Yoda Mindfulness, and Blowing Off Steam At the Dog Park
Yoda has been teaching us about mindfulness now for 40 years.
"This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away... to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing."
June 20, 2020
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Andy Borowitz- Coronavirus Disappointed By Tiny Turnout At Trump Rally
June 20, 2020
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"Your DNA makes you more likely to have the same muscle composition as most elite sprinters."
Why don't you tell me something I don't know, Ancestry Health.
"More than 80% of the world’s population likely has the same result as you, and it is even more common among elite sprinters."
Fair enough... I didn't know that.
June 20, 2020
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I've seen things posted to the effect of, if you don't want the punishment don't break the law. There's a reason we aren't all stumbling around with an eye plucked out and our hands missing- we believe in proportionality of punishment. If you don't understand what I'm saying, imagine this. Let's say the law states that if you forcibly separate children from parents who are seeking refuge or asylum, you will hereby be crucified. Ridiculous, right?
June 20, 2018
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Edmund Burke- “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
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Zuzu and I just passed a pen back and forth. Some call it sharing, I call it socialism.
June 20, 2016
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The first 10 minutes of Up just might be the height of movie-making.
June 20, 2015
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Has anybody realized that through some shift in the time/space/fiction/non-fiction continuum Mad Men's Kenny Cosgrove somehow became the Phillies' closer, Jonathan Papelbon?
June 20, 2013
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I woke up with one of those demon bites from Paranormal Activity.
June 20, 2010
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The Ultimate Warrior- "SHOULD I JUMP OFF THE TALLEST BUILDING IN THE WORLD? SHOULD I LAY ON THE LAWN AND LET IT RUN OVER ME WITH LAWNMOWERS? SHOULD I GO TO AFRICA AND LET IT TRAMPLE ME WITH RAGING ELEPHANTS?
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From Skeptic Magazine
Top 10 myths of popular psychology
Myth #6: The Polygraph Test is an Accurate Means
of Detecting Lies
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Jaws was released on this day in 1975 several months after I started walking, which means that I was alive in a time before there were summer blockbusters. See the addendum for the Indianapolis monologue text.
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Thomas Jefferson was born on this day in 1920. You know, the famous trumpeter.
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Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys was born on this day in 1942. One of a small handful of musical geniuses live today. He'll be remembered hundreds of years in the future. I just love these lyrics:
I guess I should've kept my mouth shut
When I started to brag about my car
But I can't back down now because
I pushed the other guys too far.
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John Goodman was born on this day in 1952. I used to have to call all of our Farmers with pick up times for the following day. I would do it late at night and watch a movie in the background. One time I had The Big Lebowski on and just as I was leaving a message for one of our stodgiest farmers, Walter started screaming, “This is what happens, Larry! See what happens, Larry?! Do you see what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass?! This is what happens! See what happens, Larry?! You see what happens, Larry?! This is what happens, Larry!”
The whole time I was fumbling for my remote control to turn the sound down.
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Nicole Kidman was born on this day in 1967. In Flirting, she had one of the best all-time screen entrances to The Troggs' With a Girl Like You
https://youtu.be/lJcKidPhrkU
She really does magical acting with her body. I've watched the scene of her walking while drinking wine in Eyes Wide Shut over and over.
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National Vanilla Milkshake Day
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Other notable birthdays- Martin Landau (1928), Robert Rodriguez (1968)
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Another notable deathday- Andrew Harris (2012)
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On this day in 1944, the experimental V-2 rocket reached an altitude of 176 km, becoming the first man-made object to reach outer space.
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On this day in 1945, the United States Secretary of State approved the transfer of Wernher von Braun and his team of Nazi rocket scientists to the U.S. under Operation Paperclip.
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In the Watergate scandal on this day in 1972, an 18½-minute gap appeared in the tape recording of the conversations between U.S. President Richard Nixon and his advisers regarding the recent arrests of his operatives while breaking into the Watergate complex.
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If you ever think you know too much, remember that there's a fifth roommate on the Young Ones. Sometimes you see him in the background sitting against a wall with his head down. You don't believe me, and you shouldn't, but look it up.
