Was there really any question?

A macho journalist bets he can withstand 15 seconds (SECONDS) of waterboarding. He can't.

The Secret of the Caves

Via Conde Nast Traveller

It is commonly believed by most Westerners that the world's earliest printed book was produced either by Herr Gutenberg in Mainz (a Bible) or by Mr. Caxton in London (a French novel), and that the revolutionary invention of the movable type with which it was printed came about in the fourteenth or fifteenth century. Westerners often get such things badly wrong. In fact, the world's oldest printed volume is a sixteen-foot-long scroll of religious instruction called the Diamond Sutra. It dates from the ninth century, and was created using woodblock printing. A Chinese copy of early Buddhist Sanskrit text, the scroll now lives in a perpetually guarded case in London's British Library. And it was found 101 years ago in a remote Silk Road cave in a northwestern Chinese desert between Mongolia and Tibet.

Scientists Model Words as Entangled Quantum States in our Minds

Via PhysOrg

When you hear the word “planet,” do you automatically think of the word’s literal definition, or of other words, such as “Earth,” “space,” “Mars,” etc.? Especially when used in sentences, words tend to conjure up similar words automatically. Further, human beings’ ability to draw associations and inferences between words may explain why we’re generally able to communicate complex ideas with each other quite clearly using a limited number of words.

Research has shown that words are stored in our memories not as isolated entities but as part of a network of related words. This explains why seeing or hearing a word activates words related to it through prior experiences. In trying to understand these connections, scientists visualize a map of links among words called the mental lexicon that shows how words in a vocabulary are interconnected through other words.

However, it’s not clear just how this word association network works. For instance, does word association spread like a wave through a fixed network, weakening with conceptual distance, as suggested by the “Spreading Activation” model? Or does a word activate every other associated word simultaneously, as suggested in a model called “Spooky Activation at a Distance”?

Although these two explanations appear to be mutually exclusive, a recent study reveals a connection between the explanations by making one novel assumption: that words can become entangled in the human mental lexicon. In the study, researchers from the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Australia and the University of South Florida in the US have investigated the quantum nature of word associations and presented a simplified quantum model of a mental lexicon.

The Shape of the Universe

Via Reality Sandwich and the always-wonderful Howard Rheingold

If you are fortunate enough to share a neighborhood with a leafy elm, a gnarly oak, a soaring redwood, take another look at its silhouette against the sky. That self-similar 4-D explosion of branching branches is a clue to a cosmic riddle or two and a key concept in fields as unrelated as vascular surgery and software design.

The Buddha knew this, and so do neurologists, database programmers, and mythologists.

Axis mundi, the axis of the world, is the tree at the center of everything sacred. Mythologist Joseph Campbell, referring to the Buddha's awakening, noted that: "This is the most important single moment in Oriental mythology, a counterpart of the Crucifixion of the West. The Buddha beneath the Tree of Enlightenment (the Bo tree) and Christ on Holy Rood (the tree of redemption) are analogous figures, incorporating an archetypal World Savior, World Tree motif, which is of immemorial antiquity."

To Hindu dream adepts, the question of how you know that you are awake is at once psychological and metaphysical. David Shulman, in Tamil Temple Myths, discussing a character in a myth who realizes that he is dreaming the tragedy of his life, notes: "The nature of his delusion is clear from the moment he first catches sight of the upside-down tree -- a classic Indian symbol for the reality that underlies and is hidden by life in the world, with its false goals and misleading perceptions."

To say nothing of the Garden of Eden and its two special trees. Why do trees always happen to be on the set when God talks? It doesn't matter whether your cosmology is Hebrew, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Pagan, Shamanist or Animist: trees are always part of the scenery when a theophany happens.

Darwin's Dharma

Via The Times Online

Charles Darwin’s moral philosophy may have been inspired by the writings of Buddhist monks, according to one of the world’s leading experts on the evolution of emotions.

Research by Paul Ekman, a psychologist whose work has shown how the facial expressions that signal emotion are universal across all cultures, has identified striking similarities between Darwin’s attitude to compassion and morality and that of Tibetan Buddhism.

Darwin, who was born 200 years ago last week, believed that compassion for other sentient beings was the highest moral virtue. This informed other aspects of his world view, such as his passionate opposition to slavery.

Dr Ekman, who recently edited a new version of Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotion in Man and Animals, said that these views were in accord with those of Tibetan Buddhists. He had also found evidence that Darwin was aware of their philosophy.

The Merchant Banker

Apologies and a Linkie-Poo

Hey there, weirdos and rubber-neckers!

My apologies for being MIA for a while. I have been immersed in work and sleep and seem to have missed out on quite a bit over the past few months (I understand we have a new President or something? How's that Iraq war working out? Has Mary Worth had any noteable events?).

Anyhow, Please accept my humble apologies; I will try to be a better blog parent and give you, my children, the nourishment you need. For example...

Check out the National Film Board of Canada - they have made ALL their woozily soundtracked content available online! Between Ubuweb and NFBC, you could make a career as a starving found-footage video remixer at SOMA nightclubs...especially if you LOVE ramen and think concerns about scurvy and tuberculosis are "bourgeois".

Dig it!

575 Castro Street

A film by Jenni Olson

In 2008, the Castro Camera Store, where Harvey Milk lived and worked in the late 1970's, was recreated at the same address for Gus Van Sant's film MILK. This film was shot on that same set with audio of Harvey Milk from a 1977 recording outlining Harvey's wishes in the event of his assassination.

575 Castro St. from FilmInFocus on Vimeo.

Schmuckabee on The Daily Show

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Mike Huckabee Pt. 2

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

What Would Jesus Buy?

Hakim Bey - Chaos Never Died

Silly Money

Nick Herbert - Psychedelics & Consciousness

hat tip to Bruce Eisner

Robert Schiller for Treasury Secretary

hat tip to Barry Ritholtz over at the Big Picture

Reach Out to the LDS

Some of you may be aware (most of you, I hope!) that gay marriage was defeated in California in part by a huge financial push by the Church of Latter-Day Saints, aka the Mormons. I encourage you all to make use of this link to a feedback page on their official site - let them know what you think about their use of influence in this matter. And please, spread this around for others to use!

Linkety-link

New Rules for the Election

CA Voters - A Personal Request from Mmothra

Most of you don't really know me - we simply share an interest in the esoteric and ridiculous. However, there is a proposition on the California ballots that effects me personally that I want you to think carefully about. Proposition 8 would take away the right of same-sex couples in California to marry and I believe it is deeply wrong.

Let me begin at the beginning: I grew up in a very rural Maine village and knew from an early age that I was "different". This alienation resulted in a fair amount of self-loathing, anxiety and self-destructive behavior. I moved to California after college because I thought that with 3000 miles between my family and myself, I might be able to realize who I was and who I might be.

That didn't happen until I met Richard and I began to understand what a healthy relationship looked and felt like. I had never considered the fact that in a mutually loving and supportive relationship there is room for enormous shared and individual personal growth - in short, this relationship has made me a better person.

We married this summer after 15 years together and in the eyes of our family and state, we are spouses. There is nothing fake or ironic about our union - it is the most precious thing in my life. Please, don't deny others the opportunity to find and experience the happiness and love that I have; please vote NO on Proposition 8.

Thanks,

Mmothra (Mark)

My Dinner with Andre

thanks to Links By George

Generation We

Wassup

hat tip to Robert Paterson

Tony Williams Lifetime - 1971

I Can't Imagine a President Named Obama

sigh



thanks to Crooks + Liars

Keith Olberman's Special Comment to John McCain

Obama Releases Tax Cut Calculator

Lil O'Reilly

http://view.break.com/581294 - Watch more free videos

How the Markets Really Work

Is this the US Congress or the Board of Directors of Goldman Sachs?

Head of Skate

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Wake Up, Freak Out

Wake Up, Freak Out - then Get a Grip from Leo Murray on Vimeo.

Behind the Great Credit Crash

McCains New

"Judgment" by Truth and Hope

Via Truth and Hope

Sarah Palin on the Bush Doctrine

Sarah Palin answers her critics.

See more Gina Gershon videos at Funny or Die

"Philip K. Dick's Reality" by Tessa Dick

Via Whitley Strieber's Unknown Country

(Tessa Dick was the late science fiction writer Philip K. Dick's 4th wife. Dick's most famous book is probably "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" published in 1968, which was made into the film "Blade Runner." Note that he also had "visitors.")

One of the last substantial conversations that I had with my husband Philip K. Dick entailed a synopsis of all the speculation in which Phil had engaged since his visionary experience of 1974, when he saw the world of ancient Rome superimposed on the landscape of southern California.

Phil agreed with Plato that we see only the shadows on the wall of the cave, and not the real objects which cast those shadows. Those real objects, the archetypes, stand outside of space and time, but occasionally they bleed through and some people catch a glimpse of them. Thus, the Rome that he saw was not, strictly speaking, the Roman empire of early Christian times, but an archetype of that kind of reality.

Hints of these philosophical ideas can be found throughout Phil's writing, even in works from before he experienced the visions. He always suspected that we have made some kind of Faustian pact, that we agreed to live, suffer and die in this illusory world. Thus, when a character tries to purchase a cola from a vending machine, he might find himself in an empty room holding a piece of paper on which the words “vending machine” are printed. The visitors who came to Phil showed him alternate histories stacked like dominoes above our time line, in what he called "orthogonal time"—a time and space perpendicular to our own, where we cannot perceive them any more than the point in Flatland can see the sphere who comes to visit him. He sees only the circle that appears in his flat world when the sphere passes through.

Those visitors seemed to be moving chunks of alternate history and dropping them into our time line, trying to achieve a result that would satisfy their goals. They sometimes leave behind artifacts, which might explain why many ancient societies which we have labeled "primitive" left evidence of advanced technology, including electric light bulbs and flying machines. It would also explain records of ancient nuclear war, such as we find in the Vedas.

The time travelers, or time meddlers, sometimes enter our reality to observe us, and they appeared quite shocked whenever they realized that Phil could see them. They did occasionally communicate with him. They claimed to come from a time that is neither the past nor the future, but outside of our time. Phil most often thought that they were humans, not aliens, but genetically altered in some way. He felt that they wanted to help us avoid some global disaster that happened in the 1970s and which negatively affected their world.

The longer I live, the more I see that this world is not quite real. To some extent, we have distanced ourselves from reality with our technology, but the illusory quality goes deeper than that. Some things simply do not make sense. The next time you say, "This can’t be happening" or "I don't believe it," you just might be right.

the RNC in 1:30

Overshoot

The Hollow Men

Molds and Mushrooms

Time Lapse of Mold and Mushrooms @ Yahoo! Video

Douglass Rushkoff: The Hate Party

Via Douglas Rushkoff and Boing Boing

I felt a bit nauseous watching the Republican convention last night. I’m very much a give-the-benefit-of-the-doubt kind of guy, so I try to listen to the arguments people make even when they’re made in over-the-top or patronizing ways. Sometimes it’s good to distinguish between the rhetorical devices and the underlying substance. Even people who use manipulative language sometimes have an important point beneath their persuasion techniques (ads against smoking, for example).

I usually don’t feel uneasy when I put those filters on, but last night - during the Guiliani speech - I realized I was no longer filtering a speechwriter’s intentional manipulation; I was trying to look beyond real hate. These folks were gritting their teeth, shaking their fists, and smiling the way gladiators do when going into combat against barbarians. And this is the incumbent party. The ones currently in power.

What is it they hate? Guiliani and Palin both made it pretty clear: community organizing. Community organizing is energized from below. From the periphery. It is the direction and facilitation of mass energy towards productive and cooperative ends. It is about replacing conflict with collaboration. It is the opposite of war; it is peace.

Last night, the Republican Convention made it clear they prefer war. They see the world as a dangerous and terrible place. Like the fascist leaders satirized in Starship Troopers, they say they believe it is better to be on the offensive, taking the war to the people who might wish us harm than playing defense. It is better to be an international aggressor - a bulldog with lipstick - than led by the misguided notion that attacking people itself makes the world a more dangerous place. In their attack on community organizing - a word combination they pretended they didn't know what it meant - Giuliani and Palin revealed their refusal to acknowledge the kinds of bottom-up processes through which our society was built, and through which local communities can begin to assert some authority over their schools, environments, and economies. Without organized communities, you don't get the reduction in centralized government the Republicans pretend to be arguing for. In their view, community organizing as, at best, equivalent to disruptive and unpredictable Al Qaeda activity.

But it actually goes deeper than this. Consider how Republicans have so far justified their choice of candidate: he is a "great man." That America needs a "hero" in the White House to lead us in continued preemptive strikes against Bin Laden in Iraq (I know Bin Laden is not in Iraq, but Giuliani clearly implied he was). Only a leader with McCain's war record and paternal qualifications can help Americans muster and maintain the tenacity necessary to "drill baby drill," (even though this will have no influence on oil price or supply) and generate the requisite hate to "kill baby, kill." As I explained in Coercion, having a parent figure on whom to transfer authority allows people to regress to a more childlike state. This not only allows them to feel safe; if gives them the freedom to express their rage. Make no mistake - that's what we're witnessing. And this rage - not America - is the greatest threat to humanity's long-term chances for survival.

Republican party representatives are proud today that their convention has finally produced the "same level of energy and enthusiasm" as the DNC's last week. And while it may have produced the same level of excitement, the excitement was of a very different character. It's much easier to get people riled up but inviting them to hate a man - particularly one who they haven't been allowed to hate for traditional reasons. Giuliani's job - much like his job as mayor of NYC - was to give the Republicans in attendance permission to hate Obama and the potentially intelligent society he represents. It's not about city vs. country or educated vs. military. It's about thought vs. violence.

In the black and white world of those committed to war as an international relations strategy, voting "present" makes no sense - especially when the Illinois legislative process is willfully misrepresented. (Voting present is a way to preserve the bill without passing it in its current state. Far from an easy out, it is the hard path - requiring further negotiation to remove earmarks and other problems.) They would prefer the simple relief of a "yes or no" world, where the evil are punished and the good rewarded. For in such a world, we get to know who the enemy is and just hate them.

I don't believe hate is the best way to motivate people to develop long-term solutions to problems. It is a tried and tested way to motivate them to short-term support of dangerous leaders. That much is certain. But if McCain and Palin are able to rouse the national hatred they will need to actually win this election, I fear they will have unleashed a force that they will be unable to control.

How to Make a Pop-Up Masonic Lodge

If that's what you want to do. Via Boing Boing...direct link here