A Student in Arms: The True Artist

An exerpt from Donald Hankey's book A Student in Arms. Sometimes it takes a war to find out what makes us truly human. The depth of our humanity can only be approached through the harshest of struggles. It is through this that we are able to find out who the true artist is: the one with the true sense of the dramatic.



Includes a brief history of Mr. Hankey and the book.



-Dee

Veterans Day: Its History and Meaning

11 November 1918: after four years and 20 million lives lost the war to end all wars came to an end. Heroes rose and empires fell. In the years ahead wars would arise and heroes would once again be needed to heed the call of duty to protect those who need protection and to stop those who would cause others harm. This is what Veterans Day is about. We honour those who rose to greatness when their country, and the world, needed them.


It is now 90 years to the day since the war to end all wars came to an end. The last of those brave men who served in that struggle for freedom won't be here for much longer, so while I still can I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to you who served. And not only to those who served in the First World War, but in all wars since, and to all those who continue to step up when the world needs them most. Thank you.



-Dee

Darwin and Dawkins Dilemma: Climbing Mt. Improbable

A clip from the new film Darwin's Dilemma.


Richard Dawkins has famously elaborated on Darwin's theory of natural selection, arguing that through a slow incremental process, evolution can explain the rise of new species. The new film, Darwin's Dilemma shows where Dawkins goes wrong. Growing evidence suggests that the creation of novel genetic information requires intelligence, and thus the burst of genetic information during the Cambrian Explosion provides convincing evidence that animal life is the product of intelligent design rather than a blind undirected process like natural selection.

Kabbalah and Cosmology with Harold Gans

Someone once asked me about the Medieval Kabbalistic estimate for the age of the universe of 12.5 billion years. DOD cryptographer Harold Gans has the following to say on the subject.

C'est la Vie, 3 August 2009

This is too funny not to share (you may have to click on the image to see it completely, depending on your screen resolution).

We Choose to Go to the Moon

20 July 1969, 4:18pm EDT: the moon landing. President Kennedy's vision of the future came true on that day. The world watched as Neal Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon. Today, the 40th anniversary, was a wonderful day to reflect on this achievement. Human beings walked on the moon; there's nothing more to say.

Many Lives, Unconvincing Masters

I just finished reading Many Lives, Many Masters by Dr. Brian Weiss, and I must say it was a lot like Random Harvest: the exciting final chapter didn't make up for the several boring ones that preceded it. The Masters part of the title is a reference to spiritual "masters" whom the author speaks to throughout the past life regressions of his patient. I am disappointed for a number of reasons, mostly relating to the lack of science (Weiss admits this was not a scientific study, unfortunately he does so half way through the book so any potential readers wouldn't know this until after having bought it). There is one test subject (a neurotic hospital employee with supermodel good looks), and none of the information from the rather vague past life regressions was ever checked for accuracy! Yes, when certain lifetimes were recalled months apart the details were the same, but that doesn't make up for any of the previously mentioned lacks.

I am struck by just how many times Weiss must mention his patient's physical attractiveness. Isn't there an ethics issue involved here, and isn't he married with children? Does a book about reincarnation need passages like "I knew she was smoking hot before, but now that she's cured..." (not actually in the book).

The revelations from the "masters" seem like fancy new age-isms that never once struck me as profound (definitely not as profound as the author claims them to be) and many contradict the findings of the past 150 years of mediumship research, NDEs, and what genuine spiritual masters have told us over the centuries. For example, one of the "masters" says that we are not all created equal, to which Dr. Weiss casually muses, what would the founding fathers have thought about this? Well, if you're talking spiritually all souls come from God and to God they must return. All souls possess the same potential for enlightenment. If you're talking physically we all start at ground zero as infants, completely helpless, unable to do anything. Certainly we all possess different talents which set us apart from one another (Mozart was a musical genius and Hank Aaron could hit home runs better than anyone until steroids came along), but if, as the book mentions several times, the point of life is to grow more godly over several lifetimes then shouldn't we look past these transient talents at the soul within?

In fact the good doctor seems to contradict himself on this point at the very end. In what was my favourite part of the book, he recounts a dream he had months after the regressions:

On another night, in a different dream I was asking a question. "How is it that you say all are equal, yet the obvious contradictions smack us in the face: inequalities in virtues, temperances, finances, rights, abilities and talents, intelligence, mathematical aptitude, ad infinitum?"

The answer was a metaphor. "It is as if a large diamond were to be found inside each person. Picture a diamond a foot long. The diamond has a thousand facets, but the facets are covered with dirt and tar. It is the job of the soul to clean each facet until the surface is brilliant and can reflect a rainbow of colors.

"Now, some have cleaned many facets and gleam brightly. Others have only managed to clean a few; they do not sparkle so. Yet, underneath the dirt, each person possesses within his or her breast a brilliant diamond with a thousand gleaming facets. The diamond is perfect, not one flaw. The only differences among people are the number of facets cleaned. But each diamond is the same, and each is perfect.

"When all the facets are cleaned and shining forth in a spectrum of lights, the diamond returns to the pure energy that it was originally. The lights remain. It is as if the process that goes into making the diamond is reversed, all that pressure released. The pure energy exists in the rainbow of lights, and the lights possess consciousness and knowledge.

"And all of the diamonds are perfect."

The book is slow, repetitive, and unconvincing. I would recommend giving this one a pass.

-Dee