L I F E

the more you know

"The more you know, 

the crazier you look."

what the buddha learned

We will all get old

We will all get sick

And we will all die

all humans are one people

brave new world

flags

every day is earth day

I have no country to die for.

My country is the earth.

I am a citizen of the world

which consists of only one race

...the human race.

the sandwich man

W A N D E R E R S

androcles and the lion

The earliest form of the story is found in the fifth book of Aulus Gellius's 2nd century Attic Nights. The author relates there a story told by Apion in his lost work Aegyptiacorum ("Wonders of Egypt"), the events of which Apion claimed to have personally witnessed in Rome. In this version, Androcles is given the Latin name of Androclus, a runaway slave of a former Roman consul administering a part of Africa. He takes shelter in a cave, which turns out to be the den of a wounded lion. He removes a large thorn from the animal's foot pad, forces pus from the infected wound, and bandages it. As a result, the lion recovers and becomes tame toward him, acting like a domesticated dog, including wagging its tail and bringing home game that it shares with the slave.

After several years, the slave eventually craves a return to civilization, resulting in his imprisonment as a fugitive slave and condemnation to be devoured by wild animals in the Circus Maximus of Rome. In the presence of an unnamed emperor, presumably either Caligula or Claudius, the most imposing of these beasts turns out to be the same lion, which again displays its affection toward the slave. The emperor pardons the slave on the spot, in recognition of this testimony to the power of friendship, and he is left in possession of the lion. Apion then continues:

"Afterwards we used to see Androclus with the lion attached to a slender leash, making the rounds of the tabernae throughout the city; Androclus was given money, the lion was sprinkled with flowers, and everyone who met them anywhere exclaimed, This is the lion, a man's friend; this is the man, a lion's doctor." (read more)

Ubuntu

According to Michael Onyebuchi Eze, the core of ubuntu can best be summarized as follows:

"A person is a person through other people" strikes an affirmation of one’s humanity through recognition of an "other" in his or her uniqueness and difference.

It is a demand for a creative intersubjective formation in which the "other" becomes a mirror (but only a mirror) for my subjectivity.

This idealism suggests to us that humanity is not embedded in my person solely as an individual; my humanity is co-substantively bestowed upon the other and me.

Humanity is a quality we owe to each other. We create each other and need to sustain this otherness creation.

And if we belong to each other, we participate in our creations: we are because you are, and since you are, definitely I am.

The "I am" is not a rigid subject, but a dynamic self-constitution dependent on this otherness creation of relation and distance".

(ubuntu philosophy) (nelson mandela) (paradise or oblivion)

i love you

perspective

spaceship earth

buckminster fuller

atisha

the art of asking

how now brown cow ?

Rest in peace Andy

Andrew Samuel "Andy" Griffith (June 1, 1926 – July 3, 2012) was an American actor, director, producer, Grammy Award-winning Southern-gospel singer, and writer. A Tony Award nominee for two roles, he gained prominence in the starring role in director Elia Kazan's film A Face in the Crowd (1957) before he became better known for his television roles, playing the lead characters in the 1960–1968 situation comedy The Andy Griffith Show and in the 1986–1995 legal drama Matlock. Griffith died on July 3, 2012 at the age of 86. (read more)

100 years ago today: Titanic

RMS Titanic was a passenger liner that sank in the North Atlantic Ocean on 15 April 1912 after colliding with an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton, England to New York City. The sinking of Titanic caused the deaths of 1,514 people in one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in history. She was the largest ship afloat at the time of her maiden voyage. One of three Olympic class ocean liners operated by the White Star Line, she was built between 1909–11 by the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast. She carried 2,223 people.


Her passengers included some of the wealthiest people in the world, as well as over a thousand emigrants from Great Britain and Ireland, Scandinavia and elsewhere seeking a new life in North America. The ship was designed to be the last word in comfort and luxury, with an on-board gymnasium, swimming pool, libraries, high-class restaurants and opulent cabins. She also had a powerful wireless telegraph provided for the convenience of passengers as well as for operational use. Though she had advanced safety features such as watertight compartments and remotely activated watertight doors, she lacked enough lifeboats to accommodate all of those aboard. Due to outdated maritime safety regulations, she carried only enough lifeboats for 1,178 people – slightly more than half of the number traveling on the maiden voyage and one-third her total passenger and crew capacity.


After leaving Southampton on 10 April 1912, Titanic called at Cherbourg in France and Queenstown (now Cobh) in Ireland before heading westwards towards New York. On 14 April 1912, four days into the crossing and about 375 miles (600 km) south of Newfoundland, she hit an iceberg at 11:40 pm (ship's time; GMT−3). The glancing collision caused Titanic's hull plates to buckle inwards in a number of locations on her starboard side and opened five of her sixteen watertight compartments to the sea. Over the next two and a half hours, the ship gradually filled with water and sank. Passengers and some crew members were evacuated in lifeboats, many of which were launched only partly filled. A disproportionate number of men – over 90% of those in Second Class – were left aboard due to a "women and children first" protocol followed by the officers loading the lifeboats. Just before 2:20 am Titanic broke up and sank bow-first with over a thousand people still on board. Those in the water died within minutes from hypothermia caused by immersion in the freezing ocean. The 710 survivors were taken aboard from the lifeboats by RMS Carpathia a few hours later. (read more)

what's your message ?

This is the back of my Ford F-150 pickup...

and this is my message to the world...

What's your message?