Morihei Ueshiba

Economy is the basis of society.

When the economy is stable, society develops.

The ideal economy combines the spiritual and the material,

and the best commodities to trade in are sincerity and love.

...Morihei Ueshiba...

The Love Of Money

(movie trailer)

Stamp act

The states that banned marijuana were primarily in the south and southwest, where economics and prejudice played a major role. During the great depression, migrant workers from Mexico were no longer needed nor welcome. People feared that Mexican immigrants were undercutting American workers for jobs so they were trying to get them to go back to Mexico. Since many of these immigrants smoked marijuana, it was thought that banning marijuana would help. So, in 1937 Congress passed The Marijuana Tax Stamp Act. The Act itself did not actually criminalize possession or use of marijuana, but required anyone doing so to pay roughly one dollar to receive the stamp. In the 1930’s, this would have been prohibitively expense to migrant farm workers, however, it didn’t matter ..the government was only issuing them to doctors and dentists. This created a catch-22 for recreational users ..the penalty for not having the stamp was a fine of up to $2000 and five years’ imprisonment. This put recreational users at great risk, and for the Mexican immigrant, it meant certain deportation.

Why people in olden times were happier

OPIUM FOR NEW BORNS-I'm sure this would make them sleep well (not only the Opium, but 46% alcohol!)

Very popular for children in 1885. Not only did they relieve the pain, they made the children happy! COCAINE DROPS FOR TOOTH ACHE


COCAINE TABLETS-1900-All stage actors, singers teachers andpreachers had to have them for a maximum performance. Great to "smooth" the voice.


OPIUM FOR ASTHMA

A paper weight promoting C.F. Boehringer & Soehne ( Mannheim , Germany ).. They were proud of being the biggest producers in the world of products containing Quinine and Cocaine.


Mariani wine (1875) was the most famous Coca wine of it's time. Pope Leo XIII used to carry one bottle with him all the time. He awarded Angelo Mariani (the producer) with a Vatican gold medal.



Coca Wine, anyone? Metcalf Coca Wine was one of a huge variety of wines with cocaine on the market. Everybody used to say that it would make you happy and it would also work as a medicinal treatment.



Produced by Maltine Manufacturing Company of NewYork. It was suggested that you should take a full glass with or after every meal... Children should take half a glass.






Bayers Heroin


A bottle of Bayer's heroin. Between 1890 and 1910 heroin was sold as a non-addictive substitute for morphine. It was also used to treat children with strong cough.

No wonder they were called The Good Old Days!!
BRING THEM BACK, BY ALL MEANS!

Zeitgeist, The Movie

A matter of perspective

Has it ever occurred to you

that you might be wrong?

...Charles M. Schulz...


(link)

Sphere of Consciousness

E x p a n d

your sphere of consciousness

expand\ik-'spand\ vb 1 : to open up : UNFOLD 2 : ENLARGE 3 : to develop in detail syn amplify, swell, distend, inflate, dilate--

American Beauty

There is no "hope"

only "choices"

If you look real close

you can see it

Look real close

Alien portal

I wake up feeling like I hadn't slept ..I go downstairs and drink lots of coffee while surfing the Internet. Web pages go streaking by like a NASCAR race ..disappearing down avenues of cyber space ~ click ~ a pipeline of light takes me to a satellite connection ~ click ~ ultra violet rays hurl me into the infinite ether ~ click ~ fractal patterns go spinning by ..unraveling out of sight ~ click ~ a metallic orb looms ahead ..flashing letters that form the words: cosmic connection click here ~ click~ a portal door blows wide open revealing a brilliantly colored, luminescent universe ..I pass through going ..how did I get here? On the other side an alien's face appears ..Its words bypass my auditory system and go directly into my center for word recognition: "zzzipperishhh .. gibberishhh ..licorisshh ..carnivorishh ..ahhh haaa, English ..! Greetings Earthling ..how may I be of assistance ?”

COMETA

COMETA

COMETA REPORT

(read more)

High Flight

"High Flight"

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,

I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air....

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue

I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace

Where never lark nor even eagle flew—

And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

Out Of The Blue

Google H. G. Wells

Google has again, and to the delight of many, given us yet another UFO logo for its homepage today.

Finally giving away their intention, today is the birthday of H. G. Wells.

This is the third time this month Google has stirred our minds to ponder the eternal question.....are we alone in the universe?

The goggle story

The same forces that bind the atomic particles of my eyes also hold together the planets and stars in outer space. A slight shift in balance would turn those forces into photo-energy ~ and the universe would dissolve into light. Now, as awesome as that might sound ~ you can bet that any extraterrestrials, who are watching, will be knocking on the door the instant they see us tipping that scale. I look out my backdoor ~ there’s a creek and a small wooded area ~ and so many waves of energy bombarding me; I can’t catch them all ~ only the ones that my senses are programmed to receive ~ and even those get filtered ~ sent to neuro-clusters ~ and filtered some more ~ discarding what I haven’t got sense enough to understand ~ and preserving the rest as ‘conscious experience’. Scientists tell me that space is not a vacuum ~ it’s a fabric ~ when I step outside and walk down the street ~ it clings to me and starts to build up ~ like mud on my boots after a rainy day. I explain this to my friends and they get me a pair of goggles. But even those don't help much when I'm trying to see through the debris that, psychologists say, builds up on the lenses of my mind everyday.

The Banana Dance

Rule The World

Control the food


control the sky


control the world

Racism Still Lives Boldly and is Apparently Well Nourished

The irrational and horrific assaults on the character of President Obama, the first African American President in the nation’s history, seem ill conceived and apparently inexplicable. President Obama, the man, has repeatedly demonstrated his intelligence, tenacity and integrity. He has also shown that he has the welfare and well being of the American people very much in mind in crafting his approach to governance. This is in marked contrast to his predecessor who demonstrated his complete lack of compassion in regards to the actual plight of so many Americans. As a matter of fact, his policies had effectively worsened the living conditions of those already facing severe economic hardship.

The extreme fear and threats of violence and armed confrontation made by those who would benefit the most by the kinds of reforms Obama is proposing can be readily explained if the origin of these intense feelings is racism. For many whites, battered by the new economic reality, poorly educated and enveloped in a homogeneous social environment in which extremist Christian fundamentalist ideology thrives, the rapidly changing world of the twenty-first century is extremely daunting. They are collectively fearful. These fears are compounded and fueled by ignorance. What makes the situation apparently unbearable to those susceptible to the crazed references to socialism, communism and even fascism is that their President is an extremely intelligent and highly articulate black man. This unavoidable fact is unconscionable, for the black man is supposed to be beneath them and intrinsically inferior to them. This reality turns their essential perception of reality on its head and is very frightening.

The lynch mob mentality is apparently not dead. The nation has cause for concern, since powerful interests, who are threatened by the Obama presidency for obvious and understandable reasons, are unabashedly exploiting this fear that often seems to approach mass hysteria. The nation, polarized in this way, may continue to stagnate and may ultimately regress to a time when violence dominated the political landscape. National policies must be guided by reason and compassion if we ever hope to progress as a humane society. The President is only one man, but the national destiny is in the hands of all of us.

Culture of Fear

The Right's Fringe Festival
The racist, antigay, pro-gun, antichoice, Christian nationalist march on Washington
By Sebastian Jones

September 16, 2009

This Saturday, some 70,000 people marched through downtown Washington, DC. Organizers of the "Taxpayer March on DC" crowed on their website that "thousands of local organizers and grassroots Americans" took to the streets because they've had "enough of the out of control spending, the bailouts, the growth of big government and soaring deficits." Pretty straightforward, bread-and-butter economic conservatism, right?


So imagine my surprise when, having just arrived at the march, I saw a thin, tall, bearded fellow with a boonie cap jogging up Pennsylvania Avenue shouting "White Power!" A few people looked around awkwardly, not sure how to react, but mostly the crowd just moved along. Why wouldn't they, after all, when just a few paces down the road an elderly man was showing off his "McCarthy Was Right!" sign, or when numerous placards compared the president to various genocidal tyrants, or when the most common mass-produced poster (courtesy of an antiabortion group) demanded that we "Bury Obamacare with Kennedy"?


