Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of their soul's resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger. Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had ever supposed (William James).
I think I would like to call this beautifully original structure home. As long as it is surrounded by lakes and mountains and trees like this one.
"Ever dreamed of owning a completely self-sufficient home that produces its own energy, water, and is completely customizable? New York architect Scott Specht has the answer to all of our zero-energy prefab dreams with the new ZeroHouse™. This completely self-sustaining prefabricated house generates its own power, collects its own water, processes its own waste and is 100% automatic. Versatile, durable and site-sensitive, ZeroHouse can be erected in almost any location in one day with steel frame components and a helical-anchor foundation system that requires no excavation."
As those who watched or read the news last week know, Bear Stearns, "one of the largest global investment banks and securities trading and brokerage firms in the world," was on the verge of a meltdown.1
Stearns was to become the next victim of the "credit squeeze," which has resulted from pervasive predatory lending by countless sub-prime mortgage lenders across America.
The investment banking giant was bailed out by the FED, the US federal bank. The FED in a plan to help JP Morgan Chase, once Bear Stearn's greatest competitor, acquire Bear Stearns, offered to buy up to 29 billion dollars of its debt if necessary.2
In fact, yesterday, in a sign that hope for an upswing in Bear Stearn's stock value is at abysmal levels, James Cayne, Chairman of Bear Stearns Cos Inc., sold "5.66 million shares" worth a total of "$61.3 million."3
If the captain abandons the ship, things are most certainly not good.
However, perhaps the most abysmal, and illustrative, part of this story is that just one year ago, Cayne could have sold the same amount of stock for "about $1 billion."4
He must be livid.
And who did this dreadful financial development surprise the most (other than Cayne)?
Watch the clip below to find out (and to have a good laugh): Jim Cramer: "Bear Stearns is Fine!" Tues, 3/11/08
"American-trained Iraqi security forces failed for a third straight day to oust Shiite militias from the southern city of Basra on Thursday, even as President Bush hailed the operation as a sign of the growing strength of Iraq’s federal government," reported the New York Times today.
The stated reason that Iraqi security forces are in Basra and other Mahdi Army strongholds in the south is to restore order and peace there. The central Iraqi government cites increased levels of criminal activity and violence, purportedly caused by people splintering from those loyal to the Mahdi army, as having significantly destabilized the region.
It's worth noting that provincial elections are coming up in Iraq and many Iraqi citizens see this move by the central Iraqi government as a means to undermine one of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's most potent political rivals, the head of the Mahdi Army, Muqtada al-Sadr.
The Battle for Basra: A Turning Point
It is important to recognize that this mission in Basra is the Iraqi Armed Forces' first major solo mission. Iraqi soldiers are not backed by US or other Coalition troops.
It seems, however, this precedent of the Iraqi government standing up on its own to face its own foes is becoming mired in its failure to achieve the mission's clearly stated goals as each day passes.
The New York Times underscores the crucial nature of this Iraqi-force-led mission in determining if the reduction from abysmal to excessive violence throughout Iraq this past year will remain much longer. It will likewise dictate if US troops who currently have an average of a 15 month tours of duty in Iraq, get to see any reduction in their elongated stays.
"The violence underscored the fragile nature of the security improvements partly credited to the American troop increase that began last year," the Times reports, "Officials have acknowledged that a cease-fire called by Mr. Sadr last August has contributed to the improvements. Should the cease-fire collapse entirely, those gains could be in serious jeopardy, making it far more difficult to begin bringing substantial numbers of American troops home." So it seems, the battle for Basra may mark a substantial turning point in the situation for those on the ground in Iraq.
What will it mean? Is the Post-Surge Honeymoon Over?
With at least 100 dead and 500 wounded after only a few days of somewhat restricted fighting (Madhi Army soldiers are under orders by al-Sadr to fire only in self-defense), is it fair to say that Basra may tip the scale back towards abysmal, rather than excessive levels of bloodshed?
Is this flair up fighting in Basra the cold reality of the post-surge honeymoon ending?
One sign the answer may be yes, comes from the oil pipelines in southern Iraq.
The oil lines in Iraq's southern regions, as in the rest of the country, have become chaos barometers.
That is, when the pipelines in a particular area in Iraq are constantly being shot at, blown up, and rendered non-functional - it is fair to say the area is not stable. Whereas, when oil pipelines in a specific enclave can go weeks or months functioning without issue - it is reasonable to claim such places are controlled.
That said, the New York Times reports, "a major oil pipeline near Basra was struck with a bomb around 10 a.m. on Friday [March 28th], igniting a huge fire, said Sameer al-Magsosi, a spokesman for the Southern Oil Company. Before the recent security gains, the southern pipelines had been frequent targets of insurgents, smugglers and militias, but few strikes had been recorded in the past year."
Another indicator the Iraqi government is losing more influence in the Iraqi south, rather than cementing control as was the aim of their mission, is the rising number of American deaths even in the robustly fortified Green Zone.
