intellectual properties

QOTD: i can’t get no

As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.

–George Bernard Shaw

spherical

the cold fog blocked the city and the sun this morning

a down blanket hovering overhead

creating another world – softer, slower,

muffled and enveloped inside its own visibility

a sphere of birds and slight wind through trees,

the light diffused and traffic just faintly on the other side

QOT(other)D: penguins

in discussion of “bucket lists” while watching docu on Antarctica:

“i want to see some fucking penguins!”

–me

there’s right and there’s wrong and somewhere in between there’s life

Out beyond ideas of wrong and right,
there is a field. I will meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about
language, ideas, even the phrase each other
doesn’t make any sense.

.::.rumi

with a little

we had 2 thanksgiving dinners with friends and their families, we did see the muppets movie friday night (fun!), a couple few nice walks, several more good meals with friends, good weather and 14.2 miles on the bike today. that is pretty much all the news there is to report at the end of this long weekend.  we did not go very far or do very much, which i know for some homebodies is a picture perfect weekend, but  i am easily bored and get stir crazy and keeping myself amused for 4 days while trying not to spend any money is a bit difficult (#firstworldproblems).

i otherwise spent a lot of the weekend reading updates and commentaries on all the various Occupy activities and occupations, and between that and all the horrid and shameful Black Friday news/social commentary coming out i felt a bit too mentally exhausted to do any of the personal/writing things i should have.

however, i am very thankful and grateful that we do have wonderful friends and as the saying goes, we got by.

QOTD: do not let this be true

Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force.
–George Bernard Shaw

everything is fine keep shopping

BUY NOTHING CHRISTMAS

#OCCUPYXMAS

tday pilaf

tday pilaf, originally uploaded by amyleblancdotcom.

(or, what i just came up with from ingredients i had in my house)

1.5 cups pearled barley
3 cups veg broth
+
1 cup fresh cranberries, diced (not frozen, not dried, not sweetened, not canned, not refrigerated: fresh, whole and TART)
1 diced honeycrisp apple
+
1 cup raw almonds, smashed, sauteed
1/2 lb broccoli spigarello, sauteed
1 cup veg broth
sesame seeds, white and black
1 spoonful chopped garlic
1/2 white onion
1 tbsp earth balance margarine
1 tbsp olive oil
salt/pepper to taste

mixed together. warm in oven.

vegan and all organic except for the cranberries, olive oil and seeds

thanksgiving QOTD

If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, “thank you,” that would suffice.

~Meister Eckhart

word of the day: pleonexia

Pleonexia, sometimes called pleonexy, originates from the Greek language πλεονεξια and is a philosophical concept employed both in the New Testament and in writings by Plato and Aristotle. It roughly corresponds to greed, covetousness, or avarice, and is strictly defined as “the insatiable desire to have what rightfully belongs to others”, suggesting what Ritenbaugh describes as “ruthless self-seeking and an arrogant assumption that others and things exist for one’s own benefit”.

…

Pleonexia, being mentioned in the New Testament in Colossians 3 verses 1–11 and Luke 12 verses 13–21, has been the subject of commentary by Christian theologians.

William Barclay describes pleonexia as an “accursed love of having”, which “will pursue its own interests with complete disregard for the rights of others, and even for the considerations of common humanity”. He labels it an aggressive vice that operates in three spheres of life. In the material sphere involves “grasping at money and goods, regardless of honour and honesty”. In the ethical sphere it is “the ambition which tramples on others to gain something which is not properly meant for it”. In the moral sphere, it is “the unbridled lust which takes its pleasure where it has no right to take”.

…

Classical Greek philosophers such as Plato related pleonexia to justice.

Thrasymachus, in Book I of The Republic, presents pleonexia as a natural state, upon which justice is an unnatural restraint.

In discussing the philosophy of Aristotle, who insisted in his Nicomachean Ethics that all specifically unjust actions are motivated by pleonexia, Kraut[4] discusses pleonexia and equates it to epichairekakia, the Greek version of schadenfreude, stating that inherent in pleonexia is the appeal of acting unjustly at the expense of others.

–http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleonexia

and if you really want to get into it, that idea of Thrasymachus’ , that pleonexia is natural (human) state that society and “justice” restrains, has caused a lot of philosophical controversy, which you can read more about here, in The Case for Pleonexia.

(pleonexia was recently discussed  in the context of the Greek financial crisis and its causes. )