the end of the gourd / best of 2009

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The End of the Gourd

In the past year this blog has shifted its scope and focus to different questions, a different aesthetic, different interests. In short, for several months it hasn't felt like the same blog it once was. Not that I've lost any interest in blogging, I haven't. I have a new blog that I've already started posting on which will continue many of the ideas from here. Nevertheless, this blog has a lot of material from several years of my college/grad school experience--including some ideas that I still find very interesting to mull. I am very happy for all that this blog has provided me and my readers. It's been a fun journey. Please consider subscribing to the RSS feed on my new blog! (link above)

I also am working on putting all my poetry and other creative work online--to be available sometime January 2010.

Best of the Gourd 2009

WTFs of the year:
+ DNA not the same in every cell!
+ Why did US Internet Service Providers tell the FCC that Americans don't want faster internet?! And why are we 19th in the world when it comes to internet speed?! (Current U.S. Speed: 9.6 mpbs Japan: 92.8 mpbs!)

Meaning of Life:
be like the squirrel girl
is civilization neverland? 
the meaning of life
Next Step: read The Philosphical Baby

Ethics:
is human dignity really testosterone?
Next Step: Read more on Feminist Ethics

Economics:
9 things about free market economics that are hard to swallow
Next Step: Currently reading The Genius of the Beast

Meditation:
christian intention and buddhist consciousness
"Jesus sat down and ate with sinners, and every day when we pray we sit down with all the tax collectors of the mind, con artists and loan sharks all of them."

Atheism/Intelligent Design:
religion is not failed science
intelligent design as antiques roadshow

Best New Movies I Saw This Year:
The Hurt Locker

District 9
Where The Wild Things Are
(Avatar, I hope)


Best Books I Read This Year:
The Importance of Living by Yutang Lin

The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Basho 
King Lear by William Shakespeare

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
Life in the Universe by Bennett, Shostak, Jakosky


Also, make sure to check out the Best of the Gourd 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005!

welcome to the world

+ China's State Engineers are upgrading Manhattan's subway ventilation. !?!

+ Montreal biker gangs fire bomb cafes.

+ New graphic novel Luna Park looks gorgeous.

+ 1.5 Billion people still live without electricity.

+ Obama's final war council.

+ "Anyone who is only Japanese or American, only Oriental or Occidental, is but half human. The other half that beats with the pulse of all humanity has yet to be awakened." - Huston Smith

more future stuff

"If you’re under age 30, it is likely that you will be able to live as long as you want. That is, barring accidents and wars, you have centuries of healthy life ahead of you."

The future is all about STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) jobs.  So, where does that leave me?

The return of the grassland seas! Please, please!

Cool site: Information is Beautiful

Not sure what I think about this guy.

Intel: Chips in brains will control computers by 2020

Part 2 and 3 of NOVA's "Becoming Human" are online... mind-blowing stuff!

the meaning of life

Staring into the wide sky at any time of day, investigating the unique and regular shape of a tree, observing your breath after a hard run, sunlight through a window or leaves, flames licking upward in the dark, starfields and moon watching, the eyes of babies, animals especially mammals, the crawling of bugs, colonnades of trees, cottonwood seeds falling down in the heat, moving or still water, fossil beds on a grassy plain, endless wind, the meditation of a walk, good digestion, a clean house, the ending of a clear day, fireflies in a field of green soybeans, warm tea, watching your own hand writing effortlessly, slow reading, big-hearted laughter, a loving silence, true forgiveness, recognitions (catharsis): seeing yourself in someone else, an unexpected visit from a friend, home when you thought you were lost, things stuffed in old boxes, looking into mirrors, when you begin to see your parents in yourself, when you realized you've learned something, a song you haven't heard in a long time, hearing your name

Moving physically through the world, using one's senses (sense of depth, sense of motion,...), caring for young, learning and imitating, eating and defecating, exploring one's memory, making connections, staring at bright objects. Happiness is doing what you were made to do. There isn't anything else. Happiness is the meaning of life because happiness is life being life. Living is the meaning of life.

panda watch

From the Daily Beast:

"From global warming to currency levels to human rights, the days when the U.S. could make demands of Beijing are over—we can bargain all we want, but at the end of the day, we know and they know that they are our bank...

"Precisely because Americans haven’t been paying much attention to China, they haven’t fully acknowledged the shift in the balance of power between Washington and Beijing. The more the Obama administration calls attention to that shift, the more abuse it is likely to take.

"As a government, the Obama administration seems ready for a relationship of equals with China. But as a people, Americans have barely begun to come to terms with what that means."

Space and China News

+ "A Wet Moon Is Hot Again" NASA Watch reports a rumor that NASA could have a lander on the moon in 1,000 days, start to finish. Also, the stakes are raised for the Google Lunar X Prize.

+ The Planetary Society's LightSail tests receive some attention. Of all the speculative technologies for space travel, solar sails are by far the most beautiful idea. And if we develop the right nanotechnology, they might be incredibly cheap. Zipping around within our solar system would be effortless.

+ Vatican debates the possibility of alien life - Nice to see the Church trying to be ahead of the curve on scientific discovery.

China:

+ Obama's books are big sellers in China.

+ China continues to strengthen ties with Africa and Latin America.

+ Clinton: The Rise of China Is Inevitable

+ What do people in China believe? In a polarized world of religious conflict, China holds an interesting position--officially atheist, historically pluralistic. Only a third of Chinese consider themselves 'religious.' It's striking really.

childhood's ends: civilization is neverland?

There appears to be a relationship between being domesticated and being juvenile. The most obvious example are dogs. Adult dogs are actually wolf cubs. Over time their development has been stunted and they maintain all the physical and psychological features of young wolves. If you are always protected by humans and never live in the wild, you never have to grow up. And over time those physiological processes that make you a grown up fall by the genetic wayside. In fact, many scientists argue that humans are stunted primates. We have domesticated ourselves.

It may seem strange to think that we are juvenile forms of other primates and yet we are smarter than them, but there's likely a connection between the two. As mentioned in the documentary posted below, one of the distinguishing characteristics between humans and other primates is that our children stay children for a long time. Even today, you aren't expected to be a 'full adult' until you are 18! Physiologically you aren't an adult until your early teens. That's incredibly long for any species. It is theorized that this long childhood is what allowed for the development of culture, learning, and the neocortex (abstract throught). When you are safely protected by your parents you have lots of time to play around, daydream, try new things.

In short, civilization is leisure. And leisure begins with a long childhood. And one might also argue that the height of civilization is the return to this leisure time. Galileo gets to build his telescope because he's got the time to do it. Bach gets to compose because he's got a patron, a 'father figure.' Even the development of medical technologies come from excess resources (money = stored time). If I have money, I have free time.

In every generation there are critics who bemoan the loss of knowledge. Our children know less, work less, think less, than we did. Technology seems to take away our independence. Even within society I have people who make food for me, machines that wash my clothes for me. I become less responsible every day. We children are growing up slowly, maybe never. And yet this is what our parents hoped for: that their kids won't have to work as much or as hard as they did. If enough generations are successful at this goal, the great-great-great grandchildren will spend very little time working.

It's strange to think about: the more 'advanced' our civilization becomes, the more childlike we will become. I do not see a good reason why we won't increasingly make technology/computers into our patrons and matrons. Let them do the bills, the work, the food, the cleaning. It all means more time for me to explore, have fun, puzzle over difficult ideas, hang out with friends. Especially if people begin to live to a healthy 100--why not wait until you're 30 to choose a career? ...And what might humans be like 500 years from now? Would we find them a little too soft, too innocent, too wide-eyed?

excellent pbs series on human evolution

+ Wu Ming - Italian Novelist Collective... I had not heard about this group. Crazy.

+ There is one major barrier to space colonization: escape velocity. Any current rocket must carry all its own fuel *and* bring everything it needs. You can't 'live off the land' in zero-g or off any planet (yet). But there are sweet technologies under development that could change everything... such as, power beaming - We can beam energy to objects, which means that those objects don't need to carry the weight of their own fuel. This could be used to aid rockets or create a space elevator. (It also could be used to push solar sails at low cost around our system or to other systems.)

+ If we don't get serious about space, China will. So far there has been a ban on militarizing space dating back to the Cold War. But now that China, India, Japan, Russia and the EU are busy in space, who knows?

the paradox of hedonism - dang it

+ Antioxidants may help with the flu... yum, green tea!

+ What's up in the solar system in November.

+ The rise of Islamic creationism. This is a fascinating piece of the rise of the evolution vs. creationism debate in Islamic countries. How does Christian creationism affect Islamic creationists? Will this affect the place of Islamic science education internationally? It's going to be very interesting to see what happens... what happens when you have two theories for creation. How would you decide between the two on scientific grounds? And then there is the relationship of Evolution to the West.

+ China's Ivy League

+ Sita Sings The Blues - saw this movie in Chicago, it was a lot of fun! The full movie is online free.

+ I really want to read this book.

brilliant comics site