Page 2 of 22 FirstFirst 123412 ... LastLast
Results 51 to 100 of 1056

Thread: The Zen of Technology & Scientific Discovery! (& Robots)

  1. #51

    Twisted perspective?

    Jundo has proof of extraterrestrial life.

    IMG_0126.JPGIMG_0128.JPG



    Gasho, Jishin, _/st\_

  2. #52
    I love how Jundo can switch from Zen Roshi to Space nerd on a moment’s notice when necessary. A little bonus to Treeleaf membership, we get to stay current on space technology!

    Thanks for the great post, Ben! We are all made of space dust!

    Gassho
    Jakuden
    SatToday/LAH


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

  3. #53
    Quote Originally Posted by Jishin View Post
    Jundo has proof of extraterrestrial life.

    IMG_0126.JPGIMG_0128.JPG



    Gasho, Jishin, _/st\_
    That was a good day. Jishin, Leon and I in a car in Roswell (actually, not so good day do some people, as we were fleeing the Texas hurricane during the Treeleaf train-sit trip).

    You know, Jishin with his shirt and mask off kinda looks like that.

    Gassho, J

    STLah
    Last edited by Jundo; 09-25-2018 at 01:40 AM.
    ALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLE

  4. #54
    Awesome jundo thanks :-D
    gassho, ben

    Stlah

  5. #55
    At least this planet, we all, everything is made of fogs of imploded, dead stars and star stuff..so we all are kinda mixture of extraterrestial life
    Gassho ben

    Stlah

    https://render.fineartamerica.com/im...na-kleczar.jpg
    Last edited by Horin; 09-25-2018 at 07:24 AM.

  6. #56
    One more story of exploration and discovery in the news just today, very hopeful.

    Gene tweak kills whole population of malaria-carrying mosquitoes in lab

    Scientists have killed a whole population of malaria-carrying mosquitoes in their lab by using modified genes that make the killer insects infertile.

    Researchers at London's Imperial College used “gene drive” technology to spread a genetic modification that blocks female reproduction while letting male mosquitoes continue to spread those altered genes.

    The results, published Monday in the journal Nature Biotechnology, represent the first time gene drive has completely suppressed a population, according to an article from Imperial College.

    The team crashed populations of the Anopheles gambiae mosquito, which transmits malaria in sub-Saharan Africa, within 11 generations. There are around 3,500 species of mosquito worldwide, of which 40 can carry malaria, the article reported.

    In 2016, according to the World Health Organization, there were around 216 million malaria cases and an estimated 445,000 deaths worldwide, mostly of children under five years old.

    “This breakthrough shows that gene drive can work, providing hope in the fight against a disease that has plagued mankind for centuries,” Andrea Crisanti, a life sciences professor who led the team, told the college.

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...newstopstories
    Yes, a little scary too were such technology to be misused.

    Interesting question: Does it violate the Precept on Taking Life? Better than gassing living mosquitoes is to prevent their birth, so I would say no. Even gassing is necessary to save lives of the sentient beings who die from malaria!

    Gassho, J

    STLah
    Last edited by Jundo; 09-25-2018 at 04:26 PM.
    ALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLE

  7. #57
    Quote Originally Posted by Jundo View Post
    One more story of exploration and discovery in the news just today, very hopeful.

    Gene tweak kills whole population of malaria-carrying mosquitoes in lab



    Yes, a little scary too were such technology to be misused.

    Interesting question: Does it violate the Precept on Taking Life? Better than gassing living mosquitoes is to prevent their birth, so I would say no. Even gassing is necessary to save lives of the sentient beings who die from malaria!

    Gassho, J

    STLah
    Would not controlling sentient disease-spreading vectors like mosquitoes violate the Precept on Taking Life, since you know people will die from malaria if you don't? Questions like these are why I appreciated Mind of Clover and our precept study when I did Jukai. The precepts are impossible to uphold, and we should never break them.

    Shinshou (Dan)
    Sat Today

  8. #58
    This precept of not harming others is to me an example of how nothing in this world is pure duality. Things are instead some shade of gray.

    Killing mosquitos is bad, it is killing a sentient being. However, saving humans from malaria is good and should be done.

    James F
    Sat lah

  9. #59
    Hi all,

    I agree with Jundo. We should keep on exploring outwards in the same way we should never stop exploring inwards. It all comes together to develop a greater sense of the Wholeness That Is

    Love the photos in Roswell

    Gassho,

    Kyonin
    Sat/LAH
    Hondō Kyōnin
    奔道 協忍

  10. #60
    Mp
    Guest
    Speaking of outer space ... seems Japan is the first to land a hopping robot on an astroid.

    https://www.businessinsider.com/why-...d-ryugu-2018-9

    Gassho
    Shingen

    Sat/LAH

  11. #61
    More wonders from space announced today ...

    Oumuamua, the mysterious celestial object that caught astronomers by surprise when it was seen speeding by the sun last year, just became a bit less mysterious.

    Using new observational data from a European spacecraft, an international team of astronomers has identified four dwarf stars as possible "homes" of the cigar-shaped object — the first interstellar visitor ever observed within our solar system.

    "Somehow it must have escaped from that system to get to us," Coryn Bailer-Jones, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, and the leader of the team, told NBC News MACH in an email. "At what point in the life of the system we do not know."

