by Mario Benedetti, translated by Katya Rascovsky
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Luna Congelada
Con esta soledad con esta soledad se puede algunas veces |
Frozen Moon
With this solitude with this solitude one can sometimes |
Fungus Diesel Discovery
Wired reports that Rainforest Fungus Naturally Synthesizes Diesel:
A fungus that lives inside trees in the Patagonian rain forest naturally makes a mix of hydrocarbons that bears a striking resemblance to diesel, biologists announced today. And the fungus can grow on cellulose, a major component of tree trunks, blades of grass and stalks that is the most abundant carbon-based plant material on Earth.
“When we looked at the gas analysis, I was flabbergasted,” said Gary Strobel, a plant scientist at Montana State University, and the lead author of a paper in Microbiology describing the find. “We were looking at the essence of diesel fuel.”
The beauty of the diesel engine is that Rudolf Diesel wanted fuel to be available in abundance. He specifically did not want people to have to use engines that depended on limited sources, especially those controlled by powerful oil corporations. Thus, it should not be too much of a surprise that the Gliocladium roseum fungus can break down wood and turn it into something akin to diesel fuel. It does, however, surprise me that there is now a question of whether petroleum is actually a byproduct of an ancient conversion by organisms.
Kristallnacht
Seventy years ago, on November 9th, 1938, was the Night of Broken Glass in Germany:
Flames leapt into the sky across Germany when the Nazis gave a foretaste of the Holocaust in the vicious pogrom against the Jewish community. By the time the rampage had ended, thousands of Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues had been burned down or looted by thugs as police and fire brigades looked on.
[…]
More than 400 people were beaten to death, shot or driven to suicide, records show. More than 30,000 were rounded up and packed off to concentration camps.
A museum has apparently just opened to commemorate Germans who helped hide others from Nazi persecution. Meanwhile, a new generation of Nazi sympathizers in Germany has emerged:
Figures disclosed by the government on Tuesday showed there were nearly 800 anti-Semitic crimes committed during the first nine months of this year, resulting in injuries to 27 people.
The British government, for comparison, reported over 300 anti-Semitic incidents in England during the first eight months of 2007.
My Immortal
one of several versions by Evanesence
I’m so tired of being here
Suppressed by all my childish fears
And if you have to leave
I wish that you would just leave
Your presence still lingers here
And it won’t leave me aloneThese wounds won’t seem to heal
This pain is just too real
There’s just too much that time cannot eraseWhen you cried I’d wipe away all of your tears
And you’d scream I’d fight away all of your fears
And I held your hand through all of these years
But you still have all of meYou used to captivate me
By your resonating light
Now I’m bound by the life you left behind
Your face it haunts
My once pleasant dreams
Your voice it chased away
All the sanity in meThese wounds won’t seem to heal
This pain is just too real
There’s just too much that time cannot eraseWhen you cried I’d wipe away all of your tears
When you’d scream I’d fight away all of your fears
And I held your hand through all of these years
But you still have all of meI’ve tried so hard to tell myself that you’re gone
But though you’re still with me
I’ve been alone all along
Amy Lee commented in Rock Sound magazine on the subtext of her video :
You know what? When you see the video it’s really amazing. Obviously we filmed it before [Ben Moody’s departure] happened and it’s amazing irony, how much it makes sense. We’re all separated and wandering the streets looking like it’s the day after a funeral, with Ben in a suit and bare feet, and I’m never touching the ground. I’m sitting on a phone booth or lying on a car, to hint that I’m dead, that I’m singing from the dead. It’s all about separation. It’s almost like the director knew what was going to happen, but he can’t have known. It’s just one of those fate things.
Maybe the director listened to the words of the song?