The Big Picture from The Boston Globe [recommended]

Each week, The Big Picture features one long page full of photos of a current event. These photos are always very professional and gorgeous, appearing in a large format. My one complaint is that scrolling inevitably fails to line most of the photos up correctly; I wish there were a better mechanism for moving between photos.

2012 Marking the New Year – The Big Picture – Boston.com

Around the world people celebrated with fireworks, kisses, blessings, gatherings, cheers, watching the sunrise and plunges into icy bodies of water to welcome in a new year. Here’s a look back at how some of them marked the transition. – Lloyd Young (41 photos total)

Fireworks explode in the sky over Bucharest, Romania, at midnight, Sunday, Jan. 1, 2012, during street celebrations of the new year. Large crowds gathered downtown Romania’s capital taking advantage of the dry weather to attend the celebrations. (Vadim Ghirda/Associated Press)

The Year in Pictures Part I – The Big Picture – Boston.com

(36 photos total)

A wave caused by a tsunami flows into the city of Miyako from the Heigawa estuary in Iwate Prefecture after a magnitude 8.9 earthquake struck Japan March 11, 2011. (Mainichi Shimbun /Reuters)

The year in Pictures Part II – The Big Picture – Boston.com

(45 photos total)

A cloud of ash billowing from Puyehue volcano near Osorno in southern Chile, 870 km south of Santiago, on June 5. Puyehue volcano erupted for the first time in half a century on June 4, 2011, prompting evacuations for 3,500 people as it sent a cloud of ash that reached Argentina. The National Service of Geology and Mining said the explosion that sparked the eruption also produced a column of gas 10 kilometers (six miles) high, hours after warning of strong seismic activity in the area. (Claudio Santana/AFP/Getty Images) )

The Year in Pictures Part III – The Big Picture – Boston.com

(51 photos total)

A defaced portrait of fugitive Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi in Tripoli on Sept. 1, 2011 as the fallen strongman vowed again not to surrender in a message broadcast on the 42nd anniversary of the coup which brought him to power. (Patrick Baz/AFP/Getty Images)

The Big Picture from The Boston Globe [recommended] is a post from: Ah, Wilderness!. Thank you for subscribing. Let me know what you think. peace, mjh

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The Atheist's Pulpit

Meeting myself again

Tue 01/31/12 mjh

I ran into myself in the park again this morning. Last time, Future Mark got out of a car and shuffled over to a bench. There he sat, smoking a cigar, in contemplation. It was a fatter cigar than I currently like, but tastes change over the years. I intuited that this was a ritual for him/me to get away from some less-than-ideal living situation. Perhaps, Future Mark lives in a small apartment or shares space with a friend. More likely, he lives in a warehouse for the not-yet-dead. In the park, with a good smoke, he reclaims our independence, however briefly.

Back then, I avoided contact with Future Mark out of fear of some time paradox. Since then, apparently, I will learn that’s not a problem, because this morning Future Mark approached me, or, more correctly, Luke. Mark held out his hand for Luke to sniff. Luke looked back and forth between us and managed to reconcile the situation; dogs live in the now. Mark looked me in the eye as if delivering a message just for me: "Our dog lived to be 16." (Good news that has a bitter end.) "I can’t imagine ever replacing him." I tried to comfort him what little I could: "We felt that way about Lucky. Then, when the time was right, Luke came along." Cold comfort, to replace grief with delayed grief, but we have only one other choice: love nothing. Besides, the warehouse probably forbids pets.

A few minutes later, I saw Future Mark bend over stiffly to brush some leaves off a memorial plaque beneath a tree. Then, he passed us, staring straight ahead, his face at once rigid and fluid with grief. I knew his pain. I didn’t dare look at the name on that plaque.

NADA - New American Dark Ages

“American gun laws are downright insane”- Leonard Pitts Jr. [amen]

Mon 01/30/12 mjh

Rep. Giffords’ departure a blow to democracy – Leonard Pitts Jr. – MiamiHerald.com

This episode joins a long list of elections overturned and social movements derailed by men with guns, as in the shootings of Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley, Huey Long, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, the Kennedy brothers, George Wallace, George Moscone, Harvey Milk, Martin Luther King, Jr. Somehow, people who should never have guns never have trouble getting them. John Kennedy’s assassin, a disaffected former Marine who had once defected to the Soviet Union, bought his by mail order. King’s assassin, a wanted fugitive, bought his over the counter.

Jared Loughner, the man now in jail for the Tucson massacre, was able to legally obtain a gun despite the fact that he was a mentally deranged man who had been rejected by the U.S. Army and kicked out of a community college. Which suggests that, while Loughner may be unbalanced, American gun laws are downright insane.

And they will likely stay insane, so long as our politics remain a hatefully polarized affair where the two “sides” glower at one another like boxers in their respective corners and “compromise” is a dirty word.

After all, the solution here is not rocket science.

We need meaningful background checks on all gun purchases — no loopholes. A mentally unstable man should not have legal access to a gun, period.

We need to ban fully automatic weapons from private use. The hunter who needs a gun that fires hundreds of rounds a minute isn’t much of a hunter.

We need to encourage gun safety classes so that poorly secured firearms stop ending up in the hands of little children.

At the very least, we need to have a serious national dialogue about these and other possible solutions.

But we won’t.

Rep. Giffords’ departure a blow to democracy – Leonard Pitts Jr. – MiamiHerald.com

!status updates

Congenital does not mean anatomically-correct, although the two circles overlap significantly on a Venn diagram.

Thu 01/26/12 mjh

Thought for the day.

photos, Picasa

2012 Misc

Thu 01/26/12 mjh

four or five stars

Date: Jan 26, 2012
Number of Photos in Album: 18

View Album

Election

Does Newty Gingrinch’s ascendance suggest Republicans are tired of being stupid on purpose?

Wed 01/25/12 mjh

Before DUHbya, Republicans called themselves “The Party of Ideas.” They were the Vulcans, and liberals were “emotional.” Granted, it was a small part of the party that had such hubris, but they also had the limelight. For at least 10 years, Republicans have been the Party of No, for whom every subject is judged by some stark litmus: no taxes, period. No negotiations. Government is always wrong/evil. “Main stream media” is liberal (hah!). Democrats hate America. Global warming is a hoax. Evolution is a lie. Obama is a foreign-born Muslim socialist. Michelle Obama is an “angry” black woman. Simple, inflexible – and patently false – views, echoed endlessly by angry, red-faced brutes on Fox. Republicans have been anti-thought, anti-intellectual, mouth-breathing knuckle-draggers and proudly, defiantly so. “Take yer nuance and shove it, dirty Liberals.”

Does the sudden appeal of the bloviating Perfessor indicate a change is afoot? Are Republicans simply cowed by big words and desperation for Anybody but Mitt (the one guy who could threaten Obama – at least, until Newty gutted him)?

Could ideas matter again, someday? Are Republicans ready for thought and debate, to be persuaded, to negotiate and – gasp! – to compromise? No way. Not this year.

Election

Gingrinch as consensus-builder: Left and Right agree he’s mad