maelstrom

Dead Duck, follow that meme

2007-01-19T20:31:00.000+11:00

It is of the nature of bloggers to follow that meme.Elvis sang " You gotta follow that meme, wherever that meme will lead you" Well of course he didn't'However chasing the lame duck/ dead duck tension, I came across some thing unexpectedFirstDead-duck decisionsThe behaviour of Bush and Blair casts doubt on the supposed benefits of fixed-term leaderships Mark LawsonFriday January 12, 2007The

Green Bush

2007-01-19T19:38:00.000+11:00

Bush 'prepares emissions U-turn' I came across this some time ago. It could be a "dummy run", a leak to test the waters. At the time, I liked the Machiavellian possibilities.The Republicans looking ahead see the caning that eventuated in themid-tems. Bush needs a new disguise to prepare himself for the future. The " Nixon in China" moment of turnaround.All three quotes are from English papers,

Putting things in context, The Bush presidency

2007-01-19T14:14:00.000+11:00

Please click on picture to see larger viewWith the recent announcement on Iraq and the at most tepid response to it, Bush seemingly is headed to towards the dangerous territory of Approval ratings of less than 30%.Truman during the Korean war with squabbles with MacArthur and Macarthy erached the postwar lows of 22 and 23.Nixon reached these positions at his worst. Floundering Carter and George

Watch what you say?

2007-01-04T22:35:00.000+11:00

I checked a few Indian blogs. It is a hobby OKthis is heard in the street from http://doyouwannafess.blogspot.com/Apart from that, my cousin and I went for a walk around the pubbing area here the other day and three drunk women walked by us. One of them said to her friend, “Kim, you’re a big, fat slut!”Kim looked aghast and yelled back, “Who are you calling fat?”

VOAP

2006-12-10T16:41:00.000+11:00

THis is what I needed the space on my ISP site forI have been doing some work for MeiLing at Vietnam on a plate.Here is the mockup of a website I did this afternoonVOAP

Swarf is dead Long Live Swarf

2006-12-10T16:23:00.000+11:00

I have moved Swarf onto BloggerThe Beta process seems to be overOne of the problems I had here was that my ISP only gave me a stingy 10 Meg to play with so that was just about full.It was one of the reasons i started Maelstrom in the first place.I have wanted to use the space as a testbed for ideas, but have been blocked. I have been trying to get a few websites going.If anyone cares the new

Rain in my Heart

2006-11-23T12:46:00.000+11:00

Last night on BBC2 in England, an extremely harrowing documentary was shown called Rain in My heart. A documentary made by Paul Watson, sometimes called "the godfather of reality television" for his documentaries including his 1974 series 'The Family" and "Sylvania Waters" about Australian suburbia.Here a Guardian Blog questions the amount of graphic material shown in the documentary.This has

O Tempora O Mores

2006-11-03T15:55:00.000+11:00

Social sites becoming too much of a good thing Many young folks burning out on online sharing - Ellen Lee, Chronicle Staff WriterThursday, November 2, 2006 Aarica Caro is sick of sharing. That is, sharing online. She has shared the lives of her cats. She has shared a list of her favorite television shows and movies ("Grey's Anatomy," chick flicks). She has shared her reviews of Bay Area haunts (

Ballarat California

2006-10-31T11:46:00.000+11:00

Also in the 1960s, another famous (or infamous) visitor came regularly to Ballarat. Charles Manson with his family of killers stayed at the Barker ranch south of town, and left their graffiti in Ballarat. An old Dodge Power Wagon parked near the general store still bears the stars the family used as their signature, on its headliner.This comes from a posting on a forum elsewhere where I mentioned

Moustache Brothers

2006-10-22T10:49:00.000+10:00

photograph from Joffre SalkeldThis is a shot of the infamous Moustache Brothers, Pwe troupe (traditional Burmese entertainment) that combines music, drama and improvisation with a heavy dose of political satire that has seen Par Par Lay (performer in the middle) spend 7 years in jail for comments of support for Myanmar's Nobel peace prize winning democracy campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi!Shot was

Leadbelly Irene

2006-10-20T21:21:00.000+10:00

Goodnight IreneDown below a bit, I was trying to make some sonnets based around some texts of Leadbelly and other memes. As luck would have it, I came across the NPR top 100 pieces of music of the twentieth century.Included in the 100 is Leadbelly's Goodnight Irene one version recorded by John Lomax when Leadbelly was still in prison.Others in the century are John Cage's 4 min 33'Fire and Rain by

Luca Antara: Passages in Search of Australia

2006-10-20T17:44:00.000+10:00

Martin has gone some of the way to keeping me sane through the winter as I circumnavigated the blogosphereMartin EdmondLuca Antara: Passages in Search of Australia Published by: East Street PublicationsTo be launched by Roger McDonald Friday, November 17, 2006 / 6 for 6.30pmVenue: gleebooks, 49 Glebe Point Rd, GlebeCost: FreeRSVP: gleebooks - 9660 2333 or Request a placeBuy Luca Antara: Passages

