Clipmarks | abailart's Pops

Dr. Karl Paulnack: Why Does Music Affect Us?

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 18:24:18 GMT

clipped by: clip-on-tie
clipper's remarks: Great article: http://greenroom.fromthetop.org/2009/03/11/karl-paulnack-to-the-boston-conservatory-freshman-class/

Clip Source: greenroom.fromthetop.org

Karl Paulnack

I was playing with a very dear friend of mine who is a violinist. We began, as we often do, with Aaron Copland’s Sonata, which was written during World War II and dedicated to a young friend of Copland’s, a young pilot who was shot down during the war.

Midway through the piece, an elderly man seated in a wheelchair near the front of the concert hall began to weep. This man, whom I later met, was clearly a soldier-even in his 70’s, it was clear from his buzz-cut hair, square jaw and general demeanor that he had spent a good deal of his life in the military. I thought it a little bit odd that someone would be moved to tears by that particular movement of that particular piece, but it wasn’t the first time I’ve heard crying in a concert and we went on with the concert and finished the piece.

The concert in the nursing home was the most important work I have ever done.

to play for this old soldier and help him connect,

to connect their memories of their lost friends

Tags: music

“Death in life, and life in death:” On Jane Kenyon’s “Otherwise”

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:02:54 GMT

clipped by: clip-on-tie
clipper's remarks: A wonderful poem and so very true.

Clip Source: www.ashokkarra.com

Otherwise (from Poetry 180)
Jane Kenyon

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.

At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.

Tags: poetry

Allotments: Grow Your Own

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 07:46:01 GMT

clipped by: cakebelly
clipper's remarks: "Allotment gardens are characterised by a concentration in one place of a few or up to several hundreds of land parcels that are assigned to individuals or families. In allotment gardens, the parcels are cultivated individually, contrary to other community garden types where the entire area is tended collectively by a group of people.[1] The individual size of a parcel ranges between 200 and 400 square meters, and often the plots include a shed for tools and shelter. The individual gardeners are organised in an allotment association which leases the land from the owner who may be a public, private or ecclesiastical entity, provided that it is only used for gardening (i.e. growing vegetables, fruits and flowers), but not for residential purposes. The gardeners have to pay a small membership fee to the association, and have to abide by the corresponding constitution and by-laws. However, the membership entitles them to certain democratic rights.[2][3]"

Clip Source: dearcomputer.nl

Israel permits new settlement homes

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:19:18 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: Obama now knows what it is like to be slapped in the face with a wet kosher fish.
1400 more houses planned.

Clip Source: english.aljazeera.net

Israel has approved the construction of 50 new homes in a West Bank settlement and announced plans to expropriate more Palestinian land.

The move comes just hours before Israel's defence minister, Ehud Barak, visits the US in a bid to defuse tensions over Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land.

Israel has approved 50 new settlement units in the West Bank and plans to build 1,400 more [AFP]

The land grab and new permits come despite a demand from Barack Obama, the US president, for a complete freeze to all Israeli settlement activity, and could exacerbate a rare public spat between the allies.

Barak, who is scheduled to meet George Mitchell, the US Middle East envoy, in New York, told Israel's Army Radio before the trip that he hoped to reach an agreement where "a solution to the settlements can be found".

Ian Kelly, a US state department spokesman, said: "I'm not going to say we're not willing to compromise

Tags: ethnic cleansing

Is your brain on the edge of chaos?

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:09:29 GMT

clipped by: egoldstein
clipper's remarks: I love this description of the brain. Some days i'm more "blizzard of noise" than others

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

In reality, your brain operates on the edge of chaos. Though much of the time it runs in an orderly and stable way, every now and again it suddenly and unpredictably lurches into a blizzard of noise.

Tags: brain

Tibetan Monks and Nuns Turn Their Minds Toward Science

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:21:56 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: The Chinese have begun the cultural genocide in Tibet. They have even taken the appointment of the Dalai away from the Tibetans.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

DHARAMSALA, India — Tibetan monks and nuns spend their lives studying the inner world of the mind rather than the physical world of matter. Yet for one month this spring a group of 91 monastics devoted themselves to the corporeal realm of science.

Many in the group, whose ages ranged from the 20s to 40s, had never learned science and math. In Tibetan Buddhist monasteries and nunneries, the curriculum has remained unchanged for centuries.

