Running 'Cause I Can't Fly

Kalidasa, "Look To This Day"

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 22:57:00 +0000

"Look to this day
for it is life,
the very life of life.

In its brief course lie all
the realities and truths of existence,
the joy of growth ,
the splendor of action,
the glory of power.

For yesterday is but a memory,
And tomorrow is only a vision.
But today well lived
makes every yesterday a memory
of happiness,
and every tomorrow a vision of hope.

Look well, therefore, to this day..."

- Kalidasa

Satire: “Obama, Putin Agree Never to Speak to Each Other Again”

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 22:24:00 +0000

“Obama, Putin Agree Never to Speak to Each Other Again”
by Andy Borowitz

LOUGH ERNE, NORTHERN IRELAND (The Borowitz Report) — ”The G8 summit ended today on a constructive note, with President Obama and Russia’s Vladimir Putin reaching a broad agreement never to speak to each other again. “It’s better this way,” said Mr. Obama, frostily standing in the general vicinity of Mr. Putin for the last time ever. “We truly despise each other.” “I couldn’t agree more,” said Mr. Putin, looking as though he had just smelled something bad. “My hatred of this man knows no bounds.”

According to the agreement, economic coöperation, cyber security, human rights, the war in Syria, and the New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft’s missing Super Bowl ring are among thirty-seven different topics that the two men will never again discuss. Additionally, at all future summits, if either Mr. Obama or Mr. Putin enters a room the other man will be obligated to leave immediately. The two men reached agreement on an unprecedented number of points, including never contacting each other via telephone or e-mail and keeping a minimum of five hundred feet away from each other’s residences. After signing the agreement, the two men shook hands for the final time and scowled bitterly for photographers.”

- http://www.newyorker.com/

"A Letter From Your Ever-Vigilant Friends at the NSA"

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 22:18:00 +0000

Click image for larger size.

"A Letter From Your Ever-Vigilant Friends at the NSA"
by Will Durst

"Dear U.S. Citizen,

Please accept our most egregiously sincere apologies for the difficulties and inconveniences the secret monitoring of your phone records and email and GPS units and foreign travel and bank accounts and yes, even your snail mail has evidently caused.

We here at the NSA strive for the perfection of our services, which depend on the chronic obliviousness of you, our valued customers. Unfortunately, due to one disgruntled deadbeat (who escaped to China to avoid government persecution- which is like joining the Army because you’re tired of people telling you what to do) you now know of our continuing efforts to keep you safe. That was never our intention.

When you are even tangentially aware of the absurd lengths the National Security Agency will go to keep you and your loved ones out of harm’s way, our mission has failed. If you knew half the crap we have to slog through here, your hair would curl, but that’s another story altogether.

Yes, we’re pretty much keeping tabs on everything everyone says and does, all the time, which we understand upsets a few of you. Folks. Don’t worry. Nobody’s actually listening to any of this stuff. We’re just used to collecting it. If it makes you feel any better, think of this whole enterprise as an exceedingly long, government-subsidized episode of “Hoarders.” You can trust us.

And seriously, anybody who didn’t suspect this kind of snooping was going on is not to be trusted with knives in the kitchen without a fencing mask. Privacy is soooo 20th Century. You share the regularity of your bowel movements on Facebook, but we check around to find out who’s making coded phone calls to al-Qaida and suddenly everybody’s nose is out of joint? You kidding me?

Unfortunately, one of our representatives testified in front of Congress, “no, we aren’t collecting data on Americans,” when what he meant to say is, “yes, we ARE collecting data on Americans.” James Clapper simply gave the “least untruthful answer possible.” Then again, Congress knows that getting a straight answer from us is harder than bending a wire coat-hanger into a number representing pi to the sixth digit with your teeth. All for your protection.

See, the problem is, nobody knows who the enemy is anymore. Narrowing suspicion is much too time-consuming. Lot easier to wiretap the entire nation than try to pick out the one or two most devious of you. Besides, what could be more democratic than spying on everybody?

We call the process data mining. And you, the soft quarry, are producing up to a billion records a day. Which is real similar to pulverizing Everest, then sifting through the rubble for a blue pebble. It ain’t easy, people. Lot of haystacks, not so many needles.

To ensure this glitch never occurs again, we are rectifying the glitcher in order to return our service to the high-level quality that you, the citizens of America, have come to expect. For the inconvenience we have caused, each household in America will receive 3 free months of HBO.

If you have any questions or comments regarding this matter, please contact your Congressperson. Thanks for your understanding, and please, don’t bother looking for us. You can be sure, we’ll be looking after you.

Sincerely,
Your ever-vigilant friends at the NSA.

P.S. Don’t forget to “like us” on Facebook."

