March 2008 archive

Mar 30 2008

Café Discovery

The time has almost come.  By next week it will have passed.

While I should be performing other tasks and thinking about other things, my mind keeps wandering back to the fact that I was born 60 years ago on Thursday.  The number addict in me observes that 60 = 22 * 3 * 5 is a special number.  But we all knew that, didn’t we?

Sixty minutes in an hour, so a minute is minute (small).  And a second is called a second because it is 1/602 part of an hour…second power.  Magic number…as is 360 (=  23 * 32 * 5) …perhaps because it can be divided so well into equal pieces in so many ways.  Anyway, the Sumerians thought a sexagesimal system was cool…and that gave us our timekeeping strategy and the way we measure angles.  Who knew…until much later, that 60 was also the number of elements in the smallest non-abelian simple group?

One could go back further than the Sumerians and discover that the Chinese use a calendar with a cycle of sixty years…the Jia-Zi system.  

each year within the 60-year cycle being named with two symbols, the first being base-10 (called Tian-Gan, ??  or heavenly stems) and the second symbol being base 12 (called Di-Zhi, ??  or earthly branches).

60 is the least common multiple of 12 and 10, of course.

Magic numbers are scarce, until you actively look for them.  Then you discover that all integers are magic.  

    Proof: Let x be the smallest non-magic positive number. If x exists, x would be special…and so x would be magic from some perspective or other. If no such x exists, then all postive integers are magic by induction.

Sort of.  Not a real proof, of course.  The term “magic number” has not been defined here…as I purposely intended.

But I digress…

Mar 30 2008

“Stop Loss” Military and Military Family Perspective

PhotobucketThe reviews you should be reading and listening to, from Military Personal and Family members Of. The ones, small numbers they are, who are actually sacrificing and understand the meanings some of these movies are trying to bring out, that the greater majority, the civilian population, really need to be explained to. Especially in these conflicts they do little to nothing as a sacrifice, most important not wanting to pony up the cost of these Wars of Choice and the Huge longterm Costs of!

Stop Loss:

Retention policy of keeping solders in the military past their contractual obligation

Mar 30 2008

poem

every little girl

dreams of

growing majestic

.

every little boy

dreams of

growing heroic

every mother

dreams of her son

growing kind

every father

dreams of his daughter

growing free

no one dreams

of never growing

or those that do

surely choose

not to dream at all

Mar 30 2008

Do people really change?

I hear alot of talk on blogs that centers on trying to figure out how to change people. Its not so much psychobabble as it is trying to figure out how we can get people to open their eyes and see things differently. But its also about trying to figure out how we can get people to make the kind of changes in their lives that will save the planet, reduce consumption, vote for the right person, protest unjust wars and policies, etc.

Today I’m going back to square one and asking whether or not this is possible…do people really change? Those of you who know a bit about my story might find that a strange question coming from me. I was raised mostly in East Texas in a family/community that is extremely right-wing fundamentalist christian. And up until I started openly asking questions in my 20’s, I bought it all. So if I’m any example, of course people can change…and alot!

But the question for me is not so much did I change, but did I find what was there in the first place. This might seem like a distinction without a difference to some, but I think its extremely important when we think about how we approach the goal of trying to increase the ranks of people who are willing to stand up and fight for the causes we espouse.

Mar 30 2008

Maliki’s Wild Surge

This is a second diary (first here) in my attempt to understand the most farcical aspect of the current battle in Basra: Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki’s vow that he will personally stay in Basra until order is restored, and the Sadrists surrender their weapons.  Maliki originally laid down a 3-day deadline for the surrender of weapons — and then extended it to 10 days when the first deadline fell flat.  And he is still — rather hilariously — in Basra.

One of the reasons Maliki made his strange vow was, apparently, because earlier in the week Sadr asked Maliki to leave Basra as a way to reduce tensions.  It appears Maliki is taking lessons from Bush: the single best way to get Bush to do something is to tell him that doing the opposite would “reduce tensions.”  

Mar 30 2008

America and Iran are Allies in Iraq. Muqtada Al Sadr is defeating both.

Muqtada Al Sadr

Muqtada Al Sadr is poised to become the Simon Bolivar, of Iraq….

