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
welcome wagon It's been a long time since I updated the sidebar, so please greet my new neighbors with loaves of warm bread and steamy pies. jaybird found this for you @ 17:30 in Blogosphere, Tech & Internet | | permalink
I awake to you The thunderstorm outside, it's a love song. jaybird found this for you @ 11:16 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
my fake pyramid  USDA hopes the updated food pyramid, MyPyramid, will help to ease much of the confusion that has come from so-called "doctors" and "scientists" claiming that their independent, repeatable experimentation has shown red meat, processed foods, agrichemicals and irradiation to be unhealthy for people and the planet. Many of USDA's top officials have worked in the Agribusiness industry, providing the expertise necessary to develop a pyramid that best represents the truth about healthy eating -- it's not what happens to the food before it gets to your table, but simply that you eat substantial servings of all foods -- Following these guidelines will help ensure the health of American families while guaranteeing the health of Agribusiness Corporations around the world. jaybird found this for you @ 20:55 in Silly People, Satire & Strange Behaviors | | permalink
swmming free  The roots of male nude bathing are planted at least partly in homoeroticism. Older Athenian men regarded watching the swimming of ephebes, young men undergoing physical and military training, as a great pastime. But the more modern roots of the practice seem to draw on the urban decay of the late 19th century, the historian George L. Mosse wrote in the Journal of Contemporary History (April 1982), a subject he later developed in "Nationalism and Sexuality" (1985). At the turn of the last century, Mosse explained, naked swimming and nudism in general gained wide acceptance in Europe following centuries in which Christian modesty made the naked body shameful, and leading medical authorities advised a thick dirt patina as the best protection against sickness. "Cities were condemned as breeding grounds of immorality and moral sickness," he wrote. "The enthusiasm for nude swimming, athletics and sunbathing, even while condemning false shame, harnessed the rediscovery of the body to respectability." jaybird found this for you @ 16:45 in I don't know where to put this... | | permalink
who do we have to thank? ...Data collected in for 2004 confirms that a dramatic rise in anti-LGBT hate incidents noted by the organization in the second half of 2003 continued unabated, and perhaps even worsened in throughout 2004. “This year’s report has to be viewed as a follow-up to our report from a year ago,” said Clarence Patton, NCAVP’s Acting Executive Director. “In the last edition of this report it became all too clear that with respect to violence, the nation's LGBT communities had entered a very new, and very dangerous era in which all of us were under attack at levels not seen in recent years," continued Patton. "The leaders of America's anti-gay industry are directly responsible for the continuing surge in hate violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. While other forms of crime continued to fall, the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs has documented a 4% increase in anti-LGBT crime in 2004, coming on the heels of a 26% increase in the last half of 2003. This spike in violence parallels the exact same period since the Right went into demonic, anti-gay hyperdrive following the Supreme Court's Lawrence v. Texas decision in July of 2003. Since then, church pews and the public airwaves have been awash in ugly, anti-gay rhetoric and fear-mongering. jaybird found this for you @ 12:33 in Gay, Lesbian, Queer & Free | | permalink
Gore ...Today's Republicans seem hell-bent on squelching the ability of the minority in this country to express dissent. This is in keeping with other Republican actions to undercut the legislative process. And in the filibuster fight they are doing it with utter disregard for the rule of law so central to our democracy. There is, of course, a way to change the rules if they so choose -- and that is to follow the rules. When they decide instead to break the rules and push our democracy into uncharted, uncertain terrain, the results are often not to the liking of the American people. jaybird found this for you @ 08:30 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink
modelling interconnectivity in real-time People on the Internet have talked a lot about how a sort of intelligence will form just by connecting everyone together. The issue is how we are connected together. Since it is an organic/chaotic system you can’t engineer it like you engineer a bridge, you have to get it just right, and I think a lot of it is trial and error. Although this isn’t a great metaphor, the amount of DNA that separates us from Chimps or even slugs is quite small. Similarly, throwing social software at the problem of freedom, democracy and leadership is like trying to predict — by looking at a bunch of DNA – whether you’re going to get Einstein, a chimp, or a slug. Some day maybe we will know how to figure this out, but right now, it’s a lot of tasting and stirring. So what have we learned? We’ve learned that conversations on mailing lists tend