Daily Archive

Observing Hermann tells us:

German engineers have come up with a new technique for moving ships through the high seas in a way which they hope will not only reduce shipping costs, but will also dramatically reduce the emission of dangerous greenhouses gases, as well. The new device, called a “sail”…

Thus, even as we speak, we notice the beginnings of the return to the happy past.

Next up presumably, as we of necessity step back further still, will be “oars”:

. . . the use of which will also clearly improve societal physical fitness, boldness and bravery no end.

It has been a few days of mixed achievements, according to The Independent.  First, yesterday this Independent headline demonstrated the paper is well-pleased regarding one:

Bali Conference: World unity forces US to back climate deal

So, has “world unity” at last successfully chained Prometheus — …He stole the sacred carbon fire… – to his rock?

President Bush’s administration conceded for the first time yesterday that the pollution that causes global warming will have to be cut in half…

Well, not exactly.  But it does appear that the U.S. is indeed learning from “the world”.  The U.S., too, now appears diplomatically willing to pay lip service to the proposition that carbon dioxide (”the pollution”) can be eliminated from global civilization — a goal that has almost no chance of ever being achieved.

Everyone feel better now?

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If the above is an achievement that impresses The Independent, another doesn’t.  With the official British forces’ power handover Sunday in Basra, The Indy follows form, pensively asking:

So, what did we achieve?…

Seems a huge question for one newspaper piece.  Still, writer Raymond Whitaker takes up the challenge with the usual Indy aplomb.  However, after leading us off in various (almost entirely “nothing achieved”) directions — …Extreme Islamists have brutally enforced their vision of proper behaviour, banning activities which used to be normal in what was once a sophisticated city… — in his elongated, diffuse study of the matter, Mr Whitaker somehow manages not to notice the most obvious, overall “change”.

That would be as in “winds of” . . . in another part of the world.  “So, what did we achieve?”  Like all facets of it or NOT – much as was the case when Britain had helped foster such change elsewhere — nothing less than the creation of majority rule in a land that had previously known only minority dictatorship. 

That notable similar change elsewhere, that same Mr Whitaker on Sunday happened also to have trumpeted.  However, whether he did so simply because he was chained to his desk, a story short and a deadline looming, is unclear.

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Lastly, this is not any sort of achievement . . . well not yet, anyway.  The Indy yesterday also told us:

Franco Zeffirelli would like to make over what he called Pope Benedict XVI’s “cold” image and his “showy” clothes, an Italian newspaper reported yesterday…

…his robes should reflect “sobriety”, the director added. “The papal vestments [are] too sumptuous and showy.”…

Reforming “papal vestments”?  Talk about a challenge.  (Or a war that can’t be won.)  One suspects it may be easier to eliminate carbon dioxide from human civilization, or for Iraq overnight to become the Denmark of the Middle East.