As I explain elsewhere in the thread, the Devas are not an essential part of Buddhist belief, and even historically were often not believed to exist literally. The obligate doctrinal commitments for Buddhists everywhere are the 4 noble truths and the 8-fold path, which do not require the belief in supernatural entities (nor, strictly speaking, even an afterlife, though some version of reincarnation is usually part of most Buddhist's worldviews.)
Many contemporary Buddhist practitioners, and even some early ones, did not believe in the existence of the Devas as anything more than a thought experiment. Belief in the devas are not part of the 4 noble truths of Buddhism, which are the doctrinal tenets of the religion (and, ultimately, a kind of psychological theory), nor the 8-fold path. If you subscribe to the 4 noble truths, and affirm the 8-fold path, you're pretty much a Buddhist, and there's nothing supernatural involved.
Your definition (and/or a couple of the definitions Google finds) of religion is inadequate. There are religious traditions whose claims are, at their core, existential, pragmatic or ethical, not supernatural. Buddhism and Confucianism come to mind, as do contemporary versions of Shintoism (by which religious practice is maintained generally to preserve a relationship between people and place, not because of any substantive belief in supernatural entities.)
Remember, Jesus (or his followers) bought all the loaves and fishes that were available: he could (if one believes all the Son of God/miracle-making stuff) had fed the crowd with nothing, but he didn't. He made "copies" only when the supply had dropped down to zero, thus not putting anyone out of business.
What do you do for a living? Chances are, to most of us, you are a "middleman" yourself. A cost. A sponge. That you may need to feed yourself or your family doing something that is of value to someone does not diminish that fact; most of us won't recognize that value.
I really don't blame you for your attitude. I doubt I will ever get a VAIO or other Sony PC. But that hasn't kept me from getting a Playstation or PSP or such, or getting a Sony-licensed game, and the Reader is, for me, the best on the market. I would have been furious if I had been hit by the XCP debacle, though. And many Sony divisions seem to be dedicated to sabotaging the usefulness of a lot of its products. An amazingly Byzantine company: Fellini meets "The Corporation."
I see the move to eBooks as providing a better hedge against the loss of a book than the physical possession of the book is. That "short of a thief or vandal" (or simply losing a book) is a much bigger drain on resources than you're letting on.
Libraries also have problems with space. The San Francisco library actually had to shrink its collection when it moved to its new facility, and other libraries are facing similar problems, especially for periodical collections.
Libraries have been subscribing to electronic databases of articles for ages, too. The risk of ProQuest's ABI/Inform going under is probably a bit higher than Sony disappearing, yet it seems to be working for libraries.
An e-Reader can be acquired for about $100, as well - hardly the stuff of "only the wealthy." Sony is providing e-Readers to the libraries, as well. Granted, they too can be lost/vandalized.
Sony has annual revenues of around 80 billion dollars, over 150,000 employees and an order of magnitude more contractors and manufacturing partners. XCP sucked, but - Sony is the size of a nation. Do you boycott China because of the melamine-laced products?
For pure entertainment value, the internecine feuds of the various heads of the Sony hydra are pretty hard to beat.
Also, their model required a dedicated group of followers who would attend as many shows as possible. This is not a very scalable model, when most bands would be lucky to have a (un-obsessed) fan attend one or two of their shows over their lifetime.
What is a little weird about this model is that it ultimately creates a quasi-governmental funding basis for the arts: everyone pays a flat fee that gives them unfettered access to all the world's music (film, etc.) - then, who decides how that money is allocated?
This is why "no one gets fired for buying IBM." Alternative vendors and small companies are generally riskier to deal with - if they collapse, all the support collapses with them. This reality is why many businesses prefer big, institutional vendors even when they cost more and, in the short term, seem to provide less.
No, the real reason is institutional. Scientific careers are made by holding your cards close to your chest for as long as possible, then publishing impressive conclusions while still keeping your most important data either cryptic or unstructured. The "business model" is a mess, and it isn't about the misinterpreting boob, it's about the people who *would* understand your work.
