Thus spake Zarathustra?

I would guess that most of my readers would, if anything, I guess think of a book by Nietzsche with that title. However, it really is about the original founder os Zoroastrainism, which is still a living religion and has its own struggles in Iran where it was birthed. It's meant to be a religion that Islam recognises but that doesn't mean all is well as this article outlines. I was, ofcourse, interested to note that this religious community expresses it's resistance to Islamic rule in its language,

They also conversed noisily in a pre-Islamic form of Persian stripped of the modern Arabic loan words used by their Muslim compatriots

We should note the compliance that dhimmitude breeds;

requiring worshippers to observe Islamic dress in their own sacred place, the high-level visit illustrated the second-class status of Zoroastrianism - believed to be the world's oldest monotheistic faith - in its land of origin.
Kourash Niknam, the sole Zoroastrian MP in Iran's parliament, insisted the gesture was voluntary. "We just wanted to show respect because it is they who rule and we are living in their community," he said.

Guardian Unlimited | World dispatch | Ancient religions clash in modern Iran
Filed in: Zoroastrain, Iran, Persia, contemporary

A flying tax would damage the economy, says BAA

...Not as muchas widespread drought and flooding brought on by climate change.
Grrrrrr. Short-term thinking and greed.

To be fair this is what was said

a tax on the aviation industry would not have the desired effect on the environment but would cause inconvenience to many people by pricing them out of aeroplanes.

. But the point is that we can't, climate-wise, afford to have so many flights happening. How else are we going to stop people flying so much if not by price? Anyhow, their preferred option is emissions trading, which i also favour,

We think the beauty of emissions trading is that it targets the emissions rather than trying to make a futile attempt at pricing people out of air travel. It would be generating tax income without any environmental benefit.

Hmmmmm. So where are they getting the permits from .... ?Somewhere along the line, someone is going to end up paying more, surely. Or offsetting their air travel by buying more permits to run their car. Or something like that. this is intended to be a zero sum game. I thought. Am I missing something here? [Probably, but what?]

Environment Unlimited | Travel and transport | A flying tax would damage the economy, says BAA

Filed in: CO2, policy, tax, flying, global_warming

Brain's Action Center Is All Talk: Strong Mental Link Between Actions And Words

I *think* this is a contribution to demonstrating that the core thesis in Philosophy in the Flesh is correct.

The brain's premotor cortex shows the same activity pattern when subjects observe an action as when they hear words describing the same action

The main thing being tohat most language is metaphorical, andmetaphor is not an add-on for more sophisticated communication, but is fundamental to our way of speaking and conceptualising even quite elementary things. And this lies in the use by our brains/minds of the foundation of spatial and other physical processing in the brain to build analogies and to reapply categories to other areas of experience. What this means is that embodiedness is fundamental to human thinking. Expect further publications from Lakoff and Johnson!

That's interesting theologically as well as philosophical terms. What price incarnation? For example. It does also seem to indicate that learning is probably mostly associative even for children...

ScienceDaily: Brain's Action Center Is All Talk: Strong Mental Link Between Actions And Words:
Filed in: brain, language, motor, psychology, philosophy, metaphor

Beauty And The Brain

Gotta say that this is interesting. Not least becasue I have seen some arguments in favour of God's existence on the basis of a human aesthetic sense.

"A stimulus becomes attractive if it falls into the average of what you've seen and is therefore simple for your brain to process. In our experiments, we show that we can make an arbitrary pattern likeable just by preparing the mind to recognize it quickly."

But then, this suports the popular notion that 'taste' is something that changes with exposure, education and even effort. What it ddoesn't really grapple with, of course, is how come attractiveness is 'good' when it so often leads us astray...
ScienceDaily: Beauty And The Brain:
Filed in: aesthetics, brain, beauty, judgements, psychology

Multitasking Is No Problem, But Double Talk Overwhelms Us

First off, I want to get this off my chest. Despite snide and sexist jokes, men CAN do multitasking. It's just that it's not always of the kind or the timing that women would like it to be. Men could and have in the past made jokes about women's propensity to be scatty. That's not necessarily true either but it would be the obverse, What's really going on is a piece of cultural jujitsu by certain Gender warriors, but it's no less sexis; if it's wrong for men to stereotype women and make put-down jokes about those fictional stereotypes ... well, you get the picture.
<pause to chill>
Now I've written that, on to the article that got my attention both as a trainee teacher and a worship leader;

people are pretty good at perceptual multitasking -- except when multiple sources of incoming stimuli are of the same type. Humans learn "sequential structure from multiple sources at the same time, as long as the sensory characteristics of the sources do not overlap,"

Notethe lack of differentaition by gender. Why I'm interested though is it shows that a multisensory environment is potentially helpful as a learning environment because it gives more channels for learning and we can normally cope with them. So rpoviding simultaneous inputs for kinaesthetic, auditory and visual learners is probably not only possible, but may be helpful. In a way, we knew this already, but it's nice to have some research backup.

ScienceDaily: Multitasking Is No Problem, But Double Talk Overwhelms Us:
Filed in: multitasking, psychology, brain, perception
learning
worship

Here's another argument for prison reform ...

"The Prison Officers' Association says some of these terrorist prisoners are targeting for radicalisation and recruitment other alienated ethnic minority groups, as well as the smaller number of younger Muslim prisoners, and they are providing 'rich pickings'. Many of those held, whom they describe as 'dangerous and highly capable', are 'high up' in groups using the al-Qaida name and their lives have been dedicated to radicalising younger and more vulnerable people."
And I can't help thinking that since the USA has about 4 times the number of people per 100,000 head of population in prison that we have in the UK [and that's the European highest], that there must be a real worry there too ...
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Prisons failing to tackle terror recruitment:

I told you so ...

John Reid sets out his stand for leadership of the Labour administration. As the Guardian said.

John Reid put himself in pole position to challenge Gordon Brown for the Labour leadership yesterday

And I feel vindicated because I did say something like this something like 18 months ago.
Guardian Unlimited Politics | Special Reports | Reid sets out his stand for leadership: Filed in: UK, politics, Labour, leadership