Sadko In The Underwater Kingdom

I am a big fan of Symbolist Art. This painting of "Sadko in The Underwater Kingdom" (1876) is by Russian artist, Ilya Yefimovich Repin. It predates the Symbolist-era but is categorized under that style.

The Book Surgeon

This is seriously one of the coolest things I've ever seen. Art made from old books carved with surgical scalpels... Click HERE to see 15 full-size images

The Divinity Of Wonderful Things

"In the Perfect, would familiarity ever destroy wonder at things essentially wonderful because essentially divine? To cease to wonder is to fall plumb-down from the childlike to the commonplace -- the most undivine of all moods intellectual. Our nature can never be at home among things that are not wonderful to us."

~George MacDonald, The Hope of the Gospel

Amazing Yoga Demonstration!

Quotes For The Day

"Once a man has set his foot upon that path to power, little will stop him save his own death. He will always strive to be the greatest, and he lives in constant fear that somewhere another is greater than he and will topple him. And of course this will happen, because everything that has a beginning has an ending."

~ Heaven's Net Is Wide, (Tales of the Otori), Lian Hearn

"God, devil, and the world all wish to enter me; Of what great lineage my noble heart must be."
~ Angelus Silesius

"One time I was so drunk I gave someone a back adjustment. I'm not a chiropractor -- you have to go to a weekend of school for that!"
~ Doctor at AA meeting on Family Guy

‎"I'm a vampire and I'm in love with this unattractive girl. Grrr! I'm a werewolf and I am also in love with this unattractive girl. Boy, she sure can act, though, can't she? Nope."

~ Chris, playing with Twilight puppets, on Family Guy

The Tanuki Song

Today I learned about the Japanese animal called a Tanuki, or "Raccoon Dog." It is famous for the disproportionately large size of its, ahem... testicles. I also learned that there is a schoolyard song that jokes about the Tanuki's testicles: "There isn't even any wind but they still go swing-swing-swing." But even better still, Japanese children sing this song to the melody of the American Baptist hymn, "Shall We Gather At The River." No joke.

Human Skull And Mastodon Bones Found In Flooded Mexican Cave

A fascinating story with hauntingly beautiful photography from National Geographic about cave divers in Mexico who found what are quite possibly the oldest human remains ever found in the Americas -- probably pre-Mayan as they were found alongside the bones of mastadons and other Pleistocene megafauna...
Click HERE To Read The Article and See The Photos

‎"A single speck of dust in the eye

can make the three worlds look very narrow --

liberate your mind and life

without obstruction!"

~ Neko No Myojutsu (The Marvelous Techniques of the Old Cat)

How To Make Money On Rising Oil Prices

Whenever a topic interests me and I have some spare time, I like to write about it, then post it as an article on Associated Content. Here is a piece I wrote last night about how to profit from rising oil prices. If you invest in stocks, you know that many companies' share prices have fallen the past couple of days as oil prices skyrocket. Although it is true that many businesses are hurt by rising commodity prices, you also know that someone has to be making money off this situation. Click the following link, if you would like to know how you too can reap some of the profits... How To make Money On Rising Oil Prices

Is $200 Oil Coming Soon?

Yes, $200 oil (which would be $5 or $6 a gallon for gas) is a very real possibility and very soon, if protests in Africa and the Middle East spread to major oil producers like Saudi Arabia...

Click HERE To Read More

States With No Collective Bargaining Have Lowest Test Scores

Libertarians and Republicans always say that if only we could get rid of teacher's unions, our children's education would improve drastically. Well here are the facts: Only five states do not have collective bargaining for educators and have deemed it illegal. Those states ACT/SAT rankings are as follows:

South Carolina – 50th
North Carolina – 49th
Georgia – 48th
Texas – 47th
Virginia – 44th

If you are wondering, Wisconsin, where the Governor plans to end collective bargaining, is ranked 2nd in the country.
Click Here To Read The Original Story

Indiana Official: "Use Live Ammunition" Against Wisconsin Protesters

Apparently, Libya is not the only country with blood thirsty tyrants who want to slaughter their own citizens and threaten political dissent and free speech with "rivers of blood." One only has to look to Jeff Cox, a deputy attorney general for the state of Indiana, who tweeted on Saturday night that American citizens protesting Governor Walker's union-busting bill in Wisconsin, should be removed from the capitol building with "live ammunition" and  "deadly force."

Click HERE to read the whole story on Mother Jones

I clicked the link for his blog, "Pro-Cynic," but Blogger says the site has "been removed."

