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The researchers asked people in pain to try to control a pain-regulating region of the brain by watching activity in that area from inside a real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, machine. Initial results showed subjects could reduce their pain, some quite dramatically.
The story of Reverend Carlton Pearson, a renowned evangelical pastor in Tulsa, Oklahoma, who cast aside the idea of hell, and with it, everything he’d worked for over his entire life.
Prologue. Carlton Pearson’s church, Higher Dimensions, was once one of the biggest in the city, drawing crowds of 5,000 people every Sunday. But several years ago, scandal engulfed the Reverend. He didn’t have an affair. He didn’t embezzle lots of money. His sin was something that to a lot of people is far worse … he stopped believing in hell. (2 minutes)
Act One. Rise. Reporter Russell Cobb takes us through the remarkable and meteoric rise of Carlton Pearson from a young man to a Pentecostal Bishop: from the moment he first cast the devil out of his seventeen-year-old girlfriend, to the days when he had a close, personal relationship with Oral Roberts and had appearances on TV and at the White House. Just as Reverend Pearson’s career peaked, with more than 5,000 members of his congregation coming every week, he started to think about hell, wondering if a loving God would really condemn most of the human race to burn and writhe in the fire of hell for eternity. (30 minutes)
Act Two. Fall. Once he starts preaching his own revelation, Carlton Pearson’s church falls apart. After all, when there’s no hell (as the logic goes), you don’t really need to believe in Jesus to be saved from it. What follows are the swift departures of his pastors, and an exodus from his congregation – which quickly dwindled to a few hundred people. Donations drop off too, but just as things start looking bleakest, new kinds of people, curious, start showing up on Sunday mornings. (23 minutes)
Song: “Let the Church Roll On,” Mahalia Jackson
“the dragonfly, too
wakes up, goes to
work…
night river”
–Kobayashi Issa
(1763-1827)
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation” - Henry David Thoreau
This American Life is a brilliant radio program. I have enjoyed every episode I have heard. Its hard to define what the show is about. They pick a topic and then interview people or read essays by people who have something to do with that topic. The link can be fairly obscure and its usually fairly touching in someway. Please, just listen yourself to the first show. Ira interviews Kevin Kelly of the Cool Tools website.
After he goes to Jerusalem and sleeps on what is supposedly the very spot where Jesus was crucified, Kevin Kelly has a revelation: that he should live the next six months as if he would die at the end of them. So he gives away nearly everything he owns, and tries to live each day as if his death is imminent – which turns out to be a great challenge. This story was eventually used in a much later program, Shoulda Been Dead. At the time of this interview, Kevin Kelly was executive editor of Wired magazine. Now he’s a contributing editor there, and also runs the Cool Tools website. (22 minutes)
This is from my journal:
See, if you get past the fear of it, then through looking at it you can trip yourself out. This is why religions exist, because somebody got to this point of pondering and they wondered what is it that dies and then everything tripped out. Probably they just tried to stare at something. They probably started by holding something very tightly in their mind - trying to see the dying aspect. The changing aspect. This is all beyond death though - this is sort of playing with death - with the concept of it - and of life, and of what it is that is living and dying - this self that we are.
Far more disturbing is Kasdeja, who is said to have shown “the children of men all the wicked smitings of spirits and demons, and the smitings of the embryo in the womb, that it may pass away”. In other words he taught women how to abort babies.
Libjingle is a set of components provided by Google that let your programs interoperate with Google Talk’s peer-to-peer and voice calling capabilities.
etanews is reporting about a Harvard medical school report that suggests Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is unrelated to typing at all
As a member of the fastest New Trier girls cross country team in school history — and a practicing Buddhist — the senior from Wilmette is an example of how meditation can translate into a peak athletic performance.
The fifth Patriarch recognised the genius of the rice-pounder. Hui-neng had negated the assumption of the ’self’ in bodhi or awakening. If indeed Buddha-nature is clear and bright, should the person not see through the duality of ignorance and enlightenment, defilement and purity?
Don’t do this near Mama Pig. They can be very protective of their piglets and think that you’re trying to have them for dinner. The last thing you want is a 500 lb. pig charging at you.
Animal Planet :: News :: Bees Recognize People
The larger implications of such a small number of neurons doing such complex tasks are intriguing, but not obvious, says Dyer. There is the possibility, for instance, that someday humans who have experienced brain damage could borrow the bumblebee trick — whatever the trick is — to relearn facial recognition and other lost abilities, he says.
My event was a little more crazy though. My uncle set up his weight set in the room where I had a 50 gallon aquarium, much bigger than the one in this video. I decided to change the amount of weight on the bar which was proped in the claws above the benchpress. I took off one weight and the other weight caused the whole bar to go flying into the aquarium. I cried that day.
And on a related note, I cleaned up all the fish and put them in a small aquarium but somehow in the commotion I left this kribensis in the bucket and put the bucket on a shelf. It was a month later when I pulled the bucket down and there was the little krib, laying diagonally because the water had evaporated to a point where he couldn’t swim. But he was alive and apparently healthy! Wow.