GAH! Dead Sea Faerie Fairy Taxidermy Preserved Corpse: http://ping.fm/qy11j
I woke up this morning from a nightmare. It’s a pointless question yet I know I’m not alone in questioning this so many times, but in a world like this, is there really a God? For there to be evil there has to be good. Yin and Yang, right? But does that necessarily mean that there is a God that you pray to, who will chose to answer your prayer over 6.5 billion other people who are praying for whatever pain they’re in to stop. If there is a hell, there has to be heaven. When we die, is that just the end? Quantum Immortality comes to mind. If conscious beings are immortal. Whether we end our lives by our own hand, or diesease, accident, someone else ends it for us, what then happens? In the meantime, while we’re all stuck on this 24,900 mile stretch of dirt and h20, alone and in search of a feeling of completion, every morning that I wake up — I’m almost convinced that Earth should have been named Hell. Small moments of happines are equivalent to Heaven, and darkness exceeds light. In that sense Hell overpowers Heaven.
I want to believe with every ounce of me that there is a God and he created us. I believe in science. I believe in evolution. I am almost convinced, that it truly does not matter how hard you try to be a decent person, to appreciate everyone, everything, work hard, help others, be the best you as an individual can be, listen to each lesson at church, study all of the philosophers, like Socrates and the oracle of delphi. You’re wisest because you know that you don’t know everything. When it comes to prayer, I almost feel as though it’s a waste of time really. Meditation and breathing is a beneficial form of sustaining ones temper and blood pressure, focus, etc., but prayer when it’s the things you pray for that you want most in life, those are the things that go unanswered. Is there a God? I look around and find beauty in everything and want to share it all with someone, but i’m fearful that one of these days, very soon, i’m going to wake up and no longer see beauty, no longer feel or believe in heaven. Is God created so we don’t feel alone? In that sense the same for Satan, if they do exist then what it comes down to is our true human nature. Some people are born evil, some not? Are angels and demons just the human race and this is what we’re forced to live with. A daily fight against each other. Is this world really that fucked up that we are so chemically flawed that we aren’t even equipped to handle emotion to the point that we are forced to pay $200 an hour to talk about feelings and get over it, self medicate with drugs, or medicate with chemicals the FDA has approved for us.
Where is the substance that makes you numb or does it just take years of bullshit to mentally and physically reach this point. Maybe this is what Nirvana feels like or the dark sided version is comes cheaper in the form of heroin.
James Blunt SUCKS
June 27, 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQRWcienF84
via YouTube – Isaac Asimov OUT OF THIS WORLD: Little Lost Robot (ABC 1962).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQRWcienF84
YouTube – Asimov -Part 2 The Answer for Humanity
April 1, 2009
Paul Winchell: Inventor of the Artficial Heart
March 16, 2009
In Search of Tin Pan Alley
March 15, 2009
2495 is my new favorite number!
Random Fact that I just noticed and there is a long story behind it, but — Forest Ackerman and Walt Disney had the same number address 2495 Lyric Ave was his first home purchased out here and Forry Ackerman lived on 2495 Glendower both a mere few blocks from each other in Los Feliz. I find this fucking NEATO. I love finding random shit that no one cares about but ME.
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file:///Users/Medina/Desktop/981_pd341055_1.jpg
In Search of Tin Pan Alley. The History of Music Publishing for those interested….
PS: Dr. Manhattan…..has……..blueballs!! YES!
Sonnet To Solitude and Kindred Spirits
March 15, 2009
I think of ‘Kindred Spirits’ almost every time I’m out hiking.
Kindred Spirits (1849) Inspired by
Sonnet VII. To Solitude by John Keats at Old Poetry .
Let it not be among the jumbled heap
Nature’s observatory—whence the dell,
In flowery slopes, its river’s crystal swell,
May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep
‘Mongst boughs pavilioned, where the deer’s swift leap
Startles the wild bee from the foxglove bell.
But though I’ll gladly trace these scenes with thee,
Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind,
Whose words are images of thoughts refined,
Is my soul’s pleasure; and it sure must be
Almost the highest bliss of human-kind,
When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee.
Perhaps the best known painting of Hudson River School painter Asher Durand. It depicts the recently deceased painter Thomas Cole and his friend the poet William Cullen Bryant in the Catskill Mountains. The landscape, which combines geographical features like Fawns Leap[1] in Kaaterksill Clove and a minuscule depiction of Kaaterskill Falls, is not a literal record of a particular site but an idealized memory of Thomas Cole’s discovery of the region more than twenty years prior to the canvas’s execution.
The painting was commissioned by New York art collector Jonathan Sturges and its title inspired by John Keats‘ “Sonnet to Solitude“. Bryant’s daughter Julia donated the painting to the New York Public Library in 1904. In 2005, it was sold at auction to Walmart heiress Alice Walton for $35 million, a record for a painting by an American artist. The Library was criticized for “jettisoning part of the city’s cultural patrimony“, but the Library defended its move stating it needed the money for its endowment fund.[2]
[edit]Kindred Spirits in popular culture
- In his book A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail, Bill Brysondescribes his love for the painting and how he would love to jump into the scene which the picture depicts.
Notes
‘This Sonnet, published in The Examiner for the 5th of May 1816, signed “J. K.,” is stated by Charles Cowden Clarke (Gentleman’s Magazine for February 1874) to be “Keats’s first published poem.” In Tom Keats’s copy-book it is headed “Sonnet to Solitude,” and undated. The only variation is in line 9,– “I’d” for “I’ll.” The Examiner reads “rivers” for “river’s” in line 5, and lines 9 and 10 stand thus –
Ah! fain would I frequent such scenes with thee;
But the sweet converse of an innocent mind.’
~ Poetical Works of John Keats, ed. H. Buxton Forman, Crowell publ. 1895
“Keats’ first published poem appeared in The Examiner, a lively radical weekly newspaper, on 5 May 1816. The sonnet ‘To solitude’, with its controlled rhythm and youthful echoes of Wordsworth, was a clear indication of his rapidly maturing talent. Signed simply ‘J.K.’, it attracted little public attention, but Keats was sufficiently encouraged to persevere with his writing; by the end of the year he had decided to give up the practice of medicine.”
‘Father of Artificial Organs’ dies at 97. Three days before his birthday February 14, 1911 — Valentines.
February 18, 2009
While waiting for Adam on Valentines Day at Cafe 101, I picked up a copy of the LA Times. For some reason that day, I was drawn to the Obituaries section first (rather than the comics section of course) and stumbled upon this inspiring article
Kolff is arguably credited for the first artificial heart as is Paul Winchell. Nonetheless — ‘Great Minds’.
Kolff, known as the ‘father of artificial organs,’ is credited with building the first successful artificial heart, the Jarvik-7, and established the first blood bank in Europe.
By Thomas H. Maugh II
February 14, 2009
Dr. Willem Kolff, the Dutch physician and tinkerer who built the first kidney dialysis machine from cellophane, Ford auto parts and other scraps and in the process saved the lives of millions, died from natural causes Wednesday at a Philadelphia care center. The “father of artificial organs,” who also built the first successful artificial heart, was 97.
“Dr. Kolff was a pioneer in the truest sense of the word,” said Michael K. Young, president of the University of Utah, where Kolff concluded his career. “His groundbreaking work on the artificial kidney in the 1940s made him a household name and a hero to millions of people around the world who benefited from this life-saving technology.”
Willem Johan Kolff was born in Leiden, the Netherlands, on Feb. 14, 1911, the son of a doctor. Although his childhood goal was to become the director of a zoo, his father convinced him to study medicine instead, and he received his degree from Leiden University in 1938.
He was a staff physician at the University of Groningen in 1940 when Germany invaded the Netherlands. After the Jewish hospital director was replaced with a Nazi sympathizer, Kolff moved to a small hospital in Kampen, on the Zuider Zee, where he sat out the war.
Kolff aided the local resistance movement, providing medical “alibis” to help many escape detection. When the Germans attempted to take in one local resistance leader for questioning, Kolff withdrew two pints of blood from the man’s arm and had him drink it. Laboratory tests then showed that the man was anemic and had copious blood in his stool — signs of a severe ulcer.
The Germans did not question him because they assumed he would die shortly.
When the Germans invaded on May 19, 1940, Kolff happened to be at The Hague for a funeral. When he saw the German bombers, he excused himself from the ceremony and went to the city’s main hospital, where he volunteered to set up a blood bank.
With an armed escort, he drove through the city streets, dodging bombs and snipers and collecting bottles, tubing and all the other paraphernalia needed for storing blood. Within four days, he had established the first blood bank in Europe. It is still operating today.
FULL ARTICLE HERE: http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-willem-kolff14-2009feb14,0,5182029.story
