Saturday, March 08, 2008

Sharks and Condit: 9/11 - Bush knew, but did nothing

Sharks and Condit

The week of 9/11/01, for me, began on 9/05. That was the day I was to fly to Manhattan, attend a party for my friend Rob, and hang out a few days, then return on the 10th.
Well, there was a huge storm on the 10th, and I couldn't fly out. I was stuck in Manhattan. I would simply fly out the next day, which, as is now legend, was a beautiful blue September day...until around 8:45 am...when the skies got dirtied up with smoke, asbestos and cremated human beings.
America was under attack. Just as I had predicted.

I don't know how I knew something bad was going to happen, and probably in New York, but I did. Right before I fly up on the 5th, I had written, on a message board, a post called: "The week the world ended". I swear I had nothing to do with it. I do have a fairly keen intuition though, and it just seemed too weird to me that, for one, the Media was overly obsessed with two stupid things: Gary Condit and sharks. They still waste our time with shark stuff, and I still wonder if it isn't if not a cover-up, at least a sin of omission and a sign laziness.

There were other things that augered ill, like the moribund economy, Bush's pathetic ratings (although not quite as bad as today), sabre-rattling with the Taliban, and so on. In retrospect, I think it may have been something that Robert Fritz used to talk about, but sadly I forgot the term. But it was basically this: As your patient, client, friend, whatever, is describing things, events and whatnot, you, as the healer, etc., try to visualize in your mind the action...and when it becomes difficult to visualize, therein lies the problem...which is oftentimes a lie, or some other construct that has no coordinates in reality.

Maybe what made me so suspicious was that things didn't add up. Fact is though, things hadn't added up since the election, a few months earlier.

A couple of nights before 9/11, while walking to Radio City Music Hall to see what turned out to be a remarkable Yes concert (the review of which alludes to my fears),
I said to my bud, who was working in the Media, "What is the deal with all this "sharks and Condit?), to which he replied: "It is a slow news time", to which I replied from the midst of my overall suspicion, "Not for long." Less than a hundred hours later...

GATES OF DELIRIUM, ON SACRED GROUND



Re-reading my review of the concert (the original site is closed but probably in the Wayback Machine), I am taken by what I had neglected to focus upon prior to just now...and that is that heretofore, I had thought that "Gates of Delirium" was the defining song of the night...which, after the fact of 9/11, was made all the more the obvious choice, as it was about the war between good and evil, armageddon, and so on. I had all but forgotten that I wrote about a song called "Sacred Ground" [correction - it is actually called "In the Presence of".] which must have impressed me at the time, and I recall being a beautiful and meaningful song. I HAD thought about the fact that this concert was to their last and crowning event of the tour, but I had not, fully connected NYC with Sacred Ground, and that might be because, at the time, I was disturbed by the decadent, wanton seeming lack of sacredness. From the skyscraper with a big red 666 neon sign, to megamammoniacal hindbrains, to the endless honk honk honk of angry cars...Manhattan was in decay.

In this final segment, Jon warns us of war, and says the light can win out...



from "In The Presence Of":

In your arms I can see it all
I can see it all
If we were flowers
We would worship the sun
So why not now?
This light is burning brightly
This light is burning brightly
Brighter than before
Brighter than before
Brighter than before
Brighter than before
Turn around and remember that
When it gets so low
As you finally hit the ground
Turn around and remember that
Now I’m standing tall
Standing on my sacred ground
Turn around and remember that
When it gets so low
As you finally hit the ground
Turn around and remember that
Now you’re standing tall
Standing on sacred ground
Standing on sacred ground
Standing on sacred ground




Little did I know at the time how sacred the ground on which we stood, would soon become.

After the initial shock of 9/11, there was a change in the air. Literally.
Some of it was actually good, in that people became more pensive, conversational, communitarian...and I, for the first time in my life, felt like a New Yorker...even though genealogically, I am an Old Yorker...which is suppose is better than being an old porker. We shall see.





in progress...

Friday, March 07, 2008

On the Death of Eve Carson





My father went to Chapel Hill, and I know his heart is as broken as mine at this tragic incident.

Fractals, Hubble & the night sky

Fractal Gallery
Wikisky
my.sky-map.org

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Pownce & Microblogging

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Pownce has been compared favorably to other websites with similar functionality like Twitter, and has been called a "Twitter on steroids".[3] It has also been recommended for use over Twitter in a work setting because of its enhanced discussion-tracking capabilities."

The technology involved: (Wikipedia)

Pownce is built on a variation of the LAMP stack: Debian GNU/Linux, Apache, MySQL, and Python. The web application is made with Django, an open source web application framework, written in Python. File storage is supported by Amazon S3. The desktop application is written in Flex for Adobe's AIR platform. The icons used throughout the site are taken from the open source FamFamFam Silk and ISO series icon packs.

NPR: Report: Rove Pushing a McCain-Romney Ticket

NPR: Report: Rove Pushing a McCain-Romney Ticket

Monday, March 03, 2008

LiveNewsCameras.com - Watch Live Streaming News From the USA & World - Beta Version

LiveNewsCameras.com - Watch Live Streaming News From the USA & World - Beta Version

(Thanks to Dave Winer)

Hamburg A320 Dangerous Landing - Mahalo

Hamburg A320 Dangerous Landing - Mahalo

(Thanks to Jason Calancanis, Mahalo via Twitter for the link.

Liveblogging the Queen and Barbara Walters

The queen conveys without words.

Important Fact 1 - President Bush does not DO White Tie!

"I am just a ornament." - President George W. Bush
"No, you are a nornament." Queen

Waving.

You cannot see the ceilings of Buckingham. I scrape my head on mine.

"She's got a neat twinkle in her eye." GWB
"It's called Baraka." Barbary Walter

"She's the queen of the British monarch." - nobodaddy in crowd

(I am reminded of Goofus and Gallant". )

Oops. He DOES do white tie. His explanation though makes it clear that he doesn't fully realize that she was, is and will be. He only was. His isness could stand a clintonizing.

Online Therapy: The Next Frontier

Huffington Post

I can do that.

Exclusive First Look: WorldWide Telescope

FastCompany.TV



(thanks to robert scoble -- the scobleizer)