As traditional organizations using their websites for eCommerce transactions are increasing at an exponential rate, privacy concerns of users are also on the rise. To gain an insight into these concerns, existing policies and legislation, we conducted the research reported in this paper, in 2003. To augment the literature synthesis, a multiple case study analysis was conducted, based on six large organisations in Australia. Our research findings suggested that in the Australian context, an online privacy policy on the website which (...) complies with the Privacy Act, supported by few best practices are reasonably able to address online privacy concerns. However, these findings are restricted in time frame, indicative and relevant in the Australian context. Nevertheless, we hope to stimulate academic research enquiry and discussion forums through this research. (shrink)

This study adds to a small but growing literature that situates sleep within gendered work— family responsibilities. We conducted interviews with 25 heterosexual dual-earner working-class couples with children, most of whom had one partner who worked at night. A few men suffered disrupted sleep because of their commitment to being a coparent to their children, but for most their provider status gave them rights to longer and more continuous sleep. By contrast, as they were the primary caregiver during sentient hours, (...) women’s sleep was curtailed and interrupted by responding to the needs of family members at night and at the beginning of each day, and this was true for women who worked nights as well as days. Furthermore, in struggling to meet their daily employment and familial obligations while tired and sleepy, women further stressed their bodies in ways that can cause cumulative sleep debt. This article demonstrates that sleep deficits are another manifestation of gender inequality, with important implications for long-term health and well-being. (shrink)

The essay discusses congruency issues in the biosemiotic approach of the Danish biochemist, Jesper Hoffmeyer. The authors understand Hoffmeyer’s anti-reductionistic approach to be similar to Michael Polanyi’s multi-layered ontology, but suggest that the Polanyian approach has fewer handicaps as a model-building enterprise. We offer a historical review of Hoffmeyer’s polarized narrative of 20th century biology and investigate his central thesis that life and semiosis are coextensive. We argue that Hoffmeyer conflates temporal and spatial features of semiotic systems, his account of (...) emergentism is unclear and the relationship between semiotic evolution and punctuated equilibrium is vague, possibly entailing incongruent metaphysical views. (shrink)

This contribution focuses on medical and psychological discussions about the consequences of early automobilism in Germany. It can be shown that the medical profession was reasonable discordant concerning attitudes towards the motorcar.Whereas a growing number of doctors used the relative inexpensive and useful small cars, which were aggressively advertised by industry, an influential minority identified the risks and damages of motorised driving very clear sighted. Medical criticism was not fundamental but focused on personal mistakes of drivers or technical and technological (...) inadequateness that could be removed. It therefore differed significantly from the basic opposition of several enemies of progress. (shrink)

An understanding of underlying mechanisms involved in the activation of HIF‐1 in response to both hypoxic stress and oncogenic signals has important implications for how these processes may become deregulated in human cancer. Changes in microenvironmental stimuli such as hypoxia and growth factors in combination with genetic lesions, such as loss or inactivation of p53, PTEN or pVHL or oncogenic activation, can all lead to increased HIF‐1 activity. This provides cancer cells with a distinct advantage for survival and proliferation, resulting (...) in their ability to form vascular tumours, which are aggressive and metastatic. Accordingly, upregulation of HIF‐1α, a key component of HIF‐1, correlates with a poor treatment outcome using conventional therapies. A variety of mechanisms exist that regulate expression of HIF‐1α. In recent years, it has become clear that an extensive network of signalling cascades converge on HIF‐1α to regulate the transcriptional response. A better understanding of this regulation may provide a basis for the development of new cancer therapies. BioEssays 26:262–269, 2004. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

An understanding of underlying mechanisms involved in the activation of HIF‐1 in response to both hypoxic stress and oncogenic signals has important implications for how these processes may become deregulated in human cancer. Changes in microenvironmental stimuli such as hypoxia and growth factors in combination with genetic lesions, such as loss or inactivation of p53, PTEN or pVHL or oncogenic activation, can all lead to increased HIF‐1 activity. This provides cancer cells with a distinct advantage for survival and proliferation, resulting (...) in their ability to form vascular tumours, which are aggressive and metastatic. Accordingly, upregulation of HIF‐1α, a key component of HIF‐1, correlates with a poor treatment outcome using conventional therapies. A variety of mechanisms exist that regulate expression of HIF‐1α. In recent years, it has become clear that an extensive network of signalling cascades converge on HIF‐1α to regulate the transcriptional response. A better understanding of this regulation may provide a basis for the development of new cancer therapies. BioEssays 26:262–269, 2004. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

