Open Thread WE 28 JUN 23 ~ Listening
nothing does it quite as artistically, poetically or simplistically as
this ancient design.
Welcome to Wednesday. I find the Chinese character for listening quite enlightening .
Some interpret the horizontal line ( undivided attention ) also as focus. I would add
understanding as another possibility. The ziggy line on the lower left represents king,
(not shown in this example) which I have trouble picturing within the expressed notion.
What are your thoughts?
Assimilating the various pathways to our absorption of that which we are
immersed in gives a clue to our awareness IMO.
sort of connected ..
On another topic, this image is trippy .. I see it move just a little bit.
~
Image created by a Japanese neurologist. It stays still when you are calm.
It begins to move when you experience a slight amount of pressure.
It moves like a carousel when under a great deal of stress.
An open format provided for you to share whatever you hear here.
Comments
Good morning
Listening to history ..
1870 U.S. Congress creates federal holidays (New Year's Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas Day), initially applicable only to federal employees
1894 Labor Day established as a holiday for US federal employees
(weren't taxes originally intended only for paid officials?)
1910 1st airship with passengers makes its maiden voyage; the Zeppelin LZ7-Deutscheland and gets stuck in some trees in Mount Limberg, Lower Saxony, injuring one crew member .. oops
1919 Treaty of Versailles, ending WWI and establishing the League of Nations, is signed in France
1926 Mercedes Benz forms when the world's oldest automobile manufacturers DMG and Benz & Cie merge
1935 FDR orders a federal gold vault to be built at Fort Knox, Kentucky
1959 Meldrim trestle disaster; freight train derails over Ogeechee River in Georgia causing IPG tanks to explode killing 23
1964 Organization for Afro-American Unity formed in New York by Malcolm X
1967 Israel annexes East Jerusalem
1971 US Supreme Court (8-0) overturns draft evasion conviction of Muhammad Ali
1996 The Constitution of Ukraine is signed into law.
2015 Greek Credit Crisis: Greek government says banks closed for a week and ATM withdrawals restricted after European Central Bank refused to supply emergency funds
selected gems
listening to this commenter on Auto Earth
identifies as Dr. D
• UN Documents Rampant Torture of Civilians by Ukrainian Security Forces
just one of many thinkerisms he provides
https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2023/06/debt-rattle-june-28-2023/#comm...
Good morning...
Got out early and mowed in the cool. Came back in and did the days cooking. We have an attic fan, which does a great job of sucking out heat and pulling cool air in. Once the inside and outside reach the same temp. I shut it off and shut up the house. It stays cool till late afternoon, and then we'll use the minisplit until it cools off in the evening... minimizes our electricity use, and keeps the house comfortable.
As to listening, some people are not adept. Whenever I showed a video in class, I had questions the students needed to answer as they watched the show... about geology, space, etc. Some kids were incapable. They didn't have the listening skills. I also found those kids who couldn't read well were the best at mechanical things like putting together a cart or desk. Over the years, we learned that everyone has talents. The trick is to help people find them for themselves.
As a musician, listening is an important talent. I play by ear. Fortunately I still have good hearing. Almost all the fiddlers I play with have lost some or much of their hearing. They almost all use hearing aids to keep playing. That devil's box is right up by their ear after all. The same was true when as a youngster I started playing with older fiddlers...they had already lost much of their hearing. Many of my peers lost their hearing from playing loud rock and shooting guns without protection. I religiously use earplugs to mow, run the chain saw, etc.
So listening well is a talent. Understanding what you hear is a gift.
All the best. Have a good one!
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
that's a good program you have to cool the house
we do similar here .. opening and closing windows and shades, depending on the
winds and sunlight orientation. Still wet and cool here which is glorious for me.
Use several fans and judicious use of floor based portable aircons when
it gets way hot.
Sounds like you got the tractor starter figured out. Working on several pieces of
equipment here which are being ornery for various reasons. Always something.
cheers!
Good morning, QMS et. al.
Yesterday, a Texas inmate died from heatstroke while mowing a field at Goree Prison Unit in Huntsville, Texas. The unit provided him no water, told him to keep working when he told them he was feeling ill. 70% of Texas prison units have no a/c units. Neither water nor ice is guaranteed to be provided.
