"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." "Like I always say, there's no 'I' in "team". There is a 'me', though, if you jumble it up." We would worry less about what others think of us if we realized how seldom they do. Wisdom - that part of knowledge that isn't only true, but also happens to be helpful. Wisdom speaks softly... Thereafter the volume increases proportionate to the level of ignorance A punctured bicycle
On a hillside desolate
Will nature make a man of me yet? All designed objects are propaganda for a certain way of life. Sometimes we need to stop analysing the past, stop planning the future, stop figuring out precisely how we feel, stop deciding exactly what we want, and just see what happens. We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person. "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence." --Napoleon Bonaparte The best designed clothes: invite being removed but reward being kept on. It's that you just can't take the effect and make it the cause | How CAMRA volunteers greeted guests at the Great British Beer festival a few years ago. There was a welcome but just a teensy bit patronising piece in the FT on Saturday about how the sandals-and-black-socks twattish image of real ale – and CAMRA – is no longer accurate, particularly given that the latter has doubled in size over the last decade. The number of – shall we call them 'characters' – in society has not doubled, meaning that while some of us may still have issues with the organisation in some areas, it is succeeding in reaching out to [ continue reading ‘Lager drinkers are brainwashed morons.’ ] As part of its Olympic push, the city of London pledge to get 2 million more people in England playing sports and exercising. The New York Times reports today that: Figures issued in December by Sport England, the governing body for community sports, indicated that participation at the 3×30 level had increased by 123,000 since 2007-8, when the one million baseline was established. But that number increased by only 8,000 in the last year. At the current rate, the goal of one million new participants would not be reached in 2012-13 as hoped but more than [ continue reading Surprise: 2012 Olympics Are Not Making the Brits Exercise ] Our Society is: a place to be inspired by possibilities and celebrate achievements a place to share your struggles and engage in honest, open discussion a support network where you can ask for advice, offer help, promote your activities a learning exchange where you tell your story, hear others’ experiences, and find resources Our Society aims to connect people who are genuinely concerned to move power into communities and [ continue reading Our Society ] Our political system protects and enriches a fantastically wealthy elite, much of whose money is, as a result of their interesting tax and transfer arrangements, in effect stolen from poorer countries, and poorer citizens of their own countries. Ours is a semi-criminal money-laundering economy, legitimised by the pomp of the lord mayor’s show and multiple layers of defence in government. Politically irrelevant, economically invisible, the rest of us inhabit the margins of the system. Governments ensure that we are thrown enough scraps to keep us quiet, while the ultra-rich get on with the serious business of looting the global [ continue reading To us, it’s an obscure shift of tax law. To the City, it’s the heist of the century ] SEE ME SAVE ME It’s nearly two years since Eilidh was run over by a truck that failed to see her. Her mum Heather has been working with their local Member of European Parliament to try and get an EU declaration signed to get HGVs fitted with sensors and cameras to remove their blind spot. 4000 people, mostly unprotected road users such as cyclists, motorcyclists and pedestrians are killed each year in Europe because of HGV blind spots. This declaration needs to be signed to be signed by half of the 736 MEPs before it lapses on [ continue reading Eilidh Cairns – Campaign – See Me Save Me ] All of which brings me back to Egypt as the canary in a very large coal mine. It’s hard to overstate just how unexpected a transformation is occurring in Egypt. Death, taxes, and Hosni Mubarak — they were the three great certainties in modern Egyptian life. But just underneath the surface, the tectonic pressure of dumb growth was steadily mounting. Bogus prosperity’s like magma, filling the volcanic chamber of a society: you can bottle it up for only so long before it erupts, and spectacularly. Today, the world’s gaze is fixed on the pyroclastic flow: never-ending demonstrations, protests, people [ continue reading Egypt’s Revolution: Coming to an Economy Near You ] Street artist, cartoonist and comic book creator Phlegm is known for his signature illustrative black-and-white style, which he has translated from the page to large-scale murals in run-down public areas. The Sheffield, UK-based artist recently completed some stunning floor-to-rooftop street art, including ‘Whale of a Time’ in the Riverside carpark in Rotherham. Stunning Black and White Street Art Illustrations by Phlegm | WebUrbanist. [ continue reading stunning black and white street art illustrations by Phlegm ] Harry Beck’s map continues to inspire. (CLICK HERE FOR MORE »» European E-Road System as a Subway Diagram | Cameron Booth: .) Is is possible to replicate what happened in Tunisia in other countries, like Egypt? Global guerrillas in Egypt are working on it. Here’s what is going on: Numerous attempts at self-immoliation. Six in Egypt. These attempts at martyrdom are meant to symbolically spark revolution. Protests are being organized online. This one, called “day of revolt” and organized via Facebook, generated 16k supporters (although I suspect most of them are from