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By having a reverence for life, we enter into a spiritual relation with the world By practicing reverence for life we become good, deep, and alive.
Albert Schweitzer
1) World In Pictures – Wednesday
Pedestrians walk among blooming trees reflected in a pond at Fellsmere Park in Malden, Mass. (Bizuayehu Tesfaye/AP)
A Thai girl takes care of her younger sister an evacuation center after they fled home following the fighting between Thai and Cambodian soldiers in Surin province, northeastern Thailand. Officials said Thailand and Cambodia have traded fire for a sixth day as an increasingly bloody border dispute drags on.
(Sakchai Lalit/AP)
Malkiya, Bahrain: A child on the shore of the Persian Gulf at sunset (Hasan Jamali/AP)
2) To say I am not fond of cats is an understatement. Simon’s Cat (Simon Tofield) is however one feline I love following the adventures of. Here is his encounter with a rabbit.
Hop It
1) Friday – April 1, 2011
My favorite Net posting was for one spa treatment I would love to sign up for, a Spa Lami from Living Social, Porkland. http://tinyurl.com/4y7flhr
“Discover the hautest trend in beauty with today’s deal from Spa-Lami, Porkland’s first meat-themed med-spa.”
“Your treatment begins with a paté facial, complete with deli-cut slices of premium salami that are placed over your eyes by USDA-certified, hormone-free owner Carl Nivore.”
“A prosciutto neck wrap and ground beef compress come next, followed by a soothing gravy-aroma therapy treatment (in beef or turkey) and Swedish meatball massage”
2) World In Pictures
A view of tranquil Llyn Dinas in Snowdonia national park in Bethania, Wales. The National Trust is launching an appeal to buy the lake and adjoining farm for the nation (Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
Flooded rivers systems are seen from the air in Windorah, Australia. Queensland recently suffered a series of extreme floods, affecting more than 200,000 people across more than 70 towns. The state is recovering and after the flooding, many areas of outback Queensland are now thriving with the resulting effect on wildlife and flora being described as once-in-a-generation (Photograph: Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)
An Indian family travels on a train in the city of Calcutta. India is now home to 17% of the world’s people as its population climbed to 1.21 billion this year, though growth actually slowed for the first time in 90 years, census officials said. With 623.7 million males and 586.5 million females, India’s population was bigger than the combined populations of the United States, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan and Bangladesh. (Photo by : Piyal Adhikary/EPA)
3) Art – The amazing modern murals of John Pugh – http://www.illusion-art.com
Siete Punto Uno (7.1) – 49 East Main St, Los Angeles, California
Reverse, Lateral, and Loop – Main Street, Tehachapi, California
Who is your favorite artist who is still living?
1) This being the start of the Major League Baseball season I give you the Abbott and Costello classic “Who’s On First”
2) The World In Pictures
Parishioners from the Angel of Michael Healing Tabernacle sing and dance at the 16th Shouter Baptist Liberation Day celebration at the Spiritual Baptist Empowerment Hall in Maloney. The Shouter Baptist religion comprises elements of both Protestant Christianity and African doctrines and rituals, and is characterized by religious services that involve shouting, clapping, and singing loudly.
(Andrea De Silva/Reuters)
Srinagar, India Chinese tourists get their picture snapped during a visit to the Siraj garden, which has more than 1.2 million tulip bulbs of around 70 varieties and will be officially open to the public on Friday. (Photo by Dar Yasin / Associated Press)
An Egyptian woman and child sit on a bus at a refugee camp near Ras Jdir on Feb. 28 after fleeing unrest. People in Tunisia and Egypt are driving to the border to help those arriving from Libya, with many hosting strangers in their homes, international aid groups have said. (Zohra Bensemra/Reuters)
3) A very cool video of the new Geoid unveiled today at the Fourth International GOCE, from information gathered by the European Space Agency’s GOCE satellite. A Geoid is a map of where the Earth’s gravity is all equal: if you flooded the entire planet with water, this is the shape it would if gravity were the only thing shaping this global ocean’s surface.
