the day of its next appearance in 1910. He himself predicted this in 1909, when he said: "I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it."  |
Top 15 Strangest Coincidences
22 ways To Overclock Your Brain
The brain is a three-pound supercomputer. It is the command and
control center running your life. It is involved in absolutely
everything you do. Your brain determines how you think, how you feel,
how you act, and how well you get along with other people. Your brain
even determines the kind of person you are. It determines how
thoughtful you are; how polite or how rude you are. It determines how
well you think on your feet, and it is involved with how well you do at
work and with your family. Your brain also influences your emotional
well being and how well you do with the opposite sex.
Your
brain is more complicated than any computer we can imagine. Did you
know that you have one hundred billion nerve cells in your brain, and
every nerve cell has many connections to other nerve cells? In fact,
your brain has more connections in it than there are stars in the
universe! Optimizing your brain’s function is essential to being
the best you can be, whether at work, in leisure, or in your
relationships.
It’s simple, your brain is at the center of everything you do,
all you feel and think, and every nuance of how you relate to people.
It’s both the supercomputer that runs your complex life and the
tender organ that houses your soul. And while you may run, lift
weights, or do yoga to keep your body in good condition, chances are
you ignore your brain and trust it to do its job.
No matter what your age, mental exercise has a global, positive
effect on the brain. So, here are 22 ways to boost your brain power:
1. Run Up Your Brain Cells
Research suggests that people who get plenty of physical
exercise can wind up with better brains. Scientists at the Salk
Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., found that adult
mice who ran on an exercise wheel whenever they felt like it gained
twice as many new cells in the hippocampus, an area of the brain
involved in learning and memory, than mice who sat around all day
discussing Lord of the Rings in Internet chat rooms. The researchers
weren’t sure why the more active rodents’ brains reacted
the way they did, but it’s possible that the voluntary nature of
the exercise made it less stressful and therefore more beneficial.
Which could mean that finding ways to enjoy exercise, rather than just
forcing yourself to do it, may make you smarter - and happier, too.So, play a sport, train for an event such as a marathon, triathlon
or “fun run,” or work out with a buddy to help keep things
interesting.
2. Exercise Your Mind
It isn’t just physical exercise that gets those
brain cells jumping. Just like those head-pumped cabbies and piano
jockeys, you can build up various areas of your brain by putting them
to work. Duke University neurobiology professor Lawrence C. Katz,
Ph.D., co-author of Keep Your Brain Alive,
says that finding simple ways to use aspects of your brain that may be
lagging could help maintain both nerve cells and dendrites, branches on
the cells that receive and process information. Just as a new
weightlifting exercise builds up underused muscles, Katz says that
novel ways of thinking and viewing the world can improve the
functioning of inactive sections of the brain.Experience new tastes and smells; try to do things with your
nondominant hand; find new ways to drive to work; travel to new places;
create art; read that Dostoyevsky novel; write a buddy comedy for Ted
Kennedy and Rush Limbaugh - basically, do anything you can to force
yourself out of your mental ruts.
3. Ask Why
Our brains are wired to be curious. As we grow up and
“mature” many of us stifle or deny our natural curiosity.
Let yourself be curious! Wonder to yourself about why things are
happening. Ask someone in the know. The best way to exercise our
curiosity is by asking “Why?” Make it a new habit to ask
“why?” at least 10 times a day. Your brain will be happier
and you will be amazed at how many opportunities and solutions will
show up in your life and work.
4. Laugh
Scientists tell us that laughter is good for our health;
that it releases endorphins and other positively powerful chemicals
into our system. We don’t really need scientists to tell us that
it feels good to laugh. Laughing helps us reduce stress and break old
patterns too. So laughter can be like a “quick-charge” for
our brain’s batteries. Laugh more, and laugh harder.
5. Be A Fish Head
Omega-3 oils, found in walnuts, flaxseed and especially
fish, have long been touted as being healthy for the heart. But recent
research suggests they’re a brain booster as well, and not just
because they help the circulation system that pumps oxygen to your
head. They also seem to improve the function of the membranes that
surround brain cells, which may be why people who consume a lot of fish
are less likely to suffer depression, dementia, even attention-deficit
disorder. Scientists have noted that essential fatty acids are
necessary for proper brain development in children, and they’re
now being added to baby formulas. It’s possible that your own
mental state, and even your intelligence, can be enhanced by consuming
enough of these oils.Eating at least three servings a week of fish such as salmon, sardines, mackerel and tuna is a good start.
6. Remember
Get out an old photo album or high school yearbook. Your
brain is a memory machine, so give it a chance to work! Spend time with
your memories. Let your mind reflect on them and your mind will repay
you in positive emotions and new connections from the memories to help
you with your current tasks and challenges.
7. Cut The Fat
Can “bad” fats make you dumb? When
researchers at the University of Toronto put rats on a 40-percent-fat
diet, the rats lost ground in several areas of mental function,
including memory, spatial awareness and rule learning. The problems
became worse with a diet high in saturated fats, the kind that’s
abundant in meat and dairy products. While you may never be called upon
to navigate a little maze in search of a cheddar cube, these results
could hold true for you as well, for two reasons: Fat can reduce the
flow of oxygen-rich blood to your brain, and it may also slow down the
metabolism of glucose, the form of sugar the brain utilizes as food.You can still get up to 30 percent of your daily calories in the
form of fat, but most of it should come from the aforementioned fish,
olive oil, nuts and seeds. Whatever you do, stay away from trans fats,
the hardened oils that are abundant in crackers and snack foods.
8. Do A Puzzle
Some of us like jigsaw puzzles, some crossword puzzles,
some logic puzzles - it really doesn’t matter kind you choose to
do. Doing puzzles in your free time is a great way to activate your
brain and keep it in good working condition. Do the puzzle for fun, but
do it knowing you are exercising your brain.
9. The Mozart Effect
A decade ago Frances Rauscher, a psychologist now at the
University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh, and her colleagues made waves with
the discovery that listening to Mozart improved people’s
mathematical and spatial reasoning. Even rats ran mazes faster and more
accurately after hearing Mozart than after white noise or music by the
minimalist composer Philip Glass. Last year, Rauscher reported that,
for rats at least, a Mozart piano sonata seems to stimulate activity in
three genes involved in nerve-cell signalling in the brain.This sounds like the most harmonious way to tune up your mental
faculties. But before you grab the CDs, hear this note of caution. Not
everyone who has looked for the Mozart effect has found it.
What’s more, even its proponents tend to think that music boosts
brain power simply because it makes listeners feel better - relaxed and
stimulated at the same time - and that a comparable stimulus might do
just as well. In fact, one study found that listening to a story gave a
similar performance boost.
10. Improve Your Skill At Things You Already Do
Some repetitive mental stimulation is ok as long as you
look to expand your skills and knowledge base. Common activities such
as gardening, sewing, playing bridge, reading, painting, and doing
crossword puzzles have value, but push yourself to do different
gardening techniques, more complex sewing patterns, play bridge against
more talented players to increase your skill, read new authors on
varied subjects, learn a new painting technique, and work harder
crossword puzzles. Pushing your brain to new heights help to keep it
healthy.
11. Be A Thinker, Not A Drinker
The idea that alcohol kills brain cells is an old one,
but the reality is a bit more complicated. In fact, a study of 3,500
Japanese men found that those who drank moderately (in this case, about
one drink per day) had better cognitive functioning when they got older
than those who didn’t drink at all. Unfortunately, as soon as you
get beyond that “moderate” amount, your memory, reaction
time is all likely to decline. In the same study, men who had four or
more drinks a day fared worst of all.Just as bad is the now common practice of “binge
drinking,” otherwise known as getting hammered on the weekend.
Research on rats found that those who consumed large amounts of alcohol
had fewer new cells in their brains’ hippocampus region
immediately after the binge, and virtually none a month later. This
suggests that the alcohol not only damaged the rats’ brains, but
kept them from repairing themselves later on - in human terms, that
means you shouldn’t expect to pass the Mensa entrance exam any
time soon.
12. Play
Take time to play. Make time to play. Play cards. Play
video games. Play board games. Play Ring Around the Rosie. Play tug of
war. It doesn’t matter what you play. Just play! It is good for
your spirit and good for your brain. It gives your brain a chance to
think strategically, and keeps it working.
13. Sleep On It
Previewing key information and then sleeping on it
increases retention 20 to 30 percent. You can leave that information
next to the bed for easy access, if it is something that won’t
keep you awake. If you are kept awake by your thoughts, writing
everything down sometimes gets it “out of your mind,”
allowing you to sleep (so keep a pen and paper nearby).
14. Concentration
Concentration can increase brainpower. Obvious, perhaps,
but the thieves of concentration are not always so obvious. Learn to
notice when you are distracted. Often the cause is just below
consciousness. If there is a phone call you need to make, for example,
it might bother you all morning, sapping your ability to think clearly,
even while you are unaware of what is bothering you.Get in the habit of stopping to ask “What is on my mind right
now”. Identify it and deal with it. In the example given, you
could make the phone call, or put it on tomorrow’s list, so your
mind is comfortable letting it go for now. This leaves you in a more
relaxed state where you can think more clearly. Use this technique to
increase your brainpower now.
15. Make Love For Your Brain
In a series of studies by Winnifred B. Cutler, PhD and
colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania and later at Stanford
University it was found that regular sexual contact had an important
impact on physical and emotional well being of women. Sexual contact
with a partner at least once a week led to more fertile, regular
menstrual cycles, shorter menses, delayed menopause, increased estrogen
levels, and delayed aging. Brain imaging studies at UCLA have shown
that decreased estrogen levels are associated with overall decreased
brain activity and poor memory. Enhancing estrogen levels for women
through regular sexual activity enhances overall brain activity and
improves memory.In Dr. Cutler’s study the occurrence of orgasm was not as
important as the fact that sex was with another person. Intimacy and
emotional bonding may be the most influential factors in the positive
aspects of sex. As a psychiatrist I have seen many people withhold sex
as a way to show hurt, anger, or disappointment. Dr. Cutler’s
research suggests that this is self-defeating behavior. The more you
withhold the worse it may be for you. Appropriate sex is one of the
keys to the brain’s fountain of youth.
16. Play With Passion!
You can’t do great work without personal
fulfillment. When people are growing through learning and creativity,
they are much more fulfilled and give 127% more to their work. Delight
yourself and you delight the world. Remember what you loved to do as a
child and bring the essence of that activity into your work. This is a
clue to your genius; to your natural gifts and talents. da Vinci,
Edison, Einstein and Picasso all loved to play and they loved to
explore.
17. Cycles Of Consciousness
Your consciousness waxes and wanes throughout the day .
For most it seems to go through 90 minute cycles, with 30 minutes of
lower consciousness. Watch yourself to recognize this cycle. If you
learn to recognize and track your mental state, you can concentrate on
important mental tasks when your mind is most “awake”. For
creative insight into a problem, do the opposite. Work on it when you
are in a drowsy state, when your conscious mind has slowed down.
18. Learn Something New
This one might seem obvious. Yes, we capitalize on our
brain’s great potential when we put it to work learning new
things. You may have a specific topic for work or leisure that you want
to learn more about. That’s great.Go learn it. If you don’t have a subject in mind right now,
try learning a new word each day. There is a strong correlation between
working vocabulary and intelligence. When we have new words in our
vocabulary, our minds can think in new ways with greater nuances
between ideas. Put your mind to work learning. It is one of the best
ways to re-energize your brain.
19. Write To Be Read
I am a big proponent of writing in a journal to capture ideas and thoughts.
There is certainly great value in writing for yourself. I continue to
find that my brain is greatly stimulated by writing to be read. The
greatest benefit of writing is what it does to expand your
brain’s capacity. Find ways to write to be read – by
writing things for your friends to read, by capturing the stories of
your childhood, starting your own blog or whatever – just write
to be read.
20. Try Aroma Therapy To Activate Your Brain
One day, as I was falling asleep, while listening to
endless speeches at a conference, my brain suddenly perked up when I
caught a whiff of lemon from someone’s cologne. I immediately
felt alert and found it much easier to pay attention to the presenter.
I discovered aroma therapy really is useful and I have used it ever
since revitalize or to relax.Energizers include peppermint, cypress and lemon. Relaxants: ylang
ylang, geranium and rose. A few drops of essential oils in your bath or
in a diffuser will do the trick. You can also put a drop or two in a
cotton ball or hanky and inhale. One caveat for the workplace; make
sure no-one is allergic to the oils before you use them.
21. Drugs To Increase Brainpower
Coffee and other drinks containing caffeine help
students consistently score higher on tests. Since caffeine restricts
blood vessels in the brain, it isn’t clear what the longer-term
effects may be when it comes to your brainpower. So instead of coffee
breaks try gingko biloba and gotu kola herbal teas. Ginkgo biloba has
been shown to increase blood flow to the brain, and improve
concentration.
22. Build A Brain Trust
Surround yourself with inspiring people from a wide
variety of fields who encourage you and stimulate your creativity. Read
magazines from a wide variety of fields. Make connections between
people, places and things, to discover new opportunities, and to find
solutions to your problems.
Remember that no matter what your age or your occupation; your brain
needs to be constantly challenged to be at its peak in terms of
performance. Whether it’s doing logic puzzles, memorizing lines
from Shakespeare, or learning a new skill, keep your brain busy, if you don’t want it to rust away like a car in a junkyard.
Oases in Navajo desert contained 'a witch's brew'
Rain-filled uranium pits provided drinking water for people and animals. Then a mysterious wasting illness emerged.
New lakes had appeared as if by magic in the arid scrublands. Instead of hunting for puddles in the sandstone, she could lead her 100 animals to drink their fill. She would quench her own thirst as well, parting the film on the water's surface with her hands and leaning down to swallow.
Despite the abundant water, an unexpected blessing, her flock failed to thrive. The birthrate dropped, and the few new lambs that did appear had a hard time walking. Some were born without eyes.
Lois' husband, David, wondered whether the sheepdogs were mating with their charges. A medicine man, he also suspected witchcraft. He tried to fight the spell by burning cedar and herbs and gathering the sheep around the fire to inhale the healing smoke.
LiveScience.com - Why Music Gives Us the Chills
For a willing music audience, the art of drawing emotion from notes is classic.
Composers play with subtle, intricate changes and rates of change to try and elicit emotion. In recent studies, scientists found that people already familiar with the music are more likely to catch a chill at key moments:
* When a symphony turns from loud to quiet
* Upon entry of a solo voice or instrument
* When two singers have contrasting voices
People covered in goose bumps also tend to be driven more by rewards, and less inclined to be thrill- and adventure-seekers, according to research conducted at the Institute for Music Physiology and Musicians’ Medicine in Hanover, Germany.
malcolm x - documents > eulogy of malcolm x
Faith Temple Church Of God, February 27,1965
Here, at this final hour, in this quiet place, Harlem has come to bid farewell to one of its brightest hopes, extinguished now and gone from us forever. For Harlem is where he worked and where he struggled and fought. His home of homes where his heart was and where his people are. And it is, therefore, most fitting that we meet once again in Harlem to share these last moments with him. For Harlem has ever been gracious to those who loved her, have fought for her and have defended her honor even to the death.
It is not in the memory of man that this beleaguered, unfortunate but nonetheless proud community has found a braver, more gallant young champion than this Afro-American who lies before us, unconquered still. I say the word again, as he would want me to: Afro-American. Afro-American Malcolm, who was a master, was most meticulous in his use of words. Nobody knew better than he the power words have over the minds of men. Malcolm had stopped being a 'Negro' years ago. It had become too small, too puny, too weak a word for him. Malcolm was bigger than that. Malcolm had become an Afro-American and he wanted so desperately that we, that all his people, would become Afro-Americans, too.
There are those who will consider it their duty, as friends of the Negro people, to tell us to revile him, to flee even, from the presence of his memory, to save ourselves by writing him out of the history of our turbulent times. Many will ask what Harlem finds to honor in this stormy, controversial and bold young captain. And we will smile. Many will say turn away, away from this man, for he is not a man but a demon, a monster, a subverter and an enemy of the black man. And we will smile. They will say that he is of hate, a fanatic, a racist who can only bring evil to the cause for which you struggle! And we will answer and say to them: Did you ever talk to Brother Malcolm? Did you ever touch him
ROBERT GORDON WASSON Seeking the Magic Mushroom
On the night of June 29-30, 1955, in a Mexican Indian village so remote from the world that most of the people still speak no Spanish, my friend Allan Richardson and I shared with a family of Indian friends a celebration of "holy communion" where "divine" mushrooms where first adored and then consumed. The Indians mingled Christian and pre-Christian elements in their religious practices in a way disconcerting for Christians but natural for them. The rite was led by two women, mother and daughter, both of them curanderas, or shamans. The proceedings went on in the Mixeteco language. The mushrooms were of a species with hallucinogenic powers; that is, they cause the eater to see visions. We chewed and swallowed these acrid mushrooms, saw visions, and emerged from the experience awestruck. We had come form afar to attend a mushroom rite but had expected nothing so staggering as the virtuosity of the performing curanderas and the astonishing effects of the mushrooms. Richardson and I were the first white men in recorded history to eat the divine mushrooms, which for centuries have been a secret of certain Indian peoples living far from the great world in southern Mexico. No anthropologists had ever described the scene that we witnessed.
I am a banker by occupation and Richardson is a New York society photographer and is in charge of visual education at The Brearley School.
It was, however, no accident that we found ourselves in the lower chamber of that thatchroofed, adobe-walled Indian home. For both of us this was simply the latest trip to Mexico in quest of the mushroom rite. For me and my wife, who was to join us with our daughter a day later, it was a climax to nearly 30 years of inquiries and research into the strange role of toadstools in the early cultural history of Europe and Asia.
Thus that June evening found us, Allan Richardson and me, deep in the south of Mexico, bedded down with an Indian family in the heart of the Mixeteco mountains at an altitude of 5,500 feet. We could only stay a week or so: we had no time to lose. I went to the municipio or town hall, and there I found the official in charge, the síndico, seated alone at his great table in an upper room. He was young a Indian, about 35 years old, and he spoke Spanish well. His name was Filemón. He had a friendly manner and I took a chance. Leaning over his table, I asked him earnestly and in a low voice if I could speak to him in confidence. Instantly curious, he encouraged me. "Will you," I went on, "help me learn the secrets of the divine mushroom?" and I used the Mixeteco name, 'nti sheeto, correctly pronouncing it with glottal stop and tonal differentiation of the syllables. When Filemón recovered from his surprise he said warmly that nothing could be easier. He asked me to pass by his house, on the outskirts of town, at siesta time.
Allan and I arrived there about 3 o'clock. Filemón's home is built on a mountainside, with a trail on one side at the level of the upper story and a deep ravine on the other. Filemón at once lead us down the ravine to a spot where the divine mushrooms where growing in abundance. After photographing them we gathered them in a cardboard box and then labored back up the ravine in the heavy moist heat of that torrid afternoon. Not letting us rest Filemón sent us high up above his house to meet the curandera, the woman who would officiate at the mushroom rite. A connection of his, Eva Mendez by name, she was a curandera de primera categoría, of the highest quality, una Señora sin mancha, a woman without stain. We found her in the house of her daughter, who pursues the same vocation. Eva was resting on a mat on the floor from her previous night's performance. She was middle-aged, and short like all Mixetecos, with a spirituality in her expression that struck us at once. She had presence. We showed our mushrooms to the woman and her daughter. They cried out in rapture over the firmness, the fresh beauty and abundance of our young specimens. Through an interpreter we asked if they would serve us that night. They said yes.
HOUSE where mushroom sessions took place is built of adobe, has thatch "dog-ears" over gable ends. Door, lower right, leads into ceremonial room.
ABOUT 20 of us gathered in the lower chamber of Filemón's house after 8 o'clock that evening. Allan and I were the only strangers, the only ones who spoke no Mixeteco. Only our hosts, Filemón and his wife, could talk to us in Spanish. The welcome accorded to us was of a kind that we had never experienced before in the Indian country. Everyone observed a friendly decorum. They did not treat us stiffly, as strange white men; we were of their number. The Indians were wearing their best clothes, the women dressed in their huipiles or native costumes, the men in clean white trousers tied around the waist with strings and their best serapes over their clean shirts. They gave us chocolate to drink, somewhat ceremonially, and suddenly I recalled the words of the early Spanish writer who had said that before the mushrooms were served, chocolate was drunk. I sensed what we were in for: at long last we were discovering that the ancient communion rite still survived and we were going to witness it. The mushrooms lay there in their box, regarded by everyone respectfully but without solemnity. The mushrooms are sacred and never the butt of the vulgar jocularity that is often the way of white men with alcohol.
At about 10:30 o'clock Eva Mendez cleaned the mushrooms of their grosser dirt and then, with prayers, passed them through the smoke of resin incense burning on the floor. As she did this, she sat on a mat before a simple altar table adorned with Christian images, the Child Jesus and the Baptism in Jordan. Then she apportioned the mushrooms among the adults. She reserved 13 pair for herself and 13 pair for her daughter. (The mushrooms are always counted in pairs.) I was on tiptoe of expectancy: she turned and gave me six pair in a cup. I could not have been happier: this was the culmination of years of pursuit. She gave Allan six pair too. His emotions were mixed. His wife Mary had consented to his coming only after she had drawn from him a promise not to let those nasty toadstools cross his lips. Now he faced a behaviour dilemma. He took the mushrooms, and I heard him mutter in anguish, "My God, what will Mary say!" Then we ate our mushrooms, chewing them slowly, over the course of a half hour. They tasted bad--acrid with a rancid odor that repeated itself. Allan and I were determined to resist any effects they might have, to observe better the events of the night. But our resolve soon melted before the onslaught of the mushrooms.
RECEIVING his mushrooms, Wasson takes his night's ration from the hand of Curandera Eva Mendez. In right background Guy Stresser-Péan, French anthropologist who accompanied Wasson, has begun to chew his own supply.
EATING his mushrooms, Wasson takes them from cup holding his night's quota as the curandera prays at the household altar. He chewed them slowly, as is the custom, and his six pair took about a half hour to eat.
Before midnight the Señora (as Eva Mendez is usually called) broke a flower from the bouquet on the altar and used it to snuff out the flame of the only candle that was still burning. We were left in darkness and in darkness we remained until dawn. For a half hour we waited in silence. Allan felt cold and wrapped himself in a blanket. A few minutes later he leaned over and whispered, "Gordon, I am seeing things!" I told him not to worry, I was too. The visions had started. They reached a plateau of intensity deep in the night, and they continued at that level until about 4 o'clock. We felt slightly unsteady on our feet and in the beginning were nauseated. We lay down on the mat that had been spread for us, but no one had any wish to sleep except the children, to whom mushrooms are not served. We were never more wide awake, and the visions came whether our eyes were opened or closed. They emerged from the center of the field of vision, opening up as they came, now rushing, now slowly, at the pace that our will chose. They were in vivid color, always harmonious. They began with art motifs, angular such as might decorate carpets or textiles or wallpaper or the drawing board of an architect. Then they evolved into palaces with courts, arcades, gardens--resplendent palaces all laid over with semiprecious stones. Then I saw a mythological beast drawing a regal chariot. Later it was though the walls of our house had dissolved, and my spirit had flown forth, and I was suspended in mid-air viewing landscapes of mountains, with camel caravans advancing slowly across the slopes, the mountains rising tier above tier to the very heavens. Three days latter, when I repeated the same experience in the same room with the same curanderas, instead of mountains I saw river estuaries, pellucid water flowing through an endless expanse of reeds down to a measureless sea, all by the pastel light of a horizontal sun. This time a human figure appeared, a woman in primitive costume, standing and staring across the water, enigmatic, beautiful, like a sculpture except that she breathed and was wearing woven colored garments. It seemed as though I was viewing a world of which I was not a part and with which I could not hope to establish contact. There I was, poised in space, a disembodied eye, invisible, incorporeal, seeing but not seen.
The visions were not blurred or uncertain. They were sharply focused, the lines and colors being so sharp that they seemed more real to me than anything I had ever seen with my own eyes. I felt that I was now seeing plain, whereas ordinary vision gives us an imperfect view; I was seeing the archetypes, the Platonic ideas, that underlie the imperfect images of everyday life. The thought crossed my mind: could the divine mushrooms be the secret that lay behind the ancient Mysteries? Could the miraculous mobility that I was now enjoying be the explanation for the flying witches that played so important a part in the folklore and fairy tales of northern Europe? These reflections passed through my mind at the very time that I was seeing the visions, for the effect of the mushrooms is to bring about a fission of the spirit, a split in the person, a kind of schizophrenia, with the rational side continuing to reason and to observe the sensations that the other side is enjoying. The mind is attached as by an elastic cord to the vagrant senses.
ALLAN RICHARDSON eats a mushroom in spite of his pledge to his wife.
Meanwhile the Señora and her daughter were not idle. When our visions were still in the initial phases, we heard the Señora waving her arms rhythmically. She began a low, disconnected humming. Soon the phrases became articulate syllables, each disconnected syllable cutting the darkness sharply. Then by stages the Señora came forth with a full-bodied canticle, sung like very ancient music. It seemed to me at the time like an introit to the Ancient of Days. As the night progressed her daughter spelled her at singing. They sang well, never loud, with authority. What they sang was indescribably tender and moving, fresh, vibrant, rich. I had never realized how sensitive and poetic an instrument the Mixeteco language could be. Perhaps the beauty of the Señora's performance was partly an illusion induced by the mushrooms; if so, the hallucinations are aural as well as visual. Not being musicologists, we now not whether the chants were wholly European or partial indigenous in origin. From time to time the singing would rise to a climax and then suddenly stop, and then the Señora would fling forth spoken words, violent, hot, crisp words that cut the darkness like a knife. This was the mushroom speaking through her, God's words, as the Indians believe, answering the problems that had been posed by the participants. This was the Oracle. At intervals, perhaps every half hour, there was a brief intermission, when the Señora would relax and some would light cigarets.
At one point, while the daughter sang, the Señora stood up in the darkness where there was an open space in our room and began a rhythmic dance with clapping or slapping. We do not know exactly how she accomplished her effect. The claps or slaps were always resonant and true. So far as we know, she used no device, only her hands against each other or possibly against different parts of her body. The claps and slaps had pitch, the rhythm at times was complex, and the speed and volume varied subtly. We think the Señora faced successively the four points of the compass, rotating clockwise, but are not sure. One thing is certain: this mysterious percussive utterance was ventriloquistic, each slap coming from an unpredictable direction and distance, now close to our ears, now distant, above, below, here and yonder, like Hamlet's ghost hic et ubique. We were amazed and spellbound, Allan and I.
There we lay on our mat, scribbling notes in the dark and exchanging whispered comments, our bodies inert and heavy as lead, while our senses were floating free in space, feeling the breezes of the outdoors, surveying vast landscapes or exploring the recesses of gardens of ineffable beauty. And all the while we were listening to the daughter's chanting and to the unearthly claps and whacks, delicately controlled, of the invisible creatures darting around us.
The Indians who had taken the mushrooms were playing a part in the vocal activity. In the moments of tension they would utter exclamations of wonder and adoration, not loud, responsive to the singers and harmonizing with them, spontaneously yet with art.
On that initial occasion we all fell asleep around 4 o'clock in the morning. Allan and I awoke at 6, rested and heads clear, but deeply shaken by the experience we had gone through. Our friendly hosts served us coffee and bread. We then took our leave and walked back to the Indian house where we were staying, a mile or so away.
