cartoon life

At To Live Is Christ, Angela commits some of the most outrageous fuzzy-headed illiterate thinking I can imagine. It’s people like this who make me aghast at some of the thinking that passes for comparative religion, least of all from evangelical hard-core Christians. A single post like this is enough, in my mind to warrant removal of her Thinking Blogger Award.

Is Yoga A Harmless Exercise?

You really understand very little. You cannot attribute Vedic sources, Hindu sources, to Buddhism. Hinduism and Buddhism are not the same thing.

Yoga began in the ancient civilization of India where Buddhism is ardently practiced. To understand yoga, one must understand a bit of Buddhism and its history.    

This is simply wrong. Yoga predates Buddhism as a practice. You can study Yoga very deeply and need never touch any Buddhism. There are no Yogis, or Brahman, or God in Buddhism. Brahman is a Hindu concept. The Buddha repudiated Brahman and Atman.

The central theme of Buddhism is the mantra “Atman is Brahman”      

Politely, this is bullshit. This has nothing to do with Buddhism. There is no Atman, there is no Brahman. And as to the site you recommend, I really don’t think you can read. The very first line of text on the page says, “One of the key concepts of Hinduism is the belief in an ultimate reality called Brahman which is the source of all living things in this universe.”

Considering Yoga’s inseparable tie with Buddhism, it is unwise for Christians to practice yoga.       

Buddhism has no “inseparable tie” with Yoga. None. Nada, zip, zilch zero. Siddhartha Gautama studied many esoteric spiritual paths. Yes, Yoga was one of them, one of the many he abandoned before realizing the Middle Path which lead to his enlightenment.

I am asserting that it is impossible to separate yoga from Buddhism and it’s pantheistic beliefs.        

Buddhism holds no panthiestic beliefs. Your argument is not with Buddhism. Yes, there are realms of Gods in the Buddhist cosmology, but they are irrelevant and distractions to Liberation.

Yoga is basically a tool that is used by Buddhist to unite with the Universal Soul (Bramhan).        

Buddhists do not use Yoga as a tool to unite with anything. There is no Universal Soul, there is no Brahman, there is no individual soul - Anatman - there is nothing to unite with. You already are part of it, just get out of the way.

Make some proper arguments.

Nothing is as exotic as it used to be. I didn’t expect it to be the same, but 20 years makes a huge difference. We  found Pumpernickels Bakery, eventually, but, typically of Kathmandu now, buried behind economics. All of Thamel is overgrown with buildings. What was previously open lot and three or 5 story buildings is now 8 floor hotels.

Libertarians would be immensely happy with the traffic patterns here. Momentum, mass and volume create your right of way. We stopped at one traffic light in a wild whirl of traffic coming in from the airport. When there was a space, someone drove into it. We weaved like threads in a tartan through intersections, straddled potholes large enough to swallow these tiny cars, with the driver blessing himself after every daring move.

And Thamel is like that too. Every space that could possibly be used to produce income is filled with a shop, the building walls a lush jungle of signs. Every tiny alley is display space for goods. Glance at anything and you are invited into the shop. Stop for a confused moment and someone offers a cab, someone hustles a violin or Tiger Balm. A stream of identical, tiny women in saris with a baby on her hip and an empty nipple bottle beg for change. Endless t-shirt shops, but not a single shirt embroidered with the word “No!” which you use constantly.

Internet shops are everywhere. The Kathmandu Guest House has wireless in the courtyard. Many of the little shops have web addresses. Everything is in construction. Everything changes.

Last post, perhaps, for a month or so. One timed post for next weeks cartoon is set up to go.

I hear that Kathmandu and Pokhara have internet cafes. I might indulge - or not - in a post from the other side of the world.

We are taking our kids, 12 and 15, for a walk in Nepal. We’ll be back in early November.

From Comics I don’t understand

Our family just came back from a week in Whistler, admittedly a village of commercial intentions. Even there, there is pressure to sprawl and suburbs - but you can walk through the heart of the village because it was intended to be ski-able from one end to the other. But I thought even of our own flat spread out city, versus Whistler, which is confined by the mountains around it. As expensive as it is, the thoughts of living in that very human-proportioned space was constant.

Another stunning talk from TED.com that I get through Miro; heres a link to the TED site and the Kunstler talk on suburban wastelands and good design of urban spaces.

   
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I shouldn’t be, but I am always surprised at what you can find on the web. I’ve spent the last day or so watching Kate Bush videos on YouTube. This song has always left me weeping.

From Chicago Reader, Hot Type column, The Old Sack and Brag;

In his eight years at the Herald [Scott] Nychay won … awards from the AP and the Illinois Press Association, along with several other honors. … But at strapped newspapers, talent and public-spiritedness aren’t job guarantees, least of all for editorial cartoonists, an endangered species.         

