I never got Peter, Paul, and Mary....

Too safe.

Especially after they destroyed their images with PBS fund-raising specials (but now at least vicariously, Leonard Cohen's done the same.)

Any, RIP Ms. Travers...some people said you shouldn't have been in favor of civil-rights or peace.

Their sound may have been commercial and safe, but early on their politics were somewhat risky for a group courting a mass audience. Like Mr. Yarrow and Mr. Stookey, Ms. Travers was outspoken in her support for the civil-rights and antiwar movements, in sharp contrast to clean-cut folk groups like the Kingston Trio, which avoided making political statements.

I mean...I mean...the author of the what later became "Seasons in the Sun."

made this:






Does that sound like the work of the author of the Terry Jacks' song?

I realize this is not very Buddhist and relevant to almost no one but...

Rod McKuen is guilty of poetry's - or at least pop music's- equivalent of war crimes...

He made this:



into this:



And if you compare the Nirvana version of this to Jacques Brel's, it says several political psychology theses about the state of the American mind.




And, to top it off, consider a commentary on this song in Slate, blissfully unaware of the complete difference in meaning and mood between Brel's version and Jack's version completes the picture.

There's so much I can't tell you about what I do...

It's a pity, because sometimes, like today, I just so see the future, but thanks to certain agreements I have, I can't say a peep about it here.

It's not quite a Cassandra complex...but...

How can you not love that mandolin-like instrument?

And an older version...



I think "armes" (arms) is better enunciated as "âme" or "soul."

Of course I'm Buddhist and all that, I just think it'd be more uh, authentic in an existentialist kind of way.

It'd change the meaning of the relevant sentence from "I again took up arms" to "I have retaken my soul."

More poetic. Especially given the circumstances.

Lankavatara Sutra Chapter 2, Section XX VI

Still using this source...

Those skilled assume assume various personalities for the sake of benefiting others.

And...

When those who are born of the Buddha see that the world is no more than Mind itself, they will obtain a body of transformation, which has nothing to do with effect-producing works, but which is endowed with the powers, psychic faculties, and self-control.

I Get Ideas, Part II: Stanley Ho Appears Uninterested....

I still have yet to hear back from the biggest indigenous casino owner in Macau. I figured if Steve Wynn was elbowing his way into Macau, Mr. Ho might want to return the favor...

To: pr@sjmholdings.com
Subject:

To Whom It May Concern:

Recently, as a result of a visit to Shenzhen's Minsk World [let it fully load; you won't be disappointed!], my colleagues and I became interested in pursuing a project in the United States. It seems to us that the only way we in the US could have a project along the lines of the Minsk theme park, that truly reflected American ingenuity, was to build a casino based on an aircraft carrier on The Strip in Las Vegas. It turns out that the recently decomissioned aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy may be available for this purpose . To make a casino and luxury hotel from the John F. Kennedy would certainly ensure the city's place as a premier tourist destination.

We believe that this carrier, sited on or near The Strip, would:
a) provide educational value as a testimony to American ingenuity
b) encourage patriotism in Americans
c) provide a venue for unique military entertainment
d) allow people to visit the world's only non-floating nautical casino
structure

It would be the only casino in the world to be based on a ship that saw action in the Gulf War, as well as the only casino to have been christened by Jacqueline Kennedy.

We would like to know whether someone at SJM holdings could tell me if Mr. Stanley Ho was interested in such a venture; we would be very happy to collaborate with him on making this military themed casino a reality.

My colleagues inform me that it would also be the only casino on the strip capable of antisubmarine warfare.

To be continued...

I get ideas...

As I noted below, last Sunday I had the chance to visit Minsk World, a "military theme park."

While I get an aircraft carrier being open to visitors to build pride in the folks who put their lives on the line for the country, I still can't get over the schmaltziness of Minsk World.

I indeed respect the folks in the military who, despite the imperfection of American foreign policy vow to actually defend us with their lives.

But then again, I am a sucker for scheming a good practical joke, so please military folks, don't be offended by the following.

The tawdry schmaltz of Minsk World could only be exceeded in the United States in one place.

