 The Thursday Thesis - 2/4/2020, updated
Am I alone in noticing that the BBC has abandoned any pretence of being anything other than a single-issue propaganda channel? If you apply what I call “Precision Listening” it’s obvious. All you have to do is listen very carefully to what’s being said. Listen to the words used to convey the underlying message, because the words are often deceptive, and this is no accident. State broadcasters employ the best writers to carefully craft news scripts: the words are carefully selected, ordered and tickled to do a very particular job and to convey a very particular message. So – for those who understand that the words used (what Noam Chomsky called the “surface structure” of communication) can greatly modify the message conveyed (the “deep structure”) these are interesting times. For weeks it has been ramping-up COVID-19 stories, progressively giving over more and more time in bulletins until we’ve finally arrived at today – where every minute of the BBC’s “news” coverage is scary stories and inflammatory opinion on the speed, severity and deadliness of this bogeyman virus. If you ever suspected that there was an agenda being peddled by our state-funded (state-controlled) broadcaster, Precision Listening and recent events will confirm your suspicions. Listen closely to the weasel-words in the scary stories and you’ll begin to notice that daily mortality figures are now referred to as “connected with COVID-19”. Hang on a second – only a couple of weeks ago this COVID-19 was being portrayed as a deadly killer, but now it seems to be only a component in a death. This sinister shift to weasel-words looks like a guilty person backing away from what they’ve done; for whatever reason, the Beeb has moved its position by changing the words of its carefully-prepared script. And here’s a little quote from the Office of National Statistics, from their bulletin dated 7 April 2020: “Looking at the year-to-date (using refreshed data to get the most accurate estimates), the number of deaths is currently lower than the five-year average. The current number of deaths is 150,047, which is 3,350 fewer than the five-year average. Of the deaths registered by 27 March 2020, 647 mentioned the coronavirus (COVID-19) on the death certificate; this is 0.4% of all deaths.” (Source: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending27march2020) I kid you not – in the midst of this appalling, scaremongered “pandemic”, FEWER people are dying than the average for the previous five-year period. That’s the overview of REALITY, not the twisted, stilted and distorted story we’re being fed by the state’s media mouthpiece. Consider this fact - from the ONS's figures: deaths from "Flu and pneumonia" are down, whilst COVID-19 deaths are up. The numbers nett-out to the normal rate for this time of year. So the question must arise: is COVID-19 simply a bad strain of 'flu? What do you think? You won't find the answer in the Government briefings, the Fake News or the Weasel-Words of the mendacious bastards at the BBC. © Neil Cowmeadow 2020 Please Like and Share The Thursday Thesis with your friends, family, and your chosen deity. I’d love to hear your comments, along with any ideas you’d care to hurl at me. [email protected]
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Our Darkest Day is Here and Now
Quiet, isn’t it? Hardly a car on the road, not a soul in the lane, no beer in the pub. That’s the sound of submission and acquiescence; that deafening stillness is freedom’s dying, silent scream. With hardly a murmur of dissent, the sheeple of Britain have applauded the theft of their personal freedom – all in the name of a disease less deadly than the annual ‘flu season. Last Tuesday was the darkest and most shameful day in our history. We will live to rue the day. The blustering dolt we elected to the office of Prime Minister imposed sweeping draconian restrictions on every single one of us. Yes, the loveable clown, Blundering BoJo, seized almost absolute power with hardly a dissenting murmur of concern. Hardly anyone said a dickie-bird about it. It was a supremely slick seizure of power: any common-or-garden dictator would be envious. They call it “Lockdown” – because it’s so much less inflammatory than “House Arrest”, don’t you think? The media praised and the public applauded, not counting the losses or considering the legacy we are bestowing on the next generation and many generations still to come. And so began a suicidal, manufactured, economic catastrophe, in which our kids have been sold into future slavery to pay back the mountains of imaginary money borrowed by government to be thrown willy-nilly at the smoke and mirrors “pandemic”. Cowardly people-pleasing politics, exalting the Sacred Cow of the NHS, or something altogether more dark and sinister? Let’s be clear here: people will die of COVID-19, because viruses kill people – especially sick people. Viruses are a fact of life. People die. That’s a fact of life. But the choices being made “on behalf of the British People” seem to miss those two vital facts, and the ensuing immorality of selling my son, and all of your sons and daughters into a lifetime of debt slavery is beyond me. My gorgeous boy and every single one of your gorgeous girls and boys will be gifted the debts of these cowardly politicians, goaded into action by the corrupt media and the mass outcry of the gullible herd. It sickens me to see Britain – and much of the World – spooked by a so-so disease which has been marketed as a “pandemic” by the corrupt World Health Organisation. Frankly, it’s unbelievable that the WHO is taken seriously by anyone. This is – after all - the same World Health Organisation which thought Robert Mugabe (the notoriously corrupt former president of Zimbabwe – yes, that Robert Mugabe) would be a suitable “Goodwill Ambassador”. The same World Health Organisation whose Director-General is accused of suppressing news of Cholera epidemics in Ethiopia and Eritrea in order to shield political cronies. Mugabe was forced out of the post after a day or two, but the stench of corruption hangs around the WHO and Dr Tedros, who remains in office to this day. The WHO estimates that up to 650,000 people die of ‘flu every years – COVID-19 stands at a paltry 47,174 deaths. Flu doesn’t blow-up the economy, neither does it rob people of their freedom of movement and association, the right to assemble, or put them under house arrest. We’ve always had ‘flu and we probably always will. We’ve always had freedom, of a sort, but not any more. How many lives would Government spend to fight a hot war for freedom against an oppressor? Many, many times more than C-19 will cost. But the unfought battle is already lost. Freedom will be returned to us, but not in full. There will be no full roll-back of the “Johnson Decree”. We, and all our children – and all of their children - we will all be poorer as a consequence of this irrational madness and the monstrous theft perpetrated in broad daylight. The story so far:
And the future?
