Owner: Karma URL:http://karma-action.blogspot.com Join Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2006 18:15:33 -0500 Rating:1 Site Description: Personal blog reflecting on events, mostly from a Buddhist point of view. Also includes some reflections on politics, home improvements and anything else that takes my fancy. Links to my other blogs where I record poems, essays, short-stories and money Site statistics:Click here
Gaza - did they fall or were they pushed. 2007-06-13 14:25:00 The Gaza Strip is a tiny patch of land approximately 10 km by 40 km. This makes it smaller in area than London, for instance. It is even smaller than Andorra. Yet somehow it manages to have two political movements, with corresponding militias, so antagonistic that they are waging a civil war. And all this whilst practically surrounded and controlled by the more pressing enemy, Israel. It is an almost unbelievable situation.Josephus recorded in the The Jewish Wars the irritating tendency (irritating from the Roman point of view) of the occupants of Palestine to be at each other throats and arguing with each other over the least thing.Another historian, Procopius (6th Century), noted the tendency of the inhabitants of Palestine to rise up in rebellion with boring regularity.So is it just just the nature of the people, or perhaps something in the air? Maybe something that exudes from the Earth in that spot.Or could it be that there are people with something to gain from keeping the
Operationalism, Love, religion, art and abstraction 2007-06-17 05:23:00 It seems to me that the more a word refers to something concrete then the better chance that people will be able to agree on the use and meaning of the word. The more abstract or ethereal the referent of a word is, the greater is the disagreement on the meaning.In physics and the physical sciences it is important for words to have fixed meanings in order for communication to be successful. One of the principle of science is that observations ('facts' if you want to use that overused word) should be reproducible. So the idea of operationalism was born. What a measurement 'is' is the set of operations that lead to the measurement. So, although we have a general concept of length, 'length' in any given experiment is the set of operations which lead to the figure we call the length, and some processes are intrinsically more stable and accurate than others. This is then taken to a higher level by accepting a general standard for how to measure certain things, and this allows th
Awareness - it is amazing 2007-06-21 18:15:00 One of the few times I would definitely count as insightful moments was when I realised what I meant by being conscious.I'm sure that most people grasp long before I did, but that doesn't change the impact that it had.I was wrestling with getting a PDP-12 to understand numbers that were being typed in on a Teletype. It was a fairly simple programme in assembler code but I'd written some errors into it (by mistake you understand). It was quite a walk from the station in Brighton to where I was living and I was thinking about the difference between my understanding and that of the machine. This simple problem turned the whole philosophical issue into something concrete. No matter how many times faster the computer could perform its operations, no matter how many levels of supervisor system inspected the workings of the systems below, no matter how much cross-checking there was, it would never be aware in the same sense that I was. The mere fact of my awareness had awakened.How I Read more:Awareness
The Hitchins debate - god vs religion 2007-06-20 17:18:00 Peter Hitchins and Christopher Hitchins are brothers. One has written a book about the absurdities of (theist) religion and the other has written a critical newspaper review of the book.The BBC radio 4 Today program interviewed them recently. Essentially this turned into a pointless debate. It sounded very much like arguments which they had rehearsed many times. One interesting point that arose in my mind was the interchangeable way arguments about god and religion were used. It struck me how utterly absurd this was.To take an analogy: somebody who likes sunbathing will not necessarily know anything about the nature of the sun. In a similar way, somebody who worships a god (regardless of the reality or nature of what that words refers to) won't necessarily know anything about the nature of the god they worship. They might know a little about the reputed properties (and even that is far from certain), but they are as likely to know the reality as a sunbather is of happening to b
Thomas Covenant 2007-06-24 17:18:00 A long time ago, possibly about 25 years ago, I read Stephen Donaldson's ThomasCovenant
books with an enthusiasm that bordered on the addictive. Even then I found some of his prose far too lurid, with an apparent need to trawl through every page of the dictionary in an attempt to outdo the descriptions given in a previous chapter, the imagery and imagination cured all ills.I was disappointed when he wrote the Second Chronicles. He had tidied all his characters away in a neat fashion at the end of the first trilogy, and then was forced to reinvent them for a second trilogy. Nonetheless I read all the second trilogy.Since then I have been in limbo, neither getting rid of the books nor re-reading them ... until now. I've started them from the beginning. The prose is still purple, some of the similes fail in mid-sentence, but the nightmare psychology of the plot is just as gripping (as far as I have got).I wonder whether I will get sucked in again, or will give up wading through hi
