The Secret Debunked

bent on helping people refrain from drinking the kool-aid, i offer more critical thinking on "the secret," which says that through the "law of attraction" you can get a spot on Oprah, win the lottery and have or be anything that you truly believe.

that's a mighty powerful secret. i heard on the radio this morning about a man, imprisoned for 16 years, who was freed recently after DNA evidence proved he was innocent. i wondered, how does the "law of attraction" apply there?

did he attract a 16 year prison sentence to his life? or did something horrendous happen to an innocent man?

here's what they're saying in creator's rhonda byrne's australia, where she's known as a commercial producer.
here's what newsweek has to say:

But that's not what "The Secret" is saying. Its explicit claim is that you can manipulate objective physical reality—the numbers in a lottery drawing, the actions of other people who may not even know you exist—through your thoughts and feelings. In the words of "author and personal empowerment advocate" Lisa Nichols: "When you think of the things you want, and you focus on them with all of your intention, then the law of attraction will give you exactly what you want, every time." Every time! Byrne emphasizes that this is a law inherent in "the universe," an inexhaustible storehouse of goodies from which you can command whatever you desire from the comfort of your own living room by following three simple steps: Ask, Believe, Receive.

here are a few other things to think about.
bad things always happens to good people. think about the bad things in your life. did you attract that? in some cases perhaps, but sometimes the world just works that way. there are other "universal laws" at work, not just the "law of attraction."

what about the child who is abused by his parent? is he or she "attracting" that punishment? or doesn't the "law of attraction" work on children?

if you believe in karma, what about it? what if you owe a karmic debt?

what about slavery? did African slaves attract their fate? or didn't the "law of attraction" work that long ago? does the "law of attraction" just work on middle class people with middle class desires?

what about the bad person who always is lucky or "successful?"

does the universe really want everyone to win the lottery because if people really believe this, that's what they'd wish for.

what about the child born with any number of physical ailments? did he or she attract that somehow? can they wish it away?

if i wish and believe harm on another person, will the "law of attraction" work? after all, i'm focusing my thoughts.

the effect of "the secret" could be a bunch of selfish people on a mission to get what they want -- houses, cars, money.

is there an altruistic component to "the secret?" wouldn't the "universe" want that? no, there is not and apparently no. anyone, good intentions or bad, can get what they want if they believe. that's mostly what makes "the secret" hooey.

sure, think good thoughts. but it's more important to do good things for other people. that's not a secret.

salon's take

200 Thread Count Sheets

now i understand the sheets.

H.M. and Memories

"Once they find out about me, it helps them to help other people." Henry M. on NPR

that from H.M., a man who has lost his short-term memory due to a lifesaving operation that stopped him from having seizures. this has helped neuroscientists figure out that memory takes up more space in the brain than previously thought.
Henry's current status:

As for Henry's current status, he lives in a nursing home in Hartford and still travels occasionally to MIT for memory testing. He enjoys doing crossword puzzles and watching detective shows on television. His life is peaceful, if not completely happy. He worries often that he has done something wrong, and it is not possible for him to make any real friends since he cannot remember a person from ten minutes to the next. At times, he seems to have a sense of humor about his condition, as in the following anecdote taken from his biography, Memory's Ghost: The Strange Tale of Mr. M. and the Nature of Memory, by Philip Hilts:

When walking down the corridor at M.I.T. with Henry, Dr. Suzanne Corkin made the usual kind of small talk. "Do you know where you are, Henry?"

Henry grinned. "Why, of course. I'm at M.I.T.!"

Dr. Corkin was a bit surprised. "How do you know that?"

Henry laughed. He pointed to a student nearby with a large M.I.T. emblazoned on his sweatshirt. "Got ya that time!" Henry said.

Mainly, though, he leads a life of quiet confusion, never knowing exactly how old he is (he guesses maybe thirty and is always surprised by his reflection in the mirror) and reliving his grief over the death of his mother every time he hears about it. Though he does not recall his operation, he knows that there is something wrong with his memory and has adopted a philosophical stance on his problems: "It does get me upset, but I always say to myself, what is to be is to be. That's the way I always figure it now."

memory studies at dana.org
montreal neurological institute
american academy of neurology

Mysteries of the Mind

the top 10 mysteries of the mind at livescience.com.
oh heck, there are all sorts of mysteries at livescience.
will california ever fall in the ocean? answer

The Secret About the Secret

backstabbing, lying, but hey, at least Rhonda Byrne, maker of the Secret DVD followed her intentions -- to get rich. that's the story in today's NYT. the Secret teaches thoughts are things and that you can think your way into parking spots and restaurant tables and millions of dollars. it was, after all, "the science of getting rich" that prompted rhonda to think of "the law of attraction." or was it someone elses idea she stole? (read the story)

it is interesting to note that during the interview with the NYT, rhonda wore a

"glittering silver circle affixed with false-eyelash glue to the center of her forehead."

