Christmas Eve On the Levee

This clip illustrats an old, seasonal tradition on the Mississippi river in south Louisiana. On Christmas Eve, mostly in the "River Parishes" (St. James, St. John and St. Charles parishes) and on the east side of river, the residents of the small towns and villages along the River build, and then incinerate, elaborate bon-fire structures, preceded and accompanied by lavish feasting, drinking and celebrations. Folks come from MILES around. Gumbo, etouffe, jambalaya, you NAME it! chers...



Depending on who is explaining it, the fires are lit to point the way for Papa Noel (cajun french Santa figure). Others say it is to help guide ships on the river, during December fog in Louisiana, while others say it is to help guide the faithful Catholics to Midnight Mass on Christmas. The probable trueroot of the practices is linked to the Roman Catholic rituals around what's called "la Posada," lighting the way to a room for the so-called Holy Family when they sought shelter, and wound up bunking in a barn.

Whatever the belief, it is still a strong tradition, every year on Christmas eve. The River parishes are located between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. When we lived in Baton Rouge, groups of us went every year, to a different village, for the gumbo, beer, and good times. The bonfires can get quite large and really detailed and ALOT of work goes into them.

Ceremonies utilizing fire are universal, these longest nights of the year, nest paw?

So if you're ever in the vicinity, be sure to find a party, and laissez le bon temps rouller, cher...

John McCutcheon ~~ "Christmas in the Trenches"

Garth Brooks has bought his oh-so-sincere whine to a new release for Christmas called "Belleau Wood," about an alleged rapprochement between German and American troops in that famed forest. It must have been the winter of 1917, cuz the war ended in Nov. '18.

It's not that I doubt the tale, exactly. It's just that, well I'd never heard it before, but I had/have heard John McCutcheon talk about and sing his trenchant (sigh) ballad, Christmas in the Trenches, about a real event in the FIRST winter of the war, the first Christmas, in 1915, when it all might yet have ended.

"My name is Francis Tolliver, in Liverpool I dwell
Each Christmas come since World War I, I've learned its lessons well
That the ones who call the shots won't be among the dead and lame
And on each end of the rifle we're the same...

"

The Greendale Experience (Cuz We're Prohibited From Calling It "Education")

This is funny, but 'for-profit' education, the pretensions of which this "ad" is a send-up, is not funny. When people talk about "student debt, they're not mainly talking about people who got loans to attend the local state college or university. The VAST majority of student indebtedness is owed to "proprietary" so-called "schools," like Kaplan, and Phoenix, and the rest, who sell credentials the same way GM sells cars...
With a financing plan!

The War On "X-Mas!"

War On Christmas PSA

Whaddaya Mean By "Work?"

Capitalism works AMAZINGLY well--STUNNINGLY EFFICIENTLY-- as the instrument for transferring wealth from the bottom to the top.
For "democracy?" Not so much. Capitalism is an intrinsically monopolistic program. Monopolies are contrary to democratic governance.
So wadda YOU think?

In Honor of Imaginary Beings

Probably the BEST thing one can say about peoples' devotion to"Imaginary Beings" is that it does produce some lovely and evocative imagery. Old Santa Fe friend María Móntez-Skolnik captured this image recently, around Thanksgiving, at the little "Santuario" in the village of Chimayo, in the mountains east and north of Santa Fe.

The Santuario has gained renown for the curative powers of the mud made from dirt of the Chapel floor. It's been regarded as a "healing" place for four Centuries, or so. And there started to be a problem, cuz LOTS penitents came to acquire the miraculous mud, and the floor of the chapel was continually being gouged out. So now they bring the dirt in from somewhere out in the hills, and the priest blesses it. I guess this 'works' just as well.

The lights with which the structures are festooned are called "luminarias." They're paper bags with the "novena" candles bedded in sand in the bottom. They are ubiquitous this time of year, out here.

Another seasonal/religious tradition is to build small "bonfires" in the streets on Xmas eve, for a pageant the call "Las Posadas," re-enacting the search by the Jesus family for a place to stay, ending at/in the manger. The faithful--and those playing along--light the "farolitos" to guide the "holy family" on its way.

Fyeieio: The tradition of the farolitos/bonfires is exaggerated hugely, and currently is outrageously misinterpreted, down in south Louisiana where I spoent 10 years in the '80s/90s: there, on Xmas eve, the Cajun folks spend weeks constructing HUGE, intricate, fabulous structures on the Mississippi River levees, only to set them alight, on Xmas eve, and dance, eat hugely, and drink and celebrate in the garish light of the flaming structures. It's in honor of the "Posadas" tradition, also, of course. But the (philistine) local media announce faithfully that they do it to "guide Santa" up to Baton Rouge.

Back at the Santuario: Every year, on Good Friday (before Easter), the faithful flock to make the pilgrimage to the Santuario from Santa Fe, a distance of some 20 miles, and even further. Throngs of pilgrims come from all over to visit the site and ask forgiveness for their sins. I have seen people on their knees, moving along the road-side, slowly, painfully. The SHOULDERS on the highways north out of Santa Fe and south from Espanola, and from the west, from the direction of Los Alamos, are always thick with folks walking alongside the traffic, starting on (Holy) Thursday, and going on through the night, and through the next day.

The State and local law, and the tribal cops from the Pueblos over which the pilgrims traverse (and there are several: Tesuque, Pojoaque, and Nambe', at least), keep EAGLE eyes on it. There has been violence associated with or linked to pilgrims, increasingly. One year--2002, iirc--there were even check-points with pat-down searches.

In addition to the "Santuario," the village of Chimayo is home to a large family of Hispanic weavers, the Ortegas, whose work is known and valued in folk art collections around the world. It is also the home of the renowned eatery, Rancho de Chimayo, established on the old (18th Century) family hacienda of the Jaramillo family, who once farmed the valley. They now operate a B&B there, too. My dad and the owner/proprietor, Arturo Jaramillo, were pals. The restaurant became the de facto celebration station for my family from almost the day it opened. The food is delicious (though not cheap), and available in varying degrees of capsaicin-enhancement.

If you happen to dine there, you may want to try the Chimayo Cocktail. I "invented" it, chatting with the owner (at the time), Arturo Jaramillo, after a family gatherning/meal there in the late '60s. It's basically a tequila sunrise with apple cider instead of orange juice, and a dash of creme de cassis instead of the Gran Marnier. Served up, with an apple slice garnish, and cinnamon-sugar around the rim.

¡Su salud! (y pesetas, y amor, y tiempo para gustarlos).

Something, Something, History, Something, Re-Live It

Cops are PIGS.

When did we forget this?

You coulda asked Woody...

I remember from the LAST time.

It's not true what they say...I DO remember...still bear a few momentos.

Cops are the enforcers of the Owners, the gunsels of the State.

A lot of 'em are former military. They love this shit.

They no longer 'serve & protect." Now it's "search & destroy. "

ops don't get into it for the money.

