informant38
.

-
...But of these sophisms and elenchs of merchandise I skill not...
Milton, Areopagitica

Except he had found the
standing sea-rock that even this last
Temptation breaks on; quieter than death but lovelier; peace
that quiets the desire even of praising it.

Jeffers, Meditation On Saviors


-

31.7.02

More residents packed up and left a valley in southwestern Oregon Wednesday as firefighters reinforced a defensive line against a 30-mile wall of flames.
"We are looking at the fire at this time as uncontrollable," said Greg Gilpin, of the state Department of Forestry.

{I've been reading this, looking at it too. and the previously blogmentioned Margaret Bell's 'When Montana and I Were Young' and Thomas McGuane's perfectly titled 'The Cadence of Grass'
and reading Robert Kaplan's 'Eastward to Tartary' got me to 'The Ends of the Earth' and then Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos which is provoking, thought, ire, and respect-wise. there's passion in it, behind the calm reason, urgency. this is a man who's been to the places that are our possible futures, at least most of the possibles. and he's worried, but steady on and reasoning deeply, looking directly at what scares him. it's like a prayer this kind of scholarship. a strong prayer.}

"I wish Lindh had chosen to stand up and fight for himself; he didn't do anything wrong, much less illegal. The evidence against him came from his confession, which was coerced under torture. And there's an excellent chance that, even had a jury imposed a life sentence, a fairer-minded president would eventually have pardoned him. In any case, surely it's better to spend the rest of your life behind bars with your integrity intact than to yield to torture and an unfairly manipulated court system in exchange for a lousy deal.

Then again, that's easier for a free man to say than a broken man-and at Camp Rhino Marines broke John Walker Lindh. And here in the United States, Ashcroft sucker-punched him. Rather than risk losing the rest of his life, Lindh surrendered a big chunk of it. He chose the easier way out, and these days, that makes this young jihadi as American as apple pie."

ted rall of the wiggly line and razor wit

Brazilian police announced that they will begin patrolling from a 130-foot-long airship that will hover over the crime-ridden streets of Rio; companies have been invited to advertise on the sides of the ship. Ice-T announced the release of Posse Pops, an ice-cream treat marketed specifically to urban youth. Researchers revealed that sperm work cooperatively, with hundreds linking together to form a "love train" to reach an egg more quickly. A group of 30 monkeys laid siege to an Indian police station to rescue an orphaned member of their tribe. Scientists found that women are more emotional than men. A Montreal-based company unveiled a home cloning machine; the microwave-shaped device, which can be had for $9,199, comes with a foot pedal for "hands-free fusion at four different speeds."
harpers

Glossblog word guy

Gillmor points to Rheingold pointing to Finland's Aula

retrosystem

{studebaker champion w/ hybrid motor. well...like that sort of}

Sterling points to openDemocracy

Two small boys dancing Karyobin on a boat on the Arashi River in Kyoto. The dancers represent the Kalavinka, the magic bird that was said to have appeared when the Buddha attained enlghtenment.

{again Robert Garfias to whom my heartfelt gratitude for the Malagasy joy and the Yaeyama Hatoma Bushi and so much more. everything I thought the web could be}
also this indonesian choir

blissblog another articulate alert aware writer appears in the continuing threadfollow from portage/eclogues/arcadia

wemadeoutinatreeandthisoldguysatandwatchedus

{this guy is articulate and living in an exotic niche}

"And there are times I love this place so much it is indescribable, and that�s how it was then, sitting in the back seat smiling with Wassana�s story, driving through the jungle green and thinking that I now have two licenses that I can�t show to police officers or I�ll be sorry."

interest-sparking anthro-vivisectional antiquities from a two-stage kick from portage to eclogues who in turn shunted us to open brackets and then for reasons obscure and oddly disquieting, found this, the very comforting and warm, an American's guide to Canada

30.7.02

....men calling themselves
the sky-clad came
to this district to build
a hospital for birds....


Srikanth Reddy

poetry daily 7/30/02

29.7.02

oneworld tv {realplayer filmclips and audio of people-generated info, climate change, land rights, human rights}

plasticbag gayBrit witblog

28.7.02

{this seems important in a 'looking through the windows of the rich people's house on Christmas eve while it snows on the little matchgirl' kind of a way.}

Bruce Sterling on 911.net
digital first response:
The actual September 11 event, 9/11, was a rare and remarkable thing. And, with fewer than 3,000 people dead,
it's just not that big a deal as genuine catastrophes go. Politically, theologically and militarily it was huge, but
a workaday 911.net wouldn't fret much about terrorism. Instead, it would have to deal mostly with floods, fires,
climate change, earthquakes, volcanoes and (let's hope never) asteroids and weapons of mass destruction.

So, basically, with 911.net, we are describing a social re-definition of computer geeks as firemen. Native
twenty-first century computer geeks as muscular, with-it,first-responder types. I think this would be pretty goodfor the computer industry. We all need to take thedysfunctional physical world far more seriously. This week, Itly's flooding, Texas is flooding, Colorado's on fire. This morning, the brand-new wilderness forests around the site of the former Chernobyl are on fire,
spewing radioactive ash hither and yon. Chunks of Antarctica the size of Rhode Island have fallen into the
sea. I could go on.
This is the sort of activity that humanity is required to deal with in this new century. If we build a successful method with which to do this, those useful tactics will spread across the fabric of our civilization. I believe
they are already spreading. An innovation like 911.net will likely serve as a camel's nose in the tent for a
whole series of ubicomp applications across society.

Angles of darkness

27.7.02

LONGPLAYER-HOME {Jem Finer's somewhat lengthy composition plays on in its lighthouse, and we wish it all the best, truly, but won't be able to stay for the whole piece, to our immense regret.}
{and does anybody know why I can't get quicktime to load on anything, opera,mozilla, OR ie?}

Consensus at Lawyerpoint Being a true account of the undertakings of the Broadcast Protection Discussion Group
{EFF dinosaur watch}

26.7.02

William Langewiesche� American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center

I started going with some of the core people like Peter Rinaldi and Pablo Lopez on their underground explorations. They were surveying the situation down in the ruins. It was truly dangerous stuff�not only because of what you breathe, but because nobody knew what was down there, and things were collapsing all over the place. I was with them on those runs, and after a while they understood that I was with them there in a big way. Where they went, I went.

The great American writer Herman Melville went out to his barn shortly after he got up every day for no other purpose than to say "Good Morning" to his horse.

25.7.02

Edo Nyland(?) has this thing where the Ainu and the Basque are sibling culture/linguistic peoples:

"None of the Ainu words were exactly the same as in Basque, but many were extremely close such as ikoro and koro (money), kokor and gogor (to scold), tasum and eritasun (illness), iska and xiska (to steal). A surprise was the Ainu word nok (testicle) which is much like the Basque word noka (familiarity with women). In English slang the same word is used in "to knock up" meaning "to cause a woman to become pregnant." In Indonesian nok means "unmarried young woman," while d�nok means "slender, elegant woman." In Dutch slang the word is slightly altered to neuk (sexual intercourse). There is little doubt that the word goes way back to the Neolithic or even Paleolithic."

http://www.travelerstales.com/

O'Reilly offshoot patient-centered guides

24.7.02

odds of living through the next ten years.....
"Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for teenagers."

this was being done on the Caspian Sea

veterans of something with a bone to pick and how

arlo at google groups

dangerous Iranian in Washington D.C.

