The real reason why the US might attack Iran

Buried in a Turkish press bit from Reuters:

Iraq has invited Iranian firms to submit offers to take part in building at least four oil refineries across the country, Iraq's oil ministry spokesman said on Wednesday.

"Today, the Iranian firms have been invited to bid in building refineries which the ministry has already announced it was planning to build," Asim Jihad told Reuters. Iran and Iraq, who fought a bitter war in the 1980s, have been strengthening ties since the US-led invasion in 2003, prompting concern among Iraq's once dominant Sunni minority and other Arab states, as well as in the United States. Washington, which considers Iran part of an "axis of evil," accuses Tehran of meddling in Iraq.

Yeah, helping 'em drill out their oil is "meddling."

I'm sure the Saudis won't like that.

Why is Uncommon Descent Afraid of Moi?

In this post, the folks at Uncommon Descent made the claim:

The two scientific disciplines most noted for sympathy toward ID are medicine and engineering. Individuals from these two disciplines have been actively involved in challenging Darwinism. The increasing prominence of these two disciplines bodes well for the design revolution.

Now I asked a simple question, and apparently it's too much for them to contemplate.

My simple question was to the effect of "Gee, does this mean that ID folks are going to submit papers to the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory any time soon?"

And nope; they could not publish that.

If that is not evidence of their dishonesty I don't know what is.

(HT: Ed Brayton.)

A Technical Post: why I've been on hiatus...

I've had this blog on hiatus for a couple of months, as I was supremely busy at work; anything political I had to say I did over at Kos.

Anyway, what I've been up to I can finally talk about - and in fact I will be doing so at a meeting of a major telecommunications standards body.

It's not 802.

Those guys - the 802 guys- have, I think jumped the shark.

It may not be known around many places, but the ITU is planning on a review of recommendations for spectrum usage this year.

The 802 guys are putting together a bit of recommendations for the usage of new spectrum for telecommuncations services, and as Jimmy Durrante would say, "Everybody's gettin' into the act!"

The most amusing bit came from the WPAN folks, who for some reason have Bluetooth and UWB confused with cell phones, but it wasn't the only amusing bit.

Some of the 802 wireless folks' greatest minds were spent on how to get the phrase "contention based access" into consideration before the mighty ITU.

What was especially amusing about this was that "contention based access" connotes lots of things, including but not limited to how one aspect of 3G phones already work.

But, as I say, that's not what I've been working on.

I've been working on some pretty neat stuff that effectively obsoletes a significant bit of 802.16 and 802.11n, in that I've developed a new way to get at pilot signal design for OFDMA/MIMO systems when the dimensionality one is given aren't nice numbers. It uses something called Frame Theory (see this excellent tutorial for an inro) by coming up with some neat extensions to this paper.

It may or may not reach standards nirvana, but it's pretty elegant stuff, if I do say so myself. It better be; the Muses had me working beacoup overtime on it.

Go read my Kos diary entry on "Conservapedia"

Conservapedia is the new "conservative" alternative to Wikipedia.

As with others in the left direction of the blogosphere, I had to find my choice nuggets of stupidity on that site, and it's recorded in my Kos diary for today.

Forget the politics.

Look at the math...

As Atrios says, "The stupid! It burns!"

How to take money from people

Just tell 'em to keep thinking positively:

What's The Secret?

It's a controversial self-help book (and DVD) that has reached phenomenon status — by purporting to know "the secret" to happiness.

Today the book (Atria/Beyond Words, $23.99) hits No. 1 on USA TODAY'S Best-Selling Books list.

Want a new job, a million dollars or a gorgeous girlfriend?

Author Rhonda Byrne says the secret is the law of attraction: If you think positively, you become a magnet that pulls everything you want toward you.

The book has been touted on TV by Oprah Winfrey (just last week), Larry King and Ellen DeGeneres. Word-of-mouth is helping sales as well...


People are finding out about it from other people," says Beyond Words editor in chief Cynthia Black, who heard about The Secret DVD from a friend and then signed Byrne to a book contract.

The DVD ($29.95) was released last March and has sold 1.1 million copies. The book was published in November with a first printing of 200,000. There are now 1.2 million copies in print.

Byrne, an Australian reality-TV producer, says she discovered the ancient secret to getting everything you want through her study of religious and philosophical texts.

