It may not come as much of a surprise, but I was skeptical that L and R refer to highways. So I spent a couple of hours digging around on the net. It seems to me that as a matter of fact the "L" and "R" refer to Left and Right on the MRT (Mississippi River Trail). At least according to the MRT website. I pulled up a history of highway naming in the United States, several of them, which followed the development from "Good Roads" to Appalachian Highway Development System and never once found a systematic lettering designation. The letter L was used to refer to the Lincoln Highway, but the metal plaque looks markedly different from the photo. However, there was considerable argument revolving around the change from names to numbers. Many Americans protested numbering a pioneers progress as such, and claimed it was strictly anti-American to number the roads. I was left with the thought that perhaps this internet collab got it wrong, but I wasn't going to say anything.
It wasn't just for tests of authenticity. Several stamps in history have had many revisions. While the picture remains unchanged the perforation may. This difference in perfs will allow the collector to differentiate between issues. I have the complete Scotts Stamp Catalogue on my laptop which describes in detail the identification of different perf methods, when they were used and for each stamp it will list all the different perf types the stamp was produced with. Each type will have a different corresponding value. If I remember correctly the 2c King Georve IV red Canadian postage stamp had a 13 1/2 perf variant that has a book value of $50 whereas the more common perf variant is worth 15c.
In actuality you can't tell the difference between the earth rotating around the sun and the entire universe rotating around the earth. If the entire universe rotated around the earth it would look exactly like the earth rotating around the sun.
In fact, if the entire universe was a mere projection of the metacognitive laws of experience, it would look exactly as if it wasn't a mere projection and would appear to span light-years of time and space. It would look exactly like it does now. Except you wouldn't have any of these "fine-tuning" dilemmas as the teleology as commensurate to self-awarenss would resolve all extant cosmological problems.
So like bad things happen and people don't like it. In order to minimize the suffering drummed up by reflecting on vain losses, humans fabricate hero stories that convert a vain loss into a symbol of virtue. This is the story of war. War in any case should not be regarded as such, but rather than deal with the actual pain of loss, it is easier to fabricate delusions about the value of war.
A part of me thinks the only thing that gets better is the individuals approximation of the reality of the situation. I'm 30 years old on friday and I still get the same criticisms I got when I was a teenager, except both me and my detractors are adults now. The primary difference is that I stopped valuating myself according to the standards of others, be they originally from tradition or mere egotistical whimsy. In Transformations of Consciousness: The Metaphysics and Epistemology by Franklin Merrell-Wolff, Wolff describes a transormed consciousness arrived at through the exercise of a mental faculty he calls 'introception' as distinct from the prevailing forms of cognition; perception and conception. When an individual's introceptive awarenss is awakened and noetic Realization is attained, the standard material based value system is flipped on its head. What is value is no longer how much one can acquire, but how little one can manage with. The desire to accumulate is not special and by no means difficult to abide in. The contrary is truth, to liberate onself from the desire is difficulty. People who accumulate masses of wealth are no more than self-driven demonoids. It's as if they are sucking up the life from the universe around them. Like a black hole. Yet, they will value it higher than any wisdom. Suffering may lead to an awakening of the introceptive cognition, or it may simply cause one to strive harder to gain material wealth and status and thus consume all that much more of the universe. In short, they may very well become what they hated.
It is a sad fact that to be successful you need a lack of success. If everyone were successful there would be no meaning to the term. The desire therefor to be successful is complementary to the desire to be successful over and above other people. Which amounts to little more than the luciferean ego, whereby the Morning Star attempted to out-shine it's brethren, but it's pride transformed into shame. Like an enantiodromia, human pride wherever it rears its ugliness is chased by a shadow called shame. Hence, Elton John's ashamed little play-actor grew up to be a proud and arrogant prick. Who's later years will undoubtedly be full of shame again.
Yea, but have you ever heard Elton John's song Ego? Elton John is somewhat of a societal outcast himself. Now the song goes:
Do you remember acting out your youth A Romeo resplendent on an orange case Do you remember how I would recite And how I'd blow my lines and hide my face Well maybe it was childish, foolish, before schoolish Immaturish, lose your coolish But I had to grow and prove my ego
Take a look at me now and take a taste of the money I'm not in it for the bread I'm in it for the gravy, honey Inflate my ego gently, tell them heaven sent me Oh 'cause I'm so expressive and I'm so obsessed with my ego My ego and it's message Oh inform the press, invite the guests I need the press tonight
Whose to say that the pursuit of success in other areas of life isn't just a means of proving ones ego against the backdrop of a failed high-school experience? I was severely outcast and by all material measure I'm still an unsuccessful nobody. Now, in some circles it is believed that suffering is a teacher guiding us toward enlightenment. But the relationship is not a guarantee, people can suffer just enough to make them shoot-up their classmates. There is no linear causal equation that goes "Get Bullied = Be Successful". And that is even assuming you measure "success" by material wealth. I'm perfectly fine with not being Taylor Swift or some other ubercelebrity. I'm okay with being me, and that, to my mind, is the greatest kind of success. I don't have to impress, improve, show my stuff or wait for recognition.
