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 19 Mar 2004 @ 17:40, by ming. Knowledge Management
So, I spent the day at BlogWalk 1.0 here in Enschede, The Netherlands. We didn't really walk and we didn't particular blog much along the way either. But we met at the Telematica Institute and did Open Space and various kinds of group discussions, also over several meals. Just 17 people or so, which gave a good opportunity for staying relatively focused and getting to know each other. Subject mainly being weblogs in knowledge management contexts, but also weblogs in general. So, looking at what functions weblogs might play in institutions and enterprises, and what might be the obstacles to make it happen, or the steps and positioning that might make it work. Obviously the people who are in charge in many organizations have no clue what weblogs are, or, if they do, might have a lot of fears and concerns about how dangerous it would be if people would actually rather freely talk publically about what they do, and even mix it in with their personal life and other interests. What if they reveal company secrets, or make the organization look bad, and that kind of thing. There are problems like that, of defining the lines between private and public, what should be shared and what not, but mostly it is just that people don't understand how it works, and don't realize that it could be a powerful tool for information sharing and relationship building. And in many cases as effective a knowledge management tool as anything else that is out there. There are fancy KM systems that often are not that easy to use, or that stuff can get lost in easily. Whereas a weblog is rather easy, and you don't have to worry very much about where exactly a certain item fits, and you can usually find old items very easily when you need them. And weblogs build up relationships and one's relations help filter information, and various self-organizing things go on that are useful. But is hard to explain the blogosphere to somebody who's totally not tuned into that kind of things, and haven't tried it, and particularly to managers who're afraid of losing control. And, despite that most of the hardcore bloggers can see quite well how it can be beneficial for various kinds of organizations, there seems to be a scarcity of good studies or success stories to show as evidence. Which is important both for the academics studying the phenomenon, and for anybody who tries to introduce a tool like weblogging into an organization.
Anyway, a very enjoyable event with great people. You can find some comments from some of the other guys at TopicExchange.
These BlogWalk events are loosely related to and lead up to the next BlogTalk, which is a bigger event held in Vienna, next July 5-6. And I should be making it there this year. More >
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 17 Mar 2004 @ 21:34, by koravya. Visual Arts, Graphics
All of these places are connected,
Giza, Stonehenge, Tikal, and Rapa Nui,
on a line which includes consideration
for the intersection between our equator and our ecliptic,
at this longitude which traverses the Atlantic,
which interestingly enough
approximates the mid-Atlantic ridge.
Harappa, Tonga, Rapa Nui, Cuzco, and Giza
are on the line of the ecliptic in this configuration.
-. *_.*^/_>.*/-*
For anyone who would care to interpret this configuration,
or comment in any way,
this log is open to discussion,
for at this point, this is all I know.
_//_ More >
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 17 Mar 2004 @ 05:55, by ming. Inventions
When I was a kid I was very interested in the future. One thing that was pretty obvious, other than flying cars and space stations, would be that by now we'd really not have to work, per se. It was sort of self-evident, even when I was ten. Of course, if we keep being able to do things better and better, more and more efficiently, more and more bang for the buck, more and more automation - then there would be less and less of an actual need for work. It is a simple calculation. The stuff we need could be produced by a smaller and smaller percentage of the population. Which would allow us to spend our time being creative and having a good time.
The reason that didn't happen might be in the same category as why a brand new 3GHz PC isn't any faster than a 4.77MHz IBM PC from 20 years ago. In principle it should be a thousand times faster, and it is, technically speaking. But it doesn't do anything more. It takes longer to start up Word on it than to start WordStar on that ancient relic. And there are many more things that can go wrong, and more one needs to learn in order to use it.
Maybe the reason is in the same category as why my household budget looks about the same, no matter how much or how little I make. There's not quite enough for what I need, and I tend to pay things late. If somebody came along and gave me $10,000 extra per month, I would at first feel rich, and pay all my bills, and put some aside. But gradually I would come to think I needed a bigger version of everything, and I'd invest in some things I wouldn't otherwise have. And pretty soon I would have used it up, and have more regular expenses, and I'd again be a little behind. While still living essentially the same way. You know, in a house, eating food, driving vehicles, wearing clothes, breathing air.
You can probably draw a nice systems diagram of how there are several self-reinforcing loops involved in these scenarios. If there's capacity to make more stuff or do more things, they will be done, and they will create new needs and new ideas about new things that need to be done. The PC of today would indeed run WordStar like lightning, but I'd be missing the graphics, and would quickly look around for other things it ought to do. Voids will be filled. And there's the influence from all the other folks who have some new gadget or feature. If my neighbor has 3D displays on his walls, I'll feel a little left out, even if I was doing great with a monochrome screen at some other point in time.
