Tannishblog

I’m fortunate enough to have a friend at work with whom I can sometimes banter beliefs. One day, while we both rode extensively in the company truck, we meandered into a conversation about religion. We soon became enmeshed in a detail of whether Buddhism is in fact a religion. As with similar debates, the issue involves clarification of definitions.

"It seems to me," He said, "that Buddhism is a philosophy." This, in response to my declaration of not believing in a creator being, or to a clumsy attempt at enumerating core values while supporting an agnostic position. That’s when a definition of the term "religion" came into play. Clearly, his concept of the term needed little extrapolation. Mine, however, wandered aimlessly. I fear I failed to do it justice.

With that episode in mind, I submit this week’s tidbit, written by Stephen Batchelor in his concise rendering of Buddhist "philosophy" entitled: Buddhism Without Beliefs. Thus begins his chapter on Agnosticism:

Suppose… a man were wounded by an arrow thickly smeared with poison, and his friends and companions brought a surgeon to treat him. the man would say, "I will not let the surgeon pull out the arrow until I know the name and clan of the man who wounded me, whether the bow that wounded me was a long bow or a crossbow, whether the arrow that wounded me was hoof-tipped or curved or barbed."

All this would still not be known to that man and meanwhile he would die. So too… if anyone should say, "I will not lead the noble life under the Buddha until the Buddha declares to me whether the world is eternal or not eternal, finite or infinite; whether the soul is the same as or is different from the body; whether or not an awakened one continues or ceases to exist after death," the would still remain undeclared by the Buddha and meanwhile that person would die.

– the Buddha

I wish I had this in mind during our discussion. The whole God thing, heaven and hell, the afterlife; all are, in the Buddhist view, vain pursuits and distractions of what really matters. How does one’s belief in a divine Creator-Being help in our daily life? How does a belief in eternal damnation work to reduce suffering in ourselves and others?

When asked what he was doing, the Buddha replied that he taught "anguish and the ending of anguish." When asked about metaphysics (the origin and end of the universe, the identity or difference of body and mind, his existence or non-existence after death), he remained silent. He said the Dharma was permeated by a single taste: freedom. He made no claims to uniqueness or divinity and did not have recourse to a term we would translate as "God."

While such metaphysical conundrums form a basis for interesting suppositions, while much is made of such theories in world religions, they are "beside the point" of awakening. They neither support nor contradict Buddhism. Believe if you want, but don’t let beliefs hinder mindfulness, compassion, and the clarity of vision to do what is right in the moment. Namaste.

The Plot sickens…

David Farber of interesting-people.org shares with the world another assessment of the implausibility of the airline terrorist plot. It seems Perry E. Metger has been studying his chemistry and share his insights with us ignoramuses who might be buying into the propaganda ministries fictions. As he bigins:

A disclaimer, I'm working entirely off of news reported by people who don't know the difference between soft drinks and nail polish remover, but the information I've seen has the taste of being real. As near as I can tell, it is claimed that the terrorists planned to make organic peroxides in situ on board an airplane and use them to destroy the plane.

This seems, at least given my initial examination of the idea, implausible.

He continues with a primer on basic chemistry as it pertains to the alleged liquid explosives, specifically how astronomically difficult it would be to produce inside a "jittery" airliner lav.

So, lets say you have your oxidizer mixture and now you are going to mix it with acetone. In a proper lab environment, that's not going to be *too* awful — your risk of dying horribly is significant but you could probably keep the whole thing reasonably under control — you can use dry ice to cool a bath to -78C, say, and do the reaction really slowly by adding the last reactant dropwise with an addition funnel. If you're mixing the stuff up in someone's bathtub, like the guys who bombed the London subways a year ago did, you can take some reasonable precautions to make sure that your reaction doesn't go wildly out of control, like using a lot of normal ice and being very, very, very careful and slow. You need to keep the stuff cool, and you need to be insanely meticulous, or you're going to be in a world of hurt.
So, we've covered in the lab and in the bathtub. On an airplane? On an airplane, the whole thing is ridiculous. You have nothing to cool the mixture with. You have nothing to control your mixing with. You can't take a day doing the work, either. You are probably locked in the tiny, shaking bathroom with very limited ventilation, and that isn' going to bode well for you living long enough to get your explosives manufactured. In short, it sounds, well, not like a very good idea.
If you choke from fumes, or if your explosives go off before you've got enough made to take out the airplane — say if you only have enough to shatter the mirror in the bathroom and spray yourself with one of the most evil oxidizers around — you aren't going to be famous as the martyr who killed hundreds of westerners. Your determination and willingness to die doesn't matter — you still need to get the job done.

