i'm so excited.
i got it friday and i've been converting all my cd's to itunes and loading them on my ipod.
this is my first ipod.
I agree with VoidEater. Rip your cd into mp3 format. You'll be able to play it on so many more players and devices. Otherwise you'd have to convert the AAC to mp3 and on re-encoding you're just losing even more quality.
Just do the conversion once. The windows version of itunes has that setting in itunes like VoidEater pointed out. As I understand it, if you're working with a mac, there's Max (a standalone app to rip to mp3 or other formats), as well as iTunes Lame.
an elder confesssed to me the other week that they had an elders meeting and the topic was rasied about how tired the brothers were.
he said "quite frankly, the brothers expected armageddon a long time ago and they are just exhausted".
i then enquired of him "do you think the wtbts keeping us in a permanent state of eschatological expectancy causes strain and stress and tiredness - he said yes.
People were willing to stretch themselves thin giving as much as they could for "theocratic" activity....with the end so close. But the realization has definitely set in since 1995. I've seen many young elders step down and spend alot of weekends on family recreation rather than the meetings.
I've seen many jws who were obviously disillusioned by the death of the 1914 generation be really open about how the "new light" on the generation makes so much more sense. Yeah sure it does. Try its a hell of a lot less depressing to them than the 1995 understanding. Like it somehow gives them a sliver of hope that they might still see the Big A in their lifetime.
jesus vs. horus.
jesus was the only begotten son of jehovah.
horus was the only begotten son of osiris.
Farkel,
Making comparisons is a very old game. That wiley Lucifer came up with Mithra didn't ya know.
Seriously though, IIRC, Osiris and Horus were big in some the mystery cults, so I could see influences spreading to some of the different versions of christianity. I don't really find books like those by Acharya S, for eg., all that well researched though. The Pagan Christ by Harpur wasn't all that great either.
Comparative religion studies are fruitful in helping us understand human concerns, hopes, etc. when finding common motifs like the divine saviour figure. But these other sorts of exaggerated comparisons do nothing but feed the belief of christian fanatics that they're being unjustly attacked by a baseless pro-atheistic movement.
i just got a call from a friend of mine who was driving his 2 year old son back to his mothers' house near woodstock, ontario.
the sky was fine when he left his house, but within a couple of minutes, a tornado hit and he got caught in the tail end of it.
the wind picked up his truck (with him and the baby in it) and threw it in the ditch.
Yeah, that warning was to cover from Windsor to Toronto and I'm about in between. I stayed off the computer last night because there was some lightning and I already lost a computer once to a storm. Actually two, but the other one was garbage anyway. The heavy rain stopped fairly quickly though but I just got into the book I was reading.
...losers?
discuss.
I'm 35 and I'm kinda liking the single-never married thing. I think little babies and toddlers are cute and all but am sure as hell glad that I'm not worried about how I would have to support a family.
I have other reasons to consider myself a loser. Like the fact that I haven't been able to succeed in anything and have especially failed so miserably lately financially.
this is somehow related to my previous topic on "truth and freedom" (http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/159428/1.ashx) and to an even more recent exchange with hamilcarr on the issue of "authority" of scripture/writing, on the fringe of another thread (http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/159703/2.ashx).. truth in the "objective" sense implies a strict and exclusive correspondence of language and fact (or, more modestly, perceived "phenomenon").
the kind of correspondence (whether provable or not, that is still another issue) which is sought in both "scientific" and "fundamentalistic" speech.
once the signifiants (words) and the signifies (phenomena) are accurately defined, an assertion can be qualified as either "true" or "false" (tertium non datur: there is no "third" option, according to the famous aristotelic principle).
I'm of the belief that there is an objective external reality, and so along with that there are many definite hard facts or physical "truths", at least in this backwater of the cosmos. However, our perceptions of different facets of this whole (especially of other people in it) are influenced by so many factors (emotional impact is huge) that I'd say we only have approximations of whats true.
Now, the closer we can get to actual physical truths, the likelier it'll confer to us more power to manipulate that reality. Also, the more accurately we can "mind-read", the better we can decide how to interact with one another. I'd have to say then that the content of our truths is important if there's to be progress.So I don't think we'll drop the notion of truths any time soon. But who are we kidding? We mess up alot. At least I do.
So I agree with at least two previous comments that "truths" (regardless of what they're saying) have their greatest impact in how they move us to act. Hence the strong use of emotionally charged content in whatever "truths" some group may want others to swallow. Humanity and civilization would be better of, I believe, if we come to the realization that we're in a dialectic with reality. A reality thats changing depending on when and where we're asking something of it, and we're building an approximate model of it in our minds.
gareth knight (real name basil wilby) is an author who i respect.
i have met him - he is getting old now but he's no less intelligent or fascinating.
some 40 years ago he wrote a well respected book called "a practical guide to qabalistic symbolism".
Terry
I tend to think of mystical as being more an experiential change in one's reality than a schema or category. I think you'd find a book I once read to be along your line of thinking. It was written by a biologist who was positing (no surprise) a neurological basis for religion / belief in the supernatural. It also stressed schemas or categories which our minds grouped things into. But he also proposed how some events would be shunted into combinations of schemas i.e. where "invisible & person" seemed to be a good "fit". I can't for the life of me remember the book title.
Repeatability is a very good indicator of something being real. So that weak effect is enough to make you wonder whats behind it. Is the mind able to detect some subtle correlation or cue in the setup and use that as part of its anticipating what may come? I think there would be reasonably good selective pressure to keep and refine such a skill.
gareth knight (real name basil wilby) is an author who i respect.
i have met him - he is getting old now but he's no less intelligent or fascinating.
some 40 years ago he wrote a well respected book called "a practical guide to qabalistic symbolism".
Narkissos
I've experienced that very exact result with rock, scissors, paper! Its a great example actually of how the mind tries to anticipate in order to keep ahead. From an evolutionary perspective its a huge beneficial trait. Nothing paranormal about it, but I'm awed at how good this ordered collection of cells has gotten at making predictions.
Maybe an awe thats sort of like what a mystic has when they experience a different perception of things. They often feel it as going beyond themselves, losing themselves and connecting to a greater reality, but I wonder if neurologically all they're experiencing is a kind of meta-awareness of all the processing of inputs that happens in the pre-cerebellum portions of the brain. Immersion inward to the brain constructs that in reality are a level closer to reality, So in a sense they are more directly connected to everything else. And if that makes them more conscientious of others and the environment then thats great. Instead of EMP weapons for machines, maybe the Americans should work on a weapon that triggers those kinds of experiences.
Terry
Realizing the anticipation as an emotionally charged event APART FROM the seeing itself seems rather obvious.
Sure, but I believe the experiment tried to take that into account when looking at the results.
To be an interpreter of thesedata setsis not unlike being a shaman casting animal knuckle-bones on the ground andreadingfuture events in them
I can appreciate how that applies if one were to read way too much into this particular experiment or others like it and shape it to express what one hopes see. Thats why I said earlier that with such weak effects one can't over extrapolate. I'm not advocating this experiment as proof of something along the lines of a "spidey sense". Although it would be damn useful.
I'd say that we're all making interpretations of everything we see. The perception of sight is very much a construct of sensory inputs collected and processed by different structures of the CNS. Thats kind of like an interpretation of the data, to me at least. Just that most of it is done at the preconscious level.
Why I'm curious about the repeatability of the difference in EPA levels is that it may give us some other angles to pursue in studying what may be behind "intuition". You're likely more well read than me on prosaic explanations for "intuition".(i.e. brain uses non verbal cues, previous experiences, etc on a subconscious level then spits out a "hunch"). Side studies could give us a bit more insight into how our brains work.
last night at the gas pump i had a verbal , emotional outburst , swearing to no one in particular - just the gas pump , until i saw 2 guys at the island down from me - so i figured i'd let it rip !
frustration over these insanely rising gas prices finally took it's toll on even -keeled mr. flipper !
i started my rant , wanting these guys feedback , " what is it with these #ucking gas prices ?
I travel to work 5 days a week with the round trip being about 45 km. Plus any other driving I usually do, I average about 330 km for the week. The blasted 3.8 L pushrod in my GM sedan drinks like a camel. I've been trying to find a used small car I can afford but all the ones in my price range are over 10 years old and have way too many kms on the odometer.
gareth knight (real name basil wilby) is an author who i respect.
i have met him - he is getting old now but he's no less intelligent or fascinating.
some 40 years ago he wrote a well respected book called "a practical guide to qabalistic symbolism".
Hi Sirona,
I have to agree that there's an effect there that isn't imagined. I should correct myself and be more clear with what I was saying with the p values so that others don't wrongly knock the experiment you've provided. On going back i realize that what I wrote actually gives a completely backward understanding.
So to be clear why I agree that this is evidence I can't refute: Normally with stats you're trying to give support to one hypothesis (e.g. there's an effect) by seeing if you can refute another one thats usually neutral or the "null hypothesis" (eg. there's no difference). So with those experiments having those very low p values, again as I understand it, its very low significance levels and a very low probability that those differences which were seen are just by chance that way. Lower p values makes it stronger evidence to reject the null hypothesis. So the evidence is very good statistically that the difference is real. Almost too good.
Whenever I see such strong evidence put to what looks to me as being slight absolute differences (when you look at the graph) I really don't have much confidence that the phenomenon itself manifests itself strongly. Its real but weak so I can't say this gives me much confidence in the raelity of the more demanding forms of ESP...by this experiment alone anyways. Again that slight difference is curious and it would be interesting to learn whats behind it. You have a great day.
