05w51:1 Everything, or Throwing the Backlog on the Winter's Fire, or Xmastravaganza Posted December 24th, 2005 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2005 week 51 number 1 (everything, or throwing the backlog on the winter’s fire, or the xmastravaganza) ——————————————————————— But first the news…. “Welcome to Ohio! Ihre Papiere, bitte!” | Metafilter http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/47812 “Governor Taft of Ohio is about to sign Senate Bill 9, the Ohio Patriot Act. Among its provisions: * Police can deny entry to “transportation infrastructure” to anyone not showing an ID; * Police can demand the name, address, and date of birth of anyone suspected of having committed a crime or being about to commit a crime, or having witnessed a crime or a plan to commit a crime. Failure to provide this information is an arrestable offense — so basically all demonstrators could be required to give their names, addresses and dates of birth or face arrest; * Reminiscent of Joe McCarthy’s famous question, many state licenses will begin with the question “Are you a member of an organization on the U.S. Department of State Terrorist Exclusion List?”. Failure to answer means no license; answering affirmatively is self-incrimination. * Perhaps worst of all, the original version of the bill simply prohibited state or local governemnts or government employees from objecting to the USA PATRIOT act. The current version allows criticism, but threatens local government with the loss of funds if they in any way “materially hinder” Federal anti-terrorism efforts. “Welcome to Ohio! Ihre Papiere, bitte!” is from Metafilter, and included this comment: “The men who founded this nation were brave and forward thinking, the United States formed as the most modern and enlightened government in history. And now, through the spoiled tricksters in power, it is being dismantled while the citizens are at home watching another sitcom, laughing, laughing, laughing. […] Oh, and f*ck Jesus and every moron who voted for Republicans because they promised to stop homosexuals from getting married.” Yeah, f*ck ’em. But it is Jesus’ birthday and all, supposedly. But maybe Jesus was a bastard. Maybe he was born in the summer. Ah well, at least it’s time off work, and we get to eat well. Where is Santa Claus? | Timothy Comeau http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/commentary/2005/12/where-is-santa-claus.html from 1990 when I was in Grade 10 Sata Claus | Timothy Comeau http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/commentary/2004/12/sata-claus.html Santa loves logs Santa is Satan right? http://www.blowthetrumpet.org/TheGreatDeceptionVideo.htm at first I thought this was satire than checked out the rest of the site and saw that it’s a looney Christian one and so the video I guess is supposed to be serious.Thanks to Rany (whoever you are) for the link. Merry Religious Assimiliation Day | OmniNerd http://www.omninerd.com/2005/12/22/news/455 “The first recorded Christmas on December 25th took place in the 4th century, a date coinciding with the birthdate of Mithras, the Persian sun god. Pope Julius I is rumored to have adjusted Jesus’ birthday to match Mithras’ because the church was unable to stop the pagan celebrations and thereby could associate their festivities in Jesus’ name. Other traditions owe their roots to non-Christian origin. Evergreen trees were revered by Druids for good luck and fertility because they withstood the hardships of winter. The tree became a religious symbol of everlasting life and was decorated to symbolize the sun’s power.” The Earthly Father: What if Mary wasn’t a virgin? | Chloe Breyer http://www.slate.com/id/2132639/nav/tap1/ “Should Schaberg and other scholars who question the virgin birth be hurled into the outer darkness? The problem with dismissing them, as the fourth-century church authorities dismissed their forerunners, begins with Scripture. The biblical sources for the virgin conception are a few short passages in two of the four Gospels. In Matthew, an angel appears to Joseph, who is perplexed about his fiancee’s pregnancy. Should he divorce Mary or have her stoned her to death, as the law of Deuteronomy requires? “Joseph, Son of David,” says the angel, “Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus.” The angel then goes on to quote the Hebrew prophet Isaiah. “Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel.” (In fact, “virgin” comes from Matthew’s use of a Greek mistranslation; the Hebrew in Isaiah reads “young girl.”) The version in Luke is similar.” Mary’s Not a Virgin | The Current speaks to Jane Schaberg http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/media/200512/20051222thecurrent_sec1.ram Mary’s wasn’t a virgin, she was just unfaithful I guess Eluding Happiness: A Buddhist problem with Christmas. | Jess Row http://www.slate.com/id/2132724/?nav=tap3 Oh, but now Buddhism’s in the picture. Which is interesting because…. Scientists to check Nepal Buddha boy | Navin Singh Khadka http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4479240.stm Introduction to Meditation | Gil Fronsdal http://www.audiodharma.org/talks-intromed.html …which reminds me of the Buddhist joke I once heard which I never really understood. I guess that means I’m stupid. But whatever. It went: ‘what did the Buddhist say to the hot-dog vendor? — I’ll have one with everything.’ so, on to everything…. Blink and The Wisdom of Crowds | James Surowiecki & Malcolm Gladwell http://www.slate.com/id/2111894/entry/2112064/ Preacher of the profane | Daniel Binswanger http://www.signandsight.com/features/399.html Ad glut turns off viewers | Gary Levin http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2005-10-11-ad-glut_x.htm Are you there God? It’s me Margaret | Mathew Fox interviews Margaret Atwood http://maisonneuve.org/index.php?page_id=12&article_id=415 Move Toward Plain Language in Canadian Court Decisions | Michel-Adrien Sheppard http://micheladrien.blogspot.com/2005/11/move-toward-plain-language-in-canadian.html The Plain Language Association INternational http://www.plainlanguagenetwork.org/ Artblog.net: Vincent Van Gogh, the drawings | Franklin Einspruch http://artblog.net/publications/2005/12/van_gogh/ Art in Newfoundland | Craig Francis Power http://artinnl.blogspot.com/ nobody writes me letters anymore. boohoohoo this was awesome: Optics in Renaissance Art | Charles M. Falco http://realserver.princeton.edu:8080/ramgen/lectures/20020507falcoTV7300K.rm (link to realmedia presentation, or go here: Lectures at Princeton page) and this was really good…: Urban Planning | The Current speaks to Fred Kent http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/media/200510/20051024thecurrent_sec3.ram Fred Kent complained about Frank