Truth?

Perhaps we can divide humankind into two categories with regards to truth, viz., those who use the upper case form of the word, i.e., Truth and those who utilize the lower case form, i.e., truth. Those who use the former belong to the religious camp while those who prefer the latter are more likely to be more flexible minds with a more scientific bent. Religionists and believers of all hues believe that truth exists in a pure metaphysical sense in some heavenly vault presided over by a heavenly banker called God.

Then there are other ways in which we use the word “truth,” viz., in the singular or in the plural number. Once again those who use the singular number are more likely to be religionists or believers, insofar as they assume that there is one homogeneous form of the truth – a Platonic Idea of the Truth somewhere out there. They readily equate that with God – the Ultimate Idea. In their metaphysical world, capital letters abound. Also, those who use the singular number are more likely to use the upper case form of the word, while those who use the plural number are more likely to be those of a scientific bent who see the world in a more plural sense.

In Western cultures we are called on to swear upon the Bible in court, which in itself is a naked declaration of a Christian take on what truth means. Leaving this aside, let’s say that such a swearing is a metaphorical action rather than any religious declaration per se. One could swear on a constitution of a country or on the UN Declaration of Human Rights for that matter. That sometimes our law courts get it wrong, and that historically innocent people have been executed, testifies to how hard it is to arrive at what the real truth of a situation actually is.

Then, there is the psychological nature of truth. In this respect we recall Polonius’ advice to his departing son Laertes to be true to himself. Those of us with an existentialist bent will call this our desire for authenticity. Freud and Jung and their followers, taking inspiration from Kant, have taught us that truth has a very personal shape and that we can see things more as we are than as such things are in themselves. Then the fictional, if eccentric, Dr House reminds us in a most timely and contemporary manner that we all lie for various personal purposes. Objectivity, it would seem, like truth is not as easily defined as we might at first superficially and naively think.

A Space Odyssey

trailer 1

trailer 2

Asteroid 2005 YU55

Asteroid YU-55, also written as 2005 YU55, is a potentially hazardous asteroid approximately 400 meters (1,300 feet) in diameter. It was discovered on 28 December 2005 by Robert S. McMillan at Steward Observatory, Kitt Peak. On 8 November 2011 it passed 0.85 lunar distances (324,600 kilometers or 201,700 miles) from the Earth. This is the closest known approach by an asteroid with an absolute magnitude this bright since 2010 XC15 (H = 21.4) approached within 0.5 lunar distances in 1976. (read more) (video clip)

Cornel West Chris Hedges at Goldman Sachs Mock Trial Occupy Wall St Nov 3 2011 people's hearing NewYorkRawVideos

fur

one of us

one of us

cooke

snow < = > sand

Grass is always greener

on the other side

Sea foam is bright white

and sparkles in the sun

Snoflakes dance in windy gusts

and lay to rest in fluffy puffs

And every -boarder would agree

Gnarly is as gnarly be

So be it snow or be it sand

Be it at sea or up on land

Awesome beauty in command

This does not matter: snow or sand

Annya's story - a Chernobyl legacy | whats up: 25th Anniversary of Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster | NUCLEAR "SAFTEY" = NUCLEAR THREAT

Annya's story - a Chernobyl legacy



Belarus: Annya's parents lived in a town so contaminated by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster that it was destroyed and buried. When she was four Annya was diagnosed with a brain tumor...

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more

• whats up: 25th Anniversary of Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster | NUCLEAR "SAFTEY" = NUCLEAR THREAT

• whats up: RC'S NUCLEAR BLOG

After the first few posts it became basically a news blog about the ongoing Fukushima Nuclear Catastrophe with related nuclear news and commentary - not so random anymore, it has become progressively more activist...

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NO NUKES | RE-TOOL NOW

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weird travels

"A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney"

Andrew Aitken "Andy" Rooney (January 14, 1919 – November 4, 2011) was an American radio and television writer. He was most notable for his weekly broadcast "A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney", a part of the CBS News program 60 Minutes from 1978 to 2011. His final regular appearance on 60 Minutes aired October 2, 2011. He died a month later, on November 4, at age 92.

