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2/1/2006 Mind / Illusions. Viewing distance makes a great difference.

"If you [view the images below ] from your seat in front of the computer, Mr. Angry is on the left, and Mrs.Calm is on the right. Get up from your seat, and move back about eight feet!! They switch places!!"

"This illusion was invented by Philippe G. Schyns and Aude Oliva of the University of Glasgow. It is featured on this web page: http://cvcl.mit.edu/gallery.htm, listed under 'Dr Angry and Mr Smiles'. It is taken from Schyns and Oliva's paper, "Dr Angry and Mr Smiles: when categorization flexibly modifies the perception of faces in rapid visual presentations, Nov 1998" - ir ". ... On exhibit at the Exploratorium in San Francisco"

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11/23/2005 Strange Happenings / Mind / Crime. Woman Sentenced To Night In Woods For Dumping Kittens

" PAINESVILLE, Ohio -- Snow and temperatures in the 20s are expected Wednesday night when a northeast Ohio woman begins a 15-day jail sentence by spending a night in the woods. A judge in Painesville came up with the unusual punishment for Michelle Murray, 25, who pleaded guilty last month to charges that she abandoned 35 kittens in two Lake County Metroparks. The animals were recovered but many had upper respiratory infections, and nine died. Judge Michael Cicconetti said he wanted Murray to feel what the kittens experienced. She will have no food or shelter but will have water and a way to communicate with Metroparks rangers in case of an emergency." -wjac

This is from the "two wrongs make a right" cruel and unusual school of judging. My prediction is, since the woman obviously has an empathy deficit, she will get worse after this. She will not "get it". She may have dumped the kittens in the first place because she was abused. Some person(s) with "power" in her life probably treated her with cruelty, dumping her at an early age. She needs examples of healthy love, not more examples of cruelty. ( Don't we all! ) Revenge is not medicine. We are so slow to understand this. Inflicting pain on others does not stop pain in ourselves. What seems to be the cure is actually the cause.

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11/23/2005 Mind. Hypnosis can profoundly change brain

"Hypnosis, with its long and checkered history in medicine and entertainment, is receiving some new respect from neuroscientists. Recent brain studies of people who are susceptible to suggestion indicate that when they act on the suggestions their brains show profound changes in how they process information. The suggestions, researchers report, literally change what people see, hear, feel and believe to be true. The new experiments, which used brain imaging, found that people who were hypnotized "saw" colors where there were none. Others lost the ability to make simple decisions. Some people looked at common English words and thought that they were gibberish.

"The idea that perceptions can be manipulated by expectations" is fundamental to the study of cognition, said Michael I. Posner, an emeritus professor of neuroscience at the University of Oregon and expert on attention. "But now we're really getting at the mechanisms."

Read the entire article. Fascinating.This also means you can profoundly change your own brain with self-hypnosis (meditation, prayer, etc.)

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10/25/2005 Space / Mind / Sexuality. NASA to Study Sex in Space

"If there are instances of sexual conflict or infidelity, that may lead to a breakdown in crew functioning ... People are very primitive in their emotions around partnering and sex."

True. Our primitive jealousy can turn even the most rational human into a complete jerk in the blink of eye.

"How do you have sex in weightlessness?" she ask. "And there's a lack of privacy – often they're monitoring pulse rate and temperature. I don't know how that would be handled." - more

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9/9/2005 Mind. A WAY TO OVERCOME YOUR BIGOTRY

Is such a thing possible? Can one change years of thinking? Certainly. Here are some steps from Tony Schirtzinger, ACSW is a licensed therapist in Milwaukee. Bigotry is the result of a useful protective mental strategy (grouping) taken too far. Prejudice, grouping unlike individuals or things, is both learned and correctable.

1. Survey Your Discomfort. Spend some time just mentally listing all the times you feel uncomfortable around other people. List the "types" or groups of people you feel this way around (like blacks, whites, men, women, old people, etc.).

2. Notice Whether Your Discomfort Relates to "Types" or "Groups" At All. If your discomfort does not relate to any particular "types" of people, go to #3. If your discomfort does seem to relate to "types" or "groups," notice all of the other times when you are with these same types of people but you are much more comfortable. This time list the actual NAMES of the people who make you uncomfortable, and of those who don't.

