Buddha decided to teach what he had learned with the idea, "Some will understand".
Some of his "learning" was likely hunger induced hallucinations. Other were random good insights and summaries. Some are built on the tribal culture and religion of the time and location.
These are only my opinions on the various readings I have done.
Compassion and the elimination of suffering is the main concept. Buddha recognized that suffering is an inside job, a self induced feeling, and that that feeling can be nominalized by a series of concepts, beliefs, values, ways of thinking and actions. Various translations and repeated expressions create a range of ideas of what each component really says. The four Noble truths go something like this:
1. Life contains suffering, pain, impermanence, toxicity, loss, stress, vaguity, distress, depression, pain causing things. The pain is an internal mental object, not a physical reality except if it is our body, but even then, the pain is a mental object. The unsatisfactory quality of life which is targeted mental object, the sorrow and trouble, the never completely fulfilling. We always want more happiness, less pain. But this ‘wanting more’,the longing, is itself the problem, the craving, the desire for more. Buddhism does help the physical, but first, it removes the internal mental object in ourselves.
2. The second part is it is our cravings, our attachments, our selfish grasping after pleasure and avoiding pain that causes the problem. Our delusions of how life should be, our attachment to people, property, prestige, and money, our aversion to loss of people, property, prestige, and money, or simple attachment, delusions, aversions are the cause. Again, these are internal, mental objects. It is not necessarily the real loss, just the potential of loss. Many religions find it easier to have real poverty than deal with the mental potential of loss, or the issues that desire for these things can bring.
3. the third is there is a solution to all this,
4. The solution is following the eight fold path to a peaceful serene state of mind.
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Surrogate Measurement vs Real Measurement
Surrogate Measurement vs Real Measurement is an issue in many things beside soils. The medical industry uses surrogate measurement for a lot of things.
Surrogate measurement is the concept of measuring something that generally relates to a desired property, that is difficult to measure. The swelling potential of soil is time consuming test, but the moisture content, liquid and plastic limits can be determined in a day. There is a direct relationship between the liquidity index and the swelling potential, so we determine the liquidity index and imply a swelling potential.
As long as that relationship between the liquidity index and swelling potential holds, we are in good shape. But add any one of a long and growing list, and we are out to lunch by a long shot. Gasoline, any petroleum, soap, or even organic staining, and the correlation is out. Now we must do the full consolation with swelling, to find one point. We may need a number of points, depending on the situation. Each point is 12 days at least, if a (the) consolidation frame is available.
We would need to do the test to even find out that the relationship does not hold for this sample.
Those time do not include any sampling time involved, nor sample quality issues.
Now what about the medical field. wtf. They use more surrogates than we do in engineering. If you are producing enough iodine in you urine, you are not short. 20 years of misery, and Oh, you are not absorbing enough iodine. wtf.
Oh well shit happens. The medical industry knows what it knows, which is considerable less than they indicate that they know. If they do not deliver results, they do not have a solution. Trying something may be the only true test of whether it will work or not.
Surrogate measurement is the concept of measuring something that generally relates to a desired property, that is difficult to measure. The swelling potential of soil is time consuming test, but the moisture content, liquid and plastic limits can be determined in a day. There is a direct relationship between the liquidity index and the swelling potential, so we determine the liquidity index and imply a swelling potential.
As long as that relationship between the liquidity index and swelling potential holds, we are in good shape. But add any one of a long and growing list, and we are out to lunch by a long shot. Gasoline, any petroleum, soap, or even organic staining, and the correlation is out. Now we must do the full consolation with swelling, to find one point. We may need a number of points, depending on the situation. Each point is 12 days at least, if a (the) consolidation frame is available.
We would need to do the test to even find out that the relationship does not hold for this sample.
Those time do not include any sampling time involved, nor sample quality issues.
Now what about the medical field. wtf. They use more surrogates than we do in engineering. If you are producing enough iodine in you urine, you are not short. 20 years of misery, and Oh, you are not absorbing enough iodine. wtf.
Oh well shit happens. The medical industry knows what it knows, which is considerable less than they indicate that they know. If they do not deliver results, they do not have a solution. Trying something may be the only true test of whether it will work or not.
Monday, December 5, 2011
History
History books tell us what historians have selected rather than everything that happened.
History, as recorded after the event is recorded by the survivors. What the concurred race was up to is speculation from artifacts and other evidence, not was going on. In my youth, I spent a bit of time with natives, and as a young man, I worked in the north among them. Few got the concept or idea of working for something, rather the concept of ownership of property was not in there philosophy.
The social, philosophical, living aspects just are not there. A people living hand to mouth, when presented with food, will not move from that spot until the food runs out. How does The Canadian Government deal with the native northern population, and population growth. Supply more food. How long does it expect us working stiffs to support such foolishness?
The social, philosophical, living aspects just are not there. A people living hand to mouth, when presented with food, will not move from that spot until the food runs out. How does The Canadian Government deal with the native northern population, and population growth. Supply more food. How long does it expect us working stiffs to support such foolishness?
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Free Speech, Really
In Canada, do we have free speech, or free speech as long it agrees with the politically correct view? If I said that we have been providing for the northern Indians for them to reproduce in places that have not economic base, would I be in shit, if anyone read it?
The only reason to be in the north, in many areas, is to provide services to the natives, all on the taxpayers nickel. How long are we going to keep paying as the natives keep reproducing? Where is the occupy movement now?
Just bitching.
The only reason to be in the north, in many areas, is to provide services to the natives, all on the taxpayers nickel. How long are we going to keep paying as the natives keep reproducing? Where is the occupy movement now?
Just bitching.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
DM and the Knot Hole
Back when I was a wee gaffer, I grew up in a farming community that was fifty years behind the times and proud of that. Very few had electricity, or phone. Indoor plumbing was a path to the outhouse. Water came in buckets, was heated on a wood stove. Baths happened one per week. Schools were one and two rooms. I was the first year of busing, picked up on the public road, and dropped at school, when the roads were open, and the mud was not too deep. I did not get the privilege of walking to school up hill both ways.
Most Sundays the extended family attended church, if the road were clear, the truck running, and passable. When it got real cold, the truck did not run. Sometimes it could be started by pulling with the horses, or if a tractor had been started, the tractor. If that did not work, It was too cold anyway.
Winter stating of tractors required a pail of boiling water/antifreeze mix. With pure water, it would ice up inside the block, and that was not good. There was not enough anti freeze it it to leave it in the engine, just enough to stop the icing. After the tractor was put away, the anti freeze drained and hauled back to the house for reuse the next time the tractor was needed, usually for grain hauling, or grinding. The horses worked fine for manure hauling all winter.
Anyway, now that you know we were poor foke, who on Sundays went to a church in a small place, in the Hamlet, in a church that had been built by farmer volunteers, one of which had been a carpenter/steam engineer/farm building assembler as a young man, and another a bricklayer/mason, and another a oxen driver/oxen freighter/black smith- when the west was young, and many youths who need to learn what ever there was going. It had a few issues here and there. The pews were made from dressed 1 inch pine. There were a few random loose knots, some of which the center core had fallen out or been pushed.
That church was heated by a airtight stove in the rear, and there was a pew next to the air tight, where my farther always sat so that he could "tend the fire" during the service without disturbing anyone. It was likely the warmest seat in the house also, but that will be let slide by. Most of my male cousins sat in the rear opposite side, close to the door. I, been less than well behaved (talked a bit), was usually assigned a set at the far end of fathers pew, next to the window, and behind some elderly aunts and neighbors. The church typically was getting warmish by the end of the service. Occasionally someone would come over and light the fire an hour before the service, so it would be somewhat warmer when we got there.
Anyway, DM, being a few years younger than myself, always was restless during the long boring services. His older brother, the one with a watch with a sweep second hand, often amused himself by counting the priests speaking rate. On cold days, the sermon could hit 150 words per minute, other time more like 100. On days when the priest had several services and lunch before, it could be down to 80 or 90. Something about the wine with lunch. It was something to do. Anyway, back to DM and this one knot hole. He found great joy sticking his finger in it and poking his sister who sat in front. We all found various things to do to pass the time quietly waiting for the time we could move about and do things.
Well as we age, even as youngsters time passes and fingers grow bigger and longer. Knot holes do not grow. You can see it now, the time his finger got stuck. Well his big sister leaned back, and pined his finger down to start with. Perhaps a bit of swelling happened. The poor little guy was trapped, with his finger in the knot hole for half the service, while the remainder of us had entertainment for the remainder of the service.
After the service, DM's father sent his brother over to the neighbors to borrow a saw. When DM heard that, he let out such a scream. "Not my finger, not my finger". Somebody got some snow and iced his figure, likely wetting it as well, and it came out. The saw was put to its intended us of making a knock to the knothole, so no kid could do that again. That was always know as DM knot hole after that.
Most Sundays the extended family attended church, if the road were clear, the truck running, and passable. When it got real cold, the truck did not run. Sometimes it could be started by pulling with the horses, or if a tractor had been started, the tractor. If that did not work, It was too cold anyway.
Winter stating of tractors required a pail of boiling water/antifreeze mix. With pure water, it would ice up inside the block, and that was not good. There was not enough anti freeze it it to leave it in the engine, just enough to stop the icing. After the tractor was put away, the anti freeze drained and hauled back to the house for reuse the next time the tractor was needed, usually for grain hauling, or grinding. The horses worked fine for manure hauling all winter.
Anyway, now that you know we were poor foke, who on Sundays went to a church in a small place, in the Hamlet, in a church that had been built by farmer volunteers, one of which had been a carpenter/steam engineer/farm building assembler as a young man, and another a bricklayer/mason, and another a oxen driver/oxen freighter/black smith- when the west was young, and many youths who need to learn what ever there was going. It had a few issues here and there. The pews were made from dressed 1 inch pine. There were a few random loose knots, some of which the center core had fallen out or been pushed.
That church was heated by a airtight stove in the rear, and there was a pew next to the air tight, where my farther always sat so that he could "tend the fire" during the service without disturbing anyone. It was likely the warmest seat in the house also, but that will be let slide by. Most of my male cousins sat in the rear opposite side, close to the door. I, been less than well behaved (talked a bit), was usually assigned a set at the far end of fathers pew, next to the window, and behind some elderly aunts and neighbors. The church typically was getting warmish by the end of the service. Occasionally someone would come over and light the fire an hour before the service, so it would be somewhat warmer when we got there.
Anyway, DM, being a few years younger than myself, always was restless during the long boring services. His older brother, the one with a watch with a sweep second hand, often amused himself by counting the priests speaking rate. On cold days, the sermon could hit 150 words per minute, other time more like 100. On days when the priest had several services and lunch before, it could be down to 80 or 90. Something about the wine with lunch. It was something to do. Anyway, back to DM and this one knot hole. He found great joy sticking his finger in it and poking his sister who sat in front. We all found various things to do to pass the time quietly waiting for the time we could move about and do things.
Well as we age, even as youngsters time passes and fingers grow bigger and longer. Knot holes do not grow. You can see it now, the time his finger got stuck. Well his big sister leaned back, and pined his finger down to start with. Perhaps a bit of swelling happened. The poor little guy was trapped, with his finger in the knot hole for half the service, while the remainder of us had entertainment for the remainder of the service.
After the service, DM's father sent his brother over to the neighbors to borrow a saw. When DM heard that, he let out such a scream. "Not my finger, not my finger". Somebody got some snow and iced his figure, likely wetting it as well, and it came out. The saw was put to its intended us of making a knock to the knothole, so no kid could do that again. That was always know as DM knot hole after that.
Monday, November 21, 2011
How Does One Organize Spaghetti
Spaghetti is a poison to one third of the population that is made from Durham wheat, a fall seeded variety of wheat, commonly called winter wheat. It is digested and absorbed slower that modern ground wheat, which makes it less damaging that red spring wheat but too hot for many of the descendants of norther European ancestry, or of Celtic or aboriginal ancestry. Modern wheat is even worse. Search Wheat Belly for more information. Add chemical fertilizer, and we have poison, but that is another story. See my other blogs for that stuff.
This is about sorting such things. When I was young, and writing computer programs with punch cards, with a stack a couple of yards high, and another yard of data cards, spaghetti program was the rage, with multi-branching logic streams, that lead to subroutines, functions, subprograms, error trapping routines, loop detection, file closing, m by n by o by g matrices, and other such things, all developed from pages and pages of flow charts and the like. What wonderful training for sorting spaghetti. Family histories resemble family trees with to much data, and no logical order to handle manipulable streams of unrelated data, something like sorting spaghetti to get it back into the package. Oh well.
I have several boxes of family records that I "inherited" from mother, that she, and some of my ancestors deemed important enough to save. It does not seem right that I throw them out. There also stories, bits of memory, that should be written so someone unnamed or even unborn could assemble these in something in the future. Who knows: a family trivia game? a computer game? a book? a blog? whatever.
We have no children to pass these on to, so I thought I would throw it out to the world and see what happens.
This is about sorting such things. When I was young, and writing computer programs with punch cards, with a stack a couple of yards high, and another yard of data cards, spaghetti program was the rage, with multi-branching logic streams, that lead to subroutines, functions, subprograms, error trapping routines, loop detection, file closing, m by n by o by g matrices, and other such things, all developed from pages and pages of flow charts and the like. What wonderful training for sorting spaghetti. Family histories resemble family trees with to much data, and no logical order to handle manipulable streams of unrelated data, something like sorting spaghetti to get it back into the package. Oh well.
I have several boxes of family records that I "inherited" from mother, that she, and some of my ancestors deemed important enough to save. It does not seem right that I throw them out. There also stories, bits of memory, that should be written so someone unnamed or even unborn could assemble these in something in the future. Who knows: a family trivia game? a computer game? a book? a blog? whatever.
We have no children to pass these on to, so I thought I would throw it out to the world and see what happens.
Desiccation, Vibration, Rewetting
What happens when we take a soil, dry it out with big trees, so that it shrinks and cracks, vibrate and disturb that dry block of soil, so that some of those dry peds infill the cracks, add water via a wet summer, and what happens to the lateral pressure on adjacent house basement?
Who is at fault? the owner of the trees (2 owners, one has two, the other has about 10, but farther away), the person who did caused the vibration, or the homeowner for owning a house on high plastic soils? Without any one, the problem would be lesser? The lawyers should have fun with that one.
Who is at fault? the owner of the trees (2 owners, one has two, the other has about 10, but farther away), the person who did caused the vibration, or the homeowner for owning a house on high plastic soils? Without any one, the problem would be lesser? The lawyers should have fun with that one.
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