(Genesis 43.11 & 45.9)
Jacob and his family were living in Canaan from where the honey would have come. However, it was not until some 400 years later that God for the first time told Moses that the Land of Canaan flowed with milk and honey (Ex 3.8). The expression "flowing with milk and honey" is a metaphor that describes conditions as detailed in Deuteronomy 8.7-10, where there is no lack of food and water, and where all is peaceful, restful, and calm. God had prepared such a land for the people He called His "peculiar treasure" (Ex 19.5).
No honey was to be used in any of the offerings of the Lord made by fire (Lev 2.11). The spiritual significance of that divine ruling is valid today. Honey is known for its natural sweetness, and in our worship there should be no intrusion of human sentiment or relationships. Honey may be agreeable and refreshing in its own sphere, but when it is a question of what God delights in, the line is sharply drawn between the natural and the spiritual. Anything in our worship that reflects the sweetness and amiability of the natural man would be tantamount to diminishing the unique excellencies of the manhood of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Another reason why, in the wisdom of God, honey was excluded from the offerings made by fire unto the Lord, may well have been because a latent characteristic of honey is that it ferments. Honey is composed of fructose, glucose, enzymes, oil, and water. When the fructose in crystallised honey ferments, it is used to make mead, an alcoholic beverage going back to Biblical days. Following the death of Aarons sons Nadab and Abihu, Aaron and his remaining sons were warned to abstain from alcohol (Lev 10.9). So, too, our times of worship should not be occasions for uncontrolled excitement of the flesh (carnality), but should be marked by a spirit of divine dignity and peace in which we make much of our Lords perfection and work, and His exaltation to the Fathers right hand.
"Blessed Lord, our hearts would treasure
All the Fathers thoughts of Thee"
- Miss C A Wellesley
Now when we consider the significance of the honey in Jacobs gift, we see a precious and sweet aspect of Josephs humanity and moral qualities in the spirit of the Lord Jesus (Gen 45.4-5). It is clear from the record we have, that Joseph was a person with a sweet and gentle nature, persevering with a quiet and meek spirit in everything he did. Not only did his father cherish his lovely disposition, but the Egyptians also recognised the uniqueness of his character. Sadly, the attitude of his brothers toward him was anything but sweet; rather, they were always filled with bitterness and envy (Gen 37.8, et al). Joseph, on the other hand, was ever kind, caring, and loving, and in due course would again confirm the sweet and sincere affections in his heart toward his brothers. Joseph ever wanted to re-establish the sweet link of family union (Prov 16.24).
When Jacobs sons first came face to face with the "ruler of all Egypt", the manner of their speech was not the harsh, arrogant invective employed against Joseph up to the time they sold him to the Ishmeelites. During the three days that Joseph held his brothers in ward, their individual consciences began working overtime. The brothers had heard from the ruler what amounted to an exposure of their evil thoughts against their brother twenty-one years earlier. Gods word was "quick and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart (Heb 4.12).
The second visit of Josephs brothers to Egypt a year later was even more traumatic. The rulers silver cup being found in Benjamins sack led Judah to confess to Joseph, "God hath found out the iniquity of thy servants" (Gen 44.16). Furthermore, the brothers were beside themselves with fear, and in full repentance bowed themselves to the ground, just as Joseph had long ago foretold (Gen 37.7,9). Now was the time for the outpouring of words from Joseph that would be sweet to their taste: "Come near to me, I pray you And he said, I am Joseph your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt. Now therefore be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves" (Gen 45.4-5).
So, in the life of the Lord Jesus we see that many different people found His words "Pleasant as an honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones" (Prov 16.24). Our Lord said to Jairus, "Be not afraid, only believe" (Mk 5.36); and to the widow of Nain, "Weep not" (Lk 7.13). To a trembling woman He said, "Daughter, be of good comfort: thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace" (Lk 8.48). To an impotent man the Lord Jesus said, "Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee" (Jn 5.14). To the woman taken in adultery, Jesus said, "Neither do I condemn thee: go and sin no more" (Jn 8.11).
Sadly, we often speak to and about fellow Christian believers in such a harsh and cruel way that it cannot be said that our words are sweet to their taste. The apostle James, writing about our unruly member, the tongue, would challenge our hearts by asking, "Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter?" (Jas 3.11). May our gracious Lord help us to speak from a pure heart words that will prompt the holy response, "How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth" (Ps 119.103).
Spices Tragacanth (Astragalus gummifer)
The Hebrew word nekoth, translated as "spicery" in Gen 37.25, and "spices" in Gen 43.11, is more accurately rendered "tragacanth" by Biblical scholars and botanists. The plant astragalus gummifer belongs to the pea/bean family of plants and is commonly known as one of the Milk Vetches. Astragalus gummifer can be found growing on the mountain slopes in the south of the Sinai Peninsula, in Turkey to the north, and Iran to the east. The plant is a multi-branched evergreen dwarf shrub with spiny cushions heading thorny stems and reaching a height of 1m, bearing small, white/yellow, pea-like flowers. To obtain the gum tragacanth the roots are exposed and incised just below the soil surface. The soft gum exudate is allowed to dry before being collected over a period of 10 or more days. The exudate is soluble only in water. As in Biblical days, the tragacanth mucilage is used for fusing different products together, especially in the pharmaceutical and food industries. So why did Jacob, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, include this item in his gift?
The word nekoth means stricken, smitten, afflicted, and broken. Certainly Joseph suffered at the hands of his brothers, being stricken, smitten, afflicted, and broken (Gen 37.23-24; 42.21). The very one cast out by his brothers, will, by the unifying power invested in him by God, bind (glue) Jacobs family together again. As individuals, the brothers were so very different in character and disposition one from the other (Gen 49.1-28), and only a miracle of Gods grace through Joseph, would bring the family together again. Joseph accomplished his objective through the exercise of the love and grace in his heart toward his brothers (Gen 45.15). The absence of love among an assembly of Gods people will bring about division and separation, but practical love will bind us together. The apostle Paul exhorts us: "And above all these things put on charity (love), which is the bond of perfectness (Col 3.14).
We know from the Scriptures that Jacobs family, i.e. the twelve tribes, remained united as one body until the death of Solomon when, through idolatry, the nation was divided into two units of ten and two tribes. The unequal division remains to this day and will continue up to the incoming of the millennial kingdom. Then, and only then, will the nation recognise the Lord Jesus as their Messiah, the One whom they rejected, who also was smitten, stricken, and afflicted (Is 53.4). The penitent remnant will look with astonishment upon their Messiah whom they pierced, and enquire about the wounds in His hands; they will hear Him reply, "Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends" (Zech 12.10; 13.6). Israel will be overwhelmed with the spirit of repentance and then be saved to enjoy the millennial kingdom of peace and prosperity. The Lord, by the unifying power of His love, will fuse the nation into one indissoluble family to be joyously in subjection to the King of kings and Lord of lords throughout a glorious millennium.
Today, Christian believers are united in one body in Christ before God (Rom 12.5; Eph 4.4). Sadly, the visible testimony of what divine grace and love has accomplished is not apparent because the "bond of peace" is broken. The divisions among the saints of God are due in the main to bitterness, rancour, envy, and the absence of practical love, the same traits that caused the break-up of Jacobs family. Just as tragacanth is now used extensively in industry for binding different materials together, so Christian believers know they have at their disposal the greatest power and gift for unity in the bond of peace. That power is "the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given unto us" (Rom 5.5). May our gracious Lord help us to exercise the unifying power of His love in our hearts, one toward another (Jn 13.34-35).
To be continued.


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Comparative Index to Islam: Hagar (Ajar)
- Highlights differences between Islamic and Christian beliefs about the mother of Ishmael.
- Biblical biography of the slave girl who bore Abraham's first son.
Jewish Encyclopedia: Hagar
- Overview of Abraham's handmaid from the traditional Jewish perspective, including Talmudic commentary and a comparison with Islamic beliefs.
Jewish Virtual Library: Hagar
- Brief profile of the priest, with links to pertinent Torah passages.
The Return of Hagar
- A Chassidic interpretation of the concubine, including the belief that Abraham married her after Sarah's death.
Yishmael and Hagar: A Perspective
- Rabbinic commentary on some of the questions raised by the story of Sarah's expulsion of her rival.
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2011 has been the second warmest year on record for the UK, according to the Met Office.
It said provisional figures show that only 2006, with an average temperature of 9.73C (49.5F) was warmer than 2011's average temperature of 9.62C.
Despite this year seeing high temperatures for long periods – including the warmest April and spring on record, the second warmest autumn and the warmest October day – early figures suggest we are ending 2011 with a "close to average" December.
John Prior, the national climate manager at the Met Office, said: "While it may have felt mild for many so far this December, temperatures overall have been close to what we would expect.
"It may be that the stark change from last year, which was the coldest December on record for the UK, has led many to think it has been unseasonably warm."
All bar one of the top 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 1997 and all the UK's top seven warmest years happened in the past decade.
The warmest temperature recorded this year – 33.1C on 27 June at Gravesend in Kent – was the highest recorded in the UK for five years.
But this was one of just a few hot days in a rather cool summer which was bookended by the warm spring and autumn.
Apart from January, the only months that had below-average temperatures were June, July and August.
Gravesend was again the location for the warmest October temperature ever, when 29.9C was recorded on 1 October, beating the previous record of 29.4C at March in Cambridgeshire on the same day in 1985.
The warm autumn especially seemed to have a marked impact on flora and fauna.
The coldest temperature was -13C at Altnaharra in the Scottish Highlands on 8 January, while the strongest gust of wind was 165mph, recorded at the summit of the Cairngorms on 8 December.
Globally 2011 was the 11th warmest year on record. La Niña – a weather system in the Pacific that brings cooler water to the surface – pushed down the global average, meaning this year was cooler than 2010, which broke weather records around the world.


