If that somewhere is wordpress here's a handy article describing how to export your LJ postes to wordpress

http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2009/02/18/even-easier-livejournal-migration/

Somehow I missed the photo of Earth taken from Mars during 2003.  But seeing it tonight reminded me of the Pale Blue Dot video, and Carl Sagan's Cosmos TV series which had such a profound effect on me when I was younger.

"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

-- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

Massive methane release in the arctic due to permafrost melting.  (The Independent)

There are tricksters and there is hunger, and where the tale ends and the brutal truth begins there was Fox, serviette tucked in, belt sinched tight in Mobius strips, russet shadow at rabbits steps. Ah Rabbit weary of time, long eared embers flicker from the faded phonograph of memory, hop hesitant onto the path - hunter and prey - neon bright satellite - the last to be devoured.

( Read more... )

For the first time in human history, the North Pole can be circumnavigated. “New satellite images, taken only two days ago, show that melting ice last week opened up both the fabled North-west and North-east passages, in the most important geographical landmark to date to signal the unexpectedly rapid progress of global warming.”

Greenland icesheet could melt faster. “Scientists yesterday said they could no longer rule out a fast-track melting of the Greenland icesheet — a prospect that would see much of the world's coastline drowned by rising seas.”

I will be in ottawa from the 27th thru to the 2nd - lets hang out!

Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Disastrous Presidency

Last Wednesday I went to “Zen night” which is traditional Zen practice lead by this guy named Peter and consisting of twenty five minute sitting meditation, followed by ten minutes of walking meditation, followed by twenty five minutes of sitting meditation, followed by chanting, followed by a dharma talk. 

It was fun, very formal in a relaxed kind of way, lots bowing and having specific posture and gestures.  The meditation itself was eyes open breath centric meditation – the eyes open bit was new for me, and kind of fun – it’s was neat to visually see things and try not to engage with them, to just “let them be” as it were.

The dharma talk was cool, Peter is helping this seventy five year old Japanese Zen guy translate an ancient Zen master’s book (Dogen I think, from around 1200) from ancient Japanese into English.  The Japanese guy has been working on it for forty five years, Peter for the last six.  He read some of the translated work and talked about it, and it illustrated a couple of things about Zen practice to me. 

Paraphrasing Peter (poorly):  Dogen (I think) is talking about a young monk. 

When the monk first arrives at the monastery the master greets him by saying “What is it that thus comes?”  The young monk meditates for eight years.  When his interview with the master comes up he says “When I first arrived here you instructed me ‘What is it that thus comes?’ and I think I know, but I can not express it in words.” 

It was funnier when Peter said it, the hook is viewing the question “What is it that thus comes?” as an instruction, and Peter pointed out that this is a fundamental of Zen practice, to view everything from the perspective of this question, to essentially live the question.

What this really illustrates for me is how poor Zen (and really all spiritual practices) are in communicating the basic information required to come to any sort of spiritual understanding; and I only told half the story.  The rest of it is roughly:

the master says something equally profound; the young monk goes away and meditates for another eight years before becoming enlightened.

So this poor monk basically spends 16 years, with only two basic guidelines, for the most part he is left to his own ingenuity (viewing the question as an instruction) and resources (16 years of meditation.)

There are very good reasons for this.  First enlightenment isn’t conceptual, it’s experiential, which makes it pretty much impossible to describe, and even harder to understand.  Just like someone can tell you what it’s like to be drunk, but you won’t really know what they mean until you have had too much to drink yourself.  Second spiritual realization ultimately come from within, meaning everyone needs to slog through their own mess during meditation to arrive at an understanding that is wholly their own truth, and not just something they have been told.

That said, it still seems like Zen practice is particularly vague when it comes to instruction.  “Sit with your eyes open and remain aware of your breath.  Walk slowly and remain aware of your feet.  Sit and breathe again.  Here is a story, which is also a joke and a riddle, and might also be profoundly insightful instruction.”

That said there is also something essentially beautiful about it.  Not maybe in summary, but in the doing of it.

This week the old Japanese guy will be in town, I’m so going to that – zen practice with an authentic old Japanese dude…

In recent years, scientists who work for and advise the US federal government have seen their work manipulated, suppressed, distorted, while agencies have systematically limited public and policy maker access to critical scientific information. To document this abuse, the Union of Concerned Scientists has created the A to Z Guide to Political Interference in Science.  

The old man considered the thread frayed edges of the cloth he held up to his face.

Now and then, with this, these old stitches of fabric stretched out, forlorn and listless; into your silence comes the maelstrom.

Oh such shallow folly which berefts us in one stroke of both youth and mirth; or was this then the lesson, that only on careworn fields, long lain fallow, shall fall our harsh mistress muse? 

What then?  Once encountered, courted, and enkindled, will you turn away from the spark of her fair brilliance, or reach through old flesh, unused to flow, to find the sting and mettle of life’s tide? 

