#philosophically i am in tune with self hosting

[turbotrout]

i had a dream i divorced from gmail.... my dreamself has so much ambition

[gw-thesis]

BANG ZINE RATIONALE PT.2

As a follow up to pt.1. I show the contrasting voices that are rooted in scripture, rather than culture. 

Sources:  1. https://theologydegreesonline.com/the-40-greatest-theologians-throughout-history/ 2. https://www.ranker.com/list/list-of-famous-theologians/reference 3. 

Voices known:

Saint Augustine John Calvin CS Lewis Apostle Paul Jonathan Edwards Billy Graham Ravi Zacharias William Laine Craig John Piper Lee Strobel Karl Barth John Lennox NT Wright Charles Spurgeon RC Sproul GK Chesterson AW Tozer

However, I would like to select specific contrasting quotes or parts in scriptures that addressing the current culture

1.2.2 BIG BANG: First thought of to go to is the beginning according to the Bible. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Gen 1:1.  Further thoughts shared by Frank Turek in this article, “When I debated atheist Christopher Hitchens recently, one of the eight arguments I offered for God’s existence was the creation of this supremely fine-tuned universe out of nothing.  I spoke of the five main lines of scientific evidence—denoted by the acronym SURGE—that point to the definite beginning of the space-time continuum. They are: The Second Law of Thermodynamics, the Expanding Universe, the Radiation Afterglow from the Big Bang Explosion, the Great galaxy seeds in the Radiation Afterglow, and Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity.” He later follows with, “ Now why would scientists such as Jastrow and Eddington admit, despite their personal misgivings, that there are “supernatural” forces at work? Why couldn’t natural forces have produced the universe? Because there was no nature and there were no natural forces ontologically prior to the Big Bang—nature itself was created at the Big Bang. That means the cause of the universe must be something beyond nature—something we would call supernatural.  It also means that the supernatural cause of the universe must at least be: - spaceless because it created space  - timeless  because it created time - immaterial because it created matter - powerful because it created out of nothing - intelligent because the creation event and the universe was precisely designed - personal because it made a choice to convert a state of nothing into something (impersonal forces don’t make choices). Those are the same attributes of the God of the Bible (which is one reason I believe in a the God of the Bible and not a god of mythology like Zeus)... George Smoot—co-discoverer of the Great Galaxy Seeds which won him a Nobel Prize as well—echoed Wilson’s assessment by saying, “There is no doubt that a parallel exists between the Big Bang as an event and the Christian notion of creation from nothing.”

“Whatever begins to exist has a cause; the universe began to exist; therefore, the universe has a cause”—William Laine Craig  [mentioning a law of causality— http://apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=9&article=3716]

2.2 Responding to two notions that have happened due to the “God is Dead” point. (1) The intention of the quote, (2) the public’s response in acceptance and misunderstanding. Before this we list 9 verses about God’s eternal nature, so we can squash the idea of Him ever being dead— provided by this article. 1. For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite— 1 Peter 1:6-7 2. Your throne is established from of old; You are from everlasting.— Psalm 93:2 3. Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba and called there on the name of the LORD, the Everlasting God.— Genesis 21:33 4. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.— Psalm 90:2 5. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.— Revelation 22:13 6. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.— Romans 1:20-21 7. Who has performed and done this, calling the generations from the beginning? I, the LORD, the first, and with the last; I am he.—Isa 41:4 8. Thus says the LORD, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the LORD of hosts: I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god.— Isa 44:6 9. I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.— Rev 1:8

The Guardian explains, now following is the Enlightenment revolution whereas we could know without God; God was made irrelevant to the equation. He was plugged in to explanations regarding ‘the origin of man’ but the quote “God is dead” meant a few things, though one of the main themes was “the awfulness of men killed him,” however this has led to a response from the atheists of today that has exacerbated the original intention of the message. “The other narrative that already in the mid-19th century told the western world God had died was, of course, Darwin's. Nietzsche was not part of post-Darwinism, but what he had to say fed into the 20th-century "after God" cultural steam.”

Before leading in to the Darwinism part in 3.2 we’ll respond to the heart of the message. Nietzche believed in erasing God and replacing it with man’s work and science we were accomplishing. “And the place where you need to look for how to respond in Nietzschean style to the death of God is back to his Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (1886), which I would translate as "The Science of Joy"” but Jonathan Edwards warns us of this and speaks on it here:  “Let us be exhorted to exalt God alone, and ascribe to him all the glory of redemption. Let us endeavour to obtain, and increase in, a sensibleness of our great dependence, to have our eye on him alone, to mortify a self-dependent and self-righteous disposition. Man is naturally exceeding prone to exalt himself, and depend on his own power of goodness; as though from himself he must expect happiness. He is prone to have respect to enjoyments alien from God and his Spirit, as those in which happiness is to be found. But this doctrine should teach us to exalt God alone: as by trust and reliance, so by praise. Let him that glorieth, glory in the Lord. Hath any man hope that he is converted, and sanctified, and that his mind is endowed with that true excellency and spiritual beauty? That his sins are forgiven, and he received into God’s favour, and exalted to the honour and blessedness of being his child, and an heir of eternal life? Let him give God all the glory; who alone makes him to differ from the worst of men in this world, or the most miserable of the damned in hell. Hath any man much comfort and strong hope of eternal life, let not his hope lift him up, but to dispose him the more to abase himself, to reflect on his own exceeding unworthiness of such a favour, and to exalt God alone. Is any man eminent in holiness, and abundant in good works, let him take nothing of the glory of it to himself, but ascribe it to him whose ‘workmanship we are, created in Christ Jesus unto good works.” (source).

Another approach to this argument or explanation for further thought is in Neitzche’s words from Twilight of the Idols “When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one's feet. This morality is by no means self-evident… Christianity is a system, a whole view of things thought out together. By breaking one main concept out of it, the faith in God, one breaks the whole.” The source continues to explain “Nietzsche thought this could be a good thing for some people, saying: “... at hearing the news that 'the old god is dead', we philosophers and 'free spirits' feel illuminated by a new dawn. A bright morning had arrived.”  Funny enough he foresaw and feared nihilism “His fear of nihilism and our reaction to it was shown in The Will to Power, when he wrote that: "What I relate is the history of the next two centuries. I describe what is coming, what can no longer come differently: the advent of nihilism... For some time now our whole European culture has been moving as toward a catastrophe." In other words, eventually this would snowball into meaningless. Freedom yes, but eventually meaningless. 

** What’s beautiful is a parallel if not a response to his thought in Zarathustra: "For the game of creation, my brothers, a sacred yes is needed: the spirit now wills his own will." CS Lewis in his book The Great Divorce says “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it.” [ I chose this response because God can be ‘dead’ in our life and for many, He is. He’s rejected and we can choose to live without Him. There isn’t much a fight. But a life without Him can be free but ultimately ‘free from Him’ and in the end, that is what we have chosen. Our eternity is a forever of our desire as mentioned in Romans 1:20-21.]

3.2 In response to us not being designed, immediately a few bible verses come to mind like:

- Psalm 139:13-14—For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. - Genesis 1:26— Let us make man in our own image

Then thinkers have such sayings in response to Intelligent Design as  “The fundamental claim of intelligent design is straightforward and easily intelligible: namely, there are natural systems that cannot be adequately explained in terms of undirected natural forces and that exhibit features which in any other circumstance we would attribute to intelligence.”— William A Dembski, The Design Revolution: Answering the Toughest Questions about Intelligent Design

For centuries the most powerful argument for God's existence from the physical world was the so-called argument from design: Living things are so beautiful and elegant and so apparently purposeful, they could only have been made by an intelligent designer. But [Charles] Darwin provided a simpler explanation. His way is a gradual, incremental improvement starting from very simple beginnings and working up step by tiny incremental step to more complexity, more elegance, more adaptive perfection.— Richard Dawkins

4.2 Postmodernism comes after the modernist thought based around individualism and for that, postmodernism applies this to truth—something may be true but is only true to the individual. McGrath makes a point  “To the postmodern suggestion that something can be "true for me" but not "true" the following reply might be made. Is fascism as equally true as democratic libertarianism? Consider the person who believes, passionately and sincerely, that it is an excellent thing to place millions of Jews in gas chambers. That is certainly "true for him". But can it be allowed to pass unchallenged? Is it as equally true as the belief that one ought to live in peace and tolerance with one's neighbours, including Jews?(Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 35, 1992).”

In response to postmodernity it’s written in this article, “Christianity cannot embrace postmodernity, yet we must not retreat to the hills either. There are certain lessons we must learn from postmodernity. Postmodernity reminds us to abandon "truth as arrival", yet we must humbly affirm that truth is nonetheless available. Postmodernity rightly warns us of misuse of the biblical metanarrative, yet we must resist the temptation to discard or water-down the metanarrative.” Later he addreses and responds, “D.A. Carson best summarizes the Christian response to postmodernity when he insists that we must recognize "certain truths in postmodernity, without getting snookered by the entire package"(Carson 136). So let us resolve to stand firm against the negative currents of postmodernity, but let us do so humbly .”

