Morris Dean
[Anonymous selections from recent correspondence]
Pretty entertaining, some of the "art of snow" that people create in their front yards.
At some point, watching this video, I started to find what was happening extremely funny, and I couldn't stop laughing, even though at the same time I felt it was WRONG to be laughing at people potentially really hurting themselves by falling, etc.
A kindergarten teacher was walking around her classroom while the children were drawing. When she arrived at the desk of one little girl who was working diligently, she asked what the drawing was.
The girl said, "I'm drawing God."
The teacher paused and said, "But no one knows what God looks like."
Without looking up from her drawing, the girl said, "They will in a minute."
"South Carolina Christian School Fourth Grade Science Quiz" [gizmo59, Daily Kos]:
Notice and live in the present. Right now is a miracle. Right now is the only moment guaranteed to you. Right now is life. So stop thinking about how great things will be in the future. Stop dwelling on what did or didn’t happen in the past. Learn to be in the ‘here and now’ and experience life as it’s happening. Appreciate the world for the beauty that it holds, right now.
"The Vast Realm of ‘If’." [Roger Cohen, NY Times]. Excerpt:
There is beauty in our dreams of change, our constant what ifs. Days begin in the realm of solemn undertakings — to eat less, to exercise more, to work harder, or to go gentler. They end with wobbles into compromise, or collapses into indulgence, with the perennial solace of the prospect of another day. The good-intentions dinner, a salad with a couple of slivers of chicken, turns into a Burrito with cheese and avocado and salsa and chicken. That’s human.2nd & 3rd of 18 photos from The Smithsonian’s “Wilderness Forever” Photo Contest:
It’s an illusion to think it would have been simple to change. We live lives that reflect our natures. Memory grows, a refuge, a solace, a repository so vast that what happened and what almost did begin to blur.
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| Mountain Goat Kids, Mount Evans Wilderness, Colorado [image credits: Verdon Tomajko] |
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| White Pocket, Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs, Arizona [image credits: Richard Ansley] |
"The GOP's attack on universities and free speech." [Bob Geary, Indy Week] Excerpt:
Jack Boger, dean of the UNC Law School, made an arresting statement in rebuking the latest outrage from the UNC Board of Governors:
"The University's core mission," Boger wrote, "(is) to be a catalyst for change."
Change, though, is the very thing a conservative wants to prevent, especially a conservative white Republican. By definition, they want to keep things the same – conserve them, that is. And in North Carolina, conserving the status quo works better for whites than for non-whites, and better for people with money than those living in poverty.
Aversion to change is why a committee of the Board of Governors recommended the closure of three academic centers on UNC campuses. The list includes one at UNC-Chapel Hill that studies poverty, and a second at historically black N.C. Central University that seeks to activate minority students as voters and advocates for change. The third, at East Carolina University, is the Center for Biodiversity, which the GOP apparently wants axed because it mixes diversity – a term that rubs Republicans the wrong way – with environmental protection – which they don't like, either.
But the oil and gas industry has set its sights on our national forests and land just outside our national parks.
Colorado's Mesa Verde National Park, New Mexico's Otero Mesa and Chaco Canyon and even land near the Delaware Water Gap are all at risk.
In 2011, the Obama administration's own advisory panel on fracking recommended the “[p]reservation of unique and/or sensitive areas as off limits to drilling." ["Weak Rule by Jewell: New Interior Secretary's Proposal Fails to Protect America's Natural Heritage from Fracking," Environment America, May 16, 2013] Flash forward four years, and America's most unique and sensitive places – our national parks and forests – are still at risk....
You can just imagine the impact on wildlife and rivers and streams if we allow the industry to bulldoze their way into publicly owned forests, inject tons of chemical-laden water into the land, fracture the rock deep beneath the surface, and truck out highly toxic wastewater, all while spewing diesel fumes and climate-changing methane into the air. ["Methane Leaks Wipe Out Any Climate Benefit of Fracking, Satellite Observations Confirm," Think Progress, Oct. 22, 2014]
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| Denier James Inhofe, U.S. Senator from Oklahoma, seemed to be asking: If there is global warming, how could I bring a snowball into the halls of Congress? |
Right now, in Congress and across the country, too many of our elected officials still publicly deny the science of climate change.
That needs to change.
You're part of an important team with Organizing For Action, with a mission of holding climate change deniers' feet to the fire. OFA put together a site highlighting deniers across the country, and the impact of climate change on your state.
Every year, the effects of climate change are felt in more of our communities – consider the consequences of extreme weather like historic droughts and record-breaking storms. It jeopardizes the future we'll leave for our children.
[E.g.: "Last week Senator James Inhofe turned the Senate floor into an episode of the Marx Brothers. In his latest attempt to convince us that climate change is, in his words, 'The Greatest Hoax,' the senator tossed a snowball on the Senate floor – see video below. He thought it was a funny way to 'prove' his argument that if it's cold enough to snow in Washington D.C. human-induced climate change is a hoax." –Environmental Action]
Our neighbor wrote: "We had some excitement this morning. A little after 8 a.m., as I was about to let [our dog] out back to go potty, [my husband] spotted this big cougar. It was across the ditch from us, then jumped over into our backyard, about 20 feet from our back patio. It was watching something next door, probably...their cat. [My husband] got this photo as it was just leaving! Good thing [our dog] and I weren't already outside!"
What does a clock do when it's hungry? It goes back four seconds!
"Hubble at 25: the cosmos at its most breathtaking – in pictures." [The Guardian] The Hubble telescope was launched in April 1990. Ever since, it has been providing astronomers with breathtaking images of the cosmos. For example:
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| The Carina Nebula |
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| The Crab Nebula |
"Maggie Smith Says She Will Leave ‘Downton Abbey’ After Next Season." [Gilbert Cruz, NY Times] Excerpt:
As to her character’s age, Ms. Smith, 80, said in her Sunday Times interview, “I mean, I certainly can’t keep going. To my knowledge I must be 110 by now.”
“The disclosures that Edward Snowden revealed don’t only expose a threat to our privacy but to our democracy itself,” Poitras said in her acceptance speech. “Thank you to Edward Snowden for his courage and for the many other whistleblowers.” Snowden, in a statement released after the award was announced, said, “My hope is that this award will encourage more people to see the film and be inspired by its message that ordinary citizens, working together, can change the world.”"Outdated Encryption Keys Leave Phones Vulnerable to Hackers"." [Nicole Perlroth & Brian X. Chen, NY Times] Excerpt:
The film, which has been hailed as a real-life thriller, chronicles Snowden’s effort to securely contact Poitras and Glenn Greenwald in 2013 and meet them in Hong Kong, where Poitras filmed Snowden discussing the thousands of classified NSA documents he was leaking to them, and his motives for doing so. The film takes its title from the pseudonym Snowden used when he contacted Poitras in encrypted emails that were revealed in her documentary.
Citizenfour, the acclaimed documentary by filmmaker (and founding board member of Freedom of the Press Foundation) Laura Poitras, won an Academy Award last weekend. In her acceptance speech, Poitras spoke eloquently about how the NSA’s surveillance apparatus is a threat to democracy and implored everyone to support whistleblowers of all stripes. You can watch her speech here. And tell your friends and family they can now watch Citizenfour on HBO! (Two of the film’s stars, Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden, are also on our board of directors.)
A government policy that forbade the export of products with strong encryption in the 1990s has years later left users of devices like Android and Apple phones vulnerable to hackers when they visit one-third of all websites, including whitehouse.gov and nsa.gov.How do crazy people get through the forest? They take the psycho-path!
Researchers last month discovered millions of devices and websites were using an outdated encryption key to secure their communications. The weak key resulted from a Clinton administration mandate that software and hardware makers use weak cryptography in products exported outside the United States.
Once those restrictions were relaxed in the late 1990s, many technology makers abandoned the weak cryptography. But researchers said this week that the old keys were included in the code that is still being used in a variety of modern devices and websites....
The debate over encryption — touched off by Edward J. Snowden’s disclosures [emphasis ours] of the nation’s efforts to crack and circumvent such protections — has intensified over the last year as technology companies added stronger security that would lock out government agencies.
The National Security Agency and the F.B.I. have urged tech companies to keep a back door open through their security technology for law enforcement agencies. And David Cameron, the British prime minister, has threatened to outlaw encrypted apps like Facebook’s WhatsApp messaging service.
But many tech companies have repeatedly said they have no intentions of changing what they’re doing, as Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, signaled in a speech last month at Stanford.
“If those of us in positions of responsibility fail to do everything in our power to protect the right of privacy, we risk something far more valuable than money — we risk our way of life,” Mr. Cook told an audience of White House officials, executives and cybersecurity experts. “Fortunately, technology gives us the tools to avoid these risks, and it’s my sincere hope that by using them and by working together, we will.”
"When Your Punctuation Says It All (!)." [Jessica Bennett, NY Times] Excerpt:
I’m a writer; it’s natural I’d have a thing for grammar. But these days, it’s as if our punctuation is on steroids.
It’s not just that each of us is more delicately choosing our characters, knowing that an exclamation point or a colon carries more weight in our 140-character world. Or even that our punctuation suddenly feels like hyperbole (right?!?!?!?!?!) because we’ve lost all audible tone.
Those things are true. But it’s also as if a kind of micro-punctuation has emerged: tiny marks in the smallest of spaces that suddenly tell us more about the person on the other end than the words themselves (or, at least, we think they do)....
“Girlfriends” may be a key word there, as women are more likely to use emotive punctuation than men are. Yet lately I’ve tried to rein my own effusiveness in, going as far as to insert additional punctuation into existing punctuation in an effort to soften the marks themselves.
So instead of responding to a text with “Cant wait!!” I’ll insert a space or two before the mark — “Cant wait !!” – for that extra little pause. Sometimes I’ll make the exclamation point a parenthetical, as a kind of after thought (“Can’t wait (!)”). A friend inserts an ellipses — “Can’t wait … !!” — so, as she puts it, “it’s less intense.”
“At this point, I’ve basically suspended judgment,” said Ben Crair, an editor at the New Republic who recently wrote a column about the new aggression of the period. “You could drive yourself insane trying to decode the hidden messages in other people’s punctuation.” [emphasis ours]
For as long as I can remember, I’ve forgone traditional pajamas for the pajamas the Good Lord gave me — my skin. Much to the horror of my roommates, I sleep completely naked.Limerick of the week:
I’ve never found this weird or out of the ordinary. It’s comfortable, easy and I spend less money on stupid clothing only my teddy bear and I see.
Why would I put on pajamas when I can bask in the glory of nakedness, having only my sheets as the barrier between me and my beloved bed?
Apparently, I am an outlier. According to a 2012 study, only eight percent of Americans sleep nude....
You’ll get way better sleep. According to The American Academy of Sleep Medicine, your body temperature naturally declines as a part of your Circadian Rhythm as you sleep deeply.
Wearing pajamas could disrupt this natural drop in temperature and, as a result, disrupt your body’s sleep cycle....
To eat my chocolate or not to eat her,[Adapted from "Chocolate," July 21, 2006]
that is the question. Whether 'twere sweeter
to enjoy the ravishing thrill
of moral victory over will
than to go down on dusky Lizza-Bete were.
| Copyright © 2015 by Morris Dean |
Thanks to all whose correspondence was selected for inclusion this time (and to all whose correspondence might be selected next time): Snow art, icy humor, drawing God, testing scientific facts, living in the present, the illusionary "if," wilderness-forever photos, conserving racial power and wealth, no fracking, Senator Inhofe's hoax, backyard cougar, hungry clock, Hubble photos of the cosmos, Maggie Smith's character "must be 110 by now," ashes to diamonds, Edward Snowden's Oscar, our vulnerability to hacking, how crazy people get through the forest, communicating punctuation, the science of sleeping naked, enjoying chocolate....
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