The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History will reopen its dinosaur and fossil hall Saturday, June 8. The 31,000-square-foot exhibition will feature an authentic Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton alongside more than 700 other fossil specimens, including mammals, reptiles, plants and insects—some never before displayed at the museum. The exhibition tells the story of 3.7 billion years of life on Earth, highlighting the connections among ecosystems, climate, geological forces and evolution and encouraging visitors to understand that the choices they make today will have an impact on the future. “The David H. Koch Hall of Fossils—Deep Time” is named in recognition of a $35 million gift from David H. Koch.

“Visitors to the new hall will go on a voyage like no other — a journey that begins in the past and ends in the future,” said Kirk Johnson, Sant Director of the National Museum of Natural History. “Along the way, they will experience the history of life on Earth — a story told through extraordinary fossils and engaging interactive exhibits. Visitors will also be called upon to consider the very real challenges our planet faces and their role in shaping a desirable future.”

Read more:

https://www.si.edu/newsdesk/releases/national-fossil-hall-reopen-june-8-...

 

See also:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2013/09/rising-seas-ice-melt...

Read more:

https://www.si.edu/newsdesk/releases/national-fossil-hall-reopen-june-8-...

Earlier this year, Trudi Beck, a general practitioner from Wagga Wagga, wrote to councillors across New South Wales urging them to acknowledge the climate crisis and declare a local emergency.

Some responses were positive. Others less so.

Mark Hall, a Lachlan shire councillor and Baptist pastor, told Beck: “Stick to medicine – you have utterly no clue about climate science. Your email intrusion is truly not welcome.”

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/30/you-have-utterly-...

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Mark Hall, the Lachlan shire councillor and Baptist pastor — amongst some of the other denialist councillors around Australia mentioned in this story — seems to have no clue about climate science, but he is so sure of himself, he can say with arrogance to Trudi Beck, the general practitioner from Wagga Wagga: "Stick to medicine – you have utterly no clue about climate science." This silly response stinks of LNP political party pulpit pottypotty-views...

 

Mark Hall, also a Baptist pastor, raises our suspicion about the bonafide of his scientific knowledge, beyond the cubits of Noah's Ark and the twinkling little star that led the three kings to Jesus manger. Mark Hall's possible ignorance and his pretension of knowledge could make a decent man cry. But this is what we've being fighting against for a long time.

 

Unfortunately these philistines, religious or not, end up in power, for example getting a seat on councils, for whatever delusive promises on their electorate tickets... or becoming our lord and master, like Scumdingelinglingson...

 

And the problem is not going to improve...

 

 

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I had an old now long-dead Australian friend who published several million more books in the Soviet Union than in Australia, though his subjects were very very Aussies… He went to the USSR from time to time to spend his royalties which could not been taken out of Russia. He lived like a king overthere.

Possibly due to the cold weather, the Russian People were/are more inclined to read and be more literate than the people of the downunder bogan cricket playing nation. In fact the Russians had a notion of sacrifice which went far beyond giving a few buck to the Red Cross — an organisation now claimed to be in trouble for hoarding the bushfire cash for another rainy day… 

In our individualistic capitalist world, we tend to be oblivious to other cultures, having learned humility... from the Yanks. 

I’d hate to live in Yamerika should they come second on the world stage. Everything is better in the USA. They won WW2 single-handedly. Now the real major victors of this sad saga, the Soviets — who fought the Germans and other Nazis of Poland and through Ukraine, right to Berlin and more, while the Yanks were still fiddling after the Normandy landing — are having a bum-fight on their hand against revisionism. History is being rewritten by the Polish government at present — possibly under the Yankee humility dictum — in order to belittle the Russian role in defeating Nazism in Poland… No, the Stalin-Hitler pact did not start WW2. So Putin is a bit peeved-off and is releasing archival material showing that the Polish own “liberation army” had not been the angels they now claim to have been. War is always a dirty business.
Yes Poland became part of the Soviet Union, but this was agreed by the carve up of Europe between the East and the West. This was the beginning of the Cold War till about 1991 — a cold war which was not as frozen as the present demonisation of Russia. 
The Poles basically had learnt “Solidarność” (solidarity) from the Russian commies but fought them back with hierarchical religious hubris. Poland is a Catholic nation. Weird. Why? Some bad eggs would suggest that most of the Intelligentsia in Russia is from Jewish descent, but in Poland the Jews were/are more capitalist than the Americans. Even Lenin was a Jew. So all in all, we know nothing of Russia’s cultural background, even of its revolutionary heritage, which has shaken that nation since 1917— and to some extend is still shaking it. Though the Russian kids may not know the full History, they seem to be more aware of the importance of the past than some Aussie kids who think that on the 26th of January we celebrate the invention of Vegemite.

In 1914, Vladimir Mayakovsky published his first large work, an avant-garde tragedy, a critic of city life and capitalism, but was also a praise of the modern industrial power, in which the protagonist sacrifices himself for the sake of the people's happiness in the future.

