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
My evil twin: Sun has binary partner, may affect the Earth Researching archaeological and astronomical data at the unique think tank, the Binary Research Institute, Cruttenden concludes that the movement of the solar system plays a more important role in life than people realize, and he challenges some preconceived notions: The phenomenon known as the precession of the equinox, fabled as a marker of time by ancient peoples, is not due to a local wobbling of the Earth as modern theory portends, but to the solar system's gentle curve through space. This movement of the solar system occurs because the Sun has a companion star; both stars orbit a common center of gravity, as is typical of most double star systems. The grand cycle–the time it takes to complete one orbit––is called a "Great Year," a term coined by Plato. Cruttenden explains the effect on earth with an analogy: "Just as the spinning motion of the earth causes the cycle of day and night, and just as the orbital motion of the earth around the sun causes the cycle of the seasons, so too does the binary motion cause a cycle of rising and falling ages over long periods of time, due to increasing and decreasing electromagnet effects generated by our sun and other nearby stars." jaybird found this for you @ 20:08 in Science, Quantum & Space | | permalink
Einstein: On Science and Religion Now, even though the realms of religion and science in themselves are clearly marked off from each other, nevertheless there exist between the two strong reciprocal relationships and dependencies. Though religion may be that which determines the goal, it has, nevertheless, learned from science, in the broadest sense, what means will contribute to the attainment of the goals it has set up. But science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration towards truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. jaybird found this for you @ 16:04 in Science, Quantum & Space | | permalink
A Metaphysics of Human Interface We define metaphysics as the philosophy that examines the nature of reality, the connection of mind and matter, of “being” (ontology). Interface, as the aggregate of means by which users interact with a complex system, device, or tool. User input allows control of the system, while system output provides the users of the results, also called feedback. System feedback may be regulated by cybernetics. From cybernetics’ point of view, it is possible to consider the whole universe in terms of data and data processing. Here, I propose a simple experiment from the field of contemporary esotericism: a simple request made by a user in order to accrue a procedural knowledge of phenomenon, with which the experimenter can further explore to her or his delight. jaybird found this for you @ 12:02 in Consciousness, Psychology & Philosophy | | permalink
Happy Samhain: History ubiquitously directs us There's nothing like the onset of winter to get you thinking deep, important thoughts. The modern world has children dressed fancifully and being herded door-to-door, winsomely demanding a "trick or treat" to celebrate Halloween. The idea actually developed in ancient Ireland and was brought to the United States in the 1840s by Irish immigrants escaping English persecution and the potato famine. The idea is complex. For a reason not clear to me, Oct. 31 was considered unattached to the previous or coming year. It was Betwixt and Between, which had heavy meaning. All the Spirits of the Restless Dead (not a rock group) were freed from their wet graves. Nature spirits, benign and malevolent, were on holiday acting out their resentments. The veil between the material and immaterial was lifted and otherwise rare events became ordinary. ...How are you going to account in your good, rational, analytic mind for the existence of all this? Big Bang, but what lit the fuse? Where did the materials come from? How is it that humankind has always sensed there was more to us than meat, bones and good hair? Where did that idea come from? You think I know? That’s funny! I suggest there is merit in the comparative religions and mythology scholar, Joseph Campbell’s idea. The Transcendent, he suggests, is so complex, unimaginably creative and all the other attributes associated with gods and goddesses, that our puny minds will never comprehend. We’re like fleas trying to calculate the orbit of stars. Not possible. Unable or unwilling to live with unanswered questions, many make that fateful, faithful leap, put together rituals and rules for their own comfort while agreeing there is Something Else we don’t understand...Admitting defeat in trying to understand it all leaves us orphans in a forest of unnamed trees. Rather than torment ourselves and others with unanswerable questions and terrible accusations, let us do as our impulse drives us: toward appreciation of all the natural world’s beauty, intricate relationships and opportunity to be here, now. That is Ingenious Design. jaybird found this for you @ 07:51 in Spirituality, Religion & Mythos | | permalink
