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Friday, February 27, 2004 Wondering, Wandering in a Mobile World Wandering and wondering: two words that sound nearly the same and mean something similar. When written with an 'a', wandering refers to the physical meandering of a body through space, whereas with an 'o', it becomes metaphysical: an exploration of and around ideas, dreams and concepts. I wander Wandering and wondering very often go together. Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The Reveries of the Solitary Walker uses the walk to frame and provide a backdrop for thinking about things beyond anything encountered or experienced on the actual walk. "Having decided to describe my habitual state of mind," he explains at the beginning of the Second Walk, "I could think of no simpler or surer way of carrying out my plan than to keep a faithful record of my solitary walks and the reveries that occupy them, when I give free rein to my thoughts and let my ideas follow their natural course, unrestricted and unconfined." I wonder Sitting at my computer over two hundred years later, I understand where Rousseau is coming from. With our ever-increasing mobility and 24/7 media and communication, more and more time is spent neither fully here nor there, but travelling – if not physically then mentally – somewhere we are not, rendering us dispersed, in body and mind, sometimes further and sooner than we might wish. [Read More] posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 02/27/04 05:18 | link | comments Personal Voices: The Irritation When did religion become so public? Weren't religion and politics topics we were supposed to keep quiet about? OK, maybe keeping quiet about politics is going too far. But I am longing for the good old days when it was impolite to talk about religion. I do not want to know about your religion, and I am certainly not going to tell you about mine – I won't even tell you if I have a religion. And if I hear one more newscaster talk about that Mel Gibson movie, I am going to scream! [Read More] posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 02/27/04 04:22 | link | comments "King Abdullah of Jordan, the King of Morocco, I mean, there's a series of places—Qatar, Oman—I mean, places that are developing—Bahrain—they're all developing the habits of free societies." - George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Jan. 29, 2004
(Just in case Bush needs a map) posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 02/27/04 01:51 | link | comments
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 02/27/04 01:16 | link | comments Thursday, February 26, 2004 “Freud was convinced as early as 1909 that Jung wanted to kill him. Most likely this was part true for both men. Freud must have projected his desire to be killed onto Jung. After all, in the end, Freud had his internist kill him on command with two lethal injections of morphine.” [The Tao of Jung; David Rosen, MD; 1996] posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 02/26/04 06:31 | link | comments This was the motto of President Harry S. Truman, who kept a sign with these words on his desk. The motto meant that the presidency was, in Calvin Coolidge’s words, “the place of last resort” or more simply, issues of national security are the responsibility of the president. posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 02/26/04 05:48 | link | comments posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 02/26/04 04:32 | link | comments “Despite a President having absolutely no role in the passage of a Constitutional amendment and despite opposition from many of his allies in Congress, the President … [yesterday] announced his support for a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. American Progress issued a statement in response, saying, "The Constitution has been amended to eliminate slavery, to give women the right to vote, and to secure for every person the equal protection of the laws. It has never been amended to mandate discrimination. Nor should it be." [Read More]posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 02/26/04 03:49 | link | comments
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 02/26/04 02:54 | link | comments Java History (Part One) It is simple enough to track the progress of the coffee through Europe by noting the appearance of coffeehouses. In 1650, the first coffeehouse opened its doors in Oxford, England, its proprietor a Turkish Jew named Jacob. In France, the first house opened in 1672. In 1843, there were thousands of coffeehouses throughout Europe and the American colonies. Today’s trendy espresso shops bear no resemblance to the coffeehouses of yore. A true coffeehouse was crowded, smelly, noisy, feisty, smoky, reeking, celebrated and condemned. On the street in London you located the neighborhood coffeehouse by sniffing the air for roasting beans, or by looking for a wooden sign fashioned to resemble a Turkish coffee pot or a sultan’s fez. Inside you found everyone from bankers to stockjobbers, ship-owners to newspapermen. Samuel Jackson had a coffee club at the Turk’s Head; Dryden, Pope, Swift, Addison, and Pepys were all habitués of coffeehouses. posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 02/26/04 01:40 | link | comments Wednesday, February 25, 2004
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 02/25/04 06:56 | link | comments Gestalt
