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
Sedaris: Suitable for framing She examined all of the painting, and then parts of it, her fingers dabbing in sympathy as she studied the brushstrokes. “What are you thinking about?” I once asked. And she said, “Oh, you know, the composition, the surfaces, the way things look realistic when you’re far away but weird when you’re up close.” “Me, too,” I said, but what I was really thinking was how grand it would be to own a legitimate piece of art and display it in my bedroom. Even with my babysitting income, paintings were out of the question, so instead I invested in postcards, which could be bought for a quarter in the museum shop and matted with shirt cardboard. This made them look more presentable. I was looking for framing ideas one afternoon when I wandered into a little art gallery called the Little Art Gallery. It was a relatively new place, located in the North Hills Mall and owned by a woman named Ruth, who was around my mom’s age, and introduced me to the word “fabulous,” as in: “If you’re interested, I’ve got a fabulous new Matisse that just came in yesterday.” This was a poster rather than a painting, but still I regarded it the way I thought a connoisseur might, removing my glasses and sucking on the stem as I tilted my head. “I’m just not sure how it will fit in with the rest of my collection,” I said, meaning my Gustav Klimt calendar and the cover of the King Crimson LP tacked above my dresser. jaybird found this for you @ 19:39 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Venezuelan-Owned Citgo Faces Congressional Inquiry For Offering Discounted Oil to U.S. Poor In Washington, Republican Congressman Joe Barton of Texas has launched an investigation into one of the world’s major oil companies. But he is not investigating whether any of the oil giants are engaging in price gouging at a time when gasoline and heating oil casts are skyrocketing. Instead Barton has set his sights on the only oil company that actually dared to lower its prices last year - at least for the poorest Americans. Last week Barton demanded the Venezuelan-owned company Citgo produce all records, minutes, logs, e-mails and even desk calendars related to the company’s novel program of supplying discounted heating oil to low-income communities in the United States. The Citgo program, which began late last year in Massachusetts and the South Bronx, provides oil at discounts as high as 60% off market price. Heh. Obvious, isn't it? Cutting into good ol' 'Merican profits is a big no-no, even in the midst of altrusim. Remember to get your gas at Citgo, folks. jaybird found this for you @ 15:36 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink
Black and white twins  When Kylie Hodgson gave birth to twin daughters by caesarean section, she was just relieved that they had arrived safely. It was only when the midwife handed them over for her to hold that she noticed the difference between them. Remee, who weighed 5lb 15oz, was blonde and fair skinned. Her sister Kian, born a minute later weighing 6lb, was black... Very occasionally, the egg or sperm might contain genes coding for one skin colour. If both the egg and sperm contain all white genes, the baby will be white. And if both contain just the versions necessary for black skin, the baby will be black. For a mixed-race couple, the odds of either of these scenarios is around 100 to one. But both scenarios can occur at the same time if the woman conceives non-identical twins, another 100 to one chance. This involves two eggs being fertilised by two sperm at the same time, which also has odds of around 100 to one. If a sperm containing all-white genes fuses with a similar egg and a sperm coding for purely black skin fuses with a similar egg, two babies of dramatically different colours will be born. The odds of this happening are 100 x 100 x 100 - a million to one. jaybird found this for you @ 11:33 in Science, Quantum & Space | | permalink
Claim of reversed human evolution provokes skepticism, interest
This might help resolve a debate over how our forebears walked, they added. The mutation is documented only in five members of a Turkish family, whom researchers also describe as mentally and verbally underdeveloped... The British team argued in a report dated Oct. 3, part of a discussion paper series the Centre publishes, that it’s possible—but debatable—that “we are indeed seeing the ‘rediscovery’ of something very like the quadrupedal [four-limbed] gait used by our ancestors.” Carriers of the mutation, they wrote, all children of one couple, “as adults have continued to walk—highly effectively—on hands and feet.” This gait, they added, seems to be a development of a type of crawl that some children take up as a transitional stage before upright walking. Affected people walk palms down, unlike great apes, which walk on their knuckles, wrote the British group... “The local villagers laugh at and tease” the victims, they added. “Because of this, the females tend to stay close to the house, but the male sometimes wanders for several kilometres. He helps raise money for his family by collecting cans and bottles, which he carries home in a pouch made from his shirt, held by his teeth. He is remarkably agile.” jaybird found this for you @ 07:27 in Science, Quantum & Space | | permalink
Prieur: How to survive the crash and save the Earth Strong words: Abandon the world. The world is the enemy of the Earth. The "world as we know it" is a deadly parasite on the biosphere. Both cannot survive, nor can the world survive without the Earth. Do the logic: the world is doomed. If you stay on the parasite, you die with it. If you move to the Earth, and it survives in something like its recent form, you can survive with it. jaybird found this for you @ 20:59 in Consciousness, Psychology & Philosophy | | permalink
WNC: State plans to divert mental health funds from local programs The very premise of North Carolina’s mental health reform — that money saved by closing state hospital beds would follow patients into the community — is being overturned, mental health care providers and advocates say. The state’s budget director, David McCoy, has advised that the money instead be diverted to pay debt service — $4 million this year and $8.9 million next year — on the new state hospital under construction in Butner. The city is about four hours east of Asheville, not far from Durham. In a letter to N.C. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Carmen Hooker Odum, McCoy said the Division of Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities and Substance Abuse Services is not authorized to transfer money from “downsizing funds” to the local management entities. The LMEs, as they are known, are responsible for building and managing a network of local mental health services providers. The state plans to close Dorothea Dix Hospital in Raleigh and John Umstead Hospital in Butner, which have 631 beds between them, and consolidate services into one new hospital that will have 432 beds. This action comes on the heels of a proposal to cut $28 million in administration funds to the LMEs in the coming budget year. About one in four Americans has a diagnosable mental illness. About one in 17 — or 6 percent of the population — has a severe mental illness, according to the National Institutes of Mental Health. People with a serious mental illness are less likely than the general population to have health insurance because of their difficulty staying employed, so they rely more heavily on public support for treatment. “We can’t build a network of services if we don’t have the money to do it,” said Anne Doucette, director of provider and community network development at Western Highlands Network. “It just can’t be done without money. People are going to wind up in crisis, in jails and emergency rooms, and that’s a lot more expensive.” [via blog asheville] jaybird found this for you @ 16:45 in Local- Western North Carolina | | permalink
Yay for Jubilee! Yes, that's me. And about 300 other very happy people on a day of celebration. jaybird found this for you @ 14:29 in Local- Western North Carolina | | permalink
Listen: South Africa's Kwaito Generation Some people call it South Africa's hip hop. But kwaito is more than that. It's an urban soup of South African jazz and township pop mixed with Western house and rap. It's the music that defines the generation who came of age after apartheid. South Africa's story today is its youth. More than half the population is age 25 or younger. In a still prepubescent democracy, this generation has been affecting the culture, language and economy of South Africa in more ways than the West may realize. And kwaito is the reason. Like American hip hop, kwaito was built from the ground up, originating in what its performers often refer to as "the ghetto." (In this case, though, that ghetto is in Soweto, the township where blacks were forced to live during apartheid.) The music has afforded young blacks opportunities they could only have dreamt of under forced segregation. It has meant financial freedom for some. Moreover, it has given them the chance to exercise their recently won freedom of speech; to address the new struggles (AIDS, crime, xenophobia) that have developed in the wake of the struggle; and to bring their experiences to the TV's and radios of a nation that is still discovering its identity. jaybird found this for you @ 12:43 in Art, Music, Theater & Film | | permalink
Stunning, beautiful audio + photographs from a Jain festival  It left me wonderstruck... jaybird found this for you @ 08:40 in Spirituality, Religion & Mythos | | permalink
The blog and its creator are enjoying the weekend, lazily and happily. jaybird found this for you @ 23:04 in Misc. Babble | | permalink
Phillip K. Dick: If You Find This World Bad, You Should See Some of the Others May I tell you how much I appreciate your asking me to share some of my ideas with you. A novelist carries with him constantly what most women carry in large purses: much that is useless, a few absolutely essential items, and then, for good measure, a great number of things that fall in between. But the novelist does not transport them physically because his trove of possessions is mental. Now and then he adds a new and entirely useless idea; now and then he reluctantly cleans out the trash -- the obviously worthless ideas -- and with a few sentimental tears sheds them. Once in a great while, however, he happens by chance onto a thoroughly stunning idea new to him that he hopes will turn out to be new to everyone else. It is this final category that dignifies his existence. But such truly priceless ideas. . . perhaps during his entire lifetime he may, at best, acquire only a meager few. But that is enough; he has, through them, justified his existence to himself and to his God. An odd aspect of these rare, extraordinary ideas that puzzles me is their mystifying cloak of -- shall I say -- the obvious. By that I mean, once the idea has emerged or appeared or been born -- however it is that new ideas pass over into being -- the novelist says to himself, "But of course. Why didn't I realize that years ago?" But note the word "realize." It is the key word. He has come across something new that at the same time was there, somewhere, all the time. In truth, it simply surfaced. It always was. He did not invent it or even find it; in a very real sense it found him. And -- and this is a little frightening to contemplate -- he has not invented it, but on the contrary, it invented him. It is as if the idea created him for its purposes. I think this is why we discover a startling phenomenon of great renown: that quite often in history a great new idea strikes a number of researchers or thinkers at exactly the same time, all of them oblivious to their compeers. "Its time had come," we say about the idea, and so dismiss, as if we had explained it, something I consider quite important: our recognition that in a certain literal sense ideas are alive. What does this mean, to say that an idea or a thought is literally alive? And that it seizes on men here and there and makes use of them to actualize itself into the stream of human history? jaybird found this for you @ 20:33 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Top stars picked in alien search A US astronomer has drawn up a shortlist of the stars most likely to harbour intelligent life. Scientists have been listening out for radio signals from other solar systems in the hope of detecting civilisations other than our own. Margaret Turnbull at the Carnegie Institution in Washington DC looked at criteria such as the star's age and the amount of iron in its atmosphere. Her top candidate was beta CVn, a Sun-like star 26 light-years away. jaybird found this for you @ 16:29 in Science, Quantum & Space | | permalink
Integrative Spirituality: Spiritualized Activism
Our world is no longer perceived as a linear, predictable environment where we can plan for future outcomes with certainty. Chaos is abound, there is an overabundance of information, fragmentation and the planet appears plagued by serious problems that could bring it to the brink of destruction. But there is also a phoenix rising from this bleak picture and with it comes new understanding, new perspective and new ways of being - not just doing. This phoenix carries on its wings an improved form of activism --- spiritual activism. Co-creating with the divine intelligence (or what Tom Atlee the author of The Tao of Democracy refers to as co-intelligence) to increase our capacity of developing creative solutions to the world's rich challenges, taps into the power of the universe. Instead of pushing, driving and forcing with our will, we can let go and let the process of social change organically unfold. We can put our attention on the process itself and support the evolution of a better global and local society by going within and using this divine intelligence to guide us in our actions. This is where spiritual activism begins, with the transformation of each individual being. jaybird found this for you @ 12:26 in Spirituality, Religion & Mythos | | permalink
SubGenius Membership Allegedly Leads to Loss of Child Custody Deliver us from ourselves, Bob. On February 3, 2006, Judge Punch heard testimony in the case. Jeff entered into evidence 16 exhibits taken from the Internet, 12 of which are photographs of the SubGenius event, X-Day. Kohl has never attended X-Day and is not in any of the pictures. Rachel is depicted in many of these photos, often wearing skimpy costumes or completely nude, while participating in X-Day and Detroit Devival events. jaybird found this for you @ 08:23 in Spirituality, Religion & Mythos | | permalink
Glacier Melt Could Signal Faster Rise in Ocean Levels  Greenland's glaciers are melting into the sea twice as fast as previously believed, the result of a warming trend that renders obsolete predictions of how quickly Earth's oceans will rise over the next century, scientists said yesterday. jaybird found this for you @ 19:55 in Environment, Ecology & Nature | | permalink
Meditation found to increase brain size Researchers at Harvard, Yale, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found the first evidence that meditation can alter the physical structure of our brains. Brain scans they conducted reveal that experienced meditators boasted increased thickness in parts of the brain that deal with attention and processing sensory input. In one area of gray matter, the thickening turns out to be more pronounced in older than in younger people. That's intriguing because those sections of the human cortex, or thinking cap, normally get thinner as we age. "Our data suggest that meditation practice can promote cortical plasticity in adults in areas important for cognitive and emotional processing and well-being," says Sara Lazar, leader of the study and a psychologist at Harvard Medical School. "These findings are consistent with other studies that demonstrated increased thickness of music areas in the brains of musicians, and visual and motor areas in the brains of jugglers. In other words, the structure of an adult brain can change in response to repeated practice." jaybird found this for you @ 15:53 in Consciousness, Psychology & Philosophy | | permalink
