Monday, January 28, 2008

Fragebogen:The Holocaust under my Skin




Danke Germany.I live with the memories and the consequences forever.No hate,only a great and profound pain and fragebogen.
The experience of Nazism is alive in contemporary public debates over subjects as varied as German troops in Afghanistan, the low birth rate and the country’s dealings with foreigners. Why the country seems unendingly obsessed with Nazism is a subject of perpetual debate here, ranging from Germany’s philosophical temperament, to simple awe at the unprecedented combination of organization and brutality, to the sense that the crime was so great that it spread like a blot over the entire culture. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/29/world/europe/29nazi.html?hp

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Life: Mystics See Spirits’ Power

SOLO, Indonesia — As former President Suharto hovers on the edge of death, some people here say it is not doctors and machines that have kept him alive, but an unseen cosmos of mystical forces.The diagnosis among believers here in Solo, the heart of Javanese culture, is that powerful occult forces in his body will not let him go, that certain rituals that would cleanse his spirit have not yet been performed or that nature has not yet signaled that it is ready to receive him.“The power of spirits inside his body is keeping him alive,” said Darsono, 34, a spiritualist here who is said to be able to perform magic, expressing one common view. “Suharto’s life is supported by a mystical power,” added Mr. Darsono, who, like many Indonesians, goes by one name.Over the years, according to his aides, he has made frequent visits to sacred places, including mountains, caves, tombs and ruins, and he has taken ritual baths in the ocean and in rivers at places that were believed to hold special powers. He is said to have collected hundreds of sacred artifacts to absorb their magical power.Among them, according to local press reports, is a red stone called a mirah delima, which psychics say can protect its owner from swords and bullets and guard against illness.
Nature, for example, seems to be giving mixed signals.
It’s not mysticism,” he insisted, as if trying to break through a language barrier. “It’s reality". http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/world/asia/27indo.html?pagewanted=2&ref=world

Kanguru


Kangaroo - The name for the Australian marsupial Kangaroo came about when some of the first white settlers saw this strange animal hopping along and they asked the Aborigines what it was called. They replied with 'Kanguru', which in the native language meant 'I don't know' .

Saturday, January 26, 2008

Less Is More:“Dipso, Fatso, Bingo, Asbo, Tesco”

photo by marguerita: A poetic license portrait of the Queen.(Elizabeth)
LONDON — It was a lofty idea: formulate a British “statement of values” defining what it means to be British, much the way a document like the Declaration of Independence sets out the ideals that help explain what it means to be American.Because of the peculiarities of its long history, Britain has in modern times never felt the need for such a statement.What does it mean to be British? How do you express it in a country that believes self-promotion to be embarrassing? And how do you deal with a defining trait of the people you are trying to define: their habit of making fun of worthy government proposals?Nor did it help when The Times of London cynically sponsored a British motto-writing contest for its readers.The readers’ suggestions included “Dipso, Fatso, Bingo, Asbo, Tesco” (Asbo stands for “anti-social behavior order,” a law-enforcement tool, while Tesco is a ubiquitous supermarket chain); “Once Mighty Empire, Slightly Used”; “At Least We’re Not French”; and “We Apologize for the Inconvenience.” The winner, favored by 20.9 percent of the readers, was “No Motto Please, We’re British.”As for the statement of values, Mr. Wills of the Justice Ministry said that the government would soon hold “an extensive and intensive” period of consultation with regular people on what being British means to them. After that, it will convene a “citizens’ summit” of 500 to 1,000 people who will deliberate on the matter. The final decision on the statement will be made by Parliament.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/26/world/europe/26motto.html?hp

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Food for Thought :In reference to Talent &Woman



photos by anna hirte


"It is really tragic when somebody that is gifted and talented is cut down at the early part of their career, because we always think about what more they could have offered the world in terms of their talents"

It is a natural human instinct to want gifted young people to succeed, because talent should be rewarded.

I don’t want is a society that tells me I have to.”from today's story in the NYTimes,an absurd attitude against life and reality. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/24/fashion/24skin.html?pagewanted=2

Monday, January 21, 2008

Krakow on my mind: The Singing Frog



The Singing Frog
At the corner of Pilsudskiego Street and Retoryka Street, Art-Nouveau style the former Seat of The Music School.
Maybe my mother's spirit is near me.I cannot stop seeing her in my dreams.
And for some reason the singing frog image,from when I saw him in 2004,on my first and only visit so far to Krakow.
I am always drawing the frog.I always remember Yehuda Amihai's poem: The Place Where I Never Was".

http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:wnDq3kfTESsJ:jqr.pennpress.org/PennPress/journals/jqr/yehudaamichai.pdf+Yehuda+Amihai(the+place+that+will+never+be)&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=8&gl=us

Friday, January 18, 2008

photo by marguerita

LaFontaine and the Frogs

En exergue ces quatre vers de La Fontaine, extraits de Les grenouilles qui demandent un roi :

Les grenouilles, se lassant
De l'état démocratique
Par leurs clameurs firent tant
Que Jupin les soumit au pouvoir monarchique.

