Corpus Mmothra

Was there really any question?

2009-05-01T14:59:00.001-07:00

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

The Secret of the Caves

2009-03-24T07:08:00.000-07:00

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

2009-03-02T08:27:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-24T11:30:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-19T12:35:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-26T21:24:00.001-08:00

Apologies and a Linkie-Poo

2009-01-23T06:49:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-12T07:21:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-10T08:00:00.000-08:00

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?

2008-11-08T20:31:00.000-08:00

Hakim Bey - Chaos Never Died

2008-11-08T19:53:00.000-08:00

Silly Money

2008-11-08T19:11:00.000-08:00

Nick Herbert - Psychedelics & Consciousness

2008-11-08T14:52:00.000-08:00

hat tip to Bruce Eisner

Robert Schiller for Treasury Secretary

2008-11-07T10:14:00.000-08:00

hat tip to Barry Ritholtz over at the Big Picture

Reach Out to the LDS

2008-11-05T15:29:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-02T11:06:00.001-08:00

CA Voters - A Personal Request from Mmothra

2008-10-29T08:26:00.000-07:00

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)