From the Common Dreams archive: The Food Crisis Is Over (If We Want It) by Raj Patel ..... Do read the comments also, especially the one by a George W. Bush Rho00100
Saturday, June 21, 2008
food gardens article and comments
Friday, June 20, 2008
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Autotypist great highlights
See this excellent post regarding conceptualism and nonceptualism: ..... Such discussions/debates are of interest to me although I am neither a nonceptualist nor a con- ceptualist. My poetics, insofar as I have one, is an It Poetics. That is, the work at hand is more important than any--when there is any-- preconceived notion about it. I do mildly participate in comment streams on these topics. I favor taking neither an against nor a for stance. ..... connects to my It Poetics post --u iz wuch u iz-- Rho00096
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
homocysteine methylcobalamin
Monday, June 16, 2008
EKnight LRJackson HNorse
Thursday, June 12, 2008
song lyrics
check out my new song lyrics over at Sprintedon Hollow. See About Me. Look for sw00918sl-So. Rho00093
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
may not be posting
for a while due to a massive project I began today--so sayeth the blogger into the shifting winds in an unkown vale - Rho00092
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Monday, June 9, 2008
less sugar and HFCS
Having doubts about my own situation, searches led me to these sites: fast food liver cirrhosis ..... too much sugar ..... Sugar has no nutritional value but is not totally without value. If your daily caloric intake is 2000 calories--which mine is not because it does not need to be, your daily sugar intake should be 200 calories (50 grams) at the most. High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is in nearly 80% of processed food. It is in my grape jam. It is in my 350- calorie nutrition drink. Various sites suggest substitutes such as Stevia or Sucanut. I'd never heard of Sucanut until today. It comes from sugar cane. In a sense it is sugar before the nutrients are refined out of it. Also, mention is made of copper and taurine deficiencies, and having liver enzyme levels checked. Fructose is metabolized in the liver. Visit the sites I've linked to, and related other sites. Try various searches using key words. Rho00090
Sunday, June 8, 2008
something dies something lives
In December of 2007 Peter Chamberlin posted "The planned collapse of America" ..... In it he mentions The Aquarian Conspiracy, a book authored by Marilyn Ferguson, a book I own a copy of. On page 99, down the margin is a long wavy line in green ink. Two paragraphs: On an individual level, we discover a self that does not compete. It is as curious as a child, delighted with testing its changing powers. And it is fiercely autonomous. It seeks self- knowledge, not gain, knowing it will never probe its own furthest reaches. As one recovered alcoholic put it, "The only person I need to be is myself. I can be really good at that. In fact, I can never fail if I am simply me and let you be you." Redefining the self defuses competi- tion. "The joy of this quest is not in triumph over others," Theodore Roszak said, "but in the search for the qualities we share with them and for our uniqueness, which raises us above all competition." On page 397 she writes: In new-paradigm relationships, the emphasis is not so much on sexuality as intimacy. Her book's subtitle is: Personal and Social Transformation in the 1980s. This might lead one to assume The Aquarian Conspiracy was a look back at that decade. It is not. The copyright, which is in her name, shows 1980. Published by L. P. Tarcher, Inc., Los Angeles, California, and simultaneously in Canada by Thomas Nelson & Sons Limited, Don Mills, Ontario, and Distributed by St. Martin's Press, New York, it is a forward- looking book of over 400 pages. The first sentence in the Introduction: In the early 1970s, while researching a book about the brain and consciousness, I was deeply impressed by scientific findings demonstrating human capacities well beyond our idea of "the norm." The beginning: Chapter 1 The Conspiracy After the final no there comes a yes And on that yes the future of the world depends. —Wallace Stevens A leaderless but powerful network is working to bring about radical change in the United States. Its members have broken with certain key elements of Western thought, and they may even have broken continuity with history. This network is the Aquarian Conspiracy. - - - - - - - - So from her book. Since then what? At this moment we are in the midst of a possible planet-encompassing economic disaster. At this moment we are also in the midst of accelerating beneficial changes. As much as I am interested in the future, I am not a predictor of it. I do, however, along with many, believe we must get beyond reliance on fossil fuels. We are, as Michio Kaku says, a Type 0 civilization striving to become a Type 1 civilization. For the survival of our species, it is imperative we succeed in realizing that transformation. It may be, due to a force incomprehensible to us, that transformation is inevitable. I cannot say. - - - Welcome to the World Future Society ..... Rho00089
Saturday, June 7, 2008
carbon nanotube study alert from
University of Edinburgh's Centre for Inflammation Research ..... Rho00088
Friday, June 6, 2008
Six William Everson Lectures
at the University of Wisconsin—Oshkosh