to explode in flame wars. We’ve also learned that if you make a web page, there is a good chance no one will notice. Mailing lists are like rooms that people can get into, but very difficult to get people out of. Everyone in the room hears everyone else in the room. Too much feedback. A personal web page .... No one can hear you. Not enough feedback. Life and good emergent systems live in the interesting place between too much feedback and too little feedback, that very special space between chaos and order. It’s the sweet spot of emergent order that we see in fractals, life, and the high of being "in the zone." My theory is that the critical mass of actors as well as the right balance of the cybernetic feedback systems is getting closer. Blogs allow you to more easily ignore stupid threads on other blogs, but participate in conversations. This is because blogs ping servers to let you know that they have been updated so they can be indexed immediately and those who have been linked to or mentioned will immediately know. They can read the post and assess whether the comment requires feedback or not. Speed has increased, feedback occurs, but filtering occurs as well. Although the dialog on blogs is far from ideal, we have broken past many of the issues in mailing lists and web pages without the additional feedback elements of blogs. And we’ve introduced new issues. People can still troll your comments section and following conversations across blogs is still difficult, although this is getting easier. jaybird found this for you @ 14:45 in Blogosphere, Tech & Internet | | permalink
the news-sentinel of jaybirdville The stars are in alignment for taking a sick day... might not sound like a cause for celebration, but I need the rest, and my back/digestive issues aren't really all that awful. I need time to breathe. So, it's been a while since we talked, and I hope you are agog with the glory of spring, as I've been. I've been excruciatingly busy with work, school, and all those silly things I commit myself to, and it is grinding me down. Today is a gorgeous day, and even if I'm not in the best shape to fully physically embrace it, I'll open myself to the day. What's new? I'm in the second block of classes at school, I'm 31 days away from the trip to Peru and Bolivia. The book is selling well, and the promotional events went well. I've made the bold step of going into a short round of therapy for childhood issues, though this therapist tends toward more of a present then historical focus. I am persisting through a bit of writer's block, and I'll try to chip away at that over the weekend. I think I'm having a small crush on someone, and perhaps the results of that will be confirmed soon. I'm being very careful here because I've been terribly disappointed before. Fingers crossed, though, as this season begs for an awakening of the heart. Perchance some romance will assist in reviving my mental ink. Also, some friends long out of touch have come out of the woodwork, and I've had a gay old time reconnecting with these lovelies. That's just about it. Of course, there's really much more, but I'll leave the details to your imagination... jaybird found this for you @ 08:11 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
globish? It happens all the time: during an airport delay the man to the left, a Korean perhaps, starts talking to the man opposite, who might be Colombian, and soon they are chatting away in what seems to be English. But the native English speaker sitting between them cannot understand a word. jaybird found this for you @ 20:15 in Culture, People & Customs | | permalink
looting a culture The picture there is appalling. More than 150 Sumerian cities dating back to the fourth millennium BC - such as Umma, Umm al-Akkareb, Larsa and Tello - lie destroyed, turned into crater-filled landscapes of shredded pottery and broken bricks. If properly excavated, these cities - covering an estimated 20 sq km - could help us learn about the development of the human race. But the looters have destroyed ancient monuments, erasing the region's history in a tireless search for a cylinder seal, a sculpture or a cuneiform tablet that they can sell to a dealer for a few dollars. It is tough, poorly paid work carried out by jobless Iraqis with no way of earning a better income. jaybird found this for you @ 16:07 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink
my god, it's full of stars    jaybird found this for you @ 11:54 in Science, Quantum & Space | | permalink
Let's Talk About Climate Change The commonplace view of the earth from an airplane at 35,000 feet -- a vista that would have astounded Dickens or Darwin -- can be instructive when we contemplate the fate of our earth. We see faintly, or imagine we can, the spherical curve of the horizon and, by extrapolation, sense how far we would have to travel to circumnavigate, and how tiny we are in relation to this home suspended in sterile space. When we cross the Canadian northern territories en route to the American West Coast, or the Norwegian littoral, or the interior of Brazil, we are heartened to see that such vast empty spaces still exist -- two hours might pass, and not a single road or track in view. But also large and growing larger is the great rim of grime -- as though detached from an unwashed bathtub -- that hangs in the air as we head across the Alps into northern Italy, or the Thames basin, or Mexico City, Los Angeles, Beijing -- the list is long and growing. These giant concrete stains laced with steel, those catheters of ceaseless traffic filing toward the horizon -- the natural world can only shrink before them. The sheer pressure of our numbers, the abundance of our inventions, the blind forces of our desires and needs, appear unstoppable and are generating a heat -- the hot breath of our civilization -- whose effects we comprehend only hazily. The misanthropic traveler, gazing down from his wondrous, and wondrously dirty, machine, is bound to ask whether the earth might not be better off without us. jaybird found this for you @ 07:53 in Environment, Ecology & Nature | | permalink
