![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
A guy from my work and some others are kayaking across Bass Strait. I had no idea Bass Strait had so many islands in it - no wonder ships kept crashing. Their blog is here - they also have a tracker thing so you can see where exactly in Bass Strait they currently are. They're doing it in aid of the Surfrider foundation, and because they can (mostly).
The scale of the Christchurch earthquake continues to amaze me. I can't read a lot of the articles - there were two yesterday that I read as far as the headline and just went "I cannot deal with that" - but still there's enough filtering through to know that Christchurch is in a bad way. A friend's husband has been deployed there with a surgical team - I don't even want to think too hard on that. We haven't heard from our collaborators - but given that part of their workplace collapsed we're hoping that's more because they don't have time and computer access to be sending out e-mails and not something worse.
I dunno. I can deal with bushfire - it's a risk that I'm obviously "used" to in a very odd way, and it occurs under extreme conditions - and I can deal with flash flooding (similar to fire) and non-flash flooding (annoying but avoidable), but there's something about earthquakes that really give me the willies. The earth is supposed to stay still dammit. And the idea of your foundations being literally shaken creeps me out. As does the whole "liquefaction" thing, the cracks opening up and swallowing people... ergh. It's kind of like tsunamis - what do you mean the ocean's suddenly rising up to swallow us? That's just... stupid. It's supposed to stay mostly put.
Watching the Libyan situation is also worrying. I hope that that idiot Gaddafi will see the writing on the wall, but as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
haloumi pointed out the guy's a nutjob. I'm just hoping large parts of the army aren't, and that they have qualms about opening fire on their own people. It's one thing to fire on "the enemy", but when they look like your parents and brothers and sisters and cousins and kids? That's another. I'm still hoping this can be resolved without further bloodshed. Probably wishful thinking I know. I'm also hoping that Bahrain is looking at it and that the moves there towards negotiation with the opposition parties are in response to what they're seeing on the streets of Tripoli. Ditto Algeria.
I'm also half-following the Anonymous-Aaron Barr-Chamber of Commerce saga, mostly via ObWi but with a few other links as well.
One excerpt:
..."It's a powerhouse law firm and if they're allowed to deal in this kind of illegal activity, what do ethics in the law mean?" asks Kevin Zeese, attorney for the group StopTheChamber.com. "These guys are openly talking about potentially criminal activities -- invading privacy, moving toward libel and slander and defamation of character -- by creating forged documents, tricking us to putting them out, and accusing us of putting out disinformation."...
And finally I'm following the current union-busting push in Wisconsin. Part of this is because I recently read Rainbow Pie: A Memoir of Redneck America by Joe Bageant[1], which ranted quite a bit about the state of labour negotiations in the US during the 20th century. Part of it is because - well, it's interesting. And so freaking blatant. I'm wondering if the spirit of revolution will rub off in Wisconsin as well.
There certainly is a lot going on around at the moment, isn't there?
[1] I have a half-written post about this somewhere at home that I really should finish.
The scale of the Christchurch earthquake continues to amaze me. I can't read a lot of the articles - there were two yesterday that I read as far as the headline and just went "I cannot deal with that" - but still there's enough filtering through to know that Christchurch is in a bad way. A friend's husband has been deployed there with a surgical team - I don't even want to think too hard on that. We haven't heard from our collaborators - but given that part of their workplace collapsed we're hoping that's more because they don't have time and computer access to be sending out e-mails and not something worse.
I dunno. I can deal with bushfire - it's a risk that I'm obviously "used" to in a very odd way, and it occurs under extreme conditions - and I can deal with flash flooding (similar to fire) and non-flash flooding (annoying but avoidable), but there's something about earthquakes that really give me the willies. The earth is supposed to stay still dammit. And the idea of your foundations being literally shaken creeps me out. As does the whole "liquefaction" thing, the cracks opening up and swallowing people... ergh. It's kind of like tsunamis - what do you mean the ocean's suddenly rising up to swallow us? That's just... stupid. It's supposed to stay mostly put.
Watching the Libyan situation is also worrying. I hope that that idiot Gaddafi will see the writing on the wall, but as
haloumi pointed out the guy's a nutjob. I'm just hoping large parts of the army aren't, and that they have qualms about opening fire on their own people. It's one thing to fire on "the enemy", but when they look like your parents and brothers and sisters and cousins and kids? That's another. I'm still hoping this can be resolved without further bloodshed. Probably wishful thinking I know. I'm also hoping that Bahrain is looking at it and that the moves there towards negotiation with the opposition parties are in response to what they're seeing on the streets of Tripoli. Ditto Algeria. I'm also half-following the Anonymous-Aaron Barr-Chamber of Commerce saga, mostly via ObWi but with a few other links as well.
One excerpt:
..."It's a powerhouse law firm and if they're allowed to deal in this kind of illegal activity, what do ethics in the law mean?" asks Kevin Zeese, attorney for the group StopTheChamber.com. "These guys are openly talking about potentially criminal activities -- invading privacy, moving toward libel and slander and defamation of character -- by creating forged documents, tricking us to putting them out, and accusing us of putting out disinformation."...
And finally I'm following the current union-busting push in Wisconsin. Part of this is because I recently read Rainbow Pie: A Memoir of Redneck America by Joe Bageant[1], which ranted quite a bit about the state of labour negotiations in the US during the 20th century. Part of it is because - well, it's interesting. And so freaking blatant. I'm wondering if the spirit of revolution will rub off in Wisconsin as well.
There certainly is a lot going on around at the moment, isn't there?
[1] I have a half-written post about this somewhere at home that I really should finish.