Damien, The Omen and Blair 2007-06-27 14:22:00 If you were given to flights of fancy (on a Jeffrey Archer scale) you could write quite a decent end-of-days type of novel about the rise and rise of Tony Blair
:his gift for immaculate deceptionhis ability to leave people thinking he has agreed with them - even people of starkly opposed viewshis messianic faith in his own rightness... and so it goes on (a good CV for Mephistopheles)As with any good Omen type story, he is now getting in with the Pope and apparently aiming to be peace envoy to the Middle-East. Should we be planning for World War III now? This is the same Tony Blair who stood out against an end to the Israel invasion of southern Lebanon. This is the same Tony Blair who has helped bring chaos to Iraq. And now he wants to wave his golden tongue over the remaining tinder boxes.I suppose if you preside over the signing of a treaty in Northern Ireland you might suppose you can work miracles. Maybe he will take the Palestinian leadership to a high place and promise them al Read more:Damien
Out goes the Megxon, in comes the FinePix 2007-06-26 14:58:00 Back at the end of February I wrote about getting a Megxon camera off ebay. I was very pleased with it. I loved the quality of the photos. It was easy to use and the zoom was fast and accurate. Sadly it died. During its short life it converted me to the joys of digital photography.At the beginning of June while I was downloading photos from it something happened. It was just sitting there - not being jogged about or suffering any other kind of fatal indignity. Suddenly I couldn't download any more. After a few tries I though the obvious thing was to switch off and on again (cycling the power is a fairly reliable panacea in the world of electronics). The fatal flaw in my plan was revealed when I couldn't switch the camera on again. I tried all the obvious things, like changing the batteries, removing the memory card. All to no avail.I even wrote to Megxon to ask for advice. Their reply was worthy of Microsoft. It told me to try all the things I'd told them I'd already t Read more:comes
, FinePix
Tobacco, Alzheimer's and Duty of Care 2007-07-01 14:29:00 Today, 1st July, the ban on smoking in any enclosed public space came into force in England and Wales. It is now illegal to smoke in an enclosed public space - and that includes both private enclosed spaces intended for the public, apart from private homes.The ban is intended not for the protection of smokers, but rather for the protection of those subjected to the effects of secondary smoking.This kind of legislation leaves the government in an interesting ethical (and potentially legal) quandary. The problem, so it seems to me, is this. Suppose you introduce legislation, such as the smoking ban, which is intended to reduce the likelihood of certain diseases - in this case a range of cancers. So the intention is to extend expected longevity, and I think the statistical evidence is strong enough for this intention to be found in practice. So government action is directly contributing to the likelihood of a person living long enough to suffer from Alzheimer
's. There is a very str Read more:Tobacco
A very unsettling picture 2007-07-10 16:42:00 I don't like exposed heights much, and I'm hopeless on a bicycle so this picture sent to me by a friend gives me a chill every time I think of it.But things like this also operate as a kind of mental/spiritual exercise. The things that are unsettling or even downright scary are my own personal hells, the ones I carry around in my head. They are part of my mindstream. In order to find freedom I must find a way to come to terms with them.And I'm definitely not ready for this particular challenge. (Maybe they could have left the helmet at home and strapped on a parachute for safety).(c) Hal Westhead 2005
Democratic Government 2007-07-08 10:14:00 In the phrase 'democratic government', which word is the more important - 'democratic' or 'government'? Plainly the answer is 'government'. If the government can't actually perform the action of governing, then the process by which it was chosen is utterly irrelevant.It is true that under certain circumstances the mere fact of a democratic process gives a would-be government the moral edge, and allows it to govern when other circumstances are against it.However, if it turns out that a government is simply incapable of governing the greater part of the people or the land, then whether they are supposedly democratic or not is beside the point. A body which takes the title 'government' but has no power, authority or means to govern simply fails the fulfil the basic function. As many a wit has observed of the 'Holy Roman Empire' that is was neither Holy, Roman nor an Empire, so it is with a government that cannot govern.The question is this: is the institution claiming tha Read more:Democratic
, Government
Today the sun shone 2007-07-07 11:18:00 It is a quite mundane observation, but today the sun shone. It has been raining so much for the last two weeks that the simple fact of hot sunshine is worth mentioning.I can understand how people become sun worshippers.If anything can be describe as the source of (nearly) all life on earth the sun is a great candidate.(c) Hal Westhead 2005 Read more:Today
