By John on March 2, 2012 |
[Image: postcard, "The Big Shot" (the Big Room, Carlsbad Caverns, NM). For more information, see the note at the bottom of this post.] From whiskey river: Freedom means being able to choose how we respond to things. When wisdom is not well developed, it can be easily obscured by the provocations of others. In such [...]
Posted in Art & Photography, History, Poetry, Ruminations, Science & Medicine, whiskey river Fridays, Writing | Tagged Andrew Olendzki, Boone Helm, Carlsbad Caverns, Karin Gottshall, Nicholson Baker, Richard Wilbur, Tex Helm (frontiersman), Tex Helm (photographer), the universe, Vera Nazarian, Wired |
By John on February 24, 2012 |
[Caption: Vicar's wife (sympathisingly): "Now that you can't get about, and are not able to read, how do you manage to occupy the time?" Old Man: "Well, Mum, sometimes I sits and thinks; and then again I just sits." For more information, see the note at the foot of this post.] From whiskey river: Meditation has nothing to [...]
Posted in Comics, Poetry, Research/Resources, Ruminations, whiskey river Fridays, Writing | Tagged A.E. Stallings, E.B. White, Hayden Carruth, Julian Barnes, just sitting, meditation, Peter Matthiessen, Punch, Shinkichi Takahashi, silence, sitting and thinking |
By John on February 17, 2012 |
[Image: illustration from a December 20101 post, "The Time Travelling Brain," at the Neuroskeptic blog. The orange-highlighted region of the brain is apparently used both in remembering the past, and imagining the future. See also this article in Discover.] in spite of everything which breathes and moves, since Doom (with white longest hands neatening each crease) will [...]
Posted in Poetry, Ruminations, Science & Medicine, whiskey river Fridays | Tagged Alan Watts, E.E. Cummings, Elizabeth Spires, Mark Strand, memory, Neuroskeptic, Ptak Science Books, the future |
By John on February 10, 2012 |
[See the note at the foot of this post for information about this video.] From whiskey river: I don’t know what I’m doing most of the time. There’s a certain humor in realizing that. I can never figure out the kind of tie to put on in the morning. I don’t have any strategy or [...]
Posted in Cartoons & Animation, Poetry, Ruminations, whiskey river Fridays | Tagged John Green, Jos Ley, Leonard Cohen, Louise Glück, Mark Twain, mathematics, surprise, Tomas Tranströmer, trefoil knots |
By John on February 3, 2012 |
[Image: xkcd #936, on password strength. Click image to enlarge; see xkcd itself for the full six panels and the punchline.] From whiskey river: This accidental meeting of possibilities calls itself I. I ask: what am I doing here? And, at once, this I becomes unreal. (Dag Hammarskjöld [source]) …and: Ch’ui the draftsman Could draw more [...]
Posted in Comics, Humor, Language, Movies, Music, Poetry, Ruminations, The Online World, Theater, whiskey river Fridays | Tagged Chuang Tzu, Dag Hammarskjöld, Duncan J. Watts, Ellen Steinbaum, Internet memes, Stephen Sondheim, Tim Johnson, xkcd |
By John on January 27, 2012 |
[Image: display window of "mini-prints" taken with the Fujifilm Instax camera (originally from the Photojojo store). See note at bottom of post for more.] From whiskey river: You know what I believe? I remember in college I was taking this math class, this really great math class taught by this tiny old woman. She was [...]
Posted in Art & Photography, Humor, Movies, Poetry, Ruminations, Television, Theater, whiskey river Fridays | Tagged Anne Stevenson, dead parrot sketch, Instax, John Cleese, John Green, Mary Oliver, Monty Python, Pearl S. Buck |
By John on January 20, 2012 |
From whiskey river: In the point of rest at the center of our being, we encounter a world where all things are at rest in the same way. Then a tree becomes a mystery, a cloud a revelation, each man a cosmos of whose riches we can only catch glimpses. The life of simplicity is [...]
Posted in Poetry, Ruminations, Science & Medicine, whiskey river Fridays | Tagged Albert Goldbarth, Dag Hammarskjöld, James Applewhite, Richard Jones, Stéphane Mallarmé, Terry Pratchett, Wislawa Szymborska |
By John on January 13, 2012 |
[Image: a Menger sponge overgrown with vines, found here. Wikipedia explains how to construct a real Menger sponge, noting -- without elaboration -- that the resulting object "simultaneously exhibits an infinite surface area and encloses zero volume."*] From whiskey river: You know when you see something like a marvelous mountain against the blue sky, the [...]
Posted in Art & Photography, Music, Poetry, Ruminations, Science & Medicine, whiskey river Fridays | Tagged Albert Goldbarth, Eamon Grennan, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Ken Kesey, Menger sponge, Nat Baldwin |
By John on January 6, 2012 |
[Image: unretouched photograph of an anamorphically-painted building interior, by French artist George Rousse; I found it here. As suggested at that site, be sure to see the video about Rousse's "Durham (NC) project." And while you're at it, check out the similar but sometimes entire city-sized work of Swiss artist Felice Varini. I couldn't decide which artist's work to [...]
Posted in Music, Poetry, Politics, Ruminations, Science & Medicine, Television, whiskey river Fridays | Tagged Arthur Stanley Eddington, Denise Levertov, Felice Varini, George Rousse, Groucho Marx, Naomi Shihab Nye, Noam Chomsky, Saturday Night Live, Stephen Dunn, Twin Peaks, William Stafford |
By John on December 30, 2011 |
[Above: still images from the 2010 South Korean film Quiz King, also known as The Quiz Show Scandal. See the note at the bottom of this post for more information.] From whiskey river: We are born for wonder, for joy, for hope, for love, to marvel at the mystery of existence, to be ravished by [...]
Posted in Ruminations, whiskey river Fridays | Tagged Alan Turing, Brian Christian, Dean Koontz, J. Allyn Rosser, Milan Kundera, Quiz King, Robert Bly, Terence McKenna |