I find it terribly ironic that we have in places, such as Second Life, virtual reality Buddhist temples, when in fact the whole point of Buddhism is to remove the individual from the trappings of mentally projected virtual realities—typically emanating, in the literature, from ‘self.’

[video on bottom] We were saying yesterday morning how the world is broken up, divided through nationalism, which is really a form of tribalism; how religions have divided man, with their dogmas, with their beliefs, with their superstitions, illusions; how human beings have created sects, each one believing that they are going to lead mankind to a different kind of physical world and a so-called

What the Godlike powers that our current technology have created for us demand (beyond a Godlike love, as was mentioned in the last essay) is a complete and total understanding of thought.

The Internet and technology as they are today are giving us Godlike powers of perception and action: Digital Natives are the first generation of young adults to be endowed with them.

This New Year's Eve the real party is online and the centerpiece is Jimmy Wales and Wikipedia. The party? Raise a million bucks before midnight. Just before Christmas, Jimmy did something almost cooler than founding Wikipedia in the first place. He tweeted:

'I am proud to announce that the Wikipedia domain names will move away from GoDaddy. Their position on #sopa is unacceptable to us.'

When ground was stood and truth spoken
violence became an inevitability.

Thus is the nature
of that which we are attempting to outgrow.

Knowing that, we must remember:

Neither injury nor death can justify violence.
For violence breeds violence,
and therefore: no change.

Its application will not bring about the
peace and sanity we are seeking.

The New York Times had a wide ranging report on the view of the Occupy movement from Mayors across the country. They claim that many of the Mayors of “several cities have come to the end of their patience and others appear to be not far behind.”

Point 1: The constitutionally guaranteed right to assembly is not subject to any Mayors “patience”.

A bit of an emergency: The rumor all over Capitol Hill is that the House version of the Internet Blacklist Bill will be introduced this week, probably on Wednesday.

Our allies on the Hill say the bill's so bad that it could effectively destroy Youtube, Twitter, and other sites that rely on user-generated content by making the sites' owners legally responsible for everything their users post.