MEMETICS; THE NASCENT SCIENCE OF IDEAS AND THEIR TRANSMISSION
By J. Peter Vajk
In April 1917, a 47-year old lawyer-turned-journalist and a handful of companions enter Russia by train. By November, they take control of the government of Russia. Within another four years, a devastating civil war kills some 10 million Russians.
In 1924, a 34-year old handyman and would-be artist and architect is arrested for starting a brawl in a tavern in southern Germany. In jail over the next nine months, he writes a book expressing his dissatisfactions with life and the world in which he lives, and lays out a blueprint of what he plans to do to change it. Within nine years he has total and sole control of the entire national government. Over the ensuing thirteen years, his exercise of that power leads to the deaths of some thirty million people across two continents and three seas.
In the early 1970's, two young men, both of them Vietnam War veterans, go camping in the Sierra Nevada in California, about a mile from a Girl Scout campground. The second afternoon of their stay, one of the men breaks out in chills, sweats, and violent shivering, like he had experienced a few times in Vietnam. About a week later, in the San Francisco Bay area, six Girl Scouts become ill, with high fevers, severe headaches, and violent shivering.
In the mid-1970's, a charismatic minister attracts a large following among the poor and disaffected population of a Northern California urban center. After their activities draw increasing attention from the press, the minister and nearly a thousand of his adherent move en masse to an obscure village in the jungles of a small South American country. By November 1978, he and 910 others, including children, lie dead in the jungle, having drunk KoolAid which they knew was laced with cyanide.
In the late 1970's, a handsome young French Canadian steward working for Air Canada begins to make regular visits (using his free airline passes) to New York's Greenwich Village, Los Angeles' Sunset Strip, and San Francisco's Castro, Polk, and Mission Street areas. He has no trouble picking up dates with dozens of gay men over a period of two or three years. By 1980, over a hundred men from coast to coast are dead of dying >from a strange form of cancer or from a rare form of pneumonia.
In the fall, of 1988, a graduate student loads a short program into a few mainframe computers. Within two days, dozens of mainframe computers all across North America and Great Britain come to a halt: each computer is repetitively doing nonsense copying of files, leaving no time at all for productive computing. It takes as much as a week to get some of the computer centers back to normal activity.
These six episodes, from the disparate fields of politics, human disease, religion, and computer technology, have a great deal in common. It is my aim tonight to explore memetics, a science in the early stages of birth. "Meme" (pronounced to rhyme with "cream") is a neologism, coined by analogy to "gene," by the writer-zoologist Richard Dawkins in his book _The Selfish Gene_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976). By the end of this essay, the deep similarities (as well as some of the vital differences) among these six episodes will, I hope, become clear. I will also engage in some speculation about the implications of this nascent science for current affairs.
Why 2012?
by John Major Jenkins
¾ May 23rd, 1994
Why did the ancient Mayan or pre-Maya choose December 21st, 2012 A.D., as the end of their Long Count calendar? This article will cover some recent research. Scholars have known for decades that the 13-baktun cycle of the Mayan "Long Count" system of timekeeping was set to end precisely on a winter solstice, and that this system was put in place some 2300 years ago. This amazing fact - that ancient Mesoameri- can skywatchers were able to pinpoint a winter solstice far off into the future - has not been dealt with by Mayanists. And why did they choose the year 2012? One immediately gets the impression that there is a very strange mystery to be confronted here. I will be building upon a clue to this mystery reported by epigrapher Linda Schele in Maya Cosmos (1994). This article is the natural culmination of the research relating to the Mayan Long Count and the precession of the equinoxes that I explored in my recent book Tzolkin: Visionary Perspectives and Calendar Studies (Borderlands Science and Research Foundation, 1994).
Just some basics to get us started. The Maya were adept skywatchers. Their Classic Period is thought to have lasted from 200 A.D. to 900 A.D., but recent archeological findings are pushing back the dawn of Mayan civilization in Mesoamerica. Large ruin sites indicating high culture with distinctly Mayan antecedents are being found in the jungles of Guatemala dating back to before the common era. And even before this, the Olmec civilization flourished and developed the sacred count of 260 days known as the tzolkin. The early Maya adopted two different time keeping systems, the "Short Count" and the Long Count. The Short Count derives from combining the tzolkin cycle with the solar year and the Venus cycle of 584 days. In this way, "short" periods of 13, 52 and 104 years are generated. Unfortunately, we won't have occasion to dwell on the properties of the so-called Short Count system here. The Long Count system is somewhat more abstract, yet is also related to certain astronomical cycles. It is based upon nested cycles of days multiplied at each level by that key Mayan number, twenty:
1 / Kin (day)
20 / Uinal
360 / Tun
7200 / Katun
144000 / Baktun
Notice that the only exception to multiplying by twenty is at the tun level, where the uinal period is instead multiplied by 18 to make the 360-day tun. The Maya employed this counting system to track an unbroken sequence of days from the time it was inaugurated. The Mayan scholar Munro Edmonson believes that the Long Count was put in place around 355 B.C. This may be so, but the oldest Long Count date as yet found corresponds to 32 B.C. We find Long Count dates in the archeological record beginning with the baktun place value and separated by dots. For example: 6.19.19.0.0 equals 6 baktuns, 19 katuns, 19 tuns, 0 uinals and 0 days. Each baktun has 144000 days, each katun has 7200 days, and so on. If we add up all the values we find that 6.19.19.0.0 indicates a total of 1007640 days have elapsed since the Zero Date of 0.0.0.0.0. The much discussed 13-baktun cycle is completed 1872000 days (13 baktuns) after 0.0.0.0.0. This period of time is the so called Mayan "Great Cycle" of the Long Count and equals 5125.36 years.
But how are we to relate this to a time frame we can understand? How does this Long Count relate to our Gregorian calendar? This problem of correlating Mayan time with "western" time has occupied Mayan scholars since the beginning. The standard question to answer became: what does 0.0.0.0.0 (the Long Count "beginning" point) equal in the Gregorian calendar? When this question is answered, archeological inscriptions can be put into their proper historical context and the end date of the 13-baktun cycle can be calculated. After years of considering data from varied fields such as astronomy, ethnography, archeology and iconography, J. Eric S. Thompson determined that 0.0.0.0.0 correponded to the Julian date 584283, which equals August 11th, 3114 B.C. in our Gregorian calendar. This means that the end date of 13.0.0.0.0, some 5125 years later, is December 21st, 2012 A.D.1
The relationship between the Long Count and Short Count has always been internally consistent (both were tracked alongside each other in an unbroken sequence since their conception). Now it is very interesting to note that an aspect of the "Short Count", namely, the sacred tzolkin count of 260 days, is still being followed in the highlands of Guatemala. As the Mayan scholar Munro Edmonson shows in The Book of the Year, this last surviving flicker of a calendar tradition some 3000 years old supports the Thompson correlation of 584283. Edmonson also states that the Long Count was begun by the Maya or pre-Maya around 355 B.C., but there is reason to believe that the Long Count system was being perfected for at least 200 years prior to that date.
The point of interest for these early astronomers seems to have been the projected end date in 2012 A.D., rather than the beginning date in 3114 B.C. Having determined the end date in 2012 (for reasons we will come to shortly), and calling it 13.0.0.0.0, they thus proclaimed themselves to be living in the 6th baktun of the Great Cycle. The later Maya certainly attributed much mythological significance to the beginning date, relating it to the birth of their deities, but it now seems certain that the placement of the Long Count hinges upon its calculated end point. Why did early Mesoamerican skywatchers pick a date some 2300 years into the future and, in fact, how did they pinpoint an accurate winter solstice? With all these considerations one begins to suspect that, for some reason, the ancient New World astronomers were tracking precession.
The precession of the equinoxes, also known as the Platonic Year, is caused by the slow wobbling of the earth's polar axis. Right now this axis roughly points to Polaris, the "Pole Star," but this changes slowly over long periods of time. The earth's wobble causes the position of the seasonal quarters to slowly precess against the background of stars. For example, right now, the winter solstice position is in the constellation of Sagittarius. But 2000 years ago it was in Capricorn. Since then, it has precessed backward almost one full sign. It is generally thought that the Greek astronomer Hipparchus was the first to discover precession around 128 B.C. Yet scholarship indicates that more ancient Old World cultures such as the Egyptians (see Schwaller de Lubicz's book Sacred Science) and Babylonians also knew about the precession.
I have concluded that even cultures with simple horizon astronomy and oral records passed down for a hundred years or so, would notice the slow shifting of the heavens. For example, imagine that you lived in an environment suited for accurately demarcated horizon astronomy. Even if this wasn't the case, you might erect monoliths to sight the horizon position of, most likely, the dawning winter solstice sun. This position in relation to background stars could be accurately preserved in oral verse or wisdom teachings, to be passed down for centuries. Since precession will change this position at the rate of 1 degree every 72 years, within the relatively short time of 100 years or so, a noticeable change will have occurred. The point of this is simple. To early cultures attuned to the subtle movements of the sky, precession would not have been hard to notice.2
The Maya are not generally credited with knowing about the precession of the equinoxes. But considering everything else we know about the amazing sophistication of Mesoamerican astronomy, can we realistically continue to deny them this? Many of the as yet undeciphered hieroglyphs may ultimately describe precessional myths. Furthermore, as I show in my book Tzolkin: Visionary Perspectives and Calendar Studies, the Long Count is perfectly suited for predicting future seasonal quarters, indefinitely, and precession is automatically accounted for. Some of the most incredible aspects of Mayan cosmo-conception are just now being discovered. As was the case with the state of Egyptology in the 1870's, we still have a lot to learn. In addition, Mayanists like Gordon Brotherston (The Book of the Fourth World) consider precessional knowledge among Mesoamerican cultures to be more than likely.
