My weekly collection of interesting, amusing, important, and stupid links.
It was a rough week for me. Another homeless guy that I know from my work was stabbed to death Sunday night. He was a nice guy suffering from extreme alcohol and drug dependence. Excellent piano player but homeless and mentally disturbed. Some of these people need to be permanently institutionalized. It was a failure of our system that he was out there intoxicated again. People care, the system does not. This is the third person I knew well who has been stabbed to death in the past year.
Music
Funky guitar by Pzychotropic.
Video
Profound video featuring the words of author Arundhati Roy. It’s time to wake up from our slumber. This video helps. It is American to be thoughtful about these issues, even human, humane. The alternative is neighborliness and we only have one world so we are all neighbors.
The Matrix. Performed by the poet Rodney Paradox.
When album covers attack. This reminds me of Monty Python.
Computer and Internet
Surfraw – Shell Users’ Revolutionary Front Rage Against the Web. This is the sweetest internet search engine. From the page: ” Surfraw provides a fast unix command line interface to a variety of popular WWW search engines and other artifacts of power. It reclaims google, altavista, babelfish, dejanews, freshmeat, research index, slashdot and many others from the false-prophet, pox-infested heathen lands of html-forms, placing these wonders where they belong, deep in unix heartland, as god loving extensions to the shell.”
Experiments, methods, tips and tricks related to CSS and XHTML.
Why open source matters. From the page: “Microsoft will today happily sell you their own protection over their own insecurities – it sells the poisoned apple and its antidote, separately.”
Children For Sale On Craigslist No more slavery please. Yes Virginia, there still is slavery in America. Put down your white bread and open your eyes.
Slavery in Afghanistan, “I sold my daughter to feed the rest of my family.” Okay, we’ve been “rebuilding” (destroying in doublespeak) Afghanistan since 2002, why is this still happening? America, we bear some responsibility for this. Wake up and demand change.
China’s All-Seeing Eye. If you follow the rules, you have nothing to worry about.
Politics (Business as Usual)
“The change that you deserve.” New Republican slogan is more acurate than ever. Thanks for the link Brian.
Covert US operation in Gaza backfires. This is a long article but worth the read.
Global peace index. Ranks the nations of the world by level of peacefulness.
Please, no Iran war. Are they really enough of a threat to justify our continuing belligerance? NO! Constructive engagement is not appeasement.
Stupidity on the home front. Let the market alone. No more crop subsidies.
Globalism
The Chinese Far West. Chinese developments in Nigeria.
Awareness
Space Euphoria. Astronauts experience acute awareness of all matter as synergistically connected.
Bill Hicks quotes. This could go in humor except that Bill sees things so clearly. Awareness.
The Zen Buddhist Order of Hsu Yun. Excellent articles and links available here.
The Tao is Tao. From the page:
The righteous
will insist on justice
and rip out the eyes of the blind
to make them see.
The Taoist sage lives outside
the merciless cycles of vengeance and hatred,
for he knows
there is no such thing
as anger in peace:
a moment of rage
can destroy the fruits
of a thousand years of virtue;
only patience
can guide one towards
peace.
Only in a placid pool
can the moon be reflected
in all its perfection.
The righteous
subscribe to ‘an eye for an eye’;
the Taoist sage
prefers to be blind.
Art and Creativity
Oil on canvas by artist George Dmitriev. The moon and waves.
Two films with and about poet Allen Ginsberg.
Mine enemy grows older. Fascinating blog. Author posts artwork and readers reply with creative interpretations.
Free ride. What I would give to be that red winged blackbird. Yeehaw!
Seven hundred cool animated GIFs. Warning, each animation is tiny but all 700 are on the same page.
503.gif |
504.gif |
505.gif |
506.gif |
507.gif |
508.gif |
509.gif |
China Earthquake
China earthquake photos. Some images are graphic.
History
The writings of historian Howard Zinn.
Lusitania, ancient Roman province
Mental Health
Top 10 Bizarre Mental Disorders. That stendhal syndrome sounds like fun.
Food
Giant food in China from space seeds. A real life Jack and the Beanstalk story.
Large collection of rhubarb recipes.
The incredible Garden Girl with practical information for gardening. Grow at least some of your own food!
Travel
Violence in Mexico leads to traveler alerts. Kidnapping, daylight shootings, and drug wars in the streets.
Excellent Mexico travel site. Keep in mind the above link though.
The world’s tiniest nations. Recognized and not. Mostly not.
hmm.. interesting ))