Those of you who have been regular readers of this blog know that we’ve recently been through a winter of discontent and spent some time south of the border. Now that spring has arrived in Michigan I thought it was time to give my blog a facelift with new header images, a new title, and new overarching theme: Embracing Reality. The theme is a result of my having been influenced by a saying from Byron Katie’s book, Loving What Is, in which she says that When you argue with reality, you lose—but only 100 percent of the time. If you’ve . . . → Read More: New Directions
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 Comments are closed  Blog  Agent Orange, agribusiness, anti-vaxxers, autism, Byron Katie, Catholic, childhood diseases, church, Copernicus, corn, crops, evidence, Galileo, geocentric, GMO, GMOs, golden rice, heliocentric, herbicides, hypnosis, medical, NLP, pesticides, plague, politics, reality, RoundUp, Sherry Tenpenny, small pox, soybeans, spring, torture, vaccinations, Vietnam, Vitamin A I owe the title of this blog entry to William Shakespeare, who put those words in the mouth of King Richard III. Richard’s words were a metaphor for difficult times under the previous king rather than commentary on a polar vortex of the sort we’ve been experiencing in much of the U.S. this winter. For many in the States, this has been the coldest winter with the most ice and snow that we’ve had for several years. Meanwhile, Melbourne, Australia, has been so hot that those playing tennis in the Australian Open have been wilting in the heat, . . . → Read More: The Winter of Our Discontent Comments are closed Blog agriculture, alternative, argue, auditory acuity, bees, Byron Katie, CAM, cancer, change, cold, complementary, crime, discontent, environment, find, genetically modified, global climate, GMO, Hamlet, hearing, Hell, herbicides, I-94, ice, ICIM, integrative, International College of Integrative Medicine, Jackson, Jenny Rymer, Lakeshore Acupuncture, Leah Ke, medicine, MI, Milton, ND, Paradise Lost, persist, pesticides, Polonius, poverty, reality, resist, Richard III, risk, Satan, seek, seeking and finding, Shakespeare, snow, St. Joseph, war on According to a top Saudi cleric, driving damages women’s ovaries. Does the fact (reality) that some people believe that make it true, if only for them? What—exactly—is the relationship between reality and what we believe? You may know people who believe that their beliefs accurately reflect reality. If you’ve been reading this blog for very long, you know that one of my recurrent themes is the need for an evidence procedure that allows individuals to base their beliefs on reality to the degree that it’s possible. It was, for example, perfectly logical for our ancient ancestors to believe that . . . → Read More: The Reality of Beliefs Comments are closed Blog ancestors, ancient, atheism, atmosphere, babies, beliefs, border, Byron Katie, Catholic, cleric, CO2, driving, earth, fossil fuels, geography, global climate change, global warming, heaven, Hell, humans, Imagine, Islam, John Lennon, microscopes, mountain, Mr. Everest, Muslim, oceans, ovaries, Protestant, reality, river, Saudi, Shia, Sunni, technologies, technology, telescopes, war, women It has been almost two months since my last blog entry. I have been busy, and a lot has been happening, some of which I thought would make good posts, and some of which interfered with my writing. In that category, if you have been following Debra’s and my SCS posts, you know that Debra needed to have a complete hysterectomy. She is now recovering and still hoping to spend the coming winter in Florida, which she has been thinking of as a “healing garden.” Some of the discussion following the shooting of the children at the Sandy Hook, . . . → Read More: Evidence Procedures, Part 2 Comments are closed Blog argue with reality, automatic weapons, belief systems, beliefs, Byron Katie, children, CO2, congress, debate, defense, defense spending, economic well-being, evidence procedure, fossil fuels, funding, global climate change, global domination, global warming, health care, human activity, industrialized nations, killing, Loving What Is, metamodel, military-industrial, NLP, Norway, reality, religious belief, research, revenue, Sandy Hook, science, scientific, Scotland, shooting, spending, Switzerland, tax code, weapons training, Wild Bill Hickok, Wyatt Earp In case you haven’t noticed, the United States is embroiled in a political and financial conflict that is influencing the stability of world financial markets. One of the headlines of a recent (9 August 2011) New York Times article states, “Wave of worry threatens to build on itself: Hesitation over the uncertainty of the economy can make things worse.” That led me to wonder the degree to which perception can actually determine reality. The term I associate with perception as a determiner of reality is self-fulling prophecy. Although the concept of prophesies determining future events is ancient, its modern . . . → Read More: Perceptual Frames and Self-fulling Prophesy Comments are closed Blog Abraham-Hicks, beliefs, Byron Katie, conscious awareness, Darwin Awards, desire, desires, disappointment, economic bubble, FDR, fear, fold 'em, heliocentric, herd mentality, hold 'em, hope, Kenny Rogers, law of attraction, map, mirror neuron, optimism, optimistic, perception, perceptual frame, planking, planning, real, reality, Richard Bandler, Robert K. Merton, self-fulfilling prophesy, social structure, social theory, south sea company, stock market, territory, the Gambler, Wall Street Previously—”I Read the News Today (Oh, Boy),” 4 June 4 2011—I lamented the need for greater understanding and appreciation of the essential premises of Alfred Krozybski’s Science and Sanity, which evolved into the metamodel of NLP. Those premises are basically a cry to pay closer attention to reality, known in both Korzybski’s work and NLP as “territory,” which is distinct from “maps,” which are human beliefs. The problem is that beliefs too often argue with—disagree with—reality, and, as Byron Katie (Loving What Is) has said, “When you argue with reality, you lose. But only every time.” If you want . . . → Read More: Arguing with Reality Comments are closed Blog ABC News, advertising, belief systems, beliefs, Byron Katie, cancer, Cigarettes, circular reasoning, COPD, Copernicus, DEA, drug, eggs, emphysema, evidence, fraud, Galileo, heart disease, Jesus, job creation, jobs, Judge Your Neighbor, Kent, Korzybski, loop, maps, marijuana, medical, medieval, middle earth, money, PAD, pharmaceuticals, safety, science, tax rates, taxes, territory, tobacco, TV, waste, water The “Bell Curve” is the common expression for what is otherwise known as Standard Normal Distribution. The concept basically states that in any category, most members of the category will be grouped in the middle, with fewer members at the extremes. Wikipedia provides a fancy definition: In probability theory, the normal (or Gaussian) distribution, is a continuous probability distribution that is often used as a first approximation to describe real-valued random variables that tend to cluster around a single mean value. The graph of the associated probability density function is “bell”-shaped, and is known as the Gaussian function or . . . → Read More: The Bell Curve Theory of Life Comments are closed Blog apple, bell curve, black/white, blueberry, Byron Katie, conservative, Democrats, demonization, demonize, frame, framing, frozen evaluation, George Lakoff, liberal, lobbying, map, marketing, men, mental maps, metaphor, Pareto, perception, perspective, pie, pigs, polarization, poor, progressive, public relations, reality, Reification, Reify, Republicans, rich, standard normal distribution, strategies, strategy, territory, universal quantifiers, values, wealth, women |
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