Giordano Bruno: The Passenger, monkey lov, bisphenol A, grain, pale anemone crab, Leonard Cohen, Hine Te Aparangi

I believe your questions demonstrate more about you than my answers will demonstrate about me.
Maria

At last Jack has allowed Antonioni's "The Passenger" out on DVD
One of the Great Movies. passenger othervoices ejumpcut
I sat through All A's Monica Vitti movies of the 60's. Arty indeed.
I recall seeing The Passenger with the beautiful June Pallot in Auckland 1975
The last moment of perfect happiness in my life? Zooming back down Grafton Gully on my motorbike. June went on to become an architect, one of her house designs appeared in a NZ architecture book.Then she got another degree in economics, and went with Roger Douglas to an IMF meeting in Washington. Became Professor of Accountancy at the University of Canterbury.
June died from cancer on 5 November 2004 at the age of 51. No one told me. I discovered just now on google.
So at this moment I'm considering chucking this desk and heading into the Malian Desert.

Is there anything more pathetic than a Satrapy snarling at a running dog?

Iraq's Trade Minister has lashed out at Australia after escorts guarding an embassy delegation that visited him at his Baghdad office shot dead one of his guards and wounded several others.
"They are trampling on the dignity and sovereignty of Iraqis," Minister Abdel Falah al-Sudany..
"We demand an explanation from the Australian Government for this intentional and unwarranted criminal aggression against members of our protection force.

Apparently al-Sudany has called for all trade with Aus to halt. Guess he doesnt know on which side his bread is buttered. Doesnt he realise that Aus troops are notoriously akward with weapons (see Pv Kovko, killed while tossing his 9mm in a bedroom jape]

macleans topix Leonard Cohen ripped off by his long-time manager

The U.S. consumes 21 million barrels of petroleum each day (3 gallons/person). Even if we utilized all 72 million acres of corn planted in the nation for ethanol and biodiesel, it would satisfy only 10% of our current petroleum consumption

acs
bisphenol A (BPA)
6 billion pounds....polycarbonate plastic - the resin lining food cans - and dental sealants.
the journal Endocrinology, Beverly Rubin..tiny pumps into female mice. From the 8th day of pregnancy until the 16th day of nursing, these pumps released doses of BPA into the mothers. .. on the eighth day .. mice begin growing neurons in a region of the brain that is critical for sexual behavior.
250 nanograms per kilogram per day (ng/kg/d)
95% of Americans excrete 100 parts per trillion (ppt) of BPA in their urine.
..In a section of the brain that controls the sexual cycle, female mice have 2–3 times as many neurons as males. But female mice who had been exposed to BPA ..fewer neurons than usual ..activity level ..dropped and mirrored that of their brothers.

"We found that the differences between males and females, at least for these two markers, were obliterated" adds Rubin.

October 2004 Novozymes and Genencor,..created genetically modified organisms [started with the fungus Trichoderma reesei] that produce large amounts of cellulase enzymes that digest cellulose efficiently.
..reduced the cost of cellulose-digesting enzymes to 10 - 18 cents per gallon of ethanol... cost of cellulosic ethanol $1.50 per gal

Over their 30-year life spans, photovoltaic panels with an area of 10 meter² can spare ..40 tons of CO2..
..photovoltaic systems can pay back the energy required for their production, installation, and dismantling in 19-56 months. Even better, solar panels deliver 8-18 times that amount over their lifetimes.
eupvplatform [pdf]

enn June 16, 2006 By the Earth Policy Institute
"This year's world grain harvest is projected to fall short of consumption by 61 million tons, marking the sixth time in the last seven years that production has failed to satisfy demand... world carryover stocks at the end of this crop year are projected to drop to 57 days of consumption, the shortest buffer since the 56-day-low in 1972 that triggered a doubling of grain prices,
...The 2006 world grain harvest of 1,984 million tons,(USDA in its June crop report), is down 24 million tons from last year, 1% .. down 3% from the historical high of 2,044 million tons produced in 2004 data
...Roughly 60% of the world grain harvest is consumed as food, 36% as feed, and 3% as fuel. While the use of grain for food and feed grows by roughly 1% per year, that used for fuel is growing by over 20% per year.
..Among crop ecologists there is now a consensus that for each temperature rise of 1°C above the historical average during the growing season, we can expect a 10% decline in grain yields.

This pale anemone crab is one of three crab species in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands that invite the soft-bodied animals to piggyback on their shells...
..Sylvia Earle said the National Geographic book Archipelago was among the influences that led U.S. President Bush to designate the region a national monument... Bush thanked Earle, noting that she gave him "a pretty good lecture about life."

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