The Confrérie

Sargasso C

Tue, 20 May 2008 15:25:39 GMT

Lotus is a five-piece instrumental band from Philadelphia. Their music is highly tempered by electronic styles such as deep house and drum 'n bass, but inside the sonic layers seep heavy doses of jazz, funk, and world music. Their high energy live shows feature tightly composed material balanced with stretched out improvisation. The sounds shift from spiritual and meditative to jubilant and energetic from dark dance floor burners to spaced-out waves of ambiance.

What's the true story with the Sargasso Sea? Is there actually a huge mass of floating seaweed in the middle of the Atlantic? Do ships have a difficult time traversing it? Are there abandoned ships stuck in it, and if so, how many and are there any famous anecdotes? I have heard that Columbus once encountered it; is this true?

In a new study detailed in the May 18 2007 issue of the journal Science, researchers have shown that eddies, episodic swirling current systems, pump nutrients up from the oceans depths to feed the phytoplankton.

Eddies are the internal weather of the sea, the oceanic equivalent of storms in the atmosphere said McGillicuddy, also the studys leader.

Monkey C: Darwin in the Machine

Tue, 20 May 2008 02:28:07 GMT

Genetic programming creates growing new and unexpected designs out of the most basic code. After a series of breakthroughs in the early 2000s, Genetic Programming has had a formidable and rapid development which led to the production of computers that innovate and find solutions not only equal to but sometimes better than some of the best work of humans expert in some given fields. John Koza's invention machine earned a U.S. patent for developing a system to make factories more efficient, one of the first intellectual-property protections ever granted to a nonhuman designer.

One of the central challenges of computer science is to get a computer to do what needs to be done, without telling it how to do it.

In acting as an invention machine, evolutionary methods, such as genetic programming, have the advantage of not being encumbered by preconceptions that limit human problem-solving to well-troden paths.

This is how it works.

Life Immortal

Mon, 19 May 2008 22:57:03 GMT

The power of life causes the snake to shed its skin, just as the moon sheds its shadow.

The serpent sheds its skin to be born again, as the moon its shadow to be born again. They are

equivalent symbols. Sometimes the serpent is represented as a circle eating its own tail. That's an

image of life. Life sheds one generation after another, to be born again. There is something

tremendously terrifying about life when you look at it that way. And so the serpent carries in

itself the sense of both fascination and the terror of life.

Furthermore, the serpent represents the primary function of life, mainly eating. Life

consists in eating other creatures. The serpent is a traveling alimentary canal, that's about all it is.

And it gives you that primary sense of shock, of life in its most primal quality. There is not

arguing with that animal at all. Life lives by killing and eating itself, casting off death and being

reborn, like the moon.

[Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myths with Bill Moyers. New York, Doubleday, 1988 pdf]

This was then.

And this is now:

If indefinite lifespan is on the cusp, would people really want to live forever?

And if they do, what would that mean for the world?

Opener of Ways

Sun, 18 May 2008 18:58:21 GMT

For they say that all spirits do HIS work, those who rebel no less than those who obey.

Thought!

Sat, 17 May 2008 23:10:32 GMT

"Time and the pure essence of Heaven, the moisture of the Earth, the powers of the Sun and the Moon all worked upon a certain rock, old as creation. And it became magically fertile. That first egg was named "Thought"...Elemental forces caused the egg to hatch. From it came a stone monkey. The nature of Monkey was irrepressible!"

---Saiyuki [1]

[1] Saiyuki is a 2006 Japanese historical TV drama based on the 16th Century Chinese story Journey to the West [2]. It is a successor to the popular 1970's TV show Saiyuki, known outside Japan as Monkey.

[2] Originally published anonymously in the 1590s during the Ming Dynasty, part of the novel's enduring popularity comes from the fact that it works on multiple levels: it is a first-rate adventure story, a dispenser of spiritual insight, and an extended allegory in which the group of pilgrims journeying toward India stands for the individual journeying toward enlightenment.

A Sea Monkey of Trouble

Sat, 17 May 2008 22:46:52 GMT

"Finally the day arrived! When the boy received the Sea-Monkey kit, he tore into the package with the humanoid characters on the front of the box. Sadly he was disappointed to find that inside the Sea-Monkey kingdom was really only a tiny plastic tank and a package of brine shrimp. No castle, no humanoids, no races, no tricks, no evolving colony. You really couldnt interact with them in any meaningful way. You could only peep through the little magnifying glass spots on the side of the tank and watch them twitch. This was not at all what was advertised. How disappointing!"

The Sea Monkeys were spoofed on an episode in the sixth season of South Park called The Simpsons Already Did It. Cartman's sea people built a little underwater civilization and even a statue to him.

