"Biomimicry (from bios, meaning life, and mimesis, meaning to imitate) is a new discipline that studies nature's best ideas and then imitates these designs and processes to solve human problems. Studying a leaf to invent a better solar cell is an example.
"The core idea is that nature, imaginative by necessity, has already solved many of the problems we are grappling with. Animals, plants, and microbes are the consummate engineers. They have found what works, what is appropriate, and most important, what lasts here on Earth. This is the real news of biomimicry: After 3.8 billion years of research and development, failures are fossils, and what surrounds us is the secret to survival."
[excerpted from Janine Benyus' Biomimicry Institute website]
Monday, October 31, 2011
Sunday, October 30, 2011
uranus-pluto and material energy
"The Uranus-Pluto conjunction of 1705-16 coincided with the invention of the steam engine and the discovery of the use of coal for iron-smelting furnaces that began the Industrial Revolution and the age of steam, iron, and coal. The following conjunction of 1845-56 coincided with the discovery of petroleum oil as a fuel, a discovery that began the petroleum age whose cultural, ecological, and geopolitical consequences are still unfolding. And the following opposition of 1896-1907 coincided with the birth of the nuclear age with the discovery of radioactivity in uranium, the isolation of radium and polonium, and Einstein's E = mc2 formulation." [Richard Tarnas, Cosmos and Psyche]
reactor-free medical isotopes developed
always good to hear report of ongoing disentanglements between manufacturers of weapons-grade uranium and western medicine. isotopes are used to deliver radiation to direct targets from inside the body as opposed to getting radiated from the outside. unfortunately, the truth that there's no good use for radiation (or nuclear weaponry industries dressed in energy industry garb) is rarely reported...
"Medical isotopes could be made without a nuclear reactor"
Canadian researchers are racing to perfect a safe, clean, inexpensive and reliable method for making isotopes used in medical-imaging and diagnostic procedures.
"Medical isotopes could be made without a nuclear reactor"
Canadian researchers are racing to perfect a safe, clean, inexpensive and reliable method for making isotopes used in medical-imaging and diagnostic procedures.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
piriformis or SI joint pain?
interestingly, the piriformis not only stabilizes the femur, its the key muscle responsible for the lateral rotation of the hip joint, meaning it's the muscle that allows us to open the groin and make ourselves vulnerable. i say interesting, because of how chronic we, the western population as a statistical pool, go into rigid spasm, locking down the front by seizing up in the back instead... humans. looking one way while doing another since, um, forever...
here's the best discussion i've come across on the guiding features that distinguish SI joint pain from piriformis entrapment of the sciatic... Piriformis or SI Joint Pain? by a Certified Advanced Rolfer...
here's the best discussion i've come across on the guiding features that distinguish SI joint pain from piriformis entrapment of the sciatic... Piriformis or SI Joint Pain? by a Certified Advanced Rolfer...
on the uranus-pluto cycle
"The powerful wave of feeling that overcame the Legislative Assembly in July 1792 at the height of the democratic period of the Revolution, when the deputies suddenly surrendered their antagonisms and commenced embracing and kissing each other in tears of deep emotion, and that swept through Paris generally in 1792 had its counterparts in such events as the San Francisco Summer of Love in 1967 or the Woodstock music festival in 1969." [Cosmos and Psyche: Richard Tarnas]
URANUS-PLUTO decades: "repeated outbursts of mass emotions of great intensity; whether violent or libidinous, the dominant archetypal complex in each of these periods seemed to constellate sudden sustained outbursts of nonspecific emotional intensity and elemental power that informed and compelled human activity and experience on a mass scale." [ibid]
URANUS-PLUTO decades: "repeated outbursts of mass emotions of great intensity; whether violent or libidinous, the dominant archetypal complex in each of these periods seemed to constellate sudden sustained outbursts of nonspecific emotional intensity and elemental power that informed and compelled human activity and experience on a mass scale." [ibid]
Friday, October 21, 2011
as above
Light Show In The Sky For October-November 2011
by Robert Wilkinson
Right now we have a great light show in the evening skies!