Andrew Rooney was born in Albany, New York, the son of Walter Scott Rooney (1888–1959) and Ellinor (née Reynolds) Rooney (1886–1980). He attended The Albany Academy, and later attended Colgate University in Hamilton in Central New York, where he was initiated into the Sigma Chi fraternity, until he was drafted into the U.S. Army in August 1941. Rooney began his career in newspapers while in the Army when, in 1942, he began writing for Stars and Stripes in London during World War II.

In February 1943, flying with the Eighth Air Force, he was one of six correspondents who flew on the second American bombing raid over Germany. Later, he was one of the first American journalists to visit the Nazi concentration camps near the end of World War II, and one of the first to write about them.

During a segment on Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation, Rooney confessed that he had been opposed to World War II because he was a pacifist. He recounted that what he saw in those concentration camps made him ashamed that he had opposed the war and permanently changed his opinions about whether "just wars" exist.

In London, during the war, Mary Hemingway made an accusation of plagiarism against several fellow journalists, including Andy Rooney, although the accusations were proven false.

Rooney's 1995 memoir, My War, chronicles his war reporting. In addition to recounting firsthand several notable historical events and people (including the entry into Paris and the Nazi concentration camps), Rooney describes how it shaped his experience both as a writer and reporter. (read more)

Andrew Aitken "Andy" Rooney
(January 14, 1919 – November 4, 2011)

marvin

mystery of the stones

Easter Island (Rapa Nui: Rapa Nui, Spanish: Isla de Pascua) is a Polynesian island in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian triangle. A special territory of Chile that was annexed in 1888, Easter Island is famous for its 887 extant monumental statues, called moai, created by the early Rapanui people. Easter Island is claimed to be the most remote inhabited island in the world.

It is a World Heritage Site (as determined by UNESCO) with much of the island protected within Rapa Nui National Park. In recent times the island has served as a warning of the cultural and environmental dangers of overexploitation. Ethnographers and archaeologists also blame diseases carried by European colonizers and slave raiding of the 1860s for devastating the local peoples. (read more)

a love story

nonviolent direct action

Nonviolent direct action seeks to

create such a crisis and foster such a

tension that a community which has

constantly refused to negotiate is

forced to confront the issue. It seeks

to so dramatize the issue that it can

no longer be ignored.

...Martin Luther King Jr...
4/16/63

darkness

enter into darkness

your thoughts

planet stories

Mysti - mation

watch movie

skinny Bob

lunar earthrise 1966: lo1_h102_123

The world's first view of Earth taken by a spacecraft from the vicinity of the Moon. The photo was transmitted to Earth by the United States Lunar Orbiter I and received at the NASA tracking station at Robledo De Chavela near Madrid, Spain. This crescent of the Earth was photographed August 23, 1966 at 16:35 GMT when the spacecraft was on its 16th orbit and just about to pass behind the Moon. Reference Numbers: Center: HQ / Center Number: 67-H-218 / GRIN DataBase Number: GPN-2000-001588 / lo1-h102-123

(enlarge this image to clearly see the structures found on the moon)

Moon Rising

Lunar Orbiter 1

The Living Moon

fluke

the matrix version

monuments

(see more)

Michael Moore & Cornel West on OWS, Iraq & the Progressive Discontent Obama Faces in '12 Vote

Michael Moore & Cornel West on OWS, Iraq & the Progressive Discontent Obama Faces in '12 Vote



As Occupy protests against inequality and corporate greed continue across the United States and around the world, we’re joined by Michael Moore, Academy Award-winning filmmaker and activist, and Princeton University Professor Cornel West. "We expect [President Obama] to do the work of the people," Moore says. "The people are not going to go away. So he can either go down as a historic president, who become the FDR of this century, or he can be remembered as the man who was in the pocket of Goldman Sachs." West added, "What we’re trying to do is connect what’s going on on Wall Street with what’s going on in Harlem... If in fact we continue to have this kind of magnificent movement here and around the world, we want to be able to connect the corporate greed not just on Wall Street, but in the military-industrial complex, the prison-industrial complex, and the corporate-media multiplex." [includes rush transcript]

