Tag Archives: books

A Fascination With the Afterlife

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First: Still want to hear your stories of strange experiences.

Next: This vlog was a bit of a mess. I’m not feeling on top of my game today and this is a huge topic that’s really kind of important to the whole paranormal research aspect of what I’m interested in. That time period between the 1840s and 1930s was when dozens of research organizations and secret societies were in their heyday… and a lot of them are still around (in some form) today.

I rambled on, with multiple false starts, and ridiculously long pauses for a whole 20 minutes. Editing took… a while. And, after that, I can think of dozens of ways I’d rather have done this.

In short, I’m really running head on against my perfectionist tendencies and they’re clawing at me something fierce. Of course, I can’t even begin to do much different and still hold to my schedule.

Guess that means there’s stuff to work toward eventually. 🙂

The book I mentioned in the vlog is one written by Peter Aykroyd, that’s Dan Aykroyd’s father. I picked it up a couple of years ago and it’s a really good read. So, if the history of ghosts, spiritualism, and the influences Dan Aykroyd grew up with are things that interest you, definitely check out A History of Ghosts: The True Story of Seances, Mediums, Ghosts, and Ghostbusters. Seems it’s only available for Kindle on Amazon right now.

So, check out the vlog.

Don’t forget that you have some say over what goes on for the next 100 days… click the big green button below here to get to the page where you can submit topic suggestions and questions (so I know what kinds of things you want to see go on in these videos).

[jbutton size=”xxlarge” color=”green” link=”http://durosia.com/vlog-questions” newpage=”yes”]Come Ask a Question Here[/jbutton]

Those First Weird Books

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Now we’re up to the point where I really want all of you to join in.

In today’s vlog, I talk about a bunch of the weird books that provided me with the framework for my explorations of the strange and unusual. I want to know what books and experiences you’ve read and had that involve the paranormal and supernatural.

Here’s the promised list of books from me:

There are many, many more than this… and then tons of television shows and documentaries. I could go on for hours and still miss bunches whose titles have faded from my memory, even if the stories and knowledge they contained hasn’t.

If I’d had access back then to the volume of information on ghosts, UFOs, and other paranormal things I have now, all sorts of things would have been so much more amazing. Knowing what I had to go through to get the knowledge I have of this stuff is what really makes me sad that a good bunch of the people–some running podcasts on this very same stuff–don’t know about what I consider basic things (like The Philip Experiment).

Oh… and Von Daniken did open a theme park of sorts. Back in 2003. It really didn’t last as a full-time venture.

Here’s today’s vlog, a quick run through some of my books. Let me know if you like it… but more importantly, tell me the stories you know.

Don’t forget that you have some say over what goes on for the next 100 days… click the big green button below here to get to the page where you can submit topic suggestions and questions (so I know what kinds of things you want to see go on in these videos).

[jbutton size=”xxlarge” color=”green” link=”http://durosia.com/vlog-questions” newpage=”yes”]Come Ask a Question Here[/jbutton]

Affordable Housing, Role Playing Games, Legal Wranglings, Inspiration, Tragedy, and Everything Since Friday

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This entry is part 65 of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

Yeah, apparently I’m skipping Friday updates more often than not. I should stop that. Actually stick to my own schedule.

One of the big topics that ended up being discussed today in the stream was the whole rich/poor divide and the idea of affordable housing… spawned by an article about a new building in NYC that’s going to have a separate entrance for it’s less privileged residents (who they agreed to take in so they could get a tax break, mind you).

The topic of “affordable housing” comes up frequently here in Maryland. Particular in Silver Spring. The issue is a little different than it is in places like NYC.

Here we have the problem of people building a lot of expensive housing that is then bought/rented by people who mostly work and play in DC. This leaves people who work in Silver Spring (which has a wide diversity of jobs and pay rates) unable to afford to live there (in some cases), pushing them farther out where public transportation is less viable, leading to a bit of a traffic problem and a bit of a parking problem (which leads to all sorts of other problems… like local businesses being able to do solid business because people can’t get to/part at them easily or actual residents not being able to find parking/get around easily during the day).

