Saturday, May 30, 2009

Scientist talks about reincarnation! Ideas!

An article in the National Post examines the scientific community’s response to reincarnation.

Dr. Jim Tucker, a psychiatrist at the University of Virginia who has carried on research in the field pioneered by the late Ian Stevenson, another psychiatry professor at the college and a Montreal native, said he and colleagues stop short of arguing that reincarnation is a fact.

“My conclusion is that the strongest cases provide evidence that there are times when memories and emotions seem to have survived death,” he said.

“Whether that exactly means what people think of as reincarnation—as sort of a soul moving from one life to another—that’s hard to say ... [But] there is a lot of reason to think that consciousness is sort of an independent force in the universe, and as such it may well exist separate from the physical brain, at least at times. This would be an example of that.”

The cases that prompt Dr. Tucker to remark like this are those in which patients display vivid memories of existences other than their own without any other signs of mental instability. Dr. Tucker says that while the idea of a consciousness that exists apart from the brain runs contrary to the materialist leanings of the scientific community, his own inclination is that at some point, the strictly materialist view will see a strong challenge.

I am not shocked.  Materialism results out of the inability to test that which is not material, not out of a philosophical impossibility of super-material realities.  Hell, for all scientists know, we could be the imagination of some sort of computer program that has managed to simulate a material world perfectly well. Their job is not to figure out if that is true, but rather to learn all they can about the simulation.

I do think, however, that we sometimes display a remarkable lack of creativity when it comes to understanding our own minds.  The understanding of consciousness, it seems to me, is an area well-primed for a paradigm shift.  In the physical world we have come to understand that the lines we once thought were solid are indeed blurred.  This was true when we discovered that all things were made of atoms, and it was true when we learned about quantum theory.

I think that at some point we will learn that the lines we draw between our consciousnesses are similarly blurred, but it will take a long time to figure this out because we are looking at them from the inside.  It is impossible to look at one without also looking through one, and this is a huge problem.

I think though, that just like believing that physical boundaries are discrete is an example of rudimentary thinking, so does believing that your consciousness is surrounded by some sort of brick wall represent a marked lack of creativity.

In Eastern thought, each soul is atman, which is a fractal representation of Brahman, which is the totality of existence, or the Oversoul.  One way of understanding this is to imagine Brahman as a big bonfire with a never-ending source of fuel.  When someone is born, it is like putting a small stick into that fire and letting it catch.  The small flame is atman, it is made of Brahman, but it is also separate and its own entity.

In this way consciousness can be passed, manipulated, extinguished, and absorbed, it is not simply an abstraction created by the firing of neurons, it is an energy, albeit one that we do not yet understand.  I think that we may have an inclination to it, however, and I sure hope that some giant brain figures it out soon because I feel like it is on the tip of my tongue.

Friday, May 29, 2009

Jin on Freestyle Friday

Jin is awesome, man.

No one comes close.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

The Sirige

Atlas of Curiosities: Part 5

The Sirige is the most impressive of all Dogon masks, standing an impressive 15 feet tall.  When it emerged at the beginning of the procession it rivaled even the trees. 

A villager seated with us said that the height symbolized a link between this world and another world, and we marveled at the motion that the dancer achieved: now dipping, now rising.

When we inquired as to the mechanics of the dance, the same villager motioned to his own toothless mouth, the mouth of a dancer, as the bulk of the sirige is secured by a wooden bar gripped in the dancer’s teeth; the entire weight of the stunning mask supported by only his jaw.

The strange case of the villain with narcolepsy

Hana’s friend Krista lives on a house boat on the Nile river in Cairo.  A few mornings ago, she woke up to find things a bit different in her home.  There were some items displaced onto the couch and a pair of men’s shoes in a side room.  Odd.  Then, she walked into her kitchen for morning tea, and found a man sleeping on the kitchen counter.  She went to get the property manager, who immediately ran across the street to get a friend.  Together, they put the sleeping stranger on the ground and tied him with a rope, all without him waking up.

Upon further examination, Krista found that the man was wearing her necklace.

When the stranger finally woke up, the two property managers asked him how he had entered the apartment.  He said “min el ba7r…yalla hop” (from the river, let’s go….hop!).

So this clever villain floated up on a houseboat in the night, and hopped in.  He took off his shoes, then looked around, rearranging nick-nacks here and there until he found a particularly nice necklace.  Putting it on, he somehow fell asleep on the kitchen counter, and awoke to find himself bound on the floor.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

On Homelessness

The defining features of a homeless man are these: long beard, unkempt hair, clothes that are dirty or which do not match.  Perhaps a homeless man is carrying his possessions on his back.  Perhaps he is pushing them in a cart.  Maybe he mumbles to himself incomprehensibly.  Maybe he walks in a way which is abnormal: a shuffle, a stifled gait.  It is possible that he will be wounded, and that evidence of his wound will be visible to the naked eye: a bandage, a cut, an arm in a sling.  His hands will be rough and worn.  He will look in places ordinary people will not look.  He will speak to you as you pass him with unnerving frequency and in an unorthodox style.  He will seek you out when and where you do not wish to be sought. 

