Adventures in $40 eyeglasses

Well, this looks interesting.
No pun intended.

http://tinyurl.com/yts7hj

Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products

_____________________________________

Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What's at Stake
for American Power by Mark Schapiro

The comestics industry exempted itself from oversight in the 30's
when the FDA opened for business.
Opened for business. Isn't that cute?

And so, among other things, there's lead in lipstick.

He covers the toy industry and electronics as well. Plenty of heavy
metals and carcinogens in electronics manufacture. Cadmium, Chromium,
Mercury and Lead. They are reasonably safe while we are using them.
When they break down they get into the bloodstream and DNA.

Apparently the European Union has been watching manufacturers and
bringing legislation that ensures better quality products for its
citizens. How? Well, they comprise a bigger marketplace than the good
old US of A. And the governments provide healthcare. It's just how
the numbers add up.

It was a fascinating interview on Fresh Air. I think the book will be
a great peek under the covers of the free market system that keeps us
glowing warm.

The book is not yet in the Milwaukee Public Library system.

Dear Santa ...

Verandananda

When death comes to find you, may it find you alive.

- African proverb
__________________

Perhaps you think you did not make the world, but came unwillingly to
what was made already, hardly waiting for your thoughts to give it
meaning. Yet in truth you found exactly what you looked for when you
came. There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies
your ultimate release. Change but your mind on what you want to see,
and all the world must change accordingly.
courseinmiracles.com/ ... /lesson132.htm

__________________

The mind of a Wayfarer is plain and direct, without artificiality.
There is no rejection and no attachment, no deceptive wandering mind.
At all times seeing and hearing are normal. There are no further
details. One does not, furthermore, close the eyes or shut the ears;
as long as feelings do not stick to things, that will do.

- Kuei-Shan (771-854)
__________________

When you are old, you become impatient with the way in which the
young applaud the most insignificant improvements - the invention of
some new valve or sprocket - while remaining heedless of the world's
barbarism.
Julian Barnes - Flaubert's Parrot

__________________

If you know that everything comes from the mind, don't become
attached. Once attached, you're unaware. But once you see your own
nature, the entire Canon becomes so much prose. It's thousands of
sutras and shastras only amount to a clear mind. Understanding comes
in midsentence. What good are doctrines?
- Bodhidharma (d. 533)
__________________

"When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left, I buy
food and clothes."
-- Desiderius Erasmus
__________________

Little progress can be made by merely attempting to repress what is
evil; our great hope lies in developing what is good.
-- Calvin Coolidge

__________________

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is
that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our Light, not our
Darkness, that most frightens us.
Marianne Williamson, Return to Love

__________________

Just as a man shudders with horror when he steps upon a serpent, but
laughs when he looks down and sees that it is only a rope, so I
discovered one day what I was calling "I" cannot be found, and all
fear and anxiety vanished with my mistake.

The Buddha
__________________

You may have a fresh start at any moment you choose, for this thing
we call failure is not the falling down, but the staying down.
—Mary Pickford, actress
__________________

Hate is too great a burden to bear. It injures the hater more than it
injures the hated.
- Coretta Scott King
__________________

The sooner we use up all the oil, the sooner we can stop caring about
the Middle East and global warming, and move on to a cleaner, safer,
alternative.
So, please: guzzle gas. For the children.

Ayn Marx

__________________

"No question that the enemy has tried to spread sectarian violence.
They use violence as a tool to do that."— George W. Bush, Washington,
D.C., 3/22/06

__________________

Fearful people are more dependent, more easily manipulated and
controlled, more susceptible to deceptively simple, strong, tough
measures and hard-line postures. ... They may accept and even welcome
repression if it promises to relieve their insecurities.
George Gerbner
__________________

The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems,
takes longer.
Edward R. Murrow

__________________

If you're not laughing by now you don't fully appreciate the situation.

Summer reading - 2006

Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond.

Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell

The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell

Freakonomics, by Steven D. Levitt

Buddha's Nature, by Wes Nisker

The End of Suffering, by Russell Targ

In Persuasion Nation, by George Saunders

________________

Yes, I am digging through the files.
Things may appear out of order.
I am looking for some poems to read
while a drummer drums. How very beat.

Smoothie Recipe

Frozen cherries,
banana,
orange juice,
chocolate protein powder.
Mix. Drink.
Yum.

