Once again, all "painting" by me;)
Ammonite
Saturday, June 16, 2012
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Pretty Things
I found this leaf while walking back to the office from Starbucks! It is so beautiful! Really bright and colorful. It's amazing how many really neat things there are to see even when walking along on a sidewalk. It makes me sad to think of all the extraordinary things that won't ever be noticed because we are all too busy to just go walking and looking. It seems like such a shame. Sometimes I wish I could just spend all my days strolling and observing and taking pictures of pretty things.
It's hard to explain how I feel when I find a colorful leaf, or flower, or an interesting pattern in the cracks in the sidewalk. However this picture of a tarsier and his/her stick does a pretty good job of capturing the sentiment;)
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Wine Club
Here are a couple photo's from last night's wine club. I did not host or make any of the delicious dishes below. But I sure enjoyed eating them along with learning about sparkling wine! We even had the privilege of seeing a bottle "opened" using a sword! (Well, saber actually. You can see the bottle in the middle of the first photo is missing it's top!) Niiice.
Stephen Hawking's Grand Design
I stumbled across a 4 part TV series hosted by Steven Hawking last weekend and recorded it. I watched the first one a couple days ago, and it was wonderful! Really interesting and thought provoking. The first episode was titled "The Meaning of Life". I have been wondering about that on and off over the past....fifteen years, and so I was really interested in what Hawking had to say about it. And I will get to that in a later post, but I wanted to write about something else.
One of the things I found especially interesting was his discussion of free will. It is a contentious point for a lot of people when discussing evolution, specifically when arguing against it. The argument goes, if evolution/natural selection really happen, then how do you explain free will which often appears to contradict what natural selection would "choose"? First of all, natural selection doesn't choose anything. It is simply the result of a process that occurs within systems where not every organism survives equally. And therefor free will cannot contradict it. But then what is it?
Hawking likens the billions and trillions of possible neural connections in the brain to another complex system: weather. He says
"Our brains create and sustain our conscious minds through an extraordinary network of interactive neurons."
He goes on to say
"The mind is like weather inside our heads. Free will is simply what we call the process that happens (just like natural selection just happens) when this vastly complex system faces a choice." (Parentheses inside quote are mine)
Now maybe at first blush you find this definition...less than romantic, and unflattering, but the more I think about it, the more incredible of an idea it becomes to me. To think of our minds like weather, with the same sort of complexity, and unpredictability, and ability to surprise the hell out of us on a daily basis is a truly awesome thought to me. To think of free will as a process resulting directly from the complexity of my mind is....mind blowing, because it means that not only does it exist, but it always will. To know that nature endowed me (but not on purpose!) with the capacity to forever be able to bewilder myself, and be astonished by others no matter what I think I know, is exciting and wonderful, and fills me with a curiosity about the future that I can barely express!
If Hawking is right,and free will is just a side effect of the complex system housed in our skulls, how incredibly lucky for us hu? It didn't have to happen, but it did. WOW! So awesome! This will definitely be added to my list of things I love about my life!
One of the things I found especially interesting was his discussion of free will. It is a contentious point for a lot of people when discussing evolution, specifically when arguing against it. The argument goes, if evolution/natural selection really happen, then how do you explain free will which often appears to contradict what natural selection would "choose"? First of all, natural selection doesn't choose anything. It is simply the result of a process that occurs within systems where not every organism survives equally. And therefor free will cannot contradict it. But then what is it?
Hawking likens the billions and trillions of possible neural connections in the brain to another complex system: weather. He says
"Our brains create and sustain our conscious minds through an extraordinary network of interactive neurons."
He goes on to say
"The mind is like weather inside our heads. Free will is simply what we call the process that happens (just like natural selection just happens) when this vastly complex system faces a choice." (Parentheses inside quote are mine)
Now maybe at first blush you find this definition...less than romantic, and unflattering, but the more I think about it, the more incredible of an idea it becomes to me. To think of our minds like weather, with the same sort of complexity, and unpredictability, and ability to surprise the hell out of us on a daily basis is a truly awesome thought to me. To think of free will as a process resulting directly from the complexity of my mind is....mind blowing, because it means that not only does it exist, but it always will. To know that nature endowed me (but not on purpose!) with the capacity to forever be able to bewilder myself, and be astonished by others no matter what I think I know, is exciting and wonderful, and fills me with a curiosity about the future that I can barely express!
If Hawking is right,and free will is just a side effect of the complex system housed in our skulls, how incredibly lucky for us hu? It didn't have to happen, but it did. WOW! So awesome! This will definitely be added to my list of things I love about my life!
Right in the Face!
I've really been enjoying my kickboxing classes. The workouts are off the charts, and I am pretty sure I have never sweat so much in my life! And despite the Dalmatian-like bruises that constantly cover my arms, I love the physicality of it.This past Monday though, I came across my first real difficulty...My first two actually.
We were asked to do drills where we (gently!) punch our partner in the face! The idea is to get us used aiming at a head (as opposed to sparring pads) and to get the other person used to a giant black boxing glove coming towards their face. Even though I was doing it very gently I found it almost impossible to purposefully try to hit someone in the face! I could feel the years of conditioning against what I was doing pulling at my arm every time I tried to land a punch. It was so weird. I winced every time I tried it, and couldn't help but laugh nervously the whole time. It was really strange.
And the only thing less natural to me than punching someone in the face is letting someone else punch ME in the face. Again, I am using the word "punch" loosely. But still, not only was one big black glove swinging toward my nose, but there were two! And I had to fight from closing my eyes every time on came near me. My instincts were to drop to the floor and cover my head. But we are supposed to defend ourselves and even retaliate! Whatever. I could barely keep my head up and eyes open!
It was totally awesome though. My BF was the first person I ever punched in the face, and he was the first person to ever punch me in the face! LOL...I guess the saying is true. There really is a first time for everything!
We were asked to do drills where we (gently!) punch our partner in the face! The idea is to get us used aiming at a head (as opposed to sparring pads) and to get the other person used to a giant black boxing glove coming towards their face. Even though I was doing it very gently I found it almost impossible to purposefully try to hit someone in the face! I could feel the years of conditioning against what I was doing pulling at my arm every time I tried to land a punch. It was so weird. I winced every time I tried it, and couldn't help but laugh nervously the whole time. It was really strange.
And the only thing less natural to me than punching someone in the face is letting someone else punch ME in the face. Again, I am using the word "punch" loosely. But still, not only was one big black glove swinging toward my nose, but there were two! And I had to fight from closing my eyes every time on came near me. My instincts were to drop to the floor and cover my head. But we are supposed to defend ourselves and even retaliate! Whatever. I could barely keep my head up and eyes open!
It was totally awesome though. My BF was the first person I ever punched in the face, and he was the first person to ever punch me in the face! LOL...I guess the saying is true. There really is a first time for everything!
Thursday, June 7, 2012
Temptation
I have mentioned this before but I've been sort of re-molding my habits to become a more healthy me. While it's not as terrible as it sounds, it does involve cutting out obvious things like whole loaves of french bread and desserts. And for the most part I do pretty well (except for my PB&J tortilla at 2:30 am last night;).
But as I type my resolve is being put to the ULTIMATE test because someone brought a whole box of super yummy and delicious looking donuts in to work! Noooooooo! Oh! the suffering!
I can feel them in the other room tugging on my willpower like a super-powered magnet...tantalizing my taste buds into thinking they can just make out the faint sweetness in the air...I'm not sure if I'll make it, but I'm going to go down fighting! Be strong my little resolve, be strong.
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