FOR YOU, O DEMOCRACY

Come, I will make the continent indissoluble,
I will make the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon,
I will make divine magnetic lands,
With the love of comrades,
With the life-long love of comrades.

I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of America,
and along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the prairies,
I will make inseparable cities with their arms about each other’s necks,
By the love of comrades,
By the manly love of comrades.

For you these from me, O Democracy, to serve you ma femme!
For you, for you I am trilling these songs.

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman (read it free at Dailylit.com).  I’m not sure how accurate this poem is anymore…

“Trilling” by the way is “flowing in a small stream or in drops/to trickle”

`That’s the reason they’re called lessons,’ the Gryphon remarked: `because they lessen from day to day.’

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Chapter 9) by Lewis Carroll.  Read it for free at DailyLit.com.

The oath of the inseparableness of two together, of the woman that
loves me and whom I love more than my life, that oath swearing,
(O I willingly stake all for you,
O let me be lost if it must be so!
O you and I! what is it to us what the rest do or think?
What is all else to us? only that we enjoy each other and exhaust
each other if it must be so;)

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass. From “From Pent-Up Aching Rivers”.  Read it free at Dailylit.com.

Man or woman, I might tell how I like you, but cannot,
And might tell what it is in me and what it is in you, but cannot,
And might tell that pining I have, that pulse of my nights and days.

Behold, I do not give lectures or a little charity,
When I give I give myself.

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass. From “Songs of myself” verse 40.  Read it free at Dailylit.com.

That such a diet makes people sick and fat we have known for a long time.  Early in the twentieth century, an intrepid group of doctors and medical workers stationed overseas observed that wherever in the world people gave up their traditional way of eating and adopted the Western diet, there soon followed a predictable series of Western diseases, including obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer.  They called these the Western diseases and, though the precise causal mechanisms were (and remain) uncertain, these observers had no doubt these chronic diseases shared a common etiology: the Western diet.

Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food

Ever notice that ‘What the hell’ is always the right decision?

The Little Big Things by Tom Peters (free on DailyLit)

Eat smart today because you’ll have to do it again tomorrow.

Eat This, Not That! (page 16) David Zinczenko with Matt Goulding

Thoroughly enjoying the quips in the writing and getting totally grossed out by chain restaurant menus.

on the battlefield, in the torture chamber, on a sinking ship, the issues that you are fighting for are always forgotten, because the body swells up until it fills the universe…

George Orwell, 1984 (page 103)

Still Human? Some observers refer to the post-Singularity period as “posthuman” and refer to the anticipation of this period as posthumanism.  However, to me being human means being part of a civilization that seeks to extend its boundaries.  We are already reaching beyond our biology by rapidly gaining the tools to reprogram and augment it.  If we regard a human modified with technology as no longer human, where would we draw the defining line?  Is a human with a bionic heart still human?  How about someone with a neurological implant?  What about two neurological implants?.. [page 374]

Seem like crazy-talk?  Just ask Dick Cheney.

Textbooks, with or without the bundled DVDs, are…”The Hummer of higher education.”

Judy Baker and Anya Kamenetz “The Real Cost of College Textbooks” NYTimes online.