I’m constantly tossing interesting websites into what I call my blogpile. Some of them find their way here in the form of regular posts, but more often than not they languish and get buried deeper in the pile. The end result is that I have to go back and do a bit of shoveling. Today’s item is Mini Work Outs at Your Desk.
MSGT Ken Mahoy: I struggle. I struggle with what to even write sometimes. We have all reached the stage of this deployment where we can officially declare, “The honeymoon is over.” No more silent anxiety from the rookies worried about traveling to a war-torn country, no more pumped up bravado from men wanting to kick the enemy”s tail, no more patriotic…
It’s been a busy week in Wally World: the Universe’s source of cheap plastic crap. On The Writing On The Wal — the blog USA Today says should be on its readers’ radar — Jonathan Rees, Robert Feinman, Peter Sayles and I continue our work dedicated to drawing back the curtain on the Bentonvile Behemoth’s corporate disinformation and other flackery.
WAL-MART”S LONELY CHICAGO BEACHHEAD… Wal-Mart”s entrance into the large urban market of Chicago looks destined to become the equivalent of Fort Lonesome. The solitary outpost of save money live better (if your family name is Walton) on Chicago”s southside opened to great fanfare and controversy. Keep reading…
WE WANT WAL-MART…! WE WANT WAL-MART…! When the Steelyard Commons project was first introduced in Cleveland, the developer made it clear that if Wal-Mart was not the center of the project, then the other tenants weren”t interested. Chicago”s Arcon Development has a similar problem. Keep reading…
WIKISCANNER IS NOW AN ASSIGNMENT…? Nothing new here. Really. Jonathan reluctantly wrote about Wal-Flacks changing Wikipedia pages back in August. But blogger Jenny Martin”s post caught my attention because it was a (school?) assignment on Wikiscanner. Keep reading…
FOR YOU A DEAL… JUST DON”T TELL ANYONE… I do not expect Wal-Mart to adopt a policy of allowing workers to haggle with customers over the price of big, or even semi-big ticket items. But if the competitors are undercutting Wal-Mart”s prices, customers will let Wal-Mart know and the company will react. Keep reading…
GOING POSTAL AT WAL-MART… My first reaction upon reading the news was to think that the story is all about Elijah Payne. But as I thought more about the reality of working a dead-end job for always low wages in a recession and I wondered, what took so long? Keep reading…
THE GREAT WAL-MART TREK…? Ten people make a two-hour round trip journey four times a year to a Wal-Mart and the New York Sun sees this as indisputable evidence that residents of the five boroughs of New York desperately yearn for cheap plastic crap from China to fulfill their lives? Keep reading…
JUDGE TO WAL-MART: GET OVER YOURSELF… The right of citizens to use parody and satire in protest is a tradition extending back through Jonathan Swift to the ancient Greek playwrights. But in America there are the rich and powerful with platoons of lawyers who think their sacred ox is beyond goring. Keep reading…
I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. This week he brings us all a reminder that we complain way to much: From My Dad.
An elderly monk in Myanmar laments that the monasteries are all empty; the monks, dispersed to the countryside or imprisoned, are absent. While the imagery of thousands of monks gathering is powerful, it may also be true that their presence in their home villages could have even more powerful effect.
From AFP:
An elderly Buddhist monk sits in his saffron robes inside a Yangon monastery, one of just a handful of senior monks trying to teach and care for dozens of young novices reviewing their lessons nearby.
Six months ago, this monastery was full of monks who were at the forefront of pro-democracy protests that unfolded in September, eventually swelling to more than 100,000 people in the streets of Yangon.
Now this monastery — like most others in Myanmar’s main city — is almost empty, after monks and other activists fled a deadly military crackdown that began on September 26.
“We monks have done what we could do for the people. What is the result?” the senior monk said. Continue Reading »
My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.
This is a passage I copied from Midrash and Literature edited by Geoffrey H. Hartman and Sanford Budick.
Mantic: Having the power of divination. [33] Metaphor: The application of a word or phrase to an object which it does not literally denote in order to suggest comparison with another object or concept, as in “A mighty fortress is our God.” [30] Metaphysical: Concerned with abstract thought or subjects. [19] Metonymy: The use of the name of one object or concept for that of another to which it is related, or of which it is a part as “scepter” for “sovereignty” or “the bottle” for “strong drink.” [14] Mimesis: Imitation or reproduction of the supposed words of another as in order to represent their character. [11]
Today, as I go about my tasks, I’ll think about: Happiness is living all your unifying principles. p. 33-4
In the United States one of our most cherished rights guaranteed by the First Amendment of our Constitution is the protection from governmental or private interference in the practice of our particular religions. The military dictators of Myanmar, however, find such rights inconvenient in their maintenance of power.
