Archive
Bravo to Alexander Pope
* Thank you for writing and sharing your inner light.
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”An Essay on Criticism” (published in 1711) by Alexander Pope
FULL TEXT: http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/esycr10.txt
* It begins…
“‘Tis hard to say if greater want of skill
Appear in writing or in judging ill,
But of the two less dangerous is the offense
To tire our patience than mislead our sense”
** In part 2…
“Of all the causes which conspire to blind
Man’s erring judgment and misguide the mind,
What the weak head with strongest bias rules,
Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools.
Whatever nature has in worth denied,
She gives in large recruits of needful pride;
For as in bodies, thus in souls, we find
What wants in blood and spirits, swelled with wind:
Pride where wit fails steps in to our defense,
And fills up all the mighty void of sense.
If once right reason drives that cloud away,
Truth breaks upon us with resistless day
Trust not yourself, but your defects to know,
Make use of every friend–and every foe.
A little learning is a dangerous thing
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring [216]
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.”
Worth repeating…
“The person who is a master in the art of living makes little distinction between their work and their play, their labor and their leisure, their mind and their body, their education and their recreation, their love and their religion.
They hardly know which is which. They simply pursue their vision of excellence and grace in whatever they do, leaving others to decide whether they are working or playing. To them, they are always doing both.”
–From the Zen Buddhist text
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“It is absurd to hold that a man ought to be ashamed of being unable to defend himself with his limbs, but not of being unable to defend himself with speech and reason (logos), when the use of rational speech is more distinctive of a human being than the use of his limbs.”
–Aristotle
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Jeremy Lin
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I want to see “The Beautiful Game,” whether it’s football (aka soccer), basketball, baseball, or any other athletics on display. That’s why I saw Jordan play against Magic at the Forum back in 1988. I loved the “Showtime” Lakers with Magic at the helm. Magic Johnson is my all-time favorite basketball player. I also backed Patrick Ewing’s Knicks to beat Michael Jordan’s Bulls every time, because I want to see basketball as it was intended – as a team sport with 5 players passing the ball to find the open shooter.
I enjoy watching the geometry and synchronicity of players’ movements. Gestalt! Shaq was boring to watch, in my opinion. And Kobe, while being very talented at knocking down shots as he falls away from the basket and with hands in his face, is boring to watch, in my opinion. I want movement of the ball – passes – not one man doing the bulk of the scoring with pivot-pivot-shoot, and then the next time pivot-pivot-shoot, and then rinse and repeat all game long. Basketball can be a very fluid game if everybody gets involved, and then it becomes fast-paced and exciting to watch. When I lived in New York City during the 2000s, I saw the Knicks beat the Kings at Madison Square Garden and I saw the Knicks lose to the Heat at Madison Square Garden. I enjoy the New York Knicks’ style of gritty, get-it-done-as-a-team basketball; and I also admired Allan Houston’s beautiful jump shot.
Jeremy Lin is a Rocky Balboa story. Lin believed in himself and kept fighting for his chance to shine, no matter how many teams cut him from their rosters. The Golden State Warriors gave Lin an average of something like 9 minutes per game before letting him go. The Houston Rockets also waived Lin. Reminder: Lin won the California high school championship against Mater Dei and scored 30 points against top-25-ranked Connecticut when he played at Harvard. No NBA team drafted Lin, but he persevered. Everybody kept cutting him from their team like he was a good-for-nothing bum, a la Rocky, when really Lin has the heart of a champion inside him, just like the legendary, although fictional, boxer.
Jeremy Lin is a highly skilled point guard who makes other players better. That’s what I want to see when I watch the game of basketball. I can see my own triumphs over adversity resembling Jeremy Lin’s underdog success. He is an inspiration to me.
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When sport transcends to the point of Art, it is called “The Beautiful Game.”©
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Harmonize and find your rhythm, Knicks
Other than the one loss to the New Orleans Hornets on Friday night, Jeremy Lin made the winning music happen for the New York Knicks like the missing puzzle piece of Ringo Starr getting behind the drum kit for the Beatles. Sometimes it just takes one player to make the team that much more magical. Paul McCartney said in an interview, “I always likened us [the Beatles] to a square. Take any of those four sides away and it collapses.” A basketball team is more than one man (in the NBA anyway)…it is a band of men.
* Sending good vibes to Baron Davis, Carmelo Anthony, and all of the 2012 New York Knicks)))))))
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When sport transcends to the point of Art, it is called “The Beautiful Game.”©
Die Antwoord – I Fink U Freeky
* I love the sound they make.
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Read more:
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/die-antwoord-on-tour-dont-look-for-answers-20120211
http://videogum.com/112671/die_antwoord_is_fake_and_so_wh/backlashes/
http://www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/2010/10/die_antwoord_ch.html
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So the Knicks with Jeremy Lin as point guard lost one game, and at Madison Square Garden
Get ready for Sunday!
Knicks v. Mavericks at the Garden 10 am PST/ 1 pm EST
* Basketball is a game. Have fun…and play. Play beautifully.
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When sport transcends to the point of Art, it is called “The Beautiful Game.”©
Knicks back to .500 after 7th win in a row
picture source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NewYorkKnicks.PNG
Read more:
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When sport transcends to the point of Art, it is called “The Beautiful Game.”©
IMPORTANT: The self-serving 1% and their venal handmaids…Deniers of Global Warming (aka Climate Change) are paid $MONEY$ to do their denying
Worth repeating…
FAH-Q Koch Brothers!
FAH-Q = For All to Hear & Question. ; )
“Leak exposes how Heartland Institute works to undermine climate science
Libertarian thinktank keeps prominent sceptics on its payroll and relies on millions in funding from carbon industry, papers suggest”
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https://fandecande.wordpress.com/2010/07/05/global-warming-aka-climate-change/
Global Warming, aka Climate Change
http://climatechange.procon.org/
Without making any judgements, the ProCon page titled “Is human activity a substantial cause of global climate change?” presents both sides of the “Is Earth Getting Hotter Because Of Us?” debate.
Despite the almost even number of Pros and Cons (Pros won 14 to 13), there is a glaring question of credibility from both sides of the argument: Did scientists purposely play “fast and loose” with accepted practices of science data gathering and presentation? Do the oil companies fund the climate skeptics? Is Al Gore right? Is George W. Bush right? The climate skeptics don’t have a celebrity on their side, other than the President who was in charge of our country and its policies during the bulk of the hottest decade on Earth, 1999 to 2009, according to NASA’s Goddard Institute.
That was a decade in which we increased oil drilling operations and “Killed the Electric Car,” as well as started a false war in Iraq for access to its oil reserves. Bush may have accused us of being “Addicted to Oil” but he was pumping the gas the whole time, and hardly doing anything to wean us from our habit, as he made it seem. Our country runs on oil – a lot of money is at stake in this debate. Global Warming is also an Economics issue, as well as one concerning the Environment.
The debate of “Whose Hot Planet Is It?” has become politicized. When in doubt, ask your local neighborhood climate scientist – and make sure he or she is a highly accredited source with fact & evidence to back up his/her claims.
NASA is one of the sources that believes “We Are Making The Earth Hotter.” The United Nations’ scientists insist with 90 percent certainty that human beings burning fossil fuels is the cause of Global Warming, also known as Global Climate Change.
The source of the argument is just as important as the argument itself. In journalism, we seek highly accredited named sources (3 or more per story, if possible). The Pro-side, or the“Humans = Hotter” polemic, comes with a pedigree of multiple, highly accredited sources—lots of recognizable names, or at least recognizable universities and institutions. To the contrary, the Con-side, or “The Earth Has A Fever” contingent, looks weak by comparison because it lacks highly accredited sources—other than long-time cynic of climate science models, MIT’s Professor of Meteorology, Richard Lindzen .