They LOVE what they do.

Mebbe not ALL are sadistic sociopaths, but enough are that tie mkes little difference.

I have said for the last 40 years that ALL citizens should have the experience of being rousted by cops who rezlly think you're a "perp," to see what 'rights' they give themselves to deal with you: a good cop (such as they are) on a bad day; or a bad cop (most of 'em) any day.

Lee Camp -- "Blowing Up A Car-ful of Clowns? Just Sport!"

Hot Realty: Selling Britain

A funny take on conquest, with a nudge at all the "flip it" and "home-buyer" cabloid shows around.

"The Web Of Debt," Parts One and Two

Anonymous, for Hemp

One acre of hemp creats the same biomass, with the same amount of resource use, as 4 acres of trees.

Eleven/Eleven: How About A National "PEACE" Day?

By
John Konopak (Sgt, USAF, 1964-68)

ARE YOU READY for the GINORMOUS "Veterans' Day" Appliance, Winter Clothing, Carpet and Flooring, Used AND NEW car SALE! happening THIS weekend at a Mall near you?

Whilst you're out there shopping to save the economy, I'd like to say little something about "peace." And the celebration of National--hell, why stop there--INTERNATIONAL "Peace Day!" Eleven Eleven, from now on...

Remember that November 11, 1918 (the "11/11" we now recognize) was the date on which the Armistice ending the "Great War" was signed, officially ending the carnage that had lain waste to the best parts of France, Belgium, Holland, a lot of Italy, the Balkans, and a good chunk Russia and of the Middle East.

Literally, millions of people--soldiers and civilians--perished.

But on Nov. 11, 1918, the guns--which could be heard in England, though they were fired in France--fell silent for the first time in more than four, long, brutal, bloody, ruinous years--and that kind of dying stopped, if only for a while...

It was a MOMENTOUS day. People were WILD with joy, in capitals and villages across the continent. NOBODY in all of Europe escaped the consequences. Everyone knew or was related to SOMEONE who'd lost a limb, or a lung, or had been carried off in some bizarre charge into the teeth of the first machine guns across some blood-drenched, decay-filled, shit-soaked trench. During those years, more people had died than in any comparable period of time since the Black Plague. It was, they fervently hoped, the end of all that.

From our perspective, almost a century on, it's probably well to recall, in all honesty, that the last veterans who actually did give their all for 'freedom, liberty, apple pie and Chevrolet, have mostly already left us. All the WW I vets are gone, long since; a majority of the so-called "Greatest Generation" have already signed out, too.

Since then, we vets have largely been participants in America's "wars of choice" in Asia--Southeast AND Southwest--as well as those military efforts to prop up friendly regimes in this Hemisphere. We've done what we were told. But such honor as there is in that is somewhat vitiated in my mind by the costs inflicted upon the murdered and mutilaterd victims we left--and still are leaving--in our neo-colonialist/Imperialist wake.

So I think, if 11/11 were going to be a date for commemorating and memorializing, then it should be celebrated as International PEACE Day, since it was the day the "Great War" ended and "peace" returned (to Western Europe, anyway).

And NOW is a good time to start. None Better!

We've got ALL kinds of holidays honoring and celebrating the glorious military past of our Nation and the sacrifices of its military: Memorial Day, Flag Day, Independence Day, Pearl Harbor Day, and now, perversely, also "9-11," too is draped in military regalia. If we were going to remember "veterans," these should be enough.

But there is NO day in our national calendar on which we actually celebrate the sceuclar phenomenon of "peace."

And I, for one, think Veteran's day, with its echoes of those silenced guns, should be it.

It's the time of the year when the "poppies" appear on the lapels of folks of the (former) British empire, in commemoration of the hundreds of thousands of lives which were spent in so ghastly a fashion in Flanders' fields. It should be a day on which we pledge NOT to repeat those awful lessons.

That's what seems to me to be forgotten amid all the patriotic/jingoistic folderol, to say NOTHING of the commercial hype attending the "official" holiday.

* * * * * * * * * *
Dulce et Decorum Est
by Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

That last line? The Old Lie?

"It is sweet and good to die for your County."

Bill Moyers On Ralph Nader: "Our FOREMOST Public Citizen"

As The Cookie Crumbles: No, No "Con-Con" Do, Dood!

Morning, hippies. Happy Weekend. Remember, if you HAVE a weekend, thank a Union!

As the desperation among the average citizens of the USofA becomes more palplable, cries for reform grow louder and more varied. Decisions by the SCROTUS such as Citizens United, which effectively turned Corporations into 'citizens,' and other set-backs limiting the range of legal redress through class actions, have l;ed people to propose a variety of theoretically possible but practicably impossible remedies, the latest being a Contstitutional Convention.

Y'r Ob'd't S'v't will vehemently oppose any proposal for remedying our current social ills and dilemmas which includes a Constitutional Convention.

I sympathize deeply with the sentiment, but, man, think about it!

Unless you want--or are at least prepared-- to see the ENTIRE Constitution scrapped, a ConCon is a really, terribly, terrifically, horrifically, horribly BAD fucking idea.

I understand the impetus to "do" something.

But in this hyper-mediated, public environment, direct democracy isn't a practicable alternative.

Why? Or rather, "Why not?"

Think "Prop 8." In California, a couple of years ago, amending the CA Constitution by initiative--direct democracy--to exclude gays from the rights accorded BY THE STATE to 'straight' couples. It passed, due in most part--most people rightly believe--to massive, focussed expenditures of disinformation cash by political interests OUTSIDE California. It was enough to sway the results, which are STILL being adjudicated, and the big outside money is still bankrolling the obstructionists, who may ultimately fail, but in doing so will have STILL have collected MILLIONS in donations.

Now multiply the influence of outside money in CA on Prop 8 expo-fuuking-NENTIALLY!

Then remember that, as influential as that interference has been, it is still WITHOUT the HUGE tidal-waves of cash the CorpoRats will be able to unleash through their wholly-owned, lap-dog CorpoRat/SCUM "press" to sway any such deliberations in the context of a Constitutional Convention or any other venue in the future.

And you cannot limit what may be discussed, reformed, or eliminated. You can't have a ConCon and say, well, we're only gonna talk about corporate citizenship. Everything's on the table. Every year, some Poli Sci class at Dear Ol' Siwash U conducts 'man-on-the-street interviews in which they translate the 18th Century diction of the COnstitution and rewrite it in more contemporary vernacular, and ask people if they'd accept it, or the Bill of Rights, and routinely about half of them are rejected by citizens today.

It's what the Greeks usta call an "apoeria," an irresolvable contradiction: The people cannot order their representatives to over-ride the power that placed their representatives in office in the first place. The CorpoRats, as "persons," have the "right" to expend ANY resources in ANY amount to secure the end they desire. And their resources are essentially endless and boundless.

The CorpoRats would/WILL have a fuuking FIELD DAY with direct democracy. They own ALL the media through which it would necessarily be conducted.

You do NOT think the CorpoRats wouldn't use the ALL power that CU gives them to defeat any effort to revoke or repeal it, by WHATEVER means?

And there would be no way to prohibit it.

Or do you really, truly, truly BELEEVE! there REALLY IS a difference between Miller and Bud?

See the problem?

We'll talk when I see ya at the beach!!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here's the vid in which Cenk Uygir leads the appeal for donations:

The Race To The Bottom, Chap. 22

To keep industries from forsaking frigid Illinois for wamer--and less unionized--climates, the State of Illinois has given certain big employers the authority to withhold "state income taxes" from workers' checks, but then to pocket those taxes themselves.

Could it fucking BEEEE anymore corrupt?

Andrew Breitbart: On The "Penis" Beat

Hi-Way Fucking Robbery!

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Here's MY Idea of an "Oath-Keeper"!!!

The Sarge has 50 combat missions, a MESS of non-trivial medals and decorations, and the RIGHT ATTITUDE!
Semper FI!

Tom Hartmann Fucks Up "Anosognothously"

Anosognosia is the condition of being unaware/in complete denial about a given disability.

No, really.

"THE CONDITION IN WHICH A PERSON WHO SUFFERS ILLNESS OR DISABILITY SEEMS UNAWARE OF OR DENIES THE EXISTENCE OF HIS OR HER ILLNESS/DISABILITY; MAY INCLUDE UNAWARENESS OF QUITE DRAMATIC IMPAIRMENTS, SUCH AS BLINDNESS OR PARALYSIS."

Which perfectly describes the Rightard/Wackloon/Cristo-fasci­szt contingent as WELL as a majority of the remaining O'bots

The Front Fell Off--"This was a very unusual event."

The World Economy, In Three Minutes

"What Little Girls Are Made Of"

The nay-sayers have a vested interest in denying the corrosive role of mediated 'reality' on the capacity of people to interpret properly the phenomena behind the mediated "present" in which the omnipresent 'media' immerse them. Women are particular targets of media objectification, both as consumers and as shills for the corpoRat insecurity machines. It's the same motivation that's behind the climate-change deniers' rejection of science.

Health Care For Millions of Murkins Is STILL Impossible? Really? O, Fudge!

WAIT, WAIT. STILL? REALLY?
Woody's confused!
What about Obamacare?
I thought St. Barry had FIXED all that?
You mean there are STILL people dying for wont of care?
How could that be?
I thought St. Barry had set that aright.
You mean he didn't?
O, fiddlesticks...I just don't know WHAT to believe anymore.

"IT" Came From Beneath The SEC!!!! Aiiiiyyeee!

You SHOULD Know What You Are Buying & Eating!

It's becoming a kind of tragicomic ritual to compare what St. Barry, the Pale, PROMISED in his campaign to become president and what he has delivered AS president.

While on the campaign trail in 2007, Barack Obama promised to label GMO foods if elected. Now's the time! Today, an estimated 80% of processed foods contain GMOs. Tell President Obama you agree that the U.S. needs GMO labeling "because Americans should know what they're buying".

For the past 20 years, Americans have been denied the right to know what's in their food. Help make this the Change We Can Believe In: Label GMOs!

Link to the petition here, if you think it will do any good.

Breaking: Obama Promised to Label GMOs from Food Democracy Now! on Vimeo.

Glen Ford (Black Agenda Report): "Who's Real & Who's Frontin'?"

Cornell West's Obama Shocking "Epiphany": O's NOT With Us!

Poor Cornell. He thought Obama was actually a "BLACK"-American man.

I can understand his confusion.

ALL Fossils Are "Transitional" Forms

Evolution for Dummies!

Keep It To Yourself, Okay?

F-book correspondent Tracy Knauss posted this image today, along with the following commentary:

Mike Treder, a friend of mine who's the Managing Director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies in New York sent me this wonderful quote he penned and asked me if I would design an image fitting of his prose. I was glad to accept. Here's what we came up with. Enjoy and share.

Woody likes this plenty; wishes more people would treat their faith like their genitals and not go shoving it in the faces of folks who haven't asked about it.

I mean: There was an image going around the other day of the lower abdomen/upper groin area of a fellow who'd had the face of the Disney character Pinocchio tattooed on him so that his dick was where the puppet's nose should have been.

(*Presumably, he didn't intend to imply that the bigger his dick grew, the more hew was lying, but you never know: it is a remarkably accurate metaphor, imho.)

>So it's the experience of a lot of non-believers that fiercely proselytizing Believers' perform their testimonies of faith very much to resemble the importunings of someone with a Pinocchio-tattoo on his groin, whose dick is where the nose should be, and goes around telling people about it, in great detail, with great enthusiasm, inviting them to take a look and SEE if it isn't the coolest tattoo fucking EVAR!

And then go all huffy about it if you decline the invitation.

There is a "Dicho" to that effect inscribed in the eponymous part of the right-hand margin, below, along with an assortment of others of my rendering.

Red-State Update Tackles the Booing GOPhux, and the Rest of the Clown Car Crazies

Colbert: Clouds of Mind-smoke?

The Colbert Report
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You Don't Have To "Disprove" Scientific Claims, If...

If you can merely cast doubt upon them. The same tactic is being employed, to great effect, by mostly the same people, today, in the Great Climate Change "debate."

Btw: I am a fierce opponent of tobacco consumption in any form other than soup. I smoked like a fucking chimney for 35 years. Both my parents succumbed to COPD (too young), which was the consequence of their life-long addictions. Some such fate probably awaits me, even though it has been 17 years since my last cigaret/cigar.

I would cheerfully strangle ANY tobacco executive I met.

DOUBT from The Climate Reality Project on Vimeo.

Conspiracy? Really?

How Low Can You Go?

How deluded are YOU? 10,000+ = "Crazy as a shit-house rat!"

I (HEART) Banksy

Frye & Laurie Pilot The "For-Pay" Police Service

Don't laugh...

Ogden Nash, Reading "Portrait of the Artist as a Prematurely Old Man"

The High (And True) Cost Of Voodoo Economix

Fallacy-B-Gone

Lee Camp: One Swing of the Sock

What It Means To Be "Pwned"

If you thought the debt ceiling deal was a compromise, you gotta believe Grant "compromised" with Lee. No suh! That fuckuh was PWNED!

The Colbert Report
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2008 Ron Paul Campaign Ad:

What's wrong with Ron Paul? He's against the wars, and for legal weed!@

Lee Camp ~~ "A Moment of Clarity.": Ethics/Lightbulbs

And I agree with him, except for the part about there being any such thing as "corporat" or "business" ethics.

There Are 630 "Private" Contractors, & 170 "Mercenary" Companies At Work In Iraq

When you outsource your military operations, you cede to CorpoRats the powers that were once the sole province of the People.

