Voice of America (VOA)

I was surprised at the quality of radio and TV broadcasts developed by Voice of America. All the news networks I have listened to, push sensationalism, biases, political and corporate agendas rather than report the news.

Typically CBC radio or PBS was my best choice for news. So when I ventured into the Voice of America I was expecting Fox Network like propaganda.

I have been listening to VOA for a few days now and to my delight it presents both sides of each issue in a thoughtful, in-depth and intelligent manner.

VOA goes way beyond the repetitive rhetoric of CNN, Fox and other typical networks. I found my own biases being challenged as I listened two gentlemen talk about the Popes recent comments on Islam. I heard two sides of a story and not two people bashing one another. It was a constructive and thoughtful dialogue about important issues.

http://www.voanews.com/english/webcasts.cfm

Okay Blog...

Blog… The roots of homepages, web logs and listings can be dated back to 1992.

The first use of the term weblog was presented in a topic named, “Exploiting the World-Wide Web for Electronic Meeting Document Analysis and Management” at a conference in Australia in August 1995.

In 1996 online journal diaries were measured in the hundreds.

In early 1999 Peter Merholz shortens the term “weblog” to blog.

In August 1999, Pyra Labs, today owned by Google, launches the free Blogger service.

Over a very short period of time blogs spread worldwide over the Internet.

In January 2005 Larry Keiler of Lunchbucket, Ontario, Canada begins his first blog. Larry descriped himself as a “Underemployed Pote” he decribed himself as follows

“I am the altered ego of He-Who-Shall-Remain-Nameless, currently serving a seven year term at the Yoni School for Wayward Poets. I was charged and convicted of phelonious misspelling and operating without a poetic license. am the altered ego of He-Who-Shall-Remain-Nameless, currently serving a seven year term at the Yoni School for Wayward Poets. I was charged and convicted of phelonious misspelling and operating without a poetic license.”

His first blog he wrote:

"First things first
First -- figure out what the hell I'm doing with this thing......"

Have you figured it out yet Larry?

As of 2005 there is 50 million online journal blogs.

http://www.blogherald.com/2005/03/06/a-short-history-of-blogging/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog#2001_.E2.80.93_2004

Larry’s first Blog...Feel free to look back and comment...

http://vajrasattva1.blogspot.com/2005_01_01_vajrasattva1_archive.html

Shakin' (BOB)

Agent 488 – Carl Jung

Carl Jung was an agent for US intelligence outfit called the OSS (Office of Strategic Services). He formally became an agent in 1943 but his war efforts had begun earlier. His first contact with the OSS was through his patient Mary Bancroft. Mary worked for Allan Dulles who was the OSS chief in Switzerland. Dulles later became the first Director of the CIA.

Dulles sent communiqués to Washington based on Jung’s assessment of Nazi leadership. In return Jung became privy to top-secret Allied intelligence.

Currently I am attempting to write a screenplay surrounding those events. My previous screenplay was based on Sandcastle Memories, which has an association with Jung, as he was interested in sand play. If anyone has information or links that I should research please send them my way.

Shakin’ (Bob)

ALIVE

i find a feather
smaller than my hand
silvery gray
soft smooth
wonderously thin
light

i don’t know
what kind of bird
lost it
this feather
preened it out or
lost it flying

i think about that bird
somewhere alive


i stand by a tree
an old tree
green
rugged rough
composed of three trunks

halfway near the bottom
the surface split
under the bark the hole
gathered dusty matter
from it sprung
two puffy bold
golden tan mushrooms

the tree is alive


the sun is
sinking under the horizon
over rooftops and trees
the firy sky blushes red and
orange
bathing my surroundings in
rosy light

day is dying transforming into
night
the sun is alive


last night
the moon was full
a low reddish moon
lit up my world
i could see its face almost touch it

i felt the moon inside me
i felt alive

POEM OR NON POEM ?

I think I am a poet. A poet is supposed to write poems. Poems come to you. When you are not doing anything. Between waking and sleeping. They already sing. They only need some shaping up to modify them to literary rule. Non poets want rules, initially. But then they shrug, "A am not a poet", they say. And forgive you your poetic license.

When poems don't come, where are they? I can't find any, right now. Forcing poems don't work for me. They don't sing. You may as well call them prose. Line breaks or not. Now writing proze is OK. You don't need to be a stick in the mud. Nothing wrong with stories. Although it helps if they too have music in them. They read so much better. Some prose reads/sounds like poetry. Maybe stories was the wrong word to use. Poems are stories too.

Labouring over a poem never works for me. There's got to be spontaneity. The more you work on it, the denser it gets. I prefer poems that dance like butterflies in the sun. Are all my poems like that? Of course not! My butterfly soul has the capacity to sink like a millstone.

Maybe life doesn't work without poetry. Maybe poetry and magic are interchangeable words. Dream words. Is life easier with poetry in it? Is it easy to maintain the magic? Is it easy to explain/maintain dreams? The word maintain doesn't even belong.

There are poems. There are non poems. Poetry lives.

I am outside story. I am outside poem. Today I am a non poem. Waiting for poetry. Waiting for magic. Want to dream.

wild thing feeling tame.

Brain Sculpting: Optimism & Pessimism

By Whats Shakin'

In his book, Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman, Ph.D., tells of the potential loss of important neuronal connections:

"The human brain is by no means fully formed at birth . . . Children are born with many more neurons than their mature brains retain; through a process called "pruning" the brain actually loses the neuronal connections that are less used, and forms strong connections in those synaptic circuits that have been utilized the most . . . This process is constant and quick; synaptic connections can form in a matter of hours or days. Experience, particularly in childhood, sculpts the brain."

I started hearing a murmur about brain wiring in the mid 1990’s. There are numerous examples equating the workings of the brain to electricity from the late 1800’s onward. This equation has multiplied with the development of the Internet. But that is for another Blog someday.

What interests me is that use is the determining factor in brain growth. We may sculpt our bodies through exercise so it should not come to any surprise that we may sculpt our minds by applying our attention to various interests. The mind is influenced by the stimuli in the world around it. The so-called wiring responds to stimulus by becoming stronger in particular portions of the brain that are influenced by that stimulus. For example, there are separate areas in the brain for optimistic and pessimistic emotions.

I don’t have any particular bias about either optimism or pessimism. If I have any bias it is for balance. A certain amount of pessimism is healthy unless the result is the loss of hope. Personally I find optimism more pleasing, too much so in the sense of the three monkeys. There is a middle way between seeing no evil and seeing no hope.