"Everyone has to have their own experience to believe," says Byrne, 55. "People should start with little things like deciding a cup of coffee will come to you or that you'll see a feather. There's no difference between attracting a feather and anything else you want. It's as easy to attract one dollar as it is $10,000."

I thought positively that my laundry would be returned from my hotel last night, but alas, they lost it.

Seriously, the universe is not an ATM, nor should we expect it to be.

Nobody cares if you think J. Z. Knight is Ramtha

if you're a scientist and doing competent science, if the discussion is about science. Thus yesterday the NY Times sets up a false dilemma with their publication of this article on some young earth creationist paleontologist.

His subject was the abundance and spread of mosasaurs, marine reptiles that, as he wrote, vanished at the end of the Cretaceous era about 65 million years ago. The work is “impeccable,” said David E. Fastovsky, a paleontologist and professor of geosciences at the university who was Dr. Ross’s dissertation adviser. “He was working within a strictly scientific framework, a conventional scientific framework.”

But Dr. Ross is hardly a conventional paleontologist. He is a “young earth creationist” — he believes that the Bible is a literally true account of the creation of the universe, and that the earth is at most 10,000 years old.

For him, Dr. Ross said, the methods and theories of paleontology are one “paradigm” for studying the past, and Scripture is another. In the paleontological paradigm, he said, the dates in his dissertation are entirely appropriate. The fact that as a young earth creationist he has a different view just means, he said, “that I am separating the different paradigms.”

He likened his situation to that of a socialist studying economics in a department with a supply-side bent. “People hold all sorts of opinions different from the department in which they graduate,” he said. “What’s that to anybody else?”...

And, for some, his case raises thorny philosophical and practical questions. May a secular university deny otherwise qualified students a degree because of their religion? Can a student produce intellectually honest work that contradicts deeply held beliefs? Should it be obligatory (or forbidden) for universities to consider how students will use the degrees they earn?

Those are “darned near imponderable issues,” said John W. Geissman, who has considered them as a professor of earth and planetary sciences at the University of New Mexico. For example, Dr. Geissman said, Los Alamos National Laboratory has a geophysicist on staff, John R. Baumgardner, who is an authority on the earth’s mantle — and also a young earth creationist.

If researchers like Dr. Baumgardner do their work “without any form of interjection of personal dogma,” Dr. Geissman said, “I would have to keep as objective a hat on as possible and say, ‘O.K., you earned what you earned.’ ”

Others say the crucial issue is not whether Dr. Ross deserved his degree but how he intends to use it...

“We also discuss the intersection of those sorts of ideas with Christianity,” he said. “I don’t require my students to say or write their assent to one idea or another any more than I was required.”

But he has also written and spoken on scientific subjects, and with a creationist bent. While still a graduate student, he appeared on a DVD arguing that intelligent design, an ideological cousin of creationism, is a better explanation than evolution for the Cambrian explosion, a rapid diversification of animal life that occurred about 500 million years ago.

Online information about the DVD identifies Dr. Ross as “pursuing a Ph.D. in geosciences” at the University of Rhode Island. It is this use of a secular credential to support creationist views that worries many scientists.

On the other hand, if one is trying to use their scientific background to advance pseudo-science, you'll be caught out by scientists every time.

Especially if you're on a DVD arguing against your research.

Arguments from authority are weak.

What Atrios said

Here:

I tend to try to have a "don't be an asshole needlessly" attitude when it comes to dealing with religious beliefs that no one is trying to impose on me, but there's no requirement for people to share that attitude. Beliefs cloaked in religion shouldn't be granted automatic immunity from scrutiny, and nor should the sometimes powerful institutions run by people, not angels or saints, around which the various religions are organized. While genuine bigotry exists against people of various faiths which is the equivalent to the kind of bigotry which exists against gays or African-Americans (involving unfair symbols or stereotyping rooted in historic oppression, assigning unshared beliefs to an entire group, etc...), mocking or having contempt for actual religious beliefs isn't by any reasonable definition "bigotry." It's simply heated disagreement, and as with disagreements about politics, or sports, or whatever, sometimes people who disagree with each other use mockery and insults in their discourse. Religious people may think that their beliefs about religion are on a different level than these things, but, you know, I don't really agree with that.