3. Notice the Behaviors You Don't Like. Notice what the people who make you uncomfortable actually DO and what the people who make you comfortable actually DO. Note actual BEHAVIORS of real people, by name.

4. Give Yourself Permission To Be Angry About Behaviors. At this point you will notice that your natural anger has nothing at all to do with your "trained hate" or bigotry. Your natural anger has to do with protecting yourself from mistreatment by real people! It's healthy and self-caring to be angry when you are mistreated. Sometimes you will notice that someone isn't actually mistreating you but you still feel uncomfortable (like when someone from a different culture stands closer to you than you are used to). You know that this behavior isn't "mistreatment," but it still makes you uncomfortable. You might ask the person to stop the behavior that makes you uncomfortable. You might train yourself over time to become comfortable with it. Or you might just tolerate the discomfort. But, whatever you do, don't allow yourself to think that you are being "mistreated" when you are not! (This is a major way we reinforce our bigotry.)

5. Give Yourself Permission To Enjoy Being Treated Well. Since you were "trained" to dislike the people in your target group, you will need to give yourself permission to disobey your training before you can enjoy being with them.

6. Be Proud of your Selfishness! You are not overcoming your bigotry to help "them" or to make yourself into some "politically correct" person. You Are Doing This So Your Daily Life Will Be More Comfortable - And So You Can Stop Feeding And Reinforcing That Hate In Your Heart.

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6/7/2005 Mind (reuters) US Leads in Mental Illness.

"The United States leads in mental illness globally with 46 percent of Americans suffering mental disorders ranging from anxiety, depression to substance abuse in their lifetime, The Washington Post reported Tuesday" - xinhuanet

"Up to 26 percent of all U.S. adults struggled with mental illness in the past year, with half of them having initially suffered symptoms as children, according to new research Monday from Harvard University scientists." -sunsent

One definition of mental illness is having an internal state (belief) that does jibe with physical reality. By this definition I'd say our species is 100% nuts. Horrible news stories and fake facts from our politicians don't help a bit. See these charts: one, two

For another point of view, check out the The Antipsychiatry Coalition ( "No Scientologists, please." ) The web site of "a nonprofit volunteer group consisting of people who feel we have been harmed by psychiatry." Personally, I stay sane by knowing that everyone, including me, is crazy. Don't fear it, accept it ... and do your best each day to live a good life.

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4/4/2005 Mind / Addictions. How to Change Your Behavior! Who controls you? Do you?

By age 3, the human brain has formed up to 15,000 connections per nerve cell. By the teen years, however, this number drops to about half. As we learn, the massive random connections in our young brains are pruned to remove the excess. For life, new connections continue to form and old ones are strengthened due to repeated thoughts or behaviors. The result: change is possible, but changes in one's character become more difficult as we age.

"In trying to live a better life, you must also consider that a new habit does not erase an old habit. An old habit will gradually fade away from disuse, but its underlying pattern will still remain in a dormant stage and you have to practice constant vigilance to make sure it doesn't rise and gain its previous prominence of aliveness."

"To change your behavior, you literally have to forge new neural pathways in the brain and once you have them, you've got to keep reinforcing them over and over." -meditationx

That's it. That's the real stuff. This is the trick I've used to give up things (sugar, for example) that are bad for me, and to learn to do stuff (exercise, eat right, be romantic) that are good for me. I don't see the need for an expensive Holosync program.

Just pick a behavior you want to delete and replace it with a new one you want to add.

This process is free. Do it. Repeat it. Master yourself. Why else are we here? Don't be a slave to your bad habits. Start a new good habit today, then reinforce how much you like your new good habit! Think a lot about how damn cool you are because you beat a very tricky deeply rooted bad old habit. You ROCK!

It also helps at times to have a trusted friend check on your progress.

Some people like to think they are fighting the Devil, but to me this is extra baggage. There is only you, your body, your mind. Change yourself. Evolve!

