* Start with fresh ginger root.
* Peel and cut about two square inches of the root and add it to a pot with about two liters of water.
* Bring to a boil
* Mix in 1/2 cup of sugar until it's completely dissolved, and then remove the mixture from the heat.
* When the mixture is cool enough that you can touch it without getting burnt -- but still very warm -- add in 1 * Tablespoon of yeast. (You can use the same yeast you have in your house for making bread, though it's also fun to experiment with different brewers' yeasts.)
* Mix well, and then let sit for about 15 minutes before you
pour the whole thing into a clean and empty two liter soda bottle.

You should now have less than 2 liters total, since some of the water will have boiled off in the decoction phase. Make sure that there is at least two inches of empty space at the top of the bottle.

*Put a balloon on top.

The balloon is a poor-man's "air lock". It let's carbon dioxide out of the bottle without letting oxygen in. You will need to let the air out of the balloon several times a day, however, in order to make sure that it doesn't pop off your bottle.

* After three days, add the juice of one lemon, put the top on your bottle and put the whole thing in the fridge.

Drink it up as soon as it gets cold!

Be aware that more than three days of room temperature brewing and this beverage will start to have significant alcohol content. By two weeks, it will be ale good and true, not soda pop at all.

Hey everybody! This is my first post, here, and I was wondering if you guys could give me some insight. :)

I have a very mild form of Cerebral Palsy that affects my left side, and so my muscles, especially in my left leg are tight. I was looking at lotus positions and...They're incredibly difficult, actually quite impossible for me to do. lol. When I started meditating initially, I would lie down flat, on my bed, actually, which I'm beginning to think has bad connotations. However, since I sleep on my stomach, if I lie on my back and close my eyes, my mind just switches to meditation mode automatically. But I'm disappointed because I want to see if different methods help in different ways...

I'm just stuck.

Thanks for your help in advance, guys!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcFVjPlJ3C0

Federal torture, bailouts and global warming scams spark new opposition from liberty activists in New Hampshire.

The article I read claims that the bankers won because they won't be able to be forced to accept renegotiated terms.

What sort of win is this? Sure, they don't get forced to take terms, but this isn't the 60s so they probably aren't dealing with people who can ever pay the loans.

Most people won't get in to a hole on their mortgage or will be able to pay. This is the people who are in trouble, most of those won't be able to pay anyway if the loan isn't renegotiated. But is not a sea of customers waiting to take on the property at the inflated price, so the banks lose anyway.

Hi,
on tonights show we have people on to talk to us from 'viv campisina'., we got
someone in from the anarchist black cross to give some sage advice and words of
wisdom. We've also got some more from the bike bloc, and some stuff form the
buses on the way from london to copenhagen.
Helen from the 'angry mermaid awards' tells us about the candidates and how
evil they are, and we've got some noise from the streets.
Aside from that we got some tunes and some chat, so tune in tonight at 9,

tune in and cop out.
http://live1.radiovague.com:8000/cop15radio.mp3

To access this show and other information about the happenings in Copenhagen,
check out www.indymedia.dk

My 9yr old is home sick with vommitting. Poor kid was literally up all night until he was just retching what looked like mucos. (I know, TMI, sorry) Any good kid safe recepes out there? I'm doing little things but I've only gotten through my basic herb course so this is just on the edge of out of my league.

Nauru is the smallest republic in the world, located on the eponymous island in the Pacific. It has land area of 21.3 km ² and a population of 14 thousand people. To the misfortune of the islanders (alas, one can't say otherwise) the phosphorite reserves were discovered on the Island. Phosphate intensive mining has resulted in the destruction of soil cover and most of the island turned into a stone desert (later on, as a result of remediation activities it managed to restore 63% of vegetation cover of open pits).

After achieving independence in 1968, the Nauru Government decided concentrate profits from its sole source of foreign exchange earnings to special Fund as the Government has foreseen phosphate reserves exhaustion. The funds were invested at buying property and financial services. The funds placement was given into the hands of so-called "experts" - financial managers from Australia and New Zealand. As a result of their well-paid "work" the islanders have find themselves with virtually nothing. In 90s the Nauruan stabilization fund dropped 10-fold - from 1.3 billion Australian dollars to 130 million. Easy money had disservice Nauruans because traditional economic activities were destroyed and people accustomed to the lifestyle of rentiers. Officially, 90% of islanders are unoccupied.

Nauru is now in a very difficult situation and it would be very difficult to solve this package of problems even for the crisis manager out of the top drawer.

