What would the world be, once bereft of wet and wildness?
Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Repeat after me: Iraq is fine....there are no problems...don't worry...
(click)
Sometimes my president just amazes me. Apparently, baffled by growing Americican resistance to the U.S. presence in Iraq, the White House has been turning the blame onto the American media. According to one article, government officials are now accusing reporters in the Mideast of "indulging in a morbid obsession with death and destruction, and ignoring how Iraq has improved since Saddam Hussein was toppled." While I would certainly want any news to be fair and balanced, I also want them to report the truth. And the situation in Iraq has definitely not improved since Saddam Hussein was toppled--not yet, anyway. There's still a great deal of violence and chaos in the country, aimed at virtually any foreigner who steps foot within its borders. The populace itself is embroiled in a civil war. In fact, the political and social climate there is so unstable that all it takes is a few cartoons to cause rioting and protests. And most importantly, with regard to Bush's obstinate refusal to believe his critics, the whole damn country is simply unsafe to live and travel around in. And the reporters are pissed, especially the ones actually in Iraq whose lives have been in danger the whole time, who have been forced to report from hotel balconies because it's simply unsafe to go talk with people on the streets. Now, I understand that the media has long been accused of focusing on the sensational, of peddling sex and death because it sells, but for the White House to fall back on that cliched stereotype now in an attempt to pacify us by blaming the reporters is simply irresponsible. I'm sorry, but Iraq is currently in a world of shit. And any attempt to persuade us otherwise at this point is an insult to our collective intelligence. CNN's Lara Logan tells it like it is here:
"Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring. If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature,—if the prospect of an early morning walk does not banish sleep, if the warble of the first bluebird does not thrill you,—know that the morning and the spring of your life are past. Thus may you feel your pulse."
Our Father, who art in pesto
Alfredo be thy name
Thy kingdom come, Al dente done,
on forks as it is on chopsticks
Give us this plate with garlic bread
be sure to give us napkins
As we give napkins to those who impress us
And lead me not to Olive Garden
but delivery from Carraba's.
For thine is the garlic,
the marinara and the oregano
Forever and ever
RAMEN.
These are the top 25 inventions of 2006. My favorite by far is the Magnetic Levitation Arrow Rest, invented by Stuart Minica. The arrow 'literally floats on air, only touching the bowstring of a bow, by a special arrangement of rare earth magnets to achieve magnetic levitation.'
Care for some Medieval-era illuminated manuscripts? I thought so. These are "highlights from the collections of Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts from the Koninklijke Bibliotheek and the Museum Meermanno-Westreenianum." Wow.
"It's so rare, given the basic tenor of most arguments in politics today, but every once in a while someone says something so remarkable that's it's worth noting, without any comment at all.
Such a situation took place on March 1st in Annapolis, Maryland, where a hearing on a proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage was taking place. The far right wing was doing its usual best to frighten, anger, and intimidate the witnesses who dared disagree with them.
Then Jamie Raskin, professor of law at American University, testified as to why the amendment should not be passed.
At the end of his testimony, one of Maryland's most insane ultra-far-rightwingers, republican Senator Nancy Jacobs, stood up and shouted: "Mr. Raskin, my Bible says marriage is only between a man and a woman. What do you have to say about that?"
To which Mr. Raskin replied: "Senator, when you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. You did not place your hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible."
I was cruising through the very excellent World War 2 in Color gallery, which has hundreds of amazing color photographs taken from 1939 - 1948, when I came across the following familiar image:
I was reminded instantly of the same scene I saw in Athens, Greece just a few months ago (minus the tank, of course). I must have been standing right where it rolled past, 60+ years later.
This is cool. There's a photoshop technique called cloning whereby you take multiple pictures of someone and superimpose them all in the same photo. CrazyClones.com has a good collection of these interesting (often silly) shots. Here's an example of one I like:
Apparently audiophiles (read: stereo freaks) are extrememly prone to gadgetry fads. One guy has collected a rather funny gathering of stupid audiophile products that are actually being sold, amazingly enough. My favorite is the set of cable elevators, which allows you to elevate your cable speakers off the floor, resulting in a pure, crystalline sound untarnished by all that floor noise. Check 'em out:
Because I have not had time to adequately respond to the issues raised in this previous post, for which I apoligize, I submit the following reference to the Clergy Letter Project, a praiseworthy attempt by over 10,000 Christian clergy to convince the world that Christian and scientific doctrines ("truth") can coexist. The following is their stance, which I find well-balanced.
