Paul, as you know, was the great skeptic of Christ, before his great Ecstasy and conversion on the road to Damascus; whereupon he took up his vocation and preached: "let this Mind be in you that was also in Jesus Christ." Note that the passage in Corinthians does not say: "awaken" the inner Christ, or guru in you; but let the Christ Mind -- the Guru -- "be in you." The problem we are discussing, about the "inner guru," is what do we with Him/Her when she/he has been , Awakened? Vocation in the West appears to be the answer; whereas, in the East, the great accent is upon contemplation. I am not suggesting that either you, or I, could ever career as great as a spiritual teacher as Ghandi, or Christ, or Buddha; but that there is in fact an inner wisdom, an inner sense of knowing that comes from the inner Master, that this is unique; and can only emerge through a vocation. You could live a whole lifetime and never see the impact of your vocation upon the world -- Emily Dickinson is a good example of this, where the career of the Guru remeins an isolated inward phenomenon -- but the vocation to teach, the calling, nevertheless takes place in the form of an ongoing dialoge with the unconscious, and this is what we must follow, according to Jung, if weare to achieve our wholeness.

I hope this clarifies my point a little further, with regards to the discussion we are having about the awakening of the inner guru.

The fencing summer national seems like such a long time ago even though June 29th and 30th. I got my best result ever, 6th place out of 150 fencers in Div III women's epée. I breeze-fenced through my pool bouts unchallenged, but alert. I got through four direct elimination bouts and amazingly three of my competitors were left-handed, but luckily I didn't let that throw me. The most exciting part was when I won all my direct elimination bouts, a woman at the bout committee table handed me a fencer's bio slip. I had to write down my coach's name, how long I had been fencing, and my best result. It was so official and delicious; they would announce all of that at the awards ceremony. No matter what I did I was guaranteed a medal because I had made it to the top 8. I, of course, was vying for first.

There was a separate room for the finals, which had fancy sign that had my last name in lights- changing colors and dissolving. I thought that nothing could scare me after the humiliation and trials that were public speaking, but I couldn't breathe. There were over thirty spectators in special seats. There was this elevated metal strip. What I'm used to is cheap metal strips taped to the floor, which get worn with use, and the armorers have to repair. As I stepped onto this foreign elevated metal strip, I thought to myself, "This is still the same sport, I think." I remember exactly two touches out of that fifteen touch-bout. I somehow managed to have a close bout 12-15 and I ended up placing 6th. No I did not get a new national ranking, but I will next fencing season. I will, and Finlayson (the Division III champion) better watch out next year because her flèche with and without disengages won't work on me.

After my bout, I cried, not bawled, not sobbed, but cried. I really wanted to win and had come closer than ever before. My coach was very understanding, "It's okay to cry," he said when he saw me blankly staring into the distance unsure of what expression to wear, "You're supposed to want it so bad that when you don't get it, it hurts." The Northwestern coach was recruiting and he gave me one hell of a sales pitch on his fencing team and his college. I am definitely applying there, and the sales pitch was so good, my dad wishes he were a young college-bound fencer.

Jon Carroll
San Francisco Chronicle
Tuesday, July 9, 2002

I'M PRETTY SURE that "cat year" is not a scientific term. It's more a rule of thumb, or a way of explaining why little Tigget is growing old so fast. Seven cat years equal one human year, because that's the way my mother taught me.

It's not an exact measurement. I have owned or participated in the owning of two cats that have exceeded 20 years of age, and yet I know not a single human who has made it to 140. The beloved Bulldog was once, when she was 18, left alone in a house in Inverness for a month without food (the culprit was an extremely slothful teenage neighbor who just kind of forgot what month it was) (that person is now a mother of three, I imagine -- indeed, she may be in your carpool).

Bulldog successfully foraged for field mice, voles and other creatures of the forest. I know very few 126-year-old humans who could have done the same, opposable thumb or not.

...

ARCHIE AND BUCKET are now, say, 23 and 26 in cat years. This is the flower of their cathood, when they have put away kittenish things and yet have not lost their enthusiasm for life, if "enthusiasm" is a word that can be applied to creatures who spend 78 percent of their time napping.

