i think i should start up one of these preschools

[click image]

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Hand out kelp tablets first thing every morning and... rock out....

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love, 99
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i want the good to show instead of the ugly

[click image]

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So the image of The Laureate isn't going here.

The Bolivian President and a Russian political leader have launched a campaign to revoke Obama's honour after the US attacked Libya.

Liberal Democratic Party of Russia leader and Vice-Chairman of the State Duma Vladimir Zhirinovsky released a statement today calling for the Nobel Prize Committee to take back the honour bestowed on US President Barack Obama in 2009.

Zhirinovsky said the attacks were "another outrageous act of aggression by NATO forces and, in particular, the United States," and that the attacks demonstrated a "colonial policy" with "one goal: to establish control over Libyan oil and the Libyan regime." He said the prize was now hypocritical as a result.

Bolivian President Evo Morales echoed the call: "How is it possible that a Nobel Peace Prize winner leads a gang to attack and invade? This is not a defence of human rights or self-determination."

Morales won the Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights in 2006.

He is amongst a number of left-leaning Latin American leaders who have denounced the attacks against Libya. Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua and Cristina Fernandez of Argentina have all criticised western media coverage of the Libyan crisis.

Morales and Chavez repeated calls for peace talks with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples." The Committee praised the "change in the international climate" affected by Obama's presidency.

In his Nobel Lecture, he discussed the "hard truth" of the inevitability of war, saying: "There will be times when nations — acting individually or in concert — will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified."

A message has been widely retweeted on Twitter today: "Obama has now fired more cruise missiles than all other Nobel Peace prize winners combined."

I beg the Nobel Committee to heed these decent people and revoke that prize. Insofar as anyone respects it anymore, it is a travesty to stand back and watch "peace" laureates go on killing sprees.

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love, 99
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phil is speaking server to me again

[click image — that's my friend Phil with the red beard]

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I just hate it when he does that. I never know what he's trying to convey. I am the ACE at taking in even THE most inscrutable terms or accents or whatever, but Phil-speak, which I suspect is server-speak, never yields up anything that makes sense to me. I have also just learned—against all odds—that my problem with the "wrong" box for the hard drive to my dead Mac has not been that the box is wrong! The hitch has been that they put so many alternative plugs for alternative drives in there, expecting all the unused ones to just be skrinched up in the box—uselessly—with the drive, and after you have done all that—OMG—Bob is quite suddenly and so mystically your uncle. I am now back in possession of all my emails and all my stash of old images and they are all in their own little history folder and now my old hard drive is my fully functioning external drive for backing up the crap I accumulate so the bits that are not crap are also not lost. I feel elevated to the height of at least Everest that the problem has been stupidity and now that I'm in Jim's house with all this stuff, the problem can have gone away and a clear path into the future stretches out before me.

Contrary to popular expectations, I love to find out that I have been wrong... or stupid... or ditzy... whatever the hitch has been. It means everything can get better! That—no kidding—feels like sex. Try it.

So. Jim, who knows the very soul of my paranoia—aka deeply-held Americanism—has recommended that I look-in to this plug computing thing, or whutever it is, and so the image link is meant to be my gateway into the eventual escape from fascism. My friends love me. They put up with my weirdness and they help me be happily weird. Do you realize how important that is? No. Really. He's content to use Chrome so that Google can keep perfect track of his every whim, but he knows how creeped-out that makes me and so he helps me keep as uncreeped as possible. I used to be able to just hop in Goldie and drive a couple miles and be here with Jim and Peggy. They put up with the late night death grip chocolate cravings of menopause problem. They let me read every book that lines every wall of this house, even though they've only ever had the time to buy them. They cook me gourmet meals. They serve me fancy drinks. They get me wild birthday presents. They love me even if I'm stranger than fiction to them.

So. We all now must turn our attention to this plug thing....

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OH, man, I really think you oughta bookmark this page. I'm pretty bonkers for this bit here:

When is Freedom Box?

We don't know yet. But all around us, we can see that it needs to be soon.

Doesn't that sound SANE?

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love, 99
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sane people!

[click image]

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I just knew it!

My sweet linguistic professional who is darn lax about toying with my affections drops me a note betimes, to dangle the prospect of white nights in Saint Petersburg, and the dazzling steed with the armored hero just never arrives at my door....
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for some reason this seems saner to me

[click image]

...than shipping out to the Middle East to slaughter innocents.

It's heartbreaking, and it's making me cry, but it is saner than what the fascists are using them for.

temple grandin

[click picture]

If you scroll down a little you will find two downloads of her speaking at the Mind Institute. She's an autistic PhD and I found her talks on autism riveting. She's darn wonderful, and darn sensible. If you have a couple three hours to give her, I don't think you'll be sorry.

jon kabat-zinn talks mindfulness to google

[1 hour, 12 minutes]

Seems he has rather extensive experience with the Zen literature out there, and has taken Zen meditation, trimmed off just about all of the teaching and offers this strippy version as a means to help Type A personalities calm the fuck down. I cannot fault his impulse, and might have preferred to present a version wherein he makes no specific reference to the teachings of charlatans, but there is value in this presentation of his none the less. Few, I hope, took note of any mention of so-called Zen masters, while all, I'm sure, got at least a breather here. I surely know almost nothing of Jon Kabat-Zinn, but this seems vastly more worthy to me than the bald guys in dresses making a living off of mystifying the daylights out of the already befuddled.

I just want to stress that this is not Zen he's talking here, but he is describing pretty accurately the way in. If you want to calm down, he's your man. If you want to wake up, it's almost the same as this, but you aren't exploring, or noting, or owning, or disowning the stuff that comes up while trying to keep your attention on your breath. You are learning its true nature as you keep dropping it and seeing how that works out. You are teaching yourself not to be fooled by your own thoughts anymore and to get in touch with your greater intelligence.

... Okay... sometime later.... I don't seem to be able to keep myself from mentioning that it really is too possible to clear your mind of thoughts. I have done it many times, and can do it at will. It does not prevent thought from recurring. Thought is necessary for a lot of things... like, say, figuring out how to pitch one of those fancy-fangled new tents, or how best to build a better mousetrap. I'm almost of a mind to take this down altogether, but I really do want to point out the merit of using this stuff to help people... even if you do not fully grok what it's about... instead of using it for self-aggrandizement, to get ahead, to cash in on a fad....