audrina patridge heart plant serpent
audrina’s tattoo close-up. i saturated the colors in the close-up so you could better see the elements of the design. only m’s patridge knows for sure what this design means to her, but the individual elements have had various symbolic meanings over the centuries. serpents have the recent modern baggage of association with either temptation or evil, but that has not always been the case. in several ancient cultures there were good and bad serpents, serpents of wisdom and serpents as both mother of gods and demons. this one surrounds a human heart, combined with the variations on serpent myths together they could mean anything. the green plant arising from the heart would suggest that any spin we might place on the entire tattoo not tend toward being too dark or sinister since greenery generally denotes growth and or renewal.
update: its my understanding these tattoos were temps done specifically for a photo shoot. update 2: there seems to be some argument as to whether its real or not.
Ronald De Sousa uses the vertebrate heart as an example of evolution and fittest in Why Think – Evolution and the Rational Mind
Thus the circulation of the blood is the function of the heart in virtue of the fact that the circulation of the blood has conferred fitness on countless generations of organisms and thereby resulted in their successful reproduction in the course of evolution. So the fulfillment of this function in the past has contributed to the existence of those hearts that are in vertebrates currently alive today
dragon tattoo. this one is a cheat, something i did in PShop.
A couple weeks ago Senator McCain suggested that the U.S. stay in Iraq for a hundred years and his apologists have been trying to provide some justifying spin ever since. One Conservative blog has provided some unintentional comic relief, Occupying Iraq Is Just Like Occupying … Alabama?
As a southerner and non kool-aid drinker if we must compare Iraq to the south Colonel Norvell DeAtkine does a better job, Reconciliation In Iraq, Don’t Hold Your Breath
It is now more than 140 years since the Civil War ended. Yet we Americans expect that Iraqis who have had a much more traumatic and violent history than our own will in the space of a few months embrace enemies and forget decades, perhaps centuries, of history.
The Shia are the metaphorical Reconstruction African Americans of Iraq, who without ever having power in their hands are expected to produce pristine, competent government, and feel secure enough to bring back into their political systems their recent overlords and oppressors. Like the blacks of the era of U.S. Reconstruction, they are ridiculed for their incompetence and corruption. On the other hand, many in the Sunni Arab leadership have the same attitude as those parading through the streets of Anniston so many years ago. They cannot let go. Their struggle is not about equitable revenue sharing. It is as Ali A. Allawi, a long-time Baathist opposition leader, wrote in his book, The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace (Yale University Press, 2007), correctly called existential. To them it is the end of their dominance, the Pan-Arab dream, the leadership of Iraq in the Arab world.
Not to mention a couple thousand years of tribal rivalries that Winston Churchill thought he could overcome by drawing some lines on map and dropping enough bombs after WW II. The colonel has a Mississippi flag up with his article that shows a confederate insignia in the upper left corner. If some citizens of the U.S. are still proud of symbols that represent an attempt to over throw our democratic republic they should be able to appreciate how the various factions in Iraq are reluctant to give up their cultural identities.
inkbluesky 