I'm not sure about this. Zen has a long tradition of challenging established ideas and substituting direct experience. As a Quaker I feel a strong affinity to Zen. The Quaker experience of testimony in meetings is very similar to the Zen requirement not to say anything till you have something of Zen to say. The Tea Ceremony is as pared down as a Quaker Meeting. On the other hand, the affinity between, say, the Roman Catholic Church and Tibetan Buddhism must immediately strike anyone who has ever studied any sociology of religion.
Zen is an anti-religion which tells us first to train, and then to trust, our instincts. (Excellent programmers and engineers, I feel, often follow Zen practice in this. Mahayana Buddhism appeals to orthodoxy in its custom and practice. The superficial similarities cover a very, very different outlook.
Typical of Zen: the teacher who delivered a lecture on the Arhats which began "The Arhats are like a dirty lavatory (meaning that the truth had been obscured by layers of rubbish applied over the years) and the other one who delivered a lecture which consisted of, in effect "The truth is all around you, open your eyes and look at it."
So: "Jedis", which are a synthetic construct (but then so are the beliefs of the Catholic Church, the Mormons and the Jehovah's Witnesses) possibly do borrow more in outlook from Zen. But so, actually, does particle physics. Javascript: The Good Parts is a pretty Zen book. So, while I'm in this vein, is Buehler's Backyard Boatbuilding, surely one of the best project management manuals for very small teams ever written.
As for reincarnation, you can view the Buddha's teaching as telling people that the existing religions and their insistence on reincarnation were nonsense. Realising that this is the only life we have and that following the Eightfold Path is the way to make the best of it - is part of enlightenment.
British Rail doesn't exist any more. On topic, if a simple rail line from London to Birmingham (with a stop at Chipping Norton so Rupe can call in on Dave) will cost $50G before overruns, I suspect that $60G has a decimal point in the wrong place.
I agree with much of your post, except that. At some point in the past, evolution would have been random (possibly at the early single-cell level). But, as complexity increases, evolution will increasingly result in differentiation; the "pattern of least resistance to survival" varies enormously, from fish that produce millions of eggs with near-zero survival probability to human beings (or albatrosses) with their increasing focus on the maximum survivability of a minimum number of offspring, and from herd animals that co-operatively protect calves to lions which kill cubs with different fathers. Although genetic variation is largely random, evolution becomes increasingly directed to reinforcing patterns that work.
Because we are the animal with the most complex social structure, the patterns are hardest to understand. But solving the problems of species survival can either be left up to chance - in which case we may eliminate ourselves in a Goetterdammerung of mass extinction - or we can attempt to understand "what works" and seek to maximise it. Currently the dominant social theory in the USA is, in effect, that the ideal is a predator/prey structure with human beings in both roles. It would be nice to know if this is likely to work out or whether it will result in a self-inflicted event like the Civil War of the 1900s.
The question being "How did species that live in groups evolve in the first place?" - it is a bit chicken and egg. Do animals live in groups because they have evolved towards co-operation, or do they co-operate because that is an emergent property of external pressures causing them to live in groups?
For instance, it is known that bees have an unusual form of heredity which means that sisters are more closely related than they are to the next generation. Did the bee colony co-evolve cooperation and this hereditary mechanism? Why are bonobos socially cooperative and other chimpanzee races much less so?
Another example: wrens. In the breeding season these birds are strongly territorial. In winter they will find suitable hiding places and cluster in groups to keep warm.
Once again, correlation doesn't imply causation, and this subject is well worth investigating because of its potential importance to survival as population increases.
You are right. As Dante observes in his Purgatorio, written over 700 years ago "Therefore the laws were set up as a brake (on human desires)...it is necessary to have a leader who can at least make out the tower of the True City. The laws exist, but who puts a hand to enforcing them?"
Onde convenne legge per fren porre; convenne rege aver, che discernesse de la vera cittade almen la torre. Le leggi son, ma chi pon mano ad esse
Honda, Nissan, Toyota, BMW and a Chinese company whose name escapes me all beg to differ. Just like the USA, we have plenty of car makers; it is just that, owing to the serial incompetence of British managements, they are not British owned. And, as anyone who has ever had to drive a God forbid, British Leyland vehicle will tell you, this is a Good Thing.