Since the images above the cover are difficult to read, these are the titles of the lectures: Whitman, Emerson, and the Frontier San Francisco and Kerouac I've Seen You a Thousand Times The Poet and His Words The Poet as Priest The Poet and His Poem: "In All These Acts" Everson was the English Department's 1971 Panorama of the Arts lecturer. He allowed us (me and Terry Smith) to tape his lectures and then edit them for publication. Doug Flaherty's Road Runner Press is the publisher. Copyright date is 1972 by RAR. The issue information is: Summer/Fall 1971---Vol. III, no. 2/3 Did a William Everson Road Apple Review search. Found two archives holding a copy of this RAR/ although at this date there may be only one. Once there were three. Apparently all copies are privately held. The two archives are: - William Everson Collection from the Library of Peter Bartlett ..... at 309. line 12 - ..... for Guide to Barry Gifford Papers at [Box 43] [Folder 4] Opening words from each lecture: - "I suppose if you are trying to find the archetypal American poet you'd have to begin with Emerson, because in his essay on the poet he hewed out the core of what the American poet is, in essence. Whitman embodies a phenomenal instance of conception and reali- zation, turning in a kind of one-two stroke. Conception took a long time to be articulated." - "Kerouac was a phenomenon that—I never met Kerouac, and the reason is that although I was in the area when he was there, I was in a deep monastic phase in a monastery and I hadn't yet begun to emerge. I went into the monastery during 1951 and just about pulled the walls in around me for seven years. It wasn't until 1957 with the Evergreen Review issue of the San Francisco renaissance that the whole thing sprang into the open and— after that I began to get requests to read and I began to go out of the monastery and back onto the platform again, but by that time Kerouac had already left." - "Well son-of-a-gun. Here we are. Relaxed. Well this morning we spoke of something of the East Coast scene, I mean the West Coast syndrome, ha-ha. We tried to pinpoint some of the broader aspects of what happened in San Francisco in the late fifties. To pick up now and try to re-focus our attention— I'm speaking of myself—ah, to me this is a kind of penultimate moment—it's the last time I'll appear on this campus before tomorrow night when I give the big bang, as it were, when the poet truly emerges into his own dimension." - "It's a terrible thing to be a poet, but it's a visionary thing. . . . We have lost that. You know, I think the whole approach to poetry ought to be done a different way: much more mystically, much more archetypally, in a much more visionary way. We think so much of tech- nique now, the perfection, the objectivizing of our forms. We think almost nothing of the inner state of being a poet, which is where all the difference lies." - "I find this subject the most difficult of the topics I've had to expatiate so far. I think because of its depth more than lack of any consonance. The whole concept of priest is so deep and archaic, so primitive, and yet so extremely complex. It's one of those subjects that's easy to think up, but very hard to meet. And the more deeply you've gone into it the more awed you are before the imponderable mystery that's contained in that concept. At the bottom the archetype of the priest is the sacrficer, one who offers sacrifice for the people. At the very bottom of it there's a victim, and a dismemberment, and a kind of reunion of dismembered parts in a transcendent action. Originally by burning. You see this is simply a rite of renewal, a periodic ritual in which the old has come to a term and is immolated so that the new can be born. And out of this flows the idea of the priest as father, the ritualizer through whom new life is inseminated and engendered. But the ma- terials are bloody and the new is consummated in burning." - "The idea is to get the poet's impression of what he's done. This poem was written thir- teen years ago at least, and it's a pretty far reach back for it. But a poem if it's a good poem, should take us back into itself as its own verification." * Dana Gioia's remembrance: In Memoriam: William Everson ..... Rho00087
Thursday, June 5, 2008
hectic day
Between John Latta, Stan Apps, Jasper Bernes, Linh Dinh, and Joseph Hutchison, and others, and closer-to-home situations, I have been swirling. Found what I surmise was a robin's nest this morning when I went out to place some mail to be picked up/ in my mail box. This complex doesn't have any outgoing mail boxes. When upon going out later to check for new mail/ I found that the carrier had not taken the letters I left in the box, anger/frustration/action used up the next two hours. The robin's nest? Between my/ two trips out/ it flew off. Rho00086
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
why this blog
