Ulanism

I understand where you are coming from. It does look like the future is bleak. But all is not lost. There are more people out there like you than you imagine. Part of how people in power keep holding onto it is by making themselves look like they can not be defeated. If they do a good job, most good people will not even try to defeat them.

From where I sit, I see the world changing in substantial ways. We are on the verge of a major shift in how the world works. I hope to be part of that change. Please do not give up hope… as I would like you to help with that change as well. Everyone has a role to play. Just keep looking and you will find yours.

FWIW: If you start a 1 mile race with one person 10 feet from the finish line and the “developing nations” hobbled at the start with massive debt, puppet governments and exclusionary practices like racism, it is little wonder that the race will be won by those who set it up. Add to that a military that oversees everything and steps in to block those countries that look like they are making some headway and you have a perfect game.

The problem, as you learn in Econ 101, is that in Capitalism (with no long-term relationships), keeping interests aligned is a difficult thing. For a while, it was Europe against the world. Then Europe went to war and they had to add the USA in there. Then Japan became an honorary member of the club. Slowly but surely the game is changing to one where “capital” wins – just as any good Capitalist will tell you it wold and should.

And me, being lame and foolish and wondering crazy thoughts asks; “Where do people come into play in all of this? Where is the humanity? Is this really the best we can do?”

And the Capitalists sing the happy chorus; “Capitalism is the most efficient way of distributing goods and services. Do, do do do dah…”

From the moment Utz and I left Khartoum till we flew home, not a single woman we met over 18 was not married. I do not think any of them were childless either. I was stunned to see women of 15 caring for multiple children.

However, I left Africa thinking that at least they had the full support of their community. None of the women we met were without male support (whatever that meant) and none were ostracized for having children early. Just the opposite actually, a women without a child by 20 would prob be considered an outcast and divorced by her husband.

One of the reason I try not to judge people is because of what I saw in those 5 African countries. The way people choose to live life is as varied as the folks who live it. Looking from the outside, there is little to admire about poverty and the injustice that causes it. But when you are in it, there is much about life to love – even if you would trade your poverty for a different path if you were given the opportunity.

Live freely. No borders, no military, no money…

---

Forced to Marry Before Puberty, African Girls Pay Lasting Price
By SHARON LaFRANIERE
Published: November 27, 2005 for The New York Times

CHIKUTU, Malawi – Mapendo Simbeye’s problems began early last year when the barren hills along Malawi’s northern border with Tanzania rejected his attempts to grow even cassava, the hardiest crop of all. So to feed his wife and five children, he said, he went to his neighbor, Anderson Kalabo, and asked for a loan. Mr. Kalabo gave him 2,000 kwacha, about $16. The family was fed.

But that created another problem: how could Mr. Simbeye, a penniless farmer, repay Mr. Kalabo?

The answer would shock most outsiders, but in sub-Saharan Africa’s rural patriarchies, it is deeply ingrained custom. Mr. Simbeye sent his 11-year-old daughter, Mwaka, a shy first grader, down one mangy hillside and up the next to Mr. Kalabo’s hut. There she became a servant to his first wife, and, she said, Mr. Kalabo’s new bed partner.

Now 12, Mwaka said her parents never told her she was meant to be the second wife of a man roughly three decades her senior. “They said I had to chase birds from the rice garden,” she said, studying the ground outside her mud-brick house. “I didn’t know anything about marriage.”

Mwaka ran away, and her parents took her back after six months. But a week’s journey through Malawi’s dry and mountainous north suggests that her escape is the exception. In remote lands like this, where boys are valued far more than girls, older men prize young wives, fathers covet dowries and mothers are powerless to intervene, many African girls like Mwaka must leap straight from childhood to marriage at a word from their fathers.

Sometimes that word comes years before they reach puberty.

The consequences of these forced marriages are staggering: adolescence and schooling cut short; early pregnancies and hazardous births; adulthood often condemned to subservience. The list has grown to include exposure to H.I.V. at an age when girls do not grasp the risks of AIDS.

Increasingly educators, health officials and even legislators discourage or even forbid these marriages. In Ethiopia, for example, where studies show that in a third of the states girls marry under the age of 15, one state took action in April. Officials said they had annulled as underage the marriages of 56 girls ages 12 to 15, and filed charges against parents of half the girls for forcing them into the unions.

Yet child marriages remain entrenched in rural pockets throughout sub-Saharan Africa, from Ghana to Kenya to Zambia, according to Unicef. Studies show that the average age of marriage in this region remains among the world’s lowest, and the percentage of adolescent mothers the world’s highest.

Many rural African communities, steeped in centuries of belief that girls occupy society’s lower rungs, are inured to disapproval by the outside world.

“There is a lot of talk, but the value of the girl child is still low,” said Seodi White, Malawi’s coordinator for the Women in Law in Southern Africa Research Trust. “Society still clings to the education of the boy, and sees the girl as a trading tool. In the north, girls as early as 10 are being traded off for the family to gain. After that, the women become owned and powerless in their husbands’ villages.”

