are ambiguous

"Real moral dilemmas are ambiguous, and many of us hike right through them, unaware that they exist. When, usually after the fact, someone makes an issue of them, we tend to resent his or her bringing it up."

--Bowen H. McCoy, "The Parable of the Sadhu," in Harvard Business Review, 1983 September/October

Happy Independence Day

propaganda poster
Harald Damsleth
1906-1971 Norwegian

a better world flag

The Flag of Earth
James W. Codle

Cat in the Rain

"Hemingway has succeeded in rendering an immensely poignant human experience with all the poetry that pure prose can achieve. The simple language and brittle style simultaneously conceal and reveal a powerful emotional situation without the least trace of sentimentality. The delicacy and accuracy of the achievement are magnificent."

--John V. Hagopian, "Symmetry in 'Cat in the Rain,'" College English, 1962 December

Bonne Fête du Canada.

Happy Canada Day.

protracted conflict

"Since the early nineteenth century, borderlanders have witnessed protracted conflict rooted in the vastly unequal power relationship between Mexico and the United States."

--Oscar Martinez, U.S.-Mexican Borderlands: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, 1996

a World Flag

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Flag

Dharma Bums IIII

"Across the evening valley the old mule went with his heartbroken 'Hee haw' broken like a yodel in the wind: like a horn blown by some terribly sad angel: like a reminder to people digesting dinners at home that all was not as well as they thought. Yet it was just a love cry for another mule."

--Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums, 1958

Film Reviews

Slumdog Millionaire
The first 3/4 is basically Oliver Twist and makes for excellent viewing, but the dramatic climax of the film appropriates the inauthentic, manufactured drama of awful reality television (the film's climax cleaves exactly to the fulsomely protracted climax of any episode of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?), and the ending is happy-happy dreadful.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Australian Hughie, our pretending-to-be-Canadian Wolvie, pivots his motorcycle by slashing asphalt with his claws and then takes out a Humvee with his claws and then flies up in the air and stabs a helicopter and rides on top of the helicopter. And Liev Schreiber is Sabretooth.

the entire Eastern seaboard might join the European Union

"The front page of the December 29 issue of the Wall Street Journal carried a story about a Russian professor, who predicts the disintegration of the United States by 2010....

"Igor Panarin, a former KGB analyst, forecasts economic, financial and demographic turmoil in the U.S. leading to a political and social crisis that will result in social unrest and a civil war before the country breaks up along ethnic lines....

"Panarin, the dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s academy for future diplomats, first predicted a U.S. collapse in 1998 at a conference in Linz, Austria... [Attendees] lined up afterward and asked him to autograph copies of the map showing how America would break into different regions that would align with foreign lands.


"He essentially predicted nearly a decade ago that California and many western states will become part of China (or fall under Chinese influence), Alaska will go back to Russia, Hawaii will go to either China or Japan, Texas and several southern states will become part of Mexico, northern states will become part of Canada and the entire Eastern seaboard might join the European Union.

"Panarin spends plenty of time at receptions in the Kremlin, lecturing to students, publishing books and appearing in various media outlets as an expert on U.S.-Russian relations, which are pretty dismal right now....

"His projections of a U.S. breakup have made him a darling of the Russian media and power circles.

"White House reaction at a December news conference drew laughter from the press corps. But Panarin warns a similar 1976 prediction by a French political scientist, Emmanuel Todd, correctly predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union 15 years before it happened."

--Rick Killion, Prairie Business Magazine, 2009 March

Painting the Space Needle, 1962

"Giving an upper leg its coat of 'astronaut white,' painter pauses in high cage to view awesome sight. Copyright 1962, The Craftsman Press, Inc."

U.S.A., Washington, Seattle
Space Needle
from VintageSeattle.org

Gegeen.com

www.Gegeen.com

"Supporting Health, Wealth and Education of Mongolian Youth"

Happy Bloomsday

yes I said yes I will Yes

Lyrical III

Seven Nations
I'm waiting for midnight
I'm waiting for silence

John Cougar Mellencamp
She calls me "Baby"
She calls everybody "Baby"

Marilyn Manson
Kill your god
Kill your god
Kill your TV

Merle Haggard
If someone ever said I gave a damn
They damn sure told you wrong

LFO
Deep down I know she loves me
But she's got a funny way of showing me how she cares
Last night she did a donut on my lawn
Then drove off with one finger in the air

Nirvana
I found it hard
It's hard to find
Oh well, whatever, nevermind

Motion City Soundtrack
I'll be back tomorrow
I'll be back in the ballroom, swinging
I'll be back with a capital "H"
It stands for "Hero" and the Hero is me