The Math Praxis II Test, titled "Mathematics: Content Knowledge" and found under testing codes 0061 and 5061, is a two hour, fifty-question multiple choice test developed and administered by the Educational Testing Service, or ETS. Taken on paper or on a computer, this test measures the mathematical knowledge and competency of teachers entering the practice at the high school level. Testing material is not aligned with any specific state curriculum, and the Math Praxis II is not required by every state for certification. Prospective teachers should check with their state licensing agencies before signing up for the test. A graphing calculator is required.
Teachers and prospective teachers taking the Math Praxis II are tested in five basic content categories. These categories are algebra and number theory; measurement, geometry, and trigonometry; functions and calculus; data analysis and statistics and probability; and matrix data and discrete mathematics. These topics are not divided into separate sections on the test. Because the content knowledge test is designed to demonstrate an examinee's facility with math, skills from several of the listed content categories may be required to solve each individual problem.
In addition to testing content knowledge, the Math Praxis II test is also designed to assess the test-taker's mathematical processing skills. Mathematical thinking is tested in the process of solving and answering the fifty multiple choice questions. The test is designed to measure mathematical problem solving, mathematical reasoning and proof, mathematical connections, mathematical reasoning and use of technology. These thinking skills may be applied to any of the content categories.
Notations, Definitions and Formulas
While a certain level of basic mathematical knowledge is assumed on the part of the test taker, a number of useful notations, definitions and formulas are provided within the test booklet. These notations, definitions and formulas are generally found at the end of the test booklet and can be used to compute answers independently and with the graphing calculator. The notations for least common denominator and greatest common denominator, definitions within discrete mathematics, and the formulas for sine, cosine and volume are examples of the information provided in the booklet.
Preparing for the Math Praxis II
Future educators taking the Praxis II math test generally have an undergraduate degree with a concentration in mathematical fields and are working towards teacher certification in this area. In addition to this educational background, a large number of study guides and practice books are available for purchase. Many of these study guides contain computer programs, access to online forums and practice tests. Some companies also offer test prep classes in person and online.
- Jack Hollingsworth/Photodisc/Getty Images


Since characters are really integers, the printed representation of a character is a decimal number. This is also a possible read syntax for a character, but writing characters that way in Lisp programs is not clear programming. You should always use the special read syntax formats that Emacs Lisp provides for characters. These syntax formats start with a question mark.
The usual read syntax for alphanumeric characters is a question mark followed by the character; thus, ‘?A’ for the character A, ‘?B’ for the character B, and ‘?a’ for the character a.
?Q ⇒ 81 ?q ⇒ 113
You can use the same syntax for punctuation characters. However, if the punctuation character has a special syntactic meaning in Lisp, you must quote it with a ‘\’. For example, ‘?\(’ is the way to write the open-paren character. Likewise, if the character is ‘\’, you must use a second ‘\’ to quote it: ‘?\\’.
You can express the characters control-g, backspace, tab, newline, vertical tab, formfeed, space, return, del, and escape as ‘?\a’, ‘?\b’, ‘?\t’, ‘?\n’, ‘?\v’, ‘?\f’, ‘?\s’, ‘?\r’, ‘?\d’, and ‘?\e’, respectively. (‘?\s’ followed by a dash has a different meaning—it applies the Super modifier to the following character.) Thus,
?\a ⇒ 7 ; control-g, C-g ?\b ⇒ 8 ; backspace, <BS>, C-h ?\t ⇒ 9 ; tab, <TAB>, C-i ?\n ⇒ 10 ; newline, C-j ?\v ⇒ 11 ; vertical tab, C-k ?\f ⇒ 12 ; formfeed character, C-l ?\r ⇒ 13 ; carriage return, <RET>, C-m ?\e ⇒ 27 ; escape character, <ESC>, C-[ ?\s ⇒ 32 ; space character, <SPC> ?\\ ⇒ 92 ; backslash character, \ ?\d ⇒ 127 ; delete character, <DEL>
These sequences which start with backslash are also known as escape sequences, because backslash plays the role of an escape character; this has nothing to do with the character <ESC>. ‘\s’ is meant for use in character constants; in string constants, just write the space.
A backslash is allowed, and harmless, preceding any character without a special escape meaning; thus, ‘?\+’ is equivalent to ‘?+’. There is no reason to add a backslash before most characters. However, you must add a backslash before any of the characters ‘()\;"’, and you should add a backslash before any of the characters ‘|'`#.,’ to avoid confusing the Emacs commands for editing Lisp code. You can also add a backslash before whitespace characters such as space, tab, newline and formfeed. However, it is cleaner to use one of the easily readable escape sequences, such as ‘\t’ or ‘\s’, instead of an actual whitespace character such as a tab or a space. (If you do write backslash followed by a space, you should write an extra space after the character constant to separate it from the following text.)


Preventive Drug Education Toolkit for Educators and Youth Counsellors
Teachers have been the vital partners in guiding our youths towards making the right decisions and leading a drug-free, healthy lifestyle. The teachers’ significant role is also accentuated in the National Council Against Drug Abuse (NCADA) 2013 Youth Perception Survey that reveals that teachers, after family members, are the group which youths would consult on drug and inhalant abuse matters.
Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB), as the lead agency for preventive drug education in Singapore, distributes publications such as IN, Little Red Dot, essay booklets as well as anti-drug posters and videos to schools to provide teachers with useful drug prevention information. Customised seminars for teachers have also been organised since 1999. We have received feedback at Teachers’ Seminars that the current materials are insufficient and it would be useful if we can provide more materials for the teachers to use to educate their students on the ills of drug abuse. The idea for a Teachers’ Resource Package was thus formed and the Preventive Education Unit from CNB consulted MOE’s Education Programmes Division and Curriculum Planning and Development Division in developing the contents.
This resource package is produced to assist teachers in equipping the students with relevant knowledge to lead a drug-free lifestyle. It condenses relevant information on drugs and inhalant abuse into a self contained package. There are suggested activities for teachers to conduct drug education sessions for students. Teachers can utilise the relevant portions as background reading for project work or classroom discussions. The resources can also be reproduced easily for students, parents and staff.
You can download the resource toolkit by clicking on the link below.
Education Toolkit for Educators and Youth Counsellors (PDF, 23181 KB)


A popular AI tool that turns text into images appears to be creating its ‘own language’ of indecipherable gibberish and using it to categorise different pictures.
The DALL-E tool, which uses AI to generate images from text, is seemingly generating nonsense text when instructed to create images featuring printed words.
Computer science PhD student Giannis Daras took to Twitter to share examples of the ‘language’, including phrases the AI had created to identify birds and insects.
“Apoploe vesrreaitais” means ‘birds’, while “Contarra ccetnxniams luryca tanniounons” means insects.
Daras claimed in the viral thread that if you enter the gibberish words created by the AI back into the system, it will generate images linked to those phrases.
In a research paper which is yet to be peer-reviewed, Daras and his colleague Alexandros G. Dimakis said: ““[T]ext prompts such as: ‘An image of the word airplane’ often lead to generated images that depict gibberish text.
“We discover that this produced text is not random, but rather reveals a hidden vocabulary that the model seems to have developed internally.
‘Demonic’ AI generating its own secret written language that nobody can understand – Daily Star‘Demonic’ AI generating its own secret written language that nobody can understand – Daily Star


By the Kabul valley route, which includes at its head the group of passes across the Hindu Kush which extend from the Khawak to the Kaoshan, all those central Asian hordes, be they Sacae, Yue-chi, Jats, Goths or Huns, who were driven towards the rich plains of the south, entered the Punjab.
300) India was invaded from the north by tribes partly of Parthian and partly of Turki (Yue-chi, &c.) origin.
Our earliest information about the Ephthalites comes from the Chinese chronicles, in which it is stated that they were originally a tribe of the great Yue-Chi, living to the north of the Great Wall, and in subjection to the Jwen-Jwen, as were also the Turks at one time.
The Chinese statement that the Hoa or Ye-tha were a section of the great Yue-Chi, and that their customs resembled those of the Turks (Tu-Kiue), is probably correct, but does not amount to much, for the relationship did not prevent them from fighting with the Yue-Chi and Turks, and means little more than that they belonged to the warlike and energetic section of central Asian nomads, which is in any case certain.
This may, however, be due to the fact that their contact with civilization was so short; the Yue-Chi and Turks had had some commerce with more advanced races before they played any part in political history, but the Ephthalites appear as raw barbarians, and were annihilated as a nation in little more than a hundred years.


