In 12 weeks 200 ordinary mortals are transformed into members of the elite fighting force, the United States Marine Corps. Runs aprox. 21 minutes.
Friday, June 10, 2011
Thursday, June 9, 2011
No Mass Extinction
More old news, this time from UD. We learn that the "sixth great extinction," said to be caused by you and your carbon and certainly not Algore, who uses 24 times the carbon you do but he's better than you and so it's okay for him to do so, and you should feel bad, has been grossly miscalculated. According to Debora MacKenzie writing for New Scientist:
Just like absolutely everything else a mathematical model is used instead of actually looking at the facts. They're not even measuring habitat loss, they're using a model of habitat loss to make predictions and then blaming you when two species of plant and one species of fish no one knew or cared about go missing. As a matter of fact, a full third of all mammal species declaired extinct in the past few centuries have turned out to be just hiding, including a cute little brown and white thing called an okapi and a few rat-like creatures. 67 out of 187 missing mammal species since 1500 have turned up alive and well. The sooner the little fellas went "extinct" the more likely they were to just be hiding somewhere. If a creature went missing in the 20th century it was three times more likely to still be alive than if it went missing in the 19th century. I guess a hundred years ago people knew what extinction really means. There is also the distinct possibility that the thylacine (Tazmanian tiger/wolf) did not go extinct in 1936, as evident by alleged sitings in the 1970s and even today, although no one really knows (I happen to think there is a very good chance they are still alive, maybe 80+ percent).
A new method for calculating the extinction rates of animals produces numbers 83-165 percent lower than using the old habitat loss models. That's a huge discrepancy with broad policy implications, such as plunging California's Central Valley into economy crushing drought to protect a tiny fish that may or may not have any significance to the area's ecosystem and probably won't go extinct anyway if water is diverted back to agricultural usage.
Extinction, habitat loss, and environmental degredation are serious problems, but it shouldn't be necessary to scare people into draconian 1984 iron-fisted government control to fix a problem that may not even exist. A little self-control goes a long way, and taking time to look through all the data is usually the best choice of action. There probably isn't a sixth great extinction, and if there is it probably isn't our fault (the first five weren't, after all; it's pretty arrogant to think this one is), but responsible stuardship of the planet is still important and is best conducted in a thorough, prudent manner.
It is impossible to accurately measure extinction rates. Dozens of new species are identified each year, and counting those that disappear is hard because many are small and live in poorly studied, mainly tropical environments.
Instead, extinction rates are often predicted from a mathematical model based on habitat loss, which is more easily measured. (Bold Added)Just like absolutely everything else a mathematical model is used instead of actually looking at the facts. They're not even measuring habitat loss, they're using a model of habitat loss to make predictions and then blaming you when two species of plant and one species of fish no one knew or cared about go missing. As a matter of fact, a full third of all mammal species declaired extinct in the past few centuries have turned out to be just hiding, including a cute little brown and white thing called an okapi and a few rat-like creatures. 67 out of 187 missing mammal species since 1500 have turned up alive and well. The sooner the little fellas went "extinct" the more likely they were to just be hiding somewhere. If a creature went missing in the 20th century it was three times more likely to still be alive than if it went missing in the 19th century. I guess a hundred years ago people knew what extinction really means. There is also the distinct possibility that the thylacine (Tazmanian tiger/wolf) did not go extinct in 1936, as evident by alleged sitings in the 1970s and even today, although no one really knows (I happen to think there is a very good chance they are still alive, maybe 80+ percent).
A new method for calculating the extinction rates of animals produces numbers 83-165 percent lower than using the old habitat loss models. That's a huge discrepancy with broad policy implications, such as plunging California's Central Valley into economy crushing drought to protect a tiny fish that may or may not have any significance to the area's ecosystem and probably won't go extinct anyway if water is diverted back to agricultural usage.
Extinction, habitat loss, and environmental degredation are serious problems, but it shouldn't be necessary to scare people into draconian 1984 iron-fisted government control to fix a problem that may not even exist. A little self-control goes a long way, and taking time to look through all the data is usually the best choice of action. There probably isn't a sixth great extinction, and if there is it probably isn't our fault (the first five weren't, after all; it's pretty arrogant to think this one is), but responsible stuardship of the planet is still important and is best conducted in a thorough, prudent manner.
