A Slight Delay

Thich Nhat Hanh, in his wonderful The Miracle of Mindfulness, tells a story about eating a tangerine with a friend. To paraphrase: the friend was wolfing down the tangerine, not giving much thought to the simple act of eating a tangerine. Thây goes on to say that if you’re not eating the tangerine mindfully–thinking only of eating the tangerine at that point–then you’re not eating the tangerine. You’re ingesting whatever else is “on your plate” at the time. So you could be eating American Idol (I’m trying to avoid the easy Paris Hilton joke), or drinking rush-hour traffic. (more…)

Another post that I came across at random, this time from Ever Looking Upwards, who asks, “Are you a fan of the ‘patchwork’ Gospel??” She asserts:

If you don’t consider scripture to be the inerrant Word of God (and thus above the words of anyone on this earth including the Pope!), and you feel that it’s been changed over the years by the multiple translations and rewritings etc, so you figure you can’t accept it as it’s provided, but would still call yourself a Christian, then you are also a fan of the “patchwork” Gospel, whether you realise it or not.

And this is a problem why, exactly? (more…)

Nicholas Negroponte (MIT professor, Being Digital author) and his OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) organization have unveiled the XO2, their second-generation laptop, according to an article from the BBC’s website.

The Mac Book Air it ain’t. What it is, however, may prove more important to OLPC’s target “market”: classrooms and children in developing nations. Like the first-generation XO, which has shipped 600,000 units since it was unveiled late in 2005, the XO2 is intended as a low-cost learning tool for classrooms in locales as widespread as Brazil, Nigeria, and China. (more…)

Books, lectures, films and articles on the state of society, and speculation over where it’s going, have never been in short supply. The amount of it worth reading, on the other hand… well, that’s something else again. One site that takes a broad view of what a public intellectual is, and what they have to offer, is Edge.

The site is a hodgepodge of current thinking in and about the arts, sciences, and culture. Past and present contributors have included Stewart Brand, Brian Eno, Clifford Stoll, Esther Dyson, Elaine Pagels, and Stephen Jay Gould. The Foundation seeks to lay bare the forces shaping modern life, “rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are.” It’s an ambitious undertaking, and if its reach occasionally exceeds its grasp, it never fails to make for interesting reading.

I used to have this habit of listening to the radio ’til about 2 in the morning with the tape deck running. There was a reason for the tape deck: once you get tired enough, all kinds of things start to sound good that wouldn’t when you’re wide awake. So I got in the habit of taping when I listened late. If it still sounded good the next morning, I’d explore further.

One night in 1990, it was like some odd planetary alignment. Song after song would come on, and for every artist I already knew and liked, there’d be another by a band that I just had to hear more of. One track I heard that night was “Dance of the Mad Bastards,” by some band called Pop Will Eat Itself. When the PWEI track gave me the same adrenaline rush in broad daylight that it had the night before, I decided to hear more. (more…)

I’m generally pretty neutral on Starbucks. Sure, I cringe at the thought of paying $24.75 for a tall soy mocha latte. On the other hand, I don’t think they’re the root of all evil (a distinction that clearly belongs to Wal-Mart). So I’m amused to find out that a group of supposed Christians are calling for boycotts of the chain. Their reason? Nothing to do with fair trade beans, soy milk, or snooty baristas. Apparently the coffee chain’s mermaid logo is showing too much skin for their taste.

The boycott comes from a group calling itself The Resistance Manifesto, which also devotes a fair amount of space to 9/11 “truth” screeds, and rants against celebrities. To quote from the little missive they sent out to publicize their boycott:

(San Diego, CA) Starbucks has recently introduced a new version of their logo which features a topless mermaid with her legs spread, which has caused outrage from a nation wide Christian media watchdog organization. The Resistance, with [sic] has over 3000 members nationwide, is boycotting Starbucks across the country saying their new logo is inappropriate.

“The Starbucks logo has a naked woman on it with her legs spread like a prostitute,” explains Mark Dice, founder of the group. “Need I say more? It’s extremely poor taste, and the company might as well call themselves, Slutbucks.”

Okay, I admit that I’m not up on mythical beasts, much less their mating habits. The best I can remember, though, mermaids don’t have legs. But that’s not the least of it. First off, if you think someone’s going to get their kicks off a badly-drawn cartoon mermaid, you’ve got more issues than Time magazine. Second, what next? The Coppertone logo? Products like Naked Juice, or Bear Naked granola?

And finally, with all the more pressing issues facing the world–poverty, starvation, warfare, race and class strife–the best you can do is a outrage over a fucking mermaid? Somebody’s priorities are seriously ass-backward if they think this merits a second look, much less a boycott.

On the brighter side, maybe if they get worked up enough about the mermaids, they’ll keep their mouths shut about gay marriage for a change. That would be progress.

Another favorite simple pleasure: the smell of old books, and old bookstores. It’s that peculiar bouquet of dust, mildew, and whatever else the books have picked up in their travels. It turns the book into a sensory experience, and makes it something more than just its content.

I’d be perfectly happy if someone–whoever makes Febreze, or Lysol even–would bottle that scent. I could think of worse things than the smell of an old library (though I may be in the minority there). And if someone ever managed to bottle “Eau de Benchley Roundup“… I could practically swoon just thinking of it.

Robert Rauschenberg died on Monday, May 12. He left behind a body of work that spanned six decades, and at least that many styles and media. While he could be stylistically linked with Warhol or Jasper Johns (also romantically linked, in the latter instance), his style–a pastiche of Dada, Pop, Merz, and anything else he happened to find (literally) was sui generis. The New York Times ran a good obituary on him that you can read here. In the meantime, I’ll let the artist himself have the last word:

“People ask me, “Don’t you ever run out of ideas?” In the first place I don’t use ideas. Every time I have an idea it’s too limiting, and usually turns out to be a disappointment. But I haven’t run out of curiosity.”

 Yenz.com is the online home of German graphic artist/web designer Jens Schmidt. Like so much else, I came across this site by accident (via Random Website.com, in this case) and ended up spending quite some time looking over the different graphics and designs on display. Besides showcasing Schmidt’s work for various clients (and a few things that seem to have been done just for the fun of it), there’s a short story, and an animated fish thingy that has a certain addictive Zen simplicity to it. If Schmidt’s aesthetic is decidedly postmodern, at least it hasn’t lost its sense of humor; if you remember any of the early-90’s stuff from the Designers Republic (and even if you don’t), you’ll probably find something to like about this site. Careful with that fish…

One thing life should teach everyone, sooner rather than later, is never to say, “Now I’ve seen everything.” I was reminded of this when I made the mistake of answering a question posed to me during an everyday conversation. I was asked if I’d ever read Rhonda Byrne’s insipid and insidious The Secret (the insipid and insidious part wasn’t part of my interrogator’s question, merely my own editorializing).

I answered that I hadn’t, but that I’d once been subjected to the movie, because someone at my last place of employment apparently thought it was so deep and insightful, we should all be subjected to it. Normally, I would never take the movie over the book; this is one time I gladly made an exception. Hell, it’s bad enough I’ll never get those 90 minutes of my life back.

You would think that I’d just told Billy Graham that I thought the Bible was crap. (more…)