We are in a heat wave, routinely have state issued emergency warnings to stay inside as much as possible. Seems this doesn't apply to inmates.
Stay cool, friends.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Good morning QMS et. al. Loved the breakdown of
the "listen" character. Years ago there was somebody who would sometimes do a cartoon style multi-panel stroke by stroke development of selected characters, always educational and thought provoking, like your illustration.
I got through covid, but followed it up with a massive head cold complicated by annual allergies. Annual allergies are, of cvourse, starting to become year round due to widespread piss poor decisions by hordes of "development" specializing landscape architects. Ah well.
Trundling out to the county fair this afternoon to meet with my wife and eventually transport her back home after some joint roaming about and taking in selected exhibits and such plus obligatory annual junk food dive. It got me to thinking of how one's (or at least mine) desire to visit the fair, the erxhibits and activities that attract one's interest, the amount of time one is likely to spend there and all similar suchwhat fluctuates over the course of one's life. But, meanwhile, trash goes out today and some garden chores await, so I'd better get that all started.
I must note that the 26th was the official global day for remembrance/recognition of the victims of torture. We have these specific days set aside for awareness and remembrance of specific stuff that we intend to do absolutely zip shit about in order to take appropriate cognizance that there is a problem, which we are then supposed to forget about until the holiday rolls around again next year, moving on to other things and concerns at midnight on the specified day. Today is Insurance Awareness Day for most of us and Tau Day for math junkies. --
be well and have a good one
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Have fun at the fair
glad to hear the lung infection has subsided, that was the worst part for me
haven't been to a fair in eons. memories of the Ag fairs of my youth include
cotton candy, corn dogs and strange hawkers at the games of chance,
a couple trips on scary rides followed by roaming the pens of the usual
farm critters. The kids were all so proud of the ribbons awarded by the 4H.
One year the theme was "come see the big piggies!" Now I get to see that
every election cycle. Ha!
Thanks for popping-in!
A few years ago,
back when we used to have the ranch and were raising llamas, we were showing at the National Western Stock Show in Denver. That's one of the biggest livestock shows there is, and is always well-attended. The camelid show was usually early on in the proceedings, followed by various other critters on the following days. Well, one night some yobbo left open a gate to one of the pig areas as they were loading in, and the little bastards ran rampant throughout the barn, straight into the camelid area.
Our only warnings were some odd-sounding snorts, followed by a chorus of llama and alpaca alarm calls, and then a *whole* lot of spitting. Let's face it: there aren't one hell of a lot of pigs running wild at 10,000 feet in the Andes... And as a result, most llamas aren't particularly used to seeing them- let alone having them run between their feet. They think that they are fat pink aliens. It got very ugly very fast, as each individual llama had to decide instantly whether they wanted to a) stomp them to death, or b) become 400-lb balloons and try to hover as they spit them off...
Worst of all, of course, is that we'd just finished grooming ours to show, as had most exhibitors. When you get a hundred llamas all spitting at once, shit gets *real*- and then you get to groom them again.
I felt very bad for the pig exhibitors who lost animals. There weren't many, but we all felt their pain- they'd worked as hard as we had, of course. But this many years later, I still chuckle inside at the memory of the sight of this wave of llama-flesh going straight up in the air in their stalls, starting at one end of the barn, and washing all over it to the far side...
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
I can only imagine
your story does evoke some parallels betwixt the human species tho ..
like when I've seen the rabble-rousers upsetting the elites with their
mere presence
too bad we can't keep the rulers in a better pen
Biden news
Biden has confused Iraq for Ukraine twice in the last 24 hours
This is too awesome! Thanks Emily's List, NARAL, Planned Parenthood.
From the AP: Just 34% approve of Biden’s handling of the economy as he hits the road to talk up ‘Bidenomics’.
Quick! Cherry-pick some statistics!
Oh and here's one to remember because World War III is TOTALLY KEWL for the energy transition. Also, having a candidate in office who is a slam-dunk to lose to a Republican is really good for trees.
