BEST THING TO COME FROM JAPAN SINCE WALKMAN: Scientists create incredible ice cream that won’t melt.
There should be a window and an ocean
with arch-fingered waves.
A cold fireplace drawing no shadows on the ceiling.
Lying on your back carves a vision of the stone—
a continent of letters and numbers moves closer.
You fold the image in half to toss on the fire,
remember there are no flames.
with arch-fingered waves.
A cold fireplace drawing no shadows on the ceiling.
Lying on your back carves a vision of the stone—
a continent of letters and numbers moves closer.
You fold the image in half to toss on the fire,
remember there are no flames.
The pillow is wet. You turn your head to a new resting place
on the edge of a lake.
Water the color of lodestone laps your face.
At the top of your vision is an island.
Three deer eat the low-hanging leaves.
The birds have moved on.
You try to determine the season but deliberation topples.
A gray sky begins to sink.
The deer, the island, the lake, become fog.
on the edge of a lake.
Water the color of lodestone laps your face.
At the top of your vision is an island.
Three deer eat the low-hanging leaves.
The birds have moved on.
You try to determine the season but deliberation topples.
A gray sky begins to sink.
The deer, the island, the lake, become fog.
Regret and sleeplessness deliver a beautifully surreal movie. --R.T. Castleberry
We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.
Camus — who years earlier had asserted that “there is no love of life without despair of life” — answers:
All I can do is reply on my own behalf, realizing that what I say is relative. Accepting the absurdity of everything around us is one step, a necessary experience: it should not become a dead end. It arouses a revolt that can become fruitful. An analysis of the idea of revolt could help us to discover ideas capable of restoring a relative meaning to existence, although a meaning that would always be in danger.
Speaking at the close of the meaningless brutality of World War II, six years before he formulated his ideas on solidarity and what it really means to be a rebel, Camus considers the only act of courage and rebellion worth undertaking:
In a world whose absurdity appears to be so impenetrable, we simply must reach a greater degree of understanding among men, a greater sincerity. We must achieve this or perish. To do so, certain conditions must be fulfilled: men must be frank (falsehood confuses things), free (communication is impossible with slaves). Finally, they must feel a certain justice around them.
Speaking of the devil More than pills and prayers we need – Mark Vernon.
When it comes to mental ill-health, medical science has dramatically failed to uncover agreed explanations for conditions from depression to anxiety, schizophrenia to psychosis. It can be shocking to learn quite how little is known. Research has revealed the causal pathways for only a handful of conditions, such as dementia, when the grey matter demonstrably decays. But stick a melancholic brain in a scanner and compare it with another that leaps out of bed in the morning, and the scan will tell you nothing. It’s a guilty secret for the science that grabs so much public attention, but it simply can’t tell the difference. When it comes to mental ill-health, the hard science can be little better than phrenology
An influential US Senator is worried about the stock market getting hacked
KIMBERLEY STRASSEL: The Scandal That Matters:
Imran Awan was arrested at Dulles International Airport July 24, while attempting to board a flight to Pakistan. For more than a decade the congressional staffer had worked under top House Democrats, and he had just been accused by the FBI of bank fraud.
Drones, photo-taking apps and artificial intelligence are accelerating what has long been a clunky, time-consuming experience: the auto or home-insurance claim.
Not an adaptation, but King’s goofy performance in 1982’s Creepshow is worth a shout-out.
Internet-connected
smart devices purchased by the federal government would have to meet strict
security standards under bipartisan legislation introduced Tuesday. Those devices
would have to accept software patches to remove vulnerabilities and allow users
to change default passwords, according to the Internet of Things Cybersecurity
Improvements Act. They would also have to be free of known cybersecurity
vulnerabilities, according to the legislation, though companies could receive a
waiver in certain circumstances, including if the agency buying the device
agrees to accept the vulnerability and can still use the device safely.
Contractors would be required to speedily patch or repair connected devices
they sold to federal agencies after new software vulnerabilities are
discovered, according to the bill, which was sponsored by Sens. Mark Warner,
D-Va., Cory Gardner, R-Colo., Ron Wyden, D-Wash., and Steve Daines, R-Mont. Technology
and security experts from Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and
Society and the Atlantic Council think tank consulted on the bill, according to
a press release.
“None of Us Will Ever Be Famous”: Remembering the Poet Larry Fagin | The New Yorker
90 Lines For John Ashbery's 90th Birthday | Literary Hub
"Paris is where I learned, like Hemingway, to be poor and happy"
"Paris is where I learned, like Hemingway, to be poor and happy"
Your Guide to the Great American Literary Road Trip | Reader's Digest
When a colleague is laid off, it can send shockwaves throughout the workplace
“Gangnam Style”
is a worldwide that spread like wildfire to the point where even YouTube’s view
counter could not keep up. It was also the first YouTube video to hit the 1
billion mark. Researchers set out to find out why it spread so quickly.
Newly
detailed malware can knock networks offline with devastating efficiency,
although the effected networks might not be the ones intended by the malware's
creators. The malware was presented by the security firm Arbor Networks on
Sunday at the cybersecurity conference Def Con. It appears to be designed to
use internet-connected devices from one network to attack another. In practice,
it would likely only knock out the network the devices were attached to off the
internet. But Steinthor Bjarnason, the Arbor Networks researcher who presented
the discovery, noted that can be a destructive attack in its own right. The
malware is a variant of the Mirai botnet. Mirai was only able to infect devices
that circumvented network security measures such as routers and firewalls to
allow users to access them through the internet. Bjarnason cited research
showing that only around 1 in 20 devices was not protected by a firewall or
router.
This is from the article Tim links to:
As one Christian blogger writes from Germany:
In a post-Christian society, the Biblical story that once shaped culture is no longer the narrative that gives meaning to life. The gospel is long gone. Jesus has become part of an outdated argument or distant figure haunting the past. The church has become a shadow of a once-flourishing community drawn together by the gospel. The story of God’s grace through the cross has become an echo of the past, and the remnant of the church has drifted back to the margins of culture
