Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue
Something/Someone Old
Looking at a list of Chinese inventions, I realize I could use them for my Something Old for the rest of my life. There's a reason China can lay claim to inventing human civilization (though it depends on how one defines civilization, and of course there might be some Maori, some people in Africa, and even some other Asian peoples who might raise some objections to that claim. As my life partner says, "I'm from the great unwashed barbarian tribes, and I'm gonna sit that one out.")
It's hard to choose from so many exciting inventions (yes, I get excited at the near-simultaneous invention of the armillary sphere in Greece and China. I'm a weirdo).
Since today is my partner's acupuncture day, I'm going to focus on acupuncture. But more Chinese inventions are likely to follow in coming weeks.
Of course, Something Old is always the easiest Something to find and talk about.
Acupuncture!
For those who don't know what it is, it is the Chinese practice of inserting needles into certain points of the body to relieve pain and create health. It is often combined with herbal remedies. The Chinese have ideas about the human body that are pretty far removed from our mechanistic Western tradition, and to some their notions seem woo-woo, mainly because they conceive of the body as an integrated network of energy flows. These flows must be balanced correctly with one another, and unblocked, in order for the body to be healthy.
Given that it's a living thing we're talking about, and not a concrete building around steel girders, that doesn't sound so woo-woo to me, but whatever.
Regardless of mutterings about placebo effects and unprovability, the proof of any medicine is in the pudding, and acupuncture provides reliable enough pain relief that it has become popular. To the extent that one can still make generalizations about American culture, Americans are fundamentally practical, and if something consistently works, they are not overly fussed about the fact that experts can't explain why (up until a few years ago, Grandma's chicken soup fell under the same rubric. Scientists eventually caught up, so they tell me. In fact, I still don't know why chicken soup is good for colds, and don't really care--and I'm one of the more academic of my people!)
The first mention of acupuncture was in the Huangdi Neijing (The Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor, an ancient fundamental text of Chinese medicine), which was compiled between the 3rd and 2nd centuries B.C.
I am horribly irreverent, and the image in that venerable text reminds me of this:
But my goofy irreverence does not actually diminish my respect for this tradition. Nor does it diminish how cool it actually is.
The oldest known acupuncture sticks are made of gold, found in the tomb of Liu Sheng, a king of the Western Han empire. Sheng died in 113 B.C., so the sticks are obviously from sometime before that date.
The oldest known acupuncture mannequin dates from the ninth century A.D.! I can't find a picture of those particular mannequins, but here are some acupuncture mannequins that, well, look old:
They even did acupuncture on horses!
As someone who prefers to take as few opiods and over-the-counter pain medications as possible, I am damned grateful acupuncture exists.
Something New
At the Florida Folk Festival last weekend (where I met Lookout and had a grand old time!), I encountered for the first time a group of young musicians called Wax Wings.
They call themselves a "confessional folk quintet" an "original compositional folk quintet" a "folk-jazz quintet" and a "folk-rock quintet." They feature a fiddler, a drummer, a cellist, a bassist, and a guitarist who also plays the banjo and the trumpet. They also had an emeritus member show up last weekend with a tuba. This is, obviously, a band that doesn't admit to many boundaries, which is probably why they are a folk-rock-jazz quintet. 
This is a song called "The Pioneer and the Boulder" that they played at the festival. It's about losing people in the constant exodus from the South.
They remind me a little of the music I encountered in Austin in 2005. All kinds of cross-fertilization from all kinds of genres, though traditional folk is clearly one of the loudest voices in that chorus.
Unfortunately, they aren't the only band called Wax Wings, and searching for them via Google can become confusing! Including "Gainesville" in the search helps.
The Folk Festival gave me grist for my mental mill, and is likely to turn up in this thread over the coming weeks.
Something Borrowed
Apparently we borrowed the word "robot" from an Eastern European science fiction writer. Chillingly, the word "robot" comes from a Czech word for "forced labor." It was first used in a 1920 science fiction play by Karel Capek named RUR (Rossum's Universal Robots).
According to Capek, he had originally planned to use the Latin word labori for the artificial workers in the play until his brother Josef suggested he use roboti instead. The earliest cite for the shortened version bot is 1969, in Richard Meredith’s We All Died at Breakaway Station.
http://www.whizzpast.com/10-everyday-words-got-science-fiction-writers/
It turns out that one of my favorite Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes, "The Measure of a Man," was spot-on:
It contains one of my favorite lines ever:
Prove to the court that I am sentient.
Something Blue
Having been near the Suwannee last weekend, I thought I would share one of our most precious local treasures: our freshwater springs. Here is my Something Blue; the springs of North Florida. Most of these pictures are from the Ichetucknee Springs State Park. (I'm crossing my fingers and hoping all this rain counteracts the heartbreakingly low water levels I saw when I first came home four years ago.)
This is Little River Springs, near the Suwannee:
This is where it flows into the Suwannee River. You can see the difference in water color.
These are some of the springs associated with my beloved Ichetucknee. Here's the headspring:
Here's what it looks like underwater:
Here's Blue Hole Spring:
And Blue Hole underwater:
I'm so lucky to have grown up near them. In a sane society, they would be considered a national (and a regional) treasure, and not just by us small folk.
How are you all today?
Comments
good morning all
Glad you enjoyed the folk festival. Around midnight on Friday, the tuba and accordion player from wax wing led a parade through the performers campground playing gypsy style pieces. They would stop at various campsites as people offered them beers and other libations. Then lead the parade onward with dancing and carrying on. Every year it is something different. One year there was a fire dance. On Sunday night there's a bathroom sing where as many people as possible pack in and sing mainly gospel songs. When you gather a crowd of high creatives, there's no telling what might happen.
Like you CStMS, I love Florida's springs. They are a national treasure. Unfortunately nitrates and pollutants are steadily increasing. Wakalluh Springs is huge. Here's a shot with a manatee just below the surface and an ibis (or egret?) in the background beyond the swimming area.
We returned home to more rain. Trying to reclaim some sleep after a few days of deprivation. Hope you all have a good day!
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
@Lookout It sounds like y'all had
It sounds like y'all had a marvelous time. Sounds like next time I should find a nearby campground and spend the night, maybe with one family member in tow (somebody's gonna have to stay home with the 40-lb puppy. God knows how big she'll be by next year.)
I love the idea of the bathroom sings.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Hi, everybody!
Hope everybody is doing well on this wet Wednesday.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Lol, we had a current running
down the back alley and I saw that some neighbors must have had water seeping into their garages, but it's gone down. Never seen an alley fill up so fast. The basement was seeping, and what could be put up was; we're in a slow-down right now. Yet online weather reports said nothing on it, some even saying it was currently cloudy, or variously that there might be some rainfall, with possible heavier rain later or on the weekend rather than the sheets flowing down... I think the potted plants on the porches might be washed out of their pots if another such deluge hits here.
I hope nobody here is being/has been flooded? Seems to be happening all over...
Did want to suggest that if one thinks of Chi paths as being electrical in nature, it might more easily make sense to some, as we are. As you say, as long as something works and has been proven both beneficial and harmless over thousands of years... Acupressure, of course, is also very useful. And a really good Chinese herbalist who makes his/her prescriptions up with quality ingredients is worth his/her weight in gold.Anything that works to help the body heal/function better is.
Pharma meds, on the other hand, too-often work to further distort already dysfunctional processes to avoid symptoms which the cure may actually cause, because a chemical compound/combination is found which creates a single desired effect and sold for that purpose with too-often not only a disregard for 'side-effects' which may be even worse than the problem, but cover-ups of some very nasty effects which may nonetheless eventually become obvious in unsuspecting users. Since profit comes first and all.
An entirely different mind-set in drugs-for-profit-land; sometimes the concept of biology as applying to health seems to be entirely missing.