- http://www.cagle.com/

"How It Really Is"

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 22:12:00 +0000

The Economy: Ron Paul, “Out Of Thin Air”

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 20:44:00 +0000

“Out Of Thin Air”
by Ron Paul

“When I talk to many teenagers and grade schoolers, they seem to have no problem comprehending the fact that if you just create a lot of money, it’ll be like Monopoly money and it won’t have value. Governments do that for all kinds of reasons, especially to enhance political power to fight wars we shouldn’t be fighting or to pass welfare programs that aren’t deserved.

When you print that money, the value of that dollar has to go down, and then one of the consequences of inflating the money will be higher prices. But there are a lot of other problems, too, with inflating. It causes a business cycle, it causes financial bubbles and it causes a lot of economic distortions and unemployment. But in a nutshell, inflation is very simple. When governments create new money out of thin air, you have inflation.

Inflation is immoral because it’s theft. Think about it this way: If you or I had a printing press and we could print the money just like the government does, we would be arrested and put in jail for a long, long time because we’d have stolen value — we’re pretending these pieces of paper are worth something. The Founders understood this very clearly, and that’s why they said in the Constitution that you can’t emit mills of credit, which is paper money, because they knew what runaway inflation is like.

Inflating is immoral in the sense that it steals value. If you double the money supply and your prices go up twice as much, it’s an invisible hidden tax. But the real immorality here is that some people pay higher prices than others. So if you’re in a middle class, or especially in low middle income, your prices might be going up 15% a year. Somebody on Wall Street might be working leveraged buyouts and making billions of dollars and they don’t have to worry about the rising costs of living. This to me is an immoral act that is prohibited by the Constitution, and the outcome is always tragic.

Alan Greenspan from ’87 up to [2006] was the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, the U.S. central bank. I see the central bank and the Federal Reserve System as unconstitutional in that they have this tremendous power and a monopoly control over money and credit, which is an ominous power. Greenspan or any chairman of the Federal Reserve is more powerful than even our president because he has so much control over the economy. But the interesting thing about Alan Greenspan was that he was a true believer in Austrian economics and in the gold standard. So in a private conversation I had with him I told him that I followed what he taught. In the 1960s, he was very clear on his position on gold, that he liked gold and rejected the fiat monetary system, because if you have fiat money, it leads to deficits and to the expansion of government — all of which he opposed.

So it’s rather ironic that now Dr. Greenspan accepts the paper monetary system (which is a fiat system). He literally was the participant in these deficits. I would bring this up to him in the committee, because the Federal Reserve Board’s chairman always condemns deficits; it’s always Congress’ fault.

But my point was Congress couldn’t do it if they weren’t complicit: If we don’t want a tax and we can’t borrow, then they have to print the money in order to accommodate the big spenders. If the Federal Reserve couldn’t do that, interest rates would go up and there would be restraint on spending. So he literally went from being one who once believed in the restraints of the gold standard to the Federal Reserve Board chairman — the one that ran this whole system of fiat money and central economic control.

I would chastise him quite frequently about how can he be for a free market when he endorses a system of central economic planning by controlling the money? And when you think about it, the monetary unit is used in every single transaction, so if you can control one half of every single transaction, you have a lot of power and a lot of control.

In the 1960s, I was studying and reading Austrian economics and I received The Objectivist Newsletter that Ayn Rand put out. Alan Greenspan had a piece in the newsletter and it was a delightful article — it said all the things I believed in. One day, we had a personal meeting with Greenspan just to get our pictures taken and chat for a few minutes, and we knew that was coming up. So I dug out my original copy, and I took that with me, and when we were getting ready to get our picture, I flipped it open to his article and said, “Do you remember this?” And he said he did. Then I asked him to autograph it, so he got out his pen and he was signing it. I said, “Do you want to write a disclaimer on this article?” He said, “No, I wouldn’t do that. I just read this recently and I fully support everything I wrote.”

Which is interesting because you don’t know exactly what he means. If he fully supports what he wrote, why was he managing a monetary system that was exactly opposite of what he wrote in 1966?

Now we’ve lost our way; we don’t believe in what made America great, and that was individual liberty. We’ve become too dependent on government. Yet in spite of all those negative things I’ve just said and how bad Washington is and how bad the financial system is, in my travels around the country, I’m really encouraged. Because so many young people today understand this and they’re getting information off the Internet and different sources.

A lot of them get bored with this silly Keynesian economics, which is very hard to understand and impossible to get fascinated with for the average college student. So the fact that there’s so much information on the Internet to stimulate and arouse a whole new generation is remarkable.

In the ’50s, when I was interested in finding this information, there was one group in the whole country, and that was the Foundation for Economic Education, in New York. They produced literature, and you had to search for a book. There was no Internet, nothing on television that your schools didn’t produce. Today everything is so much better.

