Retired business professional, widowed, loves to chat about science, theology, psychology, technology.
This blog is my "thinking out loud" spot, where I talk about my thoughts on topics ranging from new findings in science and psychology, as well as my thoughts on theology, particularly as they are shaped by new findings. My primary blog is Keener Living.
I'll also share other tidbits, such as news items that seem particularly noteworthy to me (in the areas of technology, science, theology, psychology, and so on).
I'm also available on Twitter and Friendfeed
By the way, the photo is a bit dated ... I have less hair now, and many more wrinkles. I still love me, though :)
At the present time, I have no plans to continue this blog.
Could I someday change my mind? Sure, we are all capable of that. But I doubt that I will post another entry here. This was an interesting experiment, but it seems to me it is just contributing more noise to a web that already has too much noise.
So long. Take care.
Paced abdominal breathing leads to lower stress levels, fewer incidents of hyperventilation and panic attacks, as well as a reduction in worrisome thoughts and sleepless nights. Not to mention better digestion, lower blood pressure, and a more capable immune system.
On the contrary, holding your breath, hyperventilating and chronic shallow breathing can take its toll directly on your nervous, digestive and immune systems, as well as your body’s ability to relax. Similar effects are seen on the nervous systems after both short and long-term stress reactions, where there is a marked increase in sympathetic activity. This increased sympathetic activity is commonly known as the “fight or flight reaction”.
Comments [0]
Yesterday I posted an article noting that people like Pat Robertson, through their stupid and insensitive remarks, are causing Christianity to decline.
While I stand by the remarks I made, it occurs to me that I may have come across as rather insensitive myself. I won't apologize for every time that I am insensitive, because sometimes I mean to be that way (as when I call Pat Robertson stupid).
But in looking over yesterday's post, I think I come across as almost gleeful that Christianity is dying. Well, sometimes I do feel that way, because religion has led to a lot of misery in many lives, plus it bothers me when anyone believes something that is wrong.
But today, as I have done many times before, I asked myself "What if I am wrong?" What if Christianity is more correct than other religions, or at least "as correct" (the "all paths to God" thinking). What if I am wrong to believe that the world is only governed by physics?
A lot of brilliant people are Christians (some of the world's smartest scientists are, just as some are atheists). A lot of brilliant people are Buddhists. And so on.
I've studied the arguments for and against Theism for several years, and I honestly have to conclude that there are not any hard-core knock-out arguments on either side, at least not if you truly try to keep an open mind. (There are arguments that come close to being that way.)
So, when I come out sounding critical of a religion, shame on me for not asking "what if I'm wrong?"
But, I do wish others would ask the same question more often. I know all too many people on both sides who seem to have their minds very made up, and are not willing to consider that they could be wrong.
Comments [0]
Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III, or whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the Devil. They said, we will serve you if you'll get us free from the French. True story. And so, the Devil said, okay it's a deal.
The above quote is from Paul Raushenbush's Huffington Post article: Go to Hell, Pat Robertson: Haiti Needs Help, Not Stupidity.
This sort of talk from a man who is supposedly a Christian leader (Pat Robertson) is certainly one reason that Christianity is dying in America. Of course, there are other factors, too, such as growing doubt as to whether prayer ever works, the difficulty in reconciling evolution with the "creation account," and so on. But Pat Robertson does a splendid job himself in turning people away from Christianity.
Comments [0]
That's what my Dad would say, joking with me about my playing: not too shabby.
This is one of my favorite tunes: After You've Gone. I loved the way Chet Atkins and Les Paul played it years ago, and especially loved the way Paul Yandell played on his recent CD. I take Paul's fingerstyle version and sort of Jerry-ize it a bit.
Sorry that the tune has a flub in the second part. I tried about 10 times to record it without error, but ... Despite the error, I hope Dad would be right in saying it ain't too shabby.
Comments [0]
Google Destroyed the Web -- It's hard to disagree with the basic contention that SEO aimed at Google's rankings has fucked the web. It's a vicious circle, too: the more fake content sites are created to game Google, the harder it will be for any new web search startup to filter that effluent and deliver meaningful results in competition to Google. This is a grim feedback loop.
I like the bluntness with which Nat Torkington of O'Reilly Radar has stated the case. Although Google appears to have tried to do a good thing with its indexing, its ranking schemes have promoted keywords and links over true valuable content. This has resulted in a seemingly infinite number of trash pages cluttering up the web, making it harder to find real nuggets. Of course, Google is not completely at fault for all the crap that clutters the web, but its indexing promotes and even rewards the creation of crap.
This is part of the reason for the surge in social media use, as people use social media to try to find good content (content that is promoted by people they follow and consider somewhat trustworthy). Alas, that will fail, too, because people will try to become popular by publishing lots of links, and necessarily many of those links will be the same kind of garbage that keyword-stuffers create.
It'll be interesting to see how we work our way out of this mess. And we do have to work our way out of it.
Comments [0]
This video depicts a travel through our universe, at least the 13.7 billion light years of it that we know exists. Pretty humbling to see how small and insignificant we are within it. And to think that our universe might only be one of many (perhaps an infinite number of universes exist).
Comments [0]
Fascinating to see barely-formed galaxies. At only about 600 million years old, we are almost certainly looking at a lifeless universe. At this stage of development, many of the heavier elements thought to be needed for life had not even formed (see the wikipedia article on Nucleosynthesis for more about this)
Comments [0]
Richard Feynman, Carl Sagan, S. James Gates, Jr., and Freeman Dyson discuss science, human knowledge and the unknown. I love Feynman's points (he is the first one to speak in the video.
Comments [0]
Comments [0]