With the obvious side-effect of being a completely unregulated agency producing potentially fallacious information. The internet also provides fertile soil for confirming biases. If you want to be a complete narcissist or machiavellian, you can set up your own blog and banish anyone who disagrees with you.
Far from being patriotic or honorable this is war. War is war. It is all stupidity. The way I see it, I lost at least 100 children that day, not just 5. Whereas, the most of us center or valuations and consciousness around our-selves. I'm choosing here to center my conscious reference point around humanity, which means not only did I lose 100 of my American children that day, I lost plenty of Japanese children too. But I can see how to the hopelessly self-centered, these 5 merit more recognition. Its such a touching story to those of us who are obsessed with our own egotistically derived emotions.
See, but humans are part of the fabric of space-time. So we can never expect to see "outside" the universe. It's actually pretty silly to try. The universe will just continue to enfold on itself hiding its true nature and apparently expanding forever into the distance. In the philosophical sense, what we have in cosmology is a type of naive materialism. "Matter" is a percept and concept of the conscious mind and what exists as "noumena" is beyond our five senses. But western society has been largely shaped by naturalists.
Well it's not like anyone knows the Great Hymn to the Aten anymore. Whatever archaeologists uncover about ancient civilization will just be regarded as "neat" and with very little seriousness put aside to ogle at later.
How manifold it is, what thou hast made! They are hidden from the face (of man). O sole god, like whom there is no other! Thou didst create the world according to thy desire,
From a completely different perspective it is entirely possible to live without optimism and in-fact without pessimism either. In so-called 'mystic' and vedantic schools of thought both optimism and pessimism are mutually interdependent opposites within a duality. The Vedantic doctrine of Advaita (non-duality) suggests it is possible to attain a state of non-dual thought, whereby the choice between pessmism and optimism is rendered non-sensical and becomes merely the mental maze of the leity.
In other words, neither is required and transcendence of duality may work out to be the most "evolutionarily advantageous".
In the pursuit of actual peace it must eventually dawn on one that much of culture representing the perpetuation of peace is itself violent or machoistic. I often consider whether or not the violent-machoistic peace-keeping mentality isn't a wolf in sheeps clothing. If it isn't really the human desire for destruction, control, dominance and sadism that drives the essentially non-peaceful behaviors. Except in this instance the feature is hiding within the appearance of virtue, and so fooling us into believing that peace is won at the hands of force.
Conversely Immanual Kant and George Washington take a different view of the perpetuation of peace. In What is Enlightenment? Kant indicates peace can only be perpetuated by maintaining an attitude contrary to force even in the face of force. Washington in his farewell address says something similar. I am inclined to agree with them. However it should be noted that the desire to use force whether for traditionally criminal or peace-keeping means is generally motivated not by a sadistic tendency, though that remains a part of human motivation, but primarily by fear. Thus rendering the act of perpetuating peace far more difficult than descending into some form of reciprocation. This may even provide the basis for the virtuous appearance of reciprocal force or violence.
Violent crime has gone down. But property crime has gone up. Property crime rates reflect economic circumstances more than violent crime rates.
"When I ride on the street cars, I am held up — I pay five cents for a ride that is worth two and a half cents, simply because a body of men have bribed the city council and the legislature, so that all the rest of us have to pay tribute to them. If I do not wish to fall into the clutches of the gas trust and choose to burn oil instead of gas, then good Mr. Rockefeller holds me up, and he uses a certain portion of his money to build universities and support churches which are engaged in telling us how to be good. Some of you are here for obtaining property under false pretenses — yet I pick up a great Sunday paper and read the advertisements of a merchant prince — “Shirt waists for 39 cents, marked down from $3.00.”
When I read the advertisements in the paper I see they are all lies. When I want to get out and find a place to stand anywhere on the face of the earth, I find that it has all been taken up long ago before I came here, and before you came here, and somebody says, “Get off, swim into the lake, fly into the air; go anywhere, but get off.” That is because these people have the police and they have the jails and judges and the lawyers and the soldiers and all the rest of them to take care of the earth and drive everybody off that comes in their way. A great many people will tell you that all this is true, but that it does not excuse you. These facts do not excuse some fellow who reaches into my pocket and takes out a five dollar bill; the fact that the gas company bribes the members of the legislature from year to year, and fixes the law, so that all you people are compelled to be “fleeced” whenever you deal with them; the fact that the street car companies and the gas companies have control of the streets and the fact that the landlords own all the earth, they say, has nothing to do with you." - Clarence Darrow
That seems highly unlikely considering how much Darrow advocated against underhanded practices in the justice system. There is no mention of such tactics in his autobiography. It is more than likely either a smear story made up to tarnish what he was all about or just a mash-up using his name because he was the most famous defense attorney in the history of United States. The Straight Dope has an article on it as well.