Edit: meant to hit 'View', and posted; knew I'd had a bunch of little things to fix... probably missed most, lol.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Good morning, CStMS. Data, I suspect, would have easily
passed the Turing test, which is something of (or should be) a minimal criteria. Descartes, Kant, Russell and others have attacked the question of sentience etc. with no spectacular results. Of them, Descartes famously resorted to fallacy, petitio principii in the form of deus ex machina and in the process inadvertantly touched upon that generally unspoken piece of the various tests and analyses, the age old cultural imperative that we differentiate ourselves from and justify our elevation over the rude beasts of the field. This invariable rests upon things like soul and gods and other suchwhat that nobody can prove or disprove, and which serve no other purpose and have no other meaning besides that elevation. That being the case, they are both irrelevant.
Somebody once proposed to Lord Russell that the issue of the reality of external objects is easily solved, he proposed that if one doubted, for example, that a given rock was real, then one should kick it. The "kick the rock" test seems silly and sopohomric, but given that we all live in our own reality, created by our consciousness and modeling of said reality, it is quite a valid test, showing that the rock is at least as real as we are at that time.
Transferring that to sentience, we can substitute "sentience" for "Buddha nature" in one of the great Koans and be done with it -- "seeking the Buddha is like riding an ox in search of an ox", for the searcher. For outside "objects", that reduces to using some form of the Turing test for seeming possessors of intelligence, but leaves us stuck with unknowability for everything else. Kicking the rock tells me that it is there, but because there can be no mutuality to our interaction, it is impossible to ever know whether it is sentient or not. That, for all practical purposes, renders the question moot and irrelevant and punts one off into the world of ethics, be charitable and assume it is, or be utilitarian and assume it is not.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
@enhydra lutris I think your point about
I think your point about interaction is valid, and, when the possibility of interaction is there, I do believe one can make some judgments about sentience. I also think that, given that we have to eat food and even plants have been proven to have something that amounts to sentience, that it makes sense to differentiate between who we will and will not eat and to think about what that means. It's likely, given who we are, that that question will involve some considerations of sentience, intelligence, etc. What it never means, unless we are talking about nanites creating nutrient paste, is that what I'm eating is thing rather than being.
Of course, all of this is inflected strongly by culture (I would feel very weird about eating a dog, even more so about eating a monkey; I'd feel weird about eating a whale or a dolphin--all of these with the caveat that when starvation is the alternative, people will generally eat just about anything and I'll leave it at that!) Those feelings are obviously culturally based and probably not based on any objective assessment of intelligence levels, etc, no matter how you define it.
I do not feel the same way about the software I am currently using as I feel about a dog or a monkey or even a bug or a plant. I believe that AI can obviously possess sentience (that seems pretty clear) but not all software is sentient, at least it doesn't seem so to me. Is the software that makes me able to embed images in this document sentient?
In other words, I don't think that we can simply dismiss the question as moot and decide to be charitable and assume sentience in everything. I don't think my toaster is sentient. Creations of humanity certainly can achieve sentience, but not all of them do. Even smart toasters (which I don't want anywhere near my kitchen, since the ugly direction of most of this technology is, sadly, geared toward universal involuntary surveillance) are not, IMO, sentient.
This is all based on the things I can interact with. The rock may have sentience that I can't possibly understand. So may a star. But I can only start from where I am and reach as high as I can, so my non-absolute definition of sentience relies not on the question of whether or not something has a soul--because there could be souls I couldn't possibly understand--but on the question of whether or not this is something I can "talk" to.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Very much agreed. Though there have been those who
assigned some sort of sentience to all things in nature, human creations are not of nature. A human creation could probably achieve sentience but I haven't heard any claims that this has been achieved. One can see some basis for pondering the possibility or degree of sentience of a raven or a tree because they do interact with and respond to nature and environmental inputs in a way no cement mixer or teakettle ever has.
