In past posts I have touched on the idea that we are all the protagonists in our own reality narratives. These realities interrelate in surprising ways which either enrich or contradict our individual, subjective perspectives. In organised religion can be found a selected framework through which a shared narrative is weaved. Myth is a powerful force rendering our existentially meaningless lives into a stronger composite than any one of us maintains alone.Perhaps in Christianity Jesus is the leading protagonist. In his story Christianity's followers catch reflections of themselves which dimly accentuate their favourite curves, their preferred self maintained attributes. The myth is a powerful force indeed.
Modern scientific enquiry renders theological concerns nigh on extinct when we ask materialistic questions:- Why do we die?
- How old is the Earth?
- What is matter?
The true understanding science can bring us in these areas is unsurpassed in the history of human thought. Yet if we attempt to analyse our subjective worlds with this scientific framework its power remains accessible to a relative elite.
I have grown to loath the word 'scientists' of late, so padded full is the media of this gross generalisation. Thus a rarely understood mass of society casts a single, collective shadow from which a lonely protagonist is wrought. All work in the sciences then, as far as our media tells us so, is maintained as the work of one 'super-science' - a conglomerate's power with a fake protagonist's glory; knowledge but no myth.
This is dangerous.
I believe that the current failure of the scientific community is in understanding their potential. If science is to overcome the dogma of religion - a problem which can only grow exponentially with time - a myth needs to be wrought.
In the hyperreal communities of the internet I see the potential for the greatest over-arching narrative in the history of humankind. Through the interplay of chaotic forces far beyond the reaches of our understanding religion of all kinds places the cogs of our society into various working machines of change. Today, as the time scales inherent in change become narrower and narrower, mythological structure has not the time to emerge. Science the protagonist, standing so heroic in many areas of our world story, still appears lost in a sea of chaotic forces none of us are capable of grasping. This allows religion to strike back, raise its head in pride and laugh in the face of scientific adversary. Dogma may shield us from the lies, but surely it ties us together tighter than any myth-less narrative.
- So I ask you:
- How should the scientific community construct the narrative to end all narratives?
- Will the internet act as its theological framework or is society best maintained in the flesh and bone relationships religion has manipulated so well?
- Could their ever rise a scientific-messiah from the chaos of modern, objectively governed society? and, if the ultimate narrative does arrive, what form will/should it take?
and finally...
We Feel Fine describes its mission:
We Feel Fine is an exploration of human emotion on a global scale.
Since August 2005, We Feel Fine has been harvesting human feelings from a large number of weblogs. Every few minutes, the system searches the world's newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases "I feel" and "I am feeling". When it finds such a phrase, it records the full sentence, up to the period, and identifies the "feeling" expressed in that sentence (e.g. sad, happy, depressed, etc.). Because blogs are structured in largely standard ways, the age, gender, and geographical location of the author can often be extracted and saved along with the sentence, as can the local weather conditions at the time the sentence was written. All of this information is saved.
The result is a database of several million human feelings, increasing by 15,000 - 20,000 new feelings per day. Using a series of playful interfaces, the feelings can be searched and sorted across a number of demographic slices, offering
responses to specific questions like: do Europeans feel sad more often than Americans? Do women feel fat more often than men? Does rainy weather affect how we feel? What are the most representative feelings of female New Yorkers in their 20s?
What do people feel right now in Baghdad? What were people feeling on Valentine's Day? Which are the happiest cities in the world? The saddest? And so on.]]>
Muslim: Do you believe in God?
Atheist: There is no God. Can you prove that there is a God?
Muslim: The universe, the land, the see, the sky, the sun, the moon,….etc are all evidences that there is a God who has created the universe.
Atheist: Can I see and hear the God?
Muslim: You cannot see the God. We have the word of the God which is the Quran. The language of the Quran is Arabic. We –Arabs- know very well that the Quran cannot be written by a human being. The Quran has challenged the old Arabs to write something that resembles the Quran. The old Arabs were genius poets but they could not. Nowadays, some persons tried to write something that resembles the Quran, but they made themselves a joke.
Atheist: Then the Quran is for Arabs only.
Muslim: The Quran is the word of the God for all peoples. Indeed the Arabs can feel the greatness of the Quran more than the other peoples. But the other peoples can read the translation of the meanings of the Quran. They can see the wisdom of the Quran. They can see the scientific accuracy of the Quran.