people outside the country who are immune from retribution). The protest it sparked in Cairo resulted in three deaths and numerous clashes with Police. The Egyptian government is [ continue reading CAN AN OPEN SOURCE REVOLT TOPPLE EGYPT? ] РАЭ-54 с борта НЭС “Академик Фёдоров” from North Pole on Vimeo. DK Matai has a great little outline on how the open source revolt spread in Tunisia. It was very open much open source warfare (OSW, the dominant form of warfare in the 21st Century), but with a rapidly evolving protest/revolt twist (OSW + flashmobs). Thing is, the conditions within which the revolt spread are becoming pretty common. Here they are: Extreme price shocks in basic commodities. Food and energy. Extreme corruption. A globally connected elite appropriating everything. Extreme connectivity. Cell phones and other social media. Given that the global system is highly unstable (extreme leverage, concentration, tight coupling, [ continue reading TUNISIA and OPEN SOURCE REVOLT ] The biggest rocket ever to launch from the US West Coast has lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base. The 72m-high Delta IV Heavy was carrying a classified satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). The Delta IV Heavy features three core boosters strapped side by side. Each has a Pratt and Whitney Rocketdyne-built RS-68 engine. These motors burn a tonne of propellant every second and produce 2,900 kiloNewtons (650,000lbs) of thrust at lift-off. 100,000 starlings fill the skies in Poole from Mark Rigler on Vimeo. With Tumblr recently experiencing a 24-hour offline stint and a reported single 9 of service reliability, there are plenty of jokes about the microblogging service’s infamous downtime (most I’ve heard have at least a tenuous WikiLeaks connection). Here’s the most Tumblr elaborate satire piece yet: Go to http://wellbebackshortly.com/ and hit refresh. Hit refresh again, and again. Created by Adam Hemphill, the site is a riff on the Tumblr “We’ll Be Back Shortly” page and generates over a hundred hypothetical excuses as to why Tumblr is down so Tumblr doesn’t have to. (Tumblr is currently UP, at the moment.) [ continue reading “Squirrels” And 100 Other Reasons Why Tumblr Is Down ] Now this is interesting! Who would have thought that this could happen even if, as we know, the ibex can do it. One of the respondents says it’s so that the ibex can benefit from minerals being leeched from the rock. Copenhagen – City of Cyclists from Copenhagenize on Vimeo. So if you go down to the woods today, you’ll find the best metaphor for Cameronism. Change your party’s logo to a lovely green tree – then sell off all the real trees to corporations. Oh, and then say you are “empowering volunteers” by doing it. The Prime Minister has said the forest sell-off “empowers local communities” to take over the forests for themselves as part of a “Big Society.” Yet sources within the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs say that – unsurprisingly – only about [ continue reading For sale: Britain’s forests and seas, and David Cameron’s claims to be green ] On December 25, 1643, Captain William Mynors and his crew aboard the ship the Royal Mary, sailed past a small island in the Malaysian archipelago and dubbed it “Christmas Island.” More than 300 kilometers away from the nearest other piece of dry land and uninhabitated by humans or their animals until the 1890′s, many of the animals and plants found here were unique to this island. These species included two endemic species of rats, Rattus macleari and Rattus nativitatis. Despite the fact that the first settlers found them to be abundant, within a very short time, i.e. by 1908, [ continue reading December 25 – Trypanosoma lewisi ] SAN FRANCISCO — Signs you’re an old fogey: You still watch movies on a VCR, listen to vinyl records and shoot photos on film. Young people, of course, much prefer online chats and text messages. These have been on the rise for years but are now threatening to eclipse e-mail, much as they have already superseded phone calls. Major Internet companies like Facebook are responding with message services that are focused on immediate gratification. (CLICK HERE FOR MORE »» E-Mail Use Falls as Young Chat and Text – NYTimes.com: .) [ continue reading E-Mail Use Falls as Young Chat and Text – NYTimes.com ] Only a hill ; earth set a little higher above the face of earth : a larger view of little fields and roads : a little higher to clouds and silence : what is that to you? Only a hill ; but all of life to me, up there, between the sunset and the sea. | Shirdi Sai Baba: "Before you speak, ask yourself: Is it kind, is it true, is it necessary, does it improve upon the silence?" Well known fact that any kiss where one or other party is in control of heavy machinery doesn't count for quality assessment purposes. There is no nonsense so arrant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action. The honest heart that's free frae a' intended fraud or guile. However fortune kick the ba', Has ay some cause to smile. Life consists in replacing one worry with another, and one desire with the next, what the Buddhists call ‘grasping’ or upādāna in Sanskrit "Every saint has a past. Every sinner has a future." "Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die." A wrong decision isn't forever; it can be reversed. The losses from a delayed decision are forever; they can never be retrieved. heavy words thrown lightly And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. Whenever you commend, add your reasons for doing so; it is this which distinguishes the approbation of a man of sense from the flattery of sycophants and admiration of fools “The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.” |
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