The Times reports, "In Baghdad, where explosions shook the city throughout the day, American officials said 11 rockets struck the Green Zone, killing an unidentified American government worker, the second this week."
Moreover, the battling seems not to be limited to the city of Basra, though Iraq's Prime Minister intended for their mission to be staged there only.
According to the Times, attacks also occurred in the cities and towns of "Kut, Hilla, Amara, Kirkuk, Baquba and other cities."
What is Plan B?
At this point one must ask, what does the US and the Iraqi governments plan to do if the relative achievements of "the surge" disintegrate and violence again reins obscene?
The slim mention, let alone response to this question, is troubling. It gives reason for anyone whose fates are intertwined with the welfare of Iraq (the majority of the world) to be ominously concerned.
My new site dedicated to the science of psychology, particularly to how the merging of neuroscience and social psych are illuminating the PUZZLE OF EMOTION: http://thesocialbrain.blogspot.com/
...there is a way for you to live inside a black hole: find one that has five dimensions. Life inside a 5D black hole is known to be rather more sustainable than it is in the 4D version. In the 4D case, you would experience 'tidal' forces that vary so vastly over short distances that your body would be pulled apart. But in the 5D case, there is no physical plughole, and the tidal forces are negligible, so you could happily explore without fear of dismemberment. And, according to the results of my research, you may be doing that right now. A mathematical analysis says that our universe may well be a 5D black hole...So next time you stare up at the night sky, stop and consider the fact that you may actually be surveying the star-speckled interior of a five-dimensional black hole.
John Roach
Scientists calculate that dark matter makes up about 25 percent of the universe. By contrast, ordinary matter—the stuff that makes up stars, planets, and everything on Earth—makes up no more than about 5 percent of the universe. The other 70 percent of the universe, scientists believe, is made of dark energy, an even more elusive force that is pushing the universe apart at an ever increasing rate.
Charles Choi
Neutrinos have no charge, and their masses are so tiny they have yet to be accurately measured. This means that neutrinos, which zip around at nearly the speed of light, can pass through normal matter largely undisturbed. Most neutrinos that affect Earth come from the sun and billions of them pass through the average human every second.
V.S. Ramachandran
The human brain, it has been said, is the most complexly organized structure in the universe and to appreciate this you just have to look at some numbers. The brain is made up of one hundred billion nerve cells or "neurons" which are the basic structural and functional units of the nervous system. Each neuron makes something like a thousand to ten thousand contacts with other neurons and these points of contact are called synapses where exchange of information occurs. And based on this information, someone has calculated that the number of possible permutations and combinations of brain activity, in other words the numbers of brain states, exceeds the number of elementary particles in the known universe.
Sourish Dutta
The model associates dark energy with something called vacuum energy. Like a number of existing theories, it proposes that space itself is the source of the repulsive energy that is pushing the universe apart. For many years, scientists thought that the energy of empty space averaged zero. But the discovery of quantum mechanics changed this view. According to quantum theory, empty space is filled with pairs of "virtual” particles that spontaneously pop into and out of existence too quickly to be detected.
American Beauty
It's hard to stay mad, when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst... And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment.
Emily Dickinson
THE BRAIN is wider than the sky, For, put them side by side, The one the other will include With ease, and you beside.
Roger Ulrich
It takes less than a quarter of a second for the body to register a physiological response to a threat, and somewhat longer—a second or two—to register a positive stimulus.
Henry Ward Beecher
Liberty is the soul's right to breathe and, when it cannot take a long breath, laws are girdled too tight.
Andrew Bird
It’s good to remind myself when I’m having a crisis of purpose and feeling useless that at least I can make something beautiful.
SpaceWeaver(SpaceCollective)
I am a free human. As such I am free from having a fixed idea regarding what is 'I', what is 'human' and what is 'freedom'.
Arthur Schopenhauer
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
Carl Zimmer
Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin?
Our minds already extend out into the environment, and the changes we make to the environment already alter our minds...In fact, the mind appears to be adapted for reaching out from our heads and making the world, including our machines, an extension of itself.
Kevin Kelley
Wherever life is - it never retreats.
Todd Haynes
I accept chaos.
Goethe
If I accept you as you are, I will make you worse; however if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that.
Twilight Zone
Flip a coin and keep flipping it. What are the odds? Half the time it'll come up heads, half the time tails. But in one freakish chance in a million it will land on its edge.
Leonard Bernstein
All music, whether pop, folk, symphonic, modal, tonal, atonal, polytonal, microtonal, well-tempered, or ill-tempered - music from the distant past, or the imminent future - all of it - has a common origin in the universal phenomenon of the Harmonic Series...it's as if we could see the whole of Music - developing from prehistory to the present - in two minutes.
Rev. George V. Coyne, S.J., PhD
I think many scientists do not appreciate what happened with modern science...for with its birth we developed the ability to put the universe in our heads - literally.
AsylumSeeking (SpaceCollective)
I think the exponential nature of synergy is where genius really comes from.
Walt Whitman
A leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.
