asleep and awake

If, as is sometimes suggested in spiritual endeavor, you claim to be asleep and striving to be awakened, is that recognition worth crediting or is it simply another example of what it is like to be asleep ... or awake either, for that matter?

How consequential are the "encouragements" lounging under the banner of "encouragements?"

Is this the reason that practice is sometimes touted as a good idea?

smile, be happy, climb a chimney

DOLNI SMRZOVKA, Czech Republic (AP) -- From afar, they look like ants crawling up a tower into the sky.

Dozens of members of the Czech Union of Chimney Climbers scaled the 60-meter- (200-foot-) tall chimney of a former textile factory one recent Saturday - a hobby they do for thrills and incomparable views.

A 76-year-old former track-and-field athlete and an 8-year-old boy were among those who clambered up the chimney's ladder.

"It's a joy to climb one, to look around from the top on a beautiful sunny day," said organizer Jiri Chudoba. "It's also great to see the others smile and be happy."

Spanish landscape ... art

The Washington Post has run a series of aerial photographs of the Spanish landscape -- photos by David Maisel taken in 2013. I think they're evocative. The link is more emphatic than the blog:

a "Muslim -free zone"

Passed along in email today was the news story of an Arkansas gun dealer who has declared her range to be a "Muslim-free zone." Her declaration is complete with the kind of reasoning that is disclaimed by the well-coiffed neo-cons but actually is the fertile soil of separation and fear... and all in the name of a greater America.

With or without the "tea party" label, with or without the creamy arrogance of the neocon, still the feeling seems to well up (blame one, praise the other) like concertina wire, scratching whatever union the country might display into a mediocre pudding of distrust ruled alternatively by flag-waving idiots and flag-waving savants.

"Hearts in Atlantis"

A flavorful shard of story-telling ... that's how I found "Hearts In Atlantis," a movie lifted from Stephen King and with Anthony Hopkins as the sole big-name performer. Nice photography, but if I were asked to say what it was about, I'm not entirely sure, but it was softly moving. Critic Roger Ebert wrote that "Rarely does a movie make you feel so warm and so uneasy at the same time..." and that's close enough for me.

educating the well-off

WASHINGTON (AP) — Education is supposed to help bridge the gap between the wealthiest people and everyone else. Ask the experts, and they'll count the ways:

Preschool can lift children from poverty. Top high schools prepare students for college. A college degree boosts pay over a lifetime. And the U.S. economy would grow faster if more people stayed in school longer.

Plenty of data back them up. But the data also show something else:

Wealthier parents have been stepping up education spending so aggressively that they're widening the nation's wealth gap. When the Great Recession struck in late 2007 and squeezed most family budgets, the top 10 percent of earners — with incomes averaging $253,146 — went in a different direction: They doubled down on their kids' futures.

surveillance takes root

Surveillance misdirection:

(Reuters) - Documents released by the U.S. government show it views an executive order issued in 1981 as the basis of most of the National Security Agency's surveillance activities, the American Civil Liberties Union said on Monday.

The NSA relied on Executive Order 12333 more than it did on two other laws that have been the focus of public debate following the leaks exposing U.S. surveillance programs by former agency contractor Edward Snowden, according to the papers released by the ACLU.
The ACLU obtained the documents after filing a lawsuit last year seeking information in connection with the order, which it said the NSA was using to collect vast amounts of data worldwide, "inevitably" including communications of U.S. citizens.....

Alex Abdo, an ACLU staff attorney, said in a blog post published on Monday that the documents "confirm that the order, although not the focus of the public debate, actually governs most of the NSA's spying."
"Congress's reform efforts have not addressed the executive order, and the bulk of the government's disclosures in response to the Snowden revelations have conspicuously ignored the NSA's extensive mandate under EO 12333," Abdo wrote.

John Cleese on "stupidity"

Passed along in email:

"principles"

For 50 years, I have saved the following missive in a journal I kept in 1964 while I was part of a top-secret-oriented army unit in Berlin.  Misspellings and all, the sheet appeared in my mailbox -- and everyone else's as well -- without further explanation. In an atmosphere of paranoia that secrecy can instill, it was just one more reminder of the fealty owed to the government we worked for.

Then as now, I had no desire to broadcast my country's secrets, however boring they might be. But simultaneously, there was no way I was going to rat out my friends from whatever country. Further, keeping a dear-diary journal (travels, parties, hangovers, culture, getting laid) was not something I was willing to give up.

The sheet infuriated me then but it also helped me to recognize that matters of "principle" could not be allowed to rely on the agreement or disapprobation of others. There really were guys in polyester slacks who had identification folders to flash under your nose before they started an interrogation. The implications of that sheet scared me, but they did not scare me quite enough.

Principles that are based on poll numbers are a just bling-studded uncertainty ... or perhaps cowardice.

Kind of like spiritual endeavor, I suspect.

"The Last Mile"

Passed along in email. I can imagine strong reactions. I kind of liked it.

invisible ... uh .... stuff

If it's invisible, where is it?

Scientists at the University of Rochester have discovered a way to hide large objects from sight using inexpensive and readily available lenses, a technology that seems to have sprung from the pages of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter fantasy series.
Cloaking is the process by which an object becomes hidden from view, while everything else around the cloaked object appears undisturbed.

The amount of energy that goes into revealing or concealing things in this life makes me wonder if the ultimate accomplishment would be just to address those things as they are.

Now you see it.

Now you don't.

Now.

Not.

the Jon Stewart network

Since the television networks and other 'news' outlets can't seem to offer much more than tits, ass and unrepentant fluff, perhaps it is time to consider making Jon Stewart a network of his own ... as exemplified briefly by this collage/clip sent along in email.

Yes, children, there was a time when people asked the obvious questions and suggested there might be another side to the story....

test result

Today is probably the day on which I will receive confirmation that I have lung cancer. Up until this point, there have been tests and suppositions, but the PET scan Monday will confirm what has merely been believed up until now.

The head-honcho cardio doctor said before the scan that the nodule on the right lung was small and treatable and just getting started and so, comparatively speaking, things are looking up.

I have a hunch that sub rosa, a part of me is anxious and crabby and disbelieving and wishful. There are all sorts of tests and doctor visits lined up irrespective of the PET scan outcome -- treating the matter in a worst-case-scenario format.

Besides whatever unspoken anxiety, it's nice to see the sun shine today.

"Hard Times"

Though it was first published in 1854, the plaintive resonance of "Hard Times Come Again No More" seems to find a home in every succeeding year and economic circumstance. There are myriad presentations of the song, but I ran across Kate and Anna McGarrigle (et al.) this morning and liked it.

agitation/propaganda

 Once upon a time news organizations were aware of their ability to "yell 'fire!' in a theater" and sow havoc among those attending. It was a serious responsibility, not just because it was caring but also because the news organization's trustworthiness was on the line. Nowadays, it seems acceptable to report what is said or done without reference to past contradictions. Trustworthiness is based now on assertion and repetition ... it must be true because I say it's true and you agree that it's true.

DOESN'T ANY EDITOR READ THIS SHIT???!!!

 

28 min ago By ZEINA KARAM of Associated Press [color added]

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said he was told of the plot by Baghdad, and that it was the work of foreign fighters of the Islamic State group in Iraq. There was no immediate comment from Washington or Paris, and al-Abadi's assertion could not be independently confirmed.
Asked if the attacks were imminent, he said, "I'm not sure." Asked if the attacks had been thwarted, he said, "No." Al-Abadi said the United States had been alerted, and that the suspects included extremists from the United States and France who were fighting for the Islamic State group in Iraq.
"Today, while I'm here I'm receiving accurate reports from Baghdad that there were arrests of a few elements and there were networks from inside Iraq to have attacks ... on metros of Paris and U.S.," al-Abadi said, speaking in English. "They are not Iraqis. Some of them are French, some of them are Americans. But they are in Iraq."
He made the remarks at a meeting with journalists on the sidelines of a gathering of world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly.
The Islamic State extremists' blitz in Iraq and Syria prompted the United States to launch airstrikes in Iraq last month, to aid Kurdish forces who were battling the militants and to protect religious minorities.
In addition to the brutality Islamic State has visited on the people in Iraq and Syria, western leaders have voiced concern that the group would move its terror operations outside the region.
This week, the U.S. and five allied Arab states expanded the aerial campaign into Syria, where the militant group is battling President Bashar Assad's forces as well as Western-backed rebels.

