American Airlines to charge $15 for fat people, others may follow
by WalidAmerican Airlines "More belt tightening to come."
(Ucs News) American Airlines wants to make customers' wallets lighter if they insist on making airplanes heavier. Citing ever-increasing jet fuel prices, the world's largest carrier will begin charging $15 each way for a passengers that are over weight. American, along with other major carriers, already had been charging $25 passengers that are morbidly obese.United Airlines started the fat fee this spring, and competitors quickly matched. Aviation consultant Bob Mann expects history to repeat itself as airlines struggle to stay aloft while paying historically high fuel prices.
"I think you will see others match," Mann said. "No doubt if this continues you will see airlines charging passengers by weight for air travel."
Houston-based Continental Airlines would not comment Wednesday on whether it would match, saying it could not discuss future pricing. But United said it was seriously studying the possibility of a per pound charge for tickets.
Major U.S. airlines face liquidation if capacity cuts and fare increases fail to cover rising fuel costs, the chief of an industry trade group said.
Oil at $130 a barrel "is simply a number around which we cannot survive," James May, president of the Air Transport Association, told reporters Wednesday in Washington. "It will inevitably lead to failures in the business."
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Satire: American Airlines to charge $15 for fat people, others may follow
Debussy: Cello Sonata in D Minor - Gendron/ Ivaldi
Claude Debussy's Cello Sonata in D Minor performed by French cellist Maurice Gendron (1920 - 1990) and pianist Christian Ivaldi.
via videosift.com
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
McCainpedia
a wiki run by the DNC's Research, Communications, and Internet teams. The goal is to centralize research material, allowing the general public to use it as they see fit. Unlike some wikis, McCainpedia is read-only and can't be edited by the public. This allows us to fully validate all of the information that appears, ensuring accuracy and reliability.McCainpedia follows FlipperTV, which puts video taken by Democratic "trackers" of John McCain as he campaigns across the country, and allows users to watch, download, and use the footage as they wish. FlipperTV has now been incorporated into McCainpedia alongside all of the research information.
Here's a video from FlipperTV in which McCain refuses to answer a question on health care.
Deepak Chopra - "Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds..."
"Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds..."
It's strange to think that America's view of love might be four hundred years behind the times. In Sonnet 116 ("Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments") Shakespeare devotes the whole poem to extolling love as immortal. "Love's not Time's fool," he declares, praising its constancy in all ages. We, on the other hand, seem quite eager to throw impediments in the way of marriage. I was struck by a news piece on TV a few weeks ago in which a hidden camera was set up in downtown Atlanta to watch people's reactions to a romantic couple necking in public.
When the couple was a man and a woman, or even two women, the reactions were overwhelmingly positive. Passers by smiled and even gave encouraging remarks ("How sweet," "More of us should be like that"). When the couple was two men, the police were called to the scene within five minutes. The most depressing part is that the police actually took the 911 call seriously (Yes, the situation was phoned in as an emergency). When they arrived, the cops were tipped off to the candid camera setup; otherwise, we don't know what they would have done.
If Shakespeare was right about love's immortal origins, society’s ideas about love change, and with each change come new ideas about enforcement. Does the state have a right to regulate marriage? It does. Does the state have a right to regulate a sacrament? No. Because modern America puts marriage in a shadow zone somewhere between a civil rite and a sacrament, values keep shifting. It's significant that the right wing used homophobia very effectively to re-elect George Bush in 2004 whereas this latest ruling from the California Supreme Court has created very little backwash. Which goes to show, as wiser heads have said all along, that it's only a matter of time before gay marriage becomes a fait accompli, arousing little outrage once the public gets used to it.Televised pundits point out that gays might actually be saving the institution of marriage, since straight couples have been fleeing from it for thirty years, and soon gay adoption may save the institution of childbirth as well. But the real issue goes back to Shakespeare's sonnet. To say that love must be constant in order to be true -- which is Shakespeare's whole point -- means that one part of human life should be exempt from legalities. When love and non-love are given equal status, then making war and making peace are equally valid options, along with granting freedom and taking it away, hurting others and leaving them alone. It shouldn't be that way. Love should have absolute priority, and once it does, then war, violence, bigotry, and denial of freedom will be seen for what they are, violations of love and therefore aberrations in human nature.