First of all some problems of a scientifical dialogue between the different systems in the East and the West are being presented. In such a dialogue symmetry and reflexivity as principles of orientation have an important function. These principles are close to reality in the field of the philosophy of science and history of science in the DDR. By the controversy between the philosophy of science and the history of science in the DDR and by the way of discussing the (...) Kuhnian theory within the Marxist-Leninist-philosophy of science, together with an apologetical demarcation a real westernoriented willingness of dialogue in the DDR can be remarked. Even far-reaching positions can be found so that an intensification of the dialogue is possible. (shrink)

First of all some problems of a scientifical dialogue between the different systems in the East and the West are being presented. In such a dialogue symmetry and reflexivity as principles of orientation have an important function. These principles are close to reality in the field of the philosophy of science and history of science in the DDR. By the controversy between the philosophy of science and the history of science in the DDR and by the way of discussing the (...) Kuhnian theory within the Marxist-Leninist-philosophy of science, together with an apologetical demarcation a real westernoriented willingness of dialogue in the DDR can be remarked. Even farreaching positions can be found so that an intensification of the dialogue is possible. (shrink)

Ce livre présente certains des résultats du travail du Réseau Thématique Pluridisciplinaire du CNRS "Phenomath". Les philosophes et mathématiciens de ce groupe ont uni leurs forces afin de développer une réflexion originale sur la pensée mathématique. Au lieu de soumettre cette dernière a priori à un cadre théorique, ils ont voulu l'interroger dans les formalismes qu'elle met en place pour y reconnaître les lieux de la production d'un sens. A ce titre, la démarche mathématique, dans son opérativité, leur a paru (...) exemplaire de celle de la pensée en général. Dans cette perspective, les présentes recherches définissent les contours d'un nouveau dialogue entre mathématique et philosophie. (shrink)

In this article I examine views of groundlessness that appear in three very different philosophical traditions: bardo teachings in Tibetan Buddhism, Michel Foucault's heterotopia, and Gloria Anzaldúa's nepantla. While each of these concepts is formulated in response to specific psychological, philosophical, and political questions, I argue that they each describe—in intimate, first-personal terms—experiences of rupture or dissolution of one's own selfhood and/or thought. Using this formulation of groundlessness as a lens for reading these three concepts alongside one another, I (...) offer a descriptive analysis of each of them, drawing out the moral-psychological ramifications of the nonfoundationalist claim that there is no fundamental “ground” to subjectivity or thought. I argue that bardos, heterotopias, and nepantla each exemplify how the rupture of groundless experience can become a vehicle for moral-psychological transformation by serving as an opportunity to recognize the pliability and spaciousness of a dynamic and unfixed selfhood. (shrink)

Nicu Gavriluţă, România în Starea Bardo: publicistică şi dialoguri culturale (Romania in the Bardo State: Journalistic Writings and Cultural Dialogs) Provopress, Cluj-Napoca, 2006.

