Confucius didn't say

Man who wants pretty nurse, must be patient.

Passionate kiss, like spider web, leads to undoing of fly.

Lady who goes camping must beware of evil intent.

Squirrel who runs up woman's leg will not find nuts.

Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.

Man who runs in front of car gets tired; man who runs behind car gets exhausted.

Man who eats many prunes get good run for money.

War does not determine who is right; it determines who is left.

Man who fight with wife all day get no piece at night.

It takes many nails to build a crib, but one screw to fill it.

Man who drives like hell is bound to get there.

Man who stands on toilet is high on pot.

Man who live in glass house should change clothes in basement.

Man who fish in other man's well often catch crabs.

Summing up

Would you like to sum up?

There is one divine essence –

boundless consciousness-life-substance-space

which is unborn and undying, unfathomable and ineffable.

Within the shoreless expanses of abstract space there are numberless concrete world-systems repeatedly coming into being and passing away,

in never-ending cycles of activity and rest,

and these worlds are composed of,

and provide the playground for the evolution of,

countless hierarchies of beings,

at every conceivable stage of evolutionary awakening,

which are gradually learning and growing and unfolding their inner potential,

periodically descending into matter,

gaining knowledge and experience,

and reascending to spirit,

through world after world,

plane upon plane,

constantly expanding in consciousness and understanding,

endlessly and limitlessly,

for ever and ever . . .

Said another way

Lord Sacks said that advertising only made shoppers aware of what they did not own, rather than feeling grateful for what they have.

.

He insisted that a culture in which people cared solely about themselves and their possessions could not last long, and that only faith and spending time with family could bring true happiness.

.

The Chief Rabbi’s comments are likely to raise eyebrows because he singled out for blame Jobs – the co-founder of Apple who died last month – 

.

By likening his iPad tablet computers to the tablets of stone bearing the Ten Commandments given by God to Moses.

.

Speaking at an interfaith reception attended by the Queen this week, Lord Sacks said: “People are looking for values other than the values of a consumer society. 

.

The values of a consumer society really aren’t ones you can live by for terribly long.

.

The consumer society was laid down by the late Steve Jobs coming down the mountain with two tablets, iPad one and iPad two, and the result is that we now have a culture of iPod, iPhone, iTune, i, i, i.i

.

When you’re an individualist, egocentric culture and you only care about 'i’, you don’t do terribly well.

.

He went on: “What does a consumer ethic do? 

.

It makes you aware all the time of the things you don’t have instead of thanking God for all the things you do have.

.

If in a consumer society, through all the advertising and subtly seductive approaches to it, you’ve got an iPhone but you haven’t got a fourth generation one, the consumer society is in fact the most efficient mechanism ever devised for the creation and distribution of unhappiness.

.

Although religious leaders have in recent years used increasingly strong language to condemn banks and politicians over the financial crisis and the gap between rich and poor, few have directly criticised ordinary people for their materialism.

.

In an attempt to highlight the link between faith and happiness, Lord Sacks pointed out that on the Jewish day of rest, the Shabbat, the devout spend time with their families rather than spending money in shops.

.

The Chief Rabbi, who has represented Britain’s 300,000 Jews since 1991 and is due to step down in 2013, said: Therefore the answer to the consumer society is the world of faith, which the Jews call the world of Shabbat, where you can’t shop and you can’t spend and you spend your time with things that matter, with family.

.

Unless we get back to these values we will succeed in making our children and grandchildren ever unhappier.

.

He concluded by telling the 70th anniversary meeting of the Council of Christians and Jews, held at Crosby Hall, the residence of businessman Christopher Moran, the organisation's vice-chair: 

.

I think this is a great opportunity for faith and a great moment for Jews and Christians to come together and leading from the front embrace those other faiths.

.

Without friendship between faiths we will drown.

.

Amen to that, unrealistic dream that it might be.

.

However for myself it is high time to let go of all religions.

.

The reality is that they have caused more trouble than anything else on this planet.

.

And this over thousands of years, and continues unabated to this very day.

.

Time to move beyond religion.

Which problem?

With so many applicants chasing so few posts, it's reportedly getting more common to encounter the kind of extreme interview questions, previously widespread only in Silicon Valley. 

.

Such as: You're shrunk to the size of a 10p piece and thrown in a blender. The blades start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do? 

.

Or: How would you market ping pong balls if ping pong itself became obsolete?

.

We've entered an interview arms race. 

.

