March 28, 2010

Quotes of the week

“At every crossroads on the path that leads to the future, tradition has placed 10,000 men to guard the past.”

 Maurice Maeterlinck

“All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than the animals that know nothing”

 Maurice Maeterlinck

If the eye does not want to see, neither light nor glasses will help.

~Proverb, (German)

...a man who's willing to make a decision in the first place can always make another one to correct any mistake he's made.

Harry S. Truman

Meditation of the week

Choices

It's not as difficult as it may first appear to confront fear and anger with love and understanding.

The decision to do so is the first step.

Making this decision every morning is the second step.

Observing the success of this choice every night is the third.

Nothing will ever be the same again when we make this a daily practice.

Best of Craig’s List of the week

Dear Moms Who Work Downtown

Video of the week

Piano improve on Chatroulette

Lines from a movie of the week

No Country for Old Men is a 2007 American crime thriller film adapted for the screen and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, You have to wade through all the violence and chaos to get to the good stuff. Here are two examples:

Loretta Bell: How'd you sleep?
Ed Tom Bell: I don't know. Had dreams.
Loretta Bell: Well you got time for 'em now. Anythin' interesting?
Ed Tom Bell: They always is to the party concerned.
Loretta Bell: Ed Tom, I'll be polite.
Ed Tom Bell: Alright then. Two of 'em. Both had my father in 'em . It's peculiar. I'm older now then he ever was by twenty years. So in a sense he's the younger man. Anyway, first one I don't remember too well but it was about meeting him in town somewhere, he's gonna give me some money. I think I lost it. The second one, it was like we was both back in older times and I was on horseback goin' through the mountains of a night. Goin' through this pass in the mountains. It was cold and there was snow on the ground and he rode past me and kept on goin'. Never said nothin' goin' by. He just rode on past... and he had his blanket wrapped around him and his head down and when he rode past I seen he was carryin' fire in a horn the way people used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. 'Bout the color of the moon. And in the dream I knew that he was goin' on ahead and he was fixin' to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold, and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there. And then I woke up...

You can’t make up such a thing as that, I dare you to even try

Also from “No Country for Old Men “

                               Bell

               My lord, Wendell, it's just all-out 

               war. I don't know any other word for 

               it. Who are these folks? I don't know

               ...

He rattles the paper. 

               ...Here last week they fund this 

               couple out in California they would 

               rent out rooms to old people and then 

               kill em and bury em in the yard and 

               cash their social security checks. 

               They'd torture them first, I don't 

               know why. Maybe their television 

               set was broke. And this went on until, 

               and here I quote...

He looks through his glasses at the paper. 

               ..."Neighbors were alerted when a man 

               ran from the premises wearing only a 

               dog collar." You can't make up such a 

            thing as that. I dare you to even try.

He peers over his glasses at Wendell who respectfully shakes his head and 

tsk's.

Sheriff Bell rattles the paper again. 

               ...But that's what it took, you'll no-

               tice. Get someone's attention. Diggin 

               graves in the back yard didn't bring 

               any. 

Wendell bites back a smile. Sheriff Bell gazes at him over his glasses for 

a long beat, deadpan. 

               ...That's all right. I laugh myself 

               sometimes. 

And finally, the culmination of millennia of scientific endeavor

http://www.newzonfire.com/Images/ilo.html

March 21, 2010

Meditation of the week

Trust

by Thomas R. Smith

It's like so many other things in life
to which you must say no or yes.
So you take your car to the new mechanic.
Sometimes the best thing to do is trust.

The package left with the disreputable-looking
clerk, the check gulped by the night deposit,
the envelope passed by dozens of strangers—
all show up at their intended destinations.

The theft that could have happened doesn't.
Wind finally gets where it was going
through the snowy trees, and the river, even
when frozen, arrives at the right place.

And sometimes you sense how faithfully your life
is delivered, even though you can't read the address.

Poem of the Week

Haikus are easy

But sometimes they don’t make sense

Refrigerator

Best of Craig’s List of the week

Why Your Car Isn't Selling -- Econ 101

Video of the week

Urban farming

OBSESSIVES: Urban Farmer - on CHOW.com from CHOW.com on Vimeo.

Websites of the week

Hunter S. Thompson motivational posters

Celebrities when they were young

Great photographs

And finally, the culmination of millennia of scientific endeavor

http://www.tom-phillips.info/flash/ball.to.drive.you.crazy.swf

March 13, 2010

Quotes of the week

Do not be too timid or squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

~Albert Einstein

Meditation of the week

Nothing is more difficult than competing with a myth.
--Francoise Giroud

Sometimes we think we need to try and be something we're not. Maybe we feel pressure from friends to behave or dress like someone else.