This was only a sampling of the hateful language on display at the rally, which was only tangentially about taxation. More accurately, the event was a FreedomWorks-organized, corporate-funded, Fox News-fueled celebration of every conservative political and cultural cause of the past fifty years. Milling around the crowd, it was impossible to miss the references to issues as disparate as blocking investigations of CIA torture, promoting assault weapons and God "judging" America for homosexuality. Confederate flags were flown, Obama was told to "go back to Kenya," and so forth and so on. The crowd itself was almost exclusively white--and its members had come to get their country back.

(read more)

I Love English!

While lying awake last night, I got to thinking about my love affair with the English language. Growing up in Montreal, I was equally at home in English and French and our family's private language, Frengjabi. I could sorta, kinda communicate in Punjabi, but never really comfortably.

Most people think that French is a beautiful language and it is! Truly it is the language of love and all you women out there who have never had a man make verbal love to you in French, you are missing a treat. And, no, it doesn't seem to work the other way around.

For sublime poetry, Punjabi is unequaled. Although my Punjabi fails me this day, still the sound and the cadence of Sri Guru Granth Sahib pierces straight into the soul, elevating one's being to the sublime.

All that said, for communication, I love English. I love its devil-may-care attitude toward itself, the way it never takes itself too seriously. ( [English teachers] take it seriously, but that's another matter. No Henry Higgins I, I am pure 'Enry 'Iggins.) This is a robust tongue in need of no language police to protect its purity, for it has no purity to protect.

For those of you learning English as a second language or those still learning the fundamentals, nothing takes the place of knowing the proper use of the language and, certainly, it is absolutely necessary to have full mastery of standard English, its grammar and structure.

(Now that I have partially placated any English teachers who may be reading this. I proceed to the important stuff.)

But once that mastery is achieved, the fun begins. English should come with instructions saying, " Please fold, spindle and mutilate; I can take it and come out the better for it." I love to try new things with English. One of my favourites - English teachers, get out those red pens - is to verb nouns. These two people flanking me as I write now turban every day.

Amrit always has, but Suni just started after they got married. (See how smoothly that flows and how perfectly understandable it is?)

It is one thing however to do this on purpose and another to do it out of carelessness or ignorance. There are a couple of mistakes that really grate on me. People, hear me! 'It's' means it is. 'It's' always means it is. 'It's' is not a possessive. The possessive form is its (no apostrophe). Its possessive form is 'its.' Clear? Likewise 'you're' means you are, a contraction. 'Your' is the possessive form. 'Your' never means you are. Of course, in nonstandard English ur can mean either. I'm not sure this is an improvement, as some meaning is lost.

I think my least favourite word is 'enthused.' It makes me cringe right from my cramping toes to the crown of my head. It sounds ugly, rhymes with ooooooooozed. I am not opposed to back formations, but I am opposed to gratuitous ugliness.

I can also dangle participles and modifiers like a champ, but I usually edit them out, unless I find them amusing. (While running to the store to shoplift some more Sudafed, my boiling pot of meth exploded, contaminating the whole neighbourhood.)

Here, as I close, I mention a new favourite piece of nonstandard English I came across a couple days ago. Eleanor Bloom, listen up! I CAN HAS MORR COKE PLZ, follow the link; you won't be sorry!

And now, for those of you who have actually gotten this far, some real fun with English:

Metaphors

Every year, English teachers from across the country can submit actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays. Here are some examples:

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a
pinhole in it.

4. She grew on him like she was a colony of e-coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.

5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.

8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.

9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.

10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like

11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 P.M. Instead of 7:30.

12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just likemaggots when you fry them in hot grease.

14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 P.M. Traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 P.M., at a speed of 35 mph.

15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.

16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two humming-birds, which had also never met.

17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River

18. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap; only it was one that had been left out so long and it had rusted shut.

19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a day.

22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

23. The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.

25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up

Coming of Age

A shift of consciousness
The definition of oneself
From looking glass self
To introspective self-realization

Your opinion of me
Has nothing to do
With who I am.

Integrity is what we do
When no one is looking;
It is also what is found
Upon looking at ourselves –
But only when honesty is employed.

Happiness is smiling
When no one is around.
Generosity is giving
What you didn’t think you had.
Love is loving the one
Who doesn’t love you back
Simply because you love.

A shocking realization:
That I need no one
But want them just the same.
It means I no longer hurt
For lack of company,
But revel in community
And in humanity
And in myself.

