Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Saturday, July 19, 2014
Monday, October 22, 2012
valis
"This winged comparison is too swift for unripe wits. They lack the power to grasp it."
The swifts are a family, Apodidae, of highly aerial birds. The family scientific name comes from the Ancient Greek απους, apous, meaning "without feet", since swifts have very short legs and never settle voluntarily on the ground, clinging instead to vertical surfaces.~Wikipedia
Vaux's Swifts are truly amazing aerialists. They spend much of the time in the air and forage, drink, court, collect nesting materials and copulate all in flight. They have a voracious appetite for flying insects and ballooning spiders.~Audubon Portland
The "Chapman swifts" are part of a migratory population of Vaux's Swifts that roost seasonally in the chimney of Chapman Elementary School in Portland, Oregon. This is North America's largest concentration of Vaux's Swifts.[3]
Every evening from mid-August to mid-October, thousands of swifts gather in the sky over the school shortly before sunset. Count estimates of 1,700 to 35,000 swifts have been reported. Shortly after sunset, over a period of 10 to 30 minutes, they fly into the top of the brick chimney (constructed c.1925) to roost on the interior surface until they depart at sunrise.[4] The school is on the birds' migratory route to their wintering sites in southern Central America and Venezuela.[5]
The swifts attract several predators, such as Peregrine Falcons and Cooper's Hawks, as well as hundreds to thousands[4][6] of human spectators.[7]
Vaux
~Surname Database
Parzival
The baby boy name Percival is pronounced in English as PAHRSihVahL. Percival's language of origin is Old French, and it is predominantly used in English and French. Percival is of the meaning 'one who pierces the valley'. The name was borne in Arthurian legend, and it was likely to have been first invented by the late 12th-century French poet Chrétien de Troyes, who spelt the name as Perceval (Old French), from the Old French percer ('to pierce') and val ('valley'). According to Chrétien and Wolfram von Eschenbach (1170-1220), who spelt the name as Parzifal (Germanic), the character was the most innocent of all the knights of the Round Table, and thus was the one who found the Holy Grail, although later legends identified Sir Galahad as the hero. Other theories suggest a derivation from the Normandy place name Percheval (Old French). The name could also be ultimately from Peredur (Celtic), which means 'hard steel', altered through association with Old French elements.
On the other hand I have yet to meet a man so wise that he would not gladly know what guidance this story requires, what edification it brings. The tale never loses heart, but flees and pursues, turns tail and wheels to the attack and doles out blame and praise. The man who follows all these vicissitudes and neither sits too long nor goes astray has been well served by mother wit. - Wolfram Von Eschenbach - Parzival - Book I
Sunday, October 14, 2012
mapping the psychic weather patterns . . .
The Homeric Greeks were open to the world in a way that we, who are skilled at introspection and who think of moods as private experiences, can barely comprehend. Instead of understanding themselves in terms of their inner experiences and beliefs, they saw themselves as beings swept up into public and shareable moods. For Homer, moods are important because they illuminate a shared situation: they manifest what matters most in the moment and in doing so draw people to perform heroic and passionate deeds. The gods are crucial to setting these moods, and different gods illuminate different, and even incompatible, ways a situation can matter. The goddess to whom Helen was most attuned was Aphrodite; she illuminates a situation’s erotic possibilities and draws one to bring these out at their best. Achilles, by contrast, is sensitive to Ares' mood—an aggressive mood in which opportunities to shine as a ferocious warrior become the most important aspects of the situation at hand. Other gods call forth other attunements. The best kind of life in Homer’s world is to be in sync with the gods. As Martin Heidegger puts it:
[W]e are thinking the essence of the [Homeric] Greek gods...if we call them the attuning ones.
At the center of Homer's world, then, is the sense that what matters is already given to us, and that the best life is the one that manages to get in sync with it. This vision speaks eloquently to our own modern needs. Homer’s Olympian gods give his Greeks a sense of the sacred that underwrites the joys and sorrows of a truly meaningful existence. To lure back these Homeric gods is a saving possibility after the death of God: it would allow us to survive the breakdown of monotheism while resisting the descent into a nihilistic existence.