Las Vegas.

They've got a fake pyramid casino there.

They've got a fake Venice casino there.

They've even got a fake Eiffel Tower.

It occurred to some of my engineer friends (one of whom is a veteran) and myself that the one way we could beat Minsk world would be to locatre an aircraft carrier on The Strip and turn it into a casino.

But not just any aircraft carrier would do.

We would need the USS John F. Kennedy.

The USS John F. Kennedy weighs somewhere between 60,000 and 82000 tons, and is about as long as the Empire State building is tall, roughly, and about 19 stories tall.

It would be very difficult to get the USS. John F. Kennedy located on The Strip.

Here are the known alternatives:

1. Build a new aircraft carrier looking like the John F. Kennedy on The Strip.
   
   Pros:
   
   
   • You avoid doing the other alternatives.
   
   
   • It fits right in with the rest of everything else in Vegas being fake
   
   
   • It probably won't be bulit to Milspec.
   
   
   
   Cons:
   
   
   • It's cheating.
   
   
   • It gets expensive if you want realism.
   
   
   • The builder of the original probably can't do it (since they're Northrup Grumman Newport News shipbuilders, based in Virginia.
   
   
   
   
2. You can disassemble the JFK, and reconstruct it on The Strip.
   Pros:
   
   
   
   • You use the real thing.
   
   
   • You avoid transporting the JFK in once piece to Vegas.
   
   
   
   
   Cons:
   
   
   
   
   • Since the JFK is welded and riveted, you have to unweld and unrivet it to get it there.
     
     That almost certainly will compromise the structural integrity of the ship.
   
   
   
3. You can dredge the Colorado River from its mouth in or near Baja, Mexico, to Lake Mead, and then find some fantastic way to get it from Lake Mead to The Strip.


Pros:




• It's the sort of thing we can complain about when speaking about Yankee imperialism.


• It is a great public works project, rivaling the Panama Canal.




Cons:




• Well, isn't there a dam in the way? I thought there might be one there.



• It costs lots of money to dredge several hundred miles of a river to make it deep enough and navigable enough for an aircraft carrier.



• OK, suppose I can get it to Lake Mead, now how do I get it to The Strip?

More to come...

Travel Reading: "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power" by Jeff Sharlet

Being in China, with its own news and its own spin, and then going back to the US and seeing the same spin, but in a different direction, one can get rather cynical.

But at least in the US you can readily find a book such as Jeff Sharlet's work on "The Family," which is readable, long (great for long flights from HK to SFO), and studded with footnotes, references, and so forth. The style of this book is restrained and sober; the only real quibble with the book is there is a bit of disjointedness between sections, that as a guy who writes mostly for business and technical applications I find, well, disjoint. Perhaps he's attempting a novelistic style of narrative, and perhaps getting to "business" about it might detract from the overall message.

The message written in this restrained and sober style is, however, quite shocking. It is nothing less than the fact that there has been a multifaceted attempt on the part of one particular cult to influence American domestic and foreign policy away from democratic rule and towards what can only be called despotism (and this cult is related to quite a few others, including but not limited to 12 Step Groups).

And a cult it is. Even some conservative Christians choke on their theology, which is basically an unslaked thirst for power hiding behind an amorphous Jesus.

This group is behind the National Prayer Breakfast, and recent (and historical) scandals "on C Street," . Mark Sanford the AWOL-for-an-Argentine-love-affair-but-it's-OK-because-God-loved-David South Carolina Governor hung with them.

But they are indisputably sinister aspects to them. The founder of the family was, for a time, a collaborator with the notorious Frank Buchman, who was the real spiritual father of 12 Step Groups, as well as an admirer of Hitler (no I am not making this up.) The founder of the Family, Abram Vereide, also infused his cult with a slavish subservience reminiscent of fascism, and, based on Sharlet's experience, those fascist tendencies persist to this day.

That such a group is so closely related to to so many at the levers of American power raises serious questions, including whether or not this group has been illegally lobbying at various times.

It is easy to criticize China for not having any Chinese versions of Jeff Sharlets.

But then again they don't have any quasi-secret cults trying to take over things. You kind of know who's running things in China.

