Of Polar Bears and Penguins

Today I was speaking with someone and they showed me a book that they had been using to teach their kids for a class project, this book was a Magic School Bus' Arctic Adventure', and so I casually mentioned if they knew that Polar Bears and and Penguins don't live in the same region. And they were surprised to hear that comment because they believed that the two did infact live in the same region and did come in contact with each other from time to time. Now I have brought this up many times and have run into other friends that also didn't realize that Polar Bears and Penguins live in different regions.... Polar bears primarily existing near the North Pole or the Arctic region and Penguins primary existing in the South Pole, or the Antarctic region. But I guess I can understand where the misconception was formed... these days we see marketing ads from big name companies that show cuddly polar bears and penguins coexisting, sharing a refreshing drink and we see images of the 2 in pictures and sometimes in cartoons. So the question is should factual data be compromised for entertainment value? Does it really matter if we go through thinking that the 2 coexist on the same continent? Who knows... Maybe it's more important that people push "Of Pandas and People" because it makes more sense (me trying to be sarcastic here...).

how effective is non-violent diplomacy in the modern world?

In light of recent events taking place around China and India, specifically with the clash between the Tibetans and the Chinese. The original intent was to march peacefully from Dharamsala, India to Lahasa, Tibet and possible begin talks about a compromise to allow exiled Tibetans to return to their homeland that was taken from them and commercialized by the Chinese government, but more recently it seems that many of the Tibetans have started to clash with the Chinese military in the area because the Tibetans feel that the Dalai Lama's message of trying to reach a consensus towards autonomy is not progressing as well as the displaced Tibetans would like, and feel that by clashing with gov't officials it will resonate a louder message, not only to the world but to the gov't of China as well. Looking back in time, the non-violent protests in Tienanmen square held by students and countless other Chinese citizens hoping for more democratic policies in the PRC's gov't let to a violent response by the military that killed many protesters. Just recently the peaceful anti-government protests in Burma also elicited a violent response from the Junta, that led to the deaths of hundreds of monks. In India, a peaceful protest against the British rule was led by Mahatma Ghandi, the most popular of which was the Salt March that caused a retaliation by the British gov't towards the peaceful marchers, and this retaliation involved violence towards the marchers. I'm sure there are many many other references that I don't want to continue to list, but what I'm getting to is... is it feasible to hold non-violent diplomatic talks in an age of weapons and the need to show force to get ones standpoint across? I like to be optimistic and think it is possible, that if the nations of the world would want to sit down and talk about possible reducing the amount of bloodshed, that the civility of humans can be displayed, I'm one to believe that we live in a time that is at peace with moments of war, instead of the belief that we live in a world that is filled with war with moments of peace. So why not extend the period of peace even further, why not find a way to compromise without greed. I don't know what do other people think about this question?

Infinity?

What is Infinity? It's a question that we learn about when we take calculus or when we talk about physics or spirituality but what is infinity? I had been listening to a radio show and on it one of the hosts defined infinity as something that is not finite, but that only really tell you what infinity isn't not what infinity is, and one interesting example they gave was that if you were to change the question and ask what is green? Then by the same notion from the previous answer you can say that green is not blue, well that tells you what green isn't but it doesn't tell you what green is, we can define green or rather any color, as what our eyes perceive through the reflection of light on an object, depending on the type of material or color that object is bounced off of, how much of the light gets absorbed and how much gets reflected... that forms the color that we perceive, so that is a definition of the color green. But back to the question of infinity, what is it?? Well according to the mathematician Cantor he stated that a collection is infinite if some of it's parts are as big as the whole. That you can find a 1-1 mapping of parts of a set to another set, so take for example the idea of walking to the door but you start by going half way then going half way from your current point and so on, in this way there are infinite possibilities but there is a final goal. A better understanding if your read the "Infinite Hotel". But Cantor also stated that all infinities are not the same, so 2 * infinity is not the same as 3 * infinity. Now to speak a little bit outside of set theory, people consider the universe to be infinite, or that time is infinite, and on a spiritual sense, god is infinite, in that god has infinite wisdom and that god is incomprehensible since god is infinite, but if we take that notion and we can find and can define what infinite is then the idea of god no longer exists because understanding God is supposed to be outside of the scope of our understanding, the supreme being, if we now understand or know what infinity is then we understand god, and if we understand god then god is something we can all understand and thus god really doesn't exist because we all understand the infinite and thus understand god. So infinity is a concept of set theory, but there are still quite a number of paradox's that need to be explored and this is quite an interesting concept and definately worth exploring more, but I will leave it here for now.