January 25, 2004
World Travel Map
Via Metafilter, my world travel map:
I've visited 36 countries (16%). Next up will be Chile in March, and I've still got a handful of "easy" ones left to visit.
Create your own visited country map.
[Edit: I took out Puerto Rico from both the ticklist and the headcount: 36 countries now] [PS - I knew it wasn't a country. How do you treat USVI, BVI? And how do you classify Wales and Scotland?]
[Edit: How did I miss Spain from my list? And now I can't get back onto the site to generate a new map. Methinks they suffer bandwidth limitations and the MeFi meme effect.]
January 23, 2004
Sou papai de novo!
Daniel Marcos George, born 21 January here in Rio de Janeiro.
January 14, 2004
Illich Revisited
In porting my site over to MT and updating the static content, I found that a lot of the Ivan Illich links had gone stale. Penn State University's full texts were taken down, which left me wishing I'd archived them locally. Fortunately, the Google Cache had some traces, and from there I was able to find a couple of new sources:
First, an Illich Page by David Tinapple. He has links to Tools for Conviviality, Deschooling Society, and Energy and Equity, as well as some resources including recorded interviews and notes from the Oakland Roundtable in 2002.
Second, I found a full text of Medical Nemesis at the amazing Soil and Health Library, from Australia. This book is in copyright, but out of print, so the site maintainer has provided a means for an individual to read this book under Australian copyright. You'll figure it out.
I think the Soil and Health site is so cool, I'm going to stick in on my permalinks section. Just now I'm browsing the site maintainer's own book, Gardening Without Irrigation.
January 13, 2004
Página 16
I thought that page 16 in today's O Globo was a fine slice of daily life here in Rio de Janeiro. Every article moved me in some way.
The main article was about the posting of signs warning of possible assaults on a major footpath from Rio's Zona Sul to the top of Corcovado, site of the world-famous statue of Christ the Redeemer. Last year a German tourist was murdered on the trail.
The article speaks of the tug-of-war between government bureaus that make it impossible to police the trail, and laments the imposition of such a "strange tactic against crime". A small opinion piece gets it just about right:
Vá ao shopping!
No início da trilha que leva do Parque Lage ao Corcovado, uma placa de iniciativa oficial informa, "Perigo de assalto na trilha."
É um aviso lacônico e direto, coma manda a boa técnica.
Mas poderia, em nome da honestidade, ser verboso e contar a história toda: "Prezado visitante: Está à sua frente uma excursão maravilhosa, que pode levá-lo - cortando este parque, administrado pelo Governo federal - até o pé do monumento ao Cristo Redentor. Um passeio imperdível. Aconselhamos que o amigo o perca: infelizmente, o Poder Público não tem meios ou coragem de impedir a ação de assaltantes ao longo da trilha. Desista se tem amor à vida. Vá a um shopping!"
Go shopping!
At the beginning of the trail that rises from Parque Lage to Corcovado, an officially-posted sign advises: "Danger of assault on the trail."
It's brief and to the point, as a good technician would order.
But maybe, in the name of honesty, it should be a little wordier and tell the whole story: "Dear visitor: ahead of you is a wonderful excursion, that will take you - cutting through this park, administered by the federal government - to the foot of the monument of Christ the Redeemer. An unforgettable journey. We kindly advise you to give it a miss: unfortunately, the public authorities don't have the means or the courage to stop the actions of criminals along the trail. Stop if you love life. Go to the mall!"
It may seem that Rio's police have better things to do than to police a forest trail, but that couldn't be farther from the truth - Rio takes very seriously its image in the eyes of tourists. For instance, over 1000 new police have been appointed to keep the beaches safer during the summer months. No doubt O Globo intends to use its bully pulpit to shame the authorities into some kind of redress. I've seen them doing similar many times in recent weeks.