What to do in Shenzhen: "Minsk World"

Shenzhen is a former fishing village that has grown so fast that 8 million people are living here, making stuff, and there isn't much here that's a natural attraction.

So the folks here invented some.

Among them is Minsk World, a "military theme park," as Wikipedia denotes it. Its centerpiece is an old rusting Russian aircraft carrier, The Minsk, as you would guess.

Crowds of people flock to it on nice days to take pictures of rusting military hardware...including those famous MiG jets. This stuff seems to date from the 1960s, and it's clearly not in great condition.



It's a real aircraft carrier, for sure, though there are numerous shops with military and Russian tchotchkes located within. For some reason they seem to think - perhaps rightfully so - that kids'll like toy planes made from what appear to be bullets.



Then there's the musical performances - kind of a military "It's a small world" kind of theme. Very strange. I'm sure Andrew Zimmern will visit soon enough. Here's their version of the musical British navy:



And yes, they have their version of the US marines:



I would like to meet the talent agent who staffed this.

Anyway, if you're ever here it's worth it just for the weirdness factor - it's a lot like Las Vegas, but in a Cantonese Russian military flavor.

As far as temples here go, there's only Hong Fa Si, but that's even more far out than Minsk World, and there are meetings to attend.

In Shenzhen

I've got to figure out how I can get some pictures uploaded here; my cell phone service is non-existent here (always seemed to be a problem with GSM in China, in my experience), but thankfully Wi-Fi sort of works.

Off to China for about a week...

Until I get back here, you can watch the townhall meeting I attended.

It doesn't embed, but I get to ask a question about 45 minutes into it.

Been there, done that...

Not in the Vipassana tradition, but Robert Wright pretty much sums up what happens when you're focusing on awareness and non-attachment for a few days with others doing the same.

Everyone knows the boat is leaking, everyone knows the captain lied...

Glenn Greenwald's take on the health care debate is sobering, to say the least:

... In fact, it's so obviously true that no matter how dumb one might think Democrats are, they're certainly not so dumb that they failed to realize that the GOP was highly unlikely to help Obama pass health care reform no matter what the bill contained. From the start, it's been obvious to everyone -- the Obama White House and Senate Democrats included -- that the GOP would not help Obama pass health care reform. Why would the GOP want to help Obama achieve one of his most important and politically profitable goals? Of course they were going to try to sabotage the entire project and would oppose health care reform no matter what form it took. Everyone knew that from the start for exactly the reason that it was so obvious to Benen.

The attempt to attract GOP support was the pretext which Democrats used to compromise continuously and water down the bill. But -- given the impossibility of achieving that goal -- isn't it fairly obvious that a desire for GOP support wasn't really the reason the Democrats were constantly watering down their own bill? Given the White House's central role in negotiating a secret deal with the pharmaceutical industry, its betrayal of Obama's clear promise to conduct negotiations out in the open (on C-SPAN no less), Rahm's protection of Blue Dogs and accompanying attacks on progressives, and the complete lack of any pressure exerted on allegedly obstructionists "centrists," it seems rather clear that the bill has been watered down, and the "public option" jettisoned, because that's the bill they want -- this was the plan all along.

The Obama White House isn't sitting impotently by while Democratic Senators shove a bad bill down its throat. This is the bill because this is the bill which Democratic leaders are happy to have. It's the bill they believe in. As important, by giving the insurance and pharmaceutical industries most everything they want, it ensures that the GOP doesn't become the repository for the largesse of those industries (and, converesly, that the Democratic Party retains that status).

This is how things always work. The industry interests which own and control our government always get their way. When is the last time they didn't? The "public option" was something that was designed to excite and placate progressives (who gave up from the start on a single-payer approach) -- and the vast, vast majority of progressives (all but the most loyal Obama supporters) who are invested in this issue have been emphatic about how central a public option is to their support for health care reform. But it seems clear that the White House and key Democrats were always planning on negotiating it away in exchange for industry support. Isn't that how it always works in Washington? No matter how many Democrats are elected, no matter which party controls the levers of government, the same set of narrow monied interests and right-wing values dictate outcomes, even if it means running roughshod over the interests of ordinary citizens (securing lower costs and expanding coverage) and/or what large majorities want.

