Friday, March 12, 2010

Tuesday, March 09, 2010

Filling Station

Walker Evans photos matched with the contemporary poems of the poet Cynthia Rylant — Something Permanent.

Thank you Shelley for such a nice share... Zo u 2!

walker-evans_reedsville-wv-1936_levels.jpg


Filling Station

Everybody wanted that job
and when Ferrell Brown's son

got it,
when Mr. Brown's son got to pump gas
and flirt with the pretty girls all day long,
they all said it was a crock,
that that boy never worked a day
in his life, never had to,
with his rich daddy,
so how come he got a job that

plenty of decent boys with real
need wanted.
Then word got around about
the boy's mother
and how she walked through that
house stark naked and
trying to hang dinner plates on the
clotheline,

and people shut up about the
Brown boy.
Real need is a personal thing,
they said.
And his mother's a loon.


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Monday, March 08, 2010

Allergic to mobile phones

Some 250,000 people in Sweden are allergic to the radio waves that are emitted when someone makes a call with a cellular mobile phone, according to a new report.

Called electro-hypersensitivity, the condition means the afflicted have severe physical reactions — from dizziness, nausea and headaches to breathing problems, heart palpitations and flat-out fainting — to the electromagnetic radiation produced by consumer electronics such as computers, televisions and cell phones.

According to a stunning new article in Popular Science, Sweden is the only country in the world to recognize EHS as a functional impairment. The article explains the plight of Per Segerbäck, one of the three percent of Swedes with the condition.


[More]

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Saturday, March 06, 2010

One Sentence archive - story #3551

Story archives - story #3551

myfairmaybe


When he told his four-year-old daughter that the doctor just needed to look at her eyes to make sure they were okay, she whispered, "Will he put them back in when he's done looking at them?"

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No! We cannot all "just get along"


The very values of Democracy upheld by the left

are preventing them from performing well

on the unlevel playing field of the right.

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Friday, March 05, 2010

Toroid? It is not as bad as all that...

Friday is doughnut day!  Now I am not talking about those sugar coated, fat laden Crispie Creame (purposefully misspelled) "things".  I am talking about all-American, USO-fed-them-to-the-troops (to the Dough boys), old fashioned, substantial, member of the cake food group - yeah, I am talking about real doughnuts.

Aye, now here's the rub, matey.  A very caring and considerate business associate makes a point every Friday to stop by the "bakery" and secure a box of ... er, uh, DoNots.  These are not the afore-alluded to brand name variety - more like KK-wannabes.  And not a real doughnut in the box.

So, if I am to receive any doughnut day fulfillment I must stop at the other bakery in town.  There on the bottom shelf of the glass showcase in a single line are the "Chocolate Iced Cake" doughnuts.  I have never seen more than half a dozen on display at any one time.  So this is to be my fate, my near doughnut experience.  I do take some small solace in the fact that the icing is a legitimate member of an important if secondary food group, Chocolate.  Ah well, such are the sacrifices...

You could say that I am having a toroid love affair with real doughnuts.

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D*mned Goth turtles

Thursday, March 04, 2010

Fate is like...

Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant filled with odd little waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don’t always like.
Lemony Snicket

Borrowed from Day&Age

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Tuesday, March 02, 2010

Your fingers move...

Your fingers move like chicken eating maize."
              - Solgorian watching me type.


Stood in the Maasai Mara

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Free to be...

Monday, March 01, 2010

Get ready for faux coffee

Coffee Industry Hit Hard by Climate Change | Sustainability | Fast Company

The National Coffee Association of Guatemala estimates that production of coffee in nine Latin American countries will dip 28% in the first three months of this years growing season. Coffee production in Columbia already fell 30% to 35% last year to a 33 year low. At the same time, ICO expects demand for coffee to rise from 132 million bags in 2009 to 134 million 60-kilogram bags in 2010.

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Friday, February 26, 2010

Shared Wisdom. Thanks Tamar!

Gleaned from Tamar's Mining Nuggets...

If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him! The Pilgrimage of Psychotherapy Patients. 

I am so glad I found this little book - small in size, but not in value of content. 