she's rich now, loaded. she can do foolish things like that. but good things happen to bad people.

of course, the video doesn't say anything about thinking your way into the soup kitchen, or starting a community foundation or helping out people who don't have as much as you. it's all about how to get things for you, how to get richer, more successful, more things, a parking spot. that's just icky. so many drank the kool-aid. when did people stop thinking critically and how can we get more people to do so?

it's a money making venture. a bunch of hoo ha. and oprah lifted the secret by hosting the "secret teachers" on her show. One of them even included in her visionary collage words about herself being on oprah. well, what person who has something to sell doesn't want to be on oprah. we'll probably get barak obama for a president, thanks to her backing. and thankfully, that will be a good thing. go barak!

but if oprah does her homework (she may read the NYT story because she says she reads it), she may lash out the way she did with james frey. her show has sort of become like QVC. i still love oprah. i think her producers need to be more discerning. there are so many people who are clamoring to be on her show. they need to tighten up their criteria, do more background work.

from the NYT. how sick is this?:

Last Sunday evening the Hickses relaxed in their $1.4 million luxury bus
parked outside the Rancho Cordova Marriott near Sacramento, where they had just
finished a six-hour workshop on the law of attraction in the hotel ballroom.
Three hundred people had paid $195 each to hear Ms. Hicks, a former secretary,
summon otherworldly spirits she says speak through her. The spirits, who
collectively use the name Abraham, answered participants’ questions.
“I don’t
have a lover yet,” one woman said.
Abraham, whose speaking voice is rounder,
quicker and more computerlike than Ms. Hicks’s natural voice, replied by
repeating the woman’s phrase roughly 20 times and then explained it contained
its own negativity, which was leaving the woman paddling upstream on the river
of life.
The audience applauded.

here's some of the hush, hush bickering going on behind the scenes:

The Hickses spend most of the year traveling the country, leading workshops based on the teachings they say Abraham has given them. They record the workshops and have 10,000 subscribers, who pay up to $50 a month for CDs and DVDs of Abraham’s wisdom.

When Ms. Byrne asked Ms. Hicks to appear in “The Secret,” as the most prominent interpreter of the law of attraction, she agreed to give the Hickses approval over much of the movie, according to a contract. But when the couple saw the first cut, they were livid. Ms. Hicks’s voice, chaneling Abraham, was used as narration throughout the film, but her face was never shown.

After negotiation, Ms. Hicks’s image was edited into the film and it was released, ultimately netting the Hickses $500,000 from sales, Ms. Hicks said. But the couple were unhappy with the distribution. They said they understood it would be shown first on Australian television, but instead it was being sold as an Internet download and later as a DVD.

Cynthia Black, the president of Beyond Words Publishing, a New Age imprint, who is both a longtime friend of the Hickses and the publisher of Ms. Byrne’s book version of “The Secret,” tried to broker a peace. She enlisted the help of Jack Canfield, the author of “Chicken Soup for the Soul,” one of the “transformational experts” who appears in “The Secret” (and whose nephew Zach Canfield says he used the law of attraction to score a date with the hip-hop singer Lady Sovereign). But Mr. Canfield was also unable to bring the parties together.

The Hickses consulted their lawyer, and Ms. Byrne in turn demanded changes to the contract, both sides said. No agreement could be reached. Ms. Byrne moved forward with a second version of “The Secret” without the Hickses. Advised by their lawyer to sue, the Hickses said they declined because litigation would take energy from their own pursuit of the law of attraction. “We don’t sue,” said Mr. Hicks, a former circus acrobat and Amway distributor.

The Skinny on Oprah

according to Bob Greene, her fitness guru.

Mummified Man Watches TV

a sign of a sad and lonely world.

Dalai Lama's Presidential Pick

Who is the Dalia Lama supporting in the 2008 race? ohio congressman Dennis Kucinich. The Dalai Lama's listed as a "friend" on Kucinich's myspace. the Tibetan peace monk has a myspace, too. he has 2,665 friends.

barak obama has a lot of friends at his myspace -- 42,706, more that hillary clinton -- 23,378 friends.

