Welcome to European Tribune. It's gone a bit quiet around here these days, but it's still going.

Open Thread - Friday Evening, Pt.II

by p------- Fri Sep 15th, 2006 at 06:26:51 PM EST

Because I'm not even on dial-up and I am still having trouble open the original one.

Here is a nice poem:


Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

© Mary Oliver

Display:
30,000 minks freed.  There is a video.  They are cute!

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. -Voltaire
by p------- on Fri Sep 15th, 2006 at 06:39:27 PM EST
those aren't real minks  ;-)
by manon (m@gmail.com) on Fri Sep 15th, 2006 at 06:49:15 PM EST
[ Parent ]
You can't prove they aren't cute, though!

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. -Voltaire
by p------- on Fri Sep 15th, 2006 at 06:55:43 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Can't we just cook the ###damned thing and eat it?

"When the abyss stares at me, it wets its pants." Brian Hopkins
by EricC on Fri Sep 15th, 2006 at 08:53:24 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Oh, that's just bloody stupid. The survivors are bound to completely ruin the ecological balance in the area. Hopefully they'll spread out enough that they won't cause too much damage.

I hate the ALF.

by HPA on Sat Sep 16th, 2006 at 04:56:57 AM EST
[ Parent ]


In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Fri Sep 15th, 2006 at 06:52:32 PM EST


In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Fri Sep 15th, 2006 at 06:53:41 PM EST
[ Parent ]


In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Fri Sep 15th, 2006 at 06:54:21 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Please delete, resize and repost.  This is WAY too big and has fucked up the whole diary's format.

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. -Voltaire
by p------- on Fri Sep 15th, 2006 at 06:55:03 PM EST
[ Parent ]


In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Fri Sep 15th, 2006 at 06:57:49 PM EST
[ Parent ]
how come it says 8 comments when there are only 3?
by manon (m@gmail.com) on Fri Sep 15th, 2006 at 07:24:34 PM EST
I posted a large-ish picture, which broke the screen for some, so I've hidden it, and the responses to it (other images by me, and complaints about the size of the first picture)

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Fri Sep 15th, 2006 at 07:28:44 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Censorship on this site continues as usual.
by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Sat Sep 16th, 2006 at 02:26:15 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Censorship leaves a bad taste in my mouth.  Jerome's posts have been unhidden.

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. -Voltaire
by p------- on Sat Sep 16th, 2006 at 04:08:16 PM EST
[ Parent ]
How's that censorship?

Those whom the Gods wish to destroy They first make mad. — Euripides
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sat Sep 16th, 2006 at 04:18:19 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Hey, the snark was a Boojum!
by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Sat Sep 16th, 2006 at 04:38:20 PM EST
[ Parent ]
But Bush crashed planes into his own people!!

My weekend of excessive alcohol and live music consumption starts in a few hours.

you are the media you consume.

by MillMan (millguy at gmail) on Fri Sep 15th, 2006 at 09:22:37 PM EST
There was this plane flying along and minding its own business when it was suddenly, viciously, attacked by the Pentagon.

That's MY story & I'm sticking to it.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

by ATinNM on Sat Sep 16th, 2006 at 12:42:48 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Thanks for that poem, gives some perspective on things.
Quite a fight here last night. It was like a contest for the highest position in our PN hiërarchy.:)

Aviation has always been a point of interest for me and what really happened on 9/11 is for sure one of the things I really want to know.
I did myself a 'replay' of the plane-trajects with a flight-sim on my computer. Only after hours of trial and error I could fly my machine in one of the towers. Hitting the Pentagon the way it was done was impossible for me on the sim. But I'm not a pilot, just a computerdesk-amateur.

So, there are questions about what exactly happened. The way the US-authority's handled the aftermath raised more questions than answers.
But I do not really care who's behind all this, who's manipulating who. They are all of the same calibre, Bush, Bin Laden and their allies or followers.

The real danger are the fences being build around our democracy. In this my disappointment about Europe grows when I see the USA political leadership is hardly criticezed. An open and strong democracy would deal with technical details in no time.

The struggle of man against tyranny is the struggle of memory against forgetting.(Kundera)

by Elco B (elcob at scarlet dot be) on Sat Sep 16th, 2006 at 07:08:39 AM EST
Only after hours of trial and error I could fly my machine in one of the towers. Hitting the Pentagon the way it was done was impossible for me on the sim. But I'm not a pilot, just a computerdesk-amateur.
Supposedly the 9/11 pilots had been trained on Cessnas and had at most had flight-simulator training with large passenger jets.

Those whom the Gods wish to destroy They first make mad. — Euripides
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sat Sep 16th, 2006 at 07:41:22 AM EST
[ Parent ]
I got the chance to play with a Boeing 747 flight simulator quite a few times.   I was leading a project for the machine control and propulsion systems for frigates and had to go to the subcontractor's machine room simulator.  Lucky for me, I had a friend who was working on the Boeing 747 simulators just next door.

The first time I tried to land was with the simulator set for Hong Kong airport.  I oversteered (it's really easy to do the first time) and everyone else in the cockpit got really sick to their stomach.  My friend was co-piloting and we were on ILS but bounced off the runway before landing.  Just steering the bloody thing to the terminal is difficult, and I am drive a manual transmission Jeep

They have devices to simulate motion in the cabin and the seats, and even the cabin smells the same.  When I opened the door, I was sure that I had taken a trip somewhere because the smell of the hydraulic oil reminded me so much of taking a trip.

It was great fun, and it took me at least 6 weeks to get used to handling the controls.

by manon (m@gmail.com) on Sat Sep 16th, 2006 at 10:46:57 AM EST
[ Parent ]


Display:
Go to: [ European Tribune Homepage : Top of page : Top of comments ]