A link to more information on the ESA’s site – http://tinyurl.com/4ubstpt
1) To start your weekend off with a laugh here are two videos that went “viral” this week.
This very moving rendition of “Danny Boy” would bring a tear to the eye of any Irishman, even if they were born in Sweden or a garbage can
How to make a viral video – point camera at child, do anything:
Emerson – Mommy’s Nose is Scary! by Mandkyeo
2) The world in pictures, where the tears where very real.
Soul, Egypt: An Egyptian man passes a church being rebuilt after it was torched amid tensions over a love affair between a Muslim woman and a Christian man (Photograph: Khalil Hamra/AP)
Libya: A Chadian refugee sits at the Libya-Egypt border after fleeing fighting in eastern Libya (Photograph: Finbarr O’Reilly/Reuters)
Customers flock to buy salt at a supermarket in Lanzhou, Gansu province, China. China’s economic agency vowed to stamp out rumors that have led to salt hoarding and price gouging after consumers emptied shop shelves of it, following baseless rumors that iodine in salt can ward off radiation sickness. (China Daily/Reuters)
Sana, Yemen — A woman attending a rally demanding the ouster of Yemen’s president outside Sana University.
(Photo by: Khaled Abdullah / Reuters)
The world of religious faith has Christians, Jews, Muslim and Hindus. The world of nations has Americans, Afghans, and Frenchmen. In the world of science there is only one family, homo sapiens.
The world will never know peace until everyone on in it thinks like a scientist.
3) Somebody, somewhere, decided that March 18th was National Lacy Oatmeal Cookie Day. I love oatmeal cookies so it gets my vote.
What is your favorite cookie?
A recipe for Lacy Oatmeal Cookies, Florentine style, from the Christian Science Monitor :
Florentine cookies are a crispy, lacy oatmeal cookie sandwich filled with milk chocolate.
From “Cookies” by Natalie Haughton
2/3 cup butter
2 cups quick oats, uncooked
1 cup sugar
2/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup corn syrup
1/4 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt
One 11-1/2-ounce package (2 cups) milk chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Melt butter in medium saucepan over low heat. Remove from heat.
Stir in oats, sugar, flour, corn syrup, milk, vanilla extract and salt; mix well. Drop by level teaspoonfuls, about 3 inches apart, onto foil-lined cookie sheets (I line with parchment paper).
Spread thin with rubber spatula. Bake for 5-7 minutes (or longer, 10-15 minutes until the edges are brown and middles are no longer wet). Cool completely on wire racks. Peel foil away from cookies.
Melt the milk chocolate chips over hot (not boiling) water; stir until smooth.
Spread chocolate on flat side of half the cookies. Top with remaining cookies.
1) Faces of the World – Monday, March 14th
Benghazi, Libya: A boy stands next to men praying in the rebel-held town (Photograph: Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images)
Nihonmatsu, Japan: A girl who has been isolated at a makeshift facility to screen, cleanse and isolate people with high radiation levels looks at her dog through a window (Photograph: Yuriko Nakao/Reuters)
Otsuchi, Japan: A survivor pushes his bicycle through the remains of the devastated town (Photograph: Damir Sagolj/Reuters)
People in Bern, Switzerland, light candles during a vigil for victims of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. (Photo: Pascal Lauener/Reuters)
2) Pi Day
Pi Day, March 14th, commemorates the mathematical constant pi. It’s celebrated on March 14th because 3, 1 and 4 are the three most significant digits in pi. This may seem like a nerdy-math-geek celebration, but I will take any excuse to have pie.
What is your favorite pie, and what was the last time you had some?
3) Quotes
“A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend. A successful woman is one who can find such a man.”
Lana Turner
“A two-year-old is kind of like having a blender, but you don’t have a top for it.”
Jerry Seinfield
“I don’t have to look up my family tree, because I know that I’m the sap.”
