fireflies

April 8th. 1832

Our party amounted to seven. The first stage was very interesting. The day was powerfully hot, and as we passed through the woods, everything was motionless, excepting the large and brilliant butterflies, which lazily fluttered about. The view seen when crossing the hills behind Praia Grande was most beautiful; the colours were intense, and the prevailing tint a dark blue; the sky and the calm waters of the bay vied with each other in splendour. After passing through some cultivated country, we entered a forest, which in the grandeur of all its parts could not be exceeded. We arrived by midday at Ithacaia; this small village is situated on a plain, and round the central house are the huts of the negroes. These, from their regular form and position, reminded me of the drawings of the Hottentot habitations in Southern Africa. As the moon rose early, we determined to start the same evening for our sleeping-place at the Lagoa Marica. As it was growing dark we passed under one of the massive, bare, and steep hills of granite which are so common in this country. This spot is notorious from having been, for a long time, the residence of some runaway slaves, who, by cultivating a little ground near the top, contrived to eke out a subsistence. At length they were discovered, and a party of soldiers being sent, the whole were seized with the exception of one old woman, who, sooner than again be led into slavery, dashed herself to pieces from the summit of the mountain. In a Roman matron this would have been called the noble love of freedom: in a poor negress it is mere brutal obstinacy. We continued riding for some hours. For the few last miles the road was intricate, and it passed through a desert waste of marshes and lagoons. The scene by the dimmed light of the moon was most desolate. A few fireflies flitted by us; and the solitary snipe, as it rose, uttered its plaintive cry. The distant and sullen roar of the sea scarcely broke the stillness of the night.

Charles Darwin

March

tides

   Traces that could live for a long time on a dead surface
   as with the Moon, are gone with one passage of the Moon
   over the surface of a living planet like the Earth.

help> a giant brain!

Maybe an artificial brain will come to life without deliberate human interference.
Something that is used by us on daily base, the internet.
Humans are plugged in and feeding this internet thing with information, and like a brain(neurons that communicate with each other in countless ways) we are communicating with each others in countless ways.
Above an unknown tresshold(connections/data) the internet comes to life.
Maybe it's alive already and we don't realize it.
But who or what is the product, is such a brain our product or do we become the product of such a brain.
A monopoly, many buyers but only one seller, or one dealer, we are all hooked.

echoes

I wondered what sells best, Google, apparently the new boss of Blogspot.com(this blog) tries to convince me of their product AdWords, for some payment they promise me to get much more readers, when I would follow their advice then this blog would look identical to all others, so what's the point.
Apparently some people wallets.
What sells best? fake and stolen goods(pictures, music, drawings and probably text.
I understand, it's very hard not to do that when active on the net, and it is so easy, but stimulating it?
The internet is plastered with plagiarism, everything looks similar cause of that.
Even news articles are copied, sometimes I want to check something by reading other news sources, but many times I read the exact same text, then I wonder, do they check the news? 
When I could shout into the internet space then it would echo endlessly, it's full of hollow chambers.
How does Google stimulate this? by the numerous examples of existing blogs they show you, a colorful explosion of images supported with text that has such a penetrating force that it enters one eye and a micro second later leaves the other eye.
Making you color blind without knowing what has hit you.

alphabet

Last days I was sick, Influenza, most of the time I was laying in bed or on the coach, sleeping or watching the television.
World wide rumble, last thing I saw was the auswitch concentration camp memorial.
I had to think about a lady I knew, years ago, an octogenarian, she died some 20 years ago.
While sipping a cup of coffee and enjoying cookies she told me things.
Her husband was imprisoned by the nazi's in one of their concentration camps, he was on a list, an alphabetical list, people who should be punished if a resistance group had the courage to oppose the nazi's.
His name started with a B, so after a resistance action they arrested him, this was at the end of 1940, he never came back alive.                                                  
Since this was at the start of the war they still had a little decency left, and he was not Jewish, so his dead body came back, she buried him, a young widow with two kids.
She must have been furious, I'm  guessing here.
After some time a resistance group asked her if she could help them out with some Jewish people, to live under the protection of her and her kids.
Food was no problem thanks to stolen food stamps she got from the resistance.
She never left her house after the war, living there till the day she died, she showed to me the entrance of the hideout for the Jewish people whenever there was a danger in her street, like Germans soldiers, Dutch police, men in black..
A closet, upstairs, just large enough to stand for one person, and a hatch in the floor, at first sight too small to crawl through.
I looked inside it, I saw a space that looked just high enough for people to crawl in, flat on their belly,  not suited for obese people, a space between the upstairs floor and downstairs ceiling.
That must have been a dangerous thing to do, but not in vain, all the Jewish people survived.
In the last year of the war Dutch traitors came for her son, 17 years of age at that time, he had to work in Germany, they were there to take him away.
She refused, saying that they had taken the life of her husband, they  won’t get the life of her son, surprisingly they never came back.
After the war she was not able to forgive the Germans, she hated them, and never travelled through Germany during her trips.
However, there was one exception, a young German(about 35) living in her street was a friend of her, he did her grocery shopping's and jobs in and around her house.