Archive for the ‘Profile’ Category

Notice to Readers

Monday, October 27th, 2008

I’ve more or less confined my activities to MSNBC.com-owned Newsvine for the past couple of years, and I will probably no longer post in this blog, although it will remain here as an archive and as an active link blog for my del.icio.us account.

I will occasionally be posting content to my new blog over at Stumblers.net and every once in a while at the New Media Ledger, where my posts at both places are multimedia in nature.

You may also find my Twitterings of interest.

Barack Obama for President!

Burma’s Next Chapter

Thursday, October 4th, 2007

Sunrise Burma

My thoughts go out to the monks and people of Burma.


Free Burma!

Aine : Review on StumbleUpon

Sunday, September 30th, 2007

What a lovely poem I just discovered. It’s a review of my StumbleUpon blog. Thank you, Cindy. :)

Aine
takes me
to distant shores
where what was
is no more
and nothing matters
but the now
and the dirge
of knowing how
to dream
to think
to be.

Aine…

By Cindy Fraley 2007

Sep 16, 1:55pm

Clipped from made2dance.stumbleupon.com

The Starfish Story

Monday, May 28th, 2007

Most people have probably seen this story, as it’s been floating around the internet for at least a decade. It was, in fact, posted at the very first web site I ever built. But I noticed tonight that it’s not on any of my sites now, so I must make amends and add it to my archive here, and maybe those of you who never did see it will find it here.

. .. .

A young man is walking along the ocean and sees a beach on which thousands and thousands of starfish have washed ashore. Further along he sees an old man, walking slowly and stooping often, picking up one starfish after another and tossing each one gently into the ocean.

“Why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?,” he asks.

“Because the sun is up and the tide is going out and if I don’t throw them further in they will die.”

“But, old man, don’t you realize there are miles and miles of beach and starfish all along it! You can’t possibly save them all, you can’t even save one-tenth of them. In fact, even if you work all day, your efforts won’t make any difference at all.”

The old man listened calmly and then bent down to pick up another starfish and throw it into the sea. “It made a difference to that one.”

Limitless Compassion

Monday, April 16th, 2007

There are countless stories in the Buddhist scriptures about the expression of limitless compassion. None expresses this better than the following story from the Zen tradition.

Once there was a simple Buddhist monk by the name of Ryokan who lived in perpetual retreat in a small hut at the base of a mountain. One evening a thief broke into his hut only to discover it was empty. Ryokan returned and caught him.

“You have come a long way to visit me,” he told the prowler, “and you should not return empty-handed. Please take my clothes as a gift.”

The thief was bewildered. He took the clothes and slunk away. Ryokan sat naked looking at the full moon.

“Poor fellow,” he mused, “I wish I could give him this beautiful moon, too.”

Clipped from www.freep.com

This event prompted Ryokan to compose one of his best known poems:

The thief left it behind:
the moon
at my window.

Rove beetles are often abundant in habitats with large numbers of fly larvae

Thursday, March 29th, 2007

A new No. 1 on the List of Things I Never Want to See Again : MC Rove and the Press Maggots.

Also read: RJ Eskow: Bush, Rove Joke About White House Felonies. Reporters Laugh.

“This clip will be referenced by future historians as a key moment in the ongoing progression of America’s forfeiting all claims of moral superiority over any other nation.

If you can watch this horrific thing without your stomach churning, call a mortician. You’re already dead.” – Paul Slansky

2008 Candidates I’d Likely Vote For

Tuesday, February 27th, 2007

Your results for “Presidential Candidate Selector — 2008 Front Runners“:

(100%) 1: Sen. Barack Obama (D)
(89%) 2: Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D)
(83%) 3: Gov. Bill Richardson (D)
(83%) 4: Retired Gen. Wesley Clark (D)
(76%) 5: Ex-VP Al Gore (D)
(74%) 6: Sen. Christopher Dodd (D)
(73%) 7: Ex-Sen. John Edwards (D)
(70%) 8: Gov. Tom Vilsack (D)
(68%) 9: Sen. Joseph Biden (D)
(66%) 10: Sen. Hillary Clinton (D)

11-22 were all Republicans, obviously. No surprise that Hillary is down there at the bottom either.

