Et cetera.

Drawing the Line Between Security and Freedom of the Press

2012-02-12T12:28:00.000-08:00

?!?!:

The Obama administration "has brought more prosecutions against current or former government officials for providing classified information to the media than every previous administration combined." (Adam Liptak in "A High-Tech War on Leaks, The NYT 2/12/12)

(The point, which maybe is a bit overstated in some cases, but not others (how is one to judge in general statements?): journalists cannot protect their sources anymore. What this means to communication between good-intentioned officials and reporters. The difficult-to-escape digital trail. The danger of phones. The threat to rigorous investigative journalism...)

"Blogs vs. Term Papers"

2012-01-22T15:25:00.000-08:00

This is a good quote from the article:

“We’re at a crux right now of where we have to figure out as teachers what part of the old literacy is worth preserving,” says Andrea A. Lunsford, a professor of English at Stanford. “We’re trying to figure out how to preserve sustained, logical, carefully articulated arguments while engaging with the most exciting and promising new literacies.”

Foreign Babes in Beijing

2012-01-20T20:14:00.000-08:00

Anyone interested in China, read Foreign Babes in Beijing: Behind the Scenes of a New China. Published in 2005, it's smart, engaging, and filled with cultural insights that I am certain still hold relevance.

"Is Banking Bad?" - Kristof, Again with Opinion

2012-01-19T20:50:00.000-08:00

"Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance."

-Plato

"Too often we...enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."

-John F. Kennedy

It must be nice to have such clear-cut opinions. One of the best things about opinion is that it makes you think about your own.

A study on political rhetoric. Thanks, Mr. Kristof. This excerpt from his op-ed caught my attention:

"Among Americans ages 18 to 29, more had a negative view of capitalism than a positive view, the survey found. Those young Americans actually viewed socialism more positively than capitalism. In other words, America’s grasping capitalists are turning young Americans into socialists."

Fascinating. On first impression, I'd agree. But then I think about this somewhat discrediting op-ed (Kristof's test-score op-ed neglecting to mention the basic background of the study forming the opinion) and wonder if the first two quotes might apply in the above. (This opinion piece - confusingly placed in the "On Education" section - is much better than Kristof's.)

Back to this excerpt. Gotta wonder at the bravado in a statement like that. If Wikipedia and my high school Critical Thinking class serve me correctly, this might just be a fallacy in "Affirming the Consequent," "Denying the Antecedent" and "Fallacy of false cause." Not to say that he's completely or at all wrong, but that there sometimes seem to be cracks in his reasoning and solidity of opinion that could be filled out a bit more. Or maybe some cracks in that solidity of opinion would be good.

In another op-ed, he writes, "so many Americans have in mind a caricature of Europe as an effete, failed socialist system." This partially questions the notion that young people are so put-off by capitalism that they are unabashedly turning to socialism. (All while so-called socialist Europe is - wrongly, according to him, but nevertheless - perceived to be failing around us.) Then again this contradiction could point to how desperate young people are to find anything more successful but capitalism, "even" socialism, as seemingly-socialist Europe suffers.

But he doesn't point this out, so we're left wondering more about what overriding positives the young see in socialism, how a greater positive view of socialism and negative view of capitalism precisely infer causation, the validity of emphatically projecting the label "socialist" on someone who responded to a word in a survey, and that which is beyond the "grasping capitalists" ranging from healthcare to other welfare issues that cause associations with certain words. (Don't get me wrong, I love the idea that my generation might bring on the terrors of socialism.)

Which also brings up the question of capitalism and if it's epitomized by the big banks too big to fail - we supposedly "grasping"-ly need it, but want the benefits of life without it (socialism)? A young person can have a positive reaction to socialism and a grudgingly positive one towards capitalism, a positive reaction to socialism and a bitterly resigned one towards capitalism, a positive reaction to socialism and a completely negative one towards capitalism. Sometimes I don't like surveys because they minimize the thoughts of those behind them...I know all of those people. Disenchanted, but in a difficult and counter-intuitively long-term dalliance with capitalism, might be a good way to put it.

This is the time to remember Plato's quote and zip the lips, waiting for the future to show up.

Birds Among the Wires (and Close to the Moon)

2012-01-19T14:01:00.000-08:00

A good bucketlist item might be to go watch birds migrate sometime. I took these a week ago while bird-watching with an Android Samsung Infuse phone. The phone was surprisingly better color-wise and for sunset shots than mom's Nikon camera. No photoshopping. Though it's difficult to see some of the birds in the pictures.

"Vibram FiveFinger" Shoes

2012-01-16T01:11:00.000-08:00

A minimalist approach to an alternative exercise experience... Not sure if my toes are strengthening as advertised, but am hoping... I can vouch for a "good ground sensation" though. You can also (as recommended) throw them into the washer.

Givology

2012-01-16T01:00:00.000-08:00

Great idea on giving.

Bothersome Op-Ed on Good Teachers

2012-01-13T00:03:00.000-08:00

I have a few issues with this seemingly good op-ed.

First, define "an excellent teacher." Here is the actual study. Kristoff completely ignores detailing this definition in his argument for more refined teacher-hunting. I'm all for excellent teachers, just don't hide the fact that the study was all about test scores in getting to the argument.

(TEST SCORES?!?!?!?!?!)

Second, it's a bit pitiful appealing to economic outcome when common sense has always told us of the importance of "good" teachers. Hopefully studies that connect test scores with other qualities in a teacher emphasize teachers' importance, or studies that connect other teacher qualities with good "outcomes" (not limited to money made in the lifespan, for goodness sake) will be brought to light and/or conducted. Maybe the study is misrepresented here. But it remains bothersome.

Elections

2012-01-10T23:41:00.002-08:00

Some thoughts from Jon Walker (Nov. 2011):

"The American people are now very favorably inclined towards the idea of an independent presidential candidate challenging both Barack Obama and the eventual Republican nominee next year. According to a new Washington Post/ABC News poll an overwhelming 61 percent favor the idea of such a challenge, while only 32 percent hold an unfavorable opinion of a possible independent run ... The reason we face the choice of only a Democrat or a Republican in almost every election is that the two parties have worked together to rig the election laws to favor either of these parties, or both, but not others. The two parties worked together to reduce choice so they only need to be slightly less worse than each other to win an election."

Not sure about the working together bit, but it does make one wonder. I get the sense that people enter the primaries and general elections with the groupthink mentality of having their vote count - in the sense that the vote will only count if voting for a major candidate. That needs to change.

Documentary Heaven

2012-01-05T21:08:00.001-08:00

This is a wonderful site full of free documentaries to watch.

Some homeless won't leave illegal camp

2011-12-28T14:31:00.000-08:00

Here is the article. I do not see why the police cannot focus on preventing crime or other more worthwhile activities compared to eviction, making other people's lives more difficult for seemingly little reason except that it is the law. (What is the purpose of the law? Not very relevant to this case I think. So it needs to be changed or something needs to be done so that such a question doesn't even need to be asked in this case.) The homeless are part of the public interest, and I would think that the police work in the public's interests unless that means privileged folk who want to go on a walk along the river.

Going back to that question of something preventative needs doing, I don't see why campsites cannot be SET UP for the homeless, as one commenter mentioned below the article. From the article: "They asked me what I'm going to do," said "Brother" Eli, a camp elder. "I said 'I don't have anywhere to go.' " If properly executed by city officials - including safety and health measures - it could be beneficial for the homeless, and legal if such measures were taken and thus a help to redirecting police energy to more important work. Land and room for community development (and leadership and sustainability) needs to become a priority.

Home-A Movie

2011-12-26T09:16:00.000-08:00

Watch this free movie, called Home. (Who knew YouTube had free movies...!)

Breathtakingly beautiful imagery.

Even if you don't believe in its core ideas.

"It's too late to be a pessimist."

From the YouTube website:

We are living in exceptional times. Scientists tell us that we have 10 years to change the way we live, avert the depletion of natural resources and the catastrophic evolution of the Earth's climate.

The stakes are high for us and our children. Everyone should take part in the effort, and HOME has been conceived to take a message of mobilization out to every human being.

For this purpose, HOME needs to be free. A patron, the PPR Group, made this possible. EuropaCorp, the distributor, also pledged not to make any profit because Home is a non-profit film.

HOME has been made for you : share it! And act for the planet.

Yann Arthus-Bertrand

HOME official website
http://www.home-2009.com

PPR is proud to support HOME
http://www.ppr.com

HOME is a carbon offset movie
http://www.actioncarbone.org

More information about the Planet
http://www.goodplanet.info

The Color Of Pomegranates

2011-12-12T14:12:00.000-08:00

Must, MUST see this, The Color Of Pomegranates. It looks so revolutionary, so epic!!!

"Are All Bloggers Journalists?"

2011-12-12T08:21:00.000-08:00

Read about this recent case where a blogger was sued.

This is more detailed.

Very relevant debate.

I believe in a clear differentiation between bloggers and journalists, though this millions-dollar punishment seems extreme.

Bloggers, even if they have inside information, should pass this information on to other sources like newspapers rather than hurry to be the "first" to write and spread such information at risk of inaccuracy, for personal protection, and to emphasize newspapers as the most objective sources. This creates a more professional reliability because of that objectivity, something that is not typically associated with blogs. Blogs are a means of expression, and should never be used to convey information misleadingly, but subjectivity is for many at the heart of the blogging culture, and this in itself implies a necessary differentiation.

Sexual Education

2011-11-27T19:25:00.000-08:00

What a wonderful article on sexual education! It's a good length. Here are some excerpts, but I hope they would point to reading the entire article!

Friends’ Central, a Quaker prep school that prides itself on both its academic rigor and its ethic of social responsibility, is tucked away in the bucolic hills of suburban Philadelphia. Vernacchio joined the school’s English department in 1998, and when, three years later, he asked to start Sexuality and Society, administrators were delighted. “He teaches at the very highest level,” said David Felsen, who in June retired as headmaster of the school after 23 years. Because Vernacchio was such a gifted instructor, Felsen said, he didn’t worry about parents’ reactions. And in fact, Vernacchio says that no one has ever complained or even voiced reservations about something he discussed in class.

Early in the year, Vernacchio gives an assignment asking students to interview a parent about how he or she learned about sex, and the father said his son handled it with aplomb: “He was very natural, and I’m the one thinking, This is embarrassing. He was a lot more mature about the conversation than I was.”

The lessons that tend to raise eyebrows outside the school, according to Vernacchio, are a medical research video he shows of a woman ejaculating — students are allowed to excuse themselves if they prefer not to watch — and a couple of dozen up-close photographs of vulvas and penises. The photos, Vernacchio said, are intended to show his charges the broad range of what’s out there. “It’s really a process of desensitizing them to what real genitals look like so they’ll be less freaked out by their own and, one day, their partner’s,” he said. What’s interesting, he added, is that both the boys and girls receive the photographs of the penises rather placidly but often insist that the vulvas don’t look “normal.” “They have no point of reference for what a normal, healthy vulva looks like, even their own,” Vernacchio said. The female student-council vice president agreed: “When we did the biology unit, I probably would’ve been able to label just as many of the boys’ body parts as the girls’, which is sad. I mean, you should know about the names of your own body.”

