Integral Options Cafe: 11/04/2007

Dharma Quotes: Practicing Compassion, Emptiness

Dharma Quote of the week from Snow Lion Publications.

Practicing compassion will bring about the recognition of emptiness as the true nature of the mind. When you practice virtuous actions of love and compassion on the relative level, you spontaneously realize the profound nature of emptiness, which is the absolute level. In turn, if you focus your meditation practice on emptiness, then your loving-kindness and compassion will spontaneously grow.

These two natures, the absolute and the relative, are not opposites; they always arise together. They have the same nature; they are inseparable like a fire and its heat or the sun and its light. Compassion and emptiness are not like two sides of a coin. Emptiness and compassion are not two separate elements joined together; they are always coexistent.

In Buddhism, emptiness does not mean the absence of apparent existence. Emptiness is not like a black hole or darkness, or like an empty house or an empty bottle. Emptiness is fullness and openness and flexibility. Because of emptiness it is possible for phenomena to function, for beings to see and hear, and for things to move and change. It is called emptiness because when we examine things we cannot find anything that substantially and solidly exists. There is nothing that has a truly existent nature. Everything we perceive appears through ever-changing causes and conditions, without an independent, solid basis. Although from a relative perspective things appear, they arise from emptiness and they dissolve into emptiness. All appearances are like water bubbles or the reflection of the moon in water.

~ From Opening to our Primordial Nature by Khenchen Palden Sherab Rinpoche and Khenpo Tsewang Dongyal Rinpoche, published by Snow Lion Publications.

The Dalai Lama Quote this week amplifies the Dharma Quote, explaining the meaning of emptiness.

Although there are as many categories of emptiness as there are types of phenomena, when you realize the emptiness of one specific phenomenon, you also realize the emptiness of all phenomena. The ultimate nature, or emptiness, of all phenomena is of equal taste and of the same undifferentiable nature. Even though the nature of emptiness of all phenomena is the same, and all the different aspects of phenomena, such as whether they are good or bad, or the way they change, arise from the sphere of emptiness, you should understand that emptiness cannot be found apart from the subject or the object.

Emptiness refers to an object's being free of intrinsic existence. Things depend on causes and conditions. This very dependence on causes and conditions signifies that phenomena lack independent, or intrinsic, existence. It also demonstrates how all the diverse aspects of things that we experience arise because they are by nature empty. When we talk about emptiness, we are not dealing with those different aspects, we are dealing with phenomena's ultimate reality.

~ From Stages of Meditation by the H.H. the Dalai Lama, trans. by Ven. Geshe Lobsang Jordhen, Losang Choephel Ganchenpa, and Jeremy Russell, published by Snow Lion Publications.

Labels: Buddhism

Roger Kimball: Norman Mailer, a Dissenting View

The list of articles noting Norman Mailer's death that I posted earlier today were almost universally positive. While they acknowledged some his more obnoxious -- and nearly murderous -- moments, most them praised Mailer.

Well, Roger Kimball would beg to disagree.

The news that the novelist Norman Mailer died earlier today at the age of 84 has already elicited little hagiographical murmurs. That hushed choir will doubtless turn into a deafening chorus of praise in the coming days and weeks—how much space do you suppose The New York Times will devote to its (I predict) front-page obituary? What grand superlatives will be dusted off and rolled out to commemorate the polyphiloprogentive wife-stabber and booster of homicidal misfits? “Genius” will be paraded early and often, I’ll wager, as will the extended family of adjectives emanating from the word “provocative.” One early notice described Mailer as “the country’s literary conscience and provocateur” and characterized The Armies of the Night as one of his (presumably many) “masterworks.” Perhaps, before the celebratory paeans entirely drown out critical judgment, there is room for a few dissenting observations.

From later in the article:

In 1955, Mailer helped to found The Village Voice, which, though always riven by internal dissension, quickly became a megaphone barking New Left thought, such as it was, into the mainstream culture. By the mid-1960s, he had emerged as an established antiestablishment guru. The spectacular success of works like The Armies of the Night (1968)—Mailer’s bloated, “non-fiction novel” about the 1967 march on the Pentagon and his own role in the demonstration—bore witness to his gifts for literary demagoguery. Subtitled History as a Novel, the Novel as History, the book followed Truman Capote’s example in In Cold Blood (1966), deliberately blurring fact and fiction, a procedure gratefully seized upon by a public eager to sacrifice truth to the demands of ideological zeal. Indeed, it was a procedure that characterized the intellectual—or, more accurately, the anti-intellectual—temper of a generation battened on mind-altering drugs and taught to regard any appeal to facts as an unacceptably “authoritarian” threat. Among anti-Vietnam War radicals—which is to say, among nine out of ten establishment intellectuals—Mailer’s exercise in narcissistic psychohistory was greeted with ecstatic hosannas, and duly picked up both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Sample adulation from the critic Richard Gilman: “Mailer has opened up new possibilities for the literary imagination and new room for us to breathe in the crush of actuality.” From the writer Nat Hentoff: “Mailer has won clear claim to being the best writer in America.”

In fact, like almost all of Mailer’s books, The Armies of the Night is badly written—almost preposterously so. It has often been observed that Mailer’s early literary heroes were Hemingway and John Dos Passos. But his own writing totally lacks Hemingway’s lapidary craftsmanship and Dos Passos’s cinematic control. When The Armies of the Night was serialized in Harper’s, to the great excitement of the editor, Willie Morris, a young copy editor complained about Mailer’s prose and, as one witness recollects, asked, “I wonder what he writes like when he’s sober?” The unfortunate copy editor was promptly fired. But she was right: The Armies of the Night is a hyperbolic, self-indulgent mess that looks sillier and more naive with every year that passes. Its famous third-person narrative strikes one now as a facile gimmick: “Mailer discovered he was jealous. Not of the talent. [Robert] Lowell’s talent was very large, but then Mailer was a bulldog about the value of his own talent… . Nonetheless, to Mailer it was now mano a mano.” That “mano a mano” is about as close to Hemingway as Mailer got.

The adulation that greeted The Armies of the Night underscores an important fact about Mailer’s success. It is part of Mailer’s genius to have been able to calibrate his appetites and deficiencies precisely to the appetites and deficiencies of the moment. His obsessions have been celebrated as brave insights because they have mirrored the defining obsessions of the time. For a moment—but only for a moment—they appear to be revelatory insights. Well into the 1970s, anyway, Mailer instinctively knew exactly what register of rhetorical excess would galvanize the left-wing intellectual establishment. This talent made him an important figure in the long march of America’s cultural revolution. It proved to be immensely profitable, financially and in terms of prestige. By the time Mailer came to write The Prisoner of Sex (1971), he was widely rumored to be up for a Nobel Prize, a rumor that absorbed his full attention for the first thirty pages of that execrable book.

This is not to say that Mailer escaped criticism. His second and third novels, The Deer Park (1955) and Barbary Shore (1961), were widely attacked, as indeed was An American Dream (1965). An American Dream was the infamous novel in which the hero, Stephen Rojack, a savvy, tough-guy intellectual—just like Norman Mailer, you see—starts out by strangling his wife. He then walks downstairs and buggers his wife’s accommodating German maid, a former Nazi who declares, “I do not know why you have trouble with your wife. You are an absolute genius, Mr. Rojack.” (Buggery—another “B” to put alongside booze, boxing, bullfighting, and broads—was to become an obsession with Mailer.) There are numerous Mailerian fingerprints in the novel. President Kennedy (“Jack”) calls to convey his condolences; Rojack’s wife is rumored to have had affairs with men high up in the British, American, and Soviet spy agencies; even Marilyn Monroe—who was to become another of Mailer’s notorious obsessions—makes a posthumous cameo appearance: when Rojack fantasizes about having a telephone conversation with a dead character, he reports that “the girls are swell. Marilyn says to say hello.” But the chief point of the book is that Rojack gets away with the murder. Such, Mailer wants us to believe, is the real if unacknowledged “American dream.”

Read the whole, scathing essay.

Labels: authors, books, literature

Satire: Checkmate, Atheists!

The sad thing is that many Christians use some of these arguments.

via videosift.com

Labels: atheism, humor, Religion

Writer Norman Mailer Dead at 84

Mailer was one of the most prolific authors and artists, both loved and hated. He passed away this morning from acute renal failure at the age of 84.

Here are some of the many articles devoted to the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner.

MSNBC/AP: Writer Norman Mailer dead at 84 -- "Mailer built and nurtured an image over the years as pugnacious, streetwise and high-living. He drank, fought, smoked pot, married six times and stabbed his second wife, almost fatally, during a drunken party."

Reuters: Author Norman Mailer dies aged 84 -- "Mailer's works were often filled with violence, sexual obsession and views that angered feminists. He later reconsidered many of his old positions but never surrendered his right to speak his mind. Detractors considered him an intellectual bully and he feuded with fellow authors like Truman Capote, William Styron, Tom Wolfe and Norman Podhoretz."

CNN: Prolific, outspoken author Norman Mailer dies -- "Author of "The Naked and the Dead," "The Armies of the Night" and "The Executioner's Song," Mailer was probably the most famous of the generation of writers who came of age after World War II -- he was certainly the most colorful, and most pugnaciously so."

Critical Mass: Norman Mailer, 1923-2007 -- "There was a time when Norman Mailer used to talk about the Big Book. It prowled the interviews he gave in the 1950s like a white whale, blasting into view and then plunging back into the darkness, where it would lurk until the next publication date. With each decade, and each new book, from The American Dream to The Executioner's Song, until his novel about Jesus Christ, The Gospel According to the Son, it seemed like Mailer might yet drag his promised catch to shore. And at 84, America's most pugilistic novelist has done something unusual. He's beginning to say he may not get it."

The Nation: Norman Mailer Brawled With Bush to the Bitter End -- "There is much, much to be said of Norman Mailer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and world-class rabble-rouser who died Saturday at age 84. But the pugilistic pensman would perhaps be most pleased to have it known that he went down swinging. The chronicler of our politics and protests in the 1960s with two of the era's definitional books--1968's Armies of the Night and Miami and the Siege of Chicago, did not rest on the laurels--and they were legion--earned for exposing the dark undersides of the presidencies of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon.

Time: Why Norman Mailer Mattered -- "He was, of course, a great conundrum. It was even there in his voice, which hovered in some undisclosed location between the Brooklyn of his youth and the Harvard of his student years. That the arc of his own career was one of his perennial subjects was not just a measure of his egotism — which was boundless — but also of his certainty that the judgment upon him of public opinion was, itself, an important sign of the times. He could never stop measuring his reputation against every other writer's; he spent years waving his Brooklyn matador's cape at Hemingway, boxing with Tolstoy (and anybody else who got in his way) and always licking his own wounds. Mailer's forte was intricate readings of his own inner conditions. His mistake was to believe in them too much as a guide to the wider world. But as Mailer would have asked: What else do we have to go on?"

New York Times: Norman Mailer, Outspoken Novelist, Dies at 84 -- "Mr. Mailer belonged to the old literary school that regarded novel writing as a heroic enterprise undertaken by heroic characters with egos to match. He was the most transparently ambitious writer of his era, seeing himself in competition not just with his contemporaries but with the likes of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky."

Labels: authors, books, literature

New Poem: Musician

[Violinist - Edgar Degas]

Musician

the door is ajar, an entrance offered
while darkness creeps across mirrors
whose names have been misplaced

all the shadows gather as one, united
in their forgetting; nag champa drifts
in the room where one man kneels

surely there are prayers, ripened fruits
eaten as sacrifice, juice dripping down
his chin, soft voices whispering in corners

an oil lamp gives light that cannot
be grasped, flickers and trembles, light
is never what it seems, and more

the man picks up a violin, cold strings
groan beneath the bow; solitude is somber
in the best nights, and yet, and yet

he chases the ghosts from the room, closes
the door; he finds the music so long lost
and opens his heart to the night

Labels: poetry

Daily Om: Everything Is In Divine Order

[Alex Gray - Mirror Series]

Today's Daily Om.

As we get caught up in the subjective reality of our everyday lives, sometimes it's hard to remember and accept that everything is exactly as it should be -- right here, right now, we are each always already fully enlightened. The trick we all must learn is to access the divine spark within us.

Unlimited Vision
Everything Is In Divine Order

We can only see so much from where we sit in our particular bodies, in the midst of our particular lives, rooted as we are in the continuum of space and time. The divine, on the other hand, is not limited to the constructs of either space or time, and its wisdom and workings often elude us as we try to make sense of what is happening in our lives. This is why things are not always what they seem to be and even the best-laid plans are sometimes overturned. Even when we feel we have been guided by our intuition every step of the way, we may find ourselves facing unexpected loss and disappointment. At times like these, we can find some solace in trusting that no matter how bad or just plain inexplicable things look from our perspective, they are, in fact, in divine order.

Even as we take our places in this earthly realm, a part of us remains completely free of the confines we face here. Regardless of what is happening in our lives, this part of us remains infused with joy and gratitude, connected to the unbroken source from which we come. Our small self, on the other hand, who is caught up in our false identity as a being limited in space and time, regards happiness as the result of things going the way it wants them to go. It is this part of us that suffers the greatest confusion and upset when the logic of events does not compute. And it is to this self that we must extend unconditional love, forgiveness, and compassion. In order to do this, we tap into our inner divinity, holding the space of a tender authority, extending love and light to our ego as a mother extends her love to a troubled child.

There are many ways to access our inner divinity—meditation, prayer, chanting, channeling, and conscious breathing, to name a few. It is helpful to develop a regular practice that provides us access to this all-powerful, healing presence, as it can be difficult to reach once we are in a stressful position, if we have not already established a connection. The more connected we are with this part of ourselves, the more we share its unlimited vision and the secure, knowing that all the things of our life, no matter how they appear, are in a state of divine and perfect order.