We don't know what the actual causative factors are, but one thing is clear: complete combustion to carbon dioxide and water should not present a risk. Plant oils produce just as much in the way of soot and hydrocarbons as petroleum-derived oil. Overheating of vegetable oil, in fact, results in the production of known carcinogens.
It is partly for this reason that I've switched from Diesel back to gasoline for car power - I am not convinced that the Diesel industry has cracked all its problems with emissions.
In fact, most developed countries outside the US, and some states inside, have strict rules on Diesel exhausts. Possibly over-strict given the relative lack of control of gasoline emissions from hot gas-powered trucks.But these people were being heavily exposed. When I worked in Diesel R&D, the engine test cells were carefully extracted and exposure to exhaust was very restricted. And for years many heavy vehicle workshops have tubing to remove exhaust fumes safely. The engine room ventilation systems on motor ships ensure that not only exhaust, but also under-piston and oil fumes, never go near engineering staff.
You could say that perhaps the industries with perhaps the greatest in-depth knowledge of these engines have taken the greatest precautions against long term exposure of staff.
If Obama had the Secret Service out finding where all the money pissed away by the banks went, and then went round all those responsible and repatriated their assets while presiding over an economic boom, and also didn't have to deal with newspapers run by the friends of the bankers and the asset thieves, I suspect even Republicans would vote for him. Russia has never been a democracy...but it has obviously been worse governed at times than it is now. After Yeltsin, I imagine an awful lot of Russians are suspicious of "democracy".
It was like one of those 1920s motorcycles where you could see the push rods operating the valve rockers with the exposed hairpin springs. You could almost imagine the logic gates operating as the opcodes went in. We had a utility which could convert numbers from any base to another so long as it was less than base 37 (think about it.) And then there was the creepy shadow memory for the system management. The pdp-8 was a wonderful expression of what things were like between anarchy and when it all started getting mainstream and boring, when architectures were still up for grabs.
Sorry, I can't always manage car analogies: I have to make do with motorcycles or boats.
I do not know if it is still true, but US car engines used to be designed, on the whole, with much lower SAE 4 hour ratings than their peak ratings. Most Diesels, on the other hand, can sustain about 70% of peak rating, as can many Mercedes gasoline engines.
As an example, many US gas engines of around 240HP ratings in cars were rated around 55HP when marinised, since marine engines are rated for continuous duty. Beyond that, after a few hours, distortion due to heat buildup, and lack of lubrication, would set in. The Chrysler hemi head was a comparatively good design because heat expansion of the cylinder head didn't take the valves out of line, while other V8s of the same era had serious valve distortion under sustained high power.
The relatively low speed limits mean that US vehicles hardly ever need to sustain high speeds, whereas acceleration sells. The different design of European roads means that speeds of around 80mph are routinely sustained for long periods, while high acceleration is of little benefit.
The older US engines are uneconomical because (a) they simply have too much moving mass to obtain those peak power ratings, (b) they tend to have inefficient auto gearboxes and (c) they have not been designed for efficiency because it costs more.
Nowadays European designs tend to be small capacity to reduce moving mass and friction, and get high peak power with heavy turbocharge (and even supercharge on some models). Turbocharging is good for efficiency and wasted little energy at low load.
A "gas tax" works, in terms of discouraging people from driving excessively large vehicles (which reduces the utility of roads for everybody else, in case you hadn't noticed, not only by taking up more space but by driving up insurance owing to the greater harm to others when large vehicles are in collisions.) Fuel consumption is not only related to carbon dioxide emissions but to the wear on the roads, since large vehicles do far more damage (I think it is roughly a cube power law of the mass, but I'm sure someone out there knows better). Mileage tax is not. It almost encourages people to drive badly.
The effect of the European tax regime has been to encourage efficient vehicles, and both European and Japanese manufacturers benefit. It also pads the effect of fuel cost, since taxes can be adjusted to slow the rate of increase and so reduce economic dislocation.
