Thank you for being such wonderful teachers,exemplary role models, and caring people.
Thank you for knowing your subjects and sharing your knowledge.
Thank you for not being afraid to treat students like real people.
Thank you for showing acceptance, approval, and appreciation. These are all gifts that are so important to a student's development and that your students will always remember, just as they will also
Remember you, Words of encouragement, a little respect, simple gestures of kindness from a teacher promote the perfect climate for students to study, learn and grow.Your attitude translates into a spirit of friendliness and good will towards others in an atmosphere of creative freedom, joy and ease, and you foster this feeling in your classroom. I salute the good work you've done. I appreciate the people you are, and I think you for your positive influence. You have passed on invaluable instruction and wisdom and created pleasurable moments associated with learning that will always be sweet memories.
Thank you for answering the call to be teachers.
Thank you for the enduring impression you've made in the lives you have touched.Every community needs people like you. Your contributions are immeasurable. Your lessons are permanent. You improve our world. You are so important.
Thank you once again to be my teacher and help me to be whatever today I am. Speical thanks to Mr.Gyotindra Narayan Jha, Md Abdul Qayum, Mr. Akhilesh Pd. Yadav, Mr. Shiv Shankar Das, Mr. Bhola Nath Jha, Mr Nihar Ranjan Sahu, Mr. Manoj, Mrs. Archana Arora, Mrs. Rashmi Priya, Mr. Gyan and also all the people who contributed little bit to my whole life.

With Respect
Shashidhar Kumar
Website : www.shashionline.in
Email : shashi@shashionline.in

I remember reading that Lokmanya Tilak started public festivals to foster a sense of unity among people. It made sense that many communities came together to celebrate something in times of extreme social unrest under the British rule. But what's the deal today? Moreover, has it even remained what it was intended to be?

Let's put aside the fact that I'm an atheist and celebration of festivals doesn't make sense to me anyway. Let's just look at the idea of public demonstrations as such.

You bring in the idol at home and perform aartis to appease the God. Fair enough. You invite other people so that everyone could benefit from one another's prayers. Again, fair enough. But what do you gain by playing loud music and making everyone else (including the ones who don't wish to be a part of it) a part of it? What do you gain by dancing along the street and disrupting the flow of traffic?

The different mentalities of people play a role here. One of the types are those who, in Ayn Rand's words, gain their self-esteem second hand. These people gauge the importance of a celebration by the number of people that participate, the size of the idol used, and the amount of noise made. The number of people gaping at your extravagance is a bigger measure of faith than the faith itself. You are great if people consider you great, irrespective of what you really are. Incidentally, this also happens to be one of the reasons why corrupt people donate large funds to charity thinking that the gesture would somehow atone for their corruption.

The other type of people involved in this are those who have forgotten the difference between "tolerance" and "respect." I don't know how this came to be, but the phrase "tolerance to others' opinions" has somehow changed into "respect for other's opinions." As if respect was something one earns as a birthright. Meaning, if you have reverence for Lord xyz, everyone else is supposed to respect that. That's nonsense. Everyone has to "tolerate" that. They cannot stop you from doing it, but they certainly don't have to consider your notions worth respecting. Respect is a special feeling reserved only for things that you have reverence for, not what others have reverence for.

Then there are those simply looking for an excuse to shed the mask of civility and be their own savage self. This public display of "happiness" gives them an opportunity to do just that. These are the ones you will find shabbily dressed, gloating between women who wouldn't otherwise even look at them, and dancing without restraint.

Of course, there are also the ones who are really spiritual and think that all of this makes sense. It is to them I want to ask: Does it?

I trust that no one will tell me that faith gets stronger by public demonstration. And certainly no one can claim that Gods prefer noisy, dancing devotees more than they prefer solemn, rational worshippers. Then what purpose does this act serve? I'm not saying you don't have a right to express your happiness; you do. You can be as boisterous as you want when you're in a place with people who all seek the same form of expression. But why is it so important to do it front of a society that might or might not be interested in sitting through an hour of that hubbub.

I appreciate that it's not alright for others to comment on someone else's faith; it's a personal matter. But do the ones celebrating it realize that it is a personal matter, and that it's called "personal" for a reason?

