Zenecdotes
“White clouds encircle the mountain waist like a sash,
Stone steps mount high into the void where the narrow path leads far.
Alone, leaning on my rustic staff I gaze idly into the distance.
My longing for the notes of a flute is answered in the murmurings of the gorge.”
-- Shen Zhou, Poet on a Mountain c. 1500. Painting and poem by Shen Zhou
In The Cascades
Above the trail to the summit
Clouds climb the mountains --
Hands through water, fingers of rain,
Smoke in dreams, as steps accumulate,
Placing first one foot, then the other,
Pacing out the rip-rap of the years.
Below the snow ghosts swirl behind
Drifts of leaf-shimmer, billowed veils
Of wind whose whispers echo back
Across the distant silence singing
To the tempo of the breath:
"Once only, once only, only once."
Above the stream in the ravine.
Watched by sentinels of stone, of fir,
Of trees so tall their tops dissolve
Into the breath of the mountains.
Ebony glints of ravens' wings
Banking into green on darker green.
Below it's all been settled long ago.
Only on foot, step by step,
Can you climb up, beyond,
And out of time -- except for the weight
You carry on your back; gossamer
Thread spinning down into the Labyrinth.
At the crest, looking back, looking below,
Herds of mule deer graze beneath pylons
Where a survey crew measures the steel river,
For a grid of concrete and copper cables
Connecting the Matrix coiled on the coast.
Above, the mountains' shoulders shatter the rain.
Jed Gradisen, 13, is lucky to escape with his life after a huge DOLPHIN takes a flying leap and lands on top of him as he catches a wave, spearing its nose through his board Gradisen, 13, was surfing near the WA town of Kalbarri. A dolphin launched itself out of the water and landed on his surfboard. The huge mammal speared its nose clean through his board. Gradisen had just enough time to jump clear before impact
Long before the modern lie detector and its harmlessly jittering graphs and wires were invented, the superstitious and untruthful faced a much more severe fate between the jaws of the Bocca della Verità, or Mouth of Fate, an ancient carving which is said to bite the hands off of liars.....
While the origin is up for debate the one unifying legend surrounding the stone carving is that if one were to stick their hand inside the disc's mouth and tell a lie, the rocky maw would bite the offending hand off. This belief seems to have originated during the Middle Ages when the disc was supposedly used during trials having the accused put their hand in the slot and if found to be untruthful a hidden axeman would lop off the appendage. While this use seems to be apocryphal, the superstition persists to this day. The Mouth of Truth, which now rests outside the doors of the Santa Maria in Cosmedin church, has been used as a whimsical lie detector in a number of movies and video games, most famously in the 1953 romance, Roman Holiday, in which the carving was a major plot device.Via Atlas Obscura
"I went on to test the program in every way I could devise. I strained it to expose its weaknesses. I ran it for high-mass stars and low-mass stars, for stars born exceedingly hot and those born relatively cold. I ran it assuming the superfluid currents beneath the crust to be absent--not because I wanted to know the answer, but because I had developed an intuitive feel for the answer in this particular case. Finally I got a run in which the computer showed the pulsar's temperature to be less than absolute zero. I had found an error. I chased down the error and fixed it. Now I had improved the program to the point where it would not run at all."
--George Greenstein, Frozen Star: Of Pulsars, Black Holes and the Fate of Stars
"In the Ashikaga Flower Park in Tochigi, Japan sits an incredibly gorgeous wisteria tree that's often referred to as the most beautiful in the whole world.
The largest and oldest in Japan, the tree is the main attraction at the flower park as visitors flock to see it in full bloom. Dating back to approximately 1870, the 143-year-old tree has branches that are supported by beams, which creates a a stunning flower umbrella." -- - My Modern MetropolisFor even more views of Ashikaga Flower Park SEE HERE Photos: Ralph Mirebs
Yet another quote for my ever expanding file marked, "Pay Attention to Peggy Noonan:"
You can get so well educated in America that your thoughts become detached from common sense. You can get so complicated in your thinking that the obvious isn't real to you anymore. -- OpinionJournal - Peggy Noonan
Have you ever noticed that "Why?" is qualitatively different from all the other interrogatives? ("What?", "When?", "Where?", "Who?", and "How?") Of all of them, only Why calls for interpretation of human opinion. All the others call only for fact. -- Ole Eichhorn @ Critical Section
MOLLY BLOOM, DEMOCRAT, TELLS HOW SHE DECIDED TO SUPPORT KERRY-EDWARDS:
"....yes when I put the sign on my lawn like the gender studies professors used or shall I wear a Kedwards Button yes and how he kissed but did not kiss me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another...."
