Western civilisation deems the people who, for example, could teach us the proper ways to use psychoactive plants 'primitive', instead of valueing the things they developed over the last thousands of years for what they are worth.

The general idea seems to be that while western civilisation was developing writing and reading, technology and science, cultures who didn't develope that stood still in time and were eating out of their nose.

It seems more reasonable to assume that the cultures who didn't develop our form of technology/science/philosophy did develop something else, about as evolved and complex but in some other area of human possibilities.

Happy 100th birthday to Albert Hofmann, the discoverer of LSD.

photo from hoffman.org

Albert Hofmann synthesized LSD and by serendipity discovered its effects while employed by Sandoz laboratories, a pharmaceutical company in Switzerland. He synthesized LSD as part of making systematic derivations from Lysergic acid, a component isolated from the ergot fungus. he thought LSD could be a medicine that can bring people who are alienated from nature to realise that they are one with nature.

"The history of LSD to date amply demonstrates the catastrophic consequences that can ensue when its profound effect is misjudged and the substance is mistaken for a pleasure drug."
"He later participated in clinical tests in a Sandoz laboratory, but found the experience frightening and realized that the drug should be used only under carefully controlled circumstances"
"I produced the substance as a medicine," Hofmann said, "It's not my fault if people abused it."

"As the years accumulate and his time left on the planet grows short, Hofmann's conversation turns ever more insistently around one theme: man's oneness with nature and the dangers of an increasing inattention to that fact."< br /> "It's very, very dangerous to lose contact with living nature, In the big cities, there are people who have never seen living nature, all things are products of humans," he said. "The bigger the town, the less they see and understand nature."

And, yes, LSD, which he calls his "problem child," could help reconnect people to the universe.
"any natural scientist who is not a mystic is not a real natural scientist."
"You should only give it to people with a certain stability who can survive a bad trip"

In the logs for this site I see quite a lot of people are interested in the Schumann Resonance and whether it is rising or not (for more on this scroll down further). These sites provide background on the Schumann Resonance.

• VLF / ELF / ULF Research in Arizona
• Schumann Research Sites and corresponding Aeromagnetic field strength.
• Schumann resonance - Space Physics Text Book of Oulu
• Geophysical Observatory at Modra Current Schumann resonance spectra smoothed by moving average.
• Schumann Resonance Recordings - Excellent project work by Hans Michlmayr.
• Receiving the Schumann Resonance - Renato Romero's work on receiving the SR with good reference links.
• Cleaning Schumann Resonances - Peter Schmalkoke's interesting article on post processing SR recordings.
• Sensitive Diagnostic for Global Change Using the Schumann Resonance to measure global temperature.

---

Titan Lander Game Sounds! (MP3, 999.7kB)



Planetary Society
Listen to the Sounds of Titan!

Looks like something wiped out most of the user webpages at deds yesterday, in the error notice you get when trying to acces pages that used to be there, it says services have been suffeing from an outage and today more information will be given.

The activity of the Sun over the last 11,400 years, i.e., back to the end of the last ice age on Earth, has now for the first time been reconstructed quantitatively by an international group of researchers led by Sami K. Solanki from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany). The scientists have analyzed the radioactive isotopes in trees that lived thousands of years ago. As the scientists from Germany, Finland, and Switzerland report in the current issue of the science journal Nature from October 28, one needs to go back over 8,000 years in order to find a time when the Sun was, on average, as active as in the last 60 years. Based on a statistical study of earlier periods of increased solar activity, the researchers predict that the current level of high solar activity will probably continue only for a few more decades.

Found an illuminating article on how even educated intelligent people can deceive themselves without being aware of it, in this case it's about the Rorschach test, but it's equally valid for 'mediums'/psychics, astrologers, tarot-readers etc.: http://www.csicop.org/si/2003-07/rorschach.html

As Ray Hyman pointed out, a cold reader can be entirely sincere. Professional cold readers even have a term, "shut eyes," to describe individuals who engage in psychic cold reading while sincerely believing in their own paranormal powers. Similarly, most Rorschach wizards of the 1950s who used cold reading techniques probably genuinely believed in the test. When the wizards made certain statements about patients (for example, Barnum statements), they often met with the agreement and even astonishment of their listeners. When they made certain highly intuitive guesses about patients (actually, the push), they found that they were often "close" to the truth, and that their listeners were highly impressed. Reinforced by positive feedback from their colleagues, the wizards gradually became skilled cold readers, believing that their remarkable insights had arisen from the Rorschach.