Here is my take, sure to piss some people off. Marriage should not in any way whatsoever be regulated by the state. It is a sacred union. Where the state can intervene is in domestic partnerships. The two should be completely separate.
If we rightly view marriage as a religion-based activity, then the Separation Clause bars the government from being involved in any way. End of story.
Daily Om - Going Through A Phase
This was yesterday's Daily Om.
Temporarily Out Of BalanceGood advice.
Going Through A Phase
We are all almost always in the process of learning something new, developing an underused ability or talent, or toning down an overused one. Some of us are involved in learning how to speak up for ourselves, while others are learning how to be more considerate. In the process of becoming, we are always developing and fine tuning one or the other of our many qualities, and it is a natural part of this process that things tend to get out of balance. This may be upsetting to us, or the people around us, but we can trust that it’s a normal part of the work of self-development.
For example, we may go through a phase of needing to learn how to say no, as part of learning to set boundaries and take care of ourselves. During this time, we might say no to just about everything, as a way of practicing and exploring this ability. Like a child who learns a new word, we want to try out this new avenue of expression and empowerment as much as we can because it is new and exciting for us and we want to explore it fully. In this way, we are mastering a new skill, and eventually, as we integrate it into our overall identity, it will resume its position as one part of our balanced life.
In this process, we are overcompensating for a quality that was suppressed in our life, and the swinging of the pendulum from under-use to overuse serves to bring that quality into balance. Understanding what’s happening is a useful tool that helps us to be patient with the process. In the end, the pendulum settles comfortably in the center, restoring balance inside and out.
Introducing: The Happiness Index
From the Freakonomics blog:
The press is calling it the Dow Jones Industrial Average of American well-being. Every day, since January of this year, pollsters have called 1,000 Americans to quiz them on their health and happiness.
The first set of results from this unprecedented survey were released on Wednesday, as the inaugural report of The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, and they find that 47 percent of Americans are struggling to stay afloat, and 4 percent are suffering as a result of money woes and illness. The remaining 49 percent say they are thriving, based on their quality of life and outlook on their future.
The index will continue to be updated daily, and will eventually be able to give a breakdown of well-being by profession, commute times, even ZIP codes.
All that data should be welcomed by researchers — like Freakonomics guest-bloggers Justin Wolfers and Arthur Brooks– who study happiness.
Now we’re curious: where would you put yourself on the index’s well-being ladder. Thriving, struggling, or suffering? And why?
This seems like a worthwhile pursuit in theory, but I wonder how accurate such a poll can be. First of all, anyone without a phone number (the homeless for example) will not be included. Second, only those willing to answer the questions will be included, which amounts, generally, to fewer than 15% of those called, which creates a bias right off the bat. Third, there is likely to be a tendency to not want to admit one is struggling, especially among male respondents.
Granted, this first set of responses shows 47% as struggling to get by, which I would not have predicted based on the tendency to under-report negative feelings in such polls.
Still, in my opinion, nice thought, but essentially worthless.
How Did Honor Evolve?
How Did Honor Evolve?
The biology of integrity
By DAVID P. BARASHKey quote:
Read the whole article.That process, known as "group selection," has a long and checkered history in biological theory. Since natural selection should consistently reward selfish acts, how to explain the existence of morality that induces people to behave, as Bertolt Brecht puts it in The Threepenny Opera, "more kindly than we are"? These days, evolutionary explanations lean heavily on kin selection (also known as inclusive fitness theory, whereby apparent altruism at the level of bodies can actually be selfishness playing itself out at the level of genes), and on reciprocity, essentially "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours." But there is also the possibility that beneficent acts are biologically generated by a payoff enjoyed by the group, of which the altruist is a member. At one point in The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, Darwin gave impetus to the group selectionists:
"Although a high standard of morality gives but a slight or no advantage to each individual man and his children over the other men of the same tribe, … an increase in the number of well-endowed men and advancement in the standard of morality will certainly give an immense advantage to one tribe over another."
But just because Darwin said it doesn't make it true. The problem is that even if people "well endowed" with morality provide their "tribe" with an "immense advantage," those same people run the risk of being immensely disadvantaged within their group if such endowment equates to spending time, energy, or money on behalf of others, or running risks that help the larger social unit while hurting the altruist. As a result, although group selection — along with its companion concept, "the good of the species" — was uncritically accepted for about a century, it has been deservedly out of favor for several decades, displaced by the understanding that selection operates most effectively at the lowest possible level: individuals or, better yet, genes.
