What Do You Call It? Reflections on a hard-to-name decade

clipped from www.newyorker.com ten years ago, no consensus could be reached in this country on what to call the decade upon which we were about to embark. The ohs? The double-ohs? The zeros? The zips? The nadas? The naughties? As we near the end, however, we still don’t have a good collective name for the first decade of the twenty-first century—at least, not one beyond “the first decade of the twenty-first century,” which is gratifyingly lacking in cuteness Arguably, a grudging agreement has been reached on calling the decade “the aughts,” but that unfortunate term is rooted in a linguistic error. The use of “aught” to mean “nothing,” “zero,” or “cipher” is a nineteenth-century corruption of the word “naught,” which actually does mean nothing, and which, as in the phrase “all for naught,” is still in current usage. To call the decade “the aughts” is a compromise that pleases no one But perhaps that’s appropriate, since this turned out to be the decade in which there were no good answers.

Snow Sculptures

clipped from www.youtube.com Snow sculptors from around the world are gathering in the Italian Alps for the Art in Ice Festival. It is being staged for the 14th time this year.

Incredible Examples of Snowflake Photography

clipped from www.webdesignerdepot.com

Who says birds don't have feelings?

clipped from www.binscorner.com Swallows: This is truly amazing & very touching............. Here his wife is injured and the condition is fatal. She was hit by a car as she swooped low across the road. Aware that his sweetheart is dead and will never come back to him again, he cries with adoring love. He stood beside her, saddened of her death. Finally aware that she would never return to him, he stood beside her body with sadness and sorrow.

Recent eruptions of moral nullity: Blair's confession, Obama's Nobel defense

clipped from www.chris-floyd.com In recent days we have all witnessed two vomitous eruptions of moral nullity that would tax the powers of a Voltaire or a Vidal to do them proper justice; they quite o'er-crow the meager gifts of a hack like me. But I will sketch a few observations here nonetheless, if only to add one more small voice to those few who bear witness to the evils perpetrated by our unaccountable leaders. We speak of course of Barack Obama's Nobel speech and Tony Blair's recent comments on the Iraq War.  last week, Blair gave an interview to a friendly, timorous chat-show host in which he made the brazen admission – no, the proud boast – that all this WMD guff is meaningless. He would have found "other arguments" to persuade Britons to follow George W. Bush into the war that American militarists had long been planning. Obama's Peace Prize speech A narcissist's defense soaring proclamation of American exceptionalism, in a setting supposedly devoted to universal principles of peace breathtaking in its chutzpah

Walls and Barriers Around the World

Amazing what human folly drives us to do. I'm sure that there are lots of rationales for having them, but the real reason is that we are failing to live up to our much-vaunted sapiency.

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk Two decades since the Berlin Wall came down, BBC Mundo looks at walls and barriers around the world which are still standing - or have been put up - since 1989. WEST BANK Israel says the West Bank barrier is essential to protect itself from attack but to the Palestinians, it is an "apartheid wall". Concrete controversy NORTHERN IRELAND Designed as a temporary measure to keep fighting Protestant and Catholic communities apart, many "peace walls" are stills standing. Troubled communities SAUDI ARABIA The most powerful economy in the Gulf is building one of the longest, most high-tech security fences in the world, at a cost of $3bn. High-tech frontier CEUTA AND MELILLA Residents of Spain's north African enclaves live behind towering fences, designed to keep out would-be illegal migrants trying to reach Europe. European gateway PAKISTAN-IRAN CYPRUS RIO DE JANEIRO US-MEXICO INDIA-PAKISTAN WESTERN SAHARA BOTSWANA-ZIMBABWE