StumbleUpon | floweringmind's blog posts

http://floweringmind.stumbleupon.com/review/37243313/

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 08:42:54 -0700

Kids aged 2-5 average more than 32 hours a week in front of a TV.

http://floweringmind.stumbleupon.com/review/36450868/

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 17:27:46 -0700

http://floweringmind.stumbleupon.com/review/34982066/

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 15:02:28 -0700

You think I'm an ignorant savage
And you've been so many places I guess it must be so
But still I can not see
Is the savage one is me
How can there be so much that you don't know?
You don't know

You think you own whatever land you land on
The Earth is just a dead thing you can claim
But I know every rock and tree and creature
Has a life, has a spirit, has a name

You think the only people who are people
Are the people who look and think like you
But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger
You'll learn things you never knew you never knew

Have you ever heard the wolf cry to the blue corn moon
Or asked the grinning bobcat why he grinned?
Can you sing with all the voices of the mountains?
Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?
Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?

Come run the hidden pine trails of the forest
Come taste the sunsweet berries of the Earth
Come roll in all the riches all around you
And for once, never wonder what they're worth

The rainstorm and the river are my brothers
The heron and the otter are my friends
And we are all connected to each other
In a circle, in a hoop that never ends

How high does the sycamore grow?
If you cut it down, then you'll never know
And you'll never hear the wolf cry to the blue corn moon

For whether we are white or copper skinned
We need to sing with all the voices of the mountains
We need to paint with all the colors of the wind

You can own the Earth and still
All you'll own is Earth until
You can paint with all the colors of the wind

http://floweringmind.stumbleupon.com/review/34781729/

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 09:56:30 -0700

Elena gave me the background of what had become her life's obsesion. In the 1947 Constitution, Gypsies had the status of a national minority, allowing them at least to use their own language -- a status which was scrapped in the revised Constitution of 1971. Now everyone, like it or not, was "made equal." To be equally Bulgarian meant that differences would not be tolerated. At the same time, from 1978 onwards, a law that was unwritten but well understood prohibited interaction between "ethnic Bulgarians" and Gypsies, including even the mention in the national press or on television. (Hence euphemisms such as "our dark brothers," still favored by the "liberated" press.) Soon the Gypsies, like the Turks, were all required to Bulgarianize their names; so Ali became Ilia and Timaz became Todor. They were no longer allowed to speak Romani, to play music, to wear "folkloric" clothes. Along with the ethnographer repeatedly pointed out, many Gypsies had lost their traditional professions -- as basket-makers, spoon and brush-makers, herb-gatherers, musicians, smiths and so on. These elements of identity, Elena and I agreed, were obviously more important for a group without land or written records. Now many Bulgarian Gypsies had no idea what kind of work their ancestors had done and often didn't know what their family name had been only a few generations before.

In the late 1950s, Antoinette's uncle had joined a Communist Party committee charged with solving "the Gypsy problem." They began in 1958, with outlawing of nomadism. Thirty-five years later, Kolev (a Gypsy who had been raised in all-Gypsy "technical" school) had not changed his views at all. "In a technological industrial society the wandering Gypsy is finished." Here Kolev could be proud: there are no "wandering" Gypsies in Bulgaria. "What is there to preserve?" he went on. "What are the supposed Gypsy professions? Copper has been replaced by plastic. Gypsies were being given the chance to become Bulgarians: differences could not be permitted." Kolev seemed triumphantly unaware that, since the end of his party's rule, those differences had violently deepened. He was sticking with the version of his glory days, and hids idiom was Central Committee perfect: "Assimilation is an objective historical process."

-- From: Bury Me Standing
The Gypsies and Their Journey
By Isabel Fonseca

http://floweringmind.stumbleupon.com/review/33933039/

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 10:49:00 -0700

My response:

http://floweringmind.stumbleupon.com/review/33116502/

Tue, 26 May 2009 15:55:29 -0700

So today the CEO of Sony came out with an article about how he wants to control the Internet. He talks about how we need guardrails for it. We know Sony has always had a terrible relationship with their customers and over stepping their bounds, when it came to DRM on their CDs and Rootkits installs on user's computers. They follow a line of thinking that all these media companies and many other type of companies feel that they should have complete control over all aspects of the user and and the user should have no rights unless the benign companies allow it. Take a look at US history with the eight hour day, and child labor rights to start and you might get an idea of how the benign company scenario plays out.

