A quote about history...

The study of history is the best medicine for a sick mind; for in history you have a record of the infinite variety of human experience plainly set out for all to see; and in that record you can find yourself and your country both examples and warnings; fine things to take as models, base things rotten through and through, to avoid.--- Livy

David Bowie - Cygnet Committee

In case no one's noticed. I like music :D

This isn't all the lyrics to the song but they are certainly poignant ^_^ Enjoy!

And the road is coming to its end
Now the damned have no time to make amends
No purse of token fortune stands in Our way
The silent guns of love
will blast the sky
We broke the ruptured structure built of age
Our weapons were the tongues of crying rage

Where money stood
We planted seeds of rebirth
And stabbed the backs of fathers
Sons of dirt

Infiltrated business cesspools
Hating through Our sleeves
Yea, and We slit the Catholic throat
Stoned the poor
on slogans such as

'Wish You Could Hear'
'Love Is All We Need'
'Kick Out The Jams'
'Kick Out Your Mother'
'Cut Up Your Friend'
'Screw Up Your Brother or He'll Get You In the End'

And We Know the Flag of Love is from Above
And We Can Force You to Be Free
And We Can Force You to Believe"

And I close my eyes and tighten up my brain
For I once read a book in which the lovers were slain
For they knew not the words of the Free States' refrain
It said:
"I believe in the Power of Good
I Believe in the State of Love
I Will Fight For the Right to be Right
I Will Kill for the Good of the Fight for the Right to be Right"

And I open my eyes to look around
And I see a child laid slain
on the ground
As a love machine lumbers through desolation rows
Ploughing down man, woman, listening to its command
But not hearing anymore
Not hearing anymore
Just the shrieks from the old rich

And I Want to Believe
In the madness that calls 'Now'
And I want to Believe
That a light's shining through
Somehow

Beirut - Elephant Gun

Here is a song & video from the band Beirut. Crazy little video with an artistic sort of message. I'm really starting to love this band. Hope everyone enjoys ^_^!

Long Lost Language in India

This link is about a language that has recently been discovered in northern India called the Koro language.

http://hotword.dictionary.com/koro-aka-india/comment-page-1/#comment-11328

Marco Polo's Unicorn

This link has a story regarding a bovine species native to Laos and Vietnam. This species may be the animal that European explorer's believed was an actual unicorn as from our own Western culture myths and tales.

http://hotword.dictionary.com/unicorn/


This link will take you to a picture of the animal dubbed a Saola in common language:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pseudoryx_nghetinhensis.PNG

Grateful Dead - Ripple

Ok so the hippy in me wants to share something too :D
Here is one of the most incredible songs I've ever heard. If you've never heard it take a few minutes and listen. It is worth it.

Old Crow Medicine Show - I Hear Them All

Great band and a great song. I love the lyrics and the meaning of it all.

Another Spirit Advances

I wanted to post a couple of poems that I found in a copy of the 1939 edition of the World Anthology of Poetry. If my house were burning to the ground I would run in to save this book. I found the book at an estate sale in the attic of the house next to an old book of a play in Spanish. I was only 12 or 13 at the time but my grandmother agreed to buy them for me for a collective price of 50 cents. The poetry book still contains the original handwritten receipt of purchase from Goldsmiths on Jan 4, 1940 for $1.89.

The first poem is entitled "Another Spirit Advances" and is by the French author and poet Jules Romains. I have to admit I don't read much poetry but this is my favorite by far and the only one I can claim to have memorized. Enjoy :)

What is it so transforms the boulevard?
The lure of the passers-by is not of the flesh;
There are no movements;
There are flowing rhythms and I have no need of eyes to see them there.
The air I breathe is fresh with spirit-savor.
Men are ideas that a mind sends forth.
From them to me all flows yet is internal;
Cheek to cheek we lie across the distance,
Space in communion binds us in one thought.


Here is the second poem translated from Latin and appearing in the same book by Decimus Junius Juvenalis called "Celestial Wisdom" the following are the first four lines of the poem:

Must hapless man in ignorace sedate,
Roll darkling down the torrent of his fate?
Must no dislike alarm, no wishes rise,
No cries invoke the mercies of the skies?


I have to point out a few things about the poems. First the poet Decimus Junius Juvenalis, I'm guessing was a Roman as the years of his life are marked as 60-140 in the book. M. Romains 1885-1972) is also the founder of the Unanimism movement in French literature. I am currently acquiring and reading his multi-volume work entitled Men of Good Will or Les Hommes de bonne volonté in French.

The Happy Life

A video from YouTube of a scene from the Showtime series The Tudors (4th season) with the Duke of Suffolk and the Earl of Surrey. Suffolk reads a poem that Surrey is working on and it's a pretty awesome poem. But the best part in my opinion is Surrey's comment after Suffolk's reading.

Ain't Life Grand

For the first post here is a video made by khataroo on YouTube set to the song Ain't Life Grand by Widespread Panic :)