(German for “Whole Pattern”) Psychological Claim: Our perceptions of the world are not built merely from the pieces we perceive; the mind imposes on complicated stimuli a general form that has meaning different from its parts. In other words: “The whole is different from the sum of its parts”[This phrase is often misquoted as “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”] posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 02/25/04 05:24 | link | comments (1) THE NAIL THAT STANDS OUT GETS POUNDED -Japanese Proverb posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 02/25/04 04:54 | link | comments Epicurus, a Greek philosopher (341-270 BC) claimed that the purpose of life is to be free of pain and to pursue what he called “gentle” pleasure, or aesthetic enjoyment and peace of mind. “Epicurus is one of the major philosophers in the Hellenistic period, the three centuries following the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE (and of Aristotle in 322 BCE). Epicurus developed an unsparingly materialistic metaphysics, empiricist epistemology, and hedonistic ethics. Epicurus taught that the basic constituents of the world are atoms, uncuttable bits of matter, flying through empty space, and he tried to explain all natural phenomena in atomic terms. Epicurus rejected the existence of Platonic forms and an immaterial soul, and he said that the gods have no influence on our lives. Epicurus also thought skepticism was untenable, and that we could gain knowledge of the world relying upon the senses. He taught that the point of all one's actions was to attain pleasure (conceived of as tranquility) for oneself, and that this could be done by limiting one's desires and by banishing the fear of the gods and of death. Epicurus' gospel of freedom from fear proved to be quite popular, and communities of Epicureans flourished for centuries after his death.” [Read More @ Epicurus] [The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy/Epicurus] posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 02/25/04 03:42 | link | comments (2) “What is most depressing about “The Passion” is the thought that people will take their children to see it. Jesus said, “Suffer the little children to come unto me,” not “Let the little children watch me suffer.” How will parents deal with the pain, terror, and anger that children will doubtless feel as they watch a man flayed and pierced until dead? The despair of the movie is hard to shrug off, and Gibson’s timing couldn’t be more unfortunate: another dose of death-haunted religious fanaticism is the last thing we need.” [Read More] [NAILED; DAVID DENBY; Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.”] posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 02/25/04 02:15 | link | comments
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 02/25/04 01:38 | link | comments Tuesday, February 24, 2004 "It has always seemed strange to me that in our endless discussions about education so little stress is laid on the pleasure of becoming an educated person, the enormous interest it adds to life. To be able to be caught up into the world of thought -- that is to be educated." -Edith Hamilton posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 02/24/04 08:02 | link | comments (2) In ‘Dear Abby’ today (24 February 2004): “I would be shirking my duty as an advice columnist, however, if I didn’t point out that more than half of all teenagers are sexually active. This is why they need clear, concise sex education beyond, “just say no” to help them avoid sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies.” (Perhaps she could let the Bush adminstration in on this one)
While we’re on the topic… Programs teaching teenagers to "just say no" to sex before marriage are threatening adolescent health by censoring basic information about how to prevent HIV/AIDS. Read the report from Human Rights Watch: United States: Restrictive Sex Ed Impedes AIDS Prevention posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 02/24/04 06:08 | link | comments A History Written In Chechen Blood By Khassan Baiev posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 02/24/04 03:38 | link | comments Harris Interactive conducted a national phone poll* asking respondents who they’d most likely pay to see executed if it were shown on pay-per-view television respondents replied: 21% would pay to see Osama bin Laden executed 11% would pay to see Saddam Hussein executed 34% believe executions should NOT be televised 54% would NOT watch a televised execution *Poll included 1,017 American adults, chosen at random between January 24-26. Margin of error is +/-3.1. posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 02/24/04 03:14 | link | comments An Unusual Love Story Penguins accept same-sex commitments. Why do some people have so much trouble with the idea? By, Gersh Kuntzman
“Roy and Silo's love is a story for the ages. Like so many great lovers, Roy and Silo met in a zoo holding tank in 1998. They were young then, and unsure of themselves sexually like many adolescents…But their attraction could not be denied, and they have remained inseparable, according to Central Park Zoo penguin keeper Rob Gramzay.
Gramzay knew that Roy and Silo had paired off, because at breeding time, they did everything the "straight" penguins did: they built a nest, they defended it from others and engaged in what zookeepers euphemistically call "ecstatic display." It sounds kinky, but it simply means that the penguins stand straight up, stretch out their wings and entwine their necks. It's the penguin equivalent of going to City Hall in San Francisco…”[Read More].