The ability to interact is critical, as you note, in estimating the likelihood of sentience. Where one is considering "something I can talk to" one can make or draw conclusions as to the probability of its sentience. Otherwise, one is stuck with assumptions which may or may not be baseless and are unreliable in any case. Assuming, in this case, is no different from assigning, and gets you nowhere except the edge of the precipice of petitio principii, self-fulfilling prophecies and a host of other risky thought processes.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
@enhydra lutris For what it's worth, I
For what it's worth, I agree with Lord Russell. I get really irritated with some of those ideas, which post-structuralism seemed quite fond of back when I was in grad school. A friend back then said "That's the stupidest thing post-structuralism ever came up with," and lightly hit me on the arm. He said, "See? My hand stopped. Your body exists." New Age thought also was quite fond of such notions. I was fond of saying to people who espoused such ideas that, no matter how much I believed that I could fly, if I jumped off the top of the Empire State building, I wouldn't flap my arms and stay up. And that goes for anybody from any culture. Sorry, Charlie, some things are bedrock reality unless you manage to get your perceptions beyond this reality in a fairly radical way which none of us has yet managed to do. Therefore the idea that one could transcend this reality thusly is as yet unproven and unprovable. I'm not saying the possibility of such transcendence has been proven false, but, for now, we neither have nor can prove it true, which kind of takes it outside the realm of what we in the West might call rational conversation.
This does not lead me to an atheistic or anti-religious point of view, by the way. There are just certain conversations that only make sense within a rational context, and certain questions that just do not belong in those conversations. Questions and ideas have preferred habitats, and just as I can't exist on the surface of Venus, questions about a transcendent reality cannot be answered within a rational context.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
@enhydra lutris By the way, I love this:
By the way, I love this:
the rock is at least as real as we are at that time.
One of the things I always hated about that "If a tree falls, and there's no one there to hear it, does it make a sound" thing was its anthropocentric egotism. "One" is obviously assumed to be human. Even a more expansive version of that statement that involves the other animals as potential bearers of perception still irritates me. My guess is that the surrounding flora and even the soil and minerals probably register the sound waves created by the fall just fine.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
And presumably the sound-waves are created,
regardless of whether they carry to receptive ears or not.
Totally agree on the inherent egotism betrayed in that one: dangerously close to the solipsistic: does anything exist if I'm not there?
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
"I refute it thus."
It was Dr. Johnson who kicked the rock. He was trying to disprove Bishop Berkeley's immaterialist ideas. See Argumentum ad lapidem.
We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.
Yes, thank you, that's probably what I was recalling.
Iirc, somebody also tossed out a variant, or cited Johnson to Russell with respect to his contention that "we" only appercieve "sensa" or "sense perceptions" and never unmediated reality, but I cauold easily be wrong, It has been many decades since I read Russell.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Good rainy/humid morning, CStMS.
You suffering soul mildew yet? LOL.
Me, neither. I will take rain over drought forever. Where exactly was the Folk Fest? I went to a rock 'n' roll/biker fest in Live Oak years ago. Spent the weekend in a rented cabin. The Suwannee was very low due to drought that year. It poured the whole time and broke the drought--a blessing for sure. It is the old Florida and beautiful up there. Had a great time at the festival.
Amen x 1000 regarding acupuncture! Rec'd!!
Inner and Outer Space: the Final Frontiers.
@orlbucfan Like most Floridians, I
Like most Floridians, I totally agree about drought. After what felt like years of both drought and fire, I'll take rain and floods and even storms over it (assuming the winds are not too too high. Cat 4 and above do scare me).
The Folk Festival was in White Springs, north up I-75 from Gainesville for a little over an hour.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Greetings from the rainy Land of Waterfalls
In my youth (early 20's) I swam in the Little River Springs and actually tubed down the Ichetucknee once. It was very crowded even back then. For those who are wondering, the brown color of the Suwannee River is not pollution, but from the naturally occurring tannin in the water.