So I think the undercurrent is very, very favorable, and I think the next generation is not as tolerant of this acceptance of big government, and there are probably two reasons for that. I think they’re attracted to the ideas and the principles of liberty, but also I think they sense that we have problems and they don’t know how they’re going to pay these huge debts and these entitlement burdens that are coming. They’re sick and tired of the foreign policy, so in some way, the problems are arousing a lot of people. As long as we do our job in spreading the ideas of freedom and emphasizing the rule of law and the restraint of government, there’s reason to be hopeful.”

- http://dailyreckoning.com/out-of-thin-air/

"Po Po Talking To You? One Sentence Response Required"

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 20:27:00 +0000

"Po Po Talking To You? One Sentence Response Required"
by Karl Denninger

"From the USSC yesterday: "In a case with important implications for individuals at the early stages of a police investigation, the high court said that a suspect must verbally invoke his or her Fifth Amendment right to remain silent to prevent police and prosecutors from using any resulting silence and incriminating body language as evidence of guilt during a jury trial."

Got it? You must tell the police (or any arm of police) if you are not yet under arrest that you are invoking your 5th Amendment right to remain silent or your actions, including silence, are not protected.

So it's really quite simple- refuse to talk to the cops- period. Is there any reason to communicate with any member of law enforcement for any reason whatsoever, including through mere silence, from this point forward?

Nope, other than to say the following: I invoke my 5th Amendment right to remain silent. Am I free to go?

That's it folks. Nothing more. This ruling will, and should, do more to harm 'law enforcement' than help it. Make it so with your response.”

- http://market-ticker.org/
•
Related: http://beforeitsnews.com/

"More NSA - STOP MUDDYING THE WATERS"

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 20:16:00 +0000

"More NSA - STOP MUDDYING THE WATERS"
by Karl Denninger

"There's another hearing going on right now regarding the NSA spying. Let me be clear once again: I have no problem with the NSA paying attention to foreign communications for the purpose of interdicting terrorism. If that surveillance winds up connected to US persons then a warrant can be obtained under the clearly-existing standards of probable cause and from there you move forward. This is clearly Constitutional and is what is being described with the allegedly-foiled plots to bomb the NY Subway and NYSE.

It is entirely different when the NSA vacuums up all data in the United States, whether one end terminates outside the US or not, and then later post-hoc manufactures justification to do whatever they wish with it. That is not Constitutional.

There are those who argue that the latter is ok under the premise that a US Supreme Court decision (Smith .v. Maryland, 442 US 735 (1979)) held that a "pen register" (recording metadata) did not require probable cause be first demonstrated. However, Smith .v. Maryland still dealt with an individual that was suspected of criminal activity. The holding was that probable cause was not necessary under the 4th Amendment as the data was being recorded by the phone company anyway. Further, the holding was that there was no "reasonable" expectation (in society) that such data would not be interdicted and stored by government. This is clearly not the case in the aggregate for everyone's phone calls on a mass basis.

It is quite-clear that nobody in this country expects that the list of the phone numbers they dial and their physical location at all times that their phone is on will be both recorded and made available to others. In other words there damn sure is a reasonable expectation that this data will be used only for its legitimate purposes of providing phone service and billing for those calls, not for exposition to others at someone else's whim.

Extending metadata collection to everyone where no suspicion exists at any level, and effectively forcing the permanent retention of data that the phone company would otherwise discard quickly as its business reason to have it would disappear (and they thus would not normally retain it), along with rendering it effectively a public matter is wildly beyond any reasonable expectation that the people have for this information.

This has never been ruled Constitutional; the question has never come before the court and there is no way that anyone can make a coherent argument that their location on a 24x7 basis along with every phone call they make is "public" or "voluntarily disclosed" information for any purpose other than to enable the functionality of their phone and billing of the usage made thereof.

It is also clear that such a blanket grab is a seizure- not a search.

Again, the premise of a pen register order is that the target is in some way suspected of committing a crime but all law enforcement has is a belief- not probable cause. Blanket vacuuming up and analyzing metadata is not the same thing and is clearly a seizure of that information. It does not belong to the government; under present law it belongs to the company (although that needs to be addressed as well!) and as such either it is being voluntarily given by the firm in which case we can and should refuse to do business with said firms or it is being seized without suspicion in which case the 4th Amendment clearly applies.”

- http://market-ticker.org/

"What I Have Lived For"

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 11:43:00 +0000

"What I Have Lived For"
by Bertrand Russell

"Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness - that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.

Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a hated burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.

This has been my life. I have found it worth living..."

From "Autobiography of Bertrand Russell," written in his mid-eighties.
- http://www.zimbio.com/Philosophy/articles/78/Bertrand+Russell+Lived

"No, Maybe I Can't Win..."