June 20, 2016
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Holy mackerel, nobody can write Trump zingers like Republicans write Trump zingers.
George W. Bush aide, Michael Gerson: "Trump has been ruled by compulsions, obsessions and vindictiveness, expressed nearly daily on Twitter. He has demonstrated an egotism that borders on solipsism. His political skills as president have been close to nonexistent. His White House is divided, incompetent and chaotic, and key administration jobs remain unfilled. His legislative agenda has gone nowhere. He has told constant, childish, refuted, uncorrected lies, and demanded and habituated deception among his underlings. He has humiliated and undercut his staff while requiring and rewarding flattery. He has promoted self-serving conspiracy theories. He has displayed pathetic, even frightening, ignorance on policy matters foreign and domestic. He has inflicted his ethically challenged associates on the nation. He is dead to the poetry of language and to the nobility of the political enterprise, viewing politics as conquest rather than as service."
June 20, 2017
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I've noticed that the same news organizations that like to say celebrities should keep their mouths shut also like to interview Chuck Woolery. Doesn't exactly inspire confidence that they'd stand by their principals if they had better celebrities... or actual celebrities, rather.
June 20, 2017
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Science- True altruism seen in chimpanzees, giving clues to evolution of human cooperation
From the article:
Langergraber adds that such behavior might serve as an evolutionary basis for human cooperation within huge, diverse communities. “One of the most unusual things about human cooperation is its large scale,” he says. “Hundreds or thousands of unrelated individuals can work together to build a canal, or send a human to the moon. Perhaps the mechanisms that allow collective action among chimpanzees served as building blocks for the subsequent evolution of even more sophisticated cooperation later in human evolution.”
https://www.science.org/content/article/true-altruism-seen-chimpanzees-giving-clues-evolution-human-cooperation?utm_source=sciencemagazine&utm_medium=facebook-text&utm_campaign=chimpaltruism-13717
June 20, 2017
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What do you know about the Milgram Experiment? It showed that 2/3 of us would administer an electric shock to someone we thought was a heart patient even though we thought it would kill them. Their obedience was based on nothing more than the experimenter telling them, "You must continue," three times and accepting responsibility for the outcome. If they still resisted the experiment was over. Those people are the heroes. The others... not so much. It was an attempt to explain the subservience of the German people to the Nazis during the Holocaust. You can see this same subservience to power everywhere you look.
https://youtu.be/xOYLCy5PVgM
June 20, 2018
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Susan Sontag- "10 percent of any population is cruel, no matter what, and 10 percent is merciful, no matter what, and the remaining 80 percent can be moved in either direction."
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Washington Post Opinion Piece- Republicans now prefer Kim Jong Un to Nancy Pelosi, by Brian Klass
Huh, I think that I prefer every single Republican including Trump to Kim Jong-un.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/democracy-post/wp/2018/06/20/republicans-now-prefer-kim-jong-un-to-nancy-pelosi/
Jun 20, 2018, 9:27 PM
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New York by Henry Miller
As they say, it's a hell of a town.
https://youtu.be/Qf4Vma9O9Xk
Jun 20, 2020, 11:46 PM
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Fran Lebowitz- "When you leave New York, you are astonished at how clean the rest of the world is. Clean is not enough."
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Excellent podcast with Sam and Jesse Singal on the subject of discussing controversial subjects. I particularly liked this line from Jesse on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when pressed by Sam:
"I'm frankly not sophisticated enough on the policy side to have strong views."
It was a passing comment but very wise. When we have strong views, particularly on controversial subjects, it's always good to first ask ourselves whether we deserve them.
https://samharris.org/subscriber-extras/250-broken-conversations/
June 20, 2021
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McSweeney's- Nihilist Dad Jokes by Isaac Baia
Haha!
"Why did the scarecrow win a prize? Because he stood alone in his field! He stood there for years, rotting, until he was forgotten."
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/nihilist-dad-jokes
June 20, 2021
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Walter- "You want a toe? I can get you a toe."
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Gretel graduated pre-school.