Where there is no verification or plausible logic (what threat does IS pose to the mainland USA, eg. and what proof is adduced?), a little hoo-rah background (likewise unexamined) will suffice.

People laugh at the governmental interference with the media in China or Russia ... but their laughter seems to be ill-informed.

I guess agitation/propaganda pays better and doesn't require as much thinking....

Follow-up story from Reuters.

new and improved not-war

As the U.S. cranks up its latest war in the Middle East -- bombing oil targets in Syria, claiming the assault is not really a "war" and generally laying the groundwork for another decade or more of violence that is easier than economic constructiveness -- various other idsies and odsies caught my eye: 

...... BOSTON (AP) — Suffolk Downs officials says live thoroughbred racing will end for the season — and most likely for good — on the first Saturday in October.
..... WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Aviation Administration is expected to announce Thursday that it is granting permits to seven movie and television production companies to fly drones, an important step toward greater use of the technology by commercial operators, said attorneys and a company official familiar with the decision.
...... INCHEON, South Korea (AP) — The Qatari women's basketball team withdrew from the Asian Games in a protest against international rules that ban players from wearing Muslim headscarves in competition.

I'm not sure quite how, but all of this feels as if a reality-show lifestyle is more important and credible than a reality lifestyle in which horses and jockeys sweat, people are responsible for the activity of the drones they employ, and the women beneath the headscarves are just as competent or incompetent as they might be without them.

If I remember correctly, when the Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler stood out on Berlin's chancery balcony in 1933 to proclaim his ascendancy as chancellor, there were only some 200 people listening in the streets below according to then-reporter William Shirer. One of the reasons for so sparse a turnout for a man whose later propaganda films would be packed with cheering throngs was that in 1933 the citizenry could still vividly recall the horrors of World War I ... and Hitler made no secret of his militaristic goals. Those memories did not stop World War II any more than the fruitless ten years the U.S. has used in Iraq is likely to inform the U.S.

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2014/09/23/6142193/suffolk-downs-to-close-oct-4.html#storylink=cpy

Vatican arrests former archbishop

Passed along in email yesterday was this Australian news account of the Vatican's first-ever pedophilia arrest of a former archbishop.

Jozef Wesolowski, a Pole who was defrocked by a Vatican tribunal in June, was placed under house awaiting a criminal trial, the Vatican said in a statement.

Jozef Wesolowski

Whether the arrest represents a sea change in the Vatican's thinking about its child-molesting priests or whether it is yet another damage-control ploy is hard to guess, but the arrest certainly would have been impossible several years ago when the Vatican used its vim and vigor to defend itself, assert its righteousness and avoid the social lash that society can lower on child molesters.

Perhaps the arrest was in aid of staving off worse repercussions. Or perhaps it represented a more open and responsible approach to a problem the church has strained to evade.

Francis, the first non-European pope in 1,300 years, vowed zero tolerance against Roman Catholic clerics who sexually abused children.
Last May, he called such abuse an "ugly crime" and likened it to "a Satanic Mass".
In July, he told victims of sexual abuse the Church should "weep and make reparation" for crimes he said had taken on the dimensions of a sacrilegious cult.

Inner Mongolian drought

Inner Mongolia and America's West seem to share a problem -- increasingly intense drought.

I suspect the trickle-down economists are snapping up access points and will give the rest of us a terrific bargain when the time comes. The idea that water sources might be staked out for the public good is ... well, it's probably not 'feasible.'

full/unfull life

The local newspaper ran the first of a three-part series on a woman's deliberate steps to die today. At 90, Lee Hawkins had had enough and so, in consultation with family and others, let go of food and drink. Today's article represented the second time the Daily Hampshire Gazette had taken a space-gobbling approach to Lee Hawkins' death. The first time said she was thinking of trying it. The second time said she succeeded. Lee Hawkins died Sept. 2.

As a former newspaper person, I have to admit my first reaction to today's appreciation was ... irritation. Dying is hardly what you'd call news ... or was it? Would there be any room for news in the news outlets if each person's death were recounted in such caring particulars? It made me wish a more serious approach had been taken.