I live part of the year in Tallahassee, just up the road from Wakulla Springs. Wakulla Springs is one of the largest and deepest freshwater springs in the world. It has an interesting history as it was privately owned by Ed Ball and his estate until 1986. A number of movies were filmed at the springs over the years, including a number of the Tarzan films in the late 1930's. Wakulla Springs is now part of the state of Florida parks system.
It has been very rainy here in Transylvania County, which besides being the home to more than 250 named waterfalls, is also rainiest county in the United States outside the Pacific NW, with the western part of the county averaging 91 inches per year.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
@gulfgal98 I'd love to visit you
I'd love to visit you there sometime! I love that part of the world.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
@gulfgal98 I meant western N.C.,
I meant western N.C., though I also love Wakulla Springs. Am really glad to hear that they got rid of the hydrilla (one of the few plants I genuinely hate, even though it's not really its fault.)
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Up and alive.
Judo kicked my ass last night, but I did far better than I have in a long time, and I've lost at least a quarter inch of my waist in 2 weeks. My daughter and son are adoring it, and overall it's just making things work well for me. Hell, I've started writing again, which is a great bonus.
Just happy, and enjoying late American Empire Music. You know, before they all started working with the mysterious "Temp Music"...
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSf5tx4e_PA]
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
@detroitmechworks Wow, congrats! That's
Wow, congrats! That's great news. I am in the worst physical shape of my life, and am trying to begin the long climb back out of this hole. If I make it out, I can never allow myself to come back here again (being 50 has implications).
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
I believe you can do it.
For me it was finding a physical activity that gave me the motivation.
Add in that now I have dreams of someday taking lessons at the Kodokan Judo Institute in Tokyo... (Again, CHEAP. Took a look and compared to the other lodgings in Tokyo, it's about fifty bucks a night for a room as long as you are there to practice. Gotta work on my Japanese... Add in the fact that as long as you're a dues paying member, the lessons are free...)
It's a good lesson for community action and how you can do what you need to without spending lots of money, at least for me.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
@detroitmechworks What I need to do is
What I need to do is start hiking again. I stopped hiking in my mid-twenties and became sedentary because of a weak, dangerously-prone-to-sprains right ankle. In my early thirties I decided I didn't want to put up with that anymore (I even had notions of maybe learning to ice skate and play hockey someday), so I got orthopaedic surgery. Big mistake. I rarely sprain my ankle anymore, but ever since I got the surgery I had back problems, which I'd never had before, as well as a chronically sore spot on my right calf just above where they operated. Hmph.
I think the moral of the story is: unless you're at the Mayo Clinic, don't get any serious medical procedure done in Jacksonville.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
@detroitmechworks By the way, thanks
By the way, thanks for the vote of confidence. I can use it!
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
I'm in a similar place
Physically. Recently I've been experiencing a lot of tighness in my lower back so I've started stretching twice a day. I've only been doing it for about a week but it's beginning to make a difference. I also live in the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains which has lots of hiking trails and is on my "To Do" list. But the exercise activity I've always really enjoyed in the past is swimming, except that requires getting into a swimsuit (yikes!).
The thing is, I know that the moment I do begin any kind of physical activity, I will immediately feel motivated to do a lot of other things too. So, in the end, it's totally a win-win.
The big question is when am I gonna start?
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
The Perfect Health Diet
http://perfecthealthdiet.com/
Might help. We love it. Have done very well, no cravings, no counting or portion control.
But real results. DH lost thirty pounds in six months; I lost less, about ten because I was closer to my natural weight.
Good luck.
You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again you did not know. ~ William Wiberforce
If you can donate, please! POP Money is available for bank-to-bank transfers. Email JtC to make a monthly donation.
Reading this a day late, but
The OT and comments were fabulous.
Marilyn
"Make dirt, not war." eyo
@mhagle Thanks, Marilyn! Always
Thanks, Marilyn! Always good to "see" you.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver