Wednesday, April 26, 2006

fugitives and refugees

by chuck palahniuk. this guy is the author of fight club, choke, and lullaby (none of which i've actually read - yet). but he lives in portland, and this book is basically a list of things to do here, interspersed with zany stories about all the weird people in portland (there's lots). so, rather than a book review, this serves as a list of "things to do in portland"

* visit USS Blueback
* visit the self-cleaning house
* tour the underground shanghai tunnels
* watch or participate in adult soap-box derby - August 10
* drive on timberline highway: driving down from the lodge turn right under the first ski lift post.
* fire department ride-along
* monk for a month at the Trappist Abbey in Lafayette
* visit OMSI - museum of science and industry
* watch the drama at eviction court: Multonomah County Courthouse Room 120 M-F 9am
*restaurants that chuck likes: alibi, delta cafe, fuller's, le happy, western culinary institute (6 course meal for $20), wild abandon
* visit mount gleall castle: 2591 sw buckingham ave
* ride to sauvie island
* see the real knife from psycho at movie madness
* galleries: BICC at OHSC, Art Gym at Marylhurst, Cooley Gallery at Reed, Archer Gallery at Clark College.
* see the mills used for grinding my steel cut oatmeal at bob's red mill
* the smallest park in the world: mill end park at sw front and taylor
* other parks: Columbia Gorge Hotel, Maryhill Museum, bishop's close (11800 sw military lane), elk rock island, the grotto at rocky butte, the recycled gardens, rooftop sculpture garden (9th floor mark o. hatfield courthouse).

the holographic universe

by michael talbot. this is a fun forray into the grand theory of everything. basically, everything is a hologram acording to physicist David Bohm ("Wholeness and the Implicate Order"): waves interfere with each other to form images, objects, everything. that which we can perceive is the explicate order and that which we cannot is the implicate. the implicate contains the explicate, and the boundaries are also constantly wavering. the interesting thing about a hologram is that every part of the hologram contains all parts of itself. therefore if you take a piece of holographic film and split it in half, the image does not split, but remains as two whole images. the results are quite profound: the normal distinctions we draw don't actually exist. you and i don't exist as separate entities but are just an interference pattern from the same cosmic unity. moreover, time doesn't exist in the linear sense that we think it does, the "past" and "future" are equally accessible as the present.

talbot starts from the interesting results of quantum mechanics (nonlocality, uncertainty, conscious observer effect) and moves on to note findings in not only physics, but neurobiology, dreaming, psychokinesis, near death experiences, out of body experiences, religious miracles, reincarnation, psychic powers, and even ghosts. see? fun! what's more interesting is that people are starting to study things like psychokinesis and the results are startling - it seems that we all have the ability (at least to some degree) to control and effect the world around us with our beliefs and minds.

moreover, there is a bias or trend in science to discount these experiences as not testable or verifiable, which means they are often not studied or simply ignored. it has also been shown that the belief of the scientist running the "new agey" experiments influences the actual results of the experiment. children often experience these "other dimensions" more often than adults perhaps because adults have had so much conditioning as to what "is possible."

some interesting notes:
*an ink drop spun in a glycerine tube undergoes reverse entropy
* stigmata is manifest through deep belief: stigmatists portray wounds on the palms instead of the more accurate location of the wrists. this is likely due to artistic interpretation of crucifiction occuring on the palm.
*when we dream, we typically have access to information that is beyond our waking knowledge (i.e., we can learn new things when dreaming).
*in chinese medicine, the method of mapping the entire body to the foot, or the ear is an example of a hologram
* people being able to see with with the tips of their fingers, ear lobes, tip of the nose, and even, yes, armpits.
* Immanuel Kant's *Dreams of a Spirit-Seer* an account of Swedenborg: "we are constituted by the intersection of two flows: one direct from the divine, and one indirect from the divine through our environment."
* The Conibo Indians of the Peruvian Amazon use of ayahuasca ("soul vine") - a hallucinogenic plant that when taken transports even lay people to exceedingly similar dimensions that the Conibo shamans visit regularly.

Thursday, April 06, 2006

Personality Test

these are fun. and probably meaningless.

Extraversion |||||||||||| 46%
Stability |||||||||||| 50%
Orderliness |||||||||||||| 60%
Accommodation |||||||||||||||| 63%
Interdependence |||||||||||||||| 70%
Intellectual |||||||||||||||||||| 83%
Mystical |||||||||||||||||||| 83%
Artistic |||||||||| 36%
Religious |||||||||||| 43%
Hedonism |||| 16%
Materialism |||||| 30%
Narcissism |||||||||||||||||| 76%
Adventurousness |||||||||||||||| 70%
Work ethic |||||||||||| 50%
Self absorbed |||||||||||| 43%
Conflict seeking |||||| 30%
Need to dominate |||||| 30%

Romantic |||||||||||||||| 70%
Avoidant |||||||||||||||| 63%
Anti-authority |||||| 30%
Wealth |||||||||||| 50%
Dependency |||||||||| 36%
Change averse |||||||||| 36%
Cautiousness |||||| 30%
Individuality |||||| 23%
Sexuality |||||||||||||||||| 76%
Peter pan complex |||||||||||| 50%
Physical security |||||||||||||||||| 76%
Physical fitness |||||||||||||||||||| 84%
Histrionic |||||||||||| 43%
Paranoia |||||||||||| 43%
Vanity |||||||||||||| 56%
Hypersensitivity |||||||||||||||||| 76%
Female cliche |||| 16%