Mass air flow sensor
Something on Soho le chien has pushed my loony button.
Go there first, I stoled the meme from there.
That's odd, the spellchecker didn't say anything about "stoled"
Pre-historically, tribes fought with each other. After thousands of years of scientific, political, artistic and religious "revolutions" we entered the Atomic era where tribes fight with each other.
Viewing the whole thing from the rim of my Guinness, it seems to me that "revolutions" are but hemorrhoids on the artery of history. Painful, itchy, unsavory but otherwise meaningless.
"Genius" is the same sort of thing. Everyone has his own genius.
The great "geniuses" of history are a product of advertising hype as much as anything.
most "Great discoveries" are the result of thousands of person-hours of mundane work claimed by one egomaniac who happened to show up to work on time for once.
Check it out. Read up on the "discovery" of the helical structure of DNA was discovered. A few more people than Watson and Crick were involved. Who's covering up what here?
"The Calculus" has several genius discoverers but Old Applebonker Newton gets the credit.
Einstein? All he did was find a slightly different way to calculate the orbits of stars and planets.
The much more important work on the genetic code was done by who?
Didn't think you knew.
It's all show biz.
Discovery is just another step in the process.
Remember those prehistoric tribes who fought with each other?
Where do you think Rock-n-Roll comes from?
In spite of all the musical history hemorrhoids.
Huh?
Not to mention Stravinsky, Jazz, and Beethoven's 7th symphony.
So I won't mention that.
Anyway I got the Volvo's Mass Air Sensor on order and as soon as the parts house calls back I'll go get it.
Of course they can't call as long as I am on line.
I have more whacko opinions, but.......?
But my horoscope told me to keep a lid on it today.
Wait, what did it actually say .....I'll be right back
O.K. here it is
Pisces; This is an excellent time to kiss and make up to repair the smallest misunderstanding.
Dear Miss Understanding, A kiss wont be necessary but we could talk about it.
E-mail me.
Wonder what hers says?
Go there first, I stoled the meme from there.
That's odd, the spellchecker didn't say anything about "stoled"
Pre-historically, tribes fought with each other. After thousands of years of scientific, political, artistic and religious "revolutions" we entered the Atomic era where tribes fight with each other.
Viewing the whole thing from the rim of my Guinness, it seems to me that "revolutions" are but hemorrhoids on the artery of history. Painful, itchy, unsavory but otherwise meaningless.
"Genius" is the same sort of thing. Everyone has his own genius.
The great "geniuses" of history are a product of advertising hype as much as anything.
most "Great discoveries" are the result of thousands of person-hours of mundane work claimed by one egomaniac who happened to show up to work on time for once.
Check it out. Read up on the "discovery" of the helical structure of DNA was discovered. A few more people than Watson and Crick were involved. Who's covering up what here?
"The Calculus" has several genius discoverers but Old Applebonker Newton gets the credit.
Einstein? All he did was find a slightly different way to calculate the orbits of stars and planets.
The much more important work on the genetic code was done by who?
Didn't think you knew.
It's all show biz.
Discovery is just another step in the process.
Remember those prehistoric tribes who fought with each other?
Where do you think Rock-n-Roll comes from?
In spite of all the musical history hemorrhoids.
Huh?
Not to mention Stravinsky, Jazz, and Beethoven's 7th symphony.
So I won't mention that.
Anyway I got the Volvo's Mass Air Sensor on order and as soon as the parts house calls back I'll go get it.
Of course they can't call as long as I am on line.
I have more whacko opinions, but.......?
But my horoscope told me to keep a lid on it today.
Wait, what did it actually say .....I'll be right back
O.K. here it is
Pisces; This is an excellent time to kiss and make up to repair the smallest misunderstanding.
Dear Miss Understanding, A kiss wont be necessary but we could talk about it.
E-mail me.
Wonder what hers says?
