25 Most Intelligent Animals On Earth

9:21 AM | BY ZeroDivide EDIT
Although most people wouldn’t typically associate extreme intelligence with animals, that is a bit of a misconception. While they are obviously not able to match the computational and meta cognitive power of the human brain there are certain things some animals specialize in for which their minds are uniquely adapted. In some ways you could say they are smarter (or more functional) than even humans at performing these tasks. These are the 25 most intelligent animals on Earth.

25

Squids

SquidsSquids are said to be among the brainiest invertebrates in the world. Their brain structure is different from other invertebrates in the ocean, as they share complex features similar to the human brain. Like human beings, squids can be very curious about their environment. They have the ability to learn new skills and develop the capacity to use tools that can either help them repress their boredom and protect them from harm.

The Last Sermon of Muhammad by Shia Accounts

9:05 AM | BY ZeroDivide EDIT
Praise belongs to Allah Who is exalted above all the creation in His Oneness, and is near to His creation in His loneliness. Sublime is His authority, and great are the pillars of His names. His knowledge encompasses everything while He is lofty in status. He subdues all the creation through His power and evidence. He has always been praiseworthy and shall always be praised. [He is the glorified Whose glory has no end. He begins and repeats the creation and to Him all affairs are returned.] He is the maker of what has been elevated (the heavens), the expander of what has been spread out (the Earth), and the dominator of the planets and the heavens. He is holy and exalted above all purifications, the Lord of the angels and the spirit. He grants to all that He created. He prolongs His grace to all that He originated. He sees all eyes, and eyes do not see Him. He is generous, forbearing, and patient. He made His mercy encompass everything, and He favored them by His grace. He does not hasten His revenge, nor does He take the initiative on what He knows they deserve of His punishment. He comprehends the secrets, and knows what the hearts conceal. Hidden things are not concealed from Him, nor do they make Him doubtful. He encompasses in knowledge and dominates everything, and has strength and power over everything. Nothing is like Him, and He is the establisher of "the thing" when it was nothing. He is everlasting [and free of need], who acts justly; there is no god but He, the mighty, the wise. He is exalted beyond being grasped by visions, while He grasps all visions, and He is subtle, well aware of all things. None can reach His description by seeing Him, nor can anyone find out how He is, secretly or openly, and He is not known except by what Allah, the mighty and the majestic, has made as the signs of Himself.

One Hundred Poems by Kabir, translated by Rabindranath Tagore

8:55 AM | BY ZeroDivide EDIT
Translated in 1915

The poet Kabir, a selection from whose songs is here for the first time offered to English readers, is one of the most interesting personalities in the history of Indian mysticism. Born in or near Benares, of Mohammedan parents, and probably about the year 1440, he became in early life a disciple of the celebrated Hindu ascetic Ramananda. Ramananda had brought to Northern India the religious revival which Ramanuja, the great twelfth- century reformer of Brahmanism, had initiated in the South. In this revival was in part a reaction against the increasing formalism of the orthodox cult, in part an assertion of the de- mands of the heart as against the intense intellectualism of the Vedanta philosophy, the exaggerated monism which that philosophy proclaimed. It took in Ramanuja's preaching the form of an ardent personal devotion to the God Vishnu, as representing the personal aspect of the Divine Nature : that mystical " religion of love " which everywhere makes its appearance at a certain level of spiritual culture, and which creeds and philosophies are powerless to kill.

Though such a devotion is indigenous in Hinduism, and finds expression in many passages of the Bhagavad Gita, there was in its mediaeval revival a large element of syncretism. Ramananda, through whom its spirit is said to have reached Kabir, appears to have been a man of wide religious culture, and full of missionary enthusiasm. Living at the moment in which the impassioned poetry and deep philosophy of the great Persian mystics, Attar, Sadi, Jalalu'ddin Rumi, and Hafiz, were exercising a powerful influence on the religious thought of India, he dreamed of reconciling this intense and personal Mohammedan mysticism with the traditional theology of Brahmanism./ Some have regarded both these great religious leaders as influenced also by Christian thought and life : but as this is a point upon which competent authorities hold widely divergent views, its discussion is not attempted here. We may safely assert, however, that in their teachings, two perhaps three apparently antagonistic streams of intense spiritual culture met, as Jewish and Hellenistic thought met in the early Christian Church : and it is one of the outstanding characteristics of Kabir's genius that he was able in his poems to fuse them into one.