June 20, 2019
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Nobody's been ever been more impressed by anything than Zuzu, listening to Gretel mess up all the words to Itsy Bitsy Spider.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid02QVEquGXs52cbCwLBk7yjBP1kCZHh66UFdUS2RFiRnZ7qYjKSGLAcAYGS2S9GYxuxl&id=741063511&mibextid=irwG9G
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Anybody here in the audience have a dog? Anybody ever take their dog to the dog park? Now let me ask you this. Has anybody's dog ever survived an attempted rape at the dog park? No, not by a person! I'm talking about dogs attempting to rape other dogs. Some people use the euphemism, "humping," but we know what's really going on. Your dog is just standing there minding its own business, smelling some dog's ass, and some other dog gets sexually aroused by the smell of YOUR dog's ass, so he gets out his little lipstick thing and attempts to go to town. No need to be silent anymore. Everybody's dog has survived an attempted rape at the dog park. They are not alone. It's a normal part of going to the dog park. We just accept it, laugh it off. Imagine that, we just laugh after our beloved hound catches the eye of some canine Casanova, who then tries to have sexual intercourse with it, against it's will. Homosexual, heterosexual, makes no difference, we laugh off all varieties, blaming it on nature or something. We have to laugh, what else can we do? We can't call the police. They don't handle that type of thing. The dog catcher handles that type of thing. Some think that the dog catcher is just for catching some dog that got loose, or one with a foamy mouth. Nope, they also round up the dog rapists, take them downtown to book them. No, I'm just kidding of course. Dog catchers don't catch dog rapists. That's ridiculous. We defunded all the dog catchers. Too many bad apples. Now we just laugh at the dog park when our beloved dog survives an attempted rape, as we sit right next to them unable to stop it. What else are we're going to do? We just laugh our heads off. And one day our ancestors will knock over our tombstones, and we'll deserve it.
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Albert Einstein- "An empty stomach is not a good political adviser."
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Jung- "I am astonished, disappointed, pleased with myself. I am distressed, depressed, rapturous. I am all these things at once, and cannot add up the sum. I am incapable of determining ultimate worth or worthlessness; I have no judgment about myself and my life. There is nothing I am quite sure about. I have no definite convictions - not about anything, really. I know only that I was born and exist, and it seems to me that I have been carried along. I exist on the foundation or something I do not know."
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Adam Smith- "All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind."
Addendum:
Indianapolis monologue from Jaws:
Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into her side, Chief. We was comin’ back from the island of Tinian to Leyte. We’d just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in 12 minutes.
Didn’t see the first shark for about a half-hour. Tiger. 13-footer. You know how you know that in the water, Chief? You can tell by lookin’ from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn’t know, was that our bomb mission was so secret, no distress signal had been sent. They didn’t even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, Chief, sharks come cruisin’ by, so we formed ourselves into tight groups. It was sorta like you see in the calendars, you know the infantry squares in the old calendars like the Battle of Waterloo and the idea was the shark come to the nearest man, that man he starts poundin’ and hollerin’ and sometimes that shark he go away… but sometimes he wouldn’t go away.
Sometimes that shark looks right at ya. Right into your eyes. And the thing about a shark is he’s got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll’s eyes. When he comes at ya, he doesn’t even seem to be livin’… ’til he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then… ah then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin’. The ocean turns red, and despite all your poundin’ and your hollerin’ those sharks come in and… they rip you to pieces.
You know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men. I don’t know how many sharks there were, maybe a thousand. I do know how many men, they averaged six an hour. Thursday mornin’, Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player. Boson’s mate. I thought he was asleep. I reached over to wake him up. He bobbed up, down in the water, he was like a kinda top. Upended. Well, he’d been bitten in half below the waist.
At noon on the fifth day, a Lockheed Ventura swung in low and he spotted us, a young pilot, lot younger than Mr. Hooper here, anyway he spotted us and a few hours later a big ol’ fat PBY come down and started to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened. Waitin’ for my turn. I’ll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went into the water. 316 men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29th, 1945.
Anyway, we delivered the bomb.
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