Get thee back to the aroma of birth

"Get thee back to the aroma of birth," Dr. Robbins had told the Countess, "for the smells of the female body, the smells you have sought to kill with your totalitarian chemicals, are the very smells of birth, the strong odors of the essence of existence. The nose that is offended by the hot perfume of the cunt is a nose unsuited for this world, and should be sniffing gold on the scrubbed streets of Heaven. The vagina reeks of life and love and the infinite et cetera. O vagina! Your salty incense, your mushroom moon musk, your deep waves of clam honey breaking against the cold steel of civilization; vagina, draw our noses to the grind-stone of ecstasy, and let us die smelling as we did when we were born!"

 

- Tom Robbins – Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

Natural sex

“I believe that sex is one of the most beautiful, natural, wholesome things that money can buy.” --Tom Clancy

redundant elections

The TV networks' computers, by "projecting" a victor in a Presidential race while the polls are still open, have already rendered the traditional electoral process obsolescent. – Marshall McLuhan

May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof (White House).

 

-John Adams, 2nd US President, and the first one to live in the White House (1735-1826)

The Violence of Butterflies

Hurricanes, floods, earthquakes
and other such
natural disasters
are attributed
in preachers’ notes
and insurance claims
to Acts of God.
They forget about
the violence
of butterflies.

Fall to fly

"You got to learn how to fall
Before you learn to fly..."

- Paul Simon

“Digging for facts is smarter exercise than jumping to conclusions.”

Article: Hair analysis could reveal recent travels�| New Scientist

Article: Hair analysis could reveal recent travels�| New Scientist

Tracking the recent whereabouts of suspected criminals or uncovering the true origins of asylum-seeking immigrants might come down to a single hair, says a UK researcher.

Stuart Black and his colleagues at the University of Reading are testing a new method of determining where people have lived by measuring the ratios of oxygen and hydrogen isotopes in their tissues or fluids. They presented their results at the British Association for the Advancement of Science Festival in Exeter, UK.

Mail and Guardian Online: King Mswati falls in love again

Mail and Guardian Online: King Mswati falls in love again

"Swazi King Mswati III, Africa's last absolute monarch, has picked a 16-year-old girl as his new wife, bringing to 12 the number of official spouses, sources in the royal household said on Sunday."

Nubility rules.

Only in Africa...

On gods and worshippers

From: Bryan P Hayward (bryan.haywardAThs.utc.com) via the AWAD (A Word A Day) newsletter.

 

Subject: Theanthropic tickled a quote

 

One of my favorite quotes was brought to mind by today's word.

 

Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child. -Robert Heinlein

 

So in my mind, there is certainly an ironic twist on the loftiness people using the word wish to confer on the depictee.

 

On a tangential note, there have been fantasy novels in which a god/dess is actually worth worshipping because they do embody the qualities normally ascribed to deities by their worshippers (loving, caring, involved, tolerant, merciful et al) but oddly I don't think they'd get anywhere if someone started a religion around them. For most people, their god has to have some sort of vengeful trait before they bother paying any attention.

 

 

This guy’s take on gods is very much like Terry Pratchet’s.

Cigarettes more polluting than diesel exhaust - New Scientist

Surprising, this. I'm still of the simple opinion that smoking is just self harming.

Court-ordered death to resurrection hoax

Business Day

A court on Tuesday granted police permission to bury the body of a man who passed away about eight weeks ago but whose family awaited his resurrection as predicted by a local "prophet".

This sentence...

"This sentence is made of lead (and a sentence of lead gives a reader an entirely different sensation from one made of magnesium). This sentence is made of yak wool. This sentence is made of sunlight and plums. This sentence is made of ice. This sentence is made from the blood of the poet. This sentence was made in Japan. This sentence glows in the dark. This sentence was born with a caul. This sentence has a crush on Norman Mailer. This sentence is a wino and doesn't care who knows it. Like many italic sentences, this one has Mafia connections. This sentence is a double Cancer with Pisces rising. This sentence lost its mind searching for the perfect paragraph. This sentence refuses to be diagrammed. This sentence ran off with an adverb clause. This sentence is 100 percent organic: it will not retain a facsimile of freshness like those sentences of Homer, Shakespeare, Goethe et al., which are loaded with preservatives. This sentence leaks. This sentence doesn't look Jewish... This sentence has accepted Jesus Christ as its personal savior. This sentence once spit in a book reviewer's eye. This sentence can do the funky chicken. This sentence has seen too much and forgotten too little. This sentence is called "Speedoo" but its real name is Mr. Earl. This sentence may be pregnant, it missed its period. This sentence suffered a split infinitive-and survived. If this sentence had been a snake you'd have bitten it. This sentence went to jail with Clifford Irving. This sentence went to Woodstock. And this little sentence went wee wee wee all the way home. This sentence is proud to be a part of the team here at Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. This sentence is rather confounded by the whole damn thing."

 

-- Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.

Sudden moments

In retrospect, Victor was always a little unclear about those next few
minutes. That's the way it goes. The moments that change your life are the
ones that happen suddenly, like the one where you die.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures)

Language may shape human thought - New Scientist

Language may shape human thought – suggests a counting study in a Brazilian tribe whose language does not define numbers above two.

And still they debate. Language allows for the description of concepts. Innit obvious?

NEWS.com.au - Big Brother gets suicide reality check

REALITY television programs are under fire after the winner in Portugal's first edition of the popular Big Brother series threatened to throw himself off a bridge at the weekend.

"Isn't kosher a Japanese type of fish?" - This question was asked in all seriousness by a guy called Sparkee. It's a strange world.

"And remember; when in doubt... fuck." - Advice given to the cat in Scent Of A Woman.

"Remember, they may be drinkers, but they are still human beings." - Batman

The abuse of power should come as no surprise. - Damien

OPPORTUNITYISNOWHERE

 

braintuna

Velcome Templa Braintuna, to zee checking of ze reality. Go mad, you've got admin rights.

Reality is the cage of those who lack imagination. - J.B.S. Haldane (1892-1964) English geneticist

Is love space?

If you could buckle your Bugs Bunny wristwatch to a ray of light, your watch would continue ticking but its hands wouldn't move. That's because at the speed of light there is no time. Time is relative to velocity. At high speeds, time is literally stretched. Since light is the ultimate in velocity, at light-speed time is stretched to its absolute and becomes static. Albert Einstein figured that one out. There's no need to hang around the clockworks and bug the Chink about it.
Assuming that our brains will get off their fat butts for a change, and play cosmic ball with us, allowing us to fully comprehend no time, then we might try to picture (if "picture" is the right word) what Einstein meant when he defined "space" as "love."
Einstein knew a lot about space-he determined, for example, that beyond the expanding volume of the universe space ceases to exist, and so we have no space to contend with as well as no time-and he may have had some special insights into love, as well. The first of his two marriages was a mess, however. Einstein wed a girl with a physical defect.
It was some sort of crazy limp that plagued Mileva Maric, some eccentricity of the foot. A few days after the civil ceremony in Zurich, one of young Einstein's friends confessed, "I should never have the courage to marry a woman unless she were absolutely sound."
Well, for all that fellow might have known, it could have been the daily contemplation of Mileva's wild toes that led Einstein to perceive the wondrous workings of Nature in a way that no other scientist ever had.
… If space is love, Professor, then is love space? Or is love something we use to fill space? If time eats the doughnut, does love eat the hole?

- Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

See? Just me. 

Perception is reality.

"There is no such thing as love; only proof of love..." - The Dreamers, Bernardo Bertolucci

God comes to the hungry in the form of food. - Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)

I get mixed up by the various Gandhis. I'll have a Gandhi mix. Shaken, not stirred.

Baby drool can be interesting. On someone else.

Adapt

In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists. - Eric Hoffer

Oh, the ego!

The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us. -Paul Valery, poet and philosopher (1871-1945)

A thing long expected takes the form of the unexpected when at last it comes. -Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)

"Sometimes you gotta create what you want to be a part of." - Geri Weitzman

"Art is the lie that reveals the truth." - Pablo Picasso

Hollywood creates reality.

Plan to Erect Buddhist Temple Stirs Some Heated Opposition

Plan to Erect Buddhist Temple Stirs Some Heated Opposition

Heh heh :)

Funny how reality pushes back.

Handedness develops in the womb | New Scientist

Handedness develops in the womb | New Scientist

A new truth about when handedness develops and what it indicates in humans. Or, perhaps, a discovery that brings us a bit closer to reality?

And we're off! Like old milk...

"That's right," he said. "We're philosophers. We think, therefore we am." -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)