|
|
4 Aug 2004 @ 01:11, by newdawn. Ideas, Creativity
May there always be sunshine
May there always be blue skies
May there always be mama
May there always be me
Repeat this verse in every language in the world
How can this affect humanity? Interconnectedness of life.
May we all see this with our hearts More >
|
|
|
|
3 Aug 2004 @ 06:46, by namakando. Philosophy
3 Aug 2004 @ 06:11, by NAMAKANDO NALIKANDO SINYAMA
THE ALL IN MY PSYCHE SERIES NO.1
"They can take away your everything but NO one will ever take away your education."-namakando nalikando sinyama
“PRISONS WITHOUT BARS”
BY NAMAKANDO NALIKANDO SINYAMA
21STCENTURY WACKY THINKING, MILLENNIUM MANIA
WAY TO THE FUTURE, DONÂ’T YOU THINK?
I find the concepts of FREEDOM and INCARCERATION as being RELATIVE. Well, I may not be a direct descendant of The father of Relativity (Albert Einstein), but I confidently do feel I have a fair command of the idea of relativity only in the philosophical sense. If peopleÂ’s traditional understanding of freedom is as a state of mind where or under which one can freely express their innermost feelings and thus view prisons as places where this amount of leverage is blatantly denied then get ready to rethink your stance as society.
Here is a paradoxical statement, everything considered, a prisoner can actually feel and be free inside the prison. The general explanation is that it depends on what one wants to do and where they want to do it, in or outside the prison. All right! Enough of the philosophical jargon you say, fine. Hang on then.
When I first came to varsity as a freshman, I had this misconception of the place being where students easily get morally corrupted because of the –so –called excess ‘freedom’. Freedom my arse! This would be your reaction too if you spent a year here. While here, I have noticed that it is the strictest place, you can ever be at, which in comparison makes places like ALCATRAZ or other penitentiary prisons seem like kindergartens. Wet even them have rules! The whole system at the university I discovered was structured in such a way that one was never really free to do anything. The design of ‘The University Prison’ is such that, there are no visible razor-sharp barbed wire fences or a high voltage electric fence to keep the students in per se. Yet the students are heavily guarded, by TIME. The trick is what the students want is inside the ‘prison’, which is EDUCATION, so he finds himself not making any attempts to escape. Although I stand to be corrected on this point as not every student is out to get a decent education. This point is made evident by the phrases in Campus Lingo. When a student goes to study it is called an activity of defending the BC, which is the monthly meal allowance. I guess due to the state of the country’s labour industry we’ve had our priorities shifted. Is it therefore Freedom when you go out of campus on a drinking spree and still come back rushing, uncalled, to attend the morning lectures? Is it freedom if you only sleep for four hours a day? Is it freedom if you live in the district where the university is situated but only visit home or never at all? Is it freedom if even during vacation many a student opts not to go home? Is it freedom if you even fail to write a letter to your dear friend because you have piles of books to read? Well, as the Yankees (Americans) would say, that’s a cock and bull story, bollocks, and a bunch of baloney sheer humbug! Kindly excuse my bad language. It’s just that I react this way sometimes when I’m pissed, oops here I go again!
A student’s stay at varsity is determined by how good they are at managing their TIME. You see, it’s funny how you can have all the fun and indulge yourself in all thinkable orgies but still be attracted to your cell ‘The level’ or the room to bury your face in the books. Therefore, it’s never freedom if in the night you doze but cannot yield to the natural process of sleep. I always break down and cry when I remember how on a countless number of times I could doze off clutching a book in my hands, yank myself out of it for sleep was a luxury which a student could ill afford to avail himself. The spirit was willing to study but the Body was weak. I will never forget not as far as long as I live. But then I realized it is in critical moments like these that the true BAROTSE CHARACTER reveals itself. So I held on and here I am with a B. Sc under me belt! I can only hope I use the knowledge and experience I’ve gained for the service and betterment of mankind. The task is indeed a bit Herculean if done alone but together we can be strong and our collective contributions will go a long way.
Yet it is all very easy and simple to escape and thus free oneself from this mental and physical torture that tests you to the limit until your sinews snap. Stories of students who decide they’ve had enough and quit mid way are all too common. I will also never forget, how despite my sweet tooth that makes me crave the Mango fruit, it was Mango season in the rest of the country, but I did not know or realize it whilst at C.B.U. But then C.B.U is just that, another country! A little corner in the world. You see there’s always this seemingly ugly, scar-face, goblin monster creature they call SENATE and it’s agent the SESSIONAL EXAMS which determine the fate of individual students and checks those that had too much freedom during their stay in the ‘prison’. This if you asked me is the surest way of getting out of THE MAXIMUM PENITETIARY PRISON.
