2 points of aesthetics

17.V.1430

construction work in the states looks smart going up and smart after it's done
here it looks dumb going up and even dumber after it's finished

work well done / well conceived is aesthetically pleasing at every stage. ... Read more

echo chamber dept. : last.fm reactions

27.Iv.1430

In response to the announcement at http://blog.last.fm/2009/04/22/radio-subscriptions, user feedback is ferocious - largely to to a feeling of exclusion in the west (and russia and poland) - the "3rd world" is more used to the exclusion : http://blog.last.fm/2009/04/22/radio-subscriptions#comments.

Meanwhile untried alternatives from comments include: Deezer, FineTune or Finemusic, Spotify, blip.fm, www.aupeo.com, and maybe Jamendo. (sorry mebbe i'll add link later)

+ of course the other sites where content is entirely user generated - like Jamendo - though there are no familiar pop or jazz classics there.

More alts from comments,

"hey!
10 free alternatives to the Last.fm Radio service.
StumbleAudio
Spotify
SHOUTcast
Musicovery
Deezer
iLike
Tunerec
Songza
Live365
RadioBeta

Anyone knows another option?"

"-Spotify
-Grooveshark
-Finemusic
-Jamendo (about indie artists)excellent!
-musicax.org (listen & download songs)

I won’t pay, record label should pay, not me."

"Alternatives to last.fm are:
limited to FR, UK, scandinavia:
spotify
US only:
slacker, pandora
I don’t know:
seeqpod, blip.fm
There’s more on alternativeto.net

Do consider that none of them are last.fm, you’ll have to pay for the real thing."

One particular comment resonated:

"I’m just confused as to why my 30 song free trial includes a big google ad right next to it, when ad-supported radio is apparently not feasable in Canada."

I'm getting all the ads all the time too here in Africa , so what gives? Isn't the whole idea of ads to bombard the user with ads on every page? so what do users in the UK/US/Germany do different from users elsewhere - don't we all get the ads equally? And is it because the ad buyers come from those three countries? Well, heck, Google's got offices in my country too !



And I was just thinking how last.fm could be turning the tide of the ominous clearchannels radio tentaclurum.

I still think it is fully equiped to turn the tide of trend like clearchannel radio and it should be supported - even with subscriptions - but without the crass discrimination.

But the key is to make a fully licensed perpetually free alternative clone to last.fm .

The economics of which still elusive of course, until money is somehow plugged out of the equation altogether, and all labor efficiently allocated and renumerated. hoohoo.

It's tough because unlike wikipedia or facebook,
a) content isn't user generated
b) last.fm has to pay license fees to the record disables. wikipedia and the other other idiots on't have to pay licensing fees to anyone. We give them all under very permissive free licenses.

RIAA is again the clear enemy here.

But the truth lies deeper in the general american moral fabric and the judaic and protestant cupidity embedded in it, distinct and far more severely degraded from European ethics.

anyweg.

Some more excerpts from the comments:


" ... Paying for a radio service is the most ridiculous thing ever."

"So what you are actually saying is: We’d love our foreign listeners to pay for our largest group of listeners, so they can listen for free.

Well, thanks for that, we’ll move on to the next best thing and make that as big as last.fm now is :)"

" ``scrobbling, recommendations, charts, biographies, events, videos etc will remain free in all countries”

thanks god biographies is still free… LOL"

"Well, it was fun while it lasted. Too bad I’ll need to use a proxy now to access last.fm now."

:)


"Do I charge for all the useful scrobble info I sent you? Do I charge for the artist descriptions I write? Do I charge for letting you stream my music? Just some random questions"

"Community site huh ? How a site like last.fm say that “i am a community site” ? Everyone have to pay exclude 3 “rich” country ?THE COMMUNITY MAKE LAST.FM , NOT LAST.FM ITSELF . NOT YOU “CBS” , YOU THINK YOU BOUGHT IT AND YOU CAN CHANGE IT TO WHAT YOU WANT ?"

"This is discrimination!!!"


"We’re managing a band, placed outside one of the “three lucky countries”. Since a new album is nearly ready, and in Lastfm we had a wide audience, we did decide to promote it there. But now… the audience will decrease drastically in most countries. So it is not a good idea to invest in promotion here anymore…

It’s a real shame, but I understand it’s a business, and they have to do whatever is better for them.

Good luck!"

"thank you guys, it was a good service… now i’ve to find something else…"


"I am gonna hear the last thirty tracks, jot down the titles of the cool songs and pieces I´ve discovered, as well as with the artists I didn´t know, find a way to keep in touch with the users I´ve made friends with, close my account and go to a peer to peer program to download all that music. SLSK anyone?

By the way,suggestions were made, Mark, but it seems that they didn´t matter. (check the other entries in the blog and their comments)

PS. Fuck last.fm"


"Just lost Launchcast a week ago in Canada. Now, on my birthday, I learn that I’ve lost Last.fm. Happy birthday to me. Sorry, guys, I haven’t been using Last.fm long enough to decide if it’s worth paying for, and I rather resent being forced to pay for something that is free in a few chosen countries."

"I repeat my idea: if users have to pay, ALL have to pay, not only ones that live outside USA and UK. I stop using it and, more important, I’ll stop scrobbling too! Your service LIVES with data scrobbled by users and I won’t give it for free.
Bye bye."

Too bad you already gave them your scrobbling data for free :) or :\

"+5000 подавитесь
eat you money, scumbags
Feel free to delete my account."

"Haha, i was playing Last.FM all day long, still ain’t noticing anything :)

If i keep it running without closing down, then i wont get cut of after 30+ songs? :D

It sucks that you can’t make a country specific ad campain, got to know a lots of new artists here.

The biggest bitches are the record labels, they just can’t get it, that there will be more downloading now, because ppl can’t listen via Last.FM anymore for free.

Just my 2 cents"

hehehe

"It’s fine that you start charging really, it’s just immensly retarted to know three countries don’t have to.

You can still get the radio’s from the API/site. So you can download the music elsewhere. (spotify and the like)

Three questions:
Does paying give you the extras old subscribers got (the playlists)?
Why not charge he UK/US/DE-trinity? If you need money you might as well. It doesn’t matter that you can advertise there, it would make it fair. (I would pay more for fair)
Why am I seeing ads?"

" ... It’s the whole “we all build this as a community, i alone (cbs) profit from it” attitude which i hate. ... To the last.fm core team, thanks guys you built something great, too bad the big boys ruined it. ..."