I'll be back tomorrow
I'll be back at a quarter to eleven
I'm half drunk, I can't see straight
And I'm off to save the world

New Found Glory
I finally have an audience to ignore me

Quarashi
There's a party at your house
'Cause your mama is a stripper

No Address
She don't like me singing songs
She don't wanna sing along
It's still the same
She only likes me when I'm gone

Counting Crows
Well, I woke up in mid-afternoon
'Cause that's when it all hurts the most

Steve Earle
I got an empty feeling deep inside
I'm going over to the other side

Arbuckle

In the Garfield universe, Arbuckle can't hear Garfield's thoughts. Remove Garfield's thought balloons, and the strips become poignant: a very lonely man, talking to his cat.





--http://www.truthandbeautybombs.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=4997&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

65th

F-5 Lightning with D-Day Invasion stripes

European Bee-eater

Merops apiaster

Picking up hookers instead of my pen

Cowboys are special with their own brand of misery
from being alone too long.
You could die from the cold in the arms of a nightmare,
knowing well that your best days are gone.
Picking up hookers instead of my pen,
I let the words of my youth fade away.
Old worn-out saddles and old worn-out memories,
with no one and no place to stay.

My heroes have always been cowboys.
And they still are, it seems.
Sadly in search of, and one step in back of,
themselves and their slow-moving dreams.

--Sharon Rice, "My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys"

old movie

poster by Eric Tan

Lake Nicaragua shark (Carcharinus nicaraguensis)

"HIDDEN DEMON OF THE PEACEFUL LAKE

"High in the jungles of Central America, Lake Nicaragua lies shimmering amid green hills in a setting of breath-taking beauty, inviting the passer-by to escape the oppressive heat in the coolness of its waters. But this can be an invitation to death, for under its calm surface lurks one of the world's few fresh water maneaters, the Lake Nicaragua shark. Averaging 8 to 10 feet in length and closely related to the Atlantic ground shark which rarely attacks men, this predator was originally a sea-dweller who migrated up the San Carlos River from the Caribbean. When prehistoric earthquakes cut off its return route to the sea with waterfalls and rapids, this shark settled down in its present home and somehow acquired a taste for people. The Lake Nicaragua shark is a deadly menace to swimmers in the lakeshore shallows because it hugs the bottom, so that no racing fin breaks the surface to warn of its approach. Local people and visitors alike have succumbed to its stealth, their first hint of danger being the mortal crush of the murderer's powerful jaws."

--Animal World in Color, Volume 8 - Hunters: Birds, Fish, and Amphibians, edited by Maurice Burton, Childrens Press: Chicago, 1969

You don't seem to

"Why make a fuss when you're so comfortable? Don't make a fuss, make a baby. Go out and get something to eat, build something. Make another baby. Babies are cute. Babies show you have faith in the future. Although faith is perhaps too strong a word. They're everywhere these days, in all the crowds and traffic jams, there are the babies too. You don't seem to associate them with the problems of population increase. They're just babies!"

--Joy Williams, "Save the Whales, Screw the Shrimp" in Ill Nature: Rants and Reflections on Humanity and Other Animals, 2001

Mother's Day cards

The blackness of the eternal void from which we come and to which we return.

The briefness of our sojourn among the conscious.

Knowledge of the Human Experience in Diverse Cultures Enlightens One to Moral Relativism

"In any comprehensive study of psychology, the selection that different cultures have made in the course of history within the great circumference of potential behavior is of great significance.

"Every society, beginning with some slight inclination in one direction or another, carries its preference farther and farther, integrating itself more and more completely upon its chosen basis, and discarding those types of behavior that are uncongenial. Most of those organizations of personality that seem to us most uncontrovertibly abnormal have been used by different civilizations in the very foundations of their institutional life. Conversely the most valued traits of our normal individuals have been looked on in differently organized cultures as aberrant. Normality, in short, within a very wide range, is culturally defined. It is primarily a term for the socially elaborated segment of human behavior in any culture; and abnormality, a term for the segment that that particular civilization does not use. The very eyes with which we see the problem are conditioned by the long traditional habits of our own society.

"It is a point that has been made more often in relation to ethics than in relation to psychiatry. We do not any longer make the mistake of deriving the morality of our locality and decade directly from the inevitable constitution of human nature. We do not elevate it to the dignity of a first principle. We recognize that morality differs in every society, and is a convenient term for socially approved habits. Mankind has always preferred to say, 'It is morally good,' rather than 'It is habitual'...