He is winning handily and defeating the alleged Militas of the government who are defecting to him and side stepping the ridiculous attempts to bomb him by the insane American forces who only know how to kill and torture civilians.

He is a nationalist…a enemy of American corporations and Iranian interests….as well as corrupt Shiites who are backed by IRan

Mar 30 2008

Pony Party: Sunday music retrospective

Leslie Gore



It’s my Party

Mar 30 2008

John McCain, Indian Agent


Source

The justification for Public Law 93-531 passed by Congress in 1974 was that the Navajo-Hopi land dispute is so serious that 10,000 Navajos near Big Mountain, Arizona, must be relocated, forcibly if necessary. It would be the largest forced relocation of U.S. citizens since the relocation of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

But tradition-minded Navajo and Hopi claim there never was a land dispute. They say the dispute was invented to get the Navajos and their livestock off mineral-rich land in the Hopi reservation so it could be developed by mining companies such as Peabody Coal and Kerr-McGee.

Mar 30 2008

I see no bravery in your eyes anymore. Only sadness

Crossposted at The Big Orange.

There is no glory in the violence we choose to inflict upon other human beings.

There is no justice for the victims of our collective hate. There is only the suffering of the many made possible by the decisions of a few. Do not come to me with open arms or begging bowl when the alliance you seek is one of kinship or dispensation for your brutality. I am not your brother or your keeper.

There are children standing here,

Arms outstretched into the sky,

Tears drying on their face.

He has been here.

Brothers lie in shallow graves.

Fathers lost without a trace.

A nation blind to their disgrace,

Since he’s been here.

Mar 30 2008

Not A “Global Warming Skeptic”

http://www.infowars.com/?p=1140

I am looking at the “Say no to Beijing 2008” ad in the upper left corner and find it related to global warming also.  Yea, we are screwing up the enviornment but the marketing effort via Big Al and this CO2 shit is only aimed at getting the peasants in chains.

Mar 30 2008

Docudharma Times Sunday March 30



The world closing in

Did you ever think

That we could be so close,like brothers

The future’s in the air

I can feel it everywhere

Blowing with the wind of change

Sunday’s Headlines: Clinton Vows To Stay in Race To Convention: Clinton, Obama supporters wrangle over delegates: Files Released by Colombia Point to Venezuelan Bid to Arm Rebels: Brazil teen ‘killer’ investigated: Vote count under way in Zimbabwe: ‘Hotel Rwanda’ hero to give evidence in extradition case:  Under siege in Baghdad’s Mahdi army stronghold: ‘Divided’ Arab summit continues: Wed to Strangers, Vietnamese Wives Build Korean Lives: Tibet tensions high as Olympic torch nears Beijing: Whatever Happened to the IRA?

Tibetan monk protests reflect growing activism

More Buddhist monks, nuns likely to revolt against injustice, oppression

BANGKOK, Thailand – Buddhist monks hurling rocks at Chinese in Tibet, or peacefully massing against Myanmar’s military, can strike jarring notes.

These scenes run counter to Buddhism’s philosophy of shunning politics and embracing even bitter enemies – something the faith has adhered to, with some tumultuous exceptions, through its 2,500-year history.

But political activism and occasional eruptions of violence have become increasingly common in Asia’s Buddhist societies as they variously struggle against foreign domination, oppressive regimes, social injustice and environmental destruction.

Mar 30 2008

Common sense and logic .. from who else, except Al Gore?

Gore expects the situation to “resolve itself” by the time the convention comes around.

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2…

MURFREESBORO – Former Vice President Al Gore said Thursday that he expects the Democratic nomination fight will “resolve itself” before the party’s convention in late August.

Gore told The Associated Press that he sees no urgency in endorsing a presidential candidate.

“What have we got, five months left?” he said in a brief interview after a speech at Middle Tennessee State University.

When pressed that several prominent Democrats, including Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, have expressed hope for an earlier decision on the nomination, Gore said: “I think it’s going to resolve itself. But we’ll see.”

Sort of disappointed to see Howard Dean doing something a little different ..

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03…

“If we have an ugly, divided convention, we will lose. John McCain is not a strong candidate for president. The only way we lose is if we are divided.”

I think Gore’s got the right frame here, the correct vision to adopt. Dean should be backing away from even giving the appearance that Democrats will be anything but united, come August.  

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