** “What the postmodern world celebrates in its rejection of all absolutes and in its assumed right to define all reality privately is a sign of God's wrath (cf. Rom. 1:22). People may plead ignorance in this situation, but Paul says they are "without excuse" (Rom. 1:20). Later, he develops this in terms of internal consciousness. Even the Gentiles who are without the written moral law still show that what it requires "is written on their hearts" because their conscience is actively at work within them (Rom. 2:14- 15; cf. 1 Cor. 9:21). It is no small scandal what Paul has to say here. What is revealed to all people everywhere? It is not that God is loving, though he is. It is not that he is accepting, though sinners may find acceptance with him. It is not that we can find him on our own terms, though he should be sought (Acts 17:27). No, what is revealed is the fact that he is wrathful. It is true that this disclosure comes alongside the fact that the creation also bespeaks his glory and the greatness of his power. Yet the greatness of his power and his glory do not obscure the fact that God is alienated from human beings. Indeed, his glory is precisely the reason that he is alienated! There is, as a result, already a faint foretaste of final judgment as the consequences of sin visit their retribution upon the sinner. This is scandalous to a postmodern ear, but locked in that scandal is the key to meaning in the world, and in that meaning there is hope.” ― John Piper, The Supremacy Of Christ In A Postmodern World

“In this fallen world, and in their fallen lives, those who are alienated from God are a part of this age, which is now passing. It has no future and there are intimations of that in the depths of human consciousness where a tangle of contradictions lie, for we are made for meaning but find only emptiness, made as moral beings but are estranged from what is holy, made to understand but are thwarted in so many of our quests to know. These are the sure signs of a reality out of joint with itself. This is what, in fact, points to something else. These contradictions are unresolved in the absence of that age to come which is rooted in the triune God of whom Scripture speaks. He it is who not only sustains all of life, directing it all to its appointed end, but who also is the measure of what is enduringly true and right, and the fountain of all meaning, purpose, and hope.” ― John Piper, The Supremacy Of Christ In A Postmodern World

Some verses on truth come about as well: Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.— Jn 14:6 Every word of God proves true; he is a shield to those who take refuge in him.—Proverbs 30:5 Even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.—Jn 14:17 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.— 1 Jn1:8

fin: Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.— Mt24:35

**further read: https://www.equip.org/article/the-postmodern-challenge/

side note/ side read: The Eternal Gospel Meets the Modern World  listen to: https://www.rzim.org/resources/post-modernism

[timestamp-renegade-universe-blog]

Follow Through

Or, “If I had the money, I would put it where my mouth is.”

In my last post, I described the difficult set of circumstances that led me to the necessary time-out on Timestamp for a few weeks, as well as my difficult decision to throw in the towel and search for a stable income in tandem with my art efforts. In a nutshell, there is a lot of stress in this household between unstable finances, unsorted mental illness, unfounded child custody cases, and all the other normal stuff that 20-somethings deal with these days. And, as usual, I have done a poor job finding the time for self-care in order to handle it. That’s why I’ve vowed to make it a bigger priority to write on a daily basis, largely using my Timestamp blog to keep myself accountable, though I will not realistically be able to create a full post every single day. For me this will be an exercise in acknowledging and discussing mental health issues that I have previously avoided for fear of social stigma. For you, this may just be the inner dialogue of a traumatized introvert, but I hope that it would one day find community. While I am nervous to work through these issues in a public forum on my business page, I also have to stand by the fact that I am Timestamp, and my mentality/ mental health is a huge part of what and how I create.  

So here’s my start.

Took time to reduce my anxiety before getting out of bed? Check. Been in contact with my therapist this morning? Check. Working on processing my situation through writing? The time has come.

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Two posts ago I was talking a big game about the methods that I use to reduce some of my anxiety and increase mindfulness when I’m continually working from home like an isolated loser for 14 hour days. Although I have a lot more to deal with than anxiety, I’ve recently found out, these have been instrumental tools in keeping my head on straight when there’s no one around to lean on.

As much as I love my alone time and find energy in working in my own environment without interruption, I also have to say that it can be really demoralizing and lonely to be manically working at home all day every day. With all of my best friends and family still residing in Illinois, the only human I have around here is my significant other, who has a very demanding schedule outside of the house (thank god, because having another party in my space 24/7 is also not the solution for me).

Without social support when I’m starting to feel the tickles of anxiety growing, I realized early on in my small business adventure that I needed to find other instruments to lean on when I’m losing my grip. These are the ways I’ve reliably used to contend with my loneliness and generalized anxiety:

Podcasts  - You know how when you haven’t seen or spoken to another human being in about two days, and you start to talk to yourself, your dog, and your guinea pig instead? Yeah, right, me either… but if I did, I would recommend that you switch to hearing other people talk on these podcasts.  I spend most of my days continually streaming podcasts in the background, whether I’m writing for my day job or hand painting a new piece of furniture. They are amazingly comforting, not only for reducing the uncomfortable silence in an empty house and stimulating your brain with subtle conversation, but also for addressing mental health and philosophical life issues if you tune into the right programs. Here are my favorites:

On Being – Good god, I wish I could have Krista Tippett in my life, calmly narrating my existence and bringing up the most thoughtful, perspective-changing questions known to man. This program is life-changing. My only regret is that it took me so long to find On Being, when I have been individually questioning the meaning of it all for 20 years at this point. Every episode is 53 minutes long edited, and about 120 minutes long unedited, if you want to hear both versions of the conversation like some people do… cough. The premise is simple, ex-journalist, theologian, and author Krista Tippett has long, organic conversations with the most interesting humans you never knew you needed to have in your life. The conversations tackle issues of mindfulness, psychology, individual spirituality, and philosophy, with a dabbling of current science for good measure. The interviewees come from hugely diverse backgrounds, some of which you might expect, including a prevalence of poets and social change leaders. However, you won’t get off that easy; often the guests are quite unexpected for a left-wing public radio show, and can be challenging to approach with an open mind such as the episodes with Glenn Beck or a panel of pro-life pastors. No matter the topic, every episode is thoroughly surprising and grounding. I gain such a sense of peace and perspective from the wisdom of these enormously influential people. I can’t say enough about the grace and depth of the conversations, or the appreciation I’ve developed for thoughtful pauses before profound answers. I want to be Krista Tippett when I grow up.

The Mindset Zone – This one is fairly self-explanatory, although the host’s voice is anything but. Ana Melikian, a Psychologist and business coach with the most unique “generally European” accent I’ve ever heard, leads these short episodes that tackle the issue of mental health in small business. Finding this podcast felt like a message from the heavens, and it came during a time when I was fully losing my battle with business anxiety earlier this year. Each episode tackles a specific issue or guest relating to the mental health management that must take place to open a new business. I’ll be honest when I say that the programs are a bit hit or miss for me. Occasionally they can be redundant or feel like advertisements for her business coaching techniques, but often they are full of the exact insight I need to hear. Is it normal to be completely overwhelmed and disgruntled about the vast number of hats you must wear in small business? Yes. Does everyone doubt what they’re doing and feel the drive to retreat to a safer option? Sure do. Is failure a necessary event to be accepted and learned from, rather than feared? Yep. The messages of the episodes are simple, eye opening, and unifying. As is always the case with mental health, just hearing that what I’ve been experiencing is normal was a huge relief; in fact, this podcast is what inspired me to begin writing more openly about the issue of mental health management in my own small business. It is a topical and useful journey, with plenty of unintended laughs at Ana’s pronunciations. Sorry Ana.

Sex and Other Human Activities – Oh man, do I love the Cave Comedy Radio/Last Podcast Network. These guys are meant to be my best friends and my best friends’ best friends; they just don’t know it yet. We’re mildly obsessed, and diligently plotting ways to prove our worth as the next generation of SOHA hosts, since these two have taken a break from the program to work on other projects. Anyways, this particular show features two of my favorite CCR/LPN hosts, Jackie Zebrowski and Marcus Parks, who openly and honestly discuss their battles with mental illness, as well as answering listener questions on the same topics. Both hosts are fantastically hilarious in my exact style of humor, and very transparent when it comes to the relationship, work, and general life difficulties that come hand in hand with attempting to better understand and control your own psychology. They are incredibly relational, and speak honestly about their successes as well as failures in sorting out depression, anxiety, bi-polar disorder, self-doubt, and anger. Though there are plenty of laughs, it’s also clear that Jackie and Marcus care a great deal about the topics, and there are many difficult episodes that took considerable courage to record. Again, there is enormous power in this program simply from hearing that you aren’t alone in your battles. Listening to the accounts from two people of similar age and mentality, working through their issues and preaching the importance of self-kindness and professional care feels like receiving guiding support from my best friends, on-demand.  I could talk endlessly about my love for all the CCR/LPN guys, but I’ll hold off for an inevitable road trip entry.

Walks – An oldie but a goodie, exercise is a crucial way to work through my emotions and ground myself when my stomach starts to tighten up in a knot. A huge part of mindfulness is observing the breath and bodily sensations, and for me the best free version of this is going on a brisk hike. There’s nothing like getting out into uninterrupted nature and connecting with my feet in order to let go of the rushing thoughts in my head. I gain so much peace from a long solo walk, where I can connect with my worries and allow myself the space to process them. This is a tool I’ve used for many years, though back in Illinois it was fulfilled through walking to and from work each day, long walks around campus on every break, and usually ending with a late evening walk either alone or with my sidekick Jacq. When my dog Jake came into my life, he became a huge motivator to keep up the practice even during dark times when I had trouble executing this style of self-care. Nowadays, the truly amazing part is our proximity to beautiful and dynamic hiking trails in Stone Mountain, which far outweigh the residential streets I used to stomp down in Urbana, Illinois when it comes to peace-bringing. The difficult part, however, is managing my anxiety long enough just to get to the park. Any deviation or distraction from my work each day carries an enormous stress load with it, so the act of going out and reducing my anxiety actually inspires a mountain of distress in the hours leading up to my departure. I do my best to remind myself that this is a critical tool for mindfulness and I need to address my issues rather than working as a means of distraction, but it’s always difficult to permit myself time for self-care. Acknowledging these difficulties in my personality, I’ve come up with three strategies to reduce the likelihood of ditching my park plans;

Arrange with a friend to chat during the walk. When there is a sense of duty, i.e. a promise I made to someone else, I have no problem following through with my plans. I’ve found it helpful, and socially positive, to talk on the phone with my friend during her lunch break as I get my exercise in. This gives me a set time to take a break from my work, prepare, and get to the park on time with a party holding me accountable. I can disappoint myself, but I can’t disappoint other people.

Leverage “shitty work days” to promote breaks at the park. There are days when I work exclusively on Timestamp projects, and I’m happy as a clam from sunup to sundown. Then there are days when I have to write and edit endless articles to pay the bills. These are the days that my brain struggles the most. Without working towards something I’m passionate about, my mind tends to get restless and wander. I have a hard time keeping my head in the game, and instead it can begin to slide into some hefty doom and gloom thinking. Sometimes, there are so many external thoughts flying around in there that I can’t concentrate on my arduous and boring task at hand any longer. I begin to lose my focus, become exhausted, and slip into a depressive state. That’s when it’s time to allow myself the luxury of a walk, in order to reset and reapproach the rest of the work day with newfound productivity.

Set a nighttime walk intention. I’ve found that there is far less anxiety and guilt associated with taking my walk at night, rather than in the middle of my day. This allows me to get all the work done that simply can’t wait before I attempt to pull myself away from the project. If, for whatever reason, I haven’t made as much progress as I wanted to by the time evening falls, I still have less guilt giving myself some space when it’s already 8pm. Of course, I’ve considered switching this to morning walks so I could calm down before my work day even started, but have yet to make this attempt, as I currently use my early mornings to get unwanted writing jobs out of the way.

Social support – We all know, your support network is the most important tool in living with mental illness. That being said, for someone with a tendency to avoid and isolate when they need help the most, it can be a huge challenge to even go and seek social support. As a verified introvert, masochist, and devotee to the idea that my existence is a burden to everyone I know, I generally do the wrong thing in these situations. In the past two or three months, I’ve made a big push to get over my fear of bothering people, and attempt to contact folks when I’m having a hard time. It can be my best friend, my therapist, or even my mother if I’m feeling desperate enough. 9 times out of 10, it results in an honest and caring conversation that helps me greatly in working through whatever problem is at hand, and I have a lasting boost of self-esteem from the interaction. Even if we can’t resolve the issue, just having the reassurance that my friends and family haven’t forgotten about me and still care about my well-being from hundreds of miles away relieves many of my greatest fears. As a bonafied one-man island in bad times, my saving graces for forcing social support on myself are:

My outgoing and extroverted boyfriend. Even though he may not always understand why I’m so crippled by imaginary worries, he’ll always listen to them. At times he can do the unthinkable and convince me to do better with his own social and optimistic nature. He always wants to spend time together and to get out of the house, and this social insistence can be a gift.

My best friends who have their own battles and insights on mental health. Not only do I have a best friend who works professionally as a clinical therapist, but most of the people I surround myself with have similar struggles. We understand one another and feel less judgement talking about the things we deal with, besides the fact that their own needs for support often keep me accountable for their sake, if not my own.

My group messages with friends back home. Reaching out and talking is hard when you feel like your life is empty and depressing. If there’s no news to share, it’s hard to call someone up just to chat. That’s why these stupid facebook messenger groups are such a helpful tool for feeling social without the pressure of actually being social. The continual chatter amongst friends helps me to feel connected to my old crew on a daily basis, even when I personally don’t feel like I have anything to talk about.

Creativity - Clearly, this one rings true for me. As I’ve stated earlier, I can work on my artistic projects from dawn til dusk without feeling an inkling of anxiety or mental duress. I realize that not everyone is as enthusiastic about making things as I am, but I believe there is some real power in accessing this part of the brain. Maybe doodling, instagramming, or zen coloring is more your style - there are plenty of options. Something about the process of thinking creatively seems to be incompatible with the pathways that cause my stress and anxiety, so one can’t happen in tandem with the other. This is great when I’m in a creative mindset and naturally fend off looming anxiety; conversely it’s very difficult when I’m in a negative mindset and battling to reach a place of creativity. Here are the ways I’ve found to get past the mental gymnastics, and get into the artistic zone:

Having some sort of a schedule. As I mentioned a bit earlier, I’ve realized that it makes sense for me to get my writing assignments completed in the morning. This allows me to set aside the stress of looming busy work, earn myself a sense of achievement, and open my mind to other tasks I want to complete. Now, I don’t rigidly schedule my writing work because just as there are times I feel creative and times I do not, there are also times I feel like writing and times I simply can’t. Maybe my head hurts too badly to look at the computer screen, or maybe I’m not feeling the creative juices flowing that particular time of that particular day. That’s when flexibility is important, so I can find fulfillment in accomplishing the tasks that best mesh with my mental state, and I can achieve the most productive day possible.  

Setting my intentions for the day one on the night before. Sometimes, it’s anxiety inducing just to wake up in the morning and look at my long list of business to-do’s. Should I be wrapping up this big desk, working on my newest set of prints, posting to Instagram, writing a blog, fixing my website bugs, posting new items to Etsy, checking on my sales around town, etc, etc, etc. It never ends. If I can just work through these options in the evening beforehand, coming up with a general list of priorities to focus on, I can hit the ground running the next day. Sounds simple, but usually it’s easier to finish up a long day of work and push the topic to the backburner for the rest of the night, than to begin planning the next busy day.

Writing. I huge problem I must overcome regularly is my brain’s penchant for repetitive thinking. If something is on my mind, I have a difficult time pushing it aside to focus on new tasks. My mind cycles through what’s bothering me again and again, bringing up the same physical reactions each time the sentiment goes passing through. This is why writing has so much power for me. Putting these concerns down on paper or keyboard is an excellent release from the merry-go-round of worry. It allows me to process exactly what I’m feeling about the issue, to solidify the issue as something that I am acknowledging, and to form a plan on how to deal with it. After that, I can move on from the problem with greater ease, and apply all that brain energy to another item.

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All I’m meaning to say here is, it can be difficult to allow yourself the “luxury” of caring for yourself and your mental health, especially when your focus is always on taking care of business. There’s nothing to stop you from putting your own physical and emotional needs aside when things are stressful, at the times when you need self-care the most. I’m no expert in the field of personal kindness, but I increasingly recognize that it’s important to improve these skills as necessary tools for a functional life. It’s certainly something that takes practice and a mindful outlook to make some of these changes reality, but the continued exercise only cements the positive effects further each time. I’ll be working on and expanding these practices for the rest of my life. I can only hope that my self-compassion continues to grow, and I can help another restless soul or two just by sharing how difficult it can feel to tackle these small measures, but how relieving it feels afterwards.

And remember, you’re alright kid, I don’t care what other people say.

[ulyssessklein]

Gordon Bok – A Legendary Songwriter by the Sea and Of the Sea

By: Rick Landers

Gordon Bok – Photo by Chris Koldewy

The roots of the songs by master songwriter, Gordon Bok, stir a cauldron of mystery, wonder, fear and joy that are never far away when one sails the sea along the coast of his native Maine.

Gordon has the deep rough-hewn gravitas of a man who not only thrives by the sea, but in many ways is of the sea.

His tunes cast a net that gathers us up in his songs and his tales of life where laborious skills are honored, when some are notable for their beauty and others held dear, as they may be relied upon when life and death slip beyond the philosophical and into the harsh realities of the sea.

And so, here we meet Gordon Bok, a master of song, a man who designs and builds boats, carves beautiful lines into native woods and hammers bronze to sculpt spiritual moments about seafaring life.

He deep baritone vocals resonate and pull us in, oftentimes with a patience that’s beguiling and nearly demand that we must stay and listen, at the risk of missing the full spectrum of a melodic jewel.

His “Bay of Fundy” is a magnificent song that’s rich and haunting, but one must not stop there. Gordon’s a man who works and loves his work, it’s really as simple as that. And with hundreds of songs to his name, for those who are only meeting him now, their discovery will feel like a buried treasure found. New and future generations may find they have been gifted with songs that capture the essence of a world that they can only imagine.

“The music of Maine folk singer Bok is like a universe unto itself, a roughhewn land filled with hardscrabble people, rascals in high places, and a natural world that is both cruel and kind, deadly and nurturing.” – The Boston Globe

“Gordon Bok is timeless. Seafarer, songwriter extraordinaire, excellent instrumentalist, and “painter” of moods, he takes his audiences over the bay and out to sea, through a labyrinth of emotions from joy to fear, and awe at the immense wonderment of the world we live in.”  – San Francisco Folk Music Center

Respected early on for his music, Gordon’s self-titled debut album was produced by the legendary Paul Stooky, who rose to fame with the group, Peter, Paul and Mary. Along the way, Gordon established his own Timberhead Music label where he continued to develop his craft and broaden his musical horizons by studying and performing the traditional songs of the British Isles, Australia, New Zealand, French Canada, the Gaelic Hebrides, Mongolia, Portugal, Italy and more, many in their native tongue.

Gordon’s artistry with both six and twelve string guitars has been influential in the world of folk music. And his interests in studying, building and innovating the instruments he plays merely adds to his significant musical legacy. Still, he is anchored in a world where his lyrics and melodies sweep us all along with him on a green wave cresting on a deep blue sea.

Guitar International is honored to present to its readers one of the most prolific and respected musicians in the world who enjoys our passion for guitars and music: Mr. Gordon Bok.

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Rick Landers: When you play “Bay of Fundy” are you surprised at how well it came together with the lyrics, almost an emotional scene, grounded I suppose in your love of the Bay of Fundy?

Gordon Bok: [Laughs] I have no great love for the Bay of Fundy. I have a lot of respect for it. It’s beautiful.

I can go back to that song and know where the parts come from, so there’s not a lot of mystery in it for me. I worked on it for a long time.

Yeah, it really started off me trying to remember a tune a boater, and his wife, Elaine Porter, who was humming to herself and then I realized I couldn’t remember it.

