Yomp #02 0645-1020 on 19 04 2023 = 215 mins 18kgs of weights in the backpack A mere 24 photos, the least unusable of which are below. The second yomp was just as much fun (and even more knackering - up hill and a bit further) than the first one. Some very loud and colourful... Continue Reading →
A walk in the park(lands). Of butterflies, coots and good times
Today the Adelaide Parklands Association (which exists to explore, inspire, protect and restore) held a rather excellent guided tour of the very south-east corner of the Parklands... Not much to say, other than groups like these - existing to defend public space from "practical" bureaucrats/politicians (who oddly often seem to get post-retirement sinecures with developers)... Continue Reading →
Of moorhens, #parklands and 3 hour yomps
Yomp #01 0755-1105 on 13 04 2023 - 190mins 18kgs of weights in the backpack 60 photos taken (the least unusuable ones are on display below). Galahs, moorhens (WHOOP), sulfur-crested cockatoos "etc" The first yomp of the Adelaide visit is done, and it was a corker. What follows is a bunch of photos, digressions and... Continue Reading →
Nature and what she does for “us”…
I have a long-standing fascination with how "nature" gets invoked, how the idea is mobilised to defend whatever people want to defend. First really really started thinking about this (I think) after reading the following quote by Julian Rathbone, from his novel "Zdt" Wrong. Nature in the Middle Ages was a hierarchy, a chain of... Continue Reading →
Capitalism? It’s only natural… aka “A Fable of the Bees for the Anthropobscene”
tl;dr We use "nature" to justify whatever we want to justify. A couple of days ago Kevin Anderson (the climate professor, not the South African tennis player) tweeted about a new paper which shows just how rubbish the Dasgupta review was. https://twitter.com/KevinClimate/status/1397891825260769282 [I could go on about how aggravating it is when people retweet bits... Continue Reading →
Elephants in the airport, aesthetic delight in our doom…
I photographed this yesterday morning, at Heathrow Airport. A friend of mine has written about elephants in the room and climate change and all that jazz. Ranciere, Badiou, that crowd. Me, I'm a Walt Benjamin man - “Mankind, which in Homer’s time was an object of contemplation for the Olympian gods, is now one for... Continue Reading →
Nothing under the sun. Not “new”, no nothing (Nietzsche).
another in the fun series "Marc clears his gmail while hunting down thesis additions" On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense 1873 Essay Translated from: Über Wahrheit und Lüge im außermoralischen Sinn I Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems,... Continue Reading →
Something fishy in the lake: of politics and power
Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening The old saw goes 'give a man a fish and you have fed him for a... Continue Reading →
Brilliant neglected book: “Ecological Pioneers” #Australia #environment
I like to believe I've read a lot these three and a half years (even by my own somewhat Rabelaisian standards). Specifically, on the Australian environment movement/climate change/climate policy etc. I've read a few excellent books, a few stinkers and lots in between (thankfully mostly at the 'excellent' end, and towering piles of journal articles... Continue Reading →
James Rockford and sustainability in the twenty-first century, or “the reel of the desert”
James Garner was a cool American actor. He had starred as ‘Maverick’ in a 1950s comedy-drama Western TV series. In the 1970s he was James Rockford, a private-eye (“two hundred dollars a day plus expenses”) in a genre-shifting TV show called ‘The Rockford Files’ (1). What the hell has this got to do with sustainability in... Continue Reading →