The attention paid to S.T.I.’s, pregnancy, rape and discrimination based on sexual orientation, while understandable, comes at a cost, he says. “We’re worrying about which bathrooms transgender students should use while teens are worrying whether they should shave all the way or leave a landing strip,” he said. “They’re worrying if someone special will find them sexually attractive, whether they will be able to do it as well as porn, whether others have the same kind of sexual feelings they do.”

“We don’t tell them: ‘Look, there are different shapes of condoms. Get sampler packs, experiment.’ That would be entering pleasure into the conversation, and we don’t want that.”

[this last comment is sarcastic if you didn't catch that...]

Another Thought Or Two About Poetry

2011-11-26T20:17:00.000-08:00

It seems that this question of interest also brings up a question of sustained interest.

Poetry seems to be characterized by an intensity of thought in every word and every relationship between every word, line, and poem.

So then how can sustained interest reach maximum excellence? Is it humanely possible to take in and absorb something so intensified? Or is it more about a digestion of words and tangential thoughts, that which is related to the experience of poetry? Is it a process of digestion rather than consumption?

Yes. One must digest poetry, not consume it. Then maybe there is no such thing as sustained interest in poetry, but sustained interest in the delights of digestion, the relatively more constant intensity of discovery rather than the intensified impact of consumption...

Bluets by Maggie Nelson

2011-11-26T19:45:00.000-08:00

I loved it. Good introduction book to more modern poetry. Here is some of what I wrote in a reaction paper for poetry class...

Nelson approaches this work with her love of the color blue. Beginning with blue leads to discussion of a multitude of other topics, many seemingly unrelated yet somehow threaded together. By combining her many “bluets” she constructs her own dictionary definitions of the word, placing it in a new light with the various connotations she plays with. Focusing on one thing with such intensity seems to illuminate that which surrounds it, while also reflecting on itself on a deeper level than if there were not one unifying idea. She is explicit that her purpose is not to equate blue or any color with the standard expectations or general ideas that might be associated with it – a black mast on a ship signifying something ill, for example – but (to put it simply) that there is more complexity and interest beyond such simplifications.

I get a sense that her love for blue seems to draw people to her and promote her curiosity and interest in the world as related to blue and beyond. She manages to link this curiosity and the people around her together. (I think this is true for writers in general. A general passion for wanting to find something to write about – whether it is for a specific subject or not – seems to promote my curiosity about everything.) For example, on page 9, she speaks of God and blue in her friend’s eyes consecutively, implying a parallel nature between the two, where God is perhaps in her friend. She also mentions that the blue collage “you” sent her made her hopeful, but not because it was blue.

By writing about blue, she seems to write herself beyond the mental struggles she might have about writing about her relationship, and finally end up in a place where she does in fact write about it, and in a more beautiful place than she would have in the first place probably. Often blue is associated with sex, the divine/religion, intense emotion (loneliness, hope, depression, et cetera) and vision, and could be an indirect approach and metaphor for her relationship with the “you” she addresses consistently, but not frequently, throughout the work.

Thought About Poetry

2011-11-26T19:40:00.001-08:00

(This blog is about a memory device by now.) Poetry seems to be about as deep as one wants to make it, which is to say it can be extraordinarily astonishing in the discoveries one can make over a lifetime, or extraordinarily dull if perused without actual interest. (Curiosity?) (Investment?)

Lonely Guinea Pigs

2011-11-08T20:59:00.000-08:00

I had a nightmare about having to cut up a pig (and I am a vegetarian). This is not about pigs, but a much smaller creature, the guinea pig:

"Like San Francisco and other European countries, Switzerland has been tightening its animal-welfare laws, and because guinea pigs are prone to loneliness, it's now illegal to own just one. This leaves you in a tight spot if you own two guinea pigs and one dies. You could buy a new one, but then, when the next guinea pig died? You might get stuck buying guinea pigs for the rest of your life. Fortunately, a market-driven solution has emerged. Priska Kung of Hadlikon, a town just outside of Zurich, now rents guinea pigs - a castrated male goes for about $30 - for as long as you need them." - Jacob Goldstein

Carnegie Surpassed

2011-11-07T15:11:00.001-08:00

Someone has surpassed Carnegie...in...libraries! Read this!

Anoesis

2011-10-24T11:24:00.001-07:00

Word of the Day for Monday, October 24, 2011

anoesis \an-oh-EE-sis\, noun:

A state of mind consisting of pure sensation or emotion without cognitive content.

Churkey

2011-10-02T20:17:00.000-07:00

Churkey

Turkey's neck, chicken's body.

This relates to my interest in chickens.

College

2011-09-30T20:54:00.000-07:00

A few surprising academic-related realizations and notes on my classes:

Poetry is more meaningful to me than fiction at the moment, as I sometimes find fiction too distant. At times contemporary fiction can seem too sarcastic, not sincere, very distant - of course the same can be said of much prose and poetry. I used to never consider reading a book of poetry because of its supposed inaccessibility. Yes, sometimes it still seems inaccessible. But more and more beautiful. Maybe beauty makes things more accessible? A beautiful thought or line or observation cannot be denied. Think of how many words there are in the world, and how much it took to pull all those words together!!! This is what makes sentences and phrases beings, creatures, living...

I love having confidence in writing Chinese characters. Sometimes it is intensely painful to memorize, and other times it is surprisingly easy - still don't know why. You sit for several hours staring and trying to practice, then realize SHIT I just wasted so much time not focusing and spent too little time on trying to become a fast learner. Or that you know how to write the character but have no idea what it means in English. And then you try to learn the English. (And the SHIT part happens again.)

Writing workshop is fun (for me). You don't speak as the writer, for the most part, as you don't want to be stuck in the position of trying to defend your work or stupidly deny compliments. And it is incredibly useful. It's also very discouraging afterwords when you're sitting at your computer trying to get up the energy to approach (and maybe even start) that dreaded but terribly necessary editing.

I'm learning about engineering concepts in my biology class, on the "architecture" of organisms - Biomechanics, basically. It is a splendid thing to find something that you never would have thought existed. The word "interdisciplinary" is starting to have a bit of a contemporary-arrogant ring to it for me (don't know why), but it's really all I care about in college. It's important to delve into a subject deeply and fully, but it's also good to make the connections and realize that academics is an ecosystem.

Poetry was a major part of Japanese courtier life. (This is from my Women's Words/Comparative Literature class.) Witty poetry, and writing by women! Such a difference between the days of studying Shakespeare! And such a necessary one, for all students at some point! Much of the poems written down involve nature and love. Brilliant on-the-spot poetry established prestige for these people of the court. Here is a poem by Ono no Komachi, I think translated by my professor:

The hue of the blossom

Has faded

To no avail

As I gaze out

At the long rain of years

Ono no Komachi was a famed poet and there are many legends about her as a lover. It is difficult to describe the number of ways this poem is brilliant, mostly because of the basic need to understand the cultural context and to know a bit about the language. For example, some words can mean several things, certain words invoke certain ideas or imagery (blossoms always invoke Spring), and the outside landscape reflects and has a bond with the landscape of the human heart (or something to that effect, according to my professor).

Ephemerality - impermanence, a core idea of Buddhism -is referenced in the fading and the effect of long years of rain, gazing out refers to longing (pivotal to love poetry, where often the women are the ones waiting), and the long rain of years can refer to the process of waiting and thus the giving up of waiting (put the faded blossom and long rain together, and you can see what rains do to blossoms and love, in time).

This is another one of those really surprising things that everyone should know about the Japanese, since people don't know much beyond anime...Also that they used Chinese characters for a long time...still use some...but that's another topic...

List of Everyday Items in the Village

2011-09-30T09:00:00.000-07:00

This might be of interest to future travelers/teachers in rural areas (what I carried every day to school in my little REI backpack, a miracle bag that holds way more than it appears to hold):

Random personal items:

mosquito spray

mosquito bite itch relief bottle (looks like a miniature green beer bottle)

camera

pen

flashlight

money

passport

umbrella

China Mobile phone

personal notebook

chapstick

mini tape

packet of tissues (essential for the bathroom)

Teaching Supplies:

kid scissors (handy at unexpected times)

color pencils and pens (drawing activities)

spiral notebook with class lesson plans (always - i.e. dictation)

packet of 10 lead pencils (drawing or if they needed a utensil for the day)

mini water bottle from a train ride (throat can get sore and the day can be hot)

fold-up fan (gift from teaching partner, very useful in the hot weather)

blow-up ball (sometimes)

soft football (sometimes)

mini music player (sometimes, unless my teaching partner had his laptop)

prepared index cards (if relevant to the day's lesson plan)

MY OLD COLLECTION OF STICKERS-they loved them (always - for those who participate/are on the winning team in a competition)

Food

2011-09-28T09:00:00.000-07:00

We ate a delicious egg dish, a very simple one with the consistency (but better) of tofu. You use about half water, half eggs (so about 5 eggs would make a good amount, with that amount in water). Add salt and ginger. Stir. Either microwave for about 5 minutes or steam (not sure how or how long so I used a microwave which my host family didn't have). And eat. Mine actually tasted disgusting compared to theirs', so I think it takes some experimentation. But it was my favorite and it's worth the effort.

Other tasty dishes:

Pumpkin stems

Cauliflower

Sweet pea soup

Eggplant

Corn-on-the-cob

Sweet white bread

Egg/tomato soup

Noodles with fried egg

Bok choy and other greens I couldn't identify

One green that looked like it had gooey stuff mixed in, but was actually a part of the plant

Observation 18: Contacts

2011-09-24T05:17:00.000-07:00

Some girls wear contacts to make their eyes (irises, specifically) look bigger. There are contacts with different colors, and my living partner had ones that were gray, and emphasized her brown eyes. They were a bit hard to get used to...

Useful Phrase

2011-09-22T09:00:00.000-07:00

"I was adopted." This is a phrase I used a lot, because it explained indirectly why I looked Chinese and said I was American, and I also clearly spoke English better than Chinese. I think there was a cultural difference in that many people refused to accept that I called myself American, as someone who looks Chinese to them is, by blood, Chinese.

我是被收养的

Wǒ shì bèi shōuyǎng de.

Wǒ - I

shì...de (this is a grammatical structure) - was

bèi shōuyǎng de (adjective) - adopted

Hopefully I explained it right and I was saying the correct thing! (For awhile I didn't say "shì" until my living partner corrected me.)