Within the community of Christian believers there are areas of dispute and disagreement, including the proper way to interpret Holy Scripture. While virtually all Christians take the Bible seriously and hold it to be authoritative in matters of faith and practice, the overwhelming majority do not read the Bible literally, as they would a science textbook. Many of the beloved stories found in the Bible – the Creation, Adam and Eve, Noah and the ark – convey timeless truths about God, human beings, and the proper relationship between Creator and creation expressed in the only form capable of transmitting these truths from generation to generation. Religious truth is of a different order from scientific truth. Its purpose is not to convey scientific information but to transform hearts.
We the undersigned, Christian clergy from many different traditions, believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist. We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests. To reject this truth or to treat it as “one theory among others” is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children. We believe that among God’s good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought and that the failure to fully employ this gift is a rejection of the will of our Creator. To argue that God’s loving plan of salvation for humanity precludes the full employment of the God-given faculty of reason is to attempt to limit God, an act of hubris. We urge school board members to preserve the integrity of the science curriculum by affirming the teaching of the theory of evolution as a core component of human knowledge. We ask that science remain science and that religion remain religion, two very different, but complementary, forms of truth.
On that note, researchers have recently found several hundred regions of the human genome where genes appear to have been reshaped by natural selection (evolution) within the last 5,000 to 15,000 years. Link to the article is here.
Found an admirable tome but it's in praise of the wrong god? Faith Converter is a godsend for priests, vicars, rabbii and holy men of all descriptions. Preach next Sunday's sermon from the Vedas, Noble Eightfold Path, Torah or Das Kapital!
The premier theological plagiarism solution for OS X, Faith Converter converts text between the vernaculars of thirty different religions, encompassing Atheism, Biopsychosocialism, Buddhism, the Cargo Cult, Christianity, Communism, Confucianism, Druidism, Falun Gong, Hinduism, Islam, Juche, Judaism, Keynesianism, Linux, MacEvangelism, Mahanism, Maoism, NIMBYism, Roman, Scientology, Shinto, Sikh, Stalinism, Taoism, Thatcherism, Trotskyism, Unitarian Universalism, Veganism and Voodoo.
Converted text can be copied, saved or printed.
Sample Conversions:
'Attend church at Christmas or else God will send you to Hell, with Satan, for not reading your Bible.'
becomes:
'Attend collective farm #897 at Leninmas or else Dialetical Materialism will send you to the poverty-striken capitalist democracies, with abundant consumer goods, for not reading your Manifesto.'
'If you are a true bodhisattva, you will also appreciate the insights into the Three Baskets (Tripitika) presented by the monk. Be warned not to be a heretic or sell your soul to Mao, as this usually ends badly.'
converts from Buddhism to atheism as:
'If you are a true science-guy, you will also appreciate the insights into the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Systems of the World - Ptolemaic and Copernican presented by the scientist. Be warned not to be a religious nutter or sell your reticular formation to Pope Paul V, as this usually ends badly.'"
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Dozens of never before released photos from the civil rights era came to light this weekend after an intern discovered them buried in an equipment closet at the Birmingham News.
The photos had been in a box marked: "Keep. Do Not Sell." But at the time they were taken, the newspaper didn't want to draw attention to the racial discord of the 1950s and 1960s, news photographers from the period said.
"The editors thought if you didn't publish it, much of this would go away," said Ed Jones, 81, a photographer at The News from 1942 to 1987. "Associated Press kept on wanting pictures, and The News would be slow on letting them have them, so they flooded the town with photographers."
To the anonymous commenter "Joseph Smith," who recently made a few immature, stupid and mean comments on this blog: go away you moron. Your pointless idiocy is not appreciated here. If you have a problem with my views or any of the views expressed on this blog, address them with respect. If you can't do that, email me and we'll talk. Actually, you can call me. My telephone number is on the home page of this site. That way I can find out who you are and where you live. If you cannot join a mature discussion, then take your dumbass teenage flamer crap back to the lame, acne-riddled cesspool where it belongs. Thanks.
For the past few days Mary Pat and I have been chillin' in South Bend with Pat and Riely for our spring break. I managed to find a little snowboarding action on the massive peaks of southern Michigan. Notice how everyone seems to have cleared the slope when they saw me about to come down.
My friend Anne sent me this link to a cool visual thesaurus, which groups similar things in little knowledge-clouds for easier browsing. Very very cool.