When the great American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes remarked that taxes were what he paid for civilisation, he was in effect pointing out that all taxes whatever are social engineering. Small Government Republicans always claim that they want to reduce taxes, but somehow it turns out that as soon as the economy has a bit of slack representatives will vote for pork barrel (your bridge in Alaska in exchange for my bioethanol subsidy). Personally I think it is better if people without an axe to grind work out how to use taxes in a socially beneficial way and politicians only get to vote on it.
You don't get it, do you? If the people are poor, there isn't much tax revenue to raise. The idea is to get Governments into debt because they have a source of tax revenue and can continue to pay the interest. Therefore, the country as a whole needs to make plenty of money to pay the taxes. Since the rich avoid or evade taxes, that in reality means a prosperous middle class.
Rothschilds actually got going by realising this and placing the sons of the founder in the capitals of countries that were rapidly becoming rich. They had headquarters in places like Vienna, not Nebraska. They lent the British Government the money to buy the Suez Canal, which was a conduit for trade, thus (a) profiting from the loan and (b) profiting by lending to promote trade.
This is what is fundamentally wrong with Walmartonomics. Walmart pays as little as possible. But, to succeed, it must have plenty of people to spend money in its stores. In effect, it wants a shit economy so it can get a cheap workforce, but really it wants a high wage economy to maximise its income. This kind of works if for "Walmart" we substitute China, and for "High wage economy" we substitute "The West". But what happens when all countries have been dragged into the mire? No markets, that's what.
Ireland, Italy and Greece are in trouble because the Governments borrowed and the taxes weren't paid, either through evasion (Italy and Greece), through "avoidance" schemes (Ireland) or because also the Governments had lied about the actual GNP (Greece). This actually wasn't the fault of the bankers, but of greedy and corrupt politicians.
As I say, if Rothschilds really ran Ireland, they would do it on the principle that the best way to produce milk is to start off with well fed cows, not to start off with starving cows and demand more output for less grass. In national economics, the Old Testament is actually a much better guide than an MBA course.
Last time I heard, Sony, Warner and the like weren't British. The IRA would do anything to placate the USA so long as the funds kept coming. They would have signed this bill into law like a shot - and then made money out of blackmailing the ISPs (nice little data centre you got here...wouldn't want it shut down by Sony, would you?).
Modern Sinn Fein, on the other hand, is quite a different matter, and is trying to build up an electoral presence in Ireland. Quite honestly, given the levels of corruption in both Fianna (epic) Fail and Fine Gael, they would most likely be a major improvement.
One recent Irish Taoiseach was so bent he had no bank account. He kept everything in cash in his house. He got his bribes by going to the racetrack, where he was always very lucky. The Rothschilds are not to blame for Irish corruption, nor is the IMF. If the Rothschilds really ran Ireland, it would be prosperous. You can't make money easily in a country full of poor people.
Off topic I know, but in fact there is more evidence for the existence of Superman. His existence is documented in a variety of media. The descriptions are almost entirely consistent with one another. There is the same amount of physical evidence of his miracles (i.e. zilch). In both cases the suspension of the laws of physics and chemistry have to be postulated to believe the writings. If I were an Abrahamic religious fundamentalist, I would be trying to destroy all the evidence for Superman, because while it exists it is too easy to produce a counter-argument to the principle of evidence from sacred books.
It seems to me that this is utterly backwards. The scientific journals should be sending cease-and-desist to the lawyers, saying that a peer reviewed study is pending and all litigation should cease until 90 days after it has been published.
Sound stupid? But the idea that lawyers are the best judge of science is currently having more and more of a throttling effect on the USA. In fact, if you weigh in sociology and experimental psychology, it can be argued that scientists should have more part in law making than at present. Though the concept that people who make laws should have exact knowledge of something might adversely affect some politicians.
Except that the headlights only use power when the car is on the road, which for most people is less than 10% of the time, only have to light a small area, and represent a tiny proportion of the energy being consumed (in my car, an average of around maybe 0.5%). And you are only required to have them on overnight or during precipitation. The running lights nowadays are mostly LED and use a tenth of the power of the headlights. This is a straw man argument.
