8/31/11

The masters of the Tao see grace in everything

The masters of the Tao see grace in everything
They do not seek display pray silently
They do not seek to force their will they wait
For what they will will come should it be fate 

The wisest scholars heed the Tao


The wisest scholars heed the Tao
The less wise partly heed
The least wise look at it and laugh
If it were not laugned at 

It would not be fit to be the Tao

Obama's Way: Obama's real reform is in its infancy Obama is a pragmaticist

Obama's Way: Obama's real reform is in its infancy Obama is a pragmaticist:

"Obama's real reform is in its infancy
Obama is a pragmaticist
Most people think he is a pragmatist
They need to understand that Charles Sanders Peirce
Who originated pragmatism
Soon rejected it
For the vastly more
Subtle and accurate philosophy of
Pragmaticism"

More at the link above.

Obama's Way: Obama will win the Presidency in 2012

Obama's Way: Obama will win the Presidency in 2012:

"We have no indication of what will happen in the next twelve months and efforts to predict are doomed to be trumped by the course of history which has a habit of being fickle at times."

New blog.


Integration is not begging - wasn't then, isn't now

Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement -- Integration is completely irrelevant to us.: "The one thing I learned from the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was that you don't work for integration in this country -- what you've got to work for is power. The mistake we made was that we went to the National Democratic Party begging them to come into their party. If we're to do anything, we have to stop begging."

This is where I parted company with Stokely. Not because I disagreed about power, but because power lies in forging unity beyond divisions and community beyond distrust. I essentially gave up a career to work toward "power" in the late 1960s when integration was superseded by Black Power. I watched with sad comprehension as Black Power was used by the white establishment to create the environment of continued racism that ensued. I still feel I am right and that Stokely was wrong. When we have real power it will be because we attained real integration, not because we rejected it. What we have now is some power bought at the sacrifice of the bulk of the Black community along with the whites and Hispanics who are subsisting at 5 percent of the average income and worth of the diminishing white middle-mandarin class.

Original Biblical Songs: A Stranger Named Peace


So why do we keep saying minorities

Majority-minority cities: Whites now a minority in New York City, D.C. and 20 other metro areas: "We’ve known for a long time that the day would come when whites would no longer be a majority in America. A pair of new census analyses shows it’s near at hand."


Global Online Privacy

We could largely eliminate fire danger by our construction methods

Flame retardants linked to lower-birth-weight babies: "ScienceDaily (Aug. 30, 2011) — Exposure during pregnancy to flame retardant chemicals commonly found in the home is linked to lower birthweight babies, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley's School of Public Health."

All we need to do is create spaces that are not merely resistant to flame but cannot burn under any circumstance. If we got to the moon we can alter our prehistoric building methods to be coexistent with the present and future.

Global Online Privacy

Cheney wants to be a revered elder statesman of the GOP?

Wilkerson: We talked about Cheney’s people like the ‘Nazis’ | Raw Replay: "“It often went like this: Those Nazis in Vice President Cheney’s office; the Gestapo in Vice President Cheney’s office. That’s kinda the way, by 2003 and 2004, we’d come to look at Scooter Libby and David Addington, including the vice president himself, in that office.”

He also criticized President Barack Obama for failing to pursue charges against Cheney and other Bush-era officials, suggesting that Cheney has repeatedly and openly admitted to “war crimes,” indicating that he fears a potential prosecution."

All this and Cantor too?

But to be fair Obama's logic on this piece is flawed. His ratings would go up, not down, if he prosecuted Cheney.

Global Online Privacy

A computer game to solve this student angst?

Computer Game Therapy Combats Stress, Anxiety | Psych Central News: "A combination of rising tuition and declining student loans, along with greater competition to achieve top grades, has led an increasing number of college students to seek counseling and therapy."

Excuse me.

Global Online Privacy

The American Dream got lost in 1968

How the American Dream Subverts Us | Psychology Today: "A recent analysis of the World Database of Happiness, covering the years 1946 to 2006, found rising happiness levels in 19 of 26 countries around the world; the United States was not one of them. As Andrew Oswald, who studies the intersection of economics and happiness at the University of Warwick, in Britain, states, "The U.S.A. has, in aggregate, apparently become more miserable over the last quarter of a century.""