Two Recent Poems

Beautiful. Betty.

After some time of waiting,
reading about writing,
listening to the flute Muzak and
successfully ignoring my pounding
ear infection, the doctors assistant
brings a jasmine tea.
How. Beautiful. Betty.
_______________________

Beautiful. Betty. Addendum.

I should have read her the poem and then handed it to her. But, I
didn't. I told her it was a poem first and then handed it to her.
That was not in our best interest.
As she started to read it her head began to bob back and forth as if
hoping to catch a ride on a rhyme. Sadly, for her, it was a short
freight train of free verse and all the box car doors were closed.

David White 8/31/06

Curiosity Kills Cat

Curiosity kills cat. So we say. We do not speak of the cat dying.
There's never any question of old age or natural causes. Was it
suicide or accident? A mob hit? Black ops? Hoax? Urban myth?
Intentional dis- or mis-information? Or, is it just what some
authority figure says instead of shut up?

Cat or otherwise, do you have questions of your own?

MuZingers (Muse + Zinger)

If it's called propaganda when they do it,
what's it called when we do it?
___

Some say that life begins at conception.
When does free will begin?
___

A binary, or dualistic thought that seems to explain - everything is
love or a call for love.
___

Terrorism is war conducted by the poor.
War is terrorism conducted by the rich.
- Charles P. Mountford

Verandananda, Swami of the Front Porch Swing

sI'm twenty seven years
And always sought the Way.
Well, this morning we passed
Like strangers on the road.

- Kokuin (10th century)

___________________________

Spring has its hundred flowers,
Autumn has its many moons.
Summer has cool winds,
Winter its snow.
If useless thoughts do not
Cloud your mind,
Each day is the best of your life.

- Wu-Men-Hui-Kai (1183–1260)

Links

I think I will start a Label for links.

Here are some I found interesting.

woodtype.org

oilposter.org

censusscope.org

breathingearth.net

laughteryoga.org

Primordial Zoupe

Alphabet Soup
Conversion Kit
$9.95

you wonder
if you won't
some day be
in to a can
with your spoon
well in hand ...

you stand in a field
the wind blows
thee oats are
sowing you
isn't that wild?

____________

David L. White
1974

PharmAgra

- text for satire ad -

PharmAgra

"Cultivating chemical dependence the world over."

Helping businesses eat away the lining of your soul.

Washington Offices on Lobbyist Lane

___________________________________
(Our sincere apologies to serious believers.)

Only Oscars Options Lot

All that is and all that's not at
Only Oscars Options Lot

Fall Sale - Everything Goes

Is & Not , Both & Neither

Specializing in Plus Sizes
for the Extra-Wide Ideas

Shopping options available now
in the Warehouse Loft district.

Knews Reader FAQ

What does knewsletter mean? K?
What's in it? Why should I read it? What are you selling? What is
alphabet zoupe? Who cares? Etc.

Alphabet Zoupe indicates that we sustain ourselves with our language.
When we need to change our mind we just stir the soup and come up
with a new spoonful of noodles.
By Knews with a 'K', I mean that we know more than we give ourselves
credit for. Generally we act surprised over the myriad ways the human
condition expresses itself. Then of course we need to take a stance,
have a judgement, find an enemy, gather allies, gossip, & bomb.

What's in here is satirical, fake or hopefully funny advertisements.
New words, books read, but not reviewed. Websites. Thought provoking
curiosities, recipes & culinary discoveries, songs, poems, an
occasional political rant or ramble. Software bits. Rare
prescriptions from Dr. Dave, Doctor of Neology. And quotations edited
by another alter-ego: Verandananda, Swami of the Front Porch Swing.

I am not selling anything here. I do happily accept donations for
postage. I do survey the list from time to time to see if you want to
continue reading it.

____________________________________________________

I found this piece in the notes from a couple issues ago. Seems
pertinent. The survey refers to the printed issues that have been
available over the last 20 years.

We might be nearing the end of the printed issues. Not primarily
because of the cost of print and postage but because my curiosity
brings me to examine and question the value of opinions. I have
thought that what I know that I know is actually a surprisingly small
amount. I'll be back to fix this thought.

