h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Brick houses: depends on where in North America you were. Colonial New England=wood. Lots of forest. Ditto western Pennsylvania, Tennessee, lots of places. In colonial Philadelphia, there was a brick works. William Penn decreed brick for his utopia - he'd experienced the Great Fire of London. Some dodgy relatives of mine used to smuggle brick into Tennessee back in the 1970s...

Here's a mini-local history of fabled Glenshaw of the Vertiginous Angels:

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~njm1/glenhist.htm

I didn't know they had a sickle factory. With steel imported from Russia. Wow. Importing steel to western Pennsylvania, how ironic in light of later events. I wish Wim Wenders would make a movie about Glenshaw.

I have an idea about that business of place affinity...and it has nothing to do with reincarnation. Have you heard of Rupert Sheldrake and his theory of morphic resonance?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_RGEpJSr6s

I ran across a TEDx talk he gave - I thought, 'What a reasonable man, and what obviously true statements.'

Then I found out the TED talk people had 'banned' his video. People keep putting it back up. He's controversial? Go figure.

And he sounds so much more scientific than Aleister Crowley babbling about 'magical memory', though they were probably talking about the same thing. See? You just have to give it a scientific name. Like Star Trek.

Fascinating!! Thanks so much for all the info! The world is an amazing place in the light of knowledge!

I've just been further checking up on William Penn, also the history of bricks.

You never know where life will take you. h2g2 is better than college for the likes of me.



Ah yes, Rupert Sheldrake! He used to lecture at the Schumacher College in Dartington, Devon, a few minutes from where we lived, although I never actually went to one of his talks.

I remember when he was stabbed in Santa Fe, a few years ago. Some fellow stuck a dagger deep into his thigh, after a lecture. Poor guy.

So, interesting! You think morphic resonance is behind the place affinity feelings?

I've been trying to get my head around Rupert's morphic resonance for years. Perhaps this is my time. I shall watch the link, and return.

Perhaps. .

. Star Trek. I love it.

The TED organisation looks good. Not heard of it before.

I really don't get why they banned Rupert, though. Its not like his ideas are dangerous. People are always filing him under pseudoscience.

OK so Rupe's morphic resonance. Good video. I think I get the collective memory that runs through a species. That's more than I've ever got before. Seems quite logical to me.

And if it's not true after all, well, so what? Has it harmed anyone? And who can prove if its true or not? Like, what's wrong with ideas?

Now I'll have to paint primary school pictures, see if I really get it.

So, let's say a guy named Sam takes a holiday flight to Spain, with his girlfriend.

The resort is fine, they have a pool, and a nice apartment. Sam goes to the poolside cafe to buy a couple of pizzas, and something happens to him. He's not a tourist any more. He's not even on holiday. He's been here before, even though he hasn't, this is home to him, he comes from this town, and his friend Raoul will appear in a minute.

Then he snaps out of it, and takes the pizza to his girlfriend, and says nothing.

It's like he went into a waking dream state.

So ....

Not sure what Rupert would make of this. . I think I might have strayed. Was Sam tuning into morphic resonance? Like, picking up on a collective memory?

Hmm.

Not sure.

I remember when we lived in Dartmouth, my parents visited us. We were looking for a place for tea.

We found an olde place, went through this archway, across a cobbled courtyard, and into the tea room.

My mother went really peculiar, we thought she was going to faint. She was convinced she'd been there before. (Even though she hadn't). Not because it reminded her of another olde worlde teashoppe, it was that particular location, and she was convinced.

Well, more convincing than Sam and Raoul and the pizza, , because its true, but was she experiencing morphic resonance?

I need primary school pictures.

Our Robbie Stamp gave a TEDx talk in London. On grief:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GfthkyzW5s

Well, I think it could be morphic resonance if you pick up 'vibes' from a place...

Morphic resonance could also explain why people all around the world invent the same thing at the same time. Like steam engines and telephones and televisions.

Plato would have agreed. Surely TED wouldn't ban Plato?

Fired brick architecture in what's nowadays the USA began in the Virginia colony back about the 1620s, with a major building boom maturing in the 1650s.

Early colonial* fired brick architecture in Virginia is substantially the same as Welsh provincial architecture, the tradesmen in the building trades doing the work during the early colonial period being imported from Wales

Both schools of architecture, Welsh provincial and Early Colonial Virginia architecture, are still alive and well.




The oldest unfired mud brick and post and lintel construction I know of is from northern Turkey dating to about 10,000 years ago.

One of the oldest fired brick sites is Mohenjo Daro in India, fired brick so modern looking it could be mistaken for 19th century work, actually predating the bronze age, brick architecture, along with ceramics and weaving, is among the most enduring of the stone age innovations.




*Before the post revolutionary, neo-classical, innovations of the Jefferson era.

Exactly! TED wouldn't ban Plato.

What about Carl Jung?

This friend and I are considering Jung's idea of the Collective Unconscious. Many people say this idea is unproven, scientifically, and somewhat fringe and wacko.

If the CU is a reality, with all like archetypes and things, and its been around forever, like a big image pool, its essential I think to not be ruled by it, 'cos it can get a bit suffocating, best to know it for what it is, but it doesn't necessarily define the self. And some other things, and then there's a higher consciousness.

What??? Jungian psychology in a paragraph. Not. . I'm a work in progress.

Robbie did a talk for TEDx? This is most interesting. I shall check your link. Thank you!

Ah Ah! Ah! Ah! Lighbulb moment. Bells and lights and twinkly tinkles.

