Radical Ubuweb Arts Site

UbuWeb is a completely independent resource dedicated to all strains of the avant-garde, ethnopoetics, and outsider arts.

All materials on UbuWeb are being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights belong to the author(s).

UbuWeb is completely free.

Concrete poetry's utopian pan-internationalist bent was clearly articulated by Max Bense in 1965 when he stated, "…concrete poetry does not separate languages; it unites them; it combines them. It is this part of its linguistic intention that makes concrete poetry the first international poetical movement." Its ideogrammatic self-contained, exportable, universally accessible content mirrors the utopian pan-linguistic dreams of cross-platform efforts on today's Internet; Adobe's PDF (portable document format) and Sun System's Java programming language each strive for similarly universal comprehension. The pioneers of concrete poetry could only dream of the now-standard tools used to make language move and morph, stream and scream, distributed worldwide instantaneously at little cost.

Essentially a gift economy, poetry is the perfect space to practice utopian politics. Freed from profit-making constraints or cumbersome fabrication considerations, information can literally "be free": on UbuWeb, we give it away and have been doing so since 1996. We publish in full color for pennies. We receive submissions Monday morning and publish them Monday afternoon. UbuWeb's work never goes "out of print." UbuWeb is a never-ending work in progress: many hands are continually building it on many platforms.

UbuWeb has no need for money, funding or backers. Our web space is provided by an alliance of interests sympathetic to our vision. Donors with an excess of bandwidth contribute to our cause. All labour and editorial work is voluntary; no money changes hands. Totally independent from institutional support, UbuWeb is free from academic bureaucracy and its attendant infighting, which often results in compromised solutions; we have no one to please but ourselves.

UbuWeb posts much of its content without permission; we rip out-of-print LPs into sound files; we scan as many old books as we can get our hands on; we post essays as fast as we can OCR them. UbuWeb is an unlimited resource with unlimited space to fill. It is in this way that the site has grown to encompass hundreds of artists, hundreds of gigabytes of sound files, books, texts and videos.

Sounds like a marginal situation? Hardly. We've won many prestigious internet awards and are acknowledged web-wide as the definitive source for Visual, Concrete + Sound Poetry. UbuWeb is on the syllabus of countless schools; we've gotten queries from Ph.D. candidates seeking information to third-graders researching a paper on concrete poetry. UbuWeb embodies an unstable community, neither vertical nor horizontal but rather a Deleuzian nomadic model: a 4-dimensional space simultaneously expanding and contracting in every direction, growing "rhizomatically" with ever-increasing unpredictability and uncanniness.

-The Editors

U B U W E B :: About UbuWeb

Poetry Archive

The Poetry Archive is the world's premier online collection of recordings of poets reading their work.

It hosts, free of charge, recordings of the voices of contemporary English-language poets and of poets from the past. The Archive is growing all the time.
Poetry Archive

The Archive has been set up:
1) to conserve voices that might otherwise be lost;
2) to demonstrate that the sound of a poem is as important to its existence as whatever the words might mean when we read them on the page;
3)to provide plenty ofadvice to teachers and students about the meaning and pleasure of poetry in general.

A video introduction to the Archvie by UK Poet Laureate Andrew Motion can be viewed here:
A welcome to the Archive by Andrew Motion - Poetry Archive

Feast on Your Life

Love after Love

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.


~ by Derek Walcott ~

Love after Love -- Derek Walcott

Playing for Change Sings Off Global Hymnsheet

Thanks to YouTube, a sample of the initial results of international collaboration on a song or two can now be viewed. ITunes is also hosting them as products, as the quality is high.



The Playing for Change Foundation posits as its mission: -
"connecting the world through music by providing resources (including but not limited to facilities, supplies and educational programs) to musicians and their communities around the world. PFCF supports projects inspired by the communities in the Playing for Change documentary film series".

The well-designed website Playing for Change: Peace Through Music contains further music enterprise coverage and further information.

Power-Spinning: Yes Minister

Cut to a revealing clip from the hillarious BBC political comedy Yes, Prime Minister.

Here, Bernard expresses a troubled desire to have a clear conscience by taking minutes accurately, to which Sir Humphrey asks, 'since when have you developed a taste for such luxuries!!

Sir Humphrey educates Bernard in how to take minutes from a meeting and get what you want. How little changes!

YouTube - A clear conscience - Yes, Prime Minister - BBC comedy

Post-Modern Times: New YouTube Channel

Yet another YouTube channel has been created promising penetrating insights into our latter-day predicaments. It's called PostModernTimes and will investigate, through audiovisual and other means, the dilemmas of the age:



"Welcome to Postmodern Times Toward 2012, a series of short animated films presenting new ideas about global consciousness and techniques for social and ecological transformation. Our first episode, "Toward 2012", introduces the project, explaining concepts from the best-selling book, "2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl" (Tarcher/Penguin, 2006) by Daniel Pinchbeck, in the author's own voice. Future segments will focus on shamanism, sustainability, alternative energy systems, the Mayan Calendar, quantum physics and synchronicity, human sexuality, and a host of other subjects.Directed by Joao Amorim."

YouTube - postmoderntimes's Channel

Crime Control and Broken Windows

Malcolm Gladwell popularised the broken windows theory of crime reduction in his book The Tipping Point. It claimed that in areas where minor but obvious crimes affecting the environment such as littering and graffiti, were tackled, a consequence was the prevention of more serious crimes, as if there was an effect of a primer being removed. A useful summary of Gladwell's position is posted here -
Greet Machine: Broken Windows

The Spreading of Disorder
- Kees Keizer,* Siegwart Lindenberg, Linda Steg

Imagine that the neighborhood you are living in is covered with graffiti, litter, and unreturned shopping carts. Would this reality cause you to litter more, trespass, or even steal? A thesis known as the broken windows theory suggests that signs of disorderly and petty criminal behavior trigger more disorderly and petty criminal behavior, thus causing the behavior to spread. This may cause neighborhoods to decay and the quality of life of its inhabitants to deteriorate. For a city government, this may be a vital policy issue. But does disorder really spread in neighborhoods? So far there has not been strong empirical support, and it is not clear what constitutes disorder and what may make it spread. We generated hypotheses about the spread of disorder and tested them in six field experiments. We found that, when people observe that others violated a certain social norm or legitimate rule, they are more likely to violate other norms or rules, which causes disorder to spread.

Faculty of Behavioral and Social Sciences, University of Groningen, 9712 TS Groningen, Netherlands

...which is literally, the Science bit -

The Spreading of Disorder -- Keizer et al. 322 (5908): 1681 -- Science

Recent experimental implementation of this hypothesis in several locations in America has demonstrated strikingly that it works:

..."The results, just now circulating in law enforcement circles, are striking: A 20 percent plunge in calls to police from the parts of town that received extra attention. It is seen as strong scientific evidence that the long-debated "broken windows" theory really works—that disorderly conditions breed bad behavior, and that fixing them can help prevent crime."

See full report at: Schneier on Security: The "Broken Windows" Theory of Crimefighting

Hypocrites for the Environment! - Monbiot

In response to an article written by Julie Birchill attacking 'green hypocrites', George Monbiot took her to task in August last year. This excerpt is the least personalised bit:

..."Environmentalism is the most politically diverse movement in history. Here in the climate camp I have met anarchists, communists, socialists, liberals, conservatives and – mostly - pragmatists. I remember sitting in a campaign meeting during the Newbury bypass protests and marvelling at the weirdness of our coalition. In the front row sat the local squirearchy: brigadiers in tweeds and enormous moustaches, titled women in twinsets and headscarves. In the middle were local burghers of all shapes and sizes. At the back sat the scuzziest collection of grunge-skunks I have ever laid eyes on. The audience disagreed about every other subject under the sun – if someone had asked us to decide what day of the week it was, the meeting would have descended into fisticuffs - but everyone there recognised that our quality of life depends on the quality of our surroundings.

The environment is inseperable from social justice. Climate change, for example, is primarily about food and water. It threatens the freshwater supplies required to support human life. As continental interiors dry out and the glaciers feeding many of the rivers used for irrigation disappear, climate change presents the greatest of all threats to the future prospects of the poor. The rich will survive for a few decades at least, as they can use their money to insulate themselves from the effects. The poor are being hammered already..."

Monbiot.com » Hypocrites Unite!

Transcendent Hope for Change

"The Transcendentalists can be understood in one sense by their context -- by what they were rebelling against, what they saw as the current situation and therefore as what they were trying to be different from.

One way to look at the Transcendentalists is to see them as a generation of well educated people who lived in the decades before the American Civil War and the national division that it both reflected and helped to create. These people, mostly New Englanders, mostly around Boston, were attempting to create a uniquely American body of literature. It was already decades since the Americans had won independence from England. Now, these people believed, it was time for literary independence. And so they deliberately went about creating literature, essays, novels, philosophy, poetry, and other writing that were clearly different from anything from England, France, Germany, or any other European nation...

...Added to all this, the scriptures of non-Western cultures were discovered in the West, translated, and published so that they were more widely available. The Harvard-educated Emerson and others began to read Hindu and Buddhist scriptures, and examine their own religious assumptions against these scriptures. In their perspective, a loving God would not have led so much of humanity astray; there must be truth in these scriptures, too. Truth, if it agreed with an individual's intuition of truth, must be indeed truth...

...And so Transcendentalism was born. In the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, "We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds...A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men."

Yes, men, but women too.

Most of the Transcendentalists became involved as well in social reform movements, especially anti-slavery and women's rights..."