Or does it? Maybe reports of group selection's demise have been greatly exaggerated. Various mathematical models now suggest that under certain stringent conditions, selection could (at least in theory) operate at the level of groups. Some of the most promising formulations involve so-called multilevel selection, in which natural selection operates in simultaneous, nested baskets: among genes within individuals, among individuals within groups, among groups within species, and presumably among species within ecosystems, among ecosystems on the planet Earth, and (why not?) among planets in galaxies, and galaxies in the universe.
Received wisdom these days is that if a behavior is costly for the individual, it is unlikely to evolve, regardless of whether it is beneficial for the group or the species. Nonetheless, even if we grant that group selection has probably been inconsequential when it comes to changing gene frequencies, that does not mean that selection at the group level hasn't been instrumental in shaping human psychology, producing some pro-social tendencies via cultural evolution rather than its genetic counterpart. And so we return to honor codes, violators thereof, and those who turn them in.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
More on Bipolar Children
Review - Bipolar Children
Cutting-Edge Controversy, Insights, and Research
by Sharna Olfman (Editor)
Praeger, 2007
Review by Benjamin J. Lovett, Ph.D.
May 20th 2008One evening several years ago, an old friend called me up to ask, somewhat abruptly, what I knew about bipolar disorder. I gave him a simplified summary of what I had seen in many abnormal psychology textbooks. I told him it was a mood disorder in which someone cycled between episodes of depression and episodes of mania, with manic symptoms including a reduced need for sleep, great excitement, rapid speech, hyperactivity, and grand plans that might not be followed up on. I also told him that the disorder, as far as I knew, was highly genetic but didn't begin to show itself until someone's late teens or twenties. When I asked him the reason for his interest, he told me that his daughter had just been diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
This didn't make much sense to me. My friend's daughter was only 9 years old at the time, and I had never heard of children being diagnosed with the disorder. He told me that he had just heard of a book, The Bipolar Child, that he was going to get and that he would let me know more when he got a chance to read it. Rather than waiting, I did a few quick internet searches and found more literature, both professional journal articles and accessible material for parents, than I could have ever guessed was available. That was back in 2002, and since then, the public profile of child bipolar disorder has only become more prominent. Textbooks on child psychological disorders now have separate sections on child bipolar disorder, and workshops are offered to schoolteachers, psychologists, physicians, and even parents on the nature and management of the disorder.
Very little of the literature on child bipolar disorder is critical of the concept, but Bipolar Children falls into that category. Although the book's essays are generally balanced, there are no real defenders of child bipolar disorder's validity, and so the book suffers from a certain kind of one-sidedness--it should be viewed as the case for skepticism about child bipolar disorder. Sharna Olfman, the editor, opens the book with an introductory essay that lays out the issues briefly and highlights how even though little is known for certain about child bipolar disorder, many mental health professionals are confidently making the diagnosis and treating it with very powerful drugs. This theme runs through many of the essays to follow.
One such essay is by Lawrence Diller, a behavioral pediatrician known for his reflections on ADHD and stimulant medication in Running on Ritalin, among other books. In this essay, Diller shows his usual humility and, as is typical, uses clinical anecdotes to illustrate just how difficult it is to identify child bipolar disorder and to separate it from family problems, other mental disorders, and typical childhood behavior. Moreover, he points out that since the criteria used to make a diagnosis are different from the strict adult criteria for bipolar disorder, the most crucial piece of evidence for child bipolar disorder is still lacking: evidence showing that children diagnosed with child bipolar disorder grow up to develop the classic adult form of bipolar disorder. Until this evidence is available, it is unclear whether these children have a juvenile version of adult bipolar disorder or a different problem altogether.
Another thoughtful essay is by Elizabeth Roberts, a child psychiatrist. She makes a detailed, nuanced analysis of the stakeholders in the diagnosis of child bipolar disorder, focusing on parents and teachers and their roles in the diagnosis. For instance, Roberts points out that children diagnosed with bipolar disorder often suffer from an inability to deal with frustration and control their emotions, and that parents may not be aware of how their discipline practices affect these skills. Similarly, Roberts notes that once children are exhibiting extreme behavior problems, it is easy for teachers to believe that the behavior is the product of a mental disorder and to recommend medical treatment, rather than suggesting to parents that the behavior might require great changes in the way that the child is managed, both at home and at school. Importantly, Roberts does not blame parents or teachers for the disorder--she merely points out how neither its symptoms nor its diagnosis appear ex nihilo.
The points made by Roberts and Diller are refreshing, since texts on child psychological disorders treat child bipolar disorder as instantly valid and unassailable. The caution that these authors urge does not come with a refusal to consider any children as meriting the bipolar diagnosis; Diller admits to cases in which even the most powerful drugs may be an appropriate prescription for certain children, and Roberts sympathizes with families and schools who may not know how to deal with severe behavior problems except through medication. Both authors simply challenge the hegemony of a medical model that not only explains behavior as being based in the brain (an obvious truth) but fails to consider environmental contributions and related solutions.
Not all of the book's essays are as synoptic as those by Diller and Roberts; the other essays typically have a narrower focus. For instance, Toni Vaughn Heineman offers a perspective on bipolar disorder diagnosed in foster children, providing a case study of an adolescent whose life experiences were so complicated and tragic that it is difficult to see how mental health professionals should classify her resulting symptoms and begin treatment. Similarly, William Purcell's essay is a sensitive portrayal of play therapy with a five-year-old boy diagnosed with bipolar disorder, in which the therapist respected the symptoms as responses to the child's life experiences rather than viewing them as brain chemical imbalances. These two case studies certainly challenge the model of child bipolar symptoms as originating solely from biological causes, and support the ideas of Diller and Roberts in proposing a more complex model of the diagnostic category.
One major player in the construction of a diagnosis, never to be left out, is the pharmaceutical industry. An essay by David Healy and Joanna Le Noury details the ways in which new mood stabilizers--the medications often prescribed for child bipolar disorder--are marketed to parents and physicians. These include claims that the drugs will prevent the development of adult bipolar disorder (although no scientific studies have explored this, and the FDA has not approved these drugs for the prevention of bipolar disorder) and claims that various famous artists and literary figures were bipolar (although few if any ever received a formal diagnosis). The drug companies' websites are also filled with what appear to be diagnostic tools, such as "mood diary" charts that parents can use to fill in their children's emotions during different parts of the day. As Healy and Noury note, many typically developing children will appear abnormal when these tools are used to describe their behavior, and the companies are concerned with the dangers of false positive diagnoses.
All of these essays, then, should contribute to a needed dialogue about the validity of child bipolar disorder, even if certain psychiatric researchers who tout the diagnosis and medications will be put on the defensive. Indeed, while reading the book, I found myself frequently wondering how proponents of the diagnosis would respond. Most of the essays' authors are too careful and nuanced to be dismissed as anti-psychiatry zealots. We can only hope that these scholars' attempts at complicating the diagnosis of child bipolar disorder will be taken as an invitation to civil discourse on this heated topic. After all, whether or not they should be labeled as bipolar, children with severe emotional and behavior problems require our sharpest and most careful thinking.
Hatin' on the Millennials?
Read the rest.Generation Slap
They're naive, self-important, and perpetually plugged in. This is a call to arms against Millennials
AND HE SHALL LEAD THEM ALL Generation Yer Kevin Colvin, caught on Facebook after telling his boss that he had to miss work for a "family emergency"
You Can Do Magic
Like many illustrious individuals before him who inadvertently stumbled into Internet stardom, Kevin Colvin became an overnight Internet celebrity by doing something stupid. In case you missed his five minutes of "fame," here's the story in a nutshell. A twentysomething intern, Kevin secured a job at Boston's Anglo Irish Bank. Using the guise of a family emergency, Kevin decided to take a day off and thus sent the following e-mail to his bosses, Paul and Jill:Paul/Jill,
I just wanted to let you know that I will not be able to come into work tomorrow. Something came up at home and I had to go to New York this morning for the next couple of days. I apologize for the delayed notice.
Kind regards,
KevinMillennials are younger. Healthier. They got to do anal in high school. They think updating a spreadsheet while posting to a Twitter account about gossip on perezhilton.com is an essential corporate skillKevin's boss, Paul Davis, apparently decided to do a little a bit of detective work and found an incriminating photo of Kevin on Facebook. He discovered that Kevin wasn't in New York attending to an unexpected family crisis, but at a Halloween party in Worcester, Massachusetts.
