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19 Mar 2006 @ 04:24, by swanny. Communication
How Are You?
How are you? how am I?
Well thanks for asking I suppose
but it's a little to late, well no, it "is" to late
to ask "how?" I am, you are or we are. Period.
I am. You are. We are. Get over it. How is somewhat
besides the point and inconsequential don't you think.
I mean, there's not a heck of a lot we can do about it
now. Now "what" I am and what you are and what we are,
that is a little more relevant.
And "why" and "where" and "who" and "when" yes
but how?
Give me, give you and give us a break.
I mean who do you think I am that I would know
how anyway? God?
Geez....
It's not as though you really care either, is it,
or that you could or would do anything about either.
Right! So take your how and hit the trail.
I Am.
I Am tired.
Thats a what by the way, not a how.
How am I tired?.... see stupid.
I am tired of how.
"What" am I now.
I am still tired. More >
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19 Mar 2006 @ 02:42, by nemue. Activism
Do you know why you are here on earth? This is a question that many ask either themselves or others so I thought I would ask you.
What role will you or are you playing? Will you be part of the solution, part of the problem or a silent bystander?
Our world is undergoing a significant change. Regardless of your belief in the New World Order, the coming of our alien family to save us, destruction of mother earth due to climate change, the coming of Planet X, WW111 etc etc etc we are undergoing change. What role you will play?
Do you believe you are here on this earth to help save the planet and to assist in moving us to the age of enlightenment?
Are you here to thwart change – that is part of the controlling forces? Or conversely you don't believe that we are being controlled by other forces/factions
Or, are you one of the millions who will stand by and do nothing just accept your fate? More >
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16 Mar 2006 @ 14:04, by swanny. Ideas, Creativity
March 16, 2006
Canada
Well mornin
THE BIRD KINGDOM: GREED
well as some of you may know I have two pet budgies.
Well Mr. G. he came first by about two years
and he was an ornary sob for a long time.
Suddenly though when his favorite victum Mr Y
died of old age and heart failure... there was this
amazing "change" of attitude.
Here he realized it was only him and me left and he
had a huge cage all to himself with no one to bully.
Well that carried on for 2 or 3 months till I decided
to get Ms A. cause I was gone a fair bit.
Well Ms A. moved right in and dog gone it if she wasn't
the same a Mr G when he was young.
She beats up on him and will be grooming him and suddenly
take a bite out of his hide for good measure. (Psychosis?)
Anyway...she was starving him to death by not letting
him eat and "guarding" the food dish. Was this greed
or instinct or control? Not sure. So to retify the matter I thought I'd just put two food dishes in. This worked okay for awhile until Ms A. in , (and now It became a control issue) a counter strategy would sit herself in between the two dishes and guard them from him. The only flaw in this logic was that she can't eat while guarding the food. Ah a dilemna... the prisoners dilemna? well anyway Ms A is now in a self imposed battle between her 1. hunger vs 2 her control issue. Should I eat or should I guard and if she eats she lose because then Mr G. can eat too. I suppose I could complicate her situation
and simply go 3d with another food dish higher up but we'll see how Mr G and Ms A fair in the ongoing saga of the bird
kingdom.
ed More >
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 15 Mar 2006 @ 04:44, by redwind. Ideas, Creativity
Something moves
in the quiet night,
is the worm-child
making holes... More >
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14 Mar 2006 @ 23:31, by ming. Economics, Financing, Banking
Doc Searls wrote an essay about The Intention Economy. You know, that is in contrast to The Attention Economy. So, let's talk about that first. Like, one fine article is The Attention Economy and The Net by Michael Goldhaber. He says stuff like this:If the Web and the Net can be viewed as spaces in which we will increasingly live our lives, the economic laws we will live under have to be natural to this new space. These laws turn out to be quite different from what the old economics teaches, or what rubrics such as "the information age" suggest. What counts most is what is most scarce now, namely attention. The attention economy brings with it its own kind of wealth, its own class divisions - stars vs. fans - and its own forms of property, all of which make it incompatible with the industrial-money-market based economy it bids fair to replace. Success will come to those who best accommodate to this new reality. [...]