For my own pleasure and learning mostly. Yet this is one record of what interests me/ anyone is welcome to read. I once thought blogging was a sure way for me to connect to hundreds of humans, but that notion passed shortly after I first established an online presence in 2000, though that presence was a regular web site, and then another. For two years in the early going I maintained a domain, and during that Ibnar time tried to become my own webring, building up to 6 Atriums (as I called them). Even tried to start a business, foolish me. My Gateway system came with a connection to AOL, and I did use Hometown in small ways, but as it turned out/ my major sites were Tripod and ThirdAge sites. Had an autobio stick figure site at Yahoo! and several times began sites in MSN. The failed BizLand site was more like a story poem than a business, and that I didn't complete, but I did save it offline/ and now it is online again in Sprintedon Hollow. At least I think that is where it is. Do I know where I am? Don't ask. After buying an HP Compaq XP IE6 system in 2006 when I'd already cut back to 3 Atriums, trouble (courtesy of IE6) forced me out of my two major sites. Once had six screen names. Two remain. Attempted to begin an AOL Journals blog, but IE6 didn't like that idea either. Approximately a year later an AOL tech woman talked me into trying again. So on November 3, 2006, I began what I then named Salchert's Weblog. A certain tenacity is required by anyone who decides to become an online citizen. Especially for someone as introverted as I am/ there is no popularity guarantee. Besides, due to two illnesses, I had to quit working and quit driving early in January of 2003. Only twice since then have I traveled alone: on planes from Gainesville, FL, to Milwakee, WI, and from Milwaukee back to Gainesville. So why this blog? Was told most poets have blogspot blogs. That was reason one. Reason two was my thinking that I could make this blog sufficiently unlike S H. Knew I would not place any of my poems or math investigations here. Difficult as it had been to post some of that work at AOL Journals, I was sure it would be impossible for me to post those same pieces here. Other reasons have surfaced since June 22, 2007, the date of my initial Rho post. In the spaces not dedicated to posts/ Blogger's program is more flexible. Also, since I decided to repost some of what was in Tripod and ThirdAge, by having a second blog/ I could put my Brian's Brain journal in Rho and my Edges of Knowledge journal in S H, both of which I was doing until my enthusiasm waned. Not sure when I'll get back to them. The only video I have posted is in this blog. Found the instructions provided by Google and YouTube, however, confusing to the point where I almost killed my welcome to YouTube. Before 2000, most of the computers I had any experience with were Hospitality Industry computers because I had been a night auditor at motels and hotels for over 25 years. Unless instructions are step-by-step clear, they are of no value to me. Stop. ~!@#$%^&*()_+ } Rho00085
Sunday, June 1, 2008
comments on my own comment
I frequently visit Poetry Foundation's Harriet, and late last night when I was there I felt a need to respond to Kenneth Goldsmith's "Charles Bernstein Recants" post. [ Have never figured out why I often find myself reading and/or composing when I ought to be in bed. ] Others had made brief comments; but I knew mine would be considerably longer, and that it would be difficult to write, not only because I was tired but also because my thoughts had not yet been consciously formed. As June began last year, I conceived the task of making three poems each day for that month--I made 85. My intent was to further explore styles which were not, as Ron Silliman has said, my "cup of tea" and (for the most part) I succeeded. My comment at Harriet shows as having been posted on June 1, 2008 12:05 AM. Made five minor fixes today. This is the repaired version: My thought chamber's been clocked askew over this. Isn't Charles Bernstein a poet of irony/parody/satire, a probable Alexamder Pope for our time? It may well be he was being on the horizontal at the symposium in Arizona, but for me/ only the photo of him here is an indication of that. If so, my feeling is--from what it is said he said-- he went too far. Saying that "the only real difference between the work of the post-avant and my neighbor across the hall at the university, Carl Dennis, is in the way it is received and written about. . . ." (thank you, Annie Finch) doesn't indicate a solid position one way or another. Given the number of poets now writing, each one with a personality at a different location on the personality scale at any one moment, and given that the same is true for those who read poems, chances are there are audiences for poems made from a myriad of aesthetic stances. Saying that "only poets working in solitude and individually can produce poems of enduring value" suffers from a similar vagueness. Even in a collaborative effort, each poet is working alone in her/his own solitude, such as it is; and there is no reason a collaborative effort can't produce an enduring poem. To mess with Gertrude Stein's "A rose is a rose is a rose" by changing it to: "Creativity is creativity is creativity." I honestly do not get into Stein's work, not yet anyway; but that doesn't make her work any less creative. - To mess with Elizabeth Barrett Browning by changing one word: "How do I love thee? Let me create the ways." Her famed sonnet is not made less thereby. From my perspective, there is room for as many ways of working with words as can be imagined. Each maker of poems finds her/his own comfort zone. What else can one do? Each maker of poems learns from other makers of poems and from anyone and any thing. I do agree that becoming too attached to one's own way of making is dangerous and ultimately pompous like a tyrant king or tyrant president. Backing away from such a self-important attitude is an honorable move, but ceasing to follow one's own lights is not. Perhaps Mr. Bernstein's lights have phased to a