Month: December 2008

This little excerpt from George Ure’s www.UrbanSurvival.com site may be of interest. I have experienced the difference myself, as have many of my friends. Have you? (To vote, you have to go to his site, hyperlinked above, and scroll down til you find this section.)

Coping: About Time

Maybe its because I chat so much with the chief time monk at HalfPastHuman, but lately I have become a bit worried about ‘time speeding up’ simply because it pops up in our discussions as something to pay attention to in 2009. I figure it may have something to do with the approaching ‘singularity’ but whatever it is, don’t feel like the Lone Ranger if you start to notice the same thing.

Continue reading Are you running fast? Running slow?

I and the guys upstairs have often insisted, the earth is not fragile; life itself is not fragile. Here’s correlation from an unexpected — and poetic — source. From The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/24/opinion/24morton.html?_r=1&ei=5070&emc=eta1

Not-So-Lonely Planet

By OLIVER MORTON
Published: December 23, 2008
San Francisco

THEY came for the Moon, and for the first three orbits it was to the Moon that the astronauts of Apollo 8 devoted their attention. Only on their fourth time round did they lift their eyes to see their home world, rising silently above the Moon’s desert plains, blue and white and beautiful. When, later on that Christmas Eve in 1968, they read the opening lines of Genesis on live television, they did it with a sense of the heavens and the Earth, of the form and the void, enriched by the wonder they had seen rising into the Moon’s black sky.

The photograph of that earthrise by the astronaut Bill Anders forms part of the Apollo program’s enduring legacy — eclipsing, in many memories, any discoveries about the Moon or renewed sense of national pride. It and other pictures looking back at the Earth provided a new perspective on the thing that all humanity shares. As Robert Poole documents in his history, “Earthrise: How Man First Saw the Earth,” that perspective had deep cultural effects, notably in the emotional resonance it offered the growing environmental movement. Seen from the Moon, the Earth seemed so small, so isolated, so terribly fragile.

Continue reading Not-So-Lonely Planet

From the new York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/23/health/23blin.html?_r=1

 

William Duke
BLINDSIGHT A patient whose visual lobes in the brain were destroyed was able to navigate an obstacle course and recognize fearful faces subconsciously.

Blind, Yet Seeing: The Brain’s Subconscious Visual Sense

By BENEDICT CAREY
Published: December 22, 2008

The man, a doctor left blind by two successive strokes, refused to take part in the experiment. He could not see anything, he said, and had no interest in navigating an obstacle course — a cluttered hallway — for the benefit of science. Why bother?

When he finally tried it, though, something remarkable happened. He zigzagged down the hall, sidestepping a garbage can, a tripod, a stack of paper and several boxes as if he could see everything clearly. A researcher shadowed him in case he stumbled.

Continue reading Blind, Yet Seeing

(For Christmas, this story via PEERS.

(I don’t know if you’re familiar with the PEERS project. It puts out a periodical email with stories that are sometimes inspirational, always informative. If you’d like to subscribe, go to http://www.WantToKnow.info/subscribe)

Dear friends,

The short, inspirational Christmas story below was originally published in the December 14, 1982 issue of Woman’s Day magazine. This moving story inspired the creation of The White Envelope Project, a caring nonprofit organization dedicated to developing the next generation of givers, civic leaders, and philanthropists. May this inspirational story remind us all of the true meaning of Christmas and giving during the holidays and throughout the year.

With very best wishes for a wonderful Christmas season,
Fred Burks for PEERS and the WantToKnow.info Team

Continue reading For the Man Who Hated Christmas

In the summer of 1963, John F. Kennedy visited Ireland, Berlin, and Central America, and was greeted with wild enthusiasm. (Naturally, that popularity wasn’t enough to protect him from those who killed him to get him out of the way of their own vested interests and their own insane certainties. After all, one could hardly expect these bright boys to take the will of the people into account.)

Now, 45 years later, the president who was appointed by the Supreme Court is in his final month in office, thank God. The contrast couldn’t be more pointed. He, having done the dirty work he was elected to do (or to allow) is in no danger of assassination. He is merely pitied by most, despised by many and hated by some.

It isn’t just a contrast of personalities, though.

Continue reading Bush, the shoe, and John F. Kennedy