Karma at arms length - the PR puzzle. 2007-07-14 13:25:00 Without going into the detail, deceiving people is said to be a deliberate action (ie karma) which has consequences most people would find undesirable. Although it is often simplified to the word 'lying', what is involved is more than that but the bare minimum is the intention to deceive and consummation of the intent.Now suppose you hire a Public Relations company to do your lying for you. You might not give them any sort of instruction of that kind, but you know what a PR company is there for. The mere fact that they do it in a professional way and without conscience doesn't change deception into straightforwardness. Could it be that all down the chain of people nobody sets out with the intention 'I will deceive' and yet the overall effect is to do precisely that?The closest analogy I can think of from the Buddhist cannon (and my knowledge is not nearly comprehensive enough to claim this is the best analogy) is the case of the actor (or was he a theatre manager??) who asked
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2007-07-12 17:33:00 Yesterday I went with my family to the SummerExhibition
at the RoyalAcademy
in London. We all visited last year and enjoyed the experience so much that we decided to go again this year. It is a mixed experienced ranging from the very good to items that you feel were simply testing the gullibility of the judges.Among the really good was Jess on the toilet by Marcus Harvey. The frame as a door. The painting looked like hammered glass. The idea was imaginative and provocative, and the artist executed the work with skill. This was an delightful entrance to the exhibition.It is sadly the case that if you spot something which is utterly devoid of skill it is often an RA exhibit. Academicians can get work included without going through the judging process. As if to prove this to excess Gary Hume exhibited a number of pieces all with the lack-of-title Untitled, 2007. These were all sheets of aluminium with their protective plastic coating partially removed. In a couple of cases he
The condom dress - practical and eye-catching 2007-07-12 14:09:00 The image comes courtesy of TheLondonNews.The texts with it says:A model parades an outfit made entirely of condoms at an exhibition in Beijing, China.(I'm not convinced that the shoulder straps are, but maybe that is being picky).It is hard to know whether this would be a complete conversation stopper, or the ultimate talking point. You could be sure it would stimulate some very tastless chat-up lines.In a rather round-about way it reminds me of the images of Artemis with what were once thought to be huge numbers of breasts. It is now thought that these are bulls testicles draped over her body (for reasons which involve way too much explanation, but involve cult rites, bull fighting, and hunting).(c) Hal Westhead 2005 Read more:dress
Alcohol, Genetics and Taboos 2007-07-22 03:45:00 This week a study was published about the finding of one central London Hospital A&E department, St. Thomas'. In brief they have found an increase in alcohol related problem in the early hours of the morning. This change has happened, apparently, since a change in the UK licensing laws.A government spokesperson was quick to point out that this was just the experience of one hospital. I think it was the BMA who then countered with words to the effect: "Yes, exactly - so we need more research". I suspect various government department don't want to know the answer because they have not been enthusiastic about asking the question (in terms of more research). A very informal piece of research by the BBC at an outer London hospital tended to support the St. Thomas' finding.A spokesperson for the drinks industry was quick to dismiss any link between their industry and alcohol related problem, pointing out that the supermarkets were to blame. There does seem to be evidence that peopl Read more:Alcohol
, Genetics
, Taboos
Statistical Confusion - populations and individuals - a rant. 2007-07-28 03:38:00 There is an excellent little book called 'How to lie with statistics'. It has been around since the early 1950s. It gives a good idea of the mighty chasm between numbers and facts - and the ways in which people deliberately and accidentally mix up the two.Much of the time with the media's use of statistics the problem is ignorance - simple mistakes that a little thought could avoid. (And avoidance of Arts' students in the media could probably eradicate).For example, suppose you have field with 100 animals in it, 50 sheep and 50 goats. It is pitch dark and the animals are well separated. So you wander through the field, grab an animal and drag it across to where there is a light. YOU have a 50% chance that the animals is a sheep, and a 50% chance that the animal is a goat (discounting the possibility that sheep and goats differ in their ability to avoid capture). However the animal you captured was always definitely a sheep or a goat - 100% certainty from its own perspective Read more:Statistical
The last page of Harry Potter. 2007-07-31 14:40:00 On the news this morning there was a report of a head teacher reading the last page of HarryPotter
and the Deathly Hallows to the school assembly.Maybe she was just a mean spirited soul. Maybe she wanted to stop the children reading books - perhaps it was getting in the way of literacy targets.For me the worst part of this is encouraging children to believe that getting to the last page is all that matters. Surely what matters about a novel is the journey not the last page. Equating the book with the last page is like equating love making with ejaculation (very possibly premature in this case). It's how you get there that really makes the difference.Perhaps in today's target driven education environment this head teacher has lost the educational plot and really does believe that education is simply the passing of exams. So it is only the last page that matters.How sad.(c) Hal Westhead 2005