23.7.02

Photography: Caspian Sea @ nationalgeographic.com This was the only way that remained for them. Watching them, I understood why the Russians call the river �Mother Volga.�
Fishing here is illegal, since the fish stocks have fallen. The old man thought I was another government guy come to ask for a bribe.

Z. V. Togan: The Origins of the Kazaks and the �zbeks
The event takes place in June 1922 in the vicinity of Samarkand:
When a Bolshevik military unit, detailed to liquidate us, opened fire, we took refuge in a nearby cemetery. As we began defending ourselves, I noticed that Togan had taken out his ever-present notebook and was busily scribbling. The circumstances were so critical that some of those among our ranks even thought that he was hurriedly recording his last will and testament. He kept writing, seemingly oblivious to the flying bullets aimed at him, and the accompanying sounds of war. I shouted at him from behind the tombstone that was protecting me, and asked why he was not fighting. Without looking up, continuing to write, he shouted back: You continue firing. The inscriptions on these headstones are very interesting.

amazingly complete biography of Irish Noo Yawk band Black 47

Recorders Part of the reason is, since the recorder uses some cross-fingerings in every key, the rapid-fire ornamentation of Irish traditional tunes is not easily produced. Also the tone of the recorder, though sweet, has a focused edge which many whistle players find unpleasant.
There are exceptions, however, to everything, and the exception to the above is the excellent singer and recorderist Emma Christian, who plays the recorder in the ornamented style of the wooden flute, and does it very well indeed.

public hanging in Shiraz

hajji baba carpet links

Photography: Caspian Sea @ nationalgeographic.com There were reports of high radioactivity in the area, and people became very sick. So Gazprom gave out gas masks. These brothers put their masks on to show me that, in ten years, this was all they were given as a solution. They told me no masks were given for children.

The Iranian, photo essays

22.7.02

Palestine Chronicle - Israeli F16s Attack Gaza City, 12 Palestinians Dead, 140 Wounded 12 Palestinians were killed and over 140, mostly women and children, wounded Monday evening when Israeli warplanes attacked a residential area in the Gaza City. Among the victims was Saleh Shehade, 50, a top Palestinian activist.

{warning: graphic photo of dead woman. (since removed)
interesting headline on Drudge about this, tho it's gone now and I can't get it verbatim, it was the usual politically-driven/militarily-permissible/morally-necessary Israeli reaction to the Holocaust of infernal Palestinian occupation of the Holy Land. Drudge is, if not an Israeli-American, someone who wants to be one.}

japanese grind boy air Photo : Kazu

Summary of the Case Facts {Mumia vs. the truth, it looks like}
At the 1982 trial, Ms. Durham testified that she had reported what she had heard to her hospital supervisor, in writing, the day after the shooting.
Priscilla Durham testified:
Ms. Durham: At this time I didn't know [who he was]...all I did was hear him say, I shot the mother fucker and I hope the mother fucker dies.
6-24-82, T.R. 28
Ms. Durham was asked where Jamal was when he made his incriminating outburst. She replied, "He was at my feet." (6-24-82, T.R. 28). She reported this to her supervisors the next day:

Early LCD | Nancy In Wonderland LCD: How did you meet Ernie Bushmiller?
NANCY: He had an interest in my older sister.
{Sluggo in amber}

Resurgence Magazine Online - Index of Articles

Utne Reader Online: Alternative Press Awards

Resurgence issue 213 - THE VIRTUES OF CAUTION by James Hillman
Time also curses the joys of discovery. It is no longer enough to experiment, ponder serendipitously, discover. There is a crushing competitive pressure to be first with a formula, a method, a product. The first to publish may get a Nobel award; the first in the market makes the most gain. We are in the age of the short-cut, corporate espionage and falsified results � because of competition. As in a foot race, only the one coming in first qualifies; the others are losers. A culture that promotes winners gets more and more losers. I like to remember a precept of Sikh religion: "Always come second."

Fortean Times - Count Saint Germain By then, some Theosophists were saying St-Germain was the incarnation of the goddess Venus. From there, it was a short jump to Guy Ballard, who claimed the Count actually introduced him to visitors from Venus. In his book, Ballard revealed a 1930 encounter with St-Germain on Mt Shasta in California. The Count, always an entertaining host, pulled gold from the air, tamed a panther, and took Guy and his wife to a convention of Venusians in the Grand Tetons.

The Ballards formed a group called the I AM Foundation, which disseminated many channelled messages from the obliging Count.
{Doug Skinner of white knuckle sandwich}

Resurgence on-line - welcome page forum for ecological and spiritual thinking

Robert Anton Wilson | Previous Thoughts As Voltaire said, "The only way to comprehend what mathematicians mean by Infinity is to contemplate the extent of human stupidity."

EnabledOnline.com: January 2001 - Real Lives: Missions of Mercy Overseas Dr. Holder said after fitting the former security guard with a below the elbow prosthesis, within one half hour the young man was able to use his new limb to write his name. The next day, the man was able to tell the Doctor that he had fed himself, undressed, bathed, and dressed himself for the first time in two years. His pride was that he could now take care of his family. �That smile on his face,� Dr. Holder said, �made my trip more than worthwhile.�

ireland.com - The Irish Times - COMPUTIMES Despite the rejection of the Kyoto Accords by President Bush as a "threat to the economy", Sterling doesn't see Bush as fundamentally un-green, so much as he is for sale.
"The 'threat to the economy' is severe: it's a direct threat to the pocket-books of Bush's major backers". Sterling suggests that a stiff Kyoto regime, or even popular awareness of the Greenhouse threat, could mean death for the major oil companies and probably jail for their leaders. "So they have little to lose; they might as well ante up everything, outbid the other players, buy the administration and squeeze out as much cash from the consumers as they can."

ireland.com - The Irish Times - COMPUTIMES Of all the Dead Media, the two mourned most by Sterling are the Incan quipu (their only symbolic means of communication, using knotted cords) and the Parisian balloon post - common during the Franco-Prussian War. About the former, he says: "It was murdered. It's a very strange and pitiful story". When Incan society was destroyed by the Europeans, there was large-scale, long-term destruction of any quipu that could be found, as well as the execution of quipu interpreters.

Fountain Grove- the round barn at the north end of town. the promise and the entropy of heartfelt vows.

blather links

negative capability search
@voices of the world



"...and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason-Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge. This pursued through volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration."
Keats' letter to his brothers

purportal{invaluable scepticization of pseudo-factuality, with footnotes, brevity, and evidence}

ring

hello kitty says hit the woods

21.7.02

Mr Boffo gettin it done




Three



Beautiful



Women



in England

Pitney Brooch

british museum/compass The Wetwang Chariot Burial

The Hall of Fame Inductees: Sara Elizabeth Parsons Sara E. Parsons is remembered as a vigorous opponent of the exploitation of student nurses and as a crusader for improvement in the care of mental illness.