We have some proposals for economic stabilization and development of Nauru, which were sent to the address almost all officials of this country. These proposals are complex, interrelated, and quite specific.

ever notice that when something is dire or there is an urgency to do something, work gets done easily?

ever notice that when there is no urgency, it's hard to stay motivated?

What are things that you do to keep on task, do chores, or little things at work; when you feel that the last thing that you want to be doing is sitting at a desk working off items on your to-do list?

Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche is a Tibetan Buddhist lama who also paints very striking, abstract art. He was featured in the current issue of Buddhadharma, and a small excerpt from an article he wrote on his abstract painting begins with some striking points about meditation and the nature of mind.

As Buddhists, we are taught that the natural state of mind is pristine and enlightened in itself. To embody this view of the natural state, first we need to work with our mind through discipline. In our meditation practice, sometimes we are present with this experience of the natural state and sometimes we are not. When something pleasant arises, we often grasp at it, and when something unpleasant arises, we may reject it. Our discipline is to transcend these grasping and rejection tendencies that cause us so much suffering.

Over time, as we feel more self-confident and secure in our practice of meditation -- and in our understanding of the true nature of mind pointed out by our teacher -- we will see that the true nature is pristine and stainless. In the traditional analogy of the ocean and its waves, it is said that however large or small the waves, all are essentially made of the element of water and cannot be separated from the ocean. Similarly, in the view of meditation, all our thoughts and various feelings arise out of the natural state of mind and are ultimately made out of the same "material." That material is empty awareness itself. If we do not succumb to habits and insecurities, or preconceptions about meditation and how our mind should be, we can then recognize that everything that arises is simply a manifestation of this very nature. Any expressions that arise from this enlightened nature can be understood as enlightened expressions when we do not approach them through the habits of acceptance and rejection.

Realizing this, we can begin to experience relaxation, as well as a lessening of judgments and reactivity. We experience more openness and acceptance. Slowly, and naturally, we begin to see the world as pure -- not as in "pure" versus "ugly," but pure in the sense of seeing the perfection of its existence. This existence is not determined according to some concept or idea of the way it should be; it simply has come to exist naturally. Its beauty is found in it being just the way it is. The world has found its own shape, form and colour. All of it arises out of the nature of mind.

These are such wise words. But I can imagine that one reason so many of us might not jive with this is that it seems to say that there's nothing wrong with the world as it is, that we should accept everything as it is without trying to change it. And it seems to many of us like there's so much wrong with the world right now, how could we possibly accept it as it is? But the point he's making is subtler than that, and more specific as opposed to general. Despite how much we might want to, there's very little that we can each do today that will affect something like the situation in Darfur, for example. But there's a lot we can do to affect our own lives today, our own life situation. By getting in touch with the equanimity that he describes, we can resolve the conflicts in our own minds that result in conflicts with our family and other people in our lives. By looking at our immediate outside world without judgment and reactivity, we can successfully embody the Tao, weaving our way effortlessly through our own external world without fighting it.

In this way, we attain peace and enlightenment in this very moment. It's as simple as that.

Bombay, 6 January 1960

The Mind Is the known — the known being that which has been experienced. With that measure, we try to know the unknown. But the known can obviously never know the unknown; it can know only what it has experienced, what it has been taught, what it has gathered. Can the mind see the truth of its own incapacity to know the unknown?

Surely if I see very clearly that my mind cannot know the unknown, there is absolute quietness. If I feel that I can capture the unknown with the capacities of the known, I make a lot of noise; I talk, I reject, I choose, I try to find a way to it. But if the mind realizes its own absolute incapacity to know the unknown, if it perceives that it cannot take a single step towards the unknown, then what happens? Then the mind becomes utterly silent. It is not in despair; it is no longer seeking anything.

The movement of search can only be from the known to the known, and all that the mind can do is to be aware that this movement will never uncover the unknown. Any movement on the part of the known is still within the field of the known. That is the only thing I have to perceive; that is the only thing the mind has to realize. Then, without any stimulation, without any purpose, the mind is silent.

Have you not noticed that love is silence? It may be while holding the hand of another, or looking lovingly at a child, or taking in the beauty of an evening. Love has no past or future, and so it is with this extraordinary state of silence. And without this silence, which is complete emptiness, there is no creation. You may bevery clever in your capacity, but where there is no creation, there is destruction, decay, and the mind withers away.

When the mind is empty, silent, when it is in a state of complete negation — which is not blankness, nor the opposite of being positive, but a totally different state in which all thought has ceased — only then is it possible for that which is unnameable to come into being.