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 10:45:00 +0000

“No, maybe I can’t win, maybe the only thing I can do is just take everything he’s got. But to beat me, he’s gonna have to kill me, and to kill me, he’s gonna have to have the heart to stand in front of me, and to do that, he’s gotta be willing to die himself and I don’t know if he’s ready to do that. I don’t know, I don’t know.”

– "Rocky Balboa"

Musical Interlude: Kings College Choir, a cappela: Samuel Barber, “Agnus Dei”

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 10:20:00 +0000

Kings College Choir, a cappela: Samuel Barber, “Agnus Dei”
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWgjwTc3PUw

"A Home Beyond What This World Knows..."

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 04:19:00 +0000

"A Home Beyond What This World Knows..."
Author Unknown

"You can chain my body
But you cannot chain my soul.
You can enslave my body
But you’ll never own my soul.
You can whip my body,
But you cannot touch my soul.
For my soul is mightier than your chains,
My soul endures all your blows,
My soul is eternal, eternally remains,
My soul has a home beyond
what this world knows.
You can imprison my body,
but you cannot jail my soul.
You can break my body,
But you’ll never break my soul.
My soul is free as the eagle flying so high,
Vast like a dark, starry sky,
Deep as the ocean, wider than the sea,
My soul is forever, eternally free,
my soul is forever, eternally free.
You can chain my body,
But you’ll never chain my soul.
You can even kill my body,
But you’ll never kill my soul.
For my soul is mightier than your chains,
My soul endures all your blows,
My soul is eternal, eternally remains,
My soul has a home beyond what
this world knows."

"A Look to the Heavens"

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 04:07:00 +0000

“The constellation of Orion holds much more than three stars in a row. A deep exposure shows everything from dark nebula to star clusters, all embedded in an extended patch of gaseous wisps in the greater Orion Molecular Cloud Complex.

Click image several times for largest image.

The brightest three stars on the far left are indeed the famous three stars that make up the belt of Orion. Just below Alnitak, the lowest of the three belt stars, is the Flame Nebula, glowing with excited hydrogen gas and immersed in filaments of dark brown dust. Below the frame center and just to the right of Alnitak lies the Horsehead Nebula, a dark indentation of dense dust that has perhaps the most recognized nebular shapes on the sky. On the upper right lies M42, the Orion Nebula, an energetic caldron of tumultuous gas, visible to the unaided eye, that is giving birth to a new open cluster of stars. Immediately to the left of M42 is a prominent bluish reflection nebula sometimes called the Running Man that houses many bright blue stars. The above image, a digitally stitched composite taken over several nights, covers an area with objects that are roughly 1,500 light years away and spans about 75 light years.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120212.html

Chet Raymo, “The Sands of Time“

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 03:55:00 +0000

“The Sands of Time“
by Chet Raymo

“Here is a slab of 400-million-year-old Old Red Sandstone quarried from a nearby hill and placed here by the Kerry County Council as part of a seawall for Ventry Pier. On its face are beach ripples similar to those one might see any day at low tide on the sand flats of Ventry Harbor.

Beach ripples inside a mountain! How did they get there? In a journal entry for May 21, 1831, the fossilist Gideon Mantell recounts an expedition he made with the great geologist Charles Lyell to a quarry at Horsham, in southeastern England, where they observed slabs of ancient sandstone covered with ripple marks. He later described the ripples and their orign in an article for the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal. No one who has observed the action of waves on a living beach can doubt that the identical undulations in ancient sandstones were made by the same agency, Mantell asserted. He added: "Obvious as the cause of this curious appearance seems to be, yet it has been a subject of dispute among men of science, the mind being but too apt to seek for a mysterious agent, to explain effects which have been, and are still being, produced by some simple operation of nature."

Biblical literalists, in their commitment to their "mysterious agent," must provide some other explanation for the ripples in stone. A twist on the Deluge story, perhaps, or the standard creationist suggestion that when God created the world 6000 years ago he provided it with the evidences of a past it never had -- a navel for Adam, light already on the way from distant galaxies, and fossils and beach ripples inside of mountains.

Not all believers take the Genesis creation story literally. They accept the antiquity of the Earth and the scientific account of the universe's history. But they believe things no less fantastic than a six-day creation -- the virgin birth and resurrection of Jesus, say, or the bodily assumption of Mary into heaven, or personal immortality. Surely, an all-powerful God who acts miraculously in the world would have no more trouble putting beach ripples inside mountains than in raising Lazarus from the dead. Which is to say, what's the point of picking and choosing among miracles, accepting science when the evidence is overwhelming, and invoking 2000-year-old "mysterious agents" when the sparsity of evidence allows some wiggle room?