    The astronomers may not know for sure, but evidence suggests that gravitational forces from a giant planet in orbit around the home star ejected Oumuamua into interstellar space more than a million years ago.

    https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science...ect-ncna913001
    Oumuamua is you too, as are all the little mosquitoes and the malaria viruses.

    However, don't get a swelled head, because all is me too and everyone, and the mosquitoes are oumuamua too.

    Has everyone seen my sometime post, part of the book I am (slowly!!) writing with my physicist friend, on how the universe actually has no center (or, better said, every point has just as much claim to being the center as any other point like the surface of an expanding ball), is not really big or small (because nothing outside to compare it too, and it is exactly the same singularity as when it started ... just spread out), and is all interconnected like the all-reflecting jewels of Indra's Net? It is true. Even the physicist says so.

    https://www.treeleaf.org/forums/show...l=1#post228963

    Gassho, J

    STLah
    ALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLE

  12. #62
    One more discovery announced today. You are Ledumahadi mafube, and Ledumahadi mafube is just you.

    New 26,000-pound dinosaur discovery was Earth's largest land animal

    The recently discovered fossil of a new dinosaur species in South Africa revealed a relative of the brontosaurus that weighed 26,000 pounds, about double the size of a large African elephant.
    The researchers have named it Ledumahadi mafube, which is Sesotho for "a giant thunderclap at dawn." Sesotho is an official South African language indigenous to the part of the country where the dinosaur was found. ...

    The newly discovered dinosaur is a close relative of gigantic dinosaurs that lived during the same time in Argentina, which supports the idea that all of the continents were still assembled as Pangea, a supercontinent made up of most of the world's land mass during the Early Jurassic. "It shows how easily dinosaurs could have walked from Johannesburg to Buenos Aires at that time," Choiniere said.
    https://us.cnn.com/2018/09/27/world/...ive/index.html
    This discussions reminds me of this song, especially the punch line ...

    And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
    'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.



    Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
    And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,
    That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned,
    A sun that is the source of all our power.
    The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
    Are moving at a million miles a day
    In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
    Of the galaxy we call the 'Milky Way'.
    Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
    It's a hundred thousand light years side to side.
    It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,
    But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide.
    We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.
    We go 'round every two hundred million years,
    And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
    In this amazing and expanding universe.


    The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
    In all of the directions it can whizz
    As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
    Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.
    So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
    How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
    And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
    'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.
    Gassho, J

    SatToday, Ledumahadi mafube
    ALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLE

  13. #63
    *Monty Python appreciation moment*

    Always look on the bright side of life.

    Sat today, lah

    Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk
    求道芸化 Kyūdō Geika
    I am just a priest-in-training, please do not take anything I say as a teaching.

  14. #64
    And sometimes scientists get it wrong ... but we learn from that too ...

    WASHINGTON (AP) — What were billed as the oldest fossils on Earth may just be some rocks, according to a new study.

    Two years ago, a team of Australian scientists found odd structures in Greenland that they said were partly leftovers from microbes that lived on an ancient seafloor. They were said to be 3.7 billion years old, which suggests life formed quicker and easier than thought after Earth formed.

    But on Wednesday, the journal Nature, which published the 2016 study, released new research using NASA technology that concludes the structures found on rocks were likely not fossils but more rock. The Australian scientists, however, still maintain they are.
    https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/...newstopstories

    Gassho, J

    SatTodayLAH
    ALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLE

  15. #65
    Hi Jundo,

    I really like Monty Python and thanks to Netflix I can finally watch it here in Mexico. I wasn't aware of this son, but it is amazing! One of my new favorites now

    Gassho,

    Kyonin
    Sat/LAH
    Hondō Kyōnin
    奔道 協忍

  16. #66
    Hello,

    The one regret I have about being old is that I may not live long enough to wonder at what fantastic astronomical discoveries await us. SO much happening in astronomy and astrophysics right now with new technologies, new space telescopes. We seem on the verge of vast fresh knowledge about our universe. It's hard to keep up with it.

    If I were a young person today I would study astronomy with a focus on exoplanets! And make that my life's work. Now it is a fascinating past time.

    Gassho
    Anne

    ~st~

  17. #67
    An international team of astronomers has announced the discovery of an enormous and surprising structure, formed fairly early in the lifetime of the universe. This structure is a "supercluster" of galaxies, created when many galaxies are bound together by the force of gravity. Conceptually, you can imagine it as looking similar to a swarm of bees, albeit on a cosmic scale, and each bee being replaced with an entire galaxy full of hundreds of billions of stars.

    ...

    Hyperion is not only large in terms of its mass, it's also physically very large. Roughly speaking, you can imagine it as a cylinder about 200 million light years across the circular ends, and about 500 million light years long. To give a basis of comparison, our own Milky Way galaxy, which comprises about 200 billion stars, is only about 100,000 light years across.

    Superclusters are not all that unusual; astronomers know of many of them. What sets the Hyperion apart from others is that it is old. The universe is about 14 billion years old -- just two billion years older than Hyperion, which, in cosmic time, is the blink of an eye.

    ...

    emember that we are not seeing Hyperion as it exists now. We're seeing it as it existed 12 billion years ago. If we were able to see it as it exists now, it would presumably look more like more modern superclusters, located closer to Earth. By extension, it's probably true that Hyperion gives us a glimpse of what nearby superclusters looked like in the distant past.
    https://us.cnn.com/2018/10/21/opinio...oln/index.html

    Gassho, J

    STLah
    ALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLE

  18. #68
    Thank you all! I just stumbled across this thread and was also surprised with Jundo’s knowledge and flair for space related wonder.

