I give you Sigur Rós...

Hafssól (Sea Sun)

Behind a vessel of clouds, a sun wakes up from its lethargy
Refreshes itself with some little raindrops
Plays with the hot flames of the fire
Makes rainbows

For the record: Loads of paperwork do not a good teacher make.

Along the same lines: Hours spent at school do not student learning increase.

I just don't get it

Read this excerpt from a story on CNN and give me a good answer to my question at the end:

BERLIN, Germany (AP) -- A leading opera house called off a production of Mozart's "Idomeneo" that features the severed head of the Prophet Mohammed, setting off a furious debate Tuesday over Islam, freedom of speech and the role of art.

The furor is the latest in Europe over religious sensitivities -- following cartoons of the prophet first published in a Danish newspaper and recent remarks by Pope Benedict XVI decrying holy war.

Kirsten Harms, director of Berlin's Deutsche Oper, announced "with great regret" that she had decided to cancel the three year old production after state security officials warned it could provoke dangerous reactions in the current politically charged climate.

After its premiere in 2003, the production by Hans Neuenfels drew widespread criticism over a scene in which King Idomeneo presents the severed heads not only of the Greek god of the sea, Poseidon, but also of Mohammed, Jesus and Buddha... CNN

Who do you think would have reacted violently against the production? Would Buddhists have blown up bombs and ballerinas? Would Christians cut and coerce a concertina of the concert amid chaos? Would Greeks go ga-ga growling gutturally and gallop around Germany giving grief? Would hordes of Hindus hie themselves hither.... You get the idea. How is this rift between cultures going to be mended? I'm glad to read, though, that Germans are pissed off about it and that a high-ranking Turkish Muslim thinks it's a step too far. Expect his head on a pike within a week...

viva le resistance!

In a brave act of defiance, I'm not going into work early today. Take that, System!

dike-louper
n. one who jumps fences; a transgressor

Friday, blessed be.

heheheh

This was a video story on CNN that I traced to the Times Herald in NY. I honestly laughed until I cried looking at some of the "alphabet." You owe it to yourself to click on the image of the alphabet to enlarge it.

Kinky alphabet rated 'X'
September 18, 2006

Monroe — Some Monroe-Woodbury School District parents received an unexpected refresher course in the ABCs of sex last week.

An inappropriate font inadvertently was used as the cover sheet for a third-grade spelling curriculum at Pine Tree Elementary School in Monroe. The font depicts male and female stick figures contorted into various kinky positions to form the letters of the alphabet....

You have got to be kidding me:

In Iraq, where an effigy of the pope was burned Monday, parliament speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani called his apology "inadequate and not commensurate with the moral damage caused to Muslims' feelings." CNN

the definition of irony

The Pope referenced an old text which, to paraphrase it, states that the Prophet resorted to violence early on in his ministry in order to spread Islam. Muslims are demanding an apology. How are they demaning it, you ask? Observe irony in its purest form:

CNN

I am so doing this!

http://www.bluegrassbabydolls.com/id14.html

Loosely related:














This wise Adonis, this Cadillac among goats, could pay great homage to the most human of acts which his intelligent and noble trainers had inspired him to emulate: shake hands, kneel in obeisance, and jump.

beta?

does anyone know if it's possible to switch to beta without losing your old posts? also, does anyone know where to insert a flash badge in beta?

#400

September has been a month as long as years, to borrow a phrase from Tolkien. Much has happened at work and elsewhere, and I think it's why I thought of eucatstrophe/dyscatastrophe in the prior post.

I'm not sure there's any way to prepare yourself for the death of a family member. I keep wondering if there's something I should say that will be that "perfect" thing to say that will stick with my grandfather for the rest of his life, however long that may be. You know, that one phrase that will be like in books and movies: the hero speaks a bon mot that is as emotionally meaningful as it is memorable, and the person to whom it is spoken is eased into the afterlife by the wisdom and comfort of the words. The problem with that, however, is that people in movies tend to be much less sensitive about the fact that they're not long for this world than are people who are slowly or quickly failing. Pragmatism doesn't enter well into end-of-life discussions, so death is pretty much an off-limits topic, paradoxically.

My grandfather has been in and out of the hospital for the past few months, and he just recently had a stroke (or series of) that has affected his speech and left him unable to walk. It's difficult for me to imagine him in this state.

poetaster (POH-it-as-ter)
n. an inferior poet

much to say but little energy

Much is happening, little of it good.

eucatastrophe
n. a word coined by JRR Tolkien in his essay "On Fairy-Stories" to refer to the sudden turn of events at the end of a story which result in the protagonist's well-being. The opposite of this is dyscatastrophe.

I can't help but respect this lady for having the chutzpah to say this.

fatty fatty Baptist lady

Kudos to Jim for this:

Research links obesity to religious-media use

This disturbs me more than anything I've seen in a long time. I don't hold any delusions about the moral or rationalistic superiority of the US, but this frightens me.

Jesus Camp (video trailer)

stories that annoy me

Some things that have annoyed me today (not a good way to begin the day, I know, but Sunday mornings are always like this):

• Does God want you to be rich? Times article. This reminds me of a church sign I saw last week at a Baptist church in Wilmore: "Come and find financial peace" (as close as I can recall). Yeah, because that's what churches are for.
  