An interesting point:
“… isn't S.F. mayor Gavin Newsom a genius? By allowing gays to marry, not only is he sending a powerful civil rights message, but every one of those gay couples had to buy a marriage license. At $83 a pop, Newsom has added almost $400,000 to the strapped civic treasury—money that certainly won't be refunded when President Bush amends the Constitution to do something no reasonable compassionate conservative would ever do: Make it less protective of individual freedom and personal liberty rather than more.” -Gersh Kuntzman posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 02/24/04 02:09 | link | comments Monday, February 23, 2004 "Feelings are not supposed to be logical. Dangerous is the man who has rationalized his emotions." -David Borenstein posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 02/23/04 16:55 | link | comments Mutually Assured Destruction The Cold War strategic doctrine which made all-out nuclear war the only possibility for war between the super-power blocs (US & USSR). Like it or not (and who would?), it worked, at least in preventing the use nuclear weapons in war. posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 02/23/04 06:58 | link | comments
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 02/23/04 04:12 | link | comments The Lone Ranger Of Righteousness It's my right to run. This is Ralph Nader's core case in announcing his 2004 presidential candidacy. Yes, Nader has a legal right to run. He also has a legal right to donate $100,000 to the Republican Party and become a Bush Pioneer, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea. So much of Nader's career has been built on reminding us of our common ties. It's wrong, he's argued, for companies to make unsafe cars, pollute our air or pillage shared resources. Actions have consequences, he's pointed out with persistence and eloquence. Now, he's taking the opposite tack, fixating on his own absolute right to do whatever he chooses, while branding those who've argued against his running as contemptuous censors, who "want to block the American people from having more choices and voices." This argument would seem familiar coming from an Exxon executive. Coming from Ralph Nader, it marks a fundamental shift from an ethic of responsibility to one of damn the consequences, no matter how much populist precedent he tries to dress it up with. [Read More] posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 02/23/04 02:00 | link | comments Friday, February 20, 2004 "The dream was always running ahead of me. To catch up, to live for a moment in unison with it, that was the miracle." -Anais Nin posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 02/20/04 06:27 | link | comments Main Entry: node 2 : an entangling complication (as in a drama) : PREDICAMENT posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 02/20/04 04:11 | link | comments (1)
posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 02/20/04 03:13 | link | comments (2)
Iran's Blogging Boom Defies Media Control By BRIAN MURPHY, Associated Press Writer TEHRAN, Iran - Take one exasperated Iranian woman. Add a computer. Hook it up to the Internet. "And you have a voice in a country where it's very hard to be heard," said Lady Sun, the online identity of one of the first Iranian women to start a blog — a freeform mix of news items, commentaries and whatever else comes to mind. Initially created to defy the nation's tight control on media, these Web journals have turned into a cyber-sanctuary — part salon, part therapist's couch — for the vast pool of educated, young and computer-savvy Iranians. As Friday's parliamentary elections approach, however, there's a distinct tone of worry that conservatives expected to regain control of parliament would step up pressure to censor the Internet. [Read More] posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 02/20/04 01:28 | link | comments Thursday, February 19, 2004 "If we value independence, if we are disturbed by the growing conformity of knowledge, of values, of attitudes, which our present system induces, then we may wish to set up conditions of learning which make for uniqueness, for self-direction, and for self-initiated learning." -Carl Jung posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 02/19/04 07:43 | link | comments (2)
NASCAR's Silent Majority "Gentlemen, start your engines," President George W. Bush shouted from the infield of the Daytona International Speedway Sunday. In a black racing jacket and button-down blue Oxford, Bush looked every bit like the voter he had come to court: the white, culturally conservative "NASCAR dad." Bush needs lots of NASCAR dads to win in November, and staging a photo op at the "Great American Race" was a masterstroke. But it's not an original idea. In fact, Bush's Daytona trip has a historical precedent: Richard Nixon's December 1969 journey to to a football game in Fayetteville, Ark. Nixon, like Bush, was taking fire for waging war on dubious grounds. After running in 1968 on a secret plan to end the Vietnam War, he had reduced troop strength but hadn't quelled the massive antiwar protests in Washington. The first week of December 1969 was particularly dicey. On Dec. 1, the first televised draft lottery selected more than 300,000 young men to report for military duty. Thousands of protesters threatened to swarm the White House and Capitol Hill. Facing more grim headlines, Nixon made for Arkansas on Dec. 6. [Read More] posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 02/19/04 02:07 | link | comments (1)
The trouble with the Howard Dean who today ended his candidacy for president wasn't that he was too liberal, or too crazy, or too much of a Washington outsider to win the Democratic nomination. The trouble was that he didn't exist. posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 02/19/04 01:17 | link | comments Wednesday, February 18, 2004 Teachers Treated After Eating Doped Cake BERLIN (Reuters) - Teachers in a German school were treated in hospital after gobbling up an anonymously donated chocolate cake, unaware it was laced with hashish, authorities said on Thursday. Some 10 teachers from the school in the northern town of Lueneburg were treated for nausea and dizziness after sharing a cake left at the door to their staff room, a police spokesman said. "They thought it was food poisoning, but the doctors quickly recognized the problem," the spokesman said. "They showed all the classic signs of people under the influence of drugs." The spokesman said the teachers had not suspected anything because it was customary for them to buy cakes from the schoolchildren as part of a fund-raising project.