Observation 17: Mosquitoes

2011-09-20T05:13:00.000-07:00

TONS of mosquitoes. They ate my feet and my ankles mostly. I think I developed an immunity to the red bump that forms, because by the end I was just itching, but not forming any kind of rash. To aid the feet: put socks on. If possible, shoes as well. The heat and pressure performs miracles and the bites don't itch as much. I don't like killing anything, which was a problem, so my living partner ended up being the one who killed the mosquitoes. I just guided them out of the mosquito net tent. I accidentally killed one guiding it out of the tent though.

Observation 16: Peanuts

2011-09-18T09:02:00.000-07:00

Rice wasn't the only thing they grew. Peanuts were a major crop in the area. So peanuts for a snack (hard and roasted with salt, out of the shell, or soft and boiled with salt, still in the shell) and peanut oil for cooking (yay, not usually pig fat or other kinds of oils!) were common. Guess what part of a plant the peanut is. (No, they do not grow on trees!)

Observation 15: Chickens

2011-09-16T09:00:00.000-07:00

I LOVE chickens! There were so many!!!!!

Observation 14: Ages

2011-09-12T09:00:00.001-07:00

At morning market I noticed that almost everyone was either very old or very young. That's because everyone who can goes into the cities (Guangzhou most likely) to look for work. It almost seemed like a town of babies and the elderly. (Except of course there were the kids we were teaching who could be up to eighteen, though that is rare).

Observation 13: Popular Guys in Chinese Ads?

2011-09-10T09:00:00.000-07:00

I've noticed Nicolas Cage and George Clooney on billboard ads, which really amused me for some reason but I don't know why... Kobe Bryant is also huge and I kept seeing him in a television ad with children promising he'd teach them how to play basketball.

Observation 12: Double-dipping

2011-09-08T09:00:00.002-07:00

It's okay with chopsticks! You do it all the time! You share dishes in the center of the table, and often help yourself with your personal chopsticks.

Observation 11: Pizza Hut

2011-09-06T09:00:00.001-07:00

Pizza Hut is unbelievably fancy in China. I went in there meaning to grab a quick bite to eat, but they had the fancy menus, nice tables, decoration, lighting, and everything. They completely reinvented themselves there! It's a fancy restaurant chain there...

Observation 10: Karaoke

2011-09-04T09:00:00.002-07:00

Karaoke is HUGE in China. It's very cheap, usually less than $10 US. But some have a very poor selection of American songs/artists. My theory is that a lot of American songs are just not very singable (Think Lady Gaga.), and people who grew up knowing Chinese, because of the tones in Mandarin and Cantonese and dialects, have a better ear for singing. (Maybe. It's like the theory that Chinese-speaking people grew up knowing Chinese numbers which are so short, and this can aid quick in-the-head mathematics skills - who knows.)

Popular American singers in China include Lady Gaga ("Oh my Lady Gaga!" is the phrase there!), Justin Bieber, Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey, and the Backstreet Boys. Yet a lot of American songs that are not at all popular in America are well-known in China and thought to be popular in America as well though they are not. Like "God is a Girl" and "The Day You Went Away" (the latter of which I taught the English version to my classes).

Observation 9: Eating rice

2011-09-02T09:32:00.000-07:00

Rice is more common in the south, and noodles more common up north. You eat rice with other food though, not by itself. (Unless you are me and like rice by itself, which can be seen as strange.)

Buddhism

2011-09-01T20:47:00.000-07:00

I cannot bring myself to kill mosquitoes (which, in part, draws me to explore Buddhism and Jainism), so in China - where there are a lot of mosquitoes - my living partner (the Nanjing student I shared a bed with) would always be the one killing them.

Below is a fun video (the title of which is awfully misleading). I dislike that Bill Moyer/others sort of suggests that not killing mosquitoes is a radical and unnecessary extension of environmentalism. While both are based on empathy and respect, I believe that the consciousness in not killing a mosquito more closely and specifically represents the Buddhist way of living a peaceful life. It is not an extreme tangent of the more general save-the-environment attitude - which of course is a good attitude to have, but one that seems somehow less conscious if it does not embrace all of life...and so we must have the consciousness of not killing a mosquito in the same way we approach the environment as a whole, applying the very basic principal of recognizing a small being to recognizing the whole being of the earth and all around...and so environmentalism could in fact be seen as an extension of our attention to a little mosquito and all other little and large lives.

I lately have loved to learn about the Buddha's original teachings and have compiled a list of various things/characteristics I now associate with Buddhism. I am typing this up having, in the last few weeks, heard a talk introducing Buddhism at the local temple, read the chapter on Buddhism in Huston Smith's "The Illustrated World's Religions," and seen PBS's two-hour documentary "The Buddha."

-the miracle of life - there need not be any other miracle greater (i.e. magic, etc)

-living in the moment

-being aware

-compassion for all creatures (bugs included)

-interconnectedness

-impermanence

-mindfulness of all

-reason/rationality/freedom to debate (the Buddha wanted followers not to blindly follow, but experiment for themselves and challenge things they disagreed with)

-lack of ritual (original Buddhism)

-generosity

-wisdom

-having humor

-humbleness

-the path, not the end

-hopefulness (the end of suffering* is possible, in recognizing and addressing the cause of suffering, desire*)

*suffering = along the lines of dissatisfaction

*desire = many forms, and not necessarily bad, like the desire to attain enlightenment; the kind that causes harm is what we want to end

(these are two words that are often misconstrued and taken too literally in the simplistic teaching of the basic Four Noble Truths; the words turned me off at first)

Observation 8: Watermelon

2011-08-30T09:00:00.001-07:00

Eating watermelon is common as a snack or dessert. Spitting seeds (and bones and other unwanted food pieces) on the table or the ground (inside) is also a common practice. The watermelon there is delicious, and there are two kinds that I saw, the typical light green/patterned western kind and a darker/non-patterned kind.

Observation 7: Cell Phone Coverage

2011-08-28T09:00:00.001-07:00

Cell phone coverage from a Chinese phone company is virtually guaranteed, including rural areas. A major provider is China Mobile. My host family, to make a living, ran a China Telecom store, had a small internet cafe (a small closet-like room with three computers), and had a peanut farm.

A Sheet Of Paper

2011-08-26T09:00:00.001-07:00

"If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in a sheet of paper. Without a cloud there will be no water; without water the trees cannot grow; and without trees, you cannot make paper. So the cloud is in the paper. The existence of the page is dependent on the existence of a cloud. Paper and cloud are so close. Let us think of other things, like sunshine. Sunshine is very important because the forest cannot grow without sunshine, and we as humans cannot grow without sunshine. So the logger needs sunshine in order to cut the tree, and the tree needs sunshine in order to be a tree. Therefore, you can see sunshine in the sheet of paper. And if you look more deeply, with the eyes of a bodhisattva, with the eyes of those who are awake, you see not only the cloud and the sunshine in it, but that everything is here, the wheat that became the bread for the logger to eat, the logger's father- everything is in the sheet of paper. . . .This paper is empty of an independent self. Empty, in this sense, means that the paper is full of everything, the entire cosmos. The presence of a tiny sheet of paper proves the presence of the whole cosmos."

-Thich Nhat Hanh

Observation 6: Red Bean...

2011-08-26T09:00:00.000-07:00

There are red bean popsicles, red bean McFlurries from McDonalds, red bean buns, and probably a lot more things with red beans in them.

Stories and Power

2011-08-25T09:00:00.000-07:00

"I believe stories have this power--they enter us, they transport us, they change things inside of us invisibly, so minutely, that sometimes we're not even aware that we come out of a great book as a different person from the person we were when we began reading it." -Julia Alvarez

(I finished reading Before We Were Free, by Julia Alvarez, and saw this quote in the "About the Author" description. Powerful book.)

The Art of Happiness

2011-08-24T09:00:00.000-07:00

Thich Nhat Hanh is an inspiring writer and Vietnamese Zen master, scholar, author, poet, and peace activist. I am quoting him from the Buddhadharma (Fall 2011) below:

"We have to learn the art of creating happiness." (29)

"Mindfulness is the paintbrush in the art of happiness." (30)

(Lately I have enjoyed reading about the original teachings of Buddhism. By original, I mean to imply that I ignore the many rituals/explanations/traditions associated with all religions including Buddhism; original Buddhism sounds like it was more simple and not a religion, but more along the lines of a set of thoughts about the world and life...which attracts me to what I think of as original Buddhism...)

Observation 5: Cooties

2011-08-23T09:23:00.001-07:00

Girls and boys do not sit next to one another willingly, and it was very common for my students (junior high age) to stand up and protest sitting next to the opposite gender. When we played "Telephone" they sometimes willingly changed seats though, for strategy. (They LOVED "Telephone.")

48 Photos

2011-08-23T09:00:00.000-07:00

A link to some photos thanks to my mom and FCC.

"China, now the second-largest economy in the world, is a vast and diverse country that is nearly impossible to sum up in a single photo essay. But here is an attempt -- a recent photographic look across the nation. The ruling Communist Party is gearing up for its 90th anniversary. Massive growth and construction continue to raise environmental concerns. And three years later, residents of Sichuan are still recovering from the May 2008 earthquake that killed more than 85,000. This collection is only a small glimpse of events in China over the past month."

Trungpa

2011-08-22T17:02:00.000-07:00

"You have never been away from yourself for even a minute. You know yourself so well. Therefore, you are the best judge of yourself." Because we know our selves better than anyone else, taking the time and space to hear our own careful and well-considered praise and criticism is highly beneficial. That is what will be most accurate." (Buddhadharma, Spring 2011, page 59)

Observation 4: Babies

2011-08-19T09:00:00.000-07:00

Babies in China, and toddlers, have holes/slits in their pants to make it easier to pee.

Observation 3: Drinks

2011-08-18T09:00:00.000-07:00

Milk is uncommon and never a drink at meals, although you can buy it. Hot tea, not juice or water, is more common even though it is not cold (no bacteria, boiled) - although in the country it was not common to be offered tea during a meal. (And the women rarely drank it.)

There is a delicious peanut-flavored milk (peanuts are very big in the country, and many of our host families had peanut farms which we picked - guess what part of the plant it's from!). Of the many things I think should be brought to America from China (red bean popsicles and McFlurries, spitting seeds/bones/etc. on the table, karaoke, bamboo forests), I think peanut-flavored milk is one of them. (This is not common, but I feel like mentioning it since it tasted good and is one of those things one never thinks to think about being in existence.)

