Scott Adam's, paraphrased

The universe is heaping shit on us all the time . We pretend we dont stink, and say honor,gratitude, and respect .

"When everyone is dead the Great Game is finished. Not before. "

 - Hurree Babu (Kim, Rudyard Kipling)

I bought Bells of Shangri-La

found it to be terrible .terrible. I feel like someone took the diary of the original Hurree Babu and tacked on many many  passages of high school level flowery-ness, and shipped it off to the presses without an editor looking at it...

felt a pang that I was one of those types who don't return things

that frontier has always been a source of great fascination

starting from Tintin in Tibet, Rudyard Kipling's Kim,  The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes, Seven years in Tibet, Magic and Mystery in Tibet ...

all grist for the mill

honest confession. I haven't read past chapters 1-2 of a couple of these...

something about the place whispers "magic!"

there are two large racoons living in our house, 

one smaller than the other

they eat our food and sleep in our beds and 

then give us attitude, also

the smaller one punches and kicks freely

they sit next to me, on the couch 

chewing through sugarcane slices

 goodbye, Scott ! 

the world's a bit emptier without you

 Cryme at the Ancient Marina

Pour me another !!

--- ye old sea dog, at the pub,  after rum

There was a knock on the door. I opened it. A man, well-dressed, navy-blue jacket, large moustache. 

Severe.

"... Mr Lortek ?" He said. I espied a folded badge in the hand he held to his waist.

"Yes ?'

"Hello. I'm from the L.E.S.T.R.A.D.E department. My name is Edward Devarian."

I smiled .

 "You mean you work for Inspector Lestrade ? "

"No. "

A grimace forced into a smile, glimpse of teeth.

"err.. what ..what is L.E.S..what can I do for you ?"

"I believe you just graduated from the Sherlock Holmes Academy on Deductive Sciences and Technique, two days ago ?"

I frown

"No,  that was a package tour and program two days ago, I explain,  we got to solve some staged cases, were served cold beef and ale, sat in armchairs and  smoked pipes, and played the fiddle some.."

"I assure you, it was a program, but not staged in any way, and completely legitimate. Would you be able to help us in a case which has been baffling the department for some time now ?"

"Is this part of the program ? "

"No."

"Can I meed Inspector Lestrade ? "

"No. He was a fictional character. Also, we are not in the 1900s any longer."

...

...

"ok, I charge 2 guineas and 1 bob and 1 quid per day."

"Again,  Sir, I assure you, this is not staged, or part of any program "

 If you ran into yourself today, would you get along ?

Would you be able to co exist  or would you get on each others  nerves , or would both of you pussy foot and be polite and not get anything done ..?

Would you tell your friends - that's a great guy - or not?

Robot rites and rituals

religious experiences started as a transcendental experiences, where the world gets re-mapped in the head, accompanied by feelings of bliss and timelessness. in Deleuzian terms, I suppose this is the self witnessing not just a line of flight ,but actual flight itself,  leaving the self behind, or rather, the de-territorialization of the self, and then watching it re-territorialize. (Cool caveat, upon de-territorialisation, there's no one left to stop the re-territorialisation, hence the inevitable descent).

religion in itself, then territorialised into a political thing. 

The core method of religion is the acquisition, development, and deployment  of the power to ignore ; and the accompanying framework for its  sanctioning.

Good religion helps you ignore your immediate sense of suffering and loss,  allowing you to exert beyond and grow beyond.  Eventually it can lead to  loss of self, and the attached suffering, sometimes permanently.

Bad religion helps you ignore others' suffering, and allows for zero sum and pareto inefficient moves,  makes for great loot. 

The difference falls under morality & ethics. 

Hence the first precept is always non violence and non taking . It always starts with compassion. 

.

Exercises for deferring gratitude form the first step of religious training. To the uninformed, it looks like self-inflicted suffering. Like fasting. Or doing a slow boring thing again and again. It is important that the context be kept in perspective, and self-inflicted-suffering  not be seen as a noble end in itself.

The next step is skill acquisition.

One needs to go past Aristotle and Confucius to reach Plato and Lao-tse, and often canmot leap-frog the first step (which is long arduous and many stepped)

Jeet Kune Do didn't spring forth from Bruce Lee's  brow magnificent and fully formed, it was a result of his mastering the many martial arts expending horrendous amounts of effort,  boxed in by iron discipline

a word on education

grammar and logic form the first bring in the edifice that is education.

arts provide a great medium for education. they train to improve sensory acuity. Drawing, painting, and sketching teach the eye to note details and distinguish between colours & shades, strokes,  and their effects. playing a musical instrument is an intensely cerebral task - reading the symbols in their notation, translating them to hand movements pertaining to the instrument, keeping in mind the melody/harmony while co-ordinating with others also doing the same. writing forces one to distil thoughts into a structured form. reading the classics stocks up the mind with many dilemmas one is bound to run into sooner or later

team sports teach deploying skills amidst alliances, uncertainty, and shared goals. Co-operation is the principle of which collective bargaining is the manifestation, and source of much wealth accumulation.

one key skill to acquire, is the skill of plugging away at learning and mastering a technique, and producing with it, until it is in the bone. all other skills are built using this skill.

now back to our regular programming...

The next step is combined execution coexisting with self programming.

Execution gets better with repetition and is hindered by environmental noise. For eg ideological differences . It is hard to behead a ravana if the ravana doesnt know and agrees at some level that he is deserving of a beheading.

Religion, with its claim on morality, deigns to tell you what is right,good, and true (phaedrus et al notwithstanding)

That makes for easy unblocked execution, and retreat to self programming to reconcile actions with the mind/soul-construct

Robots, if determinate, which by definition they are, cannot have intentions. Humans ,and programs, choose. Is there a non-deterministic element in  this choosing ? Probably not , I'd assume the machinations are not visible, but follow an algorithm, which doesn't involve tossing a coin as any of its steps.

Would driver-less cars have an algorithm to pick who to save/who to crash into ? (like will-smith in i-robot). if they could talk among themselves, would the discuss and form groups based on some sub-aspect of the algorithm applying to some scenario ?