So, at last, what is this new economy about? Well if the Net exemplifies it, then you might guess it has less to do with material things than with the kinds of entity that can flow through the Net. We are told over and over just what that is: information. Information, however, would be an impossible basis for an economy, for one simple reason: economies are governed by what is scarce, and information, especially on the Net, is not only abundant, but overflowing. We are drowning in the stuff, and yet more and more comes at us daily. That is why terms like "information glut" have become commonplace, after all. Furthermore, if you have any particular piece of information on the Net, you can share it easily with anyone else who might want it. It is not in any way scarce, and therefore it is not an information economy towards which we are moving. What would be the incentive in organizing our lives around spewing out more information if there is already far too much?
Well, my title gives it away, of course. There is something else that moves through the Net, flowing in the opposite direction from information, namely attention. So seeking attention could be the very incentive we are looking for. Parenthetically, I have now rejected both parts of the conference title; no economics in the conventional sense, and not digital information either. You might conclude I am speaking at the wrong conference. I would rather say it has the wrong title. Except the title did serve its purpose. It did get your attention, and that was something, in fact a lot.
Attention, at least the kind we care about, is an intrinsically scarce resource [ 4 ]. Consider yours, right now. You are reading this paper, or more likely, since it is intended to be delivered at a conference, listening to me speaking it. You have a certain stock of attention at your disposal, and right now, a large proportion of the stock available to you is going to me, or to my words. Note that if I am standing in front of you it is difficult to distinguish between paying attention to me and paying attention to my words or thoughts; you can hardly do one without doing the other. If you are just reading this, assuming it gets printed in a book, the fact that your attention is going to me and not just to what I write may be slightly less obvious. So it is convenient to think of being in the audience at this conference in order to consider what attention economics is all about. A lot of people have talked about the Attention Economy, and written books. Now, Doc Searls says that he doesn't entirely understand all of it, and it all sounds a little too much like marketing and advertising guys talking about "eyeballs". Which I kind of think too. Anyway, Doc is quite a new-thinker in terms of markets and where things are going, in part as one of the authors of the monumental Cluetrain Manifesto, which said cool things like:we are not seats or eyeballs or end users or consumers. we are human beings and our reach exceeds your grasp.
deal with it. So, now, Doc thinks up the term "Intention Economy" as something more desirable than the "Attention Economy":The Intention Economy is about markets, not marketing. You don't need marketing to make Intention Markets.
The Intention Economy is built around truly open markets, not a collection of silos. In The Intention Economy, customers don't have to fly from silo to silo, like a bees from flower to flower, collecting deal info (and unavoidable hype) like so much pollen. In The Intention Economy, the buyer notifies the market of the intent to buy, and sellers compete for the buyer's purchase. Simple as that.
The Intention Economy is built around more than transactions. Conversations matter. So do relationships. So do reputation, authority and respect. Those virtues, however, are earned by sellers (as well as buyers) and not just "branded" by sellers on the minds of buyers like the symbols of ranchers burned on the hides of cattle.
The Intention Economy is about buyers finding sellers, not sellers finding (or "capturing") buyers.
So, like, I express what I want. I'm going to Tahoe, I need a hotel and a rental car. I don't need the insurance, and my budget is so and so. And then the potential vendors could go to work on trying to accommodate me, and they can give me an offer.
Now, I don't think "Intention Economy" is a very good term for it. Well, it is a great term in itself, but to me "Intention" is a more noble word I'd like to reserve for other things than just what I'm in the market for buying. Like, what I want to do in life, for example.
Various people comment that most of us don't really know exactly what we want up front, so it isn't a great thing to build an economy on.
As Goldhaber and others who talk about Attention Economy point out, economies are typically based on something that is scarce, which then is traded. But, aha, that sort of indicates how Doc is right. In practicality it easily becomes just another word for corporations trying to grab my attention so they can sell me something. Because who's going to trade my attention? Well, websites and marketers. Somebody's trying to grab my attention, and sell it to somebody who wants it. Attention Economy isn't really centered on me, and really it should be, like what Doc intends with the Intention Economy. It should be about me and what I want. As he points out, advertising is an enormous waste. 999 people need to waste their time looking at something they don't want for one person to maybe get what they want. Or worse.
Could my purchasing intention be a scarce item that one can exchange in an economy? Well, potentially. One can sell a "lead", and this is in a sense a superb lead. I want something, for sure, and I'm in all likelyhood going to buy it, the question is just from whom, and what the exact conditions are.
