Yes, I know that the title sounds like a musical tour of Tom Petty's best album to date, (and that sure wouldn't be a bad thing) but its not. I'm finishing up the whole moon theme that you initiated a few entries back. In my web travels lately I've run into a few moon items of note - well actually about the moons effects on we earthlings. There's certainly plenty more where they came from BTW.
So I thought I'd assemble a small smorgasbord here. It contains one thing I said I was gonna look at last time, one thing I've always been curious about, and one thing I previously knew absolutely nothing about.
I mentioned briefly in the last entry that I'd downloaded a recent documentary and was going to report back on it and here we go. The title of the item is " Lunarcy" and it's a scarily apropos title, at that. This documentary deals with a number of people whose lives, one way or another, are inextricably wound around the moon. Although it handles the whole topic in a sometimes cheeky and almost irreverent manner, the conviction, commitment and in a couple of cases, absolute spiritual fervor that these individuals exude is unmistakeable. One of them is Alan Bean, who was actually the fourth astronaut to visit the moon and it clearly colored his existence and his life direction deeply everafter. If you have the chance to rent it online or see it popping up on PBS in the near future, I'd suggest checking it out. It's relatively short and briskly paced so it won't be a chore to consume.
The second item on the table concerns a question I've asked myself at various times, especially when, as a teacher, I was dealing with young humans during that seven year period known as " the teens". Is there a link between strange behaviour and a full moon? The extensively researched answer, it would seem, is No.
An article in the Feb 2009 issue of Scientific American titled " Lunacy and the Full Moon " does a very succinct and effective job of debunking what the authors referred to as " an astronomical and psychological urban legend ". It also introduced me to what researchers have dubbed (and what will probably become my next " term du jour " ) - "illusory correlation". It's refers to our tendency to see associations where none exist. The example given was of those folks with joint pain who claim that it is amplified by rainy weather. I can think of a few too. In fact, I think a good deal of all advertising pivots on peoples ability to make associations that have no basis in logic at all. If you want some more interesting reading you can find it at the Scientific American site.
Finally, in the process of wading about in all this moon-a-phenalia I found out about the Full Moon Party. This isn't a wacko political organization but rather a beach party that goes down on the night of the full moon. It started in 1985 in Haad Rin on the Island of Ko Pha Ngan, Thailand and has slowly grown into a fairly large scale phenomenon attended by roughly 20 to 30 thousand partiers each month - mostly westerners. The British Government, as the Wikipedia article notes, "has officially warned tourists who attend to exercise caution ". It seems that burns and cuts from broken beer bottles and various smoking materials are part and parcel of the whole experience. I wonder if this kind of behaviour could be a corollary of that "illusory correlation" thing we just heard about. Anyhow, if you know of anyone thinking of attending, here's the schedule for what our British cousins would probably have nicknamed a colossal monthly " piss-up".
Anyhow, after this little trip to the moon and what it's shown me I can only fall back on Spock's trademark utterance in response - " Fascinating ".
How bout some minor lunacy of a milder nature here - i.e. riddles.
So Carolyn, re. your previous entry of May 26, this is the second time that you've left me with a riddle and not given me the answer. What unfathomable torment!! My last one was Pride and I'm guessing that your riddle from last week was Bumblebees. Here's another:
Painted or plain
Chewed but not swallowed
Communicate impatience
With a rat-a-tat-tat
Don
All images retrieved from Google Images
Fig. 1 - aktisticmusic.co.uk
Fig. 2 - sphinxproductions.com
Fig. 3 - scientificamerican.com
Fig. 4 - sickchirpse.com
Fig. 5 - cosmicintelligenceagency.com
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