I just got morphic resonance. Thanks! What you said, about people all around the world inventing things at the same time. That's it!!! Mister D to the rescue. Yes!!

Well, that's that then. .

I think vibes from a place yes, possibly, but my previous attempts to define it are pure morphic absurdity. . Not that I will give up this delicate yet hopeful art, but it has to know what it isn't. .

That's interesting, ITI! Thanks for the brick knowledge!

Wow! Ancient! Predating the bronze age. Along with ceramics and weaving, a stone age innovation. That's amazing.

Incredible, really. For all the peculiar directions the human race has taken, we still got out there and made bricks.

I've decided this is all very inspiring. What with knowing about bricks, and understanding morphic resonance, and a lot of other things, all in the last 24 hrs, I am so bursting with knowledge I feel like a fat pigeon. .

Apart from wondering if I should clutter the Collective Unconscious/Akashic Records/General Atmosphere/Something Else Entirely with my morphic absurdity, I decided its OK to play and follow my own way.

So now I'm onto Tears In The Rain (Create theme, thanks) mixed with the Vertiginous Angel. Haven't got very far yet. .


Happy days! Days of leap and good sleep

'And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter.' Genesis 11:3, Authorised Version. (King James' spelling.)

In other words, the Tower of Babel was made of brick. So was most of Mesopotamia. But what they needed was a Babel fish...

Last night, we watched an amazing Slovak documentary about the Pygmy people in the Congo. They were attractive, hospitable, and very talented people - but not saints or angels, just people, in spite of the filmmaker's attempts to canonise them. They acted more or less exactly the way I'd have expected a well-adapted group of hunter-gatherers to behave at home. The best bits were how all the toddlers cried when they saw the weirdly pale monster filmmakers from Slovakia. Their mothers had to distract them.

What amused me was that the filmmaker acted as if their lifestyle, with its complex skills and joyous spontaneity, was a huge revelation. Well, it probably was for him - but several thousand anthropologists probably yawned.

Humans aren't evolving, you know. They haven't changed much in 35,000 years. They haven't lived up to their potential yet, either.

Without those morphic fields, we might be lost.

And what modern humanity doesn't know about how a well-run reality matrix functions fills volumes in the Akashic Library.

Brick mentioned in Genesis, the Tower of Babel was made of brick, this is getting very amazing.

Cue the Babel Fish indeed!

Interesting docu. With subtitles? Quite complex, really.

Hmm. Yes.

What???? That last sentence is very mysterious, it is a poetic enigma. I need translations in various languages. I could get obsessed. A well run reality matrix.

A reality matrix??

Nice words. Love the word matrix.

I hear stream of consciousness words in my head. I remember a National Express coach lurching through the night. Peculiar dreams come and go, in which the word matrix echoes through eons and incarnations. A bus station with orange lights in the rain. Coffee and chocolate bars at 4.56 am.

What? Well, its the journey, the journey ...

I must drink. Or maybe a nice soothing hot milk. .

I'd like to visit that bus station some night in the rain...and get coffee.

Speaking of weirdness, and your username, and nothing in particular at all, really - I wrote a Guide Entry that involves a deadly cactus, are you interested? Find it at A87891899 .

Great article!! A rather extraordinary read indeed.

And Mr.Grundman met his match. How bizarre.

Ah, the saguaro!! That's one of the reasons we went to Arizona, in fact. Had to see them, outside Tucson.

And even becomes an Austin Lounge Lizards song!

I could get obsessed with this incident. Imagine that huge noble cactus falling on him. Its the way it didn't fall when he pushed it.

Like an ancient saguaro spirit, don't mess with it Mr. G.

I'm impressed that you saw one. I have only seen small cacti.

Ah, TED talks...here's a gem with banjos in:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoCETky6KmI

I woke up thinking about Mr G getting flattened by a saguaro.

Banjos eh?? . Excellent. I'm into this TED.

Just listened to Robbie's talk on how grief feels. Incredible! Very moving and poetic. Good one, Robbie. Thanks.

Oh, have to go. That was a useless attempt at spending an hour on h2. .



Laters, for banjos, plus I have a story about an old photo.

That banjo player TED talk is really funny. . I never saw the movie Deliverance, but I get the picture.

Haha. Never saw the movie but I get the picture. Never saw the picture but I get the movie.



TED is so . I can't believe I've never heard of it before, till a couple of days ago. And Robbie's talk is so special.

Niece, husband and I did a little writing group this morning. She emails when she has a morning off work, and we all go to a cafe and write to a theme, then email our results. It gets a bit complicated if the wifi flickers, we get huffy about our creative flow.

Anyway, this morning's theme was Old Photo. Usually I get intense about old photos, sepia tinted family photos with lots of secrets, but the spontaneous outcome of mine was so quirky this morning, I had to post on h2. No pressure to read or anything, it just somehow belongs in my stash.

Oh, I can't find the back button to get to the A number. Next posting.

Old Photo

A87894508

That is . And I have room in for 18 September......do you have this photo? Or did you make it up?

Morning! from a rainy England.

Hmmm, no I made up the photo, but I saw it in my head very clearly, as if that in any way justifies my absurdity. .

I had an old photo lined up for the exercise, but something took over.

Really? oooh eh, shy now, is it Postworthy? Not sure if it works at all. I need an h2g2 AWW writing course, but mentor went to France. .

Ah well, I'll have to wash my shyness away in the rain. Again. Oh the pain. (Clutches brow).