A more consistent attitude is the one at the heart of the scientific way of knowing: There are no miracles to pick and choose between. Or, which is to say the same thing, there is only one miracle, and that miracle is the universe in all of its mystery and tentatively knowable glory."

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

•

"...the enduring paradox is that someone, a hunk of ambulatory meat somehow possessed of purpose and a sense of self, is still doing the explaining. “What is the universe like?” is a question that must be answered in a way that includes the asking of that question. And so you needn’t be a runaway divine-design jockey to think that the human mind might just be the universe becoming aware of itself"

- Mark Kingwell

"Courage, Bravery..."

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 03:53:00 +0000

“Courage is not the absence of fear but the judgment that something else is more important than fear. The brave may not live forever but the cautious do not live at all. For now you are traveling the road between who you think you are and who you can be.”

- Meg Cabot

“Bravery is being the only one who knows you're afraid.”
- Franklin P. Jones

We, the People, are many, they are few...

- CP

"Courage"

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 03:44:00 +0000

"Courage"
by George Washington

"It all comes down to courage... If you have courage, then you're willing to face that really stinky mess in the garage and clean it up. You have faith you can clean it up, because you've cleaned up other really stinky messes, or seen other people do it. In other words, you have faith because you have experience of succeeding in the past.

Fat and Happy: We Americans have led a very pampered life for the past couple of decades. Sure, there has been inequality and exploitation, and some have had it a lot worse than others. But, other than stopping extreme forms of racism (Ku Klux Klan, etc.), we haven't had to defend our borders or our liberties.

Basically, we complain if our tv goes on the fritz, or our team loses the game, or we can't afford that new, nicer whatzit, or if our boss is mean. We think those are big, Earth-shattering, history-changing events. But they are quite small in the grand scheme of things. And even those of us who think of ourselves as brave heroes usually only act like that when we know it is within the bounds of safety, within the limits of what we can handle. "Tough guys" tend to turn into meek mice whenever they are really threatened.

So we're basically lazy and timid, but we don't know or admit it. We like to pretend we are like the Founding Fathers or John Wayne (at least the cowboys had to rough it a little). But we have no experience of successfully standing up to tyrants, so we have no faith that it can be done, and while the evidence is right before our noses that our current leaders are tyrants, we're so terrified that we have our knickers in a bunch.

What Would They Do? Even if you haven't experienced success in standing up to tyrants, remember that the Founding Fathers did just that. They were just men, not gods. Sure, they were too persistent and stubborn to give up, but that's because they CARED about something: freedom and the possibility of a better life. They may have lived hundreds of years before our time, but that doesn't matter - we can still learn from their experience as if it were happening now. Time is an illusion, since human nature is the same now as it was then. Just as many people of faith ask "what would Jesus do?", we can also ask "what would the founding fathers do?" If they could do it, we can do it.

Take Heart: There is a real misunderstanding of what it means to be courageous. In America, courage is often thought of as a testosterone-driven toughness. There's nothing the matter with testosterone. Masculinity is a great thing. But many American men secretly fear that they don't have sufficient testosterone to really be brave when the chips are down. As I said above, even those of us who think of ourselves as brave men usually only act like that when we know it is within the bounds of safety, within the limits of what we can handle.

We might jump in a bar room brawl to protect our buddy, but that's because we know we're only going to get knocked around a little bit - nothing but bruises that will go away in a little while. The stakes just aren't that high. But most American men secretly doubt whether they are macho enough to pull it off under fire. They may watch a lot of action movies, and talk tough, and stand up when its not really dangerous (or when they clearly outgun the other guy), but they are secretly terrified that they don't have quite enough backbone to pull it off against the big boys, such as tyrants.

I would argue that this view fundamentally misunderstands the nature of courage, and ensures that we will never have true courage when it counts. By way of analogy, the word "discipline" comes from "disciple". If you are a true "disciple" of an idea of a plan or a strategy or a religion, then you will stick to it and "have discipline" to reach your goal. It is not just a matter of willpower; it is also devotion to something bigger than ourselves.

Similarly, the word "courage" comes from the French "with heart". Why does it have this root meaning? Because it takes heart to act bravely. That's how my childhood Karate teacher used the word: when I was practicing with courage, power and focus, he would say "you have alot of heart today" (indeed, many old-school warriors use the phrase "fighting with heart" in that way). If courage is acting "with heart", we've lost heart. And without heart, we cannot face the truth. So how do we regain our heart? Well, let's start with what gets our hearts beating. Remember that the mother bear is one of the fiercest animals of all. Just get between a mother bear and her cub and you'll see what I mean. It is her love of her cub which gives her the heart to face any enemy when her cub is threatened. It is not her level of testosterone, but rather her love for her cub which makes her so fierce.

