Clouds and Computing

Posted on August 16, 2010 by Trish and Rob

I’ve run across the phrase cloud computing several times recently. I Googled the phrase, read the various entries, but still didn’t understand what it actually was – until our trip a couple of weeks ago to the Florida Keys.

In addition to the lovely location, our agent’s house is a book lover’s dream. So one afternoon when I realized I was nearly finished with the book I’d brought with me, I started roaming through the books around the house, starting with the stack on the table pictured above.I picked up one called You Are Not a Gadget, by Jaron Lanier, known as the father of virtual reality. I’d never heard of the book, but the first page I turned to discussed cloud computing. Synchro, I thought, and read on.

“Cloud is a term for a vast computing service available over the internet. You never know where a cloud resides physically,” writes Lanier. “Google, Microsoft, IBM, and various government agencies are some of the proprietors of computing clouds.”

So it might be said that one possible cloud is composed of the millions of individuals who contribute to the internet through blogs, websites, forums, a kind of global brain, as Lanier calls it. “According to a new creed, we technologists are turning ourselves, the planet, our species, everything, into computer peripherals attached to great computing clouds. The news is no longer about us but about the big new computational object that is greater than us.”

As I was reading this, it suddenly dawned on me that one of the best examples of a computing cloud is a web bot that claims to use the internet as a giant oracle that can predict future events. The two men who own the technology, Clif High and George Ure, call themselves Time Monks. The technology and algorithms, which are kept secret,  supposedly tap into the collective unconscious through spiders that search the Internet for  300,000 words. The predictions can allegedly predict catastrophes 60-90 days in advance.

I’ve been following George Ure’s site for a couple of years now. Occasionally, he posts free predictions from the web bots, but mostly he’s an economist who rarely sees anything good about the economy and is a diehard urban survivalist. Just before the financial meltdown in 2008, he and Clif were on Coast to Coast, I think it was, and were talking about the web bot predictions for a dire downturn in the economy. It was definitely a hit. They claim to have other hits, but I can’t vouch for them.

So the web bot project uses millions of blogs and websites to make predictions. Quantity, in other words. In his book, Lenair talks about quality versus quantity. “The fragments of human effort that have flooded the internet are perceived by some to form a hive mind or noosphere.” Some of his tech friends – like Larry Page, one of Google’s founders – expects “the internet to come alive at some point.” Other people – like science historian George Dyson – believes it has happened already.

Lenair has some interesting stuff to say about blogs and blogging and how the internet is changing the book and music industries. That alone is worth the read. But his particular take on the “hive mentality” of the web and what it may mean for individual creativity is what really captured me. And thanks to this book, I finally have a clearer understanding of computer clouds and was able to identify the web bot project as one such cloud. I also realized that the government routinely uses their computing clouds to scan blogs and websites. We wrote about our experience with that here. There have been other such incidents, but that’s a post for another day!

Posted in books, computers, Internet | 20 Comments

The Universe Delivers

Posted on August 15, 2010 by Trish and Rob

We’ve posted several of Judi Hertling’s synchronicities. They usually involve her request to the universe for something specific. Her most recent story is here. What’s particularly intriguing about this story is that it shows how Judi harnesses synchronicity and is similar to an activity in 7 Secrets (p226) called Harnessing Synchronicity. 
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In early 2007, my husband and I completed construction of our potential dream home. As anyone who has ever built a house with a spouse and a contractor knows, it doesn’t get much more stressful than that. So when I began journaling about stress, illness, and healing, I was only slightly surprised.

I am a positive person for the most part so this is not a topic I usually write about, however as I hadn’t been feeling up to par for a few weeks, it seemed a natural way for me to release a few negative energies that may have accumulated during the whole construction experience, while at the same time allowing me to explore on paper which areas of my life were out of balance.
 
While there was nothing physical that I could put my finger on, I had a vague sense that something within me was not quite right. I could not shake the feeling that the house, while beautiful, felt wrong to me and that I also felt wrong in a way that I could not explain. As far back as I can remember I have been sensitive to my environment, to people, and to the subtle changes within my body.

I am also guilty of not always acting on those subtleties, or instincts. Not always trusting my intuition.
Winston Churchill said. ‘You create your own universe as you go along.” So this time I listened. And I trusted.

I made an appointment with my physician and went to see him a few days later. He ran the usual tests, found nothing too unusual, and told me to come back in a few weeks if I was still feeling – off.

Trusting that the Universe was trying to tell me something about myself, something important, I made a second appointment and after more tests and examinations he referred me to a specialist who was not usually available to take new patients. The appointment was scheduled for six days later. This in itself was unusual since appointments to see most specialists in Canada can take six weeks or longer so I was grateful that I wouldn’t have to wait that long, and also because it was scheduled for two days after my husband arrived home from working a five week rotation overseas.