Atheist: Can you give me an example of the wisdom of the Quran?
Muslim: Islam forbids homosexuality and sex outside marriage. We can see clearly that homosexuality and sex outside marriage caused the spread of AIDS which caused or will cause the death of millions of people. Besides, with Islam, a man can be sure that his son is really his son. But in western countries, a man cannot be sure that his son is really his son.
Atheist: I want to discuss the presence of the God. The universe is created by the God. Who has created the God.
Muslim: The God has not been created. The God is eternal.
Atheist: I can say that the universe is eternal.
Muslim: The universe is changeable, so it cannot be eternal.
Atheist: You did not convince me.
Muslim: I invite you to read the Quran. I invite you to rethink about the common secular idea that there is no God. It is a common idea, but it is completely wrong.]]>
I personally felt upset and shocked by their rejection and disgust of my pie - did my colleagues act insensitively or should I learn to accept that pork pies are socially unacceptable and a relic from the past?]]>
a) how would you envision a Christian Heaven?
b) Would you even want to go to it?
Also, would you agree that it’s not the enticement of Heaven that makes many people stay faithful to God, but the fear of Hell?]]>
In a post titled "Rooms of algebraic theology" BLDGBLOG writes:
The supercomputers I'm showing here are powerful almost beyond human understanding," photographer Simon Norfolk explains, describing his extraordinary new images of supercomputers and their architectural settings.
"They can map every molecule of the billions on a human DNA string; scrutinise at the atomic level the collision between two pieces of plutonium in an exploding bomb; or sketch the gravitational pull of every star in the galaxy upon every other star in the galaxy. These are not questions that humans could grapple with given plenty of time, a notebook and a sharp pencil."
Norfolk has also photographed computers used for "mapping and predicting global virus outbreaks" and for "simulating automotive crash tests."
These computers, Norfolk continues, "are omniscient and omnipresent and these are not qualities in which we find a simulacrum of ourselves – these are qualities that describe the Divine. The problem is not that these computers might one day resemble humans; it is that they already resemble gods."
[...]
full at BLDGBLOG]]>
Why would I want to live indefinitely? Why not? Unless you are suicidal or wracked by some horrible pain, chances are you would turn down the opportunity to die and not see tomorrow. I have taken this simple logic and expanded it out to every tomorrow. Basically while I remain open-minded enough to acknowledge that there may be a set of circumstances that would cause me to not wish to continue to live, I cannot imagine what they would be. Until further notice I am alive and wish to remain so. That is not to say that I fear death, but rather that I love life.
But lets get down to the nuts and bolts of how this is actually done. Obviously no one any of us have run into has lived forever. Many people from way back to Gilgamesh have sought immortality to no avail. However I believe we passed a critical point in history when Robert C. W. Ettinger wrote "The Prospect of Immortality" in 1962. He laid out the idea of freezing people right after death in liquid nitrogen to preserve them until the point that medical science could restore the damage that had caused them to die as well as the damage of being frozen. Techniques have since improved at preserving the cryonically suspended and many brains are vitrified which is a technology that has been used to preserve organs while awaiting transplant.
Of course the ultimate proof of concept: the reanimation of a suspended individual is still a way off. However physicists have not been able to raise any reasons that it might not work.
There is much more to immortalism than just cryonics. Caloric Restriction with Optimal Nutrition (CRON) is the only known way to extend lifespan currently, but Aubrey de Grey has proposed Strategies for Negligible Engineered Senescence (SENS) which aims to obviate the effects of aging in humans. Some people think these developments could come about fast enough that even baby-boomers could take advantage of them.
The Methuselah Mouse Prize was created to allow people to contribute to a prize that will be awarded to scientists who develop methods to radically extend the lifespan of mice. It is hoped that it will achieve results similar to the Ansari X-Prize or the DARPA Grand Challenge which both pushed the limits and spurred greater investment in their persepective fields.
The Immortality Institute is an organization that is made up of those seeking to transcend the pathetically short lifes we have inherited and perhaps live forever. Being able to slow and eventually reverse aging is not enough alone to enable one to live forever. Eventually it will become advantageous to make backup copies of one's self that could alleviate the effects of being obliterated. Only once a person can be entirely distroyed and then recreated from off-site backups would I personally consider them to be "immortal".
