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Wednesday, June 7, 2023
Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Speech: Refraining from Frivolous Speech
Daily Dharma: Widening the Self
We
can place the self between our ears and have it looking out from our
eyes, or we can widen it to include the air we breathe, or at other
moments we can cast its boundaries farther to include the oxygen-giving
trees and plankton, our external lungs, and beyond them the web of life
in which they are sustained.
Joanna Macy, “Positive Disintegration”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
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Via White Crane Institute // ALAN TURING
Died
1954 -
ALAN TURING,
British mathematician and computer scientist died (b. 1912) from
cyanide poisoning, eighteen months after being given libido-reducing
hormone treatment for a year as a punishment for homosexuality. Turing
is generally considered to be the Father of Modern Computer Science. He
provided an influential formalization of the concept of the algorithm
and computation with the Turing machine.
In 'the Turing Test" Turing proposed that a human evaluator would
judge natural language conversations between a human and a machine
designed to generate human-like responses. The evaluator would be aware
that one of the two partners in conversation is a machine, and all
participants would be separated from one another. The conversation would
be limited to a text-only channel such as a computer keyboard and
screen so the result would not depend on the machine's ability to render
words as speech. If
the evaluator cannot reliably tell the machine from the human, the
machine is said to have passed the test. The test does not check the
ability to give correct answers to questions, only how closely answers
resemble those a human would give.
With the Turing test, he made a significant and characteristically
provocative contribution to the debate regarding artificial
intelligence: whether it will ever be possible to say that a machine is
conscious and can think. He later worked at the National Physical
Laboratory, creating one of the first designs for a stored-program
computer, although it was never actually built.
In 1948 he moved to the University of Manchester to work on the
Manchester Mark I, then emerging as one of the world's earliest true
computers. During WWII Turing worked at Bletchley Park, Britain's code
breaking center, and was for a time head of Hut 8, the section
responsible for German naval cryptanalysis.
He devised a number of techniques for breaking German ciphers, including the method of the bombe,
an electro-mechanical machine that could find settings for the Enigma
machine. Turing was Gay in a period when homosexual acts were illegal in
Britain and homosexuality was regarded as a mental illness and subject
to criminal sanctions.
In 1952, Arnold Murray, a 19-year-old recent acquaintance of
Turing’s, helped an accomplice to break into Turing's house, and Turing
went to the police to report the crime. As a result of the police
investigation, Turing acknowledged a sexual relationship with Murray,
and a crime having been identified and settled, they were charged with
gross indecency under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of
1885. Turing was unrepentant and was convicted of the same crime Oscar
Wilde had been convicted of more than fifty years before. He was given
the choice between imprisonment and probation, conditional on his
undergoing hormonal treatment designed to reduce libido.
To avoid going to jail, he accepted the estrogen hormone
injections, which lasted for a year, with side effects including
gynecomastia (breast enlargement). His lean runner's body took on fat.
His conviction led to a removal of his security clearance and prevented
him from continuing consultancy for GCHQ on cryptographic matters. At
this time, there was acute public anxiety about spies and homosexual
entrapment by Soviet agents. In America, Robert Oppenheimer had just
been deemed a security risk.
On June 8, 1954, his housekeeper found him dead; the previous day,
he had died of cyanide poisoning, apparently from a cyanide-laced apple
he left half-eaten beside his bed. The apple itself was never tested for
contamination with cyanide, and cyanide poisoning as a cause of death
was established by a post-mortem.
Most believe that his death was intentional, and the death was
ruled a suicide. His mother, however, strenuously argued that the
ingestion was accidental due to his careless storage of laboratory
chemicals. Biographer Andrew Hodges suggests that Turing may have killed
himself in this ambiguous way quite deliberately, to give his mother
some plausible deniability. Others suggest that Turing was reenacting a
scene from "Snow White", reportedly his favorite fairy tale. Because
Turing's sexuality would have been perceived as a security risk, the
possibility of assassination has also been suggested. His remains were
cremated at Woking crematorium on June 12, 1954.
There is an urban legend that the Apple Computer “bite out of an
apple” logo is a tribute to Turing. It is exactly that: an urban legend.
But that’s not to say that the idea of paying homage to Turing is
something the creators of Apple were against. When actor Stephen Fry
once asked his good friend Steve Jobs if the famous logo was based on
Turing, Jobs replied, “God, we wish it were.” Hodges biography, Alan Turing: The Enigma is the basis of the film The Imitation Game (a reference to “the Turing Test” which is also referenced in the film Ex Machina.