YOU THERE! Yes, you!
You might think that in your happy little world you can at least control and hold onto your pointing and clicking CURSOR, right?
Well, you are DEAD WRONG!
Back in the Jar!
"It is the voice of a single hatred in the absence of a single idea."
Belmont ClubONE COCKTAIL puts you into low orbit around the Planet Me. Two cocktails degrades that orbit. Three... check for chunks in your wings, you've become the Columbia.
"Have you already been subjugated by the ideal post-modern marriage of aesthetic ugliness and materialist idolatry?"
-- From Coffeehouse at the End-Of-Days: McMansion Invasion
"Have you already been subjugated by the ideal post-modern marriage of aesthetic ugliness and materialist idolatry?"
-- From Coffeehouse at the End-Of-Days: McMansion Invasion
COURTESY OF DEMOSOPHIA
Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Body Count, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, 9-11 Hearings, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Body Count, Terrorist Explosion, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib,...Via: Demosophia: The Daily Depress
Seen at: Derek's Rantings and Musings
PhysicsWeb - SLAC sees parity violation in electrons
We think the best thing to do is sobriety tests all around and then let them off with a warning.Physicists in the US have observed parity violation in collisions between electrons for the first time.
ZEFRANK KNOWS the kind of person you're looking for and gives you what you've always Wanted . Just click when you see someone you want.
It's a Japanese thing. You wouldn't understand.
"Q: Why does Donald Duck wear a towel when getting out of the shower when he usually doesn't even wear pants?"
-- Disney Online Guest Services
... for The Meaning of Life?
"Mmm. Lost a statue, Master Lucas-Wan has. How embarrassing. How embarrassing. "
PASADENA, Calif. (AP) - Someone lifted a 170-pound bronze statue of Yoda, the "Star Wars" Jedi master."Hard to see, the dark side is. Clear your mind must be, Pope, if you are to discover the real villains behind this plot. "The theft from a flatbed truck was reported to police last weekend and artist Lawrence Noble, 55, of Crestline has offered a $1,000 reward for its return. The limited-edition bronze is worth up to $20,000.
"It's a real high-end collectible," Noble said.
Police spokeswoman Janet Pope said, "We are treating this as a burglary and we'd appreciate any information the public might have."
-- Adios Yoda
The 6.3-Richter earthquake in Bam city in southeastern Iran has flattened five tombs belonging to religious figures and 38 mosques. He added that the tragic quake has only spared one mosque and one Imamzadeh from damage.-- Via Rantburg
"In 1951, as Henrietta Lacks was dying of cancer in a Maryland hospital, one astute physician there removed a pea-sized sample of her tumor to see if its cells would grow in a test tube -- something never achieved before -- and these became the very first human cells to thrive and multiply outside of the body. Now called HeLa cells, today there are so many that they outweigh what would have been Henrietta Lacks's living body 400 times, and have been used around the world in studies on polio, leukemia, protein synthesis, the effects of nuclear radiation, genetic control mechanisms, and more."
-- From Albert Goldbarth's "Budget Travel through the Universe" at Poetry Daily
"So far, bad philosophy has killed a lot more people than biotechnology. Perhaps we should regulate it. . . ." -- Glenn Reynolds
"The capture of Saddam has not made America safer."....-- James TarantoGive Dean this: He is, in a certain perverse way, eloquent. It's not easy to cram so much idiocy, mendacity and arrogance into nine little words, but he did it.
Democratic presidential hopeful Rep. Dick Gephardt, D-Mo.,
casts a shadow on the flag as he is introduced to speak at
a rally Monday, Dec. 1, 2003, at the police station in Cedar
Rapids, Iowa.
Okay, what's Gephardt got that Dean hasn't?
Via: Yahoo! News
"All Dean's "he gets it!" cheerleaders are gonna have some crow to digest if somebody really repellant uses all these tools to get elected in the future."
From: Why Dean matters
He who would achieve great things must first be born.
by William Jennings
American (b. England, 1860-1946)
ca. 1885 gelatin silver print
Click to enlarge
From: George Eastman House -- A Matter of Fact
A recent RSS item from Memepool quoted in full:
Some (e.g. Ted Nugent) advocate hunting for food. Others cite the necessity of culling the her... [Memepool]
As received...
