Even in absurdity, sacrament. Even in hardship, holiness. Even in doubt, faith. Even in chaos, realization. Even in paradox, blessedness
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"Life expands or shrinks in proportion to one's courage." ~Anain Nin
Two very fine beers in my low-tolerance system, a stormy night, and nostalgia by the bucket load finds this article very appropriate for posting: Concise Timetable of Beer History. Chin up to that! jaybird found this for you @ 23:53 in Posting Under the Influence | | permalink
Nano-, nano-, boo boo! Tiny carbon cylinders set record A British research team has made it into the record books by creating the smallest "test tubes" known to science. Materials scientists from Oxford and Nottingham universities performed chemical reactions inside tiny tubes of carbon atoms known as nanotubes. jaybird found this for you @ 19:11 in Science, Quantum & Space | | permalink
Gallery: Secret Art of the Freemasons. (Article) Fraternalism in America has bridged gaps in many ways: economically—as the rich and poor were members of the same lodge; geographically—as fraternalism was a great healing force after the Civil War, where Northerners and Southerners met on a common level in the lodge room; racially—as African-American-Prince Hall Freemasonry and Underground Railroad secret societies like the Knights and Daughters of Tabor helped ferry those escaping the fetters of slavery, on to freedom; and immigrant lodges, which helped to give support and a sense of family to foreigners in a strange land. jaybird found this for you @ 16:18 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
Genesis P-Orridge: Behavioural Cut-Ups and Magick My primary concerns in space and time: That situation which society informs us is named "being alive," or on more intellectual days, "reality;" are Control, Human Behaviour, and an inkling that underlying everything is a web of parallel causes and parallel effects upon which we can exert more manipulative pressure than we are led to believe by the aforementioned Society. Whilst is is true that we did not ask to be here, it is also true that we did not ask to not be here either. Birth and Death at this stage of evolution appear to our everyday senses to be thee only certain points in this jaybird found this for you @ 11:11 in Consciousness, Psychology & Philosophy | | permalink
Bill Dan: The Art of Balancing Rocks, and a quite wonderful MeFi thread on the subject. "Balance is a spiritual thing to me," he says, watching one of the rocks tumble down in a gust of wind. "It's being in touch, connecting, not just accepting, but giving back. Something nice happens to me when I do this. I see people's eyes enticed by the light of this, and then I know this is a beautiful thing." jaybird found this for you @ 07:04 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
ragtime I have a love-hate relationship with cleaning house. I love the results, but I stall, balk and bargain before doing it. Sometimes, it's quick and sloppy. Sometimes, it's slow but tedious. Sometimes, it's just right; long enough to be thorough, bouncy enough to be fun.... sounds like something else that's more universally enjoyed. Anyway, today was one of those better than sex, full scale, redecorate as you go and sing real loud in your jammies kinda cleans. I even worked in some candle maintenance and rotated out the bathroom library. I love it. jaybird found this for you @ 22:21 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
jaybird found this for you @ 18:08 in Silly People, Satire & Strange Behaviors | | permalink
Codebreaker scores success in search for the Holy Grail For 250 years, the cryptic inscription has exercised the minds of Britain's finest theologians, historians and scientists, including Charles Darwin, Josiah Wedgwood and, most recently, the Second World War code-breakers of Bletchley Park. But an anonymous American researcher was credited yesterday with the best stab yet at what the letters D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M. - carved on the Shepherd's Monument at Lord Lichfield's Shugborough estate in Staffordshire - might actually signify. The answer appears to be "Jesus (As Deity) Defy" - a message left by an 18th century Christian sect Priory of Sion, which was forced to keep its views secret since the Church of England thought they were heretical. On first impressions, this rather perplexing answer may disappoint those who believed the letters pointed the way to the final destination of the Holy Grail, the cup Jesus is said to have used during the Last Supper. But Shugborough Hall was holding on to its hopes last night, since the Priory of Sion was the spiritual successor to the Knights Templar, who were known as the keepers of the Holy Grail. jaybird found this for you @ 14:09 in Forteana, Phenomena & the Bizarre | | permalink
