Category Archives: INSIDE THE BOOK

Inside the book, Vermeer: Portraits of A Lifetime. Analysis of all the paintings of Johannes Vermeer. The book reveals for the first time that the women featured in the paintings of Johannes Vermeer were members of his own family, his daughters, his wife and mother-in-law, Maria Thins.

...and other stuff, ART, FREE ADVICE, INSIDE THE BOOK, LIVES, READING MATTER, THE OZ FACTORS, UNIVERSES

WICKED WITCH OF REALITY

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Excerpt from THE OZ FACTORS, by Lawrence R. Spencer —

“9/ DOESN’T ANYBODY BELIEVE ME?

” Doesn’t anybody believe me?”–Dorothy

“Of course we believe you, Dorothy…”–Uncle Henry in ‘The Wizard of Oz’

Is reality really real?

As Dorothy discovered when she returned back to Kansas, her friends and family did not agree that the Land of Oz was “reality”.

Conversely, gaining agreement from one’s friends does not guarantee that the information agreed upon is true or workable or survival. Agreement is not necessarily reality. Although Man seems to crave agreement with his fellows, the fact that “everyone agrees that the world is flat” or that “the sun revolves around the Earth”, does not make it a reality.

History has shown that agreements among people have very frequently proven to be disastrous.

Example: Adolph Hitler gained the complete, unabated agreement of the majority of the German population before he led them into total self-destruction.

Lots of people agree when fast food franchise advertisements tell them that cheeseburgers, fries and milk shakes are good for them. We were, and still are, told, based on “medical research” that these foods contain nutrients from all the “four basic food groups”. This doesn’t change the fact that you get fat, develop hardened arteries and die an early death from heart disease or cancer if you keep eating cheeseburgers, fries and shakes.

The unprecedented multi-billion dollar profit margins earned by the beef and dairy industry and sugar growers in cooperation with the fast food restaurant cartels have a heavy influence on “truth in advertising”. In addition, the quality of information we receive, as consumers, from the American Medical Association regarding “the science of nutrition” is directly influenced by fast food commercial interests.

Only one generation ago the Japanese people were nearly free of heart disease and cancer. In just 20 short years, since they have openly adopted the Standard American Diet (SAD)–cheeseburgers/French fries/milk shakes and liquid caffeine-filled sugar water called cola–the incidence of heart disease and cancer among the Japanese people has skyrocketed. The Japanese agreement with Western lifestyles is killing them.

Reality is often heavily influenced by the Oz Factor of agreement. Agreements influence our perception of reality. A child’s perception of his environment, his religious and political ideas and viewpoints about people are often heavily influenced by agreement with his mother and father.

Be cautious with whom you agree. Carefully examine ideas and information before you agree. Just because the preacher says, “sex is evil” or the President says, “I’m not a crook”, does not make it reality.

Be careful about agreeing with Wicked Witches and Wizards who promote unworkable solutions. By your own observation decide what is real in the Physical Universe and in Your Own Universe.

Your reality is based on your agreements.”

_________________________

...and other stuff, FREE ADVICE, INSIDE THE BOOK, POETIC NONSENSE, READING MATTER, UNIVERSES

NOTHING WAS SOMETHING BEFORE THERE WAS “IS”

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Since time immemorial, curious people have asked where the universe came from. Nowadays we have a secular answer: the Big Bang. And yet that answer, incredible as it may be, is only partially satisfying. After all, we can still ask where the Big Bang came from; and we can still wonder, sensibly enough, how something (the universe) could come from nothing (whatever came before it). In his new book, On Being, Peter Atkins, a British chemist and science writer, offers an intriguing answer to those questions. To understand how something can come out of nothing, he writes, you have to appreciate the fact that “there probably isn’t anything here anyway” — that “at a deep level there is nothing” in the universe, really. “The substrate of existence,” he argues, “is nothing at all.”