UPDATE 26.iv.2009:
So far slashdot and googlenews choose to ignore the issue - not very Internetizeny of them.


... Read more

hardware and free software

16.IV.1430

Until society figures out a way to manufacture, transport and give away goods from raw materials for free, we cannot have free hardware the way free software has evolved.

Along its supply chain, hardware costs

- raw materials -> components ,
- labor to assemble components and subcomponents and so on,
- long-distance transport from pt of origin to pts of sale,
- whatever else (overhead)

So it seems impossible that there would be free hardware - as happened with software.

Although if there existed an open source community - and there exists to an extent - for hardware similar to the software counterpart, there is still room where it would fit in the supply chain.
Mainly replacing waged labor to assemble the hardware parts.

But this does not eliminate costs. There are transport costs for the free workers / contributors / volunteers to get to the assembly points.

Also because assembly points are centralized, it severely restricts the possibility of a widespread population of free workers - like that which exists in free software space.

By contrast, software is all brains and bandwidth (and hardware, but to much lesser extent).

Thus, I hope that the added value of hardware created by the waged labor that designs and makes it does not enter into the price of hardware to the end user. It does enter into it. And this even though workers are not renumerated for their value-added labor.

But why should I pay for value-added labor on hardware (which is not returned to the laborers) while I get value-added labor in free software for free ?


... not oddly, all this eventually leads to the system of both guilds and the state cushioning the life of labor's value-added products, not in wages, but generalized social and economic services. The existence of the guilds prevents a completely centralized socialist welfare state - as responsibilities are shared between both.

What keeps the guilds on the straight and narrow wrt their responsibilities to their labor force? but what doesn't ?

Historically, it seems guilds have not betrayed workers - they were simply dismantled by state and finance and then later replaced by trade or labor unions (rather emotionally but euphemistically refered to as brotherhoods by Americans). But they are not remotely related to the structure and functioning of the extinct ancient trade or industry guilds.

In the modern age, both the trade unions and industry associations are locked in adversarial relationships and both are corrupt and completely compromised.

The ancient guilds functioned both as industry associations and as workers' entitlements.

The innovation is that in a moneyless society, the equilibria are built around mutual exchange of value. That is the exchange of value-added production in return for the provision of the requisites of some accepted standard of living - removing the man in the middle, money.



- more - ... Read more

self-similarity in geography

09.iI.1430

There is an unmistakable degree of self similarity where every sea, every subcontinental outcrop or indentation finds its form repeated in relative miniature somewhere inside and or near it, and someimes also far from it as if reflected about some axis.

And with the formal replica in miniature there are also political replicas to the regionally larger political or ethnolinguistic structure.

... Read more

Stop improving nature

07.iI.1430

In response to things like , "RuBisCO is very important in terms of biological impact because it catalyzes the most commonly-used chemical reaction by which inorganic carbon enters the biosphere. RuBisCO is also the most abundant protein in leaves, and it may be the most abundant protein on Earth[2]. Given its important role in the biosphere, there are currently efforts to genetically engineer crop plants so as to contain more efficient RuBisCO (see below)," I'd like to say a few words ...


Stop messing with stuff. If it ain't broke don't fix it.
You're paid to keep / use the stuff not improve it.
KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid!

This is not the only instance. I keep running into stories about how some idiots with degrees discover new gene or protein function and then promise to set to work on improving it or making it more pronounced.

Does it occur to anyone in the "biohack" community that stuff is the way it is for not just any reason , but for an OPTIMAL reason ?

Doesn't anyone who funds them realize that?

Hey Monsanto, Archer Daniel Midlands, Go To Jail, Do not collect $300, Do not pass Go.


I looked at Monsanto on the nearest/easiest source, wikipedia. I saw this as their logo(done up with a goofing slogan?)



Hey, Monsanto, stop imagining!

If I had an agribusiness or a biotech affair I wouldn't mind the slogan

"We like it the just way it is"

... Read more

Very quick solutions to the coming social metamorphosis

5.iI.1430

1- Cancel all debt computed due to compound and simple interest.
2- Enforce food self-sufficiency for every nation that can do so.



1- Cancel all debt computed due to compound and simple interest.
In practice what people will end up doing is whole sale cancellations of debt which is not advisable or necessary - but then again people will be acting out of panic in reactionary ways.

- more -

... Read more

Pulling all the stops

04.Ii.1430

I guess this is where that phrase "pull all the stops" comes from.





The stops of an organ come in the form of pullable knobs or switch tabs. Their function is to determine the timbre or waveform of the sound by opening and closing some of the pipes (the rank) that sound the different overtones (harmonic series components) of each note.

But this, the brontosaurus of instruments, epitomized the aspiration and expression of fine control of sound. I guess it represented the state of the art in sound synthesis until the electric synthesis (starting with for example the electric Hammonds since 1930s).


a Hammond organ tone wheel and an electromagnetic pickup

Aside from all its wonders it was also emblematic of an excess of self-indulgence resource and labor abuse. The organ pictured above, with 500 stops, is a good example. it is not even the organ of a renowned church that was played by famous concert players. it is the organ in some marine academy in terroristan. I can imagine a cadet's rousing polyphonies in which he pulls all the stops for his class mates just before they take off to sow with brimstone and fire further unsustainable expressions of power and pomp on far away lands.



And yet there are much much larger behemoths. In fact the largest and most complex organs ever built - as if to highlight the inescapable element of excess - were built , as i guessed, in terroristan.


the console of the largest organ "ever built"
which is in , ahem, Jersey; New Jersey that is - apparently commissioned by one the Sopranos! :) jest kidding. It was , as it is now defunct, called the Boardwalk Hall Auditorium organ by Midmer-Losh Organ Company

The largest still-functioning organ in the world today, is , also , the Wanamaker at Macy's, Philadelphia. Second largest "built yet".

They have to make one wonder why all the complexity of hundreds of and hundreds of stops to change timbral character of the sounds? Particularly that the most enthusiastic builders were hardly brimming with musical pedigree; unless we dismiss these instances as symptoms of american (terroristani) exceptionalism that at some point people used to call Americana.

Who the hell dedicates so much labour (organ makers of the new world apparently) for such complex fine'd control and how much do they command in price from their boisterous buyers hailing from churches with worshippers' donations, or other self-important institutions of more secular nature.

