Snap News

I stumbled across this promising news feed aggregator while reading about Katrina.

Snap News

Tricky

The impossible is always tricky.
Once it has been accomplished,
people are full of logic.

- Jonathan Cainer

Presidential Performance

Seven time Tour de France winner, Lance Armstrong,
alleged performance enhancement user, could not
pull ahead of the President in the one-on-one
mountain bike race at the 2005 Prairie Chapel Pharm-Off.

“No matter how much training I’ve done,” the retired biker said,
“the president seems to train more.”

Asked if he was worried about Secret Service snipers if he
'accidently' pulled ahead, Lance said he just hoped the
President wouldn’t crash again.

__________________________________________________

Coverage of the 2005 Prairie Chapel Pharm-Off is sponsored by,
AIL*MINT, the only Artificial Intelligence Lozenge that is mint
flavored.

AIL*MINT (tm) by Creationist Candy Company, Intl.
Artificial Intelligence is still intelligence by design. God Bless
America.
Offices outsourced to Beruit, Burundi & Bombay

Any references to Camp Casey and Cindy Sheehan are totally inadvertent.
As well as the possibility that Willie Nelson might drive his Bio-Willie
diesel Family band bus up there to do a concert with Joan Baez.
Dateline: Crawford Texas • AIL*MINT Patent Punding

FINE PRINT: This material is copyrighted and we have
heat seeking lasers aimed at your retinas. Stop reading now.
And definitely NO copying, recording, reporpoising -eek eek.

Fun Place

http://www.realtechnews.com/

The World is Still Flat

I started reading the reviews of this book at Amazon. I am happy I have requested it from the library rather than rushed out and paid for it.

Read some here.

Google This!

Sometimes I mean Google.
And, sometimes I mean google.

Lots of times I use the Vivisimo meta search engine. It categorizes the results.

Speeds things up.

Just what we need.

More speed.

The World Is Flat

LINK

The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century, a newish book by Thomas Friedman, seems to be coming out of the woodwork at me. I've got a request in at the library and then checked out a few of the 258 (and counting) reviews at Amazon. That's the link above - reader reviews. Lots of them. Looks like a good read.

Global trade, the recent past and the near future, all researched and documented.

Stagger on, weary titan

The End of Empire

Correlations with end of the British Empire and the USA today.

Funny ...

My recent post was about showing up
and then I don't.

Funny.

I call it yard work and late spring cleaning.

But, it's not happening at the keyboard.

Happy Motoring

An email note from an old friend. That was the whole of it. And I have questions.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Hey,

Just a quick note to tell you that we blew up our lives and scooted out of the burbs and are in Twin, for now, the P.O.Box addy is still good for one year. We are looking at mountains. I am doing this at the library, the one last vestige of regular life.

Talk when we land.


- - - - - - - - - - - -


She, the author and artist in multiple media.
She, the anonymous blogger.

He, a poet that continues to scribe on a typewriter.
He, that introduced me to Ginzberg and Kerouac

Now they are on the road. It's a good time.
There is some road left.

She mentions the mountains and the library.
I am surprised they didn't snag a laptop for the wifi
when they left the Bayview property.

Are they in a motor home or a station wagon?
And where the hell is Twin?

Happy Motoring you two.

Google This - Bullshit Protector

The phrase to Google is Bullshit Protector and the photo was shot in a group of war vets at the president's, um, speech in Idaho.

I get quite a hoot out of an old VFW guy playing a little prank like this.
I mean, who would think he would need one of those at a, um, speech by the president?

I don't want to rip a guys photo when there are some many around.

Link Here

Showing up in the KnewsRoom

The Woody Allen quote is that 80 or 90% of success is just showing up.
In the past several months I've been at the keyboard a little more
often. I've started showing up in the KnewsRoom.

Usually, when we think of the success thing, we think we got it or not.
I say we are already at the other shore. We are already successful.

If the place you are showing up is an angry, fearful place then you are successful at exactly that. If you are showing up in a failure place, then you are a 90% success at that.
If you are showing up in an upbeat place, you are successful at that.

If you'd like to show up elsewhere, start packing.
You'll be a success. I know it.

For a few dollars more

Last night (8/17/05) there was a report of an FBI breakup of a second
9-11 terror plot that had been fomented by al Qaeda in a US maximum
security prison on California.

Young black men, already marginalized products of society and now
converts to fundamentalist Islam, were and are plotting terrorist
attacks inside the good old U.S. of A.

The way that this plot was hijacked was by catching the perps during
fundraising missions.
They were trying to rob gas stations to fund their efforts and got
busted.

For a few dollars more ........

Los Compadres

We were coming home from a weekend in Appleton and decided to stop at Los Compadres in Oshkosh. It's a bright, festive atmosphere with quality food at a good price. They put out warm tortilla chips with salsa and a warm frijole dip that was very tasty.

On the wall behind my wife was this picture. A copy of a print by some notable artist who's name I could not read. After looking at it awhile other figures became apparent. And later she said that she thought it was us. Los Compadres.

Podcasting poems

The surge in podcasting and talk about podcasting has reminded me to
get a safari together to look for those poems of mine I promised.

Podcast: 'broadcasting' in MP3 format. Made popularly possible by the
advance of that expensive little music player from Apple. There was
recently a comment in the Utne about the promise of togetherness and
connectedness when the fact is the opposite. The use of the thing
actually leads to isolation. I think the article was called Hell is
Other People's iPods.