Another article dealt with a homeless man's response to his hunger: he entered a local park and killed a white peacock for food. Onlookers tried to stop the man, but he managed to kill the beautiful bird that had lived in the park for some 14 years. The man tried to flee with the bird, but wound up getting stuck on a tall iron fence. He had to be rescued and treated for his injuries. If he is convicted, he could receive up to two years in prison. The peacock was the only white peacock in the park, although there are three other coloured ones.
The third and fourth articles were slightly more positive: Brazil's Projeto Tamar, which has as its goal the preservation and increase of sea turtles (TArtarugas MARitimas), will be releasing up to 30,000 new hatchlings in the coming weeks from its Rio-state base in Campos. While they estimate that only a few of these filhotes will survive to adulthood, at least they have a chance for having been spared poachers, pollution and the light and noise of beach-goers. Sea turtles return to the beach where they were born to reproduce. By concentrating the effort in protected areas, Projeto Tamar has managed to release more than 2 million baby turtles into the sea in the past 25 years. A remarkable achievement.
Finally, a pod of killer whales has been spotted frolicking off the coast of Rio - a sure sign that summer is upon is. They are apparently quite playful, going around in circles, leaping from the water, as if they cherish the limelight. My daughter loves whales, so I'd love to get out and do some whale-spotting, time permitting. You can see them from the shoreline on Avenida Niemeyer between Leblon and Barra when they're in town.
January 06, 2004
Reading Update
I have taken advantage of the long break over the holidays to clear through a backlog of reading and even move forward a bit. Some of these I finished in November and December:
Country of Exiles: The Destruction of Place in American Life. The author, William Leach, takes as his thesis that mobility has destroyed the attachment of a people to a place. In a very American context, he points to the construction of a huge network of interstate highways ("palace roads"), air travel, intermodal shipping, the rise of the tourism and gambling economies, the trend in employment away from "jobs for life" to temporary work, and especially the impact that this dynamic has had on the academy. He cites these trends as representing an emerging culture of the "temporary" that has supplanted, what?..agrarian groundedness? He also suggests that this groundedness is a bit of a myth, since these people do not have deep multi-generational ties to the land, at least not to this land.
100 Days on Holy Island: A Writer's Exile - This book, by Peter Mortimer, takes my prize for the worst read of 2003. Actually, my least favourite read in a very long time. Okay...one of the worst books I've ever read. As I read further and further, I kept thinking, "There's something really wrong with this concept, and with its execution." He went for "a writer's exile", but he had no reason for it, didn't stay put on the island, and really never came to matter to any of the core of native islanders. He picked a "holy" place, but chose to prattle on shallowly about religion. He's hanging out in pubs, looking for companionship, mostly from other incomers. It seemed like an excuse to get away from his domestic situation, but he didn't make much of a book out of this acquired freedom. And the "error" he finds in a book by an American writer is no error if you know what you're talking about.
Diary of a Country Priest by Georges Bernanos- a book about a young French priest who carries on his ministry while his physical condition deteriorates due to progressing cancer. The priest carries his illness as a mark of a more universal suffering. While he wavers in his own thoughts, he never loses faith unto the end. The more he suffers, the more grace is present. A strong story.
My primary accomplishment over the holiday period was to put the Christopher Alexander books behind me. I had been hauling A Pattern Language around with me since August, as is evidenced by my bookmark that I bought on our trip to Belo Horizonte. This 1100+ page tome is not an easy read - it's about 250 short chapters about the different components of Alexander's somewhat-definitive pattern language.
After spending bits and pieces of five months reading A Pattern Language, I finished the third book in Alexander's original trilogy, The Oregon Experiment, in about 24 hours. It's a particular application of Alexander's philosophy as adapted to the ownership conditions of a large state university. It's not particularly helpful to the amateur, but I found its most useful contribution to be that it shows how the ongoing application of the philosophy would eventually result in an environment that has more of the "quality without a name", even if it did not start off that way.
