Consciousness and the Paranormal

[smcder]

I caught it

I think I caught it before it settled all the way into my lungs while it's primarily upper respiratory. So I'm on Biaxin, Advil, and a combination of nutritional supplements.

I'm just listening on Coast to Coast about all the freaky deaths in the world banking and commodities futures markets. I wish they'd blow the corruption and manipulation of all that wide open and regulate it properly.

Good to catch it early . . . I had heat exhaustion and then pneumonia one summer - it settled and was very painful, I used the old trick of holding a book across my chest when I coughed, that provided leverage and I guess my compressing the chest, it somehow was less painful.

What nutritional supplements are you using?

I just don't know much about that last part . . .

found the link: Banking Cartels/ RV Predictions - Shows - Coast to Coast AM

 

[smcder]

Thanks for the tip. I just tried it with my copy of UFOs A Scientific Debate ( Sagan & Page ). It seemed to help a little, but I think I need to find something more substantial ( har har har ).

For nutritional supplements, nothing too exotic. Vitamin C+D to help offset the increased usage during illness, and Atlantic kelp to help feed my thyroid which helps create antibodies. I had also been taking some Echinacea, ginseng, eye formula, and other multi-nutrient stuff prior to getting sick, so I went into it well armed. But it still sucks to have to go through it.

Ha - I think I put a pine board and then a book in front of that, so you got the rigidity of the board and the bulk of the book . . . it was exhausting.

I found an extremely concentrated ginseng extract a couple of years ago, 1/8 tsp dose - excellent for sustained energy. Calamus root is an excellent tonic too, that I keep on hand.

Herbcraft - Acorus calamus...

 

[smcder]

Absolutely. Because of very plausible possibilities like that is why I hold off on appealing for the existence of a super- or para-natural layer of reality, I think the natural layer is incredible enough.

A thought I had re our back and forth about viri and wildflowers was the concept of grey goo: "Gray goo (also spelled grey goo) is a hypothetical end-of-the-world scenario involving molecular nanotechnology in which out-of-control self-replicating robots consume all matter on Earth while building more of themselves,[1][2] a scenario that has been called ecophagy ("eating the environment").[3] The original idea assumed machines were designed to have this capability, while popularizations have assumed that machines might somehow gain this capability by accident."

In some respects Life on earth is a green goo; self-replicating the shit out of itself everywhere. Some models even have the little green replicators surviving the impact that created the moon.

Maybe the ETs are monitoring the Earth to make sure we (the green goo) don't manage to make it off and contaminate the rest of the cosmos. Ever wonder why we haven't been back to the moon? Perhaps the PTB got a stern warning to stay in our yard...

I remember Drexler's book - The Engines of Creation . . . makes me wonder if there is a poetry department specifically for popular science books to supply the titles or whether they use something like this Popular Science random cover generator:

Science Magazine Cover Generator :: The Slightly Disgruntled Scientist

hours of fun . . . one cover generated had a headline of "hot, naked nanostructures on display!"

Just a few from a top 100 listing of popular science titles:

Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos
A Brief History of Time
Pale Blue Dot
The Alchemy of the Heavens
Brother Astronomer

They used the grey goo concept in the remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still - an entirely bad sequel that is yet not an entirely bad movie on its own . . .

Absolutely. Because of very plausible possibilities like that is why I hold off on appealing for the existence of a super- or para-natural layer of reality, I think the natural layer is incredible enough.

Not too long ago, Richard Dawkins became excited (agitated?) over some compelling telepathy experiments - then he realized that if a natural explanation for telepathy were found, then telepathy wouldn't be a supernatural phenomenon! Immediately after this, he reportedly went to his underground lab to look at hot, naked nanostructures.

If there is a supernatural layer of reality, then by definition we can't get at it by empirical methods . . . maybe we can point to it in the way we think of a singularity, an event horizon, but we would never be sure empirically that something lay beyond, because of the possibility of a new approach. So what we would have are logical arguments but mainly persistent intuitions.

And either there is an error in thinking that you can conceive of something outside the natural . . . you can certainly make that statement - but what pictures and conceptions come up when you hear the phrase "the supernatural" - seem to vary greatly from person to person, so perhaps the mystic is only someone with a peculiar kind of imagination?

On the other hand, these persistent intuitions have always come paired with persistent intuitions to the contrary - in other words, materialism has always had its mystics.