So Beautiful

Right now you're doing the laundry
feeling your favorite cotton shirt
made in China Sri Lanka Honduras

you look out at the sky - blue perhaps
gray drizzle - downpour - no matter

this moment opens
the mind grinds
the heart blossoms

you breathe in the air
hot electric air
fresh outdoor clothesline air
where ever air

this perfect moment so beautiful
while over there the drought is on fire
and on the other side the river water
is waist high in the kitchen and
smelling of sewage

there's mercury in my pan fish
melamine in the dog food
bright lead paint in the baby's mouth
methamphetamines, mood-elevators,
growth hormones and erectile dysfunction
meds all pissed into the groundwater
and pumped back out fresh as mountain spring
in to a mountain of plastic bottles

filter filter filter filter filter filter filter
filter seven times seven times seven
marketing so biblical they are fully absolved

we are in no mood now to list the great wonders
of the free market economy, for
and here's the take-away line
if the free maket economy were policing itself
we would be seeing more CEO's on wanted posters

( i can see myself drawing moustache's and glasses
and inking a cigarette on their thin lips and blacking
out a tooth. )

wearing a perfect cotton shirt
under a perfect sky
It is a perfect moment
for weeping uncontrollably

Gaming the End of Oil

WUWM - http://wuwm.com - had a couple very interesting stories on today about gaming the
end of oil.

http://thestory.org/ calls it Just a Game? and it aired 1 p.m. on 11/15/07.

Game simulations for the crunch. It's amazing what things happen. Community is redefined. It's not your people on speed dial but the people next door.

Yes, we could easily pay closer attention.

http://tinyurl.com/27jly7

http://worldwithoutoil.org/metahow.aspx

SquareAround.blogspot.com

Some square dancers consider that things might be improved with some
changes. Some of those changes might have to do with, or be enhanced
by, better general communications between the various parties that
make up the large group.

I'd had an idea a couple years ago about an umbrella brand for the
Wisconsin dancers. I got a nod to put some efforts into a web site.
And so, SquareDanceWisconsin.com was secured. There is no budget
beyond hosting the site. Attention is minimal. In thinking further
about it I decided to put some flyers out.

Clubs post their flyers at dances and some of them send their flyers
in to a quarterly publication. I've made a couple attempts at
educating the flyer-creators to email me their flyer. This results in
many file types coming in. And it means that readers need most
applications. I get Word docs, PDF's, Works, Publisher and Excel
spreadsheets.

I just decided to launch a blog so that I, and perhaps other
promoters, could email their pertinent text. It certainly seems like
a better idea than handling multiple file types all the time.

Away we go.

http://squarearound.blogspot.com/

Homework/Practice

Think the unimaginable.

Imagine the unthinkable.

This will prepare you for surprises.

Verandananda - Swami of the Front Porch Swing

Things are going to get a lot worse before they get worse.
~ Lily Tomlin

It is absolutely necessary for you to seek to obtain genuinely accurate insight and understanding. Then you can travel freely anywhere and avoid being confused by the common sort of spiritual charmer.
~ Lin Chi

Life is what we make it - always has been, always will be.
~ Grandma Moses

The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.
~ Carlos Castaneda

The chain which can be yanked is not the eternal chain.
~ G. Fitch

Crash Bang

Crash Bang

While posers and posters of propaganda
ping and pong and piss into the wind
I take a pleasant planetary perspective

