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Samples from http://communitywiki.org/zen :
test Local Anchor --- as per http://www.oddmuse.org/cgi-bin/oddmuse/Local_Anchor_Extension
here's a link to anchor "foo" down near the bottom of this page: foo (in the editor it looks like [[#foo]])
here's a link to anchor "bar" but with text "baz": baz (in the editor it looks like [[#bar|baz]])
here's a link to another page's internal anchor: JFK 50 Miler 2009#Ken (looks like [[JFK 50 Miler 2009#Ken]])
here's a link to another's page's internal anchor with different link text: 2008 Swab Report ((looks like [[JFK 50 Miler 2008#Ken|2008 Swab Report]])
test of small Caps and monospaced
link with hyphen test: "use-mention distinction"
or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use-mention_distinction
test InterMap:
Google:zhurnaly -> Google:zhurnaly[[Google:zhurnaly]] -> Google:zhurnalyGoogle:Mark Zimmermann -> Google:Mark Zimmermann[[Google:Mark Zimmermann]] -> Google:Mark Zimmermann
Tests of new link rendering:
It lowers my chess rating a few hundred points, based on a test game with [[RadRob|Robin]]. It also = It lowers my chess rating a few hundred points, based on a test game with Robin. It also
[[RadRob]] = RadRob
[[RadRob|Robin]] = Robin
here's the invisible anchor named "foo" --> <--
WikiLinks turned off now? Colin McGinn ... AbCd ... etc.?
Power test: how does ^z50 look? how about ^z50 and ^z50 and ^z50 ?
Tilde problem: with the Creole extension and the "tilde escape" feature, it seems that a number prefixed by a tilde, like ~3.14159, doesn't show the tilde... hmmm! Putting a space after the tilde, as in ~ 2.718181828, makes it visible ... ^z
more tilde tests:
Here's a tilde at the end of a line ~
Here are two at the end of a line ~
Here's a tilde in front of a digit ~17
Here's a pair ~17
Here's a tilde before a ~WikiWord
Here's a pair ~WikiWord
~ tilde at beginning of line with space after it
~ pair of them
Three tildes ~ and four ~ and five ~~ ... enough!
Here's a table with tildes in front of the digits:
| this | is | a | table | with | ~7 | cells |
| this | row | has | only | ~6 | cells | |
| this | row | has | ~5 | cells | ||
| this | row | has | ~4 |
small type in blockquote
is this a subscript or not???
is this a superscript or not???
here's the invisible anchor named "bar" --> <--
link tests:
[[Test?]]
[[WikiWordLinkTest?]]
[[Wiki_Word_Link_Test?]]
[['quoted_word'?]]
[["double-quoted word"]]
[[word_with?|in it]]
[[my!bang?]]
[[1_2_3?]]
[[word123?]]
[[3.14159?]]
The Heart-Essence of Buddhist Meditation | Tricycle
Here is where all contemplative practices have a common root, a vital heart that can be developed in an almost infinite variety of skillful directions, depending on purpose and perspective. Different techniques of meditation can be classified according to their focus. Some focus on the field of perception itself, and we call those methods mindfulness; others focus on a specific object, and we call those concentrative practices. There are also techniques that shift back and forth between the field and the object.
Meditation, simply defined, is a way of being aware.
-- Anonymous 2014-02-21 09:39 UTC
Charles J. Fillmore was the man who first figured out how framing works. He is world-renowned in linguistics, but deserves a much wider appreciation as a major intellectual. I have cited his work over and over, in my writing and in my talks. But over more than 50 years, he worked modestly as an OWL, an ordinary working linguist. He was brought up in St. Paul, Minnesota, and was known for his Minnesotan modesty, gentlemanliness, and a sly wit befitting Lake Woebegone. When he first came to Berkeley in 1971, he encountered a culture defined by the then-commonplace expression, "Let it all hang out." His response was to wear a button saying, "Tuck it all back in."
-- Anonymous 2014-02-21 16:59 UTC
George Lakoff - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Although some of Lakoff's research involves questions traditionally pursued by linguists, such as the conditions under which a certain linguistic construction is grammatically viable, he is most famous for his reappraisal of the role that metaphors play in socio-political lives of humans.
Metaphor has been seen within the Western scientific tradition as purely a linguistic construction. The essential thrust of Lakoff's work has been the argument that metaphors are primarily a conceptual construction, and indeed are central to the development of thought.
He suggested that:
"Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature."
Non-metaphorical thought is for Lakoff only possible when we talk about purely physical reality. For Lakoff the greater the level of abstraction the more layers of metaphor are required to express it. People do not notice these metaphors for various reasons. One reason is that some metaphors become 'dead' and we no longer recognize their origin. Another reason is that we just don't "see" what is "going on".
For instance, in intellectual debate the underlying metaphor is usually that argument is war (later revised as "argument is struggle"):
He won the argument.
Your claims are indefensible.
He shot down all my arguments.
His criticisms were right on target.
If you use that strategy, he'll wipe you out.
For Lakoff, the development of thought has been the process of developing better metaphors. The application of one domain of knowledge to another domain of knowledge offers new perceptions and understandings.
-- Anonymous 2014-02-21 17:03 UTC
We can all stipulate: the expert isn't always right.
But an expert is far more likely to be right than you are. On a question of factual interpretation or evaluation, it shouldn't engender insecurity or anxiety to think that an expert's view is likely to be better-informed than yours. (Because, likely, it is.)
Experts come in many flavors. Education enables it, but practitioners in a field acquire expertise through experience; usually the combination of the two is the mark of a true expert in a field. But if you have neither education nor experience, you might want to consider exactly what it is you're bringing to the argument.
In any discussion, you have a positive obligation to learn at least enough to make the conversation possible. The University of Google doesn't count. Remember: having a strong opinion about something isn't the same as knowing something.
And yes, your political opinions have value. Of course they do: you're a member of a democracy and what you want is as important as what any other voter wants. As a layman, however, your political analysis, has far less value, and probably isn't — indeed, almost certainly isn't — as good as you think it is.
-- Anonymous 2014-02-26 14:44 UTC
The American Scholar: On Weirdness - Nathaniel Rich
Great literature confounds expectations. Great sentences, paragraphs, stories, and characters create surprises that are as unexpected as they are revelatory. Even the books assigned to us in high school English class—novels like Heart of Darkness, The Scarlet Letter, Moby-Dick (especially Moby-Dick)—were greeted with confusion and apprehension upon their original publication. They were unlike anything that came before. They were unconventional. They were weird.
When I dislike a novel, it's usually because I recognize something familiar in it: a character, a premise, most often a writing style. Familiar is boring. When I enjoy a novel, it's usually because it surprises me, tells me things I didn't know, or reveals things that I do know, but from a different perspective. All high art is destined to be weird. Weird: from wyrd, Old English for "destiny."
When I write fiction, I tell myself to make it weird. Then I force myself to make it weirder. Life is extraordinarily weird. Art must be weirder.
-- Anonymous 2014-02-26 19:16 UTC
Is Information Physical? What Does That Mean?
Susskind boldly proposed that the universe itself behaves as a hologram, i.e., that all the information that constitutes our three-dimensional world is actually encoded on the universe's equivalent of a black hole's event horizon (the so-called cosmic horizon).
If true, this would mean that "reality" as we understand it is an illusion, with the action actually going on at the cosmic horizon. Baggott ingeniously compares this to a sort of reverse Plato's cave: it isn't the three-dimensional world that is reflected in a pale way on the walls of a cave were people are chained and can only see shadows of the real thing; it is the three-dimensional world that is a (holographic) projection of the information stored at the cosmic horizon.
-- Anonymous 2014-03-03 17:15 UTC
Stokes' theorem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In differential geometry, Stokes' theorem (also called the generalized Stokes' theorem) is a statement about the integration of differential forms on manifolds, which both simplifies and generalizes several theorems from vector calculus. Stokes' theorem says that the integral of a differential form ω over the boundary of some orientable manifold Ω is equal to the integral of its exterior derivative dω over the whole of Ω
-- Anonymous 2014-03-03 17:19 UTC
22 Habits of Unhappy People - InfoBarrel
You have good in your life, find it, and share it.
-- Anonymous 2014-03-09 15:08 UTC
Simplified 24 Yang Style Tai Chi Set
Movement Name (click to see figures) Direction Chinese Name
Form 1 Commencing form South
Form 2 Part the wild horse's mane (3) East
Form 3 The white crane spreads its wings East
Form 4 Brush knee and twist step on both sides (3) East
Form 5 Hand strums the lute East
Form 6 Step back and whirl arms on both sides (4) East
Form 7 Grasp the bird's tail-left style East
Form 8 Grasp the bird's tail-right style West
Form 9 Single whip East
Form 10 Wave hands like clouds-left style South
Form 11 Single whip East
Form 12 High pat on the horse East
Form 13 Kick with right heel (east by south 30) East
Form 14 Strike opponent's ears with both fists East
Form 15 Turn and kick with left heel (w by n 30) West
Form 16 Push down and stand on one leg-left style West *
Form 17 Push down and stand on one leg-right style West
Form 18 Work at shuttles on both sides 45 Degrees
Form 19 Needle at sea bottom West
Form 20 Flash the arm West
Form 21 Turn, deflect downward, parry and punch East
Form 22 Apparent close up East
Form 23 Cross hands South
Form 24 Closing form South
-- Anonymous 2014-03-11 17:39 UTC
Polymath - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
These thinkers embodied a notion that emerged in Renaissance Italy, expressed by one of its most accomplished representatives, Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472), that "a man can do all things if he will."[4] Embodying a basic tenet of Renaissance humanism that humans are empowered and limitless in their capacity for development, the concept led to the notion that people should embrace all knowledge and develop their capacities as fully as possible.
The term applies to the gifted people of the Renaissance who sought to develop their abilities in all areas of knowledge as well as in physical development, social accomplishments, and the arts, in contrast to the vast majority of people of that age who were not well educated. This term entered the lexicon during the twentieth century and has now been applied to great thinkers living before and after the Renaissance.
-- Anonymous 2014-03-12 12:24 UTC
Bakeneko - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The bakeneko (化け猫, "changed cat") is a type of Japanese yōkai, or supernatural creature. According to its name, it is a cat that has changed into a yōkai. It is often confused with the nekomata, another cat-like yōkai,[2] and the distinction between the two can often be quite ambiguous.
-- Anonymous 2014-03-12 13:27 UTC
Kolmogorov–Arnold–Moser theorem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Kolmogorov–Arnold–Moser theorem (KAM theorem) is a result in dynamical systems about the persistence of quasi-periodic motions under small perturbations. The theorem partly resolves the small-divisor problem that arises in the perturbation theory of classical mechanics.
-- Anonymous 2014-03-14 11:58 UTC
Welcome to Overwhelmia: The modern-day madness of working mothers - The Washington Post
There's a name for this. It is called "time confetti." It's miserable. And it's part of why we are all Overwhelmed.
-- Anonymous 2014-03-14 13:10 UTC
Spherical cow - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A spherical cow is a metaphor for highly simplified scientific models of complex real life phenomena.[1]
The phrase comes from a joke about theoretical physicists:
Milk production at a dairy farm was low, so the farmer wrote to the local university, asking for help from academia. A multidisciplinary team of professors was assembled, headed by a theoretical physicist, and two weeks of intensive on-site investigation took place. The scholars then returned to the university, notebooks crammed with data, where the task of writing the report was left to the team leader. Shortly thereafter the physicist returned to the farm, saying to the farmer "I have the solution, but it only works in the case of spherical cows in a vacuum." [2]
It is told in many variants,[3] including a spherical horse in a vacuum, from a joke about a physicist who said he could predict the winner of any horse race to multiple decimal points - provided it was a perfectly elastic spherical horse moving through a vacuum.[4][5]
The point of the joke is that physicists will often reduce a problem to the simplest form they can imagine in order to make calculations more feasible, even though such simplification may hinder the model's application to reality. The concept is well enough known that it can be referred to in scientific discourse without explanation.
-- Anonymous 2014-03-19 12:40 UTC
A 'collective monologue' does borrow the idea of one person talking and not paying attention to others. The idea is that children at a certain age get together in the same area to play and talk, but don't really pay much attention to each other. Instead, they all give monologues (i.e. talk aloud to themselves) at more or less the same time. From a casual listen it might sound as though they were having a conversation, but they are all talking about their own thing and what each child is talking about does not relate to what the other kids are talking about. At some later age the children learn how to share in conversations and stop the collective monologuing.
-- Anonymous 2014-03-20 14:11 UTC
Finally, a Formula For Decoding Health News | FiveThirtyEight
As a statistician, I use a simple computation based on Bayes' rule to combine my gut feeling about a piece of health news with information about the study it comes from. The result gives me a better idea of how much to believe a given headline.
This is not a definitive way to tell whether a headline is right — you'd have to perform serious scientific inquiry to know for sure — but I find it a pretty useful exercise.
Bayes' rule boils down to a simple formula1:
Final opinion on headline = (initial gut feeling) * (study support for headline)
In the equation, the final opinion about the headline and initial gut feeling are expressed as odds. If you think the odds the study is true based on your gut are 4 to 1, then your initial gut feeling will be 4. If you think the odds are 1 to 10 against the study being true, then your initial gut feeling will be 1/10. Each of the numbers is bigger than zero and a value of one is neutral. Numbers assigned to initial gut feeling between zero and one mean you tend not to believe the headline; the smaller the number, the less you believe it. Numbers bigger than one mean you tend to believe the headline; the bigger the number, the more you believe it.
-- Anonymous 2014-03-26 08:15 UTC
The Hermetic Tarot by Godfrey Dowson is a masterpiece. The tone of the deck and Dowson's artwork invokes the full spectrum of powers within the tarot practitioner for spiritual divinatory work. As a Golden Dawn study deck, the card images are fundamentally focused on alchemical and astrological references, with the deck outfitted for theurgy. It can be integrated into personal rituals, meditations, and ceremonies and in fact is probably far better suited for such work than, say, the Marseille, Rider-Waite-Smith, or even the Thoth decks.
-- Anonymous 2014-03-27 12:14 UTC
The Major Arcana represent universal archetypal forces that govern life. When Major Arcana cards dominate a reading, it suggests that great natural forces are at play. The Minor Arcana represent the many facets of the human condition. Within the Minor Arcana, the four suits generally correspond to the following:
4suits
-- Anonymous 2014-03-27 12:16 UTC
Just how steep is that climb in 2014, anyway?
I think this goes to show the difficulty of using linear regression, which sounds simple but has hidden problems. My view is that for this kind of data, fits are of limited use. I never do anything more complicated than single-variable regression if I can help it. Even then, I only do a linear fit if I have a clear and fairly simple idea of the reason for the relationship. And, of course, error bars are a must.
-- Anonymous 2014-04-04 12:37 UTC
How to Talk to Your Teenager About Pornography - NYTimes.com
Pornography depicts one shadowy and loveless corner of the vast landscape of human sexuality. Your teenager might profess a sophisticated understanding of the many varieties of sexual activity, but there's still no harm in saying: "I know that a lot of kids are looking at porn online, but I'm hoping you won't. Sex can be mutual, loving and fulfilling and it can be dark, offensive and destructive. What you see in pornography is almost always the wrong kind of sex, and I don't want you getting the impression that that's what sex is all about."
Our bodies can be aroused by things our minds don't find appealing. Next, you may want to take up the unfortunate reality that many portrayals of sex — however distasteful or disturbing — can still be titillating. You might say: "There's another reason I don't want you looking at pornography. People often find that they're turned on by stuff that they don't feel good about watching. I wouldn't want for you to be in the position of having your body react to something your head knows is wrong."
Many people consider pornography to be fundamentally exploitive. If you go this route, try: "In pornography, someone's always making money off someone else's degradation. When you watch pornography, you are participating in exploitation. We don't do that in our family." Credit for this last point goes to the author Marybeth Hicks from a conversation we had long ago. Our politics couldn't be more different (I'm about as liberal as she is conservative), but I fully agree with her on this one.
Everything you do online could potentially be seen by everyone you know. If you haven't yet had a conversation about sexting, you might introduce that related issue here: "Needless to say, we also expect that you would never share or request content you wouldn't want grandma to see."
-- Anonymous 2014-04-05 09:27 UTC
One Word That Should Never Follow 'I Love You' - NYTimes.com
A little conjunction transduction made all the difference.
-- Anonymous 2014-04-05 09:29 UTC
[[Life_Partner_Tarot?]]
project idea: tarot deck with cards associated with "life partner" criteria ... from various places:
Charites - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In Greek mythology, a Charis (Ancient Greek: Χάρις, pronounced [kʰáris]) or Grace is one of three or more minor goddesses of charm, beauty, nature, human creativity, and fertility, together known as the Charites /ˈkærɨtiːz/ (Χάριτες, [kʰáritɛːs]) or Graces. The usual list, from youngest to oldest is Aglaea ("Splendor"), Euphrosyne ("Mirth"), and Thalia ("Good Cheer").
-- Anonymous 2014-04-18 12:13 UTC
Muse - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Muse Domain Emblem
Calliope Epic poetry Writing tablet
Clio History Scrolls
Erato Lyric Poetry Cithara (an ancient Greek musical instrument in the lyre family)
Euterpe Song and Elegiac poetry Aulos (an ancient Greek musical instrument like a flute)
Melpomene Tragedy Tragic mask
Polyhymnia Hymns Veil
Terpsichore Dance Lyre
Thalia Comedy Comic mask
Urania Astronomy Globe and compass
-- Anonymous 2014-04-18 12:15 UTC
In Bruges - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In Bruges is a 2008 British black comedy film written and directed by Martin McDonagh. The film stars Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson as two Irish hitmen in hiding, with Ralph Fiennes as their gangster boss. The film takes place—and was filmed—in the Belgian city of Bruges.
-- Anonymous 2014-04-23 14:33 UTC
"Thinking meat! You're asking me to believe in thinking meat!"
-- Anonymous 2014-04-24 13:59 UTC
Big Ideas, Small Spaces: Tiny House Design Workshop in Washington, DC
Big Ideas, Small Spaces: Tiny House Design Workshop in Washington, DC
-- Anonymous 2014-04-24 14:49 UTC
'The Walking Dead' recap, episode 211: 'Judge, Jury, Executioner' - Baltimore Sun
Rick vs. Hershel.
Hershel sings the Doodlebug song to Beth, who's learning how to smile again. Rick teaches wild-at-heart Carl a lesson by telling him "Don't talk, think. That's a good rule of thumb for life."
-- Anonymous 2014-04-28 12:54 UTC
Solve a problem or puzzle using ingenuity.
They're in a bit of a predicament, but I'm sure they'll suss it out.
She had the Rubiks Cube completely sussed within a couple of days.
Debbie just sussed out how to sell shares online.
-- Anonymous 2014-04-28 14:13 UTC
Rōnin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The word rōnin literally means "wave man". That, however, is an idiomatic expression that means "vagrant" or "wandering man", someone who is without a home. The term originated in the Nara and Heian periods, when it referred to a serf who had fled or deserted his master's land. It then came to be used for a samurai who had no master. (Hence, the term "wave man" illustrating one who is socially adrift.)
-- Anonymous 2014-04-28 14:30 UTC
Given the widespread belief that meditation practice is scientifically certified to be good for just about everything, the results of a recent major analysis of the research might come as some surprise. Conducted by the Association for Health and Research Quality (AHRQ)—a government organization that oversees standards of research—the meta-study found only moderate evidence for the alleviation of anxiety, depression, and pain, and low to insufficient evidence to suggest that meditation relieved stress, improved mood, attention, or mental-health-related quality of life, or had a substantial impact on substance use, eating habits, sleep, or weight. It looks like the scientific evidence for the benefits of meditation aren't as solid as many might claim.
-- Anonymous 2014-04-30 11:54 UTC
Not all effects are so adverse. The fact that somebody's sense of self disappears for a second is not necessarily a problem for that person. They might think, "Oh, that was weird." Effects can be transient and mild. But a lot of people have charged emotional material or memories coming up. No MBSR teacher is going to be surprised by that. If you sit down on a cushion and count your breath for two months, all sorts of things— wounds, memories, traumas—are going to come up.
-- Anonymous 2014-04-30 12:00 UTC
Findings After reviewing 18 753 citations, we included 47 trials with 3515 participants. Mindfulness meditation programs had moderate evidence of improved anxiety (effect size, 0.38 [95% CI, 0.12-0.64] at 8 weeks and 0.22 [0.02-0.43] at 3-6 months), depression (0.30 [0.00-0.59] at 8 weeks and 0.23 [0.05-0.42] at 3-6 months), and pain (0.33 [0.03- 0.62]) and low evidence of improved stress/distress and mental health–related quality of life. We found low evidence of no effect or insufficient evidence of any effect of meditation programs on positive mood, attention, substance use, eating habits, sleep, and weight. We found no evidence that meditation programs were better than any active treatment (ie, drugs, exercise, and other behavioral therapies).
-- Anonymous 2014-04-30 12:14 UTC
Reification (computer science) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Reification is the process by which an abstract idea about a computer program is turned into an explicit data model or other object created in a programming language. A computable/addressable object — a resource — is created in a system as a proxy for a non computable/addressable object. By means of reification, something that was previously implicit, unexpressed, and possibly inexpressible is explicitly formulated and made available to conceptual (logical or computational) manipulation. Informally, reification is often referred to as "making something a first-class citizen" within the scope of a particular system. Some aspect of a system can be reified at language design time, which is related to reflection in programming languages. It can be applied as a stepwise refinement at system design time. Reification is one of the most frequently used techniques of conceptual analysis and knowledge representation.
-- Anonymous 2014-05-01 15:30 UTC
Meta-circular evaluator - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Meta-circular evaluation is discussed at length in section 4.1, titled The Metacircular Evaluator, of the MIT university textbook Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP). The core idea they present is two functions:
Eval which takes as arguments an expression and an environment (bindings for variables) and produces either a primitive or a procedure and a list of arguments
Apply which takes as arguments a procedure and a list of arguments to which the procedure should be applied and produces an expression and an environment
The two functions then call each other in circular fashion to fully evaluate a program.