Eerie Otherworldly Music Emanating From Jupiter

Being a big fan of dark ambient music, like that of Steve Roach and Robert Rich, I am fascinated by these eerie, otherworldly sounds that emanate from Jupiter. NASA used special instruments on board the Voyager spacecraft to record these electromagnetic interactions between the Solar Wind and the magnetosphere of Jupiter, which creates "soundscapes" of frequencies, rippling through the plasma energy "ocean" that fills the void of space. They have made similar recordings with several of the outer planets, but Jupiter, by far, sounds the best, in my opinion. Enjoy!

My Birthday Dance - 2011

Yesterday was my birthday and last night I was treated to my second Swing Dance Birthday Jam at Hot Jam in Atlanta, GA! Feb 21, 2011 - Unfortunately, my camera malfunctioned just as the third girl joined me, so after that I only got a couple of clips, but luckily they both happened during nice moves. Enjoy!

I Need To Remind Myself Of This Every Day!

Every day, as the economy worsens, job prospects dry up, chaos erupts in North Africa and the Middle East, and commodity prices skyrocket, I need to remind myself of this simple philosophy from the Bhagavad Gita...


"Desire for the fruits of one's actions brings worry about possible failure -- the quivering mind I mentioned. When you are preoccupied with end results you pull yourself from the present into an imagined, usually fearful future. Then your anxiety robs your energy and, making matters worse, you lapse into inaction and laziness. One does not accomplish great ends in some by-and-by future, O Warrior. Only in the present can you hammer out real achievement. The worried mind tends to veer from the only real goal -- realizing the Atma, uniting with Divinity, the True Self Within."


~ The Bhagavad Gita: A Walkthrough For Westerners by Jack Hawley (2:47)

Humans and Dolphins Work Together To Develop A New Shared Language

Major implications for linguistics, animal rights, and the search for alien life...


"Thankfully, the flow of information among SETI scientists and marine biologists is two-way. Information theorists like Laurence Doyle has used techniques for signal-searching developed with SETI to determine that whales and dolphins use grammar and syntax in their communication."

