Even in absurdity, sacrament. Even in hardship, holiness. Even in doubt, faith. Even in chaos, realization. Even in paradox, blessedness
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"Life expands or shrinks in proportion to one's courage." ~Anain Nin
population 1 The sign outside is painted on a section of a refrigerator door. The floor is bare plywood. There's no heat. But there are thousands upon thousands of books. "The Complete Works of Shakespeare." "Treasure Island." Trixie Belden and "The Happy Valley Mystery." Zane Grey's westerns, every one of them, lined up across two shelves. Homer. Tennyson. Amy Tan. Goethe. Elsie's late husband, Rudy, read them endlessly. He farmed and tended bar, he ran a grain elevator, he delivered gas to filling stations, and when the town was down to just him and Elsie, he served as mayor too. But he always found time to read — science fiction, history, the classics — anything but a Harlequin romance. When he got sick with cancer two years ago, Rudy confided a dream to Elsie: He wanted to turn his collection into a public library. jaybird found this for you @ 20:11 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Giant Steps 
What happens when you 'see' the music of John Coltraine? [flash] jaybird found this for you @ 16:04 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
89 hours ...and still fasting. I'll probably break around 4ish (90 hours), but I'm frighteningly hyper right now and not very hungry. I'm really proud I made it this far, and certainly didn't expect to get to this point without food. I really think that I'm going to make a monthly thing, but going for this length of time on a regular basis is not advised. The overall effects of this project continue to amaze. and then... UPDATE: Not long after posting this, my body communicated pretty clearly that it was time to break. I left the office and had a small salad without dairy (a miracle), some fruit, and a piece of barbecued tofu as a treat. I savored every bite, chewing slowly and with a sense of wonder at how sitting down to nurture oneself has become such a sterile and mindless act. Total time without food: 89 hours, 30 minutes, besting my previous record by 25 hours. In April, I will shoot for 120 in preparation for the Peru/Bolivia trip. jaybird found this for you @ 13:33 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
From Here to Alternity and Beyond jaybird found this for you @ 12:55 in Consciousness, Psychology & Philosophy | | permalink
transplanted lives? For most of her life, the young woman hated sports. And though she was born and raised in Tucson, she never liked Mexican food. She craved Italian and was a pasta junkie. But three years ago, all that changed for Jaime Sherman, 28, when she underwent a heart transplant at University Medical Center, after battling a heart defect since birth. "Now I love football, baseball, basketball. You name it, I follow it," said Sherman, a psychology student at Arizona State University. "And Mexican food is by far my favorite." She'd heard similar stories - of people who get donor hearts, develop new and surprising tastes and traits, then trace them to the donor. It's an eerie phenomenon that has triggered controversy and skepticism. Could it be happening to her? jaybird found this for you @ 08:47 in Consciousness, Psychology & Philosophy | | permalink
72 hours ...and surprisingly, I'm still fasting. This was the earliest goal I had set for myself, and had halfway expected to break with some fruit by now. It now looks like tomorrow morning, past the 80 hour mark, or possibly around lunch. Or dinner, who knows? The effects of the detox are beginning to become apparent, though I won't trouble you with those details, because they're somewhat nasty. I've obviously and visibly dropped some weight, though I can't guess how much. I'll assume, based on the averages and reports from the studies, that I'm about nine pounds lighter. My body and skin are tighter and despite periods of fatigue, my mind is clear. The "can I do it?" thoughts are phasing out, replaced with "how long will I do it?" The thought of what lies within the fridge does make me drool, though I know that it will take time before I can sample any of them. Raw fruit and veg will be my food for a day or two as my digestive system is gently reawakened. My thanks for those of you in my daily life who've expressed support, and though one colleague called it 'stupid,' it is certainly an unusual undertaking, in this society anyway. Onward to tomorrow! jaybird found this for you @ 20:47 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
13-Moon Calendar I Channel in order to Create jaybird found this for you @ 17:47 in Spirituality, Religion & Mythos | | permalink
last night the rain spoke to me  by Mary Oliver Last night what joy in a new way smelling of iron, and the grass below. under a tree. and there were stars in the sky my right hand and the soft rain— jaybird found this for you @ 11:59 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Still Fasting ...at 59 hours and feeling fine, though I could've slept a lot longer. I really am going to try to make it to Monday at lunch, possibly Tuesday. I break my record of 64 hours sometime after noon, and enter the 72 threshold tonight. I did not go dancing last night as I'd hoped, fearing the toxicity of the cigarette smoke and my body was telling me to rest instead. It's important to heed your body when fasting, and the trick to remember is to listen after fasting as well. We usually tend to let the mind dictate what the body wants, but when fasting it becomes clear that the body has its own signals which are often drowned out by the brain's loud clammoring. Fasting helps set the two in balance. jaybird found this for you @ 07:30 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