The above presented scenario should not be discouraging as it is only reflective of conditions where I was but it should spur every student where ever they may be that we need to have them prepared for all hardships and that new civilization will require all especially students to look at things in a totally new light so as not make the same mistakes that have been made in science and politics. In retrospect therefore, universities need not be ‘prisons’ but places where we should nurture ourselves into more responsible social beings, exercising greater levels of tolerance and acceptance as we prepare to become members of the New Civilization.it was under this environment that I made my first steps towards what I can only term enlightenment. One just has to experience it as i cannot put it in words. The moment one starts looking at same situations differently you get illumined by an inner glow of excitement then just know you are getting there!
CAUTION: DO NOT BITE OFF MORE THAN YOU CAN CHEW
“ Absolute Freedom Corrupts Absolutely”.
- NAMAKANDO NALIKANDO SINYAMA III, 4th Year
- B.Sc. FORESTRY (L 235)The Copperbelt university(CBU)
|
|
|
|
 2 Aug 2004 @ 21:29, by centrifuge. Ideas, Creativity
My crazy mind
Brings me bloody platters
To clean and use again
Curious conditions churning within
Weaving foggy wonders
To confuse and misapply
…This fragile origami bird
Is stained and has been folded wrongly
…This drifting creature
Used to fly against the bright sky
With matching colors and thoughts
It would return bearing rainbows
…This earnest miner
Has surfaced with no ore
Instead is empty handed
And is consumed by “black lung”
Unbridled imaginings
And child-like fear
Are in the dust,
stirring
Unfitting halo
And paper wings
…slowly turning…
They are turning into rust.
More >
|
|
|
|
2 Aug 2004 @ 10:57, by craiglang. Spirituality
To see beyond, look within. To see above look below. To see the large view the small, and to see the many look at the few.
Some thoughts on the changes upon us, and how they are indeed in progress: Both large and small, pivotal events seem to be manifesting in our personal experiences, as they are in the events of the world.
My own sense is that in many important ways, they are one and the same. As within, so without. Changes in the large and changes in the small mirror eachother. More >
|
|
|
|
 2 Aug 2004 @ 09:50, by ming. Knowledge Management
"dewf" mentions in a comment a concept I've often thought about. I've always wanted to see websites which have a hierachical introduction to topics. This is done to some extent now with hyperlinks, but generally you get a table of contents and then the details. Books try to do this to some extent, but a lot of times, they are more linear than hierarchical. Funny that we learn mathematics and chemistry and such from the bottom-up, instead of top-down.
What I'm thinking is that a how-to or informative book should start with one paragraph which tries to explain the whole gist, then maybe a 1 page explanation of the very same thing, then a 10 page explanation. Personally, I much prefer to learn that way. Give me a paragraph first that gives the core ideas. Then I know the key importances, and I'll have a mental framework that further details can fit into. But it is usually not how learning materials are presented. So often you have to wade through hundreds of pages before you get the simplicity, if you even ever find it. And so often you'll just keep it to yourself, once you've found it, as a reward for working hard at discovering it.
Several times I've had to install a payment gateway between a shopping cart program and a credit card processor. The first one was CyberCash. They gave you 20MB of information to explain how to do it. Many hundreds of pages, in dozens of files. Most people said at the time that it on the average took a month to install it. But, really, what I ended up with after digesting it was 5 lines of PHP code that did the trick. It was really very simple, and I could have done it in 5 minutes, but the simplicity was a secret, so it took a lot of work.
The way you sometimes get it is by running into somebody who's a master in a certain subject, and after dinner, when you'e built up a bit of trust between you, he might casually share one of the core simplicities of his subject. Something that suddenly makes it simple, rather than complicated, for you. Something that would have made all the difference if you had known it earlier.
Not just any simple one-paragraph piece of information will do. The key is that it needs to be action oriented. It needs to enable you to do something. Actually enable you as much as possible with the smallest piece of information possible. Maximum knowledge exchange in the smallest unit.
Let's say I wanted to learn to speak Esperanto. Random House's dictionary will give me a good one-paragraph definition of what it is: an artificial language invented in 1887 for international use, based on word roots common to the major European languages. Well, that's good. Tells me what it is. If somebody mentions it, I know that it isn't a fruit or anything, and I can pretend I know about it. But it tells me zero about how to actually do it. OK, in this case it is unusually simple, so there actually are people who've provided what I'm asking for. The sixteen simple rules of Esperanto. There it is in one page. If we put it in one paragraph, it might be:
Nouns all end in -o in singular and -oj for plural. Add an -n if it is the object. La is the definite article. Adjectives end in -a, adverbs in -e. Personal pronouns: mi, vi, li, ŝi, ĝi, si, ni, vi, ili, oni, meaning, I, you, he, she, it, oneself, we, you, they, they/one/people. Verbs have these endings: -as; past time, -is; future time, -os; conditional mood, -us; command mood, -u; infinitive mood, -i. Use the word ne to make things negative. You can put the words in the order that suits you. Everything is pronounced at written. Accent always on second-to-last syllable. And that's about it. You'd need some vocabulary, obviously, but there's the majority of the grammar rules.
OK, French would be harder. But I'd kind of like to start with some kind of inventory. Like:There are 9 different types of words: nom, déterminant, adfectif qualicatif, verbe, pronom, préposition, adverbe, conjonction de coordination, interjection. Verbs are conjugated in 3 main groups, for infinitives ending in -er, -ir, -re. There are 6 different modes of verbes: indicatif, subjonctif, imperatif, conditionnel, infinitif, participe. 19 different tenses. The language has 18 consonant sounds, 16 vowel sounds, and 3 semi-vowels. OK, takes work, and doesn't really enable you to do it, but it gives some kind of framework. Some expert could do a good job there. But I'd be hard pressed to find this kind of overview anywhere. Like one paragraph overviews of all languages.
Simple how-to information would be useful in any field, of course. But there are various fields where it maybe is more readily available, or where the need for it is more recognized. A Survival Manual is obvious. You go into the wilderness, and you can manage carrying one book that might tell you how to get out of various situations you'll run into. How to find water, how to navigate, how to know which mushrooms you can eat.
Obviously in home improvement. There will be books with nice color diagrams and step-by-step instructions for how to do your own plumbing or how to put up drywalls.
Look at this site, that I incidentally did the database for: Bagelhole, collecting low-tech sustainability how-to's.
Now, then, what would be involved in making a platform for gathering how-to's from any field, organized from simple and short towards gradually longer and more detailed versions? Kind of like wikipedia, except for the multiple levels, and the focus on enabling action-oriented how-to information.
Simple enough to make a site organized like that. But would it sort itself out simply by being a wiki that people could edit? Or does it take something more complex to be able to select the best simplicities?
A problem is of course that not everybody will agree on what the one-paragraph version should be. So maybe alternatives need to compete and be rated. Maybe there needs to be different versions depending on what one is really trying to do with the subject.
Mainly it all needs to be available in a unified structure.
How does one make metal? How does one find water? I'm sure the information is on the web. But where's the one-paragraph summary?
When people's cars break down while driving, most of them get out and open the hood and poke around. What do they actually do, and what is the best practice for actually fixing something? I don't know, I'm a software guy. I'd like the one-paragraph or one-page version, please.
If it were a book, I'd want the book that tells me briefly how to do just about anything. It is probably better suited to be a website, as I'd want to drill down into further detail if the first paragraph doesn't do it for you. But I'd like those first paragraphs to be good enough that it would be meaningful to carry them all around with me. Or to look them up via my cellphone. More >
|
|
|
|
2 Aug 2004 @ 04:55, by newdawn. Spirituality
Can our thoughts and feelings affect matter?
Are we really a connected or are we separate individuals?
Is there really a universal energy that ties all things together?
Well, as I see things, it's about time this becomes a proven fact by the scientific community.
A new civilisation? Why not! Time to prove that our thoughts influence and manifest our expectations and experiences in the world we live.
Will the sceptics ever believe? Only if they choose to. As the saying goes "the proof is in the pudding" More >
|
|
|
|
 1 Aug 2004 @ 16:09, by koravya. Globalization
“the future of one of the earth's most vital resources is being determined by those who profit from its overuse and abuse. A handful of transnational corporations, backed by the World Bank, are aggressively taking over the management of public water services in developing countries, dramatically raising the price of water to the local residents and profiting from the Third World's desperate search for solutions to the water crisis. The corporate agenda is clear water should be treated like any other tradable good, with its use determined by market principles.”