Labels: Who?
posted by Lane Savant at 10:06 AM
9 Comments:
Matthew Guerreri on SOHO THE DOG did get off on a wonderful rant about the absurdity of "Revolutions", and their aftermath. It has always fascinated me that we, here in grand America, is one of the few places that got our shit together post-revolution. France certainly took a lot longer to establish a decent government; if they ever have. Russia, likewise, struggled for decades, fighting amongst themselves, after they bumped off the Czar and his family. What they set up only lasted less than 70 years, caving in on itself like a house of jackbooted cards. Communism, Socialism, both are written well, all about the Brotherhood of Man, and Equality for all --and yet this runs contrary to the very nature of man, or men, of mankind or the lower forms of animal. Cuba certainly was a grand experiment, and we have done all we could to scuttle it --yet still it limps along and survives. The Balkans, Africa, and South America, and now the Middle East --just hot beds of dissent, bloody reprisals, martyrs, war lords, profiteers, and the wonders of free enterprize. I certainly disagree, sir, that revolutions are "meaningless". It is the governments that are somehow set up post-revolutions that are meaningless. It is always the same old song. The fat cats, the railroaders, mine owners, cattle barons, slave owners, oil men, and the wealthy who will hang on to their wealth and make damned sure that the common man, the old bleeding lips of the proletariat never get their piece of the pie. The conspiracies, the double-dealings, bare bones Fascism, lying, misrepresenting --and always, always making a profit, just all of us yoked into being slaves to profit, worshippers of profit, rapists of the whole planet as a sacrifice to profit --that,sir, is what I am talking about.
You may be onto something when your rant about our geniuses in history. Is Bill Gates actually smarter than all those other silicone nerds, or just a ten times better businessman?
Now when it comes to a conspiracy of some sort, or a cover up relative to the discovery of the Double Helix, I think a lot of other scientists were given credit too:
The Discovery of the Molecular Structure of DNA - The Double Helix
A Scientific Breakthrough
The sentence "This structure has novel features which are of considerable biological interest" may be one of science's most famous understatements. It appeared in April 1953 in the scientific paper where James Watson and Francis Crick presented the structure of the DNA-helix, the molecule that carries genetic information from one generation to the other.
Nine years later, in 1962, they shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Maurice Wilkins, for solving one of the most important of all biological riddles. Half a century later, important new implications of this contribution to science are still coming to light.
What is DNA?
Francis Crick and James Watson, 1953. Photo: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Archives
Maurice Wilkins.
The work of many scientists paved the way for the exploration of DNA. Way back in 1868, almost a century before the Nobel Prize was awarded to Watson, Crick and Wilkins, a young Swiss physician named Friedrich Miescher, isolated something no one had ever seen before from the nuclei of cells. He called the compound "nuclein." This is today called nucleic acid, the "NA" in DNA (deoxyribo-nucleic-acid) and RNA (ribo-nucleic-acid).
Two years earlier, the Czech monk Gregor Mendel, had finished a series of experiments with peas. His observations turned out to be closely connected to the finding of nuclein. Mendel was able to show that certain traits in the peas, such as their shape or color, were inherited in different packages. These packages are what we now call genes.
For a long time the connection between nucleic acid and genes was not known. But in 1944 the American scientist Oswald Avery managed to transfer the ability to cause disease from one strain of bacteria to another. But not only that: the previously harmless bacteria could also pass the trait along to the next generation. What Avery had moved was nucleic acid. This proved that genes were made up of nucleic acid.
Solving the Puzzle
The original DNA model by Watson and Crick. Photo: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Archives
In the late 1940's, the members of the scientific community were aware that DNA was most likely the molecule of life, even though many were skeptical since it was so "simple." They also knew that DNA included different amounts of the four bases adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine (usually abbreviated A, T, G and C), but nobody had the slightest idea of what the molecule might look like.
In order to solve the elusive structure of DNA, a couple of distinct pieces of information needed to be put together. One was that the phosphate backbone was on the outside with bases on the inside; another that the molecule was a double helix. It was also important to figure out that the two strands run in opposite directions and that the molecule had a specific base pairing.