A great book covering a possible future where many of these events take place is James Halperin's The First Immortal which can be downloaded for free or purchased on Amazon.
For more reading check out Alcor which is one of two currently operational cryonics institutes.]]>
Which I did, thanks, which leads me to the crux of the matter, what is the one thing in the word which you would risk it all on? I'm takling something (someone?) you would die for, to give your own existance to see this one goal through]]>
(Go here and click 'Fresh Experiences' for an insight into the Nintendo Wii).Wii looks set to change the face of gaming. Whilst the effectiveness of the system is yet to be truly realised, I have no doubt that it's original name 'The Revolution' will echo well into the future of gaming, virtual reality and augmented experiences. Nintendo had the foresight to push gaming beyond the repetitive, tried and tested genres of games and systems we have all grown to expect of the industry.
What potential do you see for this hardware, as far as true interactivity is concerned? Are you looking forward to Wii as much as I am?
More Wii links: Official Wii site - BBC News - Wii at IGN - Miyamoto Interview]]>
Loads more here....
Got any sexy photos you want to share?]]>
Am I being far fetched here? Do you welcome the simulation of life?]]>
I SHALL SHARE;
The Divine Comedy, by Dante. Oh the sheer bliss of 'reading' it...
http://bulfinch.englishatheist.org/dante/hell/hellindex.htm < here, an online edition
I SHALL SHARE;
The Wanderer, a poem from an archaic unknown english writer.
http://research.uvsc.edu/mcdonald/wanderweb/index.htm
I SHALL SHARE;
HAVAMAL, The Words of Odin the High One
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/havamal.html
A poor translation, but even still, magnificent.]]>
Christian Nold - Oct 2005 - March 06
6 month artist commission hosted by Independent Photography as part of 'Peninsula', a series of artist commissions on the Greenwich Peninsula.
Artist Christian Nold has been invited to collaborate with local residents from the Greenwich Peninsula to explore the area afresh and build an emotion map of the area that explores people's relationship with their local environment.
The project is set up as a series of participatory workshops that invite people to borrow a Bio Mapping device and go for a walk. The device measures the wearer's Galvanic Skin Response (GSR), which is an indicator of emotional arousal in conjunction with their geographical location. The resulting maps encourage personal reflection on the complex relationship between us, our environment and our fellow citizens. By sharing this information we can construct maps that visualise where we as a community feel stressed and excited.
[...]
full here]]>
My recent post on the ideal city has got me a thinkin' about utopia, and more specifically, what I would perceive as utopia. The subject has come up more than a few times on here already...
We all lie, all the time. It causes problems, to say the least. So why do we do it?It boils down to the shifting sands of the self and trying to look good both to ourselves and others, experts say.
"It's tied in with self-esteem," says University of Massachusetts psychologist Robert Feldman. "We find that as soon as people feel that their self-esteem is threatened, they immediately begin to lie at higher levels."
Many animals engage in deception, or deliberately misleading another, but only humans are wired to deceive both themselves and others, researchers say. People are so engaged in managing how others perceive them that they are often unable to separate truth from fiction in their own minds, Feldman's research shows.
[...]
"People almost lie reflexively," Feldman says. "They don't think about it as part of their normal social discourse." But it is, the research showed.
"We're trying not so much to impress other people but to maintain a view of ourselves that is consistent with the way they would like us to be," Feldman said. We want to be agreeable, to make the social situation smoother or easier, and to avoid insulting others through disagreement or discord.
Men lie no more than women, but they tend to lie to make themselves look better, while women are more likely to lie to make the other person feel better.
Extroverts tend to lie more than introverts, Feldman found in similar research involving a job-interview situation.
- Link to 'Why We lie'Self deception is a fascinating phenomenon and has been used by philosophers aplenty to examine the consistency of selfhood and the nature of consciousness. Sartre used the phrase 'bad faith' to describe a mental state humans often compel themselves towards. Existential reasoning lead him into the seeming infinite loops which arise in our consciousness. Consciousness denies freedom which denies itself, blind selfhood rolls off into infinity. From Wikipedia:
Bad faithIs this evidence that the lie is where we find reality? Without it, it seems, a consistent self could not be maintained. Animals appear to deceive, but in the ability of humans to deceive their own self perhaps we see glimpses of our inate power. In denying our objective world the human is naturally thrust into a state of inner reality, a solipsism reliant on the depth of lie one envelopes oneself in. Where do the human, the lie and the real interlink? Is all a lie?]]>A critical claim in existentialist thought is that we are always radically free to make choices and guide our lives towards our own chosen goal (or 'project'). We cannot escape this freedom, even in overwhelming circumstances. For instance, even a armed mugger's victim possesses choices: to hand over his wallet; to negotiate; to beg; to run; to counter-attack; or to die.
Although we are limited by our circumstances (our facticity), these cannot force us, as radically free beings, to follow one course over another. For this reason, we choose in anguish: we know that we must make a choice, that it will have consequences, and that some choices are better than others. But for Sartre, to claim that one amongst our many conscious possiblities takes undeniable precedence (for instance, 'I cannot risk my life, because I must support my family') is to assume the role of an object in the world, merely at the mercy of circumstance - a being-in-itself that is only its own facticity.
Intentional Consciousness and Freedom
For Sartre this attitude is manifestly self-decieving. As human consciousness, we are always aware that we are not whatever we are aware of - we cannot, in this sense, be defined as our 'intentional objects' of consciousness, including our facticity of personal history, character, bodies, or objective responsibility. Thus, as Sartre often repeated, 'human reality is what it is not, and it is not what it is': it can only define itself negatively, as 'what it is not'; but this negation is simultaneously the only positive definition it can make of 'what it is'.
From this we are aware of a host of alternative reactions to our objective situation - i.e., of freedom - since no situation can dictate a single response. Only in assuming social roles and value systems external to this nature as conscious beings can we pretend that these possiblities are denied to us; but this is itself a decision made possible by our freedom and our separation from these things. It is this paradoxical free decision to deny to ourselves this inescapable freedom which is 'bad faith'.
- Link to Sartre and Bad Faith
PEOPLE with autism seem not to daydream in the way that other people do.When the minds of non-autistic people are "idle", a network within the brain involved in social and emotional thought is, in fact, active. People often drift into daydreams at these times, but when we have to concentrate on a task, we suppress daydreaming.
A team from the University of California at San Diego used functional MRI to show that while this network is more active in non-autistic people when their brains are resting than carrying out a cognitive test, there is no difference between the active and resting brains of people with autism.
"The absence of this activity in autism might mean that they have a different sort of internal thought," says co-author Daniel Kennedy.
- from New ScientistThe boundaries of the human mind seem to lie on a superbly variable scale. Oftentimes minds on the extremes of this scale are labelled as abnormal, disturbed or even insane. Yet, in the minds of the schizophrenic and the autistic perhaps we catch glimpses of the breadth of our capacities.
Do you think studies such as the one cited can give us new insight into the nature of consciousness? or, like the many multitudes who have come before you, do you believe that these people's 'abnormalities' should be studied, diagnosed, cured and discarded?
p.s. Has anyone come across the bizarre, new-age movement of The Indigo Children? Apparently autistics represent the next stage in human evolution. X-Men eat your heart out...]]>
Uncontrollable Semantics is a surprisingly addictive site. The content is interactive and consists of mouse cursor following animations dancing across the screen.
When I feel the need for a quick bit of the old ultra mesmerizing
this is where I go.]]>
OK, so my skin crawled a couple of times, hell I even felt disgusted or shocked by a couple of scenes, never once was I 'scared'. Here's a few of the most memorable from the list:
- Exorcist
- Cannibal Holocaust
- Jacob's Ladder
- Tetsuo Iron Man
- Alien
- Audition
- Quatermass and the Pit
- Nosferatu
- Texas Chainsaw Massacre
- Videodrome
So now I ask you:
I demand funky comics! I shall repay in more comic links!]]>
A confidential Ministry of Defence report on Unidentified Flying Objects has concluded that there is no proof of alien life forms.......The four-year study - entitled Unidentified Aerial Phenomena in the UK - tackles the long-running question by UFO-spotters: "Is anyone out there?"
The answer, it seems, is "no".
The 400-page report puts it like this: "No evidence exists to suggest that the phenomena seen are hostile or under any type of control, other than that of natural physical forces." - link
My own conclusions about an alien presence on Earth have rarely diverged from this conclusion. How about you?
and...
