This could be useful.
An outstanding foreign correspondent is interviewed in this 5 part series by Peter Robinson.
Robinson as a young man created the line, "Mr. Gorbachev. Tear Down This Wall." It was deleted by the State Department from the draft, buth President Reagan insisted on delivering it.
A clever one.
Last summer we went to Maine to attend L.L. Bean's one day course for beginners in clay pigeon shooting with shotguns. I bagged a few. Shot is much more forgiving than a bullet would be--you only need to get within a few feet. We were told and shown how to hold the rifle. You do not want the butt away from your body--you want to absorb all the kick safely. But in the excitement, I forgot. Greenhorn that I was, I held the gun away from myself , which meant that the rifle butt now became a battering ram aimed at my upper arm. See the result of NOT FOLLOWING DIRECTIONS. The photo shows the contusion after a day or two; it began as a small bruise the size of a quarter. Ah, the beauty of nature.
Today in class we couldn't think of the opposite of an ebb tide. Later at home, I looked into Stephen Pressfield's Do the Work, which is free for Kindle. I discovered the free Kindle for PC application from Amazon and installed it. Then I bought the free book. In it I discovered this quotation from Martin Luther King about procrastination. And I learned the answer from the good Doctor. It is a flood tide.
We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood—it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, “Too late.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Beyond Vietnam – A Time to Break Silence." New York City, April 4, 1967
Do the Work is about overcoming resistance when trying to write a book, or trying to lose weight, or trying to do just about anything creative. It is given away using Amazon by The Domino Project, which seems to be aiming to be some kind of new publishing method.
The day before, I had seen an experienced interviewer on the same network ask the secretary of transportation about skyrocketing gasoline prices, and receive the halcyon assurance that “all hands are on deck” to deal with it. No CNN person in these different segments asked or said anything about the implicit theory that the world’s petroleum- and commodity-exporting countries were to sit as mute as cigar-store Indians while the value of the dollar was eroded as a matter of policy, to prevent deflation. Inflation will prevent deflation, but is not a lesser evil. A very large number of observers outside the U.S., and a great many economically literate Americans, think that the Treasury and the Federal Reserve have engaged in madly excessive money-supply increases through federal spending, and that traditional inflation from too much money chasing too few goods is inevitable.
In the 27 months of the Obama administration, there have been spectacular rises in the prices of gasoline ($1.83 per gallon to almost $4), oil ($41 per barrel to over $90), gold ($853 per ounce to $1,500), corn ($3.56 per bushel to $6.33), and sugar ($13.37 per pound to $35.39). The real median household income has declined by $300, to under $50,000; the number of food-stamp recipients has increased from 32 million to 43 million; the number of people officially in poverty has increased by 10 percent, to 44 million (more people than the whole populations of Poland or Spain); the ranks of the long-term unemployed have increased from 2.6 million to 6.4 million; and the U.S.’s position in the rankings of economic freedom of the world’s countries has declined from fifth to ninth. I have admitted that my canvass of television news and comment is sketchy, but I have seen almost no reference to any of these problems except the prices of oil, gold, and gas.
Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke is an undoubted academic expert on the economic history of the Great Depression. And he is doubtless correct that the Depression would have ended more quickly than it did if Roosevelt had been able to spend more and pump the prime more vigorously. Mr. Bernanke, in deference to his position and undoubted academic qualifications, has been given the benefit of the gigantic doubts that exist about his policy, including the latest foray into outer financial space with “quantitative easing 2,” in which $600 billion has been spent buying Treasuries to put money in the pockets of those who might spend it. The whole design of the policy — the incitement of profligacy by the profligate — was mad, and there is now, finally, after much noisy and orchestrated worrying from abroad, real concern that the intended solution just aggravated the problem.
The ever-bracing Mr. Black.
If you take seriously statistics indicating persistent violence against women on college and university campuses, you have to acknowledge that disdain for due process and onerous restrictions on speech and belief that have long prevailed on campus do not alleviate sexual violence. Arbitrary, unfair disciplinary procedures, expansive speech and harassment codes, and intrusive "sensitivity trainings" have denied students fundamental freedoms for years, in the hope of creating "safe" and "nurturing" environments for women and other presumptively vulnerable groups. Yet, according to frequently quoted Justice Department studies, 20% to 25% of women on campus will be the victims of sexual assault this year. Recent campus murders, rapes, and alleged rapes dramatize these frightening statistics.Since restricting fundamental liberties doesn't alleviate violence, it stands to reason that respecting fundamental liberties doesn't cause violence. But hostility or at best obliviousness to free speech and disregard for the rights of students accused of misconduct persist anyway (as the Yale Title IX complaint and recent directives from the Department of Education demonstrate). It's discouraging but not surprising that a new, well-intentioned bill aimed at curbing sexual violence on campus may inadvertently do more to encourage unfair prosecutions of students accused of misconduct and additional intrusions on freedom of belief.
via theatlantic.com
Why is it so hard for some folks to get that basic rights need to be respected, even in schools?
via folkstreams.net
Great stuff. I knew "Blues in the Bottle" from The Holy Modal Rounders. The much earlier version by Prince Albert is on YouTube. Ken Harrison's film really captures what it was like in the heydey of the music from which comes Rock and Roll.
A good Portuguese always drinks red wine (vinho tinto) and eats sardines
with white potatoes, and a sauce of olive oil with garlic,parsley and hot
pepper while listening to fado. Where are the sardines? You will find them
abundantly in the land of the three-F's: Fado, Fatima and Futebol. For a
while Salazar kept the people quiet with those elements.
My colleague Nuno Vieira sent me this lovely paragraph.