I'd say the battle isn't really between whether it is attention or intention, but rather between whether it is a buyer's market or a seller's market. Or, better, it is whether we focus on what is needed or what is offered. An industrial age capitalistic market mass produces a lot of cheap stuff and convinces people that they need it and that they should buy it, and it doesn't really matter if they really actually needed it, as long as they buy it. Doesn't matter if they'd rather have had something else. Now, new technology could now well allow for that everybody could get something different. Mass customization. In a lot of areas it is no longer inherently necessary that I get the exact same thing as a million other people. A computer manufacturer can be geared for assembling a computer just for me, to my specifications. A travel agency can construct a travel plan particularly for me.
It is still largely a market controlled by the BigCo's, so at first these things are just a gimmick to persuade me to buy from them, whether their product actually really is what I need.
What would change it would be if I and most other people were sufficiently well informed, and there were a sufficient amount of alternatives. And a sufficient amount of organization on the buyer side.
Imagine I had a website that aggregated needs. We could concentrate first on needs for buying stuff. What products or services people want to buy, and exactly how they want them. So, what if there were a way of assembling these in a systematic way, quickly and in large volume. So, let's say I could represent 100,000 people who wanted to buy computers, and I had the specs each one was looking for. Could I, or rather this aggregated buyer association, present this massive list of needs and wants and specs and requirements to a series of vendors in a meaningful way? Hey, we need 100,000 individually customized PCs, can you deliver? You could imagine that you could both act as a large volume purchaser, who needs a really really good deal because of the volume, and still ask for individual requirements for each item. That would be new.
There are computer manufacturers that let you customize the PC you order. There are websites that will let you set the price you want to pay for something, like a plane ticket. Reverse auctions. But as far as I know, you're dealing with the service individually, and it is run by a BigCo travel agency outfit that doesn't really have to care a lot about you individually. It is just another way for them to sell some tickets they might not have sold otherwise.
But what if our reach actually went farther than their grasp? If we, formerly known as the "consumers", were big enough in numbers to spell out our terms, or we'll take our business elsewhere.
If our information was well enough organized, it might go some steps further, into what is not just simple buying/selling transactions. Like, here we are, 10 million people, and we spend 10 billion dollars per year on electricity. We'd like to offer 50 billion dollars to anybody who'll come up with an energy source that means we'll never have to buy metered electricity again. You get the idea. If the masses are organized in a way so they know what they want altogether, there's leverage to be able to ask for something quite different from what they'd get if they were just individual consumers with no real choice. Like, asking never to have to buy another one of those products again.
You could imagine a market that was completely upside down. Or downside up, really. Where buyers suddenly were the scarce commodity, rather than the products. OK, companies have to compete for customers today. But imagine the customers were the big guys, and the vendors had to bend over backwards to meet their demands.
I'm not sure I can come up with a better cool name fo it. The Demand Economy, the Request Economy, the Buyer Economy, the Need Economy. I give up.
If enough people easily could get enough information about what is possible and available to know what they want in some detail, and they were able to notice if they got it or not, and they were able to coordinate that information better and faster than the vendors can manage to mislead and confuse them, and they were able to band together to carry out large aggregated transactions, then the market would certainly have changed, whatever that would end up being called.
It is something about a distributed market being aggregated. You know, like anybody can have a blog, and any blog can have a syndicated feed, and anybody can have an aggregator that shows the total content of lots of blogs very easily. And, together, this becomes something that competes quite well with mass media. We could imagine a similar thing for economic activity. More >
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 12 Mar 2006 @ 22:28, by jazzolog. Ideas, Creativity
The picture is of John Tagliabue in the full flight of reading, at Bates College Reunion '98.
Now, what is poetry? If you say it is simply a matter of words, I will say a good poet gets rid of words. If you say it is simply a matter of meaning, I will say a good poet gets rid of meaning. "But," you ask, "without words and without meaning, where is the poetry?" To this I reply, "Get rid of words and get rid of meaning, and still there is poetry."
---Yang Wan-Li
Poetry, to the poet, is the most rewarding work in the world. A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape and significance of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself, and the world around him...
---Dylan Thomas
If there is any absolute, it is never more than this one, you, this instant, in this action.
