Bill Murray's Blog, page 27

William Butler Yeats’s The Second Coming, written in the...

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William Butler Yeats’s The Second Coming, written in the aftermath of the First World War, has worked its way into the zeitgeist. As the stampede toward extreme politics accelerates in our own era, Yeats’s words resonate:

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;”

In a step back yesterday, it would appear that in Italy, the center-left thwarted a power grab by Matteo Salvini’s anti-immigrant League Party in the northern region of Emilia-Romagna.

Small victories are welcome, too.

Iowa Caucuses

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I’ll be heading for Iowa in a week and a half. For years I’ve promised myself that I’d go and have a good, close look at this unique bit of grassroots participatory democracy/great American circus/media frenzy on the tundra, as soon as I could interrupt my work without harm. That time has come.

I’ll be writing about what I find here on CS&W and filing a column @3QD on caucus day. If anyone has any suggestions, anecdotes, or wants to share something you think I should know, or if you’ll be in Des Moines and would like to compare notes (or have a beer), please email me at BillMurrayWriter (at) gmail.com.

Sky Photography from Miguel Claro

I commend to you the work of Miguel Claro, Portuguese photographer. Here’s a screen grab of some of his work. Click through to his site.

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Quotes: On the European Union

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From Robert Menasse’s acid satire of the European Union, The Capital:

“… the general loss of faith in European institutions was a consequence of poor growth, the menacing threat of right-wing populism – clearly if there were more growth there would be no growth in right-wing populism. And how could we generate more growth? Through greater liberalisation, of course. Instead of the Union stipulating common rules, each Member State ought to axe as many rules as possible for itself. Although there would never be a real union, there would be growth, and this would be best for the Union.”

Finding Iran

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Some American registered voters, who elect our president, believe that Iran is in Oklahoma. From Morning Consult.

This Month’s 3QD Post: Ngorongoro Crater Part 2

Some photos to accompany this month’s travel column at 3QuarksDaily. Read the column here.

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Remarkable, Too

Here is a video that displays the rotation of the earth. From BoingBoing,

“Eric created this time-lapse by using a star-tracker with his camera. A star-tracker rotates the camera at the same speed as the Earth, but in the opposite direction. It has the visual effect of stabilizing the sky. Usually, star-trackers are used to stabilize the camera during a long exposure, to avoid blurry or streaked stars in the image.”

Remarkable

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Annular Solar Eclipse

Visible Christmas night US time across Indonesia, southern India, Oman and Saudi Arabia. Click this screen grab for video from Slooh.

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Holiday Slide Show

For the holidays, a leisurely slide show of 171 photos posted between April and August this year on a trip around the world through Vietnam, Thailand, Finland, Germany, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Ukraine, France and Ireland. Just click the screen shot here to get started, then pop it out to full screen if you like, and enjoy! Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and Happy New Year.

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