But it also nudged my somewhat blurry memory banks and brought up two touchstones: 1. At a time when trust was more commonplace in the U.S., the "most trusted man in America," newsman Walter Cronkite, once observed, "News is not about how many cats did not get up on the garage roof." Everyone dies. Since everyone dies -- or 2. as my Zen teacher's teacher put it, "joins the majority"-- it seems a bit much to assess death, per se, as a news-worthy event. This is not to deny the sorrow or other reactions of those left behind, but it is to include death within life ... an inclusion that those left behind too frequently would prefer to sidestep.

Fearing death -- whether by hymn or philosophy or religion or nonchalance -- is fearing life, and fearing life is not to live fully. But not living life fully is nevertheless a full life, I suspect.

It's a strange conundrum, fearing what you might die to preserve.

separating apples from apples

In the course of reinvigorating its wartime footing in the Middle East, the United States and its allies are starting, as usual, with the comparatively 'distant' bombing campaign used in the past. As yet there are "no (very visible) boots on the ground." The object of the bombing is the Islamic State, a militant Islamic body whose numbers are not numbered and whose attractiveness is always treated as bogus and cruel and inimical even as it somehow gains adherents who are also not numbered.

In the course of rounding up the latest 'coalition of the willing' -- countries willing the lend a supportive hand in the attack on IS -- the U.S. has solicited help from Iran, a country which, six or eight months ago, was roundly attacked by the U.S. for trying to make the kind of uranium that might be used in an atomic bomb. [Scientific studies I cannot immediately find suggest that even if Iran did make a nuclear weapon, it would probably take at least 10 years. Further, no one in the U.S. suggests that we squeeze or vet a sovereign Israel in the same way.]

As to Iran, it seems the bad guy on the could-be nuclear front can be the good guy when it comes to routing the Islamic State. The two cannot be linked, the White House has asserted in a statement that might make a Jesuit's jaw drop:

[White House Press Secretary Josh] Earnest said the effort by world powers, including the United States, to persuade Iran to give up its nuclear program is "entirely separate" from President Barack Obama's attempts to build a coalition against Islamic State.
"The United States will not be in the position of trading aspects of Iran's nuclear program to secure commitments to take on ISIL," Earnest said, using an acronym for Islamic State (IS).

Let's not compare oranges with oranges.

Cloud 9 noodles

A Chinese noodle shop owner has admitted to lacing his wares with opium poppy seeds, in an apparent effort to keep customers coming back, it's reported.

a third breast

Snopes, the site most likely to investigate and debunk unusual human claims, has yet to debunk the tale of a Florida massage thereapist who had a third breast added to her body as a means of getting her own "reality" TV show.

“I got it because I wanted to make myself unattractive to men. Because I don’t want to date anymore,” she said.
“Most guys would think [the extra breast is] weird and gross. But I can still feel pretty because if I wore makeup and cute clothes, I can still, you know... feel pretty.”

I don't know what to think when this was passed along in email, though I wonder why anyone would bother with fiction and a world full of so many facts.

Third eye, third breast, third ...

How different is this from a U.S. Congressman wearing an American flag lapel pin?

PS. 9/24/14: As you probably suspected, it all turned out to be a HOAX.

the atmosphere is collapsing

If anyone wanted to depict a ranging catastrophe, would there be better words than those attributed to Omar Jose Gonzalez, the 42-year-old veteran who scaled a White House fence on Friday and got to a door before being barred.

Authorities described him as "armed" because he had a pocket knife, but would a skilled soldier with 13 years of combat experience show up at an assassination with a pocket knife? It doesn't scan in my book.

Gonzales, of Copperas Cove, Texas, allegedly jumped the White House fence along Pennsylvania Avenue at 7:20 p.m. Friday, then crossed the North Lawn and opened the mansion’s front door before being apprehended by a Secret Service police officer standing guard....
According to court documents, Gonzales told Secret Service agents after being apprehended that the “atmosphere was collapsing” and that he had to tell the president so he could warn the public.

