Like attracting like…

Posted on November 22, 2011 by Trish and Rob

Many of us probably remember our parents telling us to watch out who we hung around with. If you spent time with trouble-makers, you were likely to get in trouble yourself.

It makes sense. But what about this? If you spend time with obese people, chances are better than average that you will become obese yourself. Sounds like silly speculation, right. Something that you might’ve read in The Secret. Like attracts like.

But guess what? That was the finding of  mainstream Harvard scientists whose research results were published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Obesity, they report, is socially contagious. “We find that a person’s chances of becoming obese increase by 57% if they have a friend who becomes obese, 40% if they have a sibling who becomes obese, and 37% if a spouse becomes obese,” say researchers Nicholas Christakis, MD, PhD, and James Fowler, PhD.

Mutual friends more than triple the risk to each other,” note Christakis and Fowler. “If one of the two [mutual friends] becomes obese, the chance for the other to follow suit goes up 171%.”

Yikes! This report came out in 2007. So I was wondering if this theory has been discounted in the past four years. Turns out there was a new report that came out in a journal called Obesity that confirms the early study that obesity is socially contagious.

So now we need some research to find out if hanging out with skinny people has a similar contagious effect.

Posted in synchronicity | 24 Comments

Brazilian Bark and a Text Message

Posted on November 21, 2011 by Trish and Rob

We received an interesting synchro from someone who wants to remain anonymous. You’ll see why when you read the post.

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A few years back,  I was at a friend’s house. We were both on a low dose of psylocybin mushrooms, and I was helping him brew up a batch of something I’d never helped make before. It is extracted from the root bark of a shrub from Brazil.

Maybe 15 minutes after I’d finished pouring the bark into the jar we were using, while we were waiting for it to dissolve, I got a text message from a friend … asking me if “there was a drug made from tree bark.” She had zero idea what I was up to that night (no one did). She’d just gotten into a conversation about magic mushrooms (which I was on at the time), which led her and the guy she was with  to talk about other psychedelic experiences. The guy  was saying that he’d heard of some crazy drug made from tree bark, and she thought I might know what the heck he was talking about, so she texted me to ask about it … while I was actually making the stuff!

Oh, and to clarify – the jar behind the phone in the pic is root bark undergoing the extraction process.

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Ayahuasca is also used by indigenous tribes in the Amazon as a rite of passage. In the past few decades, Western travelers have gone into the Amazon in search of native practitioners who would take them on an ayahuasca journey. Author and visionary Terrence McKenna  used ayahuasca during one of his jungle excursions, he believed he had seen into the heart of the universe and discovered that the I Ching  is a coded system about quantum time/space.

Years ago, when we led trips to the Amazon, one of our guides, Hugo, told us about his rite of passage, during which he encountered an enormous anaconda that talked to him. He’d found his power animal.

The ceremony and preparations for the journey took three days. When he finally drank the liquid from the bark – which he described as disgustingly bitter – he got sick. Everyone does. Over and over again until you think there is nothing left in your stomach. Then you throw up again. Then the visions begin.

After encountering the anaconda, another animal – a black panther – approached Hugo. He couldn’t tell what was a hallucination and what was real. He thought the panther was a physical creature and freaked out when the panther charged him and passed right through him.

We always wanted to try the bark ourselves, but in our three trips to the Amazon, we were the organizers, the ones supposedly in charge of the journalists who joined us. Maybe we should’ve advertised one of the trips as an ayahuasca journey. We probably would’ve traveled much farther than the Amazon on that one!

 

 

Posted in ayahuasca, synchronicity | 17 Comments

UFO Over the Nazca Lines

Posted on November 19, 2011 by Trish and Rob

This video is intriguing and apparently hasn’t ever been debunked. What’s interesting about this cloud…is that rain falls over this area for only 20 MINUTES A YEAR!

 

Posted in synchronicity, UFOs | 7 Comments

Internet Censorship

Posted on November 18, 2011 by Trish and Rob

On October 26, 2011,  the House version of the Internet Blacklist Bill was introduced and Congress is now debating it. Under this bill, “the Department of Justice would force search engines, browsers, and service providers to block users’ access to websites that have been accused of copyright infringement — without even giving them a day in court.” (Demand Progress)

According to Digital Journal, this bill  “could shut down YouTube, Twitter and many other social websites that bring together the Occupy movements across the nation and world—any user-generated content site where the law can make the sites’ owners legally responsible for the posted content of its users.”

Back when we hosted our blog on blogger, we received a notice from them saying we had violated copyright on a post that was about a synchronicity connected to Hoover Dam. We took down the post, but Rob was so ticked off he wrote to the Department of the Interior and told them about what had happened. A woman in the department said the post didn’t violate any copyright, as the story was public information, and she couldn’t imagine who had reported it as such. She said her email constituted permission to use the post. We never re-posted the story.

The Internet Blacklist Bill could censor on such a vast scale that it would make Google’s Big Brother tactics look pitiful. And it wouldn’t just impact websites, blogs and services in the U.S. This would threaten Internet freedom worldwide.

We signed this petition, which has nearly 600,000 signatures.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in synchronicity | 21 Comments

Finding the impossible

Posted on November 17, 2011 by Trish and Rob

This strange story isn’t exactly a synchronicity, but it’s an unlikely scenario. It shows how great desire for something can overcome all odds. You could call this guy lucky, but it’s something more than that. An ineffable factor came into play and the odds no longer mattered.

Here’s the story. Brian McGuinn, who lives in suburban Fort Lauderdale, accidentally threw away his wife’s $10,000 ring when he tossed out an old razor blade. His wife had just handed him the ring as she stepped into the shower, and asked him to put it in her jewelry box. It never made it.

McGuinn didn’t realize his mistake until the next morning, but by then Waste Management had collected the garbage. The ring, it seemed, was lost forever…or was it?

Distraught, Anna McGuinn called the company that processes the garbage and was told that her husband could come and search. Which he did. The plant manager figured out where the ring most likely would be, based on where that neighborhood’s trash was dumped. Then he got McGuinn a protective suit and goggles.

“It was absolutely disgusting. It stunk beyond belief. The smell was God-awful. Everything unsanitary you could think of crossed my path at least a couple times.” McGuinn recalled in an interview with the Sun Sentinel of Fort Lauderdale.

Incredibly, within 30 minutes, McGuinn spotted something shiny surrounded by black sludge sticking out between brown bags. “It looked like a screw and I reached down and it looped around my index finger. I was ecstatic. It was probably one of the best moments ever.”

McGuinn let out a whoop that was heard across the landfill. He went home and took a very long shower, and even scrubbed his skin with toothbrushes.

What are the chances?

Posted in lost, synchronicity | 13 Comments

Instant Karma

Posted on November 16, 2011 by Trish and Rob

Here’s an interesting karma-synchro sent to us by Gabe Carlson, who spotted it in the Minneapolis Star-Trib.

A Canadian motorist who had a heart attack while driving in western Wisconsin is probably alive today because of a good deed he had done for a stranger along the interstate just a few minutes earlier.

According to the Wisconsin State Patrol:

Victor Giesbrecht, 61, of Winnipeg, was driving east Saturday evening on Interstate 94, about 9 miles east of Menomonie, where he stopped to help a motorist change a tire.

His good deed accomplished and just moments after getting back behind the wheel, Giesbrecht was stricken by a heart attack. His wife, Ann, at his side helped bring their pickup truck to a stop.

Seemingly right on cue, along came the passenger vehicle that had just gotten the roadside help with the tire. Ann Giesbrecht was on the phone and waving her arms.

“It sounds like they said: They helped us, what’s up with them?” Patrol Sgt. Michael Newton said Monday.

That vehicle stopped, 911 was called and one of its occupants, Lisa Meier, of Eau Claire, Wis., began cardiopulmonary resuscitation until emergency personnel arrived.

A state trooper discovered that Victor Giesbrecht had no pulse and wasn’t breathing. The trooper and a Dunn County deputy took over CPR, and a second deputy used an automated external defibrillator (AED) to deliver three shocks to Giesbrecht. He regained a pulse and resumed breathing.

A medical helicopter landed on the interstate and took Giesbrecht to Mayo Clinic Health System in Eau Claire. He was in serious condition Monday, a hospital spokeswoman said.

Newton believes that if the Giesbrechts hadn’t stopped and helped with the tire change, his initial rescuer may have remained stranded along the side of the highway too long to play a life-saving role.

“If he had been a few more miles down the road and had his heart attack, it could have been a different outcome,” Newton said. “It’s an interesting turn of fate.”

Newton added that Dunn County having an AED on hand “was the tipping point” in saving Giesbrecht’s life. “Without that defibrillator, I don’t know that the outcome would’ve been the same,” said the sergeant, who added that Giesbrecht had suffered another heart attack about a year earlier.

We have to add some John Lennon lyrics:

Instant Karma

Instant Karma’s gonna get you,
Gonna knock you right on the head,
You better get yourself together,
Pretty soon you’re gonna be dead,
What in the world you thinking of,
Laughing in the face of love,
What on earth you tryin’ to do,
It’s up to you, yeah you.

Instant Karma’s gonna get you,
Gonna look you right in the face,
Better get yourself together darlin’,
Join the human race,
How in the world you gonna see,
Laughin’ at fools like me,
Who on earth d’you think you are,
A super star,
Well, right you are.

Posted in synchronicity | 11 Comments

John Dee Memorial Theater of the Mind

Posted on November 15, 2011 by Trish and Rob

What would it be like to take a vacation to visit your dead relatives?

Funny question, right? But that’s what Raymond Moody, author of Life and Life and Reunions and other books, offered when he opened the John Dee Memorial Theater of the Mind, a chamber designed after the ancient Greek’s psychomanteums, where priests organized encounters between the living and the dead.

The chamber features mirrors, similar after an Aztec mirror owned by John Dee. It was said that by gazing into the mirror while in a receptive state of mind, you would have a vision.

In an interview with Sharon Barbell, Moody said, “The big surprise is that the apparitions actually come out of the mirror…the fact that the apparitions talk and you actually hear them is absolutely mind-bending to me.”

He went on to say: “The most important thing that I see going on is people reconciling and healing. The ones that come to my mind are usually the most recent ones. Just a week or two ago, we had a wonderful couple from Texas come here and this woman saw her father who had died and her grandparents. And really felt that a reconciliation occurred, she saw the three of them just come right up to the mirror and there they were in that in between space, the Middle Realm as it were, and communicated with them and got things really reconciled and found out that everything was fine there.”

Here’s another story he tells. “A very wonderful ophthalmologist came and saw his mother, who had been a very influential figure in his life. All of these are very, very significant events in my own life. I just really feel so privileged now to have been with 35 people right after they have seen apparitions of the departed. And actually to be able to talk with them and to participate almost with them. It’s been just really wonderful.

“I strongly recommend this to all therapists who might want to find a new technique to help people with this. This is just really extraordinary, I would say. Far and away the most interesting work I have ever done in my life.”

If you’re interested in stepping into the Theater of the Mind, you can contact Moody here. We’d love to hear someone’s personal experience in the chamber.

 

 

Posted in synchronicity | 13 Comments

Spam Oddities and Funnies

Posted on November 14, 2011 by Trish and Rob

We’ve compiled some of the oddest and most humorous spam we get on our blog. Spammers, it seems, are developing new techniques all the time to fool the filters. Some of the spam comments are just illiterate, Google translations – like this one:

The web site proprietor has carried out an excellent profession of placing it with each other, the information the following is really as well as useful when i do evaluation. Now i’m going to bookmark this world broad internet web site to ensure that I can review within the long term.

Or this one, advertising boots:

 Fantastic products from you, man. Ive study your stuff forward of and youre just too amazing.

Another advertising boots:

We comparable the particular browser to become very bored because the content articles as well as evaluations work for a number of phrases come up with.

Another illiterate spam advertising cheap Miami Heat jerseys:

Your favorite reason appeared to be at the web the easiest thing to consider of. I say to you, I definitely get irked even as folks think about issues that they just don’t understand about. You managed to hit the nail upon the top and also defined out the entire thing with no need side effect

Here’s one, under a video on flash dancing in the Dubai airport. It’s, like, well, huh??

Certainly believe that which you said. Your preferred cause appeared to be in the web the easiest thing to consider of. I say to you, We definitely obtain annoyed even while people think about issues that they just do not comprehend about. A person managed to strike the actual toe nail upon the very best and also described out the whole factor without necessity side-effect , people might take a signal.

Hmm, What was that about ‘the actual toe nail?’

Some of them are just laugh out loud funny. Here’s a bodybuilding spam:

Congratulations on being freshly pressed

From the cancer institute:

It is little doubt that this is the best singer in the planeta! What makes a singer isn’t their personality, it’s their voice! I don’t like when people judge singers on things that just aren’t that interesting. Remember, they are entertainers, not presidents! Let them do their thing and enjoy the music!

From a porn site. The person calls herself/himself horny hot:

Lol everybody talk about dating

From a free porn site:

que harГ­amos sin su frase admirable – I think this translates as: what we do without your admirable sentence

Here’s one advertising Viagra at a discount:

what do you think about the increase in the dollar?

Recently, spammers have been leaving pithy little sayings such as: no news is good news.  Here are  two of the oddest:

Human blood is all one colour.

Harm set, harm get.

Finally, here’s one from a.m. – one of six.

How you would write, that you’re really a professional blogger?

 

Posted in spam, synchronicity | 14 Comments

We Are the Many, Not the Few

Posted on November 13, 2011 by Trish and Rob

Here’s an interesting twist in the Occupy movement.

Hawaiian recording artist Makana was supposed to play a luau Saturday night – November 12 – at Waikiki Beach for leaders at an annual summit that is putting together plans for a Pacific free-trade pact.  The Obamas and leaders of 21 economies from the Asia Pacific were present. Among the attendees were Chinese President Hu Jintao and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. Security was apparently tight.

So there they are, these leaders, doing whatever leaders do at a private shindig on Waikiki Beach, and the young man who is supposed to play for the Hawaiian feast opens his jacket to reveal a t-shirt that reads, Occupy for Aloha. The five-minute song in the video is what he sang repeatedly for forty minutes. Here’s the refrain I love:

“We’ll occupy the streets, we’ll occupy the courts, we’ll occupy the offices of you, till you do the bidding of the many, not the few.”

 

 

Posted in occupy wall street, synchronicity | 8 Comments

Flash Dancing

Posted on November 12, 2011 by Trish and Rob

We just love it when these You Tube videos appear. This one takes place in Dubai’s airport.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_yXy4YGOyvU

Posted in synchronicity | 5 Comments