Stephen Cass
Love letters, business contracts, holiday snaps, spam, petitions, emergency bulletins, pornography, wedding announcements, TV shows, news articles, vacation plans, home movies, press releases, celebrity Web pages, home movies, secrets of every stripe, military orders, music, newsletters, confessions, congratulations—every shade and aspect of human life encoded as 1s and 0s. Taken together, they weigh roughly the same as the smallest possible sand grain, one measuring just two-thousandths of an inch across.
The weight of the Internet adds up to just about 0.2 millionths of an ounce.
William Blake
To see a world in a grain of sand And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour.
pasQual
Actually the life on earth is the dream, and in your dreams you can return to the source of all things.
Robert H. Hemphill
We are completely dependent on the Commercial Banks. Someone has to borrow every dollar in circulation, cash or credit. If the banks create ample synthetic money, we are prosperous; if not, we starve. We are, absolutely without a permanent money system. When one gets a complete grasp of the picture, the tragic absurdity of our hopeless position is almost incredible, but there it is.
Picasso
Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
Tom Robbins
Crazy wisdom is, of course, the opposite of conventional wisdom. It is wisdom that deliberately swims against the current in order to avoid being swept along in the numbing wake of bourgeois compromise, wisdom that flouts taboos in order to undermine their power; wisdom that evolves when one, while refusing to revert one's gaze from the sorrows and injustices of the world, insists on joy in spite of everything.
Spaceweaver (spacecollective.org)
Heinz Von Foerster, one of the pioneers of cybernetics, noted that our nervous system has about 100-200 million external sensors, about five orders of magnitude more internal sensors, neurons sensitive to changes in the behavior of other neurons, that is. It follows that we are about 100,000 times more sensitive to ourselves than to anything happening around us communicated by raw sensory signals.
Robert Frost
Happiness makes up for in height what it lacks in length.
William Blake
Art degraded, Imagination denied, War govern'd the Nations.
carel (spacecollective.org)
A human nervous system receives and processes roughly 1 million bits of information per second. Per second, we are aware of only 20 of those bits. Our conscious mind has no access to the other 999.980 bits.
Robert Pirsig
The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away.
Charles Bukowski
If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives, jobs. And maybe your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery, isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance. Of how much you really want to do it. And you'll do it, despite rejection in the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. You will be alone with the gods. And the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is.
Goethe
A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful implanted in the human soul.
H.G. Wells
Can an instantaneous cube exist? I mean, a cube that lasts for no time at all?
Jack Kerouac
Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round heads in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules and they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify them, or vilify them. But the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Becasue the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.
Philip Roth
What was astonishing was how people seemed to run out of their own being, run out of whatever the stuff was that made them who they were and, drained of themselves, turn into the sort of people they would once have felt sorry for. It was as though while their lives were rich and full they were secretly sick of themselves and couldn't wait to dispose of their sanity and their health and all sense of proportion so as to get down to that other self, the true self, who was a wholly deluded fuckup.
American Beauty
It's a great thing when you realize you still have the ability to surprise yourself.
Jill Bolte Taylor
If you've ever seen a human brain, it's obvious that the two hemispheres are completely separate from one another. The two hemispheres do communicate with one another through the corpus collosum, which is made up of some 300 million axonal fibers. But other than that, the two hemispheres are completely separate. Because they process information differently, each hemisphere thinks about different things, they care about different things, and dare I say, they have very different personalities.
Carl Sagan
We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.
Franz Kafka
A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.
Wernher von Braun
The lunar landing was equal in importance to the moment in evolution when aquatic life came crawling up on the land.
Michael Reynolds
I live at 7000 feet up in New Mexico, it gets 35 below zero, and in February I pick bananas out of my living room and there's no heating system.
Charles Bukowski
Unless it comes out of your soul like a rocket, unless being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder, don't do it. Unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, don't do it. When it is truly time, and if you have been chosen, it will do it by itself and it will keep on doing it until you die or it dies in you.
Charles Caleb Colton
Men are born with two eyes, but only one tongue, in order that they should see twice as much as they say.
Lord Byron
I love not man the less, but Nature more.
Atmosphere
The poison doesn't flow that far from the flower.
Aldous Huxley
The nature of psychological compulsion is such that those who act under constraint remain under the impression that they are acting on their own initiative. The victim of mind-manipulation does not know that he is a victim. To him the walls of his prison are invisible, and he believes himself to be free.
Philip Roth
And since we don't just forget things because they don't matter but also forget things because they matter too much - because each of us forget in a pattern whose labyrinthine windings are an identification mark no less distinctive than a fingerprint - it's no wonder that the shards of reality one person will cherish as a biography can seem to someone else who, say, happened to have eaten some ten thousand dinners at the very same kitchen table, can be a willful excursion into mythomania.
Charles Dickens
I had considered how the things that never happen, are often as much realities to us, in their effects, as those that are accomplished.
Brother Ali
Try and separate a man from his soul, you'll only strengthen him and lose your own.
Chinese proverb
When the wind changes direction, there are those who build walls and those who build windmills.
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