Category Archives: Science - Page 2

It’s not all bad news

Posted by on September 14, 2010 No comments

I’ll veer away from Spirituality with this one and wander towards a different direction, it’s time for a change.

I’ve written before about my views on Peak Oil and the other bogeymen that stalk our collective near future.  It might have come across that I was a doomer, with a bearish outlook.  The comments on my last post have made me think more mindfully of how I came across on this and I feel a correction is due.

I’m watching a few developments and realising that the  future isn’t as gloomy as the doomers might have us believe, though I do think that the pace of things will slow down as we become more energy constrained.  We will become more local, but I don’t see that as such a bad thing though if you’re a fan of globalisation it’s bad news.

We seem to seek out the negative and fixate on it, enthralled by the feeling of impending doom.  But what of the effects on our psyches?  Unbalancing toward the negative is damaging and I found that out to my cost recently.  So, I’m thinking of looking up some more “good news” sites  as it’s been a while since I did that.

So, I’m going to embark on a little journey to rebalance, let’s see what I can find.

Does it really matter?

Posted by on September 9, 2010 5 comments

I saw the statement from Stephen Hawking last week about his view that the universe didn’t need a divine creator.  This was reported far and wide and as you have probably noticed, this has kicked up a bit of a fuss.

I can’t help but look at this and shake my head and wonder when people will make the realisation that all of this fuss is fruitless?  The Buddha warns us away from these questions, saying that they only cause suffering and angst, from  what I can see he was bang on the money!  Also, Lao Tzu also makes it clear that certain things are simply beyond our knowledge, in fact Taoism tends not to encourage knowledge hoarding.  I find myself agreeing wholeheartedly with this, we have no evidence on which to base any speculation on the events prior to the big bang.  In the same manner we have no real idea what things are like outside the universe.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, there are a lots of times when the only honest answer is “I don’t know”, and I feel that this realisation is quite freeing.  The recognition of limitations and the acceptance that there are things out there that are beyond our capacity is liberating, in a way it gives you your mind back.

That’s quite something to say, almost heresy in todays society.  We almost worship knowledge and to be the expert on something is considered to be quite the excellent thing.  I am starting to wonder if this is the “Information Age” or the “Information Fetish Age”?

The Tao Te Ching warns us against this in chapter 19:

“End sagacity; abandon knowledge
The people benefit a hundred times

End benevolence; abandon righteousness
The people return to piety and charity

End cunning; discard profit
Bandits and thieves no longer exist

Reduce selfishness; decrease desires

These three things are superficial and insufficient
Thus this teaching has its place:
Show plainness; hold simplicity” [1]

We hoard knowledge, which isn’t a bad thing all in all, but it can breed arrogance if you’re not very careful.  If you’ve seen Star Wars Episode 2 AotC, remember when Obi Wan suggests to a Librarian in the Jedi Archive that a planet is missing, that their records might be incomplete?

“JOCASTA NU: Well, I’m sure you didn’t call me over here for a history lesson. Are you having a problem, Master Kenobi?
OBI-WAN: Yes, I’m trying to find a planet system called Kamino. It doesn’t seem to show upon any of the archive charts.
JOCASTA NU: Kamino? It’s not a system I’M familiar with… Let me see…
JOCASTA NU leans over OBI-WAN’S shoulder, looking at the screen.
JOCASTA NU: (continuing) Are you sure you have the right co-ordinates?
OBI-WAN: (nodding) According to my information, it should be in this quadrant somewhere… just south of the Rishi Maze.
JOCASTA NU taps the keyboard and frowns.
JOCASTA NU: No co-ordinates? It sounds like the kind of directions you’d get from a street tout… some old miner or Furbog trader.
OBI-WAN: All three actually.
JOCASTA NU: Are you sure it exists?
OBI-WAN: Absolutely.
JOCASTA NU: Let me do a gravitational scan.
OBI-WAN and JOCASTA NU study the star map hologram. Episode 2, Jedi Archives Episode 2, Jedi Archives
JOCASTA NU: There are some inconsistencies here. Maybe the planet you’re looking for was destroyed.
OBI-WAN: Wouldn’t that be on record?
JOCASTA NU: It ought to be. Unless it was very recent. (shakes her head) I hate to say it, but it looks like the system you’re searching for doesn’t exist.
OBI-WAN: That’s impossible… perhaps the archives are incomplete.
JOCASTA NU: The archives are comprehensive and totally secure, my young Jedi. One thing you may be absolutely sure of – if an item does not appear in our records, it does not exist! “

… and we all know how that turned out, don’t we?