Monday, June 6, 2011
A Head and Eight Testicles
This is easily one of the funniest things I have seen in a long time. This Australian man says an octopus has eight testicles. You have got to see this.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Ben Stein Says The "Arab Spring" Sucks
The pro-west anti-Iran, somewhat pro-Israel, somewhat pro-human rights Mubarak was ousted by the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the exact opposite. Iran is making a play for the whole Near East.
Monday, May 30, 2011
In Memoriam
Today is Memorial Day (30 May, ALWAYS 30 May, even if Congress decided to change it in 1968 to give jerks a three day weekend), originally known as Decoration Day. It was originally a day to remember those who had died in the Civil War. Now it seems to exist merely as an excuse for jerks to throw three day parties in which they consume vast quantities of alcohol and listen to loud music. I have nothing against alcohol or music, but ask yourselves, "why can I drink and party? Why am I free to do jackass things on this day off from work?"
My valued couple of readers (The Urban Mystic actually gets about 60 readers a day, 40 of whom come for the ponies), if you have spent any time at all here you know my fascination with the history of warfare and the military. I study war not because I love it, for only a madman could love war, but because it is my firm belief that if we all study war we can better be prepared for when war does come, and be better able to avoid war in the first palce. A sailor practies swimming not because he looks forward to his ship sinking but because he wants to be prepared should the terrible ordeal ever arise. I am the same.
Today I cannot say I spent much time reflecting on the sacrifices of those fellow Americans who gave the last full measure of freedom to secure my own, amidst all the inevitable distractions of moden life, but reflect I have. Our rights and our freedoms are given to us by God, and it is the patriots who take a stand to defend them. Men seek always to take that freedom from us. They always have, throughout all of time and space. Nothing will change that, not for a long time, if ever.
From an Integral perspective we can see why: everyone starts at ground zero. Everyone is born with basic survival instincts and must grow through the stages, magic, mythic, rational, pluralistic, etc. Growth usually stops at the society's center of gravity. A band of Bushmen may be at stage two, a street gang at stage three, a modern western nation like Australia at stage five, and a European socialist nation like Sweden at stage six. Groups like al-Qaeda or the Nazis are at stage three. While there are people at these different stages there will be conflicts between competing world views. Red always seeks to dominate, amber (blue) always seeks to stop red, and orange always seeks to use blue to stop red for its own benefit. This is just how things are.
Another possible interpretation, from the transpersonalists like Stan Groff, is to point to the personality of the trickster. The trickster aspect of reality is that which creates conflict in the world. The trickster creates novelty in Spirit, and novelty is percieved as conflict, even though in ultimate reality it is really done as an act of love. Conflict brings us a reason to be compassionate at times and in ways that we normally would not.
Those who took up arms and made sacrifices are the reason I can sit here and write about ponies and transpersonal psychology. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Freedom is bought and paid for in blood. Nothing I can do can ever repay those who made that sacrifice, but because of their kindness and generosity I never will have to, for their sacrifice is an act of compassion, given free of charge. Sometimes amber simply must confront red, even if the results are never pretty.
I don't think it is a mistake that the only people who recieved a grave memorial in Sparta were men who died in combat and women who died in childbirth, as they are the only among us who have made the ultimate sacrifice. For as many negative aspects of Spartan society may have existed, this aspect of memorialising fallen heroes deserves to be emulated and preserved. Let us never forget the sacrifice of patriots.
While you and I sit at home, isolated from the world outside, and while you celebrate with cocktails and La Cucaracha, take at least a moment to reflect on why you are free to act like a jackass. It is because someone picked up arms and went to fight evil that you are free to act as you do. Patriots are our treasure, treat them as such. Remember them even if it is for one minute, on this one day, once a year. Heroes are a thankless bunch. Take time to appreciate them, if only to the minimum degree.
From the bottom of my heart, to all those who serve, I extend my utmost thanks. My thanks is not much, but it is all I have to give, and I give it in vast quantities. Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.
Enoch Strife
Writing for The Urban Mystic
30 May 2011
5:40 PM
My valued couple of readers (The Urban Mystic actually gets about 60 readers a day, 40 of whom come for the ponies), if you have spent any time at all here you know my fascination with the history of warfare and the military. I study war not because I love it, for only a madman could love war, but because it is my firm belief that if we all study war we can better be prepared for when war does come, and be better able to avoid war in the first palce. A sailor practies swimming not because he looks forward to his ship sinking but because he wants to be prepared should the terrible ordeal ever arise. I am the same.
Today I cannot say I spent much time reflecting on the sacrifices of those fellow Americans who gave the last full measure of freedom to secure my own, amidst all the inevitable distractions of moden life, but reflect I have. Our rights and our freedoms are given to us by God, and it is the patriots who take a stand to defend them. Men seek always to take that freedom from us. They always have, throughout all of time and space. Nothing will change that, not for a long time, if ever.
From an Integral perspective we can see why: everyone starts at ground zero. Everyone is born with basic survival instincts and must grow through the stages, magic, mythic, rational, pluralistic, etc. Growth usually stops at the society's center of gravity. A band of Bushmen may be at stage two, a street gang at stage three, a modern western nation like Australia at stage five, and a European socialist nation like Sweden at stage six. Groups like al-Qaeda or the Nazis are at stage three. While there are people at these different stages there will be conflicts between competing world views. Red always seeks to dominate, amber (blue) always seeks to stop red, and orange always seeks to use blue to stop red for its own benefit. This is just how things are.
Another possible interpretation, from the transpersonalists like Stan Groff, is to point to the personality of the trickster. The trickster aspect of reality is that which creates conflict in the world. The trickster creates novelty in Spirit, and novelty is percieved as conflict, even though in ultimate reality it is really done as an act of love. Conflict brings us a reason to be compassionate at times and in ways that we normally would not.
Those who took up arms and made sacrifices are the reason I can sit here and write about ponies and transpersonal psychology. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Freedom is bought and paid for in blood. Nothing I can do can ever repay those who made that sacrifice, but because of their kindness and generosity I never will have to, for their sacrifice is an act of compassion, given free of charge. Sometimes amber simply must confront red, even if the results are never pretty.
I don't think it is a mistake that the only people who recieved a grave memorial in Sparta were men who died in combat and women who died in childbirth, as they are the only among us who have made the ultimate sacrifice. For as many negative aspects of Spartan society may have existed, this aspect of memorialising fallen heroes deserves to be emulated and preserved. Let us never forget the sacrifice of patriots.
While you and I sit at home, isolated from the world outside, and while you celebrate with cocktails and La Cucaracha, take at least a moment to reflect on why you are free to act like a jackass. It is because someone picked up arms and went to fight evil that you are free to act as you do. Patriots are our treasure, treat them as such. Remember them even if it is for one minute, on this one day, once a year. Heroes are a thankless bunch. Take time to appreciate them, if only to the minimum degree.
From the bottom of my heart, to all those who serve, I extend my utmost thanks. My thanks is not much, but it is all I have to give, and I give it in vast quantities. Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.
Enoch Strife
Writing for The Urban Mystic
30 May 2011
5:40 PM
Friday, May 27, 2011
Equestria Girls Extended Version
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Madhyamika: A Very Brief Introduction
This is from a rather rare and lengthy book (all of one used copy is available on Amazon for $49), An Introduction to Indian Philosophy (Eighth Edition), by Satischandra Chatterjee and Dhirendramohan Datta (University of Calcutta, 1984). It's one and a half pages out of 428, or three tenths of a percent of the total text, from a book that is such an obscure intellectual curiosity, and this is for educational purposes, so I'm calling this fair use. I tried to fix the typographical errors wherever possible. Pages 146-7:
The positive side of the Madhyamika doctrine; there is reality behind phenomena: it is unconditional and free from change.
The conditionality of things which makes their own nature (svabhava) unascertainable, either as real or unreal, etc., may be regarded as a kind of relativity. Every character of a thing is conditioned by something else and therefore its existence is relative to that condition. Sunya-vada can therefore also be interpreted as a theory of relativity which declares that no thing, no phenomenon experienced, has a fixed, absolute, independent character of its own (svabhava) and, therefore, no description of any phenomenon can be said to be unconditionally true.
To this philosophy of phenomena (or things as the appear to us), the Madhyamikas add a philosophy of noumenon (or reality in itself). Buddha's teachings regarding dependent origination, impermanence, etc., apply, they hold, only to the phenomenal world, to things commonly observed by us in ordinary experience. But when nirvana is attained and the conditions of sense-experience and the appearance of phenomena are controlled, what would be the nature of the resultant experience? To this we cannot apply the conditional characters true of phenomena. The Madhyamikas, therefore, hold that there is a transcendental reality (noumenon) behind the phenomenal one and it is free from change, conditionality and all other phenomenal characters. As Nagarjuna says: "There are two truths, on which Buddha's teaching of Dharma depends, one is empirical (sath-brti-satya) and meant for the ordinary people, another is the transcendental or the absolutely true one (paramartha-satya). Those who do not know the distinction between these two kinds of truths, cannot understand the profound mystery of Buddha's teachings."*
The truth of the order is only a stepping-stone to the attainment of the higher. The nature of nirvana-experience which takes one beyond ordinary experience cannot be described, it can only be suggested negatively with the help of words which describe our common experience. Nagarjuna, therefore, describes nirvana with a series of negatives, thus: "That which is not known (ordinarily), not acquired anew, not destroyed, not eternal, not suppressed, not generated is called nirvana."** As with nirvana so also with the Tathagata or one who has realized nirvana. His nature also cannot be described. That is why, when Buddha was asked what becomes of the Tathagata after nirvana is attained, he declined to discuss the question.
In the same light the silence of Buddha regarding all metaphysical questions about non-empirical things can be interpreted to mean that he believed in a transcendental experience and reality, the truths about which cannot be described in terms of common experience. Buddha's frequent statements that he had realized some profound truth which reasoning cannot grasp, can be cited also to support this Madhyamika contention about the transcendental.***
It may be noted there that in its conception of twofold truth, its denial of the phenomenal world, its negative descriptions of the transcendental, and its conception of nirvana as the attainment of unity with the transcendental self, the Madhyamika approaches very close to Advaita Vedanta as taught in some Upanisads and elaborated later by Gaudapada and Sankaracarya.
* Madhyamika-sastra, chapter 24, karikas 8-9.
** ibid. Chap. 25, karika 3.
*** Vide Prof. Radhakrishnan's article, "The teachings of Buddha by speech and silence," Hibberi Journal, April 1934 for a fuller discussion.
The positive side of the Madhyamika doctrine; there is reality behind phenomena: it is unconditional and free from change.
The conditionality of things which makes their own nature (svabhava) unascertainable, either as real or unreal, etc., may be regarded as a kind of relativity. Every character of a thing is conditioned by something else and therefore its existence is relative to that condition. Sunya-vada can therefore also be interpreted as a theory of relativity which declares that no thing, no phenomenon experienced, has a fixed, absolute, independent character of its own (svabhava) and, therefore, no description of any phenomenon can be said to be unconditionally true.
To this philosophy of phenomena (or things as the appear to us), the Madhyamikas add a philosophy of noumenon (or reality in itself). Buddha's teachings regarding dependent origination, impermanence, etc., apply, they hold, only to the phenomenal world, to things commonly observed by us in ordinary experience. But when nirvana is attained and the conditions of sense-experience and the appearance of phenomena are controlled, what would be the nature of the resultant experience? To this we cannot apply the conditional characters true of phenomena. The Madhyamikas, therefore, hold that there is a transcendental reality (noumenon) behind the phenomenal one and it is free from change, conditionality and all other phenomenal characters. As Nagarjuna says: "There are two truths, on which Buddha's teaching of Dharma depends, one is empirical (sath-brti-satya) and meant for the ordinary people, another is the transcendental or the absolutely true one (paramartha-satya). Those who do not know the distinction between these two kinds of truths, cannot understand the profound mystery of Buddha's teachings."*
The truth of the order is only a stepping-stone to the attainment of the higher. The nature of nirvana-experience which takes one beyond ordinary experience cannot be described, it can only be suggested negatively with the help of words which describe our common experience. Nagarjuna, therefore, describes nirvana with a series of negatives, thus: "That which is not known (ordinarily), not acquired anew, not destroyed, not eternal, not suppressed, not generated is called nirvana."** As with nirvana so also with the Tathagata or one who has realized nirvana. His nature also cannot be described. That is why, when Buddha was asked what becomes of the Tathagata after nirvana is attained, he declined to discuss the question.
In the same light the silence of Buddha regarding all metaphysical questions about non-empirical things can be interpreted to mean that he believed in a transcendental experience and reality, the truths about which cannot be described in terms of common experience. Buddha's frequent statements that he had realized some profound truth which reasoning cannot grasp, can be cited also to support this Madhyamika contention about the transcendental.***
It may be noted there that in its conception of twofold truth, its denial of the phenomenal world, its negative descriptions of the transcendental, and its conception of nirvana as the attainment of unity with the transcendental self, the Madhyamika approaches very close to Advaita Vedanta as taught in some Upanisads and elaborated later by Gaudapada and Sankaracarya.
* Madhyamika-sastra, chapter 24, karikas 8-9.
** ibid. Chap. 25, karika 3.
*** Vide Prof. Radhakrishnan's article, "The teachings of Buddha by speech and silence," Hibberi Journal, April 1934 for a fuller discussion.
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