Padmapani

totally agree about iboga. for me they lost their respect when they started to release all that more-minimal-than-psy stuff. what worries me is that iono, which has up to around 2 years ago been a sort-of bastion of real psy prog, is also slowly moving into that direction. are there any labels that still only release quality progressive without anything minimal- or dubstep-like?

i think we are talking about different things here. you are of course right that there are no universal values and that many (or rather most) cultures had practices that would be considered barbaric and inhumane by today's (western or westerized) standards. the aztecs are probably most well known example and i don't doubt there are many more. i was rather trying to say that altruism is not something unique to christianity and a universal component in human nature. this is also well rooted in human evolution. giving up something that's only advantageous to yourself for the good of your whole tribe (mostly relatives sharing a good part of your genome) gives your genes a greater chance of being passed on (at least in those early tribal human societies). a example (that nicely illustrates how we were talking about different things) is the myth of the founding of vientiane: they erected a central pillar for the city and their rituals demanded a human sacrifice for this purpse. eventually a pregant woman jumps into the pit below the pillar and is crushed instead of the selected victim and as a pregnant woman is considered to be of greater value this means better luck for the city. although this is of course nonsensical and barbaric by today's standards it made sense and was considered a great sacrifice for the good of the whole city back then. even if it's a myth (and therefore a bad example, i know ) it dates back to that time and shows that altruism had the same value in a wholly different culture and time. btw, people still light incense for her. i'm not sure i can agree that the bible is the main source of our values today. i'd also give credit to various philosophers and other thinkers (from ancient greece to liberalism and even karl marx). i actually see more similarities between our values and theravada buddhism (which also influened the greeks) than with the bible — at least or especially when you include the old testament, which has be pretty barbaric and bloodthirsty at times. you're of course right about hildegard von bingen (even though the work of dioskurides which was written in roman times was considered to be more valid and complete in the medical community long after they lost interest in hildegard's works). afair she was one of the first to really do some work in this area again and of great importance at the time (around 1000 iirc). but what about the few hundred years before? our lecture said that more knowledge had been lost than gained in that peroid. i agree about the monks and monastaries, but don't forget that the first university (bologna) was founded as a secular one (even though the clergy undoubtedly played a role back then). i'd rather suspect that the big wave of secularisation (with respect to common people) started with the rise of communism more around 100 years ago, but i guess that depends on what you call big, it surely accellerated since with lots of things happening about 50 years ago absolutely

that's a huge simplification. of course there is an influence, but as far as i know roman law was a much bigger influence. i am convinced they are universal things. i guess we'll have to agree to disagree here. yes of course it was rubbish, but at least they were looking for rational explanations and acknowledged the plants used in folk medicine. it's still better than praying for a cure (in most cases anyway ). surely the monestaries were the places where you'd find educated people and where all the preservation and expansion of knowledge happened. still the arabic world became a more important place for 'science' in the middle ages at some point in time and (now, i'm really going onto thin ice considering you're much more knowlegdable about history as i am ; you'll probably correct me but anyway...) the transformation of our society into what we know today and the rapid scientific advances happened only after (during, around?) the enlightenment when religion lost a great deal of its importance and the church's claims to have the answers to everything seemed more and more absurd (which probably was a gradual process starting earlier).

actually it is, as far as i know. to my knowledge karma in buddhism simply is the law of action and reaction, or causality. this includes an apple falling down due to gravity when you drop it, as well as your example with joe, as well as what we westeners commonly refer to as karma with a reward/punishment-system in the next life (supposedly caused by an imbalance in your "mind" [in lack for a better expression, those definitions tend to be complicated in buddhism]). the latter is something i do not follow and the former two are of course obvious.

excellent post. this deserves to be quoted for the new page. umm... what makes you think that logic and rational explanations are opposites? logic is basically the most important tool of rational thinking. also why cite your explanation of karma as evidence for the existance of a god? it is one of the core principles in buddhism which essentially is an atheistic religion.