David Yearsley writes of the trials of the destitute wind billowers that powered the creative crusades of J-S Bach and countless other composers and organists of high pretensions, and who received atrociously low wages for their trouble. (Incidentally Yearsley has been endeavouring to relate in a series of online essays interesting twists in the turbulent history of classical music, and a bit of jazz).

Phew, thank God for the electronics revolution, though with truly continuous and infinitesimal control, people stopped thinking like Bach , or Handel , or even like Miles Davis or the narratives of modern pop. Instead , the musicians gave us electronica. Yep thank God for electronics.

While Hammond seems to have addressed a need for cheaper organs by exploiting electromagnetism, in the climate of downturn of the Great Depression, today's modern synthing evolutionary steps have been about 20-30 years in time for another wide economic downturn. Another round of reigning in the excesses of the - hopefully - passing age.

... Read more

control theory not good for social theory

12.I.1430

Elements of control theory are often tempting as metaphors in the context of social organization. But treating such analogies as readily mappable to the social subject is a mistake.

As an example , here's an ostensible pearl of wisdom that : "A first-order control mechanism is any mechanism that is controlled by direct motion in a single direction. Similarly, in social theory, a single direct action producing a social change is a first-order control system." (wikipedia) .

This example in itself is innocuous enough. But just a question why would such a taxonomy be useful to social scientists? Why try to be social engineers? Haven't they all watched Adam Curtis' movies? By this question I mean, haven't they learned the disasterous effects of treating society as a machine (it's not) and making atrocious assumptions about human motivation?

tirade segment: haven't the bolsheviks miscalculated human motivation? didn't Hitler miscalculate the anglosaxons' motivations? Weren't both the cold war and the economic restructuring of the post-revolutionary quarter century a result of a very paranoid and a most cynical interpretation of history and economics?

I cite the Adam Curtis movies because they readily convey how a lot of the international politics (eg, the cold war) of the past half-century have evolved out of attempts at mathematical modeling stemming from game theorists who played games called "fuck you buddy", that sought to highlight the utility of betrayal and mistrust. I was left with the impression that such theory encoded the personal paranoia of its authors - particularly after watching John Nash and other supporters admitting as much !

Likewise it seems economic theory is at best based on stupid assumptions. But it's useless to debate them because they are discredited by the practitioners of those theories. For instance, they seem to take natural self-regulation as a guiding principle for the market and "the invisible hand". Yet in practice, the choir and agressive imposers of the theory's policy implications have been practicing selective protectionism (selecting that which protects their voters' interests), anti-labor violence, tying aid to "freer" markets, and interest rate manipulation all along. This is to say nothing of chronic and endemic cheating on the balance sheets by all the biggest players - as the past nine years have repeatedly shown us.

So we could criticize the notion of self-regulation, that it is not so instantaneous. Self-regulation is a long winded process, taking much longer in nature than the flashing intervals of market cycles. But it would be useless.

Another fact that undermines economic theory is its acceptance of the banking model of monetary supply as a given. Nonetheless, it should not be a given. it is a swindle. and should be thoroughly replaced with someone reflecting true value, and given the sovereignty of the state not the investor.

So when I see the terminology of control theory being applied so cavalierly and needlessly in social science, I worry. Because this translates into blind and ruthless policies under which millions get crushed figuratively or literally.


P.S.

Disclaimer: i've written before about social organization as well as information transfer, not in engineering terms, but in a formal framework. This was within the computational context of artificial multi-agent systems.

The idea was to apply the obvious social analogies for the sake of designing interesting schemes of social organization for artificial agents, in the vein of bio-mimetics. Not the other way around.

The study of information transfer has for its intent only the study of human communication, and not the control or tailoring of communication.

... Read more

quotations dept: surplus value

12.I.1430

"Every day I watched how a bare metal frame, rolling down the line, would come off the other end, a spanking brand new car [Lincoln-Mercury automobile factory, Detroit]. What a great idea! Maybe, I could do the same thing with my music." -- Berry Gordy Jr. Motown founder. ... Read more

candles in the dark شموع فى الظلام

 

In the course of the past week while a terrorist bloodbath (human political and cultural) unfolded next door a few events gleamed in the gloom.

Now to sample a few without further ado:

1- Greece - a longtime supporter of justice for Palestine - sends aid. This is despite its recent civil woes. This was a Greek government action in perfect consonance with the will of the Greek people, even though the two have been at loggerheads and youth demonstrating against them. It was a moment where all Greece, Ellas, spontaneously came into unison to sound a harmonious note ; aid to Gaza. Gia'sou. (btw, did Egypt let it through?)



2- people across the near east and as far as the sind, the EU and the transatlantic protest in large numbers.
Except in our "near east", the protestors are not overly opressed (fallout of the financial meltdown which is a Madoff-like swindle but multiplied a hundred-fold?)
Also indicative of this laissez-faire is the notable absence of agents provocateurs. This, despite the agitations in Ellas anfd Fce coupled with the associated whirled bank head's warning of civil unrest all of which could have been played up here.
But there was apparently no will to do so.
Everybody, even the PDs' agents-provocateurs are impoverished , clipped by practically the same financiers of the psychotic mayhem in Gaza. Perhaps the police's agents provocateurs stood in the demos and remained peaceful this time in order not to undermine their own cause.

3- Louder voices have come also from the very nation that injected the zionism into our oriental and arab midst. justice'n'peace fixtures Ken Livingston, George Galloway the Respect MP; from the novel quarter of the brit-music universe, music past master Annie Lennox and UN activist Bianca Jagger called on Obama the PE to cut the chicken-dove and "but he'th thtill the prethiden'" weasel act s and say or do something.
Reference: (in arabic) Brit activists call on Obama to break his silence.



4- Also from the brit-music universe, electronic/ambient music guru Brian Eno wrote a piece on Gaza.
OK. These statements, in the persons of Eno and Lennox make up a bit for when McCartney took that whiz in the Jordan. Macca are you listening to them? Do you regret your misplaced whiz?

5- This quote by Jonathan Cook: "In a country such as Israel, with a citizen army, the public has become positively phobic of a war in which large numbers of its sons will be placed in the firing line. That fear is only heightened by reports in the Israeli media that Hamas is praying for the chance to engage Israel’s army in serious combat. The decision to sacrifice many soldiers in Gaza is not one ... the Labor Party will take lightly with an election in six weeks."

