Gmail is coming. 1 gig of storage. Email will never be the same.

Goodbye, hotmail.

Visit the Sloganator Memorial for a heartwarming tribute to the Bush Cheney Slogan generator.

This is a really profound statement, I know, but I’m gonna throw it out anyway: The Mongols did some serious killing and pillaging. They just killed and killed. They killed all the way through eastern Europe before the death of Genghis Khan’s son caused the horde to pull back to the steppes to appoint a new leader.

On a related topic:
I always thought that koans were kind of pointless. It wasn’t until I read Ancient China: The Mongolian Empire: The Yuan Dynasty, 1279-1368 that I came to the conclusion that they were designed to be pointless. They were invented to give some kind of written form to the meditative school of Buddhism and as a result there was really no point to them, I decided. I’ll be the first to admit I don’t know if this is true but it’s an interesting point.

Curiously, the Mongols, though Buddhist, did not really support or patronize Buddhism, which was largely left to its own devices. They favored Tibetan Buddhism but really did not financially support the monasteries. When the Mongol rulers decided that too many Buddhists were escaping military service, they instituted a literacy test on Buddhist scriptures. Anyone who couldn’t demonstrate literacy in the scriptures lost their military exemption. This put the Mongol rulers in direct conflict with the major Buddhist masters; the central school of Buddhism was Ch’an, or “Meditation” Buddhism. It stressed the primacy of the master over scripture and the silent transmission of religious truth. For that reason, Ch’an Buddhism had no written doctrine. Under pressure from the Mongols, the Ch’an Buddhists began to record their doctrine in a series formulations called kung-an or, in Japanese, the koan.

When you’re hungry for obsessively documented news of Portland’s politics, check out The One True b!X’s PORTLAND COMMUNIQUE.

This is going to replace my link to google news: the flash-base NewsMap. Witness the outstandingness for yourself.

The Columbia River Gorge is my next target for destruction. I’m looking forward to the domination that is going to be inflicted. Have no fear, it will be brutal and induce the production of adrenaline like no human being has ever experienced. Learn more so when the time comes you’ll be prepared, physically and emotionally, to ride with me.

Check out Oregon Kayaking for lots of information about riding Oregon’s rivers. It looks really interesting, and as soon as I get out of my four week class I’m going to tear up the Class IV rapids on the Clackamas.

Once you’re completely pumped up on Kayaking, check out PDXKayaker for more shots of the epic whitewater Oregon offers. Then go to Oregon State University’s Rivers page for a list of river statistics.

Oh, the bitterness that pervades the Dreamhost Forums. Downtime is very much the enemy of some domain owners, myself included, and Dreamhost hasn’t exactly had the best success in keeping themselves up and running. I wonder if this incident will turn into free service or lower rates; lord knows they’ve got customers fleeing in droves today.

I’m one out of 100 by owning a computer, and I’m also special because I’m a college graduate.

I was exposed to baby art org and I’m not going to look at the world the same way.