Tuesday, December 13, 2016

Reading The Life Divine will change your life

BOSTON: MIT scientists have developed a new artificial intelligence system that can take still images and generate short videos to simulate what happens next, similar to how humans can visually imagine how a scene will evolve.
Humans intuitively understand how the world works, which makes it easier for people, as opposed to machines, to envision how a scene will play out.

Et tu, Evolution?
Et tu, Evolution? https://t.co/bIQ5r5CLEq @ARangarajan1972
ANAND RANGANATHAN | Sat, 10 Dec 2016, DNA
Life has no purpose. We are a creation of chance, a conspiracy hatched by thunder and lightning and water and ammonia and hydrogen and methane and dust, demonstrated so persuasively by Stanley Miller in 1953. Amino-acetonitrile met water and formed glycine three billion years ago; a sperm met an egg and produced a baby yesterday. All random, ... 
Fifty years ago, roughly 30 babies in 1000 found it physically impossible to emerge from the birth canal. Today that figure stands at 36. We are therefore stuck in a compromise, and C-section babies are living proof of this.

Assorted Tweets:
On sentience, sapience and speciesism https://t.co/6WlKbF2Rg4 Finally managed to write this, after a lot of deliberation and reading.

After finding the effect of antivirus, antibiotic and immune system, concept of protecting "all life" looked quite strange to me!

The late AK Ramanujan, one of the finest scholars of Indian literature, and a poet, wrote a brilliant, informal essay published in 1989 titled, “Is there an Indian way of thinking?”
Among the many gems in this essay is a notion that all Indian thinking is context-sensitive, as opposed to the Western way of thinking that creates thoughts that claim to be context-free. To illustrate this, Ramanujan quotes a parable of the Buddha—
"Once a man was drowning in a sudden flood. Just as he was about to drown, he found a raft. He clung to it, and it carried him safely to dry land. And he was so grateful to the raft that he carried it on his back for the rest of his life." Such was the Buddha’s ironic comment on context-free systems. Our Vedas and our glorious epics all begin with a setting of the context...
But your ancient wisdom came to you from your diabetic grandmother. That is called a home truth, not to be confused with ancient wisdom. Health expert @rmantha2 https://t.co/9poUDfp6mr

Contributions of #socialmedia r many. It has given us a glimpse into how Insane, narcissistic most of us are, that truth's matter of belief

Acting ideology-free can be either excellent or awful. Former may come through pragmatism, latter often comes through rank populism.

Pragmatism often suffers from the pitfalls of the fallacies in one's reasoning. Nothing excellent about it except the feel-good factor. https://t.co/p7OWNgqjVZ
@Flyfiddlesticks I mean pragmatism. More often than not, pragmatists rationalise theories according to the ends they seek.
@Flyfiddlesticks Which brings us to the definition of pragmatism. Which could be applied to anything except nihilism. 😀😀
@vimuktaatma 😂 but they're also ideology driven. If pragmatic,  you can go against "pragmatism"  as well.  😈@vimuktaatma I'd argue that they're not pragmatic but merely professing so.

The real truths are heresies. They cannot be spoken. Only discovered, whispered, and perhaps read.

One of the cruxes of the "truth" is to understand and identify those "who" define "truth" to be "heresy", and how they do it. https://t.co/9WkVFvJqas

@naval Repression of Heresy is only in Abrahmic Religions; Western Culture is alter ego of Semetic exclusive Truth claim, joined at Hip

@samAlochaka @naval Alternate Truth claim becomes a heresy to the self-proclaimed guardians of Exclusive Truth claim in Abrahmic thought

@naval “it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence--that which makes its truth, its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence". Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

@samAlochaka Vasudhaiv Kutumbakam is not in any sacred text but in Hitopdasesh story warning against cunning enemy mouthing such philosophy

But seriously, how are you supposed to grow up children?
There would always be things that you tell them to do/not do.

There have been wonderful examples of the academic left standing by the suffering people, joining in struggles, developing powerful discourses, and widening the cause.
an excerpt from my book on Maoists
Maoists in India: Tribals under Siege, Pluto Press London; Amaryllis, India, 2012
The least intellectuals can do, once they have unmasked the propaganda of the State, is to tell the powers that the truth is out. Once the truth is uncovered and laid before the people, someone somewhere will pick up the thread and proceed to develop more sustainable forms of resistance. If intellectuals still have energy and courage, they can use their relative insularity from repression to help raise a protective wall around this resistance so that it can grow inside. So the moral is to protect resistance to protect truth.

[The trouble with this artistic portrayal of fascism is that Benito Mussolini, the suave gentleman, doesn’t fit.] NM https://t.co/OIMbuE0qbS

Books like Shakespeare’s Asian Journeys (ed by Bi-qi B. Lei, JC Ick, & Poonam Trivedi) and Hegel's India (by Rathore & Rimina Mohapatra) bridge East and West.

[PDF] THE POETIC IMAGINATION OF WILLIAM BLAKE: RETRACING THE SYMPHONY BETWEEN THE SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND THE SONGS OF EXPERIENCE
A Maiti
... By Sri Aurobindo WORKS CITED [1]. Blake, William. Songs of Innocence and Experience. Dover Publications. February 5, 1992. Print. [2]. Bloom, Harold. Bloom's Major Poets. Chelsea House Publications 2003. Print. [3]. Martin, William. ...
Shakespeare's Asian Journeys: Critical Encounters, Cultural Geographies, and the Politics of Travel
BB Lei, JC Ick, P Trivedi - 2016

 I find  an identity of views between Sri Aurobindo and CG Jung. Both emphasize self knowledge. Self knowledge automatically leads  one towards  being a super mind and work  for  spiritual unity and good of community. Altruism at surface, without inner awakening and self knowledge, is  merely a display of ego .
             If you  muster the courage to read this  difficult  book, it will change your life. 
Vidya Nand Garg: The Life Divine by Sri Aurobindo https://t.co/cWt7ZLjOnv

@vidyanandgarg Two other booklets, The Mother and The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth are essential supplements https://t.co/wo7CB0TMsK