The site - What is Transcendentalism? - is a cornucopia of resources on the subject. Many modern movements embracing diversity would acknowledge the Transcendant approach as an important influence.

The Tragedy of the Commons: G. Hardin

In 1968, an essay was published about one of the chief underlying causes of world pollution that was to become controversial and since, one of the most discussed and quoted pieces of work on the issue. Entitled The Tragedy of the Commons , it was written by Garrett Hardin, and published in Science, December 13, 1968

Hardin was professor of biology, University of California, Santa Barbara. This article is based on a presidential address presented before the meeting of the Pacific Division of the American Association for the Advancement of Science at Utah State University, Logan, 25 June 1968.

..."The tragedy of the commons as a food basket is averted by private property, or something formally like it. But the air and waters surrounding us cannot readily be fenced, and so the tragedy of the commons as a cesspool must be prevented by different means, by coercive laws or taxing devices that make it cheaper for the polluter to treat his pollutants than to discharge them untreated. We have not progressed as far with the solution of this problem as we have with the first. Indeed, our particular concept of private property, which deters us from exhausting the positive resources of the earth, favors pollution. The owner of a factory on the bank of a stream--whose property extends to the middle of the stream, often has difficulty seeing why it is not his natural right to muddy the waters flowing past his door. The law, always behind the times, requires elaborate stitching and fitting to adapt it to this newly perceived aspect of the commons.

The pollution problem is a consequence of population. It did not much matter how a lonely American frontiersman disposed of his waste. "Flowing water purifies itself every 10 miles," my grandfather used to say, and the myth was near enough to the truth when he was a boy, for there were not too many people. But as population became denser, the natural chemical and biological recycling processes became overloaded, calling for a redefinition of property rights...

...Every new enclosure of the commons involves the infringement of somebody's personal liberty. Infringements made in the distant past are accepted because no contemporary complains of a loss. It is the newly proposed infringements that we vigorously oppose; cries of "rights" and "freedom" fill the air. But what does "freedom" mean? When men mutually agreed to pass laws against robbing, mankind became more free, not less so. Individuals locked into the logic of the commons are free only to bring on universal ruin; once they see the necessity of mutual coercion, they become free to pursue other goals. I believe it was Hegel who said, "Freedom is the recognition of necessity."

The most important aspect of necessity that we must now recognize, is the necessity of abandoning the commons in breeding. No technical solution can rescue us from the misery of overpopulation. Freedom to breed will bring ruin to all. At the moment, to avoid hard decisions many of us are tempted to propagandize for conscience and responsible parenthood. The temptation must be resisted, because an appeal to independently acting consciences selects for the disappearance of all conscience in the long run, and an increase in anxiety in the short.

The only way we can preserve and nurture other and more precious freedoms is by relinquishing the freedom to breed, and that very soon. "Freedom is the recognition of necessity"--and it is the role of education to reveal to all the necessity of abandoning the freedom to breed. Only so, can we put an end to this aspect of the tragedy of the commons.

The essay can be read in full here - The Tragedy of the Commons by Garrett Hardin - The Garrett Hardin Society - Articles

Inspiration - Chicago

A dose of blind faith in human affection amidst the heady stuff! -



YouTube - Chicago The Band "You're The Inspiration" 1992

Inspiration

You know our love was meant to be
the kind of love that lasts forever.
And I want you here with me from tonight
until the end of time.
You should know
everywhere I go

Always on my mind
in my heart
in my soul
baby.
You're the meaning in my life
you're the inspiration.
You bring feeling to my life
you're the inspiration.
Wanna have you near me
I wanna have you hear me sayin':
No one needs you more than I need you.

And I know
yes
I know that it's plain to see:
So in love when we're together.
Now I know that I need you here with me
From tonight until the end of time.
You should know
everywhere I go

Always on my mind
you're in my heart
in my soul.
You're the meaning in my life. you're the inspiration. . . .

Wanna have you near me
I wanna have you hear me sayin':
No one needs you more than I need you.
You're the meaning in my life
you're the inspiration.
You bring feeling to my life
you're the inspiration.

When you love somebody 'til the end of time

When you love somebody
always on my mind

No one needs you more than I.

When you love somebody 'til the end of time
. . .
When youlove somebody 'til the end of time
. . .

Unexplained Phenomena

1. SCIENTISTS DISCOVER NEW ELEMENT
(By Jose Luis Preza, sic)

The heaviest element known to science was recently discovered by university physicists. The element, tentatively named "Administratium," has no protons or electrons and thus has an atomic number of 0. However, it does have one neutron, 15 assistant neutrons, 70 vice neutrons, and 161 assistant vice neutrons. This gives it an atomic mass of 247. These 247 particles are held together in the nucleus by a force that involves the continuous exchange of meson-like particles called "morons." Since it has no electrons, Administratium, is inert.

However, it can be detected chemically as it impedes every reaction with which it comes in contact. According to discoverers, a minute amount of Administratium added to one reaction caused it to take over four days to complete. Without the Administratium, the reaction occurs in less than one second. Administratium has a half life of approximately three years, at which time it does not actually decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which assistant neutrons, vice neutrons and assistant vice neutrons exchange places. Studies seem to show that the atomic mass actually increases after each reorganization.

Research indicates that Administratium occurs naturally in the atmosphere. It tends to concentrate in certain locations such as governments, large corporations, and especially in universities. It can usually be found polluting the best appointed and best maintained buildings. Scientists warn that Administratium is known to be toxic and recommend plenty of alcoholic fluids followed by bed rest after even low levels of exposure.


2. Newly-Identified Virus.
There is a dangerous virus going around. It is called WORK. If you receive WORK from your colleagues, your boss, or anyone else, via e-mail or any other means, DO NOT TOUCH IT!

This virus wipes out your private life completely. If you should come into contact with WORK, put on your jacket, take two good friends and go straight to the nearest pub. Order the antidote known as BEER. Take the antidote repeatedly until WORK has been completely eliminated from your system.

Forward this warning immediately to at least 5 friends. Should you realize that you do not have 5 friends, this means that you are already infected and that WORK already controls your life.

REMEMBER, THIS VIRUS IS DEADLY!


3. Independence of Foot Movement
How Smart is Your Right Foot?

No matter how you keep trying to see if you can outsmart your foot during this exercise, it does its own thing.


1. While sitting at your desk, lift your right foot off the floor and make
clockwise circles.

2. Now, while doing this, draw the number "6" in the air with your right
hand.

Your foot will change direction......And there's nothing you can do about it!!

Darwin: Lancet Special Issue

The fact that this year celebrates the bicentennial of Charles Darwin's birth is now being widely broadcast.

A special issue of The Lancet has been published, both in print and online, entitled Darwin's Gifts. A cornucopia of articles and essays about the life and work of this most renowned discoverer of evolution has been gathered conveniently in one edition as a handy and timely resource, available to view at: http://mag.digitalpc.co.uk/fvx/lancet/darwinsgifts/

What Would Change Everything?

The Edge is an intellectual online magazine which recently posed this question to its high-brow readers, 'What would change everything?'.

The introductory invitations read:

"New tools equal new perceptions.

Through science we create technology and in using our new tools we recreate ourselves. But until very recently in our history, no democratic populace, no legislative body, ever indicated by choice, by vote, how this process should play out.

Nobody ever voted for printing. Nobody ever voted for electricity. Nobody ever voted for radio, the telephone, the automobile, the airplane, television. Nobody ever voted for penicillin, antibiotics, the pill. Nobody ever voted for space travel, massively parallel computing, nuclear power, the personal computer, the Internet, email, cell phones, the Web, Google, cloning, sequencing the entire human genome. We are moving towards the redefinition of life, to the edge of creating life itself. While science may or may not be the only news, it is the news that stays news.

And our politicians, our governments? Always years behind, the best they can do is play catch up..."

Robotics, genetics, consciousness, new knowledge paradigms, and not much: these are all the suggested targets in the articulate replies which can be explored on this pretty site:
The World Question Center 2009

The Social Transmission of Happiness

The British Medical Journal published a report of research entitled "Dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network: longitudinal analysis over 20 years in the Framingham Heart Study" in December 2008.

A few excerpts:

"Social networks consist of two elements: individuals (nodes) and the relationships (social ties) between them. Once all the nodes and ties are known, one can draw pictures of the network and discern every person’s position within it. Within a network, one can speak of the "distance" between two people (also known as the "geodesic distance" or "degree of separation"), which is the shortest path in the network from one person to another. For example, a person is one degree removed from their friend, two degrees removed from their friend’s friend, three degrees removed from their friend’s friend’s friend, and so on. Often, real social networks contain collections of subnetworks or "components." A component is a part of a network in which everyone is connected by at least one path to every other person in the same component. Logically, this means that for two different components, no one in the first component can be connected to anyone in the second component. The basic idea in social network analysis is that individuals are influenced by their location in a social network and by the happenings among people who are "nearby" them in the social network (for example, at one, two, or three degrees of separation)...

...The clusters of happy and unhappy people seen in the network are significantly larger than expected by chance...

...the number of happy friends seems to have a more reliable effect on ego happiness than the number of unhappy friends. Thus, the social network effect of happiness is multiplicative and asymmetric. Each additional happy alter increases the likelihood of happiness, but each additional unhappy alter has little or no effect. The emotional state of a person’s social relationships is more important to one’s own emotional state than the total number of those relationships...

... The happiness of an individual is associated with the happiness of people up to three degrees removed in the social network. Happiness, in other words, is not merely a function of individual experience or individual choice but is also a property of groups of people. Indeed, changes in individual happiness can ripple through social networks and generate large scale structure in the network, giving rise to clusters of happy and unhappy individuals. These results are even more remarkable considering that happiness requires close physical proximity to spread and that the effect decays over time.
Our results are consistent with previous work on the evolutionary basis of human emotions and with work focusing on the fleeting direct spread of emotions..."

The complete text is at:
Dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network: longitudinal analysis over 20 years in the Framingham Heart Study -- Fowler and Christakis 337: a2338 -- BMJ

Silence: Poem by F. Tyutchev...

Silentium.
by Fyodor Tyutchev (translated by Vladimir Nabokov)

Speak not, lie hidden, and conceal
the way you dream, the things you feel.
Deep in your spirit let them rise
akin to stars in crystal skies
that set before the night is blurred:
delight in them and speak no word.

How can a heart expression find?
How should another know your mind?
Will he discern what quickens you?
A thought once uttered is untrue.
Dimmed is the fountainhead when stirred:
drink at the source and speak no word.

Live in your inner self alone
within your soul a world has grown,
the magic of veiled thoughts that might
be blinded by the outer light,
drowned in the noise of day, unheard...
take in their song and speak no word.

Vladimir Nabokov. Verses

'Powering Our Lives' Report

"Powering Our Lives: Sustainable Energy Management and the Built Environment (October 2006 - November 2008)

The Project findings were launched on 26 November 2008. The final Project Report together with the evidence base for the Project, including scientific reviews, is available from the Project Outputs page.

Aim
The aim of the Foresight Powering our Lives: Sustainable Energy Management and the Built Environment Project was to explore how the UK built environment could evolve to help manage the transition over the next five decades to secure, sustainable, low carbon energy systems that meet the needs of society, the requirements of the economy, and the expectations of individuals.

The Project has used the best available scientific evidence to develop four scenarios around the future of sustainable energy management and the built environment, outlining some major areas of future uncertainty as well as potential future challenges and opportunities..."

Lots more detailed information, and recommendations for behavioural change, can be found on the home-page:
Sustainable Energy Management and the Built Environment (October 2006 - present)

Woman Teeters on a Glass Cliff

"The glass cliff is a program of research investigating the context in which women (and other minorities) are appointed into leadership positions. This research suggests that women tend to be appointed to leadership positions under very different circumstances than men. More specifically, this research suggests that women are more likely to be appointed to leadership positions that are associated with an increased risk of criticism and failure. Women's leadership positions can thus be seen as more precarious than those of men. Extending the metaphor of the 'glass ceiling' and the 'glass elevator' [is] this phenomenon 'the glass cliff'.....In November 2003 The Times published an article entitles 'Women on Board: Help or Hindrence' (Judge, 2003). The article reported a tendency for companies with women on their boards to perform less well than those that have all-male boards. The article concluded that women leaders were 'wreaking havoc' on the performance of FTSE 100 companies...

Putting paid to the argument that women directors are bad for business, the analyses revealed that the appointment of a woman director was not associated with a subsequent drop in company performance. Indeed, in a time of a general financial downturn, companies that appointed a woman actually experienced a marked increase in share price after the appointment. On the other hand, those appointments that were made in less unsettled times tended to be followed by a period of share price stability... companies that appointed a woman to their board had experienced consistently poor performance in the months preceding the appointment. Thus women were more likely than men to be placed in positions already associated with poor company performance . In this way, female directors were more likely than male directors to find themselves on a glass cliff, such that their positions of leadership were more risky and precarious than those in which men found themselves...

The full account of the research is at:
The Glass Cliff - Research

A BBC article fleshes out the theory with examples in real-life - BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | Introducing... the glass cliff

Quaint Advice to Bank Robbers

The following entertaining set of instructions for Bank Robbers was in circulation some years ago. It's worth digging out again while keeping in mind how times have changed especially when considering that the bank robber profile has since alchemised into white-collar Deep-Pocket...


According to the FBI, most modern-day bank robberies are "unsophisticated and unprofessional crimes," committed by young male repeat offenders who apparently don't know the first thing about their business. This information was included in an article titled "How Not to Rob a Bank," by Tim Clark, which appeared in the 1987 edition of The Old Farmers Almanac.

Clark reported that in spite of the widespread use of surveillance cameras, 76 percent of bank robbers use no disguise, 86 percent never study the bank before robbing it, and 95 percent make no long-range plans for concealing the loot. Thus, he offered this advice to would-be bank robbers, along with examples of what can happen if the rules aren't followed:

1. Pick the right bank. Clark advises that you don't follow the lead of the fellow in Anaheim, Cal., who tried to hold up a bank that was no longer in business and had no money. On the other hand, you don't want to be too familiar with the bank. A California robber ran into his mother while making his getaway. She turned him in.