I don’t know about you, but that looks pretty grim to me. But the biggest loser was our collective ability to think. To dispassionately consider the facts, look beyond soundbites, disreputable politicians, self-appointed “experts” and government sidekicks, to ask difficult, penetrating questions and be courageous in the face of Truth. The war has already been lost, and in War the first casualty is Truth. Lockdown is the new Normal, so get used to it, because it will get worse – probably much worse. Little by little the ratchet will be applied: tightened, released a little, then tightened a little more; over and over again. You were warned, oh yes you were warned.  The Thursday Thesis - 12/12/2019 “You are all diseased” – George Carlin. A couple of weeks ago I was reading about how much healthcare costs us here in the UK – it’s a lot of money, and it’s never enough. Just like churches appealing for more money (apparently God isn’t good with money and always needs more...) the NHS needs more money, despite the patently obvious fact that the health of our nation can’t be bought on our current budget – or any other budget, for that matter. It occurs to me that we’ve got it all arse-about-face: completely arse-about-face. We need to flip the model. At the moment we pay doctors for treating sick patients – usually with expensive drugs which don’t treat the underlying causes of disease, but instead manage the symptoms. Of course, that’s what the drugs are designed to do – manage the condition, not treat the underlying problem. It’s a good model – if you’re in the medical business. Cure the condition – no more drug sales: it’s a transaction that happens just once. That’s Bad Business. But manage the condition and you have a repeat business model that keeps the patient just sick enough to keep coming back for more of what doesn’t work. I’ll say it again: The drugs don’t work because they’re not designed to cure. And if you pause to think about the “payment-by-volume” medical model, you’d have to conclude that something is truly fucked-up. Think about it – the more sick people you have in your practice, the more money you get paid... Hmmm – is there a disincentive here? Get to the root of the problem and treat it effectively and you’re going out of business... A chronically sick patient is a long-term asset to a medical business, generating lots of repeat business for as long as they remain sick and in need of your attention and those all-important drugs. Now, I’m usually an optimist when it comes to human nature, but a little bell rings in the back of my mind when I think about the Sickness Industry: how about you? It’s obvious, isn’t it? More sick people are good for business, whether you are a doctor or a drug company. Just like any business, the job of a medical practice or drug company is to recruit, develop and retain a customer, maximising their Lifetime Value to the business. As a pharmaceutical supplier you want to stimulate, grow and maintain demand for your products and services; pushing up prices and enhancing the perception of the worth of your offering. The dream-ticket in the sickness business is to invent, and then profitably medicate, a condition. Do that and you’ve hit the jackpot: ADHD/ADD and Ritalin spring to mind here, though there are many, many more examples out there. To whoever invented the diagnosis of “Stress”, I take my hat off to you. By making a person’s inability to deal with challenge into a medical condition (and inventing a drug which helps just a little) you’ve shown true genius and richly deserve the billions of dollars/pounds you’ve hoodwinked the foolish out of. Nice. Those who profit from disease and sickness run the show. In a nutshell – the foxes are in charge of the henhouse. Naturally, the foxes will suggest that what we really need are more foxes to guard the hens... And more money, of course, to buy more of what doesn’t work. So here’s my Genius Masterplan to save the NHS, reform the Sickness Industry, slash the cost of real healthcare to all of us, and improve the health of more people. Are you ready? Here we go: It’s simple. On Planet Neil, the doctors are paid only when the patient is well. Let’s all pay a small monthly subscription, something like your current National Insurance Contributions, but used for promoting real health instead of paying Government debt and drugs that fail to cure. Should you become sick, however, the doctor receives nothing from you but must treat you. It’s a simple idea. Incentivising the whole healthcare sector to move away from management of disease and toward curing the root causes of disease, thus promoting long-term health, rather than incentivising the prescription of ineffective, expensive drugs to manage symptoms. Now, if your illness is the product of your own stupidity, indolence or inability to manage yourself and take responsibility for your own life (obesity, alcoholism, drug abuse etc) you get three chances to man up and run your own life, each of which is time-limited and designed to treat underlying behaviour issues. Three Strikes and you’re out. Should you fail to mend your ways after your third strike-out you are released from the system to fend for yourself, out into an unregulated market for private medicine and healthcare where you can re-connect with the old model of healthcare. Should you be ejected from Planet Neil’s Healthcare System, that’s YOUR problem, because your health and what you do to yourself is YOUR life, YOUR decision. Naturally, those who cannot manage themselves and their own health will tend to remove themselves from the healthcare system and ultimately from the gene pool if left to their own desires and devices. I know that softy Pinko liberals will hate this suggestion, but – let’s face it – they live in a world of fluffy clouds and pink unicorns, having little or no connection with reality. I think it is spectacularly foolish to squander vast quantities of scarce resources upon those individuals who are determined to destroy themselves. So let those who wish to kill themselves with drugs, booze, smoking and other poisons get on with it. The State (well, you and I, actually) should not support such self-destructive behaviour at the expense of others who are taking responsibility for their lives, because that is so patently unjust and absurd. To penalise those who do right in order to maintain those determined to do wrong and harm themselves is an insult to common sense: it is the ultimate insult to morality and human dignity. For sure I believe fiercely in Equality of Opportunity and equal provision of healthcare – but I have no time for the not unworkable fantasy of Equality of Outcome, because people are fundamentally unequal and do not live in equal ways. That’s reality – and we should never delude ourselves that it is otherwise. © Neil Cowmeadow 2019 Please Like and Share The Thursday Thesis with your friends, family, and your chosen deity. I’d love to hear your comments, along with any ideas you’d care to hurl at me. [email protected]  The Thursday Thesis - 5/12/2019
Back in the 90’s I lived and worked in Kiev, the capital city of the former Soviet state of Ukraine. During the brutally cold winters in the city I started to train at a local gym to stay active when it was too cold to be outside for long. I’ve always been a bookworm so I read everything I could lay my hands on about training and exercise, trying to shortcut my progress and build muscles I could show off on the beach at Gidropark when the summer rolled around, instead of hiding my puny torso under a baggy T-Shirt. The books gave me an exercise plan and I did everything they told me to do, I did the prescribed 10 repetitions (reps) of each exercise, grouped into sets, which I repeated in accordance with the guidelines and training principles laid down by the experts, adding new routines and exercises from the articles in various bodybuilding magazines. Every morning I’d climb the stairs to the gym, unlock the outer steel plate door and the inner steel-barred gate, turn on the lights and watch the cockroaches scatter before I changed into my gym baggies and hit The Iron. An hour and a half later it was all over and I’d go home to bed. Day after day I trained my arse off in that little gym, spent a fortune wolfing down the supplements advertised in the magazines and stuffed myself with as many calories as I could stand. I just did what everyone else did and got what everyone else got: bigger muscles, chronic fatigue, burnout and injuries. Looking back, I realise that what I believed was keeping me healthy was making me ill and hurting me. Daft as a brush. That was twenty-five years ago. But to this day there’s a purity and honesty about weight training that appeals to me: it’s just The Iron versus Me, and there’s nowhere to hide. You can tell yourself you’re strong, that you are indestructible and fearless – but The Iron knows better and it will always find you out. The Iron will always beat you up and tell you that you are full of shit, because The Iron never sleeps and The Iron has no Soul – it just keeps coming at you and it will always tell you the truth. Now, as I return to The Iron I bring a different understanding of how to train. Gone are the 10 sets of 10 heavy reps, splitting the workout over multiple days with split routines targeting my legs one day, my chest and arms another, and my back on another day. Also notable by their absence are the downsides of training – chronic fatigue, burnout and injury. I’m training only twice a week, now: one heavy-duty routine which targets all of the major muscle groups for just one set of around 8 reps, and one routine where I am doing something I would have thought absurd back in those Kiev days – one single rep of each of 5 exercises, using only moderate weights, and each rep takes FIVE MINUTES! Five-minute REPS! Like most people, I thought it was BS to train one rep for 5 minutes – NOBODY was doing it, but the science behind it looks way more robust than the workouts in the magazines and bodybuilding manuals, which don’t talk much about rest and recovery, or mention the vast amounts of drugs used by pro bodybuilders. And I’ve rediscovered the fun of challenging The Iron, but this time on my own terms. I’m getting more out of the gym than I’ve ever got before, but I’m putting a whole lot less time and effort into it. This is a much more sane approach than going Old Skool – spending hours in the gym and not ever really recovering from a session before starting the next one. Minimum input, maximum output. What I’ve learned from my research into the science of training and the Freaks at the fringes is that Conventional Wisdom is frequently wrong, and what works best is what works best for you. A couple of cheerful gym rats have told me that 5 Minute reps can’t possibly work and that they can help me to train more effectively, but I’ll do it my way and we’ll see how it goes. If unconventional works, it’s a win. If it fails I can always return to doing things conventionally. Maybe I’ll prove them wrong – we’ll see. It’s just a test. In life, everything is a test, all knowledge is contingent – a best guess while I wait for more information with which to prove myself wrong and update what I think I know. Understanding that fact means that I’m always looking for better ways to train, teach, play, write and do business: in this mindset of ongoing curiosity, fun and adventure there is always something new to discover and explore. It’s time to play. © Neil Cowmeadow 2019 Please Like and Share The Thursday Thesis with your friends, family, and your chosen deity. I’d love to hear your comments, along with any ideas you’d care to hurl at me. [email protected]  The Thursday Thesis - 28/11/2019
In the cult TV show Star Trek, Spock - the half-human, half-Vulcan Science officer – coined the phrase “Live long and prosper” as a greeting to fellow Vulcans, accompanying it with a hand gesture dividing his fingers into two pairs with the thumb extended. To me, it’s a great salutation – far better than “Good morning” or the ubiquitous “Hi”. Live Long and Prosper is an affirmation of life and all its potentials: therefore it is deeply cool in my book. But there’s something missing, in my opinion. Living Long and Prospering is all well and good, but how should we die? Personally I’m a fan of being astonishingly active and rudely healthy, deep in to old age – enjoying perfect health right up until the moment when I drop Dead. I want to arrive at my own graveside absolutely spent: exhausted, gulping my last breath as I skid my motorcycle sideways to a halt, tipping me effortlessly into the pit as the lady who I was having sex with dismounts gracefully and pirouettes away, just seconds after our final, tumultuously synchronised orgasms. And as I look up at the sky from six-feet below the grass I smile, murmuring “What a ride – now I’m going to have a lie-in” as the vicar and the gravediggers start shovelling the dirt in – clearly terrorised by the thought that I might change my mind and spring back out of the hole before bounding off in pursuit of more fun and misadventure. Sounds good to me; that was probably how life ended for a good many of our prehistoric forebears – long-term diseases were rare and (if you made it past infancy) life expectancy seems to have been pretty good. Archaeologists tell us that heart disease was virtually unknown and cancer was rare in ancient times – ancient humans seem to have been on the go right up to the end of their lives. The medical establishment tells us that cancer and heart disease are difficult to treat without spending vast amounts of money on drugs: funny how Johnny Caveman had no problem with the modern killer diseases, isn’t it? As we grow older we are expected to sicken, weaken and decline before we die – but aren’t we buying into a dodgy model here? When we accept that growing older must mean a loss of powers, declining strength and virility we accept the notion that we are victims of an irresistible force set out against us: we begin to adopt the habits, movements and lifestyle we have been told is appropriate for us and acceptable to society. So life is good for a short time, just until we reach the tipping point where we cease to consider ourselves young and unlimited, transitioning into passive riders on the long, slow downhill path to a medicated dotage and ultimate release... It doesn’t have to be this way. There is a mountain of research demonstrating that most of today’s major diseases are caused by the dismal diet (built on false premises and the suspect recommendations of Governments) we are peddled by big Corporations, compounded by our lack of movement. What the research suggests is that changing one’s diet and walking around could just about transform your life and the lives of entire nations. But you probably won’t hear about all that research, because it’s been kept out of the mainstream media by people with too much to lose if we ever find out the truth about the Western Pattern Diet (also known as the Standard American Diet – poetically abbreviated to SAD) and how its ideas poisoned the World. Since much of the Western World began to adopt the SAD and looked to the nutritional guidelines of the US’s Food Pyramid (low fat, high carbohydrates, low salt etc) diseases and chronic illness have mushroomed. In countries all over the World obesity and type 2 diabetes (formerly called Adult-Onset Diabetes) have tracked politely behind the introduction of SAD. It’s not a coincidence – it’s causation, not correlation. In every Country where the SAD has gained a hold, the story is the same: rising levels of disease and obesity, with long-term sickness occurring earlier in life, necessitating vast spending on medication to manage the problems caused by the SAD. And as UK’s the population ages, more and more of us will become sick, medicated, and helpless; reliant on drugs and healthcare to manage our symptoms – just like America - and every other country infected by the SAD. We owe it to ourselves to be vigilant and to be difficult: to question the advice given to us about our food by the food industry, about our healthcare by the people who sell us drugs, and by a society whose “average” citizen is fat, sick and medicated. That’s not how I’m planning to live out the next fifty or so years: I’m going to Live Long and Drop Dead - how about you? © Neil Cowmeadow 2019 Please Like and Share The Thursday Thesis with your friends, family, and your chosen deity. I’d love to hear your comments, along with any ideas you’d care to hurl at me. [email protected]  Leaping Gymnast or Squiggly "S" shape? The Thursday Thesis - 10/10/2019 When I was a freckly sprog I’d sit and watch the flames and glowing coals of my grandma’s open fire – it’s something I love to do, even now. Shapes change, bright spots flare and subside, and shapes shift to become.... Well, what exactly? More often than not it’s a face – not the face that my great grandma warned me about, because that was always the devil’s face I had to be careful of – or something that looked enough like a face for my eyes and brain to connect the dots of randomness until they began to resemble the familiar. We all do it – it’s a universal human trait with its own fancy name: pareidolia. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary it is “...the tendency to perceive a specific, often meaningful image in a random or ambiguous visual pattern...” It turns out that we humans are wired to sort for the familiar and especially for other humans – which is no surprise given our evolutionary need to find food and a mate. But the most important word in that definition is “familiar” because we can manage what becomes familiar to us – it’s something we have control over. If we have love and security, that’s what we’ll expect to be around us and we’ll seek out love and security. Likewise, if we are surrounded by mistrust, hate, violence and division – such as our news programmes are crammed full of – then guess what...? Yep – we’re going to expect to find that everywhere we go. So when we begin to remove undesirable things from our lives (top tip: start with your television) that will begin to reduce our tendency to find those things in random events and objects. When we don’t have doom, gloom and depravity forced down our throats every day, then guess what – we see less of it in our everyday environment. Conversely, if we are surrounded by positivity and optimism, we will recognise those things in apparently random objects and occurrences, instead. So, looking at ambiguous images such as the ten inkblots of the Rorschach inkblot tests can indicate what a person’s biases are, as the viewer “projects” what they think should be present onto the random shape of the inkblot. So next time you glimpse a face in a cloud, or notice that a car’s front-end seems to wear a certain expression, relax – you’re not going mad, you’re just seeing things. And that’s ok by me. © Neil Cowmeadow 2019 Please Like and Share The Thursday Thesis with your friends, family, and your chosen deity. I’d love to hear your comments, along with any ideas you’d care to hurl at me. [email protected]  "This is the voice of your father..." Lord Dark Helmet The Thursday Thesis - 20/6/2019
I have a voice in my head. You have a voice in your head, too. If you think you don’t, whose voice was it that just said “no I haven’t”? We all have voices in our heads – not the schizophrenic’s auditory hallucination kind of voices – but the voices that haunt us and screw us up. They’ve been around for so long that we usually accept them as permanent and just another part of us: they’re part of our identity, even though they are usually just repeating echoes of long-ago, distorted, corrupted and twisted by time. Mine is the schoolteacher who told me that I’d never amount to anything, and the protective parental voices counselling me to not take risks and to find a nice, safe job. They lurk just below the level of my ear, slightly behind my right shoulder – the same place they’ve always been. What’s yours like? Maybe – like me – you’re still hearing the words of someone with authority and upon whom you depended for approval or love, all rolled together into the voice of your Inner Critic And maybe you’ve been listening to them talk crap about you, too - maybe for decades - just like my own inner voices have been talking trash about me and giving me their ten cents’ worth for decades, making me play it safe and doubt myself. Well, they used to do that... You see, a little while back, I got lucky. James, one of my mentors, showed me how to turn my own inner critic (a.k.a. my “Inner Bastard”) into my new Best Friend Forever. As he guided me through the process, he asked “...the voice in your head is always in the same location when it speaks to you, isn’t it?” “Uh-huh...” I agreed. He pressed on “...And it always has the same characteristics of tone, volume, cadence – and it usually says the same old words it has been using since...well since forever, doesn’t it?” I think I nodded. “It’s giving you the same message – like a tired old telephone answering machine that’s played the same worn-out tape for decades...” He said. “Now we’re going to change the tape, but the voice will remain exactly the same: the same position, the same intonation, volume and cadence, but now it’s going to speak different words. It’s like we’re going to change the tape in the machine: use the voice – change the tap... use the voice – change the tape... use the voice – change the tape.” I moved my hands through the actions of removing the imaginary cassette tape from the imaginary machine and inserting a brand-new, shiny imaginary cassette...then pressing “PLAY”... Now my old schoolteacher was telling me “Neil, you’re an oddball – a creative guy, very bright and full of fun, and I am absolutely certain that no matter what obstacles you face, you’ll find at least three possible solutions that are positive for everyone involved, and usually an opportunity that nobody else has spotted, too.” Thank you Mr Roberts! Why didn’t you say that forty bloody years ago? Then my dear old mom and dad chimed in – but what they said to me on the tape is private and sacred. The effect was immediate, and I was close to tears. James had me repeat the tape-changing process and tweak what the voices on the tape said until it was exactly right, then to leave the machine turned on and ready to play the tape for me at any time. This was some pretty weird stuff to take in, but I gotta tell you that it works: it works better than almost any self-talk intervention I’ve ever seen or read-up on. Some self-talk modifiers suggest that we should draw Mickey Mouse ears on the voices and give them helium to make them squeaky voices; others suggest moving the voices further away or moving the mental volume and tone controls. They also work, but not for everyone and not always quickly or permanently; I suspect that this is inconsistent because we have changed the attributes of the voice and it loses its authoritative qualities – that’s actually the whole point of the exercise. But here’s the thing: if you retain the attributes of the voice – instead of changing them - it retains its authority, credibility and power. Now, when the voice speaks to you, it still has all the gravity, power and credibility it has always had, but now it is saying positive things to you. What would you prefer your Inner Critic to say to you? Change the tape, and notice the difference... How cool is that? © Neil Cowmeadow 2019 Please Like and Share The Thursday Thesis with your friends, family, and your chosen deity. I’d love to hear your comments, along with any ideas you’d care to hurl at me. [email protected]  Like many writers, George Bernard Shaw led readers into Trance with compelling tales and worlds... The Thursday Thesis – 30/5/2019
Warning: Do not listen to the audio version of this blog if you are driving or operating machinery, as it contains hypnotic language patterns and may induce rapid Trance. Mention to anyone that you’re a hypnotist and you’ll often get funny looks from them. To many people there’s the image of the stage hypnotist and people quacking like ducks as they waddle around him; to others there’s the Svengali-like figure exerting mind control over his victim. But hypnosis – or Trance - is a natural state which we all pass into and emerge from throughout every day of our lives, and Hypnosis has been recorded in human history since the dynastic period in Egypt, around four thousand years ago. So – if everyone does it every day - why do people have strange ideas about trance and struggle to define what hypnosis is all about? Here’s my favourite definition of Trance: the condition of focused attention and the establishment of acceptable selective thinking. One thing that training in hypnosis has taught me is that people are in trance for almost all of the day: their family trance, their work trance, their geezer-down-the-pub trance – behaving differently from one context to another. Any parent who has lost their child for what seems like days on end as the child is absorbed in the latest computer game will have observed this, just as we have all seen people staring intently at their phones, impervious to the world around them. Computer games are designed to create absorption in order to keep the user in the game and create dependence by a carefully constructed pathway strewn with rewards and schemes: they are designed to induce trance in the players and to offer them a more engaging experience than dealing with reality. They’re not zombies, they’re just in trance and are not paying attention to what we call reality – just like I did as a child transforming myself into Spiderman, a Commando, the Wolves’ captain or my flavour-of-the-week favourite pop star. Being aware of trance phenomena has been a huge help when I’m working with my guitar students – particularly the ones who tell me “...I have no musical talent / I can’t play guitar... / I have no sense of rhythm...”which is just about everybody! The problem isn’t that they lack talent or haven’t been blessed with a “Gift”: the problem is that they’re stuck in a trance and don’t know how to get out of it. Over a lifetime they’ve accumulated evidence which supports the “no talent” statement or any other belief they hold about themselves: they have learned to focus their attention on what they cannot yet do and to only think in terms of how hard it would be for them to learn. It’s a circular belief system – a positive feedback loop – which demands that the student pays close attention to what they don’t know how to do (because they haven’t tried it yet), reminding them that they can’t play guitar and reinforces the belief that learning to play will be super-hard...especially for someone like them, who has no