7 Apr 2008 @ 19:29, by hyphenate. Personal Development
Maybe I am just a numbskull.
I have a problem… but I believe it is a good one. I love it and hate it. It is the best and worst of me. In all of it there doesn’t seem to be a resolution. A minor war rages within. And it’s cool with me, most of the time.
It’s just that I get interested, enthused and excited… about everything. Well, many things. This has contributed to me being a jack of all trades, master of none. It keeps me perpetually interested in learning something new. It has me jumping from thing to thing. It makes me question my focus. It helps me to be a good “big picture person”, but to also appreciate and admire the “detail people”. It got me a shot once on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” with Regis. And I know enough to be dangerous on a lot of subjects, but am never really able to craft detailed arguments and stories that don’t ramble or ping-pong into all kinds of other areas. It helps me “get” the references in just about any Dennis Miller rant and to understand the nuances within most comedy and appreciate a lot of Charlie Rose interviews. It’s a real pisser when it comes down to answering someone’s question of, “So, what to you do?”
When listening to music I want to immerse into this genre and be able to play each instrument that comes forward with a solo… until the next song, that is of a different genre and highlights other instruments. On Saturday mornings I can find myself switching between the Topeka and Kansas City PBS stations, delving into the garden shows, home improvement shows, art classes, quilting shows, and cooking shows… and to then chastise myself for having spectated the morning away as opposed to having participated in one of these or any of my other interests during the same period. I think I sometimes freeze amidst maybe too many choices. At times I hear the echo of my feisty, New Yorker roommate from Annapolis, chiding me to, “Do something… even if it’s wrong.”
This universal interest in things makes me lose myself in front of a magazine rack or in a bookstore or on internet searches that take me from A to D to J and back to B, and 12:45 to 4:30 pm, without my having known how I got moved around the gameboard.
“Fires can't be made with dead embers,
nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men.
Enthusiasm in our daily work lightens effort and
turns even labor into pleasant tasks."
-- James Arthur Baldwin
"Catch on fire with enthusiasm
and people will come for miles to watch you burn."
-- John Wesley
“Charisma is the transference of enthusiasm."
-- Ralph Archibold
Hocchiku
flute calculator: the shakuhachi is a Japanese
end-blown flute which is held vertically like
a recorder, instead of transversely like the Western
transverse flute. It is traditionally made of
bamboo, but versions now exist in wood and plastic. It
was used by the monks of the Fuke sect of ZenBuddhism in the practice of suizen (blowing meditation). ShakuMatic is
an online hocchiku
calculator - build your own scales - find your own light - make your own
flute.
7 Apr 2008 @ 10:59, by johnjoseph. Investigation, Intelligence
Dialectical analysis of the Sudoku puzzle
A sudoku is a puzzle composed of 81 individual squares or cells, which join together into 9 larger squares of nine cells each. It can be looked at also as an array of nine columns and nine rows, each composed of nine cells.
The rules are what defines a game or puzzle and they create the contradictions in it. The basic rule of sudoku is that all the numbers 1 to 9, in any order, have to be in every row, column and square. But the defining rule or characteristic is that no number can recur in any row, column or square. Thus the main opposites here are “Identity” and “Difference”
This puzzle is constructed as a logical deduction puzzle whereby it should be possible to deduce all the absent numbers from the ones that are given, one by one, serially and piecemeal.
Now, just as the logical deductive process focuses on the rule that the numbers must be different, and uses that fact to deduce the outstanding numbers in the grid, so contrariwise, the dialectical method uses the opposite fact that in some parts of the grid, not subject to the rules, the numbers will be the same, will recur. This will give rise to certain characteristic patterns which can be used to intuit, guess and deduce the complete picture, holistically.
There are many patterns that arise in this way, but I will only mention three to illustrate my point.
Firstly, numbers cannot recur on rows, columns or in larger squares because of the rules. But they can and do recur when counted along diagonal lines. Thus on a diagonal across the whole grid it is sometimes possible to count three or four recurrences of the same number for example 4 or 7. Every diagonal is of a different length and there are sub-patterns within them that will reward study.
Secondly, what I call knight’s-move pattern. In many cases this pattern, created directly by the rules as a natural consequence of them, follows exactly the move of a knight in chess, and the same number recurs in the next column or row in this position. However, the rule that no number can recur in a larger square sometimes affects this pattern, and the same number recurs in a slight variation of the true knight’s-move, in an extended version.
Thirdly, it is noticeable that when a number is in a small square within a larger square, as we move from one column to the next, or one row to the next, the position of the same number is usually different, relatively, but not always. Thus, for example, in the top large square a 3 may be in the top left-most small square. In the next large square underneath it may be in the middle small square, while in the bottom large square it may be that it is in the right-most small square.
These and other patterns can be observed and learnt. When doing a sudoku you can use knowledge of these patterns to intuit, guess and deduce the overall distribution of the numbers throughout the whole puzzle, rather than just using a mechanical, solely deductive process to solve the puzzle piecemeal. These are examples of the Taoist and Confucianist methods of solving problems that I have written about elsewhere. Of course, it is possible to combine the two methods to get the best result.
5 Apr 2008 @ 20:29, by jhs. Music
The other day I finished a conversion from a 'normal' guitar to a fretless one, giving me the inspiration to consider anew some unresolved questions:
- whereas the ability to 'classify' is the hallmark for human intelligence (some schools using it as its actual definition), continued use appears to result in a degrade of the original ability to perceive what was classified).
The most dramatic example is human language, of course. Count Alfred Korzybski was going so far to base insanity in general upon the misuse of identifying (literally) an actual object (thing) with the word that is representing it. (see [link] )
Earlier this year I was experimenting with a new rundown to "remove the bias on perceptions". The results were astonishing and clearly demonstrate that language is just one example of self-imposed limitations and the problem lies deep in the Being's loss of the ability to differentiate perceptions.
But back to the 'fretless guitar': playing with frets only allows for playing combinations of the Western tone scale (if tuned to usual standards). Of course, one could detune the entire guitar but that would result in yet another closed framework of sounds. Like painting only with 7 colors in 3 or 4 shadings. On the other hand the modern guitar works exceedingly well the way it is. Going back, at least for the experiment, is quite a feat. Forces to listen carefully instead of just playing mechanically.
On my long, long list of actual perceptions (much much longer than Hubbard's confused arrangement of 57 perceptions) is the perception of the archetype of a person. Which is another perfect example of a lost ability even amongst most of those who think of themselves as experts, for example in the field of 'Orishas'.
Resetting the classification and 'refinding' it from scratch provided a great way to enhance perceptions.
Now I gotta get back to practice the guitar for some months (years?)...
oh well, hope my hands&arms don´t fall off... More >
As articulated in earlier articles by me, institutions torment the ‘free spirits’ or souls with ‘individuated minds’. Institutions were designed for the ‘mass mind’ people, for the harbingers of the ‘folkspirit’ or folkgeist. I’d say from my own experience that current education is inadequate for the former, for gifted children and most especially for ‘star seed’ children.
As a young man of Age 22, Erle Frayne Argonza can be described as possessing a ‘conqueror’s psyche’. Barely starting in his work as a community development assistant, he was already very bullish in meteorically rising to top leadership and executive roles. At that age, he envisioned his entry to the presidential palace as an executive in the future, 25 years hence (at age 46 he did become a bureau director in the presidential palace).
Compare that young adult Erle to the boy Erle of preschool and school days. It was a stark contrast, to be sure. This tot was shy, melancholic, and was deeply communicating with his own inner self or detached from the crowd. He went through a traumatic childhood, and he with the ‘gifted mind’ and ‘star seed’ went through a process that, to his surprise, was undergone too by other ‘star seeds’. More >
3 Apr 2008 @ 20:25, by democritus. Education
I'm 17 now, just about to take my A-levels. I do well, I get into the university I want, get a degree, get a job. Welcome to the rest of my life.
I was at a party recently. Kids with dyed hair and catchy tshirt slogans. What are they going to be doing in 10 years? Most of them, I think, will be sat at a desk, thinking back to those good times, wondering where everything changed. And you say 'Well they have the choice to do something different.' More >
3 Apr 2008 @ 18:10, by gsosbee. Violence, War
Few care to listen to the pleas of the tortured among us, until they begin to realize that the names of the homicidal perpetrators (and their silent supporters) will eternally be known as the human beasts doing the torturing. Further, the murderous minds of the uSA's sociopaths which hold sway over the media and the general population now enjoy a certain sense of infallibility as they (the hoodlums engaging in global killing, imprisoning and torturing) meet with little resistence from their apathetic and sycophantic public. However, the uSA's reign of warfare over Mankind is fast coming to a close as the entire world takes aim at the assassins who serve the uSA war machine. **The fbi and the cia are for the most part, the brains behind the atrocities being plotted and waged globally; their participation in and sponsorship of war crimes on behalf of the United States is an indictment of all three braches of government; at the same time, the citizenry who do nothing to stop their out of control government in uSA are seen as cowardly fools, and the military of this nation is seen collectively as brazen criminals let loose on the world's people.
"To the depths of depravity that the United States has fallen to...", The New York Times compares themselves to last centuries Nazi Empire as follows:
"Our humanity has been compromised by those who use Gestapo tactics in our war. The longer we stand idly by while they do so, the more we resemble those "good Germans" who professed ignorance of their own Gestapo. It's up to us to wake up our somnambulant Congress to challenge administration policy every day. Let the war's last supporters filibuster all night if they want to. There is nothing left to lose except whatever remains of our country's good name."
In the madness of war and horrific destruction being visited upon the Muslim peoples of the World by the United States, and its dwindling allies, it is interesting, but sad, to note how far these once free people fallen in barely 100 years from their truest ideas as a new war with Iran looms before them , and as we can read:
* As President Theodore Roosevelt said in his 1906 State of the Union address, "No man can take part in the torture of a human being without having his own moral nature permanently lowered." See:
[link]
2 Apr 2008 @ 14:14, by tinajoy. Spirituality
Let one who seeks not stop seeking until one finds, when one finds, one will be troubled, one will marvel and will reign over all. More >
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7 Apr 2008 @ 19:29, by hyphenate. Personal Development
