Tag Archives: web media

Tinywrld

tinywrld

A mosaic of the world made out of tilt-shifted videos of cities around the world.

Hayaku: A Time Lapse Journey Through Japan from Brad Kremer on Vimeo.


Crazy good public art. Maybe somebody in the ‘wood will get on it.

Leave a Comment

Filed under web 2.0+

Cluck ‘champ

The Holy Chicken of Life & Music from NOMINT on Vimeo.

Leave a Comment

Filed under creative captures, dada

A Hopeful Leader

Sarah Haile-Mariam. While earning her B.S. in Communications at New York University, Sara volunteered as a grassroots organizer, surrogate and out-of-state coordinator for the New York Obama campaign. Sara spoke on behalf of the campaign at rallies and town halls in New York City and on television, emphasizing the importance of young people’s participation in politics. Since the campaign, Sara has continued to write about youth activism, contributing to Global Grind and the Huffington Post. She also served as campaign coordinator for David Yassky’s campaign for New York City Comptroller. (soure: bio @campusprogress

Ms. Haile-Mariam’s other interviews at the recent Glen Beck Washington DC festival can be found at the bottom of her bio page, along with her other contributions.)

Here’s her address to the Campus Progress organization.

Finally, she was on CSPAN June 10, 2010, speaking about youth activism.

She’s my new heroine. In a better world, over-matched idealogues and the regularly ignorant would surrender. But, such a world wouldn’t be very amusing. By all means, checking out her other videos from the Beck rally, Birther Speaks out at Glenn Beck Rally, Black Tea Party Leader Speaks Out at Glenn Beck Rally, We’ll Always Have the Memories of Glenn Beck Rally.

During this Tea Party summer-into-fall, I’m reminded how different things would be if just the millennial generation would get out and vote. Generally, voting participation increases the more educated, affluent, and, older a person is. The high school degree carrying, and high school drop out, under-30 segment votes the least of any segment.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Where’s Werner?

Werner Herzog {Wikipedia}

Much to my delight, I discovered the series of youtube videos featuring German film director Werner Herzog reading excerpts from children’s books. Probably the full impact of these films is only accessible if one is familiar with Herzog’s art. Still, lacking this background, I suppose their deadpan existential content would be amusing and rewarding.

Also: When Werner Rescued Phoenix

(For me, Werger Herzog is cinema’s most provocative humanist, and, he’s also–by far–my favorite director on today’s film scene. If you haven’t received one of his transmissions, The White Diamond (2004), is my own pick as a good all-round starting point. Herzog has directed many a masterpiece, so my advice is to start with this recent film and keep on going. In fact, there are only a handful of directors with a comparable output. And no director ever ripped off a string over ten years as Herzog did with Aguirre, the Wrath of God, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, Stroszek, Nosferatu the Vampyre, Woyzeck, and Fitzcarraldo. )

Leave a Comment

Filed under Uncategorized

The Big Uneasy

Harry Shearer’s The Big Uneasy is about bad engineering, mendacity, and future walls to nowhere.

Harry’s been busy. Harry’s videos occupy a channel over at My Damn Channel. He’s lucky because he can partner with his wife, the almost illegally talented singer/songwriter Judith Owen.

Judith Owen is obviously a good sport too.

The videos with a message she makes with her husband don’t showcase her main talents because she’s a astonishing vocal artist. I’ve posted a taste over at nogutsnoglory.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Uncategorized

May your gold perish with you

Glenn Beck has something major to do with another ambitious and tilted web portal, The Blaze*. Here’s a capture of today’s page. The ridiculous headline tops a truly funny/nutty video about some members, evidently, of the ‘professoriat.’

I’m okay with those who wish to protect the non-political nature of The Restoring Honor (umm, to America) protest ritual on Saturday. Why? Because even though politics was obviously and self-evidently implicit in, and concretely an aspect of, the event’s sub-text, by setting this to the side I can regard more fully that the event was about purportedly framed by a call to vivify both religion and patriotism.

