Toxins?

The favorite buzz word of many a person, a scapegoat for everything that can go wrong with you, toxins. Whereas toxic chemicals will obviously not do you a whole lot of good, the industry that has built up around the fear of toxins has failed to realise what a great job evolution has done in providing us with a way of flushing out most of the bad stuff that invades our bodies throughout our lives. Obviously we don’t catch everything or we’d be Tolkien’s elves, immortal but for our tendency to die in battle, but we catch enough that detoxing isn’t necessary. If we do get enough toxins to require them flushing out, we should be hostpitalised, because believe me, just drinking juice won’t help you if you’re poisoned to the point where you need assistance.

A number of years ago there was a news report going round about the number of toxins in sofas, and subsequently there was a bit of a scare, but there are rarely deaths attributed to poison from sofas, and even when it comes to people who spend all their lives on their couches, they generally become obese before they become poisoned. There’s also becoming a potato, but that’s less of a disease and more of a weird colloquialism.

2012

We have two days until the world doesn’t end again and I can’t help but feel that a release of a certain disaster movie raised everyone’s expectations too high. If neutrinos don’t suddenly mutate and then suddenly revert back to their regular states then it’s going to be a huge let down. Mind you, when the nothing that’s probably going to happen happens some people are bound to be disappointed, although everywhere doing a club night that night is going to be very happy that they’re going to be able to cash in all the money drunk people spent that night not realizing that they were still going to need it the next day.

There must be some sort of problem with our society, surely, when after end of the world prediction after end of the world prediction there are still vast amounts of people swallowing every word. I just hope that it doesn’t lead to anything drastic.

And why 2012 of all years? Surely once 6/6/6 went away the apocalypse should have been shrugged off and we should have started waiting for the asteroid or nuclear war instead. If any date was going to have some sort of spiritual meaning, why pick the end of a cycle of a calendar from Central America, when there are so many more calendars that end their cycles on the 31st of December every year?

With an end of the world scare every year I’m sure spending would skyrocket and businesses would experience a bigger boom every year than they already receive.

And I bet if we actually did that there would still be people at the end of each year that thought the world was going to end.

Blaming Yourself?

So I got this comment over at Teen Skepchick, in regards to April’s post about Spirit Science (a web series based on new age philosophies that makes me a sad panda). While I admit that my ego does sometimes float above the average line, I spend most of my time under it, so unless the writer is referring to the fact that I blog as proof for arrogance I don’t really see how I fit into that category. Either way, I thought it was interesting to hear someone deny that they their childhood abuse caused misery, instead putting the blame on a chakra. I know I shouldn’t be but I was seriously surprised that someone could come to this conclusion, although I am glad that they’ve managed to turn their life around. I have a big problem with victim blaming, for obvious reasons, but what do you even tell someone for whom it has worked? You’ve got me stumped.

‘Ya know some things are true whether YOU believe them or not lol
Even though you have decided chakras dont exist they in fact do. I sustained every single kind of abuse you can imagine in childhood. Systematic as well. I managed to become a productive member of society & be self sufficient but I did not understand “love” I learned survival but I had one mentally ill parent, wasnt given ANY tools.
It is through life experience & illness that I was determined to heal without drugs & that in turn led me to the esoteric.
I had to spend YEARS working to get my heart chakra opened! It was severely blocked & caused untold pain in my life. And I went along thinking it was abuse? ? Go figure.
The feeling was insane! Absolutely insane! Literally felt it inside me like I got shot by a gun! I also had to work incredibly hard for a year & a half to leave my body.
Self-esteem can only exist when you take the time to clear yourself of those things that no longer work, take pride in yourself & make a realistic plan to better your life/yourself. It is not a feeling of power over others, it is an acceptance of others, a feeling of power over your own life.
Unlike the others here I kinda like your attitude, your arrogance, your skepticism because WE NEED DIVERSITY!! While I do not agree w/you I LOVE that the world is made up of individual souls! Each one is SUPPOSED to be different. So I just hope you open your mind a tiny bit more w/each year you reside in the physical vehicle you occupy now. Because some things are true whether YOU believe it or not ) And the more bodies on this planet that ARE in touch w/each chakra in & around their body & ARE in touch w/the balance of energy or lack thereof inside themselves the better off ALL OF US will be!
P.S. If you start to understand that you are a spiritual being having a physical experience & NOT the other way around you start to understand HOW your hardships are a result of your souls past actions. So while I know it sounds crazy to believe you are responsible for your own pain (tell someone who’s miserable their sadness is their own fault-harmful?) the moment I started learning, understanding, experiencing & opening those “ports” I started owning ALL of my pain. I own my fathers abandonment, I own the family I was given, I started to take responsibility & miserable-ness went away!
Im living breathing proof it is NOT harmful to take responsibility for your own energy be it miserable or happy. Ever! And its NEVER to late to start :O)
Im grateful for the SpiritScience folks & all the others out there like them helping to spread the news. Happy Holidays’

