He’s Just Had Coffee

My friend Ben talking about his new Shakuhachi: I feel extremely lucky to have both an exceptional instrument, and a connection with its maker. This kind of personal connection and relationship with the people that make the things I use, the clothes I wear, the music I listen to - is becoming more and more […]

I love facial blend projects. I saw a lovely project that blended faces from different suburbs in Brisbane to make average faces from places like Inala and Redcliffe. The artist (whose name I tragically can’t recall) researched the demographics in each place: gender balance, proportions from different ethnic backgrounds, age curve and then picked a […]

I’ve just started watching The Power of Nightmares - The Rise of the Politics of Fear and I must absolutely commend it to people to watch. It’s a video presentation of a theory by Adam Curtis of the BBC that a terror of rising individualism of 1950s America inspired two men, Sayed Qutb and […]

I’m reading the end of Ken Wilber’s “Integral Psychology” at the same time as Excerpt G of his unpublished “Kosmos vol. 2″ and the notion of Spirit as the Formless Ground of all reality… or at least that’s how he’s often read. A summary of my fretting goes something like: Anglo Modernism tends towards a physical […]

Hyperstition: Intuitive Economics: To some researchers, the similarity in human and capuchin [monkey] behaviour suggests an ancient evolutionary origin. “It’s not credit cards and gas prices that make us react irrationally,” Santos suggests, “but something more fundamental that we share with other species.” and if our bias towards loss aversion does have deep origins, it may […]

“Scott Ginsberg is an internationally recognized author, professional speaker and the only person in the world who wears a nametag 24-7 to make people friendlier and more approachable. In this blog, Scott shares techniques, stories and observations from his speeches, articles and books on how to MAXIMIZE approachability and become an UNFORGETTABLE communicator - one […]

Following advice from friends, I bought a Maxtor external hard drive, to use for backing up my Powerbook. Since I’ve got quite a lot of data, some of it dating back over ten years, I thought I’d write up how I’m managing backups. I think it’s simple enough to manageable and thorough enough to be […]

In a world full of the fiery insanity of electorally-empowered scriptural literalists and the dull banging on of scientistic rationalists, I bring you Jordan Stratford: “an ordained Priest of the Apostolic Johannite Church, an esoteric Gnostic Christian communion with valid Apostolic succession” Valid. Apostolic. Succession, people. That’s right! Modern Gnostics as the fun guys of the Christian […]

Don’t be sad about the vague feeling that you’re consuming too many resources! Find out how much “over reasonable” you’re consuming and become really depressed! Then somehow shake off the depression and take action. http://www.earthday.net/footprint/index.asp

“Simply put, from my view, Zen’s approach to the Ego, or the many voices that constitute the relative (small) self has been to kill it, crush it, see through it, dissolve it, release it - that sort of thing, but not to engage it. Roshi has essentially flipped things 180 degrees, and instead of spending […]