<Click HERE to read the CBS News article>

Ginger Rogers: Solo Charleston Scene

The Nordic Model -- Halfway between American and European Capitalism

An interesting set of ideas about how Capitalism should work. I copied and pasted this from a discussion board because the original FT article requires registration to view. The model of capitalism practised in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland is seen by some as one of the few winners of the current economic and financial crisis. From its response to a previous banking crisis to its promotion of women in the boardroom, the Nordic model is piquing interest around the world in the same way as the Japanese style of capitalism did in the 1980s or the Germans’ in the 1960s. Just as those systems faced challenges after their time in the limelight, so does the Nordic model. There are doubts, too, about how easy it would be to export it to other parts of the world. But the recent appointment of Ericsson’s Carl-Henric Svanberg as chairman of BP, joining two other Nordic heads of big UK companies, demonstrates the growing respect for Nordic capitalism and its leaders." Debate abounds as to what exactly the Nordic model stands for. But Mr Ollila points to the analysis of a group of academics from across the region who wrote a book called The Nordic Model. They argue that an openness to globalisation combined with strong social protection and egalitarianism defines the region’s capitalism. Francis Sejersted, a Norwegian historian and former chair of the country’s Nobel prize committee, talks about “democratic capitalism”, meaning a high degree of equality and participation in political and corporate decision-making. But Nordic countries are also well aware of the negative side of globalisation and take measures to alleviate that. Mr Kreutzer refers to “the personal safety net”, explaining: “There is a need to carry individuals who are hurt by things that are good for companies or society.” He points to workers in the paper and pulp sectors who saw their factories closed but were able to transfer to newer technologies. Underlying this is a deep sense of egalitarianism, especially in the education system. Mr Ollila points to the absence of social class as a factor, unlike in the UK and elsewhere: “Everybody can get a good education no matter what your background is. It is not who you are but what you can contribute.” It also extends to the boardroom, where Norway – thanks to a law that fixes a quota for women – has the highest level of female directorships in the world, with Sweden, Finland and Denmark all scoring relatively well too. But this deeply held egalitarianism also makes the Nordic model difficult to export. Mr Alahuhta explains how hard it was in places such as the UK, in which Kone expanded in the 1990s, to persuade employees to embrace the non-hierarchical ways of Nordic companies. “Egalitarianism is very important to us. This culture is the glue that holds Kone together,” he says. Executive pay reflects the same tendency. Many Nordic companies pay senior executives well below the international average, out of concern that the wage gap between the highest and lowest earners does not grow too large. Anne Breiby, a non-executive director of several Norwegian companies, says: “In most Nordic countries there are small wage gaps. People go to the same schools. There are no real class distinctions.” Swedish managers – the best paid in the region – earn just one-third of what their German counterparts receive while Norwegian executives, who receive the lowest salaries, typically earn just NKr3m ($480,000, £290,000, €340,000) to NKr4m, according to consultants. The lack of hierarchy in companies extends right to the top. Mr Kreutzer explains how his workers “just pop up and knock on my door”. He carries on: “They feel responsible for the company. And I want to put myself in situations where I receive the unpolished truth.” Worker participation in the strategy of companies is an important factor. Employees sit on the boards of many Nordic companies thanks to a heavy trade union presence. But executives say the relationship has matured in recent years, allowing companies to make big restructurings with the co-operation of workers. Jorgen Buhl Rasmussen, chief executive of Carlsberg, the Danish brewer, says: “I think there’s a better understanding on both sides today: it’s less about conflict. It’s quite easy to add people in good times but also to adjust downwards in tougher times.” If demand were down 30 per cent at a company, executives and employees would discuss whether to cut the same percentage of jobs or make 60 per cent work half-time, says Ms Breiby by way of example. She adds: “There are really grown-up discussions between management and workers. They solve the problem together.” Pontus Braunerhjelm, economics professor at Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology, says the success of Nordic companies suggests their informal management style provides a competitive advantage. But as groups such as Nokia and Ericsson have expanded across the globe, not everyone has found the Nordic way to their liking. “People from other cultures sometimes find it a little imprecise in terms of who is taking responsibility, what is the order, what is the objective?” he says. Some critics question whether Nordic capitalism is quite as unique as its boosters claim and point out that the region has been retreating from some of the characteristics that set it apart. “Nordic businesses are not that different from those in other parts of Europe,” says Fredrick Erixon, director of the European Centre for International Political Economy, a free-market think-tank based in Stockholm and Brussels. “They are driven by the same forces as everywhere else.” Indeed, far from exporting their model to the rest of the world, some Nordic countries are trying to overhaul their economies and import elements of the Anglo-Saxon system. In Sweden, for example, a centre-right government has been in power since 2006 with a mandate to reduce the country’s tax burden – one of the highest in Europe – and make the labour market more flexible. The region has also historically relied on big companies and has been poor at generating smaller entrepreneurial businesses – a weakness in generating employment The generous social welfare net that underpins Nordic capitalism is meanwhile facing increasing pressure from an ageing population and the cultural homogeneity that makes the consensus-based system possible is being unsettled by increasing immigration. “There are certain weaknesses in the Nordic model and they are being ‘stress-tested’ by globalisation,” says Prof Braunerhjelm. Economic data show that Nordic countries have so far fared little better, and in some cases worse, than the US and UK during the current downturn. Nordic manufacturers have cut jobs as aggressively as rivals elsewhere, driving unemployment to more than 9 per cent in Sweden and Finland. Economists forecast that Sweden’s economy will have contracted by 6 per cent from a year earlier when the country releases second-quarter data on Friday, similar to the 5.6 per cent drop revealed for the UK last week. But while the region has not been insulated from the crisis, Nordic countries have a record of bouncing back strongly from economic turmoil. Sweden has been held up as a role model for its successful response to a regional financial crisis in the early 1990s, with a mixture of enforced recapitalisations and nationalisation. That success has been undermined somewhat by a fresh barrage of bad loans facing Swedish banks that lent heavily to the troubled Baltic countries. But Mr Ollila says there are still lessons from how Nordic countries tackled their 1990s crisis. Politicians did not resort to protectionism and took bold decisions: Sweden and Finland applied for European Union membership in the middle of that downturn. Mr Ollila says he hopes policymakers today will also take the unselfish approach: “It would be very much on my wish-list for Europe. You don’t look at how good you are yourself but you look at the world as a whole.” This open approach may have much to commend it in the current crisis. But while it may be interesting for foreigners such as the US banker to look at the Nordic model, it appears difficult to emulate it. One leading Nordic businessman says the region’s capitalism is not exportable as it is so rooted in the traditions of all the countries: “You are talking about small, egalitarian countries with good education systems. That hardly applies anywhere else in the world. So you can admire it but replicating it is very tricky.”" *** A final note from the original poster... Charts shows Nordic equities outperforming world equities and recession chart shows less severity for some (Norway at approximtely -1.75 and Denmark at about -3.75, forecast GDP annual % change; Sweden and Finland at about -5, compared to US -3, Eurzone -4.25 and Japan down more than -6.) Estimates from eyeballing the chart.

A New Uprising Against The Corporate Oligarchy?

An nice editorial by Miles Mogulescu on this week's labor protests in Wisconsin...