John Frusciante Rolling Stone

john is teased on the front cover of the rolling stone issue -- "the new guitar gods" -- as "the visionary."

yeah, we know.

but inside is a Q&A with John but it doesn't get into his work outside the chili peppers. i don't get it. how can you talk about john without talking about his solo work or his collaborations with other musicians?

for those of you missing the hair, here it is! here's a short accompanying video.

invisible-movement has the grammy acceptance speech

Chili Peppers at the Grammys

Woo Hoo! could've been a better choice of song, something more upbeat. and could've done without the snow. and was that chad on the drums for the dixie chicks?
chad's got to be one of the top five drummers in the world. flea his usual fleaness.
loved john frusciante's speaking part. he seemed truly excited and nervous. it's nice to see them loving their jobs so much. of course, they picked up best rock album for stadium arcadium. they picked up three other awards.

The Secret

update: if you didn't think The Secret was a bit scammy, take a look at my spammy in the comments.

did you catch The Secret on oprah?

i liked the concept, thoughts are things and what you think is what you get. of course, the host of people who were guests on the show and "teachers" were pitching The Secret DVD and book. it was sort of like an infomercial -- when you learn "the secret" everything is better, your sex life, your financial status and your career!

i thought about buying the $30 DVD but did my research. here's how you know something is bogus -- when it's tied to money. what are they selling? i checked out the web sites of the people behind the show and each site tells you how to get rich! how to be successful! every single one of them is a self help person selling their wares.

also, the woman who started "the secret" is a reality show maven. in australia, where she's from, she's produced such reality show goodness as Australians Behaving Badly, Marry Me. her company also produced Worlds Greatest Commercials.

how about a DVD on how to serve others, you know, how to work in a soup kitchen or volunteer? that would be a silly DVD to make cause no one would buy it. but people are definitely interested in buying a DVD that tells them how to be wealthy and powerful and successful.

the universe makes everything abundant, they say. there isn't a shortage of anything, especially not money, they contend. money and wealth are the focus. if you aren't "successful" then you don't have money and you don't know "the secret" and too bad for you.

i believe that thoughts are energy. no doubt. but there are other laws in the universe, too. the laws of karma. and there are plenty more thoughts running around than just your own thoughts. in that case, there is an abundance of negative energy everywhere (given the state of the world), so how do your own thoughts scientifically penetrate all that negative energy? what other people do affects us, sorry to say.

save your money. these people aren't any better than you and they certainly don't know more than you.

Do Not Feed The Homeless Take 2

first it was vegas and it's rally against the homeless, now it's orlando. what is wrong with people? i think all social ills boil down to one thing: some group always thinks they're better than another. i suppose it's primitive means of survival. there's little empathy and not much enlightenment going on these days. from the AP:

Orlando, population 200,000, works hard to conjure the image of a true-life Pleasantville: a safe, welcoming place where visitors can soak up year-round sunshine and devour choreographed experiences at palm-ringed theme parks. But its spotless sidewalks, sparkling lakes and twinkling skyline belie a real city with real maladies — most notably, a surging homeless population that authorities are struggling to control.

After a law that banned panhandling was struck down by the courts, the city tried to discourage aggressive beggars by obliging them to carry ID cards, and later by confining them to 3-by-15-foot "panhandling zones" painted in blue on sidewalks downtown.

Despite these laws, the number of people living on the streets of the Orlando metro area swelled, from roughly 5,000 in 1999 to an estimated 8,500 today, dwarfing the city's shelter capacity for 2,000 people.

So in July, the city commission tried a "supply-side" approach: It passed an ordinance regulating the feeding of large groups of people in Orlando's downtown parks.

Those who wished to feed more than 25 hungry individuals at parks within a 2-mile radius of City Hall could do so, but only if they obtained a "Large Group Feeding Permit" from the parks department — and no one would be granted more than two feeding permits a year.

No exceptions.

Inequality is Real

"The fact is that income inequality is real. It has been rising for more than 25 years." that quote comes out of the mouth of our president. wow. he noticed. i'm surprised. but how long did it take him to speak up.
that quote is from a reuters story today. the president talks about the lavish salaries and perks of CEOs and how that might affect the stockmarket. he says government can't dampen overperked business people. it's up to the companies.
can you imagine, conscious guided execs could still have a comfortable life, be compensated well and at the same time, let the folks toward the bottom of the earnings chain make more money. what a concept. what are the chances?

Long Bets

a story in the NYT today asks: can humanity survive? the optimistic writer of the story says yes and he's made a bet on longbets.org that humans will live past 2100. i would bet not. a story about longbets was written a bit ago in Science & Technology mag.

longbets is a web site funded by amazon's jeff bezos, who's on his own mission (to space) and it's kept by Martin Rees, a cosmologist at Cambridge.
anyone can go there to make a "long bet." it's interesting to see who's betting and what they're betting. Like Vint Cerf, the Internet guru who bets:

"By 2010 more than 50 percent of books sold worldwide will be printed on demand at the point of sale in the form of library-quality paperbacks."
and here's one of his other bets:

"By 2010 more than 50 percent of books worldwide will be read on digital devices rather than in print form."

in addition to predicting the end of human kind, Rees bets this:

"By 2020, bioterror or bioerror will lead to one million casualties in a single event."

here's another interesting prediction:

"The People's Republic of China will successfuly place a living human on the surface of Mars before any other nation."
most of the predictions are pessimistic. some are funny:

"As of March 7th, 2005, Osama bin Laden is dead."
here's a fun one:

"Evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence within the solar system will be confirmed before evidence from several light-years away."