I think it is fine to open links in new windows. I normally do this by holding down the mouse, and waiting for the pop-up menu to show, and then pulling down to "open in a new window" (exact wording varies in each browser, OmniWeb, Netscape, Exploder, iCab, etc)

The "back" button, while easy to find (I think you were wrong about its findability), is the wrong answer, because it then will re-load things, depending on the implementation (although everything could be cached, not every browser implements the back button in an instantaneous manner).

To me, it is the delay associated with re-displaying the previous screen that is unacceptable. When closing a window, the previous one is instantly available.

In addition, I often use the "open link in new window behind this one" which is an option in most browsers (but not in Exploder). This allows me to request the new page, keep reading the old page, and read the new page sometime after it takes its time getting here. Thus avoiding the slow assembly of a page that comes from a slow web site(s). I hate waiting. I only wish this were the default.

Relative to "pop-under" or "pop-up" windows (generally ads, such as for X-10 cameras) which occur without my having touched a link, in a modern browser such as OmniWeb, there is a simple preference where the user can disable these. The mighty monopoly of the masses has decided that this feature is not something which they have chosen to support, so Exploder does not have this capability, at least not on my platform of choice (OSX).

Tally me on the side in favor of opening a new window for external links. And it is not because I have any trouble finding the back button on the browser. Rather, many links (especially in your column) lead to long trails of subsequent links. While it may not be particularly efficient, I usually have 4-5 or more browsers open at all times, each following a different thread. It is great to get back to the original article by simply toggling to the already-open browser (for example, by using alt-tab in Windows).

It is especially annoying when a link takes over one of the other already-open windows. Usually, I have that window open for a reason and it is a pain when the original content disappears.

Admittedly, "dive into the mark" offers a reasonable alternative: holding down the shift key while you click on a link (or doing a right-click).

It has been a general marketing rule that you should avoid sending visitors away from your site. Earlier, that meant opening a captive frame for external links, but that proved to be too annoying. Opening a separate window for external links is the current compromise, but if this also proves annoying, then it is obviously bad marketing.

Colombian cartels have spent billions of dollars building a sophisticated IT infrastructure. Now it's helping them smuggle more dope than ever before. By Paul Kaihla.

A Utica NY policeman pulled a car over on Rt 12 about 2 miles south of the Mohawk River Bridge.

When the Officer asked the driver why he was speeding, the driver answered that he was a magician and a juggler and he was on his way to Sangertown Square to do a show that night and didn't want to be late.

The officer told the driver juggling fascinated him, and if the driver would do a little juggling for him that he wouldn't give him a ticket.

The driver told the officer that he had sent all of his equipment on ahead and didn't have anything to juggle.

The officer told him that he had some flares in the trunk of his squad car and asked if he could juggle them. The juggler stated that he could, so the officer got three flares, lit them and handed them to the juggler.

While the man was doing his juggling act, a car pulled in behind the squad car, a drunk got out and watched the performance briefly, he then went over to the squad car, opened the rear door and got in. The officer observed him doing this and went over to his squad car, opened the door and asked the drunk what he thought he was doing.

The drunk replied, "Might as well take my butt on to jail, there's no way in hell I can pass that test.

Not one word has appeared since. I sent the Chronicle piece to friends in the college system in L.A., who were astonished. Not one word had appeared in the L.A. papers.

I wonder... I wonder...

If the members of the American medical establishment were to have a collective find-yourself-standing-naked-in-Times-Square-type nightmare, this might be it. They spend 30 years ridiculing Robert Atkins, author of the phenomenally-best-selling ''Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution'' and ''Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution,'' accusing the Manhattan doctor of quackery and fraud, only to discover that the unrepentant Atkins was right all along. Or maybe it's this: they find that their very own dietary recommendations -- eat less fat and more carbohydrates -- are the cause of the rampaging epidemic of obesity in America. Or, just possibly this: they find out both of the above are true.

WASHINGTON - It must be frustrating for the George Bushes...

And they are hounded by the same old question they have designed their lives to avoid: Can a Bush - born on third base but thinking he hit a triple - ever really understand the problems of the guys in the bleachers? ...the junior Bush now finds himself combating the same accusations of elitism that cost his father re-election.