psychedelic medicine Halpern's first big foray into psychedelic research was aimed at risk-assessment. In the late 1990s he launched a study of members of the Native American Church, who are permitted by US law to consume peyote. Halpern examined 210 residents of a Navajo reservation in the south-west US, who fell into three categories: church members who had taken peyote at least 100 times but had had little exposure to other drugs or alcohol; non-church members who abstained from alcohol or drugs; and former alcoholics who had been sober for at least three months. Halpern tested the subjects' IQ, memory, reading ability and other functions. His interim results showed that church members had no cognitive impairment compared with the abstainers, and scored significantly better than recovering alcoholics. Church members also reported no "flashbacks" - sudden recurrences of a psychedelic's effects long after the initial trip. Halpern believes this study, which he expects will be published soon, shows that contrary to the 1971 editorial, peyote at least can be taken repeatedly without adverse effects. jaybird found this for you @ 19:04 in Consciousness, Psychology & Philosophy | | permalink
with groovy intention At 43 hours I'm feeling fine, better in fact than yesterday. I'd love to study the physiology of fasting, and understand what's being released right now that gives me energy and clarity despite being food-less. After chaperoning the youth group sleepover, I came home and experienced an hour or so or weariness. But without much energy to go on, I undertook one of the more massive apartment cleanings I've done in some time... thorough scrubbing, mopping, attention to details that my life doesn't normally allow. Taking out the mountain of recycling. I was surprised to find that it took so long for me to catch the metaphor; cleansing is happening without as within. I'm processing the excesses, the forgetfulness, and the mindlessness of certain ruts that a human will fall into, and these things will not resolve themselves. I wanted the recycling to take itself out, but I had to do the work. For spiritual truths, it's a rather big "duh," but one of the easiest truths to misplace when we become absorbed in un-real realities. It is conceivable that I may go dancing tonight? In this state of being, chances look good. And dancing without the buzz of alcohol will invite a greater buzz, the kind the shamans speak of, the kind that comes from innocent, spinning children who know how easy it is to find magic. UPDATE: A-ha! jaybird found this for you @ 15:14 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
chaikana  Sacred Poetry from around the world A chaikhana is a teahouse along the legendary Silk Road pilgrimage and trading route linking China to the Middle East and Europe. It is a place of rest along the journey, a place to shake off the dust of the road, to sip tea, and to gather together to sing songs of the Divine... Kabir:
jaybird found this for you @ 09:56 in Spirituality, Religion & Mythos | | permalink
30 hours on... I'm feeling good, fairly brain-sizzled, but no longer hungry. This has been one of the easiest fasts yet. Luckily there haven't been any real unpleasant side effects of foodlessness. We just took the youth group extreme bowling (I won't confess how miserable my scores were), and most of the crew is settling down to sleep. I'm one of them. Others are playing hide and seek, and other randomness. I'll be doing that same activity in mere minutes, but with my subconscious... Reporting live from a teen lock-in, holding my own against the forces of physiology... jaybird found this for you @ 02:19 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
get 'em while they're cold  A new type of organism discovered in an Arctic tunnel came to life in the lab after being frozen for 32,000 years. The deep-freeze bacteria could point to new methods of cryogenics, and they are the sort of biology scientists say might exist on Mars and other planets and moons. jaybird found this for you @ 20:55 in Science, Quantum & Space | | permalink
fast update I'm approaching the 24 hour mark with little side effects other than the obvious hunger and a slight sense of being dazed and airheaded. All sorts of unnatural cravings are beginning to surface, especially deep-fried foods and general crapola. I'm a bit tired but also have that antsy energy associated with bodily anxiety about the conditions that are causing this sudden lack of food. I'm going to take a long hot shower, then head over to the lock-in and continue to starve with about a dozen teenagers. jaybird found this for you @ 18:45 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