Mr. Jesus, it seems to me, possessed many of these same characteristics.  He kept the company of prostitutes.  His hair, presumably, was rarely washed.  His clothes, when held in comparison to the well dressed people of his day, were ordinary, and likely quite dirty.  His hands would have been rough, worked, and worn.  There was dirt beneath his fingernails.  He would not say “consider the Tabernacle” in order to teach.  Instead, he would say “consider the mustard seed,” using perhaps the most lowly thing to teach his lessons.  Were Jesus alive today, He would appear to be a homeless man.  A vagrant.  A derelict.  A bum.

He spent much of his time speaking about the differences between his teachings and the teachings of the Pharasees, who were the established religious men of his day.  He said, for example “Woe unto you hypocrites,” regarding the men who dressed in fine clothes and proclaimed themselves to religious leaders.  He called them serpents, he called them a brood of vipers. 

___________________

Mr. Jesus became too powerful.  People were starting to follow him around and listen to what he had to say.  People were starting to understand His message.  So the Pharisees, working together with the Romans, had Him stapled to a big piece of wood, in order to teach everyone a lesson about bums.  The lesson was this:  Once a bum, always a bum.

Mr. Jesus had a lesson to teach too.  His lesson was this: To find God, do not look up.  Look down.

________________

Religion is such an odd thing.  Today it is a subject of many discussions, and a great deal of anger.  This is because we have forgotten the lesson of Mr. Jesus.  In America, the president is one man whose religion is very important to us.  If the president does not talk properly about religion, we get very upset.  Atheists, Jews, Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Wiccans, we get upset.

When we want to know about Religion, we look up to the very top part of our society.  We say: Mr. President, what do you suppose is true about religion?  If the President claims one thing, we are happy.  If he claims another, we are angry. If a bum shares his idea on Religion, what do we say?  “Ok bum,” we say.  “Whatever you say.”  We are a strange society.

If you ask me, Religion does not come from the very high places.  It comes from the very low places.

_______

Mr. Jesus spent a good deal of time talking about the end of the world.  “The end is near!” He would say. 

Bums say the same thing, but nobody writes books about it.

_____

Mr. Henry David Thoreau once said some thing very interesting.  He said, “Beware of any enterprise which requires a change of clothes.”  I got to thinking about this, and I got to thinking about the sorts of enterprises that normally require a change of clothes.  One of these enterprises is going to work.  When we go to work, most of us put on special clothes which tell other people how official we are. 

Another enterprise that requires a change of clothes is going to Church on Sundays.  When people go to Church on Sundays, they also put on clothes that prove how official they are.  To me, this does not make any sense.

Once Mr. Jesus was walking along in a field, and his disciples got to worrying about food, money, and clothes.  Mr.  Jesus stopped the conversation right there and taught a lesson.  He said, “Consider the birds in the fields: do they put food in a big barn and worry every day about what to eat?  No.  Even so, God is giving them food to eat every day.  Consider the flowers.  Are they saving up money to buy expensive clothes?  Do they worry everyday about looking beautiful?  No.  But look at them: God has given them the most beautiful clothes in the world.”

Then Mr. Jesus said something amazing.  He said: “God is loving birds and flowers so much that they get clothes and food every day.  Are you trying to tell me that God doesn’t love you too?  Are you trying to tell me that God won’t guard you just like God is guarding the birds and the flowers?”

How interesting.  A homeless person will not change clothes to look official.  Maybe in this way, he or she is like Mr. Jesus.

________

A homeless person will usually not be on the news explaining world events.  To me, this says more about the news than it does about homeless people.

________

Sometimes homeless people are doing amazing things.  In the American Midwest, for example, there is a homeless man that dresses in a bright pink leotard and plays the saxophone all day.  As an artist, he deserves my support.  He has it. 

_________

It is about love.  In everyone, there is something to love, something which was put there a long time ago.  Many times people are obsessed with covering this thing up, because they are ashamed of it or afraid.  They are “insecure.”  Sometimes on the street I will come across a man who will say something ridiculous to me.  For example, once in California, a man yelled “I am the kite king of San Francisco!!”

At first I was afraid, because I thought the man might attack me.  Later I realized this was nonsense.  If what he says is true, then he has no reason to attack me.  I imagine that when no one is looking, he gives the kites orders as they move around in the sky.  “Go this way!” he says, and they go.  “Go back that way!” he says, and they go back.