Beer is common for guests like westerners like us, though not on a daily basis in the villages because that would have been a burden. Rice wine is also. Disgustingly alcoholic. Ganbei-ing is very important, especially at the beginning of the meal. ESPECIALLY before doing business. (Unlucky American program director!) As a guest it is important to refuse but also give in after a bit, and if you drink at one home it's impolite to refuse at another's. As a female I was able to get away with not drinking, as the men typically do it more I think. Making excuses like "the legal age..." and "I don't like it..." and "Only a little..." and "I feel sick..." don't work. I only tasted a bit of yummy 3% beer once, after the meal when the hosts weren't looking. (Otherwise, if they'd seen me drinking, would have pressured me to continue.) It is very difficult to impossible - without offending anybody, like another person who wants to make a toast - to stop drinking once you've started, which can of course be dangerous.

Another Blog

2011-08-16T18:15:00.000-07:00

This* is the blog of Wu Xiaofang, who returned to China this year. She is a wonderful writer and I am sure anyone interested in adoption or China, especially adoptive/adopted parents and children, will be interested in her journey. (I was not able to access the blog in China so didn't post about it sooner - sorry!)

*edit: I'm sorry, I don't think the author wants it publicly known unless requested because of spam or something so will not post unless I hear from her otherwise.

Peter Coyote - Awesome Quotes from an Interview for The Sun Magazine

2011-08-16T12:12:00.000-07:00

From The Sun Issue 426, June 2011

I really loved reading this interview (whilst in my mosquito net in China, so had time to catch up on old issues) and typed up some quotes that stood out to me:

"...I am still meditating every single day. Every single decision I make, I ask myself: Is this going to hurt people? Is this going to help? Is this going to move us all forward? The only difference is that now I am on the inside of the culture. I look just like everyone else. You can't tell the hippies from the bankers. I actually think that's a good thing." (6)

"One of the problems for the Diggers, as we tried to invent a world and act it out and make it real, was the fear that maybe the old world had already irrevocable altered you. Maybe it had trained your imagination, turned it into a mental pet." Maybe what you thought of as new and exciting was just a recycling of the possibilities you'd been given through your schooling. Drugs became a way to break that up, to move beyond the permissible and pursue authentic beliefs and feelings" (7)

"Hard drugs also teach you that there is no escaping your life: no matter how high you get, the drug wears off." (7)

"Once you wake up and see your own behavior clearly, it is a kind of wound, because it makes it impossible to reflexively think of yourself as a "good person." It has taught me to be very cautious. It has taught me that we all have within us the potential to do great damage to the world and to other people, and the only thing that saves us from doing it is our self-awareness." (7)

"Or some subset of the group dictates that you can't be in a committed relationship; you can only sleep with someone three times, and then you have to move on to another partner, because monogamy is bourgeois. There was no authority to say, "That's nuts!" so we had to talk over every issue as a group and hammer things out until we came to an agreement." (8)

"I realized that there is no conflict the U.S. is engaged in now, anywhere in the world, that is not blowback from some prior problem we failed to solve." (10)

"The way that we are systematically denied knowledge of the antecedents of events makes Americans sulky, ignorant, uninformed, and self-righteous, and it is killing us." (10)

"We are the richest, most powerful third-world country on the planet. We've got income disparity greater than Saudi Arabia's, we've got crumbling infrastructure. We've got uneducated children..." (11)

"We can't tell the Iranians not to have nukes while we have thousands." (11)

"Why does everything have to grow and get bigger and more profitable?" (12)

"I am a pessimist." (12)

"What, other than his wealth, makes Donald Trump, the deity of vulgarity, worth one column inch of newspaper?" (12)

Observation 2: Going to the Bathroom

2011-08-16T09:00:00.000-07:00

In the city in China, one must have a pack of tissues or bit of toilet paper on hand - or more than a bit depending on what's going to happen - when going to the restroom. Also, not all bathrooms (like at the train station) have doors, so an umbrella can be handy. (Or you can risk it like me, and bare your buttocks with bravery.) Also, it can be very smelly. Flushing doesn't always happen even if there is a flusher. Only one museum we went to had a western toilet, and most hostels had western toilets. Public ones are usually squat. If you think about it, squatting is much more sanitary and healthy in terms of the thighs.

Article on the "Han Han fever" and China Culture

2011-08-15T14:14:00.000-07:00

Just read The New Yorker article "The Han Dynasty: How far can a youth-culture idol tweak China's establishment?" by Evan Osnos (issue July 4, 2011, 50-59). It's fascinating, and hopefully non-subscribers can get access to the entire piece, somehow. Here's a quote of his about his father that really resonated with me (because of experience with and gossip about government officials):

"He didn't like the kind of life in which you have to drink every day and kiss your leader's asses." -Han Han

Han Han writes (blogging, books) and races cars, and is beloved by many people looking for justice in China. He wrote his first novel "in the back of the classroom, on his way to flunking seven courses" (51). Immensely popular, it was a "satire of education and authority, and written by a nobody" (51).

Also, he says: "We can't always use pandas and tea...What else do we have? Silk? The Great Wall? That isn't China" (57).

It is frustrating that so many homeland tours and typical tourist expeditions feature what is so irrelevant to modern China (NOT the Great Wall, Olympic stadium, eating Peking Duck, the opera, tea ceremonies - rather, karaoke, improv, bookstores, conversations, 19-hour train rides, gypsy cabs, regular street exploration), preferring to stick with these things for the majority of the time rather than what "might have been an adoptee's past" (villages, orphanage, et cetera).

Of course it's hard to get past the face Beijing has plastered itself with without traveling around China a bit. (It's a stark contrast to other cities, even the so-called contemporary Shanghai, from its convenient subway system to its polished signs and low-key development to its number of tourist destinations.) History and culture are good and great and all, but there comes a point when you realize that silk and pandas do not represent everything China has to offer (and do not at all reveal what China does not have to offer).

Documentary: The Invisible Red Thread

2011-08-15T11:48:00.000-07:00

This may be of interest to those connected to/in the adoption community. I do not believe in any kind of red thread (i.e. fate - so I dislike the title) but am passing on the word.* Broadcast and sales of the doc will begin this fall. Here are some links I was sent, "on behalf of a Montreal filmmaker who has a documentary set to premiere in the Documentaries of the World section of the Montreal World Film Festival.":

film website (their wordpress blog with lots of information)

the Youtube trailer (trailer)

the Montreal World Film Festival programming site (film description)

the company's site (not related to the film exactly)

Here is the Montreal World Film Festival's film description:

THE INVISIBLE RED THREAD

Vivian Lum, 15, is one of 100,000 girls who have been adopted worldwide since China opened its doors to international adoption in 1991. Raised as a typical Canadian teen, Vivian was always curious about her birth land, and has all the same longings and questions as most internationally adopted children. Together with her adoptive father, she returns to her birth city in China's southern Jiangxi Province, visits the orphanage where she spent the first six months of her life and also meets Shumin Zhu, a 14-year-old girl who was similarly abandoned as an infant but adopted by a local rural couple. Vivian and Shumin compare their lives and discover surprising similarities and differences.

Sounds interesting to me, especially since that's where I just went! (Jiangxi Province) Strange how I never once thought of how this could have been my kind of life while in that particular province though, because I was just living in the moment of the immediate experiences and people and sights and smells around me. (This is what is appealing to me about Buddhism, ... not that I'm Buddhist ... - living in the moment and being alive and awake in each moment because that one moment is all we have since we never know what will happen.)

*I wrote this as part of a post on religion:

While I smile at the idea of connection across all borders and boundaries, physical or otherwise, I scoff at " The Red Thread" proverb, which adoptive families seem to mention quite a bit in relation to their own child-parent destinies: "An invisible red thread connects those destined to meet, regardless of time, place, or circumstances. The thread may stretch or tangle, but never break." Destiny unites, but sometimes it romanticizes a bit too much for my liking.

Observation 1: Umbrellas

2011-08-15T09:03:00.000-07:00

Umbrellas are fancy and pretty in the city.

Inner Dialogue: I wish America had such pretty umbrellas. Why are they so pretty? (Looking around) Oh, it's really hot out. To protect from the sun. But what if it rains? The umbrella lace will go bad.

Sudden Realization: These are sun umbrellas, to protect from the rays. They even have a shiny (pretty) layer of spray for UV protection. For light skin.

Recall Moment: Sunscreen almost always has skin-whitening components in China. It's so hard to find any that doesn't.

Asking Questions Moment: Is it a whiteness complex? Is it an economic-stay-indoors-and-you're whiter-so-that-means-you're-wealthier-and-not-in-the-fields-working-all-day complex? Is it a bit of both? Is societal peer pressure the sole motivator? Is there some kind of hidden and ancient as-of-now unknown logic behind it all, such as skin cancer protection? Isn't a little vitamin D healthy? (yeah, everything in moderation, as my biology teacher would always say)

Sudden Realization 2: Tanning salons are the equivalent in America, and we're all just really silly sometimes.

An Article of Interest

2011-08-14T16:46:00.000-07:00

The below quote from this article on ideas (or rather lack of ideas) reminded me of what Eleanor Roosevelt said, that "Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people."

"We prefer knowing to thinking because knowing has more immediate value. It keeps us in the loop, keeps us connected to our friends and our cohort. Ideas are too airy, too impractical, too much work for too little reward. Few talk ideas. Everyone talks information, usually personal information. Where are you going? What are you doing? Whom are you seeing? These are today’s big questions."

China

2011-08-13T23:08:00.000-07:00

Awhile ago I wrote a post on wanting to go to China and to perhaps teach English. During spring semester I heard of a student-run, nonprofit organization called Learning Enterprises, which would allow me to teach for about 5 weeks during the summer as a volunteer. (College students, check it out - there are programs all over the world.) It was perfect - no emphasis on tourism, cultural exposure, a different way of life socially and economically (squat toilets excited me), connecting with great children and other amazing people, exploring education and teaching, and a bit of language exposure. So that's what I did.

I traveled for about 2 weeks to Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong with four other American students, then to my assigned rural village (which actually was more of a town) Lin Tan, in Jiangxi Province. I had a teaching partner from Nanjing University, Oliver (for peace), and we taught two two-hour classes of 20-25 junior high school students, the majority age fourteen or over.

I was excited to experience the contrast of China's two very different worlds. (And who knows - it probably has more than what I saw.) In the coming days I'll try to post some things relating to my travels in the cities and in the country.

Another Trip to China

2011-06-04T16:56:00.001-07:00

(...hopefully....)

SAVE YOUR OLD UNITED STATES PASSPORT, WHICH HAS YOUR CHINESE VISA IN IT.

For those who have already been to China - this old expired visa is necessary to receiving a new one, and this is in your passport. You must show this or have a photocopy for the Chinese consulate. Because mom and I went through a travel agency with my adoption group, which applied for my visa in a different state at a different consulate than the one I recently visited twice, I must apply in that same state - the other states don't have a record of having issued my visa because they've not centralized the computer system between the different consulates. Oh the ironies.

