There Are Four Lights

I must admit I had a hunch that if I clicked a link from a facebook friend that lead to a place called The Temple of Visions that I was going to find some wooness. But whatev! The best part was coming across this dude, Nassim Haramein, and The Resonance Project. It was the perfect leap from artsy new age & raw food to pseudoscience faux-physics & crop circles!

Well, who is Nassim Haramein anyway?

Nassim Haramein’s lifelong journey into the geometry of space-time has lead to a coherent understanding of the fundamental structure of the universe.

Hmm, sounds neat. I definitely prefer coherent understanding to incoherent misunderstanding and who doesn’t want to know a bit more about the fundamental structure of the universe?

In this 4 DVD presentation, Nassim will take you on a journey through humanity’s evolution, exposing the changes necessary to produce an all-encompassing Unified Physics; a unification of not only the four forces of nature, but also evolution and the occurrence of consciousness.

Holy crap! This guy has solved it all! Forget simply unifying all of physics, he’s solved the mysteries of consciousness too. One wonders why he doesn’t have a few Nobel prizes yet…

Demonstrating the parallels between this theory and ancient codes found in documents and monuments, Nassim weaves a tale which may prove to be one of the most important discoveries of our time.

Duh, of course…I always forget that ‘the ancients’ knew everything but, unfortunately, hid in all in coded documents, artwork, and monuments. Jerks. Luckily, Nassim is here to help us out.

Have you ever wondered why those science classes were at all important?

Okay, you’ll notice in his series of questions that they start off pretty fine—-I mean, I’m certainly disappointed in my high school science education (is that what he means by ‘those science classes’?). My high school science teacher pretty much ruined my desire to take any more science credits by making us practice stippling over and over and don’t you DARE make little tails on your stipples or no one will take your paper seriously because you have one, two, homg THREE tails in your drawing composed of tiny little pencil dots!!! ahem…

Were you ever curious about the mysteries of Ancient Egypt?

Who doesn’t like learning about Ancient Egypt! However, when someone brings them into a conversation about unified field theories, my woometer starts to kick in.

What about the modern mystery of crop circles?

KABLAMO! My woometer is now on fire. Smells like stupid.

These DVDs explore all of the above as well as the following ::

DVD 1 :: The Search for the Fundamental Pattern Dimensions of Geometry, Chemistry, Scaling Law, Biology, Principle of Unification, Pyramids

DVD 2 :: From Micro to Macro – Unifying the Field Geometry, Structure of the Vacuum, Crop circles

There it is again! Crop circles? And do I smell pyramid power in DVD 1?

DVD 3 :: Everything is a Black “Whole” Ancient Egypt, Archeology, Black Wholes/White Wholes

DVD 4 :: Unlocking the Mystery – The Future is in Our Hands Bible, The Arc of the Covenant, Knights Templar, Emmanuel’s Tomb, Kabbalah, Tree of Life Decoded

Nice. My woometer has completely melted. The Bible, The Arc, Knights Templar…I bet there’s more knowledge to be decoded here. What I thought was a woo sandwich has turned out to be a woo cornucopia. One detail that caught my eye was that he’s referred to as a “scientist” on the cover artwork. Um, scientist? What kind? Usually, actual scientists call themselves physicists, biologists, astronomers, astrophysicists, geologists, or ya know…whatever field they specialize in. I guess it’s pretty clear this guy doesn’t stick to being an expert in just one field. He must be a whateverologist.

As early as 9 years old, Nassim was already developing the basis for a unified hyperdimensional theory of matter and energy, which he eventually called the “Holofractographic Universe.”

Nice, I have fond memories of making Spirographs too.

Okay, maybe you might be thinking “Jeeze, Sara. Why are you picking on poor Nassim and his lame DVD? Why do you care?” Well, turns out that The Resonance Project doesn’t just sell his lame DVD, where worst case scenario might be someone wasting $84.00 USD. No, sir—-The Resonance Project offers workshops where you can become a certified “Emissary” and teach Nassim’s lame seminars to others. Worst case scenario for this is blowing $475 and doing your part to help grow a cult. This requires a special sort of face-palm:

Meditation techniques based on this knowledge will also be offered as an invaluable tool to aid in further integration, as you learn how to more effectively tap into the vacuum energy and the curvature of space and time and connect to your own personal singularity.