Flex Your Brain

Can you work out your brain?

Youtube has recently been bombarding me with adverts for ‘luminosity’, promising me a way to train up my brain in pretty much the same way we can work out our bodies by going to the gym. This cultural phenomenon made famous perhaps by Brain Training on the Nintendo DS, does sound enticing. Wouldn’t we all want to stay intellectually sharp, especially into the years that are famous for bringing senility?

But is this even a possibility? Are our brains truly as flexible as our muscles are?

Well, there certainly seems to be some gain for keeping active into old age, from what I’ve read anyway, it would seem that keeping an active lifestyle correlates with less chance of dementia. In this scenario however, it is what we would generally call ‘working out our bodies’, but this doesn’t mean it wouldn’t have an effect on the brain, after all, the brain is part of the body, and anyone who doesn’t recognize that needs to learn some basic biology. It’s also possible that those people who stay active for longer in their life aren’t experiencing as high a frequency of dementia for a different reason, one that we haven’t focused in on yet.

I get the impression from what I’ve read and heard that we don’t have anywhere near enough data on whether intelligence can be boosted/maintained by these sorts of programs to warrant selling them like a working product, but perhaps I’ve missed something, perhaps there’s been a recent breakthrough that allows this business to make the claim. On the whole though, if you want to keep your mind sharp, I don’t see any substitute than to keep learning stuff… and regular exercise and a healthy diet… that’s pretty sound advice for everything, even if I don’t usually manage to adhere to the latter myself.

School Of Sharp Sticks

I’ve had a couple of rants on here about the fact that things like acupuncture and naturopathy are still being taught as university courses, and further as BSc…s (I refuse to use an apostrophe there), despite the lack of science that’s on their side and the irony of educational establishments ignoring the point where education on these topics gets you logically. I’d like to link you to an interesting article about a woman who attended an acupuncture course, and subsequently dropped out. It’s an interesting insight into the world of teaching speculation as fact, and it’s fascinating to take in, at least from my perspective.

Click here to see what I mean.

Hopefully in the future I’ll be able to look back on an education system that ignores what education should be about and reflect that things have gotten so much better. For now all I can do is hope that people don’t fall into what is basically an institutionalized scam, and by that I mean in the legal sense, not in the ‘this scam is crazy, put it in there next to Killer Croc’ kind of way, no matter how interesting it would be to see someone try to teach a course about sticking people with sharp objects in Arkham Asylum.

How Not To Do Feedback

I would like to ask you whether you think that you can really critique a piece when you haven’t read the whole thing, and also whether this justifies insulting. It’s not the best way to win an argument, and when you put it this way it’s hard not to reply, so I did. Here’s a comment I received today and beneath it, my reply.