get 'em while they're hot The past four weeks have been heady ones in the planet-finding world: Three teams of astronomers announced the discovery of 12 previously unknown worlds, bringing the total count of planets outside our solar system to 145. Just a decade ago, scientists knew of only the nine planets - those in our local solar system. In 1995, improved detection techniques produced the first solid evidence of a planet circling another star. A proliferation of discoveries followed, and now dozens of ongoing search efforts around the globe add steadily to the roster of worlds. Most of these planets differ markedly from the planets in our own solar system. They are more similar to Jupiter or Saturn than to Earth, and are considered unlikely to support life as we know it. [Ha! Our knowledge is still so cosmically scant!] jaybird found this for you @ 16:51 in Science, Quantum & Space | | permalink
ya think? Most of us can appreciate the fact that we make up our minds about things based on thinking that takes place somewhere just out of our reach. But today, scientists are finding neural correlates to those processes, parts of the brain that we never gave their due, communicating with other parts, triggering neurotransmitters, and driving our actions. Says Clinton Kilts, a professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Emory, "There is nothing that you do, there is no thought that you have, there is no awareness, there is no lack of awareness, there is nothing that marks your daily existence that doesn't have a neural code. The greatest challenge for us is to figure out how to design the study that will reveal these codes." jaybird found this for you @ 12:48 in Consciousness, Psychology & Philosophy | | permalink
Cleansing for a Cause At around 8 last night, I had my last meal before the fast. It was wonderful. So was the beer that washed it down and helped produce that bizarre poem posted earlier. This morning, I'm preparing my body to go as long as possible without food, and I'm hoping to meet or break my record of 80 hours. I've learned in these marathon fasts, however, that you break when your body tells you to break. It happens when it happens. I'll be drinking gallons of water today, and throughout the experience, adding in juices some time tomorrow. Tea is acceptable for this fast, in moderation, as are mild supplements and medications. Late tonight I'll begin to have a low-range headache, which may build into a crushing one my mid-day tomorrow. The key is to ride it out, and sleep through it if necessary. I'm doing this not only for cleansing, but in solidarity with those who truly hunger daily in the world. Malnourishment and starvation certainly happens worldwide, but also right here at home. It's only fair that a thirty-something gay white American should hold off on the gravy train for a few days in respect for those millions, or billions, living in misery. In that spirit, I'd like to challenge my readers to sponsor me by the hour, with proceeds going directly to Timonthy House in Haiti. This orphanage was devastated by last year's floods, and the young adult program in my spiritual community is hoping to raise funds to help this orphanage rebuild. If you choose to support this effort, please donate via the left sidebar and I'll give every penny to the cause. My subconscious played a fun food trick on me in my dreams last night: I was watching a video from Iraq of an American firing a heat-seeking missile at a helicopter. People on the ground were screaming that it was the wrong target. The 'copter crashed to the ground, with black smoke and flame shooting all about. Once the dust settled, everyone ran to the downed chopper, which turned out to be an aerial Chinese restaurant, and everyone inside was only slightly dazed. The wok was fired up, the startled crew straightened themselves up, and a line quickly formed for fried rice. I'll post regular updates regarding the fast your your entertainment and my recollection. jaybird found this for you @ 08:15 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
11pm screed "God Bless the child..." Forget breaching "certain words," jaybird found this for you @ 22:50 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
the mechanics of thought ...We seem to think in sentences. It is very hard to imagine thinking about anything without framing the thought in words. When I wonder whether I am having a bad hair day, my mind’s eye sees the phrase swimming in front of it. It almost comes to my lips. In fact, much of what I ponder slips into vocal form, an unfortunate trait that has occasionally led me to be less tactful than I would have wished. But this habit also seems to confirm Noam Chomsky’s thesis that we think in words and grammar. Indeed, there is evidence that the part of the brain that deals with language is roped in to assist with mathematical tasks, suggesting the overarching presence of linguistic ability in all things neural. However, a trio of brain-damaged patients have cast doubt on this widely accepted theory... the patients could tell the difference between similar mathematical expressions. For example, they could distinguish between 30/90 and 90/30. They could also handle arithmetic inside brackets, such as (90 - ((3 + 17) x 3)), that resemble the clauses inside sentences. They could not, however, decipher the sentence, “the man who killed the lion was angry.” The patients could also read numerals, but not written numbers, such as “three”. The results... challenge the idea that language is the master ability required for all types of cognitive processing. The study also raises the possibility that aphasic patients could be taught a “words by numbers” language that would allow them to communicate with others. jaybird found this for you @ 19:35 in Consciousness, Psychology & Philosophy | | permalink
No Gene Is An Island On the one hand, the Global Brain is as easy to understand as can be. Put one gigantic microprocessor to work and you have a pretty potent computer. But put 60 together in parallel and you have something only governments and a few top universities can afford, a supercomputer. The earth is a mesh of processors working in parallel. It's been that since a single chemical family rose and started a land-grab for the planet 3.85 billion years ago. That family is an imperialistic intermesh that specializes in transformation, invention-swapping, and collective smarts. The territorially greedy chemical family I'm talking about is the clan of life, the clan of cells, and the clan of DNA. For 3.85 billion years, biomass has worked full tilt on the imperialistic enterprise of transforming the inanimate atoms of this huge hunk of stone — the earth — into biomass. That's a big job. And biomass has pulled this off by lacing masses of micro-intellects into planet-spanning macro-intellects. It sounds like a goofy and exaggerated notion. But think for a second. To kick off this thinking process, let's start with Richard Dawkins' idea of The Selfish Gene. Dawkins is a brilliant thinker. And his "let's turn this upside down and see what new insights appear" approach was great a quarter of a century ago. But the gene-worship that's taken over since then misses a basic point. No gene is an island. No gene can afford to be totally selfish. jaybird found this for you @ 15:22 in Consciousness, Psychology & Philosophy | | permalink
hope springs eternal Modern America, like Rome at the time of Christ, is in a period of rising secularism and religious chaos. Christianity has lost the power to shape our culture, and no rival religion or philosophy seems able to take its place. I argue that this period of tension will end as the Roman one did--with the advent of a new religion that will synthesize the best features of our current religions into a whole greater than the sum of its parts. jaybird found this for you @ 11:15 in Spirituality, Religion & Mythos | | permalink
dark side of the matter Plans to trace the Moon's orbit with extraordinary new accuracy could reveal kinks in Einstein's theory of gravity and help explain the mysterious accelerating expansion of the universe, says a US researcher. The acceleration cannot be explained by known forces in the Universe. To account for the behaviour, cosmologists have introduced the concept of a new, as yet unseen, force - dark energy. But Gia Dvali... believes there could be another explanation. He thinks the accelerating expansion might be caused by unexpected properties of gravity, which are only seen over very large distances. Taking inspiration from string theory, which proposes the existence of several extra dimensions, Dvali... suggests that gravity may leak into an extra dimension on this large scale. "The accelerated universe can be a window of opportunity for understanding the most fundamental aspects of gravitation, and may signal the modification of standard laws of gravity at very large distances," jaybird found this for you @ 07:15 in Science, Quantum & Space | | permalink
All About Power Most of what has been written about change -- by political theorists as well as business gurus -- is about revolutionary change. It is about creating a sense of popular urgency for change. Writers on social and business innovation, by contrast, are (perhaps subconsciously) writing about change that incapacitates. Clay Christensen speaks candidly about 'disruptive innovation', the kind that catches successful businesses off guard, just like a virus or undetected parasite, and brings it to its knees. A huge amount of money and energy is being spent these days -- on so-called 'anti-terrorist' programs, on physical and computer security, on fighting file-sharing, on patenting anything even vaguely innovative to prevent a competitor bringing it to market, on the search for vaccines and cures for AIDS, BSE, Avian Flu etc., on anti-fraud measures like Sarbanes-Oxley -- all designed to fight incapacitating, rather than popular, revolutionary, enemies. Actions that are aimed to incapacitate are called guerrilla (meaning 'little war') actions. Since the Vietnam war debacle in the 1960s the very term has struck fear in the hearts of the power elite, because they know that, in today's heavily concentrated, centralized, interconnected, 'grid-locked' society, this is where they are most vulnerable, most powerless to defend themselves. Part 2: Free innovation, Freedom from thr grid, and peer-to-peer bio innovation:
*Via Abuddha's Memes, where on the entry for Feb. 10th, one of my favorite bloggers answers some questions I posed in this post. jaybird found this for you @ 20:19 in Consciousness, Psychology & Philosophy | | permalink
