Dear Sir,

Your Ulysses has presented the world such an upsetting psychological problem that repeatedly I have been called in as a supposed authority on psychological matters.

Ulysses proved to be an exceedingly hard nut and it has forced my mind not only to most unusual efforts, but also to rather extravagant peregrinations (speaking from the standpoint of a scientist). Your book as a whole has given me no end of trouble and I was brooding over it for about three years until I succeeded to put myself into it. But I must tell you that I’m profoundly grateful to yourself as well as to your gigantic opus, because I learned a great deal from it. I shall probably never be quite sure whether I did enjoy it, because it meant too much grinding of nerves and of grey matter. I also don’t know whether you will enjoy what I have written about Ulysses because I couldn’t help telling the world how much I was bored, how I grumbled, how I cursed and how I admired. The 40 pages of non stop run at the end is a string of veritable psychological peaches. I suppose the devil’s grandmother knows so much about the real psychology of a woman, I didn’t.

Well, I just try to recommend my little essay to you, as an amusing attempt of a perfect stranger that went astray in the labyrinth of your Ulysses and happened to get out of it again by sheer good luck. At all events you may gather from my article what Ulysses has done to a supposedly balanced psychologist.

With the expression of my deepest appreciation, I remain, dear Sir,

Yours faithfully,
C. G. Jung

From A string of veritable psychological peaches by Shaun Usher

I think I’ve told you that Ruth, my mother-in-law, was a weaver. She must have had three looms going at once and extras for friends who wanted to learn. Thrifty and thoughtful, she kept every scrap of fabric and every piece of yarn. The cut ends from her warps and weavings, called thrums (there’s a name for everything!), were kept for stuffing and felting and for birds’ nests — which I thought was neat. In early spring, Ruth would go for long walks in the woods and leave handfuls of thrums along the way for the birds to find.

An avid birder, she would then retrace her steps and watch for nests, which had been made with her threads.

Lynn Johnston writing a comment on today’s For Better Or For Worse comic.

1. Don’t flirt: those who flirt in haste oft repent in leisure.
2. Don’t accept rides from flirting motorists—they don’t invite you in to save you a walk.
3. Don’t use your eyes for ogling—they were made for worthier purposes.
4. Don’t use your eyes for ogling—they were made for worthier purposes.
5. Don’t go out with men you don’t know—they may be married, and you may be in for a hair-pulling match.
6. Don’t wink—a flutter of one eye may cause a tear in the other.
7. Don’t smile at flirtatious strangers—save them for people you know.
8. Don’t annex all the men you can get—by flirting with many, you may lose out on the one.
9. Don’t fall for the slick, dandified cake eater—the unpolished gold of a real man is worth more than the gloss of a lounge lizard.
10. Don’t let elderly men with an eye to a flirtation pat you on the shoulder and take a fatherly interest in you. Those are usually the kind who want to forget they are fathers.
11. Don’t ignore the man you are sure of while you flirt with another. When you return to the first one you may find him gone.

From Alice Reighly as found at Lists Of Note…

I note nos. nine and ten in particular.

Question: What is the information you hesitated most about revealing due to safety issues for people involved? What made you decide revealing it anyway?

ASSANGE: The Penny report. The UK argued to us that it was a “serious nuclear proliferation risk”, but on further research, they were full of hot air.

There were a lot more questions for Assange and also plenty of side discussions in each thread. I selected these five only because I found the questions particularly insightful and interesting. I encourage anyone interested in the topic–and if you’re not interested you better be soon, while you still have a country–to read the whole piece.

My first question is, why do I need to go to the jump to find out if Warren (my alma mater) or Wolf Creek school district students didn’t pass? I’ve talked with teachers across the state about this test and many are troubled by the format, methodology and implementation. For those students who do not pass, questions remain concerning how they catch up with their peers while devoting additional time (or time taken from regular classes) to passing the reading test.

For me, this is the second most important cartoon that Garry Trudeau ever drew. Only Mark Slackmeyer’s verdict on John Mitchell surpasses Phred’s worry for his friend.

Question: What are your thoughts on cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin?

ASSANGE: Here is a conversation from 2011 where I tell Google’s chairman, Eric Schmidt about Bitcoin. Fortunately he didn’t listen, or else he’d own the planet by now.