Yet the Tibetan spiritual leader views science and Buddhism as complementary “investigative approaches with the same greater goal, of seeking the truth,” he wrote in “The Universe in a Single Atom,” his book on “how science and spirituality can serve our world.” He stresses that science is especially important for monastics who study the nature of the mind and the relationship between mind and brain.

The need to keep Tibetan cultural identity alive, yet modern and relevant, has grown increasingly urgent as the 73-year-old Dalai Lama ages.

Grains of Sand Reveal Possible Fifth State of Matter

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 14:27:21 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: 20 sec vid at the source (wouldn't clip) which may help understanding what they are on about.

Clip Source: www.wired.com

In the formation of droplets in a stream of falling sand, scientists have witnessed a dynamic that points beyond the boundaries of traditional physics, and may represent one aspect of a fifth state of matter.

The droplets formed because of instabilities in the subtle atomic forces that attract sand grains to each other. Something similar happens to water falling from a faucet, but the forces acting on those molecules are 100,000 times stronger.

Measurements of this phenomena

overturn the previous explanation for sand droplets — that grains stick to each other after colliding — and quantify what’s called an “ultralow-surface-tension regime.”

It’s entirely new territory for researchers, and just one of many dynamics governing the behavior of granular materials, which for reasons unknown to science act sometimes as solids, or liquids, or gases — or something in-between

You walk on the beach, and the sand supports your weight. Pick up a handful, and it runs through your fingers, like a liquid

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

Tags: science

An Open Letter to Closed Minds

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 10:58:23 GMT

clipped by: thisnamecantbetaken
clipper's remarks: A challenge to orthodoxy tends to be ignored at first. But if it gains popular support, the first move is to discredit and silence the challenger.

“Belief” is the crux of the matter. No amount of evidence will change the consensus view until a sufficient number “convert” to a belief in the new theory.

“It gets worse. As the evidence accumulates, the two camps will not only fail to reach consensus but actually be driven further apart - propelled by their different views ..And worst of all, there is no prospect of such a consensus unless the two sides can agree about the cause of the data.” Such a conclusion bodes ill for any attempt to change the status quo.

An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarized with the new ideas from the beginning.”

Applicable to both science and religion, I reckon.

Clip Source: www.holoscience.com

An Open Letter to Closed Minds

A widely-accepted foundation stone of scientific logic involves a process of elimination, requiring all available possibilities to be considered with incorrect ideas discarded when they fail to predict experimental results.

a leading group of concerned scientists

questions a core belief – the belief in the so-called big bang theory.

Already, the first line of defense – censorship – has held. The journal Nature rejected the letter for publication

"You could write the entire history of science in the last 50 years in terms of papers rejected by Science or Nature." – Paul C. Lauterbur, winner of the Nobel Prize for medicine, whose seminal paper on magnetic resonance imaging was originally rejected by Nature.

That scathing commentator on errant human behavior, John Ralston Saul, has compared the scientific community to the medieval church

setting up organizations – political, religious, and scientific – that with time become authoritarian, exclusive and dogmatic.

Children in War Zones

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 21:16:37 GMT

clipped by: foxyarse

Clip Source: www.globalresearch.ca

Children's Rights in the War Theater: Who Guards the Guards?

The US army has detained 2,400 children as young as ten years old since March 2003

‘He never slept in a bed of myths, He didn’t live his childhood.’ ‘Song’, Adonis (Ali Ahmad Said) Victims of a Map, Saqi Books.

On 27th May 2008, Save the Children released a Report which ‘shows that children living in conflict affected countries fear to report sexual exploitation and abuse by UN peace keeping troops and humanitarian aid workers.’

‘Children told Save the Children UK that they were too afraid to report the abuse, frightened that is they did, the abuser might come back and hurt them …or that they might be stigmatized by their family and community, or even punished by them.’

Jasmine Whitbread, Chief Executive of Save the Children

“This research exposes the despicable actions of a small number of perpetrators who are sexually abusing some of the most vulnerable children in the world, the very children they are meant to protect …” ‘

A Doctor's Office That Puts Patients At Ease

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 23:01:45 GMT

clipped by: debbyski
clipper's remarks: " I asked her to let me know in a month if it was helpful. As she was leaving, she quickly glanced around the office and told me that she was happy that she had come.

"This is very unusual," she said. "I don't want to leave."

I walked her to the receptionist's desk and as I did, I am sure I heard my violin playing."

Clip Source: www.latimes.com

I played my violin today. It's an old but not a rare or expensive instrument that I keep in my office. I don't have to play it; my violin plays itself. Just the sight of the violin brings the music to my mind.

Mrs. Goldstein heard it.

She was 101 and frail, but refused to allow any gray hair on her head to date her -- and she loved my office. She told me that she had seen a lot of doctors but had never seen an office "like this one."

These things are there for a reason. The doctor's office is a stressful place.

If I can get my patients to relax, they will hear and learn more about their health.

A number of my patients tell me that I always get a lower blood pressure reading than their other physicians.

Physicians also experience stress

He asked me how long he had to live.

I tried to answer honestly.

Each time I do, I worry that I will give incorrect information and falsely raise or lower hope.

"Africa alone could feed the world"

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 04:01:33 GMT

clipped by: cakebelly

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

DOOM-MONGERS have got it wrong - there is enough space in the world to produce the extra food needed to feed a growing population. And contrary to expectation, most of it can be grown in Africa, say two international reports published this week.

The first, projecting 10 years into the future from last year's food crisis, which saw the price of food soar, says that there is plenty of unused, fertile land available to grow more crops.

"Some 1.6 billion hectares could be added to the current 1.4 billion hectares of crop land [in the world], and over half of the additionally available land is found in Africa and Latin America," concludes the report, compiled by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

If further evidence were needed, it comes in a second report, launched jointly by the FAO and the World Bank. It concludes that 400 million hectares, straddling 25 African countries, are suitable for farming.

Can't we just let him rest?

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 06:22:48 GMT

clipped by: mona
clipper's remarks: I am positively sickened by all the media frenzy, accusations, speculations, consipiracy theories, analyses, etc revolving around Michael Jackson's death.
He was a great artist, a controversial personality, he left his mark on this world ~ and now it is time for us to accept that he is no longer among us. He (and his family) deserve all the peace and respect we can offer. Let's not rip to shreds what we know close to nothing about.

Clip Source: en.wikipedia.org

Tags: my, rant, for, the, day

The Catholic Church needs to clean up its act

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 22:57:53 GMT

clipped by: foxyarse

Clip Source: www.onlinejournal.com

Theocracy Alert

The Roman Catholic Church of Corruption

By Mel Seesholtz, Ph.D.

September 27, 2005—Dante reserved the lowest circle of hell—the circle of treachery—for those who violated trust. He placed quite a few priests, church leaders, and popes there. They’ll be getting lots of company . . .

The larger than usual headline of the Philadelphia Inquirer lastThursday read, “An ‘Immoral’ Cover-up.” A grand jury indicted the Philadelphia archdiocese in a 418-page report detailing rampant pedophilia and sexual abuse as well as decades of well planned, sinister cover-up orchestrated by two Philadelphia cardinals, (the late) John Krol and (recently retired) Anthony Bevilacqua. Krol was and Bevilacqua is an outspoken critic of homosexuality and civil rights for gay and lesbian Americans.

Here are just a few of the documented examples of what predator priests did under the protection of Krol and Bevilacqua:

Tags: catholic church, corruption, sex abuse

CIA Crucified Captive in Abu Ghraib Prison

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 22:43:45 GMT

clipped by: foxyarse
clipper's remarks: Maybe they were just engaging in 'tough love'

Clip Source: www.democraticunderground.com

CIA Crucified Captive in Abu Ghraib Prison

CIA Crucified Captive in Abu Ghraib Prison

By Sherwood Ross

June 29, 2009 "Global Research" --- "The Central Intelligence Agency crucified a prisoner in Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, according to a report published in The New Yorker magazine.

“A forensic examiner found that he (the prisoner) had essentially been crucified; he died from asphyxiation after having been hung by his arms, in a hood, and suffering broken ribs,” the magazine’s Jane Mayer writes in the magazine’s June 22nd issue. “Military pathologists classified the case a homicide.” The date of the murder was not given.

“No criminal charges have ever been brought against any C.I.A. officer involved in the torture program, despite the fact that at least three prisoners interrogated by agency personnel died as a result of mistreatment,” Mayer notes...http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22941.htm

Tags: cia

Art of photography

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 07:09:25 GMT

clipped by: perellicippo

Clip Source: gallery.xemanhdep.com