Archive for October, 2006

Kahotep and the rise of Egypt

The color purple has, for centuries, often been associated with power, royalty, wealth, and strength. Engineers have a time-tested tradition of soaking themselves with purple dye. This is done to commemorate the honorable engineer Kahotep.

An ancient Egyptian story tells that Kahotep was an Egyptian scholar who is estimated to have lived around 3500 B.C. By today’s standards, he would have been considered to be a mineral engineer, as he built wells in many town not directly along the Nile. Read the rest of this entry »

Running to Paradise

by William Butler Yeats

As I came over Windy Gap
They threw a halfpenny into my cap,
For I am running to Paradise;
And all that I need do is to wish
And somebody puts his hand in the dish
To throw me a bit of salted fish:
And there the king is but as the beggar.

My brother Mourteen is worn out
With skelping his big brawling lout,
And I am running to Paradise;
A poor life do what he can,
And though he keep a dog and a gun,
A serving maid and a serving man:
And there the king is but as the beggar.

Poor men have grown to be rich men,
And rich men grown to be poor again,
And I am running to Paradise;
And many a darling wit’s grown dull
That tossed a bare heel when at school,
Now it has filled an old sock full:
And there the king is but as the beggar.

The wind is old and still at play
While I must hurry upon my way,
For I am running to Paradise;
Yet never have I lit on a friend
To take my fancy like the wind
That nobody can buy or bind:
And there the king is but as the beggar.

Every fool, he is broken beneath the same unholy curse

The past, as we understand it, is a collection of lies. These lies have been passed down from generation to generation. With each successive generation, what little truth the people are aware of becomes diluted, time and ignorance envelop and dis-integrate the remaining vestiges of compassion and understanding. So we’ve reached a point, in this great cycle of being, where the truth is so diluted that we haven’t the foggiest idea who we are or where we are going. Read the rest of this entry »