The “Background” section provides the actual text of the 1988 testimony from James Hansen, Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. However, ProCon does not provide the text of Lindzen’s criticism. In fact, on the web page, Lindzen serves only to introduce ideas of criticism without using fact & evidence to corroborate his contrarian position, as he does in the youtube video from the Heartland Institute, titled “Al Gore Snowjob.” That is to say, just because Professor Lindzen states (minute 3:00 of the video) “If it’s Greenhouse Warming you get more warming in the middle of the troposphere, the first 10-12 kilometers of the atmosphere, than you do at the surface” does not negate the fact that global temperature overall is rising – which can lead to disastrous effects for human civilization as we know it.
None of the climate scientist skeptics teach at top-rated universities, other than Lindzen. Other sources are not trustworthy because they have obvious conflicts of interest, like Fred Singer (the Former Director of the U.S. National Weather Service in the Heartland video) who runs the “Science and Environmental Policy Project” with some funding from the oil companies.
SOURCE:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/hotpolitics/reports/skeptics.html
EXCERPT:
“Affiliations & Funding: Dr. Singer publicly denies receiving funding from energy industry sources, but he has acknowledged previously being a paid consultant for several oil companies. In addition, his organization — the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) — has received multiple grants from ExxonMobil, according to a review of Exxon’s own financial documents and Greenpeace’s Exxonsecrets.org. That site also shows that many of the other organizations with which Singer works — Frontiers of Freedom, the Cato Institute, National Center for Policy Analysis — have received large grants from Exxon as well.”
It’s a little trickier to dismiss Max Mayfield, the Director of the 2005 U.S. Commerce Department’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Although he is known as a hurricane expert, that doesn’t make him a climate scientist source for the overall warming of the Earth. His expertise is hurricanes – one effect of the Earth’s atmosphere. From what I have read, Mr. Mayfield is not regarded as a “climate scientist,” but is highly regarded as a hurricane expert (which does not make him an expert on the Earth’s “Climate”). Mr. Mayfield also served in a politically appointed position in the Commerce Department during the presidency of George W. Bush – the antithesis of Al Gore.
Additionally, Chris Horner from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, also featured in the Heartland video, is not a scientist of any kind. His conflict of interest is Enterprise vs. Environment, $Green$Money$ or Green Earth. Maybe it’s not one or the other, but there is a definite conflict with Mr. Horner as a source.
Lindzen’s April 12, 2006 Wall Street Journal article, titled “Climate of Fear: Global-Warming Alarmists Intimidate Dissenting Scientists into Scilence,” could not be found on the internet, but the headline makes a claim of intimidation that has never been substantiated; and if this article appeared in the Op-Ed section of the WSJ then its content based on fact & evidence is suspect. This questionable article possibly invalidates the evidence for Con #9: “Ocean acidity levels have risen over the 20th century, but they are not out of the ordinary considering the fluctuations of the past 7,000 years.” This claim is now dubious because it comes from a heavily biased source, possibly from the pages of an Opinion page known to espouse business friendly ideas and a scientist who has been publicly dissenting of Global Warming since the 1980s – before the hottest decade ever recorded in the 2000s.
* Ironically, it is in a WSJ Op-Ed that Lindzen refutes the so-called “experts” from the Heartland Institute video, by asserting that an increase in CO2 causes an increase in temperature, and not the other way around . “Temperature increases first and then CO2 increases” is what the talking heads in the Heartland youtube clip would have us believe.
SOURCE:
The November 30, 2009 Wall Street Journal Opinion-Editorial written by Lindzen, titled “The Climate Science Isn’t Settled.”
In it Lindzen makes dogmatic claims, such as “It is generally accepted that a doubling of CO2 will only produce a change of about two degrees Fahrenheit if all else is held constant. This is unlikely to be much to worry about.” Instead of providing proof of his assertion, he contradicts himself in the very next sentence when he writes “Yet current climate models predict much higher sensitivities.” Well, then Lindzen’s claim of a temperature rise of only 2-degrees Fahrenheit being “generally accepted” doesn’t hold water because those “current climate models” predict an amplification of the warming effect due to water vapor and clouds. Therefore the generally accepted climate models from the consensus of climate scientists predicts global warming of more than 2-degrees Fahrenheit. And that outcome may be something to worry about for us, but not for Lindzen, evidently.
Furthermore, Lindzen opines that “positive feedback” – the name for clouds inducing heat – exists alongside “negative feedback” – the name for clouds decreasing CO2. Lindzen never corroborates the idea of “negative feedback” with fact & evidence. Rather than using named sources, he relies on “Some [who] have suggested” and “quite a few papers in the literature,” both of which also miss the definition of highly accredited sources. In fact, these flimsy references do not constitute sources in any way, shape or form.
So, we just experienced the hottest decade on Earth, according to NASA. And the United Nations’ top scientists from 130 countries just told us that human beings are (to a 90 percent certainty) causing this warming by burning fossil fuels. But a few climate skeptics from the United States and Canada, most of them not even climate scientists (or climate scientists from any university you’ve ever heard of), tell us that NASA and the global community of climate scientists have it all wrong. Who are we supposed to believe? I’ve got to go with NASA and the consensus of the scientists assembled by the United Nations.
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https://fandecande.wordpress.com/2011/02/22/just-say-no-to-koch/
Just say NO to KOCH
* These are the same Koch Brothers who, along with the oil companies Valero and Tesoro, tried to stop California from using renewable energy by pushing Proposition 23 in the last election.
Billionaire Brothers’ Money Plays Role in Wisconsin Dispute
source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/22/us/22koch.html?_r=1
Among the thousands of demonstrators who jammed the Wisconsin State Capitol grounds this weekend was a well-financed advocate from Washington who was there to voice praise for cutting state spending by slashing union benefits and bargaining rights.
The visitor, Tim Phillips, the president of Americans for Prosperity, told a large group of counterprotesters who had gathered Saturday at one edge of what otherwise was a mostly union crowd that the cuts were not only necessary, but they also represented the start of a much-needed nationwide move to slash public-sector union benefits.
“We are going to bring fiscal sanity back to this great nation,” he said.
What Mr. Phillips did not mention was that his Virginia-based nonprofit group, whose budget surged to $40 million in 2010 from $7 million three years ago, was created and financed in part by the secretive billionaire brothers Charles G. and David H. Koch.
State records also show that Koch Industries, their energy and consumer products conglomerate based in Wichita, Kan., was one of the biggest contributors to the election campaign of Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, a Republican who has championed the proposed cuts.
Even before the new governor was sworn in last month, executives from the Koch-backed group had worked behind the scenes to try to encourage a union showdown, Mr. Phillips said in an interview on Monday.
State governments have gone into the red, he said, in part because of the excessively generous pay and benefits that unions have been able to negotiate for teachers, police, firefighters and other state and local employees.
“We thought it was important to do,” Mr. Phillips said, adding that his group is already working with activists and state officials in Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania to urge them to take similar steps to curtail union benefits or give public employees the power to opt out of unions entirely.
To union leaders and liberal activists in Washington, this intervention in Wisconsin is proof of the expanding role played by nonprofit groups with murky ties to wealthy corporate executives as they push a decidedly conservative agenda.
“The Koch brothers are the poster children of the effort by multinational corporate America to try to redefine the rights and values of American citizens,” said Representative Gwen Moore, Democrat of Wisconsin, who joined with others in the union protests.
A spokesman for Koch Industries, as well as Mr. Phillips, scoffed at that accusation. The companies owned by Koch (pronounced Coke) — which include the Georgia-Pacific Corporation and the Koch Pipeline Company — have no direct stake in the union debate, they said. The company has about 3,000 employees in Wisconsin, including workers at a toilet paper factory and gasoline supply terminals….
Political activism is high on the list of priorities for Charles Koch, who in a letter last September to other business leaders and conservatives explained that he saw no other choice.
“If not us, who? If not now, when?” said the letter, which invited other conservatives to a retreat in January in Rancho Mirage, Calif. “It is up to us to combat what is now the greatest assault on American freedom and prosperity in our lifetimes.”
Campaign finance records in Washington show that donations by Koch Industries and its employees climbed to a total of $2 million in the last election cycle, twice as much as a decade ago, with 92 percent of that money going to Republicans. Donations in state government races — like in Wisconsin — have also surged in recent years, records show.
But the most aggressive expansion of the Koch brothers’ effort to influence public policy has come through the Americans for Prosperity, which runs both a charitable foundation and a grass-roots-activists group. Mr. Phillips serves as president of both branches, and David Koch is chairman of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation.
The grass-roots-activists wing of the organization today has chapters in 32 states, including Wisconsin, and an e-mail list of 1.6 million supporters, said Mary Ellen Burke, a spokeswoman. She would not say how much of last year’s $40 million budget came from the Koch family, but nationwide donations have come in from 70,000 members, she said, offering it as proof that it has wide support.
The organization has taken up a range of topics, including combating the health care law, environmental regulations and spending by state and federal governments. The effort to impose limits on public labor unions has been a particular focus in Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, all states with Republican governors, Mr. Phillips said, adding that he expects new proposals to emerge soon in some of those states to limit union power.
To Bob Edgar, a former House Democrat who is now president of Common Cause, a liberal group that has been critical of what it sees as the rising influence of corporate interests in American politics, the Koch brothers are using their money to create a façade of grass-roots support for their favorite causes.
“This is a dangerous moment in America history,” Mr. Edgar said. “It is not that these folks don’t have a right to participate in politics. But they are moving democracy into the control of more wealthy corporate hands.”
During a demonstration outside the Wisconsin Capitol Monday, one protester made a similar point, holding a sign saying: “Gov. Walker: Kick the Koch Habit.”
But Mr. Phillips and members of his group and other conservative activists, not surprisingly, see it very differently.
Just as unions organize to fight for their priorities, conservatives are entitled to a voice of their own.
“This is a watershed moment in Wisconsin,” Mr. Phillips said. “For the last two decades, government unions have used their power to drive pensions and benefits and salaries well beyond anything that can be sustained. We are just trying to change that.”
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Read more: https://fandecande.wordpress.com/?s=koch
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The 2012 New York Knicks
When sport transcends to the point of Art, it is called “The Beautiful Game.”©
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Congratulations to Adele for winning 6 Grammy Awards for her album, 21
* Rick Rubin is a Man-Muse with a 6th sense for the je ne sais quoi.
“I also want to say a big thank you to Rick Rubin, who taught me about quality control. He really taught me about what I wanted to be and made me realize stuff that I didn’t ever think I would.” – Adele, last night at the Grammy Awards.
source: http://www.nme.com/blog/index.php?blog=1&p=11832&title=grammys_2012_a_few_thoughts&more=1&c=1
And thank you to Paul McCartney for orchestrating a fantastic finale fugue with guitar solos by 6 different players (including Bruce Springsteen, Joe Walsh, Dave Grohl, Rusty Anderson and Brian Ray), doubling the original trio of guitarists who played on the Abbey Road Suite. To John Lennon and George Harrison…the music lives on! Thank you to all of the musicians who are here now and to those who are no longer with us. Thank you for your contributions on Earth.
“Music and water will be the last thing[s] to leave this planet.”–Quincy Jones
Read more:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/124f89c2-3cd3-11e1-8d38-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1mFJKPkeq
fandecande 