a bug's life 
They are everywhere: around us, beside us, beneath us, busy in their small, secret world. Tiny, alien, comic and fierce, stalk legs and compound eyes, extravagantly built for plain purposes: they fly, they mate, they hunt and feed. And they dream. They dream of the gorgeous saturated swirl of Eden, velvet leaves edged and shimmering in heat and dew. They dream of sunlight that lasts forever, and shadows as deep as the sea. The insects here are alive, not silent and still as we usually see them, specimens pinned dead and dry on a page. These are pictures of creatures living their lives, leaping from skyscraper stalks, climbing and tumbing over giant pods, surmounting seeds. Of ladybugs in love. Of katydids considering. Of philosophic ants. Every day the green world dreams its secrets, and every day the insects live that dream. jaybird found this for you @ 20:04 in Environment, Ecology & Nature | | permalink
it's a trap! Using a home-made trap, a tiny species of ant is capable of ensnaring prey much larger than itself and tearing it to pieces. The ants (Allomerus decemarticulatus), which live in Amazonian plants called Hirtella physophora, construct a honeycomb-like structure out of their host plant's fibres from which they can stage an ambush. The worker ants hide in the holes of this death trap with their mouths open wide, waiting for locusts, butterflies or other insects to land. When prey arrives they quickly seize its extremities, pulling on legs, arms and antennae until the hostage is rendered immobile. Once trapped, other ants from the colony arrive to sting and bite the prey until it is paralyzed. jaybird found this for you @ 16:01 in Environment, Ecology & Nature | | permalink
douglas rushkoff A renaissance allows for a profound shift in perspective. While the original Renaissance invented the individual, as well as competition, this renaissance has really brought us new possibilities for collaborative action - networked collectivism and a society of authorship. We’ve been wrestling since the Renaissance - and some would say since high Greek culture - with the seeming contradiction between the agency of individuals and their power as a collective. I mean to show that we have new ways of contending with dimension that let us see how individuality is itself defined by connections to other people, and that agency is really a group activity. jaybird found this for you @ 11:47 in Consciousness, Psychology & Philosophy | | permalink
left-wing angels Secular liberal. Religious conservative. According to the mainstream media, these are the two sides of every major sociopolitical debate in the country. In its attempt to balance all things with a "two sides to every story" formula, the media has perpetuated a view of American life that is simplistic at best, horribly inaccurate at worst. Removed from the story are the minor but still important characters that offer third and even fourth sides to the discourse. These minor characters reflect the complexity of the great debates. For the moment, I too must ignore some of the minor characters to shed light upon another. The focus on this one forgotten voice will, I hope, make sense in the end. For now, please be patient. Religious liberal. Have I lost my mind or do I simply enjoy oxymorons? (Well, both are true to some extent, but that's beside the point.) In this case, neither. Religious liberals have often been an integral part of American politics. Much of the social and political progress we so revere was brought about in no small way by religious liberals. From the abolition of slavery to the civil rights movement, from women's suffrage to gay liberation, these living, breathing "oxymorons" have been at the vanguard of the fight for justice. Go to any Gay Pride rally or parade and you'll find the religious denominations/ organizations that have offered invaluable support to this cause. Find a pro-choice protest and surely amidst the crowds, you'll also find religious liberals. Religious liberals have somehow become the unheard, forgotten voice in our country despite the tremendous role they've played in our history and their continuing participation in the modern struggles against the forces of oppression. jaybird found this for you @ 07:56 in Spirituality, Religion & Mythos | | permalink
creature double feature 