At that time I’d worked in “wonder why, wonder why”. Do you know the “wonder why, wonder why”?

Rick: Yes, the lyric from “The Bay of Fundy”. It’s haunting.

Gordon Bok: That’s the sound of the horn from Sambro Head, Halifax, and there are pieces like that I remember, when I sing it.

Of course, it takes me back there. Which was the idea of writing it really, just to remember.

Rick Landers: So, when you look at the song now as an observer are your surprised at its maturity and your vocals that were so mature, even at a young age? 

Gordon Bok: Thanks. I had a lot of adult friends, much older friends, because my playground was a shipyard when I was a kid.

I knew all the guys there. And they all knew me. My brother and my friends use to hang out there, local kids and that was back when those things were allowed.

And so, I would say, “No. I was drawing on their ways of talking and telling stories.”

There’s a part in there that came from a letter from my brother when he was fishing out of Vinalhaven, “I don’t mind the wet and cold, I just don’t like the growing old”.

I know that’s not how he said it, it’s what he said, I remember being struck by somebody in their twenties saying that.

Rick Landers: That’s kind of the way folk music evolves, you draw from the past and sometimes traditional tunes.

Gordon Bok: Yeah, and fit it to what’s around you. In a way, It’s like you can’t kill a good old song, a tune, you just put your own experience to it.

Rick Landers: That’s a good way to state it. Are you still writing songs?

Gordon Bok: Yes, very occasionally, 

Rick Landers: When you do that are their various approaches. Do you intentionally say to yourself you’re going to write a song or does serendipity have it’s way, like maña from heaven?

Gordon Bok: I think it works both ways when I am writing. I think when you’re writing a lot it’s easier. The ideas flow better, they come to you better and you’re in the practice of mental work.

To me that’s the hardest work I’ve ever done, is writing. And so sometimes the ideas flow really easy, but that’s usually because you’ve been working at it 

Rick Landers: Do you find you sometimes do some research before you approach a song?

Gordon Bok: No, I don’t sit down to write a song. I tend to write because I can’t find that feeling or that approach to life, whatever subject or approach to that I want. And yes, I do sometime check up on my facts, I try not to make anything up.

Although, I’m making up a song. [Laughs]

Rick: Do you ever grab your guitar and start noodling around and end up with a song? 

Gordon: Yes, that used to happen more than it does now. That’ s how tunes I use to make up a guitar piece, just find I was was dreaming about something and it came out in music .

Rick: I remember during the ‘60s there was a real strong folk era and there don’t seem to be those kinds of venues anymore. I know there are coffee houses and house concerts, but few large venues for folk music to draw large crowds. Do you prefer the smaller venues?

Legendary folk musician Gordon Bok – Photo credit: Bill Gamble

Gordon Bok: Oh, yeah, Anything I sang through that era, what fellas use to call “The folk scare of the ‘60s”. It was hard because you had these big halls and the sound men were all rock ‘n roll guys, and that was mostly early ‘70s.

As it sort of wandered out of popularity, then you found you got sound men that knew what they were really doing and were trying to be invisible,

So, it felt more like that there was nothing between you and the audience.

I have hyperacusis, so the stage can easily be the most uncomfortable place for me to spend any time, because it’s so loud.

I can sing loud enough to hurt my ears.

To me it’s back to where it belongs, in peoples’ homes. House concerts, of course, they’re just wonderful. You’re done working, then you toddle off to bed. [Laughs]

Rick: I host house concerts here in the Northern Virginia area.

Gordon Bok: Yeah, and you get to talk to people; you get to meet interesting people. I always found the folk audiences are amazing, you can ask them a more abstrusive question and you’re likely to get an answer.

I remember I tossed one out, I think it was in New Jersey, when I happened to try to remember the gypsy word for a non-gypsy. I not only got the southern Spanish word for a non-gypsy, but I got a flamenco guitar concert in the guy’s house!

They’re wonderful audiences, they love to answer questions to fill you in on the stuff you’re interested in and they send you stuff. It’s just a lovely way to interact.

I can’t imagine a nicer audience and once the ‘folk scare of the ‘60s’ was over, then all of the star syndrome started to sort of go away. You were treated like somebody who did nice stuff and was probably a nice guy, and you were interested in the same things as the other people. So, I just delight in the people I’ve met.

In truth, before I stopped touring a couple of years ago, I was doing tours because I wanted to go see friends I’d made! [Laughs]

Rick: You’ve experienced different levels of success, awards and accolades and more. How do you define success at this point in your life?

Gordon Bok: Hmmm, I look back, we tend to think of a career in terms of awards and things like that. And that’s okay, but I have one letter from my brother to me that makes all the work worth it. There’s a thank you letter from my brother.

There’s that and how have I pleased myself? How well have I sung songs? And I’m always working at that, and it’s rare that I please myself.

Rick: Have you found that you that you’ve been able to blend your altruism with your ambition over the years?

Gordon Bok: Yeah, I think so. When I’m on stage there’s quite often four or five chairs you can’t see, but I can see them.

I’m singing to the people that I’m singing about, and they’re there with me, and I can’t bullshit them. l can’t get away with anything, so that kind of takes care of itself.

Sometimes my brother’s there, sometimes Malcom Brewer, the master builder at the shipyard, is there. It just depends on what I’m singing and who’s looking over my shoulder. [Laughs]

Rick: I guess they know you’re truth.

Gordon Bok: I guess so, yeah.

Rick: You’re up in Maine and I know it gets frigid there in the winter and a Mainer friend of mine once told me that the mosquitoes will suck the life out of you. What’s the attraction?

Gordon Bok: [Chuckles] Well, I consider it a kind land. I love the quiet of the winter, the silence of snows.

The people really, that I have hung out with in my life, they know how the world works. They’re out in it, working with it, farmers, fisherman, woodsmen, boat builders.

I think it’s just a wonderful place to be with the world. a life to be with the world.

Rick: Looking at your background. It seems with your interests in carving, bronze work, boat building and song-writing, that you like to get into slower, almost studious things that you can’t rush, reflective crafts. Do you find you get into those Zen-like moments in the work you enjoy?

Gordon Bok: Yes, it is entirely. I do, in the presence of wood, working with wood it’s just a reverence of mine and it’s like working with some friends on a really beautiful tune.

And I love the concentration and I love a long period of concentration. I like a project and a musical project, and some of mine took years.

Rick: So, you do like being in the moment, when time flashes by and you don’t even know the time? Does it ever get away from you?

Bok: Oh. Absolutely! It goes right up on the roof and it won’t talk to me. [Laughs]

Rick: The instruments you tend to like aren’t the typical instruments that are mass assembled, but are artisan built. I know you’ve worked building instruments or come up with ideas for instruments.

Gordon Bok: Yeah, a couple of things about that; One is that I grew up in a culture that if you wanted something it was more likely that you would make it and there was always somebody down the street who’d be happy to tell you how or show you how.

And so a friend of mine and I set out to make an ice boat. We didn’t have enough wood, so we built a guitar.

And then another friend, Niko Appolonia liked that idea and asked if he could build that particular model, which was a weird looking instrument, it had no curves.

And so we said, “Sure.” So, Nick and I built a few and then he went on to really develop that and another friend and I, Sam Tibbets, decided we didn’t like any 12-string we’d heard, except outside of maybe Ledbelly’s.

So, we took the old family guitar and we wondered if we could make one that had a throaty bass. We built one and then Nick again said , “Wow!”, he liked it and asked if he could use some of those ideas.

Sure, and so he took off and I collaborated with him on a few little things, like the shape of the bell guitar and the balanced bridge on the 12-string, and things like that..

Rick: What’s a balanced bridge?

The Niko Appolonia parlour guitar designed  by Gordon Bok and developed by Nik0 Appolonia – Photo courtesy of Appolonia Guitars.

Gordon Bok: It’s a bridge where the strings run back to a tailpiece. They have to go over a bridge and you want that to be a good connection with the face.

So, you really have to have a saddle in front toward the sound hole and then a hold down bar, bends the strings down. But, you also have to have a saddle in the back. There’s still going to be some torque on the face.

Nick builds the faces very lightly and they’re easily distorted by any torque that the  strings create, so there’s a loose saddle sitting on the back of the bridge. If you see the face going up or down, you change the height of the saddle in the back.

Rick: To make sure that it’s taut?

Gordon Bok: Just to make sure the bridge isn’t twisting the face.

Rick: That’s a very minute thing to consider, that I don’t think many have in the past, do you?

Gordon Bok: No, judging by the look of some guitars when they get a little age on them. Most guitars I’ve never played are mass produced instrument, that I was ever interested in. They’re built for safety pretty much. [laughs]

Rick: Yeah, low risk builds. Do you have any new work coming out, an album?

Gordon Bok: Yes, I’m gathering some recordings that didn’t fit in any albums. Some that have come to light recently that I’d forgotten I’d done, and there are a lot of songs that I never recorded.

I’d like them to get down because they’re interesting and nobody else is doing them that I know of.

I know so many songs. They’re like horses. You gotta feed them and let them out. You gotta exercise them. And if you don’t they’re gonna wander off. You hope that somebody else will feed them. That’s why I record them now.

Rick: How do you feel when you hear someone else do your songs, with maybe a slightly different approach?

Gordon Bok: I enjoy it. As a matter of fact, the “Hills of Isle au Haut” I made years back, Bob Stuart who I’d worked with on various projects, he learned it.

But, he rearranged all the ands, the buts and the ifs and I get listening to it and I thought, “Whoa, that made a lot more sense than the way I did it.” So, I learned it his way!

And Meghan McArthur chopped a verse off “Turning of the Morning”, probably one of my most popular and I thought “Wow, that’s what I needed was an editor”. I learned it her way.