Scientific theorizing is indeed about finding something reliable in the world — if we’re lucky something reliable enough to be called a law. Why do we want something that doesn’t change? Deep question. Here’s a practical reason: we aim to capture it with something that doesn’t change, namely with ink on paper. Stability, stationarity, ergodicity… are the holy grail of science.
Economics is often presented — and lamented — to be beset with different difficulties than other sciences. Most commonly it’s contrasted with physics. To state the obvious: economics is different, otherwise we would just call it physics. But the perceived qualitative difference has often more to do with a naïve understanding of physics than with a fundamental difference in epistemology. But, I hear the objection, economics is self-referential: so are biology and medicine — sciences conducted by their objects of study. So is physics, for that matter — what am I if not a curiously arranged pile of fundamental particles? Ok, but things are not stationary in economics, so it really is different. Well — no. Nothing is stationary, said Heraclitus — a truth that never budged.
Stationarity in physics
Let’s look at something concrete: Newton’s laws (also in our lecture notes). They can be written down in ink, as valid today as they were in 1666 — and yet they don’t invalidate Heraclitus, describing, as they do, all those swirling ever-changing galaxies around us. Take Newton’s second law , force is mass times acceleration (second time-derivative of position). It can be written down in ink, so something is stationary. What exactly is that? The stationary thing, really, is a relationship among concepts. The equation describes something very non-stationary.
Let’s make it easy and say mass and force are fixed, as for an apple falling from a tree. The position of the apple is clearly not stationary, it changes. If we want to get something stable from something that keeps changing, differentiating with respect to time is generally a good idea (though we may need help from non-linear transformations). Maybe, then, the rate of change in the position is stationary? No, it’s not. Newton had to work really hard to find that the rate of change of the rate of change of the position of the apple is stable — until it hits the ground, that is.
So no, stationarity — invariance, constancy — doesn’t exactly stare us in the face when we look at physics. Unless we’re Newton or Lagrange or Hamilton or Emmy Noether.
Newton was looking at positions, , and how they behave over time. His genius allowed him to transform positions until he found something stable about them.
More recently, there has been a trend in physics of appreciating non-stationarity. It’s an interesting change of perspective. If we can put things down in ink, we must have transformed away the changes in the world (that’s the green line in the figure above). But we can also leave the changes as they are and illustrate them (that would be the blue line). The second perspective focuses the mind on non-ergodic concepts, for example ageing in statistical mechanics, and sometimes it’s easier to think that way.
Ergodicity in economics
The stationarity debate is HUGE in economics, conducted under various labels (stationarity, ergodicity, stability, equilibrium). Samuelson famously said that not hypothesizing ergodicity “takes the subject out of the realm of science into the realm of genuine history.” This statement is not incorrect, but sometimes it’s interpreted in a way that comes close to sabotage.
Having spent some time totally puzzled by Samuelson’s statement, the way I think of it now is ‘Find what may sensibly be modeled as ergodic’, whereas the sabotage-interpretation is ‘take any old thing and model it as ergodic.’ But the former is hard work! Look what Newton had to do to get invariance! In economics it’s even worse because we have to model fickle-minded humans. What can I say? Tough.
Economic “laws” may not be as good as the laws we’ve found in other fields. Plausible regularities may be present but swamped by changes in attendant circumstances. The regularities we find may not predict what happens tomorrow but rather provide stable relationships between quantities, while the quantities themselves change. Think of Pythagoras’ theorem: it doesn’t tell us the hypotenuse is five feet long, it just puts it in relation to the catheti.
If we do the search for the laws properly — keeping track of both our knowledge and of our ignorance — then perhaps we will learn when the laws are practically meaningful and when not, or when a computer simulation may be useful and when not.
But this problem of being on shaky ground is not limited to economics. Scientific progress in general operates on the frontier of discernible laws. We think we see something, and then it turns out to be a fluke. Sadly, that’s the nature of the beast (more on reproducibility here).
Story-telling in history and science
The juxtaposition of science and history in Samuelson’s statement is curious. What’s that about? How are they related? Through story-telling, I contend.
One part of history is recording what happened. Because what happened is in the past, we can be certain that it won’t change. An easy victory for ink, one might think. But alas! what should be written down, and how? Berthold Brecht wrote: “Caesar defeated the Gauls. Did he not even have a cook with him?” It’s not possible to write down everything that’s happened. Quite the opposite: we have to leave out almost everything, because we have to condense what happened to a manageable volume.
As we do this — whether we like it or not — we impose a narrative. In some way, far beyond recording events, we make sense of them. This sense-making may be futile in history. History doesn’t repeat itself (how often have I heard that phrase!). But we cannot not do it — expose patterns, regularities, something stable in the facts of the past. Some law.
Impossible as it is, history emphasizes recording past events. Naïvely, ink is a good medium for that because of the curious nature of time. Things in the past don’t change, whereas things in the future — let’s say they’re more flexible. I say naïvely because what we include in today’s narrative derived from the past may not be included in tomorrow’s narrative derived from the same past. History is constantly being re-visited.
Science also records past events: data. For example, observations of positions and time . Galileo let ink-drenched bronze balls leave marks on paper, very literally recording in ink. But science emphasizes the shape of the curve left by those past events, the story rather than the history.
History and science are related. History may try to stay away from story-telling. Where it does, it must fail because of grammatical constraints imposed on its language — Cormac McCarthy wrote recently “At some point the mind must grammaticize facts and convert them to narratives.” Science celebrates story-telling. Science becomes science when we invent a narrative and turn data into story, ink splashes into a parabola.
That’s a good place to end: the London Mathematical Laboratory quite literally celebrates story-telling, in collaboration with the Barbican, namely in the form of our Science on Screen program. Let scientists collide with on-screen stories — the results can be astonishing.


We can hope can’t we? Organic material, or methane seems the most likely. What a scientist would consider historic might seem like a yawn to many if not most non-specialists in that field.
I don’t know. We thought we might have before, and it disappointed (although some suggest we did find life before – the evidence is clearly too sketchy to get excited either way).
But in case you didn’t hear, NASA’s Curiosity had a big find that NASA is keeping secret as it tests and retests the data. They don’t seem interested in managing expectations at all, announcing that “this data is gonna be for the history books”. That’s quite a statement, isn’t it? More conservative guesses are that it’s organic material in the soil. I found this passage from that article interesting:
“Whatever Curiosity has found, it is not evidence for life on Mars. It can’t be. Curiosity is not designed to look for life. Grotzinger has stated this himself. In a NASA video about the mission, he says, “Curiosity is not a life detection mission. We’re not actually looking for life; we don’t have the ability to detect life if it was there.”
What if they brushed dirt off a small fossil? What if a little bug crawled across the screen and Curiosity followed it back to a Martian ant hill? Or lichen on a rock? “Not designed to look for life”? What an unimaginative way of thinking about things. They mean, of course, that it isn’t equipped to identify microbial life in soil. But Mars is a big planet, and even if most of it is blighted and uninhabitable that doesn’t mean Curiosity couldn’t have stumbled on something previous probes missed.
Of course, it probably isn’t life. It probably found the sorts of things it was sent to find. That’s where the smart money is. But “for the history books” is an intriguing turn of phrase, and I’ll be waiting expectantly until they announce exactly what we’ve got here.
So what do you think:
1. Will we hear in a couple weeks that there is life on Mars right now?
2. How will that change the way people thinking about their place in the universe?
Have we found life on Mars?
Sun, 25 Nov 2012 13:50:00 GMT
You should always adjust for population.
Sun, 25 Nov 2012 22:24:00 GMT
Rogoff & Reinhart insist with their argument that the economy is performing as best as is possible following a financial crisis.
This is the last question and answer from the interview:
What are some of the key lessons from the financial crisis and the recovery?
Reinhart: The U.S. recovery very much fits the mold of those following any severe financial crisis. The U.S. did not have as sharp an initial decline in output as what you have seen in emerging markets or, in effect, as what you saw in prior crises in U.S. history.—not just the Great Depression, but in the crises of 1907 and 1893, as well. In all of these, there were years where you had massive initial declines in GDP [gross domestic product] of 10% or 12%. In the Depression, it was 30%. We did not have that this time. But all the other developments were the same, including the failure to regain what was lost in income and employment, and how long it has lasted.
Post-war recessions, on average, barely last a year. And here we are having these conversations five years after the onset of the subprime crisis. It attests to the long duration of this type of systemic crisis. In the historical context, the U.S. has had, overall, a pretty good track record in the latest crisis. In terms of income per person and in comparison with other countries that are having similarly severe crises, we are doing pretty well–but not so hot in terms of unemployment.
Rogoff: We have always argued that the right metric for thinking about deep financial crises is to compare the current conditions to where you started. It is a much more robust method, particularly because there are false starts, and you don’t know when the recovery starts. It is really getting into semantics to say, “Well, we are not racing ahead that fast.” But the flip side of that is that a lot of effort was made to have the economy not fall that fast. There is basically fiscal stimulus being taken out of the economy, for example, as we are consolidating from the initial $800 billion stimulus in 2009. And if we hadn’t done that, there would be more room to make the economy grow faster now. But that doesn’t mean we would be ahead.
“We did not have that this time”. I certainly agree and would be surprised if more than one century later we would make the same mistake. But we did, only in much less intensity. Nominal spending in 2009 didn´t drop 13.5% like in 1894 (relative to 1892) but only 3% (relative to 2008). This was a first since 1938. But in 2010 we could have been much more “aggressive” in getting spending up, as it was done in 1895.
And isn´t it comforting to read Rogoff saying: “But the flip side of that is that a lot of effort was made to have the economy not fall that fast”. Yes, belatedly the monetary “breaks” were applied cushioning the fall, but what is lacking is the requisite monetary “acceleration” to get the economy back out of the “ravine”.
The Charts below provide the illustration.
The Crisis: Monetary policy, “not guilty”. The fault lies with “human nature”
Sun, 25 Nov 2012 03:06:27 GMT
Is really possible people are as confused as this suggests??? Even with preogressive taxes, you don’t end up with less income from more work, just only part of the extra income from more work. I think people understand this, but aren’t expressing themselves very clearly here.
Here is an exercise. What is wrong with the way the people quoted below are thinking?
1. Kristina Collins, a chiropractor in McLean, Va., said she and her husband planned to closely monitor the business income from their joint practice to avoid crossing the income threshold for higher taxes outlined by President Obama on earnings above $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for couples.
Ms. Collins said she felt torn by being near the cutoff line and disappointed that federal tax policy was providing a disincentive to keep expanding a business she founded in 1998.
“If we’re really close and it’s near the end-year, maybe we’ll just close down for a while and go on vacation,” she said.
2. … [the extra money that comes with a raise] “is nice, but it could very well bump you into the next tax bracket, possibly leaving you with less money than you had before the raise.”
For an answer, see the wikipedia entry on “Tax Rate” and Matthew Yglesias’s posts “Nobody Understands How Taxes Work,” “Tax Whiners Don’t Understand How Marginal Tax Rates Work,” and “Tax Ignoramuses.”
How Marginal Tax Rates Work
Fri, 23 Nov 2012 13:00:57 GMT
Fri, 30 Dec 2011 00:00:00 GMT
What would happen if the price of gas in the ravaged northeast went to a gouging price? there are suggestions by John Cochrane of the University of Chicago below. The claimed effects are mostly good. Price gouging is often defended by economists.
I think it might induce more theft of gasoline as well though, and clearly the well to do would likely be advantaged. A lot what is suggested here would likely go on in practice as well.
… If New York and New Jersey let people charge whatever they wanted for gas, and prices went up to $25 per gallon then…
Here are some ideas to get you started
- People would voluntarily stay home.
- Rather than allocating gas to people with time on their hands to wait in line, gas would go to people who are really busy.
- People would voluntarily form carpools. Better, they would advertise for paying carpool mates on Craigslist, and the minivan owner running it would be able to get gas.
- People who have emergencies, like wife needing to go to the hospital to deliver a baby, could get gas to do so.
- Ditto emergency services, fire, ambulances, cops
- Gas stations would have bought generators, so they could pump and sell gas at a big profit when the power goes out.
- Gas stations would buy said generators now. (We need to get rid of gouging laws on the generators too, so that gas stations needing generators can pay through the nose to get them, instead of someone who wants to recharge his iphone.)
- People who don’t have to go anywhere would siphon their gas and sell it neighbors. Or second-car gas.
- They’d siphon their lawnmowers too.
- People would rent tanker trucks, drive around the northeast, buy gas and resell it in NY.
- Actually, people might get a bunch of gas cans and drive the gas in from rural areas in the back of pickups. Not sure if this is a good idea, especially for smokers, but it would improve gas supplies.
- Exxon would have spent the money for more storage tanks in NJ, ready to sell gas at high prices in an emergency.
Gas price contest
John H. Cochrane
Tue, 13 Nov 2012 02:13:00 GMT
Article written by guest writer Kecia Lynn What’s the Latest Development? A paper soon to appear in Astronomy and Astrophysics reports the discovery of a “rogue planet” about 100 light-years from Earth. This planet, which is drifting in space without a sun to orbit around, is the nearest of …
Found In Our Neighborhood: A Planet Without A Sun
Wed, 14 Nov 2012 14:41:00 GMT
This is from Lew Rockwell, FYI:
It seems that the mean-spirited and envious Republicans will finally allow Ron to deliver his eloquent “Farewell Address.” While it is a so-long to Congress and the various crooks, liars, con men, and clowns who comprise it, it is far more important than that. Ron lays out a blueprint of exactly what is wrong, thanks to the rotten government, and how to set about fixing it. He talks philosophy and the most practical matters, too. He also tells us bout the ideas he will be advancing in his freer life post-Congress and post-politics. We have so much to look forward to! Watch this space for the CSPAN schedule, and the YouTube, and prepare to be moved, thrilled, and inspired. (Thanks to Jeff Deist)
UPDATE It looks as if his talk will be at 3:00pm EST today. (Thanks, Jeff)
UPDATE Now it is scheduled for 2:00pm EST. (Thanks to Norm Singleton)
So by my calculations, that’s starting in about 5 minutes as I post this…
Ron Paul’s Farewell Address
Wed, 14 Nov 2012 18:54:34 GMT