-- Anonymous 2014-05-01 15:38 UTC
The Great Works of Software — The Message — Medium
There's a sad tendency in most manuals and programming guides to congratulate people simply for thinking. Not here; you're expected to think. That can be very exciting when you're used to being patronized, and it's one of the best things about Unix.
-- Anonymous 2014-05-04 15:30 UTC
Spurious Correlations
Discover a new correlation
RSS Feed - an interesting spurious correlation each day!
-- Anonymous 2014-05-14 12:50 UTC
THE ANATOMY OF HEARING
I always hear the shimmering of blood
somewhere under the notch of the temple
and a tingle from the middle of the skull
unlike the voices of the living
a knot deep in the throat
a tangle of primeval fear
and intimation of another life
a trembling in the belly since
sexual maturity as if I were a beast
bringing life and shame at the same time
cramps behind the knees while standing
in the altai mountains of siberia as if at the right
hand of god a light numbness of being
when I find in a poem
a line that wasn't written
-- Anonymous 2014-05-14 13:27 UTC
Bob was also a collector of limericks in every form—from the most scientific to the most inappropriate—and published a book and several articles on them. He was a legend among the students at RPI. One group of students, who considered themselves experts in limericks, invited Bob to a limerick duel. The students were long exhausted when Bob was just hitting his stride. He also once gave an exam in which the students were asked to complete limericks about physics. His ability to come up with a limerick on the spot for virtually any person's name often left his listeners astounded—and occasionally shocked!
In 1975 AAPT honored Bob with its highest honor, the Oersted Medal. He served as an officer in the American Physical Society, the American Institute of Physics, and AAPT, including as its president in 1987–88. His time as an honorary visiting professor to the People's Republic of China in 1981 and again in 1985 helped to reinforce the growing physics cooperation between the US and China.
Bob and Mildred regularly attended concerts at the Tanglewood music venue in Massachusetts and the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in New York. His love for classical music was only exceeded by family, physics, and limericks—in that order. He still found time to be a passionate fan of the Baltimore Orioles and an ardent supporter of his alma mater, Johns Hopkins. Whatever he accomplished was always aimed at helping someone else to succeed. At that he was an enormous success.
-- Anonymous 2014-05-20 19:11 UTC
Flower Sermon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Among adherents of Zen, the origin of Zen Buddhism is ascribed to a story, known in English as the Flower Sermon, in which Śākyamuni Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama) transmits direct prajñā (wisdom) to the disciple Mahākāśyapa. In the original Sino-Japanese, the story is called nengemishō (拈花微笑, literally "pick up flower, subtle smile"). In the story, Śākyamuni gives a wordless sermon to his disciples (sangha) by holding up a white flower. No one in the audience understands the Flower Sermon except Mahākāśyapa, who smiles. Within Zen, the Flower Sermon communicates the ineffable nature of tathātā (suchness) and Mahākāśyapa's smile signifies the direct transmission of wisdom without words.
-- Anonymous 2014-05-21 12:06 UTC
The highest truth is daiji, translated as dai jiki in Chinese scriptures. This is the subject of the question the emperor asked Bodhidharma: "What is the First Principle?" Bodhidharma said, "I don't know." "I don't know" is the First Principle.
Lotus Sutra No. 6 lecture at the Zen Mountain Center (February 1968)
-- Anonymous 2014-06-01 17:58 UTC
The purpose of studying Buddhism is not to study Buddhism but to study ourselves. You are not your body. You are the Big Activity. You are just expressing the smallest particle of the Big Activity. That is all. But when you become attached to a temporal expression of the Big Activity, it is time to talk about Buddhism.
Part 3, No. 3 "Study Yourself"
"The basic teaching of Buddhism is the teaching of transiency or change. That everything changes is the basic truth for each existence. No one can deny this truth and all teaching of Buddhism is condensed within it. This is the teaching for all of us. Wherever we go this teaching is true. This teaching is also understood as the teaching of selflessness. Because each existence is in constant change, there is no abiding self.
Part 4, No. 1. "Transiency"
-- Anonymous 2014-06-01 17:59 UTC
'Scientists tend to overcompress, to make their arguments difficult to follow by leaving out too many steps. They do this because they have a hard time writing and they would like to get it over with as soon as possible.... Six weeks of work are subsumed into the word "obviously." '—Sidney Coleman
There is a related joke about a mathematics professor. The professor is giving a lecture and has made an assertion as part of his presentation. A student, not understanding the basis for the assertion asks why it is true. The professor responds that "It is obvious." Then the professor steps back, stares at the board and ponders for several minutes. Then he turns and walks out of the lecture hall. He is absent for a fairly long time and finally one of the students goes to look for him. He sees the professor in his office working on the blackboard which he has covered with mathematics. The student returns and reports to the class. Finally, just before the class is scheduled to end the professor reappears, and announces "Yes, it is obvious." (You're supposed to laugh here, since this is usually the end of the joke.)
But it gets better. I once told this joke to a man I know who was at one time the head of the Aeronatucial Engineering Department at MIT. His response was, "That is not a joke. The professor was Norbert Weiner. I was in the class."
-- Anonymous 2014-06-02 15:39 UTC
Excerpts from Alan Fraser's book, The Craft of Piano Playing | Alan Fraser
In Tai Chi Chuan the same form of choreography or series of battle movements is done each day for years upon years, slowly, gently. The goal is in the quality of what one does, the process is of discovery and heightening sensitivity; one is never bored or finished but always enriched. 'Sensitivity' takes on an eminently practical meaning, as it is through one's ability to hone one's kinesthetic sensing ability that improved use of one's skeletal structure occurs. The T'ai Chi master can throw an opponent across the room while barely appearing to move his little finger, because his cultivation of sensitivity has allowed him to purge himself of the tensions which prevent the average man from achieving exceptionally refined levels of power.
-- Anonymous 2014-06-05 17:35 UTC
Urizen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In the complex mythology of William Blake, Urizen is the embodiment of conventional reason and law. He is usually depicted as a bearded old man; he sometimes bears architect's tools, to create and constrain the universe; or nets, with which he ensnares people in webs of law and conventional society. Originally, Urizen represented one half of a two-part system, with him representing reason and Los, his opposition, representing imagination. In Blake's reworking of his mythical system, Urizen is one of the four Zoas that result from the division of the primordial man, Albion, and he continues to represent reason. He has an Emanation, or paired female equivalent, Ahania, who stands for Pleasure. In Blake's myth, Urizen is joined by many daughters with three representing aspects of the body. He is also joined by many sons, with four representing the four elements. These sons join in rebellion against their father but are later united in the Last Judgment. In many of Blake's books, Urizen is seen with four books that represent the various laws that he places upon humanity.
-- Anonymous 2014-06-15 20:39 UTC
Reverse ferret - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Reverse ferret is a phrase used predominantly within the British media to describe a sudden reversal in an organisation's editorial line on a certain issue. Generally, this will involve no acknowledgement of the previous position.[1]
The term originates from Kelvin MacKenzie's time at The Sun. His preferred description of the role of journalists when it came to public figures was to "stick a ferret up their trousers". This meant making their lives uncomfortable, and was based on the supposed northern stunt of ferret legging (where contestants compete to show who can endure a live ferret within their sealed trousers the longest). However, when it became clear that the tide of public opinion had turned against the paper's line, MacKenzie would burst from his office shouting "Reverse Ferret!"
-- Anonymous 2014-06-20 12:32 UTC
Osho Zen Tarot and the Corresponding Rider-Waite Cards | Daily Tarot GirlDaily Tarot Girl
0 Fool – The Fool
1 The Magician – Existence
2 The High Priestess – Inner Voice
3 The Empress – Creativity
4 The Emperor – The Rebel
5 The Heirophant – No-Thingness
6 The Lovers – The Lovers
7 The Chariot – Awareness
8 Strength – Courage
9 The Hermit – Aloneness
10 The Wheel of Fortune – Change
11 Justice – Breakthrough
12 The Hanged Man – New Vision
13 Death – Transformation
14 Temperance – Integration
15 The Devil – Conditioning
16 The Tower – Thunderbolt
17 The Star – Silence
18 The Moon – Past Lives
19 The Sun – Innocence
20 Judgement – Beyond Illusion
21 The World – Completion
The Master (This is just an extra Osho Zen Tarot card that is unique to this deck – there is no Rider-Waite equivalent)
Minor Arcana
Each Minor Arcana suit in the Osho Zen Tarot is represented by a different element
Pentacles - Rainbows
Swords – Air
Cups - Water
Wands – Fire
Court Cards
The different court cards in the Osho Zen Tarot are identified by a triangle on the bottom of the card.
King – Upright triangle
Queen – Inverted triangle
Knight - Left pointing triangle
Page – Right pointing triangle
-- Anonymous 2014-06-21 20:14 UTC
The Master
The Master in Zen is not a master over others, but a master of himself. His every gesture and his every word reflect his enlightened state. He has no private goals, no desire that anything should be other than the way it is. His disciples gather around him not to follow him, but to soak up his presence and be inspired by his example. In his eyes they find their own truth reflected, and in his silence they fall more easily into the silence of their own beings.
The master welcomes the disciples not because he wants to lead them, but because he has so much to share. Together, they create an energy field that supports each unique individual in finding his or her own light. If you can find such a master you are blessed. If you cannot, keep on searching. Learn from the teachers, and the would-be masters, and move on. Charaiveti, charaiveti, said Gautam Buddha. Keep on moving.
-- Anonymous 2014-06-21 20:16 UTC
Ace of Clouds: Consciousness
Most of the cards in this suit of the mind are either cartoon-like or troubled, because the influence of the mind in our lives is generally either ridiculous or oppressive. But this card of Consciousness shows a vast Buddha figure. He is so expansive he has gone even beyond the stars, and above his head is pure emptiness. He represents the consciousness that is available to all who become a master of the mind and can use it as the servant it is meant to be.
When you choose this card, it means that there is a crystal clarity available right now, detached, rooted in the deep stillness that lies at the core of your being. There is no desire to understand from the perspective of the mind--the understanding you have now is existential, whole, in harmony with the pulse of life itself. Accept this great gift, and share it.
-- Anonymous 2014-06-21 20:16 UTC
This column will change your life: near enemies | Life and style | The Guardian
It's widely accepted, these days, that there's plenty of wisdom to be found in Buddhism, even if you're a hardcore atheist with a Richard Dawkins ankle tattoo who'd never be caught taking life advice from any other religion. (Can you imagine the damage to mindfulness meditation's reputation if word got out that it's been part of Christian, Muslim and Jewish traditions for centuries?) Yet one of the most insightful bits of Buddhist psychology has yet to reach a widespread modern audience: the notion of the "near enemy". According to this way of thinking, for every desirable habit or state of mind, there's a "far enemy", which is its obvious antithesis. Thus hatred, it won't surprise you to learn, is the far enemy of love. Near enemies, on the other hand, are much sneakier and harder to spot, because they so closely resemble the thing they're the enemy of. Needy, possessive co-dependency can look and feel a lot like love, when really it corrodes it.
-- Anonymous 2014-06-30 14:14 UTC
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn't make any sense.