The reality is that the Internet was fine until companies came along and messed with it trying to make money off of us, funny how they blame the common user for that. When I started out on the Internet it was a wonderful medium for communicating and sharing information. Even today it still is. Yet now these companies that have swarmed onto the net plague us with ads where two thirds of a page can be filled with them, they inspire people to infect our computers with toolbars for our browsers, they send us to jail and give us huge fines when their software is copied that they put on the net, they give us millions of choices that are all the same. They steal our personal information and compile all kinds of data on us so they can watch us, sell to us, and control us.

Now there are many companies that have done things I like, but the majority of them abuse the Internet in any way they can. Half the stuff I see on the net these days is marketing some piece of garbage and I never knew how much garbage there was until now. The Internet shows how unoriginal people are. Why do we need 25 sites that bookmark webpages or shorten urls or any other idea. Thank the heavens for open source which has done wonders for creativity vs the closed routes that are just to make money.

They complain that users take what they want without paying for things, but the reality is that these companies take whatever they want all the time and make laws to prevent you from taking what you want. Take Apple who just took Creative Labs interface for the ipod with no plans of giving them anything so they got taken to court. The problem is individuals don't have the money or time to battle corporations most of the time.

Now shut off your computer and leave the Internet and look around and you will see that these companies have done the same thing to everything around us. I see ads everywhere but I have no Ad-block plus like in Firefox. Every car looks almost the same, I see lots of options but they are all false, like when I go into the supermarket and the majority of food is processed and all the raw resources are modified (genetically) and overpriced so it costs you so much more than what a company would make. There are laws everywhere created to control every aspect of human life. I see cameras going up like wildfire to monitor people. They are sticking chips in everything to track and track more. The marketing is so intense that I see people wearing stupid crap like cell phones in their ears and talking like they are crazy homeless person.

If you follow it further we now come to the predicament that most people don't want to deal with that our ancestors have created this situation and many of us are causing this to happen now. I was reading the other day how Denver, Colorado wanted to be bigger in the 1700s, but had no right to be bigger because the land belonged to the native Americans. So they took what they wanted convinced Congress to help them out and the native people lost their land. . Of course Europeans took the whole country.

If we you keep asking the question why is this happening and where did it come from it will lead to some interesting places of people being crushed and run over by other people. Anyway I feel Sony should STFU

http://floweringmind.stumbleupon.com/review/32946146/

Tue, 19 May 2009 17:49:09 -0700

Meeker's inveterate itch for writing down his ideas and observations and then sending them off to be put into print, eventually brought him to a complete breaking point with the Utes. During the spring of 1879 he wrote an imaginary dialogue with one of the Ute women, attempting to show how the Indians could not comprehend the joys of work or the value of material goods. During the course of his dialogue, Meeker declared that the reservation land belonged to the government and was only assigned to the Utes for their use. "If you don't use it and won't work," he warned, "white men away off will come in and by and by you will have nothing."

This little composition was first published in the Greeley (Colorado) Tribune, where it was seen by William B. Vickers a Denver editor-politician who despised all Indians, especially Utes. Vickers at the time was serving as secretary to Frederick Pitkin, the wealthy miner who in 1873 had been the leader in separating the San Juan Mountains from Ute ownership. Pitkin had used his power to become governor of Colorado when it became a state in 1876. After the end of the Sioux wars in 1877, Pitkin and Vickers began drumming up a propaganda campaign to have all the Utes exiled to Indian Teritory, thus leaving an immense amount of valuable land free for the taking. Vickers seized upon Nathan Meeker's newspaper essay as a fine argument for removing the Utes from Colorado, and he wrote an article about it for the Denver Tribune:

The Utes are actual, practical Communists and the government should be ashamed to foster and encourage them in their idleness and wanton waste of property. Living off the bounty of a paternal but idiotic Indian Bureau, they actually become too lazy to draw their rations in the regular way but insist on taking what they want whenever they find it. Removed to Indian Territory, the Utes could be fed and clothed for about one half what it now costs the government.

