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 26 Nov 2004 @ 18:05
When crows find a dying snake,
They behave as if they were eagles.
When I see myself as a victim,
I am hurt by trifling failures.
---Shantideva
Learn to wish that everything should come to pass exactly as it does.
---Epictetus
I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.
---Wilson Mizener
Hope In The Prison Of Despair
Evelyn de Morgan (1855-1919)
So much for happy Thanksgiving. But nobody ever said we can't give thanks sadly...or anxiously. Hysterically? Probably not to very good effect, eh?
OK, what am I talking about? I really was elated as we moved into the holiday, even though Judge Carr had turned down the Green and Libertarian parties' motion to a Federal Court to begin the recount early. Their point had been that waiting for Secretary of State Blackwell to certify the election, on a date I've seen given variously as December 3rd or 6th, would make completion of a recount impossible by December 13th, when the Electoral College convenes. [link] As Dan Tokaji explains Carr's decision, these minority candidates are highly unlikely to benefit in terms of new results; and since they're the plaintiffs, there's no reason to try to beat the deadline for Electoral College convention. Besides, Blackwell, dragging his feet and every other part of his Republican body, already had protested we can't have a REcount before the actual count is finished. He'd surely appeal a favorable verdict for the Greens and Libertarians. More >
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 9 Jun 2004 @ 07:04
Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve.
---Erich Fromm
When you look for it, there is nothing to see,
When you listen for it, there is nothing to hear,
When you use it, it is inexhaustible.
---Lao-Tzu
You must learn to be still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly alive in repose.
---Indira Gandhi
Now here is a True American Hero, whose 70th birthday it is this very day! I hear no proposal for this inspiring face to be honored on any denomination of US currency...and yet what could be more appropriate? Happy Birthday Donald! More >
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 1 Jun 2004 @ 03:35
The use of uselessness: to keep my Way.
In this secluded life I move toward truly feeling.
Mulberry and hemp, deep in rain and dew,
A mountain finch, I've built here half a life, at least.
The village drums may urge from time to time,
The fishing boats, each one floating, light.
With bramble staff I take my white head walking.
Heart makes tracks here; here's purity,
In thought, in action.
---Tu Fu
One of the elders said:
Either fly as far as you can from men, or else, laughing at the world and the men who are in it, make yourself a fool in many things.
---Thomas Merton
Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.
---Thomas Huxley
Protestors outside Halliburton headquarters
BRETT COOMER/GETTY IMAGES
Got time to catch up on some holiday weekend news?
TIME From the Magazine
Sunday, May. 30, 2004
The Paper Trail
Did Cheney Okay a Deal?
By TIMOTHY J. BURGER AND ADAM ZAGORIN
Vice President Dick Cheney was a guest on NBC's Meet the Press last September when host Tim Russert brought up Halliburton. Citing the company's role in rebuilding Iraq as well as Cheney's prior service as Halliburton's CEO, Russert asked, "Were you involved in any way in the awarding of those contracts?" Cheney's reply: "Of course not, Tim ... And as Vice President, I have absolutely no influence of, involvement of, knowledge of in any way, shape or form of contracts led by the [Army] Corps of Engineers or anybody else in the Federal Government."
More >
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 11 May 2004 @ 03:46
In a snowfall that covers the winter grass
a white heron
uses his own whiteness to disappear.
---Dogen
All religion begins with the cry "Help!"
---William James
Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don't open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down the dulcimer. Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
---Jalaluddin Rumi
US Army Spec. Charles A. Graner, Jr (rear), and Pfc. Lynndie R. England are seen at Abu Ghraib prison.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The New York Times
May 11, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Tourists and Torturers
By LUC SANTE
So now we think we know who took some of the photographs at Abu Ghraib. The works attributed to Specialist Jeremy Sivits are fated to remain among the indelible images of our time. (Presumably this is the same Jeremy Sivits who will be tried on May 19th in a somewhat streamlined proceeding known as a special court-martial. ---jazz) They will have changed the course of history; just how much we do not yet know. It is arguable that without them, news of what happened within the walls of that prison would never have emerged from the fog of classified internal memos. We owe their circulation and perhaps their existence to the popular technology of our day, to digital cameras and JPEG files and e-mail. Photographs can now be disseminated as quickly and widely as rumors. It's possible that even if Specialist Joseph M. Darby hadn't gone to his superiors in January and "60 Minutes II" hadn't broken the story last month, some of those pictures would sooner or later have found their way onto the Web and so into the public record.
Leaving aside the question of how anyone could have perpetrated the horrors depicted in those pictures, you can't help but wonder why American soldiers would incriminate themselves by posing next to their handiwork. Americans don't seem to have a long tradition of that sort of thing. I can't offhand recall having seen comparable images from any recent wars, although before the digital era amateur photographs were harder to spread. There have been many atrocity photographs over the years, of course — the worst I've ever seen were taken in Algeria in 1961, and once when I was a child another kid found and showed off his father's cache of pictures from the Pacific Theater in World War II, which shook me so badly that I can't remember with any certainty what they depicted. I'm pretty sure, though, that they did not show anyone grinning and making self-congratulatory gestures. More >
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 25 Mar 2004 @ 03:59
...and he was almighty because he had wrenched from chaos the secret of its nothingness.
---Jean-Paul Sartre
When you get there, there isn't any there there.
---Gertrude Stein
God never appears to you in person but always in action.
---Mohandas K. Gandhi
Bernard Safran: A Surgeon Working
1982, 37" x 48", oil on masonite
In some ways this article will not be typical of my writing. In the first place I shall begin with a caution about reading it at all. The main information about what I'm doing and what is happening to me---hopefully in some kind of equal balance---is simple and I can tell you that right away. As a routine procedure for prostate cancer, which we have reason to believe I have in a very early stage, I received a total body bone scan last Friday. The results were shared yesterday and they were excellent. We see cancer has not moved into the bones...and there are not other marked abnormalities. It's time to take the next step and that is selection of treatment, and I have done that. We have a date for surgery to remove the entire prostate gland on May 3rd. My urologist, with whom I have been working for a year, will perform the operation.
Some may want or need to read no further. This situation is all about male anatomy of the most personal kind. Surgery is not the stuff for a morning read over your first coffee either...at least for most of us. I'm going to talk about the operation and why we selected this option. I'm going to write about the risks and what may happen to me. You may not be interested in knowing any of that. I certainly never wanted to...until my time came, as I guess in one way or another it comes to us all. I shall not be insulted in the slightest if you simply X out this item from your screen and move on to something you like better. You're now aware that from here until the operation I shall be preparing, and afterwards I'm going to be laid up for a few weeks. That may be enough of an alert. I would appreciate if someone would volunteer to Ming to, or if Ming himself would, edit the Logs for Front Page placement for a couple of months, beginning in May. More >
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