THE HIDDEN NORTH FACE OF KANCHENJUNGA
This is one of the truly great mountain sights on earth yet never seen – except for professional mountaineers and those on our Himalaya Helicopter Expeditions. Kanchenjunga at 28,169 feet (8,586 meters) is the world’s 3rd highest mountain (after Everest and K2), with a drop from summit (the peak on the left in front of the cloud) to the glacier at it base of 12,000 feet straight down.
You can be awed by such a picture, but to actually physically be here, to witness this magnificence personally so that it is forever a part of your life, is to feel a depth of awe that has to be experienced to be understood. Kanchenjunga is part of the Himalayas, now on the border of Nepal and Sikkim, once an independent kingdom now absorbed into India. We fly right up the North Face, and into the Amphitheatre of the Southwest Face as well.
We’ll be here once again next late October. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #31 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
SKYE’S LINKS 03/23/23
The Dawning of the Age of AI
It's Not the Age of Aquarius
Not at All
___________________________________We were warned that today would come, and TTP members are well prepared for a government that rapidly falsifies information for the sake of power. Truth to our utilitarian career climbers is just another story. Now they have AI tools that are quickly growing and evolving and not evolving at a biological rate but at the rate of Moore's Law.
Bill Gates is warning that this affects everything as the machines can now spoof real-time events and records, make videos, and possibly (likely) alter official documents. If you own a Kindle device with downloaded books, you have probably noticed that the books on your machine are edited and changed without notifying you.
If the AI systems in healthcare deem your life not worth the effort, your treatment will be denied, and no reason will be given.
They tried to arrest Trump on bogus charges to create a demonstration that the Left's rent thugs could turn into a riot. They put the wrong guy in charge, and everything Alvin Bragg touched became a big problem for the Lefties. It seems that Alvin hid a lot of evidence from the grand jury.
Money is no longer leaving ESG investments. It is a full-on stampede to get out of the type of investments that crashed three banks this month, forcing the merger of UBS and Credit Suisse.
Just like that. Five hundred years of Swiss Banking integrity have been flushed away. Remind me again where the Davos gang meets.
EXPLAINING THE LINK BETWEEN LIBERALISM AND MENTAL ILLNESS
Why are conservatives happier than liberals? Why do leftists report more anxiety, depression, and neuroses compared to those on the right?
Social scientists are perplexed — as well they should be, considering that for every one conservative social scientist, there are 10 liberals. But across all age groups, all incomes, all races, and both sexes — in every single measurable way — conservatives are happier than liberals.
Musa al-Gharbi, writing in the quarterly journal American Affairs, details the phenomenon and offers some insight into possible reasons for the “well-being gap.” “Why is it,” she asks, “that maladjusted, anti-social children gravitate toward left-wing parties as adults? Why is it that liberals are far more likely to be depressed, anxious, or otherwise neurotic compared to conservatives?
Is mental illness involved?
WHAT HAPPENED TO STANFORD?
Stanford was once one of the world’s great universities. It birthed Silicon Valley in its prime. And along with its nearby twin and rival, UC Berkeley, its brilliant researchers, and teachers helped fuel the mid-20th-century California miracle.
That was then. But like the descent of California, now something has gone terribly wrong with the university.
Students at Stanford Law School recently shouted down visiting Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Kyle Duncan. He had been invited to give a lecture by the school’s Federalist Society.
The judge never even got the chance. The law school students drowned him out. They flashed obscene placards. They screamed that he was “scum.” One yelled he hoped the judge’s own daughters would be raped.
The debacle revealed three disturbing characteristics about the Stanford law students. The list of serial embarrassments reads like the suicides of Greek tragedy, where divine nemesis follows hubris.
ROME IN AFRICA
The best place to see Roman ruins is not in Rome or anywhere in Italy. It’s in Africa – specifically on the Mediterranean coast of Libya. This is the Roman theatre at Sabratha built in the 1st century BC. Over 2,000 years old, it’s still mostly intact. Starting as a Berber village, the Phoenicians founded the city as Sabrat by 500 BC. Then came the Greeks, then the Carthaginians, and after the Punic Wars came Rome.
The Libyan coast was a lush fertile place back then. So much so that Sabratha and the other major Roman city nearby, Leptis Magna, produced several million pounds of olive oil per year – sale of which to Rome enabled them to achieve great wealth. It’s a shame that Libya remains today in chaotic civil war. Hopefully the day is not off when experiencing Rome’s most magnificent remains will be possible here again. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #79 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
HAPPY NOWRUZ!
Faravahar symbol of Zoroaster, Fire Temple, Yazd, Iran
It is March 21 – the Vernal Equinox, the first day of Spring, the Persian New Year, and the Persian Christmas too, for all over Iran today people are celebrating the birthday of the founder of the Persian religion Zoroaster.
What’s that? Isn’t the religion of Iran Islam -- certainly not Zoroastrianism? Well, times are changing.
Nowruz (“new day” in Persian) is an official government holiday now in mullah-run Iran. Note today (3/21) how the Tasnim News Agency of the Revolutionary Guard or Pasdaran pretends it is just Persian New Years only: Nowruz: The New Year Festivity Celebrated in Iran.
Not a word or hint of Zoroaster – or as the Iranians call him, Zardosht. The truth is, thanks to Mullah Islamofascism, millions of Persians and others in Iran from Kurds to Azeris are turning away from Islam and towards their ancient original religion that predates Mohammed by over two thousand years.
MY STRUGGLE SESSION AT STANFORD LAW SCHOOL
Stanford Law School’s website touts its “collegial culture” in which “collaboration and the open exchange of ideas are essential to life and learning.” Then there’s the culture I experienced when I visited Stanford last week.
I had been invited by the student chapter of the Federalist Society to discuss the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, on which I’ve served since 2018. I’ve spoken at law schools across the country, and I was glad to accept this invitation. One of my first clerks graduated from Stanford. I have friends on the faculty. I gave a talk there a few years ago and found it a warm and engaging place.
But not this time.
THE CHURCH OF SAINT JOSEPH OF ARIMETHEA IN IRAN
In the early 1600s, some 150,000 Armenians fled persecution from the Ottoman Empire to settle in Isfahan, Persia under the protection of Shah Abbas. There they created an extraordinary trading network that stretched from Amsterdam to Manila, becoming prosperous in the process. This enabled them to build extraordinary Armenian Apostolic Church cathedrals – Armenian Christianity being one of the oldest Christian denominations originating in the 1st century AD.
Here you see the Armenian Apostolic Church in Isfahan, built in 1606 and dedicated to Saint Joseph of Arimathea, the disciple who took Jesus’ body off the Cross. The Armenian Quarter of Isfahan remains populated by thousands of Armenian Christians today who may freely practice their faith, albeit strictly within the confines of their neighborhood and never beyond. Nonetheless, it comes as a shock to see this in present-day Mullah Iran. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #262 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
KEEPING YOUR SANITY BY MASTERING YOUR EMOTIONS, MOODS, AND REACTIONS
Mastering our emotions, moods and reactions begins with understanding our fundamental nature as living, growing organisms. Our biological processes are full of rhythms, pulsations, flowing liquid and moving breath.
Nature’s forces are powerful and enduring. If we try to fight against a powerful wind, we can be quickly overcome by it. But if we can accept, study, and harness those same forces, we can power a sailboat or a windmill.
By stepping back and looking at the bigger picture of our own internal nature, we can more easily understand our own patterns and rhythms; and if we begin by accepting these as they are, we can use their power and direct them in ways that work better for us, rather than fighting against ourselves; against our own nature.
We begin with orienting to our biological nature. From this perspective we can begin to make sense of our flowing emotions, our changing moods, and our sudden and intense reactions.
MAGIC MOUNTAINS
In a remote valley between the northern escarpment of the Tibetan Plateau and the Gobi Desert of Inner Mongolia, you find these magic painted mountains of red sandstone created by Himalayan uplift and millions of years of erosion. It’s at the sunrise light of early dawn that the colors are most apparent before they get sunwashed in the bright of day. It takes quite a hike in pre-dawn darkness to get to the right viewpoints at the right time, but certainly worth it. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #261 photo ©Jack Wheeler)