"Mad As Hell"

Just when it seemed the angry town hall meetings had ended, a group that's still mad as hell rolled into Saint Paul Wednesday.
The group of touring physicians, called the "Mad as Hell Doctors," held a rally at the state capitol.

"I'm mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take it anymore!" the crowd yelled, at the group's urging, before the nine doctors from Oregon and California talked about why they favor a single-payer, government-run health care system that would cover all Americans.

"I'm mad as hell because Americans are going bankrupt because of their medical bills," Dr. Bob Seward, an internist from Portland, told the crowd.

"I'm mad as hell when I hear our country is ranked by the World Health Organization as 37th in the world, in terms of health outcomes," San Francisco family physician Marc Sapir said.

The doctors are stopping in 26 cities on their way to Washington, D.C., and they're not happy with any of the health-care reform options Congress is considering.

(read more)

Food, Inc.

Control the land, control the farms, control the seed, control the processing, control the advertising, control the congress, control the news, control the distribution, control the retail, control the access, control the food.

High calorie, sugar laden processed foods coupled with our sedentary lifestyles is growing our waistlines and contributing to serious health issues like diabetes, heart ailments and cancers. One-third of children and adolescents are overweight or obese. Tell Congress that kids should be served healthy meals, not soda and junk food.

Some of our most important staple foods have been fundamentally altered, and genetically engineered meat and produce have already invaded our grocery stores and our kitchen pantries.

Cancers, autism and neurological disorders are associated with the use of pesticides especially amongst farm workers and their communities. Learn about what pesticides are in your food and their effects.

Did you know that the average food product travels about 1,500 miles to get to your grocery store? And that transporting food accounts for 30,800 tons of greenhouse gas emissions every year?

Approximately 10 billion animals (chickens, cattle, hogs, ducks, turkeys, lambs and sheep) are raised and killed in the US annually. Nearly all of them are raised on factory farms under inhumane conditions. These industrial farms are also dangerous for their workers, pollute surrounding communities, are unsafe to our food system and contribute significantly to global warming.

In January 2008, the FDA approved the sale of meat and milk from cloned livestock, despite the fact that Congress voted twice in 2007 to delay FDA's decision on cloned animals until additional safety and economic studies could be completed.

Approximately 1 billion people worldwide do not have secure access to food, including 36 million in the US. National and international food and agricultural policies have helped to create the global food crisis but can also help to fix the system.

(video clip)

A most lucid explanation

If I understand what he’s saying ..the current economic crises can be traced back to the Reagan Administration. In 1980 they deregulated the Savings and Loan industry ..which put the business of making home loans in the hands of amateurs. Then, in 1987 ..the Reagan Administration had to bail out the Savings and Loan industry when it collapsed under the weight of it’s own incompetence (and unbridled greed). The Federal government allowed the Savings and Loans to package questionable loans, and sell them as stocks ..or mortgage-backed securities. It was mortgage-backed securities that helped make the housing slump of 2006–2007 ..go global in 2008 ..and wipe out investment houses from Bear Stearns to Deutsche Industriebank

Peace

World peace is possible.
Why do you say it is not?

Surely, the reason that world peace is non-existent,
is indeed because of the fact that you say it is not possible.

Then after you voice this well-believed lie,
you're actions follow, as you lie in a pool of your own acquiescence.

We are the problem of this world, but we are also the solution.
Stop believing you're powerless and join the revolution of peace.

Google Earth

For the second time this month, Google is causing an immense amount of speculation.

Google has this time surprised its users with this crop circles logo.

Today’s logo shows a flying saucer above a series of crop circles that spell Google. Well, almost — the L has been abducted. That's similar to the last Google flying saucer logo from ten days ago, where an O was taken.

If you look at today’s logo’s file name, it’s “goog_e.gif” The URL of the logo is “http://www.google.com/logos/goog_e.gif” (there is a missing L). The last logo was go_gle.gif – reflecting the missing O. So that’s O and now L. What next?

The Fastwalkers

(click post title for movie)

We were all thinking it

September 15, 2009 -- BBC -- The Iraqi man who threw his shoes at former U.S. President George W. Bush, has been released from jail in Baghdad, his brother has told the BBC.

Journalist Muntadar al-Zaidi's act of protest made him a hero in large parts of the Arab world and beyond.

Zaidi was convicted of assaulting a foreign leader.