Through the years the Amsterdam Balloon Company, besides having an authentic tradition of its own, has developed a cultural cooperation with representatives of several tribes from different countries. As far back as the Landjuweel 1992 (Ruigoord Stamping Ground) groups of South and North American Indians performed a sacred dance on the festival-grounds joining the village. In 1993 (Ruigoord 20 Years/ Dreamtime Awakening) a group of Australian Aboriginals made a ceremonial snake-dance. For the purpose of inter-tribal communication the Amsterdam Balloon Company has therefore decided to profile itself as a tribe from july 2004 onwards. The following message has been sent.

The Amsterdam Baloon Company thanks the tribes all over the world for the messengers that have been coming here on our annual Landjuweel in Ruigoord.

As a tribe ourselves, we are especially open to oral traditions and we seek to rediscover and maintain our relationships with like-minded peoples.

We are very grateful to the native peoples for preserving the original ways/knowledge needed to protect our beautiful Earth and it's population from further destruction.

Ruigoord is a free-port for threatened cultures. Our aim is to contact the different tribes and to make an exchange through gathering together

We need you.
Let's meet.

During the conversations in the "talking circle" the members declared a common belief that by celebrating life one shares love. Starting points are creativity, respect for the elements, diversity and personal contact in freedom.

"The roots of music lie closer to our ancient lizard brain than to our more recent reasoning cortex"

Similarities between the music of humans and other animals add weight to the idea that music has been around longer than human language, and maybe even longer than humans, say US researchers.

In Ruigoord hangs a shooting target
Its bull's eye is the peace symbol
I'm reminded of Zen archery
Before the archer releases the arrow
he has to become One with the target
Find inner peace, become inner peace.

Fear is the main enemy, not the thing that is feared. Fear is an instrument of external manipulation, to make people consume mindlessly and accept their freedoms being reduced in the name of 'security'. It's 'the American way', it's the way of multinational corporations and of the polytricks of politics. So it's not the things we are taught to fear, but fear itself that should be conquered, that'll make us immune to manipulation to a large extent. Foremost work to free yourself from fear, don't believe the hype and see the fnords and the SNAFUs... It's an ego thing and the ego is just a vehicle, just like the body is, a temporary nescesary burden, temporay and illusionary, but since we're all kind of illusionists out here in this so called 'reality'... The talk about 'virtual reality' would almost make us forget that 'normal reality' is already a virtual construct; just a little biochemical tweak, and the seeds of chaos are sown and the fractal nature of the 'reality constructor' reveals itself as the structures dissipate and fractalize into geometries of light, sound, color and pattern. When the illusion is broken and the brain starts 'hallucinating' as they call it, it's just a variety of bio-electro-chemical dynamics. Beyond the illusion of reality is really just a chaotic dance, we are merely a whirling, spiraling oscilations of solar energy within the grand fractal dance of vibrations within the body of our solar system, interfacing with this peculiar phenomenon 'consciousness/awareness'. In the essence of our being we are conscious, creative nothingness holes in the fabric of time-space-reality, like the eye is a sphere that's dark inside which enables us to see light and contrast, the soul is that absence of every-thing, that 'presence' of conscious no-thing-ness that enables us to observe the myriads of every-thing, our empty 'projection no-time-space' enables us to construct a chronologically sequenced image-sound-smell-taste-tactile construct out of the dance of energies that projects itself into the creative emptyness that is our very soul and essence.

The final results of the POVRay Fractal Raytracing Contest have been announced, point your browsers towards the final presentation page

On a page about 2012 I find some odd claims, that don't seem to be factual.