From Essential Rumi
by Coleman Barks
-- Anonymous 2014-06-30 18:34 UTC
Doctors are just people. Usually very busy people. They are not supermen, or superwomen. If your particular medical problem fits inside your medic's universe of knowledge, then your medics are fabulous. If it doesn't, they're worse than useless. Only occasionally did I find a doctor who was willing to look at the big picture and help me devise strategies for coping. These doctors have my profound gratitude.
Never underestimate the power of family support. Neither Becky nor Bert ever told me what I needed to do. They just helped me to see what was possible, and then supported my choices.
But the main lesson is much simpler:
Every day is a gift.
All of them. Cold ones, hot ones, hard ones, easy ones, tough ones, joyful ones, arrhythmic ones, normal ones. Every single one.
I don't know what condition I'll be in tomorrow. All I know is what I can do with today. So, each day, I try to make the most of it.
-- Anonymous 2014-07-10 13:46 UTC
Company File on The Garbageman from The Dilbert Wiki - The Dilbert site that anyone can edit!!
The Garbageman, often referred to as the World's Smartest Garbageman is a mysterious and philosophical figure and arguably the smartest character in the Dilbert universe. The calm garbageman is a skilled inventor, having created all sorts of advanced technologies including a weather control device, a phaser and an anti-stupidity gun. He is acknowledged as the only garbageman in the city and is known to use wormholes through the space fabric (or shortcuts as he calls them) to be able to collect all the houses in no hurry.
The Garbageman rarely appears in the strip, but has got more prominent roles in the TV series. He frequently helps Dilbert to solve extremely complex problems, both technical and philosophical, with seemingly no difficulty. He is also good friends with Dogbert, with whom he created the first Internet browser pretty much as a joke; and Ratbert, to which he has explained quantum physics and other complicated matters. He has also expressed admiration for Ratbert's tremendously simple lifestyle and stated that the best things in the world are silly. The Garbageman often appears "out of nowhere" in the most convenient times, sometimes with the most convenient objects, such as the body of Benjamin Franklin and a special chemical that could revive the inventor (you wouldn't believe what people throw away). He has also appeared inside Dilbert's kitchen in "The Merger" to help Dilbert solve his "familial" dilemma; and pretended to be a doctor to explain to Dilmom about young Dilbert's engineering knack in a flashback scene in "The Knack".
In his first appearance, he points out some corrections he made to a sketch Dilbert has thrown away. When questioned by Dilbert about why he became a garbageman, he points out that the real question is why Dilbert became an engineer. Scott Adams himself was once questioned about why such a genius character chooses to works as a garbageman, and stated that the joke is that we cannot really question the garbageman's career choice, since HE is smarter than we. It is also of philosophical interest that the smartest character in the strip is neither a manager nor an employee but one completely separated from the company business world.
-- Anonymous 2014-07-14 12:43 UTC
Zone In, not Out, to Overcome Your Limits | ACTIVE
a key difference between average and elite marathon runners is that whereas average runners describe zoning out to make it through the last few miles of the race, the elite runner zones in more keenly.
This habit of better runners will be familiar to anyone who has practiced the "purposeful mindfulness" Total Immersion advocates for stroke improvement. While dissociation is intended to take an athlete's mind off the distance to be covered, or the effort required while running or cycling near one's limits, a contrasting mental technique—let's call it association—is far more interesting and functional than those cited in the article.
-- Anonymous 2014-07-16 12:59 UTC
Organizational Evolution by Natural Selection
Abstract nonsense - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In mathematics, abstract nonsense, general abstract nonsense, and general nonsense are terms used facetiously by some mathematicians to describe certain kinds of arguments and methods related to category theory. (Very) roughly speaking, category theory is the study of the general form of mathematical theories, without regard to their content. As a result, a proof that relies on category theoretic ideas often seems slightly out of context to those who are not used to such abstraction, sometimes to the extent that it resembles a comical non sequitur. Such proofs are sometimes dubbed "abstract nonsense" as a light-hearted way of alerting people to their abstract nature.
More generally, "abstract nonsense" may refer to any proof (humorous or not) that uses primarily category theoretic methods, or even to the study of category theory itself. Note that referring to an argument as "abstract nonsense" is not supposed to be a derogatory expression, and is actually often a compliment regarding the generality and sophistication of the argument.
-- Anonymous 2014-08-21 17:18 UTC
The 100/0 PRINCIPLE "The secret of Great Relationships" - Pat McGill - Public Speaking Speaker
"Life is an echo, what you send out comes back" Chinese Proverb.
The 100/0 Principle allows you to take responsibility for your relationships without
being weighed down by unrealistic expectations.
Having realistic expectations of others involves realizing that we're all less than perfect.
Each of us must determine the relationships to which this principle should apply.
For most of us,it applies to work associates, customers, suppliers, family and friends.
"Some of the biggest challenges in relationships come from the fact that most people enter
a relationship in order to get something.
They're trying to find someone who's going to
make them feel good."
The 100/0 Principle reminds us of how immersed we are in all the relationships that surround us,
confound us,and sometimes lead to our defeat.
I ask, would you rather be right, or would you rather be happy and effective?
Know that you always have a choice of how you will respond in a conversation,read the following guidelines for
living and breathing the 100/0 PRINCIPLE in your relationships.
The following are four guidelines to great relationships from the 100/0 Principle by Al Ritter.
1. Demonstrate respect and kindness to the other person, whether he or she deserve it or not.
2. Do not expect anything in return. Zero, zip, nada.
3. Do not let anything the other person says or does (no matter how annoying) to affect you.
(In other words do not take the bait.)
4. Be persistent with your graciousness and kindness. Often we give up too soon especially
when others don't respond in kind. Remem
-- Anonymous 2014-08-25 13:11 UTC
Grappling with the "100/0 Principle" | Smidge of Happiness
"When you argue with reality, you lose – but only 100% of the time." – Byron Katie
I said I'd revisit the book The 100/0 Principle, and so I shall. I've been thinking about it quite a bit lately. One of the questions in the book is "Would you rather be right, or would you rather be happy?" Honestly, I'd rather be both. But let's suppose it's one or the other. Happy, sure. Obviously I'm tipped that way…
One of the points made in the book is that sometimes we get so busy defending our beliefs/opinions and what we "know" is right, that we lose the relationship for the sake of confirming our expectations. The ACT literature takes this on too, and asks us to hold our beliefs a little more loosely, so that we are open to other perspectives and interpretations. A lot of the time, we hold beliefs about ourselves and other people: I'm not a morning person, he's shy, I'm a procrastinator, etc. that paint with a broad brush and create expectations that we often fail to question. We fall into ruts and describe ourselves and others in predictable ways, and stay within the limits of what we say we (or they) are all about. If I'm "not a morning person", but I want a job that will require that I get up early, I have to decide how important my identity as a night owl really is. If I begin waking up full of energy, then I'm "wrong" about who I am. It's outside my comfort zone. Yes, we can all change, but as I said before, often we don't care for changing, even if it's in the service of something good.
The quote for today is true – when you argue with what is, you're always wrong. However, I also want us to challenge our assumptions about what is. Sometimes our belief about reality is not actually reality. Sometimes we think we can' t possibly do a thing to change something because it's just a fact, and we resign ourselves to it, or actively work to accept it. This might be helpful, or it might not.
So how does this relate to 100/0? Well, the basic idea of the book, as I read it, is that success in life is largely dependent upon your relationships with other people. And that if you want good relationships, it's up to you to make them that way. So, if you and your boss don't see eye to eye, or your marriage is on the rocks, or you constantly squabble with family members, you have to decide if you want the relationship to succeed. And if you do, it's up to you to put 100% effort into it, and expect 0% from the other person.
That's right. Nothing! Nada. Zip, zilch, big fat goose egg. The other person can make absolutely no effort to change or improve or treat you nicely, and guess what? You give them 100% anyway. You treat them with respect and kindness and you hold up your end of the relationship with steadfast determination.
Huh?
When I first read this, I thought this man was a bit touched. I'm typically of the mindset that relationships are two-way streets, with both partners giving some. It's going to vary, sure. Sometimes it's 50%/50%, sometimes it's 80%/20%, you get the idea. But the idea of a consistent "I give all, and expect nothing" mentality sort of grated on me. Shouldn't I demand respect? Shouldn't the other person meet me at least partway? Isn't it "enabling" bad behavior to expect nothing of someone close to you? I am not interested in being a doormat!
To tie in my little picture for today, this 100/0 notion was way outside my comfort zone. I've read the book a few times now (it's a very quick read). It is about more than just "giving all" – it describes learning to listen and seeing the perspective of another person, and gives helpful notions for building better relationships. I came to understand that, even though in the short-term, you are giving 100% and expecting nothing, in the long term, what typically happens is that the relationship improves because your perspective has improved. You're happier because your happiness is no longer tied to the other person meeting your expectations. This leads to the other person's attitude and behavior changing, and they start to give more to make the relationship function better.
What if they don't change? According to the book, even then, interesting things happen. You take control of your happiness about the relationship out of the hands of the other person, and into your own. You take full responsibility for doing all you can to make the relationship work, and you don't allow their behavior (or lack thereof) to affect you negatively. They don't make you happy or unhappy; you are in control. So paradoxically, by expecting nothing, you lose the pain of unmet expectations. All the other person can do is meet your expectation (by giving 0%) or exceed it (by giving anything more than 0%). I know this sounds a little bit like a pessimistic viewpoint – I'm not expecting anything good to come of this – but really that's not the tone of the book at all. It's more of an optimistic, take-charge by taking responsibility feel.
I'll admit, I'm still grappling with this one. But I'm intrigued, and I've tried it out here and there. There are, of course, caveats in the book about types of behavior that are not acceptable and should not be tolerated (criminal behavior, abuse, etc.). Short of those types of problems, though, the premise is that even a pretty crappy relationship has a good chance of being turned around. It's sort of like the way you unconditionally love your kids; no matter what they do, you'll always love them, and do all you can to have a good relationship with them.
What do you think? Ready to give 100% to fix a bad relationship, or improve an okay one? Let me know if some magic happens…
-- Anonymous 2014-08-25 13:14 UTC
Byron Katie - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In February 1986,[2] while in a halfway house for women with eating disorders, Byron Katie experienced a life-changing realization: "I discovered that when I believed my thoughts, I suffered, but that when I didn't believe them, I didn't suffer, and that this is true for every human being. Freedom is as simple as that. I found that suffering is optional. I found a joy within me that has never disappeared, not for a single moment." Byron Katie calls her method of self-inquiry "The Work." She has taught it to people all over the world, at free public events, in prisons, hospitals, churches, corporations, shelters for survivors of domestic violence, universities and schools, at weekend intensives, and at her nine-day School for The Work.
