Friday, March 31, 2006

From Cure to Hypnosis

Watching the Cure (1997) by Kiyoshi Kurosawa (1955-) led me to Franz Mesmer (1734 – 1815). Mesmer is the guy who discovered Animal Magnetism (also called Mesmerism). Interestingly, Mesmer's name is the basis of the word mesmerization and the evolution of his ideas and practices led James Braid (1795-1860) to develop hypnosis first described in his book Neurypnology: or the Rationale of Nervous Sleep (1843). That's where Braid coined the words hypnotism, hypnotize, and hypnotist.

Howz that for a meme?

Ain't No Sunshine

Ain't no sunshine when she's gone.
It's not warm when she's away.
Ain't no sunshine when she's gone.
And she's always gone to long.
Anytime she goes away.

...

Ain't no sunshine when she's gone.
Only darkness every day.
Ain't no sunshine when she's gone.
And this house just ain't no home.
Anytime she goes away.

...

- Ain't No Sunshine by Bill Withers

Thursday, March 16, 2006

Tonic

Came across Tonic via Mark's blog. Can't wait to wade through the code! :)

From what I've seen so far, this was very disappointing. I hate templating systems in PHP. PHP is a templating system! Why don't people get this? *sigh*

Man! I gotta find time to work on Inertia. Haven't touched it for a while now but checking out Tonic has got me excited again. :)

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Evolution of Enlightened Society (sic)

While channel surfing I happened to see a speech by the President of India. I've never seen him speak before so it was fun watching him talk. What made this talk interesting was his "action oriented solution for evolving a happy, prosperous and peaceful society in our planet" which he called the Enlightened Society and the proposal for an Organization of Spiritual Glad tidings. He even lists out what could be the mission of this Organization! I find points 2 and 3 of this mission interesting:


2. Using the music as a binding force of violent hearts throughout the world.

3. Making fine arts as a part of the curriculum in the secondary and university education.


Here's the cool part: The President Of India has his own website and you can find all his speeches there.

Here's the one I'm talking about:

Evolution of Enlightened Society, Address at the valedictory function of the international conference on 'human values and ethics in the global scenario', Bangalore on 19-02-2006

Sunday, March 12, 2006

Death Touch

Heard about a Chinese martial art called Dim Mak on a show where they showed someone knock people out only by touching them.

At first I thought to myself, "Nah! Can't be real. They seem to be faking it."

So I googled it and found some interesting stuff.

The Science Behind Dim Mak by Dr Michael Kelly
Dim Mak and Acupuncture by Paul Brecher
Dim Mak Point Strike Applications From The Taijiquan Chi Forms
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_touch
http://www.dimmakworld.com/

Need to revisit this when I get the time.