Chronicle

Martian Dust Storm

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1513658585/bctid1790913001

Houston

GUARDIAN's Favourite

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/style/fashionweek/runway.html#

THE END IS NEAR!

Atlas

Liberation

L. has been moopolizing the computer all day and watching that dance film abut Cuba which came out a few years ago. Spent the whole day back and forth on it. I think she finds it disturbing to know that people are having a hard time at this very moment but there is little anyone can do to help. Same old, same old, and C. Rice repeating that the U.S. is not about to make things easier on Cuba. How did Guantanamo prison end up on that island in the first place. Although if anyone ever seriously objected to the U.S. keeping prisonners, it is a gesture that the prison is not on home ground. ( And how did the planetary beacon of democracy end up calling itself a homeland, anyway?) For the joke: Guantanamo prison is hurricane proof, the safest spot on the island, at the moment.

I am seriously considering skipping the entire election campaign in the U.S. Hillary gave up the Florida votes that would have given her the victory, just politely let the vote go. Whatever possessed her to do that. I wasn't necessarily rooting for her like a religion, but there was remarkable perseverance and commitment in what she was doing. I'm feeling bummed out. Speaking of which. There is a reason why the public needn't know about the love lives of politicians and the Clintons illustrated it. In the sex department - and this is my personal opinion - that man is a dork. Baaaad sex. Awful. Take me to the movies, let me dream...

So while L. kept on the computer, I ended up watching artv, with the cat. In French, a black and white documentary on cinema and psychoanalysis in which major 20th century filmmakers appeared. Fritz Lang, with his monocle, who liked to make movies about innocent-looking people who ended up being criminals (which is the role of dreams, in a Freudian perspective). Indeed, the film itself pointed out how the whole of cinematic vocabulary, the cutting and story-telling is close to dreams, where one fades in from darkness.

Bergman liked to make films about horrible experiences: he said it made him joyful. Hitchcock used the French word 'cauchemar' to describe his work and Fellini joked he often caught glimpses of his work on tv and wondered who was making all these horrible films. Goddard really nailed it: he remarked that the cinema allowed the viewer to see what he ordinarily didn't, that this was the fascination of cinema.

So while I'm at it, I will also skip the entire Canadian election. To do math, or something creative and joyful. Ah liberation!

Muscle-activated

Climatic

I went to the hardware store today and bought a new thermometer. It felt unusually warm walking home, and my home thermometer, in the shady indoors, marked 30°. On a whim, I took my new t. outside to the garage roof. I expected to reach maybe 34°. I was astounded five minutes later to see a reading of 48° Celsius. That's 118° Fahrenheit.

I guess this is what the advocates of solar energy are talking about: there is a great deal of energy from the sun which, harnessed and somehow stored, could be doing useful work for us.
It is also the situation of seeing girls sun in bikinis, while others sky around them, in pictures of Innsbruck and the like. I intend to check again over the year to see what my garage readings are.

Following Gustav, and reading up on hurricanes, has given me a new respect for meteorological phenomena. A cyclone is a heat dissipating machine, that builds up in a positive feed-back loop once its activation conditions are met. It will keep going so long as there is excess heat.
It would be vain - and as a Canadian, I have to admit to the dream - to imagine we could build up heat in the summer to carry us through milder winters. It all dissipates as violent weather. We need to keep it cool in the summer, and make our winters warmer. And I mean outdoors. Needs work!

It's a round world.

www.spiegel.de/video/video-35360.html

America's hurricanes initially form over verdant Africa; they subsequently develop over the Atlantic where water temperatures exceed a critical limit.

Climate change does not create more hurricanes but makes the ones we get more intense. (Le Monde).