Motti

I am becoming more relaxed in life. It's great.
"Let's see how it goes" is the newest of my motti.

"Motti" of course is plural of "motto". It just seems obvious to me. Feel free to use it. :)

Ugress

How about some excellent music? For free?
Go here:
Ugress.com
I particularly recommend the song "Decepticons". It is one of my favorite songs ever.

About enemies

You have exactly the enemies you think you need.
Eolake Stobblehouse

There is a very good interview with U2's Bono in November's Rolling Stone. He says: "Your enemies define you, so make them interesting." I say: No! No, no, no. If you do that you'll fall in love with them, and you'll never get rid of them.
Who needs enemies? Enemies are only good for two things: 1) making your life interesting if you don't have the imagination to do so yourself. 2) Stopping you in the areas where you believe you need stopping.
And in the end, all that is really boring. It is like saying you "need" to be ill or to wear a ball and chain. Don't you have stuff to do?

You have exactly the enemies you think you need.
Eolake Stobblehouse

Just Don't, a story

I was just reminded of my old short-short story Just Don't, which was published in the prestigeous anthology L Ron Hubbard presents Writers of the Future, vol V.
Most of you probably don't know it, so I "reprint" it herewith.
You can find more stories, art, etc on my site.

JUST DON'T
By Eolake Stobblehouse

One fine day on Planet Earth, I was sitting in my own comfortable home in my own comfortable chair in my own comfortable body. And just as I had leisurely turned a page in my book, and was about to leisurely take a sip of my coffee, the doorbell rang.

I raised my body, squinting at the sunshine outside, and went to the door.

Having opened it, I found myself looking at a spaceman. I knew immediately that he was a spaceman from his different looks and his suit.

Now, I was quite dumbfounded. I had a funny feeling in my stomach, and didn't know what to make of the situation. But this spaceman seemed quite as cheerful as any sergeant handling civilians.

He looked up from his clipboard, said, "Follow me, please," and turned around.

I hesitated, looking back into my comfortable home, and then stumbled after him. "Hey," I asked. "What gives? What's happening?"

"Oh," he said, "they are going to give you guys another treatment. Some of you are regaining your memories."

"What memories!?"

"Don't think about it," he said.

The end

A $35,000 digicam

So you think the Nikon D2x is a fantastic camera? (It is, I have one.) Take a gander at a $35,000 digital camera!
This is the most amazing, beautiful, and impractical thing I have heard of.
So it's either this or the Mercedes for Christmas. Hm, decisions, decisions.

Crop Circles

We don't know much about crop circles. In the early nineties it was "exposed" (oddly enough in all the major newspapers on the same day...) that they were frauds, merely man-made. But that exposure has since been exposed itself, the people who supposedly made the formations could not explain how they did it, or indeed replicate it.
And since then, "crop circles" have grown wildly beyond mere circles and become amazingly complex and huge mathematical works of art appearing mysteriously in crops around the world, though mostly in England.

They are often hundreds of feet across, and contains hundreds of elements, precisely aligned after complex mathematics. And they appear usually in one short summer night. They have no footprints in them. And they often have strange magnetic phenomena within the formation.

Me, I don't know who makes them. Aliens? Spirits? Humans with secret technology? In any case they are really beautiful and compelling, and a strong witness that there is more under the heavens than we know.

Steve Alexander (Temporary Temples) is perhaps the best photographer of this phenomenon. He publishes a beautiful booklet every year with pictures of the circles. The books are really high quality, warmly recommended.
Steve does not normally give out high-rez versions of his pictures, but with my legendary charm and a promise of a link on this blog, I talked him into letting me share a few with you. They are big files, but worth the download. Enjoy.

Crop Circle Silbury Hill 2005
Crop Circle West Kennet 2004
Crop Circle West Kennet 2004 B
Crop Circle Windmill Hill 2004

Education

A reader has challenged me to write about education. I said I was not the most obvious person to do so, since I don't have any!
At least not a formal one. I didn't finish 12th grade, and I have never seen the inside of a university. (Do they really have all that mahogany?)
Yet I have an excellent life, financially and spiritually.

I won't say formal education is worthless. It is very valuable for a traditional life and craft. For learning how to be a dentist or an engineer, you won't get around it, so far as I know.

At the same time it is a fact that a very high percentage of the very most successful people in the world did not get a formal education. This is because to be successful takes education, but the kind of spirit and persistence it takes to be uniquely successful is not something anybody can teach you. At least not somebody who works in the education system. The same goes for achieving original and groundbreaking ideas and executing them. As a matter of fact, if there is a big downside to formal education, it is that it tends to kill originality by its very nature. (It can only teach you how others are doing things.)

I think I can say one thing for sure: your most important education is the one you give yourself.
You should be reading at least three books at once at any time: one on how to improve your craft. One on a craft or area you would like to go into. And one which talks about your relationship with the universe and beyond.

Wallace and Gromit

Since the advent of video and DVDs, I don't go to the movies often. (For one thing I like to be able to take breaks.) But I went with a friend last night to see Wallace and Gromit: The Curse Of The Wererabbit.
I warmly recommend it. It has even better production values than Chicken Run, and to my taste it is even more entertaining and has more soul. In fact, it is the first animated movie outside Pixar I would put in the same class as Toy Story II and The Incredibles. It is just hilarious.
It has it all: suspence, humor, mystery, action, and even romance (in a big-hair, big-toothed sort of British way).
Stobblehouse sez: Way Cool.

David Pogue again

Go to:
http://nytimes.com/circuits/
and click on
Video: David Pogue's Review of the New BlackBerry
I have been a fan (and I like to think a friend) of David's for nigh ten years*. He is the clearest and most entertaining tech writer I know, and for sure the funniest. When he started doing videos for the NYT site, it was clear that these talents translated well into moving pictures. I have told David that he is destined for TV. I know that if I was a network executive, I would be stumbling all over my furniture on my way to the phone to call him.
Hm... of course it would be bad for his international audience like me if he were to leave the NYT, for any TV show would surely not be shown outside the US.... Hey, TV executive: break a leg!

*I started reading his excellent Mac For Dummies a couple of weeks before I actually got my first Macintosh, in early 1996. How time streams.

The Soul of Money

I have added a book to the book list of my well-received money article. (Warning: if you stray beyond that page, you'll be faced with nudity. Some like it, some don't.)
The book is The Soul of Money by Lynne Twist, and it is a wonderful insight into how we can reach sufficiency in life, both on personal levels and globally. Warmly recommended, like the others.

Intelligent Design

Currently in New Scientist, there are articles illuminating the currently raging battle in the USA about whether to teach children Darwin or Creationism (read: Christianity).

My reaction is: Those are the options? We are either naked apes or created things?

Having thus offended everybody, let me present some thoughts.
How about we:
*Are eternal beings, and are co-creators of the universe.
*Have infinite potential.
*Rule ourselves, but not each other.
*Are meat creatures, but only by choice, and the choice could be anything.
*Answer only to ourselves.

We don't know much yet. I know I am certainly confused. But maybe we are part in a game as old as time, and maybe at the same time the game is just getting started.

Note: this post has some very thoughtful comments, do read them.

Finnegans Wake

"Sir Tristram, violer d'amores, fr'over the short sea, had passencore rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: nor had topsawyer's rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse to Laurens County's gorgios while they went doublin their mumper all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartpeatrick: not yet, though venissoon after, had a kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all's fair in vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe. Rot a peck of pa's malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface."
-- Finnegans Wake, James Joyce
(I just thought I'd give you a random sample of one of the most academically celebrated and studied novels of all time. What that proves, I'll leave up to you. :)