My advice? Self administer, then self medicate.

[UPDATE: colorless, green, ideas, sleep, furiously — invisible pink unicorn]

I have a three month old check on my desktop made out to the Omaha Friends meeting that belongs to Marshall Massey. The check was written to support Friend Massey’s walk from Omaha to the Baltimore Yearly Meeting where he was a keynote speaker this summer. There was, to my mind, an underlayment of inducement associated with the check, and I have had a hard time writing the cover letter and mailing it off. We sense that Marshall Massey has something to teach us, and that his presence in Wisconsin would help us gather like-minded Friends to address environmental concerns. But after speaking with him this summer it wasn’t clear whether or not he would want to use his time this way, and it was even more clear to me that sending a check hard on the heels of our conversation could be misinterpreted.

A week ago, he wrote the last posting in a journal that he began in April that documented his leading and his journey. The time has come to give up the money.

Tomorrow, in place of the regularly scheduled First Day worship at Madison Meeting, we are gathering for an extended worship sharing around the draft “Northern Yearly Meeting Faith and Practice” chapter titled “Concern for the Earth.” Any Friend Jonesing for an hour of Sunday worship can come for the regularly scheduled 9am worship, but the 11am worship, the more heavily attended, will begin at 10:30 and end at 1:00 and address our concern for the planet. This is a big deal, and the rescheduling actually might throw the planet out of orbit, so hold us in the light, please.

As part of my witness tonight or tomorrow, I’ll write something simple for a cover letter and mail the check off to Marshall Massey’s meeting, thus hopefully quieting the voice within that has begun to nag me into action.

Disclaimer: This blog, Listics, and it’s predessors, including but not limited to Sandhill Trek rel. 2.0 and the original Sandhill Trek are not now associated with, nor have they ever been part of arcane movements such as runic revivalism, futharkh spelling, nor any other pan-Germanic proto-linguistic baffle-gab promoted by the likes of Guido von List.

The existence of such a person, a man with a suspiciously Italianate first name, had nothing to do with naming this blog Listics. Anyone who says otherwise is a cad and a bounder. While we here at Listics thoroughly approve of Herr (or should I say “signor?”) von List’s choice of facial hair styling and fabulous headgear, I must re-emphasize, that his relationships in the Germanic Paganism movement, the insidious influence of Blavatsky and her nest of Theosophists on his otherwise clear and noble Wotanist thinking, have nothing to do with the work we are trying to accomplish here at Listics.

But, while we had thought that Guido Karl Anton List was a far remove from any cultural avatars that may have influenced what passes for higher consciousness in these environs, we have now been proven wrong. American Romanticism has impelled our work from the beginning, romanticism combined with a sort of native “one lord, one faith, one cornbread” naturalism.

Yesterday, Chris Locke, in a shocking thrust at the heart of American culture sullied — yes SULLIED — the memory, the reputation of New England’s favorite sons, Henry David Thoreau and by extention Ralfualdo Emerson. If Locke is to be believed, then the entire literary history of the Romantic movement on these shores is tainted — yes TAINTED — by some sort of ur-Fascist elitism and a bourgeois individualism masking as egalitarian idealism but in reality sowing the seeds of authoritarian and ultimately autocratic dictatorial repression.

Of course, this could just be my own inference, a sort of guilt by association thing…

EEstor… that’s what I’m talking about. Got my fingers crossed that it goes big and that it goes big fast.

The God Delusion arrived today! In a fit of bibliomancy, I opened it up and found on page 104 the assertion that “Pascal’s wager could only ever be an argument for feigning belief in God.” I’m going to like this book! In fact I intend to read some tonight right after I check out the video clips at One Good Move. Thank’s to Norm Jenson for all of this.

Irony or conspiracy? How likely is it that an organic food company named Natural Selection would deliver e coli 0157:H to the dining tables of millions of Americans at precisely the same time that the Pope was defaming muslims worldwide? Not likely. No, these seemingly unrelated events are obviously part of a vast global christian conspiracy digging in to protect what remains of their tattered empire in the face of challenges from science, competing superstitions, and health food nuts.

The Armies of God are on the march and we had better watch out!

Enter Richard Dawkins. The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science has brought online a web site aimed squarely at encountering religious superstition just at this critical moment when God’s rottweiler is barking loudest and the domestic religious fundies are spreading cow poop in our spinach.

Dawkins’ latest book, The God Delusion, is just out. The book is a profoundly intolerant look at god, a book that treats theocentric superstitions the same, be they baptist, catholic, or shiite. If I was him I’d duck and cover before the Papal scourging and the fatwas start flying.

The God Delusion may be one ray of light shining into the xtian darkness that has fallen on America. I’m looking forward to reading it.

Reuters sez…

California on Wednesday sued six of the world’s largest automakers, including General Motors Corp. and Toyota Motor Corp., over global warming, charging that greenhouse gases from their vehicles have caused billions of dollars in damages.

Allan Moult’s “Leatherwood Online” now features the art of Richard Wastell, paintings and drawings in reaction to the clear felling of old growth Tasmanian forests. There may or may not be a better place for UN intervention against corporate greed on behalf of environmental concerns. The old growth forests of Tasmania certainly should be on a list of areas deserving international attention and protection.

…the particular agony of Tasmania is in the end neither environmental nor political but spiritual, and it is merely one end, one highly visible end, of a continuum that extends from the muddy ash of the Styx valley to the blood spattered walls of Baghdad and the torture cells of Guantanamo Bay.

How about that bagged spinach?

Tell me some post doc isn’t responsible for flushing a recombinant e coli 0157 death vector out into our food supply via the drain in the sink at his underfunded and poorly supervised lab sometime between 1971 and 1982.

The Selectable Marker Gene: Neomycin Phosphotransferase

In addition to the aroA gene, the nptII gene from transposon Tn5 of the bacterium E. coli has been introduced in

[spinach?]

to be used as a selectable marker. This gene codes for the enzyme neomycin phosphotransferase which confers resistance to the common aminoglycoside antibiotic kanamycin (Fraley et al. l986). The DNA sequence of the gene has been determined (Beck et al. 1982). The lack of risk to humans of the nptII gene can be supported by its use in the first human gene therapy trials (Anonymous 1990). The nptII coding region is under the control of the nos promoter and nos terminator.

None of the introduced genes has any inherent plant pest characteristics or poses a risk to plant health when introduced into the modified plants.

E. coli 0157 was first identified as a cause of serious illness in humans in

1982.

Since then the numbers of outbreaks each year has increased steadily. As in other forms of food poisoning, the infection starts with diarrhoea, often bloody, sometimes associated with vomiting and nearly always with abdominal pain. Initially, E.coli 1057 was nearly always caught by contact with cattle, or by eating beef. Now it may infect burgers, rissoles or shepherd’s pie.