So, what would it take for progress to actually add up to progress, rather than to staying in the same spot with some slightly different gear?
I think the main limiting factor is not the envy of my neighbor's stuff, but the economics of production. It doesn't have to be that way, but with the way business is currently structured economically, it is quite natural. Economic rewards flow to those who keep the wheels churning, rather than necessarily to those who solve the biggest problems in the most efficient way. There's no economic incentive to constructing the machinery that would give everybody in the world food to eat every day, without them having to work. Even though it would be fairly easy and comparatively cheap to do. But it wouldn't turn a profit. People who aren't working don't make money to buy stuff, so they aren't good consumers. People who aren't working is a problem in the current scheme of things. Something that requires the financing of unemployement payments, which requires that the wheels are churning faster somewhere else, creating profits that can be diverted for that purpose. It is all pretty insane of course.
If you can formulate an economic scheme that clearly measures the actual costs of various approaches, and the value people perceive in them, and which which allows easy financing of the permanent solving of big problems, and gives little value to wasteful and unnecessary work - then it can all change rather quickly. No, I'm not talking about communism. Rather about a free market with a good enough flow of high quality of information, using a different kind of currency. A currency that is built on quality of life, and which doesn't have a built-in accelerating corrosion that encourages fake productivity for its own sake. Rather, a system the encourages the optimization and maximization of free time and creativity.
It is not too late. The future is yet to come. More >
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16 Mar 2004 @ 19:53, by jewel. Visual Arts, Graphics
My friend and associate Palden Jenkins in Glastonbury forwarded this to me:"Just in case you lost your way and need reminding, this is where you are!" More >
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16 Mar 2004 @ 16:15, by ming. Knowledge Management
These are just some lose thoughts while I'm thinking aloud.
One can learn a good deal just by plotting various kinds of qualities on different axes in a coordinate system and noticing what seems to end up in the different quadrants.
Now, one of the things I'm interested in is how to get myself and others the most useful information I need in the easiest and fastest way possible. That sounds kind of tame in itself, so let me skip ahead a little bit.
What I really would want is that I'm presented with exactly the most useful information I need at any given time, without any work on my part. Doesn't have to relate to computers particularly - I'd like that in life.
If I suddenly need a plumber, it would be nice if the first person who walked by my house, say within the next minute or so, would happen to be a plumber who could use some work. And, incidentally, he happened to be the most skilled and reliable guy, and cheap too.
OK, it wouldn't be much more trouble if I had to make a phone call and he showed up. But the trouble is the information. I need to know who the best person is, who has optimum pricing, who can be here quick. Maybe I already know the answer and it would be great. Maybe I know who to call quickly, and they would know the answer. All of that would work. But the yellow pages involves too much chance.
And that's a simple and routine problem. It is harder if I want to find somebody to go into business with, or I needed the answer to a unique and maybe complex question.
I might know the answer already. I might be good at guessing it. Or I might know people who're likely to know, and I can reach them quickly. Or I have the right book to look up in. Or I go and search in a search engine. Google has made me much smarter already. I can answer a lot of questions within a minute, simply by guessing at a couple of search words. But, again, if my need or my question is more complex and unique, it will not give me anything.
Nevertheless, I want ALL of it to be ordered suitably, just for me. All information in the world that I might possibly need. I don't necessarily care HOW it happens. Although, I do care if I need to help making it happen in some way. But at first I just care about the effect I want.
There's, for example, how ordered my information is...
OK, words can be used in various ways, and of course everything is ordered somehow. But I'm talking about what I might need. If I go into a library, the best kind of order would be that the two books I need happened to be standing right by the entrance, easy for me to see. A friendly sign saying "Flemming! Here are the books you're search for!" would help too. See, if doesn't at that point matter to me that the whole library uses the Dewey decimal system and alphabetical sorting. What matters is that I find what I want quickly. Or slowly if somehow I enjoyed that more. Anyway, we're talking about a somewhat subjective quality of orderedness. But we're talking about how to accommodate our subjective idea of what order something should be in, by some system in the real world, which probably is computerized. And it needs to do it even if I don't really know exactly what my preferred order is. I want it to be in the right order without me having to spend any significant time in finding out what that might be. Of course, if I do know, and I suddenly have a preferred order I can state, like "Give me all the books sorted by the colors of their backs", I'd want that too.