Or, vivify some version of Christianity. You know: the new-fangled Beckian Christianity, an offshoot stripped of its social gospel and re-sanctified–I presume–to be a harsh Libertarian foundationalism; and one centered on personal responsibility and other stuff found nowhere at the center of a decent, magnanimous, moral old school Christianity.

Social justice is a very bad thing? …as the bumper sticker has it: Who would Jesus Bomb today?

newleftmedia @youtube

Two videos from the event, here for your viewing pleasure, should cause you to wonder about selective editing and the ease with which ignorance can be evoked. It is the case that at any gathering numbering ten or more people, it is likely child’s play to get someone to unwittingly embarrass their self, if he or she is asked about politics or religion.

However, I still would be open to a coherent presentation of the Tea Party case. I have spent more than a few hours looking for as much, and, probably because I’m modestly overly aware of stuff like philosophy and history, I have yet to find any cogent explication. Really, my bar isn’t set very high. And, this documentation doesn’t have to be convincing, it just has to be reasonable and reasonably intelligent. I’ll keep searching.


Slate V. Video

I certainly agree with the slathering Tea Party about one bare fact: the financial industry should have been held accountable for their grotesque, morally reprehensible, gambling. But, amazingly, now it seems the Tea Party is on the cusp of being co-opted by, in effect, the Club For Growth, Koch Brothers, and their ilk!

This is apparently where the Tea Party is headed: into the arms of the collectivist moneychangers, the very ones who happily took the tax dollar and rewarded themselves handsomely for allowing themselves to be bailed out. Why the Tea Party doesn’t get, as far as I know, that this synergy weds them with the other co-dependent side of the problem they’re so angered about, is a question which remains to be answered.

Of course, many have pointed out the Tea Party isn’t really a new wave at all. This may turn out to be true. Certainly their Constitutional and economic complaints have, over the last month or so, become terribly infected by the usual suspects, and to a degree by: racial, ethnic, and religious bigotry, Birtherism, and conspiracy-theory driven paranoia.

Their eliminativist leanings are ludicrous. Still, when 40% of Republicans think it possible that Obama has come to bring Shariah to the Republic, we’re witnessing something which has grown beyond the old Conservative/Liberal fault lines. For one thing, it seems this movement is very labile and able to shape shift between advocating against a Marxist Manchurian candidate, and, advocating against a Jihadi counter-crusader. All in all, the enemy posed is of an exceptionally large scale: Islam! Communism! All those other kinds of Christians! Brown and darker skin!

I’ll wait patiently for the video featuring the Tea Party smart set. Let me know if you find anything. As for Beck embracing the legacy of Martin Luther King, to me, Beck’s thrust seems much more in the direction of Martin Luther.

He said to them, “Beware! Keep yourselves from covetousness, for a man’s life doesn’t consist of the abundance of the things which he possesses.” (Luke 12:15)

But those who are determined to be rich fall into a temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful lusts, such as drown men in ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some have been led astray from the faith in their greed, and have pierced themselves through with many sorrows. (I Timothy 6:9-10)

He found in the temple those who sold oxen, sheep, and doves, and the changers of money sitting. He made a whip of cords, and threw all out of the temple, both the sheep and the oxen; and he poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew their tables. To those who sold the doves, he said, “Take these things out of here! Don’t make my Father’s house a marketplace!” (John 2:14-16)


Glenn Beck vs. Christ the Liberator – Reverend James Martin, S.J.

*The site will be run by Scott Baker, who helped launch the conservative Breitbart TV website. Politico reports that the site already has what appear to be paid sponsors – gold-based investment service Goldline. It’s also carrying an ad for a book by former GOP House Majority Leader Dick Armey. They have also hired Jon Seidl from the American Spectator and Meredith Jessup from Town Hall as reporters for “The Blaze.”

Leave a Comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Fossils of Fuel

Ghosts in the Hollow from Jim Lo Scalzo on Vimeo.

Now my friends, I am opposed to the system of society in which we live today, not because I lack the natural equipment to do for myself but because I am not satisfied to make myself comfortable knowing that there are thousands of my fellow men who suffer for the barest necessities of life. We were taught under the old ethic that man’s business on this earth was to look out for himself. That was the ethic of the jungle; the ethic of the wild beast. Take care of yourself, no matter what may become of your fellow man. Thousands of years ago the question was asked; “Am I my brother’s keeper?” That question has never yet been answered in a way that is satisfactory to civilized society.