2. Approach the right teller. Granted, Clark says, this is harder to plan. One teller in Springfield, Mass., followed the holdup man out of the bank and down the street until she saw him go into a restaurant. She hailed a passing police car, and the police picked him up. Another teller was given a holdup note by a robber, and her father, who was next in line, wrestled the man to the ground and sat on him until authorities arrived.

3. Don't sign your demand note. Demand notes have been written on the back of a subpoena issued in the name of a bank robber in Pittsburgh, on an envelope bearing the name and address of another in Detroit, and in East Hartford, Conn., on the back of a withdrawal slip giving the robber's signature and account number.

4. Beware of dangerous vegetables. A man in White Plains, N. Y., tried to hold up a bank with a zucchini. The police captured him at his house, where he showed them his "weapon. "

5. Avoid being fussy. A robber in Panorama City, Cal., gave a teller a note saying, "I have a gun. Give me all your twenties in this envelope." The teller said, "All I've got is two twenties." The robber took them and left.

6. Don't advertise. A holdup man thought that if he smeared mercury ointment on his face, it would make him invisible to the cameras. Actually, it accentuated his features, giving authorities a much clearer picture. Bank robbers in Minnesota and California tried to create a diversion by throwing stolen money out of the windows of their cars. They succeeded only in drawing attention to themselves.

7. Take right turns only. Avoid the sad fate of the thieves in Florida who took a wrong turn and ended up on the Homestead Air Force Base. They drove up to a military police guardhouse and, thinking it was a tollbooth, offered the security men money.

8. Provide your own transportation. It is not clever to borrow the teller's car, which she carefully described to police. This resulted in the most quickly solved bank robbery in the history of Pittsfield, Mass.

9. Don't be too sensitive. In these days of exploding dye packs, stuffing the cash into your pants can lead to embarrassing stains, Clark points out, not to mention severe burns in sensitive places--as bandits in San Diego and Boston painfully discovered.

10. Consider another line of work. One nervous Newport, R.I., robber, while trying to stuff his ill-gotten gains into his shirt pocket, shot himself in the head and died instantly. Then there was the case of the hopeful criminal in Swansea, Mass., who, when the teller told him she had no money, fainted. He was still unconscious when the police arrived.

In view of such ineptitude, it is not surprising that in 1978 and 1979, for example, federal and state officers made arrests in 69 percent of the bank holdups reported.

Interview: David Bohm's New World View, P.3,4,5.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZernj1zl4U



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdzUewoqAcs


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcLEachP6kU

Interview: David Bohm's New World View, P.1, 2

The poster on YouTube has furnished an ample introduction:
- "In this Tor Norretranders interview with theoretical physicist David Bohm, Bohm cites evidence from both relativity theory and quantum theory which supports a new paradigm of a more interrelated, fluid, and less fractionalized basis of existence, one in which mind, via perception, is an active participant. Recorded in 1989 at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen. Produced and directed by Noel Fox.

According to Bohm's groundbreaking theory, "Wholeness and the Implicate Order", the hologram is analogous to the implicate order of the universe, as every region contains within itself a whole and undivided universe. "Space and time are no longer the dominant factors determining the relationships of dependence or independence of different elements. Rather, an entirely different sort of basic connection of elements is possible, from which our ordinary notions of space and time, along with those of separately existent material particles, are abstracted as forms derived from the deeper order. These ordinary notions in fact appear in what is called the 'explicate' or 'unfolded' order, which is a special and distinguished form contained within the general totality of all the implicate orders." (Bohm)

In the years before his death in 1992, Bohm lectured worldwide on the interrelation of physical reality and consciousness." -



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyX_vwjp5qs



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pf5h7F8eU2M

A Time for Change: 2012

YouTube trailer for which the tag reads:
""2012 : Time for Change" is a feature-length documentary, directed by Joao
Amorim of Curious Pictures in New York and featuring Daniel Pinchbeck, the
bestselling author of "2012 : The Return of Quetzalcoatl" (Penguin, 2006).
In the style of "An Inconvenient Truth", "What the Bleep Do We Know", and
"Waking Life", our film explores ideas about what the immediate future may hold,
symbolized by the myths and prophecies of the Mayan culture of Mexico.
Interviews with design scientists, anthropologists, physicists such as Dean Radin, Barbara Max Hubbard, Nassim Haramein John Todd and Paul Stamets;
and celebrities such as David Lynch,Sting, Ellen Page and Gilberto Gil.
2012 combines Film and animation in an innovative way, taking us on a journey through our own evolution."

YouTube - 2012 Trailer

Another informative site is at:
The Mystery of 2012 News

Philosophy Beyond The Fringe

YouTube poster 'bitterspetey' helpfully introduces this clip:



YouTube - Beyond the Fringe on Oxford Philosophy

Bonus tale!:
An eccentric philosophy professor gave a one question final exam after a semester dealing with a broad array of topics. The class was already seated and ready to go when the professor picked up his chair, plopped it on his desk and wrote on the board: "Using everything we have learned this semester, prove that this chair does not exist."