"There is an ascertainable range of human behavior that is found wherever a sufficiently large series of individuals is observed. But the proportion in which behavior types stand to one another in different societies is not universal. The vast majority of individuals in any group are shaped to the fashion of that culture. In other words, most individuals are plastic to the molding force of the society into which they are born. In a society that values trance, as in India, they will have supernormal experience. In a society that institutionalizes homosexuality, they will be homosexual. In a society that sets the gathering of possessions as the chief human objective, they will amass property. The deviants, whatever the type of behavior the culture has institutionalized, will remain few in number, and there seems no more difficulty in molding the vast malleable majority to the 'normality' of what we consider an aberrant trait, such as delusions of reference, than to the normality of such accepted behavior patterns as acquisitiveness. The small proportion of the number of the deviants in any culture is not a function of the sure instinct with which that society has built itself upon the fundamental sanities, but of the universal fact that, happily, the majority of mankind quite readily take any shape that is presented to them...."

--Ruth Benedict, "Anthropology and the Abnormal" in Journal of General Psychology, 1934

Mongolian nudes

http://theoldhun.com/mongolia/

all both alike and different

"War stories, like Holocaust stories, are all both alike and different, and all improbable; each turns on moments of hor­ror, serendipity, and unimaginable bravery. Sitting next to me at Fran O'Brien's was Steve Reighard, of Bloomington, Indiana, who was hacking one-handed with a combination knife-fork at a steak the size of a dictionary. 'They am­bushed us,' he said. 'I'm standing there trying to realize what happened and my arm is laying there. I picked it up and fell in the dirt.' Across the table, Robert Acosta, of Santa Ana, California, manipulated a steak knife with his stainless-steel hook. 'They threw a hand grenade in my truck,' he said. 'I picked it up and, damn, dropped it down between my legs. When I grabbed it again, it blew up in my hand.' At Walter Reed, Phil Bauer, a strapping cavalry scout from upstate New York, had described being on a Chinook heli­copter that was shot down on November 2nd, killing fifteen soldiers on their way to a short leave. When he came to, he said, he was pinned atop the open-eyed corpse of a woman soldier to whom he'd just given a piece of gum. His leg was jammed beneath the burning roof of the Chinook, and he had to lie there, without morphine, for two hours while a 'jaws of life' appa­ratus was flown in from Tikrit. 'It was like cooking a steak with the cover down,' he said. He lost his right leg below the knee. At the dinner, a soldier named Ed Platt, from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, told me that the signature moment of his calamity was when the medics used the ribbons of his leg--­shattered by a rocket-propelled grenade--as its own tourniquet. 'They just folded it up,' he said. 'I looked down and I'm looking at the sole of my boot.' He shuddered. 'OK, cool, whatever, dude,' he muttered to himself as he finished his story. Doctors amputated just below Platt's right hip."

--Dan Baum, "The Casualty" in The New Yorker, 2004 March 8

Happy Victory Day

Fifth of May

"Despite being outgunned and outnumbered almost two to one, Mexico won the Battle of Puebla.

"But Mexico did not win the war. France sent 30,000 more soldiers to Mexico and took Mexico City in 1863. While occupying Mexico, France put Maximilian I, a Hapsburg prince, on the throne. His title: emperor of Mexico.

"A few years later, under pressure from the Mexican people and the United States, France withdrew in 1866-1867. President Benito Juarez executed Maximilian five years after the Battle of Puebla."

--"World of Wonder: Exploring the Realms of History, Science, Nature and Technology"

the cosmic irony

"What Bartleby essentially dramatizes is not the pathos of dementia praecox but the bitter metaphysical pathos of the human situation itself; the cosmic irony of the truth that men are at once immitigably interdependent and immitigably forlorn."

--Newton Arvin, Herman Melville, A Critical Biography, 1950

Cafe Amsterdam: Speed Dating -- Завгүй залуу та хайраа хайж байна уу?

"Cafe Amsterdam has decided to launch speed dating for Mongolians. The first event will be held on Friday 8th May 2009 at 7pm. We realize that many of our mailing list subscribers are non Mongolians but we would be very grateful if you would take the time to print the attached PDF file and put it up in your office or spread the word to your Mongolian co workers.

"Please feel free to forward the email to anyone you feel maybe interested.

"Завгүй залуу та хайраа хайж байна уу?

"Амстердам Кафе Монголд анх удаа ‘Speed Dating’ зохион байгуулж байна.