Expressing your happiness does not have to mean being obnoxious to others.

While most pups are born, Mr. Snuppy and Mrs. Snuppy were "created" through the exciting process of cloning. Forgive my use of the term Mrs. Snuppy, but as her name was of no significance despite her hard work in bringing the pups to life, I couldn’t find it in this fantastic article that I read in the newspaper. I think that it’s with great pride that the “now-disgraced cloning expert Hwang Woo-Suk” of Seoul National University (some of whose work on “cloning embryonic human stem cells” was identified as fake,) brought this wonderful news to the world!

I should be happy. Nine new “pure-bred” Afghan Hound pups have been brought into this world. They are unique, aren’t they? They are purebred in two ways – both their parents are Afghan Hounds and both are clones! Voila! They are the purest! Think about the commercial aspect of this whole deal – in future we may have a new kind of pup in the pup-sellers’ windows…and they are going to have a price tag, which would make them the most exclusive of all status symbols! I should be happy!!

But I am not. Somehow this whole thing reminds me of the movie Gattaca! I don’t know if you seen it, but it tells us what may happen to this world if we begin to engineer people which is going to be the next step…they are now moving to wolves!

In my estimation, the next cloned lot would be that of guerrillas or orangutans; and then human babies will be first “manufactured” illegally…because no government will permit experimentation on humans…and then the engineered humans shall take over (it would be easier for them, for they wouldn’t have the flaws that natural-born humans would have) – and the children born of love would become second-grade citizens of the new world.

You may call this hogwash, but a canine can see twenty times the distance a human can, and mark my words…check them out when the time comes…or probably when the time comes, we’ll have only engineered humans and pups, who’ll be able to read and write…so they shall read this and brand me a canine Nostradamus! Who knows!

As I said earlier, this whole thing doesn’t make me happy. There are better things to be done with all that money that’s being poured down this cloning drain! The Katrinas and the Tsunamis, and the Gustavs and the Kosis will always be there to give us a better cause to spend money upon! Today, we still have humans who look at the victims with sympathy, but when the cousins of these natural disasters strike the engineered-beings; sympathy would be scarce, especially for the natural-borns!

The individualism that today enthuses humans to embrace cloning would become its first casualty, as cloning by its very definition is the antithesis of individualism!

So I congratulate Snuppy, but with a heavy heart. He doesn’t know that he is a victim and that his pups are symbols of a future that I’d rather not imagine!

And personally I would be happy if even this research by Hwang Woo-Suk turns out to be a fake!

There's no such thing as bad student, only bad teacher...

Actually I take that back - sometimes there are naughty students

I also mentioned wanting to get Daniel Wilson's book How To Survive a Robot Uprising (Tips on Defending Yourself During the Upcoming Rebellion .

Then, the other night, I saw another show on robotics (how in the hell do I keep stumbling across these cool, informative shows? Oh, and to those who say TV is useless - I beg to differ).

On this particular show on robotics, they did mention the future of humanity alongside robots, and they claimed that the humans that wanted to keep up/survive would have to be implemented with artificial parts, something the futurists like to call "transhumanism" - the mixture of biology and machinery.

Some of this is already done, with pacemakers and artificial limbs, and other parts of the body, but what the program was suggesting is much more drastic implementations, such as to the brain, involving silicon chips (such as the infamous RFID chips) and so forth.

Ok, I thought. So it boils down to adding robotic aspects to ourselves in order to best the technology - being like them, but also still having humanity. This is the answer! I thought.

But then today I saw an extremely disturbing episode of the sci-fi show Outer Limits.

Mind you, it is science FICTION.

And it was made in 1997.

But the fact is, it was the best damn episode of Outer Limits I had ever seen. Why?

The episode is called "Stream of Consciousness", and, in a nutshell, humanity is living within a futuristic society where everyone has implements on the side of their heads which interact with their brain in order to acquire all human data instantly, instead of having to read it/learn it.

The main character, however, is a human that had "brain damage" (he doesn't appear less intelligent) - so he wasn't able to have the implant, since he was very young.

But the disturbing part came when the "data stream" that all humans subscribed to started to give random humans a "virus" that caused information to be sought after/downloaded too fast for the brain to process - eventually killing the person.