Blood tests and a sample of an uneaten slice of cake revealed it had been doctored with hashish. The teachers were later discharged and police said they had not yet identified who was responsible for the prank. posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 02/18/04 06:49 | link | comments Arab Wave of Liberty? There May Be Signs of Freedom Stirring Among the Arab World’s Youth By, Fawaz A. Gerges Americans are bombarded with alarming reports from the Arab Middle East about intensifying anti-U.S. sentiments and escalating threats to their security. In the eyes of many Americans, the Muslim Middle East has become simply a caldron of anti-Americanism and out-of-control violence. But the headlines from the region have missed an important trend percolating among the younger generation in various Arab countries. From universities in Cairo, Amman, Beirut, Tunis, Algiers that have become de facto safe havens of civic protest across the Middle East, to soccer arenas, and anti-Iraq war demonstrations, the subtext of this generation's public expression is a deep yearning to be free and enfranchised. The most breathtaking example of the phenomenon for me was a teen panel at a conference organized by the Arab Thought Foundation in Beirut last month. Eight men and women in their late teens from across the Arab world sat on a panel before 1,000 academics, politicians, diplomats, and activists. One after another, the teens stunned their elders into embarrassed silence with vehement scolding of their countries' leaders, not the U.S. or even Israel. posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 02/18/04 04:19 | link | comments Who You Calling "Arab"? By Jack Shafer The headline on today's Page One, above-the-fold New York Times story, "Arabs in U.S. Raising Money To Back Bush," sets the table for a promising meal. You assume that reporter Leslie Wayne is about to serve a dish about how the war in Iraq and aggressive Republican Party outreach have paid dividends to Bush campaign coffers in the form of Arab-American donations. But the uncoiling lede sells a more expansive story than the hed: It's not just "wealthy Arab-Americans" but also "foreign-born Muslims" who are raising big chunks of money for the president. posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 02/18/04 01:45 | link | comments Tuesday, February 17, 2004 A Morally Unethical Relationship!
posted by durani, 02/17/04 02:58 | link | comments Friday, February 13, 2004 A linguistics professor was lecturing to his English class one day. "In English," he said, "A double negative forms a positive. In some languages, though, such as Russian, a double negative is still a negative. However, there is no language wherein a double positive can form a negative." posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 02/13/04 03:12 | link | comments "(T)here are more career women with money to spend, says Kenneth Gassman, a diamond-jewelry analyst, but 'they just haven't been spending it on diamonds.' Focus groups, Morrison says, revealed 'a sort of superstition' that a diamond ring should only be a romantic gift from a man. Thus the positioning of the right-hand ring as a 'signature style piece' that 'liberated' women from a taboo…The idea is that beyond a trend, this could become a sort of cultural imperative.'" First cigarettes and now diamonds: we've come a long way, baby! posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 02/13/04 02:47 | link | comments (1) Atheists, Humanists Push Campaign for 'Darwin Day'
By Robert Evans GENEVA (Reuters) - Atheist, agnostic and humanist organizations in the Americas, Europe and Asia are gearing up for a five-year campaign aimed at achieving international recognition of Feb. 12 as "Darwin Day."
Their target date is 2009 -- the bicentenary of the birth of British biologist Charles Darwin whose own faith in a deity who created the world collapsed before the theory of evolution he set out in 1859 in his ground-breaking "The Origin of Species." Why push for an annual celebration of Darwin now? His ideas are widely shared and even religious leaders from churches that once denounced him as a heretic accept that life on Earth evolved over 3 billion years from primitive forms. posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 02/13/04 01:18 | link | comments Tuesday, February 10, 2004 |
