Our sky chart shows the eastern sky for around mid-evening at mid-northern latitudes in North America, with the bright waning gibbous moon shining between the Pleaides star cluster and the…
Monday’s Poem: “Evolution” by Eliza Griswold, from Wideawake Field. Monday’s Literary Notes: It was on this day in 1851 that Moby-Dick was first published, in London, under the title The Whale. Only…
Democracy Now! | Headlines for October 25, 2010
Sorry, Ken, your e-mail did not eat your homework.
Democracy Now! | Headlines for October 25, 2010
You missed a, um, “spot.”
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
Message on UN Day, 24 October 2010
Happy 65th Anniversary, World! UN Day 2010
UN Day is devoted to highlighting the aims and achievements of the United Nations. This year’s UN Day focuses on the eight UN Millennium Development Goals (above) and follows on the High-level Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly on 20-22 September 2010, which adopted a global action plan to achieve the eight goals by their 2015 target date.
Tea Party Nation e-mail 10/23/10
via Hullabaloo ”Religious Tests,” citing
Article VI, paragraph 3:
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.
The founding moments of the contemporary Tea Party movement were many. Several were grassroots in nature, developing outside the existing power centers in Washington, D.C. and in the more remote regions where conservative politics meets a more libertarian (right-wing and anti-statist) opposition. Others derived directly from elements within the Republican Party apparatus and began as proxies for the party itself.
The Tea Parties also had points of origin within established right-wing organizations hoping to draw a line of distinction between themselves and the views of Sen. John McCain, who had just lost the presidential election, as well as the discredited conservatism of the Bush era. In so doing, they planned to create an opposition to President Obama and the Democrats.
” —Or, money overcomes political atonement.
We know the majority of Tea Party supporters are sincere, principled people of good will. That is why the NAACP—an organization that has worked to expose and combat racism in all its forms for more than 100 years—is thankful Devin Burghart, Leonard Zeskind and the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights prepared this report that exposes the links between certain Tea Party factions and acknowledged racist hate groups in the United States. These links should give all patriotic Americans pause.
I hope the leadership and members of the Tea Party movement will read this report and take additional steps to distance themselves from those Tea Party leaders who espouse racist ideas, advocate violence, or are formally affiliated with white supremacist organizations. In our effort to strengthen our democracy and ensure rights for all, it is important that we have a reasoned political debate without the use of epithets, the threat of violence, or the resurrection of long discredited racial hierarchies.
” —Benjamin Todd Jealous, President and CEO of the NAACP, foreward, “Tea Party Nationalism” (download the report)Due to Western influence, Segaki is often held around Halloween. My brother has spoken to me of “inviting the hungry ghosts” in his sangha’s practice.
Via John Pappason Oct 24, 2010
The ceremony of
Segaki is when we, as Buddhists, take time to offer compassionate respite to the restless spirits or “hungry ghosts” that surround us through the offering of chants, prayer or physical items. The Halloween season seems to provide the requisite amount of spirits, energy and atmosphere so it is as good a time as any to practice. Also with a tidal wave of candy-snacks rolling in, perhaps feeding my pretas beforehand may lead to less gorging.
According to Buddhist myth, hungry ghosts are creatures with large distended stomachs, small mouths and pencil-thin throats that are never able to satisfy their hunger or thirst. While these sorrowful and troublesome entities can be taken in the literal, figurative or metaphysical, I see the hungry ghost as symbolizing my own karma of the past, present and (probably) future. Whether by hook or crook, actions taken in the past have a tenacious ability to show up again in the present. By participating in this ceremony, I am able to engage my willingness to atone, bring resolution to and work towards a peaceful acceptance of the actions on which I stand.
What frightens me most about his time of year? More so than ghosts, goblins, spooks, specters and naughty maids are the actions that I have taken in the past that have caused some harm to others. But it is not a simple correspondence. It isn’t that one foul equals one harm. Like interest on a defaulted loan, my actions have the potential to continue to cause harm to others and to myself. One statement or action, while fleeting in my memory, may not be so transient for someone else. Like a worm burrowing deep into the heartwood of a tree, one time harmful actions or words are easily forgotten but continue to rot away at the substance around them.
And a hungry ghost is manifested, to forever haunt your periphery.
Our sky chart shows the waning gibbous moon and the Pleiades star cluster for around mid-evening at North American mid-northern latitudes. But no matter where you live worldwide, tonight’s…
Sunday’s Poem: “Gold Horse, Brown Horse” by Candace Black, from The Volunteer. Sunday’s Literary Notes: It’s the birthday of writer and explorer Alexandra David-Néel, born in Saint-Mandé, France, in…
For the northern hemisphere, last night’s moon was the full Hunter’s Moon. In the southern hemisphere, it was the second full moon of spring.
The full moon reached the crest of its full phase…
Saturday’s Poem: “Night Bicycle” by Jonathan Johnson, from In the Land We Imagined Ourselves. Saturday’s Literary Notes: It’s the birthday of novelist Laurie Halse Anderson, born in Potsdam, New York…
A few months ago, Boston yoga teacher Natasha Rizopoulos conducted a weekend workshop to teach experienced yoga students how to be instructors. She led them through three rigorous hours of postures and a long meditation, and discussed the philosophy of yoga, explaining the transformative power of physical practice that helps train the mind to be fully present.
But as she expounded on the benefits of yogic principles, two students in the class didn’t quite grasp the idea of spiritual enlightenment. Sitting cross-legged, they were busy firing off text messages.
“It was astonishing,’’ said Rizopoulos. “And this was a self-selecting, serious group.’’
For this reason, among others, Rizopoulos is aligning herself with some of the country’s foremost yoga teachers who are trying to take back yoga from the masses who they believe are running afoul of the traditions of a 5,000-year-old spiritual, intellectual, and physical discipline.
“Everyone is afraid to talk about the white elephant in the yoga room,’’ said Justine Wiltshire Cohen, founder of Down Under Yoga in Newton. She has invited Rizopoulos and three other nationally-known Boston-based yoga teachers — Barbara Benagh, Patricia Walden, and Peentz Dubble — to teach at her new studio. Some of them will participate in a “summit’’ on Sunday to discuss the future of yoga in America. Yoga, she said, is supposed to be “an art passed down from teacher to student.’’ It’s meant to calm the fluctuations of the mind. It advocates ahimsa, which means “do no harm;’’ and aparigraha or non-possessiveness.
” —Linda Matchan Globe Staff ”Down Under Yoga instructors try to steer students away from commercialism and other distractions” - The Boston Globe October 14, 2010
I have never seen anything like this where I’ve practiced, and coincidentally, some of the teachers at the studio where I practice have studied with two of the principals mentioned in the article.
What have we come to? Isn’t this inhumane? Isn’t it criminal?
October 21st, 2010 3:24 PM
(Credit: flickr user dvs)
So how do the Wall Street boys feel after destroying the world economy while pocketing billions, and then getting bailed out by everyone else in America? I’m sure they’re filled with remorse and desperately trying to make it up to us. Right?
“The first thing that needs to happen, I think, is to get these people out of their homes,” a man wearing a bespoke blue-striped shirt, a Hermés tie patterned with elephants and Ferragamo loafers said recently. “Correct! I’ll explain,” the veteran member of a bank restructuring and advisory team said…
“The question to me is not do you foreclose or do you not foreclose. The question is when and with what philosophy you foreclose,” the man on the bank restructuring team said. “If you want to reduce the amount of leveraged homeowners you have, you need to ultimately kick them out of their homes.” A colleague walked up: His recommendation was to burn houses. “It would lower the supply.”
That’s from a new article about Wall Street in the New York Observer, the newspaper for Manhattan’s richest people. It’s the only paper I’ve ever seen that’s printed on pink newsprint — except for the Financial Times, the paper for the world’s richest people. (I don’t know whether rich people are naturally attracted to pink paper, or whether it’s really expensive and only they can afford it. Whatever the reason, it’s meant to say fuck you to everyone else.)
Anyway, here’s what I’m wondering: Millions of people are getting kicked out of their homes who need a place to live, millions of homes are sitting empty and their value decaying along with their neighborhoods, and all this banker can say — with a straight face, I presume — is to burn down the houses? Isn’t that insane?
It is — because capitalism is insane. It doesn’t matter that we have a giant oversupply of something, and a giant number of people who desperately need that specific thing. The only thing that matters is: can this something be sold at a profit? If not, the obvious solution is to reduce supply by setting it on fire. And maybe this will create a business opportunity for the Koch brothers to sell tissues to America’s newly-homeless as they watch the empty houses burn down.
read more (including props, “h/t Paul Krugman for the New York Observer article”)
Ideology trumps analysis of our economic woes, except when you read Nobel laureate Paul Krugman.
By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: October 21, 2010
In the spring of 2010, fiscal austerity became fashionable. I use the term advisedly: the sudden consensus among Very Serious People that everyone must balance budgets now now now wasn’t based on any kind of careful analysis. It was more like a fad, something everyone professed to believe because that was what the in-crowd was saying.
And it’s a fad that has been fading lately, as evidence has accumulated that the lessons of the past remain relevant, that trying to balance budgets in the face of high unemployment and falling inflation is still a really bad idea. Most notably, the confidence fairy has been exposed as a myth. There have been widespread claims that deficit-cutting actually reduces unemployment because it reassures consumers and businesses; but multiple studies of historical record, including one by the International Monetary Fund, have shown that this claim has no basis in reality.
Comet Hartley 2 to be obscured by moonlight till late October
Tonight’s moon is only a prelude to the full Hunter’s Moon that will grace North American skies tomorrow – on Friday evening,…
For the world’s northern hemisphere, tonight is the night of the Full Hunter’s Moon. Watch it rise in the east tonight as the sun goes down. Like any full moon, the Hunter’s Moon will shine all…
Friday’s Poem: “You Just Think the Last Time” by Greg Kosmicki, from New Route in the Dream. Friday’s Literary Notes: It’s the birthday of the humorist and columnist John Gould, born in Boston,…
Bamiyan Province in Afghanistan, a stunningly beautiful mountainous region, is located in the center of the country, roughly 100 miles from Kabul. Most people here live in small, autonomous villages tucked into high mountain valleys, and work dawn to dusk just to scratch out a meager living as subsistence farmers, shepherds, or goatherds. The central government in Kabul and the regional government in Bamiyan City exercise little or no control over their lives. They govern themselves, and live for the most part in isolation.
Given this, who would imagine that Afghan youth from small villages across Bamiyan Province would come together to form a tight-knit, resilient, and effective group of peace activists, with a growing network of contacts and support that includes youth in other parts of the country and peace activists in the U.S. and in Palestine? I certainly wouldn’t have. In the United States, we may find it hard to believe that anything good can actually come out of Afghanistan, or we may have fallen into a trap of thinking that Afghans cannot accomplish anything useful without foreign aid and assistance. I confess that I struggle to live outside the shadow of this narrow-mindedness and ethno-centrism. Certainly, if the scope of our imaginations is limited by CNN and Fox News, we would not be likely to imagine an indigenous peace group forming in Bamiyan Province. But this is exactly what has happened.
Calling themselves the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers (AYPV), they range in age from eight to twenty, and they have been active for over two years, translating their camaraderie and the horror of their families’ experience of war and displacement into a passionate and active pacifism. At an invitation from AYPV, three American peace activists from Voices for Creative Nonviolence have arrived in Bamiyan for five days to build bridges of friendship and support with these youth and their families. Over this time, we will write a daily diary of our experiences and interactions with the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers.
” —David Smith-Ferri Bamiyan Diaries – Day One | Voices for Creative Nonviolence 10/19/10
Patricia Cohen’s recent article in the NY Times, “‘Culture of Poverty’ Makes a Comeback,” documents culture once again being used by social scientists as an explanation in…
The almost-full waxing gibbous moon makes 2010 an unfavorable year for watching tonight’s Orionid meteor shower, and the moon is leaving only a narrow window for observing Comet Hartley 2 at its…
Wednesday’s Poem: “My Father’s Green Flannel Shirt” by Andrea Hollander Budy, from Woman in the Painting. Wednesday’s Literary Notes: It’s the birthday of the man who designed St. Paul’s Cathedral in…
Looks like Apple has rev-bumped the MacBook Air. (Why wasn’t I informed of this?) Looks positively techno-lust-worthy. I have seen the future and maybe I can afford it for a change.
As seen from North America, the waxing gibbous moon and the blazing planet Jupiter are the closest together for the month tonight. From Asia, they’ll be closest tomorrow night. But no matter…
Tuesday’s Poem: “Obituary” by Ronald Wallace, from For a Limited Time Only. Tuesday’s Literary Notes: It’s the birthday of the spy novelist who writes under the name John le Carré, born David…
Here is the waxing gibbous moon shortly after sunset on Monday, not real far away from the largest planet in our solar system Jupiter. The waxing moon will be closer to Jupiter on Tuesday.
If…
Monday’s Poem: “Story” by Sabine Miller, from Circumference of Mercy. Monday’s Literary Notes: It’s the birthday of the man who founded the YMCA, Sir George Williams, born on a farm in Somerset,…
Is Comet Hartley 2 beginning to brighten?
On October evenings, the Big Dipper resides rather low in the northwest sky, and the W or M-shape constellation Cassiopeia the Queen sits on her throne…
Don’t expect to see Neptune, even though it’s close to the moon tonight. Neptune, the 8th planet out from the sun, is the only solar system planet that you absolutely can’t see with the unaided…
