ST ANYWHERE

. Memes gradually came to dominate our ancestors’ behaviour.

Light becomes fainter as it spreads out: there are fewer photons per unit area. That means that ever larger telescopes are needed to detect a given object at ever larger distances. So there may be a limit to how distant – and therefore how unlikely – a phenomenon we shall ever be able to see. Except, that is, for one type of phenomenon: a beginning of infinity. Specifically, any civilization that is colonizing the universe in an unbounded way will eventually reach our location.


 

e theological notions of grace (unearned benefit from God) and Providence (which is God regarded as the provider of human needs) are also related to this

while every other organism is a factory for converting resources of a fixed type into more such organisms, human bodies (including their brains) are factories for transforming anything into anything that the laws of nature allow. They are ‘universal constructors’.


Emergence is also responsible for the fact that discoveries can be made in successive steps, thus providing scope for the scientific method. The partial success of each theory in a sequence of improving theories is tantamount to the existence of a ‘layer’ of phenomena that each theory explains successfully – though, as it then turns out, partly mistakenly.


The world’s major cultures – including nations, languages, philosophical and artistic movements, social traditions and religions – have been created incrementally over hundreds or even thousands of years. Most of the ideas that define them, including the inexplicit ones, have a long history of being passed from one person to another. That makes these ideas memes – ideas that are replicators 

As for the Milky Way, you will be told that, despite its insubstantial appearance, it is the most massive object that we can see with the naked eye: a galaxy that includes stars by the hundreds of billions, bound by their mutual gravitation across tens of thousands of light years

s Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional detective Sherlock Holmes put it in the short story ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’, ‘It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.

BURROUGHS-"How beautiful the leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days."

"How beautiful the leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days."

THE EXPERIENCE AND WISDOM OF OLD AGE

DTH THIS MNTN THAT MNTN

Late Saturday night Mimi began experiencing excruciating pain in her head and abdomen. After several doses of morphine, a hospice nurse came to the house to offer advice on making Mimi more comfortable. Since then, Mimi has begun to show the signs that death is imminent. Her breathing is somewhat labored and she's in a coma-like state. Word went out to the Seattle community Sunday morning, and throughout the day there's been a constant stream of visitors and friends doing vigil with Mimi. Even now, at 2am Monday morning, three friends are sitting with Mimi, quietly making prayers and chanting mantras. Avalokiteshvara's mantra, OM MANI PADME HUM, is playing by her bedside. The atmosphere has been joyous, reverential and peaceful, filled with gratitude and love.

Mimi died peacefully today at around 2:45am. She was surrounded by caring friends, including her husband Richard and her close friend Kadam Heather from Portland. She had Geshe Kelsang Gyatso's text Joyful Path of Good Fortune on her crown and a mala in her left hand. A powa (transference of consciousness) ceremony was performed in the room immediately after her passing

We’ve done death countless times before, of course. Amazing, as Richard said to me today as I was leaving, how we forget that, how it is so normal and yet still so challenging. As I shuffle through the Fall leaves, I am reminded that none of us stays in one place for long — wherever we are and whoever is next to us, it is only a matter of months or days before we are blown by the winds of karma to somewhere completely different.

We’ve done death countless times before, of course. Amazing, as Richard said to me today as I was leaving, how we forget that, how it is so normal and yet still so challenging. As I shuffle through the Fall leaves, I am reminded that none of us stays in one place for long — wherever we are and whoever is next to us, it is only a matter of months or days before we are blown by the winds of karma to somewhere completely different.