In pictures: The noughties - a decade of lost species | Environment | guardian.co.uk
Dave Pollard:: How to Save the World
(Click on picture and "View Image" or follow the link to the article.)
| Long-Term Intention | Long-Term Practices | Short-Term Intentions (Exercises & Projects) | Hrs/day now | Hrs/day intended |
| Reconnecting with All Life on Earth, Instincts & Emotions | Appreciation (1) Presence/Paying Attention (2) Heart-Opening/Letting Go (3) | 10am to 1pm: personal/group - Forest/ocean walks - Presencing exercises - Gratitude exercises - 'Breathing through' meditation | 0 | 3.0 |
| Increasing Capacity & Competency (Personal and Collective) | Understanding How the World Works (4) Capacity-Building (6) | 2pm-6pm: learning/exploring: - presentation/conversation skills - demonstration skills - creative writing exercises - SSUQIOC exercises - balance and empathy practices | 1.0 | 1.0 |
| Dismantling Civilization | Activism (7) | 2pm-6pm: - Open Space: Stopping the Tar Sands - Open Space: Ending Factory Farms | 0 | 1.5 |
| Creating Models of a Better Way to Live and Make a Living | Model-Building (8)
| 2pm-6pm: - novel: The Only Life We Know - film: Earth 2200: A Travelogue - workbook: Finding Your Sweet Spot - unschooling: personal practice guide | 0.5 | 1.5 |
| Joy, Understanding | Self-Knowing (5) Being Myself (9) | 8pm-12pm: - reflection/questioning exercises - blogging - play: drawing, photography, with animals (original play) | 3.5 | 4.0 |
| (activities not directly related to any of my intentions -- my Y-stuff) | other hours: - self-care (sleep, exercise etc.) - networking; serendipitous reading - self-management (gardening etc.) | 19.0 | 13.0 |
Like other unfortunate side effects of modern philosophy, voiding one's bowels helps ground the sufferer by causing all senses to work in harmony and gives tangible proof of one's existence.
Existential Angst - Uncyclopedia, the content-free encyclopedia
A foreign man who spent the last seven months in jail sent Danwei this description of his daily life at the Beijing No. 1 Detention Center after his release last week.
If I were a Chinese person and not a foreigner, a crime like mine would have been dealt with on the “city district” level, as opposed to the “municipal” level which is much tougher.
The other people incarcerated at Beijing No. 1 Detention Center were all facing life sentences or death sentences, at least as a possibility, so it’s not a place where detainees are given a lot of slack. It’s the site of Beijing’s newly constructed hi‐tech lethal injection chamber.
It was boring as anything, and the rules were strict.
Danwei II » Blog Archive » A foreigner’s life in a Beijing jail
News Analysis - Painful Mideast Truth - Force Trumps Diplomacy - NYTimes.com
Palestinians on the way from Bethlehem, in the West Bank, to attend prayers at Al Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem crossing an Israeli checkpoint.
JERUSALEM — As the Obama administration tries to broker a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there is a dark truth lurking: force has produced clearer results in this dispute than talk.
I post this as a reminder to myself and anyone who sees it that there are VERY STUPID PEOPLE in the world and we must be ever vigilant. Please remember that venomous snakes will also bite the hand that feeds them.
Lakeville Country Club owner Gary Mosca looks down at a message carved into the 18th green, Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2009, in Lakeville, Mass. The Secret Service and local police are investigating after a swastika was found carved into the Massachusetts golf course green next to President Barack Obama's name.
I just love its name ... Bagheera kiplingi. I am sure that Rudyard would be pleased as well.
Vegetarian Spider (via ScienceDaily)
There are approximately 40,000 species of spiders in the world, all of which have been thought to be strict predators that feed on insects or other animals. Now, scientists have found that a small Central American jumping spider has a uniquely different diet: the species Bagheera kiplingi feeds predominantly on plant food…..
cbsnews.com — Stiff competition from thousands of mom-and-pop marijuana farmers in the United States threatens the bottom line for powerful Mexican drug organizations in a way that decades of arrests and seizures have not, according to law enforcement officials and pot growers in the United States and Mexico.
The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia
In a stunning surprise, the Nobel Committee honored President Obama “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples” less than a year after his election.
President Obama meeting with President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia in New York in September.
Ammon Shea
[On Language - Defending Against Language Pedants - NYTimes.com]
Thanks for the fun: ambivalence - So I say outpedant the pedants, and allow yourself...
...but I am not so naive as to believe in campaign promises. Barack Obama is a professional politician. The fact that politicians cannot and will not keep campaign promises does not surprise me. The fact that our government is not run by just one person does not surprise me.
Conversely I am surprised when other vocal proponents and detractors would lay the entire responsibility of their unfulfilled expectations squarely on the shoulders of one man.I voted for Barack Obama. I wanted to see change.I wanted to see an intelligent, articulate person occupy the office of President of the United States of America. I wanted a person who would be presidential. I wanted a person that I could be proud of. I even considered the fact that Barack Obama is a person of color to be an added bonus. I have not been disappointed.The room is completely empty. No furniture, no carpet or rug. No pictures, no fixtures, no curtains at the window. Only a diminutive man sitting, his walking staff at his side, framed by beams of sunlight.
