Images won't appear

I am trying to blog about my MSI Wind netbook, but pictures do not appear in my post when I attempt to add them. Not my fault that I can't blog.

Airing armpits

Derived from an outing with Pearlin and Kim,

101 ways to air your armpits (for girls)

Would you like to contribute?

Do you feel it?

Here's something random.

Have you ever felt this way:

When you sit in a chair, step into a building or sit in a car driving along an expressway, you cringe.

When you put a piece of plastic into the bin, you cringe.

When you eat meat, you cringe.

Sometimes I do.

For the first, it is because I imagine all the foundations of our concrete creations sticking into Earth and that with every step I take, it is like pressing in deeper a pin into one's flesh (sounds ridiculous, I know).

For the second, I imagine all the garbage piling up and up and how some litter in the ocean trap sea creatures so that they bleed, suffocate or starve to death.

For the third, in my mind's eye I see pigs being branded and killed, overharvesting of fish, and of nets going through everything, destroying habitats.

Do you feel it?

Amie

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Amie

by Damien Rice

Nothing unusual nothing strange
Close to nothing at all
The same old scenario the same old rain
and there's no explosions here

Then something unusual something strange
Comes from nothing at all
I saw a spaceship fly by your window
Did you see it disappear?

Amie come sit on my wall

And read me the story of O
Tell it like you still believe

That the end of the century

Brings a change for you and me

Nothing unusual nothing's changed
Just a little older that's all
You know when you've found it there's something I've learned
'cause you feel it when they take it away

hey hey hey

Then something unusual something strange
Comes from nothing at all
But I'm not a miracle and you're not a saint
Just another soldier on a road to nowhere

Amie come sit on my wall

And read me the story of O
Tell it like you still believe

That the end of the century

Brings a change for you and me

Amie come sit on my wall and read me the story of O
Tell it like you still believe

That the end of the century
Brings a change for you and me

Are chimpanzees people?

A programme on BBCKnowledge on one of the past nights examined the question "Are chimpanzees people?"

The host put it simply - Do chimpanzees have language? Yes. Do they have culture? Yes. Are they people? No. Then he had a very confused and frustrated look on his face.

Simply put, we can think of chimpanzees and humans as cousins. Perhaps think of it this way - within the human population, we differ from our cousins by parents. We are similar yet also different. In a phylogenetic tree, we are similar to the next species by a certain % of DNA and we are different by that certain % of DNA as well. As such, in the same way that we cannot ask if our cousins are us or whether our cousins come/were born before us, it is equally senseless to ask if chimpanzees are people or whether they come before us in the phylogenetic tree. Somewhere along the line of evolution, they have simply evolved differently from us in a different branch of the tree (which brings us to the point that evolution should not be thought of as only a linear one-path process. Instead it is a bush, with many different branches (or "species", if it'd aid you in understanding) developing at the same time. Through time, many of these species died out while others they evolved further).

Not the best of examples or explanation, but I hope this sheds some light on the perspective of the question of whether chimpanzees are people or whether chimpanzees come before people.

Anyway there are lots of arguments going around as to whether chimpanzees are people, looking at the amount of similar DNA etc. It really seems to me as if it has become a matter of definition.

Crossing paths

Maybe when we're feeling like we are getting further and further away from somebody important to us, the way to reduce that distance is to, ironically, walk our own paths and hope that maybe the paths will cross.

Hmm. Just a thought.

Regret

Today Pearlin was asking me if I still missed him. I thought about it and truthfully replied, "Hmm, not really also. I think I just feel regret. I was too young and naive then."

I wish I had handled it better.

Damn, I feel old.

You

I saw a quote by my friend on facebook:

I am what I'm asked to be

I don't quite like it. I'd rather it be:

I am who I want to be.

or

I am myself.

The first is an imposition of the expectations of others. The latter is more of a expression of one's true self.

Which are you?