The Outer Hebrides
I'm picking up my daughter, she's finishing up a 6 week summer camp. But there's lots of summer left, and the girl next to her is lamenting what she'll do. I tell her that her parents will probably find another camp for her and then take a vacation to Greece or someplace without her.
"Why Greece" she asks, and I explain it's because they serve free ice cream there, playing, as it were, for a reaction.
Now the little girls parents are there and they're talking to me about where they'll go for the rest of the summer vacation. Her mother, she's a frumpy middle aged woman in a floral dress, her father is covered head to toe in fur. And to make matters worse he's got a plastic flesh-colored mask on to try and make him look normal, but it's not succeeding, you can see the hair popping out the eye holes and he explains to me that it's a genetic condition. And they continue discussing where they'll go and decide upon the Outer Hebrides.
"AH, Scotland" I say, and he looks at me oddly and explains to me that the Outer Hebrides are in Peru, he was stationed there once for a time he should know. And I'm certain they're off the coast of Scotland, or maybe Iceland or Denmark but I'm betting they've got to be islands someplace but I'm loathe to argue with someone already so disadvantaged, and he explains to me the purpose of his research there and my mind is filled with graphic images.
Apparently every 12, 000 years there's a great salt flood over the entire Amazon Basin, and then a fresh water flood, and then life there starts anew, and as he's explaining I'm seeing a giant map of a square South America flooding from the Equator down and then the flood-waters circle about the end and run up to the top, there's arrows and graphics and it's a bit elaborate, like something you might see on the Discovery Channel.
I'm still not buying it and after they've left I go to the University Library where I talk to the librarian and he begins to look for maps of the Outer Hebrides for me...."The Furry Guy" he's saying, "Yeah, he's my supervisor...I've got to have a talk with him on Monday" and from the tone I gather the Librarian's going to fire him for being furry or bad at geography...
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- Category: Dreams
Magic & Mystery in Tibet - Alexandra David-Neel
Now this is great. This is travel literature. For a variety of reasons, which I'll illuminate below:
1) She's speaking of a place that has disappeared. The Tibet she has traveled was razed to the ground by the Chinese in the 1950's, what we have left are only travelers accounts, myths and cheap reproductions.
2) She talks of the miracles she witnesses - the thought projection, creation of doppelgangers, telepathy, internal combustion and other mysteries with some skepticism and common sense. And she reports many of these things as first hand experiences, not just relaying stories.
3) She interprets what she sees without prejudice and with (for the time) a fine balance of common sense skepticism and open-mindedness. You can't ask for more.
4) She illuminates you as to the 99% of Tibetan Buddhist dark magic and beliefs that somehow escaped export to a gullible western public. It's worth knowing, if only so that you can laugh in the face of the next "enlightened" white yogi who tries it on with his chanting of the "on-no-ma-ne-pad-me-ohm..".
And if she's somehow exaggerated or embellished her tales and interpretation of the events, who can blame her? It makes for a far far better story.
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- Category: Books
Calgary Herald - Find the Webpage
The Calgary Herald has a new little game that visitors to their site can play. It's called "Find the Webpage". (Hint: It's hidden under layers and layers of pop-up and pop-under advertising. But if you click enough times you just might find it.)
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- Category: Rants
Monopolies, Nepotism & Shaw
How much would you pay your kids if you had the monopoly on cable based television and internet in Western Canada? Well, the figures are out...
"JR Shaw was 10th at $9.1 million, Jim Shaw $11.6 million, Brad Shaw $17.3 million".
If you haven't already lost your appetite, you can read more here. That's a lot of money for doing a pretty bad job, but when you're the only show in town you can do as you please...
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- Category: Who's Your ISP?
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