In the midst of the prosperity and affluence of Western ‘democracies’ there is a pervasive sadness and sense of impotence about the future of our societies, of humanity and of the natural world. Many well-informed people have focused those negative feelings on the idea of‘globalisation’. For them the very term carries with it a sense of global despoliation, greed, oppression, injustice and irreparable loss. At the same time, many of us in the West are uncomfortably aware that the unprecedented material abundance we enjoy is being bought at the expense of the rest of the world’s peoples, natural resources and wildlife. Within the societies forced to pay the costs of today’s form of globalisation, tens of millions of citizens are seething with anger, envy and frustration. Yet today’s globalisation is but the latest—and hopefully temporary —phase of a globalising process that has been going on for thousands of years. In effect, we humans are a global species: we have evolved the capacity to inhabit virtually every corner of the planet. Thus some form of ‘globalisation’ is part of our destiny. What is in question is the form that human globalisation will take in its next manifestation. jaybird found this for you @ 11:05 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink
Korean Scientists Succeed in Stem Cell Therapy (via FutureHi and MeFi) A team of Korean researchers claimed Thursday they had performed a miracle by enabling a patient, who could not even stand up for the last 19 years, to walk with stem cell therapy. During a press conference, the scientists said they had last month transplanted multi-potent stem cells from umbilical cord blood to the 37-year-old female patient suffering from a spinal cord injury and she can now walk on her own. jaybird found this for you @ 07:02 in Health, Medicine & Bio-Happiness | | permalink
three things i'm proud of today jaybird found this for you @ 23:25 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
Antero Alli: The Secret Marriage of Art and Magick Imagine information as fresh experience -- spontaneous, unknown and alive -- rather than the perpetual accumulation of dead data. This breakthrough in creative thought eventually found its assimilation in twentieth century culture. What the scientist discovers through experiments, the artist experiences through new ways of perceiving, hearing, feeling and sensing. While Einstein made scientific history with his theory of relativity and Heisenberg with his uncertainty principle, the Surrealist "dada" revolution (Dali, Cocteau, Satie, etc.), James Joyce's omnicultural Finnegan's Wake, and the music of Jazz brought the living experience to the people. Both scientists and artists recognized this dynamic shift from a world view that was "predictable, solid and fixed" to a new vision of the universe simulatenously wilder, more plural, malleable and unfathomable. To those minds awakening from the slumber of nineteenth century "certainty" trance, so-called "reality" became a realm of immeasurable possibilities with countless interpretations. Any culture, or person, failing to assimilate this transformation into their perceptions and lives, remains in the past; it never enters the twentieth century let alone, the twenty-first. jaybird found this for you @ 17:30 in Consciousness, Psychology & Philosophy | | permalink
   
jaybird found this for you @ 13:59 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
Witness to a Tibetan Sky Burial After the chanting is over, we walk up a well-trodden path to a high ridge, keeping a respectful distance behind the funeral party, which has come all the way from Lhasa to discharge this final duty to their departed friend. The charnel ground, or durtro, consists of a large fenced meadow with a couple of temples and a large stone circle of stones at one end where the ceremony takes place. Prayer flags hang from numerous chortens, and scent of smoldering juniper purifies the air. Vultures circle overhead, and many more are clustered on the grass, a few meters from the funeral bier. jaybird found this for you @ 07:46 in Spirituality, Religion & Mythos | | permalink
for those gone awaiting return jaybird found this for you @ 20:56 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
Another Stonehenge Found in Russia? Russian archaeologists have announced that they have found the remains of a 4,000-year-old structure that they compare to England's Stonehenge, according to recent reports issued by Pravda and Novosti, two Russian news services. If the comparison holds true, the finding suggests that both ancient European and Russian populations held similar pagan beliefs that wove celestial cycles with human and animal life. jaybird found this for you @ 17:06 in History, Civilization & Anthropology | | permalink