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Democracy Now! - Occupy Wall Street

Democracy Now!: Inspired by the massive public protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and Madrid’s Puerta del Sol Square, hundreds have camped out in Zuccotti Park near Wall Street since Sept. 17, 2011, as part of a campaign dubbed "Occupy Wall Street." Developing a common slogan "We are the 99 percent," solidarity encampments and demonstrations have been organized across the United States and the world to call for financial, political and social change. A global day of action on Oct. 15 drew protests in 1,500 cities world-wide, including more than 100 in the United States. #OWS #OccupyWallStreet

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Occupy Wall Street September 17,2011 (Testify- Rage Against The Machine )
Uploaded by TheAnonPress on Sep 15, 2011
Message From Anonymous.

death without due process

The United States has reportedly initiated a targeted killing program under which the CIA and the military have the authority to hunt and kill individuals, including U.S. citizens, far away from the battlefields in Iraq, Afghanistan and even the Pakistani border regions, and potentially anywhere in the world. The program operates without any checks and balances; all of the essential details about the program remain secret. We do not know what criteria are used to put people on the "kill lists" maintained by the CIA and military, how much evidence is required to add a person to the lists, or whether there are any geographical limits on where individuals can be targeted. The President has, in effect, claimed the unchecked authority to put the names of citizens and others on "kill lists" on the basis of a secret determination, based on secret evidence, that a person meets a secret definition of the enemy.

We are all familiar with how the death penalty works. A crime (usually murder) is committed. It's investigated by law enforcement. A suspect is arrested, charged with the crime, and goes to trial. The government shows the judge or jury the evidence against the accused. The accused can defend against the accusations. The jury delivers a verdict. If it's a guilty verdict, the defendant might be sentenced to death.

The process, from arrest to sentencing, is the Fifth Amendment in action, the part that states: "no person…shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law."

The Constitution protects all Americans' right to life, whether they're living at home or abroad. If the government thinks you should be dead, it should at least tell you why. The fact that the standard that puts Americans on the "kill list" is a secret is itself unconstitutional. As our complaint states, "U.S. citizens have a right to know what conduct may subject them to execution at the hands of their own government. Due process requires, at a minimum, that citizens be put on notice of what may cause them to be put to death by the state."

(ACLU: Targeted Killings) (ACLU: blog)

prejudice

lost horizon

Lost Horizon is a 1933 novel by English writer James Hilton. It is best remembered as the origin of Shangri-La, a fictional utopian lamasery high in the mountains of Tibet.

Hugh Conway, a veteran member of the British diplomatic service, finds inner peace, love, and a sense of purpose in Shangri-La, whose inhabitants enjoy unheard-of longevity. Among the book's themes is an allusion to the possibility of another cataclysmic world war brewing. It is said to have been inspired at least in part by accounts of travels in Tibetan borderlands, published in National Geographic by the explorer and botanist Joseph Rock.

The book explicitly notes having made war on the ground man would now fill the skies with death, and all precious things were in danger of being lost, like the lost histories of Rome ("Lost books of Livy"). It was hoped that overlooked by the violent, Shangri-la would preserve them and reveal them later to a receptive world exhausted by war. That was the real purpose of the lamasery; study, inner peace, and long life were a side benefit to living there.

Conway is a veteran of the trench warfare of WWI, with the emotional state frequently cited after that war—a sense of emotional exhaustion or accelerated emotional aging. This harmonizes with the existing residents of the lamasery and he is strongly attracted to life at Shangri-La. (read more) (world peace)

vincent

skull rock

Mary Blair's concept drawing
of Skull Rock from Peter Pan.

wipeout

wipeout full treatment