-- Anonymous 2014-08-25 14:11 UTC
Piaget's theory of cognitive development - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nature of intelligence: operative and figurative[edit]
Piaget noted reality is a dynamic system of continuous change and, as such, is defined in reference to the two conditions that define dynamic systems. Specifically, he argued that reality involves transformations and states. Transformations refer to all manners of changes that a thing or person can undergo. States refer to the conditions or the appearances in which things or persons can be found between transformations. For example, there might be changes in shape or form (for instance, liquids are reshaped as they are transferred from one vessel to another, humans change in their characteristics as they grow older), in size (for example, a series of coins on a table might be placed close to each other or far apart), or in placement or location in space and time (e.g., various objects or persons might be found at one place at one time and at a different place at another time). Thus, Piaget argued, if human intelligence is to be adaptive, it must have functions to represent both the transformational and the static aspects of reality. He proposed that operative intelligence is responsible for the representation and manipulation of the dynamic or transformational aspects of reality, and that figurative intelligence is responsible for the representation of the static aspects of reality.[2]
Operative intelligence is the active aspect of intelligence. It involves all actions, overt or covert, undertaken in order to follow, recover, or anticipate the transformations of the objects or persons of interest. Figurative intelligence is the more or less static aspect of intelligence, involving all means of representation used to retain in mind the states (i.e., successive forms, shapes, or locations) that intervene between transformations. That is, it involves perception, imitation, mental imagery, drawing, and language. Therefore, the figurative aspects of intelligence derive their meaning from the operative aspects of intelligence, because states cannot exist independently of the transformations that interconnect them. Piaget stated that the figurative or the representational aspects of intelligence are subservient to its operative and dynamic aspects, and therefore, that understanding essentially derives from the operative aspect of intelligence.
At any time, operative intelligence frames how the world is understood and it changes if understanding is not successful. Piaget stated that this process of understanding and change involves two basic functions: assimilation and accommodation.
-- Anonymous 2014-08-28 08:28 UTC
-- Anonymous 2014-09-01 13:28 UTC
法寶: 生活在禪中 (英文版) 淨香.貝克 - yam天空部落
We can get closer to an accurate understanding of experiencing
by the word listen. Not "I'm going to do this experiencing," but "I'm
simply going to listen to my bodily sensations." If I truly listen to
that ache in my left side, there's an element of curiosity, of what is
this? (If I'm not curious, I am always caught up in my thoughts.)
Like a good scientist who is simply observant, without preconceived
notions, we just watch or observe. We listen.
-- Anonymous 2014-09-16 11:16 UTC
Getting Things Done® | David Allen's Food For Thought – October 2014
There is a light-year's difference between being "sort of" organized and having everything downloaded, clarified, updated, and reviewed from at least an elevated horizon. The brain does not get to graduate to its more exalted and more effective command post of making intuitive choices from its options, without this. It must remain the lowly galley slave trying to remember what it ought to be thinking about, at what level, when. And it doesn't do that very well, so it gets punitive lashes from our own inner judge.
-- Anonymous 2014-10-02 12:15 UTC
ZhurnalyWiki: Comments on Random
-- Anonymous 2014-11-08 16:50 UTC
Mantra vs. Mantram - Mantram Repetition
When Sanskrit words are spoken without being embedded in a Sanskrit sentence, they are often left in their "stem" form; that is, they are not declined. Many words have a stem form that just ends in "a", as in "yoga", "deva", "mantra," etc. When speaking in Sanskrit, an unembedded word is often declined in either nominative (mantraH) or accusative (mantram). Thus, "mantram" is the accusative case of the masculine word "mantra," and declining it in this way is one way of using the word outside of a sentence when in a formal Sanskrit context.
-- Anonymous 2014-11-25 13:09 UTC
Mantra - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Sanskrit word mantra- (m.; also n. mantram) consists of the root man- "to think" (also in manas "mind") and the suffix -tra, designating tools or instruments, hence a literal translation would be "instrument of thought".
-- Anonymous 2014-11-25 13:10 UTC
"Vast emptiness, nothing sacred." Right from "the beginning" we see Zen's spare uncompromising tone. And, as Peter Mathiessen points out, great mystery and power.
This "emptiness" was neither absence nor a void. . . Like the empty mirror on which all things pass, leaving no trace, this ku contains all forms and all phenomena, being a symbol of the universal emphasis. Thus this emptiness is also fullness, containing all forms and phenomena.
-- Anonymous 2014-11-26 14:00 UTC
Kiwix enables you to have the whole Wikipedia at hand wherever you go! On a boat, in the middle of nowhere or in Jail, Kiwix gives you access to the whole human knowledge. You don't need Internet, everything is stored on your computer, USB flash drive or DVD!
-- Anonymous 2014-11-28 14:20 UTC
Getting Things Done® | I'm a time management heretic!
I've lately realized that I am teaching a paradoxical and totally reversed paradigm about time management.
The old model seems to have been telling us to externalize the big stuff (priorities) and to leave the little things strewn around internally (in psychic RAM.) We were supposed to write our Daily To-Do lists (your Top Ten Things to Do–work on Job One until it's done, then go on to Job Two.) We were supposed to categorize on our lists the A-B-C priorities, and work on the A's first. And oh, the little not-so-critical thoughts and details–who cares?
I've turned that on its head. I coach that we need to externalize the details and internalize the prioritizing. We need to have an objectively captured Total Life To-Do List, from the biggest-picture bullet points to the tiniest of details of things we need or want to do. And then make moment-to-moment decisions about what to be doing at any point in time, based on our internal intuition.
We need to galvanize that intuitive process, with regular visits to our inner knowing and our outer longer-horizon goals and dreams. But then we ought to stay infinitely flexible and spontaneous in our minute-to-minute choices.
It's a paradox–the little things in life need to be captured, processed, and organized, so they don't bother us. The big things need to be given to the more inner and reflective part of who we are, to ensure that they actually get the weight they deserve.
-- Anonymous 2014-12-09 13:26 UTC
Zen Stories to Tell Your Neighbors
~ Zen Stories to Tell Your Neighbors ~
zen story tree
Why tell a Zen story?
zen story Please ReadMe!
About the photographs
the stories:
Banishing a Ghost
Bell Teacher
Books
Christian Buddha
Chasing Two Rabbits
Cliffhanger
Concentration
Destiny
Dreaming
Egotism
Elephant and Flea
Empty Your Cup
Enlightened
Full Awareness
Gift of Insults
Going with the Flow
Gutei's Finger
Holy Man
I Don't Know
Is That So?
It Will Pass
Just Two Words
Knowing Fish
Learning the Hard Way
Masterpiece
Maybe
The Moon Cannot Be Stolen
More Is Not Enough
Most Important Teaching
Moving Mind
The Nature of Things
Nature's Beauty
No More Questions
Not Dead Yet
Obsessed
Paradise
Practice Makes Perfect
Present Moment
Prosperity
Ritual Cat
Searching for Buddha
Self-Control
Sounds of Silence
Spider
Successor
Surprising the Master
Tea Combat
Tea or Iron
Transient
True Self
Useless Life
Wanting God
When Tired
Without Fear
Working Very Hard
-- Anonymous 2015-01-02 20:20 UTC
Ouroboros - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Ouroboros often symbolizes self-reflexivity or cyclicality, especially in the sense of something constantly re-creating itself, the eternal return, and other things such as the phoenix which operate in cycles that begin anew as soon as they end. It can also represent the idea of primordial unity related to something existing in or persisting from the beginning with such force or qualities it cannot be extinguished.
-- Anonymous 2015-02-03 13:40 UTC
Lost States: Loophole land—where crimes can't be prosecuted. Really.
According to a law professor from Michigan, there is small section if Idaho where major crimes can not be prosecuted—thanks to a giant blunder by Congress.
The problem begins with the boundaries of Yellowstone National Park. Yellowstone is mostly in Wyoming, but a sliver of the park extends into Idaho and Montana. When Congress created the U.S. District Court of Wyoming it included all of Yellowstone National Park. Big mistake.
Stay with me here.... so let's say you commit a murder in the portion of Idaho that's in the park (The red "Loophole Land" on my map). You'd be arrested and bound over for trial in the US District court in Cheyenne, Wyoming. But Article III of the Constitution states that the trial must be held in the state where the crime was committed—in this case Idaho. So you are sent to Idaho for trial. No problem there. But the Sixth Amendment also says that the jury must be drawn from the state and District where the crime was committed. The state is Idaho... but the District is the Wyoming District (which includes the sliver of Idaho that's in the park). So the jury would have to be drawn from residents who live in the portion of Idaho that lies in the park.
And that's where it gets interesting: nobody lives in that patch of Idaho. Nobody. No jury pool means no trial, means you go free.
This curious loophole was discovered by Prof. Brian C. Kalt, a respected legal scholar from Michigan State University. Georgetown Law Journal is reporting on the matter in an upcoming issue. (You can read Kalt's full article here)
Of course, committing crimes is bad. Don't do it. But if you're a screenwriter, this is great stuff! Maybe Dick Wolf will start a new series Law and Order: Idaho just to take advantage of this legal anomaly.
And if all this wasn't bizarre enough, Idaho's "Loophole Land" is just a few steps from another patch of American soil that also fell outside the law. Dubbed "Lost Dakota" it was a few acres of land that—erroneously—were not part of any state and thus, theoretically, outside the reach of law enforcement. (Much more on this in my book Lost States) Eventually that situation was fixed when Lost Dakota became a part of Montana. But Loophole Land remains an unsettling, well, loophole. If your nemesis suggests a camping trip near the Idaho/Wyoming border.... don't go!!!
-- Anonymous 2015-02-03 18:29 UTC
Dantian - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lower dantian (下丹田, Xià Dāntián): below the navel (about three finger widths below and two finger widths behind the navel), which is also called "the golden stove" (金炉 pinyin: Jīn lú) or the namesake "cinnabar field" proper, where the process of developing the elixir by refining and purifying essence (jing) into vitality (qi) begins.[6]
Middle dantian (中丹田, Zhōng Dāntián): at the level of the heart, which is also called "the crimson palace", associated with storing Spirit (Shen) and with respiration and health of the internal organs, in particular the thymus gland. This cauldron is where vitality or Qi is refined into Shen or spirit;[7]
Upper dantian (上丹田, Shàng Dāntián): at the forehead between the eyebrows or third eye, which is also called "the muddy pellet", associated with the pineal gland. This cauldron is where Shen or spirit is refined into Wu Wei or emptiness.[5][8]
-- Anonymous 2015-02-05 12:59 UTC
VISION - About YourView Australia
There is no single canonical list of epistemic virtues, and different lists might be drawn up for different purposes. YourView's list currently includes open-mindedness, informedness (being generally knowledgeable); cogency (being able to support one's view with compelling arguments and evidence); flexibility (being willing to change's one mind when appropriate); authenticity (forming and expressing sincerely held views); independence (not slavishly following any group or ideology); and deliberativeness (being inclined to participate in constructive deliberative exchange).
-- Anonymous 2015-02-13 14:21 UTC
Snap! (formerly BYOB) is a visual, drag-and-drop programming language. It is an extended reimplementation of Scratch (a project of the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab) that allows you to Build Your Own Blocks. It also features first class lists, first class procedures, and continuations. These added capabilities make it suitable for a serious introduction to computer science for high school or college students.
-- Anonymous 2015-02-15 16:09 UTC
Psychology Journal Bans Significance Testing « Science-Based Medicine
Psychology Journal Bans Significance Testing
Posted by Steven Novella on February 25, 2015 (99 Comments)
p-valuesThis is perhaps the first real crack in the wall for the almost-universal use of the null hypothesis significance testing procedure (NHSTP). The journal, Basic and Applied Social Psychology (BASP), has banned the use of NHSTP and related statistical procedures from their journal. They previously had stated that use of these statistical methods was no longer required but can be optional included. Now they have proceeded to a full ban.
The type of analysis being banned is often called a frequentist analysis, and we have been highly critical in the pages of SBM of overreliance on such methods. This is the iconic p-value where <0.05 is generally considered to be statistically significant.
The process of hypothesis testing and rigorous statistical methods for doing so were worked out in the 1920s. Ronald Fisher developed the statistical methods, while Jerzy Neyman and Egon Pearson developed the process of hypothesis testing. They certainly deserve a great deal of credit for their role in crafting modern scientific procedures and making them far more quantitative and rigorous.
However, the p-value was never meant to be the sole measure of whether or not a particular hypothesis is true. Rather it was meant only as a measure of whether or not the data should be taken seriously. Further, the p-value is widely misunderstood. The precise definition is:
The p value is the probability to obtain an effect equal to or more extreme than the one observed presuming the null hypothesis of no effect is true.
In other words, it is the probability of the data given the null hypothesis. However, it is often misunderstood to be the probability of the hypothesis given the data. The editors understand that the journey from data to hypothesis is a statistical inference, and one that in practice has turned out to be more misleading than informative. It encourages lazy thinking – if you reach the magical p-value then your hypothesis is true. They write:
In the NHSTP, the problem is in traversing the distance from the probability of the finding, given the null hypothesis, to the probability of the null hypothesis, given the finding. Regarding confidence intervals, the problem is that, for example, a 95% confidence interval does not indicate that the parameter of interest has a 95% probability of being within the interval. Rather, it means merely that if an infinite number of samples were taken and confidence intervals computed, 95% of the confidence intervals would capture the population parameter. Analogous to how the NHSTP fails to provide the probability of the null hypothesis, which is needed to provide a strong case for rejecting it, confidence intervals do not provide a strong case for concluding that the population parameter of interest is likely to be within the stated interval.
Another problem with the p-value is that it is not highly replicable. This is demonstrated nicely by Geoff Cumming as illustrated with a video. He shows, using computer simulation, that if one study achieves a p-value of 0.05, this does not predict that an exact replication will also yield the same p-value. Using the p-value as the final arbiter of whether or not to accept or reject the null hypothesis is therefore highly unreliable.
Cumming calls this the "dance of the p-value," because, as you can see in his video, when you repeat a virtual experiment with a phenomenon of known size, the p-values that result from the data collection dance all over the place.
Regina Nuzzo, writing in Nature in 2014, echoes these concerns. She points out that if an experiment results in a p-value of 0.01, the probability of an exact replication also achieving a p-value of 0.01 (this all assumes perfect methodology and no cheating) is 50%, not 99% as many might falsely assume.
The real world problem is worse than these pure statistics would suggest, because of a phenomenon known as p-hacking. In 2011 Simmons et al. published a paper in Psychological Science in which they demonstrate that exploiting common researcher degrees of freedom could easily manipulate the data (even innocently) to achieve the threshold p-value of 0.05. They point out that published p-values cluster suspiciously around this 0.05 level, suggesting that some degree of p-hacking is going on.
This is also often described as torturing the data until it confesses. In a 2009 systematic review, 33.7% of scientists surveyed admitted to engaging in questionable research practices – such as those that result in p-hacking. The temptation is simply too great, and the rationalizations too easy – I'll just keep collecting data until it wanders randomly over the 0.05 p-value level, and then stop. One might argue that overreliance on the p-value as a gold standard of what is publishable encourages p-hacking.
So what's the alternative? Many authors here have suggested either doing away with the p-value, or (a less radical solution) simply bring it back down to its proper role – it provides one measure of the robustness of the data, but is not the final arbiter of whether or not the null hypothesis should be rejected. We have also supported those researchers who have called for increased use of Bayesian analysis as a more appropriate alternative. The Bayesian approach is to ask the right question, what is the probability of the hypothesis given both the prior probability and the new data?
The BASP give a lukewarm acceptance of the Bayesian approach:
Bayesian procedures are more interesting. The usual problem with Bayesian procedures is that they depend on some sort of Laplacian assumption to generate numbers where none exist. The Laplacian assumption is that when in a state of ignorance, the researcher should assign an equal probability to each possibility. The problems are well documented. However, there have been Bayesian proposals that at least somewhat circumvent the Laplacian assumption, and there might even be cases where there are strong grounds for assuming that the numbers really are there (see Fisher, 1973, for an example). Consequently, with respect to Bayesian procedures, we reserve the right to make case-by-case judgments, and thus Bayesian procedures are neither required nor banned from BASP.
OK – case-by-case analysis. That seems reasonable.
The journal editors are clear that their new policy does not mean they will accept less-than-rigorous research. They believe it will lead to more rigorous research:
However, BASP will require strong descriptive statistics, including effect sizes. We also encourage the presentation of frequency or distributional data when this is feasible. Finally, we encourage the use of larger sample sizes than is typical in much psychology research, because as the sample size increases, descriptive statistics become increasingly stable and sampling error is less of a problem.
Conclusion
I don't know if the BASP solution to the problem of p-values is the best, ultimate, or only solution. Other solutions might include supplementing p-values with a discussion of the statistics that place them in their proper context, supplementing with Bayesian analysis, and having other requirements for scientific rigor. This would be a more difficult approach, and may not be able to dislodge the p-value from its lofty perch the way an outright ban might.
Requiring larger sample sizes is a good thing overall, but can create problems for young researchers just looking for a preliminary test of their new ideas. This then dovetails with another problem I and others have pointed out – presenting preliminary findings in the mainstream media as if they are definitive. Preliminary research is important, and if properly used can inform later research, but should not be used as a basis for clinical practice or hyperbolic headlines that ultimately misinform the public.
One solution is for journals to obviously separate preliminary research from confirmatory research. Preliminary research should be labeled as such with all the proper disclaimers and should not be the basis of hyped press releases. This may also provide the opportunity for having separate publishing rules for preliminary and confirmatory research – for example, for preliminary research journals can allow the use of p-values and techniques specifically designed to allow for smaller sample sizes.
The new BASP policy is a step in the right direction. At the very least I hope it raises awareness of the problems with relying on p-values and encourages a more nuanced understanding among researchers of statistics and methodological rigor.
Café Philosophique - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The subjects discussed at the cafes had a range that varied from the Santa Claus myth to truth to beauty to sex to death. They posed such questions as What is a fact? and Is hope a violent thing? Sautet made the discussions seem fun and exciting. The concept was to bring people together in a public friendly forum where they could discuss ideas. A cafe tended to have this type of atmosphere where people were relaxed drinking coffee and carrying on conversations.
We found that when people were told to be their best self, they left the lab feeling significantly happier. That's important. Think about long- term relationships. We don't necessarily act like our best selves around the person we care about the most. It's not necessarily a bad thing to have the space to be our grumpy selves in sweat pants. But if that's all we are, then that's not such a great thing for our happiness. I would argue it's worthwhile in our romantic relationships to be the person that you would be around someone you were trying to have an affair with – except that person's your spouse.
Stumped? Try these seven strategies for making smart, confident decisions - The Washington Post
seven ways to ease the decision-making process — and become more self-assured about every choice you make:
[[Remember_Your_Hands?]]
Weider Young, the Taiji group leader, used to counsel his newer students to "Remember your hands!" ... mindfulness ...
^z - 2015-??-??
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-formula-for-decoding-health-news/
Was the study a clinical study in humans?
Was the outcome of the study something directly related to human health like longer life or less disease? Was the outcome something you care about, such as living longer or feeling better
Was the study a randomized, controlled trial (RCT)?
Was it a large study — at least hundreds of patients?
Did the treatment have a major impact on the outcome?
Did predictions hold up in at least two separate groups of people?
"Last Thursday, all the rest of us moved up one," said Matthew Carter, whose designs for web fonts, including Verdana and Georgia, earned a MacArthur Fellowship, the so-called genius award, in 2010. "That's my way of saying Hermann was on top."
http://eaglemode.sourceforge.net/
"Wow, this is really awesome man. It's a brilliant idea. In fact this is probably the coolest program I've ever used."
http://www.forth.org/svfig/Len/badcode.htm
BASIC, C, and Pascal are rigid and constrain your ability to write bad code. Forth is more permissive. and you can be as awful as you please.
It has been said that Forth is an amplifier; it makes bad code very bad and good code very good. Here are some examples of the power of the dark side of the Forth.
http://www.nerve.com/movies/the-fifty-greatest-cult-movies-of-all-time
"Cult movie" is a hard thing to pin down. For the purposes of this list — celebrating the tenth anniversary of Donnie Darko — we've put a premium on the intensity and selectiveness of a movie's appeal. We've also limited each director to one film. See
you at midnight!
http://www.storytotell.org/essays/shl.html
A good friend once said, you don't learn a foreign language for the sake of knowing it, you learn it to read the poetry.
http://www.storytotell.org/essays/shl.html
I want to have a concise, cogent, interesting conclusion to insert here, but there really isn't one, because programming is not a destination and all of my conclusions are provisional. The more I learn, the more discomfort there is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlemind
In the definition provided by the U.S. Army Medical Command
"Battlemind is the Soldier's inner strength to face fear and adversity with courage. Key components include:
Self confidence: taking calculated risks and handling challenges.
Mental toughness: overcoming obstacles or setbacks and maintaining positive thoughts during times of adversity and challenge."[1]
The significance of Battlemind in the Medical Command's context is that "Battlemind skills helped you survive in combat, but may cause you problems if not adapted when you get home."[1]
Initial writings on the subject focused on the utility of battlemind while in service,[2] while several recent works focus on treatment and self-help.[3][4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babel-17#Language
The language portrayed at the center of Babel-17 contains interesting linguistic features including the absence of a pronoun or any other construction for "I". The heroine finds her perceptions (and even her physical abilities) altered once she has learned Babel-17. In this Delany's novel influenced a generation of writers: Native Tongue by Suzette Haden Elgin[citation needed], The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin[citation needed], Embassytown by China Miéville, "In Luna Bore Coda" by Joshua Nilles, and, more evidently, the short story "Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang[citation needed]. It also resembles a few preceding science fiction novels which deal with how languages shape the political and cultural stratum of societies, such as The Languages of Pao by Jack Vance or Anthem by Ayn Rand, and language as a weapon was adapted as a plot device in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonplace_book
Commonplace books (or commonplaces) were a way to compile knowledge, usually by writing information into books. Such books were essentially scrapbooks filled with items of every kind: medical recipes, quotes, letters, poems, tables of weights and measures, proverbs, prayers, legal formulas. Commonplaces were used by readers, writers, students, and scholars as an aid for remembering useful concepts or facts they had learned. Each commonplace book was unique to its creator's particular interests. They became significant in Early Modern Europe.
"Commonplace" is a translation of the Latin term locus communis (from Greek tópos koinós, see literary topos) which means "a theme or argument of general application", such as a statement of proverbial wisdom. In this original sense, commonplace books were collections of such sayings, such as John Milton's commonplace book. Scholars have expanded this usage to include any manuscript that collects material along a common theme by an individual.