His conclusion?

Anyway, from all of this, I conclude that either

1) The terrorists had a brilliant idea for how to combine oxidizer and a ketone or ether to make some sort of nasty organic peroxide explosive in situ that has escaped me so far. Perhaps that's true — I'm not omniscient and I have to confess that I've never tried making the stuff at all, let alone in an airplane bathroom.

2) The terrorists were smuggling on board pre-made organic peroxide explosives. Clearly, this is not a new threat at all — organic peroxide explosives have been used by terrorists for decades now. Smuggling them in a bottle is not an interesting new threat either — clearly if you can smuggle cocaine in a bottle you can smuggle acetone peroxide. I would hope we had means of looking for that already, though, see below for a comment on that.

3) The terrorists were phenomenally ill informed, or hadn't actually tried any of this out yet — perhaps what we are told was a "sophisticated plot" was a bunch of not very sophisticated people who had not gotten very far in testing their ideas out, or perhaps they were really really dumb and hadn't tried even a small scale experiment before going forward.

Finally, he can't help poke fun at all the Hollywood Hysterics involved in this bogus political stunt, by listing all the ways a reasonably smart person (himself, I presume) can think of to sabotage an in-flight movie. If it wasn't so serious a matter to commit pathological fraudulence of information for political gain, I would laugh.

A bloke I’ve never heard of before, one Craig Murray, has a fascinating take on the real story behind the media circus surrounding the alleged Airplane Terrorists of London (Ow-ooooo!)

Pardon me.

Mr. Murray, drawing from impressive credentials as the UK diplomat of Uzbekistan, has parsed the few drops of reality from the gallons of ink devoted to this story in the Britain. Here’s his take:

So this, I believe, is the true story.

None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the efficiency of the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn’t be a plane bomber for quite some time.

In the absence of bombs and airline tickets, and in many cases passports, it could be pretty difficult to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt that individuals intended to go through with suicide bombings, whatever rash stuff they may have bragged in internet chat rooms.

What is more, many of those arrested had been under surveillance for over a year - like thousands of other British Muslims. And not just Muslims. Like me. Nothing from that surveillance had indicated the need for early arrests.

Then an interrogation in Pakistan revealed the details of this amazing plot to blow up multiple planes - which, rather extraordinarily, had not turned up in a year of surveillance. Of course, the interrogators of the Pakistani dictator have their ways of making people sing like canaries. As I witnessed in Uzbekistan, you can get the most extraordinary information this way. Trouble is it always tends to give the interrogators all they might want, and more, in a desperate effort to stop or avert torture. What it doesn’t give is the truth.

[…]

We then have the extraordinary question of Bush and Blair discussing the possible arrests over the weekend. Why? I think the answer to that is plain. Both in desperate domestic political trouble, they longed for "Another 9/11". The intelligence from Pakistan, however dodgy, gave them a new 9/11 they could sell to the media. The media has bought, wholesale, all the rubbish they have been shoveled.

One must admit, there is quite a precedent for this pattern. WMD’s, anyone? The world has seen the like before. The tactics are eerily similar.

The morals to the story: Don’t believe everything you read, especially if it is repeated on every possible channel. As Mr. Murray notes, what we have been forced to listen to all week is pure propaganda. In that vein, I will close with Craig’s last sentence:

Be skeptical. Be very, very skeptical.

Every day one can find a blogger that really hits on something. Nicholas Carr opines on the state of blogosphere and it’s likely future via the concept of innocent fraud.

Once upon a time there was an island named Blogosphere, and at the very center of that island stood a great castle built of stone, and spreading out from that castle for miles in every direction was a vast settlement of peasants who lived in shacks fashioned of tin and cardboard and straw.

Read more of Rough Type’s The Great Unread.

Again from the weekly offerings of Lama Suryas Das via Dzogchen.org, comes a pithy summation of the Middly Way:

We are always on a spiritual path but we don’t realize it, therefore we encounter many obstacles. If you really wish to develop your life, you must first develop your mind. Contemplation on the process of your own life is the main and authentic practice of Buddhism.

          ~ H.H. the Twelfth Gyalwang Drukpa

For the rest of the world, it is beneficial that there are more master teachers than just the Dalai Lama. One man, great as he may be, can only reach so many people - even with today’s technology. Great Tibetan masters are very rare, and all are aging in this world. For an American, they can be as unreachable as the stars. May their teaching fall on open minds, so their teachings can continue in the next generation.No matter one’s spiritual anchor, we all can benefit from the work of the Buddhist community as minds are awakened one by one. 

Namaste.

… I hit that nail square on!

As I surmised in a Geek Alert last month, in response to learning about the merger between AMD, the best CPU chip maker on the planet (am I gushing?) and ATI, the largest maker of Graphics silicon, engineers will start working on a new unified chipset promising to host a GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) and a CPU (Central Processing Unit) on the same wafer of silicon.

This is great news for consumers, as it may eliminate the daunting extra cost of a graphics card, the fastest of which can cost over $500. Its also good for enthusiasts like me (can’t you tell?) because upgrade paths are simplified.

From an industry standpoint this move, if successful, will redraw the map. It should be interesting.

Unprecedented. How many times has that word come up on conjunction with the Bush administration’s tactics? I lost count. Dick Cheney and his vision of CEO-type control of our government has gone far to reinvent presidential power. The problem I see is, if our government is to be run like a company, well… isn’t a company supposed to make money? I digress…

The latest unprecedented gambit is to try to take control of our National Guard service from the hands of state Governors. From Washington Post:

The nation’s governors, protesting what they call an unprecedented shift in authority from the states to the federal government, will urge Congress today to block legislation that would allow the president to take control of National Guard forces in the event of a natural disaster or a threat to homeland security.

Ahh… That old phantom adversary trick. Shopworn as it is, it’s still useful. Crying "Terrorist" is still the hat-trick of the power-elite. Now, though, people are starting to question:

In a sharply worded letter that will be transmitted to Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress this morning, the governors ask that a House-Senate conference committee remove a provision included in the House-passed version of the National Defense Authorization Act giving the president such authority.

"This provision was drafted without consultation or input from governors and represents an unprecedented shift in authority from governors as commanders and chief of the Guard to the federal government," the governors state in the letter.

Almost all governors are protesting the move. 51 in all, including some from US territories. This begs the question; who agrees with this move? The article didn’t say.

Sometimes one altered aspect of a society is overlooked for another. The news media only has room for the most sensational scoops. So many interesting things fall through the cracks. Much has been said about our right to bear arms, the need to curb availability of handguns, or the often disastrous deeds of gun owners legal and not.

The NY Times today has a short editorial on a Florida law that loosens accountability for people who shoot first and ask question later. It’s troubling at best considering similar laws are on the books or slated in other states.

The law, passed in the last year in 15 states and being considered in eight others, allows the extraordinary use of deadly force when a person simply doesn’t want to back away from a confrontation.

We’re going back to the wild west, here. Who is most likely to benefit from such a law? Police, for one.

In one case, a retired police officer shot twice and seriously wounded an apparently unarmed neighbor who had knocked on his door in a dispute over the number of garbage bags put out for collection. The shooter will remain free as long as his self-defense argument holds, and it well may.

I would add others: people struggling with anger management issues; disgruntled employees; ex-military types affected by PTSD; people engaged in questionable activities that could lead to a crime; bouncers; and fearful people.

Fear is becoming endemic in America. Although much has been written about our emerging Culture of Fear, the new media has been largely silent on the topic. Perhaps the omission is out of a echo of guilt?