I’m happy to hear that and I don’t mind if people change a word here and there, but, yeah, there are somethings I think I would not like people to change.

A couple of them have done one of them, “Peter Kagan and the Wind”, and they just stumbled and blew the cadences. hBecause it stumbled, I felt that was a shame…anyway.

Rick: I guess it’s a compliment, they wanted to grab one of your songs and work with it, I suppose,

Gordon Bok: Yeah.

Rick: Do you have any new songs that you’re working on now or one with a working title?

Gordon Bok: No, I don’t. It’s got such disparate material in it you might ought to call it something like “Hodge-podge”.

Rick: Do you have some songs that you never get tired or performing haven’t played for a while and you rediscover the joy you initially had when playing them?

Gordon Bok: I have so many songs that it sort of automatically happens that some cycle out of my repertoire.

When I go out for two weeks I take, maybe three hundred songs with me. I try to get through them. It’s like the horses, again, you have to exercise them. [Laughs]

Some I’ll just leave for years. What that means too, is that many that I can’t stop doing.

Rick: I found a song I wrote in 1977 and I just added two verses to it four weeks ago. It never felt complete. Do you have songs like that?

Gordon Bok: Oh, I can think of one, the “Herring Croon”. A few years back I wrote the last verse for it and it was kind of a turnaround. It didn’t go in the same direction as the song.

Well, it kind of did, it’s just a very sad time. You know, the Herring are having a hard time.

Rick: Is there a song structure that you prefer?

Gordon Bok: No I don’t. There is a structure that I get into because I’m not thinking enough probably. There are some songs where I don’t do the final chorus.

Rick: What are you listening to these days? Folk or are you more eclectic in your tastes?

Gordon Bok: I’m not that eclectic I like classical, I like some classical guitar, not that I’ll ever be able to play like that. There are two or three I like. I always stop when they come on the radio. I like classical composers too, I don’t slavishly follow them, but some of them had beautiful ideas.

For some reason, Mahler because of how intelligent he sounds.

Right now I listen to a lot of Finnish music, both written and folk music.

Rick: So, what kinds of music influences you?

Gordon Bok: I thought about that a lot and I think I like to be influenced by everything I like. I remember there’s some professional singers that ‘ve tried to copy, their energy or their is something about them that grabs me,

I just try to embrace that and sometimes I’ll be singing, especially a ballad I’ll think , “Whoa!, that sounds like something Helen Schneyer would do.”

And so, I say “I’ll channel Helen for a while.”

I really do enjoy that, seeing the world through someone else’s eyes, in a way.

And the voice that most impressed me was a fisherman in Isle of Haut, and he probably never sang in public or certainly never sang for pay, because we talked about that.

It’s like the whole man came through, his love came through and I’d never heard that in a recording, I never heard it by a professional singer.

Rick: It’s almost as if he found his truth in his music like you.

Gordon Bok: Guess so, yeah.

Rick: I recall that you’re also into boatbuilding and you built a ketch.

Gordon Bok: No, that was built by Bruce Malone. I designed it and worked with Bruce on making the designs work.

But, mostly when I was there in the yard, I stayed out of their way and I’d just hang out long enough for them to ask any questions that had.

And then I wanted to build a tender, a lot of the design is based on the fact that I have bad arthritis in my hands, so I can’t sail anymore. It’s dangerous sailing.

So, a lot of the design for the Jeannie Teal is to have a houseboat to be on the water and get across the bay. But, it was designed for our varying abilities.

I also have a wonderful rowboat for probably thirty or forty years, maybe, still got it.

But, I wanted something with more initial stability, so I designed a pram, a ten-foot row-boat I’m building in Bruce’s shop using the same stitch and glue method as the Jeannie Teal.

He invited me to use his shop, which is wonderful because the stuff he has experience in that I don’t, it’s nice to have him around. So, that’s what I’m doing building a small boat with different characteristics than the one I have.

Rick: Sounds like you’ve got a good life.

Gordon Bok: I think so.

Rick: I was talking to my wife a few years ago and I told her when I was younger I focused on my resume and now I’m focusing on building my obituary and I’m focusing on things I never found the time to do when I was younger.

Gordon Bok: I never think about that, there’s always something to do.

Rick: So, you just forge ahead?

Gordon Bok: You know there’s always something to do and there’s an old saying here that a job well dreaded is a job half done! [Both Laugh]

Well, I’ve been dreading some things for a long time!

So, you know I always have something to do that my conscience or something is telling me to get at. Meantime, I’m having so much fun with these boats.

Rick: One of my favorite artists, Warren Zevon once said “Enjoy every sandwich”.

Gordon Bok: Yeah, I like that. [Laughs] My wife is like that and it’s always good to have someone like that.

Rick: How would you describe a typical day in the life of a folk singer, as you experienced it.

Gordon Bok:  One thing I tried, especially when before the house concerts came in and filled up those weekdays. I tried to stay somewhere where I knew somebody and go around with them, to see their world.

Especially, New Zealand, places like that where they had little folk clubs. What they can’t provide in dollars they make up in hospitality. We were sort of passed around from one family to another to see favorite places and favorite things to do. It was wonderful.

After a concert I would usually go back and sing at a motel, if I could without disturbing somebody. And I always sang in the morning.

Before I got back on the road, I liked touring by car, because I could practice in the car. I would usually have some musical writing or chorale writing and so would do that, if I was working that night. I loved the simplicity of it.

It’s okay for a while, but it’s miserable on the body. I was difficult to get enough exercise and I have pretty severe arthritis and you’ve got to keep that moving.

Rick: Have you ever done any busking?

Gordon Bok: The only experience I had with that was in Cornwall (U.K.). I think it was Penzance. A guy, had a funny name, was busking on the quay side where the boats were and I went down there with Michael Conner, a storyteller and he introduced the me to this guy and he said he remembered my music. He was amplified and had a real guitar with a decent sized fingerboard.

I did a tune and in the meantime, Michael went to find a policeman to get me arrested. The cop would have none of it and he came over and talked with us.

The other thing was the moment I gave the guitar back to him, he practically played it back note for note, in the same key!

GORDON BOK AT AMAZON HERE!

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New Post has been published on https://usviraltrends.com/does-autism-arise-because-the-brain-is-continually-surprised-science/

Does autism arise because the brain is continually surprised? | Science

By George Musser, SpectrumMar. 9, 2018 , 9:00 AM

Originally published on Spectrum

Satsuki Ayaya remembers finding it hard to play with other children when she was young, as if a screen separated her from them. Sometimes she felt numb, sometimes too sensitive; sometimes sounds were muted, sometimes too sharp. As a teenager, desperate to understand herself, she began keeping a journal. “I started to write my ideas in my notebooks, like: What’s happened to me? Or: What’s wrong with me? Or: Who am I?” she says, “I wrote, wrote, wrote. I filled maybe 40 notebooks.”

Today, at 43, Ayaya has a better sense of who she is: She was diagnosed with autism when she was in her early 30s. As a Ph.D. student in the history and philosophy of science at the University of Tokyo, she is using the narratives from her teen years and after to generate hypotheses and suggest experiments about autism — a form of self-analysis called Tojisha-Kenkyu, introduced nearly 20 years ago by the disability-rights movement in Japan.

In Ayaya’s telling, her autism involves a host of perceptual disconnects. For example, she feels in exquisite detail all the sensations that typical people readily identify as hunger, but she can’t piece them together. “It’s very hard for me to conclude I’m hungry,” she says. “I feel irritated, or I feel sad, or I feel something [is] wrong. This information is separated, not connected.” It takes her so long to realize she is hungry that she often feels faint and gets something to eat only after someone suggests it to her.

She has also come to attribute some of her speech difficulties to a mismatch between how her voice sounds to her and how she expects it to sound. “Just after she speaks, her own voice feeds back to her ears, and she tends to notice the difference,” says her collaborator Shin-ichiro Kumagaya, a pediatric neurologist at the University of Tokyo who studies autism using Tojisha-Kenkyu. The effect is like the awkward echo on a phone line that makes it difficult to carry on a conversation — except that for Ayaya, it’s like that almost all the time.

Ayaya’s detailed accounts of her experiences have helped build the case for an emerging idea about autism that relates it to one of the deepest challenges of perception: How does the brain decide what it should pay attention to? Novelty captures attention, but to decide what is novel, the brain needs to have in place a prior expectation that is violated. It must also assign some level of confidence to that expectation, because in a noisy world, not all violations are equal: Sometimes things happen for a reason, and sometimes they just happen.

The best guess scientists have for how the brain does this is that it goes through a process of meta-learning — of figuring out what to learn and what not to. According to this theory, biases in the meta-learning process explain the core features of autism. The theory essentially reframes autism as a perceptual condition, not a primarily social one; it casts autism’s hallmark traits, from social problems to a fondness for routine, as the result of differences in how the mind processes sensory input.

All experience is controlled hallucination. You experience, in some sense, the world that you expect to experience.

Andy Clark

Consider what happens when we are new to a situation or a subject. Every detail — every bump on a graph, every change in a person’s tone of voice — seems meaningful. As we gain experience, though, we start to learn what the rule is and what the exception. The minutiae become less salient; the brain shifts its focus to the big picture. In this way, the brain masters one challenge and moves to the next, keeping itself at the cusp between boredom and frustration. Autism might represent a different learning curve — one that favors detail at the price of missing broader patterns.

Unlike other ‘unified theories’ of autism — those that purport to explain all aspects of the condition — this one builds on a broad account of brain function known as predictive coding. The premise is that all perception is an exercise of model-building and testing — of making predictions and seeing whether they come true. In predictive-coding terms, the brain of someone with autism puts more weight on discrepancies between expectations and sensory data. Whereas the typical brain might chalk up a stray car horn to chance variation in a city soundscape and tune it out, every beep draws conscious attention from the autism brain. “It provides a very parsimonious explanation for the cardinal features of autism,” says Karl Friston, a neuroscientist at University College London who helped develop the mathematical foundations of predictive-coding theory as it applies to the brain.