new color. If they have, then they have. I, like Whitman, like most humans, am likely to change my view of something at any moment. Positive inescapability. For years I mistakenly spelled Rilke's first name "Ranier" because I didn't pay close enough attention to what was entering my eyes, and because I liked the sound of it. ======= On thinking about it, it seems normal that those at the forefront of a movement would project nonconciliatory attitudes. After all, they firmly believe in their agendas. If they seem pompous, therefore, it may be they are or it may be their convictions just make it appear they are. Pound? I still am unable to tell Charles Bernstein's stand now, and I am not sure hearing him read his lengthy Recantorium poem would dispel my uncertainty. From reading a few of his poems, I doubt reading his work would be of use since I often have trouble catching the tone in a word passage. The GRE exam I took in 1984 had two tone questions. My answers? And what aesthetic am I advocating? See my It Poetics post. Rho00084
Friday, May 30, 2008
sensible review
This is neither a nod for nor against; it is simply a link to what to me is a sensible review of Tony Hoagland's latest volume of poems. ..... Rho00083
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
green city in Abu Dhabi
A $22 billion hopefully viable clean energy city is being built near the city of Abu Dhabi. Five links to articles on Masdar City: ..... Introduction - 5 pdf pages presenting details ..... - Arab Environment ..... - carbon neutral ..... - Technology Review printable article ..... constructing the future Rho00082
Monday, May 26, 2008
silver nanoparticles pro and con
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Friday, May 23, 2008
World Without Oil
At www.worldwithoutoil.org a grassroots effort to find ways to live as well as is possible in a world with less and less oil is underway. The organizers there are seeking ideas from anyone. Here is a link to their Manifesto in 10 parts ...... --------------------- Yesterday I read that this puffed-up USA nation uses 24% of the world's oil, and that is just the beginning of the story. See J. H. Kunstler article and comments beneath it in this blog. New reserves of oil are generally difficult to find, and extraction costly. The nations with the largest pools of oil have for some years been reorganizing their societies because they too are running out of oil. And nations that want more oil are hastening the end of oil. The prices of most commodities from steel to seeds have been rising and likely will con- tinue to rise, and unless researchers can find ways to make ethanol from sources other than food plants/ along with ways to make ethanol clean and less expensive, ethanol is not the answer. Some think hydrogen is the ultimate answer, but it too has not been researched sufficiently. Solar power could be maybe, if the cost of panels comes down enough. In any case, we humans need to help each other. There are many articles about oil, but read this experts one at Rigzone: ..... Peace - - - Love - - - Community Rho00078
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Kunstler-post-and-comments
Am providing this link not only for what is in the post but also for what is in the the first group of available comments. - "Far From Normal" ..... bubble, bubble, bubble, bubble - humanity's in a bleep of trouble . Rho00077
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
things found
Earlier today while searching for a something I never did find, I found three math papers I had written in March of 1966 while at The University of Iowa striving to complete my MFA. One is dated March 8, 1966 and the others March 5, 1966. What moved me to haunt the university's math library was a magazine article about a certain genius in Michigan. Think he was 12 at the time. Topics of the 3 papers were Fermat's Last Theorem (which I was certain could be proved geometrically), a way of calculating the 90 degree arc of a circle without using Pi (which upon inspecting today I think I messed up); and due to Cantor, several axioms on infinity. Also re-found my copy of Mouth of the Dragon: 6, a publication I have because a poem of mine is in it. I have its location marked by the by the cover of the Guild Guide 1973 USA & INTERNATIONAL. You can imagine, if you care to, why I kept that cover. It wasn't to bookmark where my poem is. In paging through MofD 6 I came upon six poems written by Jonathan Williams: "Plain, Unrefined", "Country Matters", "Newcastle", "Notting Hill", "Resolute" and "Gunsmoke". He has a sense of humor that just won't quit. Found some other items I needed to find, but now my bed is a jumble of junk. I am a strange concoction. Rho00076
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Postmodernism
No thoughts of mine here. "The political form of postmodernism, if there ever is any, will have as its vocation the invention and projection of a global cognitive mapping, on a social as well as a spacial scale." Fredric Jameson See Contemporary Philosophy, Critical Theory, and Postmodern Thought University of Colorado at Denver --- Martin Ryder for connections to selections from the works of 41 other philosphers. - In this art-oriented essay from 2000 by Christopher L. C. E. Whitcombe Part 4 provides simple definitions of modernism and two forms of postmodernism. - A project which apparently ended in May of 2006 with the issue 12 publication of Dear Habermas opens with a Welcome! message on a page which also has links to issues 11 and 12. I didn't go beyond the introductory page. - Wikipedia article on postmodern philosophy with numerous links. < ^ > Rho00075