All we need to do is remember when we were younger and dressed in our parents' clothes and shoes. We pretended to be grownups, and it was fun for a while. Then the huge shoes on our feet grew clumsy and uncomfortable and the mountain of rolled-up sleeves kept falling down and getting in the way. Soon we grew tired of the game and stopped pretending.

Today when we start feeling the pressure to be someone else, let's remember how hard it is to play a role that doesn't fit us.

Poem of the Week

Shopping

by Faith Shearin

My husband and I stood together in the new mall
which was clean and white and full of possibility.
We were poor so we liked to walk through the stores
since this was like walking through our dreams.
In one we admired coffee makers, blue pottery
bowls, toaster ovens as big as televisions. In another,

we eased into a leather couch and imagined
cocktails in a room overlooking the sea. When we
sniffed scented candles we saw our future faces,
softly lit, over a dinner of pasta and wine. When
we touched thick bathrobes we saw midnight

swims and bathtubs so vast they might be
mistaken for lakes. My husband's glasses hurt
his face and his shoes were full of holes.
There was a space in our living room where
a couch should have been. We longed for

fancy shower curtains, flannel sheets,
shiny silverware, expensive winter coats.
Sometimes, at night, we sat up and made lists.
We pressed our heads together and wrote
our wants all over torn notebook pages.
Nearly everyone we loved was alive and we

were in love but we liked wanting. Nothing
was ever as nice when we brought it home.
The objects in stores looked best in stores.
The stores were possible futures and, young
and poor, we went shopping. It was nice
then: we didn't know we already had everything.

Best of Craig’s List of the week

best of craigslist > seattle > World's most uncomfortable saddle

Video of the week

The Known Universe

 

Websites of the week

The Aging Brain Is Less Quick, But More Shrewd

Are These 3 Odd but Common Obstacles Standing in the Way of Your Success?

The truth about online gaming

And finally, the culmination of millennia of scientific endeavor

Cool site design Seasons

March 7, 2010

Quotes of the week

What you get by reaching your goals is not nearly as important as what you become by reaching them.

Zig Ziglar

If you can dream it, then you can achieve it. You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.
Zig Ziglar

It was character that got us out of bed, commitment that moved us into action, and discipline that enabled us to follow through.
Zig Ziglar

It's not what you've got, it's what you use that makes a difference.
Zig Ziglar

Little men with little minds and little imaginations go through life in little ruts, smugly resisting all changes which would jar their little worlds.
Zig Ziglar

Meditation of the week

Being alone and feeling vulnerable. Like two separate themes, these two parts of myself unite in my being and sow the seeds of my longing for unconditional love.
--Mary Casey
How easily we slip into self-doubt, fearing we're incapable or unlovable, perhaps both. How common for us to look into the faces of our friends and lovers in search of affirmation and love.
Our alienation from ourselves, from one another, from God's Spirit, which exists everywhere, causes our discontent. It is our discontent. When souls touch, love is born, love of self and love of the other. Our aloneness exists when we create barriers that keep us separate from our friends, our family. Only we can reach over or around the barriers to offer love, to receive love.
Recovery offers us the tools for loving, but we must dare to pick them up. Listening to others and sharing ourselves begins the process of loving. Risking to offer love before receiving it will free us from the continual search for love in the faces of others.
I won't wait to be loved today. I will love someone else, fully. I won't doubt that I, too, am loved. I will feel it.

Poem of the Week

Happy the Man

by Horace

Happy the man, and happy he alone,

He who can call today his own:

He who, secure within, can say,

Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.

Be fair or foul or rain or shine

The joys I have possessed, in spite or fate, are mine.

Not Heaven itself upon the past has power,

But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.

Best of Craig’s List of the week

Body Dumping Location Available

 this guy is serious! http://welcometobaltimorehon.com/a-lot-to-be-desired

Video of the week

Piano Concerto No. 22 by W. A. Mozart. I saw this performed live last night and it looks impossible to play, much less play well, and yet a human wrote and performed this.

Websites of the week

Block That Bill! A History Of The Filibuster

I don’t think we are here for anything…

 

And finally, the culmination of millennia of scientific endeavor

Proof that monkeys would make better representatives than our current  congressman

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAFQ5kUHPkY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOrgOW9LnT4&NR=1

Here is how our legislators act  towards one another

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7XuXi3mqYM&NR=1&feature=fvwp