Another paradise found 
You see those little shapes in the bottom left? Those are helicopters. A cave so huge helicopters can fly into it has just been discovered deep in the hills of a South American jungle paradise. Actually, "Cueva del Fantasma"—Spanish for "Cave of the Ghost"—is so vast that two helicopters can comfortably fly into it and land next to a towering waterfall. It was found in the slopes of Aprada tepui in southern Venezuela, one of the most inaccessible and unexplored regions of the world. The area, known as the Venezuelan Guayana, is one of the most biologically rich, geologically ancient and unspoiled parts of the world. This is the first geographic report and photographic evidence of such an immense cave. However, researchers say, it isn’t really a cave, but a huge, collapsed, steep gorge. As a bonus, researchers also discovered a new dendrobatid frog species... jaybird found this for you @ 11:48 in Environment, Ecology & Nature | | permalink
Quantum computer works best switched off! With the right set-up, the theory suggested, the computer would sometimes get an answer out of the computer even though the program did not run. And now researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have improved on the original design and built a non-running quantum computer that really works. More --> Quantum computers have the potential for solving certain types of problems much faster than classical computers. Speed and efficiency are gained because quantum bits can be placed in superpositions of one and zero, as opposed to classical bits, which are either one or zero. Moreover, the logic behind the coherent nature of quantum information processing often deviates from intuitive reasoning, leading to some surprising effects. jaybird found this for you @ 07:43 in Science, Quantum & Space | | permalink
Choose Your Villain Note the eerie similarities between Goldstein and whomever the posterboy of the day is for All That Is Wrong In America: In the novel Goldstein is rumored to be a former top member of the ruling (and sole) Party who had broken away early in the movement and started an organization known as "The Brotherhood", dedicated to the fall of The Party. However, in the course of the novel, the reader never learns if "The Brotherhood" or Goldstein himself actually ever existed, even though he is led to believe that neither Goldstein, nor the "Brotherhood," nor "Big Brother" exists outside of suggestion.  jaybird found this for you @ 21:23 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
37 million poor hidden in the land of plenty The flickering television in Candy Lumpkins's trailer blared out The Bold and the Beautiful. It was a fantasy daytime soap vision of American life with little relevance to the reality of this impoverished corner of Kentucky. The Lumpkins live at the definition of the back of beyond, in a hollow at the top of a valley at the end of a long and muddy dirt road. It is strewn with litter. Packs of stray dogs prowl around, barking at strangers. There is no telephone and since their pump broke two weeks ago Candy has collected water from nearby springs. Oblivious to it all, her five-year-old daughter Amy runs barefoot on a wooden porch frozen by a midwinter chill. It is a vision of deep and abiding poverty. Yet the Lumpkins are not alone in their plight. They are just the negative side of the American equation. America does have vast, wealthy suburbs, huge shopping malls and a busy middle class, but it also has vast numbers of poor, struggling to make it in a low-wage economy with minimal government help. A shocking 37 million Americans live in poverty. That is 12.7 per cent of the population - the highest percentage in the developed world. They are found from the hills of Kentucky to Detroit's streets, from the Deep South of Louisiana to the heartland of Oklahoma. Each year since 2001 their number has grown. jaybird found this for you @ 17:21 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink
Annexing Khuzestan; Battle-Plans for Iran Bush has no intention of occupying Iran. Rather, the goal is to destroy major weapons-sites, destabilize the regime, and occupy a sliver of land on the Iraqi border that contains 90% of Iran’s oil wealth. Ultimately, Washington will aim to replace the Mullahs with American-friendly clients who can police their own people and fabricate the appearance of representative government. But, that will have to wait. For now, the administration must prevent the incipient Iran bourse (oil-exchange) from opening in March and precipitating a global sell-off of the debt-ridden dollar. There have many fine articles written about the proposed “euro-based” bourse and the devastating effects it will have on the greenback. The best of these are ‘’Petrodollar Warfare: Oil, Iraq and the Future of the Dollar’‘ by William R. Clark, and ‘’The Proposed Oil Bourse’‘ by Krassimir Petrov, Ph.D. The bottom line on the bourse is this; the dollar is underwritten by a national debt that now exceeds $8 trillion dollars and trade deficits that surpass $600 billion per year. That means that the greenback is the greatest swindle in the history of mankind. It’s utterly worthless. The only thing that keeps the dollar afloat is that oil is traded exclusively in greenbacks rather than some other currency. If Iran is able to smash that monopoly by trading in petro-euros then the world’s central banks will dump the greenback overnight, sending markets crashing and the US economy into a downward spiral. The Bush administration has no intention of allowing that to take place. In fact, as the tax-cuts and the budget deficits indicate, the Bush cabal fully intends to perpetuate the system that trades worthless dollars for valuable commodities, labor, and resources. As long as the oil market is married to the dollar, this system of global indentured servitude will continue. jaybird found this for you @ 13:19 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink
Mutual Back Scrtatching, Ltd: U.S. Has Royalty Plan to Give Windfall to Oil Companies [Login with BugMeNot] The federal government is on the verge of one of the biggest giveaways of oil and gas in American history, worth an estimated $7 billion over five years. New projections, buried in the Interior Department's just-published budget plan, anticipate that the government will let companies pump about $65 billion worth of oil and natural gas from federal territory over the next five years without paying any royalties to the government. Based on the administration figures, the government will give up more than $7 billion in payments between now and 2011. The companies are expected to get the largess, known as royalty relief, even though the administration assumes that oil prices will remain above $50 a barrel throughout that period. ...the projected largess could be just the start. Last week, Kerr-McGee Exploration and Development, a major industry player, began a brash but utterly serious court challenge that could, if it succeeds, cost the government another $28 billion in royalties over the next five years. In what administration officials and industry executives alike view as a major test case, Kerr-McGee told the Interior Department last week that it planned to challenge one of the government's biggest limitations on royalty relief if it could not work out an acceptable deal in its favor. If Kerr-McGee is successful, administration projections indicate that about 80 percent of all oil and gas from federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico would be royalty-free. "It's one of the greatest train robberies in the history of the world," said Representative George Miller, a California Democrat who has fought royalty concessions on oil and gas for more than a decade. "It's the gift that keeps on giving." jaybird found this for you @ 09:11 in News, Opinion & Politique | | permalink
Chainsaw Charlie likes it: Bush plan could sell WNC tracts The Bush administration has proposed selling 300,000 acres of public land nationwide, including some 6,615 acres in the Pisgah and Nantahala national forests in Western North Carolina. Some land in the Uwharrie and Croatan national forests in North Carolina would also be put up for sale. The money generated would be distributed to counties for schools. That's the milquetoasty version. Scrutiny Hooligans spells it out fo' real: Representative Taylor could, of course, go ahead and tell us how his values figure into the equation, whether selling public lands to private interests as a short-term education funding measure is something that's good for western North Carolina. But he has so far refrained from stating any sort of relevant opinion on the matter... The AC-T article makes it clear that underfunded rural schools, now seeing declining timber sales that were used to prop up a lack of federal and state support, depend on the money now supplied through timber funds. However, the article does not address the larger problem of school funding that is driving this wrongheaded proposal. jaybird found this for you @ 20:42 in Local- Western North Carolina | | permalink
Caring for Your Introvert Do you know someone who needs hours alone every day? Who loves quiet conversations about feelings or ideas, and can give a dynamite presentation to a big audience, but seems awkward in groups and maladroit at small talk? Who has to be dragged to parties and then needs the rest of the day to recuperate? Who growls or scowls or grunts or winces when accosted with pleasantries by people who are just trying to be nice? If so, do you tell this person he is "too serious," or ask if he is okay? Regard him as aloof, arrogant, rude? Redouble your efforts to draw him out? If you answered yes to these questions, chances are that you have an introvert on your hands—and that you aren't caring for him properly. Science has learned a good deal in recent years about the habits and requirements of introverts. It has even learned, by means of brain scans, that introverts process information differently from other people (I am not making this up). If you are behind the curve on this important matter, be reassured that you are not alone. Introverts may be common, but they are also among the most misunderstood and aggrieved groups in America, possibly the world. jaybird found this for you @ 16:32 in Consciousness, Psychology & Philosophy | | permalink
