Death

Some friends lost their son (24!) in a road traffic accident on the M6. What can you do or say but be there?

Laptops

Never change your laptop without expecting to lose at least 3 days. Everything almost there now except I can’t get my Palm m505 to synchronise. It’s acting like the device isn’t there. For once reinstalling the Oracle software wasn’t too hard.

Depression and one taste

Not me this time. I was thinking about how in the Mahamudra view, where everything has one taste this is like a condition that depressed people get where they can’t taste their food. A lot of the higher (Buddhist) medative states sound like symptoms of mental distress but approached from a different angle. I wonder if depressives have reached some higher states and then fallen back in past lives because of the difficulty. It may explain why they see the world through such bleak eyes because without the compassion and wisdom that go with it it would seem so hard. This is just speculation on my part, I have never experienced one taste myself. I had a look on google to see if I could give you some URLs to point to that explain the idea of one taste, I’d stay away from the book with that title (one taste), the reviews make me feel like Weber doesn’t know what he’s talking about. There’s a good explanation in The Secrets of the Vajra World.

Wisdom and justice

This is a story idea I’ve had:

Human systems are always imperfect. As experience builds up they modify themselves. How do you guarantee that a decision will always be just and as fair as possible. Simple,  breed judges, make sure that all of their environments are identical as they grow up and then freeze them. Use them once to make a decision and throw them away. It’s a bit macabre, and, of course, like all systems it won’t work, genetic determinism is not the force everyone thinks it is (there’s the rest of the story). It needs a Cordwainer Smith or PKD title like Justice 3423 and the left left egg. (Don’t ask me where that came from)

Anyway, if you want to use this idea, all I ask is an acknowledgement.

Paddling

Swapped the Inazone 242 for a Dagger Redline (losing about £50 in the process), much better boat that behaves itself and will attain and ferry glide properly, lovely old-fashioned adjustable fittings instead of gluing in foam like the Pirhana boats.

Had a serious go in a Liquid Logic Skip which ate my feet. Tried the Wavesport Transformer but in fact it’s not much better than the EZ. Loved loved loved the Riot Air but I think I’d get creamed on big water. Looking for some coaching to help me get off my playboating plateau. Waiting for a call, in fact.

Blessings upon you all.