Leafing through my l870s edition of Fables de La Fontaine, a favorite of mine, I couldn't help but notice a subtle parallel between Les Grenouilles qui Demandent un Roi (The Frogs who Demanded a King) and the mentality that led to the outcome of the 17 June parliamentary elections in Bulgaria. As in La Fontaine, the moral of the story is what matters and not so much the specific characters.http://www.ce-review.org/01/23/rozevagreen23.html





Thursday, January 17, 2008

Oy.Oy.Oy: Miuccia Prada: Do you have to be so Obvious??


drawing by marguerita

And,now. as Frank would sing, in Strangers in the night.Something in your eyes was so inviting,
Something in you smile was so exciting,
Something in my heart,
Told me I must have you.
....................................................................that's all we need.
The man trashed out to the bones.
The man in Ms. Prada’s current vision was domesticated and so passive as to be a neuter.
“It’s about telling your story, telling your truth,” said the musician who remains one of the most novelistic artists hip-hop has produced.
As usual with this designer, there were things to admire: a lean clerical silhouette, the severity of a nearly monochrome palette, the way color and its absence were used to mark out the torso in floating zones. But when designers stop conceding to biological function, they move away from the realm of fashion and into that of social engineering. It is one thing to nudge men toward exploring their girly sides and quite another to suggest they sit to urinate.

http://www.mp3lyrics.org/d/defyance/shadows-in-my-mind/

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Vatican News:Pope pulls out of visit to Rome university after outrage at his views on Galileo and science




PopeBenedict XVI last night called off a visit to Rome's main university in the face of hostility from some of its academics and students, who accused him of despising science and defending the Inquisition's condemnation of Galileo.The controversy was unparalleled in a country where criticism of the Roman Catholic church is normally muted. The Pope had been due to speak tomorrow during ceremonies marking the start of the academic year at Rome's largest and oldest university, La Sapienza. But the Vatican said last night it had been "considered opportune to postpone" his visit.The announcement followed a break-in and sit-in at the rector's office yesterday by about 50 students and a furious row over a letter signed by more than 60 of La Sapienza's teachers, asking that the invitation to the Pope be rescinded.The signatories of the letter said Benedict's presence would be "incongruous".
Rightwing opposition MPs were outraged. One suggested La Sapienza, which means "wisdom" or "learning" ought now to be renamed La Ignoranza...

· Galileo Galilei was the Inquisition's most high profile victim. But by recanting his view that the earth moved around the sun, he managed to pay for his defiance of Catholic teaching, not with his life, but his freedom.
Born in Pisa in 1564, Galileo was a polymathic genius - a physicist, astronomer and mathematician who improved both the refracting telescope and compound microscope

· After ridiculing the views of the then Pope Urban VIII in his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Galileo was ordered to stand trial for heresy in 1633. The judgment found that his view of the solar system was "absurd, philosophically false, and formally heretical, because it is expressly contrary to Holy Scriptures".

· He spent the rest of his life under house arrest on orders of the Inquisition and died in 1642. It was not until 1835 that his Dialogue was dropped from the Index of banned books.John Hopper

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7188860.stm http://www.guardian.co.uk/pope/story/0,,2241339,00.html


Syphillis and Columbus:On the Origin of the Treponematoses: A Phylogenetic Approach


treponemas:the bacteria that causes syphilis

Since the first recorded epidemic of syphilis in 1495, controversy has surrounded the origins of the bacterium Treponema pallidum subsp. pallidum and its relationship to the pathogens responsible for the other treponemal diseases: yaws, endemic syphilis, and pinta. Some researchers have argued that the syphilis-causing bacterium, or its progenitor, was brought from the New World to Europe by Christopher Columbus and his men, while others maintain that the treponematoses, including syphilis, have a much longer history on the European continent.

For 500 years, controversy has raged around the origin of T. pallidum subsp. pallidum, the bacterium responsible for syphilis. Did Christopher Columbus and his men introduce this pathogen into Renaissance Europe, after contracting it during their voyage to the New World? Or does syphilis have a much older history in the Old World? This paper represents the first attempt to use a phylogenetic approach to solve this question. In addition, it clarifies the evolutionary relationships between the pathogen that causes syphilis and the other T. pallidum subspecies, which cause the neglected tropical diseases yaws and endemic syphilis. Using a collection of pathogenic Treponema strains that is unprecedented in size, we show that yaws appears to be an ancient infection in humans while venereal syphilis arose relatively recently in human history. In addition, the closest relatives of syphilis-causing strains identified in this study were found in South America, providing support for the Columbian theory of syphilis's origin.http://www.plosntds.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pntd.0000148

http://www.cdc.gov/STD/Syphilis/STDFact-Syphilis.htm

http://www.logoi.com/health/syphilis/syphilis_4.html

The Beauty of Life

http://www.guardian.co.uk/slideshow/page/0,,2239194,00.html

Monday, January 14, 2008

The Inner Life : Fenelon


Linked by Fénelon at the end of the 17th century, the notions of liberty, equality and fraternity became more widespread during the Age of Enlightenment.

Francois Fenelon (1651-1715)
The Inner Life

This English translation originally appeared in "Spiritual Progress

or Instructions in the Divine Life of the Soul
from the French of Fenelon and Madame Guyon";
Printed in 1853; Edited by James W. Metcalf.

He is, in all things, infinite—in wisdom power and love,—and what wonder, if everything that comes from his hand should partake of the same infinite character and set at nought the efforts of human reason. When He works, his ways and his thoughts are declared by the prophet to be as far above our ways and our thoughts as the heavens are above the earth (Isaiah lv. 9).

Fénelon, François de Salignac de la Mothe. 1651 - 1715.

French archbishop, theologian, and man of letters whose liberal views on politics and education and whose involvement in a controversy over the nature of mystical prayer caused concerted opposition from church and state. His pedagogical concepts and literary works, nevertheless, exerted a lasting influence on French culture.

Descended from a long line of nobility, Fenelon began his higher studies in Paris about 1672 at Saint-Sulpice seminary. Ordained a priest in 1676, he was appointed director of Nouvelles Catholiques ("New Catholics"), a college for women who instructed converts from French Protestantism. When King Louis XIV heightened the persecution of the Huguenots (French Calvinists) in 1685 by revoking the Edict of Nantes, Fenelon strove to mitigate the harshness of Roman Catholic intolerance by open meetings with the Protestants (1686-87) to present Catholic doctrine in a reasonable light. While unsympathetic to Protestant belief, he equally repudiated forced conversions.

Ears what do you Hear

Karn Phool (The Ear Flower)

Buddha HeadFrom earliest times long ear lobes have been regarded as a sign of spiritual development and superior status. Among the distinguishing marks of the Buddha, and a sign of his greatness, were his large ear lobes. Homer (d.c. 800 BC) and Aristotle (d. 322 BC) reputedly also had the same characteristic.

There is believed to be a close connection between the ears and the sexual reflexes. The fleshy ear lobes, absent in all other primates, are not, as they appear to be, useless appendages, but erogenous zones which in sexual excitement become swollen and hypersensitive. In ancient times severed ears were offered to the Mother Goddess as a substitute for the male organs. In Egypt devotees offered their ears to the goddess Isis, and till the early decades of the Christian era, sculpted ears were offered at the shrine of the Great Mother in other parts of the Middle East.

The boring of ear lobes has been widely practiced in all parts of the world from early times. The purpose of this operation is not only to facilitate the wearing of earrings for beauty, but to protect the wearer from evil influences, the adornments serving as talismans. The practice was also thought to have some therapeutic value. In certain places, ear piercing was believed to be good for the eyes; it also sharpened the mind and drew off 'bad humors'.

One historian attributes the piercing to the desire to punish the ears for overhearing what they should not hear. The earrings, in turn, were the consolation for the pain and suffering. It was believed that the more decorative and expensive the earrings, the greater the consolation.

The Maiden

Early sculptures demonstrate that ear ornaments were an important constituent of Indian female attire. To the married woman, the ear ornament was (and is) auspicious. Additionally a woman's wealth was conspicuously visible and the ear ornament became a statement of her status and power; elongated ear lobes were considered a sign of beauty and wealth - the longer the lobe, the greater the woman's wealth. By appending ornaments to almost every part of the ear, the woman also ensured a continuous state of mental and physical well being. Indeed recent studies have identified the ear as a microcosm of the entire body - "the point of vision in acupuncture is situated in the center of the lobe."

The Indian woman's bejeweled ear offers a sight that prompted the exclamation: "European ladies are content with one appendage to each ear, while the females of Hindustan think it impossible to have too many."