Labels: personal growth, self exploration

Flashback Video: Cranberries "Linger"

I hadn't thought of this song in ages. Brought back some memories.

via videosift.com

Labels: Music

Speedlinking 11/9/07

Quote of the day:

"Mistakes are a part of being human. Appreciate your mistakes for what they are: precious life lessons that can only be learned the hard way. Unless it's a fatal mistake, which, at least, others can learn from."
~ Al Franken

Image of the day:

BODY
~ Chronic pain: where does it come from and why? -- "Often, injuries carry an aggravating side effect: pain. More and more frequently, pain is not just a temporary result that will go away, but becomes a permanent factor that affects people’s lives. Jane E. Brody of the New York Times reports that chronic pain often changes a person for the worst and can lead to anxiety, fear, anger, and depression."
~ Dieters Who Eat In Response To Emotions Versus Social Situations, Lose Less And Regain More -- "Just in time for the start of the holiday eating season -- a new study finds that dieters who have the tendency to eat in response to external factors, such as at festive celebrations, have fewer problems with their weight loss than those who eat in response to emotions (internal factors)."
~ Boosting Vitamin D May Have Long-Term Benefits For Inflammation, Aging, New Study Suggests -- "There is a new reason for the 76 million baby boomers to grab a glass of milk. Vitamin D, a key nutrient in milk, could have aging benefits linked to reduced inflammation, according to a new study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition."
~ Taking Care Of Your Skin Starts From Within -- "The old adage "you are what you eat" not only applies to our overall health and nutrition, but how our skin looks and feels as well. As the largest organ in the body, our skin can benefit from the same nutrition we get from foods that have a positive effect on our heart and other major organs. In fact, new research suggests that eating foods rich in protein and certain vitamins and minerals might provide valuable anti-aging effects."
~ Strategies to curb your hunger while you lose -- "Everything from stress to hormones to people, places, and situations can kick your appetite into overdrive. The good news: Whatever the cause, you can beat your hunger pangs. Health.com offers up the latest stay-full strategies from the experts."
~ Do you know how many calories your workout burns? -- "Find out if you're working as hard as you think you are with the Calories Burned Calculator."
~ Sunshine 'helps to keep you young' -- "A healthy dose of sunshine may be the secret to staying young, British scientists have revealed. Vitamin D is produced naturally by the skin in response to sunlight and may help to slow the ageing process and protect against disease, according to the study."
~ The nature and nurture of muscles -- "Some of the truly fascinating insights into talent and greatness emerge from the realm of human musculature -- how our skeletal muscles are initially formed, the attributes of different muscle fibers, and the different ways muscles can be transformed by activity and training."

PSYCHE/SELF
~ Is IQ actually AQ? (Mistaking Achievement for "Intelligence") -- "I've just gotten my hands on a copy of Andrew Elliott and Carol Dweck's mammoth Handbook of Competence and Motivation. Following the lead chapter from the editors is an utterly fascinating contribution from Yale psychologist Robert Sternberg, who, in just a few pages, seems to completely shatter the popular myth of I.Q. and intelligence testing."
~ The Art of Visualization: How to Mentally Learn New Skills, Develop Awesome Habits, and Improve Your Health -- "Although primarily used in athletics, visualization is a tool that has powerful applications in personal development. In this post, I’ll be describing what visualization is, how it works, and how you can essentially re-architect your life using it."
~ I Can't Believe My Eyes: Conforming to the Norm -- "Solomon Asch's classic top 10 social psychology experiment shows that many of us will deny our own senses just to conform with others."
~ Marriage Is Not the Key to Happiness -- "Husbands and wives are no more happier than singles."
~ 10 Reasons You Aren’t Achieving Success -- "A couple of months ago, I asked you not to fear failure, saying that embracing failure — or at least the possibility of failure — was essential to success. But, of course, in the end the goal is to succeed, and fear of failing isn’t the only thing that keeps us from succeeding."
~ Dr Mindfulness: Science and the meditation boom -- "This weekend's edition of All in the Mind looks at the explosion of mindfulness-based research and interventions in health. How do we establish a solid scientific evidence base for what is such an introspective endeavour?"
~ Feeling Stressed? -- "Pending job cuts at the office. Back-to-back final exams. A messy divorce. An unexpected surgery. What do they all have in common? In a word -- stress. While everyone knows that stress can take a toll on a person physically and psychologically, it also can lead to dermatologic problems, such as acne, brittle nails or even hair loss."
~ 8 Ways to Spark Your Creativity -- "Creativity is a strange, elusive creature. Sometimes is flowing like a river. Sometimes it’s all dried up and nowhere to be found. Here are some thoughts and ideas that I like and have found useful to spark or improve my own creativity."

CULTURE/POLITICS
~ Review - Changing Conceptions of the Child from the Renaissance to Post-Modernity -- "At a glance, childhood seems to fall into the background of philosophical inquiry, but Kennedy proceeds in this fascinating study to demonstrate the centrality of definitions of childhood in determining the self-understandings, daily behaviors, institutional practices, and punishment rituals practiced across the West."
~ Bush's Lap Dogs -- "The CIA's new target? John Helgerson, the man appointed by President Bush to expose wrongdoing at the CIA. As inspector general of the agency, Helgerson came under attack from his superiors simply for trying to do his job: He was aggressively investigating torture at the CIA's secret prisons."
~ In the Middle -- "The working class and intellectuals speak different languages, and working class activists are caught between the two. It's time for theory to reconnect with practice, says Brian Ashton."
~ The Obligations of Academic Freedom -- "Many academics, including myself, rise to defend "academic freedom" in response to claims that professoriate is too "liberal". The concept of "academic freedom," however, seems to mean many things to many people, and there is often a lack of appreciation about why it is necessary and what it ought to entail."
~ Judge: Druggists may withhold "morning-after" pill -- "A federal judge has suspended controversial state rules requiring pharmacies to dispense so-called "Plan B" emergency contraceptives, saying the rules appear to unconstitutionally violate pharmacists' freedom of religion." That's a load of crap.
~ Are We All Lockeans Now? -- "Intentionally or not, the president's words evoke the thinking of John Locke (1632-1704), the quintessential philosopher of the Enlightenment era and a key influence on the American founding fathers. It is a mistake, then, for secularists to dismiss the president's position as necessarily an unsophisticated throwback to pre-modern times."
~ Suu Kyi 'Optimistic' on Burma Talks -- "Detained Burma opposition head Aung San Suu Kyi is "very optimistic" about prospects of the UN-promoted process for reconciliation between the military government and pro-democracy forces."
~ Mukasey Sworn In as Attorney General -- "Michael B. Mukasey took the oath at the Justice Department less than a day after winning confirmation."

HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ How to Plan a Green Thanksgiving -- "These 10 green Thanksgiving ideas will save money and time while protecting the environment. Green holidays can be creative, fun, and easy - and easy on your conscience."
~ Bay Area Spill Fouls Coastline -- "An oil spill fouled miles of coastline Thursday, sending environmentalists scrambling to save tarred marine life."
~ Oil Find Could Transform Brazil -- "Brazil's state oil company said Thursday that it has discovered as much as 8 billion barrels of light crude in an ultra-deep field off the coast of Rio de Janeiro."
~ Some humpback whale calls deciphered -- "Australian scientists studying the sounds of humpback whales say they have begun to decode their mysterious communication system, identifying male pickup lines and motherly warnings."
~ Atomic-level Microscopy At Least 100 Times Faster With New Technique -- "Using an existing technique in a novel way, physicists have made the scanning tunneling microscope -- which can image individual atoms on a surface -- at least 100 times faster. The simple adaptation, based on a method of measurement currently used in nano-electronics, could also give STMs significant new capabilities -- including the ability to sense temperatures in spots as small as a single atom."
~ Green is the new blah -- "Last night I watched the TNSFKAMST (Thursday Night Shows Formerly Known as Must-See TV). To be honest I'd forgotten it was Green Is Universal week; I was just indulging in a little sitcom sitdown. But there was no escaping the green message, and it was ... what's the word? ... artificial and painful and forced."
~ Waterways downstream from oil sands are full o' toxins, says study -- "Fish, water, and sediment downstream from the gigantic oil sands projects in Alberta are chock-full of carcinogens and other toxins, says a new study."

INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ The Beginning and the End -- "'Right View' is said to be both the beginning and the end of the path of liberation in Buddhism. From Right View, the first step of the Eightfold Path, we can realize the Four Noble Truths, which is the beginning of wisdom."
~ T-Shirt of the Week: Got AQAL? -- "This weeks T-Shirt is all about "Change Your Mind, Change Your World," and asks if you're applying AQAL in your life....and if you've got this T-Shirt?"
~ A CAT-Scan of the Global Brain (Part 4) -- "If it's true that every individual brain is like a single neuron in the global brain, we are all connected at an invisible level. In itself this isn't a radical statement: scholars of art and myth have discovered countless similarities between cultures that were historically isolated from one another."
~ Participatory Spirituality, an update on John Heron’s book -- "One year ago, John Heron wrote an important, but self-published book, on Participatory Spirituality, which was subtitled, a Farewell to Authoritarian Religion. This important book is now also available through Amazon and I would therefore like to bring it once more under your attention. Below is the short review that I added to it."
~ Andrew Cohen on Women, Men, and the Evolution of Culture -- "So what is it that I notice arises from my being when Cohen speaks or writes? I think it's that ego. I think it's the Guru syndrome that he steps so willingly and so easily into. I think it's that he takes so much credit for things that are already emerging , with him, without him, around him, away from him, and in spite of him."
~ Will Solving the 'Hard Problem' of Consciousness Unweave the Rainbow? -- "Some say in fifty years or so we'll have enough neuro-scientific evidence to completely describe the functioning of the brain. The question is, will this mountain of evidence be enough to explain the emergence of human consciousness?" I doubt it.
~ Postformal dialectics 3 -- "I’m starting another thread continuing the re-posting of the Integral Review discussion because we’ve been having technical problems. It seems comments, including my own, have been ending up in the spam bin. We’re working on correcting this so please bear with us, thanks."
~ Revision3 - They’re Hip, Young, & Geeky. But Are They Conscious? -- "urchinTracker ('/outbound/article/www.fallingfruit.tv');">Falling Fruit is one among several of the first netcasting media companies. urchinTracker ('/outbound/article/www.revision3.com');">Revision3, based out of San Francisco, is another such company who are paving the way and doing it quite well. They focus primarily on technology and offer all of their content in a video format. What’s so interesting about Revision3, and why I wanted to dedicate a post to them is that their project is similar to ours in many ways, but also diverges in some unique ways."

Labels: speedlinking

Finlandia by Jean Sibelius

Some classical music for your Friday.

Sibelius: Finlandia
Yle Radion Sinfoniaorkesteri (Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra)
Conducted by Sakari Oramo
October 22, 2005
NHK Hall, Tokyo

Labels: Music

Daily Dharma: The Enlightenment of the Buddha

["May all that have life be delivered from suffering"]

Today's Daily Dharma from Tricycle comes from Robert Thurman, describing his understanding of the enlightenment of the Buddha.

The Enlightenment of the Buddha

The enlightenment of the Buddha was not primarily a religious discovery. It was not a mystical encounter with “God” or a god. It was not the reception of a divine mission to spread the “Truth” of “God” in the world. The Buddha's enlightenment was rather a human being's direct, exact, and comprehensive experience of the final nature and total structure of reality. It was the culmination for all time of the manifest ideals of any tradition of philosophical exploration or scientific investigation. “Buddha” is not a personal name; it is a title, meaning “awakened,” “enlightened,” and “evolved.” A Buddha's enlightenment is a perfect omniscience. A Buddha's mind is what theists have thought the mind of God would have to be like, totally knowing of every single detail of everything in an infinite universe, totally aware of everything--hence by definition inconceivable, incomprehensible to finite, ignorant, egocentric consciousness.

~Robert A.F. Thurman, Essential Tibetan Buddhism; from Everyday Mind, edited by Jean Smith, a Tricycle book.

Certainly, I am not the scholar that Thurman is, and I never will be. But my understanding of the Buddha's enlightenment does not involve "perfect omniscience" or God-like qualities of mind.

I can get behind the Buddha's enlightenment, otherwise I wouldn't be a Buddhist. But for me there is no equation with God in his insight into the nature of suffering and how to end suffering. The Buddha was most certainly released from the wheel of samsara, achieved non-dual consciousness, and maybe even developed some ability to see into others, but to ascribe perfect omniscience is to say that he became a God.

I understand that Thurman is coming from the Tibetan tradition, which is much more open to those types of declarations than is the Theravada tradition, but I'm not buying it.

Labels: Buddhism

In The Beginning

This short film comes from the Vancouver Film School, a student animation of a rather twisted creation myth. Kind of cool though.

via videosift.com

Labels: animation, film

Satire: Pat Robertson Says Giuliani Presidency Appears in Book of Revelation

[image source]

From Andy Borowitz at Huffington Post:

Pat Robertson Says Giuliani Presidency Appears in Book of Revelation

Posted November 8, 2007 | 11:29 AM (EST)

One day after endorsing former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani for president, televangelist Pat Robertson explained his decision, saying that a Giuliani presidency features prominently in the Book of Revelation.
In his endorsement announcement the day before, Rev. Robertson had made reference to Mr. Giuliani's tenure as "America's Mayor," but did not indicate that the Republican frontrunner was a key player in the Bible's most apocalyptic book.

In his statement today, however, the televangelist made it clear that "in order for the Second Coming to occur, the world needs to end, and Rudy Giuliani is just the man for that job."

Rev. Robertson said that he was "confident" that within weeks of his inauguration, Mr. Giuliani would usher in the "end days" that are a staple of Bible prophecy.

In praising Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Robertson had critical words for the current resident of the White House, President George W. Bush: "President Bush got us on the road to Armageddon, but it's taking too darn long -- Rudy Giuliani will put us in the express lane."

While the Giuliani camp initially welcomed the endorsement of the influential evangelist, the former New York mayor seemed less enthusiastic today about being identified as one of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse.

When asked by a reporter in Iowa about Mr. Robertson's comments today, Mr. Giuliani replied, "9/11."

Elsewhere, former Beatle Paul McCartney confirmed that he is dating a Metropolitan Transportation Authority board member, explaining, "Since my divorce from Heather, I've had to start taking the subway."

Labels: humor, Politics

Holotropic Breathing for Shamanic Journeying

I found this video at Psychology, Transformation & Freedom Papers, a cool site for psychology information.

In this video, Stan Grof talks about how shamans have used breath control to create non-ordinary states of reality. Grof developed holotropic breathwork when LSD became illegal, as a way to generate the same or similar states of consciousness.

I've used holotropic breathing in my own shamanic work, combined with Michael Harner's shamanic drumming CD. I've found this to be an incredibly useful way of entering inner space, specifically the unconscious mind. Having also used all the standard hallucinogens, I can say it bears no resemblance to any of them (although a very small dose of LSD is most similar in that consciousness shifts more easily -- without the hallucinations of higher doses).

The process I have used involves holotropic breathwork until I sense my consciousness opening up (the drumming CD is playing already during this process). I then visualize an opening into the earth, for me it's small cave in the Siskiyou Mountains of Southern Oregon that I explored on a couple of occasions.

When I enter the opening, the scene quickly shifts to some sort of cosmic spiral tunnel through which I move very quickly. When I come out the end I am almost always in the same landscape (going through a different opening takes me to a different landscape -- I find the consistency in this aspect of the work very interesting).

I generally go in with some sort of question, which dictates the experience that follows. When the CD signals time to emerge, I make my way back to the opening through which I entered and move back up the spiral tunnel.

Only once has this pattern varied. The last time I journeyed, I ascended into the heavens during the experience -- more precisely, I was summoned by some kind of archetypal female energy. I didn't return from that experience in the same way, but I did emerge from the originating cave when the journey was over.

* * * * *

Anyway, I promised someone I would blog about this work a while back and hadn't done so until now. I've hesitated because shamanic work has so many negative New Age connotations to a lot of people.

Shamanic work can be integrally informed, however, and need not be some New Age load of regressive pre-trans fallacies. If one understands the process in terms of psychological processes more than as some literal journey to the underworld or whatever, we can avoid the pitfalls in the way shamanism has been co-opted by the New Agers.

