Many historians are astounded at the astronomical capabilities of the ancients. Far from being uncultured primitives, they had keen minds and calculating vision. But that should have been obvious from the start. Anyone who can create fire and the wheel from nothing must have a brain cell or two working. In the modern technological world, there are few quantum leaps anymore, just gradual improvement by gradual increment over what already exists.

So why their obsession with the heavens? Many today believe that the celestial creator resides in heaven… could it be the same heaven in which the ancients pictured their own gods? And is there a difference from their religion and the modern forms?

Immanuel Velikovsky wrote in 1950’s Worlds in Collision that the ancients had actually witnessed celestial phenomena which science today says is impossible. By impossible, they mean it does not fall into line with their currently accepted theories.

The planets – gods to the ancients, a practice that continued even into the enlightened ages of the Greeks and Romans – used to exhibit independent behaviors. The ancients claim they had formerly been in their fixed orbits but then went free of them, going wherever they wanted.

This independence of motion came to mean divinity to our ancestors. The planets seemed to exhibit intelligence and volition.

So much of the corpus of ancient writings, myths, and religions hinge on this work of the ancient astronomers, keeping track of the motions of these gods, their battles between each other, and the timetables for their returns.

And the ancients understood that the planets were large spheres, not merely points of light in the night sky.

The question that remains is why did they see a completely different universe than we currently see? Have the rules of celestial behavior changed in so short a time or were the ancients simply dipping into the funny mushrooms a little too much?

Theory: All Pandas are actually People in Panda Suits

Discuss

Occam’s razor (or Ockham’s razor), entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem, is the principle that “entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity” and the conclusion, thereof, that the simplest explanation or strategy tends to be the best one. The principle is attributed to 14th-century English logician and Franciscan friar, William of Ockham. Occam’s razor may be alternatively phrased as pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate (“plurality should not be posited without necessity”).

Occam’s razor states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory. When competing hypotheses are equal in other respects, the principle recommends selection of the hypothesis that introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest entities while still sufficiently answering the question.

Occam’s razor was a common principle in medieval philosophy and was not originated by William, but because of his frequent usage of the principle, his name has become indelibly attached to it. It is unlikely that William would appreciate what some of us have done in his name. For example, atheists often apply Occam’s razor in arguing against the existence of God on the grounds that God is an unnecessary hypothesis. We can explain everything without assuming the extra metaphysical baggage of a Divine Being.

Read this and this to know more.

 Is it foolish to think that NOT accidently killing civilians should be an equal priority to our own security? If not…. ctd.

…then I think that changes the “Fight them there so not to fight them here” meme. We extend our rights to reach our targets…. ctd

If the threat is not existential, then we go way beyond our moral sphere by accidently killing in pursuit of our own defense. ctd

  So is the threat of Afghanistan so serious/existential as to clearly justify killing of innocents in pursuit of our security? ctd 

 I believe the argument of an existential threat out of Afghanistan is not clear and has never been justified by our leaders. ctd  

Not to say there’s no threat from Afghanistan/But that even in light of the 9-11 attacks civilian rights must be equal priority.

the faster u get (closer u approach the speed of light) time slows down. so time is your relation to lite speed. and the universe is 14.4 billion years old (according to scientists) because that’s how far they see. so the universe is as big as lite can travel for 14.4 billion years. but scientists also say that when the big bang happened, the material coming out of the primordial atom traveled faster than the speed of lite. and that’s what they say is “dark matter” and is stretching the universe, and this will end the universe with a big crunch. so that means there’s something outside our universe pulling the lite, making our universe bigger, but the only thing that can bend lite is gravity. but gravity doesn’t actually bend lite, it bends the space around it. and the only thing that has enough energy to suck in lite (all the space containing lite) is a black hole. that means that the first thing to come out of that primordial atom was a black hole. that’s what’s beyond our universe.

well actually the black hole wasn’t first. a super humungous red giant star was. and the universe expanded a lot before it died. and when it died it started to suck the matter in like a black hole. well it was a black hole. so now the universe is still expand and yes it is true that it is going to begin to shrink. this in my option is true but because the black hole will acquire so much mass that it will be greater than or equal to that of the universe and will begin to stuck in the universe faster than it can grow.
then eventually everything will be in the beginning black hole. once everything is sucked into it, there will be another big bang, resulting in everything starting again.

