Chained Babelfish Translator

http://deoxy.org/forum/chainbabelfish.pl

Flanger - electronic jazz

I now travel through London with my headphones on and the world seems such a nice place. These guys often make me bang my head against things: Flanger

Listen to it on last.fm

Download Midnight Sound

Download Outer Space/Inner Space

Download Templates

YMCK - Japanese 8 bit bossa

Yeah, I'm now some kind of vegetable, mindless clicking away, downloading music until I'm certain I won't have time to listen to it.
I found so much good stuff today, I'm starting to think this mindless clicking has some life and brain of it's own. Here's one of the best finds, from my friend Tak. It's a japanese 8 bit bossa band called YMCK. Hope you like it. Merry Xmas.

Download YMCK's Family Music

Or get all the albums!

Listen to it on last.fm

Desire

It's our failure to understand the simplicity of the natural state
that gets us into trouble. No conceptual structure will describe the true
nature of an emotion. We experience it the way we do because we don't
understand its essential nature. Once we do, the emotion tends to
dissolve.

Then we're not repressing the emotion, but neither are we encouraging
it. We are simply looking clearly at what is taking place. If we set a
cloudy glass of water aside for a while, it will settle by itself and
become clear. Instead of judging the experience of desire, we look
directly at its nature, what is known as "liberating it in its own
ground." Then it simply dissolves.

Each negative emotion, or mental poison, has an inherent perfection
that we don't recognize because we are so accustomed to its appearance as
emotion. Just as poison can be taken medicinally to effect a cure, each
poison of the mind, worked with properly, can be transformed to its
wisdom nature and thus enhance our spiritual practice.

If while in the throes of desire, you simply relax, without moving
your attention, that space of the mind is called discriminating wisdom
You don't abandon desire; instead you reveal its wisdom nature.

Read it all on www.sacred-texts.com

Bucky Fuller & his World Game: Intro to Saving Planets

The first World Game was all on paper. It was 1961 when Fuller announced the concept, noting modestly that he’d been doing it since 1927. Although the dense “Fact Books” that got handed out to students were indeed generated by a computer database, for the most part Bucky’s version of the World Game was something students did on paper, using the figures and facts provided.
This is the first element I’d like to update: What facts do you trust? Who are the real authorities? Any thinking human would be suspicious of being handed a document that literally claims to tell you everything that is true about the Earth, whether that document is titled “An Objective Report by a Supercomputer” or “The Holy Bible.” Teaching people the basic source-synthesis methods behind doing their own research should be a logical opening lesson for any World Game. Give kids the tools to build their own picture of the world. Perhaps rather than handing out “world factbooks,” we could hand out blank templates where kids could research and fill in their own data and conclusions.
This is the question Bucky posed to students: “how can we make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological damage or disadvantage to anyone?”

Read more on Brainsturbator

Follow the Little ball

Mike Patton's song for Madonna.

Midlife Crisis - Faith no More

Go on and wring my neck
Like when a rag gets wet
A little discipline
For my pet genius
My head is like lettuce
Go on dig your thumbs in
I cannot stop giving in
I'm thirty-something

Sense of security
Like pockets jingling
Midlife crisis
Suck ingenuity
Down through the family tree

You're perfect, yes, it's true
But without me you're only you (you're only you)
Your menstruating heart
It ain't big enough for two

It's a midlife crisis.. It's a midlife crisis..

What an inheritance
The salt and the dockry
Morbid self attention
Bending my pinky back
A little discipline
A donor by habit
A little discipline
Rent an opinion

Sense of security
Holding blunt instrument
Midlife Crisis
I'm a perfectionist
And perfect is a skinned knee

You're perfect, yes, it's true
But without me you're only you (you're only you)
Your menstruating heart
It ain't big enough for two

ya ya ya ya

It's a midlife crisis...
It's a midlife crisis...

You're perfect, yes, it's true
But without me you're only you (you're only you)
Your menstruating heart
It ain't big enough for two

Sweet fifteen - Pete Doherty before drugs (?)