On God. Copyright © by Jiddu Krishnamurti

A Few Notes on Climate Change

Posted by Andrei Illarionov

As the Copenhagen Climate Conference is taking place, it is appropriate to clarify once again what is more or less accurately known about the climate of our planet and about climate change.
Obviously, a brief post can not substitute for detailed studies of professionals in a variety of scientific disciplines – climatology, atmospheric physics, chemistry, geology, astronomy, and economics. However, a short post can summarize basic theses on the main trends in climate evolution, on its forecasts, and on its actual and projected effects.
1. The Earth’s climate is constantly changing. The climate was changing in the past, is changing now and, obviously, will be changing in the future – as long as our planet exists.
2. Climatic changes are largely cyclical in nature. There are various time horizons of climatic cycles – from the annual cycle known to everyone to cycles of 65-70 years, of 1,300 years, or of 100,000 years (the so called Milankovitch cycles).
3. There is no fundamental disagreement among scientists, public figures and governments about the fact that the climate is changing. There is a broad consensus that climate changes occur constantly. The myth, created by climate alarmists, that their opponents deny climate change is sheer propaganda.

The rest is here

Buddhists: Where is your place to be? Please enjoy this video. May you find peace wherever you are.



( About Hiromi... )

- worked some more on the grass surfaces (made 16 variations, combinations of 4 variations by size and 4 variations by density). spent a lot of time perfecting the variables so that they focus near the center and so that the different densities are visibly different. probably too much perfectionism for that one feature. wish there were more decorative elements to make more of these with, but will need to wait for orchard.
- made the 'undo' feature of the level editor optional; because i've been editing the game off a usb stick recently (so i can work on it on both laptop and desktop) the access time is less than a hard drive, and since it's less, the undo feature makes working in the level editor slower than usual, so i turned it off temporarily.
- found a weird 'division by zero' bug, which troubled me for a while, but after an hour or two of debugging realized that it was related to the grass surfaces feature and fixed it.
- because the script variables (using the keyword var) cause loops to run about 25% faster (no idea why, but it's a well known thing about game maker) i went through all the for() loops that are run every step and made them use var for their counter when they didn't already use it. this will probably not matter very much but it's a simple optimization.
- another small optimization: precalculated a few values used in the draw event of map objects
- added constants for every key character and numeral and used those to replace those ord('M') things with KEY_M. this will be slightly (very slightly) faster, and most of the time not really matter. but it was an easy optimization to do.
- started working on adjusting the speed of the game according to delta time, so that when the game is going very slow (or very fast, if the frames are unlimited) everything still goes at the same speed. so far, did the player's speed, but not the creatures, map objects, or other variables. however, due to the vast and extraordinary amount of time-dependent variables, i suspect fully adapting the game to delta time will take a long time.
- set a minimum frame rate (10fps) below which the game really will slow down, just because if i don't set a minimum the player will appear to 'jump' over things if the game has a hiccup or if the window focus is lost and then returned to the game, but pretty much any computer should be able to run the game faster than 10fps (and those that can't wouldn't enjoy the game at that rate anyway, even without gameplay slowdown).
- adjusted the speed of all objects to delta time. this may still be buggy, haven't thoroughly tested it at all, but preliminarily it works. there are still a few bugs like running past lilypads no longer pushing them in your direction if the frame rate is too high, those can be fixed on a case by case basis as i come across them.
- changed the game to automatically set the 'target' frames per second to the refresh rate (frame rate in the case of lcd's) of the monitor (typically 75 or 60, more rarely 85, 100, and others).
- fixed a cosmetic bug with the depth of the function ghostings/motion blur objects
- fixed a bug with diving through tunnels (it detected it from too far away)
- adjusted some but not all of the 'rotation' globals to delta time. the ones i could not change have to do with the way they are coded (taking the sine, cosine, etc. of the total number of frames since the game started divided by a certain number), and i can't think of an easy way to adapt that to time. it might be possible, but i'll skip it for now since it isn't a crucial thing.

at least these things still need to be adapted to the frame rate, and are currently dependent on the number of frames rather than real time: the delay between firings of the player's functions, the global 'timing' variables which are used for a lot of things, the delay between the actions of the creatures, the room effect fade-in, projectile speeds, path speeds (for argus projectiles or for larba movement, etc.), scrolling text speed, certain creature animations (such as how fast wings are flapped), the change in volumes of the atmospheric effects and music due to standing still, lilypad pushes, particles for water sparkles, particles for player wake, other particles in general, and probably dozens of other things.