Actually, besides how ordered things are, we get into the issue of how much work it is to make it so. I could sort all of the books in the library in color order, if I took a few weeks and they didn't kick me out. Or some other mechanism might do it for me. Anyway, there's naturally a scale of...
which leaves out various dimensions, like who or what does the work, and does it need to be done in advance, or is it done at the time the need arises.
I suppose it is not a problem if something requires a lot of work, if either it has been convenient for somebody else to already do it before I need it, or some parallel supercomputer has put it together, and can present the results to me easily. But I prefer doing as little as possible. And I suppose we can say that it is generally better if things happen with ease and minimial trouble, as opposed to with great time and effort. And how that adds up is maybe more clear if I put it together in two dimensions like this:
OK, I'm really just brainstorming here. Nothing scientific about it, and we can argue about how to use the words and where various things will fit.
But you'll notice for example that some activities and some people involve a lot of effort for little result. It is sometimes how it is to be poor or having bad infrastructure. Walking 10 miles for a pot of water. Or how poor people in an otherwise rich society might do stupid things and waste the resources they have. Or how people just trying to survive in developing countries might make an ecological mess.
Then there's the situation that you apply massive power and resources for a rather small purpose, and it therefore can be extremely well organized and ordered. Say you're a billionaire and you insist on getting fried hummingbirds freshly caught in Madagascar on your dinner plate every evening. You might command a jet to fly them to you every morning, and employ a whole hierarchy of people to make it happen in the most precise manner possibly. Or, say you're Microsoft, and you make software. Instead of making better and more inherently elegant software, you might instead hire 1000 more highly qualified engineers to try to close the holes in what you have. In other words, if you have great wealth or power, you can afford doing something in an inefficient but very organized way. If you are very wealthy and you want some kind of information, you can have a whole team of the most highly qualified and highly paid experts sitting around trying to get it for you.
In the lower right, I put "Nature", which one could well argue about. Nature is ordered, but not in the way we normally call ordered or organized. It is in many ways a mess, but a mess where nothing is ultimately wasted, and where there are lots of synergies between different lifeforms and elements. Lots of work is being done, but not really in the sense of what we normally call work. Each living creature is pretty much just going about its business and doing what comes natural, and apparently not losing any sleep over how things are "supposed to be done". If some suitable food walks by, you'll eat it, and if something comes by that considers you food, they'll eat you. The waste products are just left behind randomly. But somehow it all works rather beautifully, and something else will probably consider those waste products its own lunch. If you examine, for example, ants, they just walk around and follow very simple rules for what to do. There's a lot of redundancy, and eventually things get done, haphazardly, but quite well. It is done in a messy way, but without anybody having to make plans or work hard on making them turn out. Thus, great ease, but low organization.
Although we humans can learn a lot from the rest of nature, and strategies like what ants are using to find food might well be useful for our own algorithms to automate, those approaches aren't how we ourselves would like to work. We'd like to work at a higher order. I'm not satisfied with having to wander around haphazardly if I already know what I want and where I'm going. I wouldn't at all be nonchalant about being eaten on the way there. No, we humans usually want something fairly complex, but focused, and we want to be quite sure to get it, but most of us don't have a lot of time and resources to put into it.
So I want something very ordered that takes next to no work to acquire. We're back to talking about information. Ideally I want something just-in-time, exactly when I need it, without having to wring my brain trying to plan everything in advance, and without having to start a big project whenever I want something.
When we're talking about information, there are various noble approaches that are aiming at giving me ordered and useful information easily. There's the Semantic Web, which tries to mark everything with added attributes so that we can ask more meaningful questions. Instead of just storing text, somebody notes down which parts are an "address", a "person", a "place" and that kind of thing. Which adds some intelligence. And the hope is that people will actually feel like recording this kind of information somehow. Another philosophy is that this isn't going to happen, but we need better search engine technology that itself guesses at what things mean, based on our behavior when we move around on the web, so that it might better give us what we might need. Maybe it will be combinations. Social networks, or networks of economic activity, might gather information, by both the behavior and the deliberate value choices of many individuals. And it might add up to better information, and a better way of giving me the information I might want.
As a user, I don't necessarily care how it happens. I want an experience where things appear either like synchronicity, where an apparently random item I get presented with happens to be exactly what I need; or simply as the answer to a question I pose. But I expect that this can happen in some kind of sustainable way, just like how google comfortably can provide everybody's searches without incurring any impossible costs.