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.namasteboston.com/wed/images/jewelry/ha85.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.namasteboston.com/wed/Jewelry.htm&h=400&w=356&sz=34&hl=en&start=52&sig2=5-MUQSEaahIGruE4JyjNQg&um=1&tbnid=XgSLRyOrk1lksM:&tbnh=124&tbnw=110&ei=gXmLR8OzEY32ecKWkOAO&prev=/images%3Fq%3DRadha%2Bmaking%2BLove(National%2BMuseum)New%2BDelhi)%26start%3D36%26ndsp%3D18%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Carla Bruni:"Love lasts a long time, but burning desire, two or three weeks."



About the Elysee Palace. (Palais de l'Élysée, located 55, rue du faubourg Saint-Honoré, 75008 Paris.
The building has a long and colorful history as well as its occupants,including the new one,Sarkozy,the actual president of France.
He declared openly that he is not an intellectual,so bringing Carla into the fold maybe a chance to add some flair to politics and a change in fact.We all need Panem et Circenses. After all life is short and to achieve harmony in this insane world we must have Bread,Love and Fantasy!
The Elysees was the former address of Madame Pompadour,here in a painting by Francois Boucher.[French Rococo Era Painter, 1703-1770-noted for his pastoral and mythological scenes, whose work embodies the frivolity and sensuousness of the rococo style.-)It was bought by Louis XV for her when he made her the Marquise de Pompadour. She was born Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson on December 29, 1721 in Paris. It is suspected that her biological father was the rich financier Le Normant de Tournehem, who became her legal guardian when her official father Francois Poisson, a steward to the Paris brothers--foremost financiers of the French economy--was forced to leave the country in 1725 after a scandal. He was cleared eight years later and allowed to return to France.
Besides being the mistress of Louis XV ,she was a beautiful and intelligent woman.She had many enemies among the royal courtiers, who felt it a disgrace that the king would thus compromise himself with a commoner. She was very sensitive to the unending libels called poissonnades, a word meaning something like "fish stew", a pun on her family name, Poisson, which means "fish" in French.

Madame de Pompadour was an accomplished woman with a good eye for Rococo interiors. She was responsible for the development of the manufactory of Sèvres, which became one of the most famous porcelain manufacturers in Europe and which provided skilled jobs to the region. She had a keen interest in literature. She had known Voltaire before her ascendancy, and the playwright apparently advised her in her courtly role. She also discreetly endorsed Diderot's Encyclopédie project. After the War of the Austrian Succession, when economy was the thing the French state needed most, she drew more and more resources into the lavish court. Her influence over Louis increased markedly through the 1750s, to the point where he allowed her considerable leeway in the determination of policy over a whole range of issues, from military matters to foreign affairs.

Her memorial portrait finished in 1764 after her death, but begun from the life, by her favorite portraitist, François-Hubert Drouais
Her memorial portrait finished in 1764 after her death, but begun from the life, by her favorite portraitist, François-Hubert Drouais
Pompadour was a woman of verve and intelligence. She planned buildings like the Place de la Concorde and the Petit Trianon with her brother, the Marquis de Marigny.
information adapted from Wikipedia

food for thought::Theodore C. Sorensen

“Speaking from the heart, to the heart, directly, not too complicated, relatively brief sentences, words that are clear to everyone,” he said of the fine art of political rhetoric.

Saturday, January 12, 2008

Emotions: Thoughts & studies

The Relation Between the Physical State of the Brain-Cells and Brain Functions--Experimental and Clinical[*]

ddress before The American Philosophical Society, April 18, 1913.

The brain in all animals (including man) is but the clearing-house for reactions to environment, for animals are essentially motor or neuromotor mechanisms, composed of many parts, it is true, but integrated by the nervous system. Throughout the phylogenetic history of the race the stimuli of environment have driven this mechanism, whose seat of power--the battery--is the brain.

Since all normal life depends upon the response of the brain to the daily stimuli, we should expect in health, as well as in disease, to find modifications of the functions and the physical state of the component parts of this central battery-- the brain-cells. Although we must believe, then, that every reaction to stimuli, however slight, produces a corresponding change in the brain-cells, yet there are certain normal, that is, non-diseased, conditions which produce especially striking changes. The cell changes due to the emotions, for example, are so similar, and in extreme conditions approach so closely to the changes produced by disease, that it is impossible to say where the normal ceases and the abnormal begins.

