Reflections, Ideas, and Dreams

RSS Feed Homepage

Articles: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Remember the Clue (34) - Background
2007-08-19 21:02:00
No change is lasting until it permeates the subconscious.
More About: Background

Remember the Clue (33) - Personification
2007-08-17 00:18:00
When we use an object frequently it often appears to almost develop a personality.In memory of 66,000 miles over the past 8 years in my 1992 Accord--and toward an automobile-free existence.

Deadly Sins: Pride
2007-08-14 22:30:00
Pride is the delusion of possible success when failure is certain.
More About: Sins , Pride , Deadly

Bless This Food
2007-08-14 18:15:00
Almost all religious traditions have some form of prayer or acknowledgment before a meal. After all, it is by the act of eating that we ourselves can continue to survive. I have included below an example of a Christian and Buddhist mealtime prayer.Christian Mealtime PrayerLord Jesus Christ, As you blessed many with the five loaves and the two fishes, may we too, know your blessing as we share this food, your peace in our hearts, and your love in our lives. Amen.Buddhist Mealtime PrayerThis food is the gift of the whole universe,Each morsel is a sacrifice of life,May I be worthy to receive it.May the energy in this food,Give me the strength,To transform my unwholesome qualitiesinto wholesome ones.I am grateful for this food,May I realize the Path of Awakening,For the sake of all beings.Namo Amida Buddha.Each of these prayers incorporates imagery and content relevant to the respective religion. Comparing the two, the Christian prayer emphasizes the lordship of Jesus Christ over fish, ...
More About: Food

Creation
2007-08-12 23:54:00
A Native American creation story as featured in the documentary 500 Nations.God created the Indian country, and that was the time this river started to run. Then God created fish in this river and put deer in the mountains. Then the Creator gave Indians life. We walked, and as soon as we saw the game and fish we knew they were made for us. My strength, my blood is from the fish, from the roots and berries and game. I did not come here; I was put here by the Creator.
More About: Creation

Lazy Afternoon
2007-08-12 02:34:00
I took a nap this afternoon and had a lucid dream--but I can't remember what it was!My recall is slowly improving, though.
More About: Afternoon , Lazy

Day by Day
2007-08-09 23:15:00
What if every day were a sacred day and every moment a holy moment?From the perspective of organized religion or simple pragmatism, this may seem impractical or absurd. But then again, perhaps this view of the holy is a healthy, sustaining, and necessary component of that which binds us to the world, each other, and the community of life.
More About: Day By Day

Deadly Sins
2007-08-08 22:25:00
Considering the traditional seven deadly sins, two of them seem to me to be variations on a theme:Greed is the excessive acquisition of goods for storage/hoarding.Gluttony is the excessive acquisition of goods for consumption.The action upon the collected goods differentiates between greed and gluttony, but the two sins (at least when expressed as above) seem to share excessive acquisition as the negative action. In other words, at least these two out of the seven say it is sinful to take more than is necessary.
More About: Sins , Deadly

Intelligence
2007-08-07 16:26:00
One of the defining traits of our species is what we call intelligence and self-awareness. Too often, though, these traits are cited as a defining separation between man and beast; that is, owing to our intelligence we have somehow transcended the animalistic level.Ignoring for now that this view presumes no other significant life forms other than animals and humans, this still ignores the notion that human intelligence--just like any other trait--developed over time with selection effects. Intelligence makes us superior to lizards in the same way that wings make birds superior to us. We value intelligence only because we posses it. And since our culture has lost a connection with the community of life, we often interpret this value as superiority at best--and a mandate to dominate at worst.

Lucid Dreaming
2007-08-03 18:01:00
I was tagged by Ben at Dreaming Life to blog about how I became interested in lucid dreaming.My interest in dreams and lucid dreaming is rather recent. My dream recall was never very good, even as a child, and as a result I only ever remembered a few striking dreams; most mornings I would wake up and not give much thought to what I had dreamt. I didn't know the meaning of "lucid dream" then, but I had experienced that phenomenon at least a few times.A few months ago I wrote about a spider I saw on my walk home. I wondered how that spider would have any lasting influence on my life. Well, Ben left a comment along those lines as well. I followed his URL--and discovered an entirely new world of dreams. After poking around through wikis and weblogs for a few days, I decided the 1/3 of each day spent sleeping deserved more attention than I was giving it.I'm still working on developing dream recall, with slow but steady success. Although I have not been able to induce lucidity y...
More About: Ming , Lucid , Lucid Dreaming , Luci

PSA: The GOTO Command
2007-08-02 21:42:00
       PROGRAM GOTO_EXHORTATION    & nbsp;  GOTO 48  29   PRINT *, "could one little GOTO statement do? The downside"     &n bsp; GOTO 55  13   PRINT *, "think of the children."     & nbsp; STOP  84   PRINT *, "have been left to die a quiet and forgotten death."     &nbs p; GOTO 99  66   PRINT *, "indented. A simple GOTO statement now may save a"       GOTO 74  47   PRINT *, "the problem to the next generation. Please,"     &nb sp; GOTO 13  18   PRINT *, "GOTO command. In this day and age, though, there are a"       GOTO 39  27   PRINT *, "revived by an unwary programmer--after all, what harm"       GOTO 29  55   PRINT *, "may not be immediately apparent, once ...
More About: Command , The Go , The G

Build it up, Tear it down
2007-07-31 19:32:00
My contribution to the 85th issue of Tangled Bank hosted at Migrations.Many of the basic sciences can be viewed in terms of fundamental discrete units, at least on certain levels. Particle physics, cellular and molecular biology, and chemistry all have simpler discrete units that comprise larger, more complex systems. What about the discrete units of astrobiology, though? It is even reasonable to think of astrobiology in reductionist terms?Astrobiology by definition is an interdisciplinary field, consisting of geologists, biologists, chemists, meteorologists, astronomers, and others who collective seek an understanding of the context of life in the Universe. To this end, there is no singular reductionist unit, because the participating scientists come from widely varying academic disciplines; in effect, the disciplines themselves become the building blocks. The knowledge of evolutionary biology (based on the study of genes) is as foundational to astrobiology as the knowledge of high...
More About: Tear , Build

Globalization
2007-07-31 08:21:00
The vast majority of people alive today will never have the experience of living in a tribe.
More About: Globalization

Survey Says...
2007-07-30 21:19:00
Statistical studies based on the random sampling of a population have wide degrees of usefulness, often dependent on the population in question. When human behavior (such as consumer tendencies, voting paterns, and social perception) is evaluated in an academic setting, this is often accomplished by soliciting participants to form the random sample. Solicitation may be random (within the constraints of the experiments), providing an adequate sample from which something meaningful can be inferred.Although there are statistical techniques that attempt to correct for various biases in the sample, I wonder if there is any tendency among people who tend not to respond to such inquiries. That is, I would like to see a study that evaluates similarities between people who routinely reject invitations to participate in studies. I realize that undertaking such a study might be self-defeating (since you would get no voluntary participants), but the results of such a study could prove invaluabl...
More About: Survey

Remember the Clue (32) - Familiarity
2007-07-30 05:21:00
Things we regularly encounter do not often strike us as bizarre.Back in State College.

Hungry?
2007-07-28 05:46:00
For some reason, my friend Seth Schwartzhoff Boyd and I came up with this in middle school.The perfect response to the question: Are you hungry?Oh, I'm Chad. Why don't you Russia on over to visit U.S. sometime. We'll go in the Palestine, sit on the Afghanistan, and have Turkey dipped in Greece served on our best China, followed by a big Bolivia of Chile and Tunisia on the Sandwich Islands; but make sure you wash your Honduras before you eat or you'll have Germanies all over them.
More About: Hungry

Literalism
2007-07-25 07:33:00
One of my favorite quotes of all time comes from Joseph Campbell in The Hero With a Thousand Faces:Whenever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed. It is never difficult to demonstrate that as science and history, mythology is absurd. When a civilization begins to interpret its mythology in this way, the life goes out of it. Temples become museums, and the link between the two perspectives is dissolved.A story can be true even if it is not historical. This notion is difficult to convey to a literalist, though, who assumes truth and historicity are synonymous.
More About: Tera

Body of Christ
2007-07-23 06:03:00
I went to the LivingWaters church service this morning with my family, and the music included the Casting Crowns song "If We Are the Body ". The chorus of the songs struck me as particularly interesting:If we are the bodyWhy aren't His arms reachingwhy aren't His hands healingwhy aren't His words teaching?And if we are the bodywhy aren't His feet goingwhy is His love not showing them there is a way?Understandably, part of the song's purpose is to motivate Christ ians to take action based on their beliefs, but I think the song also raises a critical question: if reaching, healing, and teaching are expected consequences of the body of Christ, then why are these things not already happening? The song is almost in perfect syllogistic form, so to be slightly more formal we can define A and B as:A = "the Church (or church, or a given group or congregation) is the body of Christ"B = "the consequences of this identity (reaching, healing, teaching) should be apparent"The idea in the song ...

Recurring Dreams
2007-07-17 20:36:00
Back in Minnesota for a couple weeks.There are a few dreams that I keep coming back to. I don't realize this during the dream, but as soon as I wake up I recognize this as a dream I've had before. The strange thing about these dreams is that, as best as I can remember, they have almost the exact same form every time--including characters and dreamsigns---but my dream recall is still not very good, so it's hard to verify all the details. Even so, these dreams do have a more developed plot and theme than most of my other dreams (which often seem like a random assortment of people, settings, and ideas).
More About: Dreams , Recurring

Remember the Clue (31) - Ambiguity
2007-07-15 07:45:00
We can always recognize qualities in ourselves, even if no descriptive categories or labels exist.

