Friday, May 18, 2007

Forgiveness & Love

Quote:
11When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. 12Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known


Just watched ghost in the shell again & yep, this passage is littered around in the play. Didn't expect a jap to quote the Corinthians :)

But as always i have my doubts.

To speak in tongues as i know little else: i see this world where people walk around while listening to the weather report & rest of news like it's the oracle. See, the weather report was right. It's raining. It beats Stonehenge.

Then i see that people all live in cocoons, nothing new for that matter. Most stereotypes are acquired from something alike collective unconscious. Do not understand why they call it unconscious. People take note of it all the time. They talk about it when they don't know each other. Friends often have heated debates about it. It is the common ground where strangers meet. It is an instrument, played by musicians. It has grown deep under the skin the thousand years it has flourished from the cities, baptized at the first union of tribes. Rigid in stasis, fluent after catalyzing. It has gained momentum and achieved several new qualitative evolutions along the way. The book, paper and tube increased the heartbeat of society & reinvented the same structure ever again. Churches, Mosques and Schools alike. Dostoevsky's dialog with the inquisitor posed a question to the age old powers, that none of them seemed able to answer. Even so, as always, things mostly stayed the same if you don't mind the fractal distortion. His words were used and abused but the instrument remained familiar. People were trapped behind governmental & similar curtains.

Then some genius thought up the concept of an interactive network. More primitive forms have been around for ages but never did they bridge the divide that defines defines cocoon groups. A new world materialized while brands grew old.

Then to date: Neo, the 21cty superman is asked a question again. It seems
Dostoevsky's ghost is revitalized when a Neo enters a white room, filled with screens & a man. The inquisitor asks his question again. The question is Zion. Neo is given a choice. Neo, the one who finds his death in the embrace of the infectious agent, a plague that frightens both the mechanical and human world.

How will this tale end? I do not know. But what do i see? The liquidation of national power. Lush profits for some accounts, fatalistic ones for others. As usual these are only the yield of seeds planted long before. In the high Art: movies, a clear shift to Barok themes is apparent. High contrasts, vivid demonifications & horrors. Victorian the new fad. A new beeldensturm started couple of years ago when Alex Jones & Papas gave the green light to a white revolution. Love, yes yes, but what is hidden beneath the curtain? Care to look or is it back to mindfulness.

Suppose it is true that forces work on the same scale they are applied to. This is the heart of the new civil wars. Who is loved. Who is forgiven.

Karel

Sunday, May 6, 2007

Hearts & Minds

...

Ever since Plato, scholars have drawn a clear distinction between thinking and feeling. Cognitive psychology tended to reinforce this divide: emotions were seen as interfering with cognition; they were the antagonists of reason. Now, building on more than a decade of mounting work, researchers have discovered that it is impossible to understand how we think without understanding how we feel.

"Because we subscribed to this false ideal of rational, logical thought, we diminished the importance of everything else," said Marvin Minsky, a professor at MIT and pioneer of artificial intelligence. "Seeing our emotions as distinct from thinking was really quite disastrous."

...

Antonio Damasio, a neuroscientist at USC, has played a pivotal role in challenging the old assumptions and establishing emotions as an important scientific subject. When Damasio first published his results in the early 1990s, most cognitive scientists assumed that emotions interfered with rational thought. A person without any emotions should be a better thinker, since their cortical computer could process information without any distractions.

But Damasio sought out patients who had suffered brain injuries that prevented them from perceiving their own feelings, and put this idea to the test. The lives of these patients quickly fell apart, he found, because they could not make effective decisions. Some made terrible investments and ended up bankrupt; most just spent hours deliberating over irrelevant details, such as where to eat lunch. These results suggest that proper thinking requires feeling. Pure reason is a disease.

...


The Boston Globe Article
April 29, 2007

Tuesday, May 1, 2007

Star Wars plot questioned

1.) Why were a handful of rebel fighters able to penetrate the defenses of a battle station that had the capability of destroying an entire planet and the defenses to ward off several fleets of battle ships?

2.) Why did Grand Moff Tarkin refuse to deploy the stati
on’s large fleet of TIE Fighters until it was too late? Was he acting on orders from somebody to not shoot down the rebel attack force? If so, who, and why?

3.) Why was the rebel pilot who supposedly destroyed the Death Star reported to be on the Death Star days, maybe hours, prior to its destruction? Why was he allowed to escape, and why were several individuals dressed in Stormtrooper uniforms seen helping him?

4.) Why has there not been an investigation into allegations that Darth Vader, the second-ranking member of the Imperial Government, is in fact the father of the pilot who allegedly destroyed the Death Star?

5.) Why did Lord Vader decide to break all protocols and personally pilot a lightly armored TIE Fighter? Conveniently, this placed Lord Vader outside of the Death Star when it was destroyed, where he was also conveniently able to escape from a large-sized rebel fleet that had just routed the Imperial forces. Why would Lord Vader, one of the highest ranking members of the Imperial Government, suddenly decide to fly away from the Death Star in the middle of a battle? Did he know something that the rest of the Imperial Navy didn’t?

6.) How could any pilot shoot a missile into a 2 meter-wide exhaust port, let alone a pilot with no formal training, whose only claim to fame was his ability to “bullseye womprats” on Tatooine? This shot, according to one pilot, would be “impossible, even for a computer.” Yet, according to additional evidence, the pilot who allegedly fired the missile turned off his targeting computer when he was supposedly firing the shot that destroyed the Death Star. Why have these discrepancies never been investigated, let alone explained?

7.) Why has their been no investigation into evidence that the droids who provided the rebels with the Death Star plans were once owned by none other than Lord Vader himself, and were found, conveniently, by the pilot who destroyed the Death Star, and who is also believed to be Lord Vader’s son? Evidence also shows that the droids were brought to one Ben Kenobi, who, records indicate, was Darth Vader’s teacher many years earlier! Are all these personal connections between the conspirators and a key figure in the Imperial government supposed to be coincidences?

8.) How could a single missile destroy a battle station the size of a moon? No records, anywhere, show that any battle station or capital ship has ever been destroyed by a single missile. Furthermore, analysis of the tape of the last moments of the Death Star show numerous
small explosions along its surface, prior to it exploding completely! Why does all evidence indicate that strategically placed explosives, not a single missile, is what destroyed the Death Star?

ty Seraph