Croatia's fury 1991

Crowds burning Yugoslav flag after 12 croat police men got killed, 22 wounded in an ambush.

Serb nationalism

John Collier - the land baby

The grapes of wrath

"Don't let the flies in. Either go out or come in."

Language and society

http://www.hereandnow.org/stand-alone-player/?fileUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bu.edu%2Fwbur%2Fstorage%2F2009%2F07%2Fhereandnow_0701_4.mp3&fileTitle=Does%20Language%20Shape%20the%20Way%20We%20Think?

Finisterre - Sylvia Plath

Finisterre
This was the land's end: the last fingers, knuckled and rheumatic,
Cramped on nothing. Black
Admonitory cliffs, and the sea exploding
With no bottom, or anything on the other side of it,
Whitened by the faces of the drowned.
Now it is only gloomy, a dump of rocks ---
Leftover soldiers from old, messy wars.
The sea cannons into their ear, but they don't budge.
Other rocks hide their grudges under the water.

The cliffs are edged with trefoils, stars and bells
Such as fingers might embroider, close to death,
Almost too small for the mists to bother with.
The mists are part of the ancient paraphernalia ---
Souls, rolled in the doom-noise of the sea.
They bruise the rocks out of existence, then resurrect them.
They go up without hope, like sighs.
I walk among them, and they stuff my mouth with cotton.
When they free me, I am beaded with tears.

Our Lady of the Shipwrecked is striding toward the horizon,
Her marble skirts blown back in two pink wings.
A marble sailor kneels at her foot distractedly, and at his foot
A peasant woman in black
Is praying to the monument of the sailor praying.
Our Lady of the Shipwrecked is three times life size,
Her lips sweet with divinity.
She does not hear what the sailor or the peasant is saying ---
She is in love with the beautiful formlessness of the sea.

Gull-colored laces flap in the sea drafts
Beside the postcard stalls.
The peasants anchor them with conches. One is told:
"These are the pretty trinkets the sea hides,
Little shells made up into necklaces and toy ladies.
They do not come from with Bay of the Dead down there,
But from another place, tropical and blue,
We have never been to.
These are our crêpes. Eat them before they blow cold."



"No creas que estoy llorando por lo que hicistes conmigo, amor sigue tu camino vive feliz que es tu destino"

погром

The importance of the environment

It is not enough to be the possessor of genius — the time and the man must conjoin. An Alexander the Great, born into an age of profound peace, might scarce have troubled the world — a Newton, grown up in a thieves’ den, might have devised little but a new and ingenious picklock." — John Cleveland Cotton, Diversions of Historical Thought

Distant relations - Orhan Pamuk

“Nesibe didn’t even inform her husband—she just lied about her daughter’s age and entered her in that beauty contest,” my mother said, fuming at the thought. “Thank God, she didn’t win, so they were spared that public disgrace. If the school authorities had got wind of it, they would have expelled the girl. . . . She must have finished lycée by now. I don’t expect that she’ll be doing any further studies, but I’m not up to date, since they don’t come to visit on holidays anymore. . . . Can there be anyone in this country who doesn’t know what kind of girl, what kind of woman, enters a beauty contest? How did she behave with you?”

This was my mother’s way of suggesting that Füsun had begun to sleep with men. I’d heard the same from my Nisantasi playboy friends when Füsun appeared in a photograph with the other finalists in the newspaper Milliyet, but as I’d found the whole thing embarrassing I tried to show no interest. After we both fell silent, my mother wagged her finger at me ominously and said, “Be careful! You’re about to become engaged to a very special, very charming, very lovely girl! Why don’t you show me this purse you’ve bought her. Mümtaz!”—she was calling my father—“Look! Kemal’s bought Sibel a purse!”

Kayan tribes - the secret behind the long necks.

Women of the various Kayan tribes identify themselves by their different form of dress. The Kayan Lahwi tribe are the most renowned as they wear ornaments known as neck rings, brass coils that are placed around the neck. These coils are first applied to young girls when they are around five years old[5].