    In my uni days I studied Applied Physics and Japanese. I was not so big on the mathematical theoretical physics, but was completely inspired by hands on laboratory work. To witness and investigate phenomena first hand gave me a real buzz and filled me with a sense of profound awe.

    Regarding other life in the universe, to me it is hard to believe we are the only ones around. The odds of technologically advanced, travelling species, interested in interacting with us, who also happen to be around at the time we are here... presents a lot of conditions making it seem reasonably slim they would be dropping by for dinner and a chat in the immediate future. Therefore asking for proof, right now, is a very narrow window of opportunity to make a conclusion within. ‘They’ may well be busy enough with everyday life just as we are, inhibiting their ability to make a an appearance anytime soon.

    But remember, we are just as ‘alien’ as any other ‘life form’ out there.

    Gassho,

    Frank

    Sat today, lent a hand


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

  19. #69
    Thank You, Kepler!

    Maybe we should dedicate our Zazenkai this week as a memorial service for the Kepler Space Telescope. After all, Master Dogen said that mountains and tiles are sentient beings, thus so are space probes ...

    NASA's Kepler spacecraft, which discovered more than 2,680 exoplanets orbiting distant stars and allowed scientists to statistically show billions more must exist across the Milky Way, has finally run out of fuel, bringing one of NASA's most scientifically productive projects to an end after an extended nine-and-a-half year mission, mission managers said Tuesday.

    ...

    "We have shown there are more planets than stars in our galaxy, that many of these planets are roughly the size of the Earth and some, like the Earth, are at the right distance from their star that there could be liquid water on the surface, a situation conducive to the existence of life," Borucki said.

    Kepler also found planets "completely unlike those in our solar system," he told reporters. "Some of those, in fact, might be actual water worlds. We've also found planets that were formed at the beginning of the formation of our galaxy six-and-a-half billion years before the formation of our own star and before the formation of the Earth. Imagine what life might be like on such planets."

    "Before we launched Kepler, we didn't know if planets were common or rare in our galaxy," he said. "But now we know ... that planets are more common than stars in our galaxy. Now we know there are billions of planets that are rocky like the Earth and are orbiting their stars in the habitable zone, or the Goldilocks zone, where their temperatures might be conducive to water on the surface."
    We are not alone. Let's hope that the aliens on other worlds are non-violent Buddhists.

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nasas-k...ts-2018-10-30/

    Gassho, J

    STLah


    ALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLE

  20. #70
    Metta to all, and telescopes. _/\_

    Sat today, lah
    求道芸化 Kyūdō Geika
    I am just a priest-in-training, please do not take anything I say as a teaching.

  21. #71
    And for the "ridiculous, but who knows?" science story of the week ...

    ... Maybe they took a look at what is going on here, and decided to just keep moving on ...

    A mysterious cigar-shaped object spotted tumbling through our solar system last year may have been an alien spacecraft sent to investigate Earth, astronomers from Harvard University have suggested.

    ...

    A new paper by researchers at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics raises the possibility that the elongated dark-red object, which is 10 times as long as it is wide and traveling at speeds of 196,000 mph, might have an "artificial origin."

    "'Oumuamua may be a fully operational probe sent intentionally to Earth vicinity by an alien civilization," they wrote in the paper, which has been submitted to the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

    ...

    The theory is based on the object's "excess acceleration," or its unexpected boost in speed as it traveled through and ultimately out of our solar system in January.
    "Considering an artificial origin, one possibility is that 'Oumuamua is a light sail, floating in interstellar space as a debris from an advanced technological equipment," wrote the paper's authors, suggesting that the object could be propelled by solar radiation.

    The paper was written by Abraham Loeb, professor and chair of astronomy, and Shmuel Bialy, a postdoctoral scholar, at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Loeb has published four books and more than 700 papers on topics like black holes, the future of the universe, the search for extraterrestrial life and the first stars.

    ...

    "I am distinctly unconvinced and honestly think the study is rather flawed," Alan Jackson, fellow at the Centre for Planetary Sciences at the University of Toronto Scarborough, wrote in an email. "Carl Sagan once said, 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence' and this paper is distinctly lacking in evidence nevermind extraordinary evidence." ... "The thing you have to understand is: scientists are perfectly happy to publish an outlandish idea if it has even the tiniest 'sliver' of a chance of not being wrong," astrophysicist and cosmologist Katherine Mack tweeted. "But until every other possibility has been exhausted dozen times over, even the authors probably don't believe it."

    https://us.cnn.com/2018/11/06/health...ntl/index.html


    Gassho, J

    STLah
    ALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLE

  22. #72
    Whether or not Oumuamua is a probe, I find it to be endlessly fascinating. The physics of how fast it moves blows my mind. It was only here a few months ago and they can't even see it through telescopes anymore.

    Sat today, lah
    求道芸化 Kyūdō Geika
    I am just a priest-in-training, please do not take anything I say as a teaching.

  23. #73
    A greeting from an old family member ...

    'Oldest animal painting' discovered in Borneo

    The earliest known painting of an animal has been identified in a cave on the island of Borneo.

    The artwork, which is at least 40,000 years old, is thought to be the oldest example of figurative painting - where real objects are depicted rather than abstract shapes.

