Blog Update
Dec 30, 2006, 3:40a - Blog Update
I've made some updates to the guts and skin of my blog that I wanted to share.
First, I've fixed/masked the slow commenting problem. Now when you submit a comment you'll receive immediate feedback that the comment has been received (via AJAX), instead of watching the browser spin forever. It still takes several minutes for the comment to be published, ... more »
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Jesus for a Million
Dec 28, 2006, 2:57a - Religion
When I was in 12th grade, I took a fascinating class called "History of Religion" taught by an excellent teacher, Ken Todd. I remember looking forward to that class for several years, and it proved worth the wait. I learned stuff there that I still think about today. For example, we spent a lot of time discussing how every known ... more »
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Buzz
- Dec 28, 2006, 1:32p
I don't see the need to wait 1000 years. People, why do you cut down trees, drag them into your houses, cover them with gaudy breakables and multicolor lights, and throw them away after only 3 weeks? Have you lost your minds?
Now, I can also say I've taken Ken Todd's history of religions class, and I still don't understand it.
omar
- Dec 28, 2006, 2:52p
now, i haven't read your essay yet, but i will. but i'd like to comment on two things: first, i'm amazed that you still have the high school stuff. i think those essays have long been lost to me.
second: are you really publishing a new blog entry if you're just rehashing your work from years past? you're on a slippery slope here nikhil... :)
Jason
- Dec 28, 2006, 2:54p
Astounding. I read part of Dianetics out of curiosity but grew bored and a little weirded out as Hubbard basically re-labeled common psychological phenomena with his own vocabulary. Your final paragraph brings to mind a potential comparison between Scientology and the Catholic Church of the middle ages. Hubbard was also known to admire Aleister Crowley and his Church of Satan, finding particular interest in the occult himself.
This is just a google search page as there are many interesting articles available: http://www.google.com/search?q=aleister+crowley+l+ron+hubbard+scientology
While this fact is more gossip than proof of anything, it does seem to point to the idea that Hubbard was simply looking to start a business and knew just how. On the other side, I live very close to a Church of Scientology and the people are very low key. They have never posed any problems. However, their logo is incredibly lame.
An Exceedingly Odd Book
Dec 27, 2006, 1:49a - Communication
Jason, Becca's brother, gave me an exceedingly odd book for Christmas. It's called Arboretum, written by a man named David Byrne. After flipping through a bunch of pages, my initial reaction was "Wow, this is definitely on the hardcore side of weird."
When I first picked up the book, what struck me was the cover and binding: it's got ... more »
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Jason
- Dec 27, 2006, 10:12p
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Byrne_(musician)
http://www.davidbyrne.com/
Apparently David Byrne is actually an accomplished musician/composer. That may have something to do with his organizational patterns. Most books I've seen by non-composer artists tend to be very rough and loose unlike Byrne's Arboretum which is loose but exact somehow. Anyway, the links above go into a deeper scope of his work that I knew nothing about when I bought the book. I also haven't seen the last emperor but I do remember it winning an Oscar.
Evan
- Dec 29, 2006, 12:41a
David Byrne was the lead singer of Talking Heads. He is also something of a PowerPoint buff lately: http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2005/03/08_byrne.shtml
Jon
- Dec 31, 2006, 9:30a
This seems somewhat similar to a blog to which I recently became addicted: http://indexed.blogspot.com/
Eli Lilly: Strike 2
Dec 21, 2006, 10:42a - Health and Medicine
2 years ago, I reported that Eli Lilly nearly succeeded in buying a court verdict in a case where a patient on Prozac (an Eli Lilly drug) shot and killed 9 people, including himself. They also allegedly witheld information about Prozac's side effects, including increased aggression, from the FDA. They were later cleared of this second charge, but things ... more »
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Daniel Haszard
- Dec 27, 2006, 1:05p
At a glance,zyprexa was promoted 'off label' to uses that weren't FDA approved.This opens up a can of worms for patients like myself took it for PTSD for which it was ineffective and moreover gave me diabetes.
True,leaked documents don't convey the 'whole picture' but what is compelling is that zyprexa is the 7th some say 5th largest drug sell in the world and Eli Lilly's #1 drug sale by their own admission.
This is for a drug that won't get you "high" cost $2.50 a pill and only indicated for less than 1% of the population.
Hello! Somebody in Lilly land is pushing zyprexa hard-Daniel Haszard
Spam the Spammers
Dec 19, 2006, 1:32p - Technology
When I was home for Thanksgiving, my dad told me about something he'd been doing for the past few years with his (non-electronic) junk mail. Nearly all junk mail comes with postage-paid return envelopes (aka Business Reply Mail), for you to send back the credit card offers or what-not. Instead of sending back what the company wants you to send ... more »
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Sachin
- Dec 19, 2006, 3:10p
I heard about this a few months ago. If I get an offer where the envelope is like "Amex, 0% intro APR" i just trash it. But if it's something with no return label and "Urgent reply needed" and it ends up being spam, then I'm going to stuff that envelope with as much crap as possible. I can't believe spammers are allowed to have no return address on their spam.
If it's a credit card application, I usually take the application, cross over it and write something like "take me off your list." It probably does nothing, but then they know who sent it to them.
I have a standing monthly donation to Care that is billed on my credit card. A couple months ago I started getting a phone call from an unknown number (not hidden, but unknown to me). I looked it up online and found lots of complains about it. It was a telemarketing company hired by companies like Care.
Eventually I did answer their call and they said they were calling on behalf of Care. I felt like stopping my monthly donation to them. I dont know if I checked any box that said "don't call me" but it still upset me to get calls on my cell phone. Its worse that it wasn't from Care themselves but someone they hired. I may trust Care with my info, but do I trust these people?
nikhil
- Dec 20, 2006, 12:24a
Yeah, that's lame. I'm not sure exactly what to do about the non-profits...
Also, don't forget to sign the pledge:
http://nikhil.superfacts.org/spamthespammers.php
Book Notes: The Greening of America by Charles Reich
Dec 3, 2006, 4:06p - Book Notes
The Greening of America - Charles Reich
This is one of the best books I've read in the past several years. Written in the '70s by a Yale Law professor, this book documents the ongoing social revolution and predicts that it will overturn the established social fabric and breed a new form of human consciousness. Unfortunately, its predictions weren't realized ... more »
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omar
- Dec 4, 2006, 10:57p
you might as well just transcribe the entire book.. i hope charles knows you're trying to pir8 his labor! ;)
there are a lot of good quotes here. it actually feels very hippie-ish. maybe i'll put a hold on the book at the library.
now as to this quote:
- “Work can be pleasant, satisfying, and free, without making man feel that he has done anything worthwhile with his life - that he has lived greatly. And so the ultimate question concerning work is this: how can it be heroic? What does it mean to be heroic, and how can this be translated into contemporary terms?”
i have problems with it. what is "worthwhile?" and why is heroism even the right word (he later calls a heroic quest a "quest for consciousness.")? i don't know why this word is used... for instance, a hero must be a hero to someone (maybe the individual). i feel like looking for heroes puts us into the possible realm of worship, and i find that heroism is a simplifying cover that we wrap around someone in order to help us understand a phenomenon. however, is that cover doing productive work?
omar
- Dec 4, 2006, 11:02p
oh and one more thing..
"Wisdom is the one commodity that is unlimited in supply."
while this may be true, it's not really the point. access is what is important.. even if wisdom is infinite, who has access to it? how do you get it? i think there's a lot of training that can go into developing skills to better gain wisdom. that training is often times not free, and not cheap (monetarily, or measured in units of time and experience, etc..). how are we capable of becoming wise? how does it happen? those seem like important questions.
nikhil
- Dec 6, 2006, 12:37a
hmm, i did send him an email about this post, and he hasn't responded...maybe he is pissed off about the profuse citations...
"heroic" technically means "brave" or "courageous", but i don't think that's the intended definition here. here i interpreted the word to mean "honorable" and "noble" - work should make a man feel like he's done something worthwhile, that he's lived greatly and nobly. and the question he poses to the audience is how to invigorate modern work with that feeling.
on your second point: talking about access to wisdom i find to be a dubious endeaver. wisdom is less about the knowledge itself and more about the experiences that acquired the knowledge, the effort and context in which the knowledge accrued. anyone can extract the "wisdom" by citing a few portions of a book, but can one really gain wisdom by reading these Cliff notes? i doubt it - i find that it's the time spent with a subject that *is* wisdom, not just the end result of that study. the experience provides first principles that one can be confident enough to use - knowledge of the principles alone does not suffice.
charles a reich
- Dec 8, 2006, 12:44p
I will be happy to exchange observations with readers as to how my ideas of 37 years ago look from the vantage point of today. One of the themes in Greening is self deception by an entire society which prefers myths to the realities of its own actions. I wonder what today's readers think about social mythology!
omar
- Dec 8, 2006, 3:07p
oooh cool charles reich right here! i don't have time to respond to nikhil's comments, but i will say that i'm going to grab the book and give it a read before i say much more.
as to my point on wisdom: i agree that it's not something you can just get by reading a book, but i think you can be trained to make yourself more reflective and better able to parse out some wise nuggets from interactions with some training. granted, i think becoming an expert at gaining wisdom isn't the same as becoming an expert in mathematics, but nevertheless i think some training can help.
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