Crazy or sane, deluded or clear-eyed ... that's a hell of a description.

student debt dissolved

I don't have any way of verifying the assertions of this article, but it certainly is interesting in its ways of addressing the usury of student loans.

the Ig Nobel awards

[Sept 18, 2014] The 24th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony introduced ten new Ig Nobel Prize winners - Each has done something that makes people laugh then think.
Winners travelled to the ceremony, at their own expense, from around the world to receive their prize from a group of genuine, genuinely bemused Nobel Laureates, in Harvard's historic and largest theater. 1100 improbable persons filled the theatre, and the whole affair was broadcast live.

The full list of winners this year:
PHYSICS: Kiyoshi Mabuchi, of Kitasato University, Japan, and colleagues, for measuring the amount of friction between a shoe and a banana skin, and between a banana skin and the floor, when a person steps on a banana skin that's on the floor.
NEUROSCIENCE: Kang Lee, of the University of Toronto, Canada, and colleagues for trying to understand what happens in the brains of people who see the face of Jesus in a piece of toast.
PSYCHOLOGY: Peter Jonason, of the University of Western Sydney, Australia, and colleagues for amassing evidence that people who habitually stay up late are, on average, more self-admiring, more manipulative, and more psychopathic than people who habitually arise early in the morning.
PUBLIC HEALTH: Jaroslav Flegr, of Charles University, Czech Republic, and colleagues for investigating whether it is mentally hazardous for a human being to own a cat.
BIOLOGY: Vlastimil Hart, of the Czech University of Life Sciences, and colleagues for carefully documenting that when dogs defecate and urinate, they prefer to align their body axis with Earth's north-south geomagnetic field lines.
ART: Marina de Tommaso, of the University of Bari, Italy, and colleagues for measuring the relative pain people suffer while looking at an ugly painting, rather than a pretty painting, while being shot [in the hand] by a powerful laser beam.
ECONOMICS: The Italian government's National Institute of Statistics, for proudly taking the lead in fulfilling the European Union mandate for each country to increase the official size of its national economy by including revenues from prostitution, illegal drug sales, smuggling, and all other unlawful financial transactions between willing participants.
MEDICINE: Ian Humphreys, of Michigan State University, US, and colleagues, for treating "uncontrollable" nosebleeds, using the method of nasal-packing-with-strips-of-cured-pork.
ARCTIC SCIENCE: Eigil Reimers, of the University of Oslo, Norway, and colleagues, for testing how reindeer react to seeing humans who are disguised as polar bears.
NUTRITION: Raquel Rubio, of IRTA, Spain, and colleagues, for their study titled "Characterization of Lactic Acid Bacteria Isolated from Infant Faeces as Potential Probiotic Starter Cultures for Fermented Sausages."

lease on life and death (pix)

Anti-war protesters hold up signs as U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel takes his seat to testify at the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the U.S. policy toward Iraq and Syria and the threat posed by the Islamic State on Capitol Hill in Washington, September 16, 2014.
REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

A grave cleaner holds the mummified body of a woman during exhumation works at the Verbena cemetery in Guatemala City, April 17, 2013. If a lease on a grave has expired or not been paid, grave cleaners will break open the crypts to remove and rebury the bodies. Any remains that have not been claimed are packed into plastic bags, labelled and stored in mass graves. Bodies that have been stored in the upper crypt are exposed to dry and sunny conditions which means they do not decompose and instead become mummified.
REUTERS/Jorge Dan Lopez

Children are pictured on the hills on the outskirts of Kathmandu, September 16, 2014.
REUTERS/Navesh Chitrakar

A Syrian refugee child eats inside his family's tent at an informal settlement in Deir al-Ahmar, Bekaa valley, Lebanon, September 16, 2014.
REUTERS/Alia Haju

gay-friendly mosque

A Muslim academic has opened a gay-friendly mosque in South Africa, despite receiving death threats and fierce criticism from parts of the local Muslim community.

Women will also be allowed to lead prayers at Taj Hargey's "Open Mosque" in Cape Town.

Whatever other difficulties the story may suggest, it makes me wonder:

If equality were the goal of any religious persuasion, and if that goal were somehow attained, would/could the religious persuasion any longer exist?