The new breed of questions arose because traditional ones were so bad at identifying the best candidates: it was easy to get good at interviews without being best for the job, or vice versa.

.

Now several books enable you to get good at the new questions, too, thus rendering them useless.

.

Google's next move should be to stun applicants with something unexpectedly retro: Where do you see yourself in five years' time?

.

Hint: the answer doesn't involve being trapped in a blender.

.

But the interview conundrum will probably never be solved, because it's an archetypal case of the mental quirk that psychologist Daniel Kahneman calls answering an easier question.

.

Faced with a cognitively demanding question, involving uncertainty – Will this person do the job well if hired? – interviewers unconsciously substitute an easier question, and answer that one instead: 

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Did this person impress me in the interview?

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We all do it, all the time.

.

Watch any news discussion programme – questions such as Who'll win the next election? are often answered as if Which party's most popular now? had been asked..

.

In one classic experiment, students were asked, How happy are you these days? then How many dates did you have last month?

.

There wasn't much correlation, suggesting that dating wasn't the major factor in their lives. 

.

But when the questions were switched, the correlation was strong.

.

Why?

.

Because, Kahneman argues, when people hear, How happy are you these days?, the question they answer is, What's your current mood? 

.

The dating question made students feel happy or sad, and they answered the next one accordingly.

.

As the philosophy blog Less Wrong noted recently, all sorts of cognitive biases follow this pattern.

.

We ask ourselves, How scared should I be of a terrorist attack? 

.

But we answer, How scary did it look last time I saw a terrorist attack on television? I'd go further: this substitution principle governs whole swaths of our lives. 

.

You ask how you can minimise your impact on the environment, but the question you answer is, How can I feel like I'm doing my bit? 

.

Which helps explain the phenomenon known as moral licencing, whereby people who use canvas bags at the supermarket feel entitled to take long-haul flights. 

.

Or you ask if you had a productive day, but what you answer is, Did today feel unpleasant and/or effortful? which isn't the same at all.

.

So how can we get rid of this eccentricity? 

.

Sadly, it's probably too deep-rooted, so let's answer an easier question instead. 

.

What can we do about it? 

.

Stay aware. 

.

Next time you're trying to solve a problem, remember to check that the problem you're solving is the problem you've actually got.

.

Oliver Burkeman

Climate change

There is a lot of talk nowadays about ‘combating climate change’ – an absurd expression which makes it sound like humans can stop the climate from changing. 

To achieve this they would need to control the sun, the earth’s orbit, the earth’s interior, its oceans and their currents, the biosphere, and key processes taking place in the atmosphere. 

It’s remarkable that ‘climate change’ has come to be virtually synonymous with ‘man-made climate change’ – which in turn is usually understood to mean climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel combustion 

Though some researchers believe that land-use changes (urbanization, deforestation, etc.) and pollutants such as black carbon (soot), mainly emitted by developing nations, have a greater impact on climate than greenhouse gas emissions. 

The mainstream view, as articulated by the UN’s climate panel (the IPCC), is that ‘most’ of the warming over the past 50 years is ‘very likely’ the result of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. 

And that unless drastic measures are taken to slash emissions and switch to renewable sources of energy, the result will be dangerous, runaway warming. 

As already noted, there are good reasons to gradually reduce our dependence on carbon-based fuels. 

But the claim that this is necessary to save the world from catastrophic global warming is based on shoddy science and hot air (see Climate change controversies; Climategate). 

The earth has generally warmed since the depths of the Little Ice Age three or four hundred years ago, but in fits and starts, and most of the warming has been in night time, winter temperatures in the northern hemisphere. 

During the Medieval Warm Period (c. 950-1300) it was warmer than today, as it was in Roman times and during the Holocene Climate Optimum (3500-6000 years ago). 

During the last major ice age (Pleistocene), each of the last four interglacials, going back nearly half a million years, was several degrees warmer than today.

 David Pratt 

A World of Illusions

The marketing of organic food taps into our innermost drives and ambitions: to be good, to be good to ourselves, to be worth the extra cost. 

