Monthly Archives: March 2012
Extra! Extra! read all about it!
PhotonQ-Society, my Solipsism 's Love by PhOtOnQuAnTiQuE via Flickr (note: image unconnected to linked article)
I was just browsing though one of the free articles sites when I came across an unusual article. A bit too far out for earthpages.org, I nonetheless found it mildly interesting. Not because I believe it (I don’t) but because I’d never thought this way before.
The idea is a modification of the idea of solipsism. Solipsism is the belief that only the experiencing subject truly exists. In this article, the author seems to believe that he, and a few limited others truly exist. The rest of the world are just… extras.
http://www.articlesbase.com/metaphysics-articles/the-real-zombies-5768807.html
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- Is this a cliche I see before me? Your classic existential crisis (consciousnessthoughts.wordpress.com)
- Solipsism: The Self Alone (atransitoryyes.wordpress.com)
- Solipsism (highlyirregular.wordpress.com)
- Solipsist – Trippy, Experimental Video (suloudandclear.wordpress.com)
- PAL – Chapter 9 – Autonomy and Compassion – 243 -274 (biffnet.org)
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Have some people just lost it?
By lucidish via Wikipedia
Okay, I try to be open-minded about psychological differences. But today something happened that got me thinking.
I had an hour to kill and it was sunny and warm in Toronto, so I thought I’d walk up Avenue Road, north of Lawrence Ave.
Earlier this week someone had mailed a letter to our place with the wrong address. So with my RETURN TO SENDER envelope in hand, I scanned the far corner of the intersection, looking for a mailbox.
Suddenly I heard this British sounding lady cursing me violently. Although she wore nice clothes, the words she used were anything but nice.
“You f****** Canadian! You dirty trash… you’re ugly…” she said angrily, staring right at me.
Taken aback, I met her violent gaze for an instant and then, out of fear, kept on walking without saying a word. She then said something about “… Jew” that didn’t sound very nice. (For the record, I’m a Christian but was near a somewhat Jewish area.)
Now, the reason I mention the letter and my looking for a mailbox is to underscore the fact that I didn’t take note of this lady before she began her abusive rant. I only noticed her after she started hollering at me.
If by chance I’d looked at her first and thought an unfair thought about her, then maybe I could have supposed that she was some kind of mind-reader, had picked up my bad thought, and was ticked off about it.
If that were the case, then I’d probably have been humbled. But again, I never saw this lady and had zero bad thoughts when she lit into me. I was actually quite happy, thinking nice thoughts while heading out for my walk in the sunshine.
So what happened?
Did she have a fight with her Canadian husband? Or maybe her Canadian son-in-law upset her this morning, and she was venting to innocent me. Who knows…
Those two possibilities represent one kind of explanation.
Another possibility is that she heard voices and assumed she was reading my mind. This might sound a little nuts but I suspect it does happen with some people. Whether or not these voices are generated by the brain or the devil remains a mystery that I don’t think psychiatry can solve.
So either this lady was irresponsibly abusive, or she was just out of her mind. It’s hard to know. But if a cop were around, I probably would have reported her.
I was genuinely afraid for a moment. And that was one moment too long.
False consciousness..?
Cash Money Store for short term loans on Yonge St., Toronto - Photo by Vinceesq at Wikipedia
I woke up this morning to the sound of the garbage truck… looking feebly out my window I realized I’d forgotten to put the trash out last night and it was too late to make it just then.
But I did manage to get some good work done b4 having to go out. A few years ago I wrote a short entry at earthpages.ca about ‘false consciousness.’ Today I updated it.
After going downtown I wrote the following. Oh, and btw, I did manage to get the garbage out after all… the truck came around to the other side of the street in the late afternoon. 
From False Consciousness at earthpages.ca:
Another example might be what I saw today on Yonge St. in downtown Toronto. A sort of weather-beaten looking fellow who might have been living on the streets was wearing a brand new Globe and Mail baseball jacket with fine gold lettering on black. The Globe and Mail is Canada’s conservative newspaper. I’ve heard it called an “old man’s” paper, meaning that it generally represents the interests of conservatives with quite a bit of money. And I think it would strike some neoMarxists as ironic – and a proof of false consciousness – that this fellow was wearing that particular jacket.
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Pros and Cons of Paranormal Phenomena
“Wall face” appearance, purportedly paranormal but probably made by human hands, of the famous House of the Faces in Spain - photo by Cesar Tort via Wikipedia
Another volunteer question and answer at allexperts.com.
Here the questioner asks about the pros and cons of paranormal phenomena. Because it’s such a broad topic, I break it down into a few general categories.
Read answer here.
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- Why Skeptics are Wrong about Paranormal Phenomena (epages.wordpress.com)
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- Why Do So Many People Believe in the Paranormal? (geeksaresexy.net)
- Common Brain Mechanisms Underlie Supernatural Perceptions – Richard Wiseman – Scientific American (richarddawkins.net)
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Hinduism and ufos
Image via Wikipedia
Here’s another question and answer at allexperts.com. Basically the question is about those who believe they’ve been abducted by a UFO and whether or not their faith – in this case Hindu faith – saves them.
From my perspective the question isn’t entirely clear and could be interpreted to mean that (a) the Hindu faith ends the delusion of being abducted or (b) it ends an actual abduction.
Whatever the case, I got around it by using the word “believe” in my answer, published here:
http://en.allexperts.com/q/UFOs-Aliens-2138/2012/3/hinduism-ufos.htm
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- UFO Report – UFO Sighting Over Columbia – 12 March 2012 (lucas2012infos.wordpress.com)
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What If – Nichole Nordeman
Here’s another Christian pop tune that I stumbled across in my travels. I like the song and don’t really know if it needs a video. But this video seems the least intrusive of all the others I saw at Youtube.
One of things I like about music is how it can create its own visual landscape of the imagination. So if the video just gets in the way, you can always sit back, turn your head the other way, and listen.
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Past life recall and ‘enlightenment’
Hindus believe the self or soul (atman) repeatedly takes on a physical body via Wikipedia
It’s always nice when one of my volunteer answers at Allexperts.com gets published.
In this question, a man asks about recalling past lives during meditation and the idea of enlightenment.
Click on this link to read my answer:
http://en.allexperts.com/q/Meditation-2544/2012/3/past-life-recall.htm
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Mandisa – Stronger
I’ve been journeying through the past a lot here. But I’m not stuck in it. One of the nicer surprises that I’ve come across in the past few years is the ripening of Christian pop music. With exceptions on either side, I often find it more uplifting than mainstream pop. I say “with exceptions” because there are some new mainstream radio hits that I do like, and there are some Christian pop tunes that get a bit too fundamentalist for my liking (sometimes a good tune can be soured by fundamentalist lyrics). And yeah, I do have to be in the mood. But that’s true for any type of music, n’est-ce pas?
Anyhow, I hope you “dig” this just as much as I do… 
Sour Suite – The Guess Who
When I was a kid the second bargain priced record I bought was The Best of the Guess Who, Vol. 2. It’s long since gone from my collection, but thank God for YouTube. Listening to this one brings back childhood memories of listening to vinyl records in my room in Toronto, sitting in the back seat of the station wagon (remember those?) on the way up to Collingwood for skiing, and racing around in motor boats at Georgian Bay.
Like the record, all that’s pretty much gone from my life now… well, everything but the listening to music part.
It’s true that this band had a string of AM hits in Canada (and some in the US) during the 70s, but I think we all knew they were good but not quite as good as, say, The Who.
Mind you, I do like Burton Cummings‘ voice. And guitarist Randy Bachman (also in BTO – “Takin’ Care of Business“) can still be heard as a DJ on CBC radio.
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