For old lasagna

and for Bob.

Cannablog wins award

Thanks to Monkeyfister for awarding this blog a 2007 Golden Monkeyfist — The Golden Bongload Brotherhood (with blonde hash globules). Please also visit these other fine winners:

• Undeniable Liberal — The Silver Sailor’s Tongue award (with double barb cluster);
• Mahablog — The Eloquent Shiva award;
• Arthur Silber — The Silver Shiv award;
• The Command Post — The Bravo Zulu;
• Down With Tyranny — The Bolivar award (with populist cluster);
• The Newshoggers — The Mighty Quill award;
• Pax Americana — The Mighty Sparrow award;
• Tennessee Guerrilla Women — The Golden Volunteer award (enriched with uteri power);
• Pygalgia — The Amber Brew (with excellent head) award;
• Demeur — The Golden Respirator (with upgraded carbon filters);
• Your Right Hand Thief — The Delta Prime award (with hopeful clusters);
• Whiskey Fire — The Jameson award (with ever-full silver tap);
• Survival Acres — The Unsung award; and
• Blue Girl, Red State — The True Golden Monkeyfist.

For the last several days we have been discussing among ourselves the selection of an Au Peer winner. Monkeyfister should be making an announcement shortly if he has not already.

Update: and the winner of the 2007 Au Peer:

Happy New Year!

There is a season turning now.

Recommended viewing:

• Now is the time
• Must see TV
• Imagine peace
• Intervention

Story of Rabbit

Hat-tip Neil Gaiman.

Recommended viewing:

• Try tempting me with a carrot.

Taxonomy

It is because we were hunters, because
we killed for a living, because we matched
wits against the whole of the animal world,
that we have the wit to survive even in a
world of our own creation.
—Ardrey

Homo domesticus.

Do you prefer plagues of locusts?

Happy blogiversary, Libby!

Last One Speaks is four years old, yesterday.

You have your own voice. Use it.

4:20 of Woodstock ’99

Heard about Houston? Heard about Detroit? Heard about Pittsburgh, PA?

Watching my recent visitors compared to those who have been reading this blog for awhile, we are becoming more of a musical tribe and less of a political one. Unfortunately for my desire to abstain from national politics, I cannot put out of my mind the pictures of torture that have been committed. And it is not the actual photographs, which I would not care to see more than I must, but the knowledge that it is going on even now and worse.

This is still a political blog, until the administration and those who continue to dehumanize the world with such foulness are removed from power. We must restore civilization now.

Climate control

Greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, have a certain “half-life” in the atmosphere before they are eliminated by natural processes, such as by plant respiration. When the production of new greenhouse gases has equilibrium with the elimination of circulating greenhouse gases, the climate is kept in balance.

Much discussion of reducing and controlling global warming has focused on how we may regulate the production of new greenhouse gases, and we must do so or we could never eliminate them quickly enough to prevent their building without limit and turning the earth into a place uninhabitable to humans.

It would also be helpful to begin encouraging the reduction of circulating greenhouse gases by broad based home agriculture. One green plant can reduce the carbon footprint of one person by a significant amount. If climate science has taught us anything, it’s that small changes over a large population make a huge difference.

For GenX, this is Woodstock.

I just cried, listening.

Issa

Behold Atlantis!

Sunk beneath a frozen ocean, and soon to emerge: one effect of global warming.

Who will go and populate this new continent where people once lived? Those first who cannot live where they are now should always have the right of return.

Those who know how to live in harsh environments will be essential.

Related post:

• Global warming a reality

Global warming a reality

We might as well make the best of it, and this will probably be good for Finland’s tourism and immigration, if they wanted such things. The downside to tourism (and for that matter, the general warming trend) is that we lose our traditional winter cultures. We need to preserve them, however, for future generations to survive a time when the world might again return to the past or present day temperatures. We as a human species need to be prepared to live in changing environments and teach our descendents how we have fashioned ways of surviving.

That, you see, is the purpose of religion.

It is a survival trait of the human race, and of all species of animal and plant. We alter ourselves by our choices of what we value and pass along to the next generation. In our choices of how and who we conceive with, on a physical plane but also on an intellectual or emotional plane, because these teach others and ourselves to make good or bad choices as we and others have made.

Here’s some pictures of Finland.

I pass along my understanding of the world as I gain it, and sometimes my understanding changes. I am willing to admit that I make mistakes. We all do, but not everyone will say so.

All of the mythologies are history. None of them are false, in the sense that they aren’t talking about real things, but they are metaphors to some extent, due to the limitations of human language. When and as we overcome our communication barriers, our language becomes stronger and our stories become better.

Not every story is a good example to follow. You need to be discerning. Consider whether the source is trustworthy. Test for yourself. What do you want to be when you evolve?

Whose example do you follow? Do you evolve beyond that?

What will humanity be like in the future? What do you think we can do right now?

“You must be the change you want to see in the world.”

— Mohandas Gandhi

Is it A.D. yet?

“Please don’t sue me. I’m just a fan.”

A few days late

NTodd has an interesting perspective on the issue of birth control, of which abortion is only one component. I tend not to write about this issue often because it is so deeply a matter of personal conscience what determines the relative value of a given human life over another. I also take a Monty Pythonesque view on the issue of contraception, which is to say their true view and not the view they satirize by their famous song.

Let me take a moment to point out the obvious hypocrisy of anyone with a purportedly pro-human life outlook being advocates of war. Obviously they value some lives more than others, and some are entirely dispensable to them.

No sane person wants there to be unwanted children or abortions, if it were possible to avoid having them without doing violence to women (or men). We should not want to mutilate people’s genitals, we should not want there to be any harm done to the innocent.

We don’t often enough stop to consider that the cause of violence is usually violence. Stop non-consensual sex and you will stop most or all of the abortions that occur. Stop adultery and you will stop the rest.

Oh, but you don’t want to stop adultery, going by what I see.

Except to punish the woman, because she is the one who is subject to violence from her spouse if she is caught with child.

We have to end the violence done to women, and you know that divorce must be a right for that very reason. But what many of you don’t know or publicly admit due to the risk of persecution is that violence can be tamed by cannabis — marijuana. It is a lie and an obvious one at that when prohibitionists associate cannabis with violence, when the only violence is involved in the criminal aspects of prohibition itself.

End cannabis prohibition and you will see that the very thing you criticize about “hippies” is their non-violence.

End cannabis prohibition and you will end the war in Iraq and in the rest of the middle east. Cannabis can be grown to fuel our economy. Cars and trucks can run on clean biological oils. Paints and chemicals can be made from it. Cannabis may be sacred but she is also profane. We have a petroleum economy today but we cannot have a petroleum economy forever.

New day

Debra Bowen

Restoring democracy to California.

The man who fell to earth

Peace Mom

Hat-tip maha.

America

George Walker Bush

You can leave office with some dignity if you do it now of your own free will. You will have to face the judgment of your peers but it does not have to be today.

I face judgment too. So do we all.

Hops and cannabis

Twelve

You are beautiful.

Music is language.

A one, two, a one, two, three, five

I’m going to try to teach an old type of music theory, in the hopes of communicating a way that we can think together without verbal language or in combination. I mentioned before the origin of language in the first two letters of the earliest alphabet, though it would be a substantial exercise to carry it forward to discover the rest. Also, language may have developed independently at different times and places, so my examples may not be literally accurate but I would prefer to keep my descriptions brief enough to convey the point. Language exists when two or more beings can reliably produce and recognize signals between themselves in both directions. We can entrain new protocols to learn new ways of expressing ourselves.

Suppose I generate a tone at 420 cycles per second (Hertz). Call this tone Alpha, or Α.

Α=420;

Now I can generate a second tone at half the value of Α. Call this tone Beta, or Β.

Β=210;

With only these two tones, we could learn to communicate. A one, a two, a one; ΑΒΑ.

ΑΒΑ=420,210,420;

If Α and Β are sounded at the same time, you will not be able to separate them very well, for physiological reasons related to the way you hear powers of two as the same “pitch.”

ΑΒ(Β+Α)=420,210,210+420;

Notice how that is roughly indistinguishable from this:

ΑΒΒ=420,210,210;

If we want to have a note that has a different perceived pitch, we need to multiply or divide Α by something other than two. Logically, we can use three. To keep things within our range of perception, divide first by three and then multiply by two, and call this tone Gamma, or Γ.

Γ=280;

We might at this point define a rest, a silent note, and call it Chi, or Χ for now.

Χ=0;

Anticipating our need for another pitch beyond Γ we can define it as Α divided by five and multiplied by four (remember powers of two maintain perceived pitch), and call it Epsilon, or Ε.

Ε=336;

I skipped Delta, because it is the fourth letter and it creates confusion if it is used to represent a divisor of five. Let’s define it as something that doubles the value of the associated notes.

(ΔΑ)=840;

Now we can start making interesting words.

ΑΒ(ΓΑ)ΧΑ(ΔΑ)(ΒΓ)Α=420,210,(280+420),0,420,840,(210+280),420;

Happily ever after?

How to make a starter

My tinctures of vert, azure, or. Knit together to form a unity.

Everything and nothing, forever changes

Today is ?

No more bread nor wine from these

It is done, and a New Year.

Let’s hope it’s a good one.

Last day!

Seven trumpets blowing.

Related posts:

• Six days of creation
• Five cups of wine
• Four forced confessions,  three henchmen, two purple gloves, and a US body count higher than 9/11

Tonight, yes?

World Contact Day

Hat-tip.

Update: Boing Boing links to video.