"In the struggle between yourself and the world second the world."
"It is often safer to be in chains than to be free."
"Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable."
"Beyond a certain point there is no return. This point has to be reached."
"Altogether, I think we ought to read only books that bite and sting us. If the book does not shake us awake like a blow to the skull, why bother reading it in the first place? So that it can make us happy, as you put it? Good God, we'd be just as happy if we had no books at all; books that make us happy we could, in a pinch, also write ourselves. What we need are books that hit us like a most painful misfortune, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we had been banished to the woods, far from any human presence, like a suicide. A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us. That is what I believe.”
All by Kafka.
“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there. It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawn and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.”
"Time weighs down on you like an old, ambiguous dream. You keep moving, trying to slip through it. But even if you go to the ends of the earth, you won't be able to escape it. Still, you have to go there -- to the edge of the world. There's something you can't do unless you get there."
-Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami
Above, as Gandalf. niccageaseveryone.blogspot.com: a blog "founded on the belief that everything in life would be better with a little more Nic Cage, the most unique and versatile actor of his generation." (image in this post p-shopped by Colin Bridgeman, blog via George Ruiz)
Virgin America (the airline on which you can watch Boing Boing Video on a dedicated in-flight TV channel) tomorrow launches "Operation Chihuahua." Mr. Maximus, shown here, is one of the spokesdogs. "With the massive overpopulation of Chihuahuas in California we have partnered with the SF ACC, ASPCA and SFO to fly some needy pups to loving new adoptive homes on the East Coast," says a human at the airline. Moar info, and full-size pic.
calm
Last month I met a musician named Chuck Wild (formerly of Missing Persons). He currently makes ultrachill ambient music via his company Liquid Mind. He calls it "musical healthcare" designed to induce sleep, reduce anxiety, etc. We talked a bit about the New Age vibe that accompanies a lot of the genre, and I asked if there was any hard data to back up various health claims. Chuck mentioned that there's actually been a resurgence in empirical studies on the evidence-based positive effects of music therapy.I did a little research, and it turns out this is indeed the case. The item that was most intriguing for me personally came out last month. German researchers Hidehiko Okamoto, Henning Stracke, Christo Pantev and Wolfgang Stoll reported that altering commercially available music improved the symptoms of tinnitus. That's good news for any of us who might have spent a little too much time wearing headphones or hanging out in loud clubs or sitting next to computers with loud fans. They found that test subjects who listened to music "notched" to dial out frequencies in the range of their tinnitus often had improvement after a year, compared to a control group. They believe tinnitus may be a refactoring of the auditory cortex due in part to lateral inhibition.
(via Video above: A venti-sized model of the Nexus One. "This version is available for $600,000, and you have to be a giant to use it." More at Search Engine Land.
More than the devil, there is a crying god in this.
 | An unusually long cooling of the Pacific Ocean lowered temperatures across North America—but it's not proof that global warming has slowed down, scientists say. |
 | On New Year's Day a mysterious disk eclipsed a bright star—and won't let up for 18 months. Now scientists think they've solved the centuries-old puzzle behind the phenomenon. |
This is the weather the dog likes: crisp, cold, weather that puts him in mind of wolfish ancestors hunting on the steppes.
Me, I put on long underwear and dozens of layers over that, and top it off with the sheepskin Uigur hat I haggled for in Xinjiang, and trudge in the snow behind him. It's frozen on top, so you crunch and rock and hunt for ruts that already exist as you walk, or you teeter-totter across the surface, half-falling at every second step. While Cabal is happy in a world filled with sharp smells and frozen rivers, and he bounces over the ice and snow with joy.
Many years ago I discovered (via the currently hiatus-bound Fabulist) Jason Webley. I posted this a link to this song, Eleven Saints, a song Jason Webley wrote and performed with Jay Thompson...
Jason was pleased, and wrote to me to say thanks, and then, a couple of years ago, introduced me in email to his friend Amanda Palmer, with whom he was working on a project, as they worked to bring the music of two conjoined twin sisters they had discovered on the internet to the world. There were two songs out on the internet by the mysterious pair for a long time, but a new song, " A Campaign of Shock and Awe", crept out today: you can hear it at http://www.myspace.com/evelynevelyn. Highly recommended, and not just because of the, y'know, family connections.
...
Right. I do not want to be disturbed tonight. Maddy and I will be beginning our New Year's catch-up by watching the first part of Doctor Who 'The End of Time'.
Just caught 
 | NASA's new Kepler space telescope has already spotted five new planets, each hotter than molten lava and one as dense as Styrofoam. |
 | Undersea carbon dioxide reservoirs could store massive amounts of the potent greenhouse gas near eastern U.S. cities—but may also pose an earthquake risk, a new study says. |
 | Built to rove for 90 days, Spirit has lasted six years on Mars. But now it's stuck and may lose power by May. Even standing still, though, Spirit can do a surprising amount of science, NASA says. Video. |
Gabe Delahaye says, "You've probably seen the Avatar makeup tutorial going around these days on YouTube. Well, we have created one for the FELLAS with comedian Joe Mande." It's super epic.
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