In villages throughout northern Malawi, girls are often married at or before puberty to whomever their fathers choose, sometimes to husbands as much as half a century older. Many of those same girls later choose lifelong misery over divorce because custom decrees that children in patriarchal tribes belong to the father.

In interviews, fathers and daughters here unapologetically explained the rationales for forced, intergenerational unions.

Uness Nyambi, of the village of Wiliro, said she was betrothed as a child so her parents could finance her brother’s choice of a bride. Now about 17, she has two children, the oldest nearly 5, and a husband who guesses he is 70. “Just because of these two children, I can not leave him,” she said.

Beatrice Kitamula, 19, was forced to marry her wealthy neighbor, now 63, five years ago because her father owed another man a cow. “I was the sacrifice,” Ms. Kitamula said, holding back tears. She likened her husband’s comfortable compound of red brick houses in Ngana village to a penitentiary. “When you are in prison,” she said, “you have no rights.”

In tiny Sele, Lyson Morenga, a widower, financed his re-marriage two years ago by giving his daughter Rachel, then 12, to a 50-year-old acquaintance in exchange for a black bull, according to his new in-laws. Mr. Morenga delivered the bull to his new wife’s family as a partial payment, said his wife’s uncle, Stewart Simkonda. Mr. SImkonda said Mr. Morenga had promised to deliver a larger payment after the impending marriage of Rachel’s younger sister.

Malawi government officials say they try hard to protect girls like Rachel. Legislation before Parliament would raise the minimum age for marriage to 18, the legal age in most countries. Currently, marriages of Malawian girls from 15 to 18 are legal with the parents’ consent. Women’s rights advocates say they welcome the proposal, even though its effect would be limited because many marriages here, like much of the sub-Saharan region, take place under traditional customs, not civil law.

The government trained about 230 volunteers last year in ways to protect children, especially girls. Volunteers for Malawi’s Human Rights Commission, Roman Catholic Church workers and police victim-protection units also try to intervene. In Iponga village, for example, Mbohesha Mbisa averted a forced marriage to her uncle at age 13 last year by walking a half-mile to the local police station, where officers persuaded her father to drop his plans to use her to replace her deceased aunt as a wife and mother.

“I was really scared, but I wanted to protect myself,” said Mbohesha, now in the sixth grade.

Still, Malawi officials say that this region’s growing poverty, worsened by AIDS and recent crop-killing drought, has put even more young girls at risk of forced marriage.

“This practice has been there for a long time, but it is getting worse now because there is desperation,” said Penston Kilembe, Malawi’s director of social welfare services. “It is particularly prevalent in communities that have been hard hit by famine. Households that can no longer fend for themselves opt to sell off their children to wealthier households.”

“The gains which were made in addressing early marriages are being lost,” said Andrina Mchiela, principal secretary for the Ministry of Gender.

Women’s rights advocates want to abolish marriage payments, or lobolo, saying they create a financial incentive for parents to marry off their daughters. But even the advocates describe the tradition as politically untouchable.

In its most benign form, lobolo is a token of appreciation from the groom’s family to the bride’s. At its most egregious, it turns girls into the human equivalent of cattle. In much of northern Malawi, lobolo negotiations are typically all-male discussions of down payments, installments, settlements and the occasional refund for a wife who runs off.

Jimmy Mwanyongo, a 45-year-old village headman in Karonga, explained the marriage of his daughter Edah much as he might any commercial transaction. Several years ago, he said, sitting on a straw mat in his six-room house, he promised to care for his neighbor’s two cows.

Instead, he sold the cows to educate his adopted son. When the neighbor, Ridein Simfukwe, lost his wife a year later in 2002, Mr. Mwanyongo said he felt obliged to offer his daughter as a replacement. “Because I had sold the two cows, I had no choice,” he said.

Edah was 17, doe-eyed and voluptuous. Even with an illegitimate son, her neighbors and relatives say, she had her pick of suitors. Mr. Simfukwe was 63, with nine grown children and a flock of grandchildren.

Mr. Simfukwe said he considered Edah a bit young for him. But “her father decided that although I am old, I am the right person.”

“I think it was a tribute to my character,” he said. “Edah was willing. I didn’t tie ropes around her neck and drag her.”

Edah said her father did everything but that. For nine months, she said, she held out until “I thought I would die of sorrow.”

“My father refused to allow me to eat,” she said. “He chased me from the house. He said, ‘Go find somewhere where you can sleep!’ He said, ‘Go to your husband! If you don’t want to go there, I will whip you to death!’ ”

Her mother, Tabu Harawa, sided with her daughter, to no avail. “I told him, ‘It is like you are killing her,’ ” she said. “It was shameful.”

She said, “If it happens again, I will divorce him.”

