Urban Mystic Classics: Summer Spoons

Reprint from 22 August 2008.



In the same vein as an earlier entry this month, "Michael Chriton on PK", I have returned to the world of metal bending. While out eating I took the coffee spoon in my hand almost unknowingly and began the process of bending it. I'm not sure why I did this; perhaps the spoon wanted to be bent or wanted me to bend it. When I felt that it was in the state where it is ready to bend I approached with mild trepidation and decided against anyting spectacular for what I hope would be reasonable and obvious reasons. Anyway, here is the result of that.











Although I had no way of officially measuring it the spoon did seem more bent after an hour or so from the time I had put it down than when I initially bent it. This has been known to happen often.

-Dee

Urban Mystic Classics: Michael Chriton on PK

Michael Chriton talks about his experiences with psychokinesis and metal bending a la Uri Geller. This is a reprint from 11 August 2008, back before The Urban Mystic changed URLs. This will begin the series on Uri Geller and metal bending.

"but other magicians, such a James Randi, claim that spoon bending isn't a psychic phenomenon at all, just a trick.

"But I had bent a spoon, and I knew it wasn't a trick. I looked around the room and saw little children, eight or nine years old, bending large metal bars. They weren't trying to trick anybody. They were just little kids having a good time."

Michael Crichton, world famous best selling author and global warming skeptic explains why the skep-dicks' explanation that spoon bending is just a trick is wrong. You can't deny experience. The experience for what it is, experience, is beyond chriticism.

It's refreshing to see someone as famous as Mr. Crichton is sympathetic toward psi. So just what is the secret to spoon bending?

" The only thing I noticed is that spoon bending seemed to require a focused inattention. You had to try to get it to bend, and then you had to forget about it. Maybe talk to someone else while you rubbed the spoon. Or look around the room. Change your attention. That's when it was likely to bend. If you kept watching the spoon, worrying over it, it was less likely to bend. This inattention took learning, but you could easily do it. "

I can attest to that. My old teacher told me about focused inattention in teaching me spoon bending (it's been a while since I've done it, so am badly out of practice; it can become an expensive endeavor).

-Dee

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).