Do you really know which of your behaviors are good for you and for your loved ones? Watch out for denial. Being honest with yourself is sometimes the first important step. Self-improvment is a great way of life. Trust me. I'm Xeno, and I'm a strange-o-holic.

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2/23/2005 Mind / Brain / Book Reviews. Building a Brain. This amazed me. In the book Quantum Brain by Jeffrey Satinover is an explanation of how brains learn and become intelligent. Each of our 5 to 10 billion brain cells has up to 10,000 connections to other brain cells. A recent surprise about the brain is that these trillions of connections do not follow a "wiring plan". They are, especially early in our development, largely random. It turns out, however, that random systems can acquire intelligence. Satinover provides a simple proof.

About thirty years ago Martin Gardner described how to build a "brain" out of 25 matchboxes and 116 jellybeans that learns by itself how to play a simple chess-based game called "Hexapawn." Hexapawn is a very restricted version of chess. To play, visit this Java based web site for the Hexapawn Educable Robot.

Martin Gardner's artificial matchboxes-and-jellybeans brain, using completely random moves and a simple learning rule (you eat a jellybean when a move fails), will soon become as smart or smarter than you at Hexapawn. This "removal of connections that produce failures" rule is one way your human brain learns and grows intelligent.

This model also explains why successful people have many failures. For example, before becoming president of the USA, Abraham Lincoln lost eight elections, twice failed in business and suffered a nervous breakdown.

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2/17/2005 Mind. Try hacking your own mind with "Mind Hacks" - a collection of 100 tricks involving your brain that you probably never thought possible!

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2/14/2005 Mind / Do Stuff / Love 365 Top Romantic Things to Do (Some specific to the Sacramento Area) Re-linked by request for Valentine's Day. Enjoy!

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2/10/2005 Mind / Health (technews | tgi | healttalk) 'Broken Heart' Syndrome Is Serious. Another reason you should never lie about loving someone:

"Researchers at Johns Hopkins University say ... sudden emotional stress can result in severe, but reversible, heart muscle weakness that mimics a classic heart attack. Patients with such a condition, called stress cardiomyopathy or "broken heart" syndrome, are often misdiagnosed as having a massive heart attack. What they actually have suffered is "broken heart" syndrome from a days-long surge in adrenalin (epinephrine) and other stress hormones that temporarily "stun" the heart."

Odd thought: If true, could a person "dumping" a partner in a shocking and painful way be sued?

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2/7/2005 Mind / Experiment / Education Only one of these images of a penny is correct. Which one is it? : Take this test from the exploratorium. Interesting. Try other on line exhibits too! I liked the auditory illusion of a continuously rising tone.

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2/6/2005 Mind I found this pretty interesting: The Top 10 Fears that Stop Us from Having the Relationship We Want. Here is a page of funny phobias. I like: Ichthyophobia: the Fear of fish, Trichopathophobia: the Fear of hair. Also interesting was Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia: fear of long words.

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12/7/2004 Mind / Technology (yahoo) A real mind reader. Cap Harnesses Human Thought to Move PC Cursor. "Scientists have developed a non-invasive brain-computer interface that enables a person to move a cursor across a computer screen just by thinking about it.

The device resembles a swimming cap riddled with electrodes, which users wear against their scalp. The cap translates electrical signals in the brain to physical outputs, which govern the movement of a computer cursor."

At first, participants learned to use their thoughts to direct a cursor on a computer screen by imagining specific actions, from running to shooting baskets.

As they became more comfortable with the technology, the subjects began to rely less on such imagery to direct the cursor. Eventually, the participants couldn't tell what they were thinking about to move the cursor; they simply moved it.

"It becomes more like an instinctive, non-muscular skill," Wolpaw said. "What we're doing is giving the brain the opportunity to develop a new motor skill."

Each session lasted 24 minutes. It took participants two to three sessions to begin to acquire control of the cursor movement. After ten sessions, participants were able to hit the target on a computer screen about 80 percent of the time."

Jonathan Wolpaw, neurologist at the New York State Department of Health's Wadsworth Center in Albany, directed the study, which is reported this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

 

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11/8/2004 Fun. I like to learn and see something new every day. Try this trick. Go to google image search, and enter a random number like 213 then see what you get. You might find something like this:

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11/8/2004 Mind. Each day seek beauty, create love and experience real happiness. Your own joy is always there ... hidden under rocks, waiting in the water, swimming in the sky for your amusement. Turn off the news. Go outside, and enjoy life!