This story (about the breakthrough in Alzheimer's work) is a very good one to spread around, because it will produce some strong pressure to follow suit in other medical fields. Once enough of the right people start to realize that we could make serious in-roads against cancer if a collaborative approach was taken, the forces to change the status quo will become unstoppable.
If you are studying 19th century philosophy or Russian literature or such, an instructor who has been working on a handful of lectures and seminars over his or her entire career is going to be a lot more interesting than someone experimenting with methodologies. The best education is an engagement - a relationship between minds - and cultivating that relationship is a slow, interior process.
They believe this life is just a waiting room, with the exclusive Club Jebus on the other side of the velvet rope, and they would be quite pleased to be martyred for their cause, especially if it resulted in their critics being tagged as terrorists.
The difference between the state and the family is not so clear-cut. The family was the "first" state, and to this day, it can be seen as a "delegee" of the state, fulfilling certain expectations - and losing its privileges to act as a family if they fail to do so. We have, in the West, grown accustomed to a number of stark distinctions - between family and state, between the political and the economic, between the civil and the religious/philosophical - that do not apply in other cultures, and do not really stand up to deep scrutiny in our own.
I'm not one to make easy equivalencies between modern political culture and mid-20th-century totalitarianism, but one thing that I find particularly troubling is the collaboration between culture and authority. Our media, largely after having been chastised by the right, loves the military and the police. The military, in particular, is treated with an almost ceremonial piety ("Thank you for your service.") The police is given almost as much instantaneous respect (although, statistically, it is more dangerous to be a taxi driver than to be either a cop or a soldier.)
The motivation for this may be well-intentioned, but treating public employees doing an occasionally difficult job as a priori heroes - almost a new aristocracy - leads directly to this kind of blindness and apathy to the ongoing loss of real freedoms.
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As I explain elsewhere in the thread, the Devas are not an essential part of Buddhist belief, and even historically were often not believed to exist literally. The obligate doctrinal commitments for Buddhists everywhere are the 4 noble truths and the 8-fold path, which do not require the belief in supernatural entities (nor, strictly speaking, even an afterlife, though some version of reincarnation is usually part of most Buddhist's worldviews.)
Many contemporary Buddhist practitioners, and even some early ones, did not believe in the existence of the Devas as anything more than a thought experiment. Belief in the devas are not part of the 4 noble truths of Buddhism, which are the doctrinal tenets of the religion (and, ultimately, a kind of psychological theory), nor the 8-fold path. If you subscribe to the 4 noble truths, and affirm the 8-fold path, you're pretty much a Buddhist, and there's nothing supernatural involved.
Your definition (and/or a couple of the definitions Google finds) of religion is inadequate. There are religious traditions whose claims are, at their core, existential, pragmatic or ethical, not supernatural. Buddhism and Confucianism come to mind, as do contemporary versions of Shintoism (by which religious practice is maintained generally to preserve a relationship between people and place, not because of any substantive belief in supernatural entities.)
Remember, Jesus (or his followers) bought all the loaves and fishes that were available: he could (if one believes all the Son of God/miracle-making stuff) had fed the crowd with nothing, but he didn't. He made "copies" only when the supply had dropped down to zero, thus not putting anyone out of business.
What do you do for a living? Chances are, to most of us, you are a "middleman" yourself. A cost. A sponge. That you may need to feed yourself or your family doing something that is of value to someone does not diminish that fact; most of us won't recognize that value.
I really don't blame you for your attitude. I doubt I will ever get a VAIO or other Sony PC. But that hasn't kept me from getting a Playstation or PSP or such, or getting a Sony-licensed game, and the Reader is, for me, the best on the market. I would have been furious if I had been hit by the XCP debacle, though. And many Sony divisions seem to be dedicated to sabotaging the usefulness of a lot of its products. An amazingly Byzantine company: Fellini meets "The Corporation."
I see the move to eBooks as providing a better hedge against the loss of a book than the physical possession of the book is. That "short of a thief or vandal" (or simply losing a book) is a much bigger drain on resources than you're letting on.
Libraries also have problems with space. The San Francisco library actually had to shrink its collection when it moved to its new facility, and other libraries are facing similar problems, especially for periodical collections.
Libraries have been subscribing to electronic databases of articles for ages, too. The risk of ProQuest's ABI/Inform going under is probably a bit higher than Sony disappearing, yet it seems to be working for libraries.
An e-Reader can be acquired for about $100, as well - hardly the stuff of "only the wealthy." Sony is providing e-Readers to the libraries, as well. Granted, they too can be lost/vandalized.
Sony has annual revenues of around 80 billion dollars, over 150,000 employees and an order of magnitude more contractors and manufacturing partners. XCP sucked, but - Sony is the size of a nation. Do you boycott China because of the melamine-laced products?
For pure entertainment value, the internecine feuds of the various heads of the Sony hydra are pretty hard to beat.
The careers of composers for almost 800 years of Western history contradicts this claim.
Also, their model required a dedicated group of followers who would attend as many shows as possible. This is not a very scalable model, when most bands would be lucky to have a (un-obsessed) fan attend one or two of their shows over their lifetime.
What is a little weird about this model is that it ultimately creates a quasi-governmental funding basis for the arts: everyone pays a flat fee that gives them unfettered access to all the world's music (film, etc.) - then, who decides how that money is allocated?
However, no one has the obligation to be offensive, either, yet some people here think that GameStop does.
This is why "no one gets fired for buying IBM." Alternative vendors and small companies are generally riskier to deal with - if they collapse, all the support collapses with them. This reality is why many businesses prefer big, institutional vendors even when they cost more and, in the short term, seem to provide less.
You might want to check what the word "octopus" actually means.
No, the real reason is institutional. Scientific careers are made by holding your cards close to your chest for as long as possible, then publishing impressive conclusions while still keeping your most important data either cryptic or unstructured. The "business model" is a mess, and it isn't about the misinterpreting boob, it's about the people who *would* understand your work.
This story (about the breakthrough in Alzheimer's work) is a very good one to spread around, because it will produce some strong pressure to follow suit in other medical fields. Once enough of the right people start to realize that we could make serious in-roads against cancer if a collaborative approach was taken, the forces to change the status quo will become unstoppable.
I hate this idea that lectures should be "engaging." They aren't forms of entertainment. If you happen to be entertained, that is a tiny little plus.
Reminds me of a cartoon described in this article:
Well, there's always Hogwarts.
Even Q2 I would answer with a "maybe."
If you are studying 19th century philosophy or Russian literature or such, an instructor who has been working on a handful of lectures and seminars over his or her entire career is going to be a lot more interesting than someone experimenting with methodologies. The best education is an engagement - a relationship between minds - and cultivating that relationship is a slow, interior process.
They believe this life is just a waiting room, with the exclusive Club Jebus on the other side of the velvet rope, and they would be quite pleased to be martyred for their cause, especially if it resulted in their critics being tagged as terrorists.
Obligatory: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1LTUTW5m98
5.5 maybe gets an eyebrow raise here in California. 2 inches of rain, however, is the apocalypse.
The difference between the state and the family is not so clear-cut. The family was the "first" state, and to this day, it can be seen as a "delegee" of the state, fulfilling certain expectations - and losing its privileges to act as a family if they fail to do so. We have, in the West, grown accustomed to a number of stark distinctions - between family and state, between the political and the economic, between the civil and the religious/philosophical - that do not apply in other cultures, and do not really stand up to deep scrutiny in our own.
McGill is the Canadian Harvard. Definite Sith Lord material.
Globalization is the way that capitalism wrote an IOU to itself. That IOU is coming due.
The 90's called, they want their ""x" called, they want their "y" back" back.
(Enjoy the recursion.)
I'm not one to make easy equivalencies between modern political culture and mid-20th-century totalitarianism, but one thing that I find particularly troubling is the collaboration between culture and authority. Our media, largely after having been chastised by the right, loves the military and the police. The military, in particular, is treated with an almost ceremonial piety ("Thank you for your service.") The police is given almost as much instantaneous respect (although, statistically, it is more dangerous to be a taxi driver than to be either a cop or a soldier.)
The motivation for this may be well-intentioned, but treating public employees doing an occasionally difficult job as a priori heroes - almost a new aristocracy - leads directly to this kind of blindness and apathy to the ongoing loss of real freedoms.