New Paradigm Digest » Pure Fun

AMAZING MATHMAGIC

Jeff — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 05:28:07 +0000

Flying With Jetman

Jeff — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 01:53:08 +0000

A New Santa Story

Jeff — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 19:13:11 +0000

From The Intergalactic Times

This should be a “No-Brainer”. Almost everyone over the age of 7 knows that there is no Santa Claus. There. Done. Memorex. End of article.

However, a deeper look into this strange Christmas story yielded some even stranger discoveries. Apparently, Santa Claus is not completely vaporware. He is actually a Siberian shaman, who, in his role as a medium between the visible and spirit worlds, does indeed go from house to house, descending through chimneys, and handing out gifts.

To jump down the rabbit hole, click here.

Kindness in Action

Jeff — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 04:16:37 +0000

Comedian & His Music Video Win Mayorial Race in Iceland – An Emerging Trend?

Jeff — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 06:24:27 +0000

Given the deteriorating state of the world’s economies, could this be the start of major political change? Watch the video, read the story and see what you think.

By SALLY McGRANE, Published: June 25, 2010

REYKJAVIK, Iceland — A polar bear display for the zoo. Free towels at public swimming pools. A “drug-free Parliament by 2020.” Iceland’s Best Party, founded in December by a comedian, Jon Gnarr, to satirize his country’s political system, ran a campaign that was one big joke. Or was it?

Last month, in the depressed aftermath of the country’s financial collapse, the Best Party emerged as the biggest winner in Reykjavik’s elections, with 34.7 percent of the vote, and Mr. Gnarr — who also promised a classroom of kindergartners he would build a Disneyland at the airport — is now the fourth mayor in four years of a city that is home to more than a third of the island’s 320,000 people.

In his acceptance speech he tried to calm the fears of the other 65.3 percent. “No one has to be afraid of the Best Party,” he said, “because it is the best party. If it wasn’t, it would be called the Worst Party or the Bad Party. We would never work with a party like that.”

With his party having won 6 of the City Council’s 15 seats, Mr. Gnarr needed a coalition partner, but ruled out any party whose members had not seen all five seasons of “The Wire.”

A sandy-haired 43-year-old, Mr. Gnarr is best known here for playing a television and film character named Georg Bjarnfredarson, a nasty, bald, middle-aged, Swedish-educated Marxist whose childhood was ruined by a militant feminist mother.

While his career may have given him visibility, few here doubt what actually propelled him into office. “It’s a protest vote,” said Gunnar Helgi Kristinsson, a political science professor at the University of Iceland.

In one of the first signs of Europe’s financial troubles, Iceland’s banks crashed in 2008, plunging the country into crisis. In April, voters were further upset by a report that detailed extreme negligence, cronyism and incompetence at the highest levels of government. They were ready for someone, anyone, other than the usual suspects, Professor Kristinsson said.

“People know Jon Gnarr is a good comedian, but they don’t know anything about his politics,” he said. “And even as a comedian, you never know if he’s serious or if he’s joking.”

But as Mr. Gnarr settles into the mayor’s office, he does not seem to be kidding at all.

The Best Party, whose members include a who’s who of Iceland’s punk rock scene, formed a coalition with the center-left Social Democrats (despite Mr. Gnarr’s suspicion that party leaders had assigned an underling to watch “The Wire” and take notes). With that, Mr. Gnarr took office last week, hoping to serve out a full, four-year term, and the new government granted free admission to swimming pools for everyone under 18. Its plans include turning Reykjavik, with its plentiful supply of geothermal energy, into a hub for electric cars.

“Just because something is funny doesn’t mean it isn’t serious,” said Mr. Gnarr, whose foreign relations experience includes a radio show in which he regularly crank-called the White House, the C.I.A., the F.B.I. and police stations in the Bronx to see if they had found his lost wallet.

THE polar bear idea, for example, was not totally facetious. As a result of global warming, a handful of polar bears have swum to Iceland in recent years and been shot. Better, Mr. Gnarr said, to capture them and put them in the zoo.

The free towels? That evolved from an idea to attract more tourists by attaining spa status for the city’s public pools, which have seawater and sulfur baths. For accreditation under certain European Union rules, however, a spa has to offer free towels, so that became a campaign slogan.

Mr. Gnarr, born in Reykjavik as Jon Gunnar Kristinsson to a policeman and a kitchen worker, was not a model child. At 11, he decided school was useless to his future as a circus clown or pirate and refused to learn any more. At 13, he stopped going to class and joined Reykjavik’s punk scene. At 14, he was sent to a boarding school for troubled teenagers and stayed until he was 16, when he left school for good.

