“Daniil Kharms (1905-42)

mainly made a living writing children’s books in Leningrad. He also wrote poems and absurd short stories, often published in underground magazines, after the avant-garde literary societies that Kharms was associated with were banned by the Stalin regime.

In 1931 Kharms was convicted of anti-Soviet activity and spent a year in prison and exile in Kursk. In 1937 his children’s books were confiscated by the authorities, and deprived of his main source of income Kharms was often on the brink of starvation in the following years. He continued to write short, grotesque stories, which weren’t published, but merely stored in Kharms’ desk drawer.

In August 1941, shortly before the terrible siege of Leningrad, Kharms was arrested a second time, accused of ‘spreading defeatist propaganda’. During the trial Kharms was declared non compos mentis and was incarcerated in a military prison. In February 1942, while Leningrad was ravaged by famine, Kharms starved to death in prison.”

The site links to a collection of Kharms’ absurd short stories; here’s a sample:

Blue notebook no. 2

Once there was a redheaded man without eyes and without ears. He had no hair either, so that he was a redhead was just something they said.

He could not speak, for he had no mouth. He had no nose either.

He didn’t even have arms or legs. He had no stomach either, and he had no back, and he had no spine, and no intestines of any kind. He didn’t have anything at all. So it is hard to understand whom we are really talking about.

So it is probably best not to talk about him any more.

“a-gelwan: To stupefy, astonish; stupefacere, consternare: ‘-Ðá wearþ ic agelwed’, ‘then I was astonished’, Bt. 34, 5; Fox 140, 9.” Online Anglo-Saxon Dictionary – Bosworth and Toller

Teen is sentenced in “bum stomping”:

“A teenager has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for the beating death of a homeless man in an attack he and his friends called ‘bum stomping.’

Daniel Ennis, 18, who was sentenced Friday, pleaded guilty in May to second-degree murder in the death of Gerald Joseph Holle, a 55-year-old transient living under a bridge.

Prosecutors said the attack was an effort by Ennis and his friends to ‘clean up’ their neighborhood by beating homeless men until they died or left the area.

(…)

The deaths were among a series of attacks on homeless men in 2001 in which three were killed and five others were hospitalized.” CNN

Try Bananaslug: “BananaSlug was designed to promote serendipitous surfing: finding the unexpected in the 3,083,324,652 web pages indexed by Google. Directed Google searches return pages most relevant to your search term, based on the pages’ popularity on the Web. You may never see some of the pages way down the list that are relevant or interesting, but off the beaten path.

So we give you a little boost. We ‘seed’ your search with another word, chosen at random, and this accidental encounter results in pages you may have overlooked. What, if anything, do all the results have in common? You tell me!” [via b0ing b0ing]

by Gary Snyder. Why? Just because we were overdue for some Snyder on FmH, and this is particularly apt for these times. It was composed in 1969 as a handout for attendees of a Wilderness Conference in San Francisco and released with a ‘copyleft’ license stating “may be reproduced free forever”:

Once in the Jurassic about 150 million years ago, the Great Sun Buddha in this corner of the Infanite Void gave a discourse to all the assembled elements and energies: to the standing beings, the walking beings, the flying beings, and the sitting beings – even the grasses, to the number of thirteen billion, each one born from a seed, assembled there: a Discourse concerning Enlightenment on the planet Earth

‘In some future time, there will be a continent called America. It will have great centers of power called such as Pyramid Lake, Walden Pond, Mt. Rainier, Big Sur, Everglades, and so forth; and powerful nerves and channels such as Columbia River, Mississippi River, and Grand Canyon. The human race in that era will get into troubles all over its head, and practically wreck everything in spite of its own strong intelligent Buddha-nature.’

‘The twisting strata of the great mountains and the pulsings of volcanoes are my love burning deep in the earth. My obstinate compassion is schist and basalt and granite, to be mountains, to bring down the rain. In that future American Era I shall enter a new form; to cure the world of loveless knowledge that seeks with blind hunger: and mindless rage eating food that will not fill it.’

And he showed himself in his true form of

SMOKEY THE BEAR

A handsome smokey-colored brown bear standing on his hind legs, showing that he is aroused and watchful.

Bearing in his right paw the Shovel that digs to the truth beneath appearances; cuts the roots of useless attach- ments, and flings damp sand on the fires of greed and war;

His left paw in the mudra of Comradly Display-indicating that all creatures have the full right to live to their limits and that of deer, rabbits, chipmunks, snakes, dandelions, and lizards all grow in the realm of the Dharma;

Wearing the blue work overalls symbolic of slaves and laborers, the countless men oppressed by a civilization that claims to save but often destroys;

Wearing the broad-brimmed hat of the west, symbolic of the forces that guard the wilderness, which is the Natural State of the Dharma and the true path of man on Earth:

all true paths lead through mountains-

With a halo of smoke and flame behind, the forest fires of the kali-yuga, fires caused by the stupidity of those who think things can be gained and lost whereas in truth all is contained vast and free in the Blue Sky and Green Earth of One Mind;

Round-bellied to show his kind nature and that the great earth has food enough for evryone who loves her and trusts her;

Trampling underfoot wasteful freeways and needless suburbs, smashing the worms of capitalism and totalitarianism;

Indicating the task: his followers, becoming free of cars, houses, canned foods, universities, and shoes, master the Three Mysteries of their own Body, Speech, and Mind; and fearlessly chop down the rotten trees and prune out the sick limbs of this country America and then burn the leftover trash.

Wrathful but calm. Austere but Comic. Smokey the Bear will Illuminate those who would help him; but for those who would hinder or slander him…

HE WILL PUT THEM OUT.

Thus his great Mantra:

Namah samanta vajranam chanda maharoshana Sphataya hum traks ham mam

‘I DEDICATE MYSELF TO THE UNIVERSAL DIAMOND BE THIS RAGING FURY BE DESTROYED’

And he will protect those who love the woods and rivers, Gods and animals, hobos and madmen, prisoners and sick people, musicians, playful women, and hopeful children:

And if anyone is threatened by advertising, air pollution, television, or the police, they should chant SMOKEY THE BEAR’S WAR SPELL:

DROWN THEIR BUTTS

CRUSH THEIR BUTTS

DROWN THEIR BUTTS

CRUSH THEIR BUTTS

And SMOKEY THE BEAR will surly appear to put the enemy out with his vajra-shovel.

Now those who recite this Sutra and then try to put it in practice will accumulate merit as countless as the sands of Arizona and Nevada.

Will help save the planet Earth from total oil slick. Will enter the age of harmony of man and nature. Will win the tender love and caresses of men, women, and beasts. Will always have ripened blackberries to eat and a sunny spot under a pine tree to sit at.

AND IN THE END WILL WIN HIGHEST PERFECT ENLIGHTENMENT

…thus we have heard…”

“Melancholic depressed patients who are 40 years or older, especially men, appear to show a superior response to the tricyclic antidepressant drug (TCA) nortriptyline, whereas younger patients, especially women, show a superior response to the serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) fluoxetine.

SSRIs and TCAs appear to be equally effective in adults with major depression, however, some studies suggest that TCAs may be superior to SSRIs in depressed patients with melancholic features.”

I am among a subset of psychiatrists who have suspected that the SSRIs are less robust for the most severe forms of depression and that we have lost something from our therapeutic armamentarium in the last decade’s almost total shelving of the tricyclics. In meeting the pharmaceutical companies’ goal of broadening the market for antidepressants, we have lost depth of efficacy in the most serious cases. The study’s finding of the superiority of SSRIs in younger patients, especially women, is a reflection of the fact that depression in the latter demographic is more often the smouldering, chronic atypical kind associated with personality disorders than the acute melancholic episode of devastating severity.

“The downside of a cleaner environment is found in the empty palms of tourists on the long stretches of Cape Cod beaches: There is hardly any sea glass, those muted shards rubbed smooth by endless waves.” Boston Globe Having spent time already this summer on the Cape with two beachcombing children, I had noticed this and wondered if my perception was accurate.