Sierra Club Endorses Joe Biden for President
And here's a video:
"the Democratic Party is not 'left'." -- Sabrina Salvati
that is funny
good for the trees!
what used to be progressive orgs
after they get clout become donkeys
Interpreting 聽
I really like Uncle Hanzi's etymology web site. It's quite an achievement. So I tried to use it to understand the character. You can just plug Chinese characters in and see their historical development.
https://hanziyuan.net/#home
I once had the pleasure, when I was much younger of seeing "oracle bones" in the National Museum in Taipei a long time ago. Richard Sears has been working on this web site for 25 years. His bio is down at the very bottom in English, if you haven't seen the website before. I lost some of my dictionaries so I go there if I can't find some hanja I don't know, if it's not on naver.com.
I cut out the analysis I got from U. Hanzi's site. I think the Chinese was preventing this from loading.
I interpret (fwiw), based on Uncle Hanzi's etymology, the virtue component 德 as act in accordance with straight or upright heart/intention. I think the overall character 聽 (literally) means "listening/understanding ethics" So listen.
On a cultural tangent-
I became intrigued with this song, "Death Song" or "In Praise of Death" and when I heard it again recently, got into a discussion about it, and did some more research on it. While I was trying to find a better contemporary recording of the 1926 song, found the video below which connects the song to a scene from Mr. Sunshine which I think was well intentioned but leads somewhat astray from the actual historical account of the artist who originally wrote, sang, and recorded the song in 1926.
In some other performances on video, I saw that quite a few South Koreans know the words to the song by heart. There are two movies of the same name, and one drama (Netflix) of the same title based more or less on the story of the singer Yun Sim-deok. It's kind of a national legend at this point, with historical, ethical and philosophical significance depending on who is watching. There is a connection to national pride and the independence movement.
This is the link to the second movie (1991) on the Korean Classics channel provided by the Korean Cultural Center in NY. There are other movies there, almost all of which I haven't watched (yet).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHXv0xyNXxw&list=PL28d5JImIlH6jIWGEeocFJ...
It's both a morality tale and a portrayal of the times after the Japan broke down the traditional Chosun culture barrier to exploit Korea. It was quite long 2:50 I think. I was going to watch in two sittings but ended up staying up late. TThe complex relationship between Japan and Korea is portrayed from the Korean point of view. It's better than Pachinko, but I'm not dismissing that story or drama by any means. The film quality leaves something to be desired. Someone said in the comments it needs to be "remastered."
https://www.koreanculture.org/from-korea-films/2023/04/24/korean-classic...
This is the best contemporary version of the song I could find by Na Yoon-sun 나윤선. There are others on line including the original from 1926.
윤심덕 작사/노래 (1926) Death Song (rough translation)
On that vast wilderness, life is running
Where is the place that your going to?
Alone in a world of perilous stormy seas
What is it that you seek?
This world reduced to tears
If I die, will I only know suffering?
Lives seeking happiness
What you seek is futile
That flower laughing, and that bird crying
Their fate is all the same.
In life absorbed, piteous life
You, dancing on the knife's edge, driven to death
Immersed in vanity, fretful life
Do I know of your deceit?
Things of this world are futile
Then after you die, all is gone
Hangul lyrics from kiss7.tistory.com
[사의 찬미 뜻, 노래와 가사 - 윤심덕 작사/노래]
https://kiss7.tistory.com/1060
Although it seems contraindicated, I think the song inspires strength and inspiration in the Korean people who hear it. Disclaimer, all my interpretations are those of an amateur.
Thanks for the interesting OT QMS. Once I start trying to understand Chinese characters I can be pleasantly distracted for the whole day.
語必忠信 行必正直
Interesting parallels come up with your post
I appreciate your efforts to discover the source of Asian disharmony.
The same tendency is apparent in many countries around the world.
You see what is or has been done to the populations of
EU, US, AU, et.al insofar as losing the ability to determine their
own fates It is pretty much all the same, as far I can can see.
Some countries are replacing this with responses that make
more sense for their economies, culture and future.
Hope we can be too.
This is a truly sublime Open Thread.
It is redolent with perfection.
____________________
The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
I like that word sublime
it gives me the vapors
to convert (something inferior) into something of higher worth
whereas in relation to subliminal
existing or functioning below the threshold of consciousness
which is how most of the media works now
funny language
learn much