We are still trying to answer these questions: What is so important about the winter solstice of 2012 and, exactly how were calculations made so accurately, considering that precession should make them exceedingly difficult?
If we make a standard horoscope chart for December 21st, 2012 A.D., nothing very unusual appears. In this way I was led astray in my search until Linda Schele provided a clue in the recent book Maya Cosmos. Probably the most exciting breakthrough in this book is her identification of the astronomical meaning of the Mayan Sacred Tree. Drawing from an impressive amount of iconographic evidence, and generously sharing the process by which she arrived at her discovery, the Sacred Tree is found to be none other than the crossing point of the ecliptic with the band of the Milky Way. Indeed, the Milky Way seems to have played an important role in Mayan imagery. For example, an incised bone from 8th century Tikal depicts a long sinking canoe containing various deities. This is a picture of the night sky and the canoe is the Milky Way, sinking below the horizon as the night progresses, and carrying with it deities representing the nearby constellations. The incredible Mayan site of Palenque is filled with Sacred Tree motifs and references to astronomical events. In their book Forest of Kings, Schele and Freidel suggested that the Sacred Tree referred to the ecliptic. Apparently that was only part of the picture, for the Sacred Tree that Pacal ascends in death is more than just the ecliptic, it is the sacred doorway to the underworld. The crossing point of Milky Way and ecliptic is this doorway and represents the sacred source and origin. In the following diagram of the well known sarcophagus carving, notice that the Milky Way tree serves as an extension of Pacal's umbilicus. The umbilicus is a human being's entrance into life, and entrance into death as well:
Diagram 1: Pacal and the Sacred Tree.
We may also remember at this point that the tzolkin calendar is said to spring from the Sacred Tree. The Sacred Tree is, in fact, at the center of the entire corpus of Mayan Creation Myths. We should definitely explore the nature of this astronomical feature.
The first question that came up for me was as follows. Since Lord (Ahau) Pacal is, by way of divine kingship, equated with the sun, and he is portrayed "entering" the Sacred Tree on his famous sarcophagus lid, on what day does the sun come around to conjunct the crossing point of ecliptic and Milky Way? This would be an important date. In the pre-dawn skies of this date, the Milky Way would be seen to arch overhead from the region of Polaris (Heart of Sky) and would point right at where the sun rises. This (and the corollary date 6 months later) is the only date when the Sun/Lord could jump from the ecliptic track and travel the Milky Way up and around the vault of heaven to the region of Polaris, there to enter the "Heart of Sky." It should be mentioned that 1300 years ago, during the zenith of Palenque's glory, Polaris was much less an exact "Pole Star" than it is now. Schele demonstrates that it wasn't a Pole Star that the Maya mythologized in this regard, it was the unmarked polar "dark region" symbolizing death and the underworld around which everything was observed to revolve. Life revolves around death - a characteristically Mayan belief. The dates on which the sun conjuncts the "Sacred Tree" are thus very important. These dates will change with precession. Schele doesn't pursue this line of reasoning, however, and doesn't even mention that these dates might be significant. If we go back to 755 A.D., we find that the sun conjuncts the Sacred Tree on December 3rd. I should point out here that the Milky Way is a wide band, and perhaps a 10-day range of dates should be considered.
To start with, however, I use the exact center of the Milky Way band that one finds on star charts, known as the "Galactic Equator" (not to be confused with Galactic Center). Where the Galactic Equator crosses the ecliptic in Sagittarius just happens to be where the dark rift in the Milky Way begins. This is a dark bifurcation in the Milky Way caused by interstellar dust clouds. To observers on earth, it appears as a dark road which begins near the ecliptic and stretches along the Milky Way up towards Polaris. The Maya today are quite aware of this feature; the Quich» Maya call it xibalba be (the "road to Xibalba") and the Chorti Maya call it the "camino de Santiago". In Dennis Tedlock's translation of the Popol Vuh, we find that the ancient Maya called it the "Black Road". The Hero Twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque must journey down this road to battle the Lords of Xibalba. (Tedlock 334, 358). Furthermore, what Schele has identified as the Sacred Tree was known to the ancient Quich» simply as "Crossroads."
This celestial feature was not marginal in ancient Mayan thought and is still rec- ognized even today. In terms of how this feature was mythologized, it seems that when a planet, the sun, or the moon entered the dark cleft of the Milky Way in Sagittarius (which happens to be the exact center of the Milky Way, the Galactic Equator), entrance to the underworld road was possible, which could then take the journeyer up to the Heart of Sky. Shamanic vision rites were probably involved in this scenario. In the Yucatan, underground caves were ritual places used by shaman to journey to the underworld. Schele explains that "Mayan mythology identifies the Road to Xibalba as going through a cave" (Forest of Kings, 209). Here we have a metaphorical reference to the "dark rift" in the Milky Way by way of its terrestrial counterpart, a syncretism between earth and sky which is characteristic of Mayan thinking. Above all, what is becoming apparent from the corpus of Mayan Creation Myths is that creation seems to have taken place at a celestial crossroads - the crossing point of ecliptic and Milky Way.
To clarify this ever growing picture, we should stop here and plot out some charts. In addition to the detailed star maps from Norton's 2000.0 Star Atlas which allowed me to pinpoint the crossing point of Galactic Equator and ecliptic, I use EZCosmos to plot these positions3. What I found answers the question of why the Maya chose the winter solstice of 2012, a problem seemingly avoided by astronomers and Mayanists alike. While it is true that the sun conjuncts the Sacred Tree on December 3rd in the year 755 A.D., over the centuries precession has caused the conjunction date to approach the winter solstice. So, how close are we to perfect conjunction today? Exactly when might we expect the winter solstice sun to conjunct the crossing point of Galactic Equator and ecliptic - the Mayan Sacred Tree? Any astronomer will tell you that, presently, the Milky Way crosses the ecliptic through the constellation of Sagittarius and this area is rich in nebulae and high density objects. In fact, where the Milky Way crosses the ecliptic in Sagittarius also happens to be the direction of the Galactic Center.4
So the quest returns to identifying why December 21st, 2012 A.D. might represent some kind of astronomical anomoly. I'll get right to the heart of the matter. Let's look at a few charts.
Chart 1.
Here is a full view of the sky at noon on December 21st, 2012 A.D. The band of the Milky Way can be seen stretching from the lower right to the upper left. The more or less vertical dotted line indicates the Galactic Equator. The planets can be seen tracing a roughly horizontal path through the chart, indicating the ecliptic. The sun, quite strikingly, is dead center in the Sacred Tree. Let's look closer.
Chart 2.
The field is now reduced from a horizon-to-horizon view to a field of 30 degrees. Part of the constellation of Sagittarius can be seen in the lower left portion of the chart. The planet in the middle-to-upper left portion of the chart is Pluto, which rarely travels directly along the ecliptic. The center square near the sun is placed on the Trifid Nebula (M20). According to the star chart I used, this nebula is very close to the crossing point of Galactic Equator and ecliptic. However, a small star (4 Sgr) is even closer; it sits right on the Galactic Equator and its declination is only 00 .08' below the ecliptic. Let's look closer at these features.
Chart 3.
The field is now reduced to a 5-degree span, what astrology considers to be within conjunction. The dot to the lower right of the sun is the star 4 Sgr. Amazingly, the Sun is right on target. We couldn't have hoped for a closer conjunction. 1 day before or after will remove the sun a noticeable distance from the crossing point. December 21st, 2012 (13.0.0.0.0 in the Long Count) therefore represents an extremely close conjunction of the winter solstice sun with the crossing point of Galactic Equator and the ecliptic, what the ancient Maya recognized as the Sacred Tree. It is critical to understand that the winter solstice sun rarely conjuncts the Sacred Tree. In fact, this is an event that has been coming to resonance very slowly over thousands and thousands of years. What this might mean astrologically, how this might effect the "energy weather" on earth, must be treated as a separate topic.
But I should at least mention in passing that this celestial convergence appears to parallel the accelerating pace of human civilization. It should be noted that because precession is a very slow process, similar astronomical alignments will be evident on the winter solstice dates within perhaps 5 years on either side of 2012. However, the accuracy of the conjunction of 2012 is quite astounding, beyond anything deemed calculable by the ancient Maya, and serves well to represent the perfect mid-point of the process.
Let's go back to the dawn of the Long Count and try to reconstruct what may have been happening.
First, the tzolkin count originated among the Olmec at least as early as 679 B.C. (see Edmonson's Book of the Year). We may suspect that astronomical observations were being made from at least that point. The tzolkin count has been followed unbroken since at least that time, up to the present day, demonstrating the high premium placed by the Maya upon continuity of tradition. In this way, star records, horizon positions of the winter solstice sun, and other pertinent observations could also have been accurately preserved. As suggested above, precession can be noticed by way of even simple horizon astronomy in as little time as 100 to 150 years. (Hipparchus, the alleged "discoverer" of precession among the Greeks, compared his own observations with data collected only 170 years before his time.) Following Edmonson, the Long Count system may have appeared as early as 355 B.C. Part of the reason for implementing the Long Count system, as I will show, was probably to calculate future winter solstice dates.
We must assume that even at this early point in Mesoamerican history, the crossing point of ecliptic and Milky Way was understood as the "Sacred Tree". Since the Sacred Tree concept is intrinsically tied into the oldest Mayan Creation Myths, this is not improbable. At the very least, the "dark rift" was already a recognized feature. Early skywatchers of this era (355 B.C.) would then observe the sun to conjunct the dark ridge in the Milky Way on or around November 18th.5 This would be easily observed in the pre-dawn sky as described above: the Milky Way points to the rising sun on this date.
Over a relatively short period of time, as an awareness of precession was emerging, this date was seen to slowly approach winter solstice, a critical date in its own right in early Mayan cosmo-conception. At this point, precession and the rate of precession was calculated, the Long Count was perfected and inaugurated, and the appropriate winter solstice date in 2012 A.D. was found via the Long Count in the following way.
Long Count katun beginnings will conjunct sequential seasonal quarters every 1.7.0.0.0 days (194400 days). This is an easily tracked Long Count interval. Starting with the katun beginning of 650 B.C.:
6.5.0.0.0 Fall 650 B.C.
7.12.0.0.0 Winter 118 B.C.
8.19.0.0.0 Spring 416 A.D.
10.6.0.0.0 Summer 948 A.D.
11.13.0.0.0 Fall 1480 A.D.
13.0.0.0.0 Winter 2012 A.D.
Note that the last date is not only a katun beginning, but a baktun beginning as well. It is, indeed, the end date of 2012.6
The Long Count may have been officially inaugurated on a specific date in 355 B.C., as Edmonson suggests, but it must have been formulated, tried, tested, and proven before this date. This may well have taken centuries, and the process no doubt paralleled (and was perhaps instigated by) the discovery of precession. The Long Count system automatically accounts for precession in its ability to calculate future seasonal quarters - a property which shouldn't be underestimated.
This has been my attempt to fill a vacuum in Mayan Studies, an answer to the why and how of the end date of the 13-baktun cycle of the Mayan Long Count. The solution requires a shift in how we think about the astronomy of the Long Count end date. The strange fact that it occurs on a winter solstice immediately points us to possible astronomical reasons, but they are not obvious. We also shouldn't forget the often mentioned fact that the 13-baktun cycle of some 5125 years is roughly 1/5th of a precessional cycle. This in itself should have been suggestive of a deeper mystery very early on. Only with the recent identification of the astronomical nature of the Sacred Tree has the puzzle revealed its fullness. And once again we are amazed at the sophistication and vision of the ancient New World astronomers, the decendants of whom still count the days and watch the skies in the remote outbacks of Guatemala.
This essay is not contrived upon sketchy evidence. It basically rests upon two facts:
1) the well known end date of the 13-baktun cycle of the Mayan Long Count, which is December 21st, 2012 A.D. and
2) the astronomical situation on that day. Based upon these two facts alone, the creators of the Long Count knew about and calculated the rate of precession over 2300 years ago. I can conceive of no other conclusion. To explain this away as "coincidence" would only obscure the issue.
For early Mesoamerican skywatchers, the slow approach of the winter solstice sun to the Sacred Tree was seen as a critical process, the culmination of which was surely worthy of being called 13.0.0.0.0, the end of a World Age. The channel would then be open through the winter solstice doorway, up the Sacred Tree, the Xibalba be , to the center of the churning heavens, the Heart of Sky.
Notes:
1Linda Schele and David Freidel, unlike most Mayanists, continue to support the work of Floyd Lounsbury in promoting the 584285 correlation. This is 2 days off from the Thompson correlation that I use. The decisive factor in supporting the Thompson correlation of 584283 is the fact that it corresponds with the tzolkin count still followed in the highlands of Guatemala. To account for this discrepency in his correlation, Lounsbury claims that the count was shifted back two days sometime before the conquest (not likely), thus explaining its present placement. This means that either correlation will give the December 21st end date. Nevertheless, Schele and Freidel still report that the end date is December 23rd, 2012 rather than Dec. 21st, an unfortunate faux pas understandable only because they aren't particularly interested in the specifics of the correlation debate. For a detailed discussion of this topic, refer to my book Tzolkin: Visionary Perspectives and Calendar Studies.
2Case in point is the mysterious existence of myths obviously describing precession in the ancient verses of the Kalevala, the Finnish National Epic. These myths were relayed from the earliest times by way of singers. Many of these stories are thoroughly magical and are filled with sky lore. The Finnish language is not of Indo- European origin and up until the late 19th century peasants in Finland and northwestern Russia had little contact with Europe. Indeed, their heritage suggests more contact with Central Asia than Europe. Some of the Kalevala stories describe a sacred Mill called the Sampo (derived from sanskrit Skambha = pillar or pole) with a "many ciphered cover". This spinning Mill is a metaphor for a Golden Age of plenty and the starry sky spinning around the Pole Star (known as the Nail of the North), which in the Far North is almost straight over head. The Mill at some point is disturbed, its pillar being pulled out of its peg, and a new one - a new "age" - must be constructed. This becomes the chore of Ilmarinen, the primeval smith. In this legend, ancient knowledge of precession among unsophisticated "peasants" who were nonetheless astute skywatchers, was preserved via oral tradition almost down to modern times.
3EZCosmos is a graphic software package that can accurately plot and animate the positions of planets, stars, nebula and so on, for 14,000 years. It is well suited to this research because it accounts for precession in its positional calculations. It also happens to be the software that Linda Schele used to discover the astronomical meaning of the Mayan Sacred Tree.
4 Here we briefly converge with the ideas of Terence McKenna. In the book he co- authored with his brother Dennis (Invisible Landscape, Seabury Press 1975 and Harper San Francisco, 1993), Terence suggests that the position of winter solstice sun within 3 degrees of the Galactic Center in the year 2012 A.D. (a "once-in-a-precessional- cycle" event) may provide the eschatological end point for his theory of time known as Timewave Zero. His end date was chosen for historical reasons and was, apparently, only later discovered to correspond with the Mayan end date. The McKennas point out that this unusual astronomical situation has been noted by other writers, namely, Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend in Hamlet's Mill (1969). As ACS Publication's The American Ephemeris for the 21st Century shows, in the year 2012 the Galactic Center is at 27 Sagittarius (within 3 of winter solstice). Thus McKenna demonstrates that on winter solstice of 2012, Galactic Center will be rising heliacally just before dawn, in a way reminiscent of how the Maya observed Venus's last morningstar appearance.
5This basically follows the "1 degree every 72 years" rule of precession. In this way, back in 3114 B.C. the sun conjuncted the Sacred Tree on Oct 10th, which is 72 degrees, or 1/5th of the ecliptic from the winter solstice. The Fall Equinox sun conjuncted the Sacred Tree about 6400 years ago (1/4th of a precessional cycle). Ancient cultures in Mesopotamia may have recognized this alignment, and called it a Golden Age. The fall from this state of alignment may be responsible for the original Fall from Paradise myth, which filtered out to the Judaic tradition.
6The Long Count has other strange astronomical properties. For instance, the 13- katun cycle of 256 years was known to the Yucatec Maya as a prophecy cycle. We see it used in the Books of Chilam Balam. The astronomical reference here is to conjunction cycles of Uranus and Pluto, two of which equal 256 years. From another angle, 3 katuns equal exactly 37 synodical cycles of Venus.
Sources:
Brotherston, Gordon. The Book of the Fourth World. Cambridge University Press. 1992.
Edmonson, Munro. The Book of the Year. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, Utah. 1988.
EZCosmos. Astrosoft, Inc. DeSoto, Texas. 1990.
Jenkins, John Major. Tzolkin: Visionary Perspectives and Calendar Studies. Borderlands Science and Research Foundation. Garberville, CA. 1994.
Mayan Calendrics. Dolphin Software. 48 Shattuck Square #147, Berkeley, CA. 94704. 1989 &1993.
Meeus, Jean. Astronomical Tables of the Sun, Moon and Planets. Willmann- Bell Publishers. Richmond, VA. 1983.
Michelsen, Neil F. The American Ephemeris for the 21st Century. ACS Publications. San Diego, CA. 1982, 1988.
Ridpath, Ian (ed.). Norton's 2000.0: Star Atlas and Reference Handbook. Longman Group UK Limited. 1989.
Schele, Linda and Freidel, David. A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya. William Morrow and Company, Inc. New York. 1990.
Schele, Linda; Freidel, David; Parker, Joy. Maya Cosmos: Three Thousand Years on the Shaman's Path. William Morrow and Company, Inc. New York. 1993.
Tedlock, Dennis. The Popol Vuh: The Definitive Edition of the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the Glories of Gods and Kings. Simon & Schuster. New York.