I have a hunch that's one of those questions you're not supposed to ask.

outfoxing a crocodile

Being attacked by an crocodile may not be everyone's idea of a nightmare, but for those afflicted, there is this consoling story of the "slightly tipsy" 20-year-old Australian who was dragged under by an crocodile and had the presence of mind to poke the reptile in the eye.

writing departs

Recent physical difficulties that demanded attention seem to have broken the back of what once was a through-and-through habit of writing ... and crediting it. In a literal sense, words and juxtapositions and frictions that might have formed the basis for one thought oasis or another have lost their pop and defeat the capacities that are left. I can opine and think about, but the writing part -- once convincing and occasionally beautiful and full of sass -- is limp as a used condom.

I kind of miss that verve and attention and excitement and verbiage, but, given circumstances of the present, I am forced into the widespread habit du jour -- too many people telling others what to do and how to do it and not enough people to heed or care about such 'sage' or 'amusing' counsel.

For example, a news story this morning asserts that the CIA has decided to stop spying on its America's allies. The story suggests the CIA was somehow embarrassed or felt that its effectiveness had been dented by the CIA's privacy intrusions. The source of this story is kept secret, but the Associated Press seems to see nothing collusive about printing it as if it were true. My reaction was, "Who makes this shit up and what media outlet is not ashamed to spread it around?!"

In earlier times, I can imagine writing a whole lot about the personal or political Joseph Goebbels program of lying repeatedly until someone believes it. And there always is someone to create the lies and someone willing to ingest them. Religion, politics, war, love, wondrous good and heinous evil. There is no imperative to tell them or deconstruct the scenario ... being alive means deconstructing various kinds of shit ... and/or believing it ... and one (wo)man cannot tell another.  Writing about it is .... what? ... sort of eh or needlessly intrusive, however 'caring' the tone of voice.

The writing has gone away. Maybe, like a $20 bill or a dog turd, someone will find it in the gutter and make use of it. But I sort of wish I were once again more convinced -- or anyway less unconvinced -- by the melodies and arabesques of writing.

Oh well, you can't unthink a purple cow.

"The Roosevelts..." sort of

Watching segments of documentarian Ken Burns' 14-hour "The Roosevelts: An Intimate History," I am drawn in inconsequential ways into the past ... imagining things about other times and I might be right or I might be another inattentive fool.

Am I wrong, or did Burns forget to footnote the fact that the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918-1919 killed 50-100 million people worldwide. News outlets in Germany, France and the United States were kept on a short leash when reporting a disease that affected one-fifth  of the world's 1.8 billion. World War I killed 16 million. Spain was allowed to report on the epidemic, which meant there was a sense that Spain was disproportionately affected and hence the name "Spanish flu" got traction.

It's not that the illness occurred on Teddy Roosevelt's watch and he might have done something, but as an historical fact that must have been affecting, I wonder why no notice (unless I missed it) was made of it. But as I say, my reactions were more associative and thin than focused and fair.

More inconsequential still was the effect the still photos of a time span from the late 1800's to the middle of the 1900's seemed to have:

Was I wrong or were those photographed in an earlier time skinnier on average than today's well-flabbed population? I really don't know, but they seemed to be leaner and tougher even in moments of great incapacity. No breasty, botoxed, chatter-box 'housewives.' Fat people were "fat" instead of somehow "challenged."

Perhaps people were skinnier because Sigmund Freud had yet to gain ascendancy. Dissimulation was as popular as ever, no doubt, but its popularity and the wealth required to display it were not so prevalent ... or am I making that up? Does a hungry man have time or energy for pretense? His hungry eyes are hungry, aren't they?

People wrote to the president (FDR) in the reasonable expectation that he might write back or lend a hand where he could.

But columnist George Will, one of the narrators, gets off a good one in Burns' documentary:

"Building on the work of the first Roosevelt, the second Roosevelt gave us the idea, the shimmering, glittering idea of the heroic presidency. And with it the hope that complex problems would yield to charisma. This," Will declares during one episode, "sets the country up for perpetual disappointment."

I can feel the liberals squirming under that lash, but I can also feel the appropriate aspects of the remark: The appropriateness touches the latter-day conservative as well ... no shits and giggles and wool pulled over the eyes, perhaps, but a grand and wafting display of pusillanimous that is stunning in its selfishness.