In fact experiments are already taking place with LED streetlights, which are variable in output and last longer the more they are dimmed. There is a roundabout lit with them not far from where I live. Although the payback compared to conventional lights is about 8 years, that is pretty good for an infrastructure project as is getting better as costs fall.
Short answer: which have the better safety records, British motorways or German Autobahn?
Long answer: street lights reduce the glare from oncoming vehicles, which is at its worst at busy times. On 'A' roads, they also let you distinguish motorcycles from our increasing number of one-headlamp drivers. On the other hand, I've seen the result of the Porsche that overtook me once doing at least 200k at night meeting the Polish artic with tiny lights covered in mud. With street lights, the Porsche driver might have seen the truck in time. As it was, Darwin claimed another victim.
I don't normally respond to ACs, nor do I ever mod them. However, you have managed to annoy me by misrepresenting the facts (and calling me "pathetic" is not rational argument.)
I have actually been following the Leveson Enquiry, and it is pretty obvious that (a) it is not a small number of employees; the last I remember we were up to 47 arrests and Leveson is being told that it was part of the corporate culture and (b) the police and CPS officials who are having their collars felt got money from NI. To slightly mis-quote a retired KGB official "Capitalism is wonderful. You would be amazed how little money it takes to get someone to betray their country".
The point of my complaint is that the British right-wing press is very quick to support erosions of civil liberties, while very loud in demanding its own right to exceed the limits of the law. As a result, obvious attempts to erode civil liberties go unreported (or supported). It is an unhealthy climate which has been imported from the US.
IANAL but I strongly suspect that the ECHR would completely strike out non-association. It is clearly a human rights violation. Unfortunately our pathetic right-wing Murdoch/Rothermere Press is totally uninterested in civil liberties - except of course their right to hack computers, listen in on voicemail, threaten vulnerable people (Charlotte Church case) and misrepresent the EU.
Slashdot Mirror
Zen is an anti-religion which tells us first to train, and then to trust, our instincts. (Excellent programmers and engineers, I feel, often follow Zen practice in this. Mahayana Buddhism appeals to orthodoxy in its custom and practice. The superficial similarities cover a very, very different outlook.
Typical of Zen: the teacher who delivered a lecture on the Arhats which began "The Arhats are like a dirty lavatory (meaning that the truth had been obscured by layers of rubbish applied over the years) and the other one who delivered a lecture which consisted of, in effect "The truth is all around you, open your eyes and look at it."
So: "Jedis", which are a synthetic construct (but then so are the beliefs of the Catholic Church, the Mormons and the Jehovah's Witnesses) possibly do borrow more in outlook from Zen. But so, actually, does particle physics. Javascript: The Good Parts is a pretty Zen book. So, while I'm in this vein, is Buehler's Backyard Boatbuilding, surely one of the best project management manuals for very small teams ever written.
As for reincarnation, you can view the Buddha's teaching as telling people that the existing religions and their insistence on reincarnation were nonsense. Realising that this is the only life we have and that following the Eightfold Path is the way to make the best of it - is part of enlightenment.
British Rail doesn't exist any more. On topic, if a simple rail line from London to Birmingham (with a stop at Chipping Norton so Rupe can call in on Dave) will cost $50G before overruns, I suspect that $60G has a decimal point in the wrong place.
Because we are the animal with the most complex social structure, the patterns are hardest to understand. But solving the problems of species survival can either be left up to chance - in which case we may eliminate ourselves in a Goetterdammerung of mass extinction - or we can attempt to understand "what works" and seek to maximise it. Currently the dominant social theory in the USA is, in effect, that the ideal is a predator/prey structure with human beings in both roles. It would be nice to know if this is likely to work out or whether it will result in a self-inflicted event like the Civil War of the 1900s.
For instance, it is known that bees have an unusual form of heredity which means that sisters are more closely related than they are to the next generation. Did the bee colony co-evolve cooperation and this hereditary mechanism? Why are bonobos socially cooperative and other chimpanzee races much less so?
Another example: wrens. In the breeding season these birds are strongly territorial. In winter they will find suitable hiding places and cluster in groups to keep warm.
Once again, correlation doesn't imply causation, and this subject is well worth investigating because of its potential importance to survival as population increases.
Honda, Nissan, Toyota, BMW and a Chinese company whose name escapes me all beg to differ. Just like the USA, we have plenty of car makers; it is just that, owing to the serial incompetence of British managements, they are not British owned. And, as anyone who has ever had to drive a God forbid, British Leyland vehicle will tell you, this is a Good Thing.
It is partly for this reason that I've switched from Diesel back to gasoline for car power - I am not convinced that the Diesel industry has cracked all its problems with emissions.
You could say that perhaps the industries with perhaps the greatest in-depth knowledge of these engines have taken the greatest precautions against long term exposure of staff.
If Obama had the Secret Service out finding where all the money pissed away by the banks went, and then went round all those responsible and repatriated their assets while presiding over an economic boom, and also didn't have to deal with newspapers run by the friends of the bankers and the asset thieves, I suspect even Republicans would vote for him. Russia has never been a democracy...but it has obviously been worse governed at times than it is now. After Yeltsin, I imagine an awful lot of Russians are suspicious of "democracy".
Cannot get 4 adults plus dog plus ancillaries in a Yaris. But that, or. Fiat 500 twinair, will be our next town car.
Less economical than a Prius
Not as good as a Prius
Costs more than a Prius
Buy a Prius.
To use a reverse car analogy, it's Motorola Xoom to iPad2.
Sorry, I can't always manage car analogies: I have to make do with motorcycles or boats.
As an example, many US gas engines of around 240HP ratings in cars were rated around 55HP when marinised, since marine engines are rated for continuous duty. Beyond that, after a few hours, distortion due to heat buildup, and lack of lubrication, would set in. The Chrysler hemi head was a comparatively good design because heat expansion of the cylinder head didn't take the valves out of line, while other V8s of the same era had serious valve distortion under sustained high power.
The relatively low speed limits mean that US vehicles hardly ever need to sustain high speeds, whereas acceleration sells. The different design of European roads means that speeds of around 80mph are routinely sustained for long periods, while high acceleration is of little benefit.
The older US engines are uneconomical because (a) they simply have too much moving mass to obtain those peak power ratings, (b) they tend to have inefficient auto gearboxes and (c) they have not been designed for efficiency because it costs more.
Nowadays European designs tend to be small capacity to reduce moving mass and friction, and get high peak power with heavy turbocharge (and even supercharge on some models). Turbocharging is good for efficiency and wasted little energy at low load.
The effect of the European tax regime has been to encourage efficient vehicles, and both European and Japanese manufacturers benefit. It also pads the effect of fuel cost, since taxes can be adjusted to slow the rate of increase and so reduce economic dislocation.
When the great American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes remarked that taxes were what he paid for civilisation, he was in effect pointing out that all taxes whatever are social engineering. Small Government Republicans always claim that they want to reduce taxes, but somehow it turns out that as soon as the economy has a bit of slack representatives will vote for pork barrel (your bridge in Alaska in exchange for my bioethanol subsidy). Personally I think it is better if people without an axe to grind work out how to use taxes in a socially beneficial way and politicians only get to vote on it.
Rothschilds actually got going by realising this and placing the sons of the founder in the capitals of countries that were rapidly becoming rich. They had headquarters in places like Vienna, not Nebraska. They lent the British Government the money to buy the Suez Canal, which was a conduit for trade, thus (a) profiting from the loan and (b) profiting by lending to promote trade.
This is what is fundamentally wrong with Walmartonomics. Walmart pays as little as possible. But, to succeed, it must have plenty of people to spend money in its stores. In effect, it wants a shit economy so it can get a cheap workforce, but really it wants a high wage economy to maximise its income. This kind of works if for "Walmart" we substitute China, and for "High wage economy" we substitute "The West". But what happens when all countries have been dragged into the mire? No markets, that's what.