6- The very candid report by UN special rapporteur Richard Falk in which he detailed the humanitarian catastrophes visited upon Palestinians in Gaza by the zionists, in spite of his being both jewish and American. In his words there was none of the serpentine zigzagging and fudging of crucial context and detail we are accustomed from the so-called "zionist doves" like Avnery, the oh-so-Gushing shalom and the other fakes.
His uncompromising reports can be read here and here.

7- In contrast to the Mr-Obama-chicken-dove-goes-to-washington roadshow, Cynthia McKinney and a group of remarkable human beings (including Mr. Sami al-Haj)


Mr. Sami al-Haj, wrongfully detained at Guantanamera guajira guantanamera camp for seven years and recently released.

have risked their own lives (yet again) boarding a relief boat that headed for Gaza from Cyprus despite the air bombing campaign. The civilian boat, Dignity, was rammed in its larboard (port, ie left side) bow , a clear proof of intent, and a crime of international maritime law. The Dignity was rammed two more times by Israeli patrol boats.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution , the newspaper of record for the bible belt state of Georgia , actually used this misleading headline "McKinney relief ship, Israeli vessel collide ". OneNewsNow's headline went for the jugular: "McKinney seeks publicity, endangers crew in Gaza."


Photograph: Ali Hashisho/Reuters

The damaged ship which had set out from and with blessings of the Cypriots, as one of their parliamentarians Dr. Elena Theoharous was also among those on board, putt-putted to safe harbor to Soor in Lebanon, licking its wounds from the gaping hole on its larboard. It was thus that Cynthia thankfully lived to tell the tale.

8- from the churchillian and often antagonistic Fisk:
of all people, he managed to sound a consonnant note for once in a blue moon in his article, "The rotten state of Egypt is too powerless and corrupt to act" , Thursday, 1 January 2009. In it he managed to take up issues that go to the heart of Egypt's struggle under its valetudinarian government. Though he did not spare the easy target his usual robust denigrations and race-tinged sneers. He faintly echoed the thoughtful arab op-ed وجهات نظر - مصر.. العدو في الداخل by `Atef Mu`tamad (Atef Mutamad) (as did I echo him, in previous posts ("resign already") and future ones ("on egypt and lebanon part 1 - egypt") ).

9- Throughout all this was the near omnipresence of aljazeera. i am not and would not intentionally plug it. This is simply an empirical observation. It was always there: in Gaza, on the boat the Dignity, at Rafah, in London, at the worldwide demonstrations, reprinting and commenting on Fisk and on Egypt and so on. Unlike most the rest of the world's news media.

Cependant, Egypt's antidandruff shampoo appear to act, rather conspicuously, the way turncoats feigning indignation do. Whether it is an act of egyptian cryptography is anybody's guess. Then there are Lebanese (and likely israeli agents provocateurs posing as lebanese) lobbing shame grenades not just at Egypt's head and shoulders, but at the entire population - which for the latter is a rather tenuous proposition. Qatar patronizes the cause , though its aid did get turned back , rerouted to the incommunicado israeli gates instead. Qatar , if only through aljazeera, plays up the complacency of Egyptians as if they thesmelves haven't been hosting US terrorist forces as well as the ooze-spurting conference of the WTO. Abu Mazen vowed to kick back in NYC until the security council forces a cease-fire (it might as well be until Sharon levitates 100 feet in the air and glides gleefully past high-rise windows) or realistically until the us and israel decide it's time to stop. This while "our man in Ankara" Mubarak kicks back and takes in some of that lingering whiff of High-Porte gravitas from Mr. Erdoğan.

The 9 items above were like candles. But the vaudeville numbers in the preceding paragraph remain a part of the gloom.

(An unabridged unproofed vulgar version is at the alter-blog)

- 30 -

P.S.

The doubt lingers whether I am not falling for elaborate strategems of opinion forming. As though one is supposed to think Israel is bad, the PA is a bad, hamas is bad , iran bad, al jazeera good, egypt bad, or hamas good, all arab leaders bad ; bad bad good ; good good bad. bad good bad. good bad good.

Such guessing at the actual hands of cards that state and media players are clutching is pointless, miring one in mirrored irrealities.
Only the spontaneous reactions of people around the world provide a concrete indication of reality.

 

... Read more

Last Call: Save Gaza

Save Gaza for the sake of Jesus' memory at least.

When Mary and Jesus alayhim a'salaam took refuge in Egypt, they couldn't have done so by crossing the Nejef dessert. It must have been close by the shoreline , though not directly on the coastline of course to escape jewish persecution. So it was via Gaza that their refuge was accomplished.

And no Jesus was not a jew, anymore than Mohamed was a polytheist or Moses was a Horus worshiper .

Save Gaza, the holy land from the same hands that choked it and the truth for so many decades. Save them from the same hands that bankrupted world economy for the n-th time. From the same hands that brought us the bolshevik massacres and brought on the fascist massacres of the 20th century. Fro the same hands that used the crown jewel of physical theory to build atomic weapons. From the same hands that impoverished the world and spread guns alcohol and pornography in it.

Save Gaza. This is the last call ! ... Read more

Vexillological deconstructionism dept.:

from arabo-american coincidences,

Cf. pan-arab colors


src: pan-arab colors, uae.

and the flag of the independent republic of rio grande (1840).


src: Image:Flag_of_the_Republic_of_Rio_Grande, public domain.

This flag also adds to the collection of the American/panamerican motif of stripes and its use throughout the offshoots of the Spanish empire; and particularly stripes with cantons or other divisions as shown in this flag. this collection is still unfinished.

This is not to imply the coincidence lies much deeper. For unlike their arab counterparts, the present-day occupants of the Rio Grande are far more likely to shoot in situations of misunderstanding "do not dial 911" first.

This kind of antagonism or misantrhopy perhaps borne of centuries of lawlessness and abuse (?) exists in arab society only , and not very informatively (as in not surprisingly,) in those arab (and other) areas occupied largely by Rio Grandian motivation.

The other antiparallelism b/w the two is that while this kind of pathology occurs in the occupied arab cases out of dispossession, it flourishes in the rio grandian ethos, even though they are the dispossessors (be they spanish with all sorts of habsbourg monarchs or anglosaxon)

Although the collection of American colonial striped flags is still in a process of selection and compilation, these arms of Charles I Habsburg of Spain (1516 - 1556; Charles V, HRE 1519) should provide enough appetizer as to the evolution of the striped motif in modern american colonies:

... Read more

The planet of seas

One thing to notice about the world, or nature , is abundance.

Though I once in derision called our home planet, blighted as it is by our human mass stupidities of choice , the planet of apes, in more general terms one might as well call our planet (by which I include its different superposing spheres: the biosphere , the culturesphere , the cybersphere and so on) the planet of seas, or an ocean planet.

In any domain be it natural or speculative, one is confronted with an abundance of detail and of substance.

Every taxonomy, and every subject catalog contains more than we can incorporate. In every field is more information and discourse than one could ever want to learn. The phrase that often comes to mind when exposed to the vastness of information in any given field of human interest , is (at least in arabic parlance) "it is a wide sea".

These figurative seas, our world overflows with them.

Even for collectors, usually of artisanal objects from tin cans or stamps to exclusive artwork, paucity is an issue only in the artificial terms of economics and collectors price markets. But taken globally, there is an abundance in these items too.

This all contrasts with the voices that sound the call on "scarcity". Those voices happen to come, nearly ironically, from the richest corners of the earth. They are our self-appointed experts (perhaps by virtue of their accumulated wealth) on matters of quantity abundance and scarcity. Yet they also appoint themselves regents on the wealth of the world, never allowing too much of it to escape being at least partly under their control.

Those bugle calls of "scarcity" ring hollower than empty oil drums, however.

For in this world of immense material abundance , after the most rudimentary of physical surveys one scarcely finds anything more abundant and more ubiquitous in nature than energy. Right down to the nittiest grittiest littlest confines of nature , there appears nearly a limitless flow of energy.

Indeed it should strike us as an astounding shortcoming and failure on our part that we have so far found no better way to convert or redirect the abundance of energy surrounding us, than to burn fossil fuel.

So there are two possibilities here. Either it is the case that we , while we like to prize ourselves on our "technological achievements", are in fact monumentally stupid. Or, alternatively, our technological shortcoming when it comes to energy is willful, in the sense that it may be a symptom of a sort of generational hegemonic agenda that seeks to spread the notion of scarcity as a means of controlling the flow of the world's resources - in the process sustaining self-enrichment while needlessly and stupidly impoverishing the vast majority of the world's population.

If this were the case, then the false prophets of "scarcity" are not only fear-mongering and disinformationists but also war-mongerers.

Getting over those morons (or bastards) for now, what need concern us more , however , is that in the innocuous observation of abundance of things in our world, we find an overwhelming abundance of energy.

I am (not almost but fully) certain we can tap into it without recourse to the traditional methods of "dirty" energy.

I'd like to take advantage of the present ephemereal zeitgeist in the cybersphere of "yes we can", to sound a consonant note regarding our potential to cleanly tap unprecedented amounts of energy (i don't know how (;;) but what is clear is that there are tons of it lying all around us in the form of various potential fields). ... Read more

space age is here

Space age is here when every few months we run into people putting appearances in helmets, but rather very cool helmets.



Of course tons of vectors lead up to it, from mountains of scifi, to the emerging universal bashfulness all of a sudden with everybody hooded in news footage, to the possibility those helmets comment on that. That bit particularly is doctrinal shit. It's a counter counter counter cou- hey that's my tail i been trying to catch .

Back to the helmets:

Nobody's helmets are cooler than Daft Punk's. If their music weren't cool they could probably eke a living just pimping those cool helmets. I'd seen their photos before, but early this year, I Ran into this photo when Facebook launched fan pages. Theirs was among the first. copyright copyright. yes the image is the copyright of "them" the owners of the copyright, which is linguistically redundant.



Not much later on, sprucing up the late summer news cycle, shenanigans of a certain Anonymous landed me on youtube watching one of his/their videos, from which was taken this snapshot with the helmet really stealing the show.




Speaking of which, is the whole Anonymous mystique is a sort of experiment in social dislocation by something like "RAND Corporation: The New Generation" ? nothing is impossible, :) particularly this sort of thing.



Later on the helmet got surreal beyond human comprehensibility.



Rather anticlimatically, finally my latest encounter was a couple of days ago when I saw the a thumbnail of the picture below at news.bbc pointing at some TV awards pics. The photo is of The Stig, a race driver & presenter of brit automoto TV program , Top Gear, getting an award. Ne'erheardo'im. But he's the Stig. new generation of racing,
helmet always on. day and night.



Meanwhile android designers have been taking to the human look of late,








I think such similitude is as ridiculous as the plaque sent with Pioneer craft in the 70s.




which brings us back to that the space age is here. ... Read more

مقارنة المقترحات الضريبية بين أوباما و ماكين The actual tax plan figures compared

 


من المؤسف عدم إستطاعة المرء متابعة المقترحات المماثلة فى مسرحنا السياسى المحلى نظرا لإنعدام مثل هذا الوضوح و الـ "إعلام" فى الصحافة المحلية.

Contrary to what is being claimed by the GOP and the media, eg, Mitchell Rofsky's misleading article at the LA Times, the Obama tax plan does not increase taxes on those that earn 250,000 per annum, as the infographic from the Washington Post shows below:



It clearly shows that Obama's plan carries no change at all for households/families in the 22698 - 603402 income bracket. All that earn below that would experience a tax reduction, while only those earning over 603402 would face a tax increase.

I encountered the infographic at Ben Fry's blog.

In a follow-up post Fry points to a modified graphic

that shows that Obama's plan would increase taxes only for the top 0.9% of the population.



By comparison, the perfidy of McCain's plan becomes clear. It really exposes the hack and slave of power that McCain is. His plan reduces taxes for everybody, but crucially, the largest percentage decreases in taxes are for the top 1% of earners (-3 to -4.4% in tax reduction) , whereas the poorest would only experience the magnanimous decrease of 0.2 %. I know a lot of people what this means, but unfortunately many more do not realize what it means: These percentages are nothing to do with the amounts those people will pay, but amounts relative to what they earn. So irrespective of the income, you get -0.2% reduction if you're poor, but if you're rich you get a -3.3% reduction.

By contrast, Obama offers the poorest earners a -5.5% tax reduction.

Leaving aside any sentimentality (let alone ethical imperative!) about which group needs more load off its back, Obama's plan, even to an economic noninitiate like this writer , seems to be the sounder approach to relieving how far down the herculean financial crap shoot to which the GOP (those that lament BIG gvmt the loudest, yet are the most zealous in running a BIG brother public service system) have plunged that Public Service system's budget and trade balances.