1. dark matter: the force that holds stars in the sky. it can be proven in several ways: dark matter neither absorbs or emits light, scientist can observe it by measuring the effects of its gravity. this can be easily seen when two galaxies collide. Scientist use special telescopes to detect the location and amount of mass during the collision. Most of this mass is hot gas, which is the energy emitted during the collision. The other majority of mass is stars. All of this mass is contained in the galaxies. However, the force of dark matter keeps the stars (visible matter) separated. This dark matter is directly related to dark energy (the force that is propelling the universe’s expansion).
2. DARK ENERGY:
how can we know how big the universe is? we observe white dwarfs (the standard for light in the universe) to see how much light they emit. ["Because all white dwarfs achieve the same mass before exploding, they all achieve the same luminosity and can be used by astronomers as "standard candles."" (NASA)] By observing the light we can conclude their distance (using the 1/r2 law). By knowing the distance, we can know how long ago they occurred, by looking at their wave length and intensity of light. When scientists searched for these supernovae they expected that the expansion of the universe would be slowing (stars would be brighter–closer to us) but instead the supernovae was much dimmer, suggesting that they are father away… hence the conclusion of THE UNIVERSE IS GROWING!
3. Cosmic Microwaves (not just for popcorn): cosmic microwave background indicate that the Universe has a flat geometry. Except there is not enough matter in the universe to produce this plain. Dark energy is the “stuff” that must fill the vast reaches of mostly empty space in the universe in order to be able to make space accelerate in its expansion. In this sense, it is a “field” just like an electric field or a magnetic field, both of which are produced by electromagnetic energy.
4. however, there must be something more propelling the universe. if scientist measure the supernovae from the beginning of the universe, then there are other stars beyond those, which our telescopes cannot see. this would lead me to conclude there is a black hole from the first gravitational collapse of a star, when our universe was only a few million of years old. This star would have been massive, larger than any star we know of today (Pistol Star is the largest). It’s mass would result in a huge supernova and BAM the primordial black hole. …

I would like to add to the list of cartoon/CGI characters that seem to stereotype a race. We have had the black crows in Dumbo that were jivey, groovy black folk from the South. Then there was Jar Jar from the new Star Wars who have been theoried to act like a black southern lady and also an Italian person with that odd speech and accent. I can only confirm that I can see both theories there.

I want to add Doby of Harry Potter. Doesn’t this odd elf creature look like an old poor Indian guy from the streets of India? Like Gandhi himself? Doesn’t talk like one- well maybe a little.

What other stereotypes you remember?

“If I could snap my fingers and become nonautistic I would not do so. Autism is part of who I am.” – Temple Grandin

One thing I regret trying to do when Alex was younger is figuring out where his personality ended and his autism started. As you can guess, that didn’t go very well. I read Jenny McCarthy’s book Louder Than Words: A Mother’s Journey in Healing Autism and thought to myself “ooooh, Alex is under the autism somewhere. There’s a normal kid in there trying to get out.” I’ve since decided that this isn’t really the case.

McCarthy’s book is a good one. It’s just a very different experience than what I’m going through. I am not really looking to “cure” Alex. 1) I don’t believe what Alex is experiencing can be truly cured. 2) Even if it can, I doubt a cure will be available in Alex’s lifetime. 3) I just want Alex to be happy. And he is.

This doesn’t mean that I just let things happen, of course. It’s constant work on using words and undertanding feelings and social graces. Alex’s sensitivity to sounds needs more work as well so that it doesn’t hurt his ears and so that he can function normally. But overall, Alex is one of the happiest kids you will ever meet. So my quest for finding the “real Alex” under the autistic Alex is long gone. Alex is Alex. Period.

One of the challenges in having a child with autism is figuring out what’s normal age-appropriate behavior, what’s personality and what’s autism. It’s really not the clearest line in the world between ages 1-5. Anything I’d think was a little odd, like Alex lining up toys, people would tell me “oh, Bobby used to do that all the time when he was that age”. So you start to feel like you’re seeing things that aren’t there and you feel bad for going all Munchausen by proxy.

As Alex gets older, the lines are clearing between his personality and his autism symptoms. We’re working on lessening the effect of the symptoms that interfere with his life and enhancing his use of the symptoms that are actually helpful. Making all the symptoms disappear just doesn’t seem likely or possible. I’m looking forward to the day that I can have a conversation with Alex about what he wants. I have a feeling his thoughts on the matter will be similar to Temple’s.