angry person on the internet:’Well,
I find you amazingly long winded, and quite angry.
Also very closed minded.
I doubt you have ever really played around much with the power of thought.
Perhaps Spirit Science doesn’t have all the bells and whistles that hollywood can offer. Or million dollar grants to high profile universities to study.
What it does offer, or at least to me was a form to say.. Hey I found something, can you check this out? Can you practice some of my ideas and see what you find.
He’s just finding theories and expressing them in formats that are quick and easily digestible, and much like Buddha is saying — hey go check them out see what you can find.
He’s asking you have you heard of chakras? Did you know about frequencies and vibration?
Have you noticed how your thoughts can influence your day, and perhaps the moods and days around others?
Have you practiced breathing? Understand meditation? Tired meditation?
He’s not asking you for money, or to join any particular organization, he’s asking you to try. And all your doing is judging the format and the matter in which the content is being delivered.
He saying opening up your mind, let go of a style of living, thinking and doing. Or what you think you know.
And play with some thing new
NOT ONCE does he say that he knows everything, he is simply saying what he is and his friends are finding and doing. Do you think it’s interesting? He does.
I didn’t even bother reading much of you blog, you seem self righteous and arrogant. And I lost interest by the time i hit the 3 paragraph.
I fully admit there are lots of questionable ideas and he leaves him self why open to be closed off.
I think the point is, he is sharing, and he wants to see if what he finds is real to you.
AS for your germ what ever example, if you did any peer reviewed research the power of positive thought is the MOST powerful aid in relieving any medical disorder. MAYBE not curing it. BUT THE most powerful aid, in some test the placebo pill actually works better than the cure.
I frankly don’t care what anyone does as long as it spreads understanding that we are all connected – humans to humans, ecosystems to biospheres, bugs to animals.
And the more we think positively, do exercises that de-stress and and bring harmony to the earth and one another.. how does it hurt. WHAT power does your blog really offer anyone?
At least he is trying to inspire people with new ideas, and ways to help themselves with out charging a penny.
AND creating a form, for other link minded people to share and gather and develop something more than what is right now.

I challenge you to actually spend some time,
practicing some of the ideas he has out there.
Playing with rocks, sounds, studying chakras, play with vibrations.. GOOGLE MORE, listen, ask honest question with out a pig head, but and open heart. AND talk less.
Than After a while see if you have something actually value able to say.
HE and his group are simply sharing what they understand and experience.

AND Everything my life experience has shown me is no matter how you slice it, your attitude makes up 90% of your reality.
So why don’t your harp less, play more and discover the world around you.
Namaste.’

me: ‘Okay, well I thank you for starting out your critique with a barrage of insults, it’s really made me think about how wrong I was. How could chakras not exist when I’m pig headed and arrogant?

Actually I’ve done a lot of googling on the subject and that’s largely what caused me to stop believing in chakras.

When you ask yourself what do we know about frequencies and vibrations, well, we actually know quite a bit about them, that’s how we can use radio, satellites, solar powered devices, walkie talkies etc. but none of this translates into spirit science, which presents unfounded claims as if they are as valid as the aforementioned technologies above.

I would disagree that I’m closed minded as well actually, I’ve actually looked through most of this stuff, considered all that I found and believed some of it before I actually came to a conclusion based on what seemed like the best answer. I’m sorry that spirit science didn’t hold up to my criteria for truth, but if that makes me pig headed go ahead and call me Babe.

Thank you for your input,

love and light,

Eddy.’

How did I do?

Threes

Right, I’m feeling pretty crappy at the moment so I might fail to make the same number of terrible jokes you would expect from a post on this blog, but hang in there, because I’m going to try my best to make at least one lame pun during the course of this post. There, now we have an understanding.

Given that it’s a common superstition that deaths always come in threes, I’d like to see where people find the connection between the recent deaths of an entertainer, the first man on the moon and the leader of a large, brainwashing cult.

Do those seem like disparate personalities for you? They probably should.

Granted, there might be other people we don’t know about/that aren’t famous enough to be mentioned on national television, that were of an ilk, but then you get the problem of the fact that deaths don’t come in threes, but in thousands around the world.

Perhaps the connection is completely arbitrary and it happens to be three people that you’ve heard of, unless more or less die than three, in which case you forget that event ever happened until three people you’ve heard of die at a relatively similar time again.

Still trying to work out how to get a lame pun into this but I’m getting there.

Also, if anyone tries to compare Neil Armstrong to the other two they’re sort of insulting one of the greatest achievements in mankind’s history… just a little bit. We’re all human yes, but the leader of the ‘moonies’ dying within a week of the first man to land on the… oh.

Okay, I see where you’re getting confused, that’s called a coincidence, although it could be seen as a pretty startling one if you believe that destiny’s mooning you by killing a great man and arguably a bad man.

Lame enough for you?

Must Not Fap

There’s a weird idea floating around reddit (and, apparently, various odd backalleys of the internet) that masturbation is bad for you.

I was under the impression that we weren’t getting our science from taste or from outdated superstitions but apparently, yes, some people are.

As much as I would encourage people to have sex in a meaningful relationship, masturbation is pretty awesome for your body, quite the opposite of what these internet murmurers would have the world believe.