Still, it helps to suspend disbelief while engaging in the process of the work. If we are in our rational minds, we will not be able to surrender to the experience. I find it best to just be open, in as much of an observing space as possible, much like in meditation.

Labels: Psychology, self exploration, shadow work, shamanism

Speedlinking 11/8/07

Quote of the day:

"To believe is to know you believe, and to know you believe is not to believe."
~ Jean-Paul Sartre

Image of the day:

BODY
~ A Beautiful Snatch -- "Whether you're a bodybuilder, strength athlete, or football player, learning the snatch can take you to a whole new plane of development. This article is chock-full of helpful videos that will have you snatching in no time."
~ Personal Best: Pregnant Exercisers Test Limits -- "Advice on when, how long and how much to train is all over the map." I've trained two women through eight months, and each was back to their pre-pregnancy weight within a couple of weeks of giving birth.
~ High Fat Diet Changes The Body Clock -- "US researchers have discovered that a high fat diet can change a mammal's body clock and thereby disrupt a range of behavioural and physiological processes, including those controlled by genes that switch on and off at certain times to keep the body's metabolism, storage and use of energy in balance."
~ Ostrich, and the 7 other foods you should be eating -- "We've heard it all before — eat your spinach, your broccoli, your whole-grain pastas. But there are a whole host of other good-for-you foods that most of us aren't eating."
~ Caveman diet found to be the best choice to control diabetes -- "Now, in the first controlled study of a Paleolithic (stone age) diet in humans, Lund University, Sweden, heralds the simple diet of the caveman as the “best choice to control diabetes 2”."
~ Exercise Away Heart Failure -- "Exercise can spur the growth of new cells to mend weakened muscles and spur the growth of blood vessels in people with heart failure, according to two new studies."
~ Experts play the heavy on news of chubby perks -- "Being overweight may not kill you, but it could lead to obesity, U.S. health experts cautioned on Wednesday in response to research suggesting that being a bit heavy does not raise the risk of death."

PSYCHE/SELF
~ Addicted to love? -- "Experts continually debate whether sexual addiction is a real problem. Some argue that there is no such thing, and that terms like "sexual addiction" and "porn addiction" are unhelpful at best, dangerous at worst."
~ Do You Have a Deeply Fulfilling Career? -- "If you’re already on a stable or semi-stable career path, this article will help you determine whether your current career is really the right one for you, using a very simple assessment process."
~ Amygdala Abnormalities Linked to Violent Aggression -- "Patients struggling with uncontrolled aggressive urges often appear irrational and frightening to the victims of their impulsive rages as well as anyone who happens to witness them in action. Such behaviors are most commonly seen among teenagers and young adults, and experts have long suspected abnormal brain functions to be at least partly responsible for their seeming inability to restrain themselves."
~ The Borderline Parent -- "Moving beyond a bad parent."
~ Domestic Drama: Prickly Pere -- "What are your obligations to a bad parent?"
~ Sounds Like Music Therapy -- "Check out these emotional, spiritual and physical effects of music therapy. Music helps with the grieving process and can teach stroke victims to walk again."
~ Researchers Examine Social Interactions in Anorexia Nervosa -- "Dr. Zucker noticed that individuals with anorexia notoriously failed to comply with treatment, and often this failure was coupled with a failure to establish a healthy relationship with a treating therapist."
~ Susan Smalley: Meditation: The Seat Belt Of Mental Health -- "We all know that the road of life is bumpy with unexpected drop-offs, accidents, and only the occasional smooth-sailing highway. I believe that meditation -- a practice for increasing awareness -- is truly a seat belt of mental health, a protection for us on the hazardous road of life."

CULTURE/POLITICS
~ Secular Fundamentalists -- "Ninety percent of Americans claim to believe in God, church attendance is higher than in any other Western nation, and political leaders still invoke divine blessing at the end of major addresses. But in the past three years, six books touting atheism have reached the New York Times’s bestseller list. Features in Newsweek, a fawning Nation cover, and endless TV appearances followed."
~ Holy communion -- "It's not been a good year for God. Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion and Christopher Hitchens’s God is Not Great have been riding high in the international bestseller lists, while in the US Sam Harris has addressed his Letter to a Christian Nation and Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell has explored the question of how to explain the irrationality of religious belief. Michel Onfray’s In Defence of Atheism has added a distinctively French tone to the assault, and AC Grayling’s latest collection of elegant English essays is Against All Gods. It’s not surprising that cultural commentators have identified a cultural wave, and given it a label: “The New Atheism”."
~ Asia's Hottest Modern Painters -- "Five of Asia's hottest artists talk to TIME about their lives, influences and art."
~ Musharraf's Emergency -- "Pervez Musharraf claims he imposed martial law because of a rising tide of Islamic extremism and a politicized judiciary. He lied. Graham Usher reports from Islamabad on the forces behind Pakistan's slide into chaos."
~ Was Radiohead's download experiment a failure? (Crazed by the Music) -- "Radiohead’s radical “pay what you like” experiment for their In Rainbows album shook up the industry and is already one of the biggest music biz stories of the year. But after some number crunching, reports are coming back (see this Comscore article) that the vast majority of people who downloaded the record didn’t pay squat for it."
~ Welcome to the 700 Club, Rudy -- "Pat Robertson's endorsement could be both a blessing and a curse for Rudy Giuliani."
~ Kerouac exhibit sheds new light on Beat writer -- "The name "Kerouac" typically evokes a sense of hip, cool, rebellion, exploration and of course "Beat," as in voice of the Beat Generation."

HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ How The Physiological Effects Of Poverty On Young Children Takes Its Toll On Health -- "Scientists have known for years that people living in poverty have poorer health and shorter life spans than the more affluent. Now, Cornell University researchers have identified several key mechanisms in 13-year-olds that may help explain how low socio-economic status takes its toll on health."
~ Biofuels Are No Cure for Climate Change -- "Sigh. Another day, another inane strategy to fight global warming. The bee in my bonnet this time is biofuels. They're nothing new, but governments and corporations are pushing biofuels with a renewed ferocity as the panacea for our ailing planet."
~ Primates in Peril -- "A gallery of the World Conservation Union's list of the most endangered primates."
~ Genetically Modified Foods Unsafe? Evidence that Links GM Foods to Allergic Responses Mounts -- "Genetically modified (GM) foods are inherently unsafe"
~ Yellowstone Is Rising on Swollen "Supervolcano" -- "Yellowstone National Park is rising. Its central region, called the Yellowstone caldera, has been moving upward since mid-2004 at a rate of up to three inches (seven centimeters) a year—more than three times faster than has ever been measured."
~ Scientists link mysterious highest-energy cosmic rays with violent black holes -- "Scientists of the Pierre Auger Collaboration announced today (Nov. 8) that active galactic nuclei are the most likely candidate for the source of the highest-energy cosmic rays that hit Earth. Using the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina, the largest cosmic-ray observatory in the world, a team of scientists from 17 countries found that the sources of the highest-energy particles are not distributed uniformly across the sky. Instead, the Auger results link the origins of these mysterious particles to the locations of nearby galaxies that have active nuclei in their centers."
~ Locals lose out to sexy aliens -- "Globalisation has led to an increase in invasions by new species around the world and this is costing agriculture and the environment dearly."

INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ More on “Paideia In America” -- "America is certainly famous for its pragmatism — of needing to understand some sense of possible effects of undertaking an action or project. We are a young country, with no native tradition of fine art or “high culture”, as Camille Paglia rightly reminds us. We are known for rugged entrepreneurship. We are known for the American Dream, and its material rewards. These all lead one towards a conclusion that Americans, in a general sense, are not particularly suited to the temperament required for a classical education. But is that a truly earned conclusion? I don’t think so."
~ Can Buddhism become American? -- "By this, I’m not asking about whether Buddhism can mesh with American values or whether American culture can or will grow to accept Buddhism. These are worthy questions but not for today, at least for me. What I am asking about is whether Buddhism can become American in the sense of its organizations, teachers, and adherents."
~ Announcing: The Second Global Integral International Development Meeting in Istanbul, Turkey -- "The focus for this second global Integral International Development meeting is on "The Integral Practitioner" - with a particular emphasis on what Integral governance includes in today's complex world. Practitioners, consultants, coaches, social change agents, activists, scholars, and all those involved in 'Integral Praxis' are invited to discuss many important global issues...."
~ Death and what continues -- "A quick look at death and what continues.... First the obvious one: Our human self, with its personality and quirks, dies. It is gone forever. At most, some of its influences on others and society continues for a while, but then that is gone too."
~ Ngawang Tenzin Rinpoche Visits Portland to Teach the Mystery of Vajra and Dorje -- "According to Wagner University, Holiness Ngawang Tenzin is a high reincarnation of the Drukpa Kagyu Lineage of Buddhism in Bhutan. He is regarded as one of the most revered teachers of the Drukpa Kagyu lineage in Bhutan. He is the reincarnation of Drubthop Chenpo Jinpa Gyeltshen Rinpoche who was alive in the 18th century."

Labels: speedlinking

Daily Dharma: The Sweetest Strawberry

Today's Daily Dharma from Tricycle poses an interesting parable from the Buddha:

The Sweetest Strawberry

Buddha told a parable in a sutra:

A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him.

Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!

~ Paul Reps, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones; from Everyday Mind, edited by Jean Smith, a Tricycle book.

Labels: Buddhism

People Are Human-Bacteria Hybrid

[DNA]

I remember hearing about this idea a year or two ago. I can't remember who the scientist was, but he was arguing that a great deal of our evolution as a species was the result of bacteria, viruses, and other foreign DNA changing our own genetic make-up. Without this "intervention" from outside sources, we would not have survived as a species. Kind of humbling when you think about it.

This article is from Wired:

Most of the cells in your body are not your own, nor are they even human. They are bacterial. From the invisible strands of fungi waiting to sprout between our toes, to the kilogram of bacterial matter in our guts, we are best viewed as walking "superorganisms," highly complex conglomerations of human cells, bacteria, fungi and viruses.

That's the view of scientists at Imperial College London who published a paper in Nature Biotechnology Oct. 6 describing how these microbes interact with the body. Understanding the workings of the superorganism, they say, is crucial to the development of personalized medicine and health care in the future because individuals can have very different responses to drugs, depending on their microbial fauna.

The scientists concentrated on bacteria. More than 500 different species of bacteria exist in our bodies, making up more than 100 trillion cells. Because our bodies are made of only some several trillion human cells, we are somewhat outnumbered by the aliens. It follows that most of the genes in our bodies are from bacteria, too.

Luckily for us, the bacteria are on the whole commensal, sharing our food but doing no real harm. (The word derives from the Latin meaning to share a table for dinner.) In fact, they are often beneficial: Our commensal bacteria protect us from potentially dangerous infections. They do this through close interaction with our immune systems.

"We have known for some time that many diseases are influenced by a variety of factors, including both genetics and environment, but the concept of this superorganism could have a huge impact on our understanding of disease processes," said Jeremy Nicholson, a professor of biological chemistry at Imperial College and leader of the study. He believes the approach could apply to research on insulin-resistance, heart disease, some cancers and perhaps even some neurological diseases.

Following the sequencing of the human genome, scientists quickly saw that the next step would be to show how human genes interact with environmental factors to influence the risk of developing disease, the aging process and drug action. But because environmental factors include the gene products of trillions of bacteria in the gut, they get very complex indeed. The information in the human genome itself, 3 billion base pairs long, does not help reduce the complexity.

"The human genome provides only scant information. The discovery of how microbes in the gut can influence the body's responses to disease means that we now need more research into this area," said Nicholson. "Understanding these interactions will extend human biology and medicine well beyond the human genome and help elucidate novel types of gene-environment interactions, with this knowledge ultimately leading to new approaches to the treatment of disease."

Nicholson's colleague, professor Ian Wilson from Astra Zeneca, believes the "human super-organism" concept "could have a huge impact on how we develop drugs, as individuals can have very different responses to drug metabolism and toxicity."

"The microbes can influence things such as the pH levels in the gut and the immune response, all of which can have effects on the effectiveness of drugs," Wilson said.

The Imperial College research demonstrates what many -- from X Files stalwarts to UFO fanatics -- have long claimed: We are not alone. Specifically, the human genome does not carry enough information on its own to determine key elements of our own biology.

Labels: evolution, Science

87 Great Photography Blogs and Feeds

Some of these are pretty cool, even if you're not a photographer.

[From Epic Edits Weblog]

OK, so this may be a bit overkill, but I wanted to share with you some of my photography feeds that I try to keep up with. I’m subscribed to a little over 200 feeds, and just over half of those are about photography.

Below are 87 of the photography blogs I follow, though some more closely than others. So if you’re looking for more reading material, I’m sure you can find one or two in this list that suit your needs. I tried categorizing everything, but there are several blogs that cover many topics and I was having a hard time coming up with concise categories. So basically, you’ll have to dig around. The blogs I find more interesting are near the top of the list, but it’s not an exact ranking of favoritism.

If you’re new to feed reading and the world of RSS, take a look at the Problogger’s explanation of RSS technology. And if you’re visiting on-site, consider subscribing to my feed if you haven’t already.

You can also see all of the feeds I subscribe to via my Google Reader shared items for my “Photography” and “Photos” folders (thanks for the idea Bryan). And also many thanks to Alick for putting together an OPML file for those in the list.

digtal Photography School — (RSS)
JMG-Galleries — (RSS)
Photocritic — (RSS)
365 Portraits — (RSS)
Strobist — (RSS)
Kwerfeldein — (RSS)
Joseph Szymanski — (RSS)
File Magazine — (RSS)
PhotographyVoter — (RSS)
Photopreneur — (RSS)

See the whole list.

Labels: Photography

Satire: Messages From Our Troops To The Families They Can Barely Remember

From The Onion News Network:

In this Onion News Network special feature, our soldiers stationed abroad remind us there's still a war going on.

Messages From Our Troops To The Families They Can Barely Remember

Labels: culture, humor

Gratitude 11/7/07 - Dharma

Today's Daily Dharma from Tricycle is reason enough to be grateful:

Automatic Joy and Sorrow

The view of interdependence makes for a great openness of mind. In general, instead of realizing that what we experience arises from a complicated network of causes, we tend to attribute happiness or sadness, for example, to single, individual sources. But if this were so, as soon as we came into contact with what we consider to be good, we would automatically be happy, and conversely, in the case of bad things, invariably sad. The causes of joy and sorrow would be easy to identify and target. It would all be very simple, and there would be good reason for our anger and attachment. When, on the other hand, we consider that everything we experience results from a complex interplay of causes and conditions, we find that there is no single thing to desire or resent, and it is more difficult for the afflictions of attachment or anger to arise. In this way, the view of interdependence makes our mind more relaxed and open.

~ The Dalai Lama, A Flash of Lightening in the Dark of Night; from Everyday Mind, edited by Jean Smith, a Tricycle book.

