It doesn’t matter to me if they reversed their decision not to fund Planned Parenthood. They have shown their real color, and i’ve picked my alternative organization (plus Planned Parenthood) for my hard earned money.

Thanks for a great new home.
Thanks for fixing up our home.
Thanks for helping us get in shape and back in good health.
Thanks for being a fantastic family one could have asked for.
Thanks for the beautiful girls.

Read here for more info on this great community event for the DC – Maryland – Virginia area:

Just 3 weeks after buying the ipad, the man is dead. Even my wife was shocked. I bought the ipod when it first came out and it is still running. Though not an apple computer fan, i’ ve always loved Apple portable devices: ipod, ipod touch, ipad.
He was a complex man and I don’t know enough to say one way or another, so let’s keep it to the things that I use and know.

Autumn is here, and we are having 2 days of rare warm weather. The sky is clear, the sun is shining, and commuters in the morning are being blinded by it. You see, the sun is getting lower and lower on the horizon, and in the morning it’s often positioned just about where drivers on the freeway would seem to drive straight into it. With the clear atmosphere it can get so blindingly bright that you can’t help but hit the brake. So if you ever wonder why traffic always shows up black or red on a particular stretch of the freeway on the Seattle traffic map website, this might just be the cause.

Every time there is a big election, like this year mid-term one, there are bound to be some traffic slowdowns around where there are freeway pedestrian overpasses. You can count on these avid political supporters showing up in time for the evening commute, waving and holding posters. Guys, please be kind and make REALLY big banners, since we drivers can’t read them at freeway speed, no matter just out of curiosity, boredom, or genuine political fervor. Also, please show the banners so that sunlight shines on them, easier to read that way. So, we all have to slow down.

There is a blessing in all this: we have only 1 at any given time. The morning commute happens too early in the morning for the supporters, and the sun sets early for the evening commute.

Check out the Pandora Radio site. It picks the songs to stream to you based on what you like to listen to. I put in “Jeff Beck” and was served up a wide variety of instrumental guitar songs. I liked most of the the songs, but what’s not to like? Music is emotional and so dependant on the moment, and I can’t even tell you what I like. Just serve me the songs and I can tell you which songs taste good for this moment. That’s the beauty of it, you never know what gems are hidden in the basket. That’s the fun and excitement of discovery.

And so I say, no exact science is needed for this Genome Project.

We just came back from a visit to Washington DC. We were there to visit friends and relatives but also to enjoy the Cherry Blossom Festival. As luck would have it, we arrived on Thursday night so we were able to spend the entire Friday at the Tidal Basin. And also as luck would have it, the weather gave us all a real treat of an early taste of DC summer: sunny and warm to the 80s. Which was adouble-edge sword really: the crowd was huge, my wife couldn’t handle the heat on the last day we were there, and the flowers did not last 3 days after they reached Peak Bloom (March 31).

It turned out that the Friday April 2nd was the only great day for enjoying the blooms, but it was not in the relaxing sense of the word. There was an air of hurriness, the unsatiable urge to devour as much of the scenery as possible, the rush to get that spot before someone else spoil it. Everyone was swarming along the shore, restless. The place just didn’t exude the calm and relaxing essence that cherry blossoms would bring to mind. I went with the expectations of having a day-long picnic along the tidal basin, but didn’t see much of that happening. This is probably due to the make up of the people that come here, they are mostly tourists just like us. I would imagine the cherry trees here are not as happy as their siblings in Japan.

So the next time I have a chance, we’ll go to Japan for a proper hanami picnic.

Mark Wilson on Gizmodo has an excellent review on the 3D aspect of this movie. This is a really useful review, hitting many things right on, and expressing many feelings that I share (e.g. “Blue people? Papyrus font?? What the fuck”). I’m still a skeptic on 3D technology, it’s tiring on my eyes and I’m wearing glasses. I couldn’t have said it better, the shifting focus point is what make my eyes go blur eventually. I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to enjoy 2+ hours of this movie, but I still want to see for myself. Unfortunately all the weekend shows on IMAX 3D are sold out, so have to wait a bit longer.

[Updated 9/11/2010] Waited quite a bit on this. We just watched the special IMAX 3D Edition re-release on Boeing IMAX theater last night. The only real IMAX screen in this state. Our experience turned out to be different than what Mark described in the linked post. It took a little time for our eyes to adjust to the 3D effects, but by the time the Company’s bulldozers descended upon the Big Tree for the first confrontation, I suddenly realized that my eyes have completely adjusted to the effect and we could enjoy the movie effortlessly.

A truly outstanding experience, worth the ticket price of $32.50 a pair and $6 parking.

First off, the Buddha discourages us from dwelling too much on the origin and the workings on the universe, as He once told Malunkyaputta, fearing that it will distract us from the real concern which is self-enlightenment. He emphasizes to his audience at the time, that people’s knowledge and concepts were too limited to fully describe the true nature of the universe as He sees it. He did attempt to describe it though, using analogies and phrases such as “as many as the grains of sand in the Ganges”.

Fast forward to last week. I watched an episode of the Known Universe that aired on The National Geographic channel, and it struck me. Imagine this, if the Buddha was alive and walking among us today, in a world full of richly visual and sensually titillating teaching aids, deliverable via such a multitude of communication devices and channels, if someone then would come to the Buddha and asked him about the universe, He would probably be more willing to satisfy the request, don’t you think? Then the sermon that He would give would be something very similar to the Known Universe episode that I just watched. I think the Buddha, if He was alive and walking among us today, wouldn’t be surprised by all the scientific discoveries of the atomic world, of the “emptiness” of the universe, right down to our bodies, of the nothingness of matters, where everything is comprised of particles which themselves are just energy fields. It’s all a matter of perspective, how close you look at matter. The closer you get, the more resolution you can make out.

This realization just shook me again, it held me in such awe of the “awesomeness” (channeling Jack Black in Kungfu Panda) of His knowledge 2500 years ago, repeatedly validated by modern science again and again. Was it a coincidence, that at one point in this episode, a woman scientist walked on a beach, scooping up handfuls of sand, and used the number of grains of sand in all of the seas to describe the vast number of stars (note, stars, not planets; a star can have multiple planets) in the universe? Here is a quote lifted right out of the Facts list posted on the Known Universe web page:

Space is extremely vast. Each galaxy is home to around 200 billion stars. This is more stars than there are grains of sand on all the beaches of planet Earth

Is this a conscious or unconscious credit to the Buddha? OK, it could be that in His time, it’s a common way to describe infinity by refering to the number of grains of sand, but still, His description of the universe to his comtemporaries is still valid today. Even today when we watch this episode, it’s still mind boggling to us, so no wonder 2500 years ago the Buddha must have had much difficulties trying to describe the same thing to his audience who had no knowledge of modern space-time theories, no Hubble telescope, no sophisticated terrestrial radar arrays, no powerful computer programs to visualize the universe on screen.

One thing for sure though, He would still emphasize that all this quest is useless to the true concern, which is self-enlightenment. Liberate yourself, then all other questions and matters will fall into its place, the only thing is then, you would think how silly you were trying to understand the universe when you’re are tapped in the cycle of death.

The Buddha had a lot of sermons, each one was made in front of an audience. The method of teaching is to be flexible, to use analogy to shed light on what you want to teach and bring the audience to an understanding of the subject through use of words and concepts that the audience is already familiar with. To do so, the teacher must bring himself to the level of the audience he’s teaching.

Thus in order to understand a Buddha’s sermon, it is very important that we put ourselves into the mindset of the audience for which the sermon was delivered to. This probably requires a certain level of familiarity with the Indian societyof the time, its cast system and customs, and its prevailing religion, Hinduism. Another side effect of this approach is that when interpreting His teachings, we need to use a holistic approach rather than literally.

Be always aware of this when you explore and contemplate on the teachings of the Buddha, and it will hopefully keep us much closer to the truth that we’re pursuing.