very cool

Crowds celebrate Brazil Gay Pride

More than a million people have taken to the streets of Sao Paulo to celebrate the Brazilian city's tenth annual Gay Pride parade.

Revellers dressed in costumes danced through one of the main avenues, as music blared out of huge loudspeakers.

One report quoted police as saying that 2.4 million people were at the parade, which organisers say has become the largest of its kind in the world.

a nice morning ride

Before it gets too hot (and the World Cup matches start!)

The usual local ride on the CCT, 5.7 miles. I feel awful that it's been two whole weeks since I rode last. Bad me! Poor Rupert!

A ncie morning, hough already very warm. I saw quite a few squirrels, a male and a femal cardinal, a robin, and a mocking bird, and heard and saw a number of birds that I couldn't identify right of (just didn't get a good look--could have been more of the above). A few people up and walking dogs; one group of late-middle-aged men who had the look of doign somethign because they had told each other they would, not because they wanted to, and a mixed group of younger people, who seemed to barely even notice thy were running. Oh, and there'a a policeman with a radr gun at my park, checking traffic on Prosperity Avenue, in case anyone is going that way this morning. :-)

Hopefully I'll have some time today to post about last weekend, but I have some chores that really HAVE to get done. (I only just unpacked from my trip this morning...)

(no subject)

I love technology. I love the globally connected world we live in. I feel very fortunate.

There are a lot of things that need to be done better. We need to find ways to make and use energy that aren't so damaging to the planet. We need to be smarter and more sensitive to the world we live in and how we affect it. We need to treat our fellow creatures better (human and otherwise).

But right now I'm sitting in my living room in Virginia in the eastern United States, typing on a computer assembled in China, drinking coffee from Ethiopia, and watching football teams from Croatia and Japan plan in Germany, while a German commentator on an Irish sports network tells me what's going in. The signal is being bounced off satellites in orbit and caught by a piece of metal on the side of my house.

And I know I am one of the most fortunate people in the world: I live in a developed country, I have a good education, and excellent job, decent health, comfort, and many friends. I'm not sick or starving. No one tried to kill me yesterday or (so far) today, and chances are they won't try to kill me tomorrow. I can go where I want, do what I feel like (within the limits of my income and certain mostly reasonable laws, which I get to elect people to make), and say what I think (within certain, mostly voluntary, limits).

I am fascinated by the past and sometimes fearful about the future, but the present is an amazing place, and I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.