For Vajrayana Buddhism, the now is an interval, a boundary, a point of tension and suspension with an atmosphere of uncertainty. It is a bifurcation point of variable length; its name is “bardo.” The bardo is immersed in the conventional, or “seeming” reality. It emerges from what is called the “unstained” ultimate or primordial emptiness or “basal clear light.” Further, the ultimate is not the sphere of cognition. Cognition, including cognition of time, belongs to conventional reality. Buddhahood, in (...) contrast, is a condition of uncompounded knowledge where basic mind blossoms without temporal or other cognitive distinctions, unmade, unfabricated, luminous and pristine. Cyclical existence involves both the ultimate and the conventional as it moves through six bardos—all of which are the effulgent of the basal clear light—until Buddhahood. The six are: the bardo of this life ; the bardo of dream; the bardo of meditation; the bardo of dying; the bardo of dharmata ; and the bardo of existence. Each realm is both ultimate and conventional, and has specific initiation-based yogas to investigate these differences. The process of transition from one to the next involves at least three bodies, one mind, and aspects of speech. In each bardo, the character of the now as embodiment and temporal knowing varies yet a complete and consistent cross-bardo yogic wisdom leads to its total cessation in the basal clear light; the now is extinguished. The author presents, from the viewpoint of a knowledgeable practitioner of over 30 years, an essay on Vajrayana Buddhist time, drawing implications for Fraser’s time typology. The essay will draw from English translations of significant older, tantric texts on dream yoga, deity yoga, the Chod, tantric time, the bardo of death, and empowerment. Useful practices that can be applied by the audience to test the tradition and author’s assertions will be suggested. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Into the Jaws of Yama, Lord of Death: Buddhism, Bioethics, and DeathDamien KeownInto the Jaws of Yama, Lord of Death: Buddhism, Bioethics, and Death. By Karma Lekshe Tsomo. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006. Pp. 270.An anecdote recounted in this work gives an insight into the present state of Buddhist bioethics. The author relates how she asked the spiritual director of a Tibetan centre in Honolulu (...) whether he thought it was a good idea to donate one’s organs at the time of death. He immediately replied in the affirmative. When asked if the removal of the organs would disturb the dying process, he responded that it would be okay since the doctors could “wait for a few days.” On being informed that the organs had to be removed immediately to save the life of the recipient he “expressed alarm” and changed his mind, advising that for an ordinary Buddhist practitioner organ donation might not be advisable after all (p. 160).The fact that Tibetan lamas are giving ethical advice on organ donation without even a layman’s knowledge of the medical procedures involved suggests that Buddhist teachers have a lot to learn about adapting traditional teachings to modern contexts. If the problem were simply that many lack scientific knowledge, this could probably be resolved in the short to medium term. The deeper problem, however, is that Buddhism as a tradition lacks the ethical infrastructure needed to address moral dilemmas, particularly those of the complex kind presented by contemporary scientific and medical developments. Despite their undoubted acumen in certain branches of philosophy (notably metaphysics), Buddhist thinkers of the past have consistently failed to probe the moral foundations of their teachings or to establish a theoretical foundation in terms of which moral dilemmas can be analyzed. Not a single treatise on moral philosophy was produced by any of the classical scholars cited in this volume as authorities. Not surprisingly, the legacy of this neglect is that the voice of Buddhism has been almost completely silent with respect to the kinds of ethical issues addressed in this book.The present work commendably seeks to remedy this absence of information on Buddhist bioethics. This is only the second book ever to attempt such a task, the first being my Buddhism and Bioethics, published over ten years ago in 1996 (reissued by Palgrave in 2002). In the intervening period there have been many scientific [End Page 157] advances, such as cloning and genetic engineering, both of which receive attention in the volume under review. While my own approach sought to build bridges by translating Buddhist concepts into the vocabulary of contemporary bioethics, the present volume holds more tightly to the traditional teachings of Tibetan Buddhism. Accordingly, while the concepts and terminology used will be familiar to those inside the tradition, I am not sure to what extent it will facilitate dialogue with bioethicists and clinicians, for whom the colorful and somewhat medieval facets of these teachings may at times seem esoteric.Before discussing the ethical issues further, it should be pointed out that less than half of the book (chapters 8–11) is devoted directly to bioethics. The first seven chapters are for the most part an account of topics in Mahayana philosophy (such as no-self, dependent origination, and emptiness) and descriptions of the beliefs and practices of Tibetan Buddhism surrounding death. These include meditational practices relating to death and the notion of the post-mortem intermediate state (bardo). Somewhat oddly, chapter 5, titled “Foundations of Buddhist Ethics,” has almost nothing to say about ethics: after a short but potentially interesting section titled “Buddhist Definitions of Life and Death,” it veers off into a lengthy summary of Madhyamaka, Vijnanavada, and Tathagatagarbha doctrines.Tibetan teachings about death have been summarized in numerous popular volumes in recent years, and it is unclear why such an extended treatment of them is presented again here. The opening sentence of chapter 8 suggests this was necessary to “set the stage for an exploration of bioethical issues from Buddhist points of view,” but the bulk of this material has little connection with bioethics. In particular, it is not clear how it is... (shrink)