Commonplace books are not diaries nor travelogues, with which they can be contrasted: English Enlightenment philosopher John Locke wrote the 1706 book A New Method of Making Common-Place-Books, "in which techniques for entering proverbs, quotations, ideas, speeches were formulated. Locke gave specific advice on how to arrange material by subject and category, using such key topics as love, politics, or religion. Commonplace books, it must be stressed, are not journals, which are chronological and introspective." [1] By the early eighteenth century they had become an information management device in which a note-taker stored quotations, observations and definitions. They were even used by influential scientists. Carl Linnaeus, for instance, used commonplacing techniques to invent and arrange the nomenclature of his Systema Naturae (which is the basis for the system used by scientists today)
http://mymeditativemoments.com/exercise-four-pebble-meditation/
https://mindfulkids.wordpress.com/
We invite each child to sit up straight and relaxed and place four pebbles on the ground next to him or her. We invite three sounds of the bell. Then we invite each child to pick up the first pebble and say:
Breathing in, I see myself as a flower. Breathing out, I feel fresh. Flower, fresh (3 breaths)
The keywords we continue to practice silently are "flower, fresh" and we breathe together quietly for three in and out breaths, really being a flower and becoming fresh. The next three pebbles are:
Breathing in I see myself as a mountain, breathing out, I feel solid. Mountain, solid. (3 breaths)
Breathing in I see myself as still, clear water, breathing out, I reflect things as they really are. Clear water, reflecting. (3 breaths)
Breathing in I see myself as space, breathing out, I feel free. Space, free. (3 breaths)
End with three sounds of the bell. (Children are very capable of guiding this meditation for other children. They really enjoy inviting the bell for each other).
http://suzukiroshi.sfzc.org/dharma-talks/august-21st-1971/#more-1726
"When all things are Buddhism, there are birth and death—there are defilement, practice, birth and death, buddhas, and sentient beings. When all things has no self, there is no delusion, no buddha, no sentient beings, no birth, no death. Buddhism originally is beyond the all positive or neg- [partial word]—positivity or negativity, so there are birth and death, defilement and enlightenment, and sentient beings and buddha."
https://www.upaya.org/2015/11/norman-fischer-feel-like-bodhisattva-six-perfections-part-2a/
in what world does it make any sense to promise to save all beings throughout space and time? It doesn't make sense as sacrifice: rather a bodhisattva has so extended her identity that she feels like she is everyone — sees only beautiful beings everywhere — which gives her tremendous energy and cheerfulness. And it doesn't make sense in a world where time "only passes away," where moments are essentially separate one from another. It makes sense if the dimensions of time are endless and we are always meeting — if the absences of people you once met are also your mutual presence for each other, a call and answer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trivium
The Trivium is a systematic method of critical thinking used to derive factual certainty from information perceived with the traditional five senses: sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell. In the medieval university, the trivium was the lower division of the seven liberal arts, and comprised grammar, logic, and rhetoric (input, process and output).
https://oddmuse.org/wiki/Raw_HTML
Use the following rule if you want to allow raw HTML on locked pages:
push(@MyRules, \&RawHtmlRule);
sub RawHtmlRule {
if (-f GetLockedPageFile($OpenPageName)
and m/\G\<html\>(.*?)\<\/html\>/cgs) {
return UnquoteHtml($1);
}
return;
}
Use the following rule if you want to allow raw HTML on all pages:
push(@MyRules, \&RawHtmlRule);
sub RawHtmlRule {
if (m/\G\<html\>(.*?)\<\/html\>/cgs) {
return UnquoteHtml($1);
}
return;
}
Example use:
<html>
<div style="text-decoration: blink"><p>This is an example.</p></div>
</html>
The cries of the monkeys echo through the dense forest;
In the clear water, the wild geese are mirrored deep.
The wooden cock crows at midnight;
The straw dog barks at the clear day.
Mountains and rivers, the whole earth, --
All manifest forth the essence of being.
The wind drops but the flowers still fall;
A bird sings, and the mountain holds yet more mystery.
All waters contain the moon;
Not a mountain but the clouds girdle it.
Entering the forest, he does not disturb a blade of grass;
Entering the water, he does not cause a ripple.
-- Anonymous 2015-12-19 11:35 UTC
Who can free himself from achievement, and from fame, descend and be lost amid the masses of men? He will flow like Tao, unseen, he will go about like Life itself with no name and no home. Simple is he, without distinction. To all appearances he is a fool. He has no power. He achieves nothing, has no reputation. Since he judges no one, no one judges him. Such is the perfect man. His boat is empty. ~ Chuang Tzu
https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2012/04/24/enormous-integers/
Say you have a finite alphabet to write with. How long can a word be if no block of letters in this word, from the nth letter to the 2nth, is allowed to appear as a subsequence of a bigger block from the mth letter to the 2mth?
If you have just one letter, this is the longest it can be:
AAA
If you have two, this is the longest it can be:
ABBBAAAAAAA
Puzzle: How long can the word be if you have three letters in your alphabet?
Friedman showed there's still a finite upper bound on how long it can be. But, he showed it's incomprehensibly huge!
http://www.logicmatters.net/blogfront/
BMC Psychology: Highlights of 2015 - BMC Series blog
2. A Metacognitive Perspective on Mindfulness
Different psychological treatments have developed in parallel, and as such some of their therapeutic interventions may overlap. Two such interventions are Metacognition and Mindfulness. Put simply, metacognition can be described as 'thinking about thinking' and refers to awareness and control of one's own knowledge and learning. In contrast, meditation is used to develop the skills of Mindfulness, a state in which an individual pays attention to the present moment, both internally and externally.
-- Anonymous 2016-01-07 10:18 UTC
Kidz Bop, once simply satisfied to strip popular music of blatantly suggestive material, is increasingly removing from hit songs any semblance of cultural meaning that disrupts the identity-free world the company's promising to concerned parents.
It's Like This - 108 Dhamma Similes
Ajahn Chah was a master at using the apt and unusual simile to explain points of Dhamma in a memorable way, sometimes to answer questions, sometimes to provoke them. He was especially talented at exploiting the open-ended nature of the simile—in which some similarities are relevant and others are not—using a particular image to make one point in one context, and a very different point in another. This book is a companion to In Simple Terms, an earlier collection of similes drawn from Ajahn Chah's transcribed talks. Here, the majority of the passages come from a compilation made by Ajahn Jandee Kantasaro, one of Ajahn Chah's students, entitled Khwaam Phid Nai Khwaam Thuuk (What's Wrong in What's Right). The title of this compilation is taken from a phrase that Ajahn Chah often used to describe the misuse of correct knowledge. Ajahn Jandee, in his introduction, illustrates the principle by telling of a man he once encountered who used the teaching on inconstancy to justify the fact that he never cleaned his truck.
-- Anonymous 2016-01-18 11:58 UTC
But in all seriousness and without furthier adieu, here are Will's 5 Lessons (Numbers 1 and 4 were especially relevant to my own recent writing and revelation):
1. Attentiveness: "Be present to the world"
2. Pressure: To relieve or not to relieve
3. Jewel Island: I think this one had to do with realizing that all human beings are precious
4. Illusion of Enemies: "We are under a state of delusion when we dislike someone"
5. Find joy in your practice: "Start small, humble, modest; if you leave the mind alone, it begins to purify itself"
The other day, I wrote about the freedom and relief one can experience in releasing pressure. Another topic related to pressure that Will spoke about was knowing when not to release pressure. Because pressure is uncomfortable, we want to get rid of it. The easiest way is often to use somebody else to relieve our own pressure. We might even create something from nothing that someone is doing to annoy us just to devise an opportunity to make ourselves feel better, albeit temporarily. So, one practice can be to build up an endurance to for this discomfort.
What to do if you are finding yourself irritated by someone else?
Act like a log (i.e. don't react). It sound similar to my own attempts to perform energy Tai Chi. When I find my self on the defensive in response to another person, I try to avoid absorbing their energy or returning it back to them. Rather, I enision it dropping in the space between us, thus becoming null and void as it falls into the energy abyss.
I like the idea of being a log. I have already tried it, and I found it quite helpful to be a log while I felt the boil go to a simmer and eventually peter out entirely.
So, I believe the idea is to pick which pressure to release and which to endure.
-- Anonymous 2016-01-23 12:05 UTC
Meditation, mindfulness and mind-emptiness
Mental silence
Perhaps surprisingly, the oldest known definition of meditation predates both Buddhism and mindfulness by thousands of years. In the ancient Indian Mahabharata, the narrator states that a meditator is "… like a log, he does not think". In other words, the earliest definitions describe the key defining feature of meditation as an experience of "mental silence".
Many other explicit examples of this definition can be found in Eastern literature from virtually every historical period. Lao Tzu, for example, urged us to "Empty the mind of all thoughts" in the Tao Te Ching.
-- Anonymous 2016-01-23 12:07 UTC
Remaining Like a Log / Shambhala Blog
The practice of "remaining like a log" is based on refraining, not repressing. When you realize you're thinking, just acknowledge that. Then turn your attention to your breath flowing in and out, to your body, to the immediacy of your experience. Doing this allows you to be present and alert, and thoughts have a chance to calm down.
-- Anonymous 2016-01-23 12:09 UTC
The true men of old were not afraid when they stood alone in their views. No great exploits, no plans. If they failed, no sorrow; and no self-congratulation in success.
~ Zhuangzi （莊子） ~
painting (excerpt) by Shen Zhou, 15.c.
-- Anonymous 2016-02-06 01:46 UTC
... like the Arnold Bennett comment in his 1923 collection of advice How to Make the Best of Life:
... The trouble about discussing how to make the best of life is that one is forced to make so many excursions into the obvious. The failure to make the best of life is due, as often as not, to the neglect of the conspicuously obvious — to the omission to do some perfectly simple thing which everybody agrees ought to be done, or to the commission of some perilous imprudence which everybody agrees ought to be very carefully avoided. ...
... and Bennett's encouraging words, well worth remembering:
No effort is wasted.
-- Anonymous 2016-02-23 10:01 UTC
[http://arxiv.org/pdf/1602.05831.pdf ]
-- Anonymous 2016-02-23 10:08 UTC
Artodyssey: Sokolova Nadezhda (Nadejda) Stepanovna - Соколова Надежда Степановна
Nadejda Sokolova
Just one word of advice: Try to avoid strain or at any rate the appearance of strain. One way to go to work is to read your author once or twice over having an eye out for anything that occurs to you as you read whether appreciative contradictory corroborative or parallel…
He speaks to the notion that writing, like all creativity, is a matter of selecting the few thrilling ideas from the lot of dull ones that occur to us — “To invent… is to choose,” as French polymath Henri Poincaré famously proclaimed. Frost counsels:
There should be more or less of a jumble in your head or on your note paper after the first time and even after the second. Much that you will think of in connection will come to nothing and be wasted. But some of it ought to go together under one idea. That idea is the thing to write on and write into the title at the head of your paper… One idea and a few subordinate ideas — [the trick is] to have those happen to you as you read and catch them — not let them escape you… The sidelong glance is what you depend on. You look at your author but you keep the tail of your eye on what is happening over and above your author in your own mind and nature.
-- Anonymous 2016-03-27 00:37 UTC
5 Things I Wish I Knew About My Career When I Was 25 | Inc.com
Learn to value the people and relationships that consistently bring you contentment, rather than having your perception dictated by the fleeting victories and losses we all experience.