From: "S. V." xxx@xx.org
Date: Mon Oct 13, 2003 8:20:11 AM US/Pacific
To: "G. V." xxxx@xxx.net
Subject: FW: Jan, The 2004 Trailer Life Directory is hereThis is the kind of header that tells you your life is moving in the right direction.
"The limitless euphoria of the beginning belongs to the past,"
-- Arnoud de Kemp, on Bubble Bursts for E-Books
"I for one believe that if you give people a thorough
understanding of what confronts them and the basic causes
that produce it, they'll create their own program, and when
the people create a program, you get action." - Malcolm X
From gillen
You'll get further with a kind word and a gun
than with a kind word alone.
From Tom Weller's MINIMS
"Aim towards the Enemy."
— Instructions printed on a US Rocket Launcher
"When the pin is pulled, Mr. Grenade is not our friend.
— U.S. Marine Corps
"Bombing from B-52's is very, very accurate. The bombs are guaranteed to always hit the ground."
— U.S.A.F. Ammo Troop
If the enemy is in range, so are you."
— Infantry Journal
"A slipping gear could let your M203 grenade launcher fire when you least expect it. That would make you quite unpopular in what's left of your unit."
— Army's magazine of preventive maintenance
"It is generally inadvisable to eject directly over the area you just bombed."
— U.S. Air Force Manual
"Try to look unimportant; they may be low on ammo."
— Infantry Journal
"Tracers work both ways."
— U.S. Army Ordnance
"Five-second fuses only last three seconds."
— Infantry Journal
"Bravery is being the only one who knows you're afraid."
— David Hackworth
"If your attack is going too well, you're walking into an ambush."
— Infantry Journal
"No combat-ready unit has ever passed inspection."
— Joe Gay
"Any ship can be a minesweeper... once."
— Anon
"Never tell the Platoon Sergeant you have nothing to do."
— Unknown Marine Recruit
"Don't draw fire; it irritates the people around you."
— Your Buddies
"If you see a bomb technician running, try to keep up with him."
— U.S.A.F. Ammo
Scientific American: Hubble Glimpses New Moons around Uranus
"Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French. Sour cream makes it Russian; lemon and cinnamon make it Greek. Soy sauce makes it Chinese; garlic makes it good."
--Alice May Brock
Mona to the left of me, Mona to the right of me,
Mona staring straight at me. Oh my.
From the "Almost Infinite Clip File with No Originating Links," a new way of looking at the Mona Lisa -- or say, rather, a new way that she looks at you.
Click on image for full effect.
Today is the first day of the rest of your week.
From Tom Weller's MINIMS
A man with a cabbage for a head
will never want for nourishment.
-- Minims by Tom Weller
You make over $250,000 a year and still can't afford a house.
You work 10 miles away, and it takes you an hour to drive there.
Your child's third grade teacher has purple hair, a nose ring, and is named Breeze.
It's sprinkling outside, so you leave for work an hour early to avoid all the weather-related accidents.
You can't remember ... is pot legal?
You've been to a baby shower for an infant who has two mothers and a sperm donor.
You have a very strong opinion about where your coffee beans are grown, and can taste the difference between Sumatran and Ethiopian.
You know which restaurant serves the freshest arugula.
You can't remember ... is pot legal?
A really great parking space can move you to tears.
The guy in line at Starbucks, wearing the baseball cap, sunglasses, and looks like George Clooney, IS George Clooney.
Your car insurance costs as much as your house payment.
Your hairdresser is straight, your plumber is gay, and your Mary Kay rep is in drag.
It's sprinkling out, and there's a report on every news channel about "THE STORM!"
Hey ... is pot legal?
Over 85% of the cities, towns, and streets start with San, Los, El, La, Santa, De La, or De Los.
Two overcast days in a row drive you mad.
A family of four owns six vehicles, 5 cell phones, 4 tv sets and 5 computers.
Everyone who lives here knows that hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and snowstorms are way worse than earthquakes, which are, after all, over almost as soon as you realize what's happening.
Even if the store is across the street, you drive there.
Yeah, you're sure...? pot is legal.
And finally, a question:
Q. How many Californians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A. None. Californians cannot afford to turn on the lights.
Source: The Braden Files
The Man Who Thinks He's the Mayor
Bloomberg of New York by LILEKS (James) in less than 15 words:
Bloomberg: "...that hapless nanny Mayor. He's about as inspirational and reassuring as a stale blintz. "
Induction. Henry the Fourth, Part II.