---

Meanwhile, I wish I could be informed as clearly and succinctly about the politics of my own country. Alas, discussions of the sort in the local press remain impervious to me , with most of the discourse either devoid of information (the mainstream press) or full of wrongdoings of the ruling party (the opposition press) ranging in scope from emotional press scoop, to National Enquirer style gossip and slander.

- sigh - ... Read more

The killing of children in schools must Stop!

The continued murder of Children in Khorasan and the Sindh (Pak-Afghan) by Americans, NATO and other "coalition" members - or by others anywhere - should be stopped!

It behooves the civilized world to take action to stop this impunity, and stop such bleeding.

Mind you , this leaves as "civilized world" only some of the nations of the Non-Aligned movement (it still exists, if they want it). [note: they are civilized rather in their ethical compass though less so in their civic habits :) ]

The murder of children for attending a school to study the Qur'an serves none of the stated purposes of the perpetrators, though it may serve rather sinister unstated ones. It smacks of a religious genocide here, or at best an attempt to uproot natural vectors of a religion's history and sociological trends by lethal force , by martial force, by the unconscionable instrument of war.

We should have seen by now that attempts to tinker with nature, to alter a naturally evolved path has terrible consequences. Due to our ignorance of what we're pretending to understand and presuming to alter , it disrupts the whole system and sends natural equilibria into disarray.

Those actions are not justifiable on religious grounds, because the initial effort to even closely understand the "other" (the target of hostility) has not even yet begun. It has been rejected not on lack of intellectual or spiritual merit, but on zealous prejudice, and a priori rejection.

It is an action motivated at the base by concerns of financial and ethnocultural supremacy.

I think dollar to dollar, we could calculate that erradication of religiosity in a tribal country that translates into a stemming of anti-colonial intellectual and political activity among muslims at large, or at best an altering in muslim mainstream dogma that would be more amenable to presentday neoliberal economic beleifs could ultimately translate into a few millions more dollars in increased profits for multinationals in some ideal future, decades from now.

Is this what it is then? this "war"? And since when is shooting fish in a barrel - mind you with unmanned drones, perhaps remote controlled like video games and toys - called a war? And since is war anything but heinous? And why is "terrorism" or regressivism or even fundamentalism, a war and not a crime???

We will be reminded to this date no effort has been made to capture the big kahunas of terrorism organizations.

You want to tell us, a consortium of the most powerful nation states in the world cannot go in and do a house to house sweep until all fugitives are held?

What , you can't bribe the tribes with millions of dollars and services?

You know this Laden guy is not a good man. He is neither a saint, nor a holy man nor a scholar of any authority .

I find it patently unacceotable that any of the tribes would give him shelter for so long. What would be their motivation? Sorry , traditional generosity and oath of protection of guests, just doesn't cut it today. I am not buying it.

If someone wants to be my guest and then he brings down a world war on my head, sorry but I would ask them to leave. I don't care if I were Godfearing or mother theresa . I would ask them to leave.

Hence the adage, "Something stinks". nearly quite literally, quoth the bard Shakespeare, "something stinks in denmark" . [Actually the quote "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark"]

Not to mention that the tactics of the so-called insurgents themselves are in stark violation of tribal and religious mores.

It is clear then, that either the Laden nexus is a rank illusion , or that the nexus is itself part of the bloody colonialist machinery.

I take this as the most plausible.

Meanwhile this enormous lie is used to justify the murder of children and innocents every day from the air by unmanned drones.

The depths of criminality and cowardice in the above sentence are staggering.

it therefore that we must say again:

It is necessary to save the children and to save freedom and the right to live and the right to be a poor Muslim in a dust bowl village. ... Read more

egypt mother of the world + synthesis from a probabilistic clou

there is another reason to vindicate the proverb / adage "egypt is the mother of the world"

the first reason i'd thought and mentioned before on past blogs is the genetics view that current humanity hail from a stock of a few tens of thousands originating in africa (perhaps east africa) - who thus must have fanned out onto the rest of the ma`moura. This means that they must have passage this passage mostly through Egypt.
Such movement being essentially generational and slow , most if not all of the people of the earth today have had egyptian-born ancestors who may have lived all their lives in egypt - bona fide egyptians.

now the other reason, in light of an earlier language note , would come from a proto-sinaitic script origin to the proto-canaanite->phonecian script .
Such a vector seems to agree with the genetic conjecture that modern humans have come from an original african stock that migrated through egypt.

the proto-canaanite script , via its phonecian and aramaic script descendants has led to most of the alphabets or abjads used in the world today from indochina to europe to the native americans.

this observation also lends credence to the deduction of genetic links that accompany script lineages and divergences.

thus earlier i conjectured earlier that a glyphic lineage link might exist between south arabian and ancient berber and that it might indicate a genetic or ethnic lineage also between the arabian bedouins and the berbers.

now by the same mode of the thought we can also conjecture that a glyphic lineage from proto-sinaitic to proto-canaanite corresponds to a genetic / ethnic lineage between the egyptian people (themselves a link in the genetic chain from the east african stock) and the canaanites and their descdendants who populated the fertile crescent.

Update:

3.XI.2008

It must be recognized that Egypt was not (or could not possibly be) the only route out of Africa. The close relationship between the South Arabian and Ethiopic scripts leaves little doubt as to direct contact across the strait Between Southwestern Arabia and Africa's eastern pseudopod, so-called its horn, that was as intense as that between Phonecians and Greeks. This is in addition to the much-recorded common history of both regions.

Likewise, movement across the Gibraltar strait is not inconceivable, and some suggest that

this raises questions like but whence came the felix arabs? In such trangenerationally slow processes, did south arabia first become inhabited by a population drift from the north and ultimately via sinai? Or was colonialization started by early east african seafarers?

We find that in this transgenerationally slow process of population movement and ethnolinguistic genesis ,

a. more fidelity may be found in a continuum model were movement could have reached there simultaneously or nearly so from both west and north.

b. such movement would likely be bidirectional and indeed omnidirectional. This is after all human activity accumulated over many generations.

The continuum model thus postulates movement of people pretty much in all directions, including a continuum of motion or flow closing the path geographically circumscribing the red sea into a closed cycle of population movement. Even like a vortex. This blurs the certitudes on whether the earliest south arabians came from the north or the west (or even from the east), giving instead a probability distribution. Though I wonder if this would hold up to genetic and protegenic data on the regions involved.