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11/2/04 Mind. "Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born." - Anais Nin.

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10/7/04 Mind. Self-Hypnosis Lessons. Pick a habit you'd like to change or add to your life. Next, gaze into the hypnotic swirly spiral and count backwards from 10 to 1 with each breath you exhale. Become more and more relaxed. When you reach 1, you will be fully hypnotized, although you may not feel any different. When you are fully relaxed, visualize your changed behavior and how good it feels. Spend some time imagining the details. Now count back wards from 5 to 1, becoming more awake each time. Snap your fingers and you will be fully awake (you will naturally come out of hypnosis in a few minutes if you don't do this). There you go. If your behavior doesn't change, repeat this until it does. You CAN re-program your own mind. You're welcome.

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10/7/04 Mind. This is the best optical illusion I've seen of this type. It really isn't moving. Click the image to see the full sized illusion which really seems to move. I made it my screen background and now my eyes freak out all day.

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9/2/04 Mind. Guru Xeno says: Unless you generate love and contentment from within, you will not find it outside of yourself. If you do not love yourself, you will feel unloved, even when someone deeply and truly loves you. Many of us bounce from person to person, constantly feeling empty. This is why.

Balance is the key: Don't be egomaniacal or narcissistic with your self love. Be honest, humble and accepting of yourself. This is the secret, I think.

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9/2/04 Mind. Focus acts like a magnet; you attract those things on which you focus. Dwell on negatives and you will attract negativity. If you seek out things that are wrong, you will attract negative experiences to your life. Seek positives and you will attract happiness. You have the power, baby, so don't blame others if you make yourself miserable. You attract other people's responses and reactions to you simply by where you focus your attention!

I've tried to share this with people I've loved. Some get it, some don't. Major ugly junk happens but we have to get back up again. When something really bothers you, don't sit on it. Let yourself be heard at the time in an assertive and positive respectful way. Act as you can with personal integrity each minute of your life then let go of worry, knowing you did what you could. I'm honestly a very happy person. This life philosophy works for me. I jokingly call myself "Guru Xeno" because I'm happy and I see many people who are not.

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8/27/04 Mind (cbc.ca) Here is why I don't mind spending some of my valuable time reporting spammers to the Federal Trade Commission.

Scans show brain hard-wired for sweet revenge

Last Updated Thu, 26 Aug 2004 18:31:42 EDT

[ photo: The reward centre in a man's brain, shown in gold, lights up if he can punish unfair behaviour without fear of retribution. (Courtesy: University of Zurich) ]

WASHINGTON - Planning revenge really does feel sweet, according to a new study of brain scans. Researchers in Switzerland said the brain centres linked to enjoyment "lit up" in young men who punished those who cheated them.

It's as if punishing cheaters is satisfying enough to motivate getting even, even if revenge is costly ...In a commentary on the research, psychologist Brian Knutson of Stanford University in California likened the findings to a driver who refuses to yield to a perceived cheater during traffic.

"After squeezing back the intruder, you can't help but notice a smile creep onto your face," Knutson wrote.

The researchers said the instinct likely evolved to ensure cheaters were punished during the thousands of years that human societies lacked law enforcement institutions like impartial police and judges."

Guru Xeno says: Sometimes the best revenge is to distance yourself from those whose inner turmoil causes them to hurt themselves and the people who love them. Find and be happy with your own inner peace. Live and love with kid-like joy, deep personal integrity, loyalty to your friends, compassion and enthusiasm.

