... it is Music. Intelligence. Art. Life. And Love too. I see Cities of EcoPods coalescing vibrantly. Terra-forming.
Cred: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
sandmars_mro_big.jpg 2037×2532 pixels
A collection of beautiful, wonderful works from all around the real world. Really.
- Mark
- Central, Massachusetts, United States
- I like using ellipsis... My monicker represents my keen awareness of my limitations... ... the suspense is killing...
Monday, April 20, 2009
Friday, April 17, 2009
A Cat's Bitter Disappointment After Sneaking Up On Pigeon
Check out this website I found at digg.com
this is VERY funny!
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Ugh...
It's Scutigera Coleoptrata Season!
Maggie Koerth-Baker is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. A freelance science and health journalist, Maggie lives in Minneapolis, brain dumps on Twitter, and writes quite often for mental_floss magazine.
Spring is in the air. The plants are sprouting. That last pile of snow on the shady part of your neighbor's lawn has successfully melted. And your bathroom is alive with terrifying, multilegged creatures that look like this:
Yes, it's active season for everybody's favorite arthropod, scutigera coleoptrata, aka the house centipede. One of these bad boys scuttled across my bathroom floor just last night. My cats, which were born in the South and are still somewhat disappointed by Minnesota's distinct lack of huntable palmetto bugs, think this is great. I'm less enthused. But I figure that when life hands you horrifying household pests, the least it can do is make them interesting.
With that in mind, I present:
Four Facts You Didn't Realize You Wanted To Know About That Thing Living Behind Your Toilet1.Scutigera Coleoptrata are Not Your Fault
Stop beating yourself up. Unlike, say, cockroaches, house centipedes aren't hanging around because you didn't clean the kitchen. At least, not directly. Scutigera coleoptrata feed on spiders and insects--they're actually pretty beneficial if you're willing to do the devil's arithmetic here and decide that you'd rather have one fast-moving centipede than a colony of roaches. That said, leaving crumbs and half-eaten sandwiches about does create a nice environment for s. coleoptrata's food to grow in. So it might not hurt to clean.2. Scutigera Coleoptrata are Efficient
They're actually capable of eating several other bugs at once, noshing on one meal while holding onto another with one of their 30 legs. They usually hunt at night, waiting for prey to get close enough that they can jump onto it, lasso it in, or whip it into submission.3. Scutigera Coleoptrata are Not a Toy
House centipedes do their hunting via a set of venomous front legs. The good news: They won't come looking to start a fight with you and, most of the time, even if you do egg them into attacking, they won't be able to break your skin barrier. The bad news: That's only most of the time. S. coleoptrata has apparently successfully stung humans before. Not life-threatening, it's supposed to feel a lot like a bee sting.4. Scutigera Coleoptrata Will Not Forget This
Photo courtesy Kenta Hayashi
Unlike a lot of household pests that can be expected to die shortly after breeding, s. coleoptrata can live as long as seven years. There's a distinct possibility they've been in your house longer than you have. During that time, they can grow to be as big as 1.75 in. long. Unsurprisingly, getting rid of them isn't easy. Sticky traps are often recommended, but the house centipede can escape those by simply breaking off the stuck legs and growing them back later.
via boingboing.net
... and compassion for all.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Break up the Big Banks...
... Let's start the breaking up party...
... Break up the Big Banks, Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Cars. Repay the debt you have caused for our country. Then we'll start reducing Big Government.
... Support A New Way Forward...
On Saturday, A New Way Forward is sponsoring a nationwide day of action to demand that our leaders (1) nationalize (2) reorganize, and (3) decentralize the banks as a first step toward building a more just economy.
On Saturday, come to a rally near you for speeches, street theatre, petition gathering, and phonebanking to Congress. (I'll say a few words at the New York City rally.) Add your voice to this growing movement to demand our tax dollars be used to fix our problems, rather than preserve the fortunes of those who created them.
http://www.anewwayforward.org/rally-list.php
If you can't come, make sure our Senators and Representatives hear us by signing our petition to Break Up the Banks:
http://www.democrats.com/break-up-the-banks
... Break up the Big Banks, Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Cars. Repay the debt you have caused for our country. Then we'll start reducing Big Government.
follow me in the virtual:
http://twitter.com/numbone
http://numbone.posterous.com/
http://numbone111.blogspot.com/
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Won't be fooled again...
William K. Black suspects that it was more than greed and incompetence that brought down the U.S. financial sector and plunged the economy in recession — it was fraud. And he would know. When it comes to financial shenanigans, William K. Black, the former senior regulator who cracked down on banks during the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s, has seen pretty much everything. Now an Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri, William K. Black tells Bill Moyers on the JOURNAL that the tool at the very center of mortgage collapse, creating triple-A rated bonds out of "liars' loans" — loans issued without verifying income, assets or employment — was a fraud, and the banks knew it. 
Bill Moyers Journal . William K. Black: CSI Bailout | PBS via pbs.org http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04032009/watch.html
... Break up the Big Banks, Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Cars. Repay the debt you have caused for our country. Then we'll start reducing Big Government.
Friday, April 3, 2009
Do NOT miss this...
... get it on DVD. I mean it: BUY a copy of this movie. Then watch it repeatedly. Live fully. Love forever.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
He was?!?
"Marx was Right!"
Richard Metzger is the current Boing Boing guest blogger.
Watching the news with the G20 protesters in London carrying banners reading "Capitalism Failed Us" and "Marx was Right!" I felt quite good about the day's events. In 1983 and 1984, I was living in London and going to protests like this myself and it brought back long-forgotten memories. When I was younger, I considered myself a staunch socialist, but as I got older that way of identifying myself fell away. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the break-up of the Soviet Union, it seemed like Marxism was something that the world had moved on from and so did I. During the dotcom era, I was as greedy a capitalist as the next guy. Five years ago, slimming my library down for a cross country move, I unemotionally tossed all of my "Karl Marx and related" books. Boy do I regret doing this now!
One recent evening, I was writing something and I thought I'd coined a nifty new phrase to describe a major factor in the economic meltdown: "fictitious capital." I decided to Google the term and it's a good thing that I didn't pat myself on the back too hard because it's something that Karl Marx came up with about 150 years before me. That Google search led me down a Karl Marx rabbit hole that lasted for weeks (My wife, Tara, called it "worse than your reggae phase!"). I bought a new copy of "Capital" and read deep into the night. I emerged a few days later, bleary-eyed, unshaven and proudly declaring myself a socialist again.
The work of Karl Marx is ultra relevant to understanding the world's current financial mess, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Marx has become intellectually indispensable to me again, as if there ever should have been any doubt. It's fascinating to consider that during the time period when Marx was writing "Capital," there were few factories in England --it was largely an agrarian society still-- yet somehow Marx was able to see clearly the mess that we would be in today. He's the most accurate prophet in all of history, there should be no doubt about this. Marx viewed history with a very, very long telescope. How he was able to see so far into the future is a mystery of his particular genius, but Marx accurately extrapolated how capitalism's endgame would play itself out at the very birth of the system. Marx saw how utterly destructive this system would ultimately become. Look around you: Marx was right. If you disagree, well, I have a challenge for you: Start reading Marx's "Capital" and see what you think afterward. Keep an open mind and try to get past the drier chapters up front. It's a richly rewarding intellectual journey to take. There is an online course taught by Professor David Harvey that I found quite helpful, you might want to take in some (or all) of his lectures for chapters that are more difficult to understand. Maybe some of you might want to form an online reading group on Facebook. The important point is to READ Marx again and to rediscover how prescient his ideas really were and how well they explain what's going on today.
The Revenge of Karl Marx by Christopher Hitchens
Marxism (Wikipedia) An excellent overview
Reading Marx’s Capital with David Harvey (13 part video lecture series)
posted in: Economy , Old school , politics
via boingboing.net
... and he had a bitchin' beard!
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
GREEN is GOOD...
White House plans modified Washington Monument in 'carbon-free' National Mall-->
One of President Obama's key campaign promises was to make the U.S. a leader in sustainable green energy, and by the looks of this concept, he intends to lead by example. The White House unveiled today a plan for a 10-megawatt wind turbine near the top of The Washington Monument, with underground feeder cables to send the generated power to the D.C. grid.
Boring traditionalists are likely to reject anything that alters the Washington Monument so radically as unpatriotic, but imagine the green message it would send to the rest of the world. Queen Elizabeth recently bought a humungous wind turbine of her own, so Obama clearly believed that America should follow the U.K.'s example and unveil a bold green symbol for America.
In fact, 10 megawatts would actually be enough to power all of the Washington, D.C., metro area, so maybe he plans sells power back to local utility Pepco put a dent in that trillion-dollar federal deficit.
Via The White House
via dvice.com
... in my pockets.
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