Each coil is replaced with longer coils as the weight of the brass pushes the collar bone down and compresses the rib cage. Contrary to popular belief, the neck is not actually lengthened; the illusion of a stretched neck is created by the deformation of the clavicle

- wikipedia

My question.

Would the fullness of civilization(whatever that means) bring the zenith of universal neurosis as Freud decided?

Neandertals did not paint their caves with the images of animals. But perhaps they had no need to distill life into representations, because its essences were already revealed to their senses. The sight of a running herd was enough to inspire a surging sense of beauty. They had no drums or bone flutes, but they could listen to the booming rhythms of the wind, the earth, and each other’s heartbeats, and be transported.

- James Shreeve

Lieberman

Would you still want it if there were a million just like it and no one wanted any of them?

Lieberman - Ego

El conocimiento guardado

The following sentence is written by Macetafinofen from La Letrina.
(La siguienta frase esta escrito por Macetafinofen de La Letrina.)

"El conocimiento que no se comparte tiende a convertirse en arrogancia"
(The knowledge that you don't share tends to convert into arrogance.)


When learning/understanding/knowing something turns into an owning/collecting activity...

Soul of Russia (National Geographic) - Question.

Yoni Brenner: The Apology

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2009/09/yoni-brenner-the-apology.html

So what if I shouted out "Jai alai", not "you lie"? you never know.

Vail - artisan versus the assembly line

The case of the artisan versus the assembly line provides a similar example of technic-knowledge. The artisan, an individual who crafts a product through the entire chain of events needed to add value for an outside user, has the complete set of knowledge needed to perform the transformation.
For example, the watchmaker transforms metal through a variety of phases until it has reached the stage of a finished watch.
Similarly the potter makes clay into finished pottery, the carpenter makes trees into furniture, etc. Each has the power to transform a material into a value-added product.

Opposite the artisan stands the case of the assembly line. In the assembly line, individuals perform highly specialized segments of the value-adding process, but none have the knowledge to affect the full transformation.

The use of the technology of specialization provides more efficient production, from the perspective of the capitalist, but a loss of power for the individual.

Instead of the individual artisan, the assembly line holds the power over its human components. The production knowledge exists embedded in the process and outside of the control of the individual. The assembly line serves as an example of technology in control of people(I'm a little dubious about this statement).

Cuba Libre

Vail - A theory of power - No more biological evolution?

Additionally, agriculture virtually ended biological evolution for humans.
There remain a few, very minor exceptions, such as the improved lactose tolerance of Northern Europeans that probably developed alongside pastoralism and agriculture,

but evolution in general has switched from individual selection to group selection. While, in agricultural societies, some individuals would not live to reproduce, this resulted increasingly less often from lower individual fitness.

Instead, if the group prospered, far more members survived, regardless of individual
fitness. With the end of biological evolution, the makeup of our genome froze in the Pleistocene era of hunter-gatherers.

Vail - A theory of power

"The power-relationships between perceived “entities” make up the world around us, not the illusion of particles."

"if random events lead to the creation of a stable complex of power-relationships, then that entity persists."


Something to think about.

The reason why I hate "witnesses' testimony"

From "Trial By Fire" by David Grann, the new yorker

Dozens of studies have shown that witnesses’ memories of events often change when they are supplied with new contextual information. Itiel Dror, a cognitive psychologist who has done extensive research on eyewitness and expert testimony in criminal investigations, told me, “The mind is not a passive machine. Once you believe in something—once you expect something—it changes the way you perceive information and the way your memory recalls it.







"Gilbert took the files and sat down at a small table. As she examined the eyewitness accounts, she noticed several contradictions. Diane Barbee had reported that, before the authorities arrived at the fire, Willingham never tried to get back into the house—yet she had been absent for some time while calling the Fire Department. Meanwhile, her daughter Buffie had reported witnessing Willingham on the porch breaking a window, in an apparent effort to reach his children. And the firemen and police on the scene had described Willingham frantically trying to get into the house.