Fingers flew, erasers erased, notebooks were filled in furious fashion. Some students wrote over 30 pages in one hour attempting to refute the existence of the chair. One member of the class however, was up and finished in less than a minute.

Weeks later when the grades were posted, the rest of the group wondered how he could have gotten an A when he had barely written anything at all. His answer consisted of two words: "What chair?"

Breathe, Smile, You Are Alive!

SUFI RESPIRATION

In the space between the in-breath and the out-breath,
Is all one.
Honouring oneself, rib-embracing, heartens
To honour others.
A quiet breeze blows oxygenated words
That sear like sun.
The will surrenders with grief-strangling sighs
As air smothers.
Love is divine power; rules, moist-whispered,
On how dust is spun.
An after-life coughs, beyond suffocation
By genesis feathers.
Smacked soul resists - spirit bellows
In its resuscitation.
Own energy recalled instils respiration,
And storms tethers.
- goinghome

Why Do We Dream? Horizon

Ceyx/Morpheus appears to Alcyone. Engraving by Virgil Solis for Ovid's Metamorphoses Book XI,

WHY do we dream? Why do we always wake up just as its getting to the interesting bit? And will I ever relive that night of passion with The Nolans?

Tonight [10th February 2009], Horizon uncovers the secret world of our dreams as, in a series of cutting-edge experiments and personal stories, we go in search of the science behind this most enduring mystery.

Where do dreams come from? Do they have meaning? And ultimately, why do we have them? More pertinently, why can you never remember them in the morning?
What the documentary reveals is that much of what we thought we knew about dreams no longer stands true.

Many believe they are simply an unburdening exercise, a chance for the mind to empty itself of various distractions, to investigate nagging concerns, like what is the interior décor of Fergie's bedroom. But in fact it seems dreams are not simply wild imaginings but play a significant part in all our lives as they have an impact on our memories, the ability to learn, and our mental health.

Most surprisingly, we find nightmares too are beneficial and may even explain the survival of our species. Believe me, having a dream about Norman Tebbit certainly sharpens up your performance the next day.

Sadly, with the focus being entirely on humans, there is no time left for any examination of dreams in the animal kingdom.

Budgerigar owners are once again left answerless as to what occupies their birds' minds when they slip off into the land of nod

This review is from:
Horizon: Why Do We Dream? | BBC 2 | John Woodhouse TV Preview | Stoke & Staffordshire News

Truth & Freedom; Allegory of the Cave

The YouTube poster 'bullheadent' supplies useful information on this presentation of Socrates' famous parable;

An excerpt from Plato's Republic, the 'Allegory of the Cave' is a classic commentary on the human condition. It is a story of open-mindedness and the power of possibility.

We have adapted and brought it to life by shooting thousands of high-resolution photographs of John Grigsby's wonderful clay animation. To learn more, visit http://platosallegory.com

YouTube - The Cave: An Adaptation of Plato's Allegory in Clay

Mind/Soul-expanding Free Stuff

The magazine What Is Enlightenment? magazine became EnlightenNext in 2008.

Editors explain: "We changed our name to more effectively support, and in our own way catalyze, an emerging global network of Evolutionaries—people who share the conviction that spiritual enlightenment is not a personal matter but an evolutionary potential that really does have the power to change our world from the inside out.
So far, the response has been overwhelmingly positive. To celebrate, we're giving away the entire inaugural issue for free in life-like digital format. Simply click on the link below and you'll be reading your issue immediately":

http://www.enlightennext.org/freeissue

The Mindfulness Bell... "is a journal of the art of mindful living. To be mindful means to dwell deeply in the present moment, to be aware of what is going on within and around us. Practicing mindfulness cultivates understanding, love, compassion, and joy. This practice helps us to take care of and transform suffering in our lives and in our society.

The Mindfulness Bell is an inspiration and teaching resource for those practicing mindfulness in daily life. Each issue features a recent teaching by our teacher, Vietnamese Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh.

Also included are stories and teachings by teachers and students in this lineage, based on the author’s direct experience of transformation through the practice of mindfulness. Instead of giving academic or intellectual views, the teachings emphasize simple and successful ways to transform the difficulties and limitations in our lives so that each day becomes an experience of peace, happiness, and freedom."

The Mindfulness Bell is now being offered online to readers -
About the Mindfulness Bell Magazine

Diabolical Science

"It's amazing how far science has gone to destroy life without being blamed. We live in the scientific age, and science's prestige has permitted it to spread far beyond the good it can do. The first shock was the atom bomb in 1945. Only people of that generation recall the deep horror that came with the first explosion of a weapon that foresaw the potential destruction of humankind itself. But in many ways the A-bomb is a bogeyman that has been successfully caged while an invisible virus has done far more harm.

That virus is the amorality of science. Science is unique in that we allow it to have no morality. Destruction and healing are on an equal footing. New weapons technologies are funded by the same government budget that funds new cancer research. Untested medical treatments and toxic drugs are allowed almost free rein to harm and kill patients in the name of helping them. If you doubt this, consider that surgeries are not monitored by any governmental regulation. Operations can become standard procedures with a minimum of testing. Among these are heart bypass surgery, balloon angioplasty, hysterectomies, and radical mastectomies. None went through double-blind testing. As a result, radical mastectomy was the procedure of choice for decades in this country, while at the same time lumpectomies, a far more benign procedure, provided the same survival rates in Europe. Current studies show that angioplasty, performed by the thousands every month on heart patients, is not effective in extending life span...

... Science deserves to be free, and ideas should never be enclosed in boundaries. No one is talking about the religious-based intolerance and anti-intellectualism that prompted the Bush administration to put a halt to funding of stem-cell research. But if we look at the problem without irrational attacks, we can have the benefits of science without the excessive dangers we now face. A new science that works to raise our humanity is possible, and in the face of an endangered planet and nightmarish weapons spreading everywhere, nothing is more critical."

The full article by Deepak Chopra was first printed in the San Francisco Chronicle on 2nd February 2009 -
Diabolical science has to end

Samson's Riddle and Other Enigmas

Out of the eater something to eat; out of the strong something sweet.

This was the riddle Samson asked of his community after returning from an adventure where he had discovered honey made by bees in the carcass of a lion he had killed with his bare hands some time previously; the first sign of his gift making him a human weapon of mass destruction.


PONDERISMS
I used to eat a lot of natural foods until I learned that most people die
of natural causes.

Gardening Rule: When weeding, the best way to make sure you are removing a
weed and not a valuable plant is to pull on it. If it comes out of the
ground easily, it is a valuable plant

The easiest way to find something lost around the house is to buy a
replacement.

Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway.

There are two kinds of pedestrians: the quick and the dead.
Life is sexually transmitted.

Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.

The only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth.

Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of
nothing.

Have you noticed since everyone has a camcorder these days no one talks
about seeing UFOs like they used to?

Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again.

All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention to
criticism.

In the 60's, people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is
weird and people take Prozac to make it normal.

How is it one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole
box to start a campfire?

Who was the first person to look at a cow and say, "I think I'll squeeze
these dangly things here, and drink whatever comes out?"

Who was the first person to say, "See that chicken there? I'm gonna eat the
next thing that comes outta its butt."

Why is there a light in the fridge and not in the freezer?

If Jimmy cracks corn and no one cares, why is there a song about him?

If quizzes are quizzical, what are tests?

Do illiterate people get the full effect of Alphabet Soup?

Did you ever notice that when you blow in a dog's face, he gets mad at you,
but when you take him on a car ride, he sticks his head out the window?

Why doesn't glue stick to the inside of the bottle?

Do you ever wonder why you started following this blog...?

Quality of Life Tips

What really kills you?

For those of us who watch what we eat... Here's the final word on nutrition and health, and it's a relief to know the truth after all those conflicting medical studies:

1. Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than Canadians, British or Americans.

2. Mexicans eat a lot of fat and also suffer fewer heart attacks than Canadians, British or Americans.

3. Japanese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than Canadians, British or Americans.

4. Italians drink excessive amounts of red wine and also suffer fewer
Heart attacks than Canadians, British or Americans.

5. Russians drink a lot of vodka and suffer fewer heart attacks than Canadians, British or Americans.

6. Germans drink a lot of beer and eat lots of sausages and fats and suffer fewer heart attacks than Canadians, British or Americans.

CONCLUSION:
Eat and drink what you like. Speaking English is apparently what really kills you.

The following was circulated as an excerpt from Forbes' Magazine some time ago:
A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo, and when
the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back
that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole,
because the general speed and health of the whole is maintained or
even improved by the regular culling of the weakest members.
In much the same way, the human brain can operate only as fast as
the slowest brain cells through which the electrical signals pass.
Recent epidemiological studies have shown that while excessive intake of alcohol kills off brain cells, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first.

Thus, regular consumption of beer helps eliminate the weaker cells,
constantly making the brain a faster and more efficient machine. The
result of this in-depth study verifies and validates the causal link
between all-weekend parties and job related performance. It also
explains why, after a few short years of leaving a university and
getting married, most professionals cannot keep up with the
performance of the new graduates. Only those few that stick to the strict
regimen of voracious alcoholic consumption can maintain the intellectual
levels that they achieve during their college years.

So, this is a call to arms. As our country is losing its
technological edge, we must not shudder in our homes. Get back into the bars.
Quaff that pint. Your company and country need you to be at your peak, and
you shouldn't deny yourself the career that you could have. Take life by the bottle and be all that you can be!!