I suppose some kind of free market, self-organizing, collaborative filtering is part of what will get there. Plus somebody's clever inventions that aren't there yet. More >
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15 Mar 2004 @ 06:51, by invictus. Globalization
Can't say that I've ever been a fan of socialism, or that I probably ever will be, nor do I believe that the solutions to most important problems have much of anything to do with government at all, but at least the guy is capable of saying something true. A politician, saying something true about the Iraq war. Next thing you know we'll see cancer-curing bananas growing on apple trees. To see one of the stupid governments that supported that war (against the will of the VAST majority of its people, but then "democracy" is when governments do what America wants them to, so no problem there, LOL) thrown out of office for the mess it helped create... gives one warm feelings inside. Here's to Blair and Bush being the next ones kicked out of power. I'd just like to give them both a big kiss for making the world so much safer (like, "really, BRAVO guys, you really know how to turn a country into a chaotic war zone and volunteer other people's lives en masse for... whatever"). *Sigh* and no, that doesn't mean any bombings are, were, or will be okay. It means that Aznar's government supported a murderous crime, based, as is now becoming clear, on outright lies (as some of us have been saying for a looooong time). And they probably shouldn't be surprised when, justified or not, some of those darned evil people they're trying to eliminate by way of invading entire countries decide to fight back. It's not a matter of giving them a sanction to fight back, mind you; the blessing and the curse (mostly a blessing) of human nature is that you can't stop them, no matter what you do. Each person can only control themselves. They simply don't control other people. That's how free we are. The really tragic thing is that innocent people in Madrid paid for something their government did without their support. Tragic, too, that there are people who have gotten so screwed up that they're crazy enough to carry out such acts.
About fighting back: a while ago someone asked me what I'd do if China or Pakistan (!?) invaded the US and told my mommy to walk in the street. You know, since I was arguing against the Iraq war, I must have been some kind of wimp who would just let people walk all over him and hand America over to the terrorists. I'll tell you what I'd do if someone invaded: I'd do my best to make life a living (not for long) HELL for any soldier (or any person who tried to use immediately life-threatening FORCE to make me pray to any god, Muslim, Christian, channeled Martian or otherwise, and who managed to create a situation in which simply saying "no" or "stuff it" would not suffice; I must add, by the way, that having someone on the other side of the world who has a culture you don't like and who isn't tolerant enough for your liking doesn't fall under this category), from any country, who presumed the right to invade my home, order my family around at gunpoint and kill my neighbors. I've said it before; I'm not a total pacifist. I believe in self defense. However, I don't believe that the laws of cause and effect are suspended when "self defense" is invoked; if one goes too far, even in perfectly justified self defense, there WILL be serious consequences, and nothing will make them go away. No amount of force will erase them. That's justice/karma/the golden rule for you. The moral of the story is that yes, you can defend yourself, but be careful who you murder. REALLY careful. Insanely careful. And if you can't avoid killing innocent civilians who've done nothing to you... then a lot of people are going to have VERY good reasons to make sure your troops become incapable of so much as firing a rubber bullet at them, ever again. I can think of several thousand people in Iraq, probably several million, who have a first class claim to self defense against the US and its troops. That kind of comes with the territory when you use force against entire populations, no matter what you're "trying" to do. I'd do anything I could to weaken the structure that supported the invading troops; anything I could to deprive them of power and of the ability to use force against me and the people I love, regardless of their rhetoric or stated intentions. Actually, that's not true. I'd probably fight ten times harder once the word "liberation" slipped out of their mouths. What a slander that would be. I'd do everything I could to force the poor duped troops to go home and live with their families (horror of horrors!) and leave my "freedom" to me, to fight for or die for as I saw fit.
Then again, that's me. My definition of "freedom" is an individual one; I believe that every individual has the right to decide to fight, or not, for what they believe in, and to fully accept the consequences of their action or inaction (in the case of inaction, if you accept the power of a dictatorship as your government, that is what you will get; if you allow yourself to be blackmailed into accepting it, that is what you will get; you have a right to give your life in the fight against it if you wish, but you don't have a right to volunteer anyone else's life unless they are trying to rule you through coercion). That right exists regardless, and almost always in spite of, any government or army. It exists because we are human beings, and that's it. It also exists regardless of what anyone else, or everyone else, thinks, says, or does. The decision and the courage involved in exercising that right are entirely the responsibility of each person. It exists, but it comes with no assurances of a house, job, or car. The only assurance it comes with is that you always have a choice not to comply with those who would try to tell you that your life is not yours to live or to fuck up as you please. I know that some people will try to push a collectivized idea of "freedom" which is a function of proximity to an SUV dealership and a nice suburban home, or defined as some misty conception of womb-like security. And, of course, however much individual people have to be brutalized or regulated into being "good" under such an idea of freedom, it's fine because the collective "greater good" is being served. Those things aren't freedom, by any stretch of the imagination. They are the products of the way particular people have chosen to use their own basic freedom, which for better or for worse has developed over hundreds of years of democratic rule (debatable, but I'll grant it here for the sake of argument) and which also has its base in a particularly liberal (in the older sense of the word; I'm not talking Democrats here) conception of philosophy and of humanity that dates back even further. It wasn't implanted by military occupation, and it didn't replace serfdom in a year, a decade, or even a century. It CERTAINLY was not a result of so-called "democratic" institutions; such institutions arose from it. The same is true of the Constitution. Nor is it the natural state of human beings. All of humanity is not somehow destined to end up that way, no matter how much some people wish that were so.
By the way, I'd never for a second go and kill the families of the occupying soldiers. So what happened in Spain was wrong, absolutely. Period. No questions asked. The people who did it, and only those people, should be hunted down like dogs. But frankly what do Bush, Aznar, Blair, and anyone else who actually supported the Iraq war expect? For the people of the entire world to present themselves as disarmed subjects to their military force? Please. "Oops, America is scared and has gone into chicken-with-its-head-cut-off mode, so I guess a couple thousand of us will die now, huh. Oh well, all for the greater good." Well I'll tell you something. Any "greater good" that is served by the death of innocent people, and which actually necessitates it, is something we can do without. If you don't like violence, and you want to prevent it, don't invade a country, kill twice as many civilians (at LEAST) as died on 9/11, and call it "collateral damage" or, crime of crimes, "necessary". If there's ANY lesson to be taken from stupid things like 9/11/01 and 3/11/04, it's that such things are NEVER justified. Those who think they are, for whatever reason or in service of whatever ideal or way of life, deserve only to be resisted. Those who take part in or support such things are kind of giving up any right to speak against violence. When they use violence unnecessarily and speak against it at the same time, what they're actually speaking for is domination (domination in the name of some twisted "good" is still domination). Because non-violence isn't written into the fabric of the universe. It's not automatic. I don't happen to believe that anyone's imaginary friend is sitting up there in the heavens telling us what to do. One can't initiate violence on a massive scale and then expect that the graces of "something" will allow them to lock the situation down immediately afterwards, even as their armed-to-the-teeth troops still occupy the place in question. The idea that violence just is not the way to do things exists as a "moral" only so far as people are able to restrain themselves and use violence only when they have no other choice at all, and certainly NOT when they get bored with inspections or come up with a really good fish story to scare people stupid or something.
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 15 Mar 2004 @ 00:15, by ida. Visual Arts, Graphics
Quidnovi, collage
More >
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14 Mar 2004 @ 16:00, by craiglang. Religion
According to traditional Christian teachings, the season of Lent is one of preparation and austerity. It is a time when the faithful prepare for the tragedy of the Cross, and the promise of the Resurrection. I thought about this in a slightly different way this morning, as I looked out the window at a gray March sky.
The first word that entered my mind, to describe the morning, was that very term, "austere". It was a bleak, blustery sky, with a cold wind out of the north. There were a few flakes of snow floating in the air. The brief flicker of spring warmth seemed to have been snuffed out by the chill resurgence of winter, a reminder that winter was not finished yet.
I have never considered myself a traditional follower of any religion, even though I was raised a Lutheran. But I was taught all the traditional teachings - including those about Lent. And somehow this day seemed to perfectly echo the traditional lenten theme - a time of sparseness and of preparation for the challenge and the hope that lies ahead.
I had been sick for most of Friday and Saturday, with a roaring sinus infection. It had forced me to miss a day of work at a time when our project is at it's busiest. It had also forced me to miss the monthly Minnisota MUFON UFO investigators meeting. And thus, I was not be able to give the talk I had put together (those who know me, will know that thngs have to be pretty extreme for me to miss a MUFON meeting... :-) ... ). All in all, it was a less than pleasant turn of events from what had eariler promised to be a fun and interesting weekend.
