Just been watching Peter Kay's Britain's Got Some Extra Pop Factor... and Then Some (his parody of X Factor and the rest). He only went and did my Stephen Hawking on Hole in the Wall gag!
That seemed a little harsh didn’t it? But I was just taking a leaf out John Parkin’s book. It’s a great book. Or at least a book with a great title... it’s called F**k It: The Ultimate Spiritual Way (published by Hay House). Rachel has bought it for a friend for Christmas so I had a flick through it (I'm secretly hoping she might have got me a copy for Christmas too!).
You've not seen it? Then let me try to describe it to you. Two teams of "celebrities" (if you watch it you'll understand my use of the quotes) compete to avoid getting knocked into a pool of water by a wall moving towards them. Now here's the thing... there is a hole in the wall. The only way to avoid getting knocked into the water is to assume a pose that matches the shape of the hole. And that's it! It is quite spectacularly awful television. But, and here's my only defence. It is strangely watchable.
In one of my earliest posts last year I noted that some folks had claimed to have gone and found the coffin of Jesus, and that film-maker James Cameron had made rather bizarre comparisons to the Beatles. It brought to mind John Lennon's comments, made back in 1966 at the height of Beatlemania, that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus.
Alexei Sayle seems to be popping up here and there on the telly again, nearly 30 years after he surfaced as the first compere of the Comedy Store in London and became one of the leading lights of the 'alternative' comedy circuit. He's done a fair bit since then, including presenting a few TV series, writing a few novels, and pissing off the people of Liverpool.My ambition is to have more money than sense. I've got £8 so I'm half way there.And the brilliant:
Is it fat, bald, and Jewish in here, or is it me?
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,The kicker is in the final line. Knowing the difference. When I mentioned the Serenity Prayer at the Skeptics in the Pub earlier this year, a guy in the audience shouted out that the prayer is used at meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. I looked over to see who had called out and saw him stood at the bar next to three empty pint glasses. I doubt he's still a member.
courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
As I was watching the trailer for the film the other day with a friend, one of the talking heads that appeared was Dr Jane Goodall. Jane Goodall is a reknowned primatologist, anthropologist, and conservationist. For almost 50 years she has studied the behaviour of chimpanzees, having arrived at the Gombe National Park in Tanganyika (now Tanzania) in 1960, where she established the Gombe Stream Research Centre. She was one of the first people to observe chimpanzees using tools, something that had hithertoo been considered to be a uniquely huma trait. In 1977 the Jane Goodall Institute was set up with a mission statement to "advance the power of individuals to take informed and compassionate action to improve the environment for all living things". In 2002, Jane Goodall became a UN "Messenger of Peace", and in 2003 she was a made a Dame of the British Empire.
My son, Ross, turned 4 today... Happy Birthday Ross!
Last week I was interviewed by someone writing an article for O magazine, the Oprah Winfrey magazine. He was in Los Angeles, where it was apparently 93ºF, I was in Knutsford in Cheshire, where it was pissing down. The article is going to be about "chance encounters" and so I talked about how I felt we generally underestimate the role that seemingly chance encounters play in determining our life paths, and that we should embrace the fact that "chance" plays such an important part in our lives (the flip-side is that we need to also recognize that we often do have control over things that we sometimes see as beyond our control). Hopefully he'll make some sense out of whatever I was babbling on about. I believe the article is due to appear early 2009.
A year ago today Freya (a.k.a. Fritz, Bella Boo, Baby Jesus, Bum Lord...) was born. Happy 1st Birthday Freya!! We love you to bits!
Speaking of ghosts... as I kind of was in an earlier post, I was recently interviewed for an article on 'haunted' Liverpool for the October issue of the magazine Liverpool.com. You can access this via the liverpool.com website (there is a link in the top right corner of the homepage the last time I looked) or you should be able to go to it directly by clicking here. The article, under the heading "GhostBusting", appears on pages 21-23. See if you can guess why I quite like the article...
Stop press: J. K. Rowling is really, really rich! It would appear that J K Rowling is the world's best paid author. She earns around £3 million a week. No? Really? Who'd have thought it? She sells zillions of books in practically every country around the world, shares in the profits of the films made of said books (which have apparently made more money than all the James Bond films put together), and then there's all the merchandising. Next they'll be telling us that research confirms that bears do indeed shit in the woods.
I read last week that England rugby player, Jonny Wilkinson, has become a much happier person since reading about certain aspects of quantum physics (Schrödinger's cat in particular) as well as becoming more involved with Buddhism. Good for him.