Fred Allen
4) The Guardian article has clips from six very funny “mockumentaries”, including the original “Office” with Ricky Gervais – http://tinyurl.com/4m2yv5b
From the British TV series, 1999 – 2001, “People Like Us”, Part 1/3 -”Pilots”
1)Quotes
“I am” is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that “I do” is the longest sentence?
George Carlin
“Suddenly I realize that if I stepped out of my body I would break into blossom.”
From Blessing by James Wright – http://tinyurl.com/atbe8c
I think it is our rational mind that keeps us from stepping out of our bodies. It is in those moments when we can free our imagination that we see the great beauty in the world in its purities form.
When was the last time you stepped out of your body?
2) Weekend pictures from the Net:
The aurora borealis over Glenshane Pass, Maghera, Northern Ireland (By Martin Mckenna)
There are a lot of dirty jobs in the world. The guy on the other end of that sick has one of the direst.
Panompa, Thailand: A man holds a stick as he installs a pump to extract mud at a primitive gold mine. (Guardian)
Tomato seed hairs (Robert Rock Belliveau). From a Wired.com slide show of the 2010 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge, sponsored by the National Science Foundation http://tinyurl.com/5stlq92
On each tomato seed, tiny hairs called trichomes secrete the goo that encases them. The sticky substance not only protects would-be seedlings from drying out, but also glues them to soil so they don’t blow away.
3) Some smooth jazz to brighten up the winter doldrums.
Jeff Lorber and Eric Darius Live At Java Jazz Festival 2008
1) Pictures of daily life in Pakistan & Afganhistan.
An Afghan refugee girl stands with others in an alley of a slum on the outskirts of Islamabad. (Muhammed Muheisen/Associated Press)
From a slide show on the Boston Globes Big Picture Blog “Daily Life In Pakistani”
http://tinyurl.com/4omw56b
Pakistani children gather by a vendor on a bicycle selling balloons on the outskirts of Islamabad. (Muhammed Muheisen/Associated Press
2) From a Los Angeles Times slide show of winners of the World Press Photo Awards.
http://tinyurl.com/4nshhvx
I could add a warning label, and then just link to the following picture. I won’t because this blog is about my world view, which I feel needs to include both the best and worst of what we humans do to each other.
An 18-year-old Afghan woman whose nose and ears were cut off by her abusive husband, with Taliban approval, as punishment for running away. (By Jodi Bieber)
3) From NASA
This oddly colorful nebula is the supernova remnant IC 443 as seen by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. Also known as the Jellyfish Nebula, IC 443 is particularly interesting because it provides a look into how stellar explosions interact with their environment.
Like other living creatures, stars have a life cycle — they are born, mature and eventually die. The manner in which stars die depends on their mass. Stars with mass similar to the sun typically become planetary nebulae at the end of their lives, whereas stars with many times the sun’s mass explode as supernovae. IC 443 is the remains of a star that went supernova between 5,000 and 10,000 years ago. The blast from the supernova sent out shock waves that traveled through space, sweeping up and heating the surrounding gas and dust in the interstellar medium, and creating the supernova remnant seen in this image.
What is unusual about the IC 443 is that its shell-like form has two halves that have different radii, structures and emissions. The larger northeastern shell, seen here as the violet-colored semi-circle on the top left of the supernova remnant, is composed of sheet-like filaments that are emitting light from iron, neon, silicon and oxygen gas atoms, in addition to dust particles, all heated by theblast from the supernova. The smaller southern shell, seen here in a bright cyan color on the bottom half of the image, is constructed of denser clumps and knots primarily emitting light from hydrogen gas and heated dust. These clumps are part of a molecular cloud, which can be seen in this image as the greenish cloud cutting across IC 443 from the northwest to southeast. The color differences seen in this image represent different wavelengths of infrared emission.
The differences in color are also the result of differences in the energies of the shock waves hitting the interstellar medium. The northeastern shell was probably created by a fast shock wave (223,700 miles per hour), whereas the southern shell was probably created by a slow shock wave (67,100 miles per hour).
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA
4) Words of Love
a) From a letter by John Keats to Fanny Brawne, written in 1819 -
http://tinyurl.com/6jo9acw
“I almost wish we were butterflies and liv’d but three summer days – three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.”
b) Lullaby by W.H. Auden
Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.
Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While an abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit’s carnal ecstasy.
Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell,
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.
Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of welcome show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Find the mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness find you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.
1) Pictures – Nature
Nasa image, captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft, shows virtually simultaneous solar eruptions on opposite sides of the sun (Guardian)
A stampede of wild ponies in Hexigten, Mongolia, is captured by 62-year-old photographer Li Gang, who spends winters trailing the horses in temperatures well below freezing (Guardian)
Volcanic lightning seen above Shinmoedake Volcano, Miyazaki, Japan (LA Times)
2) Memories?
A friend sent me this video. I would mention her name but I can’t remember it.
Pam Peterson
How do you keep your mind, and imagination, sharp?
3) Poetry
Excerpts from the works of Alan Ginsberg:
a. From “Howl”
Angelheaded hipsters burning for the the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
Who poverty and tatters and hollowed-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz
b. From “Footnote to Howl”
Holy the sea holy the desert holy the railroad holy the locomotive holy the visions holy the hallucinations holy the miracles holy the eyeball holy the abyss!
Holy forgiveness! mercy! charity! faith! Holy! Ours! bodies! suffering! magnanimity!
Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent kindness of the soul!
c. From “Song”
The warm bodies shine together in the darkness
the hand moves to the center of the flesh
the skin trembles in happiness
and the soul comes joyful to the eye
The complete version of “Howl” contains many obscene words. The poem “Song” does not. Should high school students be allowed to read obscene literature? Pretending of course that you could keep them from doing it.
1) January has become the snowiest month on record here in CT, with 28.3 inches so far and another 8-12 inches expected overnight.
Tonight I will dream of this:
and wake up to this:
Today’s view from my condo, so tomorrow those cars will look like snow cones.
2) Being in need of a chuckle I give you:
Popeye
and from the fashion runway today in Paris – Parrot Girl
3) All Gil Meche had to do to collect 12 million dollars was show up for Spring Training at the Kansas City Royals baseball camp. The money is guarteened no matter how he performs.
Instead he pass on the money and retired, saying:
“When I signed my contract, my main goal was to earn it,” Meche said this week by phone from Lafayette, La. “Once I started to realize I wasn’t earning my money, I felt bad. I was making a crazy amount of money for not even pitching. Honestly, I didn’t feel like I deserved it. I didn’t want to have those feelings again.”
Gil Meche chose self-respect over money. No amount of money can, in its self, make you feel good about yourself. I have no doubt that he made the right choose.
I wonder how many people could walk away from 12 million dollars? I am not sure I could.
A link to the story in the New York Times – http://tinyurl.com/6exae4x
Purely for you entertainment and edification. If you wish to, post a question you would like me to answer.
1) LA Times slide show, This Week in Pictures – http://tinyurl.com/6ztns9v
a. A four-month-old Luwak civet is tempted by some red coffee beans at the BAS Coffee plantation in Tapaksiring. Kopi luwak, the world’s most expensive and lowest-production coffee, is made from the beans after they have been eaten and passed through the digestive tract of the animal.
Kopi Luwak coffee cost around $300. This is what is looks like when harvested, sorta kinda looks like….nough said.
b. At the other extreme we have mud cakes some Haitians have to dine on.
Port-au-Prince, Haiti — A woman rests next to a pot of dried mud cookies. The cookies are made of dirt, salt and vegetable shortening and are one of very few options the poorest Haitians have to stave off hunger.
c. My new hero is Cyril Wood. At 87 he was oldest competitor at the United Kingdom’s Cold Water Swimming Championship. Okay he is a tad crazy but I see that as a positive. Here he takes a towel after taking part in the male heads-up breaststroke. Check out those trunks. 
2) Comedian Miranda Hart won the British People Comic awards for people’s choice vote, best actress and best new comedy. The following video shows why.
Warning – It does have some naughty bits, well it is British, but no nudity, thank god.
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