warming first and cooling follows
glaciers come and go like clouds

you imagine all sorts of things
you see shapes you know

the sound of the big bang is just
God rebooting the universe

crash bang
crash bang
crash
bang

God is a monopoly and
it's open source
therefore, I tinker too

infinite possibilities tug
at quantum heart strings and

with a tip of the brim to
Walt Whitman and JJ Cale

I contain multitudes and
they call me the breeze

~~~~~
DL White - 2007

Front Row Seats

May you live in interesting times. - old chinese insult

Looks like we've got front row seats.

Climate Change - Peak Oil - Living in Empire
World War III - Colony Collapse Disorder
Falling Dollar - China Going Euro

more list to follow

Stock Crock Pot

"My grades are well." In the spring of 2007 there was a young college
student making a fuss at his college and in the media about having to
learn something he thinks he already knows.

The interviewer asked the upset college kid how he was doing over all in
school and the young fellow said: "My grades are well." Probably not so
much in English. Say good if your grades are good. God help us.

~ I knew that. ~

Problems with Duality and the One Right Way

Should or Shouldn't? Optimist or Pessimist?
Are these the only choices?

One answer? That's all?

If we had the single answer in our Christmas stocking
wouldn't we still like to see under the tree?

Questions. Hmmm, what if there were only one question?
How many answers would there be?

~ I knew that. ~

Writing a Poem

Writing a Poem

Mostly I cook and
she cleans up.
It works. We like it.

We play fight over
the rubber gloves
and she usually wins.

itching for something
different this morning
I put on the gloves.

And she says in her
Terrible Tiger Voice
"Hey. What are you doing?"

"I'm writing a poem, " I say,
and continue looking out the window.

And for those of you left wondering ...
See. Hear it. Here it is.

F-USA ( F - as in former)

More recent reading

Michael Ventura has a syndicated column called Letters at 3AM in the Austin Chronicle. His latest is a three part report he calls F-USA - dateline 2107: The decline and fall of the former United States of America. It's a fascinating look at what might have gone wrong, what might still go right - both - neither.

Wonderful perspective.

Part 1
http://tinyurl.com/yu5saf

Part 2
http://tinyurl.com/ysylcq

Part 3
http://tinyurl.com/342hvw

For all his columns you can go direct here: http://tinyurl.com/2c2ar4

Book Blips on Reader Radar

Some recent reading ....

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, by David Allen David Allen makes an important distinction to me about actions and projects. I've had Projects on my To Do list all this time. What's the next step is the question and Projects need to be broken down in to actionable steps. What is actually next?

He also talks about putting everything in to the In Basket, labeling everything and filing it. This action of getting the little nagging items off the top of your mind allows you to free up energy, reduce stress, and actually get something done.

He also says that in order to file everything one needs to do away with the Pendaflex folders. Well, that seems just too rude. My buddy George proposed an interim fix. Use box-bottom folders. Working on it.

A Call for Heresy
Why Dissent is Vital to Islam and America,
by Anour Majid

A Mind of its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives,
by Cordelia Fine

Naomi Wolf and Chalmers Johnson are writing about the end of western culture as we have known it. And Barbara Wendland, a lay methodist writer has a 3 part series on Empire at www.connectionsonline.org/
http://tinyurl.com/25nx4n

~ I knew that. ~

Illuminating the Void

I am rereading The End of Suffering by Russel Targ and JJ Hurtak. A couple points have become much clearer. We have heard some say that life is an illusion. Reality is a void. People, places, processes have no meaning. It would be more helpful to many of us if the end of that sentence were to read - except the meaning we give it. People, places, processes have no meaning except the meaning we bring to them.

The second idea helps me with the longstanding challenge of duality. We think we understand right and wrong. Yes and no. Good and evil. Black and white. Red and blue. I've been beginning to feel that both is more often the workable premise. Lilac, lavendar, purple, aubergine, and other combinations of red and blue are more often the case. Some of both.

Targ and Hurtak say that the second buddha proposed a forth pole of logic. Yes. No. Both. Neither. Getting to Both took a little work. Getting to Neither, while at first appearing to be a huge problem, becomes so much simpler when we realize that any answer to the question comes in the form of one abstraction or another. It is meaningless except for the meaning we bring to it. Neither is easy.

~ I knew that. ~

Not So Special

Did anyone ever tell you that each snowflake was unique? That every fingerprint is different? Stars in the sky? Motes in your eye? Grains of sand? Retinal scans?

Occasionally we say something is unique. And some of us notice when people misuse the word. Lately I am beginning to think that unique is not so special. Actually I am thinking that unique is fundamental.

Similarities are staggering of course. And we do not have time, energy or inclination to process every little thing. We group them and move on. It's a survival strategy plain and simple.

There is no thing the same as another. No moment, no process, no angle, no thought, no wish. The body rebuilds itself over time. Even our own history continues to be embellished. Unique? I don't think so. Not so special.

~ I knew that. ~

Break is over

Time to get back to it.
Took a little time to define the it of it.
Not like I was gone fishin' or anything.
Trying to look busy, or get a gig
is sometimes harder than doing the work.

Weather and TinyURL

Here's the local weather and an example of TinyURL.

http://tinyurl.com/ywqsku

This should keep things clickable.

And here's the actual url:
http://www.accuweather.com/us/wi/milwaukee/53221/city-weather-

forecast.asp?partner=apple&

Line breaks keep this from being useful.

And, yes, I know I can link it from within Blogger, but this post is
being sent via email.

Looks handy.