And this is the clincher: In the picture, Kevin is dressed as Tinker Bell, decked out in a green ballet dress that looks like it was stolen from the wardrobe closet of an elementary school performance of Swan Lake. There's glitter and blue makeup enveloping his eyes. He's holding a gold, star-tipped wand in one hand and a can of Busch Light in the other. There are wings. In short, Kevin looks so high I wouldn't be surprised if he actually used those glittery, Day-Glo wings to fly away like a hummingbird after the picture was snapped.
Mr. Davis' response was swift and, well, perfect. Attaching Kevin's incriminating photo to an e-mail and BCCing the entire company, he responded:
Kevin,
Thanks for letting us know—hope everything is ok in New York. (cool wand)
Cheers,
PCDWhen the technology blog valleywag.com posted the entire hilarious exchange, the story spread like a San Fernando Valley wildfire. It was everywhere.
In Kevin's defense, most of us have lied to our bosses and played hooky. Still, I found myself hoping that his boss, Mr. Davis, fired him with a pointed "and don't let the door hit your wand on the way out!" for good measure. But before you dismiss me as cruel, let me explain my reasons.
STRENGTH IN NUMBERS There are an estimated 80 million Millenials out there. And oh, how they are blogging
My lack of empathy for Kevin comes from my sense of loyalty to the generation born between the years of 1961 and 1981. Generation X. Kevin is part of the generation born between 1982 and 2002—a Millennial, formerly known as Generation Y. (They got renamed after whining too much.) They're younger. They're healthier. They got to do anal in high school. They think updating a spreadsheet while simultaneously posting to a Twitter account about the latest gossip on perezhilton.com is an essential corporate skill. And, like Kevin, they're always doing stupid shit, but rarely getting called on it.
What's more, Millennials pose a vital threat to my generation's cultural legitimacy, not to mention our position in the workplace. A recent article in Time warns: "Older workers—that is, anyone over 30—need to know how to adapt to the values and demands of their newest colleagues. Before too long, they'll be the bosses."
You see? They're out to get us.
If you look at the sheer number of Millennials, the outlook is grim. While Gen X boasts only around 30 million members, there are an estimated 80 million Millennials out there. They're like pod people with Facebook accounts. We're outnumbered.
MECCA The Apple Store, where Gen Yers congregate to kneel at the foot of Steve Jobs
That's why the time has come for Generation X to unite. We need to call bullshit on these naive, self-important crybabies trying to rob us of what is rightly our own. Remember how the Baby Boomers all turned into self-serving, narcissistic assholes who deified Michael Douglas in the '80s? The time has come for us to turn into assholes, too, minus the Michael Douglas part.
I suspect this is mostly humorous, since the Millennials aren't really that bad, and in fact, might be more involved in creating a better world than my generation was (I'm an Xer). We're still working at it, though, so give us another 10 or 20 years before passing judgment.
This is from the Washington Post:
Millennials' political style is also similar to the GI generation's (born between 1901 and 1924). They aren't confrontational or combative, the way boomers (whose generational mantra was "Don't trust anyone over 30") have been. Nor does the millennials' rhetoric reflect the cynicism and alienation of Generation X, whose philosophy is, "Life sucks, and then you die." Instead, their political style reflects their generation's constant interaction with hundreds, if not thousands, of "friends" on MySpace or Facebook, about any and all subjects, increasingly including politics. Since they started watching "Barney" as toddlers, the millennials have learned to be concerned for the welfare of everyone in the group and to try to find consensus, "win-win" solutions to any problem. The result is a collegial approach that attracts millennials to candidates who seek to unify the country and heal the nation's divisions.Unlike the young baby boomers, millennials want to strengthen the political system, not tear it down. According to a study last year by the Pew Research Center, most millennials (64 percent) disagree that the federal government is wasteful and inefficient, while most older Americans (58 percent) think it is. A 2006 survey by Frank N. Magid Associates indicated that millennials are more likely than older generations to believe that politicians care what people think and are more concerned with the good of the country than of their political party.
It also showed that millennials, more than their elders, believe that U.S. political institutions will deal effectively with concerns the nation will face in the future.
Some may see that tendency to trust that politicians care what people think as naive. It might be. But it beats the cynicism of my generation (we grew up with Reagan as president).