Coalition of the Billing: An Interview with Jeremy Scahill from Cultures of Resistance on Vimeo.

Coalition of the Billing: An Interview with Jeremy Scahill from Cultures of Resistance on Vimeo.

When the Bush administration chose to invade Iraq, it assumed that the war would be short and decisive. Yet by early 2010 the war had already cost over $700 billion, much of which went to corporations that profit from the conflict. Jeremy Scahill, best-selling author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, has been a leading voice in opposing the war and in denouncing the radical privatization of the military. According to Scahill, at the time of this interview there were 630 companies on the U.S. government’s payroll in Iraq. More shocking are the 170 mercenary corporations operating in Iraq. Despite repeatedly committing criminal violations, these companies have been immune from prosecution and have repeatedly been rewarded no-bid contracts. Cultures of Resistance sat down for an exclusive interview with Scahill, in which he discusses the most recent stage of the military-industrial complex's evolution.

Dawkins on militant atheism

And besides, nobody ever said atheists couldn't behave like randy assholes.

Frye & Laurie: "If Rupert Had Never Been Born..."

ONS: The Impenetrable Barrier to TRUTH!

'Green Lantern' To Fulfill America's Wish To See Lantern-Based Characters On Big Screen

The Perils of Appearing Prosperous While Being Black

If you patronize Chase Bank (or any of their offshoots), you're participating in this shit, too. The "help" doesn't do what there is not at least tacit permission from the "Top" to do:

Ikenna, a 28-year old construction worker, went to deposit a $8,463.21 Chase cashier's check at his local Chase branch, only for the teller to decide that neither he nor his check looked right and he got tossed in jail for forgery, KING5 reports. The next day, a Friday the bank realized its mistake and left a message with the detective. But it was her day off, so he spent the entire weekend in jail.

By the time he got out, he had been fired from his job for not showing up to work. His car had been towed as well. It ended up getting sold off at auction because he couldn't afford to get it out of the pound. He had been relying on that cashier's check for his money but it was taken as evidence and by the time he got it back it was auctioned off.

All this while the cashier's check had been issued by the very bank he was trying to cash it at.

Chase didn't even apologize, not even after a year. A lawyer volunteered to help write a strongly-worded letter requesting damages. After trying hard to get a response, they sent KING 5 a two-sentence reply: "We received the letter and are reviewing the situation. We'll be reaching out to the customer."

The "Good Glenn," Greenwald, On The Decline and Demise of Civil Liberties

Civil liberties under Obama - Glenn Greenwald from International Socialist on Vimeo.

It's a Life-And-Death Struggle...

This is a non-commercial attempt to highlight the fact that world leaders, irresponsible corporates and mindless 'consumers' are combining to destroy life on earth. It is dedicated to all who died fighting for the planet and those whose lives are on the line today. The cut was put together by Vivek Chauhan, a young film maker, together with naturalists working with the Sanctuary Asia network (www.sanctuaryasia.com).

Cad's Zooks -- Harry Enfield

Et Seq:

ONS: "Potential School Shooter Gunned Down By Popular Jock"

Potential School Shooter Gunned Down By Popular Jock

Prom king Trevor Wilson pumped three bullets into the quiet loner before he had a chance to think about turning on fellow students.

I'd "Do" Mrs. Betty Bowers (With Lights Out, Of Course)

One KNOWS These Poor, Stupid Bints Were Chosen For Their Tits & Asses, Not Their Brains, But Fucking STILL! WTF?!?!

Louis CK: "Why...?"

The GOPhuckkker Campaign, in One Minute, 29 Seconds

Y'r Ob'd't S'v't began predicting the GOPhux' campaign against St. Barry, the Pale, right after the results from '10 came in, would amount to no more MOST of them standing around, shouting "Niqqer, niqqer, niqqer! You CAN'T vote for the Niqqer..."

Kinda like this:

An Unholy Alliance

Member-of-the-European-Parliament Tolls The Euro's Bell

British MEP Nigel Farage does not think that another 10 billion euros should be used to bail out Greece a year after it was last done.

"There is always an alternative. A Greek default and the return of the drachma would mean a very substantial devaluation for Greece, and it would mean many of these banks taking serious hits, and it would question the ability of the European Central Bank itself. It is better sometimes in life to face up to the fact that you have done something that is wrong. It is fundamentally out of kilter that the Greek and German economies can ever be together in an economic and monetary union," Farage said. "All we are doing is pouring good money after bad. It is time to face the reality and take the hit," he added.

• Nigel Farage MEP, UKIP, Co-President of the EFD Group in the European Parliament (Europe of Freedom and Democracy)
.......................................................
• Video source: Russia Today
http://rt.com/news/people-greece-protest-bailout/

Barry Lynn (Americans United) Disposes of Creationism

But the Fucktards object. But who is surprised that the Fucktards don't get it:

The point of the video was to say that people can believe what they want about Noah’s Ark or any other story in the Bible – but that the government shouldn’t take sides on matters of theology. When state officials choose, even indirectly, to offer aid to a project like the “Ark Park” and enthusiastically welcome it to the state, that’s taking sides.

Specifically, it is taking sides in favor of Christian fundamentalism and against modern science.

Do You Believe Two Plus Two Equals Pink?

John Butler ~~ "God Will Fuck You Up!"

The Whitest Kids You Know ~~ "The Old Folks' Home"

Cenk Drop-Kicks Glans-State Gub Rick Scott's Egregious Conflicts of Interest

Did you know that Florida doctors prescribed and Florida pharmacies sold more then NINE time the amount of chemical morpheates--Oxycodone, vicodin,Oxycontin, etc--than THE REST OF THE COUNTRY, COMBINED? And Rick Scott's got a financial interest in both selling drugs and 'treating' substance abuse.

He was "cleared" by a State Ethics panel. No, really.

Red State Up-Date: Bin Laden Is Dead & Jackie 'n'Dunlap're Mad As Hell

Mr. Deity & The Magician

"Shit! They're Still Here!"

Kathy Hochul

Geogre Carlin: The Male Disease

Raw Emotion!


The Five (or Six) Overlapping Male Subcultures...

On Colbert, John Lithgow Declaims Newt Gingrich's Rejoinder

Truly Shakespearean. No, really.

The Colbert Report
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The Real News: What Prez-O Won't Say About the Middle East/Central Asia

What Is The Internet Hiding? Eli Pariser

Our Precious Bodily Fluids Are Under Attack by The Most Dangerous President EVAR!

Girls? GIRLS? OY!

George Carlin Compendium: "Freedom Of Choice? Really?"

Innit really quite wonderful how the audiences get Carlin's "humor," even when the "grey (well, okay, mostly WHITE) eminences start to cringe?

For My Friends Who, With Me, Find The Obama "Osam" Triumphalism To Be Just A BIT Primitive!

From Jonathan Schwarz' lapidary effort, A Tiny Revolution:

Tao Te Ching, Witter Bynner's translation, chapter 31:

Even the finest arms are an instrument of evil,
A spread of plague,
And the way for a vital man to go is not the way of a soldier.
But in time of war men civilized in peace
Turn from their higher to their lower nature.
Arms are an instrument of evil,
No measure for thoughtful men
Until there fail all other choice
But sad acceptance of it.
Triumph is not beautiful.
He who thinks triumph beautiful
Is one with a will to kill,
And one with a will to kill
Shall never prevail upon the world.
It is a good sign when man's higher nature comes forward,
A bad sign when his lower nature comes forward,
When retainers take charge
And the master stays back
As in the conduct of a funeral.
The death of a multitude is cause for mourning:
Conduct your triumph as a funeral.

Posted by: mistah charley, ph.d. at May 3, 2011 03:57 PM

Bynner (1887-1968), a Santa Fean, is one of the overlooked poetic lights of the early and mid 20th Century.

Mr. Deity and the After-Party; and the Ghost

A Two-fer in the Varieties of Religious Experience...The very BEST blasphemy in English, anywhere. I'd thought they'd gotten a little nervous, but "the After-party" is some savage shit.



The Team Expands:

All You REALLY Need To Know About "ThePrez" Sympathies

For working and less affluent people can be gleaned from the fact that he CHOSE this fucking shitwhistle, Alan Simpson--an staunch and life-long foe of Social Security and Medicare--to lead his fucking Catfood Commission:

Fuck Sandra Day O'Connor: She Got What She Deserved

Even if we didn't.

The fucking bint announced BEFORE Nov, 2000, that she wanted to leave the Court, but didn't want her replacement to be named by a Democrat.

So she provided the swing vote to install SW Bush.

I hope she rues the day til her face locks up in death's rictus smile.

Toobin's WAY too nice to the slag. Fuck O'Connor.

Re, The Economy: Big Mike "Breaks It ALL Down For You!"

This is pretty much it. Even according to conservatard apologists like David Frum: t

he crisis originated in the malfunctioning of an under-regulated financial sector, not in government overspending or government over-generosity to less affluent homebuyers. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were bad actors, yes, but they could not have capsized the world economy by themselves. It took Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, AIG, and — maybe above all — Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s to do that.

So there you have it...And now here's Mikey!

ORGANIZING For Collective Bargaining Rights, Is How!

How the Florida Tomato Industry Went from Being One of the Most Repressive Employers to the Most Progressive?

Last November, the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, a cooperative of agribusinesses that grow the vast majority of Florida tomatoes, signed the Fair Food agreement with the CIW. The CIW had been working since 1993 to improve the lot of farm workers. With a few pen strokes, the Florida tomato industry went from being one of the most repressive employers in the country (nine cases involving abject slavery in Florida fields have been prosecuted in the past 15 years) to being on the road to becoming the most progressive groups in the fruit and vegetable industry.

Just two years ago, it nearly came to war:

Werner Hertzog & "The Cave Of Forgotten Dreams"

Must SEE!

In 1994, three French cave explorers discovered hundreds of prehistoric paintings and engravings on the walls of the Chauvet Cave in southern France.

Carbon dating has since shown that the depictions of rhinoceroses, lions, cave bears, horses, bison, mammoths and other animals are between 30,000 and 32,000 years old.

That doesn't mean the ancient drawings are any less sophisticated than what artists create today, says filmmaker Werner Herzog.

"Art ... as it bursts on the scene 32,000 years ago, is fully accomplished. It doesn't start with 'primitive scribblings' and first attempts like children would make drawings," Herzog says. "It's absolutely and fully accomplished."

The acclaimed German director, who has produced, written and directed more than 40 films, gained exclusive access to the Chauvet caves. He tells their story and the story of the world's oldest cave paintings in The Cave of Forgotten Dreams, a 3-D documentary film.

Herzog's "Aguirre, Wrath of God" completely redefined the idea of cinema/film for me, as nothing before or since has ever done. Like seeing "Guernica." Here's a short, free-standing bit of his filmic imaginings:

The Charge of the Teahadist Hover-rounds

Susan, who is a very wicked girl and a (quite young, actually) old compAtriot is the source for this wonderful dollop of sarcasm from the Home Aisles, titled:
Hoveround: The Tea Party Death Mobile - By Mark Ames - The eXiled

To all my fellow under-55-ers: If you want to know why we have to fund the over-55-ers’ full Medicare and Social Security benefits, leaving nothing for the rest of us, here’s your answer: All those taxes have to pay for today’s Tea Partiers to ride around on these Hoverounds. That’s right, if there’s one thing Boomers can’t stand, it’s not being able to chase us around the house while hectoring us about fiscal responsibility. Thanks to the Hoveround, there’s no way we can escape from their narcissistic deficit-hawk blather.

Here it is: You can run…you can walk…you can crawl even. But you can’t hide from the Hoveround:

Soap Bubbles Predict Cellular Life

A lovely, intricate, delicate dissection of the "Intelligent Design" codswallop!~

Cornell West's Obama "Epiphany": He's NOT With Us!

Poor Cornell. He thought Obama was actually an African-American man.

I can understand his confusion.

A Moment of Illumination.

Somebody had this up on the 'Book today, and it's just riveting.
Click on the image to enlarge it, for a fuller effect.

How I Passed Stats, 25 Years Ago...

I never really got the hang of the whole "stats" thing. Instead, I wrote doggerel. The prof was intrigued enough that he passed me in exchange for using the pomes in his (then) new stats text. Thanks, Richard!

Example:
"Them Number-Summers":

How 'BOUT them Numbers-Summers, ain't they hams?
Plottin they frequencies on they histograms?
Them "n-" countin' Number-Summers take PECULIAR pleasures,
Widdey "aspeks of dispersion" an' they deviatin' measures.
Them nomologic Number-summers, ain' they hot?
Keepin all they data in a box-and-whisker plot.

Or: "Them Co-Relators":

How 'BOUT them Co-Relators, it's all just "so..."
Widdey Pearson Product moment and they Spearman Rho.
Them co-efficient Co-relators AIN' ATALL metaphoric,
Study they dichotomies by means tetrachoric.
How 'BOUT them Co-Relators, ain' they fine?
Get they linear relations where they ain' no line?

Or, "Them Skill-Scalers"

How 'BOUT them Skill-Scalers, ain't they strange?
Plottin' YER 'deviation' cross they interquartile range?
Them skew-slopin' Skill-Scalers take they freedom by degrees,
Widdey leptokutrtic samples and they 'double-tail Ts.
Them scatter-plottin' Skill-Scalers, ain' they enigmas,
Gettin' they parentheses around all they Sigmas.

There are 10 of them, which I'll reproduce for anyone who desires 'em.

Everything That's Wrong With the US Chamber

One of those trick images: click on the image, then again on the NEXT image it presents you, to get the most legible shape.