Take the test.

My Chart

Sunday, January 28th, 2007

Chart

From: Astro.com

This report is a short edition of the AstroText Portrait.

The report was generated with the following birth data: female, born on 7 June 1958 at 8:32 am in Bangor, Maine.

Your sun sign is Gemini. This is the sign in which the Sun is in your birth chart. Your Ascendant is in Leo, and your Moon is in Aquarius.

Sun in Gemini, Moon in Aquarius

You were born with the Sun in Gemini and the Moon in Aquarius. Basically you are a thinker, a person whose psychological center of gravity lies in the intellect. Your mind is strong, positive, and versatile. Your real self is at ease and happy if it can move about freely, traveling, discussing intellectual matters, making friends among intellectual groups. Theoretically you are sharp and clever, but your emotional side should be better developed.

When putting your ideas into practice, you seem to have an inclination for strange and unorthodox subjects. There is at least a tolerance for the occult, astrology, and mysticism. The Sun in Gemini supports this tendency.

You are viewed by others as humane and broadminded. You quickly make friends and socialize with those whose ideas are similar to yours.

You have a tremendous imagination, especially in the realm of forecasting the future. Despite being sociable and easy to get along with, you may at times hurt others because of your very independent and unconventional attitudes. If there is something new, you go for it.

This position of the Moon will also give you several very original romantic adventures. In dealings with others you have great magnetism, and you should profit psychologically from this.

The secret to a better integration of your being is to realize that any force in one direction always creates an opposite force with equal intensity.

(more…)

Around the Vine

Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007

You might have noticed the redesign on the blog (yes, you, my singular reader here *grin*). I have to admit I haven’t done much real blogging here in the last year or so, but that’s not to say I’ve been slacking either. I spend a lot of my day over at Newsvine, adding content to my column there, answering people’s questions, commenting on other people’s content, cleaning up the content on the Groups I’ve created, etc.

Right now, they’re running an interesting sort of contest called the “Newsvine Question of the Day” and the first question is:

Question: How does Hillary Clinton’s entrance into the 2008 presidential race most impact both the overall shape, as well as the final outcome of the race? Ends: Tuesday night, 12am Pacific. Format: Newest answers at the top. Names hidden while contest is in progress.

Whoever gets the most votes on their answer has a chance to win a new iPod Nano with a Nike + iPod Sport kit. Your identity is kept anonymous, so people vote based solely on the content of your answer. Mine isn’t getting many votes, but that’s alright… btw, your answers are limited to a maximum of 150 words. :)

I’d also like to share with you these two recent articles that actually involved “me” (not bragging, just sharing)…

16 Jan 07 : Random Act of Vineness Award
11 Jan 07 : Interview: Aine with the Old Fogey

And my friend, Lughshand, snuck in and joined the site back in December, but I didn’t see him there until just the other day when I noticed he’d posted a poem to the Newsvine Poets Society. Sneaky bugger. *grin*

Oh, and btw, all of my friends who are involved in Second Life, might want to take a look at the Second Life Group at Newsvine. I’ve been posting news about Second Life there, along with six other members. It’s my way of keeping up with what’s going on with Steller, MacB, and Crazy Canuck (and I think Steller may be the only one who is there everyday)… and I must admit, I missed almost all of that. One of these days I’ll get new hardware and be able to pop in to visit, and then I’m sure I’ll be truly amazed at what Philip Rosedale and the rest of his crew have been developing since we last spoke in 2003-2004 (? might have been even earlier than that, and I’m thinking maybe even 2002) at 3DVRWeb. Seems like ages ago now, and it’s likely he doesn’t even know who I am anymore, but I’m glad to see the ideas we discussed being implemented in his world. I like to think I had a hand in seeding some of those ideas into his brain. *grin* I was especially pleased about the announcement that the SL client was to become Open Source. The server software is headed that way too… eventually. :)

Update: Calvin Tang showed up in the comments here a few minutes ago. Obviously he’s got a feed with “newsvine” as the keyword (so do I!). *grin*