contents -/- ONT vol 1 i. short review: Beyond the Black Rainbow ii. as you die, hold one thought iii. short review: LA JETÉE -/- ONT vol 2 i. maya means ii. short review: SANS SOLEIL iii. vocab iv. eros has an underside v. short review: In the Mood for Love -/- ONT vol 3 i. weed weakens / compels me ii. an Ender's Game after-party iii. playroom is a realm of the dead iv. a precise german History v. short (...) review: STATUES ALSO DIE vi. Kenneth Clark, curator for Fascism vii. a protest poem, in industry lit viii. Lawrence and the English Romance -/- ONT vol 4 i. short review: The Eyes of Tammy Faye ii. vR is efficient R iii. all thru Asia, robes for monks iv. same of God, and of the one God sent v. i thought of the Messiah / muse would be vi. conscience is strong vii. a monk's exalted end -/- ONT vol 5 -/- i. for Shakespeare's Richard the Third ii. the truth is i pass over so many words iii. the boori nazar / nadhar iv. i've awe for jihaad v. short review: Hail, Caesar! vi. a minute of Nothing, gone from YouTube vii. we were rivalrous friends, again viii. my bardo pdf ix. within i'm a weak old mandarin -/- ONT vol 6 i. short review: The Intern ii. the confusion of Chinatown iii. we'll remember water, in Theology iv. Respironics versus ResMed v. i'd bet my life for what vi. the Mad Max deity vii. they'd kill my rat, not heal him -/- ONT vol 7 i. Austen would eroticize all life ii. Merchant/Ivory, a name oddly right iii. Ellie Arroway / Agent Starling iv. abattoir / l’abattoir / laboratoire v. von Neumann's brain an anomaly vi. was terrified of death, delighted in the a-bomb vii. the Greatest Brain is variously named -/- ONT vol 8 i. the day they shot the sacrifice ii. Yay or Nay, on Animal Testing iii. an ought is an is / an is is an ought iv. Behaviorism is for zombies v. a finding from the neuro-lab, on empathy vi. i’ve never had discernible abs vii. a cowardice i'm assenting to perpetually -/- ONT vol 9 i. Day of the Locust / Triffids ii. we're wide on a Paramount soundstage iii. HOLLYWOOD, an ecologic history iv. yet one more site of end-time art v. he's "a bookworm with bulging lobes" vi. apartment is my state of being apart vii. enlightenment means a weight's release -/- ONT lates and xtras i. re Gödel's ontological argument ii. deep in pi's numeric noise iii. from Nothing, something iv. endless in the wrong direction, tragic v. they give you all Eternity to answer vi. what of God's mercy? vii. informed consent and prayer viii. i won't live on. a deed i've done may ix. my selective memory x. Janus means: in close-up foam, two faces xi. a liveable world is a readable world xii. what Supervenes from this? xiii. at each extreme our naming is anachronism xiv. Cat is a collapsing of the wave-function xv. diminishing returns in the history of Experiment xvi. all those undershared Nobels xvii. ice preserves the Cold from heat xviii. a desert spreads xix. Pinker's wit, on jokes xx. Rome surrounds St. Paul / Paul is now the center xxi. each is a gathering Ministry xxii. white boy shot execution-style xxiii. the McDonald's Statement of Claim xxiv. first & last: Don Quixote / Ulysses xxv. The Summer of Rave xxvi. this electro is intrinsically anonymous xxvii. all thru Asia, Drake-Rihanna xxviii. WHO IS BETTER: PLATON OR KANT? (shrink)

Enquanto muitos autores interpretaram o ceticismo como um desafio filosófico e científico genuíno, como por exemplo Descartes, Stanley Cavell entende-o como um problema existencial com consequências éticas. Duvidar do mundo ou da existência de outras mentes não seria uma tese puramente filosófica, mas envolveria uma posição diante de nossa vida. Tal interpretação se funda em como Cavell lê a filosofia moderna e a ruptura da mesma com modelos anteriores de pensamento. Expandindo esse diagnóstico, Cavell vê em Shakespeare uma manifestação dos (...) limites do conhecimento e dos problemas morais que adentramos ao lidar com o ceticismo. Enquanto tal análise se deu principalmente nas peças do Bardo, o presente texto tenta o fazer em seus Sonetos. (shrink)

