The Gebser Conference is in Melbourne this Thursday to Saturday. I’ll be there on Saturday, batting for the Daily Grail and looking very confused.
- This June marks the 100-year anniversary of the Tunguska event.
- NASA says martian soil is too clumpy for Phoenix to analyse. Excuses, excuses.
- Testing spooky quantum behaviour, between the Earth and the ISS.
- Plants can recognise relatives. Even weeds are loved.
- How sugar changed the world; and my attention span.
- Millions are hooked on a psychotropic drug: caffeine. Speaking of which…
- New research suggests that the brain’s adaptive ability to see into the near future creates many common optical illusions. Seeing is believing.
- Russian girl with x-ray eyes still uses her gift of second-sight to help common people.
- Dymaxion man: the extraordinary visions of Buckminster Fuller.
- British author Kate Mosse talks about her new book and her fascination with tarot cards (Sepulchre, Amazon US or UK).
- Terry Pratchett has a peak exerience while going down the stairs. Don’t you find God by going up the stairs?
- Archaeologists have unearthed what could be the world’s oldest Christian church dating back 2000 years — to the time of Jesus Christ. Brilliant pics.
- Christie’s is auctioning a 1543 volume by Copernicus, and other scientific tomes and books. One day it’ll be Darklore.
- Wiltshire’s latest crop circle seems to predict a partial eclipse.
- The Mowing Devil of 1678 shows crop circles aren’t a modern hoax, unless Doug & Dave are really, really old.
- Thunderbirds in the skies of Pennsylvania: muppets, folklore or real?
- Billy Cox wonders if Hillary Clinton’s departure also closes the door on an E.T. glasnost.
- It may be no accident that Mt Shasta was chosen for a new SETI radio array.
- British Navy a suspect in the deaths of 26 dolphins. The US Navy is guilty as charged.
- Apocalyptic prophecies: an insightful, and frightening, review by Ian McEwan.
Much thanks to Greg and Kat.
Quote of the Day:
[O]ne can only wonder how the seemingly subtle process of transforming the inner sphere of consciousness — no longer squandering ‘free time,’ but using it to attain ‘time freedom’ — could provide any defense from the catclysmic ravages and global meltdowns to be expected when our “superannuated spatial world” crashes and burns, “as everything that becomes lifeless and rigidified breaks apart,” a collapse that appears to be approaching us at high speed. Gebser’s answer to this is similar to Sri Aurobindo’s, Jung’s, Goswami’s, and Steiner’s: If “mind-stuff,” rather than matter, is the fundamental ground of being, then a transformation of consciousness has, potentially, far-reaching effects — not just in the psychic world, but in the one we perceive to be physical, as well.
Daniel Pinchbeck, 2012: The Year Of The Mayan Prophecy p. 217 (Amazon US or UK),