Love is a constellation of emotions and experiences related to a sense of strong affection or profound oneness. The meaning of love varies relative to context. Romantic love is seen as an ineffable feeling of intense attraction shared in passionate or intimate attraction and intimate interpersonal and sexual relationships. Love can also be construed as Platonic love, religious love, familial love, and, more casually, great affection for anything considered strongly pleasurable, desirable, or preferred, to include activities and foods. This diverse range of meanings in the singular word love is often contrasted with the plurality of Greek words for love, reflecting the concept's depth, versatility, and complexity. The definition of love is the subject of considerable debate, enduring speculation and thoughtful introspection. The difficulty of finding a universal definition for love is typically tackled by classifying it into types, such as passionate love, romantic love, and committed love. These types of love can often be generalized into a level of sexual attraction. In common use, love has two primary meanings, the first being an indication of adoration for another person or thing, and the second being a state of relational status. Love is an act of identifying with a person or thing, capable of even including oneself (cf. narcissism). Dictionaries tend to define love as deep affection or fondness. In colloquial use, according to polled opinion, the most favored definitions of love involve altruism, selflessness, friendship, union, family, and bonding or connecting with another.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Reflections in the Wall
The Vietnam War Memorial in Washington means different things to different people. This movie explores one perspective. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a national war memorial located in Washington, D.C., that honors members of the U.S. armed forces who had died in service or are unaccounted for during the Vietnam War. Its construction and related issues have been the source of numerous controversies, some of which have resulted in additions to the memorial complex. The Memorial currently consists of three separate parts: the Three Soldiers statue, the Vietnam Women's Memorial, and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall, which is the most recognized part of the memorial. The main part of the memorial was completed in 1982 and is located in Constitution Gardens adjacent to the National Mall, just northeast of the Lincoln Memorial. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is maintained by the U.S. National Park Service, and receives around 3 million visitors each year. The Memorial Wall was designed by U.S. architect Maya Lin.
Reach Out and Touch Somebody's Hand
This is a video about hands done to the music of Dianna Ross' "Reach out and Touch Somebody's Hand". Love is a constellation of emotions and experiences related to a sense of strong affection or profound oneness. The meaning of love varies relative to context. Romantic love is seen as an ineffable feeling of intense attraction shared in passionate or intimate attraction and intimate interpersonal and sexual relationships. Love can also be construed as Platonic love, religious love, familial love, and, more casually, great affection for anything considered strongly pleasurable, desirable, or preferred, to include activities and foods. This diverse range of meanings in the singular word love is often contrasted with the plurality of Greek words for love, reflecting the concept's depth, versatility, and complexity. The definition of love is the subject of considerable debate, enduring speculation and thoughtful introspection. The difficulty of finding a universal definition for love is typically tackled by classifying it into types, such as passionate love, romantic love, and committed love. These types of love can often be generalized into a level of sexual attraction. In common use, love has two primary meanings, the first being an indication of adoration for another person or thing, and the second being a state of relational status. Love is an act of identifying with a person or thing, capable of even including oneself (cf. narcissism). Dictionaries tend to define love as deep affection or fondness. In colloquial use, according to polled opinion, the most favored definitions of love involve altruism, selflessness, friendship, union, family, and bonding or connecting with another.
Reflecting on a Warming World
I invite you to take 10 minutes to reflect on climate change and Global Warming. Global warming is the increase in the average temperature of the Earth's near-surface air and oceans in recent decades and its projected continuation. Global average air temperature near the Earth's surface rose 0.74 ± 0.18 °C (1.3 ± 0.32 °F) during the past century. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes, "most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations," which leads to warming of the surface and lower atmosphere by increasing the greenhouse effect. Natural phenomena such as solar variation combined with volcanoes have probably had a small warming effect from pre-industrial times to 1950, but a small cooling effect since 1950. These basic conclusions have been endorsed by at least 30 scientific societies and academies of science, including all of the national academies of science of the major industrialized countries. The American Association of Petroleum Geologists is the only scientific society that rejects these conclusions, and a few individual scientists also disagree with parts of them.