For now, the model is vague on some crucial details. “There’s many loose pieces,” says Katarzyna Chawarska, an autism researcher at Yale University. And some question whether a single model could ever account for a condition as heterogeneous as autism. Yet proponents say this very diversity argues for a unified theory. Understanding a fundamental cause might yield treatments that are equally broad in their reach. “If prediction truly is an underlying core impairment [in autism], then an intervention that targets that skill is likely to have beneficial impacts on many different other skills,” says computational neuroscientist Pawan Sinha of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Predictive coding 101:

The basic premise of predictive coding goes back to the mid-19th century German physicist and psychologist Hermann von Helmholtz, and arguably to the philosopher Immanuel Kant, both of whom maintained that our subjective experience is not a direct reflection of external reality, but rather a construct. “All experience is controlled hallucination,” says Andy Clark, a cognitive scientist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. “You experience, in some sense, the world that you expect to experience.”

One reason we rely so much on expectation is that our perceptions lag behind reality. Much of what we do, from playing sixteenth notes on the guitar to adjusting our stance on a jerking subway train, happens faster than the 80 milliseconds or longer it takes our conscious minds to register input, let alone act upon it. And so the brain must always be anticipating what comes next. It generates a model of the world, makes decisions on that basis, and updates the model based on sensory feedback. In the language of probability theory, the brain is a Bayesian inference engine, merging prior expectations with current conditions to assess the probability of future outcomes.

Predicting and updating needn’t be — and usually aren’t — conscious acts; the brain builds its models on multiple subconscious levels. Nearly 20 years ago, researchers showed how the visual cortex works in a hierarchical and predictive fashion. The primary visual cortex generates a prediction for small-scale image patterns such as edges. It refines its prediction to match the incoming signals from the retina, but if this localized fine-tuning is not enough, it passes the buck to the secondary cortex, which revamps its expectations of what larger-scale geometric patterns must be out there. And so it goes up the hierarchy, evoking ever more sweeping changes, until the buck stops at the highest level: consciousness. (Neuroscientists adopted the term ‘predictive coding’ from communications engineering, which in the 1950s developed the idea of transmitting discrepancies rather than raw data, to minimize the amount of information a network needs to carry.)

Alexander Glandien, for Spectrum

When the brain perceives a discrepancy, it can respond by either updating its model or deeming the discrepancy to be a chance deviation, in which case it never swims up into conscious awareness. “You want to attenuate fake news,” Friston says. Or there is a third alternative: Faced with a discrepancy between model and world, the brain might also update the world — say, by moving an arm or flexing a hand to make the prediction come true. “One can reduce prediction errors not only by updating the model but by performing actions,” says Anil Seth, a neuroscientist at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom. In this way, predictive coding can be not just a system for perception, but also for motor control.

But which of these three responses should the brain take? In the predictive-coding model, the brain decides among them by assigning its predictions a precision — the statistical variability it expects from the input. Precision is the brain’s version of an error bar: High precision (low variance) plays up discrepancies: “This is important. Pay attention!” Low precision (high variance) downplays them: “Just a fluke, never mind.”

Suppose the brain consistently set the precision higher than conditions called for. It would be as if Google Maps understated its uncertainty about a person’s location and drew that approximate blue circle around them too small. Random variations in the signal that cause the estimated location to jump around would look like real motion. One might well watch it and wonder what could possibly be causing that person to hop around like that: Where others saw noise, you’d see signal.

That same sort of miscalculation may occur in people with autism. “Maybe autism spectrum disorder involves a kind of failure to get that Bayesian balance right, if you like, or at least to do it in the neurotypical way,” Clark says.

Extreme precision:

Although the ideas underlying predictive coding date back at least 150 years, it came of age as a theory in neuroscience only in the 1990s, just as machine learning was transforming computer science — and that’s no coincidence. The two fields have cross-fertilized each other.

Many machine-learning systems have a parameter called the ‘learning rate’ that plays the role of predictive precision, Friston says. An artificial neural network learns by trial and error; if it classifies a puppy as a kitten, it tweaks its internal connections to do better next time, and the learning rate dictates the amount of tweaking. The system can adjust the learning rate to optimize its training and avoid problems such as overfitting the data — recognizing every kitten and puppy it has already encountered, but failing to grasp the general features that distinguish these pets. The learning rate is often high at first but decreases over time. In the predictive-coding model, the typical brain, too, starts with a high precision and gradually dials it down, possibly by adjusting the concentrations of chemical messengers such as norepinephrine and acetylcholine. “The belief is that precision is usually encoded by neuromodulators in the brain — chemicals that change the gain on cortical responses,” says Rebecca Lawson of the University of Cambridge in the U.K. When it’s time to initiate another round of learning, the brain cranks up the precision again.

In people with autism, however, the precision may have a tendency to jump to a high level or get stuck there — for whatever reason, the brain tends to overfit. This general idea was first put forward in 2010 by Columbia University neuroscientists Ning Qian and Richard Lipkin. Inspired by machine learning, they suggested that the autism brain is biased toward rote memorization, and away from finding regularities or patterns. “We can think about the difficulties of training people with [autism] as a mismatch between the learning style and the tasks,” Qian says.

The following year, another team put forth the first Bayesian model of the condition, proposing that in individuals with autism, the brain gives too little credence to its own predictions and therefore too much to sensory input. In response, two groups — one including Friston and Lawson — suggested that predictive coding could provide the mechanism for the imbalance between predictions and sensations. And in 2014, Sinha and his colleagues proposed that in autism, the brain’s predictions aren’t underweighted but simply inaccurate, which becomes especially apparent in cases where prediction is intrinsically difficult. For example, when one event follows another only slightly more often than expected to by chance, a person with autism might not notice any connection at all. A world that seems at least somewhat predictable to typical people can strike those with autism as capricious — or, as Sinha puts it, “magical.”

In autism, rather than being adaptively surprised when you ought to have been surprised, it’s as if there’s mild surprise to everything.

Rebecca Lawson

Although these groups focused on different parts of the predictive process, they described much the same principle: For a person with autism, the world never stops being surprising. “That is a very common narrative in individuals with [autism],” Kumagaya says. “They tend to be surprised more frequently than neurotypicals.” In a way, this view of the world facilitates some kinds of learning. For instance, studies show that people with autism do well at tasks that involve sustained attention to detail, such as spotting the odd man out in an image and identifying musical pitches. Also, they are less likely to see visual and multisensory illusions that presume strong expectations within the perceptual system.

But hyperawareness is exhausting. “You’re forever enslaved by sensations,” Friston says. Giving too much attention to the mundane would explain the sensory overload that people with autism commonly report. Some people with autism say they remain acutely conscious of buzzing lamps and rumbling air conditioners, and studies confirm they are slow to habituate to repeated stimuli.

Also in support of the predictive-coding model, people with autism can have trouble with tasks that are predictive by nature, such as catching a ball or tracking a moving dot on a screen. The problem is amplified when dealing with the most unpredictable things of all: human beings. To predict what someone will do in a given context, you may need to make a guess based on what they or someone like them did under different circumstances. That is hard for anyone, but more so for people with autism. “It’s very common, for example, for [people with autism] to get into social interactions and have difficulty taking what they’ve learned from situation A and bringing it to situation B,” Lipkin says. A lack of predictability can lead to acute anxiety, a common problem in people on the spectrum. Many features of autism, such as a preference for routine, can be understood as coping mechanisms. “When you see most of the repetitive movements, they are actively retreating to shield complexity in the natural world,” says Sander van de Cruys of the University of Leuven in Belgium.

In addition to offering explanations for a range of autism traits, predictive coding might also make sense of the confusing links between autism and schizophrenia. The theory accounts for schizophrenia as, in some ways, autism’s mirror image. In autism, sensory data overrides the brain’s mental model; in schizophrenia, the model trumps data.

Consider schizophrenia’s distinguishing feature: having auditory verbal hallucinations (hearing voices). Last year, Philip Corlett of Yale University and his colleagues studied the origin of these hallucinations by inducing mild versions in 30 people who reported hearing voices on a daily basis (half of whom had been diagnosed with psychosis) and 29 who didn’t. To do so, the researchers borrowed a trick from Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov. They showed the participants checkerboard images while playing a tone, so that the participants came to expect the two together. Then the researchers stopped playing the tone. The participants who hadn’t reported hearing voices quickly caught on, but those who were hallucination-prone were more likely to report that they still heard the tone. The team interpreted this difference in terms of predictive coding. “People with auditory verbal hallucinations have very, very precise expectations about the relationships between visual and auditory stimuli in our task, so much so that those beliefs sculpt new percepts from whole cloth,” Corlett says. “They make you hear things that weren’t actually presented to you.”

Autism resembles schizophrenia in some ways, Corlett says. Although hearing voices is not common, people on the spectrum have elevated rates of delusions — fixed beliefs they hold in the face of all evidence to the contrary, such as being manipulated by aliens or paranormal forces. Corlett suggests that these delusions occur when sensory data are given too much weight and install a new set of beliefs, which then become lodged in place.

Looking ahead:

There is still much about autism that predictive coding doesn’t explain, such as what exactly accounts for the autism brain’s hesitancy to dial back predictive precision as the brain gains experience. Researchers are still investigating which is askew: the prediction, the sensory input, the comparison of the two or the use of a discrepancy to force a model update. And what types of predictions are involved — all kinds, or just some? Our brains make predictions on many levels and timescales. People with autism do just fine with many of them.

