fake(y) African cat skin anything

of those who wear fake some/any/everything African cat skin...leopard, cheetah, panther...
if they cant kill it, skin it and prep it...they nonetheless merit being eaten by it

China's cultural revolution of the air

seems that -- also reflecting on being there in July 2012...
the major cities of China are showing a "cultural revolution" of the air and environment.
then they destroyed much of their past for a while, now their present.

addenda to Dante: bibliocide

the reported burnings of manuscript collections in Timbuktu is somehow worse than a human massacre. people die. killed or naturally. but do books have even a believed justice "post-mortem"?
and books and manuscripts burned destroys their contained lives and ideas of the past, the contents possible for learning and edification. and it is perhaps more the ideas, or the stories and searching systems of the world on the pages than the physical rarities -- but also these rare pieces, anchors of the past -- that are lost and mournable.
there have been book burnings for ages, even before trying to understand the a-historic, anti-historic (pre-historic?) mentalities who would proudly be destructive iconoclasts -- but remember England during the Civil War, the anti-religious destruction in the early USSR, Alexandria's library, burning books at Nuremberg,...
Prefer to condemn such an act as those of "primitive" (though this is too simplistic) human, impassioned ignorance; to comprehend revenge within the Inferno of Dante's Comedy.
and if there are therein none who committed bibliocide, let this be added.

smoke signals in Moscow

close (but irritated) daily observation of smoke in Moscow signals with ~90+% accuracy that that someone smoking is "a no one". part of the crowd.

Russia will be healthier when these passive Russians have been manipulated to smoke less. that they can or will not stop themselves -- even for better health -- is clear at any moment of the day or night in Moscow.

Dostoevsky † and Nietzsche †

studying their stories...were not the lives and works of eg Dostoevsky and Nietzsche in their own ways a self-sacrificing

the missing links

on the level of psyche, there do seem to be "missing links".
even some walking the streets of Moscow

Plato's cave in Moscow

from Plato's cave to the crowded new modern malls of Moscow, most are now at most dreaming their lives away

missing God?

sitting in cafes or walking in malls here it often seems less that God is missing than that He isn't missed

nationalisms too shall pass

national(istic) human social identities arose in history, and they too shall pass from history.
but few of those passionately patriotic want to know this. thus they remain asleeping in these their beliefs.

another motley spellbinding inauguration

from inside Spaso house -- amidst all those with ties and high heels -- watched the inaugural of President Obama...a polite Steppenwolf...
certainly one can find in the rhetoric of the Senator, the woman (who seems to have had little idea what an invocation is, but who nonetheless) gave the invocation, as well as Obama's address, some idea(s) or other(s) to dreamily live by.
but not one of these gave a talk of any real coherence and order. eg God was included more like a sun-god: distant but warming...and apparently liberally willing to be claimed as approving of such somnabulistic unclear speaking about "Him" in the clear light of mid-day, and how "He" blesses this and that of America...
and all the various re/acquired elements of the American credo were restated in one combination or other: "life, liberty, and the pursuit of...", "government of, by...", "liberty and ...", freedom, equality.... (in relation to Hesse's Steppenwolf: they are "for everyone"...not for "madmen".)
a kind of smorgasboard of inspirational wordings: take and remember what you want Americans.

but do not try to make much sense out of these words. they were more for lulling than reasoning. a few contrasting theologies were hinted; variations ontic and political anthropologies; varied social-political theories mixed....

a forgettable commemoration. all seemed adequately and politely spellbound by the motley rhetoric of America. more traditional local/national anesthetic than any clear statement of the American state.