non - persons

happy father's day

My girls

imagine a world without fish

watch full movie

Change – Who Needs It?

I would like to pose the following question – How bad do things have to get before we collectively embrace the necessity for change? Whether we examine the human condition locally or broaden our view to encompass a more global view, we are, undoubtedly, a troubled species.
Within the boundaries of the United States, we are faced with some very daunting realities. I will attempt to enumerate some of them –

•One out of every four children currently lives in poverty
•1.4 million Residents of New York City depend on food banks and soup-kitchens (some 1200 exist in the city) for their nutritional sustenance. Thirty-seven thousand New Yorkers live in homeless shelters
•Over eighty thousand are reported homeless in the city of Los Angeles
•46.3 million Americans (15.4%) as of 2009 do not have health insurance as reported by the Center for Disease Control (CDC)
•There are 13.9 million (9.1%) individuals unemployed as of 2010. This number does not include those who are under-employed or have stopped looking for work
•The data regarding the severity of summer temperatures, violent storms and unusual weather conditions continue to show strong correlations with the unabated increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

This list is a relatively small one with a somewhat narrow focus. All these conditions continue to worsen while public monies flow unabated from those with little resources to the wealthy; the income gap continues to worsen. In spite of these data, many politicians are calling for simultaneous cuts in taxes - benefiting those who already have nearly everything - and a further degradation in public services including widely-used services such as Medicare. These same voices would like to unravel the remaining remnants of public programs that benefit the many, including Social Security.

How bad do things have to get before we collectively embrace the necessity for change? How much needless suffering is required before we begin to more equitably utilize all the resources available to us as a very wealthy nation?

david

Michelangelo's David

meat pie

Cattle mutilation

theft

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

...Dwight D. Eisenhower...

Bastoy

crying girl

Roy Lichtenstein

i was born this way

jedi

"fear is the path to the dark side...


fear leads to anger...


anger leads to hate...


hate leads to suffering...


i sense much fear in you..."


...yoda...

Thicht Nhat Hanh interview with Ram Dass

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YouTube - ‪RamDassChannel's Channel‬‏:


Ram Dass interviews Thicht Nhat Hanh at the State of the World forum, September 1995

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whats more: Ram Dass interviews Thicht Nhat Hanh (1995)

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hobbits be here

Handmade house for $5,000.

Handmade Houses: A Guide to the Woodbutchers Art

apples and oranges

911scholars.org

pilotsfor911truth.org

firefightersfor911truth.org

Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth

it's about time

"Prohibition creates only one thing...

a profitable criminal underground."

Wisdom of insecurity

In 1975, Baruch Fischoff identified a major obstacle to forming new memories ..ourselves. He found that people frequently underestimate how surprised they are when events don’t turn out the way they expect. He polled a group of students before and after the Watergate hearings. Respondents who felt Nixon would be exonerated (with say 80% confidence) .. overwhelmingly came back and said they weren’t surprised by the verdict (and remember being just over 50% confident). When people learn the outcome of events, they unconsciously go back and adjust the estimate for what they thought would happen. This has the net-effect of revising memory so that it feels as if they “..knew it all along”, which diminishes the surprise-value of information [link]. More recently, neuroscientist Moshe Bar says that surprise is what gives ordinary events the informative-value necessary for transfer to long-term memory [link]. What we retain are mostly the novel bits of information we pick up along the way. They go on to form a ‘pool of scenarios’, which we use to prepare for future events. So if we go around dismissing the surprise-value of information, we sabotage memory, lower our ability to deal with the unexpected ..and don’t learn as much from experience. My friend Audrey likes to say that we can prevent future memory loss by making a conscious effort to do something out of the ordinary everyday ..increase our exposure to what’s new ..or at least give ordinary events greater value than “..it's just the same old story.”

disney's alien encounters

Dem Bones

"Skull"
by Salvador Dali

Put together dem bones,

Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.
Now hear the word of the Lord.

Let's connect dem bones, dem dry bones.
Let's connect dem bones, dem dry bones.
Let's connect dem bones, dem dry bones.
Now hear the word of the Lord.

Toe bone connected to your foot bone. Foot bone connected to your ankle bone. Ankle connected to your leg bone. Leg bone connected to your knee bone. Knee bone connected to your thigh bone. Thigh bone connected to your hip bone. Hip bone connected to your Back bone. Back bone connected to you shoulder bone. Shoulder bone connected to your Neck bone. Neck bone connected to your Head bone. Now hear the word of the Lord.

Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.
Now hear the word of the Lord.

Disconnect dem bones dem dry bones.
Disconnect dem bones dem dry bones.
Disconnect dem bones dem dry bones.
Now hear the word of the Lord.

Head bone connected from your neck bone. Neck bone connected from your shoulder bone. Shoulder bone connected from your back bone. Back bone connected from your hip bone. Hip bone connected from your thigh bone Thigh bone connected from your knee bone. Knee bone connected from your leg bone. Leg bone connected form your angcle bone. Ankle bone connected from your foot bone. Foot bone connected from your toe bone. Now hear the word of the Lord.

Dem bones, dem bone, dem begin to walk. Dem bones, dem bone, dem begin to talk. Dem bones, dem bone, dem begin to walk. Now hear the word of the Lord. And then the foot bone begins to walk. Jaw, jaw bone begins to talk. Bones get together in God's command. Walking and talking like a natural man. Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry, dry, dry bones.

The Prize

obey

Max Headroom 1987 Broadcast Signal Intrusion Incident

The Max Headroom broadcast signal intrusion was a television signal hijacking in Chicago, Illinois, on the evening of November 22, 1987. It is an example of what is known in the television business as broadcast signal intrusion. The intruder was successful in interrupting two television stations within three hours. Neither the hijacker nor the accomplices have ever been found or identified.

the buddha

overkill

just breathe

Semper Fi

Smedley Darlington Butler (July 30, 1881 – June 21, 1940), nicknamed "The Fighting Quaker" and "Old Gimlet Eye", was a Major General in the U.S. Marine Corps, and at the time of his death the most decorated Marine in U.S. history. During his 34-year career as a Marine, he participated in military actions in the Philippines, China, in Central America and the Caribbean during the Banana Wars, and France in World War I. By the end of his career he had received 16 medals, five of which were for heroism. He is one of 19 people to twice receive the Medal of Honor, one of three to be awarded both the Marine Corps Brevet Medal and the Medal of Honor, and the only person to be awarded the Brevet Medal and two Medals of Honor, all for separate actions.

He became widely known for his outspoken lectures against war profiteering, U.S. military adventurism, and what he viewed as nascent fascism in the United States.In 1935 he wrote the exposé War Is a Racket, a trenchant condemnation of the profit motive behind warfare. His views on the subject are summarized in the following passage:

"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class thug for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents." (read more)

Major General Smedley Darlington Butler

What Lies at the Core of Human Conflict?

If the overarching concepts of good and evil were to be stripped away from examples of unimaginable acts of violence of the recent past such as the use of commercial airliners filled with passengers as incendiary devices to destroy the World Trade Center in New York, or the attempt by the leaders of Fascist Germany to exterminate an entire race of human beings, or the use of the atomic bomb – essentially the most awesome and powerful weapon ever devised by human beings – on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the underlying reality would remain the same. In all these examples, large numbers of human being lost their lives under horrific and violent circumstances.

The haunting question is what characteristics of the human brain drive such events. In my thinking, it would be efficacious to examine the behavior of a much simpler organism. The social insect represents a highly successful biological machine, beautiful in its exquisite simplicity. For the purpose of discussion, we will focus on the leaf cutter ant – a species prevalent in the tropics. In relation to the survival of the species, the life and death of the individual leaf cutter ant is of no significance. Each ant is designed to fulfill a particular and essential function. The continued life of the colony is paramount to any other consideration; all behavior is directed towards this goal. In addition, the members of colony fit into distinct groups with particular and precise roles. These roles are exquisitely and genetically programmed and every member does not deviate from its function. This societal architecture precludes violence within the colony. Conflict arises only when the colony must defend itself from attack originating from outside the colony. This particular design is so efficient and successful that the species will endure well into the future as long as planetary conditions are capable of supporting life.

Over the hundreds of millions of years that spanned evolutionary time, the complexity of life increased exponentially, and eventually led to the appearance of Homo sapiens. From the enhanced interconnections of hundreds of billions of neurons within the human brain, sprang self consciousness, and existence suddenly took on meaning beyond considerations of the survival of the species. Within the human brain, the idea of person arose and humans acquired the quality of self awareness. Consciousness brought with it the reality of choice; as individuals we became capable of making choices between alternative paths of behavior. In essence, we suddenly had the capacity for self-direction. We became responsible for our own actions – an aspect of being that was entirely new for life on the planet.

Armed with this new capability, humans inevitably found themselves competing with one another for sustenance. Whether or not the propensity for violence became hard-wired within the human brain as a consequence of the environment of early humans is, of course, a matter of conjecture. In a relatively brief interval of cosmic time – some six million years since our ancestors branched off from the line that yielded the chimpanzee – humans fashioned societies, established diverse cultures, erected cities, contrived advanced technologies and killed each other at an alarming rate.

Collectively, we have assumed the staggering responsibility for the stewardship of the planet. There is sufficient reason to doubt whether humans are competent enough to function effectively at this level. Yet, the choices we can make are clear as well as their respective outcomes. There is reason for hope and equal justification for despair. Nonetheless, the future is ours to shape as our actions dictate.

after dark

Solar Max

The most powerful flare ever observed was the first one to be observed, on September 1, 1859, and was reported by British astronomer Richard Carrington and independently by an independent observer named Richard Hodgson. The event is named the Solar storm of 1859, or the "Carrington event". The flare was visible to a naked-eye (in white light), and produced stunning auroras down to tropical latitudes such as Cuba or Hawaii. The flare left a trace in Greenland ice in the form of nitrates and beryllium-10, which allow its strength to be measured today (New Scientist, 2005). Cliver & Salvgaard (2004) reconstructed the effects of this flare and compared with other events of the last 150 years. In their words: While the 1859 event has close rivals or superiors in each of the above categories of space weather activity, it is the only documented event of the last 150 years that appears at or near the top of all of the lists.


On September 1–2, 1859, the largest recorded geomagnetic storm occurred. Aurorae were seen around the world, most notably over the Caribbean; also noteworthy were those over the Rocky Mountains that were so bright that their glow awoke gold miners, who began preparing breakfast because they thought it was morning. Telegraph systems all over Europe and North America failed in some cases even shocking telegraph operators. Telegraph pylons threw sparks and telegraph paper spontaneously caught fire. Some telegraph systems appeared to continue to send and receive messages despite having been disconnected from their power supplies.

The last solar maximum was in 2000. The next solar maximum is currently predicted to occur sometime between January and May 2013 and to be one of the weakest cycles since 1928. The unreliability of solar maxima is demonstrated in that NASA had previously predicted the solar maximum for 2010/2011 and possibly to occur as late as 2012. Previously, on March 10, 2006, NASA researchers had announced that the next solar maximum would be the strongest since the historic maximum in 1859 in which the northern lights could be seen as far south as Rome, approximately 42° north of the equator. (read more)

The next solar max could be powerful enough to knock out electric power grids around the world for months or even longer.
(space storm)

Fukushima Psychopomp

Fukushima Psychopomp

BHUTAN: Taking The Middle Path To Happiness

“Bhutan – Taking the Middle Path to Happiness” is a documentary on the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan and its development policy of “Gross National Happiness.”

Imagine a country where the peoples’ happiness is the guiding principle of government. Imagine a people who see all life as sacred, a land with abundant renewable energy, a nation committed to preserving nature and its culture. Imagine a country where the government’s goal is “Gross National Happiness.” Where is this Shangri-La? Bhutan.



But can a place like Bhutan really exist? Can such ideals be realized? Can this small, geographically isolated country tucked away in the Himalayans truly protect its environment and culture as they open their doors to the West?”

The concept of taking “the middle path” is one rooted in the Bhutanese view of the world, a simple message: happiness lies in the middle path. Neither overindulging in the world’s pleasures nor rejecting the world’s goodness can lead to a prosperous and peaceful society. Happiness can only be found by taking the middle path – the path that provides the needs of mankind without sacrificing the life generating diversity of nature.

But now with Bhutan’s entry into the global marketplace, the introduction of television, advertising and the social pressures of consumerism can Bhutan maintain this delicate balance?

BHUTAN: Taking The Middle Path To Happiness