restoration -thumb.jpg) I took a break from my legion of responsibilities and finally made it out to the woods... so crisp, so perfect, leaves crackle underfoot just as they ought to, with plenty of little surprises along the trail. It was incredibly restorative... I can't even begin to express how bogged I've been, to the point of wanting to throw the whole gestalt out with the holy water. An hour in the woods did me a week's worth of good, and I feel so remarkably relieved. I so love going down new trails, the kind which wind on forever and yet there's no destination. Most trails are made for wandering, not for getting to a specific place. I was so pleased to wander, to just take to the path without inkling or care. And while I'm still beset with smoldering issues, somehow being dwarfed by great trees and wooed by distant, looming peaks reintegrates the lost and worried soul to the essence of things... ninety percent of what spins our wheels is utterly meaningless and ought not to be worth a hock of spit. The remaining ten percent is all that which really pumps the heart and glitters the eyes... the sensual, the beauteous, and even the utterly terrifying and painful. I suppose that sometimes I get caught in that grey spectrum of the ultimately meaningless yet temporally depressing. We all must... like a shell, it's there to be broken. Perhaps, in the company of oak and pine, my beak pecked against that thin boundary and I got the hint that the deluge of blah I've been battling agianst is all paper thin malarky, so just break out and be done with it. If the trees and all the creatures of the wild can be so brave in the face of change and challenge, so can I. jaybird found this for you @ 22:54 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
From Withering Comes Purity While spring is loud in its ferocious birthing, From withering comes purity; This soul craves rest. In the chill of the moonless hush, jaybird found this for you @ 20:28 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
New commenting system Finally... the least wonky commenting option I could come up with was Haloscan, and it seems to be working well. I've gotten many notes about how hard it is to comment here, mostly because of the measures I've had to take to prevent comment spamming. Haloscan seems to handily eliminate that threat. Yippers. jaybird found this for you @ 09:57 in Blogosphere, Tech & Internet | | permalink
Chomsky: The Spontaneous Invention Of Language There was [a]... very interesting case with a community of deaf people in Nicaragua. For a long time deafness was considered much like a disease, and they were isolated. Kept to themselves, there was no effort to teach them. Later, there were some efforts to improve their situation slightly, and it turned out that they had pretty quickly developed a sign language within the community. Now that language has been investigated in considerable depth, and it appears to be just like any existing language. It has the same structural properties. The infants even babble in sign just like they babble in spoken language. There don't seem to be any detectable differences. It's just that the mode is different--sign and visual, instead of articulate and auditory. jaybird found this for you @ 20:31 in Consciousness, Psychology & Philosophy | | permalink
Arthur C. Clarke: Join The Planetary Conversation We as a species have a deep urge to communicate--so if something is technologically feasible, we will pursue it sooner rather than later. Virtually everything we wish to do in the field of communications is now within the reach of our technology. The only remaining limitations are financial, legal or political. In time, I am sure, most of these will also disappear--leaving us with only limitations imposed by our own morality. How we shape the networked world of the future lies entirely in our hands--and minds. jaybird found this for you @ 16:29 in Consciousness, Psychology & Philosophy | | permalink
Merry Fitzmas! 
jaybird found this for you @ 13:06 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink
New mathematics-based sculpture unveils fourth dimension  The sculpture, designed by Adrian Ocneanu, professor of mathematics at Penn State, presents a three-dimensional "shadow" of a four-dimensional solid object. Ocneanu's research involves mathematical models for quantum field theory based on symmetry. One aspect of his work is modeling regular solids, both mathematically and physically. In the three-dimensional world, there are five regular solids -- tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, and icosahedron -- whose faces are composed of triangles, squares or pentagons. In four dimensions, there are six regular solids, which can be built based on the symmetries of the three-dimensional solids. Unfortunately, humans cannot process information in four dimensions directly because we don't see the universe that way. Although mathematicians can work with a fourth dimension abstractly by adding a fourth coordinate to the three that we use to describe a point in space, a fourth spatial dimension is difficult to visualize. For that, models are needed. "Four-dimensional models are useful for thinking about and finding new relationships and phenomena," said Ocneanu. "The process is actually quite simple -- think in one dimension less." To explain this concept, he points to a map. While the Earth is a three-dimensional object, its surface can be represented on a flat two-dimensional map. jaybird found this for you @ 12:25 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
Schizophrenics fall for no illusions The paranoia, or sense of persecution, experienced by some schizophrenics could be due to a problem they have processing contextual information, according to researchers at University College London. Researchers at the London university found that schizophrenics are not fooled by visual illusions that easily trick non-schizophrenics. Volunteers were shown high-contrast black and white patterned images, with sections altered so that the level of contrast is much lower. They were then asked effectively to match the contrast of the altered section to its twin in a line up of otherwise identical shapes. Schizophrenics find this task relatively easy, because their brain takes no account of the surrounding information when judging the level of contrast in the altered section of the pattern. Non-schizophrenic brains, however, make relative judgments about the altered section, because of the surrounding higher contrast pattern. jaybird found this for you @ 08:20 in Consciousness, Psychology & Philosophy | | permalink