I’m glad I don’t have any major mental problems. That would suck.

Anyway, I’m writing my physics paper. As you can tell because I’m posting in my blog. Obvious signs of paper writing: avoidance of paper writing.

It’s funny how stressed I can get, and how snippy I can become, and how frustrating people seem to be during school, and yet I’m still happy. I’m really happy. I’ve noticed myself contemplating everything, trying to reevaluate my life. I’m happy about my friends and my family, and about how there’s nothing majorly wrong with me, physically or mentally. I remember trying to think a few months ago whether I was happy or not, but I couldn’t come up with an answer. But I think I am. Thanks everyone. Ya’ll done good.
I guess I feel a little guilty when I think about it. Like, why do I get to be happy and others seem to be beset with sorrow? Maybe it’s luck, but that only seems like part of it. I know I am lucky for what kind of family I got, but I feel like there’s a bigger part where I know that I really want to be happy. Seems obvious, but some people just seem to gravitate towards misery. They attract it like its what they seek in life.
Either I’m completely wrong, or these people are really messed up. If you ever feel yourself being pulled down by the push of the negative, remember that the lift of the positive is within arms reach. If something makes you feel bad, fix the problem. If you can’t fix it, avoid it. If you can’t avoid it, learn to accept it. Know what you want and change the world into it, and if you can’t change the world, change yourself.

Wow, I sure am preachy.
Hmm, I wonder why that is.
EVERYONE LISTEN TO ME.
I think I have attention issues.

Some pretty fascinating stuff from a neurologist whose name I can’t pronounce:

In the case of reading, the shapes of our writing systems have evolved towards a progressive simplification while remaining compatible with the visual coding scheme that is present in all primate brains. A fascinating discovery, made by the American researcher Marc Changizi, is that all of the world’s writing systems use the same set of basic shapes, and that these shapes are already a part of the visual system in all primates, because they are also useful for coding natural visual scenes. The monkey brain already contains neurons that preferentially respond to an “alphabet” of shapes including T, L, Y. We merely “recycle” these shapes (and the corresponding part of cortex) and turn them into a cultural code for language.

Ahh-propos of that, this article on our evolutionarily hardwired understanding of numbers is a good read as well:

The fact that children possess a mathematical intuition long before they even start school implies that our evolutionary ancestors had it too. Indeed, recent research indicates that our forebears possessed such an intuition long before they could walk upright. Scientists have found that many primates, including rhesus monkeys, can solve some of the same mathematical problems we can. Since monkeys and humans diverged 30 million years ago, mathematical intuition presumably is at least that old.

. . .

The monkeys were able to learn to release the lever for matching numbers and to keep it down for numbers that did not match. If they had succeeded simply by matching shapes, you would expect them to sometimes confuse similar-looking numbers: They might choose 1 as a match with 4 because both are made of straight lines, for example. But Diester and Nieder found that the monkeys got confused in a different way. The monkeys were most likely to mix up numbers that were numerically close to each other: the sticklike 1 and the curvaceous 2, for example. What’s more, the monkeys took more time to release the lever if larger numbers matched than if smaller ones did—another sign that the animals were responding to quantity, not shape.

The monkeys were able to learn to release the lever for matching numbers and to keep it down for numbers that did not match. If they had succeeded simply by matching shapes, you would expect them to sometimes confuse similar-looking numbers: They might choose 1 as a match with 4 because both are made of straight lines, for example. But Diester and Nieder found that the monkeys got confused in a different way. The monkeys were most likely to mix up numbers that were numerically close to each other: the sticklike 1 and the curvaceous 2, for example. What’s more, the monkeys took more time to release the lever if larger numbers matched than if smaller ones did—another sign that the animals were responding to quantity, not shape.

To neuroscientists, these studies raise a deep question. If monkeys have such solid foundations for numbers, why can’t they per form high-level mathematics? Finding an answer may help us understand what makes humans so much better with numbers than other animals. Nieder and Cantlon have both speculated that the difference lies in our ability to understand symbols, which enables us to transform our approximate intuition of numbers into a precise understanding. When we say “2,” we mean an exact quantity, not “probably 2 but maybe 1 or 3.” We can then learn rules for handling exact numbers quickly. And then we can generalize those rules from one number to the next, thus understanding general mathematical principles. Other primates, lacking our symbolic brains, take thousands of trials to learn a new rule.