And all current talk of an American dream is referring to a nightmare. We need to get the dream back for sure. But it is not Sprawl America for sure.

Global Online Privacy

Bank of America on the carpet

Nevada Wallops Bank of America With Sweeping Suit; Nationwide Foreclosure Settlement in Peril - ProPublica: "The state of Nevada dramatically expanded its lawsuit against Bank of America today, turning the narrow case it filed late last year into a broadside that targets virtually all aspects of the bank's mortgage operations. Bank of America has previously denied wrongdoing."




Global Online Privacy

Some good thinking from Dallas

Dissertation Abstract: Constructed Subjectivities and a “Thick” Account of Agency: A Foucauldian Dialogue with Douglass, Fanon, and the Augustinian-Franciscan Tradition | Per Caritatem: "Michel Foucault offers penetrating analyses of how subjectivities are constructed. His statements regarding the ubiquity of power relations have been misinterpreted as both a denial of human agency and a death blow to the subject. Against this entrenched view, I argue that his understanding of power relations presuppose free subjects and, in fact, creates a space for resistance possibilities."

'via Blog this'

Global Online Privacy

On a hot August day, I drove from Manhattan up the Taconic

The Complete History of Adam Panflick: "On a hot August day, I drove from Manhattan up the Taconic, over to Route 7 and north to to the town where Adam lived after he burnt himself at the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968 until the day he concluded it was hopeless to continue trying to repair a marriage he had been instrumental in helping to demolish."



Global Online Privacy

Good for Daryl Hannah

Daryl Hannah Arrested During DC Oil Protest: ""Sometimes it's necessary to sacrifice your freedom for a greater freedom. And we want to be free from the horrible death and destruction that fossil fuels cause, and have a clean energy future," Hannah told the celebrity news Web site."

Good for her. The President should heed her. There is every reason to fall on the sword of truth if need be to sustain the truth about fossil fuels and their hellish influence on all of life.

Global Online Privacy

Sounds like a model for an entire economy

Perry Revives Social Security 'Ponzi Scheme' Rhetoric : NPR: "Social Security does share one important feature of a Ponzi scheme. The money that today's workers pay into the system goes right back out the door to pay current beneficiaries. That hasn't been a problem for the system so far, but the future presents a challenge. Retirees tend to live a lot longer now than they did in the 1930s. And as Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) told CBS, there are now fewer workers paying into the system for every retiree taking out."

What if we made it progressive and universal?

'via Blog this'

Global Online Privacy

Thus does Irene enable the majesty of capitalism

Irene the stimulus package?- MSN Money: "He's talking about the sudden influx of work for the construction industry. There is much to clean and rebuild, and a good portion of that work will be funded by the federal government."

Of course rebuilding will only make it more expensive to relocate away from the water when reason prevails.


Global Online Privacy

Another disgusting window on Syria's shame

BBC News - Dozens 'tortured and killed in Syria detention centres': ""These deaths behind bars are reaching massive proportions, and appear to be an extension of the same brutal disdain for life that we are seeing daily on the streets of Syria," said Neil Sammonds, Amnesty's researcher on Syria."


Global Online Privacy

Why was Irene so costly?

Hurricane Cost Seen as Ranking Among Top Ten - NYTimes.com: "Hurricane Irene will most likely prove to be one of the 10 costliest catastrophes in the nation’s history, and analysts said that much of the damage might not be covered by insurance because it was caused not by winds but by flooding, which is excluded from many standard policies."

Fine, but the real reason for the huge flooding cost is the unreasonable human addiction to to building near water. We should in recreating society build communities of sufficient size that they qualify as cyber-cities or units of cyber-metro areas. These would best be placed along existing interstates at altitudes that render the possibility of flood damage nearly impossible. Make no mistake. Sprawl must go and will no doubt be bulldozed or otherwise eliminated. We are going to have new cities. A new society. New opportunity for real community.  It is the key to recovery and future prosperity. We need to discover and celebrate the human in one another.


