Your task:

Find a piece of modern music that is written in 5/4 that doesn't use the same downbeat pattern as the "Mission: Impossible" theme song. (If you were to tap it out in 10/8, the downbeats would be on 1, 4, 7, and 9.)

Feel free to use this Wikipedia page as a starting point. I haven't searched all of them, but I have checked these:
"Take Five", Paul Desmond / Dave Brubeck Quartet
"Do What You Like", Ginger Baker / Blind Faith (the song that made me think of this in the first place)
"English Roundabout", XTC
"15 Step", Radiohead (has some bits with a slightly different rhythm, I think)
"Living In The Past", Jethro Tull

it's been 40 years. we should go back to the moon. for lots of reasons.

if we destroy human civilization on the earth, and aliens come and see our landing sites on the moon, they should really know that we had another president besides RICHARD FUCKING NIXON.

(seriously, happy apollo 11 day, everyone!)

From crunchywitch: Jimmy Carter quits his church over sexism (the link is to a piece by Carter himself, which is beautiful and moving).

Harvard professor arrested for being black-while-in-own-home.

In case you missed it over the weekend: Walter Cronkite is dead.

Beastie Boys' Adam Lauch announces on YouTube that he has cancer.

Bicyclists may want to skip this one: Van plows into five cyclists in Ottawa, then takes off. The driver later turned himself in.

Excellent (and long) exploration of the ethics of distributing health care resources, by a professor of bioethics.

This weekend was THINGS. Things stacked atop things in thing-sauce, with things wedged in between, and extra things stuffed in around the edges. Friday night I just gamed with Chris and spreadnparanoia and keystroke, which felt like a rest-up for all the things on Saturday and Sunday:

Saturday: Get up --> shower --> go to library --> drive down into Chicago and pick up magdalene1 --> walk around the lakefront for 2 1/2 hours --> drop her off --> drive back up to Evanston for Chris' rather ridiculously awesome celebratory "I made partner" dinner at Pete Miller's --> hang out for an hour afterward, which was really my first chance to see inediblebuddha while he's in town gathering up his Jeep --> drive back down to Chicago for niemandsrose's going-away party --> drive back up to Evanston --> have low-key talky time with Chris until 1 a.m. --> reluctantly go to sleep.

Sunday was simpler: Get up --> attempt lunch --> fail because the place wasn't open until noon --> attempt to drive over and grab lunch at Chipotle --> fail because downtown Evanston was entirely cordoned off for something called "the annual NorthShore University HealthSystem Grand Prix", which involved by my count 42 pro bikers tearing in circles around the streets of Evanston --> ditch car and Chris, walk into town, get food, walk to Kevin & Sam's --> play D&D for five hours --> stop off at home for 10 minutes, acquire Cass --> drive to Erin & Wil's for dinner and the last of season 5 of The IT Crowd --> sit around talking for an hour or so --> go home, contemplate messy kitchen and general disorganization --> say "screw it" and sleep.

I didn't eat any better or exercise any more this weekend than I have been recently, though the long walk around the lakefront was refreshing. So I don't think I'm in any way responsible for this, but suddenly this morning the fog magically lifted, and I'm back to being largely indifferent to sugar instead of craving it like a drug. So hooray for that. This morning I got up when the alarm went off instead of hitting "snooze" 12 times, and the first thing that went through my half-awake brain was "I've been an idiot for about a month now. Today's goal is to not be an idiot." Then it went through my head about 427 more times. When I'm sleepy in the morning, my brain tends to fall into grooves and repeat things at me uselessly. No matter, I'm used to moving around on fixed rails on weekday mornings.

That aside, I spent the morning planning or coordinating or feeling out some sort of event every day this week. Because people, rawr. Going places, woo-hoo. So I think it's safe to say that I've crested out of mild depression into mild mania. Mild yay! This part is MUCH more fun. Also, I really need to suck up a little summer. There doesn't seem to be much to go around this year, so I should get what I can of it.

adxiety, n. that anxious feeling you get when your graduate advisor sends you email that just says "Let's set up a meeting" and doesn't explain why or what about.

Want to know the news and update information for my site, ClaireBondage.com?

You can by subscribing to my RSS feed by clicking the icon above! or add it to your Yahoo account too!!!

So, I'm flipping about the Gospel of Thomas. These:

Jesus said, "No prophet is welcome on his home turf; doctors don't cure those who know them."
Jesus said, "A city built on a high hill and fortified cannot fall, nor can it be hidden."

Sorta make sense. I can interpret them. In my own heterodoxical way. They seem like things Jesus might say, or at least things his followers might have him say when they write the text.

But I was confused upon:

Jesus said, "One can't enter a strong person's house and take it by force without tying his hands. Then one can loot his house."

This seems like simple common sense; but I cannot imagine that this common sense was so important that they had Jesus say it and they wrote it down for it to be remembered. So can anyone here help me figure out why in the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus is found to say the above bolded quote? Cause I just don't get it.

_____________________ is better than surgery.

1


( +2 )

http://www.linux.com/news/software/developer/29068-apollo-11-story

Technical details of the Apollo 11 software. A great read!

An amazing description of Moore’s Law, its history, and how it affected the world (and many interesting comparisons). Oh, and predictions of the future too!

The expectation that meditation/ritual is something you do to gain mastery over the forces of nature made me laugh.   But then I ask, if not for the super-powers, why AM I doing this?

There are lots of beneficial side effects of meditation.  Improved concentration (obviously), reduced stress levels and attendant health benefits.  For me personally, my practice has helped me work through a boatload of crazy messed-up life stuff, and to gain a strong sense of my own center.

Oh, yes.   People think that meditation means you will be calm and unruffled. Well, that depends on the meditation, really; Feri practice doesn't so much aim at that, though it can be achieved as a fortuitous side effect.  It also depends on the person; some of us start out more tightly wound than others.   In other words, this IS my Zen, motherfuckers.

Self-improvement is a worthy goal, but one that tends to eat its own tail.   That is, at a certain point cultivating self-acceptance becomes more important than self-improvement, and the latter gets in the way of the former.  Also, once you're "good enough"  (or if you think that way to begin with) you might conclude you don't need it.  There's more to a spiritual practice than that.

The most important thing..or so I think this week...is just living.   That is, you only get one moment, the one you're in right now; everything else is past and future, vague as a dream or completely unknown, memory or imagination.  You don't live in the past or in the future; you only live now.   That doesn't stop people from trying to live somewhere else than now, they do it all the time and it's a mistake.  Because your whole life passes that way, one moment at a time, and if you're not even there in that moment as it happens, you're not anywhere.  You lose that too.  People let their whole lives go by oblivious to what is actually going on around them.  You can't get more life by duration, but you can certainly have more by actually living what you've got.

The best thing meditation or any spiritual practice can do for you is to teach you to be where you are and pay attention.  It's the only thing worth doing, really.

A new beauty contest in Cote d'Ivoire celebrates the natural skin tones of African women and discourages dangerous skin bleaching. I had no idea that so many African women were using products to bleach their skin. While I'm conflicted about the idea of beauty contests, it's nice to see that there are people out there working to show dark-skinned women that they are beautiful just the way they are.

Pedro Konijn just sent me this. This is an illustration of me drawn by Pedro from a photoshoot photographed by Dave Naz, bondage rigging by Damon Pierce. Hope you enjoy! I  think he is an amazing artist and am honored that he has taken the time to create this.?

For current information on the Bake Sale and a list of all the tasty baked goods available to be bid on, go to pastrypleasures. Scroll down to the bottom to see the sale details. Lots of yummy stuff and the proceeds of the sale will help an awesome friend of ours.

Perhaps a handful of you don't know that yet.

I forget that not everybody reads twit|book, although, technically, I did mention it here a few weeks ago too. And, like everyone else in the production, I've been saturation-bombing little blue flyers whenever encountered in person.

Festival@First 6: Tables Turned
July 23 - August 1
Performances will take place at The Unity Church of God, 6 William St., Somerville (Davis Square).

Apparently I look completely dreadful in my costume, as this was all anyone had to say to me. "Hi! Wow, you look like crap in yellow! Ok, seeya." Great. Then, again, my character is supposed to be unappealing. This way I can pretend it's only the dress. The same dress in pink would look much better, no doubt, but then you'd all start pressuring me to wear pink, and I'd have to kill you.

The raspberry explosion has commenced.

.55 kilograms collected just now. yum.

i'm a sucker for working dogs (dogs with jobs! dogs love to have jobs!), so i cannot stop clicking back page by page in this thread on militaryphotos.net of military dogs.

dogs in agility training! dogs laying down next to their handlers! running dogs! jumping dogs! sniffing dogs! guard dogs! PARACHUTING DOGS!

Having a speedometer on the bike helps me get a better workout by letting me compare how fast I come past various landmarks -- this is better than seeing what *time* I get to those landmarks because it lets me ignore the effect of traffic lights. One of my landmarks is the minuteman statue in Lexington, which I like to pass going at least 20 mph. This morning I passed it at 23 mph, and at the same time also passed another cyclist who was doing about 20. He chased me down and drafted me to the end of the bikepath at which point I convinced him to follow me up Springs Road and do some intervals. Wow, having someone else along on those made me work a lot harder. He did well, too, especially on the longer ones, and came past the high point of Springs Road half a bike length ahead of me. We rested a bit more between the intervals than I usually do so I don't know if it was any faster than usual but it sure left me more sore.