talent or natural gift.... They have a robust system of self-reinforcing beliefs and focused attention: that’s a Trance. Here’s the rule: if you’re not aware of it, you can’t affect it. That means we’ll rarely experience a change in ourselves unless we pay attention to how we move through the world; how we think, how we interact with others, how we talk to ourselves and how we view our experiences every day. How may we know to wake if we were not aware we are asleep? The other really cool thing I learned from hypnosis is what hypnotists call “Utilisation” – the process of using everything that happens as being a natural part of the client’s journey into Trance. For example, let’s suppose that - as the client relaxes ever more deeply and becomes more inwardly focused – a car alarm goes off in the street outside. The imperturbable hypnotist will utilise the unwanted noise to reinforce the client’s focus, as though the blaring horn was just another component of the mechanism of Trance, by saying “...and as you notice the sound of a car alarm in the street outside, you’ll simply pay closer and closer attention, now, to the sound of my voice as the car alarm grows quieter and more distant with every breath you take and every beat of your heart... and you notice once again that the sound of my voice takes you deeper and deeper down into the feelings you have that are the most relaxed feelings you’ve ever had, in the way that is most right for you...” This is a very powerful technique for the hypnotist to use, but suppose we just stole that idea and applied it across the everyday business of living? What new meaning could we make from the flat tyre or the laddered stocking, the deal that fell through or the date who stood us up? “...And as I leave the cinema and I attend to my breathing, I can thank my lucky stars that I can quickly eliminate her from my enquiries, which means that I retain a space in my life for someone who will show up for dates and who will be a better partner for me...this is a good thing”. Suppose we figured out how to make everything that happened to us a necessary precursor to our success or achievement of our worthy goal? Wouldn’t that be a Trance worth going into? © Neil Cowmeadow 2019 Please Like and Share The Thursday Thesis with your friends, family, and your invisible friend. I’d love to hear your comments, along with any ideas you’d care to hurl at me. [email protected]  The Thursday Thesis – 21/2/2019
As everybody knows, we live on a mis-shapen spinning ball of rock. It’s a very nice ball of rock, casually hurtling through space at a breathtaking 67,000 mph – that’s around 18 ½ miles per second; which is knocking on in anybody’s book. But that’s just its orbital velocity – its speed around the massive ball of bad-tempered plasma and nuclear fusion reactions which we call The Sun. That very same Sun is also in motion around the centre of our galaxy, at the brain-frazzling speed of 137 miles per second – that’s a whopping 493,200 mph. Naturally that means the numerous celestial bodies in orbit around The Sun are also zipping through space at stupidly fast speeds. So, The Earth is doing 67,000 mph, plus 493,200 when travelling in the same plane as The Sun’s motion around galactic centre, for a total of 560,200 mph. Now imagine yourself standing on the equator, where there speed of rotation around The Earth’s axis is greatest – just a smidge faster than 1000 mph. Add that to The Sun’s meandering speed and Earth’s orbital velocity and we’re doing up to 561,200 mph while we sleep. Now we have to remember that our own galaxy itself is in motion – at around 1.084 million miles per hour! Stop The World – I want to get off! That’s why I never tire of watching the stars at night in some remote nook or other. Sometimes there will be meteor showers, and every so often – for instance a few weeks ago – a lunar eclipse. The sky is beautiful, magnificent, terrifying, unfathomably vast and ever-changing; sprinkle in the fireworks of meteors when we pass through the debris fields of ancient comets and it’s a sight like no other. When was the last time you stood, silent and still, in the inky blackness and just looked upwards? And here’s the thing: Go and do it. Grab a flask of steaming coffee and take yourself to a dark place, then sit back and just watch the skies. See what you see, drink it in and notice it. If it makes you feel good, go “Wheeeeeehhhh!” at the thought of how fast you are travelling, all the time rooted firmly on the spot. If you want a puzzle to mull over whilst you’re there, here’s one I like – the ISS, or International Space Station. Measuring almost 110 meters long and 73 meters wide, the ISS is about the same size as a football pitch, looping around Earth at 17,500 mph. This is what puzzles me: I’m out in the wilds at night, on the shadow side of The Earth, looking up at a football-pitch sized structure that’s whipping across my field of view at nearly 5 miles per second. And the ISS is not self-luminous, but it still appears as a bright dot traversing the sky. So I’m wondering how it is that I can see an unlit footie pitch 250 miles away, in the dark, as it wazzes past at seventeen and a half thousand miles an hour? Buggered if I know, to be honest; but it seems to be incredible unlikely to me - how about you? © Neil Cowmeadow 2019 Please Like and Share The Thursday Thesis with your friends, family, and your invisible friend. I’d love to hear your comments, along with any ideas you’d care to hurl at me. [email protected]  Apollo 11 Post-Mission Press Conference L to R Aldrin, Armstrong, Collins The Thursday Thesis – 27/12/2018
Have you ever looked back at something you believed in and wondered “How did I ever believe that load of old cobblers”? We all get fooled sometimes, and it’s human nature to cling to our beliefs. We resist change and tenaciously hang on to what we think we know – even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. When we are very young we are told stories by our most credible sources, featuring characters such as Santa, the Easter Bunny and the Bogey-Man. Eventually we grow up and realise we’ve been misled and shrug it off as naivete: we were just kids, how could we know? But as adults our beliefs’ defence mechanisms are much more developed – we’ve had years of practice and our beliefs have become much more entrenched as a result. The more I’ve read, the more I’ve learned, assimilated and synthesised – just as you have. And as a consequence, some old beliefs have toppled – mostly about the “guitar heroes” I was peddled as a spotty teenager with a Mr Spoon haircut and a fashion sense that thought flares were a great idea, deep into the 80’s... But I had another hero, and he had feet of clay, too : Apollo 11 Mission Commander Neil Armstrong. I grew up fascinated by space, science and the “Space Race” – the Cold War battle for supremacy between the USSR and the good ol’ US of A. At the head of the exalted ones was always Armstrong, with Buzz Aldrin, Yuri Gagarin, Ludmilla Tereschkova, Gus Grissom and the others trailing a mile behind in the parade of spacefarers who led the way to the New Frontier for off-planet exploration and colonisation by my generation. These days, of course, I don’t believe a bloody word of it. Nope, not for a moment do I now believe that America landed on the moon in 1969. I suggest you brace yourself for 2019’s inevitable US tub-thumpin’ and flag wavin’ celebration of the Apollo 11 mission, because it’s going to be laid out right in front of us all over again, and it’s the greatest lie ever told. We are invited to celebrate the passing of 50 years since Neil Armstrong supposedly set foot on the lunar dust. Now, 50 years later, we can’t go back. According to NASA we’ve “lost the technology” that took the boys there. We can’t go beyond the Van Allen radiation belts until NASA has “proven that it can be done safely”. Odd – they seemed to do it routinely 50 years ago... They could just use the old space suits that the Apollo guys had – except that they did not feature radiation protective layers... NASA are busy developing the rocket to go back to the moon... 50 years ago the Saturn V rocket did this routinely. NASA could easily refer to the old mission data and simply re-run the Apollo missions instead of spending billions developing a launch vehicles...except they’ve “lost the data”. You couldn’t make this up: the evidence supporting Man’s Greatest Achievement isn’t there any more? You’re shitting me, right NASA? Not a bit of it. “Oh, but there are the photographs from the moon” I hear you cry – outraged that I should doubt a branch of the US Government. The cuddly old USA wouldn’t lie to us, would they? Of course not. America is the World’s Number One aggressor state, with a tally of military and CIA interventions ranging from subversion and covert perversion of free and fair elections to out-and-out invasion and mass murder, so we can trust them. If they say they went to the moon, they went to the moon. I just can’t buy it any more. You see it’s the photos that NASA say proves the story which demolish the myth. They are the smoking gun of fakery. In fact, my own doubts really began with the Apollo photographs: those stunning images of a glorious moment in man’s history. Back in the day I was a keen photographer, shooting freelance for the local paper, weddings and portraits. I shot vast numbers of photographs and even had some featured in the UK’s top photography magazine. I did my own darkroom work, too – all the processing and printing; avidly studying every part of the process from composition to final image via re-touching, image manipulation and finishing. Busted: I was a geek. And that’s the problem: I began to look at NASA’s finest images from a geek’s-eye view. That’s when I knew something wasn’t right, that NASA’s story made no sense at all. The more of NASA’s information I read, the less things made sense. First there were the cameras used “on the moon” – the Hasselblad EL model. ‘Blads are still the Rolls-Royce of cameras – and naturally I couldn’t afford one, but I’ve owned several similar medium-format cameras over the years so I understand their operation and limitations. Even back in the 80’s with cameras of that type, you had to do everything manually – there was no Automatic anything. Before you pressed the shutter you had to meter the light and calculate shutter time and aperture settings to ensure that the film would be correctly exposed. Too much light burned-out the highlights, too little light and details would be lost into shadows as highlights became murky grey splodges. Apollo 11 carried no light meters, and without a light meter, every exposure setting was just a guess. Focusing had to be done by eye, peering into the viewfinder onto a matte focusing screen to make sure the inverted image on the screen was sharp. The cameras had no automatic exposure controls, no light metering, and no automatic focus. And that’s what NASA sent to the moon! The astronauts’ EL units didn’t even have viewfinders to set up the shots, since they were mounted on the chest of the spacesuit and the helmet assembly didn’t allow the astronaut to see the camera’s controls. Then there was the film in the Hasselblads. Some films coped better with under or over-exposure than others and some films were famously difficult to expose correctly – especially films that produced transparencies (slides) instead of negatives. Among the most notoriously flakey films was Kodak Ektachrome - a transparency film with little latitude for errors in exposure. And naturally, NASA sent Kodak Ektachrome to the moon. To allow for the lack of latitude of film or in particularly important circumstances, it was usual to “bracket” every shot. That meant taking two extra shots at higher and lower exposure settings than normal, ensuring that we had the best margin for safety on critical images, such as weddings and special occasions. But at the singular moment of man’s greatest technical triumph, every shot was a one-off. NASA didn’t even bother with bracketing. So here’s the problem: we have gorgeously composed, beautifully exposed, dead-on-balls-accurate images with no bracketing for safety; allegedly taken by men in armoured gloves, operating blind with no way of seeing what they were shooting, no means of measuring light, in a hostile environment, using all-manual cameras to expose one of the world’s most picky films at the unique moment in man’s history where nothing could be left to chance. That’s why the Apollo 11 moon pictures are the smoking gun that proves the USA’s moon landing story is fake - because nothing about them makes sense. Every single technical detail about them is wrong. And that’s before you begin to analyse what is in – or not in - the actual images; their multiple light sources, the absence of star-fields, the cross-hairs that disappear behind objects in the images... It’s all on NASA’s website, go and check it out for yourself. And what about my hero, Neil Armstrong? Well, he and his crew squirmed and flinched their way through a couple of press conferences, before withdrawing from public life to a great extent, reluctant to discuss their supposed adventure. Screw that! If I’d gone to the moon I’d want to tell every single person I met about it, wouldn’t you? Watching the press conference footage now, I see three scared men, embarrassed and unsure of their answers; only able to answer questions in language that distances them from their lunar odyssey. Not one of them says “I saw...”, “I did...”, or “I felt...” because they never went to the moon and couldn’t bring themselves to use such direct language to describe what they hadn’t done. Between them they couldn’t even decide whether they could see any stars from the moon’s surface – despite its lack of atmosphere and the desolate blackness of the bitter-cold lunar night. Back in 1969 the lie was easy to pull off. In 2019 we’ll be sold the same lie all over again. I’m not buying it – what about you? © Neil Cowmeadow 2018 Please Like and Share The Thursday Thesis with your friends, family, and your domesticated Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal. I’d love to hear your comments, along with any ideas you’d care to hurl at me. [email protected]  Notorious demonstration of "dad dancing" in St Peter's Square, Rome. The Thursday Thesis – 6/12/2018
Have you ever been told “If you want to learn a foreign language, the best thing you can do is fall in love with a native speaker who speaks little English”? I have, on more than one occasion – by friends I both love and respect. But is it true, or just another old wives' tale? At first flush it seems sensible: we become involved and rapidly absorb the language of the beloved. Why is this? Some of the process is down to trusting our lover whilst we fumble around their syntax and bludgeon their grammar. We presume they will be patient and forgive us as we foul-up and gradually improve - like a parent patiently encouraging their child to walk. The parent encourages and supports the youngster, enthusing over every attempt at the vertical and smiling at each tiny progression. Patience and safety work: that’s why almost every child learns to walk – the parents don’t watch junior tumble for the first time, then say “this one’s not a walker...” and abandon the child. Better still is the gentle delivery of feedback – the “Breakfast of Champions”, though I always thought toast was what they ate. But there’s something else which might just play a large part in the acquisition of a lover’s language: a natural hormone called oxytocin, which is manufactured by your body’s hypothalamus and pituitary gland. Oxytocin production is stimulated by – amongst other things – bonding, falling in love, cuddles and orgasm; good old fashioned love ‘n’ sex. Here’s the bit that matter most: as well as virtually eradicating the stress hormone cortisol, oxytocin is associated with neuroplasticity – your brain’s natural ability to reconfigure itself and learn new things. Your brain is always changing: it’s a “trembling web”, according to Ian Robertson in his book Mind Sculpture: Your Brain's Untapped Potential. (See the link below) A rush of oxytocin is like an earthquake in that trembling web. To put it another way, just imagine your brain is made out of chicken-wire, with connections criss-crossing all over the place...now heat up that chicken-wire with a blowtorch and notice how squishy and pliable it’s become. That’s your brain on oxytocin; that’s your brain in love. Seems to me that those old wives knew a thing or two and science is just catching up with them... Link to MIND SCULTURE: Your Brain's Untapped Potential https://amzn.to/2PpqvN9 © Neil Cowmeadow 2018 Please Like and Share The Thursday Thesis with your friends, family, and your domesticated Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal. I’d love to hear your comments, along with any ideas you’d care to hurl at me. [email protected]  The Thursday Thesis – 22/11/2018 Left, right...left, right...left, right... You don’t even think about it – you just think “I’ll go over there” and magic happens: the teetering stack of bones, tendons, muscles and fat just goes – seemingly effortlessly. In essence, a walking human is a collection of four perfectly synchronised pendulums, both supporting and supported by a gristle-bound scaffold of calcification: bones. But here’s a funny thing: if I had a pound for every one of my guitar students who’ve told me that they have no sense of rhythm, I’d have a ton more dosh in my pocket. Some of those guys (and it is mostly the guys) are serious about their condition, and some of them make a joke out of it. But it’s still there, hogging their mindspace and stinking-up their thinking – despite the evidence to suggest that they are so obviously, so screamingly phenomenal at rhythm. Way too many of us are convinced that we have no sense of rhythm, and – as a consequence – we lose our inborn capacity to sing, dance, play the guitar, piano, drums: this is malware for your mind. If you had a virus in your computer, you’d fire up the toughest, most kick-arse, anti-virus software you could lay hands on and annihilate the virus. If you were ill and couldn’t sing or dance – wouldn’t you seek medical help to restore what you’d lost? In the same way that a person who doesn’t read has no advantage over someone who cannot read: if you don’t dance, sing or make music you are no different to someone who can’t do those things. Here’s the thing, though: every child sings, every child dances, every child will pick up a drum, pluck a string or pound a piano key. So why are we born with music and rhythm, but grow up to believe we have none of that good stuff in us? We’re born rhythmic because – as far we know – humans evolved as a pack animal; something like wild dogs or hyenas. Ancient Homo Sapiens used their natural endurance and unique ability to cool-off as they ran, chasing prey animals to the point of collapse before moving in for the kill. It’s called persistence hunting, and it is still used in isolated places where “civilisation” hasn’t choked the practice out. Pack animals have to communicate with one another whilst on the move, and in the absence of language or in noisy environments sound may not be an option. Thus humans became masters of non-verbal communication and rhythm as our ancestors bounced along in perfect synchronisation with one another so they could maintain eye contact and pick up on one another’s body language. Look at that group of joggers next time they come pounding past your window – they’ll all be in step with one another. Nobody is keeping them in time: they just instinctively fall into step together. Ever see a couple who are out of step with one another? What might that tell you about the state of their communications or relationship? So don’t ever tell me that you have no sense of rhythm, because you, me, and everybody else... Well, we are all just rhythm monkeys. It’s our ancient inheritance, our birthright, and it’s what we do when we think there’s nobody watching. We dance when we are alone, when are inhibitions are lowered by alcohol or narcotics, or we are in a socially sanctioned place where dancing is acceptable – clubs and dance classes for instance. When was the last time you saw someone dance in the street or in their workplace? It’s been a while... We all have rhythm, we all have natural – effortless timing – until someone tells us how hard it is and that we shouldn’t try, just in case we make a mess of it and look stupid. Isn’t it time we let our rhythm monkeys out of their cages? So shut up and dance, Monkey-face! © Neil Cowmeadow 2017 Please Like and Share The Thursday Thesis with your friends, family, and your domesticated Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal. I’d love to hear your comments, along with any ideas you’d care to hurl at me. [email protected]  How a small boy sees scientists - "Rocket Scientist Zombie". The Thursday Thesis – 8/11/2018
When the tough cop Dirty Harry suggests that the freshly shot bank robber should ask himself “...do I feel lucky?” you might think Harry is just taking the piss: after all, the dude is lying in a pool of his own guts and blood while Harry - the bouffant-haired cop - stands over him toting a .44 Magnum. By definition, it ain’t the felon’s lucky day. But what is luck, anyway? I’d describe good luck as an innate tendency to attract positive situations, circumstances, people and things into one’s life. Bad luck has the opposite effect. So what about you – do you feel lucky? Ask yourself if you are lucky, neither lucky or unlucky, or plain old unlucky. There’s no right or wrong answer, but your answer is important because you’re going to need a baseline of how lucky, or otherwise, you are right now. You’ll need that baseline because – from today – you’ll know how to be lucky, every day of your life. How would you like to be lucky every single day of your life? Suppose I told you that there is a way to be lucky – how suspicious would you be? Would your bullshit radar start bleeping, 8 to the bar? Mine would! Don’t take my word for it, have a gander at the work of Professor Richard Wiseman, an English psychologist, who set up a study of more than a thousand people, that lasted 10 years. According to The Prof, luck isn’t anything unusual or supernatural; neither is it a gift – it’s a mindset and a behaviour. So, chuck out your lucky rabbit’s foot, your four-leaf clover and your lucky horseshoe, and check yourself in to the School of Luck. Wiseman’s study divided its subjects into three groups:
Then the fun started... Across a variety of tests, the Lucky People consistently spotted opportunities which were only spotted half of the time by the Control Group, and which were spotted rarely by the Unlucky People. After much testing and thinking, Wiseman concluded that Luck was really the combination of four key factors: 1: He thinks that Lucky People create and notice opportunities. They are optimistic and curious, open to possibility, and see opportunities everywhere. Furthermore, Lucky People tend to be sociable, outgoing, helpful and likeable. They are attractive to other people, and their helpfulness generates reciprocation from others. That’s why Lucky People always seem to know the right people – they simply know more people and those people know them in a positive way. Unlucky People were more pessimistic and less sociable, helpful and less likeable. It seems common sense that you’re not likely to meet the person of your dreams or have that life changing idea if your are uninterested, holed-up in your room for days on end, and don’t experience much in the way of real human contact with a number of people. Maybe this is why stroppy teenagers who live online think that they are unlucky and life is unfair? 2: According to Wiseman, Lucky People make lucky decisions by trusting their intuition and instincts: They trust themselves and their decisions much more than Unlucky People do. Consequently they are much more likely to make any decision and take action on that decision, which naturally increases the likelihood of a positive outcome. This conclusion of the study is just another way of saying “make a bloody decision and get to work” and “trust your gut” – two very old ideas that still hold true. 3: Wiseman’s study concluded that Lucky People create self-fulfilling prophecies: they know what they want and make plans to achieve it, based on their idea of what should happen. This is no surprise to anyone familiar with the vast body of research on the effect of goal planning because Wiseman’s idea of the self-fulfilling prophecy is really the common sense idea that a person with a plan will achieve far more than a person who has no plan at all. 4: Finally, Lucky People are resilient and turn “unlucky” events into “lucky” outcomes: which is another way of saying that Lucky People are determined, resourceful and are able to see the positive potential in any situation. Again, none of this is news: the annals of history are full of the stories of people who experienced unfortunate events but who were able to transform that event into the springboard to greatness, fame and fortune. So, all in all, the science seems only to re-state a few unfashionable old ideas that our forefathers knew:
I’m not sure if we really needed a ten-year academic study to verify that Luck is really nothing more than a placeholder word for these qualities and processes, but Professor Wiseman has sold a mountain of books based on his research – the lucky bastard! For a fuller read of Wiseman's findings, get the book here: https://amzn.to/2RKmNPE  Episode 113 - 8 Hours a Day... The Thursday Thesis - 23/08/2018 For as long as I can remember I’ve been interested in sleep. Sleep fascinates me. More accurately I’ve been interested in doing without sleep for most of my adult life. As a kid I tried to stay awake all night - night after night – in the hope that I’d be able somehow to forget to sleep once I’d established the habit. I reasoned that if I could eliminate sleep from my routine I’d have more time to read and learn, then I’d eventually know everything and life would be better. It’s funny what you believe as a kid, isn’t it? But, to a certain extent I still have the idea in my tiny, pea-sized brain, and I still have a load of unanswered questions about sleep:
Today I’m just going to stick to question 11 – “Who says we should sleep for 8 hours a day?” Well, first of all, my mum did. But I wasn’t going to take it at face value, so for years I experimented with sleep patterns of varying lengths whilst I worked shifts at a busy casino in Birmingham. Some days I’d get a long eight hour-ish sleep, and sometimes I’d only sleep 3 or 4 hours between 14 hour double shifts, bookended by my 20 miles there, twenty miles back cycle ride into the city. Ever since then I’ve slept only 5 hours a night, and I’m not alone in this – several of my friends are short-sleepers, too. Medicine would probably tell us to try to get 8 hours... Why 8 Hours? It seems to have evolved since the 17th century, when street-lamps were installed in Paris, Amsterdam, and London. With the coming of streetlights, being abroad at night became less dangerous, and mentions of the traditional/natural two-phase sleep pattern began to fade from contemporary literature and documents. Humans were – until that time – accustomed to a two-part, or “biphasic” sleep pattern, with a “First Sleep” of around four hours, a period of two or three hours of wakefulness, then a “Second Sleep” lasting another four hours or so. This appears to be the natural way we sleep, according to psychiatrist Thomas Wehr. Wehr observed a group of volunteers subjected to 14 hours per day of darkness. Within a few weeks, the group adopted the two-sleep routine without any prior knowledge of it, suggesting that this pattern is a biological norm when artificial light is absent. But that’s still eight hours of sleep every day, which seems to be a lot. Eight hours kip is a third of my life, and I’ve got better things to do with my time than have strange dreams, snore and suspend breathing for long periods of time before violently sucking in air like a man surfacing from a deep lake. So now I sleep between 3 and 4 hours a night, but take one or two naps of 8-10 minutes each during the day, multiple-sleep pattern is known as “polyphasic sleep”. This means that my total time spent sleeping every day is only 4.5 hours per day, saving me 3.5 hours per day compared to the monophasic 8-hour model. So, 7 days a week I have an extra 3.5 hours of awake time: that’s 24.5 hours more awake time, every week – an eight-day week! Is this good? Maybe... I get a lot done, but there are downsides, too: society isn’t geared-up for oddballs with unconventional sleeping habits, and no sane woman is going to put up with my crazy nocturnal habits. Now, if I could just eliminate the residual sleep I do need, I’d have time to think up a solution to that problem... It’s just a thought, but everything begins with a single thought... © Neil Cowmeadow 2018
Please Like and Share The Thursday Thesis with your friends, family, your cat, unicorn and anyone else. I’d love to hear your comments, along with any ideas you’d care to hurl at me. [email protected]  Sir Isaac Newton, Scientist, Philosopher, President of the Royal Sciety, Thief. Episode 112 - Losing My Religion
The Thursday Thesis - 06/08/2018 You - like me, and like pretty much everyone else around us - grew up in the shadow of Science and Mathematics , the so-called “Queen of the Sciences”. To keep it simple, I’ll lump Mathematics and Science together and call them “Science”. Science was drummed into us in school and was generally considered to be a very good thing indeed. Our science teachers were – at least to me – the keepers of The Knowledge – handing down morsels of erudition from the high table of the great minds: Newton, Einstein, Rutherford, Darwin, and the rest of that rabble. In the absence of evidence for other people’s gods, science became my god – because it made everything understandable with its Laws and Universal Constants. Then there was this thing called The Scientific Method – this is the route by which ideas are suggested, tested, reviewed and proven. It goes something like this: let’s say that I have a brilliant idea (stop giggling, because it could happen) a spark of genius so dazzling that it will change the world forever. I cobble together an experiment that proves my idea to be an absolute belter and I write a properly formatted scientific paper and send it off to other scientists for “peer review”: this is their chance to poke holes in my idea and prove me wrong. This is a good thing: giving other people the chance to disprove my idea, or “falsify” it is Science’s way to eliminate the unworthy. In Science, nobody gets a pass and every new theory has to stand up to scrutiny. Now, just to add a bit of intrigue, I’ll mention that theft is common within the peer-review process and there are plenty of well-documented cases of intellectual theft in the history of Science. This is not just a modern problem where vast amounts of money, job security and fame are at stake. In fact, Newton seems to have been a particularly good thief – and, as President of The Royal Society at the time - he could behave more-or-less as he pleased and knobble anyone who stood in his way. “Why are you banging on about peer-review?” you ask impatiently. Well, here’s the thing: Scientists are reviewing new theories and ideas from the standpoint of Science, and there are jobs, money and prestige at stake. Now, if I show up with my brilliant idea and change everything, then the Scientists reviewing my work are suddenly out of work. That’s where my faith in Science faltered and fell: the gatekeepers appear to be more interested in protecting their positions, incomes and the status quo than expanding the range of human understanding. Real scientists follow the observable facts – the data – rather than dismiss the data because Science says that the data is wrong. And God forbid that any data breaks Science’s Laws makes it through peer-review: these strange phenomena are called “anomalous” and conveniently parked out at the fringes of mainstream Science, rather than dragged into the centre. Anomalous data are a challenge to what we think we know, a red flag that there’s a hole in the theory or that the Laws of Science are not really laws but entrenched ideas that demand to be updated. That’s how Science – if it is to be worthy of the name – should be done: fact should determine theory, rather than the theory determining the permissible facts. The current darling of Science, Quantum Theory, is busily attempting ever more tortuous ways of explaining everything in terms of itself, instead of holding its hands up and saying “buggered if we know” when confronted with the apparent paradoxes of what we understand as the real Universe. Science has no clue at all about remote action at a distance, which defies the Law that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, and is at a loss to explain the observer effect, where the mere presence of a human being will affect the outcome of an experiment - depending on the human’s intention for the experiment. Then there are the well-documented cases of remote viewing, precognition, the power of meditation to control machines – not to mention all those inventions that have been confiscated and disappeared from the public records. And there’s Dark Energy and Dark matter, where “Dark” means “we can’t find it or explain it, but we think or know it’s there or should be there. And please, please, please don’t get me started on medicine that hasn’t been able to do a thing for a person’s chronic pain for thirty-plus years, but I can turn off that pain in a few minutes. And then there is the problem of Universal Constants... The problem with Universal Constants (like “Big G”, or G – the gravitational force - and C, the speed of light on a vacuum) is that they change. Science has fixed the speed of light problem by creating a circular reference, rather than facing up to the fact that it ain’t a constant at all. In short, Science is lying to itself and to you and I about the speed of light – and if it’s lying about that, getting caught in that might lead you to ask what else it’s fibbing about. You see, Science doesn’t know everything – not by a long chalk – but it pretends to. Things that happen but which break the Laws of Science are too often shut-down in peer review or dismissed as anomalous data. That’s why I don’t believe in Science any more: it is a useful tool, as far as it goes, but it doesn’t cover everything. And it’s a dangerous situation where a single point of view dominates the discourse and intellectual fascism rules. Science lays claim to absolute knowledge, when all it really has is a rag-bag of contingent theories that don’t always meet the challenges presented by observations of reality. Science is no longer my religion and my faith, but is - at best - a rabble of dubious dogma fit to be debunked by a long, cold examination of the evidence. Science is a self-reinforcing belief system – a fundamentalist religious sect, able only to see with its own eyes, narrowing its perspective day by day. Belief – certainty, often without evidence – is static, ossified, and immovable. Logic and reason cannot assail it, because belief is irrational and not subject to examination. And belief is the barrier to understanding. Belief is the full-stop that ends thought. And everything begins with a single thought... © Neil Cowmeadow 2018 Please Like and Share The Thursday Thesis with your friends, family, your cat, unicorn and anyone else. 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