many of these things will not last, should not be expected to last. the lack of permanence is characteristic of volatile information, preserved only fleetingly even at a minus 25 degree boiling point.
we forget.
sometimes not soon enough, painlessly enough, loudly enough. as though our protest will make it sooner, easier, clearer. clearing these clouds to what end? dispelling an illusion alone? concentrating precipitation at some other time, in some other place? seeding rainfall is an imprecise science, you know. beijing would like to think otherwise — will have the world think otherwise, but we will have to wait until the eighth hour of the eighth day to learn — or at least observe the culmination of many factors not totally understood.
our control is at best imprecise.
rumours of tesla weapons and unheeded seismologists and toads are one thing, but the burial of thousands and grief to families and subsequent suicides and infertilities and abandonments are quite another. as, too, are rescues and outpourings of compassion and global relief efforts and prayers of thousands, at least some of which are being heard.
the opportunists? the profiteers?
“no man has power to retain the spirit, or power over the day of death” (Ecc 8:8) — so let them lie and cheat. let the cheaters lie. they are digging their own pit.
why do good things happen to evil people?
it was not always like this. it will not remain like this.
“he [Jesus of Nazareth] is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead” (Acts 10:42)
but he, too, makes us at peace with him through paying the price for us on the cross. “[God] reconciles to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.” (Col 1:20)
Google.cn search queries for May 19th at 2:27pm took a bit of a hit, as follows:
Three minutes of national mourning for earthquake victims. Taken seriously and moving in a way that is a little difficult to imagine an analogue for in Australia — tongue-in-cheek about re:cessation of Google-ing… but intended as a broader comment on national displays of stuff in all seriousness. Perhaps unfair as Australia hasn’t really had any disaster of this magnitude in recent times, I know.
Everyone was outside as traffic stopped to remember and share in the grief of millions. Some things are more important than search.
Must play with this HTTP server/load-balancer/mail proxy/bundle of awesome sometime soon. Looks like a pretty awesome option for VPS environments and other places where there isn’t heaps of spare resources going around! My cupboard-bound SSH oasis and occasional webserver is, of course, a likely candidate… but I’m a tad concerned I’ll screw myself over with PHP. Not because it particularly gets used for that (there’s like… a few wikis and a handful of lines of PHP code easily replaced by something else that get semi-regular attention) but mostly for the “just in case” I wanna test run something. And yeah, I know, that’s what virtualised stuff should be for… but I still haven’t quite caught up to that. I’ve got an Ubuntu thing running in a virtual PC instance on the computer I use most of the time, but it just doesn’t cut it for actually trying to test something out with, you know, other users and real Internet connectivity. In other news, can-we-have-IPv6-moar-plx? Just because it’s absurd to have to pay more to run real SSL on dedicated IPs when there is SO MUCH SPACE just waiting for us to broaden our horizons and start to fill it. I’m not heaps fussed if pre-Windows XP users can’t use it, actually, because they’ve likely got bigger security problems on their hands from their network-connected 10-year-old OS than any regular web interaction is likely to give them, properly secured or not — that is, even if their web traffic is secured, their desktop is probably a botnet zombie with keyloggers and trojans abounding.
