The Furious Spinner

And the world keeps turnin'. Did you ever notice that? That's a good thing. Mario reminded me yesterday of what I keep saying to him. "You gotta remember we're in the dark ages now." That's right. So we need to adopt survival techniques from our ancestors who lived through the dark ages before us: keep creating art (I include writing as art), stand up for each other, record what is happening, become a trickster, look to nature. For thousands of years, women, witches, pagans, gays, goddess-worshippers, and minorities (whatever minority in whatever culture) have had to figure out how to survive and thrive within the mainstream culture despite prejudice and harassment—despite the giant thumb of the dominant culture trying to press its print on their souls. We’re listening, ancestors? What do we do?

Still recovering from a couple of bouts of something. Vertigo spun into something else and it sure wasn’t gold. (At least I hope I'm recovering.) I can't listen to the news or be around people much. Every time I hear about one more death in Iraq, one more word about the ratty pope, one more word about something terrible the Emperor With No Clothes is doing, all my symptoms get aggravated. Guess I need some down time.

Scientists have developed infrared technology that has "enabled hundreds of ancient Greek comedies, tragedies and epic poems, composed by classical greats such as Sophocles, Euripides and Hesiod, to be deciphered for the first time in 2,000 years." I hope they find some Sappho. Wouldn't that be grand?

Economist Steven Levitt purports in his book Freakonomics that legalized abortion is the reason for dropping crime rates. Reviewer Stephen E. Landsburg says that Levitt "was struck by the fact that crime began falling nationwide just 18 years after the Supreme Court effectively legalized abortion. He was struck harder by the fact that in five states crime began falling three years earlier than it did everywhere else. These were exactly the five states that had legalized abortion three years before Roe v. Wade. Did crime fall because hundreds of thousands of prospective criminals had been aborted?" Levitt says he just uses the facts. I haven't read the book and don't know whether this guy is a fruitcake or not, but the book is apparently pissing off liberals and conservatives.

I found this quote on Tom Cowan's website: "The poet's job is to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, in such a beautiful way that people cannot live without it; to put into words those feelings we all have that are so deep, so important, and yet so difficult to name. The poet's job is to find a name for everything; to be a fearless finder of the names of things; to be an advocate for the beauty of language, the subtleties of language. " —Jane Kenyon, from "A Hundred White Daffodils"

This is an interesting interview with the girl blogger about her new book. Here's an article with a bunch of links about DeLie's misdeeds. And of course, Arianna Huffington has some cogent things to say about the man. Did you see the clip when he was talking to the NRA. Bleck. He said, "When a man is in trouble or in a good fight, you want to have your friends around—preferably armed."

Pope poop: What I’ve been saying (screaming, actually) is that journalists need to treat the pope and the catholic church as political entities. The previous pope tried to interfere politically in the business of other countries, so the new pope should be treated like a politician. He should be investigated. Reporters need to be critical when interviewing him. He apparently doesn’t want Turkey in the EU. I don’t have an opinion on whether Turkey should be in the EU or not because I don’t know enough to form an opinion. However, the ratty pope believes they shouldn’t be in the EU because they are a Muslim country and the purity (my word) of Europe should be maintained. Yuck, yuck, and triple yuck. Here’s a journalist who agrees with me about journalists and the pope. This piece is by a catholic who is not going to leave the church despite the ratty pope. His spiritual beliefs and decisions are his own. I wonder if he’s still going to support the church financially? I left the catholic church as soon as I was of age. I refuse to give money to institutions that condone (and actually encourage) anti-homosexual and anti-women beliefs and behavior. Institutions live and die by the amount of cash going into the coffers.

Things in Iraq seem to be going from worse to worse. Is the MSM covering it at all? At least the Guardian is.

By the way, raise your hands if you are disturbed that the MSM is now covering blogs. I don’t like it. What I’m afeard is going to happen is that now people will start slanting their blogs so that they will get mentioned in the MSM. I don’t want blogs to become part of MSM—not until MSM changes radically. Like maybe hires some real journalists again and let them do real investigative reporting. 0 comments

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