During the Spanish-American War, Parsons volunteered for service on the "Bay State," a hospital ship used to evacuate sick and wounded military personnel from Cuba and Puerto Rico. After an eight-month trip abroad to recover from typhoid fever, she was employed as superintendent of nurses at Adams Nervine Hospital in Massachusetts, a position she held for three years. At this time, Parsons completed a one-year certificate course in hospital economics at Teachers College, Columbia University, and a six-month course in hospital administration at Massachusetts General Hospital. From 1910 to 1920, she occupied the position of superintendent of Massachusetts General, but took a two-year leave in 1917 to serve as chief nurse of Base Hospital #6 in France.

artist's feetsteps {Mr. Andrew McKenzie, in his zeal to protect the images on his site from marauding crass barbarism, has prevented anyone from linking directly to it. and of course he has disabled the save function on his pages. but all one needs is a capture tool and the images are one's to do with as one wills, and of course linkage is still possible(viz est). these fools ignore the opensourced infancy of what this whole thing is and was to begin with, and that at their own peril. the silliness of that stance is made irritatingly more plain as its course parallels that of the mercantile despotism of American music businessmen}
{no Timmy I don't write like that because I have to, I do it because it's fun. for me}

australian nobility {Thomas Keneally treats of this movement in 'Bettany's Book'.
I say nobility because it is the mark of a truly noble heart, not the inherited name, but the thing the name came out of, the stuff of human living that is more than the animal grasp, what we make out of nothing, and defend in the face of incalculable opposition. And it's close to the hour we now pass through.}

Wrecks Along the Great Ocean Road near Cape Otway

This one moment in the endless flow of time:
Steve Earle has released an album called 'Jerusalem'. It has a song about the currently infamous John Walker Lindh. The song evidently is not stupid and intolerant enough for Fox Media, which all by its little pointy-headed self controls the minds of half the people in America.

Also Sarah Lawrence, who has done a lot of good work in the public dialog about raising children, is a Libertarian. She went to a big Libertarian wingding in Indianapolis, and put on a burqa, and was subsequently dealt with by people who have the full support of Fox Media.

Ghosts of Cape Sabine: The Harrowing True Story of The Greely Expedition, In July 1881, 25 men sailed out on an American expedition to create an Arctic scientific base in the Lady Franklin Bay region. There were only six men still alive three years later. Their diet just before rescue was human flesh and shoe leather.
The Greely Expedition, so named for its commander, Lieutenant Adolphus Greely, was to have been a glorious triumph for America. On paper, it was. A three-hundred year old record (held by British polar expeditions) was broken for achieving the farthest point north toward the North Pole. But the cost in human suffering, as with so many early polar explorations, was a terrible one.

1970-85 Famine Blamed On Pollution
skeletal mothers staring vacantly, children with bloated bellies lying in the sand, vultures lurking nearby. Before rains finally returned, 1.2 million people had died.

Now, a group of scientists in Australia and Canada say that drought may have been triggered by tiny particles of sulfur dioxide spewed by factories and power plants thousands of miles away in North America, Europe and Asia.

The short-lived pollution particles, known as aerosols, didn't have to travel to Africa to do their dirty work. Instead, they were able to alter the physics of cloud formation miles away and reduce rainfall in Africa as much as 50 percent,

19.7.02

history of conjoined twins and the MIT twins study

world's smallest website

hoover hoovercraft she said it was hoover

search engine diagnostics

snitch hotline? or self-policing integrity enforcement?

supportive tech explicator web usability links

corn-fed dreams of a brighter day become the edge of a nightmare that will not go away

topology of early this

18.7.02

Stories.Curry.Com : WiFi Peering The Really BigCo's stay really big by peering with each other and refusing to peer with any of the smaller guys. There are only 9 or 10 Really BigCo's, and they have a total lock on the market and the exchanges. You don't peer with the BigCos, you purchase from them.

What I like about peering (yeah, there's good news too) is that there really isn't any counting of packets..AT&T doesn't say to Sprint, "hey, you sent me less traffic than I sent you last month, pay up". Nor do the smaller guys.

FOXNews.com "I think the homeowners are being very selfish," beachgoer Julie Milton said
{there's a subset of people that things like this are targeted at. NOT some poor Chicano kid who doesn't get to go to the beach. this is propaganda for an agenda that remains hidden. but what is it? I don't know. maybe most of the people/stars that live there are liberals? probably not. maybe the scum that runs this 'news' organization wants to build a base among the low-end that feels disenfranchised and envious? more likely. it's political I guarantee that. it has nothing to do with beaches and everything to do with power. and not democratic power. hidden power.}

The Word Spy - drunken trees Mr. Rude says he no longer recognizes Alaska weather. "This year, we had a real quick melt of the snow, and it seemed like it was just one week between snowmobiling in the mountains and riding around in the boat in shirt-sleeve weather," Mr. Rude said. Other forests, farther north, appear to be sinking or drowning as melting permafrost forces water up. Alaskans have taken to calling the phenomenon "drunken trees."

Improv Message Boards - True Porn Clerk Stories One of my favorite concepts in anthropology is that of the polite fiction. It's something nobody believes, but we all pretend to because it makes life so much easier. My favorite example was of a Pygmy couple. Pygmy divorce involves quite literally breaking up the home: the couple tears apart their house (it's easy - the houses are made of leaves) and once it's down, the union is dissolved. One anthropologist was watching a long-married couple have a fight. It escalated until the wife threatened to leave, and the husband yelled something along the lines of "Fine!" and there was nothing the wife could do but start tearing down the house. She began tearing the roof off, clearly miserable. The husband looked wretched too, but at this point neither could back down without losing face and by now the whole village was watching.

Finally, the husband called out the Pygmy equivalent of "You're right, honey! The roof is dirty! It'll look much better once we get those leaves washed!" The two of them started carrying leaves down to the river, soon with the help of the whole village, and then washed and rebuilt the whole roof. When the anthropologist later discreetly asked how often one washes the roof, everyone looked at him like he was a complete doofus.

{generally this is me. inside the walls of bracketdom.}

evil in white
Adding an extra version of a single gene makes mice grow big brains -- brains so large they have to fold up, much as human brains do, to fit inside the skull, researchers said on Thursday.

It is not yet clear whether the mice are smarter -- they were all killed soon after birth -- but the scientists said they were surprised that one gene had such a strong effect and said they would do further experiments.
By Maggie Fox, Reuters Health and Science
Correspondent

BBC News | SCI/TECH | Elephant feet It is so slow yet it has a very high level of intelligence.
"It's difficult for us to put ourselves into the body of an elephant and try to make sense or ask intelligent questions that would reveal how an elephant is really operating."

THE CBDTPA Think you'd be able to get around the law by removing the policeware from your personal computer? Think again -- anyone who defies the government by disabling or tampering with the policeware on their own computer, in the privacy of their own home or business, would also face five years in the slammer.

Since alternative operating systems like Linux and FreeBSD would most likely refuse to incorporate government policeware into their code, users of these open-source systems would also be eligible for hard time.

17.7.02

Progressive Review THE WAR AGAINST TERRORISM is the political equivalent of a stock market bubble - hope, hubris and hyperbole parading as fact. We have learned nothing since September 11: we are more belligerent, jingoistic, imperialistic, and anti-Muslim than we were before. We have thus accentuated the very conditions that led to that disaster and are now fully invested in our own myopia.

radioheadarundhatiroyearthsummit

Friendly FOE

iPOD

difficult words

16.7.02

Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite

David Stirling of Save the Rhino International on Douglas Adams of The Galaxy:
I remember him worrying over the possibilities of this information ending up in the hands of the poachers, and that it would be necessary to have some sort of time delay exerted on rhino movements � an absurd precaution since the average poacher was lucky if he got close to a radio let alone have daily access to the internet. He often tried to convince his friend Steve Jobs that this was a meritorious scheme and worthy of Apple�s support. As far as I know he was still trying to win him over when he died.
Douglas left this world far too early. I would like to find a way whereby we could continue his conservation work. Perhaps a fund in his memory - a fund that champions a technological approach to the wildlife problem � is the way forward. I�d better get onto Steve Jobs and see what he has to say.

- Runners must cover 230 kilometres in 7 days, including a full marathon stage and a non-stop stage of 80 kilometres in under 40 hours
- Temperatures soar as high as 125�F, dropping to freezing at night
- Competitors have to carry all their own food and gear for the whole race. Only 9 litres of water per day and an open-sided Berber tent are provided
- The terrain varies from rocky plains and lake beds to sand dunes
- Many fail to finish

{I was in the stacks on the fourth floor of the library on the trail of a book edited by Mary Clearman Blew, Margaret Bell's 'When Montana and I Were Young' and in the same row on the same shelf this book called to me and I opened it and there's this photo so then back to the index and it's a bio of Albion Fellows Bacon. and on another page is a photo from her book 'Beauty for Ashes' the photo is called 'where the white death throttles its victims' and it's a slum room a woman standing who looks near complete exhaustion and very ill and a pale child all in long black clothes in a chair and in the right far background so dimly seen a figure in a bed. and so I came to this machine and wrote this.}

tracks of the day, traces of the night

so from living nappy to houseofbrick and this. a sub-circuit of women. strong articulate women. alert aware strong articulate women, part of a prosthetic social context for me. I guess

She died alone, thanks to laws that prohibit people from assisting a suicide. Frances Coombe, president of the South Australian Voluntary Euthanasia Society, said: "We are outraged that anyone should have to die as Shirley did � alone and terrified that she would not succeed."

Bush's boy

10 great american beers

homeless on purpose for a week and blogging it

pGp

chainsaw maintenance technique

Users of the product, which can take pictures with its camera eyes and can control up to six home appliances via infrared beacons in its hands, can direct the robot via an Internet connection.
{see also Next button toy/real electric cars}

get your chops on

get your links on

fairy penguins

15.7.02

school years in Romania

spitting image like portage in form and content some

Bush to Seek New Powers in Homeland Security Plan To safeguard information about U.S. chemical and nuclear plants, Bush also wants Congress to tighten freedom of information laws.
An administration officials said the homeland security plan would help prevent future attacks like those on Sept. 11, but conceded: "The threat we face is almost infinite. We are vulnerable in so many different ways

Portage: Stuff Worth Saving {intimidatingly arch writing and visually responsible linkage}

Council for the Eruption of the Marvelous Leaflets issued by the Council for the Eruption of the Marvelous (CEM), January-June 1970

dick cheney is many things, including the former CEO of Halliburton

ed ruscha
and a panorama of SF 1906

14.7.02

blackie
from here

a city in azerbaijan

baku women

Harvest-time scene (Bronze Age)

The boat with the sun on its stern

unknown as yet to us Timothy Findley

most interesting to me that these guys were on the way to galaxy-wide stardom when I first wrote about em. had no idea. really. probably wouldn't have gotten so worked up if I'd known. but here they go. and all the best.

russian views of azerbaijan {we're reading thomas goltz
his Azerbaijan Diary from a recommendation by Robert D Kaplan in Eastward to Tartary

more petroglyphs from gobustan(place of ravines) this one in russian

petroglyphs azerbaijan

more opera stuff

quicktime maybe for mozilla maybe

opera stuff

tech guy that had this link to animal sounds(onomatopeia) worldwide

13.7.02

is there a comparable image for this? what would it look like? of course there's grief and carnage and horror and desolation of a kind. but that's it. of a kind. degree matters. these are boys with stones against tanks. look. there it is, clearly. it takes more than character flaws and racial stupidity to move a young boy to go up against a tank with a rock. it takes heart. lots of it.

these are Jews against the violence. for peace. AGAINST the violence. FOR peace.

it's simple. the bedouins have what's called 'cachet'. they have romantic appeal to american eyes. nomads camels, the harsh desert life. so you don't hear about this part of things

she's in a couple databases somewhere huh?

grief in broad daylight

guy who took the picture of the kid kicking the palestinian woman and here's benetton knitting things up a little

hackers on planet earth HOPE
speakers and subjects therein

12.7.02

Q. The Namaste, you said, was that East Indian gesture wherein the palms are placed together with the thumbs against the chest. What does it mean?

A. "I honor the place in you where the entire universe resides. I honor the place in you where, if you are at the place in you, and I am at the place in me, there is only one of us."

Mike Mailway


It has been widely reported that the penchant in Florida for purifying voting lists by excising the names of convicted felons resulted ultimately in the election of George W. Bush. An editorial in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution of June 4, 2001, noted this electoral race card: "Now a study also shows that the data used to purge felons from Florida's voting rolls was flawed, resulting in the denial of the right to vote to 1,104 legitimate voters who have never been convicted of felonies. That's almost twice as many votes as the 537 'official' margin of victory that gave George W. Bush Florida's electoral votes and the White House. Forty-two percent of those on the inaccurate list were African American."

EFF has sterling's catscan columns

We want revolution here in Spain, right now, not maybe after the next European war. We are giving Hitler & Mussolini far more worry with our revolution than the whole Red Army of Russia. We are setting an example to the German & Italian working class on how to deal with Fascism...
"We have always lived in slums & holes in the wall. We will know how to accommodate ourselves for a time. For, you must not forget, we can also build. It is we the workers who built these palaces & cities here in Spain & in America & everywhere. We, the workers, can build others to take their place. & better ones! We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth; there is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie might blast & ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world here, in our hearts. That world is growing this minute."
Buenaventura Durruti

woddy guthrie 7/14

As I went walking, I saw a sign there
On the sign it said NO TRESPASSING
But on the other side it didn't say nothing
That side was made for you and me!

In the squares of the city, in the shadow of the steeple
In the relief office, I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry I stood there asking,
Is this land made for you and me?

Nobody living can ever stop me
As I go walking that freedom highway
Nobody living can make me turn back
This land was made for you and me



Daily Bleed: 1877 -- US: During the Great Upheavl of 1877, four years into a depression, a General Strike halts the movement of U.S. railroads. In the following days, strike riots spread across the United States. Next week federal troops are called out to force an end to the nationwide strike.
At the "Battle of the Viaduct" in Chicago, federal troops (recently returned from an Indian massacre) kill 30 workers & wound over 100. (see 27 July).

jacket magazine deep bohemian rhapsodic prose and image

Bill Griffith opines

Googie(with an 'eye') architecture

Ms Manners-Grammar

MIT houses of the future

Bill Gates at home

11.7.02

Z.V. Togan
Translated by H. B. Paksoy (owner of all the rights to this work)

Our Family --

At the beginning of my life, as I shall chronicle in this book, it could not have been foreseen that I was going to lead a great political movement of the Urals and Central Asia during this century and a liberation struggle of mass scale among the Turks; and that I was also going to attain international prominence as a person conducting research in the field of Oriental studies.


