2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 12,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

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On New Year Eve, 2011

I Will Not Toast to this Year©

I will not toast to this Year
As new as any day breaking:
Silently as a dream sleepwalking,
Men’s fears horripilating
And with beads of sweat rising
From each downy hair-
It is no toast to a day lived to the full
Nor to a dream yet to occur;
So I shall just fare the days spent well
No more see their veiled sleep;
Oh the year that lay fresh in the grave
Throw I these roses softer than a sigh
To buy your silence and a blessing:
For the shroud I weave from roses
Yet to bloom; it is no toast to borrow
From a day never dawned before.
I will not toast to this Year
However fair or foul it prove in time
Yet I will not toast to this Year.
benny

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Art- last entry for the year

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Antelope-skull

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A Quote

On freedom ©
How do I measure my freedom?
I do in the restraints I place on it so reason and my goals do not short change each other. Having come to a man’s estate all things are possible but not all things serve my purpose; nor does it justify my sense.
benny

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Second Time Around- a fable

Lord Siva is the third of Trinity. He is the god of destruction. One day he got somewhat upset by his consort Parvati and went off to think things over. He went through cities where people lived and at one place he saw a small crowd. He drew near. He was shocked to see a fellow talking about gods. ‘What does he know about me?’
The fellow said,’You know why Lord Siva has got his third eye?
The crowd was egging him on. ‘Tell us, and entertain us, Paro!’ Paro continued,’Siva cannot trust his eyes.’ The crowd of course laughed. And Siva didn’t know what was going on. He felt black. So angry he became he opened his third eye. Naturally the fire consumed the whole city. He walked on.
Thinking over the extraordinary incident he went to the stream and looked at his reflection.He heard the stream gurgling with pleasure and murmuring,’man has invented laughter. It must be fun now onwards.’ Lord Siva thought he was in a strange world. When he returned he conveyed to other gods in the godhead what he experienced. Brahma the creator said,’Didn’t you notice? I just thought man could have a lighter side to his existence. So I sent him laughter as a gift.’ Vishnu who keeps the cosmic order nodded,’I too thought so.’
Siva didn’t say further and he brooded over what he did. He vowed that he would go back among them and see for himself. ‘Did laughter make him better?’
He found where he had torched it was business as usual. There were more tents and in each men were gathered so he could not get even a seat. Inside they were listening to number of fellows, standup comedians all, vying with one another to make audience laugh.
‘Strange’he muttered and he moved on. He could not even move through the knots of men who were making merry. In another tent Comedy Central he heard customers waiting in anticipation. The comedian came much to the roll of drums and fanfare. He launched into jokes. At one point he asked,’Know why god Shiva has a snake around his neck?’ The crowd all in titter,’Because he could not think of anything better.’ The crowd went berserk.Next he said with a droll face,’Lord Siva is here!’
Instantly silence. Not even a titter. ‘What! did I say anything wrong?’ He asked his manager. No answer.
Lord Shiva went off in high dudgeon.
Moral: One joke begets a thousand and some shall fall flat and yet what does it matter?
benny

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Mulla Nasruddin Stories-the book

check out- http://www.lulu.com/content/12216087

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News on the March- Integration principle

Remember the securitization food chain that led many banks to collapse?It followed the law that deregulated safety controls set in place to save the nation from another Depression of 1929. In 1982 Reagan opened the way for banks to make private profits over public losses so what happens but subprime mortgage crisis? Anyone could own million dollar house and only when the housing market bubble burst the nation realized the citizens were short-changed while many made their billions. After the 2008 Global economic crisis one would think the government would get its act together. No the current news makes it clear.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A clerical error landed Kathleen Casey on the streets.
Out of work two years, her unemployment benefits exhausted, in danger of losing her apartment, Casey applied for a job in the pharmacy of a Boston drugstore. She was offered $11 an hour. All she had to do was pass a background check.
It turned up a 14-count criminal indictment. Kathleen Casey had been charged with larceny in a scam against an elderly man and woman that involved forged checks and fake credit cards.
There was one technicality: The company that ran the background check, First Advantage, had the wrong woman. The rap sheet belonged to Kathleen A. Casey, who lived in another town nearby and was 18 years younger.
Kathleen Ann Casey, would-be pharmacy technician, was clean.
“It knocked my legs out from under me,” she says.
The business of background checks is booming. Employers spend at least $2 billion a year to look into the pasts of their prospective employees. They want to make sure they’re not hiring a thief, or worse.
But it is a system weakened by the conversion to digital files and compromised by the welter of private companies that profit by amassing public records and selling them to employers. These flaws have devastating consequences.
It is a system in which the most sensitive information from people’s pasts is bought and sold as a commodity.
A system in which computers scrape the public files of court systems around the country to retrieve personal data. But a system in which what they retrieve isn’t checked for errors that would be obvious to human eyes.
Integration principle denote the manner how an evil practice could run into different layers affecting the society and affect at the level of individuals.
Social changes are possible because of this principle.( Ack: AP News/20 Dec.11)
Bottom line is: where else private information sensitive and sacred in any society made out to be free and enlightened, should be treated as commodity and sold for profit? Where else but under capitalism?
Capitalism practiced in America can only be dismissed as crapitalism. No other word can explain it.
benny

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A parody on King Lear’s ‘Blow, Winds’ speech

Ac III, sc-ii (lines 1-24)

Spam! Spam! Delete them all!
Out! Out!
You cowardly poltroons stop
And think what you cut and paste does no good!
Your sulphurous and beguiling offer
Clog my inbox! And a spam filter –seems what
Stops you on tracks ! And almighty Jove here
Comes an offer- for spam filter no less!
Strike at that cretin’s profoundity to think
Faster than my finger can.
Spam, spam Delete them all!
I tax you not Larry, nor do I page you.
But google at my horrible pleasure,
A poor infirm weak and harried old man
To be weaned out of this habit, I must
Smash this vile thing- keyboard the mouse and all.
If you see me leer you shall guess why.
benny

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Persian cat-after Beth van Heusen

(already posted in Artsmart)

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