Labels: Buddhism, gratitude

Speedlinking 11/7/07

Quote of the day:

"Why is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how often we have told it to the same person?"
~ Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Image of the day:

BODY
~ Stretches that can help sciatica pain -- "According to an article from spine-health.com, most types of sciatica will benefit from a regular routine of hamstring exercise, especially hamstring stretching."
~ Hell on Wheels -- "'You're a worm — a gutless worm, with puny legs to boot.' And that's just Rob Fortney talkin' to his kids about their leg development! Imagine what he's going to say to you, you weak little douchebag." Aside from the bad lede, this is a good leg training article.
~ Hesfit 30 minute muscle routine -- "By altering load, rest periods, and movement selection, you can achieve the results you want in as little as 30 minutes per day. Fat loss, sure! Strength gains, you betcha! In this article, I’ll give you some ideas on packing on some lean muscle mass in 30 minutes or less."
~ Antioxidants Abound In Ripe Fruit -- "Fall, the season of colors: Leaves turn red, yellow, and brown. The disappearance of the color green and the simultaneous appearance of these other colors are also signs of ripening fruit. A team led by Bernhard Krautler at the University of Innsbruck (Austria) has now determined that the breakdown of chlorophyll in ripening apples and pears produces the same decomposition products as those in brightly colored leaves."
~ Key To Good Health May Be Concentrating On Food Not Nutrients -- "In a recent academic review, a University of Minnesota professor in the School of Public Health has concluded that food, as opposed to specific nutrients, may be key to having a healthy diet. This notion is contrary to popular practice in food industry and government, where marketers and regulators tend to focus on total fat, carbohydrate and protein and on specific vitamins and added supplements in food products, not the food items as a whole."
~ Research Links Diet To Cognitive Decline And Dementia -- "Research has shown convincing evidence that dietary patterns practiced during adulthood are important contributors to age-related cognitive decline and dementia risk. An article published in Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences highlights information on the benefits of diets high in fruit, vegetables, cereals and fish and low in saturated fats in reducing dementia risk."
~ Cause Of Insulin Resistance Discovered By UCSD Researchers -- "Researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine have discovered that inflammation provoked by immune cells called macrophages leads to insulin resistance and Type 2 diabetes. Their discovery may pave the way to novel drug development to fight the epidemic of Type 2 diabetes associated with obesity, the most prevalent metabolic disease worldwide."

PSYCHE/SELF
~ van Gogh & the history of manic depression -- "The introductory chapter of Manic-Depressive Illness: Bipolar Disorders and Recurrent Depression, by Frederick K. Goodwin and Kay Redfield Jamison, provides an excellent description of how Emil Kraepelin first classified manic depression (or bipolar disorder) and related conditions in the late 19th century, and how his work has influenced the way in which psychiatrists treat these illnesses today."
~ When Love Can't Cure -- "Life with a borderline partner."
~ 5 Secrets to a Successful Long-Term Relationship or Marriage -- "There have been a thousand or more articles written about how to have a successful long-term relationship or marriage, but none that seem to capture some of the core ingredients I’ve found important in relationships. So here’s the straight dope, from my experience."
~ 7 Rules for a Life Worth Living -- "Are you writing the story of your life, or are you letting other people and circumstances write it for you? You might not consider yourself a follower, but here are a few signs you aren’t in control...."
~ Meditation for Beginners: 20 Practical Tips for Quieting the Mind -- "Although a great number of people try meditation at some point in their lives, a small percentage actually stick with it for the long-term. This is unfortunate, and a possible reason is that many beginners do not begin with a mindset needed to make the practice sustainable."
~ 7 Powerful Tips to Overcome Failure -- "Failure is inevitable if we are to succeed in life. Unfortunately, many people do not know how to overcome failure, and they are stopped by it when they encounter one. The ability to overcome failure is one big difference between successful and mediocre people."
~ 7 ways to catch your breath -- "When life leaves you gasping for air there are ways to catch your breath, but they seem impossibly distant at the time. When you are in the middle of trouble, just trying to survive, solutions seem out of reach. The best you can do is prepare yourself in advance by learning these 7 ways to catch your breath, before you need to use them."
~ Further evidence that genetics has a role in determining sexual orientation in men -- "Is sexual orientation something people are born with - like the colour of their skin and eyes - or a matter of choice?"

CULTURE/POLITICS
~ Review says abstinence-only ed fails teens -- "Programs that focus exclusively on abstinence have not been shown to affect teenager sexual behavior, although they are eligible for tens of millions of dollars in federal grants, according to a study released by a nonpartisan group that seeks to reduce teen pregnancies."
~ Portrait of a poet as eco warrior -- "The newly published letters of Ted Hughes make no mention of his political life. But nature for the former poet laureate was more than a source of poetry. Seeing his beloved rivers and moors dying pushed him into a second career - as a fearless environmental activist."
~ The Cultural Contradictions of Democracy: Political Thought Since September 11 -- " What counts as "political thought" in the six years since 9/11? John Brenkman addresses this question in The Cultural Contradictions of Democracy by turning to the political language used by the government, its opponents, philosophers and policymakers. He is interested in how the United States developed a rhetoric to legitimate its "war on terror," particularly its invasion of Iraq. Not surprisingly, he finds contradictions and incoherence almost everywhere."
~ Climate Consensus: Bravery or Blunder? -- "In early October, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama unveiled their campaign platforms on energy and the environment. John Edwards hasn't made an event out of his, but he has one, and so do the other Democratic candidates. All of them support some kind of legislation to curb climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions, but they might be doing so at their own peril, a recent headline suggests."
~ To Bomb or Not to Bomb? -- "A recent Zogby poll has lit up the blogosphere for several days now with its claim that a majority of Americans are on board for U.S. military action against Iran. Both sides of the aisle are lamenting or celebrating accordingly, but a closer look at the poll itself could save everyone the effort."
~ The difference between watching Obama and Clinton in Iowa -- "I knew what to expect Tuesday night at his event at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, and yet after it was over I was still impressed. He was funny and passionate, and he connected with his big audience. When he left the stage, the room was on its feet and chanting with him. Nothing like that happened during the two days I followed Hillary Clinton."
~ Pat Robertson Endorses Giuliani -- "Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson, a prominent Christian leader and social conservative, endorsed former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani for the Republican nomination for president." Either Robertson is fully senile now, or Giuliani has sold out the rest of his moderate positions to the far right.

HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ Saving Monkeys from Extinction -- "A recent census of the world's primate population finds that many of them are in danger of disappearing."
~ Crude oil stalls in march toward $100 -- "Oil prices stalled in their climb toward $100 a barrel Wednesday after a government report said oil inventories fell less than expected last week while refinery utilization remained flat." With oil at nearly $100 a barrel, you'd think it might be time to develop alternative energy sources.
~ Malaria Deaths Dropped To One Quarter Previous Level In Zanzibar, Tanzania -- "Research in Zanzibar, Tanzania has found a remarkable fall in the number of children dying from malaria. Within a three-year period (2002 to 2005), malaria deaths among the islands' children dropped to a quarter of the previous level and overall child deaths to half."
~ Wind Patterns Spur Fla. Red Tide Blooms -- "Harmful red tide blooms along Florida's west coast in the fall are spurred when seasonal changes in wind patterns move nutrients east from the Mississippi River, scientists reported Wednesday."
~ La Niña Persists -- "The tropical Pacific Ocean remains in the grips of a cool La Niña, as shown by new data of sea-level heights from mid-October of 2007, collected by the U.S-French Jason altimetric satellite." Which means a warm dry winter here in the desert.
~ Bill Clinton, Green Building Council Launch Effort To Green US Schools -- "Today at the world’s largest green building exposition in Chicago, Greenbuild 2007, former President Bill Clinton announced a joint commitment to green all of America’s schools within a generation."
~ Wolf Controversy Resurfaces -- "A few years ago, a 22-year-old student was killed in the wilds of Saskatchewan, and evidence suggested that wild wolves were the culprits. The incident was widely reported in the media, since there had never before been a documented case of death-by-wolves in North America. Last week, the coroner's inquest finally finished, and the wolves were found guilty. But some wildlife experts still have their doubts. Goat, the blog over at High Country News, has a good summary of the controversy."

INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ Women, Men, and the Evolution of Culture -- Andrew Cohen -- "I just did the unthinkable: held a weekend retreat for women only." Uh, yeah, whatever . . . .
~ The power of gratitude -- "As I mentioned previously, this pilot light event had been associated with thinking about something I had heard in various forms and reflected on - that we don't have to "earn" the deathless, indestructible joyful peace of a Buddha. We always have permission to be truly unshakably happy deep down even if our conditions, including our thoughts and emotions, are responding negatively to the perception of an unfair or adverse situation."
~ A Glimpse of the Portal—Integral Content easier to navigate! -- "As we rapidly approach the completion of the new Integral Life web portal, we thought you would enjoy a few sneak peeks of the site. Welcome to the future of Integral Consciousness on the net!"
~ In partnership with Majeski Media, Stuart Davis is getting ready to Rock the (R)evolution! -- "Majeski Media paid an even $1,000,000 to Davis for the comprehensive rights, making Davis and Majeski partners in all endeavors past, present, and future. The powerful venture stands in stark contrast with general trends in the entertainment industries, which many feel have decreasing commitment to artist development, much less those with spiritual dimensions."
~ Neuro-Science & Photography??? -- "I have been struggling to find out if photography has the ability that music and meditation has on the brain (Neuroplasticity). When the human eye sees, it does not see life as a complete picture."
~ INTEGRALWORLD: 'If You Meet Wilber on the Road, Kill Him' -- ~C started a discussion at the Zaadz I-I pod that is, um, interesting.

Labels: speedlinking

No Country for Old Men

I love the Cohen Brothers' films, and I have enjoyed the Cormac McCarthy novels I have read. So it seems like a match made in heaven for the Cohens to make their first literary adaptation a McCarthy novel.

Rolling Stone gives it 4 stars (out of 4):

Misguided souls will tell you that No Country for Old Men is out for blood, focused on vengeance and unconcerned with the larger world outside a standard-issue suspense plot. Those people, of course, are deaf, dumb and blind to anything that isn't spelled out between commercials on dying TV networks. Joel and Ethan Coen's adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's 2005 novel is an indisputably great movie, at this point the year's very best. Set in 1980 in West Texas, where the chase is on for stolen drug money, the film — a new career peak for the Coen brothers, who share writing and directing credits — is a literate meditation (scary words for the Transformers crowd) on America's bloodlust for the easy fix. It's also as entertaining as hell, which tends to rile up elitists. What do the criminal acts of losers in a flyover state have to do with the life of the mind?
Plenty, as it turns out. McCarthy reveals a soulless America that is no country for anyone, never mind old men. The so-called codger representing besieged law and order is Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, played by Tommy Lee Jones with the kind of wit and assurance that reveals a master actor at the top of his game. On the page, the sheriff is a tad too folksy, dishing out cracker-barrel wisdom to his good wife, Loretta (Tess Harper), with a twinkle written into his homespun truths. As you already know by now (and In the Valley of Elah categorically proves it), Mr. Jones does not do twinkle. He's a hard-ass. And when he chews into a good line, you can see the bite marks. Here's the sheriff on how crime has gotten so out of hand: "It starts when you begin to overlook bad manners. Anytime you quit hearin' 'sir' and 'ma'am,' the end is pretty much in sight."
That unpretty end takes the form of Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), an assassin who rivals Hannibal Lecter for dispatching his victims without breaking a sweat. Bardem, with pale skin and the world's worst haircut, is stupendous in the role, a monster for the ages. Beneath his dark eyes lies something darker, evil topped with the cherry of perverse humor. Chigurh carries around a bulky cattle gun. He'll politely ask a mark to get out of a car before he caps him in the head; that way the car won't get messy with gristle and brain matter. And he has this little game he plays. Staring at the human species like a visitor from another planet, Chigurh flips a coin. Your choice of heads or tails might just save your life. Only don't piss him off.

Read the whole review.

Reviews at Rotten Tomatoes.

The trailer:

Labels: books, culture, film

AlterNet: Is The Onion America's Most Intelligent Newspaper?

As anyone who reads this blog from time to time will know, I am a huge fan of The Onion -- I have been ever since I worked for a magazine wholesaler who carried The Onion -- and this was back in the mid-1990s.

At a time when many print papers are struggling, The Onion is thriving, causing AlterNet to ask if The Onion is America's most intelligent newspaper.

In August 1988, college junior Tim Keck borrowed $7,000 from his mom, rented a Mac Plus, and published a 12-page newspaper. His ambition was hardly the stuff of future journalism symposiums: He wanted to create a compelling way to deliver advertising to his fellow students. Part of the first issue's front page was devoted to a story about a monster running amok at a local lake; the rest was reserved for beer and pizza coupons.
Almost 20 years later, The Onion stands as one of the newspaper industry's few great success stories in the post-newspaper era. Currently, it prints 710,000 copies of each weekly edition, roughly 6,000 more than The Denver Post, the nation's ninth-largest daily. Its syndicated radio dispatches reach a weekly audience of 1 million, and it recently started producing video clips too. Roughly 3,000 local advertisers keep The Onion afloat, and the paper plans to add 170 employees to its staff of 130 this year.
Online it attracts more than 2 million readers a week. Type onion into Google, and The Onion pops up first. Type the into Google, and The Onion pops up first.
But type "best practices for newspapers" into Google, and The Onion is nowhere to be found. Maybe it should be. At a time when traditional newspapers are frantic to divest themselves of their newsy, papery legacies, The Onion takes a surprisingly conservative approach to innovation. As much as it has used and benefited from the Web, it owes much of its success to low-tech attributes readily available to any paper but nonetheless in short supply: candor, irreverence, and a willingness to offend.

Read the rest.

Labels: culture, media

Tidy Monster -- Very Cool Animation

From Daily Motion:

‘Tidy Monster’ received the University of Hertfordshire’s highest ‘Film Day’ award presented by The Mill. It has also been included on 3Dtotal.com ‘Shorts Drawer 2007’ DVD.

via videosift.com

Labels: animation, film

Tom Waits - Lie To Me

The first track from Orphans: Brawlers -- released in 2006. Good stuff.

via videosift.com

Labels: Music

Satire: Fall Canceled After 3 Billion Seasons

From The Onion:

Fall Canceled After 3 Billion Seasons

November 7, 2007 | Issue 43•45
WASHINGTON, DC—Fall, the long- running series of shorter days and cooler nights, was canceled earlier this week after nearly 3 billion seasons on Earth, sources reported Tuesday.
The classic period of the year, which once occupied a coveted slot between summer and winter, will be replaced by new, stifling humidity levels, near- constant sunshine, and almost no precipitation for months.

"As much as we'd like to see it stay, fall will not be returning for another season," National Weather Service president John Hayes announced during a muggy press conference Nov. 6. "Fall had a great run, but sadly, times have changed."

Enlarge Image
A Beloved Classic Comes To An End

Some of fall's most memorable moments

1841: Leaves crumple gently underfoot

1969: Nation charmed by adorable kids bundled up in scarves

1998: A number of highly anticipated weddings showcase stunning foliage

2006: Crisp autumn air makes its final appearance

Said Hayes: "Frankly, we're amazed it lasted as long as it did."