Ataxia II March 6

record label says March 20. john's web site says March 6. thanks to a visitor for pointing that out. march is good.

Barack Obama on Health Care

people say they don't know what Mr. Obama stands for. i say read his books, visit his web site.
here's a portion of his BRILLIANT speech made today:

Well we can't afford another disappointing charade in 2008. It's not only
tiresome, it's wrong. Wrong when businesses have to layoff one employee because
they can't afford the health care of another. Wrong when a parent cannot take a
sick child to the doctor because they cannot afford the bill that comes with it.
Wrong when 46 million Americans have no health care at all. In a country that
spends more on health care than any other nation on Earth, it's just wrong. And
yet, in recent years, what's caught the attention of those who haven't always
been in favor of reform is the realization that this crisis isn't just morally
offensive, it's economically untenable. For years, the can't-do crowd has scared
the American people into believing that universal health care would mean
socialized medicine and burdensome taxes - that we should just stay out of the
way and tinker at the margins. You know the statistics. Family premiums are up
by nearly 87% over the last five years, growing five times faster than workers'
wages. Deductibles are up 50%. Co-payments for care and prescriptions are
through the roof. Nearly 11 million Americans who are already insured spent more
than a quarter of their salary on health care last year. And over half of all
family bankruptcies today are caused by medical bills.But they say it's too
costly to act. Almost half of all small businesses no longer offer health care
to their workers, and so many others have responded to rising costs by laying
off workers or shutting their doors for good. Some of the biggest corporations
in America, giants of industry like GM and Ford, are watching foreign
competitors based in countries with universal health care run circles around
them, with a GM car containing twice as much health care cost as a Japanese car.
But they say it's too risky to act. They tell us it's too expensive to cover the
uninsured, but they don't mention that every time an American without health
insurance walks into an emergency room, we pay even more. Our family's premiums
are $922 higher because of the cost of care for the uninsured. We pay $15
billion more in taxes because of the cost of care for the uninsured. And it's
trapped us in a vicious cycle. As the uninsured cause premiums to rise, more
employers drop coverage. As more employers drop coverage, more people become
uninsured, and premiums rise even further. But the skeptics tell us that reform
is too costly, too risky, too impossible for America. Well the skeptics must be
living somewhere else. Because when you see what the health care crisis is doing
to our families, to our economy, to our country, you realize that caution is
what's costly. Inaction is what's risky. Doing nothing is what's impossible when
it comes to health care in America.It's time to act. This isn't a problem of
money, this is a problem of will. A failure of leadership. We already spend $2.2
trillion a year on health care in this country. My colleague, Senator Ron Wyden,
who's recently developed a bold new health care plan of his own, tells it this
way: For the money Americans spent on health care last year, we could have hired
a group of skilled physicians, paid each one of them $200,000 to care for just
seven families, and guaranteed every single American quality, affordable health
care. So where's all that money going? We know that a quarter of it - one out of
every four health care dollars - is spent on non-medical costs; mostly bills and
paperwork. And we also know that this is completely unnecessary. Almost every
other industry in the world has saved billions on these administrative costs by
doing it all online. Every transaction you make at a bank now costs them less
than a penny. Even at the Veterans Administration, where it used to cost nine
dollars to pull up your medical record, new technology means you can call up the
same record on the internet for next to nothing.

Chili Peppers Headline 07 Coachella

coachella
photo, Janes page

Little Miss Sunshine

abigail breslin, the 10-year old who played Olive in Little Miss Sunshine, can't wait to go to disneyland. NPR interviewed her today on her supporting actress oscar nomination and asked her what is she most looking forward to? Disneyland, where her parents are taking her following the oscars, or the oscars?

"both, i think," was her response, but she seemed to really want to say disneyland! disneyland! disneyland! now there's a reality check for these movie folks who think they've been appointed to god's court. it's an award. a career achievment for a movie.

with that, Little Miss Sunshine is a must see if you haven't. what struck me, besides the surprise ending and the offbeat middle, is the interaction among the characters. it was superbly acted.

Five Minutes to Midnight

Doomsday clock tick tock

Our Cold, Your Scurvy

most of socal's oranges are cold and ruined, thanks to our snappy weather. it has been rather lovely.