A great song about Truth. I only ever really liked the songs Harrison penned. George reminds me a bit of Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam) in that after their main music career had ended they started making music devoted to God.

Hare Harrison

Wunderbar!

Wow that's scary, she could trip someone!

I caught a glimpse of heaven last night
Through a crack in a mirror that fractalized the light
A saint is a sinner, a sinner is a saint
They're just the cloaks we hide behind
A cartoon in the brain

She should try out Trepanning and let us know how it works. I heard those Raelian kids think it's all the rage and they are doing it to improve awareness of reality. That is; you get to have tea with Rael and some of the feeling of having a head disappears during the Trepanning process.

Cool. It reminds me of the music video for Only by NIN. Reznor's face appears in an animated pin-grid. My interpretation is that is to express the fact that the appearance of an individual is only an appearance and in reality there is "Only" the pin-grid.

But there is yet something more absurd than "something from nothing" which is causa sui; "something creating itself". And this causa sui operation is implicitly attributed to and by every human being on this planet. A grand illusion of metaphysical independence.

It is starting to become apparent that most of the time these burglars are satisfied with a hot meal. Another burglary story today tells of a man who broke into the owner's meat freezer and fired up his BBQ to make some ribs. And I know of at least one other story in which the home-owner spoke to the burglar, determined his situation and offered to assist him financially as well as feeding him. In the end the "burglar" went home with a full belly and some hope for his future and the home-owner remained safe and probably felt good about helping the "burglar" out too.

I suspect probably none of you will watch the lecture I just posted. So let me give a quick overview:

The author claims that criminologists can learn from incremental theories of development in developmental psychology. He compares "entity" theories of mind versus "incremental" theories of mind, and argues normatively that taking an "incremental" approach would benefit a society whose approach is largely "entity".

The findings are as such; When a behavior is attributed to a supposed inner character trait that is native to the individual in question, it sets up a social atmosphere in which redemption is not likely. Whereas when a behavior is attributed to a naivite or ignorance and the possibility of learning, improving and redeeming are available to the child (or criminal) then learning, improving and redeeming become more likely.

Though many crime institutions take incremental approaches to crime, the vast majority do not, moreover the society at large provides the main texture of social opinion, and it is here that "entity" theories hold sway. In other words; the public at large (you and me) think like entity theorists and this increases the chance of criminal recidivism.

I know this is hard to take because we like to clearly distinguish ourselves as "The good guys" and the criminal as "The bad guy" but this is wrong and blinds us to our own contributions in the noosphere. Our contributions dramatically affect recidivism rates and the initial incidence of crime.

A thorough understanding of this dynamic is still being researched and will probably not be intuitively obvious to the average arm-chair criminologist with a chip on his shoulder and a hate on for "criminals".

In the past two decades, the science of criminology has focused considerable attention on the topic of desistance from crime or how and why individuals active in crime “go straight.” This research has been instrumental in the design and assessment of strategies for reducing recidivism through resettlement or reintegration support. Criminologists, however, have had little to say about the issue of “redemption” or what it should require for individuals to be officially forgiven of their crimes and have their “good names” restored. In this talk, I will outline the need for a discussion of secular redemption in society and discuss the implications of criminological research in this regard.

Redeeming Redemption as a Criminological Concept
author: Shadd Maruna, Queen's University Belfast School of Law
published: Oct. 30, 2009, recorded: September 2009, views: 330

http://videolectures.net/esc09_maruna_rrc/

Also, Yale Pyschology Professor Paul Bloom describes this very fact in his videolecture "Lecture 16 - A Person in the World of People: Self and Other, Part I"

Okay well this is probably a hard thought. But just think about what I mean when I say "I bought a new chair today". You probably have a stereotyped notion of "chair" and this comes to mind when I speak of the chair I purchased. My mind conjures up the image of a typical straight-back wooden four-legged chair. Like a dining room chair. But the chair I bought could very easily be a bean-bag chair, a laz-y-boy or a lawn chair. There is such a variety of chairs out there, but our minds tend to think of something specific upon hearing the word "Chair".

So, one can see how "Chair" is a stereotype, but it is also the only means we have of communicating about chairs in general. Even my descriptions of the laz-y-boy would be a mishmash of stereotyped appearances. I could say that it reclines, and you would have some image of it reclining, but that image you have is probably not identical to the reclining motion of my chair.

Even stuff that does predict job performance like gender is not acceptable. One day we will come to find that the difference between stereotyping and thinking is actually nil.

And I'd just like to rebuild my 2.4L V4 DOHC. But, that's a whole area of knowledge and expertise I'm not very familiar with. What's this guy's number?

Hasidicism: interesting branch of Judaism.

"We are men of nature,
We are made from the dirt,
At the end of my eighty,
I'll return to the Earth,
Just sand, just rock,
Dry land, fast and silent,
..."

- Matisyahu (Hasidic Jew), On Nature