Welcome to Snapchat nation, where any problem, thought, feeling, or inequality will be forgotten in less than ten seconds.
The thought that racism ended with the election of President Barack Obama in 2009, is incorrect and needs to come to an end. Racism is still a huge part of the society and will continue to be if action is not taken. It is not one’s fault that they were raised within a system of lies, but it is now their responsibility to create change.
Only 10 percent of Connecticut’s 169 towns offers affordable housing.
A shockingly low percentage when statistics show African American families are three times more likely to grow up poor.
In today’s society where 30 percent of someone’s paycheck goes toward housing, it is very important that the place were one resides typically is their biggest investment.
Exclusionary zoning affects people of color directly and drastically. Exclusionary zoning is zoning ordinances that keep out certain people from a given community. These ordinances can create white dominant towns and prevent children of color from attending superior schools — thus impacting their educational career as well as social upbringing.
African Americans are five to nine times more likely to be incarcerated than whites and four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana. That totals to 160,000 African Americans being arrested a year in the United States. This incarnation rate does not represent a “War on Drugs” yet represents a war on people of a certain race and economic status. This war is resulting in 1.6 million African Americans with a criminal record, who have lost the opportunity to vote, certain housing options, employment prospects, and education benefits.
Stop scapegoating. People of color cannot be considered “lazy” and “job stealers” at the same time. This is not about white people but about whiteness as a system of thought or behavior. A typical white dropout makes TWICE the net worth than an African American college graduate. Yet, white people are far less likely to see the discrepancies between the races. Implicit bias plays a role in their inability to see the reality of the facts. Implicit Bias is an attitude or belief that is outside of the conscious awareness or control. There are also certain luxurious that come when one is a part of a dominant group. The main luxury is being oblivious. When one is considered “normal” in society, they often don’t get labeled or think about how they don’t belong.
It is time to stop pretending to be colorblind but instead be color aware. This is not about politics (democratic or republican) but it is about justice for all. These issues are imbedded within the society and great bounds must still be accomplished to see drastic change. One cannot stay still on this moving train or they will have no say in where they end up.


From contact tracing to creating buffer zones around #COVID19 clusters, India is using mapping and location-tracking technology to fight the pandemic. Maps have been used to assess and tackle diseases at least since the 1850 cholera outbreak in London. IndiaSpend looks at how mapping the disease data through geographic information system (GIS) can assist policymakers and the authorities during outbreaks, and what privacy concerns must inform such mapping.
GIS is a system designed to capture and analyse data using spatial trends. In the context of disease surveillance and monitoring, it integrates data such as the area of outbreak, population health and available infrastructure in the area to identify the population at risk. In recent years, GIS has been used to study and tackle several communicable and non-communicable diseases.
As of 8.00 a.m. on April 10, 2020, India has detected 6,412 cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus named SARS-CoV-2, according to Coronavirus Monitor, a HealthCheck database. While 504 (7.9%) patients have been discharged, 199 (3.1%) have died. Globally, 1.6 million cases have been detected, of which more than 350,000 have recovered and more than 95,000 have died, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.
How India is using location data
The Centre has tested the COVID-19 Quarantine Alert System (CQAS), an application that uses telecom data to trigger emails and text-message alerts to the authorities if a person has jumped quarantine, as The Hindu reported on April 3, 2020. “The data collected shall be used only for the purpose of Health Management in the context of COVID-19 and is strictly not for any other purposes,” the report said, citing the standard operating procedure. “Any violation in this regard would attract penal provisions under the relevant laws.”
Earlier, the Kerala State Disaster Management Authority and health department officials had begun collating disease surveillance data separately–with primary and secondary contacts of confirmed patients–traced and identified on a live geo-map, as the news channel NDTV reported on March 12, 2020. This allows officials to identify high-risk zones to activate containment measures. Further, the state is adding layers such as the availability of laboratory facilities and isolation wards in these areas.
On March 27, 2020, the Gujarat government launched a GIS-based mobile application to monitor the movement of those advised to be home-quarantined. Similar to the Centre’s CQAS app, it alerts authorities if the person being monitored leaves quarantine. The Srinagar district had also announced plans to undertake GIS mapping of all cases including suspects, those under surveillance, quarantined and isolated, according to this March 17, 2020, report.
The Telangana government was also deploying geo-location technology to track over 25,000 people under home-quarantine using a COVID-19 monitoring system, according to this April 1, 2020, report in IANS, the news agency, published in the magazine Outlook. The state was already using ‘TSCop’, an app developed by the Telangana police, to geotag houses of foreign returnees, the report said. In neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, the government is using two tech tools developed by the State Disaster Management Authority to track each person in home-quarantine, and for contact-tracing of positive cases, the report said.
Punjab is also using cellphone data including call records and GPS to enforce lockdown, ensure home delivery of groceries, and for contact-tracing, as The Indian Express reported on April 10, 2020.
Tracking in other countries
Health officials in South Korea retraced patients’ movements using security camera footage, credit card records, and GPS data from their cars and cellphones, The New York Times reported on March 23, 2020. Citizens are alerted of new cases, with websites and apps detailing hour-by-hour timelines of infected people’s travel. People who believe they may have crossed paths with a patient are urged to report to testing centers. A separate app tracks those under quarantine.
Israel has allowed its intelligence agency to track mobile phones of confirmed or suspected patients. “We’ll deploy measures we’ve only previously deployed against terrorists,” the country’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. “Some of these will be invasive and infringe on the privacy of those affected. We must adopt a new routine.”
In China, entering one’s apartment compound or workplace requires scanning a QR code, writing down one’s name and ID number, temperature and recent travel history, as The Guardian reported in March 2020. Telecom operators track people’s movements, some cities are offering rewards for informing on sick neighbours, and Chinese companies are rolling out facial recognition technology that can detect elevated temperatures in a crowd or flag citizens not wearing a face mask.
Austria and Belgium are using anonymised data from telecom operators for contact-tracing and monitoring those quarantined.
Healthmap–developed by Boston Children’s Hospital–collates data from validated alerts from official sites for surveillance of emerging disease. Data ranging from air-ticketing and online networks tracking disease outbreaks in animals are used to track any unusual events and possible outbreaks. For COVID-19, Healthmap offers an interactive map, which includes a feature to show “outbreaks near me”–informing users about the disease transmission in their vicinity.
Mapping in past outbreaks
“The use of surveillance technologies, although necessary during the ongoing pandemic, has again started the long-standing debates on balancing privacy and security,” said Kazim Rizvi, founding director of The Dialogue, a think-tank working in the intersection of technology and public policy. “It is important that the surveillance technologies should observe the tests laid down by the Apex Court in the Puttaswamy judgment (2017).”
The judgment permits surveillance provided that it is authorised by law, and its use is necessary and proportionate to the harm expected, he said, adding that a comprehensive surveillance law must keep privacy at the heart.
The use of spatial technologies and mapping for surveillance requires data classified as personally identifiable information. Concepts such as consent and personal data, for instance, are not defined in the Information Technology Act, 2000, rules framed under which (the Information Technology (Reasonable Security Practices and Procedures and Sensitive Personal Data or Information) Rules of 2011) regulate data protection in the country.
To rectify this, the Personal Data Protection Bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha (lower house of parliament) on December 11, 2019. It has been referred to a joint parliamentary committee for examination, but falls short in addressing privacy and accountability, Rizvi said. The Bill does not provide for an independent data protection authority that could look into the privacy concerns, he added.
“Authorising unregulated surveillance might lead to data discrimination in which marginalised community (sic) could be further excluded due to non-transparent algorithmic processes,” Rizvi said.
This article was published in India Spend on April 10, 2020. Click here to read
Views expressed are personal and need not reflect or represent the views of Centre for Public Policy Research.
Nissy Solomon is Senior Research Associate at CPPR Centre for Comparative Studies. Prior to her venture into the public policy domain, she had worked as a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Analyst with Nokia-Heremaps. Her postgraduate research explored the interface of GIS in Indian healthcare planning. She is broadly interested in Public Policy, Economic Development and Spatial Analysis for policymaking. She has an MA in Economics (University of Bombay) and an MA in Public Policy (National Law School of India University, Bangalore). She can be contacted by email at [email protected]