Worldprocessor: An attempt to do justice to the term 'political' and 'geo-political' globe. jaybird found this for you @ 13:16 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
What follows is a conversation between Kurt Vonnegut and out-of-print science fiction writer Kilgore Trout. It was to be their last. Trout committed suicide by drinking Drano at midnight on October 15 in Cohoes, New York, after a female psychic using tarot cards predicted that the environmental calamity George W. Bush would once again be elected president of the most powerful nation on the planet by a five-to-four decision of the Supreme Court, which included “100 per-cent of the black vote.” jaybird found this for you @ 10:47 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
a song-ride home There's a slow piano on the radio The road is new but I pave it with memory A holiday of ruddy family faces, This winding road, it's enchanting; The feast is over, sleep is coming, jaybird found this for you @ 23:19 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
 Wild horses, in pictures , detail, and recent news. jaybird found this for you @ 16:45 in Environment, Ecology & Nature | | permalink
The chances of an impact being captured on film are millions to one. "If this is true, it's one of the most remarkable pictures ever taken..." Meteorite 'photographed' hitting Earth jaybird found this for you @ 11:47 in Science, Quantum & Space | | permalink
Homing pigeons use the Earth's magnetic field to navigate their way home over long distances, scientists writing in Nature magazine claim. The pigeons probably use tiny magnetic particles in their beaks to sense our planet's magnetic field, scientists say jaybird found this for you @ 07:30 in Environment, Ecology & Nature | | permalink
On Dreams by Aristotle [via MeFi] He will sometimes, in the moment of awakening, surprise the images which present themselves to him in sleep, and find that they are really but movements lurking in the organs of sense. And indeed some very young persons, if it is dark, though looking with wide open eyes, see multitudes of phantom figures moving before them, so that they often cover up their heads in terror. jaybird found this for you @ 23:41 in Consciousness, Psychology & Philosophy | | permalink
Think about the word mother: does it make you burst into a fantastic smile as you think of the woman you will love with a passion for all eternity, she who guides your destiny towards freedom, liberty and perhaps tranquility? jaybird found this for you @ 22:02 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
today Goodness, it's flurrying out the misted window. It's is cold even in here but I have this great purple blanket. I'm out of omelet ingredients, so I'll just fry an egg. The cat was found to be alright at the vet's the other day. I was hoarding hot sauce packets to avoid buying a bottle. Such wonderful dreams last night. Robin's mother is having us over for today's feast. I'm out of the mind-numbing funk I was in a few days ago. I've run out of time and have to get ready. jaybird found this for you @ 09:55 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
You can follow all of the breaking news from the Ukraine on the wonderful blog Le Sabot Post-Moderne. Compare the situation to Russia, where an authoritarian Putin faced off against corrupt oligarchs. In Ukraine, authoritarianism and oligarchy are fused. Yanukovych isn't just another unscrupulous candidate, he's the main man of Akhmetov -- the duke of Donetsk and the richest man in Ukraine. The current president, Kuchma, is the head of a different clan, Dnepropetrovsk. The presidential administrator is Medvedchuk, who happens to run the Kiev-based Medvedchuk-Surkis clan. He also owns the two biggest Ukrainian TV stations, which is awfully convenient. jaybird found this for you @ 22:09 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink
Plantage is a bizarrely beautiful flash based music video for the Dutch band Under Byen. The tune is very Bjork-like, and the video adds to the melodious melancholy while wandering through the tiny details of a mystical green forest. Meanwhile, I can't stop watching this video (QT), and the rest of the videos directed by Ruben Fleischer are rather punchy too. I'm not really big into this genre (bit that's changing with the increasing thoughtfulness of the content) but this director has a really good eye... jaybird found this for you @ 16:45 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