Mercury and Venus are both evening stars at this time of the year, and will be for several weeks to come. You can see Venus very clearly for the next few weeks just after sunset. At the same time, just below it you can see Mercury. The distance between the two will close between now and early November, when they will seem like "twinned stars" in the sunset sky.
Jupiter is about to become very bright as a "morning star" over the next month due to where it is relative to the Sun. It will be particularly bright in the Eastern sky at sunset during the coming New Moon on October 26-27, just as it will be every day through the time of the Moon conjunct Jupiter during the 19 Taurus-Scorpio Full Moon on November 10-11.
Very early risers will see reddish Mars in the Eastern skies from about 2:15 to 5 am from now through December. As the months roll on, Mars will be more elevated in the Eastern sky as the weeks move on, and by December Saturn will also be a "morning star" on the Eastern horizon beginning around 5 am.
All these times must be adjusted toward a couple of hours earlier in the Southern Hemisphere, since the Sun rises very early there in November and December. Anyway, a few things to keep in mind during the periods just before sunrise and just after sunset over the next few weeks. Enjoy the celestial light show!!
© Copyright 2011 Robert Wilkinson
by Robert Wilkinson
Right now we have a great light show in the evening skies!
Mercury and Venus are both evening stars at this time of the year, and will be for several weeks to come. You can see Venus very clearly for the next few weeks just after sunset. At the same time, just below it you can see Mercury. The distance between the two will close between now and early November, when they will seem like "twinned stars" in the sunset sky.
Jupiter is about to become very bright as a "morning star" over the next month due to where it is relative to the Sun. It will be particularly bright in the Eastern sky at sunset during the coming New Moon on October 26-27, just as it will be every day through the time of the Moon conjunct Jupiter during the 19 Taurus-Scorpio Full Moon on November 10-11.
Very early risers will see reddish Mars in the Eastern skies from about 2:15 to 5 am from now through December. As the months roll on, Mars will be more elevated in the Eastern sky as the weeks move on, and by December Saturn will also be a "morning star" on the Eastern horizon beginning around 5 am.
All these times must be adjusted toward a couple of hours earlier in the Southern Hemisphere, since the Sun rises very early there in November and December. Anyway, a few things to keep in mind during the periods just before sunrise and just after sunset over the next few weeks. Enjoy the celestial light show!!
© Copyright 2011 Robert Wilkinson
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
distorted thinking (book excerpt)
15 STYLES OF DISTORTED THINKING
1) Filtering: You take the negative details and magnify them, while filtering out all positive aspects of a situation. A single detail may be picked out, and the whole event becomes colored by this detail. When you pull negative things out of context, isolated from all the good experiences around you, you make them larger and more awful than they really are.
2) Polarized Thinking: The hallmark of this distortion is an insistence on dichotomous choices. Things are black and white, good or bad. You tend to perceive everything at the extremes, with very little room for middle ground. The greatest danger in polarized thinking is its impact on how you judge yourself. For example, you have to be perfect or you're a failure.
3) Overgeneralization: You come to a general conclusion based on a single incident or piece of evidence. If something bad happens once, you expect it to happen over and over again. 'Always' and 'never' are cues that this style of thinking is being utilized. This distortion can lead to a restricted life, as you avoid future failures based on the single incident or event.
4) Mind Reading: Without their saying so, you know what people are feeling and why they act the way they do. In particular, you are able to divine how people are feeling towards you. Mind reading depends on a process called projection. You imagine that people feel the same way you do and react to things the same way you do. Therefore, you don't watch or listen carefully enough to notice that they are actually different. Mind readers jump to conclusions that are true for them, without checking whether they are true for the other person.
5) Catastrophizing: You expect disaster. You notice or hear about a problem and start "what if's." What if that happens to me? What if tragedy strikes? There are no limits to a really fertile catastrophic imagination. An underlying catalyst for this style of thinking is that you do not trust in yourself and your capacity to adapt to change.
6) Personalization: This is the tendency to relate everything around you to yourself. For example, thinking that everything people do or say is some kind of reaction to you. You also compare yourself to others, trying to determine who's smarter, better looking, etc. The underlying assumption is that your worth is in question. You are therefore continually forced to test your value as a person by measuring yourself against others. If you come out better, you get a moment's relief. If you come up short, you feel diminished. The basic thinking error is that you interpret each experience, each conversation, each look as a cue to your worth and value.
7) Control Fallacies: There are two ways you can distort your sense of power and control. If you feel externally controlled, you see yourself as helpless, a victim of fate. The fallacy of internal control has you responsible for the pain and happiness of everyone around you. Feeling externally controlled keeps you stuck. You don't believe you can really affect the basic shape of your life, let alone make any difference in the world. The truth of the matter is that we are constantly making decisions, and every decisions affects our lives. On the other hand, the fallacy of internal control leaves you exhausted as you attempt to fill the needs of everyone around you, and feel responsible in doing so (and guilty when you cannot).
8) Fallacy of Fairness: You feel resentful because you think you know what's fair, but other people won't agree with you. Fairness is so conveniently defined, so temptingly self-serving, that each person gets locked into his or her own point of view. It is tempting to make assumptions about how things would change if people were only fair or really valued you. But the other person hardly ever sees it that way, and you end up causing yourself a lot of pain and an ever-growing resentment.
9) Blaming: You hold other people responsible for your pain, or take the other tack and blame yourself for every problem. Blaming often involves making someone else responsible for choices and decisions that are actually our own responsibility. In blame systems, you deny your right (and responsibility) to assert your needs, say no, or go elsewhere for what you want.
10) Shoulds: You have a list of ironclad rules about how you and other people should act. People who break the rules anger you, and you feel guilty if you violate the rules. The rules are right and indisputable and, as a result, you are often in the position of judging and finding fault (in yourself and in others). Cue words indicating the presence of this distortion are should, ought, and must.
11) Emotional Reasoning: You believe that what you feel must be true - automatically. If you feel stupid or boring, then you must be stupid and boring. If you feel guilty, then you must have done something wrong. The problem with emotional reasoning is that our emotions interact and correlate with our thinking process. Therefore, if you have distorted thoughts and beliefs, your emotions will reflect these distortions.
12) Fallacy of Change: You expect that other people will change to suit you if you just pressure or cajole them enough. You need to change people because your hopes for happiness seem to depend entirely on them. The truth is the only person you can really control or have much hope of changing is yourself. The underlying assumption of this thinking style is that your happiness depends on the actions of others. Your happiness actually depends on the thousands of large and small choices you make in your life.
13) Global Labeling: You generalize one or two qualities (in yourself or others) into a negative global judgement. Global labeling ignores all contrary evidence, creating a view of the world that can be stereotyped and one-dimensional. Labeling yourself can have a negative and insidious impact upon your self-esteem; while labeling others can lead to snap-judgments, relationship problems, and prejudice.
14) Being Right: You feel continually on trial to prove that your opinions and actions are correct. Being wrong is unthinkable and you will go to any length to demonstrate your rightness. Having to be 'right' often makes you hard of hearing. You aren't interested in the possible veracity of a differing opinion, only in defending your own. Being right becomes more important than an honest and caring relationship.
15) Heaven's Reward Fallacy: You expect all your sacrifice and self-denial to pay off, as if there were someone keeping score. You feel bitter when the reward doesn't come as expected. The problem is that while you are always doing the 'right thing,' if your heart really isn't in it, you are physically and emotionally depleting yourself.
*excerpted from THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS by McKay, Davis, and Fanning. New Harbinger, 1981. These styles of thinking (or cognitive distortions) were gleaned from the work of several authors, including Albert Ellis, Aaron Beck, and David Burns, among others.
1) Filtering: You take the negative details and magnify them, while filtering out all positive aspects of a situation. A single detail may be picked out, and the whole event becomes colored by this detail. When you pull negative things out of context, isolated from all the good experiences around you, you make them larger and more awful than they really are.
2) Polarized Thinking: The hallmark of this distortion is an insistence on dichotomous choices. Things are black and white, good or bad. You tend to perceive everything at the extremes, with very little room for middle ground. The greatest danger in polarized thinking is its impact on how you judge yourself. For example, you have to be perfect or you're a failure.
3) Overgeneralization: You come to a general conclusion based on a single incident or piece of evidence. If something bad happens once, you expect it to happen over and over again. 'Always' and 'never' are cues that this style of thinking is being utilized. This distortion can lead to a restricted life, as you avoid future failures based on the single incident or event.
4) Mind Reading: Without their saying so, you know what people are feeling and why they act the way they do. In particular, you are able to divine how people are feeling towards you. Mind reading depends on a process called projection. You imagine that people feel the same way you do and react to things the same way you do. Therefore, you don't watch or listen carefully enough to notice that they are actually different. Mind readers jump to conclusions that are true for them, without checking whether they are true for the other person.
5) Catastrophizing: You expect disaster. You notice or hear about a problem and start "what if's." What if that happens to me? What if tragedy strikes? There are no limits to a really fertile catastrophic imagination. An underlying catalyst for this style of thinking is that you do not trust in yourself and your capacity to adapt to change.
6) Personalization: This is the tendency to relate everything around you to yourself. For example, thinking that everything people do or say is some kind of reaction to you. You also compare yourself to others, trying to determine who's smarter, better looking, etc. The underlying assumption is that your worth is in question. You are therefore continually forced to test your value as a person by measuring yourself against others. If you come out better, you get a moment's relief. If you come up short, you feel diminished. The basic thinking error is that you interpret each experience, each conversation, each look as a cue to your worth and value.
7) Control Fallacies: There are two ways you can distort your sense of power and control. If you feel externally controlled, you see yourself as helpless, a victim of fate. The fallacy of internal control has you responsible for the pain and happiness of everyone around you. Feeling externally controlled keeps you stuck. You don't believe you can really affect the basic shape of your life, let alone make any difference in the world. The truth of the matter is that we are constantly making decisions, and every decisions affects our lives. On the other hand, the fallacy of internal control leaves you exhausted as you attempt to fill the needs of everyone around you, and feel responsible in doing so (and guilty when you cannot).
8) Fallacy of Fairness: You feel resentful because you think you know what's fair, but other people won't agree with you. Fairness is so conveniently defined, so temptingly self-serving, that each person gets locked into his or her own point of view. It is tempting to make assumptions about how things would change if people were only fair or really valued you. But the other person hardly ever sees it that way, and you end up causing yourself a lot of pain and an ever-growing resentment.
9) Blaming: You hold other people responsible for your pain, or take the other tack and blame yourself for every problem. Blaming often involves making someone else responsible for choices and decisions that are actually our own responsibility. In blame systems, you deny your right (and responsibility) to assert your needs, say no, or go elsewhere for what you want.
10) Shoulds: You have a list of ironclad rules about how you and other people should act. People who break the rules anger you, and you feel guilty if you violate the rules. The rules are right and indisputable and, as a result, you are often in the position of judging and finding fault (in yourself and in others). Cue words indicating the presence of this distortion are should, ought, and must.
11) Emotional Reasoning: You believe that what you feel must be true - automatically. If you feel stupid or boring, then you must be stupid and boring. If you feel guilty, then you must have done something wrong. The problem with emotional reasoning is that our emotions interact and correlate with our thinking process. Therefore, if you have distorted thoughts and beliefs, your emotions will reflect these distortions.
12) Fallacy of Change: You expect that other people will change to suit you if you just pressure or cajole them enough. You need to change people because your hopes for happiness seem to depend entirely on them. The truth is the only person you can really control or have much hope of changing is yourself. The underlying assumption of this thinking style is that your happiness depends on the actions of others. Your happiness actually depends on the thousands of large and small choices you make in your life.
13) Global Labeling: You generalize one or two qualities (in yourself or others) into a negative global judgement. Global labeling ignores all contrary evidence, creating a view of the world that can be stereotyped and one-dimensional. Labeling yourself can have a negative and insidious impact upon your self-esteem; while labeling others can lead to snap-judgments, relationship problems, and prejudice.
14) Being Right: You feel continually on trial to prove that your opinions and actions are correct. Being wrong is unthinkable and you will go to any length to demonstrate your rightness. Having to be 'right' often makes you hard of hearing. You aren't interested in the possible veracity of a differing opinion, only in defending your own. Being right becomes more important than an honest and caring relationship.
15) Heaven's Reward Fallacy: You expect all your sacrifice and self-denial to pay off, as if there were someone keeping score. You feel bitter when the reward doesn't come as expected. The problem is that while you are always doing the 'right thing,' if your heart really isn't in it, you are physically and emotionally depleting yourself.
*excerpted from THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS by McKay, Davis, and Fanning. New Harbinger, 1981. These styles of thinking (or cognitive distortions) were gleaned from the work of several authors, including Albert Ellis, Aaron Beck, and David Burns, among others.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
THE BEAUTY OF TOTALITY, by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
"Ultimate goodness is connected with the notion of ultimate joy without comparison to suffering. Out of that joy we begin to experience, visually, the beauty of the blue sky; the beauty of a red rose; the beauty of a white chrysanthemum; the beauty of chattering brooks; the beauty of the openness of the ocean, where sky and land meet; the beauty of sweet and sour; the beauty of music, high pitches and low; the beauty of experiencing warmth on our bodies; the beauty of cool air, which creates natural refreshment; the beauty of eating a meal when we feel hungry; the beauty of drinking water when we feel thirsty; the beauty of learning more things when we feel that we are not learned enough. I don’t want to paint a pleasure-oriented picture alone. There is also the beauty of your schoolmaster pinching you on the cheek, the beauty of being too hot on a midsummer’s day; the beauty of being too cold in the middle of winter—the beauty of pain as well as the beauty of pleasure."
"Ultimate goodness is connected with the notion of ultimate joy without comparison to suffering. Out of that joy we begin to experience, visually, the beauty of the blue sky; the beauty of a red rose; the beauty of a white chrysanthemum; the beauty of chattering brooks; the beauty of the openness of the ocean, where sky and land meet; the beauty of sweet and sour; the beauty of music, high pitches and low; the beauty of experiencing warmth on our bodies; the beauty of cool air, which creates natural refreshment; the beauty of eating a meal when we feel hungry; the beauty of drinking water when we feel thirsty; the beauty of learning more things when we feel that we are not learned enough. I don’t want to paint a pleasure-oriented picture alone. There is also the beauty of your schoolmaster pinching you on the cheek, the beauty of being too hot on a midsummer’s day; the beauty of being too cold in the middle of winter—the beauty of pain as well as the beauty of pleasure."
Monday, October 3, 2011
"... it has been thought better to change the traditional title. LUST implies not only strength, but the joy of strength exercised. It is vigor, and the rapture of vigor. There is in this card a divine drunkenness or ecstasy. The woman is shown as more than a little drunk, and more than a little mad; and the lion also is aflame with lust. This signifies that the type of energy described is that of the primitive, creative order; its is completely independent of the criticism of reason. This card portrays the will of the Aeon." [Aleister Crowley]"The difference between Crowley's LUST card and the traditional STRENGTH card can be illustrated by two formulas: that of St. George killing the Dragon, and that of Beauty and the Beast. In the STRENGTH card, St. George kills the dragon to save the damsel in distress, thus the woman and the beast are kept separate, and the woman is mild and powerless. In the LUST card, the woman herself falls in love with the Beast, and while in some versions of the tale the Beast becomes a man due to her love, in others the woman becomes a Beast as well. Thus, LUST relates more to the acceptance of the bestial lust and vigor for life, rather than the denial and destruction of its primal force." [Kim Huggens]
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