I think it's not an entirely good idea to discard intuitions of something else -and here I mean the sort of thing that seems to bring many people to this forum . . . if you use the evolutionary argument that such intuitions can be adaptive without conforming to "reality" then you have to consider applying that same argument to materialistic intuitions - one of Plantinga's arguments but also for the wisdom of "dancing with them what brung you".

The trap comes in when you come back to say yes, but we have empirical evidence to support materialistic intuitions - true, but only to support some of them - empirical evidence isn't complete and it very possibly cannot be complete (otherwise you vote for a type of omniscience) and two, you've got the circular argument that only materialistic intuitions could be supported by evidence . . . (evidence/absence redux) and three, you have to account for the evolution of a brain that both detects reality and makes gross errors in judgement - when Ockham might suggest the more parsimonious answer that it actually does neither.

 

[smcder]

I don't see why people have such a hard time figuring out this question: "What is this thing people call God?"

In a religious sense, the word "God" is simply a noun, specifically a title ( like "King" or "Lord" ) assigned to a divinity within the hierarchy of a religious belief system. In fact it's not uncommon to hear the Judeo Christian God referred to as the "Lord God" or the "King". So the word "God" is merely a title of a position, and what constitutes the occupant of that position varies from religion to religion. In some cases the title holder is a mythological figure with a specific name ( e.g. Yahweh ).

Historical cases also include physical objects like the Sun, or even living people. In the cases of physical objects, the existence of the believer's God can be independently established as surely as anything else. The alleged powers and mythology associated with that God are however, another matter. Nevertheless the reality of such a God can be established with a certainty that leaves no reasonable doubt.

But in the end, whether the object is an inanimate object ( like the Sun or a statue ), or some mystical being, without a believer to assign it the position of God within the believer's belief system ( deification ), it is has no special status. So even if there were such a thing as a universe creator, without it being deified by humans or other creatures with such a capacity, it would have no status as a "God".

Not in direct answer to your post, but of general interest to the recent "God-talk" on this thread . . . this article by Terry Eagleton

prominent British literary theorist, critic and public intellectual as Wikipedia would have it

Terry Eagleton reviews ‘The God Delusion’ by Richard Dawkins · LRB 19 October 2006

- makes some good points. I'll pull out a few things to pique and provoke folks to have the full read - if you have to, skip to his last paragraph and then go back (repeat as neeeded)

Eagleton leaves plenty of room for argument - the same amount as before I suspect, but he at least reminds us not to over-simplify the issue, making an example of Richard Dawkins' general lack of sophistication:

There is a very English brand of common sense that believes mostly in what it can touch, weigh and taste, and The God Delusion springs from, among other places, that particular stable. At its most philistine and provincial, it makes Dick Cheney sound like Thomas Mann. . . . Dawkins quite rightly detests fundamentalists; but as far as I know his anti-religious diatribes have never been matched in his work by a critique of the global capitalism that generates the hatred, anxiety, insecurity and sense of humiliation that breed fundamentalism. Instead, as the obtuse media chatter has it, it’s all down to religion.

on knowing what you are arguing against
What, one wonders, are Dawkins’s views on the epistemological differences between Aquinas and Duns Scotus? Has he read Eriugena on subjectivity, Rahner on grace or Moltmann on hope? Has he even heard of them? Or does he imagine like a bumptious young barrister that you can defeat the opposition while being complacently ignorant of its toughest case? (here I think of Plantinga as counsel for the opposition)

limits of reason
Reason, to be sure, doesn’t go all the way down for believers, but it doesn’t for most sensitive, civilised non-religious types either.

(as we all know, only Turtles go all the way down . . .)

the Great Pumpkin debate
Believing in God, whatever Dawkins might think, is not like concluding that aliens or the tooth fairy exist. God is not a celestial super-object or divine UFO, about whose existence we must remain agnostic until all the evidence is in. Theologians do not believe that he is either inside or outside the universe, as Dawkins thinks they do. His transcendence and invisibility are part of what he is, which is not the case with the Loch Ness monster.

what the h- . . . ck is God?
For Judeo-Christianity, God is not a person in the sense that Al Gore arguably is. Nor is he a principle, an entity, or ‘existent’: in one sense of that word it would be perfectly coherent for religious types to claim that God does not in fact exist. He is, rather, the condition of possibility of any entity whatsoever, including ourselves. He is the answer to why there is something rather than nothing. God and the universe do not add up to two, any more than my envy and my left foot constitute a pair of objects.

The central doctrine of Christianity, then, is not that God is a bastard. It is, in the words of the late Dominican theologian Herbert McCabe, that if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you. Here, then, is your pie in the sky and opium of the people.

His polemic would come rather more convincingly from a man who was a little less arrogantly triumphalistic about science (there are a mere one or two gestures in the book to its fallibility), and who could refrain from writing sentences like ‘this objection [to a particular scientific view] can be answered by the suggestion . . . that there are many universes,’ as though a suggestion constituted a scientific rebuttal. On the horrors that science and technology have wreaked on humanity, he is predictably silent. Yet the Apocalypse is far more likely to be the product of them than the work of religion. Swap you the Inquisition for chemical warfare.

Such is Dawkins’s unruffled scientific impartiality that in a book of almost four hundred pages, he can scarcely bring himself to concede that a single human benefit has flowed from religious faith, a view which is as a priori improbable as it is empirically false.

In case you get to wondering, Eagleton is not a Christian - he is a Marxist.

Now it may well be that all this is no more plausible than the tooth fairy. Most reasoning people these days will see excellent grounds to reject it. But critics of the richest, most enduring form of popular culture in human history have a moral obligation to confront that case at its most persuasive, rather than grabbing themselves a victory on the cheap by savaging it as so much garbage and gobbledygook. The mainstream theology I have just outlined may well not be true; but anyone who holds it is in my view to be respected, whereas Dawkins considers that no religious belief, anytime or anywhere, is worthy of any respect whatsoever. This, one might note, is the opinion of a man deeply averse to dogmatism. Even moderate religious views, he insists, are to be ferociously contested, since they can always lead to fanaticism.

AC Grayling leads the comment section by tersely pouring an astringent bucket of philosophy over the whole effort while more or less entirely missing the point.

 

[trainedobserver]

I'm not so sure people in general do - most of the ones I know who talk about it frequently, seem to have a clear idea of what they mean.

That has not been my experience. When challenged to explain the nature, origins, and operation of someone's god they usually have nothing to offer but perfunctory and almost always borrowed notions from scripture or some religious author or orator. The worst cases just look at you in stunned silence and mumble something like, "You don't know who God is?" "Well it's [insert deity name here]." "Believe and be [insert desired outcome here]." Hell, trying to get someone to articulate the mechanics of their "belief" is never very successful either.

One of the smartest guys I've ever known, my Dad (I'm biased OK?) who was a man of faith, explained it best I think. "It's a hope."

I think the gods or God are our hopes, dreams, and desires distilled and metastasized through the lenses of culture into an object of worship or yearning. A no-thing behind which armies rally and into which people pour their lives in hope of finding something greater than themselves. But what do I know? 56 years on, I have to say not that much.

 

[smcder]

That has not been my experience. When challenged to explain the nature, origins, and operation of someone's god they usually have nothing to offer but perfunctory and almost always borrowed notions from scripture or some religious author or orator. The worst cases just look at you in stunned silence and mumble something like, "You don't know who God is?" "Well it's [insert deity name here]." "Believe and be [insert desired outcome here]." Hell, trying to get someone to articulate the mechanics of their "belief" is never very successful either.

One of the smartest guys I've ever known, my Dad (I'm biased OK?) who was a man of faith, explained it best I think. "It's a hope."

I think the gods or God are our hopes, dreams, and desires distilled and metastasized through the lenses of culture into an object of worship or yearning. A no-thing behind which armies rally and into which people pour their lives in hope of finding something greater than themselves. But what do I know? 56 years on, I have to say not that much.

That's actually what I meant by they seem to know exactly what they mean - which may be perfunctory and borrowed notions - but they are certain this is what they mean.
I have friends who say that God is who they talk to throughout the day, who they believe loves them and who they can point to specific places in the Bible they believe are about Him. Sustained questioning as to His existence would be seen as being just irrelevant, humorous or annoying as insisting that some friend of theirs you had not met - did not exist, worse because all you would have to do is look around to see Him. But such confrontations are rare in rural Arkansas.

My own experience was growing up in an academic environment - at the time and place atheists were extremely rare and one insisted on writing angry editorials to the paper on a weekly basis mainly fashioned on how much smarter he was than everyone else and which did little to win converts to his cause. Another, quieter version, actually had a thorough command of the Bible and a compassionate nature. My history of Christianity professor had an ivy league education and a command of Greek and Latin, at least, and could probably leave the most fervent skeptic confused as to what it was he really didn't believe when the conversation started.