Appropriation ~Triple steal

2006-10-12T13:47:00.000+10:00

modern cultureIt’s hard to believe milk comes out of a cow.There’s so much milk around & so few cows.It's hard to believe wonder is sourced in a wow.There are myriad wonders & so few wows.And what about silk & the unseen silkworm?Where are the fields producing this cotton?Still I agree how milk is astoundingThere's cheese in from Denmark cultured not rottonA poem by david raphael israelIt

"Throw a coloured man a nickel"

2006-10-10T11:18:00.000+10:00

Second attempt, now decasyllabic lines, fourteen of them and a rhyming structure, getting close. iambs are tricky.Spelling errors fixed.Great Huddie stood at the top of the stairs,Martha at his side, with the white crowd below."I had a dream", he thought, “now just despair”.A new world I hoped for, not this Jim Crow “Hey you seem so distracted Lead”, they said.“Take it easy man and soon

White folks in Washington, they know how

2006-10-09T17:26:00.000+10:00

david raphael israel in washington sets tasks in this case.I have come across it on ~river~'s blogso, um, here's your assignment -- if you should choose to accept it: write a poem that includes the following memes (or, in older argot, phrases):1) "I had a dream" (which might or might not involve "I had a dream")2) "Irene goodnight" -- or if you prefer, "Goodnight, Irene"3) "hey you seem"4) "of

Basque Sayings

2006-09-27T13:25:00.001+10:00

Martin on Luca Antara has been working on Basque proverbs as he works on his theory of everything.Of course Basque has always been that magnificent island of contrariness at the top of Spain. Not Indo European, but quirkishly separate.But I, for one, though once having studied Linguistics, have never read any of the language.Martin solves this lack at least in part in this post Three Basque

New Improved Acronym for IE

2006-09-27T12:05:00.000+10:00

MallharNot much of a secret.For each link you want to make.Copy the following format, either copy and paste, or retype.MallharClearly The blue text is the immediately apparent text The red text will appear onmouseover that is when the mouse is over the

Secret revealed for amalendu

2006-09-25T11:20:00.000+10:00

Disco

2006-09-24T10:44:00.000+10:00

I was looking for poems in ~river~s that could do with footnotes I came across wordfruitwhich has the word disco-papitaIn the comments there is a discussion between ~river~ and d.i.k. about etymology of disco which I thought I knew.disco 1964, Amer.Eng. shortening of discotheque; sense extended 1975 to the kind of music played there.or in the footnote format.Discobut I was surprised by the age of

Footnote examples

2006-09-23T23:09:00.000+10:00

Here are samples for the three browsers, just by holding the mouse over the textOpera ExampleOpera: starts with the word title but does not truncate.Internet Explorer ExampleIE: does show acronym text, so I have added Italic.Firefox ExampleFirefox: shows but truncates, therefore limits the length of footnote.There are no perfect web solutions only best fits

Shyamalee

2006-09-23T13:56:00.000+10:00

A tribute...* by Amalendu JyotishiBetween blistering terrain and my wordsa life incarnatessome one at distancewhispers Bismillhasomeone at distance….A boy runs to play with the marblesthe wings spread across the cloudthis is the time for Mallhar I waitI wait for your returnNow when you are not thereI gather all these small little imagesyou left behindThat soothing sound of Shehnaicreates

Crisis in Hollywood

2006-09-06T19:15:00.000+10:00

Also courtesy of the new Google News Archive, The First Hollywood Drug Scandal, As Big as Mel Posted Monday, Sep. 13, 1948Last week the baleful word marijuana* was on every Hollywood tongue. The most self-conscious city of a self-conscious nation was in for a first-rate scandal, and it hated and feared every whisper of it. Shortly after midnight, two detectives, who had been listening outside a

First space flight

2006-09-06T18:30:00.000+10:00

I posted this on my Swarf site earlier in the year.There were a few details I couldn't quite pin down, as this event marked a beginning and an end. By launching the first object into space, it was the beginning of the space race. However the launch also meant the increase in professionalism, the move from the Army to the Air Force , later to NASA and the move from the West Coast to the East Coast

Beyond the sigla

2006-09-06T14:38:00.000+10:00

I was going to post this as a comment on the sigla post but the fall word was truncatedFW sometimes called the first hypertext novelThe word novel is dubious in this place other than as its original a new thingIt also has the quality that each fragment contains the whole.Even though I really like it, I do like Ezra Pound's slurnothing short of divine vision or a new cure for the clapp can

Sanskrit studies

2006-09-06T14:02:00.000+10:00

THis is the Special Centre for Sanskrit Studies at JNU Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.Shamelessly stolen from the backposts on rivers blue elephants see blogroll.