In fact, if the entire universe was a mere projection of the metacognitive laws of experience, it would look exactly as if it wasn't a mere projection and would appear to span light-years of time and space. It would look exactly like it does now. Except you wouldn't have any of these "fine-tuning" dilemmas as the teleology as commensurate to self-awarenss would resolve all extant cosmological problems.
It is a sad fact that to be successful you need a lack of success. If everyone were successful there would be no meaning to the term. The desire therefor to be successful is complementary to the desire to be successful over and above other people. Which amounts to little more than the luciferean ego, whereby the Morning Star attempted to out-shine it's brethren, but it's pride transformed into shame. Like an enantiodromia, human pride wherever it rears its ugliness is chased by a shadow called shame. Hence, Elton John's ashamed little play-actor grew up to be a proud and arrogant prick. Who's later years will undoubtedly be full of shame again.
Do you remember acting out your youth
A Romeo resplendent on an orange case
Do you remember how I would recite
And how I'd blow my lines and hide my face
Well maybe it was childish, foolish, before schoolish
Immaturish, lose your coolish
But I had to grow and prove my ego
Take a look at me now and take a taste of the money
I'm not in it for the bread I'm in it for the gravy, honey
Inflate my ego gently, tell them heaven sent me
Oh 'cause I'm so expressive and I'm so obsessed with my ego
My ego and it's message
Oh inform the press, invite the guests
I need the press tonight
Whose to say that the pursuit of success in other areas of life isn't just a means of proving ones ego against the backdrop of a failed high-school experience? I was severely outcast and by all material measure I'm still an unsuccessful nobody. Now, in some circles it is believed that suffering is a teacher guiding us toward enlightenment. But the relationship is not a guarantee, people can suffer just enough to make them shoot-up their classmates. There is no linear causal equation that goes "Get Bullied = Be Successful". And that is even assuming you measure "success" by material wealth. I'm perfectly fine with not being Taylor Swift or some other ubercelebrity. I'm okay with being me, and that, to my mind, is the greatest kind of success. I don't have to impress, improve, show my stuff or wait for recognition.
Text of Rudyard Kiplings "If"
http://www.everypoet.com/archive/poetry/Rudyard_Kipling/kipling_if.htm
Kiplings "If" in really neat Kinetic Typography
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tTeZNfwesg
How manifold it is, what thou hast made!
They are hidden from the face (of man).
O sole god, like whom there is no other!
Thou didst create the world according to thy desire,
In other words, neither is required and transcendence of duality may work out to be the most "evolutionarily advantageous".
Conversely Immanual Kant and George Washington take a different view of the perpetuation of peace. In What is Enlightenment? Kant indicates peace can only be perpetuated by maintaining an attitude contrary to force even in the face of force. Washington in his farewell address says something similar. I am inclined to agree with them. However it should be noted that the desire to use force whether for traditionally criminal or peace-keeping means is generally motivated not by a sadistic tendency, though that remains a part of human motivation, but primarily by fear. Thus rendering the act of perpetuating peace far more difficult than descending into some form of reciprocation. This may even provide the basis for the virtuous appearance of reciprocal force or violence.
"When I ride on the street cars, I am held up — I pay five cents for a ride that is worth two and a half cents, simply because a body of men have bribed the city council and the legislature, so that all the rest of us have to pay tribute to them. If I do not wish to fall into the clutches of the gas trust and choose to burn oil instead of gas, then good Mr. Rockefeller holds me up, and he uses a certain portion of his money to build universities and support churches which are engaged in telling us how to be good. Some of you are here for obtaining property under false pretenses — yet I pick up a great Sunday paper and read the advertisements of a merchant prince — “Shirt waists for 39 cents, marked down from $3.00.”
When I read the advertisements in the paper I see they are all lies. When I want to get out and find a place to stand anywhere on the face of the earth, I find that it has all been taken up long ago before I came here, and before you came here, and somebody says, “Get off, swim into the lake, fly into the air; go anywhere, but get off.” That is because these people have the police and they have the jails and judges and the lawyers and the soldiers and all the rest of them to take care of the earth and drive everybody off that comes in their way. A great many people will tell you that all this is true, but that it does not excuse you. These facts do not excuse some fellow who reaches into my pocket and takes out a five dollar bill; the fact that the gas company bribes the members of the legislature from year to year, and fixes the law, so that all you people are compelled to be “fleeced” whenever you deal with them; the fact that the street car companies and the gas companies have control of the streets and the fact that the landlords own all the earth, they say, has nothing to do with you." - Clarence Darrow
That seems highly unlikely considering how much Darrow advocated against underhanded practices in the justice system. There is no mention of such tactics in his autobiography. It is more than likely either a smear story made up to tarnish what he was all about or just a mash-up using his name because he was the most famous defense attorney in the history of United States. The Straight Dope has an article on it as well.
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2894/did-clarence-darrow-distract-a-jury-by-using-wire-to-keep-his-cigar-ash-from-falling