After years of work, New Zealand scholar Sally-Ann Lambert just released volume 2 of her 9-volume linguistics series.
“Hlingit Word Encyclopedia: The Origin of Copper” is a 630-page encyclopedia of the SE Alaskan native language Tlingit. She traveled to Sitka for a mid-January book release and found one little problem: none of the Tlingit native speakers or scholars there recognized the language in it.
[more inside]
posted by msalt
on Feb 8, 2012 -
97 comments
As we near completion of the current Year of the Rat, it feels appropriate to tell a story about how rat appreciation started, how the ratitor came to be, and how the organic unfolding of rat haus reality awareness manifested, first in the building of the balsa wood house itself (preceded by the rat cabin and
ancestral rat hans), then in its image scribing, next as a gift-in-photo series, and now as this virtual gathering place for consciousness to further explore, expand, and extend itself.
posted by deanklear
on Jan 20, 2012 -
6 comments
The Triumph of New-Age Medicine "Medicine has long decried acupuncture, homeopathy, and the like as dangerous nonsense that preys on the gullible. Again and again, carefully controlled studies have shown alternative medicine to work no better than a placebo. But now many doctors admit that alternative medicine often seems to do a better job of making patients well, and at a much lower cost, than mainstream care—and they’re trying to learn from it." [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Jun 15, 2011 -
278 comments
Dare 2 Share Ministries offers
profiles and tips on how to "share your faith" with fourteen different types of friends a teen Christian might have, such as
Andy the Atheist,
Marty the Mormon,
Jenna the Jew,
Sid the Satanist,
Mo the Muslim and
Willow the Wiccan. If none of those strategies work, they also offer
articles on how to "use the buzz in current teen culture to initiate God-talk with your friends" by "sharing your faith" through
Indiana Jones,
Halo 3,
Brokeback Mountain,
Kung Fu Panda and
The X Files.
posted by jardinier
on Apr 8, 2011 -
299 comments
Touched By Your Presence, Dear: Ex-Blondie songwriter and bassist Gary Lachman (aka "Gary Valentine") blogs (and is interviewed) about his books on Jung, Steiner, Ouspensky, and Sixties mysticism, and his time spent toiling in the fields of Crowleyana and The Gurdjieff Work.
posted by darth_tedious
on Sep 14, 2010 -
20 comments
How a misunderstanding about Chinese characters has led many astray. The explication of the Chinese word for crisis as made up of two components signifying danger and opportunity is due partly to wishful thinking, but mainly to a fundamental misunderstanding about how terms are formed in Mandarin and other Sinitic languages... Among the most egregious of the radical errors in this statement is the use of the exotic term “Ideogram” to refer to Chinese characters. Linguists and writing theorists avoid “ideogram” as a descriptive referent for hanzi (Mandarin) / kanji (Japanese) / hanja (Korean) because only an exceedingly small proportion of them actually convey ideas directly through their shapes... [more inside]
posted by KokuRyu
on May 6, 2010 -
83 comments
Welcome to the charming world of Vissarion: the Siberian, vegan,
reincarnation of Christ, who also happens to be a Polygamist. When he lost his job as a traffic cop in 1991, Sergei Torop changed his name to Vissarion and began spreading his message about how to attain moral perfection, drive out negative energy, and survive the coming Apocalypse. Today the Community of Vassarion in the Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia numbers around 10,000,
while a further 50,000 follow his teachings in the world beyond. [more inside]
posted by Secret Life of Gravy
on Oct 16, 2009 -
28 comments
11:11. Just in case you haven't already heard about it, people all over the world have been experiencing the most amazing phenomenon in the history of our planet. I suggest that you click on
The Rainbow Chamber link to continue.
posted by mrgrimm
on Nov 11, 2008 -
125 comments
Esalen: Where "California" Bubbled Up (one photo mildly NSFW) For many others in America and around the world, Esalen stands more vaguely for that metaphorical point where “East meets West” and is transformed into something uniquely and mystically American or New Agey. And for a great many others yet, Esalen is simply that notorious bagno-bordello where people had sex and got high throughout the 1960s and 1970s before coming home talking psychobabble and dangling crystals. In short, Esalen is in every way, even geologically, California at its most extreme. It is its caricature, as well as its noblest expression.
posted by jason's_planet
on Feb 11, 2008 -
14 comments
Dire Gnosis " In 1999, I started circulating a booklet called Beyond 2012, listing information, theories and ideas from diverse sources which predict 2012 as an evolutionary pinnacle; a leap in consciousness; a dimensional shift; an end of linear time; an encounter with an asteroid; mass genetic mutation from solar or cosmic rays; etc. The ideas come from scientists, artists, mystics, alternative Egyptologists, prophets, divinatory systems, shamanic psychonauts, mythology, and Mesoamerican research.....some of it originated before the Mayan Long Count was known about, outside archaeological circles. For example, the McKenna brothers, who found a complex fractal "timewave" encoded in the ancient Chinese I Ching oracle, discovered its 2012-termination point several years before they heard anything about the Mayan Long Count."
Drugs, aliens, spiritualism, impending world catastrophe. If it's New Agey and weird, it's here: A Rosetta Stone for New Age catastrophism! Don't miss:
What's New #1,
What's New #2,
What's New #3,
#4,
#5....
WARNING! - blue/green/purple/red/yellow text on a black background with a picture of a man staring upwards, lightning shooting into his eyes, with a "ZZzzzap" sound file to hammer the point across. (safe for work, I guess)
posted by troutfishing
on Aug 20, 2003 -
22 comments
Detailed instructions on how to give birth to the reincarnation of Dr Hans Fink of Portland Oregon. Or Mother Teresa. Or Lady Diana. Or anybody else you feel like. Isn't modern technology something?
posted by signal
on Feb 22, 2002 -
2 comments
We've heard of intelligence and emotional intelligence, but what about spiritual intelligence?
Gary Zukav is spiritually
brilliant. He frequently appears on Oprah, from which I assume (accepting all implicit risks) that his audience consists largely of women. Which is too bad, because men have quite a lot to learn from this man as well, and it would do a world of good (being, unjustly, a man's world) if every man did.
posted by sudama
on Sep 20, 2000 -
39 comments
Voodoo science? I've been seeing these things at CompUSA lately: little gizmos that you stick on your home appliances, cell phones, monitors, etc. to protect you from all those eee-vil EMF's. The site appears to contain more marketese than convincing science. Does anybody out there know: 1) whether everyday Electro-Magnetic Fields are as dangerous as these guys are saying, and 2) if so, whether a little chunk of inert material is going to have any positive effect? The whole thing sounds kind of fishy to me.
posted by harmful
on Jun 6, 2000 -
5 comments