Sources

[1] – Tao Te Ching: Annotated & Explained, published by SkyLight Paths in 2006. (www.taoism.net)

Creative Commons

The Big Bang image above is by pshutterbug and is under an Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

The Blame Game

Posted by on September 7, 2010 4 comments

A thread on Science and morality on the Tea House got me thinking.  Points were made about atrocities, this historical monster was an atheist, and then denials and counter points.  It’s always unsurprising to see these things and to be honest, I find such arguments draining, as you can just spin your wheels for ages and not get anywhere.  So, I thought I’d write a quick post to put my views on this on the record.

The row over atrocities attributed to religion vs those attributed to atheism is getting the cart firmly before the horse and missing the key component .. people.  If someone is going to commit these sort of atrocities they will, they will simply use whatever they have to hand as an excuse.  To blame it on a system is to pass the buck and delude ourselves that Humans aren’t naturally capable of such things.  No, no, it was that nasty opposing system.  Regardless, it still needed people who were willing to do the things.

To realise this is unpleasant as it acknowledges that we all have a dark side, lurking in our psyches.  Now, that really doesn’t sit well with a lot of people, they’d rather deny it and pretend the perpetrators aren’t human.  Which is odd, because I can’t think of any other creature that would behave like that.

That denial is a shame as the only way to effectively deal with this (and I have written about this before) is to acknowledge it and humbly accept it.

The Music of Life

Posted by on August 29, 2010 3 comments

I got my hands on the DVD set of the old TV series “Cosmos” and was able to start watching it recently.  I’m amazed at how well it’s aged and also at how well Carl Sagan gets his points across.  One idea I particularly liked was in the second episode.  It deals with evolution and the origins of life on Earth,  he described life on Earth as one lonely theme in a cosmic fugue.

The idea of life on Earth as a musical theme is an attractive one, with each species as an instrument in that theme.  Imagine it,  life starts as a simple refrain, just a simple tune.  As time goes by the simple tune on a single instrument becomes a little more complex, more notes are added.

Then different species start to appear, more instruments join the melody.  Maybe they seem at odds, like hunter and prey; but there is always a pattern, a symmetry there.

The point is also made that the vast majority of species to have appeared on the Earth are now extinct, many of those instruments will never be heard again.

More positive Science on Meditation!

Posted by on August 20, 2010 No comments

Well, I couldn’t let this ArsTechnica article on meditation go unshared.  In short, it seems certain types of meditation could help to a degree with ADD, addiction and dementia.

I’ve long held that meditation has many positive benefits and now it seems that Science is starting to provide more supporting evidence to those of us who advocate regular meditation.  This is a short article, but I and many others know that meditation has a very great deal to offer.

I’m looking forward to seeing more studies!

On a footnote, I haven’t forgotten the upgrades to my Sitquietly meditation timer, I’m busily putting the finishing touches to a Secondlife product, but some tidying up on the web timer is due.  I’m also toying with reimplementing the Linux timer in C as I need a project to get back into that language.

A headset that reads your brainwaves

Posted by on July 23, 2010 No comments

I happened across this video, courtesy of TED.  It’s a headset that work by reading your brainwaves and at this stage looks like an idea that is coming along very, very nicely.

I’ll only say that I would love one of these for Second Life, but I imagine it’s a few years off a consumer release as yet!

The is the full video and comment page at TED.

Pale Blue Dot

Posted by on June 21, 2010 No comments

I received the link to this Carl Sagan video in my RSS today and in light of what’s been happening in the Gulf of Mexico, I thought this was something I had to share.