"Master?" I asked quietly. "Do not call me that. I am not a Master""How then should I address you?""I am" he said never opening his eyes.I sat opposite him in the space at what I felt was a respectful distance. I sat quietly. I tried to find myself, center myself. In a single fluid motion the man rose. With measured pace he approached and placed his walking staff behind me. I flinched."Sit up. With your back straight."I stretched until I could feel his staff between my shoulder blades and at the back of my head. "Better. Now tell me why you have come."I sat motionless. I let my mind race desperately through all of my pre-arranged scenarios. I searched all of my pre-recorded explanations, all of my practicedCongress needs more time to consider health care reform for 300 million people but we should act as soon as possible to put 30-40 thousand more young women and men in harms way in Afghanistan??
Serious Conversations? Not on Twitter
Steven Hodson acknowledges 'the emperor is naked' ... Tweets at 11:00
...I began feeling frustrated because of the limitations Twitter has. It wasn’t just the 140 character limits but also the irritation of trying to keep track of Ed’s replies / counterpoints as they mixed in with all the other noise.Saying very eloquently what I have felt from the very beginning... too little content, too much noise.
. . .
That is the thing about Twitter though – it might be great for short micro-burst announcements or off the cuff exchange of comments but when it comes to maintaining a serious conversation it sucks.
 | September 14, 2009 |
Jim Carroll, the poet and punk rocker in the outlaw tradition of Rimbaud and Burroughs who chronicled his wild youth in “The Basketball Diaries,” died on Friday at his home in Manhattan. He was 60.
September 11, 2009
Shutterbug Friday #3:
John G. Moebes and the Rest of the Story
John G. Moebes was a photojournalist employed by the News & Record of Greensboro, North Carolina. He is perhaps best known for images he captured during the nascent hours of civil disobedience in the Civil Rights movement. When not documenting lunch-counter sit-ins, however, he photographed the balance of Greensboro citizens in more prosaic settings and circumstances. Here is a sampling of that work:
 Frank Zappa, Philly Joe Jones, Earl Freeman, Louis Moholo, John Dyani, Grachan Moncur III and Archie Shepp. |
I want every uninsured man and woman who comes down with swine flu to go sit in the waiting rooms of their elected representatives.
That’s it. Just sit there – coughing. Throwing your used Kleenex in their trash receptacles. If they want us to suffer, they should have to look at at the logical consequences of their inaction. Tell them you’re going to keep coming back until they manage to pass something that’s actually going to help people instead of lining the pockets of the insurance companies.
If the weather gets cold, set up a tent in the parking lot, put a sign on it that says “Waiting Room: Waiting for Affordable Health Care” and call your local media.
So, this buddhist monk walked up to this hot dog vendor and said, “Make me one with everything.”
Plato, by the way, wanted to banish all poets from his proposed Utopia
because they were liars. The truth was that Plato knew philosophers
couldn't compete successfully with poets.
-- Kilgore Trout (Philip J. Farmer) "Venus on the Half Shell"
Blogs used to be like reading books. Twitter is like endless reruns of Billy Mays commercials.
In the land of the night
The ship of the sun
Is drawn by
The grateful dead.
Geeks among you might jump to the conclusion that I am talking about Linux and a document management system. HA!
I was sitting in the side yard contemplating if the sprinkles were going to be enough to drive me back inside when they came. Apparently they were drawn by the red hat that I was wearing. I sat stock still. The first one circled and then hovered so close to my left ear that I could feel the wind from it wings. The second, not to be outdone, jockeyed for a dominant air space position. I sat stock still. Fast moving blurs in my peripheral vision and the trill drum beats of their wings let me know they are dancing mid-air over my head. Just as suddenly they were gone leaving only silence in their stead. Okay, just one geek aside... the red hat or more properly baseball cap was a swag gift from the Novell folks who came to speak at out techno-group a couple of years ago. It was my reward for asking leading Linux questions so they could amplify and sing their product's praises. Ah but the hummers don't really care about all that, they just like to posture and dance.EU funding 'Orwellian' artificial intelligence plan to monitor public for "abnormal behaviour"
The European Union is spending millions of pounds developing "Orwellian" technologies designed to scour the internet and CCTV images for "abnormal behaviour".
A five-year research programme, called Project Indect, aims to develop computer programmes which act as "agents" to monitor and process information from web sites, discussion forums, file servers, peer-to-peer networks and even individual computers.
Its main objectives include the "automatic detection of threats and abnormal behaviour or violence".
quotable quote 
On a whim I unearthed my old typewriter, an Underwood 225. Just a tank of a machine. No frills. Hardly any features. This model doesn't even do Tabs. When I brought it out my son (15) asked what it was. I opened the case and his eyes got big. I chuckled, "This is something you haven't seen before." The concept of a manually, totally unplugged, typing device was completely foreign to him. "How does the carriage move?" he asked tentatively pressing the space bar.
So I set up a couple of milk crates in the shed and rolled in the first blank piece of paper. The monumental in-the-moment sense of facing the blank page came flooding over me. As I found the home row and tried to type the date at the top of my letter I was stumbled. How much of this country's or this world's business/history/correspondence was beaten out on this type of mechanical monster. How great was the hand strength of all those secretaries who forged the written word long before the advent of electricity - and even beyond. The letter I produced for Rosemary, away at college, was filled with faint letters, missed spacing and overstrikes. Yet it is a letter by my own hand in real time. I found myself wonderfully centered. I have to construct each sentence and place it correctly the first time. I have to be cognizant of each keystroke as I have no cursor to move at my leisure and Cut&Paste my mistakes. I do not have a spell-checker to correct my atrocious speling (*smirk*). I do not have a grammar checker to alert me to run-on sentences or improper pronoun usage or even the dreaded double-space between words. If you have an old manual monster quietly collecting dust somewhere I heartily recommend you drag it out and give it a try.
Nobel Committee Release
Barack Obama: Interactive Timeline
