Taomeow

It is a belief system for the indoctrinated, but for the indoctrinators it is primarily (and often entirely) a power grab system. All our "life sciences" inherited the tradition they directly arose from -- that of witch hunts, getting rid of ideological competition, gaining both power and money, monopolizing control of people's bodies, calling the shots. (There's a pun in there.)

Yes, there's this tough guy (occasionally gal) type who's in it for a chance to hurt someone, but luckily I was spared those encounters with my TKD peers. I loved taekwondo but didn't get far -- had to quit due to family circumstances. My master was the product of the Korean army and handled training his students the way he was taught himself -- mercilessly. But my mood at the time was something like, "let's challenge this lazy cat, i.e. me, who'd rather spend her life on the sofa with a book," so I didn't mind. And later, when the great tao sent my taiji teacher, the first thing he said to me was, without me disclosing it, "ohhh... I can see you did taekwondo... that's OK, I'll get it out of your system." And did, in no time.

This is also what we use in Chen style taiji, the corkscrew motion in the spine with upper and lower parts going in the opposite directions, which is part of what you do to generate a specific kind of power we call peng. I also remember in TKD it was used to teach us to fall on all fours in a hypothetical situation where, e.g., the opponent throws you face down onto an obstacle, a boulder or curb or a glass coffee table: when landing on all fours you twist the upper body sideways to at least save your face. Master Ho had us fall like that onto a pile of soft mats, but it was still scary physics.

And biophysics, and... One of my favorite quotes ever, by an evolutionary biologist Haldane (I think), in response to the question -- --You have studied creation all your life, what have you learned about the Creator? --That God has an inordinate fondness for beetles. Not sure anthropology covers "all" the territory worth covering... in fact, it chiefly concerns itself with the antics of the species Plato called "the featherless biped" (based on the fact that we walk on two legs like birds but unlike birds are, well, featherless). And what about cats? To say nothing of beetles? So... I actually meant taoist sciences which meet the requirement I consider a sine qua non -- a unified theory underlying all of them. But today they are not viewed as science by the popes of the church of modern western science -- and are woefully lumped together, by assorted quacks, with assorted woo-woo... just like quantum mechanics. Unified theory... That physics woman in the video (I may have been too harsh in my assessment, but am too lazy to list all the reasons why) mentioned superstrings (something she apparently doesn't like) in the context of "it was mostly an American thing, not a European one." That's what we have for a unified theory... an American physics and a European physics. Or is it anthropology, sans physics?..

Thanks for clarifying. Looks like in physics "the argument from naturalness" also had (and we can only hope will have again) its champions who hardly meet the criteria for "a clear example of pseudoscience." E.g., Paul Dirac, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist regarded as one of the great ones, expressed this sentiment in a 1960s article titled "The Evolution of the Physicist's Picture of Nature": "A theory with mathematical beauty is more likely to be correct than an ugly one that fits some experimental data. God is a mathematician of a very high order..." He often reiterated it in his lectures as, ""If a theory is not beautiful, it is probably wrong."

It depends on who those "us" are. Real science, if it existed*, would be based on a unified theory and nothing in the universe would be left out in the cold (however cold) or crash and burn encountering that phenomenon (however hot). I don't just mean a unified theory physicists are pining for (those who care about physics among them, that is, rather than grants and tenures and publications). I mean science as a whole -- where physicists and geologists, biologists and chemists, astronomers and linguists would have an underlying common ground, a common base whence to have a meaningful dialog, a meaningful set of shared fundamentals so they could actually communicate and -- unbelievable as it presently seems -- understand what it's about. Understand it on the level of that unified view, unified theoretical premise they would all share. A science that would have that would be self-consistent across the spectrum of all human endeavors -- not self-contradictory, not weaponized against itself by having skipped that crucial initial step of harmonizing its countless branches by tracing them to a common root. Funny thing is, technology would never be as all-powerful if this kind of science existed. There would be deterrents built in... *It does. It just takes a much longer, much more dedicated study, is not part of any current institution's curriculum, and has empirical outcomes not readily caught by currently accepted/available methods and models. Its time will either come or we're toast. I miss him too.