The sounds of gargled water and strangled shouts from John Lennon clashing with church organs and distorted guitars

By Ben Leach
The improvised recording was made in 1967 and was played just once in public. But it was never released because three of the Fab Four thought it was too adventurous.
It is said to be composed of a series of shrieks and psychedelic sounds - far away from the melodious recordings with which the Beatles are associated.
But speaking on a BBC Radio 4 arts programme to be broadcast this week McCartney said that the public would get a chance to listen to the track.
"It does exist," McCartney told John Wilson, the presenter of Front Row.
He added that he still has a master tape of the recording and suspects that "the time has come for it to get its moment".
"I like it because it's the Beatles free, going off piste," he added.
The track was put together on 5 January 1967, in between working on the vocals for the song Penny Lane.
Since it was recorded 40 years ago the track has achieved almost mythical status for Beatles fans.
It is reported to include the sounds of gargled water and strangled shouts from John Lennon which clash with church organs and distorted guitar.
"It will help reaffirm McCartney's claim to have been the most musically adventurous of all the Beatles," said Mr Wilson.
"He told me he would love to release the track. All he needs now is the blessing of Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono and George Harrison's widow Olivia."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk

The Ungoogable

Let me tell you about my summer. Imagine it as a restaurant, and me planning to come in, sit down, relax and have some soup, maybe stare at the fishes bubbling in a huge neglected fish tank or drift away from the tablecloth’s hypnotic pattern into the cheesy world of the bald piano player. No! Not La Vie En Rose again! That was the plan. But instead, I stepped into the restaurant, fell on my face, passed out and woke up with two semi-naked snake dancers dragging me by the arms into the kitchen where Brad Pitt waited for me with a huge sausage in his hand. The rest is history. And all I wanted was soup.

So yes, as you can see, I had a rock ‘n’ roll summer, real superstar business, so much it irritates all, including me. Noooooo, can you go to ALL main festivals, make a fool of yourself on stage for money and fun and then go back to your hotel while everyone has to sleep in tents on a muddy steep hill? It was so hard to sleep, alone in a hotel room, wondering if my mates slept with their heads pointing up or down. Just curious.

I managed to sleep every night only after creating this whole HD scene in my head where everybody slept with their heads up or down but the one lonely hot guy in the village who stayed awake, lying down vertically, across the steep hill, elegant, reading French philosophy. This man doesn’t exist, I hear you say. They are all drunk or unconscious, sleeping in all directions. I think you’re right.

But if they were all real, they would be listening to Bernard Fevre.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

The Big Bang Day! Is Higgs our imaginary friend?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00dccnr

Sunset at the north pole with moon at its closest point

This beautiful image circulates via email and is often posted to online forums and blogs. Although it is certainly a breathtaking picture it is a work of art, not a photograph.

The image is in fact a work by artist Inga Nielsen. The image, called "Hideaway" can be viewed on the artist's website.

The image was created using a scenery generator program called Terragen™

M&M's Mix 'n' Mash

R.A.W. explains everything - Part 6

Robert_Anton_Wilson_-_RAW_Explains_Everything_-_06.mp3

The Political Compass

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

I survived this...

Watch us disintegrate

1, 2, 3...

Going for Goldie

By Tom Service:
I always knew it was true - it just took Goldie to confirm it. Classical music and drum'n'bass are musical brothers in arms. As he told the Telegraph: "Drum'n'bass has always been a misunderstood genre. It has always put outsiders off. Unless you're a specialist, you think it's not for you. And classical is the same." Goldie is one of the participants in the BBC's Maestro, a sort of Strictly Come Conducting, in which "celebrities" (well, Sue Perkins, Peter Snow, and other denizens of the not-quite A-list - David Soul, Bradley Walsh, Jane Asher, Katie Derham) compete for a slot to conduct in one of the Proms in the Park events that are part of the Last Night celebrations.