Go here if you like to barf

Woo begets woo. It didn’t take long to get from an innocent facebook post about going to art exhibit to the boatload of pseudoscience that is The Resonance Project. I’m probably the kind of gal who would avoid going to a place called The Temple of Visions (only out of politeness to its patrons who probably wouldn’t appreciate my big dark skeptical aura effing up their new age experience), but I know plenty of people who might check it out. And if they decided to check out what other events the venue hosts, they’d find, like I did, Resonance Emissary Jamie Janover.

Personally, I would never fall prey to Jamie’s proselytizing—-not because of my skepticism, but because I have a strict policy of not taking anyone seriously if their website uses the font Copperplate Gothic Bold.

Does God have a Future?
A Great Debate Filmed by ABC’s Nightline

Today, we attended a debate between Michael Shermer and Sam Harris vs. Deepak Chopra and Jean Houston. The debate was “Does God have a Future?” and will air on ABC Nightline on March 23rd. It was splendid  to see Shermer and Harris speak again, after each giving their own great talk, last month, at TED. Chopra was predictably absurd, dishing out his brand of woo juice cocktail—-new age pseudoscience post-modernism blended with faux quantum physics. Jean Houston, whom I’ve never heard of, was a complete embarrassment. I don’t recall anything relevant in her boring anecdotes.

I had a chance to ask a question, so I came up with one for Deepak. He had mentioned “deeper ways of knowing” and gave the impression that this was through intuition and repeatedly referred to “the subjective”. So I asked, “Without the objective scientifiic method, how can we distinguish what is true from what we simply want to be true?” Deepak answered this by saying he would answer my question, but that he didn’t want to answer any more questions after that. He then proceeded to not answer my question by doing his little Chopra word dance of nothingness.

Now, I know correlation doesn’t always mean causation, but if you want to interpret Chopra’s actions as being totally scared off by my question of skeptical awesomeness, I have no problem with that whatsoever!

Skepticism Through Manga

The graphic novel market is dominated by sales of manga; the form of comic book made popular by its animated counterpart, anime. Canadian manga creator, Sara E. Mayhew, was featured by the country’s prestigious graphic arts magazine, Applied Arts, as “new talent commanding our attention”. And, indeed, that was what she received—the attention of TED, the annual idea conference of the world’s leading thinkers and doers, who chose Sara to become part of their new fellowship program and attend the TED conference as a 2009 TED Fellow.

Her “idea worth spreading”? Promoting skepticism and passing on her passion for science through storytelling. Manga is the platform she has chosen to tell her stories. In her talk, Skepticism Through Manga, you’ll be introduced to this powerful storytelling medium and to the worlds and characters she has created to inspire readers to embrace evidence-based thinking.

Yes, I’ll be speaking at the Center For Inquiry on March 31st at 8pm in Hollywood! This is CFI’s monthly science cafe, “Cafe Inquiry“. It’s a free event so come on by and hang out with other skeptics, humanists, and science lovers. I’ll be opening the evening with my talk and then a discussion follows.

FREE skeptics talk, available refreshments, open bookstore, AND a geekalicious Canadian mangaka? HOMGosh~tell everyone!

Pink Leopard chiffon top + camisol

YesStyle is my favourite online store. I really should remove the oh-so-easy to click bookmark button from my browser. I started visiting the site as a fashion resource for illustrating clothing for my manga characters. Now, I dispose my income there…

I’m not a very big girl, by any means, but the petite sizes of this Hong Kong based store—-with Japanese, Korean, and Chinese brands—-make me feel really huge sometimes! This pink leopard print top fits fine, but you can still notice how loose it hangs on the model, compared to me. I’m also weasing flower barrettes from YesStyle (now unlisted) and a moon crescent pendant (out of stock). The blouse also came with a white lace camisol.

Below, is a yellow empire blouse from a South Korean brand called dodostyle. This picture of me was taken at a bistro called Soleil on the west side of Los Angeles. It was a really nice place, but I think that it’s adorable that french bistros in LA will have poutine on the menu as if it is as ‘fancy pants’ as other french dishes. Where I’m from, in northern Ontario, poutine is something you find at a greasy burgers ‘n fries joint, in a school cafeteria, or at a chip-truck. You typically won’t find it on a ‘classy’ menu. I could be wrong. Heck, I didn’t know there was a Poutinebot on twitter.

Crochet-detail Empire blouse