• Women complaining about men being allowed to attend their college. Is it just me, or is this horribly ironic deja vu? Money quote: "115 years of women can't be wrong." No, but apparently 10,000 years of male, chauvinist pigs can.
  
• This morning on our local NBC and ABC stations, they played their usual programming of Immanuel Baptist and Southland Christian, respectively. Southland ended their broadcast with a rousing, highly produced, emotive song about "blessed be the name of the lord." Switch over to Immanuel, and they were closing their service with a rousing, highly produced, emotive song about "blessed be the name of the lord."
  

brummagem
adj. cheap and showy but inferior and worthless

"Humans are constructed on a species-wide model." Nancy Bonvillain, Language, Culture, and Communication.

crickets vs. led zeppelin

The stridulous song of the crickets outside my window is making me sleepy. Cool nights like tonight make me nostalgic for a rural life I've never even known. Despite the countless crickets making their music, it seems quiet, peaceful, wholesome, and I can't help but feel alone in the most wonderful way.

stridulate
to produce a shrill, grating sound, as a cricket does, by rubbing together certain parts of the body; shrill.

What a fascinating piece! I mean to find out more about this study, though I'm not sure where to begin or how accessible it would be to a layperson. I'd by lying if I denied a flash of smugness over the white-thrashing I received in various multicultural courses. A flash, little more.

The Meaning of White
By JENINNE LEE-ST. JOHN


Posted Sunday, Sep. 3, 2006
How important is your racial identity to you? Researchers long thought it wasn't that crucial to whites. But a groundbreaking new study on whiteness and race relations by University of Minnesota sociologists shows that whites in the U.S. are far more conscious of being white--and the privileges it brings--than was believed.

The survey is packed with fascinating findings, some surprising (a stunning proportion of whites--77%--say their race has a distinct culture that should be preserved) and some less so (whites view their role in the social hierarchy more benignly than blacks and Hispanics do). Whites are more likely to say prejudice and discrimination put blacks at a disadvantage than to say those factors contribute to white advantage. And they are much less likely than nonwhites to attribute inequality to bias in the legal system.

What to make of all this? Though whites in the U.S. believe there remain advantages to being white, they don't necessarily link those advantages with blacks' disadvantages. This hinders racial reconciliation, says co-author Douglas Hartmann: "Whites have invented subtle ways to convince themselves that race isn't a problem in America." Blacks do see more racism in society than whites but, contrary to stereotype, seem disinclined to blame the system for their disadvantage. In fact, they are more likely to attribute it to individual causes like a lack of hard work--77% did so, compared with 62% of whites. "We think of U.S. minorities as less engaged in American individualism," Hartmann says, "but they are maybe more so."

poem comparison

Here's one of Jeffers' poems that came to mind when I read the Whitman.

Love the Wild Swan

"I hate my verses, every line, every word.
Oh pale and brittle pencils ever to try
One grass-blade's curve, or the throat of one bird
That clings to twig, ruffled against white sky.
Oh cracked and twilight mirrors ever to catch
One color, one glinting
Hash, of the splendor of things.
Unlucky hunter, Oh bullets of wax,
The lion beauty, the wild-swan wings, the storm of the wings."
--This wild swan of a world is no hunter's game.
Better bullets than yours would miss the white breast
Better mirrors than yours would crack in the flame.
Does it matter whether you hate your . . . self?
At least Love your eyes that can see, your mind that can
Hear the music, the thunder of the wings. Love the wild swan.

I was perusing a collection of Whitman's poems and re-encountered "A Song of the Rolling Earth." I read it long ago but passed over it quickly, but as I read it through again, I found myself being drawn in by the sensual language. Whitman isn't one of my fortes, but this poem struck me as being quite different in tone than the ebullient humanism of "I Sing the Body Electric" (I love the subtitle). If anything, it reminded me of the later poetry of Robinson Jeffers, especially the opening stanzas of Whitman's:

A song of the rolling earth, and of words according,
Were you thinking that those were the words, those upright lines? those curves, angles, dots?
No, those are not the words, the substantial words are in the ground and sea,
They are in the air, they are in you.

Were you thinking that those were the words, those delicious sounds out of your friends' mouths?
No, the real words are more delicious than they.

Human bodies are words, myriads of words,
(In the best poems re-appears the body, man's or woman's, well-shaped, natural, gay,
Every part able, active, receptive, without shame or the need of shame.)

Air, soil, water, fire--those are words,
I myself am a word with them--my qualities interpenetrate with theirs--my name is nothing to them,
Though it were told in the three thousand languages, what would air, soil, water, fire, know of my name?

It may not be quite as "inhumanistic" as Jeffers, but the awe of nature is certainly similar.

It's a little cool outside, and we're anticipating sleeping by a flickering fire soon.

postprandial
adj. after a meal, especially dinner

I'm off to have a postprandial drink.

Pink Floyd's The Wall was released the day I was born. How serendipitous.

Yesterday I found out that a friend from my days at a hell-bound Xian institution has purchased a local coffee shop with her husband. Odd, the directions in which our lives take us.

pittsburgh

pittsburgh
Originally uploaded by dwain.

A picture I took while escaping from the dullness of my dear sister's graduation. Yes, the dark clouds yielded rain.