Mexican farmers protest�_�bigtime

As authorities arrived on the scene, the protesters attacked the riot-gear clad police with machetes, metal poles and sticks, Jimenez said.

Mexico State Attorney General Alfonso Navarrete said six police agents and 10 protesters were injured. He said one officer was in critical condition with a knife wound to chest.

Hours later, a second group of protesters blocked major highways around San Salvador Atenco, 10 miles to the south, again battling with police. Navarrete said the protesters took four officers hostage.

HIV+ Muppet


Tenali Rama, one of the three superstar jesters of India, is said to have earned his position as jester by making King Krsnadevaraya laugh. According to one story, he contrived for the king's guru to carry him around on his shoulders within sight of the king. Outraged at the humiliation of his holy man, the king sent some guards out to beat the man riding on the guru's shoulders. Tenali Rama, smelling impending danger, jumped down and begged forgiveness of the guru, insisting that to make amends he should carry him on his own shoulders. The guru agreed, and when the guards arrived the guru was duly beaten.

Beatrice Otto at fathom

sterling points to.... Metamute

The Bush administration has argued that, by paying for the military destruction of Afghanistan, the U.S. has contributed its share of the cost of transforming the country into a democracy.

4. Peaceful change is slow and boring.

Mark Svoboda's drought monitor/weather central

reliefweb world relief agency info-clearinghouse

NoAA's weekly climate highlights

disaster relief weather events

and finally, after years and months of discouraging search:
Earth Watch though, of course, alas, it is a mere simulacrum, a substitute, a ' borrowing' from this site which was, along with L.M. Boyd's column, my favorite thing in the newspaper. when I read newspapers. before. a long time ago.}

interesting australian prayer dude weather site

while we're still thinking about Iran:

Percentage of Iranians and Kuwaitis, respectively, who say that the September 11 attacks were "totally justifiable" : 8, 18

Percentage of Americans who say this : 5

Number of the seven U.S. vetoes cast in the U.N. Security Council since 1990 that have blocked censures of Israel : 6

Amount the U.S. Agency for International Development spent to build Bethlehem University's Millennium Hall : $1,200,000

Months after the building's inauguration in December that Israel used three U.S.-made missiles to destroy it : 2.5

Harper's Index

10.7.02

The great French sculptor Rodin in 1917 applied to the government of France for a room in a museum wherein he might stay warm while he worked. The government turned him down, though it made sure his remarkable statues were stored in such warm quarters. That year in an attic room elsewhere, Rodin froze to death.

THE IRANIAN: Travel, Around the world, Neema Moraveji { like a lot, if not most, Americans, I have to double check to be sure I'm not linking to the next victim of the oleo-thugs that currently run things here. that would be Iraq. saved by a letter. and a little geography. this site has cool and surprising things.
surprise! Iranian young people who are articulate world travellers. surprise! this piece, with its little glimpse of Afghan refugees, anomalously living in some obscure corner of Iran. Iran. there was a girl, a persian girl. in San Anselmo, back in 78. there were these dudes. it's funny now of course, but they were always dressed in real dark suits. and dark themselves. men of God. they're always men of God. which isn't hard to pull off when you make a God out of your own genetic material. anyway, she was persian, and hunted, rich and dangerous, not a stunning beauty, wild and desperate, and I was wandering around like a punch-drunk yob when I met her, but I was also in my late twenties, living close to the ground, relatively fit, tan etc. there was a night, we were at this house, the dudes came, I don't remember all of it, going out to meet them, the voice saying, here is one of those dreams you wanted, hero, going out it was dark a narrow driveway, and then like so many of these things it all goes blank. but she was real, the dudes were real, she was terrified. I was mystified. it was 25 years ago. }

atomjack { kicks off a futile search for corroboration. the idea that the Hopi words for sun and moon are reverse-echoed in Tibetan is of course heavily appealing to newage Californians, among others. but also to me. who lives in CA but is not newage. no really, I'm not. I mean it, I'm not newage at all. really, I'm not. at all.}

kokopelli chang baba {I don't have the energy at the moment to run all this down. I suppose what's needed is a live expert to consult. or previous scholastic refutation online. the guy's an obvious fringe-dweller, but that's not enough to rebut the claim. the idea that the european gypsies were from India was absurd on the face of it a hundred years back. though now it's accepted truth. evidently they pulled out a thousand years ago as a band of wandering entertainers. circus folk. way back when. so Kokopelli may have cousins in Uzbekhistan. I don't know}

brilliant Japanese pruning saws

brilliant Italian driving short

NOLA.com: Creole contretemps "I still walk in and have that sort of visceral gastronomic sensation," he said.
{while we're on the subject of nostalgic idignation or whatever it is...there used to be a filler thing The New Yorker did, little paragraphs from other journalistic media, with oftentimes hidden absurdities or tricky misusings of the lingua mater. and then with the briefest of brief utterances, the coup de gras. I learned wit from that. I did. and a kind of rigor. because who wants to be on the receiving end of such unassailable irony? they keep trying to resurrect it I think, at least every once in a while I'll see one. though it's been years since I saw one that had that zing, that touch, bad writing skewered with perfect ringing clarity, and forbearance, that's the key, forbearance. that we have to live among such idiocies. but in spite of all that, we do manage to go on, we do go on.
"visceral gastronomic sensations".
indeed.}

BBC News | SCI/TECH | 'Astonishing' skull unearthed in Africa The skull is so old that it comes from a time when the creatures which were to become modern humans had not long diverged from the line that would become chimpanzees.

{this points to the distance, the vast desert in between the great valleys of science and spirituality. the writer says: "....diverged from the line that became...." why does he say that? what fundamental stance is revealed? why the insistence on a line and branches? isn't that a holdover from the dead days of anthropocentric fundamentalism?
aren't we truly first cousins? hasn't that been demonstrated beyond doubt now? but isn't kinship at the heart of this quiet war? those of us who are proud of that relation and those who are ashamed of it? and isn't the shame not the sullied propriety of a southern family soiled with the tar brush, but the actually inferior place we occupy compared to them, our brothers and sisters still in the the living heart of the world? these people will continue to insist the superiority of their bloodlines while at the same time destroying the web of life that still remains.
not that all that is in that one phrase, but it does lurk right behind it.}

BBC News | SCI/TECH | 'Astonishing' skull unearthed in Africa The skull is so old that it comes from a time when the creatures which were to become modern humans had not long diverged from the line that would become chimpanzees.

{this points to the huge desert of incomprehension that lies between the great valleys of science and spirituality. the fundamental stance of the writer revealed in the throwaway : "diverged from the line that would become....." what? why did he say that? what does that mean? what is implied? what truth is obscured there? why? is it kinship that's denied? isn't it always? the family connection that most troubles 'modern' thinkers, whether they're lost in superstition or lost in dry and lifeless rationality.}

how's your news?

9.7.02

From the Files of Mike Mailway In Trenton, N.J., doctors monitored a handyman named Al Herrin for several months, and confirmed his claim that he didn't sleep. If he could go without it for that long, they said, maybe he could go without it for a lifetime. He took catnaps in chairs, but he swore he never lay down. When he died at age 92 in 1947, survivors found no bed in his hut.

