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WHEN will the stream be aweary of flowing
                    Under my eye?
When will the wind be aweary of blowing
                    Over the sky?
When will the clouds be aweary of fleeting?
When will the heart be aweary of beating?
                    And nature die?
Never, oh! never, nothing will die;
                    The stream flows,
                    The wind blows,
                    The cloud fleets,
                    The heart beats,
                         Nothing will die.

            Nothing will die;
            All things will change
            Thro’ eternity.
            ’Tis the world’s winter;
            Autumn and summer
            Are gone long ago;
            Earth is dry to the centre,
            But spring, a new comer,
            A spring rich and strange,
            Shall make the winds blow
            Round and round,
            Thro’ and thro’,
                        Here and there,
                        Till the air
            And the ground
            Shall be fill’d with life anew.

            The world was never made;
            It will change, but it will not fade.
            So let the wind range;
            For even and morn
                        Ever will be
                        Thro’ eternity.
            Nothing was born;
            Nothing will die;
            All things will change.

(Lord Alfred Tennyson)

A good guiding principle for our lives, from Kant’s Categorical imperative.

Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it would become a universal law.

If you have used Google Books to look for content by search terms before, you will be thrilled to learn about the good news: starting this month Google made possible for us to download several out-of-copyright books in PDF format.

Among the selected works we can find Aesop’s Fables, Dante’s Inferno and Shakespeare’s Hamlet, all public domain books.

How does it work? Simple. Visit the Google Books site, type what you are looking for, and locate a Full View edition of a book. With some luck you will be able to click on the PDF download button, read a good masterpiece, and be in effect a more knowledgeable human being. The trick is now using this knowledge for Good, but that is another story.

All nature has a feeling: woods, fields, brooks
Are life eternal: and in silence they
Speak happiness beyond the reach of books;
There’s nothing mortal in them; their decay
Is the green life of change; to pass away
And come again in blooms revivified.
Its birth was heaven, eternal it its stay,
And with the sun and moon shall still abide
Beneath their day and night and heaven wide.

(John Clare)

With the election day approaching, one issue that comes up and is debated to exhaustion is that of the Swedish model. From left to right of the political spectrum, different definitions and approaches are thrown around, always confusingly.

But exactly what is the Swedish model, and where is it heading? Rarely have I see an article that echoes so perfectly my personal experience as well as some disappointment with things Swedish as this one written by Johan Norberg on the Sumer 2006 issue of The National Interest. And as if it wasn’t enough, The Economist just came up with a very even article on the subject, entitled The Swedish model: Admire the best, forget the rest.

–

I’ve been in this country for over seven years now. I was apologetic for the government from the very start and whenever I was called to vote, I voted their way. True, there were always things to be critical about, and I know few as critical about everything as me. But in the whole, I was satisfied.

Pan to this last year events. By now I’ve witnessed first hand on how easy it to defraud the state and, consequently, those who work hard and pay their taxes. In this country, as long as you are wiling to lie here and there, you are set up for life. There are no bounds and checks within the system. You can pretend you are studying while staying at home and procrastinating, that you will still receive all the perks that come with the territory. You can have houses and stock outside this country and still qualify for thousands of crowns of monthly benefits. You can live with a partner in your house and still qualify for help with your rent as if you were single. Even in my original country this would be called a scandal. Here it is called living la vida loca. Read the rest of this entry »

Can you believe that thirty-three years after being released, Pink Floyd’s album “The Dark Side of the Moon“, the longest-charting album of all time, is still selling well enough to have its own cd-pressing factory in Germany?

Article here.

Another childhood belief shattered; Mice don’t like cheese. Thank you very much Science. What’s next? Bears don’t like honey?

Não teimes, não insistas, não repitas,
mas vive como quem, teimando, insiste,
e, porque insiste, como que repete.
Esse das sombras o silêncio fluido
escoando-se por ti quando não passas,
parado que ouves, não mais é que o tempo
de hoje em que vives só alheias vidas,
de ti alheadas qual de ti vividas.

Por outro tempo te criaste impuro,
difuso e firme, no clamor de versos
que os tempos de hoje reconstroem como
delidas cartas um fogacho acendem.
Outro que seja, é teu, pois o escutaste
na dor de apenas ser, na dor de ouvir
quão desatentos menos homens são
os homens todos. Teu, sem que teu seja,
que destes e dos outros se fará
serena ciência de possuírem tudo
o que juntares para ser roubado,
quando, parado no silêncio fluido,
se escoava nele o próprio estar na vida,
atento como estavas, poeta como eras
daquele ser não-sendo que eram todos
em ti, dentro de ti, à tua volta.

Jorge de Sena, Peregrinatio ad loca infecta (1969)

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Time for a funny project. Here is a do it yourself guide on how to make those small travel alarm clocks run backwards.