Gehry’s work and that of similar architects, which in Toronto, means he’s talking about our reno-projects…. he refered to it as ‘starkichecture’ and spoke of design being a disease. Monuments to ego (*cough* Liebskind) maybe, but as public spaces, they leave much to be desired. Personally I can see an historical connection to architecture and fascism, but who cares what I think. Some pigs are more equal than others | Timothy Comeau http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/commentary/2005/10/some-pigs-are-more-equal-than-others.html Not Special | Timothy Comeau http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/commentary/2005/12/not-special.html Let’s have a culture of six pack minds baby. Because then the world might be a better place. In the meantime there’s Muhammad Yunus. Muhammad Yunus is one of the most inspiring individuals I’ve ever come across in the media-scape. A highly recommended video presentation…. Ending Global Poverty | Muhammad Yunus http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/289/ “ABOUT THE LECTURE: Imagine a bank that loans money based on a borrower’s desperate circumstances — where, as Muhammad Yunus says, ‘the less you have, the higher priority you have.’ Turning banking convention on its head has accomplished a world of good for millions of impoverished Bangladeshis, as the pioneering economist Yunus has demonstrated in the last three decades. What began as a modest academic experiment has become a personal crusade to end poverty. Yunus reminds us that for two-thirds of the world’s population, ‘financial institutions do not exist.’ Yet, ‘we’ve created a world which goes around with money. If you don’t have the first dollar, you can’t catch the next dollar.’ It was Yunus’ notion, in the face of harsh skepticism, to give the poorest of the poor their first dollar so they could become self-supporting. ‘We’re not talking about people who don’t know what to do with their lives….They’re as good, enterprising, as smart as anybody else.’ His Grameen Bank spread from village to village as a lender of tiny amounts of money (microcredit), primarily to women. Yunus heard that “all women can do is raise chickens, or cows or make baskets. I said, ‘Don’t underestimate the talent of human beings.'” No collateral is required, nor paperwork—just an effort to make good and pay back the loan. Now the bank boasts 5 million borrowers, receiving half a billion dollars a year. It has branched out into student loans, health care coverage, and into other countries. Grameen has even created a mobile phone company to bring cell phones to Bangladeshi villages. Yunus envisions microcredit building a society where even poor people can open ‘the gift they have inside of them.'” I’ve linked to things relating to Bonnie Basseler’s work before. Here is a video presentation from Printceton. I’ve linked to the real audio version, but there are others available from the source website here: Lectures at Princeton page How Bacteria Talk to One Another | Bonnie Basseler speaking at Princeton (video) http://realserver.princeton.edu:8080/ramgen/lectures/20051017basslerTAPE56K.rm Merry Christmas everybody. -Mr. Timothy —————————————- http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com To remove or add yourself to this list, go here emailed by Timothy on Saturday 24 December 2005 @ 5:24 PM
05w49:1 Pinter vs. the War Criminals Posted December 10th, 2005 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2005 week 49 number 1 (Pinter vs. the war criminals) ——————————————————————— 2005 Nobel Lecture ‘Art, Truth & Politics’ | Harold Pinter http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-lecture.html “… language in art remains a highly ambiguous transaction, a quicksand, a trampoline, a frozen pool which might give way under you, the author, at any time. But as I have said, the search for the truth can never stop. It cannot be adjourned, it cannot be postponed. It has to be faced, right there, on the spot. The truth is something entirely different. […] Political language, as used by politicians, does not venture into any of this territory since the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed. […] The truth is to do with how the United States understands its role in the world and how it chooses to embody it.”NOTE: with choice of video or text Pinter blasts ‘Nazi America’ and ‘deluded idiot’ Blair | Angelique Chrisafis & Imogen Tilden http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4688521-103690,00.html “The playwright Harold Pinter last night likened George W Bush’s administration to Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany, saying the US was charging towards world domination while the American public and Britain’s ‘mass-murdering’ prime minister sat back and watched. Pinter, 72, was at the National Theatre in London to read from War, a new collection of his anti-war poetry that had been published in the press in response to events in Iraq.”article date: June 2003 Bush on the Constitution: ‘It’s just a goddamned piece of paper’ | Doug Thompson http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_7779.shtml “GOP leaders told Bush that his hardcore push to renew the more onerous provisions of the [Patriot] act could further alienate conservatives still mad at the President from his botched attempt to nominate White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. ‘I don’t give a goddamn,’ Bush retorted. ‘I’m the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way.’ ‘Mr. President,’ one aide in the meeting said. ‘There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution.’ ‘Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,’ Bush screamed back. ‘It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!'” U.S. bans use of torture | CBC http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2005/12/07/torture051207.html “The White House has tried to argue that rules against torture don’t apply beyond U.S. soil, in places like Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or Afghanistan. But on Wednesday that all changed. Speaking in Kiev, Rice made a definitive statement. ‘Those obligations [against the use of torture] extend to U.S. personnel wherever they are, whether they are in the United States or outside of the United States,’ she said. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said it was ‘about time.’ ‘Shame on us that it took so long for the administration’ to make the determination not to use torture, she said. A Democratic Senator called Rice’s statement an ‘almost total reversal of U.S. policy.'” —————————————- http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com To remove or add yourself to this list, go here emailed by Timothy on Saturday 10 December 2005 @ 12:58 PM