One of their virtues, however, may also be one of their weaknesses. This is from AlterNet:
And Millennials, say experts, "are unlike any other youths in living memory: More numerous, more affluent, better educated and more ethnically diverse than those who came before." Those words from William Strauss and Neil Howe, social scientists who coined the term "millennial" in their book Millennials and the Pop Culture (LifeCourse Associates, March '06).Groupthink is one of the most negative traits of the Boomers. It tends to result in everyone having a say and nothing getting done. But I think it might be premature to say that Millennials will exhibit this trait. I suspect they might be more diligent in testing alternatives and being more pragmatic in their decision making process.Perhaps the most outstanding detail that distinguishes this generation -- from even those born just a couple of years earlier -- is their level of media consumption, particularly online. Today, the average teenager spends more than 72 hours a week using electronic media -- cell phones, internet, television, music and video games -- according to a 2006 study.
"There's an intense focus on openness, sharing information, as both an ideal and a practical strategy to get things done," explained Mark Zuckerberg, 23-year-old Millennial wüunderkind and founder and CEO of Facebook, in a recent interview with Fast Company. On Facebook.com, students log in daily to chat, flirt and connect -- the average user frittering away eight hours a month on the site.
All that time spent social networking has indoctrinated Millennials into the cult of groupthink, refashioning them into the most collaborative and team-oriented generation the world has seen in many a decade. This manifests in "a wide array of positive social habits that older Americans no longer associate with youth, including a new focus on teamwork, achievement, modesty and good conduct," say Strauss and Howe.
This might be the first truly post-modern, relativist generation that can embrace the healthy aspects of this stage of development, rather than the Boomeritis of the last big generation to take over the country. Millennials might be egalitarian and communal, but I'm not convinced they are averse to hierarchy.
Ken Wilber, in an endnote for his book Boomeritis, says this about the millennials:
The Millennials are now hitting adolescence and early college years. Again, we are speaking generalities and stereotypes here, but unlike the Xers, the Millennials don't want to slack the system, but succeed in it. They don't particularly chafe against the rules, don't totally yawn in the face of their parents, appear more generally happy with society and are ready to accelerate in it, and tend to trust the system, more or less.Wilber contends that this may be the first generation that can transcend the ethos of their parents in any significant way and move toward integral awareness (he cites 10% as the expectation for that generation to move into an integral stage of development).
Maybe. Maybe not. Still, the turnout of millennials in this election cycle (in support of Obama) has been heartening for an aging cynic such as myself. Maybe they can make a difference -- maybe they can change the system and the culture in a way their Boomer parents failed to do.
Keith Olbermann Responds to Criticism of His Special Comment
The Philosopher's Zone - On Suicide
Suicide has been a focus of philosophical examination in the West since at least the time of Plato, and for good reason. It raises a lot of difficult questions. What makes behaviour suicidal? Is suicidal behaviour rational and - the question that has obsessed philosophers down the ages - is it morally permissible? This week, the first part of a two-part investigation of this enigmatic and disconcerting phenomenon.Listen Now - 17052008 |Download Audio
Here is a link to the transcript.
Further Information
Michael J Cholbi (the guest)
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Suicide (written by Michael Cholbi)
Lifeline Counselling (24 hours)
Daily Dharma: True Emptiness Contains All Things
Today's Daily Dharma from Tricycle is from Jack Kornfield's A Path With Heart, one of the first Buddhist books I ever read.
A Path With HeartThe emperor of China asked a renowned Buddhist master if it would be possible to illustrate the nature of self in a visible way. In response, the master had a sixteen-sided room appointed with floor-to-ceiling mirrors that faced one another exactly. In the center he hung a candle aflame. When the emperor entered he could see the individual candle flame in thousands of forms, each of the mirrors extending it far into the distance. Then the master replaced the candle with a small crystal. The emperor could see the small crystal reflected again in every direction. When the master pointed closely at the crystal, the emperor could see the whole room of thousands of crystals reflected in each tiny facet of the crystal in the center. The master showed how the smallest particle contains the whole universe.
True emptiness is not empty, but contains all things. The mysterious and pregnant void creates and reflects all possibilities. From it arises our individuality, which can be discovered and developed, although never possessed or fixed. The self is held in no-self, as the candle flame is held in great emptiness.
--Jack Kornfield, A Path with Heart
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