because in every mirror, your reflection is already 6 nanoseconds old.

In the wake of the ever-unfolding Foley page scandal most people missed a little piece of legislation passed though Congress last week called the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

I’ll let MSNBC’s Keith Olberman give you the quick breakdown.






Habeas Corpus is Latin for “you should have the body”.

It’s the Great Writ, giving you and everyone you know the right to challenge your accuser, in a court of law, with access to the evidence presented against you. It predates our own constitution, and has now been effectively neutered by our new Unitary Executive.

And here’s the problem; depending on how he words his signing statement, this could virtually wipe out America’s right to trial by jury. The definition of enemy combatant has been ever-so-slightly reworded to include pretty much anyone the president wants.

Don’t think it can happen to an American? Ask Jose Padilla.

And the fact remains that people like myself could easily be misconstrued as giving aid or comfort to supporters of terrorism, as I try to have sympathy for all sides. It’s called compassion, and it’ something the leaders of this country lack.


The fact is becoming increasingly clear who this administration considers the enemy. It simply reaffirms my beliefs about 9-11, and the supposed existence of the Global Organization known as Al-Qaeda.

It's all about keeping you afraid, so you capitulate.

Tommyrot: The Art of Ben Templesmith




Pride of Baghdad

An amazing graphic novel by Brian K. Vaughan with art by Niko Henrichon.
It's inspiring, poignant and heartbreaking. Read it!

Also picked up We 3, by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely.

As well as Invincible #35 and And Invincible: Vol. 6 to get caught up on the series. Ahh yes, superhero comics at their finest!

Yes, I know, I'm a dork.

A Sleeping Giant Wakes - Permafrost Melting All Across Arctic Canada

MACKENZIE RIVER DELTA, N.W.T. -- The sun is beating down on an icy bluff, sending chunks of ancient permafrost crashing to the ground. Rivers of mud stream off the exposed permafrost, cracking and dripping in the 20 Celsius late-summer heat. Enormous ice wedges that have grown metres long over the eons protrude from the top of the bluff like giant fangs.

"Is this cool or what?" asks Scott Dallimore of the Geological Survey of Canada as he scrambles out of a helicopter in his hip waders. He heads for the steel grey bluff to take a closer look. But the melted permafrost is like quicksand and stops him in his tracks. "We first found this exposure two years ago," says Dallimore. The contorted pattern of the exposed permafrost suggests it might be hundreds of thousands of years old. "It's been frozen like this forever."

But not for long. The bluff, on an island that is one of the anchor sites for the proposed $7-billion Mackenzie Valley pipeline, is melting away at the rate of 10 to 20 metres a year. So are hundreds of other permafrost ridges and cliffs across Canada's North.

Geoscientist Rob Bowen, working with Dallimore to assess gases escaping from the frozen ground, likens permafrost to a "sleeping giant" that could awaken with potentially catastrophic consequences. One nightmare scenario suggests that as permafrost warms, it might belch out enough methane -- a greenhouse gas -- to trigger runaway global warming. There is some evidence such giant burps have occurred in the past. Permafrost also contains large stores of mercury, a neurotoxin, and massive amounts of soil carbon, which could speed global warming. But it's the water melting out of the upper layer of permafrost that's of immediate concern to engineers and northern planners. The so-called "active" layer -- the top metres or two of permafrost that melts every summer and then refreezes -- is becoming more active, playing havoc with the region's infrastructure. And vulnerable permafrost cliffs and ridges are melting, sending enormous blocks of the frozen ground sliding and toppling into Arctic seas and rivers.

http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/story....

--

Inuit feel the effects of global warming

The arctic is changing so rapidly that Nunavut elders can no longer tell what ice is safe, and new birds and insects are making their way into the region.

Spring starts early and fall starts late, robins are flying into the region and hungry polar bears are fading to little more than skin and bones as global warming radically reshapes the landscape, Inuit elders warned officials in Ottawa Thursday.

Peter Irniq, a former Nunavut commissioner, said the changes had been so swift that local knowledge was no longer keeping up. Ice-fishing grounds that had been in use for 30 years were now cracking, and people were falling to their deaths.

“We're seeing changes, we're seeing with the way that we are living in the arctic, the issue of climate change and global warming is not just a debate any more. It's real, it's there. It's not just an issue for scientists. It's not just an issue for Inuit any more.”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.2006...

Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.
-Pierre Teilhard de Chardin


You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments when you have truly lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love.
-Henry Drummond


Love is the immortal flow of energy that nourishes, extends and preserves. Its eternal goal is life.
-Smiley Blanton


Do all things with love.
-Og Mandino


Love does not dominate; it cultivates.
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul.
-Judy Garland


Love is all we have, the only way that each can help the other.
-Euripides


We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence, and its only end.
-Benjamin Disraeli


The moment you have in your heart this extraordinary thing called love and feel the depth, the delight, the ecstasy of it, you will discover that for you the world is transformed.
-Jiddu Krishnamurti


At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.
-Plato


Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.
-Aristotle


Take away love and our earth is a tomb.
-Robert Browning


Who so loves believes the impossible.
-Elizabeth Barrett Browning


Love is life. And if you miss love, you miss life.
-Leo Buscaglia


Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.
-Zora Neale Hurston


Loving is not just looking at each other, it's looking in the same direction.
-Antoine de Saint-Exupery


Where there is love there is life.
-Mohandas Gandhi


Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye.
-H. Jackson Brown, Jr.


Love is my religion - I could die for it.
-John Keats


Who, being loved, is poor?
-Oscar Wilde


Love conquers all.
-Virgil

I forgot how much fun painting is ...







.. and how good it feels to have paint under your nails.

Sometimes you have to practice what you preach.



Godspeed Loki.

I have these kickass VHS videos I used to watch constantly as a young teenager, where Stan Lee hosted drawing sessions with various artists, spouting forth tips and tricks and that trademark Stan Lee alliteration. At the time Image comics was booming onto the scene, and most young fanboys like myself wanted desperately for any advice on how to break into the biz.

Anyway, one of the best points made was by Jim Lee in his video, talking about the production aspects of comics, relating to how quickly you really have to work to produce a 22 page comic in a month’s time.

To paraphrase, “Imagine yourself as the director. You have an unlimited budget, unlimited scope, the best actors, the best props, the best everything. Your one constraint is time.”

So I was sitting here at work, zoning out and that little parable hit me like a ton of bricks. Just as I try to consciously apply my system of order and chaos on grander and grander scales, so too must I expand my metaphors to cover grander and grander topics.

As so that’s how it is for this life as well. You are the director, and the world is your stage. You can do anything you want, anything you can think of. You have the godlike power to help shape and create your own reality.

Only catch is, you’ve got a short and unsure timeline, unknown to even yourself. There are no re-shoots, no promotions, no trailers, no awards. Just you and your art.

How will you paint the portrait of your life?



“Get busy living, or get busy dying.”