We Americans fear, more each year. In our escalating fear, we become controllable. Media broadcasts bombings, shootings, rape, traffic fatalities with abandon, forgoing any mention of goodwill, charity, civility and helpfulness. As a result, we lock our doors, alarm our cars, hand cell phones to our teens, send the young ones to day care centers after school to keep them off the streets. We’ve installed metal detectors in our high schools, airports have them, too, and x-ray machines. We drink water from store bought bottles because we fear contaminates in tap water. We worry about data theft, identity theft, burglary, contracting diseases, baldness, bad breath, our weight. Many things we worry about are statistically unlikely, many are silly. But some fears are indeed wise. Chose for yourself which are valid, and trust your assessment.

Commercials and advertising feeds our fear of countless little things. Mostly, ads exploit us in three ways: our fear of rejection; our fear of insecurity; and our fear of belonging. In addition, ads promote themselves through three channels; power, sex appeal, and status. through these messages, some overt, some subliminal, we are fed artificial needs, and artificial fears. It make us buy things.

The combination of fear and slack gun laws will directly affect many of us. It will kill and maim many people. As fear expands and guns proliferate, situations that could be mended with words will instead end in gunfire. And it can happen anywhere.

Am I promoting fear by writing this? You bet! This one’s real, though. Be aware of the dangers in our dysfunctional world, but don’t give in to them.

Even as the Iranian government cracks down on bloggers, its President starts one of his own. There’s nothing like using the tools of the enemy against him. To revile the Great Satan through a new channel of communication created by the evil one himself. Ironic, that. I won’t mention the double standard, that’s an ingrained aspect of Muslim life, it seems. Slick interface, but reading the English version right-justified is different.

I’m confounded that a people, so openly in-your-face religious, are so militant. Isn’t that an oxymoron? It’s not just Muslims, either. modern American Christians are just as apt to arm themselves for an ideal. That’s why we’re in Iraq, isn’t it? Spreading Democracy? …don’t get me started.

Perhaps we’ve earned the moniker Iranians have been throwing at us for decades. Sometimes, as strategy of "tough love" can backfire. We haven’t been - to my limited knowledge, at least - easy on Middle-eastern nations during the past century. I won’t talk about this one. Perhaps they feel themselves recipients of unbalanced policies, ill-conceived or disingenuous attempts at allowing them to fight our battles by promising economic benefits that never materialize.

I’m also amazed that reports of fighting throughout the region often refer to armaments made in America, Russia, and France in the hands of fractious brothers of faith. How can these nations sit back and feign astonishment at a long-standing resentment and hatred toward them, when for the sake of economic growth (read: greed) weapons are sold instead of plowshares?

In this light, I tend to think the "Great Satan," is bigger than one nation, although America is indeed the point man, is instead the lingering vestages of Western colonialism, religious intolerance (not a strictly Muslim issue), and a lopsided reliance on unchecked capitalism.

As much as I would like the Muslims to lay down their Western-made arms, I can’t help wondering if what the world is currently going through is a cleansing period - not for the Middle-east, but for the West - wherein we all learn the fallacy of our policies, and the fragility of civilization. It would be sad if the end game of America’s twentieth century foreign policies is global thermonuclear war. Isn’t that what we’ve been trying to avoid?

My household is experiencing an Internet brownout today. Fully two-thirds of pages we try to load result in a DNS error or, as Firefox translates: "Server not found. Firefox can’t find the server at www…"

Any blogspot address is nil, but Google works. Many advertising banners are void, diminishing the silent shouts of "lookee here!" characteristic of online blurbs (that’s actually nice…). Sometimes I can get to my Earthlink start page, sometimes not - but my games still work. PHEW!

I bet Al Qaida is behind this. No one on the planet has the sophistication, the will, the mastery to pull of such a stunt. I can see them now, sneaking into manholes with power tools to cut through fiber optic lines in geographical coordination, severing the information backbone of our fragile nation.

And what is the Department of Homeboy Scrutiny doing? Nothing. Wait - it just looks like they’re doing nothing because they’re doing it in secret. Yeah, that’s right. Secret. No doubt they’re honing in on the manholes, awaiting just outside with big wooden mallets to bop those evil Al Qaida on the heads as they emerge from their nefarious deeds, like some life-sized gopher game. SHHH! Don’t tell anyone.

It must be working, because I have finally loaded a Blogger page. Could be an anomaly, though.