Boosting ones mood

This is in my series of reading all the blog posts I’ve been meaning to read for ages and making short comments on them.

There was a post a while ago on Pick The Brain (here), a brilliant blog I read with motivational posts and things like 9 Ways to Boost your Mood which is the post I’ll be talking about.

As of late I’ve been in some very foul moods because of the situation someone very dear to me is in and because of this things have been a bit tense at certain moments. If there’s a way to boost my mood then I want to try it when I’m in these situations. Unfortunatley it’s often the case that when in one of these moods none of the 9 ways to boost my mood come to mind. It just so happens that all of the 9 ways are very simply a way to take your mind off what’s causing you to be in a bad mood. Watching a tv show or taking a bath generally shifts your focus from the bad mood thing to relaxing or escapism. Doing some cleaning is very theraputic mostly, in my opinion, because it distracts the mind and allows it to clear itself.

Firefox ‘feature’ strikes again

We all remember, well, I remember, when Firefox had a wonderful feature that hogged memory like nobodies business. This was to do with the way it cached tabbed browsing and there was, I believe a way to turn it off.

I use firefox for certain sites that I can’t access any other way (continuum, which has a bug in its cookies that Firefox apparently doesn’t handle properly) and I’m ok with it, it does what it’s mean to do (for me), for the most part. However, today I came across this bug which is a problem with the way that Firefox’s anti-phishing works. It basically states that if a file path is being sent to the server through a form it should be truncated so that just the filename is sent and not the full path. What a great feature, all those forms I’m going to fill out with full paths which could be used by phishers (there probably is a usecase), but the real problem comes when you have someone like this guy who clearly needs the standard functionality.

Once again Firefox team haven’t really thought through their ‘feature’ and it’s going to cause them problems with Chrome and Opera being strong contenders. Opera having all the functionality and more of Firefox (without the ability to write complex extensions) and Chrome being the new kid on the block with a whole host of its own problems but the ability to move forward in a way that Firefox doesn’t seem to be able to.

Sad day for NASA

It’s a sad day for something like NASA when conclusive proof of the faking of the Moon Landing is released.

Moon Landing Proof

taken from Desi

Pez I haven’t forgotten about your comment, it’s coming.

Comment – Jay

This is a comment by a Scientologist to directly answer my questions and I’m very thankful for that, it’s not very often you get this kind of response and because of that I feel it right to go through it very closely. Italics will denote what Jay has written, and my response and comments will be in regular type.

Before I begin I would like to say a quick thank you to Jay for taking the time to respond.

Comment – Chuck

I am unsure how best to reply to comments but I have recently had two quite long comments on my postQ&A to Scientology Poster and I want to reply to them so that others can get to the comment and then read my reply. Here you’ll find a link to Chuck’s comment followed by a response.

The comments and response follow the more tag (I hope this bit works).

Q&A to Scientology poster

The question was posed to http://myscientology.blogspot.com back in July of this year.

Question:
I have a bit of a problem with a contradiction that is displayed here in your post.

Scientology says: “Man is an immortal, spiritual being”

yet Scientology also says: “In Scientology no one is asked to accept anything as belief or on faith. That which is true for you is what you have observed to be true.”

This to me seems like a clear contradiction, seeing as the former is a belief and the latter states that you need no belief and that anything that is true is observable.

The latter part of that makes me also think that if you are also stating that things that are true are observable then you have scientific evidence of the spirit and immortality.

Can you please explain this in more depth as I am trying to approach Scientology from an unbiased viewpoint.

Answer:
In Scientology a person is not expected to believe anything.

I was an atheist when I first came across Scientology. I didn’t just blindly believe the idea that I was a spiritual being, but I got so many gains from my first course that I was willing to “suspend my disbelief” until I could check it out and get some personal reality on the spiritual being thing, which I eventually did.

So from my own personal experiences in Scientology (when undergoing the spiritual counseling) I have observed that I am an immortal spiritual being.

If the idea that one is an immortal, spiritual being is just too much for a person to take and he/she isn’t willing to wait until they get some personal reality on it, then Scientology probably isn’t for them.

My view on the answer:
This is the question that I posted a while ago on MyScientologyBlog’s post titled ‘So what do we believe?’ (http://myscientology.blogspot.com/2008/07/so-what-do-we-believe.html), the question was quite specific and detailed in its asking yet the answer I got was a ‘this is my life’ response. ‘This is how it happened for me, maybe it can happen for you too, but if it doesn’t then maybe Scientology just isn’t for you’.This to me, is a very unhelpful answer as the Scientology Doctrines say that they believe in a ‘spirit’ but that apparently Scientologists are ‘not expected to believe in anything’. If I can’t cope with their belief, which remember isn’t actually a belief, then Scientology ‘probably isn’t for [them] you’.

It begs the question, can I be a Scientologists without believing in a spirit, and if I can’t, then surely Scientology requires that you believe in something and thus is has some fundamental ideals? It seems blatantly obvious that there is a contradiction here, am I alone in thinking this I don’t know, but I’d like a clearer answer from a Scientologist, not just a shrugged off ‘If you can’t cope with it then you don’t have to believe in Scientology’ because that just highlights the contradiction and the closed minded nature of Scientologists (if truely they are closed minded which I leave for another post on Squirrelling).

Scientology and Multiple Lives

Influenced by http://myscientology.blogspot.com/2008/09/what-do-scientologists-believe-part-1.html

There are a couple of things I find hard to grasp in Scientology and one of these is the concept of the ‘many lives’. Unlike most believes in multiple lives Scientologists believe that they’re not all past lives, that you can live many of these lives simultaniously. Also, and I prattle on about this a lot, is the concept that Scientology is about what you observe and that you shouldn’t believe anything without seeing it. (Aside from the fact that Past life Regression is very dangerous and false memories can easily be suggested and imagination encouraged) The Scientologists should be able to see into the future for their lives that happen in the future and some should be able to see verifiable times at the present in other places in the world who are also their lives.

I’d be more than fine with Scientologists if it wasn’t for the self righteous nature. They all seem to be advocates for what appear to be weird and wacky ideas to everybody else, and when it comes to trying to understand what they believe and having a debate on some of the matters. Instead of coming up with a fair debate for all topics they shun and outcast the questioner. It seems very counter productive for a ‘religion’ that wants to recruit members and pertains to having the truth that can help all peoples.

Science is Killing us all

http://www.scq.ubc.ca/science-is-going-to-kill-us-all/

Is an amusing yet probably quite serious post about different parts of science and how they can lead to the end of humanity. The one that took my attention most was on Bees, which, according to the post, are a vital source for the growth of many plants.

The reason that this peeked my curiosity slightly is because I recently saw a program called Jimmy and the Wild Honey Hunters (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00d298z) which was about a guy who goes to Nepal to see some, well, wild honey hunters. It mentions that Bees are very important and so seeing this twice in as many weeks makes me wonder how serious it is.

Also, I like the bit about the Swedish bringing an end to the world and wonder, if it happened and I found out that suddenly we were all collapsing into a black hole, what would I do. I think I’d rush to see those I love and wonder why they were thinking I was mad at the thought of being sucked into a black hole created by the Swedes.