the evolving mind

Newest posts over at my new site:

The View From My Bunker

On Deicide – The Murder of a Supernatural Being

Research on Spirituality Misses the Point

Click on the 360Skeptic icon in the left sidebar to go there.

My blog has officially gone to a new home. At that home I have just posted an article by this title: Skeptical of Research Linking Video Games With Violence

If you are a regular reader, please head on over. And if you encounter any problems, as I’m still working the bugs out, let me know.

Thanks.

Andrew

One week from today this blog ends. Oh my.

But with it will come rebirth. At another home. 360 Skeptic (dot com). Hold onto your hats. The winds of change are blowing.

(Okay, maybe it’s more of a puff a change.)

—

[Original photo thanks to David Stowell via Wikimedia]

It is a drizzly, cold day in Florida today. My thoughts turn to the warmer and brighter. But the thoughts themselves aren’t that warm and bright. Nothing approaching the real thing. And it is probably a good thing.

Imagine if recollections were as vivid and pleasing as real-time experience . . . there would be a lot of people, like heroin addicts, reclining on couches and beds, lost in memory.

I have often lamented over the poor resolution of my memories. They pale considerably next to any old boring thing before me face right now. Maybe that’s a good thing.

Technorati Links: memory

[It's Saturday. To hell with science and skepticism.
I'm in a different sort of mood. And so this . . . .]

Perhaps a half-dozen times in my life I have pondered the question, “If, after I die, I could come back as any type of animal, what would I be?”

My answers have included “eagle” and “dolphin.” Funny, I never considered “centipede.” During my speed-obsessed boyhood years I may have responded “cheetah.”

It has recently dawned on me that underlying the question is a sort of global recycling notion. You spend your days in one shape and then, presto, are re-formed into another. Is Hinduism thus “the greener religion?”

There is some truth to the reincarnation-as-global-recycling idea. All large mammals such as ourselves, however, go through the crucial step of becoming microbes and worms in our first turnaround before we eventually wind up as grass then rabbits then coyotes.

Today, as I think about what I’d like to come back as, I know I wouldn’t want to be an eagle. Though flying would be a thrill, I wonder if birds find it thrilling or merely a way of getting from here to there.

Flying aside, I’m afraid I would miss having hands. What if I got the urge to read a book? Just opening it would be a difficult task with a forearm that terminates in feathers.

Furthermore, the thought of cold carrion for breakfast or fish guts for lunch doesn’t do much for my present set of taste-buds.

Then there’s the problem of celebrity. The eagle is virtual royalty in the animal kingdom. I’d hate being pursued far and wide by the National Geographic paparazzi.

In my next life I also wouldn’t want to come back as a dolphin.

Continue Reading »

Technorati Links: humor, reincarnation

Since hitting mid-life I have done some thinking about how I want to age. Age? Do I have to?

Hair starting to go gray . . . needing reading glasses of increasing strength . . . muscles that respond to work-outs less like they are pep rally sessions for growth, more like they are a form of torture . . . a metabolism that seems much more capable of converting food into not energy, but mass. So no, I won’t have a second piece of pie. In fact, I better skip that first.

How do I want to age? Well, to continue being happy tops the list. Maybe “content” is a better term. That one I have quite a bit of control over. For me, making progress on projects gives me quite a bit of satisfaction. Heck, I even do quite a bit of work on weekends. Pure leisure seems a bit pointless to me. Fortunately, my projects do not involve heavy lifting. I should be able to persist at them until very late in life.

Active? I have some control over this, too. If I keep active now, chances are better I can remain relatively active. But my muscles and, more so, my joints may have some say about just how active that will be.

And . . . fat? But I’m not fat now, and for the first few decades of life I was on the opposite end of the spectrum. A bean pole, if anything. But that bean pole has added some padding over this past decade. Not a lot, but enough to notice. It’s been unintentional, and has occurred despite some effort to prevent it.

Maybe I’ll do less to prevent it in the coming years. Intentionally.

Huh!? Let myself get (relatively) fat? Though my social self recoils at the thought (and my self-concept will likely say, upon looking in a full-body mirror, “Who dat heavier dude?”) it could actually be good for me.

But wait, fat is bad, right? Maybe not. At least not always. Again we are discovering that black-and-white thinking misses a more nuanced reality. New research suggests that being overweight during your seventh decade and beyond is actually good for your health. All other things being equal, of course.

Here’s the results of research published yesterday in the Journal of The American Geriatrics Society:

The study began in 1996 and recruited 4,677 men and 4,563 women. The participants were followed for ten years or until their death, whichever was sooner, and factors such as lifestyle, demographics, and health were measured. The research uncovered that mortality risk was lowest for participants with a BMI classified as overweight, with the risk of death reduced by 13% compared with normal weight participants. The benefits were only seen in the overweight category not in those people who are obese. [source, bold added]

Wow. That’s interesting. But no, I’m not going to buy a dozen donuts anytime soon. Question is, will I ever feel differently about the appearance of excess weight? As a member of our thin-obsessed culture, shaking that bias isn’t going to be easy. If the research holds up, however, perhaps my future focus should change from shedding pounds to dropping an unhealthy bias.

Technorati Links: aging, mid-life

Just another flower. Just another Monday. Just.

Technorati Links: flowers, photography

I feel for the people of Haiti. A tragedy. Can any good from this disaster? Sure, if human beings choose to do something. Will it outweigh the bad? Not by a long shot. At least in the short term and on the individual level for those who have lost loved ones.

On a much, much smaller scale, I feed a tad of sadness for the destruction in our backyard. Not brought by an earthquake, but by that recent rogue week of hard freezes. I surveyed the damage yesterday. Come spring gardening time, it’s almost going to be like starting over.

Starting over. There is hope in that. In the wake of loss, what better response is there than to roll up your sleeves and do something?

Technorati Links: loss, psychology

First, a wacky cartoon, “Self-Description” from xkcd -

Second, a news-parody from the “local” section of the Onion -

Gay Teen Worried He Might Be Christian

LOUISVILLE, KY—At first glance, high school senior Lucas Faber, 18, seems like any ordinary gay teen. He’s a member of his school’s swing choir, enjoys shopping at the mall, and has sex with other males his age. But lately, a growing worry has begun to plague this young gay man. A gnawing feeling that, deep down, he may be a fundamentalist, right-wing Christian.

That’s a hilarious twist on things.

Technorati Links: humor

The above NASA photo is of Mars. Specifically, layered hills with sand “sculpted” by wind. Wind on Mars?!

My eyes are drawn to the photo, as if my sight had legs and could explore it. Speaking of which, in a few moments I will be pulling on boots and a coat to venture out into the snow. I will take along my camera and snap my own photos of more transient wind-blown formations. Amidst that “art” I will happily explore.

Technorati Links: art, cosmos, photography