New Atlantis and Voynich Manuscript

8:48 AM | BY ZeroDivide EDIT
The Drebbel/Voynich Theory             -Click here for the blog

This page describes my theory about the possible origins, dating and content of the mysterious Voynich Manuscript. This theory proposes that the Voynich Manuscript may be a faux book, which was created between 1610 and 1620, and made to look as though it came from Francis Bacon's fictional island of New Atlantis. And as such, that it was made to look much older than it was, and that it includes a map of the fictional Bensalem, along with both real and fanciful representations of optics and other devices, flora and fauna, the Arts and sciences, astronomy and astrology. And, that much of this was reflected from past, real works, but distorted into an imaginative reflection of how the author thought they would have been perceived and practiced by the advanced, fictional culture of New Atlantis. The theory further supposes that it may have been created under the influence of, and possibly created by someone from, the circle of Francis Bacon's near contemporaries and their world. These include Cornelis Drebbel, Michael Maier, Solomon De Caus, Johann Valentin Andreae, William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Simon Forman, Robert Fludd, among others.

Johannes Kelpius

5:45 PM | BY ZeroDivide EDIT
Miskatonic University Department of History Lecture Series:  The Society of the Woman in the Wilderness
Presented by: Dr. Charles Gerard
Of all the colonies in the New World, William Penn’s Colony had one of the most open policies for religious freedom and tolerance. Because of that, it was a magnet for groups with unusual beliefs.
One of those groups was founded by German mathematician John Jacob Zimmerman. Zimmerman’s teachings were taken from a secret mystical brotherhood known as the Rosicrucians, and included alchemy, geomancy, astronomy and astrology. Zimmerman developed a following in Hamburg, where he predicted the world would end in 1694, based on strange formulas and an obscure quote from the Book of Revelations.
“And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God,
that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days.”
So, he founded the Society of the Woman in the Wilderness to ring in the new world, and determined that 40 of his followers, all men, should set up camp at the edge of known Western civilization at the time, in the frontier colony of Pennsylvania.
He died just as his followers were preparing to sail to America, but a disciple, Transylvania-born Johannes Kelpius, took up the mission and led the group to the new city of Philadelphia.
From there, the brotherhood of scholars moved to nearby Germantown and began building a log structure, with a chapel and sleeping cells for the followers, much like a monastery. On the top of the building was an observatory with a telescope.
Each night, one of the followers was to watch the skies for celestial signs of the Rapture.
After Zimmerman’s predicted date for Armageddon passed, the group reset their predictions for the end of the world to come in 1700.

The Novum Organum

4:48 PM | BY ZeroDivide EDIT
The Novum Organum, full original title Novum Organum Scientiarum, is a philosophical work by Francis Bacon, written in Latin and published in 1620. The title translates as new instrument, i.e. new instrument of science. This is a reference to Aristotle's work Organon, which was his treatise on logic and syllogism. In Novum Organum, Bacon details a new system of logic he believes to be superior to the old ways of syllogism. This is now known as theBaconian method.
For Bacon, finding the essence of a thing was a simple process of reduction, and the use of inductive reasoning. In finding the cause of a phenomenal nature such as heat, one must list all of the situations where heat is found. Then another list should be drawn up, listing situations that are similar to those of the first list except for the lack of heat. A third table lists situations where heat can vary. The form nature, or cause, of heat must be that which is common to all instances in the first table, is lacking from all instances of the second table and varies by degree in instances of the third table.
The title page of Novum Organum depicts a galleon passing between the mythical Pillars of Hercules that stand either side of the Strait of Gibraltar, marking the exit from the well-charted waters of the Mediterranean into the Atlantic Ocean. The Pillars, as the boundary of the Mediterranean, have been smashed through opening a new world for exploration. Bacon hopes that empirical investigation will, similarly, smash the old scientific ideas and lead to greater understanding of the world and heavens.
The Latin tag across the bottom ("Multi pertransibunt & augebitur scientia") is taken from Daniel 12:4. It means: "Many will travel and knowledge will be increased".

The Baconian method

3:53 PM | BY ZeroDivide EDIT
Background:
The Organon was used in the school founded by Aristotle at the Lyceum, and some parts of the works seem to be a scheme of a lecture on logic. So much so that after Aristotle's death, his publishers (Andronicus of Rhodes in 50 BC, for example) collected these works.
Following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century, much of Aristotle's work was lost in the Latin West. The Categories and On Interpretation are the only significant logical works that were available in the early Middle Ages. These had been translated into Latin by Boethius. The other logical works were not available in Western Christendom until translated to Latin in the 12th century. However, the original Greek texts had been preserved in the Greek-speaking lands of the Eastern Roman Empire (akaByzantium). In the mid-twelfth century, James of Venice translated into Latin the Posterior Analytics from Greek manuscripts found in Constantinople.
The books of Aristotle were available in the early Arab Empire, and after 750 AD Muslims had most of them, including the Organon, translated into Arabic, sometimes via earlier Syriac translations. They were studied by Islamic and Jewish scholars, including RabbiMoses Maimonides (1135–1204) and the Muslim Judge Ibn Rushd, known in the West as Averroes (1126–1198); both were originally from Cordoba, Spain, although the former left Iberia and by 1168 lived in Egypt.
All the major scholastic philosophers wrote commentaries on the OrganonAquinasOckham and Scotus wrote commentaries on On Interpretation. Ockham and Scotus wrote commentaries on the Categories and Sophistical RefutationsGrosseteste wrote an influential commentary on the Posterior Analytics.
In the Enlightenment there was a revival of interest in logic as the basis of rational enquiry, and a number of texts, most successfully the Port-Royal Logic, polished Aristotelian term logic for pedagogy. During this period, while the logic certainly was based on that of Aristotle, Aristotle's writings themselves were less often the basis of study. There was a tendency in this period to regard the logical systems of the day to be complete, which in turn no doubt stifled innovation in this area. However Francis Bacon published his Novum Organum ("The New Organon") as a scathing attack in 1620.[2] Immanuel Kant thought that there was nothing else to invent after the work of Aristotle, and a famous logic historian called Karl von Prantl claimed that any logician who said anything new about logic was "confused, stupid or perverse." These examples illustrate the force of influence which Aristotle's works on logic had. Indeed, he had already become known by the Scholastics (medieval Christian scholars) as "The Philosopher", due to the influence he had upon medieval theology and philosophy. His influence continued into the Early Modern period and Organon was the basis of school philosophy even in the beginning of 18th century.[3] Since the logical innovations of the 19th century, particularly the formulation of modernpredicate logic, Aristotelian logic has fallen out of favor among many analytic philosophers.
Baconian method,  methodical observation of facts as a means of studying and interpreting natural phenomena. This essentially empirical method was formulated early in the 17th century by Francis Bacon, an English philosopher, as a scientific substitute for the prevailing systems of thought, which, to his mind, relied all to often on fanciful guessing and the mere citing of authorities to establish truths of science. After first dismissing all prejudices and preconceptions, Bacon’s method, as explained in Novum Organum (1620; “New Instrument”), consisted of three main steps: first, a description of facts; second, a tabulation, or classification, of those facts into three categories—instances of the presence of the characteristic under investigation, instances of its absence, or instances of its presence in varying degrees; third, the rejection of whatever appears, in the light of these tables, not to be connected with the phenomenon under investigation and the determination of what is connected with it.
Bacon may be credited with recognizing, in their essence, the method of agreement, the joint method, and the method of concomitant variations. His emphasis on the exhaustive cataloguing of facts, however, has since been replaced as a scientific method, for it provided no means of bringing investigation to an end or of insightful delimitation of the problem by creative use of hypotheses.

The Baconian method is the investigative method developed by Sir Francis Bacon. The method was put forward in Bacon's book Novum Organum (1620), or 'New Method', and was supposed to replace the methods put forward in Aristotle's Organon. This method was influential upon the development of scientific method in modern science; but also more generally in the early modern rejection of medieval Aristotelianism.

Timeline and history of scientific method and inference

4:27 PM | BY ZeroDivide EDIT
This timeline of the history of scientific method shows an overview of the cultural inventions that have contributed to the development of the scientific method. For a detailed account, see History of the scientific method.

