The revolving sky, which has never revealed any mysteries, has brutally crushed a thousand innocents. Have some wine, since no one is given a long life and once people have left this world they aren’t coming back. Translated by Juan Cole from Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat, [pdf] Whinfield 259
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Uncategorized
Omar Khayyam (458) “Be happy in this fleeting moment”
Since you can’t comprehend the mysteries, why wallow uselessly in grief? Since you ‘re not going to get your way, be happy in this fleeting moment for which you exist. Translated by Juan Cole from Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat, [pdf] Whinfield 458
Mercury from Coal Plants, Goldmining, a Global Health Crisis: UN Environmental Program
A new study has found that 84% of all fish have unhealthy levels of mercury! Richard Gelfond, CEO of IMAX, the film company, has had his health permanently damaged simply from eating a lot of fish. The message to take away is not never to eat fish. It is that there is too much mercury […]
America’s Guns, at Home and Abroad (Engelhardt)
Tom Engelhardt writes at Tomdispatch.com Given these last weeks, who doesn’t know what an AR-15 is? Who hasn’t seen the mind-boggling stats on the way assault rifles have flooded this country, or tabulations of accumulating Newtown-style mass killings, or noted that there are barely more gas stations nationwide than federally licensed firearms dealers, or heard the renewed debates over the […]
How Long will We let Coal Plants Mercury-Poison Us?
Mercury is a nerve poison, steady exposure to which causes all kinds of neurological and mental problems, as well as heart problems. I keep hearing public service announcements that you should not eat fish more than twice a week. Think about that. In a natural, normal world, didn’t people on the coast eat fish every […]
Since 1979, Firearms have Killed 120,000 US Children, Many more than Troops in Vietnam or Iraq & Afghanistan Wars (Graph)
h/t [-pdf] children’s Defense Fund Children’s and teen deaths are 1979-2010; I updated number of troops killed in Iraq & Afghanistan Wars to end of 2012
Everything You Always Wanted to Know about US Drone Strikes *but Were Afraid to Ask (Currier)
Cora Currier writes at ProPublica: You might have heard about the “kill list.” You’ve certainly heard about drones. But the details of the U.S. campaign against militants in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia — a centerpiece of the Obama administration’s national security approach – remain shrouded in secrecy. Here’s our guide to what we know— and […]
How Zero Dark Thirty Taught us to Stop Worrying and Love Torture (Greenberg)
Karen J. Greenberg writes at Tomdispatch.com On January 11th, 11 years to the day after the Bush administration opened its notorious prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow’s deeply flawed movie about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, opens nationwide. The filmmakers and distributors are evidently ignorant of the significance of the […]
8,775 Firearm Murders a Year in US, Equiv. of 290 in UK
Updated. 2013 Reprint edn. Number of Murders, United States, 2010: 12,996 Number of Murders by Firearms, US, 2010: 8,775 Number of Murders, Britain, 2011*: 638 (Since Britain’s population is 1/5 that of US, this is equivalent to 3,095 US murders) Number of Murders by firearms, Britain, 2011*: 58 (equivalent to 290 US murders) Number of […]