rant on religion

So tonight I had the pleasure of being invited to participate in a discussion on spirituality, representing the Hindu religious denomination. The first portion of this spiritual presentaiton was by 2 psychologists on wellness. The second portion consisted of about 8 panelists from Catholicism, Asian-American Christian Fellowship, the Duhai religion and student org, Muslim Student Association, and the Hindu Student Council.

Each of these faiths introduced their religions, such as main tenets, and then went on to talk about how their religion addressed the issue of spirituality. I found much of the spiritual material to be common across all the faiths. I guess this is where the similarities end and the differences start to appear.

The biggest issue was that the Duhai, Hindu, and perhaps some of the others led to the same God. Much to my dismay, the Catholic representative reffered to his God as the Christian God. I guess this difference leads me to my rant.

Can we take pride in our religions?
And merely by speaking about them, are we advertising them?
Do we want people to join our religion more than we want them to find happiness or more than we want them to find God?

It almost sickens me to find elitism in some religions. My main pet peeve is the recruitment process or the need for people to convert to their religion. Some people might be okay with others being of a different religon but deeply they find their own way is not necessarily just right but more right.

Everyone agrees that politics gave many religions, specifically Christianity and Islam, a bad rap. Think of all the fundamentalist movements of yesterday and today. Regardless, it is still accepted that religion can and will be a cause for more war and more terror due to differences in creed rather than faith.

I guess I want to be the individual to ask the reason/need for so many religions. Well to those who believe in God, God is of divine importance (obviously). To almost thank him for our existence, we must worship him by prayer and praising him. (Sorry about not capitalizing the him's)

As long as we can't explain everything and there's something left to the unknown, there will always the supernatural. I have a feeling as long as we retain the classification of human there will always be something fundamentally unknown (like for instance how we got here in the first place). Since this supernatural force or dark matter is all around us and conceptually quite powerful (since we can't understand it or control it), we might as well praise it then piss it off.

So I'm assuming people all around the world separated by all the geographical boundaries, ultimately came to this conclusion that they should worship God. Each of these groups had their own language, culture, heritage, and traditions. Thus the word God is going to be different in every language and due to the limitations of language, God and fundamental tenets of the religion will vary. Since this variance is already there since the beginning, time will change these tenets (even creeds) even more.

I believe it is man's modern need to categorize everything that creates these differences in religion despite the fact that they all lead to God. The beauty of all this and religion is that it starts off divergently (from the same God) but has the ability and tendency to be convergent. Unfortunately, we're stuck in the middle, right after the divergence and right before the convergence. This is why we have to deal with the differences. Should we even have to deal with them?

I still can't get the idea out of my head that religions practically advertise. Christians still try to actively convert people of other faiths. I guess it is inherently okay if you think about it; they are trying to save non-Christians from going to hell. Its more of peer pressure or rather societal pressure. They often give incentives and other forms of corruption exist for conversion. In India, Islam was forced onto many but I guess I should accept it with all of military history.

On to another subject, Hinduism, possibly other religions as well, defined as a way of life. If someone grew up in a secluded village in India and lived their life well, would they be Hindu? What if they prayed and never heard the term Hinduism, would they be Hindu? What if they hadn't read any of the scriptures, would they be Hindu? What if they read everything, did everything, but did not believe in a fundamental creed (e.g. Jesus as the savior, Muhammad as the prophet), would they still be of that faith? Only God could judge these sorts of things and decided whether they are to join Him or to come back to Earth/go to hell.

Hmm I'll add more things as I remember them....

whoeth be thy muse?

I tried to extract emotion from your soul,
armed with excuses of inflated rhetoric
but you discerned my motive from my farce,
steering clear of overt confessions.

I failed to realize that which
I always took for granted.
It was that grace threaded with that quotient
that made it that “you.”

It seems my actions are forever fruitless
and the only one to blame is myself.

Perhaps, I could have reaped those fantasies
that kept me up at night.
Instead, I'd rather dream those reveries
that let me sleep so soundly.

All that remains is a mild expression
of vigor for temerity on my face.

