A strange assortment to get you through the week...
- Michael Shermer reviews Expelled for Scientific American.
- Michael Prescott offers "A Moldy Tale" of Spiritualism.
- The latest Skeptico podcast features an interview with Chris Carter, author of Parapsychology and the Skeptics (Amazon US).
- The latest podcast from the Psychedelic Salon is Terence McKenna's lecture "A Few Conclusions About Life".
- Filip Coppens writes about the Irish 'Round Towers' on his website.
- Curious Expeditions tells the amazing tale of "The Geyser Riders".
- Mac Tonnies says "SETI is for Chumps" on his SETI.com blog.
- The latest Binnall of America audio interview features Tom Shachtman discussing the history and culture of the Amish (mp3/podcast download, or streaming via Flash).
- Graham Hancock's Forum has a new feature article available: "Quantum Philosophy and the Ancient Mystery School: Today's New Science Philosophy - Old or New?", by Edward F. Malkowski.
- Filer's Files #15 for 2008 and UFO Casebook #302 summarise the past week of ufological news.
- Erik Davis takes you on a tour of Lotusland, in a new article at Reality Sandwich.
- Also at Reality Sandwich: Daniel Pinchbeck's "Enlightenment Reason or Occult Conspiracy?".
- Forgetomori casts a skeptical eye over tales of 'sheep circles'.
- Whitley Strieber's latest journal entry is titled "The Nye Incidents: the Scariest Story I Know".
- Anthony North writes about "Mass Culture and the Paranormal" at Beyond the Blog.
Enjoy!
Nye Incidents
I pre-ordered that graphic novel since last year. I'm curious to read it, and compare it with the other two last books of Whitley —"The Grays" & "2012".
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It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
Irish round towers
I thought I posted this comment last night, but evidently I didn't, 'cos it's not here!
What I said before was that, to me, the round towers looked like stone-built copies of space rockets.
Regards, Kathrinn
simplistic explanation
My simplistic explanation of why people build tall things is simply because the tall things can be seen from far away.
Sometimes it helps in navigation - "we are here".
Sometimes it is propaganda - "we are here and bigger than you".
Or in the case of big rockets - "watch us go, we are really fast.'
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if everything is under control, you are not going fast enough (Mario Andretti)
Tall
So male, and phallic, doesn't come into it then?
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The balanced adult retains an inner child
Anthony North
not always phallic
There are tall buildings, like pyramids, that don't look particularly phallic. But the purpose is still to say "look what I can build, and you can't".
And then there really is the navigation aspect to some towers.
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if everything is under control, you are not going fast enough (Mario Andretti)
the new towers
It is rather depressing that the tallest buildings in all human history are devoted to corporation offices.
In te past, the tallest buildings were devoted to the gods, so we have there a really interesting syllogism...
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It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
Gods and tall buildings
Culture changes but impulses don't. Isn't 'money' now seen as a god?
Okay, Earthling, the pyramid may not be phallic, but I've got this idea that it is a mathematically more perfect representation of the ancient mound. The mound itself is, I think, representative of death/rebirth - a womb upon the land.
So maybe the resulrt of the phallic. Let's not forget, also, believed rituals in some pyramids concerning ejaculation by the pharoah to release divine seed to the stars.
It's a long time since I've read about it, but there's also the benben stone that is thought to rest atop a pyramid, which is also symbolic of divine seed of creation - maybe the Egyptologists will correct me on that last point, but I think I'm about right.
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Reality, like time, is relative to the observer
Anthony North
sacred mountain
A pyramid is but a man-made sacred mountain.
I don't know about ejaculation rituals among egyptians, but among the maya, it was customary for the ruler of the city-state, to draw blood from his penis through the use of maguey needles, as a way to symbolically fertilize the fields for the next crop.
I remember a interview by Linda Schelle, when she said that if such customs were still in use to this day, FAR fewer people would campaign to become presidents ;-)
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It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
Compulsory
Well maybe it should still be compulsory, Red. Then again, I think they'd still go for it. Ah! the seduction of power :-)
But the link seems universal.
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I'm fanatical about moderation
Anthony North
directly phallic or not
Well, if you consider symbols of power to be indrectly phallic (which is not unreasonable) then yes.
My original point was that tall things are there so that people can see them.
Duh.
And then, people put a tower with a light on it, saying "don't crash your boat here."
And then, many rich cultures make tall things to say, "hey look at this, you losers can't make one of these, can you?"
The other part is trying to get closer to the gods, which many peoples thought were up in the sky.
Sure, money and power are phallic too.
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if everything is under control, you are not going fast enough (Mario Andretti)