"Remember that one of Ronald Reagan's first acts as President was to break the air traffic controllers union. It was one of the first shots across the bow in a 30-year long war by America's corporate oligarchy to transfer wealth from the working and middle classes to the rich and to deregulate the economy in order to increase the wealth and power of the corporate and financial elite."


"The progressive movement, such as there is one, has been directed primarily at electing Democrats who too often disappoint it by deregulating financial markets and passing "free" trade bills that reduce American jobs (Clinton) or appointing the same Wall Street friendly economic advisors who helped create the Great Recession and cutting deals with corporate special interests to pass inadequate health care and financial reforms (Obama)."

Click HERE To Read The Entire Editorial

This is what I'm doing tonight...

Salsambo presents Latin Night at Atlanta's Fernbank Museum of Natural History tonight -- hot Salsa dancing beneath the dinosaurs! You can view the Facebook event page HERE.

I am a pretty good Swing Dancer/ Lindy Hopper, but I know next to nothing about Salsa. Hopefully by the end of the night, I will look something like this :)

Protests Come To America Finally!

With everything that has happened to the economy over the past two years, I've been wondering how long it would be before Americans finally get angry about their lost jobs, lost homes, lost healthcare, lost savings, and lost futures. Especially now, as many in Congress and the state legislatures want to make the pain worse with budget cuts that hurt the poor and unemployed the most. In Wisconsin, the Governor (who recently cut taxes on big corporations) has introduced a bill to strip state employees, including teachers, of collective bargaining rights, slash their pay, and raise their health care premiums. Well in this state at least, workers, perhaps taking a cue from the recent government-toppling pro-democracy protests in Egypt have risen up to let their anger be heard. On Thursday, in an attempt to torpedo the legislation, all the Democratic Senators fled the state to Illinois, denying the Governor a quorum necessary for the vote to take place. Republicans threatened to have police bring them back, but the police have expressed solidarity with the workers and can not cross state lines anyway. Meanwhile, 25,000 protesters chanted slogans outside the state capitol yesterday amid reports that the governor has put the national guard on alert in the event the protests become violent. And today, another sign of growing unrest among Americans -- the protests and teacher sick-ins are spreading to surrounding states.

“I’m still looking for this privileged class of workers. This is just part of a national attack on working people.” ~ Joe Rugola, Executive director of the Ohio Association of Public School Employees, representing bus drivers and janitors who earn about $24,000 a year.
Rise up America! Rise Up!

Click HERE To Read More...

Ancient Britons ate their dead, made skulls into cups

Ancient Britons devoured their dead and created gruesome goblets from the skulls of their remains, according to new research published on Wednesday.
Click HERE To Read More

List of Borders Stores That Are Closing

It's a sad day for book lovers everywhere as major retailer, Borders, announces it is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and that they will be closing nearly 200, or one third of their stores. Is your favorite store on the list? Click here to find out...
http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/st_borders0216_20110216.html
(The list can be arranged by state or other criteria as well, by clicking the headers at the top)

Max, Annie, and Thomas Improv Steal Dance

Stealing someone else's partner during a jam dance is a time-honored tradition in Lindy Hop. Well here are three of the best, showing how it's done. The music is "I's A Muggin'" by Stuff Smith and his Onyx Boys...

Happiest Song On The Planet

I love this song! Burning Spear's Step It...

LIndy Hop in Argentina -- LHAIF 2011

Lindy Hop, Argentina-style. A great little Jack & Jill video from LHAIF 2011...

Stunning Earth Music Video

This is magnificent and fills your heart with love for our beautiful planet and all of it's life. Jah Rastafari!

Re-Imaging The Past

This is really cool --- Kudos to the photographer Irina Werning, who came up with this idea! She took old photos of people as children and then got those same people to pose again in the exact same places, same outfits, same expressions, but years later. Take a look:  CLICK HERE

Hilarious! The 6 Crappiest Interview Questions

From The Oatmeal. This is hilarious! The Oatmeal is probably the funniest thing on the internet. "My future is as bright as a pair of albino buttocks bathed in sunlight." LOL!
Click Here To Go To The Oatmeal

Lindy Hop Burlesque

You've never seen Lindy Hop this SEXY and HOT! Cover the children's eyes! I give you Swingtease...

"Alien" Voynich Manuscript's Secret Revealed

Not written in any known language, unbreakable by all code machines, and filled with inexplicably strange drawings, The Voynich Manuscript has at least given up one of it's many secrets now...

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/02/11/history-mystery-scientists-age-voynich-manuscript/

We Are All Connected

When one species goes extinct, many others are affected as well. The circle of life is unbroken, we are all connected...

BBC: Scientists in New Zealand say they have linked the modern-day decline of a common forest shrub with the local extinction of two pollinating birds over a century ago.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12347073