Why the sea?

Is a body of water the unconscious?

What do you think?

I've found in my life that I simply cannot feel at peace if I don't live near to a large body of salt water, like the Ocean. I've lived most of my life on Puget Sound and that seems to be as far as I can get from the Ocean. I've lived inland several times, even once or twice in the desert, which I loved.

But in the end, I found I really couldn't live in the interior of a continent. I lived in Illinois for a while. I hated it. Flat ground forever, wind picks up momentum and you get winds that you can lean into at a ridiculous angle without falling down.

Spokane Washington, has "75 lakes within a 25 mile radius". I thought if I heard that again, after four years, I drown myself in one of them. I've been a SCUBA diver since 1970, and fresh water dives tend to be lame.

According to Jung (Carl Gustav), this is the "collective unconscious", where the archetypes of our culture reside, typically represented by lakes or other bodies of water in our mythologies, or in some cases a fluid container of some sort.

So is that what it is? I need to be near my collective unconscious? Maybe.

Weird.

But I do love the life here, beach life even more so. Life near the ocean, or in my case, the Sound, the living creatures in the water, the incredible sunsets, the fresh air, the all around magnificent visions.

Awesome. Simply, awesome.

Tomorrow: Vanishing Point

The God Experience

What is, the Sense Presence?

Rather than ask ourselves, IS there a God. Let's ask ourselves, Why? Why is there, why should there be, why do we think we need a God? Why?

As an animal, you would not recognize yourself. You would not recognize your death. You cannot contemplate your final demise. "You", does not exist. You are one with the world and the world with you. You live in the moment, the ultimate existentialist.

The Mirror Test is one way to differentiate between humans and animals. A few animals can pass this test, but there are yet other denominators to consider, such as contemplating your death, or beyond.

And so we have to ask ourselves what is God. A pan dimensional being? A Creator, able to alter natural laws. More? Maybe. Maybe not.

Is God omniscient? Omnipotent? Omnipresent? Not necessarily.

One could argue, God could have created everything, then disappeared forever.

Or never existed to begin with. Then the Universes are just random happenstances.

Yet still, if we can contemplate things greater than ourselves and our mortality, surely we can envision God. But if we do, is God actually there?

There is a condition known as, Sense Presence. By invoking this condition we discover a situation, not unlike that of experiencing God. By placing magnets over certain parts of the brain, we evoke the feelings, the visuals of a presence.

There is some interesting work being done by neurologist Dr. Michael Persinger. He sees religious belief as "a cognitive virus".

When we cross that pathway from animal, to creature with a greater capacity of brain power, we start to contemplate our, self; our aloneness, our mortality, our limited lifespan. This realization, this "Eden Awareness", this lack of animalness, creates anxiety, where there once never was any.

This is a serious anxiety that causes untold intense difficulties.

The natural thing at that point, is to have, or generate, a counterpoint. To have a feeling, or a belief of something outside of ourselves that goes beyond, that takes up the slack for our newly discovered limitations, and it must continue forever.

Something that is everywhere. That knows, everything. Sound familiar?

Persinger said: "Suppose you can anticipate your personal demise. Well, that precipitates tremendous anxiety, and anxiety is devastating to cognitive processes. So from a natural selection point of view, you can see why individuals would have been selected if they could minimize that anxiety,"

He further explains, "The minute a person can affiliate themselves with this concept of infinite and forever, there is no personal death, and consequently there is no reason to have anxiety. You can see why people become addicted to it." -- from Robert Hercz October 2002 issue of Saturday Night magazine (pages 40 to 46) [from Katinka Hesselink.Net].

So, it is clear that we certainly had a motivation for creating a God figure. We need it, Him, Her, whatever. We need that vessel of unlimited foreverness to contain our anxiety, our fear of what is coming. So, does God exist? He has to. Otherwise, we self destruct.

What about atheists? Do they need God? They say they don't. But they have God anyway. For to push against, to deny, to eliminate, is to have. They have still lived their lives up to the point of denial, in having that God, knowing of God's existence, the surrounding theology, philosophy, psychology.

What about not ever knowing about God? Take 1974s, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser by
Werner Herzog. A movie based upon the true and mysterious story of Kaspar Hauser, a young man who suddenly appeared in Nuremberg in 1828, barely able to speak or walk, and bearing a strange note. Later it was found had been held captive his whole life. He was a Tabula rasa, a blank slate. In the film, he was taught about manners, society, God. He questions everything, until someone in the village can no longer take his questioning the unquestionable and kills him. But he had no anxiety about Life. Why? Because, it has more to do with society, than the individual.

Still, what is this, Sense Presence? Keep an ear out for it in the future. I suspect and submit that it will turn up some interesting considerations.

Tomorrow: Why the Sea?

Happy Father's Day

I leave you with this thought on Fatherhood, from Louis CK:
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6600481n

Tomorrow: The God Experience

Cheerleaders Rock!

Why do cheerleaders rock?

Do you realize that Cheerleaders have more sports related injuries than all other school sports put together? Cheerleaders are most definitely athletes. But, is Cheerleading a sport? By law, NO.