~All Things Shining Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly
“Every new medium transforms the nature of human thought.”
“In the long run, history is the story of information becoming aware of itself.”
~James Gleick
The word experience comes from the Latin experientia, meaning "to try," whereas the word aware comes from the Greek horan, meaning "to see."
Experience implies participation in an event, whereas awareness implies observation of an event. The two words can normally be substituted in an ordinary conversation without much damage, but they are differently inflected. One gives us the sense of being engaged, whereas the other gives us a sense of being cognizant of that engagement. One denotes reflection while the other denotes the thing being reflected. In fact, awareness can be thought of as a kind of experience of our own experience.
Experience implies participation in an event, whereas awareness implies observation of an event. The two words can normally be substituted in an ordinary conversation without much damage, but they are differently inflected. One gives us the sense of being engaged, whereas the other gives us a sense of being cognizant of that engagement. One denotes reflection while the other denotes the thing being reflected. In fact, awareness can be thought of as a kind of experience of our own experience.
~Stumbling on Happiness Daniel Gilbert
Monday, October 1, 2012
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Aloha
Aloha in the Hawaiian language means affection, peace, compassion and mercy. Since the middle of the 19th century, it also has come to be used as an English greeting to say goodbye and hello. Currently, it is mostly used in the sense of "hello".[citation needed]
It is also the state nickname of Hawaii, the "Aloha State".
The word aloha derives from the Proto-Polynesian root *qarofa, and ultimately from Proto-Polynesian.[1][2][3] It has cognates in other Polynesian languages, such as Samoan alofa and Māori aroha, also meaning "love".[3]
A folk etymology claims that it derives from a compound of the Hawaiian words alo meaning "presence", "front", "face", or "share"; and ha, meaning "breath of life" or "essence of life."~Wikipedia
Sunday, July 8, 2012
Saturday, May 5, 2012
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Monday, January 16, 2012
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
kill screen
Publisher's Summary
At once wildly original and stuffed with irresistible nostalgia, Ready Player One is a spectacularly genre-busting, ambitious, and charming debut—part quest novel, part love story, and part virtual space opera set in a universe where spell-slinging mages battle giant Japanese robots, entire planets are inspired by Blade Runner, and flying DeLoreans achieve light speed.
It’s the year 2044, and the real world is an ugly place.
Like most of humanity, Wade Watts escapes his grim surroundings by spending his waking hours jacked into the OASIS, a sprawling virtual utopia that lets you be anything you want to be, a place where you can live and play and fall in love on any of 10,000 planets.
And like most of humanity, Wade dreams of being the one to discover the ultimate lottery ticket that lies concealed within this virtual world. For somewhere inside this giant networked playground, OASIS creator James Halliday has hidden a series of fiendish puzzles that will yield massive fortune—and remarkable power—to whoever can unlock them.
For years, millions have struggled fruitlessly to attain this prize, knowing only that Halliday’s riddles are based in the pop culture he loved—that of the late 20th century. And for years, millions have found in this quest another means of escape, retreating into happy, obsessive study of Halliday’s icons. Like many of his contemporaries, Wade is as comfortable debating the finer points of John Hughes’s oeuvre, playing Pac-Man, or reciting Devo lyrics as he is scrounging power to run his OASIS rig.
And then Wade stumbles upon the first puzzle.
Suddenly the whole world is watching, and thousands of competitors join the hunt—among them certain powerful players who are willing to commit very real murder to beat Wade to this prize. Now the only way for Wade to survive and preserve everything he knows is to win. But to do so, he may have to leave behind his oh-so-perfect virtual existence and face up to life—and love—in the real world he’s always been so desperate to escape.
A world at stake.
A quest for the ultimate prize.
Are you ready?
©2011 Ernest Cline (P)2011 Random House Audio
A Perfect Game? (1982 depth work)
--So long and T.Hanks for all the Mazes . . . .
Monday, November 14, 2011
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
you can save her
In the small hours that night I dreamed that four oil company execs were driving a black luxury sedan through the dark roads of wildest Idaho, when their headlights lit upon a naked woman walking down the center of the road. The four suits braked in astonishment, then eased their sedan up close.
The woman stopped walking and turned to face them. She was stunning. Full hipped, full breasted, dark-haired, unafraid. The men lusted instantly and ferociously. They were four. She was alone. But something in her eyes––an agelessness; extreme dignity; the lack of fear––prevented them from even making cracks about what they'd each like to do.
As they silently eye-raped her, another thing changed: they began to notice scrapes and bruises on her body, and an unhealthy pall on some of her skin. Fear of contagion bled into their lust.
The four men climbed out of the sedan and gathered, shoulder to shoulder in their dark suits, white shirts, silk ties. The woman stood across the car from them, totally vulnerable, yet totally calm. The men did not offer help. The woman did not ask for it. But, seeing the way they kept eyeing her injuries, it was she who broke the silence. In a calm low voice, without a hint of accusation, she said, "I am for you, as I am for all living things. All your lives I have moved with you in your every breath, as you have moved through me. From me you arrived, and to me your will return." She looked at her own body slowly, with the detached air of a physician, or mortician. "These wounds," she said, "have been inflicted by you."
That took care of one threat: the execs no longer hoped for sex. They knew too much about what had been done to her. Sex would be far too dangerous.
They decided to see what they could get by bartering. Since she carried nothing and wore nothing, robbery was not going to produce. But oil execs have their methods.
One of them ducked into the car, produced a chessboard, set it on the dark hood of the sedan. They challenged her to a match. When she merely gazed at them in response, it grew clear that she was passive before any human proposal. She had no choice but to play.
The men swiveled the board to give themselves the white pieces, and the first move. She didn't protest. The suits consulted in low whispers. One of them then slid forward a piece that looked like a white drilling platform. The moment the piece moved, a genuine drilling platform appeared in the Gulf––and a multitude of bruises appeared not so much on as under the woman's bard skin. She shuddered. But her voice was calm as she said, "You may do as you wish. And I will do as I must."
She made a counter-move sliding forward a black piece made of countless tiny carved fish, birds, marine mammals. As the piece arrived in position she sent a ray into the minds of the men, giving them a vision of what their move and her counter-move had wrought: in the Gulf, sperm whales, bluefins, dolphins and sea turtles by the thousands, billions of shrimp and fishes, and millions of birds disappeared from the planet in a writhing black mass.
The four men gaped till the vision faded, then looked nervously at her.
She gazed back without expression.
Less sure of themselves, but still determined, the put their heads together. One of them reached for a piece that looked like some kind of steel earth-eating device. When he touched it, and engine audibly started, then rose to a roar. He slid the piece forward into the boreal forest.
The woman reeled slightly, coughed up a little blood, but her face remained calm and her hand steady as she made her counter move. She touched a piece that looked like a black queen. the queen became a small black cloud. The woman slid it forward. Vast tracts of forest vanished, machines and modules roared, smoke spewed, land and lakes were devoured, sludge reservoirs appeared.
The woman coughed more blood, wiped it away, kept sliding the black cloud/queen forward. White pieces flew from the suits' side of the board. Hurricanes and tornadoes spun over the world.
Insane skies rained oil, dying fish, pieces of houses, shattered birds. Pipelines appeared a the speed of thought, ruptured over farmland, ruptured in cities. Earth's Poles turned to slush. Coastlines and islands vanished under rising seas. Refugees from inundated lands swarmed over borders by the millions, overwhelming hard-pressed countries. Glaciers vanished from every mountain range and more millions swarmed down from the highlands. Ocean gyres reversed direction Trees died by the billion. Nations went to war over water, over hunger, over dearth.
The execs gaped till the vision faded, then turned to the naked woman. She was breathing hard. The was blood at her mouth corners. Her body was a mass of contusions and burns. But her eyes were still clear, her expression calm, and her breasts, hips, flesh, at least in patches were still lovely to behold.
The execs put the heads together, preparing the next move.
The woman breathed, and waited, prepared to do as she must.
~David James Duncan The Heart of the Monster
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