Why I hope Goldie wins Maestro - The junglist-turned-apprentice conductor is onto something when he says that drum'n'bass is as misunderstood as classical music - Guardian Blog

Watch the BBC program

And Goldie's final performance:

Saving the World with Marketing, Advertising and Public Relations

If you are interested in improving the world that you live in, I literally beg you to take this article into consideration. I am not making an original point here. I am repeating a very nescessary and important point. The tools of social control have been decentralized, due to the rampant spread of information technology.
I know hundreds, if not thousands, of good people who have a lot to offer and a lot to teach. Nearly all of them hold the worlds of marketing, advertising, and public relations in total contempt. They view it—rightfully so, I might add—as the modern equivalent of black magic, cheap tricks and malicious manipulation. I am arguing that the only way that will ever be changed is if we get involved with that culture and do it better than the human turds who are currently running that particular circus.
I am not going to argue that I’m right. I’m just going to lay out the tools that are at your disposal, every second of every day, and urge you to start exploring them and using them to get your message out to the world. Becuase if you’re reading this, I have to assume you have something more signifigant and positive to say than “DRINK SPRITE” or “SUPPORT THE TROOPS”.
Are you interested? Let’s begin.

http://www.brainsturbator.com/articles/saving_the_world_with_marketing_advertising_and_public_relations/

A NEW LOOK AT 2012

by David Wilcock

As we are entering into the second to last Jupiter - Saturn conjunction before the end, the increase in the fourth - dimensional streamings of energy from the Sun as it prepares to "exhale" should be enough to open a dimensional vortex for those people who are vibrationally capable of handling it. Indeed, the Ra Material states that we are already in the fourth density vibrational level now, but people are not able to focus into it because of the planetary vibrations. This 1999 cycle will blow it open.

But, even as the Ascension happens, we get the beginning of the Pole Shifts, as apparently this is part of the consequence of the increasing frequency; it literally shatters the slower frequencies apart that cannot handle the faster vibrational speeds. This vibrational stress manifests in the Earth as heat, which causes such things as El Nino, volcanoes, flooding and earthquakes, and it manifests as great mental stress and karmic tension in the unprepared human. It is the last two cycles where all of the very major clearing has to be done.

We can already see the geometric increase in Earth Change activities in the last 20 years, and we must now realize that we are about to have another increase at just as high a degree as the one that started the present season in 1979. Many sources state unequivocably that there will simply not be an inhabited third - dimensional planet after the Ascension, as those recently ascended to the Fourth will not have yet learned the full secrets of how to camouflage themselves from the third; this could be very injurious to both parties. Thus, by 2039, our present living space will be wiped clean.

We can now see that the ascension itself starts in 1999, and those Ascended have to come back in 2039, skipping the years where the cleansing takes place. This could be accomplished by those individuals' spiritual essences traveling at near - light speed for a short time, and through the time - speeding effect of relativity, Earth time whizzes by at great speed, just long enough to make the intervening forty years pass. They are put back down on Earth in 2039, after all the storms, arthquakes and Earth

Changes have completed. This is what the Pyramid was indicating; a direct link between the "Final establishment of a separate and unique society based totally on allegiance to the Spiritual" in 1999 and "the mass incarnation of the Messianic presence in the Earth Planes" in 2039.

Indeed, I believe that the Mayan Calendar is designed in such a way that the actual nastiness associated with the pole shift is entirely complete before the full dimensional shift itself actually occurs. Thus, what we will have is a discrete increase in the degree of fourth - density vibrations in 1999 - 2000 which will be strong enough to catapult some people out, and they would be unable to Ascend into the Earth Planes until the third dimension was "clear," which should take the forty years to complete. So during that time, we can expect the Mad Max types of scenarios for those who have not yet Ascended, in the process of the clearing. Indeed, the Pyramid's chronology indicates just this fact; the total collapse of materialist society. [This same chronology incidentally targeted the Nov. 27, 1985 closest Earth approach of Halley's Comet to within three days of accuracy; the Pyramid states, "30 Nov 1985: Powerful spiritual influences start to irradiate the enlightened." Those powerful influences were obviously brought in by the comet, with the explosion of the Space Shuttle and Glasnost with the USSR soon afterwards.]

