Background history: Late last year, one of my best friends, Perry, married the love of his life, Rita. I knew they were right for each other the moment he introduced her, and couldn’t be happy for them.

Last night, around 11:15 (after I had headed to bed), I received an SMS from my good friend Maya. The message was simply, “omfg, rita’s dead?!?!”. When I viewed the message around 7:30 this morning, I replied immediately, “um what?” then checked facebook for updates to Perry’s or Rita’s profile (it was too early to call Perry). Nothing.

Around 8:30, I finally called Perry and asked, “Dude, I received a really weird text message from Maya last night. Wassup?”. He replied curiously, “I dunno, wassup?”, and from the tone of his voice, he had no idea what I was thinking. So I explained the situation and he reassured me everyone is fine. After our call, I called Maya to ask her what she was smoking, only to reach her voicemail. Shortly after, Maya sent another text, “Dexter” – She was referring to Rita’s shocking death in the season finale of Dexter. LOL

That would have been funny enough, but then Maya called me a few minutes later, “Alex, I’m SO glad you called me this morning. There was a power failure at our place, and if you didn’t call and wake us up, we would not have made it to work on time today.”

A visual representation of our known universe. It’s amazing to think how inconsequential we are in this universe.

Came across an interesting article about our projecting our beliefs to a deity. I’ve always presuming this to be true, now here’s the test study to prove it. Some excerpts:

They asked subjects a series of questions about controversial moral issues, such as the death penalty and abortion, and also asked them about beliefs on those issues of famous people and of God. Not surprisingly, subjects’ own beliefs mirrored the beliefs they attributed to God.

These two lines of evidence both suggest that people tend to project onto God their own moral beliefs. This … does imply that people can change their moral beliefs first, and then attribute those changing beliefs to God after the fact.

Stepping back, the study draws the following conclusion, which I fully agree with:

This is why questioning our own motives, and our own process, is critical to a skeptical and scientific outlook. We must realize that the default mode of human psychology is to grab onto comforting beliefs for purely emotional reasons, and then justify those beliefs to ourselves with post-hoc rationalizations. It takes effort to rise above this tendency, to step back from our beliefs and our emotional connection to conclusions and focus on the process. The process (i.e science, logic, and intellectual rigor) has to be more important than the belief.

The full article is located here.

1. Small worlds
A very short game that has you explore a surreal world at whatever pace you chose and lets you use your imagination to fill in the story.

2. Full Moon
Not many levels, but it’s one of the few puzzle games that does a good job of ramping up the difficulty appropriately.

My good friend, Gen Larocque, recently setup her website. She’s a very talented yoga instructor, providing group and private sessions all over Montreal, and introduced me to the world of yoga and spirituality several years ago. With her open heart and mind, Gen takes yoga to the next level and makes you feel welcome and connected to a higher source.

Admittedly, I thought yoga would easy, perhaps something closer to tai chi, but this art requires plenty of strength, stamina, and balance. Finishing an hour of Gen’s class left me tired and humbled.

I wish Gen much success in her endeavors, knowing she will do very well. Her website is found here.

Very interesting discussion by Lawrence Krauss about how most of the universe is made up of nothing, and other interesting facts. A tad on the long side, but well worth the listen.

A while back I came across a documentary about Edward Bernays, the late cousin of Sigmund Freud. From wikipedia:

Edward Louis Bernays was a US pioneer in the field of public relations along with Ivy Lee. Combining the ideas of Gustave Le Bon and Wilfred Trotter on crowd psychology with the psychoanalytical ideas of his uncle, Sigmund Freud, Bernays was one of the first to attempt to manipulate public opinion using the subconscious.

Basically he realized that in order to control the masses, you need to connect to their irrational being, not their rational or logical side. He also changed Western society from a needs-based society to a want-based one. Being a dabbler of psychology, I thought that’s pretty damn cool.

Checkout this introductory clip:

Some fun flash games for a Friday afternoon.

1. Fragger (Blow-up the opposition with your sweet grenade skills)

2. Robot dinosaurs that shoot beams when they roar (Doesn’t need more of an explanation than that )

A few years ago, I starting remembering how to say “cheers” (while toasting) in multiple languages. Starting with my basic four, English, French, Polish and Russian, I thought it would be cool to know how to say it in as many languages as possible. Over the years, each time I traveled to new country, I made sure to ask the locals for the expression, and added to my collection. It was a small way of connecting with them in their language.

At this point, I know how to say it in 12 languages, and enjoy sharing this knowledge whenever drinking with new acquaintances. A quick google search pulls up how to say it another 38 ways, and this link not only explains why we toast, but how to phonetically pronounce “cheers” in 50 languages.

Prost!

Part 1:

Part 2: