They have tried to tell us that causality
is meaning--that the skeleton is the body.

"Myth is the twilight-speech of an old man
to a boy. ...Myth is the facts of the mind
made manifest in a fiction of matter. The
speech of an elder in the twilight of his
life is not his history but his legacy; he
speaks not to describe matter but to demon-
strate meaning. He talks of his past for
purposes of his future. This purpose is the
prejudice of his memory. He remembers that
which has been according to what could and
should be, and by this measure sifts the accu-
mulation of his memory: he rejects the irrelevant
event, elaborates the significant detail,
combines separate incidents of similar principle.
Out of physical processes he creates a metaphys-
ical processional. He transposes the chronology
of his knowledge into a hierarchy of meanings.
From the material of his experience he plots,
in retrospect, the adventure for the mind which
is the myth." --Maya Deren, The Divine
Horsemen (1951)

The Bulldozer is our sacred cow.

"Deaf is the heart to which the Lares call from
the desolate floors in vain." --Zanoni

How can community exist without a sense
of place?

"In the past two years, 500 export assembly factories have shut down in Mexico, throwing 218,000 workers on to the street. Their crime was the $1.26-an-hour base wage they were paid by companies such as Alcoa Fujikura to produce auto parts for export to the US. Those wages are now "too high" in the global economy. Never mind that the Alcoa workers in Acuna live in makeshift cardboard huts that lack potable water. Never mind that many of the workers in nearby Piedras Negras were selling their blood plasma twice a week to Baxter International for $30 in order to survive. Those same auto parts are now being made in Honduras by workers earning 59 cents an hour, in Nicaragua for 40 cents an hour and in China for 27 cents an hour." (via Wood_s Hole)

"Kabul is a glimpse of Dresden post-1945,
with contours of rubble rather than streets,
where people live in collapsed buildings,
like earthquake victims waiting for rescue.
They have no light and heat; their apocalyptic
fires burn through the night. Hardly a wall
stands that does not bear the pock-marks of
almost every calibre of weapon. Cars lie
upended at roundabouts. Power poles built for
a modern fleet of trolley buses are twisted
like paperclips. The buses are stacked on top
of each other, reminiscent of the pyramids of
machines erected by the Khmer Rouge to mark
Year Zero. " --the Guardian (via Robotwisdom)