Burma’s 400,000 Buddhist monks and nuns have been categorised along with the country”s convicted criminals and mentally ill so that they are barred from voting in the upcoming national referendum on the regime’s draft of a new constitution, writes Edward Loxton for The First Post. Representatives of the country”s Christian and Hindu communities are also excluded from casting ballots in the referendum, due to be held in May.
The exclusion clause is contained in new legislation signed by junta leader General Than Shwe. The legislation also threatens imprisonment or heavy fines for anybody who publicly opposes the referendum or interferes with its planning. Any such public criticism of the referendum – including the distribution of critical posters and pamphlets – is punishable by up to three years’ jail. Continue Reading »
I’m constantly tossing interesting websites into what I call my blogpile. Some of them find their way here in the form of regular posts, but more often than not they languish and get buried deeper in the pile. The end result is that I have to go back and do a bit of shoveling. Today’s item is An Easy Way to Go Organic.
Eddie: The other night, the CLC Group (Concerned Local Citizens) swung by the outpost with a guy they had detained. Apparently they found him out walking around and he had what looked to be a homemade grenade. I had never seen one like this. It had a plastic body and just looked old-fashioned. Over the past week or so there have been a few incidents…
Part of being a good citizen of the blogosphere is visiting, reading and, most importantly, taking the time to leave a comment on other’s blogs. It’s all about the conversation. In the interest of setting an example I’ve decided to link to those blog posts that have compelled me to leave a comment.
1043 NE Ohio commemoration of 4000th US military death in Iraq
0715 belief versus evidence-based
0707 boundary crossing
I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. This week he brings us all a reminder that we complain to much: From My Dad.
Venerable Abbot U Pannya Vamsa has set for himself what can only be seen as a complicated and trying task: to make sense of the killings in Myanmar. I don’t think it is helpful to attempt to explain the violence in any other way than to say it is the product power and its corruption. Perhaps U Pannya will do better.
Members of New Zealand’s Burmese community are hoping one of their revered religious leaders, Venerable Abbot U Pannya Vamsa, can help them make sense of the killings in Tibet during his visit to Auckland this week.
Venerable Vamsa is considered the Burmese equivalent to the Dalai Lama, said Naing Ko Ko, a former political prisoner of Myanmar’s military government, who came here as a political refugee last year.
“Many of us Burmese can feel the same pain when we hear about what happened in Tibet because we were in the same situation just a few months ago. Continue Reading »
My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.
This is a passage I copied from Midrash and Literature edited by Geoffrey H. Hartman and Sanford Budick.
Locus: A place, locality.[xii] Locution: 1 : a particular form of expression or a peculiarity of phrasing; especially : a word or expression characteristic of a region, group, or cultural level2 : style of discourse : PHRASEOLOGY [48] Logia: Plural of logion – a traditional saying of a religious teacher. [29] Lucianic: Lucian the Martyr, 240-312 CE, theologian and bible critic born a Samosata, in Syria. [15] Macaronic: Composed of a mixture of languages. [13]
Today, as I go about my tasks, I’ll think about: When Benjamin Franklin was twenty-seven years old, he felt a great need to improve his life and decided to identify the most universal of all truths.He identified twelve and called them virtues: temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility and chastity. He took these to a Quaker, who said, I think you should add a thirteenth: humility. p.32
Three photographs stand out as icons of the Vietnam War: Nick Ut’s image of Phan Thị Kim Phúc running from a napalm attack; Eddie Adam’s photo of Nguyen Ngoc Loan summarily executing a suspected guerrilla and Malcolm Browne’s capture of Thich Quang Duc’s self-immolation. Sadly, another man has attempted to join Thich Quang Duc.
From ABC News:
A 26-year-old man set himself on fire in Rangoon’s most famous Buddhist temple in an apparent protest against economic hardship in military-ruled Burma, witnesses and police said.
Witnesses said the man bent down to pray at a shrine in Shwedagon Pagoda on Friday – a Buddhist holiday in the country – before standing up, dousing himself with petrol and setting himself alight with a candle.
The temple is one of the nation’s holiest sites and was the focal point for Buddhist monks during anti-junta demonstrations in Yangon last year.
Some witnesses said that before the man’s apparent self-immolation, he said: “May we be free from economic hardship.”
A Rangoon police official, who refused to be named, identified the man as Thaw Zin Naing from Ayeyarwaddy Division west of the city.
“He is recovering now at Yangon [Rangoon] General Hospital. The chance for his survival is 40 per cent,” the official said.
Thich Quang Duc’s sacrifice brought the attention of the world to the oppression of the Ngo Dinh Diem administration of Vietnam. He did what he thought was the only path before him. Today the world is different, may no more like Thaw Zin Naing come forward.
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