color therapy

Scientists, who have have studied color and light extensively, recognize that colors bring about emotional reactions to individuals. Our reactions and attitudes to colors differ from person to person, which makes an interesting study in itself. Our attraction to certain colors may very well signal areas where we are imbalanced. Understanding why certain colors effect us favorably while others bring about negative feelings helps us along our healing journeys.

If you live long enough

[9/19/06] Aubrey De Grey achieves major breakthrough.

[10/29/05] Ellen Heber-Katz, professor of immunology at Wistar, announced that she and her team had accidentally created a “miracle mouse” that “can regenerate amputated limbs or badly damaged organs, making it able to recover from injuries that would kill or permanently disable normal animals,” reported the British Sunday Times.

[11/24/05] Ray Kurzweil and the Singularity / Part 2

[9/15/05] Aubrey de Grey is still going strong.

[6/3/05] Aubrey de Grey thinks so too

[2/9/05] If you live long enough, you might live forever. So says Ray Kurzweil anyway.

ZabaSearch

How much information does the internet have? Search yourself.

All Believers Network

The Hawaii-based All Believers Network (Belnet) encourages individuals to examine their own faiths objectively and explore how scriptural passages that build barriers against other faiths might be reinterpreted to become more inclusive. Rather than focus on ritualistic differences among religions, Belnet tries to examine the underlying areas in common.

[9/6/06] Saleem Ahmed, founder of the All Believers Network (Belnet), just may have the recipe for world peace. Ahmed, a Muslim, has created a monthly forum for people of all faiths to gather and discuss the common threads between their respective religions. His gatherings attract anywhere from eight to 50 people of various faiths including Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Subud, Zoroastrian, Baha’i, Buddhist, Jain, Sufi, Sikh and Hawaiian Spiritualist. And he would love the list to grow.

junk mail

If you decide that you don’t want to receive prescreened offers of credit and insurance, you have two choices: You can opt out of receiving them for five years or opt out of receiving them permanently. Call toll-free 1-888-5-OPTOUT (1-888-567-8688) or visit www.optoutprescreen.com for details. The telephone number and website are operated by the major consumer reporting companies. When you call or visit the website, you’ll be asked to provide certain personal information, including your home telephone number, name, Social Security number, and date of birth. The information you provide is confidential and will be used only to process your request to opt out.

-- courtesy of Todd Haverkos

gas saving devices

Over the years, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has tested myriad gas-saving devices that burst onto the consumer scene: devices that bleed air into the carburetor or bubble air through a container of water and antifreeze mixture, fuel-line gadgets that heat the gas before it enters the carburetor, magnets that clamp to the inside or outside of the fuel line to change the gasoline's molecular structure and metallic fuel-line additives with dissimilar metals that claim to ionize the fuel.

Experts say they all have one thing in common. "They don't work," says John Millett, spokesman for the EPA. "Believe me, if it were that easy, cars would be built that way, especially the magnets and whirligig devices. It's smart to be skeptical about any claims like that."

The EPA to date has tested in the neighborhood of 100 gas-saving devices, the most recent at the request of the Federal Trade Commission, and only six "indicated a very small improvement in fuel economy without an increase in exhaust emissions."

Popular Mechanics magazine's experts tested seven fuel-saving products for its September 2005 issue and found no significant change in miles-per-gallon ratings. Two actually increased fuel consumption by 20%, according to the writer, and a third one melted before they could complete the test.

Snakes on a Plane

Whether it's a good movie or a dreadful movie is, to everybody except the bean counters at New Line Cinema, beside the point. Even they may be in on the joke, though: There have been no advance screenings of the $30 million high-flying action film, for critics or anyone else, not (the studio claims) because the movie stinks from the neck down but because what's most fun about ``Snakes" has been the Internet-driven hype that surrounds it. That hype comes down to one thing: the boneheaded comic purity of the movie's title.

In the year since a Hollywood writer named Josh Friedman posted on his Web diary that he'd been script-doctoring a movie of that title, the ``SoaP" meme has grown like Topsy. It's the latest iteration of viral marketing, an Internet kudzu that initially took on a life of its own against the wishes of the film's corporate keepers. And it's almost certainly the most visible example of a sensibility that didn't exist before the digital revolution: Mass Camp.

When word got out that the film's studio, New Line, had changed the title to the supremely bland ``Pacific Air 121," the blogosphere erupted in rage. The suits didn't get it: What was exciting people was the notion of B-movie junk that for once declared itself as B-movie junk. The original title pulled away the velvet Hollywood curtain of hypocrisy and called the thing for what it was: product. Such honesty was delightful, crass, and cheering, as if ``Jurassic Park" had been retitled ``Steven Spielberg Presents Very Realistic Dinosaurs Eating People."

The studio backed down. ``Snakes on a Plane" it was. Then things started getting strange.

Your Social IQ

Research shows “people smarts” are as much of a key to success as anything else. What exactly are they? Do you have them? Can they be nurtured?