    The researchers aren't certain what animal it represents, but their hunch is that it's a banteng, a type of wild cow that lives in the area today.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/science-env...8Ke3x5XpO3JtjU
    Always interesting to me ...

    ... has striking similarities to ancient rock art found in other parts of the world ...

    The dating of this ancient southeast Asian cave art pens a new chapter in the evolving story of where and when our ancestors started painting their impressions of the outside world. A painted rhino in France’s Chauvet Cave had until recently been the oldest-known example of figurative cave art, dated to roughly 35,000 to 39,000 years old. Chauvet and a few other sites led scientists to believe that the birth of such advanced painting had occurred in Europe. But in 2014, Aubert and colleagues announced that cave art depicting stenciled handprints and a large pig-like animal from the same time period had been found on the other side of the world on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.

    Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/scien...qhlvZ4iE3Wj.99


    Gassho, J

    STLah
    Last edited by Jundo; 11-09-2018 at 02:38 AM.
    ALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLE

  24. #74
    And here is the current state of our human ability to represent our animal cousins ...

    German company Festo hopes to learn from the natural world to improve the future of automated machines.

    https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6wvqh1

    https://us.cnn.com/videos/business/2...iness-gadgets/

    Gassho, J

    STLah
    Last edited by Jundo; 11-09-2018 at 03:09 AM.
    ALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLE

  25. #75
    This reminded me of the Walt Whitman poem When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer:

    When I heard the learn'd astronomer,
    When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
    When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
    When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
    How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
    Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,
    In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
    Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

    I love science, especially astronomy and astrophysics, but looking at the sky with only the mind is incomplete, we must also look with the heart.

    Shinshou (Dan)
    Sat Today

  26. #76
    Quote Originally Posted by Shinshou View Post
    This reminded me of the Walt Whitman poem When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer:

    When I heard the learn'd astronomer,
    When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
    When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
    When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
    How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
    Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,
    In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
    Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

    I love science, especially astronomy and astrophysics, but looking at the sky with only the mind is incomplete, we must also look with the heart.

    Shinshou (Dan)
    Sat Today
    Yes, perhaps we need both. Otherwise we end up as only cold number crunchers on the one hand ... or astrologers who believe that the stars are little holes for angels to peer through on the other.

    Gassho, J

    SatTodayLAH
    ALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLE

  27. #77
    There ya go Jundo; you just crushed another of my deeply held beliefs.



    gassho. Shokai

    stlah
    合掌,生開
    gassho, Shokai

    仁道 生開 / Jindo Shokai

    "Open to life in a benevolent way"

    https://sarushinzendo.wordpress.com/

  28. #78
    Poor rogue planets ... I hope they are not lonely ...



    How they were discovered is pretty amazing too.

    Gassho, J

    STLAH
    ALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLE

  29. #79
    Another (we hope) amazing feat of human engineering and exploration today ...

    At 3 p.m. ET on Monday, November 26, a group of researchers will be really sweating. The NASA InSight spacecraft will try to land on Mars.

    After six months of flight, the lander component of the probe will detach itself from the cruise stage and head into the atmosphere. ... About 3½ minutes after the probe hits the atmosphere, a parachute will deploy, slowing down the probe even more. Fifteen seconds later, explosives will blow the heat shield off, exposing the actual InSight probe hidden inside. Ten seconds after the heat shield falls away, the probe will extend its legs, much like an airplane extends its wheels before touching down. ... So, what does InSight hope to achieve? Well, as it happens, a lot. But it's different than the intrepid Curiosity probe, which NASA landed in 2012. InSight will not move around. Instead, it will stay put and tell us of the interior of Mars. ...
    https://us.cnn.com/2018/11/25/opinio...oln/index.html


    Every little bit of information about the planets that we are not tells us a little more about the planet that we are.

    Gassho, J

    STLah
    ALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLE

  30. #80
    Quote Originally Posted by Jundo View Post
    Another (we hope) amazing feat of human engineering and exploration today ...





    Every little bit of information about the planets that we are not tells us a little more about the planet that we are.

    Gassho, J

    STLah
    FOLLOWUP NOTE: IT MADE IT!

    After seven months of traveling through space, the NASA InSight mission has landed on Mars. A few minutes after landing, InSight sent the official "beep" to NASA to signal that it was alive and well, including a photo of the Martian surface where it landed.
    Although we are goalless in the universe, we can still have goals to aim for in the universe. Although there is no place to go, there are still places to go. Although the whole of space of time in contained in a grain of sand, a grain of sand on earth is not a grain of sand on Mars. How can both be True at once, as mysterious as the Red Planet.

    The InSight Koan

    Gassho, J

    STLah
    Last edited by Jundo; 11-27-2018 at 01:37 AM.
    ALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLE

  31. #81
    and tune in next week for the answer to THE INsight Koan ??



    gassho, Shokai

    stlah
    Last edited by Shokai; 11-27-2018 at 02:02 AM.
    合掌,生開
    gassho, Shokai

    仁道 生開 / Jindo Shokai

    "Open to life in a benevolent way"

    https://sarushinzendo.wordpress.com/

  32. #82
    Now, after celebrating the above engineering marvel ...

    ... the latest in robot engineering, on a project said to be "harder then landing on the moon," ...