My own father can probably be described as having mystical intuitions about materialism - meaning that what he can factually say about the universe is far less reaching than his vision of whirling particles - a vision which has proven over the years, to consist largely, though not entirely, of perfunctory and almost always borrowed notions from popular expositions about science.

 

[trainedobserver]

... My own father can probably be described as having mystical intuitions about materialism - meaning that what he can factually say about the universe is far less reaching than his vision of whirling particles - a vision which has proven over the years, to consist largely, though not entirely, of perfunctory and almost always borrowed notions from popular expositions about science.

I think this could describe any one of us who have accepted (at one time or another) the scientific mysticism of quantum mechanics and theoretical physics.

 

[smcder]

I think this could describe any one of us who have accepted (at one time or another) the scientific mysticism of quantum mechanics and theoretical physics.

I was definitely in that group and could still fall to the charms of a Kurzweill or other visionary, but I do actively seek out other views. Right now I just see myself as having various ways to know about the world and not being to hasty to discard any of them (well, almost any of them) - but hardly having explored them all.

It is interesting how we also don't look at very many narratives - the end of science, the end of history, etc - there were a few books on these topics recently, we don't, in the popular, imaging stop to think that science could stop paying out (some say it has of course, some claim even high tech, the computer industry hasn't changed that much - I was out of the business for a while and when I returned, I do think the form has changed but not so much the underlying principles - we don't have any kind of strong AI or conscious machines and I'm not sure I buy the hype that we soon will . . . ) and without something to replace our current sources of energy we just putter along, filling in some detail or other now and again or realize there are actual limits to what we can know, in fact this has kind of happened in some fields, many fields - this wouldn't really be any kind of an insight at all to philosophers, literary theorists, post-moderns of all kinds for whom the whole game has changed - I realize my own perspective has aged rapidly and for me culture, language - the way people relate in public seems to have changed in ways I can't quite put my finger on but which has to do with a change in the way people view the self and free will/responsibility, etc. But I could just be getting old . . .

 

[smcder]

What did your dad do?

Shouldn't you be asleep . . . ?? ;-)

 

[smcder]

I got about 3 hours in and then woke up in a coughing fit, laid on the couch staring out the window until it got light out, then drove my other half into work. Grabbed a coffee on the way to help stave off the caffeine withdrawal and stabilize things in general. The doc also gave me a prescription for codeine cough syrup, and I'm tempted to go get it and go full out zombie mode, but so far I'm choosing not to supress things too much and am riding the line between over and under medication in order to let the natural defenses do their work too. Thanks again for that book tip.

No problem - I hate for anyone to have to use that tip, but it does help!

 

[Soupie]

It is interesting how we also don't look at very many narratives - the end of science, the end of history, etc - there were a few books on these topics recently, we don't, in the popular, imaging stop to think that science could stop paying out (some say it has of course, some claim even high tech, the computer industry hasn't changed that much

That there is a limit to what humans will be able to discern about reality via the scientific method makes perfect sense. Human intelligence, our ability to test our ideas, and the concept of materialism are all finite.

Gene recently made the comment on the Paracast that monster hunter shows from the 70's are no different from current monster shows. That speaks to the problem of investigating "paranormal" topics, but also makes one wonder about what I'll call the wallpaper meme: Has human culture really changed/evolved, or do we just change the wallpaper every few years? Instead of bow and arrows we have guns; instead of bathhouses we have Facebook.; instead of gladiators in the colosseum we have violent movies and video games; instead of cigarettes we have Ritalin; and on and on.

Human nature itself hasn't changed, but viewed through the lense of the Theory of Evolution, it wouldn't be expected to in a mere 6,000+ plus years of recorded history.

When and if scientific innovation begins to augment fundamental human nature - psychology, physiology, and biology - then things will start to get weird in a hurry.

 

[smcder]

Audio interview with journalist Clive Thompson | Shrink Rap Radio Psychology Interviews: Exploring brain, body, mind, spirit, intuition, leadership, research, psychotherapy and more!

That there is a limit to what humans will be able to discern about reality via the scientific method makes perfect sense. Human intelligence, our ability to test our ideas, and the concept of materialism or all finite.

Gene recently made the comment on the Paracast that monster hunter shows from the 70's are no different from current monster shows. That speaks to the problem of investigating "paranormal" topics, but also makes one wonder about what I'll call the wallpaper meme: Has human culture really changed/evolved, or do we just change the wallpaper every few years? Instead of bow and arrows we have guns; instead of bathhouses we have Facebook.; instead of gladiators in the colosseum we have violent movies and video games; instead of cigarettes we have Ritalin; and on and on.

Human nature itself hasn't changed, but viewed through the lense of the Theory of Evolution, it wouldn't be expected to in a mere 6,000+ plus years of recorded history.

When and if scientific innovation begins to augment fundamental human nature - psychology, physiology, and biology - then things will start to get weird in a hurry.

instead of cigarettes we have Ritalin;

I've tried both and I miss cigarettes. Camel Red wides . . . tried the unfiltered version for about a week . . . yeah.

I do recommend the gum and patches - a technological innovation there.

When and if scientific innovation begins to augment fundamental human nature - psychology, physiology, and biology - then things will start to get weird in a hurry.

Yes! So many things, the answers (and new questions) to which seem to be based on our changing who (what) we are. I think this could happen even if other kinds of technology stall out because of energy or political changes or whatever - because it seems possible that once the technology is obtained, it could be carried on relatively cheaply, with sort of a small "footprint" in the sense that wheras particle accelerators or refining nuclear material are large scale and leave traces that can be detected, you can easily imagine some laboratory on an island carrying on this work in secret.

10 Genetically Modified Animals You Can Buy - Listverse

 

[Soupie]

I've tried both and I miss cigarettes.

I've often said if cigarettes weren't unhealthy and smelly, I'd still be smoking them. Humans are bags of chemicals, and we've been self-regulating ourselves with external chemicals since the dawn of time. (Although not all people need do this, my wife being one of them: no coffee, alcohol, tea, smokes, etc. Weirdo.)

Yes! So many things, the answers (and new questions) to which seem to be based on our changing who (what) we are. I think this could happen even if other kinds of technology stall out because of energy or political changes or whatever

It could be argued that widespread use/prescription of SSRIs have changed the fundamental psychology of users for the worst, but that's controversial. Any augmenting of the emotional responses of humans to the environment will have drastic effects on their behavior.

Also, our modern diet can be said to have an effect on our physiology as well, both good and bad: obesity, diabetes, but also longer lifespans.

But these changes are miniscule compared to be what removing the need/ability to eat, sleep, excrete, breath, talk, feel anger, sadness, or love will do to humans and society. Yikes.

 

[smcder]

I've often said if cigarettes weren't unhealthy and smelly, I'd still be smoking them. Humans are bags of chemicals, and we've been self-regulating ourselves with external chemicals since the dawn of time. (Although not all people need do this, my wife being one of them: no coffee, alcohol, tea, smokes, etc. Weirdo.)

It could be argued that widespread use/prescription of SSRIs have changed the fundamental psychology of users for the worst, but that's controversial. Any augmenting of the emotional responses of humans to the environment will have drastic effects on their behavior.

Also, our modern diet can be said to have an effect on our physiology as well, both good and bad: obesity, diabetes, but also longer lifespans.

But these changes are miniscule compared to be what removing the need/ability to eat, sleep, excrete, breath, talk, feel anger, sadness, or love will do to humans and society. Yikes.

I've often said if cigarettes weren't unhealthy and smelly, I'd still be smoking them.

I didn't object to either one of those qualities - it was a very slight preference for oxygen that finally won out. I was known to light one cigarette from another and at one point augmented my three pack a day habit with a nicotine patch on either arm. But, like most, I count among my religious impulses a bit of Methuselahism:

The Project Gutenberg eBook of All Things Considered, by G. K. Chesterton.

(Although not all people need do this, my wife being one of them: no coffee, alcohol, tea, smokes, etc. Weirdo.)

This man makes the same claim:



A bit off or side-topic, you might appreciate this lecture series by psychologist Jordan Peterson on Personality:

the first one is a course overview and then he gets rolling with Mythological Representations, under-grad level - but there are some gems in there, or try some of these on YouTube or Big Ideas:

Jordan Peterson on Redemption and Psychology in Christianity | Big Ideas

On the Necessity of Virtue
Reality and the Sacred
Maps of Meaning
Music and The Patterns of the Mind

But these changes are miniscule compared to be what removing the need/ability to eat, sleep, excrete, breath, talk, feel anger, sadness, or love will do to humans and society. Yikes.

. . . grow old?

Frederik Pohl in Man Plus was one of the first stories I remember exploring some of these ideas . . .

 

[boomerang]

This world's unfailing ability to balance the books increasingly amazes me as I age. Another way of saying "for everything a price". I spent about 2 years as a "moderate" smoker of cigars and strong pipe tobaccos. It was a frankly enjoyable habit (albeit very expensive in the case of decent cigars).

But--don't let anyone tell you pipes and cigars are light on nicotine and other toxins. There were times when I could barely rise out of my chair due to being light headed, and sometimes even nauseous. My hands would sometimes turn to ice due to vaso-constriction. In retrospect, I think I could feel the tobacco working black magic on my arteries. I had a heart attack about a year after cessation of smoking. There were no doubt other lifestyle and genetic factors. But tobacco is not a nutrient.

I will say something you won't hear on Public Service Announcements: It's a shame that tobacco is so darned toxic. It's a wonderfully effective mood stabilizer and facilitator of relaxed socialization. The Native American knew as much. But hunter-gatherers are a tough lot with a different view of what is risky than "modern" man.

 

[smcder]

This world's unfailing ability to balance the books increasingly amazes me as I age. Another way of saying "for everything a price". I spent about 2 years as a "moderate" smoker of cigars and strong pipe tobaccos. It was a frankly enjoyable habit (albeit very expensive in the case of decent cigars).

But--don't let anyone tell you pipes and cigars are light on nicotine and other toxins. There were times when I could barely rise out of my chair due to being light headed, and sometimes even nauseous. My hands would sometimes turn to ice due to vaso-constriction. In retrospect, I think I could feel the tobacco working black magic on my arteries. I had a heart attack about a year after cessation of smoking. There were no doubt other lifestyle and genetic factors. But tobacco is not a nutrient.

I will say something you won't hear on Public Service Announcements: It's a shame that tobacco is so darned toxic. It's a wonderfully effective mood stabilizer and facilitator of relaxed socialization. The Native American knew as much. But hunter-gatherers are a tough lot with a different view of what is risky than "modern" man.

It's a wonderfully effective mood stabilizer and facilitator of relaxed socialization.

Yes!

There was (is?) some research going on around nicotine as an anti-depressant and I believe smoking is also protective of Parkinson's?

The rate at which persons with serious illness (notably schizophrenia) consume cigarettes is way out of proportion to their numbers and I've seen a number of explanations for this.

I have found nicotine gum to be almost as effective a delivery system as cigarettes - you can control the amount delivered by how you chew - and very effective as a mood stabilizer. For years after quitting, I turned to the gum during high stress situations.

Most of what I read is that the gum and patches have very low, if any toxicity. E-cigarettes seem to be showing some of the same dangers as traditional ones - which is a shame, b/c they work very well.

 

[boomerang]

The rate at which persons with serious illness (notably schizophrenia) consume cigarettes is way out of proportion to their numbers and I've seen a number of explanations for this.

I believe pharmaceutical companies have even invested to some degree in research regarding beneficial effects of nicotine for various psychiatric disorders, and schizophrenia in particular. This is a search for some chemical analogue of a natural substance with some of the benefits but without so many of the harmful side effects. Although in the case of some of this synthesized "stuff", one wonders. And of course, the ability to patent a unique molecule for big $$ never hurts.

 

[smcder]

David Brin on The Partially Examined Life podcast:

Topic for #90: Science Fiction and Philosophy with Guest David Brin | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog

"We’ll be talking on the evening of Tuesday 2/25 with David Brin, one of our most philosophical science fiction authors, whose most recent novel Existence

(2012) certainly has a philosophical sounding name. But no, it’s not about ontology, about Being, or aboutexistentialism, but about our continued existence as a species on the planet. Is it inevitable that humanity will die off, or do we actually have a chance at spreading out over the galaxy a la Star Trek et al?"

 

[Burnt State]

oh how i miss smoking cigarettes: so many brands, so many flavours. damn you, cancer!

 

[boomerang]

smcdr, Thanks for the link. Looks interesting and I have it bookmarked and look forward to later recreational perusal.

One last observation (I promise) on the subject of tobacco usage. But I see it as a kind of minor mystery: Why do smokers of commercially manufactured cigarettes tend to experience physical withdrawal symptoms, while cigar and pipe smokers do not? After thinking back about smokers and ex-smokers I have known, asking around and even chatting with the owner of a local tobacco shop, it would seem that the 2 types of tobacco most difficult to "kick" are cigarettes, and possibly snuff or chewing tobacco. I do still crave a good cigar or pipe, much as one might crave say, chocolate. But quitting wasn't all that hard.

Oh well....I've reached the age where I am running out of enjoyable bad habits.