The Ramblings of An Eternal Student of Life

Sunday, June 5, 2016

Art & Entertainment ... Spirituality ...

Being something of a Zen practitioner (i.e., I’ve been sitting weekly with a sangha in Montclair), I’ve heard a bit about bodhisattavas. I’m not an expert, but my basic understanding is that a bodhisattava is someone who really takes all the Buddhist stuff seriously and has gone through many re-incarnations and is now living a life that could be the last . . . i.e., they have realized full enlightenment and Buddahood, and are now ready to pass on into the realm of nirvana, whatever that is. Basically it means that you ain’t coming back again, you’re involvement with this world and universe are done, you have transcended suffering and have no need to come back for additional doses of it.

This is what the Tibetan Book of the Dead is all about, a set of rituals and prayers for those who have just died, that they won’t be re-incarnated (or if they are, they will be ready to go the next time). I.e., that they will be taken up from the bardo (which is something like a holding pattern, a temporary place to wait where your post-death fate is determined) directly to nirvana. Roughly speaking, nirvana is a mysterious, undefined state of non-being, that “beyond, beyond, totally beyond” situation. (You really can’t define nirvana, the whole thing is just a Buddhist word game — actually, just about everything in Buddhism is a word game; if you enjoy having your head spin, try to logically nail down most any Buddhist teaching or written / verbal expression; it must be fun being a “teacher”, as you can always escape the bounds of logic by telling a challenging skeptic that “you don’t fully understand”).

However, there are some people who don’t have to come back, but do so anyway! Over the centuries, some Buddhists realized that their whole tradition came across as being a bit cold and me-focused, and thus had to do some verbal / conceptual backfilling so as to integrate a bit of compassion into the situation. And thus the myth of the bodhisattava evolved, the story of those who had gained enlightenment but wanted to share it » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 10:45 am Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Tuesday, May 31, 2016

◊ Off the Top of My Head . . .

Personal Reflections ... Politics ...

ON A PERSONAL NOTE: I wanted to have a “quasi-feminine” weekend: gardening, baking cupcakes, writing about feelings and spirituality for my blog . . . but instead I had to shift into maximum male mode. I got into a minor anger tiff with my brother, and I had to troubleshoot a CPU fan failure on my home computer. I started humming “When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again” to myself while driving up to the computer super-store on Monday morning, looking for a replacement CPU heat sink cooling assembly — I was thinking about the B-52 scenes from Dr. Strangelove after the crew received the “go code” and headed off to attack Russia.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to ride the rodeo-bull H-bomb into oblivion like Slim Pickens, nor did my computer blow up like that bomb (and I also didn’t wear a cowboy hat while fixing my computer). By Monday evening, my computer was back in action with a goodly amount of cooling capacity, keeping the CPU unit from self-destructing (like the CRM-114 communication device did in Strangelove, the movie plot device that blocked the recall signal that could have saved the world). Oh, and I had a beer with my brother after I got my computer back in shape, and so I cooled that overheated situation down too.

Now, on to the fun stuff, some POLITICAL PONDERINGS:

FIRST: Trump is such a bad Presidential candidate that he would only have a prayer of winning if he faced an abysmally bad opponent, someone clearly worse than any of the various people that the Democratic and Republican parties have proposed to the public over the past generation or two for the nation’s highest office. And Hillary Clinton is such a bad Presidential candidate that she could only think about winning » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 9:33 pm Read Comments (4) / Leave a Comment

Wednesday, May 25, 2016

◊ Gas Pains: Natural Gas, Methane Emissions and Climate Change

Public Policy ... Technology ... Weather ...

The world today is a really, really complicated place, and it’s hard sometimes to figure out what makes it better and what makes it worse. One confusing issue regards natural gas as a major energy source. There are some big disagreements as to whether we should encourage or discourage the production and use of natural gas. On the plus side for natural gas: as with petroleum and coal, it’s a practical way to provide energy where ever and whenever you like, in large or small quantities; it can be stored without energy loss; it’s relatively cheap and easy to produce, especially given newer drilling technologies such as fracking; there is plenty of it in the USA and in many other places around the world; and it burns relatively cleanly, without smoke and with half the carbon dioxide by-product that coal emits per unit of energy obtained (e.g. the BTU), and 2/3 of what oil emits.

Natural gas requires infrastructure to safely utilize, e.g. a network of storage tanks and pipelines and pumping stations — but most of that already exists in the US. It’s not quite as portable as a petroleum product (e.g. gasoline and diesel fuel), given that gas is harder to contain than a liquid. Thus, natural gas may not be a good fuel for most transportation needs, although there are some buses and trucks that can utilize it. But for many uses including home heating, power generation and commercial/industrial processes, it seems to be superior to both coal and oil.

Given that human-made climate change is now widely recognized and accepted as a real and significant phenomenon, a phenomenon that could have very costly and disrupting effects on human civilization in the coming decades; and also given that climate change is largely driven by carbon emissions from fossil fuel use, it would seem that we should encourage » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 5:22 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Thursday, May 19, 2016

◊ Phone Booth Memories

History ... Photo ... Society ...

“What’s this?”, you of a younger persuasion might ask upon viewing this picture. Why, this is what the 1960’s looked like! (The 1970’s too, but they were kind of depressing for being mostly a lethargic, warmed-over version of the 1960s.) These here are the remains of honest-to-goodness phone booths! Yes, once upon a time, people in public places depended upon coin-operated telephones to stay in touch with the world. And “Ma Bell”, which is what we lovingly called the AT&T telephone monopoly back then, generously provided its patrons with a glass-enclosed private area (a “phone booth”) with a small seat (which you can see here) and a little desk surface just beneath the phone box. » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 9:32 am Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Sunday, May 15, 2016

◊ Not A Good Blog Post, but . . .

Current Affairs ... Politics ...

All I have tonight are some random thoughts — admittedly I haven’t had many inspiring insights to share here lately. So for now, I’m just going to blurt out a handful of things from the top of my head. I’m not going to try to justify them with cites to other sources and articles, I’m not going to dig deeper as I usually try to do. Hopefully I can get back to that soon.

So . . . . these are my unstructured thoughts on the national political situation as of today. Again, I apologize in advance, this will not be one of my better posts.

I’m going to talk about Trump vs. Clinton . . . wow, what a lousy choice!!! Has America ever been given a worse choice between Presidential candidates? If you are grinding a partisan axe, which a lot of people are, then I’m sure that you disagree. Perhaps you see Secretary Clinton’s candidacy as “historic destiny” given that she would be the first female President; perhaps you believe that Clinton will continue the march » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 9:24 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Saturday, May 7, 2016

◊ Who for Whom? East Meets West

History ... Spirituality ...

Here’s a bit of East meets West. Genesis, the first book of the Hebrew Torah, has a line that was favored by the industrial-era European and Euro-American entrepreneurs who exploited the riches of the natural world so as to provide the human species (well, the better-off portion of that species) with vast amounts of wealth and comfort. That line is found at Genesis 1:26. I’m going to quote the line from the plain-vanilla New Revised Standard Version of the Bible:

Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”

This line was probably written by the Torah’s Priestly source sometime in the 6th Century BCE in ancient Israel.

So, this writing reflected the mindset of a very early Jewish tribal tradition on the far eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. But over the many centuries of Euro-Mediterranean history, the Torah was co-opted by the westward and northwardly expanding Christian religion, which integrated the Pentateuch into the Christian Bible; it thus became part of the heritage of Europe. Once science and technology started to revolutionize » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 12:27 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Saturday, April 30, 2016

◊ Integrative Complexity In The Public Restroom

Current Affairs ... Politics ... Society ...

Philip Tetlock is a professor and researcher at the at the University of Pennsylvania, and his specialty is a combination of psychology and political science. One of Tetlock’s noted concepts is called “integrative complexity“, which is the degree to which a person’s thinking and reasoning integrates and acknowledges a wide variety of perspectives and possibilities regarding an important issue. Tetlock’s research shows that American politicians whose positions and speeches demonstrate a LOW level of integrative complexity tend to be more successful. I doubt if Donald Trump is included in the research behind Tetlock’s conclusion, but Trump sure does nail the point home!! The fine art of looking for the complex truth and the middle ground in an increasingly complex world is increasingly being disregarded in the way that we now choose our leaders and make our societal decisions.

With that in mind, I would like to take a look at the recent controversy about tran-gender rights especially with regard to use of public rest facilities. I’m going to assume that the reader is familiar with the current situation whereby certain local governments have triggered a political dust-up by responding to demands from LGBT activists that public bathrooms which are designated by sex (i.e., the great majority of restrooms, given that unisex restrooms are a fairly recent social development) be available for use on the basis of psychological identification of sex, and not exclusively upon the user’s biological sex. The recent case in point was in Charlotte NC, which enacted ordinances saying that all sexually-designated restrooms in town that are available to the public (whether in a government facility or in a private establishment like a store or restaurant) can be used based on “identity” and not on the biological sex at birth. This would assure that a trans-gendered person would not get into trouble by using the rest room of the sex that they identify with, as opposed to the sex of their birth (and usually the sex of their bodies, barring a sex-reassignment operation, which around 25 to 30 percent of transgendered people obtain).

That move triggered the State of North Carolina to enact a law blocking such local actions, and specifying that all sexually assigned public facilities will be used based on sex of birth. Other states and towns are now » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 11:13 pm Read Comments (6) / Leave a Comment

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

◊ 2016 Politics: The Drama Shifts to Hillary’s VP Choice

Politics ...

We have another round of GOP primaries today — Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maryland and Delaware, the so-called “Acela Corridor” (Acela being the Amtrak high-speed train that runs through those states). Donald Trump is expected to do very well in all of them. There is still talk about Trump being denied a first round victory at the July 18 GOP Convention in Cleveland; but in order to do that, it appears that Senator Cruz would have to win both Indiana (May 3) and California (June 6). Otherwise, Trump will come within 50 votes of the 1237 delegate threshold; he could then reasonably be expected to pick-off enough of the 130 or so uncommitted delegates so as to seat him at the top of the GOP line this November. It would simply be a question of making deals with those floating delegates, and of course, Trump is the self-proclaimed master of the deal.

Unfortunately for those of us political junkies who would enjoy the spectacle of a contested GOP convention, several recent polls indicate that Trump is in the lead in both states. The Predictwise web site is today giving Trump 65% odds in Indiana (but no call yet in California). The 538 site is going the other way in Indiana despite the polls, giving Cruz a 54 to 45 advantage over Trump (perhaps on the weekend news that Governor Kasich agreed to suspend his ads and campaigning in Indiana so as to give Cruz a better shot against Trump). However, in California, Mr. Silver’s 538 now has Trump over Cruz by 74/22, despite a Cruz edge of 60/37 only two weeks ago.

So, it’s actually starting to look as if the GOP may actually go over the waterfalls and make Trump its candidate. There are a variety of opinions about what this will mean for the Grand Old Party in the long-run, but for now a Trump candidacy will probably » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 8:38 pm Read Comments (3) / Leave a Comment

Tuesday, April 19, 2016

◊ Is Religion Becoming Extinct?

Religion ... Society ... Spirituality ... Technology ...

I recently posted a blog about an article that I came across via Real Clear Science regarding whether the human race could become extinct in the foreseeable future. Now I want to ponder another recent article from Real Clear Science regarding extinction. This time the question is whether religion is on the way to becoming extinct, courtesy of the wonders of modern science. The article was written by RCS editor Ross Pomeroy, a zoologist and biologist. OK, with those credentials, you can assume that Pomeroy knows a thing or two about extinction, and about the wonders of science. But is he right that science will inevitably become humankind’s new religion? To me, this smacks of “scientism“, which I have already expressed my reservations about.
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Pomeroy claims that science will become the new “faith of humankind”. He notes the writings of Sir James George Frazer, who said that religion, science, and magic are similar conceptions, providing a framework for how the world works and guiding our actions. Frazer said that humanity moved through an Age of Magic before entering an Age of Religion. So, Pomeroy asks, “is an Age of Science finally taking hold?” At the end of his article, he concludes that

One of science’s primary aims is to seek out knowledge that will hopefully better our world and the lives of all who live on it . . . so not only does science dispel religious belief, it also serves as an effective substitute for it.

Given that Pomeroy is a scientist himself, we expect that he will provide empirical evidence to support his claim. And indeed, he does offer some interesting statistics » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 7:44 am Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

◊ XNA — the “X-Factor” in Humanity’s Future?

Current Affairs ... Science ... Technology ...

I regularly peruse the Real Clear Science web site and usually open up two or three articles from their latest daily list of interesting science articles. A frequent theme of the articles that the RCS editors select for their list regards “how the world could/might/will end”. If you are in a gloomy mood, then you can find examples of such articles here and here and here and here and here.

A few days ago, the RCS daily list included an article from the Science20 web site entitled “Could Anything Make Humans Extinct In the Near Future?” The author (Robert Walker, an inventor and computer geek) reviews more than fifteen possible candidates, including climate change, a comet or asteroid strike, pandemics, overpopulation, runaway nanotechnology, nuclear war, etc. According to Walker, the human race is pretty hard to kill. Many of the candidate “extinction events” could severely reduce our numbers and would probably end civilization as we now know it; but somewhere on the planet, a band of humans would mostly likely live on despite all the calamity.

(FOOTNOTE, strangely enough, Walker did not consider an H-Bomb “Doomsday Machine” like the one in the movie Doctor Strangelove. But then again, in that movie, the good Doctor himself came up with a way to save humankind with a scheme to send small groups to live in caves for the next 25 years. So perhaps Dr. Strangelove was just another example of how hard it is to totally eradicate the human species.)

Overall, Walker seems pretty optimistic that the homo sapiens species is quite robust and thus is not headed for extinction in the foreseeable future. However, there is one thing that does seem to scare him. And if » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 2:30 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

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