While P2P filesharers locked in an ongoing PR battle against the RIAA are making much of the finding that they are among the heaviest CD buyers in the market, it doesn’t follow that downloading boosts sales of recordings. It strikes me that there’s an easy rejoinder from the music industry. ‘Of course you buy alot, we know you’re interested in music, duh, but you don’t buy as much as you used to or as much as you would if you couldn’t download,’ they might say. Music swappers are more credible, IMHO, when they justify what they’re doing by anti-profit (the record industry appropriates the fruits of artists’ labor; information wants to be free, the rapacious pricing policy of the industry is what is responsible for declining music sales, not us, etc.) rather than disingenuous pro-profit arguments, whatever you think of the merits of the arguments.

“Pop music, Broadway and even opera have succumbed to over-amplification. Listeners are fleeing into the night.” Los Angeles Times

“Creative genius and crime express themselves early in men but both are turned off almost like a tap if a man gets married and has children, a study says.

Satoshi Kanazawa, a psychologist at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, compiled a database of the biographies of 280 great scientists, noting their age at the time when they made their greatest work.

The data remarkably concur with the brutal observation made by Albert Einstein, who wrote in 1942: ‘A person who has not made his great contribution to science before the age of 30 will never do so.’

‘Scientific productivity indeed fades with age,’ Dr Kanazawa says.

‘Two-thirds (of all scientists) will have made their most significant contributions before their mid-30s.’

But, regardless of age, the great minds who married virtually kissed goodbye to making any further glorious additions to their CV.

Within five years of making their nuptial vows, nearly a quarter of married scientists had made their last significant contribution to history’s hall of fame.

‘Scientists rather quickly desist (from their careers) after their marriage, while unmarried scientists continue to make great scientific contributions later in their lives,’ says Dr Kanazawa.

The energy of youth and the dampening effect of marriage, he adds, are also remarkably similar among geniuses in music, painting and writing, as well as in criminal activity.”

This methodology is unable to determine causality, of course. The conclusion that marriage dampens creativity is unwarranted. It is equally plausible that ‘geniuses’ don’t contemplate settling down until they are slowing their pace, if ever.

Previous studies have documented that delinquents are overwhelmingly male, and usually start out on the road to crime in their teens.

But those who marry well, subsequently stop committing crime, whereas criminals at the same age who remain unmarried tend to continue their unlawful careers.

Should we say, “…criminals at the same age who tend to continue their unlawful careers remain unmarried”?

Warning; severe reductionism follows:

Dr Kanazawa suggests “a single psychological mechanism” is responsible for this: the competitive edge among young men to fight for glory and gain the attention of women.

That craving drives the all-important male hormone, testosterone.

Dr Kanazawa theorises after a man settles down, the testosterone level falls, as does his creative output. ABC News

Hypertags, small electronic tags using infrared signals, can be discreetly attached to information display surfaces such as billboards or walls, to enable mobile-phone or PDA users to receive small amounts of data by pointing and clicking. Wired News Promoters of the technology envision sending URLs where the user could access digital content such as background nformation on an art exhibit, further information on an advertised product, local sightseeing information, further information on an advertised product, direct access to a film’s webpage, further information on an advertised product, get the drift? If this catches on, I predict that the almost endless interesting, innovative and really useful applications (off the top of my head, how about sites to find further information on health conditions or prescription drugs? hypertags on buses or trains sending you someplace to get updated schedule information? directions from central directories to particular locations in large complexes such as university campuses?) will be swamped by the crass pedestrian ones even much more quickly than they came to be on the Internet. On the other hand, I don’t ever foresee wanting to do much surfing on my cellphone or even my PDA. No matter how gorgeous the color, the form factor is inimical to web-browsing and only slightly more useful with “clipped” content. While it wouldn’t be realtime, about the best use I imagine for hypertags would be to dump the collected URLs from my phone or my PDA onto a desktop system later on, for further investigation on a reasonable display.

“A new film by Mel Gibson, to be released next year, depicts Jesus’ last few hours. Jews and Catholics are raising concerns about its potential for stoking anti-Semitism.” Christian Science Monitor

“The downside of a cleaner environment is found in the empty palms of tourists on the long stretches of Cape Cod beaches: There is hardly any sea glass, those muted shards rubbed smooth by endless waves.” Boston Globe Having spent time already this summer on the Cape with two beachcombing children, I had noticed this and wondered if my perception was accurate.