Ireland, Italy and Greece are in trouble because the Governments borrowed and the taxes weren't paid, either through evasion (Italy and Greece), through "avoidance" schemes (Ireland) or because also the Governments had lied about the actual GNP (Greece). This actually wasn't the fault of the bankers, but of greedy and corrupt politicians.
As I say, if Rothschilds really ran Ireland, they would do it on the principle that the best way to produce milk is to start off with well fed cows, not to start off with starving cows and demand more output for less grass. In national economics, the Old Testament is actually a much better guide than an MBA course.
Modern Sinn Fein, on the other hand, is quite a different matter, and is trying to build up an electoral presence in Ireland. Quite honestly, given the levels of corruption in both Fianna (epic) Fail and Fine Gael, they would most likely be a major improvement.
One recent Irish Taoiseach was so bent he had no bank account. He kept everything in cash in his house. He got his bribes by going to the racetrack, where he was always very lucky. The Rothschilds are not to blame for Irish corruption, nor is the IMF. If the Rothschilds really ran Ireland, it would be prosperous. You can't make money easily in a country full of poor people.
I rather think J B Cabell preceded MiB. Refer to "The Silver Stallion", if you can find a copy.
Terrorists will doubtless now attack tunnels using sociophobes planting explosives based on potassium chlorate.
Off topic I know, but in fact there is more evidence for the existence of Superman. His existence is documented in a variety of media. The descriptions are almost entirely consistent with one another. There is the same amount of physical evidence of his miracles (i.e. zilch). In both cases the suspension of the laws of physics and chemistry have to be postulated to believe the writings. If I were an Abrahamic religious fundamentalist, I would be trying to destroy all the evidence for Superman, because while it exists it is too easy to produce a counter-argument to the principle of evidence from sacred books.
Sound stupid? But the idea that lawyers are the best judge of science is currently having more and more of a throttling effect on the USA. In fact, if you weigh in sociology and experimental psychology, it can be argued that scientists should have more part in law making than at present. Though the concept that people who make laws should have exact knowledge of something might adversely affect some politicians.
Except that the headlights only use power when the car is on the road, which for most people is less than 10% of the time, only have to light a small area, and represent a tiny proportion of the energy being consumed (in my car, an average of around maybe 0.5%). And you are only required to have them on overnight or during precipitation. The running lights nowadays are mostly LED and use a tenth of the power of the headlights. This is a straw man argument.
In fact experiments are already taking place with LED streetlights, which are variable in output and last longer the more they are dimmed. There is a roundabout lit with them not far from where I live. Although the payback compared to conventional lights is about 8 years, that is pretty good for an infrastructure project as is getting better as costs fall.
Long answer: street lights reduce the glare from oncoming vehicles, which is at its worst at busy times. On 'A' roads, they also let you distinguish motorcycles from our increasing number of one-headlamp drivers. On the other hand, I've seen the result of the Porsche that overtook me once doing at least 200k at night meeting the Polish artic with tiny lights covered in mud. With street lights, the Porsche driver might have seen the truck in time. As it was, Darwin claimed another victim.
I have actually been following the Leveson Enquiry, and it is pretty obvious that (a) it is not a small number of employees; the last I remember we were up to 47 arrests and Leveson is being told that it was part of the corporate culture and (b) the police and CPS officials who are having their collars felt got money from NI. To slightly mis-quote a retired KGB official "Capitalism is wonderful. You would be amazed how little money it takes to get someone to betray their country".
The point of my complaint is that the British right-wing press is very quick to support erosions of civil liberties, while very loud in demanding its own right to exceed the limits of the law. As a result, obvious attempts to erode civil liberties go unreported (or supported). It is an unhealthy climate which has been imported from the US.
IANAL but I strongly suspect that the ECHR would completely strike out non-association. It is clearly a human rights violation. Unfortunately our pathetic right-wing Murdoch/Rothermere Press is totally uninterested in civil liberties - except of course their right to hack computers, listen in on voicemail, threaten vulnerable people (Charlotte Church case) and misrepresent the EU.