[link]
/*/*/*/*/*
Blue Gold (Hardback)
The Battle Against Corporate Theft of the World's Water
Authors: Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke
[link]
*/*/*/* More >
|
|
|
|
1 Aug 2004 @ 09:13, by mystx. Spirituality
Ego - The False Center
by Osho
The first thing to be understood is what ego is. A child is born. A child is born without any knowledge, any consciousness of his own self. And when a child is born the first thing he becomes aware of is not himself; the first thing he becomes aware of is the other. It is natural, because the eyes open outwards, the hands touch others, the ears listen to others, the tongue tastes food and the nose smells the outside. All these senses open outwards.
That is what birth means. Birth means coming into this world, the world of the outside. So when a child is born, he is born into this world. He opens his eyes, sees others. 'Other' means the thou. He becomes aware of the mother first. Then, by and by, he becomes aware of his own body. That too is the other, that too belongs to the world. He is hungry and he feels the body; his need is satisfied, he forgets the body.
This is how a child grows. First he becomes aware of you, thou, other, and then by and by, in contrast to you, thou, he becomes aware of himself.
This awareness is a reflected awareness. He is not aware of who he is. He is simply aware of the mother and what she thinks about him. If she smiles, if she appreciates the child, if she says, "You are beautiful," if she hugs and kisses him, the child feels good about himself. Now an ego is born.
Through appreciation, love, care, he feels he is good, he feels he is valuable, he feels he has some significance.
A center is born. More >
|
|
|
|
 31 Jul 2004 @ 01:07, by skookum. Ideas, Creativity
Let Go
The darkness sleeps
I can feel the cool, soft air
It is breathing, slowly
How the light seems harsh! More >
|
|
|
|
30 Jul 2004 @ 15:03, by craiglang. Religion
How Would Jesus Vote?
What would the politics of Jeshua Ben Yusef be, if He walked the Earth today? My short answer is that we probably don't know. But it would probably be something very different from what anyone would expect.
I'm writing this article for our church newsletter. I think it has alot to say to those on both the right and the left, who tell me they are "followng Jesus".
. More >
|
|
<< Newer entries Page: 1 ... 183 184 185 186 187 ... 279 Older entries >> |
|
These are news items gathered or contributed by NCN members
|
Categories
Activism (97)
Altered States (32)
Alternative Money Systems (17)
Broadcasting, Media (20)
Business (19)
Children, Parenting (28)
Communication (63)
Communities (71)
Conspiracy (34)
Counseling, Psychology (23)
Crime, Policing (7)
Death & Dying (14)
Developing World (19)
Economics, Financing, Banking (51)
Education (34)
Energy Sources (19)
Engineering (1)
Entrepreneurs, Money Making (19)
Environment, Ecology (123)
Exercise, Fitness (1)
Extraterrestrials (27)
Farming (14)
Futurism (13)
Globalization (29)
Government, Public Sector (46)
History, Ancient World (38)
Housing, Building, Architecture (10)
Ideas, Creativity (318)
Internet (49)
Inventions (6)
Investigation, Intelligence (23)
Knowledge Management (21)
Legal, Justice (24)
Liberty, Sovereignty (14)
Medicine, Healthcare (46)
Music (30)
Natural Health & Healing (27)
Neighborhood (12)
Networking (19)
Nutrition, Cooking (7)
Old Age, Retirement (4)
Organizational Development (12)
Paranormal (12)
Peace (35)
Performing Arts (9)
Personal Development (80)
Philosophy (94)
Politics (120)
Poverty (4)
Preparedness, Self-Reliance (12)
Privacy, Security (1)
Publishing (3)
Recreation, Fun (59)
Relationships (19)
Religion (40)
Science (48)
Sexuality (16)
Shared Purpose (30)
Social System Design (47)
Space Exploration (23)
Spirituality (391)
Systems Thinking (31)
Technology (37)
Transportation (9)
Travel (22)
Violence, War (103)
Visual Arts, Graphics (63)
|
| Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun |
|---|
|
|
|
|
1 |
2 |
3 |
| 4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
| 11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
| 18 |
19 |
20 |
21 |
22 |
23 |
24 |
| 25 |
26 |
27 |
28 |
29 |
30 |
|
Members can post news items and comments in the member area.
Information and opinions are the responsibility of the posters and do not represent any official position of NCN. Please do your own verification and make up your own mind.
Syndication
|
|