Back in Reykjavik, he worked odd jobs, rented rooms, joined activist groups like Greenpeace and considered himself an anarchist (he still does). He also wrote poetry and traveled with the Sugarcubes, Bjork’s first band. He said he hated music but was a good singer, and began his career with humorous songs punctuated by monologues.

“I didn’t have many job options,” he said. “It was a way of making a living and still having fun.” His wife, Johanna Johannsdottir, a massage therapist, is Bjork’s best friend.

Mr. Gnarr said his idea for the Best Party was born of the profound distress and moral confusion after the banking collapse, when Icelanders fiercely debated their obligation to repay ruined British and Dutch depositors.

Practically speaking, Mr. Gnarr said he had no qualms. “Why should I repay money I never spent?” he asked, a common sentiment here. But on a deeper level, he had misgivings.

“I consider myself a very moral person,” he said. “Suddenly, I felt like a character in a Beckett play, where you have moral obligations towards something you have no possibility of understanding. It was like ‘Waiting for Godot’ — I was in limbo.”

LAST winter, he opened a Best Party Web site and started writing surreal “political” articles. “I got such good reactions to it,” Mr. Gnarr said, “and I started sensing the need for this — a breath of fresh air, a new interaction.”

The campaign released a popular video set to Tina Turner’s “The Best,” in which Mr. Gnarr posed with a stuffed polar bear and petted a rock, while joining his supporters in singing about the Best Party.

“A lot of us are singers,” said Ottarr Proppe, the third-ranking member of the Best Party, who was with the cult rock band HAM and the punk band Rass. Mr. Proppe now sits on the city’s executive board, where he will be deciding matters like how much money to allocate for roads. “Making a video was very easy,” he said.

At a recent budget meeting, Mr. Proppe, who has a wild red beard, ran his hand through his bleached-blond hair as he studied the fiscal report from behind tinted, gold-rimmed glasses. His old band mate S. Bjorn Blondal quizzed the city’s comptroller. Heida Helgadottir, who ran the campaign and is now assistant to the mayor, wore a diaphanous minidress and typed notes.

Mr. Gnarr, who comes across as thoughtful and reserved, did not speak often. When he did he had the whole room, including the strait-laced Social Democrat, in stitches. Still, he is not just playing a cutup; friends describe his move to politics as a spiritual awakening. He agreed.

“Of all the projects I’ve been involved with, this one has given me the most satisfaction, the greatest sense of contentment.”

A version of this article appeared in print on June 26, 2010, on page A1 of the New York edition.

NPD Editor Receives Hero Status

Jeff — Thu, 13 May 2010 10:55:10 +0000

I was stunned to see this video.

It was fun making it and it has to be the greatest viral idea in web history. Make your own and send it to your friends. Enjoy!

Mission Possible

Jeff — Sun, 02 May 2010 08:57:17 +0000

Ever dreamed about playing James Bond or Jason Bourne? Dream no more.

In London,Quintessentially Secure will provide you with agent skill training and missions you can practice your newly acquired spy skills on. QS is a privately owned global-security and body guard firm with offices in London, Dubai and Hong Kong so this is the real deal. Its founders are former British and American army operatives, U.S. Secret Service agents and emergency-rescue officers.

You might be tracking a couple of spies selling weapons to a terrorist group or any of hundreds of experiential packages invented by the pros. You will learn unarmed defense, including how to thwart an attacker who is using a knife (extend your arms toward him, keeping the elbows in and palms facing you, then hit his forearm with yours while kneeing him). In addition, you’ll learn real skills including anti-ambush driving, electronic surveillance and facial and body language interpretation.

“The Day of the Jackel” is named after the 1973 film about a private assassin–a mission teaching the skills of disguise and tracking, as well as “fun stuff” like weapons use and anti-ambush skills. “Quintessentially Bourne” is a high-octane secret spy operation that culminates in a race against time in the North African desert.

Prices range from $2500 for a one day “Secrets of the Spy” package, complete with a visit to the M16 London headquarters to $50,000 for a full week’s mission.

Future Rock Star

Jeff — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 00:47:51 +0000

Incredible Evian Baby Athletes

Jeff — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 07:20:34 +0000

Does Your North Node Reveal Your Destiny?

Jeff — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:36:58 +0000

North Node Astrology: Rediscovering Your Life Direction and Soul Purpose
By Elizabeth Spring, M.A.

In a time when anything is possible and nothing is certain and when more and more people find themselves out of work, any guidance that can help us discover our deepest path is most welcome.

The real question with North Node Astrology is can this book based on astrological analysis be of real value?

In the introduction, the author says that “the making of character is made through our choices”…and offers a special and curious tool to help readers dig deeper into the whys and wherefores of character and destiny. “Our soul purpose”, she proposes “is bound up with our ability to love and be loved and the movement towards healing and wholeness” which sounds true enough with or without the context of astrology.

She next asks readers to suspend their skepticism about astrological symbolism which she says is “best used to explore psychological and spiritual terrains” and invites them to consider that there may be something in their birth charts that speaks specifically of their life direction and soul purpose.

The author proposes that the North and South nodes in charts “offer a golden clue to purpose rather than prediction that most astrologers overlook” and that the South “represents the shadow or disowned or discarded parts of the self” and the North “seeks to bring wholeness to the psyche by compensating for what is not balanced. It holds our Soul’s aspirations like a guiding compass.”

Elizabeth suggests its like making conscious the unconscious and quotes Jung who said “When an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside as fate. Perhaps, she suggests, we have some say in our fates. Is this an interesting theory or a gift from grace? She suggests the reader decide.

The book is written for all who are hungry for spirit and thirsty for meaning, hope and possibility.

In blending Evolutionary Depth Astrology and Jungian Psychology, new ideas, questions and possibilities emerge. Similarities and differences across disciplines arise and we become students of the Psyche and contemporary alchemists combining astrology and psychology. In exploring this territory, we may discover new aspects of our hidden selves and emerge in new ways that reflect our true identity and destiny. But to get there, many of us will have to suspend our “knowing” for a while and float in the field of possibility to discover if there is something there we can use and that helps unfold hidden dimensions of whom we are and might become.

She says that “this is a time when we must each speak our unique truth and that there is no longer one way to do anything” and quotes Krishnamurti who said, “Truth is a pathless land, unique to each of us.”

“The goal of our journey,” Elizabeth suggests, “is to know ourselves just enough and to be healed in our hearts just enough so our deep gladness and the world’s needs can be met in order to find our true life direction.”

The good news is readers do not need to be astrologers to understand and use the ideas in this book but rather spend time self-reflecting. Perhaps by reading her book you may connect a few unconnected dots.

“It is in healing the wounded self that we can access our wiser Self”

“To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.”
– Oscar Wilde

Finally, she offers us an equation that sums up the core of her paradigm: fate+character=destiny. In its simplest form, the book is “about making conscious what is unconscious and that gold can be found in the Nodes that hold our stuck places as well as our aspirations, dreams and unsuspected talents.” She suggests “we hold ourselves lightly so we may transmute the lead of our wounded ego parts into the gold of insight and action.”

Regarding relationships, Elizabeth offers the idea that “by searching for the perfect other or romantic fantasy, relationship can become an escape from our personal journey or as a distraction or even sabotage of our own calling.”

She describes Soul as “a feeling, an energy that wants something from us-to live up to our full potential and how we feel about our connection to Soul either feeds or depletes us.” When we make life decisions from an insightful heart-space we tap into the collective unconscious that holds deep wellsprings of wisdom…pockets of gold as well as elusive shadow dragons.

And, if we go for our dreams, it may mean leaving behind relationships with our selves and others, which is an integral part of being authentic. So some use distraction and amusement rather than mining the depths.

Looking at life symbolically invites magic and synchronicity, disturbs the status quo, and renews a sense of faith and trust because you begin to see how your personal life story synchronizes with larger patterns that are larger than you and touch your connectedness to the whole of life. Meaning underlies apparent chaos.

The author studied astrology for the past 40 years but only in the past 15 became fascinated with the North and South Nodes. For her, they have provided a reminder of the core beliefs that kept her out of alignment, disembodied and not authentically her. Each of us is a wounded healer, a “Chiron” that knows the best medicine that cures. She calls it the North Node.

The burning question we should be asking ourselves is “Is what I’m doing now in alignment with my Soul’s journey? “Is there a way I can know more about that” “Am I using all the unrecognized talents I was born with? What you are doing is not as important as how you feel about what you are doing.”

The question after all is said and done is just how accurate nd satisfying is the North Node section of the book that all the narrative speaks to. When I finally read my own North Node analysis, I was happily impressed by the accuracy of its description. For me, it was a true mirror of my past and current life and spoke to me of the transition I find my self in. I actually brought the book in to discuss with my therapist.

To answer my initial question, can this book be of value, I would now answer a resounding yes. It combines the wisdom of a visionary psychologist with the synchronicity that astrology and particularly North Node Astrology offers.

In a way, North Node Astrology echoes The I-Ching that has served generations of readers. So, if you are ready to go beyond the rational mind to explore the mystery of another dimension of possibility, this may be just the book for you.

Click on North Node Astrology or Elizabeth’s website to lean more.