Read more on http://www.greatdreams.com/2039.htm

Also http://www.divinecosmos.com/

Urban Dictionary Word of the Day - No, not today's

3. Attention Spam 740 up, 872 down
A condition resulting in a failure to process basic facts or comprehend common knowledge, due largely to having a mind full of useless information. - "Kali's numerous typos were a result of her suffering from attention spam."

See also Nut Huggers, Pomo and I wouldn't kick her out of bed for eating crackers

Toward a Cultural Ecology of Anarchy

CONTROL FIGURES arise when anarchic communities, immersed in beatific dreams, visions and vocations, inadvertently delegate too much authority to an individual who is temporarily assigned the task of maintaining the (to them) subsidiary and trivial apparatus which sustains material life. The distracted community does not realize until too late that the strong individual gradually accumulates power through continuously performing the disparaged maintenance duties. The individual constructs a hierarchy to facilitate his responsibilities, and this hierarchical institution is eventually employed to enslave the free community. As the institution expands and becomes more impersonal, it gains a momentum of its own and becomes unmanageable, even by its ostensible rulers. Hence, its deistic, absolute powers, which are then projected or displaced onto the cosmos itself.

Toward a Cultural Ecology of Anarchy at http://deoxy.org/cea.htm

Waaaaaaaa! I don't know me limitzzz!

Yeah, give him the mic, but when it comes to parties...

OMG... Should I comment on that or not? hahaha... He just said: "two in the morning and the party is still jumpin' cos my mama ain't home..." hahahaha... "I've got bitches in the livin' room getting it on, and they ain't livin' til SIX in the mornin'..." hahahahaha...

Man, if you say that back where I was born they'll send you back to kinder garden, dude. Two in the morning and the party is still going? STILL GOING?? hahaha... And you're a gangsta, right? Things start later than two, dude! Or not? Oh right, maybe he used to live in Florida, near an old people's home or somethin'. Oh, no! He lives with mama!! And she's not home, so they're having a party! Well, that explains everything... hahahahaha...

And the bitches ain't leaving until six? SIX?? Are they really getting it on, dude? ARE YOU SURE? Or you're in the kitchen helping your mate who's throwing up gin and juice? How kind...

Your daily mix up

http://www.snurfy.com/daily-mixed-picdump-34/

Never too late...

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Rubik's Cube used to get on right side of octopuses

By Rob Davies
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 07/07/2008

It may be an infuriating puzzle which has baffled and defeated countless children and their parents over more than two decades, but this octopus appears determined to solve the Rubik's Cube.

More on http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

IT tales

Bill Gates on Windows

From: Bill Gates
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 10:05 AM
To: Jim Allchin
Cc: Chris Jones (WINDOWS); Bharat Shah (NT); Joe Peterson; Will Poole; Brian Valentine; Anoop Gupta (RESEARCH)
Subject: Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame

I am quite disappointed at how Windows Usability has been going backwards and the program management groups don't drive usability issues. Let me give you my experience from yesterday.

I decided to download (Moviemaker) and buy the Digital Plus pack ... so I went to Microsoft.com. They have a download place so I went there.

The first 5 times I used the site it timed out while trying to bring up the download page. Then after an 8 second delay I got it to come up. This site is so slow it is unusable. It wasn't in the top 5 so I expanded the other 45. These 45 names are totally confusing. These names make stuff like: C:\Documents and Settings\billg\My Documents\My Pictures seem clear. They are not filtered by the system ... and so many of the things are strange.

I tried scoping to Media stuff. Still no moviemaker. I typed in movie. Nothing. I typed in movie maker. Nothing. So I gave up and sent mail to Amir saying - where is this Moviemaker download? Does it exist? So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated.

