Seems that Joel and the rest of the gunblogosphere aren’t the only ones who think Liam Neeson is even worse than the usual Hollywood anti-gun hypocrite. A company that supplied weapons for his films has a thing or three to say about it. Ding-dong, Google Glass is dead. Well deadish, anyhow. A simple explanation of what Swiss bankers just did. And a slightly more complicated one. I’m sure some of our resident money gurus will have views of their own. If you haven’t been watching, Switzerland threw the entire world into a financial tizzy yesterday. (Though IMHO, their real screwup…
Category: Arts and Aesthetics
All things creative. All things beautiful, profound, and moving.
I’ve finally reached the point of not tearing everything out.
This is going to be a cowl (aka a neckwarmer), like a warm, woolly scarf but without the annoying dangly bits that fall off your shoulder and catch on things.
I’m not knitting to make things, though. I’m doing it for meditation.
Heartbroken artist with an empty house and a bull terrier gets creative. (JavaScript needed to view slideshow.) —– Some cool, fractal-like photography. (H/T SC) —– Local cranberry growers who lost their contract with Ocean Spray landed 20 pounds of their harvest on furrydoc the other day. What do you do with 20 pounds of cranberries? Furrydoc shared the bounty and instructions for drying. I took a couple of pounds and they’re in the drier now, some unsweetened and some drizzled with honey. I’m not so big on cranberries, but I do like the dried ones in salads and trail mixes.…
Don’t be put off by the word “knitting.” Even if you’re not crafty (and I’m not!), even if you’re a guy who’d rather build a brick wall or try for a perfect grouping with your best rifle than (heaven forbid) knit. This is about that process common to so many things.
—–
You know how you sometimes open a book at random looking for guidance? For some it’s the bible. For somebody else, one of those Chicken Soup things. Could be Ayn Rand or Herman Hesse. But you hope if you just open and read there’ll be a message there, just waiting for you?
I have to laugh. I just picked up Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, not because I had real interest but because it’s one of those must-read books and this is a good time. I opened near the end to a chapter about self care and the art of just being still and listening.
Then I took my old copy of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience off the shelf and arbitrarily opened to a page that heralded the value of 16-hour workdays, but with the work so integrated with free time that you can barely distinguish one from the other.
Yup. And of the contradictory two, I must admit the latter appeals to me more than the former. Not, mind you, because I’m some virtuous workaholic. Far from it. I favor the latter because the former is harder.
“The veil between the worlds is thin tonight.”
Or actually last Friday night. So they say. Of course, in all kinds of traditions including nominally Christian ones, the veil between worlds is reputed to be thin from All Hallows Eve to All Souls Day.
You couldn’t prove it by me. The veil (if any) between worlds (if any) remained its usual cement-thick self.
… 8,000 glowing balloons will outline the wall’s course. This is a visualization. More images here.
The clouds drifted in and out for hours. Would we see it here or — as usual — would we not? See it? Not? Every minute brought different prospects. Finally when it became clear that … well, that it was going to become clear for quite a while, I did something I haven’t done since I was a little kid bitten by an astronomy bug. I drifted a piece of glass over a candle flame until I had a two-inch blackened square and had a look.* The moon slid in at the 2:00 o’clock position, then gradually eased across the…
I shall return with actual content later. Meanwhile (thanks, JB), here’s a giant, mechanical horse-dragon: It breathes fire, too. 🙂 And here’s more about it. With pix. And pix of a giant, mechanical spider as a bonus.
The FBI’s report on mass shootings … doesn’t actually report on mass shootings. So says John Lott. Attorney wants to overturn the “machine-gun ban” and then take on the NFA. In four days, he’s more than half funded. (Via David Codrea) Blogs are 20 years old now. That’s older than dinosaurs in ‘Net time. (H/T JB) Robinson Jeffers handcrafted stone cottage. Just because. (This strikes me as a very apt sort of thing for a poet to do. H/T A.G.) They were Irish and they were slaves. Where are our reparations???
If I start referring to myself in the third person like some TV celebrity, or using “we” when I’m really saying “I,” smack me silly. This could go to my head.
Seven fair entries. Ten ribbons.