Athos's Ethos: ORTHODOXY OR DEATH

Fri, 16 May 2008 20:48:50 GMT

Beware the works of Darkness.

Is Ecumenism a path to perdition?

Are you afraid of Satan's government?

Have no fear:

The Holy Mount Athos has always been a "barrier against which the waves of heresies would break"[1]. From ancient times this sublime institution, the domain of the Mother of God, which lived in accordance with Divine principles, has been the stronghold of Orthodoxy. In guarding the faith of the Holy Fathers, Athonites (hagiorites), for centuries, have been an example of piety to all... Having renounced the world and entirely dedicated himself to serving God, "a true monk fears neither the imperial purple, nor the mitre of a patriarch, and is prepared to endure anything joyfully and happily for the love of the Orthodox faith, which is his greatest treasure . ... Monastic hood does not bow before any masters who disdain the Divine Law and the Sacred Tradition, and who subject the Faith to sinful people desirous of worldly things, to people obedient to Satan." [2]

[1] Athonite monk-zealot Theoklitis Germanos, "Confession of Faith", in the collection Protestations Orthodoxes... , p. 62.

[2] Ibid., p. 63.

And do not forget to check under your bed before you turn the lights off at night...

Athos's Ethos: ORTHODOXY OR DEATH

Fri, 16 May 2008 20:41:55 GMT

Beware the works of Darkness.

Is Ecumenism a path to perdition?

Are you afraid of Satan's government?

Have no fear:

The Holy Mount Athos has always been a "barrier against which the waves of heresies would break"[1]. From ancient times this sublime institution, the domain of the Mother of God, which lived in accordance with Divine principles, has been the stronghold of Orthodoxy. In guarding the faith of the Holy Fathers, Athonites (hagiorites), for centuries, have been an example of piety to all... Having renounced the world and entirely dedicated himself to serving God, "a true monk fears neither the imperial purple, nor the mitre of a patriarch, and is prepared to endure anything joyfully and happily for the love of the Orthodox faith, which is his greatest treasure . ... Monastic hood does not bow before any masters who disdain the Divine Law and the Sacred Tradition, and who subject the Faith to sinful people desirous of worldly things, to people obedient to Satan." [2]

[1] Athonite monk-zealot Theoklitis Germanos, "Confession of Faith", in the collection Protestations Orthodoxes... , p. 62.

[2] Ibid., p. 63.

And do not forget to check under your bed before you turn the lights off at night...

Athos's Ethos: ORTHODOXY OR DEATH

Fri, 16 May 2008 20:23:02 GMT

Beware the works of Darkness.

Is Ecumenism a path to perdition?

Are you afraid of Satan's government?

Have no fear:

The Holy Mount Athos has always been a "barrier against which the waves of heresies would break"[1]. From ancient times this sublime institution, the domain of the Mother of God, which lived in accordance with Divine principles, has been the stronghold of Orthodoxy. In guarding the faith of the Holy Fathers, Athonites (hagiorites), for centuries, have been an example of piety to all... Having renounced the world and entirely dedicated himself to serving God, "a true monk fears neither the imperial purple, nor the mitre of a patriarch, and is prepared to endure anything joyfully and happily for the love of the Orthodox faith, which is his greatest treasure . ... Monastic hood does not bow before any masters who disdain the Divine Law and the Sacred Tradition, and who subject the Faith to sinful people desirous of worldly things, to people obedient to Satan." [2]

[1] Athonite monk-zealot Theoklitis Germanos, "Confession of Faith", in the collection Protestations Orthodoxes... , p. 62.

[2] Ibid., p. 63.

And do not forget to check under your bed before you turn the lights off at night...

For its hard, you will find, to be narrow of mind...

Thu, 15 May 2008 20:48:18 GMT

...If you're young at heart.

"Staying Alive" certainly does take a different dimension when sung by these folks than it did back when the Bee Gees sung it.

One can't help but wonder what the story of some of these people is.

Living a story is essential to what it means to be human. There are personal stories and there are grander collective narratives that powerfully influence the individual adventures, and vice-versa. Those stories, they shape or contain and transform one another. Very much like rock and water.

Sometimes, the water stops flowing... Like so many socio/religious/ideological static ponds, stagnant in-group stories do form now and then.

Sometimes the water stops flowing. Sometimes the land gets washed away.

Some plants, such as lotuses, prefer stagnant water, while other prefer flowing water. It's all good.

It doesn't matter in the end.

How does it feel

How does it feel

To be on your own

With no direction home

Like a complete unknown

Like a rolling stone?