One of the Best Music Videos Ever

2011-05-13T13:12:00.000-07:00

“Fight of the Century” Lyrics

Written by John Papola and Russ Roberts

KEYNES

Here we are… peace out! great recession

thanks to me, as you see, we’re not in a depression

Recovery, destiny if you follow my lesson

Lord Keynes, here I come, line up for the procession

HAYEK

We brought out the shovels and we’re still in a ditch…

And still digging. don’t you think that it’s time for a switch…

From that hair of the dog. Friend, the party is over.

The long run is here. It’s time to get sober!

KEYNES

Are you kidding? my cure works perfectly fine…

have a look, the great recession ended back in ’09.

I deserve credit. Things would have been worse

All the estimates prove it—I’ll quote chapter and verse

HAYEK

Econometricians, they’re ever so pious

Are they doing real science or confirming their bias?

Their “Keynesian” models are tidy and neat

But that top down approach is a fatal conceit

REFRAIN

Which way should we choose?
more bottom up or more top down
…the fight continues…
Keynes and Hayek’s second round

it’s time to weigh in…

more from the top or from the ground
…lets listen to the greats
Keynes and Hayek throwing down

KEYNES

We could have done better, had we only spent more

Too bad that only happens when there’s a World War

You can carp all you want about stats and regression

Do you deny World War II cut short the Depression?

HAYEK

Wow. One data point and you’re jumping for joy

the Last time I checked, wars only destroy

There was no multiplier, consumption just shrank

As we used scarce resources for every new tank

Pretty perverse to call that prosperity

Rationed meat, Rationed butter… a life of austerity

When that war spending ended your friends cried disaster

yet the economy thrived and grew faster

KEYNES

You too only see what you want to see

The spending on war clearly goosed GDP

Unemployment was over, almost down to zero

That’s why I’m the master, that’s why I’m the hero

HAYEK

Creating employment’s a straightforward craft

When the nation’s at war, and there’s a draft

If every worker was staffed in the army and fleet

We’d have full employment and nothing to eat

REFRAIN REPEATS

HAYEK

jobs are a means, not the ends in themselves

people work to live better, to put food on the shelves

real growth means production of what people demand

That’s entrepreneurship not your central plan

KEYNES

My solution is simple and easy to handle..

its spending that matters, why’s that such a scandal?

The money sloshes through the pipes and the sluices

revitalizing the economy’s juices

it’s just like an engine that’s stalled and gone dark

To bring it to life, we need a quick spark

Spending’s the life blood that gets the flow going

Where it goes doesn’t matter, just get spending flowing

HAYEK

You see slack in some sectors as a “general glut”

But some sectors are healthy, only some in a rut

So spending’s not free – that’s the heart of the matter

too much is wasted as cronies get fatter.

The economy’s not a car, there’s no engine to stall

no expert can fix it, there’s no “it” at all.

The economy’s us, we don’t need a mechanic

Put away the wrenches, the economy’s organic

REFRAIN REPEATS

KEYNES

so what would you do to help those unemployed?

this is the question you seem to avoid

when we’re in a mess, would you just have us wait?

Doing nothing until markets equilibrate?

HAYEK

I don’t want to do nothing, there’s plenty to do

The question I ponder is who plans for whom?

Do I plan for myself or leave it to you?

I want plans by the many, not by the few.

Let’s not repeat what created our troubles

I want real growth not a series of bubbles

Stop bailing out loser, let prices work

If we don’t try to steer them they won’t go berserk

KEYNES

Come on, Are you kidding? Don’t Wall Street’s gyrations

Challenge your world view of self-regulation?

Even you must admit that the lesson we’ve learned

Is more oversight’s needed or else we’ll get burned

HAYEK

Oversight? The government’s long been in bed

With those Wall Street execs and the firms that they’ve bled

Capitalism’s about profit and loss

you bail out the losers there’s no end to the cost

the lesson I’ve learned? It’s how little we know,

the world is complex, not some circular flow

the economy’s not a class you can master in college

to think otherwise is the pretense of knowledge

REFRAIN REPEATS

KEYNES

You get on your high horse and you’re off to the races

I look at the world on a case by case basis

When people are suffering I roll up my sleeves

And do what I can to cure our disease

The future’s uncertain, our outlooks are frail

Thats why free markets are so prone to fail

In a volatile world we need more discretion

So state intervention can counter depression

HAYEK

People aren’t chessmen you move on a board

at your whim–their dreams and desires ignored

With political incentives, discretion’s a joke

Those dials you’re twisting… just mirrors and smoke

We need stable rules and real market prices

so prosperity emerges and cuts short the crisis

give us a chance so we can discover

the most valuable ways to serve one another

FINAL REFRAIN

Which way should we choose?
more bottom up or more top down
the fight continues…
Keynes and Hayek’s second round

it’s time to weigh in…

more from the top or from the ground
…lets listen to the greats
Keynes and Hayek throwing down

Jasmine

2011-05-11T20:11:00.000-07:00

never did i know

what i know now

a flower

with such power

a creator

a creature

a revolutionary sense

whatever the scent

say the skittish

Here is the article this is based on. I've been meaning to write something on this and decided to spit out a poem just now.

一首简单的歌

2011-05-02T20:50:00.000-07:00

Today I sang A Simple Song with two classmates in my Chinese class for the end-of-the-year Chinese "showcase." So many people, but I'm glad I did it! We each sang one verse and we all sang the chorus together. It is definitely a simple song.

Quotes

2011-04-06T21:27:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since I've been so excited about a book so I want to post some quotes from The Spell of the Sensuous, by David Abram:

"We consciously encounter nonhuman nature only as it has been circumscribed by our civilization and its technologies: through our domesticated pets, on the television, or at the zoo (or, at best, in our carefully managed "nature preserves")." (28)

"The whole universe of science is built upon the world as directly experienced, and if we want to subject science itself to rigorous scrutiny and arrive at a precise assessment of its meaning and scope, we must begin by reawakening the basic experience of the world, of which science is the second-order expression." (36)

"The encounter with other perceivers continually assures me that there is more to any thing, or to the world, than I myself can perceive at any moment . . . It is this informing of my perceptions by the evident perceptions and sensations of other bodily entities that establishes, for me, the relative solidity and stability of the world." (39)

"Indeed, all truly meaningful speech is inherently creative, using established words in ways they have never quite been used before, and thus altering, ever so slightly, the whole webwork of the language . . . A living language is continually being made and remade, woven out of the silence by those who speak." (84)

"Of course, we may say that we perceive the past all around us, in great trees grown from seeds that germinated long ago, in the eroded banks of a meandering stream, or the widening cracks in an old road. And, too, that we are peering into the future wherever we look - watching a storm cloud emerge from the horizon, or a spiderweb slowly taking shape before our eyes - since all that we perceive is already, in a sense, pregnant with the future. But how, then, can we distinguish these two temporal realms? We certainly have a sense that the past and the future are not the same; nevertheless, they are strangely commingled within all that we perceive." (207)

"What a mystery is the air, what an enigma to these human senses! On the one hand, the air is the most pervasive presence I can name, enveloping, embracing, and caressing me both inside and out, moving in ripples along my skin, flowing between my fingers, swirling around my arms and thighs, rolling in eddies along the roof of my mouth, slipping ceaselessly through throat and trachea to fill the lungs, to feed my blood, my heart, my self. I cannot act, cannot speak, cannot think a single thought without the participation of this fluid element. I am immersed in its depths as surely as fish are immersed in the sea." (225)

"A genuinely ecological approach does not work to attain a mentally envisioned future, but strives to enter, ever more deeply, into the sensorial present." (272)

Obviously he is very quotable. Here is an excerpt from the book.

The Spell of the Sensuous

2011-04-03T17:25:00.000-07:00

(A book by David Abram)

I didn't know it was possible to so beautifully weave words. Liquid poetry.

Here is a lovely interview I found, though it focuses more explicitly on magic than The Spell of the Sensuous. It begins like this:

David Abram is an unusual combination of anthropologist, philosopher and sleight-of-hand magician. Though he worked as a magician in the United States and Europe for a number of years, he attributes most of what he knows about magic to the time he spent in Indonesia, Nepal and Sri Lanka learning from indigenous medicine people.

Here is another quote:

Everything that we speak of as Western civilization we could speak of as alphabetic civilization. We are the culture of the alphabet, and the alphabet itself could be seen as a very potent form of magic. You know, we open up the newspaper in the morning and we focus our eyes on these little inert bits of ink on the page, and we immediately hear voices and we see visions and we experience conversations happening in other places and times. That is magic!

And of course, here is a link to Amazon, which is usually helpful. (Too much praise to bother sorting out!)

Famine, Affluence, and Morality

2011-03-03T09:47:00.000-08:00

Philosopher Peter Singer wrote this essay. It is an earnest and straightforward work, easy to understand and stimulating to mull over. He speaks of a culture of giving, reminiscent of Karl Marx's desire for a revolutionary change of consciousness on a societal level.

Ethnic Differences Emerge in Plastic Surgery

2011-02-19T16:45:00.000-08:00

Lots of interesting quotes from the article on referring to trends in different races (might as well just read it):

“When a patient comes in from a certain ethnic background and of a certain age, we know what they’re going to be looking for,” said Dr. Kaveh Alizadeh, the president of Long Island Plastic Surgical Group, which has three clinics in the city. “We are sort of amateur sociologists.”

Dr. Alizadeh, himself an immigrant from Iran, admits that the results can seem less like science than like stereotyping. Still, he and other doctors who work in ethnic communities say they can scan their appointment books and spot unmistakable trends: Many Egyptians are getting face lifts. Many Italians are reshaping their knees. Dr. Alizadeh says his fellow Iranians favor nose jobs.

“We Latinas define ourselves with our bodies,” she said. “We always have curves.” “My personality doesn’t go with small breasts,” she added.

I believe it is an individual's choice to do as s/he wishes with his/her face and body, but agree with Dr. Lee that it is sad that people choose to have surgery. It's too easy to criticize society in general or to criticize people specifically, so it's an interesting topic... How are standards of beauty constructed...?

Idea I Read About Somewhere

2011-01-25T13:39:00.000-08:00

To bring the nursery to the the factory by hiring a full-time nanny so that workers don't have to worry about childcare.

The Alchemist

2011-01-25T13:36:00.000-08:00

The Alchemist, about a young shepherd boy, by Paulo Coelho, reminds me of another short(er) and sweet tale, The Little Prince. Loved them both.

Arizona

2011-01-25T13:31:00.001-08:00

In light of the recent shooting, it's important to realize this.

Priorities

2011-01-21T12:08:00.000-08:00

There are more important things to discuss than whether or not Obama dyed his hair.

Peace Train

2011-01-17T20:06:00.000-08:00

Never have I been more enchanted by a YouTube video.