Some researchers are skeptical that problems of prediction are the root cause of autism. Psychologist James McPartland, also at Yale, says he is partial to explanations that give primacy to the condition’s social traits. If one thing characterizes autism, he says, it’s social difficulties, suggesting that researchers should focus on the mental machinery we need to interact with other people, such as face recognition. He says he finds a social explanation no less biologically plausible than a perceptual one. “We have a really clear idea where in the brain faces are processed,” he says. He also wonders about the direction of causation: Instead of predictive problems explaining social difficulties, the relationship might work in reverse, because so much of the brain’s predictive capacities are developed through social interactions. “Is social information a critical kind of information for the normative development of predictive coding?” he says.

Predictive-coding researchers themselves acknowledge that they are just beginning to test the theory in autism. “Those initial papers, they’re sort of just-so stories, in that they are post hoc — explaining data that was already collected,” Lawson says. But she and others have been conducting experiments that probe the predictive mechanisms more specifically. Many involve associative-learning tasks, in which people have to figure out the rule that governs some series of images or other stimuli. Every so often, the experimenters change the rule in a way that’s not immediately obvious and see how quickly their participants catch on.

Last year, for example, Lawson and her colleagues brought two dozen people with autism and 25 controls into the lab. They played a high or low beep, showed a picture of a face or house, and asked participants to press a button for ‘face’ or ‘house.’ At first, a high tone presaged a house 84 percent of the time, then a low tone did, then tones had only a 50-50 relation to image type, and so on. The controls slowed down whenever a run of violated expectations convinced them that the rule must have changed, but the participants with autism responded at a more consistent rate, which was slightly slower overall. The researchers concluded that the participants with autism responded as if each deviation — a house when the tone augured a face, say — signaled a change of rule, whereas typical people were inclined to write off the first few deviations as probabilistic happenstance.

Alexander Glandien, for Spectrum

For about half the participants, the researchers also measured pupil size, because pupils dilate in response to norepinephrine, one of the chemicals thought to encode predictive precision. Interpreting these results was tricky because each person followed a slightly different learning curve and formed different expectations. To determine whether a given event would seem surprising, the researchers had to model each person’s pattern of responses individually. The upshot was that the pupils of participants with autism seemed to be on a hair trigger. “In autism, rather than being adaptively surprised when you ought to have been surprised, it’s as if there’s mild surprise to everything — so, it’s sort of saying, well, that was mildly surprising, and that was mildly surprising, and that was mildly surprising, and that was mildly surprising,” Lawson says.

One intriguing approach is to build the predictive-coding theory into computer models, even robots. Artificial neural networks that embody theories of brain function could serve as digital lab rats. Researchers could tweak the model parameters to see whether they reproduce the traits of autism, schizophrenia or other conditions. In 2012, computational scientist Jun Tani and a colleague programmed a robot to simulate schizophrenia. By adding noise to the robot controller’s calculations, they led it to miscalculate the discrepancy between its expectation and its sensory data. The spurious error — a robotic hallucination, if you will — propagated up the robot’s cognitive hierarchy and destabilized its operation. “The robot shows disorganized behaviors,” says Tani, professor at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology in Japan. He and others are beginning to apply predictive coding to autism in this way.

If predictive coding holds up as a model for autism, it might also suggest new directions for therapies. “Different kids with autism may show impairments in somewhat different parts of that predictive chain,” Chawarska says, which might call for a range of clinical approaches. When she meets with parents, she uses the idea of prediction to help them understand their child’s experience of the world, telling them: “Your child really has tremendous difficulties understanding what’s going to happen next,” she says. “It’s something that really comes through, particularly with these very, very young kids. Their anguish and difficulty in relating to events is that they simply don’t know where they fit.”

If nothing else, predictive coding might offer the insight some young people crave — as Ayaya did when she was a teenager. “I noticed the differences between me and other kids, and I was thinking, why was this going on?” she recalls. As an adult, she says, her anxiety has abated, not just because of the self-knowledge she has achieved, but also because of the awareness shown by her peers and friends. Often, the typical people she spends time with know about her condition, she says. “They know me. [So] I feel more free to ask, ‘I got surprised, but didn’t you?’”

This article was reprinted with permission from Spectrum, the home of autism research news and analysis.

[radcrusadecrusade-blog]