Now 20, Edah has an 11-month-old girl and is racked by fears for her future. “My husband is old,” she said, sitting on the porch of her tiny thatched hut. “He may die soon. Most likely he leave me with more children. So where will I go?”

Her life, she suggested, is about as free as that of the two prized oxen her father now hooks up to his wooden cart for springtime plowing. “I am like a slave,” she said.

Some of Edah’s neighbors pity her. Others joke that she has married her own grandfather. Their reaction is one hint that even the most traditional Africans are starting to frown on marriages of young women to old men, as Edah’s mother said, “for the sake of cows.”

Mwaka Simbeye has her fellow villagers in Chikutu to thank for her return to her parents’ home after her sojourn in her neighbor’s hut. Now back in the second grade, she is still young enough to be charmed by a simple game of toss. Her body remains that of a child’s.

At Mr. Kalabo’s, she said in a barely audible whisper, “I had to do all the household chores. Washing the plates, cleaning the house, fetching water, collecting firewood, cooking when the first wife wasn’t around.”

Her father, Mapendo Simbeye, who repaid his $16 debt with Mwaka, said he took her back after hearing that the police could arrest him. In a clearing that serves as the village social center, he said he underestimated her, adding, “My daughter is worth more than 2,000 kwacha.”

“I did it out of ignorance,” he said. “I had five kids, no money and no food. Then Mr. Kalabo wanted the money back so I thought of selling the daughter. I didn’t know I was abusing her.”

Mwaka’s mother, Tighezge Simkonda, looks like an older version of her daughter and is no less shy. “I did object,” she said softly, glancing nervously at her husband chatting nearby. “I said, ‘My daughter is very young.’ ”

“But the control is with the man,” she said. “The daughters belong to the man.”

Hey! What’s up with that? I am getting all sorts of messages that look like they came from my website. Has someone hacked my site?

Short answer is a four letter word – S-P-A-M. The particular kind of SPAM is called “spoofing” where someone sends a note that looks like it came from one website when in fact it came from another.

Just got an email from my bank asking me to change my password. What should I do?

You are probably the victim of a phishing scam. Phishing is an attempt to get sensitive data by pretending to be someone else. In email, this usually takes the form of an email requesting you to change sensitive info. Please do NOT respond via email. Always use the phone to call your bank. Also, do NOT call any number provided in the email. Use your banks 800 number or some other publicly listed phone number.

Where does the term SPAM come from anyway?

He he… it is actually quite funny. SPAM is a processed meat product. Monty Python did a two minute skit where a customer wanted to order breakfast without Spam. Many of the early users of the internet loved this skit and when unsolicited email started coming out, they likened it to trying to get email without SPAM.

If you want to accept payment by credit card on your website you will need to either use a separate “clearing” company such as paypal.com or set up your own “online” merchant account. Even if your business accepts credit cards in your “brick and mortar” (tradition offline) store, you still need to get a new “online” merchant account.

Now why is that?

The simple reason is that most “brick and mortar” merchant accounts have a “card present” requirement to them. This means that you must actually see the credit card when you charge it. You are not allowed to accept phone orders or process charges for anything where the card is not given to you to hold.

Yes, you can probably get around this by simply not telling your credit card company. Just know that you are doing something illegal and if someone scams you or someone uses an illegal card, you can be held liable. Not a good position to be in.

What does it take?

Well, back in the day (5+ years ago) it was rather hard for a new business to get an online merchant account. Even established businesses had to jump through alls orts of hoops. Now? Now it takes a single online form and you hear back in 30 seconds or so if you have been approved. Upon approval you still have to give all sorts of info, but most of it you should have laying around for tax purposes.

• Ruben Benavides
  Wells Fargo Merchant Payment Solutions

  Toll Free: 877-336-5208
  Tel: 925-746-3712
  ruben.benavides@wellsfargo.com

  Ruben goes out of his way to explain everything in clear English and is always there in times of stress. Give him a call.

  Note: There is no requirement to use YVOD has your website host.

What does it cost?

Set-up fee One-time charge: $100 – $150

Gateway Fee Monthly fee: $20-35
Merchant Account Fee Monthly fee: $20-35

Discount Rate Per transaction (VISA/Mastercard): 2.0% to 3.5%
Transaction Fee Per transaction – $0.20 – $0.35
Additional Fraud Protection Per transaction

Optional Chrages
Statement Fee Monthly fee: $5-10
American Express Monthly fee of $5 plus per transaction fee: 3.0% – 4.0%
Discover Per transaction fee of $0.10 plus discount rate of 2.0% – 3.0%

arstechnica.com post
Links to news timeline
Real Audio of press conference

One of the most significant moves in tech so far this centuryin the last 5 years…

Money and the concept of “exchange” as a requirement to procure what you need will fade to nothing. There should be no obligation to “own” something in order to get what you need in life. This is a great step towards this new way of life.