Oddly enough, and we do find it surprising, we don't listen to music
around here.

Anyway, several of us were involved in a poetry reading at the
Coffeehouse. It was Food Pantry night. We burned my selections to disk.
Now, where is that rascal?

Interview with poet David White

In an earlier post I made mention of an editorial role I play in a new publication.
There's an interview in there and I'd actually like you to read it.
Being There

Phones

We got a couple new phones. With cameras.
It's more work to find a phone without a camera.
Sort of like looking for a coffee maker that doesn't have a clock in it.

Anyway, I messaged a headshot to photoshop on the laptop,
twiddled it to neon and emailed it back to the phone.



Now I'm a screensaver.

Fresh Breeze

Tom sent me some recent photos on the progress of his wind tower.
In about a month he will nearly double his capacity for generating electricty.
And all without burning coal.

Wind

Solar Barn

Stonehouse

I live far off in the wild
Where moss and woods are thick and plants perfumed
I can see mountains rain or shine
And never hear market noise
I light a few leaves in my stove to heat tea
To patch my robe I cut off a cloud
Lifetimes seldom fill a hundred years
Why suffer for profit and fame?

- Stonehouse

New hobby for budding terrorists

On the Greenfield Hobby outdoor sign -

Pick up a hobby. It will do you good.
Water balloon launchers are in.

Not everyone

I fellow I know started a new publication.
In it there was a feature with photos of a
local artisan.

The fellow I know showed the finished piece
with the photos of the artisan.

The artisan looked at it awhile and said,
“What is it?”

He did not asked “What is it for?”
He asked “What is it?”

Where do you start to answer that question?
The publication doesn’t look like Cosmo or Esquire,
but it’s still words and pictures. It’s for reading.
And looking at. And thinking about.
Apparently not everyone does that.

I am easily amazed.

It is a first issue of a pdf publication. I have taken on some editorial role and the first issue has an interview with me in it.
It's called Being There

Proverb from Nepal

"Conduct short rituals for minor gods."

Evolved

I was in a conversation with a guy that was pretty direct about his
views on evolution.

“I sure didn’t evolve from no monkey,” he said.

Noting the truth in what he said I just nodded.
He might still have a ways to go.

Boiler plate copyright?

In reading the actual fine print, I came across this from, you guessed
it,
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

© 2005 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or
redistributed.

May not be rewritten? Rewritten?

Of course it may be rewritten. It's usually just facts, right?

In Case of Emergency, Think ICE

This good idea is going around. Here's my little part.

In Case of Emergency, Think ICE

In response to the recent terrorist attacks in London and elsewhere,
the ICE (In Case of Emergency) campaign is gaining momentum around the
world.

ICE encourages people to enter an emergency contact phone number in
their mobile phone memory and label it ICE.

Originally established as a nationwide campaign in the United Kingdom,
ICE allowed paramedics or police to easily access contact information
for a designated relative/next-of-kin in an emergency situation.

The idea is the brainchild of paramedic, Bob Brotchie.  "I was
reflecting on some of the calls I've attended at the roadside where I
had to look through the mobile phone contacts struggling for
information on a shocked or injured person," said Bob.  The idea for
ICE was born.

"Almost everyone carries a mobile phone now, and with ICE we know
immediately who to contact and what number to ring. The person [ICE
contact] may even know of the [the injured person's] medical history."

By adopting the ICE advice, your mobile could help rescue workers
quickly contact a friend or relative, vital in a life or death
situation. It takes only a few seconds to do, and it could easily help
save your life. Why not put ICE in your phone now?

For more than one contact name, use ICE1, ICE2, ICE3, etc.

Always?

Jesus always "lifted his eyes toward heaven" when he prayed, so why do
we always bow our heads and close our eyes?
Roy H. Williams

Help yourself?

"Three quarters of Americans believe the Bible teaches that 'God helps
those who help themselves.' That is, three out of four Americans
believe that this uber-American idea, a notion at the core of our
current individualist politics and culture, which was in fact uttered
by Ben Franklin, actually appears in Holy Scripture. The thing is, not
only is Franklin's wisdom not biblical; it's counter-biblical. Few
ideas could be further from the gospel message, with its radical
summons to love of neighbor."

- Author Bill McKibben, in his Harper's magazine essay, "The Christian
Paradox"

Source: Harper's Magazine

Naturally

If your ears see,
And eyes hear,
Not a doubt you’ll cherish
How naturally the rain drips
From the eaves!

- Daito Kokushi

Vigil in Crawford

We are not hearing much on the nightly news about the president going for a bike ride and getting on with his life when he could just as easily put this story to rest by visiting with Cindy Sheehan.

Can't he ride his bike down to the mail box at the roadside?
Here

When Patriotism Fails

With a headline like 'When Patriotism Fails'
we may be expecting an argument; a debate.
I don't have one right now.

I do like the way the long 'A' sounds in the phrase.

There might be a time when such a thing happens.
I like that you might ..... consider it, too.

Just a thought.

light, sweet crude links

this BBC link

naturally remote

My hut settled among neighbors,
I ignore the noise of horses and carts.
You ask how I get along—
My mind remains wide,
So my place is naturally remote.

- Tao Yuan Ming ( 365–427)

Of all the things

Of all the things
I can choose to say,
why this?