Americanization of Mental Illness

2011-01-13T22:48:00.000-08:00

Here is a thought-provoking article looking at the role of culture in mental illness. I think this is a good little quote on its own: "forms of madness from one place and time often look remarkably different from the forms of madness in another." Here are more explanatory ones:

"There is now good evidence to suggest that in the process of teaching the rest of the world to think like us, we’ve been exporting our Western “symptom repertoire” as well. That is, we’ve been changing not only the treatments but also the expression of mental illness in other cultures. Indeed, a handful of mental-health disorders — depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and anorexia among them — now appear to be spreading across cultures with the speed of contagious diseases. These symptom clusters are becoming the lingua franca of human suffering, replacing indigenous forms of mental illness."

"In the end, what cross-cultural psychiatrists and anthropologists have to tell us is that all mental illnesses, including depression, P.T.S.D. and even schizophrenia, can be every bit as influenced by cultural beliefs and expectations today as hysterical-leg paralysis or the vapors or zar or any other mental illness ever experienced in the history of human madness. This does not mean that these illnesses and the pain associated with them are not real, or that sufferers deliberately shape their symptoms to fit a certain cultural niche. It means that a mental illness is an illness of the mind and cannot be understood without understanding the ideas, habits and predispositions — the idiosyncratic cultural trappings — of the mind that is its host."

Kafka

2011-01-12T21:45:00.000-08:00

Here is the site I got these from.

I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness.
–To Ottla (sister)

If only one person were capable of leaving off one word before the truth! Everyone (I too in this dictum) overruns truth by hundreds of words.

Writers speak a stench.
–1910

Religions get lost as people do.

When it became clear in my organism that writing was the most productive direction for my being to take, everything rushed in that direction and left empty all those abilities which were directed toward the joys of sex, eating, drinking, philosophical reflection and above all music.
–January 3, 1912

[am confused by the music reference.]

The great days of the court jesters are probably gone never to return. Everything points in another direction, it cannot be denied. I at least have thoroughly delighted in the institution, even if it should now be lost to mankind.
–July 29, 1917

[can't help but love his outlook on life/humor, if only for the tragedy in it...]

Amused Again...

2011-01-12T21:34:00.000-08:00

...by a quote that seems to favor reading Chua's book (not that this is a running commentary):

"Altogether, I think we ought to read only books that bite and sting us. If the book does not shake us awake like a blow to the skull, why bother reading it in the first place? So that it can make us happy, as you put it? Good God, we'd be just as happy if we had no books at all; books that make us happy we could, in a pinch, also write ourselves. What we need are books that hit us like a most painful misfortune, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we had been banished to the woods, far from any human presence, like a suicide. A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us. That is what I believe.”
–To Oskar Pollak, January 27, 1904

Wow I'm liking Kafka after two quotes!

Amused...

2011-01-12T21:30:00.000-08:00

...by a quote I happened upon:

"Parents who expect gratitude from their children (there are even some who insist on it) are like usurers who gladly risk their capital if only they receive interest."

–Kafka; November 12, 1914

Nah, this isn't a poke at Chua or anything like that.

Big White Guy

2011-01-11T23:31:00.000-08:00

Forget about ruminating over Amy Chua and her parenting choices (for a minute or two here) - I prefer to run through Big White Guy's list of self-inflicted English names! BWG lives in China, has a quick and quirky sense of humor, .... etc .... Thanks to Eunice for the link!

A few particularly good ones (which come from another site):

Beauty Bee

Gay Man

Kudos

Maverick

Nausea

Piaget

Pineapple Bun

Sicky

Skipper

Smart Man

Titan

Tomorrow (See you Tomorrow (?))

Visit the website (it's not a blog).

Meet Dr. Freud

2011-01-10T21:30:00.000-08:00

If you can read it, I'd recommend it. (The entire article, but you need a subscription or need to buy the magazine.)

Am particularly amused at the sentence "China is more likely to absorb the most practical of Freud's ideas and discard the rest, as it has with Marxism, capitalism, and other imports."

Mental health in China - a lot of potential for discussion, there.

Economy

Suicides

Kindergarten killers/crime

Beliefs/"Superstitions"

Religion/Confucianism

Gap between rich and poor

Skype as a tool for psychoanalysis/therapy

Netizens

Freedom

City growth

One-child policy

Aging generation

Factories

Lack of suicide hotlines

Stress associated w/higher education- getting into American schools, etc.

Potentially different modes of thought/ways of thinking/processes of thinking (as mentioned in the article, which goes together out of 3 choices: a chicken, cow, and grass?); language as a possible barrier

Frightening statistics, comparative to other countries for mental health

Cultural stigma associated with anything mentally "wrong"

Eccentrics

2011-01-10T21:14:00.001-08:00

Eccentrics: A Study of Sanity and Strangeness by Dr. David Weeks and Jamie James. Not published recently, but still relevant.

Bought it on a whim in San Francisco. Devoured it. A fun and informative read. Despite some critical reviews regarding its research approach (i.e. data is skimmed over in an easy-to-read manner, and there is a suspicious lack of complex-looking graphs ... a plus in my opinion) and rather brief anecdotes, I'd highly recommend it to everybody. (Why isn't there a unisex deodorant marketed as Every Body, someone suggests.)

"Their book is as charming as its quirky subjects." -The Economist

"A valuable and long overdue look at a segment of the population who succeed by being endearingly different." -Los Angeles Times

Idea

2011-01-10T20:05:00.000-08:00

One uncomfortable giving money to those asking for it might carry around packages of food such as trail mix for those interested...Carnegie's libraries for the long-term, but the basics, like food and shelter, for the short-term.

Single Parenthood

2011-01-07T01:05:00.001-08:00

I cannot help but go back and forth on this one. My first reaction is that of course a single parent can raise a healthy child, and do a damn good job of it. But I also think that it can be a terrible thing to lose one's only parent. I have had nightmares, experienced awful anxieties, and the like. And then my third reaction is that a couple can be in the same car together, and both parents can be lost. And so then my fourth thought is that life is pretty unpredictable and so what the hell - since there are more children that need to be adopted than there are single parents or any parents willing and able to adopt, there really isn't much to think about. And then my fifth thought is that maybe that's not true - what if being raised in a stable* environment (an orphanage) is actually better than being raised for a short time by a parent who dies soon after adopting? Could this be tested? No, because (sixth thought?) every individual and situation differs, and all surrounding, supportive individuals (friends, family members) differ. And so the combination of all these thoughts and all these hypothetical situations leaves me decidedly pro-single parenthood, because if the round-about-sit-on-your-ass-and-do-nothing kept going on, then no orphanages or parents would ever get around to getting it together. Then again, maybe I should keep following the train of thoughts, because I get a bit baffled when it gets into the seventh and onward.

*edit: Thought 5 1/2...stable...debatable...

Moon Raven's Social Alchemy Blog

2011-01-07T01:03:00.000-08:00

I like this very intelligently written, interesting, honest blog. (Where else do you learn about The Gift Economy, find an intimidating list of utopian books, read up on Kale, Carrots, and Chard, and find an excerpt like "conversation is the natural way that humans think together"?)

Recording Memories

2011-01-07T00:45:00.001-08:00

I don't like giving advice to parents, but I guess if I were asked to give one piece of advice (and this would not just be to adoptive parents), it would be to record memories/moments, not just through pictures. (But not to post recordings all on the web - just put the tapes in an old box out of the way.)

I enjoy watching videos of myself as a youngster because I was so very uninhibited, as most children are I guess. I have just started to see them more than a decade later. It is a great privilege to be able to do so. Mom had a video camera that she used quite a bit on different occasions like Christmas, reunions, birthdays, performances, etc. It's super-ancient now! But I only wish I'd taken more videos of her and everyone else in my life too. It's nice looking back and seeing yourself as a stranger, almost.

A Book Lover's San Francisco

2011-01-07T00:32:00.000-08:00

This lovely article, "A Book Lover's San Francisco," features many a hidden bookstore in the depths of a beautiful city full of murals and other delights. Do check in if you are ever in the area. It is rare these days to happen upon three bookstores in the same two blocks, much less three bookstores in one building!

General Quotes

2010-12-30T10:47:00.000-08:00

A compilation of quotes from over the years. I used to collect quotes a lot, though not so much now. I figure it's better to put them out there than keep them hoarded on the computer. Sorry I can't figure out how to make the text uniform. Thanks to LuAnn for the ones starting with Ashleigh Brilliant!

If we’d only stop trying to be happy, we’d have a pretty good time. -Edith Wharton

No one is so generous as he who has nothing to give. -French Proverb

Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can. -John Wesley

Write the bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble. -Arabic Parable

It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself. -Eleanor Roosevelt

The fearless are merely fearless. People who act in spite of their fear are truly brave. -J. LaFond-Lewis

He who does not have the courage to speak up for his rights cannot earn the respect of others. -G. Torres

We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is

already disappearing. -R. Laing

Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together. -Eugene Ionesco

I never let schooling interfere with my education. -Mark Twain

What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start

from. -T. Eliot

It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves. -Shakespeare

It is easier to forgive an enemy than forgive a friend. -William Blake

Wisdom is not the product of schooling, but of the life-long attempt to acquire it. -Albert Einstein

He who limps is still walking. -Stanislaw Lee

The best way to predict the future is to create it. –Abraham Lincoln

100% of the shots you don’t take, don’t go in. -Wayne Gretzsky

My favorite part of the game is the opportunity to play. -Mike Singletary

The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time. -Abraham Lincoln

What happens to a man is less significant than what happens within him. -Louis Mann

Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire. -Reggie Leach

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. -Eleanor Roosevelt

Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss you’ll land among the stars. -Les Brown

The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it. -William James

If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded. -Maya Angelou

The future depends on what we do in the present. -Gandhi

A smooth sea never made a skilled mariner. -English Proverb

Character is doing the right thing when no one else is watching. -Watts

Motivation will almost always beat mere talent. -Norman Augustine

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving. -Albert Einstein

Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless. -Mother Teresa

The greatest mistake a man can make is to be afraid of making one. -Elbert Hubbard

The only thing you are perfect at is being yourself. -Meghan Berry

What’s right isn’t always popular and what’s popular isn’t always right. -Unknown

Kindness is the noblest weapon to conquer with. -Unknown

Kindness is a language the deaf can hear and the blind can see. -Unknown

‘Silent’ and ‘listen’ are spelled with the same letters. -Unknown

The harder the conflict the more glorious the triumph. -Thomas Paine

The most important thing is to not stop questioning. -Albert Einstein

You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -Gandhi

If opportunity doesn’t knock build a door. -Unknown

The most wasted of days is one without laughter. -e. e. cummings

Whatever you are, be a good one. -Abe Lincoln

Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lessons afterward. -Vernon Law

If you want the rainbow you have to put up with the rain. -Unknown

We do not remember days, we remember moments. -Pavese Cesare

Do not judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant. -Robert Stevenson

The mind is like a birds wings. When open, you can fly. -Greg Phillips

Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. -Unknown

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught. -Oscar Wilde

But in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes. -B. Franklin

The time to stop talking is when the other person nods his head affirmatively but says nothing. -Henry S. Haskin

All the President is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing and kicking people to

get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway. -Harry S. Truman

Some national parks have long waiting lists for camping reservations. When you have to wait a year to sleep next to

a tree, something is wrong.-George Carlin

Someday we'll look back on this moment and plow into a parked car. -Evan Davis

The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do. -Walter Bagehot

The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.-Albert

Einstein

First things first, but not necessarily in that order. -Doctor Who

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric. -Bertrand Russell

The trouble with facts is that there are so many of them. -Samuel McChord Crothers

The universe is wider than our views of it. -Henry David Thoreau

Don’t ask for an easier life. Ask to be a stronger person.

