anamnesis

Fascinating stuff. Colbert is great at employing a little known strategy of Nietzsche's I've always admired for it's subtlety. Not that Colbert is all that subtle. But the strategy states that the best way to argue against something, is to argue for it. Poorly. Something Colbert does with humor and O'Reilly does without a clue. But I'm curious about the 10 steps now, guess I'll have to make another run to bookstore. Man how I hate that ;-)

...today with one of my odd friends, who I thought had returned from a camping trip... but perhaps not? It started innocently enough, with my email: Hey Gringo, you make it back alive?! ...and then it hit the twilight zone :-) > hey, don't you remember i said we're just now hiking down the mountain > today tuesday, and driving back tonight and that the weather wasn't > unwelcoming and there weren't any problems with llama food > availability and that we didn't have a problem where the trailer > disconnected from the truck on I25 at 9pm sunday night, amazingly > lucky without any real serious issues resulting in a 12:30am arrival 1 > day ahead of our friends who stayed at the trailhead to experience > sleeping in their car the all-night storms/rain and snow half way down the mountain in the morning > that would have been quite tricky to have hiked down in? so how comes > you emailing before we get back anyway hey? Didn't I tell you

One of my favorites from times past.

You're Watership Down ! by Richard Adams Though many think of you as a bit young, even childish, you're actually incredibly deep and complex. You show people the need to rethink their assumptions, and confront them on everything from how they think to where they build their houses. You might be one of the greatest people of all time. You'd be recognized as such if you weren't always talking about talking rabbits. Take the Book Quiz at the Blue Pyramid .

You take a final step and, look, suddenly You're there. You've arrived At the one place all your drudgery was aimed for: This common ground Where you stretch out, pressing your cheek to sandstone. What did you want To be? You'll remember soon. You feel like tinder Under a burning glass, A luminous point of change. The sky is pulsing Against the cracked horizon, Holding it firm till the arrival of stars In time with your heartbeats. Like wind etching rock, you've made a lasting impression On the self you were By having come all this way through all this welter Under your own power, Though your traces on a map would make an unpromising Meandering lifeline. What have you learned so far? You'll find out later, Telling it haltingly Like a dream, that lost traveler's dream Under the last hill Where through the night you'll take your time out of mind To unburden yourself Of elements along elementary paths By the break of morning. You've earned this worn-down, h

How would you like to have a disguise that was always with you and you could whip out at any time you wanted to be incognito? Your search is over.

Podcasts, if you haven't heard, aren't some airborne invasion of body snatchers (which was what the word suggests to me), but rather audio broadcasts which you can download and listen to on your computer, iPod, Zen Player, etc. Some good ones I've tripped across: Grammar Girl. Quick and Dirty tips for Better Writing. http://grammar.qdnow.com/ http://www.qdnow.com/TOC.html 12 Byzantine Rulers. The History of the Byzantine Empire. http://www.anders.com/lectures/lars_brownworth/12_byzantine_rulers/ There is a lot of stuff happening in this space (frequency?), for example here's a list of free university courses on podcasts . May be fun just to drop in on an ivy league course in a topic of your interest while you are out for a walk with your mp3 player. Somewhat related, since it came from the site that had the course compilations above, is an article on Life Changing Books... where Open Culture asked its erudite readers which books they've read which have had the bigg