Long before Sir Noel Edmonds* wasted hours upon hours, but making shedloads of money, opening boxes in Deal or No Deal, there was a US show called Let's Make a Deal. This included a far less drawn out affair in which contestants chose one of three doors. Behind one of the doors was a prize, such as a car, whilst behind the other doors lay nothing. Once the contestant had made his or her choice, the show's presenter, Monty Hall, would then open one of the doors that had nothing behind it and ask the contestant if they would like to change from their original chosen door (which remains closed) to the one remaining door. And that was it.
Some weeks ago, a certain Mr Felix rang me up to tell me he was planning on publishing a new magazine (yes, the very one you now have in your hands). He was looking for people to write for the magazine who were credible and authoritative on all things paranormal. And so, he contacted me… to see if I knew anyone who was credible and authoritative on all things paranormal. As I couldn’t think of anyone who fitted the bill, we agreed I could write something instead. And here it is.
We've been doing something called 'Yogalates' recently which is where you do yoga poses while drinking a cup of milky coffee. It's actually a mix of yoga and pilates, and is the concoction of an Australian woman, Louise Solomon. I just wanted to ask, has anyone else ever used the term or ever heard the term "gaze adristy with the eyes..."? It's that word 'adristy'. She seems to use it to mean a soft focus, but I've never heard it before. Is it an Australianism?
The principle of choice describes the reality that I am in charge of my life. I choose it all, I always have, I always will. Because, at bottom, the world is simple, there are paths in the universe, a natural flow that makes my choice, simple and obvious. I discover these natural paths when I am open and receptive, when I sense what is inside and what is outside my body. As you and I acknowledge our self-responsibility and as we open ourselves to the paths, we flow together. Our paths are harmonious and we create a joyful community and society.Will Schutz, Profound Simplicity (1979, p. 78).
Or rather listen to her... you can still listen online to the radio show mentioned below by clicking here. I gather it will be available until Sunday 15th June, after which it will be replaced by Trisha's next show! Our bit begins about 1 hour 16 minutes into the show, so if you want to you can skip the (frankly depressing) part with the woman who has written a book called No-one Wants You: Memoirs of a Child Forced into Prostitution (an undoubted best-seller with a joyous title like that).
The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed from the list over on the right that an event called "The Big Hope" is currently underway at Liverpool Hope University. This Global Youth Congress, involving several hundred delegates from over 50 countries, is the University's main contribution to the year-long celebrations in Liverpool as European Capital of Culture 2008.
After what seemed like an age, the backing track kicked in. This was it! Now the first note was fine. I think as first notes go it was faultless. I had nothing against the first note. It was the second note and the vast majority of all the notes that followed that seemed to cause the problem. (As Eric Morecambe once noted: "...I was playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order!"). Once I'd missed the timing on the second note it went from bad to worse. I might have hit the occasional note after that but probably more by fluke than by design. It was indeed a guitar fiasco.
Oh dear. I've done it again... I seem to have gone and registered to take part in this year's Great Manchester 10K Run. You would have thought I might have learned my lesson from last year, but apparently not. That's me in the picture trying to look all smug after dragging myself around 10 km of Manchester's City Centre last year. Forced smile, you say?The world is like a ride at an amusement park.
And when you choose to go on it, you think that
it's real because that's how powerful our minds are.
And the ride goes up and down and round and round.
It has thrills and chills, and it's very brightly coloured,
and it's very loud and it's fun, for a while.
Some people have been on the ride for a long time,
and they begin to question - is this real, or is this just a ride?
Bill Hicks 1961-1994
The second talk of the three, however, was a last-minute arrangement. It was for a group called 'Skeptics in the Pub', which meet each month in London in (no surprises here...) a pub. I was asked to stand in for a speaker who was unable to make it, and so I agreed. For some reason, I was really nervous before giving this talk. And I mean really nervous. As it turned out, it seemed to go fine. However, the reason I mention it here is because of an email I received a day or so after the talk from someone who had been there, and who had subsequently taken a look at this blog. He, like me, had only recently started to learn to play the guitar, although he's now been learning for about 4 years. In his words (and I'm hoping he won't mind me including them here):Congrats on the guitar lessons. I'm 33 and started guitar when I was almost 29. Stick with it - it gets better after a year or so. Eventually there's a shift when you stop feeling like you're playing catch-up to the demands of the tune, and instead suddenly you really feel like you're driving each note. It's the coolest thing.Not only did these words reassure me that learning the guitar gets easier after a year or so (and I am finding this), but they also made me think of them as a possible metaphor for life... that is, there comes a time where you don't feel as though you're going through life trying to keep up with the pace being dictated to you by others ("playing catch-up to the demands of the tune"), but instead you start feeling as though you're in control of your life ("suddenly you really feel like you're driving each note"). And when that happens, like the man says, it's the coolest thing.
