GET A LIFE NOW

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2012-02-13T05:38:00.000-08:00

Aging Gracefully

2012-02-13T05:14:00.000-08:00

‎Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win

-- Jonathan Kozel

"The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained liberation from the self."
- Albert Einstein

Yoga Grandmother

2012-02-13T04:16:00.000-08:00

NO TO DRUGS - WHITNEY HOUSTON - YouTube

2012-02-13T00:19:00.000-08:00

NO TO DRUGS - WHITNEY HOUSTON - YouTube: ""

aded by hugogozalavida1 on Dec 26, 2010

SAY NO TO DRUG USE.
Protecting our children against those who incite drug use.
This video is presented as the drug abuse ended with a beautiful woman, born in August 1963, today 47 years given to drug use. I miss her, her figure, her beauty and her wonderful voice!

Category:

Education

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Sarah Brightman - Running (HQ) - YouTube

2012-02-12T22:47:00.000-08:00

Sarah Brightman - Running (HQ) - YouTube: " "

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AMAZING CAPOEIRA PERFORMANCE - YouTube

2012-02-12T19:34:00.000-08:00

AMAZING CAPOEIRA PERFORMANCE - YouTube

Julie Hinds: A toast to awesome actors, cute canines and great girlfriends | Detroit Free Press | freep.com

2012-02-12T02:51:00.000-08:00

Julie Hinds: A toast to awesome actors, cute canines and great girlfriends | Detroit Free Press | freep.com:

ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images

Cosmos in "Beginners"

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Whitney Houston, 1963-2012

2012-02-12T02:40:00.000-08:00

Whitney Houston, 1963-2012 | freep.com | Detroit Local News | Detroit Free Press:

LOS ANGELES — Whitney Houston, who ruled as pop music’s queen until her majestic voice and regal image were ravaged by drug use, erratic behavior and a tumultuous marriage to singer Bobby Brown, died Saturday. She was 48.

Beverly Hills police Lt. Mark Rosen told KABC-TV that Houston died in her room on the fourth floor of the Beverly Hilton. Her body remained in the hotel and Beverly Hills detectives were investigating.

But by the end of her career, Houston became a stunning cautionary tale of the toll of drug use. Her album sales plummeted and the hits stopped coming; her once serene image was shattered by a wild demeanor and bizarre public appearances. She confessed to abusing cocaine, marijuana and pills, and her once pristine voice became raspy and hoarse, unable to hit the high notes as she had during her prime.

"The biggest devil is me. I'm either my best friend or my worst enemy", Houston told ABC’s Diane Sawyer in an infamous 2002 interview with then-husband Brown by her side.

It was a tragic fall for a superstar who was one of the top-selling artists in pop music history, with more than 55 million records sold in the United States alone.

The New York Times wrote that Houston possesses one of her generation's most powerful gospel-trained voices, but she eschews many of the churchier mannerisms of her forerunners. She uses ornamental gospel phrasing only sparingly, and instead of projecting an earthy, tearful vulnerability, communicates cool self-assurance and strength, building pop ballads to majestic, sustained peaks of intensity.

Drugs and alcohol are not life affirming and the downside of most 'highs' seems to be a decent into a deep, dark depression. Drugs and alcohol was destroying M.s Huston's incredible voice and addiction seemed to be in charge of her mind.

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Have you read a good book lately?

2012-02-11T20:56:00.000-08:00

"The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries."
- Rene Descarte

Wedding in New Guinea

2012-02-11T12:43:00.000-08:00

A Papua New Guinea wedding: Face paint, grass aprons and pigs By Pauline Davies Papua New Guinea

Continue reading the main story

It's not every day you get a chance to visit Papua New Guinea, and even rarer to be invited to a highland wedding, where grass aprons are de rigueur and the bride's value is measured in pigs.

It was a wedding I could not pass up - a traditional tribal ceremony in the remote southern highlands of Papua New Guinea and I was invited as family.

Komya village was once home for Moses, the bridegroom. After being abandoned as a child and on the verge of starvation, he was taken in by an Australian couple and ended up in Melbourne.

There he met Danielle - my niece. They were only 13 years old, but romance slowly blossomed and a decade later they decided to marry.

Though outwardly a genuine "dinky-die" Aussie who works as a nurse, Moses retained his cultural roots, so the young couple decided they would journey back to Komya for their wedding.

Moses entered the world as the fifth child, of the fifth wife, of the clan chief.

When his father died, his mother remarried into a rival clan, but her children were not welcome and had to stay behind and fend for themselves. They were rejected by their large extended family who were unable to grow enough sweet potato, the staple crop, to feed the extra mouths.

But in a strange twist of fate, Moses was now returning triumphant, with an unknown bride from an unfamiliar place. In Komya, this had never happened before. 800 languages

From a small airfield in the provincial capital, Mendi, our wedding party bounced its way along the pitted highway that cut through the lush rainforest. Throughout the three hour journey, locals waved at us, bringing our vehicles to a stop.

They wanted to chat to Moses, and peer curiously at all of us - white-skinned foreigners. Animated conversations took place in a mix of English and Pidgin - two of the more than 800 languages spoken in Papua New Guinea.

News of the big event had evidently spread far and wide. Hundreds of people walked to Komya for the ceremony.

Marriage in this part of the country is a commercial transaction. The groom's family negotiates a price with the family of a woman from another village.

If he can afford her, a deal is struck and she will move to the hut he will build on his land. The bride price is measured in pigs and shells, but these days bank notes are often thrown in for good measure.

In Port Moresby, the country's capital, our taxi driver told us he had paid 30 pigs for his second wife. This made me realise what a bargain Danielle had been.

My niece had been deemed a four-pig bride, and some of the hapless creatures, fattened for a year, would be slaughtered, baked and eaten at the bridal feast. Dead birds

On the wedding day, a soft rain fell. The women separated from the men.

A group of giggling, bare-breasted women surrounded us females and gently removed our clothes. They dressed us in two grass aprons, open at the sides.
The fifth wife of the former clan chief, with her fifth child - Moses

Our faces were carefully painted in the village style - white from the nose to jaw, with yellow streaks above the brow and on the cheekbones.

Along with the face paint, the men were given spears or bows and arrows. They wore leaves at the back, a chest pad made of shell and stringy fibre, decorative armbands and headgear containing brightly feathered dead birds.

Then the village women linked arms and we bounced up and down rhythmically, whilst making a strange hissing sound. The men, standing opposite, did the same.

Young girls in the crowd squealed with delight and Danielle and Moses were married.

Then the "handing over of the pigs" ceremony began.

The villagers lining up on four sides of a square, facing the tethered animals in the middle. The bride's relatives were summoned to inspect the pigs. That done, their ropes were untied and then they were handed over to Danielle's mother.

In the interests of establishing a good relationship with the in-laws, she returned two pigs to the groom's family. The other two had already been ear-marked for next day's wedding feast. This was to be held on a patch of land belonging to Moses' brothers.

The pigs were baked on banana leaves in pits filled with hot stones.

We had brought balloons and Frisbees for the village children, and as they giggled and jumped, the adults sucked the fat from young fern leaves that had cradled the pork meat as it cooked.

Papua New Guinea is not a poor country. It has substantial mineral wealth and a liquefied natural gas pipeline in construction that will bring in vast amounts of money.

But so far little of this wealth has trickled down to the people in Komya, who live without electricity or water in woven huts with dirt floors.

As dusk gathered, and the villagers hiked barefoot through deep mud to their homes, they did not have a candle between them.

Henry miller reads - YouTube

2012-02-11T02:46:00.000-08:00

Henry miller reads - YouTube

uploaded by sacrificialtotem on Nov 8, 2009

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Category:

Education

Flying Sea Turtle

2012-02-10T17:19:00.000-08:00

KAZUO OHNO - YouTube

2012-02-10T03:02:00.000-08:00

KAZUO OHNO - YouTube: "

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Antony and the Johnsons - The Spirit Was Gone (official video) - YouTube

2012-02-10T03:00:00.000-08:00

Antony and the Johnsons - The Spirit Was Gone (official video) - YouTube: "

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Robert Palmer - Simply Irresistible - YouTube

2012-02-10T02:25:00.000-08:00

Robert Palmer - Simply Irresistible - YouTube: "

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Twain Wreck

2012-02-10T02:20:00.000-08:00

Better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.
Mark Twain

It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three benefits: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never to use either.
Mark Twain

Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
Mark Twain

There are laws to protect the freedom of the press's speech, but none that are worth anything to protect the people from the press.
Mark Twain

Of all the animals, man is the only one that lies.
Mark Twain

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
Mark Twain

It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.
Mark Twain

Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
Mark Twain

Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most.
Mark Twain

Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times.
Mark Twain

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
Mark Twain

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.
Mark Twain

A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
Mark Twain

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.

Mark Twain

Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.

Mark Twain

A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.

Mark Twain

Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But I repeat myself.

Mark Twain

What ought to be done to the man who invented the celebrating of anniversaries? Mere killing would be too light.

Mark Twain

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.

Mark Twain

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.

Mark Twain

Last week I stated that this woman was the ugliest woman I had ever seen. I have since been visited by her sister and now wish to withdraw that statement.

Mark Twain

Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.

Mark Twain

Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

Mark Twain

You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

Mark Twain

What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin.

Mark Twain

Truth is more of a stranger than fiction.

Mark Twain

When in doubt tell the truth.

Mark Twain

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

Mark Twain

Words are only painted fire; a book is the fire itself.

Mark Twain

One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.

Mark Twain

Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it.

Mark Twain

October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks. Other dangerous months are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August and February.

Mark Twain

Man is the only Animal that blushes. Or needs to.

Mark Twain

Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.

Mark Twain

Work is a necessary evil to be avoided.

Mark Twain

Best beauty picks for Valentine's Day

2012-02-10T01:47:00.000-08:00

Gallery: Best beauty picks for Valentine's Day

Irresistible advertisement

There's something satisfying about wildly strange lips - Nicki Minaj's makeup artist thought so for her 'Stupid Stupid' video, and we think so for a soiree of singles on Valentine's Day.

Wearing a metallic lip-foil by Lip Rock ($25 at eBeauty) sort of says, "I never wanted to make-out anyways"

Photograph by: Handout, eBeauty

Daily Quote

2012-02-08T20:54:00.000-08:00

Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

Mark Twain

Capital Punishment

2012-02-08T15:36:00.000-08:00

“Capital punishment would be more effective as a preventive measure if it were administered prior to the crime.”

-- Woody Allen

Capital punishment is one of the most controversial topics facing any society. Most of us spend little time thinking about killing our fellow man and really struggle with this question because we are generally ill-equipped to answer about the adequacy or morality so important a use of Justice.

The legal process moves at glacial speed and once a sentence of death is delivered by the Jury, it takes on average of 25 years for appeals to be exhausted before the sentence can be carried out. How can any punishment 25 years after the crime be a deterrent to potential murderers?

The death sentence becomes a bureaucratic process of lawyers trying to 'out-clever' and out-maneuver each other and costing societies millions of dollars while the perpetrator lives at great cost to society in prison waiting for the final answer to his multiple appeals.

There is little return to the society is terms of a decline in violent deaths and there is a huge financial cost, not to mention the further slowing of the justice system.

This is made even more onerous when the possibility of an innocent person being sentenced to death is added to the equation.

What will be left of the power of example if it is proved that capital punishment has another power, and a very real one, which degrades men to the point of shame, madness, and murder?
Albert Camus, “Reflections on the Guillotine,” Resistance, Rebellion and Death (1961).

The time between sentence and crime eliminates Camus' "power of example" argument. The crime has been buried in the past and many equally horrific crimes have taken place since that blur the memory of the society that delivered the sentence.

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Does the execution make us all guilty of the crime we are punishing?

Are we Complicit in murder?

The ability of so many people to live comfortably with the idea of capital punishment is perhaps a clue to how so many Europeans were able to live with the idea of the Holocaust: Once you accept the notion that the state has the right to kill someone and the right to define what is a capital crime, aren't you halfway there?
Roger Ebert, "Mr. Death: The Rise And Fall Of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.", Chicago Sun-Times, 4 February 2000

The profound moral question is not, "Do they deserve to die?" but "Do we deserve to kill them?"
- Helen Prejean

If violence is objectivated institutionally as an expression of a society's collective political will to justice, institutions of violence will necessarily become formative of society.

-- Larry Mattera

Wrong Approach?
The burning of the house of the offender is not a permissible punishment for arson. The rape of the offender is not a permissible punishment of a rapist. Why should murder be a permissible punishment for murder?
Justice Ismail Mahomed, S v Makwanyane, 6 June 1995

Capital punishment does not put an end to murder and does not educate future murders to not kill by showing them how to deal with the homicidal impulse or to seek other forms of revenge:

Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty.
- Henry Ford

There is No permanent answer because social ideas about capital punishment change constantly.

If we could do away with death, we wouldn’t object; to do away with capital punishment will be more difficult. Were that to happen, we would reinstate it from time to time.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister’s Travels, from Makarie’s Archive (1829).

Is death the best punishment versus being forced to live with the horror of the crime committed by the offender?

Capital punishment kills immediately, whereas lifetime imprisonment does so slowly. Which executioner is more humane? The one who kills you in a few minutes, or the one who wrests your life from you in the course of many years?
Anton Chekhov, The banker in The Bet, Works, vol. 7, p. 229, “Nauka” <1254>

Lawmaker's Opinion shaded by the humanity of the killer and the harm done to a society that uses the death penalty as a deterrent:

As regards capital cases, the trouble is that emotional men and women always see only the individual whose fate is up at the moment, and neither his victim nor the many millions of unknown individuals who would in the long run be harmed by what they ask.

Moreover, almost any criminal, however brutal, has usually some person, often a person whom he has greatly wronged, who will plead for him. If the mother is alive she will always come, and she cannot help feeling that the case in which she is so concerned is peculiar, that in this case a pardon should be granted.

It was really heartrending to have to see the kinfolk and friends of murderers who were condemned to death, and among the very rare occasions when anything governmental or official caused me to lose sleep were times when I had to listen to some poor mother making a plea for a criminal so wicked, so utterly brutal and depraved, that it would have been a crime on my part to remit his punishment.
Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, An Autobiography

Is the death penalty ever considered by the killer when he makes his decision to end the life of his victim? Is it real and tangible enough to stop the murder happening?

I personally have always voted for the death penalty because I believe that people who go out prepared to take the lives of other people forfeit their own right to live. I believe that that death penalty should be used only very rarely, but I believe that no-one should go out certain that no matter how cruel, how vicious, how hideous their murder, they themselves will not suffer the death penalty.
Margaret Thatcher

Are we playing God?

Three things belong to God and do not belong to men: the irrevocable, the irreparable and the indissoluble. Woe to men if they introduce it in their laws!
Victor Hugo, National Constituant Assembly of the French Republic, 15 September 1848

“Laws are rules established by men who are in control of organized violence for the non fulfillment of which those who do not fulfill them are subjected to personal injuries, the loss of liberty, and even capital punishment.” -- Leo Tolstoy
{http://www.capital-punishment.us/view/classic ( an interesting quote source...)}

The repugnance of the act of punishment would dissuade most from voting in favor of capital punishment:
Most people approve of capital punishment, but most people wouldn't do the hangman's job.
George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier, 1937

"Money and influence decide who is considered for a parole hearing, what the decision is likely to be and what the Governor's decision is likely to be. It is that, not your behavior in prison that decides your release."

"The application of the death penalty is like a lottery because such a small percentage of murderers get the death penalty- 1 or 2 percent of the thousands who commit homicide every year. And of those receiving death sentences, only a fraction are executed."

-- Helen Prejean

The application of the death penalty is like a lottery because such a small percentage of murderers get the death penalty- 1 or 2 percent of the thousands who commit homicide every year. And of those receiving death sentences, only a fraction are executed. Most people think this one or two percent who go to death row must have committed the most heinous, pre meditated, cold-blooded murders, but you see in many, many of these cases panic murders by defendants who have a history of child abuse or have had head injuries or who are mentally retarded, or outright insane.

- Helen Prejean

Source: Wikiquotes

Brilliant Talk by a Great Teacher

2012-02-07T01:36:00.001-08:00

My learning about many things has been greatly advanced by watching the many wonderful TED Speeches. Sometimes watching favorite speeches many times over. Mike deGruy generated enthusiasm for the oceans with his passionate presentation and he was a pleasure to watch.

In this talk, as in his photography and his many films, you can sense Mike’s infectious humor, his passion for the oceans — and his example of a life well and richly lived.

We are saddened by the news that ocean photographer, filmmaker and storyteller Mike deGruy died yesterday in a helicopter crash in Australia. Mike was truly one of the great teachers and advocates for the oceans, as you can see in his TEDTalk, filmed aboard Mission Blue in 2010:

Bit A Sweet - Monday-Tuesday (1968) - YouTube

2012-02-06T19:06:00.000-08:00

Bit A Sweet - Monday-Tuesday (1968) - YouTube: ""

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More Street Art

2012-02-04T10:32:00.000-08:00

Apocalyptic Street Scene

(image via: Metanamorph)

Street artist Edgar Mueller is a master of optical illusion, creating chalk drawings on pavement and other surfaces that transform the space into something altogether different. This post-apocalyptic scene of a German street disintegrating into a churning sea is just one example of Mueller’s many jaw-dropping street scenes. Mueller’s work relies on the viewer to stand in just the right spot to see the illusion.

Bansky, An Infamous Street Artist

2012-02-04T10:22:00.000-08:00

He is perhaps the most famous, or infamous, artist alive. To some a genius, to others a vandal. Always controversial, he inspires admiration and provokes outrage in equal measure.
Since Banksy made his name with his trademark stencil-style 'guerrilla' art in public spaces - on walls in London, Brighton, Bristol and even on the West Bank barrier separating Israelis and Palestinians - his works have sold for hundreds of thousands of pounds.
He has dozens of celebrity collectors including Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Christina Aguilera.
Enlarge
In the frame: The man in this photograph, taken in Jamaica four years ago, is believed to be Banksy
He is also known for his headline-making stunts, such as leaving an inflatable doll dressed as a Guantanamo prisoner in Disneyland, California, and hanging a version of the Mona Lisa - but with a smiley face - in the Louvre, Paris.
But perhaps his most provocative statement, and the one that generates the most publicity, is the fact that Banksy's true identity has always been a jealously guarded secret, known to only a handful of trusted friends.

Banksy's sandwich board-wearing monkey sold for £228,000 this year. He has also painted murals including a Mona Lisa with a rocket launcher

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1034538/Graffiti-artist-Banksy-unmasked---public-schoolboy-middle-class-suburbia.html#ixzz1lRGCdf8y

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1034538/Graffiti-artist-Banksy-unmasked---public-schoolboy-middle-class-suburbia.html#ixzz1lRFelSVP

Moon

2012-02-04T03:01:00.000-08:00

Quotes

2012-02-04T03:00:00.000-08:00

"Courage is knowing what not to fear." Plato

"Wisdom tends to grow in proportion to one's awareness of one's ignorance."