Get Back To Me When The Plane Goes Down

Placed firmly in the category of I'll believe it when I see it, is the MI5 contention that there are jihadist women out there getting explosive breast implants.

I've seen a few references to this around the internet. While I don't doubt that some wacky crew could actually manage it once, I can't see women lining up to do this, nor is it actually clear that the damage would be as bad as they say it is. The damage could be pretty awful, but the propagandist who came up with this one wants us to believe that explosive implants would always and everywhere result in a plane crash.

I doubt it.

What I doubt even more are the logistics involved. It adds an extra layer of expense and complexity on top of an already shaky situation for the terrorists, which is why I think MI5 made this up: MI5 has the sort of tax-base which allows them the luxury of spending more money on the latest weapons systems. Sure, some terrorists can think this up too, but they just don't have the funding or the nice comfortable high security building within which to do this sort of stuff on any sort of regular basis.

Besides, government funded entities are racking up a spectacular record for coming up with scary scenarios, especially when budgets are in question.

Attention Deconcentration

Here's a link to Attention Deconcentration in Free Diving.

Relaxed state easily can be achieved by specific technique, called attention deconcentration (AD). AD has been developed by Oleg Bakhtiyarov (Kiev, Ukraine) as the initial stage of psychological state management technique. AD means uniform distribution of attention on the whole perception field. AD is opposite to attention concentration when certain objects are distinguished from environment. Besides visual perception, attention can be distributed upon aural and tactile fields.

And if my reasoning is correct, this would be identity strengthening, rather than identity negating, because the attention is outward.

Building Up To Identity

So, as conscious beings we define, but until there are at least two other entities to define against, the definitions we can make are limited. We can only define relation to others, whether we are defining the planet Jupiter or self. More entities perceived means a more discrete identity, because our identifications can be more sophisticated.

At human scale, the will to power distorts this picture. More people can be presented as menacing, or as inadvertantly causing a logistical problem. Many are several generations from healthy human living patterns, aren't even aware of them, and assume there is no god; so they try to take up the position.

And those encouraged to 'find themselves' go marching off into unreality, their identity becoming more nebulous each and every day they continue to listen to what passes for psychological advice in this country.

But, if the presence of more entities in the picture lets us distinguish between a puddle in Texas and the duck pond on East King's Highway, it ought to help us figure out who we are too.

Secondarily, and pursuant to tearing down the premise of the power mad, the space becomes refined too. There are natural spheres of influence; Jupiter's gravitational influence just happens- no votes, no central planning, and no redistribution. Our territories of control ought to be rather obvious as well- all the more obvious and robust as more people come into our lives.

Is There A Mistake In This?

A single point of consciousness would have no real concept of itself as distinct, until it became aware of another.
With the introduction of the other, it would now have a limited awareness of:

Other
Between (whatever is between Other and it)
Away from other
Toward other.

Less certainly, there is beyond other- not always verifiable- and beyond self. Beyond self is derived from the same orientation as 'away from other' and therefore can be experienced by self, whereas 'beyond other' is an assumption that space/time exists beyond other.

A perfectly reasonable assumption within the material world, but not directly experienced.

It requires an addition of a third to fully develop our orientations: up, down, left, right, back, forward. The process is scalable in nature: we use various parts of our bodies in relation to each other in order to determine our personal orientation in space, as well as using the positions of various other bodies (friends, planets, coffee table) to determine where exactly we are at whatever scale we are thinking about.

With three:

It's important to understand the orientations do not initially have the semantic content we currently associate with them. They are simple combinations of the positions of self, other, and third. There's away from all, there's toward all; there are various combinations of away from one and toward another.

Between can be bounded by three.
One of the three can be 'between' the other two, creating a situation in which beyond the other (or another) is known by virtue of direct perception of one beyond another.

Yes, it is odd, but is it accurate?
In so far as it goes anyway...

Go Waste Some Time

Via Notes from a Commmon-place Book I've found a great essay on time. It's the sort of essay I find extremely hard to quote because it is all so good.

Corporations That Probably Won't Get Repeat Business

I finally paid off my Chase card, only to find a service charge for $2.93 on the next bill. Now, I had contemplated closing the account because they had told me they were going up on my interest rate, but I hadn't done anything. $2.93 is a small amount, but it was enough to make me pick up the phone and close the account right then.
I suppose I'll pay them the $2.93, but seriously, what is it for?

I decide to try a pre-paid phone service- much cheaper for me than what I was paying Verizon. I call Verizon on the 11th, but since the billing cycle ends on the 4th, I get this spiel- they don't want to pro-rate, so even though I made it clear the phone I have from them doesn't work, they still are billing me for the full time. So I have their phone, which won't hold a charge, sitting on my mantle.
$40+ down the drain.

In both cases I didn't have a particularly negative view of the company. Chase was just doing what credit card companies did, and Verizon is an okay cellular company- they just weren't providing a package that made sense to me. But they've just lifted the bar higher if they ever want to get me back as a customer with these extra charges.

I've also started to think there's something unjust about how they do stuff. Chase can send a notice to me about how they are going to change terms. I am supposed to do something if I don't like it, but otherwise the terms will change if I don't do anything. Let's look at it the other way- what if I sent them something? If they do nothing, will what I ask for take place?

Or will they use government, credit agencies, and whatever else to get what they want out of me?

This isn't a free market.

Worse Than I Thought

For Women Who Want Kids, 'the Sooner the Better': 90 Percent of Eggs Gone By Age 30:

The study published by the University of St. Andrews and Edinburgh University in Scotland found that women have lost 90 percent of their eggs by the time they are 30 years old, and only have about 3 percent remaining by the time they are 40.

And the first are of a much better quality than the last too.
This looks very bad, especially if one has any inking of the biological implications over generations.

Gee, I wonder what the God of the Living thinks about this. Perhaps 'not yet, I have other important things to do' isn't the response He was looking for.