Despite 40 years of effort, it has yet to produce a single result. Millions of pounds have been spent and thousands of man-hours expended, yet Seti, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, remains the great unfulfilled hope of modern astronomy...
...'Twenty years ago, scientists were confident there were at least a million alien civilisations in our galaxy,' said the meeting's organiser, Dr Ian Morison of Jodrell Bank Observatory. 'No one thinks there can be anything like that number now.'...
...'I am sure life exists on other worlds,' said Morison. 'But it may be rather primitive. Few other worlds may have the right conditions for complex organisms to evolve as they have on Earth.' - link
What would it mean for humanity if we were the only 'intelligent' life in the universe?]]>
from the Independent
'Robin Hood' Gang Rob Gourmet Stores in Bid to Feed Hamburg's Poor
by Tony Paterson
They dress up in pink catsuits, have names like "Spider Mum" and feel
a social obligation to plunder the most expensive restaurants and
gourmet delicatessens in town as part of a campaign to help the poor.
Last week the well-heeled citizens of Hamburg's Altona district got a
taste of their antics when 30 of them marched into the city's luxury
"Fresh Paradise Goedeken" supermarket and walked out five minutes
later with €15,000 (£10,000) worth of stolen goods.
The gang's booty included magnums of Champagne at €99 a bottle, filets
of Japanese Kobe beef at €108 a kilogram, legs of venison, a salmon
and several boxes of Valrhona chocolate.
Before leaving, gang members thrust a bouquet of flowers into the
hands of a shop assistant. Attached was a handwritten note which
proclaimed: "Survival in the city of millionaires would be impossible
without us!" It was signed by "Spider Mum", "Santa Guevara" and
"Multiflex".
Another note later released by the gang insisted that the haul had
been distributed to Hamburg's needy, to the "social workers, cleaning
ladies and minimum-wage earners". It added: "The places of wealth in
this town are as numerous as the opportunities to take it."
"It was a well-planned robbery," Carsten Sievers, the store's manager,
said on Friday last week. "Somebody had obviously been in the shop
before the main contingent arrived and had already filled up several
shopping trolleys."
Fourteen squad cars and a police helicopter scoured the Altona
district for more than an hour after the robbery, but failed to find
the perpetrators.
"The gang covered its tracks completely. They act like professionals,"
Bodo Franz, the head of a Hamburg police unit investigating the
robbery, said.
[...]
]]>
Our day-to-day beliefs often come from established theories, but what about beliefs based on theories in progress? A new book asks literary and scientific thinkers about what they believe but cannot prove.- link to the show
A radio program with talks from Richard Dawkins, Martin Rees and many others on the nature of science and belief. I haven't had a chance to listen yet, but looks mighty interesting.
Let me know your thoughts...]]>
i personally have always been dubious about the surprising redness of my little brother's hair - no one else has red hair that we know of. Thankfully red hair is coded for by a recessive allele so i dont have to call my mother a slag outright.........]]>
If every human on the Earth, right now, on this day, vanished… how long would it take for all human structures; items, building, anything we’ve physically created (skyscrapers, homes, phones, televisions, all of it) – in how many years will it take for these things to crumble into dust? 1,000 years? 2,000? I figure nature will pull apart things fairly quickly, but a more scientific answer would be great.
Thanks.]]>
...Whereas Dawkins likens religion to the belief that there are fairies at the bottom of the garden, Dennett declares his hunch to be that "religions that can flourish in conditions of knowledge are fine". But this is as far as his esteem goes. Religion may have positive aspects, he says,"but then so does the Mafia. It keeps neighbourhoods quite secure; there's a very low petty crime rate if the Mafia's in control. That doesn't make it a good thing.
Dennett understands the pull of religion. "Say you're working at the gas station at the crossroads, and you're wondering where the meaning is in this life. Religion, or animal activism, or New Age silliness of one sort or another, offers you a theme." Yet he warns that religion is "the nuclear weapon of rational discussion if, whenever it gets tough, you draw the blinds and play the faith card. It turns it into a sham." And this, he says, is the single most disturbing thing about it...
...The charge levelled at the New Godless is that, with their rigorous reasoning, testing and experimentation, they are making a religion out of the scientific method. "It's an all-purpose, wild-card smear," retorts Dennett. "It's the last refuge of the sceptic. When someone puts forward a scientific theory that they really don't like, they just try to discredit it as 'scientism'. But when it comes to facts, and explanations of facts, science is the only game in town." - link to full article]]>
"Evolution is operating with a vengeance in the urban environment," New
Scientist reports, "as animals struggle to adapt to novel conditions and cope with 'evolutionary illusions'." An evolutionary illusion is when an animal "does something it has evolved to do, but at the wrong time or in the wrong place." Like grilling chicken in bed at 3am.
Or massaging oneself in public.
New Scientist then explains how "cities are not just accidental homes for animals that really ought to be elsewhere. They are also hotbeds of evolutionary change, shaping the adaptations of their resident fauna as surely as the Serengeti plains or the Amazon rainforest."
Interestingly, both of these articles seem to overlook any evolutionary changes cities might inflict upon humans – in addition to the squirrels, rats, songbirds, or coyotes who also happen to live there. The evolutionary illusion of the studio apartment, for instance: what strange pathology of life wrongly lived has made its appearance inside these domestic spaces? What new behavioral triggers have evolved? Pale-faced urban apartment dwellers staring at themselves in badly lit mirrors, wondering where on earth the rest of the planet has gone, popping zits.
[...]
I (crudely) brought this very topic up earlier]]>
[...]
"Science is the way we surprise God," said Kelly. "That's what we're here for." Our moral obligation is to generate possibilities, to discover the infinite ways, however complex and high-dimension, to play the infinite game. It will take all possible species of intelligence in order for the universe to understand itself. Science, in this way, is holy. It is a divine trip.
- link to full articleSome really interesting ideas here. Reminded me of my 'Hyperreal Wikipedia' post a while back.
The world outlined in E.M. Forster's 'The Machine Stops' is not that far away...]]>
It was only very recently that I came across these ideas, and they have definitely altered the way I perceive the world. Baudrillard in particular brought the illusionary nature of the human realm into focus for me. Yet greater simulacra gush forth from our internet culture than Baudrillard could ever have predicted.Any culture contains many familiar narratives, oft-told stories, shared by the cultures' members and used to make meaning...
Because so many narratives are familiar to us, advertisements can invoke a particular narrative and all its associations by just showing us a single image that represents of one moment in the narrative, a "snapshot" that invokes the whole story....
A difficult set of questions remain. What do connotations, narratives, and myths do to us? Do semiotic systems have any effect on human behavior? If we were exposed to different signs, would our lives be different? ...
The power of sign systems lies in this: their role in generating and maintaining shared expectations, shared interpretive frameworks. Signs do not force us to have certain interpretations as much as they create the context for other people's interpretations of us, and even more importantly, our own expectations of what others think... Sign systems are merely tools, but precisely in so far as they become the common currency for communicating, they become something we can either embrace or criticize, but not ignore.
As we better understand the psychology of the human, and delve deeper into the mysteries of our perceptive systems, I can't help but wonder whether manipulation of this knowledge will become the greatest tool ever developed for the control of society. The Freudian unveiling of human subconscious had a marked effect on the way consumer culture evolved throughout the last century (See Adam Curtis' superb documentary 'The Century of The Self' for more on this).
What effect will the psychology of the 21st century have on the nature of the individual? and, in consequence, how will this new formulation be used to manipulate the consumer cultures simulating themselves in the realm of semiotic cyberspace?
I'd love to know your thoughts...]]>
Where I come from, atheism is stigmatized. In practice, secular or agnostic families are not uncommon in the US--I have countless friends who describe themselves as religious technicalities: "We're Lutheran, I think, but I've never been to church;" "I'm half-Jewish, but I don't 'do' the whole 'jew' thing;" or "I'm a recovering Catholic." But an atheist is very rarely the fruit of tradition. Most American atheists chose their identity at a specific point in their lives. Born-again Christians each have a conversion story, and I suspect many atheists do as well. I suspect this is international to some degree, and if you have input on your own national character, I'd love to read it.
So:
When did you decide you were an atheist?]]>
Bush: I base a lot of my foreign policy decisions on some things that I think are true. One, I believe there's an Almighty. And, secondly, I believe one of the great gifts of the Almighty is the desire in everybody's soul, regardless of what you look like or where you live, to be free.- E&P - Washington Post
- Crooks and Liars link (with videos of speech)
Interesting how Bush's definition of spiritual significance only stretches as far as:
- 'What you look like' - obviously skin colour / ethnicity
- 'Where you live' - political boundaries
i.e. 'America vs everywhere that isn't America'
The vast conflicts inherent in various systems of 'belief' are not accounted for here. Neither are persons of differing sexual persuasion, or those members of society with no religious convictions whatsoever. Because we know Bush's stance on these issues, and because his world, and his word, are so black / white defined should we liberal types consider ourselves outside of Bush's universe completely?
The black / white world drawn by mainstream politics tends to heat my blood to boiling point, but throw religion into the mix and you have nothing but my explosive attention.
Perhaps Bush really believes that people who inhabit the grey areas in his world view have no spiritual desire, and therefore no right 'to be free' at all... What do you think?
(Mirrored on main site)]]>
So here's some text from the FAQ:
What is HEL LOOKS?
HEL LOOKS is selected street fashion from Helsinki, the capital of Finland. The pictures are taken in the streets and clubs of Helsinki from July 2005 onwards.
Who made this?
HEL LOOKS is a hobby project of Liisa Jokinen and Sampo Karjalainen. You can contact us at info(at)hel-looks.com.
Why do you do this?
Because we want to document Finnish looks. Because we want to encourage people to dress individually and create their own styles. Because we want to promote emerging Finnish designers. Because we like fashion, clothing, young people and photography. And most of all - because you look great
[...]
site URI...
http://www.hel-looks.com/faq.html]]>
About a year ago, as winter marched in, we experienced a full on house invasion here at casa de DRM.
Mice, it seemed, were everywhere leaving their hantavirus rich scat on spaces as varied as computer keyboards and stove tops.
Urgent action was needed. Victory (of a single battle because, of course, they win the war in the end) was won once electronic mouse traps - mobile electrocution modules really - were bought and placed in well trafficked locales.
Our guests are staying out of sight - for now, perhaps convinced through the pheremone communication network our home is a death trap for their kind. Even so, we know it's only a matter of time till the next wave.
...
During this mini-crisis, the closeness of rodents became very clear. That is to say, the rodents were exploiting a vector they've adapted - or evolved - to take advantage of: urban and suburban density.
I wonder how rodent evolution would differ if humans hadn't come onto the scene or, we had different sorts of minds - not suited to or interested in building large and complex habitations.
If we remained small scale nomads, or never branched off from our cousins at all and still lounged in the forest, what sort of rodents would there be on earth?
Surely some kind of co-evolutuon of rodent and human has occured. Has anyone researched this? I'd be surprised if not.
Also, what other animals have changed their behavioral and perhaps, evolutionary trajectory as a consequence of humans being such busy, world changing creatures?
And, the opposite, how have they steered our development?]]>
...as with most activities we undertake with vigor, automation, mass production and media manipulation have turned sex into the commodity of cultures. The robots are coming..."
True enough.
And as usual, the porn segment of the entertainment industry is at the cutting edge of meeting need with product.
Fucking Machines dot com (the name is the URL) which boasts of
offering “sex at 350 rpm” provides those who want
servo-mechanization mixed in with their virtual pleasure just the
thing for a Real Doll free Saturday night.]]>
Requests for nudity should never be ignored...]]>
It produces about 45 billion pairs of chopsticks a year, consuming millions of birch, poplar and bamboo trees.
The move came as China said it would raise some consumption taxes next month in a bid to help the environment and narrow the gap between rich and poor.
- more on this story here...It's always the little things that make the biggest difference and where China is concerned ALL the little things are big things...
I just finished reading Jared Diamond's Collapse, in which mankind's burden on our environment is outlined as the major cause of societal collapse since time immemorial. One of the most striking conclusions he comes to is that if China managed to bring up its national living standards to first world standards the world's consumption of major resources would DOUBLE....
And that's just with the population they have at the moment...
Japan, where I currently live, love their disposable chopsticks. Maybe they should take a leaf out of the book of their much more enormous neighbour.]]>
Go wild...]]>
My mind is going crazy on the possibilities of this]]>
2. What aspects of human reality would you banish to Room 101 (to spend the rest of eterntiy in pain equally reflective of that which was suffered onto you)?</ul>
I'm not talking particular people, or acts of politics here. Rather concepts, activities or cultural undertakings...
Go wild...>]]>