The trilogy is an extensive work. Alexander's concept of a "pattern language" is credited in computer science circles with giving rise to object oriented programming technique. I'm not sure a computer science reader would actually take that away from an actual reading of the Alexander books - a precis would be enough. But what you do get from reading the trilogy is an introduction to the philosophy and a toolkit for the actual implementation in the built environment.
At times, I found the going a bit woolly. Some of the references cited are dated. Some of the patterns are a bit "out there". At times it seems a bit 1970s idealistic. But then, Alexander leaves you free to excerpt and to amend - the point is to come up with a pattern language that is right for you - there isn't just the one. It's also right to say that this is not a detailed "how-to" book for construction.
Still, the main text of A Pattern Language gives plenty of useful starting points, and maybe the most useful thing is that, once you've read down into the patterns deep enough, you start to see the point of the overall language - the inter-relationships. How, if you use the patterns, you pretty much have to design buildings that live. Some say it's an early application of hypertext. To the extent that certain patterns interact with higher- or lower-level patterns, this has a measure of truth to it, but I'm not sure you'd see it all the same way if you looked at it in hypertext, as some sites on the web have tried to do.
I also finished reading Bread in the Wilderness, by Thomas Merton, which is a collection of reflections on praying the psalms. Not what I was expecting. Somewhat less, rather. While I think I understand enough of what he said to take his points, I think I'd have taken more from this if I was more familiar with the psalms to start with.
My final book for 2003 was The Twelve Chairs, by Ilf and Petrov. This was a gift and a "must read" from a friend of mine who was visiting here in Rio. It's remarkable for what it is - a snapshot of the uneasy cohabitation of the peasant capitalists and the Communists in the late 1920s. It's also an extremely funny book, and one I'd never heard of. Apparently it remained so widely known and popular throughout the Communist years that it was insuppressible, even though it leveled some charges and personified some types that would continue to plague the Communists for all their time in power.
And finally, since New Year's Day I've managed to get through Frank Moorhouse's Grand Days. It's a longish novel about the early days of the League of Nations, told through the eyes of a young idealistic Australian woman who was sent to work in the Secretariat. The history is interesting, although I'm not sure I found the main characters all that credible (hey, it's fiction!). Edith Campbell Berry has an earnestness and naïvetée that makes it at times pretty incredible she is at her position.
So now I've got clear shelves (still haven't made it back to the Portuguese books - a part of me thinks this will only happen when we've left Brazil). I am planning to start into the Kristin Lavransdotter trilogy by Sigrid Undset.
Technical Notes
I have spent some time over the holidays making the move from my old hosting company and domain to a new one (although I've parked the bandiera.org.uk here and will leave it active for another couple of years at least (coz I like the name)). I've also moved from Blogger Pro to Movable Type. It was a big transition and a little bit messy.
First, some of the entries have had titles added or changed. CSS is not a friend of links in your title fields. I will have to remember that, although in one place I've left it be. Also, MT CSS does not respond well to entries without titles. Something else to remember. I've found a few places with dead links or links that have moved into site archives. In some cases, I've added updates to a new source for the content. In others, regrettably, I've not been able to find a replacement. And speaking of regrets, I've lost all my comments.
I've moved to a small hosting company called f2o.org, which seems to me to do a lot of things right. They are there for the user to learn and experiment. Their founder, Dan Cody, has personally helped me out with a lot of my moving issues. I felt so burned by my previous host,
Next, there's something buggy about the way that MT handles paragraph breaks and formatting in things like <blockquote>. Apparently MT sticks in <p> tags after each paragraph, and this somehow throws the stylesheet's values out of whack. I have found an add-in that seems to address the problem, but I've not yet had time to figure out how it works or actually add it in. I will post when I do, since it seems a useful hack.
Finally, I still don't have all of the bandiera functionality up and working at my new site, so please be patient. I am taking a cue from Matt Haughey and especially Brad Choate on using MT to run the entire site, including static content pages (so, I might finally get around to my 'about' page). Among other things, this lets you update your static content without an ftp client, so helpful to me.