Giant Flying Reptiles With Teeth*
*An admittedly radd idea, but scary when you think about one of 'em swooping down on your ass (Quetzalcoatlus was a carnivore with a wingspan of over forty feet).
http://www.utexas.edu/tmm/sponsored_sites/dino_pit/quetzalcoatlus.html
Miller Time
This confusing -and frankly depressing- chart outlines charismatic 19th century evangelist William Miller's description of signs and events leading up to The Apocalypse. Miller was the founder of the Church Of Seventh Day Adventists and invented the concept of The Rapture. He predicted the world's end and the second coming of Jesus would occur in his own time and attracted thousands to upstate New York in 1842 on the day it was supposed to all go down. When the show didn't happen according to plan, the multitude of assembled believers were seriously bummed and described the non-event as "The Great Disappointment". Miller then figured he must have gotten his math wrong and put forth several subsequent dates - which however came and went without any apparent fireworks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Miller_(preacher)
Bombing Our Illusions
Open the newspaper today—or tomorrow, or almost any day for many years to come—and you will discover that some pious Muslim has deliberately blown himself to bits for the purpose of killing “infidels” or “apostates.” Can we even conceive of a more profligate misuse of human life? As a cultural phenomenon, suicide bombing should be impossible. But here it is.
- Sam Harris
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/bombing-our-illusions_b_8615.html
The Good Life
Sacha Distel "La Belle Vie (The Good Life)"
(above) Bernie Madoff scammed this $7 million yacht from investors, christening it The Bull. The Italian-built Leopard, which "epitomizes luxury and comfort," sleeps up to six people and is capable of speeds up to 40 knots.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/business/25bernie.html
http://www.businessinsider.com/2008/12/bernie-madoff-hosed-client-list
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Dig We Must
Our salaried hipness blankets us in the warmth of security until we masturbate ourselves into an erection of astral rapaciousness and grab whatever pleasures we might in the name of Love, always quick to contrast ourselves with middle-class man.If there is a contrast, it is slight. Hip and middle-class (as well as communist, fascist, socialist, and monarchist) values, goals, reactions and attitudes offer different styles, but amount to the same end: personal, national, or racial success. "Rien ne reussi comme le suces."
And so, we stay dropped-out. We won't, simply won't play the game any longer. We return to the prosperous consumer society and refuse to consume. And refuse to consume. And we do our thing for nothing. In truth, we live our protest. Everything we do is free because we are failures. We've got nothing to lose, so we've got nothing to lose.
To Show Love is to fail. To love to fail is the Ideology of Failure. Show Love. Do your thing. Do it for FREE. Do it for Love. We can't fail. And Mr. Jones will never know what's happening here, do you Mr. Jones.
The Ideology of Failure
George Metesky, Berkeley Barb, 1966
INFO:
http://thenonist.com/index.php/thenonist/permalink/the_diggers/
http://www.diggers.org/overview.htm
Lucio Fontana
La Fine di Dio, 1963-1964 (oil paint on perforated shaped canvases)In 500 years time people will not talk of art, they will talk of their problems and art will be like going to see a curiosity - like the two rocks put together by the first caveman. What were they up to? Why did they cover walls with pictures? Today man is on earth and these are all things that man has done while on earth, but do you think man will have time to produce art while traveling through the universe? He will travel through space and discover marvelous things, things so beautiful that things here - like art - will seem worthless. Today's young people too are still tied to the earth. Man must free himself completely from the earth, only then will the direction that he will take in the future become clear.
I believe in man's intelligence - it is the only thing in which I believe, more so than in God, for me God is man's intelligence - I am convinced that the man of the future will have a completely new world.
- Lucio Fontana
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucio_Fontana
Out THERE
The Rolling Stones - 2000 Light Years From Home (instrumental mix)
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/04/090406-hand-pulsar-nebula-photo.html
Lost Time
Before man appeared on earth the god Silence reigned everywhere, invisible and present. Black, flabby things, a species of fish-cliff, emerged slowly like submarines on maneuvers, then dragged themselves painfully onto the beach like disabled veterans deprived of their motorized wheelchairs. Vast epochs of silence on earth, everything was steaming! Columns of steam arose from the seething pools, from between the tragic cliffs and the center of the forests. Nature, nature without noise! Uninhabited, silent shores; in the distance, on the milky and disturbingly calm seas, a red sun, disk of drama, solitary disk, sank slowly into the vapor on the horizon. From time to time a monstrous animal, a kind of small island with the neck of a swan and the head of a parrot, left the water to go inland, into the mysterious forest and the depths of the humid valleys. The shores were littered with strange shells: stars; tendrils, broken spirals; some of them moved a little, advancing by sudden starts, then would collapse as though exhausted by the effort and remain motionless again.- Giorgio de Chricio
Big, Wet, & Hot
NUKU'ALOFA - Scientists inspect an undersea volcano that has been erupting for days near Tonga - shooting smoke, steam and ash thousands of feet into the sky above the South Pacific ocean.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/03/19/science/AP-AS-Tonga-Volcano.html?_r=1&hp
Goodbye Rain Forest - Hello Nano (?)
India's Tata Motor Company has announced the world's cheapest automobile. At only $1,900, proponents claim The Nano will democratize travel, while others predict it's impact in the 3rd World could be similar to the introduction of Henry Ford's Model T in America. Think LOTS more cars, along with the resulting pollution, traffic - and roads to and through all remaining undeveloped land.
More info here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/23/india-car-world-cheapest
Costs of Coddling King Coal
Blackwaters by Jean Ritchie
Coal mining has left a legacy of pollution and exploitation of labor in central Appalachia. Acid mine drainage destroys aquatic life and makes water unfit for human consumption. In some places black sludge can pour from the kitchen tap and in other areas tremendous amounts of iron causes streams to run red (in West Virginia alone over 500 streams are impaired by mine drainage).
The coal industry continues to devastate the environment - blowing up mountaintops and scarring the landscape in the process - while worker residents remain among the poorest in North America.
INFO:
http://www.viceland.com/int/v13n11/htdocs/
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/25/science/earth/25mining.html
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The continuing story of extracting the world's dirtiest fuel:
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/coal-dump-poland-271108
North American Cats
from top;
Lynx, Cougar
Jaguarundi, Florida Panther
Ocelot, Bobcat
Jaguars
(note: several of the above species have all but disappeared from their former range)
info:
http://www.nwf.org/cats/
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/natbltn/200-299/nb285.htm
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