!!! Fun With Mathematics !!! -- Harry J. Smith's Home Page

Yahoo! News - Texas Boy Nearly Beaten to Death by Pastor- Police .....Louie Guerrero in intensive care for four days after broken blood vessels caused his kidneys to fail, court records say.
Both men are charged with a single count of felony injury to a child, according to an affidavit filed on Monday.
Court records allege the 90-minute beating was to physically "break" Louie for lying, Joshua Thompson allegedly told the boy's stepfather afterward.
{a. what would Jesus do? or more to the point, where was Jesus while this was happening? and b. How much more of this shit is happening without the public outcry? imagine the fear installed if the kid hadn't ended up at the clinic.}

teaching Italian kids about the problems caused by poor dental hygiene

errr, make that from Book Happy

these two gems, which together constitute the self-published autobiography of a 38-year-old ex-public servant who lives with his father in the Sydney suburb of Maroubra, and whose life gives new meaning to the words "mundane" and "uneventful."
from Happy Books

In 1949 Mr. E. Hawley of Stone Harbor, New Jersey purchased a house from the Aladdin Company. His story is representative of the many customers who went through the process of purchasing a pre-manufactured home from the Aladdin Company.


legal battle was brewing in Britain as a newspaper reported on Monday that a white couple had had black twins as the result of a mistake during fertility treatment.

Ants arrange their dead using the same principles that are thought to produce the markings on animal skin and on tropical sea shells.
� � �
Turing showed that an initially uniform distribution of reacting molecules can develop into localized blobs that differ in chemical composition. Chemicals in an embryo might behave in this way, he thought, turning a uniform cell into one with some structure - a kind of primitive body plan.

There were no computers to help Turing with the difficult and tedious mathematical calculations, so he was forced to make a lot of simplifications. As a result, the work was largely ignored by biologists for several decades.

once again, Sterling points, and off I go. this time to the crib and jungle of atomjack

not in spite of, not because of, but along with, the translated commentary is itself a representation of that which it comments on

logophilia

Virtual Museum of Russian Primitive. Catalogue. {stopped here July 09, 2:06 am.}

Virtual Museum of Russian Primitive. Catalogue Purygin, Leonid Anatolievich�"Mother of Naive Artists"

8.7.02

more from The Cloud of Unknowing Here beginneth a book of contemplation, the which is called the CLOUD OF
UNKNOWING, in the which a soul is oned with GOD.

The Register USA for the corporate buyers being a Microsoft customer usually goes pretty like the old cowboy movies. Whether it's the lieutenant or the sargeant who shouts "Indians!", it's always the sargeant who gets the arrow in the chest. So go figure, you'll pay (and you will, you will) for free arrows in the chest.

In Colombia, U.S. Companies Get Down to Business
Colombia�s largest employer is based in Westlake Village, California. Dole controls the nation�s banana industry and in 1998 bought four flower companies accounting for 25 percent of Colombian flower production.
Two-thirds of fresh-cut flowers sold in the United States come from Colombia. The industry has hurt the environment of a central savanna where most of the flowers are grown. Aquifers there have dried up, requiring water to be brought in from Bogot�, the capital.
Toxic residues from pesticides banned in Europe have turned up in groundwater. One-fifth of the chemicals used in the Colombian industry�s greenhouses have been restricted in the United States for health reasons. Studies by local nongovernmental organizations have found that nearly two-thirds of Colombian flower workers suffer from peculiar illnesses, ranging from nausea to miscarriage. Most women who become pregnant are immediately terminated from their jobs.

Georgian musik index (short)

more hippie links

multo beaucoup hippie links { offa Krassner search}

Frank Serpico, the whistle-blowing ex-New York City cop, criticized the government's anti-terrorism measures at a July Fourth reading of the Declaration of Independence.

"It is my opinion that never before have we, as a nation, stood in greater danger of losing our individual liberties as we are today," he said. "We, the people of this great nation, are being punished for the transgressions of our leaders and their consorts."

The Crown of the Andes, symbol of the Almanach de Bruxelles

A U.S. law authorizing the State Department to designate groups as "terrorist" and which allows those who support them to be prosecuted has been declared unconstitutional by a federal judge, throwing U.S. anti-terrorism strategies into disarray.

Kartli? Georgian(Iberian) ethnic group? also a pagan god?
and here is a list of famous people related to the descendants of Kartli worshippers

greenpeace Japan Nuclear shipment to face opposition along its entire route by Governments and ordinary citizens terrified at the prospect of accident or deliberate attack

7.7.02

Where Will Volcanoes Erupt in California's Long Valley Area?, Volcano Fact Sheet Most likely, the next eruption will be small and similar to previous eruptions along the Mono-Inyo volcanic chain during the past 5,000 years. Such eruptions typically begin with a series of steam-blast explosions as rising molten rock (magma) encounters and vaporizes underground water near the Earth's surface. These blasts can throw large blocks of rock and smaller fragments hundreds of feet into the air, leaving deep, circular pits like the Inyo Craters.
If magma reaches the surface, gases trapped within it can escape explosively, hurling volcanic ash (tiny fragments of the solidifying magma) as high as 6 miles or more. Airborne volcanic ash can be carried hundreds of miles downwind, and the amount and size of falling ash decrease with distance from the eruption site. Thin accumulations of ash pose little threat to life or property, especially in areas where the roofs of most buildings are constructed to withstand heavy snow loads.

Works in the William Blake Archive

http://www.underdown.org/pictures.htm links of educational interest

Volcano World -- The Premier Source of Volcano Info on the Web Source of Volcano Info

korean history search engine

History of Korean Martial Arts After the Korean liberation from Japan (August 15, 1945), Korean martial arts (i.e. "moo-yae" or "moo-sool") spread rapidly throughout the country. Classical Korean martial art techniques, which had been hidden, one by one surfaced and became publicly known. The reason for this rapid public disclosure of secret arts stems from the rivalry that developed between each proponent of some individual martial art form. That is, individual masters of their own particular martial art techniques tried to show theirs to be the "superior" Korean martial art.

However, the majority of these martial art skills to surface at this time were not organized systematically and were nothing more than individual techniques. Hence, after a brief flurry of activity, many of these arts ended up fading out of sight again.

Although these classical Korean martial arts were highly-developed, I suspect the reason for their disappearance were either because of the difficulty of adapting them practically to the needs of the modern society, or because they weren't something which could be made into sports.

Korean Martial Arts The stone-throwing techniques of those prehistoric Koreans have survived down to this very day and are called too-suk sool ('stone-throwing arts'). The awesome effectiveness of these stone throwing techniques was amply displayed in the battles at Hangjin and Chinju mountain fortresses during the Japanese invasions into Korea in the late 15th century under Hideoshi.

birch lane{bandwidth hogging and a little precious/affluent/narcissistic but really good photography and sincere, for all that}

Marion Post Wolcott - Kentucky - #6 {more genius work from Marion Post Wolcott}

Glucosamine and Chondroitin Sulfate {greatly rendered, clear and informative site}

I recall liana.org worthwhile

ALONG THE OHIO backyard dogs

Marion Post Wolcott - Virginia #2

Marion Post Wolcott - Vermont #05 {there are women like this still in the world}

Cloud of Unknowing With an Introduction BY EVELYN UNDERHILL

The Cloud of Unknowing
"HERE EENDITH THE CLOWDE OF UNKNOWING"

6.7.02

Guardian Unlimited Observer | Focus | Warming world on thin ice Sherpas and Buddhist lamas told him the glacier no longer reached to where Hillary's base camp tents were pitched: it had melted three miles up the valley.
To check their accounts, McNaught-Davis climbed up to a glacial meltpool at 5,000 metres that 20 years ago was marked on maps as a series of small ponds.
He found that the ponds had merged into a vast lake more than a mile long. 'It was huge. I was completely amazed,' he said. 'Further up the glacier you can see more ponds forming.'
And it is happening so quickly that map makers cannot keep up.

Breslin
So I called Daniel's friend, who called Mexico, after which he called me.

"He says he didn't get the money."

For nearly seven months, this man has lived in dust while some cheap, grubby Court Street lawyer toys with money and not one person in this great legal system, not a district attorney, state attorney general, chief judge, United States attorney or bar association has stirred itself to recognize the outrage.

Commentary / Edward Monks: The end of fairness: Right-wing commentators have a virtual monopoly when it comes to talk radio programming - The Register-Guard, Eugene, Oregon, USA Perhaps it should not be a surprise that the acts of President Reagan, Reagan's FCC appointments, Sen. Packwood, Justice Scalia and failed Supreme Court nominee Bork and the first President Bush should combine to ultimately produce, in my town, a 4,000 hour to zero yearly advantage for Republican propaganda over the Democratic opposition.Nor should we overlook the Orwellian irony that the efforts of an organization calling itself the Freedom of Expression Foundation helped result in so limited a range of public expression of views.

Goodwin Isn�t Fazed by Storm Over the Pledge
"The Wall Street Journal gave [the ruling] about a half-inch, which is what it deserved," Goodwin said.
He said he has received much reaction -- from strangers, lawyers and old Army buddies -- which has been running hot and cold. All the e-mails go into a folder marked "Newdow."
"Someday when I haven't got anything else to do, I'll read them," he said.

HHSPRESS archives -- July 2002 (#9)sleep is good, very good, sleep is good, very good, sleep is good....

tiecuttertiehacker

william ballou has lived in a log cabin for forty.....

5.7.02

very important information

Who's leading Who? fearless leadership

Poetry Daily: Today's Poem
...I leak words onto my pillow at night. I imagine they drip out my ears like hot water after a day at the pool, each letter a thick shimmering drop onto flannel sheets. Cholera. Helium. Zoroastrian. But by the time I find them in the morning they are hard, stuck to my pillowcase like a grain of rice stuck to your jeans after a dinner of stir-fry and beer.....

Danielle Dutton
Denver Quarterly
Volume 36, Number 3/4
Fall/Winter 2002

io and jupiter Cassini justifies its budget

BBC News | MIDDLE EAST | Jenin deaths video implicates army{ I guess we all wonder at times. how things that seem so obvious are ignored and overlooked. or run from. the doubt being that it's not that clear and what we see is incomplete or unimportant. but. I keep wanting to say this over and over. there is no monolithic Jewish thing. that is an illusion fostered by something else, that hides behind the history of persecution that is the history of the Jews. and thus claims its immunity from accusation. to accuse that thing is to accuse the victims of pogrom and Holocaust. but it is not true. it is a lie. just as the swine that dominate American politics at the moment don't speak for America, as a country and an experiment in democracy, or for the American people whose history is over 200 years old. but they are wrapped in the flag, and hiding behind it. so that to attack them to accuse them, especially in this dark hour, is to accuse and attack America itself. bullshit. it is to defend America that these men must be accused, separated from the people of this country and shown for what they are, parasites with no allegiance but to themselves. and it is the same with the Jews. though fear and commonality force the issue into the false divisions, it makes it that much more urgent to distinguish, we need names for these creatures that fit, that accurately describe what they are and do. just as many in the rest of the world now spit when they speak of Americans and never think of the thousands, the millions of us who have been persecuted and misused here in our own country, so many do likewise with the Jews. and here is why}

11 microbiologists died within 5 months of each other

scripting

minor ninth

robert friedman died

Janis Ian via scripting news:
If they really wanted to do something for the great majority of artists, who eke out a living against all odds, they could tackle some of the real issues facing us:

The normal industry contract is for seven albums, with no end date, which would be considered at best indentured servitude (and at worst slavery) in any other business. In fact, it would be illegal.
A label can shelve your project, then extend your contract by one more album because what you turned in was "commercially or artistically unacceptable". They alone determine that criteria.
Singer-songwriters have to accept the "Controlled Composition Clause" (which dictates that they'll be paid only 75% of the rates set by Congress in publishing royalties) for any major or subsidiary label recording contract, or lose the contract. Simply put, the clause demanded by the labels provides that a) if you write your own songs, you will only be paid 3/4 of what Congress has told the record companies they must pay you, and b) if you co-write, you will use your "best efforts" to ensure that other songwriters accept the 75% rate as well. If they refuse, you must agree to make up the difference out of your share.
Congressionally set writer/publisher royalties have risen from their 1960's high (2 cents per side) to a munificent 8 cents.
Many of us began in the 50's and 60's; our records are still in release, and we're still being paid royalty rates of 2% (if anything) on them.

THE SECRET LIVES OF NUMBERS very cool thing

http://www.memepool.com/

#!/usr/bin/girl -v3 | [ a girl, a browser, and a lot of spare time ]

Higgy's page : My Links Page

4.7.02

The Register USA "If there were no state-sponsored censorship of the Internet, if Cisco et al weren't crack hoes for hire, if there were no democracy activists screaming for help -- hell, we could be off having fun instead of working long hours after our day jobs," Hacktivismo member and occasional Reg contributor Oxblood Ruffin told us.

Mirror.co.uk - THE ROGUE STATE Potential vast energy sources in Central Asia have become critical for the deeply troubled US economy, and for the Bush administration, which is dominated by oil industry interests, notably the Bush family itself. An investigation by the Hong Kong-based Asia Times in January found that the US was frantically developing "a network of multiple Caspian pipelines".
THE disgraced Enron Corporation, one of Bush's biggest campaign backers, conducted a feasibility study for a $2.5billion oil pipeline being built across the Caspian Sea. Top current and former American officials, including Vice President Cheney, "have all closed major deals directly and indirectly on behalf of the oil companies", says the Asia Times.
If there was a map of American military bases established in the region to fight "the war on terrorism" what would be immediately striking is that it would follow almost exactly the route of the projected oil pipeline to the Indian Ocean.
����
There is only one way such rogue power can be resisted. It is by speaking out and urgently. If our government won't, we must.

free questions

are you free? have you ever been more free than you are now? less?
if you were more free at some other time, did you know it then, or only realize it later?
were you free if you didn't know you were?
which is more free, a baby in the womb, or a newborn?

here's a middle-class suburban family with seven members:

Father. Stanley. Manages a Crate&Barrel franchise.
Mother. Edith. Housewife and mom.
Eldest daughter. Mary. College-bound senior in high school, going 'steady', has a driver's license and her own car, and an afterschool job to pay for insurance etc.. Has a 1 am curfew weekends.
Youngest daughter. Madeline. Eighth-grade, no boyfriend, no job, has a bicycle, and some chores. 10 pm curfew weekends.
Dog. Fidel. Neutered. Lives in the backyard, with some house privileges and infrequent trips to places like the beach or the woods.
Cat. Leon. Neutered. Has 24/7 access to house and/or outside through cat door.
Bird. Beaker. Not neutered. Lives alone in a 2X3 foot cage, doesn't get let out because of 'droppings'.

which family member has the most freedom? which one do you think feels the most free? is it possible to talk about the freedom of the entire family? how would they exercise their freedom as a group? is it possible that most people's ideas of freedom are about being free FROM something negative? something like hunger, danger etc.? that they're more than willing to trade their independence for security? or is it that they mean freedom from the burdens of living, and/or the weight and responsibilities of having freedom, being able to choose from among many different ways, to go, to do, to be. and being responsible for the outcomes of those choices, good or bad? so that by exchanging the ability to choose from among many different things and courses of action, on the one hand, for the security of having choices made for them, on the other hand, that even though they're actually surrendering it to someone else, they experience a kind of 'freedom'? so that for these people, freedom means a kind of return to the days of childhood, or a vacation from work and responsiblities. could that be it?

would you be more free if you had more money? how much money would you need to have before having more wouldn't increase your sense of freedom?

is it slavery if no one complains?
if democracy is the exercise of political choice and freedom, and if Al Gore received the majority of popular votes in the last election, but through political manipulation and the exercise of economic power the Republican Party simply ignored the will of the people and essentially stole the election, is there a profound hypocrisy at work when the President speaks of freedom?
is it slavery if no one complains?
is it?

undocumented roses

World Tribune.com: U.S. Air Force: Israel has 400 nukes, building naval force A United States Air Force report asserts that Israel is building a nuclear naval force meant to respond to any nuclear strike by such countries as Iran or Iraq.
It is the first time a U.S. military institution has stated that Israel has produced a hydrogen bomb. The number of purported Israeli nuclear weapons cited in the report is double that of previous assessments.

Staggering AIDS Report From U.N. "Simply put, it's terrifying," said Stephen Lewis, the United Nations' special envoy to Africa. "The spread of the pandemic to parts of the world beyond Africa -- and it hasn't even reached its saturation point in the highest prevalence countries -- frankly it's very hard to believe, but objectively it's true.
"You have," Lewis added, "the greatest single assault on humankind that we've ever known, greater than war and greater than the Black Death."

3.7.02

God's turn signal just started blinking.

Anthrax? The F.B.I. Yawns
{but then, some animals yawn when they're nervous.}

The president will give a speech tomorrow in which he will announce the end of the war on 'terrorism'. Its premise will be that the world situation has deteriorated so markedly and the threat from our enemies has increased so dramatically, it will no longer be enough to merely eliminate 'terrorism'. The United States will now declare war on 'fighting'.
"We must, and we will, fight until all fighting is done. Until the last fighting is removed from our world. We will continue the battle as long as any fighting remains, anywhere. It is our duty, it is our responsibility, to the children of our belief systems, and to the children of belief systems elsewhere. It is our mandate, to fight on, under God, and give no quarter. To fight fighting everywhere, on the land and in the sea, in foreign places and in home places. We must fight constantly, whatever the cost, whatever the burden, for this is the true enemy, this is our biggest threat. Fighting threatens us, and now we threaten it right back. We will meet it head on, with both guns blazing. Fighting is bad, very bad, and we are going to fight it with everything we have, until it is no more."

chipmunk squalor

Metal won't tarnish on the moon.

You've read that the gel from an aloe vera plant helps heal open wounds in human skin. It's said to work the same on open wounds in tree bark.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/02/opinion/02KRIS.html

http://www.nypress.com/15/27/news&columns/signorile.cfm
http://www.lights.com/weblogs/tools.html

Sputnik Kilambi

2.7.02

1.7.02

Viridian Blog

Internet Theology Resources: Spirituality Francis de Sales (1567-1622)
Introduction to the Devout Life. [518K].
Treatise on the Love of God. Currently requires the ability to view PNG files, since whole sections of the HTML version are missing.
Francois Fenelon (1651-1715) and Jeanne Marie Guyon (1647-1717), Spiritual Progress, or, Instructions in the Divine Life of the Soul. Includes his Spiritual Letters, her book A Short and Very Easy Method of Prayer, and other works.
Alan Godlas, Sufism (1997). Excellent concise description of Sufism, with links to other resources. Dr. Godlas teaches Islamic Studies at the University of Georgia.
Guigo II (d. 1193), Scala claustralium. The quintessential medieval exposition of lectio divina.
L'echelle du cloitre. 1922 French translation, at the official web site of the Carthusians.
Scala paradisi. In Latin.
http://www.csbsju.edu/library/internet/theospir.html
Jeanne Marie Guyon, The Autobiography of Madame Guyon.
Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179). A brief biography.
Walter Hilton (d. 1396)
The Scale of Perfection. Hilton's most famous work.
The Scale (or Ladder) of Perfection. 1901 Benziger Brothers edition. This 1870 translation by Cressy uses modernized spelling, but otherwise an archaizing form of English.
The Scale of Perfection. In Middle English. Edited by Thomas H. Bestul. Each Book in its own file, with notes.
The Song of Angels. Short treatise by Hilton.
Treatise Written to a Devout Man.
Roland Horst, Hildegard von Bingen. Good collection of resources, in German and English.
Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises (1522-1548)

Mysticism Resources I have not included links to the extensive resources on non-Western traditions of mysticism. This is mostly because the course that this page is a resource for is limited to Western mysticism. It also reflects my own lack of experience with non-Western mysticism. In no way does it suggest that Western mysticism is somehow better, more worthy of study, or anything like that.

Soledad Brothers - Keeping the blues alive{stoneswarp teenage heartattack}

Yahoo! News - U.S. Bombing Kills at Least 30 at Afghan Wedding Defense Ministry official Dr. Gulbuddin told Reuters: "More than 30 people were killed. It was a wedding ceremony and some of the participants were firing in the sky as part of the celebration. Americans have confessed that they made a mistake."

they're finding new planets every day

STEVEN BERKOFF has accused the American authorities of 'post September 11 hysteria' after he was deported this week for overstaying his visa by a day five years ago.
Berkoff, who has played nemesis to stars ranging from Eddie Murphy to Sylvester Stallone, met his match in the form of an immigration clerk. 'An overzealous immigration officer, desperate to make his mark on the world, discovered that I had overstayed the period of my visa in 1997 by 24 hours,' he said.

BBC News | WALES | English and Welsh are races apart In April last year, research for a BBC programme on the Vikings revealed strong genetic links between the Welsh and Irish Celts and the Basques of northern Spain and south France.
It suggested a possible link between the Celts and Basques, dating back tens of thousands of years.
The UCL research into the more recent Anglo-Saxon period suggested a migration on a huge scale.
"It appears England is made up of an ethnic cleansing event from people coming across from the continent after the Romans left," he said.

Mirror.co.uk - WORLD EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: GEORGE MICHAEL
{WHAM!}

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