Why? Because some feminists from the 70s thought it was good for women.

Should it be? By every Moral and Ethical standard as well as the Hippocratic Oath, apparently so!

First I would like to thank Penn and Teller's BullSh*t! show on Showtime for bringing this up. I thought I'd watch it to see what nonsense they threw out there, just a few minutes of some fun. What I saw horrified me. Not the beautiful, fit girls being athletic, but the horrors these children experience on a regular basis with out the support and safety standards required by sports.

Okay, they did what the needed to, for the 70s! But it needs to be updated because what these girls are doing now a days is so far beyond "dance" that they are dying, being paralyzed, permanently injured and traumatized on a regular basis.

The 1972 Title 9, the Minx" Bernice. A good idea, that needs to be updated. Do Title IX proponents think more about their image than cheerleaders safety?

What do The National Cheer Safety Foundation and Varsity Brands Incorporated have in common? Varisty Brands sells more cheerleading equipment than anyone else. They fund the NCSF [7/27/2010 - author retraction, the NCSF is not indicated as being funded by Varsity in this episode of Bullsh*t! Thanks to Tiffany for that clarification.].

I don't know, but something, seems just wrong here and our daughters and suffering for it.

Peppered Vodka, Bond style

Ian Fleming, author of the notorious James Bond books, wrote in one of them, that Bond liked to put pepper in his vodka. He said it was because during the (second world) war, Russian vodka had tiny amounts of contaminants in it, so he put pepper in it to absorb those and he just got in the habit.

So that years later, he still liked to sprinkle pepper into his vodka, only now he would drink it too as the contaminants were no longer an issue. I tried it years later after reading that and I loved it, too. When I eventually tried Stoli's peppered Vodka (Stolichnaya Pertsovka) it was a marriage made in a Bond book, in Ian Flemming's mind, or in WWII.

I always wondered what Bond was trying to absorb in using the pepper and in looking around I find two possibilities. One, vodka could also be used as a fuel for vehicles, in which soldiers, or opportunists, could have taken from one depot to use in another. That is, they could drink it even when it might have some other substances in it being around vehicles that were using it for fuel when petrol ran sparse.

Someone once said, to create a "dry" martini (with little vermouth), you should spritz the vermouth in the air and wave the martini through it. Someone else said, simply show the martini the vermouth from across the room.

Wikipedia says of it, that "Ethanol, also called ethyl alcohol, pure alcohol, grain alcohol, or drinking alcohol, is a volatile, flammable, colorless liquid. It is a powerful psychoactive drug, best known as the type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages and in modern thermometers. Ethanol is one of the oldest recreational drugs. In common usage, it is often referred to simply as alcohol or spirits. Mixtures of ethanol and water that contain more than about 50% ethanol are flammable and easily ignited."

It goes on: "Alcoholic proof is a widely used measure of how much ethanol (i.e., alcohol) such a mixture contains. In the 18th century, proof was determined by adding a liquor (such as rum) to gunpowder. If the gunpowder still burned, that was considered to be “100 degrees proof” that it was “good” liquor — hence it was called “100 degrees proof”." - Wikipedia

Another possibility is that pepper can absorb water, which is the part and parcel of what Proof is about. Whereas, 80 proof has more water and 100 proof the least amount of water. Using pepper, could make a "dryer" vodka. Its almost a kind of joke. But if that water were impure, that could also be a reason.

So I still don't know why Bond put pepper, originally, into his vodka. But it makes for an interesting bit of speculation. Either way, I do like my peppered vodka. Now, if I could only find a bottle of Stolichnaya Pertsovka (its not on Stoli's web site any longer).

What is erotic? What is sensual?

We all have preconceived ideas on what we find erotically or sexually arousing. Some of those things are so deeply seated there is little one can do about it other than, perhaps, alter it a little. In some cases however, those deeply seated desires and erotic considerations can be enhanced, added to, or completely changed in a single moment of heat and desire.

My hot, little girlfriend (okay, at 5'9" maybe not little) through my college years was full German. First allow me to say that she was blond haired and blue eyed; a very bright, tall, leggy, woman with a runner's physique. Did I say quite attractive? Her mouth was forever in a somewhat downturned pouty frown that made you want to cuddle and please her whenever you looked at her.

Admittedly, her appearance and our relationship may have affected me in the end.

Still this is a good example of how things you thought were rock solid, could be so altered without a moment's notice.

In our intimate discussions around that time, I had always indicated a partiality to certain French erotic motifs, as banal or common though they might have been.

For instance, I found intriguing, such slightly fetishistic thoughts as the ubiquitous male fantasy of a woman in a French maids outfit; or having sex with a girl while she is Frenchly whispering soft "sweet nothings" in my ear. Or, well anything softly whispered in French for that matter. Actually, she could have been excoriating on the French penal code for that matter and it still wouldn't have had any negative affect on me. Let's face it, a hot looking woman, speaking French, coming on to a guy...obvious attraction.