Imagine you are waiting to be served in a bank when an armed robber enters and fires a shot. The bullet hits you in the arm.How lucky or unlucky would you regard this event? We asked people to rate the event (along with other events) on a scale from -3 (very unlucky) to +3 (very lucky), and found that there was a wide range of opinions regarding the luckiness of events such as this. While some people consider this event to be unlucky, others consider it to be actually rather lucky. In both cases, the judgement of how lucky or unlucky the event is made by imagining how the event might have been different from what happened. For example, those who consider the event to be unlucky can easily imagine a scenario where the bullet might have missed you altogether and so see it as being rather unlucky to have been hit by the bullet. Meanwhile, people who see the event as lucky are imagining a situation where the bullet might have hit you in the chest causing much more damage, perhaps even killing you. By comparison, a bullet in the arm is actually quite lucky. This just goes to show that an event is not necessarily lucky or unlucky in itself, it becomes perceived as such by the person making the observation. What was particularly interesting was that lucky people were more likely to rate the event as lucky while unlucky people were more likely to rate it as unlucky.
As I say, it is now 10 years since I was awarded a PhD for my contribution to this project on the psychology of luck. In the years since then my interest in this topic faded somewhat as I pursued other lines of research. In the meantime, my PhD supervisor, and the instigator of the 'luck project', Richard Wiseman, went on to conduct a whole lot more research on the psychology of luck which culminated in a best-selling book called The Luck Factor (Arrow Books, 2004) in which Richard identified four main principles that could "change your luck - and your life"!
I hope my brother isn't reading this. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't want him to be 'free'. In fact, quite the opposite, which is why I bought him Tom Hodgkinson's book How To Be Free for Christmas. The only thing is, I haven't actually given him the book yet as I haven't seen him since before Christmas.We have a duty to look into our hearts and discover our vocation, find our gift. Once we have done this, we will find that other parts of our life follow quite naturally... ... And how do you find your vocation, your gift? The answer is simply to do nothing for as long as you possibly can. In the same way that wise gardeners advise that the first step when taking over a new garden is to do nothing for a year, in order to see what grows there and only then to design your own unique, useful and beautiful garden, so I would advise taking a few months off, or even a year, if you can manage it. (p. 48-49)
Do less. Add space. Cut down on your scheduled visits and meetings to an absolute bare minimum to make way for the more enjoyable and life-affirming 'things that just happen'. When you let things happen to you, life starts happening too. So, allow giant gaps between appointments. Allow giant gaps in your life, because your life is in the gaps. (p.81)
I think I've got to get myself a pair of Ugg boots. They are clearly the footwear of choice this season. Last year it was Heelys, but this year it's the Ugg. Every third person seems to be wearing a pair. But am I the only one who thinks they look ever so slightly like slippers for the infirm?
I can't say I've ever had a lucid dream (not that I can remember), although I gather it is something you can train yourself to do. As I understand it, part of this training involves asking yourself at various points during your waking life, "am I asleep or am I awake?". The idea is that you will eventually start asking yourself this question in your sleep when you are dreaming, thus raising the possibility of becoming aware of yourself dreaming."At sunrise, Phil will emerge from his burrow at Gobbler's Knob, and his handlers will announce whether or not Phil has seen his shadow. If Phil sees his shadow, legend has it that we can expect six more weeks of winter weather. No shadow indicates an early spring."Back in 2001, one guy, an economist, even undertook some kind of analysis of Phil's forecasting data and concluded that over the years he had been around 70% successful and predicting either an early or late Spring.
ther forecaster Phil Connors who who is assigned to cover the event for something like the third or fourth year running. Connors is, to say the least, fairly cynical about the whole thing and can't wait till the piece is done so he can get the hell out of Punxsutawney and back to civilization. The trouble is, a blizzard means that all routes out of Punxsutawney are blocked and so he has to stay there for a second night. The next morning he is woken up at 6am, just like the morning before, by the same song on the radio (Sonny and Cher's I Got You Babe). He initially thinks that the local radio presenters must have simply forgotten to change the script from the previous morning, but slowly as he goes about his day he realizes that he is actually living the previous day again. It's still Groundhog Day! Eventually the end of the day comes again and he's back in his hotel bed (because just as with the previous day a blizzard prevents him from leaving town). At 6am the next morning he wakes again to the same song on the radio! And so it goes on... every morning he awakes only to relive Groundhog Day. Imagine that! Imagine having to live the same day over and over and over again. Once the realization sets in that no matter what he does, Phil Connors is going to relive the same day again and again he even tries a variety of ways of killing himself... only to find himself waking up at 6am on Groundhog Day to the sound of I Got You Babe. There's no way out.