Continues on http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/141821.asp

I am still shaking and sweating...

I woke up with a lot of difficulty. Had half of my breakfast, jumped on my bike and cycled to the station one eye closed, one eye hurting yet open. Sunday is a good day to cycle in the morning, but not a good day to wake up early and go to work. Can't complain thou. It's one more of those jobs I do. I'm off to hyde park to play games and talk to people. A regular fun day in the life of a promo girl. No quite.

Who's on today? We ask each other. Bangles. haha. And it's my break! Cool. It was pretty amazing to see them live. I sang manic monday, walk like an egyptian, all tunes with them. They rock. I had me burger and went back to work. Rather good sunny day, I thought. But I didn't really know what was waiting for me around the corner...

Stranglers are on at 19:15! Ha! I like The stranglers. No, no. I LOVE The Stranglers! I suddenly realized what was about to happen. Shivers up my spine. I was about to see The stranglers!!!! But hold on. Am I? I had my hour off already. hummm... I've got a plan. I repeat "The stranglers are great" all through the day like a drunken parrot. I look into the event manager's eyes at 19:15. I look deeper into his eyes. He holds my hands and whispers: Go.

I run like an idiot to the tent where they are and as soon as I enter it, out of breath, I feel the energy of that place exploding my brain like a cosmic convulsion. They are all yang, manly, ubber alpha rock skillfully orchestrated, lusty rock that is. they love it!! And we love it extra. They start with "Get a grip on Yourself" and I nearly faint. It's just too much. Waves of heat emanating from their instruments. So manly. They gang rape our musical brains with a classic after the other. They played all my favourites! Strange Little Girl, Nice N' Sleezy, Always the Sun, Walk on by, and of course... Golden Brown! The crowd started cheering and clapping and screaming in the middle of the song, no waiting til the end, as they looked at each other with an accomplished smile on their faces, all of us wanting to say that was intense, that was pure rock n' roll. We're taken, loved up, sweating devotion.

The older guys around me were very surprised with my love for The Stranglers, me singing all the lyrics. One of them shouted at me: "you're too young! How come?" hahaha. but they were proud and happy to see me enjoying their favourite band. The Stranglers were then, now, always, everyone's favourite band.

Sigur Ros - Glósóli

http://www.sutemos.net + 3tronik

http://www.sutemos.net

subjective music reviews, articles, free electronic music

Albert Hofmann dies - Bike day Part II

Albert Hoffmann died of a heart attack on tuesday the 29 April 2008, ten days after "Bike Day", aged 102. Very interesting life. We're all very grateful for it. If R.A.W. was alive he would recite this little poem in Hoffmann's honour:

I never saw a purple cow
I never hope to see one
But I'll tell you this anyhow:
I'd rather see than be one

http://www.telegraph.co.uk

http://www.timesonline.co.uk

http://www.channel4.com

http://news.bbc.co.uk

Hofmann was disappointed when his discovery was removed from commercial distribution. He remained convinced that the drug had the potential to counter the psychological problems induced by “materialism, alienation from nature through industrialisation and increasing urbanisation, lack of satisfaction in professional employment in a mechanised, lifeless working world, ennui and purposelessness in wealthy, saturated society, and lack of a religious, nurturing, and meaningful philosophical foundation of life”.

LSD, my problem Child

Me laughing, ya know.

Aaahhhh… Today I finished me uni thing. Handed in. Done. I got me bike and went to the supermarket, wind of freedom on my face, laughing, got lost in the back streets, laughing, playing rude tunes as loud as me phone allowed, laughing, thinking of berries. I could throw meself on the ground and listen to all me tunes in someone’s front garden if I wanted to, me face on the grass, laughing. Happy days. I’ve got nothin’ to do!

The worker boyz removing the east London line right by me house looked more orange today. And funny, and cute. Sometimes we chat but it’s like having a conversation with a friend travelling by tube. After a while the line drops like it was never there. Very cute in orange thou.

It’s me and me berries, now.

Bicycle Day

On April 19, 1943 Dr. Hofmann intentionally ingested 250 µg of LSD, which he hypothesized would be a threshold dose, based on other ergot alkaloids. After ingesting the substance Hofmann was struggling to speak intelligibly and asked his laboratory assistant, who knew of the self-experiment, to escort him home on his bicycle, due to the lack of available vehicles during wartime restrictions. On the bicycle ride home, Hofmann's condition became more severe and in his journal he stated that everything in his field of vision wavered and was distorted, as if seen in a curved mirror. Hofmann also stated that while riding on the bicycle, he had the sensation of being stationary, unable to move from where he was, despite the fact that he was moving very rapidly. Once Hofmann arrived safely home, he summoned a doctor and asked his neighbor for milk, believing it may help relieve the symptoms. Hofmann wrote that despite his delirious and bewildered condition, he was able to choose milk as a nonspecific antidote for poisoning.[5] Upon arriving the doctor could find no abnormal physical symptoms other than extremely dilated pupils. After spending several hours terrified that his body had been possessed by a demon, that his next door neighbor was a witch, and that his furniture was threatening him, Dr. Hofmann feared he had become completely insane. In his journal Hofmann said that the doctor saw no reason to prescribe medication and instead sent him to his bed. At this time Hofmann said that the feelings of fear had started to give way to feelings of good fortune and gratitude, and that he was now enjoying the colors and plays of shapes that persisted behind his closed eyes. Hofmann mentions seeing "fantastic images" surging past him, alternating and opening and closing themselves into circles and spirals and finally exploding into colored fountains and then rearranging themselves in a constant flux. Hofmann mentions that during the condition every acoustic perception, such as the sound of a passing automobile, was transformed into optical perceptions. Eventually Hofmann slept and upon awakening the next morning felt refreshed and clearheaded, though somewhat physically tired. He also stated that he had a sensation of well being and renewed life and that his breakfast tasted unusually delicious. Upon walking in his garden he remarked that all of his senses were "vibrating in a condition of highest sensitivity, which then persisted for the entire day".

Bicycle Day

Picture thanks to Fraser@UP! parallel-youniversity

Brain Scanners Can See Your Decisions Before You Make Them

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/04/mind_decision

LSD assisted psychotherapy study to start in Switzerland

http://www.maps.org/research/cluster/psilo-lsd/

Special K: Ketamine breakthrough in treating depression

Read on http://www.independent.co.uk

Big flying paradox

Man, when you’ve got stuff to do... Ah, I’ve got stuff to do but it is soooo hard to concentrate. Man, when you have stuff to do the world blooms in all its exquisiteness! Like now! Sooo many interesting things happening and I have to be here, doing my final project for this module at uni, talking codes, writing long reports, making a website, so considerate, thinking of elderly users. Aaaahh! All blossoms!

Paradoxes everywhere! It’s quite a good technique. If you want to make your life very very exciting get yourself a huge commitment. A massively boring one too. Instantly that special someone you always fancied will get in touch and suggest you two meet this week, a fantastic musician will write you a message asking you to collaborate on this magical piece, but it has to be now, your best mate needs your advice on what to do about this astonishingly intricate situation that makes you smile but takes 2 hours to be briefly touched on its slimy surface, your lemon detox + Chi Kung starts to produce a deep effect and you suddenly feel like climbing trees, your mailbox is flooded with the most amazing videos of new scientific discoveries that will change human reality forever and you… you need to concentrate.

Help.

And when you hand your project in, when you’re not committed to it anymore, everything is cold withering sarcasm, nobody is available, your computer crashes.

Like my granddad used to say, if you want something done, do it yourself or ask a busy person.

Jill Taylor in one of the best talks I've seen - Must See!!

My neighbour

Me, I’m this liquid celluloid, and things don’t hurt anymore. Can’t remember what happened. Was it yoga? I don’t know. I was a creeping westerner learning how to breathe and bang, all gone. I do sometimes feel something happening on the surface. Something that reminds me of something really bad or something really good. But me, I laugh. I love my shadows. I told myself I knew I were you, but every time I tried to tell you, you flew away.

That’s also why I don’t write here anymore. ☺

That sweeping love, oh, that feeling you give me, I melt inside. I could run in the cold rain, the freezing air stabbing my lungs, like I did many times before, just to throw stones at your window. No. Now I won’t run in the cold rain anymore. Now you’re my neighbour. I can’t drink your coffee, I won’t drink your wine, and amazingly, that kind of made you mine. How funny it is. Now that I know the way, I don’t want to go anymore. Now I will turn this cosmic convulsion inside me into rays of life, butterflies of all colours, the wisdom of an old carp. None. I won’t run, and now you live right by me. Life is funny.

You and all your faces. You were blond and obedient once, a long time ago. You were brown and loud and superficial, off you head. I loved you then. You were strong and suddenly weak, so I had to leave. I’m sorry. Now you’re tall and sweet and clever, and I would run in the cold rain to get to you in other times, but now I sit here and turn your love into rays of all colours. My neighbour.

Futurist Ray Kurzweil Pulls Out All the Stops (and Pills) to Live to Witness the Singularity

Ray Kurzweil, the famous inventor, is trim, balding, and not very tall. With his perfect posture and narrow black glasses, he would look at home in an old documentary about Cape Canaveral, but his mission is bolder than any mere voyage into space. He is attempting to travel across a frontier in time, to pass through the border between our era and a future so different as to be unrecognizable. He calls this border the singularity. Kurzweil is 60, but he intends to be no more than 40 when the singularity arrives.

If I were you I would keep reading it on http://www.wired.com/

Time travellers from the future 'could be here in weeks'

By Roger Highfield, Science Editor of The Telegraph

The first time travellers from the future could materialise on Earth within a few weeks. Physicists around the world are excitedly awaiting the start up of the £4.65 billion Large Hadron Collider, LHC - the most powerful atom-smasher ever built - which is supposed to shed new light on the particles and forces at work in the cosmos and reproduce conditions that date to near the Big Bang of creation.

Continues on http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

Thanks to fraser@parallel-youniversity's UP! for letting me know and for the picture.

The Year of the Rat

Chinese New Year this time around is the Year of the Rat, which brings with it the promise of prosperity. The Chinese admire the rat for its quick mind and ability to gather valuables and save them for the future. Since 2008 is the Year of the Rat, the year ahead should offer many opportunities to acquire wealth, as well as the ability to make choices that enable us to provide comfort for a long time to come.

Since the rat sign is the first in the Chinese zodiac calendar, we may feel the energy of a cycle beginning. We may also feel a pioneering
spirit that helps us to forge ahead with a completely new endeavor. Looking beyond Western culture’s distaste for rats, we may be able to
appreciate their ability to thrive in less than ideal conditions. This quality might offer us hope that whatever challenges we may face will only serve to make us stronger and more able. The rat’s ability to solve problems is well-known, so we can choose to enjoy any challenge that helps us keep our minds sharp while also making life more of a game. A competitive nature may develop within us, leading us to use the rat’s ability to focus on priorities. The rat can also remind us to be less worried about pleasing everyone we meet and more focused on our goals.

We should be aware of the rat’s habit for collecting and not allow ourselves to become so focused that we neglect those around us. Being constantly on the alert for opportunity can be stressful, so we can make the decision to balance our pursuit of prosperity with the enjoyment of good food and atmosphere and the people we trust to offer us both support and space. With the energy of challenge and possibility, the year is likely to be exciting without being explosive. The Year of the Rat is sure to offer the type of enjoyable challenges that will enable us to become all we can possibly be.

[ From DailyOM ]

Padmasambhava

I know so little but want so much. Sometimes it seems the world is my pray. Blindly I move in it, seeking, searching for the satisfaction of my desires, in the drunkenness of a partial mind, set up by the previous beat of my desiring heart. Thus I link my future with my past, upon the bridge of my appetites. But who am I that thread this path of questions?

In this talk Danavira uses and adapts verses from the excellent 'Self-Liberation Through Seeing With Naked Awareness' by John Reynolds (Station Hill Press 1989). Talk given at Padmaloka Retreat Centre, 2001

La di da

David Bohm

Bohm was alarmed by what he considered an increasing imbalance of not only 'man' and nature, but among peoples, as well as people, themselves. Bohm: "So one begins to wonder what is going to happen to the human race. Technology keeps on advancing with greater and greater power, either for good or for destruction." He goes on to ask:
What is the source of all this trouble? I'm saying that the source is basically in thought. Many people would think that such a statement is crazy, because thought is the one thing we have with which to solve our problems. That's part of our tradition. Yet it looks as if the thing we use to solve our problems with is the source of our problems. It's like going to the doctor and having him make you ill. In fact, in 20% of medical cases we do apparently have that going on. But in the case of thought, it's far over 20%.

In Bohm's view:
...the general tacit assumption in thought is that it's just telling you the way things are and that it's not doing anything - that 'you' are inside there, deciding what to do with the info. But you don't decide what to do with the info. Thought runs you. Thought, however, gives false info that you are running it, that you are the one who controls thought. Whereas actually thought is the one which controls each one of us.
Thought is creating divisions out of itself and then saying that they are there naturally. This is another major feature of thought: Thought doesn't know it is doing something and then it struggles against what it is doing. It doesn't want to know that it is doing it. And thought struggles against the results, trying to avoid those unpleasant results while keeping on with that way of thinking. That is what I call "sustained incoherence".

Bohm thus proposes in his book, Thought as a System, a pervasive, systematic nature of thought:
What I mean by "thought" is the whole thing - thought, felt, the body, the whole society sharing thoughts - it's all one process. It is essential for me not to break that up, because it's all one process; somebody else's thoughts becomes my thoughts, and vice versa. Therefore it would be wrong and misleading to break it up into my thoughts, your thoughts, my feelings, these feelings, those feelings... I would say that thought makes what is often called in modern language a system. A system means a set of connected things or parts. But the way people commonly use the word nowadays it means something all of whose parts are mutually interdependent - not only for their mutual action, but for their meaning and for their existence. A corporation is organized as a system - it has this department, that department, that department. They don't have any meaning separately; they only can function together. And also the body is a system. Society is a system in some sense. And so on.

Similarly, thought is a system. That system not only includes thoughts, "felts" and feelings, but it includes the state of the body; it includes the whole of society - as thought is passing back and forth between people in a process by which thought evolved from ancient times. A system is constantly engaged in a process of development, change, evolution and structure changes...although there are certain features of the system which become relatively fixed. We call this the structure.... Thought has been constantly evolving and we can't say when that structure began. But with the growth of civilization it has developed a great deal. It was probably very simple thought before civilization, and now it has become very complex and ramified and has much more incoherence than before.
Now, I say that this system has a fault in it - a "systematic fault". It is not a fault here, there or here, but it is a fault that is all throughout the system. Can you picture that? It is everywhere and nowhere. You may say "I see a problem here, so I will bring my thoughts to bear on this problem". But "my" thought is part of the system. It has the same fault as the fault I'm trying to look at, or a similar fault.
Thought is constantly creating problems that way and then trying to solve them. But as it tries to solve them it makes it worse because it doesn’t notice that it's creating them, and the more it thinks, the more problems it creates. (P. 18-19)

Bohm Dialogue
To address societal problems in his later years, Bohm wrote a proposal for a solution that has become known as "Bohm Dialogue", in which equal status and "free space" form the most important prerequisites of communication and the appreciation of differing personal beliefs. He suggested that if these Dialogue groups were experienced on a sufficiently wide scale, they could help overcome the isolation and fragmentation Bohm observed was inherent in the society.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bohm

http://www.david-bohm.net/