TDSWJS & JO: "Freedom Packages!?"

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
America's Freedom Packages
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

Bill Maher Spanks the GOP Agenda

The man does his SNARK!

"Words," Episode 2: "Okay" & Episode 3: "Know"

Rall-y "Annoying": The Disposables

The fourth episode in a new animated webseries by award-winning syndicated cartoonist Ted Rall and animator David Essman.
Eps 1-3:

#1:


#2:


#3:

Tales from Facebook: "Begging the Question"

This was the hed, and the description of a vid linked on FB:

The universe is huge
www.youtube.com
The sheer size of the universe and our true place within it challenges the view that God created it just for us. Adapted from Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot"
6 minutes ago · Like · · Share

This is the vid:

This is what I wrote:

Woody Wiqiliques Konopak Here's a good example of "begging the question/petitio principii": The sheer size of the universe and our true place within it challenges the view that God created it just for us.
Because it has nowhere yet been established the 1) there exists such a being as "God," or that if there were such, that it could "create" this gigantic universe. It assumes that which is to be proven. That's "begging the question" means.

It's always nice when such a perfect case drops into yer lap. The misappropriation of "beg the question" is one of those things that sets my teeth on edge.

A Letter To My State Senator, On The Passage By the NM Senate Of A Bill Which TOTALLY Sells-Out Teachers, Kids, and Learning

Dear Senator Feldman:

Boy was I surprised!

And not in a nice way, either, when upon happening to glance at the local TV news, I saw a story about the NM Senate passing and sending to the House "for approval" (really? that simple?) that bill which--well, I'll spare you the graphic description, but it does UNSPEAKABLE things to teachers, students, and pretty much the whole IDEA of education.

So I scurried over to the machine to ask you, Dede--we were on first-name terms when I met you at (a mutual friend)'s CD 'party' at the Flying Star--how?

How did that happen? How COULD that happen?

I never expected to make any "progress" with that puta Tejana, that tea-bagging slag, in the Mansion; but I really didn't expect to LOSE, and to lose so much, so soon and, apparently, so easily.

You may or may not know--or care--that I hold a Ph.d. in education (LSU, '89), and that I am perhaps more familiar than most with the vicissitudes of the craft, having myself been a secondary teacher as well as a scholar, and being one in a family of teachers. This is such an egregious insult, and such a calculated indignity: I would under no circumstances ever council anyone to become a teacher under this regime; would indeed actively discourage volunteers--because the kinds of teachers we--and especially the kids-- need will suffer (and probably be expelled, eventually, anyway), and the kinds we don't want will thrive.

It's ALMOST enough to make an observant person suspect Foucaultian epistemic skulduggery, GB Shaw's aphorism about 'cynicism'--"The power of careful observation is often called cynicism by those who haven't got it."--notwithstanding.

If you would feel so inclined, I would be interested in what were the machinations and motivations which brought this about.
Regards,
Y'r Ob'd't S'v't.

A Double Dose of Deity:

Consecutive Episodes of Season 4. Though these shows normally stand alone, these make more sense viewed together. The blasphemy is as gratuitous as ever, never fear, and they've added the last element of the fatal Abrahamic triangle. Plus, the begging is PRICELESS!

Mr Deity & The Matter


Mr. Deity & The Showroom

Mr. Deity & the Signs: "Tide Come In, Tide Goes Out..."

Episode I, Season IV of the smartest, funniest blasphemy you have EVER seen, now with a gratuitous jab at the fucknozzle of Fux News, Bill O'Reilly!

Tweety Disses The Huck & The Newt & The Rest Of The (FOX) Goon Squad

The Krewe of Mid-City, circa 1956

The Faith of Desperation

Via Wiki:

Rick Roderick (1949–2002) was born in Abilene, Texas, son of (by his own description[1]) a "con-man" and a "beautician". He was a teacher of philosophy at several universities, where he was much revered by many students for a socratic style of teaching combined with a brash and often humorous approach. His breakthrough into wider circles came with his engagement with The Teaching Company where he recorded several memorable lecture series. Rick Roderick died in 2002 from a congestive heart condition.

Nope. Capitalists Won't Pony Up For Job-Providing Infrastructure. Nagahapun!

There is much hand-wringing and wailing in DC and in the circles of the Wise elsewhere about the catastrophic, sustained problem of unemployment in the USer work-place. The common reply to the matter among the ones most distraught about it (the left-punditry, unions, workers' representatives, Bernie Sanders, etc.) is to "call for" the resurrection of the USer industrial/manufacturing State of yore.

It was this capacity, in a war-desolated world, which permitted the erection of (relatively) the WEALTHIEST "middle-class" in history; the dissolution of which is the most important, most instructive story in the whole unfolding narrative of "decline and fall" that is unfolding (or is "crumbling" a better word) around us even as we speak.

So this makes me wonder if I'm missing something in the popular, mediated rhetoric and hurrah about creating jobs, and restoring Murkin manufacturing, and international competitiveness, an' all shit like that.

Here's the elephant turd in the soup tureen:

Where is the money gonna come from to RESTORE the infrasructure that the CorpoRats have spent the past 30 years up-rooting, off-shoring, destroying, dismantling, and selling off?

What makes anyone think the CorpoRats are gonna spend money to undo what they already MADE money destroying? They've sold off all the parts they could, long since. The bloody CorpoRats aren't gonna pony up. The USofA is a declining empire. It's expansive days are over. This market is topped out. The people are less important as consumers than hitherto. When you've sold out your citizenship for the convenience of being a consumer, and they close the fucking stores, what have you got left?

The Global corpoRats owe and claim no allegiance to the American nation, except as the military arm and instrument of their policies. They have NO incentive to invest in the failing CIVIC enterprise that is this country's heritage and legacy.

In fact, the CorpoRats have EVERY incentive to undermine, rebuke, and/or ignore it.

No CorpoRat encourages democracy. Democracy, especially in the work-place, is almost literally anathema to the CorpoRat mind, which is autocratic and authoritarian. They exhibit these proclivities every and in every way that they work to diminish or prevent the unions from exercising their power as the democratic representatives of the workers. CorpoRations are FEUDAL freeholds, and the Owners wish ONLY to preserve their OWN power over their vassals. Unions in the work-place, and democracy in the civic culture, are active opponents of those Medieval pretensions, and as such are subject to attack, destruction if possible.

The minions and lackeys of the CorpoRat State are even now busily engaged, where they have "won" the power to do so, in reversing 150 years of workers' gains. Some are resisting. I wish them success. But I don't trust USer cops NOT to shoot demonstrators, and I do not trust 'the people' NOT to turn against 'labor (or whatever makes them uneasy); but I am skeptical by nature, especially since I was witness to and involved in an incident at which the National Guard advanced on an unruly but NON-VIOLENT student demonstration with bared, fixed bayonets (UNM, May, 1970), while the good burghers of Albuquerque stood on the sidelines and spat on the students, and cheered when the Guard inflicted injuries; so I think my skepticism is earned.

There is much hand-wringing and wailing in DC and in the circles of the Wise elsewhere about the catastrophic, sustained problem of unemployment in the USer work-place. The common reply to the matter among the ones most distraught about it (the left-punditry, unions, workers' representatives, Bernie Sanders, etc.) is to "call for" the resurrection of the USer industrial/manufacturing State of yore.

It was this capacity, in a war-desolated world, which permitted the erection of (relatively) the WEALTHIEST "middle-class" in history; the dissolution of which is the most important, most instructive story in the whole unfolding narrative of "decline and fall" that is unfolding (or is "crumbling" a better word) around us even as we speak.

So this makes me wonder if I'm missing something in the popular, mediated rhetoric and hurrah about creating jobs, and restoring Murkin manufacturing, and international competitiveness, an' all shit like that.

Here's the elephant turd in the soup tureen:

Where is the money gonna come from to RESTORE the infrasructure that the CorpoRats have spent the past 30 years up-rooting, off-shoring, destroying, dismantling, and selling off?

What makes anyone think the CorpoRats are gonna spend money to undo what they already MADE money destroying? They've sold off all the parts they could, long since. The bloody CorpoRats aren't gonna pony up. The USofA is a declining empire. It's expansive days are over. This market is topped out. The people are less important as consumers than hitherto. When you've sold out your citizenship for the convenience of being a consumer, and they close the fucking stores, what have you got left?

The Global corpoRats owe and claim no allegiance to the American nation, except as the military arm and instrument of their policies. They have NO incentive to invest in the failing CIVIC enterprise that is this country's heritage and legacy.

In fact, the CorpoRats have EVERY incentive to undermine, rebuke, and/or ignore it.

No CorpoRat encourages democracy. Democracy, especially in the work-place, is almost literally anathema to the CorpoRat mind, which is autocratic and authoritarian. They exhibit these proclivities every and in every way that they work to diminish or prevent the unions from exercising their power as the democratic representatives of the workers. CorpoRations are FEUDAL freeholds, and the Owners wish ONLY to preserve their OWN power over their vassals. Unions in the work-place, and democracy in the civic culture, are active opponents of those Medieval pretensions, and as such are subject to attack, destruction if possible.

The minions and lackeys of the CorpoRat State are even now busily engaged, where they have "won" the power to do so, in reversing 150 years of workers' gains. Some are resisting. I wish them success. But I don't trust USer cops NOT to shoot demonstrators, and I do not trust 'the people' NOT to turn against 'labor (or whatever makes them uneasy); but I am skeptical by nature, especially since I was witness to and involved in an incident at which the National Guard advanced on an unruly but NON-VIOLENT student demonstration with bared, fixed bayonets (UNM, May, 1970), while the good burghers of Albuquerque stood on the sidelines and spat on the students, and cheered when the Guard inflicted injuries; so I think my skepticism is earned.

Jimmy Kimmel's "Shoe-In" For NEXT Year's Oscar

Stewart Lee: "Political Correctness Has Gone Mad!":

The quest for the accurate naming of dead women.
I like this fellow's demeanor....

Somebody, Please, Debunk The Reagan Mythology

Woody was not the first to notice that Raygun was the very first, official, "figure-head," public relations, corpoRat/statist sock-puppet pseudo-President. Raygun's cabal set in motion EVERY ill that besets the country to this day.

Ronnie's "legacy" is a fictional narrative created in retrospect by the media the corpoRat consolidation of which his regime deregulated and encouraged.

Barbara Sizemore Talks "Turkey" (In 4 Parts)

A Rep. Who Endured One Schools Some Male/Pig Puke On Abortion

Woody always wonders if the women, who are somehow attached to men who accuse all women of thoughtlessly, or carelessly, or frivolously having abortions, know--do they actually comprehend, in the front of their brains--the utter, unspeakable contemptwith which their men regard them, to be able to accuse ALL women of such irresponsibilities.

He doubts it, somehow.

And wonders if the delivery of such news to the home/spouse, somehow, might induce changes in "domestic" policies. For example, I wonder if Mrs. Mr. Smith from New Jersey knows her ever-loving hubby regards her as a potential, mindless, serial killer?

The "Beeb" Speaks! Bieber Reveals "Thoughts"

Well he DID. (How's that Hed for "Google-Bait?")

Still, Woody fails to understand why opinions on matters of substance and importance (abortion, politics) should be solicited from, and reported about, people whose opinions are so supremely irrelevant to any possible debate about such matters as those of the Beeb, or Miley Cyrus, or any 16-year-old middle-school drop-out/nail-polish pimp??

Bieber Lets His Pro-Life and Pro-Canada Freak Flags Fly

Justin Bieber, mop-topped wunderkind of the wooded north, fell into a political booby trap at the hands of Rolling Stone, declaring himself pro-life and pro-Canada: "You guys are evil. Canada's the best country in the world." Uh oh.

On Political Parties:

"I'm not sure about the parties. But whatever they have in Korea, that's bad." [Ed: So, no tour of North Korea?]

On American vs. Canadian Health Care:

You guys are evil. Canada's the best country in the world. We go to the doctor and we don't need to worry about paying him, but here, your whole life, you're broke because of medical bills. My bodyguard's baby was premature, and now he has to pay for it. In Canada, if your baby's premature, he stays in the hospital as long as he needs to, and then you go home.

On Abortion:

"I really don't believe in abortion. It's like killing a baby?" How about in cases of rape? "Um. Well, I think that's really sad, but everything happens for a reason. I guess I haven't been in that position, so I wouldn't be able to judge that."

It's almost unfair to ask these questions to a kid who dropped out of middle school to be a full-time tween heartbreaker and nail polish pimp. "Whatever they have in Korea, that's bad" isn't really a political opinion (Is he aware there are two Korean nations?) and he doesn't seem to understand what abortion even is. If anything, this interview is a document of the woeful deficits of child stars' minds, much like the revelation that Jessica Simpson spent her entire childhood thinking Chicken of the Sea was poultry.

Kudos to Grigoriadis, though, for finding the one topic Bieber has never before been asked about: His opinion on things that actually matter. [Rolling Stone]

Send an email to Maureen O'Connor, the author of this post, at maureen@gawker.com.

Meta-Cogitating About Meta-Cognition

For some reason, in no small part stemming from conversations with my gal in NYC, Trish, of Menopausal Stoners and other venues, from her nest in the Upper West Side, from whither she ventures out to teach neo-nates how to begin to navigate this sordid, tawdry existence, Meta-cognition has been on my mind a bit lately. Meta-cognition is that function of the Mind of the learner which knows itself as a knowing self. Operational awareness, and practical manipulation, of this capacity is a crucial accomplishment for successful learning: Knowing that you can learn--are learning--is essential to actually learning. It is not a trivial competence.