Just as discipline is more than just willpower, courage stems from something bigger than just cajones. In fact, the strongest courage comes from the love of something we care about, since our heart will sustain us even when the chips are really down and we are really up against a tyrant. As the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu said: "Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage. " In addition, we're no longer living in the old west. Individualism is very important in numerous ways, but we can only win against the tyrants as a team, as a community, as a nation. And only by opening our hearts to what matters will we be able to work together, to fight for all of our kids, and all of our freedom. Only then will we be able to put the crooks and the looters and the tyrants back in the box.

Do we care about our kids, our significant others, our parents, our friends? Do we care about the freedom to choose what we want, instead of having our "great leader" choose for us? If not, what DO we care about? Because if that is where your heart is, that is what will give you courage. I care too much about my kids and their future to be afraid. I care enough about them that it gets my heart beating, connects me to something bigger than myself, and that gives me courage, even when the chips are down. Courage is an innate human quality. It is within each of us, waiting to reveal itself when we open our hearts. When we act with heart, by definition, we are courageous."

- http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/

"A Liitle Tune For Big Brother And the Big, Bad, And Oh-So-Scary NSA"

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 03:03:00 +0000

Robert Palmer, “You're Gonna Get What's Coming”
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgIebIQLiiQ&html5=1

•
Your move, gents...
oh, and by the way, switching to Python doesn't hide you. :-)

Need I elaborate my thoughts on the matter?
America, right? Freedom of speech, right? lol
Don't give up, folks, don't you give up...

- CP

"Lakotah Instructions for Living"

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 01:48:00 +0000

"Lakotah Instructions for Living"

"Friend do it this way- that is, whatever you do in life,
do the very best you can with both your heart and mind.

And if you do it that way,

the Power Of The Universe will come to your assistance,
if your heart and mind are in Unity.

When one sits in the Hoop Of The People,
one must be responsible because All of Creation is related.
And the hurt of one is the hurt of all.
And the honor of one is the honor of all.
And whatever we do effects everything in the universe.

If you do it that way- that is,

if you truly join your heart and mind as One-

whatever you ask for, that's the way it's going to be."

Passed down from White Buffalo Calf Woman

The Poet: Charles Baudelaire, "Contemplation"

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 01:41:00 +0000

"Contemplation"
by Charles Baudelaire

"Thou, O my Grief, be wise and tranquil still,
The eve is thine which even now drops down,
To carry peace or care to human will,
And in a misty veil enfolds the town.

While the vile mortals of the multitude,
By pleasure, cruel tormentor, goaded on,
Gather remorseful blossoms in light mood-
Grief, place thy hand in mine,

let us be gone far from them.

Lo, see how the vanished years,
In robes outworn lean over heaven's rim;
And from the water, smiling through her tears,
Remorse arises, and the sun grows dim;
And in the east, her long shroud trailing light,
List, O my grief, the gentle steps of Night."

The Daily "Near You?"

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 01:07:00 +0000

Jonquière, Quebec, Canada. Thanks for stopping by.

"Are You?"

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 01:00:00 +0000

"A person needs a little madness,

or else they never dare cut the rope and be free."
- Nikos Kazantzakis

"A Thought Experiment"

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 00:38:00 +0000

"A Thought Experiment"

by TheOilDrum

"Imagine that someone you absolutely believe (god, an omniscient alien, your mother, a republican talk show host, tarot card reader, etc. whoever it might be for you personally) told you with 100% certainty that the worst case scenario WAS going to happen, and that by say, 2015 there would be permanent blackouts, no food on grocery store shelves, mad-max communities, basically A World Made By Hand, in relatively short order.

If you KNEW this, and internalized it to the point where it felt 100% certain, would you change what you are doing now? Would you call all your friends and hold emergency town meetings to get regional agricultural and resilience programs started? Would you camp outside your senators office entreating him/her to initiate immediate consumption taxes on Veblen goods, etc.? Would you start growing your own food and meeting and engaging your neighbors? Would there be fear and outrage?

Or would there be fear and apathy? Would you say - well - its been fun - we have another year to party on. Let's go to Africa while we can, start pouring the libations more freely, quit your job, cash out what's left of your 401k at a penalty, and go hedonistic for 24 months?

Or would you do nothing, really? Would that information, even in its certainty, not change your daily routine, of surfing the net, finding out more interesting information, searching for unexpected reward as long as there was not too much physical effort required, etc.?

Events are making it increasingly clear to me that the scale of change needed in our institutions and leadership is so large that our government is essentially 'too big to change', and that change has to come from the ground up. I worry though, that just like the environmentalists of the past generation, many of whom foresaw limits to growth and were very articulate about its details and timing, we're talking about the upcoming energy and environmental train wreck, we may be just alleviating our consciences, and that there is enough information out there now to see the sweet spot of the default future distribution, without further number torture.