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6/4/04 Mind. My work on a new map for this site has been in the area of small world network models. The structure is simple: objects are connected by types of links. Small world maps can become quite complex with only a few elements. For example, these 20 elements can be connected in many ways to form different ideas such as "Humans may have invented Aliens." Try making your own:

OBJECT		LINK OBJECT
Aliens		are
Bigfoots		are a
Cryptozoology		are a type of
Fact		enjoy
Fiction		includes the study of
Flying Saucers		may be
Humans		may be found inside
Mystery		may contain
Rods		may control
UFOs		may have invented

If you hook several smaller clusters of word associations together, you get complex structures that resemble thought. It seems small world networks are how our brains really work, at least for short-term memory:

"If you recall this sentence a few seconds from now, you can thank a simple network of neurons for the experience. That is the conclusions of researchers who have built a computer model that can reproduce an important aspect of short-term memory." - newscientist

 

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5/28/04 Mind. I, Xeno, once saw a dream start. It was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. I was practicing lucid dreaming (where you know you are dreaming while you are dreaming and can control your dreams) and I "woke up" mentally while my body was asleep. There was no body sensation, no sound, just my thoughts. Then WHOOSH! The sound came on, full color vision, feeling, everything! I was in a dream, sitting in a VW bug. Strange but true.

Has anyone else ever seen a dream start? I'm the first I know of to report this.

Our news reports the most horrible shocking things. The truth is, however, life is full of beautiful amazing fun fascinating stuff to explore! Keep your balance.

The "fact" about using only 10% of your brain is a myth. PET scans (positron emission tomography) and fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) show we use all areas of our brains at different times in different circumstances. It IS fair to say, however, that hidden in our brains are amazing potentials yet to be explored. Some people, for example, can suppress pain through self-hypnosis, or experience real orgasms at will without physical contact. ( Pain suppression and orgasm are linked. )

Straightdope says,"Beverly Whipple, a professor of nursing at Rutgers University, invited ten women who claimed to have psychic orgasms to submit to tests at her lab. Sure enough, there was no physiological difference between orgasms from genital self-stimulation and those from "imagery" alone."

Women who have sex in lucid dreams also have real orgasms according to research at Stanford. Of course, there is more to do than sex. Some people fly, walk through walls, fight monsters, swim in the ground, visit other planets, talk to god, or try other things they can't do in real life. How to have lucid dreams: For now, try here.

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3/23/04 Mind. (newsci | telegraph ) Happiness and the Brain. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin at Madison studied experienced Buddhist practitioners and found that compared to others, the left prefrontal lobes in these happy people light up consistently (rather than just during meditation). Persistent left prefrontal lobe activity indicates positive emotions and good mood, while persistent activity in the right prefrontal lobes indicates negative emotion.

To be happy one must overcome conditioning via the deeper and more primitive amygdala and thalamus to be afraid of things that aren't really a threat. Anger is another face of fear. Both negative emotions can be overcome by anti-depressants, but these drugs do not make people happy. Buddhist meditation and mindfulness, on the other hand, developed 2500 years before Prozac, can lead to profound happiness. Research at University of California San Francisco Medical Center suggests that mindfulness practice might tame the amygdala.

Guru Xeno (ha ha) says: Be happy, not fearful and many problems evaporate. Happiness is not escape from reality. It is an honest mindful perception with perspective of whatever is. Take intelligent action against adversity and live your life with joy.

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3/22/04 How to Be Happy. Spend time with people, forgive people, drop your greed, get absorbed in something. Too much depressing stuff on the news today. I couldn't stand it any more. I need to post good news here for a while. Today I researched happiness. I found some quotes about happiness.

Here is a link to lots of pictures of happy people. I found a lot of smiling faces. It was good. Cheered me right up. Cool art also cheers me up. So here is some cool art. Escher was great. Here is another google image search link to some Escher art.

"University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin Seligman, author of the new book, Authentic Happiness, says, "the happiest people spend the least time alone. They pursue personal growth and intimacy; they judge themselves by their own yardsticks, never against what others do or have." Materialism is "toxic for happiness," says University of Illinois psychologist Ed Diener.

"Life satisfaction occurs most often" when people are in "flow" -- that is, "engaged in absorbing activities that cause them to forget themselves, lose track of time and stop worrying," says Claremont psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. "Forgiveness is the trait most strongly linked to happiness," says University of Michigan psychologist Christopher Peterson: "It's the queen of all virtues, and probably the hardest to come by." Gratitude, humility and altruism are also cited by a Harvard psychologist. - 1