Daily Bread

Saturday Morning I went to buy groceries – the winter tires on the front wheels are glorious!!! I ordered a five-olive bread at the counter, and asked to have it sliced. Then I noticed a sheet of paper taped to the large bread-slicer: This machine slices organic and conventional breads.

When I received the bread I asked the bread-lady, do people really take it that seriously? Oh yes, she answered, nodding her head vigorously, you’d be amazed.

I immediately blurted out, no wonder there are so many wars. She didn’t laugh, just nodded.

Wallpaper

I made some desktops/wallpapers for my laptop (1440 x 900 pixels) and phone (480 x 320 pixels) based on the two images from yesterday’s post. The fit MacBooks and iPhone, but should also work with other computers and phones that have a similar aspect ratio. You can download them here:

Desktop #1
Desktop #2

Saturday in Santa Fe

From the epiloge of The Godfather of Kathmandu:

A cup of wine under the flowering trees;
I drink alone, for no friend is near.
Raising my cup I becon the bright moon.

– Li Po

Goes well with the poems from Thursday.

Here is another quote from the book:

In Nepal we don’t fly through clouds, because the clouds have rocks in them.

Those rocks, in case you are wondering, are the Himalayas which reach high into the sky. The real name of Mount Everst is Chomolungma, which means Mother of the Universe in Tibetan.

Live music. No quantization, no pitch-correction, no ProTools tricks… just a bunch of guys playing in a bar in Paris. Not my favorite kind of music, but nice.

Next week Apple is said to announce a new computer device… the iSlate? iPad? (((I don’t like either of those names))) and the New York Times decided to call up one of my favorite poets, Gary Snyder. They spoke with him and he offered this poem.

Tech Reflections – Digital Muse for Beat Poet – NYTimes.com
Because it broods under its hood like a perched falcon,
Because it jumps like a skittish horse and sometimes throws me,
Because it is poky when cold,
Because plastic is a sad, strong material that is charming to rodents,
Because it is flighty,
Because my mind flies into it through my fingers,
Because it leaps forward and backward, is an endless sniffer and searcher,
Because its keys click like hail on a boulder,
And it winks when it goes out,
And puts word-heaps in hoards for me, dozens of pockets of gold under boulders in streambeds, identical seedpods strong on a vine, or it stores bins of bolts;
And I lose them and find them,
Because whole worlds of writing can be boldly laid out and then highlighted and vanish in a flash at “delete,” so it teaches of impermanence and pain;
And because my computer and me are both brief in this world, both foolish, and we have earthly fates,
Because I have let it move in with me right inside the tent,
And it goes with me out every morning;
We fill up our baskets, get back home,
Feel rich, relax, I throw it a scrap and it hums.

Read the whole article here.

I am not surprised:

Schneier on Security: German TV on the Failure of Full-Body Scanners
The video is worth watching, even if you don’t speak German. The scanner caught a subject’s cell phone and Swiss Army knife — and the microphone he was wearing — but missed all the components to make a bomb that he hid on his body. Admittedly, he only faced the scanner from the front and not from the side. But he also didn’t hide anything in a body cavity other than his mouth — I didn’t think about that one — he didn’t use low density or thinly sliced PETN, and he didn’t hide anything in his carry-on luggage.

Full-body scanners: they’re not just a dumb idea, they don’t actually work.

A couple of images from yesterday evening:

Friday in Santa Fe

More snow…

Correlation Found Between Brain Structure and Video Game Success
The subjects who had more volume in an area called the nucleus accumbens did significantly better in the early stages of training. Meanwhile, those who were well-endowed in different areas of the striatum, known as the caudate nucleus and putamen, handled the shifting strategies better.’

Brain, video games, spirituality…

Somebody (((I certainly think Mind & Life should be involved))) should create a computer game that enhances the players ability to realize himself in a spiritual fashion (((I really don’t like the word spirituality, but you get my drift)))

Of course, nothing replaces practice, and by practice I mean meditation and dedication over time, but there are things like Genpo Roshi’s Big Mind method, that offer immediate results, little insights that can inspire a person and lead them to doing the time, by which I mean sitting in meditation or silence or prayer or whatever your path may be.

Similarly I imagine that one could design video games – I bet there are a number of Tibetan lamas that could provide some mind-blowing content – that could bring about changes in the brain that would in turn foster long-term development. Visualizations are a big thing in Tibetan Buddhism… that would work well for a video game. There has been a lot of neurological research that could be applied, too. And then there is Tantric Buddhism. That could could be more exciting than Grand Theft Auto to a young person…

I think self-realization has always been, and will always be, a two-part process. Immediate understanding and training on one hand and long-term internalization and integration on the other hand. This is not foreign to a musician, by the way. You learn a new technique and then it takes years to find ways to implement that technique in a natural fashion.

I think a great video game along these lines could be life-changing as well as very profitable for the designer.

Crazy Delicious Japanese Rice Paddy Art
…a village in Japan called Inakadate has a ridiculously awesome festival where hundreds of people help out and plant different varieties of rice that grow up to be different colors (and thus create images like the ones you see above). They started doing this to reinvigorate the town, and it’s done quite well! In 2006 there were 200,000 visitors alone.

Check out the rice-paddy-art photographs here.
Link to Google map.

London’s Unpackaged Grocery Shop Eliminates Wasteful Packaging | Inhabitat
Started by Catherine Conway in 2006, Unpackaged was a small market stall that became so popular that Conway decided to open up a full-fledged shop. The store sells almost all their goods out of bulk bins and the packaged items they do carry are minimal and easily recyclable. It’s certainly not as large as most grocery stores, and it doesn’t carry multiple brands of one item — in fact the store doesn’t carry many well-known brands (except for the wines).

Why unpackaged? Three reasons: first, it’s cheaper to buy and sell things in bulk, since the extra cost of packaging isn’t passed on to you. Second, packaging is a waste of resources and time, and requires extra fuel to transport that weight. Finally, packaging is really just trash and causes pollution because it is so often sent to the landfill.

Very nice! Website: Unpackaged

And, if you are wondering why I don’t like the word Spirituality, I’ll tell you:

I just don’t see that separation of spirit and physical things, i.e. the rest of the world. To me the exterior is a reflection of the interior, and the two are forever entwined. We can’t work on the physical side without changing the spiritual side and we can’t work on our interior without affecting the exterior. So, talking about spirituality creates, to me, an unnatural disconnect from the world, from this right here, right now. I think doing something, following the Eighfold Path, for example – or whatever your path may be – creates an overall change (((and by overall I mean the person following the path and, in fact, the whole world))). Or, to put it simply, doing becomes being and being becomes doing. And really, they are not separate, except in our conceptualizations.