Days Volume Two

* "Care to elaborate?" "Only to say that everything you cherish, everything you work for, everything you hold precious will have its end. You are very proud of this intricate little community of yours, with its ten thousands habitats, its ticking clockwork mechanisms of absolute democracy. And perhaps in your own small way you are entitled to some of that pride. But it won't last for ever. One day, Prefect, there will be no Glitter Band... "For now she hides, flitting furtively from shadow to shadow, surviving by her wits. She lives in your world, but her influence over it is limited. I believe she means to change that. She means to become more powerful. She will rip control of human affairs from your fumbling hands... You must be ready for her when she shows herself. She will move quickly, and you will not have much time to react." Alastair Reynolds, The Prefect. But do you know my problem? It’s not just that I hate mobs, knowing there’s no wisdom in them....

* I am done with all things, I give it unto you.' So he flung the bread and the strips of bacon among the beggars, and they fought with many cries until the last scrap was eaten. But meanwhile the friars nailed the glee man to his cross, and set it upright in the hole, and shovel led the earth in at the foot, and trampled it level and hard. So then they went away, but the beggars stared on, sitting round the cross. But when the sun was sinking, they also got up to go, for the air was getting chilly. And as soon as they had gone a little way, the wolves, who had been showing themselves on the edge of a neighbouring coppice, came nearer, and the birds wheeled closer and closer. 'Stay, outcasts, yet a little while,' the cruc- ified one called in a weak voice to the beg- gars, 'and keep the beasts and the birds from me.' But the beggars were angry because he had called them outcasts, so they threw stones and mud at him, and went their way. Then the wolves gathered at th...

* http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur/hotair.htm n fact, there is every doubt whether any global warming at all is occurring at the moment, let alone human-caused warming. For leading politicians to be asserting to the contrary indicates something is very wrong with their chain of scientific advice, for they are clearly being deceived. That this should be the case is an international political scandal of high order which, in turn, raises the question of where their advice is coming from. In Australia, the advice trail leads from government agencies such as the CSIRO and the Australian Greenhouse Office through to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of the United Nations. As leading economist David Henderson has pointed out, it is extremely dangerous for an unelected and unaccountable body like the IPCC to have a monopoly on climate policy advice to governments. And even more so because, at heart, the IPCC is a political and not a scientific agency. Australia does n...

* Have I not shown you glimpses of the world to come, if we do not act now? She had, too, and he knew that everything boiled down to a choice between two contending futures. One was a Glitter Band under the kindly rule of a benevolent tyrant, where the lives of the hundred million citizens continued essentially as they did now, albeit with some minor restrictions on civil liberty. The other was a Glitter Band in ruins, its population decimated, its fallen glories stalked by ghosts, revenants and monsters, some of which had once been people. 'I have the weevil data,' he said, when the silence had become unendurable. Alastair Reyonds. Simmering uncertainty, simmering discontent, he heard it everywhere, the harsh plays of light, the appalling, apparently racist rants. These are the great working class, the working families our Prime Minister loved so much. He heard them everywhere, talking about the Asians that were taking over, "breeding like monkeys", the Muslims that...

* I wonder when people last got widely and publicly ridiculed for not believing in God: probably not for several hundred years. Nowadays, you'd get a slightly odd look for doing the opposite and expressly stating your faith. But, if you really want to know what it's like to be a 16th-century heretic, try saying you're a bit sceptical about man-made global warming. Temperatures do seem to have gone up a little, even though environmentalists acknowledge that we might be in for a cool spell now. And we've certainly had our fair share of tsunamis, hurricanes and typhoons recently. Still, no one has convincingly proved that all this is definitely man's fault. Try saying that in polite circles and it's like saying you're partial to roasted babies. I understand people disagreeing with global warming sceptics, but not the jeering, ridiculing way they do it. I'm not sure I'm right; they're convinced I'm wrong. They're convinced, too, that they hav...

* THERE is grey in your hair. Young men no longer suddenly catch their breath When you are passing; But maybe some old gaffer mutters a blessing Because it was your prayer Recovered him upon the bed of death. For your sole sake - that all heart's ache have known, And given to others all heart's ache, From meagre girlhood's putting on Burdensome beauty - for your sole sake Heaven has put away the stroke of her doom, So great her portion in that peace you make By merely walking in a room. Your beauty can but leave among us Vague memories, nothing but memories. A young man when the old men are done talking Will say to an old man, "Tell me of that lady The poet stubborn with his passion sang us When age might well have chilled his blood.' Vague memories, nothing but memories, But in the grave all, all, shall be renewed. The certainty that I shall see that lady Leaning or standing or walking In the first loveliness of womanhood, And with the fervour of my youthful eyes,...

* He was in Kashmir, he knew, lying in the meadows near running water among violets and trefoil, the Himalayas beyond, which made it all the more remarkable he should suddenly be setting out with Hugh and Yvonne to climb Popocatepetl. Already they had drawn ahead. "Can you pick bougainvillea?" he heard Hugh say, and "Be careful," Yvonne replied, "it's got spikes on it and you have to look at everything to be sure there're no spiders,". "We shoota de espiders in Mexico," another voice muttered. Malcolm Lowry. Life had become impossible. They made it so. An army of communist style bureaucrats had turned the people's lives to mud. Towers loomed over the rain swept streets, but what made it more disgusting was the people who peered down from those towers, their beady, self=righteous eyes justifying everything that had gone before. It was chaos, it was a depth of despair these self-righteous bastards would never know. Nothing was more dang...

* I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth. Umberto Eco Paddy Flynn is dead;....He was a great teller of tales, and unlike our common romancers, knew how to empty heaven, hell, and purgatory, faeryland and earth, to people his stories. He did not live in a shrunken world, but knew of no less ample circumstance than did Homer himself. Perhaps the Gaelic people shall by his like bring back again the ancient simplicity and amplitude of imagination.....Let us go forth, the tellers of tales, and seize whatever prey the heart long for, and have no fear. Everything exists, everything is true, and the earth is only a little dust under our feet. A Teller of Tales HAD I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light, I would spread the cloths under your feet...