As in the solving of other complex problems, the work of many people was needed to establish the full picture.
Using X-rays to See Through DNA
"Photograph 51". X-ray diffraction photo of a DNA molecule, structure B,
Photo: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Archives
Watson and Crick used stick-and-ball models to test their ideas on the possible structure of DNA. Other scientists used experimental methods instead. Among them were Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins, who were using X-ray diffraction to understand the physical structure of the DNA molecule.
When you shine X-rays on any kind of crystal – and some biological molecules, such as DNA, can form crystals if treated in certain ways – the invisible rays bounce off the sample. The rays then create complex patterns on photographic film. By looking at the patterns, it is possible to figure out important clues about the structures that make up the crystal.
A Three-Helical Structure?
Model of the alpha helix, 1951. Photo: Oregon State University's Special Collections
The scientist Linus Pauling was eager to solve the mystery of the shape of DNA. In 1954 he became a Nobel Laureate in Chemistry for his ground-breaking work on chemical bonds and the structure of molecules and crystals. In early 1953 he had published a paper where he proposed a triple-helical structure for DNA. Watson and Crick had also previously worked out a three-helical model, in 1951. But their theory was wrong.
Their mistake was partly based on Watson having misremembered a talk by Rosalind Franklin where she reported that she had established the water content of DNA by using X-ray crystallographic methods. But Watson did not take notes, and remembered the numbers incorrectly.
Instead, it was Franklin's famous "photograph 51" that finally revealed the helical structure of DNA to Watson and Crick in 1953. This picture of DNA that had been crystallized under moist conditions shows a fuzzy X in the middle of the molecule, a pattern indicating a helical structure.
Specific Base-Pairing
The base-pairing mystery had been partly solved by the biochemist Erwin Chargoff some years earlier. In 1949 he showed that even though different organisms have different amounts of DNA, the amount of adenine always equals the amount of thymine. The same goes for the pair guanine and cytosine. For example, human DNA contains about 30 percent each of adenine and thymine, and 20 percent each of guanine and cytosine.
With this information at hand Watson was able to figure out the pairing rules. On the 21st of February 1953 he had the key insight, when he saw that the adenine-thymine bond was exactly as long as the cytosine-guanine bond. If the bases were paired in this way, each rung of the twisted ladder in the helix would be of equal length, and the sugar-phosphate backbone would be smooth.
Structure Shows Action
"It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material" wrote Watson and Crick in the scientific paper that was published in Nature, April 25, 1953.
This was indeed a breakthrough in the study of how genetic material passes from generation to generation. Once the model was established, its mere structure hinted that DNA was indeed the carrier of the genetic code and thus the key molecule of heredity, developmental biology and evolution.
The specific base pairing underlies the perfect copying of the molecule, which is essential for heredity. During cell division, the DNA molecule is able to "unzip" into two pieces. One new molecule is formed from each half-ladder, and due to the specific pairing this gives rise to two identical daughter copies from each parent molecule.
We All Share the Same Building Blocks
DNA is a winning formula for packaging genetic material. Therefore almost all organisms – bacteria, plants, yeast and animals – carry genetic information encapsulated as DNA. One exception is some viruses that use RNA instead.
Different species need different amounts of DNA. Therefore the copying of the DNA that precedes cell division differs between organisms. For example, the DNA in E. coli bacteria is made up of 4 million base pairs and the whole genome is thus one millimeter long. The single-cell bacterium can copy its genome and divide into two cells once every 20 minutes.
The DNA of humans, on the other hand, is composed of approximately 3 billion base pairs, making up a total of almost a meter-long stretch of DNA in every cell in our bodies.
In order to fit, the DNA must be packaged in a very compact form. In E. coli the single circular DNA molecule is curled up in a condensed fashion, whereas the human DNA is packaged in 23 distinct chromosome pairs. Here the genetic material is tightly rolled up on structures called histones.
