Disjointed, rambling, blanket thing post

Rediscovering, remembering the Bretton Woods system. Does money control your life? Do you know what your money is based on? Who decides these things? Check it out.

Also: i stand corrected (Keith, Alex) - Special drawing rights is "a potential claim on the freely usable currencies of the IMF members" - wikipedia. NOT a currency. Okay then - glad that's cleared up.

In searching around for Special Drawing Rights info, i smacked into this strange topic of what is the US dollar worth? The US no longer uses the gold standard (where currency worth corresponds with how much gold you have stockpiled). Sure, there is still a reserve (aha! the Federal Reserve), but the US dollar floats with respect to the price of gold and all other currencies. According to wikipedia,

• "Today, like the currency of most nations, the dollar is fiat money without intrinsic value, which means that it has no backing and would be entirely worthless but for the fact that people have been persuaded to use and accept it as if it had worth." (my emphasis)

Somehow, this doesn't make me feel any better that i whittled away half of my savings upon entering the UK from the US. It also doesn't explain why it takes three people to sell me one measly box of Ibuprofen - or why Ibuprofen and every thing else has to be individually shrink wrapped in this country. Ah, i digress. First, the person at the counter tried to tell me that they only had the chalk-make-you-gag tablets. Fascinating, when i could see the caplets sitting just next to the throat-cloggers. Apparently the theory here was, "get the customer's item, and then have a social bonding experience with co-workers over how to ring up some invisible customer's items while discussing which item is a free gift and pretending not to hear the tangbile customer's request for a different item". Why did i give Boswell's my faith in the idea of the British Pound? What if, next time i was at the store, i just refused to pay, saying i don't believe in it? "Okay, well, since Bretton Woods, there's really no definition of money anyway, so here's your Ibuprofen. Have a nice day!" I'm not sure i won't be arrested.

Another trippy thing that happened today. Paul Jepson was teaching class, and he morphed into the existential detective! It could have been the fact that he was feeling under the weather and may have been hallucinating. But, he was describing the way we experience places, where we "know" or locate a certain place, and then we don't really know everything in between, and then we "know" another place. Aha - its a blanket thing! I knew it would all come together!

So you have Bretton Woods over here, and you have the chemist at Boswells over here, okay? (demonstrates with blanket) Then there's me and there's you, and there's the tree that fell over and blocked Marston Road for a few hours on saturday. Once you get the blanket thing, you can relax - because everything you could ever want or be, you already have and are. Brilliant.

Wallace and Sclater and de Candolle, oh my

It has only been relatively recently that we've come to understand the way the Earth is configured. While biogeography might seem like a sleepy, off course subject, i argue that it is, along with genetics and quantum physics, one of the most exciting topics progressing in modern science. There is still so much to be learned: why do species migrate and behave this way? What are the patterns of species diversity and distribution - in the ocean? At different scales? There has been a lot written about these topics, but there is a lot that is yet to be discovered. And if we are to ultimately live in a way where we do less harm to wild nature, we need to know the answers to these questions - we need to know how we can minimize our impact and construct systems that benefit the entire world.

I am exploring a very basic question: what is the goal of conservation? Are we trying to get to some equilibrium in nature? Why should we do this - is equilibrium the correct goal?

If you have thoughts about it, do tell.
Until later - i'll be lost in thought.

We're just proteins, man

Talking about the idea of a species today...how do we make a genetic fingerprint, a genetic description of a species? We essentially map out the genetic code that creates different proteins. So if you make certain proteins in a certain way, then you are a different species from me. So. I thought it was all about eating your leafy greens...no. Its all about proteins.

Well, proteins and theories. I've also been thinking about this idea of species as hypotheses. Its a bit...mind boggling. I feel sort of like my disintigration is taking place (as in I Heart Huckabees) since i was always taught that a species is such a tidy little concept - a hard fact. Not so. Its just a theory, a hypothesis that can be tested and changed and lumped and split. There's nothing hard and fast about it. Once you get the blanket thing...

Johanneshof, re-entry

I've started writing this blog entry about 15 times now. This is the last time. No editing. Just raw stream-of-consciousness. I won't be offended if you skip ahead to the next entry.

Went to the south of Germany for New Years. It was an eventful arrival. As the plane was in the air, i was stricken by the fact that the signs for the flight all had "Frankfurt (Hahn)" written on them - what if Hahn didn't actually stand for "International Airport", as i had assumed? So i got up the nerve to ask the German couple sitting next to me 1) if they spoke english and 2) if they knew whether there was more than one airport in Frankfurt. Fortunately, they spoke english and told me that, no - we weren't flying into the main airport in Frankfurt. Instead, we were landing somewhere TWO HOURS outside of town, and from the other airport (which was, incidentally, where my train was scheduled to depart from). I thanked them and proceeded to spin over all the possible outcomes of this situation. The problem was, i had arranged to take a train from Frankfurt International an hour after my flight landed. Now, i would be at least an hour later, depending on when i could get a bus or train. Turns out, the trains were delayed an cancelled due to snow anyway. So - i spent the night in Frankfurt, in large part due to the paramount wisdom of Ottmar Sensei.

Johanneshof is a large farmhouse style building, nestled in a small farming community in the foothills of the Alps. There are villages every few kilometers - scatterings of houses and barns, thick walls and tiny windows. Thick walls, several stories high - these folks are prepared for a long, cold winter. Then come spring, the fields will be plowed and the tractors fired up for their few months of work. Its the type of place you'd imagine Little Red Riding hood hurrying down the path with a basket of hot biscuits for grandmother, wrapped in her snug cape.

A nice place to practice, to face the challenges posed by our world and our spinning minds. There is a warm, populous group of lay-practictioners who frequent this place, and it feels like a big community center. It is a sangha center - in all senses. People travel from near and far to spend time there. By the time i left, i was able to deduce from context the gist of the work meetings, and sometimes the schedule for meal preparation, even with my weak knowledge of German.

These became the most useful phrases:
"Bitte enschuldigen sie mien schlectes Deutsch" - please excuse my terrible german
"Wie git es dir?" - how are you?
"Wie heist du?" - what is your name?
"Wo kommt das ein?" - where does this go? particularly useful for the kitchen.

I will certainly plan to go back. I like Johanneshof.

The trip back was almost as eventful as the journey to the place. It was certainly as many hours traveling. Upon arriving at Frankfurt Hahn airport early, i discovered that Ryan Air doesn't have a terribly sophisticated system with which to manage passengers. When i inqured about moving up to an earlier flight, the agent consulted a printout dotted with yellow highlighter, and pronounced cheerfully that all flights were full. When i asked if i could be on the standby list, i was informed (a little less cheerfully) that it would cost me: a fee to change my original booking, PLUS the cost of the new ticket - some 400 pounds typically. Hah! So. I waited and took my seat in my booked flight. I was rather elated to arrive home, finally, with all my luggage intact albeit at 4 am. Thanks to Ryan Air for making this trip a grand adventure!

That's all for now folks. My classes are starting and the days are slowly, slowly getting minutes longer. It still resembles afternoon for most of the day, but i am optimistic that by the time my term ends, there will be more daylight in my life.

Happy New Year. Sending good intentions to all.