donkey races

All those vices you tried to hang up are auditioning for a major performance on New Years Eve. The audience is ready, the director has given you the lines, go out and do your best. Let those vices perform, let them do it with a bang, give them the stage to enjoy the applause they so desperately crave, for this is the last chance you have to do all the things you want to stop.

Eat, drink and be merry for the dawning of New Years Day will arrive with a rasher of Do Nots.

Do not eat that fatty food, do not over indulge in tobacco or alcohol. Do not go back to your couch potato ways, get up, get out and exercise. Every year millions of people all over the country list their do nots for the New Year. They will be better people, they won't argue, they will work harder, they will be more understanding and it all starts soon, midnight December 31st.

On stage this year are some philosophical musings.

One guy Peter from England says: "My New Year's resolution is to live until I'm one hundred and twenty six. I haven't broken the resolution yet and it's currently day 5. I'm doing well.

Another one said: "Write down your mistakes in the previous year (2008) and any bad habits you may have picked up - aim to improve your life throughout the New Year by avoiding your errors. I've been following this since 2000 he says and the bad habit list is growing.

Oscar Wilde said: "To never give into anything except temptation and to read more."

Faye of the USA says "I think New Year's resolutions help us to define areas in our lives that need some improvement. If their only virtue is an admission of our faults, and a wish to improve ourselves, they are worth making even if they only last a few hours."


Gareth in the UK said "This year I have decided to give up completely."


All those dreams and drastic changes need more preparation than a New Years Eve resolution.

i've never been one to make New Years Resolutions. There is something so wrong about picking that one day out of 365 to change anything about your person. And what if you fail...what if you start out with all these good intentions and within days are back doing what you have sworn off for life?

Later, when you look back, you have not only failed, but it will make you feel bad on top of it.

So there goes the self esteem, out the window on a rash decision to make a New Years Resolution.

So this year swear off resolutions.

According to a study done by Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire 78% of those polled failed to keep their resolutions. Wiseman asked 700 people about their strategies for achieving new year resolutions only to find the majority of the respondents had failed to keep them.

So give it up, enjoy the New Year, don't make any resolutions you can't keep. Have fun, laugh lots and enjoy your friends and family.

Happy New Year

Happy Holidays

i went to see an impossible fantasy last night, a movie that left a friend longing to live on the depicted planet. "Avatar" is a movie that created a wonderful escape into a way of life many of us could wish for here. "Avatar" lived up to its billing and i would recommend it to any one that loves a good science fiction movie.

The writers create a chimera(which has been used to describe real-life entities that arise or are created as amalgams of previously separate entities) that moves between the human culture and the indigenous on planet Pandora. The irony of naming a planet after a woman who released all the evils on the world becomes abundantly clear as the movie takes shape. i would tell you to go just for the special effects. The mixing of water world entities with earth-bound physicalities in ways not allowed in our world was a fantastic use of the artist's imagination. But the unification of Pandora's inhabitants with the world they lived on is something many of us here might love to experience. Ahhhh the joys of the fantastic.

But playing the role of the gatekeeper i will restrain further flows of information about the movie so as not to spoil it for you.

Just go.

Friday is Christmas. The end of the build up that has been going on everywhere for almost two months now. Since most Americans appear to overemphasize spending and superficiality at the expense of spirituality Friday will be the culmination of an intense shopping binge.

All of us, be we religious or secular, enjoy the coming together, the festive food and the break from the work routine. It is a time of year when we can let our hair down and just fall in love with everything, if we allow ourselves that option.

This universe we live in is wondrous even without faith in a divine plan. Having a holiday to celebrate together is so much fun. This is the best time of the year in the islands. We all shut down to party and commune with each other.

This Holiday Season i'm thinking about what a magical and amazing place Earth can be when we all celebrate how improbable things can happen, Santa coming down the chimney for instance.

There is a great children's book about Santa Claus(The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by Julie Lane)that brings tears to my eyes every time i read it to a child. It is one of the most heartwarming stories i think i have ever read. It describes an orphan who is passed around from family to family in a Northern European village, because no one family has the resources to keep him full time. As he grows, he adds more people he loves to his extended family. He slowly starts making tiny gifts and leaves them in stockings on the doors during the dead of night. He evolves into the Santa we all thought we knew and loved as children only to find out later he never existed. But this Santa is real, his love is real, and the love for him from adults and children is real.

The nature of the human mind is to question and as children we are taught to question Santa's reality. i think we should be reminded of humanity's great questions at least once a year. At some point in our lives we question the meaning of our world and our existence. In doing so, we examine religious beliefs and philosophies of different cultures; we look at literature's and the artistic expressions of the people of the world; we study languages, create works of art and perform music and plays.

What, if anything, can be known with certainty?

Questioning can be as simple as having a successful confrontation with human suffering, or questioning to find the answer to life's roadblocks.

Remember that cruelty hardens and degrades while kindness reforms and ennobles. This holiday season let Peace prevail, become a foe of violence, don't let it invade your space.
And remember, don't ever stop questioning our humanity, question who we really are, question everything.