A New Biological Era
This knowledge of how genetic material is stored and copied has given rise to a new way of looking at and manipulating biological processes, called molecular biology. With the help of so-called restriction enzymes, molecules that cut the DNA at particular stretches, pieces of DNA can be cut out or inserted at different places.
In basic science, where you want to understand the role of all the different genes in humans and animals, new techniques have been developed. For one thing, it is now possible to make mice that are genetically modified and lack particular genes. By studying these animals scientists try to figure out what that gene may be used for in normal mice. This is called the knockout technique, since stretches of DNA have been taken away, or knocked out.
Scientists have also been able to insert new bits of DNA into cells that lack particular pieces of genes or whole genes. With this new DNA, the cell becomes capable of producing gene products it could not make before. The hope is that, in the future, diseases that arise due to the lack of a particular protein could be treated by this kind of gene therapy.
Was Franklin Nominated?
Rosalind Franklin.
Photo: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Archives
Many voices have argued that the Nobel Prize should also have been awarded to Rosalind Franklin, since her experimental data provided a very important piece of evidence leading to the solving of the DNA structure. In a recent interview in the magazine Scientific American, Watson himself suggested that it might have been a good idea to give Wilkins and Franklin the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and him and Crick the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine – in that way all four would have been honored.
Rosalind Franklin died in 1958. As a rule only living persons can be nominated for the the Nobel Prize, so the 1962 Prize was out of the question. But she may have been a nominee while she was still alive. The Nobel archives, that among other things contain the nominations connected to the prizes, are held closed. But 50 years after a particular prize had been awarded, the archives concerning the nominees are released. Therefore, in 2008 it will be possible to see whether Rosalind Franklin was ever a nominee for the Nobel Prize concerning the DNA helix.
The DNA-Helix
The sugar-phosphate backbone is on the outside and the four different bases are on the inside of the DNA molecule.
The two strands of the double helix are anti-parallel, which means that they run in opposite directions.
The sugar-phosphate backbone is on the outside of the helix, and the bases are on the inside. The backbone can be thought of as the sides of a ladder, whereas the bases in the middle form the rungs of the ladder.
Each rung is composed of two base pairs. Either an adenine-thymine pair that form a two-hydrogen bond together, or a cytosine-guanine pair that form a three-hydrogen bond. The base pairing is thus restricted.
This restriction is essential when the DNA is being copied: the DNA-helix is first "unzipped" in two long stretches of sugar-phosphate backbone with a line of free bases sticking up from it, like the teeth of a comb. Each half will then be the template for a new, complementary strand. Biological machines inside the cell put the corresponding free bases onto the split molecule and also "proof-read" the result to find and correct any mistakes. After the doubling, this gives rise to two exact copies of the original DNA molecule.
The coding regions in the DNA strand, the genes, make up only a fraction of the total amount of DNA. The stretches that flank the coding regions are called introns, and consist of non-coding DNA. Introns were looked upon as junk in the early days. Today, biologists and geneticists believe that this non-coding DNA may be essential in order to expose the coding regions and to regulate how the genes are expressed.
By Lotta Fredholm, Science Journalist
I will just take your word on your assessment of the talent and intellect of Issac Newton and Einstein.
Calculus (Latin, calculus, a small stone used for counting) is a branch of mathematics that includes the study of limits, derivatives, integrals, and infinite series, and constitutes a major part of modern university education. Historically, it was sometimes referred to as "the calculus", but that usage is seldom seen today. Calculus has widespread applications in science and engineering and is used to solve complicated problems for which algebra alone is insufficient. Calculus builds on algebra, trigonometry, and analytic geometry and includes two major branches, differential calculus and integral calculus, that are related by the fundamental theorem of calculus. In more advanced mathematics, calculus is usually called analysis and is defined as the study of functions.
Hell, you know that Rock and Roll came from the blues, rhythm and blues, and jazz --all started by our black brothers who got so bored picking cotton that they would find ways to continue their native traditions of music and song, marrying it to English, America, and their present situation. But hey, in Music Appreciation class in college (yes, I did go to college, several times actually), I remember seeing an animated film about the history of music, and it implied that primitive man, perhaps even cave men, needed music, and made music, mostly grunts, percussion banging, and wailing, screaming, moaning, and growling; which sounds a lot like any record by the Rolling Stones, right?
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (Russian: Игорь Фёдорович Стравинский, Igor' Fjodorovič Stravinskij) (June 17, 1882 – April 6, 1971) was a Russian composer, considered by many in both the West and his native land to be the most influential composer of 20th century music.[1] He was a quintessentially cosmopolitan Russian who was named by Time magazine as one of the most influential people of the century.[2] In addition to the recognition he received for his compositions, he also achieved fame as a pianist and a conductor, often at the premieres of his works.
Stravinsky's compositional career was notable for its stylistic diversity. He first achieved international fame with three ballets commissioned by the impresario Serge Diaghilev and performed by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes (Russian Ballet): L'Oiseau de feu ("The Firebird") (1910), Petrushka (1911), and Le sacre du printemps ("The Rite of Spring") (1913). The Rite, whose premiere provoked a riot, transformed the way in which subsequent composers thought about rhythmic structure; to this day its vision of pagan rituals, enacted in an imaginary ancient Russia continues to dazzle and overwhelm audiences.
After this first Russian phase he turned to neoclassicism in the 1920s. The works from this period tended to make use of traditional musical forms (concerto grosso, fugue, symphony), frequently concealed a vein of intense emotion beneath a surface appearance of detachment or austerity, and often paid tribute to the music of earlier masters, for example J.S. Bach, Verdi, and Tchaikovsky.
In the 1950s he adopted serial procedures, using the new techniques over the final twenty years of his life to write works that were briefer and of greater rhythmic, harmonic, and textural complexity than his earlier music. Their intricacy notwithstanding, these pieces share traits with all of Stravinsky's earlier output; rhythmic energy, the construction of extended melodic ideas out of a few cells comprising only two or three notes, and clarity of form, instrumentation, and of utterance.
He also published a number of books throughout his career, almost always with the aid of a collaborator, sometimes uncredited. In his 1936 autobiography, Chronicles of My Life, written with the help of Alexis Roland-Manuel, Stravinsky included his infamous statement that "music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all."[3] With Roland-Manuel and Pierre Souvtchinsky he wrote his 1939–40 Harvard University Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, which were delivered in French and later collected under the title Poétique musicale in 1942 (translated in 1947 as Poetics of Music).[4] Several interviews in which the composer spoke to Robert Craft were published as Conversations with Igor Stravinsky[5] They collaborated on five further volumes over the following decade.
Jazz is an original American musical art form which originated around the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern American States out of a confluence of African and European music traditions. The use of blue notes, call-and-response, improvisation, polyrhythms, syncopation and the swung note of ragtime are characteristics traceable back to jazz's West African pedigree.[1] During its early development, jazz also incorporated music from New England's religious hymns and from 19th and 20th century American popular music based on European music traditions.[2] The origins of the word "jazz," which was first used to refer to music in about 1915, are uncertain (for the origin and history, see Jazz (word)).
Jazz includes a variety of subgenres, such as New Orleans Dixieland dating from the early 1910s, big band-style swing from the 1930s and 1940s, bebop-style jazz from the mid-1940s, a variety of latin-jazz fusions such as Afro-Cuban and Brazilian jazz from the 1950s and 1960s, and jazz-rock fusion from the 1970s.
Ludwig van Beethoven began concentrated work on his Symphony No. 7 in A major (Op. 92) in 1811, while he was staying in the Bohemian spa town of Teplice in the hope of improving his health. It was completed in 1812, and was dedicated to Count Moritz von Fries.
I am sure glad that you did not mention these things, because I would feel obligated to look them up don't you know?
With the Volvo down, awaiting its mass air flow sensor (what the hell does that do, and why did it stop the car from starting?), are you driving the VW, or riding Fidelio? Is Meredith riding her Moped? It boggles the mind surmising.
