Taomeow

Me too. "I don't understand" was a statement I found to be true, not true AND false.

I don't see anything false about this statement. Please try again.

A chicken has two legs, especially the right one. They report the dollar is up but in reality it is green. If you can't say fuck, you can't say fuck the government. A lesbian is someone who prefers sex with women. When complexity strikes, meaningful statements lose precision and precise statements lose meaning. Today is yesterday's tomorrow.

I believe you. But I would like to see burn marks on the ceiling for conclusive evidence -- next time can you please take a pic?

Isn't it something? It's not only that a number of butterflies can be found that each carry this or that letter. I recall there's one particular butterfly that has all letters of the Latin alphabet on its wings. Couldn't find the pic online. Another thing that always bugged me about butterflies (no pun intended) is the fact that both males and females have light receptors in their reproductive organs. Can you imagine the fireworks butterfly sex must be producing -- invisible to the world, only seen by the participants?

And this is the place I was talking about earlier. The houses belong to a scientific facility, a glaciological station. My then-boyfriend worked there... The people I got to hang out with were all top level mountaineers and assorted hands-on (or rather whole-body-on) climate scientists, and every evening, after a day of assorted adventures, we would gather around a table of great food and plenty of booze, and they would start telling their never-ending stories of life and death. Every one of them had lost a friend, a mentor, a significant other in those mountains. I was floored every evening by what those people were living through... but they were easily the most vital and "together" group I've ever met before or after. Go figure...

double

I think I"m between Rainbow and Gerard on this... middle ground. Can't cultivate a mountain -- tao is in charge of that -- at least not until you are fully merged with tao and all her power. That would take you along a radical "leaving the human world" path. Can't depend on external environment being perfect in order to cultivate "properly" -- must cultivate where you're at, working with what you've got, this is the traditional "coming into the world" path. Walk between the two, the path is narrow and sharp as a razor blade... and that's what the "middle ground" really stands for. It's not a plateau, not a peak, not a bottom of anything. It is a razor blade!!!

I have never, ever heard anything bad about Max from anyone who studied with him in person. I've heard much, much bad stuff about him from people who never did. Makes you wonder...

I think the reasons are multiple, just like when you're looking for a regular residence for you and your family, you will take many factors into consideration, not just one. More like dozens! I suspect a large part of the choice has to do with the fact that mountains make us stronger. I've experienced it myself. When I first arrived in a place where you had to climb up or down no matter where you went, many moons ago, at first I felt totally inadequate, getting very tired very easily (even though I was a teenager), coughing and panting from the thin air -- but I found my spirit was elated far above sea level too, maybe because no matter where I looked, I looked at majestic beauty. So I went ahead and climbed up and down, to exhaustion, every day, and in a couple of weeks I changed. I felt stronger every day, with room to grow opening up everywhere. There's no feeling like it. By the end of the month, I ran skipping along the same trails where I could barely crawl when I first arrived. So I suspect the choices our ancestors made when they could choose freely, countless moons ago, were largely dictated by who the places made them into. Mountains can make some of us into the best version of who we are I suspect, the most alive. Years later, my daughter reported exactly the same effects from her first exposure to a life in the mountains as I myself had experienced.

All letters of the alphabet and numbers are spelled out on butterflies wings: http://www.fastcocreate.com/3021816/image-of-the-day/this-alphabet-is-made-entirely-from-letters-found-on-butterfly-wings

Fibonacci cats...

Maybe it's just me but my computer can't handle a thread this long with videos so plentiful. Maybe there's a way to split it into parts? "What are you listening to" part 1 through part 150? -- kidding, maybe just in half, or in thirds, or else I'll just start a new What Are You Listening To Part 2 thread?.. Warning: If I do, I'll start it with an hour of African drums! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeI1E3p2iDU

Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi.

Nope. I just spelled it the old-fashioned Wade-Giles way. Kirin=qilin. And I own a few, they usually come in pairs, a male and a female (the male is the one playing with the pearl, though I have a pair who look like playful puppies wrestling for the pearl.) An antique bronze incense burner I own has a kirin for the handle on top of the lid, and it looks absolutely like a dog, nothing horsy whatsoever. Some look more feline though, some have certain equestrian flavor about them, but none are a dragon-horse mix. A Dragon-Horse is a different animal altogether -- longma, long 龍 "dragon" and ma 馬 "horse". Know Fuxi's story?.. That one.

A classic Chinese dragon has nine "resemblances," proprietary anatomical similarities to nine other creatures. So the horns of a stag are dragon's own. The hooves are perhaps the artist's liberty (this is something modern that came up when I looked for "kirin." A classic kirin looks much more like a dog.) According to the Han dynasty scholar Wang Fu, the nine "resemblances" of the dragon are the following: His horns resemble those of a stag, his head that of a camel, his eyes those of a demon, his neck that of a snake, his belly that of a clam (shen, 蜃), his scales those of a carp, his claws those of an eagle, his soles those of a tiger, his ears those of a cow. Upon his head he has a thing like a broad eminence (a big lump), called [chimu] (尺木). If a dragon has no [chimu], he cannot ascend to the sky.

I have a dragon-turtle guarding my entrance door this year -- since my door is in the South and Taisui is there this time. The dragon-turtle is the only creature that can face and soften him. You are not to disturb the Taisui gua, and it's impossible to avoid if he positions himself at the entrance, so the dragon-turtle is the "remedy." It looks like this:

Dragon dog-horses are well-known and lucky.

Ah, I responded before I saw this. Yup.

Depends on their personal natal layout of wuxing. For someone with a water deficiency, e.g., it will be very challenging. For someone who has a wood or fire deficiency the year will be productive. Then there's many interesting individual variations... e.g. a seductive pattern where you have too much fire already and more than enough wood, and more is coming -- this could mean going down in a blaze of glory (John Lennon's situation, e.g. -- lots of fame and fortune, short life. That's your wood and fire with no water, and with all-pervasive wood and all-consuming fire strongly encouraged by a chosen lifestyle.)

The wolves in the left corner are waiting till he comes closer... It's a stallion, by the way -- a yang year we have, yang wood in the heavenly stem and yang fire in the earthly branch. Throw strong wood into strong fire, see what happens. Fire is the destructive phase of wood, wood is the mother phase of fire, but this time around we have fiery mother and she will discipline rather than nourish -- and the wood she meets with her fire is headstrong, stubborn, defiant, and powerful. All in all, it will be a year of rebellious moods involving people who are actually close and similar and related. This is the mood of civil wars.

Yes, this is one of his more fortunate passages -- which is why "religion is the opium of the people" became proverbial, they chanted this line in Russia when they were applying "revolutionary terror" to the churches and monasteries, blowing them up and shooting or sending to Siberia the priests and monks and believers in god and nonbelievers in Marx alike. Obviously practical applications of the above-cited theory were rather creative. But have you tried Das Kapital? I had nightmares featuring this thick as a brick tome which I had to study for the exam in "Marxist-Leninist economics." It just refused to take root in my mind, perhaps because I was as familiar first hand with all other creative applications of the theory to practice as with the above opium bit. I remember the night before the exam when my mind literally stalled, getting stuck on "one sheep equals two axes, two sheep equal four axes," the brilliant formula that explained how the trading of goods works if you don't look to profit. Fair and square, one sheep equals two axes, but somehow it was repeated with such pomp and fanfare that it broke my spirit, and I tried to cheat on the exam, got caught, and got forgiven because I was 18 and the teacher was sleazy, he put his paw on my knee and... anyway, that's my personal Marx, I may be prejudiced.

Well, I had to read a helluva lot of Marx, it was a compulsory part of my education. I found him intolerably boring. The "bald guy" must have been attracted to this particular trait which they seem to share -- I started watching but he spent upwards of two and a half minutes in the beginning talking about how a fat person writing dietary books is not to be trusted -- OK, fine, I get your point, but it can be made in 2.3 seconds and then friggin' move the ef on already! In 2 and a half minutes I could have watched ten Funniest Cats episodes. You've got to be kidding me. Marx, all other considerations being left aside (e.g. that he was a high ranking member of a Freemason lodge most heavily infiltrated by the Illuminati; that Friedrich Engels who was wealthy, and also an Illuminati, financially supported -- one might say "kept" -- him and his family, and the last pair of trousers strikes me as confabulatory -- both Karl and his very pretty wife were sharp dressers as I recall from the pictures I've seen), as I was saying, Marx was an exceedingly boring writer. No way in hell he could have ignited any revolutions with either his analysis or his charisma without the money of Krupp and I.G. Farben and Chemical cartels and the rest of them Jesuit Illuminati fueling this particular bogus fire with real human sacrifices...