Thursday, November 17, 2011

Friday, November 11, 2011

The Illusion of Flags:




DULCE ET DECORUM EST(1)
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares(2) we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest(3) began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots(4) 
Of tired, outstripped(5) Five-Nines(6) that dropped behind.
Gas!(7) Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets(8) just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime(9) . . .
Dim, through the misty panes(10) and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering,(11) choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud(12) 
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest(13) 
To children ardent(14) for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.(15)
Wilfred Owen
8 October 1917 - March, 1918

Sunday, November 06, 2011

The Range DFL, the Environment: Are they stupid or drunk?

More likely just stupid.
Their record from this year:
Lowering the sulfate standard
Exempting the IRRRB from environmental review
Doing this while Polymet has a deal with Glencore
Pushing for mining on state and private lands

This is not the DFL anymore and hasn't been for a long time. It's a group that rolls over and exposes its belly to anyone wanting to destroy the place.

Thursday, November 03, 2011

And some wonder

Why citizens are cynical about politicians. The Range DFL'ers  on the IRRRB are willing to deal with these people?

Wednesday, November 02, 2011

Quarterwits on parade

Watching the World Die

In the words of Aldo Leopold:
"One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise." Aldo Leopold



As an ecologist, everyday I feel about nature as I do about someone terminally ill; I see parts of them disappearing little by little, piece by piece. I grieve everyday I open my eyes. But with nature, other insults are added. Eons of evolution and community networks are destroyed for a banal stripmall, or the profits of foreign investors extracting ore and leaving a wasteland. The final insult is when the people who actually live here want this to happen, so they can get a bigscreen tv and an oversized truck. Some may wonder what is the best evidence for Evolution; it is fairly simple and clear. It is impossible for us to  be creatures of any god; no supreme being of any grand intelligence would create a species obsessed with monster trucks or small transparent pieces of  highly compressed carbon, or one that would destroy where it lives so it can have an atv. Only evolution could produce such an idiotic talking monkey.