The first thing she offered as "a clear example of pseudoscience" is "arguments from naturalness."

The hurricane/tropical storm is a couple hours away from us per latest predictions, but some fire hydrants in downtown decided to help it along ahead of schedule. Video: https://packaged-media.redd.it/k703vjwl1bjb1/pb/m2-res_1280p.mp4?m=DASHPlaylist.mpd&v=1&e=1692572400&s=6d053c7ae8deeab4e038fffffacb9f5afa090978#t=0

Dogs will eat anything. Your 'Home Science" sounds like a very useful subject (unless botched by useless teachers.) We had something similar, gender segregated -- boys were doing something in the mechanical shop and girls were knitting and sewing. I had neither the talent nor the patience for either, so my knitted goods self-limited to a scarf just big enough for a cat (should a cat agree to wear a scarf), and I also sewed a pretty nightgown that would probably fit someone very asymmetrical, with one arm three times the circumference of the other and one leg about a foot longer.

WD-40* *How to fix anything... life's most profound lesson: If it moves but shouldn't -- duct tape If it doesn't move but should -- WD-40

That's exactly what I thought too.

I am very fond of my frying pans. They are decades old (the oldest one is 70) and take heavy use in stride. In addition to cast iron I have copper and copper-over-steel ones. It's true that my 12-inch copper beauty* lost all the tin, but to re-tin it costs hundreds of dollars in our parts, so I just don't use it for anything acidic it might react with. I could give a reason and rationale for the fact that I have 7 frying pans and none are decorative or the outcome of hoarding. I use all of them interchangeably -- each of them knows what its purpose in life is and does not infringe upon another frying pan's territory. But If I was limited to just one (as I used to be), that one would be cast iron. *beauty: I mean its performance, not appearance, since it shines from thorough polishing maybe once a year and then it's all downhill for it. Scrubbing and polishing to a beautiful uniform shine is for decorative copper, not for the workhorse of the kitchen.)

We too have inherited the skill of the skillet from our primate ancestors. An FBI report from 2013 found that more crimes are committed with blunt everyday objects than with firearms -- and frying pans are quite popular. I have two cast iron frying pans in regular use and always handy. The bigger one weighs 7 lb. (For comparison -- a baseball bat is about 2 lb.) Reptilian and other malevolent creatures may want to step carefully.

When my cat was only a few weeks old, for some reason she was very interested in vegetables. Every time I come across that ubiquitous meme where a cat is being yelled at for not eating her broccoli, I find it heartbreaking. (Yes, I know it's not the cat in the original photo. Still, I can't help thinking my poor kitty may have been starving in her early kittenhood and would eat whatever... I got her when she was way too small for adoption age -- the woman selling her in the parking lot didn't seem like a reliable cat person, so, who knows. Incidentally, yesterday she brought home her first wild mouse... I mean the cat did, not that woman.)

And with a full brain you could make Cauliflower Polonaise. In my kitchen it's known as "The Right Way" rather than "Polonaise," as I inherited the recipe long before the attribution. ( "The Left Way" is just steaming it. "The Right Way" may or may not add cheese, it doesn't matter much since you can't improve much on perfection.)

Note to self: never respond to newcomers' questions until you know more about them.

"Minds are what brains do." -- Marvin Minsky, father of neural networks This statement may seem overly materialistic and "non-spiritual," but the thing is, the very notions of "brain" and "mind" are rather arbitrary. They keep discovering "brains" in places other than the skull -- e.g. there's the "gut-brain" axis, with the enteric nervous system in continuous complex communication with the CNS via complex two-way signaling pathways (e.g. the vagus nerve that equally "belongs" to the gut and the head). The immune system has a mind of its own, and the mind in the head has only indirect and limited impact on what it thinks. It's hard to draw a demarcation line. Or rather, it's somewhat counterproductive. In the organ-system-function cognitive tradition of taoist sciences, you don't separate what they "are" from what they "do." It's all one, and it splits into "matter" and "spirit," "body" and "mind" that don't constitute a whole only when unhealthy. When it's healthy it's unified.

