be that some of the incidents and accidents of the past chapter of months make their consequence known and bring about reform and inspection, like in terms of managing violence and protection or environmental stewardship, in the next.