NAFTA was supposed to work that way. How'd that work out for everyone?

Finding: The brain helps maintain a stress-cycle

It's not for nothing that people get stuck:

Reporting earlier this summer in the journal Science, Nuno Sousa of the Life and Health Sciences Research Institute at the University of Minho in Portugal and his colleagues described experiments in which chronically stressed rats lost their elastic rat cunning and instead fell back on familiar routines and rote responses, like compulsively pressing a bar for food pellets they had no intention of eating.

Moreover, the rats’ behavioral perturbations were reflected by a pair of complementary changes in their underlying neural circuitry. On the one hand, regions of the brain associated with executive decision-making and goal-directed behaviors had shriveled, while, conversely, brain sectors linked to habit formation had bloomed.

In other words, the rodents were now cognitively predisposed to keep doing the same things over and over, to run laps in the same dead-ended rat race rather than seek a pipeline to greener sewers. “Behaviors become habitual faster in stressed animals than in the controls, and worse, the stressed animals can’t shift back to goal-directed behaviors when that would be the better approach,” Dr. Sousa said. “I call this a vicious circle.”

At the very least, when one practices forms of mindfulness meditation, one gets the ability to "step out of the loop," and with practice, one remembers to be able to do this more and more.

At the town hall: the decline of America?

It is a shame that there weren't more younger people there, but of those people that were there, they skewed older, and about 60% of them seemed skeptical of the plan.

Many were completely uninformed, repeating the worst nonsense they'd heard on talk radio.

People jeered when the moderator brought up the easily verified fact that people in industrialized countries have lower infant mortality and longer life spans than we do (in Canada, it's almost 1.5 years longer - and with our life span that is statistically significant, and no murder and violence do not account for such a disparity!)

And yes, the people peddling the offensive Nazi nonsense were there.

Update: I agree with Barney Frank. At least one somewhat distant relative of mine was killed by Nazis, and this comparison is indeed contemptible.

Health Care Reform is Necessary

And the Democrats weren't elected to maintain the status quo - which is making us all poorer.

On my upcoming China trip, a side trip to Guangzhou?

I'll be traveling to China at the end of the week (Shenzhen), a city with a not-too-distinct history. Shenzhen's main claim to fame is that it's across the border from Hong Kong, and it's a mecca of knock-off objects. But not really much to see. Maybe Hong Fa Si, but that's about it. And sometimes the local monks are said to behave in rather un-monk-like ways...

Since I'll be effectively incommunicado for the better part of a week - I'll be at a conference working insane hours, it won't be much of a problem.

Luckily, though, my schedule was inadvertently set up to have an extra day in China, and I realize that it's only about an hour to Guangzhou, where there's Guangxiao Temple (光孝寺). It's said to be a temple that Bodhidharma visited.

Then again there's other temples in the city, evidently.


Hopefully I'll be able to visit that temple unless there's typhoons, crises, or ridiculous amounts of work involved after my meeting.

Aren't there ethical considerations involved in anti-aging drugs?

It's one thing to restrict one's calories to live 30% longer, with the side effect of reduced fertility. But almost certainly the use of technology to increase age will be limited to certain demographics, to put it politely.

And not amazingly the Times can make it through the whole article without raising this point.

Lankavatara Sutra Chapter 2, Section XX V

Still using this source, Suzuki's translation.

One thing I'll note here: there is within all the repetition, quite a bit of philosophical structure inherent in sutras such as the Lankavatara:

• Assertions and refutations are not to be found in the Mind-only; the ignorant who understand not that the Mind is [seen in] the form of body, property, and abode, wander about with assertions and refutations.
  
  
• This is evidently the case because since all phenomena lack an intrinsic essence (and "are/aren't that way" in a self-referential way)it's pointless to act as though they do. And thus acts of assertion and refutation concerning matters of "philosophy" (in its broadest sense - the love of wisdom) are reduced to acts of discrimination of a reality that is beyond discrimination.