Which reminded me of Howard Gardner's "varieties" of intelligence.

Gardner has derived a non-hierarchical taxonomy by which he characterizes what we now regard often as mere "talents" as actually consisting of discrete kinds of intelligence, including complex strategic capabilities and abilities for successfully inhabiting and navigating the life-world. That is what ANY 'intelligence' is: a collection of skills, abilities, predispositions, and competences which enable us to survive and thrive in our worlds.

Gardner started with seven, and has since expanded it to eight, and is allegedly weighing data for one or two more. The Original Seven were:

• Literary/textual,
• Mathematico-deductive,
• Kinesthetic,
• Plastic/spatial ('artistic/sculptural'),
• Musical,
• Meditative/contemplative, and
• Personally interactive.

He added 'naturalistic,' later.

Gardner theorized that in everyone, there were latent capacities for operating in any of these universes--that we all had some of all those capacities--but that in all of us, one predominated.

In me it is the literal/textual. I have little mathematico-deductive (linear) aptitude; I dont think that way. I was never an accomplished athlete, but I could perform in almost any physical activity I wanted to learn. I fenced, surfed, skied, played tennis and racquetball, along with the basic three American "Ball-sports." I am no kinda artist, but I sing pretty not badly, for being untrained. I am reflective, but not meditative; and I know how to work a room pretty good,.

That each "kind" of intelligence indeed creates its own life world becomes totally clearly when one interacts with others whose skills (and this is where we get back to meta-cognition) the person is intimately aware of possessing and learning from. I was a sort of academic coach for some guys on the LSU track team in the late 80s, and I had a chance to talk about learning with their bodies with Olympic-class athletes, and I can assure you, they know the world on VERY different terms than does a middle-aged profesor. You know someone who has "musical" intelligence if that person ALWAYS has song or a tune in their heads or on their fingers. And THEY know the world in uniquely "musical ways."

We 'privilege' the literary/textual (the domain of metaphor, interestingly) and the mathematico-deductive because those are the two facets upon which commerce and business depend. School caters to those, because school serves to sort, first, and then to train workers for fodder for the Elite machinery. The others kinds are often regarded as extraneous or expendable by the CorpoRats and paper-pushers, acceptable only as adjuncts which might turn a marginal profit someday, somewhere.

"He Is The Very Model Of A Modern US President..."

"Although he's black, Joe Biden says he's clean and quite articulate..."

You Might Be A Geezer IF (YMBAGI) You Remember This

...how you crawled under your desk and pulled a thick book over your head and wondered if you were going to die, when you heard the civil defense warning; or

• you remember reciting the Pledge without God in it;
• you BOUGHT 20 cent/gallon gasoline and cigarets for a quarter/pack;
• you rode on a steam-propelled, interstate passenger train;
• you listened to Sputnik, and felt bad for Laika;
• you do remember exactly where you were Nov. 22, 1963;
• you watched the Black Power salute from the Olympics (and were flabbergasted by Bob Beamon's leap) on tv;

Feel free to add your own...

How "Marxist-like" In Belief In "Democracy" Are We Murkins, Really??

Woody doesn't see what this fucktard is complaining about.
It is PRECISELY that "Absolute Faith In Democracy" (lately largely misplaced)which permits the likes of the GOP to hijack popular discontent to fuel their ideological attacks on citizens' civil liberties, the corpoRat despoliation of shared commons, and the corrupting of the liberal values upon which the Constitution is founded, the oligarchic tendencies of the founders notwithstanding.

Cunt-Hair Clancy Thomas: Impeach, Indict, Imprison, Impale? DILLIGAF?

Clarence ("Cunt-hair Clancy") Thomas has been lately prominent in the news in consequence of the revelations that his wife is now and has for several years been in the pay of lobbying and business interests which had business before the Court. He and his "mentor" and mouth-piece/puppeteer, Antonin ("Uncle Vafanculo") Scalia (who tails around his own trail of sticky, viscous, criminal slime from his excta-curricular associations with the Busheviks) have been active participants and propaganda centerpieces in Right-wing conferences, workshops, and other events of highly partisan and ideological nature. This is purest Tihadist shit, not your average Federalist Society corruption.

All of which suggests that Ol' Curly Clarence has overstepped the normal bounds of judicial temperance and gone over to the "darker" side. And some of this has been noticed by various Congresscritters, in particular the vocal and voluble Rep. Anthony Weiner (D.-NY), who is making early, gentle noises about perhaps, just maybe, POSSIBLY holding "C-h Clancy" to the judicial standards which apply to the REST of the judiciary. (Oh, NO, you gasp! I know. His temerity stunned me too.)

Now, (Yr'Ob'd'tC's'p't) didn't just lately topple off the turnip truck, so he KNOWS it's NAGAHAPUN but, in any system in which the "Rule of Law" actually was a meaningful utterance, every decision in which Clancy ("Short & Curly") Thomas has been part of a 5-4 majority opinion, at LEAST since Bush V. Gore, should be vacated and the case re-argued withOUT being ol' Cunt-Hair being permitted to vote again.

But recusal is, for me, to mild a remedy for corruption THIS concentrated, this corrosive, this contemptible. I want MORE. I want the "dream team" of the (mocha) President and the (beige) AG to get together, using all the resources that, for instance Karl Rove would have marshalled and, using ALL the power of the State, drive tht lurking, lurching, dour, dreary dunce from the Bench, entirely.

Impeachment must begin in the HoR, which is (conveniently) recently fallen back into the hands of Cunt-hair Clancy's natural constituency, the conservotard/fucktard/Wackloon right, to whom Ol' Curly's feculent spouse has sold her services--all unnoticed, apparently--for at LEAST the last decade. So it is extremely UNlikely that impeachment proceedings will begin anytime soon.

So this is where the "Justice" department should enter the picture, by bringing CRIMINAL proceedings against the drooling, leering dunce. Neither O'Bama nor Holder need feel the least hesitance to prosecute the "black" justice. They owe him NOTHING in consideration of their shared rcial heritage. Cunt-hair Clancy was ONLY chosen for his position by GHWBush as a calculated insult to the memory of Thurgood Marshall and to the social activists who regarded Marshall's seat as a talisman. It was as though Poppy Bush thought: "Well, these skeevy Negroes demand a Black Justice? Okay. Here's Cunt-hair Clancy, the dumbest, meanest, most self-loathing, lowest, shittiest crappiest fucking Oreo/jurist in the whole GOP. Suck on THIS, Jesse Fucking Jackson."

So there is NO reason for the "first Black President" or his "First BLack" Attorney General to cut the Cunt-hair any slack. Indict him. Then run him the fuck outta town.

To repeat: Every decision in which Clancy Cunt-hair has been in the majority SHOULD be vacated and re-heard, after Curly Clarence has been arrested, indicted, convicted, imprisoned and most importantly REPLACED.