Honorable N.C. Meeker, the well-known Superintendent of the White River agency, was formerly a fast friend and ardent admirer of the Indians. He went to the agency in the firm belief that he could manage the Indians successfully by kind treatment, patient precept and good example. But utter failure marked his efforts and at last he reluctantly accepted the truth of the border truism that the only truly good Indians are dead ones.

Vickers wrote considerably more, and his article was reprinted across Colorado under the title "The Utes Must Go!" By late summer of 1879, most of the white orators who abounded in frontier Colorado were uttering the applause-producing cry The Utes Must Go! whenever they were called upon to speak in public places.

-- From Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee

http://floweringmind.stumbleupon.com/review/32499683/

Sat, 02 May 2009 09:21:09 -0700

If anyone knows where I might get some Bulgarian embroidery patterns for men's shirts I would be greatly indebted to you as I wish to make my own shirt.

http://floweringmind.stumbleupon.com/review/31943051/

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 23:24:25 -0700

Human society has passed through two huge and lasting changes which deserve the name revolution. The first, the Neolithic Revolution, begins in 8000 BC and continues through thousands of years. Its effect is to settle people on the land. It makes peasant agriculture the standard everyday activity of the human species.

The second, the Industrial Revolution, gathers pace in the 18th century and is still developing today. It moves people from the countryside into rapidly expanding towns. It turns labour into a disciplined and mainly indoor activity, with an increasing distinction between owners, employers and managers on one side and workers on the other.

Elements characteristic of industrial society can be seen in isolated examples long before the 18th century. In 1378 the workers in Florence's cloth trade win temporary advantages through standing together in what would now be called industrial action. A knitting machine invented in England in 1589 is so far ahead of its time that it can play a profitable role in factories two and three centuries later. And the development of cloth mills in the late Middle Ages foreshadows the search for new sources of power in the Industrial Revolution.

Nevertheless there is one place and one time - England in the 18th century - in which these threads coalesce into a process of undeniable change.

Industrialization brings preliminary evils of exploitation, pollution and urban squalor, together with longer-term benefits in a general rise of living standards.

There are certain clear reasons why this process occurs first in 18th-century Britain. But once the pattern is established, and cheap manufactured goods begin to prevail in world markets, other regions become eager to follow suit when their own circumstances make it possible to do so. Just as the habit of settling and farming gradually permeated all regions of the world, so now - and much more rapidly - does an international tendency to crowd into cities and produce cheap manufactured goods.

View the entire article here

http://floweringmind.stumbleupon.com/review/31942634/

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 23:03:16 -0700

Peg and Awl

In the days of eighteen and one, peg and awl
In the days of eighteen and one, peg and awl
In the days of eighteen and one
peggin' shoes was all I done
Hand me down my pegs, my awl, my peg and awl

In the days of eighteen and two, peg and awl,... (x2)
In the days of eighteen and two
peggin' shoes is all I'd do
Hand me down my pegs, my awl, my peg and awl

In the days of eighteen and three, peg and awl,... (x2)
In the days of eighteen and three
new machine it set me free
Throw away my pegs, my awl, my peg and awl

They've invented a new machine, peg and awl,... (x2)
They've invented a new machine
prettiest little thing you've ever seen
Throw away my pegs, my awl, my peg and awl

In the days of eighteen and four, peg and awl,... (x2)
In the days of eighteen and four
peggin' shoes I'll do no more
Throw away my pegs, my awl, my peg and awl

Makes one hundred compared to my one, peg and awl,... (x2)
Makes one hundred compared to my one
peggin' shoes it ain't no fun
Throw away my pegs, my awl, my peg and awl