Blog — July, 2007

I've never read any of Eckhart Tolle's books, and didn't research him for STG, but I recently came across a relevant skeptical thread on Rick Ross's website.

I was pleased to see, within that single thread, references to the work of David Lane, James Randi, Carl Sagan, and Skepdic.

Following an afternoon spent doing website work (for pay), I took in the Toronto Poetry Slam finals tonight, at Hugh's Room.

Eight individuals, doing two sets each, with the top four (plus one "alternate") being chosen for the Toronto Poetry Slam Team.

One of the acts deliberately disqualified himself, sort of in protest against the idea of doing poetry for scored "points." (Kids acting out again, sheesh! Have I mentioned that I was clearly the oldest person there, aside from somebody's mother and the bartender/owner, in a room of 200?)

So, of the seven remaining poets, five would end up in the winner's circle.

What do you figure the odds are that the (five) judges, and the audience, would manage to place the best actual poet among the competitors (i.e., Jill Binder), into one of the two positions which didn't make the team?

Yep, that's exactly what happened. They chose the political rants and the social commentary, brilliant and well-acted though those may have been, over the real poetry—i.e., compositions utilizing real poetic devices, rather than being merely "spoken word."

This was supposedly the Toronto Poetry Slam. Not the Toronto Spoken Word Slam; not the Toronto Political Rant Slam.

But then, if I were to actually agree with anything I see going on around me I'd probably start to worry that I was conforming; so perhaps it's just as well....

I would never have guessed that you could get sheet music for the classic Simpson's song, Who Needs The Kwik-E-Mart.

Only goes to show....

• We Put the Spring in Springfield

• See My Vest

• In The Garden Of Eden

• Amendment to Be

• Evolution Intro (not a song, but brilliant)

BULL$#!+ - Friends of Mother Theresa:

BULL$#!+ - Gandhi:

BULL$#!+ - Dalai Lama:

May, who recently published BANG! The Complete History of the Universe with astronomers Patrick Moore and Chris Lintott, said he was adding the finishing touches to a musical score which will be played at the telescope's inauguration next summer. (more)

What??!

You really never can tell. David Lee Roth's a high-school drop-out, Brian May has a Ph.D. (pending review) in astrophysics. Go figure.

However, the report authors said it isn't possible to draw any firm conclusions about the effects of meditation on health, because the existing studies are characterized by poor methodologies and other problems. (more)

Yep, those "solid, repeated" studies just never stand up to questioning, do they? Having been designed and performed, you know, by persons who lack even the most basic professional competence in their fields.

Even if it allows you to view your brainwaves, EEG-like, and tap into the Secret of Abundance.

Ooh, Secret of Abundance....

[Tori] Amos has openly discussed her experiences with hallucinogenic drugs, particularly in relation to the Boys for Pele album. She claims that she had "tea with the devil" (whom she describes as a lovely woman who dresses in white and drives an ice cream truck) during one of these experiences. (Wikipedia)

Ooookay....

Where's Stevie Nicks when you need her?

In one unguarded moment, [Einstein] confessed to me that each personal tie was a form of torture for him, that each bond was often intolerable. As he put it, "every handcuff bothers me." When he said this, I asked him, "Suppose that you had an intelligent wife who would stay in the background and have an understanding for everything that you feel and who would leave you alone and would not restrict you or put limitations on you in any way. Would you then have been happy?" Einstein smiled broadly at my utopian suggestion and said, "Of course I would!"

—Peter Bucky, The Private Albert Einstein, p. 104

Aside from the thing about her staying in the background ... does she have a cute sister?

Porno Pizza in Winnipeg has been doing brisk business since opening last week, titillating the hungry with racy pictures at the bottom of every pizza box. (more)

It's unusual for the folks shivering (in winter) and swatting mosquitoes (in summer) back around Portage and Main to be so cutting-edge and even, dare I say it, risqué. Half a decade ago, I remember reading an article in the Toronto Star about designer martinis and the like in Toronto's chic Little Italy. They interviewed a transplanted Winnipeg man in one of the nightclubs, who enthused: "Back in Winnipeg, the cool girls wear thong underwear. But here, the cool girls don't wear any underwear at all!"

And if that's not something to be enthusiastic about, I don't know what is....

Just when you thought that the question had been settled of whether it was Sexy Sadie or Fool on the Hill that was about the Maharishi:

McCartney said of the [latter] song:

"Fool on the Hill" was mine and I think I was writing about someone like Maharishi. His detractors called him a fool. Because of his giggle he wasn't taken too seriously ... I was sitting at the piano at my father's house in Liverpool hitting a D 6th chord, and I made up "Fool on the Hill."

Alistair Taylor, in the book Yesterday, reports a mysterious incident involving a man who inexplicably appeared near him and McCartney during a walk on Primrose Hill and then disappeared again, soon after McCartney and Taylor had conversed about the existence of God; this allegedly prompted the writing of the song.

So, I hope that clears it up: "Sexie Sadie" is about His Holiness ... and "Fool on the Hill" is half about him, and half about a semi-paranormal experience had by Paul and a friend of his.

P.S. As Borat would say, "Happy Birthday, U. S. and A.! Impeach Dubya Bush!" Still, any time you can cast off a monarchy closely tied to the Church, in favor of democracy and the separation of church and state ... well, as those four mop-tops from Liverpool once sang, "Don't you know that you can count me ... in." (Even if the U.S. currently only ranks 17th on the world Democracy Index....)

Wolfgang Pauli received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1945 for his discovery of the Pauli Exclusion Principle.

He was also a patient of Carl Jung's, with "a standing appointment for Mondays at noon."

Pauli was deeply attached to his mother who committed suicide in 1927 on discovering her husband was having an affair. From this point on Pauli's life went to pieces. His marriage to a nightclub singer lasted only a few weeks. Increasingly he turned to drink and became aggressive in bars to the point where he was thrown out. (F. David Peat)

Hence, the Pauli Bar-Exclusion Principle, which states that no two drunken physicists can occupy the same barstool at the same time.

There's a whole book on the Pauli/Jung relationship (which I haven't read): Atom and Archetype:

Their collaboration resulted in the combined publication of Jung's treatise on synchronicity and Pauli's essay on archetypal ideas influencing Kepler's writings in The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche. Over time, their correspondence shaped and reshaped their understanding of the principle they called synchronicity, a term Jung had suggested earlier.

Synchronicity, of course, is really just Littlewood's Law in action, i.e., Jung's theory is, to borrow a phrase from Pauli himself, "Not even wrong."

Back when the whole Don Imus controversy was happening, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson were frequently in the news, giving their comments on the affair.

Avid little researcher that I am, I couldn't help but eventually try to find out a little more about Jackson and Sharpton's view of the world, and their undoubted wishes for "justice for all," etc.

From the Wikipedia entry for Jesse Jackson:

Jackson has been criticized for some of the remarks he has made about Jews and Jewish issues: that Nixon was less attentive to poverty in the U.S. because "four out of five [of Nixon's top advisors] are German Jews and their priorities are on Europe and Asia"; that he was "sick and tired of hearing about the Holocaust"; that there are "very few Jewish reporters that have the capacity to be objective about Arab affairs." In addition Rev. Jackson had referred to Jews as "Hymies" and to New York City as "Hymietown" in January 1984 during a conversation with Washington Post reporter, Milton Coleman.

(I can't help but think of the old line from Get Smart: "My father's name was Hymie.")

From the Wikipedia entry for Sharpton:

Some conservative and liberal commentators have accused Sharpton of being racist and homophobic. Sharpton was quoted as saying to an audience at Kean College in 1994 that, "White folks was [sic] in caves while we was [sic] building empires ... We taught philosophy and astrology and mathematics before Socrates and them [sic] Greek homos ever got around to it." Sharpton defended his comments by noting that the term "homo" was not homophobic but added that he no longer uses the term....

During 2007, Sharpton was accused of bigotry for comments he made on May 7, 2007, concerning presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his religion, Mormonism....

Jesse Jackson is also a "friend and ally" of the Nation of Islam leader, Minister Louis Farrakhan.

From the Wikipedia entry for the Nation of Islam:

The official beliefs of the Nation of Islam have been outlined in books, documents, and articles published by the organization as well as speeches by Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, Louis Farrakhan, and other ministers. These include inflammatory statements as well as the pejorative use of the term "white devils" to refer to white people....

The Nation of Islam teaches that African (Black) people were the original humans. Louis Farrakhan has stated that "White people are potential humans ... they haven't evolved yet"....

While Malcolm X was a member of the Nation of Islam, he also preached that black people were genetically superior to white people....

As of 2005, the Nation of Islam was included in the Southern Poverty Law Center's list of active hate groups in the United States.

And that surprises you?

Brain scans show that putting negative emotions into words calms the brain's emotion center. That could explain meditation's purported emotional benefits, because people who meditate often label their negative emotions in an effort to "let them go." (more)

Another big piece of transpersonal psychology which turns out to be not so transpersonal after all. Big surprise.

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