That is beautiful.  Why was I so afraid of a man who is able to talk to kites?

________

Sometimes we think that we do not need to pay attention to what other people are telling us.  We think “I am an educated person with a sound mind.  This person is talking nonsense.  I will not listen.”

This is bad.  Imagine all those people who said this to old Copernicus, who decided to start saying that the Earth revolves around the sun.  Those people were a real disaster.  So the next time someone tells you they are the Kite King of San Francisco, think of Copernicus.

__________

Maybe we do not always understand what is right.  Imagine a person who has lived their entire life inside of a medium sized box.  They are probably real experts about the inside of the box, but would we say that they understand the entire world?

It is the same with brains.  We go through life only being inside of our own brain.  We are the real expert about the inside of our brain, but that does not mean we understand the whole world.  Maybe there are amazing things outside of what our brains understand that are waiting to be discovered.

Maybe the Kite King is on to something!  Who knows?

________

It is really about love.  That is one thing I know.  Mr. Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  That does not mean that you should stand inside your box and think about how quaint somebody is.  That means that you try to understand their box from the inside!  When I do something idiotic, for example, I am always understanding that there was a reason for my action, even if the reason is stupid.  When other people do an idiotic action, however, I sometimes think “They are just an asshole.”  This is probably wrong.  That person probably also had a reason, even if it is a stupid reason.

________

Society tells us many things about each other, but most of them are crap.  It is worth listening to other people, even if they seem crazy, dirty, disheveled, or poor. This is true because our society is based around the ideas of crazy disheveled people, such as Mr. Jesus, Mr. Henry David Thoreau and Copernicus.  Even if Copernicus was not disheveled. He wasn’t, he was quite well kept.  Not that that is a crime.  It isn’t.

What in the world?

While I was looking at that awesome article about the sloth, inoticed this.  It seems that a giant blob has been found underneath Nevada. 

Last year, Arizona State University Allen McNamara explained how Earth is not neatly divided into a crust, mantle and core. Rather, several large blobs of highly compressed rock — which he described as behaving like honey or peanut butter — exist.

This is amazing, and it reminds me that I need to get to work on explaining supervolcano to the people.  I will do this soon. 

World’s oldest sloth found

What the?

Hana is always on the lookout for amazing things, and today she found something very excellent. This is a site talking about the startling discovery of the oldest sloth bones ever.

This is a megtherium, which is a giant sloth. Hands like a shovel and teeth like a shovel, that is the giant sloth.  Giant sloths ate trees whole and could bunch the living daylights out of anyone.  But they were so peaceful that they just sat around all day doing tai chi and thinking up new tree recipes.  They could grow to enormous heights, and were extremely cool, but they went extinct because they were all nihilists.  Basically one day one giant sloth woke up and looked around and he said “guys, we are the coolest animal…..ever.”  All of the other sloths thought “yeah that’s true.”  From that point on there wasn’t much point evolving or anything because they had already achieved the pinnacle of what was possible for carbon-based life forms.  So the megatheria just sort of gave up.  They didn’t shovel up any more trees or do tai chi anymore.  And that was okay, because in the end they were right about being the coolest animal, and there really isn’t that much for them these days.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

The Mysterious Dancing Plague of 1518

The outbreak began in July 1518, when a woman, Frau Troffea, began to dance fervently in a street in Strasbourg. This lasted somewhere between four to six days. Within a week, 34 others had joined, and within a month, there were around 400 dancers. Most of these people eventually died from heart attack, stroke, or exhaustion.

Historical documents, including “physician notes, cathedral sermons, local and regional chronicles, and even notes issued by the Strasbourg city council” are clear that the victims danced. It is not known why these people danced to their deaths, nor is it clear that they were dancing willfully.

As the dancing plague worsened, concerned nobles sought the advice of local physicians, who ruled out astrological and supernatural causes, instead announcing that the plague was a “natural disease” caused by “hot blood”. However, instead of prescribing bleeding, authorities encouraged more dancing, in part by opening two guildhalls and a grain market, and even constructing a wooden stage. The authorities did this because they believed that the dancers would only recover if they danced continually night and day. To increase the effectiveness of the cure, authorities even paid for musicians to keep the afflicted moving. Source

A similar plague struck Madagascar in 1840.  And then there was the terrifying Tanganyika Laughter Epidemic of 1962.

Monday, May 25, 2009

Easter celebration in Chios

I am wondering if Panos knows how to do this.

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Chad forgets his GPS

Update: I have re-attached the ending over and above Panos’ objections in order to “let the people decide” whether it is worthwhile. Panos’ said of this ending that he “did not understand how it would be possible.”