Consider electrical charge. In our universe, there are positively and negatively charged particles. How did all that charge come into being out of nothingness? It didn’t, Atkins writes, since “the total charge is zero.” The Big Bang merely separated out a uniform state of chargelessness into many individual instances of charge, positive and negative. The same goes for matter and energy generally: the total amount of matter and energy in the universe seems to be balanced out by huge amounts of “dark matter” and “dark energy,” which express themselves in terms of gravitational attraction. The Big Bang didn’t create all that energy, as such. Instead, it seems to have turned an initial Nothingness into a “much more interesting and potent” Nothingness — a “Nothing that has been separated into opposites to give, thereby, the appearance of something.”

How much, if anything, does that explain? “The separation of Nothing into opposites still needs explanation,” Atkins concedes. Still, he writes, “it seems to me that such a process, though fearsomelessly difficult to explain, is less overwhelmingly fearsome than the process of positive, specific, munificent creation.” The main point is that the Big Bang doesn’t mark, necessarily, the creation of something out of nothing. If that happened at all — and it may be, Atkins points out, that there was has never been absolutely Nothing, in a total sense — then it probably happened further back in the pre-cosmological past. Instead, it marks the emergence of texture, differentiation, and particularity out of even, unchanging featurelessness. It’s not something out of nothing, but interestingness out of boredom.

ART, FREE ADVICE, INSIDE THE BOOK

THE NATIVE PEOPLE

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CROWFOOT“What is Life?  It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of the buffalo in the winter time. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the Sunset.”  ~ Crowfoot’s last words

SEE ALL EDWARD CURTIS PHOTOS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLE OF CENTRAL & WESTERN NORTH AMERICA FROM 1900 A.D.

“Edward Curtis’s brief expedition to the Great Plains in the summer of 1900 was undoubtedly the most profound experience of his life. That summer, Curtis accompanied George Bird Grinnell, his friend and early mentor, on a trip to Montana and witnessed one of the last great enactments of the Sun Dance. As Curtis viewed the Sun Dance—a ceremony that few whites, or natives, would see again for nearly seven decades—his vision for the grand photo-ethnographic undertaking that would become his life’s work crystallized. The small body of images he made on that summer trip, among them The Three Chiefs, Piegan Dandy, and Piegan Encampment, clearly reveal that he had been touched by the magnificence of the Indian nations and the overwhelming depth of their culture. These photographs formed the beginning of the vast, elegant portrait of Native American cultures that Curtis would bring to the world over the next thirty years.

During Curtis’s time, the Indians of the Great Plains lived primarily in North and South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming, a territory once traversed by great herds of migrating buffalo. Curtis was strongly attracted to the fiercely independent lifestyle of tribes such as the Lakota, Apsaroke, and Piegan and seemed particularly adept at transforming their dignity and pride into extraordinary photographic images.

Curtis’s photographs of Indian life on the Great Plains comprise perhaps his most popular body of work; for many people, his photographs of the chiefs and warriors, the beadwork, the horses, and the Plains landscape have come to exemplify the American Indian. However, his photographs of the Plains Indians also documented many other aspects of tribal cultural life, including hunting, warfare, vision quests, and religious ceremonies. These images remain an unparalleled vision of the strength and nobility of the Plains Indian peoples who had once held dominion over tens of thousands of square miles.”

SEE ALL EDWARD CURTIS PHOTOS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLE OF CENTRAL & WESTERN NORTH AMERICA FROM 1900 A.D.

http://www.edwardcurtis.com/tribal-regions/

1001 THINGS TO DO WHILE YOU'RE DEAD, ART, INSIDE THE BOOK, READING MATTER

WHEN BONES WERE JUST BONES

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Excerpts from the book  “1001 THINGS TO DO WHILE YOU’RE DEAD“:

# 243  FEEL SORRY FOR YOURSELF

This doesn’t need any explanation. Many people have a “native” ability to do this, especially after they have lost their body, as well as  everything they worked for and accumulated during an entire lifetime.