And that's the basic issue. We disagree about things. We don't all share a belief in God, or the supernatural, or the spiritual plane, or whatever. Those who believe in these things don't agree on the details. There are a tremendous variety of belief systems in this country and across the world. The tendency to divide people into "faith" and "non-faith" has, as I wrote, obscured these differences, but the fact is that disagreement within "communities of faith" is no different than disagreement between religious and non-religious people. While I think there are those who genuinely believe in a "many paths to God" kind of worldview (and I have no opinion on whether that's theologically sound within the Christian or any other tradition), plenty of people don't actually share that worldview. They believe "other" beliefs are wacky, or stupid, or nuts, or contemptible, or immoral, or likely to lead to eternal damnation, etc.

This is also a reasonable time to differentiate between offensive and "offensive." If something is offensive to you then you have a genuine emotional reaction. If something is "offensive" then you imagine that maybe others have taken offense, or you find it offensive in some abstract sense which hasn't actually caused you any psychic distress. If you find something "offensive," as opposed to actually being offended, then you're probably just seizing on something which you perceive can be used to further whatever agenda you already had.

Ah, to have a stable of grad students

Robert Heath is probably somebody you never heard of, but void, is he productive. Or at least his grad students are.

But ah, if I could get his brain's matter into mine, what a lucky man I'd be...

How Dharma combat could get bloody...

Put Zenmar and Ken Wilber and/or Genpo Merzel in a room...

Seriously, though....looking at Merzel's website, I see terms related to money in a lot of places...moreover this is, shall I dare to say, a bit de trop...

Dennis Genpo Merzel Roshi, one of the preeminent Zen Masters in the Western world, has developed a unique and revolutionary approach for transmitting the authentic teachings that emerged from Buddha's enlightenment experience. With a mastery born of more than thirty years of teaching, Genpo Roshi has enabled thousands of participants in Big Mind workshops to gain profound insights and taste for themselves the illuminating experience from which Buddhism and all the world's great religions originate.

It is of course being promoted as "quick enlightenment."

When Dennis Merzel began his formal Zen studies three decades ago, his Japanese Zen master's methods left him perplexed. "DIE ON YOUR CUSHION!" Koryu Roshi exhorted his novices who sat cross-legged on cushions facing a wall at the Los Angeles Zen Center. "BECOME THE WALL!"

"I don't know what the hell he's talking about," Merzel remembers thinking. "And even if I knew, I'm not doing it."

From that unlikely beginning, Brooklyn-born Merzel has gone on to become spiritual leader to thousands of Zen Buddhists around the world.

But Merzel--now called Genpo Roshi--always knew the traditional Eastern approach to Zen didn't work for many Westerners. They don't like being told to die. Although he eventually realized the Zen master was commanding him to "die" in order to be reborn as a more compassionate being, he thought there had to be a better way to unlock the Zen door to Westerners.

For decades, Genpo searched for the key to enable Westerners to shift from identifying with their own self to being identified with the whole cosmos--to the Universal or Big Mind. Three years ago, he finally found it.

Call it the Western path to enlightenment.

Through a combination of Western therapy and Zen practice, Roshi now shows Zen beginners in one-day seminars at Salt Lake City's Kanzeon Zen Center how to achieve an awakening that has taken many Zen practitioners years.

And it's all possible, he says, because Westerners are suckers for a magic word: Please.

"We'll do anything for anyone if they say please," Roshi says.

At recent Saturday seminar, Roshi--wearing khakis and a short-sleeved black shirt--strode into an airy upstairs room to take his place in a director's chair before a room of 60 people sitting in padded chairs grouped in a half-circle.

"This might seem bold, this might seem strange," he tells the group, "that you will have in one day--before lunch actually --the clarity and experience that a Zen master has. But Zen is seen as the school of sudden enlightenment. And we're just making sure it remains sudden."

His technique to temporarily silence the "controller"--one's ego or commanding voice--is so simple that it's surprising it wasn't discovered earlier, he says. But such an insight wasn't possible as long as Zen remained an Eastern-centered discipline.

