All posts by Steve Stern

In case you got up this morning not thinking about how we botched Iraq…

this chart from Data Pointed should be an eye opener.

Deaths in Iraq
Each pixel represents a death: the blue = US military, green = Iraqi military, orange = Iraq civilian, and the grey = what we call bad guys. The chart on the left is by total numbers and the chart on the right is by time. This chart does not include people who have left – presumably almost anybody who could – stripping Iraq of a lot of intellectuals and professionals

Iraq was not our finest hour.

 

 

The Universe is bigger than you think….even if you think it is impossibly big

I read a couple of days ago that we have only recently began to realize how big the Universe really is. In my imagination, around the time of Galileo, we began to realize that the Universe was much bigger than our galaxy. It turns out that is not true.

In an article that I can't find now, the author wrote about our idea of the universe about a hundred years ago. Then, we thought our galaxy was the entire universe and the milky way was thought to be about 1,000 times smaller than we now think.

If history is any indicator, this video underestimates the actual size of the universe.

 

Torpor

BodyTempData
We had a Solstice ceremony yesterday – lead by Michele – and , when it came time to release what didn't serve, I released Torpor. I was only roughly sure what torpor is except that the Buddha considers it one of the inhibitors to enlightenment.
When I looked it up – with some editing – I get:
    state of mental and motor inactivity with partial or total insensibility
    sometimes called temporary hibernation
    usually short-term state of decreased physiological activity in an animal.
This seems to have been a year of falling in, of hibernation, and man. am I ready to let go of Torpor.