Maybe its this sleep-laden emotion
I wish to see in you,
So that we may color the skies
in colors we’ve never seen.

shallots?!?

Can people please stop calling onions "shallots"?

They are the same thing but my brain always has to make an extra jump every time I see "shallot" instead of onion.

I figure I can change the world if people read this post and apply it to their lives.

Good night!

Google Dashboard?!?

So yea...

I know I said I'd try and keep the blog up-to-date. Well try as I may, try as I might, try as I didn't I failed.

All is not lost!

I have a commentary about the new Google Desktop (v3) as being a consolidation of Apple's Spotlight and Dashboard. I don't take offense to it as an Apple afficionado but I feel as though the territory is being encroached upon.

Well if you're too lazy to read the link to the Google Blog, its basically refining the desktop search tool to search across multiple computers and even facilitate collaboration. That's freakin awesome! If they could streamline file sharing across networks and eventually the internet, create workspaces (kinda like Adobe), all while using secure encryption I'd be very, very happy.

As much as I like to learn about FTP, HTML, CSS, etc. the fact that templates and easy UIs will be there will make collaboration much easier. This is great because less tech savy people can still contribute.

I spoke with a professor (Nunez) in our CogSci dept at UCSD and collaboration was the feature he'd most like to see in a universal CogSci directory website.

That makes me wonder how Google Scholar will work with this new collaboration. Google can single-handedly catalyze the next information revolution.

Hmm I should sleep.

Cooking Pasta!

so im making pasta and the "ingredients" are (by a matter of convenience)

1. Vons brand Rotelle Pasta
2. Del Monte Zuchini with Italian style tomato sauce (canned)
3. 2 slices of Borden Sharp Cheddar singles
4. water?

so basically i microwaved the pasta for about 10 minutes, strained it, and covered it (for now). then i microwaved the zuchini with the cheese for about 4 minutes...and then i mixed everything together and microwaved that for 3 mintues...and let it sit for 2 minutes...and now im about to

EAT IT!

i did have olives stuffed with blue cheese as well as gouda cheese but i stuck with the sharp cheddar...

feedback while driving

so while driving to school, instead of thinking about the road and how sleepy i was, i did something worse.

i thought about cog sci!

feedback in particular

so when steering, people either steer with

1. one hand or
   
2. two hands

obvious enough. when steering with one hand, you put your hand not directly parallel to your body but slightly across to get that leverage (think gangster-driving with the seat back...)

and when you steer with 2 hands you are usually in the 10'n'2 position or a variance of that

now for feedback:

first off the goal of steering is either to turn or more likely (even though its an automatic, innate response) keep the car in the center of the lane

while steering with 1 hand, its very easy to turn, usually a little too easy. and what ends up happening is a form of positive feedback since if you let your hand move naturally to where it wants to go, it continues in that direction. the overall effect of this is an uncontrollable, extreme turn. (if unchecked, the turn will turn into a circle)

while steering with 2 hands, one can exhibit negative feedback much more easily. since each hand naturally wants to go one direction, the overall personal utility (in terms of personal convenience) favors going forward with quick response times from straying too far from the center of the road.

just to note, negative feedback is the favoring of staying in the center so all the straying to one side or the other ultimately results in a preference toward the center

ok i'm done

design

blogger offered some very nice templates and i am pretty happy with the one i chose. i found it really sweet to be able to edit the html/css. i got to personalize the sidebar with my own links (even stuff to my class webpages)

if anyone noticed, i also made the links blink instead of the boring underline and/or color change

text-decoration: blink;

i thought that was pretty cool. i wanted to do more but my html is rusty and i need to brush up on divs and all that fun stuff

introduction

welcome welcome to my new blog site. i was previously a xanga blogger but then i realized im not "azn"...also i really had nothing interesting to say about my life/"what i'm currently listening to" regularly

then it hit me

why not go to blogger and actually have something interesting to say that doesnt necessarily revolve around my personal life!

audio test

so with audioblogger i can call a phone number from my cell phone and leave a message which is pretty much just an audio blog...kinda cool i guess

test

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