"5 сарын 8ны Ням гарагийн 19 цагт

"Гоёмсог хувцасаа өмсөж ирээрэй. Хүн бүртэй уулзаж танилцахад 3 мин л бий.
25-35 насны 25 залуу, 25 бүсгүйчүүдийг урьж байна.

"Үйл ажиллагаанд оролцохоо бүртгүүлэхийн тулд cafe(at)amsterdam(dot)mn нд нэр, нас, холбоо барих утасныхаа дугаараа имейлээр явуулна уу. Хамгийн түрүүнд бүртгүүлсэн 25 бүсгүй, 25 залууг эхний ээлжинд сонгон оруулах болно. Эхний ээлжинд оролцож чадаагүй бол санаа зовох хэрэггүй. Энэ үйл ажиллагааг 2 долоо хоног болгон зохион байгуулж байх болно.

"Бүсгүйчүүд сууцгаан, залуу бүртэй 3 минутын хугацаанд ярилцан танилцах болно. Уулзалт болгоны дараа залуу бүсгүй хоёр тухайн хүнтэйгээ дахин уулзах хүсэлтэй эсэхийг нууц хуудас дээр тэмдэглэх бөгөөд хэрвээ таны сонгосон хүн таныг мөн сонгосон байвал, бид та хоёрыг холбож уулзуулах болно.

"Таксны 10 000 төгрөгийн үнэнд нэг коктайл дагалдаж ирнэ."

--http://www.amsterdam.mn/speed-dating/42-speed-dating

U.S.S.R., Ukraine, Chernobyl, 1986 April 26

"'The reactor fire was very hot; we measured at least 7,000 degrees,' says Vladimir Verbitskiy, 47, an officer at the control center of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone who worked there at the time, and who still works there today. 'But the bigger problem was the radiation itself. Initially, Reactor 4's core was emitting 40,000 roentgens an hour, and deadly levels for humans are 600 an hour. And the containment vessel was shattered facing west, with its top blown off and lying on its side. There was no way to contain the radiation; it was directed straight up and also horizontally away in beams through the cracked vessel. Those beams were very powerful. If you got stuck in the way of one for a long period of time, your flesh would simply disintegrate.'

"The fire inside the containment vessel raged on, with no public statement from the Soviet government. But if the Kremlin was taciturn after the explosion, Chernobyl was in a frenzy. 'The roads were washed 24 hours a day, just to keep them clear of radioactive ash,' says Verbitskiy. 'Everyone was ordered inside with the windows shut. Helicopters were brought in to drop sand, clay, boron, and lead onto the fire from above, trying to smother it and trap the radioactivity. Dropping lead was a big mistake, since it melted before it hit the fire and turned into a molten and now radioactive liquid that spread. Of course, they were trying anything... everything. After all, nothing like this had ever happened before.'"

--Donovan Webster, "Nature's Revenge" in Best Life, 2008 November

and with the Nordic Cross on the flag

"The Global Peace Index ranks Norway as the most peaceful country in the world. Every year for half a decade, Norway has ranked number one in standard of living, life expectancy, literacy, and education. The unemployment rate is half that of America, its crime rate is low, and it has the second highest gross domestic product.

"Norway is a model country. Yet more than 70 percent of its population claim to be either atheist or agnostic. Only 26 percent of Norway’s population believe in God.

"Norway had Christian roots, even more so than the United States whose Founding Fathers purposely left religion out of the Constitution. But Norway has shed its religious upbringing and has become one of the safest, most progressive, and most peaceful countries in the world."

--http://wilstar.com/OverCoffee/blog/2007/10/religious-propaganda-in-my-school.html

kea (Nestor notabilis)

"THE MURDERING PARROT

"Found only in New Zealand, the kea passes the summer high in the mountains of South Island, feeding mainly on fruit but also taking insects and worms. But when winter comes it descends to the plains where sheep-farming is one of the main activities. It is there that this otherwise harmless vegetarian changes character. Originally its ancestors pecked the sheepskins hanging outside sheep stations for insects, or tasted offal from the slaughter-houses. Later generations of keas, having acquired this taste for flesh, began to prey on the bodies of living sheep, chiefly for the sake of the kidney-fat they had learned to look for. So expert is the kea that it will alight on the back of a sheep exactly where the kidneys are most easily exposed. The cruel beak finds its meal in an instant, leaving the poor beast mortally wounded."