Been collecting quotes for a while. Here is a list I stopped adding to about a year ago. I need to start up again.

There were two good ones in Fidellio the other night. What were they…

---

I am my Beloved’s and my Beloved is mine – Song of Solomon 6:3

Chaos, panic, pandemonium – my work here is done – Anonymous

I like to think that loyalty and honor still exist in this world – JK

I grow weary of walking this damned path, I need a good car to drive there – Reaper

There is nothing as sad as a missed opportunity – Kess from Voyager

What you do to those you oppress you will one day do to those you love – Dragon’s Bane

It’s our choices, Harry, that show us what we truly are, far more than our abilities – Prof. Dumbledore

Every bad thing that one human has done to another can be directly traced to a child who was not shown love. To save the world, we must love all our children – Parinaz Hassani

Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see… – Cicil Postman

It is easier to destroy than it is to create – Margaret McKnight

I used to be schitzo but we are alright now… – grimm

Don’t frown. You never know who is falling in love with your smile – Anonymous

Nobody is perfect until you fall in love with them – Anonymous

My job is to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable – Anonymous

In his eyes all his geese are swans – Anonymous

I’m thinking that you think you are lost. But you are not. You are searching for something real and as long as you are looking for something real, you will never be lost – Harry Bellefonte – “Island In The Sun”

When you give food to the poor, they call you a saint. When you ask why the poor have no food, they call you a communist – Brazilian Archbishop Helder Camara and/or Swami Agnivesh

Life is a feast. You are invited to dine – Anonymous

You choose your parents – African proverb

If you kill him he will turn into a ghost and his ghost will travel across the sea and inspire others – Queimada (Burn) [the movie]

The time will come when the power of love will overtake the love of power – Anonymous

There will be no peace as long as there is rich and poor – The Meditations (No Peace)

If you are going to call a brother out… expect the bull – Bond

…and on the 7th day, God turned off her Macintosh – Anonymous

In my mind, I’m still sixteen and I’ve got forever – Danny Gatton

Work like you don’t need money,
Love like you’ve never been hurt,
And dance like no one’s watching.
- Susanna Clark and Richard Leigh

There are three principal ways to lose money: wine, women, and engineers. While the first two are more pleasant, the third is by far the more certain – Baron Rothschild

It is possible that you will spend 200,000 hours with the person you marry, so the choice had better be good – Alexandra Stoddard

Meow – Snufkin

It’s the ones who believe they can change the world… who do – Apple Computer

When I speak they cry, when I shit they die! – Lee “Scratch” Perry

How do you know all this stuff?
You’ve gotta be smarter than what you’re working with – Locutus

The great discoveries in science are not punctuated by ‘Eureka! I’ve found it!’ but rather Hmmm, that’s funny….” – Isaac Asimov

Stay hungry. Stay foolish – Stewart Brand

And you know, if you give a guy a fish, he eats for a day… but if you teach him to fish, he will sit in the damn boat and drink beer all day! :-) – SuperMatt

Dreams are free but drams get results – Old Scottish saying

It is, of course, written in Perl. Translation to C is
left as an exercise for the reader. :-) – Larry Wall

Q: I’ve tried (in vi) “g/[a-z]\n[a-z]/s//_/”…but that doesn’t cut it.
Any ideas? (I take it that it may be a two-pass sort of solution).
A: In the first pass, install perl. :-) – Larry Wall

Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it – Anonymous

Jings old man! You are looking rough this morning. Did you only get nine hours sleep? – grimm

Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue – Anonymous

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on… – Omar Kayyam

A house unkept cannot be so distressing as a life unlived – Rose Macaulay

The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat – Lily Tomlin

We have to follow our instincts, our hearts – we have to listen to our souls in this or we risk becoming soul-less, which I believe so many people are. We are doing this (or not doing) for a reason, not out of apathy. We are whole and everything is somehow much better because of it – Margaret McKnight

Without going out of your door
You can know the ways of the world
Without peeping out of your window,
You can see the way of heaven
The farther you go
The less that you know
-Lao Tzu, Tao Teh Ching

…it isn’t the thing you do, dear,
It’s the thing you leave undone
Which gives you a bit of heartache
At the setting of the sun.
Margaret E Sangster

Programmers are almost as good at reading documentation as they are at writing it – Anonymous

Relax… Life is good. You are in California now – Ulan McKnight

All I want is world peace, and lots of money… – waky [CdN]

However, in the business sense, I have decided that networking is very much like gardening. You spread seeds around. Many pop up right away and then get eaten by a slug. Some escape and just grow slow and steady. Some lie dormant for a while and eventually, when conditions are right, they spring to life and flourish. You spend a lot of time when it looks like nothing is happening while the roots are taking hold. Eventually you get plants that can be totally different from what they started out as or what you expected. It’s all pretty unpredictable and it takes patience, but its a fun process with generally good (and occasionally fantastic) results. – Miriam Jorgensen

Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one’s self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily; and why older persons, especially if vain or important, cannot learn at all – Thomas Szasz

Society should learn tolerance. Tolerance is easy when everyone behaves as you wish – freedom in that case is truly free (no sweat and no pressure to you). Freedom really only matters when someone lives a lifestyle or has beliefs that you disagree with and you still believe in freedom more than you believe in persecution and force – David Every

It’s like skiing, if you don’t fall down, you’re never going to be a better skier – Jon Rubinstein

That is the way it works. And that is good – Michael Lewis

But Daddy, I only want that computer if it has a DVD drive… – Calista (8 years-old)

I drank to much last night – Got bills to pay – My head just feels in pain – I missed the bus – And there’ll be hell today – I’m late for work again – And even if I kneel they’ll all imply – That I might not last the day – And then you call me – And it’s not so bad… – It’s not so bad – Dido – “Thank You”

If you are not on the edge you are taking up too much space – Anonymous

Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, because you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup – Anonymous

One day in class I was the only boy who could beat the girls at the math flash cards. I began thinking I was good at something. When you think you’re good at something, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy – Steve “Woz” Wozniak (founder of Apple Computer)

The things you do in your free time are what you really want to do – Steve “Woz” Wozniak (founder of Apple Computer)

Reality is for those with no imagination – Gerar Toye

Happiness is within range only for adroit people who give the slip to America’s values. These rebels will necessarily forgo exalted titles, glamorous friends, designer everything – all the proud indicators of upward mobility – in exchange, they may just get a chance at a decent life – A General Theory of Love

When the theater’s full, they don’t sell lap space – Ansel Adams

Companies can either adapt to this or die. My bet is that they’ll die – Eric S. Raymond, (www.opensource.org)

Take heed
Never take advantage of the things you need
Never let yourself be overcome by greed
Walk the straight and narrow and you shall succeed
Get your act up to speed
– Shaggy

What do you do when the only person who can make you stop crying is the person who made you cry? – Anonymous

Everything is okay in the end. If it’s not okay, then it’s not the end – Anonymous

You can only go as far as you push – Anonymous

I and I build a cabin
I and I plant the corn
Didn’t my people before me
Slave for this country
Now you look me with a scorn
Then you eat up all my corn

Build your penitentiary, we build your schools
Brainwash education to make us the fools
Hate is your reward for our love
Telling us of your God above

We gonna chase those crazy baldheads
Chase them crazy
Chase those crazy baldheads out of town

Bob Marley – Crazy Baldheads

The son refused to criticize his father’s rule. But, tellingly, he did not cite him or any other person when he was asked whether he had any African political models. “If you look at Africa,” he said, “it’s just full of misery, poverty, wars. Of course there are nations that have not been touched by all that, but I cannot say, `Look, that’s the leader that I’ll follow.’ ” – President Joseph Kabila of The Congo (A child who does not know his history)

If you can remain calm, you just don’t have all the facts – Anonymous

While Socrates says that the story he describes will seem like fiction to Callicles even though it is fact, this is merely used to mark the reality of politics in Athens, that what seems like fact for Callicles is mere fiction for Socrates… In Socrates’ case, Athens did not want statesmen, they wanted despots cloaked in the trappings of democratic rule – Utz McKnight

Things will be better when we have

1) No borders (free movement of all humans to wherever they wish to go)
2) No military (with no borders there will be little to defend)
3) No money (when we can all get what we need/want without exchange – then and only then will there be peace)

I do not believe in money – it has no basis in truth. It is artificial and acts to separate rather than unite. How can you, who sees the love and joy family can bring, desire anything less than a family of humans who live in harmony with our planet? It is always strange to me when people set their goals so low. Is having happiness for your immediate family really all you want? – Ulan McKnight

The fragrance of virtue stands alone, without equal – Buddha

If you can keep your head when everyone around is losing theirs, you probably don’t understand the issues – Reverend John Shelby Spong

It ain’t over till it’s good. If it ain’t good, it ain’t over – Anonymous

Very few people will do things themselves or even help you do something; however, almost everyone jumps at the chance to tell you what you did wrong and how they would have done it better – Anonymous

We have a cat we call “Senf” occasionally. Senf is the spicy yellow stuff, mustard, you put on food. There it is a saying here that if someone always has to have the last word, they add mustard to everything – mOmA

Change is inevitable – it is growth that is optional – Anonymous

If people live in friendship then peace prevails and life becomes good for everybody – Kongar-ol “Genghus Blues”

Don’t ask me what I think of you – I might not give the answer you want me to – Fleetwood Mac

I AM the Band Geek. I just never joined the band – American Pie 2

The Wintel 3-Step
Step 1: It will never work!
Step 2: OK, Apple has it. So what. Big deal. Who cares?
Step 3: We invented it. Thank goodness for M$.
Mr. Bill

Smile, at the world, and give your face a rest now – The Gaylands

A Native American grandfather was talking to his grandson about how he felt about this tragedy. He said, “I feel as if I have two wolves fighting in my heart. One wolf is the vengeful, angry, violent one. The other wolf is the loving, compassionate one.”