It’s interesting to consider how relatively more educated our species is in the “school of hard knocks” than in the realm of book learnin.’  For as much technological gain as we’ve gotten out of conscious thought, all our gains sit on the shoulders of hard-won intuition that our brains ‘figured out’ over millions of years.

If you ask me,  shit like this is a compelling foundation for arguments that there is a great deal more to the way we interact with reality than just what we apprehend intellectually; that is, there’s more to what we know than that stuff we “know that we know.”  I’ve never really bought into philosophical materialism myself, and if I had to embark on a long dialectical against it, scientific research like this would be a good place to start.  Just a hunch.

From the Wikipedia page on Realism (you can access the individual links there)

•Entity realism, a philosophical position within scientific realism

•Epistemological realism, a subcategory of objectivism

•Hyper-realism or Hyperreality, the inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from fantasy

•Mathematical realism, a branch of philosophy of mathematics

•Moderate realism, a position holding that there is no realm where universals exist

•Modal realism, a philosophy propounded by David Lewis, that possible worlds are as real as the actual world

•Moral realism, the view in philosophy that there are objective moral values

•Mystical realism, a philosophy concerning the nature of the divine, advanced by Nikolai Berdyaev

•Naive realism, a common sense theory of perception

•New realism (philosophy), a school of early 20th-century epistemology rejecting epistemological dualism

•Organic realism or the Philosophy of Organism, the metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead, now known as process philosophy

•Philosophical realism, the belief that reality exists independently of observers

•Platonic realism, a philosophy articulated by Plato, positing the existence of universals

•Pseudorealism, a genre of art initiated by Indian artist Devajyoti Ray where reality is appraoched via abstraction

•Pseudorealism, a term coined by American Film critics, used to describe films in which digital unreal images are created and amalgamated with regular scenes thereby creating an ilusion that is difficult to distinguish from reality
.
•Quasi-realism, an expressivist meta-ethical theory which asserts that though our moral claims are projectivist we understand them in realist terms

•Representative realism, the view that we cannot perceive the external world directly

•Scientific realism, the view that the world described by science is the real world

•Transcendental realism, a concept implying that individuals have a perfect understanding of the limitations of their own minds

•Truth-value link realism, a metaphysical concept explaining how to understand parts of the world that are apparently cognitively inaccessible

It is winter, and key limes are thick on the branches. Garlic is blooming, and soon there will be bright kumquats. Picking oranges, seeing how the tree branches had bent under their weight, I realized that the globes on Christmas trees represent fruit.

Every winter we quote from the Archpriest of Hita. This year we will quote in English, from the Willis translation, stanzas 317-320.

“You, Love, are the innkeeper and the lodging house of sloth; you never want a man to do any good works; as soon as you see him idle, you give him a life of torment; it begins in sin and ends in sorrow.

“Of all the good that you preach, you yourself perform nothing; you delude everybody with your fair words; you want what the wolf wanted of the fox: you common-law barristers, listen to a worthwhile fable.”

Axé.

I would like to make a collection of Frequently Asked Questions on Apprecitive Inquiry.

It could be about questions like:

• Why is Apprecitive Inquiry important?
• What is the purpose of Appreciative Inquiry?
• How is Apprecitive Inquiry connected to other theories, methods and practices?
• Is the 4D model the only method in Apprecitive Inquiry?
• How do you design af good appreciative question?
• Can Appreciative Inquiry be applied in conflicts?
• How do you deal with life’s dark sides in Appreciative Inquiry?
• How big ambitions should you have in Appreciative Inquiry?

Which questions are the most important and frequently asked in your life? If you tell me, I will start writing my answers.

The Juubi, the ten-tailed Bijuu, the ultimate monster and weapon, was introduced in chapter 467 when Tobi made a declaration of war to the ninja world. Of course the Juubi has special powers, but what do they have to do with our beloved main characters? What are those eyes it has? Well, let’s have a look, shall we?

This is Aeris, new member (Hi!!), and very proud of it! I’m German, so some phrases or sentences may sound a little bit awkward, just so that you’ll understand why, if it comes to this.

The Juubi and its Host.

So, here we see it. The Juubi with a single, but most certainly totally IMBA eye, and its host with his key ring wand. Let’s take a closer look at those eyes:

Three, six, nine tomoes on three circles: Voilà, the Sharin'negan!

Here we have it, displayed as Tobi’s Mugen Tsukuyomi, the state where he will have his eyes projected onto the moon. Of course, we all see that it is a mixture of the Rin’negan and the Sharingan, I dubbed it the Sharin’negan. But the Sharingan has only three tomoes, doesn’t it? Why does this eye have nine of them? a) We’ll see that later on, b) maybe because it would look really silly if there were only three on the inner ring.

Until now, we all think that the Rikudou Sennin had the Rin’negan himself, because it was always said like this. But my theory is based on the following: Rikudou does not ONLY have the Rin’negan, but the same eyes as the Juubi! A prove for a Bijuu’s attribute passing over to its Jinchuuriki are the whiskers on Naruto’s cheeks. So maybe, in some way, the Rikudou Sennin had the Sharin’negan as well after he became the Juubi’s host.

The Rikudou Sennin had two sons. One who believed that power was the key to peace, and one who believed that love was the key to peace. The “power son” had descendants that formed the Uchiha clan, and the “love son” had descendants that formed the Senju clan.

The "Senju son" and the "Uchiha son".

The son that eventually would form the Uchiha clan definitely inherited the Sharingan from his father and passed this on via DNA to every descendant. However, not each Uchiha child is born with the Sharingan, you have to activate it, a striking event must occur so that it activates itself.

Now, what if the son that eventually would form the Senju clan inherited simply the other dou jutsu, the Rin’negan?

This would mean first of all that Nagato needed to be a scattered Senju descendant. But why not? Nagato always talked about peace, that he hated and detested war, that he couldn’t stand it and that he wanted to live in a world with no war at all. But he was not strong enough in his heart. The civil war with Hanzou Salamander showed him one of his two pains, and sadness overwhelmed him. “And sadness leads to sorrow, sorrow leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to the Dark Side of the Force.” Yeah, Nagato definitely turned to the Dark Side, to Akatsuki. But how did his life end? He turned to the good guys again, being convinced by Naruto. And how could he have achieved that if the Will of Fire was not dwelling inside Nagato? I mean, Naruto is NOT Sailor Moon who can talk EVERYONE into becoming one of the good guys! (or is he?)

If the Senju clan had inherited the Rin’negan that would further have to mean that -same as the Uchihas- nearly everybody should be able to awaken it. But nobody did, as we saw. Well, maybe the Rin’negan is not that easy to activate because it has way more powers, that would only be fair .

But a better explanation is this one: How should the Senju KNOW about their legacy? This info is written on the ancient stone table and you can only read it with Mangekyou Sharingan, Sharingan and Rin’negan all together.

The ancient stone tablet in the Uchiha hideout.

The Uchihas and the Senjus are destined to be enemies all their lives, so how could the Senjus even get near the stone tablet? And even IF a Senju once stood before it: as Tobi said, the info about the Rikudou Sage’s secrets can only be discovered if the table is read with MS, S and Rin’negan together. So even the Uchiha didn’t know that.

Okay, that the original Senju son totally sucked at passing down this secret to his sons is a complete lack of intelligence, but maybe he didn’t know either.

Remember my a) and b) choice in the beginning? “Why does this eye have nine of them? a) We’ll see that later on.” I’m pretty sure that all your jaws will drop open to your table or at least to the floor beneath you when you see this picture that comes from chapter 400, page 16:

Well well, what do we have here?

WTF, a second circle????? (Credits for spotting this image go to Ninjason, a user from the German Naruto wiki.) Holy shit, what is THAT supposed to mean? Easy, in my opinion: There will come the time when Sasuke evolves, develops a second circle in his Sharingan AND three additional tomoe, so that he would have six in total by this time. I mean, this image can no way be a mistake! Or can it?

If my theory is correct, the Senju clan inherited the legacy of the Rin’negan. The Uchiha clan possesses the legacy of the Sharingan.  Plus, we have Sasuke linked to the Juubi’s eyes via Sharingan. Hmmmm, who is missing now….? *thinking thinking thinking* The rest goes without words and is to be interpreted by you.

Chapter 462, Tobi to Naruto:

This is only the second time we’ve met, but I can tell the fire of the Senju clan dwells within you. I can see the first Hokage in you. Though dead, he still lives on.

Fate?