Nerdshit

on December 30, 2004

Read the full post "Tsunami death toll tops 116,000" (1069 words, estimated 4:17 mins reading time)

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Relief workers find devastation in Indonesia

Thursday, December 30, 2004 Posted: 10:10 AM EST (1510 GMT)

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia (CNN)—The death toll from Sunday’s tsunamis has jumped sharply to over 116,000 after Indonesia reported nearly 80,000 people were killed in that country alone.

U.N. relief workers arrived in Indonesia’s Aceh province to find devastation in the region closest to the epicenter of the earthquake that spawned the killer tsunamis.

Emergency workers reported that in some parts of Aceh, as many as one in every four citizens was dead.

Scenes of destruction—homes and businesses flattened, buses tossed about like toys, piles of rubble filling the streets—were repeated across the region, as were the scenes of grief—residents and vacationers searching in vain for loved ones, or, at times, finding them in makeshift morgues.

From CNN.com

Bush’s inauguration to reflect nation at war

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Read the full post "Bush’s inauguration to reflect nation at war" (798 words, estimated 3:12 mins reading time)

on December 28, 2004

in Political

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By Nina Bradley
Senior Producer
MSNBC
Updated: 4:14 p.m. ET Dec. 15, 2004

The war on terror will take center stage at next month?s second inauguration for President Bush in Washington, D.C.

?This year?s theme will be ?Celebrating Freedom, Honoring Service,? said Jeanne Phillips chairwoman 55th presidential committee speaking to the media for the first time on Wednesday about the theme and schedule for this year?s festivities.

?It will be an important display of gratitude to members of the armed services. Each activity reflects our theme. We recognize this time that we are a nation at war.?

Festivities planned
There will be a total of nine inaugural balls this year, a youth concert, a parade, a fireworks display and, the official swearing in ceremony at noon on Jan. 20.

The committee promised a full schedule of events later this week, but did release some brief highlights.

* On Jan. 18, there will be a Military Gala, which is a special tribute to troops abroad with a youth concert in the evening featuring musical acts, video clips and guest speakers. * On Jan. 19, there will be a variety of musical acts, entertainment and a fireworks display. * On Jan. 20, the committee said they are working hard to have each state represented at the noontime parade which Jenkins said has generated enormous interest. The balls will take place that evening.

This year?s event will also have one brand new addition, the Commander-in-Chief Ball. This event will be free of charge to 2,000 members of the armed services and their families, featuring those who have recently returned from Iraq and Afghanistan, or those who will be deployed there soon.

Greg Jenkins, the Inaugural Committee Executive Director, explained during a conference call that the committee was working with the Defense Department to make sure tickets are accurately distributed.

When pressed about politicizing the events for members of the military, Jenkins insisted, ?No inaugural events are political events; this is a bi-partisan celebration.?

Unprecedented security
Security will be unprecedented because it is the first inauguration to take place since the Sept. 11th attacks.

Jenkins and Phillips refused to answer any security-related questions, deferring those questions to the Secret Service.

The estimated budget for the event is $30-40 million, but that will not cover security costs.

From MSNBC

Wave toll could reach 100,000

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on December 28, 2004

Read the full post "Wave toll could reach 100,000" (242 words, estimated 58 secs reading time)

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From correspondents in Rome
December 29, 2004

THE death toll from the massive tsunamis unleashed by an earthquake in the Indian Ocean could reach more than 100,000, the head of Italy’s civil emergency relief services warned today.

“The number of victims is destined to increase over the coming days and I fear that in the end it will be more than 100,000 deaths even if we will never know the exact figure because there is no register of the population in most of the affected countries,” Guido Bertolaso, director of the Italian civil protection unit told reporters.

Italy’s emergency relief services have been charged with coordinating all rescue operations in the region by the European Union, Italian Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini said.

Two days after the massive tidal waves ravaged the coastline of eight Asian countries, the death toll has passed 55,000, with 30,000 people still missing. Most of the victims have been in Indonesia and Sri Lanka.