Border Patrol
Since late 1994, the California part of the U.S.-Mexico border has been a testing ground for Operation Gatekeeper, a strategy aimed at blocking traditional border crossing routes. More than a billion dollars has been spent on Gatekeeper, but the new strategy has not prevented illegal entries. It has simply shifted them to the mountains and deserts east of San Diego. Meanwhile, migrant deaths have increased by 500%. Nevertheless, the U.S. Border Patrol extended Gatekeeper into Yuma, Arizona and has exported the new strategy to other parts of the Southwest border. Last year, there was at least one migrant death a day along the entire border.
I Wanna Bop with You Baby! Part 3 of 3 (Final)
A little video that was a lot of fun to make.
"Bop" sung by Dan Seals
Put on your bobby sox, baby,
Pack up your old blue jeans.
There's a band playing down at the armory
That knows what rock and roll music means.
I want to ride in your fifty- five T-bird
Back to those old memories
I ain't after your body, baby,
I just want you to dance with me.
Chorus:
I want to BOP with you baby, all night long
I wanna bebop with ya baby 'til the break of dawn
I wanna make it a night like it used to be
When our hearts were young and free
I want to BOP with you baby, all night long
I wanna bebop with ya baby 'til the break of dawn
I want to BOP with you baby, all night long
I got an old photograph in my pocket
We were still in our teens
Lord knows I look a lot older now,
But you still look the same to me.
Honey you don't ever laugh like you used to
And I don't want to see you blue
If you ain't busy tonight and you think it's all right
This is what I want to do.
(Chorus)
Let's twist and shout,
Just like in the good old days
Baby, watch out, you know I just can't stand it
When you look at me that way
Freedom and Peace: The Lark Ascending: Part 2 of 3
This is a video about freedom and peace. Peace is commonly understood to mean the absence of hostilities. Other definitions include freedom from disputes, harmonious relations and the absence of mental stress or anxiety, as the meaning of the word changes with context. However, there are others who would say that the absence of hostilities would refer to only those hostilities which are evident and that true peace only derives from the mind of each individual. Peace may refer specifically to an agreement concluded to end a war, or to a lack of external warfare, or to a period when a country's armies are not fighting enemies. It can also refer more generally to quietude, such as that common at night or in remote areas, allowing for sleep or meditation. Peace can be an emotion or internal state. And finally, peace can be any combination of these definitions. The symbol of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which has grown to become a widely-recognized peace symbol. A person's conception of "peace" is often the product of culture and upbringing. People of different cultures sometimes disagree about the meaning of the word, and so do people within any given culture. "There is no way to peace. Peace is the way." Ghandi
You Find Yourself
A reflection on the Vietnam and Iraq Wars and the role of resistance. Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) is a tax-exempt non-profit organization and corporation, originally created to oppose the Vietnam War. VVAW describes itself as a national veterans' organization that campaigns for peace, justice, and the rights of all United States military veterans. It publishes a twice-yearly newsletter The Veteran, previously published more frequently as 1st Casualty (1971-1972) and then as Winter Soldier (1973-1975). VVAW considers itself as "anti-war," although not in the pacifistic sense."VVAW was organized to give voice to the growing opposition among returning servicemen to the decade-long war in Indochina, and grew rapidly to a membership of over 40,000 throughout the United States as well as active duty GIs stationed in Vietnam. Through ongoing actions and grassroots organization, VVAW exposed the truth about U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia and their first-hand experiences helped many other Americans to see the unjust nature of that war. "VVAW quickly took up the struggle for the rights and needs of veterans. In 1970, they started the first rap groups to deal with traumatic after-effects of war, setting the example for readjustment counselling at Vet Centers now. They exposed the shameful neglect of many disabled vets in VA Hospitals and helped draft legislation to improve educational benefits and create job programs. VVAW fought for amnesty for war resisters, including vets with bad discharges. They helped make known the negative health effects of exposure to chemical defoliants and the VA's attempts to cover-up these conditions as well as their continued refusal to provide treatment and compensation for many Agent Orange victims.
"The VVAW believe that service to their country and communities did not end when they were discharged. They remain committed to the struggle for peace and for social and economic justice for all people."