Just taking the physical analogy a qubit further , in its own context (which is inferred from religious text to be open), it is not insignificant historically that the continents were connected, bridged as it were, at Egypt and not in the south. And that the Sinai passage has been in the stewardship or fief of rather than that of others. ... Read more

etymo note: some cultural notes

many western words cognate with counterparts in the indian languages, particularly hindi , have a B sound in their western branches, that is
substituted with a V sound in the indian languages.

This pattern is also found in some languages neighboring the indian subcontinent such as farsi and turki.

Indeed we find that identity between an eastern V with a western B (phoenician greek romance and germanic - don't know about celtic yet) in the russian or slavic languages as well.


Incidentally this division is more of a true (more literal) east-west division with russia, persia, turkic asia, india on the east * (not mentioning the far east, the more easterly half of this "east") ; and europe , at leastthe western levant ** , and africa on the western side.

As if


* this includes the caucasus, being a region comprising the extensions of three nations, the russ, the turks, the persians (kurds are a turkic people) and perhaps those of arab or semitic nations too.

** the arab world would happen to be smack in the middle looking onto both sides - though the linguistic implications thereof do not concern us here.


then we have to think what does it take for a person to sound a B as a V.

----------

in the process of imagining realizing the hindu religion is as it were to its people it helps to think of ancient greek religion.

firstly, we must ask whether we can talk of a greek "religion" in the first place. it seems to me from past encounters in reading that individual regions bestowed their own religious elements, not least bringing / adding their regional deity(ies) to the relgious dogma of "belief". it would thus appear that greek religion which we know chiefly via mythology related to us by poets (maybe they weren't poets
at all) was in fact my fragmented regional religions and cults sharing a common general pantheon that rather liberal in its admission policy and a general cosmogony. these common religious elements become closely tied / entertwined with linguistic features (such as greek names for hell like hades and to culture in general (contributing to a large canon of poetry dramaturgy folklore and philosophy).

It seems reasonable that hinduism is similar in this way to its greek
contemporary.

as it were there may have been a brief and interesting encounter between indic culture and perhaps by extension hinduism and buddhism and greek culture in the moment of alexander the great.

another linkage bridging the two east and west localities (hind/sindh
and europe) is the famed indo-european , or indo-aryan connection
connection and ethnic.

a reasonable / useful reminder is the paradoxical disdain of those germanic aryans to the roma who by most trusted accounts hailed from india during the late middle ages.

i was once told that hinduism is a collection or agglomeration of numerous local cults sects and regional folk religions. an agglomeration that catalogues regional and recurrent elements such as deities and that embraces different scriptural books into a common persistent pantheon and textual canon.

it should be understood as such.

i would hazard that the degree of fragmentation not only in a typical "religion" 's divergent spiritual schools but als in its sects is much higher in hinduism than it is in islam (both now with comparable population sizes ).

that degree of fragmentation is a good measure of the aspect of religion concerning the solidity and consistency of its defining dogmatic idiosyncracies.

for instance compare the degree of fragmentation in divergence from central dogma in protestantism with that of its counterpart in catholicism.


hinduism is more fragmented than buddhism as well.


the modern (recent) spread of interest in hindu belief and practices - largely in the form of exceedingly peripheral orders and sect and schools - is trans-atlantic phenomenon. to a larger extent, the
persistence of the hindu collective religion despite the presence of more consistent forms of buddhism , and abrahamic religions , may have been also the effect of a western europe influence in the form of colonization (the dutch and then french and english east india companies , and the raj).

I could not help but notice the effect the raj has had on the displacement of a largely muslim predomination throughout the indian subcontinent , not only in terms of political power but also in terms of population size.

to appreciate the effect this kind of displacement or eradication has on the collective power and reach of the muslim religion,

we can use as an illustration the analogue of the effect displacing the arabic alphabet as the alphabet for many of the turkic languages from xin-jiang/turkestan in the east to turkey in the west,and replacing it with latin and cyrillic on the mutual reach and readibility between arabic and all those languages.

the displacement of both population (by expulsion or extermination)
and influence in many parts of the muslim worlds have been a recurrent pattern in the era european colonization that extends from the late midieval age to the present time. this has also been true in the case of latin american and australian nations and elsewhere.

in light of european colonization's displacement of social orders prevalent in the XVIth cent. the persistence of the archaic hindu system today may have been due to a revival and a patronage exercised over it by the brits.

this is not dissimilar to charges of british incubation of other religious trends such as arabian wahabism or ismaili and bahai religions.

one finds a pattern here, for it was in england as well that some of the more exotic offshoots of protestanism took refuge or were incubated.


Even if this is not true for the modern hinduism in the subcontinent, it would account for much of hinduism's interface with the "west"
(for it is through the residual colonial filter that hinduism comes in contact with arabs africans and latin americans in addition to europe)
particularly in the form of the exceedingly divergent sects and imitations of western-tinted persuasions such as the transatlantic movement of hare krisna - notably with charges of abuses among the western dominated communities.

P.S.

As if to support the argument , after posting the current entry i ran into this passage at wikipedia (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_denominations
):
"Influential 19th to 20th century Hindu revivalist organizations include Arya Samaj, Tilak Mission Bhagwan Swaminarayan, Brahmo Samaj, Parisada Hindu Dharma, Prarthana Samaj, Ramakrishna Mission, Sadharan Brahmo Samaj, Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana, Swadhyay Movement, Swaminarayan Sampraday, Sathya Sai Organisation.

Hinduism was politicized in the context of the Indian independence movement, and has resulted in the rise of Hindu nationalism to a significant political force in the Republic of India." ... Read more

thoughts on Sicko

an incredulous moore - "So you got no paper rolls, paper tissues or uh kitchen towelette rolls?"

cool french/canadian/brit - "what do you mean?"

moore - "so how do you wipe your ass?"

cool french/canadian/brit - "oh they come and wipes our asses for us"



This little caricature pretty much summarizes Michael Moore's Sicko.

As familiar as I was with the horrors of American medical care there were still jaw dropping moments in that documentary (polemic or not).

Then a few thoughts hit me.

How is it that the biggest bully (the biggest richest nation) in that block of germanic nations we call "The West" has such depraved inhuman health compared to the other western nations ?

The US has always struck me as a sort of large scale (continent-sized) human experiment in nationhood, social and political order.

To a large extent it is, but it is not one for its own sake by any means. It seems more and more plausible to me that the happy Europeans with their universal health coverage and significantly less stressed lifestyles are the real beneficiaries behind this experiment of the US.

