psi4geeks

Don't Be Frightened: More Light Fun and Silly Than Evil!

Don't be taken aback by the cover of this book. It is light, 1970s self-help meets wild, unsubstantiated claims, all written in such a style and with such a lack of content as to render it completely harmless, even to the most superstitious beings.

Wow, a Blogger blog for Gavin and Yvonne Frost.

I remember their book 'The Magic Power of Witchcraft', which was advertised in a full page advertisement on the back page of magazines (particularly, in my recollection, wrestling magazines) in the late 1970s to early 1980s. I wish I could find a copy of this advertisement because it was great: it promised EVERYTHING.

I used to love supernaturally-themed literature that made the most outrageous, superlative boasts: like The Magic Power of Witchcraft, anything by the Rosicrucians, certain martial arts books (one in particular promised that you would be able to pull birds out of the sky if you practiced dragon claw kung for long enough), The Miracle of Cosmonomic Power, The Necronomicon, and so many others.

Link: Gavin and Yvonne The Dancing Wiccans.

Mariner Valley

Wow! A CGI simulation, with narration, of flying over Mars, in particular, the largest Martian canyon and the largest in the solar system, in fact, Mariner Canyon.
The fact that it's the largest canyon isn't particularly impressive.  It's the beauty of the scape that gets me: like some 1950s sci-fi painting of planetary exploration.

Found this on io9.com.
Way cool.

Doesn't really fit on psi4geeks, and, since there is purposely no sci-fi blog, it shall rest here. No sci-fi or fantasy blogs because they are supposed to integrate into all content, and thus, should not be isolated in any way.

Link: ThemisFlybyMusic-HighRes.mpg (video/mpeg Object).

Where does my consciousness go when I sleep?

If my brain generates me, and if I am an emergent property of an active, generating brain, past an event horizon of computational complexity, and if I am not generated by my brain when I enter deep sleep, that is, the 'me' is no longer generated by my brain for a short time because I am not conscious and thus am not there, then why do I return when my brain awakens and generates consciousness again? How is there this continuity?

Why isn't there a totally new me that has no recollection whatsoever of the old me that was generated by my brain prior to the uncrossable barrier of deep sleep?

The hermit has been asking this question for many years and has found very little relevant material. Especially unconvincing are arguments asserting that it really is not the same me, that it is a new being with my memories, and that I only think I am still me. Equally unconvincing are explanations involving amnesia.

The hermit is still perplexed.

Painting is 'Sleep' by Salvatore Dali

Locate the Zombie

Upon review, if you can locate the instant when you forgot that you were being filmed, then you should see a loss of the conscious mind. That 'you' that you just viewed up until the moment it forgot it was being filmed is no longer you. You are a new  you.

The engine of this process is odd and recursive, and is a stunted giant staggering across the moors on his way home from debauchery, but ultimately, it is forward progressing. The fact that you can spot the point when you forgot about the camera allows you to establish nodes. Enough of these nodes configured in space-time creates a holographic tabulation device of sorts.

Turn on your digital camcorder, ponder a cosmic conundrum. Deep into the pondering, you will realize that you forgot that you were being filmed. Review the video and add 2 nodes to the multimedia stream: a green node at the instant you realized you forgot that you were being filmed, and an orange node at the much  harder to locate point where you actually forgot you were being filmed. Each orange node interweaves with all other nodes. Each green node spins n+1 edges that connect with other nodes along multimedia spacetime.

Ageless blue fields, cupped in yellow spheres, dawdle nearby, sparkle and twirl.

Screenshot is from Dead Rising

The Effects of Human Consciousness On the Universe

And I don't mean in the quantum sense. I mean in the seperate, eternal realm that is all of human consciousness sense: its characteristics, its location, its everything. That most infathomable and endless of mysteries.

This is a topic that will be super-thoroughly explored here. Stapp, Eccles, Blackmore, Chalmers, Damasi, split-brain syndrome, pure speculation, empirical research, introspection, and much more, will be explored in prose, verse, diagram and chart.

'Twill be The Canterbury Tales Triptych of psi and consciousness.

Whimsical

The hermit twists and curls across the meadow, resembling something between 'Singin in the Rain' and elves dancing in the moonlight, with knotted limbs and bizarre gestures familiar to neither.

The cast-off vortex accretes liquid crystal traits, like a golem, like a varying ziggurat, like a transformer. It is its own news though it occasionally reports news. It is glass and starry structure contemplated in an organic framework. It is an entity of craft and possibilities made. It is grander than the universe, but meek and humble, like a sparrow.

An arcane, lecherous dwarf staggers into the eremite's grotto to exchange secrets and formulas. Drizzle softens the hardened eyes and a warm fire cheers the blackened heart.

Outside, scarred with image compression artifacts, the vortex twirls more rapidly and tightens its mocking dwarfness.

Screenshot is of Wik Fable of Souls by Reflexive Entertainment from Xbox Live Arcade.