Youtube fed a CIA guy into my feed (yum!) who studied assorted psychology disciplines toward, well, manipulation, interrogation, infiltration and whatever else they want psychology for at the agency. So he said, based on what he asserts he learned from studies, that we have an average of 65,000 thoughts on a daily basis, of which 48,000 are negative and self-defeating, and not only that but 90 to 95% of them are repetitive, thoughts we already had before, many times before, and in all likelihood will have them again tomorrow. This I think (sic) is what cultivation systems that seem to advise fighting one's thoughts by various methods are up against, and I think (sic again) it may be a worthy albeit difficult pursuit. Not to eradicate "all" thoughts but to get rid of that useless overload that consumes a ton of brainpower. "When you eat a banana 60% of the calories go toward feeding your negativity." What a thought! I'm never eating bananas again! I know three ways of turning off that loop of thoughts going nowhere. Meditation, sleep, good audiobooks read by voices I like. All three have elements of wuwei in them, though in different proportions. (For me personally, audiobooks are more wuwei in my native tongue even though non-native poses no conscious difficulty -- but my unconscious is aware of an extra effort, and my consciousness is aware of that. I can literally feel my brain using more calories from that banana.) I think periodic non-thinking times are beneficial...

a prostitute who puts out for every client willing to pay. When margarine was invented, scores of 'nutrition scientists' were tasked with proving it's healthier than butter. For one example, around the 1980s all recipes collections and cookbooks got rewritten with margarine replacing butter in them. The French didn't buy it. But I do remember cooking with it in my younger years when I didn't know better. Live and learn. I believe nutrition as a science hardly exists. For starters it's too complex and mysterious -- the most magical transformation in existence, turning assorted not-you things into you, not-me into me... sheer magic. And to make matters worse, it pretends people didn't eat for a million years before sedentary agriculture, let alone before "nutritional science" -- and step very carefully around facts. Trying not to stumble and fall into, e.g., those fire pits that Native American tribes used for 25,000 to 40,000 years in one place (tribes coming and going, the fire pit being used continuously). They roasted their bison and buffalo whole in those. No wonder nutritional scientists of today give it the widest berth -- imagine falling into something like this and all your margarine and cereals stuffed in your learned pockets going up in smoke in an instant...

I think it's one of the least mysterious statements in the I Ching. A favorable beginning (yuan), penetrating progress (heng), beneficial appropriateness (li), and steadfast correctness (zhen) -- throughout the I Ching Yuanheng Lizhen stands for the "green light" in response to your divination. A "yes," rather than what the outcome of other inquiries may be -- "maybe," "possible but not likely," "don't go there," "a hard no."

You need to graciously love yourself off.

Yayoiu Kusama, 'Pumpkin Cat,' 1990 The cat addition to Kusama's famous pumpkin motif is of debatable authorship, but I like it. Kusama is a Japanese artist presently 96 years old. She keeps working every day in her Tokyo studio. Happy Halloween!

Budai, yes, aka "the fat Buddha" or "the laughing Buddha." A Chan monk named Qici, later deified as the Future Buddha -- Maitreya. Indeed, it was Lord Gautama the original Buddha who ODed on pork, but I wanted a picture of a fat buddha specifically to illustrate the point about overindulgence in food, not a passport photo ID of Lord Gautama. Contrary to a popular misconception, Gautama is not the only Buddha and the names "Gautama" and "Buddha" are not interchangeable. As a zen saying goes, "you walk knee deep in Buddhas."

Lamb is OK, just don't eat pork on a hot day. That's how the Buddha entered nirvana. Or, in layman's terms, died. Ate too much of an irresistible pork dish, Sukaramaddava, on a hot day. That's the Mahayana tradition, by the way, whereas in Theravada they try to shy away from the fact by asserting it was a dish of special "trampled by pigs" mushrooms. But the hot weather was the likely contributor in either case, since the Buddha, before entering nirvana, told his host, the blacksmith who served him that dish, to bury what's left of it, just in case. Which hints at the possibility it was spoiled and he didn't want anyone else to get food poisoning. Though it's more likely he was trying to play down his overeating habit... which, coupled with hot weather, may be more perilous than it is in cold climates where one needs to burn extra calories to stay warm.