Month: May 2007

Kurzweil- Press ignores bias in study of multivitamins and prostate cancer

In a recent paper reporting on the National Cancer Institute study of multivitamin use and the risk of prostate cancer, the NCI authors cited several possible bias factors. An analysis by Ray Kurzweil and Terry Grossman shows why the study's biases should be considered before drawing conclusions.
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Why texting harms your IQ

From The Times
April 22, 2005

Txts n emails mk ppl stupid coz they R worse than smking pot & lead 2 a st8 of 'infomania'

By Michael Horsnell
THE regular use of text messages and e-mails can lower the IQ more than twice as much as smoking marijuana.

That is the claim of psychologists who have found that tapping away on a mobile phone or computer keypad or checking them for electronic messages temporarily knocks up to 10 points off the user's IQ.

This rate of decline in intelligence compares unfavourably with the four-point drop in IQ associated with smoking marijuana, according to British researchers, who have labelled the fleeting phenomenon of enhanced stupidity as "infomania".

Research on sleep deprivation suggests that the IQ drop caused by electronic obsession is also equivalent to a wakeful night.
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Chris Hitchens joins attack on obsolete "religions"

Interview by Laura Sheahen

Your book discusses the problems with the Abrahamic faiths, but then says Eastern religion is not the answer. It seemed like your main criticism of Eastern religion wasn't so much about its tenets so much as one sex abuse scandal at one ashram.

Oh, no. My objection was to the sign [at the entrance to one tent] saying, "Shoes and minds must be left at the gate." It's the idea that the whole effort of meditation is to try and dissolve your mind, which is the only thing you've got that's unequivocally worth having.

But don't you sometimes get sick of your mind running on and on–and want to calm it a little bit?
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/218/story_21800_1.html

Jeffrey J. Kripal talks about "Esalen, America and the Religion of No Religion"

This book is pretty amazing…the transition from Torture on the Cross to Yab-Yum Yummy yum yum maithuna tantric copulation. quite an extreme cultural reversal!
sample chapter here from publishers site
"Darwin, Tantric sex, cold war physics, psychedelic drugs, golf, and, of course, religion all come into play in a book that can only be described as monumental. Esalen is a prehistory of our nation's current fascination with Eastern religions, our steadily growing acceptance of the supernatural in everyday life–and a surprising page-turner."
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/220626.ctl

FINDING MY RELIGION
Author Jeffrey J. Kripal talks about "Esalen, America and the Religion of No Religion"

David Ian Miller
Monday, May 21, 2007

Esalen is a place "where miracles not only happen but where they happen all the time" — at least according to the Esalen Institute's Web site, which also describes the institute as home to a 40-year Olympiad of body, mind and spirit.

Sans the superlatives, the Esalen Institute, founded by Michael Murphy and Dick Price in 1962, is a world-renowned retreat and learning center on the beautiful Big Sur coast. It's been portrayed as the birthplace of the human potential movement, and it is a place where people come together to raise their spiritual awareness, expand their minds and get in touch with their bodies.

Gamer Theory! by McKenzie Wark is Online now!

McKenzie Wark has his new book, Gamer Theory, online! check it out! Post Hakim Bey, post Baudrillard. Seems like a new combo-medium where the book is created online with the users before publishing a "temporary at this time" a hard-copy book.

So by all means necessary, be a gamer, but be a gamer who thinks – and acts – with a view to realizing the real potentials of the game, in and against this world made over as a gamespace. One might start with the curious gap between the games one loves and an everyday life which, by the light of the game, seems curiously similar, and yet somehow lacking.

http://web.futureofthebook.org/mckenziewark/gamertheory/?cat=1&paged=5

E. Howard Hunt names the men who killed Kennedy

I'm not familiar with prisonplanet.com, but they tell the story of a recording E. Howard Hunt made on his deathbed. The tape was recently made public by Howard Hunt's son, Saint John Hunt. On the tape Howard Hunt describes a bitter LBJ and his involvement with the murder of JFK. Hunt names others who were involved in the conspiracy. Five minutes of the tape were aired recently on CoastToCoastAM.com
There is a direct link to the mp3 file here.

What's been bugging me about it is, what if it's true? I mean – just for a minute – inhabit a world where the Kennedy assassination has been solved- We know who did it, who helped who and why.
Now what?
How is justice served over 40 years later? Who's going to pay?
What does it mean? What would change?
How do I heal, or why, or who cares?
Is it just miscellaneous information?