In view of the similarity of brain-cell changes it is not strange that in the clinic as well as in daily life, we are confronted constantly by outward manifestations which are so nearly identical that the true underlying cause of the condition in any individual case is too often overlooked or misunderstood. In our laboratory experiments and in our clinical observations we have found that exhaustion produced by intense emotion, prolonged physical exertion, insomnia, intense fear, certain toxemias, hemorrhage, and the condition commonly denominated surgical shock, produce similar outward manifestations and identical brain-cell changes.
It is, therefore, the purpose of this paper to present the definite results of laboratory researches which show certain relations between alterations in brain functions and physical changes in the brain-cells.

http://www.worldwideschool.com/library/books/tech/medicine/OriginandNatureofEmotions/chap5.html

The Importance of Being Eaten


Mitch Leslie

On page 192 of this week's issue of Science, ecologists reveal that the partnership between acacia trees and the helper ants that fend off intruders for them in East Africa falls apart when large herbivores such as giraffes, elephants, and antelopes are absent.

Dans cet article, un groupe de chercheurs dirigé par l'Américain Todd Palmer montre comment les grands mammifères jouent un rôle indispensable pour la protection mutuelle entre une plante et des colonies de fourmis. Dans cette interaction entre flore et faune, composante-clé de l'écosystème tropical, un acacia siffleur et différentes espèces de fourmis cohabitent avec profit : l'arbre fournit son nectar pour nourrir les fourmis et ses épines creuses pour les abriter. En contrepartie, les colonies de fourmis protègent la plante en attaquant des insectes herbivores.

http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3244,36-998277,0.html

SarkoBruni: The return of Marie Antoinette


It's love, says Sarkozy

MAN trap, serial heart-wrecker, rocker arm candy, photogenic cipher, arrogant heiress, polling gimmick — the woman who appears likely to become the first lady of France has been called a lot of things lately. The last thing anyone would have thought of is that she’s a catch.

"policy of civilisation" -- to underpin the multiple reforms that he says are only just beginning. "Everything is joined up. You have to change everything at the same time... to make France a young andand modern country," he said.
"What do you want me to do? Empty state coffers that are already empty?" The problem is simple, he said. "France doesn't work enough while the other countries work more".
http://timescorrespondents.typepad.com/charles_bremner/

Thursday, January 10, 2008

I am a lucky man. I have had a dream and it has come true, and that is not a thing that happens often to men.”

Sir Edmund Hillary,Mount Everest Conqueror- from bees to the highestmountain.....
Everest, to its immediate south, is guarded by the treacherous glaciers and ice-falls of the Western Cwm. It forms a huge punch-bowl between Everest itself and Lhotse (27,890 feet), to the south-east, and Nuptse (25,680) to the south-west. The South Col is high above the Western Cwm, between Lhotse and main mass of Everest. To reach it the party traversed stretches of dangerous ice and "bad" snow, under which crevasses are liable to open up suddenly into chasms of great depth. On their way up these massifs of ice, rock and snow the Hunt party carried a new kind of mortar to dislodge loose snow which might start avalanches in their path. In this as in other respects the party were better equipped for reaching the summit than any of their predecessors.
Mr E. P. Hillary, aged 34, is a beekeeper in New Zealand. He served in the Royal New Zealand Air Force during the war. He started climbing in the New Zealand Alps and was an originator of winter ski mountaineering in the country.http://www.guardian.co.uk/fromthearchive/story/0,,966102,00.html


Cela prouve que les choses bougent, que la mobilisation produit ses premiers résultats"

Clara Rojas, Consuelo Gonzalez de Perdomo

Colombian hostages free at last!

By Judi McLeod Thursday, January 10, 2008

Clara RojasNo one could have better described the joy over the news that two women hostages held by Colombian rebels had been set free than the Colombian radio network Caracol on its website today: “At last, http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/1311they’re free!”

At an airport outside Caracas, relatives greeted the women with white lilies. Some wore T-shirts with a message: "Freedom for everyone now."
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3222,36-998102@51-941502,0.html

http://www.lemonde.fr/web/portfolio/0,12-0@2-3222,31-998123@51-941502,0.html

Earthquakes may hold clues for treatment of epilepsy



Earthquake-prediction techniques could help develop a way to forecast epileptic seizures, according to research which found striking similarities between the electrical activity in the brain before and during seizures and seismological data around earthquakes.
Both are usually preceded by small, barely detectable tremors and, as with an earthquake, the longer it has been since a seizure, the longer it will be until the next one. According to scientists, these shared features mean that the patterns are not random and could even be governed by similar mathematical rules.
Epilepsy comprises a set of conditions which disrupt the electrical activity in the brain and the main symptoms are recurrent, unprovoked seizures.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/jan/10/neuroscience.medicalresearch

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Emotions in America :ha!!!

boxart by marguerita

Clinton did not actually shed tears. But her voice quavered, and her eyes welled up, and for a media that is driven to frustration by this most controlled of candidates that was a big story.
It was the iconic moment of the New Hampshire race: Hillary Clinton, the icy control queen of the Democratic party welling up with emotion.

Emotional vulnerability is especially dangerous to women candidates because the sight of a woman losing her composure feeds directly into stereotypes that women are not tough enough to be America's........

Everywhere on this globe ,it is normal to have feelings, emotions.
So I believe.

After all if you have a heart,mind and soul,you have a set of senses,hopefully.
Otherwise you are in fact a cynic,a cold psychopath.
Not in America.
One is called a wuss and or a miriad of synonyms.
Worse one becomes a pariah when any human emotion transpires.
Reading about Hillary's tears,http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/09/us/politics/09moment.html
in my opinion she finally showed some kind of human reaction.
I would have preferred if she would feel so,when voting for the Iraq invasion and homophobic calamity that was so unjustly inflicted on an innocent nation,its people,its sovereignity ,children,women and men.
Otherwise the last tears episode,turn out to be simply a normal reaction to an exhausting circus parade which are the elections ,combined with crocodile tears.
The idea of demonstrating emotions as a no-no,appears to be a legacy from the Pilgrims,who invaded this continent in the name of whatever they chose to justify their actions which is represented quite well in the two anthems,America Anthem and America The Beautiful.
There was a population inhabiting this land of :

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties Above the fruited plain! America! America! God shed his grace on thee
A
nd crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea! O beautiful for pilgrim feet Whose stern impassioned stress A thoroughfare of freedom beat Across the wilderness! America! America! God mend thine every flaw, Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!
I wonder where did the idea of suppressing emotions come from.
The Pilgrims certainly did a nice job in instilling for two hundred years or more an idea to turn the back on the Old World and any other part of the Globe forgetting that we are all in one place,The Earth.Worse,to disseminate the idea that we can take Nature under our control,meaning that the Sun,Moon,Stars and the Infinite,which no genius so far is able to determine where it starts or ends.That we all should must mask our identities and be equal,when it is totally illogical,as each one of us despite the average determination,we seem to have two legs ,two arms,two other parts and hopefully one organ of its own particular function to exist according to the design of the Divine Spirit.
In truth all of us have a raison d'etre, one writes history,the other one reads history and so on,and so on.
So, helas : Emotions.
It is good for your skin,liver,intestines mind and soul.
And a sense of humor,relieves you of wrinkles (bad for the cosmetic industry....) and makes you realize that life is only a passage,with good and bad moments.
What is sad, to say the truth,is that some of us get more hardship than others.
So maybe there is a reason.
As someone sent me a message today,when I complained that I was desperate with my ongoing troubles:
Don't go insane. For everything there is a season. It comes with patience .
Oh, say! can you see by the dawn's early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming;
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there:
Oh, say! does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
Oh, long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust":
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

So ,so much for the very real expression of freedom and spontaneity.
We cannot live in a fake world,pretending and camuflagging our sincerity.
Someday as an old Brazilian saying goes; Um dia,a casa cae.,meaning "One day the house falls down"....
Maybe Sarkozy in France has gone to the opposite extreme,in fact,by flaunting his anger into a hollywoodian reverie in his latest escapade.
It is obvious that his behavior for the naked eye to be a esponse of a scorned man or woman,who losing their mind want to show off,a Freudian explanation,maybe,no?
But ,wait a moment.
That is all well for teenagers.
After sometime spent on this Earth,we clearly can see thow the ducks get themselves in order.
Oh yes,there must be some limits somewhere for the homo sapiens.
First .to live in some kind of peaceful and harmonious co-existence we do need a set of rules,boundaries. That is only to keep us with a sense of freedom in reality.
Self respect and as consequence a respect for the world around us,the environment and life.
That maybe in fact a recipe for Peace and Love.
For Man &Women,nations,animals, Birds,Fish, Forests, Flowers,Water,Air....
No wonder when we learn about sages,thinkers ,philosophers and as the coommon wrong belief about how artists in fact live their lives.
Real ones are very disciplined.
And most of the time tuned in to Nature.

Honesty : La nouvelle song

http://www.lemonde.fr/web/video/0,47-0@2-811987,54-997197@51-984702,0.html

Monday, January 7, 2008

Gibran Khalil Gibran



And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, "Speak to us of Children." And he said: Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts.

For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, "Speak to us of Children." And he said:
Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts.

For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness; For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;

For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Bling-Bling : Origin-Pouvoir, fric et paillettes.....Voila Sarkarla

drawing by marguerita Bruni to the magazine Figaro Madame last February
in which she declared, “I am faithful — to myself! I am bored to death by monogamy.”

Une nouvelle expression est née. Une expression curieuse, un peu familière : "bling-bling". Cette répétition de la même syllabe, on connaît. On peut citer au hasard : fifty-fifty, gnangnan, à qui mieux mieux... En général, ce redoublement d'une syllabe n'annonce rien de bon. C'est du moyen-moyen.http://swallowvth.imeem.com/music/LJ5fhES9/champs_elysees/
"Le président bling-bling". Dans ce peu de mots, on devinait plus qu'une réticence, la marque d'une franche....
Réfléchissons donc sur cette vulgarité, essayons d'en cerner les contours. Est-il par exemple vulgaire de se rendre à Disneyland ? Non, c'est tout simplement déprimant. Est-il vulgaire de porter de grosses lunettes de soleil à tout propos ? Non, c'est recommandé si l'on a les yeux fragiles et particulièrement sensibles à la luminosité. Est-il vulgaire de faire preuve de familiarité en multipliant les gestes enveloppants avec ses interlocuteurs ? Non, c'est la forme affichée d'une chaleur spontanée ou calculée.

Joke of the Day

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=1042 3886&fsrc=RSS

Looking for the right man


One guide commented on the high male-to-female ratio in Alaska with the following statement: “Ladies, the odds are good, but the goods are odd."
from the NYT sent by

Paula Kirby McWhinnie

Larchmont, New York

Sunday, January 6, 2008

Des Erreurs et de la Vérité, par un Philosophe Inconnu.

"But, Master, is all this necessary to gain a knowledge of God?
I will not conceal from you that formerly I walked in this external way. Nevertheless I at all times felt so strong an inclination to the intimate secret way, that the external way never further seduced me, even in my youth; for at the age of 23 I had been initiated in all these things.
Louis Claude de Saint-Martin, the "unknown philosopher" of the eighteenth century, was born in Amboise on January 18, 1743. (It is interesting that when the boy was fifteen years old the Count de St. Germain was living in the Chateau of Chambord, only a few miles away.) Out of respect for the wish of his father, who expected him to enter the legal profession, the young Saint-Martin studied law for a while. But after practicing for six months he found himself unable to distinguish between the rights of the plaintiff and the defendant, and asked his father's permission to enter the army, not that he was fond of fighting, but that he might have more time to study philosophy. His father appealed to the Duc de Choiseul, Prime Minister of France, who gave the young man a lieutenancy in the Régiment de Foix, then in garrison in Bordeaux. It was there that he met Martinez Paschalis and became a member of his school.http://www.blavatsky.net/magazine/theosophy/ww/setting/martin.html
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/stmartin/stm-pre.htm

Popocatepetl

....whose Aztec name means "Smoking Mountain..For days before the eruption the volcano had been screaming "I'm about to explode" but no one had heard the warning.http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3183047.stm
http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/current_volcs/popo/mar5popo.html
El volcán Popocatepetl, situado a 60 kilómetros de la capital de México, ha lanzado este sábado una espectacular fumarola de vapor de agua y ceniza que ha alcanzado los 8 kilómetros de altura, según las
autoridades.http://www.elpais.com/articulo/internacional/Espectacular/erupcion/volcan/Popocatepetl/Mexico/elpepuint/20080106elpepuint_1/Tes

Francis Bacon's Solomon House-The New Atlantis


Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was an English lawyer, statesman, philosopher, and writer.

Bacon's utopia, 'The New Atlantis' was not published until after his death in 1627. He tells of the discovery of the New Atlantis, a utopian island set beyond both the Old World and New.

Solomon's House is a research establishment on the island. In Solomons House science is a collaborative undertaking, conducted in a rational and impersonal way, for the material benefit of mankind.

The New Atlantis precedes science fiction, a genre of utopian and dystopian writing which deals with the impact of actual or imagined science upon society or individuals.

Bacon describes the various departments and riches of Solomon's House:

Burials in several earths...high towers, the highest about half a mile in height...great lakes...artificial wells and fountains...large baths for the cure of diseases...orchards and gardens...parks and enclosures...fish pools...bread houses and bake houses...dispensaries or shops of medicines...mechanical arts...furnaces...perspective houses (light)...precious stones...sound-houses...perfume houses...engine houses...a mathematical house...

Bacon raises the question of the link between knowledge and power. Knowledge gives people power over others. Bacon's scientists were depicted as moral paragons but also ordinary humans, and so fallible and open to corruption. This raises questions about how society controls those citizens that have powerful, potentially dangerous, knowledge.

Taken from: The Works of Francis Bacon
Creator: Francis Bacon
Publisher: W Baynes & Son
Date created: 1824
Copyright: By permission of the British Library Board
Shelfmark: 12271.ee.4








http://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/21cc/utopia/reasonreligion1/solomon1/solomon.html

Saturday, January 5, 2008

Macaque monkeys 'pay' for sex

AFP/CHRISTOPHE ARCHAMBAULT AFP/CHRISTOPHE ARCHAMBAULT
  • 2 January 2008
  • Colin Barras
  • Magazine issue 2637

SEX has probably been a commodity for as long as human society has existed, and perhaps even longer. The "oldest profession" seemingly has pre-human evolutionary roots. "When the opportunity arises, male macaque monkeys groom females to 'pay' for sex," says Michael Gumert of Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
Gumert looked at research on a 50-strong group of long-tailed macaques in Kalimantan Tengah, Indonesia, that covered a 20-month period. He found there was an increase in sexual activity after bouts of male-to-female grooming. On average, females had sex 1.5 times per hour, but immediately after being groomed by a male partner, this rate jumped to 3.5 times per hour. After grooming, the female was also less likely to offer herself to males other than her grooming partner (Animal Behaviour, DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2007.03.009).

"My interest in this study stemmed from Trivers's theory of reciprocal altruism," says Gumert. In the early 1970s, The complete article is 612 words long.from New Scientist.com

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6W9W-4NP9KH5-5&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=dad880bb805875904a554510987f3487

Mal educacion: No more etiquette.: Cyber Age back to Dark Ages

La tecnología ha irrumpido en la sociedad y ha quebrado normas que antes eran sagradas. El viejo concepto de buena educación se ha revolucionado ante unas herramientas nuevas que facilitan la comunicación pero que, también, trastocan la convivencia.
http://www.elpais.com/articulo/sociedad/vez/eres/cibermaleducado/elpepusoc/20080105elpepisoc_1/Tes

Friday, January 4, 2008

Orange range,rage......


photos by marguerita
Its zesty, uplifting flavor, along with a useful dose of vitamin C, is the perfect prophylactic (psychologically if not physically) for the overindulgence ahead. Take two with each meal and you can't go far wrong.Winter is the time to get the best out of citrus fruits. I like a combination of oranges and clementines for breakfast juice, use the mix in refreshing, palate-cleansing desserts such as fruit jellies and sorbets. For steamed puddings, a lemony syrup makes more sense, but some juice from something orange also combines well in the mix.

Fig and orange trifles

Rich, indulgent and incredibly delicious. The final indulgence of chocolate-dipped walnuts is not strictly essential. Serves six.

18 dried figs, cut into chunks
4 tbsp Grand Marnier (or brandy)
Juice and grated zest of 1 orange
½ tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp ground allspice
50g dark chocolate, broken up
18 walnut halves
100g plain sponge cake, cut into small cubes
6 tbsp fine-cut Seville orange marmalade
About 600ml custard
500ml double cream, lightly whipped
Put the figs, Grand Marnier, juice, zest and spices into a bowl and mix. Cover and leave for an hour. Melt chocolate in a bowl over a pan of simmering water, dip in each walnut half so it's half-covered, then leave on baking parchment to set. To assemble the trifles, put a few cubes of sponge in the base of six large wine glasses. Spoon on the figs and their liquid. Spread a tablespoonful of marmalade on top, spoon in a layer of custard and add a swirl of cream. Top with chocolatey walnuts and chill before serving.

http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/foodanddrink/hughfearnleywhittingstall/story/0,,2234925,00.html

Words

befuddled :1-. to confuse,as with glib statements or arguments.
2.- to make muddled or stupidly drunk. ( be+ fuddle)from Webster's

Thursday, January 3, 2008

Carla Bruni Sings

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.carlabruni.com%2F&ei=DIJ9R8ShBY24eqyDlTw&usg=AFQjCNErgLtyjOQ-e34S_qH8jkZg_9Aq7w&sig2=QDaMAHDjEvLWqWBj2XzGhQ

Albert Einstein and the Theory of Relativity

"An empty stomach is not a good political advisor."

Lasciate ogni speranza voi qu'entrate: Here on this Earth.....


hitler in the box by marguerita

photo &collage by marguerita

“Portrait de Dante Alighieri” by Botticelli

Considérez quelle est votre origine/ Vous n’avez pas été faits pour vivre comme des brutes/ Mais pour ensuivre et science et vertu.” (Considerate la vostra semenza/ Fatti non foste a viver come bruti/ Ma per seguir virtute et conoscenza)
http://passouline.blog.lemonde.fr/