After you've thought these issues through, here is perhaps a more important question: if you knew with certainty the worst cases would NOT arrive, would you change your behavior then? What would be the inflection point? Events themselves, or waiting for others to act and joining in?"

- http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5237

"Each Morning..."

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 00:32:00 +0000

"Each morning when I open my eyes I say to myself: I, not events,
have the power to make me happy or unhappy today.
I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn't arrived yet.
I have just one day, today, and I'm going to be happy in it."

- Groucho Marx

"Human Destiny- the Grace of the Present Moment"

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 00:23:00 +0000

"Human Destiny- the Grace of the Present Moment"

by Michael Dowd

"Our present situation, I think, can be summarized by the following three sentences: 1. The glory of the human has become the desolation of the Earth. 2. The desolation of the Earth is becoming the destiny of the human. 3. Therefore, all human activities, professions, programs and institutions must henceforth be judged primarily by the extent to which they inhibit, ignore or foster a mutually enhancing human/Earth relationship." — Thomas Berry

"A thing is right when it tends to preserve the diversity, stability, and beauty of the life community. It is wrong when it tends to do otherwise." — Aldo Leopold

"In this last day that the Universe has reflected on itself in and through Homo sapiens, for nearly 23 and a half of the past 24 hours we were in the tribal-shamanic period of Earth's cultural development; as hunter-gatherers. This is also known as the paleolithic era or Stone Age. From 11:20pm to 11:40pm, we went through the neolithic village era. Writing developed at the end of this period and, with it, the beginnings of "recorded history." The next nineteen minutes, to 11:59pm, is the period of the classical civilizations, or the age of the classical religious cultures. For the last sixty seconds we have been in the scientific-technological-industrial period. During this last minute we have toxified the air, water and soil upon which all life depends to such a degree that we are now faced with the possibility of a collapse of the planetary life-support systems, or ecocide.

The human is an expression of Earth. We are totally dependent upon the health of the community of Life for our own health. Our own healing and destiny, as individuals or as a species, depends entirely upon our relationship to the land, air, water and life of Earth. What we do to the planet, we do to our self.

It is, of course, possible that the destiny of Life may not include a human expression much longer. This will certainly be so if the destiny of the human becomes the desolation of the Earth. But whether or not our species survives, Earth will continue to evolve, eventually healing the damage done by us. The Milky Way galaxy will continue to spiral, with countless new solar systems being born, living and dying. And the Universe will continue to expand and grow more complex for billions of years after our solar system is but a distant cosmic memory. We are part of an awesome and divine Universe. We are also only a very small part of it. We must keep this perspective in mind when discussing "human destiny." Humility may be the single most important attitude of the heart we will need if we are to continue into the future. Humility and survival go hand in hand. Pride goes before a fall.

We are now at what may be the most significant turning point in the Sacred Story of Life since the 185 million year Mesozoic era, the age of the dinosaurs, came crashing to a close some 65 million years ago. That was when the dinosaurs all died out. The last 65 million years have been called the Cenozoic era, the age of the mammals and the flowering plants. As a direct result of human activity over the past two hundred years, we are now bringing to an end this 65 million year age! It is important to see things from this larger perspective.

Today, species are being eliminated at a rate faster than perhaps any other time in history. Biologist Norman Myers, a specialist in the rain forests and vegetation of the world, says that we are bringing about an "extinction spasm" that is likely to produce "the greatest setback to life's abundance and diversity since the first flickerings of life almost four billion years ago." Thanks to our addictive industrial culture, we are altering the geological structure, the chemistry, and the biological systems of the planet on a scale that would normally have taken millions of years. Yet we are accomplishing this feat in a few short decades.

As the Cenozoic era collapses around us, the logical question becomes, "What's next?" Geologian Thomas Berry suggests two possibilities. The first possibility he calls the Technozoic era. In the Technozoic, humanity would continue to understand "progress" in terms of increasing mechanistic control over the forces of nature for its own superficial, short-term benefit. Through continued scientific innovation and technological cunning, we could create delimited artificial environments to "protect" us in isolation from our despoiled and dying world. The Technozoic would be an isolated hell of existence. Humanity would become ever more alienated from the rest of Life. In the long run, of course, it could not even hope to last. Without spirit, matter decays. The Technozoic could never be sustainable.

Another possibility, perhaps the only viable option for humans, is what Berry calls the Ecozoic era. The primary aspect of the Ecozoic would be the deep somatic awareness of the natural world as our larger body, as our larger self. All species would be granted their habitat, their freedom, and their range of life expression. The Ecozoic would further be characterized by our harmonious alignment with, rather than domination over, the biological processes of the planet. This would require abandoning many of our destructive mechanistic technologies. The natural world itself would be taken as the primary referent for all that we do, and the primary model for all our technologies. In the Ecozoic, all of our activities, professions, programs, and institutions will be judged primarily by the extent to which they inhibit, ignore or foster a mutually enhancing human/Earth relationship. This is the way of human destiny!