A number of members of the community here are very interested in trying to build and maintain an actual community. One that’s vibrant at all times during the day…. not just during rush hour. What’s been in place has been slowly slipping away as development has boomed and busted a few times. (Most of what’s being built are one or two bedroom apartments/condos… not conducive to people with families, encouraging more transient people who go elsewhere to put down actual roots.)

It’s an interesting situation. A problematic one. And one I know I haven’t come up with a good solution to (mainly because I’ve got some very mixed feelings about all the affordable housing solutions I have seen–some of which were laid out in the article that Nancy shared–but some of those concerns are at odds with my desire to have poor people actually treated as people, since I’ve seen that be one of the best ways to help someone get back on their feet).

Needless to say, a number of people disagree with me on a lot of those points.

I’m okay with that.

Like I said, I don’t have an answer, so the discussion obviously needs to keep going on somewhere.

Here’s the extra long feed (which contains a few interesting discussions or starting points, so you should check it out)…

Tarot History, Takei Respect, DRM Woes, Work Tunes, Illusions in Motion, and Comic Book Stuff

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This entry is part 50 of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

Hopefully, after today’s utter insanity and stress, things will fall back into a more “schedule-friendly” rhythm at work. We should be past the point where a project that should have ebbed has continued to flow… right over top of a new project that was planned to start in the down-time.

In the feed, there’s what I consider a nice story about the insistence on DRM (Digital Rights Management) has come back to bite the company that insisted upon it in the ass. Seems a publisher that vehemently insisted Amazon only sell it’s ebook editions with DRM in place, is now in the sticky situation where it’s no longer happy with Amazon’s terms and charges, but can’t pull out without more or less using it’s entire customer base–because they’re locked into only being able to read the books on Amazon readers… because of the DRM.

Even more “fun” is the tidbit in the article that mentions Tor Books, which dropped DRM from it’s ebooks a couple years back. Ostensibly, DRM is in place to prevent piracy. Well, it seems that since dropping DRM, not only has Tor not seen an increase in piracy, they’ve actually seen an increase in sales.

Same thing happened when Amazon really jumped into the MP3 game… challenging iTunes by offering DRM free downloads. That may not have been a clear-cut victory, but Amazon’s music sales aren’t too shabby.

DRM has always treated legitimate customers like criminals and done little to nothing to deter, let alone stop, actual criminals. In most cases, it seems that it’s created more who break the law–by stripping out or otherwise circumventing the DRM so they can use their products freely.

People pirate stuff because they can’t get it legally in the form they want to make use of it. This is a lesson you’d think everyone would have learned when Napster was the biggest thing. People went there to effectively steal music because there was no legal way to get it in that format.

Ebooks are popular because people love the format. It’s bad enough that there are so many competing formats (which offer very few differences when it comes to the actual content… outside of which device you can use to read them). Adding serious DRM to them does nothing but open the door for things like a content producer getting screwed over by their DRM provider.

Maybe this time around, companies will learn.

Probably not.

A Bit of Science, Some Literature, A Tune or Two, and Some Crazy News

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This entry is part 23 of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

I spent most of my day today, neck deep in code, tweaking Drupal API bits on a data entry form to bend it to the will of my client.

I am not exactly a programmer, so this isn’t my idea of a good time.

But, it needs to be done, and so it gets done. And there’s still a lot more to do, and a ticking clock hanging over every keystroke.

That’s how a lot of our life is–full of things that need to be done that we aren’t all that thrilled about doing. It’s a shame, really. I know people who love the bulk of what they do, but the bulk of people I know slog through the day, pulled forward only by the sweet promise of release from the drudgery of the day and the solace of a cold beverage or a few fleeting hours with their significant other/family/friends before they have to bed down and do the whole thing again tomorrow.

Time is, indeed, the most limited resource we have. (And according to one of the links below, it may literally be running out… that’s kind of trippy to think about… if you have a minute to spare.) Because of that, we should all be well aware of what we do with those precious moments we have where we are in control and can do what we want.

…and that’s about as deep as I have the time to go, since I need to get off to sleep as that code won’t write itself.

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