Jill Bolte Taylor’s TED talk made me think about meditation and the functioning of the brain.

Here’s an excerpt about the talk posted on TED.com

Jill Bolte Taylor got a research opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: She had a massive stroke, and watched as her brain functions — motion, speech, self-awareness –- shut down one by one. An astonishing story.

What I got out of the talk is that once we have the ability to think selectively from the right side of the brain, we enter a sort of zen mode of existence. Which makes me think about the mode that we (or people who can) get into when they’re meditating. Even more fascinating is the possibility of switching from the right to the left at will, and being able to co-relate the individuality aspects (left brain) with the connectedness and universality aspects (right brain) in day to day life.

Fascinating stuff. This probably adds more to brain research and our place in existence than all the mind/brain research done in the last hundred years.

The content on TED is amazing. Chris Anderson (of Wired and long tail fame) has done a tremendous job of ensuring that the content is available for everyone to view. Contrary to what I’ve heard from some folks, I don’t believe TED is elitist at all.

This is awesome entertainment…

The “religious people praying for the bull to rise” bit ..

boing boing reporting on people praying to the bull

Blogging is dead. Long live twitter/fbook/flickr/microblogging.

A search on google returns 18 million hits.

Get your ranting/15 minutes of fame/self publishing fix somewhere else. Every social site has some form of expression/microblogging features.

But I keep trying…

I love this guy…

Dear Diary, tonight I saw a shirtless man run down the middle of the street. Being chased by another shirtless man. Whose pants were falling down. Because he had just taken off his belt. Which he then began using to beat the first man.

Good times.

http://jwz.livejournal.com/924938.html

This confirms my suspicion that we’re all very shallow. As in skin deep.
Here’s an analysis/attempt to algorithmize how we perceive physical beauty in our fellow human beings.

It’s based on a statistical analysis of what humans perceive to be beautiful.

When human raters are presented with a collection of shapes and asked to rank them according to their aesthetic appeal, the results often indicate that there is a statistical consensus among the raters. Yet it might be difficult to define a succinct set of rules that capture the aesthetic preferences of the raters. In this work, we explore a data-driven approach to aesthetic enhancement of such shapes. Specifically, we focus on the challenging problem of enhancing the aesthetic appeal (or the attractiveness) of human faces in frontal photographs (portraits), while maintaining close similarity with the original.

It is what it is or
some words of wisdom from across time.
I ran across this posted saying at the Durga Hindu Temple in Fairfax County Virginia almost two years ago. I took several shots of the poster. I do not know the origins of the text. Maybe someone can comment on that. It’s written in Hindi. I’m sure there are versions available in Nepali as well. It is most probably translated from Sanskrit from one of the many old Hindu texts like Gita, Upanishad or even the Vedas.

Here is my approximate translation of what is being said. Take it with a grain of salt.
I have to say, just like everything else, it’s ambiguous, almost bitter-sweet.

why do you fret so? who are you so afraid of?
who has the power to kill you?
The soul neither takes birth, nor does it die.

Whatever happened, happened for the best.
What is happening now is for the best.
What is yet to happen is also for the best.
Do not regret about the past. Do not worry
about the future. The present is still going on.

What did you lose that you cry so?
What did you bring with you that you lost?
What did you create that was destroyed?
You did not bring anything with you -
What you took, you took from here.
What you gave, you gave here.
What you took, you took from God.
What you gave, you gave to God.
You came with empty hands,
you must continue with empty hands.
What is yours today, belonged to someone else yesterday
and will belong to someone else tomorrow.
You are lost in the enjoyment of what you think is yours.
This very pleasure is the root of your worries.

Change is the law of the universe.
What you think of as death, is the very personification of life.
One moment you are the master of billions,
the next you are poor.
The concept of mine-yours, small-big, friends-enemies
erase these from your heart ,
erase these from your thoughts,
then everything and everyone belongs to you
then you belong to everyone.

This body does not belong to you
neither do you belong to the body.
Your body is made up of fire, water, air, earth and the sky
and it will go back into these.
But the soul remains, stable.
Then what are you?
Dedicate yourself to God.
This is your ultimate support.
Those who recognize this support
are forever free of fear and worries.

Whatever you do, do it with dedication to God,
thus you will experience the true pleasure of deliverance from life.

here are the pics:

Ah, the joy of machine translation.

I don’t understand the irrational behaviour behind the condemning of the His Dark Materials trilogy (of which The Golden Compass or The Northern Lights is the first).

This is the age of free-will, of great intellectual discourse, of tolerance, of recognition of universal values (including human) and openness. We are led to believe that a certain way of doing things, the way that it’s always been done, is the right way. We are told to ignore thought and reason and believe blindly in the ways of tradition. We are also taught, because of science, to believe in reason and to question blind faiths and work towards the truth. Blasphemy as a word should not have any value in this age.

So, this sort of behaviour makes me suspective of the religious establishment. Agreed, there are two schools of thought colliding. My argument is that they don’t have to collide. Religion started with faith and should be about faith. It should not be about protecting the hegemony of “religious” establishments. Religion can also be about trying to obtain the higher truth, just as science can be about not blindly dismissing spirituality as unprovable.

Coming from both backgrounds, it seems to me, there’s gotta be a common ground. I mean, for god’s sake, didn’t we all come from a common ancestor?
hehehehe

Whatever works for people, I guess. I gotta say though, The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass are all excellent writing for both entertainment and food for thought. I am eagerly waiting for the rest of the movies, if they ever get made.

“You can’t defend yourself against their fantasies!”
– Frank Manero Jr. , Saturday Night Fever

Wall painted animation.This animation called MOTU, is an amazing piece of work, using series of painstakingly created continuous paintings on walls and sidewalks, and playing with how we experience time by utilizing stitched videos etc..The artist is BLU.