It is no wonder why Ken Wilber, (see the Wikipedia entry on him for more) gushes:

Let me state this as strongly as I can: the Big Mind Process (founded by Dennis Genpo Merzel Roshi) is arguably the most important and original discovery in the last two centuries of Buddhism. It is an astonishingly original, profound, and effective path for waking up, or seeing one’s True Nature. It is such a simple and universal practice it can be used in any spiritual path you wish, or even just alone, by itself, as a practice for realizing your True Nature—which you can call God, Allah, Jahweh, Brahman, Tao, Ein Sof—it doesn’t really matter, because the core of the Big Mind Process is Emptiness itself, which, having no specific content at all, can and does embrace anything that arises, integrating it all. What Dennis Genpo Roshi has done is not only the most original discovery in Buddhism in the last two centuries, it is unbelievably simple, quick, and effective. In Zen, this realization of one’s True Nature, or Ultimate Reality, is called kensho or satori (“seeing into one’s True Nature,” or discovering Big Mind and Big Heart). It often takes five years or more of extremely difficult practice (I know, I’ve done it) in order for a profound satori to occur. With the Big Mind Process, a genuine kensho can occur in about an hour—seriously. Once you get it, you can do it virtually any time you wish, and almost instantaneously. It is nothing less than the discovery of your True and Unique Self, Ultimately Reality, the Ground of All Being—again, call it what you like, for “they call it Many which is really One.”

While it was Huineng who is said to have become enlightened after hearing the Diamond-Cutter Sutra, he was illiterate, and besides, he was actually training for years before that, albeit not formally as a monastic.

You can't buy enlightenment. At least, not the good kind, or not without a nasty hangover.

OK, that was a bit of sarcasm, but you can't buy enlightment: at best Merzel's "process" might get you to discover some ox footprints. Maybe. Because you don't get to those other stages of "enlightenment" without that Big Mindset permeating the interstices of your most mundane aspects of your existence. And there's no book that will teach you how to do that: you have to live it and practice it. Period. And nobody of any note is going to certify that, or give you a seal of approval eventually, and even if they did it wouldn't be worth whatever it's calligraphied on.

Reading Merzel's book to become enlightened is like reading "Tennis for Dummies" and expecting to be top seeded.


(Note to self: Huineng's temple's in Guandong province, and Huang Po's temple (黄檗山) should be in Fujian province - next time I go to China I want to go there.)

On the Edwards blogger brouhaha

I haven't posted here for a while, but I've a lot to say about the recent Edwards/Pandagon/"Catholic League" dust-up.

First, I'm amused that Joe Carter is pontificating on this thing. Media Matters has outed his employer, once and for all, as anti-Catholic bigots.

Secondly, if you want any stronger evidence of the right-wing idiocy in our media, look no further than William Donahue. As anyone can see from Wikipedia, the "Catholic League" is nothing but a right-wing astroturf outfit.

An array of prominent lay Catholics serve on the Catholic League's Board of Advisors: L. Brent Bozell III, Gerard Bradley, Linda Chavez, Robert Destro, Dinesh D'Souza, Laura Garcia, Robert George, Mary Ann Glendon, Dolores Grier, Alan Keyes, Stephen Krason, Tom Monaghan, Michael Novak, Kate O'Beirne, Thomas Reeves, Patrick Riley, Robert Royal, Russell Shaw, Bill Simon, Paul Vitz and George Weigel.

Really, you get Alan Keyes with the Catholic League. Sweet.

Donahue, of course, is a pathological liar, a hypocrite, and probably a law-breaker:

• Re: liar:
  
  

  We will launch a nationwide public relations blitz that will be conducted on the pages of the New York Times, as well as in Catholic newspapers and periodicals. It will be on-going, breaking like a wave, starting next week and continuing through 2007. It will be an education campaign, informing the public of what he did today. We will also reach out to our allies in the Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist communities. They worked with us before on many issues, and are sure to do so again. What Edwards did today will not be forgotten."

  
  
  Really, we don't have any allies with Donahue



• Re: hypocrisy:The bloggers in question actually apologized, and Donahue claimed he always forgives...oh, he said that about Mel Gibson, not about liberal bloggers.



• Re: lawbreaker: It is possible that Donahue's political activities on behalf of the "Catholic League" violate 501(c)(3) laws.

Furthermore, if you want "freedom of religion," better accept "freedom to blaspheme."

Void knows that Donahue & Co.'s very advocacy is some form of blasphemy.

Nominated again?

I'm honored, to be nominated again for a Bloggisattva, though I haven't kept this up here as frequently as I'd like (more activity at Kos, though).

Anyhow, I'm grateful...though I won't be surprised if I don't win...I wouldn't vote for me this year...