The Secrets of the Jews distance

Strategy to battle Russia a summary on returning from distance, I am a grandson of a founder of Judaism all details can be verified in a short time. Research in the clairvoyant drug "Ketoret" an illusion drug a "methanic" compound when discovered was observed to design dreams and set obsessions and understood when managed will end consciences trained to sing and dance for self-satisfaction of a druggist or sorcerer. We were sworn to author a final prologue for the association of the Torah's authors and their children a hobby priesthood and birthright of New York constitutionalist deeply rooted taken to Judah Ha-Levi's philosophical holy land that is east of our ocean with prayers of a holy land religion that philosophize eternally searching for unending re-structuring of the conscience of the mass to glorify "the name his name Judah" and the nemesis to the constitutionalist's Hebrew bible the Torah the tune and not the language. The tune describes distances of words at the dawn of language to relate what to when. The final prologue The Sayegh family was brought to Israel from New York one of the first known Jewish families Torah adherents and children that were illegitimate born from rape to the sisters. In the brothers home it was planned adultery from Yael Sayegh formally Brown and her group with nowhere to turn two additional children were born to the original association that are illegitimate. An experiment understood justified by Israel and failed and now ignored that one person in their country would identify the problem and reality of what was happening, one son is now thirty two years of age and the second twenty nine State of Israel who are you? We are the Torah and we are the Jewish wanted for a Middle East real estate brand and its founding declared philosophy of contrasting-philosophy a hobby known that dares truth always resulting in a performed sincerity not our tune not our song and not our theatre. My families association Aram soba authors of the Torah are from New York articles and poems were written that referred to us as Syrian a bridge with a flagged name that started with a sea and then a board and then a hymn that brought Ashkenaz a name understood as acid and a reminder of American lore that symbolized a rebellion was fermenting against those in the faraway land of the Middle East that crossed that bridge into an environ that was not known to us or referred to from our founding to the 1940's. The title Jewish was from the combination of "Jehovah and wish or will". It was a craze after its completion when written on parchment by 1911, to educate and study its reason emphasis was on writing poetry philosophies movie scripts plays stories of Amalec a named borrowed as the enemy for part of the chronicle book series on prophets, book design and written narrations to self-educate on penmanship and comprehension and all never occurred and was only for practice of its unknown language. America is in a war of wits with the Soviet Union-Russia a distant area as a result of their unending shenanigans of which they staged a comical Arab oil embargo that depressed our economy when all oil is manufactured and never drained from wells; and their Israel less than a thirty hour drive south from central Russia was then publicized as the holy land a tourist location for a massage and prayer that began issuing medallions of righteous gentile and prisoner of conscience for old friends and placed named plaques in partisan theme parks. They already drugged youth and parents in the city of New York a wickedness that is not to be forgotten to demonstrate for freedom of a non-existent soviet Jewry leaving them in a permanent unhappiness and health dependency to create an environment of excitement and encouragement for Soviets traveling the highway distance of two turnpikes and four exit ramps for a home and salaried part in Israel, which seemed to be a large movie studio and later sworn by Arabs to be a cover-up of its collapse a jurisdiction already known as a place of rotational beliefs and part of unending invasions of Russians on Russians precedence with accurate documentation from its on-set. The State of Israel's location has no connection to the Torah or the founding religion where places mentioned are philosophies not tourist sites as Jerusalem its capital never mentioned. America's founding Jews understood the Torah to study priesthood and when read in public to be witnessed as ritual of awareness of reality and its development through the stories dreams and their counterparts in Israel only as a source for philosophies to find purpose to read and reasons of their culture. Israel Jerusalem and the Temple, the first second and third was another Russian prank making idiots of the United States, the Arabs and Africa. A shangrila society that is a eternal dream in a bubble where the reality induces dreams that expands until it dissolves. When shangrila is bursted it would be understood a Russian ritual and never permitted again. Daydreaming is forbidden and their creation, a gateway to psychosomatic disturbance. Our hearts underwent operations and replaced with prosthetic aortic valves with unending mechanical beats and illegitimate children ours emotionally an institutional crime hidden than veiled as an absurdity of a mark when known becomes cultures final silent affinity and it is known. The ketoret's vapor in a short time becomes atmosphere worry depression pains dream and fantasies are noticeable until the induced instructions are accepted "The Holocaust" A production referred in the Hebrew as "Shoah" was actual pronunciation from show and never occurred Jews as social groups are lawful and not a people within a people and were not in Europe. It blossomed from the absurdity that it was documented accurately in awareness which overwhelmed the designers-producers having them lose control. The  humor that Jews were used for soap was a result of frustration of the inability to function by the priesthood who train endlessly not to err, sodium acetate that is used by sorcerers for Ketoret was believed needed for producing soap and that Jews were allied to Freemasons the fraternity as a compound of lime is also required. The term holocaust was from the cause of a hologram and the parchment written Torah finally understood as the reason of the final solution of sorcerers with crazed indoctrinations they cannot escape in sanctifying ills on life and society in a world they created idolizing the Torah that consecrated their dissolution without their awareness. Jew was in place of Jehovah a spirit of a mind with instructions heard prescribed. In New York an Israeli bank opened alongside with its Jewish agency and behaved as part of the publicized intelligence service "Mossad" constantly searching to benefit from America's original Jewish community that suffered from constant intrusions in their lives. The bank was not very well known and could have been from Canada or Mexico, when the bank was set ablaze on kings' highway Brooklyn, they responded they are of the ten ancient lost tribes and clearly understood in our city that a long war for sanity was upon us. Our families started as young friends that went to work for the federal government under patronage of Secretary George Marshall we were their children. Following eastern European's imposed immigration on Israel by 1973 it became their southern gateway, since 1964 when New York was called upon to defend Israel as part of the precedent of documentation and present its Europeans staged as victims over 22 million people entered from the Soviet Union and replace America's bloodline its citizens of register. "The god whom" America responds to the god whomever; it is all of it and if you had the emotion needed and not the illusion you would have foreseen early on, it is time for Central to be aware and it is soon time to return home my two sons will be killed, I took it all. Russia has over two million people in America that practice sorcery drugging with the methanic the illusion drug and the catalyst of the unending invasion of Russians on Russians and dreams they bring that perpetually will bring them. Israel already identifies itself as a Russian theme park with less than a thirty hour drive south from Russia itself the idea center; from its introduction into the environment originally thought a curiosity or a state of being and then a movie studio over twenty million Soviets entered our home environment our home country blurting out the sound Jewish and claiming rights from publications and over publication. The methanic identified as Ketoret the Biblical clairvoyant drug of designing dreams and setting beliefs was discovered through literature of the nineteenth century analysis and sacrifice, never with intended assistance resulting from its secretive habit the rings of misery. Daydreaming can now be totally controlled, when they created our dreams they limited our emotion of discovery intrigue and health in a life that years are numbered. The individuals profiled that drug are immediate epidemics on arrival including tourists as they never stop their barrages of misery when setting our rules as if it is by the god whomever; they are methanic. Those that we challenged harmed us dearly and are not forgiven our heart operations were planned years earlier including the replacement with prosthetic aortic valves never needed so its unending mechanical beats will be a reminder of a countdown for the hosts demise and then a clock of the error when realized the anesthetic suspended dreams that followed illusions being ignored and increased awareness, when of the dream makers became a required self-obsession. Israel's shenanigans of children born not to the known father and the courts and medicine forbidding paternal tests to the offspring following the then stated purpose that their holy land religion must prove equality in discrimination between Jews and Arabs by spokespeople of a government elected by self-protocol and only insanity a prologue understanding too late it was a self-explanatory and not an accusation of former citizenship intrigued by the performance and awaiting the play. Who were the Jews? a handful jeopardy group of membership and not the enchanting shangrila tabernacle community that required conversion for the chosen for a ticket turning towards the east the western wall and going south where it was newly built,a place for prayers to be heard or scribbled on notes and placed in the wall's crevices designed for traditions that are imagined and all searching for direction and Arabs that are answerable to protocols requiring attendance for complaining their attendance. Arabs the southern tribes and play things that walk were then challenged with not respecting borders and the Israeli reason for racing across the Atlantic from east to west over the great barrier carrying their designed flag the Mogen David planting it in every auditorium of aspiring strict communities with a sales pitch "to search for direction" when Ketoret was unleashed, territory was taken land mind and soul.  A report was sent to the Central Intelligence Agency with the hope that the MK Ultra research in mind control would be recovered it was not complete and now it is MK methane-potassium it is not and ultra the wasted time invested Jew a temporary phenomenon was in place of Jehovah a conscience with thoughts prescribed, only while possessed by Jehovah is a person known as Israel a host and Samaritan upon completion of the possession the exorcism is considered a success and Israel is discharged. "Whomever" Sorcery the playing field begins with designing the imagination with Ketoret the illusion drug, the Cohen. Whatever ends are decided by people who influence either the hypnotists or ventriloquists that are not always aware of their actions damage or whereabouts, the biblical Prophet. Sorcerers compose ghosts in the conscience referred also as spirits or ions,The Witch. The vapor rare when needed is to be overseen by priests who train endlessly not to err, the Priest. Vocal conversation including what seems superficial broadcasts to a person's belief emotions and becomes their sincerity and not their superstitions, the Rabbi. Premonitions result when groups are drugged implanting ideas and emotions within them and keeping records of their victims interacting for game and sport, the Hypnotist. Cow-hands are people who work in an environment of methane as cow waste and develop obsessions for the activity, the Patsy. Sorcerers who practice in the described environment are hypnotic and become deeply obsessed in their blessings or spell even from a misspoken phrase constantly reinforcing its outcome even to each other by sanctifying any belief, the Pagan. Dreamers set are victims of the chemists and also perpetrators of creating dreams that end with life's new goals, the Clairvoyant. The dream or obsession the clairvoyants set could be for a year in advance changing beliefs and the resulting reality that delivers on demand and a designed personality that will not be noticeable, the Psychopath. Chemists with notions set from a clairvoyant not known or realized establishes rings of individuals to train as clairvoyants permanent dreamers as his helpers to bewitch the notion, the Alchemist. Possessed are conditioned for a repetitive dream blurt out statements at times planned for a sales pitch, party act or sorcery, the Ventriloquist. Spirits and beliefs gain strength from dreams and anesthetic at regular intervals will put you in sleep where they are no dreams and obsessions of the ill and the illness will be slowed but not cured, the Doctor. Ringleaders among  those described manage humanities dreams aspiring through craft to attain, the Sorcerer Whom. A conspiracy is staged and never known how absurd claims are believed and trusted from the first misinterpretation of Hebrew of the improvement of mind-set as the exodus the movement of people from slavery resulting in its yearly holiday recalling legends of the slaves, accurate documentation was recorded in awareness and set the precedent of a goal to end unsupervised illusions. "Expressions for communication on visits from the planets east" Sephardic from the combination of the Hebrew "sepher" meaning book and the American "dic" an abbreviation of dictate in setting an expression to standardize the method of writing the Torah a rule book to be sanctified of developing etiquette for the conscience from being misunderstood only as sanctified and not its ultimate purpose a rule book. Later day Hebrew developed in the Middle East in the early mid-nineteenth century the period of civilization that conceived a theater resulting in a new culture and its methodology of organic degeneration to create the methanic atmosphere that preceded the thoughts hearing the word Sephardic to mean Spanish which proceeded a migration of Peron's Argentine peasants to Frank Sinatra's New York searching for their newly understood north east African roots. The State not yet known by the name Israel defiantly did not represent or understand the scripture Egypt and the flight from uncontrolled instructions as thoughts resulting in their holiday that honored independence of their state and relived its need without a copy or explanation of the Torah by the Sephardic, trusting screenwriters of the developed language. Russia and for Germany took the term Ashkenaz understood as acid that dissolves and when handled properly still dissolves. Zionists; Soviets that wanted everyone's home narrowed to one of their own. Soviets; sovereign and that is it individuals perpetually searching for a throne in a unending life time game of musical chairs known in the already confusing Hebrew as a "Sephardic nusach" a combination of noose and ache and its meaning Sephardic be formulated ."Zahal" Israel's army singing a Hebrew motivational song of identifying places on their horizon and for others a title of the hit song from Annie's Broadway of hope in a depression the same for Abba Hillel fans American Zionists now reminiscing the distance of what was their beliefs and benefits bestowed by their lives. "Phrases reminded from whom as origins are to be checked" Anti-Semitism was semi italicized characters written from right to left Arabic and anti was italicized characters written in the opposite direction Latin or English. The Hebrew language was Italicized designed to write the Torah the textbook for training prophets and priests had no linguistic form connection and was not originally developed for a country with a fascination of folk dancing and philosophize philosophies an eastern European hobby. The first Jewish centers in New York where in neighborhoods called Italian from italicized nobody knew whether they were going from right to left or left to right Mr. George Gershwin's humor not to forget origins and misuse of connected phrases, immigration to America was not as large as thought ports did not exist to receive newcomers. Torah is read loudly clearly and witnessed by a quorum that it is heard vocally not mistaken that it is a dream, a ritual of awareness of reality and its development through the stories dreams. Bensonhurst New York was where the first successful prayer of acceptance of the Torah as a rule book to develop conscience's etiquette as a community. "Israel's military mind challenge the wind" The Uganda Entebbe raid that rescued Israeli and Jewish hostages was a fantasy and happened during the time of preparing Israel for immigrants to their messianic country, resulted from a challenge of absurd claims and which were to be believed and an unknown setting for a precedent of accurate documentation of absurdity from the moments beginning in awareness. The raid never took place it was intended to upstage America's independence celebration of two hundred years its bicentennial July 4 1976 and constantly reminded. Those who came as immigrants and not before took the Torah a textbook with rules of developing etiquette of the conscience in place of uncontrolled illusions and dreams and exchanged it into an "Elel" an Idol to which a prayer is chanted referring to it as the old testament; Jerusalem and stories of a temple were from hymns of a holy land religion with no connection to the Torah and missionized as history of substance and sediment when chanted to the direction of the Torah. This new religion publicized as Yehudit designed not many years earlier could profess all beliefs except with the word Jesus not mentioned in the Torah; Yeshu considered a translation of Jesus from Torah "yeshurun" a Hebrew word explained by the authors family as hark listening to an unseen spirit and another eastern religion. Jewish was planned by the families of the authors to insulate and protect them and attempt with the pre-known misunderstanding of kashrus in reference to all cuisine list ingredients on industry packaging in liberty their land of birth America. "Soviets final intrusion in humanities souls" The published account of return from distance resulted from the stubborness to protect  awareness resulting from the textbook the adored nemesis a rule book sanctified of developing etiquette of the conscience for prophets that would end unregulated use of Ketoret creating illusions that converted the nemesis to an idol for prayer that is misread and protected by its idolization. All part of the final war between those demanding consciences of instruction that require to understand and idol peddlers for consciences that mimic. On a nation's inception its first moment of independence whatever tribe and whatever land blessed by trained priests and prophets that nursed the birth of a nation will hear the name lord Jehovah in their thoughts as memories of happiness and then never needed to be heard again for that nation under one god and lord its Citizenship of register and none other from that day forward with borders marked and symbols songs and pride of their design interrupted by a free world that will arise for the deserving honor.