Forecast tonight: Dark
June 24, 2008
George Carlin is gone, man. He brought light to our hypocrisies from dirty words to the ten commandments, he was fearless and funny. As long as these videos live on YouTube, American youth will be free! ( to think for themselves.)
Ever wonder when to stone your children? More good stuff for kids!
Geek Love
June 20, 2008
Do you love diagrams? I found this great one a few months ago and saved it. I can not remember where I found it, but likely it is from the NYT and their always great graphics department. If you subscribe to one paper, this is the one. Online they have great slide shows and videos from their reporters around the world as well as access to their editorials. But don’t forget to subscribe too. That is my geek love, the NYT!
Subscriptions are especially important today in a world where large corporations are buying up newspapers and television stations, then destroying them. Besides their horrible news, Fox would have me running from their horrible graphics!
Can’t help but hope
June 20, 2008
I can’t help but hope. But I plan to do much more. Door to door and voter registration, whatever it takes. I have not felt so passionate about a candidate since Robert Kennedy. So where these posts were meant to concern art, science and nature, there will be other news to check out, at least until November.Military Culture
June 16, 2008
“Military culture is filled with a totemic visual language consisting of symbols and insignia that signify everything from various unit and command affiliations to significant events, and noteworthy programs.These markers of identity and program heraldry begin to create a peculiar symbolic regime when they depict one’s affiliation with what defense-industry insiders call the “black world” – the world of classified programs, projects, and places, whose outlines, even existence, are deeply-held secrets. Nonetheless, the Pentagon’s “black world” is replete with the rich symbolic language that characterizes other, less obscure, military activities.
The symbols and insignia shown in the Symbology series provide a glimpse into how contemporary military units answer questions that have historically been the purview of mystery cults, secret societies, religions, and mystics: How does one represent that which, by definition, must not be represented?’
from Symbology (Volume I) by Trevor Paglen
2006
50 Ways to Help the Planet
May 7, 2008
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National Parks and Buffalo Slaughter
April 21, 2008
Genetically, a buffalo that seeks out fresh grass lands is a “good” buffalo, one best suited to survive. But not in Yellowstone National Park. Due to hysterical ranchers, any buffalo leaving the park are shipped off to the slaughter house. This is the largest slaughter of our native bison recorded in years- more than 1,465 to date.
FRED is Dead
June 5, 2007
Fred is Dead or How the Huge Hog was a Wild Lie
I was very grateful to Rhonda Blissitt, the hog farmer who came forward with the truth about the “monster pig” hunted in Alabama. I had found the story upsetting and even more so when I went online and saw the web site promoting the gun used and making the eleven year old out as remarkable in some way. I had thought to write a letter in response to the taxidermist’s claim that the Bible said animals are here for us to do with as we please. This is not really the accurate concept behind that quote. If people insist on checking the Bible on this matter why don’t they read Jehovah’s response to Job? Jehovah goes on for a few pages in the Bible and makes it pretty clear that he created the world for his own purposes and we humans are not to step out of bounds with his creation.
But then Rhonda Blissitt came forward with the truth about the hogzilla. His name was Fred. Fred, the domesticated breeding hog had been sold 4 days before to a farmer who uses his land as a “game” hunting preserve. Poor Fred had gotten too big for breeding or eating. Fred had not been fed for 4 days at the time of his death. Rhonda Blissitt said he liked to gnash his tusks and bark like a dog, which must have been a fearsome sight, but hardly life threatening.
But Fred’s story reveals there was a great deal of unnecessary cruelty involved. Fred was shot, wounded, then hunted down over three hours and 16 shots (!) before dying. Shot with the small, pistol-sized rifle the chubby little boy is cradling with such pride. It is an obviously cruel and unnecessary way to dispatch an animal. Yet the “hogzilla” hunting web sites are admiring of the facts regarding the small gun. It gives one pause as to what hunters think their sport is all about. It certainly isn’t survival.
And it gets worse. Hunting domestic pigs is legal. Hogs become listed as “feral” once they are released in the wild. That is an interesting catch 22 and possibly the explanation behind all the so-called “hogzilla” the knuckle-heads go on about on their web sites. It is pretty “pathetic” that these hunts are canned game. Fred was as “game” as spam in the can.
If hunters want a real survival fantasy, they should take up rock climbing.
“Is it by your wisdom that the hawk soars, and spreads his wings toward the south? Is it at your command that the eagle mounts up and makes his nest on high?
the matter we make is equal to…..
May 18, 2007
The matter we make is equal to the energy……..of cleaning up the mess. If matter on earth is unchanging, can’t we think of better ways to put these molecules to work.
Looking at the world, one “tree” at a time.
May 7, 2007
“Seeing the forest for the trees” is an expression that aptly explains the myopia of our human cognition. This has been explained as the organizing effect of the left brain on the impulsive creativity of the right brain. “Seeing the forest for the trees” is a way to experience life with out much complexity, without much friction either. But that mindset presents a false, incomplete sense of the planet we inhabit. Any time spent looking around, one realizes that in fact this world celebrates individuality, variety, complexity and uniqueness. Nothing is really the same as something else.
Maybe our brains do need to see the forest first, processing quickly what we need to know most. But without another, closer investigation we are left without a complete picture, one for both the left and right brain together.
After seeing the “forest”, we are ready to look again and maybe this time take a closer look. Tree by tree.
the comet’s tail or wallpaper for the megachurch
May 6, 2007
If the contents of a comet’s tail could be analyzed, then the origins of the universe might be known.