Dolphins save swimmers from shark A pod of dolphins circled protectively round a group of New Zealand swimmers to fend off an attack by a great white shark... "They started to herd us up, they pushed all four of us together by doing tight circles around us..." jaybird found this for you @ 12:41 in Environment, Ecology & Nature | | permalink
Nature Series No. 23: How to tell the Birds from the Flowers jaybird found this for you @ 07:37 in Environment, Ecology & Nature | | permalink
What is EPIC 2014? An interesting take on the future of information. (flash) jaybird found this for you @ 18:40 in Blogosphere, Tech & Internet | | permalink
Ask about Kituluni hill in Machakos District and people are likely to take you aside and talk in hushed tones about strange goings-on, witchcraft and sightings of ghosts dressed in white. You will be told about happenings that stand Isaac Newton’s Law of Gravity on its head, such as water flowing uphill. Some 300 kilometres away from this spot, in Nakuru, equally unlikely stories are told about a mystery cave in the Menengai Crater. Few places in Kenya, indeed in the world, are without their own stranger-than-fiction stories that defy logical explanation. Outsiders might dismiss them out of hand, but local people hold on to them with a firm conviction. jaybird found this for you @ 12:40 in Forteana, Phenomena & the Bizarre | | permalink
angelhead ![!cid_image001.jpg@01C4CADF[1].jpg](http://birdonthemoon.com/!cid_image001.jpg@01C4CADF[1].jpg) The most beloved queen of my heart, Ursula, goes into the vet today to determine the cause of her possible seizures and disorientation. In the past few days, she's been nearly normal, but with a lot more sleeping. I'm hoping it was a passing allergic reaction or a bad batch of 'nip, and she is asthma prone. So, a big question mark will be hanging over me today while a dentist scrapes at my teeth and I surf the post-anesthetic work tide. If you've got a sec, send a good vibe to my most wonderful friend (and one-time presidential candidate) Ursula, the queen of bizarre pet names, my "fat sauce," my "lazy bucket," my "angel head." UPDATE: She came back happy and fluffed out, all tests normal, and the vet said "things like that happen sometimes." I guess they do, and thank Creator this is likely not to recur. jaybird found this for you @ 07:40 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
Peter Carroll: Chaoism & Chaos Magic Since the eighteenth century European enlightenment, a belief has grown to the point where it is now so all-pervasive, and so fundamental a part of the Western world view, that one is generally considered mad if one questions it. This is a belief that has proved so powerful and useful that virtually everyone in the Western world accept it without question. Even those who try to maintain a belief in "God" tend to place more actual faith in this new belief for most practical purposes. I am about to reveal what this fundamental contemporary belief is. Most of you will think it is so obvious a fact that it can, hardly be called a belief. That, however, is a measure of its extraordinary power over us. Most of you will think me a madman or a fool to even question it. Few of you will be able to imagine what it would be like not to believe it, or that it would be possible to replace it with something else. Here it is: the dominant belief in all Western Cultures is that this universe runs on material causality and is thus comprehensible to reason. Virtually everyone also maintains a secondary belief that contradicts this - the belief that they have something called free will, although they are unable to specify what this is... jaybird found this for you @ 22:47 in Spirituality, Religion & Mythos | | permalink
2004 weblog awards Bird on the Moon has been nominated (rather, has nominated itself) for Best of the 3500-5000 Weblogs category for the 2004 Weblog Awards. When you think about it, it's not the worst traffic ranking. In fact, with something like six million blogs out there, 'tain't too shabby. I don't know if that makes me a 'B' or 'C' blogger or not, but I'll take any letter as I love what I do and do it for my pleasure and the pleasure of my readers. Yeah, yeah, I'm into self-gratification, everyone does it. Anyway, traffic here has more than doubled since this time last year with something like 1.8 million visitors from 175 countries since our messy birth. Our 6 out of 10 Google page rank is rather a proud mark, too. The site will be open for voting after the nomination round. At which time, I will call upon my loose band of loyal brigands to get thee to the voting page and do your duty. We celebrate two years of blogitude in February and will call upon all good readers to come to the aid of this wacky bucket of eph |