Will Syria break apart along sectarian lines? What are the origins of the conflict? What are the pros and cons of a US-led intervention? How is the war impacting individual lives? These were among the questions of a panel debate on the Syrian civil crisis at Maastricht University in October 2013.
A few hundred students gathered in the lecture hall of the Maastricht University School of Business and Economics earlier this month to hear what a panel of experts had to say about a situation that is making headlines every day all around the world: the civil war in Syria.
The evening kicked off with a speech by Marc Mahfoud, a European Studies student of Syrian origin, who explained his motivation in asking Studium Generale to organize an event on the Syrian conflict. He felt that it was important to look at how ordinary people see and experience the situation and to analyse how a peaceful solution can be found to end the civil war.
Expert opinions and personal accounts
Dr. Lutz Krebs, Education Director at UNU-MERIT’s School of Governance and a political scientist who focuses on international relations and conflict research, gave a historical briefing on the political situation in Syria. He analysed the nature of the conflict and went as far back as the independence of Syria in 1958 to identify its origins.
Krebs pointed out that in order to understand a conflict one needs to look at the causes not only at macro level but also at micro level. “If we only analyse the macro causes of a conflict then we no longer see the lives that are affected by atrocities like the one taking place in Syria at the moment.” Krebs recommends a multi-dimensional approach to the conflict by taking social, economic and political factors into consideration. His briefing would have been useful to every policymaker!
One of the most hotly debated issues about the Syrian conflict has been the position taken by the US Presidency. Dr. Roberta Haar, a US Foreign Policy expert at University College Maastricht, shared an overview of the pros and cons of a US intervention (or non-intervention) in the conflict.
Haar’s presentation highlighted the stakes faced by President Obama both at home and abroad. She also explained the logistical and technical difficulties attached to the recent Russian-led agreement putting a timeline to the destruction of Syria’s entire chemical arsenal under the authority of the Nobel Peace Prize Winner the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
Ms. Astrid Rijbroek, former director of The Netherlands Institute in Damascus, and Ms. Francesca de Châtel, former editor-in-chief of the monthly magazine Syria Today gave an interesting joint account of what it was like to live in Syria before the war. Both were residents of Damascus for many years, so they were able to share personal stories that shed a different light on our understanding of the conflict. It commonly happens that when analysing an armed conflict, we tend to forget about the innocent people who are caught in the crossfire and who simply want to get on with their lives.
Seeing the wider context
Before opening the debate to the audience, Dr. Zina Nimeh (pictured above) expressed her views on the conflict and asked a few challenging questions to the panelists. Her input sparked further debate not only because of her Middle Eastern background but also on account of her professional experience in social protection policy. Click here for more photos of the debate.
By the end of the evening we understood a little bit better why there are terrible tragedies taking place in Syria. Despite the Russian-led agreement on chemical weapons, there is still no end in sight to the human suffering and bloodletting.
Diego Salama joined UNU-MERIT as Assistant to the Education Director in May 2013. Diego previously worked for the UN Information Centre in Lima and served as Secretary-General of the “VI European Model UN – EuroMUN”. Diego is currently studying International Relations at University College Maastricht. He is also a columnist for two national newspapers in Bolivia and a Local Views Blogger for Future Challenges. Image: UN Photo / N.Singh


“The oldest and thickest sea ice in the Arctic has started to break up, opening waters north of Greenland that are normally frozen, even in summer.
“This phenomenon – which has never been recorded before – has occurred twice this year due to warm winds and a climate-change driven heatwave in the northern hemisphere.
“One meteorologist described the loss of ice as “scary”. Others said it could force scientists to revise their theories about which part of the Arctic will withstand warming the longest.
“The sea off the north coast of Greenland is normally so frozen that it was referred to, until recently, as “the last ice area” because it was assumed that this would be the final northern holdout against the melting effects of a hotter planet.
“But abnormal temperature spikes in February and earlier this month have left it vulnerable to winds, which have pushed the ice further away from the coast than at any time since satellite records began in the 1970s.”
“Weather becomes more extreme when instead of moving on it stays in the same place for days or weeks on end. Never-ending rainfall causes flooding, and prolonged sunny weather sparks droughts and wildfires… Evidence is now mounting to show that human-induced warming in the Arctic is distorting the planet’s natural circulation patterns such as the jet stream and making these “stalling” events more likely.”
“A number of Swedish reactors had to shut down or reduce output as the summer heatwave sent temperatures to record highs in July, with the sea water that is used to cool them becoming much warmer than normal, exceeding safety levels.”
“This summer is verging on the hottest for 359 years – hotter than 1976’s sizzler and even 1666’s Great Fire of London summer… Temperatures from June 1 to August 15 averaged 16.1C, hotter than 2006’s record 15.78C from June 1 to August 31.”
“Eastern Switzerland has experienced the driest summer on record, and farmers all over the country have been forced to bring their [cows] down early from the mountains as pastures are depleted, said Reto Burkhardt, a spokesman for the country’s milk producers’ association.”
“At least 11 people were killed in southern Italy when heavy rain flooded a deep mountain gorge filled with hikers, officials said.”
“People in the Queenstown area of the Eastern Cape [South Africa] have been struggling to get water for months. The main dam is at 10%; the augmentation scheme cannot cope with demand; and a new dam project is more than a year behind schedule. Spokesperson for the Chris Hani District Municipality Thobeka Mqamelo said the water problems are due to the severe drought gripping the area for the past three years.”
“Afghanistan is experiencing a drought so severe that two million people may run out of food in the next six months. More than 80,000 people have left their villages in search of water in cities. The United Nations fears that number may double.”
“Flood waters have receded in the southern Indian state of Kerala, allowing authorities to retrieve the bodies of victims and enabling residents to start assessing the damage to their homes after the worst monsoon rains in a century.”
“Nearly 5 million people in central China’s Henan Province have been affected by Typhoon Rumbia, the 18th this year, local authorities said Monday… Non-stop heavy rain caused flooding in cities and counties across the province.”
“South Korea’s producer prices rose to a four-year high in July as the worst heat in recent years hurt the farming sector, central bank data showed Tuesday… The index of agricultural products jumped 7.9 percent on-month in July as crop production was spurred by the recording-breaking hot spell… This summer, South Korea has been experiencing record-breaking high temperatures. The daytime temperature of the country’s capital reached a record 39.6 C on Aug. 1, while some regions saw the mercury surpass 40 C.”
“Governor Eddie Calvo has declared a “State of Emergency” for Guam as a result of flooding that has left roads and bridges impassible and island residents homeless.”
“The entirety of Australia’s most populous state, New South Wales, is suffering from a crippling drought that is the most severe in recent memory. The tough conditions are drying up huge swathes of land, leaving farmers struggling to feed their livestock and water their crops. It’s also exacerbating bushfires in the state. One mining town in the outback, Broken Hill, is even reporting crowds of emus arriving into town searching for water and food…”
“Brazil’s northeastern state of Alagoas has declared a 180-day state of emergency after dozens of cities in the region experienced water shortages that have affected more than 200,000 people.”
“Arapiraca is among the 38 cities in an area that thrives on tobacco crop. This year, however, has experienced an extremely bad harvest. Local farmers are also experiencing a shortfall in the corn yield.”
“B.C. is under a state of emergency and whole communities in the B.C. interior are under evacuation alerts. Most Westerners, however, are experiencing the fires second-hand; as a mysterious and choking haze that has suddenly delivered Beijing-levels of pollution to what are normally some of the world’s most pristine natural landscapes.”
“The National Weather Service reported flash floods across the Madison [Wisconsin] area on Monday evening, after nearly nine inches of rain.”