--Animal World in Color, Volume 8 - Hunters: Birds, Fish, and Amphibians, edited by Maurice Burton, Childrens Press: Chicago, 1969

cassowary (Casuarius casuarius)

"NEW GUINEA CASSOWARY

"The native was returning home late in the evening humming to himself, when in front of him he heard a curious howling, grunting noise. An instant later a shape hurled itself upon him. Two slashing claws raked down his body, he fell backwards, and his attacker trampled over him and rushed on. He was very lucky, for he had met a cassowary, a notoriously bad-tempered bird, almost five and a half feet tall, out hunting for food. Although in the dense forests of New Guinea and Australia cassowaries feed mainly on berries and plants, they will sometimes kill small animals for meat. They fight by hurling themselves at an opponent, slashing downwards with their powerful claws, which will kill a man. On its forehead the cassowary has a bony helmet which protects it as it runs through the thick undergrowth at a speed sometimes reaching almost thirty miles an hour."

--Animal World in Color, Volume 8 - Hunters: Birds, Fish, and Amphibians, edited by Maurice Burton, Childrens Press: Chicago, 1969

When Things Get Dark: A Mongolian Winter's Tale

"I wanted to share the exciting news that I recently sold my first book to St. Martin's Press. It's a book of literary nonfiction called When Things Get Dark: A Mongolian Winter's Tale, and it is due out this upcoming winter, in 2010."

--Matthew Davis

Happy Easter

Dharma Bums III

"Then suddenly one night after supper as I was pacing in the cold windy darkness of the yard I felt tremendously depressed and threw myself right on the ground and cried 'I'm gonna die!' because there was nothing else to do in the cold loneliness of this harsh inhospitable earth, and instantly the tender bliss of enlightenment was like milk in my eyelids and I was warm. And I realized that this was the truth Rosie knew now, and all the dead, my dead father and dead brother and dead uncles and cousins and aunts, the truth that is realizable in a dead man's bones and is beyond the Tree of Buddha as well as the Cross of Jesus."

--Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums, 1958

Agnostic

"Bertrand Russell was a well known British philosopher of the 20th century. He was arrested during World War I for anti-war activities, and filled out a form at the jail. The officer, noting that Russell had defined his religious affiliation as 'Agnostic' commented: 'Ah yes; we all worship Him in our own way, don't we.' This comment allegedly 'kept him smiling through his first few days of incarceration.'"

--http://www.religioustolerance.org/agnostic.htm

reason

Monstrously Disregards

In the United States, received a piece of religious propaganda in the mail, a 16-page, tabloid-sized newspaper entitled Faith for Life, compliments of the local Baptist church. The lead piece, “Why Does a Loving God Allow Bad Things to Happen?,” is a 1,000-word attempt to resolve the Epicurean paradox in favor of Christian faith, though the paradox is not identified by name within the piece.

The first paragraph:

“In July of 1945, during WWII, the warship USS Indianapolis had just delivered the atomic bomb. On its way back home it was torpedoed by the Japanese and sunk, stranding many sailors in the Pacific Ocean. In the days that followed, hundreds of men perished by sharks or other means until the tattered survivors were finally rescued. How could something so tragic ever happen?”

In the first paragraph of the first article on the first page of this lengthy proselytization paper, the writer alludes to an attack on an urban center with an experimental weapon of mass destruction resulting in the instantaneous incineration of 70,000 civilian non-combatants and the consequent fatal radiation poisoning and burning of 70,000 more, and monstrously disregards this in order to, in the same paragraph, designate the death of 900 fighting men in the legitimate sinking of their warship as “something so tragic.” Presumably because the 900 were “us” and the 140,000 were “the enemy,” the writer presents the death of 900 warriors as a tragedy and flouts the massacre of 140,000 innocents as not worthy of comment, in a contemptuous affront to the hippie admonition to “Love thine enemy.” The writer goes on from here to argue for the existence of a benevolent god-being.

The piece is signed: “FfL Editor.” No editor's name, writer's name, or staff member's name appears anywhere within the paper.

African helmet or wood shrike (Euryceros prevosti)

"FIGHTERS ALL

"'All shrikes are bullies, aggressive and blood-thirsty', says a distinguished naturalist, and the habits of the African helmet or wood shrike would seem to confirm this statement. But like other creatures, including man, it must eat to live, and fight for its living. We hear of shrikes seizing helpless young birds and pecking out their brains to provide a tasty morsel, whilst ignoring the rest of the body.... In many districts shrikes band together in companies to protect their nesting grounds. Fortified by numbers they become exceedingly daring, and will even mob and 'dive buzz' an invader as large and formidable as a leopard."

--Animal World in Color, Volume 8 - Hunters: Birds, Fish, and Amphibians, edited by Maurice Burton, Childrens Press: Chicago, 1969