The grandson asked him, “Which wolf will win the fight in your heart?”

The grandfather answered, “The one I feed.”
Anonymous

“The world looks very different depending on whether you are holding the lash or whether you are being whipped by it for hundreds of years…” – Noam Chomsky

Microsoft is not the answer…. Microsoft is the question. No is the answer – Phanguye

You can be completely mediocre and nice and people will want to hire you. You can be REALLY good at what you do and a nasty person and you will barely cling to employment. If you are anything less than stellar and a jerk – you will find it difficult to stay employed – Anonymous

The person who knows “how” will always have a job. The person who knows “why” will be the boss – Anonymous

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away – Anonymous

Good, better, best
Never let it rest
Until the good is better
And the better is the best!
- Lauri Ward

Our earth is but a small star in a great universe. Yet of it we can make, if we choose, a planet unvexed by war, untroubled by hunger or fear, undivided by senseless distinctions of race, color or theory – Anonymous

There are defeats more triumphant than victories – Anonymous

Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy, inquiry the progress, ignorance the end – Anonymous

People who work sitting down get paid more than people who work standing up – Anonymous

One must command self-respect before they can command respect – Anonymous

Against war it may be said that it makes the victor stupid and the vanquished revengeful – Anonymous

The greatest events – they are not our loudest but our stillest hours – Anonymous

The surest way to corrupt the youth is to instruct them to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently – Friedrich Nietzsche

Infidelity does not consist in believing or in disbelieving: it consists in professing to believe what one does not believe – Anonymous

Humans never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction – Anonymous

Free your mind and your ass will follow – George Clinton

Fate leads the willing, and drags along the reluctant – Anonymous

The greatest remedy for anger is delay – Anonymous

We seldom reflect on how pleasant it is to ask for nothing – Anonymous

Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them – Anonymous

Why should one feel it to be intolerable unless one had some kind of ancestral memory that things had once been different? – 1984 – George Orwell

Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, which crossing each other from a million different points, creates a tide which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression – Robert Kennedy

Familiarity breeds contempt… and children – Mark Twain

As you think, you travel, and as you love, you attract. You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you – James Lane Allen

Leasing is the fast-track to an appearance of affluence. Equity will keep you warm at night – Twin Peaks

Choice is widespread… unless you’re poor – Jackie Meeks

God favors no group – only religions do – Anonymous

Five simple rules to happiness:

1. Free your heart from hatred.
2. Free your mind from worries.
3. Live simply.
4. Give more.
5. Expect less.
- Anonymous

If you can’t trust a geek, who can you trust? – Anonymous

I love to fall in love with people – Tsan Abrahamson

No one spends other people’s money as carefully as they spend their own – George Leef

Share the wealth – c*de

If it ain’t broke, hit it again – Foon

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Thou shalt not kill… except to secure 60% of the worlds resources for 5% of the worlds humans – Anonymous

You cannot change the people around you. But you can change the people you are around – Anonymous

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public – Theodore Roosevelt
You’re either with us or with the terrorists – George W. Bush

Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday – Stevie Wonder

Death can always take life from you but never will it take away what you’ve created in your life – African proverb

When it comes down to the bottom line, everybody wants to see the sun come up the next day – don’t think that you don’t – Rio

O SOLITUDE! if I must with thee dwell,
Let it not be among the jumbled heap
Of murky buildings; climb with me the steep,
Nature’s observatory – whence the dell,
Its flowery slopes, its river’s crystal swell,
May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep
’Mongst boughs pavillion’d, where the deer’s swift leap…
John Keats

If eyes were made for seeing,
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have seen more battles lost than I have battles won – Sussanne Vega

How can we “shed the past” when it has taught us vital lessons? – Justine Paniagua

War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children. – Jimmy Carter (Nobel acceptance speech)

Smooth seas make bad sailors – Anonymous

Sometimes if I’m too aware of what I’m doing, there’s a problem – Spesh

A thief lives like a king until the day he is caught – Arabic Proverb

It is better to know where you want to go and not know how… than to know how to go but not know where – Queimada (Burn) [the movie]

Control arises from power. Influence from respect. The first lasts only so long as the knife stands at the throat; the second lasts in all places and in all times – isis

…we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt – “I Have A Dream” – Martin Luther King

What if war was not an option – Anonymous

What do you call a fish with no eyes? A f sh. – Anonymous

Two fish swim into a concrete wall. One turns to the other and says “dam”. – Anonymous

Baby, I had the time of my life
Everything is right with you
After all that I’ve been through
I’m not trying to loose this time of my life with you
Macy Gray – Time of My Life

Beautiful stars of love shining from heaven above
Bidding the world to look that way
Radiance yields the glow over the earth below
Cheering me on to perfect day
Isaac Freeman – Beautiful Stars

Raise up this morning, smile with the raising sun
Three little birds, sit by my doorstep
Singing sweet songs of melodies pure and true
Singing; “This is my message to you”
Don’t worry, about a thing
Cuz every little thing gonna be alright
Bob Marley – Three Little Birds

Jah would never give the power to a Baldhead
Run come crucify the Dread
Time alone, oh time will tell
Think you’re Heaven but you’re living in Hell
Bob Marley – Time Will Tell

Present two targets, confuse the predator – Adam Summers

We are creating enemies faster than we can kill them – Berkeley Bumper Sticker

Do you want to be right or do you want to be married? – Anonymous

I can not imagine paying someone for the privilege of watching my children grow – Jules Kobelin

The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long. And you, Roy, have burned so very, very brightly – Blade Runner

Never accept pay for a kindness – Anonymous

Why, after you feed the youth, the babies still a cry?
You need JAH inside of your life and after you no lie.
Busta Rhymes – Rastaman Chant

All he has discovered is our fear and our hatred. And now… we are all running towards a monster we should be running from. – Hitler – The Rise of Evil

It’s easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them – Adlai Stevenson

There is no such thing as a violent solution – Anonymous

If life is a waste of time, and time is a waste of life, then let’s all get wasted together and have the time of our lives – Armand’s Pizza, Washington, DC

Beauty is only a light switch away – Perkins Library, Duke University, Durham,NC

Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity – The Bayou, Baton Rouge, LO

It’s hard to make a comeback when you haven’t been anywhere – Written in the dust on the back of a bus, Wickenburg, AZ

If voting could really change things, it would be illegal – Revolution Books, NYC

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go – Oscar Wilde

And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom – Anais Nin

The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it - W.M. Lewis

The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience – Emily Dickinson

The true measure of a person is how they treat someone who can do them absolutely no good – Samuel Johnson

If you don’t lie, you don’t have to remember anything – Samuel Clemens

I open the paper every day. White folks 5, Black folks nothin’ – Marshall Poree

I don’t know why you expect men and women to get along… they’re not even the same sex – Marshall Poree

One day, we will find a more peaceful and sustainable approach to living, but I fully expect that pathway to be painful and destructive. Hearing many people relate current events to ancient prophecies and religious revelations, I point out that what has been described by many cultures as the end of the world, is really just the end of a way of life. If it’s not your way of life then you won’t miss it! – Michael Sherrill

A successful person is someone who’s happy with their life. In other words, a successful person is engaged doing those things they like to do that provide a source of fulfillment and satisfaction – Paul Knowlton

Wrinkles only go where the smiles have been – Jimmy Buffet – “Barefoot Children In The Rain”

Can you laugh at the cosmic carnival of it all? Mark Morford

The problems we face today will not be solved by the minds that created them – Albert Einstein

Nothing is either good nor ill but thinking makes it so – Anonymous

It’s all about the execution you know. Anyone can have a brilliant idea – Saks 5th Avenue Buyer

Life is the greatest teacher. Love is the lesson to be learnt – Linton Kwesi Johnson – Seasons Of The Heart (More Time)

Live the life less ordinary – Anonymous

No one is fool enough to choose war instead of peace – in peace sons bury fathers, but in war fathers bury sons. Croesus the Lydian in Herodotus, The Histories – Would that he was right – Anonymous

Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy wealthy and wise – John Clarke (1639)

If you want to belive in something then believe in it. Just because something isn’t true that’s no reason you can’t believe in it. Sometimes, the things that may or may not be true are the things that a person needs to believe in the most. That people are basically good. There’s honor, courage and virtue in everything. That power and money… money and power mean nothing. That good always triumphs over evil. That true love never dies. It doesn’t matter if it is true or not. A person should believe in those things because those are the things worth believing in – Second Hand Lions

The book is blank and needs to be written – Henning von Vogelsang

Anything 50% of voters can agree on is almost certainly something that doesn’t matter to most of them – Anonymous

You got me crying
‘Bout to loose my mind
Don’t let me cry in vein
Try my love just once again
Slim Harpo – Raining In My Heart (Living The Blues)

All [people] dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous [people], for they may act on their dream with open eyes, to make it possible. – T.E. Lawrence (Seven Pillars of Wisdom)

I got the blues so bad one time
It put my face in a permanent frown
Now I’m feeling so much better child
I can cakewalk into town
Cake Walk into Town – Taj Mahal (An Evening of Acoustic Music)

The best way to be socially popular is to never have an opinion and have lots of money – Anonymous

Technology doesn’t change society… society changes technology – Linus Torvalds

The secret to the fountain of youth is to think youthful thoughts – Josephine Baker

There will be no peace as long as there is rich and poor – The Meditations (No Peace)

History is written by the victors – Anonymous

It’s like a cake. It’s done when it’s brown, not when the timer goes off – Marten Mickos

In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations – From The Great Law Of The Iroquois Confederacy

Users don’t read web pages, they scan them – Jacob Nielsen

Men will go where their dicks lead them – Anonymous

Fill what is empty, empty what is full and scratch where it itches – Alice Roosevelt

Corporate customers don’t so much buy technology products, since the technology changes so fast, as invest in a relationship with a trusted supplier – Samuel J. Palmisano, CEO of IBM

If you do something right, people won’t realize you’ve done anything at all – Anonymous

An entrepreneur is someone who drives the train at full speed while still laying the track – Anonymous

Why do I need to have something to hide in order to want privacy? – Anonymous

She knew what we were meant to be, even if it wasn’t what we had become – Henry Louis Gates Jr.

…the wildness of the scene – though I’d known it all my life – seemed suddenly more harsh, more wild and terrifying, than I could bear – Phillip Pullman – “Count Karlstein”

When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras – Anonymous

I didn’t touch the code that looked scary – Marisa DeSalles

Communicate your message. Get out of the way. – Eloy Anzola

It forced us to consider: What does equality really mean? What does it look like? Equality does not exist on a sliding scale. – Melanie Judge

---

Old taglines. Good at the time. Retired and glad of it ;)

YVOD is a website development company that delivers big-company functionality for a small-business price. YVOD is a small, agile, big-hearted company that brilliantly and magically applies practical technology to help transform business dreams into revenue realities.

For small and medium-sized businesses looking for a large return on their website investment, YVOD is the website development company that delivers big-company functionality for a small-business price.

YVOD is a small, agile, big-hearted company that brilliantly and magically applies practical technology to help transform business dreams into revenue realities.

Information should be free. Hell, everything should be free – even love =)

Michlene threw a rocking party complete with a chocolate fountain. She asked me to spin and this was the playlist I lined up on the iPod if the turntables were showing me no love. Did not actually play that night but enjoy the list just the same.

---

“We Shall Overcome” Toots & The Maytals Toots & The Maytals: 54-46 Was My Number – Anthology 1964 to 2000 (Remastered)
“Who Have Eyes to See (Long Version)” Mike Brooks The Earth Is the Fullness
“Seize The Time” Jimmy Cliff Classic
“Mi God Mi King” Papa Levi
“Bim Today (Bam Tomorrow)” Toots & The Maytals Toots & The Maytals: 54-46 Was My Number – Anthology 1964 to 2000 (Remastered)
“You’re Devine” Gregory Isaacs
“Telephone Love” JC Lodge
“Gwan!” Pato Banton Never Give In
“The Selah” The Ethiopians Train to Skaville – Anthology 1966-1975
“Something You Got” Lee Perry & The Upsetters News Flash
“Country Roads” Toos & The Maytals
“Hush Baby Hush” Buju Banton `til Shiloh
“Fisherman” The Congos Heart Of The Congos CD 1
“Nyah Man Chant” Bushman Nyah Man Chant
“Riding The Region” Hepcat Push ‘N Shove
“Stir It Up” Johnny Nash Reggae Dance Party I
“Crying Over You – The Heptones” Lee Perry Produced and Directed
“Suspicion” Jimmy London Trojan Reggae Brothers
“Take You To The Dance” A. Malvo
“Third World People” Albert Gill Tribute To A King
“Hail Brother Rasta, Hail” The Ethiopians Train to Skaville – Anthology 1966-1975

“If I had a Dinosaur” Raffi More Singable Songs
“Junior Ragtime” Raffi More Singable Songs
“Willoughby Wallaby Woo” Raffi Singable Songs For The Very Young: Great With A Peanut-Butter Sandwich
“Down By The Bay” Raffi Singable Songs For The Very Young: Great With A Peanut-Butter Sandwich
“Bumping Up And Down” Raffi Singable Songs For The Very Young: Great With A Peanut-Butter Sandwich
“Sambalele” Raffi More Singable Songs
“Six Little Ducks” Raffi More Singable Songs
“There Came A Girl From France” Raffi The Corner Grocery Store
“Pick A Bale O’ Cotton” Raffi The Corner Grocery Store
“Working on the Railroad” Raffi More Singable Songs
“Listen to the Horses” Raffi More Singable Songs
“Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” Raffi The Corner Grocery Store
“Oh Me, Oh My” Raffi More Singable Songs
“Aikendrum” Raffi Singable Songs For The Very Young: Great With A Peanut-Butter Sandwich
“Frere Jacques” Music Together Maracas Song Collection
“The More We Get Together” Raffi Singable Songs For The Very Young: Great With A Peanut-Butter Sandwich
“Goodnight, Irene” Raffi The Corner Grocery Store