1985
Author's Biographical Information:
John Major Jenkins (March 4th, 1964, 9:19 p.m., Chicago) is a student of Mayan time. On several trips to Central America in the late 80's, he worked and lived with the Quich» and Tzutujil Maya in Guatemala. Observations gathered on these trips were published in Chicago area newspapers. Since then he has devoted his time to studying Mayan cosmo-conception and the mathematical and philosophical properties of the sacred calendar. More thought provoking ideas can be found in his recent book Tzolkin: Visionary Perspectives and Calendar Studies (Borderlands Science and Research Foundation, 1994). Additional information on the Mayan end date alignment is available by writing the author at Four Ahau Press: P.O. Box 3; Boulder, CO 80306. Four Ahau Web Site
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HOW WE EAT OUR YOUNG BY MIKE PATTON
If music is dying, musicians are killing it. Composers are the ones decomposing it. We are as responsible as anyone--although we'd love not to admit it. We lash out at "The Industry", blaming things like corporate structure for our shitty music--but we are the ones making it. We open the box they've given us and jump in, wrap ourselves up, and even lick the stamp. Why? Insecurity--the need for acceptance--maybe even money. We're not thinking about our music, just how it looks. One would rather have the warm tongue of a critic licking his asshole than the tongue of his spouse. It gives him a sense of validity and power. He seems to defy gravity. Maybe it is because he doesn't know what the hell else to do. He sees it coming--but freezes with panic like a deer in the headlights. Don't laugh--I've done it and you probably have too. And it has undoubtedly effected out music. (But have we learned anything form it?) We know that we are mostly a lot of slobbering babies who need constant stroking. We realize also in the moral order of society, we occupy positions similar to the thief, pimp, or peeping tom. We know that even if one has the pride of a bull, it is hard enough just to remain focused in this world. It gives us milliona upon millions of images--distractions--all saying the same thing at the same time: DO NOT THINK. If your fantasy and desire give you migraines, how easy it is to forget them when there is so much to look at. Our creations die quickly when abandoned like this. Do we realize that we are eating our young? It seems the passion that moves us is accompanied by an incredible urge to squash it. It is as quick as a fucking reflex--a conditioned response. It it a sexual problem? A puritanical one? The most intense and convincing music achieves a sexual level of expression, but what we normally feel is frigidity and limpness. It is just too easy for an artist to 'socialize' his desires when life tells him cardboard is OK. You should be ashamed of yourself! What is your fucking problem? If you don't come out, sooner or later you will die in there. Use chunks of yourself. Bodily fluids. Look left and right. Sift through others' belongings. Borrow. Steal. And try to achieve some sort of pleasure while doing it. This excitement should increase and intensify when you visualize it being shared by a number of people. Think about it. If it comes from inside you, it is automatically valid--it just may or may not be good. Because if it is not communicating in some way, its pleasure is as short-lived as a quick fuck in the back room. It doesn't mean shit. The labor of many composers is to construct elaborate walls of sound--but we often forget to leave a window or door to crawl out of. ow can we survive in these clever little rooms? We must eat our creation or we will starve. At this point, we have heard what we wanted to hear--our ears have shut down. We've resigned as slaves to our own gluttony. But if we have boarded up our learning environment, our only way out is to teach what we know. Will they listen? Why should they? Because they need you as much as you need them. You can save them from being swallowed up by the world--they can save you from being swallowed up by the world. Young and old players should be seeking each other out and using each other. They should develope a healthy exchange of smut--and learn to wear each other's masks. In this kind of environment, incredible things can happen. Music can emerge that is athletic and personal. Music that is riddled with contradictions--impossibilities. And that is the shit that can defy gravity.
BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | The Devil's Music
"In medieval theology you have to have some way of presenting the devil. Or if someone in the Roman Catholic Church wanted to portray the crucifixion, it is sometimes used there.'"
Man pleads guilty to obstructing police officer
Let me first say I do not detest security, however trust should be the benefit of the people. I also am not ignorant of the violence that has occurred at city hall. There is an obscure difference between feeling safe and being made to feel that you are being monitored or suspected. On the contrary, the article implies a yahoo trying to prove lax security at city hall; when it's possible this may be his way of getting attention of the city government. I sincerely question what is his problem with the city, and the article fails to mention this. This article is merely a trumpet of fear.
After further research, it has been found that, “Mr. Kenny spoke against a proposal to acquire a parking lot downtown through eminent domain. Kenny went on to compare taking someone's private property to "declaring war on that person."” http://www.pe.com/localnews/inland/stories/PE_News_Local_R_rthreat02.189bdbd2.html. There is no doubt that he has an viable argument, though his approach is irrational.
Staring into the Singularity 1.2.5
Staring into the Singularity 1.2.5: "If computing speeds double every two years,
what happens when computer-based AIs are doing the research?
Computing speed doubles every two years.
Computing speed doubles every two years of work.
Computing speed doubles every two subjective years of work.
Two years after Artificial Intelligences reach human equivalence, their speed doubles. One year later, their speed doubles again.
Six months - three months - 1.5 months ... Singularity.
Plug in the numbers for current computing speeds, the current doubling time, and an estimate for the raw processing power of the human brain, and the numbers match in: 2021."
BOMB Magazine: Regina José Galindo by Francisco Goldman
BOMB Magazine: Regina José Galindo by Francisco Goldman: "A slight young woman in a black dress walks barefoot through the streets of Guatemala City, carrying a white basin filled with human blood. She sets the basin down, steps into it and then out, leaving a trail of bloody footprints from the Constitutional Court building to the old National Palace. The corrupt Constitutional Court had recently allowed the former military dictator, General Ríos Montt, to run for president despite the Constitution's barring of past presidents who gained power by military coup. A Guatemalan who didn't know that it was a performance titled Who can erase the traces?–or even who had never heard of performance art–would have had no trouble understanding the symbolism: the ghostly footprints representing the hundreds of thousands of civilians murdered, overwhelmingly by the Army, during the long years of war and after; the persistence of memory in the face of official policies of enforced forgetting and impunity. I've read (and have contributed) plenty of words, a surfeit of words, about violence and injustice in Guatemala. That trail of bloody footprints was the most powerful statement I'd encountered in ages. "
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave: Chapter VI
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave: Chapter VI: "I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty--to wit, the white man's power to enslave the black man. It was a grand achievement, and I prized it highly. From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom. It was just what I wanted, and I got it at a time when I the least expected it. Whilst I was saddened by the thought of losing the aid of my kind mistress, I was gladdened by the invaluable instruction which, by the merest accident, I had gained from my master. Though conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read. The very decided manner with which he spoke, and strove to impress his wife with the evil consequences of giving me instruction, served to convince me that he was deeply sensible of the truths he was uttering. It gave me the best assurance that I might rely with the utmost confidence on the results which, he said, would flow from teaching me to read. What he most dreaded, that I most desired. What he most loved, that I most hated. That which to him was a great evil, to be carefully shunned, was to me a great good, to be diligently sought; and the argument which he so warmly urged, against my learning to read, only served to inspire me with a desire and determination to learn. "
Martin Luther King Jr. 01/15/29 -04/04/1968
- "Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."
- "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. "
- "I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law."
- "In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
- "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
The strange case of the man who took 40,000 ecstasy pills in nine years
Last Rites for Indian Dead by Suzan Shown Harjo
What if museums, universities, and government agencies could put your dead relatives on display or keep them in boxes to be cut up and otherwise studied? What if you believed that the spirits of the dead could not rest until their human remains were placed in a sacred area? The ordinary American would say there ought to be a law—and there is, for ordinary Americans. The problem for American Indians is that there are too many laws of the kind that make us the archeological property of the United States and too few of the kind that protect us from such insults. Some of my own Cheyenne relatives’ skulls are in the Smithsonian Institution today, along with those of at least 4,500 other Indian people who were violated in the 1800s by the U.S. Army for an “Indian Crania Study.” It wasn’t enough that these unarmed Cheyenne people were mowed down by the cavalry at the infamous Sand Creek massacre; many were decapitated and their heads shipped to Washington as freight. (The Army Medical Museum’s collection is now in the Smithsonian.) Some had been exhumed° only hours after being buried. Imagine their grieving families’ reaction on finding their loved ones disinterred° and headless. Some targets of the Army’s study were killed in noncombat situations and beheaded immediately. The officer’s account of the decapitation of the Apache chief Mangas Coloradas in 1863 shows the pseudoscientific nature of the exercise. “I weighed the brain and measured the skull,” the good doctor wrote, “and found that while the skull was smaller, the brain was larger than that of Daniel Webster.” These journal accounts exist in excruciating detail, yet missing are any records of overall comparisons, conclusions, or final reports of the Army study. Since it is unlike the Army not to leave a paper trail, one must wonder about the motive for its collection. The total Indian body count in the Smithsonian collection is more than 19,000, and it is not the largest in the country. It is not inconceivable that the 1.5 million of us living today are outnumbered by our dead stored in museums, educational institutions, federal agencies, state historical societies, and private collections. The Indian people are further dehumanized by being exhibited alongside the mastodons and dinosaurs and other extinct creatures. Where we have buried our dead in peace, more often than not the sites have been desecrated. For more than two hundred years, relic-hunting has been a popular pursuit. Lately, the market in Indian artifacts has brought this abhorrent activity to a fever pitch in some areas. And when scavengers come upon Indian burial sites, everything found becomes fair game, including sacred burial offerings, teeth, and skeletal remains.One unusually well-publicized example of Indian grave desecration occurred two years ago in a western Kentucky field known as Slack Farm, the site of an Indian village five centuries ago. Ten men—one with a business card stating “Have Shovel, Will Travel”—paid the landowner $10,000 to lease digging rights between planting seasons. They dug extensively on the forty-acre farm, rummaging through an estimated 650 graves, collecting burial goods, tools, and ceremonial items. Skeletons were strewn about like litter. What motivates people to do something like this? Financial gain is the first answer. Indian relic-collecting has become a multimillion-dollar industry. The price tag on a bead necklace can easily top $1,000; rare pieces fetch tens of thousands. And it is not just collectors of the macabre° who pay for skeletal remains. Scientists say that these deceased Indians are needed for research that someday could benefit the health and welfare of living Indians. But just how many dead Indians must they examine? Nineteen thousand? There is doubt as to whether permanent curation of our dead really benefits Indians. Dr. Emery A. Johnson, former assistant Surgeon General, recently observed, “I am not aware of any current medical diagnostic or treatment procedure that has been derived from research on such skeletal remains. Nor am I aware of any during the thirty-four years that I have been involved in American Indian . . . health care.” Indian remains are still being collected for racial biological studies. While the intentions may be honorable, the ethics of using human remains this way without the full consent of relatives must be questioned. Some relief for Indian people has come on the state level. Almost half of the states, including California, have passed laws protecting Indian burial sites and restricting the sale of Indian bones, burial offerings, and other sacred items. Rep. Charles E. Bennett (D-Fla.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) have introduced bills that are a good start in invoking the federal government’s protection. However, no legislation has attacked the problem headon by imposing stiff penalties at the marketplace, or by changing laws that make dead Indians the nation’s property. Some universities—notably Stanford, Nebraska, Minnesota, and Seattle—have returned, or agreed to return, Indian human remains; it is fitting that institutions of higher education should lead the way.Congress is now deciding what to do with the government’s extensive collection of Indian human remains and associated funerary objects. The secretary of the Smithsonian, Robert McC. Adams, has been valiantly° attempting to apply modern ethics to yesterday’s excesses. This week, he announced that the Smithsonian would conduct an inventory and return all Indian skeletal remains that could be identified with specific tribes or living kin. But there remains a reluctance generally among collectors of Indian remains to take action of a scope that would have a quantitative impact and a healing quality. If they will not act on their own—and it is highly unlikely that they will—then Congress must act. The country must recognize that the bodies of dead American Indian people are not artifacts to be bought and sold as collector’s items. It is not appropriate to store tens of thousands of our ancestors for possible future research. They are our family. They deserve to be returned to their sacred burial grounds and given a chance to rest. The plunder of our people’s graves has gone on too long. Let us rebury our dead and remove this shameful past from America’s future.
The Chinese zombie ships of West Africa
Bush blames Iraq's instability on Hussein - Mar 29, 2006
"President Bush said Wednesday that Saddam Hussein, not continued U.S. involvement in Iraq, is responsible for ongoing sectarian violence that is threatening the formation of a democratic government." If a dictator in prison has more power than the president of the invading country, we have light years to go!
GovTrack: H.R. 4437: Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005
"H.R. 4437: Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005" The straight facts.
12/6/2005--Introduced.
Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005 - Directs the Secretary of Homeland Security (DHS) to: (1) take all appropriate actions, including development of a national border strategy, to maintain operational control over the U.S. international land and maritime borders; (2) report on cross-border security agreements with Mexico and Canada; (3) provide for biometric data enhancements; (4) report on the One Face at the Border Initiative; (5) increase port of entry inspection personnel and canine detection teams; (6) report on the airspace security mission's impact on the National Capital Region; (7) reimburse private owners along the border for certain property damage; (8) establish at least one Border Patrol unit for the Virgin Islands; (9) report on Central American gang travel across the U.S.-Mexico border; and (10) deploy radiation portal monitors at US ports of entry to screen inbound cargo for nuclear and radiological material.
Amends the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) with respect to alien smuggling and illegal entry and presence to: (1) revise the definition of aggravated felony; (2) provide mandatory minimum sentences on smuggling convictions, and expand seizure and forfeiture authority; (3) make illegal US presence a crime; (4) increases penalties for improper US entry and for marriage and immigration-related entrepreneurship fraud; (5) provide mandatory minimum sentences for aliens convicted of reentry after removal; (6) impose on smugglers the same sentences that the aliens they have smuggled would receive; (7) include among smuggling crimes the carrying or use of a firearm during such activity; and (8) revise voluntary departure provisions.
Directs the Secretary: (1) and the Secretary of Defense to develop a plan to increase the availability of Department of Defense (DOD) surveillance equipment along the US international land and maritime borders; (2) to assess border security vulnerabilities on Department of Interior land directly adjacent to the US border; (3) conduct a training exercise on border security information sharing; (4) establish a Border Security Advisory Committee; and (5) establish a university-based Center of Excellence for Border Security.
Authorizes the Secretary to permit the use of DHS grants for border security activities.
Expresses the sense of Congress with respect to border security cooperation with sovereign Indian Nations.
Requires the mandatory detention of illegal aliens apprehended at a US port of entry or along the US land or maritime borders. Permits release with notice to appear only if the alien: (1) is not a security risk; and (2) provides a specified bond. Denies admission to the nationals of a country that refuses or delays acceptance of its nationals ordered removed from the United States.
Requires that the Secretary place an alien (other than from Mexico or Canada) who has not been admitted or paroled into expedited removal if apprehended within 100 miles of the border and within 14 days of unauthorized entry.
Directs the Secretary to take specified actions to ensure coordination of DHS border security efforts.
Amends the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to establish in DHS an Office of Air and Marine Operations whose primary mission shall be to prevent the entry of terrorists, other unlawful aliens, instruments of terrorism, narcotics, and other contraband into the United States.
Directs the Secretary to transfer to United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement all functions of the Customs Patrol Officers unit operating on the Tohono O'odham Indian reservation (the "Shadow Wolves" unit). Authorizes the Secretary to establish within United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement additional Customs Patrol units to operate on Indian lands.
Bars an alien: (1) deportable on terrorist grounds from receiving withholding of removal; (2) convicted of an aggravated felony, unlawful procurement of citizenship, or domestic violence, stalking, or child abuse from admissibility; (3) convicted of an aggravated felony from refugee or asylee status adjustment; (4) removable on terrorist grounds from becoming naturalized; and (5) from being naturalized while in removal proceedings.
Revises and enhances detention provisions for certain dangerous aliens subject to removal, including establishment of a detention review process for cooperating aliens.
Increases penalties and sets mandatory minimum sentences for aliens who fail to comply with removal provisions.
Makes an alien deportable for: (1) three or more drunk driving convictions; and (2) social security number and identification fraud.
Authorizes (and reimburses) local sheriffs or sheriff coalitions in specified counties along the southern border to enforce the immigration laws and to transfer illegal aliens to federal custody. Establishes in the Treasury the Designated County Law Enforcement Account.
Makes an alien inadmissible for US entry if: (1) such alien has been deported for criminal street gang participation; or (2) the consular officer or the Secretary knows or has reasonable grounds to believe that such alien is a member of a criminal street gang seeking US entry in furtherance of gang-related crimes or activities, or is a member of a designated criminal street gang. Makes an alien deportable who: (1) is a street gang member convicted of committing or attempting to commit a gang crime; or (2) is determined by the Secretary to be a member of a designated criminal street gang. Authorizes the Attorney General to designate a group or association as a criminal street gang. Requires mandatory detention of alien gang members subject to removal. Makes such aliens ineligible for asylum and protection from removal to certain countries.
Authorizes expedited removal for aliens inadmissible for security or criminal grounds.
Makes sexual abuse of a minor an aggravated felony for immigration purposes.
Directs the Secretary to establish, and sets forth the provisions for, an employment eligibility verification system. Expands the employment eligibility verification system to include: (1) previously hired individuals; and (2) recruitment and referral. Sets forth civil and criminal penalty provisions for noncompliance.
Provides for: (1) voluntary employer verification utilizing such system two years after enactment of this Act for previously hired individuals; (2) mandatory employer verification three years after enactment of this Act by federal, state, and local governments, and the military for employees not verified under such system working at federal, state or local government buildings, military bases, nuclear energy sites, weapons sites, airports, or critical infrastructure sites; and (3) mandatory employer verification six years after enactment of this Act for all employees not previously verified under such system.
Makes employer participation in the basic pilot program mandatory two years after enactment of this Act.
Authorizes the Board of Immigration Appeals to reverse an immigration judge's removal decision without remand.
Eliminates judicial review of visa revocation.
Authorizes reinstatement of a prior removal order against an alien illegally reentering the United States.
Requires an alien applying for withholding of removal to establish that his or her life or freedom would be threatened in the country of return, and that race, religion, nationality, or political or social group would be a central factor in such threat.
Subjects removal appeals to an initial certification of reviewability process by a single court of appeals judge.
Requires all nonimmigrant applicants to waive any right to: (1) review or appeal a determination of inadmissibility at port of entry; or (2) contest, other than through asylum, any action for removal.
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