Year: 2009
Psychic Piracy [Part 2]
(image by Lazlo-photo, used under a Creative Commons sharealike license) Yaaaar! We be back with more brain piracy, psychic mularkey and general cerebral oddity. This week, Dr. Dave looks at (amongst other things) the rather curious history of EEG, why certain tribes survived that Tsunami and several women through a telescope. The Science Of Magic? Slouching towards 2012 there's a hopeful fervour brewing in the New Age and psychedelic cauldron that the end of the Mayan calendar will force us to leap spectacularly into an era of realised panpsychism, where telepathy no longer requires telephones and we can plug directly into the Gaian internet or Vernadsky's noosphere (a kind of human collective consciousness). As a contemporary spokesman for this view Daniel Pinchbeck has borrowed generously from Rudolf Steiner, who foresaw the coming of the Age of Michael and the development of universal telepathy, as did Steiner's contemporary Teilhard de Chardin....
Psychic Piracy [Part 1]
(image by Lazlo-photo, used under a Creative Commons sharealike license) In the first of a new series of articles, long-term Blather.net collaborator (we've been collectively barred from every pub in Hackney) Dr. David Luke gives us the skinny on the extraordinary abilities that may lie just within our cerebral reach. So, sit yourselves down, strap yourselves in and get ready to have your third-eye squeegeed clean... 'I woke up this morning...' I woke up this morning with a psychic advert left lingering in my dreaming mind. It was some kind of oneiric flyer for a new type of yoga, it even had a telephone number on it to call. This fanciful hypnopompic intrusion brought me back to the idea that if science can identify techniques for reliably producing psychic abilities (termed 'psi') then PR executives will soon be pumping millions into pumping adverts directly into our minds. Forget the television,...
Gardai recover stroked Bronze Age jewellery from Strokestown
Hats and Fedoras off to the Gardai in Roscommon and Dublin, who (obviously having had their morning Weetabix last week) noticed something fishy about a haul of stolen goods they had recovered from a Dublin house. In amongst some items recently stolen from a Strokestown chemists safe, was a wonderful Bronze Age gold Lunula and two gold Sun Discs. It appears the (deceased) owner''s daughter had NO idea of the value or the age of the artefacts. No idea. At all. I suppose that's why she had them locked in a safe for 40 years. Because she had no idea. At all, at all. Ha. Fancy that. Um. Yeah. This is the sad reality of treasure seeking, gold digging, metal detecting, MONGS in Ireland today and in recent decades. Open landscape archaeological sites are consistently targeted and raped by such people. Unknown sites sometimes remain unreported for years, as the...
Forbidden Fruit
(image by killer turnip, used under a creative commons license) What was happening to him? He regretted his knowledge. He regretted having ever tasted the fruit. It appeared that knowledge was as much a burden as a gift. Maybe he had to share this burden to make it lighter and more enjoyable. That might be it; he needed some creature like himself conscious and curious of the world to challenge his thoughts and ideas and stimulate his mind. He woke up and stretched, slowly. How long had he been sleeping? He was not sure. Time didn't really matter anyway. The sun felt nice and warm on his skin. He just loved the warmth of the sun; one of the best things about this planet. He would lie there, and do nothing for hours on end, days even. Sometimes when he was feeling particularly indulgent he would vegetate for a few...
Diary of a Frenchwoman in Dublin
Ha'penny Bridge, Dublin,by Dave Walsh Photography <!-- (image by feileacan, used under a Creative Commons License) --> As every French person knows, Paris is a woman, impudent and provocative. Paris the beautiful, the magical, the enchanting. Predictably, as soon as I returned there a few weeks ago, her magic enveloped me again - from her lights to her majestic buildings and bridges, her magnificent cathedral, her many different quartiers, each with their own charm, her immense Louvre, sheltering one of the greatest art collections in the world, and of course her twinkling Eiffel tower. Nothing compares to Paris. "I don't understand; why aren't you living there?" an Irish friend asked me the other day. A fair question. Why am I not living in my own city when it happens to be one of the most beautiful of all cities? (I'm not biased!) The fact is, for more than five years...