December 2009
46 posts
'Avoid these seven foods ...' →
1. Canned tomatoes
3. Microwave popcorn
4. Nonorganic potatoes
7. Conventional apples
“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety...”
– Benjamin Franklin
“It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his...”
– Søren Kierkegaard
“There are no facts, only interpretations.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche
“If you want the Truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against. The...”
– Sent-ts’an
“The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.”
– Albert Camus
“Let your food be your treatment, and your treatment your food.”
– Hippocrates
'10 Things I Hate About Christmas' →
Brilliant. My feelings on the holiday are perfectly summed up by #s 2, 5, and 8. :)
1 tag
“Everywhere, imperceptibly or otherwise, things are passing, ending, going. And...”
– Sylvia Plath
“When we open our hearts and let go of all of our theories and speculations, when...”
– Anam Thubten
“We must take care not to make intellect our god. It has, of course, powerful...”
– Albert Einstein
'Obama guts progressive values' →
The idea that there’s a world community that means something has disappeared tonight. The clear point is, you poor nations can spout off all you want on questions like human rights or the role of women or fighting polio or handling refugees. But when you get too close to the center of things that count—the fossil fuel thats at the center of our economy—you can forget about it. We’re not...
3 tags
'Peace prize: President says piss off' →
We understand Obama better and better. He had this historical opportunity to make the case which so many people have believed he stood for, that war is a futile proposition, that it never gets you where you want to be, that he is a new sort of politician, with the background and experience, to see the world’s conflicts in a cleverer and more nuanced way, and he passed. So, possibly, he is thinking...
'Republicans, religion, & the triumph of unreason' →
How do they train themselves to be so impervious to reality? It begins, I suspect, with religion. They are taught from a young age that it is good to have ‘faith’ —by definition, a belief without any evidence to back it up. You don’t have ‘faith’ that Australia exists, or that fire burns: you have evidence. You only need ‘faith’ to believe the untrue or...
“And so I will tell them one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest story of all...”
– John Steinbeck
'Islam needs a civil war' →
Only Arabs and Muslims can fight the war of ideas within Islam. We had a civil war in America in the mid-19th century because we had a lot of people who believed bad things —namely that you could enslave people because of the color of their skin. […] Islam needs the same civil war. It has a violent minority that believes bad things: that it is O.K. to not only murder non-Muslims— infidels...
'Obama helps kill cheaper drug imports' →
On the campaign trail, Barack Obama vowed to take on the drug industry by allowing Americans to import cheaper prescription medicine. “We’ll tell the pharmaceutical companies ‘thanks, but no, thanks’ for the overpriced drugs —drugs that cost twice as much here as they do in Europe and Canada,” he said back then. On Tuesday, the matter came to the Senate floor —and...
“What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule,...”
– Ralph Emerson, Self-Reliance
“There are moments when a kind of clarity comes over you, and suddenly you can...”
– Nicole Krauss
'Copenhagen's political science' →
I can’t tell you how much it kills me to post an op-ed by Sarah Palin without tearing it to shreds, but I actually agree with most all her arguments, particularly of the environmentalist movement. I guess my only critique would be that Palin remains a shameless hypocrite in all her accusations, and perhaps that this, like her ‘book’, might very well have been...
“Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take what’s left...”
– Marcus Aurelius
“When all the knots of the heart are unloosened, then even here, in this human...”
– Katha Upanishad
“Don’t be afraid, don’t move, be silent, no one will see us. Stay...”
– Alessandro Baricco, Silk
“If we can experience a feeling directly, without naming it, I think we shall...”
– Krishnamurti
“Nothing must be postponed. Take time by the forelock. Now or never! You must...”
– Henry David Thoreau
Friendly Fires —Jump In The Pool
“The real is near, you do not have to search for it; and a man who seeks truth...”
– Krishnamurti