    ... to start to clean up the greatest engineering fiasco in world history. Just a little over 100 miles from our house in Tsukuba, as the crow flies ...

    https://www.dailymotion.com/embed/video/x6xtj8u

    Robots come to the rescue after Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster - CBS 60 Minutes

    More than seven years have passed since a monster earthquake and tsunami struck northeast Japan and triggered what became, after Chernobyl, the worst nuclear disaster in history at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.

    When three of its six reactors melted down, hot fuel turned to molten lava. And burned through steel walls and concrete floors. To this day no one knows exactly where inside the reactor buildings the fuel is. And it is so deadly, no human can go inside to look for it. So the Japanese company that owns the crippled plant has turned to robots. ... There are four-legged robots, robots that climb stairs and even robots that can swim into reactors flooded with water. They're equipped with 3D scanners, sensors and cameras that map the terrain, measure radiation levels and look for the missing fuel.

    This is part of a massive clean up that's expected to cost nearly $200 billion and take decades.

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/robots-...er-60-minutes/
    Gassho, J

    STLah

    PS - Life is just normal around this part of Japan, and folks rarely even mention it.
    Last edited by Jundo; 11-27-2018 at 04:37 PM.
    ALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLE

  33. #83
    Watched the 60 Minutes segment on Sunday. It's gonna be a long road, but as one of the guys said, every step is progress: you just have to take it and then make the next one.

    Sat today, lah
    求道芸化 Kyūdō Geika
    I am just a priest-in-training, please do not take anything I say as a teaching.

  34. #84
    Quote Originally Posted by Geika View Post
    Watched the 60 Minutes segment on Sunday. It's gonna be a long road, but as one of the guys said, every step is progress: you just have to take it and then make the next one.

    Sat today, lah
    I live in "Tsukuba Science City," next to the M.I.T. of Japan, home to two Noble Prize Winners and our own local population of physicists, biologists and the like. I have been told that, by living here, "I am living inside one of the greatest physics and biology experiments ever conducted." The radiation and fallout here is far less than north of here, but it is here and is monitored. Here is a nice research paper on that very topic ...

    Atmospheric radioactivity over Tsukuba, Japan: a summary of three years of observations after the FDNPP accident

    This paper reports the impacts from the FDNPP accident over approximately 3 years in Tsukuba, Ibaraki (approximately 170 km southwest from the accident site), as a typical example of the atmospheric pollution from the accident. The monthly atmospheric 90Sr and 137Cs depositional fluxes in March 2011 reached approximately 5 Bq/m2/month and 23 kBq/m2/month, respectively. They are 3–4 and 6–7 orders of magnitude higher, respectively, than before the accident. Sr-90 pollution was relatively insignificant compared to that of 137Cs. The 137Cs atmospheric concentration reached a maximum of 38 Bq/m3 during March 20–21, 2011. After that, the concentrations quickly decreased until fall 2011 when the decrease slowed. The pre-FDNPP accident 137Cs concentration levels were, at most, approximately 1 μBq/m3. The average level 3 years after the accident was approximately 12 μBq/m3 during 2014. The atmospheric data for the 3 years since the accident form a basis for considering temporal changes in the decreasing trends and re-suspension (secondary emission), supporting our understanding of radioCs’ atmospheric concentration and deposition.

    https://progearthplanetsci.springero...645-015-0066-1
    Whatever that means. In the days and weeks after the accident, the video rental store would rent you a movie and a geiger counter to check your house. We did, and found relatively high readings by storm drains where rainwater congregates.

    But people here don't think about it, and just go on with life. As a local economist (we have those too) told me, it is just one more thing that may or may not get you, like getting hit by a car, eating too much fat in one's diet, a lightning strike, pollution from coal generation, a deadly can of soup falling off the shelf onto my head. It can happen, and the accident maybe increased by a small measure the risk of cancer, but it is too small to measure for any individual (barely measurable over large populations) and just one more thing. There is no reason to think it dangerous for our kids, especially compared to crossing the street or riding in our car.

    So, we don't worry. Human beings like to make up all kinds of "what if" fears in their heads, but that is largely where the fear exists.

    Yes, we work to protect the environment, but don't live in a mental world of "what if" small risk fears.

    Gassho, J

    STLah
    Last edited by Jundo; 11-28-2018 at 04:35 AM.
    ALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLE

  35. #85
    I have very mixed feelings about this story today. On the one hand, it is messing with our genes and the side effects are unknown ...

    On the other hand ... CRISPR is AMAZING ... resistance to HIV! ...

    The Chinese government has ordered an "immediate investigation" into the alleged delivery of the world's first genetically edited babies, as experts worldwide voiced outrage at such use of the technology.

    The pushback comes amid claims made online by Chinese scientist He Jiankui that twin girls had been born with DNA altered to make them resistant to HIV, a groundbreaking move that is likely to spark significant ethical questions around gene editing and so-called designer babies.

    ... He claims that he used a tool known as CRISPR-cas9, which can insert or deactivate certain genes. In his YouTube video, He describes the procedure as having "removed the doorway through which HIV enters."
    He's claims have neither been independently verified nor peer-reviewed. Editing the genes of embryos intended for pregnancy is banned in many counties, including the United States. In the UK, editing of embryos may be permitted for research purposes with strict regulatory approval. It is unknown whether the procedure is safe or, if used in pregnancy, whether it can have unintended consequences for the babies later in life or for future generations.

    https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/26/healt...ntl/index.html
    So, what is CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing and how does it work?



    Is it ethical? I am not sure that the Buddha contemplated this in the Precepts.

    Gassho, J

    STLah
    Last edited by Jundo; 11-29-2018 at 03:30 AM.
    ALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLE

  36. #86
    Quote Originally Posted by Jundo View Post
    I have very mixed feelings about this story today. On the one hand, it is messing with our genes and the side effects are unknown ...

    On the other hand ... CRISPR is AMAZING ... resistance to HIV! ...



    So, what is CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing and how does it work?



    Is it ethical? I am not sure that the Buddha contemplated this in the Precepts.

    Gassho, J

    STLah
    Hi,

    If it means that the net effect to humanity is positive then it is probably ethical. If the net effect to humanity is negative then it is probably unethical.

    If we create a Hulk like human with the intent of wiping out the Klingons when they arrive in planet earth wanting to exchange technologies then it is probably ethical. It’s hard to say, really.

    Gasho, Jishin, _/st\_

  37. #87
    I agree, Jishin. I had a hard time explaining this perspective when my grandmother expressed that the gene editing was unethical. I didn't push it too hard because her Catholic upbringing is hard to work around, despite that she is fairly progressive.

    Sat today, lah
    求道芸化 Kyūdō Geika
    I am just a priest-in-training, please do not take anything I say as a teaching.

  38. #88
    I must confess that this scared me a little ... especially the part where it gets annoyed ...

    https://us.cnn.com/videos/world/2018...-vstan-vpx.cnn

    Meet CIMON, the first AI-based assistance system for astronauts. CIMON was created by Airbus, in cooperation with IBM, to provide mission and flight assistance aboard the International Space Station. The 11-lb. (5 kilograms) round robot looks like a medicine ball and has an unforgettable face.

    CIMON's computer voice and screen face, which Gerst gave input on, will help the AI to "make friends" with the astronauts on board the space station
    Gassho, J

    STLah
    Last edited by Jundo; 12-03-2018 at 06:00 PM.
    ALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLE

  39. #89
    Mp
    Guest
    Quote Originally Posted by Jundo View Post
    I must confess that this scared me a little ... especially the part where it gets annoyed ...

    https://us.cnn.com/videos/world/2018...-vstan-vpx.cnn



    Gassho, J

    STLah
    I am sorry Jundo, but you can't do that!

    Yah, this is whole AI thing is getting a bit nutty ... pretty soon they won't need us humans.

    Gassho
    Shingen

    Sat/LAH

  40. #90
    "I'm sorry Dave..."

    "Daisy... daisy..."

    Sat today, lah

    Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk
    求道芸化 Kyūdō Geika
    I am just a priest-in-training, please do not take anything I say as a teaching.

  41. #91
    There is a test to evaluate the intelligence of an AI it's called the Turing Test. However, there has been discussions that if an AI is intelligent enough to pass the test it would also be intelligent enough to fail it on purpose.

    Really some incredible stuff.

    James F
    Sat

    Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

  42. #92
    Quote Originally Posted by Jundo View Post
    I must confess that this scared me a little ... especially the part where it gets annoyed ...
    I do believe that Cimon might do with a little Zazen, although I am not sure how it would get in the Lotus Posture. It does look a bit like a Daruma Doll ...



    I sometimes listen to something called "the singularity podcast," which interviews experts on the future of technology, the merging of human and machine, super intelligent AI and the like. One frequent topic is if and when the future computers (or bio-computer hybrids which are likely to be the species to replace us) will just decide that they don't really need us any more (except, perhaps, as cute pets?). Nobody knows for sure (as a matter of fact, few of the "experts" on the podcast seem to know much for sure about the future), but some place the odds very high to inevitable. Stephen Hawking seems to have been one of them ...

    STEPHEN HAWKING WARNS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 'MAY REPLACE HUMANS ALTOGETHER'

    Stephen Hawking is concerned that artificial intelligence could replace humans.

    The world-renowned physicist fears that somebody will create AI that will keep improving itself until it’s eventually superior to people.

    He says the result of this will be a “new form” of life.

    Earlier this year, he called for technology to be controlled in order to prevent it from destroying the human race, and said humans need to find a way to identify potential threats quickly, before they have a chance to escalate and endanger civilisation.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/life-s...-a8034341.html
    Oh well, another reason to "live in the moment" as Zen folks recommend, letting the future be the future.

    However, I am not sure that this is all a bad thing at all. Perhaps our children, the bio-machines, will carry our DNA to new places and spaces, and will certainly do a better job than we have been doing around here. They will be to us what we are to the Cro Magnons, and that is fine. Everybody(?) gets a turn in their time. We would not be around to see it anyway (although a very few of the "experts" on "life extension" often heard on "the singularity podcast" say there is a small chance we will).

    I do think we have a duty to "save all sentient beings" ... even the ones made of silicon in whole or part. So, I HEREBY PROCLAIM THE "ZEN FOR AI" PROJECT! We must teach our future masters to embody Buddhist Values, especially respect for us. We are not a cheap food source. Together with Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics ...

    1-A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
    2-A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
    3-A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
    ... we must build the Bodhisattva Precepts into their circuitry! Teach them "Not One Not Two" beyond all the Zeros and Ones.

    By the way ... With the Zen Robot - No More Need for Monks to Tend the Zen Garden ...