I don’t need to remind you of the good that releasing ‘pleasure hormones’ such as serotonin can do for you, and if we’re talking about just the men here for a second (purely because I don’t know if this is the same for women), if you don’t get your little swimmers to leave, you’re body’s going to send them packing for you in the night. Just saying, perhaps you might want to be prepared for a late night clean-up.

Your body produces so much sperm anyway, that the idea of saving them up, if not ridiculous, is questionable. Nothing about pulling a sad face at your boner and putting it away is going to rid you of whatever detriments you believe masturbation is giving you, in fact (as with most of these things) you should probably go to the doctor if you suspect something is wrong with your body.

Because, you know, that’s what they’re for.

I’m claiming to have a wide knowledge range about what lies between your legs, but I am claiming that jerking off is actually good for you. Sorry haters.

Gluten Jesus

I don’t mean to harp on about the Catholic church because besides from the really big controversy I tend to let their problems slide. They get a lot of shit and I don’t generally need to add to the argument, but I was talking with my fellow Teen Skepchick writers last night about a recent happening in Columbus where a young girl with celiac disease needed gluten-free hosts (body of Christ).

This seems like a reasonable thing to ask for, but apparently her diocese decided that because Jesus at bread that contained wheat that gluten-free hosts should be banned.

Does this sound like bullying to you, because I can’t think of a more appropriate word for it.

To be fair to them (as far as you can) they did allow low-gluten hosts but she thought they tasted awful.

Even with that aside however, surely the spiritual transfer of the soul of our Lord is not restricted by the amount of wheat you have in an object, but about whether it is blessed and part of the transubstantiation sacrament?

Or do I not understand my old religion as well as I thought I did?

Checkmate, Homeopaths!

Reading the guardian’s hilarious response to the mirror’s ‘celebrities who swear by homeopathy’ article (an ironic like cures like using fictional celebrities to endorse real medicine rather than real celebrities to endorse fictional medicine), I went back to the mirror article and was once again surprised by how homeopathy was characterized as ‘natural’.

Now, I really shouldn’t be surprised by this point, this is a common tagline, even though it’s obviously hogwash of the highest caliber, but it seems when I spend extended periods of time not looking up articles written for stupid people by stupid people I forget just how stupid it’s possible to be. Okay, that was mean, replace stupid with wrong and we’re back in the fairness game, because there’s no doubt about it, homeopathy is anything but ‘natural.

Natural, meaning of nature, surely refers to things that exist in the universe, and can therefore be found within it, and that’s the broad bloody definition, if you use a narrower one it gets even thinner, and yet, even with this very simple requirement, homeopathy does not qualify as natural, because it can’t be perceived in our universe. It doesn’t exist, there’s no measurable effect, it’s based on a water memory and like cures like notion that has been clearly knocked down and demonstrated over and over again to not line up with the way our universe works.

So why, when presenting these ‘celebrities’, does the mirror repeatedly show them holding flowers and talking about natural alternatives? Does the writer of the article really think that taking homeopathy’s the equivalent of munching on a daffodil, because if so they should be fired. Being so ignorant should not go along with being a journalist, that’s a profession that supposedly works by investigation and research to make sure that articles are well-informed, rather than a shit-ton of buzz words and some pictures of an actress holding lavender. Homeopathy is not represented well by plants, because plants exist, in reality. This should be pretty clear but I’m going to say it anyway: plants are NATURAL, homeopathy, by definition is UNNATURAL. You don’t get to change the definition of a word to fit your meaning, you don’t get to decide that natural means ‘not made in a lab’, because that’s a load of old bollocks. I’d even go so far as to argue that a lab is natural because it’s real; natural’s a strange word, like spirituality because people throw it about as if it means good, when it actually has a definition.

And that’s not even to begin to argue that natural does not mean good, right, or effective. In essence this whole post has been me arguing about how these homeopaths can’t even rightly make a logical fallacy in support of their ideas. Put simple, they’re wrong, and if they weren’t wrong they’d be wrong… because they’re wrong.

Sorry, but that’s the way the universe works, you don’t get to make decisions for it. If science determines that something is not a function of the universe you’d do better to move on than use celebrity endorsements as evidence, because that’s another logical fallacy and a bloody obvious one, only proving how low these promotional tactics have been sinking in recent years.

My advice is to give up, study real medicine and become real doctors, then you can actually help people and you might learn a thing or two about how medicine really works.