Using sun and earth to survive in harsh Eritrea Seyoum Goitom, inventor and father of six, stood in his workshop in Eritrea, explaining his passion for mechanics, while young girls herded goats outside and butterflies wobbled in the warmth. Goitom has so far built a biscuit maker, welding machine and lawnmower from recycled parts. Now he is looking at a much bigger and possibly more significant project. The 38-year-old is turning his creative energies to deforestation around Keren, his home and one of Eritrea's most attractive towns, where the forest is slowly disappearing. He is working on an enormous, solar-powered stove based on a satellite dish which he believes could drastically cut the need for firewood among his compatriots in the Red Sea state. jaybird found this for you @ 21:38 in Environment, Ecology & Nature | | permalink
Creepy: Remote Control Device 'Controls' Humans  We wield remote controls to turn things on and off, make them advance, make them halt. Ground-bound pilots use remotes to fly drone airplanes, soldiers to maneuver battlefield robots. But manipulating humans? ...Just imagine being rendered the rough equivalent of a radio-controlled toy car. jaybird found this for you @ 17:35 in Science, Quantum & Space | | permalink
Mourning elephants baffle the scientists Elephants are drawn to the bones of their dead, displaying a trait once thought to be unique to humans. A study of African elephants in Kenya found they spent far longer smelling and gently touching the skulls and tusks of the dead than other objects, including pieces of wood or even the bones of animals such as rhinoceroses and buffalo. [via mecha] jaybird found this for you @ 13:33 in Environment, Ecology & Nature | | permalink
 The gleaming device I am staring at in the corner of a machine shop in San Rafael, California, is the most audacious machine ever built. It is a clock, but it is designed to do something no clock has ever been conceived to do—run with perfect accuracy for 10,000 years. Everything about this clock is deeply unusual. For example, while nearly every mechanical clock made in the last millennium consists of a series of propelled gears, this one uses a stack of mechanical binary computers capable of singling out one moment in 3.65 million days. Like other clocks, this one can track seconds, hours, days, and years. Unlike any other clock, this one is being constructed to keep track of leap centuries, the orbits of the six innermost planets in our solar system, even the ultraslow wobbles of Earth's axis. Made of stone and steel, it is more sculpture than machine. And, like all fine timepieces, it is outrageously expensive. No one will reveal even an approximate price tag, but a multibillionaire financed its construction, and it seems likely that shallower pockets would not have sufficed. Still, any description of the clock must begin and end with that ridiculous projected working life, that insane, heroic, incomprehensible span of time during which it is expected to serenely tick. jaybird found this for you @ 09:25 in Science, Quantum & Space | | permalink
Revelation in Navy Blue Amassing the objects of autumnal ritual; Whitman said that he contained multitudes From this creaky chair jaybird found this for you @ 21:32 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
The Conversations of Shams of Tabriz Now, O friend, you say, "Place the mirror into my hand so that I may look at it!" Yet I cannot find a pretext for this, nor can I deny your request; but i say in my own heart, "Let me find some pretext not to give you the mirror, because if I say that there is something wrong with your face, perhaps you will not accept it; and if you say that the mirror is defective, this will be worse for you." Yet love does not allow me to find a pretext. Now I say, "Let me give you the mirror, but if you see some fault on its face, do not blame the mirror, but something reflected onto the mirror. Know that it is your own image; find the fault in yourself! At least don't look into the mirror while you are near me. The only condition is that you do not find fault with the mirror. If you are unable to find the fault in yourself, at least find fault with me, as i am the owner of the mirror. Don't say the mirror is defective." "I accept the condition. I promise, I cannot wait any longer!" And yet his heart does not accept it. jaybird found this for you @ 16:27 in Spirituality, Religion & Mythos | | permalink
A Metaphysics of Human Interface We define metaphysics as the philosophy that examines the nature of reality, the connection of mind and matter, of “being” (ontology). Interface, as the aggregate of means by which users interact with a complex system, device, or tool. User input allows control of the system, while system output provides the users of the results, also called feedback. System feedback may be regulated by cybernetics. From cybernetics’ point of view, it is possible to consider the whole universe in terms of data and data processing. Here, I propose a simple experiment from the field of contemporary esotericism: a simple request made by a user in order to accrue a procedural knowledge of phenomenon, with which the experimenter can further explore to her or his delight. [via corpus mmothra] jaybird found this for you @ 12:25 in Consciousness, Psychology & Philosophy | | permalink