Celebrate our questions.

Happy Holidays and Best Wishes

food

Food, from the simple to the sublime . . . is a commodity we can't do without for too long before it negatively impacts our existence. And we can't have that now can we?

As the holiday season creates more venues for eating many of us will be anxiously shopping for that delectable tidbit that will wow family and guests.

Eating has always been an important event in this family, just on a daily basis. We organize our day around the evening meal, dinner being the most important for that is the one we can usually all attend. If you can't make dinner you better have a darn good excuse why not.

But traditions play a huge role for most humans around the world and for us they are primary. The menu selection, prep work, cooking and eventual presentation can cause a rash of headaches if all aren't in agreement prior to beginning the process. We are a very fussy bunch, us humans, and we like our food just so. Sometimes, tradition is so set in stone, that any mention of a change of a menu can be down right horrifying.

A guest last night was lamenting having to attend a Christmas Eve appetizer party instead of a sitting down dinner. Another was discussing a menu faux pas(cooking the Turkey in a paper bag) that had made their Thanksgiving less than stellar. It seems we are such creatures of habit that any changes during traditional meals cause such consternation as to make the event unsatisfactory.

i was reading recently about the oil used during Hanukkah, a celebration that reminds Jews of the miracle of the oil that burned for eight days when the Maccabees purified and rededicated the holy Temple in Jerusalem. Oil plays a huge role in this story. There is the oil of the candles that kept burning and the oil for cooking the Latke's, which is an American tradition. The characteristics of different oils(that for burning and eating) can enhance the flavor and aromas of most dishes but we really don't need the oil it just helps us "see" and taste in a more helpful way. Some say that oil has a way of "illuminating" life, i would tend to agree with that statement.

i had oil all over the stove, the kitchen counters, the floor and myself trying to make the traditional latke's last night and keep the guests entertained. i could "see" i was in danger of slipping on some of it while juggling heaping bowls of marinating grated potatoes, sizzling potato pancakes frying on the stove and pans full of already cooked latke's being kept warm in the oven.

The kitchen was a disaster but the dinner table looked lovely. The house glowed with the Christmas tree and other decorations, but my mother's voice kept playing over and over in my head. She had admonished us for building a house where the kitchen was visible to the guests while you were cooking. Last night was a night i could hear her saying "see, I'll bet you wish they couldn't "see" you now, hehe." "All that oil everywhere, it's such a mess, no one wants to see the mess when they are about to eat."

Well, it was a mess, but you know what, the food was great, the talk was great and everyone helped clean up after. The mess brought us all together.

Eating during holidays always brings up some cultural tradition be it Thanksgiving turkey, Hanukkah latke's, Christmas puddings, or Valentine chocolates. Food plays a big role . . . and so does the conversation that surrounds the making and eating of it. After all the prep, all the fuss, all the work of getting it to the table the real aspect of tradition and food comes to fruition.

When everyone sits down and starts to eat, if it becomes very silent for a short while you know you have triumphed. After that, the fun starts for everyone starts chatting and this is what i love to savor, eating and talking. The food, the talk, they bind us to each other. It can bring out great joy or give rise to clearing the air of grievances. We can solve the world's problems in one sitting or create new ones. We can articulate and sparkle or remain quiet and listen.

The joining together to eat can symbolize health and togetherness so celebrate every time you sit down with family or friends.

For food can humble us in ways unexpected.

lingering essence

A friends father died recently and during writing a condolence message i was struck by his lingering essence. This happens every time i write a condolence letter or even think of someone alive. Usually the person i'm writing about or thinking about appears vividly in my conscious, reminding me of all the things i liked about that person. Reminding me of the lessons i learned from that person, their smiles, stories and how we interacted.

i think about them while writing and they come back to life. My friends father was laughing, he was as alive as i am to me while i was thinking about him and yet he is dead. My conscious brought him back to life, interacted with the vision, and enabled me to compose a more personal message. He took shape, he talked, i re-created him.

There is a book written by Robert Lanza called "Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe." This book, about the centrality of life and how our conscious creates the universe, uses the term biocentrism and lays out seven principles which i will blatantly copy.

1. What we perceive as reality is a process that involves our consciousness. An "external" reality, if it existed, would by definition have to exist in space. But this is meaningless, because space and time are not absolute realities but rather tools of the human and animal mind.
2. Our external and internal perceptions are inextricably intertwined. They are different sides of the same coin and cannot be divorced from one another.
3. The behavior of subatomic particles, indeed all particles and objects, is inextricably linked to the presence of an observer. Without the presence of a conscious observer, they at best exist in an undetermined state of probability waves.
4. Without consciousness, "matter" dwells in an undetermined state of probability. Any universe that could have preceded consciousness only existed in a probability state.
5. The structure of the universe is explainable only through biocentrism. The universe is fine-tuned for life, which makes perfect sense as life creates the universe, not the other way around. The "universe" is simply the complete spatio-temporal logic of the self.
6. Time does not have a real existence outside of animal-sense perception. It is the process by which we perceive changes in the universe.
7. Space, like time, is not an object or a thing. Space is another form of our animal understanding and does not have an independent reality. We carry space and time around with us like turtles with shells. Thus, there is no absolute self-existing matrix in which physical events occur independent of life.

Our senses give us a read out while we are awake and while we sleep. According to Lanza space and time are not external, they are not objects, they are a part of our conscious makeup. Lanza explains that the basis for trying to understand this conscious creation could be had through an investigation of quantum physics.

But controversies abound.

Some say this idea will revolutionize our concept of nature. Others say poppycock. But as Kant said in his own words way back when.

Space is not something objective and real, nor a substance, nor an accident, nor a relation; instead, it is subjective and ideal, and originates from the mind's nature in accord with a stable law as a scheme, as it were, for coordinating everything sensed externally. (Ak 2: 403)

Lanza who is known to many as a biomedical pioneer in cloning and stem cell research, goes on to suggest that we are all immortal. That there is no such thing as death.

i can comprehend this because we are all energy. Energy is not lost in this world it just eeks out to combine with other entities. We change shape when we pass on but our energy remains. It becomes part of everything , part of the plants, the trees, the air, the ocean, the universe. In this way we become immortal, we don't die.

i'm throwing all this out there as a betweener. i'm not sure his idea is strong enough to convince me that only our consciousness creates reality.

If it is the case, my question today would be if our conscious created space and time and reality....why in the world did we create this place? i think we could have done much better.

And so today i'm using my conscious to create reality. My friends dead father is alive and in my world we all treat each other as equals first.........what is yours creating?

betweeness

Yesterday in the New York Times there was an article about a new book by Dr. Tomasello who "believes children develop what he calls "shared intentionality," a notion of what others expect to happen and hence a sense of a group "we." It is from this shared intentionality that children derive their sense of norms and of expecting others to obey them." The article, called "We may be born with the urge to help," describes the study of 12-24 month old subjects who exhibit helping behavior before parents actually teach manners.

"Drop something in front of a two-year-old, and she's likely to pick it up for you. This is not a learned behavior, psychologist Michael Tomasello argues. Through observations of young children in experiments he himself has designed, Tomasello shows that children are naturally—and uniquely—cooperative."

Even the selfish and independent people have to work with others to reach their goals and this may have been learned in childhood, Tomasello claims. Cooperation is one of the least understood attributes of nature and as research continues the focus on the benefits of cooperation and cultural norms becomes more apparent.

Yesterday i was also reading about yeast proteins in biomolecular interaction networks. Scientists use a term called high betweeness proteins when describing a relationship with low connectivity protein modules. While reading an abstract that is much more in depth than the above sentence i was struck by the need for high betweeness in human relationships.

Being between is not necessarily reflective of connectivity or cooperation but "being between" still has a role to play by creating a linkage of interactions. The linkage of interactions by humans not accustomed to relating with each other can occur through the random use of the betweener. The betweener can or cannot signal any diverse groups by using key commonalities.

Barbara Ehrenreich has a new book out(Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America,) that questions the mammoth business of "positive thinking". Apparently after a diagnosis of breast cancer she became caught up in the cult of the pink ribbons. Those ribbon wearing ladies who were not allowed to express anger, fear, or distress by doctors, families and other pink ribbon wearing "cancer survivors." This immersion in "happiness" in the face of death lead her to research the American obsession with optimism. She wanted to know if poverty, obesity, unemployment and relationship troubles could be overcome with a positive mind set. Later, after much research, she came to the conclusion that the bungled invasion of Iraq and the current economic mess may be intricately tied to this reckless national penchant for self-delusion and a lack of anxious vigilance, necessary to societal survival.

Which leads me back to the betweener. The betweener can create a shorter path to understanding and may directly or indirectly influence later outcomes. There is no recognizable category of people that represent betweener's for they are not easily identified. i absconded with a scientific term(high betweeness) to create a different verbal usage of connecting humans together even when they may not view it as a connection or as being necessary to their survival or existence.

Historically negotiators or mediators played a type of betweener when parties to a dispute reached an impasse and discussions broke down. This is not the definition of a betweener that i'm trying to develop, for a betweener's role is purely linkage and not final resolution. Sometimes the linkage may happen without any of the parties recognizing the importance or change in behavior that happened as a result of "betweeness."

It is a slow process that occurs over time as the betweeners sweeten the pot with unusual connections or insights.

As most of you know i was adamantly against the Iraq invasion. Today i'm adding that i'm against the increase of troops by President Obama in Afghanistan.

Our military is composed of men and women who are trained to kill. That is their job.

As Juan Cole says on his blog today:

The biggest threat of derailment comes from an American public facing 17 percent true unemployment and a collapsing economy who are being told we need to spend an extra $30 billion to fight less than 100 al-Qaeda guys in the mountains of Afghanistan, even after the National Security Adviser admitted that they are not a security threat to the US.

We are increasing our forces to kill more Afghanistan people...we are not going in to make peace. Warriors don't make peace, they kill. Peace only happens after they start to withdraw.
i rest my case.