real tantra Tantra, or more properly tantrika, is a diverse and rich spiritual tradition of the Indian sub-continent. Although in recent years, in the Western world, it has become almost exclusively associated with sex, in reality this is one aspect of what is a way of life. In India itself, tantra is now, nearly always, associated with spells and black deeds. Neither of these views is correct, and each wildly underestimates the wide-ranging nature of the different traditions. Further, there remains an ocean of tantrik and agamic literature still to be discovered and translated, spanning a period of time which at least reaches back to the 10th century of the common era (c.e.). The tradition, or perhaps better, the traditions, underwent many phases and schools over this period of time, ranging from an extremely heterodox viewpoint to, in some cases, a very orthodox standpoint... Although some tantras appear at first glance to be straightforward, most, if not all of them, employ a type of language which can be taken on many levels. According to the tradition, everything has a gross, a subtle and a supreme meaning and as the Devi is the goddess of letters, she can bewilder with her Maya as well as enlighten. jaybird found this for you @ 16:00 in Spirituality, Religion & Mythos | | permalink
the paradox cluster Astronomers say they have discovered an object that appears to be an invisible galaxy made almost entirely of dark matter. The team... claimed it is the first to be detected. A dark galaxy is an area in the Universe containing a large amount of mass that rotates like a galaxy, but contains no stars. The unknown material that is thought to hold these dark galaxies together is known as 'dark matter', but scientists still know very little about what that is. jaybird found this for you @ 11:57 in Science, Quantum & Space | | permalink
Baffled by the expansion of the universe? The expansion of the universe may be the most important fact we have ever discovered about our origins. You would not be reading this article if the universe had not expanded. Human beings would not exist. Cold molecular things such as life-forms and terrestrial planets could not have come into existence unless the universe, starting from a hot big bang, had expanded and cooled. The formation of all the structures in the universe, from galaxies and stars to planets... has depended on the expansion. Forty years ago this July, scientists announced the discovery of definitive evidence for the expansion of the universe from a hotter, denser, primordial state. They had found the cool afterglow of the big bang: the cosmic microwave background radiation. Since this discovery, the expansion and cooling of the universe has been the unifying theme of cosmology, much as Darwinian evolution is the unifying theme of biology. Like Darwinian evolution, cosmic expansion provides the context within which simple structures form and develop over time into complex structures. Without evolution and expansion, modern biology and cosmology make little sense... "The full extent and richness of this picture [the hot big bang model] is not as well understood as I think it ought to be ... even among those making some of the most stimulating contributions to the flow of ideas." jaybird found this for you @ 07:54 in Science, Quantum & Space | | permalink
yes, but is it ethical?* Whenever the president talks about Social Security, I think about the 5,000-Year-Old Woman. I can see her right now, cruising down some sunny highway in Florida in her convertible Mini Cooper, laughing into the wind. The 5,000-Year-Old Woman is supposed to give us hope. But sometimes, she scares me. Here we are talking about the federal retirement system facing possible disaster because a lot of people are living into their 80s and 90s. Meanwhile, out in the real world of science, medicine, and hypercompetitive Americans, 90 years old is already peanuts. *As magical as it all sounds to live damn near forever, I'd have to say that no, it's not ethical, at least for me. I already despise the fact that our major curable diseases have been abandoned on the research front by greedy PharmaCorps who pursue permanent erections of instantaneous weight loss pills to ease and comfort the First World, much like Huxley's "soma." Life extension tends toward a Utopian ideal that ultimately becomes racist and classist unless you're willing to extend the same benefits to, say Haiti or Bangladesh. Their quality of life and infrastructure is already billions of dollrs behind ours, so why bother? It doesn't take long with an objective eye to determine there's a problem with this sort of thinking; the desire for LE is often shared by we leftists, artists and neo-think types. Good for us, but what about them? Where is the line between individualism and conscience? It's blurred by the West's fear of death in a life where most other "problems" are a pill away. Now, as far as Leary's S M I(2) L E Principle, life extension for the purpose of getting off the planet makes sense, but only when we've hit an equilibrium of resource distribution on this radically disparaged little planet, where the main problem isn't life extension, it's staying alive. "Better a dram than a damn." ~Brave New World jaybird found this for you @ 19:50 in Conjecture & Speculation | | permalink
the frog and the peach DM: We'd like to ask Sir Arthur actually about his rather unique PC: Good evening. DM: Good evening. If you would tell us something about it, Sir. Arthur. PC: Yes, well, ah, the idea for the Frog and Peach came to me in the DM: These premises, in fact. PC: In these precise premises. Good evening. jaybird found this for you @ 15:42 in Silly People, Satire & Strange Behaviors | | permalink
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