Meet "Professor Turtle," keeper of The Lake of the Returned Sword and its mysterious giant reptile. Zoologist Ha Dinh Duc, one of Hanoi's best-known characters and world famous in his field for tracking the huge turtle living in the center of Vietnam's capital, is retiring soon. But he is not giving up his quest for recognition of the turtle as a unique species after 15 years of following its movements in the murky green water. "I call the turtle great-grandfather," said Duc, 65, who displays an obvious attachment to the 6-foot-7-inch-long and 3-foot-7-inch wide endangered turtle he named after an emperor. Nobody knows the exact age of the turtle, but for me, it is maybe more than 600 years old." jaybird found this for you @ 20:39 in Environment, Ecology & Nature | | permalink
cervantes a-go-go People in the Venezuelan capital Caracas have been queuing around the block to collect free copies of the Spanish masterpiece Don Quixote. The Venezuelan government is handing out a million copies to mark the 400th anniversary of its publication. Populist President Hugo Chavez has urged Venezuelans to draw inspiration from the figure of Don Quixote. jaybird found this for you @ 16:28 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
words cannot approach reality Unlike religious proposition or culturally centered knowledge, scientific knowledge applies equally to everyone and everything. Science focuses its search for truth based on universal predictability and regularity, and shows little preference for anything else such as race, gender or religious belief. By understanding the causes of observed regularities, science has discovered the fundamental laws of nature. The powers of scientific discovery have been demonstrated through the achievements of modern technology. And yet, science has not arrived at its ultimate goal where it would seem to merge with religion and philosophy. For the ultimate goal of science must be to discover the absolute nature and condition of everything. Newton’s laws of motion first established a basis of understanding with enthusiastic outlook. Einstein’s theory of relativity revealed that the speed of light is a constant operating in the context of a space-time continuum populated with matter and sporting with energy. The fact that the speed of light is constant for any observer in a common frame of reference points to an underlying discrete structural relationship between time and space and experience. Finally quantum physics has taken us to the brink of understanding subatomic behavior and the underlying construction of the very building blocks of physical reality. It has revealed the paradoxical wave-particle behavior of light or electromagnetic radiation. When theoretical physicists found the right model to describe the observed behavior of elementary particles, regularity gave way to discontinuity and uncertainty. After nearly seventy years, the profound implications and varied interpretations of quantum mechanics remain a subject of incredible fascination and serious scientific debate. jaybird found this for you @ 12:22 in Consciousness, Psychology & Philosophy | | permalink
george carlin We have taller buildings, but shorter tempers; wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less; we buy more, but enjoy it less. We have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, but less time; We have more degrees, but less sense; more knowledge, but less judgment; more experts, but more problems; more medicine, but less wellness. We know too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry too quickly, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too seldom, and watch TV too much. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We've learned how to make a living, but not a life; we've added years to life, not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor. We've conquered outer space, but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things. We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've split the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information to produce more copies than ever, but have less communication. These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion; tall men, and short character; steep profits, and shallow relationships. These are the times of world peace, but domestic warfare; more leisure, but less fun; more kinds of food, but less nutrition. These are days of two incomes, but more divorce; of fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throw-away morality, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer to quiet. jaybird found this for you @ 08:11 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
thirty five days There's a continent that seems so distant South America, are the Andes and the Amazon Your trails through the holy mountains I approach you with humility; I don't expect anything other than the mystery of your Earth jaybird found this for you @ 00:46 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
denise levertov We live our lives of human passions, jaybird found this for you @ 15:34 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
a daily art lesson  Your Daily Art [via mefi] Rousseau frequently visited the botanical garden in Paris for inspiration, he then concocted scenes with wild animals in his imagination and put them on canvas. His style was admired by other artists for it's straighforward and untrained style. jaybird found this for you @ 12:00 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
ayurveda rising "Every day, a new medicine," he sighs. "It is so temporary, so changeable. We talk about anti-ageing, anti-this, anti-that. The anti word is so negative. Ageing is a natural process. Each phase of life should be equally celebrated. What we should be talking about is healthy ageing. A doctor should not be just for the sick patient but for healthy people." Put like this, it is hard to disagree that as much may have been lost as gained by modern medical advance. Dubey finds that Western doctors are competent at looking after individual troublesome organs but puzzled by the concept of treating the whole person. Ayurvedic medicine (from ayus, meaning "life" and veda, meaning "science") is all-inclusive. In India, it is part of the national health service, offered in conjunction with conventional medicine in every hospital. It sees the body as a little universe and each person as having a pattern of energy as unique and individual as a thumb print. The physiological energies that control the functions of the body are known as doshas. Each of us has three - fire (pitta), water (kapha) and air (vata) - and it is believed that an imbalance between the three causes disease. Getting the balance right enhances immunity, prevents illness and maintains health. "It's all about wellbeing," says Dubey, "about achieving a balance between ourselves and nature." jaybird found this for you @ 19:56 in Health, Medicine & Bio-Happiness | | permalink
wait. a promised land in florida? In the beginning, there was an elderly widow who owned a modest brick house in the most heavenly part of town. One year she decided to put her "home place" on the market, and along came a dapper gentleman and his adoring wife, cash in hand. The gentleman, who was 67, must have been a preacher, it was rumored, for he often could be seen strolling about his new yard in a funereal suit and necktie, even on the muggiest of summer days, with a countenance of serenity and beneficence that could belong only to a servant of the Lord. But there was something disquieting about this man, too, something inexplicable that made his neighbors uneasy whenever he greeted them by politely touching the brim of his fedora. By every measure, the old man and his wife were model citizens. They were early risers. They didn't cuss, drink, smoke, pry or gossip. They drove a gleaming, burgundy Cadillac (with gilded trim and hubcaps). So, as months passed, the suspicions faded, dismissed as a small town's old-fashioned discomfort with outsiders. After all, as the neighbors could plainly see, this couple was quite beloved. Cars with tags from South Dakota, Illinois, Indiana, Montana and Texas arrived at all hours, and out stepped the cleanest-cut, most sharply tailored couples imaginable, and their winsome children, too, so cutely awkward in their Sunday clothes and shoes. In no time, they set about remodeling the dwelling of the preacher, whose name was Charles Meade. jaybird found this for you @ 15:50 in | | permalink
Stone age hardcore 
German archaeologists have found what they believe is Europe's earliest known clay figure of a male, along with a female figure that they think once was attached to the male in a sexual position. Together, the two finds could represent the earliest 3D depiction of a copulating human couple, according to the archaeological team. Clay is difficult to date accurately, the team indicate, but markings on the objects, their style and the place in which they were found suggest the figures date to 5200 BC. jaybird found this for you @ 11:31 in Carnality, Naughtiness & Fun | | permalink
in training today As you read this, I'm driving bleary-eyed to Raleigh jaybird found this for you @ 07:35 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
kaku on kaku I find myself spending most of my time staring out the window. I see blocks of equations dancing in my head, and I spend hours trying to fit them together. These blocks are as familiar to me as the back of my hand, and I spend much of my waking time turning them inside out in my head. As these equations begin to fit together, I get a scratchpad and jot down some formulae. When I am confident I am on the right track, I take out another pad and pour out scores of dense equations, sometimes burning up several hundred pages to prove my hunch correct or incorrect. Then I go back and stare out of the window again. Apparently this is not unusual: all the theoreticians I know seem to work this way. Edward Witten, whom many consider to be the engine behind the most creative ideas in string theory, wrote that when he was at Harvard, he spent most of his time staring out the window at the Cambridge landscape. Now he is at the Institute for Advanced Study, he spends most of his time staring out of the window at Princeton... I use fields every day of my life. I daydream of fields. Just as a carpenter uses wood to create beautiful furniture, I use Faraday's fields to describe the forces of the universe. When string theory first emerged, it was a jumble of loose formulae and chaotic rules of thumb that filled sheaves of paper. I remembered the work of Faraday and decided to rewrite all those equations in the language of field theory: to write an equation 2 centimetres long that summarised string theory. jaybird found this for you @ 20:28 in Science, Quantum & Space | | |