Mentawai Island consist of four main Island, North Pagai, South Pagai, Sikakap and Siberut, about 100 Km from west of west Sumatra cost. The tribe who live there call Mentawai Tribe. Among 4 islands Siberut Island is the biggest but the lowest population among four islands. Their culture, language is totally different with people who live in Sumatra, Their culture back to stone age, Most of old people decorate their body with tattoo. According to the story is the oldest tattoo in the world. They are very professional hunter using bow and poison arrow. The still practice magic. Magic man is important man, because they lead ceremony; cure somebody ill, give advice to the ordinary people before going hunting, building the house, making canoe, etc. There hundreds of island with beautiful beach and coral reef. Also the best place for surfing.
Siberut island recently received
international attention as a priority conservation area, for the unique culture
of the ethnic Mentawaian and endemicity of its biodiversity that need to be
preserved. Although the island has plenty to offer, the potential has not been
utilized fully especially for tourism.
visitors to the island are interested only in seeing the culture at the
indigenous tribes, such as the communal clan life in the traditional UMA house
along the river banks.
Siberut National Park occupies the western half of the island,
ranging from the northern coasts. At present the Integrated Biodiversity
Conservation Project organized by PHPA, MOF, together with local government,
local NGOs and other institutions, conducts the community based conservation
Siberut island (4.030 km sq) is the largest island of four
islands in the Mentawaian archipelago. It is located about 155 kilometers off
the coast of West Sumatra, across the Mentawaian strait. The Mentawaian islands
belong administratively to Kabupaten (Regency) Padang Pariaman in West Sumatra
Province. Siberut is divided into two Kecamatan (district) : North and South
Siberut with administrative centers at Muara Sikabaluan and Muara Siberut which
also service as respectively market centers of Siberut.
According to Forestry Ministerial Decree in 1993, 500 hectares area was declared as Siberut National Park.
TOPOGRAPHY AND CLIMATE
The Siberut island is characterized by
a wet equatorial climate, with minimum and maximum temperatures of 22o C
(71.6F) and 31o C (87.8F). The dry season is from February to June and the
raining season is from July to January. Siberut is hilly with wide variations
in elevation. Almost 60% is covered by tropical rain forest with many forest
type such as: primary dipterocarp forest, primary mixed forest, swamp forest,
barringtonia forest and mangrove forest. Also, there are many rivers on the
islands with a complex system of tributaries.
Some of the interesting objects to see
Community and Culture: Although Siberut is only a small
island, the internal variations in language, culture, life styles, and in
resources is rather substantial. There is no clear indication of when the first
man arrived on Siberut, but anthropologist suggest that the bataks of North
Sumatra first settled on the island several thousand years ago. In many ways,
the people of Siberut are among the most archaic people in
Jungle Adventure: Very few visitors have explored the
thickly frested island. Inside the National Park pleasant surprises await the
adventures visitor. Visiting a cave in central Siberut or waterfalls in the
northern and southern parts of the island, are possible upon request with your
guide. Be observant of your surroundings. You may have the chance to see and
hear some endemic wild life. Siberut has four endemic primates which in local
names are called Bilou (Hylobates klossi), Simakobu (Simias concolor), Bokoi
(Macaca pagensis), and Joja (Presbytis potenziani). There are at least five
species of squirrels and chipmunks and birds abound everywhere on the island.
Padding a canoe trekking on muddy trails balancing on a shippery log, wading
through a shallow river, brushing through a dense jungle - are all parts of an
unforgettable jungle adventure on Siberut.
Coastal Discovery Adventure: Some good coral reefs can
be found along the east, south to southeast part of Siberut and the surrounding
small islands. Along the coast, continuous, white sand beaches, magnificent
lagoons, enficing mangroves and coral sea gardens all promise an exciting
coastal adventure. Dolphins (Stenela longirostris) can be seen along the east
coast. Other sea mammals such as digong (Dugong dugong) occasionally can be
sighted near the sea grass by the mangrove along with three protected species
of sea turtles.
Masilok Beach on the southern part of Siberut can be reached
within an hour by a motorized boat. The island's resort, dominated by coconut
grows, a logoon with beautiful white sand beach, promising a very relaxing
environment. The west coast breaks from Siberut island, connected only by sea
garden and mangrove that lie side by side making it a unique experience for
diving. Accommodation and fresh clean water are available. If you plan to
travel to nearby islands, it can be arranged with local owners. In the south
western part of Siberut lies Sagulubek Beach, with calm and clear waters making
it ideal for wind surfing. In the northern part, Sikabaluan beach offers an
excellent dip in warm water to soothe the soul.
TRAVEL ADVISORY AND REQUIREMENTS
- Before traveling to Siberut, it is advisable to take
prophylactic doses of anti malaria medicine at least one week before departing
for Siberut, and should be continued up to two weeks after leaving
- Travelers are also advised to bring sufficient supplies of
medicine (antidiarrea and seasickness, first aid and antibiotics if
- Wear a good pair of hiking boots, bring dry clothes, raincoats
and flash light
- Respect local culture
- Leave no waste or garbage
> MENTAWAI TRIBE ADVENTURE
> SIBERUT ISLAND
> SIBERUT ISLANDS
> ABOUT ADVENTURE INDONESIA


Having good knowledge of HTML and CSS is crucial for all your web design or development work. It provides you with knowledge of how to build a web page and best practices onto well supported websites across all major browsers. So, if you want to familiarize yourself with the HTML, and CSS, it makes sense to start by teaching yourself some basics. But the problem is, with so much training materials available you will not know where to start.
With this in mind, we have gathered together a list of 10 best free online html and css resources to make sure you’re learning the right things in the most effective way possible. Have fun learning!
Whether you are a beginner or an experienced user, this particular cheat sheet is an opportunity and can turn out to be a true life-saver for you. It has all the important tags, attributes for lists, forms, text formatting, and document structure in just one place to save you plenty of time.
If you’re just getting into the world of learning anything from HTML and CSS to Phython or Ruby, CodeAcademy is one of the most popular and a great starting point.
No matter your skill level, W3Schools is a great resource and can be extremely helpful in your learning process. Offers free online learning of HTML & CSS with the help of wide range of tutorials and examples.
GA Dash is another fun and free online course for creating your own responsive websites with the help of HTML and CSS.
This is very useful and well-written guide when it comes to learning HTML & CSS. Outlining the fundamentals, this guide works through all common elements of front-end design and development.
Marksheet is a free HTML and CSS tutorial helping beginners learn HTML and CSS. The content of this project is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. So you can adapt it for your needs.


According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) more than 11% of children have Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). That is more than 6 million children between the ages of 4-17. From 2007 to 2011 the number of children with ADHD more than doubled in the United States
Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is caused by neurological rather than parental, social, or emotional causes. ADHD is caused by a brain chemistry problem not brain damage. The chemicals in the brain are called neurotransmitters.
Neurotransmitters serve various functions in the brain that have been linked to depression, anxiety, lack of concentration, ADHD, and many other issues. There are 5 different neurotransmitters each having a different function: dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, epinephrine, and GABA. Neurotransmitters are used by the brain to stimulate or repress stimulation in brain cells. To pay proper attention, the brain must be adequately stimulated. To have proper control of our impulses, areas of the brain must be adequately controlled, repressed, or slowed down. In ADHD children, both systems of stimulation and repression are not working correctly. Low dopamine and norepinephrine are the two neurotransmitters that tend to be off balance in children with ADHD. A lack of concentration can be a sign of low epinephrine. [Read more…]


Each year on the 21st December visitors from around the world gather at Stonehenge early in the morning to mark the Winter solstice and to see the sunrise above the stones. At dawn the central Altar stone aligns with the Slaughter stone, Heel stone and the rising sun to the northeast.
The Winter Solstice is the most important day of the year at Stonehenge and a truly magical time to be there. It's an ad hoc celebration that brings together England's New Age Tribes (neo-druids, neo-pagans, Wiccans) with ordinary families, tourists, travelers and party people - 100's of them!
For many the impulse to arrive at Stonehenge in time for the Solstice is a little like all those people drawn to the strange rock in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It's akin to a spiritual experience. Anyone who has witnessed the crowd become silent as the sky begins to brighten can attest to that.
Stonehenge Winter Solstice 2014
Stonehenge is carefully aligned on a sight-line that points to the winter solstice sunset (opposed to New Grange, which points to the winter solstice sunrise, and the Goseck circle, which is aligned to both the sunset and sunrise). It is thought that the Winter Solstice was actually more important to the people who constructed Stonehenge than the Summer Solstice. The Winter Solstice was a time when most cattle were slaughtered (so they would not have to be fed during the winter) and the majority of wine and beer was finally fermented.The exact time for the Winter Solstice is December 21st, 17.11pm (UK time). The sunset on the 21st is at 3.53pm and the sunrise on the 21st of December at 8.04am. We will be there for sunrise!
The small group nature of this tour means you can have a real personal experience.
Depart central London at approx 5am* December 21st 2014. Coach Travel to Stonehenge with guide and spend 2 hours inside the circle and witness the sun rising, Druid Ceremony and festivities. Back to London at 11.45am
* This time may vary depending on the access time granted by English Heritage
This is not like our traditional guided 'Private Access' tour. Although this tour is guided it does not visit other attractions and is not everyone's cup of tea, however those who do participate will never forget it and will surely 'tell the tale' for many years to come...... Please take the time to view our images / video of previous 'Solstice Tours'.
For those of you who have not visited this sacred site, we should mention that the complex is roped off. Visitors observe the stones from a distance and are not permitted within the temple complex..........our 'Winter Solstice' tours allow you to be amongst the stones before the site is open to the general public.
N.B. With this exception English Heritage do not allow any other 'private access' tours between 19th December and 25th December
English Heritage did not confirm the date for Open Access for Stonehenge for the Winter Solstice yet, but most likely this will be dawn on the 21st of December. (The sunrise on the 21st is closer to the actual solstice than that on the 22nd of December.) Expect a short period of access, from approximately 7.00 to 9.00am. They works closely with agencies, and people from all sectors of the community, in order to create a peaceful occasion - ensuring an event that can be safely enjoyed by all and protects Stonehenge and its surrounding Monuments.
Due to the nature of this 'special access' tour and the strict entry conditions that English Heritage impose please register your interest for this tour by using the 'book now' button or email us. We will then contact you with booking details and terms and conditions. This is on a first come first serve' basis.
: Solstice sunset viewing - click here


Welcome to my section where I address everyday things around us that we see but don’t observe.
Yes, the science behind what you see every day! And trust me even if you’re not a science person, you’d love to read this.
In this article I’m going to talk about the sensory root of vision: the eyes.
1) “Din me taare nazar aana”
If you have never gotten punched in the face by someone, I’ll tell you an easy way to see stars in the sunlight. Close your eyes and press over them a bit hard for a while; you’ll start seeing something vague like green waves in the shape of your eyes. At least that’s what I see.
This is called a phosphene. From Wikipedia: “A phosphene is a phenomenon characterized by the experience of seeing light without light actually entering the eye.”
Any small effect on the retina can cause phosphenes, from lack of oxygen (by excessive running) to mechanical pressure (sneeze, cough, laughter), to excessive impact of light. For example, if you see a tube light for a long time, you will see a tube light for a minute or two, even after you have turned your head. That is not your imagination!
Phosphenes can also be stimulated artificially by the use of machines on a specific part of a brain called the visual cortex.
2) Daydreams: the force of distraction
Has it ever happened to you that you’re reading your textbook and in between you just start thinking about something completely unrelated? Well with me it happens every day, and from what I have noticed, when that happens, my textbook is a blur.
Now why do things blur when we’re not focusing? It is because our eyes know we’re not focusing. So they’re like, “Boss is on a break, why the hell are we working!” and swoosh they elongate the focal length. For the eyes, the shorter the focal length the more stress they have to put to squeeze the eye lens. So when we’re not looking, the eye de-stresses and lengthens the focal length.
Normal lenses cannot do that. For example, your spectacles cannot change their focal length just like that. If they could, you wouldn’t need to change them when your number increases. It is a special property of our eyes that they can change their focal length whenever they want using tiny muscles inside the eye called ciliary muscles.
3) The Red Eye: Not a 13B ghost
“Red eye” occurs in photos because light from the flash bounces off the back of the eye. The back of the eyes has a choroid, located behind the retina which is rich in blood vessels. Though the light of the flash is white in colour, when the red blood rich choroid reflects the light it makes our eyes appear red. It is same as flashing white light on a red wall, however white the light may be, the wall would still appear red.
See, so much science you didn’t know about your eyes. Of course you see! And after reading this if you fell in love with eyes, listen to Eye To Eye by Taher Shah.
If you have any more eye related science that you’d like to share, tell us below in the comments.
Views presented in the article are those of the author and not of ED.


Antique Chests of Drawers - Early Baroque
In the period of the Restoration in the late seventeenth century most people in England still used old lidded chests for the storage of linen and clothes and chests of drawers as we know them were largely unknown.
In Jacobean times early attempts at making chests of drawers resulted in the development of hybrid mule chests and by the middle of the 17th century these had come to be replaced by the sort of antique chests of drawers that are immediately familar to us today.
Mule chests had lids opening to deep top drawers and Restoration era chests of drawers inherited this tendency to considerable drawer depth.
What distinguishes antique chests of the mid seventeenth century from their forefathers was the great amount of decoration used, greater foreign influences in design trends, and more modern construction techniques.
Often very decorative geometrical patterns and architectural, boldly protruding, mouldings were used.
While some chests of drawers still had panelled sides, as the Restoration era progressed, case construction became more prevalent.
A "carcase", or the body of the piece, usually from oak or pine, was put together with dovetail joints and then veneered in walnut.
Oak Chest with mother of pearl.
Once this was done marquetry was often applied to the veneer. Mixing different kinds of wood, of different colors, allowed for exquisite pictures and patterns to be created in the veneer.
In mid 17th century England very decorative marquetry, in a wide variety of woods and derived from Dutch knowhow, was used, with sprays of tulips and carnations being typical motifs. In the later part of the seventeenth century marquetry decoration tended to more arabesque form with endive and seaweed patterns and wood choice became more selective.


What is Storytelling?
Storytelling is an ancient art, the primeval art, the basis of all communication, imagination and creativity. It has strong bonds with literature, with popular/folk culture, with heritage. It is a homage to the mother tongue, to foreign languages, to the intercultural dialogue.
Narratives are everywhere, in many artistic and socio-cultural sectors the words storytelling and narratives pop up. All have ‘a story to tell’. In this respect oral storytelling as ‘the master of narratives’ has a lot to offer to these media and sectors, and they, in return, offer new carriers and interfaces for storytellers.
FEST is working on a collection of storytelling references in form of articles, multimedia, books and useful links. Please subscribe to our newsletter to get notified once our storytelling guide is published!
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Storytelling in Heritage Contexts About the Research Authors & Publishers Links & Downloads Heritage may have different interpretations and meanings to various people however, at its core it represents a thread that runs from the past to the present. It provides a sense of belonging and continuity through the continuingRead More
One of the main goals of the Federation for European Storytelling is to secure the professional development of storytellers in Europe. FEST pursues raising the quality of the storyteller in several ways: the analysis of training needs, the development of a curriculum for training, residencies and performance opportunities for youngRead More
Contributions to a Theoretical Bibliography In this report we offer a contribution to a theoretical bibliography on contemporary Oral Storytelling. It tries to cover a wide range of resources, from the Instruction Manuals of the beginning of the last Century to the Academic works of the 21th, including other theoreticalRead More
FEST commissioned a research on long term training in storytelling based on desk/internet research, a survey and interviews with FEST member organisations and universities.Read More


Note on lamarckiam
Asked by durvatakalkar31 | 4th Aug, 2019, 12:35: PM
Lamarck’s theory of evolution was called the Theory of Inheritance of Acquired Characters.
According to the theory of inheritance of acquired characters, “the changes in structure or function of any organ acquired during the lifetime of an individual in response to changes in the surrounding environment are inherited by offspring and keep on adding over a period of time”.
This theory states that characters are acquired by animals in two ways,
1.The effects of environment.
2.Use and disuse of body parts.
Answered by Sivanand Patnaik | 4th Aug, 2019, 07:27: PM
- Which was the first organism on the earth?
- what is molecular phylogeny ?
- Speciation and their factor defination
- What factors could lead to the rise of a new species?
- What are the factors that help in the creation of a new species?
- Write short note on. Lamarckism
- Why Mesozoic era is called golden period of reptiles?
- Define micro evolution and speciation
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noun (plural développés pronounced same)Ballet
A movement in which one leg is raised and then kept in a fully extended position.
More example sentences
- A développé is done by drawing the toe of the gesture leg (which bends at the knee and hip) up the front, side, or back of the supporting leg, until it reaches knee height.
- There are few dancers who can actually perform that développé with the liquid quality that the music indicates.
French, past participle of développer 'stretch out, develop'.
Definition of développé in:
- The US English dictionary


When we talk about predictability we’re talking about the continuum of logic and when we talk about the continuum of logic we’re really talking about – although we don’t know it – is the inverse reality. ‘Inverse reality’ isn’t something we’re taught about at school, or that we can study at college or university. Professors don’t generally write books about it, and yet if we don’t grasp the principle of inverted reality – which we don’t – what is any of our knowledge, our so-called ‘understanding’ worth? As Krishnamurti says,
Hasn’t knowledge only crippled me from seeing the truth? Is knowledge itself illusory?
Knowledge of inverse reality which does not portray itself as being ‘knowledge of inverse reality’ is actually an obstacle to seeing the truth, as Krishnamurti says. Its claim to say something useful about reality when it doesn’t prevents us having a relationship with the real world – clearly! So what the world calls ‘knowledge’ is the inverse of knowledge, it is something that stands in the way of understanding, rather than facilitating it. Education is not ‘education’ at all therefore, but rather it is ‘indoctrination in illusion’!
One approach to understanding what just a thing ‘inverted reality’ might be is to consider that predictability doesn’t exist, but it seems to. The predictability of the world about us is more important than we possibly reality it to be – the world we know and relate to every day is the serial world, it is the world that ‘carries over’ from day to day, the world that keeps on ‘repeating’ itself in time. We take it for granted that the world is consistently the same thing, but why should it be? Is logic – or ‘linear causality’ – all there is, or is it somehow ‘over-emphasized’ by our way of looking at things? The simple answer to this is that logic (or cause-and-effect) can’t be ‘all that there is’. It can’t be the whole story (or even the most important part) because logic is inherently glitched. It can’t be used to create any sort of a reality because of this glitch, this self-contradiction. The hidden ‘glitch’ in causality can be expressed thus: in all causal processes the outcome is always inherent in the premise.
What this means therefore is that the outcome equals the premise, the starting-off point, and as soon as we say this we wipe out – at one stroke – the whole continuum of logic. If the effect equals the cause (which is what we are saying) then the effect isn’t ‘the effect’ any more than the cause is ‘the cause’! So this would mean that there isn’t any cause and effect, that there isn’t any ‘realm of cause-and-effect’. We can say without any fear of controversy that this (i.e. the non-existence of causality) isn’t something that we give any consideration to; in other words as far as we are concerned there very much is such a thing as a world of cause-and-effect. That’s the only world that makes any sense to us in fact. That’s the only type of world that makes any sense to the rational mind. When we do take the realm of cause-and-effect to be an actual realm however – which is to say, a realm within which events can actually happen – then what we have done by this unwarranted assumption is to create Inverse Reality.
In the Inverse Reality there appears to be cause-and-effect and this apparent principle appears to create all sorts of ‘events’. Furthermore, it could be said that our main preoccupation is to effectively bring about those events that we want to happen, and prevent those that we don’t want to happen. Our sense of self, our confidence as effective agents, depends upon this perception. This has even been given a name, i.e. perceived self-efficacy. Now the way we normally see thing this way of seeing ourselves (as agents, effective or otherwise) seems to make a lot of sense – I can very readily obtain an impression of myself as existing if I can cause things to happen! Even if what I cause to happen doesn’t happen the way I want it to happen (in other words, if I am a loser rather than a winner) I can still obtain an impression of myself as actually existing. Either way, I’m an agent. Take causality away however and there is no more perceived self-efficacy, either positive or negative. Take away cause and effect and there can be no more winners and no more losers; there can be no more sense of us actually causing anything, and so this understanding of ourselves (i.e. as ‘causers’, or ‘controllers’) is no longer there. And because the way I normally understand myself is as an agent, as entity which has the possibility of effectively controlling its environment, the loss of this understanding – false as it is – is equivalent to the loss of my tangible, verifiable existence.
The realm of cause-and-effect – which Wei Wu Wei calls seriality – is at root nothing other than logic and logic doesn’t exist! Logic doesn’t exist because nothing new ever comes into the picture and if nothing new ever comes into the picture what are we talking about when we talk in terms of logic, when we talk ‘logically’? We could deny this and say that new statements, new ways of looking at the world can come about as a result of employing logic but to say this is patently false. In the realm of logic everything has to be derivable in terms of previous steps and if we can’t derive our statement from what came before it (i.e. if all we can do is just point at it and say, “Wow – look at that!” then very clearly this type of thing (interesting as it may be) is not logic. Logic is the world of the justified and the justifiable – we justify every position in terms of laws of logic and if we cannot do so then our position cannot be upheld. It is then revealed as being anomalous; it is then revealed as being no more ‘error’. But the thing about this is that the new (the truly new) never can be justified in terms of what came before it. It never can be derived in terms of previous statements – if whatever it is could be derived from previous statements then it would be predictable, and if it is predictable then it cannot be new. Reality itself is never predictable, only the games that we play within it are predictable and the games that we play in it are not real!
So logic doesn’t exist. It doesn’t exist because nothing new ever comes about as a result of it. Logic – we might say – is the ‘lawful extension of past assumptions into the future’ and whilst we can extend assumptions that we have made in the past into the future in such a way that there is logical consistency to what we are doing, at the same time it has to be pointed out that what we are doing has nothing to do with reality! This business of extending our assumptions into the future cannot have anything to do with reality because these assumptions of ours are only ever just that – assumptions. Its fine to make assumptions but to make an assumption is never the same thing as ‘saying something about reality’. Where do we get our assumptions from, after all? How do we go about deriving them? Any assumption that we make is never going to be anything more than a shot in the dark and so if we create a whole world via the device of extending a whole bunch of assumed truths into the future (and at the same time conveniently forgetting that we ever assumed anything) then all we have done is to legitimize our ‘shot in the dark’ and create a whole system out of it, a system that we then use to invalidate anything that is not ‘the system’. This happens to be exactly how the thinking mind works and if we imagine that it isn’t then this is simply because we aren’t being honest with ourselves about it. We aren’t being honest with ourselves because ‘not being honest with ourselves’ is the mechanism by which the game works, the only mechanism by which it ever could work…
We could take another tack on this and say that our assumptions are always guaranteed to be ‘beside the point’ because assumptions made by the thinking mind are always definite in nature and reality is never ‘definite’. For something to be ‘definite’ we have to assume a framework and then use that framework as a yardstick to determine the correctness or incorrectness of all possible statements about the world; these scheme works very well but with the one proviso that we can never see whether the framework we assume is ‘true’ or not. To do this we would need another framework and this wouldn’t do us any good because then we’d just be faced with the same old problem all over again! We arbitrarily create all of our certainties, in other words, and we don’t happen to be particularly keen to see this. We’re not very keen to see this because if we did then – of course – we’d have no more certainties left to us since ‘a certainty that has been arbitrarily constructed’ isn’t actually any sort of ‘certainty’ at all!
All future developments within the realm of logic are only ever our assumed premise in disguise and so in order to obtain a sense of security about the world that we have created we need to be very stringent abstemious with regard to actually examining that premise. We need to develop ‘a profound lack of curiosity about it’; we need to develop ‘a blind-spot’. This profound lack of curiosity about the premise on which our logical system is based is a requirement if we are to adapt to ‘life within the system’, and it is a requirement that we are successfully able to meet! The rational mind is only the authority that it is for us when we do not (and cannot, just as long as we are being rational) its basis; this means that the rational mind is at the same time both as solid and reliable as a rock on the one hand, and completely flimsy, ‘flaky’ and untrustworthy on the other. It’s solid and reliable when we don’t look backwards and examine what its basis is, and it is flimsy and completely untrustworthy when we do! In this respect rationality and its obscure pontifications are like religious dogma – they are capable of giving us a great sense of security and comfort just as long as we make a virtue of never questioning their basis…
The rational mind is thus operating on the basis of a scam that no one ever talks about – even professors of psychology don’t talk about it. Especially professors of psychology don’t talk about it because they are part of the scam! The scam in question is that so-called ‘truths’ that we are being provided with by the thinking mind only make hold up when certain information is concealed from us – information regarding how these ‘truths’ came to be ‘true’ in the first place. Because this key information is unavailable to us, the positive world (or the ‘inverted reality’) gets to seem like a viable proposition. We can’t really blame the ration mind for this conspiracy however – even though it might sound from what we have just said as if we legitimately could blame it. The point is of course that the physical universe itself only gets to seem like a viable proposition when certain key information about how it came to be there (or appear to be there) is withheld to us, or is unavailable to us. “Entropy is the price of structure.” as the father of non-linear thermodynamics Ilya Prigogine happily states. Or to put this in another way, unless information is irreversibly lost from the system, there can be no such thing as structure, no such thing as rules…
We automatically tend to think of the process by which the universe came into being as being a positive one – this assumption being as we have just implied inherent in the way that the rational mind itself works – but a vastly more ‘elegant’ approach is to see this process in negative terms, as a loss of information rather than the creation of it. To start off with we have the situation which cosmologists refer to us a symmetrical one – a symmetrical situation being one in which there are no rules! This is Original Symmetry. This is the state of affairs where all possible ways of describing what is going on are equally good, equally viable; this is – in other words – the Universal Set, where everything is allowed and nothing is excluded! When we abstract a specified or defined set from the Universal Set it very much appears that we have ‘created something’, but what has actually happened is that we disallowed everything that is not in the set that we have just defined. We have made all that information unavailable therefore, and the process by which information is lost or made unavailable is entropy. Form is not created by allowing, therefore, but by a process of ‘double-disallowing’, i.e. by a sneaky process of disallowing and then disallowing any information relating to this disallowing!
The thinking mind is – of necessity – based on the same device that the serial universe (the Causal Realm) is based on. It wouldn’t be any use to us otherwise – the proviso here being that its ‘use’ is legitimate only within the serial universe or Causal Realm. The thinking mind can (potentially) say useful things within the context of the serial universe, but part of the package is always going to be that by utilizing this mind we are going to render ourselves incapable of seeing that this context is only ‘an arbitrarily limited context’, which then means that we are going to be trapped within this limited and limiting context without being able to see that we are trapped! We’re trapped in seriality, therefore. As Wei Wu Wei says in The Tenth Man,
All our actions are serial, all our thoughts are serial, all our functions function in seriality; we neither know nor do anything that is not subject to the sequence of time. Even God, although called ‘Eternal’, is seen as everlasting.
To say that seriality (or structure, or the physical universe, or the world of form) is created via a process of irreversible information loss is the same thing as saying that structure is created by the process of ‘taking away perspective’. ‘Perspective’ is just another way of talking about information – when we talk about perspective we are alluding to the number of different ways that we have of looking at something. When we lose perspective then what we’re losing here are all the other ways of looking and so we’re getting stuck with just the one. We’re stuck with just the one way of looking at things but we don’t perceive ourselves as being stuck because we don’t know that there are any other ways! We have lost sight of the way in which the way we have of looking at the world isn’t the only way and this loss of perspective changes everything. This isn’t a small thing, this isn’t just a question of degree – it is a matter of ‘a complete and utter reversal of everything’. The one way is open, the other way closed. To use Joseph Campbell’s terminology, in the one direction lies transparency, in the other opacity. In the first case we are relating to our own existence as a type of living myth, capable of infinite interpretation and reinterpretation whilst in the second case we are relating to ourselves in a strictly literal manner, in a concrete manner, in a manner that is not susceptible to any type of interpretation other than the official one.
Information (or ‘the information universe’) is always transparent – it has no ‘substance’, ‘substance’ meaning some kind of ‘stuff’ that everything is made out of. In such a substance-based scheme the interesting thing is always what we do with the inert stuff, the uses to which we put it. It’s what we make out of the stuff that’s important, not the stuff itself. Who cares about ‘stuff’, anyway? That’s like caring about dust or dirt. This is the message we hear solemnly articulated in a Christian funeral service – “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” It’s what happens in-between that matters to us, obviously! When we look at things the other way around however it is where the show comes from that it interesting rather than the show itself. It’s the stuff that’s of value, not the games we play with it. Or as we could also say, it’s the transparency that’s interesting, not the opaque forms that we abstract from it. There isn’t any dead / inert / passive / blank material that everything is made of – it’s the constructed things that are dead, inert, passive, blank! That which everything is made of is alive and vital, but the forms that we identify with in everyday life are not.
Immortals are mortal, mortals immortal, living in their death and dying in their life.
says Heraclitus. Very curiously therefore, we identify ourselves with the dead mechanical forms and fear our return to the living Source. Or to put this another way, when we live in the Inverted Reality we put all our eggs in a basket that is not real and never could be and put all of our energy into holding onto what we never had and never could have, and this pointless suffering-producing struggle is what we perversely see as ‘living our lives’. This pernicious ‘inversion of the real and the unreal’ is the inevitable consequence of living in the inverted reality – the inversion of values being that that we should see the opaque world as being all-important, whilst the transparent world we take to be entirely inconsequential, or more accurately, as not even existing at all…
Artwork: Entropy and Order by fractalfiend