I especially adore many entries in the partial register of what Kopp describes as his eternal truths (Page 223):

  1. This is it!
  2. There are no hidden meanings.
  3. You can't get there from here, and besides there's no place else to go.
  4. We are all already dying, and we will be dead for a long time.
  5. Nothing lasts.
  6. There is no way of getting all you want.
  7. You can't have anything unless you let go of it.
  8. You only get to keep what you give away.
  9. There is no particular reason why you lost out on some things.
  10. The world is not necessarily just. Being good often does not pay off and there is no compensation for misfortune.
  11. You have a responsibility to do your best nonetheless.
  12. It is a random universe to which we bring meaning.
  13. You don't really control anything.
  14. You can't make anyone love you.
  15. No one is any stronger or any weaker than anyone else.
  16. Everyone is, in his [her] own way, vulnerable.
  17. There are no great men [or women].
  18. If you have a hero, look again: you have diminished yourself in some way.
  19. Everyone lies, cheats, pretends (yes, you too, and most certainly I myself).
  20. All evil is potential vitality in need of transformation.
  21. All of you is worth something, if you will only own it.
  22. Progress is an illusion.
  23. Evil can be displaced but never eradicated, as all solutions breed new problems.
  24. Yes it is necessary to keep on struggling toward solution.
  25. Childhood is a nightmare.
  26. But it is so very hard to be an on-your-own, take-care-of-yourself-cause-there-is-no-one-else-to-do-it-for-you grown-up.
  27. Each of us is ultimately alone.
  28. The most important things, each man [or woman] must do for himself.
  29. Love is not enough, but it sure helps.
  30. We have only ourselves, and one another. That may not be much, but that's all there is.
  31. How strange, that so often, it all seems worth it.
  32. We must live within the ambiguity of partial freedom, partial power, and partial knowledge.
  33. All important decisions must be made on the basis of insufficient data.
  34. Yet we are responsible for everything we do.
  35. No excuses will be accepted.
  36. You can run but you can't hide.
  37. It is most important to run out of scapegoats.
  38. We must learn the power of living with our helplessness.
  39. The only victory lies in surrender to oneself.
  40. All of the significant battles are waged within the self.
  41. You are free to do whatever you like. You need only face the consequences.
  42. What do you know ... for sure ... anyway?
  43. Learn to forgive yourself, again and again and again and again ...

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Higher IQ Potential

Study Shows Higher IQ Potential

Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics and Political Science, poses the theory that the more intelligent people are, the more likely it is for them to adopt evolutionarily novel preferences and values in response to the challenges of the times.

Kanazawa says that humans are evolutionarily programmed to be conservative - to care mostly about family and friends, to believe in a supernatural power or God because of their paranoia about what they perceive as "unnatural" phenomenon, and, for men, to be polygamous.

"General intelligence, the ability to think and reason, endowed our ancestors with advantages in solving evolutionarily novel problems for which they did not have innate solutions," says Kanazawa. "As a result, more intelligent people are more likely to recognize and understand such novel entities and situations than less intelligent people, and some of these entities and situations are preferences, values, and lifestyles."

H/t to Humorzo

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Thursday, February 25, 2010

Sure isn't a hawk....

Bleeding Heart Dove

Rare in these parts... :-(

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Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Facebook | An Arbitrary Number of People Demanding That Some Sort Of Action Be Taken

Facebook | An Arbitrary Number of People Demanding That Some Sort Of Action Be Taken

An Arbitrary Number of People Demanding That Some Sort Of Action Be Taken

Description:

We Demand Immediate Action on This Crucial Issue!
If nothing is done then however many of us are in this group will be very displeased. We may even comment to express our anger, possibly with bad punctuation or spelling to further communicate our individual but quite possibly collective emotion.

Something Must Be Done About This!


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Monday, February 22, 2010

Curling! With a "C"

The answer my friend is blowing in the wind...

SmartPlanet reports... (emphasis mine)

In a report by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Albany, N.Y.-based renewable energy consulting firm AWS Truewind, wind turbines in the continental U.S. could generate 37 PWh (petawatt-hours) per year — far more than the 3,816,000,000 MWh (or about 3.8 PWh) per year currently required to power the nation, as estimated in 2005.

The report also inspected how the 48 contiguous states stack up in wind power potential.

Here are the Top 10:

  • Texas: 6,527,850 GWh/yr
  • Kansas: 3,646,590
  • Montana: 3,228,620
  • Nebraska: 3,540,370
  • South Dakota: 3,411,690
  • North Dakota: 2,983,750
  • Iowa: 2,026,340
  • Wyoming: 1,944,340
  • Oklahoma: 1,788,910
  • New Mexico: 1,644,970

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What ain't no country I ever heard of! They speak English in What?

The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he, who in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.

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Uptime!

Daily Dozen

. . .