Another Book

12/2/2011 in General by cxo | No comments

More old papers, this time on psionics
Need to remember:
Title: Magic: Science of the Future
Authors: Joseph F. Goodavage
Year: 1978-09-00
ISBN-10: 0-451-70810-5
ISBN-13: 978-0-451-70810-6
Publisher: Signet
Price: £0.75
Pages: 196
Binding: pb
Type: NONFICTION
Title Reference: Magic: Science of the Future
Bibliographic Comments: Add new Publication comment (MGCSCNCFTH1978)

The real stuff I’m hunting was in seven issues of Analog, 1956 and 1957.
1956-Feb, May, June, Aug, Sept; 1957 Feb, June.
The Hieronymous Patent was # 2,482,773–and last time I asked, the patent office said they didn’t have that. I might try again. In my spare time.

Motivations

12/2/2011 in General by cxo | No comments

Here I’m trying to track future reading and annotate WHY… because in my life there can be more than one reason to read a book. If I forget my motives, I will wander unintended paths.

This letter to a friend captures my point:

You boasted that you’ve been on GoodReads since 2007–now I wish to exploit your wisdom.
Please tell me if there is a “notes” section where I might annotate my desired reading.

For instance, I have been shredding the hell out of old papers. One of my better searches had to do with my (continuing) studies in the art and science of deception. I am a big fan of Ekman. Now I’ve found that this interest went back a lot farther than I remembered, back when I was studying self-deception in claimed paranormal gifts. (How do you get to the bottom of a lie that the person telling it believes to be true?) This, of course, goes into the heart of “eye-witness testimony” and false memory such as Elizabeth Loftus made so famous in her study of car crashes. You can indeed remember things you have never seen, and utterly believe that you have seen them in real life.

So inside this study of self deception I have now recovered the title of a book “Revelations: Alien Contact and Human Deception by Jacques Vallee” whom you will recall in relation to the book “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”

I’ve recovered the citation and added it to my GoodReads, because I’m trying to force the tool to capture all the stuff I have “meant” to read. I’m trying to force the tool to give me collections that will be relevant to ongoing work I do.

The study of deception–self and other–is not going to leave my life any time soon. It’s not that I think everyone lies, it’s that so many tellers of tall tales _don’t_ think everyone lies. I’m keen enough on the kind of deception that keeps House, MD on the cynical side of life–but I’m far more interested in the way the unbelievable comes to be believed. This is entirely self serving. I wish to more deeply understand all the impossible things I myself have beheld. When am I confabulating? How does this happen? And when am I able to be certain I really did see it, and though it was an anomaly, it was in fact just what I beheld?

To know thyself, you gotta know thine own bullshit. If you don’t think you’re full of bullshit, you just have to check again. That’s true for me, anyway. Unless I am deceiving myself about it.

So I want to make a note about this Vallee book–because it’s not about studying the UFO’s… but hell, it could be. I’m not averse to reading about UFO’s. But if I come back to this thing and can’t remember that it was more about deceit than space critters, I’ll waste my own time. I want that note.
I could put it into a blog. Possibly I should. If there’s an annotating tool inside Goodreads, though, then those “motivations” might be shared with my fellow-travelers–you, Mq., JH, and whom ever else stumbles into this almost-a-party.

What do you know about this tool that might help me? Please advise.

Unclutterer: Daily tips on how to organize your home and office.

12/1/2011 in General by cxo | No comments

Because of their higher-than-incandescents price the Philips Dimmable LED Bulbs are $22 a piece on Amazon, they make terrific gifts because people are hesitant to buy them for themselves it can be hard to visualize the long-term benefits when looking at the sticker price. You can give someone one or more, and they will start saving money the minute the bulbs are installed. Plus, they’re something you know the person will use and benefit from every single day.

via Unclutterer: Daily tips on how to organize your home and office..

For Library

11/27/2011 in General by cxo | No comments

A title I’ve been trying to recall since 1975.

“Weed–Adventures of a Dope Smuggler” by Jerry Kamstra.
For his insightful definitions of “Beat” and “beatnik” and other words of wisdom on the transition from “beat” to “hippy” and the now scarcely used “freak” which was once far more biting a term than it came to be.

I see by a quick Google of Amazon that I won’t be getting another copy of this book any time soon, although in my 20′s it shaped me for being so articulate.

The guy can write.
I was only to learn years later that everyone else already knew that–that this Kamstra fellow was one of the super-novae of the beat-writers such as Brautigan.

This is the spot I keep titles I mean not to forget.

X.

Attribution, at last!

1/12/2011 in General by cxo | No comments

For a while now I’ve remembered a witty quote that I had heard and copied down as “Lead me into the company of those who seek the truth, and deliver me from those who have found it.”

I’ve looked for attribution for years, and found it mis-attributed to Arthur C. Clarke, Kant, and a couple of less famous names.

The internet is a roomy, roomy place. At last I believe I can correctly attribute this quote. It is by Vaclav Havel, and is more correctly rendered, “Keep the company of those who seek the truth, and run from those who have found it.”

Vaclav Havel.
Glad to know that, at last.

For Library

1/12/2011 in General by cxo | No comments

http://www.amazon.com/Through-Language-Glass-Different-Languages/dp/080508195X

Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Language

Library book

12/1/2010 in General by cxo | No comments

Remember a book:
Medicinal Indian Lore
Medicinal Herbs of the Plains Indians
1908 or 1912
Originally published by Scott’s Bluff National Monument
From Chimney Rock National Monument, perhaps 1914
Uses of Plants by the Indians of Missouri River Region by Melvin R. Gilmore U. Nebraska Press
0-8032-7034-8

The note I just copied here is at least as old as 2004.
Herbalism

11/15/2010 in General by cxo | No comments

A man sent me a post about a cookbook written by and for men.
The stag cook book: written for men by men edited by Carroll Mac Sheridan
Hey, thanks JH!

Here
is the link.

New theory links depression to chronic brain inflammation

10/27/2010 in General by cxo | No comments

New theory links depression to chronic brain inflammationOctober 20, 2010Chronic depression is an adaptive, reparative neurobiological process gone wrong, say two University of California, San Diego School of Medicine researchers, positing in a new theory that the debilitating mental state originates from more ancient mechanisms used by the body to deal with physical injury, such as pain, tissue repair and convalescent behavior.

via New theory links depression to chronic brain inflammation.

Compassion

10/5/2010 in General by cxo | No comments

We’ve all been having a conversation about spirituality, religiosity, and compassion.
Now there’s some new evidence that Neanderthal humans experienced and displayed compassion.

This was our stepping off point:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/8043421/Neanderthals-had-deep-sense-of-compassion-new-study-suggests.html

I was reminded of a story M. once told me, about an old burial–and I got her to tell it again.
She said:

These are the facts:

“In Vedbaek, Denmark (c.6000 years ago), an area well known for Mesolithic settlement, Seventeen graves are known, the burials were in rectangular or oval pits, most containing single burials but also some contained the remains of more than one individual. One such burial contained a Woman and a child. The woman had approximately 190 teeth of red deer and wild boar around her head and another fifty tooth pendants around her hips, with several rows of perforated snail shells. The child had a flint blade at the waist and lay on a swan’s wing.”

At that time Denmark was not separted from the UK by the English Channel. There have been similar burials for this same time and earlier from areas in the old Soviet Union to England.

The thing that struck me when I heard about this burial when I was in the UK was that this woman and this child must have been loved. Whoever gave her all those teeth must have been a good provider. She was wealthy and had a young son. Someone knapped a little flint blade for him. But they died and were buried with much love, the child laid in a swan’s wing. No matter how good a provider the father of that child was, no matter how he showered the mother of that child with gifts, they still died and much too young. And across the centuries, the thousands of years, his grief struck me. That’s about as human as it gets.

squid314: Stuff

7/12/2010 in General by cxo | No comments

So Doctor Who is not a complete loss. But then there are some shows that go completely beyond the pale of enjoyability, until they become nothing more than overwritten collections of tropes impossible to watch without groaning.I think the worst offender here is the History Channel and all their programs on the so-called “World War II”.Lets start with the bad guys. Battalions of stormtroopers dressed in all black, check. Secret police, check. Determination to brutally kill everyone who doesnt look like them, check. Leader with a tiny villain mustache and a tendency to go into apopleptic rage when he doesnt get his way, check. All this from a country that was ordinary, believable, and dare I say it sometimes even sympathetic in previous seasons.

via squid314: Stuff.

Oh!  I haven’t belly-laughed like this in weeks.

Go to this link and read his whole article.  Then read the collecting comments below it…they are just as funny.  There’s even a classic riff by a “not getting the joke” German–as though it were planned!

Lately I’ve been immersing myself in the study of telegraphy, so I’ve already got half my brain in the 1940′s…this was perfect synchronicity.

UC Berkeley Webcasts | Video and Podcasts

7/9/2010 in General by cxo | No comments

UC Berkeley Webcasts | Video and Podcasts.

Gary Taubes is a science journalist who has been published in the Atlantic Monthly, Discover, Esquire, GQ, Science, and many others. He has won the National Association of Science Writers Science in Society Award three times.

His 2001 article, “The Soft Science of Dietary Fat,” published in Science, was followed by “What if It’s All Been a Big Fat Lie?” which saw print in 2002 in the New York Times Magazine. His book, Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control, and Disease, has just been released.

« Older entries