Nychay was laid off by the paper, yet the paper continued an TV advertisement featuring his cartoons. Marketing mistake apparently - not laying off the cartoonist. That was a bean counter mistake. The Free Press didn’t replace Merle Tingley except with the occasional freelancer. When doing a bit of web research on that post I found; 

Two articles in The Ryerson Review of Journalism, Spring 1990, and Summer 1999 mention [Ting] in context of the politics and the workplace of the time.    

The two articles mention:

To the distress of old-fashioned journalists everywhere, editorial cartoonists are being wiped out. According to the National Journal, which surveyed the business on the eve of the annual convention of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists earlier this month, the number of full-time cartoonists at American dailies has dropped from about 200 to 80 in the past two decades.     

There is no possible way to source syndicated cartoons on local issues - only a local freelancer can manage that, inasmuch as I lament the delay in a weekly publication that precludes up to the minute topicality.

It’s facile to look back and laugh.  I would have been 12 years old, when in 1965, this video about “The Computer at Western” was broadcast. Yes. THE Computer at Western! which plays music and can do ‘ten years worth of astronomy calculations in just one day!’ One of many period news pieces at  The CFPL TV news archives, like this one; High School Student Appeals for the Right to Wear Long Hair and the Saga of Slippery the Seal, the story without which London wouldn’t have a soul.

 Al Stewart at The Art Exchange called to say that he sold the picture. Wow.  Congratulations you lucky buyer, you. 

I found Democracy the other day and discovered TED Talks. Democracy is a media player -Internet TV. So far I like Free Public Domain Movies - The Dancing Pirate is so stupid! - I’d probably take the first fifteen minutes of the movie and expand it to a Broadway Musical. That would be fabulous - and I like Virtual Magician and I like TED Talks. TED Talks is also available at www.ted.com.Mostly I wanted to praise this talk, the first one I have downloaded to view from the TED Talks channel. Thomas Barnett: The Pentagon’s new map for war and peace

In this bracingly honest and funny talk, international security strategist Thomas P.M. Barnett outlines a post-Cold War solution for the foundering US military: Break it in two. He suggests the military re-form into two groups: a Leviathan force, a small group of young and fierce soldiers capable of swift and immediate victories; and an internationally supported network of System Administrators, an older, wiser, more diverse organization that actually has the diplomacy and power it takes to build and maintain peace.         

This is an idea that gives me hope for a better world. Win the war, and win the peace. It would certainly be better than the disastrous situation extant now, but I wonder about consequent accusations of cultural hegemony. I suppose one could worry about that when we get there. But let’s get there first.

Yea! Sean Hurley at The Vienna Cafe! From The Great Debate:

For Londoners contemplating who to support in the debate over the direction of development, the risks and costs of unmanaged, developer led growth are becoming all too clear. The societal, environmental, and economic costs all erode quality of life and threaten prosperity. If Londoners want a city that remains livable, and viable, they need to support councillors who recognize growth must have limits.        

and from Glory Be We’re Saved

So let’s recap: The G8 agreement on climate change, hailed by our Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, as a great step forward, lays the framework for the world’s largest and most polluting industrial economy to think about making a commitment about committing to do something, but only on a condition dependent on third parties who have already said “no way, José.” Does it get any better? I wouldn’t think so, except then I got this photocopied flyer in the mail from MP Joe Preston that says “Hey! Don’t worry about climate change. We’ve turned the corner!”         

This is the kind of stuff I miss from altlondon, which has recently found it’s footing under new leadership. It’s a shame Sean and the old altondon crew, hasn’t a regular voice in London anymore. I think that some folks are feeling less heat, and a bit more room to sprawl with you guys out of town.

I caught this story  at BoingBoing, with a link to the article at Yahoo. A whale recently killed had a weapon embedded from a previous attempt over 100 years ago. We consume and kill anything. Older, younger, larger, smaller. Really, it’s what Humans are good at. Whales can live, apparently, up to 200 years. This one was merely middle aged… about my age. Slice off my flesh, fed to beasts.

From Iowacompact Recycling Plastic by the Numbers

1 (polyethylene terephthatate): water and pop bottles; recycled into pillow fill.2 (high density polyethylene): plastic milk bottles, detergent bottles; recycled into new detergent bottles.3 (polyvinyl chloride): take-out boxes, shampoo; recycled into drainage and irrigation pipes.4 (low-density polyethylene): Grocery bags, shrink wrap; recycled into new bags.5 (polypropylene): Yogurt containers, bottle caps; recycled into plastic lumber.6 (polystyrene): Packing peanuts; recycled into plastic lumber, cassette tape boxes.7 is for “other:” includes squeezable ketchup bottles and microwavable dishes; these items cannot be recycled.

London allows items from 1, 2, 4 and 5.