Surveillance reform gained new congressional momentum as the US House of Representatives unexpectedly and overwhelmingly endorsed stripping a major post-9/11 power from the National Security Agency late Thursday night.

By a substantial and bipartisan margin, 293 to 121, representatives moved to ban the NSA from searching warrantlessly through its troves of ostensibly foreign communications content for Americans’ data, the so-called “backdoor search” provision revealed in August by the Guardian thanks to leaks from Edward Snowden.

The move barring funds for warrantless searches “using an identifier of a United States person” came as an amendment added by Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California, and Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, to the annual defense appropriations bill, considered a must-pass piece of legislation to fund the US military. Also banned is the NSA’s ability, disclosed through the Snowden leaks, to secretly insert backdoor access to user data through hardware or communications services.

“I think it’s the first time the House has had the opportunity to vote on the 4th Amendment and the NSA as a discrete item. It was an overwhelming vote,” Lofgren told the Guardian. She said the vote succeeded despite efforts of what she called “the intel establishment.”

It swiftly circumvented a carefully crafted legislative package, backed by the White House and the NSA, presenting President Obama with an uncomfortable choice about vetoing the entire half-trillion dollar spending bill.

Spencer Ackerman writing in House of Representatives moves to ban NSA’s ‘backdoor search’ provision for The Guardian

So, how will gambling, bar fights, prostitution and armed robbery boost the local economy?

Question: First, what do you do to stop yourself going mental with boredom? From my understanding, you cannot leave the embassy or you’ll be arrested, so you’ve basically placed yourself under house arrest. What are you day to day activities?

Second, (and I don’t mean this to sound inflammatory), why did you start a website to leak classified information? Surely you can understand that many things kept confidential are for the reasons of national security, and releasing secret documents puts lives and international relations at risk?

ASSANGE: 1) I only wish there was a risk of boredom in my present situation. Besides being the centre of a pitched, prolonged diplomatic standoff, along with a police encirclement of the building I am in and the attendant surveillance and government investigations against myself and my staff, I am in one of the most populous cities in Europe, and everyone knows my exact location. People visit me nearly every day. I also continue to direct a small multinational organisation, WikiLeaks, which is a serious logistical and occupational endeavour. I barely have time to sleep, let alone become bored.

2) Confidential government documents we have published disclose evidence of war crimes, criminal back-room dealings and sundry abuses. That alone legitimates our publications, and that principally motivates our work. Secrecy was never intended to enable criminality in the highest offices of state. Secrecy is, yes, sometimes necessary, but healthy democracies understand that secrecy is the exception, not the rule. “National security” pretexts for secrecy are routinely used by powerful officials, but seldom justified. If we accept these terms of propaganda, strong national security journalism becomes impossible. Our publications have never jeopardized the “national security” of any nation. When secrecy is a cover-all for endemic official criminality, I suggest to you, it bespeaks a strange set of priorities to ask journalists to justify their own existence.

QUESTION: What advice would you give to ordinary citizens in regards to how they can have an impact? Many of us feel helpless, overwhelmed and small. We are screaming for change, but what steps can we take?

ASSANGE: When we are aware of the world and the scale of its inhumanity and stupidity we feel small. It very hard to “think globally” and “act locally”, because by thinking globally we become overwhelmed with the scale of the problems to be solved. However the Internet permits many people to act globally in a way they couldn’t before. WikiLeaks is a realisation of this tension. By releasing materials on many parts of the world, we empower others to think and act.

What can ordinary people do? Support and promote projects that are acting at scale. WikiLeaks is my realisation of this tension, but there are a flood of others starting. The clash between diversity and global uniformity which has been created by wiring the world to itself is now in play. You are the troops.

Today’s headlines include:

Local News

Beverly-Waterford homecoming
Study links crime rates to influx of temporary oil & gas workers
Third grade reading results
Arrest in New Matamoras robbery
Haught Run closed due to bank erosion

Top Headlines Poll: How do you feel about the Third Grade reading assessment testing?

(For comparison’s sake, I’ve added a link to the The Anchor News to these posts.)

What’s going on here…

Previously…