On the allotted day we arrived a few minutes early, filled out the necessary paperwork and then I was hustled into the exam room. An hour later I returned to the waiting area, a little shaken. I told my husband that during the exam the specialist had found two ovarian masses, and I needed to have major surgery to determine if they were cancerous or not.  Given that my Mother had passed away of ovarian cancer, this was not good news.

The date for surgery was still to be scheduled, and we were warned that it would be at least a four to six weeks wait since operating rooms were in short supply. I was also informed that I would need someone to be home with me for at least four weeks following surgery. No lifting, no cooking, no cleaning, no driving. We have no family where we live, we were new in the neighborhood, and my husband was due to go back overseas in five weeks.

I needed a synchronicity so big that it would rearrange people and events once again to provide that which I needed. Surgery and recuperation time all before my husband went back overseas. Impossible? Maybe.
My mantra is always the same. “If it is for my highest good and for the highest good of all those concerned.”
The next day I received a telephone call from the surgeon’s office saying that she had received a surprising and very sudden surgical cancellation, and that she would be able to perform my surgery 48 hours later if we could be at the hospital the next day for pre-op tests.

Not only did the Universe provide a way for me to have the much needed surgery, but my husband would be there to take care of me and the household chores as I needed, and as I had asked for.

The surgery was successful and four weeks later, once the pathology report was back, we heard the magic words, “the tumors were benign. No cancer.”

Posted in health, law of attraction, visualization | 11 Comments

Doomsday or Folly?

Posted on August 14, 2010 by Trish and Rob

If you were alive in the 1960s, you undoubtedly recall air raid drills and the hoopla about underground shelters. In the movie The Road, which takes place in post-apocalyptic times, father and son find such an underground shelter, full stocked with food and supplies. The image above is an artist’s rendition of a lounge area in a proposed underground shelter by a company called Vivos.

I ran across this image and story the same day we posted Mass Dreams of the Future, a synchronicity that felt troubling because there’s apparently enough hype about 2012 so that developers are now capitalizing on it.

In a nushell,  the Vivos shelter network is proposing a network of 20 such shelters. According to the article in USA Today, these shelters “are intended to protect those inside for up to a year from catastrophes such as a nuclear attack, killer asteroids or tsunamis.” Another outfit, Radius Engineering in Terrell, Texas, has been building these shelters for more than 30 years and claimed that business “has never been better.” Their shelters are pricey – from $400,000 to a $41 million shelter that can accommodate up to 750 people. For a Vivos shelter – which sells something like time shares for these things (not sure how that would work during a disaster!) – developer Robert Vicino is looking for buyers willing to pay $50,000 for adults and half that for children.

Vicino says he’s not profiting from fear. “We’re not creating the fear; the fear is already out there. We’re creating the solution.”

So what happens after a year or five years, when the supplies run out and people are losing their minds from living underground and the catastrophe that drove them into a shelter is still poisoning the air?

Posted in 2012, domed city, underground shelters | 13 Comments

Friggatriskaidekaphobia

Posted on August 13, 2010 by Trish and Rob

Can you figure out that title? Hint ‘Frigga’ means Friday…and there’s a phobia at the end.

Yes, Friday the 13th. If there’s any superstition that the average Muggle abides by, it’s the fear of Friday falling on the 13th of the month and the supposed bad luck that goes with the day.

However, among those who transit the mystical underground, I’ve noticed that some of us don’t abide by the bad luck scenario, and even consider it as a day of good luck. Maybe that’s because 13 is a lucky number in paganism– as in 13 lunar cycles in a year. There are lots of theories about the origin of the superstition, but I’m not going into that here.

Instead, here’s the story. Trish and I were supposed to do interviews today  about The 7 Secrets of Synchronicity for Whitley Streiber’s radio show, Dreamland, and Unknown Country’s subscriber Podcast. What happened? Mid-morning we received an e-mail from Anne Streiber saying that she was ill after returning from an 11-hour flight from London. So the show is being re-scheduled for a latter date.

So, it could be construed as bad luck–no interviews…or good luck in that we don’t have to do our interviews now on Friday the 13th! 😉

Sorry to bombard everyone with three posts today, but we couldn’t pass up Friggatriskaidekaphobia.

Posted in Uncategorized | 12 Comments

8-9-10-11-12

Posted on August 13, 2010 by Trish and Rob
soul cards
 

Thanks to Jim Banzholder for alerting us to this one. Talk about synchros with numbers! This infant seems to know a thing or two already! Poker, anyone?

Take a look. 

Posted in birth, Numbers | 6 Comments

Message from a One-Legged Burrowing Owl

Posted on August 13, 2010 by Trish and Rob

This evening (August 7), we’ve been preparing for our  interview with Whitley Strieber’s Dreamland Radio, which will be recorded on August 13. Since we’ll be interviewed separately, we’ve been trying to come up with different synchronicities for each of the 7 secrets.  I imagined myself being asked what my best personal synchronicity was – and drew a complete blank.

A kind of panic spread through me and suddenly I was 11 or 12 years old, living in Caracas, and in a piano recital that was being filmed for a local TV station. As I sat down at the piano to play the piece I had rehearsed for weeks, my fingers froze, my mind went numb, and I heard nothing but static. Stage fright. I think I started crying, the cameras stopped, and then I was finally able to play the piece. The memory seemed like a clear warning to have something prepared. And then I remembered the message of the one-legged burrowing owl. I thought we had already used it as a post, checked, and we haven’t. I did write about it in Animal Totems, a book I co-authored with our friend Millie Gemondo. So here’s the one that stands out in my mind.

For the first 11 years of Megan’s life, we lived on a lake – a man-made lake that was dug as an enticement to buy homes in our development. It had a few alligators, a lot of ducks, and drew other birds and wildlife. For several years, we had a family of burrowing owls living in our back yard. They’re an endangered species,  live in burrows they dig beneath trees and shrubs, and are slightly larger than a robin. They hunt between dusk and dawn and are rarely seen during the day.

One Sunday afternoon, Megan and her friend came racing into the kitchen, shouting about a burrowing owl perched on the atrium fence outside my dad’s bedroom. My dad had been living with us for about two years, ever since we had placed my mother in an Alzheimer’s unit.  I knew that in esoteric traditions, owls are considered to be messengers between the dead and the living and my first thought was that the owl portended that my dad, who had Parkinson’s, was going to pass away soon. The fact that the owl was perched on the fence in broad daylight concerned me, too.

The three of us stood at the sliding glass door, gawking at the owl. Then I noticed that the bird was perched on just one leg. I thought that the left leg might just be pulled up, so we hurried outside for a closer look. It wasn’t the least bit startled as the three of us approached for a closer look. We realized its left leg wasn’t just pulled up; part of its leg was missing.

Unsettled by the whole thing, I convinced myself it didn’t mean anything. But at nine the next morning, the phone rang. It was the Alzheimer’s facility. My mother was on the way to ER, presumably for a broken hip. I rushed over to the hospital. She was in excruciating pain. X-Rays were taken, doctors arrived and left. By the end of the day, the prognosis was worse than a broken hip. My mother’s left hipbone- the same leg that was actually missing on the owl – had disintegrated completely. He wasn’t a candidate for a hip replacement because she didn’t have the presence of mind necessary for the rehab.

“So what are the alternatives?” I asked the doctor who delivered the news.

“We do wonderful things with pain management nowadays.”

Easy for him to say. She wasn’t his mother.

My mother was transferred to a nursing home, where pain management consisted of regular doses of morphine. She died three weeks later of pneumonia. The owl had delivered its message that Sunday weeks earlier.

Posted in animals as messengers, death, mothers, owls | 11 Comments

Gaia Updates

Posted on August 12, 2010 by Trish and Rob

An earthquake of either 6.9 or 7.1 (two different reports) rocked Ecuador this morning, It apparently was felt across much of the country, including Quito, one of my favorite cities. Fortunately, it was 131 miles beneath the surface, which may have mitigated damage and loss of life. That story is here.

In Pakistan, floods have put a fifth of the country underwater. 1,500 people have lost their lives and another 7 million need emergency aid. The U.N. warns that even more dams could burst. Story here.

Then there is the chunk of ice – 4 times the size of Manhattan – that broke off from Greenland. An article on Huffington Post calls it global weirding. Sure fits. David Orr, a professor of environmental studies at Oberlin College, believes it is all evidence of climate destabilization.

Posted in gaia, natural disasters | 17 Comments

Jenean’s NDE

Posted on August 12, 2010 by Trish and Rob

Sansego made a comment yesterday, asking for a post on near death experiences – NDEs. We thought we had posted something on NDEs last year, but couldn’t find it. So here is one of the best we’ve ever read, which we included in 7 Secrets. We hope Gypsy doesn’t mind our posting it here.

Before we get to that, here’s an odd little synchro. When I went to Sansego’s blog to link it to this post, I discover the title of his current post: Near Death Experiences.
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In the summer of 1966, Jenean Gilstrap was a 23-year-old mother with a newborn daughter. One night she woke up, unable to breathe, and her husband rushed her to the hospital. By the time a battery of tests had been performed, she was breathing normally, but the final diagnosis was that a large gallstone had slipped out of a duct and obstructed a breathing pathway.

Shortly afterward, she went into the hospital for surgery. She remembers talking to her surgeon before she was put under, then nothing until she felt an excruciating pain in her stomach. “I remember thinking my surgeons had lied to me about the procedure. This felt as if my stomach had literally been ripped apart and a ball of fire shoved down inside it. I felt extreme coldness on the outside of my right hand, but I wasn’t able to move or speak. Then I heard someone frantically say, ‘She’s going down! I can’t get her up!”’

Jenean started rising out of her body from the top of her head, and was able to “see” everyone in the room, including herself, her body. “As I continued to move upward toward the ceiling, I remember looking down at myself and feeling as if the ‘me of me’ were being pulled away like a soft glove being slipped off.” She continued to watch all the activity from her spot in the upper right corner of the operating room.

At first, Jenean was frightened. She knew she was dying and didn’t want to be dead. “I was young and had just begun my life with my children. As I continued to have this mental dialogue with myself, I became more aware of my new surroundings and self. I focused  less on my body, where the doctors were still scrambling and shouting orders. I felt surrounded by a white softness that became an all-encompassing, purely unadulterated whiteness of light.”

The light called to her. She could see a silver-gray cord that connected her soul to her body. But the farther she moved from it, the greater her realization “that the thing called “death” was not the end of anything. It was the beginning. There was nothing to fear.”

 She heard voices around her, relatives who had been dead for years, some of whom she had never met in the physical world. “But in this world, I knew who they each were.”
At the moment of complete surrender to the light, a voice asked who would raise her children. That’s when she returned to her body.  She was angry at the doctors for bringing her back and catapulted out again.

Jenean remembers following her body out of OR and down a hallway, where her family could see her one last time. “I could hear them plainly and was infuriated that they were making plans and arrangements for me. “In that moment, I knew I was going back, that no one was going to raise my children but me.”

When Jenean regained consciousness, both surgeons came to see her and told her they’d “almost lost her.” She replied that they had lost her and related what she’d heard in the OR. They confirmed her experiences and said that they’d heard of such things, but she was the first patient to ever talk about it.

Some months later, Jenean woke one morning with the warmth of the sun coming through her windows, birds singing in a nearby tree. “I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror and realized that, at the age of 23, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt the warmth of the sun or heard birds singing. I knew I had to leave my unhappy marriage and take my children away from the unhappiness and into the warm sunshine and singing birds. I turned from the mirror, went to my closet, packed one suitcase and a diaper bag and walked out of that house, never looking back.”

Posted in Jenean, NDEs | 30 Comments

World’s luckiest lotto player

Posted on August 11, 2010 by Trish and Rob

Her name is Cris Carmona and she knows how to pick numbers. She won $10 million in June in the Texas Lottery. Not bad. Anyone who wins is considered lucky. But for Ms. Carmona, it was nothing new. She has won the Texas lottery four times in 13 years. Her smallest pot was $2 million.

Is she psychic? If so, she’s not saying.  The 63-year-old former college professor avoids interviews. Recently, she has moved from her home in Bishop, Texas, where she bought her tickets to Las Vegas. Watch out Vegas!

So what are the odds? Mat professors Eduardo Duenez and Sandy Norman of the University of Texas say that the chances of winning four times are as high as 1 in 18 septillion – that’s 18 followed by 24 zeros. That would be if she had only purchased tickets on four occasions. We can guess that she’s bought a lot of tickets over the years, reducing those odds. But still…what are the chances?

Posted in lottery, luck | 27 Comments

Numbers in the Sky

Posted on August 10, 2010 by Trish and Rob

 This story, about synchronistic clusters of numbers, was sent to us in an email by Stephanie.We’ve seen words written in the sky by a skywriting plane, but numbers? This one is the first we’ve heard of.
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Hello Trish and Rob,
I follow your blog daily and for the first time, I have something to contribute that I thought you might find interesting. On Sunday July 25, my husband and I were on our way home and we saw a line of numbers in the clouds. It was a straight row of the numbers 7 7 4 4   6 (the six was spaced a little further apart than the rest of the numbers, which were evenly spaced and perfectly clear). I’ve never seen a number in the sky, much less an entire row of them.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera with me, so I don’t have proof, but my husband saw them too so at least I have a witness! It was in northwest Iowa, near the borders of Minnesota and South Dakota. Perhaps one of your readers can share some insight into a possible meaning?
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Any takers?

Posted in clusters, Numbers | 26 Comments