In each of us there is a little of all of us. –Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

The true test of a first-rate mind is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas at the same time. -F. Scott Fitzgerald

The creative mind is the playful mind. Philosophy is the play and dance of ideas. –Eric Hoffer

We must teach our children to dream with their eyes open. –Harry Edwards

Mistakes are the portals of discovery. –James Joyce

Change your thoughts and change your world. –Norman Vincent Peale

Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself. –E. Joseph Cossman

Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible. –Anonymous

Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint on it you can. –Danny Kaye

I wish we could put up some of the Christmas spirit in jars and open a jar of it every month. –Harlan Miller

Children are like wet cement. Whatever falls on them makes an impression. –Haim Ginott

Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones. -Phillips Brooks

Everyone can afford to give away a smile. –Unknown

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. –Martin Luther King, Jr.

The two hardest things to handle in life are failure and success. –Dr. Joyce Brothers

Many of our fears are tissue paper thin, and a single courageous step would carry us clear through them. –Brendan

Francis.

Once you have them by the funny bone, their hearts and minds will follow. –Robert Wieder

A mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimension.

It’s good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end. –Ursula Le Guin

It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener succeed through failures. –Samuel

Smiles

Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of traveling. –Margaret Lee Runbeck

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. –Mahatma Gandhi

We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself. –

Lloyd Alexander

If you wait to do everything until you’re sure it’s right you’ll probably never do much of anything. –Win Borden

Each of us has a spark of life inside us, and our highest endeavor ought to be to set off that spark in one another. –Jenny Ausubel

Each one us has a fire in our heart for something. It’s our goal in life to find it and to keep it lit. –Mary Lou Retton

We are here on the planet only once, and might as well get a feel for the place. –Annie Dillard

The quality, not the longevity, of one’s life is what is important. –Martin Luther King, Jr.

It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities. –Joanne Kathleen Rowling

The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper. –Eden Phillpotts

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any. –Alice Walker

The real contest is always between what you’ve done and what you’re capable of doing. –Geoffrey Gaberino

The man who does things makes many mistakes, but he never makes the biggest mistake of all-doing nothing. -Benjamin Franklin

Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do. –Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas. –Linus Pauling

I shall make the most of all that comes: And the least of all that goes. –Sara Teasdale

I see my path, but I don’t know where it leads. Not knowing where I’m going is what inspires me to travel it. –Rosalia De Castro

I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them. -Pablo Picasso

There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds. -Gilbert K. Chesterton

A fool-proof method for sculpting an elephant: first, get a huge block of marble; then you chip away everything that

doesn't look like an elephant. -Unknown

We are governed not by armies and police, but by ideas. -Mona Caird

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. –Annie Dillard

The great art of life is sensation, is to feel we exist, even in pain. –Lord Byron

There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy and a tragedy. –Mark Twain

Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out. –Oliver Wendell Holmes

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all. –Oscar Wilde

Our care should not be to have lived long as to have lived enough. –Seneca

All of the animals except for man know that the principle business of life is to enjoy it. - Samuel Butler

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. -Albert Einstein

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will. -George Bernard Shaw

There is only one admirable form of the imagination: the imagination that is so intense that it creates a new reality, that it makes things happen. -Sean O'Faolain

I doubt that the imagination can be suppressed. If you truly eradicated it in a child, he would grow up to be an eggplant. -Ursula K. Le Guin

I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living. -Dr. Seuss

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. -Edgar Allan Poe

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere. -Carl Sagan

When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge. -Albert Einstein

Fantasies are more than substitutes for unpleasant reality; they are also dress rehearsals, plans. All acts performed in the world begin in the imagination. -Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

All men who have achieved great things have been great dreamers. -Orison Swett Marden

Trust that little voice in your head that says "Wouldn't it be interesting if..."; And then do it. -Duane Michals

I believe in the imagination. What I cannot see is infinitely more important than what I can see. -Duane Michals

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free. -Michelangelo

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking. -George S. Patton

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity. -George S. Patton

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

Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life. -Simone Weil

You see things; and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say, 'Why not?’ -George Bernard Shaw

Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. -Howard Thurman

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination. -Albert Einstein

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand. -Albert Einstein

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere. -Albert Einstein

If one advances confidently in the direction of one's dreams, and endeavors to live the life which one has imagined, one will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. - Henry David Thoreau

This world is but a canvas to our imaginations. - Henry David Thoreau

There are many ways to be free. One of them is to transcend reality by imagination, as I try to do. -Anais Nin

Sometimes I feel like a figment of my own imagination. -Lily Tomlin

Perhaps imagination is only intelligence having fun. ~George Scialabba

The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless. -Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge - myth is more potent than history - dreams are more powerful than facts - hope always triumphs over experience - laughter is the cure for grief - love is stronger than death. -Robert Fulghum

Sometimes imagination pounces; mostly it sleeps soundly in the corner, purring. -Leslie Grimutter

Creativity represents a miraculous coming together of the uninhibited energy of the child with its apparent opposite and enemy, the sense of order imposed on the disciplined adult intelligence. -Norman Podhoretz

Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. -Lewis Carroll

The purpose of life, after all, is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experiences. –Eleanor Roosevelt

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. –Eleanor Roosevelt

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience by which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along. –Eleanor Roosevelt

Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product. –Eleanor Roosevelt.

Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one. –Eleanor Roosevelt.

I believe that anyone can conquer fear by doing the things he fears to do, provided he keeps doing them until he gets a record of successful experience behind him. –Eleanor Roosevelt.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you’ll be criticized anyway. You’ll be damned if you do and damned if you don’t. –Eleanor Roosevelt

Friendship with oneself is all important because without it one cannot be friends with anybody else in the world. – Eleanor Roosevelt

The giving of love is an education in itself. –Eleanor Roosevelt

I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on. Life was meant to be lived. Curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life. –Eleanor Roosevelt

It is better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness. –Eleanor Roosevelt.

When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die. –Eleanor Roosevelt

What one has to do usually can be done. –Eleanor Roosevelt

Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terror, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them. –Anais Nin

Dreams are necessary to life. –Anais Nin

We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are. –Anais Nin

In everything do to others what you would have them do to you. For this sums up the law and the prophets. -The Bible, Mathew 7:12

Everything you should do you will find in this: Do nothing to others that would hurt you if it were done to you. - Mahabharata 5:1517

Do not offend others as you would not want to be offended. –Udanavarga 5:18

The successes of your neighbor and their losses will be to you as if they were your own. –T’ai-Shang Kan-Ying P’ien

Is there any rule that one should follow all of one’s life? Yes! The rule of the gentle goodness: That which we do not wish to be done to us, we do not do to others. –Analectas 15:23

That which you do not wish for yourself you shall not wish for your neighbor. This is the whole law: the rest is only commentary. –Talmud Shabbat 31^

None of you shall be true believes unless you wish for your brother the same that your wish for yourself. –Sunnatt

Age is something that doesn’t matter, unless you are a cheese. -Billie Burke

The only disadvantage when you are 50 or over, the brain tissue gets smaller and you start to become a litle (little) screwy. -Mark Tychnoisky, age 11

A typical 75-year-old person has spent 50,000 hours dreaming—that’s 2,000 days or 6 years. –Anthony Stevens

Our unconscious existence is the real one and our conscious world a kind of illusion. –C. G. Jung

Many cultures, including India, Egyptian and Chinese, believed that the soul left the body during dreams and wandered in the world. –Van de Castle

"My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I'm right." - Ashleigh Brilliant

"I may not be perfect, but parts of me are excellent" - Ashleigh Brilliant

"I try to take it one day at a time, but sometimes several days attack me at once." - Ashleigh Brilliant

"I have abandoned my search for truth and am now looking for a good fantasy " - Ashleigh Brilliant

My life has a superb cast, but I cannot figure out the plot" - Ashleigh Brilliant

"One possible reason why things aren't going according to plan is that there never was a plan." - Ashleigh Brilliant

It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others." - Ashleigh Brilliant

"Maybe I'm lucky to be going so slowly, because I may be going in the wrong direction" - Ashleigh Brilliant

The time for action is past! Now is the time for senseless bickering!

My life has been greatly influenced by many books which I have never read. - Ashleigh Brilliant

I am irrevocably committed to being permanently indecisive. - Ashleigh Brilliant

All I want is a warm bed, a kind word and unlimited power. - Ashleigh Brilliant

Try to be the best of what you are, even if what you are is no good. - Ashleigh Brilliant

I have many unrecognized talents, but my faults have somehow succeeded in securing wide

recognition. - Ashleigh Brilliant

Sometimes the only way you can win is to stay out of the game. - Ashleigh Brilliant

By accepting you as you are, I do not necessarily abandon all hope of your improving. - Ashleigh Brilliant

To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first, and call whatever you hit the target. –Ashleigh Brilliant

All I want is a little more than I’ll ever get. –Ashleigh Brilliant

Everything takes longer than you expect, even when you expect it to take longer than you expect. –Ashleigh Brilliant

Watch out! It’s quite possible that some of my best mistakes haven’t yet been made. –Ashleigh Brilliant

I like who I am, and am puzzled to find that not everybody shares this opinion. –Ashleigh Brilliant

If I do enough different things in enough different ways, I may, eventually, do something right. –Ashleigh Brilliant

However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results. -Winston Churchill

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen. – Winston Churchill

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. – Winston Churchill

“Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential” – Winston Churchill

“If this is a blessing, it is certainly very well disguised.” – Winston Churchill

“When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened” – Winston Churchill

“It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn't use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like "What about lunch?"” –Winnie the Pooh

“You can't stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.” – Winnie the Pooh

“A little Consideration, a little Thought for Others, makes all the difference.” – Winnie the Pooh

“When late morning rolls around and you're feeling a bit out of sorts, don't worry; you're probably just a little eleven o'clockish.” – Winnie the Pooh

If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be 'meetings.' - Dave Barry

The best way out is always through. – Robert Frost

The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion or ethnic background, is that we all believe we are above-average drivers. – Dave Barry

Don't let yesterday use up too much of today. – Will Rogers

Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment. – Will Rogers

We are all here for a spell; get all the good laughs you can. – Will Rogers

It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt.” –Abraham Lincoln

"People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be." -Abraham Lincoln

We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses." – Abraham Lincoln

"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe." – Abraham Lincoln

If you’re going through hell, keep going. – Winston Churchill

Never eat more than you can lift. –Miss Piggy

A friend, I am told, is worth more than pure gold. –Popeye.

Be yourself. Everyone else is taken. –Book Title

The best way out is always through. –Robert Frost

Gardens are not made by singing “Oh, how beautiful” and sitting in the shade. –Rudyard Kipling

Music Quotes

2010-12-30T10:16:00.000-08:00

Music is what feelings sound like. -Anonymous

Music speaks what cannot be expressed, soothes the mind and gives it rest, heals the heart and makes it whole, flows from heaven to the soul.

Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music. –Sergei Rachmaninov

To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable. –Aaron Copland

Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and cannot remain silent. –Victor Hugo

Music and rhythm find their way into the secret places of the soul. –Plato

Music is love in search of a word. –Sidonie Gabrielle

Words make you think a thought. Music makes you feel a feeling. A song makes you feel a thought. –E.Y. Harburg

When the music changes, so does the dance. –African Proverb

Without music, life would be an error. –Friedrich Nietzsche

Music is an outburst of the soul. –Frederick Delius

Music is the art of thinking with sounds. –Jules Combarieu

Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without. –Confucious

Music is the universal language of mankind. –Henry Wadworth Longfellow

Music is the soul of language. –Max Heindel

Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. –Berthold Auerbach

Music is perpetual, and only the hearing is intermittent. –Henry David Thoreau

Where words fail, music speaks. –Hans Christian Anderson

A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song. –Maya Angelou

Singing is such an excellent thing, that I wish all people would sing. –Richard Byrd

You can cage the singer but not the song. –Harry Belafonte

Those who wish to sing always find a song. –Proverb

I don’t sing because I’m happy; I’m happy because I sing. –William James

Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a singing bird will come. –Chinese Proverb

I sing like I feel. –Ella Fitzgerald

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music. –Aldous Huxley

Ah, music. A magic beyond all we do here! –J. K. Rowling

As long as we live, there is never enough singing. –Martin Luther King

Chicken Quotes

2010-12-30T10:09:00.000-08:00

Why did the chicken cross the road?

OBAMA: The chicken crossed the road because it was time for a CHANGE! The chicken wanted CHANGE!

CLINTON: When I was First Lady, I personally helped that little chicken to cross the road. This experience makes me uniquely qualified to ensure – right from Day 1! – that every chicken in this country gets the chance it deserves to cross the road. 

BUSH: We don't really care why the chicken crossed the road. We just want to know if the chicken is on our side of the road, or not. The chicken is either against us, or for us. There is no middle ground here.

CHENEY: Where's my gun?

DOCTOR: Sir, had you known the Chicken for as long as I have, you would not so readily enquire, but feel rather the need to resist such a public display of your own lamentable and incorrigible Ignorance.

GRANDPA: In my day, someone told us that the chicken crossed the road, and that was good enough for us.

DR. PHIL: The problem is that this chicken won't realize that he must first deal with the problem on 'THIS' side before it goes after the problem on the 'OTHER SIDE'.  

OPRAH: I'm going to give this chicken a car so that he can just drive across the road and not live his life like the rest of the chickens.

FREUD: The fact that you are at all concerned that the chicken crossed the road reveals your underlying sexual insecurity.

POWELL: Now to the left of the screen, you can clearly see the satellite image of the chicken crossing the road.

COOPER: We have reason to believe there is a chicken, but we have not yet been allowed to have access to the other side of the road.

BUDDHA: If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken-nature.

THE SPHINX: You tell me.

HAMLET: That is not the question.

It is better to be the head of chicken than the rear end of an ox. –Japanese Proverb

Regard it as just as desirable to build a chicken house as to build a cathedral. -Frank Lloyd Wright

When arguing with a chicken a grain of corn is always wrong. –African Proverb

Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken. -Chuck Palahniuk

An overcrowded chicken farm produces fewer eggs. -Chinese Proverb

The egg came first. -Meia

Alien Hand Syndrome, etc.

2010-12-29T18:30:00.000-08:00

I'm reading a coffee-table-like book Alien Hand Syndrome and Other Too-Weird-Not-To-Be-True Stories at the moment. Lots of interesting little ideas/facts people have had or proposed, or witnessed...

-chickens' body heat used to keep bombs at operating temperature?

-bees preying on yummy-smelling enemies after the appropriate bee pheromones have been dispersed

-a now-probably-extinct natural contraceptive, silphium, in the 6th century B.C.? (anthropology-related because sexual freedom relates to the power of women in a society, so women possibly being in control of their reproductive systems so long ago is an interesting thought...then again, anthropology class shattered my illusions of any Amazonian-like society...)

-boogers as immune-boosters? (placebo boogers?)

-"Centralia's Hidden Inferno" (mine-related; in a nutshell, representative of humankind's stupidity)

-hallucinations of little men in hats? (related to Charles Bonnet Syndrome)

-the horse that semi-knew math, Clever Hans (thought that occurred to me: a double-blind procedure would mean that the questioners must not know the questions' answers - so they don't unconsciously pass on their knowledge to the horse through body movements, etc. But that doesn't fairly test the horse, since these are supposedly adult questioners who have sound logic...)

Word of the Day

2010-12-29T18:25:00.000-08:00

I like Dictionary.com's Word of the Day, which gets sent to your inbox each day. (Sometimes it's hard to keep up though). Who knew there were words for certain things? Here is an example:

engram \EN-gram\, noun:

1. The supposed physical basis of an individual memory in the brain.
2. A presumed encoding in neural tissue that provides a physical basis for the persistence of memory; a memory trace.

Here is where you can subscribe.

Child Citizenship Act of 2000

2010-12-29T18:10:00.000-08:00

Reading this article, I was surprised to read this line:

When they receive citizenship certificates, as the children did Tuesday, kids older than 14 must recite an oath to defend the United States and "renounce and abjure foreign princes and potentates."

And I thought Alien Hand Syndrome was strange...

Adopted individuals are lucky in the citizenship respect of things. (Child Citizenship Act of 2000 )

Plea For Creativity

2010-12-20T12:46:00.000-08:00

This NPR story interests me. This NYT article is a version of the same. Students are supposedly generally happy at the college I go to, but obviously not everyone is happy every day. I haven't felt suicidal, but I'm sure the academic and social pressures can be intense for some people.

I think the pressures are mounting with time as society becomes more accelerated. (trees being cut down to be replaced by buildings, kids studying for the PSATs instead of going out to play in the rain, more people turning to graduate school and college, et cetera...)

There needs to be an organized effort to help everyone de-stress. Compelling people to be creative is one of the main answers, I think... For example, creating a business, drawing, taking photographs, writing, etc. (it's the opposite of destruction - war and tearing down trees - and acceleration - cars and such, and going through every educational hoop a person can go through without wanting to...) Not sure how, because paying people to be creative takes away the intrinsic joy. But something... Maybe colleges need to emphasize their desire for creative students more than they do. For example, I love how the University of Chicago asks the weirdest questions for its admissions essays. I also like the idea of asking students what they would do with a brick, instead of something about a significant experience. (idea from Malcom Gladwell.) And for business corporations... not sure. Maybe they should provide some kind of time incentive or something... Maybe the government should provide more accessible grants with the direct purpose of nurturing creativity. There is this amazing woman who provides scholarships through Projects for Peace, which directly supports creative initiatives that do good things for the world.

Also, I read a story in Ode about how reading is actually a method clinical psychologists use for patients. Reading, as opposed to something literally visual such as a movie, allows for the individual to experience and imagine with greater creative freedom. It can help a person make decisions, be more in tune with oneself...An excerpt:

Bibliotherapy takes many forms. Doctors or therapists write prescriptions in the context of a practice setting, or individuals explore what works for them at home. The therapy involves either reading or writing, or both, while the texts are drawn from fiction (Shakespeare, Proust or Rilke, for example) or non-fiction (self-help books). Patients include the young and old, men and women, academics and non-academics.

and ...

Bibliotherapy appears to have physiological advantages, too. A 2007 study involving 112 smelter workers in New Brunswick, Canada, for instance, found that workers who read a lot had greater protection against some of the effects of lead poisoning. Both readers and non-readers suffered equally from lead-caused motor impairment, but the non-readers had higher levels of intellectual impairment due to the brain damage the heavy metal can cause.

Dreaming Dogs

2010-12-20T12:27:00.000-08:00

Bella, when she is sleeping, will sometimes make yelps and twitch. I believe she is dreaming about seeing another dog and trying to attack it. (Maybe attacking it.) This is interesting reading, especially the anecdote about Goober.

The Federal Writer's Project

2010-12-14T12:00:00.000-08:00

I just read this on the back flap of a book called New York Panorama:

"The Federal Writers' Project was established in 1935 as part of Federal #1, a project to provide work relief for artists and professionals under the Works Progress Administration. In the next four years the project produced works on local history, folkways, and culture in addition to the magisterial American Guide Series. The New York City division of the project included such writers as John Cheever and Richard Wright."

I really like this idea. It preserves culture and history, helps support the arts and creativity in general, and (I think) boosts the economy.

Rant On China's Economy

2010-12-13T11:03:00.000-08:00

When I say I'm studying Chinese, people often mention how useful this will be in today's economy. That annoys me a bit. Firstly, it's ignoring the other possibilities - i.e. exposure to another culture, just like all languages. Secondly, there doesn't seem to be a practical application unless I go into something related to international relations/diplomatic communications, translating... which I don't have the foresight to see myself doing, at the moment. Thirdly, the idea that China's economy is an all-powerful, up-and-coming superpower without any possible ramifications is absurd. Unchecked growth can injure other parties, too. Here is an excerpt from the article:

But a growing number of economists now worry that China — the world’s fastest growing economy and a pillar of strength during the global financial crisis — could be stalled next year by soaring inflation, mounting government debt and asset bubbles.

And...

Fitch expects China’s economy to grow at an annual rate of 8.6 percent next year, down from about 9.7 percent this year. But the report, which was released a few weeks ago, said that if growth slowed to 5 percent, the economies of many other Asian nations would suffer seriously. Steel, energy and manufacturing industries around the world would also be hard hit, it said.

Two Documentaries To See

2010-12-13T10:55:00.000-08:00

Philosopher Kings, featuring eight janitors working in various colleges.

Beijing Taxi, featuring three taxi drivers in Beijing.

(I haven't seen them yet)

Playing For Change

2010-12-13T10:40:00.001-08:00

I love the DVD! Mom found out about it. Here is the website. Here are two songs on YouTube (sorry, I can't make the first become smaller...):