Days Volume Two

* http://www.hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?7724a95d-54f2-403b-abab-db95e878d62a “We can afford an aggressive cap-and-trade policy to tackle ‘global warming’” The “Report” states or implies that “cap-and-trade” works well enough to make a difference to the climate; that it costs very little; and that it will not damage the US economy. The truth is that “cap and trade” does not work. The European Union’s carbon emissions are rising yearly, while those of George Bush’s US are falling yearly. In the EU, “cap-and-trade” has already been tried twice and has spectacularly failed twice, at huge cost. The environmental result: nil. Europe’s emissions continue to rise. There have been similar failures elsewhere in the world. A recent analysis by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency of the Lieberman-Warner bill projects that costs of electrical power and gasoline would rise very sharply. Gasoline would cost about 53 cents per gallon more in 2030 and $1.40 per gallon more in 2050. Nigel Lawson...

* If you want to be happy, forget yourself. Forget all of it—how you look, how you feel, how your career is going. Just drop the whole subject of you. We all know this is true because we’ve all had the experience of doing some task—even cleaning the sock drawer or washing the dishes—and for a while, forgetting ourselves entirely. And when we blink our eyes and come back, we realize we've been happy. So losing your self-preoccupation is important. How do you do that? Simple: focus on something else. People dedicated to something other than themselves—helping family and friends, or a political cause, or others less fortunate than they—are the happiest people in the world. We sometimes hear about how people "throw their lives away" or "live for others." But such people are often very happy. Of course, if you care for others, if you devote yourself to some cause greater than you are, it doesn't mean your life will be free of troubles. No one's is. It doesn...

* I have done it again. One year in every ten I manage it-- A sort of walking miracle, my skin Bright as a Nazi lampshade, My right foot A paperweight, My face a featureless, fine Jew linen. Peel off the napkin O my enemy. Do I terrify?-- The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth? The sour breath Will vanish in a day. Soon, soon the flesh The grave cave ate will be At home on me And I a smiling woman. I am only thirty. And like the cat I have nine times to die. This is Number Three. What a trash To annihilate each decade. What a million filaments. The peanut-crunching crowd Shoves in to see Them unwrap me hand and foot-- The big strip tease. Gentlemen, ladies These are my hands My knees. I may be skin and bone, Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman. The first time it happened I was ten. It was an accident. The second time I meant To last it out and not come back at all. I rocked shut As a seashell. They had to call and call And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls. Dying...

* Obama's generation missed the sexual revolution of the 1960s - he was six in the Summer of Love. But they were in a prime position to watch the Boomers go wrong. They absorbed echoes of Woodstock, Vietnam, the social dislocation, with parents, perhaps, like Obama's mother, who were caught up in the heat of the time. They experienced first-hand the chaos of old certainties being torn apart. Then they watched the anti-establishmentarians become the establishment, and sniffed it for the phoniness it was. Miranda Devine. It was only recently that I realised that all these habits of mind and life would scarcely have been imaginable in my parents' youth; that the very facts and facilities that shape my world are all distinctly new developments, and mark me as a modern type. It was only recently, in fact, that I realised that I am an example, perhaps, of an entirely new breed of people, a transcontinental tribe of wanderers that is multiplying as fast as international telephone...

* Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so; For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me. From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow, And soonest our best men with thee do go, Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery. Thou'art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell, And poppy'or charms can make us sleep as well And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then? One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die. Death, be not proud (Holy Sonnet 10) John Donne Clouds of days, crowds jostling for attention, a sympathetic ear, the comfortable cluck of children and purpose, of warm homes and cosy demeanors. We were ever so proud. We found, in incandescent pools, a perfect logic, a story that held together perfectly....