---Charles Olson
I wonder whether friend and mentor, John Tagliabue, would agree with fellow poet Olson on that notion. I never try to corner a poet about the Absolute. I prefer to follow them about to see what spouts. Our Anglican priest in sermon today shared the Jewish blessing, "May you be covered in the dust of your rabbi!" The point is get close to your teacher, maybe especially around his feet.
At any rate, Tagliabue sent me this poem recently on sort of the same Charles Olson subject~~~
With sometimes Song
and its myriad descendents
Being
cast with the dice & the stars
there is no winning or losing but
Being More >
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 12 Mar 2006 @ 21:22, by koravya. Recreation, Fun
Notes on the road
from a drivearound. More >
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12 Mar 2006 @ 19:19, by poetsong. Spirituality
Love is not simply about individuals. As much as we might try to escape it, we are corporate creatures.
Our welfare consists in figuring out who we are, who we are in relationships, and who we are corporately within a group.
So, I need to love myself- not be self-destructive, realize my potential, and make choices that benefit me.
Second, I need to invest in others, and not only for satisfaction sake, but realizing that it is our highest potential to care about the needs and welfare of others.
Third, realize that we sink or swim as a society, and that is micro- the community, and macro- the nation and the world.
If we lose sight of the greater vision, and think that life is simply about me stuffing my face, I may make "me" happy in the short run, but be a part of why the world is sailing to hell in a hand-basket.
Sure, I believe love is divine, and the center of all purpose in the Universe; but I can't sell that to someone who believes everything is random. However, I have never met someone secular or religious who doesn't want love, and comprehend its value. It is that hard-wired into us that we cheer for love, and are disappointed when we see lack of compassion displayed.
All the same, we need to elevate the conversation of society to the point where it impacts the boardrooms and governments. Where people second guess their rash actions.
I want to convict presidents and governments, kings and princes, that love is the highest way. Every motivation other than love is inferior. Some might say in the hierarchy of motivations, faith, hope and love are greatest, and of these love is the greatest.
Well, then, all choices made in fear, anger, callous disregard must be questioned, and people need to ask, "What would love do?"
Would love poison water? Would love disregard the impact of an action on all life?
In terms of corporate thinking, if I ran a company poluting the stream, would I want my kids drinking from it? Well, somebodies kids are drinking from it.
Some think of love as trite, and that is absolutely horrid thinking. It is the most powerful motivator when grasped.
We can't suppose people wouldn't understand this, but we have to be sold on it to the point of being vocal. The world needs convictions. Some think a convictionless world would lead to less wars. Everyone could get along if no one believed in anything. Well, that won't work because we are hard-wired to search for meaning. No one is content just eating. We need touch, affection, and science proves this in many studies. Life begins to shrivel when nurture is withheld. Babies who are neglected, who have physical needs met but no touch, fail to thrive.
It is wrong thinking to assume no convictions is an answer. But again, we need to be careful about convictions. We need to start with the one conviction mankind can agree upon. Love is one of them.
Love derails every foolish argument. If people are religious or secular, they cannot get around this. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" would wipe out a lot of nonsense. People would offer mercy instead of judgment, wherever possible. We would look for reasons to help, not harm.
One definition of love is taking into account how our actions benefit others. So, faced with any decision, I ask, "What would love do?"
And this is not pie in the sky. I may fail, but at least I would know I failed and there is something to be strived for. More >
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 12 Mar 2006 @ 18:58, by jerryvest. Medicine, Healthcare
Learning to become kind, gentle, open, honest and nonjudgmental
What a great discovery I made yesterday while visiting the stacks of our used book store and finding The Pema Chodrin Collection. I was looking for some more resources on the engagement process to assist my students in learning how to more effectively interact with our elders and with individuals, couples, groups and families.
One of our primary approaches for serving others in our profession is to maintain a nonjudgmental mind so that those we interact with can feel free to be open and honest with us. Obviously, if we do not respect others and work on ourselves to maintain an open mind, how can we expect others to interact with us freely or with openness so that we can offer our best service and practice initiatives?
For many years my professional practice has been strengthened by the unitary orientation of our body-mind-emotions-spirit relationship as included in particle science and what is referred to as applied Buddhism. Tarthang Tulku, founder and head Lama for the Nyingma Center, has introduced numerous resources to guide his students in their search for clarity of meaning, purpose and right action. Please visit my other discussions on my web logs, bibliography and links page on my website for further details of this approach. [link]
In Master Tulku’s work with health professionals over many years, he accumulated some valuable knowledge and wisdom to help us with our skills and develop an open mind with meditation, physical exercise, massage, and other integrative practices. As he describes this learning experience:
Meditation is a way of opening our lives to the richness of experience, not an esoteric practice limited to certain times and places. Whether we live in the quiet of the country or in the turmoil of the city, meditation can actually become a way of life. In this kind of meditation, we learn to embrace and learn from whatever we experience.
This all-embracing form of meditation, however, is not as easy as it sounds, for it entails mindfulness in all we do. From the simple act of getting up in the morning to our dreams at night, everything is included in this meditation. We learn to open our senses to each nuance of experience, mindful of even the smallest details of our lives, such as how we walk and how we talk with others. In this way we open to the truth of our experience.(Tarthang Tulku, Openness Mind) [link]
This resource offers us even more opportunities to learn to open our mind and transcend our internal chatter and belief systems so that we can become more effective human service professionals. In this book, The Pema Chodron Collection, three lectures or discussions are introduced: “The Wisdom of No Escape,” Start Where You Are,” and “When Things Fall Apart.” In the first article, that I am focusing, she discusses the three qualities that we can cultivate and nurture to become more open, honest and nonjudgmental—precision, gentleness, and the ability to let go. [link]
I will briefly describe the breathing technique that Ani Pema Chodron introduces in this book; however, I recommend that you aquire this collection and follow her indications.
Precision
The technique to develop precision is to be mindful of our out-breath. “Be with the breath as it goes out, feel the breath go out, touch the breath as it goes out.” Be, feel and touch the breath are the key elements of awareness. For example, it develops our precision because we always return to this out-breath periodically. Thus, our mind becomes clear and accurate without other thoughts clouding our experience while interacting with others.
Gentleness
To assist us in supporting our basic principle and right of ‘self-determination,” this technique of observing our out-breath is done with gentleness. As Ani Pema describes,
the gentle attention of the breath produces relaxation and a quality of kindness so that we can be present in our relationships without judgment, manipulation and intrusion.
The focus on the out-breath is practiced with the eyes open and relaxed. She suggests that our focus on the out-breath is but 25 percent so that we can observe our entire environment with all of our senses. Everything in nature is also interacting with us as we engage others. There is no goal to silence the mind from thoughts. When we see or experience thoughts, just make an internal statement – “Thinking.” And, listen to your voice as you make this statement as it will tell us its quality of gentleness.
Letting Go
Ani describes letting go as a more difficult exercise as it requires the precision and gentleness to mature. “Rather, it’s something that happens as a result of working with precision and gentleness. In other words, as your work with being really faithful to the technique and being as precise as you can simultaneously as kind as you can, the ability to let go seems to happen to you.” Furthermore, she states that we don’t force any of these qualities or exercises. It’s a rediscovery of our original ability to let go and to be open.
With time and practice, Ani Pema gives us encouragement—“You will learn what it is to let go and what it is to open beyond limited beliefs and ideas about things.” You don’t repress thoughts; you just note that this is “thinking.”
Finally, she says that when we get the hang of this meditation, we will no longer be caught in the grip of our angry thoughts or passionate thoughts or worried thoughts or depressed thoughts. I appreciate the introduction to this technique and observance. Hopefully, with practice, we can all achieve our best possible condition and more effectively serve humanity with 'precision, gentleness and letting go.' More >
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 11 Mar 2006 @ 14:51, by swanny. Nutrition, Cooking
March 11, 2006
Saturday
Canada
Morning
Windy and Cloudy
okay
Okay we can figure out the logistics
and math and resources to get a probe
to orbit Mars and war and all that yet
a problem as simple? as feeding the whole
world still illudes not to mention proper health
care but ? is it because we won't share or care
or trade or what? What is it about making sure
that everybody at least gets a good breakfast?
Okay I know thats about 7 billion breakfasts
but even Woodstock fed 1/2 million on a couple
hours notice. Is it the money then or what?
The lack of good will? Is it to complex to manange?
To complex to figure out? What?
Isn't it important enough... hmmmm maybe thats it
who cares or no ones get paid to make sure everyones
had a good breakfast or maybe no asks but surely thats
not that hard....
So hey did you have a good breakfast there chum?
ed More >
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