OffroadPakistan's Flood Relief Efforts
From the Blog Teeth Maestro: Voices of Pakistan: OffroadPakistan's Flood Relief Efforts - Voices of Pakistan talks about OffroadPakistan 's flood relief effort This post has a video enclosed, please click through to watch the video . Read Full Post
Human Free Will
From the Blog A Myth in Creation: Awais Aftab's Blog: Human Free Will - Komal: If there is no soul, then there cannot be free will. I disagree with the compatibilists on this point. Yes, there are many external influences, but there is still a free will, even given those influences, provided there is a free choice-making entity, whose choices are themselves undetermined; undetermined in any causal sense. Me: What I feel about the human free will issue is that there is definitely a free will, but there are also strong deterministic influences. It is possible for the deterministic influences to direct what action is eventually taken. This is what i have always felt, and when I read Satprem*, I felt he was talking something similar. He speaks of a “frontal man”, and the free psychic being (soul). The frontal man is essentially the psychologically deterministic being, while psychic being is free, and the over-all result of human behavior that we see is the combination of the two. Komal: Yes. The more a person is attuned to their psychic being, the freer they are. Me: Exactly. So it seems to me that the Compatabilist view cannot entirely be rejected, because that describes the ‘frontal man’, but at the same time, it is not the whole story, and we do have a Libertarian sort of free will co-existing with it. Komal: No, that is not the compatibilist view. The compatibilists hold that the person is determined but still free; but the psychic being isn’t determined. It’s libertarianism. It’s a kind of continuous libertarianism. There are degrees of freedom, I suppose. Me: What would you call my view “a free will exists but that free will is not always being exercised”? Komal: It broadly comes under libertarianism. Libertarians can still believe that human behaviour is constrained. It’s just that there are degrees of free will, that’s all. * “The truth is twofold, but in no way are we puppets, except when we insist on mistaking the frontal being for our self, for it is a puppet. We do have an individual center, which Sri Aurobindo calls the psychic being , and a cosmic center or central being. ” . Read Full Post
Mourning Salmaan Taseer
From the Blog PkColumnist.com: Mourning Salmaan Taseer - Salmaan Taseer was a lot of things to a lot of people, many of whom have articulated their sentiments in columns, obituaries, talk shows and the like. He was a man of many parts, and those parts have not gone anywhere and continue to remind us of the man who remains with us. So how are we going to mourn Salmaan? We have written and said things to comfort his family and ourselves, we have praised his courage and his humanity and vowed to not let his sacrifice go in vain. But what does that mean? Does it mean that we are not made of the same metal? If we can see, acknowledge, appreciate and salute courage and humanity in another, surely we see it in ourselves as well? It's not about waking up and being fired by energy and enthusiasm for a short while and then retreating, saying it's all hopeless; its time to bring that courage and humanity out and let it define not only us but our society. Rather than let fear overtake us and allow us to cede more and more space to those who seek to destroy the world as we know it, we need to take back space already lost. Sounds easy but it's not, it means overcoming fear, a real and palpable fear, it means finding leadership or becoming a leader, it means being counted — not one or two but in the millions. We need to redefine the debate. Surely it's not about liberals versus the rest? Do conservatives believe it's perfectly all right to take the law into your own hands and do as you will, when you don't agree with someone else's point of view? I think not, and the sooner we all realise that every one of us, liberal, conservative, left wing, right wing, PPP, PML-N, religious or secular, is in danger, the better. If the response to having an opinion is not another opinion but a hail of bullets, we all better be worried. Worried enough to realise that we need to find that thread of commonality that will allow us to function as a society. Lives have been taken over religion, politics, lifestyles, and even over the choices we make in life, like our partners. These are taken arbitrarily and usually by those seeking to enforce their own personal writ. If we are to live by the writ and at the pleasure and whim of another, then what is the use of a state, a constitution, a set of rules by which society is organised. Raising our walls and arming ourselves may be some temporary stopgap measure but by no means will it provide the solution. It is time we realised that for there to be rule of law, for it to have any effect and enforceability, it must apply to all and it must apply equally. There can be no exceptions, for that is where the power game begins, as those who want to control the rest of the populace think it necessary to keep themselves above the rest and to control power structures. So how are we going to mourn Salmaan Taseer? Will we let everything go back to the way it was before, or will we acknowledge that we have a problem and work on a minimum common agenda, which surely must be that the state has a responsibility to protect all its citizens, to provide them with basic facilities like education and health care, to devise a foreign policy that cuts across party lines and to agree that we need to create jobs and revive the economy. Putting aside our petty squabbles and personal agendas may be a tall order, but a minimum agenda, that acknowledges that one's own survival is dependent on it, may actually work. Each one of us needs to stand up and say that we want a society that adheres to the rule of law; that we, too, can make sacrifices and learn to live within the law so that the ultimate sacrifice made does not go in vain. In the end, it is about being willing to live by what you believe. As Salmaan used to say, "kuch shehr dey log ve zalim si, kuch sanoo maran da shawk ve si". . Read Full Post
Samsung I997 Infuse 4G Preview and Specifications
From the Blog Geo Tau Aisay Pakistan!: Samsung I997 Infuse 4G Preview and Specifications - Samsung I997 Infuse 4G Preview and Specifications: Earlier this month, with the release of several smart phones and some of the best and most powerful ones like Atrix, samsung announced their upcomming smartphone at CES 2011 communication event. Samsung; under the umbrella of famous mobile phone carier company AT&T, released worl'd thinnest mobile handset. Super Related posts: Samsung Wave S8500 Review the Pride of Smartphones Samsung unleashes Wave and Champ Mobile handsets Nokia X3-02 Review and Features Samsung Pixon 12 megapixel cameraphone unleashed Nokia C3 Review: A Top Notch Gadget . Read Full Post
How to enter a Fixed Date & Time in Microsoft Excel...
From the Blog alirazashaikh - > How to enter a Fixed Date & Time in Microsoft Excel... alirazashaikh.blogspot.com — If you want Microsoft Excel to enter the current date or time and fix it at that point , use the two cool shortcuts in Microsoft Excel 2010. For Example, to... Read more » . Read Full Post
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