hooray for hubble

Looks like the Hubble is going to get some love again.

And has not the Hubble become something like a beloved building? It's got character. An identity. Worthy happenings. And what a great name.

Hubble for prez!*



*the space telescope, not Edwin. I am pretty sure he no longer meets the qualifications to run. Though we could hardly do much worse...

brez for prez?

I am not smart enough to add anything, so I will merely link to this essay by Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Here is the teaser from Steven Clemons' Washington Note...

"A sensible, enlightened treatment of what drives terrorism and how to confront it was written by Zbigniew Brzezinski in September 2002 in the New York Times, "Confronting Anti-American Grievances." It's worth reading..."

Excerpt from the Brzezinski essay: (read the whole thing here)

Missing from much of the public debate is discussion of the simple fact that lurking behind every terroristic act is a specific political antecedent. That does not justify either the perpetrator or his political cause. Nonetheless, the fact is that almost all terrorist activity originates from some political conflict and is sustained by it as well. That is true of the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland, the Basques in Spain, the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, the Muslims in Kashmir and so forth.

In the case of Sept. 11, it does not require deep analysis to note -- given the identity of the perpetrators -- that the Middle East's political history has something to do with the hatred of Middle Eastern terrorists for America. The specifics of the region's political history need not be dissected too closely because terrorists presumably do not delve deeply into archival research before embarking on a terrorist career. Rather, it is the emotional context of felt, observed or historically recounted political grievances that shapes the fanatical pathology of terrorists and eventually triggers their murderous actions.

American involvement in the Middle East is clearly the main impulse of the hatred that has been directed at America. There is no escaping the fact that Arab political emotions have been shaped by the region's encounter with French and British colonialism, by the defeat of the Arab effort to prevent the existence of Israel and by the subsequent American support for Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians, as well as by the direct injection of American power into the region...

new link

Please follow the new link to experience Creating Passionate Users.

Groovy, eclectic, passionate.

Go forth and make passionate _____ in your life.

~ Me

:?)

giddy inside

For the little boy in all of us...paintballing in a tank.

rebels vs. the empire

Employees fighting the good fight against Walmart.

beat the clock

Howz your geography?

:?)

shiny balls of mud

hikaru dorodango

"An artifact of such utter simplicity and perfection that it seems it must be either the first object or the last, something that either instigated the Big Bang or awaits the final precipitous descent into universal silence. At the very end of things awaits the hikaru dorodango, a perfect three-inch sphere of mud. At its heart: the unthinkable.”

~ William Gibson

Please go read what Patti Digh has to say about hikaru dorodango at 37days.

i am more interesting when i am writing

You know, I am more interesting to myself and more stimulated when I am writing. Even when my work demands a certain amount of lonely reflection (especilly when!), writing is symbolic of reaching out to others and being social.

I hope I never become an anti-social writer. Someone who takes a laptop into the closet and taps away while no one is looking.

who wants to blog when there's so much to read?

So much scandal to read, so little time to write. I imagine serious writers must close themselves off from such distractions to get anything done.

Thank goodness I've never been confused for a serious writer.

---

As this whole Foleygate thing has mushroomed, I am reminded of something a friend once told me. We were talking about criminals and the problem of parole.

‘Here are people with impulse-control problems, and little discipline. They get parolled and have to govern themselves, adhering to a stricter set of rules than those they could not live up to before. Is it surprising how often parole is violated?'

And then I think of legislators. Makers of laws, but most often left to police themselves. Righteous in the rule of others, but undisciplined and flawed in self-governance.

I am doing a certain amount of catching the innocent up along with the guilty. But then when the caucuses put self-preservation above self-control one cannot simply rail at the faceless body, impotent to vote down the individual member.

Individual virtue in legislators and their leaders can command loyalty only so long as the politician wields it and votes it.

The minute it is set aside for expedience it is an elective virtue and not native.

Interesting that “elect” is the root of election and selective. One can only hope more votes will be cast electively and selectively than blindly this November.

shiver me timbers

Well, it seems I had so much fun talkin' like a pi-rate that I plumb forgot to post for a while.

So I'm back, from outta' space,
I just walked in to find you here,
With that sad look upon your face.

or in pirate--

Arrr! I be back, from way up yon,
I stagga'd to the rendez-vous,
But by yer look the loot's all gone.

Arrr....