The poor sweet girl had listened to my own foolish understandings of my own lame preferences until she had finally gotten fed up with those rather pedantic attitudes of mine. So she was after all a proud German girl and decided to made it a "thing" to prove to me that her German culture wasn't so bad compared to the French. In hindsight, perhaps rubbing that particular nationalistic wound wasn't the best idea around.

So one evening she took me to a very good German restaurant. I didn't know there was such a thing. She ordered for me what she considered to be "good" German dishes. And I had to admit, it was indeed pretty tasty, even though I'm more partial to Japanese, Thai, and Viet-French cuisines.

That night she had also decided to prove that the German language could indeed be a "romance" language. I had discussed with her earlier, how German was described as a "guttural" language and not one of the "romance languages". A traditional academic stance.

At that time we were taking Linguistics at the University. Our very energetic and sweet, old Linguistics Professor was from an Eastern European, Slavic country, and spoke Germanic languages himself. He received a best teacher of the year award the year we graduated.

She told me that she had wanted to object in class when the Professor had described German as a "guttural" language. The term "guttural" merely refers to the fact that the language is spoken mostly from the back of the throat; whereas most romance languages are pronounced more toward the front of the mouth. Therefore making them appear softer, more gentle, and thus more, Romantic. The short trip to erotic is not a big leap to take, and the history of the French culture for romance and eroticism certainly adds to that understanding.

My girlfriend had decided to keep her feelings to herself that day in class. Until that night, that is. That evening, she proceeded to come on to me to prove her point. We were seated on the couch next to each other, she had her feet tucked beneath her with her knees toward me, one hand playing with the hair on the back of my head and she was staring intently at me from inches away.

In this kneeling, seated position, she was slightly looking down upon me and began to move in more closely. It was a very sexy and provocative approach for her to take. She leaned in and began to aspirate typical sweet nothings with her breath hot and heavy in my ear, but all in German. I found my blood pressure rising, my skin flushing and a desire to move to action overtaking me.

Still she held me in place with one hand on my chest as she continued her verbal and slightly physical foreplay. Until finally, I could take it no longer. Needless to say, this proceeded to a very pleasurable experience for both of us, lasting most of the night; wherein I could no longer fathom any difference of having been spoken to in either German OR French. To make a long pleasant story shorter, in the end I fully recanted my former position without any further consideration to demur, left in my mind.

So, should you ever have similar thoughts about how you feel regarding what turns you on, what is a prominent erotic ideal in your own mind, consider this: what you might think is a solid eroticism for you, what you may even consider to be your sensual fantasy, may not be as founded in concrete as you might think.

If you simply keep an open mind, and should you be lucky enough to have the right person to lead you down a more open and enlightened path than the one you've chosen, you may just find that there is a much wider spectrum of desire available to you than you had ever before considered possible.

Nuclear Proliferation

Queen Noor of Jordan, a Chairwoman on The King Hussein Foundation, was on Bill Maher the other day. She indicated that today there is a nuclear threat to the tune of 25,000 nuclear weapons that are in the hands of nine States and a few others. Its more those few others that chill my skin. For more information and a way to put things in perspective, Queen Noor, pointed out the documentary, "Countdown to Zero", a film depicting this post cold war foolishness. Its done by the same people that did "An Inconvenient Truth".

http://www.takepart.com/zero

From their site area, "Demand Zero":

"When the Iron Curtain fell, the bomb became a symbol of another era. But in recent years, the threat of nuclear proliferation has grown more urgent, and the political will to eliminate nuclear weapons is greater than ever. The Social Action Campaign for Countdown to Zero will provide the tools and actions for becoming part of the global movement to demand total nuclear disarmament."

At any one time, 2,200 nukes are on alert around the globe, ready for use in minutes. Speaking from the point of view of someone whose job it once was to support and deploy these things, this is a bad state of affairs. Always has been always will be. Should we destroy all nuclear weapons? No. Should we take them down from being available as a first response, or reply tactical response? Mostly likely.

We need nukes, for the simple reason that they are not weapons, unless we choose to use them as such. They are devices, tools. And so we need to differentiate between Good Nukes and Bad Nukes. Its all in purpose, or intent. One need only look to the stars for a single very good reason to have the ability to explode large nuclear devices. The earth is basically a moving target for the unlimited number of asteroids, meteors and debris flying through the universe at unbelievable speeds. Should we ever need to shoot at one, we might want something with which to do that with.

But, they should be kept in a tool box somewhere, not slung on someone's hip like a six-shooter. That, is insanity. That, always has been insanity.

Again from the site: "Collectively, the US and Russia have approximately 14,000 active nuclear weapons, only 200 of which could devastate either country."

Who scares you most in the world right now? Which government? Iran? North Korea? Burma?

"According to documents and photos smuggled out of Burma, the junta-led state has acquired key ingredients and tools to cook up a nuclear weapon." - Adam Trunell

Check out the National Abolition Day website:
http://www.nuclearabolition.org/

Its all something to be aware of. If you are into being "green" and fighting globalwarming, this is a far superior threat to be aware of.