Yes, I am my brother’s keeper. I am under a moral obligation to him that is inspired, not by any maudlin sentimentality but by the higher duty I owe myself. What would you think me if I were capable of seating myself at a table and gorging myself with food and saw about me the children of my fellow beings starving to death.

Eugene V. Debs | src

Leave a Comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Ouch, On a Cosmic Scale


CLOSENESS click for lightbox enlargement
S. Calhoun, 2010
ARK, (chosen, appropriated frames: using Dreamlines; hat tip to Leonardo Solaas)

How the Universe Works – Discovery Channel (many episodes available for the time being from the youtube channel documentarystreams)

I was 13 years old when, while laying on my back gazing at a crisp night sky, the awesomeness of the scale of things came to me as a thunder strike. On this evening I became amazed that I was gazing back into time, while situated as a hunk of sentient flesh prostrate on a thin layer of dirt and rock stuck to the surface of a planetary sphere. And, even then, it wasn’t at all adolescent solipsism, but, rather, that anyone could look so far away and so far back. This insight has informed my perspective ever since.

Then, a few years later, I investigated the cosmic scale of creation and destruction, and came away impressed again that entire galaxies may crash into one another. This puts a whole new spin on the mere, and in this light, inconsequential problem of mortality.

A near galactic-collision between NGC 2207 (left) and IC 2163 captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. Scientists predict the Milky Way will merge with its neighbor Andromeda in about 5 billion years. (USAToday)

Leave a Comment

Filed under science

Animated Evolution

Charles Darwin

Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.
Abraham Lincoln

via blublu.org

Leave a Comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Heaven of Hattler


Composition of the Spiritual World (LeSage)

1923 (aka Heaven) is one of two animation loops directed by Max Hattler, inspired by the work of French outsider artist Augustin Lesage (1876-1954). 1923 is based on Lesage’s painting A symbolic Composition of the Spiritual World from 1923. Hat tip Meathaus Cartoon Brew

1923 aka Heaven (by Max Hattler) from Max Hattler on Vimeo.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Uncategorized

To Speak With Solomon

Leave a Comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Why not open source the integral movement?

Visit Integral Life, the main outpost for the Ken Wilberian revolution, and see how new age it’s become. (Integral Life is the leader of the deep lifestyle movement, helping people live more free and whole lives using integral philosophy, the first genuine world philosophy for the 21st century. from the site) Having tracked Wilber for 30+ years, I find the uncritical panoply of new ageism to signify Wilberian integralism to have come full circle and returned to its transpersonal, counter-culture, origins.

Wilber and his marketers have been building this brand and its product line for some time. The more developed the brand has become, the more his framework has atrophied. Its almost as if the Wilberian integralists can’t do two things at once. So, I suppose the decision was made. And then the cash registers were installed, and so it has gone.

What it looks like is this: kitschy self-realization resources and pay-to-play products dominating critical culture to the point one can’t find the critical culture anywhere. (How is this not egocentric?)

For example, wrap your discriminating intellect and eros around this:

2012, the Aquarian Age, and the Nature of Evolution (November 19th, 2009 by Darrell Moneyhon)

Regarding Ken’s very valid point addressed in his upcoming book, that indiscriminate democracy could be disastrous, given 70% of the population is at amber or lower, I think I have a solution – a broad strategy that could avert that catastrophe. I call it 3 S, for Sustainable Social Selection. It hinges on the idea that optimal human collective adaptation is based on effective utilization of human resources – no longer on selection via organisms dying off, the old “survival of the fittest” thing.

3 S adapts by finding the right person for the right “assignment”, or “engagement”. “Survival of the fittest is replaced with “survival of the fitting-est” – not meaning that whole groups of individuals (or even organizations or ideologies) will adapt or die from not fitting in with the requirements of the times (although such a selection may occur), but meaning that collectives which are able to get the right persons in the right job will adapt best. The ability to harness the various natural aptitudes and personality orientations, or roughly speaking, “gifts”, is what helps social groups survive and prosper. When the right gifts are placed in the right niches, a kind of workable egalitarianism is formed.

Why? Because gifts will sort out the best thinkers for thinking tasks, the best dreamers/intuiters for creative tasks and early stage innovation, the best relaters for healing and facilitation of social well-being, and the best do-ers for getting projects done in an efficient and effective manner. Those “gift” catagories are mainly types, but line competencies could also be used. Gift-in-niche assignments could be made based on performance (or observed proficiency) on certain lines of development, based on some form of multiple intelligence assessment, etc.. “Gifts” in general could include, then, a blend of type and line “intelligence” – a type-by-line “fit” factor.

Because all major types and all kinds (lines) of intelligences would be utilized, productively engaged, and cherished, no gift would be considered higher than other gifts. No gifts would be given better living standards than other gifts. To favor certain gift-sets would violate the very core of the Sustainable Social Selection strategy. All gifts, all people, would be needed in such a strategy. Every one would, therefore be “equal”.

But equal doesn’t mean everyone participates equally in all things. “Each according to her gift” is a 3 S motto. The foot of the collective body does not have the same (equal) access to forks as do the fingers. Nor do the fingers have equal access to shoes. Those would be poor “fits” in a survival-by-the-fitting-est scheme. The understanding and practice of intrinsic power would replace the lust for extensic power. A finger would not want access to shoes (except to help tie shoe laces!), nor would feet want to hold forks. Those “powers” would be extrinsic to the nature of the respective gifts.

Because of the respect given to all the gifts, and because of equal provisions, there would be no press for every person to have equal say in social problem-solving or social planning projects. There would be no advantage or incentive for a do-er to pretend to be a social mapper, etc. If the standard of living is equal, then do-ers would have no incentive to do what they don’t do best! They would naturally prefer practical projects over big-picture pattern analysis, etc.

While I read this, I was thinking to myself, ‘Here’s an old Greek idea!’ Then I get to the point where ‘no gift would be considered higher than other gifts’ is contradicted by this: ‘But equal doesn’t mean everyone participates equally in all things.’ This is garden-variety incoherence. Later, in an addendum, the writer suggests:

The key is get a modified democratic system which gives weighted voting privileges according to gifts, according to the person’s line strengths and/or type. This way, the “fingers” of the collective “body” aren’t voting about shoes. And the”feet” aren’t voting about eating utensiles. A thinker would have, say, one and a half vote, for big picture social policy votes. A relater would have, say, one and a half votes on specific issues related to health care.

The author contributes, by way of contextualizing this suggestion, some thoughts about an assessment regime which would sort out the overt typology of his scheme. Then at the end of his comment he sort of peels away to his core moralism.

But there is no guarantee that the behavior is following an optimal course which is in line with a person’s potential. Accordingly, both individual and collective behavior must be looked at in a dynamic, unfolding, genetic, sort of way, if we are to “behave” ourselves, and to live up to our potential.

Is the author really suggesting that by using typological assessments based in ‘moralized’ categories having to do with capturing in some definitive way a strict monological estimation of individual potential, there could then be a evolutionary progressive integral politics anchored to these behaviorally dispositive moralistic, performative, and structural identities?

The problem of the poverty of critical culture in Wilberian integralism comes to the front in Wilber’s musings.

Here is the idea that the integral world view will be, (or could be,) imposed as a matter of the natural superiority of the second tier moral consciousness. But I have a question, if the integral system hasn’t engendered a critical culture, in what way could I be convinced that second tier moral prescription isn’t, in actuality, massively egocentric, or otherwise darkened?

 

Don Beck on the 2nd Tier:

3. Do I accept that individuals, organizations, and societies must acquire these All Quadrant capacities in a step-by-step or developmental process?

6. Have I, personally, learned “when to hold ’em, and when to fold ’em, and when to walk away?” Can I resist the need to control or engineer people?

9. Can I think systemically by addressing complex issues from a multi-case [multi-cause?] perspective rather than isolate a single culprit.

(2nd Tier, to me, is rigorously self-critical. Obviously this means I’m a charlatan or innovator or heretic.)

So, rather than develop a critical culture able to contest and refine and configure a future integral politics, what has come about is a product line wed to an inchoate “system,” itself born in top down elitism, and wildly over-generalized and simplistic estimations about political behavior. And, these products are tasked with pulling people into this uncritical socio-political sphere; all the while the cash registers ring.

This calls into question the Wilberian Project, almost in-total. One repetitive bit is a pisser in all this: when the second tier maestro, goes about reminding that he or she ‘is not judging,’ or refers to transcend-and-include as a work-around. This may fool people. But, I’m hearing an indelicate mash-up of Plato, Hegel and Mao!

Should one take the blinders off, now, many decades into the Wilberian Project, it is fairly obvious what pseudo-second tier seeks to showcase: an ability to do some educative banking, where you get to buy some old ‘vertical’ thought forms and climb up a little closer. (The idea that a spiritual elite possess the most able political consciousness is especially appealing when one can buy their way in, master the vocabulary, and learn how not to get passionately angry about anything.)

I state this obvious implication of enterprising integral politics with a sense of delighted irony. After all, there isn’t any substantive integral political philosophy–how could there be given what’s being recycled, heck, time shifted! here. And, it is deliciously ironic that Mr. Moneyhon has made an attempt to figure out the ‘assessment’ requirement, since, after all, there isn’t also a substantive integral psychology, let alone an applied integral psychology, upon which to build his mash-up of typology and assessment of aspirational potentials. Of course, with good reason, Centauric political leadership is yoked to integral spirituality, but this sure looks different when there comes the top-down proposal to assess somebody else’s spiritual stage using the potted categories given by integral spirituality.

(Might as well mention, there’s no methodology for doing these assessments; nor is there even a basis for a methodology. It’s a different kind of pipe dream.)

With respect to this latter field, it’s important to point out Wilberian integralism has wed its centralized entrepreneurial focus with (mostly) digital evangelism for its technology of enlightenment. Well, there’s nothing integral about the Wilberian style of commerce.

Full circle we go: how to account for the re-introduction of new age hucksters and thought leaders into the integral mix? What you get with this is a lot of free floating folk metaphysics and magical doctrines, and, above all, you get the utopian ethos built upon a future “Self-developmental” payoff. Cha Ching.

There’s little harm that can come from any of this. When Wilber shifted direction–years ago–and worked to create a marketable new age self-help technology, it became clear the ‘early alpha’ integral analytic framework would either be advanced by others, or, not.

***

Daniel Gustav Anderson has contributed an excellent piece at Integral World, Integral Theory After Wilber. His blog is thought provoking and a favorite.

From his excellent essay, one I take as a beginning:

Integral theory should be critical. By this I mean it should be dialectical; it should be scientific and examined as such, rather than transmitted as a belief-structure or a cult object. Universal and essentializing claims should be eschewed in favor of properly warranted, demonstrated, and delineated ones. If one is inclined to speculate and explore ideas with a freer hand as I myself often do, or when one sees that evidence is lacking for an idea that may reward further investigation, such speculations and ideas should be marked for what they are: explorations, thought experiments, provisional claims, possibilities for future inquiry, or (to borrow from David Lane) an instance of unknowingness. In short, integral theory should be critically self-aware of how it makes knowledge, and how that knowledge functions politically and socially. The Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School has much to offer in this regard, as does the pedagogy of Paulo Freire.

(There’s a lot of integral thinking and writing by persons who knew nothing, may have predated, the Wilberian ‘integral.’ I’ve come to respect greatly the variety of superb descriptive and analytic work which wanders in disciplined ways through various subjective and objective perspectives. On the web, Integral World, provides a portal for post-Wilberian thought–although quality varies a great deal. IW authors )

The spell that binds us today consists not least in the fact that it ceaselessly urges people to take action that they believe will break the spell; and that it prevents the reflection on themselves and the circumstances that might really break it. (Theodore Adorno)

2 Comments

Filed under integral

Crazy Coincidence

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Back in Black – Glenn Beck’s Nazi Tourette’s
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

There’s no reason to add anything to Lewis Black’s work here.

On occasion, during my fifteen minute drive to work, I tune in Glenn Beck. His show is without fail immensely amusing, even if I have to concede he’s a master propagandist and purveyor of snake oil. Some have mentioned that Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck might constitute a powerful renegade ticket in 2012. From God’s ear, eh? At least it would provide a powerful cognitive sort!

Although Beck offers crazy as his stock-in-trade, sometimes he really goes running off the edge. For example, from April 2010,

We all find ourselves at a certain place at a certain time and we may not know what the role is we’re suppose to play, we may, in the end, we may not even know how much we effected different things, but we each are here and experience everything for a reason, that’s why I asked you yesterday…do not accept coincidence in your life. Look for the answers in your life, look for your answers in your life through coincidence, because there’s no such thing as a coincidence.

God is giving a plan I think to me that is not really a plan. And I stopped myself because I didn’t want to utter those things out loud, because that’s not exactly right, and it’s not.

The problem is that I think the plan that the Lord would have us follow is hard for people to understand. But I’m telling you, here’s what I feel with everything in me, and, if you’ve listened to this program for a long time, you know who I am. Um, and you know many of things I’ve done and said that have put me in, ya know, harm’s way one way or another, they always start at the same place, they always start at my gut or my heart, and then I figure it out as we go along. All the stuff that I feel has been important on the show has been things that I felt and didn’t understand.

Because of my track record with you who have been here for a long time. Because of my track record with you, I beg of you to help me get this message out, and I beg of you to pray for clarity on my part. The plan that He would have me articulate, I think, to you is “Get behind me.” And I don’t mean me, I mean Him. “Get behind Me. Stand behind Me.” I truly believe I have done years now of reading the Founders, their diaries, their letters, the Pilgrims, their diaries, their letters. I’ve held their letters in my hands. The exchanges between the Founders, I’ve held their actual letters in my hand. I have seen it with my own eyes…and I will tell you that God was instrumental and then knew it! They knew they had very little to do with it. They just stood where they were supposed to stand and they said the things that they were supposed to say as He directed. Some of them lost their way, some of them got it wrong, they got back and forth…they were human. But that’s what He’s asking us to do…is to stand peacefully, quietly, with anger, quiet with anger, loudly with truth.

How odd is it that one can build a many hundred’s of million dollar fortune by saying stuff that might earn you a psychiatric work-up if you said it behind a curtain in an emergency room? What a great country.

As it happens, my main area of interest is “co-incidence,” (and, chance, randomness, serendipity, luck,) as features found in descriptions in everyday life. Should somebody tell me ‘there are no coincidences’ I would want to patiently listen to he or she present their account. I’ll keep an ear out for Mr. Neck’s exegis beyond his implying he is serving some cosmic historical role.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Water Music

The Dubai Fountain – Baba Yetu

The Dubai Fountain – Bassbor Al Fourgakom

The Dubai Fountain – – Bijan Mortazavi

(Burj Khalifa Tower, Dubai) hat tip to NETBROS, Metafilter

Leave a Comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Sheep In Sheep’s Clothing

Thinking modern day Fabians are dangerous plotters is akin to believing we’d be doomed should the YWCA and WMCA join forces.

(from the video) Communitarianism centers around the belief that individualism is to be relinquished for the “greater good” of the state. Such a system would be fascistic at its core and administered through a form of scientific socialism.

This can be seen especially with the United Nation’s Agenda 21 program, that would set international requirements for how people must live, learn, eat, travel, and communicate. This has nothing to do with the environment and everything to do with control.

The terrifying duo of “must” and “control” evoke–for some–the Fabians! Wow.

“And hereby thou wilt honour thy Father and thy Mother : Thy Father, which is the spirit of community, that made all and that dwells in all. Thy Mother, which is the Earth, that brought us all forth: That as a true Mother, loves all her children. Therefore do not hinder the Mother Earth from giving all her children suck, by thy Inclosing into particular hands, and holding up that cursed Bondage of Inclosure by thy Power.” Gerrard WInstanley

(If you ask me what my political persuasion is, I might tell you: “I’m a digger and a Fabian.” This is sort of a kiss-off answer in that I would be surprised were the questioner to then respond in a knowing manner. I would also be delighted.)

Leave a Comment

Filed under Uncategorized

God Loves Gunn High School


Fred Phelps, the hateful and hate-mongering ‘pastor’ of infamousWestboro Baptist Church, Topeka, brought his tiny insane mob to a sidewalk across the street of Gunn High School, Palo Alto, California. Phelps is well beyond the pale, and, for example, has stated that military casualties in the current combat zones are the singular result of ‘his’ God’s hatred of America.

Gunn students and the community came up with an enlightened response.

Not In Our Town, working together for safe and inclusive communities, produced the video.

Perfect. Salon picked up the story.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Uncategorized

“The stage is too big for the drama”

God was invented to explain mystery. God is always invented to explain those things that you do not understand. Now, when you finally discover how something works, you get some laws which you’re taking away from God; you don’t need him anymore. But you need him for the other mysteries. So therefore you leave him to create the universe because we haven’t figured that out yet; you need him for understanding those things which you don’t believe the laws will explain, such as consciousness, or why you only live to a certain length of time — life and death — stuff like that. God is always associated with those things that you do not understand. Therefore I don’t think that the laws can be considered to be like God because they have been figured out. Richard Feynman

It must be obvious… that there is a contradiction in wanting to be perfectly secure in a universe whose very nature is momentariness and fluidity. Alan Watts

Leave a Comment

Filed under Uncategorized

When the Film Is Rolling…

From NewLeftMedia.

In the comments to the B-roll, a youtube commenter wrote:

And the cherry picking on the left just keeps on rolling. Excellent editing skills. Bring the fringe elements and the ones incapable of coherently articulating an argument to the forefront and then keep harping on the notion that they’re all morons, racists, and terrorists. I admire your propaganda skills NewLeftMedia. Goebbels would be proud of how effective you are demonizing a legitimate element of society with legitimate concerns about taxation and the growing discontent of the governed.

If you go to the Tea Party web sites and peruse their hand-selected videos, you won’t find any thorough coherent articulations. Given that I’m familiar with several of the basic arguments for minimal taxation and elimination of all social and corporate welfare (handouts,) it would be enough to see memorably acute arguments videotaped and presented somewhere on Tea Party Planet. I’d post the video, and offer comments in agreement and disagreement.

Otherwise, I’m left with abject mash-ups, with their not-so-hidden desire for ‘patriotic’ compliance at the end of what is expressed in terms of a Manichaean struggle for the soul of America–where the the ‘Tea Party Patriotic’ version of America’s soul is supposed to ‘win out.’ (*)

Mash-ups like this one:

I continue to wait for the appearance of the something like a ‘best’ appeal this legitimate element has to offer.


The Tea Party movement seems almost completely befuddled by early American history.

A question I’d pose to a Tea Party Patriot is:

What could you tell me about how specific values and principles and ideas were contested among various founders, and how this eventually came to be temporarily played out in the election of Thomas Jefferson as the third President of the United States of America?

just sayin’…

Leave a Comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Pipes

I have witnessed beautiful tubes twice in my life. The first I saw was in 1962, at Point Santa Clara in Panama. I was seven and my dad bravely went body surfing. I vaguely recall he wasn’t out in the shore break for long, for the ripe barrels aggravated a fierce undertow. The rest of the family watched from the beach.

The second time was during the first summer of my two season surfing ‘career.’ My cousin took me to Makaha, on the west coast of Oahu. We had our boards, but the surf, running about 6+ feet was beyond my nascent skills, so we looked but did not paddle out. Yet, the break was gorgeous. Sometimes it pops up in my dreams.

I did manage to insert myself into the tube of a wave exactly once, on a lucky takeoff on a nice playful wave at a break called Ones and Twos off of Waikiki. But, young goof foot couldn’t keep the ten foot fiberglass and redwood Hobie there for long, and so I chopped through to the bottom to scoot out through the wash.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Uncategorized

The Librarian’s Shadow

Source: Madisonian Net

Leave a Comment

Filed under humor