Astrology was so very important to me when I was in college, and when I was a starving artist pretending to be a movie star who remained undiscovered. It was just that when I would get those 5-star days, and then the actual day turned to shit --I became disenchanted with the whole Sun sign thing. Our friend Kristine is still heavy into such anomolies.
I did get ahold of the electrician and the plumber, and progress is going to take place in my very basement. Repeat question: did you ever finish your kitchen cabinets?
Glenn
Mass air flow sensor is a tube with a wire in it.
Electricity is passed through the wire, which heats it up.
A computer measures the resistance of the wire, which changes wit the wire's temperature.
The tube is mounted between the intake manifold and the air filter.
When air flows into the engine, it cools the wire, signaling the computer to "send more fuel" so to speak.
Actually, it changes the open time of the electronic fuel injectors.
When it don't work, all the engine will do is sort of idle.
When you step on the gas (open the throttle is the technical term) all it will do is backfire and die.
Driving her to work in the Folksvagen.
Both Franklin and Mme. Curie died of irresponsible self exposure to radiation. Although Marie probably didn't know about the danger. Roz should have.
What do you mean "not meaningless"?
The whole point to the entire universe is meaninglessness.
I mean it.
Thanks for the techno-illustration of the mass air flow sensor. Fuel injection does baffle most of us, even though it seems create more horse power than the old carb system.
If the whole purpose of the Universe is "meaninglessness", that shifts us into a whole new paradigm. You sound a bit nihilistic.
Nihilism (from the Latin nihil, nothing) is a philosophical position, sometimes called an anti-philosophy, which argues that the world, especially past and current human existence, is without objective meaning, purpose, comprehensible truth, or essential value. Nihilists generally assert some or all of the following:
there is no reasonable proof of the existence of a higher ruler or creator,
a "true morality" does not exist, and
secular ethics are impossible;
therefore, life has, in a sense, no truth, and no action is objectively preferable to any other.
The term nihilism is sometimes used synonymously with anomie to denote a general mood of despair at the pointlessness of existence.[1]
Nihilism is often more of a charge leveled against a particular idea, movement, or group, than it is an actual philosophical position to which one overtly subscribes. Movements such as Dada, Futurism,[2] and deconstructionism,[3] among others, have been identified by commentators as "nihilistic" at various times in various contexts. Often this means or is meant to imply that the beliefs of the accuser are more substantial or truthful, whereas the beliefs of the accused are nihilistic, and thereby comparatively amount to nothing (or are simply claimed to be destructively amoralistic).
Nihilism is also a characteristic that has been ascribed to time periods: for example, Jean Baudrillard and others have called postmodernity a nihilistic epoch,[4] and some Christian theologians and figures of religious authority have asserted that postmodernity[5] and many aspects of modernity[3] represent the rejection of God, and therefore are nihilistic.
Also known as the correct choice of belief, Nihilism is often associated with the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, whose views accorded with certain aspects of the position. The modern definition, however, does not apply to him.[6] For while Nietzsche could be accurately categorized as a nihilist in the descriptive sense, he never advocated nihilism as a practical mode of living and was typically quite critical of nihilism as he construed it.[7][6] Another prominent philosopher who has written on the subject is Martin Heidegger, who argued that "[the term] nihilism has a very specific meaning. What remains unquestioned and forgotten in metaphysics is being; and hence, it is nihilistic."[8]
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
"All the beauty and sublimity we have bestowed upon real and imaginary things, I will reclaim as the property and product of man: as his fairest apology: Man as poet, as thinker, as God, as love, as power: with what regal liberality he has lavished gifts upon things so as to impoverish himself and make himself feel wretched! His most unselfish act hitherto has been to admire and worship and to know how to conceal from himself that it was he who created what he admired." (Section I, Will to Power )
This selection from the Twilight of the Idols contains 6 stages outlining the "History of an Error." The first four are a de-valuation of an Ideal; the last two are Nietzsche's re-valuation of an Ideal. It is Nietzsche's historical deconstruction of the God-Idea. The original text is followed by a brief analysis.
1. The true world -- unattainable but for the sage, the pious, the virtuous man; he lives in it, he is it.
(The oldest form of the idea, relatively sensible, simple and persuasive. A circumlocution for the sentence, "I, Plato, am the truth.")
2. The true world -- unattainable for now, but promised for the sage, the pious, the virtuous man ("for the sinner who repents").
(Progress of the idea: it becomes more subtle, insidious, incomprehensible -- it becomes female, it becomes Christian.)
3. The true world -- unattainable, indemonstrable, unpromisable; but the very thought of it -- a consolidation, an obligation, an imperative.
(At bottom, the old sun, but seen through mist and skepticism. The idea has become elusive, pale, Nordic, Konigsbergian)
4. The true world -- unattainable? At any rate, unattained, and being unattained, also unknown. Consequently, not consoling, redeeming, or obligating: how could something unknown obligate us?
(Gray morning, The first yawn of reason. The cockcrow of positivism)
5. The "true" world -- an idea which is no longer good for anything, not even obligating -- an idea which has become useless and superfluous -- consequently a refuted idea: let us abolish it!
(Bright day; breakfast: return of bon sens and cheer-fulness; Plato's embarrassed blush; pandemonium of all free spirits.)
6. The true world -- we have abolished. What world has remained? The apparent one perhaps? But no! With the true world we also have abolished the apparent one.
(Noon: moment of the briefest shadow; end of the longest error; high point of humanity; INCIPIT ZARATHUSTRA.')
But "meaning" in life is like "truth". We all struggle with our individual intellectual filters to process the world about us, and some of us try and make sense out of it, while other just live in it. I kind of gravitated toward a more open minded metaphysical explication of nature of reality, following some of the principles of Zen, that in fact we are all here during many lifetimes in lesson, that life should be, and is a classroom. It is our sacred obligation to work toward the cosmic and eternal truths, more so with each lifetime on this plane of existance. I guy I worked with was shooting the philosophic BS with me one day, and he asked, "Why bother?". All we have is what you see. Death is complete oblivion. There is no judgement, no karma, nada; just a dirt nap." Man, as he sits in Bardo after this lifetime, he will laugh his spiritual ass off at his ignorance and lethargy.
Anyway, I feel obligated to respond to the comments, edicts, and philosophic postulates thrown out here into cyber space by the indominatible infamous Sir Savant.
Glenn
Meaning, no meaning, some meaning, what does "meaning" mean?
And what am I supposed to DO about it?
The kitchen cabinets are almost in.
Just 3 more to hang. But they don't MEAN anything.
Meaning: 1.a: purpose, 2.a: the thing one intends to convey, especially with language. b: the thing that is conveyed. 2: something meant or intended. 3: significant quality, implication of a hidden or special significance. 4 a: the logical connotation of a word or phrase b: the logical denotation or extension of a word or a phrase.
What does that MEAN you still inquire? Well, it is your motor, sir, it is what drives you as a creature of his ilk. Without "meaning" we just wander in a fog. Even our vocation, if we are fortunate, has or had some meaning. Poetry has meaning. Music has meaning, and when it is composed by Lane Savant, it is meaningful. Yet even with meaning in our lives, self-imposed, imagined, or self-evident, we still need a little madness, to quote Alexis Zorba, in order to sometimes cut the rope and be free. So, for Christ's sake, to have finished the construction of your kitchen cabinets "means" that you will have a place to put your dishes and pots and pans and troll dolls.
I remember being exasperated by an acquaintence who happened to be a Seventh Day Adventist, who "believed" firmly that after death there is nothing, just an infinite form of slumber, no dreams, no progress, no planning, no life review, nothing --until Jesus comes again, and raises all these faithful to join him. What saddened me is that as entities, since time is irrelevant, and does not exist beyond the veil, we can create whatever we want, whatever we desire, whatever we believe, for a while. And yet even though I suspect that time does not exist, it seems like such a sad waste of it to force one's self into a state of nothingness, until Jesus, or someone posing as Jesus, or your mother, or someone, or something raises you from your slumber, and begins to gently inform you of the "truth", the Great Cosmic Truth, the skinny, the poop, actually what's haps.
So we are all seeking the truth, the answer as to why we are here, and how that transpired beyond the obvious combining of ovum and sperm and the magic of growth from tadpole to behemoth. In some ironic way, just being involved in your blog, and feeling free to laugh at you, at myself, at life, is definitely "meaningful". Do you know what I mean?
I often feel that you are baiting the rest of us, pushing our buttons, hoping to get that old rise out of us, manipulating and controling our responses by setting up straw man arguements or verbal or philosophic pitfalls that we will tumble into, and have to claw our way out of. You do this with whimsey, with humor, with sardonic pleasure; and yet perhaps I give you too much credit, or not enough. I spent most of my life moving along without continuing our association, bumping into others I "knew" 50 years ago, but none of them seemed to resonate with any "meaning" deep within the recesses of my cortex, heart, and spleen. Yet you, Dougie, have staying power, have some shred of meaning for me to look forward to daily, or weekly, or whenever you decide to post something new, and start me off on the reaction road.
Like this comment, for instance. What the hell does it mean, and what does it have to do with a mass air flow sensor? Well nothing, something, everything. It is just that I struggle to find some meaning in the morning, and FFTL puts me in the proper frame of mind and spirit to get with it, to snap that cat gut, to mush those doggies. Besides that I have a medical treatment today, as I do monthly, and have for over 10 years, and I am going to meet my plumber tonight immediately after the IV is extracted from my vein.
Glenn
I see what you mean.
have to agree with you about 'Revolutions" and "geniuses". generally they appear to be accidents of interpretation and reportage heavily influenced by the victorious as other sages have noted. Reading Che Guevara's "Guerilla Warfare" recently I found myself in the written presence of someone whose ego had gotten the better of him. It seems like there is a general tendancy to take history for granted and the speed of historical revision has hit new highs with the internet. Recording history 'as it was' seems like a real impossibility: like the experimental variables explaining the results of the experiment. History is addictive: like gossip.
How to tell what's bogus and what's not? Probably the same way people always have: they don't. Instead of being a forest of trees with little information and tribal instincts we now have huge volumes of information we have to cut down with a scyth and free-form tribal instincts i.e., not shaped by 'natural' environments. But what's real is not any more apparent than it was when we were eating wooley mammoth burgers save for bits of technological gee whiz like this here web-loG. Is it any different than when Cro Magnon discovered he could move the rock with a lever? I bet CM got a big charge out of his lever just like the one I get from my CD burner.
Likewise the notion of who gets 'credit' for what becomes even more ludicrous in the light of todays fascist intellectual property debacle (can you say "Telecommunications Act", WIPO, Digital Millieum Copyright Act, etc etc etc". never mind the Patriot Act and its "illk" ...) But Orwells thought police are nothing new: American copyright law is patterned after the Stationers company in England in response to Gutenbergs press. Then as now the pretense was the publishers need to 'protect" the artist (at that time it was the book manufacturing monopoly that was threatened) but that only rarely happens. 30s jazz was partly fueled by everyone doing versions of everyone elses songs but that's illegal these days. So is it better that we have a plethora of cheap recording equipment?
Stravinsky was a relentless self promoter as were Malcom Mclaren and the Sex Pistols. Dunno about Isaac Newton but I'm told he did take risks with his ideas like the others did. There, I think I spotted a relationship, I can go home now and write a 'history' book...
1-- What IS the past tense in English of the verb "to steal"??
2-- Glenn has it right; Bill Gates (and Steve Jobs, I'd add) are not smarter computer nerds than others of this ilk, but simply smarter business-people.
Tschüß,
Anonomann
"Stole" or "Stolen", I guess, although I think that "Stolen" is actually the past pumpernickel.
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