Hagakure

anyone into funk? i have been right into parliament, funkadelic, rick james, bootsy collins and all that jazz recently. heres a little youtube mixed bag - all gems http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFmQAQ9EDeM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kS5DLL9TlqM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-uM20Zbx0A http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_ifm_Vg5uY

its been way too long since a music discussion any new finds people? im really getting into math rock. really complex patterns etc. "don cabarello - american don" is blowing my mind at the moment "the mercury program - a data learn the language" is also great. interwieving musical patterns are perfect sitting back and having a good ol think.

and once you have made it turn it into saag panir and your taste buds will be doing the happy dance all night

taoists have sex but dont spill semen as they think that is where the energy is lost.

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/2095/full hope this hasnt been posted. tenacious little fellas.

sure, absolutely. dont wanna hate on Gandhi cause he is an inspirational man and a key figure in india's quest for independence. that said, do you think he was a strongly sexual man before his celibacy? of course, in our culture that has negative implications as our advertising in particular uses the fear of sexual inadequacy to control us while in reality there are all types of sexualities out there. some people need sex every day, some never. nothing wrong with any of these unless it hurts someone. but yeah, with any case of celibacy i wonder how much the person is fighting their instincts to control it. for some it must be amazingly hard, for others completely unnoticeable. we all have different biology.

amazing technology. i have heard of software for songwriting that tailors tunes to be as popular as possible. not sure how well it works or how much its used. really popular tunes still need to be slightly original. just not too much. also i heard about some software that you put all of a composers works into it and it calculates the patterns behind it and pumps more out. the dude who created the software had a series of concerts of music that was like it was from Bach and people got really offended by it.

perhaps he was bad at sex, had a small penis, was asexual or homosexual. that said, i do agree male sexuality is a cause of agression. but lets not be black and white cause there are plenty of women that cheer on the deaths of the enemies of their religion, nation and knitting circle.

i think i saw something like that on that lonely planet: 6 degrees travel show. they were in new york. i think there were a range of resons why some people wanted to be kidnapped. some wanted to try and fight and escape to have a feeling that they won. im not sure if anyone ever beat the kidnappers though cause they seemed to like the approach of breaking into your house when you are sleeping and have two huge bouncer dudes that grabbed and pinned you. it would be interesting to devote yourself to not getting caught. wire up trip alarms through your house, change times and places you travel to each day, perhaps have some mates act as lookouts/security. i cant see any point in just letting yourself get caught though.

"the western concept of God is loaded with the concept of some sentience and i dont think there is any evidence for such sentience existing. if its some unknown force that everything flows according to why reinvent the wheel, just get into taoism which isnt as tainted by these anthropomorphic western concepts." it seems this paragraph of mine wasnt clear enough so i will elaborate. re: sublime "Says the inexplicably sentient being." im not saying sentience doesnt exist (i also dont think its inexplicable but there are dozens of threads in the spirituality forum about that). im talking about the concept of some higher being that is sentient in the same way we are. take a look at the bible or the koran. the god descibed is emotional and conscious in the same way humans are. i think this is the biggest flaw with the western concept of god. back in the bad old days people didnt understand about water evaporating then coming down as rain, or tectonic plates bumping together to produce earthquakes, or lightning being produced due to buildups of charges. so rain is gods grace to help your crops, earthquakes and lightning is when god is angry. clear anthropomorphism, attributing human characteristics to natural forces and inanimate objects. nothing in nature so far suggests any higher sentience being responsible. god has simply been a place holder through the years. we cant explain it therefore god did it. irreducible complexity claims are the same as some dude thousands of years ago complaining that we cant explain the rain therefore god does it. re: el dude "the beauty of this taoist life force as you call it, is it's perception by every individual is.. just that, individual. However anthropomorphisms are projected collectively. How one interacts with the all, can be inert and lifeless.. a cold mechanistic existence, or through myths, it is characetured. making a personal idioscyncratic sense that is also harmonised into a transcendant understanding also. Truisms we can agree on." let me be clear on my raising the topic of taoism. while in the west the concept of God is a higher being in the east the concept of the tao is a lower being if not the lowest being, and at that, not really a being. while the western concept of god is up in the sky looking down and controlling like a ruler the tao is said to be like water. it always sinks to the lowest point, yet without effort nourishes everything. in the book of Chuang Tzu there is a dialog between Chuang Tzu and some other dude where Chuang Tzu gives a series examples of increasingly lower standing where the tao is found with the final example being that the tao is found in shit and piss. such explanations are probably not as important these days with our knowledge that everything is made out of the same kinds of atoms and the atoms in shit are the same as the atoms that make a holy relic. but it is still a potent example of the different ways you can look at the forces at play in the universe. you can see it as something higher and controlling like a ruler or like a low, shapeless, nameless force that retreats from any type of higher status. my preference, quite obviously, is the latter example. i especially like the science of emergence and complexity these days cause it feels like a very taoist kind of science. re: woof woof woof "i disagree with there being no god. science has not proved or explained everything yet." science cant prove non existence. i cant prove there isnt an invisble dragon in your garage, i cant prove unicorns dont exist, that the loch ness monster doesnt exist or any other similar example. the best we can do is look at the evidence and see if there is any evidence for a phenomena. if tehre is no evidence for existance then why continue to believe in it? if evidence comes along should we adjust our beliefs? sure, but not until it does.

re: intelligent design boom. headshot. re: Nabraxas' post Dawkins, to be fair, is attacking the god represented by the abrahamic religions. you can move the goal posts but remember that once you cross a certain point the goal starts getting bigger again. a low impact god that sets things in motion and doesnt control anything it seems to be stripping back the definition to the point where it is a naturalistic explanation for the origin of the universe. at what point does it really just come down to semantics with one group calling it god and another calling it nature and physics? the western concept of God is loaded with the concept of some sentience and i dont think there is any evidence for such sentience existing. if its some unknown force that everything flows according to why reinvent the wheel, just get into taoism which isnt as tainted by these anthropomorphic western concepts.

some more info here on this radio show http://www.abc.net.au/rn/healthreport/stor...007/1969924.htm fascinating stuff

yeah just to nit pick they havent found any microscopic life itself on incoming meteorites yet but they have found meteorites rich in building blocks (which to be fair you clarify later in your post). some of you may have heard of the miller-urey experiment where these dudes tried to replicate the sea and atmosphere of earth way back before life and then sparked it with electricity to simulate lighting. this experiment was hailed as a success as it produced amino acids which proteins are made out of. the concentration of the parent compounds, however, was massive compared to what there would have been back in those days so it was later discredited. amino acids and other building blocks coming from meteorites is a much stronger theory. it also produces a nice image of the big egg of earth being fertilised by a sperm like meteorite.

what you seem to be saying is that all of Dawkins work hinges on a refusal to believe in an eternal superhuman designer. isnt that dawkins whole point? LOL i dont think a biologist's bias prevents the belief in anything eternal. sure its the physicists realm to deal with all that but it shouldnt get in the way. the biologist is better positioned to see how unecessary a DESIGNER is, eternal or not. and if there is some eternal force underlying everything i would be more inclined to describe it (or not bother to try to describe it) like the concept of the Tao or Brahman before getting remotely close to the abrahamic god who MADE this world rather than IS this world like the previous two concepts.

lol dude i was referring to other peoples posts, will make a post on yours in a sec havent heard christians make the same argument as yours so i'm not dismissing it yet

re: flagella http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/design2/article.html and.... ""scientists can be wrong. scientists can be wrong about things for a long time. but guess who proves them wrong. other scientists. if you are a scientist and can find a flaw in a major theory you have got one huge meal ticket. your further research will be funded, you might make professor at some prestigious school, hot scientist chicks aplenty etc" ..And then you wake up!" you miss my point completely. there seems to be this conception in various parts of the mainstream that science is some large conspiracy that is only researching stuff they want to be true. this is definately true for some individual scientists. but in regards to the field as a whole, it is incorrect. if you can prove the theory of evolution to be false i guarantee that you will make it to the cover of Nature, Science not to mention front page of every newspaper that counts. that means huge fame and huge rewards. it is in every scientists interest to prove evolution is false if they can do so. of course not many scientists spend much time trying to prove the theory of gravity wrong because its pretty clear gravity happens. the same goes for evolution. just remember you can get fame and resources making theories and claims in science but you can get just as many rewards from breaking them.

"Why can't people reconcile the ideas of a superior consciousness and natural selection both being true?" if complexity can emmerge from simplicity then why is a superior consciousness required? this superior conciousness was invented by man to explain things they didnt understand. im not saying we understand everything but we sure dont yet see anything that suggests a designer is required. plus if a designer is required then who designed the designer? "I don't think they like re writing science books either for some reason even when they know they should." dude, whats that based on? ill mention one thing. free markets. if you have a science book that you dont update, while your competitors update theirs then which book is going to be used in universities etc. "Until the narrow minded science community realizes and admits that they don't know anywhere near as much as they thought they did and can't explain everything and they may have been wrong about certain things for a very long time then they will continue to be humiliated by a bunch of FKN nutters with microscopes." scientists can be wrong. scientists can be wrong about things for a long time. but guess who proves them wrong. other scientists. if you are a scientist and can find a flaw in a major theory you have got one huge meal ticket. your further research will be funded, you might make professor at some prestigious school, hot scientist chicks aplenty etc. show me a case where a religious group's work has humiliated science. i can show you thousands of examples of the opposite. "The sad thing is that when these deluded morons find out that modern science is based on a flawed/incomplete theory (Darwins) and they have far less answers than they claim to they use it as PROOF that their deluded views are the truth and teach it in schools. The scientific method is one of the best things that ever happened to this world but Darwin was an underacheiver at best and modern science is in a lot of shit if they don't realise and admit this then move on!" Darwin was an absolute genius. his work was incredibly meticulous due to him having a certain amount of fear in releasing a work that went against the establishment to such a degree and his perfectionist attitude. i think it was something like 10 years he worked on origin of species and he only released when he got wind of some other scientist developing a similar idea. but darwin didnt know about DNA and many other recent developments. he lays the foundation for the field of evolutionary biology but others have progressed his work to levels he wouldnt have been able to imagine. dissing Darwin in such a matter is like looking at quantum physics or something and calling Newton an underachiever for not understanding it.

i have heard some podcasts of christians attacking dawkins (can you tell im a podcast fanatic yet?) and they generally sound pathetic. he is pretty rock solid in his logic. i havent heard a convincing argument against him but appeals to quantom physics might just do it for me

Dawkins logic is terrific and he is a very smart cookie. but calling religious people idiots isnt going to result in big enough changes. people just get defensive and stuck in their ways (though i have no doubt it shakes some people from the fringes) i recently listened to an excellent podcast entitiled "Reinventing the Sacred" by Stuart Kaufman. http://feeds.conversationsnetwork.org/~r/c...-2008.06.06.mp3 He is a complexity scientist who was involved in the early days of the Santa Fe institute which is basically responsible for the development of the whole field of complexity theory. his take on the relationship between spirituality and science is really nice IMHO. if the field of complexity and emergence interests you then take a look here for a pop science introduction http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2005/02/18

cheers for posting that stamets work is always inspirational

yep you are correct, i do have it backwards. it was a merging event and not a splitting event. i assumed your statement "Physiologically speaking, the last evolution was from 44 chromosomes to 46" was talking about that event and didnt look it up to check the details. went through this stuff 4 years ago and my recollection of the specific is hazy. was also a bit of a stoner when i learnt this. basically there is this great experiment where they developed a way of marking specific chromosomes with some type of flourescent marking. through this technique they were able to show that one of our chromosomes is made up of two chimp chromosomes that merged. (edit: they may have worked this out previously before and this study just had the sexiest pictures and was hence taught to us, im not sure) so basically our common ancestor with chimps had 48 chromosomes and somewhere after the split two of our chromosomes merged to create one. here is a link with a picture http://www.mun.ca/biology/scarr/Human_Ape_chromosomes.htm sorry bout the mixup in the previous post.

this statement is incorrect. the switch from 44 to 46 was due to the ends of one chromosome splitting off and seperating to form a new one. chimps have one single chromosome with regions that match our equivalent two. split off it is doing the same thing as it was when it was connected. same genes etc prior to mutation and what not. more chromosomes isnt necessarily more advanced. some ferns have more than 1000 chromosomes. in regards to humans having 48 chromosomes i dont think tool mean it literally. there are big complications when one mating partner has a different number of chromosomes to the other partner. the offspring can be deformed, sterlie or may abort before any great development. in regards for 2012 i heard an interesting podcast about china the other day that highlighted some real big problems their economy is facing. the speaker highlighted 2012 as a possible date for one serious crunch. im curious to see what happens but no more than i am curious about the near future in general. big stuff is always around the corner.

if you do end up selling them auction them off and set a reserve at the minimum you would ask for. i think you will do quite well, they look incredible

bump putting an order in for some books to be bought online looking for more ideas. so far got a few things ordered including a book of rick griffin's art. was a book at my library i used to get all the time as a kid. really spun out amazing stuff.

ive heard they have been shipping a lot out to third world countries etc. i guess there is a limit they have hit though in terms of the cost.