Nietzsche foi um dos pensadores que mais intensamente dedicou-se ao estudo e interpretação da tragédia, considerada não somente como gênero artístico mas como uma visão-de-mundo. Em uma época de seu percurso intelectual marcada pelos estudos filológicos e pela profunda influência de Schopenhauer e Wagner, busca compreender a tragédia de Sófocles e Ésquilo como uma aliança entre Apolo e Dionísio, divindades gregas da arte. Nietzsche especula também sobre a ascensão de Sócrates e do platonismo, fenômeno tido como precursor do cristianismo e (...) de uma perspectiva existencial nas antípodas do trágico. A obra de Shakespeare, comentada por Nietzsche em alguns aforismos esparsos, oferece-nos uma oportunidade fecunda de refletir sobre o trágico sob uma perspectiva nietzschiana, o que realizamos com o auxílio de autores como Harold Bloom, Jan Kott, Leon Chestov e Rüdiger Safranski, dentre outros. Nosso objetivo é delinear algumas das formulações nietzschianas a respeito da tragédia e aclarar com exemplos retirados das obras de Shakespeare as razões que levaram o filósofo alemão a sustentar que o bardo inglês possui uma sabedoria ética superior àquela que caracteriza o socratismo. (shrink)

This paper is situated in the broader context of an examination of the relationship between East and West from the particular perspective of our experience of the body. It is therefore based on two specific traditions, one belonging to the East - a particular strand of Tibetan Buddhism - the other to the West - the Orthodox tradition of the heart prayer - in order to try to show the similarities and differences in their approach to the body and attempt (...) to compare them in the light of their respective ‘phenomenology’. In this sense phenomenology, as a western philosophical discipline, plays a pivotal role in this comparison and hopefully helps to bring new light to bear on this investigation. The early Eastern church evokes the concrete experience of the body as a holy body and sees it as an exemplary route to deification via the mystical practice of the ‘heart prayer’ (hesychasm). As regards Tibetan Buddhism, it advocates the gradual experience of the body as a rainbow body, defined as a path towards illumination, by means of ‘sitting meditation’ which brings liberation in bardo. In order to carry out this analysis, I shall refer to two recent books that are authorities in both these fields, Corps de mort et de gloire, Petite introduction à une théopoétique du corps by O. Clément and Rainbow Painting: A Collection of Miscellaneous Aspects of Development and Completion by Tulku Urguyen Rinpoché. (shrink)