EnterRUMOUR, painted full of tongues
"The posts come tiring on,
And not a man of them brings other news
Than they have learn'd of me: from Rumour's tongues
They bring smooth comforts false, worse than true wrongs."
US theatre owners are contractually obligated to play Gigli for what may be the longest two weeks of their exhibiting lives.
From:Sony gives Gigli the flick
Photo by Sheryl Van der Leun
Imagine ghosts, gods and devils.
Imagine hells and heavens, cities floating in the sky and cities sunken in the sea
Unicorns and centaurs. Witches, warlocks, jinns and banshees.
Angels and harpies. Charms and incantations. Elementals, farmiliars, demons.
Easy to imagine all of those things: mankind has been imagining them for thousands of years.
Imagine spaceships and the future.
Easy to imagine; the future is really coming and there'll be spaceships in it.
Is there then anything that's really hard to imagine?
Of course there is.
Imagine a piece of matter and yourself inside it, yourself, aware, thinking and therefore knowing you exist, able to move that piece of matter that you're in," to make it sleep or wake, make love or walk uphill.
Imagine a universe-infinite or not, as you wish to picture it- with a billion, billion, billion suns in it.
Imagine a blob of mud whirling madly around one of those suns.
Imagine yourself standing on that blob of mud, whirling with it, whirling through time and space to an unknown destination.
Imagine!
Written by Fredric Brown, 1955
"What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form, in moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!" - William Shakespeare
Homo sapiens Other names: man[common name]
Lineage:
Primeval Soup - >cellular organisms - >Eukaryota - >Fungi/Metazoa group - >Metazoa - >Eumetazoa - >Bilateria - >Coelomata - >Deuterostomia - >Chordata - >Craniata - >Vertebrata - >Gnathostomata - >Teleostomi - >Euteleostomi - >Sarcopterygii - >Tetrapoda - >Amniota - >Mammalia - >Theria - >Eutheria - >Primates - >Catarrhini - >Hominidae - >Homo/Pan/Gorilla group - >Homo - > (?)
The American Zen Master
by Dick Allen
from Poetry Daily
Zen also is to be found, he tried to instruct us,
in a car dealer's showroom, and in shoelaces. . . . Also, in America,
you don't sit at the feet of the Zen Master
but you have coffee with him, preferably at Starbucks,
next to one of those outsized suburban malls where everyone looks half dressed,
half dazed and half dead. "The secret of Zen," the Master said,
may come halfway through a Yankee Candle store
when you realize you can smell nothing,
or from reading Hallmark Cards backwards,
or choosing nothing from an overstuffed refrigerator. But it isn't a secret."
As for our questions,
instead of smiting us around the shoulders with a bamboo cane,
he'd hand us little writing-intensive packets of Equal and Sweet 'N Low,
then lean back, smiling like a sushi plate. Sometimes, he'd babble:
"Tums, drive-up windows, ATM machines.
Checkout-line scanners, 1000 Megahertz,
the industrial landscapes so remarkable." Often
we'd catch him staring at the intricate face
of a digital wristwatch, or contemplating
a simple button-down shirt on a white shelf in a Wal-Mart.
All things. "Throw your computers into the eyes of children,"
he loved to tell us. "Work for the Federal administration,
if that's what you must.
Wear last year's fashions, re-endure the 8os.
Take the last train to Clarksville.
If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill her." We'd come to Zen
Wild Honey and Gold
Today's Quotation from Today in Literature's Email Newsletter
Wild honey smells of freedom
The dust-of sunlight
The mouth of a young girl, like a violet
But gold-smells of nothing....
- - Anna Akhmatova ("Wild Honey Smells of Freedom"), born this June 23,1889
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Zenecdotes
- The Constant Murmur from the Mind
- Surf's Up [New Video]
- Bocca della Verità: The Mouth of Truth
- Improving the Program
- The Most Beautiful Wisteria Tree in the World
- Yes, You Can
- Why's That?
- Most Overbearing Political/Literary Allusion of the Day
- The Unending Mysteries of the Orient
- Okay, Break's Over...
- The Democratic Convention, Condensed
- Noted While Drinking
- Questions Containing Their Own Answers
- Questions Containing Their Own Answers
- "Okay, now everybody remember where we parked."
- National Media Feed In A Nutshell
- Unclear Destinations
- "A Picture Is Worth 100 Gallons"
- Electron Crimes
- MateMaker