.
But the only people for whom it definitively seems to be good are managers of multinationals. 
.
Ben & Jerry's is now owned by Unilever. 
.
Coca-Cola has a majority stake in Innocent smoothies. 
.
Back to nature is owned by Kraft. 
.
Supermarkets may display their organic food in rustic-looking baskets, and Starbucks may camouflage its corporate brand under local "community personality".
.
But farmers in the developing world suffer from diminishing profits, and our soil, sea and atmosphere are ever more degraded.
.
The food industry successfully hides its influence behind persuasive talk of the power of the individual. 
.
The industry and government alike argue that it is consumer choice and consumer demand that really drive change. 
.
Yet a Royal Society report published in 2010 revealed that, although consumers consulted 10 years earlier about whether they wanted GM food had responded with a resounding "no", GM has nevertheless thoroughly penetrated the food supply in the form of soya animal feed and cooking oil. 
.
The notion that consumers are in control of the food industry is a myth.

As is the notion that they are at liberty to make well-informed decisions about the food they buy. 
.
One of the Cornish pasty company Ginsters' favourite slogans is "Keeping it local". 
.
But its pasties are taken on a 250-mile round trip by lorry before being delivered to the Tesco next door to its Cornwall plant because they insist it's more efficient that way. 
.
A slice of Cranks seeded farmhouse bread has twice the amount of salt as a packet of Walkers ready-salted crisps. 
.
McVitie's light digestive biscuits have less fat than McVitie's original digestives, but more sugar, so the difference between the biscuits is just four calories. 
.
But then a 2009 article in the New Scientist pointed out that even calorie labelling is unhelpful, because the body digests different foods at different rates. 
.
Consumers aren't stupid is the stock industry response when challenged on their campaigns of misdirection. 
.

Yet in her 2010 book Green Gone Wrong, the environmental writer Heather Rogers quotes the director of an organic conglomerate noting that most consumers are simple minds who look at the label and nothing else. 
.
But with labels that are this misleading, intelligence is a red herring.
.
The industry insists that in selling the sugary, fatty, salty foods that are contributing so much to rates of obesity, heart disease and type 2 diabetes, it is simply giving people what they want. 
.
In reality, of course, the industry doesn't just respond to desires: it shapes them. 
.
Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein talk a lot about food choices in their book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth And Happiness. 
.
Their proposals, which include placing fruit at eye level in school canteens, are an acknowledgment that people aren't very good at choosing healthy food. 
.
They're an acknowledgment, in other words, of the fallacy of the much-trumpeted notion of the rational consumer.
.
Athough the governments that are in thrall to the politics of nudge seem untroubled by this contradiction. 
.
For all their good intentions, Thaler and Sunstein underestimate just how energetically the food industry is working to prevent healthy choices. 
.
Often what is needed is some basic information, some rudimentary transparency, rather than a nudge. 
.
A traffic light system for labelling healthy and unhealthy food would be a start – research shows it's the most helpful one for consumers – but that would mean giving consumers real power to choose.

One of Tory health secretary Andrew Lansley's first moves in office was to promise that "government and FSA promotion of traffic light labelling will stop" as part of a big shake-up of public health. 
.
Out went regulation, legislation and "top-down lectures"; in came voluntary corporate action and individual responsibility. 
.
Lansley set up a series of "responsibility deal networks" designed to get public health officials to "work with business". 
.
The idea of McDonald's, KFC and Pepsi designing public Health policy outdoes Orwell's Nineteen Eight Four. 
.
And one of the networks, in charge of "public health behaviour change", was to work with the government's newly set up "nudge unit". 
.
There it is again, the real payoff of nudge policy: to nudge us into buying from big corporations.
.
There's a huge denial of inequality here: between consumers and corporations, and also between different kinds of consumers. 
.
In reality, there is one group of shoppers that can afford to be ethical and another that can't. 
.
The fact is, people on low incomes are more likely to buy food that is bad for them and bad for the environment. 
.
But corporations and governments take advantage of the taboos of false consciousness and inequality in order to protest that they are simply letting consumers choose what they want. 
.
We are labouring under the delusion not only of freely available, low-cost, great-quality, nutritional food, but also of a level playing field of money, power and information.
.
The fact that we tolerate this delusional state of affairs does not speak well of us. 
.
It makes us seem passive, blinkered and bovine. 
.

The cheapness of food has provided us with a false sense of security, allowing us to believe we're getting the best of both worlds. 
.
But food prices are rising. 
.
In some ways that will make food choices more conscious, and more consciously political. 
.
But there's also a danger that we'll focus more attention on price alone. 
.
It's not really our fault. 
.
It's hard to make good choices when the marketing of products is so opaque and befuddling. 
.
It's hard to detect the silent promotion of inequality by mainstream food culture when the headlines are all about democratisation and demographic change. 
.
But we are like orally fixated toddlers, transfixed by Nigella's cupcakey bosom, Starbucks' vanilla frappuccinos and Michelin-starred creamy, frothy sauces. 
.
We need to wise up to the rhetoric of food and start tasting reality.