-- Anonymous 2016-03-27 12:21 UTC
https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/nPOV
Practitioners of category theory have often attempted to express the striking power of category theory (or general conceptual methods), sometimes through aphorism, sometimes through metaphor. Early on, Peter Freyd wrote
Perhaps the purpose of categorical algebra is to show that which is trivial is trivially trivial.
This can be taken to mean that one thing category theory does is help make the softer bits seem utterly natural and obvious, so as to quickly get to the heart of the matter, isolating the hard nuggets, which one may then attack with abandon. This is an invaluable service category theory performs for mathematics; therefore, category theory is plain good pragmatics.
However, it is also possible to take it a step beyond the pragmatic attitude, and see category theory (and now higher category theory) as exemplifying a style for doing even hard mathematics, as in the style for which Grothendieck is renowned. Paraphrasing from Colin McLarty’s excellent essay, let us regard the aforementioned pragmatic attitude as leading up to the hammer-and-chisel principle: if you think of a theorem to be proved as a nut to be opened, so as to reach “the nourishing flesh protected by the shell” (Grothendieck), then one thing to do is “put the cutting edge of the chisel against the shell and strike hard. If needed, begin again at many different points until the shell cracks – and you are satisfied.” Grothendieck points to Serre as a master of this technique. He then says:
I can illustrate the second approach with the same image of a nut to be opened. The first analogy which came to my mind is of immersing the nut in some softening liquid, and why not simply water? From time to time you rub so the liquid penetrates better, and otherwise you let time pass. The shell becomes more flexible through weeks and months – when the time is ripe, hand pressure is enough, the shell opens like a perfectly ripened avocado!
A different image came to me a few weeks ago. The unknown thing to be known appeared to me as some stretch of earth or hard marl, resisting penetration… the sea advances insensibly in silence, nothing seems to happen, nothing moves, the water is so far off you hardly hear it… yet it finally surrounds the resistant substance. (Translated from the French by McLarty)
This arresting metaphor of “la mer qui monte” (“the rising sea”), which over time changes the very form of the resistant substance, is very much in the style of Grothendieck himself. McLarty quotes Deligne as saying that a typical Grothendieck proof consists of a long series of trivial steps where “nothing seems to happen, and yet at the end a highly non-trivial theorem is there.”
http://mathoverflow.net/questions/3184/philosophical-meaning-of-the-yoneda-lemma%E2%80%8C%E2%80%8B
9
down vote
When explaining the Yoneda lemma, I always like to use the Dutch saying
Tell me who your friends are, and I will tell you who you are.
I think this is a pretty good approximation of the “philosophical” meaning of the Yoneda lemma. A more precise statement would be “tell me how you relate to everything else, and I will tell you who you are (up to unique isomorphism)”.
https://oddmuse.org/wiki/Private_Pages_Extension
This module allows any user to mark a page as private, hiding their content from anybody that doesn’t know the necessary password. Each page can have multiple passwords. Thus, users can form groups and share private pages. Users with the editor or administrator password can see and edit private pages of other users.
To mark a page as private, put #PASSWORD XYZZY on the first line. XYZZY is the password required to read the page. Multiple passwords can be supplied, separated by spaces (obviously this means that passwords may not contain spaces). To supply a password, use the Password Action: click on the Administration link at the bottom of any page and then click on the Password link.
Example:
This page is visible for two groups of users, each with a different
password.
Note that all the meta information of the private page remains public: The name of the page, the fact that is has been edited, the author, the revision, the content of past revisions that have not been protected by a password all remain visible to other users.
See Also
The Hidden Pages Extension is less flexible. There, hidden pages are identified by comparing the page name with a regular expression. The hidden pages are visible and editable for editors and administrators only.
[http://jjc.freeshell.org/rationality-ai-zombies/rationality_from_ai_to_zombies_two_column_beta2.pdf ]
You hold in your hands a compilation of two years of daily blog posts. In retrospect, I look back on that project and see a large number of things I did com- pletely wrong. I’m fine with that. Looking back and not seeing a huge number of things I did wrong would mean that neither my writing nor my understanding had improved since 2009. Oops is the sound we make when we improve our beliefs and strategies; so to look back at a time and not see anything you did wrong means that you haven’t learned anything or changed your mind since then.
It was a mistake that I didn’t write my two years of blog posts with the intention of helping people do better in their everyday lives. I wrote it with the intention of helping people solve big, difficult, im- portant problems, and I chose impressive-sounding, abstract problems as my examples.
In retrospect, this was the second-largest mistake in my approach. It ties in to the first-largest mistake in my writing, which was that I didn’t realize that the big problem in learning this valuable way of thinking was figuring out how to practice it, not knowing the theory. I didn’t realize that part was the priority; and regarding this I can only say “Oops” and “Duh.”
Yes, sometimes those big issues really are big and really are important; but that doesn’t change the ba- sic truth that to master skills you need to practice them and it’s harder to practice on things that are further away. (Today the Center for Applied Ratio- nality is working on repairing this huge mistake of mine in a more systematic fashion.)
A third huge mistake I made was to focus too much on rational belief, too little on rational action.
The fourth-largest mistake I made was that I should have better organized the content I was pre- senting in the sequences. In particular, I should have created a wiki much earlier, and made it easier to read the posts in sequence.
That mistake at least is correctable. In the present work Rob Bensinger has reordered the posts and re- organized them as much as he can without trying to rewrite all the actual material (though he’s rewritten a bit of it).
My fifth huge mistake was ...
http://www.mindful.org/search-inside-yourself/
Search Inside Yourself works in three steps:
Attention training
Self-knowledge and self-mastery
Creating useful mental habits
Attention Training
Attention is the basis of all higher cognitive and emotional abilities. Therefore, any curriculum for training emotional intelligence has to begin with attention training. The idea is to train attention to create a quality of mind that is calm and clear at the same time. That quality of mind forms the foundation for emotional intelligence.
Self-Knowledge and Self-Mastery
Use your trained attention to create high-resolution perception into your own cognitive and emotive processes. With that, you become able to observe your thought stream and the process of emotion with high clarity, and to do so objectively from a third-person perspective. Once you can do that, you create the type of deep self-knowledge that eventually enables self-mastery.
Creating Useful Mental Habits
Imagine whenever you meet anybody, your habitual, instinctive first thought is, I wish for this person to be happy. Having such habits changes everything at work, because this sincere goodwill is picked up unconsciously by others, and you create the type of trust that leads to highly productive collaborations. Such habits can be volitionally trained.
As a course, Search Inside Yourself is broken into three portions:
• Attention training: "At any time, whatever is happening to you — whether you're under stress, you're being shouted at, or anything else — you have the skill to bring the mind to a place that's calm and clear. If you can do that, it lays the foundation for emotional intelligence," Meng says.
• Self-knowledge: "Once your mind is calm and clear, you can create a quality of self-knowledge or self-awareness that improves over time, and it evolves into self-mastery. You know about yourself enough that you can master your emotions," Meng says.
• Creating mental habits: "For example, there is the mental habit of kindness, of looking at every human being you encounter and thinking to yourself, 'I want this person to be happy.' Once that becomes a habit, you don't have to think about it; it just comes naturally," Meng says.
Mathematicians Bridge Finite-Infinite Divide | Quanta Magazine
Ramsey’s theorem for pairs is thought to be the most complicated statement involving infinity that is known to be finitistically reducible. It invites you to imagine having in hand an infinite set of objects, such as the set of all natural numbers. Each object in the set is paired with all other objects. You then color each pair of objects either red or blue according to some rule. (The rule might be: For any pair of numbers A < B, color the pair blue if B < 2A, and red otherwise.) When this is done, RT22 states that there will exist an infinite monochromatic subset: a set consisting of infinitely many numbers, such that all the pairs they make with all other numbers are the same color.
-- Anonymous 2016-06-02 08:13 UTC
신개념 타로갤러리 - 타코 갤러리 2
Welcome!! Click this!
Foreigner Only
-- Anonymous 2016-06-06 01:39 UTC
Registration — The Devil Dog Ultras
Registration details
Registration opens on July 4 via UltraSignup. Entry is limited to a total of 250 runners, with a waitlist if the race fills.
The 100-miler is $180. The 100k is $120. A 50 percent refund (excluding UltraSignup fees) will be issued at an entrant's request up until a specific date prior to race day (this date is still to be determined). No deferrals. If space allows, you may be permitted to switch distances prior to the start of the race. For a refund or to change distances, please send us a note via the Contact section.
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http://www.trailrunevents.com/ul/coachingShow.asp?id=216
RUNNING YOUR FIRST ULTRA
by Nancy Shura-Dervin
Ultra running is a relatively new sport, which has only recently experienced rapid growth. Much of what is known about the sport comes from hard-earned lessons given on the trail and passed on to other runners, person-to-person. What works for one runner may not work each time for that runner, and certainly may not work at all for other runners. Every person is AN EXPERIMENT OF ONE according to Kevin Setnes. Kevin is masters champion ultra runner, writer for UltraRunning Magazine, and coach for TEAM ULTRA FIT. The challenge of this endurance sport is made more so by the fact there are few tried and true rules which work for everyone given that the distance, weather, temperature, even the runner's body, are always changing. It is a well-known fact that despite the best preparation, finishing a 100-mile ultra is still a crap shoot.
What follows is a basic primer for the new ultra runner. It is not intended to teach everything you need to know, but will give the basics necessary for the newbie to handle 50K through 100K distances most comfortably, toward a finish. The bulk of what you will eventually need to know to become a competent ultra runner will come from your experiences running these races. You will become your own best teacher. You will learn from going slow and you will learn from racing. From your DNFs will come the lessons you need to learn in order to handle the difficulties that eventually arise with longer distance races. Some of your most valuable lessons will come from bonking, yet still finishing a race, as this will teach you mental toughness, beyond what you could have imagined. You will finally come to know what you are really made of! All this will come in time, if you continue in this sport. But every sport has a beginning and at the start of each new distance, a little bit of knowledge will help you go a long, long, long, long way!
We surely all know that there are different modes of thought - we can think in words, in concepts; a painter will think in terms of colour, form and paint; a musician in terms of sound; a ballet dancer in terms of movement of the body; a mathematician in terms of geometry, symbols, and the structure of mathematical forms; and so on. Any expression in terms of one of these modes involves knowledge of that form: as Haydn said to Mozart's father: `He knows more on music than any one else alive.' Many artists are able to explain verbally what they are trying to achieve, for example in the production of a play. Though such words are but a sketch, a plan, of the actual work, they are valuable, as indicating structure and plans, which control execution.
In mathematics we have the notion of `metamathematics', the mathematics of mathematics, and indeed we have a mathematics of mathematical structures, which is known as `category theory'. This suggests that these different levels of discussion, and cross reference across levels, are important in a range of activities, or indeed in any activities, such as for example planning a holiday.
We can also ask what the public at large expect of art. Perhaps I should speak only for myself and say that I like to see:
rhythm, proportion, craftsmanship, surprise, significance,
and that the first four, which are involved with execution, should be related to the fifth, significance, or meaning.
[http://www.wisebrain.org/wisebrainbulletin/WBB10.3.pdf ]