Remember the Clue (30) - Anticipation
2007-07-13 07:33:00
Every event occurs somewhere between anticipation and memory.
More About: Patio

Sacrifice
2007-07-12 04:15:00
The death of one is the life of another. All creatures on the planet are thus bound.
More About: Sacrifice

Contact
2007-07-11 00:51:00
SETI initiatives and other projects to search for intelligent life often assume they are looking for a single intelligent species--perhaps similar in some ways to our own--that has achieved mastery over their home planet. The modern global civilization views itself as separate from the biosphere, and as a result has continued a self-destructive pattern of increased consumption and growth. This civilization views itself as the masters of the world, the single most important and dominant species on the planet. Search for life initiatives implicitly assume any contact they make will likewise be a single "superior" species.This notion is relatively recent, though, compared with the duration humans have existed on Earth. No species is an island, since life cannot exist outside of the community. Although the global human civilization views itself as separate from the community of life, this pattern of thought is ignorant and ultimately self-destructive. Likewise, any long-lived extraterre...
More About: Contact

Remember the Clue (29) - Timelessness
2007-07-09 23:55:00
It is our perception, not our clocks, that determines the length of each memory.
More About: Snes , Mele

Into the Wilderness
2007-07-06 20:35:00
This weekend marks the 4th annual Locust Grove summer weekend. As I packed up my car, I considered the reasons for looking forward to the weekend.Seclusion. There is no such thing as "getting closer to nature"; we are biological creatures, so anything we do or make is still natural. However, spending time away from the sights and demands of civilization make it easier to reflect on a time when all humans on the planet (including our ancestors) lived as hunter-gatherers. And on top of that, a secluded location necessitates disappearance.Music. I enjoy playing music, and I enjoy listening; but for me music is a need. Music is powerful, and music creates memories. As Tower of Power put it, "The music makes you happy, or it can make you sad. It can turn the worst day into the best you ever had."Community. We spend most of our days interacting with various groups of people, many of which are unrelated. Before the (recent) advent of human cities, the tribe was the primary human social uni...
More About: Wilderness , Wilde , Derne

Recurrence Relations
2007-07-06 00:51:00
My brother sent me a recursive problem yesterday, and I worked out this solution last night.Assume a population begins with resources at 100 (some unitless quantity). Half of these resources are spent, while the other half are passed to the next generation. The next generation begins with 100, plus 20 to account for progress, plus the half passed down to them. Likewise, the following generation begins with 100, plus 40 to account for progress, plus the half passed down to them. What is the resource value of the nth generation?We can induct a recursive function by simply looking at the first few terms. Let f(x) == "resource level for generation x", a = 100, and b = 20:f(1) = af(2) = (a + b) + f(1)/2f(3) = (a + 2*b) + f(2)/2f(4) = (a + 3*b) + f(3)/2f(5) = (a + 4*b) + f(4)/2Following the pattern, we can write the general case:f(n) = a + b*(n-1) + f(n-1)/2This recursive solution can correctly predict the value of the nth generation, but it is O(n) in complexity (that is, it requires n c...
More About: Relations , Relation

A Comprehensive Moral Code (2.0)
2007-07-04 22:55:00
A revision to an earlier post, this time with just one statement.If you take more than you need, then you might develop addiction--and addiction is self-destructive.
More About: Code , Oral , Moral , Mora , Comprehensive

Choosing to Remember
2007-07-03 03:04:00
Often times we have a great deal of control over what we choose to remember and forget. We take photographs of the good times but not the bad. We keep addresses and phone numbers of some friends--even old friends we never speak with--while others are thrown away, never to be thought of again. Cutting up a photograph symbolizes the attempt to forget a memory, but refusing to take a photograph may actually lead to forgetting.Tangible objects are not necessary to keep a memory, but they prompt us to remember.

And on the 8th day...
2007-06-29 17:28:00
It was brought to my attention that the Creation Museum in Petersburg, KY has now been open for one month. I'll limit my commentary and simply feature some excerpts from the Creation Museum brochure. Let's dive in.So, what is the Creation Museum all about?       The Creation Museum presents a unique and unparalleled experience, a walk through time portraying significant, life-altering events from the past, illuminating the effects of Biblical history on our present and future world.Sounds exciting! What can I expect to see there?       Walk through the Garden of Eden. Introduce yourself to our chameleons. Examine bones, the clutch of eggs from a dinosaur, an exceptional fossil collection, and a mineral collection. Enter the Cave of Sorrows and see the horrific effects of the Fall of man. Finally, see the sacrificial Lamb on the cross, and the hope of redemption.A walk through the most important events in the 6000 years of human history--grea...

Remember the Clue (28) - Repetition
2007-06-29 00:29:00
The echo lives longer than the source.
More About: Petit