Ah, purchasing DVDs in China...

For the equivalent of $1.50, I figured I can't go wrong: an anthology of "Ittai Osho" cartoons for my son...but for some reason "Danny the Dog" got in there.

Don't ask questions, it was China...

Taoist Temple in Wenzhou, China

For some reason, there were lots of fish being dried in and around this temple.

Naples, Pompeii: the day before my business

Luckily my wife bought a new camera so I could get the somewhat clunky, unreliable one...anyhow, you can't help be in a place like this and not ask, is the the future of the United States?


They had their sports events...


They had their brothels...funny thing about porn; you leave it around long enough and it ceases to be porn, but rather becomes archeological finds...and no I'm not being faceitious...I think this stuff would arouse only a necrophiliac...

And finally, there's still a bit of fascism around today... doubt about it.

Sorrento

BTW, I'm on business in Sorrento.

I will not starve here.

Citrus trees everywhere.

One wonders what the average folks do here for a living.

Food seems to play a big part.

This is truly bizarre

But it certainly is very Japanese. It seems that many folks today in Japan just don't get the Heart Sutra. It also reminds me of so-called modern "Christian music." Or whatever they call it now.

Really, the form of the Heart Sutra - especially when chanted in Japanese - expresses nullity - I don't know what else to call it and a profundity of existence - and it expresses an identity of source and object language - that is unmatched.

A song and dance number of this sutra is like putting 3 heads on top of one that's already there.


HT: Hokai

Here's something I bet you didn't know...

Of course, it's from Patrick Mannion of EE Times, so it bears further investigation:

WiMAX and metro Wi-Fi are both more energy cost effective than cellular, according to a report by ABI Research (London, U.K.). The observation comes into stark relief against the backdrop of rapidly-increasing energy consumption as carriers move to high-data-rate mobile broadband access.

For those broadband networks, energy costs represent the third most significant operating expense (OPEX) for cellular carriers, and fluctuating energy costs are a significant area of concern for business planners, said the report entitled, "Energy Efficiency Analysis for Mobile Broadband Solutions." The move to higher data rates means that the energy required per subscriber arising from increasing data uptake will push per-subscriber energy OPEX for cellular solutions past acceptable barriers—unless carriers move from a traditional cellular-only approach to one that integrates WiMAX and metro Wi-Fi.

Stuart Carlaw, director of wireless research at ABI Research, says that "From a pure coverage perspective WiMAX is twice as energy-cost-effective and metro Wi-Fi is 50 times more energy-cost-effective than WCDMA. When data traffic is factored into the equation, WiMAX can accommodate 11 times today's average data consumption and still be more energy-cost-efficient compared to WCDMA or HSDPA.

A recent ABI Research study found that the total energy consumption arising from mobile broadband service delivery is forecast to grow from 42.8 billion kilowatt hours (KWh) in 2005 to 124.4 billion KWh in 2011. The Asia Pacific region will account for the majority of this growth.

The Blue Cliff Record

I finally got a copy; Thomas and J. J. Cleary's translation.


A lot of words that say don't use words, but put them into practice.

Still worth the 30 bucks or so; the form and style of this work is radically different from other works I've read; it is practially spoon-feeding one the message.

Here's an on-line version, sans commentary, which would make all this stuff much much longer.

It's no wonder 大慧宗杲 (Dahui Zonggao) allegedly burned the original.

And damn, I feel so ignorant...makes me wonder what else I don't even know I should read.

"The homicidal bitchin' that goes down in every kitchen to determine who will serve and who will eat"

It is not often that one can glean pearls of wisdom from a song with a disco/martial beat unless of course you're talking about Leonard Cohen's song "Democracy."

And that is what I thought of when I read kos's reaction to Bush's speech last night (which I mercifully missed).

My comment:

Of course you're right, but the next step one must take is to conclude that bellowing crap like "decisive ideological struggle of our time" is exactly that - crap.

It's not the "decisive ideological struggle of our time."

The "decisive ideological struggle of our time" is basically how should 6+ billion people survive on this planet.

Solve that problem and all the religious ideological bullshit - and corrupt crony capitalist problems go away.

That, and that alone is the "decisive ideological struggle of our time."

What do you do when confronted with denial?

It is true that words cannot open another's mind.

Luckily, not all of us are insane in the manner of some right-wing bloggers.