i find it rather boring, but not at all ignorable with those horribly annoying glitchy blips that are present in every track. but at least minimal-influenced psy isn't necessarily ruining the flow and could be danced to. i have researched a bit this weekend and found this: it's not quite as bad as most of the stuff i heard on that party, but still it masterfully combines everything i hate about these new kinds of "psy". it has the minimal blips, dubstep parts, dubstep wobbles in the place of kickdrums, pointless glitchy stuff instead of psychedelic sounds, plus it uses most of the cheap tricks from the 10 reasons video and all that in a track that's not even 8 minutes long. please that me that it's a satire, please! this makes all the cheesy formulaic fullon from around 2008 sound like etnica's trip tonite in comparison. i sincerely feel sorry for the young people who just recently discovered the genre and are not only missing out on goa trance parties, but also on psy parties that deserve that name.

i was at a party yesterday and now can understand all the hate for dubstep. they advertised the party as psytrance (progressive and fullon), but i could hardly recognize it as such in those moments when it actually had some reseblance to psy. wtf is wrong with those people? most of the time what i heard was like 20 seconds psy kick+bass, followed by 20 seconds break followed by 20 seconds of dubstep and repeat. how are you supposed to dance to that music? let alone trance dance? and indeed the people (at least those who weren't obviously on mdma or something similar) were dancing for the 20s then stood around, bobbed their heads a bit and waited for the next proper "psy" sequence. and even for those sequences the only thing "psy" about them was speak samples like "i need drugs" and some delay on the dubstep wobbles that appeared every now and then. i kid you not, about one third of the "psy" sequences even had at most 3 kickdrums before one was replaced by dubstep wobbles! K-bbK-bbK-wobwob-K-bbK-bbK-wubwub-K-bbK-bbK-wowowop-K-.... what have they done? it was as if i went to a nice restaurant, ordered a chicken vindaloo with some nan, but instead of serving me what i ordered the waiters serve me a bowl of vomit, then crawl on the table and proceed to use this bowl as a toilet. i'd rather dance to nhjo hyennro playing his christmas carrols playing on repeat with him singing alongside than listening to this crap. the non-dubstep rest of the music was either rather like Perplex vs. Intersys - Glorious Times or just like 10 reaons why psytrance has become shit. i've heard multiple tracks that had bass parts which were identical in structure to loud's video, just with different fx and spech samples. people, it's a satire that condenses the most-used cheap tricks into one short track, it's not a template! i still cannot believe it. i guess that's what you get for only going to carefully selected events with artists you know in the last 2 years... sorry for the rant and a big thank you to everyone on here who knows what psytrance is all about (and who can tell therefore the difference between psy and what i descibed above) and an extra special thank you to everyone who is actively involed in keeping this great music alive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXSRgNvO0P0

dude... i... i cannot even...

it's usually about 30˚C in the day and 25˚C at night. however when i was there two years ago it was 40˚C at day and over 30˚C at night. needless to say i didn't see as much as i hoped to and spent the most time at the pool of our guesthouse.

yes of course. but as you say, that's not unique for christianity but rather universal for all religions and also valid for non-religious people or people acting independently of their religious beliefs. also on the topic of what christianity has done for medicine: their caring for the sick (which led to the development of hospitals) of course was admirable and a great thing, but there's also the question of how people were thinking about diseases and the theories behind that. before christianity spread in europe, the greeks and romans made many advances in this field, had their own (for the first time in history non-supernatural, but of course also flawed theories on how disease works; the greek medicine also was sort of a template for some of the theories we now know as traditional-"asian"-medicines). but after christianity had become the dominant religion, the advances in medicine were mainly made outside of europe, mainly because the church-backed belief at the time was that diseases are either god's retribution for your sins or god testing you; also that the only way to get cured was through jesus and prayer, instead of taking the appropriate plant drugs that had been known to be effective for that kind of illness before. europe only started making advances in medicine again when we re-imported the ancient (roman and greek-based) scriptures from the arabic world a few hundred years later. i think that our medicine would be a lot more advanced by now, if we had stuck with the roman gods i'm very surprised now, i really didn't believe that i'd ever need the information from the utterly boring university course on the history of medicine ever again

great, thanks.

of course we all know that youtube is the best source of knowledge. take this example: wonderful how it proves the existance of a creator god, ain't it? we're not better than the people who claimed that that the earth is the center of the universe? radi, please stop using this pitiful excuse for an argument. especially in this context where you defend your theist believes against science. the claim originates from the bible and was disproven by science (it took the church hundreds of years to acknowledge this fact!). you might want to look up nephilimfree on youtube. he's a strong defender of theism and because it's written in the bible he does believe that the earth is the center of the universe. he also says that the craters on the moon are due to "water ejected from inside the earth at supersonic speed during noah's flood and forming ice meteors that subsequently hit the moon". but hey, he posts the whole thing on youtube, which according to you is an excellent source of information, so according to your logic he must be right.

totally. the thing i have in my mind is that the people involved were suprised by how close the genome of humans and chimpanzees were and a sort-of "controversy" if humans could even be classified as "homo" instead of "pan" - of course only when you solely look at the genetics and not at the morphology/... +1

^ but it's so cold in the area of the ha long bay in february when i have time to travel... i'll go with the phang nga bay in the coming year

sources please. as a molecular biologist with quite a bit of background in evolution, i have never heard about such a thing, and i'm obviously interested.

imho transstellar is better. but you probably already know most of those tracks, in that case go with transaddendum. if you don't, then get transstellar. on the other hand if you're not really sure which one you should take, you'll have no other choice than to get both

seconded. or maybe also filteria, one D5 and either blacklight moments, mindsphere or nebula meltdown (i haven't listened to cosmic dimension yet). they're all good

how long did you stay there? the first time i visited the place i thought the same way, but the second time their whole thing with the constant reminders about what to do to stay safe and how to be a good citizen kind of get on my nerves after a few days. the place is too structured and organised for me; i called it "more european than europe" prices depend a lot on the area, having a meal on clarke quay costs the same as eating for 10 days in the indian quarter. new delhi or old delhi? i've found new delhi to be one of the cleanest and wealthiest places i've seen in northern india. old delhi on the other hand was pure horror, nearly as bad as agra. generally the north and the south of india are wholly different places. i'd reccomend for anyones first visit to india to go to the south first. i haven't seen all of it yet, but goa and especially kerala will spare you of seeing a lot of the awful things you inevitably encounter in the north. there will still be beggars on the streets or people crippled by polio (and of course the contaminated food ), but still it's not anywhere near what you see for instance in delhi.

evidently. we have a 6 pages long heavy metal thread going, here in the offtopic

seconded. there may be atheists who think that way, but i bet it's much more prolific with theists who have exactly that written in their holy books ("made in the image of god" and so on...). that's a funny hypothesis. its proponents argue that being in a simulation is actually more probable than not being in one. the argument goes somethin like: the people in one real universe create a sophisticated simulation of their own universe. after a while the people in this simulation are able to do the same. that goes on for a pretty long time, so for every real universe there are a huge amount of simulations. therefore if you randomly pick your own universe/simulation (actually you pick the one you're in, but from inside you cannot tell which is real and which is a not) you're likely to end up with a simulation. i'm not sure if that kind of reasoning is valid - and it certainly fails if creating such a sophisticated simulation for some reason turns out to be impossible - but it's certainly an interesting line of thought.

nice, i loved the first two mixes, so i'm sure this is gonna be good. is there any way to download?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScrJMsYrhI0

yes, that's something i cannot disagree with

atheism doesn't imply something like that. each lifeform in existance is the pinnacle of evolution just as much as any other, simply because it has "managed" to be alive today. if i had to put the stamp of arrogance on one side of this question, i'd rather put in on the belief that humans are superior to other species. we're just apes with a slightly larger lump of fat and protein in our heads, which most of us cannot even use properly . in this respect i'd place the blame for the problems we see today rather on the society we were born in and which we perpetuate and on the ignorant people (who for instance actively support wars) rather than on a malevolent or immature god. but yes, i agree that this rules out a belevolent, all-powerful god. such a being would (by defintion) have had plenty of time to make its existance clear (beyond any doubt) to everyone and would in the same way have had enough chances to improve the lives of the people on here.