The witnesses’ testimony also grew more damning after authorities had concluded, in the beginning of January, 1992, that Willingham was likely guilty of murder. In Diane Barbee’s initial statement to authorities, she had portrayed Willingham as “hysterical,” and described the front of the house exploding. But on January 4th, after arson investigators began suspecting Willingham of murder, Barbee suggested that he could have gone back inside to rescue his children, for at the outset she had seen only “smoke coming from out of the front of the house”—smoke that was not “real thick.”


from the issuecartoon banke-mail this An even starker shift occurred with Father Monaghan’s testimony. In his first statement, he had depicted Willingham as a devastated father who had to be repeatedly restrained from risking his life. Yet, as investigators were preparing to arrest Willingham, he concluded that Willingham had been too emotional (“He seemed to have the type of distress that a woman who had given birth would have upon seeing her children die”); and he expressed a “gut feeling” that Willingham had “something to do with the setting of the fire.”



Always the same story.

From Jennifer Michael Hecht's blog "Dear fonzie"

"In the practical, it's not ideal to post a poem and then hope it finds a journal home, to post is to publish to a degree. whereas after publishing a poem somewhere, posting it is fine too. So for efficiency, why not only post poems that have been published, and save the sweet young things at home? Because sometimes something new gets stuck in my head and I just want to say it out loud and show it to friends so much that I sacrifice its future upon my desire. What desire? I wonder, and guess it is a desire for communion."


I adore Jennifer Michael Hecht's blog. It's genuine, green friendly and.. tangible.
Anyway this new blog entry from her blog got me wondering about the purpose of sharing.

Can you truly say that it's all about "the communion" or is some of it our desperation to be recognized? is recognition part of the communion? and if so, should that recognition be considered selfish? Am I treating the concept of communion to be idealistically holy like there shouldn't be any selfish interest in the act of communion? Is it truly in our human nature to act according to our self-interest?

Does all this come from our childhood habit of being praised on every accomplishment by our parents? Does this mean, the more the child is praised, the more recognition she/he will look for in the act of communion during their adulthood?
or is it that everyone (regardless of his childhood)looks for praise and recognition through the communion but the level of emotional satisfaction they receive varies depending on their childhood experience? or is it the need for such praise that gets affected?

Or can it be that your jealousy towards your brother who was praised more than you during your child, caused your desperate need to be recognized in the communion?

The Lion and the Unicorn - The Socialism And The English Genius

The British ruling class were not altogether wrong in thinking that
Fascism was on their side. It is a fact that any rich man, unless he is a Jew, has less to fear from Fascism than from either Communism or democratic Socialism. One ought never to forget this, for nearly the whole of German and Italian propaganda is designed to cover it up.

Varna - the traditional Hindu caste system

Harijans [children of God] - individuals who are at the bottom of or outside the Hindu caste system. They were traditionally sweepers, washers of clothes, leatherworkers, and those whose occupation it was to kill animals. The term is also sometimes applied to the hill tribes of India, who are considered unclean by some because they eat beef. Originally called untouchables or pariahs, they were given the name Harijans by the Indian political and religious leader Mahatma Gandhi, who worked for many years to improve their lives. Many now refer to themselves as Dalits [Marathi,=broken] to indicate their oppressed position outside Hindu society; legally the Indian government groups them as “scheduled castes.”


*Shudra was a common Sanskrit word, any person regardless of his/her varna to could be addressed as shudra. An implied version of this common form has become traditionally associated with the varna system. It is also mentioned in the purusha-sukta of Rigveda where shudras are said to have emanated from the feet of the lord (पद्भ्याम् शूद्र् अजायत padbhyām śūdro ajāyata, It denotes that the three other varnas which made up the parts of purusha (पुरुश, the lord) were supported by the shudras as the feet form the supporting system of the entire body - wikipedia

Van Gogh - Cottage