So finally, the guy without the head implant has to go and find a written book that the data stream/computer had neglected to destroy (although it had neglected to destroy this copy) - in order to have his friend, a girl with an implant, read the book and spread the shutdown code to the whole system.

The problem was that, once all entwined together with this data stream, the stream itself was like a mass consciousness to all the people, and none of them would willfully destroy it (themselves!) Wow.

Basically, the question is this - if humans merge with technology as the transhumanists desire, would we doom ourselves to being vulnerable to something like a computer virus killing us?

A disturbing thought.

I'm just going to buy that fucking book, already.

The media is partly to blame, as they focus on domestic issues only anymore. American's have no clue what's going on past the mailbox anymore. As the international issues are burried deep in the confines of newspaper advertisements, and as the broadcasts continue to argue over who has what kind of bias and spin, the world is becoming a strange place.

These misc. and utterly random bills are presented and passed, and before they know it the people's lives are hanging in the balance. There is no transparency in government, and that doesn't help the people. It only seems to make them more ignorant to what's going on which is the prime reason for this article in the first place. Some say ignorance is bliss, but with ignorance also comes a loss of power. In this wonderful country power for the government has always been of the people, by the people, and for the people. When people gain ignorance, the power goes to those few who seem to control all things.

As for me, I choose to take arms against the subtle giants that exist in the world. I cannot stand idly by while genocides rage in Africa, nor when China's government tells its people what they can and cannot think or talk about. It's time we gather once again, and let us fight for the greater good which we all know exists somewhere within the hearts of all men and women. Or we can just sit down and let the subtle giants become so powerful that there is no hope of getting things back to where they were. So the choice is yours, will it be the red pill or the blue pill.

"There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest"-Elie Wiesel

Nihilism (from the Latin nihil, nothing) is a philosophical position which argues that existence is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value. Nihilists generally assert some or all of the following:

• Objective morality does not exist.
• No action is logically preferable to any other in regard to the moral value of one action over another.
• In the absence of objective morality, existence has no intrinsic higher meaning or goal.
• There is no reasonable proof or argument for the existence of a higher ruler or creator.
• Even if a higher ruler or creator exists, humanity has no moral obligation to worship them.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Many do not want to register the fact that objective morality does not exist; most would claim that there is a set of "univeral laws" that exist for everyone -- but I do not believe this to be true, because I am not under that set of "universal moral laws", so I therefore break from that line, and logically if one person doesn't follow "univeral moral code" than the entire claim must be false.

Nihilism is not reactionary; it is a movement that has been growing since the 19th century -- it is simply that events in the 20th, and in the last 8 years of the 21st century, have assisted in the expansion of this type of thought -- that life itself has no meaning. It is not existentialism, for it goes beyond simply admitting that there is "nothing". This is an affirmation that not only does nothing exist, but that it is futile to make truth claims, and to make assumptions based on knowledge -- for there is no universal, binding truth. In other words: Nothing matters.

It is not that nihilism is indifferent, or ambivalent -- it is, rather, that there is a sense that what we perceive in the world has no absolutes, and that truth is a human construct -- humanity creates truth because we want to see it, not because it exists inherently.

How Are You Celebrating "Metaphysical Awareness Month"?

Well, I guess I've been engaged in a dialogue with Dan Peterson at scientificblogging.com about his post: Watching Sports Is Good For Your Brain

Here's an excerpt:

...the interesting finding here is that those with experience, either playing or watching, are actually calling on additional neural networks in their brains to help their normal language comprehension abilities. In other words, the memories of learned actions are linked and assist other cognitive tasks. That sounds pretty much like the definition of embodied cognition and Dr. Beilock's research has helped that theory take another step forward. In her words, "Experience playing and watching sports has enduring effects on language understanding by changing the neural networks that support comprehension to incorporate areas active in performing sports skills."

So, take pride in your own brain the next time you hear, "Kobe dribbles the ball to the top of the key, crosses over, drives the lane, and finger rolls over Duncan for two." If you can picture that play in your mind, your left dorsal premotor cortex just kicked into gear!

I recommend reading the full article.

Peterson is interested in a theory called "embodied cognition" which, until reading his post, I had not heard of before. I scanned the linked Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on the theory and it seems straight-forward enough. I sum up my thoughts on the theory in one of my responses which I will now shamelessly re-post:

I find the theory of embodied cognition more in the spirit of materialist theories of cognition in which consciousness is identified, somehow, with actual material brain processes. On this view, mental (immaterial, psychical) processes can be analyzed, explained and understood in terms of brain (material, physical) processes. Of course, neuroscience must progress further before this is possible.

I see the embodied cognition theory as an extension of the materialist theory for a couple of reasons. First, the tips of my fingers are just as important for sensory perception than the appropriate parts of the brain. I include the sensory organs, indeed the entire body, as part of the physical counter-part to the thinking mind. I suppose this makes me somewhat of a dualist, whereas the materialist does not allow for a non-physical element of consciousness. If embodied cognition is the view that upon hearing/watching actions with which one has frequently experienced and of which one has detailed knowledge are processed quicker and the actions are imagined (pictured mentally) more clearly because of brain processes that correspond on that occasion, then I see nothing wrong with this theory on a neurophysiological level. However, if the theory is strong and is used to try to explain consciousness in terms of actions, then I'm not very found of the theory.

It seems to me that the LDPC [i.e. left dorsal premotor cortex - konservo] activity could be evidence of some sort of natural mnemonic device (I use the term loosely, for it's really a brain process we are talking about not a rhyme used to remember the order of the planets or whether the "i" comes before the "e" after a "c"). The LDPC activity would be the physical side of the coin, the mental side would be the reports of clearer imagery and quicker understanding of the events being described.

Classical empiricism holds that particular sensory perceptions form an impression, these impression can be abstracted into an "idea" of various kinds of impressions. For instance, a child can have sensory experiences of his or her first apple, he or she can be told that that red object is called "an apple." After seeing many red objects that taste, feel, smell, etc. like the thing called "an apple." The child will have a basic "idea" of "an apple," i.e. he or she will know what an apple is. Upon hearing the word "apple" or upon seeing, say, a painting of a bowl of fruit (which includes an apple) the "idea" of "apple" may come to the child's mind, perhaps even a specific apple. Another piece of fruit, one which the child may have never encountered, a kiwi, for example, will not have a corresponding "idea" but will merely be a particular impression. If this impression is not reinforced with subsequent kiwi impressions, then perhaps no "idea" of kiwi will be formed (or if one is, it will surely not be as strong as the "idea" of an apple). This is a theory primarily about the mental side of the coin, perhaps, when the ideas are derived from impressions formed through activities such as sports, the physical side of this processes can be explained with the increased activity of LDPC.

For more on information on this psychological/philosophical theory check out the original post and the links Peterson provides therein. You can also read me other comments and don't forget to be aware of metaphysics! :P

What do you think?

photos by pingnews.com & freestone

ఆ వాఖ్యం

ఎప్పటికప్పుడు నిత్యనూతనంగా ప్రేమిస్తూ వుండటమంత ఆత్మవంచన ప్రపంచంలో మరొకటి లేదు.

ఇది చదివిన వెంటనే నాకు "How true it is...." అని అనిపించింది. కాని ఇదే కొన్ని సంవత్సరాల క్రితమైతే తప్పక వ్యతిరేకించేవాడిని.

అప్పటిలో ప్రేమ సత్యం.... నిత్యం.... నూతనం.. అని ఇలా ఎన్నో భావాలు... అభిప్రాయాలు....

కాని ఈరోజు ....

అలా అని అవి అంతా ట్రాష్ అని అనను. కాని అంత దృఢమైన అభిప్రాయం ఈరోజు లేదు అంతే. అందుకే శరత్ (దేవదాస్) అభిప్రాయాంతో ఏకీభవించాగలిగాను...

కాని ఈ మార్పుని ఒక అంతు పట్టుదామంటే....

నాకు తెలియకుండ నాలో ఒక "opportunist" వున్నాడు అని ఒప్పుకోవాల్సి వస్తుందనో....
లేక ప్రేమకి ఎక్కడ నిర్వచనం ఇవ్వాల్సి వస్తుందో అన్న అనుమానమో....
లేక ప్రేమనే ఎక్కడ ద్వేషించాల్సి వస్తుందో అన్న భయమో...
ఏమో....

ఆలోచనలతో ఎటూ తూగలేక అనిశ్చితితో కొట్టుమిట్టడుతూ.....
వంశీ

At my first Buddhist teaching session, we talked about cherishing others.  This is my exercise in contemplating the connectedness of all living creatures.  

When we talk about a "self-made" man, it usually means that this person was born into circumstances that were very humble and then rose to have a great deal of wealth and power.  These people are described as having "pulled themselves up by the bootstraps" and "climbing the corporate ladder" all of which implies that they did it alone.  However, let's examine is this man is really exclusively self-made.

The claim is refuted simply by thinking about the fact that in order for him to come into being, he needed his mother and his father to have sex.  Beyond that, though, his parents raised him, whether poorly or well, which probably contributed to his personality and definitely contributed to his ability to walk, talk, feed himself, and exist in society.  

His teachers from all grades of school gave him the basic amount of education that allowed him to enter the working world.  Someone had to give him his first job, someone had to teach him the skills he would need to run a company.  He had to have workers and underlings in order to deal with the everyday running of whatever business he was in.

Then lets add in all the people who make life possible for everyone on an everyday basis.  When you read a newspaper, for instance, someone had to make the paper, write the stories, create the stories, and distribute the paper itself.  When you eat, someone had to grow or kill the food, someone had to prepare it, ship it, and build the grocery store to sell it in.  Someone even had to print the money that you bought it with.  

All in all, there are millions of people we don't know and probably will never know who give us the things that make our lives easier.  Without each other, where would we be?

If we are indeed on the inevitable path to destruction -- as all things must be -- then why bother living our lives in accordance with morals, personal beliefs, and the pursuit of happiness? The human race is bound to be extinct at some date in the indefinite future. Our planet, for that matter, will not last forever. All human history -- all Earth history -- will be space dust. So: if each one of us is going to die (assuming there is no afterlife), and at some point there will be no record of humankind, why should we care about our lives at all?

Here's how I see it: we live in spheres of perception that dictate what we do and what we believe in. Carl Sagan described Earth as a tiny blue dot in the vastness of space -- a desolate perspective. But human beings do not populate the far reaches of space, and the question becomes (assuming the existence of things perceived only by telescopes), What reason is there to view Earth from a hundred light years away? I cannot see a practical purpose for space exploration apart from satisfying our own curiosity for the unknown (and perhaps our wanderlust, which is fulfilled vicariously through images and videos of space). Scientists declare that there may be water on Mars. But what for? We have no shortage of water on our own planet. Why do we keep sending probes to Mars? There are no intelligent beings on the Red Planet who can bestow us with the answers to life's mysteries. I am fascinated by space exploration, but is it a pragmatic loss?

My point is that humans live exclusively on the third planet from the sun, so our physical perception of life is thus limited to the confines of the world (with the sparse exception of astronauts, who of course must return to the ground). We are all living organisms who are born, reproduce, and die, much like finches, trout, or bacteria. But perspective gives our life meaning. We view the world that is immediately in front of us -- the one that exists right here and right now. We are not looking down on an ultimately futile Earth from a bird's-eye view. We are not witnessing our own deaths, or a world without us in it. Our own personal universes exist between birth and death and extend to anywhere we have physically explored and witnessed with our own two eyes. Within those universes, we exist, we are real, and because of that our lives have meaning.

'Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point.'

'The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.'

Oh, really?

There are three things about Ehrman’s writing that help me sit up and listen to what he is saying.

First, he is world renowned scholar in his field.  He has been teaching the bible at university level for years and knows the book and its documents and the scholarship associated with it inside out.

Secondly, he is a very able communicator.  The substance of the Misquoting Jesus is the scholarship surrounding the New Testament documents - a very technical subject.  Despite this, he wrote a very readable book for the non-expert.  In God’s Problem he looks at the subject of suffering and examines how, for him, the answers as to why we suffer provided in the bible seriously fail to convince him that an omnipotent and loving god exists.He moves with ease and grace through the theology and philosophy of the Old and New Testaments, all the time reminding us that despite the words, suffering is a very human problem.  The modern day examples of suffering he discusses are personal and real, and cry out for answers.  We may be able to detach ourselves from the suffering of Old Testament nations, but, as Ehrman reminds us, the obscenity of the Holocaust is closer to home, as is the suffering of our family members and neighbours.

Thirdly, he writes as someone who has had inside knowledge, not only of the bible, but of Christian apologetics.  He knows the kind of things that Christians say because for years, he was one himself.  Before gaining a PhD from Princeton, he had studied at the fundamentalist Moody Bible Institute, the Evangelical Wheaton College and was a church minister.  He doesn’t write from an assumed knowledge of what the church is saying - he knows, and he knows too that for him the answers don’t make sense when critically examined.  And for Ehrman that critical examination is all the more compelling because it is based both on strong academic argument and pastoral experience.

In times of questioning and despair, people often quote the bible to provide answers - or sometimes produce their own glib answers reflecting what they want the bible to say.  The bible, however, does not have one answer but many - and these often contradict one another.  The prophets and many of the history books tell us clearly that suffering is a punishment for sin.  Some of the Wisdom literature tells us either that suffering is a test to be endured, or that suffering is beyond comprehension and has to be accepted.  All apocalyptic texts in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament tell us that god will eventually make right all that is wrong with the world.  Other parts tell us that we suffer because of other sinful human beings.  Other parts tell us that god causes suffering because it is in some way redemptive.  Ehrman establishes the biblical basis for each one of these arguments and then examines the answer in the light of logic and experience.

Despite the potentially bleak subject, and despite what I thought would have been my over-familiarity with the biblical text (I read, studied, and taught the bible for over thirty years), I found this a surprisingly stimulating book.  This, in part, is due to Ehrman’s light but authoritative style and his ability both to present complex issues simply and to make potentially ‘dry stuff’ live.  However, I found it refreshing to read in at least two other ways.

First, he opened windows on the familiar biblical text, enabling me to see something different for the first time.  At times we are invited to soar over the mountains with the eagles as he draws his subject out of large parts of the bible.  We get the global picture - the woods as well as the trees.  That enabled me to have a new context for understanding particular books.  But then he deftly swoops down to some detail and provides new insights into over-familiar passages.  I especially enjoyed his commentary on the prophets, and in particular his exegesis of some of the classic suffering servant sections of Isaiah.

Secondly, he asks the real, awkward questions, that I was unwilling to seriously face when I was a Christian.  And because he asks them with such compassion and such compelling evidence from experience, it is hard for them to go away or to be dealt with by less than adequate theology and philosophy.  Here is just a sample of some of them:

• If suffering is a punishment by god for sin (a major theme of much of the bible), why are some notoriously evil people allowed to live long and healthy lives in luxury while innocent babies are killed in car crashes or are born with birth defects?  Does everyone killed in flooding or earthquakes merit such pain and devastation?
• Why does there have to be suffering because of sin?  Why can’t god do what you or I might choose to do?  If my child is disobedient I may express disapproval, but there doesn’t have to be a death (either of the child, or a substitute - the pet cat?)
• If suffering is caused by the sinful actions of others, and if god is all powerful and loving, why doesn’t s(he) intervene more often to stop it.  Clearly s(he) does at times in the bible.  Why not more often?  Why allow people to have free-will sometimes and not others?
• If suffering is redemptive in some way, what has that got to do with the eighty year old woman who was raped and strangled?
• Why does god cause suffering so that s(he) might be glorified?  Where is the compassion and the free-will in that?

As Epicurus asked two and a half thousand years ago:

Is god willing to prevent evil, but not able?  Then he is impotent.

Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent.

Is he both able and willing?  Then why is there evil?

In some ways this is a very personal book.  Ehrman describes the problem of suffering and the inadequacy of the biblical answers as the biggest factor in his own loss of faith.  He was a very reluctant de-convert.  Whether or not you agree with Ehrman’s conclusions, he presents a compelling case that the Christian answers do not do justice to the weight and range of human suffering and to the enormity of the awkward questions.

- AThinkingMan