In 1915, Mayakovsky published his first major poem, A Cloud in Trousers, depicting love, revolution, religion and art, from the viewpoint of a spurned lover. The work was in the language of the streets.  Mayakovsky debunked the idealistic and romanticised notions of poetry and poets.

Вашу мысль
мечтающую на размягченном мозгу,
как выжиревший лакей на засаленной кушетке,
буду дразнить об окровавленный сердца лоскут:
досыта изъиздеваюсь, нахальный и едкий.


У меня в душе ни одного седого волоса,
и старческой нежности нет в ней!
Мир огромив мощью голоса,
иду – красивый,
двадцатидвухлетний.



Your thoughts,
dreaming on a softened brain,
like an over-fed lackey on a greasy settee,
with my heart's bloody tatters I'll mock again;
impudent and caustic, I'll jeer to superfluity.

Of Grandfatherly gentleness I'm devoid,
there's not a single grey hair in my soul!
Thundering the world with the might of my voice,
I go by – handsome,
twenty-two-year-old.

—From the prologue of A Cloud in Trousers


Backbone Flute (published in 1916) outraged critics. Mayakovsky was described as a "talentless charlatan,” for using the "empty words of a malaria sufferer” “to be interned immediately"... Backbone Flute is now seen as a groundbreaking piece with new forms of expressing social anger and personal frustrations.

After Mayakovsky's “suicide", the Association of the Proletarian Writers’ decided the poet's work had to be ignored and his existence erased in the Soviet press. In a 1935 letter to Joseph Stalin, Lilya Brik — Mayakovsky’s partner — asked the Soviet leader to restore Mayakovsky’s place in literature. Stalin commented on the letter itself:

Comrade Yezhov, please take charge of Brik's letter. Mayakovsky is the best and the most talented poet of our Soviet epoch. Indifference to his cultural heritage amounts to a crime. Brik's complaints are, in my opinion, justified…

Mayakovsky was instantly hailed as a Soviet classic — the only member of the artistic avant-garde of the early 20th century to enter the Soviet mainstream. 

All this to say that for one American Bobby Fisher, there are several hundreds Kasparov in Russia. Intellectualism isn’t a dirty word in Russia, but the USA wins hand down on hubris. This is why the US is led by a dicky Donald and Russia has had a much smarter Vladimir for the last 20 years. Many journalists in the Western Media would not see it this way. They would still recognise that Donald is an idiot, but Vladimir HAS TO BE seen as the devil incarnate.

Russians read more books and may have been more literate than their Western contemporaries. Mayakovsky was not Russian at all. He was born in Georgia. But who cares. The literature is Russian. On a philosophical scale of one to ten, a Mayakovsky is worth a hundred Jordan Petersons. Jordan Peterson is an opportunist offering sacrificing something without any goals but your own self-pleasure. A Mayakovsky saw the value of the individual sacrifice for the collective.

Now to the problem at hand: the industrial revolution so dear to Mayakovsky. The industrial revolution has to be blamed for global warming. This is a given. So what are we going to do about it? Abandon our comforts or retool the “economies” to minimise emissions of CO2, methane and NOxes? The answer is simple but we have little political will, AND VERY LITTLE TIME, to rework the equation of our human expenditure of energy. We know that the natural planetary system cannot absorb our excess emissions and that these excess emissions increase the atmospheric heat. If you don’t know this, you’re an idiot like Alan Jones or Scott Morrison. 

The first step is NO NEW COAL MINES, NO NEW DRILLING FOR GAS, NO NEW OIL WELLS. 

Next is to deal with new sources of energy: RENEWABLES. 

Renewables are not perfect. They themselves can use as much start-up energy as digging holes in the ground. But soon they become emission-less energy supplies.

Transport needs to be restructured as to minimise emissions.

The production of food needs to be taken out of multinationals’ hands and returned to a “permaculture” style of supply. First this would be better for the “soul*” rather than having huge carrot crops being RoundUped at all stages of their growth, including the destruction of foliage at the end. 
We need to streamline our health systems to be more preventive. 
We need to LIMIT POPULATION. This is a curly one as many religious enterprises encourage their own population growth to beat the other guy on the market place. This can be achieved though by penalising families with more than two kids. 
Capitalism needs to be completely rethought, away from “growth"… A "Green New Deal" has come to the surface but it should be less fierce and more friendly to the friendless denialists. Ethical investing is also in the pipeline, but in general, it’s the old system of grab-all with a few caveats… 
Can we practice a Mayakovsky style self-sacrifice NOW for the well-being of the people in the future? Unfortunately, I can see insurance companies having a field day, not mentioning the lawyers on heat...

BUT THE CRUX IS SIMPLE: WE’LL HAVE TO DO SOMETHING! Including RUSSIA...


GL

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