Pain & Pleasure: The Lobster Reconsidered & David Foster Wallace

A few years back I read about George, a 140 year-old lobster that did not wind up on somebody's dinner plate. Instead, he was returned to the ocean at Kennebunkport, Maine. Lobster age is calculated by weight and this one weighed 20 pounds. George would have provided a dinner at over $100 in a good restaurant.

Mercedes de Acosta Met Ramana Maharshi: Here Lies The Heart

Descended from the legendary Dukes of Alba, daughter in a wealthy Cuban family, Mercedes de Acosta was born in 1893 in New York, raised near Fifth Avenue, and had a beautiful sister Rita de Acosta who was a model for artists John Singer Sargent and Giovanni Boldini. Married to painter Abram Poole, Mercedes was socialite, poet, playwright, Hollywood set and costume designer as well as script writer.

The Revolt of Pancho Barnes

Born to immense wealth, Pancho had an arranged marriage to a minister. Newspapers proclaimed the marriage of a socialite to a pastor. Tired of the marriage, she couldn't get a divorce so each Sunday morning she climbed into her biplane and dove down over the steeple, buzzing his church during his sermons, drowning out the service.

Don't Forget This: The Triumphal Parade of Ancient Rome

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In ancient Rome, a general, many to become emperors, presided over The Triumph (Triumphus), a victory parade through the streets of the city with throngs watching him pass by.  In a chariot he lead the parade, and heard the ovations of the masses. He wore a purple tunic, for purple was a rare dye only the nobility and powerful could afford.  Behind him walked all his army, his men and women captives, soon to become slaves, followed by his other spoils of war.  A slave held his golden crown, but the main role of the slave was to occasionally whisper in his ear,

Memento mori, memento mori.

Translated it means, Remember, you will die.

I dedicate this story to all politicians of power and high station.

Meditation, The Narrator, and Self-Therapy

The years have piled up on me and through them I have at times been happy, have been sad, have suffered, have been calm.  Over the years and as a lesson hard-won, looking at mind with its ups and downs, I find one thing stands out.  If mind identifies with a narrator, somebody who tells his or her story, then dukkha, suffering, is greater.  The narrator is a voice, a series of thoughts, or images, that seems to have continuity, but in fact it comes and goes.  I also found that a narrator impartially takes credit for bad feelings as well as good ones when in fact either kind of feeling doesn't depend on a narrator.  They just happen. They arise and fall away, just as the narrator arises and falls away.  There is no continuous stream.  The continuity is ego's necessary fiction.  Yes, in life we have a story-line.  We were born at a certain place. Went to school somewhere. Married.  Etc.

Buddha & Absolutes: Hindu Thought & The View from Nowhere

I found an interesting article at the Skeptic site, called The View from Nowhere or Somewhere?  Maja Caron reviews a novel by Rebecca Goldstein, 36 Arguments for The Existence of God. ( I read her book Plato at The Googleplex, and it is a tour de force.)  In the review Caron brings up Thomas Nagel's classic work, The View from Nowhere, discussing Nagel in terms of the views of Cass Seltzer, Goldstein's protagonist.

What Is Time? Julian Barbour's Answer

Tell me what time is. You cannot. The future does not exist, nor does the past. Nor the present. You cannot live in the present. Snap your fingers and it is gone. By the time you say "now" it is already past.  You cannot apprehend any part of time you talk about. All you have are words to explain something that eludes you and the words only confuse you all the more.

In 1908 John McTaggart wrote The Unreality of Time, and using his A and B series of time he argued that our perception of time is an illusion. Of the A series, he argues this:

Ota Benga: Man in A Zoo Cage

In September 1906 a caged human being was put on display in the Bronx Zoo. A sign on the cage read:

The African Pygmy, "Ota Benga."
Age, 23 years. Height, 4 feet 11 inches.
Weight, 103 pounds. Brought from the
Kasai River, Congo Free State, South Central Africa, by Dr. Samuel P. Verner.

Benga was exhibited in the afternoons during September. Zoo officials clothed him in animal skins for viewers to gawk  In youth his teeth had been filed to sharp points as was the custom of his people.  Many New Yorkers thought they were for eating human flesh and called him a cannibal.  Chimpanzees were put in the cage to suggest a comparison between him and them.

Belief Shapes Behavior, Free Will or Not

Whether You Think Free Will or Determinism, Belief Shapes Behavior

Popular wisdom has it that everybody will do right or wrong based on moral choice, and that moral choice is just―well, just a personal thing. One person can be as moral as another despite any difference in underlying beliefs about the world. Maybe, but Kathleen Vohs' and Jonathan Schooler's experiment gives us pause to think about the questions. What are the implications for society if people come to believe they have no free will? No moral responsibility?

Evolution Didn't Design You To Be Happy

Happiness and Evolution

When people are asked what they really want out of life most respond that they want to be happy.  They
may think more money, a better job, improved status, social recognition will make them happy.  Or they may think of all that as superficial and that they want inner happiness.  Whichever, people regard happiness as a good unto itself.