DAILY PHOTO: Kho Ku So Bamboo Bridge – Post-Harvest
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“The Splendour Falls” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson [w/ Audio]
The splendour falls on castle walls
And snowy summits in old story:
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.
O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O sweet and far from cliff and scar
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying:
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.
O love, they die in yon rich sky,
They faint on hill or field or river:
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow for ever and for ever.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying,
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PROMPT: Drink
What is your favorite drink?
If amount consumed is any indication, that would have to be water – with coffee as a second runner up. And the rest of the pack is a muddled mess in which no one stands out, judging from the fact that the aforementioned are the only beverages that I drink on a daily basis. (Gin or beer are at most once a week beverages and average less than that, if this was meant to imply alcoholic drinks.)
Certainly, water is the only one that I: a.) can’t do without, and b.) could live a comfortable and healthy life drinking exclusively.
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World Writ Minimalist [Kyōka]
sunrise paints the haze
the color of campfire flames,
and nothing looks real,
but rather like a painting
by an artist, skilled & lazy.
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Pleasant Valley [Lyric Poem]
In the narrow valley
Traversed by a cool stream,
Life is but a pleasant,
And ever shady, dream.
Feet within the waters,
But mind up in the sky,
Nothing can upend one,
Nor kill what cannot die.
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DAILY PHOTO: More Scenes from Santichon Village, Thailand
“Treading on Grass” by He Zhu [w/ Audio]
On winding pool with willows dim,
At narrow strait the lovebirds swim.
Green duckweeds float,
Barring the lotus-picking boat.
Nor butterflies nor bees
Love fragrance from the withered trees.
When her red petals fall apart,
The lotus bloom 's bitter at heart.
The setting sun greets rising tide,
The floating clouds bring rain.
The swaying lotus seems to confide,
Her sorrow to the poet in vain.
Then she would not be wed to vernal breeze.
What could she do now autumn drives away wild geese?
Translation: Xu Yuanchong [translator]. 2021. Deep, Deep the Courtyard. [庭院深深.] Cite Publishing: Kuala Lumpur, p.226.
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Graveyard Trees [Haiku]
graveyard trees
turn crimson in the Fall, but
hold leaves stubbornly.
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DAILY PHOTO: Wat Phra Kru, Chiang Mai
Image
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BOOKS: “Nuclear War” by Annie Jacobsen
Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie JacobsenMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Amazon.in Page
Release Date: March 28, 2024
Annie Jacobsen’s new book is fascinating and — quite frankly — horrifying from cover to cover. The book presents a hypothetical minute by minute unfolding of events that culminate in full-scale nuclear war and the end of the world as we know it. A four-hundred-page book that breaks down the events of an hour may sound like a recipe for tedium, like Joyce’s seven-hundred-plus page elaboration of the events of a single day in “Ulysses.” But, it is anything but. There is so much to explore amid the concepts like “the nuclear football” and MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction,) and EMP’s (Electromagnetic Pulse weapons.) There is also so much to go wrong, and much that is virtually certainly go wrong.
That last sentence might suggest that the book takes an excessively pessimistic view to create drama. Sadly, it does not need to. The ultra-fast timeline of nuclear calculus does the work of ensuring that many things will go terrifyingly and irreparably wrong. Decision makers have a short window to make decisions, and “use-’em-or-lose-’em” thinking plays a major role in decision making. (i.e. One can’t count on delaying a decision about a counter response because one’s delivery infrastructure — notably, the human bit of it — will likely be destroyed if one absorbs the first strike.) There is also the fact that — counter to all the abort buttons seen in the movies — once missiles are launched, there is no way to stop them. [A bit of “Dr. Strangelove” writ into the system.] At many of the points at which it may seem that Jacobsen is being pessimistic for effect, she explains the basis for her pessimism: from historical events like the failure of the nuclear hotline to commentary by experts.
Lest one think that nuclear warfare is a threat of the past, and that it’s a solved problem, Jacobsen’s scenario reminds us that it’s not just a matter of NATO v the Warsaw Pact (i.e. America v the USSR in the common conception) anymore. She does this by using North Korea as the instigator. We don’t ever learn the Kims’ theoretical motivation, but all one really needs to know to make one nervous is that the DPRK has been quite happy playing the role of pariah, engaging in a number of activities in violation of international law and norms, as well as that Kim Jong Un might just believe some of the ridiculous things his yes-men tell him. (Not to mention the famines and other destabilizing conditions that could lead some other inside actor or group of actors to take unanticipated actions.) The truly disturbing part is to see how easily a strike by the DPRK could draw Russia or possibly China into the nuclear exchange. [Russia because it’s in the path between the US and the DPRK, and China because it could suffer massive casualties from strikes on North Korean facilities near the border that send radiation to sizable Chinese population centers.]
This book is a must-read for anyone who thinks nuclear weapons are the problem of a bygone era.
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