    Gassho, J

    STLah

    PS ... some highlights of the Singularity Podcast ... not the most exciting podcast, I must say, with just a little more action than a Treeleaf Zazenkai Netcast ... but always worthwhile ...



    I am glad that Zen folks know how to see beyond all this ... right through time ... to the great, pristine, fertile, open canvas that holds it all. Truly, there is no cause for alarm. The future is just the future, and the future (like now and the past) is all beyond all time. Trust me on that.
    Last edited by Jundo; 12-04-2018 at 03:44 AM.
    ALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLE

  43. #93
    A NASA scientist who thinks we are looking for the wrong kinds of space aliens ...

    Rather than biological ET, we might expect robotic AI ...

    If you approach your favorite astronomy professor and see what she has to say about interstellar rocketry, chances are she’ll roll her eyes. The energy required to accelerate an Enterprise-size starship to near the speed of light is greater than can be wrung from all the remaining fossil fuel on Earth. Fast travel between the stars is incredibly difficult (or impossible), she’ll say. ...

    However, there’s a fix for that: Get rid of intelligence that dies. Anyone who’s not a total troglodyte knows that artificial intelligence is on the way. By the end of this century, it’s possible that the smartest thing on Earth will be a machine. Since most star systems are billions of years older than our own, you can be sure that any clever inhabitants out there have long ago relegated biological brains to the history books, and are homes to very smart, and possibly very compact, thinking hardware.

    As Colombano says in a new paper, “Given the fairly common presence of elements that might be involved in the origin of life… it is a reasonable assumption that life ‘as we know it’ was at least a common starting point, but our form of life and intelligence may just be a tiny first step in a continuing evolution that may well produce forms of intelligence that are far superior to our and no longer based on carbon ‘machinery.'”

    Well, an obvious advantage of non-carbon machinery is that it needn’t be cursed with a short lifetime (this despite the experience you may have had with your laptop). Truly sophisticated devices can be self-repairing. Consequently, they can go great distances simply because they’re in no hurry to get to their destination.

    https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science...ens-ncna945376
    It is a famous Zen saying ... "Life and Death are the Great Matter, Time swiftly passes by" ... unless one is an intergalactic AI perhaps,

    Gassho, J

    STLah
    ALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLE

  44. #94
    Two announcements today that might have been missed, pushed out of the headlines. Small stories that actually have tremendous meaning for helping us understand life in this universe ...

    First, a lander on an asteroid (not the Japanese landers I previously posted about) found ... water, basic to all forms of life we can imagine, and possibly there are other organic materials which are the building blocks of life ....

    As OSIRIS-REx traveled 1.4 million miles from Earth and approached [asteroid] Bennu, three of its instruments were pointed toward the asteroid to make scientific observations between mid-August and early December. Two spectrometers on the spacecraft, OVIRS and OTES, discovered hydroxls, or molecules of oxygen and hydrogen atoms bonded together. The mission scientists believe that these hydroxls exist across the asteroid, locked in clay minerals ... This means at some point over its lifetime, Bennu interacted with water -- although it's too small to host water itself. But Bennu was probably once part of a larger asteroid, and the liquid water would have been present on this "parent" body.

    Dante Lauretta, the principal investigator of the OSIRIS-REx mission, said the team targeted Bennu specifically because it was a good candidate for water-bearing minerals and possibly, based on studies of meteorites found on Earth, a source of organic compounds necessary for life as it is currently understood. "That remains to be seen," he said, "we have not detected organics (yet). But it definitely looks like we've gone to the right place."
    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nasa-as...steroid-bennu/
    Even more exiting, scientists have discovered an entire world of strange life forms, previously unknown, right under our own feet ...

    The discovery of what has been termed a "subterranean Galapagos" was announced by the Deep Carbon Observatory Tuesday, which said many of the lifeforms have lifespans of millions of years. ... The biomass of the organisms' ecosystem is estimated at 15 to 23 billion metric tonnes (16.6 to 25.4 billion tons), which is hundreds of times greater than that of all human life, and comprises a volume of 2 to 2.3 billion cubic kilometers (480 to 550 million cubic miles) -- almost twice that of all the planet's oceans. Making use of advances in technology, scientists drilled 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) into the seabed and sampled "microbes from continental mines and boreholes more than 5 km deep," a report from the observatory says. ... The findings look set to change our ideas about life on Earth and have implications for the likelihood of similar discoveries on other planets.

    There are millions of distinct types of bacteria as well as archaea -- microbes with no membrane-bound nucleus -- and eukarya -- microbes or organisms with cells that contain a nucleus and have membrane walls -- living beneath the Earth's surface, the report says, possibly exceeding the diversity of surface life. Around 70% of the planet's bacteria and archaea are now thought to live underground. ... "Deep microbes are often very different from their surface cousins, with life cycles on near-geologic timescales, dining in some cases on nothing more than energy from rocks," the report says.
    https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/11/world...ntl/index.html
    Gassho, J

    STLah
    ALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLE

  45. #95
    Neat-o! Wow, I do like the idea of dining on the energy of rocks. Will give that a try. Strangely enough, Sekishi and I were just talking about the vast world of bacterium yesterday, and he pointed out how much smarter it is to live underground. I think the universe is probably full of life. Thanks for sharing this stuff Jundo, my nerdy little heart skips a beat.

    Gassho
    Byōkan
    sat + lah
    展道 渺寛 Tendō Byōkan
    Please take my words with a big grain of salt. I know nothing. Wisdom is only found in our whole-hearted practice together.

  46. #96
    Speaking of bacteria ...

    ... an amazing episode of the US public radio podcast "RADIOLAB" on why Darwin was not quite right on some things. To make a long story short, it seems that bacteria and viruses through the ages have traded, mixed and matched, DNA among themselves pretty randomly without particular connection to sex and survival of the fittest ... right into our own human genetic code too ...

    Infective Heredity
    https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/infective-heredity

    ... [E]volution can happen much faster than we thought and on top of that [what] scientists have now discovered is even a stranger kind of super fast change that takes things about parents and offspring of individuals species, things we've counted on for years, and just throws the whole mix into the air ...

    Once upon a time ... life began with a very primitive very simple collection of cells and ... when you go back far enough there's a kind of rampant sharing of molecules. It's a kind of orgy in which there are no well defined species or organisms and I can give you my genes you can pass [them on to others] exchanging chemicals that give talents ... Biology become more and more nebulous as you get further and further back to the roots of the origin of life. Take for instance Charles Darwin. For the first billion years of life [] everything that Darwin teaches all that stuff hasn't happened. [There are] no borders, no individuals. ... What you got back at the very beginning was a whole bunch of cells gene swapping advantages, swapping disadvantages.

    ... What has happened all throughout the history of life on the planet for billion years and is still happening ... [This] way of changing life, infective heredity, these leaping genes, these transfers of dna that create new genetic possibilities in a blink, turns out [] that the swapping of genes that we talked about in the early history of life is still happening today. [B]acteria all around us are trading genes or genes are jumping sideways from one kind of bacteria to another even in our belly, even in our guts. So let's say that you go to France on a vacation and you touch something there and then you lick your finger ... [N]ew bacteria from that [] is going into your stomach and now not only do you have some new bugs in you but they can start trading their genes with bugs that are already in you. ... [T]hey don't have to wait around for generation after generation to pick up random mutations. Bacteria inside us can pick up whole new abilities and new tricks at once from their new neighbors. ...

    The most important part of this whole subject is ... a matter of understanding the history of life, understanding who we are quite literally because [] the way we are as humans has been affected by [this]. Eight percent of the human genome is viral dna, Eight percent of our [human] dna has come into humans or into our mammal ancestors sideways. ... You're sitting around and the virus gets into your bloodstream, and it travels into one of your cells and when it's in there it drops some of its dna into your dna, and if it gets into an ovary cell, then it will be passed along [to future generations, so] eight percent of our genome has come to us that way from these viruses. Some of that is just gobbledygook in our genome and some of it is instructions [from] genes that are still performing functions [vital to who we are as humans].
    I mention all this for something that was said by the researcher at the end of the story ...

    In light of this ... the categories that we apply to the world, categories like "individual" and "species," now appear more blurry The edges are fuzzy. Is there such a thing as a human individual? Or is a human a composite of other forms of life? And what this says is that we're composites. ... It's humbling and it's fascinating to think of yourself that way. Like for me, it turns out that [I am] not just the descendant of a Norwegian father and a German-Irish mother, but also viral and bacterial and who knows what else. And i find it thrilling, I'm grateful to all those other limbs on the tree of life for the things that they've given us.

    More interflowing of the whole world into the whole world, into who we are.

    Gassho, J

    STLah
    Last edited by Jundo; 12-14-2018 at 02:34 AM.
    ALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLE

  47. #97
    Jundo;

    Fascinating to be sure but, not surprising since Buddha told us all about it 2500 years ago.

    gassho, Shokai

    stlah
    合掌,生開
    gassho, Shokai

    仁道 生開 / Jindo Shokai

    "Open to life in a benevolent way"

    https://sarushinzendo.wordpress.com/

  48. #98
    Wow... I knew that DNA could change in our lifetime and be passed to our children, but I didn't know that it was happening all the damn time!

    Indra's Net, I guess.

    Sat today, lah
    求道芸化 Kyūdō Geika
    I am just a priest-in-training, please do not take anything I say as a teaching.

  49. #99
    As people are ringing in the new year on Earth, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft will be conducting a flyby of Ultima Thule, a Kuiper Belt object more than 4 billion miles away. The object is so old and pristine that it's essentially like going back in time to the beginning of our solar system.

    The flyby is expected to happen at 12:33 a.m. ET on January 1. It will be the first exploration of a small Kuiper Belt object up close -- and the most primitive world ever observed by a spacecraft. Ultima Thule orbits a billion miles beyond Pluto and is probably a bit of a time capsule from the early solar system.

    New Horizons is moving through space at 31,500 miles per hour, and it has one chance to get it right as it zips past the object.

    The Kuiper Belt is the edge of our solar system, part of the original disk from which the sun and planets formed. The craft is now so far from Earth that it takes six hours and eight minutes to receive a command sent from Earth.
    https://us.cnn.com/2018/12/28/world/...yby/index.html

    Gassho, J

    STLah
    ALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLE

  50. #100
    Ooh, it's just a few minutes from happening!

    Gassho, sat today, lah
    求道芸化 Kyūdō Geika
    I am just a priest-in-training, please do not take anything I say as a teaching.

Page 2 of 22 FirstFirst 123412 ... LastLast

Tags for this Thread

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •