August 02 2008
Personal Responsibility
“After the last speaker had cleared the stage the conference was opened to audience questions. Most drew out details from the speaker’s lines of reasoning. Then a slender man in a well-worn brown jacket stood up. With short, grey hair he looked a youthful sixty.
His tone was quiet and respectful. He said (paraphrasing), “For three decades, I’ve heard speakers say things similar to what I’ve heard today. Thirty years ago, they were called doomsdayers. Today, we know enough to respect their opinions, but we still haven’t changed our lifestyles. I take good care of my clothes and they last a long time. I have short, cold showers and I don’t own a car. These solutions aren’t complex. They’re right before every one of us.”
When he sat down, there was a moment’s pause and then the auditorium filled with applause.
The man’s point, as I took it, was though we should all take the initiative to push our governments and businesses to act in environmentally sustainable ways, it’s a two way street and the other side starts with individual action. In all the talk of the latest thin film solar technology and the goods and evils of corporate environmentalism, somehow even the great speakers at this conference had forgotten to bring the message home, literally.”
Full story here.
7am
July 04 2008
The above poster appeared in the July 3, 2008 NYT.
Check out the People’s Campaign for the Constitution for more info.
2pm
July 01 2008
America: The age of ignorance
I ran across this on AlterNet.org, click on the headline below for a jump to the full article.
Ignorant America: Just How Stupid Are We?
By Rick Shenkman, Tomdispatch.com. Posted July 2, 2008.
’ Five defining characteristics of stupidity, it seems to me, are readily apparent. First, is sheer ignorance: Ignorance of critical facts about important events in the news, and ignorance of how our government functions and who’s in charge. Second, is negligence: The disinclination to seek reliable sources of information about important news events. Third, is wooden-headedness, as the historian Barbara Tuchman defined it: The inclination to believe what we want to believe regardless of the facts. Fourth, is shortsightedness: The support of public policies that are mutually contradictory, or contrary to the country’s long-term interests. Fifth, and finally, is a broad category I call bone-headedness, for want of a better name: The susceptibility to meaningless phrases, stereotypes, irrational biases, and simplistic diagnoses and solutions that play on our hopes and fears.
American Ignorance
Taking up the first of our definitions of stupidity, how ignorant are we? Ask the political scientists and you will be told that there is damning, hard evidence pointing incontrovertibly to the conclusion that millions are embarrassingly ill-informed and that they do not care that they are. There is enough evidence that one could almost conclude — though admittedly this is a stretch — that we are living in an Age of Ignorance. “
5pm
June 30 2008
I can get behind this
Californians are signing up folks for a ballot initiative to change the California State Constitution to allow for the production, sale and use of weed as an inalienable right. Same ballot initiative gives the State of California the right to tax weed.
Californians already voted for Medical marijuana and are in the midst of an intractable financial crisis. The job growth and tax revenues are looking very good right now.
10pm
mushroom spirit
“Most of the volunteers looked back on their experience up to 14 months later and rated it as the most, or one of the five most, personally meaningful and spiritually significant of their lives,” says lead investigator Roland Griffiths, Ph.D., a professor in the Johns Hopkins departments of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Neuroscience.
Another study, in yet another peer reviewed journal verifies what indigenous shamans have asserted all along. Our planet is brimming with life and not all earthlings are humans. Plants not only provide food and medicine but help with our connection to the divine.
It is entirely ludicrous, the banning and criminalization of plant substances, as entheogentic species are all around us. The “spirit molecule”, DMT, is present in all humans and yet to consume “aya”, the shamanic potion containing DMT, could cause you many legal problems.
Check out the reference to the original study that prompted this followup report.
7pm
Fiat Money
“money is loaned into existence, but vanishes if the loans are not systematically paid back”
Jim Kunstler talks about facets of the “Long Emergency”.
Here is a great video that describes how money is created. It is a good supplement for the discussion about how money is born.
Federal Reserve money is fiat money that is “loaned into existence”. Now that the banks and equity markets have defaulted on billions of dollars of loans we are in a world of trouble.
3pm
10 Seconds
1pm
Marijuana is a powerful Medicine
It continues to amaze me that marijuana is still prohibited.
Last year it was reported that scientists looking for a link between weed and lung cancer. No correlation or causality was found between the two. Further, the study showed that weed appeared to have a protective effect on the lungs.
Here is another link to weed as medicine.
Reading about this research it appears that one of the features of the compound recently discovered was that a user would not get high from this compound.
What is it about our culture that assigns a negative value to getting high? It seems to me that getting high has positive value in our stress ridden society.
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10am
July 6: Seattle Tumblr Meetup!
daryn:
Sunday, July 6th, 4:00pm
King’s Hardware ( map )
That’s right, we’re having our first Seattle meetup on Sunday the 6th! Come join us at King’s for delicious food and drinks, an excellent jukebox, and a sunny patio (and they have skeeball!)
So far, karion, suitep, and daryn will be there, how about you? Reblog and spread the word!
(photo from The Kozy Shack on flickr)
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Via Daryn Nakhuda
3am
Stages
As every flower fades and as all youth
Departs, so life at every stage,
So every virtue, so our grasp of truth,
Blooms in its day and may not last forever.
Since life may summon us at every age
Be ready, heart, for parting, new endeavor,
Be ready bravely and without remorse
To find new light that old ties cannot give.
In all beginnings dwells a magic force
For guarding us and helping us to live.
Serenely let us move to distant places
And let no sentiments of home detain us.
The Cosmic Spirit seeks not to restrain us
But lifts us stage by stage to wider spaces.
If we accept a home of our own making,
Familiar habit makes for indolence.
We must prepare for parting and leave-taking
Or else remain the slaves of permanence.
Even the hour of our death may send
Us speeding on to fresh and newer spaces,
And life may summon us to newer races.
So be it, heart: bid farewell without end.
—Magister Ludi, by Hermann Hesse
2am
June 23 2008
June 18 2008
True Stories Told In One Sentence
True stories told in one sentence.
Looks like a good site to get a story started.
8pm
May 16 2008
The Mountain Astrologer
I picked up the new issue of The Mountain Astrologer.
This journal has been exploring the transits of Pluto through the different signs. I’m not an astrologer but am keenly interested in these interesting times.
Jessica Murray, writing in the article Astrology in Troubled Times, has this to say about Pluto, “Pluto represents the raw power and inevitability of breakdown and renewal”.
Regarding the current transit through Capricon, she says, “…the ultimate point of this transit will be to revive an aspect of human experience that has developed pockets of unsustainable decay. Governments, corporations, and all other patriarchal hierarchies will be assiduously screened by Pluto to ascertain their viability. Capricorn’s governance of governance suggests the exposure of corruption in individuals and agencies that play the role of the authority figure…”.
It is a good read.
My friend Len, recommends the sites below for more info.
Get your free astrological reading at Astrodienst.
Eric Francis, astrologist, at Planet Waves.
2am
olpc connects to wifi
I was at Mr. Spots Chai House in Ballard today for an iced tea respite during my walk today.
I noticed a young woman using an XO laptop (OLPC-One Laptop Per Child).
I signed up for the 2 for 1 promo at the end of last year and finally received the laptop in April. I couldn’t figure out how to connect to the internet via wifi.
A short conversation later I was reasonably sure that I would be able to logon to the internet through a wifi connection. So here is the pic of my successful connection to this journal. The fix? Getting used to the Sugar GUI and processing times much slower than my X300.
1am