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Aesthetics
On page 169 of The Mathematical Experience by Philip J. Davis and Reuben Hersh, the authors write: Aesthetic judgments tend to be personal, they tend to vary with cultures and with the generations, and philosophical dis- cussions of aesthetics have in recent years tended less toward the dogmatic prescription of what is beautiful than toward discussion of how aesthetic judg- ments operate and function. This book, which I am jaggedly reading, was published by Houghton Mifflin Company Boston and copyrighted in 1981 by Birkhäuser Boston. Back in the early 1960's, when he and I were Jesuit novices at a facility near St. Bonifacius, Minnesota, the late Lawrence Deysach told me: "Math is the greatest art." It may well be this is true; and if it is, it is because beauty can be more easily seen and affirmed in mathematics than in any other art, though music is a close second, or architecture is. Poetry? From my perspective, each poem's about its own aesthetic or interactions of aesthetics. A poem succeeds when it adheres to/radiates what is at the heart of it. So, the strength of its core does matter; but one could argue till time's demise about what constitutes aesthetic strength. Every poetic school is like every school of unlike fish, and what attracts one maker of poems may not attract some other maker of poems. No manner of using words is patently better than any other, but certain manners may be more appropriate for their culture. The culture we in The United States are passing through, and have in one form or another been passing through since this nation's founding? Slippery and slimy. But this is the land of the free, the home of the brave, the melting pot of the world. Exactly. Let the myriads of attention be: indeterminate, determinate; sign, signified; I erased, I raised. And to those who think it is really possible to obliterate ego and authorship, change your names to some number anonymous. When I was old enough to understand, I accepted I am Brian Salchert. That is my label. My passage on this planet requires it. I, however, do not require it for myself, however it may seem I do. I question it. Most of what I've written is old school stuff, one might conclude. Perhaps I'm a carp among rainbow trout; but old school or not, most of what I've written reveals a man at odds with himself. That is my indeterminacy. As to beauty, it seems to have lost whatever relevance. In an empire in decline, a planet inhabited by a sentient species in decline--oh, specific amazing discoveries might yet arise and reverse what is, a hard-edged purposefully ugly poetry could be a saving tonic for (rather than another symptom of) what ails. I make no judgment here. Nescio (I do not know) defines me well. Beauty--also truth--are concepts each human perceives differently at different times. On April 24, 2008 I posted the first entry of a math project I placed the final touch on today/ over at my S H blog. 13 entries. It needed to be, and I am satisfied it is, and how it is. Still, I did not abandon my other interests, and have searched my way to poetry posts helpful to me. One addresses procedural poetry, and another concerns the University of Arizona's Conceptual Poetry Symposium. Nathan Austin's A defense of (procedural) poetry is on his This Cruellest Month blog. The second is an enewsletter from the Poetry Center at the University of Arizona. Both of these-- and of course there are numerous others-- engage poetry aesthetics not to my taste, but of which I feel I should acquire more knowledge. Adrift in/ a drift adrift. Rho00074
Sunday, May 11, 2008
blind man bowls 300
This is a story for those who bowl or (like me) have ever bowled, and for anyone who enjoys pursuing a goal. The link to this story may change or disappear. This is also a story about love and friendship and learning. Dale Davis bowls perfect game. Rho00073
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
read my blogs if but
you are also welcome to use this blog and my journals.aol.com/thinkinglizard/sh/ blog as gateways to other web blogs. This one has links to more writers (mostly poets). Sprintedon Hollow has more links to other sites of interest such as NASA's Astronomy site, which is one I visit frequently. A site I find useful when I need to know the code for a special character is the HTML ASCII site www.lookuptables.com--see under E-Whip Oases here. Brian Salchert Rho00072
Monday, May 5, 2008
Ideology Note
However based in empathy and love, any ideology its adherents insist is superior, is the one which must be followed, and yet which promotes the extermination of those who prefer to believe otherwise, is not an ideology that will lead to a heaven or any other goodly place. It is, rather, an ideology which is itself already in a hell; and is, as such, a danger to humanity. Warning: Do not generalize what I have written. As you know, there are ideologies within ideol- ogies; and it is usually the least embracing of these which are the most dangerous. We humans being as we are: too tight, too loose, certain one moment, uncertain the next: it's not likely we will anytime soon attain a state of joyance with each other. Wish I had better news. Rho00071
Friday, May 2, 2008
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