The TV reporter's three-year prison sentence was reduced to one because he had a clean record. He was released three months early for good behaviour.

Zaidi's family has been preparing to hold a party for him and he has received offers of money, jobs and even marriages from sympathisers across the Arab world.

His brother, Dargham al-Zaidi, says the journalist was beaten while in prison, suffering a broken arm, broken ribs and internal bleeding. Those allegations have been rejected by the Iraqi military.

The previously little-known journalist worked for the private Cairo-based al-Baghdadia TV.

As he flung the shoes, Zaidi shouted: "This is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, dog. This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq."

His action was celebrated in internet games and on T-shirts and some people have offered him their daughters in marriage.

We were all thinking it, now here's your chance.

Just One Thing

No normal decent person is just one thing.

OK!?!

I got some shit I'm conservative about,

I got some shit I'm liberal about.

When it comes to crime, I'm conservative,

when it comes to prostitution, I'm liberal.

...Chris Rock...

Isadora Duncan

Isadora Duncan (May 26, 1877 – September 14, 1927) was an American dancer. She was born Angela Isadora Duncan in San Francisco, California. Isadora Duncan is considered by many to be the mother of modern dance. Although popular in the United States only in New York later in her life, she entertained throughout Europe.

Duncan's fondness for flowing scarves which trailed behind her was the cause of her death in a freak automobile accident in Nice, France, on the night of September 14, 1927, at the age of 50. The scarf was hand-painted silk from the Russian-born artist Roman Chatov. The accident gave rise to Gertrude Stein's mordant remark that "affectations can be dangerous."

Duncan was a passenger in the Amilcar automobile of a handsome French-Italian mechanic, Benoît Falchetto, whom she had nicknamed "Buggatti". Before getting into the car, she said to a friend, Mary Desti (mother of 1940s Hollywood writer-director Preston Sturges), and some companions, "Adieu, mes amis. Je vais à la gloire!" ("Goodbye, my friends, I am off to glory!"). However, according to the diaries of the American novelist Glenway Wescott, who was in Nice at the time and visited Duncan's body in the morgue (his diaries are in the Beinecke Library at Yale University), Desti admitted that she had lied about Duncan's last words. Instead, she told Wescott, the dancer actually said, "Je vais à l'amour" ("I am off to love"), which Desti considered too embarrassing to go down in history as the legend's final utterance, especially as it suggested that Duncan hoped that she and Falchetto were going to her hotel for a sexual assignation.

Whatever her actual last words, when Falchetto drove off, Duncan's immense handpainted silk scarf—a gift from Desti that was large enough to wrap around her body and neck and flutter out of the car, became entangled around one of the vehicle's open-spoked wheels and rear axle. As The New York Times noted in its obituary of the dancer on September 15, 1927, "Isadora Duncan, the American dancer, tonight met a tragic death at Nice on the Riviera. According to dispatches from Nice Miss Duncan was hurled in an extraordinary manner from an open automobile in which she was riding and instantly killed by the force of her fall to the stone pavement." Other sources describe her death as resulting from strangulation, noting that she was almost decapitated by the sudden tightening of the scarf around her neck.

Isadora Duncan was cremated, and her ashes were placed next to those of her beloved children in the columbarium at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

Mirrors

"EXCERPTS REFLECTIONS ON FAME Each person you come to is a different mirror. And since you're just another person like them maybe you're just another mirror too, and there's no way of ever knowing whether your own view of yourself is just another distortion. Maybe all you ever see is reflections. Maybe mirrors are all you ever get. First the mirrors of your parents, then friends and teachers, then bosses and officials, priests and ministers, and maybe writers and painters too. That's their job too, holding up mirrors. But what controls all these mirrors is the culture if you run afoul of the culture it will start throwing up reflections that try to destroy you, or it will withdraw the mirrors and try to destroy you that way. Phaedrus could see how this celebrity could get to be like some sort of narcosis of mirrors where you have to have more and more supportive reflections just to stay satisfied. The mirrors take over your life and soon you don't know who you are. Then the culture controls you and when it takes away your mirrors and the public forgets you the withdrawal symptoms start to appear. And there you are, in the Zen hell of celebrity....Hemingway with the top of his head blown off, and Presley, full of prescription drugs" Robert Pirsig.