Ideally, everyone would be allowed to have 4 or 5 bodies at once. So, when you lose one or two it’s not such a big deal. Unfortunately, Mother Nature hasn’t figured out how to allow each spirit to run more than one body at a time yet – not counting “the gods” of course.

But who knows, with enough time and practice you may remember how to do this too! According to Earth mythology the ancient gods of Greece, Egypt, China, India and Mesopotamia could manifest themselves in many guises and forms. Maybe you can find one or more of those ancient gods to teach you this skill.

 # 497 REGRET YOUR PAST

Endless years of agonizing can be consumed in this activity. It can be a lot of fun.

There is a lot of drama involved in regretting the past. People love drama. Mulling over all the things you did, you could have done, you shouldn’t have done, you wished you had done or not done, etc., is very dramatic.

There are a nearly infinite number of scenes from past lives you can replay, like old radio or TV soap operas. However, most of them have the same plot lines and get boring after a while. And, you can’t change any of them.

#  437  FEEL LONELY

This takes a total lack of imagination. You have always been with yourself, and by yourself, for nearly all of eternity. You are your own best friend. Enjoy yourself.

However, if you want some companionship, go out a find another spirit, a person, or a life form and befriend them. They will probably appreciate not being alone.

# 608  REMINISCE ABOUT THE “GOOD OLD DAYS

This can provide endless hours, years or millennia of pleasurable amusement for yourself and entertainment for others. Some writers, like Mark Twain, earned an excellent living by reminiscing about the past for most of their life.

...and other stuff, INSIDE THE BOOK, ORDER OF OMEGA TIME TRAVEL CULT, READING MATTER, UNIVERSES

Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek EVER

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THIS IS THE FIRST PAGE OF A VERY EXCELLENT ON-LINE “COMIC BOOK”  ABOUT NIKOLA TESLA.  READ THE ENTIRE THING HERE:  Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek who ever lived – The Oatmeal

Additional notes from the author:

  • If you want to learn more about Tesla, I highly recommend reading Tesla: Man Out of Time
  • Also, this Badass of the week by Ben Thompson is what originally inspired me to write a comic about Tesla. Ben’s also got a book out which is packed full of awesome.
  • There’s an old movie from the 80s on Netflix Instant Queue right now about Tesla: The Secret of Nikola Tesla. It’s corny and full of bad acting, but it paints a fairly accurate depiction of his life.
  • The drunk history of Tesla is quite awesome, too.
  • X-rays: just to clarify, Tesla did not discover x-rays, but he was one of the early pioneers in its research.
  • Cryogenic engineering: I’m referring to the cryogenic engineering that has to do with using liquified air to cool a coil and reduce its electrical resistance (Patent No. 11,865), not freezing people and waking them up in the future so they can fight Wesley Snipes.
  • Transistor: Tesla’s influence on the modern transistor can be found in patents 723,188 and 725,605. (a better explanation here)
  • Radio: Tesla was the nicest geek ever until he decided to sue Marconi a few years later. 8 months after Tesla died, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Marconi’s patents on the invention of radio. So Tesla eventually won that battle, although he was dead by then.
  • Tesla VS Edison: I could write a novel on the differences between Tesla and Edison, but seeing as how this comic is already huge I decided to leave many things out. For instance, Edison killed cats and dogs, but Tesla loved animals and had a cat as a child. Originally Tesla wanted to be a poet, but after getting zapped by static electricity from his kitty he was inspired to study the effects of electricity. One could vaguely construe that Tesla’s cat was responsible for the second industrial revolution, which arguably makes it the most awesome cat who ever lived. 
    Edison believed that fossil fuels were the future and that there were enough resources in South America to provide for the next 50,000 years. Tesla believed that renewable energy sources like hydroelectric, solar, and wind power were the future. This is remarkable because in the 1890s there was no such thing as “going green,” so Tesla’s ideas on conservation were very forward-thinking at the time.  (From OATMEAL)