Along these lines, it seems to me that Gurdjieff’s famous ‘work’ has been turned into a set of techniques. People get together to do his movements, practical work, and to practice some kind of meditation or other supposedly derived from exercises he showed during his lifetime. Some have gone on doing this for fifty years – even though there is little evidence that any deep change is being brought about. It is just like the situation of someone being shown a mantra that will ‘liberate’ them and after trying it for some time asking why it is not working to be told that they have not tried hard enough! I’ve always had a strong response to those anecdotes about Gurdjieff in which he is urging his followers to think. In one of his most splendid talks titled ‘connaissance’ (French word for ‘knowing’) he actually says that the whole point is ‘to know’. In introducing exercises as written up in ‘Life is Only Real’ he tells his audience to look into what the exercises mean. It is an astonishing passage. In contrast, I discovered for example in speaking with a member of the Gurdjieff Society in London that they hardly ever discussed ‘the ideas’! The inevitable result must be that we go on with various practices, read various books, but never get down to investigating what it means. jaybird found this for you @ 08:12 in Consciousness, Psychology & Philosophy | | permalink
In machine based societies, the machine has incorporated the demands of the civil power or of the market, and the whole life of society, of all classes and grades, must adjust to its rhythms. Time becomes lineal, secularized, "precious"; it is reduced to an extension in space that must be filled up, and sacred time disappears. The secretary must adjust to the speed of her electric typewriter; the stenographer to the stenotype machine; the factory worker to the line or lathe, the executive to the schedule of the train or plane and the practically instantaneous transmission of the telephone; the chauffeur to the superhighways; the reader to the endless stream of printed matter from high speed presses; even the schoolboy to the precise periodization of his day and to the watch on his wrist; the person at "leisure" to a mechanized domestic environment and the flow of efficiently schedule entertainment. the machines seem to run us, crystallizing in their mechanical or electronic pulses the means of our desires. The collapse in time to a extension in space, calibrated by machines, has bowdlerized our natural and human rhythms and helped disassociate us from ourselves. Even now, we hardly love the Earth or see with eyes or listen any longer with our ears, and we scarcely feel our hearts beat before they break in protest. even now, so faithful and exact or the machines as servants that they seem an alien force, persuading us at every turn to fulfill our intentions which we have built into them and which they represent--in much the same way the perfect body servant routinizes, and finally, trivializes his master. jaybird found this for you @ 21:15 in Consciousness, Psychology & Philosophy | | permalink
Merry Fitzmas:Dick in the know I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, first learned about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak investigation in a conversation with Mr. Cheney weeks before her identity became public in 2003, lawyers involved in the case said Monday. jaybird found this for you @ 15:11 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink
Rosa Parks 
jaybird found this for you @ 09:06 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink
overwhelmed, overbusy Blogging will be taking Monday off as I'm in way over my head now and will have to catch up as a first priority. jaybird found this for you @ 07:42 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
Rumi jaybird found this for you @ 21:26 in Spirituality, Religion & Mythos | | permalink
One Hundred Starlings One hundred starlings in a tree What magic that tree is The sound of flight and I'm barely awake There is today so much to tend One hundred starlings jaybird found this for you @ 11:10 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
Nanotech offers HIV cure? I'mm too dense to get much of this, but it sounds good... In the first-ever study of metal nanoparticles' interaction with HIV-1, silver nanoparticles of sizes 1-10nm attached to HIV-1 and prevented the virus from bonding to host cells... jaybird found this for you @ 19:55 in Health, Medicine & Bio-Happiness | | permalink
Today the field of psychology would deem this study highly unethical but, it revealed some extremely important findings. The theory that only the most severe monsters on the sadistic fringe of society would submit to such cruelty is disclaimed. Findings show that, "two-thirds of this studies participants fall into the category of ‘obedient' subjects, and that they represent ordinary people drawn from the working, managerial, and professional classes (Obedience to Authority)." Ultimately 65% of all of the "teachers" punished the "learners" to the maximum 450 volts. No subject stopped before reaching 300 volts! [via mefi] jaybird found this for you @ 13:45 in Consciousness, Psychology & Philosophy | | permalink
Escalating global species extinction crisis A total of 15,589 species face extinction, reveals the 2004 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. One in three amphibians and almost half of all freshwater turtles are threatened, on top of the one in eight birds and one in four mammals known to be in jeopardy. jaybird found this for you @ 07:41 in Environment, Ecology & Nature | | permalink
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