Bufflehead Cabin

miss-mary-quite-contrary: anthrolology: tinariwen One of...

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:43:24 -0400

miss-mary-quite-contrary:

anthrolology:

tinariwen

One of my favorite bands!

Paddle-surfer captured risking life and limb to enjoy close view...

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 21:28:04 -0400

Paddle-surfer captured risking life and limb to enjoy close view of a 40-ton acrobatic whale

FLURB

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 12:39:45 -0400

FLURB

miss-mary-quite-contrary: oceanofmind: Hans Silvester

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 12:37:46 -0400

miss-mary-quite-contrary:

oceanofmind:

Hans Silvester

Designing Obama

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 12:23:05 -0400

Designing Obama:

Download the free PDF here: LINK

It’s Time to Get Laid

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 12:21:11 -0400

It’s Time to Get Laid

William Gibson - Google's Earth

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 12:17:53 -0400

William Gibson - Google's Earth:

Google is not ours. Which feels confusing, because we are its unpaid content-providers, in one way or another. We generate product for Google, our every search a minuscule contribution. Google is made of us, a sort of coral reef of human minds and their products.
…
Cyberspace, not so long ago, was a specific elsewhere, one we visited periodically, peering into it from the familiar physical world. Now cyberspace has everted. Turned itself inside out. Colonized the physical. Making Google a central and evolving structural unit not only of the architecture of cyberspace, but of the world. This is the sort of thing that empires and nation-states did, before. But empires and nation-states weren’t organs of global human perception. They had their many eyes, certainly, but they didn’t constitute a single multiplex eye for the entire human species.

Iraq: What Did We Win, And What Did It Cost?

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 12:10:41 -0400

Iraq: What Did We Win, And What Did It Cost?:

The financial costs are fairly straightforward, and they are staggering (sources in report):

- Cost of Operation Iraqi Freedom: $748.2 billion
- Projected total cost of veterans’ health care and disability: $422 billion to $717 billion

The human costs, especially in terms of Iraqi casualties, are somewhat more difficult to ascertain, but even using the most conservative estimates, the numbers are deeply troubling:

- Total deaths: Between 110,663 and 119,380
- Coalition deaths: 4,712
- U.S. deaths: 4,394
- U.S. wounded: 31,768
- U.S. deaths as a percentage of coalition deaths: 93.25 percent
- Iraqi Security Force deaths: At least 9,451
- Total coalition and ISF deaths: At least 14,163
- Iraqi civilian deaths: Between 96,037 and 104,7542
- Non-Iraqi contractor deaths: At least 463
- Internally displaced persons: 2.6 million
- Refugees: 1.9 million

Least appreciated, however, are the war’s strategic costs, the implications of which the U.S. will likely be grappling with for decades: [Great summary well worth the read.]

As it is

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 10:42:06 -0400

As it is

"Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply..."

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 10:39:35 -0400

“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”

- Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha

21st century enlightenment

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 10:35:23 -0400

21st century enlightenment

Icelandic Saga Database

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 10:29:37 -0400

Icelandic Saga Database:

This website contains all the extant Icelandic family sagas.

Arcade Fire, HTML5 and Chrome

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 10:12:57 -0400

Arcade Fire, HTML5 and Chrome:

Choreographed windows, interactive flocking, custom rendered maps, real-time compositing, procedural drawing, 3D canvas rendering… this Chrome Experiment has them all. “The Wilderness Downtown” is an interactive interpretation of Arcade Fire’s song “We Used To Wait” and was built entirely with the latest open web technologies, including HTML5 video, audio, and canvas.

ACLU Sues U.S. Over Targeted Killing of Citizen

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 10:07:12 -0400

ACLU Sues U.S. Over Targeted Killing of Citizen:

The case is Al-Aulaqi (al-Awlaki) v. Obama, 10cv1469, U.S. District Court, District of Columbia (Washington).

Bob Herbert - We Owe the Troops an Exit

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 08:30:56 -0400

Bob Herbert - We Owe the Troops an Exit:

Quoting an unnamed adviser to the president, Mr. Baker wrote that Mr. Obama sees the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as “problems that need managing” while he pursues his mission of transforming the nation. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, speaking on the record, said, “He’s got a very full plate of very big issues, and I think he does not want to create the impression that he’s so preoccupied with these two wars that he’s not addressing the domestic issues that are uppermost in people’s minds.”

Wars are not problems that need managing, which suggests that they will always be with us. They are catastrophes that need to be brought to an end as quickly as possible. Wars consume lives by the thousands (in Iraq, by the scores of thousands) and sometimes, as in World War II, by the millions. The goal when fighting any war should be peace, not a permanent simmer of nonstop maiming and killing. Wars are meant to be won — if they have to be fought at all — not endlessly looked after.

vruz: The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb Adult...

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 16:27:26 -0400

vruz:

The Book of Genesis Illustrated

by R. Crumb

Adult Supervision Recommended for Minors

via Reason.com: From Genesis to Consternation

For approximately a month after its release, the underground comics legend Robert Crumb’s painstakingly drawn adaptation of the book of Genesis was unavailable due to unexpectedly high demand. With fans have come detractors, including Mike Judge of the Christian Institute, who finds the project “wholly inappropriate” and thinks “it is turning the Bible into titillation.”

It isn’t that Crumb changed the text; it’s that he didn’t. Crumb neither adds nor detracts from the stories in Genesis: Where they are crude, violent, or sexual, so is he.

The emblem on the cover saying “adult supervision recommended for minors” is funny because of the holy book’s reputation for family friendliness. But it’s holy because its creators and believers think it tells the truth about history and man’s relation to God. Genesis tells stories about human beings living by cultural and theological standards that are alien today even to those who think they follow them.

— read more —

Ethan Nichtern on meditation as radical transformation

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 13:49:34 -0400

Ethan Nichtern on meditation as radical transformation:

crashinglybeautiful:

“The first hint we should have that meditation is not a passive withdrawal into a mental shell is this: Meditating is actually really hard! Things that are passive tend to be easy, right? Watching Project Runway for half an hour is a piece of cake. Watching your mind for half an hour, not so much. The truth is that mindfulness — paying direct attention to what our thoughts do in the present moment — is not at all peaceful, at least not in the “easy” sense of the word. Anyone who has tried it on a regular basis knows this. Why is it hard? Because coming back to the moment again and again is a true revolution against habit, a rebellion against our cultural tendency to always avoid what we are feeling and experiencing. It is this chronic avoidance of ourselves (not the rigorous practice of self-awareness we do on a cushion) that lies at the core of mindless consumer culture.”

from sharanam, sacredgraffiti & parkstepp)

"Social Security is “a milk cow with 310 million tits.” It’s for the “lesser people of..."

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 13:39:33 -0400

“

Social Security is “a milk cow with 310 million tits.” It’s for the “lesser people of society.”

That’s straight from Alan Simpson, the person President Barack Obama appointed to co-chair his deficit commission charged with cutting the budget. You can also call it the Catfood Commission; it’s stacked with so many people who want to cut Social Security that senior citizens would be so poor they’d have to eat cat food.

Simpson’s statements are vulgar and demeaning. But he shouldn’t resign. The whole Catfood Commission should shut down completely. It’s the only way to save Social Security.

Sign our petition to President Obama: it’s time to can the Catfood Commission.

”

- Firedoglake: Can the Catfood Commission: Sign the Petition (via ryking) (via vruz)

The Coming Food Crisis - By John D. Podesta and Jake Caldwell | Foreign Policy

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 13:31:00 -0400

The Coming Food Crisis - By John D. Podesta and Jake Caldwell | Foreign Policy:

underpaidgenius:

The brutal wildfires and crippling drought in Russia are decimating wheat crops and prompting shortsighted export bans. The ongoing floods and widespread crop destruction in Pakistan are creating a massive humanitarian crisis that has left more than 1,600 dead and some 16 million homeless and hungry in a region vital to U.S. national security. These and other climate crises trigger widespread food-price volatility, disproportionately and relentlessly devastating the world’s poor.

Less noticed has been the spiking price of wheat — up 50 percent since early June. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization recently cut its 2010 global wheat forecast by 4 percent amid fears of a scramble among national governments to secure supplies. As wheat prices climb, demand for other essential food crops such as rice will increase as part of a knock-on effect on world food markets, driving up costs for consumers. In particular, Egypt and other countries that depend heavily on Russian wheat might see dramatic price increases and unrest in the streets.

Fortunately, there are signs we will likely avoid a repeat of the 2007-2008 food crisis, when prices jumped as much as 100 percent and led to deadly riots in Port-au-Prince and Mogadishu. This year, bumper crops in the United States, alongside replenished wheat stocks globally, may be adequate to offset shortages due to the fires in Russia. But these short-term measures should not lull us into complacency or a false sense of confidence. We still have neither a strategy nor a solution to ending global hunger.

And there is going to be famine in Pakistan, Haiti, and other parts of the world absent huge humanitarian aid. And the various epidemics are starting in Pakistan.

Let me add this concluding paragraph from the report: This year, we may be able to limit the damage to a single supply shock in Russia and Eastern Europe. But even in the best of times, our global food system is stretched to the breaking point by the ever-present challenges of population growth, increased demand from changing diets, higher energy costs, and more extreme weather. Experts at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimate global agricultural productivity must double by 2050 to keep pace with increased demand. Unless we take immediate action, we are destined to race from food crisis to food crisis for generations to come, with grim consequences for the world’s poor and our own national security.

alexanderpf: Barcelona, 1936-1939 Alexander: Why didn’t I...

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 22:57:20 -0400

alexanderpf:

Barcelona, 1936-1939

Alexander: Why didn’t I learn this in my European History class?