Asia Struggles to Cope With 44,000 Dead

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on December 28, 2004

Read the full post "Asia Struggles to Cope With 44,000 Dead" (1221 words, estimated 4:53 mins reading time)

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By ANDI DJATMIKO, Associated Press Writer

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia – Mourners in Sri Lanka used their bare hands to dig graves Tuesday while hungry islanders in Indonesia turned to looting in the aftermath of Asia’s devastating tsunamis. Thousands more bodies were found in Indonesia, dramatically increasing the death toll across 11 nations to around 44,000.

Emergency workers found that 10,000 people had been killed in a single town, Meulaboh, in Aceh province at the northern tip of Sumatra island, the hardest hit region in Indonesia, said Purnomo Sidik, national disaster director at the Social Affairs Ministry.

Another 9,000 were confirmed dead so far in the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, and surrounding towns, he said. Along Aceh’s hard-hit western coastline, villages were swamped up to the roofs, still unexplored by soldiers combing the area for survivors and dead. Refugees fleeing the area described surviving for days on little more than coconuts before reaching Banda Aceh.

“The sea was full of bodies,” said Sukardi Kasdi, who reached the capital from his town of Surang.

From Yahoo News

Quake rattled Earth orbit, changed map of Asia: US geophysicist

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on December 28, 2004

Read the full post "Quake rattled Earth orbit, changed map of Asia: US geophysicist" (354 words, estimated 1:25 mins reading time)

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LOS ANGELES, (AFP) – An earthquake that unleashed deadly tidal waves on Asia was so powerful it made the Earth wobble on its axis and permanently altered the regional map, US geophysicists said.

The 9.0-magnitude temblor that struck 250 kilometers (155 miles) southeast of Sumatra island Sunday may have moved small islands as much as 20 meters (66 feet), according to one expert.

“That earthquake has changed the map,” US Geological Survey expert Ken Hudnut told AFP.

From Yahoo News

A Question About Time Posed To Gregg Rosenberg

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on December 24, 2004

Read the full post "A Question About Time Posed To Gregg Rosenberg" (445 words, estimated 1:47 mins reading time)

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Q: My main question is: have you thought any more about the problem of time? In the book, it seemed a bit of a challenge to link the subjective time of consciousness back to the emergence of time (and space) from the causal mesh at a more primitive level (sections 10.6 and 14.3.2). Now, it’s very possible I didn’t comprehend some of the arguments there, but I was wondering if there is any other way to address the status of time as something which inherently accompanies (not emerges from) causality and experience?

A: I would not say that I divide time in ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ time. Rather I divide it into ‘subjective’ and ‘intersubjective’ time, with intersubjective time being a relativistic construction from the structure of the causal mesh. That is, one must pick a node in the mesh and then back into a structure for time relative to that node, so intersubjective time is not an ‘objective’ view of time. FWIW, I think this view dovetails fairly well with the treatment of these things in quantum loop theory, which is a theory of physics that I find appealing.

Guide to Reality

Whitehead’s Even More Dangerous Idea by Peter Farleigh

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on December 23, 2004

Read the full post "Whitehead’s Even More Dangerous Idea by Peter Farleigh" (3197 words, estimated 12:47 mins reading time)

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”?.any doctrine which refuses to place human experience outside nature, must find in descriptions of human experience factors which also enter into the descriptions of less specialized natural occurrences. If there can be no such factors, then the doctrine of human experience as a fact within nature is mere bluff, founded upon vague phrases whose sole merit is a comforting familiarity. We should either admit dualism, at least as a provisional doctrine, or we should point out the identical elements connecting human experience with physical science.”

from here

Participation, Organization, and Mind: Toward a Participatory Worldview by David Skrbina

Published

on December 23, 2004

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The present modern worldview, the Mechanistic Worldview, has become inadequate to handle pressing concerns of society. It has outlived its usefulness, and hence a new worldview is called for. I develop the Participatory Worldview as a promising alternative, and explore various themes of participatory philosophy throughout the history of Western Civilization.

As I conceive it, the concept of ‘participation’ is fundamentally a mental phenomenon, and therefore a key aspect of the Participatory Worldview is the idea of ‘participatory mind’. In the Mechanistic Worldview mind is a mysterious entity, attributed only to humans and perhaps higher mammals. In the Participatory Worldview mind is a naturalistic, holistic, and universal phenomenon. Human mind is then seen as a particular manifestation of this universal nature. Philosophical systems in which mind is present in all things are considered versions of panpsychism, and hence I argue for a system that I call ‘participatory panpsychism’. My particular articulation of participatory panpsychism is based on ideas from chaos theory and nonlinear dynamics, and is called ‘hylonoism’.

Why I became a Panexperientialist by Charles Birch

Published

on December 23, 2004

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From my undergraduate years through my post?graduate years I was surrounded by materialists. These were scientists whose thought was dominated by the Newtonian worldview. The world was made of billiard ball?like atoms pushed around by each other as a billiard ball is pushed by another on the table. The universe was a gigantic mechanism made up of lesser mechanisms, be they human beings or the physicists’ fundamental particles. All was to be explained in terms of matter and motion.

AlfredNorthWhitehead.com

Vaccine Could Unclog Arteries for Life

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Read the full post "Vaccine Could Unclog Arteries for Life" (302 words, estimated 1:12 mins reading time)

on December 23, 2004

in Health/Bio-Tech

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Heart disease vaccines in development could offer a lifetime of protection for children and help reduce artery clogs in adults, suggest new animal studies.

The world’s leading cause of death, coronary heart disease kills more than seven million people each year. Heart attacks usually occur when blood clots in the heart’s arteries cut off its blood supply. One of the main underlying causes is a rupture in fatty plaques lining the arteries, releasing phospholipids and proteins that stick to blood platelets and cause clots.

BetterHumans

Religion and Science: Lama in the Lab

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Read the full post "Religion and Science: Lama in the Lab" (944 words, estimated 3:47 mins reading time)

on December 23, 2004

in Consciousness/Psych/Brain and Mind/Body/Spirit

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Many religious leaders find themselves at odds with science, but the head of Tibetan Buddhism is a notable exception. Jonathan Knight meets a neurologist whose audience with the Dalai Lama helped to explain why.

One of the first things people discover when they meet His Holiness the Dalai Lama is that the head of Tibetan Buddhism likes a good laugh. “He jokes all the time,” says Fred Gage, a neuroscientist at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, who met the spiritual leader for the first time in October. “He has a great sense of humour.”

This is probably a good thing. The occasion for this meeting ? a research conference held at the Dalai Lama’s headquarters in Dharamsala, India ? included a presentation of evidence that people in good spirits are better able to control their blood sugar levels. Other talks suggested that meditation can transform emotions and that daily experiences can alter the expression of genes. Gage presented his research into how the brain can remake itself throughout life.

Nature via Future Hi

For Arnold’s Sake

Published

on December 23, 2004

in Cannabis

. 1 Comment

ForArnoldsSake.com

Whaaaaat?! Qabala/Chakra/8-Dimensions of Consciousness Symbiosis?

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View map which correlates the Qabalistic Tree of Life, the Chakra System, and the 8-Ciruits of Consciousness Model!!

on December 20, 2004

in Occulture

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from Vortex Egg

Freestyling as gnosis

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Direct link to the comment in question.

on December 20, 2004

in Mind/Body/Spirit

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Great comment on on the magickal hip hop thread on Key 23 considering freestyling as channeling of the other:

this is where you don?t even realize you?re freestyling anymore.
we?ve noticed that without fail, the best rhymes we?ve ever committed
to minidisc, we have no memory of doing. this is where you?re
channeling from the cosmos and really humping the Logos good.

[...]

I think that language itself is beginning to communicate with us. I
look forward to understanding what the hell it?s talking about.

From TechnoOccult

DNA may hold key to information processing and data storage

Published