Though it came as a surprise to many, the cancellation was not without its share of warning signs. In recent years, fall had been reduced from three months to a meager two-week stint, and its scheduled start time had been pushed back later and later each year. Still, many Americans continued to hold out hope that it would make a last-minute comeback.

"I guess I should have seen it coming, but it's still upsetting to think about fall being gone forever," said Peterborough, NH resident Dale Simmons, who was informed of the cancellation yesterday while waterskiing with his family. "Maybe other people won't miss it as much, but I practically grew up watching the leaves change color."

"Now what am I supposed to do with myself between August and December?" Simmons asked. "Wear shorts?"

Though disappointed by the cancellation, a number of Americans have admitted that the last few seasons of fall were "completely underwhelming" and often lacked the trademark mood and temperatures of earlier years.

"In my opinion, fall stopped really being fall after 2004," Margaret Davies of Augusta, ME said. "Once the birds quit migrating south and the need for air-conditioning extended into late October, it just wasn't the same anymore. To tell you the truth, I was shocked to hear that fall was even still around."

Fall's recent slide isn't uncommon, however, with spring and winter also suffering from quality issues. According to recent NWS data, winter has not had a consistent showing in almost four years, while last year spring was cut down to just five days to make room for an extended run of summer that began in March.

"With the way things have been going lately, it only makes sense that fall would be canceled," said Eric Fausbaum, an observer at an independent weather-watch agency, as he wiped beads of sweat from his brow. "But then I still remember when December meant having to put on a sweater to go outside."

Though thousands have signed Internet petitions to save fall, and protests have been scheduled throughout the week, many are skeptical that they will ever see the temperate season again. In addition, the National Weather Service said that even if fall were to return at a later date—perhaps for a brief guest appearance next spring—citizens shouldn't be too optimistic.

"I know people are upset to see fall go, but let's try to keep things in perspective," Hayes said. "After all, it's not like it's the end of the world or anything."

Regardless of whether it ever returns, Americans said they would always have fond memories of the once-ubiquitous season.
"The crunch of fallen leaves underneath your feet, the smell of ripening fruit hanging heavy on nearby trees, the crisp and cool evening air—I'll never forget it," Minnesota resident Jessica Bellauc said. "That was fall, right?"

Labels: humor, weather

Tucson Family Deported After Teen Found with Marijuana

Southern Arizona is a hotspot for illegal immigration. Perhaps more than anywhere else, the battle over illegal aliens has been in the news nearly constantly for years.

Today, the Arizona Daily Star covered a story about a family that was deported last Thursday after their teen son was discovered to have a small amount of marijuana at school. The family had been in Tucson for six years, had a house, and had two kids in the school system.

On Thursday, police responded to Catalina High after school officials found a small amount of marijuana in the backpack of a ninth-grader who appeared to be under the influence, said Chyrl Hill Lander, Tucson Unified School District spokeswoman.

Police asked the boy's parents to come to the school, at East Pima Street and North Dodge Boulevard.

When the officer asked to see the drivers' licenses of the boy's parents, they said they had been living illegally in the United States for six years and that their 17-year-old son and his brother, a 12-year-old sixth-grader at Doolen Middle School, were also here illegally, said Roberto Villaseñor, assistant Tucson police chief.

The officer called the Border Patrol, which sent agents to the school, said Richard DeWitt, Tucson Sector spokesman. They took the boy and his parents into custody and escorted the family from the school, Lander said.

From there, they went to Doolen Middle School, where the couple's other son was waiting in the principal's office when the officer and agents arrived, she said.

The mother and two boys were processed and dropped off at the border by the Border Patrol to return to Mexico in a procedure called voluntary return. The father was held for a formal removal — formerly known as a deportation — because he had been apprehended various times by the agency, DeWitt said. Their names were not released.

I don't care what anyone thinks about immigration and how to deal with those who are here against the law -- this was handled badly.

This family was dropped off at the border with no clothing, possessions, car, or anything else. Their home is left abandoned, along with everything they own. The father is in jail, perhaps rightly so in light of his past run ins with the law.

What do the Border Patrol expect these people to do? They have no money, no transportation, and likely no way to contact family. They have been left to fend for themselves in a country that is no longer their home.

As far as I am concerned, this is inhumane treatment. Yes, they were here illegally, and yes the kid had some weed. There had to be a better way of handling this than the way it was done. There has to be some compassion in the way the laws of this country are carried out.

Labels: culture, immigration, Politics

Speedlinking 11/6/07

Quote of the day:

"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office."
~ Aesop

Image of the day:

BODY
~ Nutrition for Newbies, Part 2 -- "People often don't read part 2 of an article. Muttonheads! Read this! Christian will fill your belly and mind with 14 nutritional nuggets and give some concrete advice on how to accomplish almost any physique goal you might have!"
~ Study shows link between body fat, red meat and cancer -- "There’s no question that excess body fat and regular consumption of red meat can have health-related consequences. Now, thanks to recent findings from the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research, we know how severe these consequences can be."
~ Carb Cycling For Fat Loss -- "Carbohydrates are used as energy by the body; they fuel our workouts, as well as provide ample fuel over the course of any day. Learn what carb cycling is and how it is not the evil thing people make it!"
~ The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Power Cleans -- "The term Clean comes from “cleaning the floor”. You clean the floor from the barbell by pulling it on your shoulders. Starting position is similar to a Deadlift. End position is like the start position of the Front Squat."
~ Housework can help you burn 50,000 calories a year -- "If you're struggling to motivate yourself to do the dishes or dust the shelves, then just remember the number 50,261. That's the average number of calories burned off each year simply by doing household chores."
~ Intervals Cause Spot Reduction of Belly Fat -- "According to Professor Steve Boucher, the Australian co-author of the latest interval training study to show intervals work better than slow cardio, "high intensity intermittent exercise may result in greater fat loss in the abdomen". Basically, intervals burn stomach fat first, over all other sources of fat on the body."
~ 5 healthy foods that often get a bad rap -- "Bad reputations tend to stick, even with foods. Continued negative press about a fruit, vegetable, or beverage is enough reason for many of us to banish it. But scientists looking beneath the surface are finding redeeming qualities for often-maligned peanut butter, eggs, avocadoes, coffee and mushrooms."

PSYCHE/SELF
~ Secrets of the Orgasm Doctor -- Revealed -- "Physician-scientist Wilhelm Reich, best known for his claims of a cosmic life force associated with sexual orgasm, died in federal prison, and the government burned tons of his books and other publications and destroyed his equipment."
~ Do You Have Social Anxiety Disorder? - Take the Quiz -- "Most everyone panics a bit at the thought of speaking in front of a room full of people. In fact, reportedly that is the number one phobia! And we are all somewhat uncomfortable when meeting new people in social situations. But social anxiety disorder (or social phobia) is much more severe than the norm. It is a debilitating condition that can severely impair one's functioning."
~ Social Anxiety Disorder? Or Just Plain Shy? -- "But leave it to the researchers (or in this case, the lack of research) to turn a normal feeling into something that can be diagnosed and, naturally, treated… By medication."
~ Why We All Stink as Intuitive Psychologists: The False Consensus Bias -- "Many people quite naturally believe they are good 'intuitive psychologists', thinking it is relatively easy to predict other people's attitudes and behaviours. We each have information built up from countless previous experiences involving both ourselves and others so surely we should have solid insights?"
~ Against an Hierarchy of Suffering -- "Is there some kind of division between 'real' and 'unreal' suffering, noble sufferers and self indulgent rich kids?"
~ Four mental foibles we all cherish - and how to get rid of them -- "As human beings, we have a natural wish to improve ourselves, and are always looking for ways to be more efficient, focused and fulfilled. However, we also have the opposite tendency to cherish certain limitations that prevent us from achieving these exact things! Let’s go into four of these limitations in detail."
~ Adding Color Untangles the Brain’s Gray Secrets -- "Researchers have unveiled a new way to map the brain’s billions of neurons."

CULTURE/POLITICS
~ Bring back the Greek gods -- "Prominent secular and atheist commentators have argued lately that religion "poisons" human life and causes endless violence and suffering. But the poison isn't religion; it's monotheism. The polytheistic Greeks didn't advocate killing those who worshiped different gods, and they did not pretend that their religion provided the right answers."
~ The Golden Wingnut Award -- "The Wingnut Contest is over and the votes have now been tallied by the prestigious accounting firm of Pollhost.com. So without further ado, the five winners of the Golden Wingnut Award are...."
~ Jane Cooper: 1924-2007 -- "Read poems, listen to recordings, and learn about her life." The sad loss of a great poet.
~ Richard Reiss: Artist As Citizen -- "I'm the co-founder of a project called Artist As Citizen. We connect art students with donors to help them create projects on social issues."
~ Yahoo Ripped for Role in Persecution of Chinese Journalist -- "Yahoo was negligent at best and probably complicit in providing information to the Chinese government that helped it imprison a pro-democracy journalist, the head of the House Foreign Affairs committee says."
~ Feds Fight Ruling on Patriot Act -- "The U.S. government on Monday appealed a ruling that it shouldn't be able to get personal phone, e-mail and financial records without a judge's approval, as now allowed under the USA Patriot Act."
~ Paul Passes Thompson and McCain in GOP Primary -- "Betting markets show a surge for the libertarian presidential candidate."
~ Musharraf's War on Moderates -- "If his emergency rule is about terrorism, why is he going after mainstream politicians and lawyers instead of the extremists?"

HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ David Sloan Wilson: What Do Selfish Genes, and Memes, Really Mean? -- "Dan Agin has boldly waved selfish genes goodbye in his report on my article with E.O. Wilson in the November 3 issue of New Scientist, which is a digest of a more comprehensive article that will appear in the December issue of Quarterly Review of Biology titled "Rethinking the Theoretical Foundation of Sociobiology." Agin´s farewell provoked a flurry of comments that raise the issue of what selfish genes, and memes, really mean."
~ The Top 10 Greenest Colleges and Universities in the U.S. -- " Higher education has responded to growing demand for more environmental focus -- here are the 10 best."
~ Why Do So Many Species Live In Tropical Forests And Coral Reefs? -- "There is a new development in a major debate over a controversial hypothesis of biodiversity and species abundance. Ecologists are reporting good agreement between the species richness of two of the most vulnerable ecosystems -- tropical forests and coral reefs -- and a simple mathematical model building on the "neutral theory of biodiversity." The research could aid the effort to protect terrestrial biodiversity from climate change and urban development."
~ Space Mission Xeus Probes Origins Of The Universe -- "XEUS, which stands for X-ray Evolving Universe Spectroscopy, aims to study the fundamental laws of the Universe. With unprecedented sensitivity to the hot, million-degree universe, XEUS will explore key areas of contemporary astrophysics: growth of supermassive black holes, cosmic feedback and galaxy evolution, evolution of large-scale structures, extreme gravity and matter under extreme conditions, the dynamical evolution of cosmic plasmas and cosmic chemistry."
~ Toshiba develops new MRAM device which opens the way to giga-bits capacity -- "Toshiba Corporation today announced important breakthroughs in key technologies for magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM), a promising, next-generation semiconductor memory device."
~ The Bottom Line: A review of recycled toilet-paper brands -- "Deciding what kind of toilet paper to buy is a delicate issue. Perhaps most significantly because you want to protect those delicates -- but what about this delicate planet of ours?"
~ Texas' first hydrogen fuel cell bus on the road -- "The University of Texas at Austin and Gas Technology Institute (GTI) have introduced a joint technology program that features the first hydrogen fuel cell bus to be licensed and operated in Texas."

INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ What Stage of Spiritual Growth Have You Attained? Find out Now! -- "Extensive religious research has shown that there are four distinct and classical stages of spiritual growth. Even those individuals who do not normally consider themselves spiritual or religious lie somewhere within one of these four evolving stages."
~ Premature Integral? -- "In this article, Chris Cowan - co-author of Spiral Dynamics - and his collegues discuss the uses and abuses of Spiral Dynamics, and directly address what they see as weaknesses within the Integral Movement in general. What is of particular interest is Cowan's framing of the distinctions he makes between Gravesian theory, Cowan's own use of Spiral Dynamics, and the work of Dr. Don Beck."
~ “Paideia in America” -- "I’ve lightly skimmed Marrs’ piece, deemed it of substance and have printed it out for deeper reading. My overall take on Marrs’ theme (not his essay, per se) is that no doubt there are not-small problems our society faces to reinvigorate classical education — meaning, in short, learning anchored in Greek and Latin languages, and the respective native civilizations — in any widespread fashion."
~ Saul Williams on YouTube -- "In celebration of Saul's new album release, we have uploaded these two videos to YouTube."
~ Compassion for self -- "This is something particularly interesting for me because I have a habit of mentally beating myself up when I think I should be doing something other than what I'm doing. For whatever reason, I feel that a lot of us are beating ourselves up for what we are or are not."
~ The Chemistry of Love (Part One) -- "There is still a lot of controversy about what happens in our bodies when we love, or fall in love, and to what extent the chemical soup of love determines what and how we feel. But there seems to be a consensus emerging. Part one of this two-parter summarizes the chemistry of love, to the extent scientists understand it today. If you've been reading my recent articles, you'll understand why I care about this. I hope you do, too."

Labels: speedlinking

Publisher's Weekly: Best Books 2007

This is the first of many best of lists sure to come in the next two months. At least this one is useful, suggesting some good titles to read that we may have missed during the year.

Here are only a couple of sections (of interest to me):

It's the end of the year—almost. A time for reflection, before the resolutions of 2008 send us all scrambling once again. So what did we read this year that kept us up at night, broke our hearts, opened our minds, made us fall in love? Three thousand books are published daily in the U.S., and PW reviewed more than 6,000 of them in 2007, in print and online. From that astounding number, we've culled a best books list covering our favorites in fiction, poetry, nonfiction, comics, religion, lifestyle and children's—150 in all. Some we've selected, such as Tree of Smoke, Fieldwork, Brother, I'm Dying and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, are up for National Book Awards; others have been blessed by Oprah (The Secret) or are a testament to DNA (Heart-Shaped Box). Some made us think about the music of the past (Can't Buy Me Love; Coltrane) or shiver in our boots (Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA); some, to paraphrase Kafka, just broke that frozen sea inside us.