Conservatives - could they run a jumble sale? 2007-07-31 14:26:00 I switched on 'The World at One' this lunch time and caught the tale end of the sorry saga of the Ealing Southall by-election. The burning issue was who had asked for the tag line 'David Cameron's Conservatives
' on the ballot paper.It was a highly entertaining set of interviews by the BBC, listening to a range of Conservative activists and officials all deny all knowledge. Yes, it really must have been an act of God, because no body in charge in the Conservatives (possibly an oxymoronic notion) was prepared to put their hand up.It seems obvious to me that somebody must have signed a form saying, in effect, this is the wording we want. They might have just been a junior amanuensis, but that person must either take personal responsibility or be able to say who told them the words to write ... and so on up the chain of responsibility.Whatever you might think of the pros and cons of the tag-line itself, one of two things are clear - and both of them say that the Conservative leader
Kibbutz Afek - and more 2007-07-29 18:53:00 Now that I've got a slide scanner adapter for my epson perfection 1250 flatbed I've started the long, slow process of digitizing all my photographic slides.The first set I've done is of my Kibbutz experience in Israel. So long ago now - and still vivid in my mind. Oddly enough it is mostly the experiences which are vivid - the people mostly faded quite a long time ago, but that is the way my memory works.I've uploaded them as a public gallery at Picasa, but I've not finished the job of putting captions on them yet.Israel 1972(c) Hal Westhead 2005
Evolution and Government 2007-08-02 13:34:00 I guess we mostly associate the idea of Darwinian evolution with biology and life (and annoying creationists). However the Darwinian paradigm has much greater application.The iconic phrase 'survival of the fittest' is very widely misinterpreted these days, taking the world 'fittest' to mean fit like an athlete (or, fairly appropriately, fit like potential sexual partner). However this is not the correct meaning. Whilst physical fitness might come into play for a predator, it is hard to imagine it applying to a slow-moving, somnolent sloth.What 'fitness' means in the context of evolution is fitness for purpose. Each member of a species is like a key, and the environment is its lock. How well does the key fit the lock? How well can that member of the species (and the species as a whole) 'solve' the problem of its environment? The bulk of life on Earth is bacteria. They each fit their environments very well, and many species can adapt at phenomenal rates to keep pace with Read more:Evolution
, Government
Overpackaging 2007-08-05 11:07:00 A couple of weeks ago I watched a TV programme that was largely about one man's mission to cut back on over packaging - the tendency of shops to put layer upon layer of paper and card on products, all of which is just thrown away.So when I got my security card reader from the RBS I was amused by the perfect example of overpackaging they had had sent me.Starting at the outside:First there was the plastic transparent envelope ....then there was the white cardboard box - this seems to have been used so that an A4 letter could be folded exactly in three to fit on the box ....then there was the plastic tray inside the box ....to hold the blue cardboard box ...with the bubble wrap envelope inside ...with the plastic bag ...which finally had the security device inside.(c) Hal Westhead 2005
Coach on stilts - not something you see every day 2007-08-07 14:44:00 That is not something
you come across every
day.I rounded the bend into Chipping in the Trough of Bowland and did a double take. There was a man standing underneath a coach.(c) Hal Westhead 2005 Read more:Coach
Knowing another person 2007-08-10 14:10:00 Knowing is a strange thing.Suppose you say that you know a place - a town or a village, say - it could mean a lot of things. It could mean that you have visited and have a mental image of the place. It could be that the mental image is restricted to one main street. I'd definitely claim that I know the town I grew up in. I lived there for many years, and walked many of its streets. Yet there is a lot I don't know - there are chunks of my mental map that could just as well have 'here be dragons' on them for all I know of what is there. And that is without any mention of the secret underworld of cities, towns and villages - the culverts, drains, pipes, conduits and civil defence bunkers.You can see where I'm going with this. Knowing is many layered. There is knowing and then there is KNOWING, and even then there is more to know.Now what about knowing another person
. "Do you know Jim Smith?" Yes, you reply - you recognize him, you know something about him, and you might even