The US as it were serves merely as the whacking club to be used by the Europeans to secure their position and advancement in the world and in history.

It is thus that we find the repressive totalitarianism and inhumanity of the social order in the US , in order to cow its population into compliance with implementing Europe's big stick in the world.

It is thus that that belligerent rich big nation treats its citizens so ruthlessly. It is more of a tool in the hands of its real masters and beneficiaries, Europeans.

Another thought. It is this model of society that is being pushed at the "third world" with pervasive ubiquitous cultural encroachment through their "world-class" mass media / entertainment industries.

It is thus that Oliver Stone, Spielberg, Woody Allen are better known throughout the world than Claude Chabrol or Ingmar Bergman or Michel Ocelot or Hayao Miyazaki or Kurusawa.

It Seems that promoting Hollywood and its projection of the American socio-political order is what matters more than promoting the "real" culture being produced in Europe.


another thought. How with such a film out can the rotten politicians still perform their dirty play on the people? And how come the people still take. And just who are those fucking tools in political party conventions cheering and clapping and glorifying those same crooks that have robbed the terrorists (americans) of their humanity ????


Another thought. I am actually one of the stupid people because since my mid-teens it was the US and its culture that commanded my attention and aspirations, not the better more civilized societies in western europe. I was duped largely because no other culture was promoted around me so forcefully but I also fell for it like a brick because I did not know better, was not better discerning.

Only by the time I reached my late twenties did I realize that the country or society I had looked up to , was not the best one. It was the wrong one. There were better societies and cultures to be found in europe and Canada (as far as modern urban societies go). But by then it was too late for me. Too much had been invested by me, mentally, socially, ideologically , that I was left with no resources to switch to a new direction. When the inevitable ideological and financial break down came, the only way was back to where I came from - a place which rejected me upon arrival.

yet another thought. How is it that Americans have come to this? It is a question that Moore asks after sampling how radically different life is for Americans from other western societies.

This is what occurs when you let your country get run by misers. Something that was somehow not fully achieved in Europe.

The money dries up. social welfare and solidarity dries up. The faucets are turned shut.

Instead the Americans (or rather terrorists) are fed a steady diet of fear , war mongering and significantly phobias against all that can be good for them.

As Moore rightly wondered, why is that American opinion leaders want Americans to hate the French? Could it because the French are actually good to themselves? That they actually have a functioning democracy that puts intellectuals rather than media whores in public office, and that actually pushes and accomplishes the good and well-being for the population ? Yes, Michael. That's right.

Americans were taught since the 1950s that socialism is evil and a menace, and have been made to actively fight it in Italy and Greece and Portugal and latin America and Asia and Africa with the most ruthless and bloody ways - even while at hte same time, their far mentally superior kith and kin in Germany, France , Britain , Canada and Scandinavia quietly implemented socialist policy in health care and social welfare and labor rights.

The terrorists were fed a steady of fears and wars against helpless peoples and nations who would have otherwise made great friends to the Americans (eg, the south east Asians and the arabs and the Africans) and made great contributions to american society. Instead of being allowed to be a truly universal human experiment in which all input was welcome , it was restricted to input by Germanic whites only and their necrotic miserly financiers - to serve as a big stick to defend both the germanics of Europe and the petty supremacist and misanthropic fantasies of the necrotics.

The steady diet of fear and phobia and hysteria that is force-fed to Americans since they flip their first comics or watch their first cartoons is a theme that has featured prominently in a lot of Moore's work , such as Bowling for Columbine.

Americans are ruled by fears and phobias and constantly told to be afraid. They are literally ruled by terrorism . And this is terrorism if ever there was a good example. And this is how they deal with other peoples they seek to control and subjugate.


The other tool this movie pointed out for control of the people is debt. It is to keep them in debt even "before they get their first job". Keep them indebted and demoralized.

I felt Moore treated these two means of control well in his documentaries and is prominent in this one.

But as he says, disenfranchised dehumanized demoralized as we (he was refering to Americans, and I refer to us the overseas subjects of the necrotic empire) have no other choice but to "hope for the best" - lest we regain our humanity and get labeled "terrorists" by the terrorists.

here in Egypt we have been following the same American (terrorist) model. Remove social safety networks, endenture the people into debt demoralization and megalomania. We are being steered and herded into "a society of me not we".

Anyway, polemic or not, sensationalistic or inaccurate or not, ishta `aleik ya Michael. You touched me again. ... Read more

Visiting the animals at the zoo

I could watch dozens of hours of David Attenborough documentaries sampling pictures of hundreds of fascinating nothing short of the psychedelic creatures that populate or once populated our big blue marble. it would be nothing however like walking up to the animals and see them live, up close, being in their presence.

Being close to those sad majestic odes to beauty and perfection, to their innocence, their beauty their very unhuman shapes sizes colors and demeanour is an experience of mystical proportions to those who can appreciate it, even at a sad place like the zoo.

Exchanging looks with a giraffe, or a llama or dromadary; watching ruminates approach the fence in expectation of a snack; watch parakeets talk among themselves, watching a parrot with fanstastic plummage yawn are all the stuff of fantasy and dreams.

At the zoo, especially in my nook of the woods, however there are other distressing scenes. There was a lion crying, (crying if he is anything like my cat when he cries) imprisoned and pacing in his outer cage to entertain by his mere presence people under the blare of loudspeakers pouring the most obnoxious popular music from the vendors kiosks 5 meters from the fence. This was one of my saddest moments at the zoo.

It is unfortunate this contrast between the glorious feelings I get from being in proximity to such life forms and the inevitable sadness that attends one's entry into any zoo. The story of kidnap and captivity and then being kept for life in poor and highly abusive conditions.

It would be nice to take kids up close to the animals , in the safety afforded by the zoo. But what of the moral responsibility and inescapable guilt and sadness?

I would think of it like taking them to a very special shrine, but in a very dilapidated area. I still think the trip to the zoo is worth it.

I find wonder in the height of the giraffe, the intricate musculature of the dromadary, who ironically approaches in resemblance the computer-generated movies of dinosaurs, in the patient resignation of the pelicans in the searching gaze of a llama or a peacock, or the familial atmosphere in a parakeet house.

Wonder like that to be found when one sits under a few trees, and looks up at the canopy of branches and leaves above, long enough to weep at their beauty, their gentle but unremitting complexity, at the subtlety of their creator. ... Read more