An interview with Fritjof Capra at the very core of my framework is the analysis of networks, of living networks and the comparison of biological and social networks. And first, as I did already in The Web of Life, I identified a set of key characteristics of living networks. One of them is that these networks are self-generating, that is, every part in the network contributes to continually generate and regenerate the whole. For example, in a cell, you have a network of chemical processes and the food comes in from the outside, simple molecules, sugars, oxygen and so on, come in from the outside, and the cellular network builds all the structures—the proteins, the enzymes, the DNA—all that is built and continually rebuilt and regenerated and maintained by the cellular network. Now in human society, we’re not talking about chemical processes, we’re talking about processes of communication. A human community is a network of communications. This network of communications also generates itself continually. What it generates, though, are not so much material structures but ideas, information, meaning. These are nonmaterial structures. When a conversation or a communication happens, it gives rise to ideas or information, which then trigger new communications. The entire network also sustains itself and continually regenerates conversations and communications. Another similarity would be that both types of networks, the biological and the social, create their own boundaries. So a cell, again, creates its boundary, which is semipermeable. That is, it lets certain substances in and others it doesn’t let in, and it gives the cell its identity in this way. The boundary is created by the cell itself. Similarly, of course, multicellular organisms have other kinds of boundaries—we have our skin, you know, the various boundaries of organisms. A social network of communications also creates its boundaries but again, they are not primarily material boundaries, although these also exist, but they are cultural boundaries. When you have a community, you know who belongs to the community and who doesn’t, and you would treat them differently, you would have different expectations as to their behavior, you would share information differently—some things you would tell people in the community and not tell people outside of the community and so on. This is a boundary of trust, a boundary of expectations, a boundary of values and meaning. It is also continually generated and renegotiated by the network, by the community. jaybird found this for you @ 12:30 in Consciousness, Psychology & Philosophy | | permalink
Giving déjà vu a second look (again) Dr Chris Moulin first encountered chronic déjà vu sufferers at a memory clinic. “We had a peculiar referral from a man who said there was no point visiting the clinic because he’d already been there, although this would have been impossible.” The patient not only genuinely believed he had met Dr Moulin before, he gave specific details about the times and places of these ‘remembered’ meetings. Déjà vu has developed to such an extent that he had stopped watching TV - even the news - because it seemed to be a repeat, and even believed he could hear the same bird singing the same song in the same tree every time he went out. Chronic déjà vu sufferers are not only overwhelmed by a sense of familiarity for new experiences, they can provide plausible and complex justifications to support this. “When this particular patient’s wife asked what was going to happen next on a TV programme he’d claimed to have already seen, he said ‘how should I know? I have a memory problem!’” Dr Moulin said. jaybird found this for you @ 08:26 in Consciousness, Psychology & Philosophy | | permalink
The Virus: Unintelligent Design ...With the recent discovery of a truly monstrous virus, scientists are again casting about for how best to characterize these spectral life-forms. The new virus, officially known as Mimivirus (because it mimics a bacterium), is a creature "so bizarre," as The London Telegraph described it, "and unlike anything else seen by scientists . . . that . . . it could qualify for a new domain in the tree of life." Indeed, Mimivirus is so much more genetically complex than all previously known viruses, not to mention a number of bacteria, that it seems to call for a dramatic redrawing of the tree of life.
That represents a radical change in thinking about life's origins: Viruses, long thought to be biology's hitchhikers, turn out to have been biology's formative force. This is striking news, especially at a moment when the basic facts of origins and evolution seem to have fallen under a shroud. In the discussions of intelligent design, one hears a yearning for an old-fashioned creation story, in which some singular, inchoate entity stepped in to give rise to complex life-forms—humans in particular. Now the viruses appear to present a creation story of their own: a stirring, topsy-turvy, and decidedly unintelligent design wherein life arose more by reckless accident than original intent, through an accumulation of genetic accounting errors committed by hordes of mindless, microscopic replication machines. Our descent from apes is the least of it. With the discovery of Mimi, scientists are close to ascribing to viruses the last role that anyone would have conceived for them: that of life's prime mover.
jaybird found this for you @ 22:12 in Science, Quantum & Space | | permalink
Spitzer telescope finds 'crushed glass' galaxies NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has observed a rare population of colliding galaxies whose entangled hearts are wrapped in tiny crystals resembling crushed glass. The crystals are essentially sand, or silicate, grains that were formed like glass, probably in the stellar equivalent of furnaces. This is the first time silicate crystals have been detected in a galaxy outside of our own. "We were surprised to find such delicate, little crystals in the centers of some of the most violent places in the universe," said Dr. Henrik Spoon of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. He is first author of a paper on the research appearing in the Feb. 20 issue of the Astrophysical Journal. "Crystals like these are easily destroyed, but in this case, they are probably being churned out by massive, dying stars faster than they are disappearing." The discovery will ultimately help astronomers better understand the evolution of galaxies, including our Milky Way, which will merge with the nearby Andromeda galaxy billions of years from now. "It's as though there's a huge dust storm taking place at the center of merging galaxies," said Dr. Lee Armus, a co-author of the paper from NASA's Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "The silicates get kicked up and wrap the galaxies' nuclei in giant, dusty glass blankets." jaybird found this for you @ 18:10 in Science, Quantum & Space | | permalink
Want to make a complicated decision? Just stop thinking Here's a suggestion for the next time you need to make a complicated decision: stop thinking. According to a new study, thinking too hard about a problem leads to poor choices - difficult decisions are best handled by our unconscious minds. While most people are happy to buy a new set of towels without much thought, they are unlikely to buy a new car or house without some serious thought. But Ap Dijksterhuis, a psychologist at the University of Amsterdam, argues that we might be getting these methods of decision-making the wrong way around. He asked volunteers to pick their favourite car from a list of four based on a set of four attributes including fuel consumption and passenger leg room. He gave them four minutes to think about their decision and most people chose the car with the most plus points. When Dr Dijksterhuis made the experiment more complex - 12 attributes rather than four - people could only identify the best car a quarter of the time. This result was no better than choosing at random. However, when the researchers distracted the participants after showing them the cars (by giving them puzzles to do before asking participants to make their choices), more than half picked the best car. "Conscious thinkers were better able to make the best choice among simple products, whereas unconscious thinkers were better able to make the best choice among complex products," wrote Dr Dijksterhuis in a paper, published today in Science. The problem with thinking about things consciously is that you can only focus on a few things at once. In the face of a complex decision this can lead to giving certain factors undue importance. Thinking about something several times is also likely to produce slightly different evaluations, highlighting inconsistencies. jaybird found this for you @ 14:09 in Consciousness, Psychology & Philosophy | | permalink
Neo-Hesse: Webmagister Ludi and the Glass Bead Game We can now say the web is an exploration into our own psyches. The association of images and sounds is unique, and how we integrate our new behavior patterns is going to be reflected in how we create our own realities on the internet, even if those realities have not formalized themselves yet in our 3-D world of earth-fire-water-air. For what is the internet, but a continual hypertextualiztion of ideas made immediately manifest by a search engine or an available link. Web logic is not the same logic we use in a cause and effect relationship. Many times we are not aware of what information is going to be revealed to us through a search engine. Ideas are organized anew and not like the Dewy decimal card catalog system librarians are so accustomed to. We now access information by our moods or by our impressions or by audio stimulus. We have created a synaesthetic information environment where the association of ideas is not dependent on the syntax of the language, but on the mood obtained from a variety of media inputs. The age old adage of "a picture is worth a thousand words" takes on a new significance because any one of those thousand words can be searched to reveal a thousand more pictures. Frankly there is no one way to utilize the internet. There are no rules for information access, data organization, or logical understanding. Keep in mind, this was written ten years ago. jaybird found this for you @ 10:03 in Blogosphere, Tech & Internet | | permalink
So I've been told... At a quickly inhaled brunch today (at a place where one cannot go to be anonymous because of this town's peculiar social tides), a person I barely know told me that "I do a lot" for the community and I'm "appreciated." This, of course, feels all good-n-swimmy on first listen, before the self-critic begins to gnaw away at it. Doubt has always been a more-or-less automatic reaction to thanks and praise, but slowly, at least one part of her equation is beginning to sink in. I do do a lot. With the recent success of finding a New, Wonderful, Super-awesome Job, I now have another large helping of responsibility. Y'see, since leaving The Old Office, I have been barely working 15 hours a week at a Somewhat Disorganized Place. The New, Wonderful, Super-awesome Job is full time during the week, but I'm going to keep one client from the Somewhat Disorganized Place on Saturdays, for a few hours a day. And I still am a contracted consultant and trainer for The Old Office. I'm also a contract trainer for an Uber-Professional Prevention Program. All the while, I will maintain my part-time gig as Gofer-Extraorinaire at the Goofy and Lovely Spiritual Community. When you add all that up, that's five jobs (though the contract nature of two of them kinda throws them into another category). Nonetheless, with occasional website design and other side projects, this amply proves the nameless woman's observation. Yet that's just a picture of my job-type-activities. This does not include volunteering, school, and those somewhat vital things called Resting and Enjoyment of Life. It's actually fine, though. Having not done anything full-time since mid-December other than musing and cosmic loafing, I'm thrilled to finally have a full plate again. All of these gigs are fairly good evidence for appreciation, enough to send some feeble signal to my omelet-addled brain that I am competent and have my non-literal shit more-or-less together. Which, earlier in life, was a remote and lofty whimsy... I must particularily thank a few fine Blogospherians for their support, encouragement and networking during this odd phase of my life. First off, immense and profound gratitude goes to Gordon at Scrutiny Hoolingans. This is the good fellow responsible for networking me into the New, Wonderful, Super-awesome Job. Had I not gone to an event that I was initially ho-hummy about, and been forthcoming about my then-downward facing prospects, I would not have had a chance at the New, Wonderful, Super-awesome Job. Gordon is the MAN, as it were. Also, deep thanks and respect go to Bruce over at BruceMulkey.com. For it was he, with a motherlode of kindness, that got me into the Uber-Professional Prevention Program as a contract trainer. I've already been trained as a trainer in two interesting modules and implementation should be coming along soon. Bruce is an excellent writer who feels the world deeply. He is quite tall and it also the MAN, if you will. Immense jugfuls of thanks, support and kindress-spiritness go to Fliss at the Hangover Journals. She too has been on a long road to job transition, and she's given so much encouragement and straightforward wisdom that I am now deeply endebted to her. Should you ben in Asheville, and in need of a truly kickass graphic designer and educator, drop me a line and I'll send you her resume. We both are acutely aware at how great a price jobs come at in this town, and she could really use some good leads right now. Please send them her way. Of course, beloved Robin over at Robin's View has been a partner in Finally, it's down to all of you folks... the loyal and ir-regular readers of Bird On The Moon, and my scattered community of web-friends from Metachat, Metafilter, and who knows what. You've sent such warmth my way, that I nearly chucked the space heather. I can only say thanks so many times and in so many ways... but here goes again... THANKS. You've made the rough going far smoother than it ought to be. Things, as they say, are looking up... or all around, within and without. I'm moved by every little bit of it. Even deeply so, by people like you and the lady passing by while I was gnoshing on vegan-sausage gravy at Earthfare today. I do feel appreciated, and that's about 33 years in the making for me to say that with such conviction and verve. As with all things cosmic and transcendental, it works both way. As above, so below, and right back atcha. jaybird found this for you @ 20:40 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
The blog slept in today, oblivious to the passage of time. jaybird found this for you @ 12:54 in Misc. Babble | | permalink
A Trillion Worlds for the Taking For thousands of years of recorded history a fragile race of bipedal apes have cast their primate eyes skyward in hope of Divine Salvation or in fear of Heavenly Apocalypse. Strangely, unbeknownst to them, those superstitious musings weren't far from the truth. Tumbling silently through the farthest reaches of our solar system are the twin potentials of untold wealth and apocalyptic peril. Great iron mountains unchained by land, hydrocarbon ice bergs floating in an endless spatial ocean, and self gravitating heaps of gravel. There are trillions of them by best estimate. All these riches are ours for the taking: Each a potential Destroyer of Worlds. Sixty-five million years ago, a smallish one made a fateful rendezvous with our lush steamy, planet and changed the course of life on earth. And while it may have been the harbinger of doom for the dinosaurs, it was midwife to the birth of modern day furry mammals, and its many celestial cousins left behind may yet provide our deliverance or our demise. jaybird found this for you @ 16:56 in Science, Quantum & Space | | permalink
YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I've been waiting for the final word, but I finally have a full-time job offer, with excellent pay, in the field I've been wanting! I've got to run now, more details later tonight! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!! jaybird found this for you @ 08:57 in Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
Supernatural selection: study religion like any other human behavior The argument that religion can be explained as a natural rather than a supernatural phenomenon is not new. The Scottish philosopher David Hume set himself a similar task over 250 years ago. Marx and Freud had their own explanations. Over the years, scholars have enlisted everything from rational choice theory to brain scans in their efforts to trace the origins of faith... Until a few decades ago, the assumption in much social science research was that religion was the product of ignorance: Unfamiliar with the germ theory, primitive tribes believed that vengeful spirits brought disease; lacking an education, the farmboy believed in the virgin birth. In a world of increasing technological and educational advancement, the influential anthropologist Anthony Wallace wrote in 1966, ''the evolutionary future of religion is extinction. Belief in supernatural beings and in supernatural forces that affect nature without obeying nature's laws will erode and become only an interesting historical memory." In the intervening years, of course, religion has not gone extinct-by most measures the United States is a more religious country than it was 40 years ago-and social scientists have started to take another look at it. Dennett's new book is concerned primarily with this more recent work, in which a new generation of researchers have begun to suggest that religion may be neither a matter of |
Scientists’ reactions have ranged from deep skepticism to interest in a report of a mutation that makes people walk on all fours, cited in a Turkish study as a possible instance of “backward evolution...”