---

What to think of :

"7. Time is actually speeding up (or collapsing). For thousands of years the Schumann Resonance or pulse (heartbeat) of Earth has been 7.83 cycles per second, The military have used this as a very reliable reference. However, since 1980 this resonance has been slowly rising. It is now over 12 cycles per second! This mean there is the equalivant of less than 16 hours per day instead of the old 24 hours."

"equalivant" ..(sic). If anything, not time is accelerating, but 'novelty', the number of new happeningas/discoveries/inventions per unit of time. The story about acceleration of the Schumann resonances (there is not just one Schumann resonance, there are 7 frequency bands in the range between 7.83 to ca 45 Hz) is a fable. The energy ratios between those frequency bands may vary, mainly due to suns spot and lightning activity, de base frequency does vary as well, but only slightly and certainly hasn't shifted from 7.83 to 12 Hz since 1980. In reality the variation between solair maxima and minima is around 0.2 Hz en certainly not over 4 Hz. Some factual information below:

"JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 108, NO. A7, 1271, doi:10.1029/2002JA009305, 2003
[1]   Observations of resonant electromagnetic fields caused by global lightning activity are employed in determining the averaged parameters of the lower ionosphere. Using the two-dimensional telegraph equation (TDTE) transmission line model described by Kuak et al. [2003], we have computed the attenuation rate of the Earth-ionosphere waveguide from diurnal observations of the N-S magnetic component of the ELF field performed irregularly for 6 years in the East Carpathian mountains.
As the measurements were carried out during both the minimum and the maximum of the solar cycle 23 we present how solar activity influence the first Schumann resonance frequency and the attenuation rate. The analysis of all the data indicates that the first Schumann resonance frequency increases from 7.75 Hz at solar minimum to about 7.95 Hz at solar maximum while the global mean attenuation rate at 8 Hz varies from 0.31 dB/Mm at minimum to about 0.26 dB/Mm at maximum."

en

"...The Schumann Resonances have NOT changed in all the years that the Berkeley scientists have been monitoring such. You can get current and past reads and see for yourself that none of this has ever changed by more than a few microlevel changes, Just off hand, it would seem that there are rumors going around that those number have changed and they haven't. KeelyNet is another source for information. The website operator there told me also when I was doing searches, that he found about 20 references also confirming that there has been no change either. "

For more research data, see VLF / ELF / ULF Research in Arizona

"11. Be aware that most of the media is controlled by just a few. Use discernment! Look for the hidden agendas. Why is this information being presented to you? What is "their" real agenda? Is it a case of problemreactionsolution? Do "they" create a problem so that "we" react and ask for a fix, then "they" offer their solution? The "solution is what "they" really wanted in the first place."

"...most of the media is controlled "?
'The media' is plural, so this should be 'are controlled'.

"Er zullen grote veranderingen optreden met betrekking tot maatschappij, het weer en jezelf. Dit is niet per se negatief, maar spannend, want deze veranderingen leiden ons naar een nieuwe galactische samenleving die op punt zal staan in 2012."

"die op punt zal staan"? ...sic...

"We are going from 2 strand back to 12 strand DNA."

"back"? How would a 12 strand DNA-molecule fit together?

Websites about 12 strand DNA propose that 10 strands of the 12-strand DNA don't have material existence, but are more like what is postulated is a normal double strand DNA molecule that has 5 doubles, like it is said that beside a physical body, there's an emotional body, an astral body, a mental body, etc.

This blog from now on will be in English only and I made a seperate NederBlog for entries in the Dutch language.

The POVRay Fractal Raytracing Contest Voting Page (voting closed as of 24 april 2004).

New theory on the shape of the universe.

"In the model, technically called a Picard topology, the Universe curves in a strange way. One end is infinitely long, but so narrow that it has a finite volume. At the other end, the horn flares out, but not for ever - if you could fly towards the flared end in a spaceship, at some point you would find yourself flying back in on the other side of the horn"

Today it was 5 years ago I joined SETIatHome, back then still in beta-testing phase.

Today started with this first entry after working on the template last week.