god etc.

My cousin Titus proposed a reality that is inferior to a "super-reality" and that the biblical revelations  come from the intersection of these two planes. For me, reality is the super reality... We are using the same words to talk about differen things, but... Reality is everything that is real, it if is not part of reality, it does not exist; if something exists than it is part of reality. But, reality is much much much much bigger and more complex than our feeble minds and limited senses can compredend or detect.
There is the bigness, the sheer mind-blowingly hugeness of the universe. If such numbers can mean anything, these numbers ought to be repeated daily: our galaxay has at least 200 billion stars, and there are estimated to be more than 170 billion galaxies in the universe. Here's a gem from the wikipedia page:
 "Assuming the universe is isotropic, the distance to the edge of the observable universe is roughly the same in every direction—that is, the observable universe is a spherical volume (a ball) centered on the observer, regardless of the shape of the universe as a whole. Every location in the universe has its own observable universe which may or may not overlap with the one centered on the Earth."
While even the size of our own sun is difficult for our little brains to grasp.
And then there is the complexity. The higgs bozons, electrons, protons, atoms, molecules, cell structures, biochemical interactions, bacteria, slime molds, fungi, plants and animals, just on our little planet. The blood cells in the heart of the little bird on the roof of my neighbor's house. The bacteria in the goat chese in a village in Azerbaijan.
And those are just the things we know about. It goes without saying that there is so much more that modern science has not, cannot beign to sketch out.
For me, reality could be a huge dark underground cavern, but we have only a little torch to light our way with. A great work of art, or the systematic application of reason, or surrender to prayer may be able to enlighten us to a greater part of the reality which we cannot directly perceive by our torchlight.
I see spirituality, or monotheistic and daoist spirituality as a way of using the mind to sense all of reality at once. I like to think of it in a mathematical way: we can say "the set of all integers", or "the set of all real numbers". God is the set of all things that exist, or the set that includes everything in reality.  If art can reveal to us truth about the human experience, and science can reveal to us truth about nature, then religion could reveal to us truth about everything at once.
Then it gets a bit tricky if we start to talk about profecy and all. If God, that is, the entirety of reality, contrives to inspire someone at a certain time with a vision which reveals some truth about reality to fellow humans, who am I to dispute them?

economics.

It serves us well to remember that the fundamental fact of modern history is that everyone living in the developed world is vastly richer than all of their ancestors and all humans that came before the 20th century. Many of the cosmopolitan behaviors we consider normal are inherited from the tiny elite classes of europe. Meanwhile the vast majority of lived in ignorance, toil, filth, and exposure to the elements.

So, when I think of Beethoven or Newton or Marco Polo or Cook, and think, "oh, I'd like to do that" I should remember that my ancestors were very likely not riding around doing amazing or interesting things, but   were probably farming potatoes in a bog and dying of tuberculosis. If they weren't then they were extremely privileged compared to their fellow citizens, which is not much to be proud of either.

health care

The New York Times had an article about Rwanda's new universal health care system, which rapidly improved the quality of life in the country.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/03/rwandas-health-care-miracle/ (Partners in Health's work there is featured in the article. This is the organization founded by Paul Farmer in Haiti, and publicized in the book Mountains beyond Mountains)
The per-capita income in the country is just 550$ a year, though this is has risen much even in the last decade. The system is successful in improving health, but is mostly funded by international aid.
What reading about this reminded me is that health-care does not have to be such a terrible nightmare. We are not re-inventing the wheel. On the contrary we are far behind the curve on healthcare, compared to the developed countries of the world, and we ought to be able to use this to our advantage. It just shouldn't be this hard to reform and improve health care in America.

The truly humble man will be boastful. To boast of one’s virtues or accomplishments is to sully oneself because everyone knows it is not virtuous to boast. A humble man does not believe he is better than his peers, and can so lower himself without fear.

A man who believes in his own superiority must speak humbly, for this is virtuous. By choosing not to boast he is telling his peers "I am better than thee, for I will not brag of myself." Meanwhile the humble man tells his peers "look at my human imperfections, my insecurity, my need for approval; I am no better than you nor anyone else and we are all brothers on this earth."

other blog

to the 4 people that `follow` this blog - I don`t really use it anymore. I have a newer better blog at http://ianparaguay.blogspot.com/

i do appreciate you following 2010 though

borrowed thoughts from HDT

from A Natural History of Massachusetts

I am the wiser in respect to all knowledges, and the better qualified for all fortunes, for knowing that there is a minnow in the brook.

...

They are of sick and diseased imaginations who would toll the world`s knell so soon. Cannont these sedentary sects do better than prepare the shrouds and write the epitaphs of those other busy living men? The practical faith of all men belies the preacher`s consolation. What is any man`s discourse to me, if I am not sensible of something in it as steady and cheery as the creak of crickets? In it the woods must be relieved against the sky. Men tire me when I am not constantly greeted and refreshed as by the flux of sparkling streams. Surely joy is the condition of life. Think of the young fry that leaps in ponds, the myriads of insects ushered into being on a summer evening, the incessant note of the hyla with which the woods ring in the spring, the nonchalance of the butterfly carrying accident and change painted in a thousand hues upon its wings, or the brook minnow stoutly stemming the current, the luster of whose scales, worn bright by the attrition, is relfected upon the bank!

We fancy that this din of religion, literature, and philosophy, which is heard in pulpits, lyceums, and parlours, vibrates through the universe, and is as catholic a sound as the creaking of the Earth`s axle; but if a man sleep soundly, he will forget it all between sunset and dawn. ... When we lift out eyelids and open our ears, it disappears with smoke and rattle like the cars on a railroad.

and from Life Without Principle

A truly good book is something so natural, and as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and perfect, as a wild-flower discovered in a prairies of the West or in the jungles of the East. Genius is a light which makes the darkness visible, like the lightning`s flash, which perhance shatters the temple of knowledge itself...

Read not the Times. Read the Eternities. Conventionalities are at length as bad as impurities. Even the facts of science may dust the mind by their dryness, unless they are rather rendered fertile by the dews of fresh and living thruth. Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven. Yes, every thought which passes through the mind helps to wear it, and to deepen the ruts, which, as in the streets of Pompeii, evince how much it has been used.

Map of trails on newly aquired public land