Sex, family life and religion 2007-08-19 05:52:00 I was chatting with a friend recently and in the course of a wide ranging conversation she said, "Sex should be fun." This seems to me blindingly obvious, but not universally true and not even universally accepted as a truism.It got me thinking. How can you accept guidance on sex from anyone who has not experienced it. Thinking about it, turning it into words, symbolizing it, idolising it - none of these are what happens between two people.Siddharta Gautama (before he became the Buddha) was married and had a son. For him (and for Buddhism) sex isn't 'good' or 'bad' - but it is a major distraction. For a monk engaging in sex is a 'defeat'. It is a fetter so strong that serious measures must be taken to recover. However as householder it is not something to feel guilt and anguish over. If you engage in sex you should enjoy it, but see that it is not the whole of existence. However it is addictive and a difficult thing to see beyond.The Patriarchs of Israel were family m
Thoughts and Feelings 2007-08-16 18:43:00 Getting a gut feel for what someone is feeling is so important.I don't translating it into words. If I can borrow the word 'empathise', that is what I mean. Really feeling what the other person feels ... knowing how they are being drawn, pulled and dragged. And yet you are able to step back and THEN put it into words.But before you can genuinely do if for someone else, you got to be able to do it for yourself. Know what you feel, what is pulling you out of balance, out of shape and step back.It's the stepping back that is the hardest part.(c) Hal Westhead 2005 Read more:Feelings
The gravitational attraction of feelings. 2007-08-15 12:33:00 One very influential view of gravity is that it best seen as a curvature of space-time. In effect gravity warps the shape of space - or rather it IS the warping of the shape of space.On a smaller scale (and in a far less precise way) strong feelings seem to warp psychological space.Strong feelings change the ease with which one can move ones attention around. A strongly desired person seems to consume attention, and a strongly hated person also seems to consume attention.It is so very hard for the rational mind to struggle with these 'gravitational' effects coming from more powerful subterranean parts of the mind. The struggle is harder generally because you don't even want to struggle. You think rationally (or at least consciously) about the effects of actions and what would be sensible to do, but the gravity of feelings makes that course hard to hold to.(c) Hal Westhead 2005
Favourite Toaist Story 2007-08-23 14:36:00 This is one of my favourite Toaist stories. I read it several years ago and then forgot where I'd read it. Now I've rediscovered it in 'Tales from the Tao' (ISBN 1-84293-130-x).There was once an old man who had one son and one horse, both of whom he valued very highly. One day the horse ran away and his neighbors came over to console him 'Oh what great isfortune,' they said, 'your horse is gone! How will you ever afford to get another?'The old man sat and smoked his pipe and only said , 'We shall see.'Then, a few days later, the horse came back, accompanied by several wild horses, tripling his herd. Again the neighbors visited, this time to congratulate the old man on his great luck. AGains he merely sat and smoked and said, 'We shall see.'A short time later, his sone was thrown from on of the wild horses and broke his leg in several places. The neighbors all arrived, calling out, 'Ah great misfortune, you sone will never walk again!' But again the old man merely sa Read more:Favourite
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant - the great Buddhist novel 2007-08-30 19:33:00 The problem is that when I read just about any novel
it seems like a Buddhist
novel, however I think ThomasCovenant
is particularly apt.The rather unwilling hero, Thomas Covenant, finds himself thrust into a strange world called The Land. He is convinced that the whole thing is just a dream and is thus unreal. However, no amount of telling himself that the events are unreal allows him to act as though they were unreal. The Land feels real. The people in it are (with very few exceptions) heroically open in the generosity and emotions. Covenant is a tortured soul: in the 'real' world he is a leper, shunned by his neighbours and abandonned by his wife.In one of the most famous Tibetan Buddhist texts, which deals with the experiences during the death process, the dying person is reminded that all the images of gods and daemons are simply creations of the mind. This does not make them unreal, because the person seeing them is affected by them as though they were real. Indeed the c
Lieutenant William Calley 2007-09-23 05:41:00 My son was clearing out some of his GCSE history books and I started browsing through one of them.Although I was growing up during the time of the Vietnam War and remember the TV pictures, I'm fairly vague when it comesto the detail. However among the iconic names fixed in my mind is the Mylai (or My Lai) massacre. As with most war crimes by the US, it was followed with clockwork regularity by the My Lai coverup by the US army.It seems (and I'm only going from secondary sources I read yesterday) that although William
Calley certainly had his hands deep in the blood of the events, he had the honour of being the US Army scapegoat. Of all the people in the chain of command, he was on the only one who was found guilty and sentence. Subsequent events suggest there was a deal struck long before the trial came to a conclusion. How does a man who is found guilty of 22 murders (and if there were any justice he would have been tried for war crimes, rather than just murder) and is sentenc Read more:Lieutenant
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