The day on Saturday was instead spent mostly asleep. When awake, it was occupied with sipping echinachea tea and trying not to feel too disappointed at the turn of events. It was a time of trying to stay focused in the present moment - and I realized that perhaps, this was the lesson that the Universe was trying to teach me on this day.
Maybe the point of the day was the necessity of avoiding attachment to outcomes. Maybe the lesson was once again, that of mindfulness. It was one of those lessons that each of us can espouse so easily, especially after reading books such as Eckhart Tolle's "The Power of Now". Yet when the chips are down, it can be so hard to actually put this wisdom into practice. Perhaps, I decided, the Universe felt that once again, I needed yet another lesson in how to be Mindful - and so this one came in the form of a sinus infection and a missed UFO investigators' meeting.
The next day, Sunday, I felt alot better - still a bit cruddy, but at least passably human. I managed to drain my sinuses by means of a hot shower (a small portable Roto-Rooter would have been nice), to eat breakfast and to get ready for Church. The sky was gray and depressing outside, and closely matched my mood. A very gray cloud hung over this human as he got dressed and ready.
A short time later, having eaten breakfast, Gwyn and I were off to church - with me looking forward to my usual nap during the sermon :-). But today, I was captured by the message in an entirely different way. The sermon was on Lent - a very brief(!) talk by the minister on the emptiness that seems to come in preparation for the Christian holy days. I smiled as the gears started turning in my mind (and as this article began to take shape).
One key point was that the time of preparation, then of pain, ends up as a time of resurrection and of hope. The master theme of the story is just this - that what, at one moment, may seem to be the most hopeless, can actually turn out to be our greatest joy. And this was the message that got my attention. And as the service ended, and a brief social hour began, my spirits felt trememdously uplifted by this thought.
As we stepped out of church and headed off to our next destination, a nearby lunch counter for after-church coffee and conversation, I noticed that the clouds had begun to part. The sun shone through the breaking cloud deck. Blue sky was starting to replace the gray of the morning. To me, it was as if somehow God was accenting the message I had just heard, that after darkness and gray comes hope and light.
I looked up at the sunburst and smiled as we got into the car. Life in the present moment can truly be sunny and beautiful. More >
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 13 Mar 2004 @ 05:35, by ming. Organizational Development
Wired has a good article about people working in computer companies in India, who do a lot of business that is out-sourced from the U.S. It can well freak out a lot of high-tech employees in the U.S. that what is a $70,000 a year job in their area is more like a $7,000 a year job in India. And it is today both technically and organizationally very possible for a large company to oursource big chunks of their work to a place like India. And what might freak out the guy in the U.S. even more is to realize that his counterparts in India are well-ecucated, professional, well-organized, and probably willing to work harder to get the job done.
I can certainly have the same fears. My expectation of how I will be paid is along the lines of the U.S. scale. But I also notice increasingly how there are programmers on the net from Russia or Asia who apparently can do large jobs for what I would consider impossibly small amounts of money. And they seem skilled and professional. I obviously can't compete on price with somebody who'll do for $200 what I'd need $5000 for.
But that Wired article makes it seem natural and positive. Which I'm sure it is. In a global free market, those who're best suited to do a job, and who can do it the best, for the lowest costs - of course it makes sense if they do it. It would be silly to try to use laws and protectionism to force people to needlessly pay 10 times as much for the same work. Efficient telecommunication tools allow high-tech industries and booming economies to grow and flourish in places where they otherwise couldn't. That's a good thing. That a lot of the business comes from other places than where the workers are does in no way have to be any problem.
So, the answer is of course to be flexible, and to do the things that ARE needed in one's local area, and which one can make a valuable contribution towards. So, maybe one might put the business together, or structure it, or sell it, or consult about it, rather than necessarily doing all the work locally. There are always things to do. Like, how Aparna Jairam, the project manager on the picture, quotes from the Bhagavad Gita:"Do what you're supposed to do. And don't worry about the fruits. They'll come on their own." More >
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12 Mar 2004 @ 14:00, by skookum. Ideas, Creativity
Return to the Sun
Waiting for the warm sun upon my eyelids.
That peaceful immobility of timeless moments
Has it been that long since it was basking time?
If you were here, I would see only summer.
If only…such lost, lonely, pitiful words.
Return to the sun, return to the fiery stars.
Where is the promised valley of green rivers?
It is so cold here, so cold, so impersonal.
Are you out there, waiting for our reunion?
Mind the calderas. Guard the steaming waters.
Wait for me.
I shall not be too long.
When compared with eternity.
Marissa A Spencer
© February 15, 2004 More >
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