Eliane Glaser,

Mind stuff

I've seen this with the letters out of order, but this is the first time I've seen it with numbers.

.

F1gur471v3ly 5p34k1ng?

.

Good example of a Brain Study:

.

If you can read this you have a strong mind:

.

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D0 4M4Z1NG 7H1NG5!

1MPR3551V3 7H1NG5!

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17 WA5 H4RD BU7

N0W, 0N 7H15 LIN3

Y0UR M1ND 1S

R34D1NG 17

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Amen

In America Democrats pay lip service to the need to slim the rulebook

.

Mr Obama’s regulations tsar is supposed to ensure that new rules are cost-effective. 

.

But the administration has a bias towards overstating benefits and underestimating costs. 

.

Republicans bluster that they will repeal Obama care and Dodd-Frank and abolish whole government agencies, but give only a sketchy idea of what should replace them.

.

America needs a smarter approach to regulation.

.

First, all important rules should be subjected to cost-benefit analysis by an independent watchdog. 

.

The results should be made public before the rule is enacted. 

.

All big regulations should also come with sunset clauses.

.

So that they expire after, say, ten years unless Congress explicitly re-authorises them.

.

More important, rules need to be much simpler. 

.

When regulators try to write an all-purpose instruction manual, the truly important dos and don’ts are lost in an ocean of verbiage. 

.

Far better to lay down broad goals and prescribe only what is strictly necessary to achieve them. 

.

Legislators should pass simple rules, and leave regulators to enforce them.

.

Would this hand too much power to unelected bureaucrats? 

.

Not if they are made more accountable. 

.

Unreasonable judgements should be subject to swift appeal. 

.

Regulators who make bad decisions should be easily sackable. 

.

None of this will resolve the inevitable difficulties of regulating a complex modern society.

.

But it would mitigate a real danger

.

That regulation may crush the life out of America’s economy.

.

And why the Amen?

.

Because everywhere the nonsense of regulations for everything are galloping out of control.
.
Similar constraints are needed everywhere, not just in America.

Once a year......................

For such a short time don't miss it!

End of summer

A point of view

Most Christians believe that we are created at conception and that when we die we become eternal.
.
But eternity cannot be eternal on one end and finite on the other.
.
If something has a beginning, it must have an end.
.
If we believe that we will live forever, it must follow that we have always existed, as Origen taught.
.
If we have always existed, what have we been up to all this time?
.
We know that this present incarnation is important in our spiritual growth.
.
But how can a single life on earth be sufficient to prepare us to meet the transcendent God face to face?
.
If one incarnation is helpful in our spiritual evolution, why wouldn't two be twice as useful?
.
What is it that makes us resist the idea of multiple human lives when a majority of the world's religions include a belief in reincarnation?
.
People who are afraid of the concept try to make it appear ridiculous by suggesting that if we are evil in this present life we will return as an ant or a skunk.
.
This distortion needs to be seen for what it is, an attempt to avoid a greater truth:
.
We are part of God.
.
We have always existed.
.
We will always exist.
.
Our time in eternity is an evolutionary process through which we are to become more like God.
.
Jesus told us that if we followed him, we would do greater things than he did!
.
When do we get the opportunity for this spiritual blossoming if not through an enormous series of positive and negative experiences?
.
This result cannot be achieved in a single lifetime.
.
If we are part of God, our present life is no more than a semester-long class to learn a certain skill.
.
And there is more than one course in our spiritual curriculum.
.
There are myriad questions not answered by our traditional theology.
.
When do we get to use the wisdom we have accumulated in this life?
.
Where do we get to correct our mistakes?
.
If we can correct them in heaven, why did we come here in the first place?
.
Why should God punish people eternally for temporal sins?
.
Do we punish our children for the next fifty years for a penny stolen in the first grade?
.
What happens to mentally challenged people and those who cannot comprehend the laws of God?
.
If God makes exceptions for them, what other exceptions does he make?
.
How do we account for the vast discrepancies in the lives of people, some living in poverty, some in wealth?
.
At what point does God even out these unfair distinctions?
.
We invite you to a larger view of your life which helps to answer these questions.
.
The possibility that you have always existed and will always exist as an eternal part of God.
.
This current life is one of many experiences which you have generated for yourself.
.
As indeed you design your own spiritual evolution.
.
The above is a point of view
.
Not ours although it does ask reasonable questions.
.
To explain life more easily if the article had mentioned karma then all could have been explained, unfortunately it did not.
.
Karma and reincarnation being inseparable to mention the one without the other is only half the story.
.
Nevertheless what did you think as you read the article?
.
Does it affect your view of anything?
.
What does affect you? 
.
Are you open to different ideas?

A crime by any other name

The silence of the bees: government refuses to act on pesticide evidence

.

Extrapolating scientific data appears to be fine if policy-makers like where leads - such as a badger cull - but is abhorrent if they don't, as with bees.

A honey bee joins a meadow brown butterfly on a buddleia flower. Photograph: Jenifer Bunnett/Alamy

Here's an illustrative tale of how science is used and abused in government policy making. 

In some circumstances, as with the imminent badger cull, you can take scientific evidence and extrapolate it to breaking point in order to justify the decision you have already taken.

Today, on the issue of bees and pesticides, we see the opposite. 

Despite serious evidence of great harm being caused to bees by sub-lethal doses of neonicitinoid pesticides - published in the world's most prestigious journals - the government has decided that no changes to regulation whatsoever are required, because the case has not been proven beyond all doubt.

So extrapolation is fine if you like where it takes you, but abhorrent if you don't. 

Evidence-based policy making remains as dreamy a concept as ever, it seems, even with something as critical as keeping the nation's pollinators in good health and our food supply secure.

The bee fiasco began in March with the publication of two studies in Science. 

The first found that bees consuming one pesticide suffered an 85% loss in the number of queens their nests produced, while the second showed a doubling in "disappeared" bees, those that failed to return from food foraging trips. 

The work was the first to be carried out in realistic, open-air conditions and used levels of neonicotinoids found in fields.

Professor Mickaël Henry, at INRA in Avignon, France, who led the "disappeared" bees study was under no illusion about the implications of his findings: 

"Under the effects we saw from the pesticides, the population size would decline disastrously, and make them even more sensitive to parasites or a lack of food." 

He said current regulation was inadequate.

These high profile studies - and others - prompted the UK's environment ministry (Defra) to investigate. "It is appropriate to update the process for assessing the risks of pesticides to bees in the light of scientific developments – including the latest research," it stated.

Now, six months on, it has delivered its verdict "The recent studies do not justify changing existing regulation." 

How can this be? 

Defra states:

The studies were interesting but they either used neonicotinoids at a higher level than is currently permitted, or the studies weren't carried out under field conditions. The studies did not show that currently permitted uses of neonicotinoids have serious implications for the health of bee populations.

The authors of the studies dispute the suggestion that both the doses and conditions were not realistic. 

It seems to me that Defra are refusing to be convinced by any scientific study, because the very act of studying it means it is not "field conditions". 

Do you see the paradox?

Be careful to also note Defra's use of the word "permitted", which echoes the get-out used by pesticide manufacturers, but ignores the fact that farmers have and will exceed allowed doses, either by accident or design.

Another question: why have France and Italy been persuaded that the evidence is sufficient to impose a suspension in the use of some of these pesticides, but not the UK?

Lastly, Defra states:

Regulation needs to be based on all the science. Existing field studies on neonicotinoids found there weren't any significant differences between hives exposed to treated crops and hives exposed to untreated crops.

But Prof David Goulson, at the University of Stirling and leader of the other study in Science, told me previously: 

"If they have done these studies, where are they? 

They are not in the public domain and therefore cannot be scrutinised. 

That raises the question of just how good they are."

There is one glimmer of hope in the Defra document, which was very quietly slipped out:

The government has already put new research in place to explore further the impacts of neonicotinoids on bumble bees in field conditions and to understand what levels of pesticide residues and disease in honey bees are normal. This work is due to finish in spring 2013.

Defra also states: "We are prepared to take whatever action the evidence shows to be necessary." 

It seems clear to me that sufficient evidence already exists to require action, but we can only hope the new work ends Defra's stalling.

Paul de Zylva, Friends of the Earth nature campaigner, sums it up well: 

"The government's failure to act on neonicotinoid pesticides is astonishing – there is still a massive question mark over the impact of these chemicals in declining bee populations. 

Pesticide company profits must not be put ahead of bees well-being."

Guardian - Damian Carrington