Metafizzics

Free Time!

Once you know about the Clock of the Long Now, you will either be in love with the idea or not care one whit.  If the former . . . you will want to browse the free audio downloads of Long Now seminars such as "The Political History of North America from 25,000 BC to 12,000 AD" and "The Singularity: Your Future as a Black Hole." 

There's also a snappy overview of the Long Clock from Discover Magazine.   

Happiness is . . .

Just looking at the word "happiness," it seems so simple that you have to wonder how a sixth-grade spelling champion could get it wrong at the regional Bee.  But yes--one could.  Apparently I realized at a young age that in reality, happiness is not at all a simple matter.

Therefore, I was especially fascinated by today's episode of To The Best of Our Knowledge, a program (questionably abbreviated as ttbook) produced by Wisconsin Public Radio.  This excellent audible omnibus (!) is new to our local market, but if my first sample is any indicator, it's well worth listening to.

Fortunately, the program archives are available online, so I'm looking forward to reviewing some past episodes.  And--you can listen to the April 16th hour called "Hope Springs Eternal."  Find out what happens when one man decides to say yes to everything for a year, then hear about the "pronoia" movement, the history of happiness, transcendance in popular music, and much more.

Listen to it--really!  It will make you . . . well . . . happy. 

Wakefulness

"My friend, what are you? Are you a celestial being or a god?" 
"No," said the Buddha. 
"Well, then, are you some kind of magician or wizard?" 
Again, the Buddha answered, "No."
"Are you a man?"  "No."
"Well, my friend, then what are you?"

The Buddha replied . . . "I am awake."

Whether you want to wake up to your own buddha-nature, or you just want to get to the meeting on time, Falling Awake would like to help!  This website belongs to author Dave Ellis, and it offers several free and useful items, including an online journaling tool.  My favorite is the Wake Up Call.  Falling Awake will not only send you email reminders containing whatever message you compose--if you like, "they" will actually call you and speak the message right into your ear (or your answering machine). 

Of course, it's a speech-synthesized recording and sounds a bit like Stephen Hawking has called (which would be a really nice surprise, come to think of it), but the great thing is, it tells you what you want to hear!!  Or need to hear--you choose.  The message I asked for when I tested the service was "Fall like Alice"; stay tuned for a future post that will explain why . . .

Meanwhile, I've used the service several times, over a few weeks, and have received no other communications from these folks, so it really does seem to be "no strings attached."  You can have up to two hundred free calls a year.  And Dave Ellis's pleasant motivational book Falling Awake is free to download on the site, so have a look. 

Test Patterns

Two free online tests that are worth taking!

Chakra Test suggests where your energy centers may be out of balance.  If you are not familiar with the concept of chakras, there is a good Introduction, and also a section on how to work with the chakras to restore balance.  For further exploration, consult Anodea Judith's excellent book, The Sevenfold Journey: Reclaiming Mind, Body & Spirit Through the Chakras.

Luscher Color Test seems to analyze your state of mind in various areas.  First you complete a "main test" that uses multiple colors, whereupon you will see a brief analysis.  Then you can take several other single-color tests (click on the tabs) that focus on different areas of life/personality.  I've taken the tests several times, and found the results surprisingly accurate.  The site seems to have been in Russian originally, and the translated results are sometimes--well, language-challenged--but overlook that, and you may get some interesting insights. 

Furl, by the way, provides a great way to keep copies of results from online tests and oracles!

Power Tools

If you love to wander around on the web, Pluck makes a great companion.  Collect and organize bookmarks almost effortlessly, share them with others, keep up with RSS feeds, create persistent searches, and do even more useful things with one cool tool that integrates pleasantly into Explorer.  (There's also a browser-independent web version.)  Pluck is totally free, with no ads or spyware--and speaking personally, it makes me happy every single day.

Furl is equally happy-making, equally free, and a great complement to Pluck.  Furl lets you save a copy of any web page into your own online archive.  You can assign the pages to topics, and use your archive like a directory.  But you can also search your archive for any keywords you choose, and find every page you've saved that contains those keywords.  Furl shows you the date you archived a page (surprisingly handy) and also allows you to filter or sort your archives, and so on.

For additional fun, you can annotate your pages when you archive them, add keywords that are not contained on the page, create a clipping from the page--and edit all this later if you need to.  Because Furl stores your archived pages, you have an actual copy of what you saved, rather than just a link, so if the page is changed or deleted later, you still have your copy.  And one more nifty thing:  Furl lets you share your page selections with other Furl-ers if you want to (just check whether you want a selection to be private or public), and you get to see what other folks are Furling.

I find that Pluck is perfect for many things I want to do, and Furl is perfect for many other things I want to do.  Blogger Amy Gahran uses Furl and del.icio.us together, so you might want to check out her point of view.