BCE[edit]

  • c. 2000 BC — First text indexes (various cultures).[citation needed]
  • c. 1600 BC — The Edwin Smith Papyrus, an Egyptian medical textbook, which applies: examination, diagnosis, treatment and prognosis, to disease remedies,[1] paralleling rudimentary empirical methodology.[2]
  • c. 400 BC — In ChinaMozi and the School of Names advocate using one's senses to observe the world, and develop the "three-prong method" for testing the truth or falsehood of statements.
  • c. 400 BC — Democritus advocates inductive reasoning through a process of examining the causes of sensory perceptions and drawing conclusions about the outside world.
  • c. 300 BC — Plato first provides a detailed definitions for idea, matter, form and appearance as abstract concepts.
  • c. 320 BC — First comprehensive documents categorising and subdividing knowledge, dividing knowledge into different areas by Aristotle,(physics, poetry, zoology, logic, rhetoric, politics, and biology). Aristotle's Posterior Analytics defends the ideal of science as necessary demonstration from axioms known with certainty.
  • c. 300 BC — Euclid's Elements expound geometry as a system of theorems following logically from axioms known with certainty.
  • c. 200 BC — First Cataloged library (at Alexandria)

Nietzsche and Islam

8:21 PM | BY ZeroDivide EDIT
Routledge Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0203028834. $150
Reviewed by Michael J. McNeal
Roy Jackson’s Nietzsche and Islam constitutes an ambitious effort to show how Nietzsche’s hermeneutical and perspectivalist epistemological stance might enable contemporary Islam to revive its Arab essence through a recovery of the authentic meanings of its key paradigms. It is a courageous effort to deal with involutional aporias in mainstream Islamic discourses that drain the faith of life-affirming potential. Jackson also considers misunderstandings between the Islamic world and the West, addressing the “clash of civilizations” thesis, perceptions of Islam in ‘post- 9/11’ discourses and their effects within the Islamic cultural realm (6, 11), and contends that Islam might utilize secularization to better contend with modernity.
Jackson argues that Nietzsche may be understood as a religious philosopher of sorts, one whose religiosity “rests in his lack of ‘faith’ in the secular order to provide humanity with any meaningful existence (13)”. In this context Jackson announces his hope that “Islam…learn from Nietzsche’s religiosity and embrace a ‘living God’ that does not perceive secularization as an enemy”, an aim motivated by the need to "save" Islam from its own Platonic tendencies by fostering a pluralist, "liberal" stance toward its truth claims to broaden interpretation of its main principles (13).

Napoleon and religion: Islam

9:38 PM | BY ZeroDivide EDIT
Napoleon had a civil marriage with Joséphine de Beauharnais, without religious ceremony, on 9 March 1796. During the campaign in Egypt, Napoleon showed much tolerance towards religion for a revolutionary general, holding discussions with Muslim scholars and ordering religious celebrations, but General Dupuy, who accompanied Napoleon, revealed, shortly after Pope Pius VI's death, the political reasons for such behaviour: "We are fooling Egyptians with our pretended interest for their religion; neither Bonaparte nor we believe in this religion more than we did in Pius the Defunct's one".[note 9] In his memoirs, Bonaparte's secretary Bourienne wrote about Napoleon's religious interests in the same vein.[166] His religious opportunism is epitomized in his famous quote: "It is by making myself Catholic that I brought peace to Brittany and Vendée. It is by making myself Italian that I won minds in Italy. It is by making myself a Moslem that I established myself in Egypt. If I governed a nation of Jews, I should reestablish the Temple of Solomon."[167] However, according to Juan Cole, "Bonaparte's admiration for the Prophet Muhammad, in contrast, was genuine"[168] and during his captivity on St Helena he defended him against Voltaire's critical play Mahomet.
Napoleon was crowned Emperor Napoleon I on 2 December 1804 at Notre Dame de Paris by Pope Pius VII. On 1 April 1810, Napoleon religiously married the Austrian princess Marie Louise. During his brother's rule in Spain, he abolished the Spanish Inquisition in 1813. In a private discussion with general Gourgaud during his exile on Saint Helena, Napoleon expressed materialistic views on the origin of man,[note 10]and doubted the divinity of Jesus, stating that it is absurd to believe that SocratesPlato, Muslims, and the Anglicans should be damned for not being Roman Catholics.[note 11] He also said to Gourgaud in 1817 "I like the Mohammedan religion best. It has fewer incredible things in it than ours."[171] and that "the Mohammedan religion is the finest of all".[172] However, Napoleon was anointed by a priest before his death.[173]

Residency Application Timetable

10:07 AM | BY ZeroDivide EDIT


June–July
  • Register for the NRMP (all students should do this, even those seeking a military position; some military scholarship students may be approved to do a civilian residency; students seeking one of the advanced specialty (PGY-2) positions in Child Neurology, Neurotology, Ophthalmology or Plastic Surgery should also register)
  • Consult the Green Book (Graduate Medical Education Directory), available in Student Affairs, departmental offices, advisors' offices, most libraries, and on the Web
  • Consult AMA's FREIDA Online
  • Prepare Personal Statement(s)
  • Prepare a Curriculum Vita
  • Register for PGY-2 matches in Child Neurology, Neurotology, Ophthalmology or Plastic Surgery
  • July 1 begin working on MyERAS application
August–September
  • September 1: Programs begin downloading certified applications
  • Military scholarship students participate in the military selection process
  • Review your Medical Student Performance Evaluation (MSPE) in Student Affairs for accuracy
  • Provide a list of residency program addresses for the Dean's Letter (MSPE) if applying to non-ERAS programs
  • Request letters of recommendation; provide letter writer with CV and personal narrative; stamps and envelopes are not necessary; request a letter from the WSU department chair in your specialty(s) of interest
September
  • A few students will begin interviewing, this continues through January
  • Send thank you letters to program directors and other important interviewers
October
  • Review MSPE
November
  • The MSPE is sent on November 1 if reviewed by student
December
  • Military Match results are announced
January
  • San Francisco Advanced PGY-2 Specialty Match results are announced
January–February
  • Submit NRMP rank order list through Web
March
  • About mid-March, on a Monday, by logging in to the NRMP web site, students find out if they are matched or unmatched; at 2 p.m., unmatched students send applications through ERAS to programs with vacancies; on Wednesday at noon, programs begin making offers which are valid for two hours; the Match Day Ceremony is held at noon on Friday; all matched students receive envelopes containing their residency locations

Yuga

8:27 AM | BY ZeroDivide EDIT
Yuga (Devanāgari: युग) in Hindu philosophy is the name of an epoch or era within a four age cycle. According to Hindu cosmology, life in the universe is created and destroyed once every 4.1 to 8.2 billion years,[1][2] which is one full day (day and night) for Brahma. The lifetime of a Brahma himself may be between 40 billion and 311 trillion years.[1]The cycles are said to repeat like the seasons, waxing and waning within a greater time-cycle of the creation and destruction of the universe. Like Summer, Spring, Winter and Autumn, each yuga involves stages or gradual changes which the earth and the consciousness of mankind goes through as a whole. A complete yuga cycle from a high Golden Age, called the Satya Yuga to a Dark Age, Kali Yuga and back again is said to be caused by the solar system's motion around another star.[3]

Durations of four yugas[edit]

According to the Laws of Manu, one of the earliest known texts describing the yugas, the length is 4800 years + 3600 years + 2400 years + 1200 years for a total of 12,000 years for one arc, or 24,000 years to complete the cycle (one precession of the equinox). There is no mention of a year of the demigods or any years longer than the solar, which is consistent with description in The Holy Science.[3] However, the one debatable interpretation from the Srimad Bhagavatam states the following: "The duration of the Satya millennium equals 4,800 years of the years of the demigods; the duration of the Dvāpara millennium equals 2,400 years; and that of the Kali millennium is 1,200 years of the demigods... As aforementioned, one year of the demigods is equal to 360 years of the human beings. The duration of the Satya-yuga is therefore 4,800 x 360, or 1,728,000 years. The duration of the Tretā-yuga is 3,600 x 360, or 1,296,000 years. The duration of the Dvāpara-yuga is 2,400 x 360, or 864,000 years. And the last, the Kali-yuga, is 1,200 x 360, or 432,000 years in total." (Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 3.11.19) [2]. These 4 yugas follow a timeline ratio of (4:3:2:1).
The ages see a gradual decline of dharma, wisdom, knowledge, intellectual capability, life span, emotional and physical strength.
  • Satya Yuga:- Virtue reigns supreme. Human stature was 21 cubits. Average human lifespan was 100,000 years.
  • Treta Yuga: – There was 3 quarter virtue & 1 quarter sin. Normal human stature was 14 cubits. Average human lifespan was 10,000 years.
  • Dwapar Yuga: – There was 1 half virtue & 1 half sin. Normal human stature was 7 cubits. Average human lifespan was 1000 years.
  • Kali Yuga: – There is 1 quarter virtue & 3 quarter sin. Normal human stature is 3.5 cubits. Average human lifespan will be 100 years. Towards the end of the Yuga this will come down to 20 years.