* * * * *

Fiction
Call Me by Your Name
André Aciman (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
This tender, gay coming-of-age novel set in an Italian palazzo exquisitely renders first love on the Riviera.
Fieldwork
Mischa Berlinski (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
This first novel about an anthropology student in northern Thailand who “goes native” has it all: story, mystery characters, suspense, resolution.
The Savage Detectives
Roberto Bolaño (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Chilean-born novelist Bolaño (1953–2003), beautifully translated by Natasha Wimmer, deliriously tracks Mexico City poets Arturo Belano (Bolaño's alter ego) and Ulysses Lima as they travel the globe over 20-plus years.
The Tin Roof Blowdown
James Lee Burke (Simon & Schuster)
Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath provide the backdrop for an account of sin and redemption in New Orleans in Burke's 16th Dave Robicheaux novel.
Falling Man
Don DeLillo (Scribner)
DeLillo's 9/11 novel captures with breathtaking force the numbness and inchoate rage that followed the attacks.
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Junot Díaz (Riverhead)
Díaz's fierce, funny and tragic first novel, starring a sci-fi-and-fantasy–gobbling nerd-hero, is just what readers have held out for since Drown.
The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Mohsin Hamid (Harcourt)
Hamid's intelligent war on terror novel is written from the perspective of a young Pakistani whose sympathies, despite his fervid immigrant embrace of America, lie with the attackers.
Returning to Earth
Jim Harrison (Grove)
This gorgeous novel of an early death spirals into a wrenching saga set in Upper Michigan, as grief grips a family.
The Chicago Way
Michael Harvey (Knopf)
Harvey's debut thriller spins a twisted story in which the line between cops and criminals becomes dangerously blurred; the author combines the sardonic wit of Chandler with the gritty violence of Lehane's Kenzie and Gennaro series.
Heart-Shaped Box
Joe Hill (Morrow)
A particularly merciless ghost goes on the rampage in this debut supernatural thriller from the son of Stephen King.
The Archivist's Story
Travis Holland (Dial)
Set in 1939 Moscow, the story of a disgraced literature professor who's in charge of destroying anti-Soviet writings and decides to save an unfinished manuscript of Isaac Babel's captures the mood and realities of life in Soviet Russia.
Body of Lies
David Ignatius (Norton)
One of the best post-9/11 thrillers yet, this highly elaborate novel tells the story of an idealistic CIA officer stationed in Jordan after being wounded in Iraq.
Tree of Smoke
Denis Johnson (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Is it the ultimate Vietnam novel? Very likely. A terrifying epic that revolves around a murky intelligence operation.
Bowl of Cherries
Maynard Kaufman (McSweeney's)
The bawdy, original coming-of-age debut from the nonagenarian creator of Mr. Magoo has a delicious screwball sensibility.
What the Dead Know
Laura Lippman (Morrow)
In this outstanding stand-alone thriller, a driver who flees a car accident breathes new life into a 30-year-old mystery—the disappearance of two young sisters at a shopping mall—when she tells the police she's one of the missing girls.
The Complete Stories
David Malouf (Pantheon)
Australia's stark landscapes are at the harsh, violent center of a career's worth of Malouf's fictions, where relationships enter uncharted territory.
Them
Nathan McCall (Atria)
White people gentrify Atlanta's Old Fourth Ward—Martin Luther King Jr.'s parish—and things get very complicated and very ugly as real estate prices skyrocket along with tempers and resentments.
Remainder
Tom McCarthy (Vintage)
In McCarthy's haunting fiction debut, a semi-amnesiac London everyman uses newfound wealth to re-enact his memories in exacting detail.
Be Near Me
Andrew O'Hagan (Harcourt)
A priest's tumultuous, late-career assumption of a Scottish parish yields a surprising love story with emotional resonance and intellectual power to spare, laying bare a lifetime's worth of compromise.
Surveillance
Jonathan Raban (Pantheon)
An air of suspenseful dread hangs over every page of this intelligent, provocative thriller, set in Seattle.
Jamestown
Matthew Sharpe (Soft Skull)
A warped piece of American deadpan, Sharpe's postapocalyptic reimagining of the Jamestown settlement is a tour-de-force of black humor.
The Secret Servant
Daniel Silva (Putnam)
In Silva's superlative seventh novel to feature Gabriel Allon, the Israeli intelligence agent looks into the assassination of a professor in Amsterdam who's a secret Israeli asset.
Beyond Reach
Karin Slaughter (Delacorte)
The unflinching portrayal of lives ruined by methamphetamine makes the latest in Slaughter's Grant County, Ga., crime series a timely and unsettling read.
White Walls: Collected Stories
Tatyana Tolstaya (NYRB)
Beautiful, imaginative and disconcerting, the Russia of Tolstoy's great-grandniece is a labyrinth of eras, treasures and horrors: past and present, shabby and brutal, magical and otherworldly.
The Shadow Catcher
Marianne Wiggins (Simon & Schuster)
A magnificently Sebald-like approach to fictionalizing the life of photographer Edward Sheriff Curtis (1868–1952)—along with that of a woman named “Marianne Wiggins”—is suffused with crackling social commentary and breezy self-discovery.

* * * * *

Poetry
Next Life
Rae Armantrout (Wesleyan)
A veteran experimentalist and pioneering language poet, Armantrout cements her status as an important if oblique moral voice in this mature collection.
Elegy
Mary Jo Bang (Graywolf)
Bang wrote this powerfully moving investigation of grief in the year after her adult son's death.
Time and Materials
Robert Hass (Ecco)
Former poet laureate Hass's first book in a decade finds him meditating on the grim state of the environment and humanity's self-destructive tendencies.
The Collected Poems
Zbigniew Herbert (Ecco)
The late Polish master made myths of the shards of a ravaged century. Finally, all of his work is available to English readers in one volume.
Green and Gray
Geoffrey G. O'Brien (Univ. of California)
A rising star and a uniquely subtle voice, O'Brien has crafted poems that both take a long view of American capitalism and scrutinize the ways words interact.

* * * * *

Nonfiction
The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943–1944
Rick Atkinson (Holt)
Atkinson surpasses his Pulitzer-winning An Army at Dawn with this empathetic, perceptive analysis of the second stage in the U.S. Army's grassroots development into the most formidable fighting force of WWII.
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
Ishmael Beah (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
This absorbing account by a young man who, as a boy of 12, gets swept up in Sierra Leone's civil war surpasses the best journalistic efforts in revealing the life and mind of a child abducted into the horrors of warfare.
The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 1648–1815
Tim Blanning (Viking)
Blanning splendidly blends political events with social and intellectual history to trace the emergence of Europe as we know it today.
Photo by Sammy Davis Jr.
Burt Boyar (HarperEntertainment)
Davis biographer Boyar offers this collection of beautiful archival snapshots taken by Sammy Davis Jr., beginning in the early 1950s.
Brother, I'm Dying
Edwidge Danticat (Knopf)
Danticat's memoir recalls how a family adapted and reorganized itself over and over, enduring and succeeding to remain kindred in spite of living apart.
The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939–1945
Saul Friedländer (HarperCollins)
Integrating a wide-angle history with closeups of individual Jewish lives, Friedländer completes his masterly history of the Holocaust.
Can't Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain, and America
Jonathan Gould (Harmony)
Page after page, you can hear the music as Gould's deft hand makes the book sing—this is music writing at its best.
Graffiti L.A.
Steve Grody (Abrams)
A 17-year effort, this stunning, definitive examination of Los Angeles street art details all aspects of the still-illegal form with 900 gorgeous photographs, testimony from a double-handful of artists and additional material on an included CD-ROM.
How Doctors Think
Jerome Groopman (Houghton)
This could be the most important book on medicine you will ever read, analyzing why doctors misdiagnose—and how to help them get it right.
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
Naomi Klein (Holt/Metropolitan)
The economic policies—privatization, free trade, slashed social spending—of the “Chicago School” and Milton Friedman are catastrophic, argues this vigorous polemic that demonstrates how free-market ideologues both welcome and provoke the collapse of other people's economies.
The Curtain: An Essay in Seven Parts
Milan Kundera (HarperCollins)
The great novelist offers a remarkably concise history of the novel, arguing that we must tear away “the curtain of preinterpretation” to experience a work's truth.
The Atomic Bazaar: The Rise of the Nuclear Poor
William Langewiesche (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
World nuclearization “has become the human condition,” Langewiesche warns in this brief, tightly packed study that precisely defines an issue worthy of being at the forefront of our international policy.
Edith Wharton
Hermione Lee (Knopf)
Lee illuminates the dark corners of Wharton's life while examining this complex woman's contradictory values and impulses.
First Class Citizenship: The Civil Rights Letters of Jackie Robinson
Edited by Michael G. Long (Times)
Coinciding with the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's color-barrier–breaking entry into major league baseball, this absorbing collection of letters reveals new facets of the icon's private nature.
Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle over Global Warming
Chris Mooney (Harcourt)
Having witnessed Katrina's devastation of his mother's New Orleans house, science writer Mooney explores “whether global warming will strengthen or otherwise change hurricanes in general.”
Coltrane: The Story of a Sound
Ben Ratliff (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Always going past the legend to focus on the real-life stories and the actual recordings of this great jazz saxophonist, Ratliff's assessment is a model for music criticism.
The Baby Thief: The Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller Who Corrupted Adoption
Barbara Bisantz Raymond (Carroll & Graf)
Freelance writer (and adoptive mom) Raymond looks at the life and legacy of the little-remembered orphanage director Georgia Tann, a corrupt but nationally lauded figure whose whose adoption policies are still followed today; the book is a rigorous page-turner.
Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race
Richard Rhodes (Knopf)
This third volume in a history of nuclear weaponry, admirable for its research, might also be described as a chronicle of the unmaking of the arms race.
The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography from the Revolution to the First World War
Graham Robb (Norton)
The French provinces were once a foreign country to Parisians, intimately rendered by Robb in all their strange fascination.
The Door of No Return: The History of Cape Coast Castle and the Atlantic Slave Trade
William St Clair (BlueBridge)
Culled from previously unexplored papers in the British National Archives, this gripping history describes the British headquarters at Ghana's Cape Coast Castle, the “last look” point for more than three million sold into the 17th-century slave trade.
Touch and Go: A Memoir
Studs Terkel (New Press)
The legendary interviewer turns the microphone inwards in this wonderful memoir—a fitting portrait of a man who seeks truth with compassion, intelligence, moxie and panache.
Shadow of the Silk Road
Colin Thubron (HarperCollins)
In his latest absorbing travel epic, Thubron follows the course of the ancient network of trade routes that connected central China with the Mediterranean coast.
Poor People
William T. Vollmann (Ecco)
Varied responses to the question “Why are you poor?” fuel this meditation on the nature of poverty by National Book Award–winning novelist and journalist Vollmann.
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
Tim Weiner (Doubleday)
Weiner's comprehensive survey is a damning indictment of American intelligence policy that identifies the persistent problems that plague the CIA.
Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain
Maryanne Wolf (HarperCollins)
Child development professor Wolf maintains the tone of a curious, erudite friend as she synthesizes cutting-edge, interdisciplinary research—psychology and archeology, linguistics and education, history and neuroscience—in a pathbreaking look at the reading brain.

Read the whole list.

Labels: Best of Lists, books

Nine Inch Nails - Right Where It Belongs (Andrea Giacobbe)

Trent almost sounds like a Buddhist at times in this song. Very strange video by Andrea Giacobbe.

via videosift.com

Labels: Music

Satire: Mean Automakers Dash Nation's Hope For Flying Cars

From The Onion News Network:

Onion News Network anchor Brandon Armstrong argues passionately for the existence of flying cars.

Mean Automakers Dash Nation's Hope For Flying Cars

Labels: humor

Satire: Bush Proud U.S. Economic Woes Can Still Depress World Markets

[The image originally linked to here has been removed. The creator doesn't believe in Creative Commons.]

As reported in The Onion:

Bush Proud U.S. Economic Woes Can Still Depress World Markets

November 6, 2007 | Issue 43•45
WASHINGTON, DC—While speaking to a group of White House reporters, President Bush fended off questions about the weak state of the dollar, the expected long-term deficit caused by Social Security and Medicare payments, and a faltering housing market by assuring reporters that the U.S. economy's ability to have such a widespread negative impact on the world only further proves it is "easily the best."
"Our recent credit crisis alone has been enough to depress share prices in Japan, Rome, China, and Brazil," a smirking Bush said during a press conference Thursday.

"Sounds to me like our economy is still pretty powerful." Bush later added that he was equally proud of the impact U.S. foreign policy has had over the past six years, adding that only a truly great president could be capable of fostering so much hatred across the globe.

Labels: economics, humor, Politics

Speedlinking 11/5/07

Quote of the day:

"Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he'll buy a funny hat. Talk to a hungry man about fish, and you're a consultant."
~ Scott Adams

Image of the day:

BODY
~ Nutrition for Newbies, Part 1 -- "The fantastic series on bodybuilding for newbies (and crusty vets who could use a reminder) continues with Christian's take on nutrition. Just about everything you need to know is here. Just add salt (but not too much)."
~ Exercise More Important than Weight Loss for Diabetes Prevention -- "Exercise is even more important than weight loss for prevention or control of diabetes, according to a report from the Australian National University in Canberra. Dr. Richard Telford concludes that obesity is associated with, but does not cause, diabetes, heart disease and premature death."
~ Starting Strength 2nd Edition Book Review -- "In 2004 Mark Rippetoe & Lon Kilgore wrote Starting Strength. It was the first book that not only taught you how to do an exercise correctly, but also why you’re doing it wrong & how to fix it. Starting strength became a reference. Three years later Mark Rippetoe & Lon Kilgore release Starting Strength 2nd Edition. I pre-ordered the book in August 2007 & received it last week. Here’s a review of Starting Strength 2nd edition."
~ Increased Injury Risk When Energy Drinks Mixed With Alcohol -- "College students who drink alcohol mixed with so-called "energy" drinks are at dramatically higher risk for injury and other alcohol-related consequences, compared to students who drink alcohol without energy drinks, according to new research from Wake Forest University School of Medicine."
~ Yoga found to boost health in heart failure patients -- "An eight-week regimen of yoga proved safe for patients with chronic heart failure and helped reduce signs of inflammation often linked with death, according to a study released on Monday."
~ NSAIDs Protect Against Parkinson's Disease (HealthDay) -- "Taking over-the-counter pain medicines called non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) may reduce the risk of Parkinson's disease, according to a study by researchers at the UCLA School of Public Health in Los Angeles."
~ Antioxidants Could Protect Against Nuclear Radiation -- "Scientists say that antioxidants found in whole grains and high-fiber foods can protect against radiation from sunlight and even nuclear bombs."

PSYCHE/SELF
~ Soul Pseudoexplanations -- "Out of this divorce between mechanism and experience came mind-body dualism and the conceptualization of a motivating 'soul' beneath physiological mechanisms. Dualism is the 'common sense' idea that some kind of supernatural mechanism is intimately connect to and drives the physical. Dualism is a soul-of-the-perceptual-gap pseudoexplanation."
~ Why Groups and Prejudices Form So Easily: Social Identity Theory -- "People's behaviour in groups is fascinating and frequently disturbing. As soon as humans are bunched together in groups we start to do odd things: copy other members of our group, favour members of own group over others, look for a leader to worship and fight other groups. Just glance at Sherif's Robbers Cave experiment for proof of how easy it is to provoke war between groups."
~ Is the developing world better for schizophrenia? -- "One of the most commonly repeated facts about schizophrenia is that people diagnosed with the condition tend to do better in developing countries, rather than in rich Western countries. A new study has reviewed outcome studies from low and middle-income countries across the world and found the picture just isn't that clear."
~ Dream Symbols 21: Animals (2) Fleeing From a Pre-Historic Creature -- "As previously said, animals may have to do with our not-yet explored instinctual (and often sexual) nature. If an animal is furthermore pre-historic, we may have a deeply primordial, chthonic (embedded in the depths) aspect of our psyche on hand. How this plays out, depends, of course, not only on the dream, but also on the dreamer and his or her life and understanding of the self to that point."
~ Love After Loss -- "When a boyfriend suffers grief and loss."
~ Coping with Grief -- "Grieving is not the same for everyone."
~ The Key to Archetypes -- "Carol Pearson & Hugh Marr's guidebook interprets the results of the Pearson-Marr Archetype Indicator test. It brings Jung's archetypes & psychological types to life!"

CULTURE/POLITICS
~ Twenty years ago today -- " So the “Music” chapter is the most difficult one for young fans of The Closing Of The American Mind—because it’s the point at which you realize just how much Allan Bloom means it. And by “young fans,” I mean anyone under the age of Mick Jagger, who features heavily in that section." This is an excellent article -- see Matthew Dallman for a critique.
~ Suffering, Evil and the Existence of God -- "Now two new books (to be published in the coming months) renew the debate. Their authors come from opposite directions – one from theism to agnosticism, the other from atheism to theism – but they meet, or rather cross paths, on the subject of suffering and evil."
~ Permanent Adolescents Go Public -- "P.J. O'Rourke in the Weekly Standard writes only half in jest of the coming drain on Social Security: "How can present Social Security allotments be expected to fund our sky-diving, bungee-jumping, hang gliding and white-water rafting, our skiing, golf and scuba excursions, our photo safaris to Africa, bike tours of Tuscany and sojourns at Indian ashrams, our tennis clinics, spa treatments, gym memberships and personal fitness training, our luxury cruises to the Galapagos and Antarctica, the vacation homes in Hilton Head and Vail, the lap pools, Jacuzzis, and clay courts being built thereat and the his and hers Harley-Davidsons?" The political implications are immense."
~ Literature and History: A Response -- "A recent post at Pinky's Paperhaus entitled "The backwards academic," muses critically on the backward-looking focus of the GRE subject exam in English literature, required for applicants to English department Ph.D. programs, and, in Pinky's case, Ph.D. programs in Creative Writing." This post is essentially a defense of the depth and history focus of the GRE test -- and I agree.
~ Thompson Adviser Quits Campaign -- "An adviser to Republican Fred Thompson quit the presidential candidate's campaign Monday, one day after a report about his decades-old criminal record for drug dealing."
~ Wavering Republicans -- "Party faithful are upset with Bush, but a Clinton nomination may bring them together."
~ Can Musharraf Keep His Grip on Pakistan? -- "The declaration of emergency fuels an angry backlash—and anxieties in Washington."
~ Iraq: Nearly 2.3 Million Displaced -- "Nearly 2.3 million Iraqis - the vast majority of them women and children - have fled their homes but remain inside the country's borders and are in urgent need of basic care, according to a report issued Monday by the Iraqi Red Crescent."

HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ Goodbye Selfish-Gene: A New Upheaval in the Science of Human Behavior -- "Well, it seems that the father of sociobiology, E.O. Wilson has changed his mind: in the current issue of New Scientist (November 3, 2007), evolutionary biologists David Sloan Wilson and Edward O. Wilson effectively end the hegemony of the selfish gene idea: they review the field and declare in a voice loud and clear that group selection was mistakenly cast aside during previous decades, that the evidence for group selection is too strong to be ignored, and that the current ideas about how evolution works need to be revised."
~ Mars Express Probes The Red Planet's Most Unusual Deposits -- "The radar system on ESA's Mars Express has uncovered new details about some of the most mysterious deposits on Mars: The Medusae Fossae Formation. It has given the first direct measurement of the depth and electrical properties of these materials, providing new clues about their origin."
~ Cirrus Disappearance: Warming Might Thin Heat-trapping Clouds -- "The widely accepted (albeit unproven) theory that manmade global warming will accelerate itself by creating more heat-trapping clouds is challenged by new research. Instead of creating more clouds, individual tropical warming cycles that served as proxies for global warming saw a decrease in the coverage of heat-trapping cirrus clouds."
~ Scientists warn that species extinction could reduce productivity of plants on Earth by half -- "An international team of scientists has published a new analysis showing that as plant species around the world go extinct, natural habitats become less productive and contain fewer total plants - - a situation that could ultimately compromise important benefits that humans get from nature."
~ When Birds Get Lost, Experience Counts -- "A learned map of their migration keeps adult birds on track, but juveniles stay lost."
~ Three New Exo-planets Discovered -- "Three new extrasolar planets have been discovered. The planets orbit around stars similar to our Sun that are located at a distance of 850 light-years away from the Earth. Two are in the constellation of Phoenix visible only from the Southern hemisphere, while the third is in the Northern constellation of Lyra."
~ WCS study finds potential to double tiger numbers in South Asia -- "Researchers at the Wildlife Conservation Society and other institutions declare that improvements in management of existing protected areas in South Asia could double the number of tigers currently existing in the region."

INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ Deepak Chopra: A CAT-Scan of the Global Brain (Part 3) -- "Trying to understand the global brain with the same objectivity that science explores the human brain is difficult, because every society is enmeshed in the global brain. None of us occupies a privileged position outside and apart. Our personal perceptions are often overwhelmed by influences from collective consciousness -- this is why so few people are able to separate themselves from fear of terrorism, for example, and why the vast majority don't even try. Yet the more objectively we observe the global brain, the more understanding it yields."
~ Hannah’s screening, tonight -- "Excited to report that Hannah has her first screening of her newest film this evening. The film is called Small Comforts. It runs 10 minutes. The screening takes place at Columbia College Chicago, along with four other films (made by her colleagues in the Directing III class). A medium-sized theater used for screenings of student films. But still, a big screen with theater-quality sound."
~ The Radical Spirituality of Generation X, Part 16: Where Soma Meets Soul: Body Stories from Within -- "Some say the soul transcends this mundane body, but I say the body is the transmutation of soul into dense fleshy form. Rather than profane, the body, the soma, is literally a medium of sacred transmission, the organic venue for the soul's voice. In our reaching, our holding, in our opening and closing, in each expansion and contraction within the pulse of a heartbeat or the rhythm of a breath, is the physiological signature of the soul."
~ What the Critics of the New Atheists Don't See -- "Overall, Dalrymple's essay is a good read. As he pointed out, intentionality, meaning, and purpose seem to have taken a back seat in the recent books by the New Atheists because of their focus on the bad side of religion and their often sarcastic, confrontational, and polemic tones. However, as Sam Harris had pointed out in his rebuttal to Dalyrmple...."
~ YET AGAIN MORE SNAPPY ANSWERS and MORE SNAPPY ANSWERS TO STUPID QUESTIONS* -- Brad Warner -- "I thought I’d try and answer a couple more e-mail questions."
~ Book Review: Basic Teachings of the Buddha by Glenn Wallis -- "Wallis is an associate professor of religion at Georgia and has a PhD in Sanskrit and Indian Studies from Harvard. The book he has written cuts through cliched translations of Buddhist terminology and popular assumtions of what practicing the dharma means, revealing the Buddha's teachings as a highly rational and pragmatic methodology based on direct, empirical, personal experience."

Labels: speedlinking

Robert Masters: What Is Integral?

The integral world is in transition. For a long time, to many of us, Ken Wilber was the only game in town. In recent years, however, there has been a concerted effort among some of those interested in integral theory to create an integral theory that is not simply Wilberian theory.

Among those working the integral territory is Robert Masters. In his November newsletter, he asks and answers the question, What Is Integral?

He manages to talk about integral without ever mentioning Ken Wilber.

WHAT IS “INTEGRAL”?

“Integral” is fast becoming a very loosely applied term, supplying a bit of contemporary heft to otherwise pedestrian nouns, while it slides ever further into that once-was-fashionable territory that has swallowed up such terms as “holistic.” This does not mean that we ought to dump “integral” or start dumbing it down or hoist it up onto a postpostmodern soapbox, but rather that we define it as clearly as possible, both directly and through comparison with related terms.

“Integral” to me basically means inclusive in a radically comprehensive manner. I say “radically” for a number of reasons: (1) What’s being brought together constitutes not just parts of a totality, but also as much as possible of that totality’s presence, in as many directions and depths as possible; (2) such a bringing-together is far more than just a get-together or reunion or conference of partially connected items or qualities; and (3) the circle of extension that reaches from within out beyond every part illuminates and deepens the connections between all the pieces or qualities being brought together, literally integrating them without any requisite homogenization or dilution of individual differences. (Implicit to this is the fully embodied realization that everything exists through relationship, along with the invitation to become intimate with it all.)

“Holistic” (and “wholistic”) was the pseudo-hippyish ancestor of “integral” (even though Aurobindo was using “integral” long before the 1960s), as full of New Age, anemically grounded optimism as it was lacking in genuine practicality. “Holistic” meant well, but didn’t rise for long from the kind of sloppy/fluffy thinking and metaphysical quicksand that made it an easy target for probing minds that didn’t give a damn about spiritualized cognition and its sidekick clichés. “Integral” is a more sober term than “holistic,” more imbued with a sense of true inclusiveness, but nevertheless is in growing danger of shipwrecking itself on overly intellectual reefs, especially as it busies itself theorizing about its theorizing. Where “holistic” had an anti-intellectual quality to it, “integral” can tend to lean too far the other way. In both cases, however, there is a lack of real embodiment.

“Integral” is an increasingly popular adjective. Placing it before words like “parenting” or “cooking” or “dog-grooming” tends to give them a touch more respectability. It’s easy to stick “integral” in places where it may not belong. So use it sparingly. Don’t trivialize it. Be discerning in your use of it.

An integral approach is not just sophisticated eclecticism or a neatly mapped mixture of applied methodologies. We may be meditating, working out, doing a bit of shadow-work, and keeping up with the latest in integral theory, but this does not necessarily mean that we are actually being integral. We can only say that we’re being integral if our various practices and ways of being are functioning together (and not just in our eyes!) as a consistently embodied, more-than-adequately functioning whole, through which we are, however gradually, cultivating intimacy with all that we are. We may not have fully arrived yet, but are on our way, and have the momentum to back this up, along with an integrity that runs more and more deeply through all that we do.

Being truly integral means, among other things, developing intimacy with everything that constitutes us. A genuinely integral consciousness lives such intimacy both conceptually and nonconceptually.

An integral approach works with our physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and social dimensions, level upon level, consistently taking all of it into more-than-just-intellectual account, without losing touch with the totality that includes and pervades it all.

Overly intellectual approaches to being integral pay insufficient attention to emotions, in part perhaps because emotions are just too messy and too nonlinearly inclusive of the rest of our dimensions to be able to be neatly mapped. Emotions implicate us as a totality. They obviously involve the physical/physiological and the cognitive, but also include the social, and sometimes also the spiritual. (Very briefly, affect is the intrinsic, biological dimension of emotion; feeling is our conscious experience of affect; and emotion is the framing and dramatization of feeling. Where affect is reaction, and feeling the recognition of affect, emotion is adaptation.) Emotion involves feeling, cognition, social factors, related action tendencies, and perspectival capacity, all of which interact and work together. Any integral approach that only superficially deals with emotions is only superficially integral.

An integral approach is not going to be much of a reality for us if we ourselves are not already living, to a significant degree, in an integral fashion. Part of what is needed is a clear recognition of where we are not integral, not in healthy relationship to some aspect of ourselves, not in integrity. Facing our fragmentation rather than trying to rise above it or only superficially deal with it is a step toward integrity. “Integral” is a bit like “love,” in that both terms are actually quite profound in their meaning, but are often used too readily or superficially. The intention to be integral is not in itself integral.

May we do whatever is needed to make “integral” a fitting term for how we are actually living. May we align ourselves with what-really-matters in every area of our life, so that “integral” becomes not something we believe in, but rather something that we cannot help but live.

Any thoughts?

Labels: Integral

Daily Dharma: Better or Worse

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Today's Daily Dharma from Tricycle:

Better or Worse

Ordinarily, we spend all our time comparing and discriminating between this and that, always looking around for something good to happen to us. And because of that we become restless and anxious about everything. As long as we are able to imagine something better than what we have or who we are, it follows naturally that there could also be something worse. We are constantly pursued by misgivings that something bad will happen. In other words, as long as we live by distinguishing between the better way and the worse way, we can never find absolute peace such that whatever happens is all right.

When we let go of our thoughts that distinguish better from worse and instead see everything in terms of the Universal Self, we are able to settle upon a different attitude toward life--the attitude of magnanimous mind that whatever happens, we are living out Self which is only Self. Here a truly peaceful life unfolds.

~ Kosho Uchiyama, Opening the Hand of Thought; from Everyday Mind, edited by Jean Smith, a Tricycle book.

Labels: Buddhism

Q&A: Reznor, Williams up digital ante with $5 album

Reuters talks to Trent Reznor and Saul Williams about their decision to circumvent the music companies and sell their new album online -- for no more than $5 each.

Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor has spent the past few years using new methods to disseminate his music to fans. Past experiments have included hidden messages on T-shirts, "forgotten" USB drives in bathrooms containing copies of his last record, "Year Zero," and cryptic Web sites, all culminating in a prerelease free stream on the band's MySpace page.
Having just fulfilled his contract with longtime label Interscope, Reznor is upping the digital ante in tandem with activist/musician Saul Williams. Williams' Reznor-produced concept album, "The Rise and Fall of Niggy Tardust," which went live October 31 via the Fader label, can be obtained in three download formats: 192 kbit/s MP3, 320 kbit/s MP3 and free Lossless audio codec (FLAC).

The lower-quality MP3 is free, while the high-quality MP3 and FLAC cost $5. In a twist on the "name your own price" scheme that Radiohead employed for its recent album, "In Rainbows," fans will not be allowed to pay more than $5 for "Niggy Tardust."

Billboard spoke to Reznor and Williams about the implications of their sales model, what this might mean for future Nine Inch Nails releases and why people should be willing to pay the same amount for music as they do for a good cup of coffee.

Q: How did you decide to collaborate? What sort of time line was involved?

Trent Reznor: "A couple of years ago, I came across a video from Saul's last record, and it was like a breath of fresh air. At the time, I was looking for tour support and hand-picked him to join us on the road. We became friends and decided to try recording a couple of tracks. It turned out to be an incredibly engrossing back-and-forth experience; I think there was a lot of mutual respect, and Saul really gave me a lot of confidence."

Saul Williams: "The record started on the road, in hotels. We ended up doing three drafts. We did 14 tracks, and I sat with those for a few months. We came back, revisited them, did some more work and took another four months off, and then we got around to the final mixing."

Read the rest.

Here is a track from the new album, which I quite like.

Saul Williams - Banged And Blown Through

Labels: Music, technology

Matthieu Ricard on Finding Happiness Through Mind Training

This is a good TED Talk. I found this at Pick the Brain, who conveniently provided Ricard's main points:

Some of the topics covered include:

The nature of happiness and why it is often ignored for the sake of other pursuits.
The distinct different between happiness and pleasure.
Training the mind to control emotions to find happiness in any situation.
Scientifically measuring happiness and our ability to train the mind through neuro-plasticity.

Labels: Buddhism, personal growth, Psychology

Satire: Bush Gives Musharraf Tips on Eliminating Democracy

From Andy Borowitz at Huffington Post:

Bush Gives Musharraf Tips on Eliminating Democracy

Posted November 4, 2007 | 10:11 AM (EST)

In what he described as "an emergency mission to help a key ally in the war on terror," President George W. Bush flew to Islamabad today to give General Pervez Musharraf tips on how to eliminate democracy.
Mr. Bush said he scheduled the trip just hours after General Musharraf declared a state of emergency in Pakistan and suspended elections "because when it comes to eliminating democracy, I thought my friend Pervez could benefit from my experience."

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Mr. Bush said that while he commended General Musharraf's impulse to eliminate democratic institutions, he felt that the military strongman was going about it the wrong way: "When you're getting rid of democracy, the last thing you want to do is tell people you're doing it."

Mr. Bush said that eliminating such things as privacy, freedom of speech and the constitution had to be done "very quietly and stealthy-like."

"If I had gone on TV one day and just ended democracy like Pervez did, I would have caught holy hell from Maureen Dowd," Mr. Bush chuckled. "You've got to be crafty about these things."

Mr. Bush chalked up Mr. Musharraf's decision to disclose the elimination of democracy as a "beginner's mistake," adding, "I've had six-plus years of practice at this."

He also criticized the Pakistani dictator's firing of the chief justice of the Supreme Court: "Trust me, if you're going to get rid of elections, a Supreme Court could come in handy."

Elsewhere, astronauts spent Saturday morning repairing a solar panel on the International Space Station, then spent the rest of the day drinking and stalking ex-lovers.

Labels: humor, Politics

Satire: Study Finds Working At Work Improves Productivity

From The Onion:

Study Finds Working At Work Improves Productivity

November 5, 2007 | Issue 43•45
WASHINGTON, DC—According to a groundbreaking new study by the Department of Labor, working—the physical act of engaging in a productive job-related activity—may greatly increase the amount of work accomplished during the workday, especially when compared with the more common practices of wasting time and not working.

Enlarge Image
An American worker can triple his work output by working.

"Our findings are astounding: By simply sitting down and doing work, employees can dramatically increase their output of goods and services," said Deputy Undersecretary of Labor Charlotte Ponticelli, who authored the report. "In fact, 'working' may revolutionize the way people work."

Perhaps even more shocking, the study reveals that not working significantly decreases worker productivity, sometimes even resulting in no work getting done at all. Similar findings were reported in the areas of avoiding work, putting off work, complaining about work instead of actually working, pretending to work, and fucking around.

"Fucking around is in fact detrimental to the work process," the study reads in part.

To conduct the study, researchers split the staff of a Washington-based insurance company into two groups and assigned each group a series of tasks to be completed by the end of the day. The control group engaged in normal workplace activities, such as standing around and talking, staring vacantly at the computer screen, and surfing the Internet. The other group was instructed to do work and complete its given tasks. Incredibly, the group that did not do any work failed to get any work done, while the group that did do work finished all the work.

The researchers believe that these lessons could possibly be applied to fields outside the insurance industry.

Enlarge Image
Typical workplace activities, such as shooting the shit, turn out to be less productive than not wasting time.

"Based on the study, we can safely conclude that if an employee's job is to process expense reports, doing a crossword puzzle will result in the successful completion of that task zero times out of 100, while processing expense reports will result in the successful completion of that task 100 times out of 100," head researcher Richard Schoemberg said.

Jon Halper, a Baltimore-area small-business owner, claims that people used to laugh whenever he told them that the key to worker productivity was not checking friends' MySpace pages for hours at a time, but rather working.

"After this study, I feel vindicated," said Halper, who believes working is so important that for years he has required all his employees to work throughout the day. "Hopefully, more companies will embrace the idea that employees working on things that they are supposed to do is practically essential."

A similar study conducted at Harvard University over a period of three years attempted to determine conclusively whether working was more productive than various different subsets of not working. The results showed across the board that working is 100 percent more productive than listening to music and checking e-mails, 100 percent more productive than meandering around the office socializing with coworkers, 100 percent more productive than playing online Sudoku, 100 percent more productive than watching YouTube videos of nostalgic childhood television programming, 100 percent more productive than reading celebrity-gossip blogs while chatting with friends on Instant Messenger, 100 percent more productive than napping, and 98.2 percent more productive than not showing up to work.

Despite the staggering new findings, many American workers say that they still do not feel comfortable working on the job.
"I love coming into work every day," Arlington, VA sales manager Bryce Davidson said. "I get to have great conversations with [office receptionist] Sandy, challenge myself with Yahoo! TextTwist, and still have time to set my fantasy-football roster. Why would I want to ruin work by working?"

Labels: humor, work

Gratitude 11/4/07

I had been feeling pretty disconnected the past few days, but having coffee with my friend Susan this morning really helped me get grounded again. It's amazing how important it is to know another person understands what we are going through when we are doing deep work on ourselves.

Some other things I am grateful for today:

1) The Oregon Ducks beat Arizona State yesterday to take control of the Pac-10 race. And with a loss by Boston College to Florida State, the Ducks are one step closer to playing for the national championship. We just need LSU or Ohio State to lose one (my pick is Michigan to beat Ohio State this year). I can see an LSU vs. Oregon BCS Bowl game.

2) After coffee this morning, I went to my favorite used bookstore and found DVDs of Hero and The Fountain. I also found a great book on psychotherapy and shamanic journeying.

3) I got some work done today on a ghost-writing project I am doing.

4) The New England Patriots beat the Colts today in a battle of unbeatens. It was an excellent game.

What are you grateful for today?

Labels: film, gratitude, sports

The Politics of Fear

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It was widely reported in the independent press and blogs (see here and here) that the Bush administration used terror alerts during the 2004 presidential campaign to create an atmosphere of fear that would make Americans less likely to elect John Kerry to replace George Bush. The tactic worked exactly as they planned, and the corporate media never really picked up the story (although Time eventually did a story about it -- in 2006).

Now comes more evidence of their tactics in the form of memos issued by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. As reported in the Washington Post:

In a series of internal musings and memos to his staff, then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld argued that Muslims avoid "physical labor" and wrote of the need to "keep elevating the threat," "link Iraq to Iran" and develop "bumper sticker statements" to rally public support for an increasingly unpopular war.

The memos, often referred to as "snowflakes," shed light on Rumsfeld's brusque management style and on his efforts to address key challenges during his tenure as Pentagon chief. Spanning from 2002 to shortly after his resignation following the 2006 congressional elections, a sampling of his trademark missives obtained yesterday reveals a defense secretary disdainful of media criticism and driven to reshape public opinion of the Iraq war.
* * * *

Under siege in April 2006, when a series of retired generals denounced him and called for his resignation in newspaper op-ed pieces, Rumsfeld produced a memo after a conference call with military analysts. "Talk about Somalia, the Philippines, etc. Make the American people realize they are surrounded in the world by violent extremists," he wrote.

A major part of the Bush administration's post-9/11 strategy has been to keep Americans convinced that they are unsafe in a world filled terrorist threats. Like all false-truths, there is an element of truth in their claims, but there has been no evidence that we are only just barely keeping the barbarians at bay, which is what they would have us think.

The downside for all of us in this strategy is that the administration has used this manufactured climate of fear to systematically eliminate our Constitutional rights, one by one, many of them in signing statements.

From Gary Hart and Joyce Appleby, writing at George Mason University's History News Network:

George W. Bush and his most trusted advisers, Richard B. Cheney and Donald H. Rumsfeld, entered office determined to restore the authority of the presidency. Five years and many decisions later, they've pushed the expansion of presidential power so far that we now confront a constitutional crisis.

Relying on legal opinions from Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and Professor John Yoo, then working at the Justice Department, Bush has insisted that there can be no limits to the power of the commander-in-chief in time of war. More recently the president has claimed that laws relating to domestic spying and the torture of detainees do not apply to him. His interpretation has produced a devilish conundrum.

President Bush has given Commander-in-Chief Bush unlimited wartime authority. But the "war on terror" is more a metaphor than a fact. Terrorism is a method, not an ideology; terrorists are criminals, not warriors. No peace treaty can possibly bring an end to the fight against far-flung terrorists. The emergency powers of the president during this "war" can now extend indefinitely, at the pleasure of the president and at great threat to the liberties and rights guaranteed us under the Constitution.

Or this book review from Truthout:

In a new book, "Less Safe, Less Free: Why America Is Losing the War on Terror," law professors David Cole and Jules Lobel argue that the problem lies in the aggressive "preventive paradigm" the Bush administration adopted in the wake of 9/11.

The authors note that the administration "is fond of reminding us that no terrorist attacks have occurred on domestic soil since 9/11," but they ask, "Has the administration's 'war on terror' actually made us safer?"

Their answer: "While the 'preventive paradigm' can point to few gains in our security, it has come at great cost to our ideals. In the name of preemptive security, the administration has undertaken torture, indefinite detention without trial, extraordinary renditions, disappearances into CIA 'black sites,' warrantless wiretapping of American citizens, and an illegal and disastrous war in Iraq."

These measures, they add, "constitute the core of the 'preventive paradigm,' and have compromised the most basic commitments of the rule of law. And by doing so they have actually impeded our efforts to bring known terrorists to trial, limited our long-term options for security, sparked anti-American resentment and terrorist recruitment, and undermined relations even with our closest allies."

The politics of fear have served the Republicans well over the last seven years. Among the current crop of contenders for the GOP nomination, Rudy Giuliani -- more than anyone else -- is relying on the same tactic. He has positioned himself as the 9/11 candidate, making nearly constant references to his "leadership" following the 9/11 attacks. No matter that his mistakes made the rescue effort less effective.

Even Hillary Clinton is making use of this tactic. She refuses to recant her support of the Iraq War and has talked tough in regard to dealing with Iran. She is positioning herself as the only Democrat who has the toughness to deal with the falsely-termed "war on terror." As a woman, she may feel she has to do this, but I think it is more a case of doing what works.

I have a sense that people respond more to fear than to hope. Maybe there are some evolutionary psychologists somewhere who can she light on this topic, but my fear is that politicians have learned this lesson so well that we will be faced with fear-mongering for the near future as the primary election tactic.

Rove, Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld refined the approach in ways it had never been used before (which is not to say it is a new approach, only that they have made it an art). It makes me sad to think that we elect leaders based on fear rather than on hope for a better future.

What a different country this might be if we had leaders who appealed to our better angels.

Labels: culture, Politics

Cool Site: MIndBodyGreen

Jason, one of my Zaadz friends, has created MindBodyGreen, a social networking site for people interested in personal growth and Green living.

Your source for the newest and most popular news on better, healthier, greener living.
You can submit links to your own or anyone else's stories, add comments, and vote by clicking on the arrows, determining which submissions make the front page for everyone to see. Join today to get started!

It's like Digg for the Lohas crowd. Check it out. A lot of the of the sites I link to in my speedlinks (especially in psyche/self) are showing up on the main page.

Labels: blogging, information, misc.

Ren and Stimpy - Don't Whiz on the Electric Fence

Yes, I have a sick sense of humor.

via videosift.com

Labels: cartoons, humor

Radiohead 'Creep' Acoustic

The acoustic version is awesome. I don't know if this is a fan vid or not, but the animation is also pretty cool.

via videosift.com

Labels: animation, Music

Amazing Drum Tenor Solo

Tim Jackson performs one of the coolest drum solos I've ever seen.

via videosift.com

Labels: Music

Aurora Australis - The Southern Lights in Time Lapse

Very cool video.

Filmed during the Antarctic winter in the general vicinity of McMurdo Station and Scott Base, where the sun is below the horizon for 4 months of the year.

Most of the individual clips here were taken over about a 10 minute period.

via videosift.com

Labels: Nature


Marriage is love.

Integral Options Cafe

Saturday, November 10, 2007

Dharma Quotes: Practicing Compassion, Emptiness

Roger Kimball: Norman Mailer, a Dissenting View

Satire: Checkmate, Atheists!

Writer Norman Mailer Dead at 84

Friday, November 09, 2007

New Poem: Musician

Daily Om: Everything Is In Divine Order

Flashback Video: Cranberries "Linger"

Speedlinking 11/9/07

Finlandia by Jean Sibelius

Daily Dharma: The Enlightenment of the Buddha

In The Beginning

Satire: Pat Robertson Says Giuliani Presidency Appears in Book of Revelation

Pat Robertson Says Giuliani Presidency Appears in Book of Revelation

Thursday, November 08, 2007

Holotropic Breathing for Shamanic Journeying

Speedlinking 11/8/07

Daily Dharma: The Sweetest Strawberry

People Are Human-Bacteria Hybrid

87 Great Photography Blogs and Feeds

Satire: Messages From Our Troops To The Families They Can Barely Remember

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Gratitude 11/7/07 - Dharma

Speedlinking 11/7/07

No Country for Old Men

AlterNet: Is The Onion America's Most Intelligent Newspaper?

Tidy Monster -- Very Cool Animation

Tom Waits - Lie To Me

Satire: Fall Canceled After 3 Billion Seasons

Fall Canceled After 3 Billion Seasons

A Beloved Classic Comes To An End

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Tucson Family Deported After Teen Found with Marijuana

Speedlinking 11/6/07

Publisher's Weekly: Best Books 2007

Nine Inch Nails - Right Where It Belongs (Andrea Giacobbe)

Satire: Mean Automakers Dash Nation's Hope For Flying Cars

Satire: Bush Proud U.S. Economic Woes Can Still Depress World Markets

Bush Proud U.S. Economic Woes Can Still Depress World Markets

Monday, November 05, 2007

Speedlinking 11/5/07

Robert Masters: What Is Integral?

Daily Dharma: Better or Worse

Q&A: Reznor, Williams up digital ante with $5 album

Matthieu Ricard on Finding Happiness Through Mind Training

Satire: Bush Gives Musharraf Tips on Eliminating Democracy

Bush Gives Musharraf Tips on Eliminating Democracy

Satire: Study Finds Working At Work Improves Productivity

Study Finds Working At Work Improves Productivity

Sunday, November 04, 2007

Gratitude 11/4/07

The Politics of Fear

Cool Site: MIndBodyGreen

Your source for the newest and most popular news on better, healthier, greener living.You can submit links to your own or anyone else's stories, add comments, and vote by clicking on the arrows, determining which submissions make the front page for everyone to see. Join today to get started!

Ren and Stimpy - Don't Whiz on the Electric Fence

Radiohead 'Creep' Acoustic

Amazing Drum Tenor Solo

Aurora Australis - The Southern Lights in Time Lapse

About Me

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Your source for the newest and most popular news on better, healthier, greener living.
You can submit links to your own or anyone else's stories, add comments, and vote by clicking on the arrows, determining which submissions make the front page for everyone to see. Join today to get started!