News Briefs 06-05-2008
Posted by Perceval at 11:27, 06 May 2008Time for a nice cuppa.
- Three-foot pearl stretchered off Florida parking lot.
- The Virtual Seismic Atlas - explore the crust, from submarine canyons in offshore Nigeria to mud volcanoes from the Caspian Sea.
- Scientists say Indigo children do exist - or are they smurfs?
- The Arlington Institute launches the WHETHEReport - a global strategic early warning system 'using aggregate human intuition as its intelligence source'. Read the pdf on the project.
- 'The CERN Stargate, designed to send matter from this universe into another dimension, comes online next week.'
- Religion a figment of human imagination? I'm sure that was a church I passed today.
- Earth's poles long overdue for reversal, but don't throw away your compass just yet.
- Fungi help clean up the mess in Iraq and the Balkans.
- Meanwhile, a bacterium that sits on uranium, drinks bleach and eats solid rock has been found. That's what I call an extremophile!
- Odysseus: solar powered surveillance in the stratosphere.
- Iranian builds one-horsepower vehicle. Isn't a self-powered horse box a case of putting the cart outside the horse?
- Not for you? How about a gyroscopic unicycle?
- The Museum of Unworkable Devices. My laptop should be in there. It'll never produce something worthy of the Virtual Math Museum anyway.
- Man grows back severed finger with 'pixie dust', made from a pig's bladder.
- The spiritual psychology of the chakras.
- From one unexplored mound to another. Ireland's archaeological treasures dumped in a heap.
- Some seriously twisted trees.
- Elvis and the Rosicrucian brethren.
- Things your body can do after you die. Put away your donor card and make the most of it.
- Space aliens invade Canada.
- Nuclear threat to Great British cuppa.
Thanks Greg
Quote of the Day:
My friends, as I have discovered myself, there are no disasters, only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.
Boris Johnson, Mayor of London
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Comments
22 April 2008
4 weeks 6 days
"Not thou alone, but all humanity doth in its progress fable emulate. Whence came thy rocket-ships and submarines if not from Nautilus, from Cavorite?
"Your trustiest companions since the cave, we apparitions guided mankind's tread, our planet, unseen counterpart to thine, as permanent, as ven'rable, as true.
"On dream's foundation matter's mudyards rest. Two sketching hands, each one the other draws: the fantasies thou've fashioned fashion thee."
"If we mere insubstantial fancies be, how more so thee, who from us substance stole?"
Prospero, at the end of LoEG: The Black Dossier, by Al Moore and Kevin O'Neill.
12 April 2007
5 min 37 sec
"On dream's foundation matter's mudyards rest. Two sketching hands, each one the other draws: the fantasies thou've fashioned fashion thee."
Like this? :-)
PS: What are we talking about, again? ;-)
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It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
22 April 2008
4 weeks 6 days
Spot on! I liked how the article largely avoided a "therefore it's nonsense" conclusion. It reminded me of the speech from the end of the book: Moore's lecturette on the symbiosis between the real and imaginary. From today's news I now know this may be true for thunder dancing apes too!
Matt
25 November 2004
3 hours 31 min
The title of the piece (Religion a figment of the imagination) is misleading, as the first sentence merely implies that imagination is a prerequisite to religion.
This is not an unreasonable statement. Imagination grants us the ability to ask 'What if there's a God?' or 'Am I part of a larger whole?'
However, the fact that humans can use their imagination is not an alternative to the idea that 'religion evolved and spread because it promoted social bonding'.
The anthropologist speculates that imagination was born (at the same time as cave art began to appear) as a result of a development in neural architecture.
I think that the idea, explored in Graham Hancock's Supernatural (Amazon US & UK), that hallucinogens kick-started imagination/spirituality/religion etc has a lot more going for it.
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I don't believe in belief!
Perceval
22 April 2008
4 weeks 6 days
Is it any good? I've been wondering for a couple of months whether or not to read it.
Matt
25 November 2004
3 hours 31 min
I'd say yes, it's a very worthwhile read. It's an eye-opening and scholarly account of the parallels between prehistoric cave art, shamanic experiences (including his own entheogen-induced hallucinations), accounts of abductions by fairies and aliens, building to a 'unified theory' of all things supernatural.
A few too many examples for the impatient reader, I feel, but they do reinforce his case (if making the book a little bloated).
It doesn't really reach a firm conclusion, leads up some very strange speculative avenues with regard to the role of DNA, and inevitably leaves many questions unanswered.
But do read it - it's an important book IMO.
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I don't believe in belief!
Perceval
12 April 2007
5 min 38 sec
The article did not mention the cost of this crazy contraption.
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It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie