Obama

Press One For English

The pattern behind self-deception

The Story of Stuff

Good Ole Rubber Cement Comes to the Rescue Once More

Dean Kamen: The emotion behind invention

Classic Relief For Haiti

OMG!!!!!!!!

A Little Mercy Now

Did you know?

Make It Fifty-Four

Just a note for the record:
Vevah & I marked our 54th wedding anniversary with a big bag of popcorn & sodas at the movies. We toasted our enduring happiness back at home with a glass of "Whiskers Port". Perfect !!!

Dover Beach

Bill Clinton singing in Israel

Will Sing For Change

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A Journey Into The Unknown

Large Hadron Collider Rap

A Rare Mute Monk Order From Molalla Oregon Performing The Hallelujah Chorus.

Global Warming...? watch this and comment Yes or No?

A Theory of Everything

I posted this video last month. To some it may seem too complex to follow and therefore beyond comprehension. To others it may seem threatening to the comfort of their belief systems, and defensively dismissed as drivel. Those who dare to challenge the completeness of meanings for which others have settled, will however, continue to enlighten... So I have jotted down my own reactions and re-posted this below to hopefully enliven the conversation:
This is a presentation recounting an adventure in science. There is a sense of beauty, wonder and awe in this quest for a more complete understanding.

It is the testing, the measurement of real things. Only by extension, of careful, honest observations of real world processes which have shaped the very stuff of existence, is he advancing a more comprehensive, BUT NOT COMPLETE theory. It's how we can account for what we already can measure, and organise it into a more comprehensive coherency. What this young man is doing is not just mathematical gobble-degook masqeurading as fact. He is trying to advance our understanding, by suggesting that with the upcoming experiments at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, further measurements of the action of real things (sub-atomic particles), more of our place in the universe will be better understood. If you poo pooh this you will have aligned yourself with those who would have been prepared to banish into exile those who put forth the proposition ( with careful measurement, I might add ) that the earth was NOT the center of the universe.

It is one attempt to describe what is at bottom genuinely unknowable. However,these methods of measuring the processes & physicality's of life are for the sake of a more meaningful existence on this earth.

What we all want is certainty about the origins and purpose of life. That is NOT achievable without constructing an edifice of meaning into which we can invest ourselves. Any such meaning does not provide certainty, only a problematically acceptable construct for getting on with the things life sends our way. Our history is that of constructing such meaning in thousands of mythological constructs. We will go on doing this into however long we exist as a species. And this is an okay thing with me.

It is another thing to strike off into an unexamined life. When we are so secure in the mythological constructs inherited from the past and pretend that we and our ancestors have told ourselves the complete and everlasting story. Because when we do that, are we endangering ourselves by investing our of lives in hardened meanings worn thin from the testing burdens of real life.
Please scroll back up and view what a remarkable presentation this is!!
JL

Hassan's table of differences between modernism and postmodernism

Modernism	Postmodernism
Romanticism/Symbolism	Pataphysics/Dadaism
Form (conjunctive, closed)	Antiform (disjunctive, open)
Purpose	Play
Design	Chance
Hierarchy	Anarchy
Mastery/Logos	Exhaustion/Silence
Art Object / Finished Work	Process/Performance/Happening
Distance	Participation
Creation/Totalization	Decreation/Deconstruction
Synthesis	Antithesis
Presence	Absence
Centering	Dispersal
Genre/Boundary	Text/Intertext
Semantics	Rhetoric
Paradigm	Syntagm
Hypotaxis	Parataxis
Metaphor	Metonymy
Selection	Combination
Root/Depth	Rhizome/Surface
Interpretation/Reading	Against Interpretation / Misreading
Signified	Signifier
Lisible (Readerly)	Scriptable (Writerly)
Narrative / Grande Histoire	Anti-narrative / Petit Histoire
Master Code	Idiolect
Symptom	Desire
Type	Mutant
Genital/Phallic	Polymorphous/Androgynous
Paranoia	Schizophrenia
Origin / Cause	Difference-Difference / Trace
God the Father	The Holy Ghost
Metaphysics	Irony
Determinacy	Indeterminacy
Transcendence	Immanence

Hmmmm?What's this all about?

Answer may lie here

Elephant’s Migration Trail!

click on the X to remove those darn pets

Elephants march through hotel lobby after it was built on their migration trail!

The Mfuwe Lodge in Zambia happens to have been built next to a mango grove that one family of elephants have always visited when the fruit ripens. When they returned one year and found the luxury accommodation in the way, they simply walked through the lobby to reach their beloved grove of trees.
The animals come in two-by-two. Hotel staff and visitors have gotten used to the elephants' impromptu strolls through the lobby. Now the family group, headed by matriarch Wonky Tusk, return every November and stay for four to six weeks to gorge on mangos - up to four times a day. Andy Hogg, 44, the lodge director, has lived in South Luangwa National Park since 1982. But in all his years of dealing with wild animals he has never seen such intimate interaction between humans and wild animals. "This is the only place in the world where elephants freely g et so close to humans," says Andy. "The elephants start coming through base camp in late November each year to eat the ripe mangos from our trees."
Living in the 5,000 square mile national park, the ten-strong elephant herd is led to the lodge each day by Wonky Tusk. The hotel was built directly in the path of the elephants' route to one of their favorite foods .... Mangos.
"The most interesting thing about these wild animals," explains Andy, "is that this is the only herd that comes through, and they come and go as they please."
Mfuwe Lodge consists of seven camps and the base camp where the elephants walk through. Employing 150 staff, the management of the lodge report that there have been no incidents involving the wild elephants to date. "The elephants get reasonably close to the staff, as you can see in the pictures of the elephants near the reception area," Andy explains. "But we do not allow the guests to get that close."
"Guests can stand in the lounge but only as long as there is a barrier between the elephants and the guests," he added."The elephants are not aggressive but you wouldn't want to tempt them. It is the elephant's choice to be here and they have been coming here for the last ten years. There are other wild mango trees around, but they prefer ours. The lodge was unwittingly built upon their path," Andy says, "so we had no idea they would do this. It wasn't a design error, we just didn't know. The lodge was built and the elephants started walking through afterward."
"We keep people at a safe distance, but allow them close enough to see what is going on. These are still wild anddangerous animals, so there must be enough time for people to get away." The hotel is set in an idyllic national parkland. Naturally, the lodge becomes busier for both elephants and guests during November. "We find that we get more people visiting us during the elephant migration because of the unique experience of being so close to wild animals in an unusual environment," says Andy. "But as I said this is a totally natural phenomenon, as the elephants come here of their own accord. It is certainly a rare but magnificent sight."

Riversimple, Less is More

More than a concept car it's concept of transport utility and efficiency.

Born Again American?

Hot Child In The City>>>Welcome to Mississauga

The Man Behind the Curtain

From the Charlie Rose Program