Global Online Privacy

Boycott these suckers until they pay a fair share

NYT: CEOs earn more than firms pay in US taxes - Business - US business - The New York Times - msnbc.com: "At least 25 top United States companies paid more to their chief executives in 2010 than they did to the federal government in taxes, according to a study released on Wednesday."

Really. Start with eBay, Boeing, GE (MSNBC) and Verizon.

Phaneroscopy as Peirce defines it

Commens Peirce Dictionary: Phaneroscopy: "Phaneroscopy is the description of the phaneron; and by the phaneron I mean the collective total of all that is in any way or in any sense present to the mind, quite regardless of whether it corresponds to any real thing or not. "


Global Online Privacy

The gears of legislation and the perfidy of the GOP - minimalist view

Faster FOIA Act of 2011 - Senate Vote: On the Motion to Table (Motion to Table the Motion to Concur in the House Amendment to S. 627) | Campaign Contributions By Vote | MAPLight.org - Money and Politics:

"S. 627 - Budget Control Act of 2011
Budget Control Act of 2011 - Government operations and politics. 112th Congress (2011-2012) View bill details
Sponsor:
Patrick Leahy
Summary:
A bill to establish the Commission on Freedom of Information Act Processing Delays. (by CRS)
Status:
The bill was voted on in both the House and Senate.
Amendments:
5 proposed amendments. View amendments "


Global Online Privacy

Post pill nightmare

What Happened When I Went Off The Pill: "But what happens when you go OFF hormonal birth control pills (BCPs)? This is something rarely discussed –- or at least, discussed much less than what to expect when you go ON BCPs. So, let me share my story with you."

Until universal male birth control is the default I am for male vasectomies to stop the bleeding, literally.

Global Online Privacy

Phaneroscopy by any other name

intimologies: Dogen and Peirce, phaneroscopy and zazen: "Could it be that the real body of Buddha is what Dogen called One Bright Pearl? and what Peirce called the phaneron? He used this word ‘to denote the total content of any one consciousness (for any one is substantially any other), the sum of all we have in mind in any way whatever, regardless of its cognitive value’ (EP2:362). "



Global Online Privacy

How cultured we are becoming

Teen addict chic « I Blame The Patriarchy: "One blamer recently brought up the idea that fashion models are getting younger and more pornulated with each passing moment, with which idea nobody within barfing distance of a keyboard could argue. Following the tangent, someone else noted the increasing ubiquity of a creepy subgroup who sport the “young abused drugged look.”"


Global Online Privacy

India, Brazil and South Africa need to stop coddling Syria

Getting it Wrong in Syria | Human Rights Watch: "If Syria refuses to heed the international community, India, together with Brazil and South Africa, should escalate pressure on the recalcitrant government. Concerns about Libya should not come in the way of protecting the rights of the Syrian people. President Bashar al-Assad needs to hear loud and clear that even his friends will not tolerate any contempt for a united call for Syria to change its course."


Global Online Privacy

Even Petraeus Suggests Cheney is a War Criminal

Cheney Defends the Indefensible in New Memoirs | Human Rights First: "General David Petraeus opposes torture, saying over and over that we need to live our values as Americans, and noting that the evidence of these abuses are “nonbiodegradable” in their negative effect on our war effort and in their ability to inspire our enemy."

Blunt truth. Solution: The Hague.

Global Online Privacy

Start with your common sense with what you sense see hear


Start with  your common sense 
With what you sense see hear
Start with the vagueness 
And the crowd
The vagueness is the foggy edge of everything
The crowd  is all the things we sense at once
Our freedom is to choose our tackling

Out of this welter always movement from the edge 
To definition 
Then to some new experiment

The welter everything we've ever
Sent along the path

We always re-begin unsettled memories
We spiral forward
All the time
  
Global Online Privacy

This is about as wide as a lane in Anacapri

Centro de Estudos de Pragmatismo da PUC-SP - Cognitio: Revista de Filosofia: "In a strict sense, the event is aimed at philosophy professors and graduate and students; in a wider sense, at professors and graduate students in related fields, as well as graduate students of philosophy and humanities."

RECCMENDATION Richard Gordon Quantum Touch

The Slow as Molasses Press