In late August 2012, artist Paul Thomas and philosopher Timothy Morton took a stroll up and down King Street in Newtown, Sydney. They took photographs. If you walk too slowly down the street, you find yourself caught in the honey of aesthetic zones emitted by thousands and thousands of beings. If you want to get from A to B, you had better hurry up. Is there any space between anything? Do we not, when we look for such a space, encounter (...) a plenitude of other things —a slice of plaster, an old vinyl record, a flattened piece of aluminum, painted metal surfaces, nameless interstitial powder, the reflection of sky, some letters of the alphabet, roughened concrete. Between what we take to be things there exist other things, as if the universe were jammed with entities like clowns in a crowded Expressionist painting. An abyss of things that emanates from them, not a yawning void that threatens to engulf them, but a sunlit nothingness filled with dust that seems to spray out of them like dry mist sparkling with firefly swarms. In these so-called spaces, we encounter the work of causality. Look: someone painted over this crack, some sunlight rippled in a mirage, a hole appeared. When we look for causes and effects, we don't encounter a basement of efficiently whirring machinery. Rather, we encounter these in-between spaces, where we had not thought to look. What we see are stage hands moving the scenery about—they are doing it in plain sight, the best place to hide, right in front of you, in the place we call the aesthetic dimension . In Tibetan Buddhism these spaces are called bardo , which just means the between. There is no such thing as a moment of your life that is not a between, according to this view. There is the between of living. There is the between of dying. There is the between of the transition between lives. There is the between of dreaming. There is the between of meditation. There is the between of two humans holding cameras walking down a street in Sydney. The between of two buildings, a space bursting with objects as if a billion jack in the boxes had exploded at once. Some of the lids are stuck, sometimes a nose bursts out and the hinge won't open any further; at other times, the jack in the box flies right out and pulps against the wall on the opposite side of the room. Time opens up. Each surface is a poem about the past. A myriad stories begin to proliferate, as if a thing were a crisscrossing of books, a whole library of them, each page whispering parts of paragraphs and broken pieces of word. The stories tell us things—they are quite literal, look, this guy painted part of this wall, then they came and stripped off the panel and touched up the holes. Form is the past. When you look at appearance, you are looking at the past. Where is the present? And essence is the future. The hints of unknown, unseen things, the absolute impossibility of grasping everything about this plastic pipe, the way photons entering the camera lens obey a speed limit and splash onto receptors, going into and out of coherence. At the electronic level, it's quite clear that causality is aesthetic. I can't see an electron without deflecting it. Everything is a refrigerator with a light on—or off—inside. For me, for you, for this arrangement of tiles sandwiched between a door and a slab of marble. To a photon, an electron is a refrigerator with a closed door, and a light that might be on—or off—inside. How can you know whether the light is on inside? Why, you open the door of course. But then you are looking at the past. You never see the light in the refrigerator before you open the door. This future is not a predictable future that is a specific number of now-points away. You will never reach it. You will never be able to sneak up from the side and see through the refrigerator. Nor can a photon see through the refrigerator of an electron. Nor can paint see through the refrigerator of this plastic pipe. You take a photo—click—the past appears, another open refrigerator. But the thing you have just made, the photograph, the graphing of the photons—it is another thing, another story. You can read the words, but the meaning always eludes you. It always lurks just off the edge of the sentence, just at the very edge of this ragged slice of paint, just at the edge of this building, between this one and that one. Thousands of secrets, everywhere. Masks that lie and tell the truth at the same time: this pink paint is not blue paint, that's true. But the thing, the thing in itself, that paint sliding off a brush onto that pipe—it is nowhere to be seen, like a light behind a closed door. When you walk too slowly down the street, you start walking into millions of levels of pastness, levels emitted not just by the humans or the dogs and cats, but also by this garbage can, this mottled pink surface pockmarked with nail holes. You walk surrounded by as many futures as there are things. You walk, or rather you occupy a peculiar shifting ground of nowness, created by the relative motion of the past sliding against the future, not touching. You begin to realize that the present does not exist. A thing is a train station where one train is always arriving and one train is always leaving. Hundreds of train stations everywhere, hundreds of relative motions. The idea of a universal, regular, atomic sequence of instants that contains everything is absolutely ludicrous, the philosophers have known this for thousands of years, and to hide the absurdity, to get from A to B, Houston to Sydney, crossing the International Date Line without too much laughter, you have embedded piezoelectric devices in as many pieces of hardware as possible, devices in which quartz talks to electrons, making train stations where the trains seem to run on time. When you walk too slowly down the street, you begin to realize that Zeno had a point. You can seemingly divide each moment, each step, infinitesimally. So perhaps there are no moments, no steps. Or perhaps time is not a box that everything goes in. Perhaps time is, as Einstein argued after all, a way that things send out ripples. Where one house touches another house, there arise hundreds of things, hundreds of meeting places (Old English thing , meeting place). Hundreds of times. I have a thing for you. Come over here, let's do a thing. Stay in the sunlight and shadow between worlds, in the sunlit canyon between this building and that building. See how paint touches this pipe, caressing then leaving, no one will notice if a surface is left exposed, not quite filled in. See how shadows are reflected in pale cream glass—see the luminous abyss of causality spreading out before your very eyes, right in front of security. All kinds of beautiful crimes are committed right here, and as American cars keep telling you, and you never notice, OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR. They are here, or rather, here is them, and now is them. Kissing in the shadow. Tim Morton Rice University. (shrink)

To this new edition of the Bardo Thödol have been added a helpful Psychological Commentary by C. G. Jung and an Introductory Foreward by Lama Anagarika Govinda. --D. R.