by H.D.
O WIND, rend open the heat,
Cut apart the heat,
Rend it to tatters.Fruit cannot drop
Through this thick air–
Fruit cannot fall into heat
That presses up and blunts
The points of pears
And rounds the grapes.Cut the heat–
Plough through it,
Turning it on either side
Of your path.
Stephen Colbert offers some brilliant word smithing on the Rupert Murdoch privacy scandal. He cites a former editor of Murdoch’s News of the World, Paul McMullan:
I’ve always said that I’ve just tried to write articles in a truthful way and, you know, what better source of getting the truth is to listen to someone’s messages.
Then Colbert follows the advice and offers exclusive access to Rupert Murdock’s messages.
This thing’s got out of control! I’m Australian for F@#$ed!
Friedrich Nietzsche will be showing up in two presentations at DEFCON this year. Last month I offered a translation of his Aphorism 146 from Jenseits von Gut und Böse (1886):
He who fights with monsters must see to it that he does not thereby become a monster. And if you look for long into an abyss the abyss also looks into you.
Not everyone agrees on the translation, obviously. Here are the talk titles.
The philosopher argued that it takes courage and strength to live authentically, to find a path to follow of ones own choosing rather than follow the groups and organizations that offer an “escape”.
He exaggerated his case to make a point but it still seems to have survived. Will be interesting to see if the presenters try to reconcile his harsh critiques of patriotism and regulation, or even his critique of the environment in which they are presenting.
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.