Yes!  Take up these ancient arms and return the embrace, for everything about her is love.

And with that he sneezed.

I spent last week in Vancouver at Kely's place while he was in central Canada visiting relatives. Vancouver city is something special; I don't know if I could describe what I love about it so much; or if I could do it justice if I tried.

I'm back on Saltspring now, stocked up for a long haul at the house, but it's strange being alone out here - part of me really craves company and after a while and I find myself making excuses to go into town. Mmmm coffee...

I am unemployed now, and using the next couple months (short of a brief trip out east) to work on some personal projects, to see more of the gulf islands, and to get back to meditating. Three weeks in and I've made a lot of progress on the paintings and gotten a good start on the first of the two applications I want to write, and managed to sit for half an hour every day.   Which is a pretty good start I think.

Upcoming Plans:

• During the last week of July I'll be in Toronto.
• During the first week of August I'll be in Saskatoon.
• In September I'll be moving to Calgary , probably for just a year.

I you want to come visit before I leave, make plans now!!!

It's raining, and there are baby deer in my yard this morning; so damn cute! :-)

Vertigo in the dark.  Depths spin amidst these hutches of glass and light.  Vancouver cityscape, a self referential precipice, divine and infinite. 

“These,” it's eyes twinkle, looking up from a kit model of the golden gate bridge, “are the ghosts of old friends, waiting upon the hour of their reunion.”

Gibson reflects "Every object of desire is a found object."

And your voice echoes down the razor wire, through the tin cans of your childhood, "Everything about it is love..."

Top of sea warming 50% faster than thought. “The new study by Australian and US climate researchers, published in the journal Nature, concludes that the upper 700 metres of the world's oceans warmed at a rate 50 per cent faster in the last four decades of 20th century than documented in the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report...”

Mass extinctions due to sea level changes, study says. “The rise and fall of the seas may have a more lethal toll on Earth's life than asteroids and supervolcanoes, according to a new study. Over the past 540 million years, every increase in the rate of extinctions—including the five so-called mass extinctions—has been linked to environmental changes wrought by changing sea levels..."

Recent oppositely directed trends in solar climate forcings and the global mean surface air temperature
By Mike Lockwood and Claus Frohlich
2007
Published by the Royal Society

"There are many interesting palaeoclimate studies that suggest that solar variability had an influence on pre-industrial climate. There are also some detection–attribution studies using global climate models that suggest there was a detectable influence of solar variability in the first half of the twentieth century and that the solar radiative forcing variations were amplified by some mechanism that is, as yet, unknown. However, these findings are not relevant to any debates about modern climate change. Our results show that the observed rapid rise in global mean temperatures seen after 1985 cannot be ascribed to solar variability, whichever of the mechanisms is invoked and no matter how much the solar variation is amplified."

(Feedback welcome please)

On the third night that Fox cried in her sleep it occurred to Bear that in many ways she was closer to him than his parents.  It was such a long time since he had seen them last; far away in the cave which had been all he knew of the world.

Winter had long overstayed her welcome, stretching her visit through two seasons and still giving no sign of leaving. Papa bear was out foraging for longer and longer. On the last day Bear had seen them; he had been gone for several weeks and came home with just the husk of a single white berry,

“Listen son,” said momma bear as bear cub huddled next to her. “Oldest Grandmother has grown tired of the stories of men, and is coating the world with snow until everything is white and clean and new. The end of every story Oldest Grandmother tells is also the beginning, which is her magic.  When the spring comes the world will be new."

“Winter will be long, too long for many of Oldest Grandmother’s children. There will be no food for many moons, and it will be bitterly cold. Even down here in our cave near the heart of the world it may be too harsh for us.  But we bears have magic stories too, so tonight we will tell you the story of how bear cub slept through the winter to wake with the season’s change.  Papa bear has been out foraging, and he has brought back a magic berry which will transform momma and papa bear into food and blankets to keep our baby warm and well fed.”

So momma bear and papa bear ate supper and they all went to sleep and baby bear dreamt that his ancestors and great ancestors came and danced on the walls of the cave, and they sang to him songs about the bears of antiquity, and it was not too hot, and not to cold, and there was always plenty to eat.

Outside the cave the seasons slowly turned, and at long last spring came, and then it was time for his ancestors to leave. Momma bear gave bear cub one last hug and said “It’s time to wake up son. Soon aunt Fox will be here, and she will take care of you.” Then papa bear hugged him too and said “Your aunt will take care of you now, but remember her ways are not our ways, do not forget the songs of your ancestors. We will always be with you.”

Then bear heard someone calling from far above, so he climbed up to the cave entrance, which was also the beginning of the world, and went to meet his aunt.

“Oh my!” said Bear, “What bring red fur you have.

Today I saw a boy skating down the street with a bright orange cat perched upon his shoulders.  Now that has to be the best way to skateboard, letting someone else do all the work :P