the change in language

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We watched this short interview with Martin Luther King, Jr. last night. I love listening to MLK.

What I find especially noteworthy about MLK is that he used a social movement and tactics to put pressure on political figures. It seems to me that the social method allows for greater personal integrity and less compromise than a more direct political method. Something about the difference in the nature of the two arenas.

lacking words

We no longer have a sufficiently high estimate of ourselves when we communicate. Our true experiences are not garrulous. They could not communicate themselves if they wanted to: they lack words. We have already grown beyond whatever we have words for. In all talking there lies a grain of contempt. Speech, it seems, was devised only for the average, medium, communicable. The speaker has already vulgarized himself by speaking. -From a moral code for deaf-mutes and other philosophers.

Nietzsche Expeditions of an Untimely Man §26

pokerface

leonid meteor shower tonight

NASA has a little applet to show expected activity in your area. The international dark sky association lets you know the best places to check it out. I'm guessing it's going to be overcast here but maybe you'll have better luck.

to the fates

To The Fates

Grant me a single summer, you lords of all,
  A single autumn, for the fullgrown song,
    So that, with such sweet playing sated,
      Then my heart may die more willing.

The soul, in life robbed of its godly right,
  Rests not, even in Orcus down below;
    Yet should I once achieve my heart's 
      First holy concern, the poem,

Welcome then, O stillness of the shadow world !
  Even if down I go without my
    Music, I shall be satisfied; once
      Like gods I shall have lived, more I need not.

Hölderlin (trans Christopher Middleton)

the yin and the wankers

Obligatory political post.