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Gay Wisdom for Daily Living from White Crane Institute
"With the increasing commodification of gay news, views, and culture by powerful corporate interests, having a strong independent voice in our community is all the more important. White Crane is one of the last brave standouts in this bland new world... a triumph over the looming mediocrity of the mainstream Gay world." - Mark Thompson
Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989!
www.whitecraneinstitute.org
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Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - June 7, 2023 💌
"Meditation helps other parts of your life become more simple. As you
enter quieter spaces you will see how clinging to desires has made your
life complicated. Your clinging drags you from desire to desire, whim to
whim, creating more and more complex entanglements. Meditation helps
you cut through this clinging.
If, for example, you run around filling your mind with this and that,
you will discover that your entire meditation is spent letting go of the
stuff you just finished collecting in the past few hours. You also
notice that your meditations are clearer when you come into them from a
simpler space. This encourages you to simplify your life."
- Ram Dass -
Tuesday, June 6, 2023
Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Intention: Cultivating Equanimity
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Via Daily Dharma: Clear Faith
Clear
faith blooms when we recognize in another the possibility of living a
free, happy, peaceful life, and this recognition compels us to look for a
way to get there ourselves.
Vanessa Zuisei Goddard, “Good Enough Faith”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
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Via White Crane Institute // THOMAS MANN
This Day in Gay History
June 06
Born
1875 -
THOMAS MANN,
German writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1955); a German novelist, short
story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel
Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic
novels and mid-length stories, noted for their insight into the
psychology of the artist and intellectual.
His analysis and critique of the European and German soul used
modernized German and Biblical stories, as well as the ideas of Goethe,
Nietzsche and Schopenhauer.
Mann's diaries, unsealed in 1975, tell of his struggles with his
sexuality, which found reflection in his works, most prominently through
the obsession of the elderly Aschenbach for the 14-year-old Polish boy
Tadzio in the novella Death in Venice (Der Tod in Venedig, 1912).
Anthony Heilbut's biography Thomas Mann: Eros and Literature (1997) was widely acclaimed for uncovering the centrality of Mann's sexuality to his oeuvre. Gilbert Adair's work The Real Tadzio
describes how, in the summer of 1911, Mann had been staying at the
Grand Hôtel des Bains in Venice with his wife and brother when he became
enraptured by the angelic figure of Władysław Moes, an 11-year-old
Polish boy. Considered a classic of homoerotic passion (if
unconsummated) Death in Venice has been made into a
film and an opera. Blamed sarcastically by Mann’s old enemy, Alfred
Kerr, to have ‘made pederasty acceptable to the cultivated middle
classes’, it has been pivotal to introducing the discourse of same-sex
desire to the common culture.
Mann himself described his feelings for young violinist and
painter Paul Ehrenberg as the "central experience of my heart." Despite
the homoerotic overtones in his writing, Mann chose to marry and have
children; two of his children, Klaus, also a writer, who committed
suicide in 1949, and Erika, an actress and writer who died in 1969 and
who was married to W.H. Auden for 34 years, were also Gay. His works
also present other sexual themes, such as incest in The Blood of the Walsungs (Wälsungenblut) and The Holy Sinner (Der Erwählte).
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Gay Wisdom for Daily Living from White Crane Institute
"With the increasing commodification of gay news, views, and culture by powerful corporate interests, having a strong independent voice in our community is all the more important. White Crane is one of the last brave standouts in this bland new world... a triumph over the looming mediocrity of the mainstream Gay world." - Mark Thompson
Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989!
www.whitecraneinstitute.org
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Monday, June 5, 2023
Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - June 4, 2023 💌
"When you stand back far enough, all of your life experiences, independent of what they are, are all learning experiences. From a human point of view, you do your best to optimize pleasure, happiness, all the nice things in life. From your soul’s point of view you take what comes down the pike. So from the soul’s perspective, you work to get what you want and then if you don’t, ‘Ah, so, I’ll work with what I’ve got."
- Ram Dass -
[GBF] New Talk: Meeting the Fragility and Vulnerability of Life - Devin Berry
How do we respond when we witness suffering?
In this talk, Devin Berry reflects on passages from the Dhammapada related to compassion for others and ourselves in the face of dukkha.
He shares that the Buddha described compassion as "the trembling of the heart in response to suffering."
Especially in marginalized communities, we practice to create a refuge of belonging, which requires opening our heart. However, the habit of seeing those we encounter as 'other' can constrain our willingness to actively respond with care. Compassion requires a willingness to lean into suffering and be touched.
______________
Devin Berry is an Insight Meditation Society guiding teacher. A meditator since 1999, his practice is primarily informed by the metta and vipassana teachings of the Insight Meditation tradition. He has undertaken many periods of silent long-term retreat practice. Devin is committed to the personal and collective liberation of marginalized communities knowing that through the integration of reflection and insight, clarity and wisdom give rise to wise action. Devin was mentored by Larry Yang, Lyn Fine, Joseph Goldstein, Carol Wilson and Andrea Fella. He lives in New England and the Bay Area and teaches nationally.
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Enjoy 750+ free recorded dharma talks at www.gaybuddhist.org/podcast/
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