When we see things from a larger perspective, it becomes clear that something more is needed to "save the Earth" than recycling our paper and glass, not using styrofoam, and driving our cars less. Specifically, two things are absolutely necessary if the human expression of Earth is to continue into the future.

As a species, we must make a profound shift in consciousness in the direction of deep ecology if we are to survive. We must grow from seeing ourselves as discrete, separate beings that walk around on Earth, to feeling and knowing ourselves as an expression of Earth. Our thinking and behavior must align with, and flow out of, the reality of our situation: the planet is our larger body, our larger self. We are dependent upon the community of life, air, water and soil in every conceivable way. Unless we make this shift in conscoiusness, we will continue to be a "cancer," a parasite, consuming its own host environment. We will survive only with the spiritual guidance and awareness of the body of Life as a whole with its billions of years of evolutionary wisdom.

The second thing necessary for the human expression of Earth to survive is for human beings to live in ecologically sustainable communities. We must live our lives in deep communion with each other and with our bioregion: sharing possessions and dwelling space, growing food together in a way that enhances our lives and the soil; laughing, working, playing and celebrating together; and, in short, living in love with each other and with all of Life. We must create ecological communities where we can be most truly ourselves, where we can experience loving physical touch, where we can share our finitude and brokenness and feel loved unconditionally, and where we are both supported and challenged to be all that we can be, especially for future generations.

None of us asked to be alive at this moment in Earth's history. We did not choose to be born at this juncture in the Story. We were chosen. Each of us has been chosen by Life to be alive and to participate in the most significant geological and biological transformation in 65 million years. This is a fact! Can you feel the sense of personal destiny, or a sense of mission or purpose, that such an awareness awakens within you? (If you want to, take a few moments and allow yourself to feel your connectedness to the larger body of Life, and your place in the Sacred Story of Life.) Thomas Berry calls this awareness "the grace of the present moment."

The degree that we live the values of the Ecozoic era now will be the degree to which we participate in its inauguration. Love and Truth must be our guiding realities. As we love Life with all our heart, mind, soul and strength, we will quite naturally love our human and non-human neighbor, and our planet, as our self. That is the true state of affairs. Living the values of the Ecozoic requires being lovingly truthful and gently honest with ourselves and with each other. It means being real and open with the Life that is our Source, Body, and Destiny.

We are all stories within stories within stories, as we discussed at the start. The Great Sacred Story of Life is the biggest story. This story, the Universe story, provides the context for, adds meaning to, and affects the destiny of every other story in existence. That is why everything in human affairs must now be seen in light of this "big picture" in order to have any lasting meaning for present and future generations."

"For peoples, generally, their story of the universe and the human role within the universe is their primary source of intelligibility and value. Only through this story of how the universe came to be in the beginning and how it came to be as it is does a person come to appreciate the meaning of life or to derive the psychic energy needed to deal effectively with those crisis moments that occur in the life of the individual and in the life of the society. Such a story communicates the most sacred of mysteries... and not only interprets the past, it also guides and inspires our shaping of the future." — Thomas Berry

- http://www.thegreatstory.org/Bigpicture2.html

"Know What's Weird?"

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 00:16:00 +0000

"Know what's weird? Day by day, nothing seems to change,
but pretty soon... everything's different."
- Calvin, from "Calvin and Hobbes"

"Fox Kit, Head Stuck In A Jar, Approaches 2 Men For Help"

noreply@blogger.com (CoyotePrime) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 23:54:00 +0000

"Fox Kit, Head Stuck In A Jar, Approaches 2 Men For Help"
By Cavan Sieczkowski

"Wild foxes aren't known to hang around humans too often, but that changed for one little fox that turned to two men for help after getting stuck in a jar. Two men walking along a dirt road in Russia came upon a red fox with its head stuck in a glass jar. The fox walked toward them, and one of the men bent down to help. He grabbed the jar, pulled the scruff of the animal's neck and freed it.

As the kit scampered away, the man joked, "Where's my thank you?" according to a Huffington Post translation.

Red foxes are able to live in many different locales and have been able to adapt to human environments, according to National Geographic. The animal's resourcefulness has earned it a reputation for being both intelligent and cunning. Alas, litter got the best of this kit, and it isn't the only animal to suffer such a fate recently. On Saturday, Pennsylvania police rescued a young bear whose head was stuck in a plastic jar for at least 11 days, according to the Associated Press. Likewise, officers in Florida's Big Pine Key saved a deer that got its head stuck in a bag of Doritos chips.”

- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/